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.
Tuesday, November 6 was a monumental day for the resistance, significantly more successful than many pundits and headlines reveal. We gained 35 or so House seats, the most since Watergate, and we did it in the face of Republican gerrymandering after the 2010 census. In terms of blocking many of the worst of Donald Trump’s abuses, hardly anything beats controlling one of the Houses of Congress. And where and how we did it is revelatory. We captured two thirds of America’s suburban districts. We won districts that we wouldn’t even have put into play in other years. We elected shiny, bright, focused younger people and diverse people who will make Congress look more like America. Youth voting increased by a third over 2014.
We won a seat in Kansas, and its governorship. We won three of the four House seats in Iowa! We beat Dave Brat of the tea party in Virginia, and the Putin-admiring Dana Rohrbacker in California. Donald Trump dumped the insufficiently toadying Mark Sanford in South Carolina during the primary, permitting us to take the seat by beating his chosen acolyte Katie Arrington. We were not able to get the Georgia seat for Jon Ossoff in the special election in April, and now we have won it with Lucy McBath.
We took back seven governorships. We defeated Scott Walker in Wisconsin and won back Michigan behind Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois behind J.B. Pritzker. With the easy gubernatorial victory in Pennsylvania, we made a statement throughout the industrial Midwest. We flipped control of legislatures in six states and unseated 350 Republican state legislators. The red states of Idaho, Nebraska and Utah expanded Medicaid in their states to reach far more people who would otherwise be denied health care. In three states, we passed initiatives to turn away from gerrymandering.
Even in the Senate, with Kristin Sinema now winning the open seat in Arizona and Bill Nelson still a possibility in Florida, we minimized our losses to a maximum of two seats. This was in the face of the most favorable Republican map since the direct election of Senators began in 1913. Jacky Rosen beat Dean Heller in Nevada, after Trump turned him away from demonstrating the tiniest interest in the Affordable Care Act.
We did all of this together. We all became a part of this movement when the Democratic Party itself was in disarray in November of 2016. We never asked permission of anyone. Working together in countless living rooms, we started aiming toward Tuesday’s outcome very early and with open wounds. With each month, our efforts got bigger and better. That’s why so many of our candidates won. And that’s why if we exhibit the same behavior going forward, wisely and relentlessly, we will take back the Presidency in two years.
It is good that we have never been more energized, because we still have a distance to go. It is intriguing to know that if we roll out the same margins in the same states in 2020, we would win the electoral vote 314-224. Of course now that we know that, let’s forget it, lest it lead to even a bit of comfort that could turn into laxity. If you are looking for a dose of information on resistance efforts in the future, sign up for Swing Left's "What's Next?" debriefing this Sunday the 18th.
The question is how we will use what we just did going forward, not only in the 2020 electoral process but through legislative action prior to then. We know that controlling the House means being able to block approaches that Trump and Mitch McConnell would otherwise advance. This is an especially powerful position on spending and on the domestic policy agenda, and less so in influencing or blocking Trump’s foreign policy. Of course, there also will be the fact-finding advantage of Committee chairs Adam Schiff (Intelligence), Jerome Nadler (Judiciary) and Elijah Cummings (Oversight) being able to issue subpoenas. The protective zone around the president’s varied misdeeds has been breached.
Another change has received less attention. The Democratic control of the House will alter voting dynamics in the Senate. Last session, the Republicans were able to put their debates on health care and tax reform under the rubric of the budget reconciliation process. This meant that on these issues they would only need 50 votes in the Senate, rather than the 60 (to close debate) for ordinary legislation. The fact that they couldn’t lose two votes from their caucus on these reconciliation votes gave Susan Collins, John McCain and Lisa Murkowski political leverage even though they did not exercise it as often as we would have preferred.
Now tactics will change. The most common operative number for Mitch McConnell will be 60 Senators, because the House can block any such reconciliation process ploys. No more comforting the comfortable through tax bills. Outside of the painful confirmation processes where only the Senate acts, we are back to bi-partisan compromise. The President can wield influence by threatening to veto a bill, but his ability to advance legislation without Democrats just went away. McConnell’s approach will be to try to persuade eight or so Democrats to join his position on any specific issue so the Senate Republicans can get to 60.
Budgets must be negotiated and appropriations passed, so the government can run. There’s talk of some joint interest in infrastructure improvements and controlling drug pricing. Beyond those things, everything else is up in the air, including immigration and taking even tiny steps to battle climate change.
There will be plenty of work for all of us to influence these legislative processes, but there is some business we will need to take care of even before that. Let’s do these three things now:
| 1) The Elections are Not Quite Over | |
 |
We’re all watching Staci Abrams’ effort to get every vote counted, which could push her opponent under 50% of the vote and lead to a runoff election in December. It may well not happen (he is at 50.2%), but if it does we will all need to act quickly to provide support, because the runoff would be in December. Democrat Mike Espy is in a runoff on November 27 for a Senate seat from Mississippi. Because the more “moderate” of the Republicans survived the November 6 ballot, this race is a long shot for Espy. He was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture and is a good candidate. Even with the longer odds, now that your treasury isn’t being sought from multiple political directions, you might want to give Mike Espy a boost to see what happens. |
2) Protecting Robert Mueller |
|
 |
We’ve all been successfully defending the Mueller investigation for two years, and more indictments are imminent. Now that we have taken back the House, we will get the extra measure of protection from Adam Schiff being Intelligence Committee chair. Goodbye Devin Nunes and your justice-impairing proclivities. Donald Trump’s appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting Attorney General is a new thumb in the eye. It may not meet the constitutional standards for confirmation. Equally important, Whitaker has publicly declared that there is no collusion between Trump and the Russians. Since this is a primary subject of the investigation, this statement should immediately disqualify Whitaker from any supervision of Mueller. Richard Burr, the Republican Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has prided himself in protecting Mueller. Please call one or both of two senior Republican members of this committee and ask what they are doing to protect the integrity of the investigation: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida: (202) 224-3041 Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma: (202) 224-5754 |
3) Remember the Impact of Non-Partisan Organizations |
|
 |
It’s the season for charitable giving. There are many ways to use gifts to tax-exempt non-profits to fight against voter suppression and for free and fair elections. Depressing the vote has become the standard practice of the Trump party. Fighting back, The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the Southern Poverty Law Center are both able to accept your charitable giving under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. For those resisters over 70 ½, these organizations are also able to receive a portion of your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from your Individual Retirement Account. |
It’s mystifying that not every resister has grasped the full implications of what we did together on November 6. Maybe some are just not wanting to celebrate knowing how much remains to be done before Trump is displaced and replaced. Bring it on.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
No comments:
Post a Comment