Big wins prove democracy thrives in the solid blue midwest
We're tough on crime... committed by ex-presidents
Welcome to a Tuesday evening edition of Progress Report.
It’s been a long day and night, beginning with surreal and ending with the sublime. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get to it.
I spent my lunch break today outside the Manhattan Criminal Court, where I wandered in and around the vast collection of chanting protestors and straight-faced reporters who had gathered there in anticipation of Donald Trump’s arraignment.
To be honest, it was sort of a disappointing scene, because Donald Trump supporters do not recognize that they are losers. God bless them.
By the time I arrived, the Republican politicians and far-right extremists that had promised to mount a valiant resistance had long since blown their hot air into the warm morning air and gotten out of dodge. That left an assortment of unemployed diehards, curious onlookers like myself, and an army of TV news crews walking in circles.
The one notable moment for me was seeing the Fox News slime machine in action. A smug reporter who looked like Ben Shapiro with hair gel was skulking around, looking for people to barrage with racist gotcha questions about crime. I offered to step in front of the camera and clarify the record with some statistics — NYC is safer than Florida — but he declined. And then declined two more times as I followed him around the park. What a shame.
It felt as if I was walking through the same scene that we’ve seen repeat itself since 2016, only with a bit more liberal jubilance than usual. Everywhere else, Trump’s presidency, and the seismic cultural shocks that it produced, continue to reorganize our political environment, drawing ever-deeper fault lines between us.
Tonight’s major election results exemplify the revival of the Midwestern progressive tradition. Judge Janet Protasiewicz won a blow-out victory in Wisconsin’s high-profile state Supreme Court election, giving liberals a long-awaited 4-3 advantage on the state’s highest court.
After a decade under a gerrymandered GOP legislative supermajority locked in by a conservative Supreme Court, Wisconsinites mobilized in record numbers to begin the process of restoring their democracy and civil rights.
Should the Democratic candidate win a special legislative election in the gerrymandered SD-8, the GOP will also the legislative supermajority that would allow them impeached Protasiewicz before she ever gets a chance to hear a case.
With Protasiewicz on the bench, it all but assure that Wisconsin’s arcane abortion ban, passed in 1849, will be overturned. The court is also all but guaranteed to overturn the obscenely gerrymandered electoral maps that have given Republicans nearly two-thirds of legislative seats even as Democratic Gov. Tony Evers won re-election with 51% of the vote.
Turnout in this race was massive, driven in part by young people in places like Dane County, who voted at 2022 general election rates. Once again, abortion rights proved to be a decisive factor in what could have otherwise been a much tighter race, but the GOP insisted on continuing its new tradition of nominating feral psychos who make the Heritage Society blush.
In Chicago, progressive county commissioner Brandon Johnson won a huge upset victory over conservative Paul Vallas, who ran a racist campaign that emphasized crime, his experience destroying public schools, and being a dickhead.
Johnson is a former organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, which supported his candidacy from the early days when he had almost zero name recognition. Their vigorous support, as well as that of the Working Families Party and other grassroots organizations, helped Johnson launch a late surge in the big open primary that also included progressive Rep. Chuy Garcia incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot. He then had to face Vallas, who ran away with the top slot in the primary.
The money game wasn’t close, and Vallas hammered relentlessly with a “tough on crime” message that corporate consultants and media organizations still seem to think is popular with Democrats. The head of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police promising that there would be “blood on the streets” should Johnson become mayor of a city that has been plagued by police violence was also probably not particularly helpful.
Johnson, on the other hand, focused on his vision of the future — affordable housing, good union jobs, police reform — while also dragging Vallas for his long history of destroying public school systems. He wanted to “speak to people’s hopes, not their fears,” and after so many rough years in Chicago, that proved to be a winning message.
Allies, meanwhile, hit Vallas for being was a regular on right-wing talk radio and taking gobs of money from billionaire families and right-wing organizations. The cash helped him blanket the Chicago market with TV ads, but voters had seen enough of Vallas over the years to have a clear perception of him even without his constantly interrupting the NCAA tournament.
Progressives winning elections against corporate conservatives who act tough on organized labor and play up crime like it’s 1997 generally get picked apart and diminished by pundits and news media, but the significance of Johnson’s victory here is unimpeachable. A Black labor organizer backed by public school teachers just beat a school-destroying neoliberal who ran a race-baiting campaign backed by billionaires. That’s a huge deal.
Big cities have been a battleground for progressive politics and corporate money over the past few election cycles, and Johnson’s decisive victory is likely to usher in some significant change in a state governed by progressive stalwart JB Pritzker. The value of simple non-interference from the state capitol cannot be understated, because it’s becoming increasingly rare for many big cities.
At the same time that Democrats have been working diligently to expand voter rights and access, Republican states have been working overtime to strip self-governance rights away from Democratic-run cities and counties with preemption laws and other methods.
We see it right now in Tennessee, where Republicans in the legislature are on the verge of expelling three Democratic members for assisting peaceful gun control protestors in the Capitol after the mass shooting in Nashville last week. In the rent control and housing regulation in Florida. In the preemption of environmental and business regulations in Texas. On and on, democracy is being so brutally curtailed in red states that even putting culture wars aside, it’s hard to recognize red and blue states as parts of the same union.
We’ll dive deep into the parallel rise of American autocracy in the next two editions of the newsletter.
Wait, Before You Leave!
Progress Report has raised over $7 million dollars for progressive candidates and causes, breaks national stories about corrupt politicians, delivers incisive analysis, and continues to grow its paid reporting team. .
None of the money we’ve raised for candidates and causes goes to producing this newsletter or all of the related projects we put out. In fact, it costs me money to do this. So to make this sustainable, hire new writers, and expand, I need your help.
For just $5 a month, you can buy a premium subscription that includes:
Premium member-only newsletters with original reporting
Financing new projects and paying new reporters
Access to upcoming chats
You can also make a one-time donation to Progress Report’s GoFundMe campaign — doing so will earn you a shout-out in the next edition of the newsletter!
Love it:
"In Chicago, progressive county commissioner Brandon Johnson won a huge upset victory over conservative Paul Vallas, who ran a racist campaign that emphasized crime, his experience destroying public schools, and being a dickhead."