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jed-thomas · 4 years ago

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Ministers with and without Portfolios

When you want to demonstrate your sincerity, you write a letter.

The summer is nearing its summit and 1982 is disappearing in a confused fog. Somewhere, Micheal Foot opens up an envelope. An ambitious young candidate, recently selected in some leafy suburb of London, has written to him. You can feel the youth in his writing - and, regrettably, a palpable eagerness to impress. Nevertheless, there are some admirable phrases:

Socialism ultimately must appeal to the better minds of the people. You cannot do that if you are tainted overmuch with a pragmatic period in power.

For men like Foot, members of a modern British tradition, politics and oratory are not separable. Even the timbre of your voice comes into it. On some cold picket-line, at some bored union congress, or against the baying of the other half of the House, you have to fill the air and rouse the spirits. In so many ways, the tradition of British socialism is a poetic tradition.

Maybe, then, he spots it a mile away. A lack of inspiration, the absence of a real perspective. That faint sense of pantomime. Or otherwise, Michael Foot, soon to be an ex-leader of the Labour Party, dimly registers the writer’s display of party-loyalty and just puts the letter aside. This man had crashed the party’s vote-share in Beaconsfield. Tony Blair is saving face.

Last Friday, it was announced that the constituency of Hartlepool would return its first Conservative MP in 62 years. Labour’s vote-share crashed by 16%. Perhaps most astonishingly, the Conservative victory in Hartlepool is only the second time in 40 years that a party in government has taken a seat from their opposition.

In immediate response, Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer MP moved to reorganise the Labour Party’s campaign office. Importantly, Deputy Leader Angela Rayner MP was removed from her position as Chair of the Labour Party, the position ultimately responsible for election campaigns. As the Deputy Leader is elected separately, Starmer’s decision has been criticised as an attempt to undermine the influence of a senior elected official. However, as the days have passed, Rayner has emerged with a new position - or, more accurately, a few new positions. Angela Rayner MP now shadows Michael Gove MP as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and occupies the newly-created, elegantly-titled office of Shadow Secretary for the Future of Work.

Former MP for Hartlepool and Minister without Portfolio under Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson has been named by sources within the party to Guardian columnist Owen Jones. According to Jones, Mandelson signed off the press strategy for Shadow Cabinet members following the result in his former constituency.

It’s raining in Stockport. The King Street bridge is abandoned. Looking at the slow river, she knows that she is a cliché, a tired punchline. And she knows that she’ll have to leave school. Other girls have done it, so she’ll get through it, too. But it’s an abrupt and unceremonious change to whatever path she was on before. 16 and pregnant. A joke. Then again, wasn’t this always the intended outcome, in one way or another? Cornered. It was going to be a long time before she understood that there was anything that could be done about that.

The wind takes a few of the leaflets out from under his armpit and scatters them all over the carpark of Oxted station. A favour, he thinks. It’s 8 in the morning, they’re all commuters. No-one’s taking them. As if some serious city lawyer is going to read about the future of proletarian resistance, let alone in a pamphlet handed to him by a spotty adolescent. East Surrey Young Socialists. He isn’t blind to the humour of that. Some preachy privately-educated Surrey boy. He had tried to explain that he’d gotten into Reigate fairly and squarely, that it’d only just started asking for fees in the last few years. Much to his chagrin, by the way. People around here don’t listen. If they did, they’d see that there was nothing to be scared of. But they’re closed off, rigid. It’s enough to make you want to pack it all in, honestly.

His father was staring out at the snow falling on the houses of Hampstead Garden in one of his attitudes of preparation. He had an abiding sense of danger, of impending calamity. Peter always attributed that to his religiosity. Eschatology. The End Times. “Have you compiled your application yet?” “Of course, Dad.” Peter knew the counterpoint melody. Your mother and I have worked too hard. He would say it like that because his mother is the real concerned party. Descendants of the Labour Party aristocracy are obsessed with elite education. He is pretty sure that he will get in. He’s clever, goes to a good grammar. And when he gets in, he is going to have fun, the sort of fun you can only have at a place like Oxford. Judgement Day is a long way off.

The Hampstead Garden Suburb was the brain-child of two idealist architects, Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker. The pair were disciples of the Arts and Crafts movement, an aesthetic philosophy with global reach that found particular purchase among British socialists; indeed, Unwin was a life-long and active member of various socialist organisations. Hampstead Garden was to be spacious, communal and open to all social classes. It was built on land purchased from Eton College by a wealthy patron. The Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust Ltd., established in 1906, executed Parker and Unwin’s designs.

Peter Mandelson was born in 1953 to an advertising manager and the daughter of Herbert Morrison, the Leader of the House of Commons under Clement Attlee. He was raised in the Hampstead Garden Suburb, attended a local grammar school and then, studied at Oxford. As a teenager, he was a member of the Young Communist League. At university, he joined the Oxford University Labour Club.

As a veteran in public relations by the time of Tony Blair’s bid for leadership of the Labour Party in 1994, Mandelson, distrusted by trade union representatives within the party, played his part in the successful campaign in near anonymity, being referred to by staff only as “Bobby”. In his acceptance speech, Blair used the moniker when expressing gratitude to his campaign team. After running Blair’s successful general election campaign a few years later, Mandelson was appointed to the office of Minister without Portfolio, allowing him to attend Cabinet meetings without having any formal obligations. Critics have likened it to a sinecure. In 1998, Mandelson resigned from government, having failed to declare dealings with millionaire Cabinet colleague, Geoffrey Robinson. He is now a peer, happy to be part of the club.

Oxted is an incredibly old town. When William the Conqueror ordered a survey in 1086, Oxted had its various assets - hides, churches, ploughs - recorded. It remained a sleepy time-capsule until it was reached by the new railway system in 1884 and run-off trade from London began to bring money into the town. At the beginning of the last decade, it was the twentieth richest town in Britain by income.

Born to a nurse and a toolmaker in 1962, Keir Starmer was named for the first parliamentary leader of what would become the Labour Party, Keir Hardie. He attended a grammar school and was the first in his family to graduate from university, obtaining an undergraduate degree in law from the University of Leeds. As a result, he undertook postgraduate study at Oxford and became a barrister in 1987. During this time, he edited Socialist Alternative, a controversial magazine associated with various factions on the Marxist left.

Starmer is a relatively green politician, having only been selected as a candidate for Holborn and St. Pancras in 2014. The majority of his life has been spent working in the legal system. In 2010, Starmer successfully prosecuted 3 Labour MPs and a Conservative peer on charges of false accounting. In 2011, he encouraged the rapid prosecution of several rioters, sometimes on the testimony of undercover police officers. In 2012, Starmer brought a case against former Energy Secretary Chris Huhne which resulted in the only resignation of a Cabinet Minister over legal proceedings in British parliamentary history. In 2020, as Leader of the Opposition, Starmer ordered Labour MPs to abstain on the third reading of the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill, which granted undercover police officers full legal immunity for all actions undertaken on duty. Desperate to be heard, Starmer re-tweeted a Guardian column by Angela Rayner MP, adding: ‘We’ll make sure you know Labour is on your side.’

Stockport lies just south-east of the City of Manchester at the point where the Rivers Tame and Goyt become the Mersey. Although bisected by the feudal borders of the counties Cheshire and Lancashire, it belongs to a different epoch. Stockport is a town with almost 300 years of industrial history, home to one of the first mechanised silk factories in the entire British Isles. Surveying all of England for his 1845 history ‘The Condition of the English Working Class’, Friedrich Engels remarked that Stockport was ‘renowned as one of the duskiest, smokiest holes’ to be found in the industrial heartlands.

By the time Angela Rayner was born on a Stockport council estate in 1980, the country seemed eager to be free of this history. This eagerness sometimes manifested as a disdain for trade unionists and benefit claimants. Both of Rayner’s parents were eligible for benefits. And at 31, Angela Rayner was a senior official for the public-sector union Unison.

Having left school at 16 to raise her first son, she got her GCSEs by studying part-time at Stockport College, where she eventually qualified as a social care worker. At work, she clashed with management, discovering a flair for negotiation that would get her elected as a union steward. Finally, after years and years of confusion and uncertainty, someone was being made to answer.

#hartlepool #labour #boris johnson #peter mandelson #tony blair #angela rayner #keir starmer #conservative party #owen jones

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Thursday, November 19, 2020

Most expensive cities (CNBC) Zurich and Paris have displaced Singapore and Osaka in a recent report on the world’s most expensive cities. The two Asian cities previously joined Hong Kong at the top of the rankings. That’s based on The Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest Worldwide Cost of Living index which shows how the coronavirus pandemic has affected the prices of goods and services in more than 130 cities as of September 2020. According to the report, Zurich and Paris’ jump to first place was due to the strengthening of the Swiss franc and the euro. “The Covid-19 pandemic has caused the weakening of the U.S. dollar while western European and north Asian currencies have strengthened against it, which in turn has shifted prices for goods and services,” said Upasana Dutt, head of Worldwide Cost of Living at The EIU. New York City is used as the base city in the index. The top ten: Zurich, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Osaka, Geneva, New York, Copenhagen, Los Angeles.

U.S., Canada, Mexico to extend border restrictions until late December (AP) U.S. land borders with Canada and Mexico are expected to remain closed to non-essential travel until Dec. 21 at the earliest amid a rising number of U.S. coronavirus cases, officials in Washington and Ottawa told Reuters on Wednesday. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the decision later on Wednesday in a post on Twitter. The restrictions were first put in place in March to control the spread of the virus and have been extended on a monthly basis ever since. In Ottawa, a Canadian government source said the travel restrictions in place at the Canada-U.S. land border would remain in effect for at least another month.

Recession With a Difference: Women Face Special Burden (NYT) For millions of working women, the coronavirus pandemic has delivered a rare and ruinous one-two-three punch. First, the parts of the economy that were smacked hardest and earliest by job losses were ones where women dominate—restaurants, retail businesses and health care. Then a second wave began taking out local and state government jobs, another area where women outnumber men. The third blow has, for many, been the knockout: the closing of child care centers and the shift to remote schooling. That has saddled working mothers, much more than fathers, with overwhelming household responsibilities. “We’ve never seen this before,” said Betsey Stevenson, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and the mother of a second grader and a sixth grader. Recessions usually start by gutting the manufacturing and construction industries, where men hold most of the jobs, she said. The triple punch is not just pushing women out of jobs they held, but also preventing many from seeking new ones.

U.S. to Drop Case Against Mexican Ex-Official to Allow Inquiry in Mexico (NYT) The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to drop drug trafficking and corruption charges against a former Mexican defense minister to allow Mexican officials to investigate him, Attorney General William P. Barr announced Tuesday in an abrupt reversal a month after the official was arrested in Los Angeles. The official, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, had been Mexico’s defense minister from 2012 to 2018 and was accused of taking bribes in exchange for protecting cartel leaders. But Mr. Barr and Mexico’s attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, stopped short in a statement of promising any charges in Mexico. In a court filing, prosecutors acknowledged that the Trump administration had determined that preserving its relationship with Mexico prevailed over pursuing the case. “The United States has determined that sensitive and important foreign policy considerations outweigh the government’s interest in pursuing the prosecution of the defendant, under the totality of the circumstances, and therefore require dismissal of the case,” they wrote in asking a judge to dismiss the charges.

Biden’s DIY transition proceeds without Trump assistance (AP) President Donald Trump’s refusal to cooperate with his successor is forcing President-elect Joe Biden to seek unusual workarounds to prepare for the exploding public health threat and evolving national security challenges he will inherit in just nine weeks. Blocked from the official intelligence briefing traditionally afforded to incoming presidents, Biden gathered virtually on Tuesday with a collection of intelligence, defense and diplomatic experts. And as the worst pandemic in a century bears down on the U.S. with renewed ferocity, the current administration is blocking Biden from collaborating with its response team. Biden’s representatives instead plan to meet directly with pharmaceutical companies this week to determine how best to distribute at least two promising vaccines to hundreds of millions of Americans, the biggest logistical challenge to face a new president in generations. The moves reflect how Biden is adjusting to a historically tense transition. With no sign that Trump is prepared to facilitate soon a peaceful transfer of power, Biden and his team are instead working through a series of backup options to do the best they can to prepare for the challenges he will face as soon as he takes office in January.

When Trump Goes, Can the Democrats Hold It Together? (NYT) The Democratic Party is struggling with internal contradictions, as its mixed performance on Election Day makes clear. Analysts and insiders are already talking—sometimes in apocalyptic terms—about how hard it will be for Joe Biden to hold together the coalition that elected him as the 46th president. The intraparty dispute burst out full force on Nov. 5 during a three-hour House Democratic Caucus telephone meeting. Moderates angrily lashed out at liberals, accusing them of allowing divisive rhetoric such as “defund the police” and calls for socialism to go largely unchallenged. Those on the left pushed right back, accusing centrists of seeking to downgrade the demands of minorities, including those voiced at Black Lives Matter protests. Abigail Spanberger, who represents the 7th Congressional District in Virginia—which runs from the suburbs of Richmond through the exurban and rural counties in the center of the state—voiced her instantly famous critique of the liberal wing of her party during the phone call: “We have to be pretty clear about the fact that Tuesday—Nov. 3—from a congressional standpoint, was a failure,” she told her Democratic colleagues. “The number one concern that people brought to me” during the campaign “was defunding the police.” And “We need to not ever use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again because while people think it doesn’t matter, it does matter. And we lost good members because of that.” Representative Rashida Tlaib, whose Michigan district is among the poorest in the country, and who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America—directly countered Spanberger and other moderates: “To be real, it sounds like you are saying stop pushing for what Black folks want.” Other Democrats who describe themselves as democratic socialists, including the former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, have become a substantial Democratic constituency.

Pandemic media syndrome? (Scientific American) According to Claudia Wallis, of Scientific American, recent studies have shown that the pandemic’s toll on mental health has been even worse than experts expected, especially among young adults. Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, found that “increased engagement with media coverage of the outbreak” is a major driver of anxiety among people of all ages. “If people are engaged with a great deal of media, they are more likely to exhibit and report distress, but that distress seems to draw them further into the media,” Silver says. “It’s a cyclical pattern from which it is difficult to extricate oneself.”

Sweden’s coronavirus strategy (Washington Post) Even Sweden appears to be abandoning the Swedish model. On Monday, the country’s authorities banned gatherings of more than eight people as they grappled with the second coronavirus wave surging through much of Europe. The new restrictions followed other protocols coming into effect this week, including protective measures around nursing homes and bans on alcohol sales at restaurants and bars after 10 p.m. The shift in tone is noteworthy given Sweden’s notorious light-touch approach to the pandemic. “It is a clear and sharp signal to every person in our country as to what applies in the future,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said during a news conference Monday. “Don’t go to the gym, don’t go the library, don’t have dinner out, don’t have parties—cancel!” Hospitalizations are rising faster in Sweden than any other European country, and Sweden’s per capita death rate is several times higher than those of its Nordic neighbors Finland, Denmark and Norway.

Amid pandemic, Belgrade street kids find comfort at refuge (AP) In a small, brightly-colored backstreet house in Belgrade a teenage girl is drying her hair, while two others eat lunch in the kitchen. A group of boys are having their temperatures checked at the entrance as a precaution against coronavirus. It’s another busy day for Svratiste, or Roadhouse, Belgrade’s first daily drop-in center for street kids that for years has been a rare oasis of warmth and comfort for the Serbian capital’s most vulnerable inhabitants. Since opening in 2007, Svratiste has welcomed hundreds of children—some as young as five—who have come here to warm up, wash or eat. With social isolation growing and the economic situation worsening in the pandemic, the center’s role has become even more significant. Apart from providing food and clothes, the Svratiste team has also sought to help the children socialize and get to know their town by visiting playgrounds, cinemas and theaters. A key effort has been to include them in the education system and make sure they stay. During the pandemic, the center helped with online classes that most children have no means of following. One of their success stories has been Bosko Markovic, now 18, who first came to Svratiste five years ago. With the center’s help, Markovic has finished high school and now has his eyes set on becoming a policeman, he told the Associated Press. “They (Svratiste) have made me a better person,” he said proudly.

Pompeo To Visit Israeli West Bank Settlements During Farewell Tour (Foreign Policy) U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Israel today as he continues his whistle-stop tour of U.S. allies. Before he heads to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, he is planning on making history. Pompeo will visit two Israeli settlements both considered in violation of international law, one in the Golan Heights and one in the West Bank. By doing so, he becomes the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit either site. His de facto endorsement of the Israeli occupation stands in contrast to the outgoing Obama administration’s moves in 2016, allowing passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory illegal by abstaining from (rather than vetoing) the vote. His visit also comes as Israel plans to expand a settlement in East Jerusalem, despite outcry from the United Nations and European Union.

Reassured by Biden Win, Palestinians Will Resume Cooperation With Israel (NYT) The Palestinian Authority said Tuesday that it was resuming its cooperation with Israel, ending six months of financial hardship for tens of thousands of West Bank residents and signaling relief over the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. It was one of the first clear signs that anticipation of a new administration in Washington is having an effect on international relations. The Palestinian announcement undid a set of stringent measures imposed by Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s president, in May in a desperate protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to unilaterally annex large portions of the occupied West Bank. The Trump administration had indicated it would support some form of annexation, which would have imposed Israeli sovereignty over land that the Palestinians have counted on for a future state. Mr. Abbas cut off security coordination with Israel, raising fears that attacks might go unprevented. He also severed civilian ties, including those that help Palestinians travel into Israel for work or medical treatment. Most painful of all to his own people, Mr. Abbas stopped accepting routine transfers of more than $100 million a month in taxes that Israel collects on the Palestinians’ behalf, funds that account for more than 60 percent of the authority’s budget. The lack of funds forced salary cuts for tens of thousands of public-sector employees, compounding what was already a devastating economic crisis because of the pandemic. “Praise God, I feel so relieved,” Rami Kitaneh, 35, a nurse at the Hugo Chavez Ophthalmic Hospital in the central West Bank, said Tuesday night. “I gave up so much since the start of the crisis, but now I can breathe.”

Security officials worry Israel and Saudi Arabia may see the end of Trump as their last chance to go to war with Iran (Business Insider) European intelligence officials are alarmed about the possibility of military action towards Iran in the waning days of the Trump administration. Concern that Trump—who has pushed for maximum pressure on Iran—or a combination of Israel or Saudi Arabia creating a military confrontation in the waning days of the administration has been a concern for over a week, according to three European intelligence officials who spoke with Insider. The news that last week the president requested a list of military options from his military and diplomatic advisors has sent these concerns into overdrive. One fear is of unilateral action by the US to force a military clash that might make it impossible for the incoming Biden administration to return to the 2015 joint nuclear agreement that traded sanctions relief on Iran for an end to its nuclear weapon programs, all three officials said. They declined to speak on the record in exchange for their candid views on the situation.

People go hungry in Ethiopia’s Tigray as conflict marches on (AP) People are going hungry in Ethiopia’s rebellious northern Tigray region as roads are blocked, airports are closed and the federal government marches on its capital in a final push to win a two-week war. “At this stage there is simply very little left, even if you have money,” according to an internal assessment by one humanitarian group, seen by The Associated Press. The assessment, based on a colleague who managed to get out, said people “will stay where they are, there is no place in Tigray where the situation is any different and they cannot cross over into the other regions of Ethiopia because of fear of what would be done to them.” For more than a week, the United Nations and other aid organizations have been warning of disaster. Long lines formed outside shops within days of the Nov. 4 announcement by Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that a military offensive had begun in response to an attack by Tigray regional forces on a military base. Trucks laden with food, fuel and medical supplies have been stuck outside the region’s borders. Banks in Tigray were closed for days, cutting off humanitarian cash transfers to some 1 million people. And even before the fighting, a locust outbreak had been destroying crops. Over 27,000 Ethiopians have fled into neighboring Sudan, burdening villages that have been praised for their generosity, though they have little to give.

#headlines #news

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viewwrangler · 6 years ago

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Chicago elections 2019

So it appears that as a result of last night’s effectively-a-primary election, Chicago will have

1) its second black mayor ever

2) its second woman mayor ever

3) its first black woman mayor ever, and

4) there’s a very strong possibility that it will have its first LGBT mayor ever

Not too shabby for one night’s elections, really.

Chicago poised to elect first African-American female mayor after Lori Lightfoot, Toni Preckwinkle advance (chicagotribune.com)

Chicago will elect its first African-American female mayor after former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle won enough votes Tuesday amid a record field of 14 candidates to move on to an April runoff election.

It’s only the second time Chicago has had a runoff campaign for mayor, which occurs when no candidate collects more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.

Unofficial results showed Lightfoot with 17.5 percent of the vote, Preckwinkle with 16 percent and Bill Daley with 14.7 percent, with 96 percent of precincts counted. [...] One of them will become Chicago’s second female mayor, following Jane Byrne, who served one term from 1979 to 1983. And if Lightfoot is elected, she would become the city’s first openly gay mayor. Both would become the second African-American elected Chicago mayor after Harold Washington, who served from 1983 until he died in 1987....

Historic Chicago election draws national spotlight, praise from black, LGBTQ communities: 'I think Chicago is potentially ready to turn the corner' (chicagotribune.com)

[...] after Tuesday’s election winnowed down 14 mayoral candidates to two African-American women, one of them openly gay, both Chicago voters and national political groups are focusing instead on how the city’s politics are set to change. [...] Longtime Chicagoan and former presidential candidate the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a Facebook post that he “could not be prouder” of Chicago. “For the first time in history, the next mayor of Chicago will be a black woman,” Jackson said. “Two progressive African-American women will square off in the April 2 mayoral runoff. I could not be prouder of my beloved city. We made herstory tonight.”

Live Chicago election results (chi.vote)

It will be interesting to see how the votes redistribute in the April final election. Turnout will be sharply lower, one suspects -- it generally is in what feel like special elections -- which may favor Preckwinkle. Assuming that she can shed being attached somewhat indirectly to a big, spreading corruption investigation in City Hall, that is. (There was a big hand-wringing Tuesday morning and afternoon about turnout being sharply lower in this election -- they were predicting it could be the lowest and oldest and whitest turnout this century -- but there was a late surge that was bigger, younger, and browner. ‘Cause millennials -- and damn near everyone else -- gotta work, y’all. It may be a rule/union requirement that some people get time off for voting, but hell if there’s a single business going to let ‘em, you hear me?)

I am kind of impressed that the whole thing about Lightfoot being a lesbian -- and married with children, even -- is more or less relegated to a sort of, “Oh? Yeah? Interesting. But how’s she going to handle the unfunded pension mandates without raising taxes?” issue. As it should be. (Also, pretty sure the pension issue can’t be handled without more tax increases, unfortunately.)

Elsewhere in our elections, we seem to have a theme:

Chicago’s Election Signals Break from the Past — in Wards and at City Hall (propublica.org)

... That evening, as totals streamed in, it became clear that voters demanded a change. Hadden overwhelmed Joe Moore, a 28-year incumbent, with 64 percent of the vote. She became the first openly queer black woman elected to the City Council, and one of the first black aldermen ever to come from the North Side....

[...] Months ago, Moore sensed that his re-election bid in the city’s far northeast corner could be tough. He watched from afar as 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez toppled another Joe, longtime U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley, in a diverse, liberal New York City district not unlike the 49th Ward. In the age of President Donald Trump, Democrats seen as compromising or shopworn are sometimes viewed as part of the problem....

[...] By Tuesday afternoon, Hadden thought she had a chance. “But if nothing else, we’ve got new people voting, new people involved in the campaign, and we’re going to keep organizing,” she said. “In some ways, we’ve already won by putting the community’s vision first.”Within a few hours, she had won the election, too....

Teary Wrigleyville Ald. Tom Tunney claims victory in fight versus Ricketts family (chicagotribune.com)

A teary Ald. Tom Tunney claimed victory in his Wrigleyville battle against Cubs owners the Ricketts family [...] Fighting back tears, Tunney told supporters that he has sought to make sure the neighborhood is “successful with Wrigley Field in it.”

At his side was Mayor Emanuel, who said it’s important to support people who work hard, build schools, and invest in public safety and neighborhoods. “Tom's done that, and the people obviously reflected that,” Emanuel said."I think when you have somebody come in and say they're going to try to bigfoot the voice of the constituents, it's very important to see results like this," Emanuel told the Tribune. Asked if that was referring to the Ricketts family, which funded a group that sent out mailers against Tunney, the mayor brushed the question aside....

I should think the mayor would “brush the question aside”, yes.

Ald. Tom Tunney Holds On To His Seat In 44th Ward (blockclubchicago.org)

Incumbent Ald. Tom Tunney is poised to hold on to his seat in the 44th Ward.

With 95 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, Tunney had 63 percent of the vote, according to the Chicago Board of Elections. Challenger Austin Baidas was at 26 percent and Elizabeth Shydlowski was at 11 percent.

Tunney addressed supporters at a campaign party at El Jardin in Lakeview with outgoing Mayor Rahm Emanuel by his side.

“I’m grateful to the neighborhood for their support and will continue to work with the Cubs to make sure Lakeview remains one of the best neighborhoods in the city,” Tunney said. “I always have and always will believe in being a collaborative leader for the city.”

In the lead up to the election, the Ricketts family, owners of the Chicago Cubs, were linked both openly and behind the scenes to efforts to unseat Tunney... [...] Tunney, owner of Ann Sather restaurants, became the first openly gay alderman when he was first elected in 2003.

Apparently the Ricketts believe that the proper position for an Alderman in a ward in which they have major interests is supine, preferably beneath their feet. (Full disclosure: I know and like Tom Tunney, and it’s not as if the Ricketts have never gotten anything they want regarding the Cubs, as long as the requests are reasonable and can be balanced with the interests of the people who live there and whom Tom actually, you know, represents. He’s not particularly obstructionist. They just don’t get everything they want, they frequently don’t get it the way they want, and they don’t get it anything like as fast as they want. They get something, the people who live there get some concessions as well. Isn’t that the way this is all supposed to work? But I digress.)

We may even wind up with a few outright Socialists (well, US style socialists) on the city council (chicago.suntimes.com) after the April runoffs.

And apparently we have a vote buying scandal in the 25th ward? Really? Huh.(It looks like the ward was having all sorts of issues, in fact, since poll watchers had been sent to observe for an entirely separate problem.) It seems to have been at least somewhat successful, since the person buying the votes made it to the runoffs -- to replace an alderman who is leaving office because he was wired for sound in a corruption investigation, and now appears to have gone to ground. Seriously, you’d think that maybe someone would realize that people would actually be paying attention to the ward under these circumstances. (Irrelevant side note: the political conspiracy in the film “Widows” assumes a lot more competence than is sometimes in evidence in this city.)

That said, being indicted for federal crimes is apparently no bar to a campaign; Alderman Burke was re-elected without even having to go to a runoff. (”He may be a crook, but he’s OUR crook!” kind of sentiment, I guess. And allegedly, he was competent in his corruption. At least, he knew better than to buy votes on the day of the election in the polling place, anyway.)

#chicago #politics #chicago politics #chicago mayoral election #chicago elections

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berniesrevolution · 6 years ago

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CATALYST JOURNAL

Viewed by many as the most promising development for the global left in decades, the Pink Tide is in retreat. To understand its decline, this essay compares its rise and achievements to the rise of the region’s classical left, which emerged following the Cuban Revolution. Whereas the classical left’s accomplishments were rooted in the structural leverage of industrial labor, the Pink Tide has been based on movements of informal workers and precarious communities. The Pink Tide built its base from a social structure that had been transformed by two decades of deindustrialization and industrial fragmentation. This had two critical implications — it gave newly elected governments far less leverage against ruling classes than the earlier left, and it also inclined them toward a top-down, clientelistic governance model, which turned out to be self-limiting. In the end, Pink Tide regimes were undone by their own constituents, whereas the classical left was toppled by the elites that it attempted to dislodge.

The new millennium unleashed a wave of popular rebellions in Latin America, which propelled a number of left governments into power. These governments came to be known as the Pink Tide, and while they have not pursued full-blown “red” policies, they received enthusiastic support from radical quarters, including from some of our leading thinkers. Noam Chomsky, for instance, praised the achievements of the new reformers in the areas of democracy, sovereign development, and popular welfare.1The ability of these countries to soften neoliberalism’s worst effects, empower popular sectors, and stand up to US domination mark a welcome rebound from the prior “lost decades” of market fundamentalism and social exclusion. In the global context, the Pink Tide contrasts starkly with full-blown neoliberal continuity in the capitalist core and the discouraging outcomes of the Arab Spring in the Middle East.

Yet the tide is receding, and unlike daily coastal ebbs, the decline of the region’s left is a longer-term retreat of reform governments. After Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999 as an outsider populist-nationalist, Lula, the historic leader of the Workers' Party, was elected president of Brazil in 2002, followed by Nestor Kirchner in Argentina in 2003, Evo Morales in Bolivia a year and a half later, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador one year after that. They and their successors enjoyed impressive runs. But beginning in 2015, key losses initiated a reversal of the Left’s fortunes. That year, elections took down reform Peronism. Then followed a “constitutional coup” that toppled Dilma Roussef in Brazil. Rafael Correa’s coalition in Ecuador is crumbling after his reform candidate just eked out a win. Although Morales’s hold on power remains firm, when Nicolás Maduro goes in Venezuela, bringing down with him what remains of the Bolivarian Revolution’s accomplishments, the cycle will be complete.2

How should we evaluate the Pink Tide? What is its true record of achievements and failures? What undercut its promise and reversed its ascent? Interestingly, most assessments, from friends and foes alike, point to avoidable mistakes made by politicians and their parties. From the Right, analysts divide Latin American reformers into good and bad lefts, arguing, unsurprisingly, that Pink Tide shortcomings emanate from their original populist sin. There, while natural rents could buy popular allegiance, such patronage corroded stable republican institutions, irreparably polarized political and civil society, and inevitably led to fiscal disaster. Others from the Left, mostly radicals, point not to its demagogic overreach, but to the reformers’ docility and acquiescence to elite power. Here, reformers are scolded for not going far enough; indeed, even the “wrong” strategies scorned by conservatives confined themselves to limits “permitted” by business elites, seeking to restore neoliberal legitimacy.3

Such critiques of the Pink Tide reformers share a curious commonality. Both adopt voluntarist approaches to assessing the region’s left turn. Resurrecting a hobbyhorse of revolutionary socialists — notably pounded by those who argue that revolutionary opportunities have routinely been squandered in absence of “correct” leadership lines4 — they focus on the decisions made by those in charge of the reform process. But they ignore, or give scant attention to, the opportunity structure in which these forces operated. Assessing the tactics of officials and activists in this fashion makes for, at best, an incomplete analysis. However much we sympathize with their programs, we need to understand how the circumstances of their rule substantially constrained their choices. The region’s contemporary left can best be evaluated only by situating its record within contemporary structural conditions.

A structural perspective that corrects for the voluntarist judgements of the Pink Tide urges us to move from a focus on the will of reformers to their abilityto affect change. After all, how can we thoughtfully assess left governments’ willingness to challenge elite power without first mapping the contours of what was feasible? The international left, both allies and critics of the Pink Tide, needs a capacity-based assessment to generate a more solid appraisal of the accomplishments and limitations of the post-2000 left turn in Latin America. More importantly, placing the Pink Tide in its proper context offers invaluable lessons for new popular struggles currently taking shape in the region. Without an understanding of the structural conditions in which radicals operate, it will be impossible to design a strategy to overcome the failures of a left surge that seemed so promising. To do so, this paper proposes a comparison between the Pink Tide and the region’s classical postwar left.

What Once Was and What Might Have Been

The excitement and expectations awakened by the Pink Tide’s emergence was directly proportional to the deep pessimism that had engulfed radicals and socialists after two decades of defeat and surrender. The scope of the Left’s retreat had dimmed the memory of the tremendous achievements of popular classes in the previous era. Beginning in the late 1950s, a new wave of radical movements, labor upsurges, and left parties either took power or succeeded in forcing the ruling class to make significant concessions. In many ways, this radical left realistically put socialism on the region’s agenda — both in terms of democratically planned economic development and genuine popular rule. Reviewing the bases of the pre-neoliberal left’s gains will help us better understand how the changed context of the 2000s constrained the Pink Tide and contributed to its decline.

LATIN AMERICA’S CLASSICAL LEFT

Latin America’s prior radical surge culminated between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s.5 Although its defining characteristic was the militancy of workers and other popular urban sectors, this left cycle originated with the 1959 Cuban Revolution and closed with the demise of the Central American campesino-based insurgencies. The classical Latin American left did not replicate the Cuban Revolution’s distinctive dynamics and features, but the barbudos’ triumph was instrumental in opening a new radical path.

For one, it broke with Moscow-dominated Communist Parties’ Popular Front orientation, which hinged on alliances with modernizing capitalists. The key characteristic of the new left was its forceful rejection of subordinating working-class organization and demands to the requirements of a so-called bourgeois-democratic stage of development. It relied instead on militant class struggle to achieve decisive influence over, rather than remaining subsidiary to, the ruling class. And reflecting the radical policies implemented by the Cuban revolutionaries, this generation of the Left adopted a program of expanding and deepening the structural transformations unleashed by bourgeois modernizers. These involved comprehensive land reform, a thorough nationalization of key productive sectors, and the decommodification of vast swaths of social provision. In addition, the classical left proposed a profound democratization of political and economic affairs.

Of course, this more radical agenda sometimes created fissures between the forces leading the militant movements and their representatives in the state — as witnessed in the debates that wracked Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government in Chile — but overall the classical left agreed that state power was a lever to push forward their transformative agenda. In the postwar period, this agenda was pursued via two distinct routes: labor insurgency in the growing manufacturing sectors of South America, and, a decade later, agrarian insurgency in the countryside of Central America.

The first strong challenges from the Left emerged from the rising militancy of Southern Cone labor movements. Though workers’ socialist parties only came to power in Chile with Allende’s 1970 election, militant labor movements shaped state policies throughout. Alongside a growing agitation among rural masses for land, Brazilian unions took the initiative to break through the bonds of estado novocorporatism, pushing the Goulart government to adopt pro-labor reforms in the 1960s. Meanwhile, militants within the Argentine labor movement began to exert ever-greater influence, and, in alliance with radicalizing Peronists, led a labor insurgency that repeatedly forced military governments to abdicate power. Similar pressures pushed a nationalist military government in Peru in progressive directions. By the early 1970s, most major Latin American economies confronted the specter of widespread working-class revolt and, along with it, the imprint of significant social and institutional reforms.

When South American labor’s assertiveness was beat back, the region’s radicalism was not yet totally defeated. With the urban working class in the most industrially advanced countries in check, rebellion spread across Central America with seismic force. When mass movements for democracy and basic social rights for plantation labor and peasant communities arose and collided with landed oligarchies’ recalcitrance, new people’s armies emerged from organized rural communities and armed insurgency engulfed Nicaragua, El Salvador, and, to a lesser extent, Guatemala.6 Soon, these rural and mass revolutionary movements lost their effectiveness. The Sandinista revolution was brought to its knees by US-organized military intervention and a ferocious blockade, while stalemates and negotiated transitions weakened the other two insurgencies.

In sum, the post-Cuban Revolution Latin American left was founded on the mobilization of the working class and popular sectors. It strove to displace the ruling class from power and aimed to advance toward some kind of socialism and radical democracy. It is ironic, then, that the classical left acquired a reputation for having a narrow, class-reductionist approach in its demands and cultural priorities. Without a doubt, it raised the material standards and improved the livelihoods of all subaltern groups. But the classical left’s impact went far beyond “mere” economic improvements for working masses. No other political force in the region’s history contributed as much to democratizing political and social life across the board as the postwar left. Besides elevating popular sectors into forces to be reckoned with in national political arenas, the breadth and depth of the classical left’s reform program had enormous impacts on gender and racial equality. Indeed, we owe the completion of democratization in Latin America to that generation of radicals.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #catalyst #catalyst journal #jacobin #brazil #latin america #socialism #democratic socialism #social democracy

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antoine-roquentin · 6 years ago

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Early this month, Cori Bush was defeated in the St. Louis MO congressional primary, by Congressman Lacy Clay. Clay has held the seat since inheriting it from his father in 2001, and his father had it for 32 years. That’s 50 years of a congressman named Clay. Missouri’s first district includes Ferguson, an inner suburb of St. Louis. When four summers ago we saw a handful of public officials in the streets trying to chill out Ferguson protesters, there was a black congressman among them. But that was Emanuel Cleaver, from Kansas City, not the black face who’s family by then had repped the district a good 45 years.

Challenger Cori Bush lost no opportunities to remind people that Clay was AWOL during the entire Ferguson episode, but it was not enough. Bush campaigned on free college, not accepting corporate money, raising the minimum wage, restraining killer cops, more money for public education and Medicare For All, but that wasn’t enough either. She had a great personal story too, a single mother who earned a nursing degree, and spent a while living out of her car. Bush won the backing of Justice Democrats, a national outfit that had quite a lot to do with the mechanics of the Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez campaign in the Bronx a few weeks before. Unlike Ocasio-Cortez, Bush is not a member of Democratic Socialists of America , and has never identified herself as a socialist.

So how exactly did she lose? Nobody else seems willing to offer explanations, beyond shallow wisdom that “St. Louis MO ain’t da Bronx.” The folks who had a thousand good reasons Ocasio-Cortez was the front end of a blue wave have passed on explaining why this blue wave missed in Missouri.

The first thing to see is the obvious, that St. Louis really is NOT the Bronx. Ocasio-Cortez was a working class Puerto Rican woman in a largely Latino district, and her opponent was a 20 year incumbent white guy who was obviously ready to leave for a more lucrative career as a lobbyist. Lacy Clay on the other hand, really wanted to keep that St Louis congressional seat. In 2016 he faced another black woman who’d been tear gassed in the streets of Ferguson, state rep Nadya Chappelle-Nadal, who got 24 thousand votes to Clay’s 56 thousand. So unlike Crowley in the Bronx, Clay didn’t sleep the 2018 race, he ran up 81 thousand votes to Bush’s 53 thousand.

Another dimension in which St. Louis is not New York is voter turnout. New York Republicans and Democrats have deliberately engineered primary elections for low turnout, requiring votes to register as Democrats many months prior to election day just to be eligible. But in Missouri you show up and ask for the Democrat ballot. So Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s 57% of the vote was just under 17 thousand. But Clay’s 57% share in Missouri was 81 thousand, again to Bush’s 53 thousand. Ocasio-Cortez said it took 120,000 phone calls to get that. I don’t know yet how many calls Bush needed to get her 53 thousand but I’ll be asking.

We have to look at the national organizations which backed Ocasio-Cortez, Bush and the rest of this blue wave which is supposed to swamp Congress and state legislatures in 2018. There are at least 3 organizations which help raise money, funnel experienced campaign help, do social media, recruit national phone and text banking assists and more. Those would be Our Revolution, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats. Brand New Congress claims to have “recruited” Ocasio-Cortez, who was previously one of those in charge of Bernie Sanders’ New York effort. A leader of Justice Democrats served as Cori Bush’s communications director, and both outfits named Bush, who’d run statewide in Missouri for US Senator in 2016, as one of their own. Unlike Ocasio-Cortez Cori Bush has never been a DSA member either, and has never called herself a socialist.

What Brand New Congress, Our Revolution, and Justice Democrats have in common are three things.

The first is a common commitment to taking over or rescuing the Democratic party.

The second is a real reluctance to make any but the sketchiest reference to anything that takes place outside the US – as if the US didn’t have troops in a hundred foreign countries, at least 800 bases in a hundred countries and a trillion dollar military budget supported by most of the Democrats in Congress. Justice Democrats has a statement at the end of their foreign policy that seems to put the military budget around $100 billion instead of the actual trillion, which ten times that size. Cori Bush’s page is typical of the blue wave, it doesn’t mention anything on foreign policy or empire at all.

The most optimistic way to see this collective blind spot is that maybe the blue wave of Congressional candidates don’t want to incur the wrath of the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is running about 40 former CIA, Homeland Security, State Department, local police and military types for Congress this year, and has plenty money for last minute negative media offensives against would be peacenik congressional candidates in places where they don’t even have candidates.

The least optimistic view is that sketchy or absent references to US empire and foreign policy are how the blue wave candidates signal their willingness to adopt the imperial consensus if they are lucky enough to get elected. After all four fifths of the Congressional Black Caucus and just over half the House Progressive Caucus just voted for Trump’s record military 2019 military budget.

The third thing they all have in common is that few or none have distanced themselves from the drumbeat of RussiaGate, the nonsense that holds Russia responsible for Trump’s victory in 2016, that posits a credible ongoing Russian plot to steal the US elections. To our knowledge none of the blue wave candidates nor the national outfits which back them have stood apart from themselves tendency to label anybody to their left stooges of Russia either.

Bringing it back to St. Louis, Cori Bush had to face something Ocasio-Cortez didn’t. It was something her blue wave backers hadn’t dealt with either. It was the peculiarities of black politics in the US. The 1st CD Missouri is 50% black and there are some unique and well established characteristics of the Democratic party in districts like that, whether they’re in Chicago or Philly or Dallas or Atlanta or wherever.

The first is the black church, which is ridden with local, and since the advent of Bush’s and Obama’s faith based initiative, federal patronage. Black churches are often tied hand and foot to local politicians for everything from real estate deals to charter school contracts, and their leaders are often fixtures in local Democratic party affairs, even public officials themselves. The second is the nonprofit industrial complex, a literal army of advocacy groups sometimes doing housing and homeless activism, sometimes feeding the hungry, sometimes doing worker centers, womens health, tenants rights, LBGTQ activism, environmental stuff. There’s another section of the nonprofit industrial complex which can’t even be called nonpartisan with a straight face, offshoots of the NAACP and the Movement 4 Black Lives. These forces are tied to the political preferences of their corporate philanthropic funders. Executive directors of nonprofit organizations who don’t find a way to support the right Democrats in primary season and all Democrats in general election put their careers, the livelihoods of all their employees, and the outfit’s good works in jeopardy. And there are the unions – heavily public sector and disproportionately people of color, again all tied to the most right wing established Democrats on the local, state and federal level.

Unlike the troops the blue wave outfits can raise once every two years, these things are permanent institutions in black communities. Remember when Atlanta civil rights icon John Lewis stood up in Ebenezer Baptist Church to tell young black folks that free college tuition and free medical care were un-American and the crowd was with him? That’s the complex of forces against which relatively leftist electoral candidates in black communities must run. In old school political language that’s called a Machine, a standing bunch of political institutions which can put significant money into broadcast ads and mailings, speakers and preachers into pulpits, hundreds of bodies in the street and hundreds more the phone banks. Clay had them, and Bush did not. All Bush had was what she could raise on the issues.

The big blue wave outfits probably hadn’t done much work in black communities and didn’t know this. Maybe they were listening to DSA theoreticians like Adam Hiton who imagine the Democratic Party in such places has no real organization. But it’s organized, and it’s very, very real. If you’re going to knock out the right wing Democrats who dominate the electoral politics of black communities you have to do more than hire the right black consultants, although they and the Movement For Black Lives Electoral Justice Project will be glad to keep taking your money. Somebody has to build some other permanent organizations, some other centers of popular power in those communities. It hasn’t been done yet, and won’t be done before the 2018 midterm elections. That’s why Bernie didn’t crack the black vote in 2016, and that’s why the blue wave didn’t crash Missouri in 2018. It’ll be why the wave misses in other black constituencies.

these four orgs (DSA, Our Revolution, Justice Democrats, and Brand New Congress) form the main part of the “Bernie-electoral complex”. essentially, they offer to secure the consent of enthusiastic young workers with enough spare time to be electoral volunteers for the party in exchange for concessions from the Dem donor class, ie unions, lawyers, tech companies, non-profits, etc, on social welfare. thing is, most people in dire straits tend to go for the sure bet over any potential shift in electoral loyalties, which is why machine politics tend to go so well, at least until they don’t. they prefer to have the political patronage they know they already get, even if it’s very minimal, than to risk it on an unsure thing and watch it slip away.

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theliberaltony · 6 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Graphics by Rachael Dottle

Over the long course of the Republican presidential nomination process in 2015 and 2016, we frequently featured a diagram called “The Republicans’ Five-Ring Circus.” The chart was based on the idea that the GOP essentially consisted of five different constituencies: the establishment wing, the moderate wing, the tea party, libertarians and Christian conservatives. Each presidential candidate’s goal was to dominate his or her constituency or “lane” (for example, Rand Paul would have been looking to win libertarians, or Jeb Bush to win establishment voters), and then unify with the other constituencies to claim the Republican nomination.

Except it didn’t exactly work out that way. Donald Trump, a candidate who didn’t fit neatly into any of the lanes, won instead.

In retrospect, President Trump had a fair amount in common with the tea party movement — we sometimes placed him there in the chart, and sometimes put him outside of the five circles entirely. But he was really running as more of a mix of a tea party populist on issues such as immigration1 and a Northeastern moderate on economic policy. (In Pennsylvania, for instance, Trump did just as well with self-described moderate voters as with conservatives.) Problematically, our five-ring circus chart didn’t even consider the possibility of candidate who overlapped between the moderate wing and the tea party wings of the GOP. Trump also won over a significant number of evangelical voters, even though he had not exactly abided by a “family values” lifestyle, nor did he make a particular priority of issues such as abortion.

So for the 2020 Democratic nomination, we’ve resolved to entertain multiple hypotheses about the contest simultaneously. Perhaps the party will decide, and so we should be looking at how much support each candidate has from party elites. Perhaps the candidate most dissimilar to Trump will win, and so we should be evaluating the candidates based on that criteria. Perhaps the primary is just so hard to forecast that you might as well look at the polling, crude as it might be. (It has more predictive power than you might think.)

We’ll see. But we nonetheless think that (despite its mixed success in 2016) the coalition-building model is also a useful tool, especially if we make a few tweaks to how we applied it four years ago.

Just as with the Republicans in 2016, the concept this time around involves considering five key groups of Democratic voters. Here are those groups:

Party Loyalists

The Left

Millennials and Friends

Black voters

Hispanic voters (sometimes in combination with Asian voters)

You’ll notice that these groups aren’t mutually exclusive. A 26-year-old Latina who identifies as a democratic socialist would belong to groups 2, 3 and 5, for example. There might be modest tension between some of the groups — for instance, between Party Loyalists and The Left — but it’s possible to imagine candidates who appeal to voters in both of those constituencies. (Ohio’s Sherrod Brown or Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren might appeal to both The Left and Party Loyalist voters, for example.) Indeed, whichever candidate wins the Democratic nomination is going to have at least some buy-in from all five groups, even if some groups don’t buy in beyond considering the nominee the lesser of two evils against Trump.

So rather than thinking about “lanes,” we’re taking a more pluralistic approach with the Democrats. Candidates don’t have to pick any one group; rather, their goal is to build a majority coalition from voters in (at least) three out of the five groups. There are a lot of ways to do this: If you’re choosing any three from among the five groups, there are 10 possible combinations to pick from,2 and all of them plausibly form winning coalitions. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton assembled a coalition of Party Loyalists, black voters and Hispanic voters, largely ceding the other two groups to Bernie Sanders, but still winning the nomination with room to spare.

The other difference from how we handled the Republicans four years ago is that, with the exception of The Left, none of these groups are explicitly ideological in nature. That’s not to say that they don’t have somewhat different priorities; millennials might place more of an emphasis on the environment than the other groups do, for example. But these groups encompass a mishmash of ideology and identity. They’re chosen because they represent the dividing lines in recent Democratic Party primaries — but they don’t necessarily span a clear spectrum from left to right.

One obvious question you might have before we proceed further: Why aren’t women one of the groups? The answer is that women represent almost 60 percent of the Democratic primary electorate3 and so they’re a major portion of all of these groups. In fact, women are likely the majority of all of these groups, with the possible exception of The Left, which skews male. So when you think of a default voter from one of these groups, you should probably think of a woman.

Since this is really my first major foray into analyzing the 2020 Democratic presidential derby — I’ve had a lot of thoughts percolating about the candidates, but haven’t really put them to paper before — I’m going to take some time with it. In this article, I’ll lay out the five groups, how they’ve voted in the past, and what they might be looking for this time around. Next week, we’ll follow up with another couple stories that lay out my thoughts on individual candidates — although the big honkin’ graphic you see below provides some teasers about how some potential contenders measure up.

As a final warning, while you’ll see plenty of polling and other empirical evidence cited in this analysis, it definitely reflects a mix of art and science. It’s early, and there isn’t all that much hard data yet. Some patterns from past nominations will hold and others will not. Unavoidably, some of this is going to look silly a year from now (and probably even a few weeks from now). Just know that if I missed something that gives Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar an obvious appeal to Hispanic voters, or that allows New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu to rise from relative obscurity to win the nomination, everyone else back when I was writing this probably did too.

Group 1. Party Loyalists

Demographic profile: Mostly older, white and upper-middle class. And mostly women. Many are politically active and count themselves as members of the #Resistance. As a rough guide, Party Loyalists probably represent around 30 percent of the Democratic electorate; in the Illinois Democratic primary in 2016, for example,4 about 30 percent of voters selected “experience” or “electability” as their top candidate quality and voted for Clinton rather than Sanders.

What they value in a candidate: These voters are capital-D Democrats who care about the fate of the Democratic Party and generally go along with what party elites want. They tend to trust established brands, although they also care a lot about electability.

Ideological preferences: On economic policy, Party Loyalists can span a reasonably wide range, but they’re certainly more liberal than left — that is, while they may favor substantial changes to the system, they don’t want to completely remake the American economy. With that said, the Democratic Party’s platform has shifted to the left overall, and Party Loyalists aren’t the type to buck the consensus on, say, a higher minimum wage. On social and cultural issues, Party Loyalists hold conventionally liberal attitudes, being strong supporters of abortion rights and gay marriage and gun control — but being older and mostly white, they sometimes regard the other groups as too radical on issues related to race.

Who they supported in recent Democratic primaries: Party Loyalists supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for the most part also supported Clinton in 2008, although with a fair number of defections to Barack Obama. But they’re usually on the winning side of the primaries; they supported John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.

Group 2. The Left

Demographic profile: Going by membership statistics in the Democratic Socialists of America, this is the most male and the whitest of the five Democratic groups, although it’s becoming more diverse, especially among younger voters. A fair number of voters in The Left are independents rather than Democrats. They’re mostly college-educated, though not necessarily wealthy. The Left is probably somewhere around 25 percent of the Democratic electorate. In the Illinois Democratic primary in 2016, for example, 27 percent of voters said that Clinton’s positions were not liberal enough, while 24 percent said the same in Ohio.

What they value in a candidate: This is the most ideologically driven of the Democratic groups. Most obviously, they want candidates who they think will pursue left-wing economic solutions, e.g. higher taxes on the wealthy, Medicare-for-all and free college tuition, perhaps as part of a “Green New Deal.” In a broader sense, The Left thinks the status quo is broken and that capitalism doesn’t work at all or at least needs to be managed with much more government intervention — so they prefer candidates who they think will upset the apple cart over those who merely promise to reform existing institutions. The Left doesn’t trust the establishment’s instincts on “electability” and considers Clinton’s nomination to have been a debacle.

Ideological preferences: See above on economic policy. On social policy, there are quite a few divisions within this group, with some (mostly younger and urban) left-wing voters holding more liberal and “intersectional” views on issues related to race and immigration and other (mostly older and rural) voters being more “populist” and even taking conservative stances on some of these issues. On foreign policy, The Left favors a smaller military and can be more isolationist than the other Democratic-leaning groups, and it is also suspicious of free-trade agreements.

Who they supported in recent Democratic primaries: They supported Howard Dean in 2004 and Bernie Sanders in 2016. It’s less clear what they did in 2008; some voters in The Left may have preferred John Edwards initially, and then would have been lukewarm toward both Clinton and Obama.

Group 3: Millennials and Friends

Demographic profile: By one definition, millennials were born between 1982 and 2004, meaning that they’ll be somewhere between 16 years old (and thus not yet eligible to vote) and 38 years old in 2020. Although youth turnout can vary from election to election, that will likely make them somewhere on the order of 30 percent of the Democratic primary electorate in 2020. Age is not always among the most important characteristics in predicting voting behavior, but there was a huge, glaring exception in 2016, with Sanders winning overwhelmingly among millennials but Clinton dominating among baby boomers. Apart from being young, this is the most racially diverse of the Democratic groups. Many think of themselves as independents rather than Democrats. By “Millenials and Friends,” I mean that there are some Democratic voters, especially in urban areas, who are too old to be millennials (they’re the “friends”) but whose cosmopolitanism makes them fit in better with the millenials than with any of the other groups.

What they value in a candidate: It isn’t entirely obvious, as the candidates they’ve been attracted to in different cycles (Sanders in 2016, Obama in 2008) don’t necessarily have an enormous amount in common with one another. But it’s safe to say that young voters prefer “change” candidates to the status quo, which would usually translate to younger rather than older politicians. As you might expect, this group’s media consumption habits are way different than those of older voters: Voters under 30 are about twice as likely to get their news online as through the television. And they turn out less reliably than older voters. So candidates hoping to win this group must be able to be able to attract and hold these voters’ attention via social media.

Ideological preferences: On average, millenials care about racial justice, access to education and environmental issues more than older Democratic voters do. Younger voters view socialism much more favorably than older ones do, but the story is more complicated than millennials simply being further to the left: Younger voters5 also have more favorable views of libertarianism than older ones do, for example. Put another way, millenials are less wedded to the dominant political philosophies and labels of the previous generation and are willing to consider a fairly wide range of alternatives to replace them.

Who they supported in recent Democratic primaries: They preferred Sanders in 2016 and Obama in 2008. Most millennials weren’t old enough to have voted in 2004, but Dean overperformed among those who did.

Group 4. Black voters

Demographic profile: Black voters represented 19 percent of people who voted for Democratic House candidates in 2018, according to the national exit poll — so conveniently enough (since we have five groups) they’re about one-fifth of the Democratic electorate. Black voters are poorer and younger than other Democrats on average, and about 60 percent of black voters in Democratic primaries are women.

What they value in a candidate: After sometimes fractious racial politics in the Democratic Party of the 1980s and 1990s, in recent years there’s been an implicit alliance between black voters and the Democratic Party establishment. That’s served the interests of both groups fairly well; of the five voting blocs I’ve mentioned here, black voters were the only ones to back the winning candidate in both 2008 (Obama) and 2016 (Clinton). They were also a key part of John Kerry’s winning coalition in 2004. Thus, like Party Loyalists, black voters have traditionally been pragmatic and have placed a high emphasis on electability, preferring candidates whose mettle has been tested. Even Obama had to overcome initial skepticism as he didn’t poll that well among black voters in 2007 and 2008 when the campaign first began. However, there’s an emerging generational split among African-Americans, as black voters under 30 narrowly backed Sanders over Clinton in 2016 despite overwhelming support for Clinton among older black voters.

Ideological preferences: Black voters have traditionally been more religious and more socially conservative than other Democrats, having been relatively slow to support gay marriage, for example. They’re generally liberal on economic policy, although there’s sometimes tension among black voters about candidates (such as Sanders) who are seen as emphasizing economic justice rather than racial justice. Again, however, there are important generational divides within the black community. Groups such as Color of Change have been more willing to endorse platforms that emphasize both social (e.g. voting rights and criminal justice) and economic (e.g. the minimum wage) priorities.

Who they supported in recent Democratic primaries: Black voters backed Kerry in 2004, Obama in 2008 and Clinton in 2016.

Group 5. Hispanic voters, sometimes in conjunction with Asian voters

Demographic profile: OK, a bit of explanation here. I’ve gone back and forth on whether to group Hispanic and Asian voters together. The case for doing so: Both groups are made up predominantly of relatively recent waves of immigrants to the U.S. and their descendents; Hispanic and Asian voters tend to be concentrated in the same states as one another (e.g. California); they prioritize similar issues (see below); voters in both groups are younger than average and have historically had low rates of voter registration and turnout; and Hispanics and Asians mostly voted similarly in recent Democratic primaries (backing Clinton in both 2008 and 2016). The case against: On average, Asian-Americans live in better economic circumstances than Hispanics (although there’s a lot of variation) and the two groups can sometimes split when there are black or Asian candidates on the ballot, as in the California Senate race in 2016, when Asian voters went overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris while Hispanics narrowly backed Loretta Sanchez. All things considered, Hispanic voters and Asian voters are likely to have correlated preferences, but in a field with a dozen or more candidates, it’s possible they won’t vote the same way. Hispanic voters are around 15 percent of the Democratic primary electorate and Asian voters are around 5 percent, so together, they make up about 20 percent of the vote, or roughly the same share as black voters.

What they value in a candidate: Because Hispanic and Asian voters were a small fraction of the electorate until recently, it’s hard to come to as many historically driven conclusions about their preferences. But Hispanic voters put a major emphasis on economic issues and generally favor a relatively high degree of government intervention in the economy (as do Asian voters). In that sense, they tend to be fairly pragmatic and solutions-driven voters, especially on pocketbook issues. And although immigration is important to these voters, issues related to health care, education and the economy consistently rate as higher priorities in surveys of both Hispanic and Asian-American voters.

Ideological preferences: As among black voters, there are important generational divides among Hispanics and Asians. For instance, many older Hispanic Democrats describe themselves as “moderate” or “conservative.” (For a long time, especially after George W. Bush performed comparatively well with Hispanic voters in 2004, the conventional wisdom was that they were center-right “family values” voters). Younger Hispanics tend to be more liberal, especially on social issues, by contrast. But both older and younger Hispanics have a highly negative view of the Republican Party and of Trump. Asian-American voters are similar to Hispanics in many respects, although they tend to be a bit more liberal on social issues. Both Hispanics and Asians favor a bigger government that provides more services.

Who they supported in recent Democratic primaries: Hispanic and Asian voters predominately backed Clinton in both 2008 and 2016. Hispanics were also an important part of Kerry’s coalition in 2004.

Next week, I’ll analyze individual candidates in more detail. But you can probably predict which candidates do relatively well according to this heuristic and which have a more challenging path. It’s easy to identify three or four groups within the party that Harris or Beto O’Rourke might have a lot of natural appeal to, for example. It’s harder to do the same for someone like Sanders.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Nate Silver

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uk-news-talking-politics · 6 years ago

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Corbyn's democratic deficit: Will the Labour leader stick to democratic norms?

By Colin Talbot

Is Jeremy Corbyn a democrat? His fan-base will obviously reject such a question out of hand. Even those who aren't quite so besotted with the Labour leader might still think it a bit provocative. But actually, it turns out to be more difficult to answer than you might suppose.

One reason it's hard to answer is that Corbyn rarely, if ever, talks about democracy – except as applied to Labour party internal affairs. He has also deleted from his personal website links to most of the articles and speeches he has given since he was first elected as an MP in 1983 – over three decades' worth.

But we can come up with a fair analysis. A useful place to start is Labour's 2017 Manifesto. A section entitled Extending Democracy states that the party "will establish a Constitutional Convention to examine and advise on reforming of the way Britain works at a fundamental level".

This potentially very radical proposal received virtually no attention during the general election or since. The BBC summary didn't even mention it. But its importance can hardly be understated.

The UK has virtually zero history with constitutional conventions – a device usually invoked when a country faces a major crisis or change, such as a revolution, independence or well, an authoritarian power grab.

It's interesting that just when Corbyn was unveiling his idea for a constitutional convention, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro – with whom he has close ties - was doing the same. Following a large-scale protests, he tried to bypass Venezuela's 1999 constitution and its National Assembly by appointing an assembly loyal to himself. He did this on May 1st 2017, just as Labour's manifesto was being finalised.

Labour's constitutional convention, on the other hand, would be "about where power and sovereignty lies". Yet there is nothing in the manifesto about how it would be constituted, very little about what it would consider and no description of what its limits would be. A search of Labour's 'policy forum' website returns zero results.

So it could be nothing or it could be… something. Labour's proposal – and its general attitude to democracy - deserves much greater attention.

There's a good starting point for judging this type of thing in one of the most interesting political books of last year: How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. The central message of their book is that modern democracies are less often overthrown through military coups than they are eroded by authoritarian populist leaders using the rhetoric of giving 'power back to the people'.

One very interesting section of their book sets out a handy guide to "key indicators of authoritarian behavior". It is worth applying them to Corbyn's Labour.

The list is:

Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game

Denial of legitimacy of political opponents

Toleration or encouragement of violence

Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media

Let's take them in turn.

Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game

There is some evidence of this in the recent past. A video released on Twitter recently showed that in 2011 Corbyn attacked voters for rejecting his preferred candidate. "I condemn the people of Milton Keynes for the mistakes that they made in the May election," he says.

There is also the treatment of MPs. In representative democratic systems, MPs are elected to represent the whole country, not the party. Unlike parties which are influenced by Communist traditions, like South Africa's ANC, they are not considered 'deployees'.

But there are disturbing signs that Labour sees its MPs as just that – 'deployees' who should be completely under the control of their local party members, with any deviation punished by deselection. Labour MP Chris Leslie pointed out in September last year, after facing a vote of no confidence himself, how a wave of such threats was spreading across the party. Several MPs have fought similar battles against left-wing activists in their local organisation.

This is a clear break with UK constitutional norms. MPs are representatives of their constituents not of their local party memberships, which is a very small slice of the electorate.

Denial of legitimacy of political opponents

Levitsky and Ziblatt also ask: "Do they baselessly suggest that their rivals are foreign agents … secretly working in alliance with (or the employ of) a foreign government".

Many of Corbyn's supporters do frequently attack their own internal Labour party critics, as well as other parties, in intemperate terms. Internal critics have been denounced as 'Tories', 'Blairites', and more recently 'centrists', which in this context is derogatory and often implies a wish to undermine the leadership. Some Jewish Labour MPs have been subjected to anti-semitic abuse and many on social media are told that they are agents of Israel. This sort of abusive politics is operating at a level of intensity we've not seen in recent decades. But it is happening, it has to be said, across the political spectrum. And it's not yet at the level seen in the US under Donald Trump or Hungary under Viktor Orban.

Toleration or encouragement of violence

Despite attempts to hide his past, Corbyn's support for, or excusing of, violence by 'national liberation' movements in Israel/Palestine, Ireland and elsewhere is well documented. Only two weeks after an Brighton bomb, he invited convicted IRA volunteers Linda Quigley and Gerry MacLochlainn to the House of Commons.

In 2011, McDonnell told a 'Unite the Resistance' rally that he wanted to see a situation where "no Tory MP can travel anywhere in the country or show their face in public without being challenged by direct action". He also said: "Any institution or any individual that attacks our class, we will come for you with direct action."

In June 2017, immediately after a general election which Labour lost, McDonnell said "a million people should take to the streets to force Theresa May from power".

Readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including media

There is no evidence that a Corbyn government would curtail civil liberties in general, or specifically those of their political opponents. Corbyn's hostility to the hated "mainstream media' is obvious but there is, as yet, little evidence that would translate into restrictive measures against it.

The track record of socialist governments in power is not so positive, however. Corbyn has been strangely silent about the repressive and clearly authoritarian Maduro regime in Venezuela. He continues to back other repressive socialist governments like Cuba, and has had links to other authoritarian regimes in Iran and Russia as well as the Hamas rulers of Gaza.

In that he is of course no different from many Western democratic politicians of the left, right and centre who have frequently befriended or supported repressive regimes overseas for a variety of motives – some legitimate, others less savoury. It doesn't make him an incipient authoritarian himself.

So, is Corbyn a democrat or an incipient authoritarian? There is something troubling about the casual way the constitutional convention was thrown into the 2017 Labour manifesto, especially when you think of the way he, his frontbenchers, and his supporters sometimes behave. It certainly raises questions about how far they really respect, or even understand, democratic norms. There is plenty of evidence that they are willing to bend, if not break, them.

At the very least the UK electorate deserve to be told how Corbyn would like to change the way Britain works "at a fundamental level". His record raises enough questions to demand that we be given more answers.

#jeremy-corbyn

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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What Did Obama Say About Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-did-obama-say-about-republicans/

What Did Obama Say About Republicans

Etymology Of Obama Republican

Fmr. President Obama Mocks Trump’s Middle-Class Tax Cut: âCongress Isnât Even In Sessionâ | NBC News

On February 12, 2008, Barack Obama mentioned Obama Republicans in his Potomac primary victory speech: “We are bringing together Democrats and independents, and yes, some Republicans. I know there’sI meet them when I’m shaking hands afterwards. There’s one right there. An Obamacan, that’s what we call them.” In another speech, he said, “We, as Democrats right now, should tap into the discontent of Republicans. I want some Obama Republicans!” In his call for Republican votes, Obama referred to Ronald Reagan, who he says “was able to tap into the discontent of the American people … to get Democrats to vote Republicanthey were called Reagan Democrats.”

RepublicansforObama.org was founded in December 2006 by John Martin, a US Navy reservist. The organization grew to include over 2,500 registered members from across the United States, and was featured in USA Today, The New Yorker and other media throughout the 2008 Presidential Campaign.

Republican And Conservative Support For Barack Obama In 2008

United StatesPresidentBarack Obama, a member of the Democratic Party, was endorsed or supported by some members of the Republican Party and by some political figures holding conservative views in the 2008 election. Although the vast majority of Obama’s support came from liberal constituencies, some conservatives identified in him shared priorities or other positive attributes. As in any election, voters can and sometimes do cross party lines to vote for the other party’s nominee. Republican and conservative Obama supporters were often referred to as “Obama Republicans“, “Obamacans” or “Obamacons“.

Republican and conservative supporters of Obama included elected officials, former elected officials, academics, commentators, and retired military officers. According to exit polls on Election Day, 9% of those who identified themselves as Republicans voted for Barack Obama, conflicting with polling data gathered by The Economist in October 2008 reporting 22% of conservatives favored Obama, up slightly from the 6% of self-identified Republicans who voted for John Kerry in 2004.

Moment Of Shame: Obama Calls On Republicans To Speak Out In Response To Us Capitol Violence

Former US President Barack Obama condemned the violence that took place at US Capitol on Wednesday and said history will remember the incident as one incited by the sitting President and it was a moment of great dishonour and shame for America.

Hundreds of Trump supporters entered the US Capitol in a bid to overturn his election defeat. The violence that followed led to the death of one woman. The Senate, which was disrupted in its process of certification of Biden as the winner in the November 3 election, resumed it soon after officials declared Capitol secure.

Heres my statement on todays violence at the Capitol, Obama tweeted.

Barack Obama

Read full statement:

History will rightly remember todays violence at the Capitol, incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation. But wed be kidding ourselves if we treated it as a total surprise.

For two months now, a political party and its accompanying media ecosystem has too often been unwilling to tell their followers the truth – that this was not a particularly close election and that President-Elect Biden will be inaugurated on January 20. Their fantasy narrative has spiraled further and further from reality, and it builds upon years of sown resentments. Now were seeing the consequences, whipped up into a violent crescendo.

Read Also: Why Do Republicans Hate Planned Parenthood

Obama Says Republican Party Has Become Unrecognisable In Shift That Started With Palin

In this screengrab, Former president Barack Obama speaks during the Celebrating America Primetime Special on 20 January 2021

Expressing worry about Americas state of democracy, Barack Obama criticised the Republican party for being cowed into accepting positions that would be unrecognisable and unacceptable even five years or a decade ago.

In an interview with CNNs Anderson Cooper, the former president said when he left the White House, he thought there were enough institutional safeguards in place, including the Republican establishment.

He said he did not believe things would get this dark when Sarah Palin in 2008 brought the dark spirits such as xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward Black and brown folks to the centre stage of the modern Republican Party.

I thought that there were enough guardrails institutionally that even after Trump was elected, he said.

The degree to which we did not see the Republican establishment say hold on, time out, not acceptable but rather be cowed into accepting positions that would be unrecognisable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago…, Mr Obama said.

In his memoir, A Promised Land, Obama blamed Ms Palin for ushering a shift in the Republican party towards populist sentiment at its centre.

He, however, lauded some Republicans including Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger for being very brave and standing up to Mr Trump.

Ies Run Even On Key Issues

The Republican Party runs about even with the Democratic Party on three key issues: the economy, immigration and gun control. In recent years, neither political party has held a decisive advantage on these issues. The Democratic Party led on the economy through much of George W. Bushs second term and Obamas first year in office. But since 2010, about as many have favored the GOP as the Democrats.

Similarly, neither party has had a consistent advantage on dealing with immigration. The current survey finds opinion split evenly; Democrats held a slim advantage in late 2012, while Republicans held a slight edge in 2011.

And while the gun debate has drawn significant public attention over the past four months , it has not resulted in an advantage for either political party. In the immediate wake of the shootings in Newtown, Conn., Americans were divided over which party could better address gun control, and that divide persists today.

Independents are split over which party can do the better job on key issues. Overall, 38% of independents say the Republican Party could do the better job on the economy while nearly as many say the Democratic Party. Similarly, independents are divided over who can better address immigration and gun control . On all three issues, about a quarter of independents volunteer no preference between the two parties.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Obama: More Moderate Republican Than Socialist

The president rejected criticism from conservatives that he is a socialist.

Obama: I Would Be Considered Moderate Republican in the 80’s

During an interview with Noticias Univision 23, the network’s Miami affiliate newscast, Obama pushed back against the accusation made in some corners of south Florida’s Cuban-American and Venezuelan communities that he wants to instill a socialist economic system in the U.S. The president said he believes few actually believe that.

“I don’t know that there are a lot of Cubans or Venezuelans, Americans who believe that,” Obama said. “The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican.”

See Also:

Obama’s comments come amid the contentious debate over how to resolve the “fiscal cliff,” in which the White House and Congress are trying to figure out whether to extend a series of tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year while staving off steep spending cuts to domestic and defense programs set to go into place at the beginning of 2013.

For years amid the brooder debate over taxes and the size of government, Obama has been characterized by some on the right as a socialist who wants to redistribute wealth. They cite Obama’s healthcare law in particular as a massive increase in the size of government.

Michelle Obama Says Gop Is Willing To ‘tear Down Democracy’ Urges Dem Turnout In Georgia Runoffs

“We cant just vote for President and think that our job is done,” wrote Obama on Twitter

In a series of tweets published one day before Georgia’s Senate run-off election, former First Lady Michelle Obama urged voters to turn out, saying a vote for the Democratic candidates would be “another step toward cleaning up the mess of the past four years.”

The eight-tweet-long thread offered a strongly-worded rebuke of both;Donald Trump and the Republican Party in general, which Obama said had amplified the president’s false claims about election fraud while ignoring the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“Your vote is your voice. Its your power. And right now, from the President of the United States on down, were seeing and hearing just how desperate some are to take that power away,” Obama wrote. “They want us to believe that their pride is more important than our democracy.”

She continued: “And this is just unconscionable at a time when a staggering number of Americans are dying every day from a virus that was downplayed for far too long. Its unconscionable to focus on overturning an election rather than helping struggling families or distributing a vaccine.”

RELATED: Michelle Obama Recalls Putting Her ‘Anger Aside’ for Transition of Power to Donald and Melania Trump

“These runoffs will decide whether President-Elect Biden has a Senate that will work with him rather than just obstruct him at every turn,” Obama continued.

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The Affordable Care Act

In 2013, Senator Ted Cruz responded to the question “Why Donât We Impeach ?” with “Good question… and Iâll tell you the simplest answer: To successfully impeach a president you need the votes in the U.S. Senate.” That year, when asked if Obama had committed impeachable offenses on immigration and health care, Cruz said the implementation of the Affordable Care Act was “lawless”, and said of impeachment, “Thatâs a question for the House ultimately… My responsibility would be to render judgment.”

Congressional Opposition To Impeachment

Republicans react to Obama’s success

A number of prominent Republicans rejected calls for impeachment, including House SpeakerJohn Boehner, and Sen. John McCain. McCain said impeachment would be a distraction from the 2014 election, and that if “we regain control of the United States Senate we can be far more effective than an effort to impeach the president, which has no chance of succeeding.” Rep. Blake Farenthold said that impeachment would be “an exercise in futility.”

Don’t Miss: How Many Republicans Are Now In The House Of Representatives

Ways Obama Tries To Work With Republicans And Is Rejected

To President Obamaâs critics, he will never bring about the era of bipartisan cooperation that he campaigned on in 2008, but the facts prove otherwise.

The presidentâs nomination of conservative Republican Chuck Hagel to his cabinet is just another example in a long line of Obamaâs attempts to reach across the aisle and work with a recalcitrant Republican minority. Here are a few other gems, as we highlight some of Obamaâs most bipartisan gestures of his first term and the Republican response.

1) Keeping Robert Gates as secretary of defense

In January, 2009: Obama is inaugurated and immediately seeks out Republican lawmakers willing to work with his new agenda. He makes it a point to maintain Robert Gates as his Secretary of Defense. Some Republicans on the Hill even whisper that Obama was working with them more than Bush ever did.

Republican response in January, 2009: Rush Limbaugh welcomes the president with a hearty âI hope he fails.”

2) Obama meets with pro-choice and pro-life advocates

In May, 2009: Obama begins the first of several sessions meeting with pro-choice advocates and their detractors in order to help design legislation that protects both the lives of women and the unborn.

3) Obama listens to Republicans on health care

4) Obama compromises on 2010 budget deal

5) Obama compromises on “fiscal cliff”

Public Debate Over Impeachment Demands

In terms of background, U.S. public opinion widely opposed efforts made to impeach previous Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. CNN Polling Director Keating Holland has stated that their organization found that 69% opposed impeaching President Bush in 2006.

According to a July 2014 YouGov poll, 35% of Americans believed President Obama should be impeached, including 68% of Republicans. Later that month, a CNN survey found that about two thirds of adult Americans disagreed with impeachment efforts. The data showed intense partisan divides, with 57% of Republicans supporting the efforts compared to only 35% of independents and 13% of Democrats.

On July 8, 2014, the former Governor of Alaska and 2008 RepublicanVice Presidential nomineeSarah Palin publicly called for Obama’s impeachment for “purposeful dereliction of duty”. In a full statement, she said: “Itâs time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment.”

Andrew McCarthy of the National Review wrote the book Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case For Obama’s Impeachment, which argued that threatening impeachment was a good way to limit executive action by Obama .

Also Check: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Obama Explains His Remark About Punishing Enemies

After House Minority Leader John Boehner chided him for using the term “enemies”in a conversation last week with Univision Radio, President Obama offered an explication for his remark in an interview today with talk radio host Michael Baisden.

Following is Mr. Obama’s “enemies” quote from the Univision interview:

“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us’ — if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election — then I think it’s going to be harder. And that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2nd.”

Here is what Boehner said about Mr. Obama’s use of the word “enemies” in prepared remarks for a speech Monday night.

Mr. Obama told Baisden that he should have used the word, “opponents,” rather than “enemies” . According to his language parsing, presumably some Republicans candidates are “opponents,” not “enemies,” of provisions, such as comprehensive immigration reform. Understood?

Obama: Gop Blocked 500 Bills

President Barack Obama is railing against congressional Republicans, telling a Hollywood crowd that the midterm elections are crucial because the GOP is willing to say no to everything.

The president, speaking at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee event Wednesday evening hosted at Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horns home, said Republicans have been obstructionist since even before he took office.

Their willingness to say no to everything the fact that since 2007, they have filibustered about 500 pieces of legislation that would help the middle class just gives you a sense of how opposed they are to any progress has actually led to an increase in cynicism and discouragement among the people who were counting on us to fight for them, Obama said of Republicans.

The conclusion is, well, nothing works, the president continued. And the problem is, is that for the folks worth fighting for for the person whos cleaning up that house or hotel, for the guy who used to work on construction but now has been laid off they need us. Not because they want a handout, but because they know that government can serve an important function in unleashing the power of our private sector.

Obama opened by saying that he is in trouble at home, because in 2012 he had told his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, that he had run his last campaign.

Also Check: Did Trump Call Republicans Stupid In 1998

Trump Says He Wants To Box Biden On 9/11

Former President Barack Obama said Republicans have been “cowed into accepting” a series of positions that “would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago,” telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper he is worried about the state of democracy in the United States in an exclusive interview that aired Monday.

Obama Says He’d Be Seen As Moderate Republican In 1980s

President Obama said his economic policies are “so mainstream” he’d be considered a moderate Republican in the 1980s.

In a Thursday interview with a Miami-based local television station, Obama said he thinks few people believe he wants to impose socialism on the country.

“I mean, what I believe in is a tax system that is fair,” he continued. “I don’t think government can solve every problem. I think that we should make sure that we’re helping young people go to school. We should make sure that our government is building good roads and bridges and hospitals and airports so that we have a good infrastructure.

“I do believe that it makes sense that everyone in America, as rich as this country is, shouldn’t go bankrupt because someone gets sick, so the things I believe in are essentially the same things your viewers believe in,” Obama said.

Conservatives frequently raise concern that Obama has turned the U.S. toward socialism, pointing to Obama’s healthcare law and the stimulus bill the president championed shortly after taking office.

After Obama won reelection, former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Fox News said his win would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy because “Obama’s socialist policies” will “destroy America’s working class as he outsources opportunities.”

“I don’t know that there are a lot of Cubans or Venezuelans, Americans who believe that,” Obama said.

Here’s a full transcript of the interview with Obama:

Don’t Miss: How Many Republicans And Democrats Are In The House

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hollywoodjuliorivas · 5 years ago

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Why Biden Is the Change Candidate

Sanders’s grand hopes won’t come true.

Nicholas Kristof

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

March 4, 2020

765

Joe Biden thanking supporters on Super Tuesday.

Joe Biden thanking supporters on Super Tuesday.Credit...Josh Haner/The New York Times

If you want to oust President Trump this fall and then achieve far-reaching changes such as universal health care, whom should you vote for?

Until last week, the answer for many was Bernie Sanders, the champion of a “political revolution” that includes Medicare for All. But increasingly there’s a sense that in practice the real “change candidate” may be Joe Biden — because he has a better chance of winning the presidency and helping to elect a Democratic Congress — and that’s why he was the big winner on Super Tuesday.

This was a triumph of pragmatism, an embrace by voters of a candidate they like rather than one they love, and that’s why Biden is now apparently the Democratic front-runner.

“I’m here to report that we are very much alive,” Biden announced after his Super Tuesday victories. Until South Carolina voters weighed in on Saturday, people were checking his campaign to see if rigor mortis was setting in.

Continue reading the main story

Angry Bernie voters may protest furiously that it was the “establishment” that revived Biden to seize a prize that seemed theirs. But that’s wrong. Biden’s rescuers weren’t party elders but a marginalized constituency that is often taken for granted: Southern blacks.

It was black voters who gave Biden a huge win in South Carolina on Saturday, reviving his fortunes and clarifying his role as the alternative to Sanders. It obviously helped that Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar exited the race and, along with Beto O’Rourke, endorsed Biden in time for Super Tuesday (and Klobuchar may end up Biden’s running mate, while Buttigieg could end up in a Biden cabinet). But this wasn’t a coronation; it was a groundswell among moderates fearful that a Sanders nomination would be a Republican dream.

We in the pundit world are awful at predictions, and we should all be humbled by the conventional wisdom of 2016 that Trump was unelectable. Still, Sanders is the single most liberal member of the Senate, according to GovTrack, and old-timers remember what happened to Barry Goldwater on the right and George McGovern on the left. Democratic members of the House — who presumably know something about their own districts — say that it would be harder for them to win with Sanders at the top of the ticket.

At a dinner with a dozen Democratic House members recently, I was struck by how worried some were that a Sanders nomination would cost them any chance of a Democratic Senate and might even hand the House itself back to Republicans.

I’m closer to some of Sanders’s positions than to Biden’s, and I particularly admire Sanders’s leadership and authenticity on human rights issues like Yemen. But I don’t think Sanders would be able to accomplish his aims as president any more than he has been able to as a senator (he was a primary sponsor of only seven bills that became law, and they are mostly insignificant items, such as naming post offices or designating “Vermont Bicentennial Day”).

Continue reading the main story

What the Democrats need to stage a revolution, or even a healthy evolution, is to win not only the presidency but also the House and the Senate. Democrats flipped the House in 2018 with moderate candidates running on a practical, limited agenda, while progressives running in swing districts did poorly, and that’s a lesson for 2020.

Winning the Senate for Democrats got tougher with Roy Moore’s defeat in the Republican primary in Alabama on Tuesday, for Moore would have made it easier for Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat, to be re-elected. The betting markets suggest that Republicans have a better chance of winning the House than the Democrats do the Senate.

Republicans sometimes seemed giddy about the prospect of a Sanders nomination. Trump’s tweets suggested that he was terrified of Biden and Mike Bloomberg, and it’s no accident that Republicans were calling for investigations into the Biden family rather than into allegations about the Sanders family and Burlington College.

In Arizona, when Senator Martha McSally tried to discredit her Democratic rival, Mark Kelly, her strategy was to release an ad accusing him of being a “Bernie Bro.” Being a “Biden Bro” conjures something less frightening.

Biden is plodding and uncharismatic, but he has solid working-class credentials and he’s also one of the most decent people in politics. His empathy is hard-won from the pain of the loss of two children. Samantha Power, the former ambassador to the United Nations, says Biden would give out his private cellphone number to strangers who had suffered great personal loss, saying: If you feel low and have no place to turn, call me.

I think the Democrats with Biden have a good chance of winning the presidency, holding the House and perhaps taking the Senate. An economic slowdown seems likely because of the coronavirus, which also highlights Trump’s administrative incompetence. And Republican rhetoric about Democrats as socialists — the theme of CPAC this year was “America vs. Socialism” — is laughable if Biden is on top of the ticket.

So while Biden’s proposals aren’t as soaring as Sanders’s, nor as comprehensive as I would like, they strike me as more achievable. In that sense, Biden may be the real candidate of change.

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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‘I’m not trying to build a national profile’: Brindisi plays it safe in upstate New York

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/im-not-trying-to-build-a-national-profile-brindisi-plays-it-safe-in-upstate-new-york/

‘I’m not trying to build a national profile’: Brindisi plays it safe in upstate New York

The freshman Democrat from central New York’s sprawling 22nd congressional district won a tight race last year in a district Donald Trump carried by 15 points in 2016. | Twitter

SHERBURNE — More than 200 miles from the New York City district that catapulted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to progressive superstardom last year, Rep. Anthony Brindisi is straining to hold on to the center.

The freshman Democrat from central New York’s sprawling 22nd congressional district won a tight race last year in a district Donald Trump carried by 15 points in 2016, helping his party reclaim the House. But now he’s doing his best to distance himself from the party’s vocal left, Ocasio-Cortez included, and also from the liberals who control all the levers of power in Albany for the first time in years. It’s a struggle. And Republicans believe the seat can be flipped again next year.

Story Continued Below

Brindisi’s predicament is a reminder that even in liberal bastions like New York, some Democrats are eager to keep it local rather than engage in the issues that animate the party’s left wing. That’s why on a recent summer’s evening in this village of a little over 1,000 people 45 minutes west of Cooperstown, Brindisi focused not on the Green New Deal or “Medicare for All,” but on a litany of complaints from constituents. They ranged from issues with broadband and cable service providers (too few options, speakers said) to service quality (impeding the ability of their kids to do online schoolwork) to an ongoing dispute between AT&T and media conglomerate Nexstar, which has blacked out a number of local news stations in Central New York.

“It’s very deliberate, because I’m not trying to build a national profile,” Brindisi said in an interview. “It can be challenging sometimes, because being more of a moderate, you will get hit by incoming fire, not only from your left flank, but from the right flank as well.”

Brindisi’s victory last year was not seen as a bellwether of shifting local politics, as Ocasio-Cortez’s primary win over longtime incumbent Joe Crowley was, or partly the result of changing demographics, which helped Antonio Delgado unseat John Faso in a Hudson Valley seat. The 40-year-old former state legislator was in the right place at the right time, capitalizing on Republicans’ health care foibles and one-term incumbent Claudia Tenney’s penchant for inflammatory and conspiratorial rhetoric, which alienated people in her own party.

Brindisi is well aware of those circumstances, and he’s betting that voters will reward his careful centrism in 2020 as he operates far from the spotlight of fellow Democratic newcomers like Ocasio-Cortez, or even Rep. Max Rose of Staten Island, whose media-friendly brashness has elevated him as a counterweight to the insurgent left. He made good on a campaign promise to vote against Nancy Pelosi as House speaker — a high-profile display of independence — and he has brushed aside calls to impeach Trump.

“When I talked to folks in this district who come to town hall meetings, the first issue when they wake up in the morning and think about is not impeachment or the president, it’s ‘how am I going to put food on my table today?’” Brindisi said. “Regardless of what the national party does, I know what my message will be. It’s continuing to focus on those bread and butter issues that will actually help people in places like upstate New York.”

There’s no question that the district favors Republicans. Last year, when Brindisi unseated Tenney by 4,400 votes, the GOP’s sacrificial lamb for governor, Marc Molinaro, won the district over Gov. Andrew Cuomo by 50,000 votes — while Cuomo was on his way to a historic landslide win statewide.

Ideology isn’t going to win him many votes in this district. So he keeps the conversation focused on constituent service in hopes that Tip O’Neill’s famous dictum about local politics rings true next year, when the rest of the country debates the national and global issues of the Trump era.

Brindisi’s town hall in Sherburne came on the heels of an information session at the local library for veterans on recent changes to their private health care options under the 2018 VA Mission Act, which doubled as an informal airing of grievances with the VA and its medical center in Syracuse. It was yet another example of his focus on almost anything but the issues that animate his more-liberal colleagues.

“What I try to stress to the speaker and everyone in leadership is the reason Democrats took the majority in the House of Representatives is not because we unseated other Democrats in primaries, it’s because we unseated Republicans in swing districts like NY-22,” he said. “And the policies that should be reflected out of the House of Representatives are the policies that I hear about at these kinds of town hall meetings: infrastructure; health care costs; drug costs. Those are the things people want us focusing on.”

Brindisi’s claim to be a different breed of Democrat is borne out by some metrics, such as GovTrak, where he rates firmly near the center and closer to some Republicans than he is to many Democrats. (Other methodologies indicate that Brindisi votes with the president far less than one would expect, based on the district’s 2016 presidential vote.)

Nevertheless, the National Republican Congressional Committee has begun pumping out messages labeling Brindisi a socialist. It’s a sampling of what will likely become a deluge of such messages over the next 15 months.

“Once we expose his record, that myth [of Brindisi’s centrism] will be exposed a bit,” said Franklin Sager, a high school math teacher running for the Republican nomination. ��When you look at the record … he’s going to be seen as a liberal. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s not a leftist, but he’s a liberal.”

And Brindisi will also have to deal with potential voter backlash against progressive policies implemented by the all-Democratic state Legislature in Albany, including a number of criminal justice reforms and access to driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. New York Republicans have seized on these issues in their quest to win back the state Senate next year. The driver’s license measure is unpopular statewide, according to the most recent Siena College poll. Given Trump’s popularity in the district, it’s fair to assume the law is even more unpopular there.

Of course, Brindisi had nothing to do with enacting those policies, but it will further test his mettle as not-your-average Democrat.

“I think Brindisi has done everything that you can right; he doesn’t go after the president, he’s careful with his votes and he’s strategic about his stance with leadership,” said a longtime GOP operative familiar with the area. “But he could do all that right and still lose. I think a pet rock could win in a presidential year [for Republicans].”

“Therightpet rock,” the source added.

Already three Republican candidates have lined up to run against Brindisi: Stephen Cornwell, the Broome County district attorney; George Phillips, who has made three previous unsuccessful runs for the seat; and Sager.

“The bottom line is that the needs of upstate New Yorkers are not being addressed,” Cornwell said. “In Washington it seems like there’s no plan other than reelection. We have real people affected by real problems.”

The field may expand further: Binghamton Mayor Richard David’s name has also come up among Republicans, and Tenney has not ruled out running again.

Brindisi has proven himself to be a capable fundraiser, a must for those running in highly competitive seats. He raised more than $4.6 million during his first congressional campaign, and since coming into office he’s raked in a bit less than $1 million, with more than $770,000 in cash on hand, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

By comparison, Phillips has raised about $111,000 and has less than $54,000 cash on hand, and Sager has spent the entirety of the $3,527 he has raised, as of June 30. (Cornwell announced his candidacy in July and thus has not reported his fundraising numbers to date.)

But unless the GOP coalesces around a single opponent in the coming months the way that Democrats quickly aligned behind Brindisi in 2017, he won’t know his Republican opponent until the results of New York’s primary in June.

So until then, Brindisi is canvassing across a district that spans the entirety of four counties and parts of four others — and extends from the shores of Lake Ontario to the Pennsylvania border — in an uphill attempt to buck the nationalization of American politics.

“The problem with Washington, as I see it, is elected officials make a lot of commitments on the campaign trail, and then as soon as they get to Washington they backtrack on those commitments.

“That’s not something I’ll ever do.”

#Foreign #plays #Politics #upstate

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democratsunited-blog · 6 years ago

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Ocasio-Cortez’s Blueprint for a New Politics

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=6228

Ocasio-Cortez’s Blueprint for a New Politics

Sometimes history moves fast.

Almost two years ago, when I wrote “Blueprint for a New Party,” I thought of it mainly as a way to stimulate debate, not as an immediately actionable program. In the article, I called for the creation of a national left-wing political organization that, unlike the Democrats, would act in most respects like a genuine party: with a mass membership democratically determining the party’s program and forcing its office-holders to adhere to it.

It would differ from a conventional party in only one respect: it wouldn’t seek a separate ballot line. Instead, it would run its candidates on whichever line made the most sense for the race in question: an independent line in some cases, but more often — at least at first — in Democratic primaries.

Since then, there’s been an explosion of left-wing activism, including a more than quintupling of DSA’s membership, and the idea of independent, organized left-wing electoral politics has taken on a life of its own. On the heels of a series of victories for DSA-backed state and local candidates, the defeat of Queens Democratic Party boss Joe Crowley at the hands of DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represents a kind of proof-of-concept that independent socialist electoral politics can work.

But from the standpoint of my proposal in “Blueprint,” the most interesting aspect of Ocasio-Cortzez’s campaign wasn’t her victory, but her attitude toward the Democratic Party. In a televised pre-election debate with Crowley, the Queens Democrat posed a question to her that he no doubt thought was a clever trap. Here’s what he said:

This is, I think, a very exciting time for our party. … We have a chance to win back the House of Representatives. People know what’s at stake. They know that this president is an existential threat, that our lives are at stake. And so, what I believe is that we have to unite in our party, to make sure that we are united when we go into this election in November.

I’m willing to make a pledge tonight, that if you win this primary and have the support of the people of the 14th congressional district then I will fully endorse and … and vociferously and robustly work for your election to Congress. My question to you is, will you do the same for me if the people of the 14th Congressional district choose me as their nominee?

In the playbook of US politics, this has historically been the go-to “gotcha” question to level at any insurgent primary candidate who criticizes the party’s political outlook: fine, criticize all you like, but will you support me on election day? The question is a trap. If the insurgent says “yes,” he or she has essentially told their own supporters: “Whatever I say now, when it comes down to it, I’m a loyal Democrat; whatever I might promise today, whatever political alternative I claim to embody, I’ll end up doing the opposite if Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi needs me to.”

But God help them if they say “no.” Then they’ll be a spoiler. A Republican enabler. Or in nineteenth-century lingo, a “sorehead.”

But instead of falling into the trap, AOC, deftly sidestepped it. Here was her reply:

Well, Representative Crowley, I represent not just my campaign, but a movement. I am proud to be endorsed by organizations like Democratic Socialists of America, the Movement for Black Lives, Muslims for Progress, and so on. And as a result, we govern ourselves democratically. So, I would be happy to take that question to our movement for a vote and respond in the affirmative, or however they respond.

What Ocasio-Cortez’s answer reveals, I think, is that rooting left-wing electoral politics in independent membership organizations isn’t just a way to acquire electoral muscle on the ground. It’s also a powerful tool for candidates and office-holders to use in political combat. When you ground your decision-making in the will of a democratically organized constituency, on the one hand, yes, you’re relinquishing some power: you now have an organized constituency to answer to, and sometimes they won’t go along with what you want.

But on the other hand, that arms you with a powerful form of legitimacy whenever you find yourself butting heads with powerful, entrenched party interests: sorry, Chuck and Nancy, I don’t represent you, I represent those who worked to put me in office.

And now Ocasio-Cortez has gone further. In an interview with Dan Denvir on Jacobin Radio’s The Dig podcast, she was asked about the prospects for organized left politics within Congress itself:

DD: Looking ahead to you entering Congress (I’m feeling fairly confident about November but don’t want to jinx you), the Right has successfully used groups like the House Freedom Caucus to push their agenda. Do you think that the Progressive Caucus, which has been much lower profile for a long time but is significant, can do the same for the Left?

AOC: There’s potential. It all depends on how unified that caucus is. The thing that gives the Freedom Caucus power is not their size but their cohesion. Right now the Progressive Caucus is bigger than the Freedom Caucus, actually. But sometimes they vote together, sometimes they don’t.

The thing that gives a caucus power is that they can operate as a bloc vote to get things done. Even if you can carve out a sub-caucus of the Progressive Caucus, a smaller bloc but one that operates as a bloc, then you can generate real power.

I think with that, it’s just really about, “We’ll see.” As unapologetic and strong as I am in my messaging and my belief, my personal style is as a consensus builder. I like to think that I’m persuasive. I’m usually able to make the pragmatic case for doing really ambitious things. Not to say that I can carry a caucus on my back or anything, but I think that there’s a willingness right now. We’ll see if that willingness is still there in January. I think that if you can even carve out a caucus of ten, thirty people, it does not take a lot if you operate as a bloc vote to really make strong demands on things.

What we’re witnessing in embryo is the emergence of a new way of approaching left-wing politics. It’s still early, and the obstacles to the sort of plan AOC describes are formidable. She won’t find many other Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes in the House Progressive Caucus, and the pressure she’ll come under to act like a “team player” and go along with the leadership will be intense.

But two things in particular are immensely encouraging. First, she obviously understands the obstacles she’s facing, as her quote makes clear. She’s no naïf. And second, the mere act of floating this idea gives her power. From now on, every time the House Democratic leadership finds itself in conflict with its left flank, this idea will pop up; it will be discussed; and it will serve as an implicit source of bargaining leverage.

These ideas can’t be put back in the bottle. And as someone once pointed out, ideas becomes a material force once they’ve gripped the masses.

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#Democrats

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newestbalance · 7 years ago

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‘I Give and You Give’: Venezuela’s Leader Dangles Food for Votes

CIUDAD GUYANA, Venezuela — Julio Romero emerged from the flag-waving crowd as President Nicolás Maduro stood smiling on a stage, dancing to an election jingle.

Mr. Romero, 42, was in no mood to celebrate. He clutched the colostomy bag he has used since he was shot last September, when armed men stole his taxi and any chance he had of making a living. Though he had managed to attend the rally, Mr. Romero did not consider himself a supporter of the president.

He had come in search of food.

“I came here because I thought they would give me something to eat,” said Mr. Romero, referring to the handouts often seen at government rallies.

Venezuela was once a country whose governing party used elections to speak about transforming society in revolutionary terms. It built homes and clinics and schools for the poor. Its ideas spread throughout the region, influencing leftist leaders throughout Latin America for more than a decade.

But years of mismanagement have scaled back those dreams, if not dismantled them altogether, in an economic collapse that is one of the worst in the Western Hemisphere in modern times.

This election, it seems, is in many ways about food.

Venezuela’s inflation is already the worst in the world and is expected to hit a stunning 13,000 percent this year. Stores are empty and people sift through garbage for scraps. Many people call the country’s malnutrition the “Maduro diet,” laying blame for the gaunt figures that are common sights now on Mr. Maduro.

A large majority of Venezuelans are dependent on the government for subsidized groceries distributed by local councils loyal to the president. Food has even entered the election, potentially controlling the way Venezuelans will vote.

Many people receive their subsidies using a special identity card that is playing a big role in this election. For Sunday’s vote, Venezuelans have been told to present these cards at stations run by Mr. Maduro’s governing party at polling places — so that party organizers can see who has voted and who has not.

“Everyone who has this card must vote,” Mr. Maduro has said at his campaign rallies, directly linking government handouts to voting. “I give and you give.”

Many see his words as wielding food as a tool to buy votes in the campaign — or to intimidate hungry people who might consider voting against him.

“Maduro has put it clearly: It’s an exchange of loyalty,” said Margarita López Maya, a political scientist.

The election is a pivotal moment for Venezuela. The country’s democracy has come under assault since Mr. Maduro won a special election in 2013 after the death of President Hugo Chávez.

The big shift here began in late 2015, when Mr. Maduro’s governing United Socialist Party lost control of the National Assembly. But before the new legislature could be seated, pro-Maduro lawmakers stacked the Supreme Court with loyalists, stifling the opposition’s agenda.

Then in 2017, Mr. Maduro sidelined the legislature altogether, pushing through the creation of a new body, the Constituent Assembly, that had the power to rewrite the Constitution and effectively run the country. Mr. Maduro consolidated his power as the new group took over.

Now comes another major test for the country: a presidential vote that many international observers say has been engineered for Mr. Maduro to win a new term.

Many major international election observers have refused to monitor the vote on the grounds that it will not be fair. Most of the main opposition parties have been disqualified from running and their most popular potential candidates have been jailed or barred from holding office.

Those eligible to run have mostly called for a boycott. The date of the election is even a point of contention: The vote was called six months early, in what Mr. Maduro’s rivals say was an effort to give them little time to prepare for it.

The United States and many countries in the region have said they will not recognize the winner of the election.

“They do whatever they want and put themselves above the law and above the interests of the people,” said Héctor Navarro, who served for years as a minister in the government of Mr. Chávez and is now part of a growing list of former top Chávez officials who have become dissidents while still keeping their distance from the traditional opposition.

“In the history of Venezuela, every government has had its weaknesses and problems: murderous governments, thieving governments, incompetent governments, lazy governments, those have always been around,” Mr. Navarro said. “But all at the same time? That has never happened before, a government with all of those traits.”

It is the government’s inability to feed its people that has stunned Venezuelans the most, even some of Mr. Maduro’s fiercest supporters.

Isabela Romero, a 50-year-old schoolteacher, stood in the crowd of the president’s supporters in Ciudad Guyana, once a growing industrial city whose wealth was fueled by iron, steel and aluminum. Many factories are idle, and lines outside of grocery stores have been endlessly long for years.

Two decades ago, Ms. Romero voted for Mr. Chávez and saw the benefits of his reforms: She received a master’s degree that his government paid for and a parcel of land that had been expropriated, she said.

Now her hopes have changed under Mr. Maduro. “He just needs to find a way to make an economic revolution, so we can eat once again,” she said.

At his rally that day, the president sounded nearly contrite, saying he had made mistakes in the past and had “matured” — a play on words using his last name. He promised big changes to get people to work once again, an “economic revolution” that would give people jobs and opportunities again. Mr. Maduro insists that the country’s problems are the result of an “economic war” waged against it by the United States.

At a separate news conference, Mr. Maduro insisted that he was still a democrat. “Do they really think that people here are so stupid and submissive that they would put up with a dictator?” he said.

For some, the lack of food is just part of the desperation that has made many here receptive to the call for a boycott of the vote.

“People are very dispirited and they aren’t prepared to go out and vote,” said Miriam Bravo, a 40-year-old mother of seven with a 3-month-old baby in the sprawling Petare slum of Caracas, the capital. She said that her husband died in January from cancer, the victim of a health system in a free fall, with medicines scarce or nonexistent and adequate treatment often unavailable.

Ms. Bravo, a seamstress, said that before the crisis she and her husband used to take their children to the beach or to a park near the center of Caracas on weekends. Sometimes, they would treat themselves to a meal at McDonald’s. Now she struggles to put food on the table even twice a day.

“I think that by voting I will just be supporting the government,” Ms. Bravo said. “I don’t think that the election should be carried out in these conditions.”

While many opposition figures have called for a boycott of Sunday’s election, the two main candidates who have defied that appeal to challenge Mr. Maduro are Henri Falcón, a former follower of Mr. Chávez who later joined the opposition, and Javier Bertucci, a wealthy evangelical minister.

The question of abstention has weighed on the opposition, tearing apart what had been a unified front against Mr. Maduro in previous elections. His rivals faced a difficult choice: Participate in an election that many believed was rigged against them, or boycott the vote and assure a victory for Mr. Maduro.

On Thursday, those tensions were laid bare in Caracas outside the headquarters of Venezuela’s intelligence agency, which contains a jail holding about 55 political prisoners, including opposition activists and a prominent opposition politician. The night before, many of those prisoners had begun a protest in which they occupied a section of the jail, sending out text messages and videos. The images showed a prisoner they said had been badly beaten on the orders of guards.

Outside the complex, family members of the prisoners and opposition activists gathered. Mr. Bertucci, the evangelical minister running against Mr. Maduro, showed up in what he said was an effort to draw attention to the prisoners’ plight. But many of those present saw it as a campaign event for an illegitimate election.

“Get out!” they screamed, as he tried to speak to reporters. Someone threw water at him. “Bertucci is Maduro! I ask for democracy!” another shouted.

Mr. Bertucci remained calm. “Calling for abstention is not the way to free them,” he said of the prisoners. “We have to do more than protest. I believe the only weapon is the vote.”

Desireé Rodríguez, a volunteer cook at a Caracas soup kitchen, said that she intended to ignore calls for the boycott and would vote for Mr. Falcón.

Ms. Rodríguez, 33, who has a 10-year-old son, said that before the soup kitchen opened in January, her family was short on food and often ate just twice a day. She recalled counting out the small potatoes she could afford to make sure there were enough for more than one meal, or carefully dividing up a ration of pasta to stretch it across two or more days.

“This is like an epidemic,” she said. “Ask any poor person and they will tell you the same thing.”

In a Caracas slum called La Vega, Iris Hidalgo, 50, struggled with the question of whether to vote on Sunday.

She said that she had always voted for Mr. Chávez and then, in 2013, for Mr. Maduro.

“I regret it now,” she said. “He destroyed the country.”

Nicholas Casey reported from Ciudad Guyana, and William Neuman from Caracas, Venezuela.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: President of Venezuela Dangles Food for Votes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post ‘I Give and You Give’: Venezuela’s Leader Dangles Food for Votes appeared first on World The News.

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stephaniefchase · 8 years ago

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Bajan Newscap 5/27/2017

Good Morning #realdreamchasers Here is your daily news cap for Saturday 26th May 2017. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Saturday Sun Newspaper (SS).

INNISS SHAKY OUTSPOKEN MINISTER LOSING SUPPORT IN ST JAMES SOUTH - He is arguably the most loquacious member of the Freundel Stuart administration, sharing his opinion on virtually everything and never afraid of taking positions foreign to collective responsibility. Member of Parliament for St James South Donville Inniss has already made it clear he would not “bury his head in the sand” to the “element of despair” among Barbadians, a suggestion that this was what his governing Democratic Labour Party (DLP) colleagues had been doing. It was in March that the Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development had said those within the ruling DLP who believed the next general election would be easy must be “smoking something”. There was disquiet among voters, Inniss said then, and the DLP would “pay a heavy price at the polls” if it chose to ignore the signs. In a twist of delicious irony, Inniss appears set to pay a heavy price if the sentiments expressed by voters during a three-hour Pulse of the People random survey of his constituents hold true. Victorious by 770 votes in 2013 over Sandra Husbands of the Opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP), the oft-quoted minister appeared to have a difficult time holding on to his lead. The majority of voters with whom Barbados TODAY spoke, several of whom had voted for Inniss and the DLP in the past, were adamant they would go with Husbands next time round. A few residents said they would not vote at all, and only one person said he was supporting Inniss. (BT)

DEAL WITH IT - Barbadians are essentially being told to grin and bear the challenges associated with the island’s healthcare system. Director of the Urban Development Commission (UDC) Derek Alleyne made that suggestion today as he contended that just as generations before had sacrificed, Barbadians today may now have to “suck salt” for others to come. Delivering the weekly Astor B Watts lunchtime lecture at the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) headquarters today, Alleyne said despite the challenges, Barbadians were faring far better now than they were two to five decades ago. “Small states like Barbados, we collectively contribute so that the less able can survive, and anytime we want to change that we are no longer the democratic socialist country that we have been for all our lives. “Our parents and grandparents sacrificed much to provide the environment that we live in. We have to accept that things will get difficult now, but 25 to 50 years ago things were worse, and they took less to make sure we have what we have now. We have to learn sometimes to suck a little salt so that the ones that come after us don’t have to suck nipples and so on,” he argued. While stressing that he was not “knocking young people”, Alleyne said many of them do not understand what real hardship is. (BT)

HIGH RATING FOR HEALTH CARE – Barbados is THE third highest ranked Caribbean country for the quality of its health care system. So said Democratic Labour Party candidate for St Thomas and general practitioner Dr Rolerick Hinds. He was delivering the weekly DLP Astor B Watts Lunchtime lecture at DLP headquarters, George Street, yesterday. “We are ranked number 46 in the world as far as health care delivery is concerned. That is out of 197 countries. The only country from this part of the region which comes before us is Dominica,” he said. (SS)

LIVING WITH HIV CHANGES OUTLOOK - Twenty-five-year HIV survivor, Ainsley Reid believes that living with the virus requires a new outlook. This, he said, was why it is important that enabling environments are created for such people. Speaking at the launch of Regional Testing Day (RTD) held at Hilton Barbados in Needham’s Point, St Michael, yesterday, Reid indicated the benefits of Barbados adopting a training programme to help survivors to be better able to manage their new lives. Reid was diagnosed HIV positive in 1992 and he said that today he was able to manage his status well because of several reasons, specifically because of the aforementioned enabling environment and education on the virus and effects. Coordinator of Jamaica’s Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV & AIDS (GIPA), he maintained that sensitising people about the importance of HIV testing is important and necessary but after they are tested, they needed to know what was next. (SS)

LESS PARTYING MORE HELPING - There may be fewer fetes at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) soon, but it will be for a good cause. President of the Guild of Students Kai Bridgewater disclosed today that consideration was being given to diverting funds that would normally be used for entertainment events to help students who are struggling to pay tuition fees. A final decision will not be made, however, until next month’s guild retreat. During a press conference to announce plans to assist Barbadian students in paying for their UWI education, Bridgewater, who was accompanied by his counterparts from the Mona and St Augustine campuses, said the guild would be playing a greater role in helping develop the student population. It is aiming to absorb the impact of tuition costs for at least 100 students, and will also seek to create a “Consolidated Welfare Fund, much larger than ever before” in an effort to help as many students as possible, Bridgewater said. “The last thing we have already pledged to do is create scholarships. So, we will create seven scholarships – one for academic excellence in each faulty, one for excellence in sport, and one for excellence in any extracurricular activity,” he explained. The guild is funded through the annual $120 guild fee each student at the Cave Hill campus is required to pay, along with support and sponsorship received through various partnerships. But Mona campus, Mikiela Gonzales has put Cave Hill students on notice that more assistance would mean less partying. (BT)

LOOSE WOMEN - A local magistrate has lashed out at women who give themselves easily to men whom they know nothing about, often not even their names or where they live. And, said Wanda Blair, when children are born as a result of these easy “favours”, many of these women go to the court seeking child support, but refuse to grant the fathers access to the children. “I am finding more and more, women are sharing their favours . . . too easily, and when they wake up and the children are born they suddenly realize that the man who they shared their favour with, he is a good for nothing,” Blair last night told one of the Man Talk series of panel discussions organized by the Men’s Fellowship of the Cave Hill Wesleyan Holiness Church. “Some of them don’t even know the name of the man . . . don’t know where he lives, so they come to file an application for maintenance, and they don’t even have an address because they do not know. “Some of them know the man by a call name. So how is the [court] marshal going to go in search of this man?” As the only woman on the four-member panel, which was also moderated by a man, the magistrate made no excuses for the behaviour of the women who go before the court demanding child maintenance from men they hardly knew or they sometimes detest. Many of them are vindictive, she said, and seem to view the men as cash machines, and nothing more. “They see the children as their children. It seems as though the man didn’t play any role at all. They see his role as mainly providing money for the child. “They refer to the child as ‘my child, I don’t want my child to go at him,’” Blair told the discussion themed, Is child maintenance a man thing? “I often say to them, ‘if you curse the father of your child, it is a reflection on you, of your poor choice, because you are the person who chose that man to be the father of your child, so don’t waste your time cursing the child about the father’. The child has nothing to do with choosing that man . . . . Therefore it is a reflection of our poor choice.” Blair said many of these women often gave “all sorts of excuses” when fathers demand access to the children, citing an example of a mother giving as a reason, “the house in which the man was living in look as though it would capsize any moment”. “I said, ‘if you knew where he was living before you got the child [but] you went ahead and got the child for this man, he [the child] is going to visit his father at that same house,’” she told the audience. Blair also hit out at women who “feel better than the men” simply because they had found a job, and those who “all of a sudden realize that the man is a drug dealer”. The magistrate said she often explained to the mothers, “That’s not going to help. Maintenance goes hand in hand with access to your child.” (BT)

TRAIC BEACH TRIP – DEZSTON LEGALL kissed his son Nikan goodbye as he left for work on Thursday morning, something he does every day. It would be the last time he would see his nine-year-old boy alive. Nikan, a Class 3 student of Milton Lynch Primary School, lost his life that evening at Maxwell Beach, Christ Church, after getting into difficulty in the water. There was a sombre mood at the school yesterday as students and teachers tried to deal with the death of one of their own. (SS)

JAMAICAN WOMAN NOW FACING MURDER CHARGE - A 26-year-old Jamaican woman who was charged last month in connection with the stabbing death of a fellow countrywoman will spend more time at HMP Dodds after her serious bodily harm charge was upgraded to murder. Tedesha Ann-Juliet Haynes, who resided at Bay Street, St Michael made her second appearance in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court Friday after spending her first 28 days on remand at HMP Dodds. It is now alleged that she murdered Shockaya Boyd on April 28. Boyd, 34, was pronounced dead at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital after being stabbed while on Bay Street, St Michael around 2:30 a.m. Haynes was not required to plead to the indictable charge when it was read to her by Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant. She had made her first court appearance back on April 29, when she was charged with serious bodily harm, to which she was also not required to plead. The Jamaican lost her freedom when the prosecutor, Station Sergeant Neville Reid, objected to bail on the grounds that she is a non-national and that the charge against her was likely to be upgraded, based on the outcome of an autopsy on Boyd’s body. Haynes is expected to make her third appearance in the No. 2 Bridgetown court on June 23. (BT)

LANDSCAPER ACCUSED OF FRAUD – A 49-year-old landscaper is facing fraud charges. It is alleged that on April 2, with intent to defraud, Stephen Christopher Julian Maynard of #13 Chelston Avenue, Culloden Road, St Michael forged a First Citizens Bank (Barbados) Limited cheque payable to Platinum Architectural Inc., for $6,105.25. He is also accused of uttering and obtaining the same cheque. While police prosecutor Sergeant Cameron Gibbons did not object to bail for the accused, he urged that the court impose conditions. Maynard was released on $6,000 bail which he secured with one surety. He must now report to the Hastings Police Station every Monday and Thursday before noon, with valid identification. His second court appearance is on July 14. (BT)

VENDOR HAS A MONTH TO STAVE OFF PRISON STAY - A 29-year-old vendor has four weeks to pay the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court a $2,000 fine for drug offences. If Hezron Joseph Williams, of Mason Hall Street, St Michael does not pay the money, he will have to spend six months in prison. He pleaded guilty to possession, possession with intent to supply and possession of a trafficable quantity of cannabis Friday, hours after he was caught with the illegal drugs. Police had received information and ventured earlier in the day to Cheapside Market, where Williams was found. Lawmen requested a search, which he agreed to, and the drugs, contained in 80 greaseproof wrappings and 33 transparent Ziploc bags, were found inside the boxer shorts he was wearing. Asked to account for the drugs, Williams simply admitted knowledge and ownership. In the dock Friday, he told Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant: “I have nothing to say.” It was then that she imposed the fine for the trafficking charge. He must pay that by June 28 to avoid the jail term. (BT)

TWO MEN FINED $10,000 FOR DRUGS – Members of the Drug Squad have arrested and jointly charged two men for a number of drug-related offences committed on Wednesday, May 22, committed off the shores south of Barbados. They are 43-year-old Troy Sylvester King of Douglas Road, Ashton Hall, St Peter and 47-year-old Nicholas Dacosta Squires of Enterprise Main Road, Christ Church. King and Squires were jointly charged with possession of cannabis, trafficking of cannabis and possession with intent to supply cannabis. King faced additional charges of possession of cannabis, trafficking of cannabis and possession with intent to supply cannabis. Both men appeared before Chief Magistrate Christopher Birch in the District ‘C’ Magistrates’ Court today where they pleaded guilty to the joint charges and were fined $10,000 to be paid in six months or face two years in prison. They were both convicted, reprimanded and discharged for the offences of trafficking and possession with intent to supply. For his individual offences, King was sentenced to one year imprisonment; suspended for two years for the offence of possession of cannabis; and reprimanded and discharged for the offences of trafficking and possession with intent to supply. (BT)

BOYCOTT AN “INJUSTICE” - THEY ARE SEEKING justice, but former Barbados cricketer Franklyn Stephenson believes Thursday’s boycott of the Everton Weekes Under-13 final is “an injustice” and a “travesty”. The head coach of the Franklyn Stephenson Cricket Academy also described the decision taken by the Barbados Association of Principals for Public Secondary Schools (BAPPSS) not to allow Combermere and Foundation to contest the title match as “shameful”. Stephenson was among a number of spectators at Empire Club who left disappointed after the scheduled final wasn’t played because of a dispute between BAPPSS and the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) over some aspects of the regulations for the 2017 season involving clubs and schools. “It is very disappointing. I think it is a travesty. It is an injustice to cricket. These kids don’t have any part in the dispute that is . . . going on. (SS)

ILLEGAL SKATING RINK BULLZOED – An illegal skating rink and other obstacles on its lands at Graeme Hall, Christ Church, were destroyed by the Ministry of Agriculture yesterday. The ministry said that the structures were discovered a few weeks ago when officials were touring the lands at Graeme Hall. However, Paul Wilson, who was part of a group of skateboarders, BMXers and roller bladers, who used the skating rink, said they had actually been there for seven years. “We were looking for a safe and secure area where we could skateboard and one day a friend of mine told me about this spot. We went and looked at it and realised that it was being used as a dump. We cleaned it up and started to build and erect obstacles and structures,” he pointed out, adding that over time they built concrete structures as well. (SS)

EASY PICKINGS FOR BLACKBIRDS – The netball action in the University of the West Indies Games began in sweltering heat yesterday morning with favourites Mona and Cave Hill making the conditions ever hotter for Open Campuses and St Augustine, respectively. Playing on their home turf, Cave Hill Blackbirds roasted St Augustine 67-19, while Mona only used UWI Sportswoman Of The Year Shimona Nelson in the final quarter, but still humiliated newcomers Open Campuses 84-4. The Blackbirds were led by Barbados player Shonica Wharton with a game-high 52 goals from 58 attempts. Best Shooter in the recent test series against Jamaica, Sheniqua Thomas, contributed 13 from 16, while Rieah Holder took the goal attack bib in the final quarter to sink two of five for the Blackbirds. (SS)

HELP AARON MOVE ON – Aaron worrell’s mother is calling on Barbadians to support the boy who brought home gold. The 19-year-old, who captured gold in the eight-event octathlon at last month’s CARIFTA Games in Curacao, is hoping to take on the decathlon at the upcoming NGC NAAA National Junior Championships in Trinidad and Tobago from June 8 to 12. The decathlon, which consists of ten events, will see the student of The St Michael School taking on the pole vault, which would also allow him to qualify for the junior Pan American Games in Peru from July 21 to 23. Sharon Worrell told the SATURDAY SUN that though Aaron was doing pole vaulting for the first time he had adapted quite well. (SS)

BCA HAPPY WITH STAGE – KENSINGTON OVAL Management Inc. (KOMI) isn’t the only happy one. The Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) seems to be just as pleased with KOMI’s acquisition of a new mobile stage following serious concerns over entertainment events damaging the Oval’s multimillion-dollar outfield. BCA chief executive officer Noel Lynch expressed the sentiment after KOMI finally brought in the sleek 40x32-foot automated structure on Wednesday to replace the big and heavy metal stages that were previously dropped on Kensington’s grass. “We really applaud them for getting it here because part of the challenge with the maintenance of the field was erecting these big stages for entertainment events and the time it took not only to assemble the stages, but to have them removed,” said Lynch. (SS)

BASHMENT BOOST – The bashment soca pot just got sweeter for the finalists. But the monarch will have to settle for a little less food on his plate. In the second year of the competition, organisers 4D Entertainment have made some adjustments to both the prizes and the rules. Last month, some of the finalists raised some concerns about the cost of their production and input to enter the competition versus what they got for this Crop Over Festival event. The artistes who spoke to SATURDAY SUN yesterday welcomed the increased appearance fee from $500 to $2 500 for the finalists. Last year, the Yello Bashment Soca Competition was introduced and the show was held at Kensington Oval along with the Sweet Soca and Party Monarch semi-finals, under the banner of Phenomenal Friday. (SS)

PARTY ON WHEELS – There is a new set of wheels in town that are ready for ‘de road’. And its owners are promising once Barbadians board the luxurious cabin they will rethink what they know about the party bus experience. Manager of entertainment and transportation company 30 Sumten, Felicia Vaughan, said that the decked-out freight liner limousine Fete Pon Wheels Party Bus was eight years in the making. She told WEEKEND BUZZ that after seeing what the local entertainment scene had to offer, she wanted to bring something different to the masses. The 30 Sumten manager also said that there will be strict security measures for patrons to follow. “Our security personnel must be onboard at all times. People will also be searched before boarding and at any party where there are stops when passengers disembark, they are to be searched again,” she said. The party bus seats 26 people who must be 18 years or older, comes equipped with air-conditioning, mirror-ceilings, dinner lights, floor lights, a portable bar, a DJ booth, a television, and bathroom. Packages inclusive of drinks range from $3 700 to $4 600. She said she knew locals will compare their experience to the already established bus crawls but she sought to make a clear distinction. (SS)

PIPING HOT ON THE BOARDWALK – The pied pipers effect was in full swing yesterday as scores of music lovers flocked to the Richard Haynes Boardwalk. The attraction was Pipers on the Boardwalk, the first in a series of musical events that are part of the four-day Celtic Festival Barbados. Yesterday’s musical treat featured pipers from at least six countries who made their way along the South Coast promenade all the while serenading an appreciative audience. (SS)

GOSPELFEST CONCERT FULL OF WORSHIP – The sun had dropped below the horizon, but the spirits were high at the Gospelfest Sunset Concert in Independence Square on Wednesday. Hundreds were present at the event, which attracted gospel acts from Barbados and the region, Canada and the US and was sponsored by the Barbados Public Workers Co-operative Credit Union Limited. American singer Lamont Sanders connected with the crowd as he ministered in songs God Is Able and an original, Forever Mercy. This was followed by Barbados’ Krystal J Paul who in her first song, Thank You For The Cross Lord did justice to the piece. She motivated the crowd into a mood of worship with her passion and sincerity . Youth dancers Inside Out depicted the power of God over evil through their choreography, which was well received. The crowd, however, were in for an awesome experience as a family group called The Chitans – two brothers and three sisters from Canada – thrilled them with their singing. The family, originally from the spice isle of Grenada, left the audience calling for more. Veteran gospel artiste Bridget Blucher took the supportive patrons to another level of worship experience as she reminded them in her preamble that Gospelfest was not about entertainment, but about worship. She sang and commanded the large crowd to worship, raise hands and “give God all the praise that He alone deserves”. She followed up with I’m Still Here. Other performers include Shaquan Griffith, Kianna Flavus, Barbados Public Workers Co-operative Credit Union Choir, Purpose Band and local group Jireh, among others. (SS)

That’s all for today folks. There are 219 days left in the year Shalom! #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #bajannewscaps #newscapsbystephaniefchase

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