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Former three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited New Hampshire Saturday, further fueling speculation that he may run for president in 2020.
Bloomberg, 76, who recently re-registered as a Democrat, told reporters that he is focused on the midterm elections but is keeping open his future political options.
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“Right now I’m focused on Nov. 6, plain and simple,” he said, according to The Associated Press.
But the billionaire owner of Bloomberg News also said “we’ll see what happens down the road,” when asked about his plans after the midterms.
New Hampshire traditionally hosts the first presidential primary in the country soon after the Iowa caucuses and is seen as a crucial contest for White House hopefuls who want to build early momentum.
Bloomberg visited Nashua to attend a get-out-the-vote rally for state House candidates organized by Moms Demand Action, a grass-roots advocacy group promoting gun control legislation.
The former mayor himself is an outspoken advocate of preventing gun violence and co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns in 2006.
He flirted with an independent bid for president in 2016, announcing he would wage a White House campaign if President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE won the GOP nomination and Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.) won the Democratic nomination.
But when Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhite House accuses Biden of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ with Trump election claim Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton qualifies to run for county commissioner in Florida MORE defeated Sanders in the Democratic primary, Bloomberg shelved his bid.
Asked where he fits in today’s Democratic Party, Bloomberg described himself and the broader party as centrist.
He argued that Democrats are “much more centrist than people understand. They want sensible laws. And what they want is some check and balance on the White House,” according to Concord Monitor reporter Paul Steinhauser, who tweeted a video of the exchange.
Bloomberg has also told House Democratic Leader Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiTrump on collision course with Congress over bases with Confederate names Black lawmakers unveil bill to remove Confederate statues from Capitol Pelosi: Georgia primary ‘disgrace’ could preview an election debacle in November MORE (D-Calif.) that he will help Democratic candidates this fall.
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Democratic candidate for New York’s 19th Congressional District Antonio Delgado denounced attack ads from outside groups criticizing his rap career during a debate with Rep. John FasoJohn James FasoThe most expensive congressional races of the last decade The 31 Trump districts that will determine the next House majority GOP House super PAC targets two freshman Dems with new ads MORE (R-N.Y.) Friday.
“I think the ads are deeply unfortunate, and they speak to a climate right now that is divisive and ugly, and we can do better,” he said. “I think what we’ve seen as far as the trends are going in this country is away from cooperation and communicating with each other with decency and respect.”
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“We have to get beyond this if we really want to solve complicated problems, if we really want to deal with the issues…we’ve got to get to a point where we’re no longer at each other’s throats just spewing misleading facts and get to the substance of what’s really going wrong with our country right now,” he added.
Faso, who is trying to win a second term in Congress, distanced himself from the ads that critics have slammed as racist.
“I would just simply point out that those are not my ads, those ads are provocative, no doubt, those ads, however, are provocative and Mr. Delgado’s words are provocative,” he said.
“I do regret the notion that somehow these ads were mine, because they’re not, and I’ll tell you this, I reject the support of anyone who would vote for me because of Mr. Delgado’s race,” Faso added.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has released two ads highlighting Delgado’s rap career that drew widespread ire.
One ad released in September titled “NY-19: ‘Can’t Afford Delgado,’” labels him a “big city rapper.”
“Just like Governor Cuomo and Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiTrump on collision course with Congress over bases with Confederate names Black lawmakers unveil bill to remove Confederate statues from Capitol Pelosi: Georgia primary ‘disgrace’ could preview an election debacle in November MORE, big city rapper Antonio Delgado supports their radical government takeover of health care,” the narrator in the ad says.
The NRCC released another ad earlier in September that spliced together some of the scenes from a music video by Delgado in which he uses the n-word, profanity, references to sexual acts and says “God bless Iraq,” with images of the candidate giving a standard campaign speech in more formal attire.
“It’s disappointing that John Faso and his supporters are still focused on distractions by spreading fear, hatred, and division. We continue to call on Faso to condemn these divisive and deceptive ads,” Delgado said in a statement at the time.
New York’s 19th Congressional District is home to one of the nation’s tightest House races and a seat Democrats are keen on flipping in November, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee adding it to their “red to blue” program. The district voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, but voted for President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE in 2016. The Cook Political Report rates the seat as a “toss up.”
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September 15, 2020 |
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DES MOINES, Iowa — Deidre DeJear, the first black candidate to win a major-party nomination for a statewide race in Iowa, is quickly establishing herself as an up-and-coming star in the Democratic Party.
She has received considerable attention and support from prominent politicians, most recently with potential 2020 presidential candidates Sens. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.) and Kamala HarrisKamala Devi HarrisRand Paul introduces bill to end no-knock warrants The Hill’s Campaign Report: Biden campaign goes on offensive against Facebook McEnany says Juneteenth is a very ‘meaningful’ day to Trump MORE (D-Calif.) campaigning for her earlier this week.
“Let me tell you, you guys have a rock star in her,” Harris said Monday at a rally here hosted by the Polk County Democrats. She added that DeJear has “got a vision not only for Iowa, she’s got a vision for the country.”
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The 32-year-old nominee for Iowa secretary of state has big plans if she emerges victorious on Election Day, but her No. 1 goal is to boost voter turnout in a state that holds the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses in less than 16 months.
In an interview at a coffee shop before the rally with Harris, DeJear told The Hill that she thinks high-profile Democrats are helping her in order to “elevate the importance of what the secretary of state’s office does, and to re-instill the value of the vote for folks in Iowa.”
“Any time that they come, the biggest priority is to make sure that we’re giving them that platform to encourage people to participate and encourage people to get engaged, because we’ve got so many folks that aren’t participating in our elections,” she said.
“When we think about the progression of voting rights in our country, and in 2018, we have voter rolls being purged as an effort to clean the data, but the effort to connect with the voter is null and void,” she added. “We need to do better.”
DeJear is challenging the incumbent secretary of state, Paul Pate (R), who has held the post since 2015 after a previous sting in the 1990s. Governing Magazine contributor Louis Jacobson earlier this month shifted his rating of the race from “lean Republican” to “tossup.”
The secretary of state position is one of a number of offices in Iowa that Democrats hope they can flip in next month’s midterms. Iowa Democrats are also pushing to win the governor’s race and flip the three congressional districts held by Republicans.
DeJear said she wants to use the secretary of state’s office to boost voter participation. She criticized Pate for spearheading a 2017 law passed by the state legislature that requires voter identification and makes other changes to the voting process, and for not doing enough to educate the public and local officials about the statute — leading to confusion during the law’s “soft rollout” this year.
“An ID requirement I don’t believe is necessary,” she said.
Pate has defended the voter law, saying on Iowa Public Television last month that most residents wanted an ID requirement and that his office is sending free IDs to people who don’t have one.
“I wanted to make sure the bill itself was one that was doing the job and not disenfranchising but actually assuring them of the integrity of the system,” he said.
DeJear, who is originally from Mississippi and went to middle school and high school in Oklahoma before moving to Iowa to attend Drake University, first got involved in voting issues when she was in middle school. It was then that she helped her grandmother, a teacher, run for elections commissioner in Yazoo County, Mississippi.
“At that point in time in my life … she was the only woman that I had known to run for public office, but she wasn’t doing it in a political way. She was running for office because she thought it was important to engage her students in civics, engage them as it related to voting,” DeJear said. “And that’s how I think the seeds were planted in me as it related to voting.”
After the 2008 Iowa caucuses she became a campus organizer for the Obama campaign and later worked on his 2012 campaign as Iowa African-American vote director. She’s also managed successful campaigns for the Des Moines school board, and she founded a small business that helps small businesses market themselves.
DeJear said that being a woman and a black American — two groups that haven’t always had voting rights in the U.S. — has increased the importance in her life of expressing herself through voting, and she wants others to embrace the value of casting a ballot.
“For me, it’s less about me being black, it’s less about me being a woman, and it’s more about me being an Iowan, trying to connect with every eligible voter in our state and giving them a reason to vote again,” she said.
When asked if she thought Iowans would be receptive to Harris, an African-American woman, running for president, DeJear said: “I know they’ve been receptive to me. I think that right now what Iowa is receptive to is genuine, heartfelt people who have a vested interest in resolving the issues within their communities.”
In addition to participating in political events this week with Harris and Sanders, Sen. Cory BookerCory Anthony BookerRand Paul introduces bill to end no-knock warrants Black lawmakers unveil bill to remove Confederate statues from Capitol Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk MORE (D-N.J.), another potential 2020 contender, campaigned earlier this month for DeJear, who has been endorsed by former President Obama.
But the big names stumping for DeJear should not expect an endorsement in the 2020 caucuses if she wins on Nov. 6. DeJear said she has “blinders” on when it comes to the presidential race and would not back a candidate because she thinks the secretary of state’s office should be nonpartisan.
“What would my endorsement do? To me, it would skew voters,” she said. “You’re secretary of state. You should probably be quiet and just encourage voting.”
As for all the national attention she’s getting from the party, she says it’s not important to her.
“The title that I truly want is not rising star,” she said. “The title that I truly want is secretary of state.”
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President TrumpDonald John TrumpSenate advances public lands bill in late-night vote Warren, Democrats urge Trump to back down from veto threat over changing Confederate-named bases Esper orders ‘After Action Review’ of National Guard’s role in protests MORE said Sunday that Republicans will likely “do well” in the House during the upcoming midterms, while noting that his “primary focus” in campaigning has been on the Senate.
Speaking with reporters outside the White House before departing for Georgia, Trump said “there are so many people in the House and that’s a lot of stops.”
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“But I have done some House work also. But I think we’re going to do well in the House but as you know, my primary focus has been on the Senate and I think we are going to do really well in the Senate,” he said in an exchange captured by CNN two days before the midterm elections.
“With so many people in Congress, with so many people in the House, it’s very hard to make those stops. But I’ve made a number,” Trump added.
Polling has suggested that Republicans are likely to maintain their majority in the Senate, where a number of Democrats are up for reelection in states Trump won in 2016. But Democrats are likely to flip the House and regain control of the lower chamber, polls have indicated.
Trump added Sunday that “the level of fervor, the level of fever is very strong on the Republican side.”
“There is something going on out there, and I think you know what I mean. … The level of fervor, the level of fever is very strong on the Republican side. So I can’t speak to the blue, but I can speak to the red. There’s a lot of energy out there,” he said.
September 15, 2020 |
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No subpoena power. No rule barring members from accepting fossil fuel money. No directive to craft the kind of visionary plan that science says is necessary to avert climate catastrophe.
“The only reason to do this is to protect the corporate CEOs who have unlawfully suppressed information about the dangers of climate change to protect their own profits.”
Click Here: camiseta river plate—Varshini Prakash, Sunrise Movement
With the mandate (pdf) for presumptive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) Select Committee on the Climate Crisis finally available to the public, youth climate leaders highlighted these glaring omissions on Wednesday when they denounced the Democratic leadership’s new panel as completely “toothless” and lacking the ambition needed to rapidly transition America’s energy system away from fossil fuels.
“It’s everything we feared,” said Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, the youth-led advocacy group that helped organize sit-ins at the congressional offices of Pelosi and other Democratic leaders to demand a Green New Deal Select Committee.
“Democratic leaders had an opportunity to embrace young people’s energy and back the Green New Deal, but they failed us once again,” Prakash added. “This committee is toothless and weaker than the first Climate Select Committee from a decade ago, and it does not get us meaningfully closer to solving the climate crisis or fixing our broken economy.”
Driven by the deep concern that Democrats would squander their majority power in the House by merely conducting more climate hearings and little else, progressive groups have urgently mobilized in recent weeks to pressure the party’s leadership to pursue a more focused and ambitious objective: A committee specifically focused on developing Green New Deal legislation that would enact systemic energy and economic reforms in line with the latest climate science.
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But, as the Sunrise Movement noted on Wednesday, Pelosi’s new committee has “no mandate to create a plan” that would dramatically reduce carbon emissions with the necessary speed, nor does it have subpoena power that would compel fossil fuel executives to testify and hand over crucial documents.
“The only reason to do this is to protect the corporate CEOs who have unlawfully suppressed information about the dangers of climate change to protect their own profits,” Prakash said.
The new climate committee will be officially established on Thursday if House Democrats vote to approve their newly unveiled rules package, which includes a fiscally conservative pay-go measure that Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and progressive advocacy groups are working to defeat.
If implemented, progressives argue, pay-go would hamstring bold and popular policies like Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.
While calling Pelosi’s new climate committee “deeply disappointing,” the Sunrise Movement vowed to keep up the fight for a Green New Deal by continuing to organize at the grassroots level and build support for the plan nationwide.
“In losing this fight on the Select Committee, we have won the biggest breakthrough on climate change in my lifetime,” Prakash said. “We’ve shown that when we relentlessly demand what’s needed, not just what pundits say is politically possible, we can change the terms of debate altogether.”
“We’re working with movement partners and elected official allies to make plans for what’s next, but one thing is clear,” she concluded. “Even though we put the Green New Deal on the map by taking action in D.C., we will win by organizing support for it across the country—from Appalachia and the Midwest to places like Florida and California that have been ravaged by climate disaster.”
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Vice President Mike Pence received an icy response from world leaders at the Munich Security Conference Saturday, as he made clear his aim for the weekend was to promote his President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda.
The vice president began his remarks by telling world leaders, “I bring greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, President Donald Trump”—and was met with a long silence before describing Trump’s accomplishments as “extraordinary” and “remarkable.”
In addition to heaping praise on the president, Pence chastised European and Asian leaders for remaining in compliance with the Iran nuclear deal and called on them to join the U.S. in recognizing Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela, weeks after the right-wing opposition leader declared himself the head of the country despite President Nicolas Maduro winning re-election last May.
Pence urged the E.U. to “step forward for freedom” by recognizing Guaido as president.
Millions of Venezuelans in recent days have signed an open letter rejecting the United States’ attempt to intervene and pressure the country and international community to recognize Guaido.
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Slamming European countries for “undermining U.S. sanctions” by staying in the painstakingly-reached Iran nuclear deal, Pence called on world leaders to turn away from Iran while accusing the country of antisemitism.
“The Iranian regime openly advocates another Holocaust and it seeks the means to achieve it,” said Pence.
Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called Pence’s accusation “laughable.”
“Iran has always supported the Jews,” he told Der Spiegel. “We are just against Zionists.”
“Iran’s historic and cultural record of coexistence and respect for divine religions, particularly Judaism, is recorded in reliable historic documents of various nations,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi added in a statement.
“The principle that underlies our foreign policy is the aggressive and occupying nature of the Zionist regime [Israel] … which is a killing machine against the Palestinian people,” he said.
Regarding Iran, German Chancellor Angela Merkel also addressed the conference, defending the decision of Germany and other European nations to stay in the nuclear agreement and observing the Trump administration’s isolation in the debate over the deal.
Merkel has observed “the Europeans on one side and the Americans on the other side,” she said—a dynamic which was illustrated by the conference’s reception of the vice president.
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What brings together the likes of the president’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon; voter disenfranchiser Kris Kobach; notorious Blackwater founder Erik Prince; controversial former sheriff David Clarke; immigration hardliner and former Congressman Tom Tancredo; and offensive meme spewer and former baseball great Curt Schilling?
A move to supplement President Donald Trump’s proposed “wall” on the southern border with a privatized wall.
According to new reporting by Politico, the right-wing crew got together—though Prince just phoned in—for the first time last week at the border town of McAllen, Texas for “a kind of #MAGA field trip.”
The New York Times reported on the privatized wall effort late last month, but Politico is the first to report on Bannon’s involvement.
“Do we have a billion dollars right now? No. But can we raise one- or two-hundred million dollars? No doubt about it,” Bannon told the news outlet. As of this writing, the new GoFundMe page has raised a little over $20 million of its $1 billion goal.
Trump has given the effort his “blessing,” Kobach asserted to the Times.
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The project reportedly got its start in Iraq war veteran Brian Kolfage’s GoFundMe page for wall funding. That evolved into a new fundraising effort and the formation of the nonprofit “We Build the Wall.”
A FAQ page for new group asserts that it is “presently working with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol experts and other U.S. border security service professionals” to target areas for a wall, which would rely on consenting landowners. “The company will build the wall mile-by-mile in strategic locations based on a variety of factors. We will build as much wall as we can based on feasibility, land use, and funding,” it continues.
That company is reportedly the Israel-based Magal Security Systems, which is behind apartheid barriers that besiege Palestinians.
The crew is getting ready to tout their project as soon as Friday at a town hall in Tucson, Arizona and later this month at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Kolfage, who’s listed as a key part of the We Build the Wall team, told Politico, “we’re going to give it our all.”
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In what could be a pivotal ruling, a district court decision on Thursday has set the stage for a review of the case that spawned the recent era of lavish and secretive spending by big-money super PACs in local and national campaigns.
In response, proponents of campaign finance reform expressed confidence that they are one step closer to getting a major source of corporate dark money out of U.S. elections.
“For nearly a decade, the SpeechNow ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has allowed big money donors to evade federal campaign contribution limits and corrupt even further our political process.”
—John Bonifaz, Free Speech for People
“Super PACs weren’t created by Congress, or the U.S. Supreme Court,” Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People, said in a statement. “They were created by a lower court decision, based on faulty assumptions, that has never been reviewed or revisited.”
In the 2010 case SpeechNow.org v. FEC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit applied the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United decision to rule that limits on the amount individuals could contribute to “independent expenditure-only” groups violated the First Amendment.
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The court’s ruling, according to critics, unleashed a flood of corporate money into the U.S. political system that further corrupted the democratic process and gave big business even more power over election results.
“We need to put ‘We the People’ back in charge, and that starts by closing the gaping super PAC loophole that has allowed dark money to overwhelm our elections,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a plaintiff in Lieu v. FEC, which seeks to overturn the SpeechNow decision. The lawsuit was initially filed by Free Speech for People in 2016 on behalf of Merkley, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), and the late Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.).
In Thursday’s decision, the federal district court said its hands are tied by SpeechNow until the 2010 ruling is overturned. According to Free Speech for People, the case is now set to be reviewed for the first time by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“For nearly a decade, the SpeechNow ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has allowed big money donors to evade federal campaign contribution limits and corrupt even further our political process,” said John Bonifaz, co-Founder and president of Free Speech For People. “The real-world experience of this ruling and the threat that super PACs pose to our democracy must now be reviewed by the D.C. Circuit. We look forward to advancing this case.”
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President Donald Trump has long positioned himself as “tough on crime”—but, as a new Public Citizen report revealed Wednesday, that stance doesn’t extend to “lawbreaking corporations.”
Over the first two years of Trump’s presidency, enforcement activity at the nation’s top three consumer protection agencies that resulted in fines of at least $5,000 plummeted 37 percent from the last two years under former President Barack Obama, according to Consumer Carnage (pdf), the watchdog group’s new report.
“Trump, who once asserted that he was ‘not going to let Wall Street get away with murder,’ now is allowing industry after industry to get away with just about anything,” said Alan Zibel, the report’s lead author and research director for Public Citizen’s Corporate Presidency Project.
“Trump’s appointees’ apparent belief that enforcement of consumer protection laws should be a last resort,” Zibel noted, “represents a dramatic about-face from Trump’s claim of populism during his campaign.”
The watchdog’s analysis show that the drop at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) “has been especially egregious,” particularly under the reign of Mick Mulvaney, who is now acting White House chief of staff and head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Kathy Kraninger, who previously served under Mulvaney at OMB, now runs the CFPB, and has continued Mulvaney’s efforts to gut the agency.
The CFPB, as the report highlights, “completed 11 enforcement actions of $5,000 or more against corporations in 2018, down 54 percent from 24 in 2017, when the CFPB was still run by an Obama appointee.” That man, Richard Cordray, resigned as CFPB director in November of 2017.
“Under this president, federal agencies have slashed fines, declined to bring cases against corporate wrongdoers, and gutted enforcement programs. The result is a government that is eager to throw consumers under the bus.”
—Robert Weissman, Public Citizen
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), meanwhile, completed seven major enforcement actions against corporations during 2017 and 2018, compared with 13 during Obama’s final two years. At the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), enforcement actions fell by 31 percent, from 58 cases under Obama to just 40 under Trump.
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“Under this president, federal agencies have slashed fines, declined to bring cases against corporate wrongdoers, and gutted enforcement programs,” said Public Citizen president Robert Weissman, summarizing the current conditions. “The result is a government that is eager to throw consumers under the bus.”
Weissman specifically laid blame on the individuals Trump has charged with overseeing the three top federal consumer protection agencies. As he put it, “Members of the Trump administration have made abundantly clear they perceive their function as serving and assisting corporations instead of holding them accountable for lawbreaking.”
While Public Citizen focused on enforcement actions across three agencies that garnered penalties of $5,000 or more—using the Violation Tracker database compiled by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First—a report (pdf) put out earlier this week by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) offered similar conclusions about overall enforcement at the CFPB.
Under Mulvaney and Kraninger’s leadership, “enforcement activity at the CFPB has declined to levels that are either nonexistent or significantly below that of the prior administration, even in the areas where consumer complaint activity is the highest,” states CFA’s report, entitled Dormant. “The number of public enforcement cases announced in 2018 declined by 80 percent from the Bureau’s peak productivity in 2015.”
Pulling out the key numbers from CFA’s analysis, USA Today reported, “Overall, Cordray brought an average of 0.72 overall cases per week, compared with 0.2 cases for Mulvaney and 0.38 cases for Kraninger.”
USA Today also compared enforcement rates for particular areas:
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- Credit reporting: 0.09 cases per week under Cordray vs. 0.04 cases under Mulvaney;
- Debt collection: 0.07 cases per week under Cordray vs. 0.02 under Mulvaney;
- Mortgage lending: 0.22 cases per week under Cordray vs. 0.04 under Mulvaney;
- Student loans: 0.05 cases per week under Cordray vs. 0.00 under Mulvaney.
Christopher Peterson, CFA’s director of financial services and author of Dormant, decried the steep declines in enforcement rates under Trump in a statement on Monday.
“Consumers have a right to expect that the federal government will enforce our consumer protection laws,” he concluded. “It is simply unacceptable for a consumer protection agency to turn its back on consumers that have been harmed by their financial institution’s deceit.”
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Former President Barack Obama on Monday night cautioned freshman members of the U.S. House against pushing for broadly popular, sweeping reforms by suggesting that voters will reject progressive policies due to their supposed high costs—despite evidence to the contrary.
At a meeting organized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Obama told several first-term members both that they should continue to pursue “bold” policy agendas—but also injected the familiar right-wing and centrist canard concerning the cost of such programs.
“He said we [as Democrats] shouldn’t be afraid of big, bold ideas—but also need to think in the nitty-gritty about how those big, bold ideas will work and how you pay for them,” one attendee told the Washington Post.
The two ideas struck many critics as contradictory. Some slammed the former president for appearing to try to tamp down the ambition, passion, and sense of urgency many freshman including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) have brought to their work—hoping to combat a climate crisis fueled by corporate greed and politicians’ complicity; a for-profit health insurance system which has left tens of millions of Americans without healthcare; and rising economic inequality.
Obama’s remarks also put him at odds with a number of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, at least 10 of whom support a Green New Deal and a majority of whom have backed a Medicare for All plan, including several who have co-sponsored Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) bill in the Senate.
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According to the Post, the former president mainly expressed concern with how voters will react to progressive policies that require financial investment.
However, the majority of the public supports the proposals, and most Americans surveyed by YouGov in January said that the wealthiest people in the country and corporations should be taxed at a higher rate in order to fund a Green New Deal. Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed by The Hill also said that the top marginal tax rate should be raised to 70 percent in order to combat inequality and fund progressive policies.
On social media, some critics added that Obama’s comments crystallized the results of his two terms in the White House, during which he pushed for healthcare reforms that insulated the private insurance industry; bailed out the U.S. financial system without holding big banks accountable for causing the 2008 financial meltdown and leaving working Americans still struggling through a foreclosure crisis; and failed to propose ambitious targets for reducing fossil fuel emissions.
“No president since FDR has been handed as many opportunities to transform the U.S. into something that doesn’t threaten the stability of life on this planet,” wrote author Naomi Klein on Twitter, quoting a 2009 article she wrote for The Nation. “He has refused every one.”
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