#94: Americans Want and Need a Presidential President

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For the most part, it’s not good that many Americans lack a fundamental knowledge of the workings of government.  At least we have a leader on this front, since, as John Bolton says, the President’s own lack of knowledge is “stunning”.

For just a minute, Donald Trump’s lack of knowledge, incuriousness and even contempt for knowledge on the workings of government has turned to our nation’s advantage. This is the good news and the bad news. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Trump-expulsion of Dreamers could have been prevented by any of hundreds of thousands of high school civics teachers, bloggers, or small town lawyers. Luckily, Trump listens to no one and insists that his minions listen to no one but him. The court’s finding that Trump’s actions violated the Administrative Procedures Act by being “arbitrary and capricious” offers a simple solution that Trump could have followed all along--- don’t be that way.

In his executive order protecting Dreamers, Barack Obama knew that he had no clear statutory authority and that he was stretching presidential powers as far as he could, since Congress had failed to act. All Donald Trump had to do was carefully and meticulously prepare his executive order, following the procedures of the Administrative Procedures Act by providing a “reasoned explanation”. The majority of the Court has a low standard for the extent to which it wishes to adjudicate the reasoning. The Court simply maintained that the reasoning can’t be absent, which it was.

Of course this means Trump still has a path to expel Dreamers. Luckily, he is running out of time, since a federal district court is likely to enjoin his next action, making that injunction subject to appeal, and putting these matters off until after November.

All of this is bizarrely similar to Trump’s 5-4 loss on adding an immigration status question to the Census. Here too Justice Roberts ruled that the Trump administration’s reasoning was “contrived”.  Trump could have been successful by paying even minimal attention to the details of the law, or at least permitting his supplicants to guide him. He now has tweeted that it’s all proof that the Supreme Court “doesn’t like him.” Since he is thoroughly unlikable, they shouldn’t like him, but of course that is not what has caused these two significant defeats.

There will be plenty of painful times ahead with this Court. They may do some more damage to the Affordable Care Act or the right to choose. They will likely give Trump’s tax records to a federal grand jury, but perhaps not to Congress, which has sought them. There will be further victories too. It would be hard to find one more monumental than last week’s ruling unequivocally providing LGBQT employees protection under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Trump’s losses in court are richly related to the varying stages of his mismanagement of the pandemic and his antipathy to Black Lives Matter. In all these cases, he starts by dredging his approach from the nearly empty pool of his knowledge of government, polluted by his visceral notions based upon falsehoods. He tests the approach out on Sean Hannity or Rudy Giuliani and calls it good to go.

It isn’t working. Knowledge is making a strong comeback, as it has proven necessary to fight a pandemic. Whether they are mask wearers or not, voters don’t agree with Laura Ingraham that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a part of “medical deep state”. They think he is an expert on infectious diseases. Women with a high school diploma, part of the backbone of Trump’s support in 2016, are now trending toward Joe Biden. They want a presidential President, especially in these troubled times. 

That’s the secret of our impending success. We are running a man who knows all about how government works at the exact time that voters have finally noticed that the present President does not. Trust in government still polls at low levels, but there is an accompanying notion that government should be an indispensable force for good in trying times. From COVID 19 victims to George Floyd, the memories of the dead are still with us. No Trump tweet, rally or prevarication will erase that.

In the face of the Trump decline, there is also no danger that the positive polls will lull us. In fact, instead of being lulled by a lead, many of the same people who are giving us our current significant polling advantage are simultaneously worried that Trump will ultimately prevail, even though millions of independents have extricated themselves from him. Some are even convinced Trump will win, not daring to let any hope enter their heart.

Every election is different from every other. What we have done since 2016 is learn all over again how to convince people to get out and vote, and to fiercely fight the voter suppression techniques that are the shame of the Republican Party. 

This is the year that we will do huge things for our country. Here are three things that we ought to be taking on right now:

1) Help Ban Chokeholds Nationwide
	In the past, chokehold bans have not eliminated the application of chokeholds by police officers. This is different. The over eight minutes during which Derek Chauvin carried out the slow murder of George Floyd won’t be forgotten. Citizens will be empowered to monitor the streets, and cell phone cameras will play a new role in preventing misconduct. With your help, cities and towns across the country will explicitly ban chokeholds.   Check and make certain your own city has taken the right steps, or check whether your state has passed a law that covers all cities and towns. This chart by 8 Can’t Wait compares the use of force policies in scores of cities. It is a good time to call your mayor.
2) Add to Your List of Targeted Senate Races
	When Republican Joni Earl got herself elected to the United States Senate in 2014, she used her farming background to say she would “make them squeal” like a pig by challenging federal budget deficits. She ended up making corporations and the wealthiest donors squeal with joy instead, as they hogged the advantages of an Ernst supported tax bill unbalancing the budget by another trillion dollars. Donald Trump has at least one fact straight, that he is in trouble in Iowa. That’s why he pleaded with Xi Jingping for China to buy agricultural products to help him get re-elected. Farmers and farm communities who stood with him believing in his blustery trade war with China are reconsidering as the Trump administration now argues with itself where the trade deal stands. Joni Earl is an enabler of it all, and a good choice as resisters seek to flip another Senate seat, building upon our promising positions in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina. A new poll has Joni Earl’s long time lead evaporating. It is time to send a little love in the direction of Theresa Greenfield.
3) Get on Joe Biden’s List Today
	The Biden campaign has enough work to do without having to worry about whether we support him. The more voters he can lock down, the more time he can spend on people who he needs to persuade either to vote for him or to vote at all. Even if you have found a different way to invest in getting the outcome we need this year, give a donation directly to the campaign of the next President and “sign your name to stand with Biden”.

The surreal behavior of Donald Trump is everywhere, every day. To his huge disadvantage, so is reality--- a resolve by Americans by people in community after community to beat the pandemic that is ravaging us, and a new commitment to address the racism that we have never expelled. 

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#93: You Must Know That There is a Way Forward

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.

It is all overwhelming, but you must know there is a way forward. The killing of George Floyd has exposed the never healed wound of racism in America. If we make it so, this will be a point where we turn in a new direction. The massive outrage will be translated into new rules, laws, protections, and oversight of policing in America. We will find that this time is different, that not only will policing change but that as a society we will renew the way we are addressing systemic racism and huge wealth disparities.

The pandemic will continue, and with it a similar sorrow of preventable, agonizing deaths. Trump’s tale of an error free pandemic response is not believed, or believable. There are tens of thousands of caskets which should not have been put into service. Scarily, at this stage of battlefield exhaustion we are newly vulnerable. Somehow, millions of us feel invulnerable, or we suppose that we have done all we can.

There is an uncomfortable parallel between our spiraling out of control on these two fronts. We do not accept as much responsibility for racism as we must. And, we are not worried about the virus as to the extent that we should be. In both cases, we are still telling ourselves an untrue personal story, and a fable about our nation in the world.

Every time we as a society hear news that we have been bad at doing something good, we think that it is anomalous. We say, “No, that isn’t who we are.” Even if we never speak of American exceptionalism, the idea of it is so ingrained in us from our school days forward that we may as well have “We’re number one” printed on our garments.

That makes it essential to understand why the idea of the United States as a beacon can remain genuine even as we see our greatest failings exposed. It’s because of kindled dreams, the true story that those who are born here and those that come here can lift themselves up. It is more difficult nowadays to make the dream come true, but tens of millions have enjoyed more freedom, more opportunity, and more education than the generation before it. That’s our brightest beacon, and Donald Trump won’t have succeeded in extinguishing it by the time we remove him on November 3.

We will be left battered, with the virus still infecting us, systemic racism unchecked, our greatest environmental hazard unaddressed, and our role in the world diminished. The test for us as citizens after November 3 is to find our way into a new era. The challenge of our elected leadership, including a new Democratic majority in the Senate, will be to help generate the momentum that will help carry us forward.

We are eager to hear of the selection of the Vice President but are otherwise cheered by where the election stands. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but we couldn’t help but notice that there has been some deterioration of the Trump position after the bible was brandished and the New Testament ignored. It doesn’t hurt that there are two things wholly present in Joe Biden and entirely absent from Donald Trump-- knowledge and appreciation of the workings of government, and empathy for human suffering.

The formula for our impending electoral success remains. There is plenty of persuading of independents to be done, mostly to reinforce their movement in considerable numbers away from Donald Trump. Even more dominant is our need to generate turnout, which we have been ably rehearsing these past three years. 4.3% of those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 did not vote in 2016. We will fix that.

The troubled times call us not to pause our efforts but to redouble them, relentlessly seeking to bend the arc of history toward justice. Presently, we can do these three things:

1) Sustain a Huge Political Movement
	New registrations and higher turnout are much of the focus of the immense organizing effort that is underway. Indivisible and Swing Left did not exist until November of 2016. Their work has been indispensable. Other organizations have come forward, like Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote, the Sister District project, and at the regional level, such exemplars as Common Purpose.  New attention must be paid and is being paid to how sharply focused, sustainable grassroots efforts will be fostered and supported over time. That is why we should support the focus of the Movement Voter Project which has vetted and is generating assistance for 450 local and state progressive organizations
2) Protect Government Watchdogs
	The system of internal government watchdogs has had strong bi-partisan support since its inception. Now, Donald Trump is firing inspectors general one at a time, every time one of them offends him (easy to do) or a cabinet secretary. This amounts to a lot of carnage, because the entire idea of inspectors general is to push back against the misuse of power and the misappropriation of funds. Standing in the way of the new rounds of firing is Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who intended to have as his political legacy the creation and protection of a strong system of internal oversight through inspectors general. The law requires Donald Trump to provide justification for inspector general firings, and Trump thus far has said his justification is that he “lost confidence” in each appointee. Grassley has no choice but to put a “hold” on selected Trump appointees until Trump complies with the law.  Grassley’s enthusiasm for standing up to the President may fade. It’s time to use Charles Grassley’s comment system to thank him for his efforts thus far, and to urge him to continue to seek protection of inspectors general.
3) Be a Part of Our New National Commitment
	George Floyd’s murder started something that isn’t going away, and shouldn’t go away. We must recommit to finding the racism within ourselves, and tirelessly ferreting it out in our country. With regard to police brutality, from the outset we must work at the level of every single community to re-examine the nature of policing, including its priorities, staffing and funding. Unfortunately, this necessary intense effort has been branded by more than a few as “defunding”. In his life, the writer of this missive has twice been confronted by individuals who inexplicably indicated a strong interest in killing him! Calling 911 was and is an outstanding option for people in such situations, and it’s unwise to confuse Americans by telling them that 911 is going away, even if that is not necessarily what one means by defunding. This discussion over the language of defunding will continue, and eventually a language of massive reform will emerge. In the meantime, it behooves all of us to understand and be engaged in what is being sought city by city, notably by the 8 Can’t Wait Movement.

Now we have an agenda before us that must be addressed both immediately (by banning chokeholds) and over several years. Both the pandemic and George Floyd’s murder have signaled us to be wary of embracing a false equilibrium, some new level of satisfaction in ourselves. Instead, let’s remove the divider in chief from his position, and go back to looking together for what America can become

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington