Daily Lemonade Political Blog

Since Elizabeth Warren announced her withdrawal from the race, her significant following has been waiting patiently  for an article which does her candidacy justice.  Well,  here it is from Salon by Amanda Marcotte. She extolls Warren’s virtues and discusses why Warren qualifies, in her opinion, as a once in a generation candidate. Warren surpassed every bench mark the party, the  pundits and even the public demanded and it still was not good enough. 

Marcotte believes that Warren stood head and shoulders above the rest of the field.  She sparkled in the debates, had developed the most detailed plans, explained herself in easy to understand terms, destroyed Bloomberg, and was peerless when it came to the power of her intellect. Yet the author laments, with anger, that weaker, less capable male candidates bested her on the road to the White House. Marcotte calls this another example of the power of misogyny so rampant in our nation.

Her political gifts were not lost on the formidable opposition she faced beyond her fellow candidates. Actually, the prospect of her winning the nomination prompted a tsunami of trepidation in the hearts of the Wall Street  financiers, the bankers. corporate boards, the CEO’s with mind boggling incomes and lobbyists.  They all understood that  if Warren became the President she would use her bully pulpit and financial talents to wreck some of the many ways that these manipulators were accumulating wealth on the backs of average Americans.

And  the wealthy class was  simply not going to let Warren ruin the good thing they had going. Beginning last summer the business channels began having financial experts on their shows explaining why Warren would be bad for business and how her wealth tax policy would be unfair to the rich.
And then when Bloomberg threw his hat in the ring. pundits said it was because Bloomberg thought that  Biden was too weak to beat Trump. That is no doubt true….but it is not the entire story. He also entered the race because he, along with and the rest of the monied interests,. believed that Warren was becoming too strong.

The fears she raised in the  corporate world, and Wall Street speaks to her impressive administrative skills and unmatched competence.Even in the U.S. Congress, she had politicians worried that she might upend the cozy relationships thay had come to enjoy with their donors.

After reading the article below, plenty of Warren skeptics will say that the writer was merely overwrought about Warren’s departure from the race and resorted to hyperbole to make her case. And Warren fans could easily come back and say that Elizabeth Warren was  profoundly the best candidate. So much so that even the smug wealthy class, who thought they controlled the levers of government power with their money, were shaken by what Warren promised to deliver.

So her withdrawal is a loss for all Americans, but especially the millions  she would have helped. Sadly, as the headline reads. “We didn’t deserve Elizabeth Warren”.

https://www.salon.com/2020/03/06/lets-face-it-america-we-didnt-deserve-elizabeth-warren-though-she-tried-to-help-us-anyway/

The annual Remembrance event at  the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site marking the brutal assault in 1965 against  non-violent civil rights protesters by the police, took place last Sunday. The special occasion serves  as a reminder of what the Civil rights movement entailed on that long arduous, bloody  road toward the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

This year, the marking also served to help explain the overwhelming voter support that black Americans  gave to Joe Biden in South Carolina and on SuperTuesday. Black Americans view the re-election of Trump as a  significant step backwards toward those terrifying years of civil unrest and outright discrimination which the Edmund Pettus Bridge so vividly represents.  

And their fears rise out of a real basis in fact. They view Trump’s his authoritarian leanings and hatred toward people .of color as a huge red flag that discrimination likely would become worse if he got another four years.. 

For Trump’s record in this area is unnerving.  In the last three years, Trump has fueled the rise of racial bigotry. And violence against minorities has risen as a result. He has enacted unconscionable and repugnant policies on our southwest border against refugee families and children. He supports voter suppression which inordinately wrests the right to vote from largely minority populations. He and Attorney General Bill Barr are distorting the rule of law at the Justice Department. These actions drain minorities’ already justifiably weak confidence that justice will be fair in courtrooms and jails throughout the country. 

Granted life for white Americans under the Trump reign has been hair raising as well, creating a deep existential crisis about the damage Trump is doing to the country and hurting Americans in the process.. But whites are not worrying about police brutality or the degradation of their our civil rights. But for people of color, their concerns with Trump are more immediate and more critical.

And so just prior to the South Carolina primary,  Rep. Jim Clyburn made a fateful decision. He surely had assessed all of these factors before deciding to endorse Joe Biden  In his endorsement, he reminded black voters that Biden was a trusted politician and friend to African Americans who Obama obviously trusted as well and he could win.. And secondly, he stated that even in the worst of the upheaval in the fight for civil rights, he was never as worried as he is today. 

And black Americans heard these words in South Carolina and ultimately  in many states all over the South. They smartly and astutely  decided to go with the candidate who they believed had the greatest chance of being elected.

Because it was people of color who had the greatest to lose if Trump prevailed in November, it was extremely fitting to have black Americans in the South,o take charge of this Biden coalescing. And they came through with an avalanche of votes for Biden which clarified the way forward..
An now we just need Bernie to acquiesce for party unity. 

When the news first appeared that Karen Pence, wife of V.P. Mike Pence, had taken a teaching job at a school which prohibits gays, it was, for me, like a whack on the side of the head. Here was an act of professed bigotry against  millions of Americans all in the name of religious freedom. 
Karen Pence, as a private citizen, has the right to seek employment at any school she chooses.  However as the Second Lady of the country, she should be held to a much higher standard.  Choosing a fundamental Christian school which publicly claims that homosexuality is an individual  choice and that young people can be turned into heterosexuals through  some wacky conversion therapy flies in the face of  the latest scientific and medical research.  
Foisting this mumbo jumbo religious ideology onto the national stage  elicits both painful and potentially ugly, violent  consequences for millions of people who identify with the LGBTQ community. And think of the vulnerable young people who are currently struggling with their sexual identity in high schools and colleges who  look at the message Mrs. Pence is sending and suffer even more.
Most Administrations caution their First Ladies (and Second) to keep their helpful ’causes” as neutral and non-controversial as possible. Mrs. Pence instead of helping to unify and help the country divides the nation and stirs up misinformation, controversy and hate.  The Pences through their righteous determination to be out front with their religious beliefs trample on the nation’s principles of societal as well as religious tolerance.
And to support the notion that the Pence’s are seriously out of line comes this article in the The Washington Post   by Richard Cohen.  He criticizes Karen Pence’s job choice by using the Bible and  slavery to buttress his arguments.. He states that bigotry is bigotry – one type no different or repugnant than another. He compares Virginia’s  Gov. Northam’s racist choices as no different than that of the the bigotry of the Pences. In the end, Cohen concludes that  Mike Pence should resign due to his bigoted position on homosexuality and Karen Pence’s deciding to work at a school which prohibits gays.  

See what you think of Cohen’s persuasive skills and whether he deserves some debate points for his arguments. And if you agree with him that if Northam resigns, Pence should as well. 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-not-just-northam-republicans-must-confront-the-bigotry-of-the-pences-too/2019/02/04/a807063c-28b4-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html?utm_term=.1ec123d31c95

As the 2020 presidential campaign starts picking up steam, be on the lookout for the various ways in which journalists, describe the women candidates who have opted in to the 2020 election. Outright sexist descriptions will likely be less prominent than in the past, since most good political writers have been completely sensitized to the issue.  
You probably won’t see words like ‘abrasive”, ’emotional’, or ‘strident’ used when describing Senators Harris, Warren or Gillibrand. unless the writer has just emerged from a 20 year coma or writes for conservative publications.  You also won’t see many efforts at describing the candidates’ appearance either which has become unacceptable.
But there still remains  ways for sexist language to slip  into political descriptions of female politicians. Am reminded of an example I read years ago which appeared in an article describing former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s  participation in the annual Labor Day walk across the Mackinac Bridge. (Can’t remember which Michigan newspaper it appeared in.) 
She was described as “scampering  across the Bridge,”  When I read that line, the word ‘scampering’ jumped out immediately.. A man would never be depicted as scampering across anything in print unless the writer intended it to be a derogatory remark.. ‘Scamper’ is a word one uses to describe children and little animals….not a governor of a state or any woman for that matter,.  
If the media  has learned not to dwell on  a candidate’s appearance, there is still a personality feature they still want to  address  and that is the notion of likeability.  Here is an article from The Guardian which tackles that question head on and discusses how prevalent it happens to be in discussing female candidates in the mainstream media. 
Of course any woman alive to day in this culture understands the role  likeability plays in their life. For most, it is important to be ‘nice’ socially and especially in the workplace. In the past it was key to advancing one’s career..Maybe that notion of pleasantness  is changing more in today’s world  but evidently still hangs around the neck of woman politicians.  
Challenge yourself to see if the quality of likeability surfaces in your assessment of the various women  candidates.   Would you like to see Elizabeth Warren be less ,,,,, you fill in the blank.  Did your word have something to do with personality or ideology?  (Persoanlity for me,) What about Kamala Harris?  and Kirsten Gillibrand?  We are all products of our culture and to root out sexism we need to start with ourselves. 
 Sexism remains an endemic part of the American psyche. So watch for it in our politics. And please send along an example or two if you read or hear any examples as you peruse the news. I will publish the list if we collect some good ones.
Enjoy the article.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/04/why-the-likability-question-pursues-2020-female-candidates-even-as-they-make-history

Tooting Bridge Magazine’s horn one more time. 
https://www.bridgemi.com/center-michigan/bridge-earns-fourth-straight-michigan-newspaper-year-award

The Green New DealThe term Green New Deal has begun to creep into mainstream media reports more often these days so it becomes worthwhile get greater clarity on what the term entails.. According to this CNN article, Green New Deal  is an evolving term which encompasses two major goals – to fight  climate change and  provide green jobs for anyone who wants to apply.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal as part of her campaign for the House in 2018 but she was not the first to use it. Thomas Friedman used the term in 2007 and President Obama talked about green jobs as part of his stimulus packages. But Ocasio- Cortez gets high fives for her efforts to publicize the term and to capture endorsements from several of the 2020 Dem presidential contenders.. She has written a resolution along with Sen. Ed. Markey of Massacusettes which give  legislative heft to the term which they will introduce to Congress next week. 

The resolution will include several elements: moving to clean and renewable energy by 2030, creating green jobs and directing the money that will be used for this huge effort toward  communities which will be most hurt by the effects of climate change. 
The are many elements in this resolution to extol. It is a positive, exciting idea which has encouraged a whole host of groups concerned about climate change both environmental and otherwise, to come together into a powerful cohort. These groups have been providing their  expertise and promises of  support to Ocasio-Cortez and Markey  helping to make their resolution a symbol of increasing interest in the potentially cataclysmic threat to the world.
 More importantly it gives the Dems a campaign plank which gives climate change believers, aka voters, a reasonable, valuable environmental and job   package to rally around and embrace. it will make the GOP  appear  clueless and weak. It leaves Trump on the sidelines as an ignorant, hapless leader of  the largest existential threat to ever face mankind. And it will bring the deadly risk of global warming back onto the nation’s front pages where it rightly belongs. 
The Green New Deal is coming along hopefully in the nick of time to change the direction of global warming. We will stay tuned to this evolving set of ideas and cheer the perseverance of lawmaker Markey and newbie -Ocasio -Cortez. hopefully a majority of Americans are ready now to face the true risks of global warming,  become pro-active and with good fortune line-up behind the Democrats in 2020. 
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/31/politics/what-is-the-green-new-deal/index.html

Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor and currently professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkley likes the looks of Dem candidates both announced and unannounced for 2020 who are highlighting workers as their  top campaign priority. He discuss the candidates  Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris,  Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in an article today in The Guardian. 
These four candidates are hammering home the point that workers comprise one of the most overlooked and legislatively maligned groups in all segments of society. And it was millions from this segment  who comprised the core of voters whose heads were turned by the demagoguery of Donald Trump.
In considering why so many millions stampeded to the Trump bandwagon calls for a fairly simple analysis. He threw them a faux life raft in a roiling sea of lost jobs, the disappearance of labor unions, and wage stagnation. These workers felt ignored by the elites in Washington, personified by the man in the White House who served as a daily reminder of their imagined loss of status.  They were primed and ready for a person like Trump and once they had assimilated his message became steadfast believers, no matter how contrary the evidence that he was a phony and a liar. .
Trump’s message was simple.He promised them everything they could have possibly hoped for   – the rebounding of manufacturing jobs, the resurrection of the coal industry and a return to the glory days of decent middle class wages. He made these promises over and over at every campaign stop until his hyperbolic, (duplicitous) messaging sank in. Trump, the successful businessman, became a dream come true.He became their savior. He, with relish, took pot shots at all those hated Washington elites, kicked PC language to the curb and threw in outrageous, vulgar  commentary at immigrants, racial groups and the disabled.  This over the top rhetoric became  icing on their resentment cake .
Turn now to today and think of these Dem candidates as the antidote to Trump;s message of hot air in 2016. According to Reich they are proposing substantive programs that with legislative support would  provide relief and a boost to the American worker. While Trump’s promises proved to be empty, these candidates offer real change..
Sanders,, Warren, Brown and Harris  right now are promoting work programs which will put employees in positions to directly influence company policies. They are  highlighting the dignity of work and the importance of the American worker. They are taking this latent perspective to all workers irrespective of political allegiance  as a counter to capitalism’s crushing autocracy.  
They suggest that workers should not be viewed as simply cogs in the machinery of production with  little  job security or leverage. Instead they say, that workers should be held up as valuable contributors with rights in the American economy and be considered  -the lifeblood of a thriving society.
How refreshing.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2019/jan/25/election-2020-capitalism-democrats-workers

In surfing around for more news about McConnell’s connection to Russian money, I reported yesterday that it was curious that the mainstream media appeared to be laying low on the issue. There WERE stories out  there on the internet but they were from websites that I had never heard of before. e.g. Palmer Report. Then this article popped up from The Atlantic.  
It discusses how fake news written for the eyes of the  American Left had begun to appear on the internet. in 2017. Some of these sites were fairly innocuous taking fact-based news and tinkering with the gist of the story just a bit to make it slightly more sensational. Then there were other sites which  edged closer to outright propaganda. 
Like a whack on the side of the head, this article below has chastened me. It had never occurred to me that there was fake news out there to entice the Left. (naive, right?) Just like the Right was vulnerable to the Russian messaging about Hillary in 2016, we Lefties are vulnerable too. Most of us maintain a voracious appetite for any evidence or tell tale piece of news which will help bring Trump and his cronies down. And because I am sending out news to all of you, I bear an even bigger responsibility to make sure that the news sent out passes the legitimacy test.
So no more scrounging for mini- smoking guns on the internet. If the five star journalists who do this for a living don’t think there is enough evidence yet to out McConnell, then we can just remain patient. It will come out in due time. McConnell, the mostly unflappable Majority Leaders seems to have lost at least a touch of his composure these days. And rightly so. McConnell is compromised. His greediness evident. His integrity shot. The voters in Kentucky will have the final word in 2020  whether his greediness outweighs his worthiness to sit in the United States Senate.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/viva-la-resistance-content/515532/

Are you a Dem Lefty  Dem Tactical Centrist or Dem Centrist?Kevin Drum, in one of his short commentaries in Mother Jones  today, discusses how quickly the Lefties has taken over the Democratic Party. He gives readers a brief historical perspective on the topic and parses out the sub-groups residing  within the Party. He points out that the universal health care derided and mocked in the .90’s as unworkable has morphed into a popular campaign plank for first tier Dem candidates.  It is an interesting read. Enjoy.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/01/how-did-lefties-take-over-the-democratic-party-so-quickly/

In dribbles and drabs, the information about McConnell’s Russian connections keeps popping  up in the press -not yet in the mainstream media but out there nevertheless. And the fact that there has been so little reporting on such a big story remains curious until this morning when PBS jumped into the fray
The facts are indisputable. Len Blavatnik, a Russian national  contributed 3.5 million dollars in 2016 to a Republican PAC associated with Mitch McConnell..  McConnell led the GOP fight to lift the Russian sanctions and won despite the fact that all the Dems and some Republican Senators voted against the bill.
  It has just been reported, from Daily Kos, which is not a mainstream news source. that the lifting of those sanctions not only benefited oligarch Oleg Derepaska who has ties to Putin but  Blavatnik as well.  One does not have to be a forensic accountant to smell a rat.
 Obvious questions about  McConnell’s coziness with these Russian oligarchs now become even more urgent. Why would McConnell risk leading the fight to lift sanctions when his links to huge contributions from Blavatnik sit there in plain sight?  Is he. too. walking an uneasy tightrope with Russian billionaires to somehow parlay his Senate Leadership status into private millions?  Or do the Russians have leverage over McConnell as well?
 There is nothing illegal about accepting millions of dollars of political contributions to legal PAC’s. But to turn around and blatantly lead the fight to allow Derepaska, who Paul Manafort at one point owed 20 million dollars, to get his hands on his assets again looks particularly questionable. It gets too close to the Mueller investigation and the deadly serious business of Russian interference in the 2016 election.. McConnell should have stayed miles away from these links.  Was the money simply too tempting or the pressure too great?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/28/1830431/-Mitch-McConnell-now-tied-to-Putin-Oleg-Deripaska-and-Russian-companies-after-lifting-sanctions
Dems fighting backAnd the Dems, after a couple of days of mulling over the  fact that the GOP lifted the sanctions  are fighting back.  Check out this article in the link below from PBS.  Dem Senators Adam Schiff. Maxine Waters and Eliot Engel have demanded  all the documents related to the lifting of sanctions from Sec. of Treasury Mnuchin and others  In the lifting of sanctions, Derepaska’s influence in his company Rusal was supposed to be curtailed. However, it now appears that he will continue to maintain the levers of power.  
Just follow the money is the old tried but true adage. The millions donated to McConnell, Rubio and Graham and their subsequent vote to lift the sanctions now puta a stain on all three Senators. Americans deserve an explanation.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/house-democrats-want-records-on-decision-to-lift-russian-sanctions

*Correction:

Did a little fact checking on my post sent this morning and YIKES discovered I had maligned Sen. Marco Rubio. He did NOT vote for the lifting of sanctions as I had reported. He voted against the lifting -despite receiving a huge political donation from Russian national  Len Blavatnik. Sorry about the error.  Rolling Stone link below covers the story.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/deripaska-trump-782332/

The Texas Observer has just published a vivid portrayal from two Texas sheriffs of the status at the southwest border which is in stark contrast to the mayhem described by Trump. These sheriffs, with enforcement responsibilities for hundreds of miles of border,  concur that the Trump wall is not needed and if built would be a huge waste of tax dollars.
They describe life in their jurisdictions as very safe. Murders and violent crime remain rare. Immigrants who come to the border seeking asylum are described as  primarily families fleeing violence and dysfunction in their home countries. And most importantly these desperate  people do not pose threats to the citizens living along the border.
These descriptions contrast sharply with the propaganda about the border coming from Trump. Trump insists that the border is a hotbed of  drug and sex traffickers pouring into the country as well as violent gang members intent on raping and robbing Americans once they have made it into the country.

Hmmmm……..whom to believe?  These sheriffs simply report the facts as they perceive them  They certainly would push for a wall if deep down they felt it would somehow be useful. Trump, however. is another story. He hit  the campaign stage already planning on making border security a chief rallying cry. whether it reflected reality or not.  
He captured immediate headlines by calling Mexicans rapists and got huge cheers from his supporters when claiming that he would build a fancy, expensive wall and that the Mexicans would pay for it. These voters already predisposed to resent immigrants and begrudge the illegal migrants here were overjoyed at Trump’s words. More than overjoyed, they were rapturous. Here was a candidate who spoke their language and was the opposite of PC. Trump built enthusiasm for his candidacy on the backs of the immigrants. 
It would be valuable if all of the major publications would run this article in their papers. The truth about the actual status at the border needs to be widely circulated as described by people with credibility. Here are two law enforcement  officers with commentary completely contradicting the words of the President.  They have no skin in the game.  Trump however has promises to keep.
https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-border-sheriffs-there-is-no-crisis-and-we-dont-want-trumps-wall/

In the midst of the mayhem called Trumpworld comes this interesting article from  The New York Times about a  successful woman governor who also happens to be a moderate Democrat.  Raimondo, a Rhodes Scholar, Harvard educated governor of tiny Rhode Island parlayed her centrist Democrat positions to a second term in the governor’s chair. She finds herself a tad lonely  due to the flight of moderate Dems to the more energized progressive left-
It comes as no surprise that the Resistance currently favors the left. After two years of frenetic activism, Resistance voters are prepared to grab the reins of power and erase as much as possible all traces of Trump corruption and campaign dirty money avenues which helped to contort the outcome of the 2016 election. Likewise they want to obliterate  government policy which contributes to bigotry and income inequality. This zeal makes these voters ready to slay any and all  Trump/GOP dragons. Even moderate policy may be smacked down by the Resistance once they have achieved the levers of power. 
 What Raimondo suggests is that Dems should not get too far out ahead of their skis. (a phrase which means leaning too far forward in the moment  may elicit a face plant.) She worries that the Dems in their haste to undo the wrongs committed by Trump and  the GOP might alienate forces necessary to win the election. She believes that Winning the election  should take precedence  over all other priorities.
November, 2020 is a long way off.  Plenty of events may occur which easily could  change the political landscape from what it is today. And despite all polls to the contrary,  the election is not a slam dunk for the Dems. Raimondo, reminds us that moderation may be the best strategy. The Resistance, despite the raw open wound which Trumpworld  represents,  must remember the lessons of the Treaty of Versailles which was written at the end World War I in 1919.. 

The viciousness of the terms against the defeated Germans in the Treaty of Versailles created hate and bitterness for the defeated Germans. This botched effort to engender peace ultimately helped force Worled War II.  The historical lessons are:  Be mature enough to create policy which promotes a better world but not at the expense of the defeated. . Treat the defeated with respect and stop thinking of them as the enemy. Look for ways to build bridges rather than to exact retribution. And don’t gloat – it elicits deep seated animosity.  
Can the Resistance comply?  For those of us in the Resistance, who are  mad enough to wrestle a bear, this is a tough set of rules to follow. Let’s turn out attention to candidates who will bring our maturity level up to the task. Lets select candidates  who can –  turn  antipathy into positive, strategic  energy,  attract voters from the middle and thus can win. 
There have to be candidates who, among  the 20 plus  running, have the political acumen to pull it off. 
Enjoy the article.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/opinion/sunday/gina-raimondo-2020.html