Day: February 4, 2025

Take Me To Your Leader

After their catastrophic loss to Trump the Dems have promised a new way forward and regain the voters confidence….and supposedly this way is by picking a new leader of the Party, the DNC…

The Dems now have a new leader…..

Democrats, looking for a path back to power in Washington, have a new national chair to lead the effort. Ken Martin, the head of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, won on the first ballot at a Democratic National Committee meeting on Saturday, NPR reports, turning back competitive bids by Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. In his acceptance speech, Martin promised a unified party leadership. “We have one team, one team, the Democratic Party. We have one fight, one fight,” he said. “The fight’s not in here.”

The campaign focused on the DNC’s internal mechanisms more than the election losses in November, per the New York Times. The body helps set the party’s tone and goals as it supports down-ballot candidates between presidential elections in addition to building an operation for the eventual presidential nominee. In campaigning for the post, Martin, 51, told DNC members he’ll pay more attention to their concerns than past chairs have. Although the party may seem to face a tough road back, the new chair steps into an organization that’s raised record amounts of money and made record investments in data and organizing resources, per NPR, which has made it more integrated with state and local party operations.

With former President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris moving on, and few other Democrats commanding much attention, the election gives party regulars somebody to rally around, per the Hill. In his speech Saturday, Martin acknowledged the seven people he defeated for the job. “It is my guarantee to each of you that we’re going to take the great ideas from all the candidates in this race,” he said.

So far this new leader sounds a lot like past leaders…..the rhetoric is the same as always after a loss.

But who is the guy?

Wellstone, the progressive senator from Minnesota who died in a 2002 plane crash, just days after casting a courageous vote opposing President George W. Bush’s rush to war in Iraq, mounted the sort of economic populist campaigns that top Democrats now all seem to agree they need to run. He practiced year-round organizing; built multiracial, multiethnic coalitions; explicitly rejected corporate influence and focused on appealing to working-class people; always campaigned in rural areas; toppled a Republican incumbent by running a grassroots campaign out of the back of a beat-up bus; and mounted reelection bids that emphasized his progressive values rather than the talking points favored by major donors and party consultants.

…

What’s missing now in too much of our politics, says Martin, is that sort of “authentic, empathetic leadership that understood struggle and understood that everyone, regardless of whether they live in a rural community, or an urban community, or anywhere in between, needs to have some hope that their lives would be better.”

Martin, who is also a former union organizer, is not alone in this view. The notion that a values-based politics that unites urban and rural voters might be the answer for Democrats is suddenly in vogue with senators, governors, and all of Martin’s fellow candidates for DNC chair.

The bottom line for Democrats, says Martin, is that “if we continue to slide with big parts of our coalition, we’re going to be in a perpetual minority.”

As DNC chair, Martin recognizes that a core part of his job would be to raise the money to fund permanent campaigns in 50 states and to take on a Republican Party that, under Trump, is seizing every opportunity to gain financial and structural advantages. But, like Wellstone, he is wary of a politics that is so focused on fundraising that it loses sight of basic values.

(thenation.com)

Martin hit a lot of good notes but many other before him have hit the same ones.

Is he a true progressive?

I will withhold my judgement until he has time to settle into his leadership role and see if he is a progressive or will just buckle under to the big cash donors like so many others have done.

For now the Dems have a new leader but will he be the savior of a dying party?

thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is This Assault On Free Press?

The Trump retribution continues.

Around every corner someone is bitching about the loss of a free press….the Right says the Left is doing it….the Left is accusing of the Right of assaulting the press on many levels….but now there is yet even more and it stems from the trump admin.

Four major news outlets will no longer have highly coveted office space at the Pentagon after the Defense Department released an internal memo announcing it’s giving their space to other outlets. CNN’s Haley Britzky posted the memo on X that said NBC News, the New York Times, NPR, and Politico will each need to vacate their offices at the Pentagon on Feb. 14 to give space to the New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News Network, and the Huffington Post. As CNN reports, three of the outlets are relatively small and conservative organizations that are openly pro-Trump.

The internal memo said the Pentagon calls the plan its “annual media rotation program,” and spokesman Jonathan Ullyot said the outgoing outlets will remain full members of the Pentagon Press Corps with “the same media access” as before. But they won’t have office space in the building this year. Ullyot said the rotation program will “broaden access to the limited space of the Correspondents’ Corridor to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalistic value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon.” Officials chose one outlet each from print, online, radio, and TV mediums to give up their space for one year.

Members of the Pentagon press corps can only speculate if the decision is related to intense coverage of the Senate confirmation of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary last week. Hegseth is a former Fox News host, and his confirmation followed weeks of coverage about allegations of sexual abuse and heavy drinking. NBC News, which had reported on the allegations, released a statement saying, “We’re disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we’ve used for many decades. Despite the significant obstacles this presents to our ability to gather and report news in the national public interest, we will continue to report with the same integrity and rigor NBC News always has.”

You were wondering when Trump would make his move….well wonder no more.

Making sure the Liberal publications are excluded from the press conferences for the Pentagon.

Supposedly it is for only a year but my bet it will be continuing even after the year.

Controlling the narrative has always been Trump’s aim and now he has started…. where will it end?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”