#87: We Must Remember What is at Our Core

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You could say that this is no time for politics. More accurately, it is time for extra care in attention to politics. We can’t stop some things from being politicized, but we can always remember what is at our core--- how we conduct ourselves as a community; how we give the most to others when every post and headline turns us back to ourselves; and how to rejoice in life as we protect it.

After this crisis is over, there will be plenty of time to sort out the government’s response. Inevitably and appropriately, we will evaluate the approaches taken by the president. We will examine the extent to which his disrespect of science and government agencies and his relentless untruths increased the level of human misery. And we will do that with a heavy heart.

For now, we must press on and make social distancing work, because it will eventually flatten the curve of new cases and thus make it possible to provide care. To make it work, we focus as usual on how Nancy Pelosi sees it, with her top three priorities being testing, testing, and testing. Things would be far better if we had been able to test at the scale of South Korea from the outset. We all hope that in the next week the shortage of testing kits will have been resolved. 

There’s a longer-term lesson, of course. Government is nothing more or nothing less than what we are promising and contracting to do with and for each other. We should expect a lot from government, and we will pay when we disrespect what we need it to do. As much as it has been sullied or compromised, self-determination came to us as a gift. It will take some time, and countless individual steps, but we can restore it. Won’t it be a splendid thing when we do that?

For a lot of us, social distancing means struggling to maintain income. It means keeping ourselves safe and healthy, supporting our communities, schooling and otherwise caring for children and grandchildren, and countless other tasks. However, some of us have time on our hands, and we can set aside some time each day toward the task of winning an election.

There is a formula for winning, and we must take advantage of it. We’re winning now because Joe Biden appeals to a broad cross section of voters, including independents. Look at the news from Arizona, where Biden has a nice lead, and where Senatorial candidate Mark Kelly is leading Trump-genuflecting Martha McSally. Look at Florida, our regular loss by micro-margins. Buoyed by the support of retirees for Biden, we’re ahead there too. Due to the calamity of 2016, much of the focus has been on the industrial Midwest, where Biden is also strong. Winning Florida and Arizona would scramble the map, and provide us with scores of winning combinations of states.

Biden has captured the right theme, calling himself the bridge to the next generation of leaders, and bringing Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke to his side. Wisely, he has courted Bernie Sanders quietly and persistently, trying to take advantage of their long-term friendship. Before we all got to the point of insisting that he promise to select a woman as vice president, he made exactly that pledge.

We’re winning because 2020 will be all about voter turnout. Our failure to go to the polls in 2016 cost us dearly. In the congressional and gubernatorial elections of 2018, in Virginia in 2019 and in this year’s primaries, we have demonstrated that we get the need to turn people out, and we get it done. The math is ours. We have a much larger pool of potential voters than the other side. And we have the best Get Out the Vote campaign chair there is, Donald J. Trump.

We had thought we would be fighting all the way to the convention over who would be our nominee. Instead, those of us who have time during our social distancing can direct ourselves toward tomorrow’s dreams.

Of course, there are the missteps to avoid:

• Could it be that some political websites are not worth the breathless link or post? Many of the claims against Trump are true, but now and again one is untrue and challenges our credibility in its retelling. For instance, Trump did not successfully cut Center for Disease Control funding prior to the emergence of the virus. He did propose funding cuts, but Congress restored them. Check PolitiFact. Of course, there may well be other damaging claims against Trump we haven’t heard about… 

• Let's stop it with the “establishment” and the “elite.” Biden has received over 10 million votes in the primaries to 7.5 million for Sanders. Are rural Texans and Florida pawns of Tom Perez at the DNC? Are elite North Carolina voters besotted with brie and chilled white wine?

• A lot of us preferred a candidate other than Joe Biden. This missive, for instance, hankered for the selection of Amy Klobuchar. But, can we remember that fallen candidates had flaws, as well as the talents we recognized? Elizabeth Warren hung on to every sentence of her Medicare for All plan for weeks after it was draining her support. Pete Buttigieg needs more years of leadership. If he can’t get it in Indiana, maybe it will happen in Biden’s cabinet.

• Could we assess underlying circumstances before we launch our ideas? Elizabeth Warren can’t be Joe Biden’s vice president because Massachusetts has a Republican Governor who in short order would appoint a Republican Senator as her replacement, perhaps foiling our efforts to get a Senate majority. That’s one reason people are advocating for Kamala Harris or Amy Klobuchar, neither of whom face that dilemma.

• Can we eschew the call of celebrity? Senior positions in government require specialized skills, none more than Ambassador to the United Nations. Nicholas Kristoff (of all people) suggests Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for that position. She is a spirited, committed, popular member of Congress with zero background as a diplomat.

• Won’t we start believing in ourselves again? Unbelievably, there are Democrats who believe that Donald Trump will be re-elected. Why would anyone think that? With Comey’s help (inadvertent) and Putin’s help (intentional) he threaded the needle in 2016. Get your head back up! We have built the largest electoral movement in our nation’s history. It will determine the outcome.

If we can spend the time in addition to dealing with our nation’s huge health crisis, these are three things that we can be doing:

1) Make Certain That Congress Doesn’t Head Down the Wrong Path in their Coronavirus Response
	Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic House majority have had considerable success in shaping action on the virus. In the first phase, Congress put together a research and vaccine development package totaling $8.3 billion. The second phase, just approved, includes testing reimbursement and strengthens the Unemployment Insurance system, which will provide monthly payments to millions of workers. To the considerable disgruntlement of Mitch McConnell, it makes possible emergency paid sick leave in companies with fewer than 500 employees. Phase three is already being developed and will involve considerable bi-partisan negotiation. Republicans who would not vote for Barack Obama’s economic stimulus to help us out of the Great Recession have developed new love for such measures. Given that the tax giveaway of two years past has already helped create a trillion dollar deficit, the additional stimulus of a trillion or more will be borrowed entirely from our children and grandchildren. A large part of this stimulus will be direct payments to individuals, in the range of $1,000 apiece. Luckily, Congress will end up understanding that we don’t need to send such checks to our higher income citizens, but not without Nancy Pelosi watching over this decision. Unbelievably, there is considerable “progressive” support for sending these checks to everyone, which of course would be regressive, not progressive. A second major battle is over how to help the airlines, who have used over $4 trillion of profits since the Great Recession for stock buybacks to enrich shareholders. They don’t have enough cash to withstand the period where the public has stopped flying, and no one wants a string of bankruptcies. Democrats will emphasize relief for small businesses and trade-offs will be made. It’s time to check in with your own members of Congress. Email them on one or both issues, making sure that this stimulus bill (which will be passed for certain) responds to the needs of those who are hurting the most.
2) Show That It’s Not All About the Bernie “Bros”
	Too much has been made of the most hardcore of the Bernie supporters, the young white male Bernie “Bros”. Responding to them as a cohort gives undue and unwise attention to their existence, which regardless of their numbers, will continue as long as there remains a political reporter in America. Instead, we need to focus on connecting with the Bernie supporters we know. Select two or three. Check in with them and don’t take their viewpoint for granted. Respectfully discuss with them the significance of President Biden’s early moves, including figuring out who will replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg; re-joining the Paris Climate Accords; restoring countless environmental regulations that Trump has rescinded; bolstering NATO; and re-negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran.
3) Support Michelle Obama
	Michelle Obama’s voter registration organization When We all Vote has programs across the country. In the summer or early fall she will be the nation’s most important and influential voice for registering and voting. She is the perfect person for the job. You can get behind her all the way by joining and donating.

These are hard, hard times. Quelling the virus and helping sick and unemployed persons is our first task. Our other task remains, which is giving the country the leadership to make our country glisten and show us the path forward.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#86: It is All Out There to Fight For

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.

The “appeal” of Donald Trump when he was “elected” was that he was outside of the American government. The thinking by the foolhardy was that this outsider position would be a benefit, enabling new freedom to tackle our dysfunctions and imagine something fresher and newer. But, Trump has been all visceral (or eviscerating) thought, and self-delusion. He didn’t know about government in the first place, or flu deaths, or what happened at Pearl Harbor, or climate change, or NATO, or France, or constitutional limitations on his power. He isn’t interested in learning anything, except if it is discovered in Kankakee or Minot that someone loves him.

In most ways, Bernie Sanders is the antithesis of Donald Trump, mercifully. He is not a con man. He can articulate his beliefs and knows exactly why he believes those things. About the only way in which they are similar is that Bernie also doesn’t have enough room in his mind for other viewpoints. It is all about the raised voice and the pointed finger. He is running for debater-in-chief.The plus side of that approach is he has made us think much harder about the shortcomings of our nation. How many of us anticipated he would suddenly run into another force on Super Tuesday, that many millions of us had it within us to throw aside debates, policy proposals and political ads for a single notion---  that Joe Biden is more likely to beat Trump than any Democrat not named Obama?

The new Fox Poll shows that we are in an excellent competitive position. 32% of those polled say that they will absolutely vote for Trump, and 45% say they will not. Before Super Tuesday,  Biden led Trump by 8 points and Sanders led Trump by 7. Among other things, this poll that Trump hates demonstrates that we are still in a favorable position even after the messy debates and the infighting we were hoping to avoid. With our candidates polling ahead of Donald Trump, it’s useful to analyze what our greatest weaknesses are. Our greatest vulnerability would be nominating Bernie.

--- First, the separation of Democratic voters into Sanders supporters and the “establishment” or the “elites” is nonsensical. Many millions of us are no more elite or establishment than Sanders’ supporters, if not less. We just don’t happen to support Bernie.

---the Gallup Poll just found 54% of voters would not support a socialist. Those polled said they were more likely to support an atheist or a Muslim! In response, Sanders and his supporters are bent upon having a nice thoughtful examination of how “democratic socialism” is different from the kind of socialism around which voters are so unenthusiastic. Disappointingly, we have no chance of being granted this opportunity to explain. Do we think Trump and his supporters are going to announce mid-summer that they now fully understand the differences? In the middle of the most consequential presidential race in our history, are we going to bet it all based upon a narrative about socialism that is totally out of our control?

--- We won by more than nine million votes in 2018 because we were able to appeal to independents in swing states. All we have to do to win in 2020 is retain these voters. The Sanders bet is to embrace policies that turn away from those independent voters in favor of attracting youthful “progressive” voters who thus far have eschewed the ballot box. None of the turnout levels in the primaries have signaled the arrival of such a new wave. Jettisoning independent voters is the mistake Donald Trump dreams we will make.

---After winning back 40 house seats by expanding affordable care and protecting pre-existing conditions running on Medicare for All is not such an outstanding idea. It would force union members to give up the coverage they fought hard for, including union members in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (do we remember those states?) It would push seniors and independents away as well, all for a proposal that has no chance to pass the Democratic Senate if we can win back the majority, and we will be likely to win the majority if we advance this proposal. Bernie is dealing us a losing hand.

Post super-Tuesday, against all prior expectations we are finally and suddenly in a new stage. It is possible to believe that we will nominate well, pick an exciting vice-presidential candidate, and head into the late summer and fall still holding a lead over Donald Trump. Then it will all come down to the work that we know that we must and can do, with the extra motivation of saving our country.

There is much to do in our own states. There will be money to be raised and sent and postcards to be written and our own independent voters to persuade. There’s no state in the country without swing state legislative districts to be defended or flipped, or a congressional seat that we need to keep in our column or add to our column. 

Nonetheless, the will to travel is very strong. It’s a monumental election that could be determined by a miniscule victory margin. All of us need to make ourselves as large as we can be. Can you imagine if we had five thousand more field volunteers in the right place in 2016? Let’s not be sitting disconsolately in mid-November wishing we had been in Sedona in September or Orlando in October.

On the other hand, let’s not take our bright and shiny selves out for a trip and come back all travel weary and unfulfilled politically. It is all in taking the correct steps in advance. There is nothing quite as discouraging as getting connected to a volunteer coordinator who doesn’t know what she or he is doing. You don’t want a beleaguered campaign coordinator to give you a walk around list that was utilized three days before. To have the highest possible impact, start working on this right now. Ideas gleaned from previous travelers:

1) Pick the Right Place to Go
No one has done a better job of identifying swing states than Swing Left, with their Super State Strategy. They have been especially interested in twofers like Arizona and North Carolina and Georgia, where we can capture electoral votes and take a Senator away from Mitch McConnell. Competitive Democratic candidates at multiple levels feed off each other’s strengths, help increase turnout and add to the meaningful workload that volunteers can take on. If you find yourself being persuaded to go to a state not seen as in play, un-persuade yourself immediately! Assign yourself as though you are a valuable resource, because you are.

2) Stay at Least a Couple of Weeks if You Can
If you end up in the right place, each day you will be more comfortable and more valuable than you were the day before.

3) If You Can Find a Group, Go With a Group
The last missive underscored the work of Common Purpose, a Washington state organization which is scheduling group trips to sixteen swing states, each with advance briefings. Each is hosted by a local sponsoring organization which manages the work assignments. Look for an organization in your own state that is sponsoring field work. See what Indivisible has to offer. Call your state Democratic Party office and see what they know about who is sponsoring groups.

4) Check the Local Sponsor
Ideally, you can find a sponsor that has been around and knows a lot about local politics. In most but not all cases, independent organizations will be superior to a candidate’s own campaign office, which is even more likely to be besieged.

5) Make Necessary Adjustments
If you accidentally end up in a campaign situation that is dysfunctional, don’t stay silent. Find out if there is someone who can fix it, and if not look right away for another assignment.

6) Advertise Your Special Skills
If you are an experienced event organizer, or a data specialist, or speak Spanish or have any eyebrow-raising skill, make certain people know about it.

7) Do it Like it Matters
Think of every single doorbell, every single phone call or sign waving event as the action that could put us over the top. The margins could turn out to be incredibly thin. Remember that we lost on turnout in 2016 and we’re going to win on turnout in 2020. You will be out there making that happen.

We can do three things right now to give our fellow travelers the best chance to have an impact. The more voters we register right now, the better chance they will have to generate turnout in the fall. You already know about Rock the Vote which has made possible hundreds of thousands of online registrations. To make certain we are getting extra power and enthusiasm in the swing states, pick one of these three and support them now. Or to show you know what year it is, pick them all now.

1) In Arizona, Get Behind One Arizona
	One Arizona is an excellent coalition effort featuring 23 advocacy organizations. These include the state Mi Vota Familia organization, that has registered hundreds of thousands of Latino-Americans across several states.
2) In Georgia, We Could Pick Up Two Senate Seats
	As mentioned in a previous missive, Georgia is prime territory, because voter suppression was victorious there in 2018 and we can’t let that happen again. Stacey Abrams, barely defeated for Governor in 2018, is an amazing leader. She is an internationalist, an entrepreneur and the former chair of the Democrats in Georgia’ House of Representatives. Presidential electoral votes and two Senate seats are up for grabs. We can win them in a fair fight, and that’s what Abrams’ organization is going to give us.
3) Why Not Go Out and Win in North Carolina
	For a couple of days, Republican Senator Thom Tillis indicated he might argue against Trump’s misappropriation of federal funds to build a wall. Trump changed Tillis’ mind. On the matter of Tillis in any way acting as a part of the legislative branch, it isn’t going to happen. Democracy North Carolina is working to add more registered voters and to get more people to the polls.

We have things to do. Get behind the nominee, and her or his vice president. Plan to spend some time in a swing state or do everything we can from wherever it is we are sitting. There are only eight months left, and everything is out there to fight for, every day.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington