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The Blue Wave's Wake

The Blue Wave's Wake

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Summary
 Ralph discusses the results of this week’s midterm elections with America’s #1 Populist Jim Hightower, RootsAction founder Norman Solomon, Rep. Al Green (TX-9), and constitutional law expert Bruce Fein.Ralph wants to hear from you! When was the last time you bought anything— a product or a service, based directly on the ad that you read or listened to or saw? We will read and discuss your responses on a future program.Jim Hightower is a syndicated columnist, national radio commentator, and America’s Number One populist. He is a board member of Public Citizen, and he is a founding member of Our Revolution, an organization inspired by the issues brought up in the Bernie Sanders campaign. He has written several books including Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, and his newsletter The Hightower Lowdown publishes twice a week on Substack.This has been a genuine, grassroots, populist rebellion that has happened in this state. The national media seems to be interpreting this as a rebuke of Donald Trump—which it certainly is—but more fundamentally, it is a rebuke of the power structure that has left working people, and farmers, and environmental concerns, et cetera, off of the national agenda. And people have just put it back on the agenda here in the state of Texas.Jim HightowerThe Republicans have the fat cats, but we have the alley cats. We have the grassroots constituency that has long been ignored (including by the Democratic Party) that’s asserted itself this time around. And that people power took on money power at the most fundamental level, talking to people directly.Jim HightowerNorman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of War Made Easy, Made Love, Got War, and War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.I have to say (having done a lot of interviews and research in the last few days) that so far, nobody in the House with a “D” after their name has been willing to say that they will challenge Hakeem Jeffries for a speaker. That is just unfortunately the reality. Likewise, over in the Senate, anybody who wants to challenge Chuck Schumer for the majority leader position? Nobody has shown up. Nobody has stuck their heads above the barricades. I think that can only change with an upsurge of outrage at the prospect that after this tremendous victory on Tuesday…that there would be a reversion to the corporate business as usual.Norman SolomonThere are two crucial responsibilities that elected officials have and that really, in a sense, all of us have. One of them is to fight the racists, the xenophobic militarists, the corporate flunkies, the misogynists who have gained control of the Republican Party. That is necessary, but insufficient. The other necessity is to fight for and create and enact a genuine progressive program that takes care of the woeful, terrible deficits in health care, education, housing, environmental protection, diplomacy instead of war. That is the imperative (or among the imperatives) that we need to demand of Congress. It’s not enough to win on election night. We’ve got to win day after day.Norman SolomonAl Green represents Texas’s 9th District in the US Congress. He currently serves on the House Committees on Financial Services, including the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, and as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.I’m grateful to see this happen, and I’m hopeful that [Democrats] will take up affordability and accountability. Affordability obviously has been explained many times, and that has to do with the necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter, [health care]. But accountability is also about impeachment. I don’t know how we can have leadership and others say that the President has committed impeachable offenses and not take up the issue of impeachment. That’s antithetical to the verbiage that we are using. You’ve got to acknowledge that your words mean something when you say this.Congressman Al GreenWe now see what happens to Republicans when they’ve gone too far in overlooking the will of the people. And I think that the road to impeachment is one that the persons who are seeking the Presidency are going to have to travel. They’re going to have to explain why they are opposed to it or why they support it. I don’t think this is going to just go away.Congressman Al GreenI firmly, absolutely believe that [Trump will] be impeached before he leaves office. I think that it will happen and it should happen. We should not allow the next would-be Trump to believe that he can create a death squad that takes the lives of people with impunity, giving them a license to kill, making them judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner. We cannot allow that. If we do, it will be a stain on Congress that posterity will forever be critical of.Congressman Al GreenBruce ...
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