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Friday, June 16, 2017, 10:49 AM

Earlier this week in Virginia, two men who each voted for George W. Bush twice to become President of the United States won their primaries in the governor's race there.

Ed Gillespie, a lifelong Republican, won the Republican primary and Ralph Northam, who has a record of voting Republican, won the Democratic primary.

No, that's not a typo. It is, perhaps, the most relevant example, though, of why progressives and liberals in America are struggling to find a home in the same big tent.

Ralph Northam, 57, was no young man when he voted for George W. Bush to become President in both 2000 and 2004. He was a mid-life doctor whose political views were fully formed. In 2013, Northam openly said "I don't consider myself as a liberal."

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That isn't me putting words in the man's mouth. He said that. He was 40 years old when he first voted for George W. Bush, 44 years old when he somehow believed enough in the man again to vote for his reelection, and 53 when he made it abundantly clear that he's not a liberal.

Yet he is the Democratic nominee to run against Ed Gillespie, the former head of the Republican Party, to become the next Governor of Virginia.

Hear my heart I know politics are local and I know Virginia has some conservative leanings, but that the choice for governor in the state is now an open conservative and a closeted one bothers me particularly because the Democratic establishment enthusiastically supported Northam.

Do I prefer him over Gillespie? Of course. At least Northam publicly speaks out on Donald Trump, but his values simply don't line up with that of most progressives, including my own.

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I don't know of any better illustration for the current dilemma of American progressives than this race and its result. The Democratic Party is moving to the right.

Dave Wasserman, of FiveThirtyEight, observing the results of the Virginia primaries, said it like this: "There's a new name for the voters most people thought of as VA's moderate Republicans a few years ago: Democrats."

Maybe that's true. Ralph Northam represents that shift as well, but I don't think it's because they've changed their values as much as the invisible line defining who's a Republican and who's a Democrat has shifted.

The Democratic Party has shifted to the right. It's not anti-war. It's not strong on the environment. It's not strong on civil and human rights. It's not for universal health care. It's not strong on cracking down on Wall Street and big banks or corporate fraud. Ralph Northam was and is weak on all of those core principles of the progressive left, but we're expected to get behind him, and candidates like him, as if we're just a few small details away from seeing eye to eye with him. We aren't. He's not a progressive. He's not a liberal. He's hardly even a Democrat.

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Millions of us who ultimately voted for Hillary Clinton felt the very same way about her. On issues ranging from war, to corporate fraud, to campaign finance, to universal health care, and so much more, her positions were not discernibly different from the most basic Republican talking points.

Was she better than Trump? Of course she was. But I'd literally rather have a Kardashian sister or Curious George be President of the United States over Trump. Someone being better than Trump cannot be our key metric for choosing candidates.

I'm hearing more and more of my progressive friends talk seriously about the need for us to form our own political party. I get it. At the very best we are slightly tolerated guests in the Democratic Party. We are as different from establishment Democrats as those establishment Democrats are from everyday Republicans.

Being begrudgingly tolerated is a terrible feeling. We are an enthusiastic, organized bunch, but I certainly don't feel welcomed.

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MSNBC's Joy Reid all but confirmed as much in a widely shared tweet earlier this week in which she said, "Bernie and his followers are like that college friend who stays at your place for weeks, pays $0, eats your food & trashes your aesthetic."

That Reid, who makes a living as a political commentator, came to this conclusion about Bernie Sanders and his millions of followers was deeply disappointing, but revealing. Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in America. He has done far more for the Democratic Party than it has for him.

When the new head of the Democratic Party, Tom Perez, went on a speaking tour recently with Bernie, the enthusiastic crowds of thousands didn't show up at every single venue to hear Tom they were there for Bernie. Tom didn't do Bernie a favor, Bernie did Tom a favor. Bernie got behind Hillary Clinton and campaigned for her all over the country and asked his supporters to follow his lead.

I was one of those people who did just that. I've been a Democrat all of my life and have campaigned for and donated to so many Democratic candidates across the years. That the millions of us who support Bernie and his values have been reduced to bad guests who don't pay our way, eat up all the food, and trash the place, is a terrible insult rooted in something other than reality.

Democrats lost the House, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court, and the strong majority of state houses and governorships across the country. I agree that it sure does look like somebody trashed the place, but it damn sure wasn't Bernie and his followers. Anybody saying that is delusional.

Read more from the original source:
KING: Why progressives and liberals continue to feel like unwelcome guests in the Democratic Party - New York Daily News

The defeat of Tom Perriello, who ran as a populist with the backing of Bernie Sanders in Tuesdays gubernatorial primary in Virginia, marked a loss for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

But the results had more to do with timing and the strength of the states party apparatus than ideology, analysts say.

Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, who handily beat Perriello for the Democratic nomination by 12 points, had the backing of nearly every Virginia Democrat elected to state and federal office - the result of years of cultivation. And he outspent Perriello by $1.4 million on advertising, allowing a heavy television presence - especially in the costly metropolitan Washington market - in the last weeks before the election.

Perriello, a former one-term congressman, jumped into the race in January and hoped to overcome Northams structural advantage by riding a wave of anti-Trump and national progressive energy, bolstered by endorsements from Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D).

[To shake up Democratic Party, progressives turn to Virginia primary]

But it was too little, too late.

The lesson here was you cannot get in a race very late and underfunded against a candidate who has been raising money and organizing for a long time and who has every meaningful endorsement from the Democratic Party, said Jennifer Duffy, who monitors gubernatorial contests for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. I dont think this has anything to do with progressivism.

Perriello was unable to raise millions in small donor donations, even with the help of national progressive groups that sent fundraising pitches to millions. He relied on a few wealthy donors to write six-figure checks, and loaned himself $150,000 in the campaigns final days.

Meanwhile, Northam was airing ads touting his endorsements from unions, abortion rights groups and other progressive organizations, showcasing his background as a doctor and a veteran and referring to Trump as a narcissistic maniac.

[Why this Democratic doctor calls Trump a narcissistic maniac]

Perriellos internal polling showed him plunging 12 points in the last week of the campaign, mostly in vote-rich northern Virginia, after Northam won the endorsement of the Washington Post editorial board and outspent Perriello on advertising 2-1, according to Ian Sams, Perriellos spokesman.

In what became a high-turnout, low-information election, the spending disparity made a real difference in giving voters just enough information about Ralph to help him win, Sams said. It was a competitive advantage we couldnt overcome.

Democratic primary voters also seemed disinclined to rebel against the party establishment. Outgoing Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner are all beloved by Virginia Democrats. And they all backed Northam.

The real story, at least on the Democratic side...is people are generally happy with their leadership, said David Turner, Northams spokesman.

Perriellos campaign found it an enormous challenge.

Its hard to break through against an entire unified state Democratic Party operation, and we knew that from the beginning, said Sams.

In the primary, Perriello did exceptionally well with rural voters, sweeping the southern and western parts of the state, while Northam claimed the more populated urban crescent of northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads. He also did well in jurisdictions that are predominantly African American - a key constituency in the Democratic party.

Throughout his campaign, Perriello argued Virginia Democrats need to retool their approach to win more rural, young and minority voters after squeaker races for governor in 2013 and U.S. Senate in 2014.

But that message was undercut by the partys winning streak. Democrats hold all five statewide offices and triumphed in the last three presidential contests - Virginia was the only Southern state to back Hillary Clinton last fall.

Perriellos embrace of the progressive agenda - increased taxes on the wealthy to fund free community college, universal pre-kindergarten and paid family leave - made him a darling of the movement, as well as a favorite among some mainstream national Democrats. He slammed the corporate influence in politics and refused to accept donations from Dominion Energy, the states largest political donor and a contributor to Northam.

Northam embraced programs he believed can win support from Republicans, such as state funding for technical apprenticeship programs. A pediatric neurologist who championed reproductive rights and gun control, Northam could not be easily cast as an establishment villian.

Because Northam and Perriello shared similar views on policy, voters were left with a nuanced choice between styles: pragmatic or aspirational.

They were both what I would call mainstream progressives, one may have been more progressive on economic issues, one may have been progressive on guns and choice, said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic operative with roots in Virginia.

Perriellos defeat seemed to call into question the power of the Democratic Partys progessive wing, which has been trying to push candidates leftward as the party navigates the Trump era.

[Democrats unitied, GOP appears in disarray after Va. primary]

Progressive have lost other high-profile races this year, including special Congressional elections in Kansas and Montana and in the races to chair the Democratic National Committee and California Democratic Party.

Their bark may be worse than their bite, said Geoffrey Skelley, an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. They have a lot more work to do if they want the reality of their influence to match what they think their influence is.

Progressive activists say they left a mark even though Northam won.

There would have been an unquestioned victory for progressives had (Perriello) won, said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which is aligned with Warren and backed Perriello. But big picture, unlike several years ago, its now very hard to find a Democratic primary where there is not competition to claim the mantle of progressivism and one-up each other on strong positions like $15 minimum wage. And thats what we saw in Virginia.

Perriello supporters seem to be coalescing around Northam, although some environmentalists are withholding support unless he denounces two gas pipeline projects, as Perriello had.

Entering the general election against Republican Ed Gillespie, Northam is Virginias first Democratic gubernatorial nominee to support the $15 minimum wage, some form of free higher education, drivers licenses for immigrants living in Virginia illegally, among other priorities.

The GOP is already attacking Northam as too extreme. A $5 million PAC funded by the Republican Governors Association started spending on digital ads the day after the election, setting up a website called tooliberalralph.com.

Northams spokesman disputed that Perriello nudged the lieutenant governor to the left.

He has always advocated for an increase in the minimum wage, and hes always advocated for working families, said Turner. What voters wanted...is someone who had a proven record of getting stuff done in Richmond.

See the original post here:
Was defeat of Sanders-backed candidate in Va. a loss for progressives? Not quite - Washington Post

wbur President Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base on Tuesday. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

This week, the legal cloud hanging over President Trump grew darker.

According to The Washington Post, special counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating Trumpfor possible obstruction of justice.

The growing scandal around Russian election hacking and the firing of the FBI director are prompting many progressives across the country to say its time to begin impeachment proceedings against the president now.

John Bonifaz, a constitutional lawyer who heads Free Speech for People, a small progressive group in Amherst, is part of the vanguard of a grassroots movement that has opposed Trump since his first day in office.

"We've launched ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org, which now has the support of 1.1 million Americans across the country," Bonifaz says.

Bonifaz says Trump is violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause of the Constitution for failing to fully divest from his private business interests before he took the oath of office. Similar concerns prompted nearly 200 Democratic members of Congress to file suit against the Trump administration this week. The White House dismisses the suit as politically motivated and unfounded, but Bonifaz says there are other reasons to impeach Trump.

"We have since expanded our grounds for this call to include obstruction of justice in light of the president's interference with an ongoing criminal investigation with the firing of FBI Director James Comey," Bonifaz says.

Along with the million-pluspeoplewho've signed Bonifaz's petition, about a dozen U.S. cities and towns have passed resolutions calling for impeachment, including Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as Amherst, Cambridge, Pelham and Leverett here in Massachusetts.

And after Comey's congressional testimony last week, two national grassroots organizations, Indivisible and MoveOn.org, which oppose Trump, also urged Congress to start impeachment proceedings.

"More people support impeaching Trump than approve of his job performance," says Anna Galland, MoveOn's executive director. According to a recentPolitico/Morning Consult poll, she's right though the poll also found the country deeply divided over this issue, with a slim pluralityopposing impeachment.

Still, Galland says it's time to act now.

"There have been sufficient evidence of what are called in the Constitution high crimes and misdemeanors, and we think it's time for all members of Congress both Democrats and Republicans to support moving forward with impeachment proceedings, Galland says.

But that's not happening. For the most part, Republicans in Congress remain in lockstep behind the president and don't support impeachment. And so far, just two Democrats U.S. Reps. Brad Sherman of California and Al Green of Texas say they do.

"We live in a country where no congressman, no senator and not even the president of the United States is above the law," Green said earlier this week. "And I've concluded that as a result articles of impeachment should be drawn."

"The only place impeachment comes before investigation is in the dictionary."

That position sparked sharp disagreement at this week's weekly meeting of House Democrats, according to The Hill, which reported that Massachusetts U.S. Rep.Michael Capuano denounced the push for impeachment as a selfish maneuver that could hurt Democrats.

Congressman Seth Moulton of Salem agrees.

"The danger is that it just looks political that we're not really trying to find out the facts or bring the right people to justice, but are just trying to pursue a political crusade against the president," according to Moulton, who says it is "frightening" that President Trump won't acknowledge what U.S. intelligence agencies have: that Russia interfered with the U.S. election and will try to do it again. Moulton wants a bipartisan commission to get to the bottom of what the Russians did and whether or not the Trump campaign was involved.

But he says impeachment could actually impede that effort.

"If you look back to the Watergate era, there were some people who suggested impeachment very early on," Moulton says."And that wasn't actually helpful to the investigation or to ultimately getting Nixon to resign."

Massachusetts U.S. Sen.Elizabeth Warren has been quiet on the issue of impeachment, while U.S. Sen. Ed Markey says it's too soon to consider it.

"The only place where impeachment comes before investigation is in the dictionary," Markey said outside his office in Boston last week. "But if that investigation establishes obstruction of justice, then of course that matter has to come before the United States Congress as a potential impeachment process."

That possibility grew a bit more likely this week, with news that special counsel Mueller is now probing whether President Trump obstructed justice.

In tweets early Thursday, Trump accused federal investigators of promoting a "phony" story about colluding with the Russians, and once again called it a "witch hunt."

Democrats are responding carefully. The growing scandal could help them retake the House next year, but if they jump aboard the impeachment bandwagon, they could alienate voters in conservative and politically moderate swing districts.

Bonifaz, of Amherst, who organized the online petition to impeach Trump, says too many members of Congress are putting party over country.

"They're engaged in a political calculation of what works best for 2018," according to Bonifaz, who says Democratic and Republican lawmakers should instead "stand up for our Constitution and Democracy."

This is hardly the first time progressives have pushed against mainstream Democrats. They hope that if their numbers grow, the mainstream will follow.

But one longtime Democratic activist says, "If Trump gets impeached, it wouldn't be because the left called for it, but because a nonpartisan law enforcement investigation made a case beyond a reasonable doubt against the president."

This segment aired on June 16, 2017.

Read the original:
Many Progressives Say Impeach Trump Now. More Mainstream Democrats Say Not Yet - WBUR

CNSNews.com (blog)

Rev. Graham: Leftist Progressives 'Want to Destroy the President' CNSNews.com (blog) Commenting on the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise (R-La.) and three other people by a left-wing Bernie Sanders-supporter on Wednesday, Reverend Franklin Graham said "leftist progressives" will not "let go of losing the election" and "they want to ...

See the article here:
Rev. Graham: Leftist Progressives 'Want to Destroy the President' - CNSNews.com (blog)

Photo Credit: Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock.com

If I have to read one more article blaming liberal condescension toward the red states and the white working class for the election of Trump, Im moving to Paris, France. These pieces started coming out even before the election and are still pouring down on our heads. Just within the last few weeks, theNew Republichad Michael Tomasky deploringelite liberal suspicion of middle America for such red-state practices as churchgoing and gun owning andThe New York Timeshad Joan Williams accusingDemocrats of impugning the social honor of working-class whites by talking about them in demeaning and condescending ways, as exemplified by such phrases as flyover states, trailer trash, and plumbers butt. Plumbers butt? That was a new one for me. And thats not even counting the 92,346 feature stories about rural Trump voters and their heartwarming folkways. (I played by the rules, said retired rancher Tom Grady, 66, delving into the Daffodil Diners famous rhubarb pie. Why should I pay for some deadbeats trip to Europe?) Im still waiting for the deep dives into the hearts and minds of Clinton supporterswhat concerns motivated the 94 percent of black women voters who chose her? Is there nothing of interest there? For that matter, why dont we see explorations of the voters who made up the majority of Trumps base, people who are not miners or unemployed factory workers but regular Republicans, most quite well-fixed in life? (I would vote for Satan himself if he promised to cut my taxes, said Bill Thorberg, a 45-year-old dentist in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Im basically just selfish.) There are, after all, only around 75,000 coal miners in the entire country, and by now every one of them has been profiled in theTimes.

In her fascinating recent bookStrangers in Their Own Land, the brilliant sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild asks readers to climb the empathy wall and really try to understand the worldview of Trump votersas she did, spending over five years getting to know white Southern Louisianians, many of them Cajun, who have extreme free-market, anti-government Tea Party politics although they live in Cancer Alley, an area where the petrochemical industry, abetted by the Republican politicians they voted for, has destroyed nature, their communities and their health. Hochschild has a deep grasp of human complexity, and her subjects come across as lovely people, despite their politics. As she hoped, I came away with a better understanding of how kindly people could vote for cruel policies, and how people who dont think theyre racist actually are so.

But heres my question: Who is telling the Tea Partiers and Trump voters to empathize with the rest of us? Why is it all one way? Hochschilds subjects have plenty of demeaning preconceptions about liberals and blue-statersthat distant land of hippies, feminazis, and freeloaders of all kinds. Nor do they seem to have much interest in climbing the empathy wall, given that they voted for a racist misogynist who wants to throw 11 million people out of the country and ban people from our shores on the basis of religion (as he keeps admitting on Twitter, even as his administration argues in court that Islam has nothing to do with it). Furthermore, they are the ones who won, despite having almost 3 million fewer votes. Thanks to the founding fathers, red-staters have outsize power in both the Senate and the Electoral College, and with great power comes great responsibility. So shouldnt they be trying to figure out the strange polyglot population they now dominate from their strongholds in the South and Midwest? What about their stereotypes? How respectful or empathetic is the belief of millions of Trump voters, as established in polls and surveys, that women are more privileged than men, that increasing racial diversity in America is bad for the country, that the travel ban is necessary for national security? How realistic is the conviction, widespread among Trump supporters, that Hillary Clinton is a murderer, President Obama is a Kenyan communist and secret Muslim, and the plain-red cups that Starbucks uses at Christmastime are an insult to Christians? One of Hochschilds subjects complains that liberal commentators refer to people like him as a redneck. Ive listened to liberal commentators for decades and have never heard one use this word. But say it happened once or twice. Feminazi went straight from Rush Limbaughs mouth to general parlance. One of Hochschilds most charming subjects, a gospel singer and preachers wife, uses it like a normal word. Equating women who want their rights with the genocidal murder of millions? How is that not a vile insult?

Im sure I have stereotypical views of people who live in red statesincluding forgetting that, as Tomasky points out, all those places have significant numbers of (churchgoing, gun-owning) liberals. I try not to be prejudicedmost people are pretty nice when you dont push their buttonsbut I probably have my fair share of biases. But so what? What difference does it make if I think believing in the Rapture is nuts, and hunting for pleasure is cruel? So what if I prefer opera to Elvis? What does that have to do with anything important? Empathy and respect are not about kowtowing to someones cultural and social preferences. Theyre about supporting policies that make peoples lives better, whether they share your values, or your tastes, or not.

How much empathy did Louisiana Republicans show when they electedand reelectedBobby Jindal, who, backed by Republican legislators, cut taxes, slashed spending on education, health care, and social programs and gave massive tax breaks to the very petrochemical companies that poisoned Republican voters themselves? In Oklahoma, a growing number of schools are now open only four days a weekvoters, ultimately, made the choice to cut taxes instead of pay for a decent education for the states children. You can go down the most uncontroversial list of social goodshospitals, libraries, schools, clean air and water, treatment for mentally ill people and drug addictsand Republican voters label them Big Government and oppose them. And when the consequences get too big to ignore, as with climate change, they choose to believe whatever nonsense Fox News is promoting that week, as if at least 97 percent of the worlds climate scientists are just elitists who think they know so much. True, by the time the world burns to a crisp, todays voters will mostly be dead, but wheres the empathy for their own grandchildren?

Sorry, self-abasing liberal pundits: If you go by actual deeds, liberals and leftists are the ones with empathy. We want everyone to have health care, for example, even those Tea Partiers who in the debate over the Affordable Care Act loudly asserted that people who cant afford treatment should just die. We want everyone to be decently paid for their labor, no matter how low they wear their pantssomehow the party that claims to be the voice of working people has no problem with paying them so little theyre eligible for food stamps, which that same party wants to take away. We want college to be affordable for everyoneeven for the children of parents who didnt start saving for college when the pregnancy test came out positive. We want everyone to be free to worship as they pleaseincluding Muslimseven if we ourselves are nonbelievers.

What should matter in politics is what the government does. Everything else is just flattery, like George H.W. Bushs oft-cited love of pork rinds. Unfortunately, flattery gets you everywhere.

Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation.

See the article here:
The Tired Myth That Progressives Lack Empathy Is Hardly the Problem - AlterNet