#Working Family Party Candidate Maurice Mitchell

[serious2020]

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[tomorrowusa]

White Dudes for Kamala raised over $4 million on Zoom to defeat Weird Donald and Weirder J.D..

The Ultimate Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, showed up to abide Vice President Harris.

Celebrities, elected officials and political activists jumped on a Zoom call to raise millions for Vice President Kamala Harris’s run for president on Monday evening. By Tuesday morning, the amount raised had hit $4m. The Zoom call featured stars such as Mark Ruffalo, Josh Gad, Sean Astin, Mark Hamill, Josh Groban — and “The Dude” himself, Jeff Bridges. “I was brought to the party not so much as because I’m white, which I certainly am, but because I’m a dude,” the Big Lebowski star said during the call. “I’m white, I’m a dude and I’m for Harris. I’m excited, man.” here were also appearances by elected officials such as North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, former House majority leader Steny Hoyer and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. Transport secretary and potential Harris VP Pete Buttigieg was also on the call. Many of the attendees took swipes at former president Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, seeing it as a chance to push back on sexist attacks about Harris being one of the “childless cat ladies” who runs the country, as well as accusations she was a diversity hire. Organized by Brad Bauman and Ross Morales Rocketto, the Zoom fundraiser is just the latest chapter of Harris’s fundraising blitz ever since President Joe Biden endorsed his running mate to succeed her.

Neglecting white males, especially in the Midwest, by Hillary in 2016 is one of the factors which led to the election of Trump. The Harris campaign and its affiliates don't want to make the same mistake.

Maurice Mitchell, who is Black and the national director of the Working Families Party, hit on a point that was discussed throughout the fundraiser: that white men are a significant chunk of the electorate and Democrats need to get serious about reaching out to them. “White men are a massive part of the electorate and in a close election, a few percentage points can be the difference between having a democracy or not,” Mitchell said. A Pew Research Center study of the 2020 election found that 40 percent of white men voted for Biden, compared to 32 percent who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. “I'm not a political scientist or the pollsters, but I know enough to know — and I've seen enough polling results or outcomes in elections to know — that if white males would vote 1 to 2 percent more for Democrats than they usually do, then we win this race,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a longtime friend of Harris’s, said on the call.

At ActBlue, online fundraiser for Democratic candidates and liberal groups, a weekly record of $252,517,168 was raised last week. On just the first two days of this week, $38,800,078 was raised. So we're on track for another $100+ million week. Given the enormous dollops of cash which Weird Donald is getting from Elon Putz and fossil fuel executives, it would be helpful to make every week through Election Day a $100+ million week.

[ancient-bruises-ancient-moon]

“The Frontline is a new initiative from the Working Families Party and the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project that aims to forge a Black-led, multiracial coalition that can carry forward the energy of the uprising – “the largest social movement in U.S. history” – in both electoral and non-electoral forms.

Maurice Mitchell, National Director of Working Families Party, stressed the stakes in 2020 and explained The Frontline’s use-every-tool-in-the-tool-box approach:

“Every four years there’s a chorus of voices that say, ‘This is the most important election of our lifetime.’ This year, I’m one of those voices. The stakes could not be higher.

“In the midst of unprecedented crises, millions of people have taken to the streets to support and flank the Movement for Black Lives and focus on ending systemic violence and racism against Black folks. We’ve seen how powerful it can be when the movement in the streets is channeled into the polls. Amid a pandemic when voting was literally a risk to people’s lives, movement candidates like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush shocked the establishment.

“But electoral power alone will not get us free. Protests alone are insufficient. We need to vote. We need to protest. We need to organize. We need to study. We need to strike. And then we need to protest again.”

THE FRONTLINE NEEDS PPL READY FOR ACTION!!!!

1)WE NEED PEOPLE WHO ARE WILLING TO HOST ACTIONS IN OUR CITIES

AT A MOMENTS NOTICE WE MUST BE WILLING TO MOVE

2) JOIN A DIRECT ACTION MEETING!!!

COME TO  WEDNESDAY WEEKLY MASS CALLS (IT’S ONLINE! U CAN BE IN BED! AND PJS!!)

3) JOIN THE FRONTLINES TEXT TEAM (it’s rly fun actually as long as u dnt mind the occasional person telling you to kill urself lolol but we all exist on Tumblr so that’s not new) TEXT ACTION TO 30403!!!!

WE WILL NOT BE LIMITED BY THE ELECTORAL PROCESS

(We’re asking for donations too if u dnt wanna or cnt participate otherwise but wanna contribute!!)

text frontline to 30403

JOIN US ON THE FRONTLINE!!! if you need any help or have any confusion or anything feel free to dm me, I'm here to help!!

[skypalacearchitect]

[Full article pasted here]:

For the past several months—and the past three Democratic presidential debates—the party’s two progressive standard-​bearers, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have been making love, not war. As Warren told Anderson Cooper in the first debate, “Bernie and I have been friends forever.” During the second debate, with both of them on the stage the same night, Warren made a point about the disastrous effects of US trade policy—and Sanders chimed in, saying, “Elizabeth is absolutely right.” When Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney attacked Warren on security policy, Sanders tweeted in the Massachusetts senator’s defense, while Warren has resolutely refused repeated media entreaties to disavow her support for Medicare for All, the Vermont senator’s signature initiative.

This absence of infighting on the left—or at least between these two left candidates, since elsewhere on the left the narcissism of small differences rages unabated—has long troubled the centrist press. New York magazine’s “Intelligencer” reported the truce between Sanders and Warren was breaking down in June; Politico speculated the two were drifting apart in July; The Hill posted a hopeful report of imminent hostilities in August. In September, only a few hours after the Working Families Party announced it was endorsing Warren, she spoke in front of more than 20,000 people in New York’s Washington Square Park—the very spot where Sanders, backed by Vampire Weekend, drew a huge crowd in April 2016. Of course, that was also the year Sanders described the WFP as “the closest thing there is to a political party that believes in my vision of democratic socialism.”

Does the WFP endorsement mean the cool kids have abandoned Sanders for Warren? Has the American left’s long-awaited—by our enemies—internecine bloodletting finally begun? Is the WFP endorsement evidence of that organization’s decline? Or the abandonment by the WFP leadership of any claim to democracy or socialism? Is a partnership that Elle once called “the Jim and Pam of the Democratic race” irretrievably on the rocks?

Some people seem to think so. Our comrades at Jacobin were quick to hurl anathemas at the WFP and Warren, dismissing her as the “darling of a particular strata of more affluent liberal progressives.” Online, predictably, the pileup soon turned ugly, with WFP leaders Maurice Mitchell and Nelini Stamp becoming the targets of racist abuse, according to an open letter posted on Medium by Black Lives Matter cofounder Alicia Garza and signed by over 100 other black leaders.

Sanders immediately condemned any attempt to harass or bully the WFP leaders. In the immediate aftermath of the endorsement—which must have come as a disappointment to Sanders—his campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, declared, “We look forward to working with the Working Families Party and other allies to defeat Donald Trump. Together, we’ll build a movement across the country to transform our economy to finally work for the working class of this country.”

Surely that must be right. However much some on Team Sanders or Team Warren might be spoiling for a fight, their two principals have shown little inclination to turn on each other. Not while Trump is still in the White House. Or while Joe Biden—whose record on issues ranging from bankruptcy to busing to the invasion of Iraq to trade policy makes him a uniquely weak challenger to Trump, even without his unfortunate habit of tripping over his own tongue—remains the Democratic front-runner.

Because the truth is that plenty of progressives like both candidates. Politics may indeed, as Nation contributor Jeffrey C. Isaac recently argued, be “all about choice.” Certainly the WFP has every right to make its preference clear—or at least the preference of a majority under a ranked-choice vote that also gave the party’s national leadership equal weight with members and supporters. And Sanders supporters have every right to highlight that mechanism (though their criticism would have more heft if they held groups that endorsed Sanders, like the Democratic Socialists of America and the electrical workers’ union, to the same standard).

But do the rest of us really have to choose? Already? Working together, Sanders and Warren have been incredibly effective not just in making the case for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and all the other issues that are common ground for them but also in dramatically widening the entire left lane of American politics. Thanks to Sanders’s political courage and consistency and Warren’s skillful, steady push at the boundaries of political possibility, ideas once dismissed as radical now dominate the Democratic debates. Sure, Warren calls herself a “capitalist to my bones.” And after deluding ourselves over Barack Obama’s supposed secret radicalism, we’d better believe her. Her supporters wonder, “Is America ready to elect a socialist?” There’s only one way to find out.

Nearly a year ago, The Nation argued for the importance of the “ideas primary,” which would offer “reformers, activists, and grassroots groups their best opportunity to have an impact on the political debate.” And so it has.

At some point, we probably will have to choose. The Iowa caucuses in early February should help clarify matters, and the New Hampshire primary the following week is a test of strength both Sanders and Warren need to win. Until then, though, we hope the two candidates maintain their truce, competing to outdo each other in the boldness of their ideas and the breadth and passion of their support—but also continuing to have each other’s backs.

This country has never been in greater need of bold progressive leadership. Or, arguably, been more open to radical solutions to the problems we face. Warren and Sanders show every sign of knowing that. And of knowing something else their supporters might bear in mind: Solidarity begins at home.

[marvelsmostwanted]

The Working Families Party has endorsed Elizabeth Warren for President. (They previously endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016.) Learn more at https://workingfamilies.org/.

From Vox:

In a press release announcing the decision, WFP national director Maurice Mitchell emphasized that people are “lucky to have two strong progressive candidates leading in the race.” Mitchell continued, “Senator Warren and Senator Sanders have both shaped the ideological terrain on which this campaign is being waged. They have proven an effective team on debate stages and in the polls, and we hope that partnership continues. We’re proud to call both of them allies in the fight for a more just America.”

Nelini Stamp, director of strategy and partnerships at WFP, told me the decision process “wasn’t easy” for the party’s members, but many of them are really excited about Warren.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is running close with Joe Biden among white voters, according to national polls. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, (and sometimes Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders) leads the former vice president in recent surveys of overwhelmingly white Iowa. But Biden still leads in national polls, largely because he has a substantial lead among African Americans.That support is keeping him at the top of the polls and is crucial to his path to the Democratic presidential nomination.

However, an important portion of the black community is very much not behind Biden: the black left. The question is how much that will matter electorally. There are important characteristics of the black left — the way it is structured and the way it exercises political power — that could make it difficult for its members to stop Biden from winning the nomination. And the black left may not try that hard to stop him anyway.

There is no official “black left.” What I’m describing here is a bloc of people who have gained power and prominence since the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, that turned Black Lives Matter into one of the most important civil rights movements of the past decade. This bloc is distinct from what I would describe as the black establishment, which includes powerful black institutions and people: longtime civil rights activists and ministers like Jesse Jackson Sr. and Al Sharpton; veteran members of the Congressional Black Caucus; groups like the National Urban League and the NAACP; and President Obama and his close allies.1

The black left includes:

The activists and groups who either were involved in protesting the 2012 killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, went to Ferguson two years later or subsequently organized in opposition to police practices that they felt were discriminatory against black people.

Black leaders of prominent liberal groups, such as Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party.

Left-leaning black academics and intellectuals who have big followings, such as authors Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay and regular MSNBC contributor and Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude.

New generation civil rights organizations such as Color of Change and Dream Defenders.

More liberal black elected officials, such as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Not everyone in the black left actively opposes Biden. (Nor does all of the black establishment support him.) But opposition is fairly widespread. For instance, Leslie Mac, the digital organizer for a group of progressive black women and gender non-conforming individuals called Black Womxn For, told me that in an informal survey the group conducted of about 500 people in their activists’ circles, not a single person favored Biden. (Black Womxn For has endorsed Warren.)

The beef the black left has with Biden isn’t much different from the concerns that white liberal activists have about the former vice president: Namely, that he’s too centrist and establishment.

“Joe Biden shouldn’t be president,” Coates said in an interview on “Democracy Now!” back in July, noting that Biden “wanted more people sentenced to the death penalty, wanted more jails,” in earlier stages of his career.

What’s different for the black left — as opposed to the white left — is that its views are very deeply in tension with the broader black Democratic electorate, at least so far. Forty-three percent of black voters favor Biden, according to polling from The Economist/YouGov. That’s roughly 30 points more than anyone else. We don’t have a lot of polls breaking down black voters into smaller subgroups, but Morning Consult polling suggests Biden is leading even among blacks with college degrees.

Another candidate, like Warren, might catch up among black voters — or Biden might fall back. But no matter what happens, it’s worth asking why opposition to Biden on the black left hasn’t had more of an effect among rank-and-file black voters. And there are a couple of reasonable answers.

First, the black left has an unorthodox structure that might limit its electoral influence. The national office of Black Lives Matter can’t throw its weight behind Warren, Sanders or anyone else — there is no Black Lives Matter, at least in the sense of a formal organization with a board, a president and a physical headquarters. Instead, there is an informal Black Lives Matter Global Network, which has at least 15 U.S. Black Lives Matter chapters in cities around the country, plus one in Toronto. Key figures associated with the creation of the phrase Black Lives Matter and the Ferguson protests work at an array of different progressive organizations that focus on racial issues, rather than one single place. There is also a coalition of dozens of civil rights organizations, such as Dream Defenders, called The Movement for Black Lives.

More than five years after the protests in Ferguson, there is an active debate about whether this decentralized structure is the best approach to challenging policing practices and broader racial inequality in America. (It’s not totally clear if this structure was the intention of the activists, if it happened organically or if it’s something in between.)

This loose organizational structure is also largely untested in electoral politics. In 2016, the Black Lives Matter movement was in its infancy. During the Democratic primary, the activists criticized both Hillary Clinton and Sanders. The two candidates and their campaigns tried to appease the activists while also seeming a bit confused about what exactly Black Lives Matter was and who was leading it. Clinton overwhelmingly won the black vote, but she wasn’t as strongly opposed by the black left as Biden is now.

The black left has played a big role in helping to elect reform-minded local prosecutors in the years since the Ferguson protests, so I don’t want to suggest that it has no electoral power. And in theory, the black left is well-represented in spaces where some black voters are (social media, for example). Being the candidate backed by black figures with large Twitter followings should be helpful to a candidate.

“The church doesn’t have the power and influence it used to,” Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a San Francisco-based group created in 2018 that is focused on motivating liberal women of color, told me. (Allison’s group has not endorsed a candidate but Allison herself expressed wariness about Biden during my interview with her). “There are new and powerful people and networks that are being activated,” she added.

Maybe. But if I were a candidate running for president in 2020, I might prefer the tried-and-true networks that Biden is relying on, which are similar to those that helped Clinton win the black vote by more than 50 percentage points in 2016. If you are a Democratic presidential candidate aiming to win older black voters, in particular, there are clear, long-standing institutions to tap into (black churches) and political figures to court (Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina). Why is Biden currently leading with black voters? That’s a complicated question with a complicated answer (here are 2,000 words on the topic), but I think one factor is that he has spent decades in these black establishment spaces.

Beyond its structure, the black left might also struggle to wield electoral influence for a second reason: It’s not unified behind a single Democratic candidate, in part because it is somewhat wary of politicians in general.

Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris and former Cabinet secretary Julián Castro have all courted organizations on the black left, including making personal appeals (such as by appearing on their podcasts and at events they sponsor) but also by adopting some of their language and positions (for example, embracing the idea that reparations for black Americans should be studied). Biden hasn’t done as much of this — and it’s unlikely that his positions and rhetoric would have appealed to the black left anyway.

But the approach to Biden’s candidacy has varied widely among various individuals and organizations within the black left. Some have endorsed other candidates (Gay, Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and the Working Families Party are with Warren; Ellison and Omar with Sanders; the progressive black women’s group Higher Heights for America with Harris).

The decision by Working Families, a major force in liberal politics that backed Sanders in 2016, to endorse Warren angered Sanders’s supporters. But in explaining that move, Mitchell emphasized that taking a more cautious posture in this primary wasn’t smart.

“You don’t defeat the moderate wing of Democrats through thought pieces or pithy tweets, you defeat their politics through organizing,” Mitchell told The New York Times.

But others in the black left haven’t gone that far. Some influential black liberal voices, such as Coates, are more commentators and writers than political figures — they give their opinions but aren’t in roles that would necessarily put them in position to organize people for or against a candidate. Another bloc of black left figures told me that they and others in the movement like several of the candidates (usually some combination of Castro, Harris, Sanders and Warren) and are now waiting for the field to narrow.

On criminal justice and policing issues, “Julián Castro has been the most outspoken of any of the candidates,” said Samuel Sinyangwe, a co-founder of Campaign Zero, a policy-focused group that seeks to reduce the number of civilians killed by police. When I pressed him to choose among the candidates at the top of the polls, Sinyangwe praised Warren, but emphasized, “It’s early.”

Still another bloc says the field overall is flawed, and it’s not worth singling out Biden as worse than the more liberal candidates. For example, at a recent conference, the leaders of the group ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) said they will not endorse a Democratic candidate, arguing that none of the party’s leading contenders are sufficiently committed to pushing for reparations. That posture echoes early statements from some Black Lives Matter activists, many of whom were wary of the more cautious racial stands of basically all politicians, including Democrats and then-President Barack Obama. That’s both because the black left thinks the party is too centrist but also because it is in some ways an anti-establishment, anti-party movement. In its endorsement of Warren, Black Womxn For basically criticized the entire Democratic Party, writing, “the two-party system, elites within the Democratic establishment, and even the primary process itself continue to fall short of what is required to fully engage and honor the power” of black female voters.

“People were like, ‘you’ve sold out,’” said Chanelle Helm, a leader of the Black Lives Matter group in Louisville, Kentucky, describing the reaction after Helm and other black female activists attended a private meeting with Warren earlier this year. Helm is supporting the Massachusetts senator, who she said “speaks for the mamas in the margins.”

A kind of anti-politicians posture has the potential to result in a divided or disengaged black left, which could help Biden. In fact, in some ways that posture has probably already helped him. The surveys of the Democratic race are essentially an early contest of their own, as this year’s polls determine who makes the debate stage and who receives the accompanying money and attention. Candidates with low poll numbers drop out (Kirsten Gillibrand) or struggle to raise money (Booker, Castro). Biden has held a huge lead among older black voters throughout 2019, while a bunch of candidates, including Biden, are splitting the younger vote. The Democratic race would look worse for Biden if the younger black vote was more consolidated.

I don’t know where black voters will land overall, nor do I know what role the black left will ultimately play in 2020 primary. But what’s clear is that many in the black left don’t want Biden to be the Democratic nominee, and yet may not mobilize to stop him or may not be organized enough to stop him, even if they wanted to.

At the same time, a Biden primary win would not be catastrophic for their movement, these activists say. They note that the former Delaware senator has embraced many of the black left’s ideas for changing the criminal justice system, such as abolishing the death penalty.

“In many cases, he is fighting the policies he enacted,” said Sinyangwe. “I don’t think it’s an indictment of the movement if Biden wins. It isn’t dependent on a single candidate winning.”

[dipulb3]

Progressive lawmakers reflect on wins and losses in Biden's first 100 days

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/progressive-lawmakers-reflect-on-wins-and-losses-in-bidens-first-100-days/

Progressive lawmakers reflect on wins and losses in Biden's first 100 days

With Democrats in the House operating with razor thin margins — the party can only lose two votes or else legislation ends in a tie — progressive power and the prospects of members withholding their votes will only further complicate the relationship between the White House and House progressives.

“The progressive candidate did not win the presidential nomination, and so we’re working within that,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat from New York, told Appradab. “But I don’t know who would disagree with just saying that, like, a lot of people are surprised by how ambitious, how much more the Biden administration has delivered, compared to their expectation.”

‘A lot of goodwill’

For Rep. Ro Khanna of California, it is often easier to get in touch with White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain than members of his own family.

“It’s pretty remarkable,” the progressive congressman told Appradab, adding that Klain’s responsiveness is not unique to him — he has heard the same from other progressives since Biden entered the White House.

The pair started working together after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race in April 2020 when Khanna, a former Sanders campaign co-chairman, joined unity task forces to negotiate with then-candidate Joe Biden over what could be adopted from Sanders’ platform, which ultimately won over progressives to help deliver Biden the White House.

These relationships, said Khanna, helped the Biden administration when passing their first priority, a Covid relief package, even if the package did not include some key progressive priorities like a $15 minimum wage.

“I think that that first push with the American Rescue Plan bought a lot of goodwill because it was packed with progressive ideas and progressive framing,” Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, told Appradab.

Ocasio-Cortez echoed that sentiment — “I think a lot of people thought the Covid bill was going to be worse, I’ll be honest,” she said — but the progressive champion added that there were serious conversations about the caucus withholding their votes when a minimum wage hike was stripped from the overall package.

Ocasio-Cortez said the saga highlighted how progressives in the House are focused on “fights that we can win,” an acknowledgment that overcoming the eight Democratic votes in the Senate opposed to a minimum wage was too high a bar for the caucus to defeat. But Ocasio-Cortez said she did seriously consider withholding her vote when Republicans tried to cut stimulus checks and change the threshold income that made individuals eligible, a fight in which progressives came out on top.

Progressives also argued that there was too much in the Covid relief package to hold up over the minimum wage fight.

“We didn’t get the minimum wage, and we hated that,” freshman progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman told Appradab. “We were organizing to potentially withhold then we decided not to because we needed to get resources into states.”

And without the Covid relief package as a vehicle, the path forward for progressives to deliver on raising the minimum wage is a steep one. For Chairwoman Jayapal, there are three, equally challenging options: Overrule the Senate parliamentarian if she decides the provision cannot be included in the next spending bill; abolish the filibuster, which currently does not have the votes in the Senate; or attach the provision to a must pass bill that progressives would withhold their vote over. But progressives like Jayapal said their patience on minimum wage wouldn’t last forever.

“They needed to get their Cabinet secretaries in place … they needed the rescue plan to pass, but at some point, there’s not going to be quite as much tolerance for a wait attitude on something that is so popular like the minimum wage,” the Washington Democrat said.

Looming fights

How progressives walk that line between sinking legislation and getting in line behind the Biden administration could determine the Democratic President’s success in the coming years.

And despite the warm feelings between House progressives and the Biden White House over the first 100 days in office, a minefield of issues loom over the relationship, highlighted most recently by the Biden administration’s less-than-clear approach to Trump-era caps on refugees entering the United States.

The Biden administration announced earlier this month that they would not raise the refugee cap as high as he had promised, instead signing an emergency determination that kept the cap at 15,000 people. The decision drew swift and pointed blowback from across the political spectrum, but more vocally from progressives like Ocasio-Cortez and others.

“Biden promised to welcome immigrants, and people voted for him based on that promise. Upholding the xenophobic and racist policies of the Trump admin, incl the historically low + plummeted refugee cap, is flat out wrong,” she said on Twitter. “Keep your promise.”

The blowback was so fierce that Biden’s administration backtracked, announcing hours later that they would set a new, increased refugee cap by May 15.

The Biden backtrack and progressive blowback could presage fights to come between the two sides and show that despite the positive feelings, acrimony is only one decision away.

“Despite campaign promises and early signs of a humane approach to immigration, they have failed to stop human rights abuses at the border, including keeping kids in cages,” Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, a former refugee herself, said in a statement to Appradab. “I’ve also been disappointed with many of their early foreign policy decisions — whether refusing to hold Saudi Arabia fully accountable for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and their ongoing deadly blockade of Yemen, or their refusal to lift draconian sanctions on Iran, Venezuela and others.”

The most pressing of those looming fights — and one that will be a test for the working relationship between the White House and House progressives — is the Biden administration’s latest push on reforming the nation’s infrastructure.

The day after Biden first announced the package, progressives issued five top priorities for the caucus. Seventeen senators sent Biden a letter on Sunday asking him to include improvements to the health care system in the package, Ocasio-Cortez and others are trying to make the package more climate focused. And progressive lobbying efforts on the bill have continued behind the scenes.

Those progressive priorities have become the backbone of Republican attacks on the bill, arguing that the Biden proposal is too broad and focuses on far more than just infrastructure. So far, there has been little Republican support for the bill, as it was rolled out.

The question for lawmakers like Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman and others is whether the caucus is willing to withhold their needed votes if they don’t get what they want in this package.

“People always go to that point of like, what is the line and where are you going to hold your votes and I always say, let us work to try to get it done,” Jayapal said. “That’s more important to me than just putting out a false deadline or a false line because I feel like we are still in that process.”

Why progressives don’t want to ‘rest on their laurels’

The fate of the ongoing relationship between progressives and the White House becomes increasingly precarious when considering progressives are feeling the pressure of needing to deliver on their campaign promises made to voters ahead of the 2022 midterms.

A progressive lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak openly about the deliberations with the White House, said the childhood tax credit in the Covid relief bill cannot be the only major legislative victory progressives bring back to their districts.

“That doesn’t speak to the heart and soul of voters,” the lawmaker told Appradab. “The question is our side going to be fired up to turn out. And that’s a challenge.”

That pressure is especially potent for lawmakers who were elected by arguing that Washington politicians often fail to deliver on the promises they make on the campaign trail.

“We don’t want anybody resting on their laurels because the first bill out the gate was okay,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who was first elected by upsetting 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary. “I’m trying to push as much on this infrastructure package as possible because, yeah, this one Covid bill is not enough work to show for an entire two-year House term or four-year presidential term.”

A key reason for that is because of pressure from outside progressive groups, many of whom have organized to both hold progressive leaders to their promises and push the Biden administration to listen to those progressive lawmakers. For example, the Green New Deal Network, which is comprised of 15 organizations located in all 50 states, hosted more than 200 events while the House was in recess in March to put pressure on lawmakers and the administration to pass a Green New Deal and incorporate its proposals in Biden’s infrastructure package.

Working Families Party national director, Maurice Mitchell, whose organization is part of the Green New Deal Network, outlined how organizers are trying to capitalize on the ear that progressives have with the White House at the moment.

“It’s clear that the Biden-Harris administration was listening” Mitchell said, referring to the organizing done that resulted in tangible progressive wins in the American rescue plan. “So, if they’re listening to progressives and the grassroots, and people in frontline communities, why would we stop talking?”

With that mentality, Mitchell said he views the Biden administration “as a door not a destination. Meaning that our advocacy does not stop at the election, it actually really begins.”

Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, characterized progressives’ relationship with the White House as “trust, but organize.”

“Trust, meaning there’s a general belief that the Biden White House genuinely wants to get there on things like a $15 minimum wage, massive investment in taking on climate change and canceling student debt,” he said. “But, you know, it’s up to organizing to ensure that the incentives are aligned for them to go bigger and faster.”

For Jayapal, it’s good that Biden has been more progressive than people had thought, but that hasn’t just happened — it’s the product of hard work.

“I think everyone is surprised at how progressive he is,” said the progressive caucus chairwoman. “That’s not an accident.”

[techmaqofficial]

Insurgent Wave in New York Pushes Old Guard Democrats Aside

Insurgent Wave in New York Pushes Old Guard Democrats Aside

[ad_1]

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said that last Tuesday’s elections were a “referendum on black lives” that signaled a political realignment was in progress.

“This was a ‘what side are you on’ moment,” he said.

The early results underscored a national trend in Democratic politics that seems to be playing out in New York, too: Candidates of color are…

[profoundpaul]

Black Leaders Claim Bernie Supporters Launching Racist Attacks After Support Thrown Behind Warren

Black leaders of the Working Families Party report that they have been under attack by supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont ever since the party endorsed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday. Maurice Mitchell, the National Director of the Working Families Party and an organizer with the Movement for Black Lives,…

The post Black Leaders Claim Bernie Supporters Launching Racist Attacks After Support Thrown Behind Warren appeared first on The Western Journal.

source https://www.westernjournal.com/black-leaders-claim-bernie-supporters-launching-racist-attacks-support-thrown-behind-warren/