Kamala's closing message

Today, we the people get to decide ...

From her closing speech in Philadelphia last night:

“We have an opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics that has been driven by fear and division. We are done with that. We are exhausted with it. America is ready for a fresh start, ready for a new way forward, where we see our fellow Americans not as an enemy, but as a neighbor,” she said.

“Ours is a fight for the future, and ours is a fight for freedom, including the most fundamental freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do,” she said. And she pledged always to put “country over party and self and to be a president for all Americans.”

“Tonight…we finish as we started: with optimism, with energy, with joy, knowing that we the people have the power to face our future and that we can confront any challenges we face when we do it together.”

“We still have work to do,” she said. “We like hard work. Hard work is good work. Hard work is joyful work. And make no mistake: We will win.”

Now back to the phones to call those harried voters in Philly one more time! 

Here's yesterday's canvassing launch in Reno; these folks are coming to turn out your vote -- with joy!

Halloween on the phone bank

The dialer got into the spirit of the day on the UniteHERE phonebank yesterday.

 

While waiting for someone to pick up in Philly, it displayed screens like this with the phone icon jiggling.

 

Gotta keep the phone crew amused. We'll be on through the election, chasing down voters for Harris-Walz and supporting a couple of thousand canvassers in the battleground states.

Political action for efficacy: uncoordinated and very well coordinated

Political scientist Lester Spence, who describes himself as an Afro-realist, has observations about the 250,000 people who've canceled the Washington Post in outrage at Jeff Bezos' decision to kill the paper's endorsement of the Harris-Walz ticket.

Political scientists who study comparative politics came up with a term to describe a certain type shift from democratic states to non-democratic ones. "Democratic backsliding." They came up with that term to describe transitions that didn't happen immediately, through a military coup, or something like it, but slowly. And they've recently begun using the term to describe the US. Free press tampering is often something that comes with backsliding--either politicians or oligarchs gradually or abruptly reduce the ability of journalists to report.

What happened to the Post and the  [LA] Times is a sign backsliding is taking a turn for the worse. The Post IS NO LONGER FREE IN THE WAY IT WAS LAST WEEK. Once he makes this move, what prevents him from coming after the news next? Take a look again at the quote above. What prevents HIM from coming after those things now that he's done this?

THIS is what people responded to. And people chose this, WHILE UNCOORDINATED, because this was the best signal to send. Far better than canceling Amazon Prime (although that could be next) because an amazon prime cancellation can be read in a dozen different ways.

Now on that response. You're suggesting that mass cancellation can only hurt. But compared to what? What other action would've been better? If there's an action that could've been better...why didn't Post staffers coordinate it? why didn't you coordinate it? I'm pretty sure a draft of the endorsement exists. Why didn't the board send it out? Anonymously even?

I suggest that we're already down a dangerous path. Instead of telling people "STOP" in the absence of ANY OTHER ALTERNATIVE...the answer should be to tell people "GO." And use that energy to develop the internal institutional strength to contest the changes in the paper. ...

Like Spence, much as I doubt the efficacy of uncoordinated political actions, I am thrilled by the volume of the uncomplicated response to what feels a moral political offense.

We have a few more days to prove that Jeff Bezos bet on the wrong horse. Let's keep working.

• • •

And since I'm sharing from Spence, here are some fragments from the Johns Hopkins University professor's own first experience canvassing Philly for Harris-Walz.

I didn’t know what I’d expect to see because I’d never done door to door canvassing before. But there were about 150 or more of us, and of this group I imagine maybe four or five were paid by the campaign (not the Harris Walz campaign but by the group we were working with). The rest of us were volunteers. The youngest I met were in undergrad. The oldest I met were in their sixties and early seventies. It was a multiracial group, and, tellingly, international.

(Foreign nationals cannot donate money or participate in decision making in any domestic political committee but can volunteer their time in other ways.)

... Although the vast majority of these door knocks went unanswered, maybe about 20 percent of the time someone answered the door. The bulk of these folk were fervent Harris supporters—again this last push is about getting people we already know are likely to vote for Harris to do so. There were a few exceptions.

The white brother who answered the first door our crew knocked on spent twenty minutes telling us how scared he was of the Democratic Party, in part because of their response to the George Floyd Protests, and when January 6 was brought up, he said “that was four years ago.” ...

... Perhaps the best story of the two days happened on Saturday. Near the end of our run one of the crew ran into an elderly voter who wasn’t able to get to the polls because she wasn’t mobile, and she was concerned that her mail ballot wouldn’t get to her in time. I went to talk to the sister myself and collected her information so I could help her. My plan was to talk to people at the top of the food chain because technically there was only so much we could do. Maybe we could get a ballot and bring it back to her.

I ended up running into an election judge around the block from her. She wasn’t on our list—I think she stepped outside and saw us door knocking, and I told her what we were doing. She then told us who she was, what she did. So I took the opportunity to ask her how we could help her neighbor. She gave us permission to go back to the neighbor with her information. We told her the neighbor’s name but she didn’t recognize it.

When we went back to the neighbor, the neighbor laughed. “Oh. I know her. I taught her son!”...

 

That's how elections like this one are won -- one vote scratched out at a time, finding our people. 

This afternoon I go back to this work, calling into Pennsylvania with the UniteHERE national phonebank.

Getting Out The Vote: a tale

From the UniteHERE phonebank: we're calling into Pennsylvania. The state is most likely to be one of the closest elections in the nation.

The job is to contact all the people who've requested mail-in ballots, identify whether they are Harris voters, make sure they actually received their ballot from the county, help them with any details about how to submit the slightly complicated pile of envelopes and required signatures, and make sure they get their vote in on time. 

UniteHERE union canvassers (you can join them via Seed the Vote) have been helping people they meet at the doors in Philadelphia for weeks to request mail-in ballots -- and naturally, many other citizens request them without our encouragement. But in Philly, a lot of mail-ins come because of this door-knocking program. 

So I'm on my last call of a 3 hour shift yesterday ... what sounds like a nice young man answers.

I'm friendly and he agrees to talk for a few minutes. I ask whether he's for Harris -- "hell, yes!"

I ask whether he's got his ballot yet? "Oh yes. And I already mailed it in."

And then the kicker. "I'm doing what you are doing on the doors ... I'm working with a union -- UniteHERE."

I just laugh and we trade notes for a bit on what it's been like on the streets in Philadelphia. He didn't know we had a whole phonebank calling the people they'd pushed to use mail-in ballots. He did know, a lot of Philly people love them some VP Harris!

This was a true experience of a campaign working the way it is supposed to work: my call closed the loop on a process that is what campaigns call Get Out The Vote -- GOTV. Find the voters who support your candidate and do whatever it takes to make sure they actually do vote. That's the task for the next 12 days!

Door-knocking story from Pennsylvania

We have arrived at the stage in the seemingly interminable election when, after all the ads, and phone calls, and the flood of mail, it's voter-to-voter contact that seals the deal. In the places where there are close contests -- nationally the seven presidential battleground states, but also innumerable local races we hear less about -- it's the people talking with people that make this season our semi-annual festival of democratic engagement with the country's better aspirations.

So here's a canvassing story from suburban Pennsylvania, by @MattHardigree, grabbed from Xitter.

I door-knocked today for the Harris campaign in Bucks County, PA, one of the most important counties in one of the most important states. I've done a lot of door-knocking in a lot of elections, including this cycle, but what I saw definitely changed my view of this race.

Of course, this is just a single day covering about 90-100 doors. But it was also a persuasion run. We were hitting Ds but also had a list that included Independents and even a few Republicans who were considered possibly persuadable. Only had one pro-Trump door the whole day.

This isn't what I expected. This is a 50/50 county and the part we were in skewed Republican. My cousins Joe and Deb, who are wonderful, help organize this area and know their community well. It's a good community full of hardworking, nice folk, but it's not an easy one for Dems.

When I got there I saw a lot of Trump signs. Their [his cousin's] house stood out because it had a giant Harris-Walz sign, albeit one that was slashed by three men in hoodies a few nights before. It's a street fight out here.

The first neighborhood we hit was a fairly representative middle-class part of the county. We saw a mix of Harris and Trump signs, though more Trump signs. And, sure enough, the first door I knocked there was an older woman who told me "Democrats are ruining this country."

"Ah!" I thought, "it's going to be one of THOSE kinds of days." I wished her a nice day and went to the next house. I had a few nice interactions, a few people weren't home, and then I went to a door to find an older gentleman. He'd passed away and his wife was a lifelong R.

She wasn't on my list, but she was all-in on Harris. She couldn't imagine anyone voting for Trump. This was the first time I heard this from a Republican, but it wouldn't be the last time. The more doors I hit, the more Republicans or former Republicans I met who said the same.

I met an older Jewish gun-owner, a Republican who became Independent in January 2020. I met parents who were registered Republicans but whose daughters became engaged and persuaded them to vote Harris. They asked me to put up a yard sign for them.

I was surprised that the Republicans and Independents were actually the most excited about the election and felt strongly about voting for Harris. Democrats were mostly split into two groups: Older women and younger families.

Older women are extremely active and looking for a fight. At one door I was looking for the daughter and the mom asked me if I was there for Harris or Trump. I said Harris and she said "Good! I keep getting mail from Trump and I keep ripping it up!"

She was hilarious and had whipped her family into caring about voting. She even had her mail ballot and was going to return it to a drop box so she made sure her vote counted. These are high propensity voters and they're voting early.

And they also want signs, partially because they don't want to be intimidated by their Trump-supporting neighbors. This is pretty much the opposite of the experience I had with young Dems and Dem families.

Younger Dems, especially those with kids, are calling relatives and getting people to vote but they're also more nervous. Very few wanted signs and multiple people told me it was because they were afraid of their "Trumper neighbors." All the signs made them nervous.

The next neighborhood seemed slightly more upper-middle-class and signs were about 50/50 when we got there, but more Harris tilted when we left.

Overall (TL/DR), Dems are motivated, not a single Independent was voting for Trump and instead voting for Harris, moderate Republicans were all voting Harris. Other than the first door I didn't meet a single Trump voter.

Dems are active and voting by mail ballot and taking nothing by chance. There are a lot of Trump signs and I think it'll still be close, but a lot of people were happy to tell me they were voting Harris even if they didn't want their neighbors to know.

Some observations on this story:

• Campaign organizers hate election signs. They are bulky to store and distribute. The presence of many of them doesn't promise you'll win an area. But signs matter to voters who need to express themselves as in this neighborhood.

• In our present moment, it's often older women who are carrying the struggle for the Dems. We've had it. We won't go back!

• You can call what these guys are encountering "Republicans for Harris" but you can also just call it realignment. Middle class, sane, white Republicans are becoming Dems in the suburbs, much to the their own surprise.

The nation is in a race between grievance and hope for the future -- who will prevail?

An unexpected source of support for US aid to Ukraine

How about some elements of the religious right?

Most of us who don't live their world miss nuances and small fissures in evangelical support for Trumpism. These aren't our people and their information diet is not ours.

But informed observers think that Republican Congressional Speaker Mike Johnson's willingness to allow a majority vote for aid to Ukraine derived, in part, from rightwing Christians' awareness that Russian invaders are persecuting their kind. Russia wants to impose a Russian flavor of Orthodox Christianity under the Moscow Patriarch. 

Historian of Christian religion Diana Butler Bass has flagged the resulting conflict:

When Speaker of the House Mike Johnson pushed through aid to Ukraine ..., it did more than green-light funds to support the Ukrainians. In recent weeks, he changed from hard-core opposition to supporting Ukraine to championing its cause. His actions were, of course, political and personal, but they also signal a genuine conflict within American evangelicalism, one that could come to have ramifications for the upcoming presidential elections.

... While 77% of evangelicals supported Ukraine when Russia invaded, that enthusiasm eroded over the next two years. ... In general, American evangelical public opinion became clouded. It appears that in the last two years, the more evangelicals committed to Christian nationalism as a political movement, the more they began to back away from Ukraine and re-embrace Vladimir Putin. As a result, evangelical opposition to Ukraine and support for Russia essentially took over the issue. ... By November 2023, however, pro-Ukraine groups figured out the key to American aid in their war was swaying evangelicals. ...

The number of stories about Russian persecution of evangelicals appearing in the religion press increased. A good example of this can be found in The Baptist Press — their Ukraine coverage increased in its political content, urgency, and frequency beginning in the autumn of 2023 through this spring.

 Sarah Posner is a leading student of America's religious right. She sees Mike Johnson shoring up his base against purer nihilists like Marjorie Taylor Greene:

Greene and her fellow ideologues may want to tread carefully. There is a growing backlash on the Christian right against the move to oust Johnson. While Greene’s MAGA influencer antics garner significant media attention, people with longtime clout in the evangelical political trenches, including Johnson himself, have been waging a quiet but scathing war against her in Christian media. The GOP’s evangelical base — vital to Republican hopes in the fall — is hearing that Greene is groundlessly attacking a godly man and imperiling the party’s election chances, thus bringing (in Johnson’s words) the Democrats’ “crazy woke agenda” closer to fruition. 

Worship in a Baptist congregation in the village of Gat in Ukraine. (Photo: European Baptist Federation)

Meanwhile, divisions over Russian persecution of Ukrainian Baptists and others have come to the American home front. Catherine Wanner, a professor of History, Anthropology, and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, explains:

I'm a professor at Penn State ... so I live in rural central Pennsylvania, where there happens to be a Baptist mega church. It used to be called the Russian Baptist Church – they changed their name after 2022. They are now the Salvation Baptist Church. The majority of members are either Ukrainians, Russians, or Russian speakers, and this community itself has fractured; it has divided in two. While there was universal agreement that the war should be condemned in no uncertain terms and that Russia is the aggressor in this case, the issue that prompted this community to split was over how one should pray for suffering co-religionists.

The Russians and the Russian speakers argued that the restrictive atmosphere in Russia was such that there was immense suffering among Russian Baptists in Russia, and so the suffering of Russian Baptist should be equated with Ukrainian Baptists, and the two should be prayed for on equal terms. The Ukrainians, those from Ukraine, said no. The suffering of Ukrainians is primarily at the hands of their Russian brethren, who are waging war and shelling Ukrainians every day and destroying Baptist communities throughout Ukraine.

And so, it was over the issue of how to recognize the suffering of both Baptists in Russia and Baptists in Ukraine that prompted this community to experience conflicts such that they split. This is my way of saying that these conflicts are not limited to the occupied territories in Ukraine where they are most acutely experienced, but they reverberate in communities in rural central Pennsylvania, which has a significant number of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and specifically from Ukraine – as does our neighboring state, Ohio, and Michigan beyond it. 

The U.S. religious right is paying attention to such divisions, to the benefit of Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression. Can the rest of us listen up as well?

2022 Elections: Senate contests Democrats should and must win

In many states, Republican gerrymanders make it hard for Democrats to win a fair share in state legislatures. For example, Democrats, including Governor Tony Evers in 2018 and Joe Biden in 2020, won the majority of all Wisconsin votes. But the state legislature is completely controlled by Republicans. Their dominance is bolstered by geographical sorting, rural and urban, as well as gerrymandering. In some states where this pattern prevails, Democrats can be quite competitive statewide and so have opportunities to win or hold onto U.S. Senate races. 

Here's a run down of the most competitive states.

• Georgia: Incumbent Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, elected to a short term in 2020, will be running against Trump-cult adherent and Georgia football hero Herschel Walker. Since Walker is pretty close to certifiably nuts, violent, the acknowledged father of four children by four different women whose paternity he at first concealed, and a serial fabricator, this shouldn't be much of a contest. But that assumption disregards the heft of college football in the Peach State. Warnock has been a strong voice for voting rights and for the people of Georgia.

• Pennsylvania: This open Senate seat attracted a wild cast of characters in both party's primaries. TV-doctor Mehmet Oz won the Trump endorsement and squeaked through for the GOPers. Apparently he actually lives in a mansion in New Jersey which may not go down well with Pennsylvania voters. John Fetterman, the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, is a 6'7", tattooed, shorts wearing, giant straight shooter, a bit of a breath of fresh air in the staid political class. Let's hope he can overcome some health challenges.

• Wisconsin: Republican Ron Johnson, the Senate's dumbest anti-vaxxer and an apparent Trump co-conspirator who tried to prevent the 2020 transfer of power to Joe Biden, is up for re-election. If Dems were not so well organized, as the sitting Senator, he'd probably be a shoo-in; the primary for the Dems is late, August 9 and the winner may have a shot in a state usually quite evenly divided.

• Arizona: Incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly will face off against one of several Republicans to be chosen on August 2. The leader among them, a man who needs another vowel, sitting Attorney General Mark Brnovich, figured out his own advancement meant he had to support Donald Trump's Big Lie against his own Republican election officials in this battleground state. Trump has endorsed Blake Masters, a hard right libertarian and tech-bro Peter Thiel protege, who wants to privatize Social Security.

• Nevada: Incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez-Masto is running for a second term. Her opponent is Adam Laxalt -- whose own family considers him an unworthy usurper of a proud Nevada name -- a far right wingnut and failed governor candidate. Not going to be easy for Cortez-Masto though; the Democratic registration advantage in the state is declining.

• North Carolina: This open seat is an attractive long shot prize for Democrats as their nominee for the state's other Senate seat only lost by 1.8 percent in 2020 while Trump won the state. The sitting governor is a reasonably popular Democrat, so Dems see a chance. Democrat Cherri Beasley, a former judge of the state Supreme Court, is running against Republican Ted Budd, a Congressman who doubles as a gun range owner. Early polls give Beasley a chance to pull this one out.

• I'll be watching also New Hampshire, Ohio and Missouri where the vagaries of electoral contests might shake up Senate prospects -- though probably not, as party polarization is such a strong force.

2022 elections: governor contests that Dems need to win

Republicans are pushing hard to win races for governor this year in states where support for the two parties hangs on a few votes. And Democrats are doing everything they can to win, block, or hold governor's offices in the same states. These states deserve governors who give a damn about the well-being of their residents -- Democrats usually care more for that work. But furthermore, who holds these offices will matter in 2024 if there is another close national election and GOPers are running around screaming that the vote was "stolen." We're seeing all too much of what that can be like. A Democratic governor can help shut down a lot of bullshit.

So here's a rundown of some of the most critical governor races in 2022.

Arizona: Donald Trump has a favorite in the August 2 primary: GOPer Kari Lake, a Phoenix TV anchor. Lake is leading in the primary polls. She has advocated jailing Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, her opponent in the governor's race, so as to overturn the 2020 vote count. 

“Frankly, I think she should be locked up,” Lake told the crowd in Cave Creek, which responded by starting a Trumpian chant of, “Lock her up!”

Her campaign could not explain what crime she's charging Hobbes with. Lake asserts that, if she had been governor, she would not have certified Joe Biden's 2020 Arizona victory.

Pennsylvania: Republicans have nominated one of the most looney-tunes characters around in the Keystone State. According to the Washington Post, Doug Mastriano is an insurrectionist who has been subpoenaed by the January 6 investigation. There's video showing him crossing Capital police lines, though what else he did inside is not known.

He’s a first-term state senator who was relatively unknown — until Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, in large part by narrowly losing Pennsylvania to Joe Biden. ... [He] rose to prominence in the aftermath of the 2020 election by falsely claiming Trump won the state. Mastriano also helped commission an unauthorized audit of voting machines in a rural county ...

The Democratic Party nominee for Governor is the state’s attorney general, Josh Shapiro. The winner will get to name Pennsylvania's secretary of state, the official who oversees elections.

Michigan: Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer has been a stalwart supporter of the rule of law against right wing mob pressure. Dogged by pushback against public health rules and mask mandates, she was even the intended target of a militia plot, according to the FBI. Two conspirators convinced a jury that they were just being blowhards (seems likely a role they know well); two more are awaiting a second trial.

Well known Republicans aspiring to run against her made a mess of their campaigns, hiring paid signature collectors who made up false voters on their papers. So their names will not appear on the August 2 primary list which now consists of a smaller field of also-rans.

GOP hopefuls who qualified for the Aug. 2 primary ballot include a conservative media personality, two COVID-19 lockdown protesters, a pastor and a wealthy businessman. 

None has held an elected office before but are seeking to bring a fresh perspective to Lansing and unseat Whitmer, who has built up a big campaign war chest as she seeks re-election to a second term.

Let's hope Whitmer can overcome whoever comes out of this odd scrum.

Wisconsin: The Republican frontrunner in the August 9 primary was former Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch who fully supported Trump’s recount requests based on baseless claims of election fraud in 2020. That wasn't good enough for Trump; he liked construction executive Tim Michels better. He dropped an endorsement in his inimitable style. Here's why Trump liked Michels:

"Wisconsin needs a Governor who will Stop Inflation, Uphold the Rule of Law, strengthen our Borders (we had the strongest borders in history just two years ago, now we have the weakest!) and End the well-documented Fraud in our Elections," read a written statement from Trump ... "Tim Michels is the best candidate to deliver meaningful solutions to these problems, and he will produce jobs like no one else can even imagine."

The Democratic incumbent governor of Wisconsin is Tony Evers. Dems are aiming to re-elect Evers to preserve some honesty and sanity in state government.

Nevada: Democrat Steve Sisolak was elected governor in 2018 and has done a creditable job during a pandemic that crashed the state's vital hotel, casino, and restaurant industries. For months, Nevada had some of the nation's worst unemployment.

Trump offered a late endorsement to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo who prevailed in the Republican primary held June 14. The former president wanted a high profile win by backing the guy who was already leading the GOP field. The race between Sisolak and Lombardo is expected to be close.

Georgia: Democrat Stacey Abrams is taking on incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp in a re-run of their 2018 contest. This will be a very tough race, possibly turning on some of the restrictive election laws Kemp has signed. In case you have forgotten, Georgia is the state where GOPers made it illegal to give out water to people waiting in line to vote.

There's nothing easy about any of these contests.

Secretaries of State: a cascade of dangerous Republican crackpots

In most states, an elected Secretary of State administers elections; it's a lot of work and relatively low profile. For example, here in California, that's incumbent Shirley Weber who is running to stay in the job in November.

This year, in states that are expected to be battlegrounds between Dems and GOPers, some mighty sketchy kooks are trying to implant themselves in the system in anticipation of their Orange God/King (h/t Charlie Sykes) running in 2024. It's not pretty and it's dangerous. (Not all the members of this gallery of rogues have yet won their primaries, but the outlook is clear.)

Here's a rundown:

Arizona: The presumptive Republican nominee (primary August 2) is Mark Finchem. His website (I'm not linking to these nutjobs) declares:

Since my very first election, I knew something was very wrong with our elections process. Major defects such as chain-of-custody of ballots, hidden contributions, and expensive unnecessary technology have contributed to the decay of public confidence in our elections. Then on November 3rd, 2020, the unthinkable happened: Americans witnessed real-time reallocation of votes from one candidate to another, broadcast on national television.

Finchem is not only a QAnon believer, he was present at the January 6 Capitol insurrection. It's not clear whether he was among the mob breaching the building. He's Trump-endorsed, naturally.

Two normie Democrats, Reginald Bolding and Adrian Fontes, are running to oppose Finchem in the primary.

Michigan: The incumbent Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, is seeking reelection despite death threats when Biden prevailed in 2020. Kristina Karamo is the presumptive Republican nominee.

... the Oak Park Republican skyrocketed to fame in conservative circles after claiming she witnessed fraud at Detroit’s absentee counting board while working as a poll challenger in November 2020. ... Karamo referred to herself as an “anti-vaxxer,” opposed the teachings of evolution in schools, likened abortion to human sacrifice and said LGBT people and those who have sex outside of marriage “violate God's creative design” and are indicative of a culture of “sexual brokenness.”

Michigan GOPers and the Donald think she's their kind of gal.

Nevada: Silver State Republicans joined the Secretary of State clown car in the June primary, nominating Jim Marchant for the office. The Nevada Independent reported:

Marchant

Telling Republicans their votes haven’t counted for diddly-squat due to rampant fraud, then asking them to go cast a ballot, seems a bit counterintuitive for a “get out the vote” campaign. And yet, among at least some Republicans, that has been the message during much of the 2022 primaries. In February, Republican candidate for secretary of state, Jim Marchant, told a crowd in Reno that their vote “hasn't counted for decades.”  

“You haven't elected anybody. The people that are in office have been selected. You haven't had a choice,” Marchant said.

Trump likes this guy too. The normie Democrat running for the open office is Cisco Aguilar.

Georgia: Brad Raffensberger, the Republican incumbent Secretary of State, unexpectedly won his May primary to keep to his office over a Trump-endorsed challenger. He withstood Trump's pressure to "find 11,780 votes" to defeat Biden in 2020. Death threats followed. He is favored to keep the job, however a state law since passed removed the position of state election board chair from the Georgia Secretary of State's duties. He no longer has as much power as he did in 2020.

Senator Raphael Warnock and governor candidate Stacey Abrams will have to win indisputably in fall 2022 to overcome the obstacles state Republicans have erected to free and fair voting.

Pennsylvania: They don't have an elected secretary of state to run elections in Pennsylvania. The job is appointed, so the issue of who runs the 2024 election will be determined by who wins the governor's race this fall. State Republicans have nominated a real doozy. Doug Mastriano is another insurrectionist who has been subpoenaed by the January 6 investigation. There's video showing him crossing Capital police lines, though what else he did in not known.

He’s a first-term state senator who was relatively unknown — until Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, in large part by narrowly losing Pennsylvania to Joe Biden. ... [He] rose to prominence in the aftermath of the 2020 election by falsely claiming Trump won the state. Mastriano also helped commission an unauthorized audit of voting machines in a rural county ...

Wisconsin: In this very contested state, elections are administered not by an elected official, but by a bipartisan regulatory agency, the Wisconsin Elections Commission. This supposedly neutral agency has been the location of complicated infighting over false Republican assertions that the 2020 election was fraudulent. UpNorthNews reported on the commission and former Attorney General Bill Barr's recorded testimony to the January 6 commission:

In a video played Monday during the second public hearing of a special congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection, former President Donald Trump’s attorney general Bill Barr laughs and scoffs at claims that cell phone data proves there was voter fraud in Wisconsin in the 2020 election. ... 

[In response to these claims] Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) member Ann Jacobs mentioned [in a meeting] that the drop box at one Milwaukee library is directly below an apartment building—filled with digital pings from cell phones, laptop computers, tablets, and other devices from people not physically using the drop box. 

In February, Assembly Elections Committee Chair Michelle Brandtjen (R-Menomonee Falls) turned the committee’s time over to a presentation from someone convicted of fraud who was claiming numerous irregularities with the state’s voter database. Only a week later did Brandtjen schedule time for WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe and Technology Director Robert Kehoe to refute the baseless claims. 

“Making unverified, fantastical claims without consulting real election officials has the effect of diverting lawmakers and the public from tracking real issues in need of improvement,” Kehoe told the committee. “That could end up causing real harm to Wisconsin elections.”

Wisconsin election administrators will face constant pressure so long as Republicans are making false assertions about voting.

Happens every primary season

Paul Waldman, an opinion writer at the Washington Post, took a whack at a hardy perennial feature of primary season among Democrats. One set, labeled "centrists" by journalists, complains that progressives will force candidates so far to the left that they won't be able to win a general election. Another set says that voters will be uninspired by a nice safe candidate who offers only small incremental improvements in their lives. Waldman asserts Democratic centrists want to say politics is simple. They’re wrong. 

Exhibit A for Waldman is the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate primary contest between "moderate" Congressman Conor Lamb and Lt. Governor John Fetterman. It's not going the way some Democratic donors think it should. Fetterman is ahead in polls, not their guy Lamb.

The [Democratic donor] super PAC’s analysis is simple: Lamb is more centrist than Fetterman; Fetterman is winning because people don’t understand that; eventually they will, even if it doesn’t happen until the general election; so primary voters have to be persuaded to get with the program now and back the centrist in the race.  

The trouble is that while the Pennsylvania Senate primary might involve ideology, it isn’t just about ideology. With all due respect to Conor Lamb, he’s pretty indistinguishable from a thousand congressional candidates who have come before: clean-cut, solid résumé, just the kind of person you picture when you think “congressman.” 

Fetterman, on the other hand, stands out, from his imposing stature (6-foot-8) to his tattoos to his sartorial choices (he’s one of those shorts-in-the-winter guys) to his unashamed advocacy of issues such as marijuana legalization. Might his liberalism be a vulnerability in a closely divided state? It’s possible, but it’s also possible that his long record of concern for people in distressed areas of the state will help him win votes in places many Democrats don’t. Some people love Fetterman because of who he is, and some people don’t. 

... Lamb has discovered that reminding everyone he’s a moderate is taking him only so far. The argument between centrists and liberals might never be resolved, but don’t believe anyone who tells you the answer is as simple as these moderates believe.

Some comments: National Democratic leaders will almost always prefer the uninspiring "centrists" in these contests -- because should they get elected, they'll be a lot easier to work with. I bet I know who Chuck Schumer would prefer to deal with in his caucus.

The "moderate" candidates will almost always have an easier time raising money. People with big money don't want the boat rocked. Bernie proved you can get around this with small donors, but non-standard candidates will always face a high bar. 

And, from years of canvassing and working get-out-the-vote, votes aren't very attuned to these divides. These days, party label accounts for most vote choices. Among the sliver who really are making a choice, they want to feel like this person cares about people like me. That can go in as many directions as there are voters. 

I don't have a horse in the PA Senate race. Lamb was a sterling candidate who won a formerly Republican House seat in a very tough race in 2018. He was what that set of voters wanted. Fetterman is more a wild card, but he has won statewide before. The voters will decide May 17.

Here's Fetterman's introductory ad:

2022 election preview -- because democracy is on the line

The media refer to 2022 as "an election year." In fact, and probably to the detriment of citizen engagement with democracy, every year is an "election year" somewhere and in many places at some level of government. 

This is a federal midterm election year during which we'll vote on all 435 members of the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, and a slew of state governors. It is also a year in which the candidates of the Irresponsible Party -- a nice label for Big Lie-promoting Republicans, don't you think? -- will be seeking revenge for losses in 2020 and to win power going forward. And the history of midterm elections under a new president says they'll have the wind at their backs.

The purpose of this post is to lay out some context for the contests we're all going to live through, as much for my own understanding as any reader's, though perhaps some might find this useful. So here goes:

Gerrymandering: Because 2020 was divisible by 10 and the Census Bureau somehow completed a plausible count of us all as required by the Constitution, states are reapportioning the districts in which we vote for state reps and Congress. Republicans control all branches of government (state legislatures and governors) in 23 states; Democrats in 15; and others are divided. State laws about reapportionment allow for many variations on how districts are drawn, but who is in power has a lot to do with the results, mostly.

In a general way, the predominance of Republicans in many state governments would promise that Congressional maps would grossly favor Republicans. And in some places (looking at you, Tennessee) they do, so far in the process. And in a few Democratic Party controlled states like Illinois, Dems are shoring up their advantages in Congressional seats. But the best-informed observers including Dave Wasserman at the Cook Report and many others don't see Republicans creating many aggressive gerrymanders. Rather,

... Republicans don’t appear likely to gain a significant number of seats through redistricting. Instead, they’ve taken up a new strategy: make red seats redder.

If this is correct, it should seem familiar to Californians. In 2000, the state legislature approved what amounted to an incumbent protection gerrymander: though Dems predominated, they largely made their own members and sitting Republicans invulnerable to challenge for a decade. Only one Congressional seat (won by Democrat Jerry McNerney in the northern Valley) turned over during the '00s, despite growing Democratic margins among the electorate. The sense they'd been disenfranchised encouraged Californians to adopt our current independent Citizen Redistricting Commission to do the job. (We still get mostly Dem Reps because we are mostly Dems.)

Elections for the House of Representatives: Decades of gerrymandering and voluntary self-sorting by political preference mean that hardly any Congressional races are really competitive. As of today, the Cook Political Report points to a measly total of 13, nationally. Some others may develop because of local circumstances or candidate quality. But unless you live in or to next to one of these competitive districts, your political attention is better paid to other offices. 

Elections for Governor: Though Republicans have ridden decades of smart gerrymandering to control of many state legislatures, in quite a few of these states the electorate statewide is closely divided. These are mostly "battleground" states in presidential years. And electing Democratic governors to four year terms in 2022 will help protect an honest vote count in 2024 if the Reps try again to override the decision of the voters. 

States where elections for governor are critical and where volunteer help and any available cash might be of assistance include:

• Georgia: the inspiring Stacey Abrams will again be on the ballot. This will be very tough, but never count that brilliant organizer out. 

• Nevada: Incumbent Democrat Steve Sisolak will be seeking another term. 

• Pennsylvania: Attorney General Josh Shapiro is the consensus Democratic candidate. A slew of Reps are running in a primary on May 17.

• Wisconsin: Incumbent Democrat Tony Evers will face whoever wins the Republican primary on August 9. There are at least two well-funded contenders, both Trumpy. Wisconsin has the best organized Democratic Party in the country. 

• Michigan: Incumbent Democrat Gretchen Whitmer will try to hold on for another term. A Black Detroit police chief, Jame Craig, is one of the leading Republican contenders; these will face off on August 2. 

• Arizona: the governor's office is open as the incumbent Republican is termed out. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs probably leads the Democratic aspirants, while Republicans have a slew of choices including QAnon and Trump-loving news anchor Keri Lake. The primary is August 2. 

• Another governor's race I'm watching: in Maine, Trumpish former governor Paul LePage wants to take back the job from incumbent Democrat Janet Mills.

Then there are the Senators. Again, Democrats are quite competitive statewide in places where Republican gerrymanders keep them out of power in the state legislatures.

• Georgia: Incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock looks to be taking on Trump-cult adherent and Georgia football hero Herschel Walker. Since Walker is pretty close to certifiably nuts, this shouldn't be much of a contest, but that assumption disregards the heft of college football in the Peach State.

• Nevada: Incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto will seek a second term. Her likely opponent Adam Laxalt -- who his family considers him an unworthy usurper of a proud Nevada name -- is a far right wingnut and failed governor candidate. Not going to be easy for Masto though; the Democratic registration advantage in the state is declining.

• Pennsylvania: This open Senate seat has attracted a wild cast of characters in both parties, including the 6'7" tattooed Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and, among the Reps, TV-doctor Mehmet Oz. Fortunately the primary is in May, so we'll get a look at the real shape of the contest here fairly early in the year.

• Wisconsin: The Senate's dumbest anti-vaxxer, incumbent Republican Ron Johnson, is up for re-election. If Dems were not so well organized, as the sitting Senator, he'd probably be a shoo-in; the primary for the Dems is late, August 9.

• Arizona: Incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly will face off against one of several Republicans to be chosen in August. The leader among them, a man who needs another vowel, sitting Attorney General Mark Brnovich, figured out his own advancement meant he had to support Donald Trump's Big Lie against his own Republican election officials in this battleground state.

• North Carolina: This open seat will be an attractive prize for Democrats as their nominee for the state's other Senate seat only lost by 1.8 percent in 2020 while Trump won the state. The sitting governor is a reasonably popular Democrat, so Dems see a chance. There's a wide field of Dem and Rep candidates running in a June 7 primary (date subject to all sorts of litigation over House seat boundaries; North Carolina is Republican Congressional gerrymander ground zero.)

• I'll be watching also New Hampshire, Ohio and Missouri where the vagaries of electoral contests might shake up Senate prospects -- though probably not, as party polarization is such a strong force.

Whew!!! Gonna be a tough year -- and as much Democratic Party success as can be won matters desperately to the preservation of some remnant of U.S. democracy.

Those of us who care need to pick the most plausible contests and be ready to donate and work.

Finally, if figuring all this out is just too much, and you have some cash, consider supporting Swing Left's national fund which prioritizes smartly for us.

Redistricting as 8th grade math exercise

I'm not the only person in my family who is interested in the mysteries of gerrymandering. My cousin Jon Kimmel teaches 8th grade math at Westtown School in the Philadelphia suburbs. The area is ground zero for a legal fight over a Republican Congressional district map which the state Supreme Court has ruled is “clearly, plainly, and palpably” in violation of Pennsylvania's state constitution. The GOPer map achieved its goal:

In 2012, Democrats won 51 percent of the statewide popular U.S. House vote but only 5 out of 18 House seats.

But that's not what Kimmel put in front of his students. Instead, when they saw the odd shapes of Congressional districts in their area, they were curious how they came to be drawn that way. Here's what came next from an article in the Daily Local.

Kimmel’s eighth-grade math students ... had been studying the Census and how it relates to redistricting and, in some modern cases, the unconstitutional process of gerrymandering.

“My students, getting their first taste (of the subject), were amazed at the audacity, flabbergasted at what this meant about democracy, and more than a little amused at the stupidity of adults,” Kimmel wrote in an essay recently.

Someone wondered whether the class itself could do as well, or even better. ... In a little over two weeks of class time, indeed, the group of eighth graders did do a better job than the Legislature, he said. ... “The students learned how their mathematical skills, a sense of fair play, and some common sense could point the way to solving some of the problems we as a society face,” he added.

The students agreed.

“I had a lot of fun doing this,” said Alex McVickar, a West Vincent resident in the first year at Westtown. “I think we all collectively learned that it isn’t too hard to redistrict a single state. It may take some time, but the districts don’t need to be as preposterous as they are now. Also, I personally never realized how much math is involved in politics.”

The students drew eight different Pennsylvania maps using criteria including compactness and, apparently, their own sense of what was just.

“In fewer than 10 43-minute classes, my students created eight different redistricting maps. They are not perfect. We concluded, in fact, that there is no mathematically perfect way to do this, but there are ways that seem reasonable and ones that do not. And, pretty much anyone could tell the difference when looking at the maps from across a large room. The current CD map plainly does not pass that test,” he said.

“If my eighth graders can draft congressional district maps that are very representative and compact, why can’t the Pennsylvania Legislature?” he wondered. “And if the state Legislature cannot figure out how to represent its citizens, I know some great 14-year-olds who already have.”

I was pretty much a failure at 8th grade math. But I might have been able to learn from this guy.

The U.S. Supreme Court has indicated that it is afraid that trying to restrict partisan gerrymanders will drag it into decision making that requires higher math and statistics. Maybe the judges need to meet these kids.