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PRINCETON, N.J. To hear some Democratic activists tell it, 2017 is supposed to mark the dawn of the partys new era led by a younger, more aggressively progressive generation.

So why does it look like the establishment may be striking back?

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In the only two governors races of 2017, Democrats might end up nominating a longtime Goldman Sachs executive and high-level political financier in New Jersey, while in Virginia the top of the ticket could feature a former George W. Bush voter who describes himself as a fiscal conservative.

Both Phil Murphy and Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam now position themselves as progressives running on liberal platforms in states that voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, and both have launched scathing attacks on the president.

But the easy caricatures of their backgrounds make some national Democrats nervous about the caricatures' effect on the grass-roots fires burning through the party early in 2017 and worried that their bruising internal battles about Democrats future may just intensify as a result.

Its not something thats going to be solved by the 2017 primaries. We have a lot of healing to do, and my point of view is you cant have a progressive wing and an establishment wing, said party strategist Rebecca Katz. We need to have a progressive establishment in order to win.

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The elections are the partys first statewide tests with Trump in the White House, and since they land just as Democrats debate their identity and figure out how to harness progressives anti-Trump intensity, they are being monitored increasingly closely especially the neck-and-neck contest in Virginia. And as the political world looks to them for signals about the direction of the party in the Trump era, the divisions are widening.

Adding to the sudden surge in interest: the fact that the Democratic nominee is currently favored to win both races in November in elections that stand to be framed as referendums on the president.

Murphy, a former ambassador to Germany under Barack Obama, is far more likely to win his race on Tuesday: a Stockton University poll from late May showed roughly one-third of New Jerseys Democratic primary voters backing him, compared with just 10 percent for former Bill Clinton Treasury Department official Jim Johnson, 9 percent for Assemblyman John Wisniewski, and less for a handful of others.

That gap hasnt stopped Murphys opponents from going after the likely nominee over his banking and party establishment ties, even after hes gotten vocal support from Bernie Sanders son Levi and liberal groups like the Communication Workers of America, and as he reminds voters that his Democratic National Committee work was under the liberal Howard Dean.

The broadsides from Wisniewski, who served as Sanders New Jersey campaign chairman in 2016, have been particularly strident. And Johnson, who describes his candidacy as a potential guiding light for the national party, has warned that a Murphy win could sap energy from base voters even after the front-runner got campaign help from former Vice President Joe Biden, who at a rally last month in Lyndhurst called the New Jersey race the single most important one of the next three years.

People will take a really hard look at the party [nominating] process in New Jersey and determine if its truly small-d democratic or the result of the machine doing what the machine has done for a long time, Johnson told POLITICO. And I think some people will be dispirited by that.

Yet its next week's vote in Virginia thats captured more attention from national Democrats, largely because of the more competitive primary race between Northam and former Rep. Tom Perriello. The latter, while far from a standard progressive on hot-button issues like gun control and abortion, has sought to portray himself as the candidate of the future, tying himself not only to Obama, but also to prominent liberals like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Perriello and Northam the No. 2 statewide official and a pediatric neurologist who has leaned heavily on backing from state Democratic leaders including Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine appear headed for a toss-up, according to a recent Washington Post/George Mason University poll.

Entering the contest only in January, Perriello has worked to increase attention to the race while he and Northam criss-cross Virginia, aiming to raise money and national recognition to counter the existing support and statewide familiarity with Northam.

Phil Murphy, a former ambassador to Germany under Barack Obama, is far more likely to win his race in New Jersey. | AP Photo

This is, in some ways, less a primary than a test of what the next generation of the Democratic Party is going to look like, Perriello told POLITICO, pointing to the level of attention he received by aggressively going after Trump early on in the race.

Nonetheless, while New Jersey's and Virginias off-year races often offer hints about the next years midterms, they are rarely direct predictors of a partys fortunes or decision-making processes the states are more suburban and highly educated than many others, and Clinton beat Sanders in both primaries by over 25 points. Plus, Northam launched his run in early 2015 and Murphy in mid-2016, so many contours of both campaigns were largely set even before Trump won.

And its not like activists who argue for the party to take a more liberal tack have lost all their fights so far this year: They've taking over a few state parties and nominated Rob Quist in last months congressional special election in Montana.

The last-second injection of interest into the years two largest races, which have largely been overshadowed by day-to-day news from the White House, has still provided an opportunity for the partys leaders to take stock.

Democrats, as voters, are not in a place now where theyre only going to elect the farthest left of candidates. A lot of Democrats are taking positions that are far more progressive than they have in the past, and I think thats a good thing. But we dont want to cross the Rubicon where you have to be considered the left-most of the candidates to win every election. Thats a strategy for losing," said longtime party operative Dave Hamrick.

I dont think that this party has moved to a purity test party where we cant elect candidates who fit the district or states theyre running in. And thank God."

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Meet the new Democrats - POLITICO

Albany

A group of progressive organizations on Monday gathered to voice their opposition to holding a constitutional convention, which voters will decide on Nov. 7.

We have far more to lose than we have to gain, said Ron Deutsch, executive director of the labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute. We think this is a recipe for disaster.

While supportive of ideas such as a constitutional amendment ensuring a right to clean air and water, Peter Iwanowicz, executive director of Environmental Advocates of New York, said he believes a convention could endanger existing environmental protections.

It places them on a chopping block where they are subject to political trades, Iwanowicz said.

Charles Khan, organizing director at Strong Economy for All Coalition, another labor-backed group, said he feared a constitutional convention could turn out to be a Trojan Horse, during which billionaire activists could use their money and influence to help choose the delegates and create policies.

Every 20 years New Yorkers can choose whether to have a constitutional convention. If they do, delegates would then be selected to develop a slate of potential amendments to the state constitution. Voters in 2019 would decide whether to approve any amendments.

Supporters including the New York Bar Association and the New York Peoples Convention, backed by activist Bill Samuels, say a convention could fix the states partisan redistricting process, as well as create more environmental protections and measures to close campaign finance loopholes. Amendments could also simplify the states voting process and court system, advocates say.

Opponents such as Fiscal Policy Institute and New Yorkers Against Corruption, fear it could set the stage for rolling back protections and rights such as public-sector pension guarantees and legal protections for immigrants and the poor.

Monday's conference comes as opponents have been pouring money into ad campaigns for a "No" vote.

Opposition forces have already shelled out more than $1 million on their efforts in the run up to the final month, some bigger money is flowing as the Nov. 7 vote draws near.

Convention opponents went up on the airwaves last week with two ads slamming the process and urging New Yorkers to vote no on convening a convention this November.

According to filings with the Board of Elections on Friday, New Yorkers Against Corruption backed by labor unions, environmental groups, women's groups and others dropped nearly $600,000 on the TV ads.

The group spent more than $1 million total, raising $1.8 million (bolstered by $500,000 from NYSUT, $350,000 from AFSCME and $250,000 from CSEA).

It's that kind of money that convention supporters have known they'd have trouble competing with.

New York People's Convention reported $55,000 in spending since Oct. 6 in their latest financial filings released on Friday. That included nearly $22,000 for radio ads, digital ads, ad production and campaign literature, but no television spots.

Another group, the Committee for a Constitutional Convention, reported no advertising or literature spending part of about $5,500 in expenditures.

Matthew Hamilton contributed.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU

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Progressives urge "No" vote on constitutional convention ...

To this day, Republicans havent forgiven Chief Justice John Roberts for casting the deciding vote that upheld the core of the Affordable Care Act. But along with his tie-breaking vote in the 2012 decision, Roberts also did something conservatives give him far less credit for, and he even convinced two of his more liberal colleagues to join him. He dealt a crippling blow to Obamacares Medicaid expansion, declaring that the requirement was essentially extortion: Agree to expand health-care coverage or lose all of your existing Medicaid funding. This, Roberts wrote, was akin to a gun to the head of the states, and thus unconstitutional.

Blocking that kind of unlawful coercion is federalism in action, which conservatives have fought long and hard to defend as a local check against federal overreach. And now that Donald Trump is running the federal government, its a principle that liberals and progressives are embracing with open arms, as Democratic-leaning states and localities mobilize to shield themselves from federal policies they consider retrograde or just plain damaging to their residents and interests. Hand over undocumented immigrants to Trumps deportation machine? Perish the thought. Let the chief executive faithlessly sabotage the health-insurance market in an otherwise liberal bastion? Over our dead bodies. Or how about Jeff Sessionss intended crackdown on local marijuana laws? Get out of town.

Progressive federalism is not a phrase you hear often, but the Trump era may have prompted a liberal awakening to the benefits of local pushback against centralized executive fiat. When the president announced his ill-begotten travel ban a week after he took office, it was up to states like Washington and Minnesota to score the first major victory against the executive orders implementation. And so its been with other hotly contested legal battles over sanctuary cities, clean air, the payment of certain subsidies under Obamacare. It has fallen to Democratic attorneys general and municipal leaders to be standard-bearers for the legal resistance against Trump, who otherwise seems committed to trampling on states rights, conservative principles be damned.

For Heather Gerken, the new dean of Yale Law School and one of the leading scholars in support of progressive federalism, Republican control of Congress and the presidency has given new urgency to her work. In the aftermath of the election, she co-authored a users guide in the journal Democracy on how localities can best harness the power of federalism to serve progressive ends. Thats not to say Democratic enclaves will necessarily carry this flag for the long haul. In an interview, she told me that people on both sides of the political spectrum tend to opportunistically wield federalism for their partisan ends and not because of some high-minded constitutional commitment. Both sides are fair-weather federalists. Both sides use it instrumentally to achieve their goals, she said.

The leaders of the liberal resistance, naturally, wont just cop to favoring federalism because it now suits them. During a recent press conference to announce a new lawsuit challenging Sessionss war against jurisdictions that wont turn over undocumented immigrants to the feds, Xavier Becerra, Californias attorney general, suggested his effort wasnt about opposing Trump, but rather about standing up for our founding document. I dont see this as a fight against the federal government, Becerra said, according to the Recorder, a legal publication. Were fighting to protect the Constitution.

Thats the kind of lofty and legalistic talking point that Republicans have elevated to an art form. For example, Becerras counterpart in Texas, Ken Paxton, has insisted time and again that the scores of lawsuits his office felt compelled to file against President Obama were all about the rule of law and preventing federal encroachment in local affairs. To protect civil liberties and prevent the concentration of power, the Constitution divides authority through the separation of powers and federalism, Paxton wrote in a recent letter defending his decision to threaten more litigation over an Obama-era program aimed at protecting young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. If Texas really cared about federalism, it shouldve gone after the federal program that helps these kids years ago.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Democrats are the ones relying on similar litigation tactics and conservative precedents to oppose Trump. And theyve won some significant victories so far, which in turn have had the effect of slightly moderating the administrations stance on some issues. In April, a federal judge in San Francisco admonished the Department of Justice that it cant just threaten to strip funding from cities and counties simply because they refuse to do the governments bidding on immigration. And he did so borrowing from Chief Justice Robertss language in the first Obamacare challenge before the Supreme Court: The threat is unconstitutionally coercive, wrote U.S. District Judge William Orrick about Trumps executive order against immigrant-friendly sanctuary cities.

More dramatic still is whats been happening in the second most powerful court in the country, the federal appeals court in Washington, where the Trump administration has been waging a fierce regulatory battle with New Yorks Eric Schneiderman and other state attorneys general who insist that their states have skin in the game of how the federal government should enforce its own laws. In back-to-back decisions earlier this month, judges in that court recognized that these states should be able to intervene in cases where Trump, if left to his own devices, could simply decide that ozone pollution standards dont matter, or stop making millions in cost-sharing payments to insurers that make coverage affordable to poor Obamacare beneficiaries.

In these court confrontations, tellingly, lies a key difference in how progressives and conservatives employ federalism. For conservatives, its all about stopping executive policy they dont like: Texas alone spearheaded efforts to invalidate federal rules and directives aimed at protecting transgender students and patients, workers considering joining a union, and the undocumented parents of American citizens and permanent residents all in the name of upholding the Constitution and laws and their state budgets and businesses. Progressives, on the other hand, really like some of these policies and have jumped in the fray to save them from non-enforcement or outright repeal by the Trump administration. And in the face of new actions by Trumps team, their strategy has been to play offense, as in the bid by sanctuary states and localities to get the federal government to leave them alone on immigration.

These interventions have emboldened the Democratic base and maybe even contributed to the political aspirations of attorneys general and other local politicians. Federalism is now a tool to #resist. But is there a principled way for progressives to seize the moment and learn to love federalism for federalisms sake, rather than just as a means to score political points against Trump or salvage a policy they favor?

Writing in National Review, Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor and longtime libertarian scholar of federalism, expressed hope that the Trump era could well be the time to make federalism great again for both progressives and conservatives a moment for politicos and legal thinkers from both sides to find common ground and form a new bipartisan and cross-ideological appreciation for limits on federal power.

Yale Laws Gerken, for her part, is skeptical that one can make a bright-line rule for federalism, but she says that there are issues, such as national security and the enforcement of federal civil-rights laws, that everyone should agree belong in the realm of the national government vis--vis the states. Ive never met a [federalist who says] that a state should control our nuclear arsenal, she says. There are always things no matter what side youre on that you believe should be centralized. And there are almost always things that you think should be decentralized. The real question is, how much weight do you put on the scale for the values of federalism, and what you think federalism can achieve, given your goals?

Convicted killer Mark James Asay lost his last appeal, and was executed on Thursday night.

Weeks ago, nearly 50 counties had no insurer selling Obamacare plans. Despite Trumps many acts of sabotage, that number is now zero.

So long as the president has an internet connection, hes bound to read and, occasionally retweet all manner of far-right wing nuts.

Weve had the time of our lives, and we owe it all to him.

If Trump were to be removed from office via impeachment, the GOP would continue to rule with much the same policies. So why all the talk of a coup?

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says hes recommending changes to a handful of national monuments.

Its an acknowledgement that the sailors are not expected to be found alive.

History shows the party in the White House struggles to knock off incumbent senators in midterms. Its one of many cross-cutting factors for 2018.

Fix the Debt is now fixin to get paid.

Police are reporting that one person died, and the suspect was shot and taken to the hospital.

It could become a Category 3 storm and cause potentially devastating floods by dumping close to two feet of rain in some areas.

Now that the president has put a government shutdown squarely on the table, Democrats must decide if they want a deal, or just a Trump defeat.

A primer on how the Houses struggle to pass a 2018 budget could blow up tax reform and Americas credit rating.

The White House chief of staff is controlling the flow of information to the president and presenting him with decision memos.

The president plays backseat Majority Leader, as relations between the White House and Capitol Hill continue to sour.

Progressives have taken up a conservative principle as a shield against the federal government. But is it just a marriage of convenience?

Rick Dearborn, who is now deputy chief of staff, reportedly passed along information about someone trying to connect Trump officials with Putin.

The charges stem from his use of pepper spray at the rally in Charlottesville, which he says was justified.

They said his words have given succor to those who advocate anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia.

The reported plan gives Mattis six months to figure out what Trumps tweets mean for service members and by then the courts may have weighed in.

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A New Romance: Trump Has Made Progressives Fall in Love With Federalism - New York Magazine

Common Dreams

The Long Game For Progressives Common Dreams "Progressive values include fairness, equity, a level-playing field, compassion, justice, reverence for our planet and environment, and a genuine pursuit of peace, not war all things which play extremely well in the hearts of Americans, not to ...

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The Long Game For Progressives - Common Dreams

Tuesday night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (DVt.) and Rep. John Conyers (DMich.) met with a crowd of 2,000 at the Fellowship Chapel in Detroit to discuss their new bill on universal healthcare. The event also became a rally for progressive values as cheers of Bernie 2020 came from the audience along with multiple standing ovations.

Conyers said his Medicare for All bill now has 117 cosponsors. He emphasized the government needs to combat high youth unemployment rates as well.

"There are two fundamental human rights in our great democracy: everyone should have health care from the minute they're born, and then of course, after you get born, you got to get a job," he said.

Conyers also discussed water activism, referencing instances when Detroits water has been shut off, stating it was a U.N. human rights violation.

Sanders touched upon the Charlottesville violence, as he criticized President Donald Trumps both sides argument. What was scary to U.S. citizens, he said, is that the United States has seen Nazis and white supremacists before, but have never seen a president Democrat or Republican who could not condemn them.

There are no nice Nazis, he said.

Sanders moved on to echo Conyers speech on universal healthcare. He also added the government should invest in education to combat youth unemployment and automatically register 18 year olds to vote, arguing his ideals are not radical if other countries do them as well.

During the Q&A session, an audience member asked if progressives should make their own party, leaving behind the Democrats and Republicans. Sanders, who is the longest running Independent senator in the United States, said while he welcome critiques of the Democrat party, it would not be accurate to equate them to the Republicans.

Dont lump Democrats and Republicans together, he said, explaining he made the choice to work with Democrats so the conservative party does not have another four years. He also emphasized the wish for the Democrats to open to the working class.

Vibha Venkatesha, a Wayne State University 2015 alum, said she came to the townhall interested in hearing about Sanders and Conyers healthcare policies. She wanted to see more about the Medicare for All push.

A lot of Democrats rally about keeping the Affordable Care Actwhich I agree with and I am on the Affordable Care ActI really wanted to see if there is any push to go beyond that, she said.

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Progressives rally in Detroit at Bernie Sanders, John Conyers townhall - The Michigan Daily