Democrats trying to unseat each other II

[lpetrich]

The surge of grass-roots activism has come as a jolt in Massachusetts, which, because it is so firmly in the grip of one party, does not have a history of competitive primaries.

The old guard, the consulting class, hasn’t figured out a way of combating it,” said Jordan Meehan, 29, who turned to Ms. Walsh to organize digital outreach for a campaign last year, when he challenged a 34-year incumbent for a State House seat. He lost but credits Ms. Walsh with devising a creative approach, reaching out individually to his social media followers and recruiting them for events and volunteer shifts.

“It really does threaten the whole consultant-industrial complex,” he said.

One will get a lot more meaningful choice in primaries than in general elections in such places, and these activists are taking advantage of that.

I don't know when "primary" as a verb got started, but it seems to be very recent, and I think that it was during heyday of the Tea Party movement. Some Tea Partiers made it a strategy to challenge Republican incumbents in primaries, and the movement had a major success: Dave Brat primaried Eric Cantor in 2014. DB was an economics professor and EC was a long-time incumbent and party leader.

But DB was a nobody while in office, and he was defeated after two terms.

In 2016, some Bernie Sanders campaigners formed Brand New Congress, with a willingness to primary excessively centrist or conservative Democrats. Though neither it or its spinoff group Justice Democrats was ever very successful, but in 2018, a BNC/JD candidate scored a success at least as spectacular as DB vs. EC: AOC vs. Joe Crowley, also a long-time incumbent and party leader.

AOC was joined by Ayanna Pressley in 2018, and Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, and Marie Newman in 2020. Who might join her in 2022?

 

[lpetrich]

Another rematch in 2022: Melanie D'Arrigo vs. Tom Suozzi in NY-03. She's Brand New Congress's first endorsement of this campaign season.

Brand New Congress on Twitter: "Queens and Long Islanders, this is your candidate! Melanie D'Arrigo is running to represent #NY3, and we proudly welcome her to BNC's 2022 slate! Follow @DarrigoMelanie, boost the signal, and support Melanie's campaign as a founding donor- right now! (links)" / Twitter

She responded
Melanie D'Arrigo for NY3 on Twitter: "I’m a mom of 3 running for Congress to fight for my daughters’ future and yours. I will fight to repeal the dangerous Hyde Amendment and center reproductive justice. #NY3 has never elected a woman, can you help make history? Launch our campaign strong: donate & RT this (link)" / Twitter

She's gotten a lot of endorsements:
Melanie D'Arrigo for NY3 on Twitter: "I am humbled and proud to launch with the endorsements of @NationalNOWPAC @BrandNew535 @MomsInOffice @herboldmoveUSA @progwomenofny and @es_indivisible. We're not taking a single dime of corporate PAC money, chip in here: (link)" / Twitter
She's for

• reproductive justice
• equal pay
• paid family leave
• ending our maternal mortality crisis.

She's had a lot of success so far:
Melanie D'Arrigo for NY3 on Twitter: "WOW - we’ve raised $20K online within the first hour of announcing my candidacy! Can you chip in now to show you are with us on day #1? (link)" / Twitter

Rep. Tom Suozzi will be challenged by progressive Melanie D’Arrigo - New York Daily News describing her as "a progressive health care consultant from Long Island"

Melanie D’Arrigo, who lost to Suozzi in the 2020 primary by more than 40 percentage points, said in an interview that her chances at winning “are very different this time around.”

“We have a base that we didn’t have last time, and I think the appetite is there for change,” said D’Arrigo, whose campaign announcement came along with endorsements from six prominent progressive groups, including Brand New Congress and the National Organization for Women.

 

[lpetrich]

More of that interview:

The congressman, 58, is known on Capitol Hill as a moderate and serves as the vice-chair of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, making him vulnerable to primary challenges from the Democratic Party’s increasingly influential left wing.

...
“Congressman Suozzi takes a lot of money from insurance groups and pharma groups that give him money so that he will not support ‘Medicare For All,’” said D’Arrigo, who’s a proponent of the single-payer health care system favored by progressives. “If you’re going to represent the people, you cannot take money from groups that work against the people.”

MDA is 40 years old.

Melanie D'Arrigo for NY3 on Twitter: "Today, our campaign is proud to announce that we’ve raised 50K in the first 12 hours of our launch, placing us among the top Progressive challengers in history. In fact, more than any challenger not backed by @justicedems. Thank you so much for your overwhelming support! (link)" / Twitter

Much like AOC vs. Joe Crowley.

 

[lpetrich]

Nina Turner, running for OH-11, has gotten an endorsement from Rep. Katie Porter, and that endorsement was recently trending on Twitter. She's already gotten numerous endorsements.

It got this odd response:
Silent Amuse on Twitter: "In honor of Katie Porter's endorsement of Nina Turner,
I invite everyone in the sanity-based community to please send a quick donation to Shontel Brown.
Please Retweet (link)" / Twitter


Youseff Baddar is running in OH-05, and he seems like a long shot. He is running as an independent.

 

[lpetrich]

Are We Entering a New Political Era? | The New Yorker - "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."

"Justice Democrats is reshaping the Democratic Party by giving moderates an unignorable reason to guard their left flank." Along with lots of less-prominent ones, like its parent Brand New Congress.

“It’s one thing for the progressive movement to tell a politician, ‘It sure would be nice if you did this,’ ” Alexandra Rojas, the group’s executive director, told me. “It’s another to be able to say, ‘Look, you should probably do this if you want to keep your job.’ ” This insurgent approach has caused establishment figures from both parties to refer to Justice Democrats and its ilk as the Tea Party of the left. Max Berger, an early employee, said, “If that’s supposed to mean that we’re equivalent to white-supremacist dipshits who want to blow up the government or move toward authoritarianism, then I would consider that both an insult and a really dumb misreading of what we’re trying to do. But if it means that we come out of nowhere and, within a few years, we have one of the two major parties implementing our agenda—and if our agenda is to promote multiracial democracy and give people union jobs and help avert a climate crisis—then, yeah, I’m down to be the Tea Party of the left.”

Also mentioned the Sunrise Movement (climate activist), Data for Progress (polling), New Consensus (think tank), United We Dream (immigrants' rights), Momentum (organizer training)

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, one of the main authors of the Green New Deal, said, “You can put together the perfect policy plan, but if it doesn’t fit within the dominant ideological frame then you’re getting laughed out of the room. So, while we argue for our ideas, we also keep trying to push out the frame.”

Waleed Shahid of the JD's:

“In any other country—a parliamentary system in Europe or Asia or South America—we’d be called either social democrats or democratic socialists,” Shahid told me. “Our party would win twenty-five per cent of the seats, and we’d have real power.” But, in a two-party system, “the way to get there is to run from within one of the two parties and, ultimately, try to take it over.”

What the Tea Party did to the Republican Party. The Tea Party is still with us, as the Trump cult.

 

[lpetrich]

More from that article,

Gary Gerstle, an American historian at the University of Cambridge, has argued, in the journal of the Royal Historical Society, that “the last eighty years of American politics can be understood in terms of the rise and fall of two political orders.” The first was the “New Deal order,” which began in the thirties, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt established a social safety net that Americans eventually took for granted. Next came the “neoliberal order,” during which large parts of that safety net were unravelled. The axioms of neoliberalism—for instance, that deficit spending is reckless, free markets are sacrosanct, and the government’s main job is to get out of the way—felt radical when they were proposed, in the forties and fifties, by hard-line libertarian intellectuals like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. In the sixties and seventies, these axioms became central to the New Right. By the late eighties, the ideas that had been thought of as Reaganism were starting to be understood as realism. A new order had taken hold.

A political order is bigger than any party, coalition, or social movement. In one essay, Gerstle and two co-authors describe it as “a combination of ideas, policies, institutions, and electoral dynamics . . . a hegemonic governing regime.”

Then about how Dwight Eisenhower keeping the New Deal going, Bill Clinton slashing welfare, Richard Nixon proposing a universal basic income, and Barack Obama not doing so.

Gerstle argues that dominant orders seem like common sense, “making alternative ideologies seem marginal and unworkable.” As Margaret Thatcher liked to say, TINA: there is no alternative.

 Cyclical theory (United States history) - the US has gone through roughly six political regimes. Here, with the Schlesinger periods:

• Founding - (LC) Revolution and Constitution (C) Hamilton Era (L) Jefferson Era (C) Era of Good Feelings
• Jackson - (LC) Jackson Era (C) Slaveowner Dominance
• Civil War - (LR) Civil War, Slavery Abolition, Reconstruction (C) Gilded Age
• Progressive - (LC) Progressive Era (C) Roaring Twenties
• New Deal - (L) New Deal (C) Eisenhower Era (LCR) Sixties Era
• Neoliberal, Gilded Age II - (C) Gilded Age II

L = liberal, C = conservative; C = Huntington creedal passion, R = race-relations upheaval
Peter Turchin's cycles:

• Rising - Founding
• Falling - Jackson, Civil War
• Rising - Progressive, New Deal
• Falling - Gilded Age II

The first Gilded Age lasted some 30 years, and the second one has so far lasted 40 years.

Frank DiStefano discusses these regimes in "The Next Realignment", and he proposes that they begin with two parties each taking different stances on what kind of nation the US is to be. As they achieve their goals, they lose their sense of purpose, and they degenerate into career vehicles and grifts.

That is happening now, and we are due for a realignment. That is also evident from Schlesinger's theory. A liberal phase ends from society-scale activism burnout, and a conservative one from accumulation of unsolved social problems. The latter is what is now happening.

 

[lpetrich]

Barack Obama in a recent interview: “Through Clinton and even through how I thought about these issues when I first came into office, I think there was a residual willingness to accept the political constraints that we’d inherited from the post-Reagan era. Probably there was an embrace of market solutions to a whole host of problems that wasn’t entirely justified.” He and others felt constrained by the ideology of Gilded Age II.

Early Obama donor Reed Hundt wrote a book about the Obama years called "A Crisis Wasted" (2019) where he argued that the Obama admin's inadequate response to the 2008 financial crash was from feeling constrained by “neoliberal dogmas”. When Obama's economic advisors discovered that “the economy needed $1.7 trillion of additional spending in order to produce full employment”, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel objected that Congress would be spooked by any price tag “starting with a t.”

Back to the article. "After the financial crisis, it became increasingly clear that the market was not going to self-correct, and that inequality was likely to keep widening." The Tea Party emerged on the right, and Occupy Wall Street on the left. OWS fizzled out after crackdowns on their campsites after a few months of occupying city parks -- the OWS people didn't bother to find new meeting places.

Gerstle again. “The Great Recession of 2008 fractured America’s neoliberal order, creating a space in which different kinds of politics, including the right-wing populism of Donald Trump and the left-wing populism of Bernie Sanders, could flourish.” Three years ago, he wrote a journal article, “The Rise and Fall (?) of America’s Neoliberal Order.” He stated that by the end of the decade, we will see if it “can be repaired, or whether it will fall.” He is now writing a book by that name, but without the (?).

“We’ve already seen, under Trump, an early version of what a right-wing post-neoliberal order might look like. Ethno-nationalist, anti-democratic, trending toward authoritarianism.”

He concedes that a progressive version is “harder to nail down,” but “we might be starting to see it unfold under Biden.” He noted that “for all of Obama’s charisma, and Joe Biden’s reputation for political caution and for stumbling over his words, Biden seems likelier to emerge as the larger-than-life figure. This is where personality matters less than circumstance. Obama was stuck within a preëxisting order, but Biden is inheriting a more fluid moment.”

Joe Biden seems very boring to many people, a pleasant and friendly elder figure, but without much charisma. Republican strategists can't find anything that gets their party's base to hate him, so they are focusing on other Democrats.

So yes, he is a very unlikely revolutionary. But the US's founders were also rather unlikely revolutionaries, except for Thomas Paine and maybe some others.

 

[lpetrich]

About a Justice Democrats meeting,

In the public imagination, political movements are associated with picket lines or with throngs amassing on the National Mall, but a surprising amount of the work takes place via spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks.

Behind-the-scenes activism work.

If politics is the art of the possible, then there are two kinds of radicals: those who disdain all worldly forms of politics, and those who engage in politics in order to change what’s possible. The former may make a disproportionate amount of noise, especially on the Internet, but the latter tend to notch more tangible victories.

...
If the jaded, bellicose young socialists who post and podcast for a living are sometimes referred to as the dirtbag left—or, even more derisively, as the Patreon left—this nascent cohort might be called the PowerPoint left: anti-incrementalist but not anti-pragmatic, skeptical but not reflexively cynical, willing to speak truth to power but not averse to acquiring some. Its collective outlook is sweetly earnest, sometimes to the point of treating politics as a spiritual practice. More than one person, contrasting the abrasiveness of the Bernie bros to female-led groups such as Justice Democrats and Sunrise, described the cohort as “matriarchal.”

Brand New Congress has recently joined them with former BNC candidate Adrienne Bell taking over.

The groups are mostly run by people in their 20's, and they are short on hierarchy and cash.

"Officially, the groups are all independent. In practice, everyone seems to be everyone else’s co-author, drinking buddy, former mentor, or romantic partner."

Just as pragmatic liberals pursue piecemeal reforms and orthodox Marxists hold out for the proletarian revolution, the lodestar of the PowerPoint left is ideological realignment. “For as long as I’ve been old enough to be conscious of politics, all I’ve known is a Democratic Party that has defined itself as ‘We’re less bad than Republicans,’ ” Girgenti told me. “With J.D. and Sunrise, the starting point is more like, ‘If we as a society didn’t accept the busted logic of anti-government austerity, what would that allow us to do?’ ”

Waleed Shahid: “There are segments within the left that have always been allergic to anything having to do with elections or politics. Our basic feeling was, Sure, we can cede the entire terrain of electoral politics to the center and the right, but how does that help us achieve our goals, exactly?”

Getting good people into office is not the only thing, but it's an essential thing. A successful movement will need both activists and elected supporters.

Civil-rights activist Bayard Rustin: “If we only protest for concessions from without, then [the Democratic Party] treats us in the same way as any of the other conflicting pressure groups. . . . But if the same amount of pressure is exerted from inside the party using highly sophisticated political tactics, we can change the structure of that party.”

 

[lpetrich]

When Movements Anchor Parties | Princeton University Press by Daniel Schlozman

Throughout American history, some social movements, such as organized labor and the Christian Right, have forged influential alliances with political parties, while others, such as the antiwar movement, have not. ...

Taking readers from the Civil War to today, Daniel Schlozman shows how two powerful alliances—those of organized labor and Democrats in the New Deal, and the Christian Right and Republicans since the 1970s—have defined the basic priorities of parties and shaped the available alternatives in national politics. He traces how they diverged sharply from three other major social movements that failed to establish a place inside political parties—the abolitionists following the Civil War, the Populists in the 1890s, and the antiwar movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Back to the article. The two major US parties are "weak parties". "In other countries, parties decide which policies they favor, then select candidates who will implement them; in the United States, the parties are more like empty vessels whose agendas are continually contested by internal factions." I think back to when AOC said that in most other countries, she and Joe Biden would be in different parties. With more ideologically coherent parties, that would indeed be the case.

"In the U.S., the only successful insurgency was happening on the right." Then discussing Dave Brat's victory over Eric Cantor in the 2014 Republican primaries, with DB portraying EC as soft on immigration, though DB had $200K and EC $5M in campaign cash. That doomed a major immigration-reform bill.

Shahid, who was then working for an immigrants’-rights group, was crushed by the news, but he also saw it as a proof of concept. “My first reaction was, Looks like a small faction really can change the direction of an entire party,” he recalled. “My second reaction was, I bet I could raise two hundred thousand dollars.”

If Dave Brat could bring down a major Republican leader, could someone bring down a major Democratic leader?

 

[lpetrich]

The article described a leftist-activist coalition called All of Us or #AllofUs. In 2016, its members were sure that the Presidential candidates were Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush. Both of them were favorites of the establishments of their parties. But Hillary almost lost to Bernie Sanders and Jeb Bush lost to Donald Trump, alongside candidates ranging from experienced politicians to vanity candidates. Then Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.

Yong Jung Cho: “We were getting ready to make the case that, even if it looks like the establishment is still in control, the American people are going to be ready for populism soon. Then we looked around and went, Oh, it looks like people are ready for populism right now.”

They delivered a presentation that stated that neoliberalism was now spent and that a big shift in “the terms of political debate” was both necessary and possible. “A movement-aligned faction can take control of the party.”

When YJC and WS meet Alexandra Rojas of Justice Democrats at a sort of left-wing activist convention, they explained to her their theory of realignment, and she said "Oh, yeah, that’s kind of how we see it, too, we just haven’t had time to write it down."

The article mixes up the history of Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats a bit, describing some events in BNC's early history as JD events.

Corbin Trent, once of the founders of BNC, "sometimes insisted that a candidate with a bold enough platform should, in theory, be viable anywhere." WS protested “Dude, I’m Muslim! There are a lot of districts in this country that I could not even run in.”.

The article: "They hoped that the novelty of their plan would attract national media attention and a wave of small donations. It didn’t work."

BNC and JD founder Zack Exley: “It was a nice dream, but we ended up realizing that the partisan divides were just too strong.”

... Justice Democrats had received some ten thousand nominations—an organic-cotton farmer in Wyoming, a pastor in South Carolina. Employees interviewed applicants by phone, taking notes in a Google spreadsheet. Ocasio-Cortez, nominated by her brother Gabriel, was rated a four out of four in several categories (strength as a nominee, good fit for district). Under “Would this applicant do well on TV?” the interviewer wrote, “Absolutely.”

That was BNC.

 

[lpetrich]

By late 2017, JD was very short on money, and found it hard to get enough to pay its staff. Its organizers listed as internal goals “Get (at least one) incumbent establishment scalp to become a credible threat” and “Lead (at least one) national policy/ideological fight in the Democratic Party.”

They decided to go all-out on three candidates: Anthony Clark IL-07 (a Chicago teacher), Cori Bush, and AOC. "Shahid, Chakrabarti, and Trent spent the next few months in New York, devoting most of their time to the Ocasio-Cortez campaign." AOC won and the other two lost.

Ocasio-Cortez’s ascent had many causes, from quirks in New York election law to her raw political skill. On cable news, her election was often framed in personal terms. At every opportunity, though, she talked about herself as part of a burgeoning faction. Last year, when a reporter from New York asked her how she might legislate under a Biden Presidency, she said, “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party.” This, too, was interpreted through an interpersonal lens. She later clarified that she hadn’t meant it as an insult; it was simply a fact. It was also the kind of thing you might say if you’d been subjected to one too many PowerPoints about factional realignment.

The article then described pushing the Green New Deal and also Biden's campaign proposals, complete with how they went farther than Bernie Sanders in 2016. "When Exley embarked on his diplomacy campaign, in 2019, this was just the sort of outcome he was hoping for."

Then Rep. Conor Lamb vs. AOC after the 2020 elections. CL blamed the left, decrying “the message of defunding the police and banning fracking . . . policies that are unworkable and extremely unpopular.” By contrast, centrist Dems advocates positions “rooted in common sense, in reality, and yes, politics. Because we need districts like mine to stay in the majority.” He was responding to AOC, who stated in a NYT interview that for now, D's in purple districts might think it safe not to take bold positions, but that such centrists were “setting up their own obsolescence.”

"If some historians now see Jimmy Carter as the last President of the New Deal era, then it’s reasonable to wonder whether Biden will be the last President of the neoliberal era, or the first President of whatever comes next."

Is JB really a frustrated progressive? That's doubtful, though Gerstle pointed out that FDR and LBJ were also moderates who resisted big changes, but who ended up feeling forced to do so.

“Whenever progressives have won in America,” he said, they’ve done so by “pulling the center to the left.” The Civil War historian Eric Foner compared contemporary progressives like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to the Radical Republicans who goaded Abraham Lincoln, a moderate in his party, to abolish slavery. “In times of crisis,” Foner told me, “people with a clear ideological analysis come to the fore.”

 

[lpetrich]

... it is inarguable that the Bernie Sanders-A.O.C. wing of the Party, which barely existed a few years ago, is now contesting for power in ways that were recently unimaginable. John Kerry is Biden’s climate czar—a job that was created only because Sunrise and other activist groups demanded it. Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, actively courts leftist support, liking tweets from Shahid and McElwee along with the usual fare from Axios and the Center for American Progress.

All in all, a nice article.

Paula Jean Swearengin bows out. At least for now. Of her three Knock Down The House costars, AOC is in her second term, Cori Bush in her first, and Amy Vilela is running against after campaigning for Bernie Sanders in 2020.

Paula Jean Swearengin on Twitter: "I don't want to disappoint but I doubt I will ever run for office again. I'll never ask anyone to sacrifice their dollars & time until I know that grassroots campaigns are not destroyed by the system that broke us in the first place. I'm not so sure anymore." / Twitter
then
it's me monida! on Twitter: "@paulajean2020 People rarely win their first time please run again" / Twitter
then
Paula Jean Swearengin on Twitter: "@monidaw2 I never wanted to get into politics. I was in two national races out of desperation for survival. It's not about winning elections. It's about people not having to struggle like most of us do." / Twitter
then
lfc13/14 on Twitter: "@paulajean2020 @monidaw2 A reluctant politician is the only kind of politician worth being. Please please, run again. The very fact that you’d consider not running for the reasons you’ve stated are the exact reason we need you to try again if you’re up for it" / Twitter
then
Christina on Twitter: "@Akpaedem @paulajean2020 @monidaw2 "Great leaders aren't 'made' they're cornered." " / Twitter

chronicle of wasted time on Twitter: "@paulajean2020 @monidaw2 It sucks though because this is what they want. For the best of us to become demoralized and exhausted. I have no right to complain, I haven't done anything. It just sucks that Paula's out too now." / Twitter

austin bradfield on Twitter: "@paulajean2020 Organizing a strong union movement is a prerequisite for progressive Change." / Twitter
then
Paula Jean Swearengin on Twitter: "@culture_nit I'm sure Mother Jones, Joe Hill, Bill Blizzard, the coal miners of Blair Mountain and Matewan can relate." / Twitter

Roger on Twitter: "@paulajean2020 I don’t blame you. You did your job. We'll take it from here. You enjoy & spend time with that beautiful grandchild of yours" / Twitter
then
Paula Jean Swearengin on Twitter: "@Roger2dot0 I didn't say I was done." / Twitter

 

[lpetrich]

Justice Democrats has a new candidate: Kina Collins IL-07 - Kina Collins, anti-gun-violence activist, announces primary challenge to Illinois Democrat Danny Davis - CNNPolitics

"From leading the gun violence prevention movement in Illinois, to fighting for Medicare for all and holding elected officials accountable after the murder of Laquan McDonald, Kina has already delivered results for her community," Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of Justice Democrats, said in a statement. "The people of this district are ready for a new generation of leadership who will show up everyday in Congress and fight for the change her community needs."

She argues that Rep. Davis has been neglecting his community.

"I've been at community meeting after community meeting on urgent issues like health care and gun violence, and Congressman Davis just doesn't show up," Collins told CNN. "We are in a watershed moment coming out of this pandemic, and in this recession we need someone who's been organizing on the front lines of the district. These urgent crises require urgent leadership."

Collins' activist work was recognized by then President-elect Joe Biden's team when she was asked to join the transition's task force on gun violence.

"I've been working on every single level on this issue, and it is one of the top issues in our district," Collins said. "People in the city of Chicago, people in the western suburbs, they want solutions and they want to make sure that they're going to elect somebody who's going to fight for prevention and reaction."

She criticized Rep. Davis for accepting corporate PAC donations, and she argued that she was the progressive candidate to get behind, to avoid splitting the vote in a FPTP election. Even if that might seem like "I believe in dictatorship, but with me the dictator." Back in 2020 she ran against JD choice Anthony Clark and a third challenger for Rep. Davis.

"I think that we are going to make it very apparent that I am the progressive challenger that progressive groups need to get behind," Collins said, pointing to Justice Democrats' decision and other early endorsers, including the Women's March Illinois. "We're building the rainbow coalition."

Danny K. Davis - Ballotpedia -  Danny K. Davis - he was born in 1941 and he has been in the House since 1977. He consistently beats Republicans with large margins - they get only 12 - 15% of the vote. So it is in the primaries where he is vulnerable.

• 2012: DD 84.5%, Jack Conway 15.5%
• 2014: (unopposed)
• 2016: DD 81.2%, Thomas Day 18.8%
• 2018: DD 73.9%, Anthony Clark 26.1%
• 2020: DD 60.2%, Kina Collins 13.9%, Anthony Clark 13.0%, Kristine Schanbacher 13.0%

So at the rate of DD's vote-share decline, KC has a good chance to win in 2022.

 

[lpetrich]

Brand New Congress now supports Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick for FL-20. That district is in the Everglades between Miami and Lake Okeechobee, with fingers extending to Hollywood, Ft. Lauderdale, and W Palm Beach.

This seat was vacated by the death of long-time Rep. Alcee Hastings. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will likely win the general election.

 

[Swammerdami]

There are already literally hundreds of third-parties, yet you all say "we need a 3rd party." Guess what? They already exist! The question is this: why aren't they viable? It's because there's momentum to create new parties but ZERO momentum for actual electoral reform.

Other than the Democratic Party and MAGA, the two strongest parties in the U.S. are the Libertarians — operated by and for psychotics and morons — and the Green Party — which did succeed in electing a President! (In 2000, the Greens were delighted to defeat Al Gore — the most pro-Green of any major Presidential candidate ever — and install George W. Bush as Prez.) Ross Perot's Party did rather well in 1992 — so well that its wrong-headed ideas have been largely adopted by MAGA.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The recent Presidential election in Peru is bemusing. In a huge field, only the two highest vote-getters qualified for the run-off, despite that those 2 combined got less than 1/3 of the vote. Voters are asked to choose between a right-wing woman whose main campaign plank is to release a corrupt ex-dictator (her father) from prison, and a school-teacher whose left-wing party has zero seats in Parliament. Centrists in Peru must have felt more than a little exasperated. (Several days after the election, it is still too close to call; the left-winger is leading.)

 

[Harry Bosch]

There are already literally hundreds of third-parties, yet you all say "we need a 3rd party." Guess what? They already exist! The question is this: why aren't they viable? It's because there's momentum to create new parties but ZERO momentum for actual electoral reform.

Other than the Democratic Party and MAGA, the two strongest parties in the U.S. are the Libertarians — operated by and for psychotics and morons — and the Green Party — which did succeed in electing a President! (In 2000, the Greens were delighted to defeat Al Gore — the most pro-Green of any major Presidential candidate ever — and install George W. Bush as Prez.) Ross Perot's Party did rather well in 1992 — so well that its wrong-headed ideas have been largely adopted by MAGA.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The recent Presidential election in Peru is bemusing. In a huge field, only the two highest vote-getters qualified for the run-off, despite that those 2 combined got less than 1/3 of the vote. Voters are asked to choose between a right-wing woman whose main campaign plank is to release a corrupt ex-dictator (her father) from prison, and a school-teacher whose left-wing party has zero seats in Parliament. Centrists in Peru must have felt more than a little exasperated. (Several days after the election, it is still too close to call; the left-winger is leading.)

Yea, I never understood why the far left hated Gore so much. I think he would have been a great president. He is a true environmentalist who cares about the planet. Maybe they didn't want to be outflanked by a democratic moderate. But the US and the world really paid a price for this.

 

[lpetrich]

Another progressive PAC:
Catch Fire – Helping progressives catch fire early. | Catch Fire - Catch Fire (@catchfiremvmt) / Twitter

Some more:
Randy Friese AZ-02
Junaid Ahmed IL-08
Mikayla Ridley NY-22

Home - Brand New Congress - Brand New Congress (@BrandNew535) / Twitter
Justice Democrats - Let's Elect the Next Generation - Justice Democrats (@justicedems) / Twitter
Sunrise Movement - We Are The Climate Revolution - Sunrise Movement (@sunrisemvmt) / Twitter
  2022 United States House of Representatives elections

 

[lpetrich]

Hillary Clinton endorses in Ohio special election - POLITICO
"The former secretary of State is backing a Cleveland Democratic official, Shontel Brown, putting her on opposite sides of 2016 primary opponent Bernie Sanders."

Hillary Clinton on Twitter: "I'm proud to endorse @ShontelMBrown for Congress in the OH special election.

Shontel made history as the first Black woman to chair her county Dem party, and she'll work to help her state and our country recover from COVID.

Join me in supporting her: (link)" / Twitter

Nina Turner was a campaign director for Bernie Sanders.

Commentator Krystal Ball responded
Krystal Ball on Twitter: "Hillary’s hatred of anyone and anything related to Bernie knows no bounds." / Twitter

Not surprisingly, Brand New Congress now endorses NT.
Brand New Congress on Twitter: "Hello Somebody! @brandnew535 is thrilled to share our endorsement of @ninaturner, the next Congresswoman from OH-11. She leads the pack, and we can help her keep it! Will you split a donation between BNC and Nina so we can support her run? Let’s win this! (links)" / Twitter

 

[Harry Bosch]

Hillary Clinton endorses in Ohio special election - POLITICO
"The former secretary of State is backing a Cleveland Democratic official, Shontel Brown, putting her on opposite sides of 2016 primary opponent Bernie Sanders."

Hillary Clinton on Twitter: "I'm proud to endorse @ShontelMBrown for Congress in the OH special election.

Shontel made history as the first Black woman to chair her county Dem party, and she'll work to help her state and our country recover from COVID.

Join me in supporting her: (link)" / Twitter

Nina Turner was a campaign director for Bernie Sanders.

Commentator Krystal Ball responded
Krystal Ball on Twitter: "Hillary’s hatred of anyone and anything related to Bernie knows no bounds." / Twitter

Not surprisingly, Brand New Congress now endorses NT.
Brand New Congress on Twitter: "Hello Somebody! @brandnew535 is thrilled to share our endorsement of @ninaturner, the next Congresswoman from OH-11. She leads the pack, and we can help her keep it! Will you split a donation between BNC and Nina so we can support her run? Let’s win this! (links)" / Twitter

I don't know about "Hillary's hatred of anything related to Bernie"! But Shontel is very impressive. A great speaker. She's not as left as Turner. But she's a very solid democrat who is very charismatic. She's impressive.

 

[lpetrich]

Rebecca Parson is again running for WA-06.

Brand New Congress now endorses Shervin Aazami of CA-30

I was curious about his name, so I researched further. From About in his campaign site,

Shervin was born in Bologna, Italy, the son of two Iranian asylum seekers who faced religious persecution and fled for their lives in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Before his second birthday, his parents immigrated to the San Fernando Valley and settled in Canoga Park, California.

I'm guessing that his parents could be Bahais. The Bahai sect is an offshoot of Islam that emerged in the 19th cy., and that was persecuted rather heavily when the Khomeini regime took over in Iran. So if he is also a Bahai and if he gets elected, he will likely be the first of that sect to be elected in Congress.