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Once a stronghold of coalmining, industrial and energy employment, the Hunter Valley now has the second-highest rate of youth unemployment in the country, second only to rural Queensland. Photograph: HO/Reuters

I want to start in Abermain. Its a town of about 2,500 people in the Hunter Valley, about 8km from Cessnock. It started as a coalmining community in the early 20th century and slowly became a commuter town for blue-collar workers in the Hunter industry.

It has always been a Labor stronghold but, at last years federal election, something shifted. In the federal seat of Paterson, One Nation won 12.8% of the vote the highest in any seat outside of Queensland. In a result that is surprising but not unique, the majority of One Nation preferences in Paterson went to Labor. In Abermain, they won 16.27%.

Once a stronghold of mining, industrial and energy employment, the Hunter Valley now has the second-highest rate of youth unemployment in the country, second only to rural Queensland. Towns like Abermain are the ground zero of Hansons appeal and there are plenty of similar blue-collar towns and suburbs across New South Wales.

At the moment, progressive politics doesnt have much appeal to towns like Abermain or its equivalents in Wisconsin and Michigan, or the villages in England and Wales that voted for Brexit. We are losing blue-collar communities because we dont have answers for them.

Regional NSW has effectively been in recession for years. Regional manufacturing capacity has shrunk by 20%, which has seen incredible numbers of high-wage jobs go overseas. Often, there arent even low-wage service jobs to replace them the poverty just compounds on itself.

I come from a country town. I know what those jobs represent, not just for the workers but for the whole community. When the jobs go, the people who stay face a collapse of the social organisation around them.

Those people see the political system as broken, rigged against them. Their living standards have declined, not risen, and every day is driven by anxiety about paying bills, housing security and insecure work. Can we be that surprised when they look for desperate solutions?

The success of Trump, Hanson and Brexit is that they harness the anger that failure generates and channels it into a perverse ethno-nationalism that is pitted against the communities that have benefitted from globalisation.

The real risk for progressive politics is that this split becomes the axis of future political contests. Dividing Australian society into the winners and losers of globalisation splits the progressive coalition in two.

In the past 20 years we have seen the rapid growth of the progressive middle class or, as the Sydney Morning Herald recently referred to them, progressive cosmopolitans: educated professionals, many of whom have benefited from the progressive reforms to education championed by Labor governments.

Similarly, we have created a unique and cosmopolitan society from the waves of immigrants who have made Australia home. LGBT Australians live in a better, more liberated world than a generation ago. Women have won important rights that have dramatically furthered the cause of equality.

We will not pander to the social conservatives. These struggles for justice and equality must still be at the core of the progressive agenda. The elimination of racism has to continue to be a priority, suicide rates amongst LGBT youth in particular are still unacceptably high, women still do not have full equality in the workplace or in our society.

But, without a strong progressive coalition, these priorities are under threat. The ethno-nationalism of Trump pits those communities against communities that feel left behind; especially those stuck in regional towns once the factories have gone. Its divisive, its dangerous and we know that it is effective.

Australian politics has already seen this divide. As the writer Richard Cooke puts it, asylum seekers has become the way in which the different classes of Australian society argue about globalisation.

We have seen what this does to the progressive coalition. On one side, the conservatives have used it as a way of winning working-class support in places like western Sydney. On the other side, it has seen large parts the progressive middle class decamp to the Greens, especially in the inner cities.

Unable to unite these two parts of its constituency, it has left Labor wedged fecklessly supporting a torturous program of indefinite detention and flagrant human rights violations. Without unity, the progressive coalition will lose.

And while I have always been more of a Mark Lennon guy than his Russian namesake, the real question is Lenins: What is to be done?

Inequality condemns some Australians to a life of desperation unimaginable to the professional middle class

Inequality, the denial of peoples aspirations for a decent life is degrading, alienating and condemns some Australians to a life of desperation unimaginable to the professional middle class.

We need to make the populist right redundant by actually listening to regional and suburban Australia. We need to practise a different kind of politics that treats their communities with respect and commit to delivering jobs to thousands of towns and suburbs like Abermain. It is just as important to internalise the moral imperative as it is for progressives to absorb the political dynamics here.

I think it starts by re-establishing economic justice as both a central and binding element of the progressive agenda and a moral imperative of our movement.

We need to permanently retire the Blairite idea that social democracy should evolve away from inequality as a central concern. We can no longer accept a system that condemns entire sections of Australian society to a life of desperation and poverty.

The times are coming to suit us.

I dont think that the Labor partys recent shifts on economic policy are occurring in isolation. The left is on the march. The partys neoliberals the Costas, the Tripodis, the Lathams are a spent political force and have lost critical debates on the partys policy.

We have to have a credible plan to deliver economic justice to all Australians and that will require a bold re-imagining of the role of the state in the economy, jobs and regulation.

I believe that our goal should be nothing less than the re-industrialisation of the Australian economy to deliver full employment in our suburbs and regions. Eighty-three per cent of Australian voters support that objective but it requires a commitment with the scale and the ambition of Chifleys postwar reconstruction.

After 20 years of neoliberal reform we have built a policy apparatus in Canberra that is failing to engage with the real problems facing our economy and unable to access the real drivers of productivity, growth and living standards.

The Productivity Commission, alongside the Treasury, the Department of Finance and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, are committed to a discredited neoliberalism that is increasingly out of step with what our country needs.

We will need a root and branch reform of these institutions to ensure that they are able to reflect a more advanced, nuanced and progressive understanding of the role of the economy in our society.

Similarly, we should reform the Reserve Bank of Australia to include employment as a key objective of our monetary policy. I respect the independence of the Reserve Bank but its current focus on inflation is too narrow we must align our most powerful economic levers with our key economic challenges.

Additionally, we need to revive the Australian Workplace and Industrial Relations Survey: rich data about the Australian labour market will be critical in shaping the future of work.

It is time to smash the orthodoxy that government cannot create jobs. Active government intervention in the labour market has been a critical part of Labors political agenda since it was founded and I believe that it is worth revisiting.

We need to build the economy we want, not simply what is dictated to us by a neoliberal elite

We need to build the economy we want, not simply what is dictated to us by a neoliberal elite. A national industrial strategy would find ways for governments to invest directly in critical industries that will create jobs.

This isnt impossible or even that abstract.

We should create low-interest loans for investment in Australian manufacturing jobs. Our manufacturing sector has been starved of investment for decades and it is time to put our money where our mouth is. It wont be popular among the bean counters but thats the point really.

We can build an advanced manufacturing sector by capitalising on the strength of our nations research and development capabilities and create a fairer and more productive future for our economy.

That means significantly reshaping the governments bizarre narrative around innovation. As the economist Mariana Mazzucato describes in The Entrepreneurial State, real innovation requires sustained and creative government intervention and not a misplaced belief in speculative capital.

Similarly, we need to renew the social democratic interest in establishing cooperatives, particularly in agriculture. We can deliver investment in regional communities, unlocking the quality and efficiency of Australian agriculture and create jobs in our food manufacturing sector.

It is time that we radically expanded the scope of the Department of Employment and gave it the responsibility to shape the future of work in this country. Labor took a policy of full employment to the last federal election, lets create a federal department that can achieve it.

The Department of Employment could oversee the mass pooling and retraining program for workers affected by the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, especially in the Hunter Valley. Similarly, a rejuvenated department could lead the government-wide response to mass automation, which will be a critical issue in the coming decades.

By setting and enforcing employment targets, we can start ensuring that government is playing an active role in the labour market. It can also be a powerful force for equity: it should be leading the governments efforts to reduce the wage gap between women and men, and stamp out discrimination in the workforce.

Two-thirds of the projected job growth will be in industries dominated by women; health, human services and education, aged and child care, hospitals, schools and other education. Good jobs for women are as important as good jobs for men.

It would mean that we can offer real answers for people in insecure work. Portable entitlements, better protections for casual and contract workers and the muscular enforcement of our current protections have to be a priority of the next Labor government.

Finally, I support Thomas Pikettys proposal to use an inheritance tax to fund a one-off capital grant for every citizen at the age of 25. According to the Community Council of Australia, a 35% estate duty on all estates over $10m would raise at least $3.5bn in government revenue, while affecting only a fraction of the top 1% of Australians.

A universal inheritance would give millions of young people a future: they can put it to a house, they can start their own business, they can pay off their university fees. It may be bold but politics as usual doesnt offer the scale of policy that is required to genuinely tackle regional and intergenerational inequality.

The rise of Trump and the far right is, I believe, clarifying moment for the left. In the course of a single year, global politics has been transformed. We live in extraordinary times.

But Hanson will fail and Trump will fail, because they dont offer solutions to their voters. They offer nostalgia for more certain time with a more limited form of globalisation and more rigid boundaries around our social and economic spheres. Importantly, there is a strain of left thinking that shares that nostalgia.

Hanson will fail and Trump will fail, because they dont offer solutions. They offer nostalgia for more certain time

But those boundaries punished women who wanted to make their own choices. They refused to allow LGBT Australians to be themselves. And they were built on a model of racial hegemony that is not only immoral but fundamentally incompatible with the Australia that is all around us.

We deserve better. I remain powerfully optimistic about Australian democratic socialism.

Not only can we build a model of social democracy that is capable of uniting both the winners and losers of globalisation, I believe that Australia is uniquely capable of doing so.

We do not have nearly the economic and social dysfunction of the United States or the UK.

We have a strong labour movement with strong connections to a governing political party. I have defended the union link and I believe it is now more important than ever.

We have leaders who are committed to creating a new forms of organising and campaigning especially Sally McManus, who I believe will be the new leader of the ACTU.

And finally, I am also an optimist because of our movements history. For over a hundred years we have demonstrated a capacity to creatively link our struggles to the aspirations of ordinary Australians and win.

We had better get on with it.

This was a speech given to the NSW Fabians Society event titled He Won: Progressive Politics in the Age of Trump. A podcast of the event is available here fabians.org.au/podcasts

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Dynamic socialism: how progressives can win back the blue-collar heartlands - The Guardian

The comparisons were inevitable.

With the Atlanta Falcons leading the New England Patriots 140 in the second quarter of last nights Super Bowl, New York Times elections and polling reporter Nate Cohn tweeted that the Falcons had an 86 percent chance of winning the gamearound the same winning probability that Hillary Clinton had going into election night. By the third quarter, when the Falcons had extended that lead to 283, that percentage had increased to 99 percent.

But then, before bandwaggon fans had a chance to learn the Dirty Bird, the Falcons melted down, the Patriots got their groove back, and as quickly as you can say Ohio, the confetti was falling down on the Patriots in overtime. Trump tweeted congratulations to his dear friends, Patriots owner Bob Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady; noted neo-Nazi Richard Spencer was tweeting a photo of Brady kissing his wife Giselle Bunchen with the typlically inflamatory caption, For the White Race, Its never over; and Donald Trump Jr. was trolling statisticians everywhere.

For many progressives outside of New England, the game felt like another win for racism and bigotry and, well, the version of America that Trump has so brazenly amplified and empowered.

But, while there are striking parallels on the surface, staring too deeply into the abyss is both dangerous and unproductive. After all, when you look at the bigger picture, there were plenty of victories for progressive values on Sunday evening as well.

Super Bowl commercials have, historically, been a bastion of sexism and stereotypes. But this year, almost all of them carried strong messages about unity, togetherness, and the importance of diversity.

Audi ran an advertisement that focused on the importance of equal pay for women. Coca-Cola, which has spoken out against Trumps Muslim ban, re-ran a commercial from 2014 that featured America the Beautiful sung in many different languages, and promoted the ad on social media with the message, Today millions cheer together, because together is beautiful.

Budweisers adwhich had already caused such an uproar among a small faction of conservatives after it was posted online last week that some were organizing a boycottshowcased their co-founders story of immigrating into the United States. While the company claims it wasnt in response to Trumps immigration policies, many arent buying it, for better or for worse.

Then there was the ad that was deemed too political to air in its original form84 Lumbers 90-second spot depicting a mother and daughter crossing the dessert in Mexico to try and cross the United States border. (Fox reportedly made them cut out the end of the ad, where the family comes face-to-face with a wall at the border, only to ultimately discover a door in the wall. However, you can see the ad in full below.)

Progressives are loathe to give these corporations too much credit, and rightly so: behind the scenes, many of them have plenty of flaws. But the fact that so many of these commercials championed equality and acceptance instead of sexist tropes proves that diversity and inclusion can be good business as much as good policy.

In fact, as pollster Geoff Garin highlighted on Sunday, despite Trumps electoral college victory, Clinton won the parts of America that generate 64 percent of countrys economic activity. The consumers that advertisers covet most voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clintons vision of America.

There was also Lady Gagas halftime showwhich, while not as overtly political as many expected, did promote LGBT rights and the suddenly-radical concept that this land is made for you and meand the Schuyler Sisters sisterhood spin on America the Beautiful before the game.

Plus, as necessary as it is to hold Brady and Belichick and Kraft accountable for their extremely public relationships with Trump, its also important to note that the three of them do not encompass the entire Patriots organization. Two Patriots players, tight end Martellus Bennett and defensive back Devin McCourty, raised their fists after the national anthem in the first NFL game of the season as a nod to Colin Kaepernicks protest against police brutality and racial injustices in America.

Bennett even confirmed on Sunday night that he would not be attending the White House when the Patriots visit to celebrate their championship because he does not support Trump. It remains to be seen if any of his teammates will join him in that protest.

So, sure, seeing a team led by Trump supporters win in improbable fashion over a team from one of the most diverse cities in America, and realizing that Spencer and other white supremacists were celebrating, was enough to trigger Election Day flashbacks. But scratching beneath the surface just a bit reveals just how flimsy the analogy is.

After all, the Patriots were the favorites going into this game, and ultimately its their talent and experience that led them to victory, not bigotry and bluster. They won because they have the best quarterback and coachlikely in NFL historyon their side. (And, yes, atrocious Falcons play calling helped.) We need to stop reading more into it than thatafter all, conflating reality and entertainment might just be what got us into this mess to begin with.

The result on the football field was just about football. Its everything that happened around the field that serves as a much better example of who we are as a country.

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The Super Bowl had more for progressives to love than you might realize - ThinkProgress

OLEAN, N.Y. In a county where more than 66 percent of voters cast ballots for President Donald Trump, local progressives gathered Saturday morning to discuss how they can impact issues both nationally and locally in response to the new Trump administration.

About 90 people, including local residents, legislators and school board members, packed inside and outside the Olean Public Librarys Gallery Room and discussed a wide range of actions, from participating in the potential national strike day and running for elected positions, to simply calling their local congressman and attending more public meetings.

Residents stood up to voice their ideas, with several women who attended the Womens March in Washington, D.C. giving advice on protesting, and one resident, a former employee of the closed Olean tile plant, simply standing to say hes been depressed since the election and the meeting had been therapeutic for him.

I think it shows there are a lot of local people who are interested, who are concerned about the direction the country is going, and who want to see how they can actually act and make a difference, said Chris Stanley, a St. Bonaventure University theology professor who led the meeting. Its obvious this is an area where Trump won about two thirds of the vote and a lot of people feel isolated, so having a sense of community that there are other people like me who can work together and do something and not feel hopeless.

The meeting mostly centered around grassroots efforts to improve the local area in response to things happening in Washington. Some in attendance argued the group cant ignore local matters and brought up several Cattaraugus County issues, such as the potential sale of the county nursing homes.

I would say most of the people in this room are motivated by whats going on on the national level, but when it comes down to thinking about where you can make a difference, I guess I was kind of inclined to the possibility where the local level is where you can do that more, Stanley said.

Several questioned if the group should begin finding candidates to support for the 2018 mid-terms, with Stanley theorizing that while Democrats are lousy at showing up for local off-year elections, 2018 could be different in light of Trump.

Cattaraugus County Legislator John Padlo, D-Olean, said there needs to be people campaigning for candidates using databases, social media and yard signs.

It is so critically important we start at the grassroots level and build this thing up rather than top-down theory, he said.

John Nelson, an Ellicottville attorney who ran for Cattaraugus County District 3 legislator this past November, told attendees to remember there are are 145 open positions up for election across the countys cities, towns and villages this November and only 23 are currently held by Democrats. He said conservatives in the area often run unopposed, and encouraged residents to run if they want to have an impact on their communities.

For those that dont think you can do it, obviously you can somebody did and became president, he joked.

Frank Puglisi, who ran Nelsons campaign and is the town of Lyndon clerk, said those interested in running for elected positions need to remember theres a process, and that the democratic elections commissioner will hold a class in May to show residents how they can get their name on the ballot.

City of Olean Common Council President Paul Gonzalez said the citys Democratic party is desperately trying to reinvigorate itself, and encouraged those interested in coming to a party committee.

Attendees also discussed getting other demographics involved in their efforts. Gonzalezs wife, Nichole, who is St. Bonaventures executive director of residential living, said looking around the meeting its clear they are missing vital people in the community. She also suggested they recruit and encourage people from diverse backgrounds to run for open county positions.

We need to stop looking and acting all the same, she said.

The lack of young people at the meeting was also raised as a concern. When Diane Cox, an Alma resident, asked those in the room to raise their hands if they were between the ages of 21 and 30, just one person did. Stanley said he is working to have similar meetings and discussions with St. Bonaventure students.

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Residents also discussed how they can best reach those in the area living in poverty. Linda Witte, Olean alderman and the citys former mayor, said most of the people she encounters while working at the Olean Food Pantry do not vote, therefore their needs are not being reflected in elections.

Stanley added that he would like the group to give a voice to the poor, and he plans to notify the Warming House of the groups next meeting.

There was also discussion of how to connect with those on the other side of the political spectrum. Ideas floated included educating conservatives on the outcomes of their voting as they feel conservatives are sometimes voting against their own interests or finding common ground with them.

We need to understand why they are voting the way they did, said Olean resident Mike Kelly. I cant imagine in my wildest dream voting the way others did, but I know some intelligent people who did vote that way.

While some Saturday compared their grassroots efforts to the Tea Partys during former President Barack Obamas administration, Stanley said he hopes the progressive movement will be different than the Tea Partys.

I think, as Ive read it, the Tea Party movement has been predominately one of anger and negativity. Im not aware of them actually trying to do good, constructive things in the community, in terms of providing for the poor or needy or a lot of the other issues that came up today, he said. So I would like to hope that on one hand, we can follow the playbook as far as it works, but do it in a way thats less angry and more cooperative, and more trying to make a constructive difference in the community along the way.

The exact time and location of the groups next meeting has not yet been determined. Those interested in attending or getting involved can contact Stanley at 372-4232 or cstanley@sbu.edu, or join the Southern Tier Activists for Peace & Equality Facebook page.

Read more here:
Olean progressives hold grassroots meeting in response to Trump - Bradford Era

AlterNet

What Progressives Need to Beat TrumpThe Answer Isn't Copying What Right-Wingers Do AlterNet But without that focus on the part of progressives and liberals, the fate of the republic looks bleak. Donald Trump may not have been the dream candidate of right-wing leaders, but in the end, they deemed him close enough. For that, they're being ...

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What Progressives Need to Beat TrumpThe Answer Isn't Copying What Right-Wingers Do - AlterNet

DETROIT The Democratic National Committees future forums four public meetings ahead of the partys vote to pick new leadership, set this year for Feb. 25 are largely friendly affairs. Over a few hours, the candidates for top DNC jobs field questions and decline to take cheap shots. More often, they take time out to praise each other for running.

That made it easier to see the wincing when Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., spoke up at Saturdays forum to declare his solidarity with the protest movements that have sprung up since President Trumps election.

I am the only candidate on this stage who joined the Womens March, Buttigieg told the gathering at Detroits Wayne State University.

The audience cheered; the mayors leading rivals stayed poker-faced. It benefited none of them to point out that they had missed the Womens March only because they were in Miami, at a long-scheduled meeting of progressive donors, organized by Democratic activist David Brock. They had agreed to do it before anyone realized the largest mass mobilization since the Vietnam War would be happening that day.

The DNC race, the partys firstreal internal contest since 2005, was originally scheduled to be over by now. It was delayed until the last week of February so that the party, ostensibly, could debate what it stood for and what went wrong while its representatives in Washington figured out an opposition strategy.

But the speed with which protests have built against an unpopular Trump has given the race the feeling of an endlesss directors cut, with less public engagement than Democrats hoped.

I look at those marches, and all I can think is: Theres millions of pieces of data well never get, grumbled one candidates strategist on Friday night.

Ostensibly, the first three future forums allowed DNC members from the West, South and Midwest to meet their candidates in person and for local activists to feel some buy-in to the party.

In reality, the three forums have attracted around a quarter of the DNCs 447 voting members, and the turnout by local activists for all-day Saturday meetings has been wan in part, because those meetings overlapped with protests. In Houston, the host of the second forum, dozens of activists showed up still angry about the pre-2016 rules that allowed Hillary Clinton to build and pad a lead with superdelegates.

Meanwhile, the unity commission that will rewrite delegate rules existed in the form of a table manned by chairman Larry Cohen, a Bernie Sanders supporter and former Communications Workers of America president who is waiting for the DNC race to end so that the commission seats can actually be filled. The party still has 20 days to go before it can join the protest movement, already in progress.

The shape and form of this new movement has no real parallels in history because we have never seen anything like Donald Trump in modern American politics, said interim DNC chair Donna Brazile.

The leading candidates for DNC chair and vice chair have made the most of the forums, with each week prompting reactions to the latest Trump administration outrage. Theyve filled the space outside the forums with campaign literature and swag and have brought along supporters meant to serve as previews of the energy they could harness.

In the chairs race, former secretary of labor Thomas Perez has changed the most in relation to Trump. The race began before he left the Obama administration, but at the forums since, Perez has become a fount of outrage. At Houstons forum, which came right after Trumps executive orders on immigration and refugees and a threatened (but as yet nonexistent) order on voter fraud, he raised his voice and accused the president of peddling bulls***. In Detroit, he paced around the hospitality suite rented by his campaign, raging at how Trump had undone a Labor Department rule designed to prevent fraud by financial managers.

Hes got a degree from MSU Makin S*** Up university, said Perez.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who was born and raised in Detroit, has been accompanied at forums by members of National Nurses United, who have tried to evoke the feeling of a presidential campaign by waving signs and singing pro-Ellison songs. (To the tune of Chain of Fools: Change change change/ unity. Change change change/ experience.) Buttigieg has asked young supporters to join him at forums and dispatched them in the hours before the gatherings to conduct voter-registration drives another line that always gets a cheer.

Little has affected the race itself, which is being decided out of view in phone calls and visits with the 447 voting members. This weeks high-profile endorsements put former vice president Joe Biden and the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers behind Perez, while former vice president Walter Mondale, the Teamsters and a crew of Michigan legislators endorsed Ellison.

None of those backers, of course, are voting members of the DNC. Less than a quarter of DNC members have made public endorsements. Privately, both the Ellison and Perez campaigns see themselves in a close race, with most DNC members still undecided. Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, is seen as a safe first ballot choice for undecided members, as is Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Sally Boynton Brown, the executive director of Idahos Democratic Party, and Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene, have benefited from the in-person forums but not broken through.

The party has also maneuvered to include late-declaring fringe candidates, who have not disrupted the race.Sam Ronan, a 27-year old Air Force veteran who ran for Ohios state legislature in 2016, has been a self-effacing and generous presence at the forums, dressing in jeans and talking about how to make millennials feel included. Peter Peckarsky, a Wisconsin attorney, has talked dryly about voting rights. A third candidate was cut from the forums after insulting Ellisons religion; a fourth has not showed up to the forums.

And with one exception this week, the party has changed the story line about the race from the one it espoused in December, when the rise of Ellison and entry of Perez prompted analysis of the race as a rematch between supporters of the Obama administration and supporters of Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator leaned back into that story after Bidens endorsement, reiterating his advice that the party could choose a failed status-quo approach or reform itself.

Asked on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday to explain the criticism, Sanders largely repeated himself.

The Democratic Party has got to say: Yes, were going to take on the greed of Wall Street, the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, the greed of corporate America that throws American workers out on the streets and moves to Mexico and China, Sanders said. We are on the side of the elderly and the workers, not on the side of big business.

But freed from the Obama administration, which had defended the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Perez has taken no position to the right of Ellison or Sanders. The future forums have focused more on party strategy than policy, and outside of the forums, the Democrats who warn that the party might swing too far to the left to compete are nearly invisible.

The conversation, instead, is dominated by activists, by Sanders who will appear on CNN on Tuesday night to defend the Affordable Care Act in a debate with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who told a meeting of the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Saturday that Trump had won only by plagiarizing radical rhetoric from politicians of the left. His failure to deliver on that rhetoric would be the partys opening to win.

There are some in the Democratic Party who urge caution, Warren said. They say this is just a tactical problem. We need better data. We need better social media. We need better outreach. We need better talking points. Better talking points? Are you kidding me? People are so desperate for economic change in this country that Donald Trump was just inaugurated as president, and people think we just have a messaging problem? What planet are they living on?

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DNC race grinds on as progressives and protesters strategize - Washington Post