#20: We're Standing Behind This Bet on America

See below for information on our special Zoom session with Mi Familia Vota on fighting voter suppression.

This is the next of our 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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks.

Either way you look at it is appropriate. On the one hand, you could check in on American politics and climb the same wall of worry you tried to scale the day before. It goes something like this--- With his big lie, planned from the outset, Trump has gravely damaged the integrity of the electoral process, and he hasn’t gone away. It is dismaying and does not portend well that we lost the Virginia governorship a year after Joe Biden won Virginia by ten points. It is unbelievable that Trump still owns that party after starting the insurrection of January 6, and scary that the party’s “leadership” has let its Q-Anon courting members run free.

It is a tough wall to climb, but of course you can accomplish it if you try. The story of the election is more about how the process and the country withstood the attack. Virginia’s Glen Youngkin could not be less like the candidates Trump is pushing across the country. Republican leaders are letting Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz run free, but 19 Republican Senators and 7 House members voted for the infrastructure bill. The understandably unloved Mitch McConnell will find a way to allow the debt ceiling to be lifted. 

On the other hand, we could set the worry wall aside and focus much more attentively and intensively on which party is in power, and what they have done so far. The education/climate change reconciliation bill will be passed and signed before the holidays, because every elected Democrat in Washington D.C. from Joe Manchin to Pramilla Jayapal to Bernie Sanders knows that it must be. It will represent the third element in a colossal legislative strategy which has lifted what government intends to do to boost the lives of its people. In the category of stepping up to specific, well identified challenges it will be as impactful of a legislative session as we have had in decades.

The advances in responding to the Covid economy, addressing unemployment, decreasing child poverty, rebuilding roads, bridges and transit systems, incentivizing carbon reduction and providing universal Pre-K will be monumental, without even including a myriad of other overdue measures. Unfortunately, the huge movement that took back the House, Senate and Presidency is so caught up in the conventional liberal/progressive narrative that activists can’t seem to form complete sentences about what has been achieved. You would think these things were accomplished in secret. The fact that there are maniacal people pushing the Republican “agenda” makes this year’s long list legislative successes more consequential, not less.

So far, many a polled American voter is not associating Joe Biden with much of any of the good news. We have been averaging almost 600,000 new jobs a month. Last month, new unemployment claims were at their lowest level in 52 years. The infrastructure plan has had public support of over 70%, but Biden is learning that even the most richly deserved credit is difficult to gain. 

Of course, this is unfortunate, since many of those who thus far are not offering credit to this point are the independent voters we need to vote with us less than twelve months from now. But our upside potential for November 2022 is high, because independent voters in battleground states have already walked away from Trumpism and show no signs or heading back in Trump’s direction. They like the approaches that Biden is behind, although not crediting him. The situation is entirely unlike the aftermath of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, where independent voters walked away from the substance of the law.

We are faced with enormous pandemic and post-pandemic economic, social, environmental, and international challenges. Wouldn’t you want the specific ways in which we meet those challenges to be at the apex of the daily national political discussion? We are making the bet the voters will ultimately recognize that what the government does with and for us is what counts the most. We are making a big bet on the importance of new investments in America.

That’s a bet that doesn’t allow for any venal tweet to sear your synapses. It is a bet that requires all of us to get back to work. We know the ten things we need to do. Why not go ahead and do them?

Joe Biden’s legislative actions match up well with the key Senate and House races. Republican Senators are retiring in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Blue collar women and men have been waiting for some time to see what Democrats will do which touches their lives, and Joe Biden has given them the right answer. Also to our advantage is the dumpster fire nature of Republican discourse. Independent voters don’t believe Trump when he says the insurrection was “peaceful” and the insurrectionists were “great people”.

We can make November 8, 2022 the right kind of big day in America. That means forbidding malaise from creeping in, and it means not waiting until January. Let’s give our country a holiday gift by doing one, two, or three of these things:

1) Get Behind La Familia Vota
	The less told story of the 2020 Biden/Harris campaign is the impact of the growing Latino vote. The news media got fixated on many Cuban-Americans from Dade County in Florida voting for Trump. They missed the larger truth that Latino voters put Biden over the top in Arizona and Nevada and were consequential in every single state that we won by a narrow margin. White male voters are on a permanent decline as a percentage of the total voting population, but Republican operatives continue their worship of those guys. America’s changing demographic is a huge opportunity for Democrats when they do not take voters of varying ethnicities for granted. The best way of all for activists to make certain these opportunities are seized is to support Mi Familia Vota. In 2020 Mi Familia Vota had the largest field operation in the Latino community. This report describes their monumental impact on the 2020 election and how you can give them a boost today. You should also sign up for this blog’s special appearance of Eduardo Sainz, Mi Familia Vota’s national field director. Email me if you would like a link to hear and participate in Eduardo Sainz’ discussion of this year’s plans. The Zoom is from 7-8 pm Pacific time on Sunday, December 5.
2) Pick Your Organizing Platform Now
	Many of us have already selected regional or national organizations to be our guide for our political activity. A lot of Indivisible cells are still active, and our blog followers swear by such organizations as the Movement Voter Project and the giving network Focus for Democracy. There are thousands of local working groups doing calls, writing postcards and doorbelling where possible. If you are without someone to organize your activity, sign up for Common Power which mobilizes volunteers from across the country and is active in every battleground states. They partner with the most vibrant of local activist organizations and campaigns, following the idea of “our boots, your ground.”
3) Present Your Views to Ron Johnson
	Unbelievably, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson called the holiday parade tragedy in Waukesha, Wisconsin "the reality of Democratic governance". That was before he issued a statement with Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin urging outside groups not to exploit the event. Email the Senator’s press aides and tell them they should help him to select his second idea over his first.

There are countless commentaries about the current high level of political tensions in America. It isn’t an all-new thing, but that doesn’t mean it can’t diminish our nation in an all-new way. We won’t let that happen.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#19: Do This After an Alarm Goes Off

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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks.

You woke up with an awful feeling on Wednesday, November 9, 2016. From then on, everything you feared about Donald Trump transpired. There were temporary moments of relief, as when three Republican Senators refused to terminate the Affordable Care Act. For the most part, the four years were filled with venality, with Trump’s partially successful efforts to wreck our government, and with his final unsuccessful coup.

Five years is a long time to fight back. For the most part, we have been relentless. We won Virginia in 2017, the House of Representatives in 2018 and the Senate and the Presidency in 2020. A year ago, we mustered by far the largest presidential vote total in our country’s history.

However, our loss of the Virginia governorship Tuesday night was not even close to inevitable. Pundits will read more into to it than is there is to read, but it still represents an alarm going off. Post-mortems are emphasizing the electoral success of the Youngkin focus on education and parental participation, which certainly was a voter interest. But you wouldn’t be hearing nearly as much about it if Democrats in Congress had given Joe Biden (and Terry McAuliffe) the legislative victory that he needed the week before Biden left for Europe. The fact that the “human infrastructure” and climate change bill will be passed in the next week or so is insufficiently consoling.

Regarding that bill, it was standard negotiating practice for Bernie Sanders to start with a very large number, for Joe Biden to camp out with a smaller but still huge spending amount with plenty of new domestic policy initiatives and for Joe Manchin to insist upon a much smaller number. Biden has known all along that he only has 50 Senate votes. In the political battleground, he has been seeking more at the outset in order to get more when he settles for less. In the meantime, the House Progressive Caucus has also done what comes naturally, holding up the bipartisan infrastructure bill to get traction on Medicare expansion, drug prices, universal pre-k, and strategies to decrease carbon emissions. Joe Manchin, Nancy Pelosi, Pramilla Jayapal, Chuck Schumer, Krysten Sinema and Nancy Pelosi all know this must be resolved soon. Manchin’s newest roadblocking statement is just an effort to gain a little more leverage.

All of this makes sense, except that the messy strategy for governing ran into what should have been a cleaner and clearer political message on why we should be selected to govern. In that sense, it was an unforced error at a time that such an error can’t be afforded. The margins for next year are too tight. Independent voters are happy to turn against the party holding the White House in off year elections. They didn’t need another reason. And there are other unhappy circumstances. No one is thinking right now that it is morning in America. We are worn down by the pandemic and the changes it has wrought in our daily existence. We wake up each morning to social media generated wars and the continued presence of the Big Lie, which in other generations would have been immediately dismissed by both political parties.

What do we have going for us? 

• We have demographic destiny behind us. The only demographic reliably voting Republican is white males, who represent their smallest percentage of the American electorate ever. That’s why Val Demings in running even in the polls in Florida in her challenge of Marco Rubio, and why Beto O’Rourke has a real chance to defeat Greg Abbott and become Governor of Texas.
• The continued presence of Donald Trump wounds our souls but helps our chances. Glen Youngkin won by distancing from Trump, which Trump will not permit in most races. The Senate seats being contested include several swing states where Republican Senators are retiring, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. In all four cases, the Republican winning the primary will be much closer to Trump than was Glen Youngkin. These candidates may well send independent voters fleeing.
• The resistance has not gone away. We still have the capacity to field millions of donors and campaigners, and most everyone still has the intent to be fielded.
• One might wish that more of Joe Biden’s 81 million voters would understand what he will have accomplished before Congress adjourns for the year. Among the initiatives in the American Rescue Plan, The American Jobs Plan, and the framework for the soon to pass expansion of the social safety net are:
• A child tax credit that over time could decreases child poverty in America by over half.
• The single largest investment the United States has ever made in public transit.
• Provision of pandemic-related unemployment insurance to a quarter of America’s workers.
• Building, preserving, or retrofitting over two million homes and commercial buildings
• Providing pre-school opportunities for all three- and four-year-old children.
• Reducing greenhouse gases by over a billion tons.

It would be perfectly fine for this liberal or that progressive to lament what is missing from the Democratic legislative agenda, especially since the Congress will not be passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. However, a little less sorrow and a little more pride would be in order. After the pride is mustered and we understand that the alarm just went off, we can do these three things.

1) Expand Our Efforts to Increase Voter Participation
	A previous missive outlined ways in which we can support registration and voting in the African-American, Latino/a and Asian-Americans communities that Republicans are seeking to exclude. The missive emphasized national organizations. Walk the Walk USA has done better, identifying local organizations with an excellent track record with targeted populations in targeted states. They include the Arizona Coalition for Change, Georgia’s Asian-Americans Advancing Justice, Casa Pennsylvania, the North Carolina Black Alliance ncblackalliance.org, Make the Road Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin’s Voces de la Frontera If you were to use that magnet to affix one list to the refrigerator this would be a great choice.
2) Every Week, Call the Lie a Lie
	On the one hand, it is exciting to have Donald Trump say his supporters may not vote in 2022 unless the 2020 election result is reversed, and he is declared President. On the other hand, we need to continue our work to prevent his continued desecration of the American political process. One way to do that is to support those of his party who publicly insist that Trump lost, an exceedingly patriotic thing to do. The Republican Accountability Project is the ticket now that they have placed TRUMP LOST billboards in New York’s Times Square and in seven swing states.
3) Work to Revive John Lewis’ Bill
	Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski worked with Democratic Senators this week to develop a compromise version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. She turned out to cast the only Republican vote to halt her party’s unconscionable filibuster. When John Lewis died, Susan Collins memorialized him as a man who “changed history at great personal sacrifice.” Let’s call her Senate office to remind her of her sincere admiration of John Lewis, and her clear path to honoring him now. Call Senator Collins’ office at (202) 224 2523.

It is just a year now before we decide how much support Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will get from the House and Senate in the final two years of this term. There is no point in talking about Mitch McConnell and his contemptuous approach to Democratic presidents unless we are willing to do something about it, which we are.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#18: Do These Ten Things and Trump Will Fail

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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks.

The threat to America from Donald Trump has been huge since 2016. For getting your attention, there is nothing like having a malevolent, narcissistic, anti-constitutionalist on the scene. Though there are predictions that his forces will get a rebound in 2022, the formula for continuing to push him toward history’s dustbin is simple. However, it needs to be attended to with more intensity than we are presently mustering.

We need clear-headedness as well as tirelessness. Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan set Trump resisters on fire weeks ago by insisting that the constitutional crisis is no longer threatened, that instead it has arrived. Luckily, Kagan is overstated on all fronts as he details Trump’s various coup attempts, and the dramatic actions in Congress on January 6. Yes, Mike Pence ultimately did the right thing, but Kagan makes it sound like Pence stood alone in insisting upon the constitutional transfer of power. He was on the same page as Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Barr, acting attorney Jeffrey Rosen, Chuck Schumer, Mitt Romney and yes, Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell. As Politico senior editor Jack Shafer notes, Trump’s current rages and lies which seem to impress Kagan could well be more a sign of weakness than of strength. 

Surely, eternal vigilance is demanded, since it is the price of liberty. Rather than lamenting that the constitutional crisis has arrived, we should be recognizing that it has been averted (for now) and will be avoided for as long as Democrats remain in power, and perhaps even longer than that.

Kagan also details the discomfiting circumstances that have emerged after January 6. He emphasizes the attempts by Republican state legislators to “audit” the 2020 ballots, their assaults on voting rights in Texas, Arizona and Georgia, the continued existence of the big lie; the large cohort of anti-vaxxers, Trump’s continued dominance over his party, and the sinkhole that social media has become. But voting laws have been improved in 25 states, non-vaxxers are dwindling by the week, and none of the big lie “audits” have a chance of success.

Ross Douthat got it right in the New York Times. He tells liberals and progressives that they are in the process of securing the America they have sought. Of course that seems odd because there is so much more than must be done. But the American Rescue Plan (focusing on COVID, the economy, and child poverty), the bipartisan American Jobs Plan (centering on physical infrastructure), and the upcoming $2 trillion American Families Plan (addressing education and social welfare) will all be law by mid-November. This is an enormous set of legislative accomplishments. It was planned by Joe Biden from the outset. It has been made possible in part by the maligned Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, and in part by Trump’s January 5 Georgia election nosedive.

Perhaps a celebration seems a bit premature since there is no guarantee that we will maintain control over the House and the Senate in November 2022. There is even less certainty that we will be able to get many more Democratic Senators, which would be beneficial because Manchin wouldn’t be able to hold us back on reducing carbon emissions.

There are simple strategies for expanding the House and Senate margins and getting ready for the November 2024 presidential election. We know exactly what to do. It would be an unbelievable if we didn’t do it at all, or at enough scale. Many of these matters have been discussed in previous missives. Here are the ten strategies that we should affix to our refrigerators and act upon each week:

1) Boost Latino/a Registration and Voting
	Republicans are working hard at voter suppression because the 2020 Census has reconfirmed their demographic destiny. White males are now the sole major demographic group that supports Trump, and their share of the voting population is the smallest it has been in American history. Democrats must not take any ethnicity or population segment for granted, as they proved in 2020 when they lost Florida because Cuban-Americans voted for Trump. For an organization that will stay focused on Latino/a registration and voting from now until November 2022, you can’t beat Mi Familia Vota.
2) Increase African-American Registration and Voting
	Not to revisit a wound, but a major reason the blue wall did not hold in 2016 is the lower than expected African-American turnout in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which was reversed in 2020. There are numerous local and statewide organizations attending to these matters, but it is never a bad idea to start with Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight. We would not have 50 United States Senators without her, and with our help she will be the next Governor of Georgia.
3) Increase Asian-American Registration and Voting
	Democratic vote totals among Asian-American voters have not been as considerable, but Democratic candidates have still benefited from these margins in nearly every state. Asian and Pacific Islander-American Vote is the national go-to organization.

4) Fight Ongoing Voter Suppression
	There is hardly a political strategy more redolent of moral decrepitude than impeding another citizen’s intention to vote. Republicans have shamelessly invented voter fraud problems to suppress the vote. The unlikely strongest force standing in their way along with the American Civil Liberties Union is the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Subscribe to their Briefing and support them any other way you can. Keep in mind the ultimate goal is voting by mail.
5) Target Seditionists
	In the midst of an insurrection, there are those in Congress who voted to refuse to accept electoral vote reports from targeted states. These are members of the “Sedition Caucus”. There is hardly a better test of unsuitably to serve in the United States Congress. At least two Political Action Committees have been organized to unseat the most politically vulnerable of these members. These are Defeat the Sedition Caucus run by the Progress Action Fund and the Treason Caucus by the Voter Protection PAC.
6) Convince Companies not to Support Seditionists
	For a time after January 6, large American corporations steered clear of members of Congress who had tried to take down our country. Now their feet are starting to get cold, because they don’t want to lose influence with those members. Deserving of your participation and support is the number one monitor of those companies and advocate for steering them away from seditious elected officials. That is Citizens for Ethics in Government (CREW).

7) Reform Republicanism
	Whatever one can say about the Lincoln Project, its attack mode was not targeted to draw in whatever moderate Republicans are left in the land. The most effective organization on that track is Sarah Longwell’s Center Action Now. It is not for liberals and progressives, but for those who might once have been a Republican and who want to help Center Action Now expand a middle ground. If one is of that disposition and wants to use that frame to defeat Trump, “taking the pledge” is encouraged here.
8) Fight Back Against Lies on Social Media
	After you have seen the thousandth misinforming article on social media on vaccination or elections, you could resign yourself. Or you could be a part of the growing number that expects social media to develop and apply standards. Use stronger.org to report misinformation on COVID and vaccines.

9) Target and Support Selected House and Senate Candidates
	Between now and November of 2022, several organizations will promote lists of targeted candidates. They will focus upon races we can win to add to our fragile majorities in the House and Senate. The appeal of being guided by such lists or donating to all or some of their targeted candidates is to avoid wasting donation dollars by supporting candidates who have no choice to win or those who are sure to win by a wide margin. Among the very best of these lists (and funding portals) is that of Swing Left They are starting with six Senate races and will update every quarter. Postcard writing has also become a key strategy for those who are not doing in-person campaigning. Often the most aggressive postcard writing is through the cells of Indivisible.
10) Pick Your Own Excellent Candidate
	It’s important to give candidates who need money the resources they must have at the time when they can most benefit from those resources. At this moment, one could already identify candidates who are certain to do excellent work, are very likely to win any primaries they have, and are in important races to expand our lead in the House and the Senate. The wise thing is to do our research and not get swept away by an unwinnable race, such as Amy McGrath’s candidacy in 2020 trying to unseat Mitch McConnell. She lost by 19% of the vote. In 2022, a good race to start with is Rep. Tim Ryan’s very promising effort to fill the vacant Ohio Senate seat.

It has been difficult to stay focused on defeating the cult of American mean-spiritedness and misdirection that Trump exemplifies. As the pandemic recedes, the temptation will be to ignore Trump, revel in life, and experience love, adventure, and compassion. Sometimes we need to share the time spent on those splendid activities with the most difficult thing. In this case, that thing is making certain every single week to do the work that will make Donald Trump fail.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#17: Donald Trump, Please Keep Doing What You Are Doing

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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks.

The idea that California regularly leads the nation down inventive or progressive new paths is a shibboleth. California has certainly been a leader in clean air regulation, but Minnesota has been ahead on fighting poverty. It was Washington’s cities that started things going on the $15 an hour minimum wage. Fighting the pandemic, both Washington’s Jay Inslee and Ohio’s Mike DeWine have stood out through firmness and consistency more than has California’s Gavin Newsom.

However, California just distinguished itself. It became the first to significantly test and improve the formula for beating the forces of Donald Trump in the fall of 2022.

This counts for a lot. Rarely are mid-term elections positive for the party that is in power. At this point. the “generic” Congressional ballot presently shows only a 2% lead for Democrats, putting Nancy Pelosi’s majority in peril. Even though there are several Republican Senatorial retirements and promising races redound, there is no comfort to be had with the elections just over a year ahead. Thus, any strategies that can be perfected today will bode well for keeping both the Senate and the House behind Joe Biden where they belong.

Political analysts think they have found something in the California recall that will provide a blueprint for Democratic campaigning in the next year. The recall race looked much closer six weeks before election day. In the final weeks, leading Republican candidate Larry Elder changed his mind after initially declaring that Joe Biden won the presidential election “fairly and squarely”. Beset by Trump and Trump’s supporters, he altered his course. He started talking about “shenanigans” and absent evidence of fraud refused to say whether he would accept the election’s outcome. It is widely believed that his Trump style election denialism cost him dearly in the polls. The “no on recall” ended up winning by nearly three million votes.

The Republican former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer, who trailed Elder, had it right when he said that the unsubstantiated claims of election fraud depressed the Republican vote. Meanwhile the Democrats increased their turnout by effortlessly tying Elder to Trump’s now endless fraud claims. Since those claims became dominant only during and after the fall of 2020, their electoral impact is only now being tested. The California recall provides early and positive news that “stop the steal” is old news that appeals only to Trump’s core supporters, and not even all of them. 

More than ever, and even among independent voters, Trump turns out voters who are against him more than he does those who are for him. In part, that is because he is incapable of taking himself out of the story, so it would be impossible for aides to convince him to step back if he is hurting a candidate. Plus, his cries that even the clearest election result is “rigged” makes Republican voters think their vote is worthless, so they are less likely to cast it.

As important, the Newsom forces made Elder the MAGA candidate on vaccine denialism and COVID non-management. Unluckily for the Trump backed candidate, the majority of independent voters favor vaccine mandates and related government efforts to defeat the pandemic. It wasn’t difficult for Newsom to make Larry Elder Trump’s political brother, since Trump insisted on it. And Trump will keep on making himself the issue across the country in 2022.

In California, COVID management became the second part of the “Name the villain, describe the stakes” Democratic strategy. If someone can be accurately labeled the MAGA candidate, it follows that they will be apologists for anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. These MAGA candidates will be running against candidates who are treating the pandemic like the public health emergency that the public recognizes. For the majority of the besieged populace, these stakes are huge. They want the pandemic to come to an end. Trump long ago ceded the ground of recognizing the pandemic’s ravages and deploying government to conquer it. Through all of challenges of the Delta variant, Biden has seized this ground.

“Name the villain, describe the stakes” will not be a winning strategy in every Congressional district. However, the California approach suggests that the number of districts in which it will be a winner is growing. Now more than ever, the strategies that Trump uses to gain the allegiance of his core supporters are anathema to the very independents that Republican candidates need. He is unlikely to run for President in 2024, but we should want his lying, felonious, malevolent insurrectionist self around for November 2022.

Let’s continue to confront him by focusing on the seditionists he loves most of all, and otherwise joining the battle he has framed:

1) Virginia Hinges on Battling for the Right to Choose
	Virginia is one of two states (the other is New Jersey) that have gubernatorial elections this fall. Since Governor Ralph Northam is term limited, former Governor Terry McAuliffe is the Democratic Candidate. He is in a close race with businessperson Glenn Youngkin, endorsed by Trump. Democrats are using the widespread oppositition to the Texas abortion law (which allows neighbors to file civil suits against women getting an abortion) to increase the votes of independent suburban women. Candidate Youngkin was caught on tape saying that he was waiting to get elected to “go on the offense” against the right to choose. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia is fielding campaign teams in the DC suburbs to increase the turnout of independent voters. This is the right time to make an investment.
2) Yes, the Lincoln Project is Still Telling the Truth About Trump
	To some, the Lincoln Project has been a bit annoying, because they are staffed by former Republican operatives who cannot abide Trump or his brand, even though some of them helped pave the way for his arrival. However, this former inside position makes their political ads even more inventive and creative and relentless. You can share these ads with every list you have and everyone you know and help expand the Lincoln Project’s impact. Have a look at the Lincoln Project's site. Here is an example of a Lincoln video that could benefit from your distributional assistance.
3) Report COVID Misinformation Every Day
	On the human side, we can and must save lives. Every day, lies about the vaccine and even about masking prevent people from protecting themselves against severe illness or death. On the political side, we cannot maintain our majorities in the House and Senate unless we defeat the virus. Reporting misinformation should be our daily duty. Stronger.org provides this guide to reporting false information you receive through Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Do not count upon this social media companies to do the right thing on their own. They won’t.

You have already made a pledge to yourself to not take November 2022 for granted. You have promised yourself to start increasing your activity week to week. It is time to keep the promise.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#16: What to Do About Donald Trump Loving Alabamans to Death

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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks.

You could be around abnormal behavior so long that it starts to seem normal, or at least commonplace.

The surreal could begin to seem real. Your adjustments to abhorrent behavior could go from the short term to the longer term, or they could become permanent.

Is this our situation in 2021, in America? A billionaire who pays marginal wages to hundreds of thousands of people is hailed as a hero for using what he otherwise could have paid them so he could take a sub-orbital flight. Dogecoin was established to satirize cryptocurrency markets and the “coins” are now collectively $43 billion. As many as 15% of Americans believe a cult that says politicians are kidnapping children and drinking their blood. Up to 50% of the population gets at least some of their “news” from social media which in fact, has no news. 

And that’s nothing up against our response to a deadly virus. Nearly 80 million adult Americans have yet to get vaccinated. The Delta variant is destroying the bodies or ending the lives of thousands of unvaccinated people. The South is a pandemic war zone. There is a run on the horse de-wormer Ivermectin, espoused as a COVID treatment by some right-wing media. Republican Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott zealously weaken protections against the virus. With the lowest vaccination rate in the country, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (also a Republican) desperately moves to strengthen them. 

All of them are bit players, compared to Donald Trump. He is the only person in the country who could singlehandedly, immediately and sharply decrease the number of anti-vaxxers. Seventeen of the eighteen states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Trump. The most bizarre situation is starkly before us. A man who claims an important role in the development of life saving vaccines, and who himself was in danger of death by COVID, is unable to control the monster he created. At this point, he is causing the death of other human beings. 

There has always been a choice. You could have an elected official who articulates her or his worries about the reach of governmental actions, or the ability of government to carry out this or that complex program. This is a loony hypothetical considering Trump, DeSantis and Abbott, but an elected critic of government could still retain the ability to identify extraordinary dangers to the public and make certain that government responds to them, saving their citizens from agonizing deaths.

Imagine having to deal with the knowledge that you have caused people to die because their ravaged lungs can’t give their body enough oxygen. Knowing that, and knowing Governor Kay Ivey’s pleas that “the unvaccinated people are letting us down”, Trump came up with this at his Alabama rally.

The lame attempt: "You know what? I believe totally in your freedoms. You got to do what you have to do, but I recommend: Take the vaccines. I did it – it's good," he said.

After some boos, the spineless retreat. "That's alright. You got your freedoms. But I happen to take the vaccine. If it doesn't work, you'll be the first to know. I'll call Alabama and say, 'Hey you know what?' but it is working. But you do have your freedoms."

The freedom to get a deadly communicable disease, and transmit it to others? As it turns out, they love Trump to death in Alabama.

Six months after we could have approached herd immunity, we will overcome this. With the new FDA full approval of the Pfizer vaccine (and soon the Moderna vaccine) companies, governments, schools and universities will issue vaccine mandates. These will cover many millions more people, further boosting the vaccine uptick of the last week. By October, hospitalization rates may well recede again, especially in the several states where over 80% of adults have already had at least one shot. The booster shots that have already started will reduce the number of breakthrough infections. And slowly but very surely, we will defeat the virus.

What will we be left with, after an awful two years, and with much of the world still beset by the virus? Besides relief when the virus again recedes and the deaths dwindle further, hopefully we will be left with anger, and not the kind that renders one non-functional. This is the kind of anger that propels us to reject through the November 2022 ballots this surreal argument that Fox foments and Trump abets--- that personal freedom has anything to do giving someone else a deadly communicable disease.

Our success in 2022 will depend in large measure on how Joe Biden and our government has done in defeating the virus, and whether the economy continues to be rebuilt. We can do these three things to keep people alive and move in the right direction.

1) Report Social Media Misinformation
	Google helped start a new coalition called Stronger.org to fight against rampant vaccine misinformation. It partners with health care advocacy organizations and spreads the truth about the COVID vaccine. You can get on their email list, figure out how to get involved, and donate. As important, the organization will guide you on how to monitor social media and report misinformation.
2) Remember the Old School Yell
	What if a college football coach were the highest paid employee in a state? What if he assumed the responsibility of guiding young men? What if he was a resolutely anti-vaccine, even in the face of a new state mandate? What if, thus far, the president of the university is at least thinking about standing tall about the obligations of the football coach, regardless of any positions of athletic boosters? It is all there at Washington State University with President Kirk Schulz and football coach Nick Rolovich. Write Schulz’ chief of staff Christine Hoyt at christine.hoyt@wsu.edu and express your feelings about university leadership.
3) Join the Campaign Against Virulent Lauren Boebert
	Eastern Colorado member of Congress Lauren Boebert is the perfect target for those of us seeking to beat an aggressive anti-vaxxer. She has called government officials who advocate for vaccination “Needle Nazis”. She won by six percent in 2020 and will face a strong opponent in the fall of 2022 in rancher and State Senator Kerry Donovan. Spend your coffee money today.

It is time to understand that the personal freedom Trump is talking about is the freedom to kill other people with a deadly, highly transmissible virus. Let’s act accordingly.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#15: Time To Take Advantage of a Growing Republican Schism

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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks.

In earlier times, to call anything part of the “infrastructure” could get you cold shouldered at a Capitol Hill reception. It was thought to be the most wonky and un-astute of terms, to be carefully avoided any time someone wanted to pass or even talk about a bill about highways, transit or water supply.

Now it is a word that provides sanctuary. Those seeking protection are the 17 Republican Senators (including Mitch McConnell) who plan to complete this deal with Joe Biden over the protests of Donald Trump, who doesn’t want Biden to get a win. These Senators will continue to ignore Trump on this matter because:

• They have known for as long as they have been in politics that our highways, bridges, and other public systems are troubled by under-investment.
• The Senate compromise contains any number of projects from which their own states will benefit, a fact which can easily be made known to voters.
• Trump himself promised an infrastructure bill which would have had some of the same elements, though it would have done far less for public transit, and nothing for community broadband, and electric vehicle recharging.
• They have been looking for something they could get away with doing with Democrats, because they wanted to believe that could happen.

Even in the worst of years, Republican and Democrats cooperate on any number of uncontroversial matters, just to keep government going. However, the percentage of proposals that are seen only through a partisan lens has grown, and with it the enmity born of constant dispute. It hasn’t been as much fun to go to the office anymore.

Excepting the infrastructure bill, in the past few decades there hasn’t been a bigger distance between what Republican Senators want for the country and what they are willing to do. A majority of Senate Republicans would have always passed a bill to protect Dreamers, or declared the election decided by late November, or kept the United States closer to NATO. They would have done such things if the fear of retribution from Trump and his hench-people had not been so high. 

They have not been inventing the danger of retribution, and it isn’t just in the House, where the early execution of Rep. Mark Sanford by Trump was watched with a shudder by any DC Republican with a soul and a pulse. In the Senate, Trump-inspired electoral vulnerability contributed to the retirement of Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee in 2018.

A huge bi-partisan infrastructure bill may signal the beginning of the end of an era. Consistent with his previous behavior, Trump has threatened to recruit primary opponents against the 17 Republican miscreants and thus throw them out as RINOS (Republicans in Name Only). Those threatened are privately celebrating that it is an empty threat. Only 3 of the 17 apostates are up for re-election in 2022. Six are retiring and are leaving openings in their states for good Democratic candidates. Lisa Murkowski is already being challenged because of multiple wonderful slights of Trump. That leaves John Hoeven of North Dakota and Todd Young of Indiana to be “primaried” by Trump, and both are untouchable.

We don’t have to like Mitch McConnell even the slightest bit (and we don’t), but we can still be pleased he is ignoring Trump completely on policy issues and battling it out with him over candidates to try to win back the Senate in 2022. In several states, retiring Senators, McConnell or the Republican Senate Campaign Committee are courting candidates in direct opposition to Trump’s pick. What Democrats have daydreamed about is emerging - a Republican schism that works to their advantage.

In the fall there will be a deal among Democrats for a second budget reconciliation bill. Joe Manchin and Kristin Sinema will eventually provide the necessary votes for significant new Biden-proposed expenditures on education and social welfare, which themselves were initially called “human infrastructure” because of the electoral magic of the term. There may be two more bipartisan compromises, focusing on competitiveness with China, and police practices.

And then we will be ready to see what the American people think about all of this. In part, the 2022 elections will be a referendum on Biden’s first year. The economy will remain strong due to the American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure package. The pandemic will finally have been quelled, so voters will show that they like what they see. 

In the face of this good news Donald Trump’s plan is to make it all about Donald Trump, with continued exotic variations on the big lie, even though the Arizona Cyber Ninjas have not found any traces of bamboo. Mitch McConnell’s plan is to try to paint Democrats as out of control, though it is clear that his real grudge is that they are in control. Our collective plan is to keep the intensity of effort alive that took back the Senate, House and Presidency over a four-year period. We can move ourselves along nicely by doing these three things:

1) Combat the Sedition Caucus
	There needs to be consequences for the 137 House members and 7 Senators who voted to overturn the Pennsylvania election results on January 6. It is right to see them as the Sedition Caucus. It is fair and just to expect companies who make political contributions to move away from elected officials who are unwilling to uphold the Constitution. Pushed along by the Lincoln Project and the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Toyota has reversed its position and dried up its contributions to these members of Congress. It is time to expect Anheuser-Busch do the same. Write corporate vice president Daniel Keniry at Daniel.Keniry@anheuser-busch.com. Tell him that his company’s support for members of Congress who underpin the big lie is decreasing your taste for Michelob and Stella Artois.
2) Call Susan Collins Out of Order
	Susan Collins voted to convict Donald Trump for his role in making the insurrection. Subsequently, she fought in a losing cause to establish a bi-partisan commission to investigate all the events of January 6. One would think that the failure of her own caucus to step up would inhibit Senator Collins from attacking the Speaker of the House on her own efforts. It turns out Collins believes Pelosi was “partisan” in denying Representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks seats on the investigative panel the House has commissioned. Susan Collins knows Jim Jordan, and knows that he denies that January 6 happened. Susan Collins understands exactly what happened, and it is shameful that she is playing these games. Tell her that is what you don’t like by calling her at 202-224-2523.
3) Expand Our Senate Majority One Senator at a Time
	It is amazing how much better it is to have 50 votes in the Senate rather than 48. As we all remember that outcome was only secured when the once unthinkable happened and Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock were elected in the January 5 Georgia runoff elections. Both of those victories were built from the ground up by tireless candidates who started early and never stopped. That is the kind of candidate Rep. Val Demings is. Her role as one of the managers of the Trump insurrection impeachment was stellar. She is articulate and principled and with your help will be the next Senator from Florida. Donate today if you can. Or make this a project going forward.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has announced that Donald Trump is meeting with his “cabinet” and is “ready to move forward in a real way.” These people are not going to vanish from the political scene if we are not as focused as they are bizarre.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#14: When it Was 2021, It Was a Very Good Year

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.  

Please email me 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, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks. If you would like to participate in a monthly working section of activists please email dsh347@gmail.com. The Cockeyed Activists meet the last Sundays of the month, the next meeting will be July 25 at 7pm PDT.

As Democrats skirmish with Democrats over the infrastructure bill and what comes after, it is good to remember three elements of the good news for our country that did not seem possible a year ago:

1. Joe Biden is off to an excellent start, getting the pandemic under control, restoring America worldwide, passing the American Rescue Plan using the 50-vote budget reconciliation process and utilizing executive orders to undo much of Trump’s damage.
2. The bi-partisan infrastructure bill called the American Jobs Plan is still slated to pass this fall. It authorizes an unprecedented level of investment in public transit, railroads, highways, bridges, broadband, electric vehicle charging stations, water supply systems, and the electricity grid. It is the biggest investment in public transit in our history.
3. Joe Biden never expected that the final infrastructure bill would include the “human infrastructure” elements in his original proposal. Several of these measures will be a part of a second budget reconciliation process which will likely emerge as the American Families Plan, focused on education and health care. Joe Manchin has already agreed to provide the 50th vote, depending on the scope of the plan. 

Joe Biden was the man with the plan from the outset. Focused as he has been on ending the pandemic and restoring the economy, he has also intended not to waste a good crisis. That is, he has used the national public health emergency as a jumping off point for bolder, broader proposals to move America forward. His poll numbers are strong, and Republican efforts to paint him as a socialist are laughable.

Integrated with these country-changing policy efforts is a political plan for the off-year elections. Normally, the off-year races are unkind to sitting presidents. Biden aims to change that. Republican Senators are retiring in North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania. They are expected to retire in Wisconsin and Iowa, and we are expecting to be competitive against Marco Rubio in Florida.

The above administrative and legislative actions demonstrate Biden cares about middle class and blue-collar families, once the bulwark of the Democratic vote in the Midwest and the Northeast. In addition to attending to this part of his electorate. Biden hopes that Trump will provide the same assistance in these targeted races that he did in helping us get Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock elected in 2020.

In the first six months of his presidency, Joe Biden has gotten it and gotten it done. It has been a very good year, with these features:

Accomplished by Executive and Administrative Action

• re-entered Paris Climate Accord and seeking its expansion.
• re-established the NATO partnership and resumed leadership within the G-7.
• vaccinated America, with 327 million doses administered so far.
• overturned Trump executive orders on environmental regulation and in countless other areas.

Accomplished Through the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (using the reconciliation process, where only 50 votes are necessary), which:

• funded a new round of stimulus payments
• extended unemployment benefits
• provided assistance to the states reeling from the economic downturn
• provided a child tax credit which can reduce children in poverty by almost 50%
• offered other pandemic related aid

Bipartisan Proposals likely to get the necessary 60 votes in the Senate and become law in some form after action by the House:

• infrastructure bill including large increases for public transit, passenger railroads, electric vehicle charging stations; water system replacement of old pipes; electric grid broadband; and projects to decrease the impact of climate change
• policing bill, the framework of which has been agreed to by Republican Senator Tim Scott, Democratic Senator Cory Booker, and Democratic Representative Karen Bass
• new investment on technological competitiveness with China, emphasizing research and development

There are things missing from the list. The For the People Act will not pass. It was always a symbolic effort to underscore Republic perfidiousness in Georgia, Texas and elsewhere. It was mostly a good deal, although federalizing elections would have been a bit scary if we had it during the last four years. We will not get any legislative action protecting Dreamers, or accomplish even the slightest bit of immigration reform. There is new money to fight climate change, but very little regulatory improvement.

We are in immensely better shape that we were last year. We need to get ourselves some more House and Senate members on Tuesday, November 8, 2022. As a first step in that effort, let us keep working toward free and fair elections:

1) Hold Accountable Those Who Would Trash the Constitution
	Unbelievably, 141 House members voted on January 6 to de-certify the election results of one or more states. These House members have joined in Trump’s big lie every step of the way, and most continue to parrot fictions about state election processes, threatening permanent damage to election integrity. Several leading American corporations have taken note of this threat to democracy and have frozen their political contributions to these House members. Not Toyota, which announced that they support candidates “based on their position on issues that are important to the auto industry and the company” and would not make decisions based upon the certification votes. Call Toyota’s public affairs manager Carley Cesaretti at 469-292-8754 and tell her how much more you expect of Toyota.
2) Use Shareholder Actions to Monitor Corporate Political Actions
	There has been more success lately in shareholder efforts to cast more light on corporate political shenanigans. A good way to keep track of our progress on this front is following the efforts of the Center for Political Accountability, which attends to these matters on our behalf. Sign up here:
3) Stand with Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders
	During the worst of the pandemic, Donald Trump fueled racist attacks on Asian-Americans. According to a Pew survey, 1/3 of Asian-Americans are now afraid of being assaulted. We can stand up for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as a political force by setting aside a portion of our political contributions budget for the AAPI Super Pac, which is working to increase political involvement. Success has been impressive. There was an 84% increase between 2016 and 2020 in the AAPI vote in Georgia. Nationally, 2/3 of the AAPI vote went to Joe Biden.

You can keep a bad man down. This summer is the time to accelerate our political efforts, setting the groundwork for 2022 success. Even with Joe Biden having a good year, we cannot take a single thing for granted.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington