Marianne Williamson talks a lot about changing our country’s priorities and going from an economic bottom line to a humanitarian bottom line. During her presidential campaign she said that “The first pillar of a season of moral repair has to do with economic justice– has to do with recognizing that we have created a wealth inequality greater than anytime since 1929, we have decimated America’s middle class, and we must take immediate action to fix this. We should repeal the 2017 $2 trillion tax cut, which gave 83 cents of every dollar to the very richest individuals and corporations; although, we should put back in the middle class tax cut. We should stop all the corporate subsidies, such as $26 billion that we gave to oil and gas alone last year… For what reason?”
As she said, “We have near 93 million people who live near poverty in the United States today. That means millions of people, tens of millions of people who live, every single day, in chronic tension and economic anxiety, not knowing really what will happen if they get sick, not knowing what will happen if one of their children get sick, not knowing how they will send their children to college or not knowing how they themselves will get out from under the burden of their college loan. We need to change this. Bad public policy created all this and good public policy will make it right.”
After Marianne ended her presidential campaign she decided to do what she could to help progressive congressional candidates who are running on platforms that she feels are about creating that good and reparative public policy. You may have noticed that this week centrist Democrat Amy Klobuchar, a top contender to be Biden’s VP pick, followed Marianne’s lead and announced that she is trying to help down-ballot candidates, what Politico referred to as “kicking off her next act.”
The effort to raise funds, the snazzily dubbed “Win Big Project,” began Friday by endorsing a slate of a dozen House and Senate candidates. All of them are centrists or candidates from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like reactionary Blue Dogs Anthony Brindisi (D-NY) and Xochitl Torres Small (D-NM).
Klobuchar’s are the kinds of candidates who have worked hand-in-hand with the Republicans to create the bad public policy Marianne has derailed. And none of her candidates are anything like the candidates Marianne has endorsed– the list of which you can see by clicking on the thermometer on the right.
We asked several of those candidates what makes their own campaigns different from the campaigns of conservative Democrats being supported by the corporate and political establishment.
The first response was from Liam O’Mara, a progressive congressional candidate in Riverside County who won his primary and is challenging right-wing crook and Trump enabler Ken Calvert. “Marianne is right to say that we need a moral renaissance in this country,” he said. “All our great religious and philosophical traditions give us a sense of right and wrong which is rooted in justice and compassion for others. None of them could be used to justify the neofeudal outcome of Republican tax policy. The GOP claims the mantle of liberty while it strips that liberty from Americans by steadily lowering our living standards and reducing us to virtual paupers, dependent on the largesse of powerful special interests and the billionaire class. Americans should not have to live on their knees, begging for crumbs from the table of the super-rich. Our Founders fought a revolution motivated by the Enlightenment ideal that all human beings were born free and equal in dignity and rights. It is well past time we realised the promise of that revolution, and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which is also the law of the land.”
Mark Gamba‘s all-mail primary is 2 weeks from Tuesday. He told us he couldn’t agree more with Marianne on this. “I have long advocated that we should measure America’s success on a Gross National Happiness Index rather then the GDP which only measures outcomes for the wealthiest and has little relevance to the rest of us and certainly doesn’t measure economic justice. Concepts like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal which look to invest in the vast majority of people and the health of the nation, rather than the wealth of the 1% are exactly what we need to enact to bring our country out of the economic tragedy millions are suffering due to the pandemic. It will require a significant change in Congress however to make that a reality. The neo-liberals will use this crisis to further their agenda of concentrating wealth and power at the top. Everyone below the top 10% have been getting poorer, relative to the cost of living, since the Reagan era. It is critical that we raise the minimum wage to a living wage and tie it to the cost of housing so that it never stagnates again. It is beyond time to tax capital gains at the same rate we tax other income; to increase the tax rate on anyone making more than $10 million a year to at least 50% and to close the loopholes that allow companies like Amazon to pay nothing in taxes. This is why all the candidates in this post need the support of every American who hopes for progressive change, I for one do not take a penny of corporate money so that I can be free to fight for the changes Marianne and I have outlined.”
Michael Broihier is a progressive Democrat Marianne has endorsed for the Kentucky Senate seat held by Mitch McConnell. Mike told me that “Marianne is spot on; the great tragedy of this pandemic, after the loss of life, will be a rush back to the comfort of business as usual. As a farmer, I know how little a roaring stock market means to rural voters. In a state with the nation’s fifth worst economy and double the national average of people working at the minimum wage, the health of the Dow-Jones or S&P means little. And, the failure of a health care system tied to employment is self-evident when 30-million Americans become unemployed in a manner of weeks.” He elaborated:
Sadly, those people who routinely had to chose between rationing their prescriptions or paying the rent were invisible to career politicians of both parties until Washington career politicians began to fear the Senate gym being looted for hand-sanitizer and toilet paper. But even with a mounting death toll their first instinct was to bail out their rich and corporate donors and that tone deafness is not lost on working America. Even the paltry, one-time payment to citizens smacks of desperation– not leadership– as they fail to grasp the enormity of the challenges ahead.In my race, I face the DNC’s handpicked candidate, who has refashioned herself as a pro-Trump moderate who thinks the Senate Majority Leader is stopping the president from draining the swamp. A candidate who said she would have voted to elevate Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. This is what Washington establishment Dems think is what is needed– another a get-along Democrat absent of vision or the moral courage to lead the country towards a more just and equitable future.
If you agree the way out of the mess we’re in is to transform the country’s focus away from ‘profit over people’, the best way for this to become reality is to elect candidates who share this vision.
Please help Marianne’s endorsees get the messages out by making a donation today. The time has never been better to make voters understand why enacting humane public policies focused on making life better for everyone, not just the 1%– is vital.
Thanks for always doing what you can to make a better world,
Howie, for the entire Blue America team
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