The Progressive Midwesterner

You may have come across a few headlines in the national media about a woman who accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct running for a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives this year. She has a name. Her name is Rachel Crooks, and she is a fantastic candidate. Let me make it clear: Rachel did not decide to run for a state house seat in Ohio because of what Trump did to her, in fact, Rachel makes this point clear in her campaign website's biography page . Rachel is running for a state house seat in the 88th Ohio State House district ( includes all of Sandusky County and most of Seneca County ) because she wants to make her community and her state a better place to live. As someone with extensive experience working with international college students at Tiffin University and Heidelberg University, Rachel has helped do the hard work to make America a more inclusive country. As a state house candidate, Rachel has promised to support common-sense progressive ideals to make ...

The Democratic nominee in the 9th Congressional District of Indiana is Liz Watson, a fifth-generation Hoosier, an attorney who has represented low-wage workers and victims of domestic violence, a former labor policy director for the U.S. House Democratic Caucus, and one of the most progressive Democrats to be nominated for a Republican-held U.S. House seat in the 2018 midterm elections. Can an unabashed progressive like Liz Watson win a U.S. House seat in the Southern Indiana-based 9th Congressional District of Indiana? I believe that she can! One thing that defines Watson's style of politics, more than anything else that one could say about her, is that she is a fighter for the people. On her campaign's biography page, Watson described her style of politics in this sentence: I will always vote to make Hoosiers’ lives better, and that will be my litmus test for every single vote I take. There is this pervasive mentality, particularly in the Trump era, among many in the R...

On Tuesday, Kara Eastman, the chairwoman of Omaha, Nebraska's Metropolitan Community College (MCC) board, pulled off one of the biggest upsets in Nebraska political history by defeating former Congressman Brad Ashford in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska by a narrow margin, but a large enough margin to avoid an automatic recount, in the Democratic primary. Eastman will face Donald Trump crony Don Bacon in the general election in November. One big reason why Eastman won is because she is willing to stand up to those in her own party that oppose progressive values; this campaign ad is an actual campaign ad Eastman ran during the Democratic primary campaign: Eastman's victory in the Democratic primary will live in the glories of the progressive movement for generations to come. Democratic primary voters in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District rejected the notion that Democrats need to appease Republicans, or even run Republican candidates as Democrat...