#98: We Will Stop Trump from Dismantling the Election

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.

Followers of this blog/post/e-blast have a unique opportunity to hear from one of the leaders in the effort to register voters for November and fight voter suppression. Eduardo Sainz of Mi Familia Vota has led his organization's efforts in Arizona to increase the Latino vote and is leader of their national get-out-the-vote effort. Mi Familia Vota has just expanded its targeted efforts from six states in the southwest and west to several Midwestern states. Please sign up to join us on Monday, August 31st at 7pm PST by emailing me at dsh347@gmail.com and we will send you the handy zoom link when the time draws near.

For some time, we have reminded ourselves that Donald Trump will do anything to “win” an election. There is no sense of wonder that Trump would now turn to the Postal Service or the Census to try to change the outcome that is emerging, on November 3 or over time. There’s no surprise that we are examining whether he will resist leaving the oval office after we defeat him. 

Turnout is our electoral strength, with our potential even higher upon the nomination of Kamala Harris. Donald Trump wants to tarnish this election to make it less likely you will vote in it. Across America, resisters are saying, “He can’t do all of these things, can he? He has not been fully checked in previous assaults on the Constitution, so why should we have any confidence in how things will go on November 3? Worse, his own party has an abysmal record of blocking his authoritarian intentions.

On all three threats, we already know how to respond, and how to prevail. Donald Trump knows what we know. Yes, he would burn down all our post offices if he could get away with it. In the absence of that strategy, he expects that mail in ballots will be delivered, and counted, he’s just trying to drive the totals down. His aim is to make the cloud surrounding the election so dark that voters will elect not to participate. It is his primary voter suppression technique, and he practices it every day.

The United States Postal Service processes and delivers 500 million pieces of mail a day, through 31,000+ post offices, whose employees are not all hanging on the Postmaster General’s every word. As the Atlantic points out, there is no issue in the capacity of USPS to handle the volume of less than a 100 million mail in ballots. The issue instead is whether the USPS political leadership will seek to change processes to impair the capacity. The funds that Nancy Pelosi will insist that USPS be provided in the next stimulus package is insurance--- they block the intentional impairment of the capacity, and cast light on dark deeds. There will not be a stimulus package unless these matters are attended to.

Nancy Pelosi and the public outcry will prevent the worst behavior by the Post Office management, but it falls to all of us to prevent the collateral damage that Trump always intended. It’s essential that turnout remain our advantage. Already, countless campaigns and organizations are turning the availability of mail ballots into a central tool. In every swing state except Texas, mail in ballots can be secured without the voter needing to provide a reason. 76% of American voters have the mail in option. It’s even possible that Trump’s false claims of fraud will depress the vote of his own supporters.

A few states honor November 3 postmarks, but many more do not, including more than a few where the cast ballot must arrive by election day. Absentee balloting will begin as early as late September in some states. The goal is to send our ballots in by October 22. This will not only guard against any slow delivery, but it will guarantee that there will be higher totals to be announced on election night. Rather than the outcome being dragged out over weeks (as Trump claims) we can secure totals on the evening of November 3 that will show Trump the door.

So the question becomes whether he will go out the door once he is shown the door. Here too, it is bizarrely in his interests to sully the election by failing to guarantee that he will leave. That is because he wants to be able to maintain that the election was stolen (by mail in ballots) no matter what the totals. It is all part of depressing the vote, which he sees as his victory path.

He has to foul the nest to have a chance to occupy the nest, so will say “we’ll have to see” all the way to November 3. After that, the equation changes. This country’s institutions, including the Courts, the Congress (yes, the Congress) and the military have every interest in the peaceful transition of power. More important to Trump, so do the financial markets. A refusal by Trump to go would send markets into a deep dive. It would sharply reduce Trump’s beloved (and overstated) assets, and increase his chances of going to prison. He won’t do it.

The best defense here again is turnout sufficient to sweep all or nearly all of the swing states. In each we hold a lead. Since we know that Trump is capable of trying anything, we defend against everything, but we keep on winning this election the old fashioned way.
Trump’s third means of creating disorder is a work in progress. At the Commerce Department, Wilbur Ross is seeking to end the Census count a month earlier than planned, by the end of September. 

This raises the specter of minority populations being undercounted. If the Census Bureau reports faulty numbers to Congress on December 31, it could have a deleterious impact on the distribution of certain federal funds and the apportionment of Congressional seats ultimately on the equitable drawing of district lines.

This is a yet unresolved matter. There is some good news. First, a bi-partisan group of Senators including Mitch McConnell (inexplicably) has urged Nancy Pelosi to use the stimulus package or freestanding legislation to extend the date when the Census report is due to Congress. Second, even if this fails, the Congress convening in 2021 could take steps to reject or improve upon the impaired count. On this front, it would seem prudent to make certain we win the Senate majority.

Let’s celebrate Kamala Harris. We have our ticket. We are ahead and we are going to win if we don’t let up for a second. Since each of the above requires our attention, and since vigilance is liberty’s price, let’s do these three things right away.

1) Protect the United States Postal Service
	The battle is not even close to over. The USPS has issued a statement saying they will do their job this fall. We will make sure this promise is honored. It’s not a bad idea (next time you are masked up and buying stamps) to talk to as senior a manager as you can find in your local post office. As you know the voter suppression talk isn’t coming from them. The not so evident players on this challenge are the Secretaries of State in each state. Their national association has asked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for a meeting about USPS obligations, and he has agreed. Notably, the letter was signed by two Republican and two Democratic Secretaries of State.  We can all make sure these elected officials from both parties realize the seriousness of their obligation. You can email nass@sso.org or phone them at 202-624-3529. And, if you are feeling spirited, you can give your carefully worded input to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is a Republican and who signed the letter.
2) Protect the Census
	The Census count ending early is a profound problem, even though there will be additional ways in the next several months to protect the integrity of the census. At this point, the best thing to do is to call your Senator in support of the bi-partisan letter, which calls for a delay in the Census report date to Congress. If you want to be a litigant as well, there is no better organization to support than the Brennan Center at NYU.
3) Send a Signal This Week to Support Biden and Harris
	The best defense against Trump’s multi-front attack on the Constitution is a resounding victory on November 3. As well as the Biden/Harris ticket is doing in reaching out to all those who cannot abide Trump, there are resisters who are not sure that they are with us. You know which, if any, of your friends meet this description. This is a good week to remind them that Trump’s assaults on the USPS and the Census Bureau and his meditations on not vacating the office transcend the every four year battle about who should be President. Protecting the Constitution is the first order of business and they must be a part of that business. You can also gently remind them of the epic battle that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is fighting. Ask them to become a part of her struggle, making it unthinkable that Trump will get a third appointment to the Supreme Court.

Each of Trump’s endless series of attacks on our country demonstrates not our powerlessness, but our power. We are fully marshaled and we know what to do.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#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

#96: How We Will Seek to Redeem a Country’s Soul

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.

Find out below how to participate in our Zoom session with swing district Congressional candidate Alyse Galvin!

John Lewis said we are fighting to redeem the soul of our country. Right now, we are not fighting hard enough. Nicholas Kristof reminds us that as we win on November 3, there will be promise ahead of us. In no way do we have to give in to midnight in America. Rather than the despair that abounds, we see a long but very real path forward toward ending the virus, restoring the economy, and addressing systemic racism in new and powerful ways. We can choose to take that path.

We will wake up on November 4 and tackle America’s enormous unfinished business. No single action taken by President Biden or a Senate rid of Mitch McConnell’s grip will re-establish us as newly worthy of the attention and respect of the world. Countless actions taken over years will do so. Even as we restore environmental protection, show global leadership, significantly expand health care and battle racism, the bulk of the work to meet John Lewis’ soul redemption plea will remain unfinished. This is not a short term project, but we are all in.

We’re all in, unless we have joined the ranks of reactors rather than participants. Railing at Donald Trump and fighting to defeat him are not mutually exclusive propositions. Nonetheless, getting or giving likes or shares or re-tweets or other approvals of a clever or snarky takedown of Donald Trump is not an act of resistance. Listening to Randy Rainbow parody songs, meditating on Melania, commenting on Trump’s hair, and mulling over Trump’s cognitive tests may feel necessary in order for one to bear another day of this awful president. But these things must not be conflated with the actual well-known steps necessary to win an election. There is no such thing as a social media warrior, unless or until they turn their justifiable antipathy toward Trump into actions. Without action, it is just another echo chamber, of which this nation has plenty,

John Lewis exemplified the difference between righteousness and self-righteousness. The first is emboldening and energizing, the second draining and distracting. We have the next 3 ½ months to practice the first. 

Maybe we always intended to participate in an organized resistance group, and it never happened. As the election date neared, the pandemic overwhelmed. Now it may seem like there is nothing to do but watch it all unfold.

It isn’t too late, of course. There is still a great opportunity and need to engage, rather than observe. Polls do not represent an election, but the difference between where we stood at this time in 2016 and where we stand now is pronounced and encouraging, as Harry Enten discusses. In the face of these data, our duty is to 1) remain uncomfortable, and 2) drive home whatever lead we might well have.

If we intensify our already high level of activity, then we will win back more Senate seats than the net of three that we must secure. Past three, every additional seat makes it that much more possible to do some soul redemption for our nation. There are juicy opportunities beyond the highly rated efforts to unseat Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis and Martha McSally with John Hickenlooper, Sara Gideon, Cal Cunningham, and Mark Kelly. We can defeat Mitch McConnell with Amy McGrath, Steve Daines with Steve Bullock, Lindsay Graham with Jaime Harrison, and that is still just the start.

Engaging more intensively is still possible because of the many postcard-writing, texting, calling, voter-registering, turnout-inducing and personal campaigning efforts underway. It is helpful to be affiliated. It isn’t too late to sign up with Indivisible, Swing Left, the Sister District Project, with a specific campaign, or an exemplary regionally based organizing unit, like Western Washington’s Common Purpose, now renaming itself Common Power.

And it isn’t too late to be unaffiliated but still helpful. Postcards to Swing States is a project of Indivisible in Chicago. They will send individual campaigners postcards and addresses, all to be mailed in October and all focused on generating the necessary turnout in then ten most critical states. Also, some individual campaigns are overwhelmed with volunteers, but not all. Those unattached at this point can shop around and find a good candidate set up to deploy volunteers well. And we must all remember the state legislative races that are nearby.

With all of that, there is one other things all of us can be doing even without joining a group.
There is someone out there who you know who (unbelievably) doesn’t plan to vote or (even more unbelievably) believes there isn’t much difference between the two candidates. There is more distance between Biden and Trump than there was between Washington and King George III! Please find those people, make sure they are registered, and get them to vote. Any questions as to how to register can be answered by Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote. 

Honoring John Lewis properly will take some time. There will be initial attention to the possible renaming of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma after Lewis, and then the attention rightly will turn to what will be named the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. It is intended to restore the strength of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, for which Lewis nearly gave his life. Originally, the Act required federal “pre-clearance” of election law changes in several states. In 2014, the Supreme Court invalidated this provision, ruling it was no longer related to evidence of discriminatory practices in those states.

The battle over voter suppression has widened considerably since the Supreme Court decision. Advocates have found new ways to push back against restrictive voter identification laws, poll closures and other suppressive tactics. A re-charged Voting Rights Act named after Lewis would be the perfect way to provide further momentum for all of these efforts, as well as holding specific states to account as the law initially provided.

Since Mitch McConnell refused to recognize that voter suppression exists in America, taking back the Senate is a must for John Lewis to be remembered in this way. Here are three things we can do head in the right direction:

1) Avoid Losing the Focus on Racism
	Republicans have adopted multiple strategies to reduce voter registration and turnout because the more people that vote, the less likely they are to win. The long-standing Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is a coalition of 200 civil rights organizations which will make sure that identification of racism is a central element of the ongoing struggle. You can be certain that you understand every dimension of the effort to create a strengthened Voting Rights Act in John Lewis’ honor by staying in touch with the Leadership Conference.
2) Drive the Message Home in Alabama
	It is ironic that the one thing that destroyed Jeff Sessions’ political career in Alabama is the act of which he should be most proud. As Attorney General, he recused himself from the Mueller investigation. That is why Donald Trump made sure former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville won the Republican primary. Since Tuberville is out of his league, it enhances the chance that Democratic Senator Doug Jones can hold onto his seat. We need a net of 3 seats to take back the Senate, and it will make that a lot easier if we can pull this off, but it will be difficult. Now is the time to help.
3) Add to our House Majority
	The bigger the House majority we are able to build, the more likely we are to sustain a House majority over time. Flipping additional House seats requires us to pay attention and not let ourselves be fully distracted by Senate races. This missive is sponsoring three Zoom sessions over six weeks featuring and hosting swing district candidates who have already demonstrated their excellent potential for flipping a seat. The second session features the tireless Alyse Galvin, who has come from behind to run neck and neck with long time Representative Don Young in Alaska. This one-hour Zoom is scheduled for Thursday, August 6, at 6:30pm PST. To get the Zoom link, RSVP on our Facebook event or email me at dsh347@gmail.com.

It is just over a hundred days until we throw off this crushing burden we have been carrying around for four years. Imagine the new promise it will bring and strive to make it so.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#95: We Must Keep Our Eyes on this Prize

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.

Find out below how to participate in our zoom session with swing district Congressional candidate Carolyn Long!

Braxton Bragg was a terrible Civil War general, much unloved both by his soldiers and his fellow officers. He was a slaveholding plantation owner. His temper was legendary, and he specialized in bitter and unwarranted criticism of people he barely knew. He was a bad strategist, so Jefferson Davis ultimately relieved him of his command. If ever a military installation begged for renaming, it is Fort Bragg in North Carolina. If ever there was a man who would refuse to do it in order to protect our “heritage,” it is Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, the truth is that shielding our eyes from much of our past IS part of our heritage. Thus, we have chosen this time in our history to own up to the inconvertible fact that we have not been the land of the free. We embrace what has always been the best of the American experiment, our huge aspirations, our love for the idea of freedom and self-determination. We are not even close to finished with the American experiment. With agonizing slowness, our nation has kindled dreams for all, not just the Protestant white male property owners that were by far the most privileged after our independence from England. There was a reason why the Statue of Liberty was always seen as a beacon. It is not extinguished and we will not let that happen.

That’s why resisters are already emphasizing what we can become and what we can accomplish during the four years of the Biden presidency, before he stands aside for a younger leader. (All of this depends of course on us keeping our focus and thus maintaining our lead between now and November 3.) We recognize that there is a necessary unfinished agenda from the Obama presidency. Not the least is the salvaging and grand expansion of the Affordable Care Act. The repairs of Trump’s misdeeds will be paramount and must be addressed daily. The pandemic must be ended and the next one prevented. Every day, we must show that our country remembers what happened to George Floyd.

And there is so much more to be done early in President Biden’s term: protection of a woman’s right to choose, constantly under fire. Undoing the executive orders that accelerated environmental degradation. Getting us back into the Climate Accords and improving them. Shielding Dreamers. Restoring our position in the world community. Renewing global friendships and distancing ourselves from dictators. Addressing the income inequality that otherwise will surely unravel us. 

We feel the urgency to remake America, honoring what Barack Obama was able to achieve and going beyond it. We’re already mindful of the ways we will be constrained in January 2021 and beyond. Notable barriers will remain even after Trump takes his legendary misdeeds and untruths and starts to occupy his own rightful place in history, as the malevolent nativist divider of the American people. 

As we take on the post-Trump restoration of the American presidency, we will face three major obstacles, each of which is already causing misery among those that want to accelerate the coming reforms. In all three cases, the constraints are meaningful but manageable, if we are well led, stay together and get at least a slim majority in the United State Senate.

First, we are hampered by the constitutionally ordained makeup of the United States Senate, in its award of two Senators for each state regardless of its population. This was a necessary condition to form the Union in 1789, and gives oversized power to often conservative voters in rural states. This condition has no chance of being changed, since any constitutional amendment process would have to be agreed to in those same rural states. There is no point in being heartsick over it. It is important to note that some of the rural states that are lumped as one by critics have some purple coloring, including Alaska, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, Maine, and New Hampshire, or are blue, like Vermont. Even South Dakota had a Democratic Senator up until 2018.

Second, we are constrained by Supreme Court, whose narrow conservative majority seems unlikely to shift in the next decade. We will live with the unnecessary arrival of Brett Kavanuagh and Neil Gorsuch into our lives for a generation or so. We will experience countless painful rulings from the Court during Joe Biden’s presidency. However, Roberts and Gorsuch recently played the key role in expanding employment protections to LGBTQ Americans under the Civil Rights Act. This is as consequential a ruling as there has been in years. Kavanagh helped Roberts block Trump’s continued attack on Dreamers. Splendidly, in a 5-4 decision Roberts treated certain protections for abortion clinics as settled law. This court will not necessarily erect major obstacles to a reform agenda led by Biden and Senate Democrats.

Third, we are constrained by the Senate’s own self-imposed rules, which in many cases require a supermajority (60 votes) to close off debate. It would take 50 votes to apply the “nuclear option” and eliminate this rule. Such Democratic Senators as Diane Feinstein and Joe Manchin are reluctant to do it, because it has worked in our favor to block Mitch McConnell, most notably in preventing the decimation of the Affordable Care Act through countless attacks, and in saving the Iran nuclear deal. Other Democrats believe now is the time to exercise the nuclear option, as they angle for major legislative action on climate change. 

This is an issue to watch closely, not getting caught up in former Majority Leader Harry Reid’s rhetoric, beseeching us to use the option. Reid was smart enough to never do it while he was in power. Democrats like Delaware’s Chris Coons (close to Biden) have defended the rule in the past. In showing a new interest in changing the rules to close debate (perhaps short of the nuclear option) Coons is signaling that Democrats will not accept McConnell using his minority powers to block major legislation on gun control, immigration and climate change. If we get the new Senate majority, guaranteeing that we won’t use the nuclear option represents disarmament, since its threat can induce concessions by Republican leaders. Eventually having to use it is an awful choice, because we will want desperately for 45 votes to have sway sometime in the future.

So, it behooves us to embrace and build from all that we can do within the existing rules of the Senate:

--- As with Trump, Biden needs only 50 votes to confirm federal judges and presidential appointments. If we gain the majority it will give him the opportunity to name the successor to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

--- Biden and his Vice President, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor can immediately restore our standing in NATO, renew our friendship with France and Germany, rescind Trump’s departure from various international agreements, re-visit the six nation accord with Iran; and develop a coherent US trade policy.

--- It will take time, but Biden and his EPA administrator and Interior Secretary can reverse all of the executive actions that Trump and his minions took eliminating environmental regulation.

--- Biden can find means to use the budget reconciliation process (which is not subject to the 60-vote rule for closing debate) to advance major fiscally oriented policies as Republicans recently did with the tax bill. For instance, reconciliation could be used to battle climate change by creating a huge green infrastructure “bank,” or modifying tax policy that advantages fossil fuels. This is in addition to returning to the Paris accords and working to boost the efforts of the states.

--- Absent action from Congress (and under Supreme Court scrutiny) Biden can use executive orders to protect transgendered persons, shield Dreamers, sharply increase the federal role in reinventing policing, and advance gun regulation.

--- Importantly, many of the provisions of the greedy Trump/McConnell 2017 tax law will expire in 2025. That will give Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer leverage on tax policy from early on in the Biden administration. McConnell simply blocking tax reform (as he would otherwise do) rather than participating in bi-partisan discussions would mean he would have almost nothing left of his corporate tax approach by mid-decade.

Beyond all this, within his existing powers and within the rules of the Senate President Biden can usher in an era where we have a President who acts like a President. We can step away from daily division, and enter a world where we can have some pride in our government and get some protection from it.

Let’s do these three things to find that place:

1) Continue to Flip House Seats
	The bigger the House majority we are able to build, the more likely we are to sustain a House majority over time. Flipping additional House seats requires us to pay attention to key races and to not let ourselves be fully distracted by Senate races. This missive is sponsoring three zoom sessions over the next six weeks featuring and hosting swing district candidates who have already demonstrated their excellent potential for flipping a seat. The first is Carolyn Long, running in Washington State’s 3rd Congressional District, centered in Vancouver, Washington, which is just north of Portland. Carolyn’s fresh and exciting candidacy gained her 48% of the vote in 2018. In 2020 we will put her over the top.  Would you like to join us at 4 pm Pacific time on Monday, July 20? Register here and we will spend an hour with Carolyn.
2) Warm Yourself in November by Winning Florida
	Donald Trump and Republican Governor Ron DeSantis are boosting our already good chances in Florida. Unfortunately for those over 65, they have done so by demonstrating early on that opening up businesses quickly is a priority over the health of older Floridians. Understandably, this virus mismanagement is sending older voters toward Biden. Of course the new hullaballoo will be Trump’s upcoming efforts to unmask Jacksonville during his convention speech. Lenny Curry, the Republican mayor of Jacksonville has indicated the health of the public is his primary concern. It is a great time to email him and remind him that the nation is watching and hoping he will stand up for what is right: MayorLennyCurry@coj.net.
3) Make Certain Voters Can Vote
	Voter suppression efforts are underway in several states, not least of which are Donald Trump’s efforts to misrepresent the safety and security of mail ballots. One way to prevent suppression is to guarantee voters can overcome obstacles in their path, including often confusing voter ID requirements. Vote Riders is the inventive national assistance program on voter ID, and it partners with voter registration and turnout organizations in multiple states. It is a good idea to make sure they have the resources to do their job.

If election day were today, that would be a very good thing. The polls look excellent, the Biden campaign seems well managed, and Donald Trump is insulting NASCAR. Four more months to continue our intensity of effort and end this nightmare.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#94: Americans Want and Need a Presidential President

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.

For the most part, it’s not good that many Americans lack a fundamental knowledge of the workings of government.  At least we have a leader on this front, since, as John Bolton says, the President’s own lack of knowledge is “stunning”.

For just a minute, Donald Trump’s lack of knowledge, incuriousness and even contempt for knowledge on the workings of government has turned to our nation’s advantage. This is the good news and the bad news. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Trump-expulsion of Dreamers could have been prevented by any of hundreds of thousands of high school civics teachers, bloggers, or small town lawyers. Luckily, Trump listens to no one and insists that his minions listen to no one but him. The court’s finding that Trump’s actions violated the Administrative Procedures Act by being “arbitrary and capricious” offers a simple solution that Trump could have followed all along--- don’t be that way.

In his executive order protecting Dreamers, Barack Obama knew that he had no clear statutory authority and that he was stretching presidential powers as far as he could, since Congress had failed to act. All Donald Trump had to do was carefully and meticulously prepare his executive order, following the procedures of the Administrative Procedures Act by providing a “reasoned explanation”. The majority of the Court has a low standard for the extent to which it wishes to adjudicate the reasoning. The Court simply maintained that the reasoning can’t be absent, which it was.

Of course this means Trump still has a path to expel Dreamers. Luckily, he is running out of time, since a federal district court is likely to enjoin his next action, making that injunction subject to appeal, and putting these matters off until after November.

All of this is bizarrely similar to Trump’s 5-4 loss on adding an immigration status question to the Census. Here too Justice Roberts ruled that the Trump administration’s reasoning was “contrived”.  Trump could have been successful by paying even minimal attention to the details of the law, or at least permitting his supplicants to guide him. He now has tweeted that it’s all proof that the Supreme Court “doesn’t like him.” Since he is thoroughly unlikable, they shouldn’t like him, but of course that is not what has caused these two significant defeats.

There will be plenty of painful times ahead with this Court. They may do some more damage to the Affordable Care Act or the right to choose. They will likely give Trump’s tax records to a federal grand jury, but perhaps not to Congress, which has sought them. There will be further victories too. It would be hard to find one more monumental than last week’s ruling unequivocally providing LGBQT employees protection under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Trump’s losses in court are richly related to the varying stages of his mismanagement of the pandemic and his antipathy to Black Lives Matter. In all these cases, he starts by dredging his approach from the nearly empty pool of his knowledge of government, polluted by his visceral notions based upon falsehoods. He tests the approach out on Sean Hannity or Rudy Giuliani and calls it good to go.

It isn’t working. Knowledge is making a strong comeback, as it has proven necessary to fight a pandemic. Whether they are mask wearers or not, voters don’t agree with Laura Ingraham that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a part of “medical deep state”. They think he is an expert on infectious diseases. Women with a high school diploma, part of the backbone of Trump’s support in 2016, are now trending toward Joe Biden. They want a presidential President, especially in these troubled times. 

That’s the secret of our impending success. We are running a man who knows all about how government works at the exact time that voters have finally noticed that the present President does not. Trust in government still polls at low levels, but there is an accompanying notion that government should be an indispensable force for good in trying times. From COVID 19 victims to George Floyd, the memories of the dead are still with us. No Trump tweet, rally or prevarication will erase that.

In the face of the Trump decline, there is also no danger that the positive polls will lull us. In fact, instead of being lulled by a lead, many of the same people who are giving us our current significant polling advantage are simultaneously worried that Trump will ultimately prevail, even though millions of independents have extricated themselves from him. Some are even convinced Trump will win, not daring to let any hope enter their heart.

Every election is different from every other. What we have done since 2016 is learn all over again how to convince people to get out and vote, and to fiercely fight the voter suppression techniques that are the shame of the Republican Party. 

This is the year that we will do huge things for our country. Here are three things that we ought to be taking on right now:

1) Help Ban Chokeholds Nationwide
	In the past, chokehold bans have not eliminated the application of chokeholds by police officers. This is different. The over eight minutes during which Derek Chauvin carried out the slow murder of George Floyd won’t be forgotten. Citizens will be empowered to monitor the streets, and cell phone cameras will play a new role in preventing misconduct. With your help, cities and towns across the country will explicitly ban chokeholds.   Check and make certain your own city has taken the right steps, or check whether your state has passed a law that covers all cities and towns. This chart by 8 Can’t Wait compares the use of force policies in scores of cities. It is a good time to call your mayor.
2) Add to Your List of Targeted Senate Races
	When Republican Joni Earl got herself elected to the United States Senate in 2014, she used her farming background to say she would “make them squeal” like a pig by challenging federal budget deficits. She ended up making corporations and the wealthiest donors squeal with joy instead, as they hogged the advantages of an Ernst supported tax bill unbalancing the budget by another trillion dollars. Donald Trump has at least one fact straight, that he is in trouble in Iowa. That’s why he pleaded with Xi Jingping for China to buy agricultural products to help him get re-elected. Farmers and farm communities who stood with him believing in his blustery trade war with China are reconsidering as the Trump administration now argues with itself where the trade deal stands. Joni Earl is an enabler of it all, and a good choice as resisters seek to flip another Senate seat, building upon our promising positions in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina. A new poll has Joni Earl’s long time lead evaporating. It is time to send a little love in the direction of Theresa Greenfield.
3) Get on Joe Biden’s List Today
	The Biden campaign has enough work to do without having to worry about whether we support him. The more voters he can lock down, the more time he can spend on people who he needs to persuade either to vote for him or to vote at all. Even if you have found a different way to invest in getting the outcome we need this year, give a donation directly to the campaign of the next President and “sign your name to stand with Biden”.

The surreal behavior of Donald Trump is everywhere, every day. To his huge disadvantage, so is reality--- a resolve by Americans by people in community after community to beat the pandemic that is ravaging us, and a new commitment to address the racism that we have never expelled. 

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#93: You Must Know That There is a Way Forward

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.

It is all overwhelming, but you must know there is a way forward. The killing of George Floyd has exposed the never healed wound of racism in America. If we make it so, this will be a point where we turn in a new direction. The massive outrage will be translated into new rules, laws, protections, and oversight of policing in America. We will find that this time is different, that not only will policing change but that as a society we will renew the way we are addressing systemic racism and huge wealth disparities.

The pandemic will continue, and with it a similar sorrow of preventable, agonizing deaths. Trump’s tale of an error free pandemic response is not believed, or believable. There are tens of thousands of caskets which should not have been put into service. Scarily, at this stage of battlefield exhaustion we are newly vulnerable. Somehow, millions of us feel invulnerable, or we suppose that we have done all we can.

There is an uncomfortable parallel between our spiraling out of control on these two fronts. We do not accept as much responsibility for racism as we must. And, we are not worried about the virus as to the extent that we should be. In both cases, we are still telling ourselves an untrue personal story, and a fable about our nation in the world.

Every time we as a society hear news that we have been bad at doing something good, we think that it is anomalous. We say, “No, that isn’t who we are.” Even if we never speak of American exceptionalism, the idea of it is so ingrained in us from our school days forward that we may as well have “We’re number one” printed on our garments.

That makes it essential to understand why the idea of the United States as a beacon can remain genuine even as we see our greatest failings exposed. It’s because of kindled dreams, the true story that those who are born here and those that come here can lift themselves up. It is more difficult nowadays to make the dream come true, but tens of millions have enjoyed more freedom, more opportunity, and more education than the generation before it. That’s our brightest beacon, and Donald Trump won’t have succeeded in extinguishing it by the time we remove him on November 3.

We will be left battered, with the virus still infecting us, systemic racism unchecked, our greatest environmental hazard unaddressed, and our role in the world diminished. The test for us as citizens after November 3 is to find our way into a new era. The challenge of our elected leadership, including a new Democratic majority in the Senate, will be to help generate the momentum that will help carry us forward.

We are eager to hear of the selection of the Vice President but are otherwise cheered by where the election stands. We don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but we couldn’t help but notice that there has been some deterioration of the Trump position after the bible was brandished and the New Testament ignored. It doesn’t hurt that there are two things wholly present in Joe Biden and entirely absent from Donald Trump-- knowledge and appreciation of the workings of government, and empathy for human suffering.

The formula for our impending electoral success remains. There is plenty of persuading of independents to be done, mostly to reinforce their movement in considerable numbers away from Donald Trump. Even more dominant is our need to generate turnout, which we have been ably rehearsing these past three years. 4.3% of those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 did not vote in 2016. We will fix that.

The troubled times call us not to pause our efforts but to redouble them, relentlessly seeking to bend the arc of history toward justice. Presently, we can do these three things:

1) Sustain a Huge Political Movement
	New registrations and higher turnout are much of the focus of the immense organizing effort that is underway. Indivisible and Swing Left did not exist until November of 2016. Their work has been indispensable. Other organizations have come forward, like Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote, the Sister District project, and at the regional level, such exemplars as Common Purpose.  New attention must be paid and is being paid to how sharply focused, sustainable grassroots efforts will be fostered and supported over time. That is why we should support the focus of the Movement Voter Project which has vetted and is generating assistance for 450 local and state progressive organizations
2) Protect Government Watchdogs
	The system of internal government watchdogs has had strong bi-partisan support since its inception. Now, Donald Trump is firing inspectors general one at a time, every time one of them offends him (easy to do) or a cabinet secretary. This amounts to a lot of carnage, because the entire idea of inspectors general is to push back against the misuse of power and the misappropriation of funds. Standing in the way of the new rounds of firing is Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley, who intended to have as his political legacy the creation and protection of a strong system of internal oversight through inspectors general. The law requires Donald Trump to provide justification for inspector general firings, and Trump thus far has said his justification is that he “lost confidence” in each appointee. Grassley has no choice but to put a “hold” on selected Trump appointees until Trump complies with the law.  Grassley’s enthusiasm for standing up to the President may fade. It’s time to use Charles Grassley’s comment system to thank him for his efforts thus far, and to urge him to continue to seek protection of inspectors general.
3) Be a Part of Our New National Commitment
	George Floyd’s murder started something that isn’t going away, and shouldn’t go away. We must recommit to finding the racism within ourselves, and tirelessly ferreting it out in our country. With regard to police brutality, from the outset we must work at the level of every single community to re-examine the nature of policing, including its priorities, staffing and funding. Unfortunately, this necessary intense effort has been branded by more than a few as “defunding”. In his life, the writer of this missive has twice been confronted by individuals who inexplicably indicated a strong interest in killing him! Calling 911 was and is an outstanding option for people in such situations, and it’s unwise to confuse Americans by telling them that 911 is going away, even if that is not necessarily what one means by defunding. This discussion over the language of defunding will continue, and eventually a language of massive reform will emerge. In the meantime, it behooves all of us to understand and be engaged in what is being sought city by city, notably by the 8 Can’t Wait Movement.

Now we have an agenda before us that must be addressed both immediately (by banning chokeholds) and over several years. Both the pandemic and George Floyd’s murder have signaled us to be wary of embracing a false equilibrium, some new level of satisfaction in ourselves. Instead, let’s remove the divider in chief from his position, and go back to looking together for what America can become

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington