Nina Turner, RoseAnn DeMoro, Others Call for New Third Party

Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin. Could a third-party candidate do this?

by Thomas Neuburger

I'm thinking out loud these days, trying to crack the uncrackable nut, escape the inescapable trap laid for policy-minded voters, the one that says “It's a Republican or a neoliberal; there's no other viable choice. Pick one.”

More and more, people want to pick neither.

I don't have an solution yet, but I swear there has to be one. The present situation is unsustainable. If the country stays trapped for much longer between two terrible choices — in 2020 it's Trump or Biden; in 2016 it was Trump or Clinton; in 2012 it was Romney or Obama (who, if your memory stretches back that far, ran in 2008 saying “Yes We Can,” then switched on Day 1 to “Yeah, But No I Won't,” though we let ourselves pretend for quite some time we could convince him otherwise).

Barack Obama — Mr. “Let's Play 'Grand Bargain' With Your Social Security,” Mr. “Keystone Pipeline Will Make America Great,” Mr. “Desperate to Pass TPP Before I Retire to Richard Branson's Yacht” — the man who was never the person he campaigned as in 2008 — was just the most recent addition to a long line of servants of wealth pretending to be heirs of the FDR Party legacy.

It's been aptly said that “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party, and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat” (Gore Vidal); also that “Today's Democratic leaders would rather lose with Biden than win with Sanders” (lots of people, including yours truly; most recently here). And today, after the primary spectacles of 2016 and 2020, it seems that reforming the Democratic Party is as doomed an exercise as supporting a third-party candidate would be, a candidate who may never get on the ballot in all 50 states and, if so, would never be chosen by the bipartisan “debate commission” to appear on stage with the two “major” donor-approved choices.

How the Parties Captured the Debates

After the 1980 election, during which the League of Women Voters allowed independent John Anderson into the presidential debate, the two parties colluded to wrest control of the debates for themselves — successfully. Today's Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is jointly run by the Democratic and Republican Parties, not the League of Women Voters. Here's how that played out in 1992 and 1996 (emphasis mine):

In 1992, Reform Party candidate Ross Perot had a seven percent rating in the polls before the presidential debates. On election day, Perot had 19 percent of the vote, the largest-ever jump for a presidential candidate [source: PBS]. Proving himself a risk to the other candidates, the Dole and Clinton campaigns excluded him from the presidential debates through the CPD when he ran again in 1996. Perot later sued the major television networks for failing to grant him equal time, but since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) changed the provision in 1975, Perot lost his suits [source: FCC].

The fallout from Perot's exclusion from the debates illustrates one of the vital services the CPD provides the two major parties. It acts as a shield. Despite the Democrats and Republicans drafting memorandums of understanding and deciding who can participate, it's the CPD that publicly issues the decisions; so it's the CPD that accepts the public's ire. But since it isn't beholden to the public, the CPD has nothing to lose.

All of which just points out how impossible the two-branched solution to our quadrennial problem has proved to be. If a third-party won't work, and reforming the unreformable won't work, what's to be done?

(There is a third possibility, and a kind of hybrid fourth one, but I'm going to save those discussions for another time.)

Out of Frustration, A Tenth Third Party Raises its Head

Despite these obstacles, people are hungry for a way out, a way to silence the bipartisan blackmailers. On the left that frustration has led people like Nina Turner, former co-chair of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign; RoseAnn Demoro, former head of the Sanders-supporting National Nurses United; Nick Brana, a Sanders 2016 alum and former electoral manager with Our Revolution; actor John Cusack and many less notable others, to start to talk (well, tweet enthusiastically) about forming and supporting another American third party, one that will advance progressive policies, a party that progressive voters can finally control.

I feel welcomed @4aPeoplesParty https://t.co/N9H4yqZLAV

— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) May 3, 2020

This is our bleak future in the Democratic Party. The political revolution that inspired millions in 2016 was born **explicitly** out of a rejection of big donors as its core principle.

We don’t have to resign ourselves to this. Another party is possible!https://t.co/GBq895DbOr https://t.co/aokEZRmPKr

— Nick Brana - #PeoplesParty (@nick_brana) May 5, 2020

We know the reality of what the neoliberal dems really did to the movement - Bernie was treated as the existential threat not trump or gop -they moved heaven & earth to stop a return of new deal politics - which is exactly what times demand -
Yes to 3rd party

— John Cusack (@johncusack) May 1, 2020

And they're not talking hypothetically. These folk are well and truly frustrated, and they're close to well and truly done with the modern, apparently unredeemable Democratic Party.

What to Make of This?

I said at the start I was thinking out loud. I see a deep hunger, much of it shared by the best lights behind the Sanders campaign, but I also see impediments.

Will a People's Party candidate fill a Sanders-size stadium? It depends on the candidate, but very likely no. That candidate would have to relight Sanders' improbable public fire, blaze with his surprising light.

Will a People's Party candidate reach the election debate stage? I fear the answer is never. Nor will there ever be cable campaign coverage, discussion in the corporate press, or live camera feeds of that candidate's peopled podium like there were of Donald Trump's empty one. That candidate will be silenced out of the public discussion, erased from the landscape of choices. Would even Sanders, had he run third party, become the Sanders that thousands flocked to hear? Likely not.

So perhaps that avenue is closed even as the desire to take it opens up. Yet the gaping maw of the hunger that drives that desire isn't going away soon, perhaps not even in our lifetimes. So what's the solution to our national political nightmare, the bear trap of blackmail — "Trump or the neoliberal" — we either ignore or succumb to every four years of our lives?

The way out isn't apparent … yet. But I guarantee there will be one. At some time something will break here so completely that even the broken Party of FDR can't pretend it can put things right again with its next pro-corporate offering.

I do hope, if we see that tragic day, the moment will be managed in an orderly electoral way. The alternative — a chaotic transition to a multi-headed, multiply led revolt — puts us back in the 1930s, and in most major countries of the world, that didn't go well at all.

We got lucky, got Roosevelt, who was allowed to be elected. Most nations got something less.
  
 

Bloomberg-- Oligarch... And Dangerous Predator

This could be labelled Part II of a post that began yesterday morning. The word "oligarch" comes from the Greek "rule by the few." The accepted definition today is "a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence." Michael Bloomberg's photo could easily be next to the definition in any American dictionary. Comcast TV political hack, Jason Johnson, can always be counted on to play the role of a sad fool but when he told Nina Turner that to call his beloved Bloomberg an oligarch is a misnomer, it just showed once again what a bad choice MSNBC made in hiring one of Bill O'Reilly's favorite commentators.

Washington Post reporter Allyson Chu looked at the spat between Johnson and Turner over whether Bloomberg should or shouldn't be labelled an oligarch. Chu begins by establishing that the use of the word is "pejorative" when used to describe Bloomberg and that Turner didn't invent the description on Monday night. "What started," she wrote, "as a routine interview between MSNBC host Chris Matthews and Nina Turner, a national campaign co-chair for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), turned into an argument after one of the network’s contributors took issue with Turner describing Bloomberg, a billionaire, as an “oligarch.”

The term was defined originally as one who favors government by the few. In more modern times, an oligarch became “a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence,”especially a corrupt actor in Russia.

The events leading to the on-air spat began when Matthews asked Turner how it could be possible to beat an opponent like Bloomberg, who has unlimited resources.

Turner instantly bristled at the notion that a wealthy presidential candidate could use his or her own money to make headway in the race, criticizing the Democratic National Committee’s recent decision to drop its grass-roots funding requirement for participation in debates, which could allow Bloomberg to make the cut.

“We should be ashamed of that as Americans, people who believe in democracy,” she said, “that the oligarchs, if you have more money you can buy your way.”

“Do you think Mike Bloomberg is an oligarch?” Matthews asked.

Turner didn’t hesitate to answer.

“He is,” said Turner, a frequent Sanders surrogate, during the live segment. “Buying his way into this race, period.”

Bloomberg, whose self-funded campaign has drawn scrutiny, was one of the few Democratic candidates not battling it out in Iowa Monday. Instead, the 77-year-old was more than 1,800 miles away campaigning in California, where he has hired more than 200 employees in addition to mounting an expensive national advertising effort worth more than $250 million, Reuters recently reported.

While Turner’s criticism of Bloomberg didn’t appear to shock Matthews, the “oligarch” label drew a fierce reaction from MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson, from the network’s main studio in New York. Johnson hit back at Turner on-air, accusing her of “name-calling” and adding that the word oligarch has “implications in this country that I think are unfair and unreasonable.”

“You’re working for somebody who’s part of the 1 percent,” Johnson told Turner, referencing Sanders. “Do you call him an oligarch? No, you don’t. You say he’s a rich guy. … Just because somebody has a tremendous amount of money doesn’t mean that they’re not necessarily representing the people.”

“Oligarch” trended on Twitter Monday night. By early Tuesday, various clips of the exchange had been watched hundreds of thousands of times. Bloomberg’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Johnson, a politics and journalism professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, kicked off the debate, launching into a lengthy rebuke of Turner’s reference to Bloomberg as an “oligarch.” Being rich doesn’t automatically mean “you’re an oligarch who abuses his power,” Johnson said, adding, “The power that Mike Bloomberg got access to was given to him by the voters of New York.”

He warned that Turner’s language could potentially be a problem for Sanders down the line.

“It’s dismissive, it’s unfair and it’s the kind of thing that blows up in your face if you become the nominee and you have to work with Bloomberg three or four months from now,” Johnson said. “That’s the issue that Sanders’s people never seem to want to remember.”

A few minutes later, MSNBC had the pair on a split screen.

Turner immediately slammed Johnson for defending “the wealthiest people in this country over the working people in this country,” stressing that Sanders has always backed “the everyday people of this nation.” The MSNBC analyst responded by pointing out Sanders’s wealth, telling Turner that she should refocus her criticisms on the system that allows billionaires like Bloomberg to exist.

“At the end of the day, the enemy of this country, the enemy of the poor, is not just everybody who happens to be rich, it is a capitalistic system that abuses people,” he said. “If you want to speak about that, that’s fine, but if you want to name-call people that’s not going to help Bernie if he becomes the nominee and he’s going to need Mike Bloomberg’s money.”

Soon, Johnson and Turner were talking loudly over each other as they argued, carrying on until Matthews interrupted in an effort to bring the debate to a close.

“Do you want to change your word from oligarch?” the host asked Turner.

“No, I’m not changing,” Turner said emphatically. “He doesn’t tell me what to say and how to change my words. My words stand.”

Later Monday, Turner took to Twitter, retweeting people who supported her argument and tagging Johnson in a tweet sharing a link to an opinion article about Bloomberg in the Guardian titled, “An oligarch has bought his way into the 2020 race. Why is no one talking about this?” Turner also asserted in a separate tweet that she has “the good sense of knowing what makes for Oligarchy.”

Meanwhile, Johnson kept his commentary on the debate limited retweeting a post from one a viewer who wrote of Turner, “ … did she not respond to any of his actual points and instead chose to attack him specifically?”

How Badly Will Biden's Racist Beginnings In Politics Hurt Him With Democratic Voters-- If They Ever Find Out?

I don't forget about politicians I hate. And my hatred for Status Quo Joe didn't begin when he decided to run for president again. Nor when he screwed over Anita Hill. Nor when he outed himself as one of the most homophobic Democrats in Congress. Nor when he led the effort to make sure Bush's war against Iraq would be bipartisan nor when he wrote anti-working family bankruptcy legislation on behalf of the credit card companies that were financing his career nor when he campaigned vigorously to gut Social Security and Medicare. No, I began hating Biden's guts long before any of that.

In the 1970s there were several prominent politicians who weren't from the former slave-holding states but whose political careers were built entirely around racism-- and the best known of them were three bigoted slobs: Louise Day Hicks in Boston, Bobbi Fielder in L.A. and Republican-turned Democrat Joe Biden in Delaware. When Obama picked Biden to balance his presidential ticket-- one black man and one long-time racist-- Biden's whole anti-Black past seemed to be instantly flushed down the memory hole.

Yesterday, former Ohio state senator and Bernie campaign co-chair Nina Turner, put the issue of Biden's racism front and center in the place where it most needs to be remembered-- South Carolina, where older African-America voters are completely responsible for Biden's high polling numbers. Turner's OpEd in The State, South Carolina's second biggest newspaper, which has a circulation of over 120,000, made the point that "while Bernie Sanders has always stood up for African Americans, Joe Biden has repeatedly let us down." Turner asked the question that Biden was hoping would never be brought up: "Will our community side with former Vice President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly betrayed black voters to side with Republican lawmakers and undermine our progress? Or will we stand with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and a movement that has been fighting for racial and economic justice since the civil rights era?"

This critical choice is illustrated by the key differences between Biden and Sanders-- which began at the beginning of their respective careers.


As a recent NBC News headline said of Biden’s time in the Senate: “Biden didn’t just compromise with segregationists. He fought for their cause.” The NBC report quoted the NAACP’s legal director saying that one Biden-backed measure “heaves a brick through the window of school integration.”

And Biden didn’t just vote for bills designed to prevent black students from accessing white schools: in a series of personal letters he actively courted pro-segregation senators to support the legislation.

Sanders, by contrast, began his work in politics by organizing civil rights protests. As a college student, he helped lead a local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality in its push to desegregate housing. Sanders participated in the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington and was arrested for protesting rampant school segregation in Chicago. In addition, Sanders has been pushing an education plan that supports local efforts to combat racial segregation.

As a local elected official, Sanders also defied the political establishment by proudly endorsing Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign; Sanders said that Jackson was a candidate “who has done more than any other candidate in living memory to bring together the disenfranchised.”

And the contrast between Biden and Sanders continued during the early 1990s.

Biden facilitated the public degradation of Anita Hill, an esteemed professor already victimized by a powerful man.

Biden also fought alongside right-wing Republicans to pass so-called “welfare reform” that reduced financial support for low-income families. Biden echoed former President Ronald Reagan’s dishonest “welfare queen” language and wrote a column conjuring an ugly stereotype of “welfare mothers driving luxury cars and leading lifestyles that mirror the rich and famous.”

In contrast, Sanders vigorously opposed these punitive cuts. “What welfare reform did, in my view,” Sanders said, “was to go after some of the weakest and most vulnerable people in this country.”

Similarly Biden worked with segregationist Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond to pass “tough on crime” legislation that targeted black communities with punitive criminal justice policies while promoting mass incarceration and harsh punishment for nonviolent crimes. At one point Biden declared that every “major crime bill since 1976 that’s come out of this Congress, every minor crime bill, has had the name of the Democratic senator from the state of Delaware-- Joe Biden.”

One of the leading dissenters to Biden’s “tough on crime” agenda was Sanders, who Vox noted was “an early critic of mass incarceration and punitive criminal justice policies.”


The contrast between Biden and Sanders also extends to economic policies.

Biden has repeatedly worked with Republicans to try to slash Social Security even though “almost three-fourths of African American beneficiaries rely on Social Security for at least half their income,” according to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Sanders, on the other hand, has fought to block those cuts and has proposed expanding Social Security.

Biden did the bidding of his credit card industry donors by helping Republican lawmakers make it more difficult for Americans to reduce their debts in bankruptcy court. At one point, Biden split with then-Sen. Barack Obama and almost every other Senate Democrat to help Republicans kill an amendment to protect medical debtors from predatory lenders.

Biden’s bankruptcy legislation passed in 2005 over the objection of Sanders; 12 years later ProPublica reported that “black people struggling with debts are far less likely than their white peers to gain lasting relief from bankruptcy.”

And today the differences between Biden and Sanders remain stark.

Biden opposes Democratic efforts to legalize marijuana. Sanders, on the other hand, is campaigning not only to legalize marijuana but also to root out institutional racism in our criminal justice system, outlaw private prisons, slash the prison population in half, end cash bail and hold police departments accountable.

Biden is opposing the Democrats’ push for Medicare for All, which would guarantee health care to all Americans and help address the disproportionately high maternal, infant and cancer mortality rates among African Americans. Sanders, on the other hand, is the longtime champion and author of that Medicare for All legislation.

Biden has refused to support Sanders’ bill to make public colleges and universities tuition free and cancel all student debt; this act alone would shrink the racial wealth gap between blacks and whites from 12-to-1 to 5-to-1. Sanders, meanwhile, is committed to closing that gap-- and he believes as I do that this is one of the most pressing moral issues of our time.

All of these contrasts underscore the high stakes in this primary election.

By supporting a racial justice champion like Sanders-- and his popular progressive agenda-- black Americans will forge a multiracial, multigenerational working-class alliance that will generate the high turnout necessary to beat President Donald Trump.


In standing with Sanders over Biden, we will declare that we are not going backward-- we are going forward into a future of empowerment and equality for all.

Biden's expected response: 'I am the Father Of The Civil Rights Movement and no one has done more for the Blacks than I have.' Just wait.

"Everyone Would Be Tied for Last"

Nina Turner, Ro Khanna and Rick Santorum debating Sen. Kamala Harris' potential presidential candidacy

by Gaius Publius

Much is being written these days about newly minted Sen. Kamala Harris, former Attorney General of California and in the eyes of many, one of the more likely candidates for president in 2020, at least so far. (See here, here and the video above.)

The questions being asked include, "How progressive is she?" and "Can she be moved more to the left than other prospective candidates"? Also, "If she gave Steve Mnuchin's OneWest Bank a pass for fraud as a prosecutor, can she be trusted at all?" The go-to piece about Harris, Mnuchin and his bank was written by David Dayen, also author of the excellent Chain of Title, a look at the mortgage fraud story in its broadest context.

Dayen has written a follow-up to his first Kamala Harris story that, in effect, says that there's nothing special about Harris in her treatment of mortgage fraud, since no one in that era, or even today, treats mortgage fraud with anything like what it deserves. His bottom line:

In other words, if you were to rank the performance of law enforcement officials during this period, everyone would be tied for last.

One of the most striking aspects of his latest piece is not his seeming defense of Kamala Harris — in fact, he's not defending her at all — but his indictment of a system of fraud-protection that's as wide and deep in scope as it is damaging in effect.

The Crime of the Century

Dayen rightly calls the 2008 mortgage crisis "the crime of the century." He writes:

Let’s recognize that no public official in this country, from Barack Obama on down, covered themselves in glory during the foreclosure crisis; to say that Harris failed to prosecute bankers is simply to say that she was a public official with authority over financial services fraud in the Obama era.

From the late Bush years through most of Obama’s presidency, at least 9.3 million American families lost their properties, whether to foreclosure or forced sale. The original sin of faulty loan originations, inflated appraisals, doctored underwriting, and improper placement into subprime loans led to fraudulent misconduct in securitization, loan servicing, loan modifications, and foreclosures, with millions of faked and forged documents used as evidence for the final indignity of eviction. There’s not a single step of the mortgage process that wasn’t suffused with illegal fraud during the housing bubble and its collapse.

The crisis resulted in a punishing recession and countless destroyed lives, not to mention what has been credibly described as an “extinction event” for the black and Latino middle class. Yet from New York to California, Arizona to Florida, Washington state to Washington, D.C., the political class and law enforcement elite responded largely with indifference. Powerful bankers with armies of lawyers were allowed to get away with the crime of the century (thus far).

The individual actors in this drama — U.S. AG Eric Holder, NY state AG Eric Schneiderman, and so many others — are none of them covered glory, but smeared with its opposite:

Though he was OneWest’s chairman, Mnuchin was never at risk of indictment or conviction. At best, California would have extracted a decent-sized fine from the company—paid for by shareholders—and guarantees meant to deter further law-breaking; it’s possible that Mnuchin, his reputation sullied, would not have ended up in charge of federal banking policy. This watered-down version of public accountability was seen as the best possible outcome, and Harris didn’t even go for that.

This doesn’t make her particularly special. Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer took hiatuses from their careers as corporate lawyers to join Obama’s Justice Department and ensure light punishment for financial abuses. Tom Miller, the attorney general of Iowa, ran the 50-state investigation of foreclosure fraud, which investigated nothing and moved directly to a weak settlement that delivered 90 percent less relief for homeowners than promised. Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, sold out supporters by agreeing to that settlement, saving it from the brink of collapse. He co-chaired a so-called “task force” on bank crimes that did nothing but ink more toothless settlements and proudly proclaim fake headline numbers about fines from behind a podium.

In other words, if you were to rank the performance of law enforcement officials during this period, everyone would be tied for last.

Read Dayen's piece to see how this heartbreaking tale is still going on. It's horrifying in its destruction of lives, and Dayen is right to highlight it.

"Not Particularly Special"

But back to Kamala Harris. It's true, as Dayen says, that within this group — where everyone is tied for last — Kamala Harris is not particularly special. But if "not particularly special" and "tied for last" is leading the field in the early race for the 2020 nomination, Democrats may be in bigger trouble than any of them realizes.

GP
 

Sanders Supporters Begin to Abandon Clinton

Ignore Chris Matthews' aggressive pro-Clinton badgering. Focus on Turner's determination to keep her progressive powder dry ... for the moment.

by Gaius Publius

I'm not saying this is a trend ... yet ... and I'm presenting this just as news, not as something I do or do not want to happen.

Frankly, part of me is watching this drama with a novelist's fascination, or more accurately, with a novel reader's fascination. We're in the middle of one of those turning-point political stories — the fall of Athens perhaps, or the year Atilla showed up — where anything could happen, all of it seems to matter, and everything starts to point to a final transformational clash on a world-historical scale. Or at least so it seems.

As a result I'm riveted, and refuse to preference an outcome. For one thing, I have no idea what it would be best to want, outside of a Sanders presidency. None of the other outcomes seem ... well, easy to live through, to tolerate as a "shape of things to come." But who knows?

Too Many Possible Outcomes

There are way too many possible outcomes for this story. One of the possible outcomes of this watershed election season is a Clinton win against Trump in a two-person race, which will enable the neo-liberal ("we serve the educated 10%") Democratic consensus to keep control of their own party through the next four years, for better or worse. That outcome would also allow the billionaire ("we serve the .01%") Republican consensus to reassert control on their side of the aisle. (After that, I don't think the Republican consensus will come apart, but I think the Democratic Party could split, depending on what Clinton does as president.)

Another outcome is a three- or more likely, a four-person race — Clinton, Trump, Jill Stein, Gary Johnson — with the outcome (or outcomes) very much in doubt. I'll treat those hypotheticals separately.

In any case, the real deciders will be the mass of "radical independent" voters, who have control of the story this time around.

Sanders Tries to Lead the Flock to Clinton...

Let's assume that Sanders is sincerely trying to lead the people empowering the "Sanders political revolution" to support Clinton. (I've read plausible speculation that his motives may be multiple, including making sure that if she does still falter, in the polls or in the courts, he's now tied so closely to her that he's the only one next in line. Still, speculation.)

If Sanders is trying to lead the flock, how is he doing so far? With voters, not that well, though it's clearly early days. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, is polling above 3% nationally, and there's a fair amount of talk on Sanders-supporting social media about turning to her, and also about getting her above the controversial 15% polling threshold that would make her eligible for the presidential debates. Her star seems to be rising on Sanders media. If interest in her candidacy — and she's doing all she can to spark that interest — reaches critical mass, Clinton could have a problem. She's already on thin ice of her own in the polling, running roughly even with Trump in key battleground states at this point.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, is polling above 5% nationally. We'll know soon enough if those numbers will increase as well.

...While Some of Sanders Leaders Are Defecting from Clinton

Which brings me to the part of the tale that just caught my eye. Within the last week or so, several of Sanders' strongest public supporters, including surrogate Dr. Cornel West, have respectfully but publicly declined to support Clinton, despite Sanders' decision to do so himself.

Cornel West, writing in The Guardian, starts with President Obama's decision to go to Dallas, but not Baton Rouge or Minneapolis, to address racial justice and killing (my emphasis throughout):

Obama has failed victims of racism and police brutality

The president and his cheerleaders refused to engage deeply with systemic problems facing our country. That came back to haunt America last week

A long and deep legacy of white supremacy has always arrested the development of US democracy. We either hit it head on, or it comes back to haunt us. That’s why a few of us have pressed the president for seven years not to ignore issues of poverty, police abuse and mass unemployment. Barack Obama said it very well, following the shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, that some communities “have been forgotten by all of us”.

And now – in Dallas, Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights and beyond – this legacy has comes back to haunt the whole country.

Obama and his cheerleaders should take responsibility for being so reluctant to engage with these issues. It’s not a question of interest group or constituencies. Unfortunately for so much of the Obama administration its been a question of “I’m not the president of black people, I’m the president of everyone.” But this is a question of justice. It’s about being concerned about racism and police brutality.

I have deep empathy for brothers and sisters who are shot in the police force. I also have profound empathy for people of color who are shot by the police. I have always believed deliberate killing to be a crime against humanity.

Yet, Obama didn’t go to Baton Rouge. He didn’t go to Minneapolis. He flew over their heads to go to Dallas. You can’t do that. His fundamental concern was to speak to the police, that was his priority. When he references the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s to speak to the police. But the people who are struggling have a different perspective. ...

Unfortunately, Obama thrives on being in the middle. He has no backbone to fight for justice. He likes to be above the fray. But for those us us who are in the fray, there is a different sensibility. You have to choose which side you’re on, and he doesn’t want to do that. Fundamentally, he’s not a love warrior. He’s a polished professional. Martin Luther King Jr, Adam Clayton Powell Jr and Ella Baker – they were warriors.

Which leads him to this reflection on neo-liberal notions of justice:

Obama’s attitude is that of a neo-liberal, and they rarely have solidarity with poor and working people. Whatever solidarity he does offer is just lip-service to suffering but he never makes it a priority to end that suffering.

Obama has power right now to enact the recommendations made after Ferguson. Better training, independent civilian oversight boards, body cameras. But he has not used executive orders to push any of these changes through.

This November, we need change. Yet we are tied in a choice between Trump, who would be a neo-fascist catastrophe, and Clinton, a neo-liberal disaster. That’s why I am supporting Jill Stein. I am with her – the only progressive woman in the race – because we’ve got to get beyond this lock-jaw situation. I have a deep love for my brother Bernie Sanders, but I disagree with him on Hillary Clinton. I don’t think she would be an “outstanding president”. Her militarism makes the world a less safe place.

Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr., prominent black writer and intellectual leader (and frequent guest on the old Rachel Maddow AAR show), writes in Time:

My Democratic Problem With Voting for Hillary Clinton

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. | July 12, 2016

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., is the chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University and the author of Democracy in Black.

I'm turning my back on the party that turns its back on our most vulnerable

I am not voting for Hillary Clinton, regardless of her endorsement by Bernie Sanders. My decision isn’t because of the scandal around her emails or because of some concern over her character. My reasons are pretty straightforward. I don’t agree with her ideologically.

Democratic values centered on economic and racial justice shape my own politics. I’m not convinced those values shape hers. Nothing Clinton says or intends to do if elected will fundamentally transform the circumstances of the most vulnerable in this country—even with her concessions to the Sanders campaign. Like the majority of Democratic politicians these days, she is a corporate Democrat intent on maintaining the status quo. And I have had enough of all of them.

What has Clinton offered the American people as a substantive alternative to the status quo? How would her position on free trade, her view of foreign policy, on immigration, her call for “common sense policing” in the face of the murders of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge or Philando Castile in Minneapolis redirect our course as a nation? Transform the condition of black and brown communities?

Given the state of the country and of black and brown communities, these questions must be asked. But for many, especially for Clinton supporters, these questions reek of the unreasonableness of the American left or of people like me: that somehow to ask them reveals that we don’t understand the incremental nature of American politics or that we have crossed over into some forbidden realm of politics. ...

Will this trend continue? It's early days, as I said, but these events are important enough that I want to put them on your radar now. I don't expect Robert Reich, another Sanders surrogate, to follow Dr. West's lead, but you never know. I do have my eye on Nina Turner, however. Watch her again in the video above and decide if she'll ever drop her coin in the Clinton slot.

Maybe not. The mark of the Sanders campaign is its adherence to principle and policy, not personalities and candidates.

Playing God's Spy

This is a very rocky road, the one ahead. I don't envy any of these people the decisions they have to make. Me, in my chair by the window, I have only one decision between now and this November — try to keep you caught up on the unfolding drama played by better men and women than I.

As one of those better men once wrote:

So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news, and we’ll talk with them too—
Who loses and who wins, who’s in, who’s out—
And take upon ’s the mystery of things
As if we were God’s spies.

Not sure there's much else for us to do. Those with real "agency" (as the kids say today) are the mass of Sanders supporters, the millions who turned out for him, plus the few with "names" who joined him in those stadiums offering public introductions and praise. We in the bleachers are relegated to a less prominent position — "God's spies."

As long as that's our role, we may as well watch.

GP
 

Bernie Really Is A Better Candidate Than Hillary

Hillary's not a good candidate for several reasons, electability being one, her record of leadership being another. Obviously she's better on the issues-- all of the issues-- than Cruz or Christie or Rubio or any of those clowns. But that's a really low bar. The problem with her, policy-wise is that she's a flip-flopping opportunist who has been consistent on one thing: watching which way the parade is headed and then running to the front when it's absolutely safe to do so. For example, it took Hillary quite a long time to come around on LGBT equality. She had a typically conservative Democratic perspective until national polls showed the public had-- after years of effort by other leaders (Bernie included-- embraced the notion of gay equality. Then she followed. That's her story; she follows. Bernie has been leader on tough issues while Hillary has always tried to have it both ways-- cautiously placate gays and lesbians and their families, while not offending bigots and haters. Listen to what she had to say-- her own words-- in the video below. It's all the dancing around the issue that makes people hate politicians in general and dislike her in particular.

We've written about Hillary's reluctance to embrace LGBT equality before, particularly when she was endorsed by the Beltway establishment shills at the Human Rights Campaign. According to 2012 exit polls 76% of gays voted for Obama. My guess is that gays will turn out in equally lopsided numbers for whomever wins the Democratic nomination, primarily because the Republican Party as an institution has been and continues to be so overwhelmingly hostile to the LGBT community and so opposed to legitimate LGBT aspirations. But for people looking for leaders, Hillary isn't the place to be looking-- not on the environment, not on Wall Street reform, not on Climate Change, not on income inequality. She's just another conservative Democratic Party tap-dancer, nearly as bad as her horrible surrogate Claire McCaskill.



As for electability every poll shows Bernie leading all the Republican candidates in head-t-head match-ups, while Hillary loses to Rubio and sometimes to Cruz. As important, Bernie beats each Republican with significantly bigger margins than Hillary. That's because independent voters love him and pretty much hate her. I'm not saying they should hate her-- the GOP has spent 2 decades poisoning the Hillary well-- but that's the sad reality.

According to a new poll of New Hampshire voters by Emerson, that was released yesterday, the only candidate-- from either party-- with a positive favorability rating from voters is Bernie Sanders. His favorables are 14 points greater than his unfavorables-- the polar opposite of Hillary's own, still much better than the serious GOP contenders, but never even close to Bernie's.

• Bernie +14
• Hillary -15%
• Rubio -27%
• Herr Trumpf -31%
• Cruz -35

I hope you had a chance to watch the interview Chuck Todd did the other day (up top) with Ohio's most respected Democratic leader, Nina Turner, who switched her support from Hillary to Bernie-- just as several high profile state Reps have done in South Carolina in the last few days. She talks a lot about aspiring and working for progressive goals rather than-- how shall I put it?-- being just another hack who "shrugs and claims that change is just too hard has crawled into bed with the billionaires who want to run this country like some private club." Take a look at Bernie's new ad. Do you think the Hillary people will call it a vicious personal attack on her? Why would she think that? Just because it is undeniable that she is Wall Street's candidate?



Yesterday, Matt Karp, writing for Jacobin pointed out that "by early 2015, the leadership of the Democratic Party had determined to nominate Hillary Clinton with a degree of unanimity unparalleled in recent history," while Bernie was tarred as a "fringe figure," despite representing positions far more popular with the public than her own Wall Street-centric agenda.

Given Clinton’s gigantic early lead, and her built-in advantages of name recognition, cash in hand, and establishment backing, it was remarkable how quickly Sanders closed the gap in the early-voting states.

...In the past month, with Sanders’s strength in Iowa and New Hampshire stubbornly growing, commentators have finally begun to compare Sanders to an actual primary winner-- Barack Obama. Sanders, like Obama in 2008, has challenged Clinton by mobilizing young and first-time voters-- a valuable if notoriously precarious demographic base. Heading into Iowa, the question animating professional poll-watchers is whether Sanders can follow the Obama path to early-state victory.

Yet this is the wrong way to approach the Sanders phenomenon. A good deal of evidence suggests that Sanders has assembled a rather different kind of voter coalition than any primary challenger of the past generation-- that he is the rare “progressive” candidate who can actually win over white working-class voters.

Recent Democratic primary upstarts have appealed above all to a highly motivated liberal base-- voters who were generally well-informed, well-educated, and well-off. In 2000, exit polls showed that the only bracket of voters Bill Bradley won in Iowa were those with incomes over $75,000 a year; in New Hampshire, he only won voters making over $100,000.

In the 2008 caucus, both Obama and John Edwards significantly over-performed their overall Iowa numbers with voters making over $100,000, while underperforming with voters making less than $50,000. It was Hillary Clinton, though she finished third in the overall caucus, who outdid her overall numbers with Iowans at the lower end of the income distribution.

In New Hampshire, where Clinton staged a surprise comeback victory, she again overperformed among voters making less than $50,000-- winning them over Obama by a margin of 47 to 32 percent. Perhaps even more telling was Clinton’s victory among voters who said they were “falling behind financially”: she won them, 43 to 33, while Obama swept voters who said they were “getting ahead,” 48 to 32 percent.

The young liberals who flocked to Obama in 2008, in other words, were economically both comfortable and confident. All signs so far suggest that Bernie Sanders’s Iowa and New Hampshire youth revolt is of a very different character.

...One striking difference between Sanders and Obama, as Jedediah Purdy has noted, is that the Sanders campaign is about the platform, not the candidate. Another striking difference is that Sanders has forged connections to lower-income New Hampshire and Iowa Democrats that eluded Obama and every other progressive primary challenger in recent history.

Sanders has done it by offering a substantial rather than rhetorical “progressive” vision. His call to break up the big banks, install a $15 minimum wage, and provide single-payer health care for all-- however mild as “democratic socialism” goes-- represents an aggressive economic populism exiled from the national Democratic Party for decades. Certainly Sanders’s program far exceeds the universally timid and deficit-focused reforms on offer from Bradley, Dean, and Obama.

Sanders may well have won intense backing from the professional and technical workers that John Judis described at a campaign rally last fall, and that Michael Harrington long hoped might embrace democratic socialism. But the polls suggest that Sanders’s program has also proven immensely appealing to a younger but less affluent and more traditional Democratic white working class: not just hybrid owners, but truck drivers, too.

Eric Garner's daughter, Erica Garner, endorsed Bernie in an insightful Washington Post OpEd this morning. "Black Americans-- all Americans-- need a leader with a record that speaks for itself. And to me, it’s clear. Of all the presidential candidates, Sen. Bernie Sanders is our strongest ally... I remember another candidate who dared me to believe in hope and change. His opponents said he wasn’t ready for leadership. They said he couldn’t win. He said, “Yes, we can.” And we did. I still believe we can. That’s why I endorse Bernie Sanders for president."

By the way, did you see that big Univision survey this week, the one about persuadable Hispanic voters? This graphic-- along with Hillary's relatively high unfavorables among Latinos (30% compared to just 16% for Bernie) may be causing some serious consternation in Camp Clinton right now:

I'd Never Vote For Hillary-- But Some Of My Best Friends Plan To

Hillary is better than these

I want to get something off my chest and I figure late night on a Sunday is as close to yelling at a wall as I'm going to get. Personally, I have no intention of voting for Hillary Clinton ever, obviously not in a primary, but not even against an outright fascist like Cruz or Trump, one of whom is likely to be the GOP nominee. Yes, yes, yes, Hillary is better than either of them and better than any other garbage candidate the GOP is considering or might consider. But when I look at who she is, at who's backing her and at what she's offering, all I can say is that-- as much as I want to see a woman president-- the lesser of two evils is still evil and I'm done with voting for evil. If Democratic primary voters decide to reject the best opportunity in any of their lifetimes for a really extraordinary change-candidate, we'll all be the poorer for it but that isn't going to push me into voting for the system I despise.

That said, I entirely respect the contrary position of almost every friend I have. Just about everyone I know is ready to vote for Hillary, every one of them in the general and even one or two in the primary. God Bless! I'm sorry I failed to persuade the ones who are choosing her over Bernie in the primary-- that's scary to me-- but the ones who back Bernie and have already decided to vote for her in the general if she beats him... well, maybe when they get older they'll understand the folly of that kind of thinking. I used to buy into the lesser-of-two evils the Democratic Party establishment always foists on voters too.

That said, I want to share two letters I got today from two Members of Congress who I respect and admire. They were both kind of apologetic about their recent decisions to endorse Hillary. The first came to me as an e-mail entitled "private note about my HRC endorsement" so I don't feel entitled to reveal his name.

Hi, Howie. I meant to send this to you last night, because I knew it would probably land in the newspaper, but forgot. I have endorsed Hillary Clinton over Bernie, whose relentless and important message I do love. I want to win. I want the American people to win, and we have to have a Dem in the White House for them to have a shot. I believe that Hillary has everything in place to do that in this ugly campaign full of Republicans who are betraying our values daily, and I believe that Bernie has pushed her far enough to the left now that she is supporting more progressive policies that help regular people and the poor. (Keystone and the TPP were huge for me.) I didn't do it for votes. I didn't do it for money. I didn't do it to win friends. It might help. It might hurt. I have many progressive friends and supporters on both sides, so I just don't know. It doesn't matter anyway, because I didn't do it for gain.

I just want to win. I am scared to death of those guys who brag about what America would look like under their command. I am scared of their power to appoint Supreme Court Justices. I am going to work very hard for HRC or Bernie, and then I will keep pushing to make sure America works harder for the middle class and the poor. I respect your opinion, and I know we differ on this, but I wanted to let you know my thinking on this.

And I respect his opinion as well, though we differ. I have donated money to his campaign and if I lived in his state, I would be working for his re-election and eagerly vote for him as well. The second letter came from a senator who loves Bernie personally and sees eye-to-eye with him on virtually every position but has endorsed Hillary. Her letter surprised me when I saw it today although I had asked her for a clarification about whether she had endorsed Hillary or not since the local media reports were unclear.

I’ve been spending a significant amount of time trying to get Hillary and her campaign to adopt my Social Security and Medicare platform and also to take our [very aggressive] field program and implement it statewide. They actually have been listening to me, and I’ve been making progress. They asked me to join the Leadership Council. If I didn’t, then they probably would have stopped listening.  So I did. We actually negotiated over this, and I told them that they could call it an endorsement if they wanted to, but that I would continue to say good things about both candidates. Some of the local media tried to blow this up and make Bernie supporters unhappy with me. But if this means that I get Clinton to spend $5 million on a real statewide field program and we score an extra 300,000 Democratic votes from it, then I’ll live with it.

I have no idea how the congressman who wrote me the first note is going to vote in the primary but I'd guess this senator will be voting for Bernie in her state's primary. They will certainly both vote for whichever Democrat is nominated. I'd bet that if Hillary wins, Bernie will endorse her and actively campaign for her too. But I could be wrong about that; we'll see. By the way, if you'd like to contribute to Bernie's campaign, you can do it here at this Blue America page.

Patrick Healy, writing for Saturday's NY Times reported about why one Democratic Party official was not stampeded, intimidated and bribed into endorsing the Democrats' establishment candidate and, in fact, has endorsed Bernie.

John Wittneben simmered as he listened to Hillary Rodham Clinton defend her ties to Wall Street during last weekend’s Democratic debate. He lost 40 percent of his savings in individual retirement accounts during the Great Recession, while Mrs. Clinton has received millions of dollars from the kinds of executives he believes should be in jail.

“People knew what they were doing back then, because of greed, and it caused me harm,” said Mr. Wittneben, the Democratic chairman in Emmet County, Iowa. “We were raised a certain way here. Fairness is a big deal.”

The next day he endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders in the presidential race.

...In the primaries, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers privately concede that she will lose some votes over her Wall Street connections. They declined to share specific findings from internal polls, but predicted the issue could resonate in Democratic contests in Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and Michigan, where many have lost homes and businesses to bank foreclosures.

Mr. Sanders zeros in on Wall Street donations to Mrs. Clinton in an aggressive new television commercial that started running in Iowa and New Hampshire on Saturday: “The truth is, you can’t change a corrupt system by taking its money,” he warns.

One of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent supporters in Ohio, former State Senator Nina Turner, defected to Mr. Sanders this month in part, she said, because she felt he would be tougher on special interests. And some Democratic superdelegates, whose backing is crucial, said Mrs. Clinton’s ties to big banks, and her invocation of 9/11 to defend her ties to Wall Street at the Nov. 14 debate, only made them further question her independence from the financial industry.

...[O]thers said they were more concerned that Mrs. Clinton had not broken with Wall Street in a clear way, noting the lengths she went to at the debate to explain the relationship.

“She was waving the bloody shirt of 9/11 to defend herself, which we’re accustomed to seeing with demagogues on the right, and it just didn’t feel quite right,” said Kurt Meyer, a co-chairman of the Mitchell County Democrats in Iowa, who has not endorsed a candidate. “She connected two things, 9/11 and her ties to Wall Street, that I didn’t like her sewing together.”

Ms. Turner, the former Ohio lawmaker, said the blocks of foreclosed homes in Cleveland were a painful reminder that banks prioritize their own corporate interests. Mr. Sanders has been criticizing “the corrupt economy symbolized by Wall Street greed” for decades, she said.

“He shows righteous indignation and speaks for the common woman and man in saying they have a right to be outraged at Wall Street,” Ms. Turner said. “He doesn’t just talk the talk. He walks the talk.”

And Mrs. Clinton? “Her ties are her ties,” Ms. Turner said.

There's another letter I want to share tonight. This one was an open letter from a former congressional candidate in Arizona, Bob Lord. He published it under his own name this morning at Blog For Arizona.

Sinema hasn't endorsed Hillary or Bernie... or even Webb

An Open Letter to Kyrsten Sinema

Dear Kyrsten:

Slamming the door on Syrian refugees was the umpteenth cynical, self-serving vote you've cast. After working hard to help you in 2012, the previous such votes were disappointing.

This one was far worse.

As you know, my help included recruiting Syrian American friends to support you. They did so generously.

Is locking their friends and family members out of America your way of thanking them? It sure seems so.

Did you give them any thought when casting your vote? Did you consider asking them for their input? Did you not realize they have loved ones in Syria with shattered futures and lives are in peril, desperately hoping to join them here in America?

And you voted to dash those hopes? Really? For the pathetic reason that you feared the political repercussions of casting a less cowardly vote?

My friends trusted me in 2012 when I asked that they support you.

And now you’ve treated them with unfathomable cruelty and selfishness.

I’m mortified. I’ve apologized and they’ve forgiven me for this, but would they ever trust me again, as they did in 2012? I doubt it.

Your record, in my opinion, just crossed the line from cynical to unconscionable.

Your constituent,

Bob Lord

Last night a friend of mine went to a Nancy Pelosi DCCC event in Brentwood. She ran into corrupt conservative New Dem Pete Aguilar and asked why he voted against the Syrian refugees last week. He didn't say anything about policy considerations but explained, somewhat apologetically, that the people he represents in San Bernardino are too dumb to understand the issue. So, he reasoned, because of that his vote shouldn't be held against him. Besides, he said, if there is a vote on overriding a presidential veto, he'll switch. Pete Aguilar... not an actual Democrat-- a drugged-up, bankster-financed Steve Israel Democrat. And, of course Aguilar, like Steve Israel, endorsed Hillary; no worries there. One other thing about that DCCC event-- when pressed, Pelosi said her plan to regain the House majority back from the Republicans was-- Steve Israel and his messaging. Like I've been saying, the Democrats won't win back the House-- not this year, not next year, not in a decade-- as long as corrupt conservatives are running the show and being enabled by an increasingly enfeebled party leader.

Watch Tonight's Debate As A Battle Between A Miserably Failed Establishment And A Break With That Foul Ancien Régime

When the House passed, 343-86 a bill to repeal Glass-Steagall in the summer of 1999, only 69 Democrats, 16 Republicans and 1 Independent stood in opposition. The Independent, of course, was Bernie Sanders. Many Members who made that vote, which turned out to be so predictably catastrophic for the U.S. economy, are no longer in Congress. But many are. Tammy Baldwin (D-WA), like Bernie now in the Senate voted NO; so did now Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS). House Members at the time who are now senators who were too stupid-- or too stuffed on financial industry bribes-- to understand the cliff they were pushing the economy off were Roy Blunt (R-MO), Richard Burr (R-NC), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Rob Portman (R-OH), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Senate candidate Ted Strickland (D-OH), John Thune (R-SD), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Tom Udall (D-NM), David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), and Roger Wicker (R-MS). Speakers Hastert (R-IL), Boehner (R-OH) and, of course, Ryan (R-WI) all voted for it as well. Hillary Clinton was still First Lady when he husband signed the legislation but recently said she is opposed to bringing back the legislation, which her backers on Wall Street loathe with such vehemence.

I doubt it will come up in tonight's second Democratic Party presidential debate, which takes place at Drake University in Des Moines, a debate where even the timing was chosen by Hillary allies at the corrupt Wasserman Schultz-run DNC to hold down the viewership and offer Bernie as little exposure-- to a national audience that already knows Hillary-- as possible. Hillary's camp is eager to hammer home a feeling of inevitability, something that is doing well among voters who haven't engaged yet with an election a year away. ABC News reported yesterday that, though Hillary will have a terrible time winning a general election-- most Americans find her untrustwiorthy-- she's popular among Democrats. Voters are still getting to know Bernie but, unlike Hillary, more voters like him than dislike him. And among Democrats his favorables have risen since the summer from 36% to 54%-- while his unfavorables have stayed around the same. Her favorables and unfavorables among Democrats have been pretty stable, liked by 83%, disliked by 14%.

The one metric in a NY Times/CBS News poll released yesterday, that should be worrying for the Clinton people is that 30% of Democratic voters feel "very confident" that Bernie can help reduce the gap between rich and poor, while on 25% feel that way about Clinton. Democrats also tended to see that Hillary is far less likely than Bernie to say what she really thinks or believes rather than just spout what she thinks people want to hear. Another potential problem for her is that Democratic primary voters understand that special interests hold a much bigger sway over her than over Bernie.

Zephyr Teachout, CEO of government reform group, MAYDAY.USA, has urged Hillary to clean up her corruption problems before it's too late. It would help her immensely with progressives inside and outside the party if she were to:

• Announce and release a plan that lays out what she intends to accomplish on the Dark Money in politics issue in her first 100 days in office.

• Work to recruit a prominent champion on money-in-politics reform, such as U.S. Representative John Sarbanes who has already endorsed your campaign, as her surrogate on campaign finance.


• Incorporate her platform into your regular stump speech remarks.

• Give a prominent speech laying out her vision for a more balanced system and why she is committed to solving this challenge.

Democratic Party insiders-- not especially less craven or less corrupt than Republican Party insiders-- are completely in the bag for Hillary. Of the 712 Superdelegates-- a disgraceful scheme to tamp down the "excesses" of democracy by crooked, power-hungry careerists like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Steve Israel and Chuck Schumer-- 359 have pledged to vote for Clinton, whose campaign has been arm-twisting with shocking aggressiveness, while only 8 are pledged to vote for Bernie. At the end of the week, each campaign announced a high level endorsement. Hillary's was wretched arch-conservative Blue Dog-- anti-DREAM Act, anti-Choice, anti-LGBT and pro-NRA-- Joe Donnelly of Indiana, one of the worst Democrats in the Senate and very likely to lose his seat in 2018. A normal person would be embarrassed to be endorsed by someone like Donnelly. Bernie, on the other hand, was endorsed by a champion of equality, former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner, who backed away from supporting Hillary, saying she she appreciates Bernie's outspokenness on voting rights and wage issues.

Turner is taking leave from her high-level Ohio Democratic Party post to campaign for Sanders. She will be at Saturday night's debate in Iowa to cheer on the Vermont senator and will introduce him Monday at his rally at Cleveland State University... Turner is a prominent black leader in a key state. She is a terrific public speaker and no stranger to MSNBC's prime-time lineup. When she talks, people-- particularly progressive Democrats-- listen. She can be a very effective surrogate.

Turner is being denigrated and abused by the corporate careerists inside the Ohio Democratic Party, you know, the ones who have completely destroyed the party from the inside while advancing their own miserable careers. Like Turner, progressives nationwide are up against the self-serving Machine. Clinton is the lesser of evils compared to the Republicans. But the lesser of evils is still evil and since we looked at head to head match-ups between Bernie and the GOP field-- with him crushing the likely Republican nominee, Ted Cruz, by an astonishing 12 points... there really is no need to pick between two evils. We can pick the one good instead.


UPDATE: Glass-Steagall in Ohio

When Congress voted to repeal Glass-Steagall, Dennis Kucinich was still in Congress and, of course, he voted against repealing this vital consumer protection law. Sherrod Brown was still in the House then and he also voted against repeal. Interestingly, Ohio's two corrupt conservative Senate frontrunners, Republican Rob Portman and conservaDem Ted Strickland-- as well as current Ohio Governor John Kasich and ex-Speaker Boehner-- all voted to repeal Glass-Steagall. History has proven them horribly wrong, much to the detriment of ordinary working families across Ohio and the rest of the country. This morning the other candidate for the U.S. Senate, P.G. Sittenfeld, told us he would have stood with progressives like Sherrod Brown and Marcy Kaptur in favor of keeping Glass-Steagall and has plans for it when he's in the Senate. "The Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial banking from investment banking-- and repealing it not only helped precipitate the Great Recession, but also allowed reckless casino capitalists on Wall Street to gamble with our money at no risk to themselves. If they gambled and won, they got to keep the profits. But when they gambled and lost, they knew the taxpayers were there to bail them out. This system of privatizing profits but socializing risk cost Main Street billions. If we don't want to see what happened before happen again, we need to reinstate Glass-Steagall. And in the Senate, I'll be proud to stand with Elizabeth Warren and other consumer advocates in fighting to make that happen."