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.
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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
