Progressive Political News

We recently wrote about many of the reasons Bernie Sanders lost the 2020 Democratic Primary and one of the most prominent reasons for his defeat was his reluctance to be much tougher on his rivals, which they were with him. Sanders sustained a slew of attacks from his competitors in the Democratic field, most of the attacks were based on fear-mongering about the high price for his policies. Virtually every candidate attacked Sanders on the cost of Medicare for All, using the 'huge cost' of such a policy to scare voters into being against the policy, consistently screaming "it costs $30 trillion!" The price tag is actually somewhere around $17 trillion, also conveniently left out are the facts that this is the cost over ten years and that Medicare for All actually costs substantially less than the current American healthcare system. Medicare for All is estimated to save anywhere from $303 billion to $2 trillion over the course of the next ten years, if implement...

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have long been seen as friendly competitors vying for the same base of support, with Warren entering the race being seen as a tough blow to Sanders' presidential aspirations. However, as the race has heated up Warren has repeatedly attacked Sanders for supposedly not being a unifying figure within the party, has gone after his supporters and their supposed bad behaviour online and has more recently said that she would be a better president than Sanders as she would be able to get more done while in office. The Primary race first begun with the two rarely saying a bad word about each other, referring to each other as friends. Warren repeatedly claimed that she was with Sanders on all of the big progressive issues such as Medicare for All, getting money out of politics and a Green New Deal. This is mainly due to the fact that for much of the race both Sanders and Warren had to attack the front-runner at the time, Joe Biden. Biden was the targ...

The Iowa caucuses are finally here and Bernie Sanders is surging in the polls, currently sitting atop the RealClearPolitics polling averages in both Iowa and New Hampshire, which are the first two states to vote in the Democratic Primary. According to the RCP polling averages in both states, Sanders has an average lead of 4 points in Iowa and 9 points in New Hampshire. Sanders support fluctuated in late 2019 after a minor heart scare which led to several pundits claiming that Sanders was done and he would soon be dropping out, but of course we now see that Sanders has become even more invigorated. In the caucuses, any candidate that does not reach 15% of the vote in the first round of voting will be eliminated and their voters will then be able to back another candidate who has reached that 15% threshold. This is extremely good news for not just Bernie Sanders but Joe Biden as well as the only candidates who are currently polling above 15% are: Bernie; 24.2%, Biden; 20.2%, But...

At a recent Bernie Sanders campaign rally in Iowa, Sanders surrogate Rashida Tlaib caused controversy when instead of quieting a crowd that was booing Hillary Clinton when she was mentioned by name, Tlaib instead stated: " No we're gonna boo, we're gonna boo. When we win the haters will shut up. " This angered the media class and voters that wouldn't have even supported Sanders in the first place. The 'Very Serious People' of online Democratic discourse slammed Tlaib, claiming that she was being divisive and harming Sanders chances in the upcoming primary. Some went a step further, claiming that Tlaib wasn't a true ally to women and their struggles if she was jabbing at Hillary Clinton, while others made videos screaming " f*ck Rashida Tlaib " into the camera for their Twitter bubble and others want her to be primaried and removed from Congress. This has come after Hillary Clinton has spent the last few years trashing Bernie Sanders at ...

Detractors of 2020 Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders often point to his online supporters and their apparent harassment of people on Twitter. You often hear the phrase " I like Bernie, I support his policies, but his supporters really put me off ." This has been a running theme since the 2016 election with constant focus on supposed 'Bernie Bros' apparently harassing anyone who dare say a bad word about him. For the majority of the time it follows a very similar pattern. Sanders is constantly criticised, sometimes fairly of course, but the majority of time you'll find it to be a prominent liberal saying something outlandish about Sanders, claiming him to be a russian plant, a sexist, racist, having policies that 'only benefit straight white people', a communist and is repeatedly compared to Trump. This is when Sanders supporters push back, this is the supposed 'harassment' - responding to bad faith criticism such as Sanders being compared to ...

Jim Messina, a former President Obama and UK Conservative Party adviser has recently come out against Bernie Sanders and claimed that the Vermont Senator would not be able to win a general election against sitting President Donald Trump and further mentioned that Democrats would "struggle" if Sanders was the nominee. So, who exactly is Jim Messina and why should we trust his opinion? Messina was hired as Obama's national chief of staff in 2008 and was key in his election victory that year as he controlled a $750M budget and also worked for Obama's 2012 campaign but subsequently left in 2011 and begun giving paid corporate seminars and speeches to companies such as Apple, Facebook, Zynga, Google, Microsoft and DreamWorks. Furthermore, in August 2013, Messina signed on as a paid consultant to the UK Conservative Party to work for both David Cameron's and Theresa May's campaigns in 2013 and 2017 respectively. Seemingly, Messina's advice didn't seem ...

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has had to endure an abundance of criticism during his two attempts to enter the Oval Office, such as the cost of his major policy proposals (Medicare For All, $15/hr minimum wage or Universal Childcare etc) and those are legitimate concerns to have and you would hope that Sanders could answer those questions. However, should you spend far too much time on social media like I do, you’ll soon notice the anti-Sanders enclaves that will use anything and everything, no matter how ridiculous, to hinder his presidential chances - including using the image above to suggest he’s either racially insensitive or just a racist in general.  As you can see, Sanders is pictured above posing for a photo with a black man while Bernie holds the fried chicken that, we assume, the man cooked. And I don’t see a problem here. Should I? Because I don’t. I could stare at this picture and literally just see two dudes smiling and holding a piec...

Hillary Clinton's most ardent supporters really are incredible, any political objection to Hillary is a result your deeply held misogyny, she was apparently "entitled" to each and every vote from those who described themselves as anything else but a Trump supporter, any legitimate criticism of her or her politics is the result of "Russian disinformation campaigns" and now Hillary is apparently of the same moral standing as notable religious figures. One person, Sam, decided to place Hillary Clinton above Jesus due to some of the good work that her foundation has done, which is true, the foundation has done wonderful work such as allowing  nine million  people gain access to lower-cost AIDS medication. Credit where credit is due. But.. Jesus? Really, Sam? Speaking of the Clinton Foundation and without going off into the weird land of right-wing conspiracies, investigations into the Foundation found what was essentially a pay-to-play racket in place.  Moth...

Whenever Bernie Sanders is attacked on policy or either being supposedly racist and sexist, - still no explanation as to how - his supporters are by his side more often than not. However, two recent statements that Sanders made has drawn the ire of even his most loyal supporters. Firstly, with the subject of immigrant child separation and abolishing ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) dominating news headlines, even most centrist Democrats and Sanders supporters are united in their wishes to abolish ICE, but Sanders couldn't join the club when asked the question by Jake Tapper during a  CNN interview . When asked by Jake Tapper if he would join the calls of fellow Democrats such as Cynthia Nixon to abolish ICE, he tapped danced around the question, instead saying that Trump and Congress should work to make sure that what we see today with the separation of children and their parents is put to an end. His supporters didn't agree with this stance, with arguments ...

Polls that were undertaken by polling organisation Gallup have produced some rather worrying signs for both major political parties in America and good news for smaller, lesser known parties. The polls, which were published in January 2018, show that the number of Americans who indentify as Independents has seen its largest ever increase a year out of a presidential election. As you can see pictured above, the number of Independents has been increasing sharply since Gallup's recording began pre-1989, and very rarely dipping below the numbers of Democrats or Republicans. Gallup also mentions how decreases in Independents is usually a result of people choosing to back the candidate with either a (D) or (R) next to their name as they vote for someone that resembles their ideas as closely as possible. The large increase in Independents also spells bad news for both parties, however. Ever since Barack Obama's historical 2008 victory, the number of American Independents has bee...

Bernie Sanders often deals with objections to his presidential aspirations from all sides of the political spectrum, those on the Right who believe Sanders wants to turn America into some kind of Communist dictatorship, Centrist Democrats who label Bernie as racist, sexist and unable to win a general election, with people from the Left who suggest that he isn't progressive enough. However, one particular critique of Sanders is both extremely exaggerated and in some cases, a flat out lie. Venture over to Twitter and read the tweets of people who use the '#NeverBernie' and '#StillWithHer' hashtags and you'll notice a similar theme: "Bernie Sanders cannot appeal to People of Colour". It must be mentioned that Sanders does indeed have a problem marketing his message to groups of non-white Americans that he will need to win over in order to fulfill those aforementioned presidential aspirations, but this is a hurdle that Sanders should be able to conqu...

Self appointed Hillary Clinton and People of Colour defender Candice Aiston took a short break from likening Hillary Clinton to Jesus and claiming that Democrats were literally 'entitled' to the votes of minority groups in order to write a truly awful  article   suggesting that Bernie Sanders supporters essentially target aforementioned minority groups who do not share their politics and dig up old tweets which could be seen as controversial in order to "silence women and POC". We will now take great delight in explaining how Candice is being extremely disingenuous when discussing the interactions between Democrats and left-wing accounts on social media. Firstly, it must be said that some of the tweets from left-wing accounts Candice uses to back up her stance are extremely worrying, whether they happen to be in jest or not. Two tweets stick out, one suggesting that the "RIP Candice Aiston" Twitter Trend could be relating to her death and another calling...

Should you decide to torture yourself and delve into political social media, you will be met with two warring liberal factions - Loyal Democrats and Progressives. Much of the debate between the two factions surrounds Bernie Sanders, with 8% of registered Democrats claiming to actively dislike the Vermont Senator. This 8% are extremely vocal on social media and you are able to find them sharing their disagreement with Bernie Sanders in replies to anything he posts, even if his post isn't anything that these people disagree with, it all apparently goes back to how evil Bernie Sanders is. With the current sexual assault allegations surrounding prominent American political figures such as Al Franken, Donald Trump, John Conyers and Roy Moore, every single allegation has to be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly as powerful men shouldn't be able to get away ruining a woman's life in order to assert their self-perceived dominance. The current frenzy of allegations ha...

Pro-Trump website 'Conservative 101' had penned a particularly dreadful  article titled "Bernie Sanders Blames President Trump For White Nationalist Movement, Then He's Caught Doing...", and it is unfounded to say the very least. Hell, the writer couldn't even make the piece grammatically correct as one of the paragraph begins with the line, "despite how Bernie Sanders the mainstream media are portraying the situation", yes, that is a literal sentence in the article, told you that it's dreadful. Anyway, the article is based on the premise that because Bernie Sanders has the support of the progressive political action organisation 'Our Revolution' and because Our Revolution sent out an email referencing how Heather passed away and to essentially fight back against the rise of white nationalism that we are currently experiencing and the fact that they had a link at the bottom of the email to ask people for donations - which, you kno...

A twitter user, which Progressive Political News is now blocked by, recently made the assumption that a vast number of white nationalists support Bernie Sanders and that he is somehow accepting of their support in order to further his political ambitions of seemingly turning America into a Soviet-style socialist state - or just giving people health care in order to live, but you know, who needs political nuance in this day and age. Political Twitter is made up of several factions that spend most of each and every day screaming at each other about why they're right, most of the time without a single policy mentioned. The factions pretty much range from the "we even hate Bernie Sanders" Left-Wing, then to the "Democrats are the only hope we have! #Resistance" and you can even end up at the Alt-Right/White Nationalist part of Twitter if you're brave enough. There are also, of course, the Bernie Sanders supporters, Republicans and Libertarians sprinkled acro...

So, as it turns out, even Donald Trump's very own pollster has confirmed what progressives have been saying for over a year now: Bernie Would Have Won. This seemingly obvious statement has been disreputed by two groups of political loyalists - Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton supporters. Trump's supporters, who view Donald as some sort of God who has never put a foot wrong, find it laughable that a 'communist' Independent politician could defeat their dear leader. As for people who would bow down at the feet of Hillary Clinton - you'll be able to find them by the use of their #StillWithHer Twitter hashtag - prefer to use the rather childish defence of "WE WON! YOU LOST!"(although Hillary has now lost twice during a major election) in order to suggest Sanders would have suffered the same fate as Clinton during the 2016 General Election. The pollster in question, Tony Fabrizio, made the claim while speaking at a Harvard University Institute of Politi...

Marco Rubio happens to be one of the more slimier, corporate Republicans, this is even after Trump fooled his voters with his "Drain The Swamp" falsehood. Pictured above, you are able to see Rubio adopting the usual Republican position when it comes to making sure people have health care, as they all hear the words "government-run" and shudder at the fact this will annoy their private industry donors, Mr. Rubio is clearly no different. Time for a quick debunking of Rubio's right-wing talking points. Firstly, the current cost of implementing the Affordable Care Act is $49 TRILLION over the next 10 years, with a Bernie Sanders style Single Payer system costing $17 Trillion LESS. So we're saving money by having a government-run system. Don't believe it? Allow sitting US Representative Ro Khanna to explain  here . A quick summary of the video could also be put into a few sentences: Khanna: Single-Payer will cost roughly $32T over the next ten years,...

Jim Hightower, the 8th Agriculture Commissioner of Texas has spent his life fighting for progressive change, being involved in politics from the late 1960's when he began working as a legislative aide to Texas Senator, Ralph Yarborough. Hightower is a nationally syndicated columnist which is carried by seventy-five independent weekly newspapers and other publications. " The Hightower Lowdown " has more than 125,000 subscribers and focused heavily on the, what Hightower sees, as the corruption that existed within the Bush administration, claiming the former President was tied to large corporations and right-wing extremists. Well, he's got a point. All of his speaking and writing accomplishments wasn't what stood out to us when we first came across Mr. Hightower, it was a political concept that he created and that desperately needs to be spoken about much more within this political climate. Here it is. The Doug Jones Average The Doug Jones Average is the p...

In our last piece , we discussed how Sally Albright, in her pursuit of "bringing back liberal" (whatever that actually means), has consistently alienated left-wing voters and essentially foams at the mouth with propaganda about how progressives "don't know politics" and how we are complicit in electing Donald Trump as we didn't all trip over each other in order to vote for Hillary Clinton, even though she isn't entitled to our votes, she has to earn them and that was not the case. After further research on Sally's extreme dishonesty when it comes to her selective political outrage, we have found her driving force for twisting words, spreading damaging rhetoric and punching left. Her reasoning for her deceit isn't a belief that she is doing the right thing politically or an admiration for the facts within a political debate - her driving force is to make money in any which way she can, or in Sally's case, helping get Republican's elec...