The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
A message to the out-of-touch Washington pundit class: get a grip. What was or was not on Hillary Clinton’s email server when she was Secretary of State is not a game-changing news story.
In fact, no one outside the chattering class — and right-wing true believers — could give a rat’s rear about this story — and there is a good reason: there is no “there” there. If someone really thinks the great “email” story — or the Benghazi investigation — are going to sink her candidacy, I’ve got a bridge to sell them.
Of course, this is not the first time that the media — with an assist from right-wing political operatives — have laid into Hillary Clinton in an attempt to create a “scandal” where there was none.
Over the weekend, syndicated columnist Gene Lyons quoted a New York Times editorial as saying:
“These clumsy efforts at suppression are feckless and self-defeating.” It argued that these actions are “swiftly draining away public trust in (her) integrity.”
That editorial actually appeared in January 1994. The Times was expressing outrage at Hillary Clinton’s turning over Whitewater documents to federal instigators rather than the press, which, as Lyons pointed out, ” had conjured a make-believe scandal out of bogus reporting of a kind that’s since become all too familiar in American journalism.”
Speaking on NPR’s Diane Rehm show, the Atlantic’s Molly Ball sounded the same notes 21 years later. The email issue “continued to contribute to the perception that she has something to hide.”
The Times’ Sheryl Gay Solberg added that the email issue “creates and feeds into this narrative about the Clintons and Mrs. Clinton that the rules are different for them, and she’s not one of us.” Really?
What might really feed a negative narrative would be the New York Times’ own story several weeks ago that falsely accused Ms. Clinton of being under criminal investigation. Which she is not and never was. The Times public editor acknowledged that the story was false and that it feed another narrative: that the New York Times had an ax to grind against the Clintons.
Of course the bottom lines of this story are simple:
At the time Ms. Clinton was Secretary of State there was no prohibition against the Secretary of State having a private email server. In fact, no Secretary of State before Ms. Clinton had a government email account.
None of the emails on the Secretary’s personal account were classified at the time they were sent or received. That is not in dispute. There is an on-going controversy between various agencies of what ought to be classified in retrospect as the material is released to the public by the State Department, but that does not change the fact that none of it was classified at the time. In fact, one of the several emails at issue actually says the word “unclassified” in the upper left hand corner and can still be accessed by the general public on the State Department web site.
Finally, no one has ever pointed to an instance where the fact that something was on her server instead of a government server had any negative consequences whatsoever.
There is no issue here, period.
And as for the Benghazi “affair,” none of the many investigations that have already been completed concerning the events surrounding the death of the American Ambassador to Libya in the Benghazi attack has found a shred of evidence that that Hillary Clinton did anything wrong whatsoever leading up to or in response to that attack.
And frankly if you ask most people about the Benghazi affair they think you’re talking about something you rub on your muscles to reduce pain.
So now Congressman Trey Gowdy, who is the Chair of the Select Committee that was set up by the Republicans in the House to once again investigate this non-scandal, has decided to investigate the non-existent issue of the Clinton email server as well — even though he acknowledges that it has nothing to do with Benghazi.
Not withstanding the lack of substance to any of these issues, people like Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post proclaim that they could be a terrible weight on her candidacy.
Who exactly are these pundits talking to? Rarely have they been so out of touch with the real American electorate. The perceptions and narratives they are discussing are the perceptions and narratives of the insider pundit and political class — not normal voters.
And the same goes for often-unnamed Clinton backers that are wringing their hands that Clinton has not yet put the email issue behind her.
No one is handed the American presidency — and that is especially true of a candidates that are not incumbent Presidents.
Every candidate faces many challenges and hurdles to getting elected — and Hillary Clinton is no different. But the email-server issue is not one of them.
Clinton’s campaign completely recognizes that it must fight for every delegate in the primaries and every vote in the general election.
In the general election, she must motivate Democratic base voters to turn out in massive numbers. She must excite new voters — especially young people and women. And she must persuade undecided voters that she will fight effectively to actually change the rules of the political and economic game so that we have economic growth that benefits every American, not just Corporate CEO’s and Wall Street Banks.
These are her real challenges — and her campaign is focused like a laser on meeting those challenges.
It’s time for her supporters to focus on those challenges as well — and for the media to resist continuing to play its role as enabler of baseless right wing attacks like the great email and Benghazi “scandals” of 2015.

A.P.’s Erica Werner reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is considering “a major role in Democratic primaries in key congressional races nationally, which could produce weakened nominees who would be more easily defeated by Republicans, according to an internal memo obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.” Werner says the Chamber is targeting Democratic primaries for 4 senate races (IL, OH, FL and PA) and 5 house races for possible involvement.
According to the International Institute for Democracy, “if you define voter turnout as the ratio of voters compared to the entire population of citizens eligible to vote, then for presidential elections, the U.S. lately ranks 75th (with 53.58 percent of eligible voters turning out) if you focus only on the 113 countries with presidential elections.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. succinctly defines the current assault on voting rights: “Mr. Obama’s election called forth a far more sophisticated approach to restricting voting. Republicans closely examined how Mr. Obama’s political organization had turned out large numbers of young African-Americans who had not voted before. Their participation was facilitated by early voting, and particularly Sunday voting…So legislatures in many states where Republicans had full political control went to work to make it harder for African-Americans, Latinos and young people to vote. Of course, that is not what they said they were doing.”
Columnist Doyle McManus terms Hillary Clinton’s strategy “soft populism”…not the insurrectionist socialism of Bernie Sanders but still progressive enough to keep most Democratic primary voters on her side.”
At The Plum Line Paul Waldman probes “The simple-minded populism that controls the GOP,” and notes, “Democratic populism says that the problem is largely about power: who has it, who doesn’t, and on whose behalf it’s wielded…Republican populism, on the other hand, is aimed against “elites” that are decidedly not economic. It’s the egghead professors, the Hollywood liberals, the government bureaucrats whom they tell their voters to resent and despise. ”
Jonathan Chait distills the Rubio pitch and then shreds it in his New York Magazine column “Marco Rubio: Let Me Be Your Front Man, Republicans.” Chait explains: “Republicans who favor tax cuts for the rich, cuts in social benefits for working-class Americans, and deregulation of Wall Street…What these donors want is a candidate who will continue to advocate the fiscal and regulatory policies they crave…Rubio is all but explicitly making the case for himself as the front man to make that sale.”
Former Sen. Kay Hagan has decided not to run for the U.S Senate seat now occupied by NC Republican Richard Burr, who many observers of NC politics believe to be one of the more vulnerable senators up from re-election in 2016. There are some less well-known potential challengers, with the usual concerns about fund-raising in a shrinking window of time. More here.
Lee Drutman has some interesting observations at Vox Polyarchy about “What Donald Trump Gets About the Electorate.” Citing a study showing that “the dominant left-right/liberal-conservative divide in American politics doesn’t fit a large number of voters,” Drutman says “While most elite-funded and elite-supported Republicans want to increase immigration and decrease Social Security, a significant number of voters (across both parties) want precisely the opposite — to increase Social Security and decrease immigration. So when Trump speaks out both against immigration and against fellow Republicans who want to cut Social Security, he’s speaking out for a lot people….By my count of National Election Studies (NES) data, 24 percent of the US population holds this position (increase Social Security, decrease immigration). If we add in the folks who want to maintain (not cut) Social Security and decrease immigration, we are now at 40 percent of the total electorate, which I’ll call “populist.”
Somebody has a serious message discipline problem.

There’s a fascinating debate going on in punditland and in the political science community over the craziness breaking out in every direction in the GOP presidential nominating contest. The conventional wisdom remains that it’s all a mirage, and that eventually sane “adult” voices in the GOP will resume command and the restless grassroots elements supporting various extremist candidates will fall into docile place, just as they always do. In other words: nothing to see here folks, move along.
But it ought to set off some alarms when AEI’s Norm Ornstein says he doesn’t think this is all political business as usual, as I discussed at Washington Monthly today:

Us old folks remember a time when AEI’s Norman Ornstein was the very voice of The Conventional Wisdom. So his new column at The Atlantic ought to come as a particularly significant warning about this election cycle and the particular level of conservative freakout we are dealing with:

Almost all the commentary from the political-pundit class has insisted that history will repeat itself. That the Trump phenomenon is just like the Herman Cain phenomenon four years ago, or many others before it; that early enthusiasm for a candidate, like the early surge of support for Rudy Giuliani in 2008, is no predictor of long-term success; and that the usual winnowing-out process for candidates will be repeated this time, if on a slightly different timetable, given 17 GOP candidates.
Of course, they may be entirely right. Or not entirely; after all, the stories and commentaries over the past two months saying Trump has peaked, Trumpmania is over, this horrific comment or that is the death knell for Trump, have been embarrassingly wrong. But Trump’s staying power notwithstanding, there are strong reasons to respect history and resist the urge to believe that everything is different now.
Still, I am more skeptical of the usual historical skepticism than I have been in a long time. A part of my skepticism flows from my decades inside the belly of the congressional beast. I have seen the Republican Party go from being a center-right party, with a solid minority of true centrists, to a right-right party, with a dwindling share of center-rightists, to a right-radical party, with no centrists in the House and a handful in the Senate. There is a party center that two decades ago would have been considered the bedrock right, and a new right that is off the old charts. And I have seen a GOP Congress in which the establishment, itself very conservative, has lost the battle to co-opt the Tea Party radicals, and itself has been largely co-opted or, at minimum, cowed by them.
As the congressional party has transformed, so has the activist component of the party outside Washington. In state legislatures, state party apparatuses, and state party platforms, there are regular statements or positions that make the most extreme lawmakers in Washington seem mild.

Perhaps he’s thinking of the widespread subscription to the lunacy of Agenda 21 conspiracy theories, or there’s something even more alarming crawling around out there. But I digress…

Egged on by talk radio, cable news, right-wing blogs, and social media, the activist voters who make up the primary and caucus electorates have become angrier and angrier, not just at the Kenyan Socialist president but also at their own leaders. Promised that Obamacare would be repealed, the government would be radically reduced, immigration would be halted, and illegals punished, they see themselves as euchred and scorned by politicians of all stripes, especially on their own side of the aisle.

So the forces favoring a big-time right-wing insurgency, says Ornstein, are already at the kind of levels that produced conservative uprisings in the GOP in 1964, 1976 (Reagan’s primary challenge to incumbent president Ford), 1980 and 1994. But wait: it could be worse than those:

[I]s anything really different this time? I think so. First, because of the amplification of rage against the machine by social media, and the fact that Barack Obama has grown stronger and more assertive in his second term while Republican congressional leaders have become more impotent. The unhappiness with the establishment and the desire to stiff them is much stronger. Second, the views of rank-and-file Republicans on defining issues like immigration have become more consistently extreme–a majority now agree with virtually every element of Trump’s program, including expelling all illegal immigrants.

There’s more from Ornstein, but you get the idea. For years right-wing insurgent energy has flamed up and died down in a cycle that keeps getting more dangerous. This time the fire may be out of control.

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Many of the same people who rushed America to war with Iraq are now engaged in a no-holds-barred campaign to convince a small group of House and Senate Democrats that they should vote to kill President Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement when Congress returns in September.
But the fact is that opposing the Iran nuclear deal is horrible politics for Democrats. If it were defeated, it would be even worse from America — and, by the way, for Israel.
The case is made succinctly in a new TV spot by Americans United for Change.
First, the politics.
Reason #1: Polls show that everyday Americans — and especially Democrats — overwhelmingly support the agreement, and they have been supportive of the process that led to the agreement for many months.
A Public Policy Polling nationwide poll taken July 23-24 found 54 percent of the public supported the nuclear agreement with Iran and only 38 percent opposed.
According to PPP:

Democratic voters (75/17) are far more united in their favor for the agreement than Republicans (36/54) were in their opposition to it. Voters within every gender, race, and age group are in support of it.
Similarly, 54% of voters want their members of Congress to vote to allow the agreement to move forward, compared to just 39% who would like to see it blocked.
It may surprise some pundits that an even greater number of Jewish voters support the deal. According to a poll by GBA Strategies for J Street, a progressive pro-Israel lobbying group, Jewish voters support the deal by a 20-point margin — 60 percent in favor and 40 percent against. Jewish voters strongly support action by Congress to approve the agreement.

And in New York City, where several Democrats are still undecided about their support for the agreement, a PPP poll taken last week found that 59 percent of the city’s voters want their Member of Congress to allow the deal to go forward, compared to only 33 percent who do not.
In New York City, of course, most key electoral races for Democrats are Democratic primaries. Far from experiencing a backlash if they support the Iran deal, Democratic Members of Congress will likely benefit. In fact, 54 percent of voters say they are more likely to vote for someone who supports the agreement, while only 25 percent say they’d be less likely to.
Reason #2: If the Iran deal goes into effect at the beginning of October as it is supposed to do, every indication is that it will be going very well by the time any Members of Congress face the voters in either a Primary or General Election.
The interim agreement that froze Iran’s nuclear program during the 18 months of negotiation that preceded the consummation of the final agreement was derided by Neo-Cons at the time it was signed. They argued that Iran would never adhere to its terms and it would collapse.
Not only did it not collapse, but many of those same voices thought it was working so well by early this year that they urged the U.S. to scrap the negotiations in favor of trying to maintain the interim deal that that they had earlier excoriated.
By next spring, there is every reason to believe that the same will be true with the permanent agreement.
There is no danger that a vote for the Iran agreement will create a nightmare scenario by the next election. But there is a very high likelihood that if Congress rejects the deal, America could be facing a major foreign policy disaster by next year that will be hung directly around the necks of those voting no. More on those consequences in a moment.
Reason #3: Many of the Democrats who oppose the Iran Deal, or are undecided about their support, fear a backlash from a very small group of influential Democratic donors and bundlers.
But many of them ignore the rise of a whole new group of progressive Democratic donors — and progressive Jewish donors — that are just as committed to supporting the agreement as opponents are to stopping it. J-Street — the progressive alternative to AIPAC — has exploded in size over the last five years. From the point of view of fundraising and political support, these donors represent the future for Democratic Members of Congress.
What’s more, many progressive Democratic donors have made it clear that they will refuse to support opponents of the deal in the next cycle.
Reason #4: Democrats who oppose the deal will be isolating themselves from the vast majority of Democratic voters (including Jewish Democratic voters), from the overwhelming majority of Democratic Members of Congress, from the House Democratic Leadership and from the Democratic President.
That isn’t good politics for anyone who wants to have influence within the Democratic caucuses of the House or Senate — or the White House.
Reason #5: The organized progressive community within the Democratic Party is every bit as intense in their support for this agreement as the small number of opponents.
Opponents of the deal are likely to alienate these organizations and their leadership for years to come and to bear the brunt of intense criticism from groups that have no compunction inflicting political costs onto Democrats who they believe have betrayed their principles.
Reason #6: Most importantly, Democrats who vote against the Iran Agreement will ultimately find themselves on the wrong side of history.
This vote is an “Iraq War” moment that will fundamentally define Members of Congress for the rest of their careers.
Thirteen years later, there are not many Democrats in Congress who voted in favor of the Iraq War and are glad they took that vote. Many of them have paid a steep political price for allowing themselves to be rushed into war by many of the same people who today are urging that the Iran Agreement be stopped.
There are simply no alternatives to this agreement other than a nuclear Iran or military conflict. If the U.S. Congress stops this agreement, our partners will end sanctions and we will get nothing in return from Iran. The hard-liners in Iran will be emboldened and will argue that the U.S. never really wanted a negotiated agreement and that the only way for Iran to protect itself is to actually build a nuclear bomb.

Read more…

From Samantha Page’s “Why Republicans Could Have Trouble Winning The Latino Vote, In One Poll”:

A new poll released Tuesday suggests Republicans could have a tough time winning over a key voting bloc next year if they don’t start taking environmental issues seriously….Nearly three-quarters of voting Latinos — one of the fastest-growing demographics in America — think it is “important” that the United States acts on climate change, according to the poll, released by Earthjustice and GreenLatinos.
More Latinos think it is important to reduce smog and to increase water conservation than to fix immigration policies, the poll of registered Latino voters found. The poll also found that 90 percent of Latinos want to strengthen the Clean Water Act, and 85 percent want to reduce smog and air pollution.

Latino concern about climate change is about being good, concerned citizens. But it’s also personal because “American Latinos are three times more likely to die from asthma than other racial or ethnic groups, and about half the country’s Latino population lives in regions that frequently violate clean air rules, according to the National Hispanic Medical Association…Almost a quarter of low-income Hispanic and Puerto Rican children in the United States have been diagnosed with asthma, in comparison to one in 13 middle-class or wealthy white children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Most of the 16 declared GOP presidential candidates are still in denial about human-caused climate change and are clearly in poor position to offer remedies. Page adds: “A 2014 poll by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that nine out of 10 Latinos in the United States — including 68 percent of Republican Latinos — want the country to take action against climate change…This is bad news for prospective Republican candidates.”
Democratic candidates and their campaign staffers at the federal, state and local level, take note. Concern for the disparate impact of pollution on the health and well being of Latinos and indeed, all people of color and low-income whites, is a particularly good issue for your candidates — and a disaster for Republicans.

For the first time ever, not one, not two, but three non-trivial presidential candidates are people who’ve never held public office. And they’re all Republicans. Is that significant? I tried to answer this question at TPMCafe today:

The intense focus on Donald Trump among the Republican presidential candidates has obscured a phenomenon in which he is a part of but is not unique to him. Consider this recent take from the Washington Post‘s Philip Bump:

Fox News released the results of the first major-outlet national poll since the first Republican debate three months two weeks ago. Comparing those results to the Fox poll released immediately before the debate, we can, as objectively as possible, declare a winner: Ben Carson, who saw a five-point jump in the polls — a 71 percent increase over where he was two weeks ago…
Carly Fiorina gained three — impressive because it more than doubled her support. She clearly won the early-bird debate…
In total, 42 percent of the support from Republican voters went to people who have never held elected office: Trump, Fiorina and Carson.

Add in the standing of the least experienced elected official in the race, Ted Cruz (Senate Class of 2012), who is also the loudest disparager of his fellow GOP members of Congress, and you’ve got more than half the Republican electorate preferring as little time on the public service clock as possible. Meanwhile, the rest of the field has compiled a total (through 2016) of 144 years in elected office.
A year ago a much-discussed piece that focused on Rand Paul’s campaign suggested this cycle might represent a “libertarian moment.” It’s now looking more like amateur hour….
All three amateur candidates–along with their spiritual ally Sen. Cruz–are clearly benefiting from a climate of opinion among rank-and-file Republicans in which the habitual anti-Washington sentiment has turned sharply against Republican office-holders, and not just in Washington. Decades of alleged betrayal of the conservative movement and its constituent elements (especially the Christian Right and those who bristle at any compromise with liberals or Big Government) by Republican elected officials at every level have made short work of long resumes. The most alarming thing for the Republican Establishment is that their usual peremptory dismissal of unsuitable candidates like Trump and Cruz does not seem to be working its magic this time.
Ultimately the Establishment could well have the last laugh of the 2016 “clown show.” For one thing, the amateurs could help destroy each other; Trump has already been the first fellow Republican to point a finger at Fiorina and call her a loser. And if Trump’s long history in the public eye supplies his rivals’ Super-PACs with abundant ammunition, Carson’s brief history of association with extremism could be enough to scare off voters once they understand his idea of the “political correctness” he despises includes much they hold dear.
But it’s clear these candidates will not go away quietly, and won’t go away at all if a lack of experience is the only problem they exhibit. All these years of despising the public sector have finally taken a toll on a Republican Party that considers itself proudly on the brink of total power in Washington. “The base” is not impressed.
And even if the GOP can end the “amateur hour” during its nomination process, there’s always the chance a third-party candidacy will emerge from the wreckage. The last two times an amateur appeared on the general election ballot, in 1992 and 1996, Republicans lost.

No wonder Republicans are worried about an independent candidacy by Donald Trump.

Here we have yet another example of a Republican trying to leverage Black Lives Matter in service to the GOP Agenda.
This time a writer for RedState and Townhall.com, Leon H. Wolf, argues that abuses by law enforcement are mostly about bloated “big government” budgets, ever the most-favored GOP whipping boy. He lobs in cherry-picked numbers which distract from the fact that it’s a bogus notion from the get-go that somehow, smaller law enforcement budgets will magically eliminate police abuses.
A more grounded program to help eliminate racism and violence in law enforcement championed by Democratic leaders is needed. Certainly Dems should call, loud, clear and repeatedly for more body cameras, video monitoring groups and citizen-staffed police review/oversight boards, which have had considerable success in some localities across the U.S. Democrats should urge adoption of better screening and recruitment of law enforcement, checking racial prejudice and attitudes toward violence to tighten up recruitment and hiring standards.
But there should also be more rigorous training in peaceful conflict-resolution for all law enforcement personnel, including reworking ‘rules of engagement’ with suspects to encourage nonviolent outcomes. There must be increasing participation of people of color and women in law-enforcement policy-making, as well as among police officials and rank and file. Additionally, Democrats should advocate raising the percentage of police who don’t carry lethal weapons and work with community organizations.
Democrats should prioritize these and other reforms. And yes, such reforms might cost a little extra. But not as much as the cost of lawsuits and policing the protests — peaceful and rioting alike — that will come with doing nothing. Then there are the hidden costs of decaying and neglected communities, which require infrastructure upgrades to put people to work at livable wages. Few Republican elected officials are willing to discuss, let alone support major, nationwide infrastructure projects, or even realize that law enforcement IS a critical element of the infrastructure needed to rebuild America.
Black Lives Matter has put the imperative of fundamental criminal justice/law enforcement reform on the national agenda. And if this creative movement can help register hundreds of thousands of new voters in key swing states, needed reforms in law enforcement could become a reality.

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.

“A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released this week found that fully 60 percent of millennials say government should do more to solve problems, rather than leaving things up to businesses and individuals. Only 37 percent say government shouldn’t shoulder more responsibility,” reports Tom Shoop at the National Journal.
Democrats should be forgiven of they pause to gloat, just for a moment. You may have seen several articles during the last week or so, like this one, about how generally devoid of anything resembling substance are the debates going on between the GOP candidates. Nothing to be surprised about, when you consider the ‘claims to fame’ of top Republican contenders: a brother of a former president who wrecked the world economy, a Koch brothers errand boy/union buster and an immigrant-bashing, misogynistic birther — and that’s the top tier.
Gloating aside, Jeb Bush’s super-PAC “Right to Rise USA” is springing for “an eight-figure ad buy in the early primary states.”
E. J. Dionne, Jr. provides an astute observation about the Trump phenomenon in a global context: “Trumpism does have its uniquely American characteristics. Not many places would turn a loudmouthed real estate tycoon first into a television celebrity and then into a (temporarily, at least) front-running presidential candidate…a gift to us all from a raucous entrepreneurial culture that does not hold bad taste against someone as long as he is genuinely gifted at self-promotion…Trump is a symptom of a much wider problem in Western democracies. In country after country, traditional, broadly based parties and their politicians face scorn. More voters than usual seem tired of carefully focus-grouped public statements, deftly cultivated public personas and cautiously crafted political platforms that are designed to move just the right number of voters in precisely the right places to cast a half-hearted vote for a person or a party.”
Estimable political analysts Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley have designated Trump “The Un-Nominatable Frontrunner.”
Jim Rutenberg’s “Nine Years Ago, Republicans Favored Voting Rights. What Happened?,” follows up on his much-cited New York Times Magazine article, “A Dream Undone.” Rutenberg cites dim prospects for legislation to reinstate some of the voting rights weakened by the Shelby vs. Holder Supreme Court decision, which sparked a rash of Republican-driven voter suppression laws in the states. Only a Democratic presidential victory in 2016 can insure that the next Supreme Court justice will not be another advocate for voter suppression.
In an NPR interview, Ari Berman, author of “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America,” makes it plain when asked “what is behind the wave of new voting restrictions”: “I think it’s an attempt by elements in the Republican Party to make the electorate older, whiter and more conservative as opposed to how the electorate was in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected, which was younger, more diverse and more progressive. If you look at the methods that Republicans are using to try to make it harder to vote, they disproportionately affect minority voters, younger voters who are the core of Obama’s coalition, but they also disproportionately target the methods that the Obama administration used so successfully to win election and then re-election.”
A new Jewish Journal poll, which includes Jews who are not religiously observant, indicates that 63 percent of respondents “of the three-quarters who said they knew enough to offer an opinion on the deal” support the Administration’s proposed lifting of sanctions against Iran in exchange for arms reduction.
Good luck with all that.