Class warfare is escalating. America's superrich are taking it to hard-working people, or maybe we should say taking it from us. For the past few decades, greedy plutocrats have been taking our jobs, our wages, our benefits, our pensions, and more. All while gutless politicians aid and abet this war of the have-mores against the have-lesses.

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) has been engaged in the struggle for economic and social justice since our founding in 2004. We're concerned that all our progress is at risk this Election Day. Please support our efforts to elect progressives.  (See below for the list of our House Endorsements.) Please pitch in $500, $50, or whatever you can to help us send more Progressives to Congress, and sign up with Mike "Phone Guy" Fox to make important get out the vote calls.

Let's Have A Scary Halloween, Not A Scary Election

Please pitch in $500, $50, or whatever you can to help us send Progressives to Congress! Money tight? Then sign up with Mike "Phone Guy" Fox to make calls from your own home.

Today’s corporate plutocrats established cold, hard cash as the font of all political power. This is the legacy of Reaganomics, and "money is speech" jurisprudence. The latest apostle of avarice Donald Trump adheres to the right wing dogma that claims we'll all do better if most of us do worse, this because the rich are too poor and the poor are too rich.

Decades of rising productivity alongside stagnant wages and rising economic inequality exposes this latest version of Trickle-Down economics is every bit as wrongheaded as all of its earlier incarnations. Wall Street prospers by creating Main Street paupers. Vote for real progressives, and beware of fake populists Like Trump. Here are the PDA House Endorsements, listed by State and District:

AZ-03 Rep. Raul Grijalva
AZ-04 Michael Weisser
CA-13 Rep. Barbara Lee
CA-21 Emilio Huerta
CA-23 Wendy Reed
CA-33 Ted Lieu
CA-44 Nanette Barragan
CA-45 Ron Varasteh
CA-46 Bao Nguyen
CA-49 Doug Applegate
CO-04 Bob Seay 
FL-17 April Freeman
FL-25 Alina Valdes
GA-04 Hank Johnson
HI-02 Tulsi Gabbard
IL-09 Rep. Jan Schakowsky 
MA-02 Rep. Jim McGovern 
MD-08 Jamie Raskin
MI-13 Rep. John Conyers 
MN-05 Rep. Keith Ellison
MN-08 Rep. Rick Nolan
NJ-07 Peter Jacob 
NJ-12 Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman
PA-07 Mary Ellen Balchunis
WA-07 Pramila Jayapal 
WI-02 Rep. Mark Pocan 
WI-05 Khary Penebaker

Note: there are several other strong progressives running, but they either didn't seek our endorsement, or else didn't agree to support enough of our progressive policy priorities. PDA has an exacting endorsement policy. We urge you to get involved with PDA after the election to help guide our decisions moving forward, and to vote for all the progressive candidates on your ballot! Please pitch in $500, $50, or whatever you can to help us send Progressives to Congress!Money tight? Then sign up with Mike "Phone Guy" Fox to make calls from your own home.

In this Nouveau Gilded Age, Donald Trump, who never met a giveaway to the wealthy he didn't exploit is actually pretending to be a populist. As PDA Advisory Board member Jim Hightower explains, "There's not a single populist muscle in Donnie Trump's whole plutocratic body."

Trump represents the worst impulses of money ball politics and laissez-loot economics, the hostile takeover of our government by corporations. Trump is promising that, as president, he'll bring back the jobs he sent overseas as a businessman. He's really more a name brand with a bad comb-over than a businessman, but that's another story.

Citizen Trump's business model mainly involves him getting paid to put his name on everything from booze to beef, and of course, casinos. The latter is most appropriate as he's hoping to fast talk voters into gambling away their family's future by voting for him. He's relying on enflaming enough resentment, fear, and hatred to close this Bad Deal.

I understand the frustration millions of us feel. Too many of our elected officials show almost zero concern for ordinary Americans, creating a golden opportunity for Trump. I'm not telling you how to vote, but I am echoing Jim Hightower's warning: don't get conned by this conservative con man.

Trump's entire career shows he's a creature of the elite establishment. He's no more a true "outsider" than a trick-or-treating toddler is really Super Man or Wonder Woman. Trump learned his lessons from his daddy Fred Trump, who bilked federal housing programs and flagrantly discriminated against African Americans.

True populist Woody Guthrie, one of Fred Trump's appalled tenants, sang about his landlord's greed and racism in Old Man Trump, (words by Woody Guthrie).

I suppose that Old Man Trump knows
Just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project

Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home

I don't blame the son for the sins of the father. Still, like his daddy, Donald enriches himself by exploiting his fellow Americans. Jim Hightower reports that Trump and / or his companies were defendants in 1,300 lawsuits this summer, many of which were for stiffing small business contractors and suppliers.

He's allegedly engaged in wage theft, outsourcing, and hiring but underpaying undocumented immigrants. The same workers he promises he'll keep out of America by building a wall. I wonder if that wall will include secret passages to Trump's Human Resources Department?

Trump says he'll help the middle class, but his proposals would just escalate the GOP's ongoing class warfare by undermining labor rights, lavishing gifts on huge corporations and the rich, slashing spending on public needs, and continuing the Tea Party Republicans' war on wage-earners. Anything there sound populist? Not to me.

Some ask, "Well, at least Trump opposes so-called 'free-trade' deals?" That's doubtful. Again according to Jim Hightower, aside from his taking advantage of every outsourcing opportunity he can find, consider this: Trump chose a running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who never met a bad trade deal he didn't like. While he was in Congress, Pence worked for all eight trade deals that came up, and he's been cheerleading for the TPP so hard he wore out his pom poms.

Trump is anything but a populist, as Jim Hightower tells us, Trump is a braggart who bullies migrants and Mexicans whom he smears as "criminals," "rapists," and "drug dealers." He mocks protestors, disabled people, women, and ... it's hard to keep track of all of his other targets. This pampered son of privilege pretends his belligerence shows he has the "courage" to be "politically incorrect." To me, he's just incorrect, period.

Trump's multiple bankruptcies indicate that his claims of business genius are greatly exaggerated. A vote for Trump is less a protest vote against the establishment, and more of a blank check for the most selfish and hateful elements of the economic elite. To paraphrase true populists Jim Hightower and Abraham Lincoln, "In his heart, mind, and whole being, Trump is not any kind of populist, Trump is a Trumpist—of, by, and for Trump."

Please pitch in $500, $50, or whatever you can to help us send Progressives to Congress! Money tight? Then sign up with Mike "Phone Guy" Fox to make calls from your own home.

In solidarity,

Mike Hersh for Donna, Judy, Mike F, Janis, Dan, Kim, Deb, Amos, and Teva
Your Progressive Democrats of America National Team

P.S. We're here to help you make progress in your state and locality! If you need any help organizing a new PDA chapter or energizing your existing chapter, please contact PDA Field Coordinator Judy Hess.

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