We cannot cower; Mangi does not

Too often, the best Americans -- the people who best embody the aspirations of this terrible, conflicted country -- are the relative newcomers rather than the old timers like me (a Mayflower descendant through and through.)

Adeel Mangi is a distinguished Pakistani-American New Jersey litigator, both in private practice and in pro bono civil rights cases. Joe Biden nominated him to an appellate court judgeship. At confirmation hearings, Mangi endured repeated, ignorant, and abusive interrogations from Republican senators. LawDork explains:

Mangi would have been the nation’s first Muslim American federal appeals court judge, and the attacks against him never stopped. After Republicans questioned him at his confirmation hearing largely with anti-Muslim guilt-by-association attacks, the opposition later expanded to include baseless claims of terrorism and anti-law enforcement connections. ...

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer cut a deal with the Republican senators to give up on confirming Mangi and other appellate nominees in order to advance lower federal court Biden appointees. This may have been a necessary deal -- it's hard for outsiders to know. I'm not surprised by betrayal of Mangi by Joe Manchin; he's a preening popinjay masquerading for decades as a man of the people.

But it is hard to learn that two Democratic Senators who I worked in Nevada to elect dissented from Mangi's nomination. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen choosing to torpedo Mangi is really bad. 

What follows is my speculation; it is neither kind nor generous. 

Presumably Rosen was running scared in last fall's re-election bid; her status as a visibly Jewish leader in national politics presumably made it seem simple to sign on with the reactionary strain in Jewish politics in a state with few Jews, but some loud and well-funded right wing Jewish advocates. It looked an easy cave to the MAGAs. (As it turned out, she delegitimated her opponent early on and won easily.) Cortez Masto is gunning to rise in the Dem Senate leadership; sticking with and covering for her sister Nevada Senator made for a cheap date. So Mangi becomes a scalp claimed by Republican Islamophobes. The two Senators' choices sicken me.

Mangi has written a heartfelt public letter denouncing the process he, and by extension his faith, were put through. 

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, spoke at the inauguration of a mosque in Washington, D.C. He said: “And I should like to assure you, my Islamic friends, that under the American Constitution, under American tradition, and in American hearts, this Center, this place of worship, is just as welcome as could be a similar edifice of any other religion. Indeed, America would fight with her whole strength for your right to have here your own church and worship according to your own conscience. This concept is indeed a part of America, and without that concept we would be something else than what we are.”... 

It was that vision of America that led me, 25 years ago, to make it my home. ... 

When my nomination then came before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I was prepared to answer any questions about my qualifications, philosophy, or legal issues. I received none.

Instead, I was asked questions about Israel, whether I supported Hamas, and whether I celebrated the anniversary of 9-11. Even more revealing, however, was the tone. The underlying premise appeared to be that because I am Muslim, surely I support terrorism and celebrate 9-11. When I made clear that all these claims are false — that I condemn the Hamas attacks and all forms of terrorism, and indeed that it was my city that was attacked on 9-11 — the next Republican Senators up just repeated their performative outrage. There were children in the audience. ...

... advertisements were run deeming me an antisemite, a radical, and a terrorist sympathizer. Horrifying images were published with the Hamas flag substituted for my eyes or interspersing my face with footage of the twin towers on fire. And all of this, even while major Jewish organizations across the country condemned these attacks, ranging from the National Council of Jewish Women to the Anti-Defamation League, and over a dozen more. One of the largest Jewish groups put it this way: “Adeel Mangi, was questioned aggressively on thin pretext about his views on Israel, terrorism, and antisemitism, turning these serious issues into a tool of partisan attack. … American Jewish Committee (AJC) has joined several U.S. Supreme Court briefs led by Mangi and find him to be an able jurist, a person of integrity, champion of pluralism, and adversary of discrimination against any group.”

...What can explain all of this? One commentator recounted my professional accomplishments and then observed: “But he also successfully fought efforts by two New Jersey communities to prevent the construction of mosques. He has served on the board of directors of the Muslim Bar Association and Muslims for Progressive Values. Clearly, he’s both an accomplished attorney and a proud representative of his religion. That’s what his Republican critics can’t tolerate. They will never accept someone who is so prominently associated with Islam.” 

Mangi is even less sparing of Rosen and Cortez Masto then I am. (And that's not very.)

Two allied Senators from a state far from the Third Circuit announced their opposition ostensibly based on the attacks claiming I am against law enforcement. I will not assume the worst possible motivation for their embrace of this attack. But to me that leaves two possibilities: that these Senators lack the wisdom to discern the truth, which exposes a catastrophic lack of judgment; or they used my nomination to court conservative voters in an election year, which exposes a catastrophic lack of principle. One reportedly made the decision based on fear of an attack ad—and apparently not for the first time.

He concludes:

Our country faces an incoming tsunami of bigotry, hatred, and discrimination. It targets Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Black people, the LGBTQ+ community, and many others. And it always pretends to be something other than what it is. These forces are fueled not only by their proponents, but equally by the collaboration and silence of the spineless. They can be defeated only by those who lead voters with courage, not those who sacrifice principles for votes. But courage can be found outside of politics. 

American Muslims are part of this nation’s fabric and will not cower. This campaign was intended to make it intolerable for Muslims proud of their identity to serve this nation. It will fail. Our Constitution forbids religious tests for any Office of the United States and American Muslims will cherish that fundamental American value, even if others apply it only selectively. And let me be clear: I will always be immensely proud of my faith as well as my pro bono legal work to challenge both denials of freedom of worship and the alleged killing of an incarcerated Black man. I have battled for justice, even if it meant there would be none for me.

... To return to President Eisenhower’s words, Americans must now look at the story of this nomination, and ask themselves: is this who we are now? For my children, I hope America one day lives up to President Eisenhower’s promise, even if not today. For my part, I entered this nomination process as a proud American and a proud Muslim. I exit it the same way, unbowed.

This is the spirit the country will need in the difficult times ahead.

Recycling that could become self-sustaining

It's hard to stay enthusiastic about urban recycling when you've seen urban trash haulers just dump your recycling into the same truck with the solid waste.

But industrial recycling may well be an important part of our response to climate change. Instead of proliferating waste, let's hope our eager engineers can figure out how to make money off it.

Such a thing may be underway in north western Nevada, a region fast becoming a tech-industrial hub.  

According to Bloomberg: 

In the scrublands of western Nevada, Tesla co-founder JB Straubel stood on a bluff overlooking several acres of neatly stacked packs of used-up lithium-ion batteries, out of place against the puffs of sagebrush dotting the undulating hills. As if on cue, a giant tumbleweed rolled by. It was the last Friday of March, and Straubel had just struck black gold.

Earlier that day, his battery-recycling company, Redwood Materials, flipped the switch on its first commercial-scale line producing a fine black powder essential to electric vehicle batteries. Known as cathode active material, it’s responsible for a third of the cost of a battery. Redwood plans to manufacture enough of the stuff to build more than 1.3 million EVs a year by 2028, in addition to other battery components that have never been made in the US before.

It’s a turning point for a US battery supply chain that’s currently beholden to China. ... Redwood is attempting to break that stranglehold by creating a domestic loop using recycled critical metals.

... EVs already have a much smaller environmental footprint than internal combustion cars, even in countries that still get most of their electricity from coal. While the toll of mining the raw materials for batteries is considerable, more than 95% of the key minerals can be profitably recycled.

At Redwood, nothing goes to landfill, and no water leaves the facility except the sanitary waste from sinks and toilets. There are no gas lines; everything is electric. It’s also built for scale, allowing the company to quickly break down a truckload of assorted batteries without manual sorting or tedious disassembly.

Recyclers will eventually need to match the pace of car factories. For example, a Tesla factory just 250 miles away in Fremont, California, produced 560,000 EVs last year — more than one every minute. When it’s time for those cars to be recycled, they will generate almost 10 times as much EV battery material as the entire US market processed last year. If recyclers can handle all of that, they would begin to rival traditional mining operations.

“Once we've changed over the entire vehicle fleet to electric, and all those minerals are in consumption, we’ll only have to replace a couple percent each year that’s lost in the process,” said Colin Campbell, Redwood’s chief technology officer and the former head of powertrain engineering at Tesla. “It will become obvious to everyone that it doesn't make sense to dig it out of the ground anymore.”

My emphasis. This Bloomberg article goes on to raise the considerable obstacles that battery entrepreneurs could encounter, including reaching necessary scale to supply the new industry, while China may find it in its interest to undercut the costs of their output.  

But it's happening ... and subsidized by the legislation that the Biden Administration squeezed out of Congress to underwrite sustainability. Weird that a government led by a white haired old guy is so forward looking, but there it is.

By way of Bill McKibben.

Looking toward Nevada 2024

The Biden-Harris campaign is already setting the context to once again win in Nevada. This won't be easy. In 2022, Democratic US. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto only squeaked by statewide with an 8000 vote margin. Joe Biden's win in 2020 was by less than 35,000 votes. Democratic U.S. Senator Jackie Rosen will also be on the ballot next year. 

So the Democratic contenders are getting their message out early.

It's a hard hill to climb in Nevada for Joe Biden. Though this is a state with a working class consciousness, the old white guy isn't an easy fit for this slightly iconoclastic Latinx and Western place. 

The Nevada Independent reports:

The $25 million Biden campaign ad buy in top swing states (including Nevada) strikes again, this time with another Spanish ad: La Diferencia. The 30-second spot — set to run in English, too, as well as on a Univision broadcast of the second GOP primary debate — casts Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as “the difference,” while Republicans are “working for the rich and powerful.”   

These Spanish-language ads come as Biden and Democrats nationwide look to protect margins with Latino voters, who remain a key bloc in Southwestern swing states such as Nevada and Arizona. Latino support for Democrats remained steady from 2020 to 2022, even after a concerted GOP push to court those voters. More recently, a national Univision poll released Monday still found Biden leading Trump 58 percent to 31 percent.

Michigan goes blue; Ohio stays red; Nevada splits the difference

Here's an interesting discussion of why Michigan and Ohio, states which might seem similar, have diverged politically since 2016. In that year, both voted for Donald Trump. By 2022, Michigan elected Democrats to state offices across the board, while Ohio elected Republicans to the U.S. Senate and statewide. The latter is now considered a solid "red state," while Michigan looks solidly "blue."

These are apparently demographically similar places, with only small differences:

Michigan and Ohio have similar white populations, 78% and 80%, respectively; Black populations, 14% and 12%; bachelor’s degree recipients, both 18%; people over 65, both 17%; median household incomes, both $59,000 in 2020 dollars; and workers belonging to unions, 13% and 12%.

 

The study's authors go on to discuss whether perhaps different voting laws shape different electorates. Michigan has put in place automatic voter registration through the DMV and election day registration. Ohio makes potential voters sign up a month in advance. Michigan's easier voting laws may make for increased participation.

According to the Michigan secretary of state’s official election results, there were 4.5 million total votes in the gubernatorial election, the highest office contested in 2022. Meanwhile in Ohio, the secretary of state reported 4.2 million total official votes cast for governor. ... The total number of voters in Ohio dropped by 295,466 between 2018 and 2022.

Well - maybe. But I have reservations, based having worked the election in Nevada in 2022. Under a Democratic governor and legislature, both elected in 2018, that state put in place election laws that do everything possible to make voting easy. Every Nevadan got a ballot in the mail, could mail it in or vote it in person as much as two weeks before election day, or register on election day if somehow they'd missed out on the mailing or at the DMV. 

And Nevada remained its deeply divided self in 2022, replacing its Democratic governor with a Republican, and re-electing a Democratic U.S. Senator, both by razor thin margins.

So very easy voting in Nevada (easier than in Michigan I think) wasn't enough to shape the partisan outcome.

The authors of the Michigan/Ohio comparison note one considerable discrepancy between but don't discuss it much:

Ohio voters were less likely to reside in a union household – 21% to 27% – and were much more likely to identify as Republicans, 41% to 32%.

Did the labor movement in Michigan get out the vote?

From what I saw in Nevada, it was the massive commitment of the hospitality union -- Culinary/UniteHERE -- to electing the Democrat that saved Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. Union membership in Nevada is not so different than in the other two states, between 11 and 12%. But a determined, high functioning union sector can make a difference in outcomes. And, so far, union membership does keep a lot of Nevadans identifying as Democrats. 

Perhaps unions in Ohio, despite their nominal membership, are not doing the work of communicating the advantages of Democratic governance to their people. Or maybe, their members have irrevocably soured on messages from these unions. These study authors conclude that whatever is going on, it may not be irrevocable --"... writing off Ohio as a noncompetitive state may be premature." Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown will be testing this out in 2024.

A ground level view of what really happened in the 2022 Nevada Senate election

Matt Yglesias, an often intriguing, though grumpy, Democratic DC pundit, is a fan.

One of the 2022 results that surprised me was Catherine Cortez Masto’s successful re-election in Nevada.

He cites a Data for Progress study which claims that the most effective Democratic message in the past cycle was something like this, from her campaign:

I worked hand-in-hand with law enforcement to crack down on crimes and keep our communities safe. I led the fight to combat sex trafficking, helped protect victims of sexual assault, and passed legislation to combat law enforcement suicide. I’ve worked tirelessly to get law enforcement the support and resources they need to keep our communities safe.

And he maintains this sort of thing is what made her narrow victory possible. Well maybe. Her victory was close enough that every little bit helped. But having lived inside the UniteHERE/Culinary Union campaign that helped win the election for Cortez Masto, I feel a need to report there was so much more going on here.

• Crucially, Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt put himself at odds with a crucial majority of Nevada voters when in June, he "called the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision 'a joke' and said it’s 'sad' that Nevada is not anti-abortion." Cortez Masto's ad makers never let anyone forget this. Our canvassers would report they would be having conversations at the doors on other issues and then, almost as an afterthought, would be told the voter's decision would be based on "women's rights." Nevadans overwhelmingly support reproductive choice.

• Republicans everywhere wanted to run in these midterms against a purported wave of increasing crime. In much of the country that was just a means of scaring white suburbanites about all those dangerous dark people that live in big Democratic cities. Cortez Masto came by her answer to this attack honestly: she was a former state attorney general who had had good relations with law enforcement, advertised her endorsement by the respected retiring Reno police chief, and had brought a particular focus on the sex crimes perpetrated against women from her former job. 

• Sex trafficking and sexual assault have particular weight in Nevada. The state advertises itself to tourists as a transgressive playground where anything goes, where "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."  The state boasts state-licensed brothels. This does not promote a safe or respectful environment for ordinary working women. Cortez Masto's particular record of concern for women's public safety is all the more attractive in the Nevada context.

• Many working people in Las Vegas really are experiencing a very scary crime wave. Our canvassers in Nevada's only big city complained their own neighborhoods had become frightening, violent places since the pandemic. One day when a large group of them was gathering in a public park before taking off to knock on doors, they had to scatter to safety when an unconnected gang fight led to a shoot out on the same turf. It seems likely that appropriate fear of crime worked quite well for Republicans in Clark County/Las Vegas. Historically, Democratic statewide wins have depended on running up huge margins there to cancel out the state's deep red Republican rural counties. Didn't happen in 2022; the Dem margin in Clark just about equaled the Republican margin in the rurals. This made Reno/Washoe County the arena where the Senate race was decided.

• Like everywhere in the country, inflation was on the minds of voters. Especially inflation as evidenced by gas prices. When we arrived in July, regular gas was running close to $6 a gallon. I watched hopefully as the price dropped under $5 during the summer -- and watched in horror as it climbed back up to nearly $6 again in the fall. Would the price of gas doom our efforts?

• UniteHERE/Culinary Union canvassers listened to the people we met at the doors -- and realized there was another issue that was as important to voters as gas and grocery inflation. This was the rising cost of housing. Canvassers would try to contact a voter and be met with an eviction notice. Tenants around Reno were experiencing 35 and 40 percent increases. So the union added a petition to the canvass, seeking signatures asking politicians to enhance "neighborhood stability." The petition was greeted eagerly in Washoe and in Las Vegas. People felt heard and were eager to talk about housing scarcity. We put the issue of rents on the state agenda. Our candidates, including Cortez Masto, promised to seek solutions. I think we can trust that this approach helped encourage otherwise disinterested voters to cast a ballot in November. 

• Finally -- national media didn't realize that Cortez Masto was extremely fortunate in her opponent. Perhaps because Adam Laxalt was another former state attorney general, much of the national media didn't take in that he was as much a crackpot Trumpist election denier as were so many other candidates endorsed by the 2020 sore loser. Laxalt had been Trump's 2020 Nevada campaign chairman; he led a series of baseless lawsuits challenging the presidential result and continued to tell audiences that the results were "rigged." And it's an open secret in Nevada that this "Laxalt" adopted the Laxalt name opportunistically to try to inherit some of the respect that attached to longtime Nevada U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt, despite having been born named Domenici (it's complicated). The Laxalt family is offended by this appropriation, complaining that he “leveraged and exploited the family name.” They endorsed Cortez Masto. Adam Laxalt doesn't look like "a normie Republican" to Nevadans.

I found it telling that Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark who led focus groups of potential swing voters in most all of this year's battleground states, came away from her Nevada group surprised: "they just hate Adam Laxalt." 

Her surprise reinforces my sense that national commentators never had much of a clue about the dynamics in this Nevada election. There was so much more going on than they saw.

When elections are very close -- Catherine Cortez Masto won by a margin of 8000 votes among nearly one million cast, almost all of that margin from Washoe County/Reno -- the local features of the contest mattered. By finding, persuading, and turning out people who most likely would not have voted otherwise, UniteHERE canvassers were vital to this Senate victory. 

I take a lesson from all this. I know an enormous amount about this Nevada campaign; I know enough to be unsatisfied by most reporting about it. Perhaps all the other campaigns I read about need as much more nuance as this one does in order to get a useful understanding of what happened. That feels worth remembering.

There's a ghoul on the loose in Reno

I doubt that whoever put up this Halloween decoration understood how well it went with their choice of U.S. Senate candidate. Adam Laxalt is a Big Lie Trump sycophant, eager to ban abortions nationally. Even his family urges voters to just say "no" to his ambitions.

But he's in a dead heat race with work-horse Nevada U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto. We're turning out her voters here in Reno.

Reno boomtown and battleground

The story we're meeting while canvassing the neighborhoods of Reno, Nevada, has turned into a national story. Here's the New York Times describing this fascinating place:

These are boom times in and around Reno. Warehousing and casinos have long been the city’s main businesses, and the surge in e-commerce since the start of the pandemic has companies snapping up facilities as fast as they can be built. 

Yet Reno and the surrounding area have also seen the cost of things like housing, gas and groceries rise, making daily existence in this growing metropolis increasingly difficult for many of the people who live here...  

“Now Hiring” billboards dot Reno’s interstate and back roads. A chocolate factory was willing to pay as much as $25 an hour. A sign outside a Petco warehouse says a starting salary could be as high as $22 an hour. Hidden Valley Ranch’s plant says its starting hourly wage is $21, with other benefits including a 401(k), paid time off, and health care with dental and vision. Many retailers like Walmart are also trying to attract seasonal workers.

And yet for all the nominally "high" wages, people in Reno find that this booming economy doesn't give them enough to live on and they balance on edge, stressed and precarious.

So in this environment, Democratic U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto is trying to win re-election -- and the contest is attracting national focus as the result might decide which party will control the Senate. Her opponent, Adam Laxalt, is something of a Nevada perennial candidate and a Trumpish Big Lie proponent.

More than any Senate candidate, Cortez Masto has made the Big Lie and Jan. 6 central to her campaign, running harrowing footage of the violence in TV ads and touting the support of law enforcement officials who’ve endorsed her campaign, in part because of her opponent’s recklessness. 

“Laxalt could not bring himself to show an ounce of remorse for his actions,” Cortez Masto said at an appearance last week with peace officers in Las Vegas. “It is unforgivable, and Nevada will not forget his actions.” 

... “He should know better,” Cortez Masto said in an interview Wednesday, her eyes narrowing as she discussed her opponent after a campaign stop at a Mexican restaurant in eastern Las Vegas. “But he doesn’t. And he’s leaning into this for a political extreme agenda.”

Laxalt's own relatives repudiate him as a phony, an opportunist, and an extremist.

But Cortez Masto could lose to this guy. The polls point to a cliffhanger.

A CNN/SSRS poll conducted 9/26 to 10/2 in Nevada gave Catherine Cortez Masto a +3 advantage among registered voters and -2 among likely voters.

That's why members of the hospitality union, UniteHERE, and dozens of volunteers are working, day in and day out, knocking on doors, explaining the stakes for women and for all working people. Join us.

A danger to democracy in Nevada

The Republican MAGA man running for Secretary of State here is a fanatic extremist. Will voters put him in office without really knowing what he's about because he comes with an R after his name?

His Democratic opponent, Cisco Aguilar, just wants to run this usually obscure office which manages state elections professionally and fairly. He would be following in the path of the current Secretary of State who is an honest, competent Republican -- not a Big Lie-affirming crank like Marchant. 

Says Aguilar: 

Growing up, my parents not only taught me that life is most meaningful when in service of others, they lived it. My grandfather and father were lifelong members of labor unions and they instilled the honor of a good day’s work, the importance of protecting working families, and standing up for their right to have a voice in democracy. I have made it my mission to be in service to the community I call home by being a fierce advocate for educational opportunities for all of Nevada’s children and an advocate for innovative public private partnership programs in our most vulnerable neighborhoods.  I’m running to be Nevada’s next Secretary of State because we must recognize that our government must work for all Nevadans.

More than ever, we need to defend every eligible American’s right to vote, remove barriers to voter participation, and make our elections as transparent as possible to maintain the public trust. But, there are individuals and groups who are determined to take us backwards making it harder to vote, creating barriers to register, and subverting public confidence in our elections. I am committed to building on the work that many have started in a bi-partisan way, including modernizing, safeguarding and strengthening our democracy, our elections process and the voting rights of every Nevadan.

Nevada has fair election laws and hardworking, professional election administrators. Cisco Aguilar is trying to keep it that way.

No hiding this ...

Down the road from Reno, the Orange Cry Baby held one of his rallies the other day. 

Republican US Senator Tommy Tuberville, of Auburn U. college football fame, came along for the festivities. Tuberville, one of the Senate's dumbest bulbs, shouted the quiet part out loud. By way of Judd Legum: 

On Saturday, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) appeared at a rally in Minden, Nevada, to support the Republican nominee for Senate, Adam Laxit. During his speech at the event, which also featured Donald Trump, Tuberville unleashed a racist diatribe against Black Americans. Tuberville said that reparations, which would provide benefits to Black descendants of slaves, would only benefit criminals. 

Some people say, well, [Democrats are] soft on crime. No, they’re not soft on crime. They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that! Bullshit!

The crowd, full of people wearing Trump hats and other MAGA paraphernalia, responded by erupting in applause.

I raise this racist morsel up because, at the UniteHERE Reno campaign, something like half our folks knocking doors are Black workers - cooks and housekeepers - from the east coast, come to help out among the cowboys and tech bros of the high desert. They encounter this racism every day. And they just keep searching out our voters. I am in awe. 

You can join us for a weekend or a week.

Nevada crosscurrents

In 2021, in the Journal of Democracy, Rachel Kleinfeld published a solid survey of the social science research into rising U.S. rightwing political violence. Much of it restates the obvious in academese -- Republicans are a highly homogenous white bunch whose grievances, mostly imaginary, are manipulable by power-seeking pols like Donald Trump and his tribe of imitators.

But I found several of her concrete descriptive observations worth highlighting. 

Although incidents from the left are on the rise, political violence still comes overwhelmingly from the right, whether one looks at the Global Terrorism Database, FBI statistics, or other government or independent counts. Yet people committing far-right violence—particularly planned violence rather than spontaneous hate crimes—are older and more established than typical terrorists and violent criminals. They often hold jobs, are married, and have children. Those who attend church or belong to community groups are more likely to hold violent, conspiratorial beliefs. These are not isolated “lone wolves”; they are part of a broad community that echoes their ideas.

The MAGA crowd are emphatically not the dispossessed.

... the people most likely to support political violence were both Democrats and Republicans who espoused hostility toward women. A sense of racial threat may be priming more conservatives to express greater resentment in ways that normalize violence and create a more permissive atmosphere, while men in both parties who feel particularly aggrieved toward women may be most willing to act on those feelings.

So often, misogyny unleashes violent behavior that might not have been actively expressed if underlying hatred and fear of women wasn't present.

The bedrock idea uniting right-wing communities who condone violence is that white Christian men in the United States are under cultural and demographic threat and require defending—and that it is the Republican Party and Donald Trump, in particular, who will safeguard their way of life. This pattern is similar to that of political violence in the nineteenth-century United States, where partisan identity was conflated with race, ethnicity, religion, and immigration status; many U.S.-born citizens felt they were losing cultural power and status to other social groups; and the violence was committed not by a few deviant outliers, but by many otherwise ordinary citizens engaged in normal civic life.

They think a cultural status that was their birthright has been stolen from them; no wonder they are suckers for a fraudulent claim of a stolen election by a sociopathic politician.

These angry folks exist in plenty here in northern Nevada -- as do plenty of other Nevadans intent on building a  pluralistic, somewhat free and easy, but hard working and prosperous, community. The clash between these currents are what this election is all about. Ah ... democracy.

US Senator Catherine Cortez Masto

This is the woman we are working to keep in the United States Senate.

She's well spoken and clear-eyed.

Our canvass team finds Nevadans very ready to vote to keep free access to all reproductive health care.

This is what we are up against in Nevada

Not surprisingly, with this guy as the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, volunteers are beginning to trickle in from all over to help keep Nevada Democratic.

You can join us -- just use this link.

Observations from Nevada that expand on the media picture

The Los Angeles Times highlights the importance of Latino voters in the impending midterm election.

Latino voters strongly support Democrats’ policy priorities: letting Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices (91%), canceling student debt (74%) and protecting abortion rights (77%), according to a weekly tracking poll by the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. But Biden’s approval rating with Latinos is just 58%...

It's good to see the paper trying to dig into the issues that seem to be depressing Latino enthusiasm for Democrats, but as a person working in a campaign many of whose primary target voters are working class Latinos, I have some observations.

Most importantly, this was written as if all "Latino" voters are similar to each other. Nonsense -- people broadly labelled "Latinos" may have many common concerns. But they also have particular concerns that vary widely based on many variables including class status, language preferences, gender, immigration status, U.S. region, countries of family origin, etc. This is a wildly diverse population and can't be lumped together. I've pulled out below some themes touched upon by the LA Times.

• Representation
This writer found many prominent spokespersons for the idea that the Biden administration had appointed too few Latinos.

Although Biden appointed a historic four Latinos to his Cabinet, there have been no Latinos appointed as assistant attorneys general at the Justice Department, no Latinos named to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that addresses workplace discrimination, and no Latino leadership at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 

“Appointments send a message,” said [Thomas] Saenz of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a former counsel to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “This goes far beyond the notion of progress. We have actually seen some regression in comparison to the Obama administration.”

The Biden administration naturally has a Latina White House aide who says this ain't so. It's hard for me not to think that perhaps these advocates were the easiest quotes for a reporter to get -- a commentary on the sources readily available to the LA Times.

• Communication about Kitchen Table Issues
Another theme in the article is that Latinos are being hit particularly hard by the post-pandemic disruptions in our economy.

Sending working families $1,400 pandemic relief checks, canceling as much as $20,000 of student loan debt and enacting the first gun safety reforms in 30 years after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, this year are “overwhelming policy successes,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic consultant and advisor on Latino outreach to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “The problem is the Latino voters don’t know about it. You don’t see ads talking about the litany of successes this White House has delivered for the Latino community.” 

... “One of the first things that comes out of people’s mouths when I talk to them in the district is gas prices,” said Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Pacoima). “If gas prices weren’t where they were, then people would be talking more about what we have done.” In those conversations, Cárdenas said he looks to focus constituents on all the things Democrats have done to help working families, as well as last year’s bipartisan infrastructure overhaul. “Biden has a lot to brag about. But something people don’t realize is that over 50% of construction workers are Latinos,” he said. “That infrastructure bill is a tremendous boost to millions of Latino households.”

This agrees profoundly with our experience here in Reno, Nevada, where the hospitality workers' union, UniteHERE/Culinary, is campaigning to activate working class voters, many Latino. Even though there are many more jobs advertised here than workers to fill them, people are weighed down by a rising cost of living, particularly the cost of rental housing. And they have very little idea that their Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak and their Latina U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto have been working to ease their economic burdens. We enjoy talking with the people we meet about these efforts. Join us on the campaign and see for yourselves.

• Abortion/Women's Rights
The number two issue we hear from voters is fear that abortion rights will be restricted or women's rights undercut by Republicans.

In last week’s National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials tracking poll, abortion rights were a top-three issue for 28% of respondents — a huge jump from 2018, when only 4% listed it as such.

These people have reason to worry; both of our Republican opponents have pandered to extreme anti-abortiionists, though they are now trying to walk this back. Sisolak and Cortez Masto won't let them.

• Immigration
The LA Times makes the assumption that immigration injustices are high among Latino priorities. This is not what we are hearing at the doors. I almost think there's stereotyping going on, though in other states the miseries of a broken immigration system may be central concerns. Those issues don't seem top of mind among voters here. This may not be so true in border states, but the folks here who are immigration obsessives seem to be white Republicans.

The University of Nevada Reno is working to be an officially designated Hispanic Serving Institution

Here in the Southwest (and I'd include southern California in this) it's almost an anachronism to think of "Latinos" as a separate constituency group. Sure, people have their own history and traditions which they honor, but they are also building, alongside other ethnicities, an inclusive, and new, Southwestern American society. For a sensitive discussion of this development on the occasion of the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, see this article in the Nevada Independent.

When Latinos complain that no one talked with them, as they often do, they are not alone. National Democrats are too often behind the curve on the novel adaptation of U.S. culture being birthed throughout the Southwest.

If enough of us vote, it doesn't have to be this bad

Robert Kagan is one of those Washington think-tankers who provided the intellectual impetus for our misbegotten adventures in regime change after 9/11 in societies of which we were manifestly ignorant. Not my kind of guy. He left the Republicans over the fascistic energies released by Donald Trump, so he's made himself part of the big resistance tent we all need if U.S. democracy is to survive.

Recently, in an interview with Johns Hopkins University political scientist Yascha Mounk, Kagan offered a dire, but imaginable, vision of where the Republican assault on majority rule might lead the country. I found Kagan's imaginings thought provoking because they go beyond the necessary description of our Constitutional dysfunction to what happens if ...?

... it's really up to people. It's up to individuals all the way up, down, and across society, from the president, the vice president, the Supreme Court, the members of Congress, down to volunteer election officials (those are the people who saved us, in a way, in 2020). Unfortunately, I don't know that there is a legal or constitutional fix to what ails us.

What I am most worried about is moving into a period where, let's say two or three states which hold the balance in the Electoral College are completely contested. There is every prospect of mass protests from both sides. People are increasingly tending to come to those protests heavily armed. We could be in a situation in 2024 where there is no obvious way out, and then we'll be left with President Biden, or whoever is in charge at that time, having to make what amounts to extra-constitutional decisions in order to save our democracy, because there is no constitutional remedy.

.. If you're a president in a situation where a couple of states are hopelessly deadlocked because you've got mobs in the street, how do you get out of that situation? At what point are you able to say, “No, I won,” or “they won,” and that's the end of it? Is he going to call out the National Guard? Is he going to call up the Army? Once you have gotten to the point where the established means of choosing a president and all that comes with that have been cast to the winds, you really are in an extra-constitutional situation. 

That just means that whatever a president does in that situation, the other side will accuse them of being a tyrant, just the way Lincoln was accused of being a tyrant—to some extent, justifiably so. I don't want Donald Trump to be president after 2024 because I think he will then dismantle American democracy. Because he doesn't have any belief in American democracy. But even before you would get to Trump being in office, you would be in this crisis where we do not have a legitimate president. That's what I'm worried about.

... There's no question that there are conditions in the United States in terms of the way people feel about things, the way people behave, what they value and what they don't—that is a problem that exists apart from Donald Trump. And the question then is, has it always existed? Is there something new about what we're seeing today? I think there's a reasonable case to be made. But racism is certainly not new in America. White anxiety is not new. We never think about this, but the 1920s were a very similar period. What you had then was intense xenophobia, intense anti-immigration, anti-science in the Scopes Trial, the rise of the second Klan—these tendencies have, I think, always existed and are sort of inherent to the American experience, unfortunately. The 1930s were a time that was ripe for a Donald Trump, and the Donald Trumps were out there in Father Coughlin and Huey Long.

... as to these other problems that exist independently of Trump, we do need to work on them, and we need to fight that battle. And that battle now, as we can see, needs to be fought again, at every level of society. You know, you have to fight it at the school board and in the local community center. We are in one of those moments where we can't just wait for our elected officials to solve everything for us. 

But to repeat myself for the umpteenth time, I do think that Trump is special. And so I do think if we can get past Trump, yes, there’s a chance that this group, which has always been around, will be out there simmering, bubbling, and occasionally giving rise to some politician’s trajectory, but it won’t be the kind of comprehensive threat that Trump has turned into.

 The sign above was captured by a doorknocker in Reno. Passions are high out there.

Republican extremism is not popular

This really is becoming a midterm election about who controls child bearing -- women and families or the state. And more and more us don't think it should be up to Republican lawmakers and courts. 

Kevin Drum presented this chart summarizing Wall Street Journal polling:

A radical Supreme Court has rubbed the American majority the wrong way.

Some internal findings from the polling:

• 62% opposed an abortion ban at 6 weeks of pregnancy that only included an exception for the health of the mother
  
• 57% opposed a ban at 15 weeks with an exception only for the health of the mother
• 77% opposed banning women who live in states where abortion is illegal from traveling to other states to get an abortion.
• 81% were against banning all abortions.

Here in Nevada, the Republican seeking to replace U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has run as a hardline anti-abortion activist. 

We're working night and day to be sure this fanatic extremist doesn't win in November.

Remember the newcomers ...

Jay Caspian Kang, a very thoughtful New York Times opinion writer, included the following paragraphs in an announcement that he is ending his subscriber-only newsletter. It brought me up short; he catches something I knew, but seldom see articulated in political commentary.

Almost all of today’s politics, whether the actual policies enacted by local, state and federal government or the intensely polarized culture wars, come out of four events. The first three — the 2008 financial crash, the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the near-decade-long Black Lives Matter movement, which culminated in the mass George Floyd protests in 2020 — shouldn’t be particularly controversial or novel. 

But the fourth — the 1965 Immigration Act — being a bit older and obscure, does not get discussed all that much outside of xenophobic right-wing media figures like Tucker Carlson, who called it “the worst attack on our democracy in 160 years.” Carlson’s fixation on this moment is not unwarranted: The multiethnic country we live in today would not be possible without the 1965 Immigration Act, which opened up the country to millions of people from all over the world, including my parents, who moved to the United States in the late 1970s.

My emphasis. Being a Californian whose life in politics has been deeply enmeshed in the stresses and strains of demographic transition, I know this is true in my bones. But Kang is right -- for comfortable-class white people, especially on the East Coast which still sets the media narrative, the breadth and implications of our multiethnic evolution seems something of a sideshow. I'm with Kang. How we shape the exciting but difficult community we have made is the central arena of struggle.

Which brings me to Joe Biden's pro-democracy barn burner of a speech yesterday at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The President came out swinging and I'm delighted with nuggets such as these, cribbed from Heather Cox Richardson's summary.

"Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic."


"There’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country."
 

"MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people. They refuse to accept the results of a free election, and they’re working right now as I speak in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself."
 

"MAGA forces...promote authoritarian leaders, and they fan the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country."

You go, Joe! This country needs a brave leader speaking harsh truths. We may very well need a Lincoln whose political savvy and vision combined to hold a divided country together in another moment of crisis. At terrible cost.

Yet I also understand why, in some parts of this country, a speech like Biden's doesn't break through. I fear he's not speaking some of the aspirational vision that is most important to the new citizens whose lives are a consequence of the 1965 Immigration Act.

Here's how I attempted to explain this at Dan Pfeiffer's Message Box this morning:

Watching this from Nevada -- I thought this a terrific speech. He said what needed to be said. 

And, working in a massive voter turnout out operation in Nevada, I'm aware he's largely inaudible here. It's not just the media; it's cultural. (Addendum: the Republican challenger to Nevada's Democratic governor thinks the way to win is to put up pictures of Gov. Sisolak with Biden.)  

Biden simply doesn't read as a leader in this western, heavily Latino, state. He doesn't resonate culturally in the West -- and he probably doesn't understand the West. The tropes he appeals to are foreign to this state. Not that folks don't want democracy and honest government, but the messages need to be a little different. On the coast -- CA, OR, WA -- this doesn't matter as Democratic-led government has, at present, established itself as a "good thing." But the Southwest is different territory, needing to build new visions of freedom. 

We're a sprawling country. But at least Joe believes in us.

Independence Hall and the promise of the rule of law aren't enough. People desperately want to be told that their government respects them and that it honors the sacrifices they are willing to live for their children. They want to believe in the fairness of the system -- and too often they can't. Yes, they want to believe no one is going to take away their votes, but they want to hear other themes even more.

And they don't want anyone interfering with their bodies or their families. A polling insight that I keep returning to:

About 81% of Latino voters in Nevada believe abortion should remain legal, no matter what their own personal beliefs on abortion are.

A warning of civil violence

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld, a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has described a pattern of developing civil violence that should worry us all. She contends that in societies where political terrorism takes root, there's a pattern.

Violent groups that get involved in politics in other countries follow a common path ... 

At first, politicians recruit experts in violence and intimidation to use those tools as a campaign tactic.  

Later, those violent leaders run for office or take political roles directly, cutting out the political middleman. Usually, what they want is power and impunity, so that they can make money from more lucrative criminal activities, though sometimes they simply want power for its own sake.  

To understand where this can lead: 11 of India’s current national legislators face open cases for murder, 30 have attempted murder charges and 10 serving legislators have been convicted of such serious crimes – a doubling from ten years ago.

In India, with its long history of violent religious sectarian violence, this may not seem so surprising -- though sadly, India once proclaimed itself the world's largest democracy before the current Hindu nationalist government came to power.

In the U.S., we're seeing all too much of Kleinfeld's pattern. In Pennsylvania, the Republican candidate for governor paid for buses to Washington for supporters of Donald Trump's January 6 attempted coup. Doug Mastriano has been subpoenaed to testify about what he did that day.

Here in Nevada, Republican candidates for both U.S. Senate and state governor are adherents to the Big Lie. The GOP candidate for secretary of state (the official who runs elections) insists the vote in 2020 was rigged and that he wouldn't hesitate to overturn a majority vote of Nevadans if he were in office.

Kleinfeld has taken note of ominous developments in the state where we're working on the midterms:

In Nevada, it appears more clear that the Proud Boys are still at the first stage, being recruited by unscrupulous political actors who are using their violence to amass more power for themselves. ... Why would a faction of Republicans still in power or running for office at the federal, state, and local level make common cause with violent criminals? Because violence and intimidation are already bolstering their power. ...

We sometimes look away, but violence from the right has been escalating ever since Barack Obama broke the rule that a Black man could not be elected President.

... Americans may feel that these incidents of political violence are “high politics” that they can avoid if they steer clear of the political arena. That feeling is widespread in countries I have studied where political violence grows to dangerous levels. It Is always a false hope.  

In the United States, it is already far more dangerous to exercise freedom of speech than in the recent past. Driving cars into civilians used to be a tactic favored by overseas terrorists. It had been recorded just twice in the United States before James Alex Fields Jr. murdered Heather Heyer by driving into a crowd of counter-protestors at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. Yet from George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020 through September 30, 2021, at least 139 drivers drove their cars into protests across America, injuring 100 – sometimes severely – and killing four. ... 

... Violence begets violence – once its use mainstreams, moderates who espouse non-violence appear anemic and unable to offer protection to their side. The middle weakens, while violence eventually takes on a rhythm of reprisal far removed from the original causes. ... Even if Trump passes from the scene, the embrace of violence and intimidation as a political tactic by a faction of the GOP will cause violence of all types to rise – against all Americans.

No one is exempt. And our civil society could become a nightmare.

Politics MAGA-Nevada style

You can't drive around Reno without seeing Joey Gilbert's billboards. He's the pugilistic lawyer who wants your business.

 

The guy is an evangelist for Trump's Big Lie and the generally violent id of the GOP.  Gilbert decided he should run for governor in the Republican primary.

Joey Gilbert lost his primary in June. By a lot. So he announced the election must have been fraudulent. And started his legal wheels whirling.

LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — Reno attorney Joey Gilbert has filed a lawsuit over his defeat in the Nevada GOP gubernatorial primary. 

... "It's simple; we prove with mathematical certainty Joey Gilbert is the winner of the primary gubernatorial race and that he had over 55,000 votes taken from him," [conservative blogger and activist Robert] Beadles wrote. 

... Gilbert finished second to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo in last month's primary race. Lombardo had more than 87,000 tallies, about 38% of the vote in the GOP contest, while Gilbert finished about 26,000 votes behind with 27% of the ballots. 

Gilbert previously paid for a recount in all 17 Nevada counties. That effort ultimately changed the margin of the contest by one ballot in Clark County, as Lombardo lost eight votes while Gilbert lost seven.

Gilbert's crusade to overturn the primary infected the Washoe County (Reno) Republican Party. The Reno Gazette Journal got hold of a tape of a leadership meeting:

Carole Fineberg, party secretary, pleaded with [party chair Bruce] Parks on the recording to find someone to talk to Gilbert and ["election Integrity" committee chairman Robert] Beadles: “Ask them, ‘Please don’t tear down the party.’” 

“We’re being demolished, guys,” added [treasurer Sandra] Linares. 

Parks responded, “The one thing I'm not going to do is tell my election integrity committee chair to stop. … I want him to fuel up his flamethrower and burn this son of a bitch to the ground if he has to.” 

“And whoever he takes with it?” Linares asked. 

“Damn straight,” Parks said.

A few days ago, Gilbert's lawsuit to overthrow the primary was thrown out of court.

A Carson City judge has blocked Reno attorney and former Republican gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert’s effort to re-do the 2022 primary election, finding that “no competent evidence” was presented that would warrant the extraordinary changes Gilbert sought. 

District Court Judge James Wilson issued the ruling for summary judgment in favor of Clark County sheriff and Republican gubernatorial nominee Joe Lombardo from the bench on Wednesday, blocking the election contest from proceeding further.  

Gilbert’s election contest, filed after a statewide recount on July 15, heavily relied on testimony from Edward Solomon, identified by the suit as an “expert mathematician,” who has alleged since the 2020 election that “algorithms” have been responsible for switching votes in multiple states. 

Wilson called the Solomon report “hearsay, first of all,” and said there was no showing that the information provided by “the admitted non-expert Mr. Solomon … is the product of a reliable methodology.”

Our campaign is working to defeat the Republican who did win the primary -- and to re-elect Governor Steve Sisolak who has been a good governor for workers. Sisolak supported a measure which gave precedence in rehiring to workers laid off during the pandemic. That's particularly important in a state so dependent on casinos and hospitality to tourists. He has supported extension of state health care access and raising the minimum wage. 

Despite the national bad mood, we are proving that we can help voters remember that Sisolak is on their side.

What unifies Americans: Free Brittney!

I was in a laundromat in Reno the other day. The place is a little seedy; the neighborhood is solid working class, but in a slightly decayed sort of way. Mostly white, as far as I could tell. Women were diligently washing and drying mountains of laundry. The place seemed a sort of community gathering center. Retired white men clustered in the corner, talking animatedly.

"It's a terrible thing, what they are doing! They are locking her up for nine years; she didn't do anything. ... She was just trying to do what she does for a living ... we should get her free ..."

I realized they were talking about Russia's imprisonment of Britteny Griner, the WNBA star, tatooed, dreadlocked, Black, married lesbian beauty. 

I could have taken them for likely Trump voters -- in this knife-edge state, there's a good chance I might be right. But they're behind "that gal."

• • •

Tom Nichols, Atlantic writer, puts Brittney Griner's situation into the international context:

Griner was arrested just days before the invasion of Ukraine, which is to say that she was grabbed after Putin and his circle had almost certainly made the decision to go to war. She was perfect for the part that the Russians wanted her to play as a possible bargaining chip. She is a prominent American, but not too prominent. She is gay, Black, and covered in tattoos, the kind of defendant for whom the average Russian will have no sympathy. Detaining her for a minor drug charge must have been an easy call for the Russian intelligence services.

Better yet for the Kremlin, the American determination to get her back home serves a Russian-propaganda purpose. Russia does not value all its citizens equally; some Russians matter and others vanish without trace. The efforts to spring Griner, however, almost certainly feed into a Russian narrative that America, too, does not care about all of its citizens equally and that we value racial or sexual minorities disproportionately—exactly the case that anti-Western hysterics like Putin have been making for years. ...

Unionized sports leaders are keeping keeping the heat on the Biden administration to get her out of there. Sign on with them at Free Brittney!

Friday cat blogging

Las Vegas, where I've been being trained for the last couple of days, is too darn hot (112° F) to be out midday -- though our election canvassers will be. They are brave and determined.

But as dusk fell, this beauty stretched out on a tiny patch of green stuff ...