David Harrison's Blog Alert: Zoom to Fight Voter Suppression

Dear friend of Our Unfinished Work,

My missives sent every two weeks outline ways in which we can defeat Trumpism and make certain democracy wins in this country.

Our biggest tools are voter registration and turnout. Our biggest enemy is voter suppression. As we speak, anti-democratic forces in state legislatures are trying to make it more difficult to vote. As has become evident, they have become disenchanted with the actual casting and counting of ballots!

Please stay focused on defeating this threat. You can join me at 4 pm this Friday, February 26 to review our path forward with Phil Keisling, founder of the Vote At Home Institute and a key organizer of the VoteSafe Coalition. Phil Keisling is Oregon's former Secretary of State and a dynamic leader of this movement. 

I know you have lots of opportunities to Zoom. This one is critical. If you are interested, please email me at dsh347@gmail.com and I will send you the handy link.

best

David Harrison

#7: Let’s Not Waste the 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 two weeks.

It is obvious that every single one of us had been hoping for a spectacular un-nuanced Trump departure from the scene. After his unsuccessful coup attempt, leaving in disgrace was what he deserved. It was what we deserved too, ideally in an Oscar like presentation recognizing the notable, relentless achievements of our collective millions in defense of democracy. Though unprecedented historically, the available alternative of seven Republican Senators voting for conviction does not lift us to the level of comfort and exultation we seek. We are not close to sated by the current level of Trump-diminishing, but we still recognize that the slide of Trump is underway.

Call me a cockeyed activist, but it matters that the discredited Nikki Haley, Mitch McConnell and Rupert Murdock all did major Trump takedowns in the same week. There are many standing in line to accelerate Trump’s decline. 58% of Americans believe that Donald Trump should have been convicted by the Senate. The number of self-identified Republicans continues to decline. A huge percentage of independent voters seem permanently divorced from Trump and MAGA.

He will face criminal charges on several fronts, including the possibility of being charged with election tampering in Georgia. The possible civil actions are many, and his financial woes are considerable. A record of conniving will not always come crashing down on the con man, but it will this time.

Most damaging will be a relentless stream of disclosures. Some of the juiciest will come from Republican appointees and elected officials who do not fancy Trump as their future leader, or who are especially concerned about the primary challenges he might arrange under such “leadership.” It will be revelatory to hear about the sweetest notes he sent to Putin (or to Kim Jong-Un) or get new news on who he wanted to invade, or find out what he chose to ignore, foment, and misrepresent through his unique blend of malfeasance and malevolence. 

Those Republicans whom Trump has identified as the enemy will not go quietly, and from them there will be no Kevin McCarthy style pilgrimage to Mar A Lago. It will be a long list of combatants, including Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney. Notable will be South Dakota Senator John Thune, much respected by Senate Republicans and much disrespected by Trump. Thune had the temerity to say in late December that Trump’s attempt to overturn the election by appealing to Congress would “go down like a shot dog” in the Senate. Thune, not being a Cruz/Hawley/Rubio like toady, angered Trump.

The schism between Republicans and Republicans is huge and growing. There is no elder statesperson who is going to emerge, now that the wounded Trump has viciously responded to McConnell’s hugely damning floor statement. It is not that McConnell sold his soul to the devil and is now getting his just rewards, since there was no evidence at the outset that Mitch had a soul.

Some resistors underplay the significance of McConnell’s attacks, or Nikki Haley’s new anti-Trumpian opportunism, or Rupert Murdock’s Wall Street Journal editorial emphasizing that Trump is not going to be our future president. Some see all three as shifty, self-serving, and unprincipled, because they ARE shifty, self-serving and unprincipled. However unlovable each is, the point for the Democrats and the resistance is not to let a good schism go to waste. There are going to be House, Senate, and Gubernatorial battles in 2022 between Trump recruited and endorsed candidates and McConnell recruited and endorsed candidates. This provides us all new opportunities to widen our narrow margins. Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio are all there for us if we make it so.

To prepare us for the fall of 2022, Joe Biden will not need to be an unbelievably good President. He is just required to be able, affable, principled, and focused. The extent to which he has already been able to reverse Trump-era policies is unbelievable. It is due in part to Trump’s dependence on executive orders used because he could not get 60 votes in the Senate in the face of Democratic filibuster threats. As some Democrats talk about doing away with the filibuster for short term gains, this should be remembered. We may need this tool again sometime in the future.

Biden will be the President who accelerated the vaccines, ended the COVID crisis, and thus started the restoration of the economy. He is going big with the American Rescue Plan because it will be the signature achievement of this term. 70% of Americans want to proceed with the Plan. Joe Manchin will provide the 50th vote so it can be passed through the budget reconciliation process. If Republican Senators vote against it as a bloc, Joe Biden should send them a thank you note.

There is some evidence that reform of the Affordable Care Act and multiple investments in carbon reduction are not on the list of Republican greatest fears. Have their traumas about the Green New Deal and Medicare for All softened them to less far-reaching but still significant reforms? The greatest battleground is bound to be immigration reform. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will have a difficult time getting anything done on this policy front besides protecting Dreamers.

The Biden/Harris responsibility is to do good things and do them well. Our responsibility that we have taken on since November 2016 is to attend to political matters every single week. With or without the schism, the biggest question for us is whether the not-on-the-ballot Trump will still function as our unofficial get-out-the-vote chair. Our worst enemy is lower turnout.

To make certain that we get on with our business, and take advantage of the wide, growing Republican split, let’s do these three things:

1) Keep Up the Fight Against Voter Suppression
	The Republican roadmap for 2022 includes persuading us not to vote, inhibiting us from voting, prohibiting us from voting, and redrawing district lines to make our vote less valuable. As efforts underway in state legislatures already demonstrate, voting from home is the number one Republican target. We should support the National Vote at Home Institute and its Vote Safe Coalition every chance we get. And we need to learn about opportunities and threats from the founder of the Institute, former Oregon Secretary of State Phil Keisling, who led the fight for Oregon at home voting in 1998. Phil Keisling will talk about the way forward in fighting voter suppression in a Zoom discussion sponsored by this missive. The hour-long session will begin at 4pm PST on Friday, February 26. Let us know that you are interested by emailing dsh347@gmail.com and we will send you the handy link.
2) Give Jaime Harrison a Boost
	As many of us hoped, Jaime Harrison has been named chair of the Democratic Party. Perhaps it has now been forgotten, but that party was in no position to provide leadership after the November 2016 election. There has been a notable recovery since, with more work to do. Whether or not we normally are party-identifiers, we need to recognize Jaime Harrison’s leadership by joining in his honor.
3) Call Out Lindsey Graham
	It is no longer difficult to identify the most preposterous statement by Lindsey Graham, one that would sacrifice his last shred of dignity if he had that to sacrifice. Now comes his pronouncement that Lara Trump (spouse of Donald’s son Eric) “is the future of the Republican party.” Who even knew she was in the running and was qualified for such an assignment? Please email Lindsey Graham and ask him to return to the party of which John McCain was a member.

You could watch the current Republican mud wrestling and conclude it is all an entertainment or a game. However, all it takes to focus us on what matters is remembering back to January 5 when we showed our political power in Georgia, and January 6, when we re-learned the extraordinary threats that our country faces.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#6: Finding the Cure for Republican Amnesia

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 two weeks.

As Joe Biden undoes much of Donald Trump’s most perfidious acts, and as Trump’s Twitter voice remains silent, one can find a calm absent for the past four years. No daily counterpunch? No elevation of fraudsters, attack on American institutions, or monumental falsehoods? Back to the work of figuring out what a government can do with and for the people, including defeating a pandemic! It is a glorious feeling that should be savored, so long as one remembers the democracy-defending work in which we must quickly re-engage.

The $1.9 trillion stimulus package that Joe Biden has proposed was designed from the beginning as a package that could be subject to compromise. Its $1,400 per person stimulus checks would go out to married couples making as much as $150,000 per year, giving Mitch McConnell the truly bizarre opportunity to pretend that he is worried about the government giving too much money to the rich. Biden left room to compromise, hoping not without justification that Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Joe Manchin can rouse the same bi-partisan coalition that drove the previous stimulus package. In that context, Susan Collins taking nine other Republican Senators to the White House is a good idea.

The other Democratic option regarding the stimulus package is to forget the compromise and pass a package with 50 votes and Vice President Harris breaking the tie. That would narrow the package only to items (including the stimulus payments) that can be included in the budget reconciliation process and pare the bill to $1 trillion or so. Even the smaller package would require the not-automatic assent of Manchin, Democrat Krysten Sinema of Arizona and Independent Angus King of Maine. The fact that Manchin is not a guaranteed 50th vote reduces the President’s leverage.

This might well work out. So might an effort to figure out how to do something about Trump now that it has become obvious that we will not get the 17 votes necessary to convict him for his role in the riot at the Capitol. The effort by Democrat Tim Kaine and Susan Collins to censure Trump (and perhaps ban him from running for office) could get traction. They would have to move quickly and expertly. Just over three weeks from when Trump almost got them killed, Senate Republicans already are developing amnesia over what happened. In another couple of weeks, they will be insisting that Barack Obama did it.

Unfortunately, there is a re-emergence of the large Trump-terrified segment of the Republican leadership. This means that we resistors will have to turn our attention away from Biden cabinet confirmations and restorative executive orders. The Republican leadership and rank and file have made other bargains with Trump in the past so that he will pretend to be interested in something they want. Before, the deal was about him killing them politically. On January 6, the Trump provoked mob raised the idea of killing them physically.

Unbelievably, we need to get ourselves fully engaged in the elections of fall of 2021 and 2022. This is because House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has already travelled to Mar A Lago to offer and receive the necessary blessings. The former insurrectionist in chief, McCarthy and Mitch McConnell are unwilling to extricate themselves from their “can’t live with him, can’t live without him” mode.

State party organizations are allied with Trump and are angry with the 85 Republican House members who did not join the amicus brief seeking to overturn the election. Although it is a depressing thought, there is a good argument that we should all be circulating petitions to urge Trump to remain the active leader of the Trump-Republican party. It would then continue to be the party of white males, the only major demographic where he led last November.

Off-year Congressional elections are normally the time when the opposition party gains ground. Trump running further-right candidates against those conservatives who have been identified as lackluster bootlickers gives us an excellent chance to take back seats. It’s not a fanciful prediction since a split Republican party just delivered us two Senate seats in Georgia. Certainly, we worked hard to grab these seats but Trump had already loosened their grip. There are several promising opportunities to pick up Senate seats.

Across all Americans, 76% rate Trump’s post-election conduct as fair-to-poor, and 68% believe he should not continue to be a major public figure. Of course, things are a little different among Republicans. Pew Research has filed a very timely assessment on Trump’s current grip on the party of Lincoln. 

There are some heartening findings, and some that are unbelievable. 64% of those that are Republicans or lean Republican are still locked into the lie that Trump won or “probably won” in November. Of course, that means that 25 million or so voting Republicans no longer believe this con. It is also encouraging that only 29% of the Republican respondents are completely convinced by this toxic waste dump of beliefs. These people endorse Trump’s post-election behavior, hold him harmless for the insurrection, believe he was the elected winner, and want him to play a major role going forward. 

With Trump still bullying the schoolyard, our biggest danger is that the lie of a stolen election that he continues to repeat will grow in its credence over time. The best way to prevent this is to immediately resume the collective intensive productive political advocacy of the many millions of us who brought down Trump.

At the local level, as Republicans seek to change the laws and voting regulations that enable mail-in ballots, we must contest every false statement. They are all derived from the made-up fraud story that began months before the election and did not end even in the aftermath of the January 6 riot. From now until November 2022, the central battleground issue will be how easy or difficult it will be to cast a ballot. To our advantage, the false claims of voter fraud will be a staple of debates in primary contests between Trump-endorsed candidates and current Republican office holders clinging to a shred of integrity.

We should support the other ways that Trump could slide further downhill even while holding on to the Republican party structure. 

First there are the lawsuits. The rape/defamation case filed by E. Jean Carroll remains before the courts. Trump is under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James for over-inflating property valuation while securing loans and deflating the same property values when paying taxes. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has secured tax files and is looking at insurance, bank, and tax fraud.

Second, there are the other candidates. Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio will try to nudge Trump away from his leadership role without being obvious about it.

Perhaps most importantly, there will be the recriminations from those whom Trump wronged in the past four years. The pre-election Trump tell-all books were just a start. There are damaging tales to be told by besmirched jettisoned Cabinet secretaries, and there will be a flood of disclosures on what Trump said to this or that world leader. There will be surprises, and we will end up feeling that there could have been monthly impeachment charges.

Trump brought America down almost all of the way. While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stride forward, let’s do three things that will keep us on track from now through the off-year elections on Tuesday, November 8, 2022.

1) Fight Now to Protect Voting Rights
	Across America, state legislators are battling over the circumstances under which people will be welcomed to vote or will be discouraged from doing so. Those trying to suppress voting will retreat to Trump’s election fraud lie over and over. The Brennan Center for Justice has an outstanding summary outlining where legislators are trying to scale back mail-in ballots, expand voter ID requires, make voter registration more difficult, or purge rolls of infrequent voters. It is time for you or your organization to check in at your state capital. Call your legislator to make certain you understand what is transpiring and what you should be doing. Or check in with your state’s democratic party organization. If they don’t know what is going on, help them change their ways immediately.
2) Help Republicans Make Republicans Accountable
	The Lincoln Project drew a lot of attention during the Presidential campaign, but there is an even better organization of former Republican leaders to support the fight against election fraud con. This is the Republican Accountability Project. Give them your email and they will send you regular news of their activity. They are part of a constellation of Never-Trumpers that is very intent on not letting Trump pretend he won. They are the folks that put the Ted Cruz: Resign billboard up in Times Square.
3) Get Started on Swing Senate Seats
	There are 20 Senate Republican seats up for election in 2022 and only 14 Democratic seats. We have a good shot at what will be open seats in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa. Wisconsin could get interesting, especially if Ron Johnson retires. How about Florida if Ivanka Trump challenges Marco Rubio in the Republican primary? Since we already wish we had more than 50 seats, it is time to gear up. During the post-election battles in Pennsylvania, 6’8” Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman was fierce and principled and unwavering. He is going to jump into the race from the outset. If you act now you will be able to say you were with him from the beginning.

Somewhere, in the midst of things (perhaps on January 6?) it occurred to all of us that this is not a movement that would or could end with our election success on November 3, 2020. So, we are in it to win it, over, and over again.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington