#43: How We Stop Awful Things from Happening

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No one said for even a minute that this was easy. Just remember that when commentators say that “Trump still has his base,” that amounts to just a bit more than a third of American voters. If you keep working on independents, and you keep on making certain that those seeking a new direction REGISTER and VOTE in November, this particular election will absolutely be a blue wave, and it will provide the best sort of brake on some of the worst things that this totally bizarre American president can do.

Maybe when you are awash in despair you remember Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ path breaking “On Death and Dying.” You are recalling her five stages of response to terminal illness: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Now feel the cool breeze as you realize the Trump stages are entirely different. Here's what you may have been thinking:

1. Disbelief (November 2016) There was a tiny chance of that happening, of the “firewall” being breached, even with the last-minute Comey announcement. But I still can’t believe he is the President of our country. The hurt I feel for America is overwhelming.
2. Befuddlement What do I even do about what I am hearing? I am going to have to sort his out, get some equilibrium. I am going to be a part of the resistance and not let this bring me down.
3. Organization There is Indivisible, and Swing Left, and there are local independent groups, and special elections, and fighting for health care, and against the tax cut and for refugees and against environmental destruction. There are ways to weigh in every week. I believe that we are starting to get some traction. I know this matters. Even though this distresses me and I must find time away from it, I am fully dedicated to resisting.
4. Traction (the present) Before, I was pleased that we all worked together to save the Affordable Care Act, even though I know that Trump still is wounding it regularly. I am pleased that there are still many millions of people receiving health care who otherwise would not be if the resistance had not acted. Now, refugee and immigrant parents are going to be reunited with their children. Whatever Trump says or does next, this is a huge victory for the resistance. We can build on this and work tirelessly all summer and early fall for a blue wave.
5. Celebration On the morning of November 7, 2018, I feel as hopeful and renewed as in any time I remember. I know there are as many as two more years of Donald Trump, but we now have demonstrated with the election results that we can change the course of history. In no way are we done, but our work is paying off.

What could keep us from completing these five steps now that we are so far along? We could be self-indulgent. We could forget to attend to the business at hand while trading snarky comments about Ivanka or trying to figure out Melania Trump’s jacket. Worse, we could fall into a pattern of debating whether it is okay to harass someone while they are having a sandwich at a restaurant, which can be very easily resolved because it isn’t okay. Whatever moral outrage you might feel justified in expressing to Sarah Huckabee Sanders or other Trump minions, it is a narcissistic, politically self-defeating act. We wouldn’t want any of those distractions to define our next few months, would we?

Instead, we must remember and emphasize the four issues that will be providing us the traction and 
getting us the celebration. And we must focus on why each of them offer us a considerable political advantage, and work from now to November 6 to keep it that way.

Health care is a matter of reminding everyone that the “Pottery Barn” rule is now formally in play. Trump and his supplicants broke the Affordable Care Act, and they don’t plan to fix it. Independent voters will vote against them for this alone. We have skyrocketing premiums and fewer choices. Most important to voters, we are moving toward the point that the remaining elements of the ACA are in such a shambles that the treasured coverage for pre-existing conditions will diminish. 

The new tax law is the second key issue. On the personal income side, 80% of the benefits went to the wealthiest 1%. The American taxpayer so far is not “seeing” the benefits of Congress borrowing money from our children and grandchildren to pay for the cuts. Polls show the law is viewed unfavorably, taking away what Republicans hoped would be a fall campaign strategy. Moreover, as predicted, the greatest use of the corporate tax cuts has not been for wage increases or new investment in plants and equipment. It has been for corporate stock buybacks. 

The third issue is immigration, which sadly is more advantageous to us as a political issue than it otherwise would be because it will take until fall just to get the 2,500 children back to their parents. 67% of Americans were against the separation in the first place. Don’t count out the possibility of Trump working with Stephen Miller on some more “zero tolerance” and incarcerating undocumented border crossers or even asylum-seekers and their children in camps at military bases. Trump is also making sounds about closing the government on October 1 if he doesn’t get the wall. Congress would be under enormous pressure from voters to pass a bi-partisan bill to keep the government open.

Fourth, we will remain attentive to whatever indictments Robert Mueller will seek this summer.

These four issues are all we need to take back at least a score more seats in the House than the 24 we need. And the Senate is in play. The newest NBC/Marist poll has Bill Nelson four points ahead of Rick Scott in Florida. In Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is polling more than 10 points better than each of her possible three opponents.

Let’s not let the sideshows created by the daily tweets distract us from staying with the biggest show, the issues that will decide this election. Maybe you yourself can’t believe that any independent voter could countenance Trump, given his indifference to things like, say, the Constitution, but you don’t want to take that for granted. Independent voters (especially women) are turning away from Trump, but they need all the encouragement and evidence we can provide, and the above four issues will tell the tale. These same four issues will motivate the new voters we can convince to register. Finally, they will help us bring back the voters who maddeningly and dishearteningly did not cast a ballot in 2016.

From this point forward, our opportunities to comment on pending legislation will be fewer, and our three things to do will be almost entirely related to the November elections. The consequences of resisters failing to pick a favorite Congressional race in which to engage are too painful to describe on the pages of this missive. Here are three things we all can do today.

1) Send Postcards to Voters Every Week
	20,000 of us are already participating in Postcards to Voters, an innovative way to break through seemingly impenetrable barriers and reach voters who live in swing districts and who thus hold our country’s future in their hands. Postcards to Voters will provide your small group of advocates a list of voter addresses in selected Congressional districts. You add the artwork, personalized message and food for thought. You know that you can express yourself in such a way that your customized missives will be noticed by the recipients. It’s a great thing to do over coffee with friends.
2) Single Out Phil Bredesen
	A year ago, it seemed hopeless to even think about trying to take control of the Senate, because 26 of the 35 seats being contested are already being held by Democrats. Additionally, a number of these Democratic seats (Montana, West Virginia, Missouri, North Dakota, Indiana) are in states where the Russia-aided Trump beat Clinton in 2016. Now, there are glimmers. Jon Tester in Montana and Joe Manchin in West Virginia are polling well.  As noted above, there is an excellent chance that Democrats will take back the Arizona seat now held by sort-of-Republican Jeff Flake. All of this means that eyes are turning to Tennessee, where Republican Senator Bob Corker is not running, and where former Democratic governor Phil Bredesen has a narrow lead in the polls. This is becoming another excellent chance to pick up a seat. True as it is that all of these campaigns have big budgets and money is pouring into Tennessee, it would be a great week for you to do some pouring yourself. Give up your coffee for a week if you need to and help perk up Tennessee for Phil Bredesen. Here’s where to find the click to donate.
3) Promote Online Voter Registration
	Wherever you go, you can view people intently focused on their cell phones. There are any number of things that are easier to do now that the digital universe has arrived, and some of those things are well worth doing, such as registering to vote! Here, certainties come into play. You can be assured that the effort to take back the Congress depends hugely on the number of people who vote, which itself depends on the number of new voters register. In some states, as many as 2/3 of the new registrants will be part of the blue wave. Further, most states have online registration. Wouldn’t it be easy for you to do a Facebook post or a tweet or an email providing a link to Rock the Vote? Rock the Vote is there to help you. There will be as many as a dozen swing districts that end up getting decided by turnout from newly registered voters. That seems motivating.

The little things do rankle. During a recent public Congressional Medal of Honor ceremony, Donald Trump told an 89-year-old widow of a World War II war hero that he hoped she had voted for him. Of course, this was supposed to be a “joke”. No one is laughing, Donald Trump. You are dishonoring your office and our country. We aim to take it back.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#42: We Will Not Let Him Be Our Country's Voice

Thank you for continuing to share these messages with your friends, if you are not already on our mailing list, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, A Path Forward to November 3, 2020, every two weeks, which means there will be a total of 100 missives before the Presidential election of 2020, in which our country will select a whole new course.

It isn’t as though Donald Trump is messing up what otherwise would be an unblemished global record of the United States. Over time, we have made common cause with countless dictators as they suppressed their people. Often, we have conflated the aims of capitalism with those of democracy. In the 1930’s, we remained isolationist for an interminable period while the world faced its greatest peril. Throughout our history, more than a few Americans have tried to shut the door and lock it right after their generation of immigrants made it past the Statue of Liberty.

Still, over time our democratic aspirations have kindled countless dreams that might not otherwise have emerged in Dakar or Prague or Bangkok. Our free speech and peaceful transfers of power have been well tested and have survived, and equal protection under the law has protected people who would be under siege in many other countries.. As a nation, we have been capable of international leadership, and generosity, and inventiveness. Why not celebrate that now and again we have lifted ourselves, and others? And, why not mourn that the man who “leads” our country is dashing those dreams and withdrawing that leadership, and even mocking the idea of such leadership, every single day?

The “nativists” whom he leads and who of course aren’t originally from here either, throw out “globalist” and “immigrant” as epithets. For all their bluster and meanness of spirit, they are elevated and almost never corrected within a party that once said with conviction that it stood for world leadership. In one decade, a Republican president asked a Canadian prime minister to put his country’s soldiers in harm’s way to defend our collective national security. In the next decade, a Republican president has invented national security as an excuse to invoke special powers in a trade dispute with Canada. As friendly and neighborly as another country could possibly be, Canadians are treated to egregious insults, while Russia and North Korea are praised. How is this possible?

We will make these dreadful moments pass. Within the Republican Party, there is a large cohort whose greatest pride at being Republicans was international diplomacy. Ronald Reagan was far more the renegade than the Bushes and treasured by many in his party for being so. But at this moment he would be ashamed of the behavior toward our allies displayed by Donald Trump.

Those within the White House who did not want a trade war have left, including economic advisor Gary Cohn. Larry Kudlow, Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross are yes-people. Trump is the arbiter of these matters and he is locked over and over again in The Art of the Deal. Leaving aside that in the first place this was a made-up story about a real estate developer, it has no application to trade negotiations. 

It is monumentally different because there are countless United States interests with every country in which we are in negotiations and each of those countries has its own alliances with each other. It is different from real estate in that time never stands still, that dynamism and change is the constant, and that a single bottom line is a fiction. You could win once in a tweet-advanced swaggering showdown, but you are setting yourself and ourselves up for bigger losses. Most important, it is different from real estate because some countries are founded upon principles of self-determination and protection of human rights while others relentlessly seek to stamp out these principles. In fact, their leaders wouldn't mind stamping us out, even after Donald Trump shakes their hand and pronounces them trustworthy.

Trump rejects out of hand the concept of partnership, even though that is where our genuine self-interest is advanced. Now and again, a pundit will suggest that Trump’s bluster could advantage us, as in “Maybe that other country will think he is just crazy enough to start a trade war and will make concessions.” But we are dealing with other governments, not someone who owns a parcel in Manhattan. This is not just about dairy supports or the price of imported steel. Canada, Germany, Britain and France are not going to forget the flurry of insults, nor should they. Now, Un-believably, and without a trace of irony, Trump has made Kim Jong Un a “lover of his people” while Justin Trudeau is “weak.” Don’t let this become America’s voice.

Democrats, well aware that freer trade has had its economic winners and losers, are going to be happy to watch Senators Bob Corker, Ben Sasse and others battle Trump apologists on the Senate floor over trade. The issue is whether to rein in Trump’s bogus use of national security as grounds for slapping tariffs on products from Canada and other allies. Among the ironies, the Koch brothers are on Corker’s side.

We need to stand for globalism, an indispensable part of the way forward not just on climate change but on most everything that the planet and its people need. We need to remind ourselves again that in fighting poverty and disease, the world has accomplished something together. Nicholas Kristoff says the world has achieved important progress but faces mortal threats. Let’s do three things to diminish the threats.

1) Bolster the Backbone of Those Challenging Trump
	There is always the possibility that the sizable number of Senate Republicans who are challenging Trump on his trade approach will fold in the usual ways when the usual “let’s stay together” pushback is mounted by Trump-battered Republican leaders. But there is a better chance that this battle is an ongoing one, since the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other Republican business interests are aligned with the Corker-led apostates. Donald Trump had promised wary Republicans that the battles waged at the G-7 in Quebec would be “a movie that ends quickly”. But he couldn’t bear to have Justin Trudeau write his own narrative, so the movie didn’t end. Even if it had, with Trump there will always be the sequel. So, it is time to call and write to a couple of Republican Senators who are inclined to give Bob Corker some cover, and who could help over time to make this battle be about the need for global partnerships. Please call and/or write: Senator Lamar Alexander 455 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510 (202) 224-4944 Senator Ben Sasse 136 Russell Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510 (202) 224-4224
2) Represent Yourself as a Part of the Community of Nations
	True as it is that the United Nations is seriously flawed, it is the one place where countries buy in to the idea that we are a community of nations and that we have collective interests that must be pursued. At minimum, we must have a forum where mutual goals are established in fighting global poverty, addressing climate change, and responding to the global refugee crisis. So of all times in our lives it has become necessary to either join the United Nations Association of the USA or at least understand what it is trying to accomplish, now is the most important time of all.
3) Be Guided by Your Fellow Blog Readers
	We have received many thoughtful responses to the 41 missives we have sent since the electoral tragedy of November of 2016, and gratifying encouragement to keep on going. A number of working groups and resistance efforts around the country follow up immediately on the three recommended steps for action that are always included. And we get letters --- Says one - “Perhaps a topic for the next missive is the Sessions’ approach to border-crossing families of taking children away from parents and putting them into holding pens and foster care while detaining, deporting or prosecuting their parents… surely there must be a more humane way…" Stayed tuned for missive #43 for updates and action steps on asylum-seekers and on DACA. Says another - "I would ask you to consider advising your readers to read a very important book I just finished. It’s called How Democracies Die by Levitsky and Ziblatt. It is a scholarly analysis of the signature circumstances that characteristically lead to a democracy turning into an authoritarian dictatorship. It does an in-depth analysis of numerous historic examples with frightening comparisons to America today. I personally believe that every thoughtful person should read to open their eyes concerning what’s going on this country." No dying democracies on our watch. We will read it! From California - "Every Wednesday a bunch of women in our town, whose kids are grown and flown, meet for two hours to write postcards to registered voters. We spruce up our plain postcards in all manner of creative ways and write… to encourage people to get out and be part of the blue wave. As you say each time, we must participate if we are to be governed in a way that is just and fair.” Let’s do that, too.

Since Donald Trump believes he can take the measure of a person in thirty seconds, let’s understand what we would want him to know about us in thirty seconds. We would want him to know--- No, we won’t let this stand. We believe that our democracy is imperiled, and we are fully confident that we can do something about that, and that is what we are doing at this very moment, and that is what we will continue to do until this danger to democracy is lifted.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington