The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
I have been thinking a lot about the incomparable Julian Bond the last couple of days, but as he would no doubt be saying, in spite of our sorrow, we have to keep our eyes on the prize. The contrast could not be greater between the violence in word and deed of so many modern day conservatives and the path Julian Bond forged to make a new way for us in this world.
I am looking with dismay today at footage of thugs working for Scott Walker pushing around demonstrators. Walker then brags about it, talking about how tough he is and how we will fight back against the “special interest” demonstrators. This video brings to mind what happened when my colleague Lauren Windsor found out where the latest Koch secret meeting was and went to cover it — one of the Kochs’ top capos grabbed her and a friend and physically assaulted them.
Then there is the rhetoric on the Republican and conservative side, which seems to grows increasingly violent every year. From Trump’s Mexican rapist comments to Christie saying he wants to punch teachers in the face, to the Tea Partiers’ “watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants” to Rush Limbaugh’s calling feminist activists sluts, this crowd gets nastier and nastier.
The contrast with Julian Bond could not be greater. Julian Bond did not back down from anyone who was doing wrong. He took the Georgia legislature to the U.S. Supreme Court when they denied him the right to serve after being duly elected; he never backed down from advocating civil disobedience in the face of death threats, physical violence, and jail time; his razor sharp wit won a thousand aggressive verbal duels; if heckled, he remained calm while making his case.
But Scott Walker and the Kochs seem to think they have to hire thugs to protect them from those who disagree with them. Julian Bond won his battles without a single thug by his side. Ever. He didn’t engage in this kind of petty bullying both because he knew it would demean him and his movement, and because he didn’t need to: he won his battles through the clarity of his vision, the brilliance of his intellect, and the strength of his character.
When I was a young man growing up, and I wanted to make a difference in making the world a better place, I got interested in political organizing as my way to accomplishing that end. My home state of Nebraska was as Republican a place as it could be, and most of the people I knew were Republican and pretty conservative. But when I looked out at the field of political battle, and I saw people like George Wallace and Richard Nixon on one side, and people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Julian Bond, and John Lewis on the other side, it was pretty easy to figure out which side I wanted to be on.
Forty plus years later, I know I picked the right side. Our side doesn’t have anywhere near the money or political muscle, but I would rather be standing with Julian Bond and his brethren than with the Koch brothers and Scott Walker any day of the week. Bullies sometimes get their way, but I like being with the people who stand up to those bullies.
I met Julian Bond a few times over the years, once consulting for a group he chaired (the NAACP National Voter Fund), and it was always a pleasure to talk with him on those occasions. My favorite memory of him was shortly after Obama’s re-election, at an awards dinner for the Midwest Academy, the legendary organizers’ training group started by Julian’s and my dear friend Heather Booth.
It was such a heady moment for me to be honored at the same dinner as Julian Bond. The best part was our pre-dinner conversation on how to keep pushing Obama to the left in his second term. Julian’s strategic insights on what to do next were superb. That brief moment, soaking in the wisdom of this great man, was one of the most cherished experiences of my life.
This country has a choice: Julian Bond’s path of peace and social justice, or the path of bullies. I’m proud to follow in the footsteps of Julian Bond.

From Janie Valencia’s Huffpo article “Americans Are Becoming More Pro-Union: Public perception of unions took a hit during the Great Recession, but is now at its highest point in six years.”

Americans have grown more supportive of labor unions in recent years, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. The poll found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans say they approve of labor unions, the highest approval rate since 2008.
Gallup has been surveying American opinion on organized labor since 1936. Approval has jumped five percentage points in the last year alone, and 10 percentage points since 2008. Desire for more union influence is also up. Thirty-seven percent of Americans say they want unions to have more influence, while 35 percent want to see unions wield less influence. By comparison, in 2009, only 25 percent of respondents said they wanted more influence, and 42 percent wanted less.

The trend in public approval of unions as reflected in Gallup’s polling since 1936 is interesting, with a very steep uptick during the last year or so:

“Respondents who identified as Democrats were almost twice as likely as self-identified Republicans to approve of labor unions, the poll found, and more than three times more likely to want unions to have more influence,” adds Valencia. “Millennials, defined as those between the ages of 18 and 34, are more pro-union than any other age group.”
Note that the peak of trade union approval occurred during the Eisenhower administration. Ike had his share of struggles with organized labor. But, unlike the current generation of Republican leaders, Ike had a low tolerance for all-out union-bashing:

I have no use for those — regardless of their political party — who hold some foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when unorganized labor was a huddled, almost helpless mass…Today in America unions have a secure place in our industrial life. Only a handful of unreconstructed reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions. Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.

It may be a long time before we see another Republican leader who recognizes the importance of unions. Yet, the hope is that Americans are beginning to realize that a thriving, or even a stable middle class, requires a stronger labor movement, and conversely, inequality will only widen without a revival of trade union membership.
It will likely take a Democratic landslide to enact legislation to help restore labor strength to the point where the majority of working families can have a sense of economic security and access to affordable higher education for their children. it appears that increasing numbers of voters are ready to hear that message.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman takes a look at the last GOP presidential debate, and finds the field limping along and struggling to provide any convincing criticism of President Obama’s impressive record. Krugman explains,

…The shared premise of everyone on the Republican side is that the Obama years have been a time of policy disaster on every front. Yet the candidates on that stage had almost nothing to say about any of the supposed disaster areas.
And there was a good reason they seemed so tongue-tied: Out there in the real world, none of the disasters their party predicted have actually come to pass. President Obama just keeps failing to fail. And that’s a big problem for the G.O.P. — even bigger than Donald Trump.
Start with health reform. Talk to right-wingers, and they will inevitably assert that it has been a disaster. But ask exactly what form this disaster has taken, and at best you get unverified anecdotes about rate hikes and declining quality.
Meanwhile, actual numbers show that the Affordable Care Act has sharply reduced the number of uninsured Americans — especially in blue states that have been willing to expand Medicaid — while costing substantially less than expected. The newly insured are, by and large, pleased with their coverage, and the law has clearly improved access to care.

Krugman ads that Republican politicians know now that bashing Obamacare is getting harder to sell and that it is not the job-killer they predicted. “In the year and a half since Obamacare went fully into effect, the U.S. economy has added an average of 237,000 private-sector jobs per month,” notes Krugman, “better than anything we’ve seen since the 1990s.”
As for the GOP candidates’ discussion of economic policies in the debate, Krugman explains “Why didn’t the other candidates say more? Probably because at this point the Obama economy doesn’t look too bad…domestic oil production has soared and oil imports have plunged since Mr. Obama took office,” adds Krugman. if you compare unemployment rates over the course of the Obama administration with unemployment rates under Reagan, Mr. Obama ends up looking better – unemployment was higher when he took office, and it’s now lower than it was at this point under Reagan.”
Further, “the Obama economy has utterly failed to deliver the disasters — hyperinflation! a plunging dollar! fiscal crisis! — that just about everyone on the right predicted. And this has evidently left the Republican presidential field with nothing much to say.”
Krugman distills the GOP candidates’ core meme: “The only way to thrive, the right insists, is to be nice to the rich and cruel to the poor, while letting corporations do as they please.”
Meanwhile, President Obama “raises taxes on the 1 percent while subsidizing health care for lower-income families, ” and “provides stimulus in a recession…regulates banks and expands environmental protection.”
Krugman acknowledges the unmet expectations of the President’s economic policies, but adds that Obama has a nonetheless impressive litany of accomplishments, which are very hard to criticize in a credible way. Republicans are forced to rely on tired memes, while the longer term benefits of President Obama’s leadership are starting to kick in.
Without getting too optimistic, Dems are in good position to hold the presidency and make significant gains at the federal, state and local levels. President Obama and the Democrats have done their part to improve Democratic prospects. Now Republicans are cooperating with a weak field of candidates, a circus-like atmosphere, unconvincing arguments and no accomplishments of their own.

The following post by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
The debate season is starting, and there is no doubt that it is entertaining. The media’s obsession with Trump will not be diminished by last night’s debate, as both the moderators and the other candidates in both the prime time and happy hour debates circled around the persona of Trump as the planets circle the sun. The run-up to the debate over the last week has been all-Trump-all-the-time, and there’s no reason to think that will stop anytime soon.
Ultimately, though, I firmly believe that Donald Trump will not be the Republican presidential nominee- and I don’t think it will be because he blows himself up with an outrageous comment, as he has already proved that making outrageous comments only adds to his appeal. What will finally defeat Trump is not likely to be the Donald himself, but the combined might of the people who control the Republican party: mainly the Koch brothers and those, both politicians and other big money players, who trail in their wake. As Congressman Tim Ryan said last night, “What’s happening this evening is an audition for the billionaires, the Koch brothers.” What they were auditioning for was to be the anti-Trump candidate the Kochs will muscle through the nomination process.
Last year, in tapes of the secret meetings the Kochs hosted in Orange County that my colleague Lauren Windsor obtained, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said to the Koch brothers, “I want to start by thanking you, Charles and David, for the important work you’re doing. I don’t know where we’d be without you.”
I noted at the time how true McConnell’s words were:

In fact, McConnell does know where his Republican Party would be without the Kochs and their network of millionaire and billionaire donors — nowhere. Saddled with a deeply unpopular economic and social agenda, locked down by a primary electorate that won’t allow even occasional forays into moderate policy or rhetoric, crippled by demographic trends that are making their voting base smaller and smaller, Republicans have lost the popular vote six of the last seven presidential elections. Without the Koch money, there would have been no tea party movement or 2010 tidal wave. Without the Koch money, the 2012 presidential race wouldn’t have even been competitive… The only thing keeping the Republicans in the game is the Kochs and their big-money friends dumping hundreds of millions of dollars ($290 million this cycle according to some accounts, $500 million according to at least one source) into the pot, and McConnell and other party leaders know it.

This cycle, the Kochs and their billionaire friends have pledged $900 million to help the Republicans win — and that doesn’t include the hundreds of millions they are investing in think tanks, academic institutions, PR, and other ways of influencing the broader political narrative. Closely allied to McConnell and most of the other party leaders, they dominate the party’s thinking on climate change, taxes, the federal budget, regulatory policy, education policy, and a host of smaller behind-the-scenes issues.
The Kochs run the Republican show, and they will not let someone outside of their orbit like Trump get his hands on the prize. The Kochs are playing the long game — they have been happy to accept short-term losses to keep their hands on the controls of the party. So if Trump decides to blow up the Republican chances this year by running as an independent, they will take that hit.
It is important to understand why this is such a serious development for the future of our democracy. These are bad people, not because they are conservative, not because they throw around a lot of money, and not only because they blatantly act in their own self-interest. I have seen all of that before in spades. I’ve been in politics a long time, been involved in presidential campaigns since 1984, worked in a White House and on two transition teams, and believe me I have seen, and faced off against, all kinds of naked self-interest and big money, for decades. But no one in my lifetime, or in American politics over the last hundred years, has had as much power as the Kochs, and no one has abused that power so egregiously.
I will come back to the big picture in a minute, but first let me tell you about one of the Kochs’ closest associates, a man named Kevin Gentry. Gentry has two big titles in Koch world, simultaneously serving as vice president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and as vice president of special projects at Koch Industries. Gentry served as the emcee of the secret Koch conference held last year, speaking more on the tapes Lauren was given than any other person at the conference.
And Kevin Gentry is a thug. I don’t say this lightly, as I respect most of my political opponents and believe in treating them with dignity. But the VP of Koch Industries and the Charles Koch Foundation roughly grabbed two young women at their conference this last weekend, twisting the arm of one of them so much that paramedics were called. Read Lauren Windsor’s harrowing account of the incident here.
This wasn’t some rogue security guard, some junior level staffer that lost it and went out of control. This was one of the Kochs’ very top people, and I think you can be guaranteed he will not be fired for this incident. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that people with such raw power and Ayn Rand-like political views feel like they can commit assault and battery without blinking an eye. In Gentry’s case, he actually laughed about it.
Meanwhile, their political agenda as spelled out very clearly at their secret meetings last year, is another form of assault and battery. I wrote at the time:

In a series of big ideological speeches given the first day of their retreat (which Mitch McConnell called “very inspiring”), Charles Koch, his “grand strategist” Richard Fink, and the Charles Koch Institute’s VP for Research and Policy, Will Ruger, laid out a vision of government and society that would be pretty terrifying to anyone this side of Ayn Rand: The minimum wage (which leads to Nazi-ism) should be abolished; homeless people should be told to “get off [their] ass and work hard like we did”; and government should get out of the business of anything except the police force, military, and judicial system — no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, student loans, clean air or water rules, national or state parks, food safety, Wall Street oversight.

This would be assault and battery on everyone in America outside of the top 1%, so you can be sure that when Kevin Gentry manhandles two women, the Kochs won’t blink an eye. These are the people with an iron grip on the throat of the Republican Party, and I guarantee you they will not let the party or its political leadership out of their control. Donald Trump is a fun, fascinating, thoroughly entertaining sideshow, but the real action was behind the scenes in Orange County last weekend.

In his New Yorker article, “Donald Trump’s Sales Pitch,” James Surowiecki shares some salient thoughts about white working-class support for Donald Trump:

Donald Trump’s campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again!” A better one might be “Only in America.” You could not ask for a better illustration of the complexity of ordinary Americans’ attitudes toward class, wealth, and social identity than the fact that a billionaire’s popularity among working-class voters has given him the lead in the race for the Republican Presidential nomination. In a recent Washington Post/ABC poll, Trump was the candidate of choice of a full third of white Republicans with no college education. Working-class voters face stagnant wages and diminished job prospects, and a 2014 poll found that seventy-four per cent of them think “the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy.” Why on earth would they support a billionaire?
Part of the answer is Trump’s nativist and populist rhetoric. But his wealth is giving him a boost, too. The Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who’s published reams of work on white working-class attitudes, told me, “There is no bigger problem for these voters than the corruption of the political system. They think big companies are buying influence, while average people are blocked out.” Trump’s riches allow him to portray himself as someone who can’t be bought, and his competitors as slaves to their donors. (Ross Perot pioneered this tactic during the 1992 campaign.) “I don’t give a shit about lobbyists,” Trump proclaimed at an event in May. And his willingness to talk about issues that other candidates are shying away from, like immigration and trade, reinforces the message that money makes him free.
Trump has also succeeded in presenting himself as a self-made man, who has flourished thanks to deal-making savvy. In fact, Trump was born into money, and his first great real-estate success–the transformation of New York’s Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt–was enabled by a tax abatement worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet many voters see Trump as someone who embodies the American dream of making your own fortune. And that dream remains surprisingly potent: in a 2011 Pew survey, hard work and personal drive (not luck or family connections) were the factors respondents cited most frequently to explain why people got ahead. Even Trump’s unabashed revelling in his wealth works to his benefit, since it makes him seem like an ordinary guy who can’t get over how cool it is to be rich.

Surowiecki goes on to point out that Trump’s ‘winner’ image is packaged in a veil of distractions, since his business losses have included four bankruptcies, which he shrewdly projects as biz as usual for a courageous, visionary entrepreneur. “…The businessman he most resembles is P. T. Barnum…Barnum’s key insight into how to arrest public attention was that, to some degree, Americans enjoy brazen exaggeration. No American businessman since Barnum has been a better master of humbug…”
Surowiecki says it is “highly-improbable that he could ultimately win the nomination.” Yet “his bizarre blend of populist message and glitzy ways” resonates well “with precisely the voters that any Republican candidate needs in order to get elected.” As Greenberg says, “Trump is a huge problem for the Party. He’s appealing to a very important part of the base, and bringing out the issues the other candidates don’t want to be talking about.”
Democrats have known at least since FDR, and later JFK, that working-class voters don’t care how much money a candidate has, as long as the candidate seems honest and unafraid to support bold policies that can improve their lives.
Trump gets credit for being honest, just because he has no filter between his brain and his mouth, and that makes him look candid in comparison to his equivocating opposition, all of whom seem to be beholden to one sugar daddy or another. But that’s only part of what is needed to get elected. When the novelty fades, and Trump is held accountable to explain how his policies can benefit working people, that’s when he will tank as gloriously as he has risen.

From Jonathan Martin’s New York Times article, “Democrats Unveil a Plan to Fight Gerrymandering“:

The Democratic Governors Association is creating a fund dedicated to winning races in states where governors have some control over congressional redistricting, the party’s first step in a long-range campaign to make control of the House more competitive.
Billed as “Unrig the Map,” the effort will target 18 of the 35 states in which governors play a role in redistricting, and where new congressional maps could allow Democrats to win House seats that are now drawn in a way to favor Republicans. The fund will be used for governors’ races over the next five years, leading up to the 2020 census.
Democratic officials said that they hoped to raise “tens of millions” for the effort and that they believed they could gain as many as 44 House seats if lines were more favorably redrawn in the 18 battleground states. Many of those states still have Republican-controlled legislatures, but with Democratic governors in place they could at least veto the next round of congressional maps and send the disputes to the courts.

“About time” or “What took them so long?” seem like appropriate responses, before we settle for “better late than never.” But this campaign is really a call to arms for Democrats, who get it that all the good we do in presidential election years is rigged to be undone in the following midterm elections, and without a congressional working majority Democratic presidents will be doomed to nibbling at the fringes of social change into the forseeable future.
Martin reminds his readers of one of the most disturbing political statistics in recent memory — that Democrats won 2 million more votes than Republicans in 2010, but still we got “shellacked.” The presidential race gets all of the media glory, but the midterms define the limits of the majority’s hopes and dreams, thanks in large part to gerrymandering. Yes, political apathy and voter suppression also play important roles in the midterm “correction.” But having no plan to fight gerrymandering has proven to be a loser.
But ther DGA initiative won’t be cheap. As Martin points out,

..Democrats have also been badly outplayed and outspent in the battle for statehouses. Both parties operate networks of political committees intended to channel national money into governor and state legislative races. But the Republican version is far better financed: The Republican Governors Association, for example, spent $170 million during the 2014 cycle, compared with $98 million for the Democratic Governors Association.
Democratic governors and strategists have often complained that their donors are too focused on more glamorous presidential and Senate races, while Republicans have been pouring money into state-level contests.

Martin concludes by quoting top Democratic donor Peter Emerson, who said, “We’re late to the game, but we don’t have to come up with a new strategy — we just have to adapt to their strategy.”
Better we should improve on their strategy and use our edge in social media and small donor contributions to fund the campaign. Dems simply must make this campaign a priority or accept the alternative — perpetual gridlock.

The New York Times screwed up badly on July 22nd, when ‘the newspaper of record’ ran a disastrously-flawed story saying that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been targeted by criminal referrals from two inspectors general relating to her e-mail usage during her tenure as Secretary of State.
The Times report included some astounding errors, and the newspaper’s clumsy walkback compounded the mess exponentially. Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri responded with a devastating letter to executive editor Dean Banquet. The Eric Wemple blog at The Washington Post frames Palmieri’s letter and the stunningly inadequate Times response:

Thanks to a letter from Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri shared this evening with the Erik Wemple Blog, we now know that the version of events from within the Times was incomplete. In a lengthy, detailed and merciless letter, Palmieri documents just how rushed and reckless was the Times’ push to publish the story that night.

You can read more about it right here.

Those who follow the role of American labor unions in politics will find “Hillary Clinton’s multi-step strategy to woo labor: Before winning over AFL-CIO, she hopes to gain backing of individual unions” by Brian Mahoney and Gabriel Debenedetti of interest. Writing in Politico, the authors explain:

…The Democratic front-runner’s machine is turning its attention to individual leaders one by one, looking to methodically win over unions as she faces off against an insurgent Bernie Sanders — a longtime union ally whose fiery rallies have riled up rank-and-file labor members across the country.
Clinton spent about an hour with the AFL-CIO’s executive council on Thursday, with the ultimate goal of securing the formal endorsement of the federation of 57 labor unions and the political organization and millions of dollars in campaign money that would come with it. But while Sanders shows staying power in the early-voting states, the organized labor movement sees an opportunity to gain leverage over the party’s likely nominee, whose labor bona fides are still a topic of debate among some activists.
As a result, Democrats associated with multiple campaigns don’t see the AFL-CIO taking the rare step of backing a candidate in the Democratic primary anytime soon, even if they expect it to eventually back Clinton and to keep urging local groups to stop backing Sanders…The Clinton campaign’s targets in the meantime? Some of the prominent unions that make up the AFL-CIO.

Debenedetti and Mahoney go on to note that Clinton has secured a key endorsement from the influential1.6-million member American Federation of Teachers, and is actively wooing the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers and the 1.8 million member Service Employees International Union.
As for issues, the authors report that Clinton is focusing on “the AFL-CIO’s central demand for 2016: raising wages,” while remaining undecided regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Sen. Bernie Sanders and former MD Governor Martin O’Malley oppose, joined by key unions, including the United Steelworkers.
Meanwhile, Sen. Sanders is reportedly racking up support from rank and file, as well as local labor leaders. Sanders, who is held in high regard by American labor leaders across the nation has a near-perfect track record on his votes on issues of critical concern to unions. Any union would be more than comfortable with a Sanders presidency. Should Clinton win the Democratic nomination to run for president, however, a Clinton-Sanders ticket would be hugely popular with unionized voters, who would likely also be fine with O’Malley against any Republican.
Despite numerous articles in recent years about organized labor’s declining membership and impact, when it comes to elections, no progressive constituency provides more support for Democrats in terms of both money and manpower than unions. That is a leading reason why Republicans are constantly seeking to destroy and undermine labor and worker rights.
Conversely, the next Democrat to win a landslide victory in a presidential election would be smart to strongly support and work for policies to revive the American labor movement, which remains the best hope for reducing income inequality and improving living standards for millions of American families.

None of the declared Republican presidential candidates could be considered even remotely-friendly to voting rights and all would likely rejoice in further suppression of demographic groups who tend to cast their ballots for Democrats.
But if you had to pick the three most dangerous advocates of voter suppression among the GOP wannabe field, you would likely pick Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush. These three, more than any of the others have demonstrated an eagerness to manipulate, eliminate or even violate voting rights laws.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee sets the standard for lowbrow voter suppression advocacy among current GOP presidential candidates. As Mollie Reilly explained in her HuffPo article “Ohio Issue 2: Mike Huckabee Urges Voter Suppression Against Opponents Of Anti-Union Measure“:

As reported by MasonBuzz, the 2008 presidential candidate spoke to a crowd of about 350 Issue 2 supporters at a pancake breakfast and rally in Mason, Ohio on Friday. Huckabee expressed his support for the referendum, and outlined what supporters could do to ensure the measure’s passage in next month’s general election.
“Make a list,” said Huckabee, referring to supporters’ family and friends. “Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2 and are you going to vote for it?’ If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”
The crowd laughed at Huckabee’s remarks. In 2009, he made a similar joke in Virginia, saying, “Let the air our of their tires … keep ’em home. Do the Lord’s work.”

When it comes to higher-brow voter suppression, Sen. Ted Cruz is the GOP’s top advocate. Cruz, like Chief Justice Roberts, clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who had a particularly sordid history as an advocate of voter suppression. In 1999, Cruz been working as a domestic-policy adviser on the George W. Bush Presidential campaign. In the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin explains some of Cruz’s role in opposition to voting rights of pro-Democratic demographic groups.

When the result of the 2000 campaign devolved into a legal struggle over the vote in Florida, Cruz was well situated to play an important role. By the Thursday after Election Day, he was in Tallahassee. “Through an odd bit of serendipity, it happened that I was the only practicing lawyer, and, in particular, constitutional litigator, who had been on the full-time campaign team,” Cruz told me. “One of the realities of the recount and life is that lawyers and political folks don’t really speak the same language. By the accident of being in that place I found myself, there was sort of a small leadership team that consisted of Jim Baker and Josh Bolten and Ted Olson and George Terwilliger and Ben Ginsberg and me. And I’m twenty-nine years old, this kid, and all of these other folks are Cabinet members and masters of the universe.” Ginsberg, the national counsel to the Bush campaign, and his associates set up seven teams of lawyers to address the sprawling controversies generated by the recount, and Cruz was the only lawyer who served on all seven. His job was to encourage communication and assure consistent positions.
“I’ve been amused at some of the subsequent descriptions of Bush versus Gore, because they sort of described us as this fine-oiled machine with a careful strategy,” Cruz said. “It was one tiny notch slightly below utter chaos.”
Cruz’s initial assignment was to assemble a legal team. His first call was to his former mentor Carvin, who wound up representing Bush before the Florida Supreme Court. Cruz’s second call was to a Washington lawyer named John Roberts. “John had been a friend and a Rehnquist clerk–I’ve known John a long time,” Cruz said. “Everyone we called, without exception, dropped everything and came down…”

Toobin recounts Cruz’s role as a successful advocate in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, and notes:

In another case, a major challenge to Texas’s 2003 electoral redistricting on the ground that it discriminated against minorities, the number of plaintiffs before the Court was so large that Cruz was allowed to file a hundred-and-twenty-three-page brief in response, well above the usual page limit. He won that case as well.

Should any Democrats find themselves feeling indifferent about the prospect of Jeb Bush getting the GOP 2016 nomination, take a stroll down memory lane with Greg Palast and feel the burn once again:

WI Governor Scott Walker could also be added to the short list of the GOP candidates who are most invested in voter suppression, given his history and relationship to the Koch brothers and their sponsorship of ALEC’s voter suppression template legislation. And don’t be shocked if two of these candidates end up on the GOP ticket. If Bush or Walker wins the nomination, Huckabee could be on their veep short lists, if they need an attack-dog/bomb-thrower. Cruz or Huck might end up as any other GOP nominee’s running mate. It’s hard to imagine Bush settling for a second spot, but there are quite a few plausible Republican ticket scenarios that have one of these four candidates on the 2016 GOP ticket.
Even more voter suppression will be the order of the day if the GOP wins the white house and control of the Senate, especially with Justice Roberts at the helm of the U.S. Supreme Court. A rigged electoral system designed to disenfranchise millions more voters and permanently disadvantage Democrats will then become a top priority of the federal government.
It’s a nightmare scenario, not just for Democrats, but also the integrity of Democracy itself. That’s why Democrats must support the party’s 2016 nominee with unprecedented unity, energy and resources.

Emory University philosophy professor George Yancy conducts an excellent interview with sociologist Joe Feagin, “a leading researcher of racism in the United States for more than 40 years” on the topic of “American Racism in the ‘White Frame’” on the pages of the New York Times Opinionator. This is a good read for Democrats who want to better understand and more effectively navigate complex race relations in the U.S. at this political moment. Some highlights:

G. Y.: In your book “The White Racial Frame,” you argue for a new paradigm that will help to explain the nature of racism. What is that new paradigm and what does it reveal about race in America?
J.F.: To understand well the realities of American racism, one must adopt an analytical perspective focused on the what, why and who of the systemic white racism that is central and foundational to this society. Most mainstream social scientists dealing with racism issues have relied heavily on inadequate analytical concepts like prejudice, bias, stereotyping and intolerance. Such concepts are often useful, but were long ago crafted by white social scientists focusing on individual racial and ethnic issues, not on society’s systemic racism. To fully understand racism in the United States, one has to go to the centuries-old counter-system tradition of African-American analysts and other analysts of color who have done the most sustained and penetrating analyses of institutional and systemic racism.
G.Y.: So, are you suggesting that racial prejudices are only half the story? Does the question of the systemic nature of racism make white people complicit regardless of racial prejudices?
J.F.: Prejudice is much less than half the story. Because prejudice is only one part of the larger white racial frame that is central to rationalizing and maintaining systemic racism, one can be less racially prejudiced and still operate out of many other aspects of that dominant frame. That white racial frame includes not only racist prejudices and stereotypes of conventional analyses, but also racist ideologies, narratives, images and emotions, as well as individual and group inclinations to discriminate shaped by the other features. Additionally, all whites, no matter what their racial prejudices and other racial framings entail, benefit from many racial privileges routinely granted by this country’s major institutions to whites.

Feagin has an interesting observation about blind spots many white Americans share about their own history:

G.Y.: I realize that this question would take more space than we have here, but what specific insights about race can you share after four decades of research?
J.F.: Let me mention just two. First, I have learned much about how this country’s racial oppression became well institutionalized and thoroughly systemic over many generations, including how it has been rationalized and maintained for centuries by the broad white racist framing just mentioned. Another key insight is about how long this country’s timeline of racial oppression actually is. Most whites, and many others, do not understand that about 80 percent of this country’s four centuries have involved extreme racialized slavery and extreme Jim Crow legal segregation.
As a result, major racial inequalities have been deeply institutionalized over about 20 generations. One key feature of systemic racism is how it has been socially reproduced by individuals, groups and institutions for generations. Most whites think racial inequalities reflect differences they see as real — superior work ethic, greater intelligence, or other meritorious abilities of whites. Social science research is clear that white-black inequalities today are substantially the result of a majority of whites socially inheriting unjust enrichments (money, land, home equities, social capital, etc.) from numerous previous white generations — the majority of whom benefited from the racialized slavery system and/or the de jure (Jim Crow) and de facto overt racial oppression that followed slavery for nearly a century, indeed until the late 1960s.

Feagin also illuminates the phenomenon of ‘white virtue framing,’ which is well-understood by many people of color:

G.Y.: What implications does the white racial frame have for blacks, Asians, Latinos and those from the Middle East in our contemporary moment?
J.F.: That white frame is made up of two key types of subframes: The most-noted and most-researched are those negatively targeting people of color. In addition, the most central subframe, often the hardest to “see,” especially by whites, is that reinforcing the idea of white virtuousness in myriad ways, including superior white values and institutions, the white work ethic, and white intelligence. This white-virtue framing is so strong that it affects the thinking not only of whites, but also of many people of color here and overseas. Good examples are the dominant American culture’s standard of “female beauty,” and the attempts of many people of color to look, speak, or act as “white” as they can so as to do better in our white-dominated institutions.

The Yancy-Feagin interview is a good read for any American, especially for Democrats, as members of the racially-inclusive party who want to promote interracial solidarity in pursuit of progressive reforms. The challenge for Dems is to provide leadership to alleviate what Feagin terms “the centuries-old reality of this country’s white racism, especially…its systemic and foundational character and how it has been routinely reproduced over 20 generations.”