Nbadan
02-15-2015, 02:18 AM
Progressives who want to have some influence on the election are hoping they can push Hillary to the left—or somehow persuade their preferred candidate, Elizabeth Warren, to run.
David Freedlander - DailyBeast
02.13.15
<snip>
Elizabeth says she’s a no. Bernie is a fighter, but he is also, you know, Bernie. O’Malley doesn’t excite, Webb used to be a Republican, and Hillary is, well, a Clinton.
The 2016 presidential primaries are fast approaching. What is a good progressive to do?
At a moment when a handful of issues that liberal activists have campaigned on for years, from raising the minimum wage to the growth of corporate power to climate change to criminal justice reform, are entering the mainstream debate—even within the Republican Party—progressives are facing the prospect of being rendered voiceless just as the nation is tuning in to the 2016 presidential primary.
“What progressives are saying is, how are we going to get people out of bed to vote if we don’t stand up on the issues that people care about,” said Ed Ott, a longtime New York labor leader and a professor of labor studies at the City University of New York. “There is a lot of anger at the Democratic Party. People want to know where they stand.”
This strange moment for progressives was crystallized over the weekend when the liberal Working Families Party, which is based in Clinton’s home state of New York and which backed her in both of her Senate runs, decided to join liberal groups such as Move On and Democracy for America in supporting a Draft Warren effort.
The move dismayed some progressives. Warren has consistently maintained she isn’t running, and fantasies that she will change her mind distract from some more achievable goals, some liberals maintain.
“The whole Warren thing is kind of silly,” said Howie Klein, a progressive activist who blogs at the website Down with Tyranny. “If I could pick anybody to run for president it would be her, but she is not going to do it. It started out as a not-bad idea but I think it has gone on long enough.”
Without a candidate to get behind, some liberal and labor groups are focusing instead on changing the complexion of the electorate, hoping that Clinton can be pulled to the left by forces on the ground. After a summit on the issue of raising wages (headlined, it should be noted, by Elizabeth Warren) the AFL-CIO announced that they would barnstorm the first four primary states to rally voters around the issue.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, meanwhile, is trying to persuade progressive leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire to hold off announcing that they are ready for Hillary until she publicly announces where she stands on key liberal issues such as expanding Social Security and breaking up big banks.
<snip>
More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/13/progressives-between-hillary-and-a-hard-place.html
Progressives are going to have to accept that many of Hilliary's major contributors are the same enemies of the working families progressives fight to support.....many of the same doubts that drove progressives toward Obama in 2008 and denied Hillary the WH ie the same pro-Warren group that wants her to run today...
David Freedlander - DailyBeast
02.13.15
<snip>
Elizabeth says she’s a no. Bernie is a fighter, but he is also, you know, Bernie. O’Malley doesn’t excite, Webb used to be a Republican, and Hillary is, well, a Clinton.
The 2016 presidential primaries are fast approaching. What is a good progressive to do?
At a moment when a handful of issues that liberal activists have campaigned on for years, from raising the minimum wage to the growth of corporate power to climate change to criminal justice reform, are entering the mainstream debate—even within the Republican Party—progressives are facing the prospect of being rendered voiceless just as the nation is tuning in to the 2016 presidential primary.
“What progressives are saying is, how are we going to get people out of bed to vote if we don’t stand up on the issues that people care about,” said Ed Ott, a longtime New York labor leader and a professor of labor studies at the City University of New York. “There is a lot of anger at the Democratic Party. People want to know where they stand.”
This strange moment for progressives was crystallized over the weekend when the liberal Working Families Party, which is based in Clinton’s home state of New York and which backed her in both of her Senate runs, decided to join liberal groups such as Move On and Democracy for America in supporting a Draft Warren effort.
The move dismayed some progressives. Warren has consistently maintained she isn’t running, and fantasies that she will change her mind distract from some more achievable goals, some liberals maintain.
“The whole Warren thing is kind of silly,” said Howie Klein, a progressive activist who blogs at the website Down with Tyranny. “If I could pick anybody to run for president it would be her, but she is not going to do it. It started out as a not-bad idea but I think it has gone on long enough.”
Without a candidate to get behind, some liberal and labor groups are focusing instead on changing the complexion of the electorate, hoping that Clinton can be pulled to the left by forces on the ground. After a summit on the issue of raising wages (headlined, it should be noted, by Elizabeth Warren) the AFL-CIO announced that they would barnstorm the first four primary states to rally voters around the issue.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, meanwhile, is trying to persuade progressive leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire to hold off announcing that they are ready for Hillary until she publicly announces where she stands on key liberal issues such as expanding Social Security and breaking up big banks.
<snip>
More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/13/progressives-between-hillary-and-a-hard-place.html
Progressives are going to have to accept that many of Hilliary's major contributors are the same enemies of the working families progressives fight to support.....many of the same doubts that drove progressives toward Obama in 2008 and denied Hillary the WH ie the same pro-Warren group that wants her to run today...