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Les Leopold, executive director at The Labor Institute writesWill Progressives Only Talk To Themselves?

For the last generation, progressives have organized themselves into issue silos, each with its own agenda. Survival depends on fundraising (largely from private foundations) based on the uniqueness of ones own silo. Each group must develop its own expertise and activities which distinguish it from other groups. Each needs to proclaim that its issue is the existential threat, be it climate change, police violence, abortion rights or health care. The net result of this Darwinian struggle is a fractured landscape of activity. The creativity, talent and skill are there in abundance, but the coherence and common purpose among groups is not.

Siloed organizational structures also make it extremely difficult to cooperate on a common program to reverse runawayinequality, There is little incentive to form a grand progressive alliance to build what the Sanders campaign, for example, had set in motion. Better to launch your own national effort and claim that it is the center of the organizing universe.

It is therefore not surprising that the two biggest progressive challenges to runawayinequalityin the last decade Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders campaign did not arise from within these siloed organizations. OWS largely grew from a notice in Adbusters, a Vancouver, BC, journal. Most of those who did the occupying at the 900 encampments also did not come from progressive siloed organizations. In fact, the non-profit/NGO community more or less watched from the sidelines.

Similarly, the Sanders campaign also did not emerge from a concerted effort among progressives to create a new politics within the Democratic Party. Rather, it was driven by Bernies own social-democratic vision that he had been espousing for over 40 years, year after year after year. When his effort showed signs of life, progressives broadly divided between the idealists feeling the burn and the pragmatists seeking to back a sure winner, who at least would provide access to progressive ideas.

The advent of Trump certainly has unleashed an enormous amount of progressive activity. In addition to the many sizeable marches, there are now approximately 5,000 Indivisible groups making life miserable for Republican office holders. However, nearly all of this activity is anti-Trump and defensive. There is no common Indivisible national agenda, nor is there a common organization to set a coherent strategic direction.

More importantly, pure anti-Trumpism guarantees we will be talking to the already convinced. By focusing solely on Trump, it becomes next to impossible to reach the Trump voters who also voted for Sanders and Obama.

Some argue that such outreach is a waste of time because there really are not that many Obama-to-Sanders-to-Trump voters. Unfortunately, exit polls do not give us enough data to reasonably estimate the size of this hybrid voting population. But sources inside the United Steelworkers, for example, report that 50 percent of their members who voted, voted for Trump. Given how representative those members are of the broader working class, were probably looking at several million Obama-Sanders-Trump voters.

We do know this: In the state of Michigan there was a 500,000 vote loss from Obama (2012) to Clinton (2016). It was minus 290,000 in Pennsylvania and minus 222,000 in Wisconsin.

Very few, if any of our siloed progressive organizations are targeting these working people. Danger ahead. [...]

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We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. ~Molly Ivins, from her final column, January 11, 2007

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2002No charges against Padilla:

Once upon a time, security agencies needed things like "charges," or "probable cause" to arrest and detain someone. Thanks to the WOT, that's no longer necessary. Case in point: The alleged "dirty bomb" suspect that had the press in titters the last two days. While headlines trumpeted a victorious blow against terror, the government's case against gangbanger Jose Padilla was nothing more than vapor. The latest in this bizarre saga? Rumsfeld now admits that the US is not going to arrest Padilla. They just want to 'question him'.

Yet at the same time, in violation of everything this country and its Constitution stand for, he is being held "indefinitely". This is getting really scary.

Ontoday'sKagro in the Morningshow:Greg Dworkinrounds up the Trump Trainwreck. On the radar: GA-06 andVA-Gov. Trumps trust gap is yooge. Will Republicans skip recess toavoid constituentswork? Latest legal wrangling over emoluments, explained. Caesar? Thats just locker room talk!

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Open thread for night owls: LeopoldWill progressives only talk to themselves? - Daily Kos

WASHINGTON Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam squares off against progressive favorite Tom Perriello on Tuesday in the states highly competitive Democratic gubernatorial primary, where the left flank of the party hopes national momentum will carry it to a win.

Thanks to Virginias status as one of two states with gubernatorial races this year (the other is New Jersey), the primary has attracted historic levels of attention and resources from Democrats eager to land a blow against President Donald Trump.

Northam, a 57-year-old pediatric neurologist, had locked up the support of virtually every major elected official in Virginia and was poised to cruise to the nomination until Perriello, a 42-year-old former diplomat and one-term congressman, announced his run in January.

Thanks to the endorsements of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the countrys leading progressive politicians, and firm stances on several controversial issues, Perriello has excited the states younger and more liberal voters, erasing virtually all of Northams lead in the polls.

As a result, many progressives view the race as a crucial test of whether a more liberal candidate can prevail in a state where moderate Democrats have long ruled the roost.

This primary is really about what foot the Democratic Party in Virginia is going to lean on, said Quentin Kidd, a Virginia politics expert at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. Its leaned on the right foot for a decade and a half since Mark Warner evolved this model of a Democrat who can win statewide in Virginia. If Perriello wins it means it will lean slightly to the left foot.

Kidd uses the word lean, because he doesnt think the shift would be any more dramatic than a pivot to the left.

The Washington Post/Getty Images

Nowhere is the potential shift more significant, however, than in the state governments posture toward Dominion Energy, Virginias influential power monopoly.

Perriello has refused to accept contributions from Dominion and opposes construction of the Atlantic Coastal pipeline, which the company is planning to construct across the state. Northam has declined to take a comparable stance against the natural gas pipeline, favoring tight regulation instead.

In the end, approval of the pipeline is a matter for federal regulators, but Dominion clearly views Perriellos vocal opposition as a major threat. The company has mobilized tens of thousands of its employees, retirees and shareholders to campaign in the gubernatorial primaries, using thinly veiled language that makes clear they prefer Northam.

If Northam wins tomorrow, you wont hear much about Dominion any more, because Northam wouldnt make that an issue, Kidd predicted.

When Perriello got into the race, he immediately began to nationalize the contest, claiming he was inspired to run by Trumps election and pitching himself as a bulwark against the effects of the presidents policies for Virginia.

What people want to see right now is that willingness to stand up to Trump and limit those really unconscionable and unconstitutional moves and also have a positive vision, he told HuffPost in March.

Northam emphasizes his legislative experience in Virginias capitol, but has also incorporated Trump, who he dubbed a narcissistic maniac, into his stump speeches.

Whatever you call him, were not letting him bring his hate into Virginia, Northam concludes in one of his television advertisements.

He has also gone toe to toe with Perriello on some of his bolder economic proposals, embracing the $15 minimum wage and putting forward his own free community college plan albeit one that, unlike his opponents, requires community service.

For some progressive activist supporters of Perriello, however, his early involvement in the anti-Trump resistance won them over. Perriellos presence at Dulles Airport to protest Trumps first travel ban in January and participation in subsequent rallies against the executive order made an impression on Virginia Democratic National Committee member Yasmine Taeb, who is now a vocal supporter of his.

He has been very committed to running a grassroots, bottom-to-top campaign, said Taeb, who lobbies on civil liberties issues for a Washington-based liberal nonprofit. He looks to us for guidance, not the other way around.

Taeb, like many of Perriellos most enthusiastic supporters, backed Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

For several reasons though, Sanders insurgent challenge to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not an apt parallel for the Perriello-Northam matchup.

Perriello spent years ensconced in the Democratic Party firmament, including as head of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. And the bid of Sanders acolyte Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison(D-Minn.), to chair the Democratic National Committeewasactively combattedby former President Barack Obama and his aides. But Perriello has attracted the endorsements of more than 30 Obama White House veterans, including close the former presidents confidante Valerie Jarrett. (Northam appealed to former Attorney General Eric Holder to ask Obama not to intervene in the race himself, according to The New York Times.)

Perriello, a Charlottesville native, became a darling of national Democrats during his time in Congress in 2009-10 for voting enthusiastically for the stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act, in spite of his conservative district, which included a large swath of rural Southside Virginia.

Obama campaigned for him in his 2010 reelection bid, which Perriello has publicized heavily in his current campaign ads. That anger over the ACA ultimately cost Perriello his seat only improved his standing in the party.

The Washington Post/Getty Images

But Perriellos time in Congress was also marked by attempts to triangulate on hot-button social issues. He earned an A rating from the National Rifle Association during his 2010 reelection campaign and received a $6,000 donation from the influential group based in Fairfax, Virginia.

More troubling still for some progressives was Perriellos vote for the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the ACA, which would have denied federal funding from the new law to any health insurance plans that cover abortions.

Perriello has since dubbed the NRA a nut-job extremist organization and embraced greater gun safety regulations.

He has also expressed regret for his vote for Stupak-Pitts, claiming he was honoring a promise to constituents to ensure the ACA complied with the Hyde Amendment, a law barring federal funding of abortions. Now the former congressman has embraced the complete abortion rights agenda and is proposing enshrining a womans right to an abortion in Virginias state constitution as a backstop against a Supreme Court ruling that overturns federal protections for the procedure.

But some reproductive rights activists still do not trust Perriello, claiming he has yet to be tested by a vote on the matter since his change of heart. Revelations that in 2004, Periello, a practicing Catholic, co-founded Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a social justice group that has compared abortion to torture and war have only heightened advocates suspicions. The Perriello campaign claims he has nonetheless always been pro-abortion rights.

Northam, by contrast, has a record of only ever supporting abortion rights, and played a key role in the fight to kill the trans-vaginal ultrasound bill as a state senator in 2012. NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia cited Northams record in its statement endorsing him.

This is about trust. I know exactly who Ralph Northam is, and I know exactly what Northam will do as governor. He will not stick his fingers up in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing, said Erin Matson, a Virginia-based reproductive rights activist who supports Northam.

For Matson, the primary is a test of the Democratic Partys commitment to abortion rights at a time when top lawmakers ranging from Sanders to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have loudly proclaimed that Democrats who oppose abortion are welcome in the party.

It is really disturbing to see this play out in Virginia, where the candidate who is considered more progressive has a murky history on abortion rights and Bernie is saying it is an optional part of being progressive, Matson said.

The Washington Post/Getty Images

In a further twist of the races complicated narrative though, Northam has admitted to voting twice for former President George W. Bush, who appointed two anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court. In 2011, he also called health care a privilege. (He claims he was not following politics closely during the Bush years, and now considers health care a right.)

On other issues, like overturning Virginias status as a right-to-work state, which Perriello supports, but Northam has demurred on, the contrast between the two candidates is clearer.

One way or another, Perriellos chances of winning depend on expanding the electorate, since he enjoys the greatest advantages among young people, new voters and Democrats in Southside and Southwestern Virginia who have not voted regularly in primaries, according to Kidd of Christopher Newport University.

Northams support is concentrated in more reliable Democratic constituencies, including older Democrats and black voters, particularly in central and Southeast Virginia, Kidd added. The key battleground, he said, is in the Washington suburbs of Northern Virginia, where Perriello has been campaigning most heavily in the final weeks.

There was this pent up energy in the electorate for an alternative to Northam that Perriello tapped into. And that pent up energy has the capacity to surprise people, if the expanded electorate turns out, Kidd concluded. Thats the key.

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This Virginia Democratic Primary Is A Crucial Test For The Party's Progressive Wing - HuffPost

The letter by Clive Lewis (above) and Caroline Lucas says: Support and votes were lent to Labour, but people can and will take their votes back if they dont see a new politics emerge. Photograph: Martin Pope for the Guardian

Jeremy Corbyn could have been prime minister with a landslide majority if every progressive vote had counted, according to Labours former defence spokesman Clive Lewis and the Green party co-leader, Caroline Lucas.

In a joint article for the Guardian, Lucas and Lewis, who is tipped for a return to Labours frontbench, write of their frustration that so many marginal seats went to the Conservatives in last weeks election because of wasted progressive votes.

They suggest that the result could have been radically different if Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats could have agreed more electoral pacts.

If every progressive voter had placed their X tactically to defeat the Tories then Jeremy Corbyn would now be prime minister with a majority of over 100, Lewis and Lucas wrote.

They added: We felt a profound sense of frustration and dismay when Tories won by narrow margins in places such as St Ives, Richmond Park and Hastings it really could have been so different.

Analysis by Compass, the thinktank that has pushed for a progressive alliance, suggests that 62 seats could have been won from the Tories if progressives had voted for the best placed left-of-centre candidate in each one.

In the election, more than 30 Green candidates stood aside for another progressive candidate who they thought had a better chance of winning. The Liberal Democrats stood aside to allow Lucas herself to comfortably retake her Brighton Pavilion seat. The Greens had offered to stand aside for Labour candidates in 12 other seats in return for Labour standing down in the Isle of Wight, but the Labour leadership refused.

Lewis and Lucas said the short notice of the snap election meant that there was not time to form more pacts. But they suggest that the next election could be different. If we work together there is nothing progressives cant achieve, they write.

Lewis, who was talked about as a possible future Labour leader before Corbyns poll surge, claimed a year ago that the party faced an existential crisis if it failed to embrace progressive alliances with other parties. His article with Lucas stops short of that assessment. But in a message to the Labour leadership, the pair warn that progressives will desert the party if they dont see a change in the way politics is conducted.

Support and votes were lent to Labour, but people can and will take their votes back if they dont see a new politics emerge, Lewis and Lucas wrote.

They added: People in Britain have embraced a more plural and open politics and its critical that what happens next continues to build that vision and listen to their voices. To do otherwise would be both a massive disservice to democracy and to misunderstand that the Corbyn effect is just one wave in the tide of change.

The alternative, Lucas and Lewis argue, is the kind of regressive alliance being negotiated between the government and the Democratic Unionist party.

Labour alone does not have all the answers, Lewis and Lucas argue. They write: Yes, the Labour party has been the main beneficiary of the hunger for change in our country, but this doesnt mean Labour alone owns it. Politics is now so incredibly volatile and complex. If progressives want to win big, not just to peg the Tories back, or be in office for a short period to ameliorate the worst excesses of free-market economics, then we must build a permanent and vibrant progressive majority for change.

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Corbyn could have been PM with 'progressive' votes Lewis and Lucas - The Guardian

The focus of most American commentary on the results of the general election held in the UK last Thursday is likely to be on the potential instability of Theresa Mays now much weakened Conservative Government, and on any impact that instability will have on the UKs divorce negotiations with the European Union. Much ink is likely to be spent exploring the depth of the damage that the vote did to the political standing of the woman who called it, and to the longer-term ramifications of a minority government now holding onto power only via a working alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party. Come to think of it, it will not only be in the U.S., but in the UK too, that much journalistic ink will also be spent explaining to a hitherto largely ignorant electorate what exactly the DUP is, and what its MPs stand for. Since what they stand for includes climate-denial, opposition to same-sex marriage, and a robust rejection of abortion, the more the British electorate discover about the views of this tiny Ulster-based party, the less likely they are to enjoy their new information.

But the other side of the Tory failure to increase its majority in Parliament last Thursday was the success of the Labour Party its capacity, under its most radical leadership for at least a generation, to confound its critics, increase its vote, and add 30 seats to its parliamentary tally. Going into the election, all the political chatter in the UK was on how a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn would likely be all but obliterated; so that conservative commentators, both there and here, are left struggling now with why that obliteration did not occur. The New York Times Bret Stephens still insists that Corbyn has done as much to shove the Labour Party to the nasty left as Donald Trump has shoved the Republican Party to the ugly right; and the more moderate Richard Reeves at Brookings seems to find comfort in the thought that there is a good chance that this is Corbyns high-water mark. But with Labour actually leading the Conservatives by 6 percentage points in the first major post-election opinion poll, we now need to get our head around the possibility that on the contrary, and as Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said in Chicago this weekend, Corbyns achievement was part of a global trend towards recognizing that progressive politics are the answer to a lot of the inequality, and a lot of the issues that young people and working families across the globe are facing.

If that is right, and I am sure that it is, then there are important lessons to be gleaned here for American progressives coping with the world of Donald J. Trump. These four in particular:

First, that there is a coherent and credible progressive alternative to the austerity politics advocated by U.S. and UK conservatives, one that is ready available and waiting. That alternative is not difficult to find, and it is definitely not nasty. There is nothing nasty about a Labour Party program offering free childcare for all two-year-olds and 12 months maternity leaves for their mothers. There is nothing nasty about committing to the building of 100,000 new starter homes, more funding for the NHS, the abolition of university/college fees, and the provision of maintenance grants for the students going to those universities. There is nothing nasty about higher rates of income tax on the top 5 percent of income earners, and nothing particularly nasty or even radical in advocating what many progressives in the United States also advocate. These include taxation on financial speculation, help for small businesses, the strengthening of trade union and worker-rights, greater infrastructure spending, and a new state-funded national investment bank to help start-up companies and alleviate regional disparities in economic development. You can find many similar proposals in the Better Off Budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This is not nasty politics. It is simply sound, sensible, progressive common sense.

Second, that this progressive common sense is not difficult to sell. Jeremy Corbyns modesty, his faith in people and movements, and his unwillingness to tack to every short-term political wind, was supposed to be his greatest weakness; but it didnt turn out that way. On the contrary, as John Harris put it in The Guardian, Corbyn shows theres a new way of doing politics. Straight talking is back. And it is back, and selling well electorally Jeremy Corbyn didnt win, but he has rewritten all the rules, as Jonathan Freeland put it because out there, in the cities, towns and villages of the UK, there are literally thousands of good people hungry for an honest politics and for a fair society. Anyone lucky enough to be in Washington DC as part of the Womens March on January 21, protesting the Trump presidency and program, knows well enough that there are legions of equivalent people here in the United States as well. In the wake of the UK election, what is now crystal clear is that center-left politicians will not consolidate support among such wonderful people by tacking to the right. If American and British voters want conservative policies, there are plenty of Republicans and Tories to whom they can give their electoral support. What progressive parties have to service are the armies of American and British voters who dont want conservative policies, and who find austerity programs to be both profoundly unfair and socially divisive. The Corbyn-led partys pulling of so many former UKIP voters back into the Labour ranks points to this more general truth: design policies that meet peoples needs while promising to reform the institutions that have previously failed to meet those needs, and the route to power is open again.

The third thing that the increased vote for the Corbyn-led Labour Party reminds us here in the United States is that the future is on our side. The uniquely British part of this general election was the collapse of the UKIP vote the going back to the main parties of the bulk of the 4 million people who had voted in 2015 for the United Kingdom Independence Party (the one keenest to leave the European Union). Theresa May called this snap election, thinking she could pull all those people back to the Conservative Party now that the Brexit vote was safe for them, but she was wrong. At least two-thirds of all the young voters in this election those under 25 voted Labour; and indeed, came out to vote in huge numbers, often angry with themselves for not having done so in the Brexit referendum of a year ago. What Labour took last Thursday was a majority slice of young professionals, and of college/university educated folk the bulk of whom wanted the UK to remain in the EU. What the Conservatives took was a majority slice of an aging white working class, and of young workers without further/higher education qualifications all of whom wanted to leave the EU. As election follows election in the UK, the demographics work in the center-lefts favor just as they do in the United States as the young replace the old, and as the education level rises. Which is why in both places, it is the Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyns of this world who are now sitting astride the gateway to our collective future: galvanizing the young, harnessing the single-issue focused movements, and challenging centrist Democrats and Laborites to move out of the way.

Finally, this. Jeremy Corbyns Labour Party confounded its critics not just because it tapped into the youthful energy of first-time voters who were mad at Brexit. It also tapped into a new electorate because it spoke directly to both their immediate and their long-term needs. As international economic organizations as august as the IMF and OECED have been quietly conceding of late, there is no austerity route to long-term prosperity for all. The route to that prosperity requires greater equality, not greater inequality. It requires the full mobilization of existing skills not least the skills of increasingly well-educated women and so needs policies in place that make it easier to combine parenting with full-time employment. And it needs an open and welcoming civic culture, one prepared to harness and share the capacities and aspirations of people from all kinds of different backgrounds, ethnic groupings, religious affiliations and sexual orientations. It needs an end, that is, to nasty politics; and the only really nasty politics currently on show in the UK lie with the DUP and UKIP, and in the U.S. with the alt-right and their ultra-conservative Republican allies. Donald Trump is a huge own goal for the American Right. Brexit (and the calling of this snap general election) is proving similarly disastrous for the British Conservative Party. Buyers remorse is growing on both sides of the Atlantic, as conservative politicians, through their own ineptitude, do all they can to give parties of the center-left a route back to power again. It is a route that we now need to take.

Currently, therefore, the biggest problems on the center-left are not those of inadequate programs or poor-quality leaders. There are plenty of fine progressive politicians active in both countries, and there an emerging consensus amongst them about the kinds of policies that can both win them power and take the rest of us to a better, fairer and more prosperous place. All that is entirely to the good. The biggest problems now facing the Center-Left are effectively in-house: the continued presence within the U.S. Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party of both divisions and lack of confidence. Both parties are broad churches, with strong centrist elements in/around leadership roles in each and there are moments when it sometimes feels as though, for a certain kind of centrist, defeating their own progressive wing is more important than is defeating the party across the aisle. The speed with which certain UK centrists reached out to the media in the wake of the election results to emphasize over and again that Corbyn did not win, and that they could have won if only they were leading the party speaks volumes about the depth of division still afflicting the Anglo-American Center-Left. Let us hope that the confidence that U.S. progressives acquired as the Sanders campaign flourished, and that now Corbyn supporters inside the Labour Party suddenly possess, continues to expand. This is no time for progressives to moderate their ambitions. Rather, it is time for centrist Democrats and Blairite Labour MPs to leave leadership to others. For the biggest lesson of all, from the election in the UK last Thursday, is that to the brave go the spoils. It is time, therefore, to continue to be brave.

First posted, with full academic citations, at http://www.davidcoates.net

The arguments developed here are explored further in David Coates (editor), Reflections on the Future of the Left, to be published in September in the UK by Agenda Publishing and in the U.S. in November by Columbia University Press.

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American Lessons From A British Election Progressives, Take Heart! - HuffPost

Observer

New York Times Calls Sanders Progressives 'Militant' and 'Often Raucous' Observer The People's Summit took place in Chicago last weekend. Predictably, the establishment media is trying to attack the conference, which brought together hundreds of progressive and activist organizations. On June 11, The New York Times published an ... Progressives consider, or don't, life after Bernie SandersCNN Bernie Sanders urges progressives to seek more electoral winsReuters Bernie Sanders & The People's Summit Highlight Progressives' Future AgendaChicagoist Bustle -New York Times -The Resurgent -CNN all 125 news articles »

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New York Times Calls Sanders Progressives 'Militant' and 'Often Raucous' - Observer