Our Unfinished Work

Monday, October 7, 2024

#50: Trump Unconcerned About Pence, and Everyone Else

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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One could ruminate on how a candidate who sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power could be normalized sufficiently to be enabled to run again. Embracing the horse race story, it seems almost like commentators and reporters are unwilling to say what they know to be true about Donald Trump. It seems a bit bizarre that he is running for election without acknowledging the results of the previous one. To say nothing for promising to arrest his opponents, get police to beat people up, and use the military to deport 12 million people.

Now comes the release of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s filing to federal district court judge Tanya Chutkan. This detailed explication of felonious behavior should be required reading. Beyond saying “So what?” when told his vice president’s life was in jeopardy, Trump clearly knew he had lost and chose fraudulent democracy-obliterating actions to try to stay in power. This is not forgivable.

However, this train of thought about the absolute illegitimacy of his candidacy must not be entertained, at least not until after we win on November 5. For this moment and every moment until then, it is only about what we must do to make Kamala Harris president.

Our chances are good, for these top 10 reasons:

Kamala Harris is closing the gap with Trump on voter trust on the economy. This leaves immigration as his dominant issue and helps explain the heavily emphasized Feeding on Felines plank of Trump’s platform.
Even by Trump’s standards, his most recent claims on Harris being mentally impaired are uncommonly repellent to independents.
In six of the seven swing states, Democratic Senate or Gubernatorial candidates have strong leads. At this point, the leads of Senatorial candidates Ruben Gallego in Arizona, Jacky Rosen in Nevada and Gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein in North Carolina (over “black Nazi” Mark Robinson) are large enough to discourage Republican turnout. The polling leads of Senate candidates Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan are also valuable for Kamala Harris.
Harris’s campaign is raising and spending considerably more money than is Trump. Accordingly, she is making unprecedented commitments to field staff and digital advertising, as well as the usual television and print ads.
Polls are showing fewer undecided voters than in recent election years, and fewer already committed voters open to persuasion. Trump’s agonizingly long tenure on the national scene means that most Americans have their mind made up about him. That makes it easier for Harris to sustain even a small lead.
Polls in 2022 ended up being the most accurate of the last two decades. Pollsters believe that they have made methodological improvements to polling approaches that had contributed the 216 and 2020 undercounting of Trump’s support.
Robert Kennedy Jr. (the non-Kennedy Kennedy) remains on the ballot in Michigan and Wisconsin, to Trump’s disadvantage. Given Kennedy’s dumping of a bear carcass in Central Park, he is Trump’s “bro” in creating animal lore.
A woman’s opportunity to control her own body is on the ballot statewide in Nevada, Arizona and Florida. To try to win votes, Trump is pretending that he never did what he previously said he was proud he did. Similarly, Trump opposed the Affordable Care Act every second of his administration and now insists that he led a bipartisan effort to protect and save it.
As judges Aileen Cannon and Juan Merchan have fallen by the wayside at least temporarily, federal judge Tanya Chutkan has just shown herself to be unyielding. Special prosecutor Jack Smith has filed a 165-page brief providing significant new evidence of Trump actions that are way outside the heretofore unimagined broad presidential immunity the Supreme Court devised. Chutkan is expected to also release material (including FBI notes) from the appendix that Jack Smith filed. This will all remain in the news, as it should.
The demographics in several swing states show a substantial reduction in the percentage of white voters without college degrees, who heavily support Trump. This is partly because of increases in diversity.

By now, we know what to do. We are either doing it already, or plan to do it as soon as we can, which hopefully will be very, very soon. Even though voting has started in some states, there are things that can be done.

1) Target Young People
	There are college students and other young people (even ones you may know) who still are facing this hugely consequential elections with antipathy, Rock the Vote makes it incredibly easy to check one’s registration, register to vote, and help others do the same. If you aren’t a young person, figure out to whom you can send the link.
2) Go Someplace Soon
	You would think it would be too late to sign up to go someplace else to knock on doors. The thing is, it isn’t too late. Common Power is one of the premier field organizers in the country. They are doing work with local partners in all seven swing states and in nine other states with close Congressional races. Depending on your travel availability you could even pick a nearby state. They are just a click away.
3) Lessen Your Money Management Burden
	Just as there are places you can still go, there are places your money can still help! There are organizations that are duty bound to put your resources in play before the election. In North Carolina, Mi Familia Vota is deploying paid canvassers to Latino households in and near Raleigh. The North Carolina Latino population has grown significantly, and it is under-registered. This little missive has already raised $8,000 for this aggressive effort by tireless organizers. Here is a link to join us in this effort. Happily, there are Republicans who cannot abide Donald Trump. Led by Sarah Longwell, the Republican Accountability PAC will run as many swing state ads as they can pay for. They all feature personal testimony from Republican voters. They would welcome your help.

Let’s seize upon the excellent opportunity to wake up in the sunshine on Wednesday morning, November 6.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Thursday, September 5, 2024

#49: This is How We Will Keep It Going

It isn’t just being suddenly ahead when more than six weeks ago we were behind. That itself was worth our collective exhilaration when Joe Biden resigned, Kamala Harris got traction, and Donald Trump was surprised, surprisingly.

Instead, this glee has been built on the idea that we can keep this momentum all the way until November 6. We suspect that there something different about this election cycle that makes Kamala Harris’ lead more sustainable and expandable than Hilary Clinton’s even bigger lead in 2016. This is the case for that proposition:

In 2016, Trump forces were just starting to Benghazi Clinton, as they had Swift Boated John Kerry. The worst of emails, Anthony Weiner and Jim Comey’s declarations were yet to come. It may be that as a former prosecutor, Kamala Harris has considerably less vulnerability than did Clinton.
Even though she is Vice President, Kamala Harrison is being received as the candidate of change. There was a huge response to her simply being younger; a woman; and capable of a smile or laugh. It is difficult to believe that Donald Trump was once seen as a political novelty, but no more. Day after day, he owns being a grumpy old man, dare we say “nasty”? Better yet, the Democratic strategy at the convention has been not to describe him looming, but to make him small, the man running his leaf blower.
Donald Trump’s means of delighting his base by repeating lies and insulting Kamala is not being well received by independents. It has decreased the number of undecided voters and thus has made it harder for him to regain the lead.
Trump and Vance continue to test racist and misogynistic approaches to defining Kamala Harris. A Putin lover calling her Comrade Kamala? Through the convention speeches and huge swing state advertising buys she has established her own life narrative.
If Kamala Harris had started campaigning in 2023, by now she would be frayed by the efforts of her Democratic opponents. Instead, she is fresh and energetic, and only needs to this momentum for two months. This is Joe Biden’s inadvertent gift.
In a meaningful way, reproductive freedom is on the ballot in all 50 states. Especially important in drawing young voters in swing states are the statewide initiatives in Arizona, Nevada, Florida and (to boost Senator Jon Tester) Montana.
As successful as Trump and the Supreme Court have been in delaying or preventing Trump’s legal reckoning, Juan Merchan is standing in the way. He is scheduled to sentence the felon on September 18 in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
Democratic Senate candidates are bolstering Kamala's candidacy by leading their opponents in the swing states if Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Now for the feeling being felt now to be the way we all feel on Wednesday morning, November 6. This is not guaranteed. Perhaps we have all decided the ways in which we can be engaged. This missive has outlined thirteen ways to jump in deeper and stay in longer. The gains thus far among independents are startling. Accordingly, worthy of new attention is the heretofore inadequate but potentially consequential effort by some Republicans to get other Republicans to vote for Kamala Harris. We could support one or more of these three organizations:

1) Hayley Voters for Harris
	Haley Voters for Harris believed Nikki Haley when she said she would not kiss Trump’s ring. They were compelled by her detailed description of why he would be “a disaster for the party”. All they are doing now in the face of Haley’s protests is acting on her very clearly articulated beliefs. She should be proud of them! They are working hard to capture for Kamala Harris the votes cast for Nikki Haley in the primaries. Haley Voters for Harris.
2) Republicans for Voting Rights
	Veteran Republican organizer Sarah Longwell has developed several projects under the flag of the Republican Accountability Project. Even though its goals are longer term, the favorite should be Republicans for Voting Rights. They are a clear voice in fighting their own party’s voter suppression.
3) Republican Voters Against Trump
	Out there also is the more established Republican Voters Against Trump. Their budget is modest, but their use of their dollars is exquisite. They are placing ads in swing states featuring Republican voters outlining their antipathy toward Trump, featuring his January 6, 2021 insurrection. Their ad budget can be increased to seize this unique market niche.

As Michelle Obama urged, we have all decided to “Do Something”, reveling in the hugeness of the opportunity that has emerged in the last month. Over the next 60 days everything depends on the extent of our commitment.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Sunday, July 28, 2024

#48: Make the Momentum Momentous

Our step has a new bounce. On one day, we were a part of Joe Biden’s losing bet. He had wagered that voters would discount his decline in the face of Donald Trump’s malevolence. From the time he made that bet in 2023, we were in danger of losing it, and it happened on one single debate night. It wasn’t just that polls in swing states got scary. It was that there was no way to move forward to change those projected outcomes, given Biden’s frailties. There wasn’t a way to reset, and none would develop.

On the next day, we were offered a first-rate opportunity and a hundred days to take advantage of it. Our energy boost is huge. We are in play in an all-new way. We are fortunate that we didn’t lose the Biden bet in the September debate, which would have been too late for any recovery. It is not an inevitable outcome, but we know what we must do and what Kamala Harris must do to win the Presidency. So, let’s spend the next hundred days doing it, and she will too.

The race is suddenly fluid. The encouraging signs are everywhere, way beyond the $250 million that Kamala Harris’ campaign and a Super PAC raised in the three days after Joe Biden’s withdrawal. CNN reports that compared to Biden in early July, Harris polls 9 percentage points higher among independents, 8 percentage points higher among people of color, and 6 percentage points higher among women. Try as he might, Trump will not be able to shield himself from having overturned the protection of Roe v Wade. A new Axios/Generation Lab poll shows Harris doing 7 percentage points better than Biden among 18–35-year-olds.

Certainly, we need to find an additional boost from this boost. Here’s the five places from which it is most likely to come:

The selection of the vice president has everything to do with our competitiveness in swing states. Unworried about chromosomal makeup, this missive would pick Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in a heartbeat, because of her ability to reinforce the blue wall in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. An excellent case could be made for Arizona Senator Marc Kelly, a Navy captain and astronaut from a border state. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has youth and blue-collar credibility and could stick a pin in the highly over-inflated J.D. Vance balloon.

Trump’s physical and cognitive decline has become more evident. Kamala Harris should challenge Trump to a one-mile walk. Hannibal Lecter is now showing up as a commendable, living human being in Trump’s rally speeches. At one point, Joe Biden tweeted, “Donald, Hannibal Lecter is not real. And he is a cannibal.”

Any debate between Trump and Harris gives Harris a chance to use her prosecutorial skills to counter Trump’s cascade of lies. What Trump will say in a debate is entirely predictable. Harris’ counter will obviously be better delivered than Joe Biden’s. Plus, there is a real possibility that her fighting back will elicit never too far under the surface misogyny and racism from Donald Trump. Harris’ “abuser, fraudster, cheater” description of Trump isn’t going to go away. She knows his type.

Trump’s multiple legal problems will reemerge in September, the worst time for him. As regrettable as was the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, it still left a path for justice. In the hush money case, Judge Juan Merchan will sentence Trump in September, finding Trump’s felonies occurred prior to his election, putting them outside the Supreme Court’s broad protections. Merchan’s sentencing will elicit an appeal which the Supreme Court will not hear before November, if at all. Perhaps even more useful, Federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan will be holding evidentiary hearings in September or October on which of Trump’s election fraud actions represented “private acts”, also outside the Supreme Court’s shield. This will put damning testimony from former Trump aides before the public daily.

Kamala Harris can get a boost from us. Joe Biden won in 2020 in part because of the extraordinary effort behind him. We cannot and will not be out-organized or out-funded. We should be doing these three things without delay, taking advantage of the Kamala Harris driven new burst of energy.

1) If You Have Money, Send It
	Find your checkbook or credit card. On the funding side we must follow cardinal rules. After giving money in the ultra-close presidential race, we can be careful to not donate to candidates who a) don’t need the money or b) aren’t going to win even if they have the money. Instead, we are looking for races hanging in the balance. Helping to target races are such strong organizations as Focus for Democracy and the Movement Voter Project, sorting out cost effectiveness and using this learning to provide guidance. Swing Left does an excellent job of identifying targeted Congressional and Senate races. Sometimes, unique ways to give emerge. In this case, there is the political action committee called Haley Voters for Harris. They still believe the things Nikki Haley said about Donald Trump this winter. Their money is being used to capture for Harris the votes that went to Haley in the primary. Out there also is the more established Republican Voters Against Trump.
2) If You Have Time, Give It
	Now that we are fully back in play, you can put time into campaigning as well as money. If you want to present yourself to be deployed in another state, no one will do it better than Common Power which attends to training and on the ground supervision as well as placement. After dinner is removed, your kitchen table can be the site of postcard campaign participation through Postcards to Voters or Vote Forward.
3) Don’t Forget the Grassroots
	Readers of this missive provide bedrock support to organizers around the country, all of whom have targeted efforts in swing states. These leap out: Walk the Walk is volunteer run, focusing on registering people of color in 11 states. Reproductive Freedom for All is a great way to focus on states where pro-choice initiatives are on the ballot, including Florida, Nevada and Arizona Mi Familia Vota organizes Latino voters in eight targeted states, including the burgeoning Latino population in North Carolina. Rock the Vote is the largest organizer of young voters, where Kamala Harris has already made important inroads. And thank you Taylor Swift wherever you are. The Rural Youth Voter Project is turning out young voters in rural areas, focusing on people of color.

What to do in the next hundred days? Why not spend it taking advantage of this sudden, fresh opportunity to create a Trump-free future.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Sunday, July 7, 2024

You Must Remember This

Dear friends,

This is a short note responding to all of the late breaking news. It is my belief that understanding of what is going on in America today is in a dead heat with misunderstanding of what is going on. Please consider these clarifications.

Biden's Debate Performance:

This missive has been pining for Joe Biden to not run for President since last year. His cognitive problems are significant. These problems should convince Joe and Jill Biden that Joe should withdraw with grace.

The issue is not Joe Biden's showing as President in these 3 1/2 years. We have been lucky to have him. But his ability to handle the office's rigors moving forward is a non-trivial matter. We wouldn't have knowingly compromised on it with any past candidate, and we shouldn't now. Carl Bernstein just cited 15-20 cognitive episodes in the past two years. We are fortunate this came to a head now rather than in September, when it would be too late to fix.

There are only two paths for Joe Biden and they are rapidly narrowing to one. Everyone in his political world is waiting to see what the better class of polls say about their presidential choice once the polling sample is entirely focused on post-debate respondents. They are especially interested in swing states, and monumentally interested in the parts of the Northern blue wall (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) which we lost in 2016. won in 2020 and must win in 2024.

If Joe's numbers are better than expected, he can continue to run (Early results have not been encouraging). If they aren't, a combination of friends, large donors and major elected officials will find a way out for him. Partisans watching the news every day to see who will call for him to withdraw is nonsensical. These are the most influential people who would file their views publicly, that being counterproductive.

The polling for alternative candidates is encouraging. Kamala Harris' strong performance among independents and women is a singular surprise. This election is not even close to over. There is no meaningful analog to the changing of Democratic candidates in the 1968 presidential race, and every reason to believe that Democratic candidates would avoid a bloodbath.

The Court

With their establishment of a wide range of criminal immunity for the official acts of the President, the Supreme Court has put to final rest their previous claim that they rely on "textualism". The level of immunity they provided is stunning and should be mourned.

However, the post-ruling analyses have left out another part of the ruling. In the April arguments before the court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett raised these three hypotheticals with Trump's lawyer. He agreed that the described behavior would be a private act of the President if Judge Chutkan finds that it took place. The rejection of any claim that Trump would have been carrying out official duties provides an excellent opening for Jack Smith. Barrett's hypotheticals:

The petitioner turned to a private attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims of election fraud to spearhead his challenges to the election results.

The petitioner conspired with another private attorney who caused the filing in court of a verification signed by petitioner that contain false allegations to support a challenge.

Three private actors—two attorneys, including those mentioned above, and a political consultant—helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. A petitioner and a co-conspirator attorney directed that effort.

Jack Smith has been prepared all along for the court to reject immunity for private actions such as these. He is ready to go with evidentiary hearings in front of US District Court Tanya Chutkan late summer and fall which will determine which of the charges will stand, which are predicted to be well over half. Chutkan has already indicated that the fact that Trump will be campaigning is not material to her. This will keep Trump's election fraud in the news all through the campaign. Even Trump's appeal of Chutkan's rulings to the Supreme Court will work to our electoral advantage.

This is a fluid situation. Let's keep on doing our work.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Saturday, June 15, 2024

#47: Before You Do This, Forget That

There is no sense beseeching everyone to get over it, because they won’t. The reasons we despair that Donald Trump is actively pursuing the Presidency go way beyond the sickening, real but far from inevitable possibility that he could win. Why we are heartsick is worse than that. We can’t believe that any significant number of people could buy into Trump’s unique brand of malevolence, lying and authoritarianism.

Rather than Trump’s level of support merely surfacing an undercurrent that might have always been there, it makes us think that it is now a different country than it was. We have a lot to regret in our nation’s past, but it seemed like elected officials shared the ideas and some of the dreams of democracy. Pledges of outright retribution or deportation of American citizens. were uncommon. The more obvious forms of lying and assaults of American institutions were discouraged, and sometimes even disqualifying.

So, we miss that a lot and we miss it every day. At the worst, we think it might be gone forever. On the most depressing days of our intended activism, the existence of Donald Trump and MAGA disempowers us completely. When we defeated Trump in 2020, our movement was filled with energy and purpose. Even now that he is a felon, too many of us are now feeling 2024 as a year of dread.

Luckily, this is a treatable condition. If you haven’t re-engaged, do it now. Our path to winning is clear, if we follow it. Once we get there, the huge bonus will be that this will be the last gasp of this level of Trumpism, mercifully. Meanspirited-ness and the assault on democracy will live on, fueled by social media, but our daily dose will diminish This is because:

Trump will not be running a fourth time after being defeated in November.
No Trump wannabe who follows him will have his or her pre-candidacy name recognition or his or her own television network. This has been essential to Trump’s level of political viability. There will be a host of claimants to Trump’s legacy, making the higher levels of support for a single MAGA politician impossible to muster.
As these claimants emerge, none will have the capacity to execute another. Trump has taken revenge against elected officials in his own party to an all-new level. He has expanded the range of punishable offenses beyond that of any of our country’s other elected officials, ever. By now they have learned that he can and will destroy their future election prospects. There are lots of Republican leaders who don’t believe that Trump’s felony convictions were rigged by Joe Biden. They just don’t plan on saying so. They let him back in after the insurrection because they were scared not to, and for good reason. His vengeance within his own party is not hypothetical.
The legal problems will not go away. Trump will be sentenced for the 34 felonies. He will pay huge penalties in the two civil cases that have been resolved, and that will be the beginning, not the end. The Supreme Court will not invent total presidential immunity, much as Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would like. Ultimately, the piper will be paid for election fraud.

The requirement is that we put aside the grievous soul-wrenching recognition that the voter disqualification of Trump (which could have happened countless times in the past years) never happened at all. For the less than five months we have, we must replace it with a new relentlessness. Here we can take advantage of what is going our way.

First, the 2%+ gain we get from Trump being convicted is just the start of it. We will get at least that with the real possibility of more related to the mid-July sentencing, his subsequent appeals and other legal problems. It isn’t just this switch of regular voters we are working for. Biden already leads among voters who cast ballots. It’s among infrequent voters that Biden trails. Now come predictions that the convictions will cause Trump-leaning infrequent voters to not vote at all or vote for Robert Kennedy. A post-conviction poll by Fox News has Biden only four points behind in Florida, which had not been thought of as a swing state.

Second, whether they provide an immediate opportunity for the federal district court in DC to continue with Jack Smith’s election fraud charges, the Supreme Court will decide in June that Donald Trump does not have legal immunity for his private (not official) acts.

Third, the battle over reproductive freedom will still be raging in November and will get us votes in every state. Splendidly, choice initiatives are on the ballot in swing states Arizona and Nevada, as well as several other states, including Florida and Colorado.

Fourth, the conditions of the June 27 debate favor Biden’s approach. There will be no live audience and the moderator will have full control over candidate microphones.

So, the plan is waiting to be grabbed. Before we lose ourselves in what Trump having a core of support means about America, let’s return to our 2020 focus on winning the winnable. We can do these three things today:

1) Boost Sarah Longwell
	There is not a better Republican anti-Trump leader than Sarah Longwell. She is the organizing force behind Defending Democracy Together. More recently, she has led Republicans for the Rule of Law in an advertising campaign in swing states attacking Trump’s claim of total legal immunity. Whatever your lifelong or immediate political persuasion, you can donate to the ad campaign or sign their petition.
2) Get Some Donation Guidance
	A recent missive identified two organizations that are especially intent on sorting out where political donations will have the biggest impact. These are Focus for Democracy and the Movement Voter Project. Now comes OATH which meticulously sorts out which congressional candidates most need your help.
3) Get Into the Field
	Across the country, activists are agonizing over whether to hit the road in the early fall, traveling to swing states to help build upon narrow margins. For those who have the yen and not the assignment, there is no better group of field organizers than Common Power. They are Seattle based but fully accessible online. They are training volunteers and deploying them to ten states.

As we do the essential work of political activism in the nearly five months until the election, we aim for less consternation and more tirelessness. As we know from our efforts in 2020, that will do the job.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Monday, May 13, 2024

#46: Donald Trump Could Shoot Fido

Throughout the MAGA world, there is outrage that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem shot her 14-month-old puppy and her goat. Apparently, both had behaved inappropriately. This disclosure and her false claim that she had scolded North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un have now disqualified Noem from being selected as Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate. This rejection is based either on her doing these things, or on her getting caught doing these things. Noem’s spokesperson blamed her ghostwriter, but Noem must have read the book because she narrated the audio version.

Two ironies emerge. First, Donald Trump’s delay of aid to Ukraine led to the death of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers, thus epically overshadowing Noem’s own callousness. If Donald Trump figured he needed to shoot Fido, he would do it in a flash.

Second, Noem obviously didn’t get Trump’s memo on what to do once citizen dismay grows and political damage looms. If she had been paying attention, this is what she would have said:

I never met that dog. I wouldn’t recognize that dog if he was here barking at me right now.
As you should know, he is not in any way my favorite type of dog. Who even has this kind of dog?
This is an obvious hoax.
Nancy Pelosi/ Nikki Haley shot the dog. Stop telling me they aren’t the same person.
Joe Biden/ Barack Obama ordered a protesting Secret Service agent to shoot the dog. Then he bragged about it at Thanksgiving dinner, all the while refusing to call it Thanksgiving.
I have immunity. As Justice Alito said, we can’t be having prosecutors filing random dog-shooting charges.

The disqualification of Kristi Noem says as much about MAGA and Donald Trump as it does about Kristi Noem. Independent voters, if you like what Donald Trump did to reproductive freedom, thank him and support him! If you don’t like it, understand that he was just supporting states’ rights! His strategy is never, ever admit to anything. The January 6 insurrection was tourists visiting the Capitol. People jailed for assaulting police officers are hostages. Denial is everything. After the emergence of the Access Hollywood tape, Trump said “No one has more respect for women.” A man of belief, always consulting Two Corinthians!

Can a con lose its power over time? There is nothing like a court of law to disqualify made up stories. Even now in Manhattan District Court, oath taking witnesses including former aide Hope Hicks are taking apart Trump’s hush money denials. And there is so much more to come. There was no blanket declassification of sensitive documents, no evidence of any rigged election, no standing or justification for Trump certifying false electors.

The law doesn’t catch up with everyone, but it is catching up to Donald Trump. Rather than being a minor case, Alvin Bragg’s hush money charges are a guided tour through a world of sleaze. Trump’s federal court appeal of the E. Jean Carroll defamation award has already been dismissed, and Trump will pay as much as $80 million in damages. Likewise, even though Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron’s $350 million plus interest fine could be reduced, it isn’t going away.

And on come two major federal criminal cases, whose timing depends on the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on immunity. The worry is that Supreme Court justices will slow justice’s wheels. That is why Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s line of questioning on the nature of claimed presidential immunity is so significant. Other conservative judges seem to be ignoring their self-declared textualism and appear bent on creating immunity for official duties that our founders never contemplated. Coney Barrett’s questioning of Trump’s lawyer secured the concession that several of Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s charges against Trump were based upon his personal, non-official acts.

This opens the real possibility that rather than simply remanding the entire case to the appellate court for further explication of immunity protection, the Court will permit Federal District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to proceed with the election fraud trial this late summer or fall. The bulk of the charges and anticipated testimony are focused on actions Trump took outside of his official duties. It is not out of the question that the classified document trial will proceed this year as well.

That’s what Trump opponents are hoping for, anyway. Either way Trump’s days in court are a key part of the narrative of this election. Whatever the Supreme Court does, Stormy Daniels has delivered her testimony. The media continues to downplay the political consequences of Trump’s trials, even though 50% of independent voters and 25% of Republicans tell pollsters that they would find a felony verdict significant in their own decision making. This signals that Trump’s legal troubles still could equal or even surpass abortion rights as a problem for him in November.

These are essential matters and should be spoken of frequently. As we know from experience, there is also the central matter of how we are participating in this election. We are all carrying out an ongoing investigation about how to weigh in, including the best place to send money. Readers know this missive is not shy on this matter, favoring efforts in swing states that organize, help people to register, and gets them to vote. There are a lot of good places to boost, but none better than this one. This time we have just one proposed action step.

1) Strengthen Mi Familia Vota
	Two years ago, Mi Familia Vota was selected as Bootstrap Field Campaign of the Year. Hard work at the local level is their hallmark. They work in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Florida, Colorado, California, Texas and now North Carolina, where the Latino population has increased by over a million people in the last two decades. The votes that Mi Familia Vota and other organizers found in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada were instrumental to the 2020 outcome, and will be in 2024. Now that Mi Familia Vota is targeting North Carolina (which Biden lost by 1% in 2020) we can win that state. That outcome and these votes are not to be taken for granted. In previous years, readers of this blog banded together to make timely investments in Mi Familia Vota’s organizing in Arizona and Nevada. Can we come up with $10,000 for the new North Carolina effort in the next week? It would mean a lot.

If we watch what the courts do, work hard, and keep our dogs close to the house, this could all work out well.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

#45: The World Is Not On Fire

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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