#4: We Will Not Be Mere Observers

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We are all faced with the challenge of how not to be “just an observer” in this increasingly bizarre time. As always, the first step in being deliberate and effective in our engagement is sorting out what is going on and fully understanding the greatest threats to the republic for which we stand and the most compelling political opportunities. We need to seize upon those opportunities and not be distracted. For some, even in the midst of the manipulations and misrepresentations that are the daily fare of the Trump assumption of the Presidency, modest redemptive acts by the President-elect can be possible.

But for me, even if a single appointment or action emerges that seems sensible, my rejection of this man as president will be untouched. There is nothing he can or will do to be fit to be president. This is because to him the lie doesn’t matter at all. To all of us, whether you praise a dictator or dismiss a foreign nation’s interference in the election goes to the heart of our freedom as Americans. To him, it is a daily game in which the facts and even the aims are inconsequential, giving way always to what seems to be his unparalleled incuriosity and narcissism.

Through all of this we will prevail, together. What we have going for us is that we will not let ourselves be mere observers of the events of the next four years. The quality and intensity of our collective actions will carry the day.

The first enormous victory is less than two years away! As discussed later in this fourth missive, there is disagreement about whether we can get the 24 seats to take back the House in 2018. I think it is self-evident that we can, and of course we must. There are steps we can begin to take right now.

In the meantime, battlegrounds will be chosen. Almost all of the major Presidential cabinet appointments will be approved in the next couple of months, some only after the requisite set of warnings are issued to the nominee and assurances received by the Senate. Concentrated action will move to hearings about Russian hacking and the elections, which Senators McCain, Graham and others will use with some effectiveness to push back against Trump softness on Russia. Trump and the Congress will pass a showy repeal of the Affordable Care Act, granting themselves time to figure out how to preserve its most popular provisions, such as coverage of pre-existing conditions. It will become apparent early on that they have no way to reconcile the disputes among Republicans in the House. Ultimately, Speaker Ryan will appeal to Congressional Democrats for votes to get a new health care law passed that the Senate can agree to and that includes major provisions of the current law.

Here are three new steps we can all take now.

1) Learn What Indivisible Has to Say on How to Play Defense
	Fortunately, a group of former Congressional staff members has put together a 26-page primer on how to influence members of Congress. As someone who worked on Capitol Hill for several years, I can attest to this overall approach and to the clarity of their ideas and message. This is the best material so far on ways to help make certain that Congress prevents Trump from doing his worst. As you read the Indivisible report please pay special attention to their description of how the members of Congress are thinking about you, your views and their role in Congress. Even the member whose views are the furthest from your own is likely to be making an effort to show his or her district that he or she is responding to their needs and that of the country. To this day, with an awful partisan divide and with rational discourse on some issues not invited by the majority, one can find oneself appreciating the quality of a Congressional committee hearing, or a “markup” of a bill in committee. Your goal is to take advantage of the way the member of Congress thinks about her or his effectiveness as a public servant. As the creators of Indivisible point out, even members from safe seats are worried about primaries from within their own parties, or they have otherwise found a reason to pay some attention to the collective voice of concerned voters. The report emphasizes your connection with your representatives through their town halls, their other public meetings, through visits with them and their staff at their in-district offices, and through mass calling campaigns. It is astute on how to organize and deliver a message. It falls short a bit only in its aggressive use of the Tea Party and their activities in 2009 as a prime lesson. We need to remember and account for the antipathy of liberals and progressive to being herded! But, the intensity of effort will certainly be there, born out of the present unacceptable situation.
2) Develop an Obsession with Winning the House of Representatives on November 6, 2018
	Donald Trump’s favorability rating on the day of the election was 38%. There are any number of political analysts who believe he will never achieve a favorability rating as high as 40% during his period as President. A not inconsiderable number predict constant political warfare between him and Republican members of Congress, starting with disputes over the hacking and his coziness with Russia. Given these factors, why would we believe he will be a colossal political force two years from now, when the parties of even successful presidents almost always suffer a mid-term loss? It is true that the redistricting carried out by mostly Republican state legislatures after the 2010 census causes us extra problems. For instance, in 2014, Republicans captured 52% of the votes for members of Congress, but won 57% of the seats. In 2012, Democrats got more than half the votes and captured only 201 of the 435 seats. Of course, only some of this is due to modest or even egregious gerrymandering. Some of it is due to heavy Democratic concentrations in some urban areas, which no amount of creative map-drawing can spread out. Even with these obstacles, we can take back the House. We need to take back just 24 seats to go from the present 241-194 to a razor thin 218-217, which we have done twice in the post-war era. Why is this possible? Because Trump and Ryan will make the more vulnerable Republicans “walk the plank” to provide necessary votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act and support tax “reform” that comforts the comfortable. There are 14 congressional districts that Hillary Clinton carried that have Republican members of Congress and at least a score more that are trending in the Democratic direction because of changing demographics. We will say more in our next missive. You can learn more by using this Daily Kos article to see which nearby Republican member of Congress is sitting in a district that does not want President Obama’s accomplishments unraveled. Boosted by the Indivisible report, make it a point to follow that member’s actions from this point forward. It will not be too long before candidate recruitment begins and before the recognition that we can take back the House of Representatives gains greater momentum.
3) Remember Your Charitable Contributions
	At this point, under new leadership, our country is infirm. From previous missives, we remember that we are all trying to include charitable giving to advance its health, to shore up those organizations that are battling the Trump agenda or providing essential services that the United States may abandon. This could include such entities that are playing defense as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Planned Parenthood. My favorite goes to the heart of the matter---- boosting registration of Latino voters in Texas, Colorado, Nevada, California, New Mexico and Arizona through the Mi Familia Voter Education Fund.

As has been the case since November 8, we could make the mistake of looking away. We told ourselves when we heard the news that this would not and will not stand. We recognize the need for focused, collective action, and we will not exempt ourselves from this challenge. And we will succeed.

Best regards,

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#3: Making the Most Careful Choices

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Please sign our petition on change.org to urge Donald Trump to start working on his taxes now so that he will be ready to pay on April 15. Send the petition on to your friends. And, if you are interested in giving this effort an extra boost, use the "Promote this petition" link to send $25 or $50 to change.org so they can get the word out.

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Dear Friend,

One of the most unusual things about this post-election period is that there are major choices to be made every single day about how to engage. Because Donald Trump’s tweets, cabinet appointments, and recent foreign policy positions are so disheartening and dangerous, the varying approaches you could use to defend the republic are growing, even exponentially. What standard can we use to sort things out?

I don’t think there is much danger that at this point, we will start falling by the wayside, figuring that things will be okay, not when the President-elect insists that he is smart enough to not need regular intelligence briefings. Of all Donald Trump’s flaws, and there are many, the greatest danger to all of us may be his lack of curiosity, his disinterest in learning new things, his erstwhile selection and parroting of information (however fanciful or inaccurate) that supports the view he already held.

In the context of the turmoil which will persist and our dismay which will linger, the question becomes how we make choices. How can we pick the most consequential actions, so we will turn ourselves into activists who will not rest unless we block Trump’s worst intentions and until we revel in this being over on November 3, 2020?
There isn’t going to be a universal standard for how to sort out where to focus our most intensive efforts. My own sorting device is to avoid initiatives that seem doomed from the outset, like changing the vote of the Electoral College, since so many of the electors are legally bound. You might feel differently about that. My interest in Trump’s income tax payments comes from a feeling that 1) the pressure from multiple fronts will grow between now and April and 2) he is destined to act in a way that is disfavored by a broad cross section of the electorate. I think this is a negative that will stay with him. If anything it will get worse.
 
My priority setting standards on what all of us can do involve questions like: Could the proposed approach have any chance of success? Is it fair? Does it avoid a level of snarkiness or self-righteousness that is tempting but self-defeating? In terms of trying to influence the votes of citizens or lawmakers, is the message accurate and well-articulated? Is it being delivered to the right people, and is the timing right? If the approach includes supporting a specific organizing group or a non-profit, will they be able to sustain their effort? What is their track record?

Helping our Collective Impact Grow

In addition to these missives being emailed to you all, they are posted on Facebook and are collected on my blog. It would be a great honor to me if you could send me two or three names of people who would like to regularly receive these ideas, as many of you have already done. We will build on approaches we have already offered (archived on the blog), including:

• How to contact a member of the U.S. House of Representatives or U.S. Senate so your views will have a life beyond hitting their phone call tally sheet. (November 30)
• How to identify which Trump supporting members of Congress will be most vulnerable in the fall of 2018, including some that may surprise you. (November 30)
• How to watch whether Democrats do a better job of framing and presenting their economic message, with a little progress already on this front. (November 16) 

Here are three more things we can all do right now:

1) Combat Ongoing Voter Suppression Efforts
	Many of us are aware that gerrymandering by state legislatures after the 2010 elections makes the task of taking back the House of Representatives even harder. If Republican controlled legislatures can engineer it, they will concentrate Democratic voters in as few districts as possible.  For instance, there are nearly as many Democratic voters as Republicans in North Carolina, and the Congressional delegation has 10 Republicans and 3 Democrats. Even more pernicious is voter suppression. 2016 brought the lowest presidential election turnout in Wisconsin in 20 years. The primary tool for decreasing the vote was a Voter ID law, with the state Department of Motor Vehicles dragging its feet in issuing ID’s to those without driver’s licenses, and the related drop in voting totaling 41,000 in Milwaukee alone. At this point the primary battle over voter suppression is in the courts, though state legislatures must be watched too after many go back into session in January. Advocates for voting justice should support the impressive legal efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union in several states, and nationally should support the very thorough and principled actions of the voting rights program of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The Brennan Center is an excellent resource on what is happening in the courts.
2) Fight Where the Greatest Dangers Will Emerge
	It is certainly possible that Trump will never secure positive approval ratings during the entire period of his presidency. However, the damage that can be wrought even by an unpopular, under-supported President can be huge. Hence our attention is naturally drawn to global destabilization, given the dangers of Twitter diplomacy. It is good to remember that in some areas defenses are easier to mount, as will be evidenced in the bi-partisan hearings on Russia and hacking. Surprisingly, this is also true of tax policy. When the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee start working on tax “reform”, they will not begin their efforts with the frame of Trump’s proposal. Of course, that doesn’t mean the resultant law will meaningfully address wealth disparities. We are in the greatest immediate trouble in the area of environmental policy, because so many of our recent gains were secured by executive orders from President Obama in the face of Congressional abdication of responsibility. The President-elect nominated Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency as the first step in rescinding and reversing these executive orders. There have been 35 executive orders on energy, climate change, and the environment, and President Obama issued a new one last week on oil drilling and wilderness protection in Alaska. Here the battle will be multi-pronged. We know that Ivanka Trump does not want her father to walk away from the Paris accord. I expect that he won’t formally walk away, but that he will  do multiple, continued, insidious destructive things. So you will want to pick and support your favorite national environmental advocate. I like the litigation-oriented Natural Resources Defense Council. But don’t stop there. There are very considerable actions that can be taken at the regional, state and local level. If you live in a state that recognizes the existence of climate change, find out what state government is being asked to do that it isn’t presently doing, who is asking them to do it and contact your own state legislators. For example, in Washington State the excellent driving force is Climate Solutions. And, don’t stop there either. Almost every member of Congress speaks of the wondrousness of our environment when they are campaigning. When Congressional environmental committee memberships are settled in January, I will provide the names and personal numbers of these members’ key environmental policy staff members, and I will urge you to do some intensive, individual contact work.
3) Advance a Robust Free Press
	It turns out that a pizza parlor in DC is not the headquarters of a Democratic sex ring! It was just selling pizza, as they informed the man who showed up with a shotgun. We have a long, long way to go in battling made up news, and we can start by subscribing to publications where news is researched and covered and written. This from my very wise friend Hilary Hilscher: "As a former journalist, and one who still believes there are such things as true facts as opposed to twitter blather, I think supporting the “Fourth Estate”, i.e., a robust, honest free press is one extremely important step we can take. With the probable-incoming President dissing all of the foundations of our democracy, we simply HAVE to have intelligent, ethical reporting if we are to continue as a viable country." So please consider adding this to your list of to-dos: Support original sources of news rather than just using internet aggregators! This means subscribing or contributing to solid news sources such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Guardian, National Public Radio, or go straight to indie groups. Consider subscribing to local news outlets: The Seattle Times, one of the last family-owned regional newspapers, and like all newspapers, is struggling to find its financial footing in the digital age. Know the editorial outlook of your media: The New Yorker and Atlantic are definitely progressive in outlook, but offer some of the most in-depth, thoughtful analysis available. ALSO, use every opportunity to challenge fake or hate-talk outlets like Fox and Breitbart.

Thank you all again for participating in this venture. With each missive, our “audience” continues to grow. Could you stay with us, ACT whenever you can, and pass this all on to your friends.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island,  Washington