Will the so-called blue wave that struck American politics on Tuesday, November 7, 2017 continue into the 2018 elections? Will Missouri’s 2^nd Congressional District, currently represented by right-wing Republican Ann Wagner, factor in? I had an opportunity to preview that election last night, when the four Democratic candidates hoping to face off with Wagner held a forum and talked about the issues they would run on. I’ve met each of the candidates at other events, but this format really allowed them to get into the nitty-gritty of their positions.

This article will not attempt to document the evening, but to highlight ideas that stood out to me–especially those of Kelli Dunaway. It was an evening packed with competition, bold ideas, and one major surprise.

The candidates (in ballot order) are Kelli Dunaway, Mark Osmack, Cort VanOstran, and Bill Haas. The Candidate Forum was sponsored by MO 2^nd District For Change and was moderated by a League of Women Voters representative.

Kelli Dunaway had a great night, and here are the highlights of her comments. (I’ll be paraphrasing most of the time.)

When asked what her path to victory against Ann Wagner would be if she won the primary, she said that the path to victory is very narrow and that it wasn’t about one candidate but about all of us – it would take the energy, money, and time of every person in the room.

Dunaway shared that the health insurance provided to her mother – a coal miner – allowed her to recover from a crippling car accident at age 17 because she got the operations, rehab, and equipment she needed so she could walk again for only $200 out of pocket. They were poor, but the insurance was good. Now, as a mother of two with a great job, she has the “good” health insurance of today, but she still has a bill for $1000 for tests sitting on her counter. She may be able to afford that bill, but most people cannot. That’s not good enough.

On the environment, Dunaway observed that in Missouri, the clean energy industry is creating twice as many jobs as traditional industries. Missouri, she warned, can choose to lead on energy and create jobs, or can fall further behind.  (I looked up data on this when I got home, and it’s probably more than “twice as much.”)

As the night went on, Dunaway’s message got even stronger and clearer.

On guns – Dunaway declared that any parent who leaves out a gun that a kid finds and uses to kill someone should go to prison. It’s the parent’s fault. Prison.

Dunaway said she’d eliminate limits on Social Security and legalize marijuana and then “I’d tax the crap out of it.” And then Dunaway really let it rip.

When asked about Citizens United, Dunaway said that “Money in politics is disgusting,” and that even once elected, the money keeps coming in to candidates – influencing them. The only way to have fair elections is to have publicly financed campaigns. Until then, she says, nothing is going to change.

On trade, Dunaway argued that TPP or no TPP, free trade or more trade or less trade, nothing will change until Americans are willing to pay more for things and “stop buying things for $5 at Wal-Mart.”

On K-12 education Dunaway asserted that it isn’t fair that her kids get a better education because they happen to live in an area with higher-income earners.

On college education she noted that the cost going to the college she attended had increased by 300% in 20 years, but the value of the education hasn’t kept pace with the cost. She predicted this to be the next bubble to burst in  our economy

On women’s reproductive rights, Dunaway was not shy about her frustration that Ann Wagner is currently making news saying Satanists promote abortion, and that old, white men were still deciding what women could and could not do. “We need to elect better people,” and (paraphrasing) “This is 2017! Women have to make sure that we matter. Because right now, we don’t.”

Dunaway was the last candidate to deliver a closing statement.

She started out by vowing to fight for women’s rights every day and then declared (paraphrasing) “It makes me angry when Bill Haas says he hopes Van Ostran spends a million dollars on the primary, because this race is not about any one of us (the candidates). It is about the fact that our nation and our state are in peril.” She claimed only one person on the stage would be able to face Ann Wagner and win.

Then she dropped the bombshell. She withdrew from the race.

“I do not see a path to victory for me,” she said. You could hear a pin drop. She withdrew. Everyone was stunned. It was stunning. The forum ended with the entire room gave her a standing ovation for her truth telling.

I apologize for not covering the other candidates’ remarks, but this was the moment of the night, and Dunaway was the person of the night. She showed up to say things that needed to be said to inspire everyone, including her many disappointed supporters.

On an editorial note – throughout the evening all four candidates had memorable moments, had detailed policy positions, and espoused American and Democratic values. Overall, Bill Haas seemed dismissive of the other candidates, saying several times that, based on his record, he was going to win the primary. This didn’t sit well with the audience. Dunaway was focused on her message and imminent departure. Osmack and VanOstran both shined as the new passionate, thoughtful, and skilled Democratic candidates they are.

Get up, get out to support a candidate, and vote in 2018. Let’s be a part of a political blue wave.

The post Could a blue wave come ashore in Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District? Hints from a Candidate Forum appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Joe – Thank you. Your panel discussion of the Berkley/Antifa/Snowflake “controversy” reminded me why of I don’t watch morning news programs. It is too annoying to work all day while I’m debating with you in my head.

It is simultaneously humorous and frustrating that the newfound awareness of the “Antifa” is instant Republican fodder.

Conveniently, now in the “Summer of Trump 2017” – the conservative media is eager to focus on the very few liberals who are violent – picking up on the NRA’s narrative du jour. Now, thanks to the “Antifa’s” actions, Republicans can choose not to face the well-organized and entrenched evil of white supremacy in America or how it is now the true, active, and very public base of the Republican Party because of a very few liberals who gained notoriety.

I always denounce threatening words and threatening actions and physical violence regardless of the source. But I know that this white nationalist threat exists in every corner of the US. I don’t live in a bubble. The people who ignore this hateful reality are in the ones in a bubble. And the people who discuss it so glibly are the “mentally stunted”.

I’m 48 years old and in my lifetime, I have heard no condemnation of racism by Republicans that is backed up by action. Democrats haven’t done enough either. But I have never seen Republicans call for more thorough investigations and prosecutions when synagogues and mosques targeted and burned or when white pro-life activists threaten the lives of doctors and commit assault against legally operating abortion providers.

Republican politicians consistently turn a blind eye when it suits them – further infantilizing the white working class by not owning up to their support of systemic racism in our communities and our culture.

But I’m in a liberal bubble. Sigh.

A few Republican politicians have come forward to denounce the KKK, but have you debated on your show why they likely won’t change laws to actually protect people and why they certainly won’t change the policies that continue to keep people divided by race? Until they do that, violence will increase, because they are pitting us against each other.

Then, Joe, you talked about law and order. Again – do you hear that? That’s the echo of the right-wing echo-chamber messaging.

Did you care when, earlier this year, a 2006 Department of Homeland Security study was reported to find that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers”?  And that white supremacists were “avoiding overt displays of their beliefs” to gain “employment with law enforcement agencies”?

Did you or any other Republican object when Trump gave the DOJ direction to stop pursuing terrorism investigations by Neo-Nazis and only focus on Islamic terrorists? I heard crickets from my bubble. That was a clear-as-day green light for Neo-Nazis and a signal that law enforcement would once again turn a blind eye to crimes against minorities and our democracy.

It was a far cry from the small progress made at the DOJ to fairly represent people equally under the law during Obama’s administration, which Republicans were chomping at the bit to undo. Did any Republicans fight for racial equality during the confirmation process of Trump’s nominees? No. They stuck together and marched in almost perfect time, happy to remove so many African-Americans from leadership positions.

It’s a sad day for me when I realize that even my “moderate” Republican friends, who are similar to you, will ignore all that and just be glad to jump on Antifa actions and smear liberals, while only reservedly shaking their heads and give a quiet “oh, jeez, that’s terrible” at violence by bad white cops or atrocious white nationalists.

And, oh! The “free speech” hand-wringing from you and your panel about right-leaning speakers who were supposedly deprived of their first amendment rights and the fate of liberal college students.

Fake News Alert! A college cancelling a speaker is not “limiting their free speech.” These well-financed and well-represented speech-givers have ample media outlets, the internet, podcasts, and more. What the universities are taking away is money and promotion and their name. And that is within their rights.

The people and students protesting aren’t limiting free speech. They are rejecting the content of that speech. And that protest is their free speech!

Of course, there should be no violence – but your faux concern about free speech – please. Republicans just don’t like it when people tell them they aren’t wanted. They can’t seem to handle rejection (i.e. reality) as well as us liberal snowflakes.

And – it keeps making me laugh – your offer to send “some people” to help Berkeley protect the Alt Right demonstrators? Forgive me – I must have missed it – did you offer to send some people to Charlottesville to protect the Jews and Christians in their places of worship? Did you send “some people” to protect protesters in Ferguson? In Baltimore? Funny how you want to protect the Alt Right’s rights, isn’t it?

When the organizer of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march, Jason Kessler, wanted to give a press conference after the unfortunate events that weekend, he was provided a microphone and the press was waiting for him – with bated breath – ready to report his free speech to the world.

Kessler was shouted down by an opponent and then complained that free speech is dead. Someone stole the spot light during his moment of hateful glory. Boo hoo hoo! Talk about a snowflake. Racists and their supporters have been shouting down and taking away the mic from black people for decades.

Actually Joe, free speech is not dead in Berkeley because of liberals – it just doesn’t ONLY belong to Republicans.

I know, Joe, you are smarter than me – reading the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times – as a child. RME. You are more elitist than me. You are slicker than me. Your hair stands taller than mine. But I’m not living in a bubble because I don’t want to listen to right wing ideology. I hear it, I see it, and I reject it.

(Sources: NRA.com, Reuters, Intercept/IBT, Morning Joe)

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Throughout my entire adult life, my Republican friends insisted GOP policies were not racist: the laws are the same for everyone; let people pick themselves up out of poverty; there are poor white people too! As a white person myself, I wanted to believe this. I wanted to believe in a just government.

When I was young, I lived in Philadelphia. During a full decade of my life, I saw how the Move conflict developed because of race and ended in the bombing of a home full of black men, women, and children.

My father’s family were Texas farmers, and when I traveled to visit them in the slowly dying town of Nevada, TX, we passed through nearby Greenville – as you drove through this small town in the early 1980s, a banner hung across the road that read “The blackest land and the whitest people.”

Everywhere I lived and every state I have visited – it has been the same: in both the city and in the country I saw first hand that, no matter what, white people always had the advantage.

I saw the effect with my own eyes as I grew up – I knew people didn’t like to hire blacks, and that made it harder for them to earn a living. But I didn’t know that the federal government told banks not to invest in black neighborhoods. I didn’t know insurance underwriting was priced along racial lines. I didn’t know developments were authorized as long as they would not allow black residents.

My family moved to the suburbs to send my sister and me to good public schools. City schools were not good – like in so many cities.  Because we were white, it was relatively easy to build on our assets and leave the city.  I don’t remember one black person in my neighborhood. They lived across “City Line”, in Philadelphia.

My friends and relatives understood that slavery and racism was wrong in the abstract. But it did not seem to help them understand the full weight of racism on black people and communities. They didn’t see it with their own eyes. Or they turned away from it. It just was the way it was.

In my teen years, when Reagan attacked welfare using the “black welfare queen” idea, and I passed through black neighborhoods in Philly, I could see that was a big fat lie. No one was getting “rich”. It was harsh, depressing, and hopeless.

It is easy to believe the lie. With no real experience about black communities, it is easy to believe the political slogans and to blame black people for “their choices”. But “their choices” were our choices. Their conditions and limited opportunities were a product of our laws and social norms. And so poverty and all that comes with it deepens.

For 50 years Republican policies have successfully limited the black community and kept them “in their place”. But their anti-labor/anti-education/pro-big agra agendas, which unrelentingly include tax write-offs and benefits for the wealthy, have also slowly drained white working class communities of their opportunity and modest savings. They have drained poor white communities of hope.

And so, poor whites who may or may not have known or cared about the discriminatory policies of our government of the past century cry out, “What about us?”

And rightfully so.

Single issue voters have given Republican ideology so much power that now the GOP has openly abandoned even whites, especially poor ones.

Keeping people poor limits their choices and their voices.

Make no mistake. The African-American community has been silenced again and again by their poverty and their lack of options. Now the white people in Missouri and across the nation are also being silenced the same way. They are feeling the increasing pinch of the powerful removing their opportunity and freedom.  GOP policies will only make this situation worse for struggling white voters.

The recently failed Republican healthcare bills are evidence of this. Instead of actually solving problems, they continue to carry on with an ideology that provides healthcare to those who can afford it. If you can’t, it’s your own fault or it is okay you are left behind.

The GOP in so many states, including Missouri, has voted against making healthcare affordable or expanding Medicaid, has voted against infrastructure projects with decent wages, against retraining, against innovative businesses that bring new opportunities, and against education – the only way out of poverty for many. What have they really done to help the white working class avoid sinking into debt, illness, and poverty? I would argue nothing or very little.

It’s not the blacks or the Mexicans that are draining the system away from us and toward those in power. It is lobbyists and strategists and politicians.

It’s time for people of all races, Republicans and Democrats alike, to come together and demand change that benefits everyone. Not just ourselves. Not just the people at the top. Everyone.

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