Trump got things rolling: ‘Don’t give power to an angry leftwing mob’. Other Republicans and the conservative media have gleefully joined in the mob messaging

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Mob rule

With the midterm elections fast approaching, it seems Republicans have come up with a new strategy: to paint the left as an “angry mob” that must be resisted at all costs.

As Donald Trump whips up angry crowds at a series of election rallies, the apparently irony free plan has manifested itself in a series of trotted-out talking points. The president got things rolling.

“You don’t hand matches to an arsonist,” Trump tweeted on Saturday, in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the supreme court. “And you don’t give power to an angry leftwing mob. And that’s what they’ve become.”

Since then, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has decried the “far left mob” for trying to prevent the nomination of Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault by three women.

“The GOP shift to disparaging descriptions of their opponents as unruly and sinister is a marked change from their messaging before the Kavanaugh battle, when they’d hoped to focus on the strong economy and the mammoth tax cut they pushed through Congress last December,” the Associated Press wrote this week.

It’s not just Republican politicians who are jumping on the mob message. The conservative media is weighing in. The National Review, the Daily Caller and of course Fox News have gleefully joined in the mob messaging.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus …

… opened a new policy center on Tuesday, with the aim of strengthening their hopes of introducing Medicare-for-all, a $15 national minimum wage and debt-free college.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bernie Sanders is the only senator who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Photograph: Amy Kontras/Amy Kontras for The Guardian

The CPC Center, to which donors have contributed $4.5m, will work with progressive groups to “align messaging and policy initiatives”, according to the CPC, which aims to help progressive House members – Bernie Sanders is the only senator who is a member – to further their goals.

“What that allows us to do is … connect all the policy research, work that’s being done on the outside, the organizing network, and the strategy to the work that’s being done on the inside,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, the first vice-chairwoman of the CPC, told CNN.

“I think that’s a really crucial piece of the infrastructure that’s been missing.”

What we’re reading

“It should be clear by now that Donald Trump and the rightwing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States,” writes Bernie Sanders in a piece published by the Guardian.

“All around the world, in Europe, in Russia, in the Middle East, in Asia and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears, prejudices and grievances to achieve and hold on to power.”

Sanders says people need to fight for “an international progressive movement that mobilizes behind a vision of shared prosperity, security and dignity for all people, and that addresses the massive global inequality that exists, not only in wealth but in political power”.