The Harris agenda is freedom for this time

Pamela Herd, a professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University, has taken a stab at laying out what our new Democratic presidential candidate offers as a positive vision for the country. I found her observations a helpful summary:

“Weird” might be effective political messaging, but it tells us little about what a Harris presidency would look like. ...

Harris promotes a different vision of freedom, a version that evokes, but updates, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s definition of freedom, where people are free from want and fear and have freedom of speech and religion. With Beyonce in the background, Harris calls for:

• The freedom not just to get by, but to get ahead.

• The freedom to be safe from gun violence.

• The freedom to make decisions about your own body.

• We choose a future where no child lives in poverty.

• Where we can all afford health care.

• We believe in the promise of America and we are ready to fight for it.

This isn’t just a laundry list of policy goals. It’s a coherent vision of what government should, and should not, do. ...

... In her stump speech, a key line is that “we’re not going back.” Audiences have responded by chanting “not going back” in response. ...

I can live with this -- even thrill to this.

It seems to me that Joe Biden offered a vision suitable to his age and experience. As the last of our politicians formed in the before-Reagan times, he harked back to a New Deal-influenced vision of using the state to grow an economy which spread its benefits more equitably and broadly. And we should be more grateful than we are for his leadership.

Harris came up in a different time, with politically active immigrant parents of color, influenced by the liberation movements of the '50s,'60's, and early '70s. An optimistic vision of freedom for all, unbounded by old verities, was the fruit of those heady days. Harris's themes seem to me to derive from that moment -- and I love it!

The civil rights struggle of Black Americans for full citizenship made her candidacy possible. The struggle for women's liberation underpins her constituency and appeal. And the LGBT+ struggle for liberation has unleashed the potential to re-imagine society in novel configurations.

I doubt very much that Harris can fulfill all the hopes her vision of freedom offers. But I can enthusiastically get behind a leader from a new generation whose person was impossible under the old rules -- and who looks forward to new rules. Bring on the Harris campaign. I'm on board.

It's still up to us

Heather Cox Richardson reminds that, in a democracy in which the people's will counts, history can turn unexpectedly. 

... In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.

Today there are postcards to voters. In 1860 there were envelope covers with the message.

The change was just as quick in the 1850s. In 1853 it sure looked as if the elite southern enslavers had taken over the country. They controlled the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They explicitly rejected the Declaration of Independence and declared that they had the right to rule over the country’s majority. They planned to take over the United States and then to take over the world, creating a global economy based on human enslavement.

And yet, just seven years later, voters put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with a promise to stand against the Slave Power and to protect a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He ushered in “a new birth of freedom” in what historians call the second American revolution.

The same pattern was true in the 1920s, when it seemed as if business interests and government were so deeply entwined that it was only a question of time until the United States went down the same dark path to fascism that so many other nations did in that era. In 1927, after the execution of immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, poet John Dos Passos wrote: “they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspaper editors the old judges the small men with reputations….”

And yet, just five years later, voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised Americans a New Deal and ushered in a country that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. ....

... It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.

It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.

Thanks to the Democratic Party for, at length, taking up the task.

Lay off the cat people!

I am indeed a "childless crazy cat lady." Janeway and Mio will testify to that. 

When I first heard of this slur from Trump's mini-me JD Vance, I figured I was hearing garden variety homophobia. If we find these posturing bros repulsive, we must be queer. Well, yippee for that!

But Republican natalism -- their obsessive fixation on women bearing children -- is even more vile than simple homophobia. 

JVL of the Bulwark spells out the deeper scandal of GOPer bigotry:

... while Vance and his confederates are super-duper concerned about childless people who “have no stake in America’s future” I have also heard many conservatives/Republicans express a great deal of concern about brown people having too many babies.

... You may have forgotten, but back in the 1990s, conservatives were worried about African-American women having too many babies, so they pushed for a welfare “family cap” which denied extra benefits for low-income women (translation: African-American women) who had children while on public assistance.

Sometimes the Republican pro-natalists let the mask slip. Last year in Texas Republicans pushed a bill that would give large property tax credits to households with four or more children.

But not all households with four or more children. The bill was tailored so that in order to qualify the household would have to be comprised of two heterosexual married adults, neither of whom had been divorced, and—most importantly—who owned the property in which they dwelled.

I’m sure it was just coincidence that in Texas home ownership rates are significantly higher for whites than blacks and Hispanics.

So remember: When you hear JD Vance & Co. talk about the importance of having babies because parenthood gives you some sort of special stake in the country, sure, that’s a batshirt idea.

But this batshirt idea isn’t even on the level. They mean something very different. Here’s what they actually mean:

They are threatened by the fertility patterns of minorities and view white women who don’t have babies as race-traitors.

For too many of our MAGA compatriots, it comes back to racial fears projected outward as racism.

There's something about the women ...

Since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, it's been fun for your vacationing campaigners (that's EP and I) to read about an outpouring of enthusiasm, anchored by women. We feared this was going to be a death march against impending MAGA fascism -- ethically necessary, but entirely defensive rather than uplifting.

They met in January as veteran campaigners do. They knew they would have to take up this fight for decency and sanity. I hope most can now share the new hope

Apparently there are plenty of people who are now feeling engaged. 44,000 Black women jammed a zoom call. 40,000 new voter registrations -- most likely young people -- in one day. 

Sure, there will be bumps in the road; many of us will wish Kamala were more able to break free from the inclinations of the administration which brought her here. 

But she gives us a chance. When you've been terrified you were condemned to a MAGA world, the relief is energizing.

Frank Bruni of the NYTimes catches some of this: 

... [Women] still don’t enjoy full equality with men in America, but we sure have been leaning on them lately to save American democracy. The appallingly stymied attempts to hold Trump responsible for his crimes have rested largely on the efforts of women, a few of whom did vanquish him in court, as my Times Opinion colleague Jessica Bennett noted in an essay in April. She did a roll call of his pursuers: “Letitia James. Fani Willis. E. Jean Carroll, and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan. And, of course, Stormy Daniels. The five women who are living rent-free in Mr. Trump’s mind these days.”

I’d add “crazy Nancy Pelosi” — Trump is still regularly calling her that, unable to purge her from his thoughts — to the list. (Jessica wrote about Pelosi in an essay this week.) Also former Representative Liz Cheney: Nobody on the House panel investigating the events of Jan. 6, 2021, was more forceful or impassioned than she was in exposing Trump’s actions and inaction on that day. She, too, squats somewhere in Trump’s gray matter, so much so that he recently amplified social media posts that accused her of treason and urged that she be subjected to a televised military tribunal.

... Women’s reproductive rights are in the foreground of this presidential election, Harris is practiced and eloquent in her defense of them, and that could widen a gender gap in a way that works to Democrats’ advantage. Women voters could be the barricade between Trump and that first-day dictatorship.

Also, as my Times colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan wrote recently, and as I discussed with two prominent Democrats in a conversation published on Wednesday, women opponents bring out the ugliest in Trump. Harris will quickly take up residence with Pelosi, Cheney and the gang.

And Trump will have to build an annex, maybe to his frontal or occipital lobe, to accommodate the sorority.

Unless the law gets further twisted to accommodate Trump's crimes, New York State Judge Merchan has now scheduled sentencing in his hush money felonies for September 18. 

It's the crook v. the prosecutor now -- and she's a girl!

*Title borrowed from the 1970s "women's movement" anthem.

Thank you Joe Biden; bring on Kamala Harris. And Nancy delivers again.

So our Democratic leaders have, at length, led. We can now get on with the business of trouncing MAGA. The dis-eased and depleted state of the nation may defeat us, but the majority of us still have a chance to live to struggle another day for hope, justice, civil compassion and government of the people.

Many of us have watched in horror for the past three weeks as the Democratic Party, through whose big tent we are forced to work, has seemed mired in indecision and in desperate need of a generational transition. Well, we've begun one.

In this moment I want to bring forward a bit of almost forgotten San Francisco history. My Congresscritter, the former Speaker and still Party wisewoman Nancy Pelosi, first came into office through a managed generational transition not so different than the one we are seeing now.  She knows how this goes.

In the 1960s and '70s, San Francisco was represented in Congress by Phil Burton, a liberal giant whose legislative efforts included civil rights, environmental protection, disability rights, and the struggle for health care for all. And then, at in 1983 at age 56, a ruptured aortic embolism killed this man on the move. His wife Sala Burton slid into the safe Democratic seat and served two terms, before succumbing to colon cancer in 1987. The shocking Burton transitions left many progressive Californians unmoored.

Nancy Pelosi was a prominent California Democratic leader, a powerhouse fundraiser. But she had not ever held elective office herself. As Sala Burton was dying, Pelosi came away with her death bed endorsement for the San Francisco Congressional seat. Oh, now this Pacific Heights lady wants to be in Congress?

Not all San Franciscans were ready to jump on what seemed an anti-Democratic dynastic transition. The city was then full of left activists, supporters of revolutions in Central America, of affordable housing for all, and particularly of gay and lesbian AIDS campaigners, desperately trying to force the murderous epidemic onto the national agenda. In the special election held to replace Sala Burton, these forces combined behind gay Supervisor Harry Britt. Nancy consolidated the money, the party regulars, and the politically active unions; Nancy wiped the floor with Harry. (I know. I did some door knocking for poor Harry.)

In the end, Pelosi has been a magnificent Democratic Party leader. From her safe seat in San Francisco, she has served her true constituency, her fractious party. Those of us who cast ballots for her are just extras in her Party drama -- but mostly she's been good for the broad progressive project. 

I feel confident that she has had a strong role in the Biden to Harris transition. This sort of thing is her political meat and potatoes and her political genius. Thanks again, Nancy -- I feel sure you have been in the middle of getting us here.

As we try to take in the changes we're riding though ...

... we can enjoy this remarkable art.

I find this creature very soothing. More later.

We already decided this -- we don't like kings

David Rothkopf writes a Substack, Need to Know, which is both hilariously funny (follow the link) -- and wise. He offers these reassuring reflections after watching the Republican convention. 

... The GOP, after all, are not just the party of Trump. They are also the party promoting the idea of the “unitary executive,” a monarch-like president around who sits atop a government that answers to him. Democrats on the other hand recognize or should recognize that the senior most position in our system of government is the citizen, the voter. The president works for us. He or she is accountable to us. That is one of the main reasons the Revolutionary War was fought and it is a concept that Americans have defended with their lives for the past nearly 250 years.

... The Democratic Party is therefore not only not all about our president or presidential candidate of the moment. To succeed, it must be about a large group of professionals committed to shared ideals and goals working to serve a much, much larger group of bosses—the public at large. We should not be, must not become, a party that places loyalty to any one individual ahead of the mission that has brought us all together, that has made what we agree on far more important than our disagreements but must also make a respectful hearing of those disagreements a central part of how we serve a profoundly diverse society.

They have taken blended their cult of personality with their authoritarian impulses and brought this country to the brink of autocracy. (Or returned us to it. After all, as I noted before, that was the state we rebelled against in the first place.) We Democrats ultimately offer the better answer for the country precisely because we are not about any one individual, we are not about blind loyalty to one person’s ideas. We are about capturing and embodying the spirit of democracy of finding a way to serve the many by representing, listening to, acting on behalf the many.

What Democrats are going through now is all good. It is just what we should be discussing. It will make us stronger. It is absolutely certain we all share and will work for the goal of defeating Trump. And that brings me to my last point. Which is I believe we will win in November and not just by a little and, just as importantly, I know we will be ready to better serve the people of this country than the alternative offered by the other cult-like party.

We haven't always, or even often, been a good country. But we were founded with a glimmer of hope for something novel and good. Now our "leaders" need to stop dillydallying and we the people need to get to work. No kings here.

Next post will turn to vacation pictures -- when I can get online again.

Before the railroads, there were canals

England's industrial innovations in the 1700s and early 1800s wouldn't have changed the world (and enriched capitalist entrepreneurs much like the tech moguls of today) if moving product had continued to depend on horses and wagons. And so, the country developed a network of small canals. In the mid-1800s, these water ways were rendered obsolete by railways, but many remain intact and boaters navigate them on what are called narrowboats, barely 7 feet wide and as much as 60 feet long.

The Erudite Partner and I have just enjoyed two weeks on the Llangollen, Trent and Mersey, and Bridgewater Canals, accompanying her brother who is moving such a boat north for its owner. Some pictures:

Would that more days were this bright and clear! Fog and wind in San Francisco is good preparation for an English summer. But when the sun breaks through, a glimpse of "England's green and pleasant land."

Along the shore, small business eke out a living from the traffic.

 

Passing through larger towns, the canal can become somewhat crowded.

 

Then back to quiet and solitude.

 

The canals made transport possible by using locks to raise and lower boats over the rises in the terrain.

 

Boaters operate the paddles at each lock, opening and closing off the water, sometimes with advice from local volunteers. These two women were learning the drill. Erudite Partner and I cranked through dozens of locks while Captain Josh drove.

This is what it looks like from the boat while passing inside a lock.

 

Where a canal encountered substantial rises, the builders dug tunnels. Boaters have to approach with caution; the tunnels are only barely wider and higher than a single boat. On long tunnels entry is timed -- first north bound gets 20 minutes, then the south bound boats take their short turn. Here's what a tunnel entrance looks like:

That's a short one. Sometimes there are curves and some are as long as a mile. Here's what this one looks like while inside.

 

A towpath runs along the canal and serves walkers and runners well, though it is largely uncrowded.

 

Let me close with a pic of E.P. taking the helm.

 

The narrowboat made for an easy and enjoyable adventure. We disembarked near Manchester, leaving Josh to finish his journey with a new crew. We are now on to the Lake Country. More when I have connection and thoughts.

No wonder violence came for Donald

Still out of the country for another two weeks, but able to get online for a brief comment.

Again he dominates our heads. 

Donald Trump traffics in delight in violence. A convenient list via Jay Kuo.

• Trump urged supporters at rallies to beat up protestors. 

• He called for Black Lives Matter rioters to be shot.  

• He used racist language to inflame hate and hate-based attacks against Asian American during the pandemic.  

• He made fun of the brutal attack upon Nancy Pelosi’s husband.  

• He mocked the notion that radicals had plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.  

• His words helped inspire racist mass shooters in Buffalo and El Paso.  

• He approved of chants to “Hang Mike Pence.”  And he incited the violent January 6 attack upon the Capitol.

No wonder violence came for him. That's how the world works. We quite often get what we live by.

The MAGAs work to enable every idiot in the country to run around with weapons of war and then wonder why people, including their Orange Totem, get shot.

I guess I'm glad this incident didn't kill him, but if that broken boy's aim had been better, I'd still think Trump got what he asked for.

Too many MAGAs have put American democracy, the rule of law, and human decency in their gun sites. Most of us aren't among the gun-obsessed nor do we wish to stomp on the freedoms, and the people themselves, with whom we coexist, however uncomfortably at times. 

We still have the choice to practice diligent voting and compassionate justice activism.

And we can be kind to each other, seeking to sow better fruit and a better future. That is all.

• • •

Meanwhile there were the inadvertent casualties, the spectators killed and maimed as forced participants in a spectacle. The frolics of cruelty leave their victims.

• • •

I came of age in 1968, during the last era of directly political American violence. We've forgotten how good we've had it.

On vacay as the USofA simmers, literally and politically.

Take care of things, folks.

Our once and future king?

So says the Supreme Court majority. 

Are we going to put up with these black-robed partisans anointing a monarch? That's not our tradition.

I will now resume my vacation, writing from London where they set some precedents about what to do about kings who care only for themselves. Doubt that DJT knows about that. That was a messy process... not something anyone wants to live.

Blog and blogger on break for the month of July

Narrowboat, By RHaworth - Own work, Wikipedia

I'll be on one of these on English canals for a couple of weeks with Erudite Partner and her brother, moving it for the owner. We've seen pictures -- it looks pretty cushy. After that, several destinations in the UK.

Unless something earth shattering occurs, I'll try to stay off this blog -- but who knows? We never do know what to expect these difficult days.

Biden fights back

This is running in the battleground states. That's what they do with all that money they keep asking for. Will it help? It might. 

This is a marathon, not a sprint.