TrumpCountry

TrumpCountry https://www.dailykos.com/news/TrumpCountry News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:09:20 +0000 Sun, 26 Jan 2020 13:09:20 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) The reported Taming - or is it Breaking, of Rep. Alex. Ocasio-Cortez made me sad and then, angry... https://www.dailykos.com/story/2019/9/22/1887010/-The-reported-Taming-or-is-it-Breaking-of-Rep-Alex-Ocasio-Cortez-made-me-sad-and-then-angry Dear Citizens and Elected Officials: Initially, my reaction to this article from Wednesday, September 18, 2019 in the New York Times, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/us/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-washington.html" target="_blank">www.nytimes.com/...</a>entitled “How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez learned to play by Washington Rules,” was one of sadness. After all, as my title suggests, becoming an good insider was about the last feature I was looking for in a Congressperson to represent the bottom 60% of the nation amidst what Washington had become, that the left and Tea Party both hate. That’s the Beltway culture which Kevin Phillips, Bill Greider, Matt Taibbi, Molly Ivins (the late MI) and Naomi Klein all despise(d), the Congress of millionaires, lobbyists, special interests and the revolving door. Of Neoliberalism and Austerity for public purposes & awash in private $$$...A scene which, I am also sad to report, I saw firsthand in statehouse cultures, in detail in Trenton, NJ, and later in Annapolis, MD. Yes, she comes from a unique NY District, part of the Bronx and part of Queens, the 14th Congressional District of New York. And yet it has always looked to me, visually at least, to be a district full of struggling citizens and small businesses, everyone hustling just to barely keep their heads above the swift economic currents, ones that have swept so many others away. It may be urban and new ethnic, but it has more in common with the economic struggles of rural red state Trump country, of Baltimore’s troubles merging with Allegany County in Western Maryland — drugs and despair, many empty storefronts right on Main Street, kids heading for the exits ASAP…than the Republican Right or Democratic Centrists want “the ends of the spectrum” to “woke” and realize. That being said, it’s not what initially called my attention to AOC, who was not on my political radar screen until the national publicity about her great Democratic primary upset in June of 2018. What grabbed me first was her obvious charisma, a fusion of passion and ideas in a fluid and seamless public persona, a gift as rare as a bright new comet amidst the staid old political constellations. And her intellectual pedigree was a factor, that she had Justice Democrats roots, out of the first Sanders campaign, and even more personal for me, was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, at about the same age as I was in the 1970’s when it was the home for Michael Harrington, Irving Howe and Deborah Meier, called the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. I was, for a brief time in that decade, an unpaid “weekend” organizer for “DSOC” in New Jersey along with Vern Mogenson and John O’Keefe, and we were “tutored” by an old leftie from the UAW, whom I will here call “Ira,” grown cautious and skeptical even then as the AFL-CIO of today, who regaled us with stories of the nightlife and social occasions for the left in Newark, NJ, a veritable subculture of the left, in the 1930’s, when it was one of the East’s great manufacturing centers, “back in the day” for Ira. That was a bit before Cory Booker’s time, before the industries left or collapsed, leaving the pollution behind, before Newark’s version of Frank Rizzo took over, the riots of the 1960’s, and before Newark-Camden-Paterson formed an underclass inverted “brand” the opposite of Short Hills-Bernardsville-Princeton. But please, repeat after me, Kossacks: there is no such thing as “class” in America, just different stops on Hawthorne’s Celestial Railway all heading in one direction… That was what I saw at first. Then came the tactics and the platform, the sit-ins outside the Speaker’s office, siding with the Sunrise kids to place the Green New Deal before a startled Democratic Establishment and at first astonished nation. This was audacity itself. For ten years I had been writing about and calling for a “Green New Deal,” and for the last five it’s been stamped on my business card: “For a Green New Deal,” handed out right in the heart of Trump company in purple state Maryland. In a vast course correction to former Speaker Tip O’Neil’s “all politics is local,” he of the compromises with the opposite side of the spectrum, with the Reaganauts, all headed in one direction — to the Right — here was a brash not even sworn in young woman who was formulating a national program for the Democrats. The Democrats of corporate fiscal austerity and social causes now starkly challenged with an egalitarian economic ethos and political “parity” for Nature. (Yes, I’m tweaking the Farm Bureau’s foundational agricultural parity here.) This was unheard of, a comprehensive outline (to come out in print on February 7, 2019 in fourteen pages, the Green New Deal Resolution) which united economic causes left untouched since the unravelling of the Old New Deal coalition, and especially since the Great Recesssion of 2008-2009, joining overlooked frontline communities of race and gender short- changed by the tough realities of the 1930’s, and now joined to the great upper middle class reform stream of the environmental movement, even as some of the most established names there recoiled in shock, having been outflanked. By who? AOC? By what — the Sunshine movement? <blockquote> Not since Napoleon’s electrifying campaign in Italy (you remember that, fellow world citizen’s don’t you?) or Stonewall Jackson’s campaign in the Shenandoah Valley — or Patton’s race to save the besieged paratroopers at Bastogne — has such tactical brilliance been thrown forth — in civilian clothes on the battlefields of politics. </blockquote> I’m getting up a head of steam here readers, but I don’t want this to be a long posting, I’ve written my say on the First New Deal and the Green New Deal in August (Compass in the Storm), so let me finish the story here as succinctly as I can, given my limitations as a poor old white man who keeps looking for my privileges so as to check them at the door. Whatever they have given me over the years, some of them must still have been lost in the mail. Upon re-reading that NY Times story, several times, and looking at AOC’s concluding line, I think, and surely hope that it was more about the Times’ reporter putting her finger to wind as to the papers inclination of fear: away from Bernie and the left wind blowing across the old redoubts of the party. A party which has been so long in a crouch, so long in looking over their shoulder that David Roberts, the former Grist and now Vox reporter says they are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome: captive for more than 30 years of Market Fundamentalism, kept in a Neoliberal straight-jacket for the mind — and for big ideas which require a government more on the side of the people than the corporations. And sure enough, others, Cynthia Nixon from New York, the gutsy actress turned Cuomo challenger, caught the drift of this “hit” piece, and Truthdig did this follow-up, which puts it in perspective: <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ocasio-cortez-rejects-the-new-york-times-version-of-herself/" target="_blank">www.truthdig.com/...</a>and even The Hill was drawn into the “Taming” dialogue...<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/462054-ocasio-cortez-accuses-ny-times-of-dripping-condescension" target="_blank">thehill.com/</a>… <blockquote> For my part, I want the old AOC back, the one that fought for and lost the battle, before she was even sworn in, for that Standing Select Committee for the New Deal, with subpoena power - that Speaker Pelosi was so dismissive of — a tragic mistake for the party, the needs of the country, and perhaps the fate of Nature and the bottom 60%. I say that because we really do need the best minds in the country to work on a plan, in public, with input from all quarters and corners of the country, the sifting all the various streams from the great environmental rivers that have been flowing since the first Earth Day in 1970, and I can attest personally to how diverse they are. It took more than a hundred pages for the Climate Mobilization to set them down in their Victory Plan, here, <a href="https://www.theclimatemobilization.org/victory-plan" target="_blank">www.theclimatemobilization.org/...</a>a sample of what the thinking-out- loud presentations should have been in front of that committee and which also is contained in the methodology, if not all the choices put forth by editor Paul Hawkens in the book Drawdown ( 240 pages). The tragedy of this committee denial, strangled in the crib by Pelosi, is that it didn’t bind anyone in the party or the Congress to accept the Plan or policy recommendations at the end of the year long process — they would still have to be passed by the relevant legislative jurisdictions of the existing rules of Congress. More than anything else, this signaled the brittleness, the shallowness, the aimlessness of the Democrat’s Ancien Regime, their fear of having to rise to meet the challenge of developing a national vision and program. Indeed, it is the Green New Deal Resolution that still represents the most comprehensive and sweeping reform proposals ever put before the American People and “their” Congress — and the irony between the quotation can’t be jagged enough, bleed enough over these pages. </blockquote> I haven’t escaped unscathed from this struggle for the soul of the Democratic party. Right inside our Western Maryland Green New Deal coalition, we have been jostled by the same ups and down that the GND has suffered in the broader country, over the same time frame, with it being attacked by the left, right and center. So when I defended AOC from this NY Time’s restraining harness in an Email, a retired steelworker jumped on me for my pure “bullshit.” That hit more than a bit of a nerve with me, because in many of her speeches, in AOC’s tone of urgency and calls to action, backed up by the most comprehensive reform package in the nation’s history, I have witnessed the closest approximation to what I have been lambasting the AFL-CIO leadership for, for many Labor Day’s now, going back more than a decade. Where is the Labor Day speech that will go down in history with Lincoln’s at Gettysburg, King’s at the Tidal Pool, Wendell Berry’s Jefferson Lecture at the Kennedy Center in 20012...(yeah, read that one online...) <blockquote> At the very nadir of labor’s standing in the country, not only politically but culturally, in the paychecks, decimated pensions and shriveled share of the nation’s income and wealth, and the despairing, departing white working class falling for Trump the imposter, I have shouted that any national union leadership that can’t give a fiery speech over these conditions is captured lock stock and barrel by the Nancy Pelosi’s, Steny Hoyers, Larry Summers and EJ Dionne’s happy faces of this party and they have served their corporate leaning times long enough and ought to step off the stage. Get out of the way. AOC, a woman under 30, has delivered the speeches and tactics that all the old AFL-CIO “tough guys” can no longer dare to speak. </blockquote> And here’s the burning irony for someone from the steelworkers to toss my way: AOC is using the same tactics — sitdown, sitdown, sit-in, occupy — that the CIO first used to organize the mass production industries — that the AFL turned their noses up at — in the 1930’s. But she had to first let them loose against the leaders of the Democratic Party before employing them against the corporate powers which are harder to reach. And today, what is the AFL-CIO leadership doing? Attacking the Green New Deal, attacking universal healthcare and fueling their long-standing feuds with greens, defending, in other words, their old stakes and constituencies rather than speaking for all the unorganized in the service sectors, and the broader needs of their society — for the more universal good which this society so desperately needs. Not even the tens of thousands “Deaths of Despair” from their natural constituencies can get them to change their course. My steelworker friend/adversary also exclaimed “What has AOC done at the practical level for her constituents? Nothing.” Now we’ve been hearing this from the center of the party for a long time, the need to compromise with the hard Right to get even the smallest common denominator piece of legislation passed. It’s become a pipe dream, and all through the compromised years of Tip O’Neil, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama (collectively they got four presidential votes out of me — and I voted for Jesse Jackson in the ‘88 primary in NJ and his Rainbow early “intersectionality”) we have moved, the price of little splinters of compromise, steadily to the Right in terms of political possibility, until the physical facts on the ground in the paychecks and the incarcerations and the demonizations grew to such outrageous proportions that Bernie Sanders and his offshoots said “enough,” this is a crazy, losing strategy. To my steelworker, just what do you think Rep. AOC can get passed through this Congress to help her district? My answer is zero, which gives her all the more licence to raise the new vision built upon the oldest and most successful one the Democratic Party ever had — the New Deal, and FDR’s challenge to go further by enacting his Second Bill of Rights from 1944, which Brent McKee of the Living New Deal having just reminded us in Western Maryland that we have not passed, achieved, a single one those Rights denominated in that Great, forgotten speech. Senator Sanders said it was the foundation of his democratic socialism, and Senator Markey, co-author of the Green New Deal Resolution, said it informed the whole document without being explicity mentioned. I have the same question the young in the streets have posed in the great marches of their Climate Strike on Friday: if not now, under these conditions, when? I pose it to the Democratic Party and the fossils of thought at the AFL-CIO: if you can’t rise to the occasion, get out of the way. And I can see the need, just around the corner, the need for massive sitdowns, and sit-ins and massive arrests, to get “there,” to get to the vision in the Green New Deal. Ideally we want to do it at the polls, in a massive wave of hope and mobilization. But it may take more. Our very own history tells us that. And I thank AOC and the Sunrisers for reminding us of what the young men of the CIO once did in the 1930’s but apparently are not capable of doing today in their “Golden Years.” I have some explanations for the why of that...but I’m saving it for another time. Best to you all, and it’s time to rise to the occasion...with Ocasio-Cortez. Bill of Rights Frostburg, Md rss@dailykos.com (billofrights) AFL-CIO AlexandriaOcasio-Cortez AlleganyCountyMaryland BillGreider BrentMcKee Bronx CIO ClimateMoblization ClimateStrike DeborahMeier DemocraticParty drawdown DSA DSOC FranklinDelanoRoosevelt GreenNewDeal insidethebeltway IrvingHowe KevinPhillips larrysummers livingnewdeal Maryland massproduction MattTaibbi MichaelHarrington MollyIvins NancyPelosi NaomiKlein NewDeal NewYorkTimes nursesunion PaulHawken Queens RedStates RepublicanRight RevolvingDoor SecondBillofRights sitdownstrikes steelworkers StenyHoyer SunshineMovement TrumpCountry truthdig victoryplan WPAart WPAposters youngmen _1887010 Sun, 22 Sep 2019 17:25:01 +0000 In MD, Solar Farms struggle with the symbolism and myths of Farmers and Farmland: Illusions Abound https://www.dailykos.com/story/2019/9/13/1885231/-In-MD-Solar-Farms-struggle-with-the-symbolism-and-myths-of-Farmers-and-Farmland-Illusions-Abound Dear Citizens and Elected Officials: Introduction: I am hoping that what follows below — an editorial by a solar industry advocate in Maryland, and my own reaction to it — will be relevant to many other Eastern states. In far Western Maryland, Allegany and Garrett counties, places which are more rural red state Trump country than purple state Maryland in general, we also have, in addition to farmland, thousands of acres of partially restored (and not so restored) former coal mine sites. Yet we have yet to land a major solar generating facility, despite state laws and regulation that would seem to encourage efforts like “community solar” and an ambitious state timetable for more alternative energy. So this morning, I am sharing a brief letter I sent to some good fellow citizens working on this issue, trying to get more solar in a region built on coal, with Governor Larry Hogan, the Republican moderate, pushing more extensive dependence on fracked gas. And not appointing any conservationists to his newly created solar siting Board. And after my own comments, I’m posting the full text of the editorial which triggered it. To complete the picture for Kossacks, I’ve been immersed over the past week or so in researching the rural/ag policies of the Sanders and Warren campaigns. The more I read, the more I felt I needed context and perspective, to fit them into the flow of American ag policy history, from at least the New Deal to the present. So this transcends the local and even the purely agricultural. I’ve long maintained that the history of American agriculture, of farms and farming, is a great window into the nature of capitalism itself, all its glories of production, and all the pain and consequences of the costs of its “creative destruction”: in this case, of small farmers themselves — and to the health of the Nature which makes it all possible. And to its great hypocrisies: how dependent it has been on government subsidies, of all types. And no segment of the economy has outdone American agriculture, or farmers, in federal and state support programs, all the while proclaiming its rugged Jeffersonian individualism and denouncing government “regulations.” Ok, have a good read… best, Bill of Rights, Frostburg, MD Good morning. It's hard to disagree with this editorial found below. I do get tired of the at least partly insincere desire to protect farmland, thrown up as an obstacle to solar. Never underestimate the creative imagination of NIMBY's. To be clear: we should not lose any of the top quality soils to solar; for the poorest soils in low productivity ag use, that's another story. And there is another way to look at our "farm" situation. If it's ever a question of other related land uses, let's take a look at the "nature" of suburban lawns, the "Crabgrass Frontier," whose acreage is staggering. In the Chesapeake Bay Watershed alone, it's a whopping 3.8 million acres, which far exceeds the total "official" farmland acreage in the whole state, which in 2012 was 2,030,745 acres, in 12,256 farms averaging 166 acres in size. <a href="https://chesapeakestormwater.net/2009/06/the-grass-crop-of-the-chesapeake-bay-watershed/" target="_blank" title="">https://chesapeakestormwater.net/2009/06/the-grass-crop-of-the-chesapeake-bay-watershed/</a> Two additional perspectives: the way lawns are handled, they are pollution sources of both nutrients and toxins. I don't have to explain that further to this audience. Cleared of those maltreatments, the vast extent of suburban lawns means we should never have to worry about having enough land, in theory or practice, to feed this nation, and others too. And, although it will be hard and more expensive to link up individual modest solar fields potentially sited on them, the scope of this suburban lawn acreage means that, in a crisis or in answering the question, is there "room for solar?"...just look at those acreage figures. One of the difficulties in talking about agriculture, food and pollution is, again, the sheer sentimentality surrounding the words farms and farmers. As part of my research, background into comparing the ag policies of Sanders vs Warren, I came across this mainstream analysis (below) of American farm policy since the New Deal. It comes from the Clinton era, and further strips away the illusions surrounding those heritage words. Its frame of analysis is mainstream economics, the nature of public interventions into supply and demand dynamics, which are more complex than just those two words can convey. (Consumers and processors, and distributors all have a say...but not in proportion to their numbers...) It does not offer a Wendell Berry perspective (hardly, quite an understatement) and it is chronologically out of step with the later rise of the organic, sustainable farming movement. But that broad and diverse movement has lost out, mostly, in the grand political power struggles which shape our major farm bills: the bell-weather word "rigged" comes to mind...but if only the votes of the 2-3 million actual farmers count, alternative ag would lose anyhow. So the dynamics in this Federal Reserve article covering the years 1933-1996, do address the main forces alternative ag is still losing too. And explains why: in general, family farms are better off than the national median income and have access to, or drive, powerful lobbies, like the Farm Bureau, (and probably are one source for the shock troops of the Tea Party. ) A shock to me, and... (good local alternative farmer name deleted) please take note of this for what it is worth, the author, an ag economist, of whom I've met quite a few, maintains that the driver of the Conservation Reserve Program was the great land and price deflation in the farming "heartland" in 1985-1986, not concern for soil practices and impacts on Nature. What do we have here? A Federal Reserve mainstreamer sounding like any vulgar old Marxist in his economic determinism. I'll stop here. This is a good basic read, still: <a href="https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/farm-bills-and-farmers-the-effects-of-subsidies-over-time#" target="_blank" title="">https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/farm-bills-and-farmers-the-effects-of-subsidies-over-time#</a> Bill of Rights rss@dailykos.com (billofrights) alleganycounty alternativeagriculture AlternativeEnergy backtotheland BernieSanders ChesapeakeBay ChesapeakeBayFoundation crabgrassfrontier davidmurray ElizabethWarren FarmBureau Farmers farmpolicy Farms garrettcounty Government LarryHogan lawns MarylandMatters moderaterepublican nutrientpollution OrganicFarming PresidentialCampaign roomforsolar RuralAmerica RuralRedStateAmerica SolarEnergy solarsiting Subsidies TeaParty TrumpCountry WendellBerry _1885231 Fri, 13 Sep 2019 13:15:13 +0000 Little Blue Pockets in the Bluegrass State: Inside the progressive fight for Kentucky governor https://www.dailykos.com/story/2019/9/5/1882072/-Little-Blue-Pockets-in-the-Bluegrass-State-Inside-the-progressive-fight-for-Kentucky-governor On Nov. 4, Kentuckians will vote for their next governor. Attorney General Andy Beshear—who beat out state Rep. Rocky Adkins and former state auditor Adam Edelen in the May 21 Democratic primary—is challenging the Republican incumbent, Matt Bevin. Phenomenal efforts are underway by progressive groups statewide to ensure Beshear wins, and in a red state such as Kentucky, that requires activating as many <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/story/2018/11/13/1812706/-/" target="_blank">Little Blue Pockets</a> as possible. Despite Mitch McConnell’s success and Kentucky’s recent presidential election track record, this red state has not always been a sure thing for the GOP when it comes to downticket elections. Kentucky and the Democratic Party have a long history together. For 95 years, Democrats controlled the state House, and usually the governorship. Republicans officially took control of the state legislature in 2017, electing a GOP speaker of the House. This turnover in Kentucky cemented Republican control over every state legislature in the South. A bipartisan tug of war continues within the state, however—and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-flip-deep-red-kentucky-house-seat-republicans/story?id=53245391">Democrats just reclaimed a state House seat</a> in 2018 in a district Trump won by 72%! But why stop there? rss@dailykos.com (Erin Tulley) 2020 AmyMcGrath AndyBeshear Appalachia Bevin canvass Democrats Elections2019 Elections2020 ForwardKentucky GOP Governor Kentucky knowledgeispower KTFC KYlege Lexington LittleBluePockets Louisville MattBevin MitchMcConnell MoscowMitch OlegDeripaska PhoneBank Recommended Redstate Republicans Russia SteveBeshear TrumpCountry VotingRights WorkingAmerica _1882072 Thu, 05 Sep 2019 15:15:03 +0000 Violent South Carolina woman known as 'Pool Patrol Paula' pleads guilty to assaulting black teen https://www.dailykos.com/story/2018/12/12/1818712/-Violent-SC-woman-known-as-Pool-Patrol-Paula-pleads-guilty-to-assaulting-black-teenager A white South Carolina woman won’t stand trial for charges filed in June, after <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/6/27/1776013/--Pool-Patrol-Paula-assaults-15-year-old-boy-then-pushes-and-bites-deputies-sent-to-arrest-her" target="_blank" title="">a viral video showed her shrieking at and striking a black fifteen-year-old boy</a> whom she deemed unwelcome at her suburban pool. Stephanie Sebby-Strempel, 38, of Summerville, <a href="https://www.live5news.com/2018/12/10/lowcountry-woman-pleads-guilty-assault-community-pool-captured-viral-video/" target="_blank" title="">pleaded guilty to third-degree misdemeanor assault</a> for the attack on Darshaun “DJ” RocQuemore Simmons at the Reminisce community pool, where DJ and two other friends were invited guests. Her sentence? A paltry $1,000 fine, with ten days to pay it. Sebby-Strempel, of course, faced other punishment for her foul behavior, which included racial slurs and other insults lobbed at not just DJ, but two of his unnamed friends.<a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/roden-fields-fires-woman-dubbed-pool-patrol-paula-racist-tirade-assault-black-teens-pool-185855003.html" target="_blank" title=""> She lost her job at a multi-level marketing company,</a> such as it was. Since she’s now internet-famous for bigotry and violence, her uncommon name will forever be linked to both her mugshot and coverage of this foul act of racism—not to mention <a href="http://abcnews4.com/news/local/summerville-woman-charged-with-assaulting-boy-at-community-pool-assaulting-deputies" target="_blank" title="">her subsequent biting attack on the officers who came to arrest her.</a> But what about offline consequences, out of the courts and in her own neighborhood? The blind hatred and privilege, as well as the arrogance and utter disrespect required to fuel such an attack might seem unusual to many. But, as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/02/feature/the-trump-effect-how-a-norm-scrambling-presidency-is-changing-the-way-one-s-c-subdivision-talks-about-race/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0c44d9cfad2f" target="_blank">Washington Post reports</a>, in this fast-growing Charleston suburb in a county of 156,000, the necessary mindsets are not unusual at all. According to the must-read in-depth journey into the Reminisce subdivision, and Summerville itself, published in September, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/02/feature/the-trump-effect-how-a-norm-scrambling-presidency-is-changing-the-way-one-s-c-subdivision-talks-about-race" target="_blank" title="">Sebby-Strempel actually didn’t face much shaming around her neighborhood.</a> Instead, many of the locals took her side. rss@dailykos.com (Jessica Sutherland) AfricanAmerican Assault Bigot Bigotry Black Charleston DonaldTrump Guilty Hate Racism Racist SebbyStrempel SouthCarolina southern Southerners StephanieSebbyStrempel summerville TheSouth trump TrumpCountry Violence Violent White _1818712 Thu, 13 Dec 2018 01:12:00 +0000 Little Blue Pockets can be found in almost every red state. How can we help them grow for 2020? https://www.dailykos.com/story/2019/8/29/1812706/-Little-Blue-Pockets-can-be-found-in-almost-every-red-state-How-can-we-help-them-grow-for-2020 I don’t usually write about myself, and I don’t plan on doing it often, but I hope you’ll join me on this little journey before I get where I’m going. *** Long before I drove cross-country to California, I lived a downright lovely couple dozen years in Cleveland, Ohio. We Clevelanders fancy ourselves the bluest part of an embarrassingly unreliable swing state. My elder liberals back home cling tightly to a history that includes electing both <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2017/11/a_historic_look_at_former_clev.html" target="_blank" title="">the nation’s first black mayor, Carl Stokes,</a> and a certain boy mayor named Dennis Kucinich. But just as the well-loved <a href="https://m.clevescene.com/cleveland/the-king-of-spin/Content?oid=1503534" target="_blank" title="">Kucinich is far more problematic than my hometown tends to recall or acknowledge,</a> Ohio is inconsistent; even my beloved blue county has little pockets where, by age 10, I knew <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/30/us/integration-proves-elusive-in-an-ohio-suburb.html" target="_blank" title="">people of color were particularly unwelcome. </a> I suppose those little pockets of hate exist everywhere; I haven’t been everywhere, so I’m hesitant to make such a bold assertion. Yet as many places, including my beloved Buckeye State, turn redder with each election, it’s no longer appropriate to call those scary places “little pockets” anymore. I call ‘em hate zones. The media calls them “red states” and “Trump country.” But as the dust settled from the 2018 midterms, I kept finding these little blue pockets in these red states. And they make me happy. They make me hopeful. rss@dailykos.com (Jessica Sutherland) 2020 Democrats DonaldTrump DoSomething Election2020 letsdothis LittleBluePockets NC09 NorthCarolina Ohio Oklahoma Progressives Recommended teameffort TrumpCountry Unite _1812706 Thu, 29 Aug 2019 15:15:06 +0000