2020 USA presidential election

How many weeks are we going to have to watch Republicans try to disenfranchise the votes cast by black voters in Atlanta and Philadelphia by using their cronies in the courts? It's not enough that they have lost the popular vote by 4 million votes, how do these creeps look themselves in the mirror?

Some good news: several progressives did get elected.

Cori Bush, a formerly homeless nurse and single mother, ran a long-shot primary in Missouri's first congressional district in St. Louis against 10-term incumbent William Lacy Clay Jr. He and his father before him held the seat for half a century. Bush won the primary, and, on Tuesday, became the first African American woman elected to Congress from Missouri.

Cori Bush was spurred to political action as a leader of the protests following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. "We protested more than 400 days," she said on the Democracy Now! news hour after winning her primary, describing Ferguson. "People were beaten … tear gas, mace, rubber bullets, real bullets were flying. But we kept coming back. I myself was assaulted by police."

Cori Bush ran on a progressive agenda, including defunding the police: "It's a reallocation of funds … there won't be areas of overfunding while we have areas of underfunding, making sure that there is money for human services in our community, money for social programs, money for health and hospitals." ...

In CD-16, straddling the Bronx and Westchester County, former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman, endorsed by Ocasio-Cortéz and Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, unseated 16-term incumbent Congressmember Eliot Engel, another powerful Democrat.

"I'm going to Washington," Bowman said on Democracy Now! on election night, "to fight for housing as a human right, healthcare as a human right, fully funding our public schools, a federal jobs guarantee, raising the federal minimum wage, a Green New Deal, and humane criminal justice and immigration reform."

Immediately to the north, in CD-17, where longtime Congressmember Nita Lowey is retiring, Mondaire Jones prevailed in an eight-way primary race, and now is one of the first two openly gay African Americans elected to Congress. The other is Ritchie Torres, just to the south in CD-15, in the Bronx.

In Chicago and suburbs to the south, Marie Newman won the seat held since 2005 by conservative, anti-choice Democrat Dan Lipinski. His father held the seat before him, from 1983. Progressives Katie Porter and Mike Levin both won re-election to second terms in Southern California.

With intense focus on the presidential election, the electoral successes of progressive Congressional candidates can be easily overlooked. The 117th Congress to be inaugurated on January 3 will be the most diverse in history, with more people of colour and more women than ever. Grassroots organizing in communities from coast to coast is translating into power in the halls of Congress.

https://rabble.ca/columnists/2020/11/us-democrats-expand-progressive-win...

Jerry, thank you for that uplifting account of new Congress members to make it in and push progressive ideas. And some of them knocked out long-standing dynasties. Brava and bravo to those new members!

Here's another song to dedicate to the outgoing President

Regime Change in Washington Paves the Way to More Nefarious Policies

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/11/regime-change-in-washington-paves-...

"It seems that the powers that be are finally managing to get rid of US President Donald Trump. While Trump's domestic policies have been as much to the favor of the very rich as those of his predecessors, his foreign policies were remarkably different. A Harris (Biden) regime will return to 'business as usual' and be more aggressive.

Now, as it seems that Joe Biden will win the presidency, there is no longer a need to promote the fake 'Russiagate' stories. Just in time for the election three major pillars of 'Russiagate' were thoroughly debunked and quietly buried...

While I would not have voted for Trump I rue what is following him."