#81: Other Whistles Will Be Blown

After publishing every two weeks for the last 3 years, we are going to skip a missive which would otherwise be sent on December 25. Instead we will “publish” #82 two weeks later, on Wednesday, January 8. That will enable essential refueling as we begin the most consequential year.

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 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, 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.

There’s no joy in Justin Trudeau making fun of Donald Trump, since the joke is on us. Joy is not what we are collectively seeking anyway. Instead, we seek nothing less than the restoration of our democracy. In its scope and what it demands of us collectively, this is a magnificent obsession. It is nothing less than starting again to protect the environment, cherish and advance human rights, and build the global alliances these times require.

The times are bad, but the news is good. In this fall’s general elections selecting Democratic governors in Kentucky and Louisiana, Trump’s rallies were self-defeating, bringing more Democratic and independent voters to the ballot box than Trump supporters. In 2020, he will be our get out the vote champion. Trump’s actions to maintain his way too small base dwell on actions that are anathema to independents. 

The impeachment vote will come before the holidays. In January, Mitch McConnell will figure out something for Republican Senators to do with all this. Their defense will be more muted than the House, in deference to Susan Collins, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski. It will be Ukraine lite, with no florid Jim Jordan and no shady Devin Nunes. They will walk away from “Trump didn’t do this” and land upon “Whether Trump did this or not it doesn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense.” They will acquit by the end of January.

Of course, it does rise to the level of an impeachable offense. Once Schiff and his colleagues teased out the three months of maneuvering to put Trump’s election interests ahead of the nation’s security interests, Speaker Pelosi had no choice. There are those that initially feared we would pay a political price for adhering to the Constitution, but we have seen no such evidence in the polls.

The year draws to a close, the election year looms, and there is considerable Trump weariness. It’s hard to believe that we have to endure a year of him mean-spiriting and conning his way across America. But it is now clear he won’t just be the same old Trump. As discussed in a previous missive, there will surely be new events and disclosures that will capture our attention. There is no chance that the passage of a new Canada/ Mexico/ United States trade agreement will underpin a new longer-term narrative about Trump and trade policy. The dotard/rocket man exchanges are rearing again, Giuliani may be arrested any day, and you really can’t predict what other whistles will be blown. Why would you think Ukraine would be the only one?

With all that has happened, it isn’t really much of a stretch to say “anything can happen.” One big part of the world we face will be court rulings. Will former White House counsel Don McGahn be compelled to testify about obstruction of justice? Will emoluments rulings hold Trump accountable for using his position to enrich his businesses? How about legal action from women he pretends he never met?

Most critically, there are two separate federal appellate court rulings requiring Trump’s accountants to turn over his tax returns. These have the best chance of all to expose all new Trump misdeeds. As early as Friday, December 13th, the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear one or both of the two cases requiring the release of Trump’s tax records, either by the accounting firm Mazars or (in the second case) by Mazars, Capital One, and Deutsche Bank. These firms are not resisting the court orders. Trump has been able to secure a stay (ironically, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose turn it was to hear such petitions) temporarily preventing their release.

All of this started with Michael Cohen’s testimony. In Trump v. Vance, state of New York district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. took note of the hush payments to Stormy Daniels. Among other things the grand jury that he caused to be empaneled is evaluating whether these payments were an unlawful, unreported campaign contribution.

In Trump v. Mazars, it is the House Oversight Committee that is the litigant. Their primary interest is the Michael Cohen testimony that Trump was decreasing his tax liability by misrepresenting his capital assets. Trump has argued for a level of immunity way beyond what presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton ever sought, and neither of them were successful in convincing the Court to block release of documents that Congress was seeking. It seems like too much for Trump to be asking of John Roberts, whose public statements as recently as September have argued that partisan politics have no place at the Court. 

It will take four votes of the nine for the Court to decide to hear the case. Legal analysts are not expecting Trump to prevail on the merits, but some are convinced that the Court will accept one or both cases and hear oral arguments in June. If the tax documents are released only to the grand jury and not the Congress, they will not be disclosed to the public. 

In the three years of our collective resistance of Trump, the federal courts have slowed his regress on numerous occasions. They have blocked Trump’s census schemes, kept even worse things from happening at the border, and protected much of the Affordable Care Act. Obviously, this is far from the whole story. The Court is going in the wrong direction of gun violence and the right to choose is imperiled. Nonetheless, we must continue to use the federal courts as a way to curb Trump’s constitution-shredding malevolence every opportunity we get, including these three:

1) Protecting Undocumented Children at the Border
	The conditions that continue to exist for children seeking asylum are our nation’s shame. Released tapes of the recent death of a 16-year-old who had contracted the flu showed an inconceivable disregard for human life. The Trump policy has spawned dozens of squalid camps across the border. It is the intent of our government to inflict as much misery as it can. The establishment of the camps across the border where migrating families await their asylum hearings has widened and deepened the problem.  The very small Los Angeles based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law has been ever present in monitoring conditions. They are a major player in the court battles for the minimum standards required in the Flores ruling. They are key, and do not have the access to resources of some of the larger organizations.
2) Fighting the Food Stamp Rule
	After a two-year battle, the Trump administration has issued its final rule altering conditions of food stamp (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) eligibility. The adjustments on when states can issue waivers of work rules were confirmed on December 4 and will go into effect on April 1. This Grinch like action follows the regular Trump administration pattern of finding people who need help and taking it away from them. 700,000 people will have the food removed from their table.  There will be a final effort to block these rules in the federal courts and in the Congress. Because of the McConnell grip in the Senate, the courts are the better option. The new lawsuits are just being formulated, and there is time to make our own statement before this next phase. We need to each make one trip to our local food bank to help them stock their shelves and to demonstrate our commitment to food security. Many have shopping lists you can take to the grocery store. Feeding America, the national network of food banks, can guide you to local food banks and keep you posted on the action agenda.
3) Securing Fair Elections
	The underpinning of all good things in a democracy is elections free from misdeeds. Our vote casting and counting has gone well relatively compared to other countries. As far as we know, the Putin interference is a new thing. Setting up improved systems that resist efforts by other countries to sway our elections has gone too slowly. Trump and a shocking number of Republican members of Congress continue to deny the well proven (and prosecuted) Russian intervention. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook persist in hosting the fake advertising that is an elixir for their balance sheet and a poison for the ballot box. Voter suppression also remains with us. Efforts have grown to prevent inappropriate purging by Republican officials of voter lists, unnecessary provisions that discourage voting, and efforts to decrease the number of polling places. The Brennan Center’s efforts to ensure that every American can vote are unsurpassed. You can increase their resources or get on their list to make certain you understand the chicanery they are resisting.

It is indisputable that all of this is exhausting. You could let Donald Trump bring you down every day. Instead, we’ll let him be our prime motivator. The election is now less than a year away.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#80: Fiona Hill Showed Us All

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Eloquent, courageous, committed State Department and National Security Council officials taught us all a lesson in the last two weeks. It’s heartening that they are there and that they are looking out for their country. The juxtaposition of their integrity with Trump’s failure to muster any at all will stay with us for a long time.

Even though these hearings are coming to a close, the Ukraine disclosures will continue. Most notably John Bolton will feel inclined to relate what Trump said when Bolton asked for the release of the $400 million necessary for Ukraine’s defense. Bolton is interested in protecting his own defense hardliner reputation. More than any other Trump appointee, he has a “brand” independent of Trump, and is not acting beholden. If not him, perhaps we will hear more from Rudy Giuliani, who has camped out in the danger zone that has taken down other public officials. At this point in time, it is more important to him that he is on the news than what he says or what is being said about him on the news. Only sleep prevents him from saying more things damaging to Trump. He could very easily end up arrested. Beyond Ukraine disclosures, there’s also there is a very good possibility that the Supreme Court will refuse to hear arguments for shielding Trump’s tax returns, which itself will open up a new Trump-world of turpitude.

It’s important not to get confused about what the American people think about impeachment, and what it has to do with the most important presidential election of our lifetime on November 3, 2020. 70% of Americans believe that Trump did an unacceptable thing in Ukraine by asking a foreign government to intervene in our domestic politics. More than 50% think these actions warrant an impeachment inquiry, and up to 50% conclude that Trump should be impeached, convicted and removed from office. This is in comparison to the 29% who wanted that outcome for Bill Clinton.

What do the public’s views on impeachment have to do with the upcoming election? Just because voters in battleground states are less enthusiastic about impeachment than in blue states doesn’t mean that they think Trump is prime presidential material. The Ukraine narrative is just one important dimension of how voters feel about Trump, but it will be an critical element of the 2020 campaign.
Has anyone seen Nancy Pelosi slip on any banana peels lately? Her intent is to impeach the President because his impeachable offenses are obvious and thus unavoidable. She plans to conclude the official House processes as soon as she can. She believes the monumental evidence presented will boost our case on November 3, even as the Senate votes to acquit. We are in good hands.

Even so, we have let ourselves fall into the “Trump voters never change” fallacy. Five million or more Trump voters changed when we took back the House, flipped Virginia, won the state house in Kentucky and defended it in Louisiana. Where do we think those voters are coming from if not from the ranks of independents and Never Trump Republicans? Sure, it is nice for Trump or any elected official to start with 38% of voters supporting her or him no matter what. But that didn’t work so well for George McGovern and Barry Goldwater, because you have to have a way to expand from there. The issue is how many additional Republicans and Independents will go to Trump’s side in November, and the extent to which impeachment is one more reason for them to flee.

Even the sainted NPR has grown befuddled by the myth of Trump’s base and the way it could help him in the upcoming year. Their own coverage stresses that American opinion is set in stone, even though the poll results say the opposite. In the poll, 39% of independents and 24% of Republicans said that they could imagine evidence that could change their mind on impeachment. That isn’t a low number, it’s a high number. And, as has been the case for some time, Trump’s strategy for keeping the base is a huge impediment to him attracting anyone else.

Articles of impeachment will be passed in the House, and the Senate will acquit Donald Trump. It’s an election year, and the Republican Party is not going to implode itself, which is what would happen if Republican Senators removed Donald Trump from the Presidency. The sequence has been set up to go like this for some time: 

1. The Mueller report and ultimately the Ukraine debacle solidify the opposition to Donald Trump. 
2. Aggressive explication of these and other Trump misdeeds becomes our order of the day.
3.  The impeachment trial, though not securing a conviction, fully exposes Trump’s malfeasances. 
4. Further abuses become known. 
5. In the face of these disclosures, Trump’s disapproval ratings remain low, or go lower. 
6. As the election gets closer, Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes becomes narrower and narrower, an order of magnitude more narrow than the firewall he and Putin overcame in 2016. 
7. We select an excellent ticket, continue to register voters, fix our 2016 turnout problem with 2018 style turnout strategies, and win our country an election.

Impeachment is about defending the Constitution because we must, and using the subsequent disclosures and debate to win the election, because we must. It puts that many more purple states in play, and thus creates many more paths to victory.

Which states to keep in play? There’s been considerable statistical analysis of the Obama/Romney and Clinton/Trump races to see how levels of approval/disapproval correlate with vote totals from a year later. This study shows that if we win Michigan, where we won the governorship by a solid margin in 2018, and hold onto states Hillary Clinton won, we would likely be at 249 electoral votes, and would need only 21 more from these states:

• Pennsylvania - 20 electoral votes
• Wisconsin - 10 electoral votes
• Florida - 29 electoral votes
• North Carolina - 15 electoral votes
• Georgia - 16 electoral votes
• Arizona - 11 electoral votes

This demonstrates how many more ways we have to regain the Presidency over and above winning the firewall states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which we collectively lost by 80,000 votes in 2016. For instance, if we pick up the states Hillary Clinton won and (as predicted) win Michigan, then Florida alone will put us over the top (and we have been losing it by tiny margins) or Pennsylvania and Arizona, or North Carolina and Arizona.

It’s all very encouraging and makes us want to imprint a state deeply into our psyche and our action plan. Pennsylvania would be a good place to do three things, on the way to winning the presidency there in 2020. Then, soon, this missive will take on Arizona.

1) Follow the Lead of Swing Left
	We lost Pennsylvania to Donald Trump by 44,000 votes in 2016. It never should have happened, since Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in Pennsylvania by 5.4% in 2012 and John McCain by 10.7% in 2008. We have recovered nicely since, winning races for Governor and Senator by wide margins in 2018. In the next year we will take nothing for granted.  With its “Super State” strategy, Swing Left continues to be a “go to” organization in our effort to gain the electoral votes in targeted states. You can sign up to send letters to independent voters and/or contribute to campaign funds that will be spent in Pennsylvania once candidates are chosen. Don’t wait until November 3 to pay attention to Pennsylvania.
2) Support Registration and Turnout in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh
	On election night, things might be going very well. Or, you may find yourself hoping that there are still unreported votes from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. The National Coalition of Black Civic Participation is organizing around registration and turnout in multiple cities and states. You can give them your email and see when they need your help and go ahead and donate today so you don’t forget. The click to donate is under “Get Involved.”
3) Make Certain Candidates Understand Pennsylvania Issues
	At this point, our candidates have presented policy positions on scores of issues. Ultimately, employees of manufacturing companies and other unionized laborers are going to want to hear what the specific Democratic agenda is for the working woman and man. One could make an argument that voters in 2016 did not recognize a coherent, impassioned approach from Democrats about how they would focus on jobs and employment, Take a look at what our candidates are saying today. It’s time to watch our favorite candidates on these issues to make sure that this perception or belief doesn’t wound us in 2020.

Fiona Hill, Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman are exemplars. If our faith in American public servants had been waning, they have restored it. They all put themselves forward, and they were all counting on us to do the same in the next year, to stand up. That’s what we will be doing.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#79: We Will Win This Election the Old Fashioned Way

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We learned an extremely painful lesson in November of 2016 and took great advantage of that lesson to take back the House in November 2018. What comes next is no mystery, no enigma, and no puzzle. There won’t even be a tingle of spines unless we make it so. On November 3, 2020, (less than one year from now) we will win the most important election of our history by doing what we already know how to do one more time.

For that result to happen like it should and like it must, we must stay on the path. Keep the independents we won back in 2018. Register voters. Fight voter suppression. Persuade more independents. Support strong candidates. We have a huge pent up demand for a President who will immediately tend to payment of our overdue obligations to the environment and to health care in America. In selecting a candidate, let’s remember that every conceivable Democratic nominee would do exactly that.

So, let’s use our terms carefully. There are no “moderates” in the Democratic field. Except for the self-identified Socialist Bernie Sanders, all of the top ten candidates are liberals by the usual definition. The use of the word “progressive” to describe some and not others is an appropriate extra smooch from advocates that is mostly related (but not entirely) to the candidates’ policy positions. All of the major candidates would protect the Dream Act, reform student debt, reverse Trump’s LGBQT discrimination, advance universal background checks, restore global alliances and make a massive commitment on climate change.

Thus, the “lanes” that candidates are said to occupy can be misleading. Earlier in the campaign season, there were huge blocs of Sanders voters for whom Biden was the second choice, and huge blocs of Biden voters for whom Sanders was the second choice. There is not much difference in the Senate voting records of Booker, Klobuchar, Warren, Sanders and Harris. There are policy disputes among our candidates that we should understand and sort out, but let’s not overstate them. Clearly the top two are specific ways to tax the wealthy and the major disputes over Medicare for All.

As we go down the path, let’s keep our heads up. As many as 57% of voters have indicated that they have no plans to vote for Trump. Unbelievably, there are Democrats and independents who can’t stop themselves from predicting Trump will win. Are we so wounded that we can’t even recognize the advantaged position we assumed last November? Last week we took back both the Virginia House and Senate. We won the governorship in Kentucky, a state that Donald Trump carried by 30 points three years ago. These are not random happenings or liberal fantasies. They are what is taking place in our country, today. Our candidates are polling well in head to head match-ups with Trump. We hold the majority position on most of the issues confronting America, and we are running against an incompetent and venal man.

As we go forward with our heads up, let’s make the correct and critical choice regarding the central element of our strategy to take back the presidency, the Senate, and thus save our country. Trump’s unpopularity gives us a huge head start. Are we going to re-visit and re-invest in what we know how to do, and which just won the suburbs and took back the House? It is pretty simple. There are several other states to put in play, but if we win two of these six Trump will have virtually no path: Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona. We won all of these in 2008 and all but North Carolina in 2012. 

This month’s polls show we’re starting in good shape. That’s where Medicare for All comes in. We decrease our chances with working people in Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania or with seniors in Arizona and Florida or with independents in all these states by telling them we plan to carry out an enormous expansion of the federal government. Are we going to advocate this approach when respect for government is at the lowest? When independents and some Democrats say they aren’t interested, are we going to tell them they don’t understand what they need? If our candidates demur and instead favor huge expansion of health care coverage, are we going to accuse them of using Republican talking points?

Committing to Medicare for All is especially bizarre because it is entirely divorced from what would happen in the United States Senate if we do exceedingly well in 2020 and end up with 52 or 53 Democratic Senators. Even if a Medicare for All proponent were President, there is no chance that the Senate would pass such a bill. Further, our own Senate candidates in battleground states do not support it, instead opting for mammoth steps toward universal coverage. 

Whether or not we argue for Medicare for All in 2020, in 2021 the Senate would end up with the same very significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act that Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar espouse. Knowing this in advance, are we really going to jettison our health care political advantage for a campaign around doubling our taxes and outlawing private insurance? Are we going to depend on our lecturing skills to convince the voters that it will all balance out once health care costs are reduced? Are we thinking the other side will come to the table with a nice articulated pro and con issue brief rather than spending hundreds of millions of dollars taking advantage of an issue we would have created for them?

It is time to stop this. In even considering running a Medicare for All dominated election, we are putting a beleaguered country at risk. Let’s remember this as we contemplate this risk. We are deciding on a president who would betray the Kurds, or not, who would deport Dreamers, or not. After November 3, 2020, we will have a president who will nominate someone to the Supreme Court who will or will not respect the settled law on Roe v. Wade. We will select a woman or man who launches a national effort to curb climate change or denies that it exists. Donald Trump will be president, or not.

There’s an argument that whatever independent voters we would jettison in advocating Medicare for All would be offset by new voters we would attract. The problem is, the scale of the latter is not close to matching the scale of the former, especially in battleground states. Sure, we would take this risk in a heartbeat if it was the only way to do what is right and just on a fundamental issue, but in this case the same health care reform steps will emerge in Congress in 2021.

There is a better way. We can have a ticket that nicely covers our plentiful common interests. We can move dramatically toward universal health coverage after the election without subjecting ourselves to self-inflicted wounds during the election. Let’s enmesh ourselves further in the race for the presidency by doing these three things:

1) Register Voters in Florida
	Barack Obama won Florida by 2.8% in 2008 and .9% in 2012. Donald Trump and Russian operatives won by 1.2% over Hilary Clinton in 2016. We can take back this state. Former Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum lost his race for the governorship by half a percent. 700,000 more Floridians have registered to vote since this. Gillum’s new Bring it Home Florida has pledged to register a million more and to re-engage those already registered, which has not always been accomplished by the Florida Democratic Party. Gillum’s organization is a good place to follow Florida. Donating is a good way to boost our chances to win the state in 2020.
2) Commit Today to Fight Gerrymandering
	Several national organizations did great work to help flip both houses of the Virginia State Legislature. Notable among these was the Sister District project. Former Attorney General Eric Holder’s PAC is aptly named the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He wants to flip state legislatures because of the way Republican controlled legislatures abused the redistricting process after the 2010 census. In addition to donating to candidates, this PAC litigates and helps build the “political infrastructure” to prepare for the redistricting that will take place after the 2020 elections. Now is the time to connect with this important effort. There’s a way to get on the e-mailing list even if you aren’t donating.
3) Evaluating Candidates Not in the November 20 Debates
	The November debate is going to look a lot like the October debate. Missing will be Beto O’Rourke who dropped out and Julian Castro who didn’t reach the polling threshold. Eventually the field is going to narrow. If you are still shopping, this is a good time to think also about Steve Bullock and Michael Bennet. Neither of these men has been advantaged by late starts. If one was in the thinking mode, one could also look at Michael Bloomberg, though there is a down market for billionaire candidates, or Deval Patrick, who would need to decide to run with lightning speed. There isn’t a website for Michelle Obama…

So, now it is less than a year until the election. As reviewed above, it is time to resolve our Medicare for All dispute in favor of not overreaching. Our energy level has not waned. Given the events of the last few weeks, our motivation could not be higher.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#78: We Can Shape the Way the Senate Approaches Impeachment

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 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, 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.

A sideshow is a diverting event of incident. It is not necessarily trivial- it can be hugely consequential in itself, and you can be drawn to it daily. Trump’s visits to Dayton and El Paso after the mass shootings and the criticisms of his visits were a sideshow, as Americans confront gun violence. The show is when and whether Congress is going to pass universal background checks and ban assault weapons.

The ultimate passage of a resolution in the Pelosi led House to impeach Donald Trump is inevitable. Is it justifiable? Certainly. Those who doubt it should read Ambassador Bill Taylor’s public statement about Trump’s quid pro quo in Ukraine. However necessary, righteous, and possibly politically advantageous, forcing an impeachment trial in the Senate is still a sideshow. The Senate will neither summon the two-thirds vote to convict Trump nor convince him to resign. When the sideshow it is all over the greatest show on earth will still be ahead of us, the presidential election of November 3, 2020.

This is a good thing to remember, else the constitutionally necessary impeachment sideshow will overwhelm, and leave us insufficiently attendant to the election twelve months away. What have you got if you can enumerate sixteen awful Trump actions in a week, rather than twelve, unless you find out who is fighting each of them and how you can help? Worse, how funny does a parody of Trump have to be to be worth taking you away from the work of supporting candidates and finding votes? If you traffic in the new round of foul taunts of Trump, what kind of country are you aiming to make? If you shout “lock him up” at a baseball game, your fury is justified. But that doesn’t classify the crowd chants as effective political action. The point is, we are distractible.

The evidence against Trump has been further strengthened by the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was on the Trump call, and concluded immediately that it was wrong for the President of the United States to ask another country to investigate his political opponent.

What can we do to make certain that all of the Trump disclosures are not an election distraction but an election attraction? Under this scenario, impeachment and a Senate trial that does not lead to conviction will make Trump’s malfeasance clear, thus motivating independent voters to make the right choice in November. With this approach, our election and impeachment strategies are integrated.

First, as Speaker Pelosi is setting out to do, we can respond to the bogus due process claims of House Republicans. Steve Scalise and 23 other Republicans stormed the hearing room where closed door depositions were being conducted. They failed to helpfully mention that 45 of their Republican colleagues are on the three relevant committees and are full participants in the information gathering process. Pelosi’s next set of actions will further formalize the inquiry and outline its processes. 

The Senate has already shown signs of being more measured in the face of the frenetic responses of McCarthy, Scalise and the House Republicans. Senators from both sides have long treasured their six-year terms. They have maintained that longer terms make it easier to deliberate carefully, communicate civilly and not get swept away by the news cycle. Hardly any of them is eager to draw a Trump tweet, but unless they are up for election in 2020 (as are Thom Tillis, Susan Collins, and Cory Gardner) they have some insulation from retribution.

If eight or so Republican Senators can help maintain the Senate’s equilibrium, the trial will be about the substance of the claims against Trump, and all process issues and useless claims of witch hunts will be behind it. It is this climate we depend upon in order to have the trial set the frame for the November elections.

We need to depend upon eight Senate Republicans to defend the institution and the Constitution, whether or not each of them votes to find Trump guilty.

Richard Burr of North Carolina has been highlighted in recent missives. He is the force behind the Senate Intelligence Committee issuing a respected bipartisan report documenting the Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

As some Senate Republicans grumble about Richard Burr, Roy Blunt of Missouri has backed him up every step of the way. If you aren’t doing something exactly the way Donald Trump would want you to do it is good to have support.

Susan Collins of Maine is an awful position. Even though she cast a key vote to save the Affordable Care Act, Maine voters were looking for a lot more distance from Trump than she has delivered. Being up for election in November, 2020 means all of her actions during any trial will be under huge scrutiny, and voters in Maine will be expecting her to demonstrate her openness to the evidence.

Similarly, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is expected by resisters to be open to conviction. However, since we aren’t going to get to 23 Republican votes, it is nearly as important that she makes it a healthy process where not just Democrats are asking the hard questions.

Mitt Romney of Utah is in the enviable position of not having to genuflect to Trump ever. After getting as far as he could from his roots as he could when he ran for President, he’s now emulating his dad George Romney, who was the moderate Republican governor of Michigan. George Romney was steely and would have had Trump’s con figured out in a second. Mitt Romney’s refusal to downplay Trump’s actions in the Ukraine is very helpful to other Senators.

Twice recently, John Thune of South Dakota has stepped up. He called the evidence from the Ukraine testimony “not a good picture” and then called Lieutenant Colonel Vindman a patriot. As #2 in the elected leadership behind Mitch McConnell, Thune is key to setting a tone.

Ben Sasse of Nebraska has been a pointed and even eloquent critic of the President, most recently on the betrayal of the Kurds and on Trump’s musings about China investigating Joe Biden.

There are at least two Senators who may end up being a voice for fair-minded review of Trump. Of all people, Marco Rubio is one. He has never gotten over Trump’s abuse of him during the campaign. He has not given up on the idea of being president and would not mind coming across as principled, as long as that doesn’t make Trump very, very angry.

Another Senator who doesn’t mind taking a contrary position in order to protect the institution is John Kennedy of Louisiana, who likes the microphone and has blocked Trump nominees for the federal bench.

Obviously, the motivations of the eight vary, depending on the depth of their concerns about their own elections, and the extent to which they feel the president is endangering the country. Our objective is to make them even more motivated. We know that our sought outcome in November 2020 will be influenced by the nature of the Senate trial, so let’s do these three things now:

1) Make John Thune a Project
	Senator John Thune of South Dakota has rarely received our attention. Since he is a leader of the Republican caucus, he is unlikely to get out in front of Mitch McConnell. However, he called Ambassador William Taylor’s testimony “not a good picture.” That was an intentional signal that at least some Republican Senators intend to review the evidence after Lindsay Graham gets done with spit wads. At this point, Senator Thune’s email system will accept comments from those of us who are not South-Dakotans. You could tell Senator Thune that as you are watching how the country is doing in the face of political battles it was refreshing to see him to speak about the evidence. If emailing doesn’t work for you, call his office at 202-224-3121.
2) Finally Find Warm Words for Mitt Romney
	There are resisters who have never found much good to think or say about Mitt Romney. But it is time to recognize and respond to what happened these past weeks. Mitt Romney has just cast himself as the number one Senate Republican critic of the Trump-Guiliani Ukraine adventure. Romney is not muting his words, and he is not going away. He is willing to put himself in an uncomfortable position with some of his colleagues from now to the end of the impeachment process. Please call Mitt Romney’s office in Salt Lake City at 801-524-4380. Tell his staff to tell Mitt that he is right about the Ukrainian quid pro quo being wrong, and that you are grateful for him standing up.
3) Secure the Democratic Majority
	Writing and calling Republican Senators is important. It’s proven that they are influenced by national public sentiment, so why not make that sentiment known, again and again? Susan Collins is a hardworking Senator, but she has been insufficiently influenced by our collective suasions. She has had all too few instances of differing with her colleagues in the moments that matter most. Early on in Trump’s term, she had to make a tough decision on whether to more openly oppose the unacceptable positions of an awful man on issues of human and social welfare to which she has been deeply committed. It is fair for us to now to say that she took the wrong path, and to send an early check to her very promising opponent, Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon. Here’s where and how to help her, since we know that early money is like yeast.

Just over a year from today we will see this person who is an enormous burden on our country fall away from power. What an unsurpassed joy that will bring. Then, together and with new leaders we will get down to the business of restoring our democracy.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#77: We Know Exactly What to Do to Win

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We are doing this all together. None of our progress is by accident. We are in the best position to end this awful presidency no later than November 3, 2020 than at any time since this sorry chapter began. Certainly, we are fortunate to be able to honor the elected officials and the leaders and lawyers of the resistance. But, this movement is so strong and unrelenting not just because of them but due to the millions of people who have stood against Donald Trump from the beginning, making it a part of their life’s work.

Our candidates are strong. The Tuesday night debate again demonstrated their passions and their priorities. We have a few things for some of them to work on, but the fact that we are still a long way from deciding who it will be is a good thing, not a bad thing. Not a single primary vote has been cast. What unites us is far greater than what divides us, and we will narrow our differences.

There are those who understandably are so wounded by nearly three years of the Trump presidency that they can’t quite let themselves believe that we have arrived at this extremely promising point. Especially since we lost before, there is no spirited debate, no poll, no court decision, no new disclosure, and no impeachment inquiry that will bring them any peace.

To the extent that any of us thus afflicted can conquer it, we are more likely to attend to the work of resisting every day. What we are called upon to do will continue to change, because damning disclosures of Trump’s actions will continue, and the sordid will need to be sorted. The basics are there. We already know how to win this election, because it is exactly how we took back the House in 2018. Register voters, get support from such excellent organizations as Rock the Vote. Fight voter suppression, under the leadership of the Wagner Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and others. Persuade independents in every way we can, including sending them postcards through Tony the Democrat and let Swing Left and others support strong candidates and guide us to promising races.

For a long time, there was a debate over whether Donald Trump was crazy like a fox. Under this school of thought, his daily seizing of the news cycle was excellent tactically, since it easily distracted the media from the in-depth reporting that might illuminate mean spirited policies and misdeeds. Trump craves attention, and for the first two years of his presidency he could turn on Fox News at any time of the day and get his dopamine rush. It put us on defense, in a continuous response cycle on whatever he tweeted or executive order he announced.

The debate has been resolved. Donald Trump is not sly or cunning. We don’t need to figure out his daily or weekly strategy and respond accordingly. Instead, more simply, we need to understand what a winning hand includes, and continue to play that hand. Donald Trump has no compass, no beliefs, and (importantly) no strategy. He has no long term planned course of action. As he gets himself deeper in a hole, he has provided a shovel for Rudy Guiliani, who just keeps digging away.

The cheering has stopped. He no longer gets comfort from turning on the television. All there is for Donald Trump right now is unfavorable federal court decisions, escaped Isis prisoners, betrayal of the Kurds, and the looming reality that we will find out about his tax returns. John Bolton, Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson, Nikki Haley, Colin Powell and Mitt Romney are all jabbing away, and some of those were the people who once had good things to say about him. Trump calls Mitch McConnell daily for the little solace that is available and frets about the loyalty of Senate Republicans, whom he has outraged over the Kurds.

The untruths of the past are catching up. No one with a pulse believes that Donald Trump was on a worldwide quest to end corruption when he called Kiev. In two weeks, the shift toward an impeachment inquiry by independent voters has been nearly twenty percent. 70% of independents and 40% of Republicans think it is wrong for a President to have called Ukranian leader Zelensky to talk about Biden. When polls catch up to events, the public’s disapproval of his betrayal of the Kurds will be even higher.

Each morning, Donald Trump sees that Nancy Pelosi has captured an advantage and is pressing forward. Pelosi understands the mechanics of governance, the demands of the Constitution and takes advantage of trump's lack of knowledge, his petulance, and his love for odd, debunked conspiracy theories. She knows that we have the upper hand and has figured out how to keep it.  She fully understands what we have to say to independent voters outside of reminding them whom we would replace.

When we follow Pelosi’s guidance (as we did in taking back the House) voters know we are the people that make certain that Americans have health care and are not denied it because of pre-existing conditions. They know we recognize the enormous threat of climate change and will re-join the Paris Accords and become an international leader forging aggressive climate solutions. To help pay for government, we will include among the taxed the companies and people who have the most money. We will maintain strong global alliances and will never betray those who have stood in harms’ way on our behalf. 

This is where some of our candidates need a little help. However far we expand upon these positions, we must treat these tenets as our fundamental deal with the American voter, who will stay with us as long as they and we remember that this is where we stand. This is the election where we take back America, where we redefine its promise, and where we bring people along with us who have not always been with us. Our current positions on health care, the environment, gun violence, reproductive freedom, discrimination and America’s global positions are majority positions right now, today. 

Intellectual intensity and clarity are valuable, so Elizabeth Warren is being rewarded in polling for making additional distinct, bold proposals. There’s no automatic foul in advancing a Medicare for All proposal that Americans do not favor over the various dramatic moves toward universal coverage that voters do favor. But by a certain point it is a foul to lecture over and over again to Americans about what they should want without displaying any indication that one has listened or heard any of their thoughts on why they don’t agree. Even if we win 55 Senate seats, the votes for outlawing private health insurance are not close to materializing. What instead is in our grasp is a dramatic expansion of the public option that Barack Obama developed. Elizabeth Warren, if you want to be a leading candidate, tell us what you plan to say to voters who do not support Medicare for All, beyond your insistence that you are right and they are wrong.

After the debate, it seems likely that Pete Buttigieg will join Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the first tier of candidates. Of Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, and Kamala Harris, perhaps one will find a way to climb out of the second tier. Anyone rooting for that outcome for any of the four should send assistance soon. It is hard to see that happening for Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer, and Julian Castro, who was in the unenviable position of answering Anderson Cooper’s final “Who is your unlikely friend?” question first and couldn’t immediately think of one. And what are we going to do with Steve Bullock and Michael Bennett?

While we are narrowing our field, we can take heart that in the first month of their presidency, one of these candidates will, by executive order, re-enter our country into the Paris Climate Accords and otherwise set about to restore the presidency. In the meantime, let’s do what we can to lessen Trump’s damage in each of these three instances:

1) Remembering the Kurds
	It wasn’t just the morally forgetful Donald Trump who owed loyalty to the Kurds. It is the rest of us, and the obligation is ongoing. Unfortunately, what is ours to do now is make certain food, shelter and medical care is available as Kurds flee for their lives. Mercy Corps has an outstanding record of helping the Kurds in Syria and in Northern Iraq, where many driven out by Erdogan will seek shelter. We need to find ways to help Mercy Corps and make certain our friends do as well.
2) Building on a Lands Protection Victory
	As these missives have stressed in the past, Trump’s Interior Department has been seeking to decommission millions of acres of preserved public lands in Utah so that they can be accessed by mining companies. Interior moved to cut 85% of Bears’ Ears National Monument and 50% of Grand Staircase-Escalante. The litigation to block this action has been carried by Earth Justice. The Federal Judge has recently refused to dismiss the environmentalist’s claims. This gives new hope that we can win this case or stretch it out until we get a Democratic president. Help is on the way. In the meantime, the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and its Rural Utah Project are fighting for and finding new friends across Southern Utah. Sign up for their regular reports and keep an eye on what is the single most critical public lands dispute between Trump and environmentalists.
3) Thanking Republican Senators!
	At long last, after three years of Republican denial regarding Russia’s election interference, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have joined in assuring that the monumental evidence on this interference be released and confirmed. The new bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee report proves that Trump’s reactions to the Mueller findings are lies.  Importantly, it shows that indispensable bi partisan work can be done even when the Senate is nearing total dysfunction. For this, we have to thank Committee chair Richard Burr, ranking Democrat Mark Warner and such Republicans as Missouri’s Roy Blunt, who helped protect Burr from criticism within the Senate Republican caucus. It’s time to spread the word on this under-publicized report and to personally thank Roy Blunt. Give his staff a quick call at 202-224-5721 and thank him for handling this report in a bi-partisan fashion.

If all of this testimony about the Ukraine and the sorry stories about the Kurds are beating you down, you have to get back up now. Putting our country back together is a magnificent obsession, and there’s a tremendous amount of work to be done.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#76: Make Certain Doing the Right Thing Turns Out the Right Way

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 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, 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.

Even two weeks is a very long time when Donald Trump is president. So, by mid-September you may have let your senses dull. As much as there were separate promising fronts in slowing and ultimately ending Trump’s abuse of America, the resistance may have seemed a bit stalled. The committee investigations underway since the release of the Mueller report were impeded by Trump preventing Don McGahn and others from testifying. The multiple efforts to get Trump’s tax returns were still out there and still very promising, but with uncertain timing. There was nothing to do but register voters, fight voter suppression, persuade independents and support strong candidates. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Then came the whistleblower’s complaint and with it a level of previously unreached clarity. In no way is this huge revelation about a single “perfect” telephone call. An American president, his personal lawyer, and his State Department used multiple tactics overall several months to induce a small, extremely vulnerable foreign nation to do Donald Trump’s personal political bidding. This included not only the freezing of critical military aid but the recall of the American ambassador. It is an array of impeachable acts that disgrace the Presidency. These acts would outrage Lindsay Graham if Lindsay Graham still existed in his previous human form.

The whistleblower complaint itself should be required reading for every American. There are multiple excellent analyses off what is unacceptable and why it is unacceptable. Importantly, for most of us these disclosures resolve an impassioned, hugely consequential and well-articulated debate between those of us who had not been ready to move forward with an impeachment inquiry and those of us who insisted upon it.

This missive was resolutely in the first camp, viewing moving toward impeachment as a blind alley, with the Senate virtually certain to acquit and with Mitch McConnell being handed a megaphone. Until now, this missive found unpersuasive the argument that justice demands impeachment, since justice is not clearly and automatically served by acquittal. Moreover, since as many as 65% of voters had indicated that they didn’t want impeachment, moving forward seemed like Democrats would be sustaining a self-inflicted wound that might be unhealed on November 3, 2020.

There are those that still feel that way and express those cautions, most notably David Brooks, who is wrong on this matter but undeserving of the resultant enmity. But everything has changed with the Ukraine disclosures. The argument that we must pursue the impeachment inquiry is the winner for two reasons. First, these particular non-Presidential acts are so out of bounds that to ignore them would cause poor James Madison to spin in his grave. One cannot be blind to the Constitution and then count on it to remain the unsurpassed guide to our 230-year experiment in self-governance. It was Trump and Giuliani who removed our alternative, not us.

Second, since we are most likely by far to settle this once and for all on November 3, 2020, it is still fair to ask what additional risk we are taking on in our obsession with beating Trump at the ballot box. The amount of risk depends in large measure on how the inquiry and any subsequent steps are handled. Thus far, we have benefited because Nancy Pelosi has demonstrated a reluctance to impeach. In part because of her cautious approach, a new CBS news poll shows that 55% of voters (including 23% of Republicans and 49% of Independents) approve of the inquiry. 

It wouldn’t be overly optimistic to expect another bit of news. Actually, there may be several bits. With such huge changes in the last two weeks, why assume the gathering of information regarding Trump misdeeds is complete? It is not out of the question that someone will reveal additional damaging charges about the Ukraine, or tax fraud, or conversations with Putin, or Kim Jong Un, or Mohammed Bin Salman, or any other people that Trump happens to call.

In pursuing the impeachment inquiry, we have done the right thing. However, let’s remember the right thing doesn’t automatically turn out the right way, and it’s up to us to make certain it does. Our most likely outcome in going down this path is that impeachment processes will cause an additional Trump slide which would lessen his chances of re-election still further. Our biggest danger is that we will go about the process so carelessly that independent voters will become more tired or angry with us than they are with Trump. An advantage in securing the right outcome is that the American people rightly think that Trump is an unreformed teller of untruths. It makes it difficult for him to provide even the slightest shred of exculpatory information about the “perfect call.”

Doing the right thing does not mean getting caught in social media fantasies. Barring some huge additional disclosure that stomps on the Constitution, there is no chance that 20 Republicans will vote for conviction, and Democrats Doug Jones of Alabama and Joe Manchin of West Virginia may not either. Former Senator Jeff Flake’s comment that 35 Republican Senators would vote for conviction if there was a secret ballot is worth nothing, because there is zero chance the Senate would change its rules to provide for a secret ballot. 

For Republican Senators, the fact that 2020 is an election year is hugely consequential. Nixon was impeached during the second year of his second term. This time around, there would be no time for Republicans to recover from a conviction vote. Thus, Trump aligned voters would walk away in November, and elections even in red states would be carnage for Republicans. 

Absent major new disclosures, we won’t get the votes in the Senate. If we don’t, we can take our resultant free time to underscore the Democratic agenda that was so successful in the Congressional elections of 2018. This includes universal health care, with full protection for those with pre-existing conditions; recognition of climate change and development of robust actions to decrease its threats; and, restoration of global alliances that have kept our country strong. 

Now is still the time to be sorting out our candidates. We should be expecting them to refrain from inappropriately drawing blood from each other, while still demonstrating their differences. We should expect them to act like they are all in the same party. We should want her or him to appear on the electoral horizon as someone who is president of the whole country and who will restore American promise one step at a time.

And, taking advantage of our increased momentum, we should do these three things: 

1) Keep Richard Burr and Mark Warner Heading in the Right Direction
	Having Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr work closely with Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Committee is an under-recognized advantage for justice seekers. Burr is not error-free, and he is not showy, but he is definitely on the varsity compared to his House Republican counterpart Devin Nunes. To almost no attention, Burr and Warner have already held a closed hearing about the whistleblower process with Joseph Maguire, Acting Director of National Intelligence. If the impeachment issue gets to the Senate, the Burr/Warner relationship will be key to forging a deliberative process.  It’s time to call Richard Burr at 202-224-3154 and thank him for his evenhanded approach to the whistleblower complaint.
2) Remember That Smaller Advocacy Organizations Go to Court
	A federal judge has permanently rejected a Trump administration policy seeking to ignore the long time “Flores” protections which requires detained families to be released in twenty days. Though this ruling will be appealed, it is a major step in protecting families of undocumented detainees. This was one of three favorable immigration rulings on the same day.  Notable in the Flores case is the involvement of the National Center for Youth Law, which for years has been a smaller, stalwart organization working on foster care and youth homelessness, among other challenges. Their increased involvement in the rights of kids under immigration law is a valuable step and should be supported.
3) Boost Stacey Abrams’ Schemes
	Stacey Abrams is tired of voter suppression, which is a big problem in at least a dozen states, and which notably cost her the governorship of Georgia. There are a lot of Democrats who would like Stacey to run for one of the two open Georgia Senate seats, but now she is fully focused on Fair Fight, the best new entrant battling the suppression that has gone on far too long. Financial support would be terrific. If you aren’t able to do that right now, sign up for Stacey’s suppression alerts and 50-state campaign so you will know what you and all of us can do to help.

Our country has massive imperfections. Some have been fielding the theory that the change that has besmirched us during the last three years is our future writ large. It’s not. Not now, not ever. After we get this man out of office we will put ourselves and our country back together again one large and glorious step at a time.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington