#3: We're Not Even Close to Being Done

This is the next of a new series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

We will be sharing these messages every two weeks by eblast and on blog, Our Unfinished Work. Please click here to be added to our email list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can also read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement.

A surprising thing happened in America at 7 am on Thursday, December 17. In the 20-minute CBS news summary there was not a single mention of Donald Trump. There was no tweet revisited, con expanded upon, citizen counterpunched, scientific fact dismissed, or false election claim advanced. 

For those glorious 20 minutes, America’s possibilities were in view. On television, vaccines were administered and snowstorms described. Fresh, distinguished governmental officials were appointed with the new president detailing dreams they will all seek to realize. 

It turned out this was just a fleeting moment, but nonetheless we have seen a future where we can attend to the American agenda. In the meantime, Trump is occupying his last 30 days with an extraordinary set of rants and lies. He is conspiring with people who are as dysfunctional as he is. This is a pool more and more limited as time passes. It is up to us to move the country forward, limit his screen time, and try to decrease the damage.

How do you drive away from someone when they’re desperately clinging to your rear bumper? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris know what to do in the longer-term to put this bizarre person behind us. It’s a matter of getting things done. Administer the vaccine. Escape from the pandemic. Repair the economy. Address our country’s enormous wealth disparities. Fix the tattered Affordable Care Act, and tackle climate change as if lives depend upon it. Fight for racial justice in an all-new way. 

Before those goals are sought, we must retain our focus on the damage that Donald Trump will continue to cause between now and inauguration. We are using our phenomenal organizing skill to put Georgia in play on January 5 hoping to take advantage of dissension in the Georgia Republican ranks. You don’t get 80 million votes for your candidate and then stop.

Even now that Mitch McConnell has called the election, the damage to the democracy being caused by Trump is on the shoulders of the Republican leadership in the Senate. It was they that enabled Trump to advance his lies about fraud all the way from November 3 to the electoral college vote on December 14. They believed Trump would stop once the Supreme Court refused to hear his case. Since McConnell and Cornyn and Thune know Trump this expectation does not qualify as rational. Children waiting for Santa Claus to come have a stronger basis for their belief.

Trump’s current destruction is concentrated in three areas:

First, the fraudulent claims of election rigging and the ascendancy of Sidney Powell send a signal worldwide that we are not currently a beacon for the fair and peaceful transfer of democratic power. Imagine being an American diplomat somewhere in the world trying to talk a military leader into honoring the vote of his country’s citizens. Will our country sanction him after he tells made up stories about their voting machines?

Second, Trump’s last month has seen several actions by the Department of the Interior to expedite mining claims or decrease protections of existing wilderness areas. These projects include the transfer of public lands in Arizona for a huge copper mine, a helium drilling permit in a Utah wilderness area and open pit lithium mine in Nevada. As the New York Times outlines, a number of these actions are contestable by environmental organizations but a few have been timed to make reversal less likely. 

Third, the most significant rending of the constitution will come right at the end as Donald Trump makes a further mockery of the already mockable pardon process. Even if Trump ends up pardoning himself, and the courts uphold that pardon, it would not free him from charges that can be brought under state law in New York. Any number of miscreants from his administration will receive his pardon as will various other people who have received his attention, perhaps even Joe Exotic. There will be almost nothing that anyone can do about it except express dismay and find and keep a better president.

There are 100 things that we can do to stand in the way of the megalomaniacal person. Let’s start with these three:

1) Stop Tommy Tuberville
	There’s an argument that we should want an up or down vote in Congress on January 6 on whether to overturn the results of the electoral college which selected Joe Biden for President. This will be unsuccessful and will create enmity in the Republican party for several years. That’s why Mitch McConnell doesn’t want the vote to happen and why he’s trying to achieve a unanimous Republican caucus to prevent it. To have a vote at all requires at least one senator to join a small group home of especially disgruntled Republicans members of the House. Donald Trump has found new Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville who probably knows less about the constitution than he does. Tuberville may be willing to bring this matter to a vote. He shouldn’t because it’s just one more American trip through a garbage dump. We have had enough of that.  Email Tommy Tuberville and tell him that America wants him to do the right thing. He doesn't have an office yet since he won't be a senator till January so let's reach him at contact@tommyforsenate.com.
2) Win the Mining Battles One at a Time
	For decades the Natural Resources Defense Council has been the leading litigant on federal lands management. They are on the front lines of defense in stopping Trump’s new efforts to open up mining in protected areas. Now is a good time to sign up for their information briefs and to give them whatever financial boost is possible.
3) Do the Next Best Thing to Stopping Trump's Pardons
	There is no way to rescind presidential pardon powers. However there is a way to make our new President more successful. Give Joe Biden the Senate majority by winning the two seats in Georgia. The state has been flooded with money. At this point pick a smaller organization working hard with limited resources. A great choice is Mi Familia Vota seeking to expand Latino turnout.

In less than a month Joe Biden will be president and Kamala Harris will be vice president. We all did that together and we’re not close to being done. 

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#2: Getting the Truth Down From the Scaffold

This is the next of a new series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

We will be sharing these messages every two weeks by eblast and on blog, Our Unfinished Work. Please click here to be added to our email list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can also read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement.

It is too easy to fall into jibes about banana Republicans. It is more essential to see the continued challenge to the integrity of the election process as a huge problem for America, and one that isn’t going to go away soon. It tarnishes our democracy worldwide, and diminishes the trust of the American voter.

Trump’s reaction was foreshadowed well before the election. He said that either he would win, or that he would maintain that he was cheated out of winning. On this front, as historian Henry Adams (grandson of President John Quincey Adams) said, “I expected the worse, and it was worse than I expected.” Much more disheartening is that Republican Senators have gone AWOL. More than a month after the election, they have settled on the view that Trump has the “right” to pursue his increasingly outrageous ventures. Roger Stone is now claiming that North Korea delivered fake ballots to Maine harbors in the dead of night.

The shameful thing is that Marco Rubio and Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins and John Cornyn all know that Joe Biden is the president-elect. They know that putting Rudy Giuliani out there day after day has been a disorienting, democracy-damaging disaster, halted only by Giuliani contracting the virus. They will not honor their own oath of office for fear of retribution from Trump. Perhaps Henry Adams was foreshadowing Alexander, now nearing the end of his notable career, enabling Trump daily and gnashing his teeth at night. “It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. It was always the good men that did the most harm.” Perhaps not always, but if we all know that Trump is a con man, what does that make those who will not expose the con?

In the meantime, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are putting together a very encouraging and diverse team of senior advisers and heads of Cabinet agencies. Every day brings evidence that adults are in the room. Because it has to happen, a bi-partisan stimulus package will be agreed to in the upcoming week. Tellingly, this deal was made possible by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Manchin’s corralling of five Republican Senators represents good news and bad news for the next two years, if not the next four. Whether or not Democrats take back the Senate in the Georgia runoff elections of January 5, Manchin is showing that Mitch McConnell will not have the stranglehold that he had during much of the Obama presidency. McConnell will have a difficult time getting Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney to regularly walk the plank to support the goals of a Trump dominated party. 

This bodes well for much of Biden’s aims, but not for his most ambitious goals. Because he can issue executive orders and send John Kerry around the world, Biden will be able to claim a leadership position for the United States on climate change. But, Congress will not pass anything remotely tracking the scope of the Green New Deal. Similarly, even with Bernie Sanders wanting more, the health care agenda will be fixing the tattered Affordable Care Act and expanding its coverage.

With or without Manchin’s bi-partisan efforts, it would be glorious to claim the two Georgia seats and push McConnell away from the podium. Last minute donations can go to the turnout increasing New Georgia Project, which is doorbelling. Those resisters not yet signed up to do calls, texts and postcards can find a home at Common Power. 

This focus on Georgia reminds that beyond the Biden/Harris legislative/executive agenda for the next two years will be a hyper-focused nationwide battle over election systems and rules. This will be elevated by Republican refusals to accept the election results in six states in particular and everywhere else in general. The venue for false claims about large scale fraud will shift from the courts back to state legislatures. Terrified of Trump, Republican legislators and many of the Governors will put truth on the scaffold.

To lessen the spread of the virus, this year several states made it easier to vote by mail. In every instance, Republicans will try to change the conditions under which mail in ballots can be sought. In addition they will seek to decrease early voting, reduce polling locations, and add to voter identification requirements. Who knew it was okay to have a party obsessed with suppressing voting? They are trying to lower the turnout of all people who do not look like them. We can help make certain they do not succeed by doing these three things.

1) Find a Home for Your Voting Rights Advocacy
	You can’t be an effective voting rights advocate without getting regular information about our progress and what you can do to help. Hedrick’s Smith’s Reclaim the American Dream has a resource guide to national (and some regional) organizations focused on these issues. Stacey Abrams’ Georgia-based Fair Fight is organizing volunteers in each state and would like you to sign up. In most states, Indivisible chapters are focused on these issues. The national organization Vote at Home is centered entirely on mail-in voting. Beyond all of these organizations, it’s nothing but a great idea to ask a friendly state legislator who is the most effective voting rights advocate during legislative sessions.
2) Make Charles Grassley a Project
	This country badly needs a Republican United States Senator to aggressively vouch for the integrity of voting in America. It needs to be someone who has not regularly rebelled against Trump. Charles (Chuck) Grassley disappointed all of us in not blocking the Supreme Court hearings but he is nonetheless ideal. He has had good relations with Joe Biden, with whom he served for 30 years. He is retiring in two years, so Trump can’t touch him politically, and he is sore at Trump for firing Inspectors General of several Cabinet agencies. Time to send him a note and call him and ask him to use his influence to help restore the faith of voters. Use this form for your comments and call his Des Moines office at 515-288-1145. In a polite way, let them feel the intensity of your concern.
3) Guarantee Our Nationwide Capacity to Litigate
	The last two years have seen notable victories in state and federal courts by those fighting voter suppression and supporting the efforts of states to increase mail in voting and access to the polls. No one does this work better than the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. Even without your financial assistance, they will keep you posted on their full docket of cases. Checks from all of us will make them even stronger.

We secured 80 million votes on November 3 and we needed all of them. We worked hard for all of those votes. We will keep working that hard because that is what it has taken and will take to get Trump and Trumpism behind us.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington