You can't win if you don't run

There's been plenty of talk about how the 2018 midterm elections are drawing women and other first time candidates into the electoral fray. Results of primaries in safe Democratic seats pretty much assure that there will be Muslim women, and Native women, and even young socialist women in the next Congress. Will all those old guys in suits know what hit them? I sure hope the new people in the room will change the dynamics in Washington.

Daily Kos Elections pointed out another indicator of this Democratic surge.

Democrats have a nominee in 432 of 435 congressional districts, the most they've contested since the 1974 Watergate wave, when Team Blue had a candidate in all but a single district. On the other hand, Republicans have left 39 House seats without a nominee, and such a large disparity, based on past history, points to a Democratic-wave environment this fall.

It may not seem that the sheer number of candidates would matter much -- aren't many of the seats Democrats are running in hopeless Republican strongholds? Well, yes, so they seem. But what's happening in New York's 27th Congressional District outside of Buffalo shows why a political party that is serious about winning should always field a candidate for every contested office.

Chris Collins, a Republican, has held this House seat since 2013. It's true Republican turf -- exurbs and rural counties clustered outside two cities, Buffalo and Rochester, whose urban culture and demographics are very separate from their surroundings. Places like this usually vote Republican. Collins was one of Donald Trump's earliest backers is the House; his district voted 60-35 percent for Trump. There was no reason to think the seat was competitive. Then Collins was arrested in August. Apparently he used insider knowledge to enrich his family -- or so Department of Justice prosecutors charge.

Fortunately, Democrats didn't just give up on this seat, in June nominating a Grand Island Town Commissioner for the seemingly hopeless task of running against one of Congress' wealthiest members. Now that candidate, Nate McMurray just might have a chance to pull off a huge upset. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which handicaps Congressional races, has just moved its evaluation of the contest to "Lean Republican." That doesn't mean they predict that McMurray will knock off Collins, but they have decided Collins' legal troubles give the challenger a fighting chance.

You can't win if you don't run. McMurray is running.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: this resident left a note

Okay, this was an unusual find, a sophisticated response to Nevada's surge of canvassers. And here in the Reno area, it is not unheard of to encounter opposing sentiments, including houses that advertise their owners intent to defend their property with their precious firearms.

But those hostile addresses are seldom on our lists. We're talking with people whose voting history, class position, and gender and racial identities suggest they might be open to electing a new Democratic Senator. We know that, if we can increase turnout among people who too often skip voting, Nevada will become more Blue and the country will gain a better Senate.

Over 2000 door-knocks a day by our hardy crew are carrying us toward that goal.

You too can join this project.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: the Republicans want to run against Nancy Pelosi

It really happens when you door knock: people repeat back to you what the ads on TV are saying about the candidates. This goes for both sides -- and here in Nevada, a perennial swing state deluged in political advertising, many voters tell me they just don't pay attention to any of the ads. But nonetheless, the ad themes permeate the air.

One of the strangest themes to this Californian is that Republicans keep accusing our Democratic US Senate candidate Jacky Rosen of being a stooge for Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi has been my Congressperson what seems nearly forever -- since 1987. For her San Francisco constituents, she seems a moderate, but she has led the Democratic caucus since 2007, serving as Speaker of the House from 2007 through the 2010 elections. She evidently really does lead. Democrats are a notoriously contentious bunch, but unlike say the Republican leader Speaker Paul Ryan, Pelosi somehow manages to get her Democrats on the same page, voting the same way when it matters, such as to defend health care access.

And so, professional Republican politicians hate her effectiveness and seek to make her a national hate object. This takes a lot of ad dollars, since most voters barely know who their own Congressperson is, much less who some woman from California is. Hillary is gone from the national scene; they aim to make Nancy Pelosi another powerful woman to hate.

A few months ago, Paul Waldman wrote an insightful column about the odd Republican fixation on Pelosi.

The Republican attack on Pelosi is about conservative identity politics, full stop. It’s partly the same kind of ugly misogyny that has driven conservatives for years, and that comes out whenever the prospect of a woman wielding genuine power rears its head. Women who display ambition are judged harshly, particularly by conservatives; it’s no accident that Bernie Sanders, whose policy ideas are much more opposed to conservatism than Pelosi’s, inspires nothing like the venomous loathing on the right that Pelosi and Hillary Clinton do.

And it’s partly the us-versus-them conflict that has animated every Republican campaign for a half century. Democrats, they tell voters, aren’t like us. They don’t share our values; they’re elitist and alien and threatening. Those ideas can be expressed through issues, but what they’re about is cultural affinity: The Republican candidate is one of us, and the Democratic candidate is one of them.

... Republicans will continue to attack Pelosi from now until November, because they have few better ideas for how to convince voters to send them back to Congress. In some places it might work to get their base to the polls; more often, in all likelihood, it won’t. But either way, we shouldn’t buy for a second that the reason they do it is because they’re trying to say something about policy.

Some Democrats, including some younger Congress members, think it is time for Pelosi to give up the leadership. I get it. Democrats need to make room for a new generation of leaders. If we all do our work and turn out to vote this fall, that will be underway.

But Republicans aren't talking about that. The ads I hear repeated on the doors are the usual lies and woman-hatred, not a principled critique. I guess a political party that can't find a more principled leader than Donalc Trump hasn't got any principles except greed and individual ambition.

A nightmare prospect

Next Thursday, FEMA will do its first test of a system that allows the president to send a message to most U.S. cellphones. https://t.co/VyUoegiJgu

— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 15, 2018

There are at least 150 million of us who don't want spam phone calls from this Preznit. We have plenty of reason to believe that nothing he touches will be to our benefit.

We need FEMA to stick to hurricane relief.

The app writer who creates a blocker has a great career ahead.

Saturday scenery: Huffacker Park views

Just a few miles from where we're staying in Reno, there are a couple of high desert hummocks encircled by a gravel-covered trail.

South Reno is sprawl-land: office parks, malls, warehouses and new housing developments. And all around, desert vistas and a big sky.

In the middle distance, that's the GSR (Grand Sierra Resort), one of Reno's two unionized hotels/casinos.

Anyone who wants to come visit and walk precincts for a better Nevada U.S. Senator and Governor for working people and the country, give me a holler.

Friday cat blogging from Reno

A friend asked, "why no cat blogging?" It's not that there aren't cats in Reno. I see them in the neighborhoods when I'm canvassing, but juggling a tablet and literature prevents photography.

But that doesn't mean cats play no role in my work.

Here's a story: a couple of days ago I was walking a barely built development of townhouses by a golf course. You might think this an unpromising area, but in fact many voters I met want a new Democratic Nevada senator as much as I do.

So I knock on a door and a woman opens it a tiny crack -- and immediately a tiny scrawny tan creature rushed past her and into the yard. Oh gosh, I think, I've let her little hairless chihuahua escape. She'll hate us ...

Then I realize the animal is a sphynx kitten. And, concurrently, I see that the woman is standing at the door supported by crutches.

"May I catch your sphynx and pass it to you?" I ask. These critters are not only bizarre appearing and affectionate, they are expensive, I think.

Fortunately the weird little cat doesn't fight being picked up. I pass it in the door and she blocks a small slit with her crutches. We proceed to a good conversation about how everyone needs access to medical care, how she is having surgery next week and will be homebound, but she has already made sure that she'll be able to vote for Rosen and Sisolak. Another successful conversation with a voter!

Here's a picture I snapped of one of these surreal critters when full grown. Despite their appearance, sphynx cats pretty much just behave like cats. They don't know we think they are strange looking.

Justice delayed

It's good news that, at long last, San Francisco police officers whose racist and sexist text messages have been public knowledge since 2015 can face discipline. But I have to highlight one sentence from the Chronicle report on the decision.

The state Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for San Francisco to seek disciplinary action against a group of police officers who exchanged racist, sexist and homophobic text messages in 2011 and 2012 — calling African Americans “monkeys” and encouraging the killing of “half-breeds,” among other slurs.

The texts, which surfaced publicly in 2015, prompted the district attorney’s office to re-examine thousands of criminal cases the officers have handled. As many as nine officers, who have been on paid leave since December 2015, could be fired if the Police Commission finds serious misconduct.

We've been paying these guys not to work for three years because a combination of the power of the police union (POA) and politicians' weakness have made the SFPD unaccountable to the public. Individual cops have a right to fair hearings, but the people have a right to speedy resolution of complaints and removal of wrongdoers on the force.

Mayor Breed, State legislators, County supervisors, and Police Commission: take back our city from rogue cops! This is your job!

What it is really like on a campaign: learning what's at stake

A campaign isn't just about hard work and logistics. It's also about real lives.

So what's all this work we're doing to elect Jacky Rosen to the Senate really about? For many of us on the crew, it's about fighting the Trump/GOPer wrecking crew that is running the country into the ground for the benefit of plutocrats. But for the people we meet behind the doors we knock on, their Republican U.S. Senator's lies are a threat to life itself.

This ad, from a Democratic associated group, catches the sense of danger.
.Their Republican Senator has been playing politics with their lives.

A local Reno free paper, the Reno News and Review, clarified how Dean Heller has weaseled and waffled to play to Trump and his Koch Brothers-associated funders.

On June 23, 2017, U.S. Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada said of one ACA repeal measure, “This bill would mean a loss of coverage for millions of Americans and many Nevadans. I’m telling you right now, I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes insurance away from tens of millions of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans.”

... For months, Heller threaded a needle on the issue that drew criticism from left and right. He endured a humiliating scene when, seated beside Donald Trump, he heard Trump threaten him publicly.

“This was the one we were worried about,” Trump said. To Heller: “You weren’t there. But you’re going to be. You’re going to be.”

Then, to the audience: “Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn’t he?”

An alliance of conservatives headed by the Kochs said they had assembled a war chest whose purpose was to protect Republican senators—but only those who had voted against the ACA.

... On April 5 in Clark County, Heller spoke to a closed meeting of the Nevada Republican Men’s Club, whose meetings are normally open. According to a recording of that meeting leaked to the Las Vegas Review Journal, Heller said he supported repeal of the ACA and blamed other senators for preventing its repeal.

“If we have 51 Republicans that will vote to repeal and replace, it will happen,” he said. “We need 51 votes. And right now we know there’s three votes we’re missing for that 51—John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.”

... By August this year, Heller was trumpeting the damage he and other Republicans had been able to do to the ACA: “We did eliminate the [individual] mandate. We did get some of the taxes. I did push back and postpone the Cadillac tax and some of those issues.”

Last month, the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity PAC started running ads in Nevada supporting Heller.

Dean Heller cares about himself and his rich buddies. No wonder plenty of Nevadans know they need a different Senator. They need one who believes "health care is a right, not a privilege."

Some battles must be fought over and over

Erudite Partner recounts how last month members of an organized professional association stood up for ethical conduct within their discipline. Psychologists held out against expedient conformity with the wishes of leaders in authority, a tough choice too often demanded of all of us in these times.

Juan Cole published her story. She begins ...:

No one, not Psychologists or Supreme Court Justices, should be Helping with Gov’t TortureSometimes the good guys do win. That’s what happened on August 8th in San Francisco when the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association (APA) decided to extend a policy keeping its members out of the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The APA’s decision is important — and not just symbolically. Today we have a president who has promised to bring back torture and “load up” Guantánamo “with some bad dudes.” When healing professionals refuse to work there, they are standing up for human rights and against torture.

It wasn’t always so. In the early days of Guantánamo, military psychologists contributed to detainee interrogations there. It was for Guantánamo that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved multiple torture methods, including among others excruciating stress positions, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation, and enforced nudity. Military psychologists advised on which techniques would take advantage of the weaknesses of individual detainees. And it was two psychologists, one an APA member, who designed the CIA’s whole “enhanced interrogation program.” ...

Read it all at the link.

The photo is from 2007 when APA members demonstrated in San Francisco outside their association's annual meeting, demanding psychologists get out of Dick Cheney's gulag.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: pride in hard work

This amazing crew knocked on over 2000 doors yesterday in Reno to support Rosen for Senate and Sisolak for Governor -- and will do the same and more tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that ... all the way until election day.

There is abundant research about how campaigns can encourage citizens who don't usually vote to become regular voters. Robocalls, lawn signs, and social media ads create atmospherics around elections. But nothing equals in-person, face-to-face, at-the-door contact with another human being. Often it takes more than one contact. Talking with a canvasser enables folks to get their minds around the idea that the unfamiliar activity of casting a ballot can matter to other human beings.

That's what we're doing here, every day. It's a joy and a privilege. We are living at the core of what community and democracy is all about.

When we were very young ...

A new season begins. GO NINERS!

Saturday scenery: a sparkling Reno morning

When I decided I to come to Nevada to campaign, I had forgotten that Nevada is beautiful.

This pond is not far from where we're staying, not that we're likely to have more than fleeting minutes to run around it. In addition to this egret and some ducks, there were quail and some sort of heron,

Condos on the shore have fabulous views.

Athletes who speak up for justice and liberation

Jelani Cobb reflects sensibly in the New Yorker on Nike's advertising decision to highlight Colin Kaepernick. He gives the monster athletic goods company credit for taking a (calculated) risk:

Nike gambled that a greater portion of the world understands where Kaepernick is coming from.

The communities that drive our understanding that Black Lives Matter will determine whether that gamble is a good one. I bet yes.

Cobb's article reminds us that Nike's original "Just Do It" campaign which launched in 1988 highlighted

... Walt Stack, an eighty-year-old man, ebulliently trotting across the Golden Gate Bridge as part of his daily seventeen-mile run. “People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime,” Stack says. “I leave them in my locker.”

Cobb's article neglects that Walt Stack and Kap are figures who have something deep in common. These are two exceptional athletes. But also, they are both exemplary justice heroes.

Walt Stack worked as a construction worker, a hod carrier who lifted bricks all his working life, a loyal union activist, and a convinced socialist who stood against big employers who exploited their workers. He was an evangelist for amateur running, especially for women who, back in the day, weren't expected to go out and "just do it." In their own ways and times, both these fighters were about breaking the rules to construct a new and better world. Let's honor Kap as a hero for our times; Walt Stack too is worthy of our respect.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: practice, practice, practice

Before volunteer organizers can start talking with voters at their front doors, they have to learn what Nevada candidates Jacky Rosen for U.S. Senate and Steve Sisolak for Governor are offering the public. For example, both candidates are focusing on helping Nevada's overcrowded and crumbling public schools, while also promoting a strong economy where workers can earn a living wage.

None of those issues are easy to talk about with strangers. So we practice.

Learn more about this campaign here. And come on along to take part. We'll happily incorporate volunteers for several days or more into a smart, strategic effort to replace a sitting Republican Senator who refuses to stick up for Nevadans against Donald Trump.

Good news for those of us campaigning in Nevada

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michelle Obama will headline voter registration rallies in Las Vegas and Miami later this month during a week of action to encourage voting for the November elections by a nonpartisan organization she co-chairs, organizers said Wednesday.

The former first lady is hosting the Las Vegas event on Sept. 23 and the Miami rally on Sept. 28, said Stephanie Young, communications director for When We All Vote.

Mrs. Obama announced last month that When We All Vote will mark the 53rd anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting, by urging Americans to hold events Sept. 22-29 to sign people up to vote in the Nov. 6 midterm elections and beyond ...

Sure, this is "nonpartisan," but we know all too well which party wants make sure all citizens can vote.

You can help elect Democrat Jacky Rosen to the United States Senate and Democrat Steve Sisolak as Nevada's next governor by joining union hospitality workers campaigning in Reno. Send me an email and I'll explain how to get involved.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: the calm before the surge

Our newly cleaned, completely orderly, office will be filled on Wednesday.

Thirty-five volunteer organizers, union members, friends and family, blew into town today. Here they check into their quarters in an extended stay residence for the next two months.

Soon the work of talking with voters can begin ...

For the sake of your health care ...

Economist Paul Krugman came out with a timely reminder this morning of why Democrats must win Congressional and Senate seats this fall -- and why Nevada is a key place to start. Republicans just lie about their intent to take access to medical care away from people with pre-existing conditions. Here's Krugman:

When someone like, say, Senator Dean Heller of Nevada co-sponsors a bill that purports to protect pre-existing conditions but actually doesn’t, what he hopes for are headlines that say “Heller Announces Plan to Protect Americans With Pre-existing Conditions,” with the key fact — that his bill wouldn’t do that at all — buried in the 17th paragraph.

Or better yet, from his point of view, that 17th paragraph would state only that “some Democrats” say his bill is a fraud, while Republicans disagree. Both sides, you know.

So if you’re an American who suffers from a pre-existing medical condition, or fear that you might develop such a condition in the future, you need to be clear about the reality: Republicans are coming for your health care. If they hold the line in November, health insurance at an affordable price — maybe at any price — will be gone in a matter of months.

The graphic above, "GOPUS delendus est" is a takeoff on Shakespeare's play about the assassination of the tyrant Julius Caesar, meaning roughly "the Republican cult must die." H/t Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. I'll be using it a lot this fall.

What it is really like to work on an electoral campaign: getting started

The E.P. and I are getting settled in Reno, our home away from home for the next two months as we work to elect a new Democratic Senator, Jacky Rosen, and a new Democratic Governor, Steve Sisolak. In this perilous moment when the small measure of equal opportunity working people and people of color have won in this country are at risk from Trump and the GOPers, nothing seems more important than replacing as many Republicans as we can in November. Nevada is ground zero for this effort, our best shot at replacing a sitting GOP Senator. So here we are.

We are fortunate to be working in a small, highly efficient, sub-branch of the campaign. The union UniteHERE (that's the hotel and hospitality folks) have the project of making Washoe County (Reno and Sparks) blue. This is the second largest concentration of people in the state; most of the rest are around Las Vegas. The union has worked here in the last two presidential elections and done the job, but never before in a midterm. This is a campaign operation that knows what it is doing. You can read more specifics at this link.

I find myself in a fortunate position here: I've been around enough of these efforts to know the ropes -- but I am just lower middle management this time, not responsible for the stressful and confidential stuff that running a campaign involves. I just have a job to do -- mostly coordinating volunteers and being a spare pair of hands. Consequently, I will be able to blog about what it is really like to work on an election.

And so, here's a first installment: lead organizers spent Labor Day clearing out a crowded, underused borrowed office of superfluous junk from a decade of campaigns past:

We'll generate our own junk over the next two months. It was thrilling to make a new start.

Anyone who wants to volunteer to help make Nevada a blue state that treats workers and people of color right, email me here.

Some photos of working San Franciscans for Labor Day

When you snap photos while exploring precincts, naturally you are going to encounter lots of people with outdoor jobs.

And for all our affluence, there is still plenty of work that takes place outside.

She makes sure that hydrants are tested.

With all sorts of turnover in neighborhood retail districts, this sight is common.

A woman slinging earth is not such a common sight -- but hey, I used to do that, so why shouldn't she?

It's nice to see that some of our new crop of indoor workers understand the disruption they are part of here in the city by the bay.

He appears to have done his time and is wandering home, satisfied.

A story of persistence, grit, and finding her unique way

My friend Tara is beating back limiting assumptions about what women can do -- and the hard reality that financial support for women's winter sports is close to nonexistent. Two years ago, she was working on a produce farm and hawking T-shirts showing her exploits. It was the only way to follow her passion. Today she is on the top of her sport. Tom Kelly, writing in the Park City (Utah) Record, the site of the Olympic Training Center where they know their winter sports, tells her story:

Vermont ski jumper Tara Geraghty-Moats is a pioneer. Like Park City's Lindsey Van, who pioneered the way for women's ski jumping a decade ago, Geraghty-Moats is doing that for women's Nordic combined – the one remaining winter Olympic sport where women are still seeking representation.

This past weekend in Oberwiesenthal, Germany, a former mining town in Saxony near the Czech border, she put her stamp on her sport in the first ever elite-level international Nordic combined Summer Grand Prix. She won!

... It has been a long trail for Geraghty-Moats, now 25. At age nine, she started ski jumping. An injury knocked her out of the sport so she shifted to biathlon, even training in Sweden. Then she found ski jumping again, knocking out top-10 international finishes. Her passion swung back to the unusual combination of ski jumping and cross country skiing that is Nordic combined. The past season was rugged. Three elbow surgeries – the latest in March – held her back. But she persevered. In July, she came back to the U.S. Championships in Utah. This time there was a [Nordic combined] women's class. And she won her first title.

So, naturally, having won her U.S. title, she jumped to the big time, the International Ski Federation's Nordic Grand Prix tour in Europe -- and won there too. Tara is indeed now forging a path for women who jump and race on the skinny skis, a path only available to male athletes until now. There will be Continental Cups this winter and adding a women's World Cup event is in the works. One day the Olympics will get around to adding a women's Nordic combined competition, though most likely not in time for the 2022 games.

May I to prove I knew her when?

Go Tara!