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.
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1861, when the Union unraveled. 2020, when over 3 million people around the world died in an all-new pandemic. 1939, when the most destructive of all wars became inevitable. In those years, perhaps our world was on fire. But it isn’t on fire now, and believing it is keeps us from focusing upon what we must do to defeat the persistent forces of autocracy.
Every year since our inception as a nation has been a battle to protect against our unraveling. We have proved ourselves capable of indescribable evils, enslaving an entire race, and crushing indigenous people. But, however dimmed we have permitted our beacon to become, we still attend to it. Our biggest idea, the Bill of Rights, has yet to be equaled by any other nation in its scope and longevity. It provided barriers every day the last time an autocrat became President.
We have become overwhelmed by the new instruments of communication, and the concomitant decline of means of sorting the truth. This has fueled our malaise. We have conflated the ever present and overwhelming daily noise of American life with a swelling of American support for this insurrectionist, but the evidence of the latter is absent. We have not been able to get over our disbelief that he is still out there, and that anyone at all supports him.
Advocates are determined that announcing a nearly inevitable cataclysm is the way to get us to understand that the dangers of climate change require immense efforts on our part. Since thus far our huge new efforts are insufficient, their description of the plight threatens to disarm us, rather than propel us.
These are today’s big battles, all hanging the future in the balance. Notably, they are the worrisome big battles of last year, and the year before. Despair is a personal emotion, and one can have as much of it as one lets in. But it is not off base in 2024 to remind that too much of it is not a good thing. We don’t have the luxury of dispiritedness. We need unimpaired activism for the next six months.
We can get our energy from recent events:
- Joe Biden has had an uptick since the State of the Union.
- The House will take up Ukraine funding after they return from recess. Ukraine will finally get the money it desperately needs, as Hakeem Jeffries provides beleaguered Speaker Mike Johnson the votes. Meanwhile, the Republican majority will continue to aggressively disqualify itself from future leadership.
- Donald Trump will spend a month in Manhattan District Court starting April 15, at last facing felony charges of falsifying business records to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels. Unlike in his recent civil losses and in various pre-trial hearings, his daily presence is required.
- The Supreme Court will hear Trump’s claim of absolute immunity on April 25. Even if they pare back the appellate ruling that fully rejected that claim, there is no chance at all that special prosecutor Jack Smith will be blocked from proceeding on charges related to trying to steal the election. Federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan is still anticipating an August trial. The polls are clear that being convicted of a felony in any of the four criminal cases would seriously impair Trump’s support.
What to do with our energy, after freeing it from entropy? After sending fifteen recommendations last month on where to go, what to do and where to send money, this missive received four separate strong recommendations from multiple readers.
As always, we have been fortunate to gain support for grassroots organizer Mi Familia Vota and field mobilizer Common Power. We’ve been pleased to hear more about these organizations deserving our immediate support:
- Focus for Democracy doesn’t want your money. What they want is you to be guided by their rigorous analytical approach regarding which organizations’ work is most cost-effective. They use their metrics to make your giving the most powerful it can be. Sign up and they will invite you to their zoom sessions recommending a number of strong organizations and offer other tools so you can get some very useful guidance.
- Movement Voter Project does want you to give money to their Political Action Committee, and they will put it to very good use. Like Focus for Democracy, they are bent on finding effective local organizers. After finding them, they support them financially, staying with them beyond single election cycles. They have a special interest in youth, BIPOC and immigrants.
- Walk the Walk is run entirely by volunteers. All the resources they gather go to 13 organizations in 11 targeted states. All the organizations they have selected are run by people of color and all have a proven record of registering people and getting them out to vote.
- The Rural Youth Voter Project is even more tightly targeted. A project of Clean and Prosperous America and the Movement Voter Project, they are raising a minimum of $10 million to register and turn out young voters in rural areas. They are especially focused on people of color, who make up 24% of rural populations in their targeted states.
- Sara Longwell and her Republican Voters Against Trump have a better shot of turning Republican votes away from Trump than does the Lincoln Project. Longwell is a former Republican operative whose site features voters who have turned away. They field anti-Trump political ads (featuring reformed Republicans) through their Republican Accountability PAC.
We are not that far away. We can win the Presidency, flip the House, and defend the Senate. For six months, we can be on fire.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
