# 12: Squelch Trump’s Big Lie

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 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 three weeks.

Threats to democracy can be damnably complex, or even intractable. The Big Lie is neither. Donald Trump contends that the election he lost by 7 million votes was stolen. This very simple Big Lie puts democracy at risk in the United States, diminishes the integrity of future elections, and casts a shadow over the peaceful transfer of power that is our hallmark. Internationally, it extinguishes our beacon.

Even from this man, it is reprehensible and contemptible. A similar claim from any past presidential candidate of any party would have been immediately dismissed. We are at this point for two reasons. First the Big Lie has been monetized by Trump, Fox News commentators, and numerous Republican candidates. Second, the retribution visited upon Republicans who refuse to live the lie is swift and sure.

Most Republican elected officials have now gone way beyond ignoring Trump’s impeachable offenses. They know the lie will diminish us all. They know their complicit actions are craven, but they nonetheless consent to this dance with the devil, whose grimy embrace will never be unlocked.

Still, the defeat of the Big Lie will depend largely upon other Republicans who can not abide by it. Since the lie is fed daily and is too dangerous to be ignored, our response must be daily as well. Let’s do these seven things now to defend our country. Please share these steps with your friends so that they will take action too!

1) Yes, You Must Support Liz Cheney
	No one is asking you to select Liz Cheney as your favorite person, or to ignore innumerable past political sins. What is compelling is the answer to this question. What is in it for her politically in taking on Donald Trump over the election lie and the January 6 insurrection? The answer is NOTHING. There is no chance that she will ultimately be granted political rewards for her stand. Still, she is not going to blink. Her principles on this issue are the best thing we have going. There will be no viable Democratic candidate, so she has a chance to save her seat in Wyoming against a Trump-endorse candidate. If she is able to get herself reelected, it will be a huge victory over Trump and over the lie itself. Her ability to do that depends upon her having sufficient campaign resources give to a conservative Republican today.
2) Protect the Truth in Maricopa County
	At this point, the epicenter of the election integrity war is Maricopa County, Arizona. The Republican controlled State Senate is teaming with the “consulting firm” CyberNinjas to do a third recount of ballots sans procedures and with an eagle eye out for bamboo traces. This is to be sure that Southeast Asian operatives did not dump tens of thousands of ballots on unsuspecting Maricopan election officials, a QAnon theory. The Republican controlled Maricopa County Commission is fighting back against this madness, Republican board chair Jack Sellers says the Senate is “making an attempt at legitimatizing a grift disguised as an audit”. Call Jack Sellers’ office at 602-506-1776 and ask his staff to pass on your admiration for his integrity.
3) Keep Posted on the New Republican Movement
	Whether or not you have ever been a Republican, or ever hope to be one, it is useful to understand who is behind the Call for a New American Renewal. These are 150 Republicans including former Governors, members of Congress and Senators. They aren’t forming a third party and instead are trying to start a principled movement. We wish them all the best with that. Send them your email to keep track of them. If you are not thus sated, listen in on their huge June 16 Town Hall.

4) Maintain Your Election Law Grounding
	You can’t keep tabs on the Big Lie and all the associated smaller lies without a reliable source regarding the truth. Following the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University is the very best way of understanding all the ways in which we are pushing back against the voter suppression that the Big Lie is feeding. They provide state by state analysis and are an indispensable litigator. You can give them your financial support or just sign up for their reports.
5) Expect More from John Kasich
	John Kasich has completed his two terms as Governor of Ohio, and he is not ever going to the Republican candidate for President. From this point forward, he will either influence the American agenda with his credibility and his insights, or will fail to do so. It is Kasich who should be speaking out on behalf of Liz Cheney. It is Kasich who should be making it a daily point to call out the Big Lie. Time to email him at info@johnkasich.com and ask him what he is waiting for. Remind him his country is at risk and that he could be doing something about it. He cares about his legacy.
6) Energize the Corporate Community
	Even the modest actions that companies have taken to fight voter suppression laws in Georgia, Texas and Florida have terrified Republican operatives. Some companies have already pledged to withhold financial support from members of Congress who continued their support of the Big Lie on January 6 even as our Capitol was under attack. This movement needs greater traction. Find the email address of the CEO of the largest corporation in your state and write her or him a note asking how they intend to fight the Big Lie induced voter suppression. If a leader of this movement is going to emerge, it will be Kenneth Chenault, the former CEO at American Express. Chenault was behind the best and most important joint corporate letter so far. He is very difficult to reach. Call his venture capital firm General Catalyst in New York at 212-775-4000 and tell him this country needs his continued help.

7) Improvise and Promote Your Own Big Lie Combating Strategies
	Share this post with your friends! Write to this missive on other things you plan to do to fight to Big Lie and we will pass on your ideas. Examine the Lincoln Project and see if they warrant your support, especially for ads that expose the Big Lie. Carefully consider that principled Congressperson Adam Kinzinger has started a PAC to support Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, always remembering that we would prefer to have those seats for Nancy Pelosi.  Also, keep an eye on the Dominion lawsuit, which will expose multiple elements of the lie and force Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and others to pay damages. Watch the Fox News debacle and look for an opening. If it ever transpires that they are going to have to pay for the lie (even in advertising revenue) they will 1) flee from it, and 2) pretend they never said it.

1)    There are Biden’s policies to be passed, and election campaigns to advance. Val Demings is running to unseat Marco Rubio in Florida! None of these adventures will go as well as we want them to if we let the Big Lie stand out there moldering, sapping our country’s strength.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#11: Time to Go Out and Win Ourselves Six Senate Seats

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 three weeks.

It has gone better than planned. After he was elected President of the United States, Joe Biden expected he was going to have to settle for 48 Senators on his side. Raphael Warnock, Jon Ossoff and Stacie Abrams and all of the rest of us got him to 50 on January 5. Of course, we had a little help from Donald Trump, but by then he owed us a lot more than two Senate seats.

At 48 Democrats, Biden would have needed two votes from Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney to pass the American Rescue Plan. Those votes would not have been secured without a huge reduction in necessary spending. The difference between needing to get those votes and instead getting an aye from Joe Manchin is a trillion dollars of expenditures for economic recovery, repairing the tattered Affordable Care Act, and sharply reducing child poverty.

At 50 votes, the narrative that Manchin is blocking all of the best that is within us is false. He is providing cover for 6 to 8 Senators in each party who want to preserve the filibuster to make the parties work together at least on the basics. He was there to get us to fifty on the American Rescue Plan, and he will be there to support much of Biden’s infrastructure wish list. He has provided the key fiftieth vote to confirm countless Biden nominees. Passing the monumental climate change law we deeply desire (and need) would take sixty votes, since it is not subject to the budget reconciliation process. Manchin would be a problem there if he could be, but we are not close to sixty. On this front the President is moving us along nicely, using executive orders, other administrative actions and diplomacy. It is not close to enough climate change action, but it reflects Biden’s commitment and tenacity. This movement is accelerating rapidly.

We are getting what we worked so hard for. On vaccinations, Biden has instituted the delivery systems, the reliable supply and the clear messaging that were nowhere to be seen in December. Biden is using three budget reconciliation bills, countless executive actions and able elected officials to turn the country in a new direction. This will serve the United States and the world well for the next two years.

In November 2022, we face the off-year elections that will stop us or enable us to move forward with even greater energy. Perish the thought that we would end up with fewer than 50 votes, giving Mitch McConnell back a gavel, used before almost entirely to comfort the comfortable. Even the fact that Donald Trump now hates Mitch McConnell is not redemptive.

Why would we return to this ugly world? Instead, we will get Joe Biden at least six more Democratic seats that will strengthen his hand, expand his agenda, and help us prepare for the 2024 presidential election.

The greatest grassroots political effort of our time has been lulled by the absence of tweets from the big liar about the big lie. We need to start paying more attention to these matters right now, as hugely consequential Senate campaigns get organized. We are buoyed by the movement of voters away from the “Republican Party,” a party that stands for what, actually? Republicans are warring internally, but as one pundit has said, most are circling Trump’s Death Star.

The Trump battle with Mitch McConnell over which Republican Senatorial candidates should emerge is encouraging news. It will result in some wacky, easier to beat candidates, like Missouri’s felonious and previously disgraced former governor, Eric Greitens. Moreover, there are already several announced retirements, creating open seats where Republican Senators would otherwise be running for re-election. We will need to defend Mark Kelley in Arizona and Raphael Warnock in Georgia, both of whom are now running for full six years terms. There are these very promising opportunities:

• In Pennsylvania, the totally disgusted but insufficiently courageous Pat Toomey is retiring. Democratic Secretary of State John Fetterman, an important force in fighting against Republican election fraud lies, has entered the race and there will be a strong Democratic field.
• Republican Senator Richard Burr is retiring in North Carolina after voting for impeachment and shepherding a fair report on Trump’s dalliances with Russia. Democrats hold the governorship. Former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley, an African American, just entered the Senate race. She is an extremely attractive candidate who has won twice statewide.
• In Iowa, 87-year old Republican Senator Charles Grassley has yet to announce he is retiring, but he will do so.
• In Missouri, Roy Blunt is retiring. Republicans are seriously considering nominating the previously fallen Eric Greitens, who resigned as governor after being accused of blackmailing an ex-lover.
• Marco Rubio in Florida has a polling problem. Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murray is already running, and Rep. Val Demings may run as well. Demings is the former Orlando police chief that Joe Biden considered for the vice presidency.
• Ohio provides an excellent opportunity with the retirement of the moderate but Trump-genuflecting Rob Portman. There is a big squabble among Republican candidates. On the Democratic side, Representative Tim Ryan is a very strong candidate, and he is all in.

Given these excellent opportunities, let’s hasten to do these three things:

1) Give Tim Ryan a Fast Start
	Tim Ryan is a ten term Member of Congress whose ties to blue collar workers mirror those of Joe Biden. He is a good bet to reach the voters that elected John Glenn and Sherrod Brown. He has already started his campaign and has $1.25 million while the Republican field is still being buffeted by Trump, who organized a bizarre “Hunger Games” tryout. It is a good thing to get back in the habit or writing checks to candidates, and there is no better place to start than Tim Ryan.
2) Convince Our Side to Get to Work
	It is now a long time ago, but we should not forget that Indivisible and Swing Left (and others) stepped up to organize against Trump after the 2016 election while the Democratic Party itself was in the highest level of disarray. That is why we were able to take back the House in 2018. With regard to strategies to take back some more Senate seats in 2022, Indivisible is invisible and Swing Left is becalmed. You can use Act Blue to donate to Senate races through the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It would be even better to use your existing connections to either or both Indivisible and Swing Left and tell them that you are eager for them to get going with developing and sharing their targeting strategies.
3) Set the Record Straight
	By now we have heard everything from Trump supporters. But there still can be a time when you can be appalled by what a member of Congress just said. Jim Jordan excoriated Dr. Anthony Fauci for depriving Americans of their liberties through mask requirements and limitations on large assembly. Fauci has responded that the real deprivation of liberty has been the death of 560,000 Americans due to the pandemic. It is time to call Jim Jordan’s district office in Lima at 419-999-6455 to give his staff your thoughts on these matters. Ask them what kind of man would rail at a simple request to protect others from an agonizing death?

Our efforts continue, and we have accomplished so much. As of today, we don’t have daily tweets to recall Donald Trump’s contempt for democracy. We need to recognize that we don’t need that reminder. Let’s get to work on these Senate seats as if today is October 1, 2022.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#10 Never Forget to Call a Lie a Lie

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.

Every day, we have the pleasure of having a president who is an adult, who is experienced in managing the government and who has compassion for people. The era of the daily counterpunch and the hourly lie is behind us. For now.

Are we entertaining the notion that the four-year ordeal could not possibly happen to us again? Are we letting our intensity and our advanced political skills atrophy? Can we get focused every week on what must be done on both the policy and political side? As important, can we take full advantage of the relationship between the two, making sure independent voters understand what Joe Biden is doing to battle the virus and restore the economy?

We have a good start. Americans strongly support Joe Biden’s efforts to vaccinate the country. He has good support as well on the American Rescue Plan, the initiative to restore the COVID-ravaged economy. Americans are behind most of the individual elements of the infrastructure-rebuilding American Jobs Plan, but less comfortable with those elements once they are all assembled into a large package.

With hardly an exception, Joe Biden has been pitch-perfect. He knows how important his first year in office is, and he planned for it. The policy efforts stand on their own, but it is not difficult to ascertain one of their primary political objectives. Biden intends to move millions of blue-collar workers away from Trumpism by making them a clear winner in the economic recovery, which is good for them and good for the country. On the political side, this is intended to restore our previous political strengths in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the margins of victory in 2020 were modest. Not coincidentally, restoring our strength will help us flip Republican Senate seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio in 2022. It will not hurt in contesting the open seats in Iowa, Missouri and North Carolina.

Biden will not ever let “When will workers return to their office building” become the question of the day, as it often is in the media. He understands that tens of millions of Americans do not occupy offices. They grow things, manufacture things, provide health care, and serve people in physical space and real time. He will not stop being president for all of us, and independent voters will appreciate it at the ballot box.

That is why Republicans across the country want to change who puts a ballot in the box. Calling the Georgia voter suppression efforts “Jim Crow on steroids” is inaccurate, as it understates by comparison the virulent earlier voter suppression history of the Jim Crow South. In 1956, because of intimidation and violence, poll taxes and literacy tests, only 27% of African Americans were eligible to vote in Georgia. For the elections just completed, 68% were registered, a higher percentage than whites.

As so often is the case, Stacey Abrams had it right. These current Georgia voter suppression efforts are “Jim Crow in a coat and tie.” Ostensibly, the Brian Kemp and legislative efforts were devised under the rubric of election reform, to help voters trust the system even more. But the same people who passed the law have been lying about nonexistent voter fraud to tear down that trust. The new law compounds the lie. There is not a single word of it that would have been written if Republicans had won the Georgia elections. Pure and simple, Brian Kemp wants fewer minority voters because they make it more likely that he and his gang will lose.

And so it goes across the country. In our most recent missive in Our Unfinished Work we outline the specific steps we can all take to fight the rampant voter suppression attempts underway. We will block or defeat the bulk of them across the country, but we cannot stop them all. The new kid on the block is going to be helpful. Motivated by the prospects of boycotts, large American corporations are joining this fight. We are not being lulled into thinking that they will always be with us, or even that they are fully with us now. Nonetheless, this involvement matters a great deal. If corporate leaders continue to call the big lie of a stolen election a lie, it may well stimulate reconsideration of the Georgia bill. If not, it will slow down the voter suppression efforts in other state legislatures.

We can build upon the efforts of these temporary political partners and do these three things:

1) Keeping the Lie from Growing
	Incredibly, the former President has developed a new routine that the insurrection of January 6 was all about hugging and kissing. In an interview with Laura Ingraham, he emphasized the “great relationships” between the 400 now arrested insurrectionists and the Capitol Police, saying the insurrectionists “walked in and walked out.” Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted in response to the Trump interview: “No remorse and no regret. It is quite honestly sick and disgusting.” Representative Rodney Davis, the ranking Republican member of the House Administration Committee, charged with examining the happenings of the day, has stayed silent. Please phone him at 202-225-2371 to say that his allowing Trump’s hugging lie to stand dishonors the life of policeman Brian Sicknick who died of his January 6 injuries.
2) Support African-American Corporate Executives
	The strong corporate pushback against the Georgia bill to suppress voting did not materialize magically. It started with former American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault, who maintains and utilizes a list of fellow African-American corporate executives. “The Fierce Urgency is Now” was organized by Chenault and sent by 75 executives. Send a personal note to Kenneth Chenault’s at General Catalyst Partners at 434 Broadway, NY, NY 20013 and pass on your thanks for him spurring a movement.
3) Help Joe Biden Address Home and Community Care
	The Biden-Harris infrastructure proposal is called the American Jobs plan, but a fifth of its proposed expenditures would go to rebuilding the uneven home and community health care system that attends to the needs of the elderly and disabled. Biden does not expect this $400 billion multi-year initiative to pass in its entirety. He is trying to increase America’s commitment to home health care in the millions of instances where it is the best option. A group of organizations flying the flag of the #CareCan’tWait Coalition has put together a major media campaign to make certain we do not turn away from this challenge. A strong part of that Coalition is Caring Across America You can get regular updates and send your donation to them to help make certain Joe Biden’s proposal starts something.

The lie that the election was stolen, the lie that voter suppression is thus required, and the lie about  the January 6 insurrection will not recede naturally. We did not get to our present favorable position by expecting justice to automatically prevail. Let’s do the work that needs to be done.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington

#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