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
