Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Meet Progressive
Champions Ben Jealous and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Larry
Stafford, Nash Jenkins
June
27, 2018
ourfuture.org,
Time magazine
1.
Go Bold, Ben: A Progressive Earthquake Shakes Maryland
2.
Democrats Respond to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's
Surprise Win
Larry Stafford
ourfuture.org
June 27, 2018
ourfuture.org
June 27, 2018
Last night, a
Progressive earthquake shook Maryland’s establishment politics to their core.
Ben Jealous’s primary victory puts Maryland within striking distance of the
progressive governor we deserve and need. His victory marks the ascendance of a
movement that’s grounded in progressive values, led by women and people of
color, to shape a new direction for politics that breathes new life into the
electoral system, in our state and beyond.
At Progressive
Maryland, we’ve been on board with Ben from the start – and he with us. Back in
December, he let us know where he stands on key issues: the $15 minimum wage,
workers’ right to organize, women’s rights and Medicare for All. As with all of
our candidates, before we knocked on a single door, we shared his public
commitment to us on these issues with you. And as we celebrate his victory,
it’s worth remembering what he told us then:
I’ve been a civil
rights leader my whole life and it has been a lifetime of bringing together
diverse coalitions across the lines that are supposed to divide us like race,
class, religion and so on. Talking to Marylanders from the place that they are
coming from, whether they are a white police officer dealing with violent crime
in Baltimore City or a black working mother from Montgomery County, you have to
first recognize and acknowledge their struggle and it is only from that place
that understanding and change can happen.
This is what sets
Ben apart, and makes him a true leader. Like Progressive Maryland, he hears the
voices of ordinary Marylanders, the only way you can: by knocking on doors and
listening to the struggles, hopes and dreams all across our state. He then puts
this experience into practice on issues that really resonate with people.
Ben’s primary
victory represents a shift in the balance of power in Maryland politics and
within the Democratic Party away from the old, corporate consensus that the
only kind of change that’s possible is incremental. He is bold, and so are we.
It’s proof that
Progressives are now organized enough, and strong enough, to win statewide
elections. People in the state have often speculated that Maryland was more a
moderate state, a more establishment Democrat-driven state. Ben’s win totally
proves that theory wrong.
It also shows that
the path forward for progressive values and working people’s values is through
organizing and creating meaningful alliances between populist progressive,
white constituency groups and progressive people of color, who want to who want
to vote for people who knows the issues of our communities and who will put
forward hold solutions that meet the needs of our constituency.
Ben represents the
success of this kind of coalition, and how it can beat establishment politics.
And it also represents to me, as an African-American man, that we are strong
enough to win in Maryland, and in the nation.
Maryland’s
Democratic electorate has long been significantly been driven by Black voters.
The fact that Maryland’s Democratic contender for governor is now
African-American is powerful. But even more powerful is that Ben’s campaign is
not just based on racial identity. It’s based on the real values he puts
forward, the types of ideas that he has, and the vision that he’s putting
forward for our state. These are the values and vision that Maryland needs now.
We’re clearly
witnessing a changing of the guard, especially in the Maryland State Senate,
where the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Senate Finance Chair, Senate
Pro-Tem and Senate Health and chair of the Environmental Affairs Committee were
all unseated by progressive challengers.
Regressive
incumbents like these have held back progress in Maryland on the minimum wage,
sick leave, criminal justice reform and other policies that matter most to
ordinary people, so these victories open the door to real change in our state.
Ben now stands
poised to lead this progressive wave. We’re proud of him, and proud of all the
progressives who made strong showings across our state – such as Cory McCray,
Mary Washington and Antonio Hayes in the State Senate, Mark Elrich and Brandy
Brooks in Montgomery County, and Krystal Oriadha and Juwan Blocker in Prince
George’s County. At Progressive Maryland, supporting candidates like these
demonstrates our commitment to doing politics in a different way – now, in
November and beyond.
Ben has a bold
vision, one that’s right for Maryland. Onwards to victory, Ben. You demonstrate
when you really tap into our state’s progressive electorate, you can win with
progressive ideas: go bold.
Larry Stafford is
executive director of Progressive Maryland.
Nash Jenkins
Time Magazine
June 27, 2018
Time Magazine
June 27, 2018
By all accounts,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset of a 10-term Democratic lawmaker on
Tuesday night was a stunner. The 28-year-old former bartender — a democratic
socialist who ran on a platform of universal health care, ending tuition at
public colleges and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency —
defeated Rep. Joe Crowley by double digits.
Crowley, who had
his eyes on a Democratic leadership post, raised more than $3 million for the
primary in New York’s 14th congressional district, with a donor list that read
like a NASDAQ ticker; Ocasio-Cortez had just north of $300,000. Perhaps more
critically, Ocasio-Cortez won on a campaign putting forward the sort of
left-leaning ideas that until very recently many Democrats considered fringe.
The district, which encompasses parts of Queens and the Bronx and is about half
Hispanic, leans deeply Democratic and her primary win all but assures she’ll
soon be the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
Despite all this,
Democrats on Capitol Hill downplayed the larger meaning of the result on
Wednesday.
“Yes, I was
surprised, because no one expected him to lose,” Rep. James Clyburn, the South
Carolina Democrat who serves as the House’s Assistant Minority Leader, said as
he entered an elevator off the House chamber. But when asked what, if anything,
the New York contest augured for the party’s ideological tact, he was curt.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing for the party.”
“One election out
of five hundred and thirty five?” Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy scoffed when
asked the same question, boarding the subway train connecting the Capitol to
the Russell Senate Office Building. “Listen, I do not know the district. I’m
not trying to dodge your question.” The train then pulled away.
Critics of the
Democratic establishment say this is precisely the strain of dismissiveness
that has stoked disenchantment among the party’s base. This was a spiritual
tension at the core of the 2016 Democratic primary: Sen. Bernie Sanders, a
previously little-known independent from Vermont, ran on an unabashedly
progressive platform; his dogma, and the grassroots support it received,
underscored the relatively centrist campaign of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
The gap between
these two factions has not narrowed in the years since. The intraparty battle
continues to be especially loud on social media platforms like Twitter and
played a role in the fight between former Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Sanders
ally Rep. Keith Ellison to chair the Democratic National Committee. (Perez
won.)
But a number of
the party’s rising stars seem to sense that change is afoot. In October, a
quarter of all Senate Democrats — notably including potential 2020 contenders
Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren —
signed onto a Sanders bill for universal health care. He had introduced a
similar bill two years prior, and couldn’t find a single cosponsor.
Sanders was elated
on Wednesday after what transpired the previous evening in New York, and also
in Maryland, where Ben Jealous, a progressive who previously chaired the NAACP,
had won the Democratic primary for governor by more than 10 percentage
points.
“When you are
running a grassroots campaign, when you are talking about issues that matter to
people in your district, you can win no matter what,” Sanders told TIME in a
telephone interview. “Today, you’ve got well over a hundred million people who
are struggling to put food on the table. You’ve got 30 million people with no
healthcare.”
“In other words,”
Sanders continued, “You have a middle class which is struggling and you have
some people living in desperate poverty, and for too long the Democratic Party
did not understand that reality.”
The party stands
now at an ideological crossroads ahead of this November’s midterm elections.
For months, pundits have predicted a “blue wave,” citing President Donald
Trump’s unpopularity and the historical tendency for the president’s own party
to lose seats in the first midterm contest after his taking office. But
progressive commentators care less about the numbers game of the horse race and
more about whether the party will move left.
“Alexandria’s
victory is incontrovertible proof that not only is the progressive agenda
deeply resonating with voters, but that running ‘uncorrupted’ is a powerful
electoral tool,” Emma Vigeland, a correspondent for the progressive digital
media outlet The Young Turks, tells TIME. “The Democratic Party would be wise
to learn from this historic win.”
Her victory is
also the latest strike against the leadership of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a
longtime bête noire for conservatives who in recent months has
faced increasing criticism from her own ranks. A number of House Democrats —
both progressives like Ocasio-Cortez and moderates like Rep. Conor Lamb of
Pennsylvania, who won in a special election in his Trump-supporting district
earlier this year — have declined to support Pelosi’s continued leadership.
Crowley, who at 56 is a generation younger than the 78-year-old Pelosi, was
widely considered her successor.
When asked about
this on Wednesday, however, Pelosi’s allies did not seem particularly
concerned, chalking up the upset in New York to an anomaly.
“We can’t write
trend stories at this point when one thing has happened,” one senior leadership
aide tells TIME. “You’re talking about a district that’s probably in the top 5%
of the most liberal districts in the country. I think everyone is surprised,
because Crowley and his folks were giving off very confident vibes. Obviously,
he tried to move to the left, and it wasn’t enough.”
But the
demographic peculiarities of the race did not detract progressives from their
confidence in what they saw as the election’s broader philosophical crux: that
Democratic voters seem ready for a change.
“You’ve got to
present an agenda and ideas to the American people and working families that
make sense to them,” Sanders tells TIME. “But that’s not enough. You need to
run a strong grassroots campaign. Alexandria was outspent by 10-, 15-to-one.
And she won. When you get people involved in the political process, nobody can
stop us.”
More articles by
Nash Jenkins
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Source URL: https://portside.org/2018-06-27/meet-progressive-champions-ben-jealous-and-alexandria-ocasio-cortez
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