#22: This is How Trump Can Help Us Win in November

We are pleased to bring to you the next of a 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. 

If you are not already receiving our emails, please click here to be added to the 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.

It has always been difficult to figure out which are the worst of Donald Trump’s offenses. If you pay attention to it all, the numbness sets in. You can be tempted to dwell on his boorishness and malevolence, gathering material for “did you hear?” exchanges with your friends. You could use the House of Representatives as your guide, focusing on the specific offenses leading to him being impeached twice. You could select one or more of the things that are most likely to make him a felon.

But isn’t it easy to identify the absolute worst behavior, that which has been most destructive for our country? 13 presidents before Trump were denied re-election, each conceded to his opponent, and each participated however ruefully in the orderly transfer of power. In Trump’s era, Mauricio Macri of Argentina did it, as did Peter Martharika of Malawai and Jose Mario-Vaz of Guinea-Bissau. Why couldn’t Trump muster an ounce of character to step aside? It’s a rhetorical question, we know the answer.

It became much worse than the failure to concede. Our darkest suspicions and predictions have now been realized. Trump prepared his lies about the “steal” months in advance of the election. As the House select committee will eventually conclude, Trump helped plan the insurrection, advanced fake electors, illegally interfered in the recount in Georgia, and stood between a country and its Constitution. He attempted a coup. 

Luckily it is not correct that we are in greater danger of a coup being successful in 2024 than we were in 2020. Trump was in control over the agencies of government during his last attempt and he would not be in 2024. It will be beside the point since he won’t be running in 2024 anyway. His permanent fade has begun. The con is being recognized. 70% of American voters don’t want Trump to run again. 

The Republican bootlicking will diminish one Ted Cruz style self-debasement at a time. The signal for its sure decline came from an unlikely person, Trump loyalist and South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds. The chance is zero that Rounds upbraided Trump on his own without advance consultation with Mitch McConnell and fellow South Dakotan John Thune. This is what Rounds said:

"We looked -- as a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states." 

"While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state." 

"The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And moving forward -- and that's the way we want to look at this -- moving forward, we have to refocus once again on what it's going to take to win the presidency." 

"And if we simply look back and tell our people don't vote because there's cheating going on, then we're going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage. So, moving forward, let's focus on what it takes to win those elections. We can do that. But we have to let people know that they can -- they can believe and they can have confidence that those elections are fair.”

As important as the statement itself is that Rounds was unafraid that Trump would execute him. Of course, one of the reasons McConnell chose Rounds for this duty is that he isn’t up for re-election until 2026. And their motivation is that they are petrified that “Stop the Steal” will cause Republican voters to lose so much confidence in the integrity of the process that they won’t vote this fall. They think that it could all be a repeat of the Ossoff and Warnock victories on January 5. And it might be.

This gives us an all-new strategy, which goes beyond Representatives Benny Thompson and Liz Cheney exposing Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection. It is beyond Trump being charged by the New York Attorney General, and/or the lower Manhattan District Attorney, and/or the Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor. It even goes beyond Attorney General Merrick Garland charging Trump with abetting or planning the attack on the capitol.

Our strategy includes Joe Biden standing behind the American Rescue Plan, the American Jobs Plan, and a new version of Build Back Better that Democrats will pass in the next few weeks. It includes the pandemic waning to the point that normalcy will return before the November election, perhaps even by late spring.

Happily, our political fortunes now involve us taking advantage of the increasing public schism between Republican leaders and Trump over his insistence that the election was fraudulent. Deeply ironic is the fact that Mitch McConnell (himself a god in the annals of the suppression of minority voters) is petrified that Trump is suppressing the Republican vote.

Beyond Chris Christie, John Thune, Mike Rounds, Roy Blunt, and Mitch McConnell, we need to help Republican leaders speak their truth about the election. And when they do, Donald Trump will call them names, threaten to run candidates against them, and repeat all the Stop the Steal lies. The more they say the election wasn’t stolen, the more he will do to say it was, and the more his core supporters will shy away from the November ballot. It won’t take very many supporters staying away to significantly increase our chances to win Senate seats in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, all of which are held by Republicans.

The disclosures will keep on coming. Sean Hannity texted Trump on January 6 “no more stolen election talk” and implored his staff from enabling “crazy people” from entering Trump’s orbit. We will hear much more about which insiders were imploring Trump to stop. There will be more and more ways to keep Republicans debating both the failed coup and Stop the Steal all year long. Let’s do these three things:

1) Demand Leadership from John Barrasso
	As chair of the Senate Republican Conference, John Barrasso of Wyoming is the Senate’s third ranking Republican, behind Mitch McConnell and John Thune. When asked about Mike Rounds’ declaration that Biden won the election, Barrasso, who clearly has not read Profiles in Courage, said “Noting to add to what’s already out there.” Of course, he didn’t say which thing that is “out there” doesn’t need additional improvement. That is a bit of a moral fiber problem. It is good to let him know the world is watching. Let him know at 202-224-6441 that we are all out here waiting for him to defend the Constitution.
2) Tell UPS They Promised to Deliver
	The United Parcel Service was among the companies that stopped giving campaign contributions to the 157 members of Congress who opposed certification of the election results. This “Sedition Caucus” has seen a drop in their support, but companies like UPS are starting to wobble, as documented by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW). It’s time to call the UPS Media office and tell them you will not give them your business as long as they fund campaigns of the seditionists. Call them at 1-404-828-7123.
3) Remind Trump Who Won
	There’s hardly a billboard in the world which better serves the public interest than the TRUMP LOST billboard that has been up in Times Square. This billboard is in a score of other locations as well. It is the work of the Republican Accountability Project. Because they are a group of Republicans, this organization is is ideal to fight Trump’s false claims. You can sign up on the mailing list, or help pay for more billboards, which will goad him into even further false claims.

What a bizarre, awful human being. Trump just announced that the insurrectionists would be pardoned if he becomes the 47th president. Grover Cleveland was the only president who returned to office a term later after being defeated for re-election. Donald Trump, you’re no Grover Cleveland.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#21: The Law Is Closing in on Donald Trump

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 get to decide what the story is that you want to tell. You are within your rights under the Constitution to be miserable about American politics all through 2022. Just know as you sort through the Trump led mean-spiritedness that we are not going to keep the Senate and the House in November unless we have a positive way to articulate how Americans can move forward.

Joe Biden has such a way. He expects that by June that we will have 9 or 10 million more jobs than when he started, bolstered by the infrastructure law. He will get people to notice his historic economic performance. 

He thinks that in January he will get a Build Back Better bill from Joe Manchin (with whom he is still negotiating) to match with the American Rescue Plan and the American Jobs Plan. He believes that the new law will cover a huge increase in Pre-K education and hundreds of billions in incentives to decrease carbon emissions. He thinks that this bill coupled with already voted infrastructure improvements to the grid will signal an all-new day on climate change.

Joe Biden is hanging on to reports from South Africa that contracting the omicron variant quadruples protection against the more virulent delta variant. He is looking for our public health crisis to fade by spring.

He believes that the antipathy of independent voters to Donald Trump and his con will grow. He has made a note that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has called Trump “ignorant, or one of the most evil men who ever lived” for the sin of recommending that people get vaccinated and boosted. There is irony here, no? 

Joe Biden sees a path not to civil war, but to civility. He believes that 2022 will be the year that the law will catch up to Donald Trump. He and Merrick Garland are tracking every one of these investigations and legal actions, each with its own significance and collectively a huge storm cloud on Trump’s horizon.

• There is the question of whether the Department of Justice will use evidence gathered by the Congressional panel investigating the insurrection to charge Trump himself for conspiring to cause the felonious assault on the Capitol by several hundred people. Or perhaps the DOJ will charge just some of Trump’s hench-people, like Steve Bannon. Laurence Tribe and an exasperation of other tv commentators have called out Merrick Garland for not signaling any such intentions publicly. Isn’t that the way we would want an Attorney General to act?

• New Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is giving high priority to the Trump case. A previous grand jury filed felony tax evasion charges against Trump financial manager Alan Weisselberg. Any charges against Trump would involve fraudulent valuation of commercial real estate to secure favorable loan terms. The appropriate tax returns and financial records have been secured now that Trump’s records-hiding appeal to the Supreme Court has been unsuccessful. The District Attorney’s office is getting regular assistance from New York Attorney General Letitia James. Since a second grand jury has been empaneled, it is very likely that additional people will be charged. The medium to high level possibility is that Trump will be one of those people.

• In what may eventually prove the most compelling case, Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis is considering bringing criminal charges against Trump for election interference. Trump twice called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, looking to “find” 12,000 votes. The District Attorney has sent out letters to multiple parties warning them not to destroy records.

• There are several civil suits filed against Trump over his role in the January 6 insurrection, each taking a different approach. One case has been brought by injured Capitol police officers and the other two by members of Congress. There is a hearing in federal court in three weeks on a motion to dismiss the cases. Disclosures by the Congressional committee on such matters as Trump’s connections with the January 6 “War Room” in the Willard Hotel is helping keep these cases alive.

• There are several other lawsuits in progress. Former columnist E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit is still alive. The issue is whether Trump defamed her when he said in response to her rape allegation that she was trying to sell her book and was “not his type”. The federal court is determining whether Trump was acting as the President when he made the defamatory comments, which would shield him. They are skeptical.

All in all, these and scores of other lawsuits show a man who has flaunted the law his whole life. Bringing the law to him would be sweet justice for the rest of us. Whether or not he ever is incarcerated, or pays considerable damages in a civil suit, the criminal and civil lawsuits are closing in on him. They give strength to the argument that he is slowly losing his grip on America, not too soon. 

This is evidenced by the uneven prospects of the candidates he has endorsed for the U.S. Senate, the increase in Republicans who have conceded the results of the 2020 presidential election, the fact that Chris Christie has not been pummeled over his criticism of Trump, the votes of 17 Republican Senators for the infrastructure law, and the positive resolution (over Trump objections) of the debt ceiling battle.

So, we are called to get more firmness in our grip and confidence in our stride, with the off-year elections just a year away. We could do a lot more than these three things, but let’s do these three things now.

1) Setting Ourselves Straighter
	The best of us can get it wrong. When the outstanding Heather Cox Richardson meditates that Republican counties and Congressional Districts have lower economic outputs, pay lower federal taxes, and thus are supported by blue counties, it is a misstep. Our argument is different from that. We are right to say instead that wealth and economic power should NOT generate political influence.  Which district generates a higher level of federal income tax should be irrelevant to us. Let’s sort out these kinds of claims a little more clearly. For instance, Joe Manchin’s current (but not necessarily final) opposition to Build Back Better is disappointing and misguided. However, one element of his intransigence is well founded--- Congress should not be increasing the child tax credit for couples earning $200,000-$300,000 a year. The eligibility level should be lower. We should not borrow funds to give money to people who do not need it.
2) Help Republicans Help Themselves
	It doesn’t seem like a bad idea to hope that the remaining tiny band of Republican moderates will shrink to nothing, since their efforts have been meager. But any Republicans calling out Trump helps our candidates with independent voters, who we won over in the 2020 presidential election but whose support is impermanent. Thus, we should be happy that the Republican Accountability Project has shown the stability and longer-term potential that has not been demonstrated by the Lincoln Project. The “Trump Lost” billboards that the Republican Accountability Project has dotted across the country are themselves evidence that they are worthy of support. Their leadership includes Sarah Longwell, the best Republican anti-Trump strategist there is. To sign up and/or donate, click here. Former Republicans are told “Don’t sit quietly and surrender one of America’s great political parties.” That may seem like an overreach, but they were instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1963.
3) Get Into This Exciting Race
	Val Demings has been an intriguing candidate from the beginning. She was a very well-spoken floor manager during Trump’s first impeachment in the House. She is the former police chief of Orlando. This rising star is running to unseat Florida’s principle-free Senator Marco Rubio and has come across a strategy that is now getting traction. She has been using Facebook as the key tool in attracting small and medium donors. She now has 172,000 donors and raised $8 million last quarter. You can keep infamous Mark Zuckerberg out of the equation, give directly, and become donor 172,001. With key races in Pennsylvania and Ohio, we need to open up a new front in Florida, helped by significant efforts to register Latino and African-American voters.

What better time for you to jump back in (or jump higher) than the one-year anniversary of the insurrection? What now stands between Trump and the shredding of the Constitution is you and the people across the country who share your views and your commitment.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington