Free Republic

In what should be Democrats' strongest moment since November, a series of emotional and racially charged clashes are forcing the party to once again confront the problem that has plagued it for a year: How to incorporate the supporters of Bernie Sanders. The Vermont independent senator himself is winning battles over the direction of the Democratic Party. He has emerged as a messaging leader on health care, appeared on a "unity tour" with the party's new chairman and helped craft a populist economic agenda for the midterm elections. Many Democrats even concede the possibility that Sanders could enter the 2020...

Concern about the political effects of a deeply unpopular county pop tax — on top of recent state and city tax increases — on Thursday hung over the first day of Cook County Democrats' endorsement session for next year's primary election. Northwest Side Ald. Nicholas Sposato, 38th, said he expects some backlash against the pop tax "down the road in the election next year." People complaining to him about the tax "are blaming the Democrats," he said, adding that the income tax increase would compound the problem. Democrats last month overrode Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of a state income tax...

... There are lots of reasons the partisan division has become so lopsided in favor of the GOP. The Democrats and their friends in the government departments of elite universities and on the editorial desk at the New York Times will say it's because the legislative district maps are drawn unfairly, because the votes of non-whites are suppressed in the South and in rural areas, and just about any other excuse they can think of to suggest the Republicans are cheating. In truth, the voters just aren't buying any more what the Democrats have to sell. The Democrats, from FDR...

When Democrats think about their party’s problems on the political map, they tend to think of President Trump’s ability to win the White House despite losing the popular vote and Republicans’ potent efforts to gerrymander congressional districts. But their problems extend beyond the Electoral College and the House: The Senate hasn’t had such a strong pro-GOP bias since the ratification of direct Senate elections in 1913. Even if Democrats were to win every single 2018 House and Senate race for seats representing places that Hillary Clinton won or that Trump won by less than 3 percentage points — a pretty...

Ken Livingstone, a former mayor of London, has blamed the turmoil in Venezuela on Hugo Chávez’s unwillingness to execute “oligarchs” after he came to power. ... “One of the things that Chávez did when he came to power, he didn’t kill all the oligarchs. There was about 200 families who controlled about 80% of the wealth in Venezuela,” Livingstone told Talk Radio. “He allowed them to live, to carry on. I suspect a lot of them are using their power and control over imports and exports to make it difficult and to undermine Maduro.”

Democrats, after analyzing their miserable 2016 showing, found voters didn’t know where the party stood on key economic issues. Starting now, they want to build an economic identity so that their candidates can run next year on something more than just opposition to President Trump. The pressure point, however, is crafting an agenda that balances the needs of energizing anti-Trump liberal activists without driving away centrist voters and Republicans disillusioned with the president and the lack of results coming from the GOP-led Congress. Without winning a significant bloc of Republican voters in next year’s Senate races, Democrats will fall deeper...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelans appeared to be abstaining in massive numbers on Sunday in a show of silent protest against a vote to select a constitutional assembly giving the government virtually unlimited powers. Associated Press journalists toured more than two dozen polling places in neighborhoods across the capital, including many traditional strongholds of the ruling socialist party in southern and western Caracas. Virtually all the polling places saw hours-long lines of thousands of people in past elections over the last two decades of socialist government.

An “open letter” published on an anarchist website urges liberals and progressives to take the side of violent “anti-fascist” (Antifa) groups. Antifa have often embraced violent acts like rioting, breaking storefronts, and beating political opponents on the streets, which has correlated with an increasing number of violent incidents directed at conservatives and Republicans. (RELATED: This List Of Attacks Against Conservatives Is Mind Blowing) It’s Going Down, a self-described “digital community center from anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements,” recently published an open letter to regular liberals and progressives urging them to take the side of the Black Bloc. Its...

The path back to power for the Democratic Party today, as it was in the 1990s, is unquestionably to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left, whose policies and ideas have weakened the party. The last few years of the Obama administration and the 2016 primary season once again created a rush to the left. Identity politics, class warfare and big government all made comebacks. Candidates inspired by Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren and a host of well-funded groups have embraced sharply leftist ideas. But the results at the voting booth have been anything...

German police used water cannon to disperse around 500 anti-capitalist protesters overnight in the port city of Hamburg where Chancellor Angela Merkel will host leaders of the G20 leading economies in a two-day summit starting on Friday. Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to march in the city this week against globalization and what they say is corporate greed and a failure to tackle climate change. German authorities believe around 8,000 demonstrators were prepared to use violence, the interior minister said on Tuesday. Some 20,000 police officers will be deployed. Hundreds of mainly young left-wing activists gathered and marched...

Bernie Sanders Denies Allegations Over Dirty Land Deal and Blatant Nepotism While His Wife Was In Charge Of The Now Shuttered Burlington College Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife, Jane Sanders, has engaged in blatant nepotism while she was president of the now inoperable Burlington College. The Sanders family are not the lovable old Socialists the left thinks they are. They are a corrupt political family and flawed human beings who will do what they have to do to get ahead in life and help their family along the way. Jane Sanders approved a deal for Burlington College with the Vermont...

Marxist professors, including some of recent notoriety, are preparing for the upcoming “Socialism 2017” conference, where they will strategize to “build the left” and “fight the right.” More than 1,500 professors, students, and left-wing activists from around the country are expected to gather in Chicago from July 6-9 in hopes of “fighting injustice and oppression” while resisting the “political system that spawned Trump.”

The Washington Post reports that James T. Hodgkinson, the suspect in the Alexandria shooting that wounded Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and three others at a Republican baseball practice Wednesday morning campaigned for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential election. The Post and other outlets have identified the suspect as James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old man from Belleville, IL who reportedly owns a home inspections business. The Post‘s Robert Costa interviewed a man who says that he and Hodgkinson campaigned for Sanders in Iowa: Charles Orear, 50, a restaurant manager from St. Louis, said in an interview Wednesday that he became...

The newly activated Democratic base -- the resistance! -- was tripping over itself for a fight. Their money arrived down South by the truckload. The Republican President's approval ratings are in the tank. And yet, another Election Day is gone, and Democrats are again asking where it all went wrong. By late Tuesday night, the answers were rolling in. Prominently mixed into this dog's breakfast of recriminations, mostly from the party's activist left, there is at least one recurring thread: Democrats do not have, either by omission or commission, a cohesive economic message. Operatives and consultants peddle tactics, electoral "paths"...

Record temperatures. Roads cracking and buckling. Planes that can't take off. Power knocked out. Wildfires raging. These are just some of the trying conditions currently roiling America's West Coast, which is in the midst of a record-breaking heatwave. Nervous about how these disruptions will negatively impact the economy and even cost human life? You should be. And there's more to come. Changing weather patterns are the new normal, thanks to decades of trashing the environment and a refusal from many in the party currently controlling Washington, the Republicans -- and their corporate patrons -- to even acknowledge climate change as...

Innovation and forward-thinking may be Hawaii's two biggest exports in 2017. Earlier this month, the state earned the distinction of being the first in the U.S. to formally accept the provisions of the Paris Climate Agreement after President Donald Trump decided to withdraw the nation from it, and now, Hawaii is taking the lead in embracing yet another innovative idea: universal basic income (UBI). On June 15, Hawaii state representative Chris Lee wrote a Reddit post about House Concurrent Resolution 89, a bill he says he introduced in order to "start a conversation about our future." According to Lee, "After...

THE LEFT IN AMERICA – PROGRESSIVES, DEMOCRATS AND LIBERALS OF ALL STRIPES – HAVE GONE FROM BEING SNOWFLAKES NEEDING SAFE SPACES TO BLOOD-THIRSTY PEDDLERS OF VIOLENCE THAT TODAY HAS LED TO THE DEATH OF ONE OF THEIR OWN WHO DIED WHILE ATTEMPTING TO “DESTROY TRUMP & CO”. As news of the the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise hit the Internet today, Left-wing Democrats and Progressives celebrated with unfettered abandon. Not only did they display absolutely no compassion of any kind for the wounded congressman, they called him every kind of vile name and insult you could think of. In short,...

New data released by state regulators provide a detailed snapshot of California’s battle against global warming. We’ve crunched the numbers on specific sources of pollution, including planes, cars and trucks, and how the state’s pollution compares to the size of its economy. The state has been chipping away at greenhouse gas emissions in recent years. However, it’s going to need much deeper cuts to reach its goals. Emissions have been reduced by approximately 1% each year since 2006, when California enacted its landmark law setting a target for cutting pollution that causes climate change. But to reach a newer, more...

Democrats are pushing late-blooming bills to significantly improve state Sen. Josh Newman’s odds of surviving an effort by the state GOP and others to recall him from office. The proposed changes, which became public Monday morning, would add months to the existing timeline of certifying a recall election for the ballot. The measure would virtually assure that any recall election would be held at the regularly scheduled June 5, 2018 legislative primary election. Regular election turnout historically is much higher than turnout for special elections, which helps Democrats. The effort to recall Newman, D-Fullerton, began soon after his April 6...

I sometimes wonder how the mainstream media, judicial system, sanctuary cities and liberal politicians would fare in the kind of world they are trying to bring about: a world without borders, a world without morals, a socialist society ruled by an all-powerful, central government that would control the distribution and quality of health care, the parameters of abortion, the length of people’s lives through euthanasia and the population’s practice of religion. Probably the first thing to go, as is always the case in totalitarian regimes, would be freedom of the press. Then most of the rest of our personal freedoms...