Democrats trying to unseat each other II

[lpetrich]

A Progressive Latina Thinks Democrats Are Blowing It with Hispanic Voters - POLITICO

It was a Saturday, about a week and a half before the midterms, and Delia Ramirez wasn’t taking any chances. The heavily Democratic 3rd Congressional District with its 40-plus percent Hispanic population was almost guaranteed to send her to Washington. But Ramirez was out knocking on doors anyway. She didn’t want to just win; she wanted to prove something.

Since 2020, much attention has been paid to Republicans’ increasing popularity with Latino voters. To reverse this trend, some have argued, Democrats would need to hew much closer to the middle. But Ramirez had a different theory, and she was determined to prove it here in the western suburbs of Chicago.

Democrats, she believed, were losing Hispanic voters because they weren’t talking to them the right way. And that means telling working-class Latinos the party is going to fight for them against the “rigged” economic system that favors, as she puts it, “a bunch of riquillos,” or rich people. What brings out working Latino families to vote, Ramirez argues, is a straightforward economically progressive message — not threats to democracy or rhetoric on social justice issues but pocketbook issues such as health care and housing.

Something like AOC's success.

This is Ramirez’s playbook: hammering on Latinos’ hunger for better political representation and connecting her progressive economic platform to her own personal story as “the daughter of two Guatemalan immigrants working factory jobs.” Ramirez’s parents are how she bonds emotionally and politically with voters. Her mother, she says, “nearly died in the Rio Grande,” pregnant and crossing the river carrying Ramirez, and her 71-year-old father, she says, “can’t retire with dignity” because “he needs to get another job to afford his Medicare supplementals.”

It's the opposite of Mayra Flores, who won against a Democrat in a special election in South Texas. She lost in the general election against another Democrat, however.

Joshua Ulibarri, a Democratic strategist at Lake Research Partners, said Democrats have a perception problem with Latino voters who often view them as “weak” and ineffective, while associating “strength” and “getting things done” with Republicans. “That’s not what they see with Delia,” Ulibarri said. “They see an assertive campaign orientated around affordable housing, health care and education. That is pretty exciting for voters.”

In the primary, she won against a moderate Latino opponent by 42%, 40% in Chicago and 47% in the suburbs of DuPage County.

In the general election, she beat a moderate-Republican and John-McCain-admiring Hispanic by 34% in a district that the Cook Political Report rates as +20% Democratic, winning in Chicago by 53% and barely winning in DuPage Cty - 2% - and winning Hispanic areas there by 14%.

 

[lpetrich]

Ramirez’s Hispanic heritage and Christian faith define her progressivism. Her religious parents migrated “from a Pentecostal church in Guatemala” and raised her a devout Christian in Humboldt Park, a working-class neighborhood a few miles west of downtown Chicago. The church that she grew up in, Ramirez said, is not “insular and four-walled” but “involved,” following the teachings of “Matthew 25: feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and clothe the naked.”

At 17, Ramirez began her career as a community organizer and activist as “a mail lady” for Humboldt Park Social Services, a local agency her Methodist church founded for families experiencing homelessness. Four years later, she became the executive director of Center for Changing Lives, connecting needy families with affordable housing for the next decade. “My faith tells me the absolute opposite of what the faith of those that call themselves evangelicals. It is why I am as progressive as I am,” Ramirez said. “I’m the opposite of Mayra Flores. She said: ‘God, family, country.’ I say: ‘Faith, family and community.’”

 Delia Ramirez

Before entering elected office, Ramirez worked and held leadership roles in social service agencies, nonprofit advocacy organizations, and local community organizations. Notably, she was president of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association from 2005 to 2007, executive director of the homelessness-focused non-profit Center for Changing Lives from 2004 to 2013, and president of the Latin United Community Housing Association (LUCHA) from 2016 to 2019.

In Spanish, "lucha" means "fight".

She seemed like she was settling down to a nice career as the head of an activist organization, when her state representative retired. Her friends urged her to run for that office, but she wasn't interested. She “never wanted to be a politician,” she says. She would take a big pay cut, and she was in the middle of a divorce.

But friends continued to press her to consider public office, so she explored her options. The turning point came in 2017 in an unexpected place — a high-ceiling condominium looking down at Chicago’s gentrified Wicker Park neighborhood. The condo belonged to Derek Bagley, a wealthy, young, well-connected Democratic donor sympathetic to progressive causes. He asked her a career-defining question: Could you make more impact from the outside as a head of a nonprofit, or from the inside as an elected official?

For more than a decade, Ramirez had fought against the generational wealth and gentrification that she felt Bagley symbolized. The irony that a “random” rich white man like Bagley was encouraging a Latina activist with a working-class background to run was hard to miss — and also persuasive to her. Less than 24 hours later, she announced her candidacy. Ramirez calls the encounter “a divine intervention.” She never met him again.

Almost like getting a call from a progressive PAC as one returns from a cross-country activism trip.

In 2018, she won with 48% of the vote, with the other three getting 21%, 16%, and 15%. She was supported by Planned Parenthood, some labor unions, and some left-leaning activists. She was unchallenged in the general election.

In 2020, however, she was unchallenged.

In 2022, she moved up to the US House, winning 66%, with her opponents at 23%, 7%, 4%.

 

[lpetrich]

Ramirez’s strength in politicking has always been “in-person,” said Trevor Tejeda-Gervais, a Democratic consultant and her former colleague at Common Cause. “She’s terrible at Twitter, just dreadful at it.” Viral tweets (like those of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s) throwing shade at opponents can rally your base and function as a great fundraiser tool. That’s not Ramirez’s Twitter. It is an animosity-free feed of her canvassing, with lots of photos of her smiling with her allies, constituents and big names in local progressive politics.

The same goes for her style of legislating. Ramirez has been a realist willing to make compromises. Her previous experience of nonprofit lobbying at the state capital had taught her that what delivers progressive legislation are not Twitter hot takes but thousands of tedious hours invested in negotiating. ...

What distinguished her from dozens of other left-wing lawmakers in this deep-blue state is her ability to sell seemingly watered-down, flaccid versions of negotiated bills back to her progressive base. She calls this process “hard, messy, painful, emotional” because she has to first disappoint her allies. ...

Ramirez has another talent: persistence. And that has enabled her to build incrementally on legislative successes. When the initial bill providing health care to all low-income undocumented immigrants first passed in October 2020, it capped eligibility at 65. Emboldened by their reelection in 2020, Ramirez and her allies expanded the coverage in March to those over 55. By July, she had helped bring down the eligible age to 42.

Seems like she is well-prepared for Congress.

 

[lpetrich]

The Republicans are making inroads in the Hispanic population, but what can be done?

What will flip that trend, argues Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha — who co-hosts The Latino Vote podcast with Madrid — is the message of economic populism centered around pocketbook issues.

Then noting John Fetterman's victory among Hispanics.

The staunchest platform of economic progressivism with a dialed-down rhetoric on social justice issues is the combination that Rocha believes would keep Latinos blue.

Gabe Vasquez’s victory over the incumbent Republican in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District is Rocha’s other example. Vasquez, a progressive Latino with a grassroots background similar to Ramirez’s, centered his campaign around health care and cost of living. Michelle Vallejo, another progressive Latina candidate in Rio Grande who lost to Monica De La Cruz, still carried the Hispanic-majority Hidalgo County with a 12-point margin without much outside spending from Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or the House Majority PAC.

...
A former adviser to Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2020, Rocha firmly believes economic progressivism is the antidote to Trumpism. Many called out the progressives like Vallejo, Ramirez and Vasquez for being “too progressive” but they prevailed, Rocha said. “They really proved them wrong in this race.”

Madrid, on the other hand, thinks a majority of Latinos are moderates. “Look at the numbers,” he said. “Even though those seats went Democrat, they grew more Republican. You can’t organize out of a messaging problem. It doesn’t matter how many doors you knock on.”

Rocha’s response is that math is not always the answer. “You don’t need a bunch of ‘woke’ white folks in D.C. trying to make decisions on people of color’s races, when they have no fucking idea what’s really going on the ground,” Rocha said, fuming at the Democratic Party’s decision not to fund Vallejo’s race. “They’re just looking at a spreadsheet.”

So Michelle Vallejo was like Jaime McLeod-Skinner, another candidate not funded as supposedly being too progressive. What a bunch of losers the DCCC is, especially its most recent head.

 

[lpetrich]

Who Are Newest Squad Members? Greg Casar, Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez – Rolling Stone - Aug 2

“THIS IS THE point in the interview when they ask if we’re gonna join the Squad.” - Summer Lee

I had actually asked whether there were any current federal lawmakers who they might emulate when they enter the House next year. Only Casar ventured an answer: He’d just met Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and deemed her both “brave” and “brilliant.”

Greg Casar on Twitter: "Triple threat, coming to DC on Jan. 3! @SummerForPA @Delia4Congress (pic link)" / Twitter
Showing Greg Casar with Summer Lee and Delia Ramirez.

Delia Ramirez on Twitter: "Finally had the chance to connect with Congresswoman @AOC. Excited for all the work we will do together to fight for our communities in Congress. (pic link)" / Twitter
Showing the two Reps together.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "@Delia4Congress Great meeting with you! Can’t wait to see you rep IL in Congress " / Twitter

“At the core of all of this is just the federal government not having done enough,” he says.

Lee believes frustration at the stalemate in Washington keyed the primary wins of the politicians at the table. “We’re here today because of decisions [Democrats] did not make before, because of times when we were in power and squandered it,” she explains. “Our [party’s] messaging too often is a little bit of gaslighting — that what you’re experiencing is not actually what’s happening” she adds. “That’s what makes us the targets, because we’re the ones validating those voters and their understanding of what’s actually happening.”

Targets indeed, though Lee’s reasoning may not wholly explain it. Conversation at the hightop inevitably turns to “the elephant in the room,” as Lee puts it: The historic amount of money that has been spent in Democratic House primaries this year, mostly, against progressive candidates. It’s a scale of money usually reserved for tight general election races.“We can’t be the party of ‘End Citizens United’ and also be the party of, ‘As long as I like the target, I will allow this,’” quips Lee, who had a spectacular $4 million spent against her in the final weeks of the campaign.

That money was often used to make their primaries a referendum on the Squad. “They wanted me, and people like me, to feel ashamed” of allies like Ocasio-Cortez and Omar “instead of proud of them,” Lee says. Then there’s the casual racism: Casar’s opponents circulated seven rounds of mailers that conspicuously darkened his face. The trio sees the onslaught not as an indictment of their movement, but rather as their foes’ desperation. “There’s no backlash unless you’re winning,” Casar says, “unless they’re worried about something.”

I agree that parts of the Democratic establishment are running scared. They lost Joe Crowley, they lost Mike Capuano, they lost Eliot Engel, they lost Lacy Clay, they lost Dan Lipinski, ... they only lost Dan Schrader this year, however.

This new class of progressives are more in the model of Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) — who served on Boston city council before her House run — than Ocasio-Cortez, who had been working as a bartender before she won her House seat. They come with experience as both organizers and elected officials, having performed public service in antagonistic spaces: Casar’s Austin city council chafed under GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, Republicans have controlled the Pennsylvania state House for as long as Lee has served, and Ramirez went up against the Chicago Democratic machine that didn’t want her in Springfield.

With // without previous elected-office experience:

• 2018: Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar // AOC
• 2020: (none) // Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Marie Newman, Mondaire Jones
• 2022: Delia Ramirez, Greg Casar, Summer Lee, Becca Balint, Jasmine Crockett // Maxwell Frost, Jonathan Jackson

So the Class of 2022 is much like the Class of 2018.

 

[lpetrich]

Delia Ramirez Makes History As First Midwestern Latina Headed To Congress - "Ramirez, a progressive Chicago Democrat, won handily over Republican challenger Justin Burau, according to unofficial returns."

Ramirez told a crowd of supporters: “We just made herstory tonight.”

“If you had asked me sophomore year of high school, if we would be here today, a young woman struggling with depression, with insecurities who didn’t feel she was worthy or enough, someone who didn’t think she’d make it to junior year, that I’d be standing here as your congresswoman, the first Latina in the Midwest, I’d think you were crazy. I would’ve thought it was unimaginable,” the congresswoman-elect said.

“That glass ceiling that for so many Latinas who looked like me that sophomore year, when I never saw a Latina who looked like me representing, fighting for me at these levels, that glass ceiling just broke. We just broke that tonight, y’all.”

 

[lpetrich]

Interview: Maxwell Frost on why he isn’t worried about being the first Gen Z member in Congress - Vox - "The representative-elect for Florida’s 10th Congressional District is used to being the youngest person in the room."

“I’m going into a system that has caused a lot of harm historically,” Frost told Today, Explained host Noel King for a recent episode. “But I also think that to give up on government as a path toward the world we want is to almost give up on our greatest tool that we have as far as being able to make the change. ... I think we have to use every tool in our toolbox.”

Then from the interview itself,

Noel King

The average age in the House of Representatives is 59-ish. So you’re going to be very young compared to many of your colleagues. And I wonder, what do you think the challenges will be having colleagues who are, on the whole, just a lot older than you?

Rep.-elect Frost

The great thing is a lot of my colleagues are really just excited to have me there. Something that Speaker Pelosi told me just a few days after I won my primary is that it’s going to be really a breath of fresh air to have young people in the caucus.

I think there’s often times where people won’t take me as seriously or look down on me, but that’s something I’m used to. I mean, I’ve been working full time in politics since straight out of high school at 18 years old, and I’ve always been the youngest person in the room. I’ve managed people twice my age ... even though it’s at a whole new level now, the United States Congress, I’m ready for it.

Then he described how he got started in activism when he was only 15, though it became a "career" for him when he was 18.

... I think about Representative Cori Bush. When they took out the eviction moratorium [on renters in 2021], she knew what it was like to sleep on the streets, and she slept on the Capitol steps. And because of her advocacy, it was extended, and people stayed in their homes.

Then about Democrats losing Florida.

Sometimes, especially in Florida, these Democratic campaigns end up being campaigns of just rebutting Republicans. Right. The Republicans call you this name — you spend a million dollars on a commercial that says, “I’m not that.” Republicans say, you believe this. You spend a million dollars on commercials saying you didn’t do that. We spend so much time talking about what we’re not and don’t spend as much time talking about what we are and what we believe in. What I found in my organizing is people are more apt and excited to vote for you if they have something to believe in.

Then on how Congress is split between Democrats and Republicans, like the parties having different cloakrooms.

The other thing I’ll say is part of the reason why these times are becoming even more divided is we have a far-right MAGA movement that is scapegoating every vulnerable community for every problem there is. It’s hard to come to the table with someone who doesn’t respect your humanity. Imagine being a queer legislator and coming into this body or being a trans legislator and coming to this body, having to sit across from someone and talk about issues [with someone] who doesn’t value your existence as a human. That’s something that we have to square and figure out.

 

[lpetrich]

Progressives and the midterms: Maxwell Frost, Delia Ramirez, Greg Casar, and Summer Lee might just be the new Squad.

The year 2021 marked the first time that the Congressional Progressive Caucus counted a larger membership than the moderate New Democratic Caucus. The addition of four new members will grow their ranks even further. Despite major efforts by various outside spending groups to move the Democratic Party to the right during primary season, the leftward push continues.

Frost, Ramirez, Casar, and Lee all fit the demographic profile of Squads of yore. All four are nonwhite; all four are under 40. All four are champions of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, adding four formidable advocates to those top-billed progressive priorities.

...
Progressives didn’t stop there. The victory of Chris Deluzio, a onetime Bernie Sanders delegate, in Pennsylvania’s 17th District, is at least as big a triumph as the aforementioned victories. PA-17 was, until recently, held by Conor Lamb, one of the furthest-right members of the Democratic House caucus. He left the seat for a doomed primary campaign against eventual Senate winner John Fetterman. Vermont’s Becca Balint, a Sanders endorsee and a champion of Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, won her race as well. Jasmine Crockett, in Texas, is another progressive notable.

That makes 13: (2018) 4, (2020) 2, (2022) 7

 

[lpetrich]

I'll now assess the performance of Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats this election season.

They supported 32 newcomers, BNC 30, JD 7, both 5 -- BNC-only: 25, JD-only: 2

Of these,

• Withdrew before primaries: 2
• Lost primaries: 19
• Advanced in primaries: 3
  • Lost runoff: 1
  • Lost general: 1
  • Won general: 1
• Won primaries: 7
  • Lost general: 1
  • Won general: 6

Breaking down by which PAC: total, wins:

• BNC: 30, 6
• JD: 7, 2
• Both: 5, 1
• BNC-only: 25, 5
• JD-only: 2, 1

 

[lpetrich]

Illinois’ first Latina U.S. rep on AOC and the burbs - POLITICO

“People would say, ‘She’ll never win in the suburbs. Just focus on the city, and you’ll be fine.’ Or, ‘She’s too left for the suburbs,’” recalled Ramirez in an interview with Playbook in her Hermosa neighborhood office in Chicago. “I said, ‘Yeah, but I also want to represent the suburbs.'”

Ramirez headlined dozens of suburban house parties. “The kind of fundraisers where people drink wine. But they also brought friends so they could hear me speak,” Ramirez recalled. The conversations were “nuanced” about community safety, she said. “Once people understood my holistic approach to public safety, fears were calmed and minds were changed. This is why when asked the question on defund [the police] we were able to get into the meaning of investing in root causes of violence.

...
Ramirez’s victory during the primary might have been a signal that Democrats had a greater chance in the suburbs than polling had indicated.

...
“Everyone asks” if she’ll join the squad. “My plan is to work with and join anyone who is trying to advance a policy agenda that helps the working people of Illinois,” said Ramirez, who counts Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Chicago native, as a mentor. Pressley and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) both endorsed Ramirez.

But she seems very friendly with AOC.

 

[lpetrich]

Zana Day Lefties stop the hero worship! on Twitter: "I owe an apology. ..." / Twitter

I owe an apology.

I worked at Justice Dems & BNC (BNC 4 yrs). As Comms Director I wrote emails promising that we would hold progressive candidates accountable once elected and call them out if they swayed from the platform. We were supposed to shake up the 2-party system. I believed in those promises. The promises of electing regular-working people nominated by their communities who would fight for M4A, GND, ending ICE, ending wars, ending corporate monopoly, and ethically financing their campaigns. I saw some AMAZING candidates lose, that very well may have shaken up the status quo. And I saw AOC win, and I thought she was likely going to fold into the establishment, and she did. 90-hour work weeks. Time away from home. I was doing this organizing for my daughter, just as many of you had hopes. But even though I believed that things would change, I started to learn that, unlike the slogan I coined, it was politics as usual. I'm disappointed as well. And I'm sorry for the false promises. My heart was with yours in hoping for real change for all of us that were struggling.

We can't wait 'till the next election cycle to raise a "ruckus." The political system breeds ego, corruption, and desperation for relevance.

Can't let the "progressives," who are nothing but regular ol' Dems, make us lose focus on what matters.

We must organize today.
END

BNC = Brand New Congress. JD is a spinoff from BNC.

Far too pessimistic an assessment.

 

[lpetrich]

Rowdy Rod on Twitter: "@ZeynabDay The work was important. It showed us that taking over the Dem party was not a thing. I certainly thought it was possible, but the Justice Dems has showed us we have to find a diff strategy." / Twitter

Zana Day Lefties stop the hero worship! on Twitter: "@mendez_rod I did think ... / Twitter

I did think BNC might work b/c it was supposed to be outside the parties. I was never a Dem and was always an independent. We were supposed to recruit folks nominated by their communities to run. And, run different parties, and indis but on a progressive platform. After AOC got famous (BNC, not JD, launched her campaign btw), things shifted. BNC started drifting more toward the Dems. Stopped recruiting from community nominees and eliminated the accountability portion to maintain access and keep up fundraising. I left after that.

There was no way that BNC would have gotten anywhere as a third party. Look at the Green Party and how irrelevant it is.

The BNC did run a candidate as a Republican in 2018, but he lost the Republican primary. A Bernie Sanders Republican? Since then, the BNC has been all-Democrat.

Documenting the Capitalocene Era on Twitter: "@ZeynabDay @_sa311 It's not your fault. It's hard to tell the difference between momentary strategy and permanently being a certain way. The 70 dollar hoodies and the book deals brokered by the party machine are enough to know now, before they went to town union busting" / Twitter

Zana Day Lefties stop the hero worship! on Twitter: "@ALeftistMoniker @_sa311 Thank you. It really is sometimes.
I agree, it was visible a while ago. Been calling it out since I left two years ago. Even held a protest at AOC's office summer before last.
But, it was deff weighing on my this week." / Twitter

Then about what "union busters" AOC and her friends are, even the DSA. Presumably with respect to the rail-worker issue and their not doing enough.

Also,
Brennan Lowery on Twitter: "@ZeynabDay No apology needed we all got hoodwinked by them. Watching her vote endlessly for war, pivot to “access to healthcare”, and boosting police funding for capitol police (just a few of her massive failures) has been heartbreaking and spirit shattering. We can’t give up!" / Twitter
then
Zana Day Lefties stop the hero worship! on Twitter: "@BrennanBabbles Yes to all those, and dropping the abolition of the DHS." / Twitter

I also found this response:
Biden/Harris/Pelosi Stan on Twitter: "@mendez_rod @ZeynabDay Bingo! You’re never going to take over our Party, we don’t want to lose every election with your policies that 90% of Americans oppose.
Form your own party, go fight with the Greens for the 1% they get. We’ll stay focused on winning and making real progress.
See ya! (vid link)" / Twitter
A belligerent centrist Democrat?

 

[lpetrich]

The Graveyard of Progressive Social Movements | MR Online - May 9, 2017

When first encountering the “Impeach Bush” movement in 2007 I responded, almost flippantly, “why not impeach the system that gave us Bush?” Otherwise, I said, “we risk having someone in the White House who’ll make us long for Bush.” If prescient, my response was admittedly formulaic and evidentially deficient

Then how the would-be Trump impeachers wouldn't like Mike Pence as president.

The lesser-evil thinking that entices many well-intentioned liberals, workers as well, to keep electing Dems and, thus, the delay in the construction of a real working class political alternative, would only, I further argued, embolden capital to do whatever is necessary to lower wage costs in order to restore profitability.

But the last halfway-successful third-party movements were over a century ago and the recent ones are losers and spoilers.

 

[lpetrich]

Then some actual history. "After the successful anti-colonial struggle (Tom Paine being its best propagandist) the campaign to end slavery was America’s first progressive movement."

I like that description of the American Revolution. Good to see someone on the Left not write off the Founders as slaveowners. Also a good description of the antislavery movement.

So what explains why a party of slave owners would become the home of progressive social movements? Maybe it had a Pauline conversion moment on the road to Washington. The evidence upon a close reading suggests something less transcendental. It reveals that there was nothing inevitable about that unlikely marriage. Historical contingency is a better explanation.

The pro-slavery Democrats were Dixiecrats, who would later flee the party for the Republican Party.

The debilitating and ultimately deadly embrace of progressive social movements by the Dems began with the original populist movement, the People’s Party. Launched in 1891 by small farmers and petit-bourgeois forces to reform capitalism, it rapidly grew owing to the increasing number of those victimized by the system’s inherently rapacious character, especially when the depression of 1893 hit. DP presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan opportunistically pitched his 1896 campaign to the People’s Party base and rather than run their own candidate they endorsed Bryan. A faux populist, Bryan’s lost to Republican William McKinley (Mark Hanna, McKinley’s campaign manager and Karl Rove’s hero, out-organized him) effectively spelled the end of the People’s Party. Little if any of the populist tinge rubbed off, which is why the DP remained as conservative as ever.

Then noting that FDR didn't claim to differ much from then-President Herbert Hoover on spending and deficits.

FDR was noted for saying the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” in his first inaugural address, but he also said in it “I shall ask [it] for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” Author August Nimtz called it Bonapartism, but it could also be called Caesarism.

For at least one of the People’s Party supporters there was a lesson to be learned from the 1896 debacle; working people needed their own party independent of the Dems. In helping to found the Socialist Party in 1901, Eugene V. Debs, a labor battle-tested fighter, set in motion for the first time in the U.S. the practice of working class-oriented parties contesting elections. His 1912 and 1920 presidential campaigns—the latter from a prison cell—garnered more votes than ever for an avowed socialist candidate (though he never disavowed the label, Bernie Sanders, not to be forgotten, didn’t run as a socialist).

Then on how such parties got absorbed by the Democratic Party. Part of it was the Communist Party vs. Trotskyist parties in the 1930's and 1940's - in the 1930's, the Soviet Union ordered Communist Parties to create "popular front" coalitions against Fascism, so the Commies allied themselves with the Dems against the Trots.

 

[lpetrich]

Once the labor movement was wedded to the Dems—with whom it has been submissively residing ever since—the marriage became the template for subsequent social movements, first, the Freedom Now or Civil Rights Movement and then later, the fight for equality for women, the two most consequential social movements in the second half of the 20th century.

Then discussing Barack Obama's 2013 speech on the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement's March on Washington.

Yes, it was true, he acknowledged, that it took marching in the streets to make the advances that he so personified to be possible. But mass marching was yesterday. Rather, as he exhorted to those gathered, it was those “marching” everyday as “teachers,” “parents,” “small business people,” who represented the future. In other words, the efforts of the individual and not the “mob” Tocqueville despised and feared were now determinant; the liberal agenda touted by its most renown advocate.

The struggle for racial equality—gender equality as well—paid a high price for the kind of advice Obama was peddling.

Isolated individuals aren't very effective. That's why I consider the Occupy movement a failure. It depended on its participants getting together in campsites, but their movement did not survive the shutdowns of those campsites by city governments, and the Occupy people didn't try to find new campsites.

 

[lpetrich]

Then noting what Presidents Clinton and Obama got away with.

At the massive April 2004 march for abortion rights, Clinton famously told the crowd: “We didn’t have to march for 12 long years because,” referring mainly to her husband’s tenure, “we had a government that respected the rights of women.” And to make clear what she meant in that election cycle: “The only way we’re going to be able to avoid having to march again and again and again is to elect [DP candidate] John Kerry.”

...
Obama and Clinton’s aversion for the streets has a long tradition in the DP, particularly when one of their own is in the White House. President John Kennedy tried unsuccessfully to have the 1963 March called off. With the 1932 Bonus Marchers still no doubt on the brain FDR had better luck. His wife Eleanor was able to convince the organizers to cancel the original March on Washington for Black rights in 1941, with the Stalinists, in full popular front campaign mode, cheering in approval.

...
Both Obama and Clinton played the timeworn DP identity cards for the 2016 election cycle; this time they didn’t work. To the Black Congressional Caucus dinner a few weeks before the election, Obama arrogantly demanded: “I will consider it a personal insult—an insult to my legacy—if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election. You want to give me a good send off? Go vote.”

Most recently, the Democratic leadership's first response to the revocation of RvW was to fundraise off of it.

Why did Presidents Clinton and Obama get away with so much that is contrary to the desires of the Democratic base? Because they posed as the lesser of the two major evils, implying that it's either them or the Republicans. Not that Republicans weren't willing to act like great villains.

 

[lpetrich]

Almost exactly a year after the 50th anniversary commemoration, young people of all skin colors and genders but overwhelmingly working class in composition ignored Obama’s liberal advice and took to the streets in mass protests against police brutality. But for Black Lives Matter to advance it too will have to think systemically—again, the system of capitalism.

That's silly, since there is nothing in capitalism that requires a racial hierarchy, not even the most grotesquely unequal sort, with a few super rich oligarchs and everybody else having to eke out a borderline living. But racial hierarchies can easily be turned into economic hierarchies, and economic hierarchies can easily be justified as racial hierarchies. Consider early in the history of the British North American colonies. It was easier for WASP economic elites to justify the permanent subjection of people who obviously didn't look very WASP-ish than people who were fellow WASP's - the former became permanently enslaved, while the latter often came in as indentured servants who would work off their debts and become free people.

Yes, slave plantations were capitalist, despite some plantation owners presenting themselves as above capitalism. Plantation owners treated their slaves as the moral equivalent of farm animals, to be bought and sold just like cows or horses or pigs or sheep. They also liked to grow cash crops like tobacco and cotton, crops grown to sell.

 

[lpetrich]

Then a section on “What is to be done?” - the title of one of Vladimir Lenin's works.

The necessary condition for a socialist alternative is recognition by workers that the best that capitalism has to offer is behind them. One of the sufficient conditions to realize a socialist alternative is recognition that we have opportunities today that our forebears didn’t have.

But August Nimtz didn't seem to have any prescription, like how to run businesses. In one of AOC's conversations with Ta-Nehisi Coates on a MLK day, she proposed turning Amazon into a workers' cooperative. That's the sort of thing that I hardly ever see from many anticapitalists and self-styled socialists.

Lastly, the big picture. History reveals, thankfully, that the most decisive political questions have never been settled in the electoral/parliamentary/judicial arenas. To believe so is to be afflicted with what Marx and Engels called “parliamentary cretinism” along with what I term “voting fetishism” and “judicial cretinism.”

No moment is as instructive in U.S. politics as the period from March 1857 to April 1865. Three major decisions made under the authority of the Constitution were only effectively decided in an arena unauthorized by the Republic’s founding document.

Then listing the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the defeat of the Confederacy.

I have problems with all three, and I note an omission.

Dred Scott? The Supreme Court's existence is mandated by the Constitution, though that document may not be as clear about that court's powers as one might want.

Abraham Lincoln's election? Presidential elections are mandated by the Constitution.

The defeat of the Confederacy? One can argue that that is in accord with the Constitution, because among Congress's powers is "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;" The Civil War was clearly the suppression of an insurrection.

But the secession of the Southern states, which he didn't mention, was clearly extraconstitutional.

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I do get what seems to be his point, that legislative action isn't everything, that one needs activism outside of governments. What AOC calls "electoralism" is not enough, and she says that she believes in an inside-outside strategy of activism, with her being on the inside.

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"Just as the future of chattel slavery could not be settled on authorized terrain so too will it be for the future of wage slavery—capitalism."

Without going into how one is going to have reduced-hierarchy or no-hierarchy workplaces. Not even a mention of some work that goes into detail about that. And certainly no discussion of how to avoid an Animal Farm sort of scenario, where a new ruling class emerges and is as arrogant and exploitative as its predecessor.

 

[Derec]

In Spanish, "lucha" means "fight".

That word has been popular with extremists on both ends of the horseshoe.

For more than a decade, Ramirez had fought against the generational wealth and gentrification that she felt Bagley symbolized

Gentrification is one of those boogeymen of the movement leftism that never made much sense to me. Who would not want neighborhoods to improve?

She never met him again.

"Magic Negro" in reverse?

 

[Derec]

[Chuck] Rocha’s response is that math is not always the answer.

I mean movement leftists even think that math is racist, so of course they are going to dismiss it ...
Also, he is an embezzler. I wonder if he tried to blame math for that one too.