#96: How We Will Seek to Redeem a Country’s Soul

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Find out below how to participate in our Zoom session with swing district Congressional candidate Alyse Galvin!

John Lewis said we are fighting to redeem the soul of our country. Right now, we are not fighting hard enough. Nicholas Kristof reminds us that as we win on November 3, there will be promise ahead of us. In no way do we have to give in to midnight in America. Rather than the despair that abounds, we see a long but very real path forward toward ending the virus, restoring the economy, and addressing systemic racism in new and powerful ways. We can choose to take that path.

We will wake up on November 4 and tackle America’s enormous unfinished business. No single action taken by President Biden or a Senate rid of Mitch McConnell’s grip will re-establish us as newly worthy of the attention and respect of the world. Countless actions taken over years will do so. Even as we restore environmental protection, show global leadership, significantly expand health care and battle racism, the bulk of the work to meet John Lewis’ soul redemption plea will remain unfinished. This is not a short term project, but we are all in.

We’re all in, unless we have joined the ranks of reactors rather than participants. Railing at Donald Trump and fighting to defeat him are not mutually exclusive propositions. Nonetheless, getting or giving likes or shares or re-tweets or other approvals of a clever or snarky takedown of Donald Trump is not an act of resistance. Listening to Randy Rainbow parody songs, meditating on Melania, commenting on Trump’s hair, and mulling over Trump’s cognitive tests may feel necessary in order for one to bear another day of this awful president. But these things must not be conflated with the actual well-known steps necessary to win an election. There is no such thing as a social media warrior, unless or until they turn their justifiable antipathy toward Trump into actions. Without action, it is just another echo chamber, of which this nation has plenty,

John Lewis exemplified the difference between righteousness and self-righteousness. The first is emboldening and energizing, the second draining and distracting. We have the next 3 ½ months to practice the first. 

Maybe we always intended to participate in an organized resistance group, and it never happened. As the election date neared, the pandemic overwhelmed. Now it may seem like there is nothing to do but watch it all unfold.

It isn’t too late, of course. There is still a great opportunity and need to engage, rather than observe. Polls do not represent an election, but the difference between where we stood at this time in 2016 and where we stand now is pronounced and encouraging, as Harry Enten discusses. In the face of these data, our duty is to 1) remain uncomfortable, and 2) drive home whatever lead we might well have.

If we intensify our already high level of activity, then we will win back more Senate seats than the net of three that we must secure. Past three, every additional seat makes it that much more possible to do some soul redemption for our nation. There are juicy opportunities beyond the highly rated efforts to unseat Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis and Martha McSally with John Hickenlooper, Sara Gideon, Cal Cunningham, and Mark Kelly. We can defeat Mitch McConnell with Amy McGrath, Steve Daines with Steve Bullock, Lindsay Graham with Jaime Harrison, and that is still just the start.

Engaging more intensively is still possible because of the many postcard-writing, texting, calling, voter-registering, turnout-inducing and personal campaigning efforts underway. It is helpful to be affiliated. It isn’t too late to sign up with Indivisible, Swing Left, the Sister District Project, with a specific campaign, or an exemplary regionally based organizing unit, like Western Washington’s Common Purpose, now renaming itself Common Power.

And it isn’t too late to be unaffiliated but still helpful. Postcards to Swing States is a project of Indivisible in Chicago. They will send individual campaigners postcards and addresses, all to be mailed in October and all focused on generating the necessary turnout in then ten most critical states. Also, some individual campaigns are overwhelmed with volunteers, but not all. Those unattached at this point can shop around and find a good candidate set up to deploy volunteers well. And we must all remember the state legislative races that are nearby.

With all of that, there is one other things all of us can be doing even without joining a group.
There is someone out there who you know who (unbelievably) doesn’t plan to vote or (even more unbelievably) believes there isn’t much difference between the two candidates. There is more distance between Biden and Trump than there was between Washington and King George III! Please find those people, make sure they are registered, and get them to vote. Any questions as to how to register can be answered by Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote. 

Honoring John Lewis properly will take some time. There will be initial attention to the possible renaming of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma after Lewis, and then the attention rightly will turn to what will be named the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. It is intended to restore the strength of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, for which Lewis nearly gave his life. Originally, the Act required federal “pre-clearance” of election law changes in several states. In 2014, the Supreme Court invalidated this provision, ruling it was no longer related to evidence of discriminatory practices in those states.

The battle over voter suppression has widened considerably since the Supreme Court decision. Advocates have found new ways to push back against restrictive voter identification laws, poll closures and other suppressive tactics. A re-charged Voting Rights Act named after Lewis would be the perfect way to provide further momentum for all of these efforts, as well as holding specific states to account as the law initially provided.

Since Mitch McConnell refused to recognize that voter suppression exists in America, taking back the Senate is a must for John Lewis to be remembered in this way. Here are three things we can do head in the right direction:

1) Avoid Losing the Focus on Racism
	Republicans have adopted multiple strategies to reduce voter registration and turnout because the more people that vote, the less likely they are to win. The long-standing Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition of 200 civil rights organizations which will make sure that identification of racism is a central element of the ongoing struggle. You can be certain that you understand every dimension of the effort to create a strengthened Voting Rights Act in John Lewis’ honor by staying in touch with the Leadership Conference.
2) Drive the Message Home in Alabama
	It is ironic that the one thing that destroyed Jeff Sessions’ political career in Alabama is the act of which he should be most proud. As Attorney General, he recused himself from the Mueller investigation. That is why Donald Trump made sure former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville won the Republican primary. Since Tuberville is out of his league, it enhances the chance that Democratic Senator Doug Jones can hold onto his seat. We need a net of 3 seats to take back the Senate, and it will make that a lot easier if we can pull this off, but it will be difficult. Now is the time to help.
3) Add to our House Majority
	The bigger the House majority we are able to build, the more likely we are to sustain a House majority over time. Flipping additional House seats requires us to pay attention and not let ourselves be fully distracted by Senate races. This missive is sponsoring three Zoom sessions over six weeks featuring and hosting swing district candidates who have already demonstrated their excellent potential for flipping a seat. The second session features the tireless Alyse Galvin, who has come from behind to run neck and neck with long time Representative Don Young in Alaska. This one-hour Zoom is scheduled for Thursday, August 6, at 6:30pm PST. To get the Zoom link, RSVP on our Facebook event or email me at dsh347@gmail.com.

It is just over a hundred days until we throw off this crushing burden we have been carrying around for four years. Imagine the new promise it will bring and strive to make it so.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#95: We Must Keep Our Eyes on this Prize

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.

Find out below how to participate in our zoom session with swing district Congressional candidate Carolyn Long!

Braxton Bragg was a terrible Civil War general, much unloved both by his soldiers and his fellow officers. He was a slaveholding plantation owner. His temper was legendary, and he specialized in bitter and unwarranted criticism of people he barely knew. He was a bad strategist, so Jefferson Davis ultimately relieved him of his command. If ever a military installation begged for renaming, it is Fort Bragg in North Carolina. If ever there was a man who would refuse to do it in order to protect our “heritage,” it is Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, the truth is that shielding our eyes from much of our past IS part of our heritage. Thus, we have chosen this time in our history to own up to the inconvertible fact that we have not been the land of the free. We embrace what has always been the best of the American experiment, our huge aspirations, our love for the idea of freedom and self-determination. We are not even close to finished with the American experiment. With agonizing slowness, our nation has kindled dreams for all, not just the Protestant white male property owners that were by far the most privileged after our independence from England. There was a reason why the Statue of Liberty was always seen as a beacon. It is not extinguished and we will not let that happen.

That’s why resisters are already emphasizing what we can become and what we can accomplish during the four years of the Biden presidency, before he stands aside for a younger leader. (All of this depends of course on us keeping our focus and thus maintaining our lead between now and November 3.) We recognize that there is a necessary unfinished agenda from the Obama presidency. Not the least is the salvaging and grand expansion of the Affordable Care Act. The repairs of Trump’s misdeeds will be paramount and must be addressed daily. The pandemic must be ended and the next one prevented. Every day, we must show that our country remembers what happened to George Floyd.

And there is so much more to be done early in President Biden’s term: protection of a woman’s right to choose, constantly under fire. Undoing the executive orders that accelerated environmental degradation. Getting us back into the Climate Accords and improving them. Shielding Dreamers. Restoring our position in the world community. Renewing global friendships and distancing ourselves from dictators. Addressing the income inequality that otherwise will surely unravel us. 

We feel the urgency to remake America, honoring what Barack Obama was able to achieve and going beyond it. We’re already mindful of the ways we will be constrained in January 2021 and beyond. Notable barriers will remain even after Trump takes his legendary misdeeds and untruths and starts to occupy his own rightful place in history, as the malevolent nativist divider of the American people. 

As we take on the post-Trump restoration of the American presidency, we will face three major obstacles, each of which is already causing misery among those that want to accelerate the coming reforms. In all three cases, the constraints are meaningful but manageable, if we are well led, stay together and get at least a slim majority in the United State Senate.

First, we are hampered by the constitutionally ordained makeup of the United States Senate, in its award of two Senators for each state regardless of its population. This was a necessary condition to form the Union in 1789, and gives oversized power to often conservative voters in rural states. This condition has no chance of being changed, since any constitutional amendment process would have to be agreed to in those same rural states. There is no point in being heartsick over it. It is important to note that some of the rural states that are lumped as one by critics have some purple coloring, including Alaska, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Maine, and New Hampshire, or are blue, like Vermont. Even South Dakota had a Democratic Senator up until 2018.

Second, we are constrained by Supreme Court, whose narrow conservative majority seems unlikely to shift in the next decade. We will live with the unnecessary arrival of Brett Kavanuagh and Neil Gorsuch into our lives for a generation or so. We will experience countless painful rulings from the Court during Joe Biden’s presidency. However, Roberts and Gorsuch recently played the key role in expanding employment protections to LGBTQ Americans under the Civil Rights Act. This is as consequential a ruling as there has been in years. Kavanagh helped Roberts block Trump’s continued attack on Dreamers. Splendidly, in a 5-4 decision Roberts treated certain protections for abortion clinics as settled law. This court will not necessarily erect major obstacles to a reform agenda led by Biden and Senate Democrats.

Third, we are constrained by the Senate’s own self-imposed rules, which in many cases require a supermajority (60 votes) to close off debate. It would take 50 votes to apply the “nuclear option” and eliminate this rule. Such Democratic Senators as Diane Feinstein and Joe Manchin are reluctant to do it, because it has worked in our favor to block Mitch McConnell, most notably in preventing the decimation of the Affordable Care Act through countless attacks, and in saving the Iran nuclear deal. Other Democrats believe now is the time to exercise the nuclear option, as they angle for major legislative action on climate change. 

This is an issue to watch closely, not getting caught up in former Majority Leader Harry Reid’s rhetoric, beseeching us to use the option. Reid was smart enough to never do it while he was in power. Democrats like Delaware’s Chris Coons (close to Biden) have defended the rule in the past. In showing a new interest in changing the rules to close debate (perhaps short of the nuclear option) Coons is signaling that Democrats will not accept McConnell using his minority powers to block major legislation on gun control, immigration and climate change. If we get the new Senate majority, guaranteeing that we won’t use the nuclear option represents disarmament, since its threat can induce concessions by Republican leaders. Eventually having to use it is an awful choice, because we will want desperately for 45 votes to have sway sometime in the future.

So, it behooves us to embrace and build from all that we can do within the existing rules of the Senate:

--- As with Trump, Biden needs only 50 votes to confirm federal judges and presidential appointments. If we gain the majority it will give him the opportunity to name the successor to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

--- Biden and his Vice President, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor can immediately restore our standing in NATO, renew our friendship with France and Germany, rescind Trump’s departure from various international agreements, re-visit the six nation accord with Iran; and develop a coherent US trade policy.

--- It will take time, but Biden and his EPA administrator and Interior Secretary can reverse all of the executive actions that Trump and his minions took eliminating environmental regulation.

--- Biden can find means to use the budget reconciliation process (which is not subject to the 60-vote rule for closing debate) to advance major fiscally oriented policies as Republicans recently did with the tax bill. For instance, reconciliation could be used to battle climate change by creating a huge green infrastructure “bank,” or modifying tax policy that advantages fossil fuels. This is in addition to returning to the Paris accords and working to boost the efforts of the states.

--- Absent action from Congress (and under Supreme Court scrutiny) Biden can use executive orders to protect transgendered persons, shield Dreamers, sharply increase the federal role in reinventing policing, and advance gun regulation.

--- Importantly, many of the provisions of the greedy Trump/McConnell 2017 tax law will expire in 2025. That will give Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer leverage on tax policy from early on in the Biden administration. McConnell simply blocking tax reform (as he would otherwise do) rather than participating in bi-partisan discussions would mean he would have almost nothing left of his corporate tax approach by mid-decade.

Beyond all this, within his existing powers and within the rules of the Senate President Biden can usher in an era where we have a President who acts like a President. We can step away from daily division, and enter a world where we can have some pride in our government and get some protection from it.

Let’s do these three things to find that place:

1) Continue to Flip House Seats
	The bigger the House majority we are able to build, the more likely we are to sustain a House majority over time. Flipping additional House seats requires us to pay attention to key races and to not let ourselves be fully distracted by Senate races. This missive is sponsoring three zoom sessions over the next six weeks featuring and hosting swing district candidates who have already demonstrated their excellent potential for flipping a seat. The first is Carolyn Long, running in Washington State’s 3rd Congressional District, centered in Vancouver, Washington, which is just north of Portland. Carolyn’s fresh and exciting candidacy gained her 48% of the vote in 2018. In 2020 we will put her over the top.  Would you like to join us at 4 pm Pacific time on Monday, July 20? Register here and we will spend an hour with Carolyn.
2) Warm Yourself in November by Winning Florida
	Donald Trump and Republican Governor Ron DeSantis are boosting our already good chances in Florida. Unfortunately for those over 65, they have done so by demonstrating early on that opening up businesses quickly is a priority over the health of older Floridians. Understandably, this virus mismanagement is sending older voters toward Biden. Of course the new hullaballoo will be Trump’s upcoming efforts to unmask Jacksonville during his convention speech. Lenny Curry, the Republican mayor of Jacksonville has indicated the health of the public is his primary concern. It is a great time to email him and remind him that the nation is watching and hoping he will stand up for what is right: MayorLennyCurry@coj.net.
3) Make Certain Voters Can Vote
	Voter suppression efforts are underway in several states, not least of which are Donald Trump’s efforts to misrepresent the safety and security of mail ballots. One way to prevent suppression is to guarantee voters can overcome obstacles in their path, including often confusing voter ID requirements. Vote Riders is the inventive national assistance program on voter ID, and it partners with voter registration and turnout organizations in multiple states. It is a good idea to make sure they have the resources to do their job.

If election day were today, that would be a very good thing. The polls look excellent, the Biden campaign seems well managed, and Donald Trump is insulting NASCAR. Four more months to continue our intensity of effort and end this nightmare.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington