Convention Weekend Roundup:
Fact checking the speech of former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, and more.
Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, redistricting litigation, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, Project 2025, Build Back Better, the progressive movement, the true story about 2024 VP contender Gina Raimondo, and much more.
The convention has wrapped up, but if you missed anything, always feel free to go to C-SPAN, the best venue for full party convention coverage bypassing the usual melodramatic commentary that usually takes place elsewhere. Keep that option in mind (for Verizon customers, go to channel 606).
Don’t feel forgotten. The DNC Rural Council also had a meeting on how to win voters not just in Biden Country, but in Trump Country. Rural areas are not unwinnable at all. It may take time, but pushing for regular competition in these areas will only strengthen the rural push long term. But like the big event itself, the Rural Council meeting energy is palpable, and long needed indeed. As is taking the message to Fox News directly.
One big issue for farmers and ranchers today: foreign ownership of farmland and how it impacts local communities like those around the alfalfa farms across Arizona, and actually the entire Western region of the country.
The real work begins now to win over the nation by November 5. Not just to show that government can lift people up instead of bringing them down, but that we need a leader who seeks the best of America instead of tearing us apart. Let’s jump off the Trump Trainwreck while we can. Let’s make it too big of an election win for Trump to contest and overturn in 2024.
And remember. To paraphrase a well-known GOP congressional leader, Republicans are 100% focused on stopping the Harris-Walz agenda and will do everything they can to roll back Build Back Better and impose Project 2025 on all of us.
More convention notes here. Unfortunately, US Commerce Secretary and former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo made a highly unwelcome appearance at the DNC-to the chagrin of both political outsiders and insiders who have come to slowly know her record over the past year…whether they will say it or not. And as usual, she lies and distorts her record beyond any recognition of us locals.
As a Rhode Islander, I know her record, and I know she is not the person you want anywhere near Washington DC (even as a registered lobbyist). No one wants a career politician in the Harris Cabinet with legal problems and a record of entirely dismal failure. You will likely agree once you google “The Gina Raimondo Files.” But since no one fact-checked her DNC speech, I happily accept the pleasure to do so here.
So here is the reality for those with an open mind on Gina Raimondo:
1. She did not turn around the economy in RI from previous governors (including an Independent Governor who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012). In fact, the state still ranks 45th overall in business climate, 44th in infrastructure & transportation conditions, and D grades still this year for access to capital, cost of doing business, workforce, and cost of living. Her biggest programs are being rolled back and overturned one by one, like RhodeWorks' truck tolls. She only knows opportunity on the basis of her own wealth and connections. Hear Governor Dan McKee speak for himself on RI’s economy (12:30-14:00).
2. Her economy in Rhode Island did not support businesses or workers. In fact, her pension cuts in 2011 have driven out people who want to work in education, law enforcement, or in state government, even as her own venture capital firm made off handsomely with our taxpayer money. That's why the unions and retirees hate her so much, as do progressive and conservatives alike. Inequality between the wealthiest Rhode Islanders and poorest Rhode Islanders is hurting our state.
3. Raimondo did not repudiate the status quo. She doubled down on it, passing tax cuts to the wealthiest Rhode Islanders, giving taxpayer subsidies to large multinational corporations and her own campaign contributors, cutting social services, privatizing state agencies, and expanding fossil fuel infrastructure in the state. She does the bidding of Wall Street & Corporate America instead.
4. Raimondo talked about her working class roots. She doesn't say how she bailed out of RI to go to Harvard and then went into venture capital and private equity, eventually coming back to run a mediocre venture capital firm that lost jobs and mishandled its own finances (as the local media has reported over the years).
5. Raimondo’s father supposedly said our leaders sold us out. Yes, the leaders in her wing of the party sold us out with trade deals (i.e NAFTA) and the rest. People like her political idol NY billionaire Michael Bloomberg, whom she endorsed in 2020 over Biden, whose campaigned collapsed immediately after Super Tuesday.
6. Harris & Raimondo are apples and oranges. Unlike Raimondo, Harris did not take in money from all of the following: Jonathan Sackler, John Arnold, Caleb Kramer, Andrew Tisch, Stacy Schusterman, Michael Polsky, Emma Bloomberg, Husam Ahmad, Al D’Amato, Manhattan Institute board members, AECOM contractors, and local NRA gun lobbyists like Bill Murphy.
7. We cannot forget that Raimondo's allies in the donor class and the press, with help from Bloomberg, were indeed behind the push to get Biden out of the race and sideline Harris in her own ambitions for higher office (not to mention trying to have her off the presidential ticket to be Biden's 2024 running mate earlier this cycle). Raimondo tried pushing Biden & Harris out for her own interest.
And a new reflection on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
President Joe Biden is now a lame duck President for better or worse. That will be quite challenging in regard to Israel-Gaza. But challenging situations can also offer ripe opportunities to play the cards right, especially for the biggest challenge remaining that can be key to furthering his legacy.
We are almost at the 11-month mark of the Israel-Hamas War. The record needs to be set straight. Hamas isn’t fighting for the liberation of Palestine. They never have. They are a barbaric terrorist group who could care less about its people or those of its adversaries.
Israel is a nation that we should respect and admire. The pact between the United States and Israel is one that has to be a joint venture. Not a bullying relationship, but one of mutual respect for each other.
That is not the relationship today. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a bully not much different from Donald Trump himself, the man Netanyahu publicly prefers to win this upcoming November. He is a man vested only in himself and not in the welfare of his own nation. This is a guy who tried to weaken the judicial system so he would be legally immune and protected from future prosecution. Sounds a little like someone in the United States today who I know. He is a man who was willing to fund Hamas to keep the Palestinian people in Gaza & the West Bank divided for his own political purposes, only for that money to be used in ways that would kill 1,200 Israelis and hold more than 200 hostage for almost a year. He is prolonging a war in Gaza deliberately to delay any pending elections in the Knesset that could oust him from power; a different system of elections from here in America for full clarification. He is condoning tensions in the West Bank contributing to violence as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza only worsens and worsens quickly.
The Biden-Netanyahu relationship is not much different from a dating relationship gone horribly wrong.
Israel’s far-right government, one that is trying to subvert its own democracy too, is a disservice to its nation, and to the Palestinians as well. Let’s go over its war goals quickly.
Is Hamas destroyed? No, and frankly, it is not going to be the same way the US, for all its potential and strengths, couldn't eradicate the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. But hey, Republicans got us into forever wars in the Middle East in the first place. Maybe they think another one is worth the cost, even against Iran. The fact is you can’t destroy an idea or movement, at least through mere violence.
Are the hostages back? No. In fact, the most recent we have retrieved are dead, and are likely dead because Netanyahu failed to get a hostage deal finalized as much as Hamas failed to finalize a deal to release the hostages. And it might even be fair to say Netanyahu has stalled hostage deals to prolong his own time in power.
Is the Middle East stable? Well, if you count Iran ready to go to war and unleash a regional conflict in an already tough region, probably not. Gaza is shredded and torn apart to ruins with 40,000 people dead, most of whom are not armed terrorists, but women and children. The humanitarian crisis is only worsening. The West Bank violence is spilling out in the open. Even aid workers from the UN are being attacked indiscriminately by the IDF, sometimes with our American bombs.
Wars are not solutions, especially one that is unjust. Ukraine is fighting for its sovereignty against a foreign power who invaded a European nation for the first time since World War II. Israel’s far-right government is conducting a war with no focus on its goals and without many accomplishments to tout quite frankly.
And we need solutions in the Middle East now. A ceasefire in force. A release of all hostages, and the remains of those who are not around. Addressing the humanitarian crisis. Getting a two-state, or maybe even a three-state solution.
Netanyahu wants to run out the clock with the hope of having a puppet let him run rampant in Gaza & the West Bank as his own personal playground. But President Joe Biden can reign those impulses in and be united with the world in doing so.
As a lame duck President, there is one thing Joe Biden can do, which is to pause the shipment of offensive weaponry, including the same 2,000-pound bombs that have been used to raze Gaza to smithereens. Netanyahu is a rogue leader with no regard for his nation, the region, or the globe, much like Trump was on January 6th. Keeping his government and military from further antagonizing the region and politicizing the military operation can secure the goals outlined above.
National security & global security is at stake. Regional diplomacy and human rights is at stake. Defensive capabilities should not be jeopardized at all. But it is time to condition offensive weaponry on the values we all have as a nation and as a global society period.