Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
“The reality is that politics is complex and somewhat unpredictable — with a lot of voters who are regularly changing or just forming views on issues and also changing who they vote for or whether they vote in the first place,” Perry Bacon Jr. writes.
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“The neoliberal order seems to be collapsing. A generation of young activists is trying to insure that it’s replaced by progressive populism, not by the fascist right,” Andrew Marantz writes for The New Yorker.
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Many in the Republican Party want public policy that is explicitly tied to fundamentalist Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. But they don’t even practice what they preach.
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The move signifies that Biden is a team player committed to the Democratic Party. In 2009, Barack Obama and his advisers chose to keep campaign data in the hands of a semi-separate outfit called Organizing For America.
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Speaking to The Washington Post, Amy Edmonds explained what has happened to her since she started questioning Donald Trump’s deep web of lies following the 2020 presidential election.
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“Increasingly the Democratic Party is divided into two camps: those who favor the ideas of Warren/AOC/Sanders now, versus those who will favor these same Warren/AOC/Sanders ideas in 3-4 years, when those ideas are more in the political consensus,” Perry Bacon Jr. writes.
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“Twenty-nine Democratic National Committee members have joined a call for structural reforms to increase transparency and ensure fairness in the nominating process,” David Moore writes.
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Writer Edward-Issac Dovere takes a look at the Democratic Party’s plan to win the Wolverine State in 2020 after losing to Donald Trump by less than 11,000 votes in 2016, which emphasizes facets of big organizing and local control.
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A Slate columnist says that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is taking an increasing number of progressive positions, aligning himself with Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and Ron Wyden, and going further than Joe Biden has in embracing policy directions we need.
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This joint event hosted by the Washington State Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Oregon showcased progressive leaders from the Pacific Northwest like U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on the eve of the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
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“No one, even McConnell can herd these cats. The party – from top electeds to think tankers to party officials to voters — has become one big swarming mass of hack pundits competing to go viral.”
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Jennifer Epstein and Tyler Pager of Bloomberg: “This cycle, Biden’s team is working more closely with the DNC than any candidate in recent history, according to interviews with more than 20 veteran Democratic operatives. The two teams coordinate strategy on advertising, fundraising and messaging and share operational costs in ways that Clinton and Barack Obama did not do with the party.”
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“Expect to understand more about the best in modern political campaigning, and a chance to hear some inside stories from this year’s campaign.”
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Republican consultant Stuart Stevens: “Trump was the moral test, and the Republican Party failed… It’s an utter disaster for the long-term fate of the Party. The Party has become an obsession with power without purpose.”
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“[T]he Pavlovian urge to win the short-term news cycle, own the libs and defend the economic interests of corporate America and Trump’s re-election are combining with the predilection for conspiracy-minded thinking on the right.”
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“A revolution of policy or a renaissance of humanity cannot happen without participation in and access to the process — and we all will lose that access if we do not move in concert right now.”
Launch“Can we really push back against a machinery that was built to keep women (and so many others) out of the halls of power? Or will we simply have to swallow our emotions, tamp down our exhaustion, and resign ourselves to America’s misogyny as an immovable object?”
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The New Jersey politician formally joined the Cult of Trump at a White House meeting, where he was lauded by Trump, Trump’s kids, and Mike Pence. The House Democratic caucus responded by notifying Van Drew that he is no longer welcome among them.
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New Jersey’s Jeff Van Drew has decided to sell out to the Party of Trump, presumably because he is desperate to get reelected in his Republican-leaning congressional district. Van Drew and his self-serving treachery epitomize what’s wrong with our politics.
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“A federal grand jury has indicted the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party and a major Republican campaign donor on conspiracy and bribery charges,” The Charlotte Observer reports.
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Read five columns and op-ed pieces that explore the argument that Nancy Pelosi is the best choice to continue leading the House Democratic Caucus and to once again assume the constitutional role of Speaker of the House.
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