#9 We’re Fighting for Free and Fair Elections

 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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every two weeks.

Of all the things that dismayed us during Donald Trump’s four years of non-governance, especially disheartening was the lying. The number of untruths was staggering. The Washington Post documented 30,573 lies, and CNN underscored the most notable. Small lies and misrepresentations turned into huge ones, as Trump claimed Obama’s veterans’ health choice reforms, inflated the too high trade deficit with China, said for four years that his health care bill was about to be released, and falsely accused others to protect Putin. No crowd was ever small, no opponent noble, and no autocrat unimpressive.

It is no surprise that the small lies turned into big lies that have killed people. The insurrection of January 6 would never have happened without the election fraud Trump started perpetrating months before the election and continued until officer Brian Sicknick lay dying after the assault. Trump quietly received the vaccine, but he intentionally created the climate in which millions of Americans refused to receive it. Thus, he bears responsibility for those who will no longer be on the face of the earth.

Getting Pinocchio to recognize his nose is a lost cause. It is even a possibility that the Twitter-less Trump will continue to fade. Whatever level of super-spreading his serial untruths generate, we can battle back against the related made-up stories of Trumpian Republican Senators. Someone should tell Mike Pence that as insurrectionists screamed “hang Mike Pence” Ron Johnson was not worried about safety, since those invading the Capitol were not from Black Lives Matter or Antifa. Strangely Johnson had said in a previous statement that some of the insurrectionists were Antifa, wearing MAGA hats to blend in. He needs to settle on a single untruth, rather than trying out multiple stories.

The newest intentional prevarications have to do with Biden’s American Rescue Plan. Republicans deployed Senator John Barasso of Wyoming to say that only 9% of the package is devoted to “defeating the virus.” The artful wording leaves out efforts to revive the economy and help people whom the pandemic has crushed, bringing us to a total of 85% of the package. We can surmise that Barasso knows that already.

Looming over all this obfuscation is Trump’s big lie of election fraud. Even those Republicans who are ashamed of the events of January 6 are trying to breathe life into the fraudulent fraud claims being made in state legislatures across the country. In nearly every state, the Republican dream is for fewer people to vote! The sweeping Democratic response is HR 1, the For the People Act, which has passed the House. It will not get the necessary 60 votes to move forward in the Senate. It is a strong bill in its restoration of voting rights guarantees and its important tackling of campaign funding. It is not without its flaws, because it affords the federal government preeminence in matters of voter registration and the casting of ballots that heretofore have been left to the states. How would that have turned out when Donald Trump was president?

In the absence of a new federal law, there are wars being fought over voting in every state capital. The greatest Republican emphasis is on restricting mail in balloting, requiring further signature checks and limiting when and where polls are open. The number of separate proposals that would suppress voting is frightening. The outstanding Brennan Center is tracking them all. 

It is good to remember that the threats to us differ greatly depending upon the state. Thus, understanding which states to prioritize is an important part of this battle. For instance, some of these anti-democratic proposals outlined by the Brennan Center are in states where we have no chance of electing a Senator or President, such as Wyoming or Idaho. Even in these states we shouldn’t forget that local candidates or even Congressional candidates can be hampered by the suppressive actions.

Happily, scores of these proposals are in states with Democratic governors who will veto them if they make their way to her or his desk. The especially good news is this protection is available to us in battleground states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Virginia. The first three of these are providing us juicy opportunities to flip Senate seats in 2022.

Alas, there are 23 states where the vote-suppression can accelerate because suppressors control both branches of the state legislature and the Governor’s office. 

Of these, eight are especially significant in the voting rights battle. This is where our greatest immediate efforts should be directed. In these cases, Republicans who control the state capital are trying to restrict voting to give them a better chance of defending or picking up seats in the United States Senate to make Mitch McConnell majority leader once again. It is difficult to fathom anyone wanting such a thing.

These states include Ohio and Iowa, where Republican Senators Rob Portman and Charles Grassley will retire; Florida, Missouri, and South Dakota, where Donald Trump might intervene with his own candidate and provide us an opening; and, Arizona, Georgia, and New Hampshire, where we must defend the seats of Mark Kelley, Rev. Raphael Warnock and Maggie Hassan.

As the Brennan Center emphasizes the suppression strategies are many. They include but are not limited to eliminating “no excuse” mail in voting, eliminating or reducing ballot collection sites, expanding signature verification, reducing early voting (including after church on Sundays in Georgia), and expanding purging of the voter list. This is what you do when you are worried that you cannot win a free and fair election.

We can do these three things right now to fight back against these injustices.

1) Be Guided by the Best
	There is no one in the country who is doing better work to protect the right to vote than the Brennan Center for Justice. They have a range of e-newsletters that will keep you abreast of the challenges we must confront.  And, there is no one doing better on the work on the ground than Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight, battling against “Jim Crow in a suit and tie” in Georgia. They have expanded to Texas and are national leaders in the articulation of what ought to be done. It is easy to get their action alerts. For those who have it to give, these are both good places to send money.
2) Find Your Ideal State Partner
	It is always good to understand what is going on in your own state, so chicanery can be stopped. It is not as easy to identify the best partner in fighting suppression in Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Missouri, South Dakota, Arizona and New Hampshire (with Georgia well covered by Fair Fight. Among the promising suspects are Indivisible chapters, League of Women Voters chapters, and state Democratic Party organizations. Among the national organizations, All Voting is Local is worthy of examination.
3) Expand Corporate Support
	With Stacey Abrams’ pointed encouragement, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce has discouraged the Georgia State Legislature’s voter suppression proposals. The two key companies in that effort are Coca Cola and Home Depot, both interested in their own economic prospects and neither wanting to see Georgia continue its 150-year path of suppression. Thank the Georgia chamber by emailing their governmental affairs manager Lisa Sherman lsherman@gachamber.com In addition to commending her, you can beseech her to tell her story to other state Chambers.

White males comprise a lower percentage of voters than at any time in our nation’s history. Celebrate and defend the still growing diversity of our country!

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#8: Build Upon a Great Day

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. 

If you are not already on our eblast list, please click here to be added. 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, Our Unfinished Work, every two weeks.

We stood tall against a country-diminishing, soul-deadening presidency. We devoted ourselves to a huge and relentless campaign effort from the day Trump “won” in 2016 to Warnock and Ossoff’s victories in Georgia on January 5 of this year. We took back the House, then the Presidency, and then the Senate, and we never once lost our focus. So, let us not let it happen now. 

We can prevent that by reminding Robert Reich and all other regular counselors that our proposed significant increase in the federal minimum wage was not going to be found by the Senate parliamentarian to be a legitimate part of the budget reconciliation process. Even if Vice President Harris had overruled the parliamentarian, which she would not do in the first place, we would not have had the votes to sustain the Vice President’s action. Nor do we have the votes for the “nuclear option”, which would eliminate the sixty-vote requirement to close debate. We do not have the votes to pass a single payer health care system, or to pass the set of legislative ideas known as the Green New Deal.

What do we have? We have slim majorities in the House and Senate which are going to use the budget reconciliation process to pass a stimulus bill that will help us end the pandemic and rebuild our economy. They will go way beyond the $1400 stimulus payments. In one law they will bolster states and cities damaged by the recession, extend unemployment insurance, help to reopen schools and expand the earned income tax credit to further boost those with low incomes. They will increase our capacity to vaccinate at huge scale. They will provide help for folks who cannot pay their rent and do some major repairs to the Republican damaged Affordable Care Act. They will set the table for Biden and Harris for the next two years.

It will be a great day when Joe Biden signs the bill into law. It will be added to all the other good days that have unfolded since January 20. It turns out that what we have is a lot. What is surprising is not how little Joe Biden has accomplished in six weeks with the Senate split 50-50, but how much. Joe Biden has been able to erase nearly all of Trump’s executive orders because they were executive orders, and not laws. Trump had been chronically unable to get the 60 votes in the Senate to close debate. And we want to eliminate this provision, leaving us demagogue-vulnerable from this point forward?

Biden has started the rebuilding work with our allies. He has put people in cabinet positions who believe in the mission of the agencies they will run. The strides during the next two years will be great. The way that we will get done what needs to be done for our country is to expand our Senate and House majorities in November of 2022 and retain the Presidency in 2024. Right now, this looks like an excellent prospect, given that the other party is dominated by grumpy white men in an increasingly multi-racial country. With the deepest of irony, it turns out that Mitch McConnell would support Trump’s nomination after excoriating him for fomenting an insurrection. Are they really going to stay banded around the big lie and the big liar? Is that the plan? We will take that in a heartbeat.

There is a huge amount of work on the campaign side. What needs to be left to chance is nothing at all. But it would be helpful to remember that the number one thing that we can do to be successful on November 8, 2022 is to restore the country under Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ leadership.

The repairs to the Affordable Care Act and the several steps on climate change show that this Administration will be focused on these two matters from their first days to their last. Even though we have seen them as the most difficult things, we have as great a national consensus and an array of tools through which to move forward as we do in these three challenging areas.

Reproductive Freedom

Even though the pro-choice Presidential candidates have received more votes than their opponents in seven of the last eight elections, our situation in the Supreme Court has deteriorated and Roe v Wade itself is at risk. It is possible that Chief Justice John Roberts and either Justice Bret Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett would join the three liberal justices to defend the core of Roe v Wade as settled law. We can’t depend on this. If the court were to do the worst, the protection of the right to choose would vanish immediately in 22 states, including several that have passed “trigger laws” in anticipation. 

In addition to blocking additional states from passing anti-choice laws before the court rules, we can support the Biden/Harris efforts to remove federal restrictions advanced by Trump. Biden has already reversed the prohibition on US funded international organizations discussing the abortion option. The administration is working to remove similar restrictions on Planned Parenthood and other domestic organizations that receive federal dollars. There is also the more difficult but achievable restoration of Medicaid funding for abortions by eliminating the Hyde Amendment. 

Wealth Maldistribution

In America in 2020, the wealthiest 10% of households held nearly 70% of the assets (up from 60% twenty years ago) and the bottom 50% held 1.6% of the assets. The very rich got a big boost from the 2017 Trump tax “reform” and they are getting a further leg up during the pandemic. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are on this case. What they are seeking goes beyond the ongoing battle over the federal minimum age to the even higher calling--- a sustainable, living wage that will enable a family to house, feed, clothe, educate and secure health care for themselves.

Three provisions which will remain a part of the stimulus bill will have considerable impact on lower income populations in 2021. First, there are the $1,400 stimulus payments themselves. Getting less attention is the increase in the tax credit for children, and making it “refundable”, meaning it will be provided as a payment even if there is no tax liability to offset. There is also a major expansion of the earned income tax credit, long a central poverty-battling tool and which is also refundable.

There will be tax reform during Joe Biden’s first term because individual income tax rates and some tax breaks will expire in 2025, necessitating reauthorization before then. This gives Biden uncommon leverage in forcing Republicans to the table and will help him guarantee that tax reform decreases wealth maldistribution, rather than exacerbating it.

Immigration

Perhaps the most difficult challenge facing Biden in the Congress is finding a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. He is going to need some more Democrats elected in 2022 and some Republican Senators to get close to the necessary 60 votes. In the meantime, Democrats are more likely to get traction on three fronts, all of which have a bit of support from a small, beleaguered band of “moderate” Republicans.

Most likely is creation of the still absent statutory protection of Dreamers, including a proposed three-year path to citizenship. The Obama order providing protection only survived the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision on procedural grounds because of Trump’s fumbling of his executive order. There are also efforts underway to open a path for longer term agricultural workers and some proposals to increase employment visas. Importantly, the Biden administration is working hard to re-unite 600 children with their parents after they were separated at the border.

It would not be wrong while we focus on good public policy to take care of another matter. The Voter Protection Project has identified those who voted to ignore the Electoral College results who are the most politically vulnerable. They are starting with a $10 million fund to defeat their targets in 2022. We know what to do about that. 

Then, let us remember that we need independent advocacy to keep the above three opportunities squarely in front of Congress. These organizations will help us to achieve the most possible, rather than settling for easy compromises. We can sign up to make certain their strategies are clear to us and we are thus properly deployed, and we can decide to donate as well. Let’s do these three things.

1) Relentless Advocacy for Reproductive Freedom
	Planned Parenthood is a major advocate for reproductive freedom. Luckily, they have benefited greatly from donors responding to Trump’s relentless attacks on their programs. NARAL Pro-Choice is a great option for their political focus and relentlessness. They are out in front on overturning the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortions. You can get regular briefings by texting NARAL to 21333.
2) Fighting Poverty One Program at a Time
	The Center for Law and Social Policy has the detailed understanding of complex federal anti-poverty programs that is the prerequisite for making these programs better. They can make certain that we take best advantage of the changes in the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit in the stimulus bill. They can also guarantee that we are ready for the next tax policy battle. Their e-news signup is right on their front page.
3) Coalescing Around Immigrant Rights
	The National Immigration Law Center has always been in the forefront of litigation on immigrant rights. They are intentionally expanding their work to strengthen immigration coalitions and to expand advocacy now that Congress is getting back to hearing immigration bills.

Joe Biden just announced a new deal between Johnson and Johnson and Merck to accelerate the production of the third vaccine. This means that every adult in the country can be vaccinated by the end of the May. It is this kind of immense breakthrough for which we worked for four years, and it is just the start of what we can get done.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

David Harrison's Blog Alert: Zoom to Fight Voter Suppression

Dear friend of Our Unfinished Work,

My missives sent every two weeks outline ways in which we can defeat Trumpism and make certain democracy wins in this country.

Our biggest tools are voter registration and turnout. Our biggest enemy is voter suppression. As we speak, anti-democratic forces in state legislatures are trying to make it more difficult to vote. As has become evident, they have become disenchanted with the actual casting and counting of ballots!

Please stay focused on defeating this threat. You can join me at 4 pm this Friday, February 26 to review our path forward with Phil Keisling, founder of the Vote At Home Institute and a key organizer of the VoteSafe Coalition. Phil Keisling is Oregon's former Secretary of State and a dynamic leader of this movement. 

I know you have lots of opportunities to Zoom. This one is critical. If you are interested, please email me at dsh347@gmail.com and I will send you the handy link.

best

David Harrison

#7: Let’s Not Waste the Republican Schism

 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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every two weeks.

It is obvious that every single one of us had been hoping for a spectacular un-nuanced Trump departure from the scene. After his unsuccessful coup attempt, leaving in disgrace was what he deserved. It was what we deserved too, ideally in an Oscar like presentation recognizing the notable, relentless achievements of our collective millions in defense of democracy. Though unprecedented historically, the available alternative of seven Republican Senators voting for conviction does not lift us to the level of comfort and exultation we seek. We are not close to sated by the current level of Trump-diminishing, but we still recognize that the slide of Trump is underway.

Call me a cockeyed activist, but it matters that the discredited Nikki Haley, Mitch McConnell and Rupert Murdock all did major Trump takedowns in the same week. There are many standing in line to accelerate Trump’s decline. 58% of Americans believe that Donald Trump should have been convicted by the Senate. The number of self-identified Republicans continues to decline. A huge percentage of independent voters seem permanently divorced from Trump and MAGA.

He will face criminal charges on several fronts, including the possibility of being charged with election tampering in Georgia. The possible civil actions are many, and his financial woes are considerable. A record of conniving will not always come crashing down on the con man, but it will this time.

Most damaging will be a relentless stream of disclosures. Some of the juiciest will come from Republican appointees and elected officials who do not fancy Trump as their future leader, or who are especially concerned about the primary challenges he might arrange under such “leadership.” It will be revelatory to hear about the sweetest notes he sent to Putin (or to Kim Jong-Un) or get new news on who he wanted to invade, or find out what he chose to ignore, foment, and misrepresent through his unique blend of malfeasance and malevolence. 

Those Republicans whom Trump has identified as the enemy will not go quietly, and from them there will be no Kevin McCarthy style pilgrimage to Mar A Lago. It will be a long list of combatants, including Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney. Notable will be South Dakota Senator John Thune, much respected by Senate Republicans and much disrespected by Trump. Thune had the temerity to say in late December that Trump’s attempt to overturn the election by appealing to Congress would “go down like a shot dog” in the Senate. Thune, not being a Cruz/Hawley/Rubio like toady, angered Trump.

The schism between Republicans and Republicans is huge and growing. There is no elder statesperson who is going to emerge, now that the wounded Trump has viciously responded to McConnell’s hugely damning floor statement. It is not that McConnell sold his soul to the devil and is now getting his just rewards, since there was no evidence at the outset that Mitch had a soul.

Some resistors underplay the significance of McConnell’s attacks, or Nikki Haley’s new anti-Trumpian opportunism, or Rupert Murdock’s Wall Street Journal editorial emphasizing that Trump is not going to be our future president. Some see all three as shifty, self-serving, and unprincipled, because they ARE shifty, self-serving and unprincipled. However unlovable each is, the point for the Democrats and the resistance is not to let a good schism go to waste. There are going to be House, Senate, and Gubernatorial battles in 2022 between Trump recruited and endorsed candidates and McConnell recruited and endorsed candidates. This provides us all new opportunities to widen our narrow margins. Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa and Ohio are all there for us if we make it so.

To prepare us for the fall of 2022, Joe Biden will not need to be an unbelievably good President. He is just required to be able, affable, principled, and focused. The extent to which he has already been able to reverse Trump-era policies is unbelievable. It is due in part to Trump’s dependence on executive orders used because he could not get 60 votes in the Senate in the face of Democratic filibuster threats. As some Democrats talk about doing away with the filibuster for short term gains, this should be remembered. We may need this tool again sometime in the future.

Biden will be the President who accelerated the vaccines, ended the COVID crisis, and thus started the restoration of the economy. He is going big with the American Rescue Plan because it will be the signature achievement of this term. 70% of Americans want to proceed with the Plan. Joe Manchin will provide the 50th vote so it can be passed through the budget reconciliation process. If Republican Senators vote against it as a bloc, Joe Biden should send them a thank you note.

There is some evidence that reform of the Affordable Care Act and multiple investments in carbon reduction are not on the list of Republican greatest fears. Have their traumas about the Green New Deal and Medicare for All softened them to less far-reaching but still significant reforms? The greatest battleground is bound to be immigration reform. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will have a difficult time getting anything done on this policy front besides protecting Dreamers.

The Biden/Harris responsibility is to do good things and do them well. Our responsibility that we have taken on since November 2016 is to attend to political matters every single week. With or without the schism, the biggest question for us is whether the not-on-the-ballot Trump will still function as our unofficial get-out-the-vote chair. Our worst enemy is lower turnout.

To make certain that we get on with our business, and take advantage of the wide, growing Republican split, let’s do these three things:

1) Keep Up the Fight Against Voter Suppression
	The Republican roadmap for 2022 includes persuading us not to vote, inhibiting us from voting, prohibiting us from voting, and redrawing district lines to make our vote less valuable. As efforts underway in state legislatures already demonstrate, voting from home is the number one Republican target. We should support the National Vote at Home Institute and its Vote Safe Coalition every chance we get. And we need to learn about opportunities and threats from the founder of the Institute, former Oregon Secretary of State Phil Keisling, who led the fight for Oregon at home voting in 1998. Phil Keisling will talk about the way forward in fighting voter suppression in a Zoom discussion sponsored by this missive. The hour-long session will begin at 4pm PST on Friday, February 26. Let us know that you are interested by emailing dsh347@gmail.com and we will send you the handy link.
2) Give Jaime Harrison a Boost
	As many of us hoped, Jaime Harrison has been named chair of the Democratic Party. Perhaps it has now been forgotten, but that party was in no position to provide leadership after the November 2016 election. There has been a notable recovery since, with more work to do. Whether or not we normally are party-identifiers, we need to recognize Jaime Harrison’s leadership by joining in his honor.
3) Call Out Lindsey Graham
	It is no longer difficult to identify the most preposterous statement by Lindsey Graham, one that would sacrifice his last shred of dignity if he had that to sacrifice. Now comes his pronouncement that Lara Trump (spouse of Donald’s son Eric) “is the future of the Republican party.” Who even knew she was in the running and was qualified for such an assignment? Please email Lindsey Graham and ask him to return to the party of which John McCain was a member.

You could watch the current Republican mud wrestling and conclude it is all an entertainment or a game. However, all it takes to focus us on what matters is remembering back to January 5 when we showed our political power in Georgia, and January 6, when we re-learned the extraordinary threats that our country faces.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#6: Finding the Cure for Republican Amnesia

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. 

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, Our Unfinished Work, every two weeks.

As Joe Biden undoes much of Donald Trump’s most perfidious acts, and as Trump’s Twitter voice remains silent, one can find a calm absent for the past four years. No daily counterpunch? No elevation of fraudsters, attack on American institutions, or monumental falsehoods? Back to the work of figuring out what a government can do with and for the people, including defeating a pandemic! It is a glorious feeling that should be savored, so long as one remembers the democracy-defending work in which we must quickly re-engage.

The $1.9 trillion stimulus package that Joe Biden has proposed was designed from the beginning as a package that could be subject to compromise. Its $1,400 per person stimulus checks would go out to married couples making as much as $150,000 per year, giving Mitch McConnell the truly bizarre opportunity to pretend that he is worried about the government giving too much money to the rich. Biden left room to compromise, hoping not without justification that Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Joe Manchin can rouse the same bi-partisan coalition that drove the previous stimulus package. In that context, Susan Collins taking nine other Republican Senators to the White House is a good idea.

The other Democratic option regarding the stimulus package is to forget the compromise and pass a package with 50 votes and Vice President Harris breaking the tie. That would narrow the package only to items (including the stimulus payments) that can be included in the budget reconciliation process and pare the bill to $1 trillion or so. Even the smaller package would require the not-automatic assent of Manchin, Democrat Krysten Sinema of Arizona and Independent Angus King of Maine. The fact that Manchin is not a guaranteed 50th vote reduces the President’s leverage.

This might well work out. So might an effort to figure out how to do something about Trump now that it has become obvious that we will not get the 17 votes necessary to convict him for his role in the riot at the Capitol. The effort by Democrat Tim Kaine and Susan Collins to censure Trump (and perhaps ban him from running for office) could get traction. They would have to move quickly and expertly. Just over three weeks from when Trump almost got them killed, Senate Republicans already are developing amnesia over what happened. In another couple of weeks, they will be insisting that Barack Obama did it.

Unfortunately, there is a re-emergence of the large Trump-terrified segment of the Republican leadership. This means that we resistors will have to turn our attention away from Biden cabinet confirmations and restorative executive orders. The Republican leadership and rank and file have made other bargains with Trump in the past so that he will pretend to be interested in something they want. Before, the deal was about him killing them politically. On January 6, the Trump provoked mob raised the idea of killing them physically.

Unbelievably, we need to get ourselves fully engaged in the elections of fall of 2021 and 2022. This is because House minority leader Kevin McCarthy has already travelled to Mar A Lago to offer and receive the necessary blessings. The former insurrectionist in chief, McCarthy and Mitch McConnell are unwilling to extricate themselves from their “can’t live with him, can’t live without him” mode.

State party organizations are allied with Trump and are angry with the 85 Republican House members who did not join the amicus brief seeking to overturn the election. Although it is a depressing thought, there is a good argument that we should all be circulating petitions to urge Trump to remain the active leader of the Trump-Republican party. It would then continue to be the party of white males, the only major demographic where he led last November.

Off-year Congressional elections are normally the time when the opposition party gains ground. Trump running further-right candidates against those conservatives who have been identified as lackluster bootlickers gives us an excellent chance to take back seats. It’s not a fanciful prediction since a split Republican party just delivered us two Senate seats in Georgia. Certainly, we worked hard to grab these seats but Trump had already loosened their grip. There are several promising opportunities to pick up Senate seats.

Across all Americans, 76% rate Trump’s post-election conduct as fair-to-poor, and 68% believe he should not continue to be a major public figure. Of course, things are a little different among Republicans. Pew Research has filed a very timely assessment on Trump’s current grip on the party of Lincoln. 

There are some heartening findings, and some that are unbelievable. 64% of those that are Republicans or lean Republican are still locked into the lie that Trump won or “probably won” in November. Of course, that means that 25 million or so voting Republicans no longer believe this con. It is also encouraging that only 29% of the Republican respondents are completely convinced by this toxic waste dump of beliefs. These people endorse Trump’s post-election behavior, hold him harmless for the insurrection, believe he was the elected winner, and want him to play a major role going forward. 

With Trump still bullying the schoolyard, our biggest danger is that the lie of a stolen election that he continues to repeat will grow in its credence over time. The best way to prevent this is to immediately resume the collective intensive productive political advocacy of the many millions of us who brought down Trump.

At the local level, as Republicans seek to change the laws and voting regulations that enable mail-in ballots, we must contest every false statement. They are all derived from the made-up fraud story that began months before the election and did not end even in the aftermath of the January 6 riot. From now until November 2022, the central battleground issue will be how easy or difficult it will be to cast a ballot. To our advantage, the false claims of voter fraud will be a staple of debates in primary contests between Trump-endorsed candidates and current Republican office holders clinging to a shred of integrity.

We should support the other ways that Trump could slide further downhill even while holding on to the Republican party structure. 

First there are the lawsuits. The rape/defamation case filed by E. Jean Carroll remains before the courts. Trump is under investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James for over-inflating property valuation while securing loans and deflating the same property values when paying taxes. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has secured tax files and is looking at insurance, bank, and tax fraud.

Second, there are the other candidates. Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio will try to nudge Trump away from his leadership role without being obvious about it.

Perhaps most importantly, there will be the recriminations from those whom Trump wronged in the past four years. The pre-election Trump tell-all books were just a start. There are damaging tales to be told by besmirched jettisoned Cabinet secretaries, and there will be a flood of disclosures on what Trump said to this or that world leader. There will be surprises, and we will end up feeling that there could have been monthly impeachment charges.

Trump brought America down almost all of the way. While Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stride forward, let’s do three things that will keep us on track from now through the off-year elections on Tuesday, November 8, 2022.

1) Fight Now to Protect Voting Rights
	Across America, state legislators are battling over the circumstances under which people will be welcomed to vote or will be discouraged from doing so. Those trying to suppress voting will retreat to Trump’s election fraud lie over and over. The Brennan Center for Justice has an outstanding summary outlining where legislators are trying to scale back mail-in ballots, expand voter ID requires, make voter registration more difficult, or purge rolls of infrequent voters. It is time for you or your organization to check in at your state capital. Call your legislator to make certain you understand what is transpiring and what you should be doing. Or check in with your state’s democratic party organization. If they don’t know what is going on, help them change their ways immediately.
2) Help Republicans Make Republicans Accountable
	The Lincoln Project drew a lot of attention during the Presidential campaign, but there is an even better organization of former Republican leaders to support the fight against election fraud con. This is the Republican Accountability Project. Give them your email and they will send you regular news of their activity. They are part of a constellation of Never-Trumpers that is very intent on not letting Trump pretend he won. They are the folks that put the Ted Cruz: Resign billboard up in Times Square.
3) Get Started on Swing Senate Seats
	There are 20 Senate Republican seats up for election in 2022 and only 14 Democratic seats. We have a good shot at what will be open seats in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa. Wisconsin could get interesting, especially if Ron Johnson retires. How about Florida if Ivanka Trump challenges Marco Rubio in the Republican primary? Since we already wish we had more than 50 seats, it is time to gear up. During the post-election battles in Pennsylvania, 6’8” Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman was fierce and principled and unwavering. He is going to jump into the race from the outset. If you act now you will be able to say you were with him from the beginning.

Somewhere, in the midst of things (perhaps on January 6?) it occurred to all of us that this is not a movement that would or could end with our election success on November 3, 2020. So, we are in it to win it, over, and over again.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#5: How We Can Climb Together Toward the Light

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

#4: How We Can Make This the End of an Error

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 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.

Dear friends, I finished this missive Wednesday morning just before rioters stormed the US Capitol. In it I stressed that Republican Senators have been with Trump every step down this sorry path. Their subsequent words have been heartening but they are way, way too late. The wounds our nation has suffered have been at their hands and not just those of Donald Trump.

It is too early to say how much the president's bizarre participation in encouraging the Capitol siege will decrease his political stock going forward. Either way, the proof that we can and will take this on is there today in the election of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and the glorious dismissal from the podium of Mitch McConnell.

It was a horrible day for America, but we can make it into a signal of the end of an error not the start of a new one. This 230-year-old grossly imperfect dream filled experiment in self-governance is well worth fighting for.

Just as much as his mother and father, Republican Senators created Donald Trump. Deliciously, it has now cost them their Senate majority. They always knew that he worshipped only at the church of Trump, that he is monumentally incurious, that he forms his policies only on "gut" instincts, and that he has no allegiance to the Bill of Rights. They understood that he has no sense of how government works, no focus, no empathy, and no work ethic.

It seems like the president's political stock has fallen a great deal but we don't want to assume that. Nonetheless, for four years they regularly offered their obeisances. They left him unchecked and ignored their own oaths of office. It is not redemptive that some have voted on January 6th to confirm Biden's selection. They decided to swim only after they filled the moat with water and sank all of the available boats. Once Pennsylvania was decided on Saturday, November 7th, they could have declared the presidential election over and congratulated Joe Biden. If they had, they would have won both Georgia Senate seats this week.

They didn't do that. They created their own divided party and fueled the stop the steal movement that will poison much of America's political life for some time.

There have been multiple schools of thought about Donald Trump's impact in years to come. One theory has already been discarded - that his soul crushing act will diminish quickly, giving way to golf. He will push on, requiring our ongoing vigilance. He isn't going to accept any responsibility for the Georgia results. He would call in a drone strike on Lindsay Graham, Melania and Ivanka if it would help him maintain his following. Even as we celebrate the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Trump resistance must continue.

The careful, exceedingly conservative Senator John Thune of South Dakota has been afforded an advance peek at what is to come. After Thune said Trump's January 6th schemes would "go down like a shot dog" Trump started recruiting a 2022 primary opponent and has pronounced Thune's career over.

And so it will go in the Republican party's new age. There will be epic inter-party battles in 2022. Trump will seek to unseat Republican Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia, guilty of following election law.

Of the 34 Senate seats up for reelection in 2022, 22 are held by Republicans. All six of the states with the closest races for president in 2020 will feature Senate races in 2022. Republicans will defend in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania (all promising for Democratic pickups) and Democrats will defend in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.

Donald Trump Jr. has said that it's now Donald Trump's Republican Party and there’ll be plenty of challenges from those who differ with that view. Those primary wars will provide new opportunities and openings for Democrats way beyond the expected results in off-year elections. That is because Trump will force his endorsed candidates to lock down the base over and over, cede the center and seek to win through expanded turnout.

The better way for Republican candidates to win in 2022 in Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin would be to secure the base and compete for independent voters, mostly in the center. Trump's alternative approach is terrifying to Republican strategists because it denies the nation's demographic destiny, which helped yield 81 million votes for Joe Biden.

By relying almost entirely on the turnout from this base, Trump is betting on a segment (white males over 30) that is a smaller percentage of the voting population than it has been at any time in our nation's history. Biden, Harris and the Democrats have instead sought support from the multi-racial multi-ethnic society that we have already become and from the electoral emergence of 18-to-30-year old’s. This all underscores why Republicans are working so hard to suppress new registrations and the voting of non-white populations.

As these scenes unfold Trump resistors should not take diverse voters for granted. For their part Biden and Harris would never do such a thing. In the last 10 weeks our political situation has improved greatly. Let's keep moving in the right direction by doing these three things:

1) Support Targeted Organizing
	There are separate powerful political advocacy organizations intensively focused on African-American, Asian American and Latino populations. Now, rather than November 22 is prime time to make certain these organizations are strong, and that the Democratic agenda is responsive to them. Don't wait to support the Asian American Advocacy Fund, Mi Familia Vota, and Stacy Abrams Fair Fight.
2) Thank Doug Ducey
	On Election night early returns from Arizona sustained us, showing us our first path to 268 electoral votes. From that night until Arizona electoral votes were certified,, Republican Governor Doug Ducey withstood enormous pressure from Donald Trump and stood tall for election Integrity. Please write to thank him engage@az.gov.
3) Renew Your Campaign Committee Connection
	We will all need our independent campaign organizations sooner than we think. There would have been no presidential victory on November 3rd and no Georgia Senate sweep on January 5th without millions of calls, texts, postcards door-knocks, and dollars generated by independent organizations. It's time for us to re-enroll and hear what's next on the to-do list.

Wednesday, January 6th could mark a turning point for America. Let's go out and make it so.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington