PRIMARY ELECTIONS ARE KNOWN FOR POOR VOTER TURNOUT!
LET'S WORK TO MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD!
MAKE INFORMED VOTES!
|
|
Monday, August 19, 2024
POLITICO Massachusetts Playbook: Mass Dems descend on Chicago
We thank you, Joe
Friends, Tonight’s opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be an opportunity for the Democratic Party and the nation to take stock of Joe Biden’s term of office and thank him for his service. He still has five months to go as president, of course, but the baton has been passed. Biden’s singular achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that reigned since Reagan and return to one that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980 — and is far superior to the one that has prevailed since. Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government.” It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good. The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Reagan’s presidency: markets are human creations. The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They stopped the looting of America. They also gave Americans a modicum of economic security. During World War II, they put almost every American to work. Subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education. America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration developed satellite communications, container ships, and the internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA, and infectious diseases. Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. Labor unions thrived. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized. Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders. But then America took a giant U-turn. The OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of it by raising interest rates so high that the economy fell into deep recession. All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism. From 1981 onward, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that markets functioned well only if the government got out of the way. The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from the common good to economic growth, even though Americans already well-off gained most from that growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit reduction — all of which helped the monied interests make even more money. The economy grew for the next 40 years, but median wages stagnated, and inequalities of income and wealth surged. In sum, after Reagan’s presidency, democratic capitalism — organized to serve public purposes — all but disappeared. It was replaced by corporate capitalism, organized to serve the monied interests. ** Joe Biden revived democratic capitalism. He learned from the Obama administration’s mistake of spending too little to pull the economy out of the Great Recession that the pandemic required substantially greater spending, which would also give working families a cushion against adversity. So he pushed for and got the giant $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. This was followed by a $550 billion initiative to rebuild the nation’s bridges, roads, public transit, broadband, water, and energy systems. He championed the biggest investment in clean energy sources in American history — expanding wind and solar power, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen and small nuclear reactors. He then led the largest public investment ever made in semiconductors, the building blocks of the next economy. Notably, these initiatives were targeted to companies that employ American workers. Biden also embarked on altering the balance of power between capital and labor, as had FDR. Biden put trustbusters at the head of the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. And he remade the National Labor Relations Board into a strong advocate for labor unions. Unlike his Democratic predecessors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Biden did not reduce all trade barriers. He targeted them to industries that were crucial to America’s future — semiconductors, electric batteries, electric vehicles. Unlike Trump, Biden did not give a huge tax cut to corporations and the wealthy. It’s also worth noting that, in contrast with every president since Reagan, Biden did not fill his White House with former Wall Street executives. Not one of his economic advisers — not even his treasury secretary — is from the Street. The one large blot on Biden’s record is Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden should have been tougher on him — refusing to provide him offensive weapons unless Netanyahu stopped his massacre in Gaza. Yes, I know: Hamas began the bloodbath. But that is no excuse for Netanyahu’s disproportionate response, which has made Israel a pariah and endangered its future. Nor an excuse for our complicity. *** One more thing needs to be said in praise of Joe Biden. He did something Donald Trump could never do: He put his country over ego, ambition, and pride. He bowed out with grace and dignity. He gave us Kamala Harris. Presidents don’t want to bow out. Both Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson had to be shoved out of office. Biden was not forced out. He did nothing wrong. His problem is that he was old and losing some of the capacities that dwindle with old age. Even among people who are not president, old age inevitably triggers denial. How many elderly people do you know who accept that they can’t do the things they used to do or think they should be able to do? How many willingly give up the keys to their car? It’s not surprising he resisted. Yet Biden cares about America and was aware of the damage a second Trump administration could do to this nation, and to the world. Biden’s patriotism won out over any denial or wounded pride or false sense of infallibility or paranoia. For this and much else, we thank you, Joe. |
Kamala Harris, An Immigrant Daughter
Why subscribe? Note the kind words of James, a new paid subscriber: "I love your writing and perspective, thanks for all you do for us readers to be informed and to see the real deal." Kamala Harris, An Immigrant DaughterOur likely next president’s family history reminds us what makes America stronger and better
Our country has suffered through nearly a decade of degradation and contempt toward immigrants spewed by Donald Trump. It started in July 2015 when he announced his presidential bid by calling Mexicans who enter America at the border rapists and criminals. The despicable vitriol was still spewing forth this weekend when he called unauthorized immigrants “savage monsters.” The haters may excuse him by claiming he’s only talking about “illegals.” But there’s little doubt the vile and venomous rhetoric spewed by Trump and his hostile acolytes—Nazi talk about migrants as “vermin” and “animals” and “not human”—has harmed many hard-working immigrants and people of color, including those born in America to immigrant parents. Amid the poisonous misinformation spread by Republicans, it’s useful to note the facts: Immigrants, authorized and unauthorized, are significantly less likely to commit crimes than those born in the U.S. Moreover, research has found that cities that accepted the largest numbers of refugees relative to their size saw their crime rates go down, sometimes dramatically. But let’s zoom out from the fear-mongering exploitation of the issue intended to pit people against each other rather than solve problems. I may be particularly sensitive on this general topic of immigration, not only because my father, his brother and my grandmother arrived in America from Nazi Germany in 1939 by the skin of their teeth. As an immigrant son, I saw firsthand how patriotic a refugee can be toward his adopted country and the opportunity it provided, which is why my late father proudly served in the U.S. Army. I’m also keenly aware of the profound and positive impact so many immigrants have played in the nation’s flourishing. “We believe that in America our diversity is a strength. It is not a weakness,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries said on the day he became House minority leader. “An economic strength, a competitive strength, a cultural strength…We are a gorgeous mosaic of people from throughout the world.” Jeffries’ speech, delivered in the wee hours of Jan. 7 last year, inspired me because it taps into the reality of how diversity gives our nation the opportunity to continue to grow and provide a model to the world. As I put it then:
All this is on my mind since lingering over the charming photo from 1970 of Kamala Harris (born 1964), her sister Maya (born 1967) and their mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris. Married in 1963 to Donald J. Harris and divorced by 1972, she then carried the responsibility to care for these girls and to ensure they learned positive values and gained a productive education. Shyamala, like the girls’ father, had come to America to study at the University of California, Berkeley—she from India, he from Jamaica. They met in 1962, both were part of an influential Black study group later known as the Afro-American Association, and fell in love with a shared commitment to civil rights. “My parents marched and shouted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It’s because of them and the folks who also took to the streets to fight for justice that I am where I am,” Harris wrote in 2020. While she was from India, Shyamala recognized that her daughters would always be seen as Black in a society that then saw race in binary terms. “My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters,” Harris wrote in her 2019 book, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. Both Donald and Shyamala believed that leaving their own countries would be an opportunity to fulfill their aspirations. Indeed, Shyamala studied biochemistry and became a noted breast cancer researcher and Donald was the first Black tenured economics professor at Stanford University. But their immigrant history and family members still in their home countries played an important role in the life of Kamala. She describes the “profound impact” of walking on the beach in Chennai, India, hand-in-hand with her Indian grandfather and hearing his stories. A governmental official, he invited her to tag along when he talked politics with his retired buddies, passionately discussing equal rights, corruption and India’s future. Donald recounted in a 2019 essay taking both of his daughters to Jamaica in 1970 to share life there “in all its richness and complexity.” One of his fondest memories: “We trudged through the cow dung and rusted iron gates, up-hill and down-hill, along narrow unkempt paths, to the very end of the family property, all in my eagerness to show to the girls the terrain over which I had wandered daily for hours as a boy.” Donald was less involved with his daughters after the divorce, deepening Kamala’s reliance on and gratitude for her mother who died of colon cancer in 2009. Here’s how she summarized her mother in her convention speech four years ago:
Yesterday, The Washington Post published a report detailing the massive focus on immigration by Republicans, with more than $247 million spent on immigration-related advertising in the first half of this year. This included more than 700 campaign ads for presidential, Senate and congressional races. (In contrast, Democrats have released not much more than three dozen.) As the story’s team of reporters write, “Taken as a whole, the ads convey an unrealistic portrait of the border as being overrun and inaccurately characterize immigrants generally as a threat, of which there is little evidence.” They note that FBI data underscores that U.S. border cities are among the nation’s safest. But that hasn’t slowed GOP efforts to make a dangerous border “central to their attacks on Harris in her effort to win the White House.” These ads are mostly running in states that are far from the Mexican border, with the largest money being spent in Ohio, Indiana and Montana. Some of the ads refer to migrants as “illegals” or “aliens,” while others include more hostile wording such as “trafficker,” “rapist” or “murderer.” As reported, some of the ads describe migrants as invaders and the influx as an invasion. The intention of this effort is clearly to incite fear and raise doubts about the Democrats. But let’s not doubt that this aggressive misinformation also serves to fuel hostility toward immigrants more broadly. It’s hard to overstate what a terrible disservice this is to a country that has been and will continue to be enriched by its history of immigration. That assumes, of course, the Republicans don’t take power and enact the Trump/Project 2025 plan to round up and deport millions of migrants without due process. Gaze up again at the touching photo of Kamala in the yellow coat, a strong little girl who is now on the verge of becoming the next president of the United States. Think about the courage it must have taken her mother to come to America at just 19, the sacrifices she must have made to create a life for herself and eventually for her daughters. If we did not welcome people who want to improve their lives, as well as contribute to our country and culture, we wouldn’t be just worse off—America wouldn’t be America. One note: I’ll be hosting a live chat later today at 5PM ET, looking ahead at this week’s Democratic convention. This is for paid subscribers only, so if you haven’t upgraded yet, I hope you will and take part. |
The Week Ahead: Conventions Past
Some political conventions stand out in history. This one, 2024, where a Black woman will be nominated by a major party as its candidate to be the president of the United States for the first time in our history is certain to be one of them. Kamala Harris is eminently qualified by virtue of both experience and temperament; if you haven’t recently rewatched her telling Mike Pence “I’m speaking” during the 2020 debate, you owe it to yourself to watch.
Some conventions garner less attention, but they’re all notable. Because every four years, Americans come together to practice democracy. It’s remarkable that we have been doing it for over 200 years. A couple of weeks ago I was doing some deep cleaning and came upon my father-in-law’s credentials from the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami. That was the year the incumbent, Richard Nixon, beat South Dakota Senator George McGovern. McGovern ran on an anti-Vietnam War platform. “Within 90 days of my inauguration, every American soldier and every American prisoner [in Vietnam] will be … back home in America where they belong,” he told the convention. He lost in one of the worst defeats in electoral history, 520-17. McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
But ironically, he handled the Democratic convention masterfully, winning on the first ballot against two challengers. Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, running as part of the “anyone but McGovern” movement, edged out Hubert Humphrey just slightly, 371 votes to 345, but McGovern overwhelmed them both with 1319 votes before going on to defeat in the general election. My father-in-law’s role in 1972 was a modest one. The head of the Alabama Democratic Party (most emphatically not part of the Wallace faction), he served on the arrangements committee, which promoted the important improvements it made over past conventions: low-cost housing, modern security enforcement, and the largest communications network ever. Although women outnumbered the men on the committee, there was only one Black member; then a state senator in Texas, Barbara Jordan went on to become the first southern Black woman elected to the House of Representatives. Four years later, Jordan was mentioned as a possible running mate to fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter, and although she wasn’t selected, she became the first African-American woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.
Look at those photos. We have made so much progress. Instead of letting MAGA denigrate our country and our accomplishments, we should be embracing how far we’ve come. We have miles to go, but we have come so far. At the 1968 Convention, Alabama made some history that connects to where we are now.
The Alabama Journal reported it like this: “One proud moment came in 1968, when Judge Vance led the state's delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the first Alabama delegation to include blacks.” Before that, no Black delegate had represented Alabama Democrats at the convention. And even that year, it was a close call, pushed past an angry George Wallace. One of the delegates was Arthur Shores, a prominent Birmingham civil rights attorney, whose home was bombed twice in retaliation for his role in the Civil Rights Movement. His daughter, Helen Shores Lee, went on to become a circuit judge on the same court my husband served on in Jefferson County, Alabama. Whenever I saw them working together, I thought about how happy and proud that would have made their daddies, who had worked together to summon a world where it would be unremarkable for a Black woman to be a judge and work alongside a white male colleague.
It is such a simple story, lost to history for the most part, but I think about the courage it took for Mr. Shores to go to the convention despite the violence his family had experienced. His daughter Helen told me many years later how frightened her mother was about him going—but also proud. People like Arthur Shores make history, make the future possible, even when they aren’t widely remembered. There were some shenanigans involved in the maneuvering in 1968 that I’m not sure I ever got entirely straight—perhaps involving some delegates stepping aside at the last minute so the first Black delegates could serve. Two white Democrats from George Wallace’s camp resigned in protest when the Black delegates were seated.
The public history I’ve found, a rather sanitized version of what I was told over the years, reflects that, “Vance split with many southern Democrats by opposing segregation. His rise hurt Gov. George Wallace’s political faction, and Vance famously sparred against Wallace’s proposed delegates (which included noted segregationist Eugene “Bull” Connor) for the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DNC) to prevent it from being seated at the convention … Ultimately, the Vance delegation was seated at the convention and it included a large faction of Blacks as the first ever interracial delegation from Alabama at a DNC.” Alabama was part of an emerging trend:
And it wasn’t just Alabama’s delegation that was taking baby steps toward racial equality in 1968. They were long overdue and slow in coming, but deeply important. Civil rights attorney and businessman Vernon Jordan wrote about it:
The courage of the Black delegates who faced down irrational hatred, often at great personal risk, to attend the convention and demand their place in the process is a reminder that we can all summon the courage to do whatever it takes to defeat MAGA at the polls this fall. The stories of the conventions are stories of courage—quiet courage that frequently goes on to be forgotten. There’s another one from 1968. Channing Phillips, who is mentioned in the paragraph above, was the DNC chairman for the District of Columbia in 1968. In an attempt to gain recognition for the District, which had no representation in Congress at that time, an effort was launched to nominate him at the convention as a favorite-son candidate for President. His son, also named Channing, who served with me as a U.S. Attorney in the Obama Administration, told me, “It was a symbolic gesture, of course. He was nominated by Philip Stern, while John Conyers gave the second nominating speech. As a result, he earned the distinction of becoming the first black to be nominated for president by a major political party.” Here we are, looking back at Channing Phillips’ symbolic gesture in 1968 and forward to a week that will culminate with Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the Democratic nominee for the presidency, honoring the service and sacrifice of all of the people who came before her, and helping to move our country forward, a few steps at a time. There will always be work left to do. It wasn’t until 2000 that Alabama’s Democratic delegation included the first openly gay man. But we are going forward. We are not going back. The week ahead is a week for optimism. Not only will it signal the changing of the guard to a new generation of leadership in the Democratic Party, the Harris campaign is giving off strong vibes that it fully understands the threat to democracy that Donald Trump poses. On the heels of our post last week about the lawyers gearing up to address Trump’s certain efforts to prevent certifying the results of the election—of course, only if he loses—the campaign has announced that it has assembled an unparalleled election protection team, a Justice League of lawyers who know how to protect voters’ rights and election outcomes. Democratic super-lawyer Marc Elias, who was the general counsel for Harris’ 2020 primary campaign, will focus on election recounts, which is where a lot of the action is likely to happen. His phenomenal successes in court after the 2020 election and aggressive efforts to stop voter suppression in court since then bode well for the campaign’s state of preparedness. Marc was our guest for Five Questions in March of 2023. This question and answer seems even more important now than it did then: Joyce: In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, election deniers running for key statewide offices like Governor and Secretary of State posed a serious threat to our democracy. Fortunately, most of those candidates went on to lose their elections. As you look ahead to 2024, what do you predict will be the greatest threat to our democracy during the next election cycle? Marc: The shamelessness of today’s Republican Party is arguably the greatest threat to our democracy as we look ahead to 2024. Democracy only works when we all share certain core values and a common decency, regardless of our party affiliation. Unfortunately, today’s Republican Party is committed to undermining faith in elections with evidence-free conspiracies about voter fraud, while targeting minority voters with gross acts of suppression and intimidation. And I worry that Republicans will continue to target the vote counting and certification process. We are in for a convention and a campaign to be proud of: American joy instead of American carnage. Progress can be slow, and sometimes painful, but it is progress nevertheless. This week, we get to watch history happen. We’re in this together, Joyce |
Top News | 'He’s Not Going to Run Unopposed': Sanders Rejects Schumer for Majority Leader
LOTS OF POSTS IGNORED BY BLOGGER..... OR REMOVED ON THEIR WHIM! ALL POSTS ARE...
-
LOTS OF POSTS IGNORED BY BLOGGER..... OR REMOVED ON THEIR WHIM! ALL PO...
-
LOTS OF POSTS IGNORED BY BLOGGER..... OR REMOVED ON THEIR WHIM! ...
-
LOTS OF POSTS IGNORED BY BLOGGER..... OR REMOVED ON THEIR WHIM! A...
