Has Trump Gone To War Against An American City? Does He Have Storm Troopers Gassing Peaceful Protesters? The Most Repulsive Reelection Stunt Ever Pulled

The Psychedelic Furs were always ahead of their time. The song above, lead track on the Forever Now album, was written and recorded almost four decades ago!

You have to have a party
When you're in a state like this
You can really move it all
You have to vote and change
You have to get right out of it
Like out of all this mess
You'll say yeah to anything
If you believe all this but
Don't cry, don't do anything
No lies, back in the government
No tears, party time is here again
President gas is up for president
Line up, put your kisses down
Say yeah, say yes again
Stand up, there's a head count
President gas on everything but roller skates
It's sick the price of medicine
Stand up, we'll put you on your feet again
Open up your eyes
Just to check that your asleep again
President gas is president gas again
He comes in from the left sometimes
He comes in from the right
It's so heavily advertised that he wants you and I
It's a real cowboy set, electric company
Every day is happy days
It's hell without the sin, but
Don't cry, don't do anything
No lies, back in the government
No tears, party time is here again
President gas is up for president
Line up, put your kisses down
Say yeah, say yes again
Stand up, there's a head count
President gas on everything but roller skates
It's sick the price of medicine
Stand up, we'll put you on your feet again
Open up your eyes just to check that your asleep again
President gas is president gas again
President gas
Oh, president gas
Whoa, president gas
Oh, president gas
Whoa, president gas
Oh, president gas
Whoa, president gas

On Saturday evening L.A. Times reporter Richard Read noted that "Undeterred by civil rights lawsuits and pleas from local officials to stand down, federal agents in camouflage have continued their crackdown against demonstrators in Portland, Ore., into the weekend, launching impact explosives and tear gas late Friday at downtown protesters shouting, 'Go home.' Since early in the week, agents dispatched by the Trump administration, some in unmarked vehicles, have confronted and detained activists, according to Oregon state officials, charging at least 13 with crimes related to demonstrations. One protester was hospitalized with skull fractures July 11 after a federal agent shot him in the face with a projectile. By the administration’s move to make Portland an example in a national 'law and order' initiative just months before the presidential election, the conduct of federal forces here has accomplished what weeks of strife between protesters and Oregon officials had failed to do-- uniting them, at least momentarily, in common cause."

“Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening,” state Atty. Gen. Ellen Rosenblum said in a statement. “If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere.”

Rosenblum on Friday sought an injunction against federal law enforcement agencies, accusing them of seizing protesters without probable cause, pulling activists into unmarked vehicles and detaining and questioning them without basis for arrests. She said agents in Portland wore no identifying information other than the label “police” on their military fatigues.

...Trump is doing this because it plays well with the right-wing media and his political base," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said in an interview Friday. "If Trump thinks he can get away with this in the Pacific Northwest, he’s going to try this elsewhere.”

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch dubbed the Trump-provoked violence in Portland Trump’s made-for-TV fascism and predicted it won't get him reelected. "As protests in Portland over police brutality and racial inequity near the end of a second month," wrote Bunch, "these heavily camouflaged, helmeted and anonymous agents have routinely fired tear gas-- even though courts have mostly banned local police from deploying it-- and projectiles at protesters near a federal building in Oregon’s largest city. And-- as captured in video or described by victims-- these agents even snatched peaceful protesters off Portland sidewalks, shoved them into unmarked vans and took them for questioning without identifying themselves or their agency. These are the kind of Kafkaesque, police-state tactics that most civilized folks hoped had gone the way of Chile’s late authoritarian (and U.S.-installed) 20th-century dictator Augusto Pinochet, only to return for the increasingly desperate and dangerous final days of Trump’s disastrous presidency and America’s descent into madness and chaos."

These hazy, tear-gas-soaked nights in the Pacific Northwest have been five years in the making-- the inevitable climax of a story line that began on a morning in June 2015 when Trump descended a gilded escalator to start building a movement of right-wing rabble with hate speech against Mexicans. You were warned in the early days of his presidency, when Trump made good on his promise to the white-supremacist unions of cops and federal border and immigration agents to “take the shackles off,” cheering on police brutality while setting the stage for agents to show up at schools and courthouses and disappear undocumented immigrants with deep roots in their communities. Those who said nothing or uttered toothless platitudes at these tactics, or the agents ripping toddlers from the arms of their parents at the Mexican border, shouldn’t be shocked by now seeing Gestapo tactics in the streets of Portland.





Indeed, Trump’s inexorable frog-in-boiling-water push toward full-on authoritarianism has been so successful that almost no attention was paid on July 1, when the government announced a program with the Orwellian name of Protecting American Communities Task Force, or PACT (apparently the “F” is silent), which had the started goal of protecting statue and monuments. But PACT’s real open-ended and ill-defined mission seems to be escalating conflict in a handful of cities, like Portland, with the most-active far-left communities.

PACT is comprised of officers from an array of agencies including U.S. Customs and Border Protection (yes, even though the Canadian border is 285 long miles away)-- whose union Twitter feed is a steady stream of pro-Trump propaganda, including diatribes against “the Radical Left”-- as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Marshals Service. Under the leadership of Wolf-- a presidential lapdog who wields the powerful hammer of Homeland Security even though he’s only been confirmed as an undersecretary-- this is a “dream team” for a Trumpian secret police.

And there’s a very real chance that Pinochet-style federal policing may be coming to your hometown very soon. Acting Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli (also not Senate confirmed) told NPR on Friday that “this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we’re responsible for around the country.”

Chad Wolf set the template for these unwelcome-- literally no major government official in Oregon has asked for this intervention and most have pleaded for the federales to go home-- mini-invasions when he showed up in Portland on Thursday, snubbed elected leaders but met with the head of Portland’s police union, and posted a picture on Twitter of himself rallying the troops, whoever these troops actually are. “Our men and women in uniform are patriots. We will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch,” Wolf tweeted-- trying to make it sound like his camouflaged crusaders were ready to storm Omaha Beach rather than fire rubber bullets at graffiti vandals armed with chalk.

Has Trump offered him a preemptive pardon? Why doesn't the Senate act?

Wolf’s renegade Homeless Security army is tragic vindication for those of who’ve been warning since the early 2000s that the extensive security apparatus that America created after 9/11-- from that ominous too-1930s-Germanic sounding moniker of “Homeland Security” to the level of militarized policing unavoidable seen since George Floyd’s murder-- would be turned against U.S. citizens, especially if America ever elected a president with an authoritarian streak.

For now, though, Trump’s 21st Century fascism is mostly a political performance. Unable to run on his leadership or his record, with a mounting coronavirus death toll that just passed 140,000 and 11 percent unemployment that may get worse again before it gets better, the president is hoping to save his presidency with fear. But his desperate and misguided efforts to recreate Richard Nixon’s 1968 “law and order” campaign and somehow scare voters about Joe Biden won’t work unless he can bring nightly scenes of disorder and chaos into your living room.

...Yes, it’s more than a little ironic that all of this is unfolding on the very weekend that the greatest living American in the arena of civil rights, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, died at age 80 (and that we also lost another champion of democracy, the Rev. C.T. Vivian). Lewis had a complicated relationship with the type of left-wing activists leading the current protests in Portland but there’s no doubt that the late congressman-- famously beaten by both angry mobs during 1961′s Freedom Rides and by Alabama troopers near the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma four years later-- would have been appalled at the government’s brutal crackdown on any form of dissent there.

“We are tired of being beaten by policemen,” Lewis said in his address to the 1963 March on Washington. “We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again. ... I appeal to all of you to get into this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete.”

The air has been filled all weekend with political platitudes about Lewis, many of them from hypocrites who’ve devoted their political careers to fighting everything he stood for, from voting rights to basic human rights. There is so much work left undone to honor the legacy of this great man, but a simple start would be to get Trump’s tin soldiers out of Portland, today if possible.

When It Comes To Disastrous Trade Policies, Biden, Beto, Delaney, McTurtle Are On One Side, While Bernie Has Been Fighting On The Other Side-- Our Side-- For His Whole Life

Last Friday, former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau interviewed Marianne Williamson on his podcast, Pod Save America. Among other things, Marianne told him that "there are two kinds of Democrats, aren’t there? And that’s being played out in this campaign. There are two categories here. The two categories is the incrementalist who say we can have it both ways. We can take [corporate] money. We can take tens of thousands from some security investment firms. We can take tens of thousand from Big Pharma. We can take tens or even more thousands from oil companies, but we’re going to go and be an instrument of change. Yeah, right. There’s that, and they’re saying well, we’ll make these incremental changes and then there are those of us who say this has got to stop. We need a fundamental pattern disruption of the American political and economic status quo."

A fundamental pattern disruption isn't something you could have a serious talk with candidates like Delaney, Biden or Frackenlooper about. That's not what they're aiming for. Each would like to hold onto a status quo that has worked well for them-- but get it a little better... a very little better. That's why the 3 of them oppose Medicare-For-All and the Green New Deal, for example. It's why the three of them would have opposed the American Revolution and might have suggested that the tax on tea be reduced and that the colonies have a voting member or two sitting in Parliament. And Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto, Kirsten Gillibrand, McKinsey Pete, Amy Klobuchar, Tim Ryan... you don't think any of them are agents of change, do you? Fundamental pattern disruptors? No.

Last week, Common Dreams published a piece by Thom Hartmann, If Democrats Want to Beat Trump, They Better Not Nominate a ‘Free Trade’ Candidate, warning that nominating a candidate like Biden-- let alone dreck like Delaney or Hickenlooper-- would lead to catastrophe. He reminded his readers that when establishment Democrat, Walter Mondale "was nominated by the Democratic Party to take on Ronald Reagan in 1984, he uttered, in his acceptance speech, a single line that did more than anything else that year to lose him the election. He said, 'Mr. Reagan will raise taxes and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.'"

The Republicans turned it into a campaign ad, and it played over and again, dragging Mondale so far down that he lost every state in the country except his home state of Minnesota.

What Mondale said was true, and Reagan did raise taxes on working people-- eleven times-- but that was still the moment when Mondale signed his own political death warrant. Americans had been bitten badly in the previous decade by inflation and the Reagan Recession, and were in no mood to give more of their hard-earned money to the government or anybody else.

In 2020, trade will be as potent an issue as taxes were in 1984.

This election cycle, it’s starting to look like Democrats are about to make the same mistake of not defending the paychecks of working people. Only this time, the Democratic quote will be, “Trump won’t succeed in bringing home your jobs, but neither will I because I support all of the trade agreements that took your jobs in the first place.”

Again, Status Quo Joe Biden, Frackenlooper, Delaney are all for the kinds of horrendous free trade deals that have been so destructive. And they're not the only ones. In 2015, the Senate passed the Trade Act of 2015, which included Trade Promotion Authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 48 Republicans and 14 Democrats. Among the current candidates for president, Michael Bennet voted yes and Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand voted no. It passed the House very narrowly-- 219-211-- with 191 Republicans and 28 Democrats voting for it. Delaney and Beto voted yes. Swalwell, Ryan, Tulsi and Moulton voted against it. There was another vote-- which failed-- on TAA, for which just 40 corporate Dems, lead by Hoyer, voted. The culprits included the two ardent "free" traders running for president today who were in the House then, Delaney and Bonnie Beto. biden, of course, has been for almost every bad trade bill ever written, especially favored nation status for China, NAFTA and TPP.

Hartmann concluded by writing that "Progressive Democrats have been pushing for a return to Jefferson-until-Carter protectionist policies ever since Bill Clinton split apart the party over the issue with his advocacy of NAFTA in the 1992 election. If the Democrats want to beat Trump, they need to get with the progressives’ trade program in a big, strong, and fast way. Democrats must point out that Trump is doing protectionism wrong because he’s doing his tariffs by executive order, which only last as long as his administration does; no company is going to build a factory based on that thin assurance. (And the anti-tariff Republican Party will never pass such a policy; Trump is screwed in that regard.) Congress should be negotiating our trade agreements in the open and passing them as solid, long-lasting legislation, so companies have multi-decade horizons of tariff protections; Democrats need to return the party to its past mission of putting American workers and the environment first. But if the Democrats promote 'free trade' in 2020, get ready for four more years of Donald Trump gloating at us all from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 'I’m for free trade,' if it becomes the party’s mantra, will be the 2020 version of Mondale’s 'I’m going to raise your taxes.'"

Meanwhile, there's another piece to fundamental pattern disruption that we need to keep foremost in our minds this cycle-- Congress. Electing more New Dems and more Blue Dogs, like electing more Republicans, makes things worse, not better. We've talked endlessly about how Cheri Bustos, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi are fighting like mad dogs to protect Dan Lipinski who is anti-immigrant, anti-Choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-worker and pro-NRA. That's your Democratic Establishment. Don't trust them, don't believe them, don't support them and don't give them any money. A contribution to someone like Dan Lipinski is going to do you as much good as a contribution to McTurtle would. Which reminds me... On Sunday, Will Bunch penned an important McTurtle piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mitch McConnell’s Democracy-Crushing Smirk Is Why Just Getting Rid Of Trump Isn’t Enough. Biden never talks about why getting rid of Trump isn't enough-- because it might make someone wonder what he stands for-- but both Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are basing their campaigns on it.

What Bunch was writing about is completely in line with hat Blue America is all about. "It’s pointless to ask 'why' about Mitch McConnell," he wrote. "The only question that matters going into 2020 is 'how'-- How can McConnell be stopped? In the long term, his rise and his unholy reign pose hard questions about the very nature of American democracy and its foundation-- whether the constitutional checks and balances of a Senate that gives citizens in Wyoming so much more power than their fellow Americans in California makes sense in today’s world. But McConnell’s assault on democracy can also be stopped in the short run. For starters, the Senate majority leader is up for reelection in 2020, and even if you don’t live or vote in Kentucky, any American can donate or volunteer to help his election opponents. But even if that falls short, Democrats can end McConnell’s reign as leader-- and make sure he’s not thwarting the replacements for aging Supreme Court justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer-- with a net gain of three or four Senate seats."

For anyone who cares about keeping liberty alive, beating McConnell next year is every bit as important as beating Trump. That’s why it’s so frustrating that the elites of the Democratic Party don’t seem to get it. Rather than making a reclamation of the Senate the national moral crusade that it needs to be, the allure of the Trumpian reality show has sucked the top tier of potential candidates-- Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro of Texas, Steve Bullock of Montana and Stacey Abrams of Georgia-- into the presidential race or related pursuits. Vanity and shortsightedness could leave a President Warren or Harris or Biden one vote short in 2021 of the progress that their voters demanded.

The only good news is that the 2020 general election is still 16 months away-- plenty of time for the Democrats and concerned voters to shift gears, make the Senate a priority, keep liberty alive... and wipe the smirk off Mitch McConnell’s face.

There Are Different Kinds Of Democrats-- Some Are Appreciated, And Paid, By The Koch Bros

In a post entitled How Many Democrats Are The Koch Brothers Backing in November? for IVN this week, W. E. Messamore asserts that the Kochs and their appendages are "staunchly anti-war... and support gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose." Yet they-- or their money-- were key in electing an unchecked war-mongering, homophobic, anti- Choice government. Messamore also points out that they support some Democratic candidates "if they hear from any who speak their language." What language is that? The Kochs want what they call "pro growth federal policies such as sound fiscal policies and deregulating the financial industry." Does that mean climate catastrophe and large scale financial fraud are "pro-growth?" Well, there are some Democrats in one of both of those camps. The Democrats, after all, don't have a massive and growing Republican wing for nothing.

A Koch-financed ad that ran in North Dakota a couple of months ago, thanked right-of-center Democrap Heidi Heitkamp "for her leadership role in working on the Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act." So far this year, the Kochs have given a direct cash contribution to just one Democrap: Collin Peterson, who votes more frequently on crucial roll calls with the GOP than with the Democrats. "He’s a fiscal conservative," understates Messamore, "who supports tax cuts and the FairTax (a national sales tax plan to replace the income tax), so it’s no wonder that Koch Industries likes him." You gotta love this reactionary tax policies that take from the poor to give to the rich!

The Kochs are doing ads for right-of-center Democraps Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM), Raul Ruiz (New Dem-CA) and Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA). Oh, yeah... and Pelosi's DCCC chair Ben Ray Luján (NM).

Yesterday, Will Bunch wrote a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer about a Democratic Party fractured into 3 wings. "There is," he wrote "a huge disconnect within the Democratic Party right now-- a rift that was critical to 2016's shock election of President Trump. The re-emergence of the one modern Democrat who could glue many of these broken pieces together-- Barack Obama, who brings his energetic push for the party's 2018 candidates to Philadelphia on Friday-- and a looming midterm election in which anger over an autocratic president can be channeled into state and local races are likely to paper over this Democratic family feud… for now."

But when voters wake up on November 7, they'll hear the gong to start the sure-to-be-insane national election of 2020, with as many as 20 or more candidates from delusional billionaires to congressmen you've never heard of prepared to yank hard on every gaping fault line within the party of Andrew Jackson, FDR and JFK. Those cleavages could give Trump a second term in much the same unlikely way that he won his first one. And yet when you put your ear to the ground and listen to the Democratic rumblings, the various sides still don't understand each other, or even know how to talk to each other without yelling.

Here's a quick field guide to the three Democrats you meet on Twitter, or in the voting booth… or sitting on their couch when they should be voting:

The Bernie Sanders Democrat

@IronStache

The Bernie Sanders Democrat very often doesn't even call himself or herself a Democrat, preferring terms like progressive or democratic socialist or, increasingly, registering as an independent, as Sanders himself does. Although you find them everywhere, this species of left-of-center voter predominates among the under-30 electorate, in cities and especially in gentrifying neighborhoods; it tends to be somewhat more male than female. Animated by the holy trinity of Medicare-for-all, free college and the $15 minimum wage, they are leftists who may engage in Democratic politics but spend most of their time complaining about Democrats, or at least Democratic elites, as too tied to big corporations and big donors and too happy to bend over for Wall Street.

The Hillary Clinton Democrat

Hillary

The Hillary Clinton Democrat, a cohort that is overwhelmingly female, tending to be white, suburban, and middle or even upper-middle-class, often with a college degree. Some of them even voted Republican back in the 1980s or '90s for the low taxes-- but started drifting away after Anita Hill in 1991 or as they saw the GOP get more Southern and then more crazy. These voters felt existential shock and despair when they saw America (technically, the Electoral College) reject a qualified woman-- whose life struggles mirrored their own-- in favor of a man whose non-stop lying and admission of sexual assault was now their worst nightmare in the Oval Office. Their profound sense that the world has betrayed them has made them the backbone of the so-called Trump Resistance.

The John Lewis Democrat

Andrew

The John Lewis Democrat, in honor of the 1960s civil-rights icon still in Congress, although you could also call them Andrew Cuomo Democrats or Dianne Feinstein Democrats, since their votes tend to keep these establishment figures in power, despite the derision from the far left. Tending to be older and often (but not exclusively) non-white, this group reflects the growing conventional wisdom that the real base of the Democratic Party is older, church-going African-American women. These are the Democrats who-- quite unlike the Bernie Sanders crowd-- are proud to identify as Democrats, having grown up revering tales of FDR or JFK. They tend to prefer politicians who can cut deals and win resources for their communities over those with lofty but impractical ideas. And they cherish their right to vote and show up at the polls religiously, which is what gives them such outsized influence.

So which of these groups do you think the Koch-Democrats come from? Hint, not the first category, that's for sure. And which wing do these congressional members belong to? Personally, I only look at the Democratic Party as two wings-- the Democratic wing, generally about accomplishing progressive goals for working families, and the Republican wing, generally corrupt careerists who don't real believe in much of anything. 

Which Candidates Dare To Say IMPEACHMENT?

Some congressional candidates campaign explicitly on impeaching Trump. The DCCC advises against that. Kaniela Ing, for example, warns Democrats at the top of his issues page that "It's not enough to simply resist Donald Trump. People are struggling and feeling left behind. Leaders must offer hope and progress beyond resistance." He then goes on to offer 30 bold planks he's running on, from Medicare-For-All, expanding Social Security, Affordable Housing, Tuition-free college, and 100% Renewable Energy by 2035 to Job Guarantee and Net Neutrality. #30, though calls for Trump's impeachment:

Donald Trump is an affront to the values we hold dear in Hawaii. We're pulling America back from the past, when we should be looking to the future. Kaniela will‍‍‍ champion the impeachment of Donald Trump, so we can focus on progress beyond resistance (see above). In Congress, Kaniela will be an ambassador of‍‍ tolerance, diversity, and aloha.

Ing, though, is an exception. Even among candidates who are eager to vote to begin the impeachment process, few want to put it on their websites.

I spoke with a couple dozen members of Congress and candidates for Congress about impeachment. Basically nearly all of them said they'd rather not talk about it. Like Kaniela, Alan Grayson (D-FL) was another exception: "On May 9, 2017, Donald Trump fired the Director of the FBI because of 'the Russia thing,' as clear a confession to obstruction of justice as you will ever see. On May 10, 2017, Trump met with the Russian Ambassador and Foreign Minister, in the Oval Office, and gave them 'code word' classified information (meaning higher than “Top Secret”) that we don’t even provide to our allies, which is the crime of espionage under Chapter 37 of the US Criminal Code. And that’s just two days during the Trump Regime. What, exactly, does Trump have to do to get impeached? Does he have to (to use his own words) 'stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody?'"

Levi Tillemann is running for a suburban Denver congressional seat held by GOP lapdog, Mike Coffman. The DCCC has another worthless lapdog they want to slip into the seat-- Jason Crow. One thing is sure, the progressive in the race, Levi Tillemann is nobody's lapdog. Early this morning he told us quite definitively that "Trumpism is fascism; and many seem to believe that our institutions will protect us from it. Unfortunately, that's not how it works: it's up to us to protect our institutions from fascism. On that count, and many others, Congress' failure to impeach Trump is an abject failure."

 Another candidate with the guts to talk about the impeachment issue publicly? Well, of course... Randy Bryce, @IronStache: "If Paul Ryan did his job as Speaker of the House as opposed to Speaker of the White House he’d realize that Congress is part of our checks and balances, not an exclusive gym membership. With real leadership a question of impeachment wouldn’t be an issue-- Trump would have been made aware long ago that we fought a war in order to free ourselves from a monarch then set up a government to keep us from turning into one. Trump has made a mockery of the office of President. I’m already on record as being supportive of impeaching Trump. Recent events (his personal lawyer’s office being searched by the FBI) have done nothing to change my mind. (For a start let’s look at Republican thought while pursuing an impeachment of Bill Clinton.)"

Yesterday Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch asked, provocatively, What's a guy gotta do to get impeached in Trump's out-of-control America? "We often say that the Founding Fathers who gathered here in Philadelphia to draft the U.S. Constitution way back in 1787," he wrote, "never could have anticipated our modern world of AR-15s and Cambridge Analytica. But they actually were spot on when it came to anticipating the sleazeball tactics of the Trump Organization and its owner who currently sits in the Oval Office. The Emoluments Clause of the Constitution spelled out in plain Olde English that presidents are barred from profiting in their dealings with foreign powers. Trump’s refusal to divest his global business interests while making life-or-death foreign policy decisions is a clear-cut case of the short-fingered vulgarian in the White House once again flipping the bird to constitutional law and democratic principles.

And the legislative branch of government is either too cowardly or too bought off to do anything about this-- which is probably exactly what President Trump expected would happen. The parameters of time and space don’t allow me to list all the various transgressions that have occurred since the 45th president took the oath on Jan. 20, 2017. To be sure, a lot of it-- from the vulgarity of his Twitter feed, which has worn out even Trump’s die-hard supporters, to the policies that scar our environment just when climate change is becoming an existential threat-- is simply very bad presidenting that’s not criminal, where the most effective punishment will come at the ballot box.

But other acts-- most notably, the blatant conflict-of-interest between his presidency and his high-profile business empire, and the powerful case for a campaign of obstruction of justice and abuse of power aimed at shutting down the criminal probe into possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 election-- scream out for a serious U.S. House investigation into Trump’s “high crimes” or “misdemeanors.”

Pause for a moment and consider Trump in the context of what Congress has considered an impeachable offense during my lifetime. Richard Nixon faced certain impeachment, and thus resigned, for interfering with the FBI probe into the crimes of Watergate-- which is exactly what Trump has done in the firing of former FBI chief James Comey and a host of related actions. Bill Clinton was impeached-- fairly or not-- for lying to the public (and in legal proceedings) about his extramarital affair, and the evidence that Trump also lied publicly in a nearly identical fashion is mounting.

Yet in 2018, with the most dangerous U.S. president in our history with his stubby fingers on the nuclear football, impeachment has suddenly become the political act that dare not speak its name.

Just this week, the New York Times came down from the mountaintop bearing tablets that impeachment-- an idea which so far has animated the so-called Trump resistance to become the nation’s most potent political force, defeating pro-Trump Republicans in special elections from Alabama to Oklahoma-- is a suicide pact for the Democratic Party. Wrote the Paper of Record: “Many top (Democratic) officials in the capital fear it is a political trap that would distract from their core message and possibly even boomerang to harm them in November”-- mainly by animating GOP voters to rise up and defend Trump from this supposed lynch mob. Democratic political guru David Axelrod-- a really smart guy who helped Barack Obama become president in 2008-- buys into this.

As much as I respect Axelrod, I have to respectfully disagree on this. The American people, and our elected representatives, are at a dangerous crossroads right now. We need to own up-- and own up quickly-- to the reality that Donald Trump isn’t just a normally bad president, but a clear and president danger to the experiment in republican democracy that was launched in Philadelphia nearly 242 years ago.

The risk we face is not in normalizing impeachment, which is the tool that the Founding Fathers created to deal with the threat posed by the kind of president that they feared-- and that Donald Trump has become. The real hazard is normalizing Trump’s conduct over the last 15 months-- profiting off the presidency, interfering with an independent system of criminal justice, governing in opposition to a free press and other constitutionally guaranteed liberties, and violating human rights through mass deportations engineered by an agency, ICE, that is becoming a secret police force.

Look around the world, and you’ll see that autocracy is rising all over the map-- in Turkey, China, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Hungary and Poland, to name just a few. We’ve been here before-- in the 1920s and ’30s, when a string of once-great nations succumbed to fascism, but America elected a small-d democrat in Franklin Roosevelt who rebuilt a prosperous nation with strong but constitutional methods. Today, Trump is the anti-FDR-- a beacon to the world’s new generation of dictators, not a foe. As citizens, we and our representatives can watch this nightmare unfold over the next 33 months with our thoughts and prayers that it will somehow end well. Or we can take affirmative action.

We don’t need to elect a Congress that will slam-dunk guarantee Trump’s impeachment. What we do desperately need, though, are House members who will vote next January to begin a bipartisan impeachment probe with public hearings-- modeled after the way that Congress got it right with Richard Nixon in 1973-74-- leading to a fair vote on the evidence.

The scary part is that this might come too late. The worst thing about Monday’s unhinged rant by Trump against special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia probe is that it happened right before a cabinet meeting where an angry, boxed-in and probably scared president was going to be deciding on U.S. military action in the tinderbox of Syria that has all the elements-- including the involvement of Russia, Iran, Israel, etc.-- that could trigger a global war. The Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, gave us a tool to ensure these decisions aren’t made by a morally compromised president.

What are we waiting for?

Let's end this with a full essay on impeachment that Tom Guild wrote for us last night. Tom is the progressive Democrat running for Congress from the long-time Republican-held district in the Oklahoma City metro.What rewrote is similar to what almost all the Blue America candidates told me:

Donald Trump is America’s nightmare. He regularly prevaricates. He often runs rough shod over important American institutions, like an independent judiciary, that is directed by a moral and ethical compass to do what is right, not what is expedient or dictated by partisan political pressures. Mr. Trump openly hawks his wares, like Trump properties, to line his pockets. Don, Jr., Jared, Ivanka, and other members of the Trump family follow this example on a regular basis.

Trump is a bully. He bullies federal judges, special prosecutors, members of and sometimes entire minority communities, Congresspersons, and others who disagree with his narrow and warped view of the world. He behaves erratically and we can only imagine what a nightmare it must have been for others to share a sandbox with a young Donald during recess.

Donald is crude, vulgar, profane, and a committed and practiced egomaniac. He demands loyalty from others and then as a reward fires them with a cruel tweet, without remorse, and then moves on to the next victim. His paranoid glands are working overtime, and even though paranoid people have enemies, his twisted conspiratorial worldview always entitles him to claim victimhood status.

He runs through cabinet secretaries, aides, assistants, and other federal underlings like used underwear. He is mean, vicious, rude, overbearing, and refuses to do the hard work of informing himself on important issues. As a result, he is incapable of weighing competing facts (he’s into alternative facts) and interests. His megalomania makes it nearly impossible for him to consider the needs of others or to show them compassion or empathy or to put their needs or our country’s needs above his own.

He’s skating on thin ice and approaching the point of no return. Impeachment? If he fires Deputy FBI Director Rod Rosenstein or Special Counselor Bob Mueller, all political hell will break loose. Either act would further inflame the American people and force the issue of impeachment on the Profiles in Cowardice Crew who currently control many seats in Congress.

How would I cast my vote in considering articles of impeachment? I feel deep in my soul that I would do the right thing for the right reasons. Despite my profound disappointment and distaste with and for Mr. Trump and his coarse and harsh persona, I would be fair to him and try to dispassionately dispense justice. My ultimate consideration would be the public interest, justice, and safeguarding our American republic while preserving our great constitutional values and traditions. I’m certain my decision would be well considered, thoughtful, and based on facts and the rule of law. The ice is cracking under Donald’s feet. Is it too late? The clock is very close to striking midnight...

If Lamb Wins Tomorrow, The DC Dems Will Walk Away With The Wrong Lesson... As Usual

Tomorrow is election day in PA-18-- an election in a dismal district that will cease to exist immediately after the votes are counted. Whomever wins-- a shit Democrat (Conor Lamb) or a shit Republican (Rick Saccone)-- will have to run in a different district in November... and PA-18 is divided between a really red district for Saccone and a competitive district leaning blue either for Lamb or, hopefully, a better Democrat. Lamb is a Blue Dog who defines what it means to be a political coward. There's no enthusiasm for him and if he wins it will be only because voters hate Trump and want to let him know. I've been writing about that for weeks. Turns out, Republicans are as unhappy with Saccone as Democrats are with Lamb. Even Trumpanzee realizes how bad Saccone sucks. Trump thinks Saccone is is a terrible, "weak" candidate and Republican leaders have been bellyaching ever since it looked that Saccone could lose that "Lamb is a far superior candidate to Saccone and running a far better campaign. Lamb is running effectively as Republican Lite. He's pro-gun and says he personally opposes to abortion (though he supports abortion rights). The thing that most irks senior Republicans involved in the race: Saccone has been a lousy fundraiser. Lamb has outraised Saccone by a staggering margin-- nearly 500 percent... Should Saccone lose, Republicans will be quick to describe his loss as meaningless and will argue it's not a bellwether for November's elections. They'll say he was a terrible candidate and that his loss should be a wake-up call to other Republican candidates who may be getting lazy about their fundraising."

This weekend, an editorial in the Washington Observer-Reporter bemoaned the lack of bipartisanship and saw that GOP-liteness in Lamb and endorsed him.

[E]ither candidate would probably be able and competent when it comes to representing the 18th Congressional District. But we believe one of the two candidates would be better positioned to be the kind of moderate, conciliatory figure that is needed in this tempestuous moment in our political life, and that is Conor Lamb.

And they like him for the very reasons most Democrats are unenthusiastic: he "has refrained from full-frontal attacks on Trump" and he backs fracking. Across the state, the Philadelphia Inquirer offers a more in-depth look at Lamb's shortcomings from a columnist who used to live in PA-18 and write for the same Washington Observer-Reporter, Will Bunch. He referred to Trump's imbecilic foray into the district Saturday as "a desperate, 11th-hour bid to prop up sagging GOP congressional candidate Rick Saccone and described Trump's speech as "racist and misogynistic, autocratic bordering on fascism," a "freestyle egomaniacal monologue."

He worked there in the early '80s and he remembers "trying to figure out why schools were closed and public officials all vanished on December 1 (it was the first day of deer season!)."

Some 35 years of additional oxidation later, it’s a place seemingly tailor-made for a candidate like Lamb-- smart, good-looking and with an impeccable resume that includes stints as an attorney for the Marines and a federal prosecutor. Handpicked for the special election by local Democratic bosses, which meant he didn’t have to face a primary electorate that has been moving left, even in the Rust Belt, Lamb seems to bring everything you’d want in Deer Hunter country.

Except enthusiasm.

I was struck reading my colleague Jonathan Tamari’s recent reporting from the district, where Democratic and middle-of-the-road voters seem truly energized… about sending Trump a one-fingered salute. Conor Lamb? Meh. Wrote Tamari: “Outside Lamb’s rally with Biden at Robert Morris University, several Democrats said they wished Lamb was closer to their views on guns, abortion, and wealth disparity. But even those who described themselves as liberal still wore Lamb campaign pins, saying he gave them the best shot to win here-- and send a message to Trump.” Typical was voter Evelyn Harris, who told the Inquirer reporter that Lamb is “not as far left as I’d like.”

These are the voters who deliver special elections, and they may do so on Tuesday because of antipathy for Trump, not because of any love for Lamb. And there’s a lot for the Democratic base and voters on the left not to like about their special-election candidate. Although ostensibly pro-union, Lamb won’t support a $15 living wage. His attacks on fellow Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are more than a tad awkward in this season of #MeToo politics. But then, Lamb goes out of his way to not mention that he’s a Democrat, or discuss any policy at all other than he’s for “working people.”

While there’s no dispute that Western Pennsylvania leans right on guns, Lamb’s passion for weaponry-- he filmed a campaign spot firing an AR-15-- is shameful in a political moment dominated by the Parkland massacre. Hours after a teen gunman mowed down 17 people in the corridors of that Florida high school, Lamb (who mildly supports stronger background checks and thus sits a tad left of his fellow gun zealot Saccone) said, “I believe we have a pretty good law on the books.” Since Parkland, Florida’s NRA-backed Gov. Rick Scott has shown more gumption on guns than Lamb. Let that sink in. Sometimes firing an assault rifle for the camera isn’t a mark of political courage but cowardice.

That said, the Tea Party-backed Saccone, a Trump acolyte, would be measurably worse than Lamb. Still, one senses-- given rising rage toward Trump, his abusive governing style and his trail of broken promises-- that Democrats would vote for Being There‘s slow-witted Chauncey Gardiner if they believed it would deliver a blow to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The numbers bear that out. In a slew of special elections since the start of 2017, Democrats have shown the greatest gains in areas that went for Trump-- regardless of the candidate.

The thing is, a Lamb victory on Tuesday might give Democrats exactly the wrong lesson-- that all they need to do is fire a few rounds from their semi-automatic and mansplain Pelosi and they can buy a one-way ticket to Reagan National-- going into the wider 2018 midterms. What has really explained the rising fortunes of Democrats, including special-election wins in red states and gains in places like Virginia? A new study by two top political scientists has found one giant X-factor-- the surge in energy from mostly suburban women, especially in the 30-70 age bracket.

“The new upsurge is not centered in the progressive urban enclaves where most national pundits live; nor is it to be found among the grizzled men in coal country diners where journalists escape to get out of the bubble,” write Lara Putnam and Theda Skocpol in the journal Democracy. “Neither of those poles looks much like most of America anyway. About half the country lives in the suburbs, twice the number who live in either fully urban or rural settings. More than half of Americans are also women-- and of those, half are in their thirties to sixties. It is in this Middle America, and among these Middle Americans, that political developments since the November 2016 election have moved fastest and farthest.”

Putnam, who teaches not far from PA-18 at the University of Pittsburgh, adds that she “has come to believe there is an epochal ‘generation’ in the making: a cohort of Americans for whom life-cycle stage and personal trajectory collided with public events-- the election of Donald Trump; the Women’s Marches and calls to action that followed-- in ways that changed life after life in very similar, and very consequential, directions.” Needless to say, Conor Lamb, his AR-15, or other Democrats who wish to imitate him don’t do a lot to move these voters. This isn’t the only way forward; another new study published in the Times last weekend urged the Democrats to push to regain a few million young and mostly nonwhite Obama voters who failed to show up at the pols in 2016; that wouldn’t mean so much in predominantly white PA-18, but it could sway key Senate races from Texas to Ohio. That, and tapping into the energy of angry, anti-Trump women. Playing for the God, guns and gold crowd that went ga-ga for Trump in 2016 seems a much lower priority-- especially when it might drive away the first two groups.

But if the past is prologue, Beltway Democrats are going to get the wrong message from whatever happens on Tuesday. The worst plan for moving past the Trump nightmare would surely be to lead a flock of “Lambs” into November, some of whom will surely be slaughtered at the polls.

The brand new Monmouth poll-- certainly the last poll we'll see before the exit polls tomorrow-- came out this morning. Looks like pretty bad news for Saccone and the Republicans; maybe Trump's rally over the weekend made their position even worse. They're already calling it "a Democratic district." The PVI is R+11. and the DCCC has been funding Lamb's campaign stealthily.

The Art Of The Rig... By A Perpetually Failed DCCC

Tuesday is primary day in Texas. The most closely followed races are in TX-07 (Houston), TX-32 (Dallas), TX-23 (Rio Grande Valley), and TX-21 (Austin-San Antonio), races that are considered flippable in November. Then there are two open blue seats-- TX-16 and TX-29, the former being vacated by Beto O'Rourke who is running for Ted Cruz' Senate seat and the latter being vacated by Gene Green because he realized the constituents were onto him and he wouldn't survive a primary challenge. TX-29, one of the poorest and most neglected districts in the U.S., is 77% Latino and Green is a conservative old white man owned by Big Oil who has led the neglecting. When school teacher Hector Morales, challenged Green, no one paid any attention nationally, but people did locally. And Green saw the writing on the wall, picked an establishment crony of his-- Sylvia Garcia-- and announced he was departing to spend more time with his family.

Blue America has been enthusiastic about Morales replacing Green. Six other Democrats jumped into the race to vie for the nomination in this deep blue district, including Tahir Javed who has put $800,000 of his own money into the contest-- hoping to buy the seat. And as of February 14 he had raised a total of $1,217,677 and Garcia a total of $483,885. Our candidate in this race, Hector Morales, had brought in just over $10,000. In a Q & A yesterday told the Houston Chronicle yesterday that "Money and signs don't win election, people do. When 30,000 people determined the winner in the primary for the 29th last year, during a presidential election year, it was beyond time to act. Elections should be won based on merit, not low voter turnout or millions of dollars spent and raised from special interests." Asked why he's running, Hector responded with this:

Education, healthcare, and the environment. As a teacher I've seen first-hand how the policies in Washington and Austin affect our students and parents. We've grown to accept a system with zero accountability on behalf of our elected officials. When my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, my family witnessed first-hand the sickening world of profits over people and cannot fathom ever having anyone else have to go through what we went through as a family. The time for Medicare for All is now because we can have a system where people do not have to worry about being too poor to receive the health care they desperately need. For decades the refineries in Pasadena have dominated the skyline, along with multiple stories about explosions, leaks, and shelter in places for the community. It's time we hold these players accountable for the increased rates of cancer in our community and tell them "no more." We can have a future of renewable energy that will place us in the forefront of the future.

It's basically too late to send money now but there's going to be a primary runoff in May so we'll readjust our Texas page on Wednesday morning and get back to you. Where money is very much needed now is in the non-Texas races-- and that's where the Act Blue congressional thermometer on the right will take you to if you click on it. Let's flip over to the East Coast where our old pal, Will Bunch, has penned a piece for The Inquirer that sheds light on how the DCCC tries to rig the primaries for their GOP-lite candidates. And he goes right to one of our favorite candidates as an example: Jess King. Jess, he wrote, was frustrated after Trump's narrow victory in Pennsylvania "by watching how the Democratic Party had failed to connect with economically struggling voters in the center of the state who instead were lured to Trump’s throw-back nationalism." He's too polite that the Pennsylvania Democrats had recruited a gaggle of crappy centrist candidates who inspired no one.

“I never saw myself running for office,” King told me this week. But the more she brooded about Trump’s success, she thought, “He’s using a language that people in my neck of the woods are responding to. As Democrats, we need to own the issues for working families. We need to address the challenges in those districts that are Trump Country … that are struggling with the loss of jobs with automation, with off-shoring.” Last June, King announced her candidacy for Congress.

Running for Congress is a daunting task, especially for a political novice, and especially in a district that was mapped for GOP dominance, represented by a Republican incumbent. But 2018 isn’t a normal political year by any stretch of the imagination. In a grim political landscape, the only real energy is coming from the progressive grassroots-- the thicket of heavily female “resistance” groups that sprung up in disgust with the vulgarian Trump and that have amplified support for truly liberal policies like single-payer health care.

In east-central Pennsylvania, King fed on the electricity of an amped-up grassroots group called Lancaster Stands Up and by the end of 2017 she was raising more money than any candidate in the then-16th Congressional District-- even more than incumbent GOP Rep. Lloyd Smucker-- en route to endorsements by progressive groups like the Working Families Party. Indeed, only one key group didn’t seem excited by everything that first-timer King had accomplished: The Democratic Party establishment, with its ability to tip the May party primary.

Last October, the influential Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, held a weeklong training event for candidates. Jess King wasn’t even invited. Instead, an invitation went out to a rival candidate — Christina Hartman, who’d won the party’s nomination in the 16th in 2016 and built close ties with Democratic insiders even as her centrist appeal to white exurban voters fell flat in a lopsided defeat by Smucker. Planning to run again in 2018, Hartman won the immediate nod from of a bevy of establishment types like Ed Rendell, the former governor and national Democratic chairman, and also from the highly influential Emily’s List, which was created to encourage female candidates like King but didn’t even reach out to her before its endorsement.

King’s problems-- which got national coverage in the Intercept in January and which, in her case, has had a happy interim ending (more on that later)-- aren’t unique. Across America, the tsunami of newcomer candidates who decided to get involved in politics because of anger over Trump, generating grassroots enthusiasm, is hitting an unexpected obstacle: the Democratic Party that many had perhaps naively expected to welcome them with open arms.

In regions like the Philadelphia suburbs, where mostly women first-time candidates are lining up in hopes of challenging Republican incumbents, the so-called Trump resistance is bumping up against a party establishment that continues to fight the last wars (even though it lost those wars, for the most part) by favoring more connected insiders who are wealthy enough to fund their own campaigns or tap other rich friends, and who-- not coincidentally-- tend to hold moderate views aimed at nonexistent “swing voters” instead of the fired-up liberal base.

Those tensions boiled over in public this past week as the DCCC-- convinced that only a Republican-lite centrist can win in a suburban Houston district that’s on its list of potential pick-ups after it went narrowly for Hillary Clinton in 2016-- actually lashed out in an attack ad against the female Democratic primary candidate who seemed to be gaining grassroots support, Laura Moser. The party muckety-mucks apparently decided she was too liberal, although the DCCC’s line of attack is that Moser is a “Washington insider” (because she’d lived there with her husband, a videographer … for Barack Obama).

Like most of the Democratic establishment’s clumsy, heavy-handed moves, the attack on the slightly-more-liberal Democrat Moser seems to have completely backfired. Not only has it given the Houston challenger a national profile, but contributions began pouring in-- $86,700 in just a matter of days-- from rank-and-file Democrats infuriated by this election meddling by the real Washington insiders, the DCCC.

But the national party’s attempts to tamp down enthusiasm for female newcomers like King and Moser could cause the Democrats to do what it’s always done best: Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. With Trump’s unpopularity spiking up to 60 percent, the party infighting between the party’s grassroots and its establishment hasn’t stopped a string of victories for the Democrats since November, with some unlikely upset wins in Virginia legislative races while nationally flipping a remarkable 39 formerly GOP-held state legislative seats in special elections. About the only thing that could screw up a Democratic “wave”  this coming November is bitter party infighting tamping down enthusiasm among the party base. And that seems to be happening, right on schedule.

...In recent days, leaks have exposed that the DCCC continues to push its candidates toward the soft, soulless middle. One party memo recently leaked to the Intercept showed that — in a time of surging support for single-payer health care — the DCCC is using poll data that critics say are skewed in an effort to steer Democratic candidates away from that issue. Even more embarrassing was the release of DCCC memos from after the mass shootings in Las Vegas and again last month in Parkland, Fla., that urged Democratic candidates to not politicize the issue on Day One but to take a noncontroversial thoughts-and-prayers approach to gun violence.

The last memo hit just as the teen survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were angrily rejecting the thoughts-and-prayers strategy and calling for immediate gun-law reforms — and electrifying the nation. That gun debate would still be mired in stalemate if the mush-mouths at Democratic HQ in Washington had their way. And that’s symbolic of the broader problem-- insulated party poobahs who don’t seem to have a clue about the anger and energy on America’s streets today … or maybe they’re just afraid of that grassroots energy.

We all know that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing that failed, again and again. Thus, the Democratic Party’s determination to stick to the same tired playbook that lost control of the U.S. House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016 is officially insane. The intensity of the anti-Trump resistance-- people who were barely engaged in politics two years ago, now determined to knock on neighbors’ doors or even run themselves if that’s what it takes-- is the game-changer the Democrats have been waiting for. The tired establishment can lead, follow, or get out of the way. Or put up a wall, the dumbest possible choice.

In the case of Jess King out in Lancaster, the story has a happy ending … sort of. Her good news is that when the state’s congressional map was changed last month by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the controversial and much-ballyhooed gerrymandering case, her rival Hartman decided her prospects were better in the next district over. This week, King’s candidacy was officially endorsed by Lancaster County Democrats. The bad news? The map made the new 11th District more Republican and more favorable for Smucker.

But in a year in which the political momentum is flowing against all things Trump, the longer odds don’t seem to bother King. She told me that her idea is to prove to the Democrats that a new approach can win back some of the voters who defected to Trump, to show that “we have rebuilt left-wing populism.” Amid a grassroots tidal wave, that kind of new thinking sounds refreshingly … not insane. Are you listening, Beltway Democrats?

And a little update that's roiling many Democrats this weekend about the imbeciles and incompetents at the DCCC-- this time in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, where Republican Charlie Dent is retiring and where the new district boundaries predict a probable Democratic seat. Dave Weigel broke the story Friday for the Washington Post. Greg Edwards is one of the candidates, the most progressive candidate and the only African-American candidate. The DCCC tried forcing him out of the race. "As far as I know they only targeted one candidate to leave this race-- the most progressive candidate, the only candidate of color," said Edwards."Their inability to understand why that’s fundamentally wrong says everything."

Meet Nina Ahmad-- You'll Be Happy You Did

Machine bossism is not dead-- far from it. The Queens Democratic Party boss, Joe Crowley, has been picked by Hoyer and Pelosi to take over the Democratic congressional caucus after they're gone. The political capo dei capi of New Jersey Democrats, George Norcross, was able to install his kid brother, Donald, in a South Jersey congressional seat the Machine owns (Camden, Cherry Hill, the eastern Philly suburbs, Gloucester County), and in Philly, on the other side of the Delaware, you have Bob Brady, a congressman and the machine boss of Philadelphia (technically, since 1986, the chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic Party). When Bill Clinton appointed 17-year Congressman Tom Foglietta Ambassador to Italy, there was no primary and barely a general election battle at all. Brady waltzed into the seat and has sat there ever since. He generally gets around 80% of the vote with no serious opposition. Last year he was investigated by the FBI for paying off an opponent, Jimmy Moore, to withdraw from the race. In 2015, during Pope Francis' visit to the United States, Brady stole the glass that the Pope drank from, drank from it himself and had his wife, Sen. Bob Casey and his wife drink from it and allowed Joe Crowley to stick his fingers in the glass. The Philadelphia Inquirer has written that "running against him could equal career suicide." Now he has an opponent who doesn't care about that kind off politics, Nina Ahmad. Will Bunch did an excellent profile of her for The Inquirer about a week ago. When he asked her "Aren’t you afraid of taking on the (Democratic) machine?" she told him "Death has visited my door-- rape, and being killed."

[T]here’s something very different about this race in Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District-- one of the nation’s poorest, snaking down the Delaware from Philly’s river wards to struggling Chester in Delaware County.

...Ahmad makes a strong case that working-class and poverty-plagued women need to win the war against entrenched patriarchy more urgently than affluent females, who have the means to hire a lawyer and sue a male boss for sexual harassment. “These are women who have to suck it up and have been sucking it up for ages, because they don’t have the luxury to smack the man who’s been pawing them as they do their work,” she said, “because that’s one of the three jobs they have to keep so they can put food on the table.”

Nina Ahmad was born in Bangladesh and lived through genocide and war in 1971, only to come to the U.S. and earn a PhD in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and the go on to work as a molecular geneticist. She became politically active as an organizer for Howard Dean in 2004, served on President Obama's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, was elected president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the National Organization for Women and served as Deputy Mayor for Public Engagement under Mayor Jim Kenney, where she did outreach to ensure communities of color, women, and millennials were represented in government. Did I mention she's one of the best congressional candidates I've ever spoken to? I asked her to introduce herself to DWT readers and Blue America members. If you like what she has to say, consider contributing to her campaign by clicking on the thermometer on the right.


Confronting Monopoly Power And Its Role In Racial Inequality
-by Nina Ahmad

Monopoly of any industry smacks of a “rigged” system. The rising income inequality can be attributed to the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of a few. A growing number of candidates are pledging to tackle the trend towards the monopolistic market domination, and I can be counted on to be amongst those who will fight to ensure the corporate power over our economy and our politics is regulated. But less examined in the fight against these forces are the burdens it has placed on people of color locked into an economic class structure that continues to hobble them at the knees. One must be careful to not use race as a stand in for class, but the reality is that structural barriers to racial equity result in low-income communities that disproportionately contain people of color with women being most affected. As a legislator, it will be my job to ensure that all people in my district have a voice, and I wanted to examine the real-world consequences of our failed policies and try to foster solutions for the future.

Starting in the 1980s, the Reagan administration and the courts changed the focus of anti-trust laws to protect businesses with considerable market power under the conservative concept of “economic efficiency." The old gospel of trickle-down economics has, of course, had the opposite effect. Wealth inequality is now at its highest level since the great depression.

Of course, when inequality grows, it adversely affects those at bottom the most, and people of color have the built-in disadvantage I spoke of earlier.  According to an article in Forbes Magazine, (Forbes!) the wealth gap between the median white family and the median African American family will grow from about 25x in 1983 to more than 99x in 2024.  As we concentrate more wealth up the chain, we are further stacking the deck.

The growing influence of monopoly power threatens to further create problems. The social & economic injustice of the “digital divide” facing people in poor communities is further entrenched by the callous and cruel decisions. With the FCC’s decision to end net neutrality, the monopolies that control telecommunications can charge more for certain products, which will further hurt people of color. When people don’t connect to the internet, they fall behind educationally, then economically, and the cycle of poverty is strengthened. The government needed more regulation in that case, not less, and in Congress I will fight to undo this injustice.

As an immigrant woman of color, I am keenly aware of the intersections of race and economic mobility. Monopoly of power in the hands of a few primes and solidifies the structural and institutional barriers to economic freedom. My candidacy for Congress is founded on principle that all marginalized constituencies need more representation in Congress. As the old cliché goes: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” In an era where the courts have allowed corporations unlimited political power, we need more people in Congress who are willing to stand up to the powerful and who will make economic justice with a racial equity lens a central part of their platform going forward.