After canceling PDB general membership meetings for March and April due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we restarted our general membership meetings on May 20. In order to maintaining social distancing, members met by Zoom!!!!!
On May 20 we will heard from Nancy Klein who works with West County Organizing, a group of volunteers in Contra Costa County and the greater East Bay who focus on electoral politics to help elect progressives and Democrats!
West County Organizing uses phone and text banks to register voters and Get Out The Vote (GOTV). They also encourage civic engagement through town hall attendance and calls to elected representatives.
Guest speaker Nancy Klein described their recent efforts and shared with us suggestions on how we can initiate and support GOTV efforts for upcoming races to be decided on November 3.
Our own Kathy Kerridge then described a GOTV letter writing party that she is planning, working through Swing Left.
Our first meeting on Zoom went with relatively few technical glitches, and was so well organized that we ended in just a few minutes over an hour!
We will look forward to zooming together again next month.
IMPORTANT: if you are a member of PDB, January was the month to renew your annual dues (unless you joined since October, 2019, in which case your initial membership and dues count for 2020). PLEASE PAY TODAY!
As you know, we’ve cancelled our March and April general membership meetings over concerns about the coronavirus and in compliance with state and local stay at home orders.
We’re not sure about our May membership meeting at this point and how to proceed with the rest of our 2020 schedule for PDB public meetings and events. The Solano Co. Democratic Central Committee is conducting its April meeting via Zoom, and at least one local Democratic Club – the Stonewall Democratic Club based in Vallejo – has moved its meetings online for the for the foreseeable future, including its April meeting via videoconferencing.
Even if the lockdown is lifted in May in some manner, it’s still unclear what social distancing norms will be in place and how public gatherings can be conducted. How comfortable will we be sitting in a room with 50-60 people? Will we be allowed to have a meeting that large? If we social distance in the Dona Benicia room, does it make sense to do so with so few people in attendance? (Think of chairs six feet apart from side-by-side and front to back.) I have no idea what to expect or how I’ll feel about it. Perhaps you do?
PDB will likely be purchasing a Zoom account for upcoming steering committee meetings, and perhaps that will become the new normal for all future committee meetings. But, what about general membership meetings? We could go the route that Stonewall has chosen and set up videoconference feed for members to attend. While the steering committee sorts out the costs and logistics of doing so, and exploring other options, we need input from members – your thoughts and suggestions. Perhaps there’s someone who has such experience and could even help!
Obama promises to join campaign trail ‘as soon as I can.’ Endorsement allows Obama to campaign, raise money for Biden
Bloomberg News, by Jennifer Epstein and Tyler Pager, April 14, 2020
Barack Obama speaks next to Joe Biden in Washington, D.C. in 2016. Photographer: T.J. Kirkpatrick/Bloomberg
Former President Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden on Tuesday in a 12-minute video describing his close partnership with his former vice president and urging Americans opposed to President Donald Trump to join together in a “great awakening” against him.
“Choosing Joe to be my vice president was one of the best decisions I ever made, and he became a close friend. And I believe Joe has all the qualities we need in a president right now,” Obama said, speaking directly to the camera.
Much of Obama’s statement is focused on winning over left-leaning voters who may be cool to Biden’s candidacy, with praise of Bernie Sanders, who exited the race last week, and an allusion to Elizabeth Warren’s promise of “structural change.”
He cast the general election as a binary choice between Biden and Trump, making several veiled references to some of the differences between the two candidates’ approach to governing and their personal backgrounds.
“Elections matter,” he said. “Right now, we need Americans of goodwill to unite in a great awakening against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance, and just plain meanness. And to change that, we need Americans of all political stripes to get involved in our politics and our public life like never before.”
Obama’s endorsement was expected now, just as the general election against Trump begins. He’d long made clear that he would wait for Democratic voters to choose their nominee before getting involved in the race. Biden didn’t wait for the endorsement, however, to capitalize on their relationship. From his campaign launch a year ago onward, the legacy of his eight years in the White House with Obama was at the core of his case.
Obama’s announcement comes a day after Sanders, Biden’s final opponent for the nomination, endorsed him and urged Democrats, independents and “some Republicans” to unite around Biden to defeat Trump.
Obama’s endorsement means that he and former first lady Michelle Obama, the two most popular figures in the Democratic Party, can begin to campaign — and raise money — for Biden. While Biden’s campaign had hoped to hold massive rallies to roll out the support of the Obamas, it is settling for a digital rollout during virus-related social distancing.
Obama remained publicly neutral throughout the primary race, but he offered to share advice and speak privately with any Democratic candidate. Most candidates took him up on the offer. But as the race narrowed, Obama spoke more frequently with Biden, including congratulating him for his victory in South Carolina, and he spoke a number of times with Sanders as he was contemplating the end of his campaign.
The Trump campaign dismissed the big-name endorsement, saying Biden would “embarrass” his former boss.
“Barack Obama spent much of the last five years urging Joe Biden not to run for president out of fear that he would embarrass himself. Now that Biden is the only candidate left in the Democrat field, Obama has no other choice but to support him,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement.
Obama and Biden remain close friends, a bond that deepened when Biden was grieving over the death of his son Beau in 2015. Their partnership in the White House — in which Biden was given a broad portfolio — is also the model Biden has been contemplating as he begins the process of selecting his own running mate.
After canceling PDB general membership meetings for March and April due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we restarted our general membership meetings on May 20. In order to maintaining social distancing, members met by Zoom!!!!!
