This is the next of a new series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020.
We will be sharing these messages every two weeks by eblast and on our blog, Our Unfinished Work. Please click here to be added to our email list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can also read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement.
Because of the ever-changing location of the moon, we are obligated to accept that the darkest hour is not always before dawn. Even if it were, how would we know within the moment whether it is going to get just a little bit darker? There is no certainty, but today we are poised to climb toward the light.
In his address, Joe Biden could not have been more pointed or more authentic in calling for and pledging a new day. Given that he is a supremely empathetic person, it’s best to believe that he shares the pain of all of the country, not just those of us who have struggled each day to endure his predecessor. Even though he would be willing to put all 331 million of us on his shoulders if he could, that is not what is necessary. He just needs to use his powers to make things better one month at a time, each and every month.
Bizarrely, things have become so bad that the get-better-by-the-month objective is doable. Establishing a national goal of 100 million vaccines in 100 days was strategically brilliant. As vaccine production will continue to accumulate and accelerate, Biden knows we can access plentiful arms of greatly endangered Americans. He understands that it will be a major factor in reopening the economy, and that after this is all over the 100-day effort will be seen as a very significant part of our removal from peril.
Biden and Harris will be able to build upon the goodwill that will surface as the pandemic misery dwindles, hopefully by summer. Nonetheless, there is a huge gap between what we have dreamed they will accomplish and that which they will surely accomplish. We will all work to close that gap.
We already know that Donald Trump is not going to be convicted of an impeachable offense, even though it could not be more evident that he is guilty. Mitch McConnell remains untypically unequivocal about Trump’s abuses, now stressing that the January 6 mob was “provoked” by Trump and was fed lies. For this truth telling moment, we still will forever refrain from thanking Mitch. He knew what Trump was doing long before the election, let alone immediately prior to January 6. He put his fellow members of Congress in harm’s way. If he and ten other Republican Senators had vouched for the election by mid-December and congratulated Biden, the Stop the Steal lie would have receded, and the Capitol would not have been breached.
Republican Senators who have been threatening to supply the 17 Republican votes necessary to convict Trump, were doing so to keep him within some boundaries during his final White House week. Their further goal in wounding him is to lessen Trump’s hold on the party going forward, and to remind him that they could have been killed. Still, they will not vote to convict in sufficient numbers. Some will seek protection for their position through the Constitution’s lack of clarity over whether the President can be tried after their term of office is completed.
In the meantime, Joe Biden realizes that there is not any substitute at all for hitting the ground at a sprint. The 17 executive orders he issued on Inauguration Day immediately reversed terrible Trumpian actions of the past four years. Among other things, his administration rejoined the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organizations, stopped the walling off of Mexico and protected the Dreamers from deportation.
There is extensive discussion about the extent to which Joe Biden’s possibilities will be stymied because the Democrats have narrow margins in the Senate and the House. In all too many instances, this certainly will happen. But the powers of the President to lead us and change our direction are immense, and Joe Biden knows how to utilize them. He will use executive orders and Senate budget reconciliation rules to make considerable progress on climate change and on expanding the Affordable Care Act.
We should join Biden and Kamala Harris in kindling big dreams. As the poet Amanda Gorman said during the Inauguration, we can always reach the light “if we are brave enough to see it, and be it.” We can build further from the five things that we should most expect of ourselves and our leaders in the next two years:
First, Joe Biden will become a successful, memorable national leader. He may well be the most empathetic elected official in America today. Moreover, being at the center of the battle against the pandemic requires advanced knowledge of how to make government work and a respect for what government can do at its best. Biden has both and the previous President had neither. Plus, Biden is willing to use the Defense Production Act to accelerate any lagging parts of vaccine production, which Trump was inexplicably unwilling to do.
Second, Joe Biden will bring about a resurgence in the Center/Left. There is not going to be a Green New Deal right now, but there will be a green new deal. Biden has plans to attend to each separate element of alternative energy investment, including its role in boosting job growth. There will not be Medicare for All, but Biden will achieve a public option and coverage for many millions more people. On a host of other issues, flipping the two Georgia Senate seats increases the influence of the more moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin, Krysten Sinema, Mark Kelly and independent Angus King. This helps make certain that Biden will be able to advance legislation, though with less gusto than would be the case if he had 55 Democratic votes. He has excellent leverage on tax law because individual tax rates will expire late in his term.
Third, Joe Biden will benefit from accomplishing some things that both sides want. The word populist refers to an authentic intent to hear and respond to the needs of the people, especially those not connected to power and privilege. It is a travesty that Donald Trump was ever called a populist. The economic anxiety of 50-year-olds living in manufacturing-dependent areas is real, and responding to that anxiety more intensively and with bipartisan appeal is on the Biden/Harris agenda. So is the bipartisan agenda of restoring our position in the global community.
Fourth, we will all push back against the “steal” that never was. Half of Republican voters still believe the election was stolen. Once he was told that many Democratic votes by mail would be counted after many Republican votes at polling places, Trump suckered Republican voters about his win being taken away in order to raise money and feed his wounded ego. Without our vigorous response, these lies will poison every single state legislative discussion on mail in voting and other election rules. One plus is that more than a few Republican candidates in 2022 will be obligated to stand up for electoral integrity as a part of their defense against Trump-endorsed candidates.
Fifth, we will not allow our daily news to be gripped by social media and by Fox News. The aging of Rupert Murdoch and the split in the Republican Party will mean that Fox News commentary will no longer be a vassal state of Donald Trump. Trump’s at least temporary lack of access to 80 million Twitter followers will give Biden a better opportunity to develop his messages.
Let’s do these three things to defend election integrity and thus move our dreams forward:
| 1) Make Voting by Mail a Strong Option in All States |
 < | The 2020 elections saw a huge increase in voting by mail, helped along by pandemic-spurred changes in state voting rules and processes. 27 states expanded vote by mail, and 34 allowed voters to state the pandemic as their reason to seek the mail-in ballot. 80% of voters can get access to a mail-in ballot. Fighting voter suppression requires us to keep these numbers high. One way to do that would be to sign up for briefing materials and support the best national vote by mail organization, Vote at Home and through them, the national Vote Safe Coalition which advocates for mail in ballots. |
2) E-Mail Representative Dan Newhouse |
 | There is nobody in the House of Representatives who made a harder choice to vote for impeachment than Republican Representative Dan Newhouse of Washington State. Newhouse farms 600 acres near Sunnyside in Eastern Washington. 2/3 of the voters in his district vote Republican. Newhouse went from signing the anti-democratic Supreme Court brief in December to impeaching in January, saying a vote against impeachment would validate the violence in the Capitol. Dan Newhouse deserves our thanks. To try to get around the email flood, write to his legislative director Sean O’Brien at sean.o'brien@mail.house.gov. |
3) Help Corporations Turn Away from Anti-Democratic Giving |
| 139 House members and 8 Senators sought to block the final electoral college count, even though their only Constitutional obligation was to total the ballots and announce Joe Biden the winner. In the wake of the Trump-provoked insurrection, a score or more of American companies have decided to cut off all political contributions to these 147 elected officials because of their assault on democracy. This is sending shock waves through Congress. Even more companies have decided to pause their campaign donations altogether. This is having the positive effect of slowing the flow of corporate money that had been accelerated by the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United. It would be good to write to Marriott and thank them for their leadership among companies who are shutting off the 147. Email them at customer.care@marriott.com. |
Aptly quoting Abraham Lincoln, Joe Biden said “my whole soul is in this.” Of that there can be no doubt. After enjoying a splendid Inaugural day, let’s get back to giving him the help he needs.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
