Thank you for continuing to share these messages with your friends. If you are not already on our mailing list, 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, A Path Forward to November 3, 2020, every two weeks, which means there will be a total of 100 missives before the Presidential election of 2020, in which our country will select a whole new course.
Our collective national calamity is robbing us of loved ones, making fear ever present and threatening to deprive us of the feeling of community that we cherish. We are not accustomed to mustering the strength that is being demanded of us. We cling to any information that we are influencing the curve, that testing will become commonplace, that the number of hospital ICU beds equipped with ventilators will continue to grow, and that we soon will reach the peak.
South Korea and the US got their first confirmed case on the same day, January 21. There will be enough time between now and November to understand what happened then. In South Korea, they ran 55,000 tests in February, identifying cases, initiating quarantines and flattening their curve from the outset. During the same time, Donald Trump was saying the virus was going to disappear, that we have it under control, and that Democratic efforts to underscore its danger were a hoax. With Fox as Trump’s science adviser, we tested less than 1,000 people in February and are only now doing testing at necessary levels. Because it has taken us much longer to act, our curve has yet to flatten and tens of thousands of people will suffer preventable death.
As time passes, there will be plenty of say about Donald Trump and this national health crisis. To this day, as body counts rise, protective gear shortages persist, and emergency hospitals are being constructed, Trump is being his own self. While America is sheltering, mourning and weeping, Donald Trump is tweeting his press conference ratings.
The most telling of all of the morally reprehensible acts Trump has committed has just been visited upon us. A month after assuring us the virus was under full control, 10 days after telling us we could well re-open by Easter, he has a new announcement, that as many as 100,000-240,000 people might well die. Unfortunately, this statement does not represent an epiphany for him, or at least it isn’t all it represents. In advance of summer or fall campaign ads, he is setting himself up with a high number so that he and Kelly Conway can seek to claim later that his hard work averted the worst.
The end of this worldwide scourge will come, and with it will come Trump’s downfall too. You can’t counterpunch Dr. Anthony Fauci or even Governor Andrew Cuomo, even though some Trump supporters have tried. Even more compelling, there’s no workable con when it comes to the number of body bags. All spring and summer they will be a reminder of what government at its best can do and what it can fail to do when it is not at its best.
It is unlikely that the Congress will put together a fourth legislative package any time soon. If it happens, we can be sure that Nancy Pelosi will stand up strong, as she did in shifting much of the $2 trillion stimulus package from Mitch McConnell’s wishes to the needs of the people. Joe Biden has put an excellent plan forward on what we should have done and what we can do next.
On the election side, the Fox News poll is holding up well, with Biden leading Trump 49% to 40%. Other polls demonstrate that our margins in 300 swing counties are strong. The issue will remain whether we can get people voting, which we were able to do in record number in 2018, 2019 and in this year’s primaries.
With heavy hearts, we summon ourselves to do these three things:
| 1) Put Bernie on a Different Course | |
 | A previous missive outlined the long list of things that we can say to the small but still meaningful minority of Bernie Sanders supporters who are unsure of where they are headed. There are some things we should be stressing to Bernie himself. At this point, he has two avowed motivations, to pursue a slim chance of being nominated and to make certain that his policy ideas get traction with a broader range of Democrats. The fact is, there is no path to victory. Maintaining his campaign in this period of national crisis does not strengthen his already considerable impact on our collective agenda. It weakens it. He has been friends with Joe Biden for decades. The way for him to increase his influence is to come together now. Write him on his “comments” page, pick an issue, and tell him it is time to be with us. |
2) Preparing for the Possibility of an Election During a Pandemic | |
 | We are likely to have been freed from social distancing in October and November. Since we don’t know that for certain, we need to be preparing now for how our elections will be well managed. Luckily, states manage the election process, not the Trump “led” national government. No one is doing a better job of monitoring the states and proposing improvements that can be made between now and November than the Brennan Center at New York University. Analyze the state by state guide they have just published. Decide what you need to say to your state legislators and governors, and say it today. |
3) Send Mitch to a Back Bench | |
 | There are a number of Senatorial seats in play where we can win back our majority. Maine, Colorado and Arizona are extremely promising. Things are looking better and better in North Carolina, where the Republican incumbent Thom Tillis has fully bought into Trump’s chamber of horrors. He signaled that he might object to Trump’s usurpation of Congressional powers but caught himself in time. Cal Cunningham is our candidate. He is a former State Senator and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. If you have some money to spare, it would be a very good idea to send it to his campaign. |
It will be like it is now for several weeks at least, if not months. Our family, our neighbors and our communities come first. We will emerge. When we do, we will not have lost our obsession with putting our imperfect and beloved country back on the right path.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
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