Random Thought

I can't believe Rudy was just introduced in New Leaf.

He just seems like a "classic" villager that would have been there since *at least* City Folk or Wild World.

"The democratic national committee rsquo s unity tour is over and the reviews are in most journalists panned it ldquo at a lsquo unity rsquo stop in nebraska democrats find anything but rdquo wrote the new york times ldquo is dem unity tour tearing the party apart asked msnbc rsquo s amjoy vice didn rsquo t even bother with the question mark proclaiming quot the democrats are falling apart on their quot come together tour quot 1 journalists treated the ldquo unity tour rdquo as a spectacle meant to spotlight party unity it was anything but mdash yet it was necessary dnc chair tom perez and senator bernie sanders don rsquo t see eye to eye on many policy disputes sanders had of course backed rep keith ellison for the job that went to perez and depicted the former labor secretary as a stalking horse for the barack obama hillary clinton wing of the party more than once on the tour perez was booed by sanders backers the sanders and dnc folks don rsquo t seem to have collaborated enough on screening the candidates the tour traveled to support there was a huge dustup around the issue of choice for example as well as a skirmish over a promising democrat seemingly rebuffed by sanders as not sufficiently progressive 2 but these are real intra party conflicts and the debate they rsquo ve inspired as well as the compromises and clarifications of each faction rsquo s positions have been necessary this unity tour launched deliberately and self consciously in search of greater concord within a party still rent by the fierce primary battle between sanders and clinton 3 the embers smolder on social media and controversies can reignite them into firestorms almost a year after he was mathematically eliminated by clinton sanders voters still feel like their man could have beaten trump if the dnc hadn rsquo t had a thumb on the scales clinton voters believe her victory was hobbled not merely by james comey and russian hacking but by ldquo bernie or bust rdquo voters who sanders helped create by treating the former secretary of state as a creature of wall street and the 1 percent 4 there are genuine gulfs in ideology as well as political strategy on one side sanders and many supporters want to see democrats fight to win back working class white voters who rsquo ve abandoned the party ldquo i come from the white working class and i am deeply humiliated that the democratic party cannot talk to the people where i came from rdquo he sternly intoned a week after the election a few days later he added in a speech ldquo one of the struggles that you rsquo re going to be seeing in the democratic party is whether we go beyond identity politics rdquo naturally the party rsquo s existing base overwhelmingly female and multiracial don rsquo t like seeing their issues derided as ldquo identity politics rdquo and shunned as distractions lifestyle questions or political correctness run amok while the troubles of white downscale men are centered 5 a unity tour was bound to roll into that pothole and it did almost immediately when it headed to omaha nebraska to support a former state senator running for mayor heath mello mello rsquo s feisty economic populism caught the eye of sanders rsquo supporters what they didn rsquo t necessarily see right away by the accounts of some people close to the process is that he had a history of anti abortion votes back in the state legislature including support for a 20 week abortion bill and one that mandated telling women they had the right to see an ultrasound of the fetus before an abortion mello supporter and nebraska democratic chair jane kleeb says the bill was a compromise to prevent a worse bill mdash one that required women to watch the ultrasound mdash from becoming law when reproductive rights groups rightly howled sanders dug in his heels and reiterated his own pro choice stand but added ldquo i think you can rsquo t exclude people who disagree with us on this one issue rdquo 6 that sounded funny to a lot of people though because sanders was at the same time doing something comparable to the most promising politician to rise from the ashes of last november rsquo s defeat jon ossoff making a real challenge to pick up hhs secretary tom price rsquo s vacant seat in suburban atlanta full disclosure my daughter works as ossoff s deputy field director sanders hadn rsquo t endorsed ossoff or even commented on him but on election day the vermont socialist told a wall street journal reporter ldquo i don rsquo t know rdquo when asked if the young democrat was a progressive ldquo some democrats are progressive and some democrats are not rdquo he stated that night ossoff finished first in a 16 candidate primary to face the woman who helped inspire the revitalization of the pro choice movement karen handel who decided that breast cancer behemoth susan b komen foundation should stop supporting planned parenthood rsquo s provision of breast cancer services she rsquo s been running for office unsuccessfully ever since it seemed an odd time for sanders to throw shade at ossoff rsquo s progressive bona fides 7 to be fair ossoff isn rsquo t as progressive as sanders would like he made a good government anti gridlock pitch to his suburban district for the left his worst move to that point was to criticize wasteful government spending in one of his ads but a berniecrat is unlikely to win the moderate suburban seat held by tom price in omaha sanders seemed to tell women and pro choice advocates to just suck it up in the georgia sixth district race he didn rsquo t seem fired up to defeat karen handel ldquo it tells your most active political base that we rsquo re just negotiable political property rdquo naral pro choice america rsquo s leader ilyse hogue told the new york times 8 so everyone hit their battle stations a bad look for a so called unity tour and then people tried to come together again perez issued a statement clarifying his and the dnc rsquo s fervent support for choice and sanders endorsed ossoff though he refused to call him a progressive 9 all rsquo s well that ends well not necessarily these issues are likely to come up repeatedly because there are real policy divides among these factions and some things will be hard to compromise on sanders is entitled to continue to say that ossoff isn rsquo t sufficiently progressive although it begs a question can a mainstream liberal democrat be powered by a genuinely progressive movement and should the left see that as worth cheering in slate michelle goldberg wrote about the surge of women into the ossoff campaign denied their chance at the first female president they threw themselves into campaigning for this unlikely tossup seat goldberg writes inspiringly about these women warriors of suburban atlanta 10 women lead the local indivisible chapter in march two women formed a women rsquo s group called pave it blue devoted to running progressive candidates in local races mdash contests where in the past republicans often ran unopposed a private invite only facebook group called liberal moms of roswell and cobb or lmrc has swelled to 1 700 members 11 those new activists deserve respect in their own right and any unity tour that ignores them won rsquo t bring unity 12 on the other hand sanders supporters wonder why ossoff has gotten national democratic support while more progressive democrats in kansas and montana have not gotten the same it rsquo s not fair to paint ossoff as the creature of the dnc 7 75 million of the 10 million he rsquo s raised came in small dollar act blue donations and daily kos chipped in another 1 million still ossoff is attracting some of the same national leaders and celebrities who traveled the country working for clinton who he supported berniecrats say they haven rsquo t seen the same generosity 13 but then so far our revolution and other groups have been slow to get off the ground to provide meaningful support to the lefty democrats the group gave james thompson a berniecrat running to represent wichita kan only 900 though members offered more as in kind contributions after thompson rsquo s relatively narrow defeat earlier this month it makes sense that tom perez would want to travel with bernie to support a heartland progressive in omaha mdash though no one had apparently done a deep dive on his entire political history 14 still i think it rsquo s progress that these issues are being faced in donald trump rsquo s first 100 days when the resistance still seems sizeable and urgent and people can come together around the necessity of defeating trump mdash even as they disagree on tactics as well as policy none of the unity tour stumbles were fatal a few ended productively and the party factions will have to keep working to define what ldquo unity rdquo means in the wake of the transformative sanders clinton battle 1 Keep on reading: The Unity Tour Was Kind of a Mess—and That’s Okay