#75: Making Sure We Win the Most Important Election Since Lincoln Beat Douglas

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Right after a debate is the perfect time to examine where we stand in staying together as resisters and together winnowing our field of candidates. We would want to keep tabs on this not least because it will be an election more consequential than any time since Abraham Lincoln beat slavery sympathizer Stephen Douglas in 1860.

The polls show that we are in excellent position with less than 14 months until the big day. Trump’s unfavorable rating has spiked even higher, and nearly 60% of voters think he should be denied a second term. Our top candidates poll well in head to head matchups, and Trump can be counted on to do something newly self-destructive any day now. The nightmares we have about November 2016 prevent many of us from having a single scintilla of complacency. We allow ourselves no comfort from polls or pundits who say we will very likely win. 

We remain even more guarded because we remember times even outside 2016 that it seems like we pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory. Since we don’t want to do that again, we must maintain rules of engagement for our movement and for our candidates.

• Watching Our Language---- Elizabeth Warren doesn’t really think that her colleagues who want to modify her Medicare for All proposal are “spineless,” so she shouldn’t say they are. More critically, Julian Castro does not really believe that Joe Biden suffered from short term memory loss in a two-minute period in last Thursday’s debate, so he shouldn’t have made that accusation twice in a half a minute. We need to decide what to do about candidates showing such irresponsible judgement. One attractive option would be to suffer memory loss on why Julian Castro should be provided support. We cannot end up together at the end unless we keep ourselves between the lines as debates continue.

• Circling Back to What We Have in Common---- The debate exchanges on the differences between Medicare for All and a very robust public option were more helpful and compelling than they have been in past debates. These vivid differences will continue to be sorted out. Three or four candidates underscored that all the Democratic candidates support universal coverage and stressed the stark difference between that approach and Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. References such as these are important. Notably, the warrior Bernie Sanders seems not to acknowledge any common cause with the other Democratic candidates. There is a huge difference (which he seems not to recognize) between exhorting, persuading and guiding. It is said by her supporters that Elizabeth Warren has come to appreciate these distinctions. May we all help to make it so!

• Adding to the Top Tier---- It is not too late to add another name or two at the top. If Andrew Yang’s lottery giveaway proposal disqualified his candidacy and Julian Castro weakened his own chances, that leaves five other debaters who could join Biden, Warren and Sanders in the lead. These are Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke. These are a strong group of public servants, a couple of whom you wouldn’t object to hanging around for a while. If you feel that way, now is the time to donate. And keep Michael Bennett and Steve Bullock in mind, just in case either finds a way to get some traction. Don’t keep Tom Steyer in mind at all.

• Ending the Criticism of the Debate Selection Process----There is nothing activists like to do more than get angry with the Democratic National Committee, which has been known to earn that enmity. However, the recent debate shows that we benefited from the DNC process to limit the number of candidates on the stage. Why would the number of donors and performance in respectable polls be seen as an “arbitrary” standard to narrow the field?

• Trusting the Speaker on Impeachment---- Perhaps what is soon to be discovered in Trump’s tax returns will be new grist. Barring that, Nancy Pelosi is right to slow walk impeachment proceedings in the House, because she is mortally certain that a trial in the Senate would not attract the necessary 67 votes. Thus, she rightly believes that handing Mitch McConnell and his friends a microphone for a couple of months in an election year is as self-defeating a strategy as resisters could devise. Losing in the Senate does not demonstrate courage nor does it advance justice. It is just losing. We all know how to get rid of Trump and we even know the date--- November 3, 2020. Register voters. Fight voter suppression. Persuade independents. Support strong candidates.

We can stay together now, as a way to guarantee being together at the end. In this movement, we can keep from unraveling by being truthful and passionate with each other and never turning on each other with righteousness, eschewing epithets. We can continue to recognize the centrality of our shared purpose. 

Due entirely to Mitch McConnell and the Republicans who hide behind him, legislation is stalled on every front. However, there will be a budget deal, and there will be a vote on background checks for gun owners because Republican Senators up for re-election will insist upon it. McConnell is leaving substance up to Trump, who is in a bind. He wants to please both the NRA and the 80% of Americans who want stronger background checks.

Elsewhere, there is a new furor over a whistleblower filing in the intelligence agencies that should be followed carefully. There is also a new front in the legal battle to get Trump’s tax returns. Meanwhile, with Congress not moving forward, there are still multiple ways to respond to the mean-spiritedness that embodies the Trump presidency. Let’s do these three things:

1) Appeal to General Mattis’ Patriotism
	Former Defense Secretary Mattis has a new book “Call Sign Chaos”. In it, he says that he will not criticize a sitting president. But he says this much: “I did as well as I could for as long as I could. When my concrete solutions and strategic advice, especially keeping faithful allies, no longer resonated, it was time to resign, despite the limitless joy I felt alongside our troops in defense of our Constitution.” In trying to do an honorable thing, General Mattis is doing a dishonorable thing. Our alliances with France, Canada, Germany and Great Britain are an indispensable element in maintaining a fragile world order. Rather than having an obligation to not say what he knows, Mattis has an obligation to sound the alarm about Trump’s siding with Putin against our friends. This is exactly how Constitutions get defended. Mattis is on a national book tour. Follow this site to see if he is coming to your area. When he comes, show up in the hall or outside, aiming to get him to speak up for our global friends, whose soldiers have shed blood at our behest. Or write a letter to the editor or post on Facebook. Mattis is personally unreachable. The most enterprising can try to send this message through his speaking agent, the Washington Speaker’s Bureau.
2) Make Sure Pat Toomey Does the Right Thing on Gun Control
	Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania is up for re-election in 2022. Not only does he personally believe that stronger background checks are an important part of gun reform, his own re-election depends upon it. That is why he has been the leader among Senate Republicans in trying to find bi-partisan support for closing some of the holes in the easy to evade background check system. His primary tool is an inadequate bill co-sponsored with Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. This bill has been in play as Mitch McConnell lets Donald Trump decide what Senate Republicans are going to do. It’s a great time to check in with Pat Toomey. One way or another, he will be a key player in whatever transpires. Beseech your Pennsylvania friends to get directly involved. Let’s generate as much phone activity as we can to three of Toomey’s offices. Tell them that he needs to do something, now.      Washington DC- 202 224-4252      Allentown- 610 4434-1444      Johnstown- 814 222-5974
3) Protect Animals from Trophy Hunters
	In individual cases, the Trump administration has waived the ban on importing African lions as trophies even as Donald Trump described such killings as horrific. Write your own member of Congress and make certain she or her has signed onto the bill passed by the House Natural Resources Committee. If we attend to this legislation, we can make certain the ban is absolute. And, sign the Humane Society’s pledge and help guarantee they keep up the pressure.

We are trying not to get ahead of ourselves. Donald Trump already has proven that being unsuited does not automatically disqualify someone for the presidency. Nonetheless, our efforts are going well. It would be good to remember that the word “optimist” should not be used as a pejorative term by those who hear others describing our impressive progress.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#74: Economic Growth Means More Than Comforting the Comfortable

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He has borrowed from future generations to give money to the Americans who already have money. He has told corporations he will ignore the cost of their pollution. He has denied the cataclysmic economic and environmental impact of climate change. He has destabilized trade 
worldwide, destroyed foreign markets for our crops, and treated our friends like enemies. 

The common narrative is that any of Donald Trump's economic "successes" might well fade by November 2020, removing for him might otherwise be an argument for votes. The truth is sharper-even though more Americans are working, for the most part these were not economic successes in the first place.

It has been a far more productive economy for stockholders than it has been for wage earners. Real wages adjusted for inflation have only started to pick up and some metropolitan areas experience labor shortages. The economic growth that we have experienced has been gained through unsustainable practices. It has exacerbated the wealth divide in America. 

Donald Trump's tax cuts were designed to comfort the comfortable. Reductions in corporate tax rates were sold as a means of stimulating investment in workers, plant and equipment. But a very significant portion of the revenue created has been used for corporate stock buybacks that drive up stock prices. The same tax cut skyrocketed the deficit which will make it more difficult to find stimulus funds if the economy ends up needing a boost.

The tariffs levied have lifted more money from middle-class taxpayer pockets than the tax cuts put there in the first place. This is contrary to Donald Trump's claims (lies) about tariff revenues being a net gain for the Treasury. The in-artfulness of Trump's dealings is based upon his refusal to recognize that Xi Xing Ping needs to walk away from the table showing the Chinese that he got something too. Trump's announcement that we must and will win is geopolitically nonsensical. Decades of work building markets for agricultural products has been jettisoned.

Always scapegoat searching, Trump has selected for attack his own appointee, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. Powell refuses to use monetary policy (meant to control inflation and underpin job growth) as Trump's secret weapon on trade disputes. Powell is uncertain where Trump is heading, which makes two since Trump is uncertain of where Trump is heading.

There is considerable evidence that Trump propped up markets last week by inventing calls he had received from the Chinese. The things he is willing to do or say are no longer surprising to us. What is surprising is how many of us are willing to just let it pass if Trump's actions are related to the economy.

We can't let pass the implication that the debt increasing, middle-class ignoring, food stamp and health insurance depriving Trump has an argument to make for any steps on the economy. He doesn't have any such argument. That conclusion can be drawn even before we see the results it in the future of missteps he is presently taking.

Instead let's go for an economy where we not only raise the minimum wage but we fully attend to securing living wages that sustain families. Let's go for narrowing the huge wealth disparities that have grown in America. Let's establish a tax code that recognizes the 80% of the population that tax law now treats as an afterthought, if it if gives any thought at all to low-income and middle-income taxpayers.

Let's immediately take two steps to fight for economic justice. Then let's return to the upcoming Senate debate about the awful carnage that has overtaken America.

1) Keeping from Adding Insult to Injury
	Unbelievably a gang of Senate Republicans is seriously proposing that the president issue an executive order to index the capital gains tax to inflation. This would significantly reduce the tax paid on gains on stocks whose price has doubled or tripled since the Great Recession.  There has been no positive indexing of the minimum wage. Republicans have even opposed increasing the present federal minimum wage from the miniscule $7.25 an hour. Yet there seems to be no shame on lowering the capital gains tax even as recent tax cuts have blown up the deficit.  It's not clear whether Trump can legally index capital gains by executive order or who would have the legal standing to challenge it. This action would cost the treasury an additional hundred billion dollars realized almost entirely by the wealthiest of Americans.  At this point the center of the battle against indexing capital gains is Democratic senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Call him at 202-224-2315 to tell him this would be an awful step and encourage him to keep working to find Republican allies to oppose any such move. The best means to monitor the insults of the present and future is to follow the work of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
2) Advancing the Minimum Wage
	Increasing the minimum wage is only one part all of the agenda for advancing the economic interests of low-income Americans. This is because even at the higher-level imposed by some states the minimum wage in no way represents a living wage. Still, it's an important step in concert with increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit and broader tax reform. Progress has been made in a score of states so there are two fronts for getting this done. The US Senate needs to take up the minimum wage bill already passed by the house which increases the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 over several years. At this point the Senate committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions has refused to take it up. Chair Lamar Alexander knows better than that and you can remind him that he knows better than that by calling his office at 202-224-4944. Self-evidently, in the long-term both the federal and state efforts to increase the minimum wage go better in bed as Democrats take over the US Senate and increase and win majorities in state legislatures. Second, the best guide to which states need intervention from resisters is the National Employment Law Project. You can sign up to get progress reports. If you are so inclined can give them financial support as well.
3) Moving Forward on Gun Legislation Now
	At long last there is going to be a meaningful debate in the United States centered on gun control. As much as key Republicans would like to have the debate be just about "red flag" laws where people of interest can be overseen, the debate that will be held will go to the much more significant issues of universal background checks and assault rifle bans.  This is an extraordinary opportunity to do something important to respond to the massacres that have emerged across our country. The NRA and Donald Trump will be doing whatever they can to do as close to nothing as possible. It falls to us to make certain Republican Senators who have shown some interest in gun reform will step forward rather than step backwards.  As with the calls we made weeks ago these five Republicans Senators must be reached because they are more interested than Trump in responding to the crisis that is before us. Please call as many of them as you can. Susan Collins of Maine 202-224-2523 Lamar Alexander of Tennessee 202-224-4944 Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania 202-224-4254 Mike Braun of Indiana 202-224-4854 Rob Portman of Ohio 202-224-3353

Reputable polls put us in the best shape that we have been since Donald Trump was elected. It falls to us to keep it that way.  As we know there's only one thing that we need to do--- exhibit relentless, intensive, democracy-serving vigilance and action.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#73: From Today Forward, We Must Do Even More

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There is another threat to our country besides Donald Trump. Looking beyond Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, Lindsay Graham and Sean Hannity (who are just flunkies) we find the danger coming from our own angry and despairing selves. We never expected to live for nearly three years under such a government or such a president. Thus, we can be wounded each day by whatever maniacal or narcissistic action Trump comes up with.

The threat we represent comes from the tendency of wounded people to not always act wisely when they seek to distract themselves from those wounds, or try to heal them. We understand intellectually that it is a political movement that will remove the source of the wounds (and that of our nation) by November of 2020. Even in the face of that understanding, on some days we don’t make such great decisions on the total time we spend on the public or political sides of our lives, and what do we do with the time allocated. Day to day, are our actions specifically directed toward election results or do we get distracted or even swallowed within our own community of disapproval?

Several years ago, the Facebook campaign to Save Darfur got 1.2 million “likes”. From all that activity, it only generated $90,000 in contributions to fight hunger. Over 99% of the persons who “liked” the campaign found that single click sufficient to cover their commitment to fighting hunger in Darfur. The point is that enormous amount of social media activity that surrounds the resistance to Donald Trump does not itself represent political action that will bring about his longed for demise.

Yes, we can use social media to learn things that make us better advocates. We can use it to bolster us in our resolve. However, in terms of getting votes. Randy Rainbow songs, the newest cartoon, Epstein conspiracy theories and tweets of outrage are all sounds being made in an echo chamber, albeit a very big echo chamber.

On August 8, Donald Trump flashed a thumbs up while being photographed with a child whose parents had been killed in a massacre that he himself had helped precipitate. There has been no fuller measure of this man than his behavior in El Paso and Dayton. Understandably he has been called out on social media for this new extraordinary rejection of any conceivable way a president might act. However, the test for us is not the digital expression of disapproval that has since materialized but our specific actions since (and in the upcoming weeks) demanding that members of Congress enact universal background checks and a ban on assault weapons.

We are part of the largest political movement in decades. It won’t be the largest, most powerful political movement until the results are tallied on the evening of Tuesday, November 3, 2020. We are very, very likely to win on that day, because Donald Trump has lost the center, and we will make certain that it stays lost for him. We are winning almost 2/3 of newly registered voters, and he will continue to help us by adding to his list of offenses.

Why not turn our very, very likely victory into an inevitability? It is the most important election of our lifetime. The force that will make our victory inevitable is not the power of digital information or observation, it’s the power of action, using digital tools but going way beyond them.

We are not strangers to the powerful, satisfying, successful elements of meaningful political action. Whether we are fully ensconced in that world, have wandered from our place within it, or have never found that place, it’s time for an increase in our commitment and our concentration.

We can register younger voters, making certain that no one turns 18 without getting the chance to change the world. We can concentrate on registering Latino voters in swing states. We must make certain the vote is not suppressed, learning where the greatest threats are and how to respond. To guarantee that post-census redistricting is not itself a voter suppression tool, we must stay focused on state legislatures as well. 

If we are working on all of this alone, we needn’t be. We can join an Indivisible group, or create one of our own. Or, we could join a Swing Left group. We can link up with Tony the Democrats and do personal postcards to voters by ourselves, or in small groups. We can buy into the smartest, best articulated electoral vote winning approach courtesy of Swing Left and their Super State strategy, designed to win the Presidency and take back the Senate. We can start giving to the Democratic nominee right now, through Swing Left’s Unify or Die fund, which will be provided to our presidential candidate right after she or he is nominated.  We can adopt a Senate candidate who must win if Mitch McConnell is to be deposed, like Mark Kelly in Arizona. 

All of the above are things that fighters must do right now, as if lives depend upon it. And, all the while that we take such direct political action (rather than just observing the battle), we must contend with an awful series of injustices Donald Trump has advanced while Congress is in recess. The long-term solution to each is to have a different President. In the short term, we must do these three things.

1) Keep the Words of Emma Lazarus Alive
	Part of the pride of being an American is the resonance of the Emma Lazarus poem on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe fee, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”  Donald Trump and his hench-people are working to decrease the opportunity of immigrants to become lawful permanent residents of our country if they have used food stamps and other government services. Immigration chief Ken Cuccinelli had previously shamefully called immigrants “invaders” so his “stand on your own two feet” standard is unsurprising. Is it really this easy to forget what so many of our own grandparents went through to build their lives in this country, and to build this country? Several states are seeking to block this new administrative rule, as is the National Immigration Law Center, whose important work you can follow and who would be happy to receive your support.
2) Work to Stop Trump from Endangering Other Species
	Donald Trump’s complex changes in the administration of the Endangered Species Act sum up to “let’s not try too hard” even though 99% of the species labeled endangered have been successfully protected. The new rules adopted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service represent the long arm of former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke reaching back to punch the animals he was supposed to have been protecting. As with the immigration rules, the battle to block the Endangered Species Act changes will begin in the courts. Still, it would be good to start with the Sierra Club’s petition to the Fish and Wildlife Service to demonstrate how many of us are with the conservation organizations in the looming battle.
3) This Time, We Will Pass Universal Background Checks
	It’s predictable. Weeks after El Paso and Dayton, Donald Trump’s interest in strengthening background checks has vanished. Could it be that he and Wayne LaPierre of the NRA had a discussion? But, there remains an opportunity. Mitch McConnell promised a post-recess Senate review on gun issues, where he will try to limit the discussion to extreme risk protection orders, known as red flag laws. In that discussion, Republican Senators will have a chance to close the numerous loopholes in the background check “system”, such as gun show exemptions. Americans are for better background checks. Will any Republicans stand tall on this? Please call any or all of these five Republican Senators who have already said they are for such improvements, but who are susceptible to White House pressure.  Susan Collins of Maine 202-224-2523 Lamar Alexander of Tennessee 202-224-4944 Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania 202-224-4254 Mike Braun of Indiana 202-224-4854 Rob Portman of Ohio 202-224-3353

We have witnessed this unraveling of our country at the hands of a man who should not have been president for almost 3 years. From the beginning, we have been part of a monumental movement to put our country back together. Perhaps we are thinking that we are doing all that we can. Now we need to do even more.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#72: We Will Not Risk the Presidency Over a Resolvable Dispute

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On every major issue driving the American voter, we are in excellent shape. Unless we misdirect ourselves (which is not our plan) we are the party of choice and access to health care. We are also the party which battles climate change, requires universal background checks to own a gun, and restores global alliances. We reject Donald Trump, whose has sown the wind with hatred of the “other.” He has drawn together angry people and told them lies about Mexicans and about immigrants to make them angrier. He did not intend for the people to be shot in El Paso. And undoubtedly he regrets that it happened, but he created the soundtrack for the demented soul who wielded the weapon and heard the screams.

Our numbness must not prevent us from winning this next election. The Congressional races in 2018 were the last Trump referendum. We won by eight million votes, registering and turning out millions of new voters aged 18-30. We won over the suburbs and their independent voters. We could paralyze ourselves with fear or dismay that this awful presidency will continue. We would be better off building upon 2018 and seizing every opportunity to make such a result impossible.

The stakes could not be higher for America. That’s why a large majority of us have selected electability as our central criterion for choosing our candidate. We are focused on the issues to be sure, but we think that any of several candidates will espouse positions close enough to our own. We are willing to accept some differences as long as we win. Presidential debates are a year away, and we are already calculating who will be the strongest voice exposing Trump and winning over voters at that podium.

Thus, any sharp words among candidates can dismay us. We are susceptible to the commentators who declare daily that this or that position is a telling error that will doom us. In this context, the intense debate comparing Medicare for All and Medicare for All Who Want It can be especially difficult to watch. 

As Cory Booker helpfully pointed out, all of the candidates favor universal coverage, so the health care exchanges among our candidates have outside boundaries, which gives comfort. What generates discomfort is Elizabeth Warren’s charge of “spinelessness” in candidates who do not agree with her health care position. Senator, you know that isn’t true, so don’t say it. They have just as much spine as you do, just different positions. Your claim is no more appropriate than John Hickenlooper’s “socialist” tag. Once we have a candidate, every other candidate will stand behind her or him, and we must lay the groundwork for that now.

All our candidates are pleased that voters like the idea of a strong public option, as outlined in excellent research by the Kaiser Family Foundation. They are much more likely to like Medicare for All if it permits them to keep their own physicians.  But, as Warren knows, they will like Medicare for All much less if it eliminates the supplemental coverage that senior citizens are presently able to obtain,  or if it drives huge deficits, or closes rural hospitals. Those hospitals depend upon the higher payments of insurance companies and can’t balance their books with the lower payments from Medicare and Medicaid. As the Kaiser Foundation stresses, the net favorability of the public option is the highest when voters see it as important competition for private plans, not a legally required substitute.

We must and will debate all of these questions. To do so with no eye on the independent voter is absurd. Would we really risk the outcome of the most important election of our lifetime for an extra Sanders or Warren whack at insurers? The issue is not (as Michael Bennet argues) that we are creating a Trump talking point that Democrats have overreached or are overwrought, since Trump has proven time and again that he doesn’t know anything about health care. If the majority of voters are interested in the dramatic expansion of what Barack Obama started, and only a minority would go as far as Bernie, why would we even think about going as far as Bernie? Win the Presidency, win back the Senate, and get back to the business of making the country better one month at a time. We can fashion a plan that for the first time creates a robust national public option and thus have a huge impact on our broken health care system. Give Booker and Buttigieg and Klobuchar a better opportunity to say how they would do that, and stop calling them names.

It is a good time for the fall debate qualifying rules to winnow our candidates. To be eligible, candidates must have 130,000 donors spread over 20 or more states. Even more challenging, they need to register 2% or more in four national polls conducted by pre-certified pollsters. Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Klobuchar, Booker, and Harris have qualified. This is where the going gets tough for latecomers Michael Bennet, Steve Bullock and Tom Steyer, Governors Jay Inslee and John Hickenlooper and somewhat surprisingly, former HUD Secretary Julian Castro.
What are some good standards for us to help in the winnowing?

• Let’s check to see if there is someone who hasn’t received as much attention and could use a boost from us to make it to the next round. Many of these people are not new to government. They have shaped policies, learned from voters and won elections. Let’s provide that boost to one or two and withhold it from others depending upon who they are and what they have done so far. For instance, maybe we would like Julian Castro to still be at the podium.
• Has any candidate already done something that resisters should see as disqualifying, such as Kirsten Gillibrand’s refusal to let the charges against Al Franken be examined by the Senate Ethics Committee? Shouldn’t we disqualify Bill de Blasio for his contrived, sustained attack against Biden over Obama-era immigration policies, when at the time de Blasio thought they were bold?
• Have any of these candidates run any part of a local, state or federal government? Trump’s ineptitude underscores the utility of such knowledge. Among others, Booker, Klobuchar, Sanders, Buttigieg, Castro, and Harris have run governments, agencies and programs. Among others, Andrew Yang, Tom Steyer and Marianne Williamson have not.
• Has anyone shown some capacity to win over an independent voter, thus being able to put a swing state in play, and defend his or her positions in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin? Who besides Klobuchar, Hickenlooper and Bullock have shown promise in purple or red states?
• Which candidates are part of a generation of elected officials that we might want to ask to open the doors to the generation of leaders behind them?

We will sort out candidates all the way until the primaries of the winter and spring and the convention... Through it all, our head to head polling matchups vs. Trump and Pence will remain strong. Let’s continue to work at this, so an entire nation can breathe a sigh of relief in November of 2020. Let’s do three things:

1) Talk to Elizabeth Warren about Spines
	Obviously, Elizabeth Warren is a smart and principled and progressive person. We would help her a lot if we could convince her to stop calling her fellow Democratic leaders “spineless”. Perhaps she knows better already. Not untypical of national candidates, it’s virtually impossible to call her campaign, and almost as difficult to get an email response. The best way to get attention is to email her fundraising staff. Tell them that calling other candidates “spineless” is going to decrease her chances.
2) Help Boost a Candidate Into the Fall Round
	As noted above, eight candidates are already sure to be included in the fall round of Democratic candidate debates. There may be other candidates whose time in the spotlight you would like to extend because of what you have heard so far. A small donation will help whomever you choose reach the 130,000 donors they need in order to qualify, and it will also give them resources to try to increase their poll standing. Here’s some candidates to choose from: Julian Castro Jay Inslee  Steve Bullock  Michael Bennet
3) Follow the Super State Strategy
	The very nicely articulated Super State Strategy devised by Swing Left is the way to develop, advance and defend multiple paths to victory. The best and most aggressive voter registration effort targeted to Latino voters is Mi Vota Familia. Their efforts could spell the difference in three of Swing Left’s targeted states--- Arizona, Florida, and Texas. Investing early in voter registration is how close elections will be won in these states. Electoral votes from one or more of these states could make you very, very happy on election night.

We will have spirited debates among our candidates until we nominate a President and Vice President. We already know how to do this, and we can act on our learning from the past. We welcomed a dozen viable candidates and sorted them out when Bill Clinton won in 1992. We remained receptive to someone all new and were rewarded with Barack Obama in 2008. We were overconfident about the final outcome and closed ranks way too late with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in 2016. As the 2020 elections emerge, we’re ahead now and we’re going to make it stay that way.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#71: We Know the Stakes are the Future of our Country

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.

On the matter of racism, do you think Trump and his rally supporters would be yelling “send her back” if the members of Congress had emigrated from Norway and their names were Gudrun and Helga? This is another major episode in the shame fest that has become the Trump presidency.

It further sparks a debate among resisters about the extent to which Donald Trump devises strategies and seeks to execute them. Does he set out in the morning with a plan? The evidence is that he doesn’t decide his next steps in the usual way. Even when he weighs alternatives and decides which action would be most likely to succeed, or (now in dreamland) which is the most likely to be beneficial to the country, that process is fraught from the outset. 

His decision making is heavily influenced by his belief that you always counter-punch. He would disparage a nun, an infant or Mike Pence, or all three in the same sentence, so attacking the “squad” is easy. He also believes that apologizing should be reserved for other persons. Whenever he expresses anything close to regret, he disavows his “apology” less than 24 hours after he makes it, as he just did with the four members of Congress. Plus, it is widely known that he’s not squeamish about prevarication. 

Over and above all of these things, what is hugely important to understand about his actions is that he’s determined to use the same negotiating style over and over. This is to stake out and aggressively defend an extreme position in hopes of moving any ultimate resolution in his direction. That’s why we get his public statements about bombing other countries into oblivion, and his claims regarding the huge economic benefits of trade wars and tariffs, which even he knows are false. These statements are all part of the alleged “art of the deal”. Given the becalmed status of nuclear proliferation talks with North Korea and trade talks with China, it is more accurately the artlessness of no deal.

Similarly, Trump thinks that ICE raids and separating children from the parents at the border will make the Democrats more likely to come to the table on immigration issues. Once, he let slip that he would like to work it out for Dreamers. He stopped that right away because he was afraid that it would diminish his hard line negotiating stance. All this is important to know because understanding his addled sensibilities makes it easier to combat his actions and to predict what’s next.

In Tim Alberta’s American Carnage, Paul Ryan says that Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about how government works. This has not been received in the country as a startling revelation. If Trump knew about government, he would have known how to get his citizenship question in the census without inducing the Supreme Court to block him. Instead, the Trump aides sat around the Commerce Department and White House and settled on what lie to tell to the courts .They decided to say they needed the citizenship question to help them enforce the Voting Rights Act, which was so palpably false that even Chief Justice Roberts found it annoying. So he provided the 5th and deciding vote to block the question.

What Trump doesn’t know includes how much deal making within the branches of the federal government (or between the federal government and a foreign government) differs from a Manhattan real estate deal. In real estate, the push and pull can be about a single transaction. Depending upon their leverage, one party can gain enormous advantage at the expense of the other.

Which leads us to what Nancy Pelosi and Xi Jipeng have in common. Neither is a Manhattan real estate developer who is short of leverage and who Donald Trump can bully and threaten. Both have control over multiple things that Donald Trump needs, and thus have plenty of ways to defend themselves against his bluster. Trump needs Speaker Pelosi’s help to raise the nation’s debt ceiling and pass the new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. He needs Xi Jipeng’s help in dealing with Kim Jong-un.

Making things worse, Trump doesn’t seem to get that Pelosi and Xi-Jipeng and countless other adversaries need to win too. In these governmental negotiations, Trump’s adversaries have got to be able to define what they got out of the deal or they can’t or won’t proceed. If anything, Xi-Jipeng has more at stake politically than does Trump. Nancy Pelosi’s speakership depends on standing up to Trump, which she has done nicely. She is not going to conclude a negotiation and watch Trump spike the ball. Especially in dealing with Congress, Trump tries to turn up the heat, but his claims of the other side’s perfidy are always dramatically overstated and thus do not accomplish their purpose. Besides, with regard to the debt ceiling compromise, the only way he has to turn up the heat is threaten to close the government, which would shave ten percent off the stock market, thus making even him averse.

Finally, Trump employs this same insulting practice of adopting the extreme, bullying position with the best friends we have in the international community. Canada is our number one trading partner and sent its soldiers at our request to Afghanistan. Why do Republican Senators enable Trump to pummel these friends, and why would even a malevolent person like Trump do it in the first place? Because he thinks it puts him in a better negotiating position. Meanwhile, we continue to isolate ourselves in the community of nations.

Certainly some of Trump’s mean-spiritedness contributes to the extreme positions as well. But, once we fully understand that extreme positions are a main ingredient of his negotiating strategy, what do we do about it?

In each instance, we take him at his word. Whatever indefensible extreme he outlines as his position, we address immediately and seek to take advantage of politically. If he says (as he just did) that he is the greatest thing that has happened to Puerto Rico, we emphasize the multiple times he has stalled aid. When John Bolton gets him to talk about full scale war with Iran, we emphasize that two years ago the international community (including Russia and China) had already reached an enforceable nuclear non-proliferation agreement with Iran, which Trump in his extremism took apart.

We temporarily move our gaze away from debates between those aspiring to be an authentic president and do three things to counter Trump’s most extreme positions.

1) Fight Back Against Food Stamp Cuts
	The expression “there is a special place in hell reserved for...” is put into play way too often. It’s cheeky to determine who among us should or should not be an occupant of a place that may (or may not) exist only metaphorically or metaphysically. Nonetheless, there is a special place in hell reserved for people who would seek to throw 3 million people out of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (food stamps), most for having assets greater than $2,000, while having recently passed $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. The new USDA SNAP rule renews a battle that we won last year in Congress. For bad measure, it also eliminates the eligibility of 300,000 kids for free and reduced lunches, forcing them to re-apply.  What more would you need to know about what kind of people Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue and other Trump minions are? Are they heading home proud of the day they spent at the office? The rule was just published today, so the opposition is just getting started. There’s a sixty-day period for public comment and we’ll go from there. Right now, the best thing to do is ally oneself with the best SNAP advocacy group, the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).
2) Make Trump Hear the Truth about Detention Centers
	Donald Trump says that border detention centers are “clean” and “well run”. The non-muckraking USA Today published a report calling them “nightmarish” and “unfit for children”. Whom to believe? Pass on the USA Today report to your friends, post it on your Facebook page if you still have one, and write a letter to your local newspaper if you still have one.
3) Fuel Mark Sanford’s Efforts to Challenge Trump Within his Party
	It seems clear that John Kasich is not going to contest Trump within the Republican Party, which isn’t so hard to understand. What’s left in the Republican Party is a very uneven collection of Trump supporters. If you were a member of that one-time party of international alliances, free trade and fiscal restraint, you have been gone for some time. And it’s clear that former Massachusetts William Weld is not going to attract any attention at all. Now comes former South Carolina Governor and former member of Congress Mark Sanford. Unlike Kasich and William Weld, Sanford has a lifetime conservative voting record. He felt Trump’s wrath because of differences over fiscal policy, civility and for recognizing human impacts on climate change. Trump did him in during the 2018 primaries, paving the way for Democrats to flip the seat. Mark Sanford running against Trump would be a gift to the country, because it would underscore all the party’s toadying to Trump, and raise again the mystery--- Where has the Republican Party gone? Each Sanford event, interview or article would help reveal that Trump hijacked a party, and hopefully help drive the last of the true Republicans away from Trump.  Sanford is likely to run against Trump. He doesn’t have a campaign site yet, but he has a web page. You can get on his list, encourage him to run, and follow what transpires.

We resisters are continuing to build upon the November 2018 results. As intensive as our efforts have been, we are going to do far, far more between now and November 2020. There is no danger we are going to get distracted. We know what to do, we know the stakes are the future of our country, and thus we will prevail.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#70: Help American Voters Remember their Core Beliefs

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 turns out that selecting a President among all candidates not named Trump is going to be a lot of work. Of course, it is well worth the effort.

What’s happened so far is all fine. Rhapsodies over individual candidates might ultimately emerge, but not just yet. No particular outcome is inevitable. There is no team of elite power brokers orchestrating the way it is going to turn out. Its unpredictably is part of its charm. Six months ago, few would have predicted that Mayor Pete would be displacing Beto O’Rourke, or that Elizabeth Warren would be gently pushing Bernie Sanders aside, or even that Kamala Harris would be getting a lot more traction than fellow Senators Gillibrand, Booker and Klobuchar. Months from now our expectations may well have been scrambled again.

Together we have developed unprecedented focus. There is more access to more candidates, more volunteer efforts to engage in, more donations to be made, and more things to dwell on or obsess over. With all of those good things comes two dangers, that we will be conclusion-jumpers, and that we will be captured by someone else’s faulty narrative.

In the first instance, we are prone to wishful thinking. No, Daniel Epstein’s arrest is not going to bring down his former buddy Trump, as much as we may wish it so. With the resignation of British ambassador Kim Darroch for privately informing his government that Trump is incompetent and inept, it would have been fair for us to jump to a conclusion that the secret is finally out. But, to foreign governments and not just a few Republican Senators (in private), it hasn’t been a secret at all. Darroch was stating the obvious. He is an extremely bright, well-educated, well-spoken man. Stupidly and wackily, Trump called Darroch stupid and wacky,

More dangerous than wishful thinking is fully accepting the narrative of any single pundit, AOC’s tweets, or the collective wisdom of one’s Facebook friends. On issues like Medicare for All, what has emerged is overreaching statements like “If that many candidates raised their hands on this issue at the debate, then we can’t win.” But we are just at the start of sorting out these issues together. What we have now in a very predictably messy Democratic way is not a pitched battle between liberalism and progressivism, as suggested by everyone’s favorite faulty narrative. Instead we will have is a fair discussion of how to protect and improve upon the health care guarantees of the Affordable Care Act, and how to keep from diminishing the ways the existing indispensable Medicare program serves seniors.

It’s a faulty narrative because considering all the issues in play, one would be hard pressed to take the Democratic candidates and put them on a moderate to liberal to progressive continuum, except of course for Bernie Sanders. That’s a good thing, and it makes John Hickenlooper’s use of the word socialism even more self-serving and ridiculous and unacceptable. All of these candidates are versed well in their own arguments regarding their electability. Let’s give them a chance to articulate their claims. In the meantime, let’s expect them all to understand every day that among others there are four voter cohorts we need them to attend to, and ways to make certain we don’t leave anyone un-reached.

• The all-important independent voters, who fled Republican Congressional candidates in flocks last November. They are wanting a President who is more like a President. Since they themselves consider both parties a possibility, they don’t like Trump’s daily vilification of the other side. A large number of these voters are suburban women, and rightly or rightly they have concluded that Trump is predatory toward women. The gender gap remains huge. Our candidates must make certain that voters know that the protection of the right to choose will depend entirely on their vote in 2020.

• Latino citizens make up more than 11% of the electorate. This will be the fastest growing cohort for some time, which has led to the resisters giving considerable support to voter registration efforts. Over 70% of these voters vote for the Democratic candidate, which is high but considerably lower than the percentage of African-Americans who vote for Democrats. Still, in the 2018 Congressional elections, nine Republican seats were taken by Democrats in districts where Latinos are at least 10% of the voters. Border issues are important regardless of how politically consequential they are or aren’t,, but even more powerful politically is providing a path to citizenship for Dreamers. We have to make certain our candidates don’t see DACA as yesterday’s issue. It will be back before all of us because the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in November, and it gives our candidates an important chance to spotlight Trump’s intransigence and mean-spiritedness. 

• Young voters aged 18-30 are more open to Medicare for All provisions that would eliminate supplemental coverage than are voters over 65, who have experienced the benefits of such coverage. As stated above, this will need some sorting out. Young voters got the message in 2018 that elections matter, voting at a higher rate in an off-year election than any time since 1954. Reversing Trump on climate change is a huge motivation for these voters, which will not be difficult for our candidates to remember. This is also the cohort that would be happiest to see the Democratic ticket include generational change, which some of candidates can offer and others cannot.

• Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were supposed to save us from Donald Trump in 2016. Obviously, other things were happening like the Russian intervention, but there is no question we slipped among blue collar voters. The more we remember the firewall was breached and rebuild it, the better off we will be in November 2020. The emphasis by our candidates on strengthening the middle class can resonate, but only when the economic message reflects the authentic nature and experience of the candidate, which is something we can check when we are doing our choosing. Happily, we have new leadership in these states which will help us boost our presidential candidates. We took all three Governor’s races in 2018. Tom Wolf won by 840,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer by 400,000 votes in Michigan, and Tony Evers squeaked by incumbent Scott Walker in Wisconsin. All won the blue collar vote.

As missive #69 emphasized, the Democratic position is favored over the Republican position on all of the major issues to be debated in 2020. It’s good to make the candidates dig deeper on these matters. Have we forgotten that deciding what the government is going to do with and for the people is the essence of democracy? But, it’s also good to remember the basics. If permitted, Donald Trump would take away choice from every woman in America, take away Affordable Care Act coverage from 20 million people, leave a million Dreamers subject to deportation, and refuse to defend the planet we all inhabit from climate change. Understanding these simple truths drives us every day, and calls for us to do these three things:

1) Sadly, Give Up on Susan Collins
	We must take back the Senate for dozens of reasons, most urgently to protect the constitutional rights of women in the next Supreme Court nomination. Unfortunately, as hard as Susan Collins has tried to moderate Trump’s worst positions, she twisted herself into a pretzel to back Brett Kavanaugh, even though she herself is pro-choice. She is a vote for Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader. We have a much better chance of taking back the Senate if we win Maine, so we need to thank Susan Collins for trying and send her home. Rather than spending the next year waiting out the primaries, we need to boost the best candidate right now, Maine’s Democratic Speaker of the House Sara Gideon. Why not give up coffee for a week, send the money to Sara Gideon, and let the prospect of taking back the Senate keep you awake?
2) Get College Campuses Ready for the Fall
	Registering to vote has been revolutionized. Online registration is possible in almost all states. National organizations like Rock the Vote can tell you everything you need to know about registering.  You can send high school kids the link as an 18th birthday present. You can also pay some attention to what four-year colleges and community colleges are doing institutionally to include voter registration opportunities as a part of the orientation experience of incoming students. Start by identifying the college nearest you. Search online for the name and email of their president and write her or him asking for a description of what they are doing about aiding in registration. Depending on their answer, help them find and utilize the tools they need, or notify the nearest Indivisible group regarding their current shortcomings.
3) Win a State Legislative Majority
	Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi are holding state legislative elections this fall. In all three states, it will be the last legislative election before the post 2020 census redistricting, so the stakes are huge. There are several organizations bent upon flipping the Virginia legislature and making inroads in the other two states, but Sister Districts is a premier effort. If you are out of money, they have multiple other ways you can help. If you have some money, give that to them too. Virginia is an extraordinary opportunity. Republicans hold a 21-19 majority in the Senate and a 51-48 majority in the House. Democrats have benefited from some recent court-mandated redistricting. If you do one thing today, get involved in what will be happening in November 2019 in Virginia.

There are a lot of people trying to figure out what Donald Trump is going to do next and working hard to prevent the worst of it. There is an enormously effective way to put this awful blot on our nation’s history behind us--- a huge victory at the ballot box on November 3, 2020. It can’t come too soon.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington