SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
donald trump
This Election Isn’t About a Perfect Candidate, It’s About Our Futures
Harris will never be my community’s liberator. But for right now, for this election, she is my target. My goal is to stop Trump and his MAGA allies from ever getting close to the White House again.
Oct 06, 2024
I remember seeing the pain in my dad’s eyes when Trump’s Muslim Ban took effect. As a daughter of Mexican-Iranian immigrants, the onslaught of Trump’s anti-immigrant, Islamophobic attacks over his four years in office served as a violent and constant reminder of the ways this country has ruthlessly attacked the lives of the people I love.
As one of the first people in my family eligible to vote, it feels as if I am holding the weight of my entire family, my generation, and my future on my shoulders when I go to the ballot box. Never has my vote been just about me. It’s about what gives my family and my community the best chance at survival.
This year’s election is no different. Each vote matters, and if recent polling shows anything, it’s that this alarmingly close race between Vice President Harris and Trump will come down to the margins. The very real possibility of yet another Trump presidency has left me grappling with what life for my family, friends, and community—many of whom are undocumented—would look like if Trump took office again.
I am under no impression that Harris is perfect; but I am not fighting with her. I am fighting to move her. I will vote for Harris on November 5, but my vote is not a profession of my love for Harris or my approval. It’s about making a deliberate choice to pick the playing field for the next four years that my generation and I will be forced, one way or another, to organize under.
Under Trump’s first term, undocumented people in my community retreated into fear because nowhere felt safe, not even a simple trip to the grocery store. The risk of being pulled over, targeted by the raging enforcement apparatus Trump’s administration fortified, was enough to force many back into the shadows. Thousands of families couldn’t escape Trump's attacks. The detention centers that have existed under both Republican and Democratic presidents alike, swelled under Trump. Everyone was a target: children, parents, grandparents, and more.
To this day, there are children who have yet to be reunited with their loved ones after being ripped from their parents’ arms under Trump’s Zero Tolerance policy. They have lived their childhood years tossed from courtroom to courtroom as many of their parents fight to regain custody.
When I think about this year’s election, I wish I didn’t feel the fear I do about a future life under Trump. But I have asked myself seriously: can my community survive that again, only this time worse?
As someone who grew up with a family of immigrants, I know this is not mere speculation or exaggeration—Trump and MAGA Republicans have a plan to hurt my community. Among many other atrocious policy proposals, the anti-immigrant policies outlined in Project 2025 are designed to tear apart families across the nation– both at the border and in the very states and cities we call home.
Trump is going after everyone. He would aim to strip legal status by ending DACA, TPS, humanitarian parole and other life-saving programs that have supported hundreds of thousands of people who already live, work, and care for their families in this country. The sprawling immigrant detention camps and deportations carried under his first admin were just a glimpse at what he could do under a second term, where he has promised to use the military to conduct nationwide raids in the places where we live, work, and pray to target anyone suspected of being undocumented.
This is the reality I am grappling with as a young voter from an immigrant community. For me, my decision to vote this year isn’t about rallying behind a perfect candidate who, unfortunately, does not exist right now. Vice President Harris is far from perfect. I am outraged by the ways she’s adopted Republican talking points and rhetoric when it comes to immigration, while also ignoring the calls to end the genocide in Gaza and stop sending weapons to Israel that American tax dollars have paid for.
Still, I know the ways I’ve seen how our progressive movement has successfully pushed Democrats before. In 2012, our movement forced the Obama administration to bend to our will when we successfully won the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has protected hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the threat of deportation. Obama didn’t do this out of the goodness of his heart. He did it because our movements demanded it and refused to let up the pressure even while he was in office. This year, we also forced the Biden administration to deliver healthcare access to DACA recipients through the Affordable Care Act and delivered a monumental achievement when we won protections for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens in order to keep mixed status families together. The reality is, these achievements did not come easily nor did they come overnight; they required relentless pressure, strategic maneuvering, and years of being able to move tactically against every political target who sat in the Oval Office. But they have also been achievements continuously targeted by the MAGA right who have stopped at nothing in trying to decimate these life-saving programs.
Vice President Harris is far from perfect. I am outraged by the ways she’s adopted Republican talking points and rhetoric when it comes to immigration, while also ignoring the calls to end the genocide in Gaza and stop sending weapons to Israel that American tax dollars have paid for.
Harris will never be my community’s liberator. But for right now, for this election, she is my target. My goal is to stop Trump and his MAGA allies from ever getting close to the White House again. As a young person whose heritage comes from people who have crossed rivers, borders, and oceans to protect those we love, I have had to channel what it means to move with intention through turbulent waters. Our survival depends on our ability to out-strategize those who seek to oppress us.
I am under no impression that Harris is perfect; but I am not fighting with her. I am fighting to move her. I will vote for Harris on November 5, but my vote is not a profession of my love for Harris or my approval. It’s about making a deliberate choice to pick the playing field for the next four years that my generation and I will be forced, one way or another, to organize under.
This election has made me feel more determined than ever to fight for the future my community and generation deserve. We deserve to have candidates on the ballot who truly reflect our values. Who don’t take years and generations to deliver on our demands. Every day, I am committed to fighting for that future, where the conditions are in our favor, where we have amassed enough people power and political power to make the changes our communities desperately need only faster, on the timeline we set. I am casting my ballot for myself, my community, my generation, my country, and for the future I believe to be possible.Keep ReadingShow Less
It Shouldn't Even Be Close: Harris Must Ditch Genocide and Embrace Working-Class Politics
Winning should be a breeze for Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and the other Democratic candidates. What's going on?
Oct 05, 2024
With little more than four weeks to go before the November elections, polls show the Trump/Harris race as “too close to call.” Winning should be a breeze for Harris and the other Democratic candidates. The GOP’s Congressional votes and policies are bad for women, children, and workers. The GOP doesn’t recognize and act against climate violence, it protects the corporate-favorable tax code, it is soft on corporate crooks, it scuttles regulatory protections for the peoples’ health, safety, and economic wellbeing and mocks the dire necessity of preparedness for future pandemics. (The military Empire with its violent war crimes and runaway budget-busting drain on our domestic necessities is supported by both Parties and not in electoral contention.)
Why so close, then? Because for years, the Democratic Party has abandoned the blue collar, New Deal roots of the Roosevelt era and ferociously dialed for the same commercial dollars as does the GOP. It has hired corporate-conflicted political consulting firms that control campaign messages, strategies and has excluded access by citizen groups to candidates, generally preferring corporatism over democracy, regardless of its rhetoric.
It also doesn’t advance any path to electoral victory to abandon half the country—the red states—and surrender them to the Republicans. The mountain states and North and South Dakota used to have Democrats representing them in the Senate. Failing to compete in these low population states concedes about ten Senate seats at the outset.
Most telling in these last remaining days is the refusal for Kamala Harris and most Congressional candidates to have front and center proven and proper vote-getting agendas reflecting the New Deal.
It also doesn’t advance any path to electoral victory to abandon half the country—the red states—and surrender them to the Republicans.
To begin with I’m referring to raising the GOP frozen federal minimum wage to at least $15 an hour from its present $7.25. Democrats need more than a throwaway line on wages. They need to pour some of the billions of dollars raised into media and groundgame campaigns around the slogan “go vote for a raise, you’ve long earned and been denied by the Republicans.” That, authentically conveyed by thousands of Democratic candidates will get the attention of 25 million underpaid and struggling workers, who make our real economy run daily. Why aren’t the Dems ringing that bell?
Another winner for 65 million elderly voters is to pledge with full throttle to increase Social Security benefits frozen for half a century and to raise the Social Security tax on the wealthy to pay for it. Astonishingly, Kamala Harris and her handlers are not championing the “Social Security 2100 Act” which had 200 sponsors in the Congress, led by Congressman John Larson and Senator Richard Blumenthal. The throwaway line is that they “will protect social security” as it deficiently exists. Talk is not enough. The Democrats need to organize and communicate to drive this message.
Third, they should be championing government-paid child care, maternal and family sick leave and the child tax credit—all opposed by the Wall Street GOP. Paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy—this issue is an 85 percent poll winner. Instead, Harris and the Dems mumble with some general rhetoric that nobody really believes. Western countries have long had such social safety net protections for families and children.
The Democratic Party has abandoned the blue collar, New Deal roots of the Roosevelt era and ferociously dialed for the same commercial dollars as does the GOP.
Get-out-the-vote efforts are still inadequate. The Party has trouble listening to Rev. William Barber who argues that just a ten to fifteen percent increase in low-wage voter turnout from 2020 would win the November elections. Instead of scapegoating the Green Party and spending money to block Third Party ballot access, the Democrats should try harder to tap into the 80 to 90 million non-voters who stay home, many of whom don’t see anything benefiting them coming from bloviating, hypocritical politicians.
If readers want more ideas for ways to get more votes, such as midnight shift campaigning, and cracking down on corporate crooks, they can obtain my usable new book “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” and go to winningamerica.net.
Are you wondering why Tim Walz didn’t do better against J.D. Vance in the VP debate? Vance managed to normalize criminal felon Trump with his serial lies and law violations, corruption, abuse of women, awful presidential record (recall his lethal mocking of the early Covid-19 pandemic), because Walz was muzzled by the Harris campaign operatives. He was told what not to speak about and to hew to the narrow Party line. That kind of advice may sink the genocidal Democratic Party with its insular cowardliness in November.
Will these observations get the attention of the tiny number of ruling Democratic Party operatives who make most of the major decisions for their rank and file? Probably not. But similar advice from loyal party columnists like Dana Milbank, Michelle Goldberg, Eugene Robinson, Charles Blow, E.J. Dionne, Paul Krugman, among others, may breach the upper deck’s aloofness.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Progressives Set to Unleash Swing State Blitz for Harris
"The polls are tight and the Electoral College is rigged to give Trump an edge, but Our Revolution can turn the tide by turning out progressive voters in key battleground states."
Oct 04, 2024
Just over a month away from the U.S. general election, the largest progressive political organizing group in the country announced Friday that it is aiming to encourage 5 million voters in seven battleground states to vote against former Republican President Donald Trump.
Our Revolution hopes to reach voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin via door-knocking, phone calls, and text messages ahead of the November election, in which Trump is facing Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The get-out-the-vote effort comes after surveying over 1,400 Our Revolution members who live in swing states. The results, the group said, "present worrying signs for the Harris campaign" and "suggest that the Trump campaign is actively engaging young and progressive voters."
Joseph Geevarghese is the executive director of Our Revolution, which grew out of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The group leader said Friday that "the polls are tight and the Electoral College is rigged to give Trump an edge, but Our Revolution can turn the tide by turning out progressive voters in key battleground states."
In the 2020 election, President Joe Biden "narrowly beat Trump by less than 300,000 votes in these states four years ago, which means that our 1.2 million supporters in the swing states could be the margin of victory in 2024," Geevarghese noted.
"After hearing from progressive swing state residents and our organizers on the ground, we are sounding the alarm on the lack of enthusiasm amongst this key voting bloc," he added. "In the coming weeks, Our Revolution will continue urging the Harris campaign to release bold policy plans aimed at motivating the party's progressive base, and we are committed to doing everything we can to mobilize support against another disastrous Trump presidency."
As the group detailed Friday, its polling—first reported by Semafor—found:
- 1 in 4 Our Revolution members in swing states know progressives who are planning not to vote or to vote third party;
- 3 in 4 of our swing state supporters believe Harris needs to get more specific on policy and do more interviews to clarify her positions to earn the votes of undecided people they know;
- 80% say that celebrities coming out for Harris are unlikely to sway their undecided friends and neighbors;
- 80% think the escalating war in the Middle East is a sign of trouble for the Harris campaign;
- 2 out of 3 said they've received outreach from the Trump campaign—including grassroots Trump canvassers and door knockers, and they're being bombarded by Trump ads; and
- 54% of Our Revolution swing state supporters report they're seeing more Trump signs than Harris signs in neighbors' yards.
Since the president passed the torch to Harris this summer following a disastrous debate performance against Trump, she has racked up endorsements from leading groups, including People's Action, Popular Democracy, and the Working Families Party. Harris won the first-ever endorsement of the youth-led gun violence prevention movement March for Our Lives and has support from various reproductive rights, labor, and climate organizations—even some that declined to back Biden.
However, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters declined to endorse for the first time since 1996, and the Uncommitted National Movement—which is critical of U.S. support for Israel's annihilation of Gaza—announced last month that "Harris' unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her."
Uncommitted also made clear that it "opposes a Donald Trump presidency, whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing," and "is not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency given our country's broken Electoral College system."
Despite recent polling that suggests U.S. voter support for Harris would grow if she backed an arms embargo against the Israeli military, Harris is not making clear attempts to win over Uncommitted voters. Leaders from the movement toldReuters that they were not invited to her Friday meeting with Arab American and Muslim leaders in Flint, Michigan.
Efforts to convince Michigan voters to support Harris will continue this weekend. Sanders and United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain—whose union endorsed her this summer—have three events in the state in the coming days. They plan to talk about corporate greed, healthcare, and manufacturing in the state.
Meanwhile, Harris this weekend plans to head to North Carolina, which was just devastated by Hurricane Helene.
The Sunrise Movement—a youth-led climate group that launched a campaign to defeat Trump and reach 1.5 million young swing state voters in August—intends to boost efforts to elect Harris in the weeks ahead, specifically focusing on North Carolina.
"Young climate voters could decide the election in North Carolina and put Harris over the edge," Sunrise organizer Paul Campion said in a statement Friday. "We're focused on reaching a group of 84,000 young voters between the ages of 18 and 26 who are very concerned about climate change but aren't regular voters. We're talking with them about the devastation of Helene and how Donald Trump's Project 2025 agenda would worsen the climate crisis, making disasters like Helene more frequent and severe."
Shiva Rajbhandari, a North Carolina student organizer, said that "people are angry. We're watching homes be swept away, entire towns consumed by floodwaters, and Donald Trump is joking about how climate change will create more waterfront property."
"Big Oil just murdered 200 people," the 20-year-old declared. "People know who's responsible for the climate crisis, and we're going to hold them accountable in November."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular