#97: Increasingly, America is Finished with Donald Trump

This blog is hosting a series of Zoom meetings with key swing district Congressional candidates. Next up is Alaska’s Alyse Galvin, who has built a huge grassroots campaign to unseat 24 term incumbent Don Young. Alyse will be joining us for an hour very soon, on Thursday, August 6, at 6:30 pm PST. Email dsh347@gmail.com for the handy zoom link!

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.

Three months away from the most important election in our lifetimes, and victory is there for us, if we will take it. This will require maintenance of our collective equilibrium, which is always hanging in the balance. Will we focus on the intensive strategies that support good candidates and cause people to register and vote? Or will we get drawn away by snarky cartoons about Trump’s weight, or chatter about golf, cognitive tests and Rose Garden remodeling?

Anger, shame, and sorrow for our country surge within us. Mocking Donald Trump has become a safety valve. As the pandemic rages, the results of presidential perfidy can be counted in body bags and evictions. How can we not be filled with rage?

How can we not direct that rage not just at the man who never had any business being President, but at the Republican officials who knew that from the outset? At almost every critical point, they offered their support to him or turned their head. When you are a United States Senator, it is difficult to endanger your career for your country. When they needed to, they didn’t, and they won’t.

Anger toward the President and Republican appointed and elected officials occupies its fair and justified place, as long as it is channeled into political action. Otherwise it will rob us of our focus. Unfortunately, epithets uniformly directed at their supporters spread across the country threaten to wound us all. As it turns out, those Trump supporters are not all the same person. It’s fine to not want to talk to Uncle Ned or one of your neighbors, or even a dear friend. If they are supporting Trump, they are enabling a takedown of our country. But it is good to remind ourselves that they have their own stories. They are responsible for their own actions to be sure, but they did not collectively patent racism, nativism, homophobia and misogyny, all of which have been with us since the founding of the republic and before.

This understandable anger toward supporters is exacerbated by a falsehood--- that Trump’s “base” is uninterested in any element of the case against him and is thus unshakeable. While it is true that Trump often gains a 90% approval rating among Republicans, the rest of the news gets little attention. According to the Gallup Poll, the percentage of Americans self-identifying as Republicans has dropped precipitously since January, when 47% of those polled said they are Republicans or leaning Republican, compared to 45% who said they are Democrats or leaning Democrat. The same poll question two weeks ago revealed a 50%-39% lead in those who identify as Democrats. It is not well understood that millions of people have walked away from the party he took over. 

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, 68% if Americans believe that Black people and other minorities “do not receive equal treatment in the criminal justice system”: This personal conviction has jumped from 37% in 1997, and 53% just five years ago. We have an immense distance to go, and minds and hearts to change, but America increasingly is finished with Donald Trump.

We do not have a fascist government, as those who have ever lived under a fascist government can attest. It is wrong to conflate the unlawful deployment of Homeland Security agents with the killings by the Gestapo during a world at war 80 years ago. It diminishes the sacrifices of the fallen. But it is right to understand every day that Donald Trump unconstrained would be morally unbounded, and capable of anything. Vigilance has always been the price of liberty. We are willing to pay that price. We can hang on through this nightmare another ninety days, and so can our nation.

New threats appear every day. Will Donald Trump abuse the United States Postal Service sufficiently to discourage voting, or to delay the counting of the votes that have been cast? Will he seek to decrease our collective trust in elections? Yes, he will try to do all of those things. Is there a danger that he will make up allegations of fraud as an excuse to not vacate the office? Quite possibly, unless we prepare well for that eventuality. He could attack another country. He could refuse to follow court orders and (if he thought it would be helpful) he could shred the Bill of Rights in the Rose Garden. If a vacancy happens, he could try to appoint and confirm a Supreme Court justice a week before President Biden’s inauguration. He will pretend that we have a vaccine before we do.

Now is the time to anticipate and prevent each separate insane or malevolent act. There are scores of ways that Donald Trump and those who have abetted him are trying to suppress the vote. The ACLU, the Brennan Center for Justice and several other organizations have led the battle to suppress the suppressors. The Brennan Center has documented the nine falsehoods that Trump and others are using to discredit the election. 

We have worked so hard to turn the tide in our favor. Let’s do these things so that Americans won’t be dissuaded from casting their ballots:

1) Defend Vote by Mail Every Day Until November 3
	As the definitive analysis by the Washington Post shows that  our defense of mail in ballots has put us in an excellent position in virtually all contested states. There are problems in Kentucky and Texas, where voters are required to give a reason beyond COVID-19 to request a mail in ballot. Every other state in play is either a “no excuse needed” state or a state that determined the presence of a killer virus is a legitimate excuse to request a mail in ballot. In fact, Trump’s attacks on mail in ballots and false allegations of fraud may be most likely to discourage his own voters. We are all prepared to deal with this irony.  Trump predicts that mail in ballots will overwhelm the post office and keep election results from being decisive for weeks after November 3. Our candidates are already focused on early voting as a way to demonstrate insurmountable leads in swing states election night. Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona mail in voters will all have their ballots by the first week of October. 80% of Arizonans voted before Election Day in 2016. We need more Republican elected officials to brave Trump and stand up for the integrity of mail in voting. Washington’s Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman (who supervises the state’s elections) did just that on NPR’s All Things Considered last week  Wyman has been the only Republican state election official in the country to stand this tall. It is a good time to write her a non-partisan note to tell her how much you appreciate it. Email her at secretaryofstate@sos.wa.gov.
2) Restore Voting Rights in Florida
	Awesome basketball player Lebron James scored on a more important front this week. He donated $100,000 to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. More than 60% of Floridians voted to enable former felons to register and vote as a part of their re-entry into society. Florida Governor DeSantis was able to convince the Florida Supreme Court to uphold making their voting contingent on paying fines and fees, a modern day poll tax. The Coalition is helping to pay the fines and to register these voting aspirants one person at a time across Florida. They need our financial support today.
3)Join Us in Our Continued Zoom Series
	This missive has sponsored a series of Zoom sessions to help all of us learn more about ways to boost candidates between now and November 3. The live question and answer format generates a lot of new information in less than an hour. Featured guests have included David Domke, founder of the political activist organization Common Power (formerly Common Purpose), and Washington State swing district Congressional candidate Carolyn Long. On Thursday, August 6 at 6:30pm PST, we will feature Alyse Galvin, who has an outstanding chance to flip the Alaska Congressional seat. We will be hosting these Zooms every two to three weeks until the election. The next session will focus on the Brennan Center for Justice and their efforts to fight voter suppression. Email dsh347@gmail.com to make sure you are apprised to these sessions well in advance.

We will be hosting these Zooms every two to three weeks until the election. The next session will focus on the Brennan Center for Justice and their efforts to fight voter suppression. Email dsh347@gmail.com to make sure you are apprised of these sessions well in advance.

We are fortunate to have only a hundred days left of this bizarre situation. We are going to persevere, reverse our nation’s course, and get back to work.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington