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Khalid Kamau, a very progressive activist lawyerendorsed by Our Revolution,earned a city council seat in South Fulton, Georgia, a newly incorporated municipality outside Atlanta. He won bya landslide with a grassroots message. He engaged average Americans on their turf. High-priced ads did not get him elected:engaging with people did.

Progressives from around the country invested more than$8 millionin getting Jon Ossoff into a runoff. How many additional dollars will be spent trying to take the seat? If he wins, it will bea symbolic victory. But win or lose, it willhave been a waste of resources that could otherwise get spent in local elections to bring more progressives into office in races throughout the country.

Most Americans are progressive in the majorityof their values. When asked about policies like Social Security, Medicare, the right to health care, or public education, they support these by overwhelming margins.So why is it that progressives, the folks who by definition will materially make the lives of the middle class and the poor better, have a hard time winning? The answer is: afailure to communicate.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. How many times do we hear consultants tell Democrats that theyjust need to bring out the base for a win? What happens when many in that base come out but instead vote against their interests, as they did in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin during the last presidential election? When will Democratic leaders realize what Republican consultants know but do not say? Party affiliation when folks enter the confines and privacy of the voting booth is fungible. And the party or group thatreaches voters on the carnal level ultimately wins.

The corporate establishment always knew that. Over the last several decadesthey've executed the Powell Manifesto, written by Democrat Lewis Powell, with abandon. The Republican Party and corporate Democrats have not deviated from its tenets. It is the reason we have an Affordable Care Act that benefitsinsurance companies that pilfer the average American citizen. It is the reason pharmaceutical companies are allowed to charge us exorbitantprices for drugs originally developed with taxpayer dollars. It is the reason we do not havesingle-payer/Medicare-for-allhealth care and universal health care, which is in effect in some form in every democratic industrialized country in the world.

So how does one stopthe insanity? Remember that party affiliation is fungible. People vote for those they connect with in their gut. One can demonstrate that Republican policies materially hurt most Americans. But the GOP wrap themselves in the flag andAmerica First rhetoric, and they instill a fear of the other. Progressives must use those same impulses, with the truth framed in similar terms.

Progressives must understand that it is about more than bringing out the base. It is about expanding and educating the base. The right counts on ignorance, and we must remember that ignorance defines our original state of being. The process of growing and teaching must start locally. We build trust locally.

All Americans want a good education for their children. That is one place where people can work together to elect school boards that are looking out for children. Parents working together will soon realize that the funding and laws they need to do better by their kids need legislation and financial support from the state. If the state politicians do not oblige, those same politicians get booted out. If the federal politicians do not support the requests of the state andlocal politicians, they are voted out. The common interest, with people working together, can create an actualwe, the people government.

The aforementioned scenario may be overly simplistic, but the process is definitely on point. It requires hard grassroots work to bring people together while fighting the misinformationdistributed bymany Washington think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and others. But it can be done. We must do it. If progressives win locallyby winning the hearts and minds of their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances throughworking together on issues of shared concernthe national wins will follow.

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If progressives win locally, the national wins will follow - Daily Kos

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This is going to anger some of my progressive friends but here is the hard ugly truth; Trump supporters are united. Progressives are fractured.

Lets break it down.

According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll,96% of Mr. Trumps voterssay they would vote for him all overagain. This in spite of assaults on their health care, a gross diminishment of theprograms that they use, no legislation passed, staffing his cabinet with swamp creatures, possible war on several fronts, the evolving Russian collusionstory and a lumbering economy that is not improving.

Even though the polls show that Trump votersdo not like the nepotism, his tax secrecy and find him to be untrustworthy, they do like his image, his anti immigrant stance, his anti government fury, his war on the free pressand that he is anti gun control. Theycomplained continually about Mr. Obamas off-time while he was in office yet they have no problem that Mr. Trump seems to be constantly playing golfnor with the enormous amount of tax dollars we are spending so that he can.

On the other hand, I am still seeing that progressives are attacking each other wantonly. There are highly emotional, deeply biased and unreasonable anti Bernie and anti Hillary memes and fake newsstories popping up daily on my internet feed, many re-posted by hardcore progressive partisans.

Some claim that Bernie is anti woman in spite of the fact that he gets enormously high marks from national womens groups and of course others feel that Hillary stole the election from Bernieand the old guard that remains at the DNC must go. The poll numbers in regard to either candidate would not come close to Trumps 96% support at this time.

It is doubtful that either Hillary or Bernie will be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 but that is not the issue. Not by a long shot. The point is that unlike neocons, the left simply can not get it together. We are far too willing to believe bad or fake news about other progressives while neocons stridein almost cult-like unisonto nearlyany tune Mr. Trump plays.

The most obvious lesson from the last election seems to havebeen totally missed by many disgruntled progressives. That lesson is that we have a common adversary and that defeating that adversaryin the upcoming elections is the ONLY important thing. This is a message that is at the forefront on the right but appears to beonly a dream on the left. The truth is that too often progressives are theirown worst enemy.

This is a difficult column to write after such inspiring and successful protests likethe Womens March on DC,the worldwide Earth Day Science Marchesand the amazing town hall confrontations that Republicans are experiencing back home. It is clear that on the issues progressivesare united but that somehow we get hung-up in personalities when it comes to elections and that is when wefall apart.

This is the exact weak spot that the Russians exploited in the last election. It has been shown that the hard feelings in the Bernie camp (I was a supporter) were the happy hunting ground for Russian bots and trolls who pumped out nonsense and lies about Hillary at a yeomans ratein the lead-up to the election. Many Bernie supporters accepted the propaganda not because it was true, in fact many knew that it was complete BS. They accepted it because it was about Hillary and they could not stand her. As a result, they either supported Jill Stein who had dinner with Putin and Mike Flynn in Russia and who the European Greens see as badly flawed or they did not vote at all. This was one major reason Mr Trump won the electoral college and is now sitting in the White House.

On the other hand, Hillary supporters are still angry still angry because they feel that Bernie and his followers werea reason Hillary lost steam and then lost the election. That anger turns into a willingness to accept fake facts about who Bernie actually is and what he supports. In turn, thisdrives the wedge deeper into the progressive baseand is a foreboding sign coming up to the mid term elections.

Recently, Berniewent on the road with new DNC Chairman Tom Perez in what was billed as a unity tour. Both progressives were trying to stimulate the electorate on the left to find common ground and to work together. However, there are film clips where young progressives in the audience actually booed Mr. Perez who has a strong and reasonedprogressive record and whose policies most of those who booed him agree with.

I find it frustrating that almost none of the progressives who are anti Perez even watched the DNC debates wherein Mr. Perez was a stand out with concise and pionted answers to the questions put before him. If they had taken the time to research beyond a Facebook meme, they would have known that. However, it seems that having their own way can bemore important and so they consume one BS meme after the other and then pass them on.

In closing, I beseechprogressives to do one thing. Go outside and look around you. We live in a country that is still functioning on a high level. Most of us have a place to live and food to eat. The street lights work and the highways are clear. We are still living in a fairly open society where we can speak out without fear of arrest or worse. All of that is at risk, big time, if progressivesdo not unify and coalesce around issues instead of personalities.

We may not, in fact probably wont, have the perfect candidates we agree with 100% to run in the upcoming elections.. There will be things that our candidates will support that we do not like and things they will not support that we do. However, it is up to us to stop swallowing and passing on foulpropaganda about progressives who are not our choice simply because we childishly want it our way or no way at all. We must focus on the issue and vote accordingly. The counter productive intolerance for members of our own group is what Mr. Trump is depending upon and it is what the Russian trolls enjoyfeeding on.

Our priority has to be tostop satisfying Mr. Trump and providing Russia an easy target.If not, Mr. Trump and the Russians will surely appreciate anyeffort to divideus once again as Mr. Trumpenjoys a disastrous second term.If we wish to avert that fate, progressivesmust remember that resistance and unity go hand in hand, not foot in mouth.

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A note to progressives - Field of View - Blogs - Times Union - Albany Times Union (blog)

Progressives see local rule of law differently Fairfield Daily Republic I heard how the Progressive Democrat County Central Committee feels we need to have Sanctuary Schools here in family-friendly Vacaville. Apparently, we require progressive help to enlighten us here in our city because of the pressing need to stand up ...

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Progressives see local rule of law differently - Fairfield Daily Republic

Do you have march fatigue yet? The left, apparently, does not, performing street theater on Saturday, Earth Day, with the so-called March for Science.

Its hard to think of a better way to undermine the publics faith in science than to stage demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and around the country modeled on the Womens March on Washington that took place in January.

The Womens March was an anti-Donald Trump festival. Fine. I found it vulgar and demeaning to women, but its a free country.

Science, however, to be respected, must be purely the search for truth. The organizers of this March for Science by acknowledging that their demonstration is modeled on the Womens March are contributing to the politicization of science, exactly what true upholders of science should be at pains to avoid.

When you read the organizers online statement, the purpose seemed so utterly vacuous as to cause heads to nod: The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. We unite as a diverse, nonpartisan group to call for science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence based policies in the public interest.

Yeah. I know loads of people who oppose the common good, dont you?

So what is it really about?

As best I can make out (besides being a nice excuse to enjoy the April weather in Washington, when everything is in bloom), those who attended wanted to express dismay at President Trumps policies on a range of subjects, including climate change and the travel restriction (which they label a travel ban).

On the matter of climate change, those who present themselves as champions of science, i.e., fact-based reasoning and commitment to the scientific method, ought to be very careful not to blackball everyone who offers a dissenting view. Even among self-described environmentalists, there are differing views on how best to combat global warming. Whether temperatures are rising dangerously is a scientific question. What to do about it is a political question.

When you lump the travel ban into the march, though, you really go off the rails. As Robert Young, an ecologist, warned in The New York Times, including such matters only serves to cement the image of scientists as an interest group who might politicize their data, research, and findings for their own ends.

A true march for science might tackle problems like the replication crisis or confirmation bias.

Its a vanity of the left that they stand for science, fact-based policy and sweet reason as opposed to conservatives, who support superstition, alternative facts and denial. Jeffrey Anderson, an associate professor of radiology and bioengineering at the University of Utah, explained to The New York Times that he would fly to D.C. for the march because of what he regards as the wholesale disregard of truth and fact by the president and his close advisers. Their devaluing evidence and the scientific method, is so extreme that I cant be silent.

Admittedly, this president has been reckless and heedless of the truth or falsity of his comments on a range of subjects. His endorsements of conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism and climate change being a Chinese ruse to harm American companies were preposterous and worrying. But he hasnt said those things lately, and the march doesnt seem to have been provoked by them.

Note to the left: The above paragraph is what sincere people who are fact-based and willing to be critical of their own side write. Now, where is the acknowledgement that there is plenty of hostility to science among progressives? Who objects to nuclear power (despite its potential to combat global warming)? Who rejects evidence of male/female brain differences? Who stands in the way of genetically modified organisms but also argues that children should be hormonally and surgically modified if they say that they are of a different gender from the sex listed on their birth certificate?

When progressives are ready to admit that they sometimes cherrypick the science they like and disregard the science that confounds their worldview, they will have taken a key first step toward the scientific method.

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Progressives ignore science in conflict with their worldview - Daily Mining Gazette

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Since Trump took office, weve heard reports of infighting between numerous White House factions, which reads like something from Game of Thrones. Currently, the trending topic is escalating tension between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. The players embody a set of ideals clashing at the epicenter of Western power: a media mogul who consolidated Trumps populism through Breitbart while mainstreaming fringe elements of the alt-right vs. a 36 year-old Upper West Side liberal representing nepotism. The media sensationalizes White House office politics like sports coverage; however, little is said about the lefts plans to take back any of the three branches of government they lost this past election cycle.

Democrats efforts to block Supreme Court nominee, now justice, Neil Gorsuch began with hullabaloos from the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders but ended in a whimper. Media outlets like Slate and The New York Times pushed a hostile agenda towards all of Trumps nominees, with particular emphasis on Betsy DeVos in what could be surmised as a total double standard when it comes to women in the Republican Party, but did little to deter Trump from bulldozing the opposition and establishing his administration. Meanwhile, media fervor surrounding Jon Ossoffs upstart candidacy to take Georgias sixth congressional district is fizzling. Despite an eight-million-dollar DNC war-chest and a front-page New York magazine feature written by Olivia Nuzzi, Ossoff failed to avoid a runoff and will now face Karen Handel with consolidated Republican support behind her.

Most of Trumps resistance comes from grassroots movements, but these have yet to translate into a singular political movement or coherent policy. Although the number of anti-Trump protestors is staggering, the #resistance faces considerable obstacles in aligning their values with a political party that sold them out to Clinton. Whereas the Koch Brothers and a handful of Big Tobacco/Big Oil firms financed the Tea Party, which successfully staked out Congressional representation through the Tea Party Caucus and the Freedom Party, theres little to suggest the anti-Trump movement wont dissolve like its Occupy predecessor, turning instead to slacktivism and lethargy. Theres a fundamental disconnect between the Liberal political elite, so consumed by the world of D.C. politics, and the masses marching on Capitol Hill theyre making decisions for, tension exacerbated by progressive rhetoric against Washington still reverberating from Bernie Sanders camp. Although progressives and establishment Democrats are united in their hatred for Trump, a clear strategy has yet to emerge for how they can reconcile their political differences into a collected agency.

Davis Richardson is a writer whose work has appeared in Vice, Nylon Magazine, and Capitol File. Follow him on Twitter @davisoliverr

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Progressives And Establishment Dems At Odds Over The Future Of Liberalism - Daily Caller