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Democrats sound alarm against Trump
Top liberals and leading progressive groups perceive the GOP front-runner as a dangerous and unprecedented threat.
Politico
Gabriel Debenedetti
3/17/2016
Excerpt:
PHOENIX — Leading liberals and progressive groups are turning their gaze away from the Democratic primary and toward efforts to unite the left against Donald Trump, framing him as a dangerous and unprecedented candidate who poses an existential threat to the progressive movement and the nation.
Ad campaigns are in the works. There are calls for massive voter mobilizations and screeds from leading donors circulating within liberal circles. Major labor groups are organizing their members on the ground in swing states. Within the Democratic Party apparatus, top elected leaders are beginning to speak out both collectively and individually in ways that reach beyond standard presidential-year posturing. The sense of urgency in some corners of the left is high enough that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a progressive icon who has gone to great lengths to avoid being part of the Democratic presidential conversation in 2016, hinted on Monday that she might soon get involved with the effort to stop Trump.
“Ever since early January, when I was door-knocking with our members in Cedar Rapids [Iowa], I heard concerns from our members about what he was saying and doing, and I would say [that] inside our union, our objection to his hate-filled rhetoric has been growing,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, a 2 million-member labor group that’s supporting Hillary Clinton.
Henry is a signatory to one of the most conspicuous anti-Trump efforts to date, an open letter calling progressives to arms against the billionaire. Signed by leaders of more than 20 leading liberal groups that support Clinton or Bernie Sanders, the letter described Trump in the harshest of terms and called for a massive organizing effort against him.
“This is a five-alarm fire for our democracy. A hate-peddling bigot who openly incites violence is the likely presidential nominee of one of our nation’s two major parties,” reads the letter, signed by leaders of groups as varied as MoveOn, the Sierra Club, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Greenpeace. “It is alarming and dangerous. Donald Trump’s candidacy is a threat to the America we love, and we must respond to him and what he is stoking as such.”
The letter, released Tuesday, served as a public acknowledgment of the heightened apprehension surrounding Trump’s candidacy, as well as a sign that leaders in the party’s left wing are now setting their sights more squarely on Trump than the protracted Democratic nomination battle between Clinton and Sanders.
“As more and more progressive groups were with each other in the early primary states and talking about our general organizing, we decided to link our fights and invite others to join us,” explained Henry.
The question of what to do about Trump has gone from a bad joke to a topic of frequent conversation among leading Democratsincluding members of Congress. As Trump has stormed toward the GOP nomination, confounding the Republican establishment and steamrolling veteran officeholders in his path, liberal leaders have come to conclude that the time has come to more seriously confront Trump — whom, they warn, could actually win the White House.
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View the complete article, including image, at:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...p-alarm-220910
Top liberals and leading progressive groups perceive the GOP front-runner as a dangerous and unprecedented threat.
Politico
Gabriel Debenedetti
3/17/2016
Excerpt:
PHOENIX — Leading liberals and progressive groups are turning their gaze away from the Democratic primary and toward efforts to unite the left against Donald Trump, framing him as a dangerous and unprecedented candidate who poses an existential threat to the progressive movement and the nation.
Ad campaigns are in the works. There are calls for massive voter mobilizations and screeds from leading donors circulating within liberal circles. Major labor groups are organizing their members on the ground in swing states. Within the Democratic Party apparatus, top elected leaders are beginning to speak out both collectively and individually in ways that reach beyond standard presidential-year posturing. The sense of urgency in some corners of the left is high enough that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a progressive icon who has gone to great lengths to avoid being part of the Democratic presidential conversation in 2016, hinted on Monday that she might soon get involved with the effort to stop Trump.
“Ever since early January, when I was door-knocking with our members in Cedar Rapids [Iowa], I heard concerns from our members about what he was saying and doing, and I would say [that] inside our union, our objection to his hate-filled rhetoric has been growing,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, a 2 million-member labor group that’s supporting Hillary Clinton.
Henry is a signatory to one of the most conspicuous anti-Trump efforts to date, an open letter calling progressives to arms against the billionaire. Signed by leaders of more than 20 leading liberal groups that support Clinton or Bernie Sanders, the letter described Trump in the harshest of terms and called for a massive organizing effort against him.
“This is a five-alarm fire for our democracy. A hate-peddling bigot who openly incites violence is the likely presidential nominee of one of our nation’s two major parties,” reads the letter, signed by leaders of groups as varied as MoveOn, the Sierra Club, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Greenpeace. “It is alarming and dangerous. Donald Trump’s candidacy is a threat to the America we love, and we must respond to him and what he is stoking as such.”
The letter, released Tuesday, served as a public acknowledgment of the heightened apprehension surrounding Trump’s candidacy, as well as a sign that leaders in the party’s left wing are now setting their sights more squarely on Trump than the protracted Democratic nomination battle between Clinton and Sanders.
“As more and more progressive groups were with each other in the early primary states and talking about our general organizing, we decided to link our fights and invite others to join us,” explained Henry.
The question of what to do about Trump has gone from a bad joke to a topic of frequent conversation among leading Democratsincluding members of Congress. As Trump has stormed toward the GOP nomination, confounding the Republican establishment and steamrolling veteran officeholders in his path, liberal leaders have come to conclude that the time has come to more seriously confront Trump — whom, they warn, could actually win the White House.
...............................................
View the complete article, including image, at:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...p-alarm-220910