Bernie Sanders Calls for Progressives' Election as Means to Defeat Trump

Will the Democratic Party establishment wake up and work for progressives in this Blue Wave year?

Democratic primaries in the coming weeks will tell, including in key states Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Ohio

In Ohio, Dennis Kucinich (with Tara Samples) is running for the Democratic Party's nomination for governor. The election is May 8.

Kucinich is backed by Our Revolution, a non-profit progeny of Bernie Sanders' 2016 run for the presidency. In a rational political culture, Our Revolution's endorsement would give the primary election to Kucinich.

The failed War on Drugs has destroyed communities, filled prisons and cost taxpayers millions.

More and more states are doing their part to restore sense, compassion and fairness to their criminal justice systems. It's time Ohio did the same. #OHGov https://t.co/ggMQ0dnEjr

— Dennis Kucinich (@Dennis_Kucinich) May 1, 2018

Tune in next Tuesday night at MSNBC to watch the results come in.

Pennsylvania

In Pennsylvania, Bernie Sanders has made three endorsements—John Fetterman for Lieutenant Governor, Greg Edwards for Congress, and Jess King for Congress. (The race for governor is widely seen as a likely win for Democratic incumbent Tom Wolfe).

The Pennsylvania election is May 15.

From a fundraising email from Bernie Sanders:

If we are going to defeat right-wing Republicans in 2018 and 2020, we need to win in states that Trump won, like Pennsylvania. And, in my view, the only way we win in those states is by supporting progressive candidates who have the guts to defend working-class families - white, black, Latino, Asian American, Native American - and take on the power and greed of the billionaire class.

Here's some very good news. In Pennsylvania there are three strong progressive candidates who can win their primary fights and win the general election.

As you know, Donald Trump represents something we have never seen before in the history of the United States. It is not just that he represents the interests of the wealthy and powerful. It's that we have never had a president with more authoritarian tendencies than him.

The 2018 midterm elections will be long remembered as a pivotal moment in American history because, if we are successful, we can put an end to the disastrous Trump agenda. If we are not, we will have at least two more years of a rapid shift toward authoritarianism, the further normalization of corruption and the continued rise of oligarchy.

But we cannot defeat Trump and the Republican Party with the same playbook, or by supporting the same kind of candidates long favored by the political establishment and financial elite. That is how we got to where we are today.

That is why I am traveling to Pennsylvania later this week to support three strong progressive candidates: John Fetterman for Lieutenant Governor, Greg Edwards for Congress, and Jess King for Congress. Their primaries are on May 15, and they need your help now. So here is the part where I ask:

This is our chance to elect three great progressives who will help lead the fight against Donald Trump and the dangerous Republican agenda. They need our help to win in Pennsylvania.

Our job in 2018 is to take on and defeat Trump's authoritarianism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia and religious bigotry. But we can only do that if we run candidates who can rally the American people around an agenda that works for them, not the billionaire class.

For more than a decade now, John Fetterman has been an outstanding progressive leader in Pennsylvania. From early in his career he has stood with the working families of the state as he advocated for a $15 per hour minimum wage, Medicare for all, marriage equality and ending the failed war on drugs. He has been an outspoken defender of women’s health, immigrant rights, racial justice and LGBTQ equality.

For the past 25 years, Greg Edwards has worked tirelessly to organize for justice in health care, education and economic dignity. The powerful grassroots movement behind Greg Edwards is championing Medicare for all, universal pre-k, debt-free college and raising the minimum wage, and he is living his values of unwavering inclusion by building the diverse coalition Democrats need to win in his district.

Jess King has seen firsthand how the biggest corporations have hurt workers and squashed competition. In Congress, she will work to pass Medicare for all, rein in Wall Street, break up corporate monopolies, and support the real job creators: small businesses in our local economies.

These are three great candidates you can be proud to support. Candidates like John, Greg and Jess will help us stop Trump while ushering in an era of strong progressive change in this country. Thank you for supporting them. They need our help.

In Solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

Halt Grab of Veterans' Land

I love Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA).

For a period during the Bush administration, it felt like the only compelling loyal Democratic opposition was from Waxman, Feingold and Kucinich.

But Waxman has earned the wrath of veterans the nation-over for his bizarre commitment to overseeing appropriating veterans' land in West Los Angeles

Writes Robert L. Rosebrock, director of The Veterans Revolution:

Veteran land is land that has been deeded to the Veterans to take care of their physical and emotional wounds. One of these lands the West Los Angeles Veterans' Home (WL VHA) the largest parcel on land for Veterans in the USA, was donated by Arcadia de Baker and John P. Jones in 1888 to the Government for the sole purpose of providing permanent care to our Veterans. Arcadia de Baker kindly donated 388 acres in West Los Angeles, to Veterans and our Veterans ONLY.

Rep. Waxman, what are you thinking?
Why are you helping to appropriate this land that veterans clearly regard as sacred?

This is a slap in the face of our 23-million veterans who have been beaten on far too often during the Bush administration as it privatized, abused and neglected the public welfare of veterans whose plight is our collective disgrace.

Waxman is better than this, much better. For more information see Veterans Land Grab.

Kevin Phillips on the Economic Numbers Racket

Update II: Americans are doing considerably worse than the usual economic measures let on.

Update: Debt Rattle, Fire and Iceland; Central Banks Signal Deepening Concern at Outlook as G-7 Meets

via MAL Contends

In the Harper's May issue (not available online yet), Kevin Phillips has a vital piece discussing why the American economy is in worse shape than is acknowledged by bipartisan elites who have been participating not in some "grand conspiracy, just accumulating opportunisms."

Phillips cites John Williams, a California-based economic analyst and statistician, who dubs this predilection over the last several decades to paint an overly-rosy picture of the economy and Americans' financial health: "Pollyanna Creep."

Myself, I call it, lying.

Although Phillips does not write it, like in most dysfunctions of government, the Bush administration is the worst.

Americans know perfectly well that American elites have functioned as a collective Squealer—the character who is a pig in George Orwell's Animal Farm, who contra reality on the farm incessantly squeals how well everyone is doing and how blessed is the state of Animal Farm in all respects.

One does not need to be a reader of CounterPunch, or for that matter a reader of John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich, to know that this taboo analysis is instructive to American families and impolitic towards the squealers.

Writes Phillips:

We might ponder as well who profits from a low-growth U.S. economy hidden under statistical camouflage. Might it be Washington politicos and affluent elites, anxious to mislead voters, coddle the financial markets, and tamp down expensive cost-of-living increases for wages and pensions?

I think we indeed might ponder these points and consider them in the next election, and especially the white working class demographic which seems to focus on gays and their own god deemed vengeful and unloving towards other tribes, especially around election time.
Concludes Phillips:

The U.S. dollar, off more than 40 percent against the euro since 2002, could slip down an even rockier slope. ... The credit markets are fearful, and the financial markets are nervous. If gloom continues, our humbugged nation may truly regret losing sight of history, risk, and common sense.

Unless we enforce a reversal of the major economic and political trends in our society, no manner of preventing gays from marrying or asking for god's wrath is going to help our fellow citizens in this grand American experiment.

Iowa Democratic Pres Race Prediction

Lots of polls and predictions for the Iowa caucuses out

The Iowa Independent predicts:

Barack Obama: The winner in a narrow victory, and Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in a second-place tie.

Not bad, but I would add that word around Wisconsin Democratic campfires is that Clinton has several first-rate field organizers from Wisconsin (and elsewhere), and Dennis Kucinich just might offer his support to someone in whom he believes, and a last-minute endorsement from Kucinich can make a difference in a close race like Iowa's.

The politically savvy Kucinich might make an early-next-week endorsement that would give his candidacy's concerns (crazy ideas like health care, education and peace) political capital; watch out for a surprise.

No one is outworking anyone else among the big three Dems, but I predict a Clinton win accompanied by a strong performance with Iowa Catholics, with Obama and Edwards close behind.

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