All posts tagged "elections"

These forgotten Americans hold the key to Trump's downfall — and they'll use it soon

Even at the absolute highest level, at some point, just getting the basic job done — sawing wood, blocking and tackling — is the only means to sway critical elements of the American electorate toward support or disdain for this or most other administrations.

For that reason, and precious few others, it is only a matter of time until the floor drops out from under Trump's MAGA express and its adolescent scorched-earth second run.

Such a low-key, mealy-mouthed pronouncement kind of sounds absurd at first.

After all, at any given point, 35 percent of this country is in a cold civil war with the opposite 35 percent. The red side of that equation believes that Trump's Department of Justice is about to deliver Obama and Hillary's Q-inspired imprisonment, all while they cheer the deployment of troops to Portland. Probably Portland, Maine, given this administration's incompetence.

Meanwhile, many of us on the blue side believe we're a day or two away from Trump passing out on the podium as the Epstein files prove that he played a major role in the most notorious teen sex-trafficking scheme in modern history. (And don't think that he doesn't love the government shutdown as a diversion.)

The reality is likely more in the middle — though that's one hell of a middle, to be sure.

Real hope for moderating or deflating Trump and company will likely spring more from that middle 30 percent, the kind that don't believe that pitchforks are warranted yet, so long as someone answers the damned phone when they call Social Security, gets their tax rebate before Memorial Day, wants FEMA positioned before the storm, and prefers hamburger that is at least cheaper than Bitcoin.

Because Trump et. al. can implement Project 2025 in all its horror, putting troops in American cities, deporting actual American citizens, firing women and POC as presumptive "DEI hires," all of it, with the 35-35 dynamic and a "thirtyish" middle that is practically asleep, just wanting American s––– to work.

To deal with an obvious issue, no, that middle should not be forgiven for being asleep at the wheel as Trump steals American democracy, but that's a topic for another day.

There is reason to believe, however, that the middle is about to lose its precarious tolerance of Trump as his regime continues its nosedive into banana republic despot despair.

First and foremost, there is the fact that no one can afford anything, whether it is groceries, a house, Amazon Prime, never mind health insurance. Trump is in the White House based on one issue — inflation, and not only has he failed spectacularly to bring it down, but there is every indication that it will only get worse. Prices alone will move that middle to disapproval faster than nearly any other factor.

But now watch what happens when air traffic control, or the lack thereof, makes Thanksgiving and next summer an utter nightmare. Yes, that's a "First World Problem" but we are or were "the First World," and very easily angered when such entitlements are threatened.

We got damned lucky this hurricane season. FEMA got "DOGE'd" but wasn't tested in August or September, and good thing too: We could have had a disaster on top of a disaster. But just because the trade winds favored us doesn't mean that a major upheaval, such as an earthquake, fire, or next year's hurricane season, won't expose the breathtaking incompetence we know to be in place.

There is a darker side, too. As the Trump administration fully politicizes the FBI, pulling agents into political conflicts and away from international attacks, all under the leadership of a former podcaster, we are terrifyingly more exposed to terrorist attacks, whether of the old variety, such as bombs, or the newer threats to our networks and grids. The political folly of the FBI, replacing so many honed-in apolitical veterans, can and likely will be exposed in something where minutes matter. It is more likely than not.

And then there is the relatively easy stuff that is already souring, as mentioned: Social Security calls going unanswered, VA appointments dropping off, SNAP dissolving, and Medicaid cuts closing hospitals, all of that toll takes only time — and the administration has lots of it remaining.

It is really easy to spend an hour on X and fully believe that the United States is about to start the Civil War 2.0 — and, no doubt, our democracy is being burgled by the hour, the post-Constitutional America may well be "here." But the administration still has to fear that middle because in this hyper-polarized climate, it takes only a good 15 percent sway in the electorate and very suddenly the administration has little room to move without serious risk.

There is a major, major difference in the authoritarian battlefield between a presidential approval rate of 45 percent versus a true 35 percent, and as has been written here before, Trump has never had to defend his "burn it all down" approach in a souring economy — never mind a wholly dysfunctional government.

This is not a call to sit back and wait. No. The dangers are present and clear, the agenda is damned dangerous, and its implementation is now weekly. Stand and resist, spread the word, don't give an inch, all that. But do not scroll the phone thinking that we're one big revelation away from MAGA implosion.

If we have learned one thing in the Trump era, it is that scandal doesn't touch him ... unless the economy sucks, the phones go unanswered, and a real bomb drops. He has never faced a major revelation with an angry middle.

It is coming. The incompetence can only remain hidden for so long. Just don't count on overwhelming shock about any one revelation, until such time as the middle gets miffed.

At some point, competence matters. The federal government, whether it is TSA, Social Security, the FBI, or FEMA, has actually "worked" fairly well, going back a generation. We have had legions of politically agnostic civil servants earn the expectation that they can be counted on. But most of them are gone, perhaps primarily because they kept politics out of the office, all to usher in just a few "true believers."

And their absence is about to be felt, month by intolerable month.

The somewhat perverted "good news" is that it is coming, and as the middle turns against Trumpism, some of his worst plans will be abated. The bad news is that it cannot come soon enough, and questions linger over whether there will be much left worth saving.

Fight now. Resist today. And know that replacements are coming. Whether they can be forgiven for waiting until abject incompetence set in is a question for history.

But it most certainly is coming — this administration has shown that it cannot be counted on to answer the phone, blocking and tackling, and that's on a nice day. Wait for a real storm and not the "Q" type.

The administration will soon find out that competence matters most.

Jason Miciak is a past Associate Editor of Occupy Democrats, American attorney, author, and can also be found on Politizoom. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com

We can beat Trump together — but there's only one way to do it

The headlines over the past few weeks have been unrelenting. The Trump administration is activating the full power of the federal government against perceived enemies, from liberal groups to elections officials to a former FBI director.

Meanwhile, autocratic powers like China and Russia are running influence campaigns and cyber attacks to pit Americans against Americans.

China currently has the ability to track Americans’ locations and unencrypted communications on American telecom networks, as well as movements and communications abroad, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.

Russia has been perfecting the art of social media influence, with apparently great success in the case of President Donald Trump’s first election.

China and Russia want to crack the idea that we are a rainbow of many colors, a multiracial, multi-faith, representative democracy where we respect each other and celebrate our diversity in all its joys. They know America is weaker domestically and on the world stage when we are fighting against each other, both online and in the streets.

The more we hate each other, the more our fabric of American government pulls apart and frays. While I strongly disagree with Charlie Kirk’s message and its impact on marginalized groups, political violence is always wrong and is a dynamo that is hard to stop.

Here in Minnesota, we had one our toughest summers since 2020. House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and their beloved golden retriever Gilbert were assassinated. It’s only by luck that State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette survived the assassin’s bullets, and that the killer failed to harm the dozens of other leaders on the kill list.

One of my closest friends was on the first page of the kill list. It’s scary. It’s easy to be anxious and paranoid. I have been threatened at my own home.

The only way to defeat us is if the Trump administration and the movement that undergirds it manages to divide us. We can’t let that happen. To win as a majority coalition, we must always invite everybody who believes in civil liberties and human rights.

In a time when the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, labor allies, and the left needs to be organized, there is an ongoing rift between factions of the DFL Party.

In Minneapolis, the party convention’s endorsement for mayor of state Sen. Omar Fateh was appealed to the state party and invalidated. This did not end the question. If anything, it made each intra-party faction feel ever more strongly that the opposing side was corrupt and self-dealing at the expense of the greater Democratic project.

Minnesota has been a shining eight-pointed North Star, strong on civil liberties, human rights, and economic opportunity. Gov. Tim Walz recently announced that he is running for a third term. There is an open U.S. Senate contest with Sen. Tina Smith retiring from public service next year. This is a real opportunity to earn back a DFL trifecta with two legislative majorities and the governor’s signature pen. The stakes are high.

Keeping a big tent party unified in these times is incredibly difficult. I know first-hand as the former chair of the DFL local party unit that trained the most volunteers and raised the most funds of any DFL local party unit statewide. But this commentary isn’t about water under the bridge.

This November, voters in Minneapolis and Saint Paul will elect city leaders for the next four years. The first Tuesday of next February, thousands of DFL members will gather in the cold night for precinct caucuses. We will host yet more intra-party contests at in-person conventions across the state of Minnesota. It will get nasty. There will be hurtful language that threatens the inclusiveness of our party. How we react and lead will decide the path forward.

Words matter. Actions matter more. We on the left side of the spectrum — from moderate Democrats to liberals to leftists — have a role to play to invite Minnesotans into the greater Democratic project. You can invite your friends to a virtual training. You can attend the “No Kings” protests across Minnesota on Oct. 18. You can register your family to vote where they live so they can vote in elections that affect the community they call home.

And you can give family, friends and random people online a little grace. There are plenty of bots trying to gin up conflict, and real humans like us don’t have to add to that.

We are in the real fight against fascism now, here, in America. If you thought Joe Biden was using rhetorical hyperbole when he said in 2019 that there was a battle for the soul of this country, well, we are here now.

The words we use and the actions we take will have significant consequences over the next months and beyond. Majorities are only built with addition, not subtraction. To help make it happen, you can get involved, bring your friends, make calls, knock doors, write postcards, protest, and exercise our First Amendment rights to protect the Fourth Amendment rights and all the rest they are coming for.

We can do this, but only if we do it together.

Conrad Lange Zbikowski is a longtime Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party activist

This abominable choice exposed the single saddest thing in my lifetime

Well, Kamala Harris’s memoir is out, and while I am generally not a fan of political books, I believe this moment deserves some attention given the weighty timeframe and consequences of one of the most significant events of American history.

When this very good woman lost to the most abominable man in America last November, it opened the door to hell and exposed a fractured country that used to fight against fascists, not elect them.

We’ll know soon enough whether this is just an end of a chapter of the American story, or the definitive conclusion of that book. Today, our military is in our streets on behalf of a king, and human beings are being locked away in alligator-infested swamps.

We’ve seen worse, but it took a bloody “Civil” War to address it.

And let’s get this out of the way early: I proudly voted for Harris, and did what little I could to help get her elected. I was at her rally in the Milwaukee suburbs on day one of her truncated campaign, and walked away convinced she had what it took, despite one hand being tied behind her back thanks to her party’s inability to get out of its own damn way and pull together as a team.

No matter what you are hearing from all the Monday Morning Quarterbacks out there since the book’s release, she ran a damn fine campaign, walloped the America-attacking Trump in their one and only debate, and was right about literally everything — unless you believe Trump really had no idea what was in Project 2025, RFK Jr. is a renowned scientist, Stephen Miller is a caring social activist, or anything at all that pours out of the pursed lips of Trump’s personal press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

I have read myriad excerpts from 107 Days, and watched Harris’s lengthy interview with Rachel Maddow Monday night. She looks good, sounds refreshed, and instead of carpet-bombing the countryside with anti-American, destructive nonsense that the election was stolen, is trying to reckon with what happened, while providing some insight into why it did.

I will touch on a couple of common themes, but not before asking again how any person who truly cares about this country, could have voted for a grotesque, orange lowlife whose attack on America on Jan. 6, 2021, left law enforcement officers wounded in the halls of our Capitol, and our democracy in its greatest peril since that civil war.

To say this should have been a disqualifying event goes to the top of the list of my career understatements. Republicans’ failure to vote for his impeachment, and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s disregard for Trump’s heinous attack, go to the top of my list of lifetime disappointments.

So let me start here: If you did not vote for Harris, please go find the nearest door and slam it on your head. Sure it will hurt, but maybe it will knock some damn sense into you. If nothing else, you will feel the pain millions of Americans are experiencing right now.

You are to blame for all of this.

Own it.

Longtime readers will know that I thought Joe Biden should have dropped out of the race after the 2022 midterms and been the bridge president he promised to be when he ran in 2020. When he didn't, I probably should have raised more hell. In my thin defense, I had one eye on my country, and the other on the America-attacker who was gaining strength by the hour, because of Garland’s stunning refusal to bury him with the full weight of the law.

I did spend a lot of time on that one, and still turn red with anger when typing about the feckless, galling attorney general.

Meanwhile, Harris was behind the scenes pretty much doing what vice presidents do, staying the hell out of the spotlight, and offering public support for her boss.

In her book, and with both arms free to express herself, Harris takes aim at Biden’s refusal to drop out of the race earlier:

“In retrospect, I think it was recklessness … The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”

Then she goes further, and blames herself for not doing enough to force her boss out. I find this to be both an endearing and lamentable trait in many women, who often apologize when they have nothing to apologize for. I suppose this is because too many men like the odious Trump have given themselves free reign to never apologize for anything at all, and have the audacity to think it somehow projects strength, when really it is just ugly, completely pathetic, and a poor example to our children.

Here’s what Harris says:

"I realize that I have and had a certain responsibility that I should have followed through on — and so when I talk about the recklessness, as much as anything, I’m talking about myself."

It wasn't her fault.

Period.

She was dealt the cards late and played the lopsided hand for all it was worth. The loaded Trump card was too much to overcome. That the Democrats still haven’t found better dealers, is what we should be worried about most right now, and I hope Harris will help with that.

I’m dubious she will lead the Democratic ticket in 2028, but I am positive she will be a powerbroker. So let’s close with what we know, and some irrefutable facts.

Had Kamala Harris been elected …

… there’d be more jobs and prices would be lower.

… smarmy Billionaires like Elon Musk would be on alert to start paying their fair share, and Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security would be untouchable.

… Project 2025 would have been placed in a nuclear-powered shredder, and Stephen Miller would be cleaning Trump’s pool at Mar-a-Lago.

… murdering regimes around the world, starting with Russia, would be our enemies, and places like Mexico and Canada would be our friends.

… vaccines would be readily available to protect us from things like polio and the measles, and the demented RFK Jr. would be off scraping up roadkill with the hope of eating it.

… our air and water would be protected from corporate vandals, and our women would be protected from Republican perverts who can’t keep their sweaty hands off of them and their rights.

… voting rights would be a top order of business.

… truth, not lies, would reign.

As a dad to daughters, as a son, and as a husband, I am worried the single saddest thing in my lifetime will be America’s inability to check its grotesque misogyny at the door and finally put a woman in our White House.

Harris was the first woman of color to head the ticket of a major party in the United States of America, and I fear for whatever is left of my life, she might be the last.

She wasn’t the perfect candidate, because perfect candidates don’t exist, and damn I wish people would start getting that.

But this much is undeniably true: She deserved far better than what she got, and for now, a disintegrating America is getting exactly what it deserves.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

‘Assault on the entire West’: Vance outdone as fellow Republicans ramp up terror talk

CONCORD, N.C. — Vice President JD Vance’s visit to a sweltering hangar at an airport outside Charlotte on Wednesday provided a campaign-style platform for familiar attacks on Democrats as being “soft on crime,” even as news broke of a deadly shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas.

With a militarized backdrop including SWAT and emergency response vehicles flanked by local law enforcement officers, Vance sought to highlight both the killing of Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte light-rail last month and the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah two weeks ago.

But such efforts were somewhat overshadowed by news of the ICE shooting in Dallas, which left one immigrant detainee dead and two critically injured.

Authorities including President Donald Trump were quick to ascribe political motives to the shooter, who FBI Director Kash Patel said appeared to have inscribed anti-ICE messages on ammunition.

In North Carolina, Vance called the Dallas perpetrator a “violent left-wing extremist,” while insisting Democrats refrain from criticizing ICE agents for heavy-handed tactics as they implement Trump’s hardline immigration and deportation agenda.

‘Violent radicals’

Though Vance described Zarutska’s death as the result of “soft-on-crime policies” and a “political leadership that failed,” he did not threaten to impose National Guard troops and federal law enforcement resources on Charlotte, as the Trump administration has in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, claiming to be tackling runaway crime.

Instead, Vance said that if Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles and North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein — both Democrats — “ask for our help, we would absolutely send it, because we believe in helping people, regardless of whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.

“We want to go where we can have a real partnership between local law enforcement and the federal officials so that we can root out the crime.”

Without specifying the target of his criticism, Vance charged: “We’ve got a crew of violent radicals in the United States of America who think we ought to make it harder for police to keep us safe than easier for police to keep us safe.”

Vance also repeated an unfounded claim by administration officials that a far-left network was behind the killing of Kirk.

“Over the next couple of years, the Trump administration is going to do everything that we can to dismantle the networks, to destroy the funding and to make it harder for people to kill one another just because they disagree with what somebody says,” Vance said.

Whatley v. Cooper

Republicans have blamed Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor turned candidate in a contest that could decide control of the U.S. Senate next year, for Zarutska’s shocking death.

“The blood of this innocent woman can literally be seen dripping from the killer’s knife, and now her blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail, including Former Disgraced Governor and ‘Wannabe Senator’ Roy Cooper,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial this month.

DeCarlos Brown Jr., charged in Zarutska’s murder, received a misdemeanor charge of misusing 911 in January but was released by a magistrate judge on a written promise to appear.

Asked by Raw Story on Wednesday if the Republican-controlled state General Assembly should bear some responsibility for Zarutska’s death, given its role in establishing the law governing pre-trial release, Vance said, “I think every politician who didn’t work hard to keep violent criminals behind bars deserves to have some of the blame, but at the very top of that list is Governor Cooper, because at the time that we were pushing these soft-on-crime policies, Governor Cooper was the man in charge.”

Trump has urged supporters to vote in the forthcoming Senate election for Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman.

On Wednesday, speaking before Vance, Whatley attempted to link Zarutska’s death to his opponent by pointing to a 2020 executive order, issued by Cooper as governor, to create a racial equity task force, following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Whatley claimed the order pledged to “reimagine law enforcement in North Carolina.”

The report released by the task force, an advisory body of which Cooper was not a member, included a section headed, “Reimagining Public Safety,” but those words do not appear in Cooper’s order.

"I don't think we need to reimagine law enforcement," Whatley said. "What we need to do is enforce the law, and back the blue."

A Cooper campaign spokesperson responded: "Roy Cooper is the only candidate who spent his entire career prosecuting violent crimnals and keeping thousands of them behind bars as attorney general, and signing tough on crime laws and stricter bail policy as governor. DC insider and Big Oil lobbyist Michael Whatley is desperate to distract from his support for cuts to law enforcement that make North Carolinians less safe."

Whatley faulted Cooper for briefly marching with Black Lives Matter activists in June 2020, outside the Executive Mansion in Raleigh, a couple days after a protest turned violent and a police station was pelted with projectiles, store windows were smashed and fires started.

“We cannot focus so much on the property damage that we forget why people are in the streets,” Cooper said at the time.

“We have to constructively channel our anger, frustration and sadness to force accountability and action. If we don’t, then we haven’t learned anything. We have to have these conversations, and then move beyond them to do the work of ending racism and building safe, thriving communities for everyone.”

‘Under attack’

During Vance’s visit on Wednesday, the most incendiary comments came from two Republican U.S. House members.

“Western civilization is under attack,” said Rep. Mark Harris, who represents North Carolina’s Eighth District, citing the deaths of Zarutska and Kirk.

“These tragedies are not isolated incidents, but signs of a national epidemic of lawlessness and division that threatens the very fabric of our society. Iryna and Charlie have opened many eyes to the battle being waged against our nation. But this war isn’t just against America — it’s an assault on the entire West.”

Formerly senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Charlotte, Harris declared that “Christ has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind.”

Rep. Addison McDowell, of the Sixth District, charged that cities across the U.S. were “run by left-wing lunatics who don’t have a spine and would rather coddle the criminals than enforce the law.

“They would rather see the likes of Iryna Zarutska murdered on a light rail on the way to work” than “lock up a dangerous criminal who had been in and out of our system,” McDowell claimed.

“Far-left activists that call themselves judges […] let an unhinged and unstable man out into the community leading to the horrific murder of Iryna that should have never happened,” he said.

This story was updated on Sept. 25, 2025 at 5:09 p.m. ET to include a statement from the Cooper campaign.

'Massive move to the left': Data expert says Arizona election reflects nationwide response

CNN's data guru is saying a "massive move to the left" is happening following the large Democratic turnout in Arizona — a reflection of what's happening nationwide.

"What a massive move to the left, to the Democratic side we're talking about here," statistician Harry Enten reported early Wednesday. "My goodness gracious."

He pointed to Latino voters in Arizona showing up in droves, saying "Democrats doing much better than they were doing in Latino districts. A lot of Latinos live in Arizona, seventh district, and not surprisingly, Grijalva doing 17 points better than Kamala Harris did back just a little less than a year ago."

He compared the results from Arizona's election Tuesday night to Kamala Harris' results in the 2024 presidential election.

"Democrats are doing on average, get this, 18 points better than Kamala Harris did back in 2024," he said. "So the 17 point over-performance last night matches the average that we see. The 18 point over-performance that Democrats have had in U.S. House elections. Again, this is one of the best signs that Democrats have had so far. When people vote, Democrats are doing significantly better than they did, just a little bit less than a year ago."

It's a major shift for Democrats ahead of midterm elections, he said, pointing to history as a marker for what's to come.

"What it says is if a party outperforms in special elections going all the way back since the 05-06 cycle, they go on to win the U.S. House of Representatives five out of five times," he said. "We'll see if it becomes six out of six. But the bottom line is history says that the Democrats outperforming just like they did last night in Arizona. Seventh district, the presidential baseline is a very, very good sign. As these districts move very much to the left."

Adelita Grijalva, who is the daughter of longtime late Arizona congressman Raúl Grijalva, who died after battling cancer, won the race Tuesday to succeed him. This further narrows the gap for the Republican majority in the House, the New York Times reports.

The House now has 219 Republicans, 214 Democrats and two remaining vacancies left.

How two decent Virginians gave hope that Trumpism can be crushed

As the anti-science Republican Party urgently tries to turn out the lights to the lab of the great American experiment, I want to remind you again that there are patriots and truth-tellers everywhere fighting them, and we should all take heart …

Like you, these good people are leaning in hard and spending their time and treasure to protect us from the most anti-American regime this country has seen since the racist, traitorous Robert E. Lee was leading armies against our country 165 years ago.

I ran into two of these good folks on Saturday, and I want to tell you about it.

My wife and I were shaking off the last of the grisly road grime from a long journey that started in the Battleground State of Wisconsin, and 1,200 miles later ended hard on the coast of the Battleground State of North Carolina.

We were busy settling into temporary housing that should shelter us nicely for the next few months, as the state that stretches out to the north of us, Virginia, readies for crucial elections Nov. 4. Democratic victories in that state could radically change the battlefield for the forces defending America against the odious, fascist Republicans who mean to end us.

On the way to our car, I spotted a white Subaru in the parking lot with a handsome, bright blue Abigail Spanberger sticker on the car.

Spanberger is the Democrat running to replace the grotesque, book-banning, Glenn Youngkin, in Virginia as the state’s governor in just six, short weeks.

I told my wife that I endeavored to meet the fine people who would fly this flag in a N.C. county that isn’t shy about touting their anti-American ignorance by supporting the orange, convicted felon who violently attacks us …

There are plenty of pro-American, pro-environment patriots out here in the Outer Banks, but we don’t carry guns or wear our ignorance on stupid, childish cammies. We’re more inclined to go about our work with a quiet purpose, while picking up their trash on the beach.

Just after lunch, and on my way to the hardware store to grab some much-needed supplies, I got the opportunity to meet these people who wore their hearts on their sleeves.

A man and woman were piling into the Subaru, when I approached them. Here is how that encounter went:

ME: “Howdy!”

THEM: “Howdy!”

ME: “I was hoping to meet the people with that Spanberger sticker on their car.”

THE MAN: “Why? Are you going to punch me in the nose?”

I laughed out loud …

Such times we live in …

I told the man, named Joe, that I actually wanted to hug him, because Spanberger was badass, and anybody who would support her must be some kind of badass themselves.

That’s when they laughed.

The wife, Carol, asked where I was from in Virginia, and I told her I was just a loudmouth activist lately stationed in Wisconsin, where we are fighting the good fight from the rooftop of the country.

She said, “Oh!! You guys are killing it up there!”

I agreed, of course, because since 2018 it’s hard to point to another state that has altered its political landscape as dramatically as Wisconsin.

We’ve kicked out Republican governors, flipped our Supreme Court from dark red to middling blue, put fair-ish maps in place, and basically restored order to a state that had gone mad thanks to the poison the billionaire Koch Bros. had been ladling out to the mouth-breathing Republicans, who were led by Scott Walker, perhaps the stupidest man alive.

Yeah, we fell short last November, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Kamala Harris actually got more votes than Joe Biden did in 2020, but just enough Republicans and dummies in the middle helped put the woman-abusing felon back in our White House. We did keep the steady Tammy Baldwin in the Senate for six more years, so there was that.

So now I was talking to a couple of patriots who knew the importance of every election going forward, and were dug in on the frontlines of Virginia.

I told Joe that Spanberger was going to win big, because she was made for the moment, and so, too, were he and his wife.

He said, “I sure hope so,” before Carol interrupted and said, “She’s great. Yer damn right she’s gonna win!”

I gave her a high-five, smiled big, walked off, climbed into my car, and headed for the store.

There are patriots everywhere, my friends, and this is the time to be loud, proud and purposeful. You need to search these people out. Lean on them … If necessary, help show them the way.

There is great power in connection, because connection brings power.

It’s time to take that power back.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Two looming contests will tell if America still lives or if Trump has doomed us all

When I was a young man, I never figured that well into my seventh decade on this green and fading earth, I’d need to reiterate that I was a proud anti-fascist, and a veteran who served his country to defend it from violent, lawless convicted felons.

Like the one who has somehow scraped his way back into our White House …

It would have been completly inconceivable — a thing of fiction. When I was discharged from the Navy in 1980, America was an imperfect place, but tied together with the imperfect notion that if we stood together we could work our way out of nearly any self-inflicted mess.

Today, I am typing to you that Republicans have declared war on America, and as grotesque as that is, it is nonetheless a terrible reality we must come to grips with.

Maybe they are finishing what they started with Nixon and Reagan, but I’m here to tell you they have never been this sinister.

Donald J. Trump is a homegrown terrorist who hates America. After violently attacking our country once, he again has his fat little foot on the gas pedal, and this time means to run us over for good.

Instead of spending my golden years writing another damn book, and squeezing out every ounce of good that might be due to me, I am furiously banging out these three chilling words:

Authoritarianism is here.

Look, Trump will stop at nothing to protect himself, and continue to endanger this country. There are no lines he won’t cross, or laws he won’t incinerate. He’s a wholy dishonest man, who is good at exactly one thing: breaking things.

Like our economy, for instance ...

Since he slithered his way into our White House and spray-painted it tacky-gold, prices are rising, inflation is rising, unemployment is rising, and jobs are on the decrease. And that peace he promised to deliver on Day One? Well, things are escalating quickly in the Mideast, and along the frontlines of democracy in Eastern Europe.

Trump has predictably been a complete and utter failure, because history tells us that is all he has ever been. He was a rotten kid, a rotten businessman, a rotten husband, a rotten father, and is a poor damn excuse of a man.

His approval ratings are tanking, and everywhere he goes, which lately was an appalling stop in Great Britain, he is met with hate and derision.

His health is failing, and he looks even more hideous than usual. All the spray tan, and stringy stuff he tapes to his head each day are doing nothing to hide the fact he is quickly approaching the point where he is almost as dead on the outside as he is on the inside.

Instead of doing what every other president has done before him, and reassessing what has taken us down, he is steadfastly dragging along his dead right leg, and limping forward without looking back. He is climbing over the dead bodies toward the higher ground in his bunker where he can blame somebody else for his deep and never-ending failures.

It’s what losers do, and what he has always done.

If what’s left of our media is reporting on his ongoing failures, they are the problem, and need to be silenced.
If comedians are making light of his never-ending moronic tendencies, they need to be squashed.
If economic data comes out that doesn't put a shine to his dark failures, he needs to manufacture his own numbers that will.
If proven science doesn't align with his hair-brain thinking on things like vaccines and clean air and water, scientists need to be silenced, and crushed by the morally bankrupt billionaires who keep him in office, so their profits will soar.
If some inconvenient law is getting in the way of his march against the truth he can just ignore it, because he knows his bought-off, reprehensible conservative Supreme Court has already decided their lopsided, orange lout is fit to be king.
If none of that works, it was Obama or Biden’s fault.

And while ALL of this was inconceivable even 15 years ago, none of it comes as any surprise to those of us who have been doing nothing but paying close attention since the initial blast on Nov. 8, 2016.

If only everybody cared even half as much, we might not be in this terrible mess. Sadly, most don’t.

I’ll be spending the next couple of months typing to you from the coast of the Battleground State of North Carolina, and inside the Tidewater, Virginia, media market, as that state girds for crucial elections Nov. 4, that will decide which party holds power there.

Those elections, and similar contests in my home state, New Jersey, will be the first signs of whether our slide deep into fascism continues, or if we are interested in climbing out of the abyss.

For now, I’ll exit at the same place I left my last couple of columns by reiterating WE must be the truth-tellers going forward. We can no longer rely on our corporate media to tell us what is going on, because too many have pathetically surrendered to authoritarianism. We must turn to independent journalists to provide the truth, and confirm what is right in front of our eyes.

You … we … must all light the way ahead.

I’ll be very honest with you: I don’t need this shit, and know many of you don’t either. I think I speak for many of my generation when I say this is not how our retirement was supposed to go. We were planning to toss our flashlights and keys to the younger folks to guide the way. It was finally our turn to get the hell out of our own way, collect our social security, lean carefully on our savings, and make the most of whatever remained of our short lives.

I figured I’d find time at the nearest beach, and write about soft, pretty things of absolutely no consequence. I’d ride bliss, until it tossed me off and into some grave.

That’s when war came, and I made the decision not to ignore it.

It has been left to us to be true patriots and rescue America from the bruised grip of a maniac and his morally busted political cheap-shots, and misogynystic racists who mean to end us.

We must speak up, and stand against the latest Republican attack against our Democracy. There are no magic potions, or thoughts and prayers that will get us out of this mess. There is nobody coming to rescue us.

Once our Democracy is gone, we won’t get it back. Not in this lifetime.

At one point, America was the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I believe we are here to prove it still can be …

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

What do real voters want? Don't ask these Dem squishes

Talk tough on crime and immigration, don’t say trans, and sit back and let Trump’s economy make voters mad.

That’s the way to Make Democrats Great Again, or so say the roughly eleventy-nine Democratic-allied centrist political action committees and think tanks, some old, many new, who promise they know how to right (pun intended) the ship and rebrand the Democratic Party.

Nevada U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto is heading up one of those groups, the Moderate Democrats PAC. That’s appropriate because she’s a one-time chair of the official PAC of Senate Democrats so she’s experienced at raising money. And when it comes to blind faith in moderation, you could say she’s a radical extremist.

Cortez Masto was momentarily and uncharacteristically trending this summer when she sparred with her Democratic colleague Cory Booker while working to pass a pair of “Police Week” crime bills supported by the entire Senate (including Booker; the whole thing was kind of dopey).

Alas, Cortez Masto’s long-held tendency to back all things cop notwithstanding, the Democratic Senate candidates her Moderate Democrats PAC is raising money for are still going to be called “soft on crime” or whatever in Republican attack ads. That’s just how it works.

And sorry, Nevada Democratic Rep. Susie Lee. Marching in lockstep with Fox alumnus celebrity and D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and being one of only eight House Democrats voting with Republicans to allow 14-year-olds to be tried as adults in Washington D.C. courts may have seemed like a politically prudent thing to do at the time. But it’s not going to stop Republicans from calling you a radical leftist criminal coddler, or words to that effect. In ads.

Cortez Masto and Lee, along with the rest of Nevada’s Democrats in Congress — Sen. Jacky Rosen and Reps. Dina Titus and Steven Horsford — have also voted for things like a fearmongering Trump bill to deprive immigrants of due process under the law. But Republicans are still going to say Nevada’s congressional Democrats “love open borders” because that’s how Republicans roll.

The newest entry in the organizational race to persuade Democrats to tack right and party like it’s 1989 is a think tank formed by Adam Jentleson, a former staffer to the late Harry Reid. Jentleson tells the New York Times that the “folks who are most to blame about Trump are the ones who pushed Democrats to take indefensible positions,” on contentious issues, especially LGBTQ+ ones.

Every Democratic politician in the country could stop talking about trans people this very minute. In fact, most of them already have. If they ever did. But guess what? Republicans are still going to squeal and scream that Democrats want, as Trump bizarrely puts it, “transgender for everybody.”

There may be some Democratic politicians who sincerely share Trump’s fever dream that “transgender for everybody,” whatever that is, is just around the corner. (Titus and Horsford don’t, by the way).

There are probably also some Democratic politicians who share Trump’s desire to create a shoot first-ask-questions-later-if-ever police state. Or who applaud Trump’s zeal for wrecking not only lives but the economy by indiscriminately deporting people whose only crime was doing what it took to escape poverty and/or oppression.

But if Democrats believe refraining from opposing Trump on divisive socio-cultural issues will make people vote for them instead of Republicans, that seems problematic. It’s not like Republicans are going to stop hammering Democrats on those issues just because Democrats don’t talk about them.

Given a choice between a Democrat who has officially cried “uncle” in fear of Republican red meat attack ads and a Republican who keeps launching those ads anyway, people who are moved by those issues can still be expected to vote for the Republican.

Ye olde thought leaders

The centrist groups vying for Democratic thought leadership are defined almost exclusively by what they want Democrats not to do.

As to what Democrats should do, the centrist group growth industry is fuzzy, collectively mumbling something about “kitchen table issues” and “common-sense.”

Policies and positions reflecting such phrases and concepts were used again and again by Democrats on the campaign trail last year (as they are every campaign year). And they were voiced far, far more often than support for LGBTQ+ rights or sensible immigration reforms. The policy pitch by the centrist groups sounds a lot like the same old.

Which brings us to perhaps the one strategy in the moderate Democratic agenda, (in as much as there is either a strategy or an agenda) that might be loosely termed proactive: Reaffirm support for popular policies, especially health care policies, and hope that voters get sick of Trump’s economic shenanigans.

As rebrandings go, it’s sad-trombone soft and tiresomely derivative.

And it fails to address perhaps the biggest questions about next year’s elections: What exactly is the electorate anymore, and what does it want?

In polling both before and after the 2024 election, voters said their top concern was the economy.

A Fox News poll released last week found 52 percent of those surveyed said Trump is making the economy worse, compared to only 30 percent who said he’s making it better (let alone great again). Numerous other surveys also find Trump underwater on the economy.

So maybe all Democrats need to do is vow to “fight” to protect health care provisions and programs, and then sit back while Republicans sink under the weight of Trump’s economic blundering. And then Democrats might at least take back the House in 2026 (assuming there will be an election), which is the first step toward overturning Trumpism in 2028.

But voter responses to pollsters about the economy notwithstanding, something other than the cost of things — and something other than immigration, and even something other than video of Kamala Harris saying “transgender” out loud, for that matter — was going on with voters last year.

A sizable percentage of Nevada voters told pollsters they wanted to “tear down the system completely.”

Could the tear it down vote be potent enough to neutralize voters’ economic frustration next year? Especially if the economy merely limps along (as per some projections) instead of dropping into recession (as per others)?

Normally that would be unthinkable. But “normally” doesn’t exist anymore.

The evangelizers who swear that centrism will solve everything and the Nevada politicians who love them promise they’ll save the nation by embracing “mainstream positions” and “common sense.”

The last time voters in the nation and Nevada had a chance to express themselves, they elected Trump president. In other words, it’s anybody’s guess if Nevada’s congressional Democrats, and groups like Jentleson’s, have the foggiest idea what, if anything, passes for mainstream common sense anymore.

What’s equally disturbing is how blithely they assume they do.

Hugh Jackson is editor of the Nevada Current

Tyrant Trump always says, 'This is only the beginning.' Believe him

The huge Labor Day banner outside the Labor Department building with Trump’s picture and the words “American Workers First” depicts one of Donald’s most disgusting lies.

With multiple factual examples, Steve Greenhouse, former labor reporter for the New York Times, provides proof that Trump is the most brazenly “anti-worker” president in U.S. history. With his Big Vicious and Ugly Bill, barely passed by his fawning GOP in Congress, and dozens of illegal executive orders, he is smashing the American Worker beyond the avarice of the cruelest Plutocrat.

Quoting liberally from Greenhouse's Labor Day article in the Guardian, I urge labor union leaders and rank-and-file union members to absorb its contents. This article could make American labor angry enough to mount an unstoppable movement to tell Trump, “You’re Fired,” and fire up enough convinced or electorally scared lawmakers in Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office.

The aggregated madness from this failed gambling czar, wholly devoid of empathy, compassion, truth, while betraying his own voters and his oath of office, follows:

Trump put corporate interests first by “often cutting [workers’] pay or making their jobs more dangerous.” This includes gutting regulations that protect miners from a debilitating, often deadly lung disease. He fired the chair of the top labor watchdog – the National Labor Relations Board, whose now stalled mission is to “protect workers from corporations’ illegal anti-union tactics.” Then “Trump stripped one million federal workers of their right to bargain collectively and tore up their union contracts.”
“Trump has hurt construction workers by shutting down major wind turbine projects and ending Biden-era subsidies that encourage construction of factories that make renewable-energy products.”
Trump is pressing to end “minimum wage and overtime protections for 3.7 million home-care and domestic workers,” and has already ended a “Biden plan to prevent employers from paying disabled workers less than the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage.” Trump adamantly opposes raising this frozen minimum wage for 25 million workers who would benefit from a $15 federal minimum wage. He ended a “requirement that federal contractors pay their workers at least $17.75 an hour.”
Tariffs and reckless, wholesale deportations are “pushing up prices and slowing economic growth.” His big tax cut for the super-rich is being paid for by “millions of working families by cutting food assistance and causing many to lose health coverage” (from Medicaid). As for deportation, it is “undermining their employers’ businesses,” and I might add closing down some of them and impairing farmers from harvesting their crops.
“In her annual State of the Unions address, AFL-CIO president [Liz] Schuler said: ‘We want cheaper groceries, and we get tanks on our streets. We want more affordable healthcare, and we get 16 million Americans about to be kicked off their coverage.’”
Trump is swinging an axe to end worker safety protections, cutting OSHA staff and pushing those still working at OSHA to weaken all kinds of essential safety and health protections, ranging from coal miners to workers under extreme heat, to reducing fines for violating safety rules, and much more. He “froze enforcement of a Biden-era regulation that protects miners from silicosis, a serious lung disease.” “…a major killer among coal miners.”
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) “forecasts that Trump’s effort to deport 1 million immigrants a year will result in 5.9 million lost jobs after four years: 3.3 million fewer employed immigrants and 2.6 million fewer employed US-born workers. ‘If you don’t have immigrant roofers and framers, you’re not building houses, and that means electricians and plumbers lose their jobs.’ ‘Plus, you lose the consumer spending from those workers,’” and tens of billions of withheld tax revenues annually, one might add.

The list of anti-worker cruelty goes on. Tyrant Trump always says, “This is only the beginning.” He acts like an imperious dictator because that is what he is, imposing burdens and pain on the American people — in red and blue states alike. The six rogue Supreme Court Injustices, who thus far know no limits, are enabling the madman in the White House. Before his sleazy conversion, JD Vance called Trump “America’s Hitler.”

UNFORTUNATELY, THE WORST IS YET TO COME, MUCH WORSE!

The flip side of Trump’s feverish repression of worker rights, remedies, and existing protections is that there is no chance of reforming anti-union laws, such as the notorious Taft-Hartley Law of 1947, with Trump and his congressional cronies in power.Readers may well ask why all these attacks on workers didn’t lead unions and their allies to launch a COMPACT FOR AMERICAN WORKERS and insist that the feeble, corporate-conflicted Democratic Party adopt it authentically and replace their stagnant leadership with new, vigorous leaders.

That is what they should have done right after their disastrous loss to Trump, the serial law violator, abuser of women, corrupter, daily, delusionary falsehood teller, shredder of the Constitution, greedy, egomaniacal, and seriously dangerous personalityThere is still one Labor Day before the 2026 midterm elections. Can Unions and the Democratic Party save our Republic from the rampaging daily Trump outlawry and viciousness (he is now invading American cities while wrecking our country)? It should be easy, just based on his failed record.

As the economy worsens amidst the chaos, consumer prices rise, unemployment rises, and Trump behaves more like Captain Queeg (the fictional, cruel, and crazy skipper in the film, The Caine Mutiny), voters for Trump are starting to ask, “Did We Vote for This?” Non-voters, in turn, should resolve to head for the polls and reject what Trump is doing. The people who are the sovereign in our Constitution must start acting like they have power.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of "The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future" (2012). His latest book is, "Wrecking America: How Trump's Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All" (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).

These Democrats have what it takes to show Americans why Trump must be beaten

If it’s to have a future, the Democratic Party must not only condemn Trumpism but explain why so many Americans are struggling and provide a credible way for most people to share in the nation’s prosperity.

That means forgetting about moving to the so-called “center” and instead embracing the passion, energy, youth, and big ideas of young Democratic candidates like Zohran Mamdani in New York and Senate candidates Graham Platner in Maine, Dan Osborn in Nebraska, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Nathan Sage in Iowa.

Most Americans are justifiably angry that our political-economic system is in the hands of a bevy of billionaires and multimillionaires who have rigged it for their own benefit.

Trump talks as if he’s a tribune of the people but he’s cutting Medicaid, food stamps, veterans’ benefits, education, and much of what average Americans depend on so he can give another big tax cut to his wealthy backers.

Where are congressional Democrats in all this? Dazed, asleep, mum, frightened.

Trump has baselessly attributed America’s real problems — such as stagnant wages, insecure jobs, soaring food prices, and unaffordable housing — to immigrants, the “deep state,” transgender people, socialists, and communists.

Why don’t Democrats tell America the truth — that these problems are largely due to monopolistic corporations and robber-baron billionaires? Because too many Democratic politicians are afraid to bite the hands that feed their campaign coffers.

Hopefully, that’s beginning to change. A cohort of new, young, progressive Democrats appears willing to take on the moneyed interests.

They’re calling for higher taxes on the super-wealthy to finance what average working Americans need. And they want big money out of our politics.

Mamdani’s remarkable win in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary was based on the simple message that New York has an affordability crisis and that the wealthiest New Yorkers must help respond.

Mamdani’s three main proposals to help working families cope with it are to make city buses free, freeze the rent for stabilized apartments, and expand free child care.

Under Mamdani’s plan, the financial burden of paying for these policies would largely fall on wealthy taxpayers and businesses.

Other young progressives now running for U.S. Senate are sounding similar themes. They include Maine’s Platner, a 40-year-old veteran and oyster farmer who’s challenging incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins.

Platner describes his candidacy as a referendum on wealth and power. He’s pledging to “topple the oligarchy.”

As he pilots a fishing boat in his launch video, Platner rails against billionaires, corrupt politicians, unattainable housing, and decades of stagnant wages.

“People know that the system is screwing them. No one I know around here can afford a house. Health care is a disaster, hospitals are closing. We have watched all of that get ripped away from us, and everyone is just trying to keep it all together.

Why can’t we have universal health care like every other first-world country? Why can’t we take care of our veterans when they come home? Why are we funding endless wars and bombing children? Why are CEOs more powerful than unions? We’ve fought three different wars since the last time we raised the minimum wage.”

Nebraska’s Osborn — a union president and former machinist who organized Nebraska workers during a nationwide strike at the cereal giant Kellogg’s — invokes a similar message. He’s attacking CEOs who care more about wealthy shareholders than workers and politicians who are more loyal to donors than voters.

Osborn captured national attention during his independent Senate run in 2024 against Republican Senator Deb Fischer. Although he lost that race, he narrowed Fischer’s margin of victory to single digits in a state that Trump won by 20 points.

Now he’s back, challenging incumbent Republican senator Pete Ricketts in a contest Osborn characterizes as a struggle between the working class and the wealthy.

Osborn contrasts himself with Ricketts, whose father founded stockbroker TD Ameritrade and whose net worth is estimated to be $184 million.

“Our government doesn’t look like me,” says Osborn, “so that’s certainly what I want to get in there and change.”

Michigan’s El-Sayed is the former director of Wayne County’s Health and Human Services and the Detroit Health Department and a former professor of epidemiology at Columbia. His background in public health is a big reason why he’s so dedicated to Medicare for All and abolishing medical debt.

El-Sayed has become one of the Democrats’ most cogent citics of RFK Jr. El-Sayed also has a strong political track record as runner-up to Gretchen Whitmer in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor and as part of the Biden-Bernie Unity task force in 2020.

Iowa’s Sage is a military veteran, mechanic, and longtime sports radio personality whose campaign emphasizes his working-class identity and the needs of Iowa’s working class.

The Democratic establishment doesn’t particularly like any of the people I’ve named.

Mamdani is making corporate Democrats cringe. Hillary Clinton endorsed Andrew Cuomo for New York mayor. Trump may, too.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is eschewing the progressive candidates I’ve mentioned in favor of so-called “moderates.”

That’s a mistake. The Democratic establishment is looking in the rearview mirror.

What about the Democrats’ presidential candidate in 2028?

My personal favorites are Rep. Ro Khanna of Ohio and former senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who’s now running again for the Senate. I’ve also been impressed by three governors who are effectively standing up to Trump: California’s Gavin Newsom, Illinois’s JB Pritzker, and Maryland’s Wes Moore.

I’m also hearing from young people across the country — not only in the Democratic strongholds of New York, California, and Massachusetts but also in Texas (where I spent some time in August) — that they’re moved and excited by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York.

In 2028 — assuming Trump doesn’t call off the next presidential election — AOC will be the ripe old age of 38, and eligible for the presidency.

A new day is dawning for the Democratic Party — if it’s able to see the sunrise.

Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.