The Network for Public Education Action is delighted to endorse the following candidates for election to the United States Senate:
Mark Kelly-Arizona
Jon Ossoff-Georgia
Theresa Greenfield-Iowa
Barbara Bollier-Kansas
Amy McGrath-Kentucky
Sara Gideon-Maine
Steve Bullock-Montana
Cal Cunningham-North Carolina
Jaime Harrison-South Carolina
We endorse these nine candidates as friends of public education. We are not able to send them money, but we urge friends of public education in their states to donate to their campaigns and vote for them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think these endorsements are terrific and they also speak to the complexities of the Democratic party. Some of these Senators might not be particularly progressive on some issues, and they may be even more progressive on other issues! There are some people with a very questionable agenda who don’t mind throwing public education – and democracy itself! – under the bus and refuse to vote for any Democrat because they insist that the entire Democratic party is so corrupt that stopping the Democrats from having power is much more important than stopping the complete right wing takeover of this country. (One of the loudest purveyors of this nonsense is privileged white man Chris Hedges – who had a privileged private school education, of course.)
Let’s say Chris Hedges’s dream comes true and the Green Party candidate is elected president. The Democrats and Republicans aren’t going away; to get anything done, the Green president will have to compromise and negotiate with the other 2 parties. At which point Hedges will be ranting and raving against the Greens for being sellouts. We are stuck with this 2 party system for the foreseeable future, the so-called 3rd parties are not viable and poll in the low single digits. I wish we had more than 2 viable parties as is the case in Canada, for example. Our best chance to make the US more progressive is to infiltrate the Democratic party with more liberals and progressives like AOC, Bernie and the Green New Deal folks. The GOP is hopeless, it has become a far, far, far right wing nut libertarian death cult, a la Limbaugh or Hannity. It’s the party of Trump, enough said. If Ralph Nader had run as a Democrat, he could have been moving the party leftward and did some good in Congress.
Re: wish for more parties. It sounds nice, but that’s not the system we have, which not parliamentary. I wrote something to the effect of this four years ago. In a parliamentary system, political coalescing to find policy consensus takes place IN the governing process. This is exactly the opposite of what the framers intended and as the history of the nation has confirmed. In the US, the dirty work of blending political voices it to be done WITHIN the political parties to build solidarity to act and sort out the 50 percent plus 1 winners political marketplace. It is the jobs of parties, not governments to sort this out. Our system is not broken because we have two parties, it is broken because there is no longer a distinction between politicking and governing, something that has generally sustained this nation through the early 1990s. I think you come nearer the truth in your final sentence about Nader. If more Americans understand that losing a battle in the party process is not the equivalent of losing the strategic war. Instead, we have extremists who snipe and threaten to take their marbles and go home, thus further exacerbating the political divisions that hamper the process of governing. They would be better served to build effective, sustaining coalitions within parties. Now, if we had a parliamentary system, together with shadow cabinets, my arguments would be very different.
But because of people like Chris Hedges, the more far right the Republicans become, the more power they get! The far right Republicans have far more power today than they did 4 years ago. Citizens United would likely already be repealed, but thanks to Chris Hedges and short sighted people who acted as useful idiots to the far right, the far right has more power right now than they could ever imagine! They may very well be able to steal an election!
And now Chris Hedges wants to give them even MORE years because he believes democracy is expendable, as it is to many privileged self-described “principled progressive” white folks who say Bernie Sanders and AOC don’t have a clue and they are far superior to Bernie Sanders and AOC who they imply have both sold out.
Imagine that private school educated and overprivileged Chris Hedges believes his knowledge of what is best for progressives is far superior than what Bernie Sanders and AOC believe. The arrogance and elitism of those anti-public school “principled progressives” is clear.
Green, Libertarian and all other third partiesp must be abolished now, because they solely exist to siphon Democratic votes. No more Ralph Nader! Only Democrats. 😁
purveyor of nonsense: you have the description down pat
Please consider Marquita Bradshaw in Tennessee!
Ask her campaign to contact CarolBurris at Network for Public Education Action:
carol at npeaction.org
Phone:
(646) 678-4477
I do hope you’ll do a post on this. Best civic education lesson of the year! (And for those few of you who wonder why Linda rightly [correctly, that is] brings up Leonard Leo and you’re wondering why, here’s a good reason why she does so.)
Greg-
The comments that precede your’s, lament the nation’s turn to the right. Reading the comments, a person wouldn’t have a clue that the power behind the change was prominent Catholic Americans and the money backing them.
Leo and Barr received Catholic awards for undermining secularism. Yet, the public is advised to ignore that fact.
Who would have expected liberal journalism to perpetuate the con that discussing religion would be harmful to democracy? Facetiously I ask, how’s silence been working up to now?
Today, Huffpo posted an interview with a former professor at Catholic University of America, which was written by his former student who is a senior Huffpo editor. Big surprise, the professor who gained credibility by working with Obama and now Catholics for Biden, thinks “mum’s the word” regarding religious questions of Barrett. So, the public is supposed to believe, a Catholic professor at one of Charles Koch’s favorite universities offers good advice- a man who, while linked to Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, advocated for school choice? This same guy writes in one publication that clergy should leave politics to the laity. According to the Catholic Association Foundation’s mission, the lay organization was formed at the request of the Catholic Church. CBS News identified the Catholic Association Foundation as spending to promote Barrett’s confirmation. Does it sound like the public should be skeptical when the same CUA professor tells Huffpo that a member of the Catholic laity (Barrett) shouldn’t be asked about her religion?
Quite convenient.
Maybe, there was a point in people rejecting Alf Smith (1928) and questioning John Kennedy’s loyalties to Roman Catholicism, the pope, etc ? 😮
You missed the point, Eddie. This is not about Catholicism. Condemning or marginalizing anyone because of their religion is antithetical to constitutional principles and just plain wrong (I will confess to being hypocritical about this with respect to the cult of scientology). This IS about the hypocrisy of using contrived “religious principles” and ideas espoused by so-called leaders and representatives of orthodox “doctrine” to oppose constitutional principles. So, to respond to your post: NO, no-one should condemn Smith, JFK or Pope Francis (or anyone, for that matter–scientology excepted) because of their religion. But Linda and I (assuming I can speak for you, Linda) will consistently and unconditionally condemn and oppose anyone who uses false religion-based obfuscations to justify hypocrisy, tyranny and expediency.
Greg-
You speak for me.
Pres. Kennedy welcomed the question because he knew and wanted the public to know he planned to act in the best interest of Americans.
In government function, he would ignore the clergy’s interpretations of God’s word, religious dogma and, the religious who fronted for the agenda of colonialism.
Out of fear, the truth tellers in D.C. refuse to identify Charles Koch and his allies who are Catholic power brokers.
Sen. Whitehouse criticized the Bradley Foundation but, didn’t connect it to Charles Koch. He highlighted Leonard Leo but, failed to cite the motivation for Leo’s opposition to secularism and, for his push for authoritarianism.
Sen. Whitehouse focused attention on 3 current legal issues. (1) Elimination of ACA which he connects to the goal of corporate profit taking (2) Prohibition of same sex marriage and (3) Overturn of Roe v. Wade. The latter two, Whitehouse leaves suspended in air with no connection to motivation.
Commenters at this blog claim there is no crisis. Whitehouse identified 80, 5-4 partisan SCOTUS decisions. Commenters believe the long arch of history, in isolation of all other variables, will lead to the transition of America to the humanity of Western European nations like the Nordic countries. Evidence can mean little to some.
It seems improbable from personal info. provided by Greg at this blog that he has a dog in the race of the 3 issues that were the focus of Whitehouse’s attention. So, I’m grateful he continues to champion the conservatives’ targets, even while his position is unreasonably misunderstood.
Linda,
I don’t think most commenters here say there is no crisis. I certainly think there is a crisis. Where we disagree is on the source of the crisis. You pin the blame on the Catholic Church. I attribute it to extremists in the three major religions: Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. DeVos is not Catholic. The Orthodox Jews in NY are Trump fans.
Diane,
Perhaps we could come closer to agreement by assessing relative weight of influence. Using your example, we could possibly review categories like how many Jewish people vote GOP, if their clergy rally them to vote GOP,…the number of evangelicals,… in Trump-appointed roles in government office, the judiciary and in the military, the number of each sect who have access to and who promote conservatism on media platforms, the amount of money each sect’s leadership spends promoting the conservative agenda, the extent of each sect’s lobbying, the size of the politicking infrastructure in states for each sect and in D.C., the sect that is most advantaged by conservative politicking, the number of a sect’s institutions operating in alliance with the Koch network, etc.
Orthodox Jews would be a far smaller number than rightwing Protestants and Catholics. Read Katherine Stewart’s “The Power Worshippers” about the rise of Christian nationalism. It’s Falwell and many more.
It’s unknown what (1) common goods e.g. public education, medical care, supply of natural resources (2) socialistic democracy (3) women’s rights (4) workers’ rights (5) gay rights (6) the rights of black people and (7) federal emergency preparedness would look like in America today if Catholic Church leaders and wealthy right wing Catholics hadn’t rejected the 1970’s trend toward modernism.
Evidence suggests conservative evangelical power would have faced limitations operating in isolation from other religions. More so, if prominent Catholic influence had championed Keynes economic policy and the rights of those other than white, men.
We know, with certainty, that the church duopoly double dipped taking a big chunk of the American people’s money from Covid funds intended for small business. So, that’s another casualty of right wing religion.
Linda,
The extremists in all our major religions are dangerous.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/trump-is-the-savior-from-the-destruction-how-evangelicals-have-long-talked-of-conspiracies-against-gods-chosen/
If you want to see one of the best documentaries ever, watch “Dark Money” by Kimberly Reed. It features a dogged and inspiring reporter (John S. Adams, now of Montana Free Press) who never gives up, and it features Steve Bullock, our former attorney general and current governor, who worked hard to fight against dark money in politics and for transparency. Bullock is currently in a neck-and-neck race with incumbent Sen. Steve Daines. If you have any extra money, please contribute to Bullock’s campaign!
Here’s the summary of the documentary
:
DARK MONEY, a political thriller, examines one of the greatest present threats to American democracy: the influence of untraceable corporate money on our elections and elected officials. The film takes viewers to Montana—a frontline in the fight to preserve fair elections nationwide—to follow an intrepid local journalist working to expose the real-life impacts of the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Through this gripping story, DARK MONEY uncovers the shocking and vital truth of how American elections are bought and sold. This Sundance award-winning documentary is directed/produced by Kimberly Reed (PRODIGAL SONS) and produced by Katy Chevigny (E-TEAM).
DARK MONEY is available to stream at PBS.org and via Amazon Prime Video.
https://www.darkmoneyfilm.com/