What Do Mainstream Republican Careerists Think Of The #CocaineConvention So Far?

Before the #CocaineConvention began yesterday, I passed a TV and noticed that Trump was doing a press gaggle of some kind. Briefly interested in the way you might be attracted to a pile-up on the inter-state shown on TV, I was soon wondering why the TV network didn't just label it "And now an uninterrupted hour of lies from your president." And that was just a precursor of what was coming-- Apocalypse Now, 2020.

CNN, which was thanked by Señor T, for covering his shit-show, noted this morning that it "started off with a parade of dishonesty, in stark contrast with last week's Democratic convention. While CNN also watched and fact-checked the Democrats, those four nights combined didn't have the number of misleading and false claims made on the first night of the Republicans' convention." CNN listed over a dozen of the most blatant and pre-approved lies that, in sum, are the substitute for a party platform.

Speaking of which, at The Atlantic this morning, David Frum ran down the unspoken GOP platform, which the party has decided not to publish. "This omission," he noted, "has led some to conclude that the GOP lacks ideas, that it stands for nothing, that it has shriveled to little more than a Trump cult. This conclusion is wrong. The Republican Party of 2020 has lots of ideas. He listed 13 ideas that "command almost universal assent within the Trump administration, within the Republican caucuses of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, among governors and state legislators, on Fox News, and among rank-and-file Republicans. Once you read the list, I think you’ll agree that these are authentic ideas with meaningful policy consequences, and that they are broadly shared. The question is not why Republicans lack a coherent platform; it’s why they’re so reluctant to publish the one on which they’re running." I'll summarize, using Frum's words:

• Adjusting the burden of taxation down on society’s richest citizens.
• Coronavirus is a much-overhyped problem. It’s not that dangerous and will soon burn itself out. States should reopen their economies as rapidly as possible, and accept the ensuing casualties as a cost worth paying-- and certainly a better trade-off than saving every last life by shutting down state economies. Masking is useless and theatrical, if not outright counterproductive.
• Climate change is a much-overhyped problem. It’s probably not happening. If it is happening, it’s not worth worrying about.
• China has become an economic and geopolitical adversary of the United States. Military spending should be invested with an eye to defeating China on the seas, in space, and in the cyber-realm.
• The trade and alliance structures built after World War II are outdated. America still needs partners of course, especially Israel and maybe Russia.
• Health care is a purchase like any other. Individuals should make their own best deals in the insurance market with minimal government supervision. Those who pay more should get more. Those who cannot pay must either rely on Medicaid, accept charity, or go without.
• Voting is a privilege. States should have wide latitude to regulate that privilege in such a way as to minimize voting fraud, which is rife among African Americans and new immigrant communities. The federal role in voting oversight should be limited to preventing Democrats from abusing the U.S. Postal Service to enable fraud by their voters.
• Anti-black racism has ceased to be an important problem in American life. At this point, the people most likely to be targets of adverse discrimination are whites, Christians, and Asian university applicants.
• The courts should move gradually and carefully toward eliminating the mistake made in 1965 when women’s sexual privacy was elevated into a constitutional right.
• The post-Watergate ethics reforms overreached. We should welcome the trend toward unrestricted and secret campaign donations. Overly strict conflict-of-interest rules will only bar wealthy and successful businesspeople from public service.
• Trump’s border wall is the right policy to slow illegal immigration; the task of enforcing immigration rules should not fall on business operators.
• The country is currently gripped by a surge of crime and lawlessness as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and its criticism of police.
• Civility and respect are cherished ideals. But in the face of the overwhelming and unfair onslaught against President Trump by the media and the Deep State, his occasional excesses on Twitter and at his rallies should be understood as pardonable reactions to much more severe misconduct by others.

"So, concluded Frum, "there’s the platform right there. Why not publish it? There are two answers to that question, one simple, one more complicated. The simple answer is that President Trump’s impulsive management style has cast his convention into chaos. The location, the speaking program, the arrangements-- all were decided at the last minute. Managing the rollout of a platform, as well, was just one task too many. The more complicated answer is that the platform I’ve just described, like so much of the Trump-Republican program, commands support only among a minority of the American people. The platform works (to the extent it does work) by exciting enthusiastic support among Trump supporters; but stated too explicitly, it invites a backlash among the American majority. This is a platform for a party that talks to itself, not to the rest of the country. And for those purposes, it will succeed most to the extent it is communicated only implicitly, to those receptive to its message. The challenge for Republicans in the week ahead is to hope that President Trump can remember, night after night, to speak only the things he’s supposed to speak-- not to blurt the things his party wants its supporters to absorb unspoken."

Frum just neglected to mention one big and rapidly growing part of the unwritten Republican Party Platform-- Q-Anon, the new Republican Party Religion, which is disrupting the GOP and the already crackpot religious right churches. "Once the fascination of far-right commentators and their followers, QAnon is no longer fringe," wrote Katelyn Beaty for ReligionNews. "With support from Trump and other elected officials, it has gained credibility both on the web and in the offline world: In Georgia, a candidate for Congress has praised Q as “a mythical hero,” and at least five other congressional hopefuls from Illinois to Oregon have voiced support. One scholar found a 71% increase in QAnon content on Twitter and a 651% increase on Facebook since March." 

Jon Thorngate is the pastor at LifeBridge, a nondenominational church of about 300 in a Milwaukee suburb. In recent months, he said, his members have shared “Plandemic,” a half-hour film that presents COVID-19 as a moneymaking scheme by government officials and others, on Facebook. Members have also passed around a now-banned Breitbart video that promotes hydroxychloroquine as a cure for the virus.

Thorngate, one of the few pastors who would go on the record among those who called QAnon a real problem in their churches, said that only five to 10 members are actually posting the videos online. But in conversations with other members, he’s realized many more are open to conspiracy theories than those who post.

  Thorngate attributes the phenomenon in part to the “death of expertise”-- a distrust of authority figures that leads some Americans to undervalue long-established measures of competency and wisdom. Among some church members, he said, the attitude is, “I’m going to use church for the things I like, ignore it for the things I don’t and find my own truth.

“That part for us is concerning, that nothing feels authoritative right now.”

For years in the 1980s and ’90s, U.S. evangelicals, above nearly any other group, warned what will happen when people abandon absolute truth (which they located in the Bible), saying the idea of relative truth would lead to people believing whatever confirms their own inward hunches. But suspicion of big government, questioning of scientific consensus (on evolution, for example) and a rejection of the morals of Hollywood and liberal elites took hold among millennial Christians, many of whom feel politically alienated and beat up by mainstream media. They are natural targets for QAnon.

Out Of The Blue-- The REAL Blue-- Marquita Bradshaw

Tennessee is one of the reddest states in the union. Every statewide elected official is a Republican. The state Senate consists of 28 Republicans and 5 Democrats and the state House has 73 Republicans and 26 Dems. Of the 9 members of Congress, there are 7 Republicans, a Democrat representing strongly blue Memphis and a reactionary Blue Dog so far right in Nashville that the Republicans aren't bothering to even run anyone against him. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary 1,517,402 (61.1%) to 867,110 (34.9%), winning 92 of the state's 95 counties.

Tennessee is the most recent state to cross the 100,000 confirmed COVID cases mark. Thursday, the state reported 2,252 new cases, the 5th worst in the country, behind California, Florida, Texas and Georgia and yesterday the state added another 2,432 new cases, bringing the state total to 118,782 (17,393 cases per Tennessean). Gov, Bill Lee is an anti-mask ideologue and seems determined that thousands of Tennesseans die needlessly. 42 more deaths were reported Thursday and another 20 yesterday, bringing the state total to a rapidly increasing 1,206. How many Tennesseans will have to die before voters there abandon Trump and Lee and knee-jerk, death-cult conservatism?

Thursday's primaries included a complete shock in the Democratic Senate race. Despite Schumer's handpicked candidate, James Mackler, having raised $2,112,630, the results clearly showed that Tennessee Democrats are moving away from wealthy white establishment conservatives. (In 2018 another open red Senate seat saw Schumer push Mackler out of the primary so another wealthy white establishment conservative, Phil Bredesen could waltz into the nomination. Bredensen spent $19,271,700, only to be defeated by the odious far right extremist Marsha Blackburn, who spent about $3 million less than Bredesen. The DSCC spent just over a million helping Bredesen but the Schumer-controlled Majority Forward PAC spent $10 million, most of it ineffectively smearing Blackburn, their biggest expense of the 2018 cycle. She beat him 54.7% to 43.9%. Mackler then started a scammy PAC, Believe in Service, that benefitted no one but himself:

Thursday, Mackler came in a distant third, two African-American women beating him decisively. The more progressive of the two, and the most under-financed, Marquita Bradshaw, won the nomination and will face far right Bill Hagerty-- Trump's candidate-- in November after his own bitterly vicious and divisive Republican Party primary.

Her platform helps explain why: I support Medicare for All.

As your Senator, I will fight to ensure Tennesseans going bankrupt from seeking needed Medical Care is a thing of the past. Having experienced that in my own life, I know what it's like to have to suffer through our current system.

Medicare For All is a good place to start, and I commit to you I will only advocate for legislation that is patient-centered.

I want our system of healthcare to be guided by the health outcomes and experience of patients, not insurance company profits. Fundamentally changing our healthcare system in Tennessee means:

• Fighting for legislation that guarantees when you go to the doctor, you will not leave with a bill that will bankrupt your family.
• Simplifying our system of healthcare in this country. Working families in Tennessee don't have time to worry about copays, deductibles, insurance premiums, and the never-ending list of things that keep you from getting care.
• Including mental, dental, vision, comprehensive reproductive health and addiction wrap-around services help into every conversation and legislation about healthcare. Tennesseeans are having to choose between paying for their medical needs or their mortgages in many cases. This is not right. I will fight for you & your family as hard as I do my own.

I Support the Right to A Fully Funded High-Quality Public Education

Our society demands that we teach our students lifelong learning and skills that will translate to a modern economy. I am a lifelong proponent of funding our education system the same as we do our military in order to promote generations of meaningful success regardless of background or location in Tennessee.

We need meaningful ingenuity on how we teach and treat our children, Pre-K - 12 and beyond, to ensure Tennessee is the leader in the coming generations. To ensure everyone not only meets but exceeds their right to a quality education we must:

• Relieve current student debt and reinstate protections from predatory for-profit student debt companies and colleges. We cannot invest in our youth if they are burdened with tens of thousands of dollars by the time they graduate. A Tennessee economy with that built into it is not sustainable.
• Provide funding available to under-resourced and low performing local education authorities to implement appropriate wrap-around services to set students up for success
• Provide quality childcare and school wrap-around services that support working families in economically depressed communities.
• Fund universal pre-K education giving children the foundation to be lifelong learners.
• Build towards a free technical, community, HBCU, and public college education;  expand grants and work-study options in areas of focus so students can complete their studies debt-free and gain skills in their field of choice.
• Provide education and job training programs to re-skill workers

I Support the Green New Deal

I Support A Living Wage And Workers' Rights

I Support Community Policing, Restorative Justice And Signed The Justice Guarantee Pledge

I Support Universal Background Checks

Very clear-- very much a set of Democratic Party values, not the values of the corporatist neo-libs who have taken over the party establishment and who make the boundaries between the GOP and the Democratic Party fuzzy. She also supports DACA, LGBTQ rights, automatic voter registration, overturning the Citizens United decision and outlawing gerrymandering.

A single mom, a Berniecrat, a community advocate for environmental justice, she's exactly the kind of woman Schumer doesn't want anywhere near the Senate. She joins Paula Jean Swearengin as one of the two challengers for Senate seats endorsed by Blue America-- but not Chuck Schumer-- for the general election. You want fundamental change? That's what clicking on that thermometer on the right will help give us a chance at in November.

For Progressives-- Wins, Losses And The Road Forward

Start calling her Congresswoman Bush

Last night there were two gigantic progressive wins-- both in Missouri. After a decade of dogged and vicious Republican opposition in the state legislature and from the governors, the state's voters passed a Constitutional Amendment to give health care to nearly a quarter million of the state's poorest citizens (people earning less than $18,000 annually) through Obamacare Medicaid expansion, making Missouri the 38th state to adopt it. Thanks to massive popularity in St Louis, the amendment passed 52-48% statewide, with right-wing governor Mike Parson continuing to lie that the state can't afford it-- even after a credible study from the Institute for Public Health at Washington University, found that providing health care for more people would actually save the state money. Since the federal government will match 90% of the costs of the newly eligible-- down from 100% had Missouri decided to be part of the program from the beginning-- that state will save about half a billion dollars a year in federal income taxes because residents pay into the system that funds Medicaid expansion without getting the benefits of that expansion."

The other huge progressive win in Missouri was Cori Bush defeating corrupt Congressman Lacy Clay in their St. Louis congressional race:

Cori, a nurse, a Black Lives Matter activist and Berniecrat was great news on a night when other movement activists didn't around the country didn't fare as well. Clay raised $740,525 compared to Bush's $562,309 but a massive $150,000 I.E. on her behalf from Justice Democrats evened the playing field.

The biggest disappointment was that Blue Dog and "ex"-Republican Tom O'Halleran in Arizona managed to avoid being ousted by another Berniecrat and movement activist, Eva Putzova, who won the districts's biggest and bluest county, Coconino, but was dragged down by the more conservative counties that backed O'Halleran. With 94% of the votes counted, he won 34,095 (58.65%) to 24,037 (41.35%). This was Cori's second try against Clay-- and Eva's first try against O'Halleran. I expect she will try again.

In Michigan, Rashida Tlaib handily beat back a challenge from corporate shill Brenda Jones, with a 2-1 landslide. And in the southwest district, with all precincts now counted, voters have chosen the progressive state legislator, Jon Hoadley over garden variety Democrat Jen Richardson-- 52.3% to 47.7%. Hoadley is in a good position to beat Trump enabler Fred Upton in November.

In Washington state, progressives lost their congressional runs against right-of-center incumbents Rick Larsen and Derek Kilmer and in WA-10, conservative Marilyn Strickland seems to be beating progressive Beth Doglio for first place for the seat opening up after Denny Heck's retirement. It looks like they will square off in November-- with a sharp contrast between a progressive and a conservative.

This morning, Roots Action, led by Berniecrat Norman Solomon, announced that his group has launched a grassroots campaign aimed at "swing voters on the left," to persuade Bernie supporters and other progressives in swing states to "Vote Trump Out-- and Then Challenge Biden."

The Vote Trump Out swing-states initiative will include a highly-targeted social-media program and other digital outreach, utilizing messages from national and state progressive luminaries-- people who are widely respected on the left in ways that establishment Democrats are not. The campaign will urge progressives in the dozen battleground states to vote for Joe Biden rather than sit out the election or cast a third-party protest vote. Directed heavily toward young people, the effort will be entirely independent of-- and often in opposition to-- corporate Democratic leaders.

The RootsAction campaign has assembled a group of national endorsers who are likely to be persuasive to progressives on the fence about voting for Biden. They include: Ady Barkan, Medea Benjamin, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Marjorie Cohn, RoseAnn DeMoro, Barbara Ehrenreich, Daniel Ellsberg, Bill Fletcher Jr., Jim Hightower, Rep. Ro Khanna, Jamie Margolin, Annabel Park, Linda Sarsour, Winnie Wong and James Zogby.

The #VoteTrumpOut campaign will assert that-- while President Trump is unfailingly immune to progressive persuasion or protest-- the fight for a full progressive agenda (ranging from major climate initiatives and anti-racism to universal healthcare, free public college and taxing the wealthy) would have the potential to win some victories with Biden in the White House.

The campaign’s mission statement declares: "We are not going to minimize our disagreements with Joe Biden. But we’re also clear-eyed about where things stand: supporting the Democratic nominee in swing states is the only way to defeat Trump... If Biden wins, we’ll be at his door on day one, demanding the kinds of structural reforms that advance racial, economic and environmental justice."

Renowned linguist, author and political activist Noam Chomsky contributed this comment to the initiative: "I live in the swing state of Arizona, and I’d vote for a lamp post to get Trump out." Chomsky is featured in a campaign-launch video [above].

"Our organization fought fiercely in the primaries for Bernie and against Biden," said RootsAction.org cofounders Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon. "But the general election is far less about Biden than it is about Trump-- the most dangerous president in modern U.S. history, who opposes virtually every policy and principle that progressives are fighting for."

   

Why Are So Many Republicans So Comfy With Backing Biden? Expect Trump Enablers In Congress To Get Badly Burned In November

Only an extremist conspiracy-theorist would accuse Fox News of released polls based against Trump. The new Fox poll is likely to elicit that kind of response on the fringes of society. Among registered voters, Trump approval rating is just 44% (55% disapproval) and just 38% say they would vote to reelect him. (50% say they will vote for Biden.) Enthusiasm for Trump among his supporters is high (62%), while Biden has no enthusiasm (just 31%-- down from Hillary's 44%).

A big majority of Biden voters (63%) are motivated by fear that Trump will be reelected. I think that will be enough-- even if the calculus turns off voters like myself who only vote for candidates and-- rejecting the lesser of two evils theory the American political establishment is completely wedded to-- not against candidates. I'd never consider voting for a conservative like Biden, But he doesn't need me or people like me. He has plenty of Republicans who are perfectly happy voting for him instead of Trump. And that number is growing as Republicans look at his right-of-center career long record and feel more and more comfortable with it. A case can easily be made that he is the more traditionally conservative than Trump.

Yesterday, writing for Newsweek, Adrian Carrasquillo wrote that more Republicans are backing Biden in an unprecedented rebuke of a sitting president. And it's now appearing to be going beyond the #NeverTrump partisan elites. "The coordinated efforts," he wrote, "far surpass the high-profile defections that occurred during Donald Trump's candidacy in 2016 and come amid his plummeting public support and intense scrutiny of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and police reform protests, both major domestic crises. Peter Jeffrey Kuznick, a professor who specializes in 20th- and 21st-century presidents at American University, told Newsweek that the rejection of a sitting president by his own party is 'unprecedented' in modern American history, and "extremely unusual" overall. Parties have rarely splintered in such a way, he said, citing Teddy Roosevelt running as a progressive as one example."

The latest super PAC of Republicans for Joe Biden, The Right Side PAC, includes short-lived former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci and launched Wednesday. Scaramucci told Newsweek he plans to go into swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, in predominantly white areas that voted for Trump, to spread his message of why it's against their interest to continue to support him. The group will use digital, phone, and mail to reach voters and rely on major donors.

Scaramucci said that while Trump's idea of leadership is "throwing Molotov cocktails," Biden wants to unite the country.

"Trump has hijacked this party, but there's going to be a reckoning," he said.

The creation of that PAC follows the new 45 Alumni for Biden PAC of former Bush administration officials that began this month. Former President George W. Bush will not support Trump, and his spokesman Freddy Ford told Newsweek he is also not involved in the PAC. But the group, which will fundraise for Biden, quickly gathered close to 200 supporters.

The fundraising efforts come on top of high-profile GOP defections, like former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said June 7 that Trump "lies" and he will vote for Biden. Cindy McCain, the widow of former Senator John McCain, plans to support Biden but may not be public about it because of her son's political career, the New York Times reported.

Then there are the groups like The Lincoln Project, started by veterans of past Republican campaigns, which spent $1.4 million against Trump through March and raised another $1 million after the president attacked the group in May for their ad on his coronavirus response. Bill Kristol's Republican Voters Against Trump is also stocked by GOP operatives and is releasing searing ads against him, like one featuring Senator Lindsey Graham. The ad received widespread media coverage and attention on social media after showing Graham slamming Trump during the 2016 campaign and then lavishing praise on Biden.

Trump, however, has been opposed by establishment Republicans before. In 2016, GOP leaders were more likely to say they weren't backing Trump, than to take the next step and say they were supporting Hillary Clinton. Trump lost support at various times-- when he was slow to denounce former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, when he attacked a Latino judge in the Trump University case, and when he attacked a Gold Star family. But many Republicans publicly abandoned him in October, just weeks before the election, after an Access Hollywood tape emerged of his lewd comments about women.

...[Hurting Trump] is that his presidency "became real," something they said was never more clear than in the last five months as he faced a pandemic and protests that swept the country. A CBS News poll after the protests showed that 49 percent disapproved of Trump's handling, while 32 percent approved of it. A FiveThirtyEight analysis also showed that Trump's approval rating of the pandemic's management has slipped. About 54 percent of Americans now disapprove of his pandemic leadership.

Rosario Marin, who served as Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush and recently joined the super PAC supporting Biden, said that six months ago people weren't thinking about switching parties, but the coronavirus outbreak "shined a bright light on his deficiencies as a leader and as an administrator."

"But even worse, were the protests. It was something that has been brewing in people's hearts and they realized he's not going to be the healer we need at this time," she said, also chiding Trump for not mentioning racism during his executive order announcing limited police reforms.





...GOP groups who are opposing Trump said that the high-profile defections also provide a "permission structure" for lifelong Republicans to support Biden, and say multiple factors have contributed to the early support for the former vice president. As president, Trump now has a record to critique and no longer has Hillary Clinton, deeply unpopular among Republicans, to use to deflect criticism.

Biden, on the other hand, is a much more respected and palatable candidate for Republicans to back, the groups said.

"Biden's brand positioning makes him a very safe choice," said Tim Miller, an advisor to Republican Voters Against Trump. "When they say 'He's an extremist in the pocket of AOC! He's an ANTIFA supporter!' Really? Joe Biden?"

Miller's group has courted Republican donors and held focus groups with Trump supporters and Republicans who have soured on the president. He told Newsweek that during the primary donors told him they were against Trump, but wouldn't be able to donate money to his group if Senators Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren were the Democratic nominees.





"He's not ANTIFA, he's not Bernie Sanders, he's not even Nancy Pelosi," Jennifer Horn a founder of The Lincoln Project, told Newsweek about how Republicans view Biden. Horn said she spent 10 years as New Hampshire Republican Party chairman using Nancy Pelosi as a boogeyman in her races, but Biden, she said, is "good guy," who works in a bipartisan manner.

Where many in the military gave Trump the benefit of the doubt in 2016, Miller said, there has been a cascade of former military leaders coming out against Trump, whom Republican groups see as the "most credible messengers" in their quest to see Biden defeat Trump.

"This fall, it's time for new leadership in this country-- Republican, Democrat or independent," retired Navy admiral William H. McRaven, who led the Osama bin Laden raid told The Times. "President Trump has shown he doesn't have the qualities necessary to be a good commander in chief."

Former defense secretary James Mattis was joined by former chairs of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen and Marty Dempsey, in criticizing and repudiating Trump's leadership.

"For lifelong Republican voters, military critiques of Trump are extremely persuasive and extremely valuable," Horn told Newsweek... More high-profile Republican endorsements of Biden are coming, she said.

"It would be a relief that [Trump's] no longer going to be there," Marin said, envisioning a Biden victory on election night. "A sigh of relief that they no longer need to make excuses, they no longer need to cover for him."

The Lincoln Project is actively working against Trump enablers in the Senate-- Republicans-- from Joni Ernst (R-IA), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Cory Gardner (R-CO) right to the political, spiritual and societal fount of evil himself-- Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the self-proclaimed Grim Reaper:





Don't be surprised to see more Lincoln Project ads against these and other Republicans-- Tom Perdue (GA), Steve Daines (MT), Dan Sullivan (AK), Lindsey Graham (SC)... Meanwhile, Democratic voters should be asking themselves why Republicans seem to very comfortable with Biden. Is it more than their disdain for Trump? Are they just holding their noses and backing Biden because they hate Trump? Or are they more enthusiastic about Biden than many Democrats are? Maybe Democrats better start thinking that unless they want 4 more years of establishing;ishment conservatism running the show in DC, they should replace conservative, status quo Democrats in Congress with actual progressives. This morning, Krystal Ball spoke eloquently on the subject of the Tuesday primaries and I suggest listening to her analysis below. Is it time to contribute to progressive Democrats like the ones you'll find my clicking on the Blue America 2020 thermometer on the right? These are men and women who will hold the feet to the fire of whichever conservative winds up in the White House. It's not too late. But after primary season... it will be.

Marianne Williamson Takes On The Party Establishment

Yesterday, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti invited Marianne to be a guest on Rising to discuss her 2020 congressional endorsements. She explained (above) her thinking about backing candidates who are challenging Democratic congressional leadership-- like Shahid Buttar (vs Nancy Pelosi), Mckayla Wilkes (vs Steny Hoyer), Jen Perelman (vs Debbie Wasserman Schultz), Lauren Ashcraft (vs Carolyn Maloney), Jamaal Bowman (vs Eliot Engel)... To have a national figure who can command attention on media the way Marianne does, is incredibly valuable to the progressive movement. In fact, Friday she's tape a show for next week with Anand Giridharadas at Vice.

The candidates she's backing span a wide range of progressives, some-- like Mike Siegel (TX-10), J.D. Scholten (IA-04), Nate McMurray (NY-27), Julie Oliver (TX-25) and Lisa Ring (GA-01)-- who came incredibly close in 2018 and are tee-ed up to win in November. Others are first time candidates who are part of the future of the progressive movement and, hopefully, the Democratic Party, win or lose-- like Eva Putzova (AZ-01), Keeda Haynes (TN-05), Shan Chowdhury (NY-05), Rebecca Parson (WA-06), Hector Oseguera (NJ-08), Robin Wilt (NY-25)... Marianne's ActBlue thermometer is on the right and finding a candidate or two you could support with a contribution could make a real difference in a campaign and in the tenor of Congress for the next two years. Is it going to be a corporate pig-sty again or a place where progressive ideas and values are going to play a role?

After Marianne was finished taping the show, she started some inspired tweeting. First this thread:

And then this one-- powerfully and directly to the point:

Then she focused her 2.7 million twitter followers on Jamaal Bowman brand new campaign video, released moments before. 2.7 million twitter followers is a big deal. Three of Biden's top VP contenders don't have that many combined: @SenKamalaHarris (1.2 million), @AmyKlobuchar (1 million), @RepValDemings (135,800). I sure hope a lot of those 2.7 million people have watched or will watch Jamaal's video:





Marianne hasn't endorsed many candidates for U.S. Senate. One, though is Teresa Tomlinson who is running for the Georgia seat occupied by odious Trump ass-kisser David Perdue. Before Teresa can beat Perdue, though, she has to beat Chuck Schumer. Schumer has stuck his nose into Georgia politics and thinks he's entitled to chose the state's Democrats nominee. He recruited a pointless centrist, Jon Ossoff who couldn't beat Perdue in a million years. And now Schumer is raising money for Ossoff from the Wall Street and corporate whores who he serves. Take a look at this little fundraising chart:

Teresa is getting her contributions from Georgians (68.7%). Ossoff is getting his contributions from out of state, much of it from Schumer's senator-purchasers (63.3%-- so just 36.7 from Georgians). This contest is June 9. Teresa: "Despite Jon Ossoff’s supposed fundraising prowess, we are smokin’ him in Georgia. Georgians are the voters and they will decide this race... From the beginning, this battle has been Ossoff’s 2017 national fundraising network vs. our 'For Georgians, by Georgians' campaign. Now, we know that his national network is responding tepidly to his candidacy and our in-state fundraising has significantly outpaced him. With our $1.6M to his $1M and with nearly two thousand more Georgia donors than Jon’s campaign-- we see that Georgians are demanding their say in this election."

There Really Is A Reason We Have Primaries-- Too Bad So Few People Use Them

Do you watch the Humanist Report much? If not, maybe you should. In the video above, host Mike Figueredo successfully explains why progressives need to show some spine when it comes to dealing with foot draggingly corporate careerist Democrats, especially in leadership. As you know, Marianne Williamson has endorsed Shahid Buttar, who's running against Nancy Pelosi, Mckayla Wilks, who is running against Pelosi's top lieutenant, Steney Hoyer, and Jen Perelman, who is taking on faded party leadership figure Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Look at Marianne's list of candidates; 14 of them are taking on entrenched Democratic incumbents.

One senior congressional Democrat, a progressive, didn't agree that anyone can lump Pelosi and Hoyer together. "It's like apples and hand grenades," he told me. "And to have this video come out within 24 hours of her calling Trump a "fat fuck" is bad timing. Would anyone else call Trump a "fat fuck!"

Yesterday Shahid Buttar told us that he's "incredibly grateful for Marianne Williamson's support. Having seen her as a voice encouraging empathy at the highest levels of our national politics, I'm eager to build a brighter future together with her-- finally putting people and communities, rather than corporations, at the center of our public policy. Often, it takes a voice like hers, from the outside of politics, to see so clearly what the root of the problem is in Washington-- entrenched Democratic so-called leaders like Nancy Pelosi who are our immediate hurdles to progress. I'm impressed by Marianne's courage in joining me to take on the top brass of political corruption, and I hope other figures in the Democratic Party have the strength to follow in her footsteps."

Well, one of those figures is Eva Putzova who served on the Flagstaff City Council and as a Bernie DNC delegate. Now she's running for Congress in a district (AZ-01) held by former Republican state legislator Tom O'Halleran, who now bills himself as a Blue Dog. He opposes everything the Democratic Party stands for. Eva told us that she "became a U.S. Citizen in 2007 and the day after the naturalization ceremony I registered to vote as a Democrat because I am a democrat. Then in 2016, I went to the DNC as a delegate for Bernie Sanders, which opened my eyes to how the party leadership at both national and state levels is enmeshed with corporate interests and how the only way we can reclaim Democratic Party for democrats is to replace those who are bought by corporations. So many young people we talk to on the campaign trail are turned off by conversations about policies because they are turned off by the corrupted politics. I'm challenging the most Republican Democrat in Arizona precisely for these reasons: his votes and inaction on the most enormous challenges we face, like climate change, are a direct reflection of his support of the corporate agenda. The top Democratic Party representatives in Congress lost their ability to lead with courage and to drive transformation because they are out of touch with the people of this country and because they accepted and institutionalized corruption. They have to go because they are no longer Democrats."

All the details are here: https://secure.ngpvan.com/DAR1YEp-bkWTNtpHzgUd7A2

Michael Owens is a former Democratic chairman for Cobb County, which went blue under his leadership. He knows the party inside and out and he's taking on one of the last of the Georgia Blue Dogs, David Scott. He was very happy to have received an endorsement from Marianne. "Her willingness to suppprt progressive candidates," he said, "is a breath of fresh air, in what can often be the caustic environment of primary politics where challengers are running against establishment Democrats. The true strength in moving the progressive movement forward is through down ballot candidates."

Jan Perelman is the progressive Democrat running for the south Florida seat that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is sitting in-- opposing everything remotely progressive other than gay rights and abortion. When it comes to working families' interests, she's a baby step from being a Republican. "I'm always so amazed that I'm considered the 'left,'" Jen told us last night. "I have been a Democrat since I registered to vote in 1989. I am pro-labor, pro-environment, and anti-war, which are not radical positions. It was the Democratic Party that 'left' me when it was taken over by corporate interests and stopped representing working people. We cannot move forward as a country as long as entrenched corporate Democrats remain beholden to special interests. As a primary challenger who takes zero corporate money, I am going to do everything in my power to bring the Democratic party back to its roots as the party of the people."

Robin Wilt is also challenging an old school corrupt political hack, Joe Morelle, in Monroe County, New York. Robin was very enthusiastic about Marianne endorsing Shahid and told me that "not only proved that her run for the Presidency was not borne of vanity, but of integrity; but she has also demonstrated the type of political leadership and courage that the left wing of the party has long been lacking. As Democrats, as long as we remain complicit in supporting leadership within the party that does not advance an agenda that centers those most impacted by the deleterious policies that have produced the massive inequities that we witness today, we can no more say that we care about marginalized communities and the plight of the disenfranchised than can Republicans make that claim."

Continuing, Robin said that "It is disingenuous and craven to claim that you support universal health care, and then support leadership that blocks Medicare for All at every turn. It is disingenuous and craven to claim that you care about wealth and income inequality, and then support leadership that preserves a tax structure that benefits only the top 1% and accepts massive amounts of money from corporate interests. It is disingenuous and craven to claim that you care about climate justice, and then support leadership that thwarts implementation of the Green New Deal. It is disingenuous to claim that you care about housing justice and then support leadership that will not advance a Federal Homes Guarantee. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King warned us about the well-meaning moderate that compromised his/her principles for the sake of pragmatism. King understood that whenever we compromise with a lie about who people are, and barter the human rights of the people we serve for our own comfort, we empower the political forces that have exploited our divisions to maintain power. The politicians who are blocking the expansion of healthcare to all Americans, abiding corporate polluters, increasing investment in the war and mass incarceration and detention economies, all while slashing our nation’s safety net and denying workers the right to earn a living wage are the selfsame politicians who are blocking a progressive agenda. Our silence is enabling their deceit. It is time that we follow Marianne Williamson’s courageous lead, give voice to the voiceless, and unabashedly support true progressives that adhere to the principles we hold dear."

Hector Oseguera, the New Jersey progressive running for a seat held by party hack Albio Sires, told us this morning that "It's an absolute honor to be part of Marianne Williamson's movement to bring the Democratic Party back to earth. This is a party that's supposed to represent the working-class people of this nation, but has gotten way too comfortable with their corporate sponsors. When you look at my race, you'll find that I'm the only Democratic candidate in this Democratic primary. The incumbent has an abysmal record on immigration, corporate welfare, and mass surveillance. Whether it's the environment, healthcare, or affordable housing, my opponent is to the far right of the average voter in my district, relying on a network of political cronies and corrupt big money interests to keep him in power. He's received dishonorable mentions in books like the Soprano State and the Jersey Sting, covering his history of corruption and ethics violations that have contributed to New Jersey's reputation as a politically corrupt state. This progressive movement, which owes a lot to Marianne's leadership, is working to dismantle the facade that corporate Democrats offer much substantive difference from their Republican colleagues."

In the Oklahoma City congressional district, Tom Guild is running against one of the most conservative Blue Dogs in the House, Kendra Horn. Tom noted yesterday that "Marianne Williamson is showing exemplary leadership in endorsing, raising money and fighting for progressive congressional candidates throughout America. My opponent opposes Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, raising the minimum wage to $15; she voted against labor’s major legislative initiative in Congress in 2020, voted against Sen. Tim Kaine’s and Ro Khanna's resolution to restrain Donald Trump from taking military actions that could start another endless war in Iran, and recently met remotely with lobbyists for Big Insurance Companies who were seeking money to bail out COBRA in the HEROES Act. That’s just a small sampling of her support for Republican-lite regressive policies. On the CARES Act she voted for the rule to let the bill proceed to the floor of the House to be debated and voted on, then she voted no on the bill. Go figure. Unless progressives oppose Nancy Pelosi’s DCCC gravy train and their support for Republican-lite members of the House running as Democrats, we essentially have two big corporate parties corrupted to the hilt by Wall Street and special interest campaign money. That may be one of the big untold stories as to why so many Americans choose to opt out and not vote every year. They see little structural and substantive difference between the two major parties on issues important to them. I thank Marianne for her support for our campaign and commend her for her integrity in grabbing the bull by the horns and supporting, Shahid, Pelosi’s primary challenger. Marianne has the guts of a government mule and that’s exactly what it will take for progressives to rule the roost. Progressives need to be tougher and stick out their necks to support fellow progressive candidates even when it’s hard to do and not convenient for them. I’m happy that I promoted Marianne to help her make the presidential debates and encouraged people on Facebook and Twitter to donate to her campaign. I was all in for Bernie, but saw that progressives needed all the help we could get in the primaries and in the debates. We need to GO BIG, GO BOLD, or GO HOME!"

Is There Still Any Push For Progressivism-- Even Inside The Corporate Democratic Party?

Last night we noted that the Dems have a plan for another bailout. Former Congressman Alan Grayson, who likes Pelosi, waded through hundreds of pages and called me and said-- word for word: "This is a horrendous strategic mistake. People are suffering terribly-- far worse than in 2008-- and they deserve to have someone on their side." I feel pretty certain Grayson would have been on their side and voted against it-- but that New Dem Darren Soto, who represents his old Orlando district, certainly won't. Krystal Ball explained how it's just another useless messaging bill-- which is basically what all the Democratic staffer are saying as well-- that will never pass that but that shows Pelosi's contempt and disdain for progressives. You should listen to Krystal in the clip above... kind of sad, although it helps explain why there's so much talk on the left about the formation of a non-establishment third party lately.

How about the Working Families Party? Ah... yeah, how about them? A conservative Republican pretending to be a Democrat, Wlla Street shill Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, and her Democratic establishment attorney (Martin Connor, who was used by Melinda Katz last year to steal the Queens District Attorney race from Tiffany Cabán) succeeded in getting AOC kicked off the Working Families Party ballot line. The official GOP line (Caruso-Cabrera speaking): "The AOC campaign is in shock. She has hurt working people of the Bronx and Queens with her votes and creates disunity within our party. Her own campaign spokesman ran away from her in March. No wonder why pro-union forces don’t want her and neither do our neighborhoods."

The hapless Working Families Party State, through their NY Director Sochie Nnaemeka: "The Working Families Party is unwavering in our support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and we believe the congresswoman is the leader her district and this country needs. Limits on petitioning due to coronavirus have led to numerous ballot challenges, including this one."

Back to the Pelosi proposal. She wouldn't go along with any of the progressive priorities, like temporary universal healthcare during the pandemic... nor recurring Universal Basic Income payments during the pandemic.. and, of course, no paycheck guarantee program to avoid further job losses, but she did give Hoyer what he most wanted most in the whole wide world: the lobbyist bailout. Lobbyists-- the most hated group in America by Democrats, Republicans and independents, but beloved by Stony Hoyer, the Representative of K Street! That's who Pelosi is bailing out? The thermometer on the right has candidates running in primaries against Pelosi's conservative incumbents. Please give them some support if you don't want to see the Democratic Party continue drifting ever rightward, ever more corporate and ever more corrupt.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has the leverage-- the numbers-- to force Pelosi's hand, right? The answer is yes, they have the numbers to make her rewrite it. But do they have the cohesiveness? Or the will? They seem reluctant to use their power (to put it mildly). If you didn't listen to Krystal... do it now.

Common Dreams ran a statement from the American Economic Liberties Project urging Democrats to get a spine and vote no.

"This bill delivers charity in place of justice, and Congress should vote it down," said Economic Liberties’ Executive Director Sarah Miller. "Without addressing corporate power, additional aid to the people will ultimately end up in the hands of banks, monopolies, and landlords. While the need for humanitarian assistance is urgent, fundamentally this bill is not a serious attempt to grapple with power. It includes important programs, such as aid to states and localities, unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance, and hazard pay, but doesn’t address the roll-up of power happening throughout the economy that results in systemic exploitation of workers, consumers, small businesses, taxpayers, and communities."

"The bill has no prohibition on corporate mergers. It bails out corporate lobbyists and corrupt mortgage servicers. It funnels money to monopolistic insurance company executives. And it has no constraints on private equity firms currently using public money from the Federal Reserve to cherry pick corporate assets on the cheap. Even some of the positive aspects, like a provision authorizing crackdowns on price gouging, are poorly conceived, for example allowing the corporate lobbyist-dominated Federal Trade Commission to block state officials from acting.

"We opposed the first CARES Act because it encouraged, rather than put the brakes on, the consolidation of corporate power. That bill was structured to support massive aid to the stock market, and a trickle of aid to the rest of us. Progressives should demand this bill address the injustices deriving from this consolidation of power in addition to humanitarian needs.

"Our economy is being restructured whether we like it or not, so we need structural solutions to our current predicament. At the very least, the House should pass a merger moratorium, which is supported by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of Americans. And we encourage the House to pick up Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Senator Josh Hawley’s idea to have the government directly support payrolls," added Miller. Problematic provisions in the bill include:

• A Corporate Lobbyist Bailout: The bill makes Paycheck Protection Program funds available to 501(c)6 trade associations, which is the institutional vehicle for corporate lobbying.
• A Dark Money Group Bailout: The bill extends Paycheck Protection Program funds available to 501(c)4 trade associations, which is the institutional vehicle for dark money political spending.
• No Merger Prohibition: This bill has no mechanism to block or slow pandemic-related corporate mergers. Already, Amazon is rumored to buy AMC theaters, and Uber is in talks to buy Grubhub.
• Tax Cut for the Wealthy: This bill includes a repeal of the State and Local Tax Deduction, which primarily benefits the wealthy.
• Bailout of Mortgage Servicers: This bill extends Federal aid to mortgage servicers, who were the thinly capitalized entities at fault for the foreclosure crisis. These servicers have fought attempts at reform of their industry to make their business safer and are now demanding a no-strings-attached bailout.
• Subsidies for Health Insurance Monopolies: Rather than extending Medicare or Medicaid to the unemployed, this bill would fund COBRA, subsidizing health insurance monopolies and offering nothing to millions of Americans whose jobs never offered health insurance to begin with.

Will There Ever Be Another Presidential Election That Isn't A Race To Determine Who Is The Lesser Evil?

The latest YouGov polling for The Economist was released yesterday. There are over 350 pages: be my guest. I'll just highlight a few findings about characteristics that motivate vote choices among registered voters-- comparisons between Bernie and Status Quo Joe.

• Cares about people like you-- Biden- 49%, Bernie- 55%
• Honesty and trustworthy-- Biden- 39%, Bernie- 48%
• Age would severely limit job capacity-- Biden- 38%, Bernie- 34%

The same poll shows that both Biden and Bernie would beat Trump in November, Biden by 4 points and Bernie by 1 point. But perceived fear of a second Trump victory is driving Democratic primary voters to pick the less honest and trustworthy, more senile and less caring candidate. And we wish good luck with that, to all the strategic 2016 Democratic primary voters who were so sure Hillary would win that the least competent, least honest, least fit candidate in history is now sitting in the White House destroying our country. Great job; by all means make the same mistake again.

Author and L.A. Times columnist Erin Aubrey Kaplan was the first black weekly op-ed columnist in that paper’s history. Her much discussed column on why black voters are supporting former Vice President Joe Biden over Sen. Bernie Sanders stands out as an important piece of 2020 election coverage. In a letter to the editor, Richard Robinson wrote that there piece was "exactly on target. Comparing Sanders’ ideas to those of Martin Luther King Jr. was right on. Kaplan wrote, 'In the decades since King’s death, many black people have lost touch with the necessity of idealism and imagination.' She also pointed out that the 'overwhelming fear of a Trumpian future' is 'making pragmatists of us all.' Not only black voters have traded their idealism for fear. I’m sure many other groups have forsaken idealism for fear-based pragmatism, and they may end up with the very Trumpian future they so deeply fear anyway."

The country stands at the brink of absolutely bottomless catastrophe-- financially, politically and, obviously, healthwise. And all the two corrupted, dysfunctional political parties have come up with are an incompetent, narcissistic criminal carnival barker and a pointless conservative corpse who wants nothing more-- or less-- than the honor of dying as president. Yesterday, CounterPunch published a piece by author and American ex-pat-- residing in Switzerland-- Matthew Stevenson, that dealt with the question of the Democrats' suicidal charge into battle behind the corpse.

"Will the Democrats cut their losses with Joe Biden and try to nominate someone else at the national convention," he asked as a set-up. "Let’s get real about Biden. He’s a dead candidate running, whose only role in this campaign was to deny the Democratic nomination to the bomb-throwing Bernie Sanders. Did anyone vote for Biden for his intellectual prowess, leadership qualities or record in crisis management?" He wrote that he doesn't think so and that "the only reason anyone voted for Biden in the primaries was because his name wasn’t Sanders and because he was seen as someone who would endorse bailout checks to corporate America-- whatever the crisis. The rest hardly mattered. Now, a month into what is called his 'presumptive' candidacy, Democrats are waking up to the fact that their nominee cannot string together three comprehensible sentences and is just as clueless as Trump and Mike Pence in dealing with a national health crisis... I trust you have seen a few of the videos circulating online of Biden broadcasting from his undisclosed location. He sounds like an old man on a golf club membership committee, complaining how it’s impossible to find a parking place near the men’s grill on Saturdays."

He added, woefully, that "Now in 2020, the Dems seem to have gone out of their way to confront a seventysomething incumbent with wandering hands and crooked kids with their own nominee who seems cloned from the same source code." Stevenson thinks the Dems will dump Biden before or during the national convention. "Just as Republicans are good at rigging elections, Democrats are skilled at marking the cards in their primaries and caucuses. The reason Bernie hasn’t thrown in the towel and endorsed 'my friend Joe' is because he knows how the Democratic game is played, and the party will do to Biden as it did to him-- namely screw him out of the nomination. It’s about all the party does well. Getting rid of Biden will be a lot easier than getting tested for the virus. If the remaining primaries are postponed or cancelled ('a national emergency…this grave crisis…'), Biden would arrive at the virtual convention with 1,217 delegates (where the count stands today) while 1,991 are needed for the nomination.

If no Democratic candidate at the convention gets a majority on the first ballot, the 771 superdelegates become eligible to vote on the second and all subsequent ballots.

That bloc should be sufficient to throw the nomination in whatever direction it chooses, especially given that superdelegates come from the ranks of senior Democratic office holders and members of the national committee.

My guess is that, as a group, the superdelegates are tired of YouTube watching Weekend at Biden’s (“A lively comedy about a guy who isn’t…”) and despair that their man could lose to the criminally negligent, emoluments-rich, woman-abusing, narcissistically incompetent Trump.

At this point, the Democrats would happily nominate some tough-talking, Covid-fighting governor on the 38th ballot so long as it was not Sanders or, now, Biden.

Standing in the way of rational behavior, of course, is the Democratic Party itself, which has been in self-destruct mode since it loaded the dice in favor of Hillary Clinton in 2016, if not long before. Remember Mike Dukakis and John Kerry?

Note the ages of the party leadership: Biden is 77 and Nancy Pelosi is 80. (Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is 69, which makes him, relatively speaking, “the kid.”) And the runner-up in this race, Bernie Sanders, is 78. Even China has done away with its gerontocracy.

Is it any wonder that the Democratic party has so run out of ideas that all it can think to do, during a time of national crisis, is to nominate Clueless Joe?

...The great irony of the 2020 Democratic primaries and the general election is that the two candidates who ran largely on medical reform-- Sanders and Elizabeth Warren-- stand discredited, while the last two (tired old white) men still in the race-- Trump and Biden-- have nothing coherent to say about medicine (or anything else).

And you wonder why the crisis is out of control.

Stay safe or, as they ended letters during the Depression, write when you find work.

In the background, polling is finding support for Bernie's signature issue, Medicare for All-- explicitly opposed by Status Quo Joe and Trump-- is soaring. Morning Consult's Yusra Murad wrote that "In the midst of a pandemic that has spurred an economic crisis and put Americans’ health care costs in stark contrast with the rest of the industrialized world, support for Medicare for All has risen to its highest point in about nine months. The sweeping health reform package championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would provide all Americans with health insurance through the government now has support from 55 percent of registered voters, per a March 27-29 survey of 1,997 respondents, taken as the United States became the global epicenter of the coronavirus. Thirty-five percent of voters continue to oppose the proposal, putting net support-- the share who support minus those who oppose-- at 20 points, a 9-point jump from mid-February... For the first time since June 2019, a majority of independents are in favor of Medicare for All (52 percent), sparking an 8-point increase in net support among this demographic since February. As the domestic COVID-19 caseload spirals and economists predict a historic surge in unemployment, millions of Americans are bracing for potentially untenable health care costs and lapses in coverage, reviving questions about the viability of a health system that relies on binding insurance to employment." The Blue America ActBlue thermometer above, shows you candidates who are actively campaigning for Medicare-for-All. Please consider contributing to their efforts.