Warren’s Challenge

Unions and Blacks. As a supporter of Elizabeth Warren this is my memo to her: Soften somehow your thoughts on eliminating private health insurance for labor union voters in Nevada and somehow make black voters in South Carolina comfortable with you. Because if you win Iowa and possibly New Hampshire those two states next on the calendar, Nevada and South Carolina, can propel you to a clinching victory on Super Tuesday March 3d. You don’t have to lead there right now but simply make voters there comfortable if the time comes.

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Author: craigcrawford

Trail Mix Host. Lapsed journalist, author & retired pundit happily promoting nothing but the truth for Social Security checks.

53 thoughts on “Warren’s Challenge”

  1. craig,  wonder if any of this as reported in the June  Manchester Union Leader NH  helps along that line:

    Manchester union local to represent Elizabeth Warren campaign workers
    More than 200 workers on Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign, including 36 in New Hampshire, have agreed to unionize and designate a Manchester union local to represent them.

    The 206 workers chose the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2320, according to its business manager, Steve Soule.
    The next step in this process is we move to a collective bargaining session” to reach a contract, Soule said Tuesday.
    Workers on Bernie Sanders presidential campaign became the first campaign to unionize. They chose the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400.
    Their job titles include field organizer, policy adviser and press assistant.
    Workers also considered The Teamsters and the Campaign Workers Guild to represent them, according to Soule.
    The Warren campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

     

  2. lizzie tweeted a couple of days later:

    “My campaign has submitted their support to join @IBEW 2320. Every worker who wants to join a union, bargain collectively, & make their voice heard should have a chance to do so. The labor movement has long fought for the dignity of working people, & we’re proud to be part of it.”

    in may, Castro’s unionized with the Campaign Workers Guild. so a warren-castro ticket can clear that hurdle when they get to nevada

  3. And Gillibrand bows out and will endorse … someone. Any thoughts on who she’ll endorse and whether it will make a difference?  Place your bets. 

  5. flatus and other mixers of the military, what’s your opinion on this?

    the hill:

    The Trump administration said Wednesday that the children of some U.S. military members and government employees working overseas will no longer automatically be considered United States citizens.
    U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a policy that in some cases rescinds previous guidance stating that children of U.S. service members and other government employees abroad are considered “residing in the United States” and automatically given citizenship under a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
    USCIS issued a clarification to the rule later Wednesday, explaining that the new rule would only affect three categories of people: Children of non-U.S. citizens adopted by U.S. citizen government employees or service members; children of non-U.S. citizen government employees or service members who were naturalized after the child’s birth; and children of U.S. citizens who do not meet residency requirements.
    The policy guidance issued Wednesday stated that USCIS “no longer considers children of U.S. government employees and U.S. armed forces members residing outside the United States as ‘residing in the United States’ for purposes of acquiring citizenship under INA 320.”

    [continues]

  6. One need not be a veteran to recognize how cruel and spiteful the entire Trump Administration is.
     
    Exile them all and revoke their citizenship.

  9.  
     
     
    These kids must now obtain visas as they are foreigners. We’ve been through that process when we adopted our six-year-old girls more than half a century ago. We adopted them, first, under Korean law then once again under American law once they were safely on our soil.
    Less than two years later I received orders for the Canal Zone, an accompanied tour. The girls were authorized to become citizens in order to go overseas with us. But, they were still required to take the naturalization test, in English, and provide character witnesses for their entire period in the U.S.. They did it, making the front page of the Columbus Dispatch!
     
     
     
    t

  12. I don’t see any national candidate getting fulsome support in South Carolina without active support by SC Rep Jim Clyburn.

  13. yep you’re right flatus, he almost single handedly shifted the black vote from Hillary to Obama. He and Warren are in sync on a lot of issues, introduced bills like student debt relief together in House and Senate.

  14. that McGrath ad is wonderful, precisely the way to go after Mitch — how can the most powerful man in Congress have some of the poorest counties in America

  15. I think Oprah had something to do with the black vote for Obama and she did it in SC

  18. Turnout is everything so  I’d agree with that 
    but in the Obama case I think Oprah had more to do with it because she gave women permission to abandon Clinton especially black women.  They wouldn’t have cared what Clyburn said

  20. Soldier’s kids aren’t American, huh ? And, the draft dodging russian agent’s kids are ? 
    Something’s wrong with that picture.

  21. C’mon, Joe, don’t commit unforced errors.

    As he campaigns for president, Joe Biden tells a moving but false war story
    HANOVER, N.H. — Joe Biden painted a vivid scene for the 400 people packed into a college meeting hall. A four-star general had asked the then-vice president to travel to Kunar province in Afghanistan, a dangerous foray into “godforsaken country” to recognize the remarkable heroism of a Navy captain.
     
    Some told him it was too risky, but Biden said he brushed off their concerns. “We can lose a vice president,” he said. “We can’t lose many more of these kids. Not a joke.”
     
    The Navy captain, Biden recalled Friday night, had rappelled down a 60-foot ravine under fire and retrieved the body of an American comrade, carrying him on his back. Now the general wanted Biden to pin a Silver Star on the American hero who, despite his bravery, felt like a failure.
     
    “He said, ‘Sir, I don’t want the damn thing!’ ” Biden said, his jaw clenched and his voice rising to a shout. “’Do not pin it on me, Sir! Please, Sir. Do not do that! He died. He died!’ ”
     
    The room was silent.
     
    “This is the God’s truth,” Biden had said as he told the story. “My word as a Biden.”
    Except almost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect. Based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. troops, their commanders and Biden campaign officials, it appears as though the former vice president has jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened.
     
    [Continues]

    Damn, Joe, pick a story and stay with it – as it happened.
     
    BTW, I may not have been in the military, but WTF is SFB thinking with respect to service members’ kids?  Is he trying to retroactively revoke John McCain’s citizenship?

  23. Ya know…   when it comes to healing our relationships with our allies and just foreign policy in general…  I think Joe Biden is the top candidate for that.  But these gaffes are really starting to mount up.   Not a good sign.
     
    I like Liz.  I think she’s a very smart candidate.  And I think when it comes to the economy and fiscal policy…  she’s the one.  And I still really like Kamala.  But I’ve decided it’s too early for me to make a choice set in stone.

  24. renee, isn’t it nice to have so many options? 

    kinda feel sorry for the gopers with what they have to choose from (altho’ weld’s not as bad as the other 2)

  25. by George, from rawstory:

    George Conway, the husband of Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, believes that President Donald Trump may have committed a “criminal violation” by fabricating a phone call between American and Chinese officials.
    Pointing to a recent CNN report in which Trump aides admit that the president lied about having a call with Chinese officials to resume trade talks as a way to calm down the stock market, Conway says that the president’s actions are a textbook example of illegal market manipulation.
    “What this describes is, quite literally, market manipulation that constitutes criminal violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934,” Conway writes on Twitter.
    Jennifer Taub, a professor at Vermont Law School who specializes in financial market regulation and white-collar crime, chimed in to say that Conway’s analysis of the president’s actions was “correct.”
    According to CNN’s report, Trump aides have “privately conceded the phone calls Trump described didn’t happen they way he said they did” and instead said that “Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China’s vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese.”

  26. add to George’s charge of market manipulation a suspicion that don the con might have alerted one of the family (or friend Icahn) that he was going to do it so that they could prepare/take profitable action.

  27. interesting post mortem on that bankruptcy bill brouhaha between liz and joe from politico:

    […]

    The next time they saw each other, Biden “held out his arms and shouted from halfway across the room, ‘Professor! Come here and give me a hug!’” Warren recalled on the Senate floor in 2016.
    “He had not forgotten our earlier battle, but he made it clear that he continued to think and rethink issues about working families and that, even when we disagreed, we could respect — and even like — each other,” she said, adding that Biden had “provided encouragement, wisdom and good counsel time and again.”
    As vice president, Biden supported Obama’s decision to appoint Warren as a presidential aide charged with helping set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Terrell McSweeny, who was Biden’s domestic policy adviser at the time, said in an interview.
    Warren also advised the administration’s Middle Class Task Force, which Biden led, and wrote a post for its blog outlining how the new agency would help families.
    “I never recall him having anything other than respect for her,” McSweeny said.
    After Biden administered Warren’s oath of office in 2013, he pulled her close. “You gave me hell,” Biden told her in an apparent reference to the bankruptcy bill, as Warren and her husband, Bruce Mann, laughed, according to C-SPAN footage of the event.
    Biden even considered Warren as a potential vice presidential pick in 2015 as he weighed running for president. Warren told him at the time that she thought his past positions on issues like bankruptcy would make it harder to run to Hillary Clinton’s left in the primary.

    [continues]

  28.  

    Ment Nelson:

     

    Before there were Netflix specials or a Dave Chappelle even, his Great Grandfather was the president of Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. Who would have known where the Chappelle legacy would go from there

  29. Renee Said:

    And I still really like Kamala

    Bingo!, And if you look at the Iowa polls break down she draws from the center left voters like Renee. 
    If Biden does his usual break down those votes aren’t going to Warren. Kamala is the obvious heir. Her only competition is Mayor Pete and he is too light weight for a Biden supporter.  Right now Joe , Bernie, liz, kamala and Pete are the only ones who can come out of Iowa with delegates and Bernie and Pete may not clear the 15% needed for a delegate.
    So if Biden is breaking down as fast as you say then that puts Kamala at a healthy second. All she needs to do then is let the old folks have NH  Barn storm every black church in the nation. Get her folks back home to remind California democrats this is their only crack at national prominence “so get out the vote”. Then walk away with the lead on Super Tuesday. 
    See just that simple.  };-0
    Do a reverse Obama. Combine the black vote with the moderate / conservative wing.
    Jack

  30. BTW
    That strategy is they way our fair city has had 2 black Mayors in a row.  The first one put together a coalition with white urban core liberals to win. Our current Mayor did a coalition with northland Republicans to beat an urban liberal. Funny thing is that he is as liberal as his opponent but by being black didn’t seem so I guess. 
    Jack

  31. RR

    I’m definitely off the Biden bandwagon unless he is what we end up with after the primaries.  Definitely still prefer Kamala and Amy.  Would like to see either of them in a match up with Booker, Castro, O’Rourke etc. but I do like the options.

    Bernie can go somewhere and rot, but I think he will be out before voting for him becomes a possibility.  Warren would get a great big thank you vote just for eliminating his carcass from the race.

     

     

  32. If Democrats can’t shut down those migrant detention facilities before the GE, I ain’t voting.  

    We’re keeping children in cages, people.  

  33. Over at Wapo, reading an article on the Dow’s rebound today, I actually read to the bottom of the article and found this tidbit:

    On Thursday, the U.S. Commerce Department said the U.S. economic growth had slowed more in the second quarter than previously thought. Gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2 percent, the department said, revised down from an estimate of 2.1 percent last month.
    “Consumers bought more non-durable goods and spent more on services, but exports were a touch weaker and spending by state & local governments added less than the first GDP estimate a month ago,” Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank, wrote in note to investors Thursday. “The economy is still on cruise control and growing a steady 2.0% in the second quarter as the trade wind skies continue to darken.”
     
    Just as the trade war takes its toll on the U.S. economy, the conflict’s effects are also rippling across the globe. China’s economic growth has slowed to its lowest rate in 27 years, as factory output declines and unemployment rises, and central bank leaders in Europe, Asia and Australia have cut interest rates in recent weeks, citing the need for economic stimulus.

    2% – not exactly that roaring economic engine SFB promised us. Who could have guessed? 

  34. Bink, I would love to agree with your last comment, but with Dems having only the House how would they do that?  There’s some court action on that front, but I don’t have a clue what other power dems have to close the border detention facilities.  You have thoughts on that or just a wish?  I share your goal but don’t see the way to get to it before the election,

  35. Biden’s gaffes are miniscule compared to trump’s 13,000 whoppers. I don’t think Bob Sixpack or Teri Teacher care about Biden nuzzling a woman’s hairdo the way they detest the bragging pussygrabber’s pussygrabbing. I don’t think that black voters are down on Biden for having gotten segregationists to sign onto legislation, because they see trump inciting white racist terrorists. Besides, Biden doesn’t tout himself as flawless, while his opponent, the most venal and corrupt president in history, does. So, Joe is going to be harder to overtake than many people think. Biden is acceptable this year because trump is so vile. 
    If Biden takes a stumble, his supporters are not likely to head to the Harris camp. Bidenians will remember that she walloped him with her impassioned busing speech in the first ‘debate.’ They support him because they like him and because they think he is the most likely to beat trump and putin. If Biden falls, his supporters will move to the next most likely to beat trump, who is somewhat likeable : Warren. Harris would probably be out of the race by then, and Bernie! produces zero warm fuzzies. Ergo : Warren. QED.

  37. In all the discussion about Gillibrand’s leaving the race — not a word about Al Franken

  39. XR – gaffes versus lies … I’ll take gaffes every day and twice on Sunday. And in the context of the Dem race I don’t see it as disqualifying. 

  40. Oh, too bad. SFB’s Doral golf course & Mar A Lago are both on the east coast of Florida.  Sad.  :>)
     
    Doral has bed bugs and SBF’s wife lives in Maryland. No one likes SFB.

  41. “You have thoughts on that or just a wish?” -pogo
     
    Look at how fall we’ve fallen- brainstorming ideas on how to stop child abuse as official state policy.   
     
    No- i don’t have any good ideas beyond the trite.  I’m not discussing any other policy matters, though.  Has opposing child abuse and the terrorizing of an entire segment of the population become what qualifies as “wishful thinking”? 
     
    I understand everyone, here, is likely on the right side of this issue, but goddamn if political analysis and economic speculation aren’t petty expressions while these atrocities continue, on our soil.

  43. Privileged people in our society will spend thousands of dollars and years of their lives in psychological therapy to remedy childhood emotional trauma that, frankly, pales in comparison to being wrapped in tinfoil, locked in a cage, and forced to live in their own filth.
     
    It’s the kind of behavior (keeping innocent humans in cages and separating familes, that is) in which violent psychopaths engage, and it’s official U.S. policy!

    Our government is raiding food-processing plants with the aim of deporting people who work very disgusting and dangerous jobs THAT PUT FOOD ON OUR TABLES!

    Poultry processing is so disgusting, you don’t even need to see it to be appalled, you just have to be down-wind from it. Ask anyone in the industry and they’ll tell you the only people willing to work those types of jobs, consistently, are immigrants. Our thanks for them feeding us is us terrorizing them, and apparently, it’s nothing worth ruining anyone’s day over, right?

    …on our soil.

  44. Pogo, Xrep
    Here is a comment on twitter that seems to fit in your conversation.

     
    The election will be seven stories about Biden confusing some facts held up against one story about how Trump cleared the bar by not ritually executing his enemies, every day for months.

    Jack

  45. Bink,
    I agree but I’m personally powerless. Hell I can’t even stop the idiot kids in the neighborhood from shooting at each other.  Hell, it is what happens when you vote to stir things up. Are things stirred up enough yet?
    Jack

  47. I love Randy Rainbow.  Here he is with “Cheeto Jesus” and then the song from Jesus Christ Superstar that he parodies:

  48. I just hope that anyone reading this continues to raise the topic in casual conversations with family, friends, and co-workers. 

    What are they going to do?  Send you to HR for wanting to stop child abuse?  You could probably turn that meeting into a corporate donation to a charity benefitting organizations that support terrorized segments of our society.  Go ahead and ruin that BBQ, fuck it.  Make that dinner out uncomfortable- make a joke and pick up the tab, you’ll be fine.

  49. Bink, I think you’re right. We’re all in agreement with you – I think that no one here disagrees with anything you’re said – I know I don’t. But after spending about 45 years involved at one level or another dabbling in this politics thing I haven’t seen anything the minority party can do between elections to change the majority’s policies. I’d love to say “Here’s the answer” but it would be a BS answer, so I’m open to suggestions. I’m flat out of ideas until 11/20, but come then, vote. WTF is the alternative other than impeachment? I’m all ears. 

  50. Keep reminding those good mountain folk what is being done in their names- i don’t care how conservative they are, they’ll be hard-pressed to defend child abuse in conversation.  I brought it up with my good ol’ Republican pals, today- they couldn’t disagree.

    If you’re a community leader, getting your local government to pass a resolution condemning it would be pretty cool.

  51. At one point in their family finances that meant take a job any job, my son in law worked in one of those poultry processing plants.  Hosing down the floors to flush out the bodies of dead chicks was the least of the atrocities.  He had to learn basic Spanish to get along with the other workers, most of who were by necessity undocumented.  

  52. Oddly enough, our little slice of heaven is very close to 50/50. We have the minority leader of the House of Delegates and one of the most vocal, if not powerful, members of the state Senate from our district. Our local government is literally a bunch of morons. The city councilmen with brains move over to the county commission. Statewide the power is a coalition of the unemployed miners, drug addicted Medicaid and disability recipients and rich businessmen and oil and gas workers from Texas, Oklahoma and Montana, and I can tell you that the reps “defend” trumpian policies by repeating trumpian talking points- which is what passes as debate in East Bumfuck. It’s akin to beating one’s head against the proverbial wall. 2.3 of our circuit judges and 100% of our family court judges (these are the judges I interact with) are democrats although they are “nonpartisan” elected positions. In the hallways we bemoan the idiocy of the rise of repugnican rule and support here. It began with anti Obama racism. Argue with that?  Head – wall. 

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