Archive for the ‘Democrats’ Category

Progressive Democrats of America

Progressive Democrats of America was founded in 2004 to transform the Democratic Party and our country. We seek to build a party and government controlled by citizens, not corporate elites-with policies that serve the broad public interest, not just private interests. As a grassroots PAC operating inside the Democratic Party, and outside in movements for peace and justice, PDA played a key role in the stunning electoral victories of November 2006 and 2008. Our inside/outside strategy is guided by the belief that a lasting majority will require a revitalized Democratic Party built on firm progressive principles.

For over two decades, the party declined as its leadership listened more to the voices of corporations than those of Americans. PDA strives to rebuild the Democratic Party from the bottom up-from every congressional district to statewide party structures to the corridors of power in Washington, where we work arm in arm with the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In just a couple of years PDA and its allies have shaken up the political status-quo on issues from ending the Iraq war, voter rights, protecting Social Security, a full employment economy, national healthcare and economic justice.

Progressive Democats of America is a federal political committee which primarily helps members elect candidates who reflect our values through a variety of activities aimed at influencing the outcome of the next election.

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Progressive Democrats of America

Washington State Senate Democrats

Bill passes, up to 2,000 high school seniors to receive diplomas

Passage of Senate Bill 6145 will help up to 2,000 Washington high school seniors who met all their graduation requirements, except for passing the states high-stakes biology assessment. (TRT: 46) CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

http://sdc.wastateleg.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Assessment-bill-passes-Mixdown-1.mp3 []

OLYMPIA Today the United States Supreme Court issued its much-awaited ruling on marriage equality across the country.

In a landmark decision that will finally secure marriage rights for all couples, the Court ruled state []

While some services are protected by constitutional or federal mandates, a government shutdown would still hurt people in communities across our state in more ways than you can imagine. Washington children would lose early []

Senate Democratic Leader Sharon Nelson issued the statement below following the release of the states revenue forecast:

I was very pleased to learn our states revenues are expected to increase. This is further proof that []

OLYMPIA As legislators continue work to come to an agreement on the state operating budget and a funding solution for schools, work has continued to refine the Carbon Pollution Accountability Act, which could []

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Washington State Senate Democrats

Nancy Pelosi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nancy Pelosi House Minority Leader Incumbent Assumed office January 3, 2011 Deputy Steny Hoyer Preceded by John Boehner In office January 3, 2003 January 3, 2007 Deputy Steny Hoyer Preceded by Dick Gephardt Succeeded by John Boehner 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives In office January 4, 2007 January 3, 2011 President George W. Bush Barack Obama Preceded by Dennis Hastert Succeeded by John Boehner House Minority Whip In office January 15, 2002 January 3, 2003 Leader Dick Gephardt Preceded by David Bonior Succeeded by Steny Hoyer Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 12th district Incumbent Assumed office January 3, 2013 Preceded by Jackie Speier Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 8th district In office January 3, 1993 January 3, 2013 Preceded by Ron Dellums Succeeded by Paul Cook Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 5th district In office June 2, 1987 January 3, 1993 Preceded by Sala Burton Succeeded by Bob Matsui Personal details Born Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro (1940-03-26) March 26, 1940 (age75) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. Political party Democratic Spouse(s) Paul Pelosi (1963present) Children Nancy Christine Jacqueline Paul Alexandra Alma mater Trinity Washington University Religion Roman Catholicism Signature Website House website

Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi (; born March 26, 1940) is the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives and served as the 60th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 2007 to 2011. She is the only woman to have served as the House Speaker and to date is the highest-ranking female politician in American history.[1]

A member of the Democratic Party, Pelosi represents California's 12th congressional district, which consists of four-fifths of the city and county of San Francisco. The district was numbered as the 5th during Pelosi's first three terms in the House, and as the 8th from 1993 to 2013. She served as the House Minority Whip from 2002 to 2003, and was House Minority Leader from 2003 to 2007, holding the post during the 108th and 109th Congresses. Pelosi is the first woman, the first Californian and first Italian-American to lead a major party in Congress. After the Democrats took control of the House in 2007 and increased their majority in 2009, Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House for the 110th and 111th Congresses.

On November 17, 2010, Pelosi was elected as the Democratic Leader by House Democrats and therefore the Minority Leader in the Republican-controlled House for the 112th Congress.[2]

Pelosi is Italian-American and was born Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro in Baltimore, Maryland, the youngest of six children of Annunciata M. "Nancy" (ne Lombardi) and Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., who was a Democratic party U.S. Congressman from Maryland and a Mayor of Baltimore.[3][4] Pelosi's brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, also a Democrat, was mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971, when he declined to run for a second term.

Pelosi was involved with politics from an early age. In her outgoing remarks as the 60th Speaker of the House, Pelosi noted that she had been present at John F. Kennedy's inaugural address as President in January 1961. She graduated from the Institute of Notre Dame, a Catholic all-girls high school in Baltimore, and from Trinity College (now Trinity Washington University) in Washington, D.C., in 1962 with a B.A. in political science. Pelosi interned for Senator Daniel Brewster (D-Maryland) alongside future House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.[5] She met Paul Frank Pelosi (b. April 15, 1940, in San Francisco)[6] while she was attending Trinity College.[7] They married in Baltimore at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen on September 7, 1963.[8] After the couple married, they moved to New York, and then to San Francisco in 1969, where Mr. Pelosi's brother, Ronald Pelosi, was a member of the City and County of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors.[9]

After moving to San Francisco, Pelosi worked her way up in Democratic politics. She became a friend of one of the leaders of the California Democratic Party, 5th District Congressman Phillip Burton.

In 1976, Pelosi was elected as a Democratic National Committee member from California, a position she would hold until 1996.[10] She was elected as party chair for Northern California on January 30, 1977, and for the California Democratic Party, which she held from 1981 until 1983.[10]

Pelosi was appointed Finance Chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of the U.S. Senate Democrats, in 1985.[10] That same year, she ran to succeed Chuck Manatt as chair of the Democratic National Committee, but lost to then-DNC Treasurer Paul G. Kirk.[11] Pelosi left her post as DSCC finance chair in 1986.[10]

Phillip Burton died in 1983 and was succeeded by his wife, Sala. In late 1986, Sala became ill with cancer and decided not to run for reelection in 1988. She picked Pelosi as her designated successor, guaranteeing her the support of the Burtons' contacts.[12] Sala died on February 1, 1987, just a month after being sworn in for a second full term. Pelosi won the special election to succeed her, narrowly defeating San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt on April 7, 1987, then easily defeating Republican candidate Harriet Ross on June 2, 1987; Pelosi took office a week later.[13][14]

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Nancy Pelosi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Democratic Party | political party, United States …

Democratic Party,in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Republican Party.

The Democratic Party has changed significantly during its more than two centuries of existence. During the 19th century the party supported or tolerated slavery, and it opposed civil rights reforms after the Civil War in order to retain the support of Southern voters. By the mid-20th century it had undergone a dramatic ideological realignment and reinvented itself as a party supporting organized labour, the civil rights of minorities, and progressive reform. Since President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal of the 1930s, the party has also tended to favour greater government intervention in the economy and to oppose government intervention in the private, noneconomic affairs of citizens. The logo of the Democratic Party, the donkey, was popularized by cartoonist Thomas Nast in the 1870s; though widely used, it has never been officially adopted by the party.

The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the United States and among the oldest political parties in the world. It traces its roots to 1792, when followers of Thomas Jefferson adopted the name Republican to emphasize their antimonarchical views. The Republican Party, also known as the Jeffersonian Republicans, advocated a decentralized government with limited powers. Another faction to emerge in the early years of the republic, the Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, favoured a strong central government. Jeffersons faction developed from the group of Anti-Federalists who had agitated in favour of the addition of a Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States. The Federalists called Jeffersons faction the Democratic-Republican Party in an attempt to identify it with the disorder spawned by the radical democrats of the French Revolution of 1789. After the Federalist John Adams was elected president in 1796, the Republican Party served as the countrys first opposition party, and in 1798 the Republicans adopted the derisive Democratic-Republican label as their official name.

In 1800 Adams was defeated by Jefferson, whose victory ushered in a period of prolonged Democratic-Republican dominance. Jefferson won reelection easily in 1804, and Democratic-Republicans James Madison (1808 and 1812) and James Monroe (1816 and 1820) were also subsequently elected. By 1820 the Federalist Party had faded from national politics, leaving the Democratic-Republicans as the countrys sole major party and allowing Monroe to run unopposed in that years presidential election.

During the 1820s new states entered the union, voting laws were relaxed, and several states passed legislation that provided for the direct election of presidential electors by voters (electors had previously been appointed by state legislatures). These changes split the Democratic-Republicans into factions, each of which nominated its own candidate in the presidential election of 1824. The partys congressional caucus nominated William H. Crawford of Georgia, but Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, the leaders of the partys two largest factions, also sought the presidency; Henry Clay, the speaker of the House of Representatives, was nominated by the Kentucky and Tennessee legislatures. Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes, but no candidate received the necessary majority in the electoral college. When the election went to the House of Representatives (as stipulated in the Constitution), Claywho had finished fourth and was thus eliminated from considerationthrew his support to Adams, who won the House vote and subsequently appointed Clay secretary of state.

Despite Adamss victory, differences between the Adams and the Jackson factions persisted. Adamss supporters, representing Eastern interests, called themselves the National Republicans. Jackson, whose strength lay in the South and West, referred to his followers simply as Democrats (or as Jacksonian Democrats). Jackson defeated Adams in the 1828 presidential election. In 1832 in Baltimore, Maryland, at one of the countrys first national political conventions (the first convention had been held the previous year by the Anti-Masonic Movement), the Democrats nominated Jackson for president, drafted a party platform, and established a rule that required party presidential and vice presidential nominees to receive the votes of at least two-thirds of the national convention delegates. This rule, which was not repealed until 1936, effectively ceded veto power in the selection process to minority factions, and it often required conventions to hold dozens of ballots to determine a presidential nominee. (The partys presidential candidate in 1924, John W. Davis, needed more than 100 ballots to secure the nomination.) Jackson easily won reelection in 1836, but his various opponentswho derisively referred to him as King Andrewjoined with former National Republicans to form the Whig Party, named for the English political faction that had opposed absolute monarchy in the 17th century (see Whig and Tory).

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Trade highlights Democrats’ divorce from Obama …

The same liberal Democratic senators who stuck with the White House through six years of politically excruciating votes are set to break away in droves to oppose Obama's free trade efforts.

Their goal is to block a bill that greases the wheels for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an enormous 12-country trade deal that Obama wants -- badly -- to add to his legacy. And their open rebellion against their own party's president shows that lawmakers are viewing their own political fortunes as increasingly divorced from Obama's.

The internal rift will be forced into the open Tuesday when the Senate casts its first procedural votes on a bill called "trade promotion authority" -- or "fast track."

RELATED: Obama steps in with outsourcer at Nike

It would allow Obama to submit trade deals to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no amendments. That's key, trade negotiators say, to getting other countries involved in the talks, like Japan, Australia, Canada and Mexico, to take their own political risks of signing off on a final agreement, knowing American lawmakers won't seek to re-open it later.

Both Republican and Democratic aides remain uncertain about the vote's outcome -- suggesting there's a real chance the Senate could fall short of the 60 votes necessary to begin debate on the trade bill.

If that happens, it won't mean the bill is dead. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could shelve it temporarily and bring it back up at a later date. But it would still be a worrisome sign for Obama, who often only seems able to bend Congress to his will when government shutdowns or debt ceiling breaches are at risk.

"At this point it's very questionable," whether 60 senators will vote to begin debate, said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois. "Most Democrats including those who are supporting fast track really want to know what they are voting for and so far Sen. McConnell has been very furtive in his strategy."

In public, Obama is at war with liberal firebrand Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who he said this weekend is "absolutely wrong" on the issue.

All the while, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner to replace Obama, has been caught in the middle, offering only tepid statements that allude to liberals' concerns without taking a stand for or against the deal.

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Trade highlights Democrats' divorce from Obama ...