Tag: GA-6

Why Nancy Pelosi won’t step down, at least for now

Yesterday, Democrats lost the 6th Congressional District of Georgia special election runoff, with far-right Republican candidate Karen Handel defeating Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff by slightly less than 10,000 votes in an election where both major parties spent millions of dollars of money. On the same day, Democrats also lost the 5th Congressional District of South Carolina special election, with far-right Republican candidate Ralph Norman defeating Democratic candidate Archie Parnell by slightly more than 2,800 votes, even though Democrats didn’t invest a lot of resources into Parnell’s campaign. In other words, Democrats lost by a higher raw vote margin (not percentage-wise) when they actually invested the full resources of groups like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the U.S. House Democrats’ fundraising arm, than when they didn’t do so.

Already, a lot of people on the left, and even at least one Democratic U.S. House member, Kathleen Rice of New York, who voted for Tim Ryan over Pelosi in the House Democratic leadership race earlier this year (which Pelosi won), are calling for Pelosi to give up the position of House Minority Leader. Jackie Kucinich, the Washington bureau chief for The Daily Beast, said this on Twitter about calls for Pelosi to step down:

Regarding Kucinich’s first point, it is more correct to say that Democrats had an opportunity to replace Pelosi, but decided not to. As I mentioned before, Pelosi defeated Tim Ryan earlier this year to retain the leadership of the House Democratic Caucus.

Regarding Kucinich’s second point, such an internal anti-Pelosi coalition within the House Democratic Caucus, if one were to form, would mostly overlap with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which, although home of some of the most progressive Democratic members of Congress, doesn’t consider removing Pelosi from the House Dems’ leadership to be of any priority, at least for now.

Any movement to force Democrats in either house of Congress to change their campaign strategies or force party leaders like Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step aside would almost certainly come from outside of Congress and the Beltway, and almost certainly from the anti-establishment left. In fact, Republicans on the right fringe of their party (i.e., the Tea Party movement) have had past success going this route, forcing a group of Republican members of Congress to successfully push for the ouster of then-House Speaker John Boehner in 2015 over perceived apostasies of parts of the far-right agenda. However, unlike the GOP circa 2015, when they controlled both houses of Congress, Democrats are currently completely out of power at the federal level, and forcing Pelosi to step aside would not do anything whatsoever to address serious underlying problems with Democratic campaign strategies, one of which is the bizarre email strategy that a lot of Democratic campaigns, and, most infamously, the DCCC itself, have used. The Democratic email strategy comes across as a bizarre form of mind control of Democratic voters and donors. The second problem is a lack of any kind of a coordinated campaign platform for Democrats running in U.S. House and U.S. Senate races in 2018, which would probably be similar to the British Labour Party’s manifesto from the British House of Commons elections earlier this year.

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(TRIGGER WARNING) Comparing Bernie Sanders to a domestic abuser minimizes domestic abuse

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This blog post contains a tweet that includes an image depicting violence against women. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

The Democratic Party is being increasingly dominated by two forms of progressivism. One form of progressivism prioritizes human rights issues, especially in regards to women’s reproductive rights, over other issues. This form of progressivism is associated with very liberal voters who voted for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries/caucuses, who are the core base of support, although not 100% of the support, of the resistance to the Trump Administration. The other form of progressivism prioritizes economic issues, especially in regards to efforts to reduce income inequality, over other issues. This form of progressivism is very strongly associated with Bernie Sanders, in fact, Sanders has often by criticized by progressive critics of Sanders for having supported candidates for public office who oppose abortion rights (although Bernie himself has a very pro-choice voting record as a U.S. Senator) and not regarding reproductive rights as an important issue.

Sanders has come under extremely heavy criticism for publicly endorsing Omaha, Nebraska mayoral candidate Heath Mello, who, as a member of Nebraska’s unicameral state legislature, voted for legislation that required doctors to give women who consider terminating a pregnancy a list of ultrasound providers. Although Mello has publicly disavowed his past support for anti-abortion legislation, the bill that he supported as a state legislator was designed purely to shame women, and nobody can re-write history.

Sanders’s support for Mello has prompted a large amount of criticism from progressive critics of Sanders. While most of the criticism has been over the fact that Sanders has, despite being pro-choice himself, endorsed anti-choice politicians from time to time, as well as Sanders not regarding women’s rights issues as important, there has been at least one example of criticism of Sanders that goes straight into the gutter of American politics. This was a tweet that somebody going under the alias “BroStoogeRally” posted about Bernie endorsing Jon Ossoff, a pro-choice and anti-interventionist Democrat who is running in a special election in the 6th Congressional District of Georgia:

Really? Bernie endorses a candidate with a realistic chance of winning a U.S. House seat that was previously held by a Republican who is now a member of the Trump Cabinet, and this guy has the gall to compare Bernie to a domestic abuser? Bernie is, to my knowledge, not a domestic abuser, and comparing someone like Bernie to a domestic abuser minimizes violence against women, which is a serious problem in America. Although these statistics date back to no later than late 2014, nearly 5 million American women each year experience physical violence by an intimate partner, one in four American women will be victims of severe violence by an intimate partner, and over 38 million American women have experienced physical intimate partner violence at some point in their lifetimes. It is inherently clear that domestic violence is a major problem in America, and using graphic images of domestic violence to compare political figures who aren’t domestic abusers to domestic abusers minimizes the serious problem in America that is domestic violence.

The GOP and the media don’t want you to know it, but it’s not over yet in Georgia

The winner of the special election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District is…nobody! For congressional special elections, Georgia uses a two-round system in which all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, appear on the same ballot in the first round, and, if one candidate gets a majority of the first-round vote, that candidate wins, otherwise, a runoff election is held at a later date between the top two candidates, regardless of party affiliation. No candidate received a first-round majority, although Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff came only a couple thousand votes short of an outright victory, and Ossoff will face Republican candidate Karen Handel in a June 20 runoff.

The narrative from the Republicans and the corporate media is that they believe that Handel is going to win the runoff easily. Trump is touting a “BIG “R” win” on Twitter, even though nobody has won the election yet, and the runoff election is two months away.

Let me tell you this: the election in the 6th District of Georgia has only begun, and there are a number of reasons why:

  • Most pre-election opinion polling had Ossoff projected to receive somewhere around 40-45% of the vote in the first round. Ossoff received roughly 48% of the vote in the first round, slightly outperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential election performance in most precincts in the 6th District of Georgia.
  • Handel might be the worst candidate for the Republicans to have sent to the runoff. She ran as not enough of a Trump loyalist for the Trump loyalist crowd in the first round, and now she’s trying to run as a Trump loyalist in the runoff. Also, Handel was the person who nearly destroyed the Susan G. Komen Foundation over her opposition to reproductive rights.
  • Trump is very unpopular among some voters in the 6th District of Georgia who had voted strongly Republican prior to November of last year; most of these voters voted for Ossoff in the first round of the 6th District special election.
  • Trump may campaign for Handel at some point before the June 20 runoff.

If you live in the 6th Congressional District of Georgia, vote for Jon Ossoff on June 20.

A whole slate of endorsements, because it’s time to hold Trump accountable

I’m going to announce a whole slate of endorsements in a number of elections across the country, including special elections this year, Democratic primaries for general elections this year, and Democratic primaries for general elections in 2018.

6th Congressional District of Georgia special election – Jon Ossoff

Early voting is underway in the special election to replace Republican U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price in the U.S. House of Representatives, and it is likely that Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff will get a plurality of the votes in the April 6 election, and, if no candidate gets a majority in the special election, a runoff between the two candidates who receive the highest number of votes in the April 6 election would be held on June 20. Prior to entering electoral politics, Ossoff was Han Solo an investigative filmmaker and a baseball player. As an investigative filmmaker, Ossoff exposed judicial corruption in the African country of Ghana and uncovered acts of brutality committed by ISIS in Iraq. Republicans are so frightened that Ossoff might win one way or another, Republican-aligned political organizations have spent tons of money on television ads attacking him because he’s a fan of Star Wars. While I’m no fan of Star Wars, that is one of the most ridiculous things to attack a candidate for public office over. Should a runoff be needed, Ossoff’s most likely GOP runoff opponent would probably be Karen Handel, who, when she was the vice president for public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure, cut off Komen’s funding to Planned Parenthood, an organization that…you guessed it…provides breast cancer screenings to women! Only Karen Handel could mess up a charity seeking to eradicate breast cancer. I endorse Jon Ossoff’s campaign, and I encourage voters in the 6th Congressional District of Georgia to vote for Ossoff on April 6, and, if necessary, on June 20.

8th Congressional District of Massachusetts Democratic primary – Brianna Wu

I proudly endorse video game developer Brianna Wu in next year’s Democratic primary in the 8th Congressional District of Massachusetts. Prior to entering electoral politics, Wu, who was born in West Virginia and grew up in Mississippi but now lives in Massachusetts, was repeatedly harassed and doxxed online by a bunch of misogynists as part of Gamergate. Wu supports collective bargaining, internet privacy rights, and other progressive ideals.

At-large Congressional District of Montana special election – Rob Quist

Another special election is taking place across the entire state of Montana for the U.S. House seat vacated by Republican U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and Democrats have nominated musician and former Montana Arts Council member Rob Quist in the upcoming special election for the seat. Quist was born and raised in Montana, and he supports closing corporate tax loopholes and opposes Donald Trump’s efforts to take health insurance away from millions of Americans. Quist’s GOP challenger is Greg Gianforte, a wealthy carpetbagger from New Jersey who supports the Trump agenda and wants to bring New Jersey values to Montana. The special election in Montana will take place May 25.

Governor of New Jersey Democratic primary – John Wisniewski

Speaking of New Jersey, I proudly endorse John Wisniewski for the Democratic nomination for the office of Governor of New Jersey. Wisniewski has been perhaps the most vocal critic of Chris Christie there ever is, the most vocal critic of Chris Christie there was, and the most vocal critic of Chris Christie there will ever be, particularly in regards to the Bridgegate scandal. If nominated for and elected governor, Wisniewski will take on both the Republicans and the George Norcross machine that is holding back the New Jersey Democratic Party, and he’ll be a steadfast advocate for progressive ideals. New Jersey holds its gubernatorial election this year.

Governor of Virginia Democratic primary – Tom Perriello

I proudly endorse former U.S. Representative and former diplomat Tom Perriello for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Virginia. If nominated for and elected governor, Perriello will be a fighter for the people of Virginia by standing up for women’s reproductive rights, rebuilding Virginia’s crumbling infrastructure, expand broadband internet access in Virginia, and treat opioid addiction as a treatable illness, not a criminal act. Like New Jersey, Virginia holds its gubernatorial election this year.