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There was a very instructive moment this week amid all of the political messaging, applause and back-slapping involved in the arrival of the long-awaited Liberal foreign policy statement and defence review.

It happened when Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was asked, in front of a sea of uniforms, to guarantee his exhaustive, occasionally thoughtful piece of policy homeworkwould survive beyond the life of the current government.

The report, after all,is supposed to be a 20-year document.

His response was somewhat awkward: "We as a government and future governments owe it to the Canadian Armed Forces that we fully fund the Canadian Armed Forces on a long-term footing."

Much of the post-policy coverage has, justifiably, focused on fiscal skepticism.

Do the Liberals have the money? If so, where is it? Will it add to the deficit? If so, by how much?

The answers were: Yes. Stay tuned. No. And see the previous answer.

The skepticism, however, has deep and tangled roots, some of them fresh in terms of the string of broken Liberal campaign promises; others stretch back decades where history is littered with well-crafted and some not-so-well-crafted defence policy plans.

The Trudeau government may have given Canadianssome crisp, well-honed ideas and fact-based conclusions in the report about a world in turmoil, many of which run contrary to what they campaigned on.

But what Sajjan's rather tentative call to arms indirectly exposed is perhaps the biggest failing of this latest endeavour and maybe even the ones that preceded it: The absence of clear, unambiguous, long-term political support.

So, forget about the budget for a minute. Think Parliament.

"Unless you do get a consensus, some kind of bipartisan consensus, which I think is possible, then this policy is going to be very short-lived," said Richard Cohen, a retired military officer who servedin the Canadian Forces and the British Army.

He should know.

A member of the military looks on as Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan unveils the Liberal government's long-awaited vision for expanding the Canadian Armed Forces Wednesday. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

As an adviser to former defence minister Peter MacKay, Cohen was one of the people who helped craft the ephemeral 2008 Conservative defence strategy document.

That 20-year plan survived a little less than 20 months from the time it was introduced, said Dave Perry, of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

TheConservative planwas sacrificed in a bid for abalanced budget, but in light of the toxic politics of the day succeeding governments, regardless of their political stripe, would have had a tough time swallowing even the more palatable portions.

The survival of this plan will depend on "whether there is cross-parliamentary and cross-partisan support," Perrysaid.

The two major overseas deployments in recent years have been either politically divisivethink Afghanistanor languished in misunderstood obscurity, such as Iraq.

The defence minister wasn't the only one in the spotlight this week.

Behind Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland's measured, sometimes chirpy, delivery of a major policy speech on Tuesdaywere some stark words and reality.

"To put it plainly: Canadian diplomacy and development sometimes require the backing of hard power," she saidin her speech.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland delivering a speech on Canada's foreign policy future in the House of Commons Tuesday. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

The notion that Canada can no longer be entirely comfortable under the U.S. security umbrella is remarkable in its sobriety and significance.

Yet, it was politics as usual in the House of Commons after Sajjan delivered his plan.

"The previous government announced a lot of things, didn't put the kind of money forward in stable, long-term predictable ways,and that's what we've done," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said answering opposition criticism.

What the Liberals haven't done is the kind of painful, political bridge-building that may be necessary in times that they themselves acknowledge are extraordinary, said Cohen.

"Neither [opposition]party is very supportive of the end result it seems to me," he said.

The Liberals would argue that both the Conservatives and NDP had their chance during the months of public consultations held during development of the policy.

And, in fairness, neither opposition party has shown any inclination towards ratcheting back the partisan rhetoric.

But Cohen argues the government has an extraordinary opportunity to take politics out of national defence and build some kind of long-term consensus in the implementation of its policy.

"I think this is a time when parties are moreor lessaligned on what they see in terms of our national goals. It is the means they are arguing about," he said. "I think it's possible to come to a consensus, but who knows, maybe it's too late."

Cohen said an overhaul of the House of Commons and senate defence committees,or creating some other kind of body,might provide a venue for bipartisan co-operation.

The almost-established parliamentary oversight committee on national security promised by the Liberals during the election could have provided such a bipartisan forum.

But defence is not included within its already sprawling mandate.

Link:
Cost is one question but partisan politics may undo Liberal defence plan - CBC.ca

Updated June 10, 2017 21:58:53

A $200,000 donation to the WA Liberal Party from a billionaire property developer with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party has raised questions, WA Deputy Premier Roger Cook says.

Dr Chau Chak Wing's company Kingold Group donated the sum to the WA branch of the Liberal Party in 2015/16.

Dr Chau, who is an Australian citizen, also made donations to the Labor Party federally.

Kingold is headquartered in Guangzhou, in southern China, and develops projects including international trade centres, commercial buildings, hotels, office and residential buildings.

A joint investigation by the ABC and Fairfax revealed earlier this week, that Dr Chau's links to the Chinese Government were referenced in a briefing by ASIO chief Duncan Lewis in 2015.

In secret meetings with senior federal administrative officials in the major parties, Mr Lewis warned of the risks associated with accepting foreign-linked donations.

The agency also reportedly briefed senior federal politicians including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, his predecessor Tony Abbott, and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.

Mr Cook on Saturday said it was important for all political parties to stick to the absolute spirit and letter of electoral laws.

"A $200,000 donation to a state branch of a political party is a hefty sum, and so you would have to ask questions in relation to the nature of that donation," he said.

"I hope what political parties are making sure is that while they acknowledge and accept political donations are a reality of our modern democratic system, and one that we rely on, that that in no way impacts upon the policies of the parties and it certainly does not impact in any way in terms of good government decisions when those parties are in Government."

WA Liberal Party director Andrew Cox said in a statement the party always conducted its fundraising in an ethical manner and fully adhered to state and federal electoral laws.

He said the Labor Party should tell the WA public how much the union movement donated to it, and what "political favours" were being provided in return.

The ABC was unable to reach Dr Chau for comment.

However he told The Australian newspaper on Friday that the media reports had caused him great distress.

"At no time have I sought to, or see any reason to, use an elaborate corporate structure to mask a donation to a political party," he said.

"Further, I have never sought or received any personal or commercial benefit in connection to a political donation.

"The most distressing allegation in recent days is that I am somehow acting as a conduit for information for the Chinese Communist Party, which risks jeopardising Australia's sovereignty.

"For clarity, I am not and have never been a member of the Chinese Communist Party, and I completely reject any suggestion I have acted in any way on behalf of, or under instruction from, that entity."

Dr Chau is a member of a provincial-level People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and also owns a newspaper in China. The press in China are closely monitored and influenced by the central government.

Dr Chau also made donations to the federal Liberal Party of $560,000 in 2016, and $100,000 to the NSW branch.

He donated $200,000 to Labor federally.

Dr Chau has made donations to non-political causes in Australia, most notably $20 million for the construction of a business school at the University of Technology, named the "Chau Chak Wing building".

According to Kingold's website, Dr Chau hosted and attended events during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's recent visit to Australia.

Notre Dame Politics and International Relations Associate Professor Martin Drum said foreign donations to political parties were banned by many Western countries but not on a state or federal level in Western Australia.

"When we don't know the structure that foreign entities operate under, their ownership structure, we don't understand the relationships they have with other overseas entities such as foreign governments, then there's extra cause for concern," he said.

Dr Drum said a recent federal parliamentary inquiry recommended foreign donations be banned.

He said under current rules entities could also make donations up to $13,200 to each political party in each state, and the federal party, without having to declare it publicly.

Watch the Four Corners report "Power and Influence" on ABC iview.

Topics: government-and-politics, elections, foreign-affairs, wa, australia

First posted June 10, 2017 19:52:03

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Chinese businessman subject of ASIO warning donated $200000 to WA Liberals - ABC Online

An electoral upset with no visionary leadership for resistance. An opposition party armed with new politics and control of multiple branches of government. The sudden demand for a new ideological paradigm to guide the party. And a once moribund media format put into service of spreading an ideological direction.

Though that describes the crisis facing Democrats in 2017, it also chronicles the very conditions in the early 1990s that gave rise to the conservative talk radio phenomenon. But in 2017, it's podcasters who are at the forefront of a leftist talk renaissance, with shows recently created or reinvigorated by the opportunity Trump's election poses for the left shows like Chapo Trap House, Delete Your Account, Street Fight Radio, District Sentinel Radio, By Any Means Necessary, What a Hell of A Way To Die, The Katie Halper Show and more.

For nearly three decades, right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and more recently, Alex Jones have dominated Republican party politics, setting the tone and ideology for a generation of conservatives. Driven, at first, by the rise of Clintonism and alienated by what they considered left-of-center media like the New York Times and Washington Post, a then-new class of acerbic radio hosts vulgarians who told it like it was, and weren't afraid to be "politically incorrect" used shock and awe to build an ideologically uncompromising format. Vicious skits were designed to offend (Rush Limbaugh famously performed caller abortions, where he'd cut off cantankerous callers with sounds effects of a vacuum cleaner and tortured screaming) while a hardline anti-establishment narrative gave listeners a simpler framework through which to make sense of the complex power relations between politicians, big business and public interests.

Rush Limbaugh on May 3, 2007 in Novi, Michigan.

And, most importantly, these shows could often swing elections.

Now, the left wants in, and a new cohort of podcasts is taking advantage of the same style, vulgarity, irreverence and pure cathartic entertainment championed by the right to create a new, extreme progressive culture all while attempting to avoid the business failures epitomized by the long-bankrupt Air America, the left's initial attempt to respond to right-wing radio.

Amid a deep soul search about what Democrats can and should stand for in the age of Donald Trump identity politics, ideological purity, economic justice, etc. lefty podcasters are emerging to set the the terms of liberal debate. And they do so as the mainstream media and nominally liberally aligned media outlets twiddle their thumbs over their role in creating this mess.

"There needs to be a conversation among liberals about what their core ideology is, what they stand for and what's worth fighting for," Angelo Carusone, president of liberal media watchdog Media Matters For America, told Mic.

And if there were ever a time for leftists to define that conversation, it's now.

When Bryan Quinby was a cable installer in 2011, he had one listening option as he drove around Columbus, Ohio, hanging ladders and setting up new service: conservative talk radio. Quinby was a blue-collar miscreant, shoplifting organic groceries and doing comedy on the side. He was discovering leftist politics late in life, but his diet at the time was pure right wing, packed with Glenn Beck, Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony, shock jocks with a little anti-union, anti-"political correctness" sentiment blended in.

"I listened to those guys and I thought they were the news," he said. "They sounded just as intelligent to me as anybody else. It's only once you get away from them that some of their stuff starts to sound like bullshit."

But Quinby had no one else to turn to. It seemed like working-class people were only useful as a punching bag for liberals, whereas conservatives spoke in terms that made sense to him. Quinby was a comedian in a world where the blue-collar kings of comedy Jeff Foxworthy and Quinby's proletariat peer, Larry the Cable Guy were Republicans.

"The people in my ear at the time weren't leftists, and leftists weren't talking to me in a way that I felt like I could respond to," he said.

So when he got the chance to create something himself, he took it. Through the local comedy scene, he was set up with Brett Paine, another budding anarchist comedian. Paine thought Quinby was an "old, square guy," and Quinby thought Paine was a "young, hip asshole." But they had on-air chemistry and similar politics and so, with Quinby's cable installation money, they bought a cheap mixer and a few $60 microphones. They started recording a show called Street Fight Radio on an "old shitty computer" in Paine's basement and broadcasting it on the local community radio station, WCRS in Columbus, Ohio.

Paine and Quinby discussed single-payer healthcare, distrust of the police, the tyrants of small business and the racism of everyday retail interactions. On Street Fight, you can hear rants about why making fun of flat Earthers is classist, or a critique of the fundamental conservatism of the puritanical 12-step programs with which Quinby had some experience. They honed their routine over six years, and eventually started writing stand-up together. From the initial mutual distrust grew a familial relationship. On the weekend that Trump was inaugurated, they sold out a live stand-up show at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C.

"Our goal was to give the only thing we can give: to articulate the feelings of working class people in the middle of the country, and the practical things we can get to improve people's lives," Quinby said, describing the "street-level" politics of the show.

But their influence goes beyond just their audience: In February 2016, Quinby brought a crew of three Twitter friends on as guests to review 13 Hours, Michael Bay's movie about Benghazi. After the episode, the three self-proclaimed leftists who came on as guests Will Menaker, Felix Biederman and Matthew Christman figured they had enough on-air chemistry to try to record a few episodes on their own.

They started Chapo Trap House, one of the most rapidly growing, divisive and talked-about political podcasts of today and the de facto lead of the so-called "dirtbag left," a term later coined by co-host and leftist writer Amber A'Lee Frost, and codified by a New Yorker profile of the crew.

Quimby and Paine, however, are bona fide blue collar dirtbags in the traditional sense. They talk about working-class politics from the perspective of guys who've worked as dishwashers and telemarketers themselves. The Chapo crew instead uses crude language alongside their academic qualifications as firepower to rail about subjects like conservative punditry and the liberal obsession with Hamilton and The West Wing. They even have their own "dittoheads" (a term that originally described callers who wanted to air their agreement with Rush Limbaugh's show), the devout fans who've since been emboldened to pursue activism and openly air their grievances at the show's pantheon of common enemies. With Chapo, the "dirtbag" identity isn't so much about capitalism's grimy cast-offs, but rather describes an acerbic disposition against an establishment that would allegedly rather police intra-liberal discourse than fight for any tangible political goal.

The Chapo crew and their followers also engage in internal fights of their own, however mostly spiteful shit-flinging at centrist writers (often women defending Democrats like Hillary Clinton) and listeners will hear plentiful use of the slur "retard."

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in New York Thursday, June 1, 2017.

In fact, first against the wall for the Chapo gang aren't necessarily conservatives, but rather establishment Democrats or, in the Chapo hosts minds, the technocrats who traded New Deal progressivism for corporate money, making aesthetic overtures to the needs of the poor and people of color while delivering them nothing. In Chapo's estimation, Trumpism owes its greatest victory to the complacency of a political elite raised on soaring Aaron Sorkin monologues, who believed they could run the country on fundamentally conservative ideas of free markets and meritocracy while defining their ideology by who they're not (namely: Republicans).

As a result of their language and some of the people they've railed about, they've been accused both of misogyny and orchestrating Twitter pile-ons, but producer and co-host Brendan James said that impression of Chapo Trap House isn't grounded in reality.

"Just listen to the show," James told Mic. "You may not like it, but you'd probably realize that it's not what a couple of people who hate us say it is. There's such wild stuff out there about what we're supposedly all about, and it's relegated to a pretty excitable corner of a corner of Twitter."

But despite or perhaps because of the controversies and insularity, Chapo Trap House became the immediate frontrunner in leftist podcasting. In their first year in business, they've become the most lucrative crowdfunded podcast online, making over $62,000 a month from paying subscribers via Patreon. Nearly 14,000 people pay for premium access to extra episodes, but a conservative estimate of their audience overall would be 30,000 to 50,000 listeners per episode, or as high as 80,000 for more popular episodes. They've also landed the aforementioned profile in the New Yorker, performed in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and garnered a book deal with Touchstone Books for The Dirtbag Left Guide to the Revolution, billed as a manifesto for "a new vision of the left."

Unlike Quinby and Paine, Chapo isn't trying to provide an alternative to conservative talk radio for discussion-hungry blue collar liberals. Chapo targets a younger, far-left audience, and does so by taking on the liberal pundit class, Republican blowhards and psychologically tortured conservative op-ed writers.

"I want the left to win in this country, and part of that involves creating an alternate culture that's not mainstream," host Will Menaker said. "A very large cohort of people of my generation understand that political values we may have grown up with [are] inadequate to the times we live in."

Mainstream Democrats and liberals see the potential for podcasting, too. Both Bernie Sanders and Rep. Keith Ellison have launched their own shows; Hillary Clinton had one during her 2016 campaign.

One of the other ascendant podcast houses is Crooked Media (a reference to now-President Trumps oft-used insult about the press), which was started by former Obama White House staffers Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor and Jon Lovett. (For all that Chapo's political bent is opposed to the Crooked Media ideology, Menaker said of the three former Obama guys' foray into podcasting: "Better that than the fucking Brookings Institute.").

Over the past few months, the three moved to Los Angeles to launch a series of shows, including their own Pod Save America (formerly the hit show Keeping It 1600), a podcast now tracking the Trump administration by D.C. insiders in exile, funded by the usual cast of plucky startups buying podcast ads (Blue Apron and Headspace among them). Favreau, Vietor and Lovett are decidedly establishment liberals compared to their hard-left counterparts, but they're similarly exasperated with the mainstream media's vacuousness.

For the sake of illustrating the inanity of cable news' response to Trump, Vietor described the classic debate format, unchanged during the new administration: the Trump surrogate contorting themselves to defend the latest tweet or foreign policy faux pas, and the often horrified liberal counterbalance.

"That's a useless way to consume news," Vietor said. "You emerge depressed and horrified about whats happening in our country. The process leaves you frustrated, and without knowing how to fix things."

Tommy Vietor at the White House in Washington on February 3, 2011.

That's part of their mission: fixing things. Pod Save America came out strong in defense of the Affordable Care Act, telling listeners to hit their congressional town halls to raise hell with Republicans who backed the American Health Care Act. To Vietor, it's a no-brainer that Americans are flocking to partisan media on both sides. They want to know how to take action. Cable news won't light the path, and for Democrats, it's obvious that party leadership is in disarray.

"No one is controlling the party right now," Vietor said. "The Clintons had been around a long time, but what we need is a whole new generation of leaders."

But even as liberals tear themselves apart re-litigating the 2016 primary, leftist entertainers are taking advantage of the energy of an upcoming generation of voters who espouse far-left political ideals and have little to no representation in mainstream media. Americans under the age of 30 view socialism more favorably than capitalism, and cast more primary and caucus votes for Bernie Sanders than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined.

"If someone is conveying that they don't know what to do with their pent-up rage, or how to help out their community, we need to be able to jump in and say: 'We're here, here's what we're about and here's what we're going to do,'" Roqayah Chamseddine, who founded the podcast Delete Your Account, told Mic.

Chamseddine grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with a liberal family that shouted back at conservative talk hosts as a pastime. As a Marxist Shia Muslim, Chamseddine never had her views represented in the media available to her.

Started as an idea she kicked around among union organizers, Delete Your Account began during the 2016 election season by calling out individual liberals who should "delete their accounts" (an oft-used response to someones bad tweets) by Chamseddine's thinking, the mawkish and the terrible, the bootlickers and the sellouts. But since Election Day, Delete Your Account has largely become a podcast about building worker solidarity and giving listeners the tools to organize in their communities.

Chamseddine isn't optimistic that liberals will pull to the left in time for the midterms: She believes that the far left has often been sidelined, ignored or outright stifled by mainstream Democrats. Still, she does have faith that the crisis of liberalism as represented by Trump's election victory mixed with a new generation shifting their politics to the left of the party, has created an opportunity for a wholesale changing of the guard.

As she puts it, "We've all wanted something like this, and what better time than when the Democratic party is crumbling?"

However, the new cohort of liberal podcasts is currently missing what might be the essential ingredients used by conservative talkers to influencing voters: terrestrial radio. Podcasts can build communities from the far-flung and dispossessed, but a local radio station capturing enough of its market can turn a primary or an election around.

"In a primary, you get low turnouts and ideological voters," Brian Rosenwald, a media historian writing a book on conservative talk radio, said. "The local hosts can talk about a race every day, and go after a congressman for years. The power comes from that, and the power legislatively comes with the power to shut the phones down."

Sam Seder, co-host of the podcast Ring of Fire, has an example from his stint at Air America, the liberal radio network that launched in the mid-aughts as a response to conservative talk radio and leftist outrage at the mainstream media over the Iraq War. Seder, whose podcast takes it name from his Air America show, says that, during a labor dispute with the Rockettes' musicians in 2005, the union took out ads on the local Air America station to try and force management into a negotiation. Within a few days, Seder recalled, the Rockettes were offered a compromise provided they took the ads off the air.

"The people working at Air America didn't understand what had just happened, because they weren't liberals or activists," Seder said. "Because the next thing you'd do [if you knew what you were doing] is go to every union in the country and say, 'Look at the power we have.' That's the power of terrestrial radio."

Despite being a petri dish for talent hosts in the early years included Rachel Maddow, Al Franken, Marc Maron, Chuck D and Janeane Garofalo and having money from liberal donors, Air America rapidly failed. Rosenwald said that Air America was set up for disaster from the beginning not because liberal talk radio doesn't work, but because the business was a disastrously mismanaged "three-ring circus." Ultimately, the network couldn't sell ads after ending up on the no-buy lists of prestige "blue chip" advertisers.

Al Franken during a 2004 Air America news conference in New York.

"We couldn't get corporate America to spend the ad dollars," former Air America executive Carl Ginsberg told Mic. "And there's only so much money you can get from the Ben & Jerry's of the world."

Of course, those revenue problems came before the broad acceptance of podcasting, before technology made recording shows cheaper and easier than ever before, before hyperpartisan Facebook pages were able to monetize outrage and before a slew of new potential streams of digital revenue developed beyond simple ad sales. Like every creative industry over the past decade, the internet created a space for bootstrapping, and for many podcasts in the new class of talk shows, the primary platform for revenue-generation is Patreon, a Kickstarter-like site where subscribers can pledge small, regular donations to creators.

The rankings of the top 30 Patreon accounts are currently dominated by podcasts of all stripes alongside ad-hoc news networks at one point, Chapo Trap House was ranked No. 1. By comparison, Rosenwald said a terrestrial radio show needs to reach about 3% to 5% of its potential listenership to justify its existence to executives. But a podcast with a couple hundred paying subscribers on Patreon can keep the lights on as long as their microphones and internet connections work.

Seder, like Rosenwald, doesn't buy the theory that Air America was a failure because talk radio doesn't work for liberals; he thinks it just didn't work in that moment, in part because of the financing issues. Seder said it could be high time that the project of liberal talk radio get another shot.

Chapo's Menaker said that he has "no fucking idea" how a fledgling ad hoc coalition of media leftists, self-proclaimed dirtbags, political organizers and comedians could eventually wield direct political influence. For now, his priority is crafting an entertaining show and building out business opportunities. Chapo Trap House currently has Brillstein Entertainment Partners as a management agency helping develop new projects and amass awareness in Los Angeles. The team is also launching a website as a home for the podcast, latest news and future endeavors, and is looking into expanding its brand to new formats "outside the medium of podcasts."

The Crooked Media team is adding more shows, like Pod Save the People (with activist DeRay McKesson at the helm) and With Friends Like These (hosted by MTV News correspondent and Wonkette founder Ana Marie Cox). Chamseddine is about to return from a haitus, and Delete Your Account is experimenting with subscriber-only content as the checks from Patreon continues to grow.

As for Brett Paine and Bryan Quinby of Street Fight, the increased visibility they got for being the godfathers of a young leftist movement has brought new interest to their own Patreon, and they're beginning to pay themselves a stipend for doing the show. They're booking their first New York City show, with stops in Milwaukee, Louisville and Atlanta on the way. Quinby believes that it won't be long before Patreon subscribers will support the hosts full-time.

In the meantime, the duo is planning a joint campaign to become the mayors of Columbus, Ohio. Quinby's doubtful that they have a chance to win, but they'll be holding show after show in the area functional campaign stops to raise enough hell about working-class issues like fair wages, over-policing and the full legalization of marijuana.

"We're proposing a $16 minimum wage, just so the Democrat has to explain why you're not worth $16 an hour," he said.

No matter the outcome, Quinby figures they'll be able to either expose the true politics of the local incumbents or possibly push them to the left like Limbaugh and his cohort cattle-prodded a generation or more of Republicans to the right.

It's a small push, for now. But it's a start.

Go here to see the original:
Liberals are playing just as dirty as conservatives did in the '90s and it sounds great - Mic

Oklahoma Republicans like to boast that their state is the reddest of the red, with their party holding every statewide elected office and every one of the state's seats in Congress.

Democrats hoping to chip away at the Republican stranglehold have pinned their hopes on Anna Langthorn, a 24-year-old woman who has logged more than five years in the political trenches.

While acknowledging her age may raise eyebrows, the newly elected chairwoman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party hopes it will also help her to fan a growing enthusiasm in the state, especially among other young people, to shake up Oklahoma's political system.

"There are a lot, a lot of voters who just aren't voting because they haven't been engaged, and a lot of those are young people," she said from her bustling new office in Oklahoma City. "If we can present them with a party organization that reflects their values but also has a face they can relate to, they're more likely to be engaged."

Oklahoma went hard for Republican Donald Trump in November, to no one's surprise. But Langthorn said she's seen a dramatic increase in the number of young people showing up to local and state Democratic Party organizational meetings since Trump took office.

"All of those were tripled in attendance across the state," she said. "We've had counties in western Oklahoma, in rural Oklahoma, that have not been active in the last decade, in some cases 20 years, that for the first time this year had people showing up who wanted to participate."

In a special election for an open House seat last month in rural central Oklahoma, the Democratic candidate lost by about 2 percentage points in the same district a Republican won in November by 33 points.

Langthorn is among a growing number of millennials who have been tapped to lead state parties in recent years, including 28-year-olds William McCurdy II in Nevada and Kylie Oversen in North Dakota.

While North Dakota Democrats suffered major losses in 2016, including Oversen's own state House seat, a growing dissatisfaction with Trump and an enthusiasm among younger voters could shift things dramatically for Democrats in 2018, said Ken Martin, leader of the Democratic Party in Minnesota and the president of the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

"We have seen young people in the past serve in these positions, but what I am seeing right now is just a wholesale new energy throughout the country," Martin said.

Less than 45 percent of U.S. voters ages 18 to 34 cast ballots in November's election. That figure was even lower in Oklahoma, where less than one-third of registered voters in that age group voted, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Those are voters that Langthorn hopes to engage.

Langthorn has her work cut out for her, especially healing a rift that deepened during last year's Democratic presidential primary election between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. While acknowledging the division, Langthorn said she believes she's the right person to help bridge the two factions.

"My hope is that I can marry those two groups in who I am as a person, that I do have very progressive values and beliefs and want to move the party in that direction, but I also recognize that there are people who have given 30, 40 and even 50 years of their life to serving this party, and their contributions and wisdom are still valuable," she said.

Follow Sean Murphy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/apseanmurphy

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Okla. Democrats pin hopes on new 24-year-old leader - ABC News

If theres one thing Democrats need to learn to do right now, its multitask. In effect, to claw its way back to power, the opposition party must walk and chew gum at the same time. President Donald Trump and the Republican leadership have offered Democrats such a target-rich environment, the only way they can lose is by shooting themselves in the foot in all the excitement. That, however, remains all too likely. Too many voices are still echoing past battles, but its both possible and necessary to pursue more than one strategy at the same time, build a unified resistance both within the party and beyond it and win in 2018.

Its possible to be critical of Russia and Vladimir Putin, for example and committed to finding the truth about the Trump campaigns possible collusion with Russia without demonizing them the way conservatives demonized the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Its possible to do all that without overlooking serious problems with our own intelligence agencies, or losing sight of other issues that hit ordinary Americans closer to home.

Its possible to defend Hillary Clinton and female political figures in general against misogynist attacks without ignoring other factors in her defeat. Its possible to rebrand and reshape the Democratic Party without needless attacks on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Those are a few of the false dichotomies were routinely asked to accept. We need to develop the habit of rejecting them.

Take my first example: My critical views of Putins regime are fully engaged, simply based on his kleptocratic, authoritarian behavior. But theres more to the story than that. I wrote about the role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine back in 2014, for example reflecting a decades-long history of U.S. involvement with them as well as role of neoliberalism in laying the groundwork for Putins rise more recently. (That global tendency produced an extreme re-concentration of wealth that coincided with nothing less than a full-scale 1930s-type depression for the vast majority of Russians.)

Putins rise, in short, reflected a tremendous experience of loss, and many who oppose him are no angels, either. None of that lessens the fact that Putin poses a threat to our democracy it just calls for a more sophisticated response.

Its also possible to pay close attention to the Trump-Russia affair without turning a blind eye to problematic aspects of our own intelligence community. After the Washington Post broke its story about Jared Kushner supposedly asking Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to set up a secret communication channel, historian Kathleen Frydl (author of The Drug Wars in America, 1940-1973) wrote perceptively about both sides of the threat involved.

It serves no democratic purpose to receive intelligence leaks, and reprint them, Frydl wrote, without also raising the dilemma raised by Roman poet Juvenal: who will guard the guardians?

Frydl points out that two serious narratives are involved: The story of the Trump campaigns relations to Russia, which is gradually coming to light, and the story about that story.

On the first narrative, she contendsthat its a grave mistake to argue over criminal intent and go looking for a smoking gun:

Instead the story and basic culpability of the Trump campaign begins well before the election, even before Russian hacking, and extends beyond the elections result. It is a story of an incompetent and uncaring campaign, allowing for all manner of interlopers, even some bent on infiltration.

She draws an analogy to the theory of the case against Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, which convinced the company to seek a settlement:

The theory being: you can sell highly addictive drugs (in this case, opioids), but you cant market them aggressively; and if you choose to market them aggressively, you damn well better market them accurately.

There was no smoking-gun document saying, We plan to kill tens of thousands of people, and there didnt need to be. Reckless disregard was quite enough. So too with the Trump campaign. The president has repeatedly claimed there was no collusion with Russia. Well, there didnt need to be:

In the analogy drawn, the theory would be: you can be incredibly careless in handling the operations of your campaign, but you cant then engage in policy discussions with Russians; and if you engage in policy discussions with them, you damn well better not accept help from them at the same time.

So the Trump-Russia story, properly understood, is a damning indictment of Trump. But the second narrative, the story about the story, puts the shoe on the other foot. Leaking intelligence is not like other leaks from the EPA, for example. Intelligence is a monopoly by necessity, Frydl writes, but the implicit contract inherent in tolerating this incredible concentration of power is that this universe of information is not then selectively revealed in such a way so as to influence politics. We might be happy to see Trump brought down by the forces of the so-called deep state, but who would be next? Who will guard the guardians? Frydl concludes:

Two forces endanger a democratic republic; neither one new, but both newly emboldened. One is a political apparatus that has lent itself to profiteering at the expense of the public interest; the other, a secret government that operates beyond the purview of democratic accountability. The Trump story is the catastrophic culmination of one; and the story about the story suggests that we have much to worry about regarding the other.

Although Frydl doesnt say this, theres a bit of a silver lining here: A more accurate framing of Trumps culpability significantly reduces the need for leaks. One could even argue that, properly understood, a case for impeachment already exists in plain sight. We may not always escape such a dire dilemma, but this time we surely should be able to if we are willing to face it rather than spend so much energy in denial, blame-shifting or other forms of evasion.

Nor do we need to ritualistically refight past fights, rather than learning from them and synthesizing multiple truths. Supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have fallen into this trap, in both straightforward and convoluted ways. We can all do better, without abandoning what matters most to us.

A case in point was the more-heat-than-light response to former Salon writer Rebecca Traisters recent New York magazine feature on Hillary Clinton. To keep things manageable, Ill choose a single sane response, which is not meant to be exhaustive.

Collins is a political scientist who went on to write:Yes, sexism was a real factor in the election, citing research by Brian Schaffner and colleagues [chart]. And in an election decided by narrow margins in a few states, thats enough to flip an election. But thats different from saying that sexism is an insurmountable barrier . So yes: sexism real factor in 2016 election, but also yes, women who run can win, since sexism not sole or even central factor.

Collins also raises a number of other complicating points.On one hand, he notes that the effect of gender attitudes on vote choice are far smaller than other factors, like party. See Kathleen Dolan [link]. If that seems to minimize the importance of sexism, Collins also notes that when the percentage of women in our national legislature lags behind that found in Saudi Arabia, America needs many more women to take the plunge and run.

There was a similar but unrelated freakout over Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who is regarded as a Bernie Sanders surrogate. Two days after the story about Jared Kushners dubious contacts with Kislyak broke, Turner appeared on CNNs State of the Union and observed that the Trump-Russia scandal was not Americans top concern. Hows this playing in Ohio? asked guest host Dana Bash. Turner responded at length:

No one in Ohio is asking about Russia. I mean, we have to deal with this. We definitely have to deal with this. Its on the minds of the American people. But if you want to know about people in Ohio they want to know about jobs. They want to know about their children.

I was just in California, where California folks, especially the national nurses, are pushing for Healthy California, a single-payer, Medicare-for-all kind of thing. I talked to [an] African-American baby boomer who lives right here in D.C. Russia is not in his top five [concerns]. He believes that both parties are failing. I talked to a Gen-Xer white male who is in a union; he wants a third party. We are losing.

The president should be concerned about this, all Americans should be concerned about this. But if we were to go to Flint, they wouldnt ask you about Russia and Jared Kushner. They want to know how they are gonna get some clean water and why some 8,000 people are about to lose their homes.

We are preoccupied with this. Its not that this is not important, but every day Americans are being left behind because its Russia, Russia, Russia. Do we need all 535 members of the Congress to deal with Russia? Can some of them deal with some domestic issues?

Turner wasnt simply offering her opinion. Just a few days before, results of the latest HuffPost/YouGov poll were announced, showing that 47 percent of Americans saw health care as a top concern, followed by 38 percent for the economy and 20 percent for immigration. In contrast, The relationship between the Trump administration and Russia, which has dominated headlines in recent weeks, scores far below, with just 12 percent naming it as a top issue. Whats more, health care topped Russia among Hillary Clintons voters by a huge margin, 55 to 31 percent, as well as among non-voters and third-party voters.

But the response to Turner, at least in some quarters, quickly went from critical to unhinged.

I question why Turner, a Democratic rep and prominent Sanders surrogate, would run interference on the Russia investigation. So should you, tweeted Melissa McEwen, editor of Shakesville.

Nina Turner is poison for democrats. The future is Kamala Harris, Ted Lieu, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff they are fighting back, read another heavily retweeted comment. Get that witch outta our party!! a since-deleted tweet added.

Those Twitter users probably didnt know that Rep. Maxine Waters, perhaps the most outspoken Russia investigation advocate in the House and a close Clinton ally, agreed with Turner. Aday after the March for Truth, MSNBC host Joy Reid asked Waters whether Democrats were making a mistake by focusing so much on Russia, when most Americans would rather hear about jobs and the economy. Waters responded:

Well, we do both. Absolutely. Democrats are talking about jobs and the economy, and were pushing back on this presidents budget thats undermining all of our cities and towns, our seniors. And so we talk about the budget, we talk about job creation. Where is [Trumps] infrastructure item that he promised in the budget? He doesnt have any infrastructure program. Obama presented an infrastructure program that created a lot of jobs. We want that, but we also are going to continue to talk about how this president and his allies I believe, and others believe colluded with the Russians to undermine our democracy. And were not going to stop talking about it, because this is extremely important to the future of this country. And so we do both.

Theres nothing remarkable about how Waters responded aside from the fact that its become remarkable to respond that way over the past couple of decades. Waters was talking the way most Democrats did in the years before Bill Clinton and NAFTA. She and Nina Turner both wantDemocrats to get back to their roots.

So does former MSNBC host Krystal Ball, founder of the new Peoples House Project, who appeared on Joy Reids showthe day before Waters. The host asked Ball whether her new organization was sort of controversially trying to de-Pelosi the Democratic Party. Ball rejected that forcefully:

What were trying to do is restore the brand of the Democratic Party in the heartland and specifically in the Rust Belt and Appalachia. And that means running candidates who are connected to their communities more than to the donor class. And thats been interpreted as de-Nancy Pelosi-ing the party. But I think weve really got to work to restore that credibility with voters there, and also to add to our very strong civil rights plank having an economic message, thats strong and connects to voters in that region.

The idea, more precisely, is to find candidates who already resonate with their communities, and then interest donors in them, rather than the other way around. The logic of Balls strategy is as as sound as Turners. In 1993, the Democrats representing Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin in the Housevoted against NAFTA almost unanimously, 33-2, while Republicans from those same states supported it, 24-4.

As I wrote about those votesjust after the November election, It could not possibly have been more clear whose interests each party represented in these key states. Heedless of their House members, the neoliberal Democratic establishment abandoned the partys base. Democrats have been paying the price ever since, but never as painfully as on Election Day 2016.

In 1993, Democrats held a majority of House members from those four states. Today, 40 of the 56 House members from those states are Republicans, even though Democratic presidential candidates (at least before Trump) have typically carried all four of them. Thats largely due to gerrymandering, as former Salon editor David Daley explained in his book Ratfucked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal Americas Democracy,but the NAFTA vote played a huge role in getting the ball rolling. To start rolling it back again, Democrats will need candidates like the ones who voted overwhelmingly against NAFTA. Candidates like Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, for example. Or like Nina Turner.

Balls concern about Democrats returning to their New Deal/Great Society roots is nothing new. Although she supported Hillary Clinton in 2008, in February 2014 she made a controversial on-air plea for Clinton not to run again:

It is clear now that we have two economies: one for a thin slice of educated elite and one for everyone else. That is the moment we are in now. So I ask you, does Hillary Clinton sound to you like the right person for this moment? Is someone who recently took $400,000 to give two speeches at Goldman Sachs the person we need to wrest control of the asylum back from the banking inmates? In a time when we badly need to be inspired, rallied, and made to believe that America can once again be true to the American dream, we desperately need someone who is mission driven.We need someone who is clearly passionate, who is living and breathing and feeling in their bones the plight of the worker and the middle class, and who is unafraid to stand up to the Wall Street titans. That person is not Hillary Clinton.

That was not a widely shared view at the time, but it seems quite compelling in retrospect. My point, however, is not to recycle old arguments but to glean something forward-looking from them. That something is this: Democrats represent a diverse constituency, whose views will always be imperfectly integrated. There is no one right way to bring this about.

The more useful question is, Which way is better? And the answer to that should help improve the quality of all the options. The economic populist argument is a powerful one, and attempts to deflect or distract from it do not produce better options.

Similarly, it isnt helpful to ignore the ways the Trump-Russia scandal can distort our politics. On the contrary, the more conscious we are of potential pitfalls as discussed above the more likely we are to succeed, without creating a whole new round of future problems.

Forty years ago, Zbigniew Brzezinski national security adviser under Jimmy Carter thought it was a brilliant response to the Vietnam War to give the Soviets their own Vietnam. So began the wars in Afghanistan wars that have mutated and multiplied and now have tentacles on every continent save Antarctica. Possibilities that must have seemed remote, if not unimaginable, turned out to dwarf the immediate goals in the long run, with no conceivable end in sight. Do we really want another success like that? Or do we want to welcome the most wide-ranging, disciplined and critical examination of what were getting ourselves into before its too late?

Whether puzzling out how to deal with Trump-Russia, how to prioritize progressive issues or how to structure our arguments, our greatest strength will come from developing a multitude of options and then testing out ways of connecting them. Polarizing, single-issue politics are well-suited to conservatives. When progressives fall into that kind of dichotomous thinking, we become our own worst enemies. There is no one true right way forward except together.

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Democrats have a bright future but only if they can fight on multiple fronts and avoid distraction - Salon