Influencing Attitudes and Behaviors

 https://www.npscoalition.org/post/influencing-attitudes-and-behaviors-to-promote-your-cause

The Disturbing World of the New GOP

“The Disturbing World of the New GOP.  “  John Nichols. The Nation.

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/republican-party-2022-midterms/

 

The Disturbing World of the  New GOP     The 2022 midterms saw the Republican Party complete its devolution into a party that has fully abandoned its conscience.   By John Nichols The Nation Nov 25, 2022 - The Republican Party that will take narrow control of the House of Representatives in January 2023 has gone through a dramatic transformation in the two years since Donald Trump and his allies attempted a violent coup to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.    The party that was once torn over how to respond to Trump’s assault on democratic norms is no more. It was replaced in 2022 by one that did not merely tolerate Trump’s election denialism but embraced it by nominating January 6 insurrectionists and apologists for congressional and statewide posts—a strategy so noxious that it cost Republicans key US Senate contests and the “red wave” GOP strategists were counting on.    But post-election pundits who imagine that the party will do an about-face and suddenly adopt a more politically rational course are sorely mistaken. The new Republican Party has a base—and many leaders—that does not merely fall for Trump’s lies. Republican partisans are increasingly looking beyond the scandal-plagued former president and taking inspiration from right-wing European nationalist leaders with politics rooted in a fascist sensibility that employs racism, xenophobia, and a win-at-any-cost approach to elections and governing. This transformed Republican Party will exploit its control of the House and state posts for a 2024 presidential election in which Trump and a rising generation of ruthless partisans will plot a return to unitary power—with a vision that is dramatically more authoritarian than anything seen in the 45th president’s first term.   From Semi-Fascist to the Full-on Variety   This is something Democrats need to recognize as they prepare for this next political moment. They won’t be governing with a political party that realistically compares with the very conservative yet still institutionally inclined caucuses that controlled the House on and off between 1995 and 2019. In 2022, the GOP moved past its “semi-fascist” stage and began “barreling toward full-on fascism,” says former US representative Joe Walsh, who was considered among the most right-wing members of the House after his election in the Tea Party wave of 2010.    “The country needs to understand that my former political party is fully anti-democracy. It is a fascist political party. It is a political party that embraces authoritarianism,” as evidenced by Republicans at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) celebrating European nationalists and domestic insurrectionists. “We’ve got to move on now and just defeat them.”   A lot of Republicans were defeated on November 8. But the party still won the power, via its new House majority, to derail much of President Biden’s agenda. Incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Republicans did not gain as many seats as they might have achieved as a more conventional, institutionally inclined Grand Old Party running in a more traditional midterm election. But they succeeded in melding concerns about inflation and crime, racial backlash messaging, and a fiercely negative and immensely well-funded campaign to secure victories that should have been unimaginable. In part, this was because America’s rigid two-party system forces an either-or choice on most voters. Such a system creates a situation in which the right can exploit economic and social anxiety to attract voters who don’t necessarily agree with the whole GOP agenda but who want to—in the parlance of former Alabama governor George Wallace’s racist campaigns—“send them a message.”   The message this time is a daunting one, because the party that surfed a wave of resentment over high gas prices and post-pandemic instability is not the GOP of Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes, or Dick Cheney. None of those figures would have stood a chance in the Republican primaries of 2022. Indeed, Liz Cheney, the standard-bearer of the social and economic domestic conservatism and foreign policy neoconservatism that held sway until Trump came along, won just 28.9 percent of the vote in her Wyoming Republican primary reelection bid.   There is no question that the Republican Party began veering dangerously to the right long before the 2022 midterm election season. This is, after all, the party that welcomed Southern segregationist Strom Thurmond into its ranks during Barry Goldwater’s 1964 “extremism in the defense of liberty” presidential campaign. But as I watched the 2022 races play out in states across the country, it was clear to me, and to many other longtime observers of the GOP with whom I spoke, that it’s taken a far more dire turn. This Republican Party is proudly unapologetic about its excesses; there is an open acceptance that “we’re doing bad things and we don’t care because we think it will work politically.”   The determination that we saw in the none-too-distant past to maintain a veneer of respectability—with admittedly disingenuous efforts to push back against accusations that the party was running overtly racist, crudely xenophobic, and aggressively dishonest campaigns—has been abandoned. As has any willingness to acknowledge that particular candidates, such as the Georgia US Senate nominee Herschel Walker or the newly elected Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, are too toxic to be supported. Thus completes the GOP’s devolution into a party that has fully abandoned its conscience.   Whether the party is described as authoritarian, neofascist, or fascist, the trajectory is clear. “Trump had done everything he could to seize the laurel crown and declare himself an American Caesar,” says Sarah Churchwell, one of the great scholars of American fascism. “He hasn’t given up yet—and, what is more, neither have most of his supporters.” Even as the 2022 results pointed to dozens of races in which Trump’s interventions had saddled the GOP with weak candidates—who in many cases lost what should have been winnable seats—Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, such as House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik, rushed to endorse the 2024 presidential bid he announced in mid-November. And while the same pundits who imagined that Trump would be rejected by Republicans in 2015 and 2016 are now sure that Florida’s Ron DeSantis has the juice to snatch the nomination from Trump, polls still show Republicans favoring the former president by a wide margin over the governor he decries as “Ron DeSanctimonious.” The mistake the pundits are making is to imagine that most Republicans are eager to move beyond the crude hatemongering that has characterized that party since Trump banished talk of “the big tent” and started describing anti-Semitic white nationalists as “very fine people.”   Today’s Republican Party gleefully amplifies the language of its once shunned but now broadly accepted ideological mentor, Steve Bannon, the connoisseur of European fascist literature and movements. It embraces an ideology that promises not just retribution for political rivals—and for longtime targets of its vitriol, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and the liberal philanthropist George Soros—but a wholesale restructuring of federal power.   Even with a narrow majority, a Republican-controlled House will immediately stop exercising its oversight powers to get to the bottom of Trump’s coup attempt and will begin attacking the January 6 committee’s investigators and the very notion of accountability. That will be only the beginning of a campaign to make Joe Biden a lame-duck president by rejecting his policy proposals and weaponizing the budget process to deny funding to federal agencies. Outlined in a September “Dear Colleague” letter from Texas Representative Chip Roy, an emerging force within the House Republican Conference, the strategy would reject continuing resolutions in order to block “tyrannical government agencies, offices, programs, and policies that Congress regularly funds through annual appropriations bills.” The theory is that the ensuing chaos will convince voters that only a switch to full Republican power will make the wheels of government turn once more.   If and when Republicans gain control of all three branches of the federal government, they will execute their explicit mission to politicize the government along the lines Bannon has laid out. In his War Room radio show and podcast, the veteran Trump whisperer amplifies the messages of the former president’s congressional coconspirators, election deniers, and extremist rising stars, promising that his reelection in 2024 will put “4,000 shock troops” in charge of reconstructing the federal government as a battering ram for right-wing ambition.

California To Become the World's Fourth Largest Economy

 

California Set To Become World’s 4th Largest Economy. Who is Left Out?

November 16, 2022 | By Mauricio Torres Jr.

A few weeks ago news broke that California is set to become the world’s 4th largest economy — larger than Germany and the United Kingdom if the state were an independent nation. State leaders celebrated the news as evidence of their success. 

Yet, despite California becoming the world’s 4th largest economy, we know too many Californians are struggling to make ends meet. A real marker of success is ensuring that every resident has a roof over their head, access to food and clean drinking water, the opportunity to get a higher education, and a robust safety net to fall on when things get tough. But right now that is not a reality. 

California is set to become the world’s 4th largest economy — larger than Germany and the United Kingdom if the state were an independent nation. This strong economy should ensure that every resident has a roof over their head, access to food and clean drinking water, the opportunity to get a higher education, and a robust safety net to fall on when things get tough.

“Ensuring all Californians have the resources they need to afford food, housing, child care, and meet all of their basic needs should be our state’s real measure of economic success.” 

Yet, despite California becoming the world’s 4th largest economy, too many Californians are left out of our state’s economic success. As leaders celebrate California’s strong economy, we have to remember those that are continuously shut out from accessing our state’s wealth, and we must take collective action to create an inclusive economy.

This fall about 2 in 3 California households with incomes under $35,000 had trouble affording basic needs like housing, groceries, and diapers. For Black, Latinx, and other Californians of color, the challenge is often greater. This is a result of historical and continued policies that create and exacerbate racism and discrimination across our state, creating disparities in earnings, well-being, and wealth building.

As inflation and high housing costs continue to take a toll on Californians, state leaders must ensure that our public policies create an economy that benefits every Californian, not just corporations and those at the top.

One way California can help distribute our state’s great wealth is by strengthening existing tax credits like the California Earned Income Tax Credit, commonly known as the CalEITC, which puts cash into the pockets of California workers, their families, and young working adults with low incomes.

Katie Porter won in California

 

Duane, 

I have exciting news: While it took a few days for votes to be counted, we’ve won!

As Elizabeth Warren says, nobody wins alone. It’s so true—the greatest strength of our campaign is our grassroots support. I’m so thankful for every person who was a part of our campaign.

I’ll continue my work in Congress to be a voice for the people I met on the campaign trail—families trying to make a living and get by, people who play by the rules but can’t seem to get ahead. And I can promise I’ll keep standing up to corporate special interests and Republicans who are making everything more expensive and taking away our rights. 

Thank you for being a part of this campaign. 

Katie Porter 

Donate ›››

 

Robert Reich : On the Election Results , Neo fascism

Apart from specific issues and candidates that motivated voters on Tuesday, two contrasting parties continue to emerge in America – one, pro-democracy; the other, anti-democracy or neofascist.

The hallmarks of the neofascist party are its cruel nastiness and unwillingness to abide by election results. In other words: Trumpism. 

Both were on full display election night as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake assailed the “cheaters and crooks” whom she claimed were running elections, “BS and garbage,” “incompetent people,” “propagandists,” and “fake media.”

And as Rep. Andy Biggs joked that Nancy Pelosi was “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” a crude reference to the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull.

Other GOP candidates and flaks hurled similar insults -- “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose,” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry,” Sen. Mark Kelly is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match,” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper,” Democrats are “lunatics.”

Contrast this feculence with Tim Ryan’s graceful concession speech in the Ohio senate race (I’ve pasted the live version below).

We have too much hate, we have too much anger, there’s way too much fear, there’s way too much division, and we need more love, we need more compassion, we need more concern for each other. These are the important things. We need forgiveness, we need grace, we need reconciliation. … I have the privilege to concede this race to J.D. Vance because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election you concede and you respect the will of the people. We can’t have a system where if you win it’s a legitimate election and if you lose, someone stole it. … We need good people who are going to honor the institutions of this country…. The highest title in this land is citizen, and we have an obligation to be good citizens. 

Or with John Fetterman’s humble remarks after the senate race in Pennsylvania was called for him — when, wiping away tears, he told cheering supporters “I'm not really sure what to say right now, my goodness. I am so humbled, thank you so much …. This campaign has always been about fighting for anyone that ever got knocked down that got back up.” 

Fetterman had been knocked down last May with a near-fatal stroke — which invited ridicule from Trumpists such as Trump Jr., who told a Sunday-night crowd at a rally in Miami that “if you're going to be in the United States senator, you should have basic cognitive function. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to have a working brain … We're up against a Democrat party today that doesn't believe that a United States senator should not have mush for brain."

Gratuitous cruelty, derision, nastiness — they are one of a piece with authoritarianism because they feed off the same anger and fear. They also fuel the hate and paranoia that are causing Americans to distrust our electoral system and one another. And they can fuel violence. 

When I was a kid I was bullied by other kids because I was so short. I remember the ridicule and the cruelty. The worst of the bullying, I later learned, came from kids who were bullied at home, often by abusive parents. 

So many Americans feel bullied by the system today — bullied by employers, landlords, hospitals, insurance companies, debt collectors, government bureaucracies, and the like — that they’re easy prey for Trumpism. 

This isn’t to excuse these people, but only to explain the likely source of their rage, and how the Trumpists are channeling it. 

And why it’s so important to stop all forms of bullying in modern America — not only because such bullying is morally wrong but because its poison spreads throughout our society. 

The results of the midterm elections could have been far worse. The extreme grotesqueries of the Trumpist right were soundly defeated — Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Maine gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage, New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc, and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels (who promised if elected that no Democrat could ever win Wisconsin again). Most election-denying candidates for secretary of state were defeated. 

As of Wednesday evening, Kari Lake was trailing her Democratic rival for Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, by a hair. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (the freshman MAGA Republican from Colorado) was fighting to keep her seat, 

But Marjorie Taylor Greene was reelected, as was Andy Biggs, and many other election-deniers. And Trump himself seems intent on launching another run on the White House (and on American democracy) within the week. 

Not as bad as it could have been, but deeply concerning nonetheless. 

We are still on the brink. 

Democracy on the Ballot: It Won !

 

Democracy Was on the Ballot—And Won Tom Nichols  November 9, 2022 The Atlantic The American crisis isn’t over, but the midterms were a good sign.

American flags in the US Capitol. , (Samuel Corum / Getty)

Let’s get the bad news out of the way: In yesterday’s midterm elections, a fair number of odious candidates managed to buy tickets to Washington. Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson is going back to the Senate, where he will be joined by Ohio’s would-be hillbilly whisperer J. D. Vance, whose campaign will stand for years to come as a monument to cynicism and hypocrisy. We don’t know yet if Kari Lake—or as my friend Tim Miller calls her, the “Empress of Trollistan”—will become governor of Arizona. And we still don’t know who will control Congress. Nonetheless, yesterday was a good day for democracy. Some of the worst election deniers and kookiest candidates were sent packing, in many cases by larger margins than anyone—including me—expected. Among those who must now go back to writing angry Facebook posts and griping on conservative podcasts were such notables as Don Bolduc, the retired general who promised to get to the bottom of the Great Kitty Litter Mystery, and Mehmet Oz, the carpetbagging celebrity doctor. At the state level, things look even brighter for the protection of democracy, as voters turned back a fleet of extremists and outright weirdos. Michigan, whose Democratic governor was the target of a bizarre kidnap plot two years ago, is now under a unified Democratic government for the first time in nearly 40 years. A crackpot running as the GOP candidate for governor in Pennsylvania was drubbed in a double-digit loss to an utterly conventional Democrat. And let’s even give a cheer as well for one Republican: Brad Raffensperger, who had to endure death threats for defying Donald Trump’s demands to upend the 2020 vote in Georgia, was reelected as secretary of state. As the elections analyst Sean Trende said today on Twitter: “It turns out that selecting your candidates from the Star Wars cantina might not be a recipe for electoral success.” If you want to know how bad a night it was for Republicans, check Trump’s temperature, which apparently zoomed last night past “boiling,” through “molten lead,” and is now somewhere near “the surface of the sun.” And rightly so: Some in the GOP are holding Trump responsible for their party’s losses and are now trying to push him out of the way. Even Trump’s conservative hometown paper, the New York Post, twisted the knife this morning with a cover photo of Governor Ron DeSantis and a one word caption: “DeFuture.” The best news in all of this is that the pundits and advisers who told Democrats to talk only about the economy and inflation and avoid any boring yakety-yak about democracy were wrong. As my colleague McKay Coppins tweeted after looking at an AP VoteCast poll, “it’s striking how many voters were motivated by concern for American democracy.” I have been arguing for months that voters are in fact capable of thinking about more than one thing at a time, but I admit that I also was starting to wonder whether fears about GOP authoritarianism could break through the noise. And so I was especially glad that Biden made the case for democracy in his closing argument at Union Station, because I thought it was his duty as president to speak on the threats to our system and warn the voters of what was at stake. In any case, to argue over grocery prices while ignoring Republican threats to stomp on our rights and nullify elections would have been malpractice, with Democrats taking the bait to apologize for the economy (much of which no one can fix right now) while giving a pass to unhinged candidates who couldn’t care less how much a gallon of milk costs.

U.S. Views of Democratic Socialism

Food For Thought , By Peter Dreier

April 28, 2022

 

Despite over a century of anti-socialist propaganda, it is remarkable that 38% of all Americans over 18 have a positive view of socialism, according to a Gallup Poll survey conducted in October 2021.

 

• There are 258 million Americans over 18, according to the 2020 Census. That means that 98 million Americans have a positive view of socialism. 

 

• The same poll found that 47% of Americans between 18 and 34 have a positive view of socialism.

 

• There are 76 million Americans between 18 and 34. That means that 36 million Americans between 18 and 34 have a positive view of socialism.

 

• The same poll found that 65% of Democrats (compared with 40% of independents and 10% of Republicans have a positive view of socialism. 

 

• The same poll found that 43% of women and 34% of men (over 18) have a positive view of socialism.

 

• In addition, 54% of non-white Americans over 18  compared with 31% of white Americans over 18 have a positive view of socialism.

• Finally, 44% of Americans who are high school grads or less, 30% of Americans who have some college education, and 40% of college graduates have a positive view of socialism.

[You have to link to the cross-tabs in the article below to get these numbers. Here's the link: [file:///C:/Users/Peter%20Dreier/Downloads/211206EconomicTerms%20(1).pdf ]

 

Any way you look at it, this is a huge number of people who have a positive view of socialism. Even if many or most of them can't specifically define what they mean by socialism, they are open to the idea.

 

The nation's largest socialist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, has grown from about 6,000 members in 2015 to about 100,000 members today. 

 

Plus, as we've seen in the past six years - since Bernie Sanders ran for president the first time -- a significant number of Americans are willing to vote for candidates who call themselves "socialists" or "democratic socialists." 

 

Another Gallup Poll, conducted in January 2020, found that 45% of Americans said they would be willing to vote for a socialist for president. More specifically, 76% of Democrats, 45% of Independents, and 17% of Republicans said they would be willing to do so. 

 

Currently there are more than 100 members of DSA who have been elected to municipal, county, state or national (House and Senate) offices, and many more who were endorsed by DSA. 

 

*Peter Dreier is a Professor of Politics at Occidental College. 

Bernie Sanders: The Current Crisis ( editorial)

 OPINION · Published November 4, 2022 2:00am EDT

Our economic crisis isn’t inflation, it’s corporate greed and the GOP will only make that worse

Corporate greed is at a 70-year high and oil companies are buying back stock, not lowering prices

By Sen. Bernie Sanders

As we enter the final week of the midterm election, voters are expressing deep concern about the state of the economy and inflation. They should.

Today, we live in an economy in which the billionaires are getting much richer while working families fall further behind. Unbelievably, while 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, we now have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of our country – with three multi-billionaires owning more wealth than the bottom half of Americans. While employers squeeze workers and their unions for cuts to health care and other benefits, the CEOs of major corporations now make nearly 400 times more than their average employees – the largest employer-worker gap in our history.

During this campaign, my Republican colleagues talk a lot about inflation, and they are right to do so. Over the last year, Americans have become sick and tired of paying outrageously high prices for food, gas, health care, prescription drugs, housing and other necessities. 

Unfortunately, most Republicans completely ignore the underlying causes of inflation and the few "solutions" they do offer would make a bad situation even worse.

Yes. During this political season it is easy to blame President Joe Biden and Democrats for inflation. But that’s just not accurate.

Let’s be clear. Inflation is not unique to America. It is an international crisis. In the European Union, inflation is nearly 11 percent. In Germany, it is 11.6 percent. In the United Kingdom it is 10.1 percent. In Ireland, it’s 9.6 percent. In America, it’s 8.2 percent, much too high, but lower than it is throughout much of Europe.

The truth is that inflation is, to a significant extent, caused by the ongoing global pandemic, the break in international supply chains and the horrific war in Ukraine. But there is another major reason for inflation that too few people talk about. And that is the unprecedented level of corporate greed that we are now seeing.

Elections: Which Side Are You On ?

 

We’re one week out from this election, and it comes down to recognizing who is on our side. Ask yourself: Who are the candidates trying to solve problems, and who are the ones just trying to stoke fear and division? Who supports public education, and who is trying to ban books and engage in culture wars? Who is protecting freedoms like a women’s right to reproductive health, and who is undermining our democracy?  Check out the GOP plan for the economy. They want to: Raise prescription drug costs. Increase healthcare premiums. Cut Medicare and Social Security benefits. Cancel student loan forgiveness. Drive up inflation and the deficit by cutting taxes for the rich. Look how well that worked for the last U.K. prime minister. The AFT has endorsed the problem-solvers—the lawmakers and candidates who are working to solve the problems that keep us up at night: inflation, the costs of prescription drugs and gas, the struggle for a better life, potential cuts to Social Security and Medicare, global climate change, the need to strengthen public education, and threats to and our freedoms and our democracy. On the other side, we have the problem-makers—the lawmakers who use anger and fear to divide people and want to slash Social Security and Medicare, roll back freedoms, allow Big Oil to gouge us at the pump and Big Pharma to gouge us at the pharmacy, and stop student debt forgiveness. Their answer to everything seems to be to cut taxes for the rich.  We need problem-solvers who will work for us. We need lawmakers who are on our side. That means turning out and voting in this election and getting our families and friends to do the same. Click here to learn more about our endorsed candidates and make a plan to vote. Everything is on the ballot this year. Thank you. In unity, Randi Weingarten AFT President