Progressives Every Day: VP Pick and Other Big Decisions
Lots of news!
Welcome to the Tuesday night edition of Progressives Everywhere!
So, as you definitely know by now, the big news today is that Joe Biden has selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate (and, if we work hard enough, the next Vice President of the United States).
It’s hard to know exactly where Harris stands on the issues that matter most to progressives. She has always been in the minority in the US Senate, and it’s easy to support big policies when you know they’re not going to be enacted. To wit, she first supported Medicare for All during her presidential campaign and then pulled back on it the first moment that the media began questioning its cost (sigh). Further, she hasn’t even backed that many progressive ideas while in the minority — there’s a reason why Wall Street is pumped about her nomination.
Then again, Biden could have picked any number of much more definitively conservative candidates. It could well be that Harris will support the progressive ideas she espoused on the campaign trail and believes that the unprecedented crisis we’re now facing will require more fundamental change than she’d sought before. Hopefully, we’ll know either way by this time next year.
In terms of sheer politics, I think this is a good move. Harris is likely to be on the campaign trail far more than Biden himself and I can’t wait to see her eat Mike Pence alive. And as a bonus, I’m pretty sure this has Brett Kavanaugh really, really pissed off.
It’s pretty wild when you pull back and realize that Joe Lieberman was the Democratic vice presidential nominee 20 years ago and now the vice presidential nominee is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. That is the true promise of the United States.
OK, on to the other news of the day!
Elections (and Future Elections)
Now that Stacey Abrams is officially not Joe Biden’s running mate, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggests that she’s likely to run for governor of Georgia once again in 2022. She got cheated out of the governorship in 2018 and Republican Brian Kemp has been nothing but flagrantly awful in his first year and a half in office, especially when it comes to COVID-19.
I look forward to raising money for Abrams whenever she decides to run for office next… though I’m pretty sure she won’t really need my help.
Speaking of running again in 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is looking to get his re-election campaign off the ground. Between cavalierly allowing well over half-a-million Floridians to contract COVID-19, signing the Jim Crow poll tax to disenfranchise one million Floridians against the wishes of a vast majority of the state’s voters, and even getting dissed by Senator Rick Scott, one of the worst people alive, DeSantis certainly has an impressive list of accomplishments to present in his quest for a second term.
In late July, DeSantis’ once-favorable poll numbers had cratered, going down to 41-52% approve/disapprove. Given the state’s ongoing trouble with coronavirus and DeSantis’s insistence that schools reopen despite palpable danger, it’s unlikely that Floridians have warmed up to him at all over the past three weeks.
Ilhan Omar looks like she’s well on her way to re-election in tonight’s primary, overcoming a challenge from an empty vessel powered by a gigantic financial investment from right-wing special interests.
I’ve been saying (and tweeting) “Republicans are terrorists” for the last four or five years and for much of that time, people have told me to knock off the divisive hyperbole. The GOP’s response to COVID-19 more or less proved me correct, but for anyone still on the fence about it, meet Marjorie Tyler Greene, the next Republican Congresswoman from Georgia’s 14th district and an avowed QAnon supporter. She is truly an awful person, a categorization that feels generous in her case.
Big new poll alert: Joe Biden is currently leading Trump 49-44 in Wisconsin. This is consistent with Marquette University’s June polling, which had Biden up 50-44. There’s a lot of useful and important data in this poll; here are some highlights:
Both parties are excited to vote — 87% of both Democrats and Republicans say they’re definitely going to cast ballots in November, while 60% of independents are certain that they’ll participate
As for how they’ll vote:
35% say they’ll vote absentee
46% plan to vote in person on election day
12% intend to vote early in person
While Trump is unpopular in the state, Gov. Tony Evers gets positive marks for his job performance overall as well as how he’s handled COVID-19 (despite the fact that Republicans continuously try to stop everything he tries to do).
Overall, Evers is at 57-37 approve/disapprove
He’s at 61-35 with regard to how he’s handling the coronavirus, up three points from June.
A whopping 99% of Massachusett’s 30,000 members of MoveOn voted to endorse Senator Ed Markey in his tight primary race against Rep. Joseph Kennedy III. For context, as WBUR points out, just 82% of the organization’s national membership voted to endorse Joe Biden for president even after he had clinched the nomination.
COVID-19 and Related Drama
Nearly 1000 healthcare workers have died of COVID-19. Here are some of their stories.
Nevada’s Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak signed a bill that protects most businesses — casinos in particular — from “frivolous” lawsuits related to COVID-19. Schools and hospitals, however, are exempted from protection. This is what Mitch McConnell wants to do on a national level; despite the fact that Democrats now control Nevada’s government, it’s clear that big business still ultimately has the final say.
Ugh.
Quibis
This is my district. Awful and horrifying. Antisemitism is everywhere.
I graduated college right into the 2008 financial collapse and am now working to push forward amidst the second once-in-a-lifetime economic meltdown of my career. Being a millennial is tough!
More hockey stuff!