Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
Today, President Barack Obama received the Paul H. Douglas Award for ethics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his acceptance speech, President Obama returned to the political arena, blasting Donald Trump and the Republicans for their toxic politics of division.
Democrats will not defeat Trump and his increasingly fanatical, revanchist party by promising the restoration of what came before him; the country is desperate for a vision of something better. Whether or not you share that vision, if you truly believe that Trump is a threat to democracy, you should welcome politics that inspire people to come to democracy’s rescue.
“Taking inspiration from Virginia, Democrats are finally running to win in the states,” writes Joan Walsh. “But will the party make room for a different kind of candidate?”
Columnist Danny Westneat calls out the Washington State Republican Party and its legislative caucuses for their divisive, counterproductive Seattle-bashing, which they’ve said they intend to do even more of in 2018, even though it hasn’t worked for them in the past.
The New York Times examines the Democratic Party’s candidate recruiting successes and concludes the party is doing a good job of returning to the fifty-state strategy championed by Howard Dean.
The Democratic Party is on its way to finding its way out of the wilderness thanks to a willngness by elected Democrats to listen to the grassroots, writes David Atkins.
“It’s hard to think of a term that causes more confusion, yet is more frequently used in political debate, than neoliberalism. It’s one thing to argue that the term should be discouraged or retired from public discussions, because it generates heat instead of light, but it is another to say that it doesn’t have any meaning or use,” writes Mike Konczal.
Democrats must make tough, data-driven decisions about how to prioritize their work. Right now, too many are using bad math and faulty logic to push the party to chase the wrong segment of white voters.
Republican politicians have pushed one policy after another that has favored the rich and powerful over everyone else, and far too often, Democrats have gone right along… And no matter how extreme Republicans in Washington became, Democrats might grumble or whine, but when it came time for action, our party hesitated and pushed back only with great reluctance. Far too often, Democrats have been unwilling to get out there and fight.
— Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren gives progressives in Congress a rousing call to arms against Trump (The Huffington Post)
Pushing back hard on McCrory worked. The seeds of his final defeat today were very much planted in the summer of 2013. And it’s a lesson for progressives in dealing with Trump. Push back hard from day one. Be visible. Capture the public’s attention, no matter what you have to do to do it. Don’t count on the media to do it itself because the media will let you down. The protesters in North Carolina, by making news in their own right week after week after week, forced sustained coverage of what was going on in Raleigh. And even though it was certainly a long game, with plenty more frustration in between, those efforts led to change at the polls 42 months after they really started.
Bernie Sanders has given USAToday a preview of his future plans, saying that he plans to launch an organization called The Sanders Institute to raise awareness of structural problems like money in politics, and another called Our Revolution to recruit, train, and fund progressive campaigns.
The fundraising base is phenomenal. You can’t ignore that. You can say that winning a primary is ephemeral. But that funding base — millions of people willing to donate, more than Obama. Wow, that’s something amazing.
Happening NOW: NPI President Robert Cruickshank’s panel A New 50 State Strategy: Reversing the Democratic Collapse in the States (Netroots Nation 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona). Panelists include California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, Progressive Majority’s E.J. Juárez, the DLCC’s Michael Sargeant, and Nina Turner.
The Idaho Democratic Party responds to a poll that finds that voters in Idaho are increasingly disillusioned with the Republican Party and changing their registration to independent. Party leaders say that they will work to capitalize on this trend. If they’re successful, within the next few years, we could see solidly-red Idaho become more competitive for Democrats.
In Brief is authored by the staff, board, and contributors of the Northwest Progressive Institute, a netroots powered strategy center working to raise America's quality of life through innovative research and imaginative advocacy.
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