Category Archives: Liberal

Britain has seen dramatic shifts in attitudes towards the socially liberal end of the spectrum in just 30 years on issues ranging from drugs and abortionto gay relationships, a survey suggests.

Remain backers are much more supportive of gay rights than Leavers, the findings show. But the public is much more cynical about politicians today, with only half as many people having positive views of them.

Researchers at the Policy Institute at Kings College London compared a survey on moral beliefs in 1989 with results to the same questions now and found huge changes, including:

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Capital punishment is the only issue to see an increase in disapproval 22 per cent said it was morally wrong in 1989, while now 37 per cent do.

Thirty-nine bodies have been found in a lorry container in Essex, police have said.The discovery of 38 adults and one teenager was made at an industrial estate in Thurrock.Police said they believed the lorry had come from Bulgaria and entered the UK at Holyhead, in Wales, on Saturday.Essex Police said it had launched a murder investigation after its officers were called to Waterglade Industrial Park, in Grays, in the early hours of Wednesday morning.A 25-year-old-man from Northern Ireland has been arrested on suspicion of murder

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Ships out at sea before the sun rises off the coast of Whitley Bay, Northumberland

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Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife. The messy display is the culmination of a weekend of festivities where first years say thank you to their more senior student "parents" for mentoring them

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Wales players celebrate after beating France in their Rugby World Cup quarter-final in Japan. Warren Gatlands side had to battle after Frances fast start but capitalised on their rivals ill discipline to squeeze into the semi-finals, 20-19

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People gather in London to join the Final Say march for a people's vote

Angela Christofilou/The Independent

Protesters on Whitehall in London during an Extinction Rebellion climate change protest

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European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson shake hands during a news conference after agreeing on a Brexit deal, in Brussels

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A man walks his dog through the fallen leaves in Clarkes Gardens, Allerton in Liverpool

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Police officers carry away an activist as Extinction Rebellion protesters block a road with a caravan in central London

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Queen Elizabeth II sits with Prince Charles on the Sovereign's throne ahead of delivering the Queen's Speech at the State Opening of Parliament

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Great Britain's Joe Fraser competes on Parallel Bars during the World Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. He claimed GB's second gold with his victory. The 20-year-old from Birmingham nailed his routine to score 15.0 then watched as a series of rivals failed to live up to his total

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St Helens players celebrate with the trophy after they won the Super League Grand Final at Old Trafford in Manchester. They beat Salford Red Devils 23-6

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Richard Ratcliffe, husband of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe jailed in Tehran since 2016, holds his daughter Gabriella during a news conference in London. Their five-year-old daughter has arrived back in Britain, after making the "bittersweet" decision to bring her home

AFP via Getty

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at Thornton Manor. Their meeting focused on further Brexit proposals

EPA/Noel Mullen

Wales survived an almighty scare against Fiji to secure quarter-final spot at the rugby world cup. Warren Gatlands side recovered from a 10-0 deficit thanks to a hat-trick from Josh Adams

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Protesters dubbed the Red Rebels at Millbank at the junction with Great College Street, during an Extinction Rebellion protest in Westminster

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Final preparations are made in front of a reproduction of Michelangelo's 'The Last Judgement', ahead of the opening of for the 'Michelangelo: A Different View' exhibition at Hull Minister

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A car drives through a flooded street in Whitley Bay in Northumberland

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Thousands took to the streets of Edinburgh today to march in support of a second Scottish independence referendum

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A 12ft sculpture of a gorilla, entitled 'Gorilla Apocalypse', created by Luke Kite entirely from scrap car bumpers and panels discarded in the last decade is on display at the British Ironwork Centre in Oswestry, Shropshire

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Police stands in front of the Treasury building during an Extinction Rebellion protest in London

Reuters

Ex-Thomas Cook employees demonstrate in London after delivering a petition calling for a full inquiry into Thomas Cook's collapse and for the company's directors to pay back their bonuses

AFP/Getty

A road in Alum Rock, Birmingham is flooded after persistent heavy rain

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Two tourists pose for pictures in front of Union and EU flags outside the Houses of Parliament in London

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A sheep on London Bridge as Freemen of the City of London took up their historic entitlement to drive sheep over the bridge, which was once London's only river crossing

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An Aldabra giant tortoise is fed watermelon as a treat at the Malvern Autumn Show, at the Three Counties Showground near Malvern in Worcestershire

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Gallery assistants pose with an artwork entitled 'Devolved Parliament' by British artist Banksy, during a press view in London ahead of Sotheby's contemporary art sale, as part of the Frieze Art Fair

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England's Jonathan Joseph is tackled by United State's Marcel Brache during their group match at the Rugby World Cup in Japan. England scored seven tries on their way to winning 45-7

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Tributes for former Rangers player Fernando Ricksen at Ibrox Stadium. Today, the funeral procession will pass Ibrox Stadium before making the journey to Wellington Church

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A person dressed as a caricature of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a prison uniform stands outside the Supreme Court after it ruled that his decision to suspend Parliament was illegal

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Thomas Cook aircraft are parked up at Manchester Airport on the day they collapsed after rescue talks failed. A total of 22,000 jobs - including 9,000 in UK - are to be lost following administration. More than 150,000 British holidaymakers need to be brought home, with the government and CAA hiring dozens of charter planes to fly customers home free of charge

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Fire performer Penella Bee performs before people take part in the North East Skinny Dip at Druridge Bay in Nothumberland, an annual event that marks the Autumn Equinox and raises money for MIND - the Mental Health Charity

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Protesters gather for a march and rally organised by "The People's Vote" in Brighton, to call for politicians to give the public a final say referendum on Brexit

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Protesters in London joined millions across world to demand urgent action to save planet in the largest environmental protest in history

Angela Christofilou/The Independent

Rapper Dave poses with the Mercury Prize: Albums of the Year Award at Apollo

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A surfer in action during sunrise at Tynemouth on the north east coast

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Protesters dressed as the Incredible Hulk and Robocop outside the Supreme Court in London where judges are due to consider legal challenges to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament. The Supreme Court will hear appeals over three days from two separate challenges to the prorogation of Parliament brought in England and Scotland

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Farmer Tom Hoggard harvests pumpkins at Howe Bridge Farm in Yorkshire, ahead of Halloween

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Team Europe celebrate winning the Solheim Cup at Gleneagles in Auchterarder, Scotland. Europe won the last three singles matches to claim victory 14-13

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Sunset at St Mary's Lighthouse in Whitley Bay

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Activists from PETA stage a demonstration outside a venue during London Fashion Week in London, Britain

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Australia's Marnus Labuschagne attempts to stop a boundary in the fifth Test

Action Images via Reuters

Storm clouds gather over the pier just off the North East coast at South Shields

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The peloton rides past the Angel of the North during stage four of the Tour of Britain from Gateshead to Kendal

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A penny farthing cyclist rides past St. John's, Smith Square, Westminster, London

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Australia celebrate the wicket of England's Craig Overton, which meant they won the fourth test and retained the Ashes

Action Images via Reuters

Manchester City celebrate after Caroline Weir scored during their Women's Super League match against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. The WSL attendance record was smashed with 31,213 people watching the first Manchester derby of Womens Super League era nearly six times the previous WSL record

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A bull bumps into a plain clothes police officer (left) while being walked by Prime Minister Boris Johnson during his visit to Darnford Farm in Banchory near Aberdeen. It coincided with the publication of Lord Bew's review and an announcement of extra funding for Scottish farmers

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UK has become socially liberal on drugs, abortion and LGBT+ rights over past 30 years, study shows - The Independent

However, keep in mind that, because the Liberals are now managing a minority government, the implementation of potential tax changes is less certain, says Debbie Pearl-Weinberg, executive director, tax and estate planning at CIBC Financial Planning and Advice.

Regarding corporations, she highlights the Liberals broad-based proposed changes. These include a promise to crack down on tax loopholes that allow companies to deduct debt from earnings to reduce tax.

Well have to wait and see what those changes actually are, she says.

She also notes the promise to cut corporate taxes by 50% for clean-tech companies, specifically those that develop and manufacture zero-emissions technology.

For personal taxes, several changes are in the works.

What will impact the most Canadians is changes to the basic personal amount the amount of income that any individual can earn that is not subject to tax, Pearl-Weinberg says.

That amount is currently $12,069 in 2019 and rises annually with inflation. The Liberals have promised to increase it by 15% over four years. By 2023, it will reach $15,000, she says.

The increase isnt universal. It will not apply for those individuals who are described as being Canadas wealthiest 1%, she says.

The amount will be reduced for those earning more than $147,667 those in the second-highest federal tax bracket and completely eliminated for those in the top bracket, which is $210,371 in 2019.

Those in the top bracket will continue to receive the current basic personal amount, which will continue to be adjusted for inflation, Pearl-Weinberg says.

The Liberals also promised to boost Old Age Security (OAS) by 10% for seniors over age 75 who earn less than $77,580, and to raise the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) survivors benefits by 25%.

The change to OAS could mean an increase of $729 a year, according to the Liberals platform. It will start in July 2020, Pearl-Weinberg says.

With CPP, a spouse or common-law partner currently receives about 60% of what their deceased spouse or common-law partner received in benefits, she says. The promised increase could mean an additional $2,080 per year.

Parents have been promised that their maternity and parental benefits, received through employment insurance, will be tax-exempt at source, starting in 2020. The result would be about $1,800 more annually for someone receiving EI benefits who earns about $45,000 annually, Pearl-Weinberg says.

Adoptive parents could also see a change in their EI benefits, with the Liberals proposing a 15-week leave the same length as for maternity leave.

The tax-free Canada Child Benefit is also slated for an increase for those with kids under one year old. The promise is to boost the benefit by 15%, resulting in an increase of up to $1,000. Starting in July 2020, the base benefit should be $7,750 for these children, Pearl-Weinberg said.

The Liberals proposed to immediately double the tax-free Child Disability Benefit. The benefit applies to families caring for a child with a disability who is under age 18 and eligible for the disability tax credit. The Liberal platform said the increase could result in more than $2,800, to $5,664 annually.

A new vacancy tax would limit the housing speculation that can drive up home prices, the Liberal platform said. The residential tax would apply to vacant properties owned by non-resident non-Canadians.

Finally, the Liberals might move forward with two tax credits originally announced in the federal budget, Pearl-Weinberg says.

The Canada Training Credit was proposed to start in 2020, to help cover up to half of eligible tuition and fees associated with training. The credit could accumulate a balance up to a lifetime limit of $5,000.

The second is a non-refundable 15% credit for eligible digital news subscriptions. The credit is for a limited time, for amounts paid after 2019 and before 2025, and is a maximum tax credit of $75 annually, to start in 2020, she says.

This article is part of the AdvisorToGo program, powered by CIBC. It was written without input from the sponsor.

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Tax implications of the Liberal win - Advisor.ca

The Canadian oilpatch had a lot on the line heading in the federal election.

Many industry players saw it as a decisive moment to regain some momentum for a sector thats been stuck in neutral this year, frustrated by a lack of pipeline capacity and largely ignored by investors.

Company executives spoke out, penned an open letter to Canadians, created advertisements to profile their workers, and raised concerns about the sectors future.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) even registered as a third party advertiser, trying to promote its issues and push for more LNG projects and pipelines to be built.

The victory of the Liberal party in Mondays election returning with a minority government means many of the biggest issues for the sector havent really changed.

And frustration in the oil and gas industry is building.

For the energy sector, this is a massive impact. There will be discussion upon discussions. Many are not only disenchanted with our current federal (Liberal) government and not trusting them, but understandably frustrated and outright angry, said Grant Fagerheim, CEO of Whitecap Resources.

Companies have to be more cautious and pull back and be more restrictive on spending We have to make sure that we get our products to market.

Bob Geddes, president of Ensign Energy Services Inc., said the election outcome will continue the diminishment of the Canadian oil and gas sector and likely lead to less spending and drilling activity going forward if pipelines arent built and the sector cant grow.

There is an oilfield service company going bankrupt every week, so I dont think its going to change, he said.

Anger in the sector has been bubbling as the industry has grappled with multiple issues in recent years, particularly problems getting new pipelines built.

Its been a tough period since oil prices collapsed in 2014, and many fear the future could be even more difficult in the years ahead, depending if the Trans Mountain expansion is built and how much help a Liberal minority government needs from the NDP, Bloc Quebecois or Green party to govern in the months ahead as the project is being built.

While the Liberals have vowed to continue with the expansion, some in the industry and the Alberta government are concerned about its fate, as well as Bill C-69, which overhauls how major pipeline projects will be environmentally assessed in the future.

For the Canadian oil and gas sector, and the Alberta government, the election campaign was seen as a pivotal period to raise concerns about the impact of these policies on jobs, the economy and the ability to attract capital into the industry.

For us in Alberta, our main objective is to get market access, Energy Minister Sonya Savage said Monday evening, before the results were counted.

We are tired of being a punching bag. All we want is to get our resources to market. We have a constitutional right to develop them.

Energy Minister Sonya Savage says a minority government puts the Trans Mountain expansion in peril.Azin Ghaffari / Postmedia

Savage also raised concerns a minority government could threaten the future of the Trans Mountain expansion, which would nearly triple the amount of oil moving from Alberta to the west coast.

I think we have a pipeline in peril if we have a minority government, she added.

While much of the debate in the election focused on climate issues, and throttling back fossil fuel production, the energy sector accounts more than 11 per cent of GDP in the country and more than 550,000 direct and indirect jobs.

The industry is navigating through a demanding period, with growing pressure to become more cost competitive, address ESG (environmental, social and governance) issues from investors, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Benchmark crude oil prices have fallen by almost 23 per cent in the past year, reflecting broader global concerns about excess supplies and falling demand. Meanwhile, the S&P/TSX Capped Energy Index is down eight per cent this year.

Due to weak commodity prices and a lack of sufficient pipeline access, capital spending in the sector is expected to fall by another seven per cent this year to $36 billion.

We are already in a terrible spot as far as global investment goes, said CAPP head Tim McMillan. A minority government doesnt send a clear signal to the market, to global investors, that were getting a shift in direction that would change their view of us.

With less spending, the number of wells drilled this year is projected to drop 18 per cent to 5,000 wells, according to CAPP.

And that means fewer jobs.

Rafi Tahmazian, a senior portfolio manager at Canoe Financial, said a minority government means Canadian energy stocks will remain stuck with dirt cheap valuations today, and we will bounce along the bottom for an extended period of time.

Four years ago, we were a turtle walking around with our heads out, he said.

Today, we are completely just retrenched into our shell. Thats what the industry is today. We cant move. We are paralyzed.

Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.

cvarcoe@postmedia.com

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Varcoe: Alberta's future now rests on how much help Trudeau needs from NDP or Bloc, and that's bad news - Calgary Herald

President Donald Trump applauded his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for pushing him on criminal justice reform and noted that he "could be a liberal."

On Friday, Trump delivered the keynote address at the 20/20 Bipartisan Justice Center's Second Step Presidential Justice Forum in Columbia, South Carolina. During his remarks, the president singled out a number of legislators, activists and leaders that fought to ensure the First Step Actwhich he signed in Decemberbecame law.

One of those people Trump pointed out was his son-in-law, who worked "tirelessly" to get the First Step Act passed.

"I think I was telling [Senator] Tim [Scott] before and I pulled [Senator] Lindsey [Graham] aside and I said, 'You know, I think he's a liberal. He could be a liberal,'" Trump said.

The First Step Act gives judges more freedom during sentencing, provides rehabilitative programs to inmates, and enables certain inmates to be given sentencing relief.

Kushner, Trump claimed repeatedly, hounded him about getting the First Step Act signed into law. Kushner's persistence, according to Trump, was to the point that he agreed on the condition Kushner would leave him alone.

"And we got it done, right Jared? We called a couple of folks that people didn't think would come along and they were incredible once they understood what we were doing," Trump told the crowd.

Kushner was credited with being the driving force behind the piece of criminal justice reform. CNN reported the bill's supporters said he worked behind the scenes to bring together the Trump administration and legislators on both sides of the aisle.

In April, Kushner penned a piece for Time, during which he called standing next to the president when the First Step Act was signed one of the "proudest moments" of his life. For Kushner, the topic wasn't politicalit was personal.

"Over the course of 12 years, I had gone from the son of someone who was in federal prison to sitting in an office next to the President. This topic was too important to me not to give it attention," Kushner wrote.

While Kushner was a student at Harvard University, his father Charles, a real estate developer, pleaded guilty to 18 counts of making illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. The younger Kushner repeatedly claimed Charles, who was sentenced to two years in prison, was unfairly prosecuted.

Charles Kushner was released in 2006 and more than a decade later, his son played a pivotal role in helping incarcerated people be reunited with their families through the legislation.

During his speech, Trump said he was uncertain if signing the bipartisan bill was the popular or unpopular action to take, but added that he knew it was the "right thing to do."

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Trump Says Son-in-Law Jared Kushner Could Be a 'Liberal,' Applauds Him for Criminal Justice Reform Work - Newsweek

Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a new government and the mandate has now been given to his central political rival, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz.

Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman has implored Gantz to form what he calls a "national, liberal government" that comprises Likud, Blue and White and his party.

Benny Gantz and Avigdor Liberman meeting to discuss a unity government (Photo: Elad Malka)

Yisrael Beytenu a liberal party? It seems liberalism has a new definition these days.

Standard liberalism ascribes to equal political rights for all, and I simply cannot remember if and when Liberman's party platform included the basic liberal demand to allow voting rights to Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank.

Nor have I seen Yisrael Beitenu's leader demand a withdrawal from the territories as a liberal worldview would dictate.

Perhaps as a new liberal, Liberman will demand public investment in the Arab community be equal to the budget allotted to Jews, as a pre-condition to participation in a coalition government.

In fact, he should have demanded that West Bank Palestinians and West Bank Jews be given the same services and support. If he is a liberal, let him be liberal.

The late Menachem Begin, as prime minister pledged to give equal funding to Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem. He did not - nor did any subsequent government.

Yisrael Beytenu calls for an exchange of territory whereby Jewish settlements will become part of Israel while Arab communities inside the pre-1967 borders become part of the West Bank and under military rule.

The party also demands corporal punishment for terrorists, home demolitions for terrorists without Supreme Court interference and a policy in the West Bank that ignores any court rulings on Israeli sovereignty and settlements.

Unity governments in Israel were never described as liberal. Indeed, prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres (who shared a rotating premiership after the 1986 elections) never described themselves as such.

In Israel, liberal means being opposed to Netanyahu. Being anti-liberal therefore means supporting the outgoing prime minister.

That is the premise upon which Yisrael Beytenu's liberal government would be built, but a national unity government cannot be liberal by virtue of its makeup.

It is a government that includes opposing positions, some liberal, others religious or nationalist or social-democratic.

Sitting around the cabinet table will be ministers who follow separate and often conflicting ideologies. Such a government - which may be inevitable considering the results of the last two elections - would certainly have to mitigate any liberalism and not celebrate it.

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz receives a mandate to form a governement from President Reuven Rivlin (Photo: Rafi Kotz)

In his impressive performance Wednesday, as he was receiving the mandate to form a government from President Reuven Rivlin, Gantz said he intends to form a strong and broad government that would include as many political parties as possible.

A "reconciliation government," he called it, and only at the end of his statement did he quietly describe this future coalition as a liberal one.

The decisions facing any incoming government deserve ideological debate and opposing views and the world is undergoing such ideological conflicts every day.

The Brexit row in the United Kingdom is one such example, and it would be delusional to believe Israel would be able to meet the challenges ahead without having an intense debate such as the one currently taking place in Britain.

Israel should not declare it is heading towards national unity, not even if it is dressed up in liberal clothing.

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In Israel, being liberal does not mean what you think it means - Ynetnews

Premier Scott Moe has escalated his rhetoric against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the same time other members of the so-called resistance of conservative premiers appear to be toning it down.

But Moe brushed off any notion that his alliance with premiers like Brian Pallister of Manitoba and Blaine Higgs of New Brunswick is fraying in light of election results that kept the Liberals in power in Ottawa.

Higgs committed to implementing a carbon tax consistent with the federal governments benchmark on Tuesday.

I cant ignore the obvious here, Higgs said. The country has spoken.

While frequently invoked by Moe as an ally, Higgs was not on the famous MacLeans magazine cover of anti-Trudeau conservative premiers dubbed the Resistance.

But Premier Brian Pallister was, along with Moe, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

While he didnt backtrack on his carbon tax opposition, Pallister did offer post-election remarks that were more conciliatory than Moes address, where the Saskatchewan premier said theres a fire burning in the Prairie provinces.

Instead, Pallister signalled a willingness to work with a new Trudeau government. He also forcefully shut down talk of Western separatism.

I have no time for that kind of thing, Pallister said. Were going to make the country work.

While Moe has referred to himself as a frustrated federalist who believes in Canada, he hasnt dismissed or condemned the rising tide of western alienation that crested into a surge of separatist sentiment on social media after the election results.

Moe has also doubled down on his rejection of carbon taxation, calling on Trudeau on Tuesday to reverse it. He blamed the policy, in part, for the divisiveness revealed by election results that saw the Conservatives sweep Saskatchewan.

Asked Wednesday about the solidity of the conservative resistance, Moe said hes spoken with Higgs and other premiers since the election results. The same concerns over provincial jurisdiction remain widespread, according to Moe.

With respect to comments by Premier Pallister and Premier Higgs yesterday, I fully respect those comments, as I believe it is in the provincial jurisdiction for them to make decisions to address climate change in the most effective way that they feel they can, Moe responded.

Higgs confirmed to Moe that he is still planning to intervene in Saskatchewans carbon tax appeal, according to the Moes press secretary, Jim Billington. Billington added that Pallister has also shown no sign of dropping out.

Moe was not available for comment immediately after question period on Thursday, but Trade and Export Development Minister Jeremy Harrison took questions about separatism and Saskatchewans acrimonious relationship with the re-elected Liberal government.

Im happy to make a categorical statement saying we are not in favour of separation, period, Harrison said.

He argued that Saskatchewan people dont want to separate from Canada; they simply want to separate from the Liberal government.

This is real. This is genuine. People are angry. People are frustrated, said Harrison. People demand change, and we saw that at the ballot box.

Mondays election hurt the Liberals in regions across the country, but the trend in Saskatchewan was especially marked. The Conservatives jumped from 48.5 to 64.3 per cent of the vote, while Liberal support slipped from 23.9 to just 11.6 per cent.

By contrast, the Liberals held on to 26.3 per cent of the vote in Manitoba. While that was a steep drop from the 44.7 per cent they won in 2015, the party retained four key battleground seats in the Winnipeg area.

The Liberals also lost votes in New Brunswick, but remained the largest party with 37.6 per cent of the vote. They held on to six seats.

The argument could be made that the premiers are simply responding to electoral cues.

Another member of the resistance, Premier Doug Ford of Ontario, also struck a strangely harmonious chord after the election. He thanked Trudeau for supporting his transit priorities and said people expect us to work together.

But hes also planning to continue pursuing the provinces carbon tax challenge in the courts.

The federal Liberals shed just three points of their 2015 vote share in Ontario, winning 79 seats on Tuesday.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney remains an ally of Moe and an outspoken critic of Trudeaus policies. But he hasnt been quite so bombastic in recent days.

He sent a lengthy letter to the prime minister congratulating him on his election victory, while reiterating his deep concerns about Albertas place within the federation.

He again called on the federal government to exempt Alberta from the carbon tax backstop, as just one of a long list of grievances.

The Conservatives gained 9.5 points in Alberta, a province they already dominated in 2015. The Liberals lost all of their seats in Alberta and saw their vote share drop from 24.5 to 13.7 per cent, though the NDP held onto one riding in Edmonton.

Even if hes attracted opprobrium from his critics, its clear that Moes hardline approach is proving popular on social media.

The premier posted a statement to his accounts on Tuesday blaming the Liberal government for divisions and calling for a new deal for Canada. Billington said it was the most shared Facebook post ever by a Saskatchewan premier.

It had received 38,000 shares on Facebook as of Thursday evening.

awhite-crummey@postmedia.com

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Moe the hardliner as 'resistance' premiers diverge on Liberal election win - Regina Leader-Post

Demand Justices list evokes a similar set of prospective Supreme Court nominees released by Trump in the fall of 2016.

Demand Justices list evokes a similar set of prospective Supreme Court nominees released by Donald Trump in the fall of 2016. But the differences are more illuminating than the similarities. For one, Trumps list arose in a starkly different political context. As a candidate, the president broke with GOP orthodoxy on multiple fronts. He denounced free-trade agreements in favor of tariffs and protectionism, castigated past Republican leaders for entangling the U.S. in overseas wars, and pledged to reject cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Trump, unlike Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, wasnt a product of the conservative establishment. At one point in his life, he was a pro-choice Democrat.

Even as rank-and-file GOP voters largely flocked to Trumps banner, conservative elites and donors saw danger. They had spent four decades building a movement to reshape the federal judiciary in their own image, nurturing a cadre of originalist lawyers and jurists to serve in it. Antonin Scalias sudden death in 2016 threatened to upend that project. If Hillary Clinton had won, her nominee to replace him would have almost certainly given the courts liberals their first five-justice majority since the 1960s. And even if Trump somehow won, conservative legal figures worried that his ideological flexibility and self-professed willingness to strike deals would leave them empty-handed.

Trumps 2016 shortlists amounted to a Faustian bargain of sorts between him and the conservative legal movement. In exchange for their support and influence, he would pledge to use the lists as a guide when naming future Supreme Court justices. For Trump, it was an easy deal to make. He had already promised to appoint judges in Scalias mold and often warned his supporters of Clintons potential nominees. In practical terms, this arrangementgave some conservatives adegree of cover when endorsing him. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who had pointedly refused to back Trump at the partys convention that summer, used the list to justify his endorsement in September.

These internal dynamics arent really at play for liberals. There is no real fear that Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, or Bernie Sanders would name someone to Justice Stephen Breyers right to the high court if given the chance. There is also currently no Supreme Court vacancy to force the issue to the top of the national agenda. And as BuzzFeeds Zoe Tillman noted last month, there used to be a fundamental difference in how the two parties approached the subject. Democratic candidates and voters tended to focus on the issues that come before the court, such as abortion, gun control, and LGBT rights. Republicans, by comparison, typically focus on control of the courts as both an end and a means.

That gap is fading fast in the Trump era. Thanks to Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, there is now a reliable conservative majority on the Supreme Court for the first time in more than a half-century, and it will likely persist for at least a generation. That majority owes its existence to a fractious sequence of events: Mitch McConnells blockade of Merrick Garland, Trumps victory despite losing the popular vote, and Kavanaughs corrosive confirmation battle. As a result, Democratic presidential candidates are now openly weighing court-packing as a potential remedy to a Supreme Court that they increasingly view as illegitimate. (Ive previously argued against that option and proposed a healthier solution.)

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A Liberal Legal Movement Is Stirring at Last - The New Republic

The following is a preview from the forthcoming print issue of Jacobin, on populism. Subscribe to Jacobin today and get it when its released in November!

October 2040: an exhausted nation readies itself for the third and final presidential debate of a grueling campaign season. Across Americas living rooms, bars, basement shelters, and prisons, augmented reality devices light up with images of the two contenders.

First-term California governor Malia Obama, vaulted to the Democratic nomination after her heroic response to the devastating Central Valley flood of 39, introduces her Green Forward agenda. This ambitious plan, developed in partnership with Harvard University and the Bezos Foundation, aims to relocate 20 million workers from environmental and economic brownfields to productive metropolitan cores, where they can apply for federal grants, providing the displaced with access to education and skills training, along with civic engagement and entrepreneurship programs.

The proposal brings a throaty sneer from Republican president Allen Jones, the retired professional wrestling star formerly known as A.J. Styles. The elite wants to make you move to Portland, Oregon, and eat plastic hamburgers in a cubicle until you die, he says, referring to the citys recent ordinance banning the consumption of animal products. In contrast, Jones pledges to protect Judeo-Christian values by building the largest military drone fleet in world history, implanting microchips in illegal immigrants (just stamp em!), creating a million new American jobs in ocean-floor mineral mining, and cutting taxes.

As the debate ends, pundits remark that the country is more polarized than ever. Earlier in the campaign, Joness son Ajay, a freshman congressman from Georgia, made headlines by performing his fathers signature move, the Styles Clash, on longtime Texas senator Beto ORourke; images of bleeding Beto have featured prominently in campaign ads on both sides. But it is not clear how many Americans are really paying attention. One hundred and thirty million people sat out the last election, including a record share of lower-income and working-class voters. Even as wealth and income inequality soar to new highs, experts predict that less than a quarter of Americans without college degrees will cast a ballot in 2040.

For socialists, this may be a dystopian vision, but this is the future many liberals want or, at least, the future that professional Democrats have been aiming at for some time.

Chuck Schumers notorious boast about trading blue-collar Democrats for college-educated Republicans accurately captured the strategy that produced both the Democratic Partys disastrous 2016 defeat and its limited victory in 2018. But the comment was not just an unusually candid confession of the partys strategic priorities; it was also a neutral description of a much larger process that began long before Schumer reached the Senate.

Since the 1970s, parties of the left center have bled working-class support all over the industrialized world, with millions of blue-collar Democrats, Social Democrats, and Labor voters giving way to a new class of highly educated professionals. Schumers own political career, which began at age twenty-three, when he graduated from Harvard Law School and won election to the New York State Assembly in the same year (eat your heart out, Pete Buttigieg!) is just one illustration of this shift. In fact, Schumer-like politicians, and the professional-class voters they represent, have become the active leadership and core constituency within center-left parties from Brooklyn to Berlin to Sydney.

Thomas Piketty has dubbed this new configuration a clash between the Brahmin Left educated professionals, defined by their cosmopolitan virtues and the Merchant Right business leaders, committed to the ruthless maximization of profit. Under this arrangement of forces, working-class voters have either dwindled into quiescent adjuncts of the professional-class left, gravitated toward right-wing populism, or dropped out of politics altogether.

It wasnt always this way. Even in the United States, where racism and the two-party system have always sapped working-class solidarity, politics in the mid-twentieth century was polarized firmly along class lines. From the 1930s to the 1960s, if you were a working-class voter a mail carrier in Harlem, a miner in West Virginia, a farm laborer in New Mexico, a garment worker in Cleveland you were very likely to vote Democrat. If you were a manager or professional outside the Solid South from Vermont to California you were very likely to vote Republican. At its peak, in the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, class voting was nearly as robust in the United States as anywhere in the industrialized world.

Across the twentieth century, it was this politics of class that structured the great and lasting achievements of European social democracy, from Britains National Health Service to the Scandinavian welfare state. In the United States, class voting produced the political coalitions that delivered the New Deal and the Civil Rights Acts. Here, as elsewhere, the decisive energy for reform came about through working-class organization, chiefly in labor and social movements.

But a key ingredient in the mix was a partisan alignment that allowed, and in some ways even encouraged, the success of class-based demands for economic redistribution and democratic equality. Unexceptional New Deal Democrats like Hubert Humphrey, pushed by organized labor and confident in the knowledge that they spoke as clear representatives of the working people, could denounce scabs and defend vigorous labor laws while calling for national health insurance, an end to Jim Crow, unprecedented mass transit and eldercare projects, and a stabilized economy of full employment.

There is no need to romanticize such mid-century Democrats, who also presided over the expansion of the security state and the murderous war in Vietnam. Yet neither can we afford to dismiss the victories in this era of class voting, which dwarf anything either Democrats or American leftists have won in the last fifty years. The Democratic Party was never truly a workers party, but its major achievements of the twentieth century were possible only because it was a party of workers.

This alignment has been under stress since the 1960s. Today, it is officially dead. The Democratic Party of our own decade, as New Americas Lee Drutman writes with palpable excitement, has become an unequal partnership between highly educated professional whites and minority voters, in which wealthy cosmopolitans play a role of increasing significance, not least as fundraisers and donors, but also in the party primaries, where the affluent disproportionately participate.

The Republican Party, meanwhile, has sharpened its identity as an alliance of bosses, cultural conservatives, and white nationalists. With a working class divided by race, and a managerial class divided by culture, more than ever it is education and moral values rather than material interests that form the battleground on which Americas two parties collide.

The causes of this broader shift, of course, transcend the conscious maneuvering of center-left party leaders. Racist backlash in the postcivil rights era served to undermine class solidarity everywhere. More broadly, globalization, financialization, automation above all, the political victories of capital over organized labor in the late twentieth century have combined to create a social reconstitution of the American working class. Its representative figure today is not a General Motors line-worker, close to the centers of power, but a home health aide (or atomized gig worker) whose labor, however necessary to society at large, does not always generate obvious leverage over capital or natural opportunities for collective action.

In the same decades, the rise of the knowledge economy swelled the numbers of credentialed professionals especially in law, medicine, education, and engineering and cemented their influence on American politics. With organized labor in decline, Democrats increasingly sought and often won this professional-class support, often clustered in affluent suburbs near universities, hospitals, and technology centers.

In the 1970s, the practitioners of the New Politics gave this process a progressive sheen, seeking to build a constituency of conscience in the era of George McGovern and Watergate. In the 1980s and 1990s, New Democrats in the mold of Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton tacked to the right, promising to rein in big government, forge public-private partnerships, and get tough on crime. But what both party movements shared was a laser-like focus on white-collar voters, accelerating the decline of class voting and paving the way for todays even more comprehensive dealignment.

This fundamental shift from the party of Humphrey to the party of Schumer remains the most important American political development that confronts the Left today. It is no accident that the decline of class voting has corresponded with fifty years of retreat for American workers: stagnant wages, accumulating debt, and increasing precarity, even as corporate profits have soared. Nor is it a coincidence that even popular two-term Democratic presidents in this era, elected by such dealigned class coalitions, have proven unable or unwilling to push for structural reforms on anything like the scale of the New Deal era, even after facing the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression.

This is the heavy undertow that churns beneath the apparent rising tide of the American left. Yes, the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign helped bring social-democratic ambition back to national politics, revealing mass support for once-marginalized ideas like single-payer health insurance and free public college. Yes, the overwhelming popularity of these and other proposals from debt cancellation to a Green New Deal has encouraged mainstream Democrats to ride the wave the best they can, accepting some limited demands (a $15 minimum wage) while attempting to dilute others (Medicare for All Who Want It). And yes, by appearing to embrace most of Sanderss platform, Elizabeth Warren has vaulted to the front of the 2020 primary race, leaving more cautious contenders like Kamala Harris and Beto ORourke far behind.

In one sense, these are cheering ideological victories, and a testament to the ongoing appeal of class-based politics. But the truth remains that all this has come about almost entirely within a political party whose own professional-class character, in the same years, has only grown stronger than ever. The 2018 midterms, after all, were won in the affluent suburbs; Democrats now control every single one of the countrys twenty richest congressional districts.

Warren, meanwhile, has broken away from the Democratic primary pack with the unmistakably enthusiastic support of voters making over $100,000 a year, among whom she leads in almost every poll. A recent California survey showed Warren winning more voters making over $200,000 than her next two rivals combined.

Is this a reliable base on which to challenge the power of capital or even to fight for basic social-democratic reforms? The experience of the last fifty years suggests otherwise.

For some liberal-left commentators, the decline of class voting and the rush of rich professionals into the Democratic Party is not a problem, but an opportunity. Matthew Yglesias and Eric Levitz, among others, have assembled all their cleverness to make the case that these new affluent voters so-called Patagonia Democrats are not an obstacle to economic populism, and may even be an asset.

As should be obvious, this is a deeply counterintuitive argument you see, wealthy people want to have their wealth redistributed! for which the burden of proof should be very high. Yglesias and Levitz do not reach it with either of the two major points they make.

First, they contend, the leftward shift within the professional class reflects a sincere ideological response to empirical reality that is, the shocking inequality of our era. Surveys show that upscale voters are increasingly willing to support redistributive ideas, including new taxes on the rich and increases in health-care spending. Even the professional establishment of the Democratic Party, Levitz notes, has moved dramatically leftward why else does the Center for American Progress now propose a federal job guarantee and a universal health-care plan?

Why now, indeed? Inequality yawned just as grotesquely ten years ago, under the presidency of Barack Obama and a filibuster-proof Senate, when the Center for American Progress supported no such things. The American health-care system was no less revolting in 2014, when the words Medicare for All did not appear in a single New York Times news article. Nor did this great leftward turn of the establishment make much of an impact on the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, which won Patagonia Democrats in droves while fiercely resisting most of Bernie Sanderss social-democratic platform.

Might it be that the Democratic establishments recent leftward movement does not represent a sudden ideological conversion, but a tactical response to a rather different empirical reality the militant economic populism unleashed by the Sanders campaign, whose base was anything but Patagonia Democrats? In that case, the way to further advance the shift is not by congratulating professional-class elites on their progress much less building a political strategy centered around them but by making bolder and broader demands for change from outside the system.

Abstracted opinion polls, in any case, are an unreliable index of political behavior, especially when material interests become involved. After all, surveys show that most millionaires and tech CEOs also support various redistributive measures; a number of billionaires, including Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, have consistently expressed support for higher taxes on the rich. Does this mean that literal millionaires and billionaires are also not an obstacle to waging class war on millionaires and billionaires? Obviously not.

Yglesias and Levitzs second point is that the material interests of the professional class diverge sharply from the true 1 percent, which has hogged nearly all the economic growth of the last three decades. This is surely true, to an extent, and a major reason why many six-figure earners support taxes on seven-figure earners, while seven-figure earners support taxes on eight-figure earners, and so on and so on. But what does such modest and selective backing for redistribution look like in political practice?

One clue comes from Democratic governments in deep-blue states. Levitz optimistically cites Californias new bill to protect gig workers, but for every such example, there are several more discouraging ones, most of them concerned not with the regulation of a particular sector, but with the red meat of budgets and taxation. In New Jersey, new millionaire governor Phil Murphy failed to persuade a Democratic legislature to pass a millionaires tax. In Connecticut, governor Ned Lamont made good on his major campaign promise by passing a budget without any income tax raises. In Washington State, meanwhile, the new Democratic House speaker recently ruled out a new state income tax. This years California budget, purposefully light on tax increases, can hardly be considered a serious effort at economic redistribution.

Even New York, where a new progressive majority won a number of significant victories in the State Senate, the budget itself remained very much in Patagonia, prioritizing historic tax cuts on incomes up to $323,200 over urgently needed funding for education, public transit, and social programs. The New York Health Act, a single-payer bill that had passed the State Assembly in four straight sessions, was deemed untouchable in the Senate. New Yorks legislative session may suggest the arrival of a better Democratic Party, but it hardly suggests the second coming of social democracy or even the second coming of Hubert Humphrey.

At the national level, it may be that Patagonia Democrats prove more willing, as Levitz says, to pay modestly higher taxes for the sake of fortifying Americas social safety net. But this formula is neither new nor inspiring its a rerun of the Obama presidency, which let the Bush tax cuts expire, passed the stimulus, and expanded Medicaid, thus proving to captive observers like Paul Krugman that progressive policies have worked. Meanwhile, in the real world, the housing crisis destroyed working-class wealth, inequality kept soaring, and poverty remained entrenched.

Democrats should take the class warfare message to upscale suburbs Yglesiass argument is a sentence that makes sense only if your idea of class war is a few tweaks to the tax code, and your ultimate political horizon stretches no further than a third Obama administration.

Elizabeth Warren is the ideal general to fight just this kind of class war. A university law professor for forty years, thirty of them inside the Ivy League, Warren would be the most academic president since Woodrow Wilson, and she is already the most influential scholar to mount a serious presidential campaign. Her impressive credentials and technocratic sensibility have made her catnip for affluent professionals including, of course, some journalists who have become her most enthusiastic supporters.

Ideologically, Warren is no centrist New Democrat. Nor is she a lofty neoliberal triangulator in the mold of Obama or Pete Buttigieg. In her determination to fight corruption, and her fondness for clear rules and fair regulations, she may most resemble the progressive reformers of the McGovern era.

Yet while she is sometimes described as an economic populist, Warrens chief function in the primary race against Bernie Sanders has been to take the populism out of progressive economics. While formally embracing much of Sanderss 2016 platform, the Warren campaign distinguished itself not by underlining the necessity of popular struggle, but by advertising the comprehensive wonkery of her policy agenda: She has a plan for that! Warrens planfulness is Democratic savior politics in the style of Obama or Hillary Clinton. It does not summon the will of the masses; it says, Chill out, shes got this.

The emphasis here is on the reasonableness of the plans, not the boldness of the demands. Even Warrens most daring stroke on this front, a 2 percent tax on fortunes over $50 million,elicitschantsoftwo cents, two cents! withthe campaign and its supporters alike practically fetishizingthe modest limitsof the request.

When Warren does vow to challenge the power the wealthy, her rhetoric often works not to stoke the popular mind against Americas inequality but to naturalize it as a fact of national life: In America, there are gonna be people who are richer and people who are not so rich. And the rich are gonna own more shoes, and theyre gonna own more cars, and they may even own more houses. But they shouldnt own more of our democracy.

This isnt economic populism; its closer to a folksy progressive riff on there is no alternative. Nor does such a cabined understanding of democracy a question of fair procedures, walled off from the world of material goods open much room for questioning the tyranny of bosses under capitalism.

Having assembled a scrupulously conventional campaign staff, loaded with veterans of the DNC and Hillary for America, Warren has made it clear through careful primary endorsements that she remains an institutional player within the Democratic establishment, not an insurgent aiming to transform the party itself. Even in her scattered and vague references to the need for a grassroots movement, what she appears to mean, when she doesnt mean selfie lines, is nothing more revolutionary than electing more Democrats.

Rhetorically, Warrens stress on corruption the malfeasance of individual bad actors in Washington further channels legitimate complaints about a rigged system away from a confrontation with class power (as Sanders intends) and toward a search for better rules. It is perfectly suited to the spirit of todays proceduralist progressives Rachel Maddow Democrats whose first and strongest instincts are to outlaw, invalidate, or somehow disqualify their opponents rather than to defeat them in popular struggle.

In occasional populist moments, as in her recent speech at New York Citys Washington Square Park, Warren talks about the need to put economic and political power in the hands of the people. But the technocratic style of her politics hardly works to close the distance between political professionals and the people even her own supporters. I havent specifically pored through her policy proposals, said one New York University student in Washington Square Park, with what one imagines was a mixture of shame and awe, because there are a hundred thousand of them.

In fact, Warren lacks detailed plans for K12 education and health care. In Washington Square Park, while Warren talked about big structural change, comparing herself to the workers rights advocate Frances Perkins, she devoted just two formulaic sentences to contemporary labor politics. Although 2018 saw the most labor strife in over thirty years, with nearly half a million workers involved, Warrens speech barely mentioned the word strike.

The question here is not simply whether a Democratic candidate nominally supports unions, but where labor stands asa priority within the party. Memorably, Barack Obama supported the union-backed Employee Free Choice Act on the campaign trail, but after his election, he let the proposal die in Congress with barely a sound.

We may choose to regard this as a shameful presidential betrayal, but like many Obama-era failures, it revealed far less about Obamas personal views than about an institutional Democratic Party dominated not by labor advocates but by professional-class politicians highly attentive to their professional-class constituents. (The rise of the broader Patagonia left, as a study of fifteen European countries has found, tends to produce a less pro-worker welfare state.) As an individual Democrat, Warren may be to the left of Obama, but there is little reason to believe that she has the capacity to change this larger state of affairs.

Warrens most enthusiastic left-liberal supporters seem to regard her as a kind of sleeper agent within the system who can heroically cajole or hypnotize establishment Democrats into backing big, structural change, purely on the strength of professorial persuasion. Such faith, if sincere, is almost touching. But the record of Warrens own private battles with the Obama team hardly suggests that transformational change can be achieved through such a deeply institutional politics.

Warren will surely aim to craft better rules for Washington and Wall Street, but is this really structural reform? Her campaign has already announced that the first legislative priority of a Warren administration is nothing more architectural than a suite of strict lobbying regulations, most of them already passed by the Democratic House, along with the creation of a US Office of Public Integrity. Naturally, Vox calls this agenda ferocious.

Even in the best-case scenario, politics under a President Warren would almost surely resemble politics under Obama: careful negotiations between progressive professionals and stakeholders in Washington, in which the president seeks the least-worst outcome in a world of narrow and fixed constraints. An infinite variety of Yglesiases and Krugmans will luxuriate in the nuance, integrity, and ferocity of Warrens bold progressive agenda, even as fundamental economic structures remain unchanged. And then they will be shocked, just shocked, when the next Donald Trump swaggers into the White House and blows it all to bits.

Above all, it is hard to see how Warren can address the dealignment of class voting, or the ongoing evolution of the Democratic Party into the party of Fairfax County, USA. More than likely, Warrens nomination would only accelerate the trend. It is not a coincidence that by far her strongest support comes from Democrats with six-figure incomes and postgraduate degrees: in style and in substance alike, she offers a version of progressive politics as professional politics.

Theres a reason, as the journalist Krystal Ball has pointed out, why Warren and Buttigieg appeal to the same class of voters, despite the considerable differences in their platforms. Both candidates Harvard folk, of course rely heavily on individual stories of meritocratic achievement, along with an appeal to white papers, intellect, and resume items. This has worked and may continue to work wonders for Warren in a Democratic primary, where Patagonia Democrats predominate; how it would fare in a general election is much less clear.

In a campaign against Trump, of course, Warren would win many of the same votes that Hillary Clinton won, including black, Latino, and Asian workers who see no real alternative in the Republican Party. But a Warren nomination also clearly sets the stage for another dreary cultural clash between elite progressivism and Trumps fake populism. In such a battle, earnest liberal hymns to Warrens 100,000 plans no matter how many wealth taxes they propose are not likely to fare much better than 2016 pleas for voters to visit http://www.HillaryClinton.com/Issues.

Ultimately, there is little sign that a Warrenite politics of strict rules, detailed plans, and careful procedures can break the grip of this new cultural polarization never mind inspire the multiracial working-class coalition necessary for big, structural change, both inside and outside the Democratic Party.

More than a hundred years ago, Engels mocked the faddishness of elite interest in left-wing economics, and even socialism itself:

There is indeed Socialism again in England, and plenty of it Socialism of all shades: Socialism conscious and unconscious, Socialism prosaic and poetic, Socialism of the working class and of the middle class, for, verily, that abomination of abominations, Socialism, has not only become respectable, but has actually donned evening dress and lounges lazily on drawing-room causeuses. That shows the incurable fickleness of that terrible despot of society, middle-class public opinion, and once more justifies the contempt in which we Socialists of a past generation always held that public opinion.

In the last fifty years of American history, elite Democratic support for economic redistribution has proven no less fickle. The carousel of professional-class opinion spins on and on last week, McGovern; yesterday, Dukakis; today, Warren; tomorrow, Buttigieg? all while the right wing grows ever uglier and workers, as a class, drop ever further from view.

In a 2020 campaign against Donald Trump, a bet on Warren is a risky wager on its own terms. But over the next twenty years, the politics of Patagonia liberalism is not a bet at all its an unconditional surrender to class dealignment.

Bernie Sanders offers a fundamentally different path forward and not only due to his domestic, foreign, and planetary policy ideas, his ideological roots, his theory of change, or his relationship to the Democratic Party. All these differences are important, but Sanders also points to an alternate future for class politics itself.

To be sure, the Sanders campaign in the United States, like the Corbyn movement in Britain, has benefited, too, from the professional-class vogue for left-wing politics. (Thus Engels mocked the rise of respectable socialism, but admitted that we have no reason to grumble at the symptom itself.) Sanders supporters, much younger than average, are hardly a perfect cross section of Americas working class.

Yet neither is Sanders the creature of drawing-room progressives. From the beginning, Bernies campaign in 2015 attracted a coalition that looked very different from any primary insurgent in Democratic Party history. While McGovern, Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, Howard Dean, and now Elizabeth Warren won their first and fiercest support from wealthy professionals, Sanders in 2016 won more than 13 million votes from a much younger, less affluent, and less educated swath of the electorate.

In this years primary, the Sanders coalition remains young and relatively lower income, while it has grown more racially diverse. Bernies large, enthusiastic, and disproportionate support from Latino voters who form by far the fastest-growing segment of Americas working class must be one of the most underreported political stories of 2019.

The gaps between Warren and Sanders supporters are stark, especially considering their purported similarities in policy and ideology. According to Politicos September poll averages, Warren underperforms with voters making less than $50,000 by a greater margin than seven of the top eight Democrats in the race; Sanders overperforms with the same group by the highest margin the field.

When it comes to Patagonia Democrats, especially, the differences are unmistakable. A recent YouGov poll showed that just 13 percent of Democrats making $100,000 or more would be disappointed if Warren were nominated, the lowest share in the entire field, aside from Pete Buttigieg. Over a third of the same affluent group was opposed to Sanders, by far the highest of the top five leading Democrats.

In California, meanwhile, a UC Berkeley poll showed Warren far ahead of the pack among postgraduates (at 39 percent) and voters making over $200,000 (35 percent). Sanders, meanwhile, earned the backing of just 12 percent of postgrads and 9 percent of highest earners.

If the Sanders platform is in the objective self-interest of virtually all affluent suburbanites, as Eric Levitz argues, why do so few of them seem to know it?

The point is not thatSanders or his agenda is incapable of winning professional-class votes. In a general election, as dozens of polls have made clear since 2016, these affluent Democrats will almost certainly come around if the alternative is Trump. But while some upscale Democrats may benefit from Bernies platform, they are not drawn to his populism or his class politics. Sanders, unlike Warren, will never be their top choice.

In fact, the core of Bernies support comes from voters with a far more urgent material interest in the social-democratic programs he proposes, and a far clearer position in the class struggle that he has helped bring to the fore. Among California voters making under $40,000, Sanders had more support than Warren and Joe Biden combined; he also led both rivals among all voters who didnt go to college.

Bernies call for wealth taxes is not a modest plea for two pennies from Jeff Bezos, but a cry to abolish Jeff Bezos, and billionaires writ large. His support of Medicare for All is not a pledge to find the best policy framework, but a vow to fight the private insurance industry until every American has health care as a human right.

This is the kind of class politics that has won Sanders the support of 1 million small donors, faster than any candidate in history (and twice as many as the Warren campaign). An OpenSecrets review of campaign donations found that while Warren was naturally the top recipient among scientists and professors, Sanders led by far among teachers, nurses, servers, bartenders, social workers, retail workers, construction workers, truckers, and drivers. Of all the money going to 2020 Democrats from servers one of the lowest-paying jobs in the country more than half went to Sanders alone.

This is just what is required to challenge the power of the ultrarich: a politics that does not treat lower-income voters as a kind of passive supplement for professional liberals, but one that can put the new working class itself at the center of the action.

A professional-class left, as scholars of European politics have noted, may be trusted to safeguard the bare bones of existing welfare states programs that are themselves the legacy of much older working-class struggles. But in the United States, with our barbarously incomplete provision for basic social needs, the necessary struggle is not just to defend existing social democracy, but to build it from the ground up.

This is not the work of a single election cycle or a single presidential administration. Nor is it exclusively, or even primarily, the work of electoral struggle itself. But if we want to build anything like a halfway decent, free, or fair democracy, we should remember that the only politics that have ever achieved this or can ever achieve this are the politics of class voting, led by an organized working class. Bernie Sanders, all by himself, will hardly bring about the movement we need. But unlike every other Democrat in the field, at least he points in the right direction.

Read more from the original source:

Is This the Future Liberals Want? - Jacobin magazine

Carly Pildis is a progressive activist and writer who frequently speaks out about anti-Semitism on the left as well as the depredations of the right. Every day, she says, she gets messages from American Jewish women who tell her theyre scared of expressing their support for Israel, or even their Jewish identities, in progressive spaces.

She tried to support the women, advising them and amplifying their concerns in her writing , but there wasnt much more she could do.

Now Pildis, who worked on the 2012 Obama campaign, is taking action on the issue. She has joined the staff of a Jewish not-for-profit called Zioness as its director of organizing and second full-time employee.

I dont want people to feel afraid, said Pildis. I want them to know they are powerful, and I joined Zioness to teach them how to grab that power.

Zioness was founded in 2017 to serve people like Pildis - feminists and liberals who dont want to denounce the Jewish state as the price of entry among progressives. Now its expanding its staff and ambitions.

But as the group tries to grow, it is facing distrust from other liberal Jewish organizations that would presumably be its natural allies. The divide reflects the tension many American Jews face as they struggle to balance their liberal leanings with their desire to support what they see as an increasingly illiberal Israel.

The suspicion goes back to Zionesss founding two years ago. The group was born after employees of the Lawfare Project, which fights the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, learned in 2017 that the Chicago Slut Walk had banned Zionist symbols. Outraged, they flew from New York to Chicago to participate anyway, waving banners proclaiming themselves part of the Zioness movement.

The group reached its highest profile as a critic of anti-Semitism within the Womens March. Executive director Amanda Berman got invited to speak at synagogues. Chapters now more than 30 were formed across the country.

But many prominent Jewish progressives were skeptical, especially about the Lawfare connection. Berman worked there until this January, and Lawfare founder and executive director Brooke Goldstein, who went with Berman to Chicago, is a Trump supporter and a frequent Fox News guest.

Berman insisted at the time and maintains now that Zioness was independent from Lawfare.

Still, some on the Jewish left wondered if Zioness was a bid by right-wing Zionists to co-opt their movement, claiming to be progressive only to cover up their true goal of defending Israel.

Now it seems that IfNotNow and others were right to be skeptical.

Last month, Goldstein wrote on Facebook that Lawfare funded and incubated Zioness and that she had used [Berman] as the face of the movement as she wasnt a public figure and not identifiable as conservative. Goldstein did not respond to interview requests.

Whats more, Berman admits now that her Lawfare connections helped Zioness get right-wing funding. She secured a $25,000 donation when she spoke about Zioness in 2018 to the Merona Foundation, a Jewish donor network run by the wife of the controversial conservative Jewish philanthropist Adam Milstein.

Yet Zionesss relationship with Zionist conservatives soured after the group issued a statement calling Trumps policies of detaining migrant children and separating families heartless and contrary to Zionist values.

We felt betrayed, basically. And angry, said former donor Rita Emerson.

These days, Goldstein claims that Zioness is now too anti-Trump. Berman claimed that Milstein used to donate to them but no longer does because its actually progressive. A spokesperson for Milstein said that was not an accurate characterization but declined to say whether Milstein gave or is still giving to Zioness.

Support on the right has withered but will progressive groups step in as allies, given that their early suspicions seem to have been well-founded?

If the answer is no, Zioness work will be harder at the beginning, said Shaul Kelner, a professor at Vanderbilt University who studies social justice movements.

One such progressive Jewish group is Truah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. Truah is Zionist they support a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian one and also campaigns against mass incarceration and family separation, partnering with major organizations like the ACLU.

Truah executive director Rabbi Jill Jacobs said she was still skeptical of Zionesss strategy.

My perception of Zioness is about showing up at protests with the signs, not around long-term relationships, she told the Forward. Its those relationships that allow you to have complicated conversations around Israel.

Zionesss board features Jewish liberals, such as former Clinton White House communications director Ann Lewis and onetime Democratic congressional candidate Erin Schrode. But its impossible to know whos funding it now. Since its so new, its not yet required to share financial records.

Other progressive groups are going to be looking at [the funding,] and that will probably influence whether theyre going to work with them or not, Kelner predicted.

Berman said that the money to hire Pildis came from an anonymous liberal Jewish philanthropist. She refused to disclose their identity because she didnt want Pildis to find out. Pildis said she didnt know who it was.

Zionesss next stage, Berman said, involves helping members advocate for specific issues they care about - providing them with policy memos and campaign strategies.

Some chapters are already active. One has joined the Florida Hate Crime Coalition.

Pildis has been hired to train Zioness members to be activists on domestic issues like gun control and reproductive rights. She will teach them how to engage with elected officials and form partnerships with other advocacy groups.

But what Zioness wont do, say Pildis and Berman, is advocate for Israel unless someone else brings it up first.

Weve been really clear from day one we dont exist just to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Berman said.

Kelner said Zioness has a chance to be a long-term success even if other liberal groups keep their distance.

Its a matter of doing the hard organizing work to transform the base level of demand into people actually signing up, he said. Then it doesnt matter what the origin story is, because they have the power of numbers behind them.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at pink@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

The rest is here:

This Polarizing Liberal Zionist Group Is Growing. Can It Overcome Its Past? - Forward

The Oldest Hatred

To the Editor:

It was with great interest that I read Hillel Halkins review of Bari Weisss How to Fight Anti-Semitism (Sept. 29). Halkin writes with characteristic clarity, force and knowledge, and I concur with his judgment that her book is a brave one in the current political and cultural climate. Her stance as a proud Jew and lover of Israel is one that I, like Halkin, applaud.

However, I find his disappointment and critique of Weisss identification with the liberal values that dominate the contemporary American Jewish community rather narrowly construed historically. The alliance between Jews in the modern Western world and political liberalism predates the 19th century and German reform and unquestionably has its origins in the writings of Baruch Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn that called for separation between religion and state during the 17th and 18th centuries. These stances were part and parcel of Enlightenment thought and allowed for a neutral or at least semineutral public sphere to emerge that permitted the political emancipation of the Jews. Virtually all modern religious and secular Jews applauded this development. It was a stance that was born both out of one reading of a multivalent Jewish tradition that championed such values and of a self-interested Jewish judgment that such liberal values were in the best interests of the Jewish community. Many if not most American Jews including Weiss and myself still believe this to be the case.

Indeed, in championing a liberal reading of Jewish tradition, Weiss and other American Jews are allowing values of the larger culture to inform their reading of the tradition no less than Jews have for thousands of years. As the historian Gerson D. Cohen pointed out in his memorable 1966 commencement address, The Blessing of Assimilation in Jewish History, Jews throughout history have assimilated teachings from the surrounding world to inform their own understanding of an ever-evolving Judaism.

This was true when the Bible employed the political lexicon of the ancient Near East to describe the relationship between a sovereign and his subjects and transformed the Akkadian word biritu (clasp or fetter) into the Hebrew term berit (covenant) to describe the relationship between God and the Jewish people, or when the medieval philosopher Moses Maimonides internalized and applied the teachings of Aristotle to explicate the nature of Judaism to his contemporaries. I fail to see why modern Jews like Weiss should not possess the same right as their ancestors to interpret Jewish tradition through the wisdom and insights provided by a surrounding culture.

Halkin may not agree. Nevertheless, I do not see why Weiss has any need to apologize for her advocacy of a liberal stance or why such a stance is any less legitimate than a neoconservative reading of Jewish tradition.

David Ellenson New York

The writer is chancellor emeritus and former president of Hebrew Union College and professor emeritus of Near Eastern and Judaic studies at Brandeis University.

To the Editor:

In his review of Bari Weisss book, Hillel Halkin tries to deride the position of those who are liberal and pro-Israel as a seemingly contradictory notion in this day and age a position not unlike that of President Trump, who recently accused Jews who are Democrats of being disloyal. The question is not whether democracy is compatible with the stance of liberal Jewish Americans who are pro-Israel but whether social justice, which is the foundation of the Jewish religion, is compatible with being a Republican.

Diane Burstein Jamaica, Queens

To the Editor:

Has Judaism been influenced by the American milieu? Yes, of course. But Judaism has likewise been influenced by every diaspora Jews have lived in. Throughout its long history Judaism has evolved as it interpreted and reinterpreted its foundational sacred writings in light of the times and communities in which Jews have lived.

In his attempt to strip love and compassion from its rightful place in the Jewish tradition, Hillel Halkin seems to have forgotten about the teachings of the biblical prophets.

The lines from Isaiah, read in every synagogue on Yom Kippur, to let the oppressed go free share your bread with the hungry and take the wretched poor into your home, sound an awful lot like American liberalism to me.

Barry W. Holtz New York

The writer is Theodore and Florence Baumritter professor of Jewish education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

To the Editor:

Hillel Halkin asserts that the tradition of Judaism does not support democracy or gay rights. Apparently these were created by the deplorable Greeks and picked up by the Reform Jews.

Halkin, like Bari Weiss, is entitled to his interpretation of his religion. The problem arises when anyone asserts their right to rule a nation-state according to their religious interpretation. That is why the United States began with separation of church and state. There should be no Jewish state, no Christian state, no Muslim state, no Hindu state and not even an officially atheist state. If such a view leads to a rejection of Zionism, then so be it. Democratic anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitic.

Wayne Price Bronx

To the Editor:

The headline (The Oldest Hatred) on Hillel Halkins review of Bari Weisss book got it dead wrong.

The oldest hatred is of women. Period.

Caroline Gaudy Salt Lake City

Link:

Can American Jews Be Both Liberal and Pro-Israel? - The New York Times