Alert: This
small missive played a key role in 2022 in supporting key organizing efforts by
Mi Familia Vota in Nevada and Arizona, which helped eke out narrow victories. Mi
Familia Vota has set its sights on North Carolina, where the Latino population
has now exceeded one million. This is a terrific chance to make inroads in a
swing state. Our missive has pledged $15,000 to help Mi Familia Vota get going
in North Carolina. We have raised $5,000 so far. Please help us reach this goaltoday.
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 and holding onto the Senate in 2022.
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Even after seven years of MAGA pestilence, you can still get surprised. This is the news. Eighty House Republicans have walked away from Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine. They couch it in “higher American priorities” babble, but it still startles. There is no American interest in protecting a democratic nation from being invaded by a dictator? Marjorie Taylor Greene lies that Joe Biden wants to send our sons and daughters to die in Ukraine. Trump himself says he could end the war in a day, not adding that Zelenskyy would have to cede a third of his nation to Putin for that outcome to be secured. Only the vague knowledge that it is a state would keep Trump from offering Nebraska to Putin, or perhaps Rhode Island.
There is no bigger difference between Ronald Reagan’s Republicanism and the modern-day party, and with it comes a strange new affection for autocracy. This is a party that has identified any number of tyrants to be excused, but Putin? He would subjugate or kill us all if he could, including House Republicans. Don’t they know that?
Democrats are all behind Joe Biden’s engineering of a robust US and international response. Mitch McConnell and many Senate Republicans are there with Biden. So is Kevin McCarthy, to the extent he dares to get away with it with his caucus. Biden has worked hard to get enduring support from other Western democracies. Both major parties in Great Britain unequivocally support Zelenskyy. The reason why Biden is muted in his criticism of House Republicans is he knows it ultimately would be disadvantageous to have Ukraine’s defense be seen as a partisan issue. But one can’t avoid the conclusion that as with Covid, House Republicans are not so good at identifying instruments of death.
Combine that with McCarthy’s serving up an impeachment inquiry regarding Joe Biden and we descend into a world where narrow House margins mean that battles between thirty or forty very right-wing House members dominate the proceedings. Kevin McCarthy didn’t have the floor votes to mandate that inquiry but ordered it up from three committees. Here’s what would make you admire him even less. Kevin McCarthy doesn’t believe a single second that Joe Biden committed an offense, let alone an impeachable one. He is just trying to appease the right flank so they will keep the government open on September 30. If Matt Gaetz told him to do cartwheels through the House chamber, he would do it,
Meanwhile the resolute but weary Biden has decided to own “Bidenomics” after Republicans branded it as a critical sobriquet. Biden is trying to accomplish what happened with “Obamacare” which started out as a derisive term and ended up the opposite. Since Biden has been part of creating 13 million new jobs, he’s understandably looking for some credit. His problem is that he is being blamed for inflation. This blame will recede more slowly than the inflation itself, undoubtedly all the way to November 2024.
We should not forget the monumental legislative achievements of Joe Biden during the first two years of his Presidency. Almost all were dependent on the 36 years he spent in the Senate. However, it cannot be escaped that Biden’s age is a powerful weight upon Democratic 2024 prospects at a time when no votes can be spared. Supporters who say that Biden can avoid the mental and physical ravages of age are wrong. No one can. There is a reason why we have never had an 85-year-old president.
A new Democratic candidate would take advantage of the antipathy of independent voters toward MAGA. Someone like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer would give us the needed immediate generational shift. She would turbo-charge the right to choose part of our agenda and allow us to recast the Democratic economic agenda away from inflation and toward the blue-collar ties she has successfully advanced in Michigan.
Democrats seem certain that Biden is running. But his campaign has started out slowly. It is possible that he is just holding the spot to be certain not to be lame ducked early. To this point, it is not necessarily a disadvantage to be watching Republicans fighting each other while Donald Trump awaits criminal conviction.
It is time to up our focus by doing these three things.
| 1) Take Advantage of Changed Demography |
 | To get to 306 electoral votes in 2020, Joe Biden won nearly all the close races in swing states. The notable exceptions were in Florida, which Democrats lost by just over 3% and North Carolina, where Trump squeaked by with a 1% margin. Both will be major targets in 2024, especially because of demographic changes. Half of the population increase in Florida each year is Latino-Americans. North Carolina’s Latino population went from 67,000 in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2020! That is why supporting Mi Familia Vota’s new efforts in North Carolina is so important. Help our missive achieve our $15,000 commitment if you possibly can. |
2) Keep Track of State Courts |
 | The Brennan Center at NYU has been an indispensable organization, especially in providing the resources to the efforts to limit voting in America, which is all the rage among Republican operatives. Now the Brennan Center has an excellent new resource, tracking the numerous positive and negative actions in State Courts, which often carry the day on issues of voter rights. You can sign up today. |
3) Call Nancy Mace with the Truth |
 | Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina has called out House Republican leaders more than once for their treatment of members who are vulnerable after having been elected in Congressional districts where Biden beat Trump. She is against an impeachment vote on the floor but has developed convoluted reasoning that McCarthy directing three committees to do an “inquiry” is fine. Call her Capitol Hill office phone at 202-225-3176 and tell the recording that America expects her to stand up to the far right. |
Admittedly, it is difficult to spend too much time thinking of these often-foul political things. They can bring you down. On the other hand, applying the energy we have and the beliefs we foster, we can bring them down.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
