Progressives Every Day: The $2000 Question and a Huge Lesson Learned
More of this, please.
Welcome to a Tuesday night edition of Progressives Everywhere!
This will be the final premium edition of the year, though I may send one out to the wide list tomorrow, depending on what happens in the news. Either way, let me start off this edition by thanking you for supporting Progressives Everywhere this year.
This was an unprecedented and surreal year, filled with massive social upheaval, political warfare, and human tragedy, and I’m proud of how we were able to cover it while being planted firmly in the middle of the madness here in New York City. We supported legislative candidates in states all over the country, helped progressive Democrats win tight primaries, supported progressive organizers in their critical work, documented the Black Lives Matter protests and raised over $1.5 million for civil rights groups, launched several websites that provided crucial information to countless voters, and, last but definitely not least, laid out the strategy that Democrats are now using in the Georgia Senate runoff elections.
I have a lot of big plans for 2021, which include beginning the rollout of viral videos on progressive issues, focusing far more coverage and support for progressive grassroots organizers, more interviews with experts and journalists, and other innovations that I’m sure will come to me as the country careens from disaster to disaster.
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OK, let’s get to the good stuff!
The $2000 Question
Right now, Mitch McConnell is wrestling with an existential question: Does he enjoy watching people suffer enough that he’s willing to lose his grip on power in the Senate?
Yesterday, Democrats — and 44 Republicans — voted to approve a $1400 bump in stimulus checks for tens of millions of people around the country, putting Republicans on the hot seat and validating the strategy I laid out a month and a half ago (and then kept emphasizing). Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, locked in tough runoff elections that conclude a week from today, meekly endorsed the $2000 stimulus, making sure to couch it as support for Donald Trump and emphasizing their stunning lack of empathy for everyone else.
A number of other Republican Senators have also come out in support of the increased stimulus checks, though bad-faith arguments from Blue Dog Democrats and newspaper columnists have done little to help things. Funny how people suddenly get really concerned about how targeted financial benefits are when they could possibly go to poor and working people, but not when they’re giving huge tax cuts to mega-corporations and the wealthy!
Bernie Sanders is promising to filibuster the defense spending bill if McConnell doesn’t bring the $2000 checks up for an up-or-down vote, and McConnell is aiming to combine them with poison pills for Democrats like a voter fraud commission, ending Section 230 (which debilitate right-wing disinformation networks more than anything else), and I dunno, making it mandatory to watch videos of Ted Cruz eat.
It’s unclear what will happen from here (Schumer is already taking aim at McConnell for that), but the experience has been instructive and very valuable nonetheless. Joe Biden was the one who made the $600 surrender in the first place, and as he enters the White House, it’s key that Democrats see that they can harness public opinion and energy to push for more progressive policies than those for which they might normally settle.
Biden is stuck in an austerity mindset and obsessed with compromise, to the point that he so often pre-emptively surrenders, as if doing so will earn him a badge of honor. He needs to see what fighting for bolder policy can do and recognize that he’s got an emboldened wing of a party that is going to do it regardless of how he feels.
Important News You Need to Know
I want to try some Mr. Show-style news updates, so I’m going to keep that going. Let me know if anyone objects!
Georgia: Speaking of the Senate runoffs, it’s stunning just how much corruption Kelly Loeffler has engaged in during her one year in the Senate. She really dove right in there and started exploiting her power. Yolo, I guess. Elizabeth Warren just introduced a new bill in the Senate to ban lawmakers in the chamber from owning or trading stocks while in office, but something tells me it’ll hard to get passed.
Elsewhere in Georgia, Black people are aiming to save the day once again. Democrats best make it worth their while.
Cities (Various): It’ll take a lot of improvement to even approach justly rewarding Black people for their loyalty to the Democratic Party. One thing that became very apparent this year, especially during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in June, is that big-city Democrats deserve their fair share of the blame for the toxic policies that exacerbate inequality, police violence, and other matters that disproportionately impact Black people.
Here in New York, Mayor de Blasio backed the NYPD to the hilt even as it was clear that they were openly assaulting people of color during protests; he only apologized last week, during the Christmas rush, after a commission came out with a report condemning the NYPD’s conduct. Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti vetoed a budget that took a bit of funding away from the LAPD and rerouted it to disadvantaged communities. And now, San Francisco is moving to kick out thousands of homeless people from the hotel rooms where they’ve been housed right as COVID hits a new peak.
Illinois: There is a big backlog of criminal record expungements in Illinois, in part due to COVID. The expungements were a key part of the deal brokered when weed was legalized there, and more are promised soon, but still, this is something to keep an eye on.
Speaking of, lawmakers’ desire to arrest people under 21 for possession of cannabis is holding up New Jersey’s official establishment of cannabis legalization. Incredible. Arresting kids for weed is the opposite of the point of legalizing marijuana.
Texas: It was undoubtedly a very disappointing year in Texas, where Democrats’ hopes for flipping anything blue were dashed. They picked up just one seat in the legislature and lost ground with voters of color, making it really somewhat of a disaster. But the Texas GOP is plagued by corruption, with under-indictment Attorney General Ken Paxton under investigation for even more crimes.
Democrats are focusing their fire on Paxton right now, and outside activists have launched a new PAC that is both specifically targeting the crooked AG and is aiming to help organize for progressives in a way that hadn’t been happening in the state up to this point.
Unfortunately, they’re going to face a steep climb, as the GOP’s continued grip on power gives them complete control of the redistricting process happening next year. Here’s a money quote: “I don’t see indicators that the Texas Legislature has learned its lesson, that it understands what it did in 2011, and quite frankly, perpetuated in 2013. I see no understanding of the ways in which that was wrong and hurt voters of color.”
The Internet: A few weeks ago, NY Times reporter Taylor Lorenz and I publicized the fact that Proud boys founder and right-wing white supremacist is on Cameo, the “celebrity” made-to-order message system. I checked with Cameo about it before I reported it; they had no comment. McInnes, who has been banned from every social media platform other than the right-wing cesspool Parler, is still on the site, selling videos to fawning racists. I was going to turn it into a whole big story, but I can’t really afford right-wing doxxing right now… don’t have the income or savings to protect myself from that.
Quibis
This is an interesting piece on why Mitch McConnell largely threw Trump under the bus (or at least let him fend for himself) during the stretch run of the election.
Good news: Anonymous shell companies will be banned in the United States once the defense spending bill passes.
No charges for the cops who murdered Tamir Rice. Motherfuckers.
Real Quick…
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