I've worked for politicians, a PR firm, corporations, nonprofits, and state and federal government. Since 2000, I've run a PR and marketing sole proprietorship. I think politics is important, maddening, humorous and good fodder for a spirited conversation. So, I hang out here when I need a break from life.
The Washington Post’s Sunday magazine yesterday featured a powerful article about our bitterly divided country’s prospects for healing after Tuesday’s election. The author, Gene Weingarten, though he’s a humor columnist by trade, has a hard time keeping his optimism up.
I understand how he feels. So do millions of us.
A dear old friend, a naturalized American citizen who
fled South Africa because of apartheid, told me the other day that despite accusations
from the Right, she doesn’t hate Trump supporters, she simply can’t fathom
their allegiance to such a creepy guy. Another old friend, a former Peace Corps
volunteer no less, has been arguing with me on Facebook, determined to convince
me that Joe Biden is thoroughly corrupt, senile and certain to drag the country
down to socialistic hell.
They’re very civil representatives of the respective
sides. I’ve actually had a gun-loving Facebook acquaintance use the phrase
“Lock and load” during a testy exchange.
I’d say that the prospects of our healing and
reclaiming some common ground are better if Biden wins, if only because he will
at least try. That’s not only his promise, it’s also his history. Don’t forget
he was harangued by his opponents in the Democratic primary for having been too
friendly with Senate Republicans and “blue dog” Southern pols of yore.
President Trump, on the other hand, has demonstrated
little if any interest in mitigating his policies or his behavior to win over
Americans who disagree with him. The
notion that he would suddenly turn magnanimous and conciliatory in a second
term seems pretty farfetched.
Whatever happens Tuesday – or the Tuesday after that
or the Tuesday after that, depending on how the vote count and the likely
challenges go – we’re going to have to make the best of another four years
together.
And because I
would much rather us be singing and dancing in the streets than shooting, here,
respectfully and not at all facetiously submitted, is a little playlist for the
days ahead, a diverse, non-partisan Top 10 of songs that speak to wellness, optimism
and unity:
“Peace in the Valley” – Elvis Presley
And the lion shall lay down by the lamb.
“Medicated Goo” – Traffic
My own home recipe’ll see you through
“Get Together” – The Youngbloods
Come on, people now, smile on your brother
“Coconut” – Harry Nilsson
Add lime, then drink ’em both together
“We Can Work It Out” – The Beatles
Life
is very short and there’s no time.
“A Spoonful of Sugar” – Julie Andrews
Helps the medicine go down
“Why Can’t We Be Friends” – War
The color of your skin don’t matter to me/As long as we can
live in harmony
“Jeremiah Peabody’s Polyunsaturated
Quick-Dissolving Fast-Acting Pleasant-Tasting Green and Purple Pills” –
Ray Stevens
Guaranteed to be just what you need for
quick, fast, speedy relief.
“(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and
Understanding” – Nick Lowe
Seriously.
“Sexual Healing” – Marvin Gaye
Helps to relieve my mind.
Bonus track for the hopelessly devastated:
“Whiskey River (Take My Mind)” – Willie Nelson.
Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune (1986-2000). He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.
Why is Trump obsessed with investing so much time and money in Minnesota?
Last night’s Trump rally in Duluth was old hat for us. The visits from Trump and surrogates are non-stop, and the incendiary attack ads are wall-to-wall.
Yes, I understand that in 2016 Hillary only won Minnesota by 44,593, or 1.5 percent. Yes, I realize that there are “soooo many Trump signs up in rural areas,” where “real Minnesotans” live. Yes, I realize the Iron Range is continuing to evolve into a reliably red East Dakota or North Kentucky, politically speaking.
But still, the data from 2020 just don’t look all that encouraging for Trump, or puppets such as U.S. Senate candidate Jason Lewis. Despite all of those massive Trump signs in rural areas, 55% of Minnesota’s population is in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, and Biden is doing well there. Here are the most recent polls, aggregated by fivethirtyeight.com:
(P.S. The Star Tribune/KARE-11/MPR poll published on September 26 had Biden ahead 48 percent to 42 percent, with eight percent undecided. It has Trump’s approval rating at 43 percent. Not sure why fivethirtyeight.com didn’t list that one, but that poll is consistent with the average of these other polls.)
As we all know, the 2016 polls didn’t match up with the 2016 results on Election Day, though for the most part the difference was within the polls’ statistical margins-of-error, or nearly so. It’s important to note that these most recent findings in 2020 are mostly outside the margin-of-error.
To be clear, I’m not saying Minnesota is a sure thing for Biden. The margins shown in these polls are not insurmountable, particularly if Trump continues to dump a disproportionate amount of time, money, lies, and voter suppression efforts here over the next 33 days.
But if these numbers qualify Minnesota as one of the most hopeful swing states in Trumpland, how bad must the other swing states look for Trump?
Trying to pick your least favorite type of Trump supporter is not easy. The competition is stiff, and there are strong arguments for all of them.
Trumpist Typology
Greed Trumpists. There’s the Greed Trumpists, who will put up with any Trump outrage – kids torn from mothers and put in cages, white supremacy encouragement, coordinating with foreign enemies interfering in our democracy — to get a tax cut, even a tax cut that represents relative crumbs compared to the mountains of loaves lavished on billionaires.
Personality Cult Trumpists. There are the Personality Cult Trumpists, many of whom watched far too many episodes of The Apprentice with an uncritical eye. They find Trump entertaining and embrace the myth of Trump’s deal-making skills and “only I can fix it” hucksterism, despite his pandemic response debacle and tax returns that expose Trump as a bumbler of epic proportions.
Bible-Thumpin’ Trumpists. Then there’s the Bible-Thumpin’ Trumpists. They ignore of the dozens of Trump’s extreme anti-Christian actions—serial sexual abuse and infidelity and cutting food subsidies for the poor to name just a couple — that make a mockery of the Golden Rule and the Beatitudes in order to hoard as many Fallwell-endorsed judges as possible.
Tribal Trumpists. Who can forget the Tribal Trumpists, who will let Trump take their loved one’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) health protections and Social Security benefits just to be able to say that their Red Tribe of “real Americans” stuck it to the Blue Tribe of “libtard snowflakes.” Go team!
Changeophobe Trumpists. Changeophobe Trumpists are fearful of our fast-changing world and ever-nostalgic about the glories of what they view as the good old days of their childhoods. They are particularly susceptible to Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” by keeping coal dirty, light bulbs inefficient, America white, global competition at bay, and bigotry unchallenged.
Racist Trumpists. The Racist Trumpists are obviously a very strong contender for least favorite. They insist that Trump’s villifying of immigrants and people of color is a “refreshing rejection of political correctness,” instead of a wink and a nod to the full spectrum of racists, from those of us who are sometimes lousy at recognizing systemic racism to full-blown white supremacist activists like the Proud Boys, Aryan Nations, Volksfront, American Freedom Party, Ku Klux Klan, and White Aryan Resistance.
Thug Trumpists. And then there are Thug Trumpists, who can’t recognize the difference between bullying and actual strength, and gravitate towards authoritarian personalities to serve as a binky to make them feel more secure in the face of their overblown fears of our changing and more diverse nation.
False Equivalence Trumpists
But the last month of the election is when we unfortunately have to be hearing a lot from perhaps my least favorite type of Trump supporters — the False Equivalence Trumpists. They continually declare that “both sides do it” to make their vote for the most bigoted, incompetent, and corrupt President in U.S. history seem somehow defensible.
Since last night’s presidential debate, the False Equivalence Trumpists were out in full force, complaining about “both candidates” being equally bad and lamenting that they “once again have to choose the lesser of two evils.”
Though they carry an air of intellectual superiority in their assertions, False Equivalence Trumpists are among the most intellectually lazy of all of the Trumpists types.
Obviously, both candidates have sold out to a special interest, lied, supported an unwise policy, or made a big mistake. Same as it ever was. But from that truth, False Equivalence Trumpists quickly jump to the safety of “both sides do it equally,” instead of digging into the facts to determine which candidate does it more. In a democracy, doing that kind of qualitative differentiation is a voter’s duty, and they consistently shrink from it.
Because False Equivalence Trumpists find it distasteful to be held accountable for supporting an imperfect candidate, they stubbornly cling to the truth of “both sides do it,” but not the whole truth. The whole truth is that any fair-minded analysis comparing Trump and Biden will show that Trump is much more incompetent, much more bigoted, much more dishonest, and much more corrupt.
But this group of Americans lacks either the judgement to see that truth, or the courage to speak it.
The False Equivalence Trumpists are top-of-mind right now because, we are entering the final month of the presidential campaign with about 6 percent of the voters somehow still undecided. Tragically, these pathologically indecisive Americans could be decisive on November 3rd. The fact that the fate of the nation, and maybe even the planet, falls to this group of Americans is crazy making and terrifying.
“Like they say, it takes all types to make the world. But sometimes you wish it didn’t.” — Gloria Naylor, Bailey’s Café
Our country hasn’t been so divided since the run-up in the 1850s to the Civil War, but this time, though there are similar moral and social issues at the heart of the conflict, the geographic aspect is not so defined than you can draw a Mason-Dixon line between North and South.
Animosity is festering among citizens who live side by side, albeit dispersed in different proportions from state to state. If shooting were to break out — as some worry it will and a few appear to hope — it would be like a massive barroom free-for-all, an ugly, bloody mess that would wreck our economy and make us easy pickings for a hostile foreign power.
Hand-crafted GOP political sign, outskirts of Watkinsville, Georgia
If one side firmly believes four additional years of Dirty Donald Trump would turn the United States of America into a fascist state and the other side is dead certain that a Sleepy Joe Biden victory would make us communist, is there anything we can do preemptively?
Secession isn’t an option, for reasons alluded already. Our hostile factions live cheek to jowl.
If we are indeed dealing with many of the classic complaints — irreconcilable differences, mental cruelty, unreasonable behavior — what about separation instead, a monumental divorce?
What if we divided up the property, the land mass of the continental United States into two roughly equal acreages, East and West, not North and South, so both factions get some Sun Belt,some coastline and some places to ski and snowmobile? We can flip a coin to determine who gets which slice.
Obviously, this restructuring will require a monumental migration/resettlement, the most complicated game of musical chairs ever attempted. First, however, we have to figure out who belongs where.
To facilitate any necessary reassignments, we’ll all fill need to fill out the following 13-question — in honor of the 13 original colonies — questionnaire:
1. Do you believe that being asked to wear a COVID mask in public infringes on your Constitutional liberty?
2. Do you believe that every American citizen should have the right to own and carry an assault rifle or pistol?
3. Do you believe climate change is a plot hatched by Chinese communists and/or anarchist scientists?
4. Do you drive an extra-large pickup truck as a leisure vehicle?
5. Do you believe George Soros is a closet Nazi determined to spend his vast fortune to turn the world socialist?
6. Do you believe Hillary Clinton operated a child-sex ring out of a Washington pizza parlor?
7. Do you still believe Barack Obama is Kenyan by birth?
8. Do you believe Black Lives Matter is terrorist organization?
9. Do you believe we need a tall, spike-topped wall along our southern border to keep Mexican and other Latino asylum seekers out?
10. Do you believe Redskins is a fine name for a sports team?
11. Do you believe windmills cause cancer?
12. Do you support fracking and oil drilling in national parks?
13. Do you believe Donald Trump’s face should be added to Mt. Rushmore?
If you answer yes to more than two of these questions, you could soon be a citizen of the new right-wing nation of Murica.
If you answer no to all but one or two of these questions, citizenship will be granted to you in leftist Portlandia.
Flag designs to come.
Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He’s a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (200-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune (1986-2000). He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.
In the wake of the George Floyd murder, I’m appreciative that the Minnesota Legislature finally is about to pass some police reforms. But I’m also pretty underwhelmed.
Based on reports I’ve heard, it seems heavy on mandates and light on investments in changing the face of law enforcement. The compromise package that will soon pass includes things such as requiring officers to intervene in cases of abuse, banning choke holds and “warrior training,” and having a better statewide database on abuse cases.
That’s all good stuff, as far as it goes. The problem is, it doesn’t go very far. The New York Times summarizes the debate and the unfinished business:
“Ultimately, legislators could not reach a deal that reconciled the Democrats’ calls for far-reaching changes to police oversight with Republican leaders who supported a shorter list of “common-sense police reforms” that included banning chokeholds in most situations and requiring officers to stop their colleagues from using unreasonable force.
Democrats said the plan passed by the Republican-led Senate consisted of tepid half-steps that were already in place in most law-enforcement agencies and did not rise to the moment’s calls for dramatic action. Republicans balked at the proposals passed by the Democrat-controlled House to restore voting rights to tens of thousands of felons and put the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, in charge of prosecuting police killings.
Republican leaders later said they had agreed to alter arbitration proceedings when officers are accused of misconduct, but Democrats said it was not enough.
All week, state legislators held emotional hearings on proposals to increase oversight of how the police use force and are disciplined; change the process for firing officers; and explore alternatives to policing, such as sending social workers to respond when people in mental distress need help.”
What About Ending Marijuana Prohibition?
I was disappointed that putting the marijuana prohibition question on the ballot wasn’t part of this session focused on preventing future police abuses. After all, the ACLU has documented that marijuana prohibition is a root cause of much racial profiling and police abuse:
A Black person in Minnesota is 5.4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person. Minnesota ranks 8th for largest racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests. In 2018, marijuana possession arrests accounted for 35% of all drug arrests here.
Although the overwhelming majority of Minnesota counties have racial disparities, Goodhue, Olmstead, St. Louis, Ramsey and Carver Counties have the worst records, ranging from Black people being 7.07 times more likely to face arrest than whites in Carver County to 11.19 times more likely in Goodhue County.
It’s clear what we need to do. Let’s take marijuana enforcement off of police officer’s plates, because marijuana is much less dangerous and addictive than legal alcohol, and it’s leading to much police abuse.
I understand this would have been a very tough sell with Senate Republican leadership, but this topic should have at least been part of the discussion. Legislators should have seized this educable moment to further build already strong public support for legalizing marijuana. (KSTP 2018 survey: 61% support marijuana legalization, including 54% of Republicans)
Reforms That Require Substantial Investment
Also missing from the list of reforms are any proposals to professionalize policing that costs more than a nominal amount of money. Spending money is something that both sides avoid, because neither side wants to take the political hit for proposing offsetting spending cuts and/or tax increases.
For instance, how about paying for a rigorous De-escalation and Racial Justice Re-Training Academy, to give every Minnesota law enforcement officer in the state extensive training about how to do their job more respectfully, lawfully, safely, and effectively. How about requiring all officers to subsequently pass a training proficiency test to prove they did more than doze and wise-crack their way through the training?
To keep this re-training top-of-mind and up-to-date, how about also funding biennial supplemental training courses, such as we require for other professions with life-and-death powers (e.g. Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits for medical professionals)?
How about a Police Professionalization Fund to establish financial incentives for local governments that hire college-educated officers and/or officers from under-represented communities?
How about a Hometown Officer Fund to pay for moving expenses for officers who move their home into the neighborhoods they are serving?
(Note, a couple of these good ideas came from Wry World Messrs. Lambert and Austin.)
Think about it. More officers who are college educated people of color whose family lives in the community they serve and have extensive and regular training about how to be a different kind of public servant. All of that coupled with the changes in the current bill would go a long ways toward changing the toxic culture in many law enforcement departments.
But all of those things cost money. The State should be funding them because many unenlightened and/or financially strapped local governments are unlikely to do these things on their own without financial help.
But apparently legislators from both parties still aren’t willing to put their money where their mouths are. So unfortunately there’s much more police reform work to do in the 2021 session.
For good reason, there was a lot of national discussion about the 6,200 Trump supporters who gathered at an indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Americans were understandably concerned that Trump’s selfish rally would be a “super spreader event” that would needlessly cause a spike in COVID 19 infections and role model reckless behavior.
While all of that national discussion was taking place, South Dakota’s ultra-conservative Governor Kristi Noem looked at that Tulsa scene and effectively said “hold my beer, Mr. President.”
In the midwest, you don’t have to be reminded when the ten-day Sturgis Bike Rally begins. Even in my community, which is 600 miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota, and even in the two weeks before and after the ten-day August Rally, motorcycles and trailers towing motorcycles are everywhere on our roads and highways.
The Sturgis Rally is massive. Last year, 490,000 people traveled from around the nation to the Black Hills. That’s equivalent to about 80 Tulsa Trump Rallies. Oh and by the way, unlike the Tulsa event, the Sturgis Rally lasts for weeks, not hours.
That’s a lot of cash for a remote, sparsely populated state like South Dakota. It’s also a lot COVID-19 exposure. Make a list of major COVID-19 exposure risks, and you’ve described the Sturgis Bike Rally: Inability to distance in small indoor spaces? Check. Unwillingness to distance due to libertarian “live free or die” attitudes? Check. Too few masks? Check. Obesity and related comorbidities? Check. Advanced age and related comorbidities? Check. Binge drinking and the associated increase in risk-taking? Check. No small amount of casual sex? Check. Lengthy exposures over multiple days? Check. A merger of exposure pools from around the nation, and lengthy cross-country travel in all directions. Check and check.
Granted, bikers at the Rally are outside a fair amount, riding and camping. But indoor bars, restaurants, hotels, stores, and tourist attractions within a several hundred mile radius of Sturgis also are traditionally packed with strangers in close proximity with each other. When it’s loud in those indoor spaces, visitors are forced to shout at, and expectorate on, each other.
If a super villain were to design a super-spreader event to try to harm their worst enemies, they perhaps couldn’t do much better than the Sturgis Rally.
Without a doubt, Governor Noem out-Trumped Trump by refusing to cancel the Sturgis Bike Rally this August 7-16. From the beginning of the pandemic, Noem has supported basically no public health protections for her citizens. She wants to show corporations that South Dakota is pro-business, tax visitors so she doesn’t have to tax her conservative base, and show her conservative fan base that she is “protecting freedom.” She apparently isn’t interested in protecting the citizens of her state, a state that is disproportionately elderly and therefore particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 deaths.
So, if you’re thinking about summer travel this year, my advice would be to take a lot of masks and sanitizer, and to take an extremely wide berth around Kristi Noem’s COVID-19 mushroom cloud in South Dakota.
I like bars as much as the next guy. Okay, maybe more so, depending on who the next guy is. But the most significant error Governor Tim Walz has made in his mostly wise mid-pandemic “reopening” plans was announcing that bars could return to serving customers indoors if they agreed to operate at 50% capacity to allow for adequate spacing.
Under pressure from Republican legislators and bar owners, Walz seemed to be making the decision in haste. He announced on June 6th that indoor bar reopening would begin on June 10. The announcement was made at a time when COVID-19 cases in Minnesota had only plateaued, not decreased.
While Walz has stressed allegiance to experts, national public health officials disagree with his bar opening timing. In April, the Trump Administration recommended that states only begin a gradual reopening process after they experience a “downward trajectory” of reported cases, or a falling share of positive tests. At the time bars opened their indoor spaces, Minnesota had not met that criteria.
In fact, according to covidexitstrategy.com, Minnesota is still not meeting federal guidelines today, because the number of cases has been increasing for the past two weeks and ICU capacity is rated as “low.”
Contrary to popular belief, bars are not essential services, so this is not something we “just have to live with.”
Moreover, bars obviously pose a difficult social distancing challenge. Many, particularly young adults, go to bars specifically to connect with friends and strangers, the precise thing we need to prevent during a pandemic. Even those who arrive at the bar cautious and responsible get more open to a variety of different types of unsafe encounters as alcohol flows and inhibitions subsequently decrease.
Bars are uniquely challenging. They work very hard to become social “hot spots,” which makes them especially susceptible to being pandemic hot spots.
So it’s no surprise that COVID19 spread at bars is swiftly emerging as a major public health problem in Minnesota, as the Star Tribune recently reported:
Outbreaks centered on four bars in Minneapolis and Mankato have contributed to a surge in COVID-19 cases in young adults, which state health officials warned could undermine months of planning and recent progress in managing the pandemic.
Roughly 100 people suffered COVID-19 infections related to crowding over the June 12-14 weekend at Rounders Sports Bar & Grill and the 507 in Mankato, while more than 30 cases have been identified among people who went to Cowboy Jack’s near Target Field and the Kollege Klub in Dinkytown between June 14 and June 21.
While growth of COVID-19 is inevitable until a vaccine is found for the novel coronavirus that causes it, preventable clusters could cause an escalation that could exhaust the state’s medical resources and leave vulnerable people at risk, said Kris Ehresmann, state infectious disease director.
“When you have 56 cases associated with one location from one weekend, that is not managing the rate of growth,” said Ehresmann, imploring businesses and individuals to take precautions “so that even as we open up, we are not putting ourselves in a position to overwhelm the system we worked so hard to strengthen.”
A young person familiar with the situation at Cowboy Jacks told me that the 50% capacity rules seemed to be followed, but customers eventually left their tables and bunched together tightly in one relatively small part of the bar.
Well of course they did. That scene is almost certainly playing out to varying extents in most of Minnesota’s bars.
I have a lot of sympathy for the bar owners. Most want to do whatever it takes to follow the rules so they can stay open. But forcing drunk people to stay 6 feet apart is not merely “difficult.” Unless you use unacceptably heavy-handed enforcement tactics, it’s pretty much impossible. Even for the most responsible owners with the best plans, getting patrons to stay at their tables after the booze has been flowing for hours is just not feasible.
That’s why the Governor needs to shut down bars until Minnesota truly is meeting federal guidelines on a sustainable basis.
From a public health standpoint, these bars are creating a serious public health threat. While young people are at relatively low-risk of dying, they’re at high risk of spreading COVID19, and most are in contact with networks of at-risk people.
I wish there was another way, but I can’t think of one. I understand this would be really hard on bars, so elected officials should find a way to keep them afloat during the pandemic.
But legal mandates are the only way when individual choices significantly endanger innocent victims. That’s why we have enacted legal mandates banning drunk driving, child abuse, driving at unsafe speeds, dumping toxins into water supplies, running red lights, smoking indoors, and many other things that individuals choose to do that inadvertently victimize innocent people.
This may be the least enthusiastic post I have ever written, but the public health logic of it is pretty undeniable. There’s no getting around this fact: In the midst of the worst pandemic in a century, Minnesotans partying inside even half empty bars are significantly endangering innocent people, and there isn’t a way to manage around it.
This won’t be fun for anyone. Taking hooch from people who’ve been quarantined for months will be like taking candy from babies–big, boisterous, beer-bellied babies. But if Governor Walz is truly prioritizing public health over public popularity, and following the public health science, he’ll admit his error and go back to limiting bars to outdoors only.
When it comes to addressing racial equity issues in education, health care, and housing, racism is a barrier. But I would argue that fiscal conservatism is an even bigger barrier.
In Minnesota’s policymaking debates about racial equity, this is the unacknowledged “elephant in the room.” It is what makes all of the hopeful dialogue about addressing racial equity feel hollow to me.
DFL Governor Tim Walz, Speaker Melissa Hortman, and many others deserve a lot of credit for leading on police reform. Despite the failure to pass police reforms during the recent special session, I suspect they’ll eventually enact some police reforms. This is in large part because police reform is relatively inexpensive.
But beyond police reform, I’m pessimistic when it comes to DFLers being willing to address other major forms of systemic racism in society, such as in health care, housing and education.
That’s because most DFLers and all Republicans seem completely unwilling to make the case for higher taxes.
Elected officials need to get courageous and make the case that privileged white people like me need to pay higher taxes in order to build a more equitable state. I’m not naive about this. I’ve worked in and around politics for thirty five years, so I know tax-raising is excruciatingly painful for politicians, particularly in an election year. But if we truly care about making racial justice progress in this agonizing “educable moment,” there truly is no other way.
To cite just one example, Minnesota has long had some of the worst achievement gaps in the nation, gaps that open as early as age one. The roots of k-12 achievement gaps are early education opportunity gaps. Year after year, about 35,000 low-income Minnesota children can’t access the high quality early learning and care programs that they need to get prepared for school. Those 35,000 left-behind low-income kids are the children who are most likely to fall into achievement gaps in the school years and other types of disparities throughout their lifetimes. The lack of new revenue is why our 35,000 most vulnerable children continue to be left behind every year.
Similar tales can be told about many other issues, such as health care and housing. We know what to do in those areas as well, but we don’t do it, because the changes would necessitate requiring Minnesotans to pay higher taxes.
I understand why politicians are afraid of being branded tax raisers. But the inescapable truth is that lawmakers’ long standing insistence on perpetuating the fiscal status quo is perpetuating systemic racism.
So we need to start talking honestly about the fiscal side of these racial justice issues too. Until we do, progressive leaders’ lofty rhetoric about racial justice gains is just idle chatter.
We’re all thinking it, but are afraid to say it out loud. If Trump loses the Electoral College in a close race and refuses to leave the White House on January 20, 2021, claiming he actually won but was cheated, what will the guys in and around the White House with the guns do?
It feels paranoid to even discuss this. This is what people living under dictatorships in Moldova, Sri Lanka, the Congo, and Gambia discuss, not citizens of the self-described “greatest democracy on earth.” America has long have been admired for its ability to follow-up bitter political campaigns with the peaceful transition of power. Our ability to consistently do this is arguably our single greatest achievement as a nation.
But with Trump, we can no longer be sure that the peaceful transition of power will be a given. Keep in mind what Trump’s former right hand man Michael Cohen said: “Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020, there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”
Trump himself, has more than said as much, as documented by The Atlantic:
“In December (2019), Trump told a crowd at a Pennsylvania rally that he will leave office in ‘five years, nine years, 13 years, 17 years, 21 years, 25 years, 29 years …’ He added that he was joking to drive the media ‘totally crazy.’
Just a few days earlier, Trump had alluded to his critics in a speech, ‘A lot of them say, ‘You know he’s not leaving’ … So now we have to start thinking about that because it’s not a bad idea.’
This is how propaganda works. Say something outrageous often enough and soon it no longer sounds shocking.”
One thing is almost certain: Even if Trump suffers a clear defeat in the Electoral College, he will still claim mass cheating. Remember, this is the guy who made the false assertion that “millions” voted illegally in California, and that was after he won the Electoral College.
If he loses the Electoral College, and subsequently faces the prospect of multiple criminal prosecutions as a civilian, his claims of fraud will get even more desperate, expansive, and outrageous. The question is, will armed authorities in and around the White House listen?
(By the way, I’m being vague here, because I’m not sure who would ultimately be responsible for removing the President. Secret Service? U.S. Marshals? The military? We don’t have historical precedence to guide us here. )
Trusted Third Parties Needed
By January 20, 2021 at noon, the Secret Service, U.S. Marshal Service, and U.S. military no longer would be under Trump’s control, unless they decided that Trump’s claims of cheating were correct, and that Trump therefore was reelected and is still their boss.
Will those armed authorities agree with Trump’s claims of election cheating? I’m not sure. “Was Trump cheated in the election or not” is not something that will be easy for armed authorities to judge. After all, they’re not experts in election law or in a position to investigate claims of election fraud.
In trying to sort out the Trump claims of election cheating, I would hope that the guys with the guns will look to third parties who they find credible. The courts obviously will be in play, but that will take quite a bit of time to reach a final decision in the U.S. Supreme Court.
In addition to the courts, we need third parties that can act more quickly than the courts, and be credible with the American people and the armed officials who may need to remove Trump on January 20th.
Bipartisan Presidents Weigh In Jointly
Here’s my hope: We need a bipartisan group of former Presidents from the past three decades to unanimously weigh in on this by mid-November.
Specifically, I propose that Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle (the second in command under George H.W. Bush, because he passed away), and Jimmy Carter privately pledge to each other right now that they will stand together to counter any false claims of mass fraud and publicly affirm the presidential election outcome as soon as it becomes apparent.
I understand that it could be that the election outcome won’t be clear enough for the quintet to make a unanimous declaration, and their decision has to be unanimous for it to carry the necessary weight. In that case, all of this is mute. (I also definitely understand that Trump could easily win reelection, and that it might not even be close enough to be contested.)
But if the bipartisan group can agree on the outcome, they should commit to jointly and publicly announcing the outcome in November, before Trump has a chance to send several weeks to sell his conspiracy claims unrebutted.
Why ex-presidents, and a vice president proxy? First, their political careers are effectively over, so they can’t credibly be accused of wanting to further their political careers. Second, they’re bipartisan, so it will be more difficult for Trump and his cult to marginalize them as a “partisan group.” Third, they have knowledge and credibility on the issue of fair elections, because they’ve worked in that world up close for decades. Fourth, ex-Presidents have extra gravitas, so their announcement will feel weighty, newsworthy, and historic. Finally and perhaps most importantly, the Secret Service and Generals are used to following these former Commanders-in-Chief, and likely have residual respect for at least some of them.
If the nightmare scenario I describe here plays out, an early bipartisan declaration of the past three decades’ ex-Presidents won’t guarantee that the guys with the guns will do the right thing and remove Trump. But it’s the best thing I can come up with to try to avoid an event that could mark the end of democracy in America. For something that historically consequential, we need a plan.
Minnesota U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar is an extremely talented politician. In my lifetime, Klobuchar and former Governor Tim Pawlenty were the most skilled Minnesota politicians I’ve observed. Both come across as smart, savvy, genuine, reasonable, warm, sincere, likeable, trustworthy, eloquent, and sensible. That’s why they won a lot of elections.
Moreover, in the presidential caucuses and primaries Klobuchar proved to be perhaps the strongest debater in the very large and talented field. So that sounds like a pretty great Vice Presidential choice for Biden, right?
Biden certainly could sure do much worse, but he also can do better. Here’s why.
Minnesota Is Likely A Biden Win Without Her. Biden probably doesn’t need Klobuchar to win Minnesota. While off-year elections are dicey for Minnesota Democrats, presidential years like 2020 are pretty solid. There hasn’t been any recent head-to-head polling in Minnesota that I know about, but in October the Star Tribune poll had Biden leading Trump by 12 points.
More recently in May, on what looks to be the uber-dominant issue of the 2020 election, a Survey USA/KSTP-TV survey showed that Minnesotans give Trump only a 34% approval rating for his handling of the pandemic crisis, compared to 82% approval for DFL Governor Tim Walz.
Looking at those numbers, Minnesota simply isn’t looking like much of a 2020 battleground state. Obviously, November is still six months away, and Trump will be targetting Minnesota with a big war chest. So Minnesota is not a lock for Biden. But if the overall environment is so bad that a state currently giving Trump pitiful 34% approval ratings goes to Trump, the Electoral College likely will be long gone anyway.
Selecting a proven vote-getter in a swing state such as Wisconsin, Nevada, Texas, Michigan, or Georgia arguably would do more to shake-up the Electoral College map than nailing down the already relatively solid Minnesota.
Staff Abuse Stories Baggage. Long before Klobuchar ran for president, I’ve heard a steady stream of accounts of Klobuchar being childish and abusive to staff. Some of what I have heard has been publicly reported, some has not. These do not seem to outlier stories, as evidenced by Klobuchar having perennially having the highest staff turnover in the U.S. Senate.
This issue died down in the primaries, and it’s nowhere near as consequential as the myriad of Trump sins. But it would get more attention if Klobuchar became the nominee.
I worry that these stories will detract and/or distract from the issues Democrats need to stress in order to defeat Trump. The rule for a veep candidate should be similar to the Hippocratic Oath, “first do no harm.” Through detraction or distraction, new or rehashed staff abuse stories would do some amount of harm to the ticket. Coverage of these cringe-worthy stories would erode perhaps Klobuchar’s biggest political asset, a perception of decency.
Could Lose a Precious Senate Seat. If Klobuchar were Biden’s vice presidential nominee, there would need to be a special election to replace her. If historical trends hold, Democratic turnout in an off-year likely would be much lighter than normal, which could lead to a Republican representing Minnesota in the U.S. Senate. That could prove decisive in the narrowly divided Senate, hurting progressives on important issues, such as Supreme Court justices, a minimum wage increase, health care reform, and taxing the wealthy.
Minnesota has been trending increasingly blue in statewide elections, but it’s still purple, not blue. It’s a state that Hillary Clinton only won by 1.5% in 2016, when Democratic turnout was realtively heavy. In off-year, statewide elections, when Democratic turnout is lighter, Minnesota has proven willing to elect Republicans, such as Tim Pawlenty, Norm Coleman, and Mary Kiffmeyer. Republicans also currently control the Minnesota Senate, giving Minnesota the only divided Legislature in the nation.
Risking the loss of control of the U.S. Senate by putting purple Minnesota up-for-grabs is not worth the relatively modest amount of political benefits Klobuchar would bring to the Biden ticket.
Won’t Inspire Progressive Turnout. To put it mildly, Senator Klobuchar is not exciting to progressives from the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. That matters a lot. Democrats can’t win without enthusiastic support from progressives driving up voter turnout.
If Senator Klobuchar is selected by Biden, her moderate record will fuel fears of the Sanders supporters that Biden will govern as a milquetoast moderate. It will erode the “more progressive than you think” narrative that the Biden camp has been actively pitching to skeptical Sanders supporters.
Putting a moderate like Klobuchar on the ticket could contribute to many progressives voting third party or failing to vote, which could sink Biden.
Won’t Inspire People of Color Turnout. Democrats also can’t win without enthusiastic support from people of color driving up turnout in key states. People of color will be underwhelmed if Biden chooses a white person to be the 49th consecutive white Vice President. The fact that it’s also a candidate who African American leaders have criticized for a shoddy investigation and prosecution of a potentially innocent African American young person doesn’t help.
Democrats have a lot of dynamic non-white women candidates who might generate enthusiastic turnout of people of color, such as former Georgia House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, California U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, Nevada U.S. Senator Catharine Cortez Masto, or Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. The turnout those candidates generate could be crucial in November.
I don’t want to make this issue bigger than it is. Vice Presidential nominees don’t tend to have much of an impact on election outcomes. But if Democrats find a candidate that is a bit of a net positive in battleground states, it could make the difference in a razor-thin election. I just don’t think Amy Klobuchar fits that bill.
When it comes to handling the coronavirus pandemic crisis, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who issued a stay at home order on March 25, has earned 82% approval ratings, compared to 34% for President Trump, according to a Survey USA/KSTP-TV survey. Up until this point, stay at home orders seem to have actually been a political benefit to leaders courageous and wise enough to invoke them, not a burden. For instance as of early May, only about 20% of Minnesotans wanted the Governor’s stay at home order lifted.
But that is almost sure to change over time. In part because of President’s Trump’s constant call to ease restrictions, and calls for the public to resist them, we’re already seeing Americans getting more antsy, as evidenced by a recent Gallup poll that shows the number of people avoiding small gatherings decreasing by four points among Democrats, 10 points among Independents, and 16 points among Republicans.
Also a Unacast report card measuring social distancing activity, which earlier gave Minnesota an “A” grade, has downgraded Minnesota to a “D-” grade, a crushing blow to the earnest promoters of Minnesota exceptionalism.
Picking up on that sentiment, and following their President’s call to “LIBERATE Minnesota” from pandemic protections, Minnesota House Republicans are increasingly criticizing Walz’s stay at home order, and using a bonding bill as ransom to get it lifted. I’m not convinced “we’re fighting to stimulate the economy by blocking job-creating bonding projects” is the most persuasive argument, but that’s what they’re going with.
So, should Governor Walz further loosen distancing rules? As of May 6, the experts at the Harvard Global Health Institute say that only nine states have done enough to warrant loosening restrictions — Alaska, Utah, Hawaii, North Dakota, Oregon, Montana, West Virgina, and Wyoming. The Harvard analysts find that Minnesota is not one of them, another blow to Minnesota exceptionalism. Specifically, experts find that Minnesota needs to be doing more testing and seeing lower rates of infection from the tests.
There might be some modest steps Walz can take to ease the political pressure and help Minnesotans feel like they’re making progress. I’m not remotely qualified to identify them, but for what little it’s worth here is some wholly uninformed food-for-thought anyway:
For those with low risk factors — people who are young and healthy and are not essential workers — maybe the good Governor could allow masked and socially distanced haircuts. (Can you tell my new Donny Osmond look is starting to get to me?)
For the same group, maybe Walz could allow masked and distanced visits with members of the immediate family — offspring, siblings, and parents. (Can you tell I miss my daughter?)
Those two things seem to be particularly stressful to people. While far from risk-free, they aren’t recklessly risky. These kinds of small adjustments might help people (i.e. me) become more patient and compliant when it comes to more consequential rules.
Overall, Walz should listen to experts and largely keep stay at home orders in place until the experts’ guidelines are met. A new spike in infections and deaths will seriously harm consumer confidence and the economy, and that shouldn’t be risked. At this stage, most Minnesotans are not likely to flock back to bars, restaurants, malls and large entertainment venues anyway, regardless of what Walz allows.
When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, a loud minority of Americans are over it. They’re moving on, man. They’re shrugging off the 56,752 COVID-19 deaths American have experienced over the past 9 weeks.
After all, they’re not dying. And as a meme shared by a conservative friend recently cheerfully noted, the “Current Survival Rate for COVID19 in the US is 98.54%. Let’s share this story. Positive vs. Panic.”
Come on, man, we want to do stuff! Sports watching! Road tripping! Beer drinking! Freedom, mofos! I mean, the fucking glass is 98.54% full! LIBERATE!
Think about that. Really think about it.
This COVID-19 pandemic, which is still very much raging, has already killed the equivalent of the much-mourned 9-11 attacks (3,000 deaths). That is, if the 9-11 attacks occurred again and again and again, for 19 days in a row. Is that really something we should shrug off?
The nine-week old pandemic has already killed as many Americans we lost in the Afghanistan War (2,440), which is in its 19th year. Twenty-three times as many, to be precise. No big deal?
In just nine weeks, COVID-19 has quickly killed far more Americans than are lost in a typical year to opioid overdoses (46,000), traffic deaths (36,500), and gun violence (40,000).
In the next day or so, the pandemic will have killed more Americans than we lost in the decade-long Vietnam (58,220), by a far the bloodiest war of my generation. And that’s a big “meh” too?
Oh and by the way, COVID-19 seems to be just warming up. Many states still haven’t hit their peaks. Most experts believe a second deadly spike is coming next fall, sooner if more states go all Georgia or South Dakota on social distancing roll-backs. COVID-19 still has a lot of room to spread in rural America and much of the rest of the world. And most believe a vaccine is likely more than a year away.
What a perfect time to go back to the bar!
As this excellent one-minute ad brought you by prominent Republicans involved in The Lincoln Project notes, during the pandemic we are seeing “two types of Americans — those who sacrifice and those who demand:”
“Two types of Americans have emerged during this pandemic — those who sacrifice and those who demand.
Those who sacrifice, they’re the leaders working tirelessly to save American lives. The millions of Americans who have chosen to stay home, despite the hardships. The first responders, the nurses, the doctors. People who put themselves in harms way to help others, no matter the cost to themselves.
Those who demand, they protest. Threaten. Scream, with words of selfish entitlement. They fight, but only for themselves, for their interest, their desires. Putting their wants ahead of what’s right, no matter the cost to anyone else.
Yes, there are two kinds of Americans. We already know which kind of American Trump is. The same one he’s always been. The important question is, which one are you?”
The question of whether to end most social distancing protocols at this stage is not a close call. Beyond lives, research is even showing that social distancing is saving the nation money.
“A new study by researchers at the University of Wyoming finds that the essential shutdown of the US economy to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 can be justified economically.
A team led by economics professor Linda Thunstrom crunched some numbers and found the lives saved through social distancing and shelter-in-place orders around the country far outweigh the expected cost to the economy, dollar-to-dollar.
‘Our benefit-cost analysis shows that the extensive social distancing measures being adopted in the US likely do not constitute an overreaction,’ Thunstrom says. ‘Social distancing saves lives but comes at large costs to society due to reduced economic activity. Still, based on our benchmark assumptions, the economic benefits of lives saved substantially outweigh the value of the projected losses to the US economy.’
‘Our analysis suggests that the aggressive social distancing policies currently promoted in the US probably are justified, given that no good contingency plans were in place for an epidemic of this magnitude,’ the University of Wyoming researchers wrote.”
Still, many of the same people who can’t seem to stop sharing flag-waving memes about how they’re honoring the sacrifice of American soldiers, first responders, and health care providers can’t be bothered to sacrifice any more time away from bars, restaurants, and stadia to save their neighbors and front-line workers from arguably the worst clear and present danger of their lifetimes. But actions speak louder than memes.
It’s not an exaggeration to say our election system is seriously ill. Hurdle after hurdle exist on the path to voting, and millions regularly choose to sit out the chaos. Layered on top of all of that, we now have a lethal pandemic that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), predicts will make an encore appearance in the fall, precisely when we’re holding one of the most consequential elections in our history.
All in all, it’s not great a look for the self-proclaimed “greatest democracy on earth.”
But suppose someone told us they had developed a magical elixir for our election problems. I’m talking even better than Trump Water™ and hydroxychloroquine. Something to eliminate the most significant hurdles, such as the significant time and timing issues. Something to end waiting in long lines. Something to allow the “new normal” Stay At Home sensibilities to safely coexist with Election Day.
People with an even passing familiarity with this issue understand that we have that magical elixir right under our noses – vote-by-mail, or vote-at-home. Under such a model, voters are sent their ballots in the mail. They don’t have to go to polling places to obtain them. Then, they can return them in person or via mail.
That’s it. No traveling to polling places. No lines. No work schedule conflicts. No child care barriers. No discriminating election judges. No tight time constraints. No requirement to enter a potentially dangerous COVID hot spot. It’s not a panacea, but it would be a significant improvement.
Yeah But
Untested, you say? We have already been doing vote-by-mail successfully for decades. We’ve offered vote-by-mail to millions of soldiers, absentee voters in all 50 states, many voters in California, and all voters in Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Hawaii.
Vote-by-mail is old news. It is tried-and-true. In places where vote-by-mail is used, there is no great movement to go back to a polling place-centric model, because vote-by-mail works better.
Expensive, you say? Without the need for expensive polling place staffing, machines, and infrastructure, vote-by-mail saves between $2-$5 per voter, according to research out of Colorado. Cost considerations shouldn’t be the primary reason we implement vote-by-mail, but they also shouldn’t be a reason that we don’t.
Fraudulent, you say? In the wide swath of America that is already voting by mail, there is no evidence of fraud, and bar code and automated record-matching technology continue to make it more secure than ever. The non-partisan Politifact finds that Trump’s frequent claims of fraud are, well, fraudulent.
This lack of widespread fraud shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, who wants to risk a $25,000 fine, as they have in Oregon, over gaining a single vote, or a few votes, in a pool of millions? As it turns out, almost no one.
Democratic plot, you say? The non-partisan do-gooders at Vote At Home explain this one well:
Utah, the 4th full Vote at Home state, is decidedly “red.” Republicans also dominate Montana and Arizona, where 70% of voters automatically are mailed their ballots as “permanent absentee” voters. Nebraska and North Dakota, also Republican dominated states, have also expanded the use of vote at home options. While Oregon and Washington, the first two states where VAH initially took hold, are today more “blue than red,” both states have elected Secretaries of State who are Republicans – and big fans of this system.
On a more tactical level, the Republican party, whose base is disproportionately elderly, should probably reevaluate this issue in the pandemic era. If I were a Republican turnout strategist, I would worry about depending on their huge block of frightened elderly Americans being willing to bring their over-flowing basket of comorbidities into crowded polling venues during a pandemic.
But you know what? As a Democrat, I want those elderly MAGA-hat wearing seniors to have easy, safe access to voting. I want as many people voting as possible. If my party can’t win a majority of the votes in an election where everyone has an equal opportunity to safely and fairly participate, then my party needs to get it’s ass back to the drawing board to come up with better policy ideas.
Other questions, you say? Read this well-sourced document produced by Vote At Home. Spoiler alert: None of the other excuses hold up to reason or research either.
Don’t Get Your Hopes Up, Yet
The reasons to adopt universal vote-by-mail are patently obvious, and an overwhelming majority of Americans of all political stripes agree. A recent Reuters/Ipsos survey found that nearly three-fourths (72%) of Americans, including about two-thirds (65%) of Republicans, support mail-in ballots to protect voters from respiratory disease.
The experts at the Centers for Disease Control agree:
Encourage voters to use voting methods that minimize direct contact with other people and reduce crowd size at polling stations. * Encourage mail-in methods of voting if allowed in the jurisdiction.
But as with so many issues with overwhelming majority support – such as expanding access to Medicare, higher taxes for the wealthiest 1% and corporations, background checks for gun purchasers, marijuana prohibition, helping Dreamers become citizens, cutting Social Security and Medicare, higher minimum wage, paid maternity leave, and more – Trump, McConnell and their supporting cast in the U.S. Senate are the barrier. Cue David Byrne: “Same as it ever was.”
None of those things will happen until Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate Majority are removed in the fall. None. In Minnesota, Senate Republicans are similarly promising to block a wise vote-by-mail proposal recently floated by Secretary of State Steve Simon.
So while many people around the world are required to put their lives at risk in armed conflicts to establish or preserve their democracy, millions of Americans in 2020 likewise could be required by Republicans to put their lives at risk in deadly germ-infested schools, churches, community centers, and fire stations to preserve their democracy.
Give me democracy, or give me death? In a vast sea of Trump-McConnell era outrages, forcing Americans into this life-and-death choice on November 3rd may be the most outrageous development of all.
Sometimes, even the great Washington Post buries the lede. Disguised in a terrific story with a bland headline that only a supply chain manager could love (“Desperate for medical equipment, states encounter a beleaguered national stockpile”) was this disturbing and fascinating pandemic response story: “Florida Is Only State to Receive Everything It Asked For”
That’s the salient nugget Political Wire chose to highlight from the Post story, even though it was buried in paragraph twelve of the Post’s 2,500 word tome. Political wire got the headline prioritization right.
While the Post’s headline and lede didn’t promote the most ethically troubling part of its reporting, the three reporters who worked on the article, Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sen, and Beth Reinhard, certainly did great reporting about the differences in how various states say they are being treated by Team Trump during the pandemic response.
Beyond the widely publicized problems that hotspot states like New York and Washington have been having with the Trump Administration’s response, the Post piece documented how other states also are struggling due to lack of adequate federal help:
Democratic-leaning Massachusetts, which has had a serious outbreak in Boston, has received 17 percent of the protective gear it requested, according to state leaders. Maine requested a half-million N95 specialized protective masks and received 25,558 — about 5 percent of what it sought. The shipment delivered to Colorado — 49,000 N95 masks, 115,000 surgical masks and other supplies — would be “enough for only one full day of statewide operations,” Rep. Scott R. Tipton (R-Colo.) told the White House in a letter several days ago.
Florida has been an exception in its dealings with the stockpile: The state submitted a request on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves, among other supplies — and received a shipment with everything three days later, according to figures from the state’s Division of Emergency Management. It received an identical shipment on March 23, according to the division, and is awaiting a third.
“The governor has spoken to the president daily, and the entire congressional delegation has been working as one for the betterment of the state of Florida,” said Jared Moskowitz, the emergency management division’s director.”
“Florida has been an exception.” While my jaw dropped when I got to that part of the article, the Post shrugged it off: “Anecdotally, there are wide differences, and they do not appear to follow discernible political or geographic lines.”
How about this for a potential “political line?” Unlike the underserved New York, Washington, Massachusetts, Colorado, and Maine, the fully served Florida is one of the six states widely considered a “battleground state” that will determine the outcome of Trump’s 2020 reelection bid.
“Those will be the six most critical states (Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin),” Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean, told Newsweek.
“There will be others that’ll be important in varying degrees,” he said, “but those will be ones we’ll ultimately look back on and say, ‘How many of them did Democrats win back and were they able to win enough to win the presidency?'”
Given Florida’s undeniable status as a crucial swing state in Trump’s 2020 Electoral College calculus, it’s critically important for any news publication to pose this very legitimate question: Is lifesaving equipment being distributed based on patients’ needs or political needs?
I’m open to the possibility that there is an epidemiologically sound explanation for why Florida has been at the head of Team Trump’s pandemic response line, while bright blue hot-spot cities like Boston and New York City are not. Skeptical, but open. But to ignore the obvious political angle, not pose that legitimate question to Trump officials, and bury the Florida exception in paragraph twelve is baffling.
What’s even more puzzling to me is why people like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi apparently aren’t raising the same legitimate question. Because the reckless game Trump seems to be playing here is not just ethically untenable, it’s also politically perilous.
This isn’t intended to be gratuitous dude-bashing. My Y chromosome is a pre-existing condition that fundamentally shapes me, and I’m pretty darn fond of myself. While I sometimes half-heartedly try to avoid some forms of my innate Neanderthal-ness, it seems pretty baked into my DNA. I scratch inappropriately. I groom only sporadically. I mansplain with the worst of them.
But this business about men not social distancing in the Covid-19 Era is embarrassingly stupid and/or arrogant, even for us. An Altarum survey tells the tale: Nearly one-quarter (24%) of men say they are going to public spaces “a lot” or “far more than usual,” compared to only 10% of women.
Why? Confronted about going to a public place with Covid-19 cases increasing rapidly, I can predict the reaction of many of my male friends. A smirk. A shrug of the shoulders. A devil may care twinkle of the eye. “You can’t live your life afraid of everything,” they’ll say. “If it’s my time, it’s my time.”
For those of you who don’t speak Dude-ish, allow me to translate what these guys are trying to convey to the world: “I’m a bad ass. I’m courageous.”
Obviously, in this context, this is complete and utter bullshit. Yes, courage sometimes means going into dangerous situations, and public gatherings in the middle of a pandemic are dangerous. But let’s be real, fellas. You’re going to the dangerous situations to get yourself a beer, laugh, a corporate brownie point, or a thrill, not to rescue someone.
Going into these dangerous situations for those reasons isn’t rushing into the smoke. It’s more like what suicide bombers do to themselves and innocents.
As has been widely reported, Covid-19 is often carried by people who are asymptomatic or lightly symptomatic, so none of us knows who has the lethal germ-bomb duct-taped to our chest. Walking into public gatherings armed with that knowledge isn’t remotely courageous. It’s either ignorant or deplorably self-centered.
So fellow dudes, you won’t catch me scolding you for your utterly defensible scratching decisions. But could we get just this life-and-death decision right?
I’ve come to realize that I’ve been partially wrong about Governor Tim Walz. Based on what I had seen pre-pandemic, I had him pegged as a politically cautious guy who inevitably gravitated towards a relatively modest “split-the-difference” caretaker agenda. From a progressive’s standpoint, he seemed like a competent Governor, but far from a bold one.
Often Cautious
After all, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Walz had exhibited an abundance of caution that wasn’t comforting to progressives. For instance, Walz came into office proposing an exciting MinnesotaCare Buy-In Option for Minnesotans who can’t get health coverage from employers or the government. Progressives cheered. But Walz didn’t seem to fight particularly visibly or hard for it.
Likewise, Walz has expressed support for legalization of marijuana for adults. Again, progressives cheered. But Walz rarely uses anything close to the full measure of his powerful “bully pulpit” and political influence to move public opinion on that key social justice issue.
In the 2019 session, Walz wanted to raise much more revenue to deliver improved services. Instead, he ended up with lower overall revenue. He caved relatively quickly to Republican demands and walked away without one penny of the gas tax increase he sought, while giving Republicans an income tax cut and a 10% cut in the provider tax, which is needed to fund health care programs.
At a time when DFLers controlled the House and the Governor’s office, the GOP-controlled Senate somehow was given a”no new taxes” outcome that would make Tim Pawlenty proud, and Governor Walz declared victory.
Why has Walz been so cautious? My theory is that he is so infatuated with his “One Minnesota” sloganeering from his 2018 campaign that he has been afraid to challenge conservatives and moderates in rural areas of the state.
Bold On Pandemic Response
However, lately Walz has been under heavy fire from those rural Minnesotans about his wise decision to close bars and restaurants statewide. Since most Minnesota counties still have few or no coronavirus cases, the bar and restaurant closures strike short-sighted rural Minnesotans as overkill, and Republican politicians are always all too happy to encourage rural victimhood and resentment.
“While we understand the necessity of Governor Walz to lead in this time of crisis, that leadership should not be unilateral and unchecked,” (Republican Senate Majority Leader Paul) Gazelka said in a statement.
Several lawmakers, all Republicans, have expressed concerns about the impact of Walz’s orders on small businesses in their towns in Greater Minnesota.
“The governor’s order puts these small businesses in an impossible position,” state Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, said in a statement addressing the closings in the hospitality industry. “These small businesses, and their many hourly wage earners, will undoubtedly suffer because of this order. I urge the governor to reconsider the financial impact of his order on small business owners that concurrently has the potential to make them criminals for simply trying to earn a living.”
To his credit, on pandemic response issues Walz has consistently put public health above politics. He understood that ordering closures on a partial county-by-county basis would be unfair and ineffective. After all, irresponsible citizens in counties were restaurants and bars were closed would simply travel across county borders to eat and drink out, which would create new pandemic hot-spots in previously uncontaminated Minnesota counties.
Thanks to Walz’s leadership, on March 24 Minnesota ranked in the top ten of states with the most aggressive policies for limiting the rapid spread of coronavirus. A lot has changed since these rankings came out, but Walz seems very likely to issue a shelter-in-place order sometime this week, which should keep Minnesota relatively high in the rankings.
It would be tempting for Walz to view restaurant and bar closing through a short-term political lens, as the Governors in red states such as Wyoming, Mississippi, Texas, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Missouri seem to be doing. It would be easier to keep some or all of Minnesota’s bars and restaurants open, and let other states leaders do the heavy lifting when it comes to pandemic management.
But Walz isn’t taking that politically expedient approach, and the economic and political fallout from all of this could potentially cost him his political career.
I certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does, it’s a relatively small price to pay to prevent Minnesota hospital patients from suffering the kind of horrific meltdowns being seen in Italy, where physicians are reportedly forced to deny care to suffocating people over 60 because of lack of medical capacity.
Trying to avoid scenes like that are well worth whatever political price Walz pays. Here’s hoping that the newly self-quarantined Governor stays healthy, and that a plurality of Minnesotans will eventually appreciate his impressive display of political courage at this crucial moment in Minnesota history.
Whether you reside on the left or middle end of the political spectrum, the fashionable way for Democrats to discuss politics these days is to assert that your preferred candidate is the most “electable.” Furthermore, you must posit that anyone who dares to disagree with your electability theory is guilty of the unforgivable sin of supporting ideological purity over removing the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President in history. “If Trump wins, it’s your fault!”
Why the obsession with electability? In part, voters who are exposed to massive amounts of punditry on 24/7 cable news outlets and social media are aping those pundits. Beyond that, “electability” has become the Democrats’ go-to argument because to argue otherwise opens you to being labeled an impractical ideologue indifferent about removing Trump.
But the electability discussion is a massive waste of time and energy. Ten months away from the election in a highly unpredictable environment, being able to divine electability is impossible. Electability is unknowable. Not difficult to know. Unknowable. Gauging who is most likely to beat Trump is akin to gauging a Rorschach ink blot, where we see what we want to see, not the one and only truth.
After all, ten months before the election, how many of the pundits, whether in the mainstream media or your social media feed, were correct about the election victories of Paul Wellstone, Jesse Ventura, Donald Trump, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, or an extremely inexperienced black guy with the middle name Hussein? In all of those cases, the same group of pundits were doing what they are doing now, branding supporters of those candidates unrealistic naifs for not seeing that the winner was sure to be Rudy Boschwitz, Skip Humphrey, Norm Coleman, Jeb Bush, Joe Crowley, and Hillary Clinton.
But getting it wrong so many times doesn’t seem to make either professional or amateur pundits any less confident in their seer skills. Moderate pundits like James Carville, Jonathan Chait, Thomas Friedman, and George Will are once again loudly warning that a progressive nominee will force moderates to vote for Trump against their will, and therefore are unelectable.
Similarly, progressive pundits are warning that a moderate candidate will surely force people of color and young people to stay home or vote for a leftist third party, and therefore are unelectable.
Both sides are correct about the electoral disadvantages they flag. But they also undervalue the advantages of each candidate, and are self-delusional in believing that they know precisely how each candidates’ advantages and disadvantages would net out against Trump on November 3. None of us can know that, but the three words you will never hear coming from an amateur or professional pundit’s mouth are “I don’t know.”
This electability bickering is not only a waste of time, it also carries a high opportunity cost. After all, every moment progressives are yammering about electability speculation is a moment that voters aren’t hearing compelling arguments in favor of progressive proposals and achievements and critical of conservative proposals and transgressions. That’s a big problem.
Rather than continue this self-indulgent electability parlor game, my suggestion to Democrats is to do two things: First, vote for who you would most like to see be your President, period. Stop staring at the electability ink blot pretending that you can see the one correct answer. Stop with the electability guessing game, because it’s a fool’s errand, polarizing, and off-message.
Second, if your first choice isn’t the nominee — highly likely in a field of 24 candidates, by the way–support the Democratic nominee without throwing a tantrum because your electability guesswork didn’t get embraced by your fellow Democrats.
I supported the dearly departed Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, so I’m already resigned to the fact that I probably won’t fall in love with the nominee. But to paraphrase the great Stephen Stills, if I can’t be with the one I love, honey, I’ll love the one I’m with. With the daunting Trump threat hanging over the nation, we Democrats need to do what Republicans do, fall in line even when we don’t fall in love.
Republicans are currently led by a brazenly corrupt chief executive who was caught in a bribery scheme to benefit his personal and political career. The evidence is clear and overwhelming, but congressional Republicans are marching in lockstep defending their corrupt leader.
As this plays out, many cynical observers shrug it all off, maintaining that if a Democrat leader faced a similar charge Democrats would do the same thing Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are doing. They claim that “both parties protect their own, no matter what.”
They might want to ask Rod Blagojevich about that.
On December 9, 2008, Blagojevich, the Democratic former Governor of Illinois, was caught soliciting appointments in exchange for the right to name the replacement for former Senator Barack Obama. It was clearly documented bribery for personal benefit. Sound familiar?
The Democratic Governor’s actions were deplorable and corrupt. At the same time, Blagojevich’s type of bribery lacked some of the worst elements of the Trump Ukrainian corruption scandal.
After all, Blagojevich wasn’t endangering a foreign ally’s troops under attack from a sworn American enemy, as Trump did.
Blagojevich wasn’t directing a foreign government to interfere with our free and fair elections, as Trump did.
Blagojevich wasn’t illegally redirecting hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds approved by a large bipartisan majority of the duly elected legislative body, as Trump did.
Blagojevich wasn’t demanding the slander of a political opponent, as Trump did.
Blagojevich hadn’t launched a massive cover-up of evidence, as Trump did.
Still, Blagojevich’s form of bribery was despicable in its own right, so Democrats at both the state and national level acted swiftly to protect citizens from this corrupt leader.
Immediately after the charges against Blagojevich became public, state Democrats immediately condemned their fellow Democrat and called for him to resign, including the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Comptroller, Treasurer, and Secretary of State.
At the national level, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, and Illinois U.S. Senator Dick Durbin called for the Democrat to step down. The 50 members of the U.S. Senate Democratic caucus ordered Blagojevich to not fill the seat with himself or anyone else.
When Blagojevich named someone to serve anyway, the Democratic State Attorney General filed a motion with the Illinois Supreme Court seeking to declare the Governor “unable to serve” and strip him of the powers of his office.
Then the Democratic-controlled House quickly began impeachment proceedings. In January 2009, just one month after the Blagojevich crimes became known, Blagojevich was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House on a vote of 114–1. Only one Democrat opposed it.
Just twenty days later, the Democratic Governor was convicted by the Senate, with every Democrat voting in favor of his impeachment. Democratic legislators also disqualified their fellow Democrat from ever again holding public office in the state.
In other words, faced with a powerful chief executive from it’s own party engaged in attempted bribery to benefit himself, Illinois Democrats didn’t make excuses. They didn’t engage in blame-shifting “whataboutism” arguments. They didn’t shrug it off because no payoff had yet been made before investigators shut down the scheme. They didn’t put party over principle.
Instead, Democrats supported a swift impeachment and removal of their party’s top leader.
Democrats are far from perfect. But as Senate Majority Mitch McConnell and the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate begin their Trump impeachment trial, the contrast between how Democrats and Republicans have handled these two respective bribery scandals is clear and stark. The case of Rod Blagojevich reminds us that lazy “both parties are equally complicit in the face of bribery and corruption” assertions just don’t hold up.
The 2020 elections are the most important elections of my lifetime, and potentially the most important in American history. Will we replace the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President of our times, and his shameless congressional enablers, or will we go further down the road to authoritarianism and corporatism? That sounds melodramatic, but given what we’ve learned about Trump over the last three years, it’s not an exaggeration.
The stakes are high, so liberals need to step up their game.
This isn’t about trashing liberals. Liberals have done a lot of great things for America. At a time when all of these things were quite unpopular, liberals had enough vision, courage, and commitment to pass Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, marriage equality, civil rights, voting rights, environmental protections, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
But we grassroots liberals also can be also our own worst enemies. To win in 2020, we need to make five New Years resolutions to do better than we did in 2016.
STOP THE PETTY, PERSONAL ATTACKS. With hundreds of substantive reasons to criticize Trump and his lackeys, there is no reason to stoop to snotty attacks about personal issues like the President’s complexion, hair, waistline, hand size, penis size, verbal slips, and misspellings. The same goes for personally insulting his supporters.
Among the moderate swing voters who will decide the outcome of this election, those kinds of personal shots inadvertently create sympathy for Trump and others who don’t deserve swing voters’ sympathy. I get that they are cathartic, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek. But they’re also and self-defeating in the end, and therefore self-indulgent, so liberals need to get better at taking a pass on the personal shots.
STOP THE CANNABILISM.
Liberals also need to be mindful of Ronald Reagan’s 11th
Commandment, “thou shall not speak ill of other Republicans.”
I understand the temptation to wage civil war. My top presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, has already dropped out of the race, and my second choice, Cory Booker, doesn’t look like he will last much beyond Iowa. Having to go to Plan C is deeply disappointing to me. Having to go to Plan D, E, F, G, H, I, J, or K, a distinct possibility in a field this large, likely will be even more disappointing to me.
In the end, I realize that I am unlikely to be in love with my Democratic Party nominee. But if I can’t be with the one I love, honey, I’ll love the one I’m with. Unless we learn something dramatically scandalous about one of the Democratic candidates in the coming months, I’m pledging to myself that I won’t trash other Democratic candidates, vote for a third party candidate, or sit out the election. For a long time, I’ve even been making monthly donations to the eventual nominee, whomever that ends up being, via the Unify or Die fund.
All liberals should make a resolution to forgo intra-party cannibalism, because it greatly increases the chances that we have four even more catastrophic years with the most corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent President of our times. That can’t happen, so we all have to suck it up and pledge to support the candidate that prevails in the nominating process.
STOP THE SHINY OBJECT CHASING. We all know that President Trump is going to do and say hundreds of things before the election that are mock-worthy and outrageous, but probably are not issues that are going to sway swing voters or motivate non-voters. Every moment we spend talking about those side issues –say, a funny golf story, a boneheaded gaffe, a stupid joke at a rally, a silly exchange with an athlete or celebrity–is a moment we’re not talking about issue differentiators that are more likely to influence voting decisions.
What Trump actions are more deserving of our focus? His giving lavish, deficit-spiking tax cuts to the wealthy. His separating young children from parents and caging them. His taking birth control and other types of reproductive health care away from women. His blocking legislation to control pharmaceutical prices. His cowardly refusal to cross the NRA to support common sense gun safety laws. His erratic Russian-friendly foreign policy decisions in dangerous places like Iran, Syria, the Ukraine, and North Korea. His repeated attempts to repeal Affordable Care Act protections, such as preexisting condition protections for 133 million Americans.
Polls show those kinds of issues work against Trump with swing voters and non-voters, so those kinds of issues should be the primary focus of conversations at the break room, bar, barbeque, or online chat.
With such a steady stream of Trump’s outrages, it’s difficult to not take the bait from the ever-outrageous tweet stream. I’m far from perfect on this front. But we liberals have to get better about focusing on the issues that matter the most to swing voters and non-voters, and that means shrugging off a lot of the side issues.
FOCUS ON ROOT CAUSES. When deciding how to spend time and resources, liberals should also consider focusing on the root causes of Trump’s electoral success. For instance, rather than only supporting individual candidates, consider supporting groups like Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight 2020 and the ACLU. Those groups are battling Republicans’ relentless voter suppression efforts aimed at people of color, which threaten to swing close elections to Trump and his political toadies now and for decades to come.
Ensuring that every vote counts and voting is easier will help progressive local, state and federal candidates up and down the ballot. It will help preserve our representative democracy for future generations. Supporting those groups isn’t as obvious to most of us as supporting parties and candidates, but it’s every bit as important.
SPEAK OUT EARLY AND OFTEN. Speaking out against Trump and Republicans in person and on social media is frowned upon by Americans who are “non-political,” ignorant, and/or in denial about what is happening to America. That can make speaking out about Trump unpleasant and exhausting. Goodness knows, no one relishes being called, gasp, “political,” and being accosted by trolls.
But in America today, we have politicians who are all too willing to separate brown-skinned kids from their parents and put them cages indefinitely. We have politicians trying to repeal health protections for 133 million Americans. We have a party that gave a massive, deficit-ballooning tax gift to the wealthiest 1% at a time when we have the worst income inequality since 1928 and record deficits. We have a President taking birth control and other reproductive rights away from women. If we don’t vote out this crew, we could easily have much worse developments on the horizon in a second, even more unhinged Trump term.
All of which is to say one person’s “politics” is another person’s life, livelihood, and rights. A while back, writer Naomi Shulman helped put this issue in proper perspective for me:
“Nice people made the best Nazis. My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on “politics,” instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”
I’m not saying liberals have be jerks and nags to their friends and relatives. We don’t have to be the turd in the punch bowl. In most cases, we should be calm, respectful, factual and measured when we speak out, even when the respect isn’t deserved and returned, because that’s usually the best way to win hearts, minds, and votes.
But we do have to speak out, because silence implies consent. As Martin Luther King famously said of another movement in another time:
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
The same is true of the movement to save America from Donald Trump and his Republican enablers. I’m about as conflict averse as they come, but unfortunately that excuse just is not going to cut it with so many lives hanging in the balance.
So my fellow liberals, this New Years Eve raise a glass of your favorite truth serum, and make some challenging resolutions that nudge you outside of your comfort zone. Your country needs you now more than ever.
When it comes to food stamps (aka Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) for poverty stricken Americans — 80% of whom are children, the disabled or elderly—President Trump is a tough fiscal conservative. This Christmas season, Trump announced he’s taking food away from 700,000 of them, which will save about $1 billion per year. Self-described fiscal conservatives are cheering.
But when it comes to lavishing funding on the Pentagon’s huge corporate contractors, Trump has been the furthest thing away from fiscally conservative. Last year, he proposed an increase of $34 billion per year to a $4.7 trillion 2020 budget, including funding Trump’s Space Force toy.
To recap, Trump is saving $1 billion per year on food stamps with the one hand, while going on a $34 billion per year Pentagon spending spree with the other hand. Ladies and gentlemen, this is contemporary fiscal conservatism, where cruelty is the point, not actual fiscal restraint.
Contrary to Trump claims that President Obama “devastated” the military, the U.S. doesn’t need to play “catch-up” on spending. It spends more on military than the next seven more armed nations, COMBINED. Clearly, we are armed to the teeth so that chicken hawks like Trump and McConnell can have their hair triggers at the ready any time they feel the urge to send other people’s kids in front of bullets and IEDs.
At the same time, the Pentagon has not exactly shown itself to be the most trustworthy and efficient of public agencies. It was recently caught hiding an audit that found about $125 billion in wasteful spending. The Washington Post reported what the Pentagon and fiscal conservatives wouldn’t:
“The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post.
Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.”
So, how do politicians and their constituents justify taking from the poorest Americans while giving lavishly to the richest corporate Pentagon contractors? Three words: “Support. Our. Troops.”
Uttering those three magical words gets most politicians on both the right and left to obediently write deficit-financed blank checks to corporate contractors, lest they be accused of being anti-troops.
The “support our troops” mega-brand has been built in no small part by Pentagon military recruitment budgets that ensure there is an endless stream of shallow paid-patriotism sloganeering at all types of community gatherings, particularly sports events. The Washington Post explains:
“In 2015, an oversight report by Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona revealed the NFL as one of several leagues that accepted Department of Defense funds to stage military tributes, a practice known as paid patriotism. (The league eventually gave back more than $700,000, drawing praise from Flake.) Joe Lockhart, a former Clinton administration staffer, had just joined the NFL as a spokesman when the scandal broke.
‘As I dug into that a little bit, the National Guard, which is probably the most aggressive advertiser at NFL games, talked about how it was the single best recruitment vehicle they had,’ said Lockhart, who left the NFL last year. ‘Which is just interesting. I think there is a connection. . . . Football Sundays have a connection to what a lot of people view as patriotism.’
The service members presented at games can feel like props, part of a show. The camouflage uniforms and accessories can cheapen the sacrifice of soldiers and prohibit critical thinking about the military.
‘It almost feels like it’s a mandatory patriotism that is pushed down the throats of anybody who wants to attend a game,” said former Army Ranger and author Rory Fanning, who has become a vocal critic of America’s wars. ‘By trotting out veterans, patting them on the back, I don’t think it does justice to the actual experience of veterans, particularly over the last 18 years. There certainly isn’t an opportunity for veterans to talk about their experiences in combat. So many veterans don’t feel like the heroes the NFL wants to present them as.””
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for “supporting our troops,” at least in ways that are actually relevant and meaningful. Say a sincere, heartfelt thanks. Provide good pay and benefits. Supply the training and equipment soldiers need. Fund lifelong help after they serve. Most importantly, keep them out of unnecessary armed conflicts.
But writing blank checks to corporate contractors is not on that list. The reality is, too much of that $4.7 trillion annual Pentagon budget has nothing to do with troop-supporting functions, such as the $125 billion in covered-up waste.
So how about some bipartisan cooperation for dramatically reducing that largest of government boondoggles, the $4.7 trillion per year Pentagon budget. How about putting a little “support our taxpayers” in the mix?
