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We read that the local progressives, which we define as including all Democrats, are disappointed that their anti-President Trump events have accomplished very little, if anything, and are now considering whether they should spend their time and money to obtain offices, at the city, county and even state levels.

Assuming you decide to run for local offices, we have some questions for you: If you lose, will you seek to delegitimize the winner or support and work with him or her in order to help serve the public?

Will you join with others to protest a decision of action made by the winner, even though its the subject matter of the winners platform? Or will you tell others to cool it and give the winner a chance?

Youre going to face a lot of people, who, like us, will not support you, perhaps ever, if youve got a D next to your name. Your brand is damaged, perhaps beyond repair. Youre shown yourselves to be sore losers, antagonistic and really mean people.

Such obstructionist tactics dont do anything for this country.

Dan and Myrna Coleman, Portville

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Letter: Questions to ask of local 'progressives' - Olean Times Herald

By Jeff Bryant / Education Opportunity Network

Betsy DeVos may have won her contest in the Senate to become the new U.S. Secretary of Education, but her opposition wasnt the only thing that went down to defeat that day.

For decades, federal education policies have been governed by a Washington Consensus that public schools are effectively broken, especially in low-income communities of color, and the only way to fix them is to apply a dose of tough love and a business philosophy of competition from charter schools and performance measurements based on standardized tests.

Since the 1990s, this consensus among Democrats and Republicans has enforced all kinds of unproven reform mandates on schools, and by 2012, as veteran education reporter Jay Mathews of The Washington Post noted that year, the two parties were happily copying each other on education.

Democrats have in recent years sounded and acted a lot like Republicans in advancing corporate education reform, which seeks to operate public schools as if they were businesses, not civic institutions, writes Valerie Strauss, the veteran education journalist who blogs for the Washington Post. By embracing many of the tenets of corporate reform including the notion of school choice and the targeting of teachers and their unions as being blind to the needs of children they helped make DeVoss education views, once seen as extreme, seem less so.

But with the election of President Donald Trump and the ascension of DeVos to secretary, that consensus appears dead.

She would start her job with no credibility, Education Week quotes Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington. A vote for Betsy DeVos is a vote for a secretary of education who is likely to succeed only in further dividing us on education issues.

The DeVos vote reflected the tribal, dysfunctional, polarized nature of our politics, writes Woodrow Wilson Center senior scholar Linda Killian in USA Today. It is a harbinger of things to come.

But what looks like the death of a political consensus on education could be the beginning of something else: an opportunity for progressives to press a new education agenda. Heres what should they do.

Build On The Perfect Storm

Public education advocates have long been exasperated with progressives.

When will progressives defend public education? fumed education activist Anthony Cody nearly two years ago. Cody who helped organize the largest public protest event in support of public education to date and co-founded the Network for Public Education whose membership recently passed the 300,000 mark lamented that while big money, astroturf groups such as Democrats for Education Reform continue to present the left as a partner of charter schools and corporate reform, progressive organizations generally remain silent on the issues.

These organizations need to wake up, Cody argued.

Well, consider them awake.

The DeVos nomination motivated an array of progressive groups to engage in the unprecedented outpouring of opposition to her. Similarly, civil rights organizations, that often differ with public education activists on charter schools and school vouchers, led a strong effort to oppose DeVos.

DeVos nomination was simply the perfect storm for progressives and members of the resistance to seize upon, observes Lucia Graves at The Guardian. The voter outrage was the triumph of grassroots organizing. And that is worth celebrating despite the outcome.

Now that progressive organizations are engaged in the fight against DeVos, public school advocates must continue to reach out to them and engage them in the ongoing fight against privatization DeVos will lead. In turn, public school advocates must also be ready to step outside the education silo and take up other causes progressives care about, such as Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights, that have impacts both inside and outside of schools.

Turn Education Into A Wedge Issue

For years, big money donors have been successful at keeping many Democratic party candidates in the charter school camp. Opposition to DeVos may disrupt that loyalty.

For instance, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker has been an ardent supporter of charters and vouchers and has deep ties to the charter school industry, yet he voted against DeVos.

Booker, who many consider a possible presidential contender in 2020, joined DeVos on the board of Alliance for School Choice, when he was mayor of Newark. In 2012, he gave a speech at a meeting held by the American Federation for Children, the advocacy group DeVos founded and once chaired. Both organizations advocate using taxpayer dollars for charter, private, and religious schools, which DeVos will surely champion. Yet Booker sided with his fellow Democrats against her.

Westcoast billionaire Eli Broad is another prominent Democrat who advocates for school choice but strongly opposed DeVos. This is more than just one billionaire school activist going against another billionaire school activist, Strauss writes in another of her blog posts. His opposition underscores what has been obvious for some time: that the opposition to DeVos goes far beyond the teachers unions.

Of course, not all Democrats whove been supportive of the corporate reform movement made strong public statements in opposition to DeVos.

As reporters for Education Week note, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who once received praise from DeVos for his support for charter schools, was reluctant to publically criticize her during her nomination.

Cuomo recently announced his intention to abolish the cap that limits the number of charter schools in New York City, despite Mayor Bill De Blasios strong opposition a proposal Secretary DeVos will certainly praise. Given the Democratic partys total antipathy for DeVos, public school advocates can now easily pivot from opposing DeVos to opposing Cuomo and smear him with her negative brand.

Sensing an opportunity to do just that, the Alliance for Quality Education, a public school advocacy group that frequently battles the governor, issued a statement opposing Cuomos recent education proposals, including lifting the charter cap, immediately after DeVos was confirmed. It stated, Betsy DeVos is a disastrous choice that spurred massive public resistance to her nomination. In New York State it is time for resistance to focus on Governor Cuomo Just as New Yorkers have been leaders in the fight to resist Trump and dump DeVos, we will now fight back against Cuomo and his attacks on public education.

Press For Positive Change

Resistance is all well and good. But my colleague Richard Eskow is correct when he writes, In todays political climate, opposing or worse, merely withstanding isnt enough. It will take a countervailing force for change to stop Trump and the Republicans.

Whats the countervailing force public school advocates need? Progressive Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives recently answered that.

As Politico reports, on the same day of the final vote on DeVos in the Senate, Democrats in the House issued a new Progressive Education Agenda. The agenda was drafted by California Democratic Representative Mark Takano and endorsed by the House Public Education Caucus.

The Agenda begins as it should, proclaiming education as a fundamental civil right in the United States of America and calling for education approaches that address equity in the public school system and considering both the instruction our children receive and the conditions they need in and out of the classroom to succeed.

In a complete departure from the corporate reform ideas Democrats have embraced, the Agenda completely abandons the language of competition and performance measurement and instead calls for defending and investing in our public schools as universally accessible and inherently democratic institutions.

Among the 6 policy goals in the agenda are proposals to expand access to early childhood education, ensure equitable access and resources at all grade levels, and support educators and their training programs.

Certainly, those are positive reforms all progressives can get behind.

Not A Time For Compromise

The torrent of protests that have greeted the advent of the Trump regime is evidence of a popular unwillingness to compromise with the nations new leadership.

Is there any reason to believe this unwillingness to compromise doesnt extend to education?

The Progressive Education Agenda Takano and his colleagues are pushing reveals the wide gap between progressive Democrats and Betsy DeVos in terms of both education policy priorities and expertise, states a press release from Takanos office. Good. The gap needs to be wide.

Via Big Education Ape blog

Jeff Bryant is an Associate Fellow at Campaign for Americas Future and the editor of the Education Opportunity Network website. Prior to joining OurFuture.org he was one of the principal writers for Open Left. He owns a marketing and communications consultancy in Chapel Hill, N.C. He has written extensively about public education

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Progressives Lost The Vote On DeVos But Won Something Else - San Diego Free Press

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Posted: Feb 09, 2017 12:01 AM

Earlier this week Nordstrom announced the retail giant will no longer sell Ivanka Trump brand products in stores, severing the previously held business relationship. Belk, Jet, ShopStyle and Home Shopping Network all followed suit.

In response to the move, President Donald Trump tweeted about the situation.

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person -- always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

While its certainly highly inappropriate for President Trump to go after a private company on issues of family business now that hes in the Oval Office, he isn'twrong on the merits.

Ivanka Trump officially announced she was leaving her company in January ahead of her move to Washington D.C. to focus on new endeavors. One could argue this is no longer her brand or concern, but thats not the point. Its still her name, she built the business and because shes associated with her father, the left is out for blood. This isnt simply about Nordstrom or the other stores dropping the brand. Poor sales were cited for the decision, not politics, but its important to follow the money.

The Ivanka Trump brand is a victim of the Grab Your Wallet campaign, organized by leftist agitators who send mobs to intimidate companies and those who dare buy their products. Its one thing for boycotters to refuse patronage to certain businesses for any reason as individuals, but bullying others into doing the same is a different story. Not to mention, it won't be Ivanka Trump who suffers most from this wrath but instead everyday people working for the brand.

In their efforts and haste to make a statement about President Trump by going after his daughter, leftists, and particularly feminists, are depleting their own cause for tolerance by attacking a champion for women with a proven track record of female empowerment. They're also eroding their ideological path into the White House.

For years, Ivankas clothing line has been providing career women with inexpensive, fashionable options to look and feel their best in the work place. As superficial as that may sound, it matters. More importantly, shes been a staunch advocate for equal pay and flexibility in the workplace when female workers enter motherhood. Her soon to be published book, Women Who Work, promises to give young women the skills they need to have and manage it all.

Our grandmothers fought for the right to work. Our mothers fought for the choice to be in an office or to stay at home. Our generation is the first to fully embrace and celebrate the fact that our lives are multidimensional. Thanks to the women who came before us and paved the way, we can create the lives we want to leadwhich look different for each of us, she describes. Ive been fortunate to be able to build my career around my passions, from real estate to fashion. But my professional titles only begin to describe who I am and what I value. I have been an executive and an entrepreneur, but alsoand just as importantlya wife, mother, daughter, and friend. To me, 'work' encompasses my efforts to succeed in all of these areas.

Just this week Ivanka published a photo on Instagram with the caption, Taking a call in the White House with my personal assistant Theodore.

The photo shows Ivanka, dressed in black slacks and four-inch classic black pumps, managing a phone call while holding her smiling one-year-old son on her lap. Shes in the White House working and being a mother all at the same time. She is the epitome of an ambitious, versatile and successful career woman whos managed to find the coveted balance between family life and work.

At the 2016 RNC Convention, Ivanka gave a speech full of arguments often made by feminists (and Hillary Clinton!) about women in the workplace. At the time, liberal women praised her words and urged her to move over the Democrat ticket.

As President, my father will change the labor laws that were put into place at a time when women were not a significant portion of the workforce. And he will focus on making quality childcare affordable and accessible for all, Trump said. As a mother myself, of three young children, I know how hard it is to work while raising a family. And I also know that I'm far more fortunate than most. American families need relief. Policies that allow women with children to thrive should not be novelties, they should be the norm.

He will fight for equal pay for equal work, and I will fight for this too, right along side of him, she continued.

Most recently Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner, who serves as one of President Trumps senior advisors, were credited with squashing a proposed executive order to strip gay couples of federal benefits. The couple also reportedly pushed the White House to issue a strong statement in favor of LBGTQ rights, certainly in opposition to Trump's socially conservative advisors and campaign advocates.

President Donald J. Trump is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community. President Trump continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election, the statement reads. The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump.

The Lefts best position to rein in President Trump on many issues they claim to care about is through his daughter, Ivanka Trump. After all, even he admits she is "always pushing him to do the right thing." To their detriment, they fail to see the opening through their blind hatred.

Read this article:
Progressives, Nordstrom, And The Moronic Crusade Against Ivanka Trump - Townhall

BALTIMORE The House Democrats gathered here fortheir annual policy retreat are scheduled to attend a session Wednesday on Rumors, Truths and Reality. Later, theyll discuss Fighting for Our Principles with leaders of major activist groups. And then theyll hearPerspectives from the vice president of Third Way, a prominent centrist think tank.

That last session, showcasing a wing of the party that dominated Democratic politics for much of the past two decades, would not typically gain much notice. But those days are over: Progressive groups are incensed that lawmakers will be hearing perspectives that they argue have been thoroughly discredited in the wake oflast years election.

For House Democrats to seek advice from a Wall Street-funded think tank that preaches timidity, that shows them learning the exactly wrong lesson in the Trump era, said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. I think Democrats need to fight more strongly, with backbone, and not let Trump steal the mantle of economic populism.

[Some Democrats push for an economic message that goes beyond trashing Trump]

Jim Kessler, Third Ways senior vice president for policy,is set to address the retreat Wednesday evening during a half-hour session where, according a senior Democrat familiar with his planned remarks,he will make the case that the Democratic Party needs to grow geographically, demographically and ideologically not move decisively to the left to regain power. That is a strain of thought that represented Democratic orthodoxy in the 1990s, when the business-friendly Democratic Leadership Council held sway.

But it has since fallen out of favor, especially among progressives who believe Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would have better captured voter anger toward the political establishment as the 2016 Democratic president nominee. And now, they say, Third Ways politics are notwhat Democrats need to hear.

In their view, 2016 was a thorough rebuke of establishment-mindedcentrism and giving Third Way a platform to advocate for it is not a recipe for winning.And their angry response to centrism being given a platform at a party event reflects the hardball tactics they are using to shape the future of the Democratic Party.

Basically youre deciding were going to figure out our path forward with a bunch of losers, said Charles Chamberlain of Democracy for America, another activist group.

Erica Payne, founder of the Agenda Project, called it illogical to the point of absurdity to believe that Third Way could lead Democrats out of their electoral abyss and compared it to Republicans calling on former Florida governor and failed presidential candidate Jeb Bush for advice.

Third Way spokeswoman Ladan Ahmadi said in a statement that the group was honored to be invited to address House Democrats at their retreat. The House Democratic Leadership has always valued hearing from a diversity of voices that make up the progressive movement and this year isnt any different, she said.

Democratic aidesinvolved with the planning of the retreat noted that there are numerous other panels that featureprogressive-minded speakers, including Center for American Progress chief executive Neera Tanden, political strategist Cornell Belcher, analyst Mark Huelsman from the liberal think tank Demos and numerous leaders from labor unions and leftist activist groups. Its our belief you have to hear from everyone to chart the best path going forward, one of the staffers said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered a message of party unity at a news conference Wednesday: Atthis conference, Democrats at the end will show our values are in harmony.

Third Way, it should be noted, has hardly acted like Wall Street lobbyists or Trump accommodationists. During the presidential campaign, the group was strongly anti-Trump, and it has advocated for tougher financial regulations and higher taxes on the wealthy. In recent days, their social media accounts expressed opposition to Trumps efforts to roll back the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and Trumps nomination of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary.

What appears to be particularly vexing to the activists is that Kessler is getting a session to himself rather than sitting on a panel where his views might find a counterpoint. But more than that, progressives are taking the view thatThird Way-style centrists have no place inthe Democrats tent, period.

Its not a wing of the party anywhere outside of Washington, D.C., Green said. There are not people in West Virginiaand Ohio and Michigan rooting for Wall Street to get away with murder again.

Chamberlain argued that it wasthe Elizabeth Warren wing fighters who won congressional races in 2016, citing the Senate campaigns of Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.). More centrist candidates like Patrick Murphy (Fla.) and Evan Bayh (Ind.) lost.

Everywhere we won, we won from the Warren wing, he said. And whenwe lost, we lost from the corporatewing. It is disgusting, it is a disappointment that the Democratic establishment is still wanting to hear from these Wall Street losers at their retreat.

But there are significant counterpoints to that view: Russ Feingold, a beloved progressive former senator, lost his bid to reclaim his seat in Wisconsin to incumbent GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, as did unabashedly liberal Senate candidates such as Deborah Ross in North Carolina and Ted Strickland in Ohio. And in a closely watched House battle between an outspoken progressive and a moderate Republican, New York University law professor Zephyr Teachout lost her race for an Upstate New York House seat.

Green questioned why no progressive organizing groups were invited to address Democrats. He said his group asked for a role in the retreat after it learned Third Way would be represented but was told by organizers that it was too late.

Their role is to paper over the lessons of the last election and urge Democrats not to be more robust in their critique of Wall Street and establishment power, he said of Third Way. That is not the lesson Democrats need to learn right now.

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A centrist is addressing House Democrats, and progressives are furious - Washington Post

Well, Sen. Elizabeth Warren managed to get herself squarely in the public spotlight again -- on the far-left spectrum of the Democratic Party where she's most comfortable.

In the process, Warren re-energized her progressive base, which had begun to doubt her liberal extremist credentials in light of her recent actions.

Always ready to manipulate the media when it suits her agenda -- and ignore them when it doesn't -- the senior senator from Massachusetts was at her grandstanding best on the U.S. Senate floor Tuesday night, where she was unceremoniously silenced for her attempts to impugn the character of Sen. Jeff Sessions.

Sessions, an Alabama Republican, just happens to be President Trump's very capable and competent attorney general nominee. Senate Democrats have made it their business to extend the process of approving Trump's Cabinet picks for as long as possible, since as the minority party, they don't have the votes to block them.

So Warren took to the Senate floor Tuesday night with the apparent attention of assailing the character of this respected conservative senator -- continuing to do so even after being warned her conduct was out of order.

That occurred earlier in the evening after Warren read past statements from the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, who had called Sessions a "disgrace to the Justice Department."

No, Warren didn't employ her own extremist blather to cut the legs from under a colleague.

Forewarned that she ran the risk of violating Senate "Rule 19," which prohibits senators from "directly or indirectly" impugning the motives and conduct of a colleague, Warren pressed on.

She later attempted to read a letter sent to the Senate nearly 40 years ago by Coretta Scott King, widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King, opposing Sessions' bid for a federal judgeship, in which King alleged Sessions conducted "a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters" in Alabama.

That's when Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell asked for a vote demanding Warren cease and desist, calling her actions a clear violation of Senate rules.

And along party lines, the Senate did exactly that. Warren, feigning disbelief, couldn't understand why she was silenced. She instantly regained the allegiance of her adoring progressive wingnuts for her courageous stand.

Their faith had been shaken by her support for Scott Brown, the Republican she defeated to win her Senate seat, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for her vote confirming former GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Obviously realizing her perceived ideological drift, Warren, whose political calculations revolve around her own ambitions, realized she needed a course correction -- a sharp left turn.

Sessions' nomination supplied that headline-grabbing opportunity.

It's too bad Democrats can't find a more measured instrument to voice their beliefs and concerns. They've allowed Warren to become the face of their party, which will remain out of touch with mainstream America as long as that's the case.

The rest is here:
Warren wins one for progressives, loses for the party - Lowell Sun