Daily Archives: May 28, 2022

Eric Alterman is lecturing and traveling in Israel and Jordan this week, and so todays Altercation is authored by the historian Michael Kazin, a professor of history at Georgetown University and the author, most recently, of What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party, from which the below is adapted.

To judge by media coverage of the Democrats, youd think nothing is going on within the party but battles between progressives who want to pass sweeping pieces of legislation like Build Back Better and the PRO Act and moderates who fret that increasing federal spending will add to inflation and alienate business. This may be unfairthe mainstream media often arebut we would be fooling ourselves were we to fail to admit that the party itself has a serious identity problem.

In fact, there are more influential progressives or leftists (or whatever your term of choice) inside the Democratic Party now than at any time in decades. To make a lasting difference in the life of the countryrather than winning Twitter fights or gaining face time on MSNBCthey might learn something from the career of a bygone senator from New York who may have been the most powerful progressive who never ran for the White House in the two centuries the Democrats have existed as a mass institution.

During that span, a remarkable array of heroes and villains have made the party their political home. The virtuous set obviously includes Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed into law Social Security and other pillars of the limited welfare state, and led the nation to victory in World War II. It also includes John Lewis, who fought for voting rights for all Americans as a young activist and then spoke out for economic as well as racial equality during his 19 terms in Congress. Among the rogues are Roger Taney, a close aide to Andrew Jackson, who appointed him chief justice of the United States. From the bench in 1857, Taney intoned that Black people had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. And then there is George Wallace, the infamous Alabama governor, who exploited white hostility toward civil rights and liberal elites to become a darling of the far right in the 1960s and early 1970s.

But to name such figures, whether famous or infamous, neglects those party stalwarts, scarcely remembered today, who labored hard and long to enact critical reforms that stand as hallmarks of progressive achievement. Throughout their history, Democrats have done best when they espoused a vision of moral capitalism and policies to match. At a time when Democrats are struggling to enact programs like universal pre-kindergarten and expanded Medicare benefits, they can learn from the careers of once prominent, now little known, lawmakers who won election after election by championing policies to help the great majority of working Americans.

Most prominent among the forgotten is Robert Ferdinand Wagner. Born in a German Rhineland village in 1877, Wagner emigrated to New York City with his parents a few years later. His father had owned a small business in the Old Country but made his living as a janitor in the New World, at a salary of about a dollar a day. Discontented with his lot, Reinhard Wagner and his wife sailed back to Germany near the end of the 19th century and never returned. But Robert completed high school and then graduated from City College in Manhattan. He won an award as class orator that presaged his future career in politics.

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Wagner soon enlisted in the ranks of Tammany Hall, the citys potent Democratic machine. In 1904, he got elected, with Tammanys endorsement, to the New York state legislature. With the help of female reformers like Frances Perkins (who later became labor secretary during the New Deal), he worked to pass bills for accident compensation and factory inspection aimed to prevent horrible events like the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company that killed 146 workers, most of them female immigrants. Mary Dreier, a pioneer labor organizer, recalled traveling with Wagner to vegetable farms in upstate New York where young women toiled for as long as 19 hours a day. She recalled that Wagner was very astute asking questions about the children, who often accompanied their mothers to the fields.

In 1926, Wagner won a seat in the U.S. Senate by clinging to the coattails of Al Smith, then his states popular governor. On Capitol Hill, he proposed measures to aid the unemployed and use government funds to stabilize the economy. When FDR became president, Wagner seized a unique opportunity to pass bold initiatives to markedly improve the lives of working Americans. Leon Keyserling, a 27-year-old economist on his staff, wrote the National Labor Relations Act, which the press immediately dubbed the Wagner Act, although it was co-sponsored with a congressman from Massachusetts. The senator also introduced bills to erect millions of units of public housing and provide every citizen with health insurance. Wagners reputation as the most prominent and most effective labor liberal in America made him the natural choice to oversee the drafting of the 1936 Democratic platform, on which FDR ran his campaign for re-election that carried all but two states and gave the Democrats huge majorities in both houses.

Wagner was also one of the few Democrats in Congress whose empathy for ordinary people never faded at the color line. In 1934, he proposed a bill to make lynching a federal crime and fought, in vain, to stop Southerners in his party from filibustering it to death. He also sought to amend the Social Security Act and his own National Labor Relations Act to include domestic workers and farmworkersoccupations held by two-thirds of Black workers in the South. But the New Yorker and his fellow liberals lost that struggle, too; Southern Democrats composed too large a bloc in the party and had too much power in Congress. But Wagner did show his unflagging commitment to racial equality when he proposed, in 1940, a successful amendment to the new Selective Service Act that outlawed discrimination in the Army Air Corps and other elite branches of the military.

The German immigrant had come a long way from his days as a young cog of the New York Democratic machine. Still, Wagner understood just how essential both loyalty and a strong organization were in politicsand so he kept the faith. Tammany Hall may justly claim the title of the cradle of modern liberalism in America, he told an Independence Day crowd in 1937.

Wagner had another exemplary quality few politicians have ever possessed: He was as lacking in egotism and a hunger for adoration as any intensely public man could be. One New York journalist who followed Wagner throughout his career described him as an unassuming man sincere and unaffected, he has neither the desire nor the talent for self-exploitation. The senator, groused another reporter, does not put on a good show.

Yet in his modest fashion, he did as much as any New Dealer but FDR himself to advance, in the words of his partys 1940 platform (which Wagner drafted), the essential freedom, dignity and opportunity of the American worker. And he did this in a period of depression and foreign war that tested the survival of democracy in the nation and the world more than at any time in history.

Wagner remained in the Senate until near his death in 1953. A year later, his only child, Robert Wagner Jr., was elected mayor of New York City. The consistent labor liberal ran the metropolis until 1965. During his final term, he broke with Tammany Hall, whose clout had weakened considerably since it had launched his fathers eminent career.

If Democrats hope to dominate national politics again. as they did during the middle of the last century, they will have to develop leaders able to build a strong organization committed to advancing the economic interests of Americans who work hard but have too little to show for it. This is the hard, unglamorous work of politics. It requires both movement-building and deal-making, and if any current progressive Democrat wishes to earn him- or herself a record like that of Robert Wagner, they had better get to work on both.

Michael left us some room that should not go to waste, so here, from the Journal of the History of Ideas, is a forum on Black intellectual history that definitely will not make it into any of the curricula in Florida or Virginia anytime soon.

And I did not want to go two weeks in a row with no music. I am a fan of cover versions and I wrote up some of my favorite way back when The New York Times asked me to pick some in 2008, here. I am also a fan of Mr. Springsteen and so todays bonuses include Bruce doing Love Me Tender and Drift Away, Like a Rolling Stone, and the famous Leipzig 2013 You Never Can Tell, with over 60,000,000 views. Bruce apparently did not remember that he did the song (also unrehearsed) in 2009, but the bootleg I grew up listening to was from 1974. Listen to how differently Bruce used to talk on stage back then: Im married, Im selling insurance

And if you remember this song (and useful metaphor) fondly, as I do, then you ought to love this one perhaps even more.

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Altercation: The Best (Progressive) Democrat You Probably Never Heard Of - The American Prospect

In my view, these solidly red states provide fertile ground for populist Democratic challengers who are willing to run against the party establishment and in favor of strong working-class appeals. In 2020 in Kentucky, Charles Booker took on his own partys favored candidate, Amy McGrath, in the Senate primary and almost won. Today, due to his resilience, he is the partys nominee to take on Rand Paul in November.

Consider Alabama. A state that has witnessed two campaigns to unionize Amazon in the past couple of years and has seen a brutal union-busting effort by the Warrior Met Coal company against its own workers. These worker-led movements have popular support in the state. Alabamians are hungry for someone to speak to their pain, carry their fight in the political area, and importantly, take on a struggle that necessarily entails friction with their wealthy corporate paymasters. Due to GOP Senator Richard Shelbys retirement, there is an open seat. This should be fertile ground for redefinition of the Democratic brand. And while the contest might not be immediately successful, waging this kind of battle is necessary for repositioning the party to potentially win down-ballot seats or even claim a Senate victory in the years to come.

The alternative is to simply give up. But it wasnt that long ago when Democratsbuffeted by FDR/New Deal branding and the molding of generations of Democratic votersheld Senate seats in places like Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, North Dakota, and Louisiana, all of which have races this year. Its just like Edison said: The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

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How the Democrats Can Become the Party of the People Again - The New Republic

Two nearly identical text boxes appear on the respective campaign websites for Henry Cuellar and Jessica Cisneros, the Democrats locked in a heated primary runoff to represent south Texas in Congress.

Cuellars text box warns voters that Cisneros would defund the police and border patrol, which would make us less safe and wreck our local economy. Cisneros, in turn, blasts Cuellar for opposing womens right to choose amid a nationwide crackdown on reproductive care.

The parallel advisories read like shorthand for the battle thats brewing among Democrats in Texas, where centrist incumbents like Cuellar are facing a mushrooming cohort of young and progressive voters frustrated by the status quo.

I want people to take away from what were doing people-power people can go toe-to-toe with any kind of corporate special interest, Cisneros told the Guardian. And that we still have power over what we want our future and our narrative to be here in Texas, despite all odds.

Texas-28 is a heavily gerrymandered, predominantly Latino congressional district that rides the US-Mexico border, including the city of Laredo, before sprawling across south-central Texas to reach into San Antonio. During the primary election in March, voters there were so split that barely a thousand votes divided Cuellar from Cisneros, while neither candidate received the majority they needed to win.

Now, the runoff on 24 May has come to represent not only a race for the coveted congressional seat, but also a referendum on the future of Democratic politics in Texas and nationally.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, House majority whip, James E Clyburn, and House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, have thrown the full-throated support of the Democratic establishment behind Cuellar, while endorsements from progressive icons such as Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have elevated Cisneros as a rising star on the national stage.

If Cuellar wins, this is a story of how the Democratic machine and the old system is still strong in the district. And if Jessica Cisneros wins, the narrative is this is another successful Latina politician carrying the community forward, said Katsuo Nishikawa Chvez, an associate professor of political science at Trinity University.

Cuellar did not grant the Guardians request for an interview.

Cuellar and Cisneros both Mexican American lawyers from Laredo represent two radically different visions of what south Texas is and could be.

Cuellar has served nine terms in the US House of Representatives, where last summer he teamed up with the Republican senator Lindsey Graham to portray migrants as disease carriers and demand that the Biden administration end the surge at the US-Mexico border. By contrast, Cisneros, 28, has spent much of her early career fighting on the frontlines for immigrant families and asylum seekers, and part of her platform is more humane border and immigration policies that include a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized residents.

Their strategies also diverge on campaign finance. Cuellar has funded years of congressional bids with contributions from donors that have notably included the National Rifle Association and oil and gas industry Pacs. Cisneros, meanwhile, has publicly sworn off campaign donations from corporate Pacs and lobbyists and yet still far outpaced Cuellars fundraising numbers during the first quarter of 2022.

At least part of Cisneross fundraising success earlier this year may be linked to the FBIs raid on Cuellars home in January, which immediately embroiled his office in scandal. A Texas Tribune analysis found that in the days after the raid, Cisneross campaign contributions soared, although what exactly the FBI was investigating remains unclear and Cuellar maintains he has done nothing wrong.

Now, in the days leading up to the runoff, another major controversy has taken center stage: the candidates opposing views on reproductive care. After a leaked draft opinion went viral suggesting the supreme courts intention to overturn Roe v Wade the landmark decision that established a constitutional right to abortion in the US Cuellar has faced renewed scrutiny from reproductive rights champions as the lone Democratic representative to vote against codifying the right to an abortion last September.

Cisneros, in turn, has vowed to protect that right. In a statement following the draft leak, she called on the Democratic leadership to withdraw their support of Henry Cuellar who is the last anti-choice Democrat in the House.

The 2022 election is Cisneross second bid to unseat Cuellar, whom she also ran against in 2020 as a first-time, 26-year-old challenger. After she lost that race by less than 4% of the vote, she said she felt compelled to try one more time.

What folks were telling us over and over and over again was that, you know, the way things are right now isnt working, and that they want a different version an alternative version of what south Texas can look like, because they felt like they were being taken for granted, Cisneros said.

Residents in Texas-28 have a lot working against them, which may explain why some could feel like they and their votes are undervalued. For one, increased voter restrictions, closed or relocated polling places, and other serious barriers that require more time and energy make it so that by design, many Texans of color dont vote when they perceive an election to be low stakes.

Everything we see looks to be orchestrated in a way that makes voting for Latinos hard and almost impossible, said Nishikawa Chvez, who suggested it was hard to look at the Texas governments actions and not recognize a systemic interest in suppressing the Latino vote.

In a self-fulfilling prophecy, candidates from both parties also chronically underinvest their limited resources in Latino communities like Texas-28 because they dont know how to reach them and assume they probably wont go to the polls, Nishikawa Chvez said.

Jen Ramos, a state Democratic executive committeewoman for the Texas Democratic party, has been getting out the vote for Cisneros in Laredo and San Antonio, where some residents have told her its the first time their doors have ever been knocked by a political campaign.

The fact that these folks have never had their door knocked on, have never been contacted before, and were talking to people and meeting them where theyre at, thats a real disappointment for an elected official whos been in office for as long as he [Cuellar] has, Ramos said.

If there was anything Ramos noticed growing up in Texas-28, it was the defeated feeling that nothing ever changed within her community, no matter who was in power. Henry Cuellar has been in office almost as long as Ive been alive, and yet nothing has inspired any change or difference, nor has he ever bothered to talk to anybody in the community, she said.

Shes optimistic that things could finally be different with Cisneros representing the district: I think that Jessicas race is the very first time in a long time that the region and the community has seen the sense of hope.

But not everyone in the district agrees with the kind of change Cisneros represents. Texas-28 is a perfect microcosm of how Latino voters are in no way a monolith, and closer to the borders Rio Grande, constituents trend more conservative, Catholic and pro-gun rights than in San Antonios working-class neighborhoods, Nishikawa Chvez explained.

Its a huge district, and its cut in such a way to maximize Republican votes, he said. And so you get a kind of a schizophrenic area.

Generational and gendered divides complicate matters further. Older voters speak Cuellars language around good jobs, border security and Catholic values, while a growing constituency of highly educated young Latinos hear their values represented in Cisneros. Meanwhile, Latina matriarchs are pushing their communities to vote for issues beyond the economy, such as healthcare access, the environment and quality education.

Ultimately, the runoff will come down to who actually turns out, a question that may have a larger impact on how politicians appeal to Latinos in future, Nishikawa Chvez suggested.

How this election goes is going to tell us a little bit about the future, about how to approach or how to campaign and to get the votes of Latino voters in the US, he said.

For now, Cisneros is hoping to find common ground with her neighbors across the district by listening to what they want addressed. When were talking about increasing the minimum wage and Medicare for All, she said, theyre kitchen-table issues that, you know, people are much more concerned about.

Change doesnt happen overnight, Cisneros added. Every little thing that were doing every single day, I mean, is helping us build a brighter future. But I do know that when we win on 24 May, I really hope that it is the beginning of change in south Texas.

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Will Texas pick a progressive or anti-abortion Democrat in heated runoff? - The Guardian US

A new political action committee backed by a major New York hedge fund and Democratic politician turned cable news commentator Bakari Sellers plans to spend more than $1 million in a bid to oust progressive second-term Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib from the U.S. House of Representatives in November's midterm elections.

"It's flattering that billionaires who know nothing about our district are so scared of our movement."

Politico reports Urban Empowerment Action PAC announced a new campaign to "elect solutions-oriented Democrats" to Congress.

"UEA PAC's premier race will be in Michigan's 12th Congressional District, where the group plans to spend upwards of $1 million on TV, digital, mail, radio, and print advertising to support Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey in her campaign to restore infrastructure, improve educational opportunities in the district, and support the Biden-Harris agenda in D.C.," the new group said in a statement Friday.

Politico does not mention UEA's biggest contributor: According to OpenSecrets.org, the New York-based hedge fund Third Point LLC, founded by multibillionaire investor Daniel S. Loeb, has given $76,355 to the PAC.

Tlaib responded swiftly, tweeting, "Yet another Wall Street billionaire-funded Super PAC running interference in local races, spending millions to peddle lies and distortions, pushing a pro-corporate agenda on a district that has consistently stood against the corporate greed hurting our families."

According to Politico, Sellersthe former South Carolina state lawmaker and failed lieutenant governor candidate who regularly appears on CNN as a political analystis fundraising for UEA PAC. When asked about his endorsement of Winfrey, he told Politico's "The Recast" that "we are hoping that we can have a candidate that doesn't have varying distractions."

Tlaib, who is Palestinian-American, and "Squad" colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)the first Muslim-American women elected to Congresshave been smeared as anti-Semites by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers for their advocacy of Palestinian rights, their condemnation of Israeli crimes including apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and their willingness to criticize President Joe Biden over "unconditional" U.S. support for Israel.

Earlier this month, Tlaib introduced a resolution recognizing the Nakbaor "Catastrophe"in which Zionist Jews ethnically cleansed more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homeland while establishing the nation of Israel.

Sellers, on the other hand, is a staunch supporter of Israel. He also bristles at Tlaib's vote against Biden's bipartisan infrastructure bill, which she rejected after Democratic leadership broke a promise to pass the measure in tandem with the Build Back Better Act. That sweeping climate and social spending package has still not passed, in large part due to obstructionist right-wing members of Tlaib's own party.

Progressives reacted angrily to Politico's reporting.

"Fuck this. We'll make sure Rashida buries them," activist Brett Banditelli tweeted. "She represents all working-class people in her district and in her city."

Strategist Waleed Shahid tweeted: "With Islamophobia on the rise, it is disgraceful to single out the *only* Palestinian member of Congress, who is a civil rights lawyer and represents one of the most Arab-American districts. Shouldn't you focus on holding the Dem majority?"

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Wall Street-Funded Democrat PAC to Spend $1 Million in Bid to Unseat Tlaib: Report - Common Dreams

Since the end of World War II, the president's party has lost an average of 26 House seats in midterm elections. For Democrats to keep control of the House in the 2022 elections, they will need to successfully hold districts like Illinois' reconfigured 6th Congressional district, which stretches from Villa Park to Tinley Park and is currently rated "lean Democrat" by The Cook Political Report.

In the June 28 primary, 6th District Democratic voters will need to not only consider whether Rep. Sean Casten, the 6th District incumbent, or Rep. Marie Newman, who now serves Illinois' 3rd Congressional District, would best represent them in Congress. They also need to think about who has the best chance of winning the general election.

Casten is the clear choice on both counts. A resident of Downers Grove, Casten proved he could win in contested suburban districts when he defeated six-term Republican incumbent Peter Roskam in 2018 and held off challenger Jeanne Ives in 2020.

Newman, on the other hand, won in the more heavily Democratic 3rd District. While Dan Lipinski had won this district with 73% of the general election vote in 2018, Newman received just 56% of the vote in 2020.

Although Newman has generally voted with the majority of Democrats since joining the House last year, Casten has emerged as a congressional leader in his two terms, particularly on efforts to prevent the worst effects of climate change. He sits on the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis and his work led to funding for clean-energy battery storage and research into low-carbon industrial technologies being included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Residents of the 6th district who want Democrats to keep control of the U.S. House should turn out to vote for Sean Casten on June 28.

Allen Hogg

Downers Grove

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Letter: Which Democrat has best chance to win? - Daily Herald

Wisconsin voters took legal action against their states five largest cities on Wednesday over the illegal use of unmanned drop boxes during the 2020 election.

Filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of voters against Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine, the legal complaints allege that city officials ignored state law by implementing unmanned drop boxes over the course of the 2020 cycle.

In 2020, the cities of Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay made an agreement with the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life [CTCL] to use the drop boxes to get these cities residents to vote, said Thomas More Society Special Counsel Erick Kaardal in a press release. This so-calledWisconsin Safe Voting Plan, involved $8.8 million of private grants to these five cities, to target specific populations to vote. It had little, if anything at all to do with keeping voters safe from Covid-19, as it purported to do.

During the 2020 election, CTCL received $400 million from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to finance the infiltration of election offices at the city and county level by left-wing activists and use them as a platform to implement preferred administrative practices, voting methods, and data-sharing agreements, as well as to launch intensive outreach campaigns in areas heavy with Democratic voters, in the words of William Doyle in The Federalist.

According to a report from the Capital Research Center, CTCL distributed a total of 31 grants above the $5,000 minimum to Wisconsin cities and townships, with 28 going directly to specific cities rather than counties.

Out of those 28 grants just 8 of the recipient localities were won by Trump, while 20 were won by Biden, the report reads. Together, these 20 cities received $9 million or 90 percent of all CTCL funds in Wisconsin.

The Capital Research Center findings also reveal that [f]or grants over $5,000, 9 of CTCLs 10 largest per capita grants went to cities which Biden won, with Racine ($21.83), Green Bay ($11.60), Kenosha ($8.63), Milwaukee ($5.91), and Madison ($4.71) receiving the most out of all localities in the state.

The lawsuits from Wisconsin voters come after the Wisconsin Elections Commission refused last month to launch investigations into the five cities for their use of unmanned drop boxes, despite a January ruling from a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge saying that such drop boxes and ballot harvesting violate state law and cannot be used in the upcoming midterm elections.

Its all good and nice, but theres no authority to do it, Judge Michael Bohren said with respect to the use of drop boxes.

Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Wisconsin Voters File Lawsuits Against Democrat Cities Over Illegal Drop Box Use In 2020 Election - The Federalist