Hey Progressives, Play Your Hand, Sometimes The Cards Ain't Worth A Dime If You Don't Lay 'Em Down

Liz Cheney? Hell No! What Was Kamala Even Thinking?

Kamala and those around her— basically the Democratic Party establishment— opted for Liz Cheney and a pack of conservative Republican Party apostates instead of for the traditional working class base of the Democratic Party. It’s why DWT has been calling on progressives to start thinking about abandoning the Democratic Party and embarking on the long, strange trip it will be to re-start a Progressive Party... like a real one to fight corporate power, not fellate it.

Truckin’, got my chips cashed in

Keep truckin', like the doo-dah man

Together, more or less in line

Just keep truckin' on

Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street

Chicago, New York, Detroit and it's all on the same street

Your typical city involved in a typical daydream

Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings

Dallas, got a soft machine

Houston, too close to New Orleans

New York got the ways and means

But just won't let you be

Most of the cats that you meet on the streets speak of true love

Most of the time they're sittin' and cryin' at home

One of these days they know they gotta get goin'

Out of the door and down to the street all alone

Truckin', like the doo-dah man

Once told me, "You got to play your hand"

Sometimes the cards ain't worth a dime

If you don't lay 'em down

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me

Other times I can barely see

Lately it occurs to me

What a long, strange trip it's been

What in the world ever became of sweet Jane?

She lost her sparkle, you know she isn't the same

Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine

All a friend can say is, "Ain't it a shame?"

Truckin', up to Buffalo

I been thinkin', you got to mellow slow

Takes time, you pick a place to go

And just keep truckin' on

Sittin' and starin' out of the hotel window

Got a tip they're gonna kick the door in again

I'd like to get some sleep before I travel

But if you got a warrant, I guess you're gonna come in

Busted, down on Bourbon Street

Set up, like a bowlin' pin

Knocked down

It get's to wearin' thin

They just won't let you be

You're sick of hangin' around and you'd like to travel

Get tired of travelin' and you want to settle down

I guess they can't revoke your soul for tryin'

Get out of the door and light out and look all around

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me

Other times I can barely see

Lately it occurs to me

What a long, strange trip it's been

Truckin', I'm a goin' home

Whoa whoa baby, back where I belong

Back home, sit down and patch my bones

And get back truckin' on

Sorry; I just couldn’t help myself. I took one of my first acid trips with them (the Dead, not the Pop’o’Pies) on a school bus that drove a bunch of random hippies— me included— from the Haight to Mount Tam and dosed everyone. Later I hired them to play at Stony Brook. Around the same time I hired Julian Bond to come speak there.

Progressives aren’t going to get anywhere playing the GOP-lite game. One of the most Republican states in the country is Nebraska, although FDR beat Herbert Hoover there in 1932 with 63% of the vote, winning every county but 2. Roosevelt followed that in 1936 with a 57% win against Al Landon and after that Nebraska was back to red with one brief interlude— 1964’s LBJ vs Goldwater donnybrook. Trump just beat Kamala there 60% to 38%. She won the two dependably blue counties— Douglas (Omaha) and Lancaster (Lincoln). I thought it was interesting to see how the Democrats did in those two counties, compared to how independent progressive Dan Osborn did. 

Douglas County

• Kamala +10

• Tony Vargas for Congress +3

• Preston Love for the other Senate race +5

  
  

• Dan Osborn +17

Lancaster County

• Kamala +4

• Mike Flood (R) +3

• Preston Love +0.55

  
  

• Dan Osborn +16

Easy to see where I’m going with this? (Osborn also won Sarpy and Thurston counties, which none of the Democrats did.)

Now Georgia. That was close.

• Trump- 2,660,655 (50.8%)

• Kamala- 2,543,483 (48.5%)

You may remember, if you’re as old as I am, when Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta, was a GOP hot bed that used to send Newt Gingrich to Congress. It’s very changed— and very blue. Kamala won Cobb County 227,640 (57%) to 168,286 (42%). A small piece of it is the only purple part of Marjorie Traitor Greene’s otherwise all red district. (This year she even won that though.) Another part is in Lucy McBath’s district, and she won the Cobb County part of her district with 71%. Barry Loudermilk has the Republican part of the district and he won that part with 54%.

But the most exciting election result in Cobb County this cycle was a state legislative race, where 27 year old waiter and Democratic Socialist Gabriel Sanchez beat Democratic incumbent Teri Anulewicz last May and went on to cream Republican Diane Jackson on Tuesday, beating her 16,658 (63%) to 9,661 (37%).

“It’s very important that people feel like they’re being engaged and being talked to by their local representatives and reminded about how important local politics are,” Sanchez said. “I think people are ready for change and they’re excited to see the energy that our team has been able to bring into this community.”

Sanchez, who campaigned on workers’ rights, affordable housing, universal healthcare and an increased minimum wage, felt his message resonated with the district… Sanchez has also criticized Israel as an apartheid state and called what is happening in Gaza genocide.

“I think we really made a difference and are looking to start a movement for working people here in Georgia,” Sanchez said.

Nothing about inviting any conservative Republicans to join him and rag their toxic issues into his camp. He’ll be the first self-identified socialist to be part of the Georgia Legislature since my old friend Julian Bond in 1967, who had to appeal to the US Supreme Court to be seated.

With AIPAC likely to try to kill his career as soon as they can, Blue America has kept Sanchez on our contribution page for state legislators. Aside from being one of the first Hispanics in the Georgia legislator, he’s also Georgia’s first Gen Z legislator.

Maya Homan reported that “Sanchez credited his success to a campaign that was informed by his experiences as an organizer, where he spent years advocating for expanded LGBTQ and voting rights, and canvassing for other local candidates. In his own bid for statehouse, he sought to engage with people on the ground in his community, listening to their concerns about issues like workers’ rights and the rising cost of housing. Again and again, he said, he encountered voters who said they hadn’t been engaged with by their local elected officials. ‘There were so many people at the door who were telling me they had never had their door knocked on up until now,’ Sanchez said. ‘It's a community that was really looking for change and really looking to get involved with and weren’t being engaged with by their local leaders. And so that's something that people were really appreciative of.’ During his first term, Sanchez says he hopes to improve housing affordability, and will push to increase wages and protections for workers. He is also hoping to implement Medicare for all and a $20 minimum wage… ‘What matters more than anything else, beyond the Gen Z or the socialist label, is what are we going to do for our people in the community?’ Sanchez said. ‘People are tired of the status quo of a state that is against workers, that is only for corporations, and they want representation that's really going to fight for them. And I think that our message is really resonating.’”

Now put Dan Osborn’s overperformace in Nebraska and Gabriel Sanchez’s stunning victory in Georgia together with… Andrew Perez’s and Asawin Suebsaeng’s report about Kamala’s decision to try to use Liz Cheney to sell her politics joy. “The pitch,”they wrote, “bombed with Republicans, as Democrats’ share of moderates and independents fell and overall Democratic support crumbled, too… A Democratic strategist says they warned key Harris surrogates and top-level officials at the Democratic National Committee that campaigning with Liz Cheney— and making the campaign’s closing argument about how many Republicans were supporting Harris— was highly unlikely to motivate any new swing voters, and risked dissuading already-despondent, infrequent Democratic voters who had supported Biden in 2020. The strategist says they also attempted to have big donors and battleground state party chairs convey the same argument to the Harris campaign. Another Democratic operative close to Harrisworld says they sent memos and data to Harris campaign staffers underscoring how, among other things, Republican voters, believe it or not, vote Republican— and that the data over the past year screamed that Democrats instead needed to reassure and energize the liberal base and Dem-leaning working class in battleground states. ‘We were told, basically, to get lost, no thank you,’ says the operative.”

Maybe we should. It’s inevitable. Is it time? Past time? In late October, even “Bill Kristol, a top Never Trump Republican, publicly urged Harris in the final weeks of the campaign to pitch a progressive, populist economic message against Trump and his army of billionaire supporters... [writing] “Feels like maybe Kamala Harris should embrace Elizabeth Warren’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax and barnstorm on that for the next ten days.”