Did The Damn Just Crack On The Biden Campaign? Will Democrats Nominate A Compulsive Liar AND An Anti-Choice Candidate?

Many in Congress are concerned about Trump's seriously deteriorating mental health. And, at the same time, according to polling released yesterday by Pew Research more Americans identify fake news as a bigger problem for America than terrorism, illegal immigration, racism and sexism. They reported that 68% of those polled said made-up news and information greatly impacts Americans’ confidence in government institutions, and over half (54%) said it is having a major impact on our confidence in each other. Yesterday, Paul Farhi reported for the Washington Post that "It’s (almost) official: The president of the United States is a liar." Mainstream news organizations are finally waking up and smelling the plastic roses. Until fairly recently the media has by and large shied away from branding Trump’s gaslighting and bullshit as outright lies. "Nowadays," wrote Farhi, "many in the news media are no longer bothering to grant Trump the benefit of the doubt. In routine news and feature stories, Trump’s dishonesty carries no fig leaf. It is described baldly."

At a time like this-- although in my mind, any time-- it would be a dangerous risk for the Democrats to nominate someone like Joe Biden to run against Trump. As we've mentioned before, although PolitiFact has found that Trump has lied in 84% of his public statements-- making him the world's biggest liar-- Biden's record of lying and deceiving people is completely unacceptable in any way other than not being as bad as Trump's. Overall, Biden has had a very long and repulsive political career and he's one of the worst liars in politics-- with a horrifying 61% of public statements being lied. Compared to Trump-- not so bad, compared to anyone else: unacceptable!

How much do politicians lie? According to PolitiFact:

• Rush Limbaugh- 94% (Half true- 12%)
• Trump- 84% (Half true- 14%)
• Kevin McCarthy- 80% (Half true- 36%)
• Ted Cruz- 77% (Half true- 14%)
• Pelosi- 76% (Half true- 29%)
• Pence- 68% (Half true- 30%)
• Mitt Romney- 68% (Half true- 28%)
• Lindsey Graham- 67% (Half True- 33%)
• Sean Hannity- 67% (Half true- 17%)
• Schumer- 63% (Half true- 21%)
• Biden- 61% (Half true- 29%)
• Dick Cheney- 61% (Half true- 12%)
• McTurtle- 60% (Half true- 18%)
• Beto- 53% (Half true- 32%)
• Obama- 51% (Half true-26%)
• Bernie- 51% (Half true- 24%)
• Rachel Maddow- 50% (Half True- 14%)
• Elizabeth Warren- 47% (Half true- 47%)
• Cory Booker- 42% (Half true- 14%)
• Kamala Harris- 37% (Half true- 14%)

And that brings us to the controversial Hyde Amendment-- a disgraceful piece of legislation targeted at poor women... but just another important piece of policy Biden is lying about. Yesterday. Jodi Jacobson, editor of Rewire News wrote that "Biden's campaign confirmed to NBC News that the candidate supports the Hyde Amendment, an anti-choice restriction banning federal funding for abortion care."

Less than a month ago, at a campaign event, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) volunteer approached Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to ask whether he would commit to abolishing the Hyde Amendment, which denies public funding of abortions to women who can’t afford them.

“Will you commit to abolishing the Hyde Amendment, which hurts poor women and women of color?” she asked.

“Yes,” Biden said unequivocally. “Yes.”

To be honest, watching the clip at the time made me wonder if Biden really even knew what he was saying. He had what appeared to me to be a quizzical and unfocused expression on his face, suggesting he was not clear what the volunteer was asking. Biden’s first response was to tell the woman about his “near-perfect” voting record according to the ACLU.

But the volunteer did not let him get away with that, and she persisted, saying to him, “I heard you did [have a good record]. but I am so glad said you would commit to abolishing the Hyde Amendment.”

“No, no,” he replied. “It has to be … it can’t stay.”

Apparently, Biden either did not understand the question, did not remember what the Hyde Amendment is, or did not know his own campaign position.

Today, NBC’s Heidi Przybyla writes, Biden’s campaign “confirmed to NBC News that Biden still supports the Hyde Amendment, a four-decade-old ban on using federal funds for abortion services, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman”

“Biden’s continued support for Hyde not only sets him apart from the rest of his 2020 Democratic competitors,” Przybyla writes, “but it may surprise progressive groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which promoted a recent tweet by one of its activists appearing to get Biden to commit to ending Hyde during a rope-line exchange in South Carolina. Biden’s campaign told NBC he would be open to repealing Hyde if abortion avenues currently protected under Roe were threatened.”

Biden’s position on Hyde puts him out of step with the national party, which officially committed to abolishing the anti-choice restriction in its platform for the first time in 2016.

So before the first debate, and after months of waiting for him to get into the presidential race, we now know that Biden’s campaign is, to be kind, not ready for primetime.

Meanwhile, most of the other Democratic candidates have already come out for repealing the Hyde Amendment, leaving Biden isolated on an issue he and his campaign team were hoping would never be raised:

• Bernie
• Elizabeth Warren
• Jay Inslee
• Beto
• Gillibrand
• Steve Bullock
• Eric Swalwell
• Tim Ryan
• Julian Castro
• Cory Booker
• Amy Klobuchar
• Marianne Williamson

Yesterday, The Hill confirmed that Biden was lying to the ACLU volunteer when he told her he backs repealing the Hyde Amendment and that he has never changed his position backing the amendment.

Truth is, Biden has not been a friend of Choice and women should think long and hard about voting for him in a primary with so many candidates who are so much better. The Hyde Amendment is an anti-Choice smokescreen that progressive have not backed and do not back this abomination. NARAL President Ilyse Hogue: "That position is unjust and discriminatory and endangers women and families." Kelly Robinson, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund: "The unfair Hyde Amendment makes it so that those who have the least end up having to pay the most to access abortion, and those who are service members or live on reservations are often left with no coverage for abortion care. We encourage any candidate who doesn't recognize Hyde's impact to speak to the women it hurts most-- particularly on women of color and women with low incomes-- to learn more about the harmful impacts of this discriminatory policy."

Biden himself is "a devout Roman Catholic who opposes abortion" on a personal level. He has grudgingly backed most pro-Choice positions but Hydge is the biggie and he's definitely on the wrong side of that one-- and knows enough to lie right in women's faces about it when he's confronted. In 1981 he voted to remove rape and incest exceptionsts in pending legislation and he voted several times to prohibit federal workers from using health insurance on abortion services, with the only exception being to save the life of the mother.

Yesterday the Trumpist regime announced that the federal government would sharply curtail federal spending on medical research that uses tissue from aborted fetuses-- fulfilling a top goal of anti-abortion groups that have lobbied hard for it. Meanwhile, scientists say the tissue is crucial for studies that benefit millions of patients. I know where most of the Democratic candidates stand on this, but where would Biden come down? Who knows? Given his long, putrid record, it's too dangerous to take any chances with this guy. The Blue America backed progressive candidate, Mike Seagel, running in a red-leaning, gerrymandered Texas district, is clear and to the point and no one has to try to guess about where he stands on women's Choice: "The Hyde Amendment is killing women," he told us yesterday, "predominantly women of color and working class Americans. Repealing the Hyde Amendment is essential to combatting the maternal mortality crisis in Texas and across this country."

Blue America's most recent endorsed candidate, Kathy Ellis, isn't shying away from calling a spade a spade because of anti-Choice sentiment in south east Missouri. "The Hyde Amendment," she told us, "prevents people from accessing the medical care they need. In my state of Missouri, we have seen first-hand how restrictive, anti-abortion laws put peoples' lives and health at risk. I fully support the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, and I fully oppose the restrictive anti-abortion laws we see popping up across the country."

Eva Putzova is running for seat held by a Republican, Tom O'Halleran, who now calls himself a Blue Dog Democrat. Unlike O'Halleran, she is a form supporter of Choice. "I support reproductive choice for all women," she told us yesterday, "including the right to abortion. The Hyde amendment punishes mostly poor women and women of color who are the primary recipients of Medicaid and other government programs. The Democratic Party national platform calls for the repeal of the Hyde amendment, and when I am elected to Congress I will work tirelessly with my colleagues to repeal it. We can't say that we support a woman's right to choose in theory, yet effectively prohibit it for women who can't afford it."

All of the candidates we've been talking to-- men/women, white/black, rural/urban, senior/junior... they all feel very strongly about ending repealing the Hyde Amendment. Michael Owens, attorney and Democratic Party activist, is running in the suburbs south and west of Atlanta in a deep blue district occupied by a conservative Blue Dog, David Scott. Michael told us that he continues "to believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services. The Hyde Amendment directly impedes on a woman's access to abortion. Furthermore, it marginalizes women of color, and those without substantial financial means by making it more difficult to access reproductive health services for over 15.6 million women in the United States, including 1 in 5 women of reproductive age. This is no more important than here in Georgia where we women face the highest maternal mortality rate in the country and our our Governor just signed a 'forced-birth' bill that will make a women seeking abortion a crime."

Dary Rezvani is the progressive Democrat taking on Devin Nunes this time around. He's in his late 20s and never remembers a time when women didn't have the right to Choice over their own bodies. Last time around, Central Valley Democrats lost with a centrist Democrat who was fundamentally uncomfortable with progressive issues and causes. Dary is the opposite. "The government," he told me last night, "shouldn't be telling women what they can and can't do with their health choices, their bodies. Trust women! Trust women! Trust women! That means... trust women. The Hyde Amendment was a mistake in 1976 when Congress decided, arbitrarily, that Medicaid can't be used by women for a perfectly legal health decision. It was a way for a body made up almost entirely of men to get around Roe v Wade. It should have been thrown out long ago and I'll work with women's groups towards doing just that if voters in Fresno and Tulare counties decide to replace Devin Nunes with me."

Elizabeth Warren, during an MSNBC town hall in Indiana last night, said Biden was wrong to support the abortion funding restriction. "Women of means will still have access to abortions," Warren said. "Who won’t will be poor women, will be working women, will be women who can’t afford to take off three days from work." Meanwhile, Beto was on CBS news suggesting Biden is senile: "I hope that Joe Biden rethinks his position. Perhaps he doesn’t have all the facts. Perhaps he doesn’t understand who the Hyde Amendment hurts the most." But in his 2007 book, Promises to Keep, Biden wrote: "‘I’ve stuck to my middle-of-the-road position on abortion for more than 30 years. I still vote against partial birth abortion and federal funding, and I’d like to make it easier for scared young mothers to choose not to have an abortion, but I will also vote against a constitutional amendment that strips a woman of her right to make her own choice."

Don't Link The MAGA-Bigots To Covington-- They're From Park Hills

Covington Catholic High School (CCH) is a private, all-male high school in Park Hills, Kentucky, southwest of Covington. It used to be in Covington. It moved in 1954 and kept its name. Covington is a small city (population 40,797) in Kenton County directly across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, where the Ohio is joined by the Licking River. Its population has been steadily decreasing since 1950, when there were 64,000 living there. The biggest employee in the city is the IRS-- 4,500 workers haven't been paid in a few weeks. The city is a blue island in a very red area, Tom Massie's 4th congressional district. In 2016 primary day was interesting in Kenton County:

• Hillary- 5,146
• Bernie- 4,880
• Cruz- 2,475
• Trumpanzee- 1,997
• Kasich- 1,741
•Rubio- 1,095

The general election was... less interesting, if more predictable and more in line with the statewide vote which had gone to Trump 62.5% to 32.7%.

• Trumpanzee- 42,958 (59.7%)
• Hillary- 24,213 (33.7%)

Don't expect this state and this county to be at all sympathetic with Nathan Phillips. Don't recognize the name? I'm about to tell you about him and what happened to him and what it has to do with Covington. First of all, I have 2 friends who live there, "Jack" and "Jill." Jack was born and raised in Covington and Jill moved there when they got married. They both agree that the behavior from these Covington Catholic High kids was disgusting, and they told me that "most of the people who actually live in the City of Covington are pretty firm on that" but wanted me to remember that Covington Catholic High School is not in the City of Covington and that most of the kids who go to Covington Catholic do not live in the City of Covington. They live in the surrounding suburbs with their MAGA-obsessed parents. They are alarmed that the national media is showing-- at best-- its lazy nature and is using terms like "Covington High School" and "Covington kids" and "Covington parents" etc. "Everybody. said Jill, "knows exactly what they're seeing in those videos because we all see it at basketball games and football games when they show up at your local school. There are lots of folks who will rally behind Cov Cath, but their reputation for obnoxious behavior towards other people and the way they weaponize 'normal school chants' has been a topic of conversation in the region for decades. They've always been like this, and lots of other schools hate them because of it... even some of the other Catholic schools, but the public schools especially. You can imagine why people in Covington are alarmed. Dave explained it:

"The Covington Independent Public School system is the poorest school district in the state of Kentucky. As poor as any district in the mountains of Appalachia, in the fields of Western Kentucky, in the cities of Lexington or Louisville. 89% of the students in Covington Independent Public Schools qualify for free and reduced lunches. 46% of the students in CIPS are white or Caucasian, 31% Black, 14% Hispanic. CIPS is a majority-minority district.

As #CovingtonBoys continues to trend, and news stories about “Covington High School” spew forth, and national media self-flagellate for jumping the gun, the real story of Covington is lost. CIPS is bounded by some of the wealthiest public school districts and private schools (like Covington Catholic) in the state.

This is not a complicated story, nor a story unfamiliar to most. It’s a story of social, racial, and economic stratification, of white flight and urban-suburban division.

As national news descends on the city and region, I ask three things: 1. spend some time talking with actual Covington High School students; 2. spend some time focusing on the larger structural problems that produce the absurdity you’re witnessing; and 3. visit and enjoy the city of Covington."

On Tuesday, Jodi Jacobson published a post at Rewire News, that is crucial reading for anyone following this story: White-Washing White Supremacy: Media Rushes to Excuse Covington Catholic Students. Short version: "In another incidence of white-washing white supremacy, white journalists are rushing to excuse a clearly racist incident involving white teens from Covington Catholic school in Kentucky, in part by discounting the testimony of a Native elder and Vietnam war veteran." Jodi starts off by expelling how Nathan Phillips wound up interacting with a gang of racists from a private Catholic school in Park Hills, Kentucky.

Every single day across America, women seeking abortion and other forms of reproductive health care have to run a gauntlet of intimidation just to enter health clinics. Protesters, self-anointed street “counselors,” and religious fundamentalists bring gory signs, and yell and scream—often using high-decibel amplification equipment—to harangue and harass patients and staff calling them “baby-killers” and promising them damnation. Clinic protesters feel righteous in their actions because they believe they are morally superior to the people seeking care, and they believe they have a right to impose their will on others. These and other tactics of intimidation are an integral part of the misogynistic, patriarchal arsenal of the “pro-life” movement, which every year in January hosts a “March for Life.” And every year, the march organizers bus students in from parochial schools across the country to ensure someone actually shows up. This year, they brought students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky.

The students’ visit to D.C. did not end well.

In a now widely reported video, students from Covington Catholic, a virtually all white, all male elite private school, taunted and mocked Nathan Phillips, a Native elder from the Omaha Nation, former U.S. Marine, and Vietnam veteran. Phillips was in D.C.-- which like much of the United States is land from which indigenous peoples were forcibly removed-- to attend the first Indigenous People’s March, a gathering of prayers, songs, dances, and speeches, calling attention to the global injustices perpetuated against indigenous peoples. In trying to intercede in what he believed to be an escalating situation between a large and increasingly rowdy group of at least 60 white teen boys and five Black men, he walked between the two groups, drumming in an effort to defuse the rising tension. Phillips then came face to face with Nick Sandmann, the young man who became an instant and iconic image of white entitlement exhibited by him and his classmates.

What happened next is telling: In short, the testimony of a Native elder, former Marine, and Vietnam veteran of an incident in which a very large group of raucous boys surrounded him and acted with extreme disrespect is being ignored in favor of an after-the-fact narrative created by white teens from a virtually all-white school with a history of blatant and public racism. The boys narrative also is being amplified by white journalists, further disrespecting the Native elder, and of eye witnesses at the scene. This discounting of experience is familiar to many of us, the women who seek reproductive health care who are effectively told we should endure abuse, the Native elder who on sacred ground is the only adult who tries to intervene in a situation being made the “aggressor,” the people of color who constantly have largely male, majority white media telling them “there’s more to the story” of their abuse than they what they say. It’s the same story, different characters that we saw played out only recently in the Supreme Court hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, who also attended an elite Catholic school and who many defended as just “boys being boys.” White boys, of course.

The entire incident reads like the script of a remake we’ve seen too many times before. The initial video showing a large group of boys being aggressive and disrespectful to Phillips exploded across the internet and drew outrage. Then, new videos purporting to show “other perspectives” (including helpful offers by #MAGA followers on Twitter to send me their “spliced videos” showing the “true picture”) were circulated. This was followed by a letter ascribed to Sandmann but actually written by a PR firm, which effectively blamed Phillips for the entire incident, stating: “he waded into the crowd, which parted for him. I [Sandmann] did not see anyone try to block his path. He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face.”



The letter was crafted and disseminated by RunSwitch, a Kentucky-based PR firm. One of the three founding partners of RunSwitch is Scott Jennings, a conservative commentator, and a former political operative who worked for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, George W. Bush, and other Republican politicians.

I watched at least five of the initial short videos shot by different people, and there was no question as to what I saw: A large unsupervised group of boys, acting entitled and out of control. They had come from an event that is focused on controlling women’s lives, choices, and bodies. Indeed, a group of them harassed a young woman before the incident with Phillips. And another suggested that rape “is not rape if you enjoy it.” The young men who’d just come from the “March for Life” were directly mimicking their movement’s views on the agency of women by harassing young women and discounting rape. In other words, in their eyes women deserve no agency.

The boys were wearing #MAGA hats, “March for Life” sweatshirts, and toting bottles of “Trump water,” which in several videos they can be seen proudly exhibiting to others around them. Though they were high school students, they appeared to have no adult supervision, but for one lone adult who stood at the back of this large pack of boys and did... nothing. Indeed, in a nearly two hour video, Phillips was the only adult I saw who tried to intervene in what clearly appeared to be an escalating and potentially dangerous situation. If I had been there, I would have done the same.

In the videos, it is clear the boys surrounded and hemmed in a Native elder, laughing, chanting, “war whooping,” and at various times doing “tomahawk chops” right in Phillips face. Hunter Hooligan, who attended the Indigenous People’s March to honor her Mvskoke family, wrote in The Cut: “Nathan stopped walking, but he kept singing and playing his drum-- staring right into the smirking boy’s eyes. We all huddled around him as the other boys began to push, prod, and bump us into a tighter and tighter cluster. They were mocking Nathan’s sacred music with purposefully disrespectful dancing and a perverted imitation of his singing. Their imitations were the racist tropes of “Indian chants”-- the stereotypical grunting and “hiyahiyahiyas” of representations past.” Her personal testimony appears not to have been read by many of the Covington Catholic boys’ apologists.

But all it took was the mournful letter written by a right-wing PR firm to change the situation. Almost immediately after “the other side” letter was released, the white-washing began. White journalists across the internet paused for a collective white sympathy moment, writing mea culpas at having “misread the situation.”

Robby Soave of Reason claimed that the media had “wildly mischaracterized” what happened. Jake Tapper tweeted his piece, without indicating whether he’d personally looked into whether Soave’s position had merit.

John Harwood and S.E. Cupp tweeted mournfully that they’d wished they’d waited for more information. Michael Cohen of the Boston Globe complained on Twitter about lost nuances, and Sam Stein of the Daily Beast asserted “it was a tricky story to unpack.” In other words, those of us who saw this scene for what it was, a pack of entitled, racist boys taunting a Native elder were engaged in “motivated reasoning.” In The Atlantic, Julie Irwin Zimmerman wrote about how she “failed the Covington Catholic Test” [🙄].

I hated the MAGA hats some of the kids were wearing, their listless tomahawk chops, the way some of their chanting mocked Phillips’s. But I also saw someone with Phillips yelling at a few of the kids that his people had been here first, that Europeans had stolen their land. While I wouldn’t disagree, the scene was at odds with the reports that Phillips and those with him were attempting to calm a tense situation.

As I watched the longer videos, I began to see the smirking kid in a different light. It seemed to me that a wave of emotions rolled over his face as Phillips approached him: confusion, fear, resolve. He finally, I thought, settled on an expression designed to mimic respect while signaling to his friends that he had this under control. Observing it, I wondered what different reaction I could have reasonably hoped a high-school junior to have in such an unfamiliar and bewildering situation. I came up empty.

“Listless tomahawk chops?” Of course Zimmerman “began to see the smirking kid in a different light.” That was the point of the PR effort in the first place. Poor young white boy trying to stave off 60 of his best friends yelling and chanting disrespectfully by staring down a Native elder and-- really-- just praying for peace. It’s as though the PR firm had cast a spell.

In an effort to figure out what had actually happened, I watched the nearly two hour video taken by a member of the Black Hebrew Israelites three separate times. And here is what I saw.

In the first hour of the video, four members of the fringe Black Hebrew Israelites sect are standing well in front of (not on, as Sandmann claimed) the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the patio that leads to the reflecting pool. They were facing the Washington Monument, away from the memorial steps. They never moved from this spot. Black Hebrew Israelites, which the Southern Poverty Law Center says includes a small extremist element, believe that African Americans, not Jews, are the real descendants of Israel. They often engage in street preaching in places like New York City and D.C. They are homophobic, racist, and misogynistic. They can be verbally abusive but, as police in New York attest, they are not generally physically dangerous. Most people ignore them.

In the long video, hundreds of people do just that… either walk right by them, or mill around listening for a while and then walk away. At one point in the first hour, two women engage them in an argument for a few minutes and then walk away. In that first hour, the Hebrew Israelites appear to get agitated by a skateboarder who circles them purposefully over and over, clearly there to taunt them, and indeed the skateboarder is the only one with whom they engage directly. One of the Hebrew Israelites suggests getting a “MAGA hat for this Republican,” referring to the skateboarder.

At 59:09, the video pans to the steps of the memorial, well behind the Hebrew Israelites and it’s clear that sometime in the prior 15 minutes or so, a large group of the Covington Catholic High School teens has assembled there. The Hebrew Israelites still have their back to the steps. The man making the video says, “Take a look at these Make America Great Again crackers,” apparently referring to the large group.

While the Hebrew Israelites face the Washington monument, the teens jeer from behind them. At 1:04:00, a homeless man wanders past and exchanges words with the Black Hebrew Israelites. At 1:05:00, it is clear that the group of teens behind the Hebrew Israelites has grown much larger and they begin to further engage the Black Hebrew Israelites by yelling from behind them, catcalling them; one of the Hebrew Israelites turns around at 1:06:00 to engage the boys briefly and turns back. The students continue to talk to the Hebrew Israelites from the steps. At about 1:08:00 the Covington Catholic students start chanting and jeering, though it is hard to hear what they are saying. At 1:09:51, a student runs down the stairs to face the others. He throws off his jacket, sweatshirt, and t-shirt, and naked from the waist up, starts jumping up and down and leading some sort of loud and grunting chant. The Black Hebrew Israelites never leave the spot they have been at this entire time.

Then the crowd of teens gets even rowdier. They are clearly taunting the Black men. Some of the teens move onto the patio and closer to the men, who still for the most part face away from them, talking to others. The teens are dancing and chanting. Then suddenly they huddle. At around 1:12:20 you can hear faint drumming of Phillips walking slowly into the picture, a distance away from the stairs.

Sandmann claims in his letter that “The protestor everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him.” First of all, Phillips was not a “protestor.” Second, this is clearly not what happens in the video. Instead as Hooligan wrote, the teens surround Phillips and start hopping, chanting, chopping hands, laughing. By 1:13:00 there is a very large crowd of teens surrounding Phillips; they are openly mocking him. There’s nothing respectful about it. If there is a chaperone or teacher around the vicinity, it is not obvious, and if as Sandmann asserts, they asked for and received permission from a teacher to do what they in fact did…well then, as a parent, I am aghast.

The Hebrew Israelites video focuses back on the teens who move closer to the Hebrew Israelites, some clearly taunting them again. Finally at 1:17:17 someone yells for the students to back up, but instead they quickly re-converge around and engage the Hebrew Israelites at which point the Hebrew Israelites themselves ask the teens several times to step back. From there until the end of the video, the Black Hebrew Israelites and teens are talking back and forth until it appears they leave.

Sandmann’s letter states: “I never felt like I was blocking the Native American protestor. He did not make any attempt to go around me. It was clear to me that he had singled me out for a confrontation, although I am not sure why.”

But as this video shared on Twitter by Waleed Shahid shows, Phillips was surrounded by jumping, whooping, mocking teens. As you can see in the frame below, Sandmann is in the background (red cap, gray jacket) smiling. It does not appear to me that Phillips “singled him out” for confrontation. That assertion also appears to be a lie.

Be sure to read Jodi's entire post here. And if you need more about the racism of these MAGA-hat brats... this HuffPo piece by Andy Campbell, who emphasizes that the "confrontation between MAGA-hat-wearing students at Covington Catholic High School and a Native American sparked a nationwide conversation about racism, the symbolism of the “Make America great again” hat and what it means for a group of white kids to stand face to face with a dark-skinned man and mock, sneer and howl at him."


UPDATE: Irony

This morning Ro Khanna told me that "the irony of having privileged kids yell build a wall to a Native American-- the first inhabitants of the land-- leaves me speechless. I kept thinking of Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom and how much work of reconciliation remains."

Women's Choice Is Not A Cultural Issue Democrats Are Allowed To Compromise Away

The less bad anti-Choice candidate in Omaha?

Activist Jodi Jacobson, founder of Rewire, was one of the people who rang the alarm bell on many elements within the Democratic Party for seemingly giving anti-Choicers a wink and a nod recently. There's a lot of misinformation floating around about the Democratic candidate for Omaha mayor, Heath Mello, and the circumstances of the hubbub around his relationship to the party. Yesterday Jodi endeavored to straighten it out and make it all clear and understandably. Let me just reiterate what I've already said: Blue America doesn't endorse anti-Choice candidates and we didn't endorse Mello. "Mayoral candidates also don’t normally draw national headlines," wrote Jodi, "but Mello did, because the endorsements also shed a glaring light on his past anti-choice record. Although he is running as a Democrat and lauded for progressive positions on numerous issues, as a Nebraska state senator, Mello co-sponsored and helped pass some of the worst state-level restrictions on abortion care in the country."

Those laws remain in place, and Mello has neither denounced them nor made clear whether he now understands why they are so damaging. His elevation to a national stage has opened old and new wounds, once again raising the issue of whether the Democratic Party, and progressives writ large, truly understands the intrinsic connections between the most fundamental rights of women and the ostensible goals of a progressive agenda. It underscores the persistent but erroneous idea that abortion rights are just a “cultural issue” that can be subject to “beliefs,” rather than facts, medical evidence, and public health goals. It promotes the notion that you can restrict women’s rights and still be a progressive. It has also posed the question of whether the future leaders of the party will not only protect, but promote women’s health and rights by taking responsibility for repealing existing barriers, some of which they themselves have put in place. The initial answer to the last question seems to be no.

...Criticisms of the party’s embrace of Mello by leaders such as NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue led to a cycle of mansplaining (“You’re blocking our agenda with your wedge issues!”), misinformation (“Mello’s record isn’t that bad!”), and defensiveness (“But Bernie is pro-choice!”). And Democratic Party leaders demonstrated that after all this time, they can’t seem to grasp that there is no justice without reproductive justice; that women can’t enjoy full citizenship if they can’t decide whether, when, and with whom to have children; that access to abortion is a public health imperative; and that childbearing and childrearing are fundamentally economic activities no matter what tent you are pitching or where you pitch it.

When women’s rights leaders protested, party leaders very quickly trotted out the most common Democratic Party shibboleths-- with the least basis in fact-- to quell the firestorm. Women were schooled about what it takes to win races in “red” states, never mind that time after time, poll after poll, ballot initiative after ballot initiative shows that no matter how they self-identify, voters in states controlled by right-wing legislatures do not desire to rob people of their fundamental rights and routinely vote against abortion restrictions when given the chance (take Colorado, Mississippi, or South Dakota for example). Never mind, either, that throughout the country women are literally running the resistance and fueling the resurgence of grassroots electoral power at the state level.

The first people to effectively tell women to sit down were Sanders and DNC chair Tom Perez-- both of whom should have known better and who later reversed course to publicly support reproductive rights, because, let’s face it, a great deal of PAC money and organizing power is involved. But some of the loudest pushback to women’s rights advocates came from other self-proclaimed progressives, such as D.D. Guttenplan at The Nation, who, though he is not known as an abortion rights expert, decided that we were all complaining too much and that, by the way, we had our facts wrong.

We do not.

Here are the facts.

Mello’s record on abortion rights is very bad. Full stop. As a state senator in 2010, for example, Mello co-sponsored a 20-week abortion ban, one of the first in the nation and the first to rely on the false claims of “fetal pain” cooked up by anti-choice groups to shop this kind of model legislation. In 2011, Mello voted for LB 22, which prohibited insurance coverage of abortion in the state by using a false claim that federal funds in state exchanges were being used to fund abortion. Before passage of the Affordable Care Act, the majority of women with private insurance were covered for abortion care. Thanks in large part to the machinations of former Democratic Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson (for whom Mello previously worked) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, millions of women lost insurance coverage of abortion care as the states used Nelson’s amendment to justify eliminating it. Mello helped finish his one-time boss’ work.

In 2011, Mello also voted to effectively kill telemedicine abortion in Nebraska via LB 521, which required the physical presence of a doctor for any abortion. This is another tool in the arsenal of the anti-choice playbook to make abortion so difficult to access that patients are faced with forced pregnancy. Such legislation raises the costs of abortion (by requiring office visits and the presence of a doctor even when not necessary and even for a medication abortion), makes it harder for rural women to access abortion (because they have to travel to clinics, of which there are only three in that very large state), and, ironically, results in many abortions taking place later than they might otherwise. This would seem to defeat the purpose of the bills-- but then, the purpose really is to shame women.

In running for mayor, Mello has said he would “never do anything to restrict reproductive health care.”

We'll get back to Jody in a second. I just want to point out, though, that when I interviewed another fake progressive, anti-Choice Democrat, Tom Perriello in 2008, he used the exact same words to lie to me and manipulate me into recommending him for a Blue America endorsement. He took our donors' money, got elected, showed his true colors by running up a ProgressivePunch "F" and then breaking his specific pledge to "never do anything to restrict reproductive health care." He is now the "progressive" choice for the Democratic nomination for governor of Virginia (against an even more conservative Democrat). Jodi handled that pledge from Mello by pointing out two problems: "As mayor, he will need to actively promote access to abortion care by enforcing the FACE Act, ensuring clinics are respected, and taking other steps. More to the point, however, he participated in the substantial and irreparable damage done to abortion rights in his state, and those votes can’t just be excused by votes for child care, Medicaid expansion, education, or other progressive goals. The reason is simple, and it bears repeating: Access to abortion is a public health imperative. It is a medical and individual health imperative. It is a fundamental human right, without which women can’t control their futures or fully participate in societies and communities. Denial of abortion care makes women poorer and less able to achieve their own goals. Access to abortion care improves maternal survival and health and increases infant and child survival."

This is not about “beliefs,” it’s about decades of medical and public health evidence and basic, profound questions of human rights. We’ve all become conditioned to treat abortion as some thing subject to religious dictates at the social level in ways that are not at all dissimilar and only matters of degree different from excuses used to promote female genital mutilation, child marriage, and the sequestering of women as “religious” dictates. We’ve come to treat lies and misinformation about abortion as somehow different than lies and misinformation about climate change. They are no different.

It is true that Mello is running against a Republican who is as bad on abortion rights and far worse on many other issues of concern. It is true that some in Omaha defend Mello based on his broader record and that they are the ones who vote for their representatives. But that does not obviate broader questions. Because it is simultaneously true that others in the state, and throughout the country, are in fact deeply and legitimately concerned about the failure of the party and various leaders to grapple openly and honestly with the implications of sidelining fundamental rights going forward. It is also true that Mello has not, at least publicly, actually come to grips with what his past record suggests and has not, at least publicly, disavowed his actions. Finally, it’s not enough to say that as mayor he won’t do any more bad things, because in a state in which there are three clinics and one-third of the population lives in rural areas, his past actions continue to affect people who need care.

This is not an abstract issue. Under the ACA and with the permission of Democratic leaders we have seen the greatest erosion in abortion rights in this country in over two decades, and that is not just a problem of Republicans. What is at stake here is the future of the party. What is at stake is whether the largely white, largely male-dominated Democratic Party actually means to promote and protect women’s rights from here on after. What is at stake is what it actually means to be “pro-life,” if you are willing to pass legislation that stigmatizes, criminalizes, and makes inaccessible essential reproductive health care.

The question, now, is not only whether Mello understands the damage he is done and is willing to advocate to undo it, but whether the DNC, DCCC, Sanders, and others understand it. The question is what Mello’s supporters will do to push him on these issues as he seeks higher office in the state, because he will. The question is whether the party and leaders like Sanders will dedicate themselves to addressing the harm done to women’s rights by being complicit with the corporate and religiously fundamentalist Republican Party at the national and at the state level under the guise of a so-called big tent that inevitably undermines women’s health and rights, gives cover to the Catholic Bishops and white males, but leaves more than half the population out in the cold.

It can no longer be OK to substitute anti-choice lies and “religious” beliefs for the fundamental rights and health of women. Moreover, anti-choice positions are not necessary to win elections, though that is the least of the issues right now. If the situation with Heath Mello shows anything, it is that this is a conversation that has only just begun.

If Democratic leaders start making it ok for the party's nominees for office to be anti-Choice, how long before it's OK to be anti-LGBT? Xenophobic? Racist? Anti-working family? A Climate Change denier? Where does it end? Really-- where? With the Democratic Party standing for nothing very solid at all other than the careers of the corrupt assholes in elected office? Is that what it's all about? It is for them. Oh, and one more thing, if Mello wins the mayor's race, isn't is better than the Republican winning? Sure-- except the Republican isn't going to wind up tarnishing the Democratic Party brand or one day becoming a Democratic congressman, senator or governor.

Will Hillary's Choice Of Kaine As Running Mate Push Progressive Voters Towards Jill Stein?

Do you agree with Trump about anything? Even when he gets something right-- TPP for example-- his objections are not credible and invariably for all the wrong reasons. Well, he's wrong about Hillary too-- no matter what he says... and he's said everything! In terms of the election, all anyone really has to know is that however bad she is-- even after filtering out all the GOP/Hate Talk Radio slander and nonsense-- she is in all ways and on any day the far, far lesser evil than he is on his best day. There are some pros and some cons about a Hillary Clinton presidency. The only case to be made for a Trump presidency is apocalyptic... if that's your cup of tea.

She just selected Tim Kaine as her running mate-- this seems like too big a decision for any one person, especially when we're talking about people like Trump, but her too-- which has been a foregone conclusion all week. There was never a moment I thought it would be someone any better than she is. In my mind it would always be someone catering to the worst aspects of the wing of the Democratic Party that has more in common with Eisenhower Republicans than with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Democrats-- the Clinton wing. I was surprised yesterday when Markos wrote at Daily Kos, of late very much a mouthpiece for that wing of the party, that Hillary would lose ground with the base by picking a corporate centrist. He singled out Vilsack and Kaine; I' would have included Cory Booker and Julian Castro. Markos wrote than neither Kaine, who he deems particularly crappy, nor Vilsack is "palatable." Palatable to who? To the base? The base is as low-info as the Republican base... two-digit IQ morons who have saddled us with two miserable candidates the country seems to hate. The base can be persuaded. Or does he mean the activists and progressives who once, quite some time ago, alas, animated his then-revolutionary website? They want impossible dreams like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown or Bernie. That's never been in the cards, Hillary has less in common with them than she does with Susan Collins or Rob Portman.

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The perfect compromise between a candidate springing from her own Republican-lite instincts and those of the progressive wing of the party, would have been Labor Secretary Tom Perez. He's not Elizabeth Warren and he's not Bernie but you don't have to twist the meaning of the word "Democrat" to get that he is one. Tim Kaine should never be president for a wide array of reasons, starting with his fealty to Wall Street, to fracking and to the kinds of trade agreements just about everyone in America short of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell (and Tim Kaine) now understands have been catastrophic. He has all of Clinton's policy flaws-- and more-- and none of her hard to discount saving graces. Kaine may well negate all the positive feelings Democrats who watched Trump's Hate Fest this week have allowed themselves to harbor about her. Markos seemed to be optimistic that Hillary was still going to "make the right call." I hoped he was right and that I was wrong. It's happened before. But not this time.

Jodi Jacobson at Rewire seemed as concerned and disturbed about the prospect of the Clinton's giving the slot to Kaine as we are. "The selection of Kaine," she wrote, "would be the first signal that Clinton intends to seek progressive votes but ignore progressive values and goals, likely at her peril, and ours."

Standing up for progressive principles is not so hard, if you actually believe in them. Senator Elizabeth Warren is a progressive who actually gets shit done, like the creation against all odds in 2011 of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, perhaps the single most important progressive achievement of the past 20 years. Among other things, the CFPB  shields consumers from the excesses of mortgage lenders, student loan servicers, and credit card companies that have caused so much economic chaos in the past decade. So unless you are more interested in protecting the status quo than addressing the root causes of the many problems we now face, a progressive politician would want a strong progressive running mate.

By choosing Tim Kaine as her vice president, Clinton will signal that she values progressives in name and vote only.

As Zach Carter wrote in the Huffington Post, Kaine is setting himself up as a figure willing to do battle with the progressive wing of the party. Kaine is in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement largely negotiated in secret and by corporate lobbyists. Both Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose voters Clinton needs to win over, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren oppose the TPP because, in Warren’s words, it “would tilt the playing field even more in favor of a big multinational corporations and against working families.”

The progressive agenda includes strong emphasis on effective systems of governance and oversight of banks and financial institutions-- the actors responsible, as a result of deregulation, for the major financial crises of the past 16 years, costing the United States trillions of dollars and gutting the financial security of many middle-class and low-income people.

...[A]s governor of Virginia, Kaine supported restrictions on abortion, such as Virginia’s parental consent law and a so-called informed consent law, which in 2008 he claimed gave “women information about a whole series of things, the health consequences, et cetera, and information about adoption.” In truth, the information such laws mandate giving out is often “irrelevant or misleading,” according to the the Guttmacher Institute. In other words, like many others who let ideology rather than public health guide their policy decisions, Kaine put in place policies that are not supported by the evidence and make it more difficult for women to gain access to abortion, steps he has not denounced. This is unacceptable. The very last thing we need is another person in the White House who further stigmatizes abortion, though it must be said Clinton herself seems chronically unable to speak about abortion without euphemism.

While there are many other reasons a Kaine pick would signal a less-than-secure and values-driven Clinton presidency, the fact also stands that he is a white male insider at a time when the rising electorate is decidedly not white and quite clearly looking for strong leadership and meaningful change. Kaine is not the change we seek.

Of course for those perfectly comfortable with going along with the lesser of two evils scenario that the two Beltway political parties insist defines democracy now... well Tim Kaine  is, arguably, far better than that walking freak show from Indiana (no, not Evan Bayh, the one... with the white hair... Mike Pence). As horrified as I was by the Cleveland Hate Fest and Trump's rantings and ravings-- and the overwhelming evil he and his horrid family-- sorry Chris Matthews-- represent, I will never vote based on who the lesser of two evils is. And if my resolve was weakening while I watched the GOP's deranged convention speakers and their hate-filled, ugly white audience, it just took a little focus back on Hillary-- and her announcement of Kaine half an hour ago-- to re-strengthen that resolve once again.