Progressives Every Day: Elections (Should) Have Consequences
And one of the crueler policies I've seen
Welcome to a Monday night edition of Progressives Everywhere!
All eyes are on Georgia, where both President-elect Joe Biden and outgoing President and failed mob boss Donald Trump are rallying their bases ahead of tomorrow’s grand Senate runoff election finale. I previewed that race in yesterday’s edition of the newsletter, and there are really only a few quick things I want to add before diving into big news from a number of states.
First, it sure is nice to see this:
Biden was responsible for green-lighting the remarkably unpopular $600 stimulus check quarter-loaf compromise and had largely been silent on the $2000 check proposal. I’m glad to see he’s come around, if only for purposes of political expedience, because either way, he’ll have to deliver it if Democrats do win in Georgia.
Second, I want to take a moment to scream at Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and the rest of the Democratic leadership in Congress.
Donald Trump’s attempts to bully Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into stealing the election for him, as revealed in the Washington Post yesterday, could not be more blatantly illegal. They are appalling, an egregious affront to democracy even by Trump’s standards, and they should not only be the subject of impeachment hearings, but they should also be the sort of thing that Democrats tag Republicans with for the next four election cycles. And yet, what did Hakeem Jeffries say when asked about whether Democrats would consider taking action over the calls?
This shit: “We're not looking backward. We're looking forward to the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20.”
Republicans weaponize absolutely every single Democratic misstep and stutter, no matter how slight, and invent plenty more of them out of whole cloth. They milked Benghazi for nearly half a decade. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has been holding hearings about every invented conspiracy theory he can find, including gross misinformation about Covid. And while I don’t think Democrats should be that cynical and opportunistic, the fact that they can’t be bothered to make an offical issue out of the President of the United State’s blatant attempts to overthrow a democratic election, days before more than 150 Republicans are going to stand up to pledge fealty to him during the Electoral College vote, isn’t just pathetic, it’s enraging.
They may not even officially condemn him!
I’ve long thought that Democratic leaders were remarkably and unnecessarily timid due to a combination of PTSD from the ‘80s and ‘90s and their institutional centrism. But I’m beginning to think they’re just also remarkably lazy and terrible at politics. Every time they allow these obvious and egregious assaults on Americans and the rule of law to go unpunished, they normalize it, push the goalposts further toward abject lawlessness, and embolden the worst criminals in the GOP.
There were no consequences for the people who lied us into the Iraq War, no consequences for the Wall Street executives who sold bad mortgages to unwitting Americans and caused the financial crisis of 2008, and no consequences for the lawmakers and White House officials who actively sabotaging the COVID-19 response. And now we’ve got Trump trying to steal the election, 150+ Republicans refusing to approve of the Electoral College, and Republicans trying to carry guns into the Capitol, with no real consequences on the horizon.
It will only get worse, and Americans will only get more numb to it if Democrats don’t stand up and do more than try to fundraise off of the anger that people feel. I often say that Democrats need to give people something to vote for, but they also need to give people confidence that they’ll actually fight against the people they call evil. Otherwise, what’s really the difference between the two parties?
The next few years will be brutal. Republicans have no respect for the law, let alone norms and institutions. They would absolutely overturn the election results if they had the numbers in Congress to do so. This is our last stand. If Democrats don’t start fighting back, they’re doomed.
What’s Happening In The States
Georgia
Two more things, because I want to highlight fun little tidbits about progressive organizers in this race. Again, if Democrats win these races, they will owe everything to the organizers who have been doing the hard work in Georgia for years now.
First, to get in touch with young voters, organizers have been getting creative, including conducting outreach on social networks and even dating apps. (There was actually a Democratic Congressional primary candidate in my district who had volunteers use Tinder to try to get in touch with voters, but that situation seemed more Catfishy than anything else.)
And second, behold this incredible effort:
We’ve raised money for Mijente before at Progressives Everywhere and you best believe we will be doing it again soon.
Nebraska
Because cruelty supersedes everything else for Republicans, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts suggested today that undocumented immigrants would not be eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the state.
Undocumented immigrants have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic due to their roles as essential workers, the economic precarity they tend to experience, and their lack of healthcare coverage. Not only is it cruel to deny them the vaccine, it also does the rest of the state a disservice by keeping the most public-facing workers at risk of spreading the infection.
There was already fear in the undocumented community of supposed record-keeping that would pass along the immigration status of those receiving the vaccine to the feds, something the Surgeon General has been trying to combat. Now, Pete Ricketts, the son of billionaire Joe Ricketts, is going a step further and banning them altogether, signaling that such information will be collected. What a disaster.
California
The ripple effect of Prop 22 is already being felt — and at this pace, it’s going to become a tidal wave. California voters were tricked into passing the anti-worker amendment sponsored by gig companies such as Lyft, Uber, and Instacart (seriously, voters say they regret it!), which keeps gig workers marooned as second class citizens without access to real benefits, and now more companies are taking advantage.
On Monday, the grocery chain Albertson’s announced that it will be firing all of its unionized delivery workers and replacing them with DoorDash drivers:
The only surprise is the speed at which Albertsons reversed course on its commitments to workers. This move comes after nearly a year of celebrating grocery store workers for feeding communities. Earlier this year, Albertsons Companies President & CEO Vivek Sankaran said the company was “taking care of our team.” Albertsons Companies “are working… to ensure that every member of our team who faces a crisis can have peace of mind that we will help them get through it.”
Lyft and Uber are looking to export this law elsewhere, especially in states with ballot initiatives. It will be something to watch very, very closely.
In better worker news, though, Google (well, technically Alphabet) employees are forming a union for the first time. It seems that the firestorm around the ouster of AI ethicist Timnit Gebru was a final straw. I’m curious about whether this union will address the huge number of subcontractors that Google hires, asking for them to become full-time employees or at least inviting them into the union regardless of who signs their paychecks.
Virginia
More good news from the Democratic trifecta in Richmond: Gov. Ralph Northam’s budget includes a guarantee that transgender Virginians will be fully eligible for the state’s expanded Medicaid program:
If the General Assembly agrees to the language, Virginia would become at least the 19th state to explicitly affirm that transgender care is covered by its Medicaid program, according to statistics gathered last year by UCLA School of Law.
Another 12 states have adopted laws or regulations expressly banning coverage of gender-affirming care for transgender Medicaid enrollees, UCLA’s review found. (At least two of those states, West Virginia and Alaska, are currently facing lawsuits challenging the policies. )
Remarkable how much discrimination is built into our system unless explicitly outlawed.
Michigan
Several top Republicans who’ve been touted contenders to run against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have now declared that they will not be running against the hard-as-nails first-term governor. And here’s some good news, from the new progressive DA of Washtenaw County, where Ann Arbor is located:
And finally…
Congressman Jamie Raskin and wife Sarah Bloom Raskin’s son took his own life this weekend. It is heartbreaking to know that someone who was such a bright spot, who gave so much love and inspired so much of it in return, felt such a bleak, consuming sadness. This is a beautiful and crushing tribute.
Real Quick…
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