Another Progressive Bench Edition:
Plus 2024 Autopsy Recommendations and Trump Executive Orders Summary
Feel free to check the past archives and follow the editions to come in the Trump Era (First Come, First Serve!).
More 2024 Election autopsies are churning out. Here are two notable ones:
Michael Podhorzer outlines how 2024 is not “an embrace of MAGA,” but a rejection of the Democratic Party brand (and more so the impression voters had of the Biden-Harris Administration). You can see the major dropoff in votes came from urban areas, and almost everywhere, which shows how much a reduction in turnout hurt the Harris-Walz campaign. Much more significant than any increase in Trump-Vance turnout.
Thanks to the person who forwarded Podhorzer’s article to me. Glad to see my own intuitions and my own analysis of the voting data reflected in someone else’s very detailed take.
Please, please, please read Podhorzer’s article when you get a chance. It tells us a lot about what happened and the way forward.
Likewise, check out this piece from Dr. Robin Johnson and Matt Barron on how the rural vote did sink many Democrats, and helped some others stay afloat. It is because Democrats like Jacky Rosen, Ruben Gallego, Tammy Baldwin, and Elissa Slotkin outperformed Harris among rural voters that they won their races. It demonstrates that winning 40%+ of the rural vote—vs. 30%, or less—makes a huge difference in election outcomes. We saw it at the House level too. Take note, whoever the next Democratic National Committee chair is.
Don’t look now, but Trump’s executive order swarm is coming right out of the pro-oligarchy and autocracy Project 2025 agenda.
Repeal of lower prescription drug costs, including for diabetes coverage.
US withdrawal from the World Health Organization & the Paris Climate Accords
Offshore wind leasing has been paused (good for energy costs…not!)
Bird flu reports from the CDC have been halted (that’ll help the egg prices)
Federal government has a 90-day hiring freeze
February 1 tariffs are being threatened (in which consumption taxes from it would benefit the wealthy and threaten funding for Social Security)
There is a full-scale regulatory freeze (not good for contaminated areas from the LA wildfires like Pacific Palisades)
Gutting of cancer research (for God’s sake!) and threats to the FEMA program
Reinstatement of Schedule F to purge civil servants
Suspension of the refugee resettlement program, including for our Afghan allies
Expansion of the use of the death penalty
Elimination of birthright citizenship (pending litigation), including for Native Americans and Pacific Islanders
Churches, schools, and hospitals are no longer exempt from mass deportation efforts
Security clearances (including that of John Bolton and Dr. Anthony Fauci) were removed based off of petty personal grievances
A pardon for Silk Road marketplace mega drug trafficker Ross Ulbricht, prioritizing political allies over the working and middle classes
The hiring of a junk food and seed oil lobbyist to run operations at the US Department of Agriculture. So much for “Make America Healthy Again!”
Wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Mt. Denali
Alas, let’s do a checkback on how David Zaslav is further tainting journalistic integrity at CNN. He is reportedly pulling the strings to move morning anchor Jim Acosta into the midnight hours as one of the few no holds barred Trump reporters left. And that is after sidelining Magic Wall and national political correspondent John King and laying off prominent voices such as media critic Oliver Darcy and John Harwood in the name of M&As.
Apparently, Zaslav’s underlings have even told network journalists not to “express outrage” or aggressively trash Trump’s record. And let’s set aside the hints of layoffs to come.
Otherwise, let’s get back to another edition of building the progressive bench. That is what the progressive movement needs to do to influence the Democratic Party further, including as we get closer to the inevitable passing of the torch by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as the ideological standard bearers of the cause. New voices will inevitably at some point have to continue the fight from where they started in fighting the status quo that delivered us this right-wing, special interests-led, highly unfair, and rigged tech oligarchy.
Building the bench in Congress and in state governments all across our country is how the grassroots movement wing of the party—and not the Washington DC, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley consultant and donor classes—can influence the 2028 presidential contest if we hold the line in these next 2 to 4 years.
And yes, while candidate quality is essential, it is also true that reinventing and reimagining the party brand as a whole will be even more crucial to building the bench of candidates who are willing to take on the oligarchic special interests, the DC lobbyists, and the Big Dark Money groups. That is the challenge after all: to showcase to America an alternative, more compassionate, authentic, and tough-as-nails working class progressive populism. Even if such candidates may differ on the edges on one angle or another. Too much at stake to forfeit vast swaths of the country to the con jobs of the Trump Republican Party elite, even with their voter suppression efforts.
By the way, if you think these officials should run for the offices mentioned as I do, you should reach out to them and let your voices be heard too:
Jon Ossoff: GA Senator Jon Ossoff has been quite a surprise for many as a standard bearer of progressive populism, running on direct COVID-19 stimulus when David Perdue opposed it in 2020.
But there’s more. Senator Ossoff has led on a wide range of issues, from exposing and reigning in the prison-industrial complex, to pushing for marijuana legalization, taking on speculative trading, and expanding trade school and vocational training opportunities.
He is poised, however, to face a tough reelection challenge in 2026 if the somewhat popular Georgia Governor Brian Kemp jumps into the fray.
Ben Ray Lujan: NM Senator Ben Ray Lujan has been a figure on Capitol Hill who has been able to bridge priorities of congressional progressives with steady and consistent communication with leadership, especially on campaign finance reform, tribal sovereignty, labor rights, blue-collar trade and vocational workforce programs, healthcare expansion, substance abuse treatments, and a sustainable energy portfolio.
Having been a son of an ironworker and lived nearby a Native American tribal reservation, Senator Ray Lujan’s service to New Mexico has been nothing short of selfless and impressive.
Tim Ryan: Former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, even despite the harsh advice and commentary, has been mostly right about why Democrats needed new leadership, younger faces, and different perspectives for years and years and years. He was right long ago that Democrats needed to rebuild their brand. And he may need to be a part of it in some way, alongside his longtime friend, Sherrod Brown, in 2026.
Congressman Ryan also has been on the right side of many issues, just like Senator Brown himself. He opposed NAFTA and voted against TPP and other bad trade deals that encouraged the global race to the bottom. He has put forth major policy frameworks for how the Midwest can be a center for renewable energy manufacturing, high-speed rail, and semiconductor production. He has been an ardent, and somewhat provocative, defender of the right to organize and for the labor movement at large. He fought for retirement pensions and Social Security benefits during the pandemic, and opposed bailouts for the banks. Democrats need a working class focus much like the one Tim Ryan has and can offer to the rest of the party.
Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez: Texas’s Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez is a rising star indeed, as an organizer for young people across the country and to propel them to leadership in higher political offices. This is someone who is capable of offering a good Senate matchup against either John Cornyn or Ken Paxton in 2026. She is a civil rights and workers’ rights leader supporting agricultural immigrant laborers, motivating Latinos to vote, empowering women in the workforce, pushing for universal pre-K, bold climate action, and a fair healthcare system with no greedy insurance middleman (a position even Mark Cuban vouches for).
In her first bid for office in 2020, Tzintzun Ramirez did especially well in the increasingly Republican Rio Grande Valley, which can be telling of how she can organize the type of coalition similar to Beto O’Rourke that may hold hope in swinging the political tides in Texas back towards battleground territory. She might have the chops to do such.
Lina Hidalgo: One other Texas leader to watch for may very well be Lina Hidalgo, the Harris County Judge who has been dealing with all kinds of issues, from voter suppression, to heat waves, frozen energy grids, and even her own mental health treatment. She is a civil rights leader stemming from her past work as a medical interpreter and volunteer for a Texas grassroots organization before flipping the office for Democrats in 2018 and staying there ever since.
She has been tried and tested, and should she continue to make progress on the county level, may also be in a position to run for higher office in Texas, like Governor (as would be the dynamically religious State Rep. James Talarico).
Fentrice Driskell: Florida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell is thought to be a rising figure for Florida Democrats who also was elected in the 2018 blue wave, and a potential future candidate for statewide office, preferably Governor, in the years to come (similar to State Rep. Anna Eskamani).
She has been a champion for Fair Maps in the aftermath of Governor Ron DeSantis’s egregious GOP supermajority gerrymander for congressional and state legislative districts, and has put forth an elaborate, detailed, alternative agenda showcasing her party’s devotion to the blue-green economy, for property insurance relief, for gun safety, and for toughening anti-corruption and government ethics laws.
Jose Javier Rodriguez: Jose Javier Rodriguez just finished serving in the US Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Division, after a long career representing labor union employees and negotiating with employers for higher pay, safer conditions, and dignified treatment. He was a former state lawmaker from Miami, Florida who lost reelection in 2020 mainly upon a ghost candidate boosted by GOP dark money-funded political action committees. As a lawmaker in both chambers of the Florida Legislature, he was one of the strongest backers of public education, affordable healthcare, climate resiliency measures, and reforming state unemployment systems all across the country.
This would be the smart recruiting pick for Marco Rubio’s Senate seat up in 2026 as a result of Trump’s 2024 reelection.
Daniel Blackman: Georgia’s Daniel Blackman may be the kind of candidate Democrats need to be elected Governor in 2026. After a close race for Georgia Public Service Commissioner in 2020, Blackman served in the federal government as a head of one of the regions overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, and oversaw the EPA’s STEM recruitment program as a special advisor.
As a nationally renowned environmental activist and community leader, Blackman worked to address public health issues arising from environmental pollution and creating a sustainable energy economy from it. He is also a civil rights advocate in Georgia and a community philanthropist and consultant to local companies and nonprofits in his neck of the woods. Fantastic leader to consider (gun safety advocate and Congresswoman Lucy McBath would also be a very good choice).
Mia McLeod: SC State Senator Mia McLeod is the perfect choice to give a true run at establishment career politician Lindsey Graham in 2026 for all of his inconsistencies and flip-flopping, and both ways posturing with Trump supporters, whether she ever runs as an anti-establishment Democrat or Independent populist.
McLeod has been a state leader on maternal mortality, rural healthcare, and reproductive justice, That was shown in recent years as South Carolina enacted draconian abortion bans after the fall of Roe v. Wade. But even more importantly, Senator McLeod is a fighter for the economic interests of the working class, from a $15 minimum wage, to infrastructure projects funding, supporting a renewable energy economy, addressing water system issues in rural areas, and increasing pay for educators. McLeod offers a needed unique foil to Graham.
Pramila Jayapal: Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal just recently wrapped up her uniquely successful tenure as the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. From where things started in 2017 and even as recently as 2019, Congresswoman Jayapal, with other prominent co-chairs, built the organization into a major fighting force, especially against corporate Democratic saboteurs of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Agenda (like Joe Manchin & Kyrsten Sinema). And she has transferred leadership over to someone well-equipped to take on Trump 2.0 in Greg Casar.
Her long standing progressive values are no doubt an asset to Washington State, and hopefully will be able to continue that someday in the United States Senate should Patty Murray or Maria Cantwell retire in the near future.
Aaron Ford: Nevada has been fortunate to have a true leader in AG Aaron Ford (as well as its Secretary of State, Cisco Aguilar). Both have been at the forefront of combatting 2020 election denial, even as Trump’s minions celebrate their victory in 2024 despite the fundamentals not changing very much at all. Ford has also led to protect reproductive access and voting rights, support pregnant workers, push for pharmaceutical transparency in the fixing of drug prices, challenging price gouging, and prosecuting instigators of the opioid and fentanyl epidemics in rural Nevada.
It is in no small part to this work that Ford won his reelection bid in 2022 by 8 points, and why he can lead the statewide ticket to unseat Republican Governor Joe Lombardo.
Adrian Fontes: AZ Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is another electoral outperformer even for most Democrats in his own battleground state.
Furthermore, he (as well as AG Kris Mayes) is one of the most consistent defenders of counting the vote in our democracy when it has been under attack by election deniers, such as Arizona’s own Kari Lake. He did it as the county recorder in Maricopa County, the largest Arizona county home to the Phoenix area. He is doing it now as a statewide official. In the years to come, it may be Fontes will be the leader of all statewide officials across the country committed to protecting the integrity of and counting the vote.
Wilda Diaz: Former Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz served her city as its top official for a dozen years, and remains active politically after a career of tackling corruption, improving the city’s business climate, pursuing infrastructure rebuilding, and navigating the city during the early phases of the coronavirus pandemic as well as Superstorm Sandy. Her commitment to economic and social justice is strong.
Whether it is in elected office in New Jersey in some capacity, or out of office, Mayor Diaz has a lot to offer for her state and for the Democratic Party.
William Tong: CT Attorney General William Tong ought to be on the political radar for US Senate or for Governor.
He recently has led the charge against the repeal of birthright citizenship by Donald Trump, but he also has been a national advocate for tougher consumer safety guardrails, prosecution of the opioid industry to the fullest extent of the law, and being at the forefront of major climate and environmental litigation. Keep an eye on the current Connecticut Attorney General.
To be continued…