#49: How Will We Attend to the Repairs?

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After a pointed, obsessively researched take down of Donald Trump, Bob Woodward said Americans should "wake up", though he later said it would be helpful if some would "calm down".

Should we calm down? Yes, and no. Yes, we should remember that the republic for which we stand has been diminished but has not been dissolved. Yes, it is necessary for us to maintain some equilibrium. And, no we will never make light of what Donald Trump represents. 

Our nation was flawed before he began his nasty deeds. Wealth inequality was huge and growing before he grew it much further. We were slow on climate change and too comfortable with doing business with undemocratic foreign leaders. Our anti-poverty efforts were patchy and innsufficient.

In every area he has touched, he has made things worse. With gall, he's pulled up apart with profound disrespect for democratic institutions and monumental unearned personal self-regard.

Starting with November 6, we will win the country back one election, one plea bargain and one legislative victory at a time. Not only does Donald Trump not have a way out of the hole he has excavated, he can't help but keep on digging. What a foolish man.

As we usher him out, in what specific ways will we attend to repairs? Outside of how we address the great policy issues of our time, how will we answer what underlies all of them--- Who is going to play a part in doing the addressing? Who is welcomed into the political process, not just during elections, but in the whole democratic experiment? Who feels a part now? Who will be enabled to join us, and what are the rules that will keep their participation from being suppressed? Who can come here tomorrow, like we and our generations of families did yesterday?

This is the larger post-Trump restoration. It will be the re-invention or resurgence of how we do things with and for each other in this country. How can we guarantee that all of us together will take this on?

Donald Trump is 71, all the evidence that you need that age does not always bring wisdom. Either we ourselves are that age or older, or we have friends or family that are. Wouldn't it be delicious if Trump's age cohort was indispensable in rebuilding American political systems?

If these folks have individual retirement accounts or a 401k, they are obligated at age 70 1/2 to start to take an annual Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) Many do not know that (if their finances permit) all or a portion of their RMD can be transferred to a qualified non-profit. This will keep the distribution from being a taxable event AND help in the long-term retooling of America, all at the same time.

Required minimum distributions can fight against white nationalism through the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Morris Dees' splendid organization has been in the vanguard against intolerance for decades.

Long term investments including RMDs and other charitable contributions can underpin our push back against voter suppression. The eligible organization that stands out for the quality of its work and its rich understanding of the threats we case is the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University 

We must also make a long-term commitment to welcoming lovers of democracy from around the world. Will we really countenance the shutting of the door that most of our own families walked through? Here the RMD should go to your local or regional charitable organization that provides free legal assistance to immigrants facing deportation or other legal proceedings.

As we address these long term necessities, we aren't forgetting that November 6 must be depended on to give us a huge initial lift, There's a lot of work to be done between now and then. Let's start with these three things:

1) Make Certain Senator Debbie Stabenow Will Prevail
	In the Farm Bill now under consideration, the Republican leadership has implanted new work rules that would result in denying Food Stamps to as many as 1.5 million present participants. They are inventive enough to give a trillion dollars or so of tax breaks to the very wealthy, but they have not quite figured out how to give a loaf of bread to someone who otherwise would have none. Luckily, they need 60 votes in the Senate and Debbie Stabenow (the ranking Democrat on the Agriculture Committee) is standing in the way. Make sure the Democrats on the Agriculture Committee stay with her: Tina Smith of Minnesota (202) 224-5641 Sherrod Brown of Ohio (202) 224-2315 Bob Casey of Pennsylvania (202) 224-6324 Insist there be no Farm Bill if it includes the new draconian rules.
2) Boost Michelle Obama's New Project
	As this missive has previously emphasized, getting people registered so they can vote on November 6 is the current number one job of resisters. September 22nd through 29th will be the biggest week of the year in terms of meeting that goal as When We All Vote holds a series of events.  It's not too late to help Michelle Obama, Lin-Michael Miranda, Tom Hanks and others get us focused.
3) Bring Florida a Democratic Governor
	With all the talk of the Senate and House, we are at risk of forgetting to take back several governor-ships. We would (perish the thought) fail to take advantage of the gifts Donald Trump has made available by his support of the most right wing (and less electable) candidate in several races. He has put us ahead in Florida though his support of Jim Desantis. Take a chance on Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum, who has an excellent chance of becoming the next Governor, and the first African-American Governor of that state.

This is not a mysterious thing. We know exactly what needs to be done by November 6, and we know exactly how to do it. Now that we've heard what's in Bob Woodward's book we know that a nation hangs in the balance.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#48: We Won't Stand Down, We Won't Stand Aside and We Won't Stand For It

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.

Last week was about John McCain, but it wasn’t just about John McCain. Of course, we like to know that someone around us is larger than life in the way McCain was. But, it is the contrast to Trump and his smallness that gave the week its resonance. Susan Glasser of the New Yorker called the McCain funeral “the biggest resistance meeting yet.”

There was some audience approval when Megan McCain said her dad was a great man. “We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice.” Isn’t it a sad thing that we know exactly who she was referring to?
Now comes the hard part. What are we to do upon seeing hundreds of elected officials of both parties honoring someone with a conservative voting record for having values, being willing to be self-critical, and for being averse to being strong armed by his party? When we hear such things, and we see all that heartfelt honoring is going on, can’t we start expecting such behavior from the mourners? If these behaviors caught on, rather than McCain being the last of an era, he could be the first of the new era.

This project will take some time. It does seem clear that the quality of congressional deliberation shifts from decade to decade. We are right to dismiss any notion that Senators kowtowing to Trump is an inevitable thing, even though it seems endless when the kowtows are in progress. It certainly isn’t a certain outcome. Republicans Jacob Javits and Hugh Scott and Margaret Chase Smith were pivotal in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As late as 2013, three Democrats seeking meaningful immigration reform were joined by three Republican Senators in making a major proposal--- Lindsay Graham, John McCain (unsurprisingly) and Marco Rubio (surprisingly)

Absolutely, there should be better Democrats, but let’s stay with Republicans for a while. With McCain’s passing, there are temporarily just 50 Republican Senators. How many do you suppose agree with Trump’s daily evisceration of the Department of Justice and the FBI? How many think Canada should be dragged into the mud, week after week? How many are happy that Trump trashes NATO, threatens to walk away from the World Trade Organization, and calls the press the enemy of the people?

The Senators who are true Trump acolytes are a very small number. The rest understand that he’s a bad president, and they have stories that they can tell in secret. But so far there is no queueing up to display political courage or principle. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski count precious few brave, principled moments, and they will now buy into a charade that Brett Kavanaugh has no antipathy to Roe v. Wade. For the most part, Bob Corker and Jeff Flake saved their eloquent dismay about Trump until after they decided not to run for office. Lindsay Graham will tell you every week that Donald Trump said something troubling, but he will do nothing to Trump that will risk his Senatorial nomination in 2020. Lamar Alexander, once a notable moderate, must avoid glancing in the mirror in the morning given the way he has let Trump knock him around. They know he won’t bolt, so they don’t defer to him.

When one is counting Republican Senatorial heroes, it is difficult to get to a higher number than two. Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee Richard Burr is a hero for protecting Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein. He has formed a meaningful partnership with the ranking minority member, Mark Warner of Virginia. Beyond that, the man with McCain-like fortitude is Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who is up for election in 2020. He has said that Trump has no “core principles.” He is a reliable Republican vote, but thus far has avoided Graham’s obsequiousness. He might be preparing a 2020 presidential bid, and so might John Kasich. Either way it is nice to see Sasse’s wit and intellect in play. He said that instead of watching Trump at the nominating convention he would “take his kids to see some dumpster fires.”

What’s at work for all of them is the political calculus. As reported in previous missives, if you are a Republican Senator, you not only know what the Trump wing can do to you if you rebel, you know what they will do to you. The Trump-ites don’t even have to be even close to a majority of voters. They just need to have a good chance of beating you in the primary after you refuse to tack far enough to Trump’s positions.

Of course, we resisters have the last word. In many of these states, these Senators will eventually see that we will unseat them if they continue to be a part of this dragging down of our country. At the very least we respond to their Trump-coddling by putting them in the Senate minority in 2020 if not in 2018. The rationale that some of them have developed is that in sometimes subtle ways, they are a defense against the worst that Trump could do. And maybe some of them are providing such a defense. Of course, their gains are minor while Trump’s transgressions are major. These Senators are enabling the diminishment of their country. There are no John McCains here, so far.

The Washington Post says that “winter is coming” in the form of the Mueller report and that Trump is not prepared. The Post/ABC poll shows disapproval at an all-time high with strong disapproval far outdistancing strong approval.This is a very good sign for November election turnout. 

And there is one more question about the behavior of Republican Senators. In the Atlantic, Eliot Cohen suggests that nearly all tyrants are ultimately abandoned, since their power has no grounding. As Shakespeare said of Macbeth, “Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love. Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief?“ It seems obvious that many Republicans are with Trump absent another viable path. At some inflection point, that support may dissipate, as it did with Republican Senators and Richard Nixon.

Short of ten Senators walking away from Trump we are still holding out some hope that these Republican Senators will take a glance at the Bill of Rights on their office wall. They might then be jolted into action with the sudden recognition that Trump would delete most or all of those rights if he could. As early as November of 2018, and no later than November of 2020, we will have the Senate majority. For now, as we work to make that so, let’s ask Republican Senators to do these three things:

1) Protect the Justice Department from the President
	What would Republican Senators have done if Barack Obama had tweeted regularly that the Justice Department was failing to protect his political interests? They would have formed a vanguard to protect the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There has not been single president (until now) whose daily savaging of these agencies would have been permitted. This has to be taking its toll on these public servants. Let’s go to the subcommittee level, to the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, which up to this point had proudly guaranteed that the FBI and the Criminal Division of the Justice Department would get the support they needed to do their job. Now they have been relegated to the position of wishing and hoping that the President would stop tweeting.  Call Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, the subcommittee member who months ago derailed a Trump nominee for the federal bench for lack of qualifications. Tell John Kennedy that he should be protecting the department from political attacks. Phone his office at 202-224-4623. While you are at it, call the subcommittee’s Majority staff (who are less accustomed to hearing from citizens) and ask them to stand up for Justice. They can be reached at 202-224-5972. They can be asked to take heed of the aforementioned Ben Sasse. When Donald Trump criticized the insider trading and fraudulent campaign spending charges against two Republican members of Congress, Senator Sasse said: “The United States is not some banana republic with a two-tiered system of justice--- one for the majority party and one for the minority party.”
2) Insist that the Senate Stand Up for Canada
	As Trump picks other countries to attack for bad behavior, he has hit upon unloading on our best national friend and number one trading partner, Canada. At an earlier juncture, Trump was making up things about Justin Trudeau, but privately confiding that he had no knowledge of any existing trade imbalance. With any previous president, that may have seemed a surprise, but no one picked up on Trump’s admission. After Trump attacked Trudeau, Bob Corker and some other Senators from the Foreign Relations Committee held a meeting with the Canadian Ambassador to apologize for the President’s behavior. It’s time to recognize that apologizing is insufficient. There are at least two Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who are intent on courting independent voters. Call Rob Portman of Ohio at 202-224-3353 and Cory Gardner of Colorado at 202-224-5941 and tell them they should be remembering how much Canada means and has meant to the United States. Tell them you think it is their responsibility to do something in response to Trump’s actions.
3) Make Sure Claire McCaskill Gets Back to Washington
	In 2012, Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill was fortunate to be opposed by Todd Akin, who had said that women could not get pregnant through a “legitimate rape” because the body will prevent it. Six years later she has a serious opponent in a state whose citizens are still harboring their affections for Donald Trump. It could well turn out that the Senate majority will be riding on this race. Claire McCaskill is a fighter. Can you imagine how difficult it is to be a Democratic Senator in a state as red as is Missouri? You can make it just a tiny bit easier by making sure she has the funding to defend her seat. You can join “Team Claire” here and effortlessly use that magic card in your wallet to give her a boost.

It isn’t true Donald Trump will be automatically turned away if he does surreal things, or nasty, ill-informed things, or takes actions that deprive people of their constitutional rights, or lies or bullies or threatens, or subverts or attacks the underpinnings of democracy. This is not automatic. Instead, we must be part of a fierce, unrelenting effort. We won’t stand aside, we won’t stand down, and we won’t stand for it. Because we are doing the work that needs to be done, the voters will give us a very favorable progress report on November 6.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington