Month: September 2020

“Repeat after me,” a union organizer directs a roomful of female garment workers in a key scene from writer-director Rubaiyat Hossain’s docu-drama Made in Bangladesh: “Worker’s rights are human rights… [And] women’s rights are human rights.” Through a First World lens this dialog may appear a bit heavy-handed, but the sad fact remains there are still places in this world where these truths are not necessarily held to be self-evident.

The central character is a headstrong 23 year-old named Shimu (Rikita Nandini Shimu). To avoid a forced child marriage, she fled her home village when she was a pre-teen and now lives in Dhaka with her husband of choice Reza (Shatabdi Wadud). Like many young women in the capital, Shimu has found gainful employment in the garment industry. That is not to say she has a dream job; in point of fact she works in a sweatshop.

In addition to putting up with the low wages, long hours, unsafe conditions and spotty overtime compensation Shimu and her fellow workers regularly face sexual harassment, workplace intimidation, and all the other systemic maladies of a patriarchal society. Still, it’s a paycheck; with her husband chronically unemployed, somebody has to pay the rent.

After an explosion and fire kills a fellow employee, Shimu is approached by an investigative journalist, who after hearing her account of working conditions steers her to a local union organizer (Shahana Goswami). Shimu embarks on a mission to unionize her factory. With obstacles at every turn (including at home) she has her work cut out for her.

While it is a familiar narrative (especially if you have seen Norma Rae, a film the director has cited as an inspiration, along with the real-life story of a woman named Daliya Akhter who is a factory worker and union leader) Hossain offers us a 21^st Century feminist heroine who challenges the stereotype of the subservient Muslim woman and reminds us that the final chapter in the struggle for worker’s rights is yet to be written.

“Made in Bangladesh” is currently streaming via Virtual SIFF Cinema.

Overtime bonus! Here are 10 essential films that embody the spirit of Labor Day:

Blue Collar (Amazon Prime) – Director Paul Schrader co-wrote this 1978 drama with his brother Leonard. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto portray Motor City auto worker buddies tired of getting the short end of the stick from both their employer and their union. In a fit of drunken pique, they pull an ill-advised caper that gets them in trouble with both parties, ultimately putting friendship and loyalty to the test.  Akin to Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront, Schrader subverts the standard black-and-white “union good guy, company bad guy” trope with shades of gray, reminding us the road to Hell is sometimes paved with good intentions. Great score by Jack Nitzsche and Ry Cooder, with a memorable theme song featuring Captain Beefheart (“I’m jest a hard-woikin’, fucked-over man…”).

El Norte (Amazon Prime) – Gregory Nava’s portrait of Guatemalan siblings who make their way to the U.S. after their father is killed by a government death squad will stay with you after credits roll. The two leads deliver naturalistic performances as a brother and sister who maintain optimism, despite fate and circumstance thwarting them at every turn. Claustrophobes be warned: a harrowing scene featuring an encounter with a rat colony during an underground border crossing is nightmare fuel. Do not expect a Hollywood ending; this is an unblinking look at the shameful exploitation of undocumented workers.

The Grapes of Wrath (Amazon Prime) – I’m stymied for any hitherto unspoken superlatives to ladle onto John Ford’s powerful 1940 drama (adapted from John Steinbeck’s novel). Suffice it to say, this is the quintessential film about the struggle of America’s salt of the earth during the Great Depression. Perhaps we can take comfort in the possibility that no matter how bad things get, Henry Fonda’s unforgettable embodiment of Tom Joad will “…be there, all around, in the dark.” Ford followed up with the Oscar-winning How Green Was My Valley (1941) another drama about a working class family (set in a Welsh mining town).

Harlan County, USA (Criterion Channel, HBO Max)– Barbara Kopple’s award-winning film is not only an extraordinary document about an acrimonious coal miner’s strike in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1973, but is one of the best American documentaries ever made. Kopple’s film has everything that you look for in any great work of cinema: drama, conflict, suspense, and redemption. Kopple and crew are so deeply embedded that you may involuntarily duck during a harrowing scene where a company-hired thug fires a round directly toward the camera operator (it’s a wonder the filmmakers lived to tell this tale).

Made in Dagenham (Amazon Prime) – Based on a true story, this 2011 film stars the delightful Sally Hawkins as Rita O’Grady, a working mum employed at the Dagenham, England Ford plant in 1968. She worked in a run-down, segregated section of the plant where 187 female machinists toiled away for a fraction of what male employees were paid; the company justified the inequity by classifying female workers as “unskilled labor”.

Encouraged by her empathetic shop steward (Bob Hoskins), the initially reticent Rita finds her “voice” and surprises family, co-workers and herself with a formidable ability to rally the troops and affect real change. An engaging ensemble piece (directed by Nigel Cole and written by William Ivory) with a standout supporting performance by Miranda Richardson as a government minister.

Matewan (Blu-ray only) – This well-acted, handsomely mounted drama by John Sayles serves as a sobering reminder that much blood was spilled to lay the foundation for the labor laws we take for granted in the modern workplace. Based on a true story, it is set during the 1920s, in West Virginia. Chris Cooper plays an outsider labor organizer who becomes embroiled in a conflict between coal company thugs and fed up miners trying to unionize.

Sayles delivers a compelling narrative, rich in characterizations and steeped in verisimilitude (beautifully shot by Haskell Wexler). In addition to Cooper, you’ll recognize many Sayles regulars in this fine ensemble cast (David Strathairn, Mary McDonnel, et.al.). The film is also notable for a nicely curated Americana soundtrack.

Modern Times (Amazon Prime) – Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 masterpiece about man vs. automation has aged well. This probably has everything to do with his embodiment of the Everyman. Although referred to as his “last silent film”, it’s not 100% so. There’s no dialogue, but Chaplin finds ingenious ways to work in lines (via technological devices). His expert use of sound effects in this film is unparalleled, particularly in a classic sequence where Chaplin, a hapless assembly line worker, literally ends up “part of the machine”. Paulette Goddard (then Mrs. Chaplin) is on board for the pathos. Brilliant, hilarious and prescient.

Norma Rae (Hulu)– Martin Ritt’s 1979 film about a minimum-wage textile worker (Sally Field) turned union activist helped launch what I refer to as the “Whistle-blowing Working Mom” genre (Silkwood, Erin Brockovich, etc). Field gives an outstanding performance (and deservedly picked up a Best Actress Oscar) as the eponymous heroine who gets fired up by a passionate labor organizer from NYC (Ron Leibman, in his best role). Inspiring and empowering, bolstered by a fine screenplay (by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.) and a great supporting cast (including Beau Bridges, Pat Hingle and Barbara Baxley).

On the Waterfront (Amazon Prime) – “It wuz you, Chahlee.” The betrayal! And the pain. It’s all there on Marlon Brando’s face as he delivers one of the most oft-quoted monologues in cinema history. Brando leads an exemplary cast that includes Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint in this absorbing portrait of a New York dock worker who takes a virtual one-man stand against a powerful and corrupt union official. The trifecta of Brando’s iconic performance, Elia Kazan’s direction, and Budd Schulberg’s well-constructed screenplay adds up to one of the finest American social dramas of the 1950s.

Roger and Me (Amazon Prime) – While our favorite lib’rul agitprop director has made a number of films addressing the travails of wage slaves and ever-appalling indifference of the corporate masters who grow fat off their labors, Michael Moore’s low-budget 1989 debut film remains his best (and is on the list of the top 25 highest-grossing docs of all time).

Moore may have not been the only resident of Flint, Michigan scratching his head over GM’s local plant shutdown in the midst of record profits for the company, but he was the one with the chutzpah (and a camera crew) to make a beeline straight to the top to demand an explanation. His target? GM’s chairman, Roger Smith. Does he bag him? Watch it and find out. An insightful portrait of working class America that, like most of his subsequent films, can be at once harrowing and hilarious, yet hopeful and humanistic.

Related posts:

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Working Man

Kleptocracy Now: A Top 10 List

Last Train Home

Rush Hour

The Crime of Monsieur Lange

Lula, Son of Brazil

Sing us out, Billy Bragg…

More reviews at Den of Cinema

—Dennis Hartley

What a weird coincidence:

Russia is seeking “to undermine public trust in the electoral process” by spreading false claims that mail-in ballots are riddled with fraud and susceptible to manipulation, according to a new intelligence bulletin by the Department of Homeland Security.

Many of the claims made by Russian sources are identical to repeated, unsupported public statements aired by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr, who have said that mailed ballots aren’t trustworthy while warning of the potential for rampant fraud in November’s elections.

Homeland Security’s intelligence office has assessed that Russian actors “are likely to promote allegations of corruption, system failure, and foreign malign interference to sow distrust in Democratic institutions and election outcomes,” the bulletin states. Russia spreads these claims through a network of state-controlled media, proxy websites and social media trolls, it adds.

Bill Barr is on a crusade to go after “Antifa” and has deployed the federal government in that task. Meanwhile, he has nothing, and I mean nothing, to say about this:

White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States, according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security.

Two later draft versions of the same document — all of which were reviewed by POLITICO — describe the threat from white supremacists in slightly different language. But all three drafts describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups.

“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for Homeland attacks but probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year,” all three documents say.

Russia “probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in the Homeland,” the documents also say.

Former acting DHS Sec. Kevin McAleenan last year directed the department to start producing annual homeland threat assessments. POLITICO reviewed three drafts of this year’s report — titled DHS’s State of the Homeland Threat Assessment 2020 — all of which were produced in August. Ben Wittes, the editor in chief of the national security site Lawfare, obtained the documents and shared them with POLITICO. The first such assessment has not been released publicly, and a DHS spokesperson declined to comment on “allegedly leaked documents,” and on when the document will be made public.

None of the drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa, the loose cohort of militant left-leaning agitators who senior Trump administration officials have described as domestic terrorists. Two of the drafts refer to extremists trying to exploit the “social grievances” driving lawful protests.

The cut-off date for information analyzed in the earliest draft is August 3, 2020, while the cut-off date for the next two is August 27.

John Cohen, who oversaw DHS’s counterterrorism portfolio from 2011 to 2014, said the drafts’ conclusion isn’t surprising.

“This draft document seems to be consistent with earlier intelligence reports from DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement sources: that the most significant terror-related threat facing the US today comes from violent extremists who are motivated by white supremacy and other far-right ideological causes,” he said.

Everyone has known about this for years. But Trump was “triggered” by the words “domestic terrorism” so they couldn’t bring it up in threat assessment briefings. Barr, on the other hand, is just a right-wing nutbag who thinks the left is coming to kill all the Real Americans in their beds.

I wish I had read this Anne Applebaum interview with Peter Strzok before I wrote the previous post. Oh well.

It is extremely interesting and I think I’m going to have to read his book. The record on this whole thing has been completely confused and I think this book may hold important clues about how to go back and look at everything that happened.

Applebaum:

As I read Strzok’s book, I found myself unexpectedly angry, because his narrative exposes an extraordinary failure: Despite multiple investigations by the FBI, Congress, and Mueller’s team, Americans have still never learned the full story about the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia or Trump’s own decades-long financial ties with Russia. Four years have passed since the investigation began. Many people have been convicted of crimes. Nevertheless, portions of reports produced by Mueller, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and others remain redacted. Investigations are allegedly ongoing. Details remain secret. Meanwhile, valuable FBI time and money were spent investigating which email server Hillary Clinton used—a question that, as it turned out, had no implications for U.S. security whatsoever.

Strzok himself was not exactly reassuring: He does not believe that Trump’s true relationship with Russia was ever revealed, and he now worries that it won’t ever be. It’s not clear that anyone ever followed up on the leads he had, or completed the counterintelligence investigation he began. He doesn’t say this himself, but after speaking with him I began to wonder if this is the real reason the Department of Justice broke with precedent in his case by not just firing a well-respected FBI agent but publicly discrediting him too: Strzok was getting too close to the truth.

An excerpt:

Applebaum: Do you think that the president’s deeply personal attacks on you, McCabe, Alexander Vindman, and others will scare public servants in the future? Will they be more cautious, less likely to investigate powerful people?

Strzok: I know from people I keep in touch with that the personal attacks have had a chilling effect on employees in the government and, I have to imagine, on those considering public service. There’s no way it couldn’t. That’s the goal.

It’s not that government servants lack courage or don’t want to do the right thing. It’s that Trump has shattered the norms of presidential behavior in a way that impacts not just individuals, but governmental organizations themselves. Neither can protect themselves in ways that have worked in the past. The investigative independence of the FBI is under severe stress, but I think it’s holding. I worry four more years of Trump threatens significant, long-term harm.

It’s not just Trump. It’s partisans in Congress and in the media, and the online harassment and even outright death threats they inspire. Remember, Trump told [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky that [U.S. Ambassador Marie] Yovanovitch was “going to go through some things.” Now Trump darkly crows about the investigation of the investigators, with a menacing refrain of “We’ll see what happens.” Nothing is off-limits. This is the behavior of authoritarians.

We’re numb to all this now. He has turned the US Government into the manifestation of a toxic twitter troll feed that you cannot ignore. But we really can’t just look away. Some of this damage will be permanent if the Democrats manage to win and they refuse to take a deep dive into what happened here. He has taken a wrecking ball to our country.

Click on page 2 for the whole interview.

Yesterday Trump was asked about the poisoning of Alexei navalny, the Russian opposition leader and once again he punted:

All he has to say is “Poisoning your political opponents with nerve agents is bad” and he can’t do it. Instead, he pivots to an imaginary war with North Korea. https://t.co/REyAOxB6Kw

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) September 5, 2020

He simply cannot do it. No matter what. And we still don’t know why.

Peter Strzok’s new book about the investigation speaks to that apparently:

Mr. Strzok’s new book, “Compromised,” a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times ahead of its publication on Tuesday, provides a detailed account of navigating the two politically toxic investigations and a forceful apologia of the bureau’s acts. Mr. Strzok also reveals details about the F.B.I.’s internal debate over investigating the president himself, writing that the question arose early in the Trump presidency and suggesting that agents were eyeing others around Mr. Trump. Mr. Strzok was himself at first opposed to investigating the president.

[…]

Mr. Strzok’s insider look serves as a counter to the efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to discredit the Russia investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr has appointed a veteran prosecutor to review the conduct of the F.B.I., Mr. Strzok and others for possible misconduct and bias.

The Justice Department inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, found the bureau had sufficient reason to open the inquiry and found no evidence of political bias. He said in a report that he found no evidence that Mr. Strzok’s political views affected the F.B.I.’s work but that he was “deeply troubled” by the texts.

Mr. Trump and his supporters seized on the texts when they were first disclosed in late 2017 as evidence of a plot to destroy his campaign and presidency.

“The reporting about my texts hadn’t only whipped Trump into a frenzy,” Mr. Strzok writes. “It had also sent Republicans in Congress into a righteous peeve, giving them fodder for right-wing indignation that would eventually ferment into the deep-state fairy tale that would consume conservative media.”

[…]

In his book, Mr. Strzok repeatedly rejects accusations that he was part of an effort at the F.B.I. to hurt Mr. Trump. He lays out the reasoning for opening the investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, into whether any Trump campaign associates had conspired with Russia’s interference operations in the 2016 election. The F.B.I. was “investigating a credible allegation of foreign intelligence activity to see where it led,” Mr. Strzok writes. “It started with Russia, and it was always about Russia.”

He also points out that the F.B.I. had kept the investigation as quiet as possible to keep from harming Mr. Trump’s candidacy, limiting the number of people inside the bureau who were aware of it to try to ensure its existence did not leak to the news media.

That’s important, particularly in light of this:

Mr. Strzok also devotes considerable time in the book to the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server, known inside the bureau as Midyear Exam. He concedes that Mr. Comey erred by holding a news conference in July 2016 to say that the F.B.I. would not recommend Mrs. Clinton be charged with mishandling classified information but that her conduct was “extremely careless.”

Critics of Mr. Comey called the remarks an ad hominem attack that damaged her campaign. Mr. Comey’s speech, along with a pair of letters to Congress just before the election revealing that the investigation was briefly reopened and then closed, most likely cost her the election, Mr. Strzok says.

“And as much as it pains me to admit, the Russians weren’t the only ones who pushed the needle toward Trump,” he writes. “The bureau did too.”

Mr. Strzok says he was proud of the investigation, which he says was handled professionally, but he laments that the resources devoted to it could have been used to fight greater threats like China or Russia.

He says there was no comparison between the Russia investigation and the email inquiry, which the Republicans had used as an anvil to damage Mrs. Clinton’s election chances.

“Midyear was a mishandling case with little if any impact on national security,” Mr. Strzok writes. “In contrast, Crossfire was looking into whether anyone in the Trump campaign was conspiring with the Russians — even up to the unlikely worst-case scenario that Trump was a Manchurian candidate.”

This is the fundamental argument against this ridiculous crusade to persuade the American people that the FBI’s investigation into Trump was politically motivated. They kept it a secret at the same time that Trump’s opponent was being openly investigated for an alleged national security threat and publicly flayed on a daily basis.

It’s obvious that the FBI had good reason to wonder about all those Russians and people affiliated with Russia crawling all over the Trump campaign. And nothing Trump has done in this term has allayed any suspicions that something is very, very weird with his relationship with that country.

And by the way:

Despite his belief that tracing money was the most critical investigative trail the probe could follow — “even more than proving contacts with Russia” — Strzok is fairly confident that that thread was never tugged at, let alone unraveled, after he was removed from the probe.

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) September 5, 2020

Nobody ever looked at the money.

A few more points on Trump’s latest scandal:

After The Atlantic reported on Thursday that Donald Trump had privately trashed American war dead as “suckers” and “losers,” the White House, the president’s 2020 campaign, and a broad array of Trump loyalists activated to aggressively denounce the report as fictitious and absurd. 

In The Daily Beast’s interviews with 11 senior administration officials, Trump aides, Republican operatives, and former and current friends of the president, several of them mounted a curious defense of Trump. Yes, they admitted, the commander in chief at times makes callous, tone-deaf comments about American military personnel behind closed doors. But it’s because he hates the wars they’re forced to fight, not the service members themselves.

“The president means no disrespect to our troops; it’s just that the way he speaks, he can sound like an asshole sometimes,” one of these sources, a current senior administration official, told The Daily Beast. “That’s how he is [when the cameras are off]… It’s his style.”

Sometimes? He is always an asshole. And let’s not pretend his words don’t mean exactly what they mean. He thinks anyone who goes into the military is a sucker and he thinks those that are killed or disabled are losers for failing to come out of it whole. His words are not vague or inscrutable.

Some of these sources defending President Trump and pushing back on The Atlantic’s story agreed to go on the record. Others would only speak on background and in an anonymous capacity—even after the White House trashed the magazine for relying on such nameless sources. (The president on Friday afternoon called the story a “hoax,” even though the Associated Press and Fox News had confirmed key details of the original piece.)

Some of these individuals close to the president did concede there was one part of Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s article that rang true to them: the anecdote about Trump joining John Kelly, his former White House chief of staff, on a visit to the grave of Kelly’s son Robert—who was killed in the war in Afghanistan—and coldly asking Kelly, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Three people with direct knowledge of the president’s private remarks in the past three years about Robert Kelly, as well as other Americans who’ve died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that Trump had made similar-sounding comments to them, too. This included the president mentioning that their service in these war zones was a “waste,” or that U.S. military personnel in these conflicts had “died for nothing,” or that the fallen “should have been doing something else.”

However, these sources, who would only speak on the condition of anonymity, all independently insisted that Trump was not disrespecting the U.S. war dead; he was merely stating a belief that they should not have been sent overseas to fight and die in these wars in the first place. Each said that the president often has a brash, ill-mannered way of talking that can obscure what they believe to be his intended message, especially in moments when Trump is trying to convey sympathy or empathy.

Bullshit. He blames the troops for losing.

Here is what he said about John McCain:

“He lost and let us down. I’ve never liked him as much after that. I don’t like losers,”

Here’s what he said to the generals when they gathered to attempt to give him a 6th grade education on national security. From “A Very Stable Genius”:

Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.

“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”

He blames the military, including the soldiers on the ground, FOR LOSING. That’s what he means when he calls them losers.

Trump doesn’t hate war. Fergawdsakes, is there anything in his personality that would make that believable? Of course not. He just believes America should use the massive force at its disposal to “win” them.

Soldiers are losers and suckers for joining up in the first place when they could be making money and for getting injured and dying and for losing any battles and wars in which they participate. You see, if he ever went to war, he’d WIN! That’s all that matters.

A tweet from local independent reporter Jason Sandford alerted me Friday to the story that our troop-loathing commander-in-chief was planning to shut down Stars and Stripes, the American military newspaper.

The @starsandstripes is truly a symbol of America's commitment to freedom of the press. Please don't shut it down. I learned *so* much about journalism, and the world, during my time as a reporter there. I cherish it. (Here I am at an Army base in Bosnia, New Year's Eve, 1998.) pic.twitter.com/YXzGDfQuRQ

— Jason Sandford (@Ashevegas) September 4, 2020

USA Today reported that earlier. The Washington Post followed up on moves afoot to shut down the publication founded by Union troops in 1861:

In an undated memo to its publisher and staff, a Pentagon ­public-affairs official told the publication to begin vacating its offices next week and to submit a plan that “dissolves” it. “The last newspaper publication (in all forms) will be September 30, 2020,” wrote Col. Paul Haverstick Jr.

Stars and Stripes has an independent streak that surely peeved Acting President Donald Trump. It has run stories unflattering to military brass and Pentagon operations. And on Friday, the Post reports, Stripes.com ran a story on Trump’s denial of reporting in the Atlantic magazine that he thinks U.S. dead and wounded are “losers” and “suckers.”

The ostensible reason for axing the $15.5 million budget for Stars and Stripes was cost-cutting. Defense Secretary Mark T. ­Esper said in February he intended to zero out funds for the venerable publication, explaining they “would be used for ‘higher-priority issues,’ such as weapons purchases.”

Please. The White House won’t tolerate independent voices under its control.

The Department of Defense’s annual budget is $700 billion-plus — $15.5 million is not even Pentagon pocket lint. Esper’s explanation is as credible as Trump not honoring American war dead buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery adjacent to Belleau Wood outside Paris because his $400 million Marine One helicopter could not fly in the rain.

The intense blowback from the “losers” and “suckers” story knocked the White House back on its heels so far that Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany rushed out of a press briefing Friday afternoon without taking questions after issuing a brief rebuttal. Reporting by the Atlantic was later backed up the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and Fox News.

Kayleigh McEnany stormed off without taking questions after lecturing the press on how much Pres. Trump loves our troops pic.twitter.com/gAmXcQsyyG

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) September 5, 2020

Minutes later, Trump announced a hasty reversal of the funding cut to Stars and Stripes.

The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch. It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2020

The acting president can play tough guy all he wants, but he is kidding no one.

He’s no Tom Petty.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Coming soon to a U.S. Senate race near you (CNBC):

The activist network backed by libertarian billionaire Charles Koch is dropping big bucks into the Kansas Senate race as polls show the contest beginning to tighten. 

Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC that’s part of the larger Koch network, is backing Republican physician and congressman Roger Marshall in a state that’s historically been a GOP stronghold.

Koch network spending millions to keep Senate in GOP's control, backing candidates in GA., MT., CO., N.C., TX. and now KS, too https://t.co/bTimzzYZ2k

— Jane Mayer (@JaneMayerNYer) September 3, 2020

Yup, there’s more:

At least seven Republican-held Senate seats are up for grabs. The Cook Political Report has marked races in Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Montana and North Carolina as toss-ups. The Arizona race between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Mark Kelly has been deemed “lean Democrat.” 

Of those toss-up races, four of them are seeing activity from the Koch-linked super PAC. The committee plans to launch a new $5 million digital ad campaign targeting swing voters in support of Marshall and the other Senate candidates it’s backing. The ad campaign will start this week and go into November. 

Expect it to get ugly. We saw that here in just a state senate race ten years ago. I use the example in my webinars to illustrate the importance solid get-out-the-vote organizing in rural districts.

John Snow was the last Democratic state senator standing in North Carolina’s far west. Jane Mayer wrote about his 2010 reelection race in a New Yorker piece titled “State for Sale.” Conservative N.C. kingmaker Art Pope served on the board of Americans for Prosperity founded by David Koch in 2004. Pope poured almost a million dollars into that one state senate race. His PACs sent two dozen attack flyers into John’s district. One echoed the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad.

Now, John lost that race. BUT … even after all the money spent against him, John lost by 161 votes in a district then spanning 8 counties with an average population under 30,000. That 161 votes was less than the undervote in his race in his two largest counties, i.e., the number of people in those counties who cast ballots but didn’t vote in John’s race. If those counties had the kind of program we run here, John might have held that seat and denied Pope his prize.

Having a vibrant GOTV program is also important for building your county organization long-term. Your professionalism will attract higher-caliber candidates, inspire your volunteers, and bring them back again and again. It will fuel your fundraising efforts when donors see yours is an organization that’s got “game” and deserves their support.

It’s Labor Day weekend. Please get busy.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Red pandas!

I think this pretty much confirms that Trump said all those things in front of John Kelly:

The President takes the opportunity to launch a preemptive strike on John Kelly as if he’s preparing for Kelly to confirm The Atlantic story pic.twitter.com/uwFYdxxYQB

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 4, 2020

He said it. He knows John Kelly knows he said it. So, like all the other troops he’s demeaned and degraded as losers and suckers and the like, he’s now doing it to him. He might as well have just confirmed the story.

But let’s ask ourselves what kind of person would say these things to a retired 4 Star General who lost his son on the battlefield. I think it’s a power trip, saying these grotesque things to someone he knows will have to sit there and take it or make a huge gesture and walk off the job? I’m sure he knew it was offensive to Kelly. That was the point.

Sociopath.