What A Day - Justice Democrats League

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

Five states hold primaries today, including Minnesota, where Rep. Ilhan Omar is running to keep her seat in Congress. The elections come a week after another progressive, Cori Bush, won a major upset in her race against a longterm incumbent in Missouri. We speak to Bush about her path to politics and check in on Justice Democrats, the political group that backed Bush, Omar, and a handful of other progressive Democrats since 2017. Read our full interview with Cori Bush at crooked.com/articles/cori-bush-democratic-party/Lebanon Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced his resignation yesterday, following mass protests after the chemical explosion in Beirut. Protests continue in the country with demonstrators demanding that other top leaders resign as well. Donate: ImpactLebanon.orgAnd in headlines: protests in Chicago and Belarus, a big loss for Uber and Lyft, and Nikki Haley tries to cancel popcorn.To read more of Gideon's reporting on primary races, check out: https://crooked.com/articles/kentucky-underdog-booker/

It's Tuesday, August 11th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is what a day where we haven't lost hope that we'll get picked as VP. Yeah, I mean, I'm a black woman, but you know, they're not going to just have one. So maybe a black woman and a white man will get us there. Yeah, you know, the takes will be nuclear. That's all I can say. They don't like it. On today's show, an interview with Cori Bush, the latest Democrat to beat a long-term incumbent, and then some headlines. But first, the latest. Lebanon's Prime Minister Hassan Diab announced his resignation yesterday following mass protests over the chemical

explosion in Beirut, which has killed more than 160 people, injured 6,000, and left roughly 250,000 people homeless. In a speech, Diab blamed Lebanon's ruling elite class, saying that a level of corruption, quote, bigger than the state,itated the events and quote, only God knows how many catastrophes they're hiding. This resignation is monumental, not only because of the speed with which it happened, the deadly explosion happened less than a week prior, but also in the middle of a pandemic and continued economic collapse that began well before the COVID-19 crisis. That's right. So there's a really great opinion piece in the New York Times that was eerily published the day before the explosion took place. And it's called We Lebanese Thought We Could Survive Anything, We Were Wrong. And in it,

they really comprehensively explain how this horrible tragedy is just the last straw. But let's talk resignations. The prime minister and his entire cabinet have now resigned, which hopefully will inspire some other incompetent heads of state to do the same. Yeah, so what do we think is actually going to happen next year? So Diab and his cabinet will continue as caretakers until a new prime minister is appointed, which could take several months. And the protests are ongoing with the demand that other top leaders resign. Police there are tear gassing protesters, yes, in the middle of a pandemic after a tragic and seemingly preventable explosion and economic downturn. So we're going to continue following this. And if you would like to help, please check out the links in our show notes. But turning now to U.S. news,

today, several states are holding primary elections. One of the major races is in Minnesota's fifth congressional district, where Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is facing a primary challenger with a lot of money in her first bid for reelection. This comes a week after another progressive Democrat, Cori Bush, won a major upset in her House primary race in Missouri. Bush, like Omar, is supported by the political group Justice Democrats, and that's what we're going to be digging into today. So Gideon, let's do a little bit of background on Justice Dems. Okay, so the group was created in 2017. And Cori Bush, the winner of last week's primary in Missouri's first congressional district that you

were mentioning, was actually the very first Justice Democrat recruit. The idea at that time, born out of people involved with Senator Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, was to find these candidates and run them in various races who all believed in key progressive issues like Medicare for All and rejecting corporate PAC money. These candidates were often dismissed by some members of the Democratic Party as long shots or worse, in some cases, kind of nuisances. But the story seemed to change in the summer of 2018 when a then not so well known former bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated a 10 term incumbent in New York. And then a few months after that, Ayanna Pressley pulled off a similar feat in a Boston-area district. And that same year,

voters sent Omar and Rashida Tlaib to Congress. All four of them are and were J.D.-backed candidates. And so people began to draw differing conclusions about what this all meant. Some Democrats saw these wins as one-offs and would characterize them as happening in deep blue districts or say that the incumbents were just uniquely unprepared. Then folks on the more progressive side would argue something bigger was going on here. Often ordinary working people who looked more like their diverse districts were winning on a set of progressive values. Yeah. And flash forward to this year, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib easily won their primaries. So it's really likely that they're headed back to Congress. But what else is going on with Justice Dims in 2020?

Yeah, so going into the year, there was a lot of excitement about Sanders' second run for the White House. Justice Democrats had this plan where they kind of pared back how many candidates they were endorsing and really, really zeroed in on places where they thought they could be successful, often in bluer districts across the country. And at first, it seemed like things could have been going better. Sanders loses in the presidential primary, and one of the Justice Democrats' first candidates of the year in Texas, Jessica Cisneros, lost the challenge against the Democratic incumbent, although pretty narrowly. But then as the year goes on, things got better for them. And at this point, nearly all of the House candidates Justice Democrats have backed this cycle have won their races, including Marie Newman, who beat an anti-abortion

Democrat in a rematch in Illinois, and Jamal Bowman, who beat long-term incumbent Elliot Engel in New York. Yeah. And that brings us to Cori Bush, a Black woman who just won in Missouri. That's right. And she could actually be important to note the first Black woman elected to Congress in Missouri. So as we mentioned, Bush was here for the start of Justice Democrats. She became active in politics after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014 and worked as a triage nurse on the ground and an organizer. In 2018, she ran against Congressman William Lacey Clay Jr. and lost by almost 20 points. Then she ran again this year and defeated Clay, ending a family dynasty in that district that went back over 50 years. I spoke with Bush on Friday after her win, and here's what she had to say about why she thought her message is

resonating more at this moment. People are starting to understand why so many of us have been saying Medicare for all, you know, for several years and why we've been pushing it, you know, why we've been saying job status can't be connected to your health care. People saw it then. People saw why we were saying a $15 an hour federal minimum wage and why that was important because we had essential workers who were making $9 an hour losing their lives because they had to show up to work, you know. I mean, they contracted COVID-19. So people saw that. And then fighting the other pandemic that was already a part of just Tuesday in America, the pandemic of Black lives being taken at the hands of police disproportionately in this country. So now that people are a little

more open, people are home, a lot of people were home, they can sit down and really hear this message. But, you know, for a lot of that, I was in the band myself. Yeah. And she's been affected by almost every issue we've talked about on the show. As she alluded to, she was sick with COVID-19 earlier this year. She's formerly unhoused. She's been protesting police brutality for years. And her win wasn't just noteworthy for who she is and who she beat. It also challenged some of the assumptions about these kinds of races, that they only seem to be successful in liberal enclaves like New York City, that they only happen against older white incumbents.

Yeah, for sure. That's 100% right. Bush is in the St. Louis area. She unseated a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. So the dynamics are a little bit different here. And Justice Democrats historically had not been successful when challenging CBC members. So this is a first in that regard, too. And I asked her about whether she sees a world in which primary challengers like herself would get more support from sitting members in the future. I think we'll get there. Some of them are calling me like, wow, your story is like really amazing. And, you know, so where they might've thought, you know, we don't want her, you know, because she's a this or that, and she was supported by this person in that group.

You know, once they heard my story, it's like, oh, wait a minute, you know, this person really has something to say. This person is a substance. This person is not a prop as I've been called, you know? And so I think that when that starts to happen, they see that, okay, maybe we need to broaden what we're thinking a little more. I think that that will be the change. And I think it will also cause some of our Congress members to look at what they're doing in their own communities, because some have been there so long to say, well, you know what, let me do a self-check, you know, and I can course correct. Because we're not saying just throw everybody out and at least I'm not personally.

I'm just saying, let's just take care of our district. So if you need to course correct, none of us are infallible. You know, let's just fix it and do better. Bowman and Newman is all but guaranteed to be in Congress next year, where she told me she wants to institute a $2,000 monthly basic income to help people during this pandemic, cancel things like utility shutoffs, reinvest money in public education, and work towards Medicare for all, among other things. And she joins what is quickly becoming a growing coalition of progressive members who may very well butt up against a more moderate Democratic administration and House leadership, which presents its own opportunities and challenges. I'm just going to be me. You know, I'm the same. I'm, you know, I'm coming in as a politivist. I like that. So, politivist is, I guess, a shortened version of

political activist, which is great. And, you know, I think, I hope that's the future of politics, more politivists. While we will be keeping up with the primary results, but in the meantime, head over to Crooked.com to read a full transcript of Gideon's interview with Cori Bush. And that's the latest. It's Tuesday, WOD Squad, and for today's Tempt Check, we're talking about another can-miss concert. The 90s band Smash Mouth performed on Sunday night in South Dakota for a mostly mask-free crowd at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The rally was expected to bring in 250,000 people to the small city of Sturgis. The bikers who saw the concert heard Smash Mouth's lead singer say, fuck that COVID shit, and may have also caught performances from Buck Cherry and Quiet Riot, but not Willie Nelson, who canceled. So Giddy, the big question, does this change your enjoyment of Shrek? No, no. Shrek is too tangential to this. I'll give the movie a pass for its uh extensive involvement with smash mouth i do

like that willie nelson uh canceled on this and if he canceled you know because of covid reasons um shouts to to him for recognizing that this might be a problem to be at an event like this the bar truly is low i will i will look for praise and enlightenment anywhere. But no, I'm still Shrek Hive, Donkey Forever. I love it. I also say Donkey. The important question of the day. When does

Smash Mouth play All-Star? At the beginning or the end of their set? I assumed it was their entire set. I thought they would just be like, now we're going to play it on Kazoos. Now we're going to play it as a hand clapping hand clapping game now we're gonna just play it as like dinging sounds from microsoft like windows 96 or 95 or whatever it is like literally i i they have a song in the second one i think and i i skipped it you know all star for me is the beginning and into smash mouth so they really just got to stick to the hit. Right. Might as well be

Walking on the Sun. It's been a minute. I played Barbies to that one, so I'm definitely aware. But I just got to say, All-Star was clearly the song. I think this festival is all of these other bands playing All-Star in the festival.

Buck Cherry, Quiet Riot, cover All-Star. Shrek shows up yeah well just like that we have checked our temps please don't go to a Shrek concert in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic it's very stupid stay safe and we will check in with you all again tomorrow Let's wrap up with some headlines.

Headlines. and damaged stores. Hundreds of people in the city gathered in outrage over news that a police officer shot a young man in a nearby neighborhood. Now, the young man was sent to the hospital in an unknown condition, and rumors quickly spread about the shooting, many of which the police department refuted. There also was no body camera footage from the officers. Dozens of stores at a high-end shopping district were damaged, and over 100 people were arrested. Bridges to the downtown area were lifted, and public transportation in the city was halted well into Monday. A curfew in the area remained in place last night and police say they'll be going over surveillance videos to make more arrests. Heated protests continued in Belarus after what many observers are calling a rigged election. Over the weekend, President Alexander Lukashenko won a landslide re-election with 80% of the vote.

For context, he's been the president since 1994, when the position was created, and this would be his sixth term. The election itself was filled with suspicious authoritarian-like activity all of 2020. Most of the internet in the country was shut off as people tried to vote on Sunday, and observers were not invited to monitor the election. His opponent, who the protesters support, also said that staff members saw her winning in over 50 polling stations. On top of that, many were outraged at Lukashenko's handling of the pandemic, which is basically just him telling citizens to drink some vodka and go into a sauna. Protests continued at the Capitol into Monday, with over 3,000 people being detained. Lord Almighty. A ride share might look different once it comes back around the year

2025. A California judge issued a landmark ruling yesterday that would require Uber and Lyft to classify drivers in the state as employees rather than independent contractors. So that could have a huge impact on the business models of those companies, which just aren't made to account for things like overtime pay, workers' comp, and health insurance. You know, the things bosses have provided for the last hundred years until disruptors in Silicon Valley had the revolutionary idea to stop that. San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Shulman wrote that under California's new AB5 law, rideshare drivers are clearly employees because their work is central to Uber and Lyft's business rather than tangential. I think that follows. Uber and Lyft are expected to appeal the injunction, though. Excited to look back on the gig economy as just another bad trend from the 2010s, like hoverboards that catch on fire or smashing milk

gallons in a grocery store. Oh, yeah. I mean, planking and flashmobs forever. All right. Well, the cancel culture has officially come for snacks you eat out of decorative tins. Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley tweeted yesterday that she would never buy from a place called the Popcorn Company again after they failed to deliver gourmet popcorn in time for her nephew's birthday. It's good to use your platform to call out injustice. In this case, the injustice involved a hashtag disappointed nephew going to sleep on his big night with a belly totally empty of salty corn. Haley's post didn't go unnoticed, and some pointed out the irony that the administration she supports and used to work for frequently attacks the United States Postal Service, the same organization that makes sure nephews get popcorn.

Trump donor Louis DeJoy took over the USPS in May. Since then, he's introduced cost-cutting measures that have led to delivery delays. And on Friday, he announced a massive restructuring of the organization, which no one really understands. Popcorn probably is the most important thing that comes in the mail, but we also rely on it for absentee ballots, bills, medication for seniors, and more. It's true. Mail is big and good. We need the mail. And those are the headlines. Quick announcement before we go. Ben Rhodes' new podcast, Missing America, is out today. Ben was Obama's deputy national security advisor, and over the past few years, he's been all around the world speaking to leaders and activists and getting a sense of what's happening now that America has stopped trying to lead.

The first episode is out now. Listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, step away from that flaming hoverboard man, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just tweets under the hashtag disappointednephewlikeme,

What A Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And enjoy your salty corn. I mean, we all need something to enjoy these days. Yeah, get that popcorn.

But also make sure that you can get it with the good mail. What a Day is a Crooked Media production. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tan is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kshaka.