Mike Davis: Biden’s Big Mistake; Black Lives Matter-Victories at the Polls: Jody Armour

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Mike Davis on the Trump voters: Latinos in south Texas and white workers in the rust belt—and Biden’s big mistake: allowing Trump to claim “the economy” as his issue, instead of connecting jobs to controlling the pandemic.
Also: Black Lives Matter had massive victories in the elections in America’s biggest county—LA, with 10 million people. They elected a progressive D.A. and passed an initiative to re-imagine public safety by moving 10 per cent of the county’s $5 billion unrestricted budget to alternatives to incarceration, to community services, and barring the county from using the money on prisons, jails ,or law enforcement agencies. Jody Armour explains—his new book is N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law. 11-12-2020

Trump’s Tactics Will Fail: Harold Meyerson; BLM Victories in LA: Jody Armour; “Collective”: Ella Taylor

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Harold Meyerson argues that none of Trump’s tactics to hold on to the White House will succeed—the lawsuits are ridiculous, the proposals for Republican state legislatures to send their own Trump electors to Washington won’t work. But the fact that Trump got more votes than any Republican in history gives him a lot of power over the party.
Also: the huge victories Black Lives Matter won at the polls in L.A. County: Jody Armour explains, starting with electing a progressive District Attorney, George Gascon. Jody’s new book is N*gga Theory: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law.
And our TV critic Ella Taylor recommends “Collective,” a terrific documentary about corruption in Romania.  11-12-2020

Biden’s Successes—and Trump’s: John Nichols and Joan Walsh

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John Nichols says Joe Biden seems to be headed for a historic win. On Wednesday afternoon he already had more than 70 million votes—the largest number of votes for a president in American history. He’s also above 50 per cent, something no Democrat has done in our lifetimes, except for Barack Obama. So this is likely to be a big victory, except for one thing: The Electoral College. That’s where it’s close, and that’s our problem.
Joan Walsh looks at Trump’s support, and finds it shocking that he did about as well as last time, despite everything that he’s done in the last four years, culminating in the disaster of the pandemic response and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. She concludes that too much of our country consists of racists who prefer white supremacy to equality.  11-4-20

What Biden can do on Day One without the Senate: Harold Meyerson; Trump voters: Joan Walsh; ‘Queen’s Gambit’: Ella Taylor

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Harold Meyerson considers the consequences of failing to win control of the Senate–and points to dozens of far-reaching executive actions Biden could take without Senate approval.
Plus: Joan Walsh of The Nation says, ‘It shouldn’t have been so close.”
and TV critic Ella Taylor reviews “The Queen’ Gambit,” the terrific series on Netflix about the protofeminist female chess champion in Cold War America.  11-5-20

 

The Politics of White Men, from Obama to Trump: Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren, plus Sherrod Brown on voting and Eric Foner on disputed elections

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Melissa Harris-Perry and Dorian Warren talk about the changing voter turnout among white men and people of color over the last three presidential elections—and other features of our political system. They are hosting a new podcast for The Nation, “System Check”—checking the systems that hold us back: premiering Friday at TheNation.com, Apple podcasts, and elsewhere.
Also: talking politics, and history, with Sherrod Brown. Of course he’s the senior senator from Ohio, first elected in 2006. He was re-elected in 2018—he won by 7 points—in a state Hillary Clinton had lost—by 8 points—just 2 years earlier. He talks about how he did that, and how Biden has learned the lessons of that campaign.
Plus: disputed elections past and present: Maybe the election next week will have a big enough vote for Biden so that it can’t be challenged in court; maybe the Republicans won’t dispute the outcome. But maybe they will. We’ve had other disputed elections in our history—of course we had the Supreme Court stopping the count in Florida in 2000; and there was another one, much less well known—the election of 1876. Historian Eric Foner explains.  10-28-20

White Voters and Joe Biden: Harold Meyerson; The Chicago 7: Lee Weiner; Borat: Ella Taylor

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Harold Meyerson reviews Biden’s excellent recent poll results in swing states, and looks at the Democrats’ long standing problem with white male voters, and what can be done to bring them back into the party. Also: The one union that’s doing door-to-door precinct work during the pandemic.
Also: ‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ – the new Aaron Sorkin film – is the most-widely reviewed movie in America right now; 250 critics have written about it. Of course it’s about the trial of leaders of the antiwar protests at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 in Chicago –the indicted included Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Bobby Seale, Davie Dellinger, John Froines and Lee Weiner – and we have a conversation with Lee Weiner – about the movie, and what really happened.
Plus: This week more than ever we need a bit of relief from the election
–maybe the new Borat movie? Sasha Baron Cohen’s return with his memorable character from ‘Khazakstan’–but of course it’s all about “President MacDonald Trump.” Ella Taylor will talk about “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” 10-29-20