I liked a @YouTube video https://t.co/wl64SXpYo8 Hillary Clinton urges Senate to give Merrick Garland a hearing, blasts Donald Trump

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March 31, 2016 at 02:37PM

A Southern State Agenda for Progressive Liberal Dems

Politics, Uncategorized,

“Congressional Republicans in the Obama era have largely been defined by their insistence on standing in front of the administration and yelling stop. Democrats call them the party of “no.” But in state legislatures, Republicans are finding both rewards and peril in being a vigorous party of “yes” when it comes to promoting conservative social issues.”

NY Times

This is what I wonder: for Democrats – progressives, liberals and everyone in between – 2018 will be a crucial moment. At the state level, Democrats have completed their transformation into the “liberal opposition”, the “Negro Party” (the latter being what the Southern GOP was described as in the 1890s), the “anti-gun party”, the “pro-abortion party”. They’re fighting different battles than what Beltway Democrats are fighting in Congress, on a different playing field.

But we’ve also become the “party of No” in states which have gerrymandered state legislature district lines. We’ve come to this point from embracing minority, disadvantaged, young, migrant, creative, urbanized and/or educated identities, and fighting fights from a minority, disadvantaged, young, migrant, creative, urbanized and/or educated position.

This means that at this level, we will have to get used to being the opposition in so much of the rurally-spread United States for a long period of time. The rural agenda and historic rural privilege (pro-gun proliferation, pro-patriarchy, pro-religious establishment, pro-austerity, pro-racial privilege) runs ship at the state level. And I don’t see a turnaround happening without either one of two things happening:

  • a hypocritical repeat of the Southern Strategy in which Democrats drive out the “non-traditional Americans” who they’ve accrued since 1968 and curry favor with the “traditional Americans”.
  • Creating new, Democratic-leaning states from existing ones, a la State of Baja Arizona, State of South Florida, State of Atlanta, State of South Louisiana, State of South Texas, etc.

I think, with the latter option, those minority positions – Afro-American and Latino, college student, LGBT, women, urbanites, creative types, service worker, types who have better representation in city government – will have greater autonomy and home rule in the South than they have in this forever-disadvantaged position against these hopelessly-rural state legislatures. Hawaii is one example, D.C. is another. Why be held in this minority position forever? If bigoted rural interests hold back whole state governments, why let them hold back those who have a more diverse agenda? Statehood for Southern New Democrats. Think about it.

For the strategists and experienced folks: those who grew up aged 20-28 during the Reagan years now constitute the average age span of officeholders in state legislatures and Congress (56-64).

this means that those who grew up as young adults in the Clinton years have yet to constitute the majority of the political class, but do constitute the nationwide average age span of the voting population (47 years old).

If this is the case, why are Clinton-era young adults putting Reagan-era young adults into office from 2010 to 2016? Maybe for lack of contemporary alternatives among their own generation?

Dr. Jill Stein

Politics, Uncategorized

If there is one candidate who I can say I won’t vote for, who is not a Republican or Democrat, it is Dr. Jill Stein.

When I saw her debate Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson on RT America in 2012, I was really disappointed by her diction and delivery. She played overly nice (and did it poorly), he played “attack the socialist” (and did it glibly and viciously, like many of the libertarians and “fiscal conservatives” in my life). I couldn’t tell if she was serious, or if she was high. She wouldn’t defend herself, and she wouldn’t defend her party.

She’s been a fuck-up of a candidate for the Green Party, just like Cynthia McKinney was in 2008; McKinney now plays “American conspiracy theorist-in-residence” for Iran’s Press TV.

Why not select someone who has actually won an office of local leadership? Gayle McLaughlin, Green former mayor of Richmond, CA? No? Not someone with actual chops in leadership? You’re not fucking serious, Green Party.

The biggest sign that I’ve tuned out of presidential politics is that I’m becoming so much more involved in helping build a local candidate’s campaign. Over time, I degenerated in some way because I felt that I didn’t have that much of a relationship with the Bernie campaign. I’ve come to see presidential politics as not only out of my hands, but infuriating in their inanity. I’m learning more about our local candidates. I’ve known for a while that nothing will get done if I don’t get involved and do something.

At the same time, I do not want to be complacent. I know full well that our state government is ran by people who see themselves as the least connected with the federal government or any metropolitan familiarity, utterly possessive of a government which reflects their culture, and maddeningly dismissive of our history and our lackings in basic protections. To change this status quo, a fundamental shift in representation should redirect control of the state away from rural areas and toward urban areas. The day that I give up on this is the day I redirect my goal, utterly and totally, toward relocating to California.

I’m on hiatus from this account. Please visit my new site, @PinkPeachNews: https://t.co/t52pTSJpBy. Thanks! #LGBT #ColumbusGA #lgbtsouth

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February 26, 2016 at 10:49PM

I will vote early in the primary tomorrow.

Politics, Uncategorized, ,

I will vote early in the primary tomorrow.

I’m having jitters about voting bragging rights. I confess: I didn’t vote for Barack Obama in 2008, my first time voting in a presidential election. I remember writing in Nader, as a protest against the two-party system, but I felt at the time that Obama, with his story and his meteoric rise to the top of a presidential coalition, was inevitable at some point.

Now, in liberal circles, it’s a bragging right to say that you voted for Obama in both primary and general elections both in 2008 and 2012. I didn’t buy the hype in 08 enough to vote for him, and I don’t remember voting in the Democratic primary that year,

Now, because of how impressed by him I have become over the years, I sorta wish I did buy that hype in 2008. But at least I voted for him in 2012, the same year I met Fenika Miller and created the Houston County Democratic Party website as a personal project.

Now we’re talking about that inevitability with Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Sanders is the primary challenger for the nomination. But that has been undercut by voter turmoil and a lower Democratic base turnout for both Clinton and Sanders.

It was easier for me to go for Bernie Sanders when he announced his candidacy, but this cycle has soured so much for me. I just saw two Facebook friends break up hard over this rivalry the other day.

In my feed, on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve seen pro-Sanders people wax conspiracist and cranky in a right-wing way against Clinton, I’ve seen pro-Clinton people wax anti-socialist and paternalistic in a right-wing way against Sanders. And I say “in a right-wing way” because this all sounds like shit you read on FreeRepublic or Breitbart. Like, STOP IT PEOPLE. STOP BEING ASSHOLES. Gods.

You know what? I’d vote for Obama again. Third freaking term. But he’s graying at the speed of light. Argh. I don’t know about bragging rights, saying that you’d voted for one who you knew was the “right one”. I don’t know if that makes you a better person. I don’t know if that makes you psychic. But I know that I’m not voting to keep Republicans in check. I know that I’m not voting to prevent anything from happening. I’m not going to vote my fears, or for strategy or tactics.

I’m going to vote for the things I want, the ideas I want to see become flesh. They can come from either candidate, but they must have a liberal Congress to make them happen. I implore you, all my friends: don’t vote your fears, your strategy or your tactics. Fear is the worst choice. They tear you apart, just as they’ve hit me at points this election cycle. Vote for the change you wish to see in the next four years. Press your candidates on these issues.

Vote for more liberals and progressives in office, people who will vote for the Equality Act, an amendment to overturn Citizens United, an increased minimum wage, a Right to Vote Amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment, decriminalization of marijuana, for renewable energy, for expanding Medicare to all people, and so on. Vote for people who will bring those laws into the state and local level, too. Vote for those solutions. Vote for constitutional change. Vote for equality. Vote for hope. #YesWeCan

RT @okayafrica: ‘Eclipsed’ Is Making History As The First All-Black, All-Women Broadway Show https://t.co/RQbAHdMUfL https://t.co/gR4ZaYXOmZ

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February 20, 2016 at 11:08AM