Blue America Endorses Atlanta "Good Trouble" Activist Nikema Williams

Georgia's 5th congressional district-- most of Atlanta from the airport to Buckhead as well as Decatur plus Forest Park, Lake City and Morrow in Clayton County-- hasn't been in play since 1986, the legendary John Lewis' first term. In fact, Republicans have never run a serious campaign in the D+34 district and Lewis usually ran unopposed. This cycle, Trump pardoned a crackpot right-wing sociopath and felon, Angela Stanton-King, who had served almost 3 years of her prison sentence for running a car theft ring, a kind of female, later-day Darrell Issa. Two weeks after Trump pardoned her, she announced she was running against John Lewis, a beloved congressman by everyone except Trump, who hated him with the passion of the KKK thug that he's always been at heart.

After Lewis died, the Democrats nominated state Senator Nikema Williams to run for his seat. Williams, who is also the chair of the Georgia Democratic Party, was diagnosed with COVID-19 in March, Republican state Senator and anti-masker Brandon Beach having infected several members of the legislature. She has since fully recovered and her backing for Medicare for All has grown even stronger as the result of her experience. In 2018, she was arrested at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the state Capitol, demanding that all absentee ballots be counted in the gubernatorial election, which was opposed by the Republicans.

Endorsed this week by Blue America, I asked Nikema to introduce herself to DWT readers. Please consider contributing to her campaign if you like what she has to say-- and if you would like to see more activists in Congress. Just click on the ActBlue 2020 congressional thermometer below.

An Activist For Congress
-by state Sen. Nikema Williams

This election will determine the course of our nation for generations to come. This will be a decisive moment, and we must raise our voices and declare that enough is enough. Enough of Trump’s divisive rhetoric. Enough bigotry and fear mongering. Enough racist and misogynistic politics. We must come together and elect individuals who will stand on the side of the American people. We must elect individuals who will not be afraid to fight for those too often unheard and unseen in our society.

The stakes are high and GA-05 deserves a representative who will put themselves on the line, in the same way Congressman Lewis taught us. Someone who will live up to the legacy of Good Trouble while moving us closer to the full promise of America for generations to come. Someone who will fearlessly center those most marginalized in every decision. Someone willing to live out loud and on purpose fighting for the promise of America.

That someone is me, Nikema Williams, the Democratic Nominee for Georgia’s 5th congressional district.

My fight began in rural Alabama, where I rode around on the back of my grandpa’s pickup truck and dropped off slate cards so our neighbors knew who to vote for. Little did I know, the impact this would have on me, instilling the importance of voting. I grew up reading textbooks that spoke about my great-aunt, Autherine Lucy as she became the first Black student admitted to the University of Alabama and this ingrained into me a sense of standing up to injustice and demanding equal and fair treatment.

I’ve worked since I was 16 years old and needed a work permit. My first job was a union job. I was a proud member of UFCW as I worked as a cashier at Food World. Through the combination of scholarships and Pell grants, I attended Talladega College, an HBCU in Alabama, where I also joined Alpha Kappa Alpha, sorority.

I have a first-hand understanding of the struggles American families face and this is what makes me most equipped to be the voice of GA-05 in Congress.

I know what it's like to have my vote suppressed-- in the last election, I never received my absentee ballot. So I waited in line for five hours just to cast my vote.

I learned the hard way that in America, health care is not a human right. When my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 46, she couldn’t afford the treatments. My sister and I took turns covering the costs of appointments just to keep her alive.

And as the mother of a 5-year-old who just started virtual kindergarten, I understand the importance of affordable high-quality child care and a public school education.

In short, I am not your conventional candidate-- I didn’t come from money or political connections. I am someone who will work around the clock to ensure Georgians are able to thrive regardless of their zip code.

I first ran for office in 2017 because I understood the power of representation, and I was determined to be a voice at the state Senate who would fight for the issues that mattered most to the district. While at the state Senate I led the charge to fully and equitably fund our public schools, expand access to qualify affordable healthcare, and combat the voter suppression that was engineered to keep our communities away from the ballot box.

On November 13, 2018 the lessons of getting into "Good Trouble" became more real than ever. I was standing with my constituents speaking out and demanding that every vote be counted after the disastrous 2018 election, when state troopers rushed protesters into the Capitol, and arrested several of us demonstrating. I was taken out of the state capitol where I serve as a senator, with zip ties on my wrists, to the Fulton County jail, for simply standing with my constituents demanding that every vote be counted in the wake of a disastrous election.

It is moments like these that remind us of how much work we have yet to do. I am ready to get to Congress so I can take my lived experiences with me and fight for an America that allows everyone to thrive, not merely survive. An America that finally lives up to its promise, for everyone.

Today Is A Very Important Day In America

On Sunday, Selma "Bloody Sunday" veteran, John Lewis (D-GA) unexpectedtly showed up at the annual commemorative march and delivered an impassioned plea to voters to use the ballot box as "a nonviolent instrument or tool to redeem the soul of America." Is America still redeemable after just 3 years of Trump and the ascendancy of Trumpism? At around the same time, The Atlantic was preparing to published author George Packer's deeply disturbing opus, on how Trump is winning his war on American institutions, "destroying the civil service and bending the government to his will." Ironically, Trump is turning out to be not just the least progressive president in history, but also the least conservative. Oh, yeah-- and a pusillanimous GOP filled with spineless and desperate career politicians, has allowed him to redefine what conservative means in the context of American politics.

Packer began by pointing out that when Señor Trumpanzee "came into office, there was a sense that he would be outmatched by the vast government he had just inherited. The new president was impetuous, bottomlessly ignorant, almost chemically inattentive, while the bureaucrats were seasoned, shrewd, protective of themselves and their institutions. They knew where the levers of power lay and how to use them or prevent the president from doing so. Trump’s White House was chaotic and vicious, unlike anything in American history, but it didn’t really matter as long as “the adults” were there to wait out the president’s impulses and deflect his worst ideas and discreetly pocket destructive orders lying around on his desk. After three years, the adults have all left the room-- saying just about nothing on their way out to alert the country to the peril-- while Trump is still there." This is exactly what many Trump voters wanted.

James Baker, the former general counsel of the FBI, and a target of Trump’s rage against the state, acknowledges that many government officials, not excluding himself, went into the administration convinced “that they are either smarter than the president, or that they can hold their own against the president, or that they can protect the institution against the president because they understand the rules and regulations and how it’s supposed to work, and that they will be able to defend the institution that they love or served in previously against what they perceive to be, I will say neutrally, the inappropriate actions of the president. And I think they are fooling themselves. They’re fooling themselves. He’s light-years ahead of them.”

The adults were too sophisticated to see Trump’s special political talents-- his instinct for every adversary’s weakness, his fanatical devotion to himself, his knack for imposing his will, his sheer staying power. They also failed to appreciate the advanced decay of the Republican Party, which by 2016 was far gone in a nihilistic pursuit of power at all costs. They didn’t grasp the readiness of large numbers of Americans to accept, even relish, Trump’s contempt for democratic norms and basic decency. It took the arrival of such a leader to reveal how many things that had always seemed engraved in monumental stone turned out to depend on those flimsy norms, and how much the norms depended on public opinion. Their vanishing exposed the real power of the presidency. Legal precedent could be deleted with a keystroke; law enforcement’s independence from the White House was optional; the separation of powers turned out to be a gentleman’s agreement; transparent lies were more potent than solid facts. None of this was clear to the political class until Trump became president.

But the adults’ greatest miscalculation was to overestimate themselves-- particularly in believing that other Americans saw them as selfless public servants, their stature derived from a high-minded commitment to the good of the nation.

When Trump came to power, he believed that the regime was his, property he’d rightfully acquired, and that the 2 million civilians working under him, most of them in obscurity, owed him their total loyalty. He harbored a deep suspicion that some of them were plotting in secret to destroy him. He had to bring them to heel before he could be secure in his power. This wouldn’t be easy-- the permanent government had defied other leaders and outlasted them. In his inexperience and rashness-- the very qualities his supporters loved-- he made early mistakes. He placed unreliable or inept commissars in charge of the bureaucracy, and it kept running on its own.

But a simple intuition had propelled Trump throughout his life: Human beings are weak. They have their illusions, appetites, vanities, fears. They can be cowed, corrupted, or crushed. A government is composed of human beings. This was the flaw in the brilliant design of the Framers, and Trump learned how to exploit it. The wreckage began to pile up. He needed only a few years to warp his administration into a tool for his own benefit. If he’s given a few more years, the damage to American democracy will be irreversible.

And that was just the intro. May I suggest you go the The Atlantic to read the body of Packer's brilliant essay. You may not share the visions of conservatives like William Barr, Erica Newland, Andrew McCabe and Mike Pompeo but the light Packer shines on them is one you will probably find elucidating. I couldn't result including this swampy tale though:

There’s always been corruption in Washington, and everywhere that power can be found, but it became institutionalized starting in the late 1970s and early ’80s, with the rise of the lobbying industry. The corruption that overtook the capital during that time was pecuniary and mostly legal, a matter of norm-breaking-- of people’s willingness to do what wasn’t done. Robert Kaiser, a former Washington Post editor and the author of the 2010 book So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, locates an early warning sign in Gerald Ford’s readiness to “sign up for every nasty piece of work that everybody offered him to cash in on being an ex-president.” Cashing in-- once known as selling out-- became a common path out of government, and then back in and out again. “There was a taboo structure,” Kaiser told me. “You don’t go from a senior Justice Department position to a senior partner in Lloyd Cutler’s law firm and then go back. It was a one-way trip. That taboo is no more.”





Former members of Congress and their aides cashed in as lobbyists. Retired military officers cashed in with defense contractors. Justice Department officials cashed in at high-paying law firms. Former diplomats cashed in by representing foreign interests as lobbyists or public-relations strategists. A few years high up in the Justice Department could translate into tens of millions of dollars in the private sector. Obscure aides on Capitol Hill became millionaires. Trent Lott abandoned his Senate seat early in order to get ahead of new restrictions on how soon he could start his career as a lobbyist. Ex-presidents gave six-figure speeches and signed eight-figure book deals.

...The swamp had been pooling between the Potomac and the Anacostia for three or four decades when Trump arrived in Washington, vowing to drain it. The slogan became one of his most potent. Fred Wertheimer, the president of the nonprofit Democracy 21 and an activist for good government since the Nixon presidency, says of Trump: “He was ahead of a lot of national politicians when he saw that the country sees Washington as rigged against them, as corrupted by money, as a lobbyist’s game—which is a game he played his whole life, until he ran against it. People wanted someone to take this on.” By then the federal government’s immune system had been badly compromised. Trump, in the name of a radical cure, set out to spread a devastating infection.

To Trump and his supporters, the swamp was full of scheming conspirators in drab D.C. office wear, coup plotters hidden in plain sight at desks, in lunchrooms, and on jogging paths around the federal capital: the deep state. A former Republican congressional aide named Mike Lofgren had introduced the phrase into the political bloodstream with an essay in 2014 and a book two years later. Lofgren meant the nexus of corporations, banks, and defense contractors that had gained so much financial and political control—sources of Washington’s corruption. But conservatives at Breitbart News, Fox News, and elsewhere began applying the term to career officials in law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, whom they accused of being Democratic partisans in cahoots with the liberal media first to prevent and then to undo Trump’s election. Like fake news and corruption, Trump reverse-engineered deep state into a weapon against his enemies, real or perceived.

The moment Trump entered the White House, he embarked on a colossal struggle with his own bureaucracy. He had to crush it or else it would destroy him. His aggrieved and predatory cortex impelled him to look for an official to hang out in public as a warning for others who might think of crossing him. Trump found one who had been nameless and faceless throughout his career.

...In his fourth year in power, Trump has largely succeeded in making the executive branch work on his personal behalf. He hasn’t done it by figuring out how to operate the bureaucratic levers of power, or by installing leaders with a vision of policy that he shares, or by channeling a popular groundswell into government action. He’s done it by punishing perceived enemies, co‑opting craven allies, and driving out career officials of competence and integrity. The result is a thin layer of political loyalists on top of a cowed bureaucracy.

Justice and State were obvious targets for Trump, but the rest of the executive branch is being similarly, if more quietly, bent to his will. One of every 14 political appointees in the Trump administration is a lobbyist; they largely run domestic policy. Trump’s biggest donors now have easy access to agency heads and to the president himself, as they swell his reelection coffers. In the last quarter of 2019, while being impeached, Trump raised nearly $50 million. His corruption of power, unprecedented in recent American history, only compounds the money corruption that first created the swamp.

Within the federal government, career officials are weighing outside job opportunities against their pension plans and their commitment to their oaths. More than 1,000 scientists have left the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and other agencies, according to the Washington Post. Almost 80 percent of employees at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture have quit. The Labor Department has made deep cuts in the number of safety inspectors, and worker deaths nationwide have increased dramatically, while recalls of unsafe consumer products have dropped off. When passing laws and changing regulations prove onerous, the Trump administration simply guts the government of expertise so that basic functions wither away, the well-connected feed on the remains, and the survivors keep their heads down, until the day comes when they face the same choice as McCabe and Yovanovitch: do Trump’s dirty work or be destroyed.

Four years is an emergency. Eight years is a permanent condition. “Things can hold together to the end of the first term, but after that, things fall apart,” Malinowski said. “People start leaving in droves. It’s one thing to commit four years of your life to the institution in the hope that you can be there for its restoration. It’s another to commit eight years. I can’t even wrap my head around what that would be like.”

And this, my friends, is precisely why today is so important-- so important to cast a ballot for Bernie and so important to nominate candidates like Mike Siegel (TX-10), Cristina Ramirez (Sen-TX), Cenk Uygur (CA-25), Liam O'Mara (CA-42)... instead of conservatives in contested races in Texas and California so that they can go on to November and defeat Trmpist bootlickerss like Michael McCaul, John Cornyn, Steve Knight (or Mike Garcia) and Ken Calvert. Bernie can beat Trump and Bernie needs a progressive Congress so he can beat conservatives of both parties who oppose the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free state colleges, and the rest of the platform they're running on-- rather than on a platform that doesn't go beyond the kind of personal careerism that always-- not sometimes-- leads to corruption. Mike Siegel told me late yesterday that "We are in the fight of our lives, and not everyone realizes it. Conservatives in the Democratic party are punching left instead of closing ranks to defeat an authoritarian regime. Here in the Texas 10th, I'm fending off two corporate-backed challengers who only showed an interest in this race after my 2018 campaign turned it from 'safe Republican' to 'battleground district.' One challenger takes money from private prisons and the corporate forces that are starving Texas municipal governments; the other received $360,000 in outside spending from an anti-Green New Deal super PAC. We are going to beat them anyway, because this campaign is fighting for the needs of the many and has earned the love and support of the people. We need more of this, in Texas and across the country: campaigns that fight for our communities, that fight on issues that matter in people's lives. I'm honored to have the support of Blue America and progressives across the country, who see how winning this race in Texas-- and sending home one of the most powerful Republicans in DC-- would have enormous positive repercussions for the politics of this nation."

Liam O'Mara, the Riverside County, California progressive candidate and history professor, sees it much the same way. "Corruption and subservience to corporate interests is a bipartisan problem, though obviously worse on the GOP side. But if we are to get a Congress that serves the needs of the people again, we need to get that corporate money out! I'm tired of having Representatives who ought to be wearing NASCAR jackets with their sponsors' names. All those other great progressive issues-- Medicare, global warming, education, etc.-- depend on breaking the grip of the oligarchs who currently choose our leaders. We can do better. If we start by electing a clean Congress, we can pass comprehensive legislation that ends the tyranny of Big Money in American politics. But that means we all need to step up. I know you get a lot of money-asks, but if we do this right, it won't have to stay this way! A progressive Congress can pass public financing for elections, but we can only get a progressive Congress with your support. Please donate whatever you can, and know that fixing our campaign finance system will be a top priority."

Impeaching Señor Trumpanzee-- Where Are The Missing Votes Hiding?

UPDATE: There are now 211 members of Congress in favor of opening an official impeachment inquiry-- meaning all they need is 7 more, something they will have before the end of the day.

On Tuesday morning-- apparently with an OK from Pelosi-- John Lewis, who is considered by many the "conscience of Congress," spoke on the House floor, reversing his public impeachment position. "We cannot delay. We must not wait. Now is the time to act. I have been patient while we tried every other path and used every other tool. We will never find the truth unless we use the power given to the House of Representatives and the House alone." This gives immediate cover to a least a dozen wavering members. It is also, part of Pelosi's staging strategy.

Even Status Quo Joe, locked in a deadly battle about who's family is more corrupt, noticed that maybe it was time to call for Trump's impeachment if he doesn't fully cooperate with all ongoing congressional investigations and subpoenas.

Last night, in announcing she would have the House begin a formal impeachment inquiry, Pelosi said that "The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections. Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. I am directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry."

As best I can figure out, there are 159 members of Congress who have now publicly called for a formal impeachment inquiry, the most recent being Michigan New Dem Haley Stevens. Not one Republican has taken the step, although Independent-- former Republican-- Justin Amash has. So that means 158 Democrats out of 235 are on board for impeaching Trump. That leaves 77 Democrats still not there yet. These are the Democrats who are either against it or still, at this late date, making up their minds-- and, as far as I can tell, some who are about to make a big splash in the news tomorrow (watch for my book for the details). The percentage next to each name is Trump's 2016 score and the bolded scores show where Trump won the district:

• Colin Allred (New Dem-TX)- 46.6%
• Cindy Axne (New Dem-IA)- 48.5%
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)- 40.9%
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- 43.3
• Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY)- 54.8%
• Cheri Bustos (New Dem-IL)- 47.4%
• Matt Cartwright (D-PA)- 53.3%
• Ed Case (Blue Dog-HI)- 30.5%
• Kathy Castor (D-FL)- 39.0%
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC)- 30.3%
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)- 38.2%
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- 36.4%
• Joe Courtney (D-CT)- 45.8%
• T.J. Cox (New Dem-CA)- 39.7%
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)- 46.4%
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- 38.5%
• Elijah Cummings (D-MD)- 20.2%
• Joe Cunningham (Blue Dog-SC)- 53.5%
• Sharice Davids (New Dem-KS)- 46.0%
• Susan Davis (New Dem-CA)- 29.6%
• Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)- 40.4%
• Antonio Delgado (D-NY)- 50.8%
• Lizzie Fletcher (New Dem-TX)- 47.1%
• Abby Finkenauer (D-IA)- 48.7%
• Lois Frankel (D-FL)- 39.1%
• Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)- 29.6%
• Jared Golden (D-ME)- 51.4%
• Vicente González (Blue Dog-TX)- 40.0%
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- 48.8%
• Josh Harder (D-CA)- 45.5%
• Jahana Hayes (D-CT)- 45.8%
• Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK)- 53.2%
• Steven Horsford (New Dem-NV)- 44.6%
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- 32.1%
• Andy Kim (D-NJ)- 51.4%
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)- 49.3%
• Conor Lamb (D-PA)- 49.4%
• John Larson (D-CT)- 36.3%
• Al Lawson (New Dem-FL)- 35.9%
• Susie Lee (New Dem-NV)- 47.5%
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)- 39.9%
• Dave Loebsack (D-IA)- 49.1%
• Stephen Lynch- (New Dem-MA)- 34.4%
• Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT)- 39.1%
• Donald McEachin (New Dem-VA)- 37.1%
• Jerry McNerney (D-CA)- 38.0%
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- 12.7%
• Joseph Morelle (D-NY)- 39.1%
• Stephanie Murphy (Blue Dog-FL)- 44.1%
• Richard Neal (D-MA)- 36.5%
• Tom O'Halleran (Blue Dog-AZ)- 47.7%
• Jimmy Panetta (New Dem-CA)- 23.2%
• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)- 8.7%
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- 61.8%
• Max Rose (Blue Dog-NY)- 53.6%
• Raul Ruiz (New Dem-CA)- 43.4%
• Linda Sanchez (D-CA)- 27.4%
• Adam Schiff (New Dem-CA)- 22.3%
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)- 44.1%
• Bobby Scott (D-VA)- 31.9%
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- 26.6%
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)- 28.6%
• Donna Shalala (D-FL)- 38.9%
• Albio Sires (New Dem-NJ)- 21.5%
• Xochitl Torres Small (Blue Dog-NM)- 50.1%
• Darren Soto (New Dem-FL)- 41.9%
• Tom Suozzi (New Dem-NY)- 45.5%
• Mike Thompson (Blue Dog-CA)- 24.3%
• Jeff Van Drew (Blue Dog-NJ)- 50.6%
• Marc Veasey (New Dem-TX)- 23.7%
• Peter Visclosky (D-IN)- 41.5%
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz (New Dem-FL)- 35.8%
• Susan Wild (New Dem-PA)- 47.6%
• Frederica Wilson (D-FL)- 15.4%

Notice that Tom Suozzi's and Josh Harder's names are crossed off the list-- as many, many others will be in the next 2 days-- because they just changed their positions. I was talking with members all day yesterday who have confirmed that there's quite a bit of choreography going on here. I knew something was cooking yesterday when Long Island Democrat Tom Suozzi posted this on his Facebook page at 3am (PT):

As many of you know I have been reluctant to support impeachment of the President.

My reluctance was based upon my belief that: impeachment will further divide an already divided country; the President will use impeachment proceedings to try and solidify his base, arguing that his opponents are more interested in stopping him than solving the country’s problems; less than a majority of American voters support impeachment; the Senate, under Mitch McConnell and GOP control, are unlikely to support impeachment; the history of the Nixon and Clinton impeachment proceedings instruct cautious deliberation on such a weighty matter. Most importantly, for those of us who do not support the President, I argued that our attention should be focused on replacing him in the 2020 election.

However, the most recent admission by the President about his conversations with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where he urged him to investigate a political opponent and his family, is eerily reminiscent of reports that candidate Trump solicited foreign intervention in the 2016 election as documented in the Mueller report.

Furthermore, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community notified Congress of a “credible” and “urgent” whistleblower complaint related to the President’s conversations with the Ukrainian President. Now, despite federal law requiring the disclosure of a whistleblower complaint to Congress, the administration has blocked its release to Congress. This refusal is in outright contravention of the law and is again similar to the President’s and his administration’s refusal to comply with other mandates. I cannot ignore this flagrant disregard for the law.

Inaction would give this president (and future presidents) assurances that their misdeeds are immune from punishment. Inaction also would seriously diminish the role of the Congress as a co-equal branch of government determined to utilize its Article I powers.

I believe that it is my Constitutional duty and the duty of the United States Congress to move forward with impeachment inquiries.

I have not made this decision lightly. We must now build the case and establish sufficient evidence to garner a majority of the House to support impeachment and sufficient evidence that will require any rational member of the Senate to convict.

If my theory about Pelosi working this all out carefully is true-- and I have tons of confirmation that it is-- you will be seeing lots of notes like Suozzi's tonight and tomorrow. An old friend of this blog, Matt Cartwright, whose district went pretty substantially for Trump in 2016-- while reelecting him then and last year-- told me that "At some point, it becomes necessary to announce certain conduct by an American president as unacceptable. There have been credible allegations this week that the president abused the power of his office, on the international stage, for political gain. We need to get to the bottom of these serious allegations through comprehensive impeachment proceedings and document production. Whether such hearings result in actual impeachment of the president and or senior cabinet officials remains to be seen."

In his note, Harder wrote that "I wanted to reach out quickly about a rapidly changing situation in Washington. We've been closely following the whistleblower story about President Trump's phone call with Ukraine since last week. Based on recent developments, I've decided that if the allegations are true, it is time for the House to open impeachment proceedings. Here's what I just told the Modesto Bee for their story:

"Last week, we found out that the president himself may have put our national security at risk, invited another foreign government to interfere in our election, and used American tax dollars to further his own political agenda... Anyone willing to sacrifice the national security interests of the United States for their own benefit is unfit to be president.”

"While," Harder continued (with the DCCC talking points) I will be keeping my focus on issues that are most important to folks in my district-- affordable healthcare, good paying jobs, and access to water-- I will also be doing everything I can to make sure the truth comes out. Because it's what the American people deserve. So during a time like this, I feel it's my responsibility to add my voice. Our democracy demands it."

Trump disagrees that he should be impeached. Imagine that! On his way into the UN yesterday, he told a gaggle of reporters that he thinks "it’s ridiculous. It’s a witch hunt. I’m leading in the polls. They have no idea how they stop me the only way they can try is through impeachment. It’s nonsense, and when you see the call, when you see the readout of the call, which I assume you’ll see at some point, you’ll understand. That call was perfect." He's not leading in the polls; he's cratering with almost no path to victory unless he can get Biden the nomination by appearing to Democratic primary voters be so against him.

Yesterday Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein suggested that Pelosi is following a very carefully choreographed strategy towards impeachment, similar to the one Tip O'Neill used against Nixon. Even as Nixon was cruising to a reelection landslide after Watergate was committed, O'Neill "reckoned that so many bad things had been done by the Nixon men that they simply could not be kept secret indefinitely. Privately, he urged his surprised colleagues in the House leadership to get ready for impeachment. But O’Neill was patient. The House didn’t move after the cover-up collapsed in spring 1973, or after dramatic Senate hearings that summer revealed that Nixon was personally involved. Only after the Saturday Night Massacre in October, when Nixon ordered Justice Department officials to fire the special prosecutor overseeing the probe, did they start moving toward impeachment. And then for months, the judiciary committee slowly gathered evidence to make its case. This strategy eventually worked, as the story gradually came out and moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats began defecting from Nixon-- followed by the rest of the Republican Party in August 1974. Has Pelosi been emulating O’Neill? She’s been taking plenty of heat from pro-impeachment Democrats. She’s certainly been unwilling to get ahead of her caucus. Perhaps that’s because she thinks impeachment could be avoided. Or perhaps she’s been betting that Trump’s past and current lawlessness would keep supplying new evidence pushing ambivalent Democrats toward action-- and that a measured, patient process would be far stronger than a rushed one."

One more smart look at this-- why Vox's Zack Beauchamp is no longer sitting on the impeachment fence. Ukraine-Gate, he wrote, "changes everything. Impeaching Trump over Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia investigation would have been an attempt to address past offenses; impeaching Trump over these calls would be an attempt to halt what sure looks like an ongoing attempt to hijack American foreign policy in service of the president’s reelection. Democrats have an obligation to try to stop this before it gets any further. There is now no question: It’s time to impeach Donald Trump.

The most compelling argument against impeachment, to my mind, was that it wouldn’t really accomplish anything.

There’s a virtual guarantee that impeachment will fail in the Republican-controlled Senate, which means there’s no real chance of actually removing Trump from office. Public opinion about the Russia scandal became more set along partisan lines as time went on, making it unlikely that drawing attention to it would galvanize public opinion against the Trump presidency in 2020. Why risk distracting Democrats from the issues on which Trump is genuinely unpopular, and jeopardizing the House Democratic majority, when the gains were so marginal?

This seems to be something like the reasoning that has guided Pelosi’s stolid opposition to impeachment. It’s not obviously correct, but it’s a serious argument-- and one that pro-impeachment Democrats and commentators dismissed too easily.

The new Ukraine scandal challenges this logic. There is now an obvious and immediate pragmatic upside to impeachment: stopping an ongoing abuse of presidential power that could undermine the integrity of the 2020 election.

State Senator Kai Kahele is running for the seat in Hawai'i's second district currently occupied by Tulsi Gabbard, who opposes impeachment. Kahele is more in sync with the Democratic Party-- and with voters in Hawai'i. Even before the whistleblower came forward about Trump's call with the president of Ukraine, he told me that "Some say impeachment will tear this country apart; I say that Donald Trump has already torn our country apart. He clearly has put his own self-interest and self-profiting above the interests of the American people. The recent revelations of taxpayer money being spent at his properties overseas and his desire to steer the G-7 summit to his resort in Florida, in addition to continued foreign government spending at the Trump DC Hotel, raise serious questions in regards to the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report outlined numerous instances of possible obstruction of justice. Now is the time for Congress to fulfill it’s constitutional duty to serve as a check and balance on this administration and conduct a full impeachment inquiry to see if there is enough evidence to remove the President from office. Only once Donald Trump is forever gone from the White House can we start to put our country back together again."

There are quite a few progressive candidates running for seats held by Trump-friendly Blue Dogs. In each case, the challengers are backing impeachment, while the incumbents are opposing it. In Arizona, Eva Putzova is running against "ex"-Repubican Tom O'Halleran, a Trump enabler. "My opponent," she told me last night, "chose to stick with the Republican Party while Bush's administration was involved in war crimes and torture, while the Party was taken over by Tea Party's racism, and through most of Obama's presidency, so it's no surprise he is not demanding Trump's impeachment despite numerous, frequent, and credible reports of Trump committing impeachable offenses. Voting with Trump nearly 40 percent of time, our representative in Arizona's first congressional district switched parties, but not his value system. If I were in Congress and president from any party behaved so irresponsibly and with such a disregard for the integrity of the Office of the President, I would not hesitate to call for impeachment proceedings. Our democracy is at stake."

It's the same thing up in Oregon where Milwaukie mayor Mark Gamba is facing off against Blue Dog Kurt Schrader. "We pride ourselves as Americans for having a society that lives by the rule of law rather than the tyranny that some other countries suffer under," said Gamba. "The question is: What is our country becoming when a President thumbs his nose at our laws and seemingly breaks them with impunity?  We are supposed to have a system of checks and balances so that we can never be ruled by a tyrant. I believe that it is the implicit duty of congress to protect our democracy by holding the other branches of government to the same standards we are all held to. If I were in Congress, I would be calling for an in depth and thorough Impeachment Inquiry. Kurt Schrader once again shows himself to be unwilling to step out of his comfort zone even when he knows it’s the right thing to do. He hasn’t done it in order to stop the climate crisis, he hasn’t done it to make sure every American can receive the medical care they need, he hasn’t done it when it came to supporting a living wage for every hard working American and now he won’t do it to protect our democracy from a tyrant."
 
Shan Chowdhury, the southeast Queens progressive challenger to corrupt New Dem Gregory Meeks made a good point: "We need less sheep and more shepherds. Many established democrats are changing their tune because of house leadership finally finding some courage to do their jobs. Activists and grassroots organizations have called for impeachment from the start of the president's term. Too many impeachable offenses were cast aside for political gains: lying to federal agents, ties to Russia, support for white nationalist violence, and spewing misogynistic and racist speech. So it’s about time! We need to stop playing politics, and starting doing the right things."

 

Saturday The DNC Finally Picks A New Chair-- Let's Pray It's Not Another Disaster Like Wasserman Schultz

The DNC charter says a new chairman has to be elected before March 1st. Saturday is as close to the deadline as they could have gotten. It's been a long race, primarily between the progressive wing represented by Keith Ellison and the status quo establishment wing represented by Tom Perez. Obama has been quietly making calls on Perez's behalf. The energy of the Resistance in fully behind Ellison.

This week New Hampshire Democratic Chairman Ray Buckley-- also the chairman of the Democratic chairmen organization-- dropped out of the race and, significantly, endorsed Ellison. That's a very big deal that the media largely missed. This is what he told his supporters when he endorsed Keith:

We need to reform the DNC and strengthen our state parties if we are to win back power. After helping win 11 of the last 13 statewide elections in New Hampshire-- and electing the nation's first all-female, all-Democratic congressional delegation-- I wanted to help lead this national effort.

Many of the 10 of us who were running spoke about these issues. But Keith's track record of winning elections, increasing voter turnout in Minnesota, being an organizer, partnering with the progressive grassroots, and helping to change the national debate in a way that favors Democrats all stood out.

I have 100% confidence that with Keith Ellison as our Chair, the Democratic National Committee is going to become much more accountable and that the grassroots will be the top priority of the DNC. With Keith's leadership, we will start winning again.

...Keith Ellison also knows elections are not won and lost in the DC beltway, but on the ground across the country. We both believe in providing support and investing resources to help every state party succeed, and organizing in every county across this great country.

There are only 447 voting DNC members. As I've talked to the DNC membership, it's clear that nobody has all the votes they need yet. It's also clear Keith has widespread and growing support.

Yesterday John Lewis, one of the moral centers of the Democratic Party, once again threw his weight behind Ellison (see video above). And remember, Lewis was not just a supporter of Hillary Clinton's campaign, he went out of his way to disparage Bernie during the primary. His endorsement of Keith is an important step in healing the gap between progressives and a political establishment that blundered and failed and brought us the disaster of Trump and Trumpism.

"We need his leadership. We need his vision. We need his commitment and his dedication now more than ever before," said Lewis in his announcement. "Keith wants our party not just to wait until the next election but to organize now for the long haul."

Yesterday many of us got an e-mail from Michael Moore under the subject line: Do These 10 Things, and Trump Will Be Toast. They were all good. #6 is especially relevant to this post though:

TAKE OVER THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: The old guard of the party has twice in 16 years presided over the majority of Americans electing the Democrat to the White House-- only for us all to see the losing Republican inaugurated as president. How is it that we have won the popular vote in SIX OF THE LAST SEVEN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS-- the Republicans have only won ONCE since 1988-- and yet, we hold NO power in any branch of government?! That, plus losing 1,000 local seats in this election that the Dems use to hold-- plus watching many Dems in Congress unwilling to stand up to Trump ― PLEASE, the old leadership has to go. God love ‘em for their contributions in the past, but if we don’t enact a radical overhaul right now, we are doomed as far as having a true opposition party during the Trump era. And that, more than anything, will help to usher in the vice-grip of a totalitarian culture.

You must do two things:

Let the DNC know that THIS SATURDAY, February 25th, the Democratic National Committee MUST elect reform and progressive candidate, Congressman Keith Ellison, as the new DNC chair. Keith is a former community organizer, the first Muslim elected to Congress, and a key backer of Bernie Sanders. He not only has Bernie’s support-- and mine-- but he’s also backed by Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Gloria Steinem, John Lewis and many others. Sign his petition of support at www.keithfordnc.org/howyoucanhelp. Let the DNC know how you feel.

And locally, you need to start attending your county Democratic meetings. If possible, organize your friends and others and take over your local Dem organization. More on this at a later date.

The DNC chairman's race worked to benefit the Resistance. Can you imagine if a universally despised piece of shit like Wasserman Schultz was still chair and attempted to make herself part of the grassroots movement? It would have died an ugly death. Keith is largely seen as a part of the Resistance and can help channel its energy into the 2018 electoral cycle. I doubt many people would be interested in Perez's attempts to do something similar. Yesterday, Bill McKibben addressed concerns about the party and the Resistance in an OpEd for The Guardian. "If Keith Ellison wins," he asserts, "the party might just be able to win back its lost credibility."

The resistance is doing as well as anyone could realistically hope. Deprived by the elections of any institutional power, we’ve marched in record numbers with courage and wit. That’s helped journalists to find their footing, and President Needy’s poll numbers have begun to tumble. But only a crazy person could keep up this plate-spinning pace for long. Since he clearly will, those fighting Trump need to find a fortress to call home-- a place to find shelter in and from which to sally forth.

One of those fortresses may be the Democratic party, depending on how this weekend’s vote for a new DNC chairman comes out.

There are a number of candidates, but two appear to be in the lead: former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison. Both, by all accounts, are good guys, and not greatly divided by ideology. But they clearly represent the two wings of the party.

Perez is from the ruling wing, the institutional party. He’s closely identified with Barack Obama, who he worked for, and Hillary Clinton, who he supported. Ellison is from the movement wing. He’s closely identified with Bernie Sanders. Indeed, he was one of the few members of Congress who actively supported his insurgent candidacy.

The choice is actually about the best way to unite the opposition to Trump, at least for the purposes of winning elections.

We don’t need the Democratic party to tell us what to think-- we have vibrant and engaged movements out there that are reshaping public opinion every day, in the airports and on Facebook. Black Lives Matter leads our movement intellectually in a way that the Democratic Party never will. But we may need the Democratic party for the fairly limited purpose of winning elections and hence consolidating power. What would best serve that utilitarian need?

The answer, I think, is pretty clear.

Ellison-- and by extension the movements he represents-- offers the party the items it lacks and needs. Credibility, for one. You could (and this is the argument of Perez and his establishment team) begin in the middle, with as unthreatening and centrist a party as possible, and then reach out to the various movements and try to bring them on board. But I doubt that will work.

The deep-seated anger at the elites, who have compromised serious principle time and time again, is simply too strong. If the polls are to be believed, most Americans don’t trust any of Washington’s power centers, the DNC included. No one looks at Steny Hoyer and thinks ‘what barricade can I die on?’ The last chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, was the embodiment of this kind of non-principled power-based thinking, and she did tremendous damage. [Editor's note: She'll still have to be dealt with for the DNC to ever regain any kind of confidence form grassroots progressives.]

And if that’s true of Americans in general, it’s doubly true of young people. In fact, more than doubly: the single most remarkable statistics of the 2016 election season were the four- and five- and six-to-one margins by which Bernie won young voters.

That he was able to overcome that inherent distrust means he may be able to do the party a great service, and deliver it a generation of voters who are not otherwise inclined to affiliate with institutions of any sort. Ellison is the bridge to that world, and it would be political malpractice to draw it up. But he’s also the bridge to the world of movements, which supply the passion and spirit and creativity that the DNC requires at least as badly as it needs credibility.

A typical Ellison supporter is someone like Jane Kleeb, the whirlwind Nebraska organizer who spearheaded much of the fight against the Keystone Pipeline, and is now assembling a coalition of farmers, ranchers, and other unlikely activists across the Midwest to fight fossil fuel infrastructure and demand renewable energy.

Kleeb’s just been elected chair of Nebraska’s Democratic party, giving it a transfusion of organizing energy that had been lacking-- if you want to compete in the heartland, she’s the kind of person you need.

These folks are serious about winning elections-- Ellison himself has been a remarkably successful campaigner in his Minnesota base, expanding his margins year after year and lending effective support to the rest of the ticket. And they know how to raise money, one of the key jobs of a party: Bernie’s 27-bucks-at-a-time model is clearly the future of political fundraising, a welcome change from simply finding plutocrats or shaking down Wall Street.

Ellison is in a very real way the safe choice. If the institutionalists are put in charge, then much of the DNC’s energy in the years to come will be spent trying to deal with people who distrust institutions. But with Bernie’s implicit backing, Ellison can short-circuit that conversation and simply get to work.

Few people will accuse the black Muslim Berniecrat of being an apparatchik. And since he’s simultaneously a modest Midwestern track-and-field coach, he’ll be able to get a message across to the broad middle.

I don’t know whether that will be enough to save the Democratic party. We’re in an era of rapid deinstitutionalization-- our political parties may just become hollow shells that cannot compete against insurgent candidates like Bernie (who was an Independent most of his career).

But there are, unfortunately, strong forces in the Constitution that favor a two-party system. So even if parties are not as important as protest, it’s still worth seeing if they can serve a useful role going forward. Keith Ellison is the best chance of finding out.

Moments after McKibben's OpEd was published, Steve Phillips' powerful-- and contrarian-- endorsement of Ellison hit the NY Times, urging DNC voters to "choose a leader who will resist the pressure to pursue the wrong white people. Hundreds of articles have been written about the imperative of attracting more support from white working-class voters who supported Barack Obama in 2012 but then bolted to back Donald J. Trump. The far more important-- and largely untold-- story of the election is that more Obama voters defected to third- and fourth-party candidates than the number who supported Mr. Trump. That is the white flight that should most concern the next D.N.C. chairman, because those voters make up a more promising way to reclaim the White House. The way to win them back is by being more progressive, not less. To be clear, all white voters matter. But Democrats must make tough, data-driven decisions about how to prioritize their work. Right now, too many are using bad math and faulty logic to push the party to chase the wrong segment of white voters. For example, Guy Cecil, who spent nearly $200 million as head of the progressive “super PAC” Priorities USA, urged the party to rebuild trust with the “millions of white voters who voted for President Obama and Donald Trump.” The math underlying that conclusion is incorrect (Mr. Trump picked up not “millions,” but only 784,000 white votes in the 10 battleground states he won by single digits). And it misses the bigger-- and more fixable-- problem of white Democratic defections to third- and fourth-party candidates."

Hillary Clinton lost the decisive states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan by 77,744 votes; the number of Democratic votes dropped significantly from 2012 levels, and the Republican total increased by about 440,000 votes. The third- and fourth-party surge, however, was larger than the Republican growth, with 503,000 more people choosing the Libertarian or the Green candidate than had done so in 2012. When you look at the white vote in those states, the picture is even more stark.

In Wisconsin, according to the exit poll data, Mrs. Clinton received 193,000 fewer white votes than Mr. Obama received in 2012, but Mr. Trump’s white total increased over Mitt Romney’s by just 9,000 votes. So where did the other 184,000 Wisconsin whites go? A majority went to third and fourth parties, which, together, received 100,000 more white votes than they did in 2012.

In Michigan, where 75 percent of the voters were white, Mrs. Clinton received about 295,000 fewer votes than Mr. Obama did, but the Republican total increased by just 164,000 votes. The ranks of those voting third and fourth party leapt to more than 250,000 last year from about 51,000 in 2012, and Mrs. Clinton fell short by just 10,704 votes.

In Pennsylvania, the Democrats’ problem was not with white voters, but with African-Americans. Mrs. Clinton actually improved on the Democratic 2012 results with whites, but over 130,000 unenthused black voters stayed home, and she lost by about 44,000 votes.

If Democrats had stemmed the defections of white voters to the Libertarian or Green Parties, they would have won Michigan and Wisconsin, and had they also inspired African-Americans in Pennsylvania, Mrs. Clinton would be president.

If progressive whites are defecting because they are uninspired by Democrats, moving further to the right will only deepen their disillusionment. But if the next D.N.C. chairman can win them back, the country’s demographic trends will tilt the field in Democrats’ favor. As Mrs. Clinton’s popular vote margin showed, there is still a new American majority made up of a meaningful minority of whites and an overwhelming majority of minorities. Not only is there little evidence that Democrats can do significantly better with those white working-class voters who are susceptible to messages laced with racism and sexism, but that sector of the electorate will continue to shrink in the coming years. Nearly half of all Democratic votes (46 percent) were not white in 2016, and over the next four years, 10 million more people of color will be added to the population, as compared with just 1.5 million whites.

Keith Ellison, a D.N.C. chairman candidate, has a proven record of engaging core Democratic voters rather than chasing the elusive conservative whites, and the party would be in good hands under his stewardship. (Thomas E. Perez, the former labor secretary, has less electoral history, but his reliance on political superstars such as the strategist Emmy Ruiz, who delivered victories for Democrats in Nevada and Colorado, is encouraging.)

Whoever prevails as chairman must resist the pressure to follow an uninformed and ill-fated quest for winning over conservative white working-class voters in the Midwest. The solution for Democrats is not to chase Trump defectors. The path to victory involves reinspiring those whites who drifted to third-party candidates and then focusing on the ample opportunities in the Southwest and the South.

Mrs. Clinton came closer to winning Texas than she did Iowa. She fared better in Arizona, Georgia and Florida than she did in the traditional battleground state of Ohio. The electoral action for Democrats may have once been in the Rust Belt, but it’s now moving west and south.

It's Trumpanzee Inauguration Day And God Is Crying Cold Tears

Yesterday, Alan Grayson e-mailed his supporters to ask them to support John Lewis-- which you can do here, at the Resist ActBlue page. When he was in Congress, Grayson always spoke reverentially about Lewis. In his e-mail he reminded his supporters why Lewis feels Trump is an illegitimate president and why he's boycotting his Inauguration today. "I don't see this President-Elect as a legitimate president," said Lewis on Meet The Press. "I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected, and they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton."

Before Lewis' interview, only a small handful of congressmembers had heeded Luis Gutierrez's call to boycott the inauguration. We may never know how many members skip it, but so far over 70 have made public statements about why they are staying away-- and most of them mentioned John Lewis and the way Trump responded to him. Back to Grayson:

The Tweeter-in-Chief responded as follows:

"Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime-infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk-- no action or results. Sad!"

I don’t know what’s worse about President-Elect Trump, his thin skin or his thick skull.

Make Donald Trump even more angry-- show your support for John Lewis.

John Lewis was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, who challenged racial segregation on the buses in the South.  He also was the Chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

In 1961 and 1962, Lewis was arrested. Twenty-four times.

In Anniston, Alabama, Klan members deflated the tires of a bus that Lewis and the other Freedom Riders had boarded.  Then they firebombed it.

In Birmingham, Lewis was beaten.

In Rock Hill, South Carolina, two white men punched Lewis in the face, and kicked him in the ribs.

In Montgomery, a mob met the bus, took Lewis off the bus, knocked him over the head with a wooden crate, and left him unconscious on the bus station floor.

On one day in 1965, a day known as “Bloody Sunday,” Alabama state troopers in Selma hit civil rights demonstrators with tear gas, charged into them, and beat them with clubs. They broke John Lewis’s skull.

I’ve seen the scars on his head.

Somehow, all of that . . . pain . . . forged an outstanding Congressman. A champion on universal healthcare.  A forceful proponent of gay rights and gun safety.  An apostle of peace.

Let me sum it up this way.  Whatever John Lewis has done, he has done for others. And whatever Donald Trump has done, he has done for himself-- bigly.

I’m glad that there are people like John Lewis in public life.

So are these 71 Democrats, all of whom have explicitly confirmed that they're skipping the Trump inauguration today:

• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
• Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)
• Barbara Lee (D-CA)
• Ted Lieu (D-CA)
• Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA)
• Judy Chu (D-CA)
• Mark Takano (D-CA)
• Maxine Waters (D-CA)
• Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)
• Grace Napolitano (D-CA)
• Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
• Jared Huffman (D-CA)
• Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
• Karen Bass (D-CA)
• Jerry McNerney (D-CA)
• Raul Ruiz (D-CA)
• Tony Cardenas (New Dem-CA)
• Juan Vargas (New Dem-CA)
• Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC)
• Frederica Wilson (D-FL)
• Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
• Darren Soto (New Dem-FL)
• John Lewis (D-GA)
• Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)
• Bobby Rush (D-IL)
• Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
• Mike Quigley (New Dem-IL)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Pete Visclosky (D-IN)
• John Yarmuth (D-KY)
• Katherine Clark (D-MA)
• Mike Capuano (D-MA)
• Jamie Raskin (D-MD)
• Anthony Brown (D-MD)
• Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
• John Conyers (D-MI)
• Keith Ellison (D-MN)
• William Lacy Clay (D-MO)
• Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
• Alma Adams (D-NC)
• G.K. Butterfield (D-NC)
• Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
• Bonnie Watson-Coleman (D-NJ)
• Donald Payne (D-NJ)
• Albio Sires (D-NJ)
• Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
• Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
• Adriano Espaillat (D-NY)
• Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
• Jose Serrano (D-NY)
• Louise Slaughter (D-NY)
• Grace Meng (D-NY)
• Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
• Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
• Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR)
• Dwight Evans (D-PA)
• Mike Doyle (D-PA)
• Brendan Boyle (D-PA)
• Bob Brady (D-PA)
• Steve Cohen (D-TN)
• Lloyd Doggett (D-TX)
• Al Green (D-TX)
• Joaquin Castro (New Dem-TX)
• Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX)
• Donald McEachin (D-VA)
• Don Beyer (New Dem-VA)
• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)
• Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)

Like Grayson, Steve Israel is no longer a member of Congress. However, unlike Grayson, I haven't seen Israel, a former Blue Dog and a lobbyist-loving corruptionist, have anything to say about John Lewis' service. His dismally failed messaging talents have been so catastrophic for the Democrats that he was just hired by the corporately owned and operated Third Way organization to bring his "his decades of experience... to help Democrats reconnect with middle class voters and offer a compelling alternative to bring Democrats out of the wilderness." Here's some Fake News from Third Way:

“Democrats are on the cusp of becoming a regional party. We are winning only in the more comfortable and elite coastal areas and losing badly virtually everywhere else. We are thrilled that Steve Israel will be joining our organization and serving as a leader in our New Blue campaign. Steve’s tremendous expertise will be an integral part of devising the economic strategy and messaging that will restore the Democratic Party nationwide,” said Jonathan Cowan, President of Third Way.

Mr. Israel said in a statement, “I am eager to join Third Way’s work on this vital task. I came to rely heavily on Third Way’s insights in my own swing district and as DCCC Chair. They are the smartest think tank in Washington when it comes to innovative policies with broad appeal. And, as I saw first-hand in evenly-matched areas around the nation, we need a vision for the Democratic Party that constructively taps into the unique convergence of anxieties gripping middle class and working families. The New Blue campaign is precisely what our party needs as we rebuild in message, mobilization, and values.”

Blue America is looking forward, not backward to the failed era of Steve Israel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Blue Dogs, the New Dems and Third Way but towards young leaders of working families like California Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, who is running in the special election to replace Xavier Beccera in Congress from a district that Steve Israel and his allies from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party might want to characterize as one of the "elite coastal areas" (like Old Westbury, Great Neck, Oyster Bay, Manhasset, Roslyn, Mill Neck and Woodbury-- all among the richest towns in America and all formerly represented by Israel), although the district Gomez is running in is a fast-growing and vibrant but an area that is ranked as one of the dozen poorest congressional districts in America. That's Third Way's and Steve Israel's idea of an "elite coastal" area. Oh, yeah-- Steve Israel doing messaging for the Republican wing of the Democratic Party... what could possibly go wrong?

Writing on his Facebook page yesterday, Robert Reich referred to today's freakshow as "a sickening event in the history of the United States, a tragedy for America and the world, and a victory for hatefulness, racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism."

[W]e say farewell to the first African-American President-- a man of decency, integrity, and dignity-- and turn the national reigns over to a thin-skinned, vindictive, impulsive, sociopath. Trump is a conman and bully who is ignorant about democracy and disdainful of its basic institutions. He lies constantly. He has cheated his customers, investors, and contractors. His countless tweets and stream-of-consciousness statements at his rallies reveal a nasty, greedy, mendacious, bigoted human being, with a level of egotism and narcissism rare even among politicians and celebrities.

Trump fueled his campaign with the sense of dispossession and anxiety found among millions of voters-- most of them white-- many of whom voted for him because they thought he would carry their resentments and fury to the nation’s capital, and make our political economic system work for them instead of the privileged few. Some say Trump rose on racism. But racism has been with us since the founding of the nation. Trump rose on downward mobility and economic fears, which allowed him to exploit racism and as well as fears of foreigners and Mexican immigrants, Islamophobia, and the rest of his hateful arsenal.

Trump is the ultimate price our political establishment pays for doing almost nothing to improve the plight of the bottom 60 percent of Americans for over thirty years.

As David Remnick has written, the most hopeful way to look at this grievous event is that it and its consequences in coming years “will be a test of the strength, or the fragility, of American institutions. It will be a test of our seriousness and resolve.”

Every decent American-- regardless of political party, or wealth, or race-- must now commit herself or himself to combating Trump’s authoritarianism, calling out his lies, protecting the weak and vulnerable among us, keeping hope alive, and preserving what we can of what is best about America.