#73: From Today Forward, We Must Do Even More

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There is another threat to our country besides Donald Trump. Looking beyond Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, Lindsay Graham and Sean Hannity (who are just flunkies) we find the danger coming from our own angry and despairing selves. We never expected to live for nearly three years under such a government or such a president. Thus, we can be wounded each day by whatever maniacal or narcissistic action Trump comes up with.

The threat we represent comes from the tendency of wounded people to not always act wisely when they seek to distract themselves from those wounds, or try to heal them. We understand intellectually that it is a political movement that will remove the source of the wounds (and that of our nation) by November of 2020. Even in the face of that understanding, on some days we don’t make such great decisions on the total time we spend on the public or political sides of our lives, and what do we do with the time allocated. Day to day, are our actions specifically directed toward election results or do we get distracted or even swallowed within our own community of disapproval?

Several years ago, the Facebook campaign to Save Darfur got 1.2 million “likes”. From all that activity, it only generated $90,000 in contributions to fight hunger. Over 99% of the persons who “liked” the campaign found that single click sufficient to cover their commitment to fighting hunger in Darfur. The point is that enormous amount of social media activity that surrounds the resistance to Donald Trump does not itself represent political action that will bring about his longed for demise.

Yes, we can use social media to learn things that make us better advocates. We can use it to bolster us in our resolve. However, in terms of getting votes. Randy Rainbow songs, the newest cartoon, Epstein conspiracy theories and tweets of outrage are all sounds being made in an echo chamber, albeit a very big echo chamber.

On August 8, Donald Trump flashed a thumbs up while being photographed with a child whose parents had been killed in a massacre that he himself had helped precipitate. There has been no fuller measure of this man than his behavior in El Paso and Dayton. Understandably he has been called out on social media for this new extraordinary rejection of any conceivable way a president might act. However, the test for us is not the digital expression of disapproval that has since materialized but our specific actions since (and in the upcoming weeks) demanding that members of Congress enact universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons.

We are part of the largest political movement in decades. It won’t be the largest, most powerful political movement until the results are tallied on the evening of Tuesday, November 3, 2020. We are very, very likely to win on that day, because Donald Trump has lost the center, and we will make certain that it stays lost for him. We are winning almost 2/3 of newly registered voters, and he will continue to help us by adding to his list of offenses.

Why not turn our very, very likely victory into an inevitability? It is the most important election of our lifetime. The force that will make our victory inevitable is not the power of digital information or observation, it’s the power of action, using digital tools but going way beyond them.

We are not strangers to the powerful, satisfying, successful elements of meaningful political action. Whether we are fully ensconced in that world, have wandered from our place within it, or have never found that place, it’s time for an increase in our commitment and our concentration.

We can register younger voters, making certain that no one turns 18 without getting the chance to change the world. We can concentrate on registering Latino voters in swing states. We must make certain the vote is not suppressed, learning where the greatest threats are and how to respond. To guarantee that post-census redistricting is not itself a voter suppression tool, we must stay focused on state legislatures as well. 

If we are working on all of this alone, we needn’t be. We can join an Indivisible group, or create one of our own. Or, we could join a Swing Left group. We can link up with Tony the Democrats and do personal postcards to voters by ourselves, or in small groups. We can buy into the smartest, best articulated electoral vote winning approach courtesy of Swing Left and their Super State strategy, designed to win the Presidency and take back the Senate. We can start giving to the Democratic nominee right now, through Swing Left’s Unify or Die fund, which will be provided to our presidential candidate right after she or he is nominated.  We can adopt a Senate candidate who must win if Mitch McConnell is to be deposed, like Mark Kelly in Arizona. 

All of the above are things that fighters must do right now, as if lives depend upon it. And, all the while that we take such direct political action (rather than just observing the battle), we must contend with an awful series of injustices Donald Trump has advanced while Congress is in recess. The long-term solution to each is to have a different President. In the short term, we must do these three things.

1) Keep the Words of Emma Lazarus Alive
	Part of the pride of being an American is the resonance of the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe fee, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”  Donald Trump and his hench-people are working to decrease the opportunity of immigrants to become lawful permanent residents of our country if they have used food stamps and other government services. Immigration chief Ken Cuccinelli had previously shamefully called immigrants “invaders” so his “stand on your own two feet” standard is unsurprising. Is it really this easy to forget what so many of our own grandparents went through to build their lives in this country, and to build this country? Several states are seeking to block this new administrative rule, as is the National Immigration Law Center, whose important work you can follow and who would be happy to receive your support.
2) Work to Stop Trump from Endangering Other Species
	Donald Trump’s complex changes in the administration of the Endangered Species Act sum up to “let’s not try too hard” even though 99% of the species labeled endangered have been successfully protected. The new rules adopted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service represent the long arm of former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reaching back to punch the animals he was supposed to have been protecting. As with the immigration rules, the battle to block the Endangered Species Act changes will begin in the courts. Still, it would be good to start with the Sierra Club’s petition to the Fish and Wildlife Service to demonstrate how many of us are with the conservation organizations in the looming battle.
3) This Time, We Will Pass Universal Background Checks
	It’s predictable. Weeks after El Paso and Dayton, Donald Trump’s interest in strengthening background checks has vanished. Could it be that he and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA had a discussion? But, there remains an opportunity. Mitch McConnell promised a post-recess Senate review on gun issues, where he will try to limit the discussion to extreme risk protection orders, known as red flag laws. In that discussion, Republican Senators will have a chance to close the numerous loopholes in the background check “system”, such as gun show exemptions. Americans are for better background checks. Will any Republicans stand tall on this? Please call any or all of these five Republican Senators who have already said they are for such improvements, but who are susceptible to White House pressure.  Susan Collins of Maine 202-224-2523 Lamar Alexander of Tennessee 202-224-4944 Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania 202-224-4254 Mike Braun of Indiana 202-224-4854 Rob Portman of Ohio 202-224-3353

We have witnessed this unraveling of our country at the hands of a man who should not have been president for almost 3 years. From the beginning, we have been part of a monumental movement to put our country back together. Perhaps we are thinking that we are doing all that we can. Now we need to do even more.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#72: We Will Not Risk the Presidency Over a Resolvable Dispute

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.

On every major issue driving the American voter, we are in excellent shape. Unless we misdirect ourselves (which is not our plan) we are the party of choice and access to health care. We are also the party which battles climate change, requires universal background checks to own a gun, and restores global alliances. We reject Donald Trump, whose has sown the wind with hatred of the “other.” He has drawn together angry people and told them lies about Mexicans and about immigrants to make them angrier. He did not intend for the people to be shot in El Paso. And undoubtedly he regrets that it happened, but he created the soundtrack for the demented soul who wielded the weapon and heard the screams.

Our numbness must not prevent us from winning this next election. The Congressional races in 2018 were the last Trump referendum. We won by eight million votes, registering and turning out millions of new voters aged 18-30. We won over the suburbs and their independent voters. We could paralyze ourselves with fear or dismay that this awful presidency will continue. We would be better off building upon 2018 and seizing every opportunity to make such a result impossible.

The stakes could not be higher for America. That’s why a large majority of us have selected electability as our central criterion for choosing our candidate. We are focused on the issues to be sure, but we think that any of several candidates will espouse positions close enough to our own. We are willing to accept some differences as long as we win. Presidential debates are a year away, and we are already calculating who will be the strongest voice exposing Trump and winning over voters at that podium.

Thus, any sharp words among candidates can dismay us. We are susceptible to the commentators who declare daily that this or that position is a telling error that will doom us. In this context, the intense debate comparing Medicare for All and Medicare for All Who Want It can be especially difficult to watch. 

As Cory Booker helpfully pointed out, all of the candidates favor universal coverage, so the health care exchanges among our candidates have outside boundaries, which gives comfort. What generates discomfort is Elizabeth Warren’s charge of “spinelessness” in candidates who do not agree with her health care position. Senator, you know that isn’t true, so don’t say it. They have just as much spine as you do, just different positions. Your claim is no more appropriate than John Hickenlooper’s “socialist” tag. Once we have a candidate, every other candidate will stand behind her or him, and we must lay the groundwork for that now.

All our candidates are pleased that voters like the idea of a strong public option, as outlined in excellent research by the Kaiser Family Foundation. They are much more likely to like Medicare for All if it permits them to keep their own physicians.  But, as Warren knows, they will like Medicare for All much less if it eliminates the supplemental coverage that senior citizens are presently able to obtain,  or if it drives huge deficits, or closes rural hospitals. Those hospitals depend upon the higher payments of insurance companies and can’t balance their books with the lower payments from Medicare and Medicaid. As the Kaiser Foundation stresses, the net favorability of the public option is the highest when voters see it as important competition for private plans, not a legally required substitute.

We must and will debate all of these questions. To do so with no eye on the independent voter is absurd. Would we really risk the outcome of the most important election of our lifetime for an extra Sanders or Warren whack at insurers? The issue is not (as Michael Bennet argues) that we are creating a Trump talking point that Democrats have overreached or are overwrought, since Trump has proven time and again that he doesn’t know anything about health care. If the majority of voters are interested in the dramatic expansion of what Barack Obama started, and only a minority would go as far as Bernie, why would we even think about going as far as Bernie? Win the Presidency, win back the Senate, and get back to the business of making the country better one month at a time. We can fashion a plan that for the first time creates a robust national public option and thus have a huge impact on our broken health care system. Give Booker and Buttigieg and Klobuchar a better opportunity to say how they would do that, and stop calling them names.

It is a good time for the fall debate qualifying rules to winnow our candidates. To be eligible, candidates must have 130,000 donors spread over 20 or more states. Even more challenging, they need to register 2% or more in four national polls conducted by pre-certified pollsters. Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Klobuchar, Booker, and Harris have qualified. This is where the going gets tough for latecomers Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock and Tom Steyer, Governors Jay Inslee and John Hickenlooper and somewhat surprisingly, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro.
What are some good standards for us to help in the winnowing?

• Let’s check to see if there is someone who hasn’t received as much attention and could use a boost from us to make it to the next round. Many of these people are not new to government. They have shaped policies, learned from voters and won elections. Let’s provide that boost to one or two and withhold it from others depending upon who they are and what they have done so far. For instance, maybe we would like Julian Castro to still be at the podium.
• Has any candidate already done something that resisters should see as disqualifying, such as Kirsten Gillibrand’s refusal to let the charges against Al Franken be examined by the Senate Ethics Committee? Shouldn’t we disqualify Bill de Blasio for his contrived, sustained attack against Biden over Obama-era immigration policies, when at the time de Blasio thought they were bold?
• Have any of these candidates run any part of a local, state or federal government? Trump’s ineptitude underscores the utility of such knowledge. Among others, Booker, Klobuchar, Sanders, Buttigieg, Castro, and Harris have run governments, agencies and programs. Among others, Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer and Marianne Williamson have not.
• Has anyone shown some capacity to win over an independent voter, thus being able to put a swing state in play, and defend his or her positions in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin? Who besides Klobuchar, Hickenlooper and Bullock have shown promise in purple or red states?
• Which candidates are part of a generation of elected officials that we might want to ask to open the doors to the generation of leaders behind them?

We will sort out candidates all the way until the primaries of the winter and spring and the convention... Through it all, our head to head polling matchups vs. Trump and Pence will remain strong. Let’s continue to work at this, so an entire nation can breathe a sigh of relief in November of 2020. Let’s do three things:

1) Talk to Elizabeth Warren about Spines
	Obviously, Elizabeth Warren is a smart and principled and progressive person. We would help her a lot if we could convince her to stop calling her fellow Democratic leaders “spineless”. Perhaps she knows better already. Not untypical of national candidates, it’s virtually impossible to call her campaign, and almost as difficult to get an email response. The best way to get attention is to email her fundraising staff. Tell them that calling other candidates “spineless” is going to decrease her chances.
2) Help Boost a Candidate Into the Fall Round
	As noted above, eight candidates are already sure to be included in the fall round of Democratic candidate debates. There may be other candidates whose time in the spotlight you would like to extend because of what you have heard so far. A small donation will help whomever you choose reach the 130,000 donors they need in order to qualify, and it will also give them resources to try to increase their poll standing. Here’s some candidates to choose from: Julian Castro Jay Inslee  Steve Bullock  Michael Bennet
3) Follow the Super State Strategy
	The very nicely articulated Super State Strategy devised by Swing Left is the way to develop, advance and defend multiple paths to victory. The best and most aggressive voter registration effort targeted to Latino voters is Mi Vota Familia. Their efforts could spell the difference in three of Swing Left’s targeted states--- Arizona, Florida, and Texas. Investing early in voter registration is how close elections will be won in these states. Electoral votes from one or more of these states could make you very, very happy on election night.

We will have spirited debates among our candidates until we nominate a President and Vice President. We already know how to do this, and we can act on our learning from the past. We welcomed a dozen viable candidates and sorted them out when Bill Clinton won in 1992. We remained receptive to someone all new and were rewarded with Barack Obama in 2008. We were overconfident about the final outcome and closed ranks way too late with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in 2016. As the 2020 elections emerge, we’re ahead now and we’re going to make it stay that way.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington