#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