Background Briefing: June 3, 2018
Tuesday’s California Primary as a Bellwether For Flipping the House
With the June 5th California primary two days away and the expectation that the results will be a bellwether for the Democrat’s chances of taking the House and possibly the Senate in November, we will begin with Cenk Uyger,the host and founder of the Young Turks, the largest online news show in the world and the CEO of The Young Turks Network. He joins us to discuss the possibilities of flipping the 14 Republican-held House seats in California. And while Trump is deeply unpopular in California with Republicans now in third place in registration after Independents and Democrats, Democrat’s chances may be hampered by overcrowded fields of hopefuls, fratricide between the DCCC and the California Democratic Party and the so-called jungle primary which has the top two vote-winners advancing to the general election regardless of party affiliation. We will assess whether the conventional wisdom of running centrist Democrats against Republican incumbents holds anymore, since running Republican-lite Democrats dampens the enthusiasm of the progressive majority in the state where grassroots fundraising is proving just as effective as corporate donations and, as the Bernie Sanders campaign has shown, there is widespread populist appeal for progressive politics.
Kavanaugh the Corporatist
Then we speak with Chuck Collins, who directs the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is co-editor of inequality.org and the author of “Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tacking Inequality”, “Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good”, and his latest book just out, “Is Inequality in America Irreversible?” With the U.N. warning that Trump’s “cruel” policies of rewarding billionaires and punishing the poor are pushing inequality in the United States to a dangerous level, we will discuss Chuck Collins’ policy agenda to reverse inequality emphasizing the power of local campaigns.