It Takes Guts To Run As An Unapologetic Progressive In A District As Red As NY-27

 

There are 8 counties (and parts of counties) that make up NY-27. The DCCC aggressively wrote it off as a target because the PVI is R+11 and because in 2018 and again this cycle, the Democratic candidate is way too independent-minded and way too progressive for them to stomach. That would be Nate McMurray. But last cycle he came closer to winning than any of the DCCC candidates who lost and who they spent millions of dollars on. Had they invested just a fraction of that in Nate's campaign, he would have won. How do I know? Look?

He out-performed Gov. Cuomo, who was also on the ballot. Example, Nate won Ontario County comfortably; Cuomo lost it by a lot. You'd think Cheri Bustos would have jumped right into this one, right? Wrong. She wants a Blue Dog like herself for the seat, not someone who has pictures of himself hanging around with AOC. When asked why he did so well in such a deep red district, he said, "Many are tired of being asked to vote blindly for their party. They are tired of nothing ever improving, nothing ever changing. And they are tired of the politics of hate and corruption... In 2020, we will go to Washington to fight for healthcare for every American (now!), infrastructure (now!), for common sense gun control (and now!), for immigration reform to help our farmers (now!), and for technologies and policies that will confront the reality of climate change."

A few weeks ago he told me that he's "way more progressive than Joe Biden. I support him as the Democratic nominee but there are issues we really differ on. It's about the average Americans who need access to good quality, affordable healthcare, safety and secured rights for minorities and LGBTQ Americans. It's about being able to say and mean that Black Lives Matter and not having a President who just tells white supremacy groups to 'stand by' and refuses to renounce white supremacy outright. The American people and our democracy cannot take another four years of Trump. Will I fight for more progressive policies in Washington than Biden stands for? You bet I will. But we need him in office right now to restore our faith in humanity, and repair all the damage done to the country. A Trump win will tear the country apart."

Obama lost NY-27 both times he ran and Trump won the district in 2016-- 59.7% to 35.2%. Nate did much better than Obama or Hillary. If you click on that thermometer above it will take you to an ActBlue page for progressive candidates running strongly in congressional districts that Trump won. Nate has a good shot of pulling it off this cycle-- and can definitely use some help with his GOTV efforts.

Other than the NY metro counties, Erie has the most COVID cases in New York State. There were 140 new cases reported yesterday, bringing the county total to 13,161-- as well as 717 deaths. There were 22 new cases in Niagara County yesterday-- and a new total of 2,108 along with 102 deaths. Are the rural parts of the district blaming Trump? We'll see on Tuesday.





A couple of days ago, the Buffalo News' top politics reporter, Jerry Zremski, noted that McMurray is a "proud progressive... He’s an advocate of Medicare for All running to represent the state’s most conservative district. He’s a gun control supporter who has challenged, rather than placated, the gun owners of rural Western New York. And just as conservatives there and elsewhere celebrate their new majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, McMurray says Democrats should think about packing the court with progressives."

That’s the Twitter McMurray. But there’s also another McMurray, one who says his top congressional priorities would be helping the troubled farms and communities of New York’s 27th District, one who has traveled its country roads and stumped in its small towns for nearly three years, happily meeting with-- and listening to-- friend and foe.

In such places, McMurray delivers a message aimed at easing the minds of anyone who thinks he’s too liberal to represent the flatlands, hills and valleys between Buffalo and Rochester.

“I am NY-27,” said McMurray, a Democrat and former Grand Island town supervisor who doesn't live in the district, but who says he's developed an abiding passion for it. “My family is farmers and factory workers and tradespeople. And so, in a lot of ways, I am very similar to the people of the region.”

But McMurray's Republican opponent-- Rep. Chris Jacobs of Orchard Park-- sees things very differently.

“I think he's a very liberal guy,” Jacobs said. “I think he's much more in line with the New York City Democrat, more so than even some of the Western New York conservative Democrats.”

Hearing that, McMurray said there's much more to serving in Congress than adopting cookie-cutter campaign stands that match what voters presumably want. There is working hard to really represent the district. There is listening.

McMurray vows to do both.

"I really believe if people get a chance to visit with me and talk to me, you can get beyond the labels," he said.

McMurray doesn't run from the progressive label or fudge his positions so that voters won't notice them.

Instead, he explains.

He said he's for Medicare for all-- a single-payer health care system-- by noting that he's heard plenty from people in the district who ask him for help getting cheaper insulin from Canada, as well as people afraid of losing their health care.

"I think the argument for single-payer is that it will be more efficient," thereby controlling spiraling health care costs, McMurray said. "We are the only advanced country in the world that does not have some form of universal care. And I'm also open to getting there in a gradual way."

Similarly, McMurray explained that while he's been engaged in an ongoing Twitter battle with gun rights supporters, he's been around guns his whole life and knows a lot about them.

Knowing what he knows, McMurray said the sale of new assault weapons should be banned; he says they are dangerous and unnecessary. He said background checks should be expanded to cover gun shows, and Congress should strip gun manufacturers of their liability immunity.

"I think if you ask my policy overall it is let good people have guns," McMurray said. "I don't want guns in the hands of criminals and people that are unfit or unstable."

Similarly, McMurray said he doesn't want the Supreme Court in the hands of Trump appointees who joined the court only because the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, gamed the system. McConnell in 2016 blocked a Democratic nominee (Merrick Garland) and this week rushed the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

McMurray sees the new conservative Supreme Court as a threat to the Affordable Care Act, legalized abortion and gay marriage.

"There's no constitutional limit (on the number of justices), and if adding one or two members of the court is going to preserve those rights, yes, I'd do it," he said.

To hear McMurray tell it, though, national issues would not be his top priority in Congress. Instead, he would focus on aiding his district's struggling farmers and shrinking small towns.

He'd like to join two House committees, Agriculture and Foreign Affairs, seeing an important synergy between the two.

"If you look at these trade deals, there are massive protections for former foreign farmers," said McMurray, a lawyer who worked in Asia for years and who more recently had an acrimonious split with Delaware North Cos. "So yes, that's the reason why I want to be on both committees"-- to press for trade agreements that would benefit local farmers.

McMurray said he would also work for immigration reform, hoping it would modernize the visa program for farm laborers so that it would allow them to stay in the U.S. year-round. He said that's just what many dairy farmers want, given that while crops only need to be tended to from spring to fall, cows need to be milked all year.

Expanding rural broadband access would be another of McMurray's top priorities. Noting that he had better internet service when he lived in South Korea than he does on Grand Island, McMurray said the government should wire the entire nation with fiber optic cable.

"With COVID, there's been a surge of people wanting to leave the cities, right?" he asked. "And who wouldn't want to live in a beautiful downtown like Albion or Warsaw if you had the availability to engage in modern commerce there, using the internet?"

McMurray has been stumping across NY-27 for nearly three years now, preaching his can-do gospel about how Washington can help revive the district while fending off naysayers.

One person who's seen McMurray in action who has come away respecting him is his ideological opposite: Duane Whitmer, the Libertarian candidate in the congressional race. He saw McMurray at a 2018 event sponsored by a gun rights group, explaining his support for gun control.

"I was surprised because he went to these people and at least talked to them," Whitmer said.

At the time, Whitmer noted, McMurray was running against then-Rep. Chris Collins, who was under indictment on insider trading charges and who never was known for meeting with groups that disagreed with him.

McMurray lost that race by 1,087 votes, and when Collins pleaded guilty and resigned from Congress 11 months later, McMurray entered the special election contest to replace him. In June, he lost that race to Jacobs by 5.3 points-- in a district that President Trump won by 24 points four years earlier.

To McMurray, both those losses signal that he's exceeding expectations-- and that maybe he'll do even better this November. He said the nation and the district are souring on President Trump amid the Covid-19 epidemic. Moreover, McMurray said he's withstood an onslaught of negative ads from Collins and Jacobs and virtual campaign appearances by Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. only to remain a contender in New York's most Republican district.

"I think that the fact that all those powers have been aligned against us and we still maintained not only a good campaign, but a campaign that is competitive and that might win, is kind of a miracle," he said.

Progressives Will Largely Hold Their Noses And Vote For Biden (Who Isn't As Bad As Trump)

At this point I don't know anyone-- aside from myself-- who's still refusing to vote for Biden. No one I know-- not one person-- likes Biden or thinks he'll make a good president. Few expect him to even be a mediocre president. Most everyone I know expects him to be one of the worst... but not as bad as Trump, who is the worst... and beyond. But everything in Biden's decades in elected office says he'll be the worst Democrat in the presidency since, perhaps, James Buchanan, who, tragically, took office in 1857. The only hope for just a plain ole mediocre Biden presidency would be if he sits down in a rocking chair on the day after he's inaugurated, sucks his thumb for four years and lets Obama run the show.

On Tuesday night, though with no success, Trump tried splitting the progressive base away from the virulently anti-progressive Biden. Progressives know what a sack of shit Biden is and know that Trump is infinitely worse. Most people I know, say they will voted for Biden anyway and fully expect to start fighting his and his Wall Street "Nothing Will Change" agenda with all they have as soon as he takes office. Yeah, yeah.

With Trump's prodding, Biden went out of his way Tuesday night not just to distance himself from Medicare-for-All, but to make sure Americans know his plans for a faux public option are mostly faux and will in no way discomfit his friends (and donors) in the health insurance industry. He also bad-mouthed the Green New Deal and gave progressives every reason in the world to sit on their hands next month-- and then he called Trump a "clown" and told him to "shut up" and... some-- in not all-- was forgiven.

Tuesday night, Biden boasted about beating Bernie. Wednesday morning I got an e-mail from Bernie asking me to send a $500 contribution before the end of the day so he can continue trying to help elect the man I won't even vote for. "This is the most important election in the modern history of our country," he wrote. "It is absolutely critical we do all we can to defeat Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in modern American history." Everyone agrees and, like I said, everyone I know plans to hold their noses and vote for Biden.

NBC News' Sahil Kapur reported on Wednesday that a spokesman for the Justice Democrats, Waleed Shahid, responded to Trump's naked attempts to split the Democrats by saying that "Trump wants to play this ridiculous 'Gotcha, you and Bernie disagree!' game as if the entire primary didn’t happen. I think Biden could have tried to articulate his actual policy positions and what he wants to get done. But it was hard to articulate anything in that debate."

Shahid said the progressive movement’s role is to “elect a president closer to your views” and “broaden the scope of what's considered politically possible” with a mix of protest and pressure.

Biden's eagerness to distance himself from the left is reflective of his strategy to win the election by attracting moderate-minded seniors and white college graduates, rather than bet the race on turning out younger or irregular voters in Barack Obama's winning coalitions. Millennials and Generation Z voters are less enthused about Biden, and their voting patterns are difficult to predict.

For now, Trump is a unifying force masking genuine tensions between an older, moderate faction that runs the party and a rising base of young progressives seeking to reshape Democratic priorities. The debate is more reflective of a coffee table conversation on policy than a bloody knife fight threatening to wound the party.

I am not upset with Biden,” said Brian Fallon, a veteran Democratic operative who now runs Demand Justice, a group fighting for a more progressive judiciary and Supreme Court. He said he interpreted Biden's nonanswer on whether he'd support adding Supreme Court seats as a sign that it was “on the table” if he's elected president.

Fallon said Biden wanted to isolate variables and make his opposition to Barrett be about the proximity to the election, but said Biden “oversold it” by calling her a “very fine person.”

Ben Wessel, the executive director of the youth-focused progressive advocacy group NextGen America, dismissed the “noise” around Biden's Green New Deal remarks, and instead praised Biden’s plan for 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035.

Progressive activists say they view the contest as one between a reluctant ally and a mortal enemy. While some distrust Biden’s moderate instincts, they see him as willing to listen and adopt some of their ideas. Some take the optimistic view that he’d embrace more liberal ideas if elected.

“I don’t think most of our people give a shit what it’s called as long as it gives us a fighting chance at a safe and livable climate,” Wessel said. “The young people we’re talking to know that we’re going to have to push Biden to be even stronger on the issues once he’s in office, but that they’ve got to get him in the White House first.”

On Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez dismissed former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s attempts to highlight Biden’s opposition to the Green New Deal, contrasting him favorably with Trump, who she said “doesn’t even believe climate change is real.”

A Biden adviser said that if Trump’s strategy was to drive a wedge between Biden and progressives, it only backfired, as Biden held firm to his more moderate lane of the party and used the high-profile moment to undercut Trump's strategy of portraying Biden as a Trojan horse of the radical left.

Campaigning Wednesday in Alliance, Ohio, Biden addressed questions about his differences with the left, reiterating his opposition to Medicare for All and saying his plan is "the Biden Green Deal."

Biden said Trump keeps trying to run against "somebody other than me."

"I've said to the left, to the right, to the center exactly where I am on each of these issues," Biden told reporters. "So I'm not worried about losing the left, right or center of the party. This is a big party."

If Biden is elected, the governing tension could become a theme of his presidency.

Shahid said the modern left will pressure Biden the same way contemporary movements pressured Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson to be bolder.

"Lincoln was not an abolitionist, FDR was not a socialist or trade unionist, and LBJ was not a civil rights activist," he said. "In fact, they took great steps to distance themselves from those movements."

Many of the candidates endorsed by Blue America were Bernie or Elizabeth Warren supporters during the primaries. None were Biden supporters. All of them oppose Trump and I believe all of them plan to vote for Biden while sticking to their own progressive agendas. The first one I reached was Rockland/Westchester congressional candidate Mondaire Jones, a very independent-minded progressive. "The left in recent years has never shied away from a fight with members of the Democratic Party," he told me, "and I see no reason why we won’t flex our newfound muscle in a Biden-Harris administration. Biden and Harris would be working with the most progressive Congress we’ve seen, and I’m ready to make sure they’re sticking to their promises, and I'll be part of the effort to push them to be more in line with progressive values."

Similarly, West Virginia progressive, Cathy Kunkel, told me that her campaign "has been consistent from the beginning in fighting for an economy that works for all West Virginians-- for Medicare for All, well-funded public education and revitalizing our economy as the coal industry continues to decline. Our campaign will continue to advocate for those issues, and highlight the fact that Congressman Alex Mooney has done nothing in the last six years to address these urgent needs, regardless of the dynamics in the presidential race."

Nate McMurray, the populist candidate running in New York's "reddest" district (which he came within a handful of votes of winning in 2018) has a very clear vision when it comes to the elections next month. "Listen," he told he this morning, "I'm way more progressive than Joe Biden. I support him as the Democatic nominee but there are issues we really differ on. It's about the average Americans who need access to good quality, affordable healthcare, safety and secured rights for minorities and LGBTQ Americans. It's about being able to say and mean that Black Lives Matter and not having a President who just tells white supremacy groups to 'stand by' and refuses to renounce white supremacy outright. The American people and our democracy cannot take another four years of Trump. Will I fight for more progressive policies in Washington than Biden stands for? You bet I will. But we need him in office right now to restore our faith in humanity, and repair all the damage done to the country. A Trump win will tear the country apart."

Breaking Democracy Is A Republican Party Thing Now

 

Slimeball by Nancy Ohanian

I have no idea if George Packer knew he was comparing democracy to religion in his Atlantic essay Trump Is Trying to Trick Americans Into Giving Up on Democracy... but that's how I read it. "Democracy," he wrote "depends on belief in democracy-- on an extraordinary leap of faith by ordinary people that their rulers will abide by the rules, that their votes will count, that their compatriots won’t tear the country apart, that lies won’t become truth. When the checks and balances have all given way, the last barrier to an authoritarian regime is public opinion. It will stand or fall on November 3. According to a new poll by the international organization More in Common, the only issue that matters to Americans across the political spectrum is the integrity of the November presidential election. In the same poll, more than three-quarters of Americans-- again, from left to right-- still express a belief that citizens can change society through their actions. And yet similarly large majorities expect high levels of voter fraud or voter suppression in November; trust in government, the media, and one another is abysmally low. Another recent poll, by YouGov, finds that just 22 percent of Americans expect the election to be free and fair; when told that experts say the election cannot be rigged, only 19 percent believe it. Americans are in the desperate position of clinging to something precious that they expect to betray them."

Yesterday I was talking with western New York congressional candidate, Nate McMurray about a stunt his opponent, hereditary billionaire Chris Jacobs, pulled on Saturday. The Trumpist incumbent, speaking at a rally of extremists where an effigy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo was beaten and hung, was part of a mob. "This district has a history of political climbers like Bill Paxon, Tom Reynolds, Chris Lee and Chris Collins who used the communities and families of NY-27 for personal gain," McMurray told me. "But the hatefulness on display Saturday was a disgraceful new low. Chris Jacobs and his comrades in western New York have fully embraced the worst of Trumpism. Extreme Republicans like Chris know that if every American votes they will lose. So they traffic in conspiracies, lies and the politics of fear to destabilize the electoral process and end democracy as we know it. And their march toward authoritarianism will not end with a whimper but with the bang and butt of a gun. Chris should be ashamed of how far he has debased himself, all to try and win an election."

Packer wrote that "Democratic faith turns out to be as fragile as it is necessary, and Trump specializes in undermining it. When he repeatedly asserts massive fraud months before Election Day, announces that he won’t respect results that go against him, and refuses to promise a peaceful transfer of power-- the litmus test of democracy-- he is forcing Americans into a mental trap that can resemble madness. The president says that the election is rigged, and he also insinuates that he will rig the election. To believe him is frightening; to discount him is foolish. Either way, Trump becomes ever more powerful, while the people-- on whose consent his power entirely depends-- slip into passivity and paralysis, or are pushed into rage, even political violence.This is exactly the atmosphere of chaos in which Trump thrives. He makes it almost impossible to hold on to the idea that the election can be free and fair. But the survival of democracy, which lives and dies in our minds before anywhere else, depends on that idea. For the election to succeed, we have to think and act as if it will succeed.

Trump uses words the way Russian intelligence employs “active measures” operations: not to inform or persuade, but to poison the mental atmosphere, to confuse and agitate the public until it begins to lose faith in rational discourse and, ultimately, in democracy. Whether or not this continuous ink spray could actually lower voter turnout, Morris said, it will degrade “our belief in each other as common citizens of a republic.” Sizable numbers of Americans in both parties are now willing to tolerate political violence in the aftermath of an election, according to a Democracy Fund Voter Study survey last spring: 20 percent of Republicans in the event of alleged vote fraud, 20 percent of Democrats if Trump loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College. Americans are edging toward civil conflict.

In the coming weeks, anyone who cares about our democracy has to hold two conflicting ideas in mind while remaining sane. The first is that Trump should be taken at his word when he warns that he will do whatever is necessary to stay in power. This dark prospect requires a constant state of alertness, a refusal to seek comfort in hoping for the best or looking to Trump’s party or his judges for some glimmer of salvation. At this stage of his presidency, naivete is unforgivable.

But the second idea, even more demanding, is that our votes still matter. Not just that they’ll be counted, but that they are sacred, if anything in a secular democracy can be called by that word. This idea means refusing to give way to panic or despair or, most crippling of all, the sullen resentment into which subject populations are worn down by authoritarian rulers. The more we dwell on what Trump might do, the likelier he’ll be to get away with something. He’ll have become the omnipotent central character in the drama, occupying the place that rightfully belongs to a democratic people, who are reduced once more to watching in outrage. We have to believe that power still lies in the people, or else we’ve already surrendered it.

For weeks, Belarusians have filled the streets of their cities to insist that their votes are sacred. Beatings, grenades, flashbangs, arrests, torture, and disappearances by the state have neither deterred them nor driven them to violence. Some commentators have said that the United States is not yet Belarus. This is true enough, though we are closer than seemed imaginable just a few years ago. The real question is whether Americans have what it takes to be Belarusians.

Tuesday, Nick Ackerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, was on CNN, where he said that after reading the NY Times piece on Trump's taxes, he realized that Trump makes Nixon look like a rookie amateur. He sees Trump going to trial if he loses the election because what he's guilty of is not tax avoidance but full-blown tax fraud. "Tax evasion is a 5 year felony. It's a pretty serious crime and the more money that's stolen, the longer you go to jail for... The only thing saving him at this point is the Department of Justice’s guideline that says you can’t indict a sitting president."

Ah... yes, the Department of Justice. It's like when The Mob takes over the FBI. CREW-- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington-- made an abuse of power case for impeaching Barr. Pelosi is bound to ignore it for narrow partisan reasons but CREW made the case that Barr abused the powers of his office by engaging in a course of conduct that impaired the Special Counsel investigation of Trump, "the conduct of lawful inquiries by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the purpose of that agency, and the oversight and impeachment powers of the United States House of Representatives. These actions violate DOJ’s founding principal to maintain the independence and impartiality of federal prosecutions from political intervention." There can be little doubt that Barr is also guilty of directing federal law enforcement officers to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens who gathered to engage in peaceful protest outside of the White House and across the country. They want to see an impeachment inquiry by the House that focuses on whether Barr abused the powers of his office by engaging in a course of conduct that was 'seriously incompatible with our system of constitutional government.' At a minimum, that inquiry should consider whether Barr:

• Corruptly subverted the Special Counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and of President Trump for obstruction of justice;
• Interfered with the lawful functions of the Department of Justice by overturning the actions of career prosecutors in the cases of Roger Stone Jr. and Michael Flynn and by firing United States Attorney Geoffrey Berman;
• Obstructed lawful investigations of the United States House of Representatives; and
• Abused and exceeded the powers of the Attorney General to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens.

Congressional Races Heating-- As GOP Goes Berserk Looking At Probable November Losses

 

The other day someone wrote a comment here about how the country is ready to explode in Civil War and all that's needed is a Ft Sumter incident. I don't agree but some kind of a half-assed insurrection would be a fitting and predictable denouement for the illegitimate, completely divisive Trump regime.

I'm no Andrew Cuomo fan and I wasn't that shocked to see some Trumpist yahoos in western New York hang him in effigy after a mock trial over the weekend, but what did surprise me was that a Republican congressman-- albeit a knee-jerk Trumpist-- took part in the proceedings. The spoiled son of a billionaire, Rep. Chris Jacobs, spoke at the pro-COVID/pro-gun/pro-QAnon/anti-Black Lives Matter largely maskless event in front of the Hamburg city hall. What Jacobs did might or might not have been sedition, but it was certainly a violation of the House Code of Ethics.

His opponent is Nate McMurray, who came within a thousand votes of winning (a fraction of a percent) in 2018, despite antipathy from the DCCC which reflexively opposes progressives running in red districts. Pelosi's DCCC head, Cheri Bustos, is again working behind the scenes to sabotage McMurray's campaign and make sure Jacobs, a fellow conservative, is reelected. The Democratic Party has had nothing to say about the Jacobs rally but McMurray pointed out in a press release yesterday that the district "has a history of political climbers like Bill Paxon, Tom Reynolds, Chris Lee, and Chris Collins who used the communities and families of NY-27 for personal gain. But the hatefulness on display Saturday was a disgraceful new low. Chris Jacobs and his comrades in Western New York have fully embraced the worst of Trumpism. Extreme Republicans like Chris know that if every American votes, they will lose. So they traffic in conspiracies, lies and the politics of fear to destabilize the electoral process and end democracy as we know it. And their march toward authoritarianism will not end with a whimper but with the bang and butt of a gun. Chris should be ashamed of how far he has debased himself, all to try and win an election. Chris Jacobs is showing us who he is and we should believe what we see. And while his behavior is deeply troubling, we need not accept it. We've got to send a message, and vote these dangerous charlatans out of office this November."

Meanwhile, Democrats who normally vote with the Republicans in the House are, somewhat ironically, the ones who are most savagely attacked by the NRCC. It's hilarious that they single out the most extreme right-wing Democrats, some of whom have voting records that are to the right of some Republicans, and call them socialists and Pelosi and AOC puppets. No one would dispute, for example, that Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House. His Progressive Punch lifetime crucial vote score is 39.09%. In other words, he earned his "F" rating by voting with Republicans against progressive legislation far more often than for anything remotely progressive. But look at the misleading ad the GOP is running against him this week. You'd get the idea he's a liberal.





Same treatment for one of the worst right-wing Democratic freshmen, Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico. Her "F" rating is backed up with a 43.75 crucial vote score. Conservatives don't need Republicans if they have Democrats like Torres Small. In fact, she has been so relentlessly against the interests of the working class, that she was endorsed this month by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against the GOP candidate, far right sociopath, Yvette Herrell, who Torres Small narrowly beat in 2018 by less than 1 point, 101,489 (50.9%) to 97,767 (49.1%). She's the kind of "Democrat" the DCCC supports, rather than an independent-minded FDR-oriented progressive like McMurray. Suggestion. Click on that thermometer above and contribute what you can to McMurray's campaign. So far Jacobs has put over half a million dollars of his inheritance into his own campaign and accepted around $200,000 in bribes from corporate and ideological PACs.

ACB-- Another Terrible Idea Of Trump's And His Circle

 

I dissent by Nancy Ohanian

Dan Balz wrote scorching column for the Washington Post yesterday even before Trump announced Amy Coney Barrett, Facing possible defeat, Trump threatens the integrity of the election. "Each week has brough evidence," he began, "of the damage [The Donald] has done during his nearly four years in office. According to his own words, he is not finished. This past week brought a renewed warning of a harm he could yet inflict on the integrity of elections. [Donald] did more than simply refuse to pledge that he would facilitate a peaceful transfer of power if he loses to former vice president Joe Biden, though that in itself was a step no previous president has taken. In doing so, he escalated his ongoing attack on mail-in ballots, seeding the ground to contest the election as rigged or fraudulent if he is not the winner and to propel the country into chaos."

Balz speculated that all this carp from The Donald may "merely reflected the mind-set of a president who knows he is running behind in his bid for a second term, one more rhetorical flailing to somehow throw the opposition off balance and to distract from the real reasons for Biden’s lead in the polls. But this close to the election, anything Trump does to question the validity of the count should be regarded as serious and treated as such. Republicans who normally stand by idle when the president says or does something outrageous pushed back against his words-- though, notably, nearly all were careful neither to rebuke nor condemn the president personally. They simply pointed to a long history of peaceful transfers from one presidency to the next and stood up for the Constitution, which is the minimum expected of elected officials who have sworn an oath to defend that document."

As you know, almost all of these Republicans-- who were fanatics that "the voters must weigh in" when Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court-- almost a year before before the election-- are now saying that Donald's nominee must get a vote. Democrats see it differently. Reaction against his nomination yesterday was swift and overwhelming. Mondaire Jones is Blue America's candidate of the week and a court expert, so I was talking with him about about the nomination. His take, like many progressives, is that Barrett "thinks the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. She thinks abortion is 'always immoral.' She is hostile to LGBTQ+ civil rights, & would vote to undo marriage equality. Her nomination would be a direct attack on millions of Americans. We won't stand for it. A generation ago, the GOP replaced Thurgood Marshall, the founder of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, with someone who has cast decisive votes to undermine racial justice. Now they want to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with someone who promises to undo her legacy of reproductive justice. Not on our watch." Jones will try to find support among his new colleagues to expand the Supreme Court by 4 members next year. [You can contribute to his campaign here.]

Current members were concerned about the same things Jones is concerned about. Pramila Jayapal, right after the announcement:

Any individual nominated to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court must believe in equal justice under law and opportunity for all. That means being fully committed to protecting civil rights and voting rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights, reproductive rights and disability rights, LGBTQ+ rights and Indigenous rights. It also means standing on the side of people over profits and communities over corporations when it comes to health care, protections for those with pre-existing conditions, immigration, the environment, consumer protections, ending gun violence and getting money out of politics.

Not only does Amy Coney Barrett fail to meet that standard, but she has spent years consistently and dangerously arguing against it from the federal bench. It is no wonder that conservative, right-wing groups had her on their recommendation list as they continue their coordinated attacks on health care, abortion rights, voting rights and the right of workers to organize. I strongly oppose this lifetime appointment to the highest court in our land, and I urge President Trump to withdraw his nomination as quickly as he made it.

With less than 40 days until the election, and as voters across America are already casting their ballots, we need to let their voices be heard. They know that everything is on the line. We must allow them to choose the next president and then allow that president to choose the next nominee for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. This is the same standard that Republicans implemented at the end of President Obama’s term when Merrick Garland was nominated with more than seven months remaining before the election. This is how we must proceed with the future of the court, this country and our democracy hanging in the balance.

AOC weighed in quickly as well: "If confirmed before the election, Barrett will have the opportunity to cast the deciding vote to strike down the ACA on November 10th when the Court hears California v. Texas. Millions of Americans would be thrown off their health insurance in the middle of the pandemic, and health insurers could refuse to cover individuals who have or have had COVID-19... And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Barrett holds radical positions when it comes to the right to choose. She is on record saying that abortion is 'always immoral.' On the 7th Circuit, she has repeatedly handed down decisions that would have limited abortion. With her on the Court, the conservative goal of repealing Roe v. Wade is within reach."

Bernie urged his supporters across the country to tell their senators "to do everything possible to slow down the nomination process... He called her nomination "a disaster for our country and our movement. If confirmed, she poses a threat to health care, LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, voting rights, workers' rights, environmental protections, and so much more. Now Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans are going to try to rush through Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings and have the Senate vote on her nomination before the end of this year." He continued:

It is not a radical idea to suggest that the winner of this year's presidential election should be the one to select Justice Ginsburg's replacement. In fact, that is what the clear majority of the American people want.

But now that Trump has announced his nominee, Mitch McConnell is planning to rush a vote during this election year-- a complete contradiction from his position just a few years ago.

You may recall that in 2016 Mitch McConnell refused to have the Senate vote on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Scalia. McConnell's view at that time was that the nomination should be the job of the next president.

Here is what McConnell told Fox News in 2016:

"The Senate has a role to play here. The president nominates, we decide to confirm. We think the important principle in the middle of this presidential year is that the American people need to weigh in and decide who's going to make this decision."

And it's not just Mitch McConnell-- many other Republican senators are on the record saying the same thing.

Well, today I say to my colleagues in the Senate: We must let the next president name Justice Ginsburg's replacement. Respect the will of the American people and delay Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Barbara Lee (D-CA) noted that "Senate Republicans have no shame in pushing a right-wing judge just weeks before the election despite the fact that a majority of Americans believe Mitch McConnell should wait to replace the judge until after the election. This lifetime appointment will reshape the court to a 6-3 conservative majority and have far-reaching impacts on our nation for generations to come. Amy Coney Barrett has a record of being hostile to reproductive rights, immigrants’ rights, gun control policies, and the Affordable Care Act. With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear a case on the Affordable Care Act coming up a week after the election, the stakes have never been higher. Right now our fundamental rights are on the line, and we need to do everything we can to honor Justice Ginsburg’s last wish and prevent Mitch McConnell from stealing this seat."

Back to Balz's pre-announcement column. He wrote that Señor Trumpanzee's "Republican allies in Congress... are they the people whose views he cares about most. Instead, his attempt to discredit mail-in ballots as a way to challenge a possible Biden victory is aimed at rallying his own army of supporters, prepping them to respond, if necessary, with protests or perhaps worse if he challenges vote tabulations-- and therefore the results-- in the days after the election. If any people believed that the president was just letting off steam when he declined to pledge a peaceful transfer of power, they can look to something White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said after FBI Director Christopher A. Wray had testified before a Senate committee that he knows of no evidence of 'any kind of national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise.' Wray’s comments were the latest in a string of statements from all kinds of election and security experts debunking Trump’s claims about mail-in ballots being rife with fraud. Meadows, however, chose to challenge the FBI director during an interview Friday on CBS’s This Morning. 'With all due respect to Director Wray,' he said, 'he has a hard time finding emails in his own FBI, let alone figuring out whether there’s any kind of voter fraud.' That was not a chief of staff trying to retract a president’s words or clean up after a mistake. What he said in attacking Wray was meant to reinforce the message the president continues to deliver."

Attorney General William P. Barr has added his voice to the campaign against mail-in ballots, saying they mean an end to the sanctity of the secret ballot-- and ignoring the steps states take to protect the secrecy of votes cast that way. This past week, Barr told the president about discarded mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, which the president claimed was evidence of fraud.

Voting-law experts have sharply criticized a Justice Department investigation into the matter.

People do want to know who wins the presidency as soon as possible, and generally that’s been on the night of the election or by early next day. But that was in years when nearly everyone voted in person on Election Day. In recent years, more Americans have chosen to vote ahead of the election at designated early-voting sites.

This year, because of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of Americans are reluctant to vote in person, whether on the day of the election or during specified early-voting windows. They prefer to mark their ballots without having to be in places with other people. As a result, there has been a surge in requests for mail-in ballots. Trump appears to fear that the more people who vote, and the easier it is for people who fear the virus to do so safely, the less chance he has to win the election.

The processing of those mail-in ballots will take longer than ballots cast on Election Day. Some states require that mail-in ballots arrive by Election Day, others that they simply be postmarked by Election Day. Ballots may legally arrive for days after Election Day, and processing and counting can and will be slow in some places, as the primary elections showed. There will also be challenges to some of these ballots, and some will be discarded because they were filled out improperly.

No matter the exact system, the processing and counting of these ballots is more laborious and therefore slower. California is a case in point, a state where the counting can go on for days and possibly weeks. In 2016, Hillary Clinton saw her vote totals rise steadily after the week of the election, eventually amassing a popular vote margin of nearly 5 million votes in the state. In 2018, California Democrats captured House seats with the votes that were tabulated days after the election, including two in which Republicans were leading the day after the election.

The scenario that could play out on the night of the election is simple. In the hours after the polls close, Trump could appear to be winning in some of the states that will decide the election, even though tens upon tens of thousands of ballots will not have been counted.

At that point, as he did with a tweet during the 2018 U.S. Senate race in Arizona, Trump could attempt to call a rhetorical halt and claim that whatever happens next is a sign of fraud or evidence of a rigged count. The tabulating will continue, but how will his loyalists react if he cries foul?

To suggest this is all just mischief-making by the president is to understate the potential maliciousness of what he is attempting to do. He seeks to disqualify voting in states where all voters are being sent mail-in ballots, which he claimed, without evidence, in a recent tweet means they are open to “ELECTION INTERFERENCE by foreign countries” that will lead to “massive chaos and confusion.”

Facing possible defeat in November, the president also recently tweeted that this year’s election “may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED” because of mail-in ballots. In another tweet he claimed, “RIGGED ELECTION in waiting.” At a rally in Wisconsin last month, he said, “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.” On Friday night in Virginia, he said, “We’re not going to lose this except if they cheat.”

If Trump loses the election and then moves to discredit the results in the face of no evidence of widespread fraud, the country will be confronted with one more crisis of his presidency-- one that will have been unfolding in plain view.

Donald’s announcement of his Supreme Court nominee drew about 150 guests to the White House and, appropriately enough, according to Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim "most of [them] declined to wear masks or social distance because of the coronavirus pandemic. Notable in the Rose Garden crowd were former campaign aide Corey Lewandowski, Faith & Freedom Coalition Founder Ralph Reed and Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Folding chairs were set close together for the event. Among the lawmakers in attendance were Republican senators who will be voting on the nominee-- Josh Hawley (MO), Thom Tillis (NC), Deb Fischer (NE), Ben Sasse (NE), Kelly Loeffler (GA), Mike Lee (UT) and Marsha Blackburn (TN)." If you could pick one of them to not die, who would it be?

I caught up with New Jersey congresswoman and progressive icon Bonnie Watson Coleman at church this morning. After the services, she told me that she had two problems with what was happening here, first "The hypocrisy of nominating a replacement of this ilk, or any person to the Supreme Court at this time, and second This particular nominee, Amy Barrett Coney. First, we are at the end of the election season when an important decision about the direction of this country is being considered. Trump has made a mockery of our values, made our citizens less safe and divided this country with his inciting and racist words and deeds. McConnell refused to consider Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court with 400 days left in his administration, yet he promises to force this upon us in less than 40 days left before an election and at a time when some states are already voting. Sheer hypocrisy and evil and it pisses me off. Regarding the second point, this candidate does not deserve to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She represents a direct threat to access to health care, a woman’s autonomy over her body, protection of civil rights, LGTBQ+ rights and voting rights. She’s wrong for the job."

Adam Christensen, the progressive Democrat aiming to replace Ted Yoho in north-central Florida by beating some shady character from Yoho's orbit, noted that "Amy Coney Barrett stands against everything we fight for: Medicare, civil rights, climate legislation, LGBTQ+ rights and women’s rights to choose. Mrs. Barrett would be on the bench for decades and would prevent any meaningful change from occurring. If she is nominated before this election we must expand the Supreme Court to allow for fair justices who will stand for the issues that matter to all Americans, not just the few." It'll be great seeing him and Mondaire Jones working on this together.


Nate McMurray is running for Congress in western New York, a rural/suburban district between Buffalo and Rochester that is the reddest district in New York and a district McMurray, running as a progressive with no help-- to put it mildly-- from the DCCC came within a third of a percentage point (1,087 votes) of winning in 2018. Presumably because he did so well, the vile, progressive-hating Blue Dog Cheri Bustos, who heads the DCCC, is again actively sabotaging McMurray's campaign. Meanwhile, the DCCC and it's corporate candidates can take a lesson from McMurray in how to talk with their voters about Trump's Supreme Court power-grab. McMurray to NY-27 voters today:

A mere week after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, the Trump administration speeds forward with its plan to install another extremist ideologue on the Supreme Court by Election Day in November, flouting the Constitution yet again in the process.

All this so the Republican party can cruelly do away with protections for preexisting conditions and go after women's health and protections for minority communities. Over 204,000 Americans are dead, seven million more infected and at risk of long-term effects of COVID-19. Over 40 million Americans are out of work and 12 million lost their health insurance since March. It is unconscionable that President Trump would choose a nominee who will deliver the death blow to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and rip health care away from millions of people during a deadly pandemic.

After Justice Ginsburg’s passing, I said that Trump’s choice for nomination would unravel Justice Ginsburg’s legacy of protecting choice and equality. Sadly, I was correct. And the hyper-political nature of this moment puts on full display his utter contempt for the American judicial system and the confirmation process.

There is no doubt that Trump will, if allowed to stack the highest court in the United States, ask them to overturn the ACA, including its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. If Trump has his way, complications from COVID-19, on top of conditions like cancer, diabetes, and pregnancy, will become pre-existing conditions that allow families to be denied healthcare coverage.

My opponent, who has only known a life of wealth and privilege, including lifelong access to excellent healthcare, has already signaled his support of Trump’s nominee. Chris Jacobs has no idea what it is like to be unemployed or struggling, without health insurance, in a health crisis. I do. The voters do. God help us.

Reforming Government-- Raúl Grijalva Wants To-- Pelosi And Her Team Want To Pretend They Do Too... But They Don't

 

McConnell's never going to allow the Senate to debate it and even if he did and it passed, Trump would never sign it. But that didn't stop Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) from introducing new legislation to end the common practice of hiring lobbyists in a revolving door scheme that swampifies the executive branch-- and it's not just something corrupt Republican do. Corrupt Democrats do it too. Last week, writing for the American Prospect, David Dayen showed how Grijalva is forcing corporate conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party "to take a stand on whether they will hold a potential Joe Biden administration to at least the same anti-corruption standard that Barack Obama held for himself as president."

Grijalva's new bill would "deny confirmation of any nominee to an executive branch position who is currently or has been a lobbyist for any corporate client or officer for a private corporation, in this or any future administration. That would include all Cabinet officials, and any of the roughly 1,200 Senate-confirmed positions throughout the federal government. The letter, endorsed by Demand Progress, the American Economic Liberties Project, the Revolving Door Project, and the Sunrise Movement, represents a baseline request for personnel in the next administration. Groups had proposed something similar to this for months, but not this sweeping a ban, and not with the full-throated support of a House committee chair."

The Grijalva rule is a stronger version of President Obama’s lobbyist ban. Under Obama, any registered lobbyist was barred from government service in the issue area where they lobbied until they had been unregistered for two years. On the way out, these officials couldn’t lobby the government for the remainder of the administration. Obama’s rule was a little leaky, as it didn’t apply to unregistered, de facto lobbyists who were obviously engaged in influence-peddling, lobbyists registered outside the two-year ban, or lobbyists hired for a government job outside their lobbying area.

It’s been long forgotten and is now somewhat risible, but Donald Trump also has a lobbying order in place, which replaced his predecessor’s. The Trump rule allows lobbyists into the government as long as they recuse themselves from anything they lobbied on for two years. It also allegedly bans former executive branch members from lobbying the government for five years, though it only applies to the agency where they worked.

According to one count, 281 lobbyists had worked in the Trump administration as of last October, including the secretaries of defense, interior, energy, labor, and homeland security, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler. In addition, several former Trump officials found a way around the modest post-government lobbying ban.

The Grijalva rule tightens the Trump and even the Obama standard significantly. Not only is there no safe-harbor period for former lobbyists-- they’re out of government no matter how long ago they lobbied-- but the rule includes all officers of private corporations, of which there have been many in the past two administrations.

...Biden hasn’t committed even to restoring the weaker Obama-era order on lobbying, despite promising a kind of Obama restoration throughout his campaign. Numerous business types have been pitched for top slots in a Biden administration, and his transition team includes former Apple lobbyist Cynthia Hogan, Facebook director Jessica Hertz, and Jeffrey Zients, former Facebook board member and president of Cranemere, a conglomerate that buys and sells businesses. TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson and co-CEOs of Ariel Investments John Rogers and Mellody Hobson have also been mentioned as potential Cabinet-level officials.

Yesterday Grijalva told me that "No democracy can survive if it has one set of rules for the public and another for insiders. Americans have seen decades of special corporate favors and billion-dollar giveaways, and they won’t accept that as the natural state of things any longer. If we’re going to restore faith in our government, we have to end the revolving door, not just reverse it, and we have to end corporate government once and for all." We need to ask ourselves what the leaders of both parties find unacceptable about that premise-- and why they are so doggedly in favor of the status quo. 

Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a Pelosi-generated piece on House Democrats' unveiling "a sweeping package of reforms... designed to strengthen Congress’s ability to check the executive branch and prevent abuses of power, especially by the president." No mention of Grijalva or his proposal-- just more bullshit from Pelosi and her disgustingly GOP-like, corrupt leadership team. "The package," wrote Karoun Demirjian, "which its architects have informally referred to as “post-Trump reforms,” includes measures to restrain the president’s power to grant pardons and declare national emergencies, to prevent federal officials from enriching themselves, and to accelerate the process of enforcing congressional subpoenas in court. It also includes provisions to protect inspectors general and whistleblowers, increase penalties for officials who subvert congressional appropriations or engage in overt political activity, and safeguard against foreign election interference. Taken together, the proposals represent the Democrats’ long-awaited attempt to correct what they have identified as systematic deficiencies during the course of President Trump’s tenure and impeachment, in the style of changes Congress adopted after Richard Nixon left office. Unlike the post-Watergate reforms, however, which took years to enact, today’s House Democrats have collected their proposed changes under one bill reflecting several measures that have been percolating piecemeal through the House."

It's all about Trump and doesn't touch any of the systemic corruption that has made DC one of the swampiest cities on the planet. Pelosi and Hoyer should have learned a lesson from all the millions of Americans who voted for Trump in 2016. They're incapable of learning any such lesson.

Shahid Buttar is the San Francisco reformer running for Pelosi's seat in November; there's no progressive, just a contest between a corrupt garden variety Democrat and a real fighting progressive. Today, Buttar told me that "Unfortunately, Democrats have followed the Republican playbook in Washington for years. The bipartisan revolving door between K St. and Capitol Hill is the dirty secret of Washington-- and a big part of the reason why our government has grown so unresponsive to the needs of voters struggling to endure the compounding crises of our times."

He said he's "running to replace the leading corporate Democrat in part to help the party grow more responsive to grassroots concerns, and to help make our government more responsive to We the People. I’d be eager to support Rep. Grijalva’s bill in Congress, and to promote other checks and balances to limit and counteract corporate influence peddling in Washington."

Demirjian continued that "In a joint statement, seven committee chairs [though not Grijalva] signaled their legislation is intended to 'prevent future presidential abuses, restore our checks and balances, strengthen accountability and transparency, and protect our elections. It is time for Congress to strengthen the bedrock of our democracy and ensure our laws are strong enough to withstand a lawless president,' the statement says. 'These reforms are necessary not only because of the abuses of this president, but because the foundation of our democracy is the rule of law and that foundation is deeply at risk.' All good stuff... except for the steaming pile of hypocrisy sitting in the middle of the room in plain view.

Nate McMurray is the progressive Democrat in western New York taking on the newest slimy little Trumpist in Congress, hereditary multimillionaire Chris Jacobs, a complete knee-jerk kind of politician. Nate, in contrast, is an independent-minded leader who told me yesterday that "The Democratic leadership is not really well connected to working people and communities. And it really shows-- Democrats lost a lot of ground over the years at the state and local level. But the situation is fixable. The grassroots of the Democratic party has bold initiatives that excite and inspire voters to get involved, and the Democratic Leadership would do well to really listen."

Liam O'Mara is running for a southern California seat occupied by one of the most overtly corrupt members of Congress, Crooked Ken Calvert. When Fox News was looking for a corrupt slimebag to use as an example of DC corruption, they did a Mike Wallace special on Calvert's corruption. This morning Liam told me to call him old-fashioned or "an idealist; call me whatever you like-- but I believe that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people ought to serve only the people-- not corporations and wealthy special interests. Our elections need to be publicaly funded, and all lobbying, in the sense of contributions, needs to end." The topic boils his blood. He continued:

Lobbying used to mean catching someone in the lobby and pressing your case-- that's it! And advocates for bills make perfect sense to me. But when someone can come at you flush with cash from a corporation and say, please vote for things we like, and here's a million bucks to keep your job... that shit needs to be illegal. Now. Right fucking now.

We have hundreds of congresscritters taking vast amounts of cash for their campaigns, and that should be understood as bribery, plain and simple. A bribe is something offered in exchange for a decision in your favour. What else can we call it when someone takes a corporation's money, then votes to advance that same corporation's interests? It's a damned bribe!

I don't care which party you call home-- if you take a big wad of cash from someone and then push their legislative agenda, you are violating your oath to serve the people and the Constitution of this country. It's way past time for some changes. We need to apply the laws properly against bribery, pass a total ban on cash lobbying, introduce publicaly-funded elections, and, as the president disingenuously put it, drain the swamp!

 

With The Passing Of RBG, Will The Issue Of Choice Help Or Hurt Democrats Running For Congress?

 

Right after it was announced that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away, Trumpist crackpot Angela Stanton-King sent out the above Tweet. Her opponent, Democratic state Senator Nikema Williams has been a fearless advocate for women for her entire adult life and worked as a vice president for public Policy at Planned Parenthood for a decade. Protecting women's choice isn't an issue she's going to run away from.

Early Monday morning, Omaha Democrat Kara Eastman-- the progressive candidate running for the congressional seat held by Trump sycophant Donald Bacon-- told me that "With the tragic passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I've heard from many voters in Nebraska about their fears that a more conservative Supreme Court will vote to reverse Roe v. Wade. While I support Roe and I believe that women constitutionally deserve to be able to make healthcare decisions affecting their bodies in consultation with their doctors without government interference, I know as well that Rep. Don Bacon would rather have us back in the pre-Roe dark ages of back-alley abortions and second-class status for women. The fact is that if you are really 'pro-life' you would support universal pre-natal health care, you would favor Medicare for All (which isn't much different than the socialised medicine that Don Bacon has enjoyed his entire career), and you would push for massive economic investments in jobs and infrastructure that will lead to a safe recovery from Covid."

On Sunday, the NY Times noted that Abortion Was Back-Burnered In The Presidential Race. Not Anymore. "For months, abortion has been relegated to a back burner in the presidential campaign, eclipsed by a worldwide pandemic, an economic crisis and protests over racial justice. But the death of Justice Ginsburg and the looming confirmation battle to replace her could force the candidates to discuss a volatile issue six weeks before Election Day that carries significant political risks for both sides, even as it energizes portions of their bases. Mainstream views on abortion are more moderate than those of the activists on either wing, with most Americans saying that abortions should be legal with some restrictions. An all-out fight over abortion could further alienate the more moderate suburban voters both sides are competing for. Democrats especially must navigate their own divisions over how far to push an issue that Mr. Biden has long found personally uncomfortable."

I'll leave Biden's response to the centrist spin doctors he has running his campaign. Instead, I am interested in knowing how the GOP rush to ramrod through a far-right anti-Choice Supreme Court justice who wants to end women's Choice is going to play out in congressional races around the country. Kara Eastman is running in a 50-50 purple district and her forthright position on Choice shows conviction... and courage. Same for California progressive Audrey Denney, who's running for a red California seat held by anti-Choice fanatic Dog LaMalfa. Many in the district are anti-Choice but that isn't keeping Denney from speaking out loudly and clearly. "Choice has always been a top issue for me," she told me yesterday. "I’ve been endorsed by EMILY’s List, Planned Parenthood, and Vote Pro Choice. Our polling shows it, along with access to medical care, a top issues with some of our important voter groups." She issued this statement to voters in CA-01:  

This is a terrifying moment in U.S. history, when 46 years of precedent for recognizing women’s right to privacy and sovereignty over their own bodies is being systematically dismantled. The policymakers who have put forward these archaic bans on safe and legal abortion claim to be doing so because they value human life.

I deeply respect the sanctity of life. I believe that life is created by God, and I believe that every woman has the right to choose whether or not she will participate in bringing life into being. No one has the right to tell her that she must. Making the decision to end a pregnancy is a difficult and tragic one-- but having the right to make that decision is foundational to protecting women’s health, privacy, and well-being.

If the people who wrote these laws truly cared for the sanctity of life, they would be working tirelessly to reduce our country’s maternal mortality rate (currently the worst among industrialized nations), but instead they are limiting or eliminating care, and more mothers are dying during childbirth. They would be investing in initiatives to improve infant and child health and access to early education and child care. They would be fighting for paid family leave, so that parents have adequate time to regain their own health and support their new child. They would be losing sleep over the 12 million children in this country who will go to bed hungry because their parents are trapped in poverty, unable to earn a living wage.

I imagine a world where fewer women face the difficult decisions surrounding ending a pregnancy. Statistics have proven since Roe v. Wade, the path to that kind of world is not through restrictive legislation around abortion. That path is achieved through policies that support women and families, and make it easier for families to thrive in our country.

The legislators who support abortion bans have failed us. They have failed their constituents. They have failed our nation. Their time is up.

Kathy Ellis, is the progressive Democrat running to replace Trump enabler Jason Smith in the reddest district in Missouri, the eighth congressional district in the southeast corner of the state, where Missouri comes together with Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and southern Illinois. The PVI is R+24 and Trump beat Hillary there 75.4% to 21.0%. Perhaps counterintuitively, polling shows that most voters in the district are pro-Choice. Jason Smith certainly isn't. Kathy's campaign has been advertising her endorsement by Planned Parenthood extensively and she certainly isn't backing away from her pledge to protect Choice. "I've always been a proud pro-choice candidate," she told me, "and protecting the right to choose is not a foreign fight for Missourians who have been up against staunchly anti-choice bills for over a decade. But now, with the passing of Justice Ginsburg, this fight has certainly gained importance. In a rural district such as mine, we've actually seen most folks fall into the pro-choice category, and when the Missouri legislature attempted to pass a full abortion ban, with no exceptions, we saw a huge increase in pro-choice organizing in the District. When I first announced my campaign, I was advised to avoid this issue, but for me, protecting a person's reproductive freedom is at the heart of why I'm running for office. I've always been proudly pro-choice, and I'll always be honest about who I am."

Republican Chris Jacobs is another garden variety Trump sycophant and anti-Choice ass. Typical e-mail to his supporters (last week):

The progressive Democrat running for his western New York congressional seat is our old friend Nate McMurray. Earlier, McMurray told me that "The appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court became a political fight to the death in 2018 just before the midterm elections. Now the unthinkable has happened, and Justice Ginsburg's death has launched us into another situation where she hasn't even been laid to rest and Mitch McConnell is salivating over another chance to put his hypocrisy on full display-- just 43 days away from the election. Just as COVID-19 magnified the issues with our healthcare system, RBG's death reminds us all that even institutions like the Supreme Court are not safe from the corrosion of toxic political forces. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the Affordable Care Act on November 10th. Should the Republican party have its way, millions of Americans will be thrown off their health insurance before the second wave of the pandemic hits. Reproductive rights, labor rights, civil rights, and so much more are on the line. The GOP has sunk so low-- it's not a time for us to 'go high;' we've got to fight like hell for the future of this country."

There's no question about where Mondaire Jones was coming down on this issue. One of the best hopes for progressive leadership in the next session of Congress, he's running to hold an open, narrowly blue district. ""Unfortunately, the Trump Administration and the Republican Party have systematically undermined women’s reproductive freedom," he said this morning. "The federal government must step in to protect civil rights-- and it cannot leave those rights up to the extreme conservative majority on the Supreme Court. As a member of Congress, I will work to codify Roe v. Wade by statute, repeal the Hyde Amendment, and ensure that any Medicare for All legislation includes coverage for the full range of reproductive services. That’s why I’m proud to be endorsed by leading pro-choice groups like Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America. My opponent, meanwhile, is anti-choice and intends to be a staunch opponent of reproductive freedom, which could not be more out of step with the values of our district."

Of course it isn't just in congressional and federal races where the "new" issue is being injected into the election. I spoke with Heidi Campbell yesterday. The mayor of Oak Hill and a state Senate candidate in Tennessee, she is on the verge of ousting anti-Choice Republican Steve Dickerson and flipping a red seat blue. You can help her do that here. I asked her how the Supreme Court being threatened with another anti-Choice extremist is playing out in her suburban Nashville district.

"Devastatingly, she told me, "the October surprise came early this year-- not to say that there won’t be several more, in this accelerating-ly chaotic wreck of a year. Each time something like this happens though, we have to reassess the dynamics of our race. I am running for state Senate in Tennessee’s District 20 which is gerrymandered to carve out the conservative pockets of Nashville’s metropolitan area. This district has been trending blue and went for Clinton in the last election. In fact, two separate polls show us narrowly ahead of the incumbent. Democrats have not flipped a state Senate seat in Tennessee in over fifteen years, and we have a great shot at flipping this one. The SCOTUS appointment to fill RBG’s seat cuts both ways of course-- both sides are energized by it, and it should strengthen the position of candidates like myself who are running in districts that are gaining Democratic voters. But this also means that Republicans are going to spend as much as they can to hang on to their seats, and in our race they have purchased several hundred thousand dollars worth of television ad time to run attack ads against our campaign over the next five weeks. Our team is fighting with every fiber of our beings to flip this seat, in a state where anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, anti-immigrant (and many other) bills are intentionally seeded to wend their way up to the Supreme Court. We simply do not have as much money as the Republicans, and since we’re not going to have election finance reform in the next six weeks, we have GOT to raise as much as we can to win."

 

Was The Trump Tweet Yesterday A White Flag?

Trump's tweet was hilarious Wednesday morning. I wondered if it gave McConnell heart failure; I'm certain it sent Pelosi into a state of near exultation, if not euphoria. He completely undercut McConnell's already weak bargaining position on the must-pass pandemic relief bill-- telling the Republicans (i.e.- McConnell) to "go for the much higher numbers." It also looks like Trump told Meadows to get a bill done. Right after the tweet, Meadows told the media he feels "optimistic" and that "If the Speaker is willing to stay in, I'm willing to stay in, the Secretary [Mnuchin] is willing to stay in and negotiate."

In May the House passed a $3.4 trillion bill (Heroes Act), which McConnell has refused to even allow to be debated. Instead a joke of a "skinny bill," offering a shameful $650 billion. The Republican bill doesn't give any money to local governments, doesn't do anything about battling COVID-19 and would trigger a Depression. Yesterday, before the tweet, The Atlantic's Derek Thompson suggested the reason Trump, stuck in a Pollyannaish fantasy of his own making," isn't trying to save the economy. Bad economies defeat incumbent presidents and, noted Thompson "The 2020 economy is worse than weak; it is, for many, an outright catastrophe. Look beyond the healthy housing market and the stock market, and you will see a depressed leisure-and-hospitality sector, 8 percent unemployment, and tens of thousands of small businesses on the brink of collapse. The implication seems obvious. President Donald Trump faces an array of obstacles on his path to reelection. But he could do one thing, right away, that would, in all likelihood, immediately improve his odds with almost no downside risk: Call for Congress to open the cash spigot and buoy the lackluster economy on a wave of stimulus. All he has to do is announce his intention to sign a second major economic relief bill-- a CARES Act II, essentially-- and count on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to muddle through. Such a law would almost certainly improve the financial state of countless families at a time of mass desperation, and just weeks before the election."

Maybe Thompson's article is what spurred Trump's tweet. It wouldn't surprise me. But why hasn't he done so before yesterday's tweet? Thompson reiterated that "With no pressure from the top, Senate Republicans rejected the HEROES Act, the multitrillion-dollar stimulus package that Democrats passed in the House, and countered with a stingy-- or “skinny”-- stimulus that did not include another round of checks for taxpayers or state and local government aid."

On the campaign trail and in his television ads, Trump proclaims that a great and historic economic recovery is afoot. The notion that the economy is sick enough to require a trillion-dollar booster shot is in direct tension with the claim that it’s thriving. So, the theory goes, Trump is unwilling to advocate for stimulus, because he doesn’t want to acknowledge that the economy is broken in the first place.

Trump’s approach to the enfeebled pandemic economy resembles that of a certain cartoon dog sipping coffee in a burning room. It’s the “This Is Fine” style of American politics. Surrounded by evidence of a crisis, Trump seems content to make up promises about a fictionalized economy rather than take action to fix the real thing.

Meanwhile, the people around Trump aren’t urging him to reject this faulty logic. Some of them are simply afraid of objecting to a leader with a taste for punishing his intraparty rivals. But the GOP, as a group, has also convinced itself that more stimulus is unnecessary. Republicans are more dubious about Keynesianism than Democrats, even though they stood by quietly as deficits mounted under Trump before the plague hit. The GOP largely prefers targeted social insurance over the broad-based stimulus of mailing checks to hundreds of millions of American households. They don’t believe that states and local governments need a huge bailout. They’re reluctant to top off unemployment-insurance checks with hundreds of dollars in pandemic bonuses.

The generous interpretation is that Republicans believe the economy will rebound without federal assistance; the critical one is that, just as Trump is delusional about economic realities, the GOP is delusional about economic policy. The Great Recession demonstrated clearly that without emergency support after sharp recessions, state and local governments lay off workers, whose unemployment delays the overall recovery. But the GOP, refusing to learn from the experience of past economic conflagrations, is clasping anachronistic ideas about economics with both hands. In other words: “This Is Fine.”

It would be one thing if the tendency to ignore reality were limited to Washington. But the inability to see reality through the smudge of one’s own ideology is a national affliction. As a general rule, Americans pick sides first; the thinking comes second.

Overall, Americans’ evaluation of the economy these days has very little to do with reality. An analysis by the University of Michigan’s Richard Curtin found that partisan differences in how people perceive the state of the economy has never been higher. In other words, at any given moment, Democrats and Republicans claim to be seeing almost completely opposite countries. Take, for example, a Fox News poll from last week. Two-thirds of Republicans said the economy is “excellent” or “good,” almost the exact same share who approved of Trump’s job performance. Meanwhile, just 16 percent of Democrats said the economy was “excellent” or “good,” also close to the same share who approved of Trump’s job performance.

Meanwhile, a pandemic followed by an unprecedented fast freeze of the face-to-face economy has scarcely updated Americans’-- and, particularly, Republicans’-- views of the world. National approval for Trump’s handling of the economy is not meaningfully different than it was in the summer of 2018 or 2017, even though the economy has gone from extremely strong to severely distressed.

In the past 100 years, economic conditions have determined voters’ political preferences. But today, especially on the right, political preferences shape most voters’ attitudes about the economy. For many, it doesn’t matter if the world is freezing, on fire, or just right. “This is fine,” and it will always be fine, just as long as your team is in power.

I asked Nate McMurray, the union-backed western New York (NY-27) candidate running against billionaire reactionary Chris Jacobs (R) if the state of the economy and the stubborn, systemic Republican Party refusal to pass the pandemic relief package is impacting his own race. "For decades," he told me this morning, "my district has been plagued by out-of-touch Republicans who chase power, abandon the people in pursuit of power, and end up resigning in disgrace. Is it any wonder that NY-27 has one of the worst job markets in the country? To Chris Jacobs, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and any other do-nothing politician that stands in the way of working-class families putting food on the table in the middle of a global pandemic that they lied about: History, and the voting public, will not forget the death and ruin you caused by abandoning the American people. If we don't take a clear stand in support of humanity and our democracy, we will lose both of them. If I were in Congress today I'd be fighting for monthly direct payments to individuals, a free and universally available vaccine, rent, mortgage and student loan forgiveness; a full-blooded bill that actually answers the cries of families like mine that are struggling to survive in Trump's America."