2020 Democratic Primary Thread: Focus on House & Senate races
- Thread starter mc_brew
- Start date
damn amy with 30k more votes than warren 
klobuchar got more than biden and warren combined
if she can hang in a few more rounds she might be a problem...
klobuchar got more than biden and warren combined
if she can hang in a few more rounds she might be a problem...
This pick is going to be the most examined VP pick in recent memory, due to Bernie's age and recent heart issue.
That's why I wonder about Pete. I expect a lot of arm twisting down the line to get him on the ticket.
Interesting times. Mayor Pete would inherit the presidency.
any of the moderate republicans who wouldve switched already did or they not voting (and its not a lot of em 
)
bringing romney in would just be a bad call, you dont want a VP whos that conservative on social issues jeopardizing your liberal - and for sanders left - base
)bringing romney in would just be a bad call, you dont want a VP whos that conservative on social issues jeopardizing your liberal - and for sanders left - base
Gotta cut the snakes from ya team. Too many Nap's in your support group
If I were still a Warren supporter I wouldn't acknowledge anyone who didn't understand the corruption and fraud that took place during the 2008 recession. That should've been the red line considering we're on the brink of a new recession. It would've been the easiest way to charge the base up, educate them on issues, and get them believing in your vision. "We're throwing all y'all in jail" should've been the slogan.
Not sure. Hasan just posted it.Man she had so much momentum. I thinks she’s a great politician but she’s made some weird decisions lately. She has to be perfect during her campaign to make it to the end and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
She’s kind of damned if she does and damned if doesn’t go at Bernie though.
who is that twitter poster anyway?People be posting stuff on twitter for clout.
See my last post. She needs to take Amy out the game.
I know as a progressive this is borderline sacrilegious but I miss Obama
Pull Up the Roots
Breakfast for dinner.
The difference is that the Sunrise movement, Our Revolution and National Nurses United are 501(c)4 groups that can raise unlimited amounts of dark-money. WFP and PCCC are not. And can't. Her whole thing was about SuperPACS. PCCC has an affiliate group though that is (c)4 but they aren't promoting her campaign.
We've been here before man. This is why Klobuchar and Pete continue to win. Hillary supporters, who Warren needs, don't care about PACs.
Stop making this argument for people who don't care about us.
Our mission is much more than electing Bernie Sanders. Our members have elected nearly 250 candidates to local office and Congress; we’ve passed over 50 ballot measures and local ordinances to expand affordable housing, voting rights and racial equity; and we’ve amplified the voices of progressives in state and local Democratic parties controlled by corporate interests.
Those who claim that Our Revolution is anything other than independent of the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign insult our grassroots members who are doing the hard work necessary to transform our broken system.
Our adversaries mischaracterize us as a “dark money” group controlled by corporations and the wealthy. That is simply laughable. We are advancing “Medicare for All,” “Green New Deal” and other policies that are the opposite of corporate profiteering.
The truth is that regular people fund us. In 2018, 98.6% of our fundraising came from over 107,000 people whose average gift was $20.04. Organizing people and pooling their resources is the only way to defeat the power and influence of the wealthy in America.
Fact Check: Does Bernie Sanders Get Support From Big-Money Super PACs?
Those who claim that Our Revolution is anything other than independent of the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign insult our grassroots members who are doing the hard work necessary to transform our broken system.
Our adversaries mischaracterize us as a “dark money” group controlled by corporations and the wealthy. That is simply laughable. We are advancing “Medicare for All,” “Green New Deal” and other policies that are the opposite of corporate profiteering.
The truth is that regular people fund us. In 2018, 98.6% of our fundraising came from over 107,000 people whose average gift was $20.04. Organizing people and pooling their resources is the only way to defeat the power and influence of the wealthy in America.
Fact Check: Does Bernie Sanders Get Support From Big-Money Super PACs?
The Pro-Sanders Groups
It’s unclear which pro-Sanders organizations Warren was referring to when she said that only she and Klobuchar were running without super PAC support—the Warren campaign did not respond to Sludge’s requests for comment. Some, including myself, assumed she was referring to the super PAC of National Nurses Union, a California-based union. Others thought she meant Our Revolution, which is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, not a super PAC. Still more theorized that she may have been referring to nine supporting organizations, mostly small operations representing young and working-class people and people of color. Perhaps, she meant all of these groups.
National Nurses United
The California-based nurses’ union National Nurses United endorsed Sanders and reported spending roughly $70,000 in late 2019 on placards and t-shirts through its affiliated super PAC. The group has not reported making any independent expenditures so far this year. Unlike traditional super PACs, the union’s PAC is funded mostly with member dues from the union itself. It also received $14,700 from Reclaim Chicago PAC, a progressive group that spends money on Illinois state elections and has endorsed Sanders.
The nurses’ union backed Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary as well, and a February 2016 article quotes National Nurses United Director RoseAnn DeMoro as saying, “It’s not a super PAC. It basically lacks the appropriate definition at the FEC.” She told Time that her group was fully funded by its members. “We don’t take outside money from anyone,” she said.
On Jan. 30, nine progressive groups announced a collaboration called People Power for Bernie. The groups, which include the Sunrise Movement, racial justice organization Dream Defenders, and immigrant rights group Make the Road Action, are combining forces to knock on doors, text and call potential voters, and organize on college campuses and online to help get out the vote. The groups, which “represent a total of 2.2 million primarily Black, Brown and working people and young people,” according to a press release, hope to mobilize 1.4 million voters in early-voting states, swing states, and large Super Tuesday states.
Here are these groups, some of which formed super PACs in order to spend directly on politics.
Sunrise Movement
“We realized in 2018 that because of the way our election laws work, forbidding traditional nonprofits from engaging in elections, that doing any work in support of politicians and political candidates meant we would need a PAC of our own,” said O’Hanlon. “We have it so that passionate young people can get involved to help elect Green New Deal champions across the country, and fight back against the millions of dollars in PAC money flowing to politicians from the oil industry and right wing billionaires to block climate action.”
Sunrise PAC is a traditional PAC that can also make independent expenditures. Formed in March 2018, it has no full-time staff. The PAC has received most of its funding, $400,000, from the Sunrise movement, which is a 501(c)(4) youth-led group that works to promote the urgency of addressing climate change. An additional $86,000 has come from individual donations, most of which were under $1,000. The PAC had reported making $49,000 worth of independent expenditures benefiting Sanders as of the date of publication. Unlike traditional super PACs, which typically log ad production and placements costs, Sunrise’s IE reports detail meals, lodging, gas, staff time, as well as some small Facebook ad purchases.
O’Hanlon contrasted the Sunrise PAC spending with that of more traditional super PACs.
“None of that money went to slick TV ad makers, and none of it came from secretive right-wing billionaires, unlike the enormous amounts of cash pushed into Super PAC’s on behalf of corrupt, fossil fuel-funded politicians,” he said. “Our grassroots-funded and entirely youth-run operation just exists to help young people knock on doors, make calls, distribute Green New Deal campaign literature, and send texts to boost our candidates nationwide who will fight for our generation.”
Dream Defenders
The Florida-based Dream Defenders is a racial justice group formed in 2012 after the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was racially profiled and killed by George Zimmerman. One of the co-founders, Philip Agnew, is a Sanders campaign surrogate and spoke at rallies in Iowa before last week’s caucuses.
The group launched its super PAC, Dream Defenders Fight, in late November 2019. It has spent roughly $22,000 on independent expenditures, mostly backing Sanders. Of the $60,000 it has raised, $25,000 came from the Movement Voter Project, a group that helps donors support “the best and most promising LOCAL community-based organizations in key states with a focus on youth and communities of color,” $22,500 came from the Indivisible Project, a group founded “to resist the Trump agenda,” and $10,000 came from progressive philanthropist Rachel Gelman.
Nailah Summers, communications director of the Dream Defenders, told Sludge about the group’s super PAC’s organizing efforts.
“We’re knocking doors, phone banking, throwing events in communities all over Florida,” she said. “One of our organizers is from Sanford, Florida and he’s putting together a basketball tournament called ‘Ballin’ for Bernie’ there. We’re throwing events on campuses at HBCUs and most of the major colleges in Florida. We’re sending a bus of our members to canvass for Bernie in South Carolina ahead of their primary.”
In contrast to traditional super PACs funded by corporate executives, Summers said, Dream Defenders is “an organization of young, working-class Black and Brown people learning to use the political tools that have been available to these entities that have unlimited resources for at least a decade. We’re not in Washington, we aren’t career campaigners, no one over here interned for the DNC or anything. We’re a bunch of young people in the South directly impacted by the games these politicians and their camps play.
“We are an organization made up of young, working-class people of color,” Summers continued. “Our organization is run by young black women. We are immigrants and people affected by the criminal justice system. Many of us don’t have insurance. We’ve got queer, gender-non-conforming and trans members. We’ve got members taking care of their aging family members. We’ve got people in our organization working 2 and 3 jobs. We live in superfund sites. We’re pretty much all drowning in student debt. Our lives are deeply, deeply affected by who wins this election. We are fighting for our safety, for our livelihoods, for the families we represent. We are keenly aware of what the stakes are in this election. So no, it isn’t fair to lump us in with the likes of Wall Street or billionaires who want to maintain the status quo. It’s because of the status quo that we’re in this mess and we have a vested interest in dismantling it.”
This is the first time that Dream Defenders has endorsed a presidential candidate.
Center for Popular Democracy Action
Center for Popular Democracy Action, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit arm of the progressive organizing group Center for Popular Democracy, formed its Popular Democracy PAC last month so it could make independent expenditures in the presidential race. The Center for Popular Democracy “works to create equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy,” according to its website.
The PAC has spent $19,500 so far on canvassing for Sanders. Because it was so recently formed, it hasn’t reported the names of its donors, but the group told Sludge that it is raising money from small donations, other individual contributions, and other organizations.
“There is a dangerous false equivalency that equates Super PACs that corporations and billionaires set up to ensure that the political deck continues to be stacked in their favor, and efforts like ours,” Natalia Salgado, political director at Center for Popular Democracy Action, told Sludge. “When evaluating independent expenditures, one must ask the question: is this effort meant to keep power in the hands of billionaires and the corporate elite, or is it meant to bring people who have been historically left out of the political system in? When you look at efforts backing Biden and Buttigieg, you see Wall Street bankers, you see the credit card industry, you see billionaires who are willing to wade into politics if it means that it will help them to keep their billions and their power.
“We are sick of the stranglehold that millionaires, billionaires and big corporations have on our economy and our democracy,” said Salgado. “We’re flooding the streets with real people—Black and Brown people and communities affected by the harmful impacts of the current administration. It takes money to mobilize our communities, and that’s why we’re raising and spending money through the structures set up and called Super PACs.”
People’s Action
Membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit People’s Action is a “national network of state & local grassroots power-building organizations” representing 1.3 million members that fights for a clean environment, health care for all, housing justice, and free college, according to its website. It has spent $13,500 on canvassing, phone banking, literature, and staff time backing Sanders. It is in the process of creating a hybrid PAC/Super PAC that can devote all of its resources to electoral politics. The group is reallocating $100,000 that it raised before endorsing Sanders to its independent expenditure effort, and it has also raised a few thousand dollars in small donations specifically for the effort.
“Our members in the multiracial working class will not be told to sit on the sidelines when white supremacy, corporate power, and the climate crisis are all reaching a boiling point,” Derrick Crowe, communications and digital director of People’s Action, told Sludge. “We are spending no funds on TV ads. Ninety percent of our money goes to salaries for organizers who mobilize volunteers to talk with voters, especially Black, Latinx, and API voters within the multi-racial working class.
“We reject any comparison between us and corporate front groups funneling cash from corporate interests to prop up their political puppets,” said Crowe, who also noted that People’s Action appreciated that Warren engaged with its membership and sought its endorsement last year. “While our members endorsed Senator Sanders as the best choice to win the presidency and win on our issues, Senator Warren was our second choice, and we look forward to working together with her in the future,” Crowe said.
Our Revolution
501(c)(4) nonprofit Our Revolution, which was formed in the wake of the 2016 election by Sanders campaign officials and surrogates, is organizing phone banking, canvassing, and other volunteer efforts to boost Sanders’ campaign. The group is not a super PAC, as a poorly worded Associated Press headline has led some social media users to believe.
Local Our Revolution branches are supporting Sanders by “mobilizing their members to vote in primaries,” Paco Fabián, director of communications and campaigns at Our Revolution, told Sludge. The group will not use “ads, flyers, or paid phone bankers or canvassers,” he said. “Our total base of support is several million people, and they do not need persuasion, as our members overwhelmingly support Bernie. Our strategy is to make sure folks turn out.”
Fabián said that all Our Revolution donors are individuals. The largest donation in 2019 was $25,000, and several individuals gave $5,000 each, but the average contribution that year was less than $18, he said. The group lists every donor who gave more than $250 on its website.
The California-based nurses’ union National Nurses United endorsed Sanders and reported spending roughly $70,000 in late 2019 on placards and t-shirts through its affiliated super PAC. The group has not reported making any independent expenditures so far this year. Unlike traditional super PACs, the union’s PAC is funded mostly with member dues from the union itself. It also received $14,700 from Reclaim Chicago PAC, a progressive group that spends money on Illinois state elections and has endorsed Sanders.
The nurses’ union backed Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary as well, and a February 2016 article quotes National Nurses United Director RoseAnn DeMoro as saying, “It’s not a super PAC. It basically lacks the appropriate definition at the FEC.” She told Time that her group was fully funded by its members. “We don’t take outside money from anyone,” she said.
On Jan. 30, nine progressive groups announced a collaboration called People Power for Bernie. The groups, which include the Sunrise Movement, racial justice organization Dream Defenders, and immigrant rights group Make the Road Action, are combining forces to knock on doors, text and call potential voters, and organize on college campuses and online to help get out the vote. The groups, which “represent a total of 2.2 million primarily Black, Brown and working people and young people,” according to a press release, hope to mobilize 1.4 million voters in early-voting states, swing states, and large Super Tuesday states.
Here are these groups, some of which formed super PACs in order to spend directly on politics.
Sunrise Movement
“We realized in 2018 that because of the way our election laws work, forbidding traditional nonprofits from engaging in elections, that doing any work in support of politicians and political candidates meant we would need a PAC of our own,” said O’Hanlon. “We have it so that passionate young people can get involved to help elect Green New Deal champions across the country, and fight back against the millions of dollars in PAC money flowing to politicians from the oil industry and right wing billionaires to block climate action.”
Sunrise PAC is a traditional PAC that can also make independent expenditures. Formed in March 2018, it has no full-time staff. The PAC has received most of its funding, $400,000, from the Sunrise movement, which is a 501(c)(4) youth-led group that works to promote the urgency of addressing climate change. An additional $86,000 has come from individual donations, most of which were under $1,000. The PAC had reported making $49,000 worth of independent expenditures benefiting Sanders as of the date of publication. Unlike traditional super PACs, which typically log ad production and placements costs, Sunrise’s IE reports detail meals, lodging, gas, staff time, as well as some small Facebook ad purchases.
O’Hanlon contrasted the Sunrise PAC spending with that of more traditional super PACs.
“None of that money went to slick TV ad makers, and none of it came from secretive right-wing billionaires, unlike the enormous amounts of cash pushed into Super PAC’s on behalf of corrupt, fossil fuel-funded politicians,” he said. “Our grassroots-funded and entirely youth-run operation just exists to help young people knock on doors, make calls, distribute Green New Deal campaign literature, and send texts to boost our candidates nationwide who will fight for our generation.”
Dream Defenders
The Florida-based Dream Defenders is a racial justice group formed in 2012 after the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was racially profiled and killed by George Zimmerman. One of the co-founders, Philip Agnew, is a Sanders campaign surrogate and spoke at rallies in Iowa before last week’s caucuses.
The group launched its super PAC, Dream Defenders Fight, in late November 2019. It has spent roughly $22,000 on independent expenditures, mostly backing Sanders. Of the $60,000 it has raised, $25,000 came from the Movement Voter Project, a group that helps donors support “the best and most promising LOCAL community-based organizations in key states with a focus on youth and communities of color,” $22,500 came from the Indivisible Project, a group founded “to resist the Trump agenda,” and $10,000 came from progressive philanthropist Rachel Gelman.
Nailah Summers, communications director of the Dream Defenders, told Sludge about the group’s super PAC’s organizing efforts.
“We’re knocking doors, phone banking, throwing events in communities all over Florida,” she said. “One of our organizers is from Sanford, Florida and he’s putting together a basketball tournament called ‘Ballin’ for Bernie’ there. We’re throwing events on campuses at HBCUs and most of the major colleges in Florida. We’re sending a bus of our members to canvass for Bernie in South Carolina ahead of their primary.”
In contrast to traditional super PACs funded by corporate executives, Summers said, Dream Defenders is “an organization of young, working-class Black and Brown people learning to use the political tools that have been available to these entities that have unlimited resources for at least a decade. We’re not in Washington, we aren’t career campaigners, no one over here interned for the DNC or anything. We’re a bunch of young people in the South directly impacted by the games these politicians and their camps play.
“We are an organization made up of young, working-class people of color,” Summers continued. “Our organization is run by young black women. We are immigrants and people affected by the criminal justice system. Many of us don’t have insurance. We’ve got queer, gender-non-conforming and trans members. We’ve got members taking care of their aging family members. We’ve got people in our organization working 2 and 3 jobs. We live in superfund sites. We’re pretty much all drowning in student debt. Our lives are deeply, deeply affected by who wins this election. We are fighting for our safety, for our livelihoods, for the families we represent. We are keenly aware of what the stakes are in this election. So no, it isn’t fair to lump us in with the likes of Wall Street or billionaires who want to maintain the status quo. It’s because of the status quo that we’re in this mess and we have a vested interest in dismantling it.”
This is the first time that Dream Defenders has endorsed a presidential candidate.
Center for Popular Democracy Action
Center for Popular Democracy Action, the 501(c)(4) nonprofit arm of the progressive organizing group Center for Popular Democracy, formed its Popular Democracy PAC last month so it could make independent expenditures in the presidential race. The Center for Popular Democracy “works to create equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy,” according to its website.
The PAC has spent $19,500 so far on canvassing for Sanders. Because it was so recently formed, it hasn’t reported the names of its donors, but the group told Sludge that it is raising money from small donations, other individual contributions, and other organizations.
“There is a dangerous false equivalency that equates Super PACs that corporations and billionaires set up to ensure that the political deck continues to be stacked in their favor, and efforts like ours,” Natalia Salgado, political director at Center for Popular Democracy Action, told Sludge. “When evaluating independent expenditures, one must ask the question: is this effort meant to keep power in the hands of billionaires and the corporate elite, or is it meant to bring people who have been historically left out of the political system in? When you look at efforts backing Biden and Buttigieg, you see Wall Street bankers, you see the credit card industry, you see billionaires who are willing to wade into politics if it means that it will help them to keep their billions and their power.
“We are sick of the stranglehold that millionaires, billionaires and big corporations have on our economy and our democracy,” said Salgado. “We’re flooding the streets with real people—Black and Brown people and communities affected by the harmful impacts of the current administration. It takes money to mobilize our communities, and that’s why we’re raising and spending money through the structures set up and called Super PACs.”
People’s Action
Membership-based 501(c)(4) nonprofit People’s Action is a “national network of state & local grassroots power-building organizations” representing 1.3 million members that fights for a clean environment, health care for all, housing justice, and free college, according to its website. It has spent $13,500 on canvassing, phone banking, literature, and staff time backing Sanders. It is in the process of creating a hybrid PAC/Super PAC that can devote all of its resources to electoral politics. The group is reallocating $100,000 that it raised before endorsing Sanders to its independent expenditure effort, and it has also raised a few thousand dollars in small donations specifically for the effort.
“Our members in the multiracial working class will not be told to sit on the sidelines when white supremacy, corporate power, and the climate crisis are all reaching a boiling point,” Derrick Crowe, communications and digital director of People’s Action, told Sludge. “We are spending no funds on TV ads. Ninety percent of our money goes to salaries for organizers who mobilize volunteers to talk with voters, especially Black, Latinx, and API voters within the multi-racial working class.
“We reject any comparison between us and corporate front groups funneling cash from corporate interests to prop up their political puppets,” said Crowe, who also noted that People’s Action appreciated that Warren engaged with its membership and sought its endorsement last year. “While our members endorsed Senator Sanders as the best choice to win the presidency and win on our issues, Senator Warren was our second choice, and we look forward to working together with her in the future,” Crowe said.
Our Revolution
501(c)(4) nonprofit Our Revolution, which was formed in the wake of the 2016 election by Sanders campaign officials and surrogates, is organizing phone banking, canvassing, and other volunteer efforts to boost Sanders’ campaign. The group is not a super PAC, as a poorly worded Associated Press headline has led some social media users to believe.
Local Our Revolution branches are supporting Sanders by “mobilizing their members to vote in primaries,” Paco Fabián, director of communications and campaigns at Our Revolution, told Sludge. The group will not use “ads, flyers, or paid phone bankers or canvassers,” he said. “Our total base of support is several million people, and they do not need persuasion, as our members overwhelmingly support Bernie. Our strategy is to make sure folks turn out.”
Fabián said that all Our Revolution donors are individuals. The largest donation in 2019 was $25,000, and several individuals gave $5,000 each, but the average contribution that year was less than $18, he said. The group lists every donor who gave more than $250 on its website.
Who are the top 10 Warren surrogates on twitter? (You can give me just 3 if you want) I'd like to check their twitter page for something.
She’s kind of damned if she does and damned if doesn’t go at Bernie though.
Her decisions aren't weird, they're calculated and super obvious to anyone who hasn't fallen into thinking she's Tweety Bird's grandma.
How is she dammed if she doesn't go at Bernie? She has spent more time sucking up to Amy and shytting on Bernie than she has been hitting the targets she needs to claim the moderate voters that would gladly flip for her way before his supporters would..and she's still doing it, despite the fact that Klobberjaw is taking her spot, what gives?
He has already said that he prefers a woman who is aligned with his views politically, why in the fukk would he pick Pete? Especially considering he's who the establishment wants, they'd kill him to get him out the paint
This is bigger than a Sanders term, he's got a movement coming in his wake and there needs to be continutiy because whoever his VP is could run right after him with the movement in tact, that's not going to be Bootyjuice, Amy or even Warren at this point it looks like.
Tulsi, as much as she is hated, makes more sense than that.
ALonelyDad
Veteran
Where did all the momentum for Pete came from?