#45: The World Is Not On Fire

This is the next of our series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

If you are not already receiving these messagesby email, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, Our Unfinished Work, every three to four weeks.

1861, when the Union unraveled. 2020, when over 3 million people around the world died in an all-new pandemic. 1939, when the most destructive of all wars became inevitable. In those years, perhaps our world was on fire. But it isn’t on fire now, and believing it is keeps us from focusing upon what we must do to defeat the persistent forces of autocracy. 

Every year since our inception as a nation has been a battle to protect against our unraveling. We have proved ourselves capable of indescribable evils, enslaving an entire race, and crushing indigenous people. But, however dimmed we have permitted our beacon to become, we still attend to it. Our biggest idea, the Bill of Rights, has yet to be equaled by any other nation in its scope and longevity. It provided barriers every day the last time an autocrat became President.

We have become overwhelmed by the new instruments of communication, and the concomitant decline of means of sorting the truth. This has fueled our malaise. We have conflated the ever present and overwhelming daily noise of American life with a swelling of American support for this insurrectionist, but the evidence of the latter is absent. We have not been able to get over our disbelief that he is still out there, and that anyone at all supports him.

Advocates are determined that announcing a nearly inevitable cataclysm is the way to get us to understand that the dangers of climate change require immense efforts on our part. Since thus far our huge new efforts are insufficient, their description of the plight threatens to disarm us, rather than propel us.

These are today’s big battles, all hanging the future in the balance. Notably, they are the worrisome big battles of last year, and the year before. Despair is a personal emotion, and one can have as much of it as one lets in. But it is not off base in 2024 to remind that too much of it is not a good thing. We don’t have the luxury of dispiritedness. We need unimpaired activism for the next six months.

We can get our energy from recent events:

• Joe Biden has had an uptick since the State of the Union.

• The House will take up Ukraine funding after they return from recess. Ukraine will finally get the money it desperately needs, as Hakeem Jeffries provides beleaguered Speaker Mike Johnson the votes. Meanwhile, the Republican majority will continue to aggressively disqualify itself from future leadership.

• Donald Trump will spend a month in Manhattan District Court starting April 15, at last facing felony charges of falsifying business records to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels. Unlike in his recent civil losses and in various pre-trial hearings, his daily presence is required.

• The Supreme Court will hear Trump’s claim of absolute immunity on April 25. Even if they pare back the appellate ruling that fully rejected that claim, there is no chance at all that special prosecutor Jack Smith will be blocked from proceeding on charges related to trying to steal the election. Federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan is still anticipating an August trial. The polls are clear that being convicted of a felony in any of the four criminal cases would seriously impair Trump’s support. 

What to do with our energy, after freeing it from entropy? After sending fifteen recommendations last month on where to go, what to do and where to send money, this missive received four separate strong recommendations from multiple readers. 

 As always, we have been fortunate to gain support for grassroots organizer Mi Familia Vota and field mobilizer Common Power. We’ve been pleased to hear more about these organizations deserving our immediate support:

1. Focus for Democracy doesn’t want your money. What they want is you to be guided by their rigorous analytical approach regarding which organizations’ work is most cost-effective. They use their metrics to make your giving the most powerful it can be. Sign up and they will invite you to their zoom sessions recommending a number of strong organizations and offer other tools so you can get some very useful guidance.
   
   
2. Movement Voter Project does want you to give money to their Political Action Committee, and they will put it to very good use. Like Focus for Democracy, they are bent on finding effective local organizers. After finding them, they support them financially, staying with them beyond single election cycles. They have a special interest in youth, BIPOC and immigrants. 
   
   
3. Walk the Walk is run entirely by volunteers. All the resources they gather go to 13 organizations in 11 targeted states. All the organizations they have selected are run by people of color and all have a proven record of registering people and getting them out to vote.
   
   
4. The Rural Youth Voter Project is even more tightly targeted. A project of Clean and Prosperous America and the Movement Voter Project, they are raising a minimum of $10 million to register and turn out young voters in rural areas. They are especially focused on people of color, who make up 24% of rural populations in their targeted states.
   
   
5. Sara Longwell and her Republican Voters Against Trump have a better shot of turning Republican votes away from Trump than does the Lincoln Project. Longwell is a former Republican operative whose site features voters who have turned away. They field anti-Trump political ads (featuring reformed Republicans) through their Republican Accountability PAC.

We are not that far away. We can win the Presidency, flip the House, and defend the Senate. For six months, we can be on fire.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#44: Do These NineThings to Win the Election in November

This is the next of our series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

If you are not already receiving these messages by email, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, Our Unfinished Work, every three to four weeks.

It is far from an ideal situation. 75% of American voters think Joe Biden is too old to run for President, simply because Joe Biden IS too old to run for President. Complain all you want about the inappropriate statement of special counsel Robert Hur, or the absence of a similar age concern being applied to Donald Trump. The simplest truth is Joe Biden always wanted to be President, and accordingly does not want to stop being President. It was good fortune for us that he got his wish in 2020. His performance has been strong. Because he cannot repeal the laws of aging, it is bad news for us that he is insisting on running again. 

Late last year David Brooks argued otherwise. He said that asking Joe Biden to retire after one term was the bigger risk for Democrats, given that the alternative risk is introducing voters to candidates with whom they are not familiar. As Americans watch Biden slow way down, this critical equation has changed.

It is still possible that neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump will be on the ballot. If Jack Smith is questioning Mark Meadows in Federal District Court in April, Donald Trump could be a convicted felon by June. As many as 70 percent of Americans say they will not vote for a candidate convicted of a felony. On the Democratic side, it is possible that someone or some event will talk Joe out of it.

In the meantime, we can celebrate that Donald Trump has appointed himself Joe Biden’s campaign manager. What a lucky break! What an appropriate time for Trump and his closest cronies to continue their bromance with the Ukraine-attacking, Navalny-killing, nuclear arms in space-promoting Russian leader. Donald Trump remains smitten with Putin and wants to remind us about it. 

Trump remains key to Democratic salvation. Mar-A-Lago is the basilica of the Church of Himself, and Rudy Giuliani is the cardinal no longer permitted to be an officiant. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz lift the hem of Trump’s robes lest they touch the ground, and Tucker Carlson offers liturgical guidance. 

All of which means it isn’t the worst thing in the world to work with what we’ve got. We can and must win whether or not Joe Biden is on the ballot. We hate every day that Trump is in the news, but we are probably stuck with him. Nikki Haley is no moderate and she would be the more formidable opponent, recognizing every day the existence of NATO, the Constitution, and other people beside her supplicants.

Since 2016, we have built more organizations, written more postcards, completed more calls, registered more voters, visited more residences, and donated more money than ever before. As early as 2018, we used the ballot box to prevent most but not all the worst that Trump had to offer. Many of us know where we want to go and what we want we want to do, but there are still things to remember,

• If we are involved in any kind of campaigning the quality of our sponsoring organization is critical. Postcards to Voters is time tested as is Vote Forward There isn’t a better organization in the country to train you and get your boots on the ground (always with a local sponsoring organization) than Common Power 
• There is no mystery regarding when to get going on campaigning or donating. The time is now. On the donations side, this is going to take more money than you had planned to give. It will give you democracy-protecting rewards.
• Donate where it matters the most. Swing states deserve enormous emphasis. Swing Left does an excellent job of identifying targeted Congressional and Senate races. Unless you know about a candidate in a blue or red state who deserves special attention (Senators Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and Representatives Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Kim Schrier in Washington). sticking to swing states is not a bad idea. In those places your support for local or statewide candidates will help our presidential candidate as well. Swing Left’s swing states for the presidential race are Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
• Swing Left is also very conscious of the 14 Congressional seats held by Republicans in districts that voted for Joe Biden. They are especially vulnerable because of the disastrous performance of the House Republican Caucus on virtually every issue that has come before them.
• Don’t get so focused on individual candidates that you forget about organizations that register voters and make certain they vote. That’s often where the biggest bang for the buck is. In 2020, swing states like Nevada and Arizona would have been lost without the efforts of Latino-registering organizations like Mi Familia Vota We would not have won Georgia without Stacey Abrams’s organizing efforts. 

We have been presented with nine distinct favorable issues and approaches if we work to make it so. These are the issues and approaches, and some of the organizations who need to be supported in getting this work done,

1) Advancing the Right to Choose

The power of pro-choice campaigning has been demonstrated in every single election since Roe v Wade was overturned, including in epic statewide votes in Kansas and Ohio. Even in places where initiatives are not on the ballot, appealing to voters on choice can give Democratic candidates an additional advantage in the range of 3 percent, and can be a major factor in increasing the number of young people voting.

The states most likely to have initiatives on the ballot supporting this fundamental right are Nevada, Arizona, Maryland, New York, and Colorado. There are more tenuous efforts in play in Florida, South Dakota, Missouri, and Nebraska. NARAL Pro-Choice America is a leader in this battle. They have renamed themselves Reproductive Freedom for All.

2) Getting Younger Voters to the Polls

Democratic candidates have a greater advantage among young people than any other demographic. Around 70 percent of voters aged 18-34 voted for Joe Biden in 2020. However, this age group represents a smaller percentage of the population as America ages, and their electoral participation is not to be taken for granted. This is all about registration and signing up for mail in ballots. There will be ten million youth voters in 2024 who were not eligible in 2020. Local efforts in swing states are there to be found. The premier national organization going way beyond Taylor Swift’s ongoing commitment to voter registration is Rock the Vote. 

3) Recognizing Economic Success

Polling on voters and the economy has been misleading because Republican voters have proven allergic to Joe Biden’s success. Their disapproval levels of Biden are historically consistent with the approval ratings of presidents facing a 12% unemployment rate. Under Biden, the unemployment rate is 3.7%. With independent voters, we can still take advantage of the fact that the United States is the world’s post Covid economic success story. Much of the responsibility for making that “sale” falls to the Biden campaign itself. The Center for American Progress is an organization that articulates these truths, which should be self-evident.

4) Taking Advantage of Mail- In Ballots

Donald Trump continues to associate mail-in ballots with voter fraud, which depresses the number of his voters that seek them and thus the eventual turnout. The further good news is that it has become far easier to vote at home, and voting at home produces the higher turnout that traditionally is good for Democrats. In the last four years, the percentage of American voters who can request the automatic provision of a mail-in ballot for each election has grown from 19.7% to 30%, It is the National Vote at Home Institute that continues to lead this charge. 

5) Boosting the Latino Vote

Over time, the Democratic share of the Latino vote in a general election has receded, but it remains above 60%. Moreover, there are swing states where the number of Latino voters has grown dramatically. This is true of North Carolina, where the Latino population has grown to over a million people, up from 200,000 in 1990. Mi Familia Vota has started a new campaign in North Carolina to take advantage of this shift, even more important because the presidential race in North Carolina could well be decided by 20,000 votes. 

6) Keeping Donald Trump in the News

Donald Trump got under 47% of the vote in both 2016 and 2020. The strategy he has employed to try to secure his base has proven to be anathema to independent voters, so he should keep it up. Plus, the upcoming criminal trials in Manhattan and Washington DC will keep the media locked into the dominant felonious side of his personality.

It's not wrong to help make sure he has Republican opposition. Primary Pivot is an organization that outlines in which states independents or even Democrats can cross over in the primary, and what you might want to do if you live in that state.

7) Preserving NATO and Defending Ukraine

Trump’s unbelievable utterances regarding Vladimir Putin will draw more attention during the upcoming months than they have to date. That’s because the focus on the killing of Alexei Navalny isn’t going away. This will abundantly reveal Trump as the dupe he has been for years. The majority position among voters is that Putin is an autocrat. His interest in nuclear weapons in space underscores that Russia remains a significant threat to American security. Trump’s opposition to funding for Ukraine will be unfavorably viewed by independents.

In response to Trump’s attacks on NATO, Congress added an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act severely limiting a President’s ability to withdraw from NATO. It isn’t enough because the wrong President could wound NATO severely even without withdrawing. Outside of the aging Mitch McConnell, the best defense is with pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine Republican House committee chairs, like Foreign Affairs Chair Mike McCaul. Call him at 225-2401 to ask him to continue to protect NATO and Ukraine. Then make sure the votes are there in the future by helping to take back the House.

8) Supporting Redistricting Reform

This is a year where the results of the back-and-forth redistricting battles will fall slightly in the favor of Democrats. That is because Justice Brett Kavanagh joined John Roberts and the three Supreme Court liberals is protecting the Voting Rights Act from additional evisceration. That means further protection of black voters in Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana which will produce as many as three more Democratic House seats. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University is to be commended and supported for this outcome and for their longer-term goal of taking redistricting away from parties and putting it back into the hands of the citizenry. 

9) Pick a Swing State

In this hugely consequential year, there is no better strategy than picking one or two swing states and sticking with them. As previously noted, Swing Left is targeting Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. They are adding Senate races in non-swing Montana and Ohio and races to win back the House. Many of these are in California and New York, which underperformed in 2022, helping us to lose the House by 6,500 votes.

The trick in picking swing states is determining how to invest time and money beyond the support of individual candidates, primarily by strengthening organizations that are registering voters and making certain they vote, Personal research is valuable, and one could email any number of sources for further information, including this missive.

These six organizations each have a proven record:

Mission for Arizona (Arizona)

You Can Vote (North Carolina)

Seed the Vote (Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia)

Fair Fight (Georgia)

When We All Vote (national, founded by Michelle Obama)

Common Power (several states)

And, or course, the League of Women Voters continues to do important voter registration work throughout the country. 

It has been said before and can be said again. Let’s not wake up on November 6 and wish we had done more. We already know what we must do, and we know we can get it done.

David Harrison

Bainbridge Island, Washington

Letter from David Harrison

Dear friends,

Certainly, I would never be the one to tell you to ignore the soul-deadening mean-spirited truth-avoiding statements of the Republican ex-president. You are bound to notice and cringe that he is out there bouncing from court to podium, worshipping at the church of himself and posing a threat to our country.

However, it would be good to underscore that this is the 2018 and 2020 and 2022 failed Republican playbook. Nikki Haley’s New Hampshire supporters were heavily populated with Republican and Independent voters who cannot abide her opponent at all, not loyalists who will close ranks. This turning away is an increasing phenomenon, not a decreasing one, and it is evident across the country.

As we all jump in, the story of 2024 will be a pronounced version of recent Republican political adventures. Their candidate’s special sauce is pleasing his core while scaring and offending and angering and repelling the voters in the middle. And the bonus is that their likely candidate is a get out the vote machine for Democratic voters. We can have those voters, so we will take them, and with them the House as well as the Presidency.

For the voters in the middle, the upcoming appellate ruling matters, there is no such thing as complete presidential immunity. So does the sight of Mark Meadows and others testifying under oath this spring that Trump knew he had lost while he was feloniously deploying fake electors. 

Independent voters were reached in the 2022 election cycle by Joe Biden’s emphasis on Trump’s threats to democracy. Those charges continue to resonate. Trump’s bizarre love for autocrats and antipathy toward Zelenskyy and Ukraine will continue to steer voters to us.

Voters aren’t forgetting the Dobbs decision. It looks like constitutional protections will be on the ballot in several swing states. If every single state, the assault on the right to choose gives us a significant electoral boost.

What to add to these present conditions? Principally, we must add our relentlessness. If you are watching and not acting, watch AND act. If you are looking for something to do at this very moment to reveal your 2024 self, get involved in voter registration, or sign up for postcard writing. If you need a new organization, help the extraordinary Mi Familia Vota register Latino voters in the swing state of North Carolina. Or, do some postcard writing for the powerful team of Swing Left and Vote Forward.

Please look for my missive on ten 2024 election strategies on coming up on February 15.

Best to you all,

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#43: The Way the Court Will Boost Jack Smith's Trial

This is the next of our series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

If you are not already receiving these messages by email, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, Our Unfinished Work, every three to four weeks.

It’s a solid bet that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is extremely annoyed. Trump lawyer Alina Habba just chronicled how hard the Trump White House worked to get him confirmed, saying she expects Kavanagh will “step up” in the Supreme Court’s decision-making over whether Trump’s insurrectionist behavior could keep him off ballots.

Kavanaugh has voted with the conservatives in the great majority of the cases before the Court. However, he showed some independence. In the spring of 2023, he joined John Roberts and the liberals in protecting the key remaining section of the Voting Rights Act, thus forcing several Southern states to abandon racially discriminatory redistricting maps. 

In February, the Supreme Court will review the 5-4 decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to deny Trump a place on that state’s presidential ballot. The Colorado Court’s finding is that Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection disqualifies him for the Presidency under an 1868 amendment to the Constitution.

In 2022, a New Mexico judge removed County Commissioner Cuoy Griffin from office for assaulting the Capitol on January 6. Could Trump face the same fate? Whether or not Brett Kavanaugh despises Trump or has a secret shrine to him in his closet, the answer will be no. This will be even more painful because Trump has warned the Court and nation that there will be “big trouble” if the Court rules against him. By all rights, this alone should disqualify him.

The insurrection of the Civil War involved putting a million Confederate soldiers into battle. The Supreme Court will find a problem in the Colorado case with a lack of definition of insurrection, a temporary shortage in Trump convictions, a lack of an established statutory process to consider the issue, and perhaps with an uncertain definition about whom is an “officer” of the United States under Section 3 of the 14th amendment. They will let the awful man stay on the ballot, perhaps even by more than the typical 6-3 or 5-4 vote.

Roberts and Kavanagh and the liberals will craft a way to say something more, underscoring the felony charges before Trump. Besides, as court watchers know, there is a lot more to come:

• E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case is still out there. Trump has already been found to have defamed Carroll over her charges of rape. What will be before the Court is an appellate finding that Trump did not claim on a timely basis that he had immunity from this civil charge. Once the matter is completed and Trump held liable, the Supreme Court will refuse to hear his appeal.

• By June, the Supreme Court will hear the appeal of three January 6 rioters who were convicted of “obstructing an official proceeding”. A federal district court judge dismissed charges, ruling that the law prohibiting such actions requires the obstruction of a document, record or other object, The appellate court reversed that decision in a 2-1 vote, leaving the case ripe for the Supreme Court to choose the narrower interpretation. If that’s what they do, it will eliminate one of special counsel Jack Smith’s four charges against Trump. This is relatively inconsequential, except for the tiresome Trumpian untruths and misrepresentations that would immediately follow. Three hundred of the one thousand rioters faced this as at least one of their charges.

• There are two separate cases in which Capitol police have sued Trump for civil damages related to the injuries suffered during the January 6 insurrection. These cases and Jack Smith’s felony charges reach Trump’s ultimate defense, that he has total civil and criminal immunity for any actions taken during his presidency. The big win before the Supreme Court will be when they find that no such total immunity exists, nor has the court ever implied that it does. Instead, the courts will determine that a President is criminally and civilly liable for actions taken outside of his official duties.

• Jack Smith is counting on this in the most important case of all, now before US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in DC in which Trump is charged with plotting to overturn the election. Smith’s actions are shrewd. The reason he wants the ruling on immunity before the trial is that it helps him organize his prosecution. It establishes that a few important former Trump staff members, including Mark Meadows, will testify that they knew, and he knew that he was acting outside of the Presidency.

As this missive is being distributed, a three-judge panel in DC will be hearing Jack Smith’s expedited appeal on presidential immunity. Donald Trump plans to attend. It’s possible the three-judge panel will immediately reject the spurious claim and remand the case back to the federal district court which had sought to begin the long-awaited Trump trial on March 6. It is not out of the question that the Supreme Court will refuse to hear any subsequent appeal on the immunity claim.

What a time it is, no? Why not do some things on our own, rather than just watching the news.

1) Celebrate Ron DeSantis’ Demise
	Perhaps at one point Ron DeSantis met with a campaign aide who counseled him: “Ron, I want you to spend your entire campaign imagining you have a sour lemon in your mouth. Be extremely angry at everyone, even your mom. And if you need to summarize, just say, ‘Florida is the place that woke goes to die.’ That will supercharge the electorate!” Accordingly, the DeSantis campaign is nearly over. In the meantime, as conservative as Nikki Haley is, it would be nice to have a Republican candidate who wants Zelenskyy and Ukraine to live and thrive. We will find out how viable she is in New Hampshire on January 23. In the meantime in “honor” of DeSantis, let’s get back to guaranteeing that Florida is a swing state again. The right to choose may well be on the ballot in November. Help make that so by supporting Floridians Protecting Freedom.
2) Do This to Help Ukraine
	The leading Republican supporter of Ukraine in the House is Michael McCaul of Texas, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It is a good thing that he cannot abide walking away from further aid to Zelenskyy. Call his office at 202-225-2401 and tell him now is the time to step forward to make certain his caucus does the right thing.
3) Shore Up State Election Laws
	It’s time to circle around to our state legislators to make certain they are doing due diligence in strengthening election processes. The best guide there is on what legislators should be doing right now on such issues as election certification and dispute resolution is How States Can Prevent Election Subversion in 2024 and Beyond. Get it from the Brennan Center and contact your own legislator.

There would not be a way to overstate the danger to our nation of the swirling, Trump-generated anti-Democratic forces. These are formidable foes, but this is a battle that we will win.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#42: Bolster These Six Strengths All the Way to November

This is the next of our series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

If you are not already receiving these messages by email, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, Our Unfinished Work, every three to four weeks.

Don’t discount the danger that Joe Biden will soon have the wrong thing in common with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In 2013, after Barack Obama told her that Democrats were likely to lose the Senate in 2014, thus inhibiting his opportunity to name her successor, Ginsburg made the choice to stay on the Court.

Ginsburg was 80 then and had beaten cancer, but like Biden today, she felt fine. Being a Justice of the Supreme Court was her life, and there was much work to be done. Moreover, she felt good about Hilary Clinton winning the presidency in 2016.

Ginsburg died at 86, four months before the end of Donald Trump’s term in 2020, thus making possible the overturning of Roe v. Wade. It wasn’t her intention to put her nation at risk. How it turned out was heartbreaking for her and for us.

At 81, Joe Biden loves the work and feels good about his chances for re-election. He aims to serve at 86. At this point, he is putting our country at great risk. The big danger is not that he will be elected in the face of his diminishing capacity. The two far greater perils are 1) that he will lose because the American voter has already made a different calculation than he has about the implications of his age, or 2) He will suffer a medical incident between his nomination and the election, thus creating near certainty that the Republican candidate will win.

There is still a chance that Joe Biden will decide not to run, but his recent rejection of David Axelrod’s voiced concerns is troubling. Independents and even some Democrats are casting their eye on the very conservative Nikki Haley, aware that she has read the Constitution and does not seem to have a Trumpian vitriol addiction. This is because when you fear for your country, you can start thinking about the least bad alternative, in case Democrats band behind Biden until November 2024 and it doesn’t work out so well.

None of this has anything to do with Biden’s performance up until now, as some “progressives” seem to have misunderstood. Blaming Joe Biden for not having a bigger package of incentives to reduce carbon than the huge package he got enacted is bizarre. Are we going to go back to Ralph Nader’s assertion to younger voters that there was “no difference” between Al Gore and George W. Bush? How did that turn out?

Instead, this is all about Joe Biden’s future potential. The Democratic Party leadership needs to huddle with each other and with Joe Biden and start active consideration of Gretchen Whitmer and others. In the meantime, we can revel in the six strengths we have heading into 2024.

1. Choice - The Dobbs decision which overturned the right to choose has richly rewarded Democratic candidates ever since the Supreme Court ruled in June of 2022. It must seem like a decade for Republicans rather than just 18 months. Among other things, it cost Virginia Republican Governor Glen Youngkin a Republican majority in both his House and Senate. Democrats gleefully project initiatives putting choice on the ballot in 2024 in the swing states of Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.
2. Demographics - Depending on the candidates, there is no guarantee that the Democrats’ 70%-30% margins among Latino voters will materialize at that level in the fall of 2024. However, the percentage will still be favorable and the non-white population of nearly all the swing states is growing at a faster rate than the overall population.
3. The House of non-Representatives - It has arrived at the point where the impasse among House Republicans is so intractable that political damage for Republicans is inevitable, especially in swing states. It takes a lot to disabuse the American voter of their idea that both parties are equally to blame for Congressional dysfunction. In response, Republicans are pioneering new ways to obstruct legislation, and there isn’t anything Speaker Mike Thompson can do about it. 
4. The Economy - There is a popular and peculiar notion among commentators that Democrats aren’t getting and won’t get any boost from recent inflation reduction, market upswings, lower gas prices and 14 million jobs. “No boost” is an overstatement. Every piece of good news about the economy helps Democrats, just not nearly as much as they wish it would.
5. Trump - Obviously, it is a great danger to have him around, but Trump boosts Democratic chances with independent voters everywhere he goes. There should be a Democratic PAC that pays to send him to swing states. He isn’t staying put on the old list of wrongs, grudges, and recriminations. He finds new people to insult every day, including Iowa evangelical leaders. There’s a shibboleth that putting Trump on trial only reinforces his support, but that is among the minority of voters that are his base. As the trials reveal a new litany of misdeeds, independent voters will walk away, as they have in every election since 2016. Even the Koch empire knows this, as they demonstrated in their support of Nikki Haley.
6. Ukraine - Surprisingly, a lot of Republican leaders share Trump’s desire for a bromance with Vladimir Putin. No accounting for taste. As we get into the election year, Zelenskyy will soldier forward, Biden and McConnell will get him and the Ukrainians the necessary support, and the Republicans will continue to find themselves in another minority position.

Building on these strengths, let’s do these three things now:

1) Take Advantage of the House Republicans Fighting Each Other
	The battles between House conservatives and House ultra conservatives have created a caucus that cannot function, whatever the efforts of new speaker Mike Johnson. Ever since Democrats helped them pass a continuing resolution to fund the government until January, the Republican majority has been unable to even pass a procedural rule covering floor debate on two appropriations bills. There is no way forward. Republicans won’t kick Johnson out as speaker because they have nowhere to go. Instead, they will keep on warring until the next election. These persistent battles put the Republicans in swing districts at enormous risk, including several who were elected in districts that Joe Biden won in 2020. Swing Left has served up a first list of targeted districts in which to invest, including explanations of why they selected them.
2) Consider Dean Phillips
	For some who think that it is time for Joe Biden to step aside, supporting another Democratic candidate would be a difficult or even painful thing to do. The other point of view is that either way Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips is not going to end up as President. Supporting him in New Hampshire might be a good way to send a signal to the Democratic Party, which seems frozen behind Joe Biden’s unwise candidacy.
3) Alarm Yourself About Trump and the Insurrection Act
	One more good reason to fight Donald Trump is that he has already discussed using the centuries old Insurrection Act to involve the American military in domestic situations. As the Brennan Center for Justice has pointed out, none of the protections that would keep a President from misusing the act are present in the law as written and interpreted by the courts. The effort to amend the law is still in the early stages. It isn’t too early to use the Brennan Center as your source to keep track of all such matters. You can subscribe to their outstanding newsletter.

As this missive reports, we have a lot of electoral strengths as we head into 2024. Will we all jump in so late that we fail to take full advantage of those strengths? That would be a pity, no?

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#41: Thank Joe Biden, and Select Your New Presidential Candidate

This is the next of our series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

If you are not already receiving these messages by email, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, Our Unfinished Work, every three to four weeks.

Here are ten important ways in which Republicans have already disadvantaged themselves as they head toward the November 2024 elections, making our victory more likely:

• They are resolute in their opposition to a woman’s right to control her own body.
• They protect AK-47s and AR-15s religiously in the face of massacres across America.
• Choosing Putin, they are increasingly against military aid to Volodymyr Zelensky and freedom seeking Ukrainians.
• Unable to elect a Speaker of the House, they have sapped the institutional strength of the Congress at a critical time. Every day of the week, they demonstrate a lack of leadership. 
• Several of their leaders are dedicated to shutting down the United States government a month from now.
• Many of them are unwilling to recognize that they lost the 2020 Presidential election, even though their conspiracy claims have tattered the flag.
• They refuse to acknowledge that there have been 14 million new jobs created since Joe Biden took office.
• Their leading candidate to date has been charged with felonies in four separate cases and will be a convicted felon by the time the election is held.
• Many countenanced an insurrection against the United States government on January 6, 2021.
• They continue to support tax policies that comfort the comfortable, increasing the wealth gap in America.

Painfully, here is the most important way in which Democrats are already disadvantaging themselves as they head toward the November 2024 elections.

• Resolving to select the current successful president Joe Biden as their presidential candidate.

There is no question that Joe Biden deserves our everlasting gratitude for defeating Donald Trump by seven million votes in 2020. He has served ably. Working with narrow majorities in both the House and Senate, he enacted into law major changes in how this country fights the enormous threat of climate change and reverses the deterioration of its infrastructure.

Joe Biden has performed well on the international stage. More than any other person, he is responsible for the expansion and strengthening of the NATO alliance and the development of the coalition of nations supporting Ukraine, which otherwise would have been conquered by Russia.

Nonetheless, it is time for Joe Biden to complete his more than four decades of service. This is not even an issue of his electability. Despite his low voter approval at this point, he could win the presidency, especially matched against Donald Trump, whom independent voters have deserted.

The issue is Joe Biden’s health and age. Were he elected, he would be sworn in at 82 and be serving at 86, the oldest President in U.S. history. Performing the incredibly rigorous demands of the presidency would be impossible, not only for Joe Biden, but for anyone of this age. Even more concerning is the distinct possibility that he would become incapacitated or even die during the four years of his second term, or even during the campaign.

President Biden having a heart attack or stroke during the 2024 campaign season would deliver the election to the Republican candidate.

Mortality data backs up this concern. More than 30% of 80-year-old males in America will pass away prior to their 86th birthday, and others will suffer a considerable loss of function. The ravages of aging are inexorable. These are the unavoidable facts of life. This is too big a job and too important a campaign year for Joe Biden’s party to bet on his future health. 

Even if millions of Joe Biden’s most grateful supporters wished to accept these dangers, the American voter will not. Three quarters of American voters think he is too old to run, including nearly 70% of Democrats. 

It is time for a generational change. It’s happened before. John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were all the youngest major candidates in their presidential primaries. Strong younger candidates abound. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is 52, and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker is 54. California Governor Gavin Newsom just turned 56 and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar is 63. Sure, none is as well-known as Joe Biden, but all are a generation younger, fresh, able, and experienced. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is 50 and Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker is 58. Maryland Governor Wes Moore is a huge emerging talent and he’s 45!

There are political analysts who believe that Joe Biden intends to withdraw from this race, that he is waiting until near the end of the year after Congress goes home to shorten the period that he will be a lame duck. Others believe that even as we speak, internal discussions are taking place as to how to convince Joe Biden to step aside if he will not do so on his own. Perhaps they are right. Even those of us who deeply admire Joe Biden must help to make it so. Let’s do these three things to increase our chances in 2024:

1) Call Congressman Dean Phillips Immediately
	Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips is not going to be the next President of the United States. However, what he will do over the next two weeks is of great consequence. Phillips is the Democratic elected official to date most intent on budging Joe Biden away from running. Phillips has made overtures to New Hampshire Democrats and will need to decide in the next two weeks whether to be a candidate.  This is exactly what is needed to give more of our leaders the freedom to talk about the dangers of Joe Biden running, and the opportunity to field an alternative. It will draw considerable press attention, make the 2028 Democratic wannabees take notice, and advance their own preparedness in case Biden reconsiders. It is nothing but a good thing. Dean Phillips is former chair of the gelato company Talenti and is the grandson of advice columnist Abigail Van Buren (sister of Ann Landers). He has stepped down from his House leadership position and is fully focused on this matter. He heads back to Minneapolis frequently. Call his Congressional campaign office at 952-426-1766 and tell his aides you need him to run for President.
2) Contact Your State Party Chair
	Even if you are in a mainstream Democratic state, this is a situation in which state party leadership matters. State party chairs and representatives to the Democratic National Committee are just as worried as you are that voters are overwhelmingly concerned about Joe Biden’s age. Track down their emails and tell them it is time for them to act on their worries.
3) Watch No Labels Carefully
	At this point, it is difficult to figure out the organization No Labels. Their announced intent is to get beyond bitter partisanship and elevate bi-partisan solutions, including centrist candidates. It is possible that No Labels could do something that would change the entire makeup of the election, and even spur the value of Democrats having a new presidential candidate. Early results are unpromising. The joint appearance by former Utah Republican Governor Jon Huntsman and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin left the policy positions of No Labels indistinct, or perhaps nonexistent.

There’s just a little more than a year to go before the next presidential election. There’s plenty of time to get the right candidate if we get going.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#40: Republicans: “Mr. Putin, Put Up That Wall!”

Alert: This small missive played a key role in 2022 in supporting key organizing efforts by Mi Familia Vota in Nevada and Arizona, which helped eke out narrow victories. Mi Familia Vota has set its sights on North Carolina, where the Latino population has now exceeded one million. This is a terrific chance to make inroads in a swing state. Our missive has pledged $15,000 to help Mi Familia Vota get going in North Carolina. We have raised $5,000 so far. Please help us reach this goaltoday. 

This is the next of our series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020 and holding onto the Senate in 2022.

If you are not already receiving these messages by email, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, Our Unfinished Work, every three to four weeks.

Even after seven years of MAGA pestilence, you can still get surprised. This is the news. Eighty House Republicans have walked away from Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine. They couch it in “higher American priorities” babble, but it still startles. There is no American interest in protecting a democratic nation from being invaded by a dictator? Marjorie Taylor Greene lies that Joe Biden wants to send our sons and daughters to die in Ukraine. Trump himself says he could end the war in a day, not adding that Zelenskyy would have to cede a third of his nation to Putin for that outcome to be secured. Only the vague knowledge that it is a state would keep Trump from offering Nebraska to Putin, or perhaps Rhode Island.

There is no bigger difference between Ronald Reagan’s Republicanism and the modern-day party, and with it comes a strange new affection for autocracy. This is a party that has identified any number of tyrants to be excused, but Putin? He would subjugate or kill us all if he could, including House Republicans. Don’t they know that?

Democrats are all behind Joe Biden’s engineering of a robust US and international response. Mitch McConnell and many Senate Republicans are there with Biden. So is Kevin McCarthy, to the extent he dares to get away with it with his caucus. Biden has worked hard to get enduring support from other Western democracies. Both major parties in Great Britain unequivocally support Zelenskyy. The reason why Biden is muted in his criticism of House Republicans is he knows it ultimately would be disadvantageous to have Ukraine’s defense be seen as a partisan issue. But one can’t avoid the conclusion that as with Covid, House Republicans are not so good at identifying instruments of death.

Combine that with McCarthy’s serving up an impeachment inquiry regarding Joe Biden and we descend into a world where narrow House margins mean that battles between thirty or forty very right-wing House members dominate the proceedings. Kevin McCarthy didn’t have the floor votes to mandate that inquiry but ordered it up from three committees. Here’s what would make you admire him even less. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t believe a single second that Joe Biden committed an offense, let alone an impeachable one. He is just trying to appease the right flank so they will keep the government open on September 30. If Matt Gaetz told him to do cartwheels through the House chamber, he would do it,

Meanwhile the resolute but weary Biden has decided to own “Bidenomics” after Republicans branded it as a critical sobriquet. Biden is trying to accomplish what happened with “Obamacare” which started out as a derisive term and ended up the opposite. Since Biden has been part of creating 13 million new jobs, he’s understandably looking for some credit. His problem is that he is being blamed for inflation. This blame will recede more slowly than the inflation itself, undoubtedly all the way to November 2024.

We should not forget the monumental legislative achievements of Joe Biden during the first two years of his Presidency. Almost all were dependent on the 36 years he spent in the Senate. However, it cannot be escaped that Biden’s age is a powerful weight upon Democratic 2024 prospects at a time when no votes can be spared. Supporters who say that Biden can avoid the mental and physical ravages of age are wrong. No one can. There is a reason why we have never had an 85-year-old president.

A new Democratic candidate would take advantage of the antipathy of independent voters toward MAGA. Someone like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer would give us the needed immediate generational shift. She would turbo-charge the right to choose part of our agenda and allow us to recast the Democratic economic agenda away from inflation and toward the blue-collar ties she has successfully advanced in Michigan.

Democrats seem certain that Biden is running. But his campaign has started out slowly. It is possible that he is just holding the spot to be certain not to be lame ducked early. To this point, it is not necessarily a disadvantage to be watching Republicans fighting each other while Donald Trump awaits criminal conviction.

It is time to up our focus by doing these three things.

1) Take Advantage of Changed Demography
	To get to 306 electoral votes in 2020, Joe Biden won nearly all the close races in swing states. The notable exceptions were in Florida, which Democrats lost by just over 3% and North Carolina, where Trump squeaked by with a 1% margin. Both will be major targets in 2024, especially because of demographic changes. Half of the population increase in Florida each year is Latino-Americans. North Carolina’s Latino population went from 67,000 in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2020! That is why supporting Mi Familia Vota’s new efforts in North Carolina is so important. Help our missive achieve our $15,000 commitment if you possibly can.
2) Keep Track of State Courts
	The Brennan Center at NYU has been an indispensable organization, especially in providing the resources to the efforts to limit voting in America, which is all the rage among Republican operatives. Now the Brennan Center has an excellent new resource, tracking the numerous positive and negative actions in State Courts, which often carry the day on issues of voter rights. You can sign up today.
3) Call Nancy Mace with the Truth
	Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina has called out House Republican leaders more than once for their treatment of members who are vulnerable after having been elected in Congressional districts where Biden beat Trump. She is against an impeachment vote on the floor but has developed convoluted reasoning that McCarthy directing three committees to do an “inquiry” is fine. Call her Capitol Hill office phone at 202-225-3176 and tell the recording that America expects her to stand up to the far right.

Admittedly, it is difficult to spend too much time thinking of these often-foul political things. They can bring you down. On the other hand, applying the energy we have and the beliefs we foster, we can bring them down.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington