The efforts are paying off, with Republicans turning out in historic numbers. Trump received more than 31,000 votes in the Iowa caucus, surpassing the 25,000 Democrats who turned out during Barack Obama’s successful 2012 reelection bid. Trump’s share was more than four times the number of Republicans who caucused during George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign.
The vote totals in New Hampshire were even starker. The president received 129,696 votes, more than doubling Obama and Bush’s totals.
While it’s unclear what the figures might portend for the general election — the president’s job approval numbers remain stuck in the mid-40s in most surveys — the results highlight the degree to which Trump’s base is energized. A little more than a year after the president’s party suffered sweeping losses in the midterm elections, Republicans are bent on ensuring that Trump wins a second term.
“There is a personal vote for Donald Trump that is unshakeable,” said John Couvillon, a Louisiana-based pollster who has been tracking the primary totals. “Republican voters are willing to go out” to vote for Trump even though he doesn’t have a formidable primary challenge.
Trump is a very stupid narcissist who undoubtedly has convinced himself that the polls are all rigged against him by the fake news media because all these people come out and cheer for him like he’s a rock star. And it is true that he has a cult following like few others in American history. It’s way beyond politics.
Of course his most die-hard fans are coming out to vote for him in the primaries. They travel for miles and wait in line for days to see his rallies. But we don’t know how many of them there really are so I don’t think you can really extrapolate anything about the general election from these numbers.
I do think we can predict that if Trump loses, these people are going to go batshit insane and Trump will be leading them. We just have to be prepared.
On Wednesday night, when President Donald Trump addressed supporters from behind a Trump Hotels lectern in a room at his Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., one of his company’s most faithful customers accompanied him.
The U.S. Secret Service.
The government agency charged with protecting the president has paid his businesses at least $471,000 to fulfill its congressional mandate, according to documents The Washington Post recently obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. That’s money from U.S. taxpayers flowing to the Trump Organization, with a venerable 155-year-old law enforcement organization being used like one of Michael Cohen’s Delaware shell companies and serving as a conduit for presidential profit. And that $471,000 figure? It’s only through April 2018.
That’s money from U.S. taxpayers flowing to the Trump Organization, with a venerable 155-year-old law enforcement organization being used like one of Michael Cohen’s Delaware shell companies.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance in October, Trump Organization Executive Vice President Eric Trump claimed his company charged the government only enough to recoup its costs when hosting the president. (Eric Trump also denied the new Washington Post reporting.) But the rates the new documents detail — $650 per room at Mar-a-Lago! $17,000 to rent a cottage for a month at Trump Bedminster! payments to the D.C. hotel despite Trump’s never having spent a night there as president! — seem a bit higher than what it costs to clean a room and freshen the linens.
These formerly federal funds can and do reach the president’s pocket, albeit through another conduit: Trump’s 400-plus business interests are held in a revocable trust that is not blind and can “distribute net income or principal to Donald J. Trump at his request,” as ProPublica reported. (Maybe the president withdrew $1 from it to buy a Coke while you read that last sentence — we simply don’t know.)
I’m going to guess it went to paying off some of his massive debt. He doesn’t need pocket money in the White House which must be a huge thrill for him.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the chair of the House Oversight Committee sent a letter asking the Secret Service to detail all of its spending at Trump properties. But the agency is just one of the executive branch entities that have rendered unto Trump the money that had once belonged to taxpayers.
A complete accounting of how much taxpayers have forked over to the Trump Organization since its CEO’s election is as likely as a Trump pardon for Cohen. The Post’s recent scoop, however, follows a microtrend of the government’s occasionally releasing a little information about some expenditures at Trump businesses months or years after they occurred. What the government has allowed Americans to see demonstrates that the corruption is real: Substantial amounts of your money are, in fact, being spent at Trump properties, many of which are reported to be floundering otherwise.
Trump always said that he could make money from running for president. Why would anyone think he wouldn’t pocket as much taxpayer money as possible as president?
This piece goes into the many different ways in which we already know he’s been personally benefitting and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
2,600+ counties contacted, roughly 900 “opens,” over 400 downloads. (It’s a lead-a-horse effort.)
Every four years, people who otherwise pay no attention to politics get revved up over the presidential horse race. Others never do. Local canvassers report knocking door after door where citizens are unaware there is an election coming. Readers of this blog may find that stunning, but that is because they are readers of this blog.
Much of what people think they know about party politics they learn from watching the presidential contest every four years. Their image is as distorted as the billions spent on presidential races. They leave the impression that that kind of money is floating around party politics the other three years. It is not. Not even remotely. It’s common to encounter election-year volunteers who think local Democratic Party officers get paid for the hours they put in. In Miami-Dade County, Fla. (pop. 2.8 million), maybe. But in bright-red Toombs County, Ga. west of Savannah (pop. 27,000) you won’t even find a county Democratic committee. The Facebook page still online hasn’t been updated since mid-September. Other pages from nearby counties are dummy pages someone set up in 2017 that were never used. A third of Georgia lives in 134 counties under 100,000 in population.
Why should you care? Because you can’t win if you don’t show up to play. Because Democrats running in statewide races and presidential campaigns clean up in bright, blue cities only to have their clocks cleaned in rural places where their organizations are moribund or nonexistent. Because clusters of small, rural counties elect state house and senate members who will redraw state and federal district maps in 2021. Because big statewide and presidential campaigns care about votes in bulk and I need them — you need them — where they matter to winning district races or to winning U.S. Senate seats Democrats now forfeit to the GOP. And if not to win outright, then to shave GOP statewide margins. When last North Carolina went blue (2008), it did so by under 14,000 votes.
In 2010, directly and through groups he funded, Art Pope, North Carolina’s own mini-Koch brother, threw nearly a million dollars at state Sen. John Snow’s district in North Carolina’s western mountains. Pope groups targeted Snow with two dozen mass mailings. One attack, Mayer wrote, was reminiscent of the infamous Willie Horton ad from 1988. Even after all that money, the last Democratic senator standing in the far west lost his seat by 161 votes in a district spanning 8 counties with an average population under 30,000 – by 2/10ths of 1 percent, less than the undervote in each of the district’s two largest counties.
I addressed the boom-and-bust funding of campaign seasons last November, but smaller counties never see booms even in presidential years. Democrats’ organizing model is like waiting for the Olympics every four years to start training, then blaming losses on weak candidates and weaker messaging. Elections are not just contests of ideas. They are contests of skills. Skills that don’t just manifest on demand.
Three weeks ago, I did some email coaching for a new, western-state county chair in a red county that had been dormant for decades. It’s a start.
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For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. 2,600+ counties contacted, roughly 900 “opens,” over 400 downloads. (It’s a lead-a-horse effort.) Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
I know …Valentine’s Day was yesterday. But at least I remembered. OK, I’m on the couch.
Anyway. I’ve combed through my review archives of the last decade or so and assembled a “top 10 list” of romantic comedies that may not have set the box office on fire, but are definitely worth seeking out. You may even fall in love with a few of these. Alphabetically:
Blind Date – Is there a level of humor below “deadpan”? If so, I’d say that this film from Georgian director Levan Koguashvili has it in spades. A minimalist meditation on the state of modern love in Tbilisi (in case you’d been wondering), the story focuses on the romantic travails of a sad sack Everyman named Sandro (Andro Sakhvarelidze), a 40-ish schoolteacher who still lives with his parents. Sandro and his best bud (Archil Kikodze) spend their spare time arranging double dates via singles websites, with underwhelming results. Then it happens…Sandro meets his dream woman (Ia Sukhitashvili). There’s a mutual attraction, but one catch. Her husband’s getting out of jail…very soon. This is one of those films that sneaks up on you; archly funny, and surprisingly poetic. (Full Review)
Emma Peters – As she careens toward her 35th birthday, wannabe thespian Emma (Monia Chakri, in a winning performance) decides that she’s had it with failed auditions and slogging through a humiliating day job. She’s convinced herself that 35 is the “expiry” date for actresses anyway. So, she prepares for a major change…into the afterlife. Unexpectedly lightened by her decision, she cheerfully begins to check off her bucket list, giving away possessions, and making her own funeral arrangements. However, when she develops an unforeseen relationship with a lonely young funeral director, her future is uncertain, and the end may not be near. A funny-sad romantic romp in the vein of Harold and Maude, from Belgian-American writer-director Nicole Palo. (Full Review)
Hot Mess – Comedian-playwright Sarah Gaul does an endearing turn in writer-director Lucy Coleman’s mumblecore comedy about a 25 year-old budding playwright and college dropout who suffers from a lack of focus in her artistic and amorous pursuits. She expends an inordinate amount of her creative juice composing songs about Toxic Shock Syndrome. She becomes obsessed with a divorced guy who seems “nice” but treats her with increasing indifference once they’ve slept together. And so on. The narrative meanders at times, but when it’s funny, it’s very funny. (Full Review)
Let the Sunshine In – The best actors are…nothing; a blank canvas. But give them a character and some proper lighting-and they’ll give back something that becomes part of us, and does us good: a reflection of our own shared humanity. Nature that looks like nature. Consider Julilette Binoche, an actor of such subtlety and depth that she could infuse a cold reading of McDonald’s $1 $2 $3 menu with the existential ennui of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 123. She isn’t required to recite any sonnets in this film (co-written by director Claire Denis and Christine Angot), but her character speaks copiously about love…in all of its guises. And you may think you know how this tale of a divorcee on the rebound will play out, but Denis’ film, like love itself, is at once seductive and flighty. (Full Review)
Liza, the Fox Fairy – If David Lynch had directed Amelie, it might be akin to this dark and whimsical romantic comedy from Hungary (inspired by a Japanese folk tale). The story centers on Liza (Monika Balsa), an insular young woman who works as an assisted care nurse. Liza is a lonely heart, but tries to stay positive, bolstered by her cheerleader…a Japanese pop singer’s ghost. Poor Liza has a problem sustaining relationships, because every man she dates dies suddenly…and under strange circumstances. It could be coincidence, but Liza suspects she is a “fox fairy”, who sucks the souls from her paramours (and you think you’ve got problems?). Director Karoly Ujj-Meszaros saturates his film in a 70s palette of harvest gold, avocado green and sunflower orange. It’s off-the-wall; but it’s also droll, inventive, and surprisingly sweet. (Full Review)
A Matter of Size – When you think “star athlete”, it invariably conjures up an image of a man or a woman with zero body fat and abs of steel. Then there’s Herzl (Itzak Cohen), the unlikely sports hero of this delightful comedy from Israel. Sweet, puppy-eyed and tipping the scales at 340 pounds, he lives with his overbearing mother, Mona (Levana Finkelstein) and works at a restaurant. After being cruelly fired for (essentially) his overweight appearance, Herzl falls into gloom. But when he experiences a mutual spark of attraction with a woman in his weight watchers group (Irit Kaplan) and finds a new job at a Japanese restaurant, managed by an ex-pro sumo coach (Togo Igawa)-his life takes unexpected turns. It would have been easy for directors Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor to wring cheap laughs from their predominantly corpulent cast, but to their credit (and Danny Cohen-Solal, who co-scripted with Maymon) the characters emerge from their trials and tribulations with dignity and humanity intact. (Full Review)
Mutual Friends – I’ve always found dinner parties to be a fascinating microcosm of human behavior; ditto genre films like The Anniversary Party, The Boys in the Band, and my all-time favorite Don’s Party. Sort of an indie take on Love, Actually, director Matthew Watts’ no-budget charmer centers on a group of neurotic New Yorkers (is that redundant?) converging for a surprise party. In accordance with the Strict Rules of Dinner Party Narratives, logistics go awry, misunderstandings abound, unexpected romance ensues, and friendships are sorely tested. Despite formulaic trappings, the film is buoyed by clever writing, an engaging ensemble, and cheerful reassurance that your soul mate really is out there…somewhere. (Full Review)
A Summer’s Tale – It’s nearly 8 minutes into this delightful 1996 Eric Rohmer film (which had a belated U.S. first-run in 2014) before anyone speaks; and it’s a young man calling a waitress over so he can order a chocolate crepe. But not to worry, because things are about to get interesting. In fact, our young man, an introverted maths grad named Gaspar (Melvil Poupaud) will soon find himself in a dizzying girl whirl. It begins when he meets the bubbly Margo (Amanda Langlet) an ethnologist major who is spending the summer working as a waitress at her aunt’s seaside crepery. In a way, this is a textbook “Rohmer film”, which I define as “a movie where the characters spend more screen time dissecting the complexities of male-female relationships than actually experiencing them”. Don’t despair; it won’t be like watching paint dry; even first-time Rohmer viewers will surely glean the late French director’s ongoing influence (particularly if you’ve seen Once,When Harry Met Sally, or Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy). (Full Review)
2 Days in New York– Writer-director-star Julie Delpy’s 2012 sequel to her 2007 comedy 2 Days in Paris catches up with her character Marion, who now has a son and a new man in her life, a long-time friend turned lover Mingus (Chris Rock) who has added his tween daughter to the mix. The four live together in a cozy Manhattan loft. Marion and Mingus are the quintessential NY urban hipster couple; she’s a photo-journalist and conceptual artist; he’s a radio talk show host who also writes for the VillageVoice. Marion is on edge. She has an important gallery show coming up, and her eccentric family has just flown in from France for a visit and to get acquainted with her new Significant Other. The buttoned-down Mingus is in for a bit of culture shock. And yes-Franco-American culture-clash mayhem ensues. Smart, funny and engaging throughout. (Full Review)
Your Sister’s Sister – This offering from Humpday writer-director Lynn Shelton is a romantic “love triangle” dramedy reminiscent of Chasing Amy. It’s a talky but thoroughly engaging look at the complexities of modern relationships, centering on a slacker man-child (Mark Duplass) his deceased brother’s girlfriend (Emily Blunt) and her sister (Rosemarie Dewitt), who all bumble into a sort of unplanned “encounter weekend” together at a remote family cabin. Funny, insightful and well-acted. (Full Review)
The Trump administration is deploying law enforcement tactical units from the southern border as part of a supercharged arrest operation in sanctuary cities across the country, an escalation in the president’s battle against localities that refuse to participate in immigration enforcement.
The specially trained officers are being sent to cities including Chicago and New York to boost the enforcement power of local Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to two officials who are familiar with the secret operation. Additional agents are expected to be sent to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Newark, N.J.
Among the agents being deployed to sanctuary cities are members of the elite tactical unit known as BORTAC, which acts essentially as the SWAT team of the Border Patrol. With additional gear such as stun grenades and enhanced Special Forces-type training, including sniper certification, the officers typically conduct high-risk operations targeting individuals who are known to be violent, many of them with extensive criminal records.
The cities are already militarized so I suppose this isn’t really an escalation in that sense. But targeting the Latino communities specifically (you know they aren’t going into say, Polish neighborhoods) does take it to the next level.
There was a time when the wingnuts all used “states’ rights” and “local control” to justify their racism. It was always nonsense, of course. If they had the power they always wanted to inflict their racist values on everyone in the country. They finally found their true champion.
And it’s not good for Barr. We know he doesn’t listen to his own advisers or any experts. He doesn’t even listen to his family or his friends. But he does take his cues from right-wing TV, radio and social media figures, mostly because they take him at his word and reflect his point of view back to him. He loves that sympathetic feedback loop.
The following are all well-known, right-wing figures, many of whom have been re-tweeted by the president:
It’s a sad day when we learn in America that there is a #twotieredjusticesystem Andrew McCabe gets to walk – no justice after he lied to federal investigators with IG. I guess as Americans we know where we stand now. @realDonaldTrump and his campaign was illegally targeted
With the DOJ's decision to drop the charges against McCabe, it's time for Trump to step up and pardon both Flynn and Stone. The base is alienated by a lack of action to defend those who defend the President, which they see as cowardice.
Not good. McCabe did the EXACT same thing as Stone, while Deputy Director of the FBI. He gets a pass, Stone has book thrown at him. This bifurcated legal system is how republics end. The people will not tolerate this. https://t.co/jKhyoPY0fr
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday that Donald Trump deserved to be re-elected, praising the U.S. president’s reaction to his decision to end a decades-old military agreement with the United States.
Trump said on Wednesday he did not mind Duterte’s decision to end the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) even as his defense secretary, Mark Esper, called the move “unfortunate” as Washington and its allies press China to abide by “international rules” in Asia.
“It is President Trump’s circumspect and judicious reaction to the termination of the VFA that made President Duterte give the following remarks: ‘President Trump is a good president and he deserves to be re-elected’,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
Trump’s reason was that it “costs money” to keep troops in the Philippines, which is true. Meanwhile, he’s upping the defense budget to unprecedented levels anyway. You tell me what he’s doing because it makes no sense to me.
Trump has frequently expressed a desire to bring U.S. military forces home from decades-long deployments abroad and has strong-armed some allies into paying more for the right to U.S. defense.
In his comments about the VFA on Wednesday, Trump added that he had “a very good” relationship with Duterte.
Since the day after trump’s election, I’ve been writing that while I agree that we are long overdue for a re-assessment of US military deployments and overall national security strategy. It’s been 60 years, the world has rearranged itself. There are many experts who have been thinking this through on all sides of the political divide for some time and I’m sure there are many good ideas that can be implemented.
But allowing an imbecile whose one big idea is that the world has been cheating America and has to pay up to rearrange the world order on that basis is mind-boggling. Trump isn’t just a “disruptor.” He’s a “destructor.” And in a nuclear-armed world that needs to work together to save the planet, nothing could be more dangerous.
Rodrigo Duterte is a psychopath. But he’s probably more savvy than Donald Trump. What could go wrong?
If you believed that the Barr-Trump contretemps this week was all staged to make it appear to all the prosecutors and other Department of Justice staff that Barr is operating independently of the president and is a man of integrity, I think it’s pretty clear by now that it was just a one-day strategy:
IG report on Andrew McCabe: Misled Investigators over roll in news media disclosure…Lacked Candor (Lied) on four separate occasions…Authotized Media Leaks to advance personal interests…IG RECOMMENDED MCCABE’S FIRING. @FoxNews@IngrahamAngle
I still maintain, as I did when it happened, that Barr may have told the president that he needed to buck up the troops but I doubt very, very seriously that Trump was happy with Barr’s lecture on the limits of presidential power, calling him a bully or saying that he shouldn’t tweet.
Remember, for Trump, substance is always irrelevant. He only cares that he is treated by his subordinates (which is everyone in the world except for Vladimir Putin) with the utmost deference, particularly in public. A minion asserting independence, even if it’s in service of the larger cause is infuriating to him.
When President Trump learned that the Justice Department was dropping a case against a former F.B.I. official whom he considered one of his longtime enemies, his immediate response was anger. As he flipped on the television Friday and watched how the story was being covered, that anger only mounted.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has searched for an attorney general who would function much as Roy Cohn did for him as his personal lawyer and fixer in the 1970s — a warrior committed to protecting him and going after his foes. The president thought he had found that person in William P. Barr. But now, people close to Mr. Trump say, he is not so sure.
The president was cheered this week when Mr. Barr moved to reduce the sentence of a convicted presidential friend, only to be shocked when the attorney general publicly called on Mr. Trump to stop tweeting about it. And after his livid reaction to the Justice Department’s decision to drop a separate case, which he heard about without any advance notice, he learned that Mr. Barr was intervening more favorably on behalf of another presidential ally.
If Barr was seeking to reassure his troops while keeping Trump happy, he has probably failed at both:
Critics assume it is all a Kabuki dance, cynical theater meant to preserve Mr. Barr’s credibility as he executes Mr. Trump’s personal political agenda while pretending to look independent. And it is certainly true that, even now, Mr. Barr continues to demonstrate a willingness to personally take charge of cases with Mr. Trump’s interests at stake.
But insiders insist the tension is real, with potentially profound consequences for an administration that has redrawn the lines at the intersection of politics and law enforcement. Barely a week after being acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial, Mr. Trump is demanding that some of the people whose actions he believes led to his troubles be charged, convicted and sent to prison, and it is not clear that even Mr. Barr is willing or able to go as far as the president wants.
Nah. He’d be happy to do it. The problem is that he’s getting grief for it even from some of his own pals on the right who thinks the whole thing is being handled slumsily and want him to keep Trump corralled. Good luck with that.
In his only comment on the matter on Friday, Mr. Trump pushed back against Mr. Barr a day after the attorney general told ABC News that the president was making it “impossible for me to do my job” by tweeting about criminal cases and declared that he was “not going to be bullied.”
Mr. Trump cited another comment Mr. Barr made in the same interview affirming that the president had never actually asked for any specific actions in a criminal case. “This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!” Mr. Trump added. The “so far” in there, of course, hung online as a kind of sword of Damocles waiting to fall.
Only in the hours after that tweet did the news emerge that Mr. Barr’s department was dropping a case against Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy F.B.I. director blamed by Mr. Trump for his role in the investigation into Russian election interference. Two people close to the matter said the Justice Department did not give the president a heads up about the decision.
Then came the more welcome news for the Oval Office that Mr. Barr had ordered a re-examination of the case of Michael T. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russia. The new review raised the question of whether Mr. Flynn will actually go to prison.
Mr. Trump has bitterly decried “what Flynn has gone through” while believing that Mr. McCabe has unfairly walked, people close to him said. The president on Friday was angrier about the decision not to prosecute Mr. McCabe than he was at Mr. Barr’s comments in his interview, the people said.
I predicted that too. Trump doesn’t care about Flynn. Flynn is no use to him and doesn’t know the kind of dirt that Roger Stone knows. The only reason he defended him after the guilty plea was because he could use his case to illustrate how “unfair” it is that his enemies are getting the same treatment.
He wants heads on pikes and he expects Barr to deliver them with enthusiasm. Barr has been juggling that edict with Trump’s other desire that his buddies be allowed to skate until now. The problem is that what Trump really wants is for his enemies, which includes numerous people in the Obama administration as well as all the law enforcement and DOJ officials who investigated him, to do time. Revenge and exoneration is what drives him.
I’m sure Barr is personally fine with all that. He believes in unfettered executive power and is willing to use it to defeat “the left” which he clearly sees as the enemy. But I suspect that the insurrection in the DOJ, combined with some criticism from Barr’s own Federalist Society teammates (mostly around his inability to control Trump) has made Barr belatedly recognize that Trump isn’t going to play along with any pretense of “integrity” because he doesn’t understand what it is so he can’t fake it. That raises the stakes tremendously.
Trump’s ranting publicly about all of it isn’t going to stop. And unfortunately for Barr, the DOJ appears to finally be rebelling against allowing Trump’s cronies to skate while persecuting former prosecutors and law enforcement officials for doing their jobs.
We’ve seen little integrity from top government officials so this may be the end of it. But if this is actually the beginning of a strong institutional push back from within the government, then maybe it can at least keep Trump and his henchmen off balance for a while.
Obviously, the only way to truly put an end to this madness is to defeat Trump in November. I can’t even contemplate what these people will do if he wins.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). Still image from Iron Man (2008).
There is a lot of organizing to do today away from the keyboard, so let’s hear from my friend, “Politics Guy” Mike Lux, as he reflects on what the Clinton campaign failed to address in 2016 that we need to now:
First, the Clinton campaign did not change its message to incorporate the Bernie view of the world. They mostly avoided populism on economics; they joined Obama in talking about how great the economy was; their ads were mainly targeted to upper income suburban moderates, not the young and working class Bernie people who were feeling hard pressed economically in their daily lives.
Second, and most profoundly is the cynicism by the upcoming generation of progressive young people about the Democratic Party in general. From their perspective, the Democrats have let them down on some of the most central issues in their lives.
What Mike hears from younger progressives is Democrats became more cautious and more “corporate” after their blowout in 1972. They helped deregulate industries and failed labor. Under Clinton and Obama, they promoted trade deals that hurt working people, deregulated Wall Street, and passed crime bills that produced mass incarceration and promoted charter school policies that undermined public education.
Younger progressives believe Democrats whiffed “on climate change, immigration reform, campaign finance reform, indexing the minimum wage, making bigger investments in infrastructure and rebuilding public schools in low income neighborhoods, reining in credit card interest payments, housing issues, helping people burdened with student debt.” Even with passage of the Affordable Care Act, people’s paychecks remained flat and for many life just became more of a struggle.
Not all of that criticism is fair, Mike writes. There are lots of Democrats struggling against a Republican tide and a flood of money to make things better in spite of all that. Politics is a lot harder in practice than in our imaginings.
But now we have a “put the oxygen mask on your democracy first” emergency. We face open right-wing authoritarianism. An old friend this morning quotes someone from “Democracy Now!” (maybe) riffing on the Washington Post’s “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” saying, “it’s not dying in darkness; it’s dying in broad daylight and the people killing it are making no bones about it.”* To beat that back, the left will need unity now more than ever (Mike’s a Warren supporter, so his advice leans that way):
But unity will take some give from Bernie world as well. To win the 2020 election, Bernie’s voters, volunteers, and contributors are also going to need to understand the need for reaching to the middle and finding some compromises. This is equally true whether Bernie wins the nomination or not; it is equally true if he becomes the president when we are trying to get big, complicated legislation passed. The great thing about Bernie’s people is the passion they bring to politics, and the fact that so many of them have never been involved before. But that passion and fresh perspective will need to be tempered by a willingness to work with Democrats who don’t think exactly the same way. You can’t take the politics out of politics, and it is destructive to try: the nature of democracy is building broad coalitions, and you need to compromise to succeed.
Elizabeth is the right person to unify our party precisely because she is a fighter from the progressive side of the party, at the same time she knows how to get things done on the inside. Elizabeth has the credibility on fighting for big, structural change because that is what she has been doing her whole career, and that is how she is running her campaign. At the same time, though, her inside skills are also formidable. Working with her as she stood up to Wall Street and many Democratic insiders on TARP supervision, on passing the CFPB, on getting the CFPB up and running so effectively, and then on the personnel and budget battles she fought as a Senator has been one of the great joys of my life, because she is a progressive who knows how to fight and how to win.
Playing the inside-outside game on the state level, I have more power, so I can relate. And persistence. Persistence, even after a loss, pays off in power. Someone remarked this week that the left has never understood power or how to wield it. It’s past time to learn.
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
