Chris Hedges's Blog, page 361

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Jumps Into 2020 Presidential Race

NEW YORK—Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand entered the growing field of 2020 Democratic presidential contenders Tuesday, telling television host Stephen Colbert that she’s launching an exploratory committee.

“It’s an important first step, and it’s one I am taking because I am going to run,” the New York senator said on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” She listed a series of issues she’d tackle as president, including better health care for families, stronger public schools and more accessible job training.

Gillibrand, 52, has already made plans to campaign in Iowa over the weekend, more than a year before the leadoff caucus state votes.

She joins what is expected to be a crowded primary field for the Democratic nomination that could feature more than a dozen candidates. Already, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has announced her own exploratory efforts, and decisions by a number of other senators are expected in the coming weeks.

Gillibrand, who was appointed to the Senate in 2009 to fill the seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, has been among the Senate’s most vocal members on issues like sexual harassment, military sexual assault, equal pay for women and family leave, issues that could be central to her presidential campaign.

“I’m going to fight for other people’s kids as hard as I would fight for my own,” said Gillibrand, a mother of two sons, ages 10 and 15.

As she works to distinguish herself from likely rivals, Gillibrand will be able to draw from the more than $10.5 million left over from her 2018 re-election campaign that she can use toward a presidential run.

Gillibrand pledged during her Senate campaign that she would serve out her six-year term if re-elected.

She will use Troy, New York, where she lives, as a home base for her presidential efforts.

Near the end of their interview, Colbert presented Gillibrand with a basket of campaign gifts, including an ear of yellow corn to wave in Iowa, a piece of granite for New Hampshire and a one-of-a-kind button that reads “I announced on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Trump’s Attorney General Nominee: ‘I Will Not Be Bullied’

WASHINGTON—Vowing “I will not be bullied,” President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general asserted independence from the White House on Tuesday, saying he believed that Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, that the special counsel investigation shadowing Trump is not a witch hunt and that his predecessor was right to recuse himself from the probe.

The comments by William Barr at his Senate confirmation hearing pointedly departed from Trump’s own views and underscored Barr’s efforts to reassure Democrats that he will not be a loyalist to a president who has appeared to demand it from law enforcement. He also repeatedly sought to assuage concerns that he might disturb or upend special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as it reaches its final stages.

Some Democrats are concerned about that very possibility, citing a memo Barr wrote to the Justice Department before his nomination in which he criticized Mueller’s investigation for the way it was presumably looking into whether Trump had obstructed justice.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Barr the memo showed “a determined effort, I thought, to undermine Bob Mueller.” The nominee told senators he was merely trying to advise Justice Department officials against “stretching the statute” to conclude that the president had obstructed justice.

Though Barr said an attorney general should work in concert with an administration’s policy goals, he broke from some Trump talking points, including the mantra that the Russia probe is a witch hunt. Trump has equivocated on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and assailed and pushed out his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing because of his work with the Trump campaign.

Barr stated without hesitation that it was in the public interest for Mueller to finish his investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to sway the election. He said he would resist any order by Trump to fire Mueller without cause and called it “unimaginable” that Mueller would do anything to require his termination.

“I believe the Russians interfered or attempted to interfere with the election, and I think we have to get to the bottom of it,” Barr said.

He said that, at 68 and partially retired, he felt emboldened to “do the right thing and not really care about the consequences.” If a president directs an attorney general to do something illegal, he said, an attorney general must resign.

“I will not be bullied into doing anything that I think is wrong by anybody, whether it be editorial boards or Congress or the president,” Barr told the hearing.

Consumed by the partial government shutdown, Trump remained out of sight at the White House but also kept an eye on the news coverage of the hearing and told aides he was pleased with how Barr was handling himself, two White House officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal conversations.

On other topics, Barr echoed in part the president’s hardline immigration stance and said the Justice Department would not go after marijuana companies in states where the drug is legal. He also would not rule out jailing reporters for doing their jobs, saying he could envision circumstances where a journalist could be held in contempt “as a last resort.”

Barr’s confirmation is likely, given that Republicans control the Senate. Even some Democrats have been looking to move on from acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who declined to remove himself the Russia probe and has faced scrutiny over his private dealings.

But he nonetheless faced skeptical questions from Democrats over whether he could oversee without bias or interference the remainder of Mueller’s probe.

Feinstein said the nominee’s past rhetoric in support of expansive presidential powers “raises a number of serious questions about your views on executive authority and whether the president is, in fact, above the law.” Under questioning, Barr voiced a more moderate view, saying a president who ordered an attorney to halt an investigation would be committing an “abuse of power” though not necessarily a crime.

Barr said under questioning from Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, that he wouldn’t interfere with a Mueller request to subpoena the president for his testimony “if there was a factual basis.” But he also said he saw no reason to change Justice Department legal opinions that have held that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

“I don’t believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt,” he said when asked by the panel’s Republican chairman, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Barr called Mueller a friend of 30 years and said “it is vitally important” that Mueller be allowed to complete his investigation.

The special counsel is required to report his findings confidentially to the Justice Department. Barr said he wanted to release as much as possible of Mueller’s findings to Congress and the public — “That certainly is my goal and intent — though he stopped short of making a pledge. He also noted the Justice Department does not typically disclose information about people it investigates but does not prosecute.

He also disclosed having discussed Mueller with Trump during a meeting in 2017 when Barr declined to join his legal team. Trump wanted to know what Mueller, who worked for Barr when he led the Justice Department between 1991 and 1993, was like.

“He was interested in that, wanted to know what I thought about Mueller’s integrity and so forth and so on,” Barr said. “I said Bob is a straight shooter and should be dealt with as such.”

He insisted that Trump never sought any promises, assurances or commitments before selecting him for the job and said he had never asked him to fire Mueller or interfere with the investigation.

He also defended his decision to send an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department in which he criticized as “fatally misconceived” the theory of obstruction that Mueller appeared to be pursuing with regard to Trump.

He said he raised his concerns at a lunch last year with the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller and has overseen his work. Rosenstein didn’t respond and was “sphinx-like,” Barr recalled. He followed up with the memo in June.

Barr also sent the document to White House lawyers and discussed it with Trump’s personal attorneys and a lawyer representing Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, among others.

Barr said the memo was narrowly focused on a single theory of obstruction that media reports suggested Mueller might be considering.

He said he would consult with ethics officials on whether he would need to recuse because of the memo but the decision would be ultimately his.

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Associated Press writers Chad Day, Jonathan Lemire and Colleen Long contributed to this report.

Richard Wolff: The Next Economic Crisis Is Coming

Every time I sit down with economist Richard Wolff, he demonstrates why the field of economics is so necessary in the cultural critique of our American empire. In my recent interview with him, we discussed why the thriving economy touted by President Donald Trump hasn’t translated into real gains for the majority of Americans. We also went over what is hidden by the economic indicators that allow the financial industry to celebrate while so many Americans are still suffering.

Professor Wolff talked with me on my show “Redacted Tonight: VIP” on RT America. Enjoy this excerpt from the interview.

LEE CAMP: Professor Wolff — thanks for joining me! Last month was, apparently, the worst December for the stock market since the year 1980. What’s going on here?

RICHARD WOLFF: A lot of things are coming to a head. Each one of them by itself might have gone by without this, but they’re too many.

To list major ones: The tariff war with China, Europe and the rest creates enormous uncertainty. It makes all the predictions and plans of corporations and entire countries uncertain. People are holding back. Number one.

Number two, the capitalist system that we’re all part of has a downturn on average every four to seven years. It’s been more than seven years since the last crash — 2008/9 —so everybody knows it’s coming.

It’s not a question of whether, we’ve never been able to overcome these kinds of instabilities in our system. So we’re overdue for one.

And here’s another one that people don’t talk about. The big tax cut last December, 2017, gave an awful lot of money to the richest Americans and to big corporations. They had no incentive to plow that into their businesses, because Americans can’t buy any more than they already do. They’re up to their necks in debt and all the rest.

So what they did was to take the money they saved from taxes and speculate in the stock market, driving up the shares and so forth. Naive people thought that was a sign of economic health. It wasn’t. It was money bidding up the price of stock until the underlying economy was so far out of whack with the stock market that now everybody realizes that and there’s a rush to get out and boom, the thing goes down.

Very serious. The question now is how badly the underlying economy — jobs, incomes, and debts — will be impacted negatively by all of this stock market downturn.

LC: You brought up predictions of an impending crash because it’s been seven or eight years, even JPMorgan Chase has told investors that the next crash, the crisis, they think will be in 2020. What does it mean when the largest financial firms in the world are saying, “Oh yeah! We’re just going to have another financial crisis around the corner”?

RW: It’s a wonderful sign. (Laughs) And by the way, JPMorgan Chase is not the only one. Goldman Sachs has done that, the International Monetary Fund, lots of the major players know it’s coming. The only disagree on exactly when which you can never know anyway. But here’s what it means, it means that they have accepted, as if it were like rain falling from the sky, that this economic system we have crashes every few years. As if it’s kind of in the cards. Unchangeable. Unaffected by anything we might do.

It’s kind of like giving up on the human desire not to be plunged into a crazy unemployment and cutback every few years that interrupts people’s lives, their educations, their savings for the future. I mean, we ought to have an economic situation, or at least a debate, about an economic system that works this way rather than simply accepting it in the manner of these predictions. As if there’s nothing we can do.

LC: Absolutely. Donald Trump keeps telling us that unemployment is very low, so obviously he is a wonderful president. Is that true? Also I overheard on NPR that they had a panel or something about why wages aren’t going up considering how well the stock market has done over the past years, and how low unemployment is. The host just seemed baffled as to why wages have not gone up.

RW: Well again, there are a number of reasons why wages aren’t going up. What we’ve seen is a quote-unquote “recovery” that is very peculiar.

Two particular peculiarities: People who lost jobs — and those are in the millions in 2008, 2009, and 2010 — have now gotten jobs, that’s true, but the jobs they’ve gotten have lower wages, have less security and fewer benefits than the ones they lost, which means they can’t spend money like we might have hoped they would if they had got the kinds of jobs they lost, but they didn’t. And the second thing is that large numbers, particularly of white men aged 30-60, have not gone back into the labor force.

They lost their jobs, it’s very hard for them to find new jobs. The jobs they find are so poor that they’re more likely to stay at home, or do something else. So as the economy comes back at least with some jobs, and as they run out of savings, these people are slowly coming back.

So there’s no need for employers to raise wages to attract workers, they can just pull them slowly out of the desperate population of people who haven’t worked for years and have run out of savings. They can’t turn to their friends and relatives anymore, so they come back and accept the jobs that they were once too proud to accept. It’s a real downturn of the quality of life of America, which is why you don’t see the wages going up and why you see the anger and the bitterness, because all of the promises of Obama before, and of Trump now, are not changing that basic situation.

LC: Yeah, the quality of life has definitely gone down. If these jobs are not good — as you say — and also the gains have gone to the 1%, and something like 50% of Americans can’t afford a $1000 emergency, then why does it seem like everything just keeps trucking along? You know, you don’t really see things collapsing. There aren’t strikes shutting down whole cities. What’s the motor that keeps things going?

RW: Well at this point I think it really depends on what indexes you’re looking at. The biggest thing that’s kept this economy going in the last few years should make everybody tremble. It’s called debt, let me give you just a couple of examples. Ten years ago, at the height of the crash, the total debt carried by students in the United States was in the neighborhood of $700 billion, an enormous sum.

What is it today? Over twice that, one-and-a-half trillion dollars. The reason part of our economy hasn’t collapsed is that students have taken up an enormous amount of debt that they cannot afford, in order to get degrees which will let them get jobs whose incomes will not allow them to pay back the debts. And forget about getting married, forget about having a family.

We have paid an enormous price in hobbling the generation of people who would have otherwise lifted this economy and made us more productive. It is a disastrous mistake historically, and if you face that, and if you add to it the increased debt of our businesses, and the increased debt of our government, you see an economy that is held up by a monstrous increase in debt, not in underlying productivity, not in more jobs that really produce anything, but in debt.

That should frighten us because it was the debt bubble that burst in 2008 and brought us the crash. It is as if we cannot learn in our system to do other than we’ve always done and that’s taking us into another crash coming now.

LC: Yeah. This is the land of the free, but it seems like most of us are chained down by debt peonage.

Britain’s May Faces No-Confidence Vote After Brexit Plan Crushed

LONDON—British lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s divorce deal with the European Union on Tuesday, plunging the Brexit process into chaos and triggering a no-confidence vote that could topple her government.

The defeat was widely expected, but the scale of the House of Commons’ vote — 432 votes against the government and 202 in support — was devastating for May’s fragile leadership.

It followed more than two years of political upheaval in which May has staked her political reputation on getting a Brexit deal and was the biggest defeat for a government in the House of Commons in modern history.

Moments after the result was announced — with Speaker John Bercow bellowing “the noes have it” to a packed Commons chamber — May said it was only right to test whether the government still had lawmakers’ support to carry on. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn quickly obliged, saying May’s government had lost the confidence of Parliament.

Lawmakers will vote Wednesday on his motion of no-confidence. If the government loses, it will have 14 days to overturn the result or face a national election.

Although May lacks an overall majority in Parliament, she looks likely to survive the vote unless lawmakers from her Conservative party rebel. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which props up May’s government, said it would support her.

“The House has spoken and the government will listen,” May said after the vote, which leaves her Brexit plan on life support just 10 weeks before the country is due to leave the EU on March 29.

May promised to consult lawmakers on future moves, but gave little indication of what she plans to do next. Parliament has given the government until Monday to come up with a new proposal.

She faces a stark choice: Steer the country toward an abrupt “no-deal” break with the EU or try to nudge it toward a softer departure. Meanwhile, lawmakers from both government and opposition parties are trying to wrest control of the Brexit process from a paralyzed government, so that lawmakers by majority vote can specify a new plan for Britain’s EU exit.

But with no clear majority in Parliament for any single alternate course, there is a growing chance that Britain may seek to postpone its departure date while politicians work on a new plan — or even hand the decision back to voters in a new referendum on EU membership.

“If you can’t resolve the impasse here in Westminster, than you have to refer it back to the people,” said Labour Party lawmaker Chuka Umunna, who supports a second referendum.

May, who had postponed a vote on the deal in December to avoid certain defeat, had implored lawmakers to back her deal and deliver on voters’ decision in 2016 to leave the EU.

But the deal was doomed by deep opposition from both sides of the divide over U.K.’s place in the bloc. Pro-Brexit lawmakers say the deal will leave Britain bound indefinitely to EU rules, while pro-EU politicians favor an even closer economic relationship with Europe.

The most contentious section of the deal was an insurance policy known as the “backstop” designed to prevent the reintroduction of border controls between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland Assurances from EU leaders that the backstop is intended as a temporary measure of last resort completely failed to win over many British skeptics,

Two and a half years after the referendum, Britain remains divided over how, and whether, to leave the EU.

As lawmakers debated in the chamber, there was a cacophony of chants, drums and music from rival bands of pro-EU and pro-Brexit protesters outside. One group waved blue-and-yellow EU flags, the other brandished “Leave Means Leave” placards.

Inside, the government and opposition parties ordered lawmakers to cancel all other plans to be on hand for the crucial vote. Labour legislator Tulip Siddiq delayed the scheduled cesarean birth of her son so she could attend, arriving in a wheelchair

Some Conservatives want May to seek further talks with EU leaders on changes before bringing a tweaked version of the bill back to Parliament, even though EU officials insist the 585-page withdrawal agreement cannot be renegotiated.

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said May was unlikely to get changes to her deal from that could “placate her Brexiteers.”

“Or, she reaches out to Labour and goes for a softer Brexit than most Brexiteers would contemplate” — but which the EU might accept, Bale said.

Frustrated EU leaders called on May to make her intentions clear on the future of Brexit.

“Now, it is time for the U.K. to tell us the next steps,” said Michel Barnier, the bloc’s chief negotiator.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker — who returned to Brussels late Tuesday to deal with fallout from the vote — said the rejection of May’s deal had increased “the risk of a disorderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom.”

“Time is almost up,” he said.

Economists warn that an abrupt break from the EU could batter the British economy and bring chaotic scenes at borders, ports and airports. Business groups expressed alarm at the prospect of a “no-deal” exit.

“Every business will feel no-deal is hurtling closer,” said Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry. “A new plan is needed immediately.”

European Council President Donald Tusk highlighted the quagmire the U.K. had sunk into, and hinted that the best solution might be for Britain not to leave.

“If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?” he tweeted.

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Casert reported from Strasbourg, France. Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed.

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Follow AP’s full coverage of Brexit at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit

Census Citizenship Question? The Answer Is No, Federal Court Says

The United States census has not asked respondents whether they are American citizens since 1950. In March 2018, Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross brought it back, in a list of potential census questions submitted to Congress. Almost immediately, immigrants’ rights organizations filed multiple lawsuits challenging the question.

On Tuesday, the first ruling came down, addressing two of the lawsuits. Judge Jesse M. Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the Trump administration to remove the question from the census. Ross, according to Furman, committed multiple violations of federal procedural law, setting up the possibility of appeals that could take the citizenship question all the way to the Supreme Court.

Opponents of the question, as The New York Times writes, say it is an attempt “to turn the census into a tool to advance Republican political fortunes” and discourage immigrants from participating in the census for fear of repercussions, including deportation. Critics also argue, as The Washington Post reports, the lower response rates “make the constitutionally mandated decennial survey more costly and less accurate.”

Supporters, including Ross and the Justice Department, argued the data is necessary for accurate enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

Plaintiffs, which between the two cases included 18 states attorneys general, multiple cities and civil rights organizations, cheered the decision. Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU, told the Post “the ruling is a forceful rebuke of the Trump administration’s attempt to weaponize the census for an attack on immigrant communities.”

A key question of the case centered on which agency asked that the question be included in the first place. Ross, the Post writes, “testified before Congress that the original request came from the Justice Department.” That claim seemed to be supported by a December 2017 letter to the Commerce Department from Arthur E. Gary, general counsel for the Justice Management Division of the U.S. Justice Department In that letter, Gary explained the data from the citizenship question “is critical to the Department’s enforcement of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and its important protections against racial discrimination in voting.”

The letter, however, was not the whole story. As the New York Times points out, Ross “had begun considering the issue within days of becoming commerce secretary in February 2017,” according to an internal memorandum. Additional documents made public as a result of the lawsuit showed that the Justice Department had even declined initial requests to support the question, and only after what the Times calls “a monthslong campaign, capped by a telephone call by Mr. Ross to the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions,” did the Justice Department agree to offer its support.

In response to Tuesday’s court loss, Kelly Laco, a spokesperson for the Justice Department, told the Post, “We are disappointed and are still reviewing the ruling,” while adding the Trump administration is “legally entitled to include the question on the census.” The administration is expected to appeal the current ruling. Another similar trial is underway in California, with one more scheduled in Maryland for next Tuesday, both of which the administration has attempted, unsuccessfully, to stop.

White House Shifts Shutdown Strategy, Attempts to Bypass Pelosi

WASHINGTON — Shifting strategy, the White House invited rank-and-file House Democrats to lunch Tuesday with President Donald Trump, bypassing Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team in an effort to get centrist and freshman lawmakers on board with funding Trump’s long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Pelosi approved of lawmakers attending the meeting, telling her team that the group can see what she and others have been dealing with in trying to negotiate with Trump to end the partial government shutdown, now in its 25th day with no resolution in sight.

Pelosi predicted that after meeting with Trump the lawmakers will want to make a “citizen’s arrest,” according to the aide, who wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Lawmakers invited to the White House include centrist Democrats from districts where Trump is popular, including freshmen.

Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., said he attended a meeting of fellow centrist Democrats on Monday night and that a handful of members, most of whom represent districts Trump carried in 2016, were invited.

The White House has not released a guest list.

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, another centrist Democrat, said the White House is “grasping at straws.”

“The majority of Americans understand exactly what is happening here,” he said. “The president could open the government tomorrow and he refuses to. We’re very conscious of the fact that this is a bully and when you allow him to succeed by holding the government hostage you can expect to see that play run again.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor that it’s up to Democrats to get the country off the “political carousel” of the shutdown fight. The Kentucky Republican said Democrats have turned Trump’s wall into “something evil” and have engaged in “acrobatic contortions” to avoid dealing with the security and humanitarian crisis at the southern border.

With the government shutdown now in its fourth week, negations between the White House and Congress are at a standstill. Trump has demanded $5.7 billion for the border wall; Democrats are refusing but are offering money for fencing and other border security measures.

Trump has rejected a short-term legislative fix and dug in for more combat, declaring he would “never ever back down.” The president also edged further away from the idea of trying to declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress.

“I’m not looking to call a national emergency,” Trump said Monday. “This is so simple we shouldn’t have to.”

Congressional Republicans were watching Trump for a signal for how to move next, and Democrats have not budged from their refusal to fund the wall and their demand that he reopen government before border talks resume.

House Democrats plan to hold votes this week on legislation this week that would reopen the government into February, but Republicans are rejecting those bills out of hand. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., called the votes “political theater” and said the legislation will not pass the Senate.

In addition to the White House outreach to centrist House Democrats, about a dozen senators from both parties met Monday to discuss ways out of the shutdown gridlock. Participants included Graham and Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Tim Kaine, D-Va.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said McConnell was aware of the group’s effort but added, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s blessed it.” The odds of the group producing a solution without Trump’s approval seemed slim.

Meanwhile, the effects of the 25-day partial government closure were intensifying around the country.

Some 800,000 federal workers missed paychecks Friday, deepening anxieties about mortgage payments and unpaid bills, and about half of them were off the job, cutting off some services. Travelers at the Atlanta airport, the nation’s busiest, dealt with waits of more than an hour Monday as no-shows by security screeners soared.

Trump spent the weekend in the White House tweeting aggressively about Democratic foes as he tried to make the case that the wall was needed on both security and humanitarian grounds. He stressed that argument repeatedly during Monday’s speech at a farming convention in New Orleans, insisting there was “no substitute” for a wall or a barrier along the southern border.

Trump has continued to insist he has the power to sign an emergency declaration to deal with what he says is a crisis of drug smuggling and trafficking of women and children at the border. But he now appears to be in no rush to make such a declaration.

Instead, he is focused on pushing Democrats to return to the negotiating table — though he walked out of the most recent talks last week.

White House officials cautioned that an emergency order remains on the table. Many inside and outside the White House hold that it may be the best option to end the budget standoff, reopening the government while allowing Trump to tell his base supporters he didn’t cave on the wall.

However, some GOP lawmakers — as well as White House aides — have counseled against it, concerned that an emergency declaration would immediately be challenged in court. Others have raised concerns about re-routing money from other projects, including money Congress approved for disaster aid. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have also warned that acting under an emergency order would set a troubling precedent for executive power.

Universal Basic Income Will Make Serfs of Us All

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a much-touted solution to our increasingly tech-driven society, proposed by everyone from Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez to conservative libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

The idea is that UBI could replace vanishing jobs and give all Americans a cushion. Give every American a set amount of money per month, often suggested at the $500 or $1,000 level, to spend as they wish.

As leaders from tech to social movements are well aware, we are about to enter the age of self-driving Ubers, increasingly smart supply chain and warehouse technology, and news reports being generated and delivered by AI. It doesn’t matter how many workplaces unionize or how many stomp their feet and demand jobs: a lot of people currently employed won’t be in the foreseeable future.

Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg have all pointed to UBI as a solution for the fact that tech is taking over entire industries. Besides being a prong in the “Green New Deal,” the city of Stockton, California, is implementing a trial run beginning in February by giving 100 residents $500 a month.

Never mind that in 1972, when the idea of UBI was gaining popularity, the guaranteed amount discussed was $1,000. It seems absurd that, given inflation and massive cost of living increases over the last 45 years, $500 a month is what’s being discussed.

And rarely, if ever, is it pointed out that, in fact, the idea of giving everyone money is so they can spend money. That seems to go without saying, of course, but that point should be made: Our capitalist system requires everyone in this country spend money.

More important is how to enable people to live in a way that is healthy—will UBI do that? The evaporation of traditional jobs requires a reevaluation of our place in society, and how we can contribute to and support our families and communities. Do we want to continue to labor for money to buy things that for thousands of years were acquired without cash or credit?

“The American citizen’s first importance to this country is no longer that of citizen but that of consumer,” wrote the Flint Journal’s editorial board in 1924. “Consumption is the new necessity.”

That point has been driven into us so deeply as a society that we live it intuitively, without thought or articulation.

What UBI would do is facilitate our society’s continued consumption. That’s the point, at its heart, and why the great titans of contemporary wealth are championing it: Hypercapitalism has sucked so much wealth from the bottom rungs that giving them money to spend seems a viable option to keep the economy chugging its fossil fuel-powered engine into an increasingly bleak future.

Capitalism is failing, and the strategy is to give everyone money to spend.

Of course, the great masters of the moneyverse Branson and Zuckerberg can’t come out and say that, but the progressive left and the conservative right have happily taken over the job of selling it to society on their behalf—with very little details, of course.

Some on the right, like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, say rolling other social programs into one “flex-fund” or “universal credit” would reduce government spending while giving citizens more control. Bestselling author and libertarian darling Charles Murray has the same idea about UBI. That might sound good until you realize there is no way those who rely on Medicare, SNAP, and Section 8 (or any combination of dozens of other programs) can possibly purchase health insurance, food, and shelter for themselves, let alone their families, with $500 or even $1,000 a month.

Others like Mark Zuckerberg recommend UBI in addition to other social welfare programs, and suggest it would foster creativity and innovation. Native Americans on reservations have been receiving government checks and consistently falling short on their expenses and basic needs for years. With gas at $12 a gallon and a quart of milk at $16, it’s easy to see why.

What Musk and Branson and others across the media landscape are doing, says Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, is “they’re saying [UBI] because it feels good. They’re just mouthing a slogan.”

What’s missing from all of these suggestions, or slogans, and by their champions from Silicon Valley to Washington to the New Progressive—besides being honest about why people need money to spend to sustain a failing system—is truly universal: A comprehensive plan.

Many, from the right through to the Green New Deal, are strikingly vague about what they are proposing with UBI, says Miron. The specifics, he says, are needed every time UBI is brought up so people know what is actually being referred to. A roll-all-welfare-into-one UBI is much different from a supplement to other welfare programs, and both are much different from a true universal plan, where everybody gets the money, from Jeff Bezos to the homeless guy who camps under your town’s highway overpass.

The lack of discussion of UBI details is eerily similar to the first part of Sinclair Lewis’s prescient book, “It Can’t Happen Here”—the 1935 tale of America’s rapid decline into fascism. Protagonist Berzelius Windrip, initially a Trump-like presidential candidate, promises every American $5,000 a year. After taking power, many of his supporters are moved to work camps, wondering when the $5,000 a year they were promised would come. Others simply end up dead.

Hillary Clinton came close to talking UBI up on the campaign trail back in 2016, but like many other smart people, did the math and discovered she and her team just “couldn’t make the numbers work.”

Figuring out how to pay for UBI for millions of Americans is certainly the big hurdle all advocates of UBI face—despite those who say it’s easy. Has any mass program our government decided to pay for ever been easy?

More amusing is what is really being discussed is how to get money to the poor so they can perhaps spend a little on stuff they don’t really need, rather than considering that, perhaps, the entire system of hypercapitalism for the few imposing it on the rest of us is at a breaking point.

Former President Barack Obama said that the question of universal basic income will be an important discussion over the next decade or two: “We underpay teachers, despite the fact that it’s a really hard job and a really hard thing for a computer to do well,” he told Wired. “So for us to reexamine what we value, what we are collectively willing to pay for… that’s a conversation we need to begin to have.”

David Graeber eloquently demonstrates this need to re-examine our values in his latest book Bullshit Jobs, where he considers how those who should be the most valued members of our society are the least paid, while those who do meaningless or “bullshit” work are often the highest paid with the most prestige. Graeber recommends UBI as a tool that would ease the need for bullshit jobs.

Rarely, if ever, has throwing money at a problem whose core is society’s loss of moral compass brought back that moral compass.

Rather, UBI as a solution to society’s topsy-turvy values in fact would further entrench society in capitalism, as it still requires people to continue to participate in and reinforce an unhealthy, money-driven system.

One could argue, then, that it’s not UBI that is needed, but a whole host of reforms when it comes to the things people need for survival and flourishing in our society, that they are now unable to do on their own because the system they are forced to live in requires they spend money they don’t have.

Worse, “there is no chance,” says Miron, of getting UBI done in a comprehensive, meaningful, and functional way in the U.S. “We’ll never do it right,” he continues. “It will be complicated. It will interact in complicated ways [with other social services], and add to total amount of government expenditure.”

From Miron’s point of view, “all energy should be put on reducing the government expenditure.”

While that’s in line with traditional libertarian thought and not something most Americans would agree with, the value of the statement is that it offers a direction thought leaders and the grassroots activists alike might together consider: The examination of the things we need to survive, from small farming to small business to fishing and hunting, and the environmental consequences of the capitalist systems that make these types of basic human survival instincts unattainable in our modern society. There’s a black market in the U.S. for everything from raw cow’s milk to inhalers—problems UBI is not going to fix.

People who might otherwise be self-sufficient are subject to regulations and fines they are unable to afford, and others are living in such toxic areas they can’t even drink the water or breathe the air. They are unable to sustain themselves in the ways humans have been supporting themselves for thousands of years.

They need money.

While certainly some current regulations do keep some types of greed in check, a thorough and complete reality check of how our laws and regulations are keeping people trapped in a capitalistic system they cannot survive in without cash or a “job” is not an unreasonable call given the state of our society.

The answer, then, isn’t UBI. It’s allowing people to go back to more traditional ways of life, without punishing them for it or making it so difficult if they are unable to.

Either way, clearly, if you’re poor—or rich—many of these ideas seem ridiculous. But the reality is that tech is making it easy for big business to kill jobs, and how to keep the money wheels spinning is, in fact, a growing concern.

It’s up to us, individually and in our own communities, how we want to proceed. Do we provide everyone with a universal basic income? Do we return to more basic ways of life and rewrite the rules to enable that? Or do we do a combination of both, or something else entirely?

The choice is ours, and it is important to consider as universal basic income becomes the slogan du jour.

This article was produced by Local Peace Economy, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Democrats Have No Excuse for Not Embracing Medicare for All

On the same day a new poll showed an overwhelming majority of Americans think the nation’s healthcare system is “in state of crisis,” a new analysis shows that Democrats should listen to those Americans—and end their reluctance to run on the promise of a bold solution like Medicare for All while propping up the for-profit system.

A new Gallup survey released Monday showed that 70 percent of respondents saw the U.S. healthcare system as having “major problems” or being in a “state of crisis.” Eighty-four percent of Democrats expressed these concerns about the system in which many families are forced to pay high premiums and and deductibles, with worse health outcomes than in other high-income countries, while 56 percent of Republicans agreed.

Gallup has conducted the poll since 1994, with varying majorities of respondents generally expressing similar levels of concern with the U.S. system—but in recent months more Americans have pointed to Medicare for All as their preferred alternative to the for-profit model.

Meanwhile, the progressive think tank Data for Progress found in a recent analysis of the 2018 midterm election results that Democrats need not fear negativity regarding Medicare for All as they look toward 2020 and other future elections.

Looking at Democratic candidates who won in districts that had been held by Republicans in 2018, Data for Progress found (pdf) that candidates who supported Medicare for All were no more likely to lose their elections than so-called “moderate” Democrats.

“Medicare for All is politically safe ground for Democrats in general elections,” said Emma Einhorn, a campaign director for MoveOn, which funded the report. “November’s election results show that universal, higher-quality, lower-cost healthcare through Medicare for All is all moral upside—without political downside. Democrats shouldn’t let corporate interests scare them away from supporting real change that would save lives.”

“There is no evidence that Medicare for All harmed progressive performance in the 2018 midterms. Democrats shouldn’t fear authentic candidates who articulate our values. Those candidates offer the best path forward for the party,” added Data for Progress co-founder Sean McElwee.

Responding to the Gallup survey, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), whose Medicare for All bill has 15 co-sponsors in the Senate, pointed out Americans’ widespread dismay over the for-profit system as the latest proof bolstering his case for the proposal.

A poll by Reuters last summer found that 70 percent of Americans—including 84 percent of Democrats and a majority of Republicans—believe the government should expand the federally-funded and broadly popular Medicare system to all Americans, establishing a universal healthcare system like the ones enjoyed in other wealthy countries.

Despite the rapidly growing appeal of Medicare for All, many powerful Democratic lawmakers continue to refuse to fight for the plan in Congress, with House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) saying days after the Democrats won control of the House that he prefers to wait for President Donald Trump to propose reforms to the Affordable Care Act.

The corporate media also persists in pushing the false narrative that Medicare for All would be too expensive—despite evidence that the system would save trillions of dollars for American families in its first 10 years—with CNN grilling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) about how the country would pay for the program, a concern the network hadn’t shared a year earlier when Republicans pushed through their $1.5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy and corporations.

Rep. Steve King Stripped of Committee Duties Following Racist Remarks

WASHINGTON — Veteran Republican Rep. Steve King will be blocked from committee assignments for the next two years after lamenting that white supremacy and white nationalism have become offensive terms.

King, in his ninth term representing Iowa, will not be given committee assignments in the Congress that began this month, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Monday night. King served on the Agriculture, Small Business and Judiciary committees in the last Congress, and he chaired Judiciary’s subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

McCarthy, R-Calif., called King’s remarks “beneath the dignity of the Party of Lincoln and the United States of America.”

King’s comments “call into question whether he will treat all Americans equally, without regard for race and ethnicity,” McCarthy said, adding: “House Republicans are clear: We are all in this together, as fellow citizens equal before God and the law.”

The action by the GOP steering committee came after King and McCarthy met Monday to discuss the remarks on white supremacy, the latest in a years-long pattern of racially insensitive remarks by King.

King called McCarthy’s decision to remove him from committees “a political decision that ignores the truth.” He vowed to “continue to point out the truth and work with all the vigor that I have to represent 4th District Iowans for at least the next two years.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced King earlier Monday, saying, “There is no place in the Republican Party, the Congress or the country for an ideology of racial supremacy of any kind.”

Meanwhile, House Democrats moved to formally punish King. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the third-ranking House Democrat and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, introduced a formal resolution of disapproval late Monday.

Addressing what he called “a tale of two kings,” Clyburn said the Iowa lawmaker’s remarks were offensive because they embraced evil concepts.

Invoking the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — whose 90th birthday will be celebrated on Tuesday — Clyburn called on colleagues from both parties “to join me in breaking the deafening silence and letting our resounding condemnation be heard.”

Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said he will introduce a censure resolution, a more serious action by the House, that Rush said would announce to the world that Congress has no home for “repugnant and racist behavior.”

“As with any animal that is rabid, Steve King should be set aside and isolated,” Rush said Monday in a statement that also called on Republicans to strip King of his committee memberships until he apologizes.

A third Democrat, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, introduced a separate censure resolution against King.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican, we all have a responsibility to call out Rep. King’s hateful and racist comments,” Ryan said, noting that the white supremacy comments were not the first time King has made headlines for inappropriate language.

The text of Rush’s censure resolution lists more than a dozen examples of King’s remarks, beginning with comments in 2006 in which he compared immigrants to livestock and ending with his lamentation in the New York Times last week that white supremacy and white nationalism have become offensive terms.

McConnell, in his statement, said he has “no tolerance” for the positions offered by King, and said “those who espouse these views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms. Rep. King’s statements are unwelcome and unworthy of his elected position. If he doesn’t understand why ‘white supremacy’ is offensive, he should find another line of work.”

One Republican did not join the chorus of criticism. Asked about King’s remarks Monday, President Donald Trump said, “I haven’t been following it.”

King on Friday suggested he’s been misunderstood. He said on the House floor that the interview with the Times was in part a “discussion of other terms that have been used, almost always unjustly labeling otherwise innocent people. The word racist, the word Nazi, the word fascist, the phrase white nationalists, the phrase white supremacists.”

King said he was only wondering aloud: “How did that offensive language get injected into our political dialogue? Who does that, how does it get done, how do they get by with laying labels like this on people?”

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who is the only black Republican in the Senate, cast King’s remarks and those like them as a blemish on the country and the Republican Party.

“When people with opinions similar to King’s open their mouths, they damage not only the Republican Party and the conservative brand but also our nation as a whole,” Scott wrote in an op-ed last week in The Washington Post.

“Some in our party wonder why Republicans are constantly accused of racism — it is because of our silence when things like this are said,” Scott wrote.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, also condemned King, telling CNN Monday that King “doesn’t have a place in our party” or in Congress and should resign.

King’s position in the GOP had been imperiled even before his remarks about white supremacy.

Shortly before the 2018 midterm elections, in which King was running, Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, then the head of the GOP campaign committee, issued an extraordinary public denunciation of him.

King has already drawn a primary challenger for the 2020 election: Randy Feenstra, a GOP state senator. Feenstar said Monday, “Sadly, today, the voters and conservative values of our district have lost their seat at the table because of Congressman King’s caustic behavior.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Has Democrats Running Scared

PAUL JAY: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay.

Well, the 2020 election has started, essentially; certainly in the Democratic Party the primary conversation is hot and heavy already, and there is a lot of discussion about progressives, as they call themselves, primarying corporate Democrats. Norman Solomon, who helped organize Bernie Delegates Network, wrote an article recently in Huffington Post where he says he would like ‘primarying’ to become a verb–it kind of is, maybe, but anyway–and talks about how the corporate Democrats are afraid of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and what she represents. Here’s a little clip from Kamala Harris, who everyone is expecting to announce that she’s going to run for president. This is, I think, she tries to walk a line which is not Clintonesque, but not Berniesque, either. Here’s how she responded to the question of what she thought AOC, as Alexandria is known, means to the party.

SPEAKER: Do you agree that she could possibly, and this ideology if the socialist left, could splinter your party?

KAMALA HARRIS: No. You know, I think that she is challenging the status quo. I think that’s fantastic. I think that she is introducing bold ideas that that should be discussed, and I think it’s good for the party. I, frankly, think it’s good for the country. Let’s look at the bold ideas. And I’m eager that we have those discussions. And when we are able to defend the status quo, then do it; and you know, if there’s not merit to that, then let’s explore new ideas.

PAUL JAY: This is a question, according to her, about bold new ideas. But as I’ve said over and over again on The Real News, I don’t think the division in the Democratic Party is simply about some new ideas versus some old ideas. It’s about interests. And the section of the American oligarchy has its hands on the Democratic Party apparatus, and would not like–what is it?–their fingers, cold dead fingers pried off the apparatus. But Sanders certainly started prying off some of those fingers.

And, Norman, you wrote in your article–actually, let me, first of all, introduce our guests. So, joining us, first of all, is Norman Solomon, who wrote the article in Huffington Post. Norman’s co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org, and he, as I say, just recently published this piece in Huffington Post. It was called “Democrats Are Afraid of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Too, and That’s a Good Thing.” Also joining us is Jacqueline Luqman. She’s editor-in-chief of Luqman Nation, a social media outlet that connects history, politics, and evolving social issues through a black and pan-African revolutionary perspective. Thank you both for joining us.

JACQUELINE LUQMAN: Thank you. Thanks.

JAY: So, Norman, let’s pick up on your article. Kamala Harris, it’s kind of interesting how she positions this, that this is just a difference of ideas. And it reminds me of something that Hillary Clinton said to Bernie Sanders, maybe even in their first debate. She said to Bernie, she said, you know, Bernie and I, Clinton says, have really the same objectives. It’s just a difference of how to get there. And they try to make out that this split in the party is simply over ideas. So what do you make of that, and what do you make of this–explain your call to primary the corporate Democrats.

NORMAN SOLOMON: Maybe Hillary Clinton meant that they both had the same objective to get elected. Other than that, though, I think the actual goals in that case and in many others are quite different. There’s a pretense–and Hillary Clinton has embodied that–that somehow the Democratic Party can serve the interests of Wall Street and Main Street. The average working person, wants to be working person, retired individual, struggling student, that somehow the party can serve their interests and also serve the interests of the predatory bank executives, and the hedge fund multimillionaires, and the huge multibillion dollar corporations. That’s just not a real world. It’s a fantasy that unfortunately has been swallowed by a lot of folks who could and should know better.

We’re really at a juncture where the left is gaining tremendous momentum through social movements and awareness and public discussion. And part of that momentum is in electoral terms. So when the Democratic Party is going to have so many incumbents running in 2020, it would be a terrible mistake for progressives to not pick and choose, but definitely choose which incumbents in Congress or in other major offices to challenge in those primaries.

And as you said, Paul, this piece I wrote for Huffington Post says that primaries should more emphatically become a verb. That just as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was successful in ousting an incumbent, an entrenched Democratic corporate person, Joe Crowley, and others have occasionally been able to accomplish that goal, it’s got to be done across the board and across the country.

JAY: Jacqueline, what’s your thoughts?

LUQMAN: Yeah, I absolutely agree that primarying needs to be a verb. It needs to be embarked upon as a strategy that is well mapped out, that’s based on policy; the policy differences between the establishment corporate and, honestly, military-industrial complex-focused Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and others who have been pro-war and grassroots politicians who actually represent the people. The major difference between the current makeup of the Democratic Party is these people were chosen by the Democratic Party. The difference between the Ayanna Pressleys and the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes and the other insurgent progressive candidates who unseated Democrats in these races is that they were selected by the people. And that has to be done, as Norman said, across the board, In every race. It cannot just be we have to vote Blue no matter who; we have to keep the blue wave pushing. We have to examine these politicians’ policies. Every single one of them. And if their policies line up too much with corporate focus, with military focus, with fossil fuel focus, with Wall Street focus, then yes, they need to be primaried. And a leader from among the people that is going to advance the people’s interests needs to be put in that person’s place.

JAY: Norman, many of the candidates now are adopting some of the–candidates. Expected candidates, certainly at the presidential level, are starting to adopt some of the Sandersesque language. You have more people saying they’re for Medicare for All. You’ve got more people talking about a Green New Deal. How are you going to separate those who are taking on some of the rhetoric–and there you have Kamala Harris, for example, who’s normally considered–not Hillary Clinton, but as I said, certainly not Bernie Sanders–and trying to sort of incorporate the progressive wing into what’s expected to be her own candidacy.

SOLOMON: It’s rhetoric versus record. It’s wheat from chaff. It’s whether somebody put on these now-insurgent ascending ideas as sort of the newfashioned clothes of the season, or whether they walked the walk and talked the talk for a very long time.

If we look at the actual polling numbers across this country–I’m not just talking Democrats, but just people who live in the United States–you have polls showing that Medicare for All, for instance, and free public college tuition for all, those proposals gained upwards of 70 percent of support. And this disconnect between the punditocracy and the corporate-backed candidates on the one hand, and what people really want, has become so huge because of the Occupy movement, because of Bernie’s campaign, because of so many insurgent candidates and activists, that now people such as Kamala Harris and many, many other congressional candidates, as well, they feel they need to give lip service. But the fact is we can’t afford to go on lip service, because when we’ve done that we’ve had one president after another with a D after their name, one member of Congress after another with a D after their name, and they simply have never fought for the principles that sometimes they give lip service to.

 JAY: Jacqueline, the counterargument goes, and there’s some evidence of this in the just recently-held midterms, that in places where there were progressive candidates that won their primaries–not that many actually won. Some did, and of course, Alexandria is one of the best known. But there’s places where, in fact, the seat went Republican. Now, it might have gone Republican anyway. But the argument goes that this theory that progressives can win districts that corporate Democrats can’t, it’s a mixed bag whether there is an answer to that. What do you make of that?

LUQMAN: I think some of it comes down to messaging. A lot of these new progressive candidates were first-time campaigners, so they didn’t have the whole concept of messaging down. You know, you can’t say that you’re a progressive, especially in a competitive district where you’re running against a Republican that has a chance, and a corporate Democrat who’s an incumbent. You can’t just tie the Republican to Trump and think that’s going to win you that seat. You have to talk about policies. And at the same time, if you want to unseat the incumbent Democrat, you have to do the same thing with a Republican. You have to point out why these people’s policies have failed the people.

Kamala Harris is an interesting, very interesting subject to me. It’s interesting that we opened this piece with her comments because, you know, she talked about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bold policies as if these policies that are being talked about are some type of newfangled bunch of things that no one has ever seen. But these policies, other than being focused on renewable energy, really are things that we have done before in this country. And I think that is one of the major mistakes that a lot of these progressive candidates who are new to politics and new to campaigning are weak on, their political history. Because the argument can be made that we’ve done these things before, so we can do them again. We’ve done a New Deal before. It’s not new. Just the fact that it’s green, that it focuses on renewable energy, doesn’t mean that it’s something we haven’t seen before. We have done free college tuition before. We have done some type of expanded Medicare for most Americans before.

We’ve done these kinds of social programs before, so the only reason we think we can’t do them is because certain politicians tell us that we can’t afford it. But these are the same politicians who continue to vote for unending war, and continue to vote for a bloated military budget that no one ever questions how we’re going to pay for. So some of these progressive upstarts need to bone up on their political history, and they need to be a lot more, I think, forceful in their delivery in challenging both ends of the establishment spectrum.

JAY: As I was saying in the beginning in my intro, this is really like a division of interest. This is–you said Wall Street versus Main Street. It’s really quite a vicious fight, and it’s going to get very vicious. At the last Democratic Party convention you were part of the California delegation, and you were part of the Bernie Network. You guys kind of got closed down there. Didn’t have a lot to be able to say or participate. The Clinton forces used the party apparatus to basically–even they got Nina Turner not to make Bernie Sanders’ introduction. You know, Bernie eventually endorses. But the machine is very powerful, as I say, because it’s not just a battle of ideas. It’s a battle of power. Some people are suggesting that this fight in the Democratic Party ain’t worth it.

SOLOMON: Well, it’s extremely important, because if we care about power then it’s not just a matter of speaking truth to power, or even also about power, as important as that is. It’s crucial to take power. And if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had run as a Green or some other third-party candidate she would still be tending bar. Nothing wrong with that. But the fact is that if we want to have authentic representatives of grassroots peoples’ interests, then we need to realize that history tells us and reality tells us that we’ve been able to elect some genuine people to represent people’s interests through the Democratic Party. That’s how we have Rashida Tlaib from Detroit in Congress–also, like AOC, a declared democratic socialist.

So I think we need our feet on the ground and our eyes on the horizon. The fact is that since the 2016 campaign, activism–and RootsAction.org has been part of a coalition including Our Revolution and other groups–we basically shut down the superdelegate problem, which was instrumental in getting Hillary Clinton nominated in the first place. Long story short, the starting gun goes off for the campaign, and one candidate, the establishment candidate, is already way ahead because of superdelegates. No more. There hasn’t been a second ballot for a nomination at the Democratic Party conventions since 1952. And now we know that there will be zero superdelegates able to vote during the first decisive ballot. That only happened because people organized and fought like hell, sometimes necessarily, nonviolently, disrupted official meetings of the Democratic Party since 2016.

So nothing gets handed to us on a silver platter. Like Frederick Douglass said a long time ago, power will never concede without a struggle. And I feel that a lot of folks on the left are accustomed to just complaining about the Democratic Party, that it won’t roll over. Of course it won’t roll over. We need to take it over as progressives,

JAY: Jacqueline, there’s a lot of debate about whether Bernie should run, should be the candidate that progressives all rally around. It’s still apparently a question in his mind whether he’s going to run or not. I don’t know, you hear–but it sounds like he’s probably going to. What’s your take on it? And if Bernie does run, should some of these other people that consider themselves progressives, the Elizabeth Warrens, the Tulsi Gabbards, and others, should they be running against him?

LUQMAN: I think some of those candidates are going to run against him even if he does announce that he will run, because again, going back to the discussion about power, some of these people aren’t really interested in changing anything in this country, let alone within the Democratic Party, because if they were they would have endorsed Bernie Sanders the last time around, and they didn’t.

JAY: Tulsi Gabbard did. I mean, she quit the DNC.

LUQMAN: Well, Tulsi did, but Elizabeth Warren infamously did not. And those of us who were supporters of, supporters of Sanders, we’ll never forget that, and we should not, along with her inaction in regard to the to the protests at Standing Rock.

But I am not in a position–and I don’t like to tell people who they should vote for, who they shouldn’t vote for. I am of the opinion that we need more than two parties in this country. I understand that we have a two-party political system. But a lot of people feel justifiably burned by not just the Republican Party, but by the Democratic Party, also. Especially black voters. We have not had a lot of our issues met even by some so-called left politicians who are trying to push the Democratic Party to the left. So you’ve got a lot of people-

JAY: Does that include Bernie Sanders?

LUQMAN: I think there are some questions with how Sanders ran his campaign, especially in regard to the southern states, that a lot of voters, black voters, while they were happy to support him, really wanted him to do more in reaching out to them in those southern states. And also the issue of reparations is very very critical to black voters, especially facing the economic crisis that we are uniquely facing in this country that almost nobody else is. We will be economically bankrupt in less than 30 years.

JAY: Jeff Weaver, who was a Sanders campaign manager, it’s been announced now that if Bernie runs again Weaver won’t be the campaign manager again. And Weaver was critiqued for a lot of these kinds of campaign issues, and how the campaign was run in the south. Do you think that’s going to make a difference?

LUQMAN: It will make a difference if Weaver is replaced by someone who actually listened to the criticism of black Sanders supporters, black Sanders staffers, and black voters who reached out to Sanders to talk to him about these issues after his campaign. So it’s good that Weaver won’t be the campaign manager, but we’re in a wait and see mode to see who his replacement will be.

So yeah, I do believe that for people who think that the only option they have is to push the Democratic Party left, yes, absolutely, vote for progressives who can flood the Democratic Party and really push them left. But I also believe there needs to be a very strong movement outside of the Democratic Party that’s focused on local and state elections, where third party candidates do have more of a shot, and make more of an immediate impact than the national Democratic Party candidate would.

JAY: Norman, on the same two issues–what do you make of the Weaver thing? And then also Jacqueline’s last point on third party.

SOLOMON: First, I very much agree with the emphasis to move outside of the Democratic Party with local municipal races. For instance, I live near Richmond, California, where there’s been a coalition of Democrats, Greens, Peace and Freedom, other parties to engage in winning progressive victories in the city council, mayor’s races, fighting Chevron both inside and outside the electoral arena. On the ballot those are nonpartisan races. And that’s true around the country. Needs for cities, often in counties, certainly for school boards. And that’s where we get around the juggernaut of the Democratic Party, where officials often try to block these sort of coalitions from gaining power.

In terms of Weaver, whatever he did or didn’t do, frankly, I think he’s ill-suited for helping to run a campaign that melds the power of grassroots, social progressive movements and electoral machinery. It’s a very different thing to run an election campaign traditionally from being part of a social movement. And the best of all worlds is to have election campaigns that embrace and gain synergies from and provide synergy toward social movements. The traditional view of liberal politicians has been that social movements should be a subset of whatever election they’re trying to win next, when actually it should be the other way around. Elections, very important electoral campaigns, should be subsets of the social movements that have always been responsible for everything we can be proud of in this country. It never comes from the top down. Most recently, for instance, gay marriage. Marriage equality. It never came from the top. It came from people at the grassroots demanding what seemed impossible until it became a reality.

JAY: All right, thank you both for joining us.

SOLOMON: Thank you.

LUQMAN: Thank you so much.

JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.