We believe that it’s time to get back to big organizing in a big way. It’s already happening, as evidenced not only by the Bernie Sanders campaign, but also by other campaigns and movements before it, such as Obama in 2008, Occupy Wall Street, the effort to unseat George W. Bush in 2003–2004. We also see it in the immigration movement, in particular the DREAMers, the Movement for Black Lives, and to some degree in movements on the right such as the campaign of Ron Paul in 2004, the rise of the Tea Party, and even some elements of the madness that was the Trump campaign.

What do big organizing goals look like? Make public college free. End the drug war and stop the mass incarceration of black and brown people. Let everyone enroll in Medicare and make health care truly universal. Pursue an industrial policy that seeks to put everyone to work in the best jobs possible. None of these are crazy things to ask for. And it’s not crazy to ask for them all at once. In fact, all of those things are the status quo in almost every high- and middle-income country in the world. Bernie Sanders called for them, and he almost won the presidential primary. Our problems are big, so our solutions must be big as well. To achieve them we need a new kind of organizing, and that is big organizing.

Big organizing rarely works around a single issue. Our struggles are all connected. We can’t achieve universal health care until we have immigration reform. We can’t fix income equality until we deal with structural racism and the historical legacy of slavery. We can’t resolve national and global security issues or reach full employment without working as hard as possible to stop climate change. Big organizing also needs to have a clear and credible theory of change that explains why organizing matters. Bernie’s message was that if we wanted to win on all of the issues, we had to organize for a political revolution.

This may sound daunting to actually accomplish, given the big numbers of people necessary to make it work well enough to win. The good news is that people are waiting for you to ask them to do something big. What we’ve learned from the Bernie campaign and many other movements is that far more people are willing to step up if you ask them to do something big to win something big than they would be if you asked them to do something small to win something small.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Rachel on the show this week that he’s “absolutely” prepared to hold open the Supreme Court’s vacancy, agreeing that Republicans effectively “stole” a high-court seat with their partisan blockade last year.

The comments did not escape the attention of his Republican counterpart.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed a pledge from his Democratic counterpart to block President-elect Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, insisting “the American people simply will not tolerate” such a move. […]

“Apparently there’s yet a new standard now, which is to not confirm a Supreme Court nominee at all,” McConnell said, adding: “I think that’s something the American people simply will not tolerate, and we’ll be looking forward to receiving a Supreme Court nomination and moving forward on it.”

Ahead of Election Day, three Republican senators suggested they were prepared to block all Supreme Court nominees, regardless of merit, until 2021 at the earliest. Two of the three senators were on the ballot in November. Both won.

The American people “simply will not tolerate” senators refusing to confirm a high-court nominee? It’s a nice idea, and there may have been a point at which I even agreed with the assertion. But McConnell, who somehow managed to make this argument with a straight face, has already provided all the proof we need to know how very wrong he is.

Responding to Obama’s comments and the overall concept of “Corbynization,” a spokesperson for the Labour leader suggested Democrats should embrace a more liberal platform, rather than pursue compromise with Republicans.

“Both Labour and U.S. Democrats will have to challenge power if they are going to speak for working people and change a broken system that isn’t delivering for the majority,” the spokesperson told The Guardian on Dec. 27

Rather than “Corbynization,” British politics may have suffered from “Americanization” in recent years, as neoliberal initiatives, such as increased privatization of public services and cuts to the social safety net, have become increasingly commonplace. Corbyn’s leadership, by contrast, is widely seen as a rejection of neoliberalism in Britain.

Although Sanders was defeated in the 2016 presidential primaries, analysts like Diane Abbott, a member of Parliament from the Labour Party, suggest that the continued popularity of Sanders and Corbyn represents an ongoing need for progressive, anti-corporate voices in the political arena.

“It would be a mistake for the party establishment on both sides of the Atlantic to dismiss this insurgency, and think that things can return to how they were,” Abbott wrote in The Guardian in August.

The first art sensation of 2017 would seem to be China’s 23-foot-tall Donald Trump-like rooster sculpture.

It’s designed by Seattle-based illustrator and animator Casey Latiolais in honor of the Chinese zodiac, which is set to usher in the year of the rooster on January 28.

The fiberglass statue, located outside a shopping mall in Taiyuan in Shanxi Province, features a Trumpian scowl with bushy eyebrows and a golden helmet of hair. “This was way more yuge than I expected,” wrote Latiolais on Twitter after the statue’s unveiling.

He told the New York Times that he created the design for Beijing Reliance Commercial Land, and had added the Trump-like features of his own accord. According to a Chinese social media news outlet cited by the South China Morning Post, the statue’s egg-shaped body and golden hair symbolize wealth and prosperity for 2017.

For all the controversies that engulfed the Democratic Party in 2016, perhaps the biggest was the leadership of the Democratic National Committee. The chairwoman, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, was forced to resign just days before the party’s nominating convention in July. This came after hacked e-mails revealed that she was working behind the scenes to help Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries.

Ellison was the first Muslim elected to Congress

When Ellison earned his seat in 2006, he became the first Muslim American to serve in the U.S. Congress. Ellison converted to Islam while he was in college.

He’s a champion of left-wing causes

There’s a reason Sanders likes Ellison so much. Ellison is a strong supporter of tougher bank regulations, putting him in the company of Sanders and other progressive Democrats like Elizabeth Warren.

He wants to change the way the DNC raises money

Ellison told the Huffington Post on Wednesday that he wants to end DNC acceptance of lobbyist money, another move likely to boost his profile with progressive party members.

Democratic New Jersey Assemblyman John Wisniewski is running for New Jersey governor – which is one of the few gubernatorial elections held in the off year.

In his announcement video, Wisniewski covers a lot of topics – his personal biography, the effect Wall Street has in New Jersey, the need to fight for the middle class and his past support for Bernie Sanders. But most importantly for the citizens of New Jersey – Bridgegate.

Another major part of the Democratic candidate's announcement video is his support for Bernie Sanders – which he served as chairman of Sanders' New Jersey campaign.

The political ad touches on the need to criticize and fight a rigged economy, increase the minimum wage to $15/hour and fight for the middle class.

“The issue here is how former presidents and other politicians should respond to someone who has shown himself to be a dangerous demagogue,” Reich writes. “Donald Trump became president by lying, demeaning women, denigrating racial and ethnic minorities, denying intelligence reports of foreign intervention in our election, excusing violence against opponents, and undermining the freedom and independence of the press.”

Given that Trump has shown no contrition, and has instead “continued to tell big lies, retaliate against critics, call opponents “enemies,” avoid press conferences, and dismiss conflicts of financial interest.”

In sum, Reich believes that attending Trump’s inauguration “gives tacit support and approval to someone who poses a clear and present danger to our democracy.”

In a new video interview with The Huffington Post, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) pledged to ban contributions from lobbyists to the Democratic Party if he’s elected as its next chairman.

“Yeah, I would,” Ellison told HuffPost when asked about banning lobbyist donations. “I think it’s important that people feel that the party is their party … There is a pragmatic, perhaps too pragmatic step that you can say, ‘We’ll just take whatever money from whatever source in whatever amount.’ But once you do that, I think you cross a line where people do not feel that the party is really theirs.”

President Barack Obama banned lobbyist contributions to the Democratic National Committee after winning the 2008 election, but the then DNC Chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) quietly lifted the ban during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run. In a December interview with HuffPost, Ellison’s chief rival for Wasserman Schultz’s successor, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, refused to rule out lobbyist donations.

Lobbyists contribute only a small fraction of the money raised by the Democratic Party. And while they do grease the gears in Washington, D.C., they’re paid to do the bidding of other big donors ― CEOs, private equity bigwigs and other well-heeled operators who few politicians are willing to blacklist from the donor rolls.