Welcome to a premium Wednesday evening edition of Progressives Everywhere!
We’ve got a very packed newsletter tonight after a blistering 72 hours of news — some of which wasn’t even totally bad!
Elections:
Georgia: Democrats were energized last winter by a run of big wins in Georgia, and as they limo to the finish line of what became a very rough and disappointing year the party, the Peach State is once again offering some much-needed good news.
First and foremost, Stacey Abrams announced today that she is once again running for governor, officially kicking off a second gubernatorial campaign after three years spent unofficially running for the top job.
That’s not meant as a dig — since losing a nail-biter in 2018 to now-Gov. Brian Kemp largely due to Kemp’s unprecedented voter purge program, Abrams, the former Georgia State House Minority Leader, has been become a national star through her relentless activism. As founder of both the New Georgia Project and Fair Fight, Abrams became the nation’s leading voting rights advocate and led a decade-long grassroots campaign that turned Georgia’s fast-growing minority population into a political force, one strong enough to win the state’s electoral votes and US Senate seats for Democrats in 2020.
Assuming Democrats in DC don’t bother to pass voting rights legislation, the new GOP gerrymanders will lock in Republican control of Georgia for the next few election cycles. But as yesterday’s municipal elections in the state showed, the progressive coalition in Georgia only continues to grow in size and strength…
In Fairburn, former Mayor Mario Avery won back his old job by ousting Elizabeth Carr-Hurst, who sealed her fate when she forced city workers to go back to their work sites in May 2020 even as the rest of the world was quarantining during the earliest, scariest days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
South Fulton, a 100,000-person municipality near Atlanta that has a 92% Black population, chose khalid kamau as its new mayor. The Black Lives Matter activist and former city council member has an ambitious agenda for the city, which he wants to turn into a “real-life Wakanda.” Sure, that’s a comic book reference, but he’s laid out plans so detailed that T’Challa and Shuri would be proud.
Atlanta: Former city council member Andre Dickens won the mayoral runoff yesterday, pulling off a major upset victory. Dickens campaigned as a progressive who promised a fresh approach to an office stained by controversy over the past eight years.
Dickens barely made the runoff and began as a heavy underdog to outgoing City Council President Felicia Moore, but was able to break through with a message that could prove instructive for Democrats in places where crime has risen (or is perceived to have risen):
Dickens has pledged to increase the number of police officers, arrest gang leaders and implement community policing. He says he may keep current Police Chief Rodney Bryant, who came out of retirement in 2020 after a previous chief stepped down following a fatal police shooting of a Black man that led to unrest.
Dickens also wants to increase affordable housing, improve infrastructure and ensure current residents qualify for high-paying jobs. He acknowledged the city’s problems Tuesday night, but then pivoted to optimism about the city’s ability to change.
Less likely to be a big takeaway for national Democrats: The rapper T.I., who supported Dickens, spread a false rumor that Moore wanted to shut down the city’s famous strip clubs.
There were a number of other big victories, including some exciting flips for Democrats, which I talking about more in an upcoming edition of the newsletter.
Massachusetts: Republican Gov. Charlie Baker is not running for re-election. This might seem surprising, given his strong approval ratings, but the moderate record that has earned him such solid support in the liberal state also doomed him with the Massachusetts’ increasingly unhinged Republican Party.
Voting Rights and Redistricting
Lots happening in the courts right now. Here’s a rundown!
Wisconsin: The State Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that it would not consider partisan balance when it evaluates the GOP’s proposed redistricting maps and will make as few changes as possible before signing off on what is now guaranteed to be another egregious gerrymander.
Ohio: The ACLU and several other groups have filed another lawsuit over the GOP’s laughably unconstitutional gerrymandering. This time, the litigants have their sights trained on the Congressional map, which is likely to give Republicans a 13-3 advantage in a state that voted 54-46% for the GOP over the past decade.
Georgia: Stacey Abrams’ lawsuit over the state’s voter suppression law will finally go to trial… three years and one new voter suppression law after she filed it. This is why we can’t rely on courts to save voting rights, even when they may be sympathetic.
Minnesota: The State Supreme Court on Tuesday heard arguments in a case challenging Minnesota’s felon disenfranchisement law, which currently keeps 50,000 otherwise-eligible citizens from voting. As is often the case in situations like this, the Democratic secretary of state’s office is charged with defending the law on behalf of the state. Secretary of State Steve Simon’s office is arguing that it’s an issue that should be decided by the state legislature, which is currently split between Democrats and Republicans.
Michigan: Things are getting dramatic with the state’s first independent citizens redistricting commission!
Heroes
Justice Sonia Sotomayor: The US Supreme Court technically heard arguments in a case that could decide the fate of abortion rights in the United States, but it quickly became apparent that the event was a mere formality.
The six Republican-appointed justices didn’t even feign interest in the arguments being made by the lawyer representing Jackson Women’s Health; instead, the debate seemed to shift over to whether they should ditch Roe v. Wade altogether, as was urged by Mississippi’s solicitor general, or make the “moderate” choice of preserving the 15-week grace period allowed for by the state’s law.
The court’s far-right justices rolled out every specious justification for ending abortion protections as they could in a court of law, stopping just short of simply chalking it up to God’s orders.
Aware of the inevitability of the once-unthinkable outcome, Justice Sotomayor did not hide her exasperation. Instead of simply focusing on the case at hand, Sotomayor repeatedly emphasized what a politicized, illegitimate mess the entire Supreme Court has become.
The statement can be read as a retort to her newest colleague, Amy Coney Barrett, who insisted back in September that the Supreme Court wasn’t a “bunch of partisan hacks” in a speech she gave at the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville.
Stephen Breyer, the more stubborn of Sotomayor’s two liberal colleagues on the bench, has also expressed concern that the court is becoming politicized, but has been adamantly opposed to the only real solution to this disaster: Expanding the Supreme Court. Not that he has any official say over it, but his refusal to even entertain the option gives the Biden Administration and many Senate Democrats resistant to expansion plenty of cover. More on that later…
Villains
Scott Stewart: The general solicitor for the state of Mississippi, Stewart didn’t just argue for the Supreme Court to uphold his state’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks, he argued for the overturning of Roe v. Wade altogether. What a dick.
Susan Collins: Remember when she assured everyone that Brett Kavanaugh believes that Roe is settled precedent? It was an obvious lie, but one that she used to justify voting for the crying frat boy’s confirmation. Three years later, Kavanugh’s promise disappeared faster than the $200,000 in debt he held shortly before his confirmation.
Chuck Todd: This clown invites Republicans on Meet the Press every single Sunday, then allows the show to publish garbage like this:
It’s willful ignorance at this point for the media to not recognize how much of an influence it has on the public opinion; after all, it’s universally accepted that the right-wing sludge network addles the minds of its viewers, so there’s no reason to think that the “mainstream” news networks don’t have the same impact on its own audience.
WTF
Have some shame:
C’mon, guys. If you’re going to break your promises and refuse to use the power we’ve delivered you, just stay quiet.
Wonk Stuff
Got some quick Build Back Better stories for your perusal:
Universal Pre-K: Given the way the program is structured, we’ll probably need to include an asterisk or perhaps some air quotes when we talk about this provision in Biden’s big economic bill. Should the bill pass, it will be left up to individual states to opt into receiving federal funding for pre-school, and just as with Medicaid expansion, it’s unlikely that most Republican states decide to do help its low-income or middle class residents. NEED LINK
Child Tax Credit: Joe Manchin, in keeping with his tradition of yanking the goal posts to the right, is now making no promises about extending the Child Tax Credit. It should be the very bare minimum for any Democrat, even a neoliberal one like himself. This is what happens when you continue to defer to someone and give them complete power — they take it as far as they can, no matter the consequences.
Here’s a preview of what those consequences could look like for Manchin if he keeps this up:
Focusing on legislation’s actual impact on people instead of obsessing over the insular political horse trading that obscures the stakes and misleads casual news consumers? You love to see it!
Parliamentarian: For as awful as Manchin and Sinema have been, the biggest hurdle to Democrats accomplishing any of their economic agenda, however, may turn out to be the Senate Parliamentarian. Then again, like the filibuster, she only has power thanks to the convenient Senate traditions that Democrats refuse to jettison. The jig is up, they just don’t know it yet. Just check out the responses to that DSCC tweet.
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