Beyond the festivities, the burden and the inspiration

David Rothkopf (@djrothkopf) offers an Independence Day twitter thread for these "times that try our souls." He's not exactly Tom Paine but his response to the Trump presidency was to write a book he called Traitor and to found the Deep State Radio Network. I've shortened the thread, edited slightly, and will chime in using italics. Rothkopf is indented here.

On this July 4, I think of all the progress the US has made & the struggles we have endured & am convinced that ultimately those who seek to undo that progress & steal that democracy for which we struggled will be defeated.

If I were writing this, I'd go a little lighter on the "progress" and a little heavier on the "struggles." He's just enough younger than I am so that our country's Vietnam aggression was childhood background noise, not the morally indefensible crime it seemed to a very slightly older cohort. Our young men were sent to suffer the moral injury of committing crimes against the Vietnamese. For nothing. Younger people have their own points of disillusionment with US wars and other crimes.

[Winning for democracy] is going to take a long time. Our system will be tested & weakened before it can be strengthened again. Indeed, we will be reminded in the years and perhaps decades ahead that the struggle for freedom is never over, that current generations will have to do their part. 

This holiday is not a time simply to look back at the accomplishments but to recognize that we are in one of the great struggles in our history

I could not agree more. I'm reading these days about the early months of the Abraham Lincoln's 1860 administration when it was not at all clear that the Union could be preserved and the rebellion of the enslaving states turned back. Preserving the country was not at all foreordained then. Or now.

One of our two major political parties, the GOP, seeks to turn back the clock & strip away essential rights we thought had been won. They are actively and, thus far successfully, trying to turn America--once again--into a minority rule nation. There is every reason to believe that their success will continue in the years immediately ahead.  

The Supreme Court majority are now extremist political agents. They are likely to continue to curtail voting rights and give unfair electoral advantages to their allies.  

To the extent Republicans in Congress regain power, they will do the same--attacking core rights of all but those of the white, rich, Christian, male elites they serve. 

Not all GOPers are elites. Many are just people who have been scared into identifying their safety and interests with those of  white, rich, Christian men. That includes some women.

They will continue to harness the power of biased, unprincipled, media outlets to inflame the grievances of a base they claim to serve--but who are actually among those they exploit most egregiously.  

They will win more elections, take more court seats, further enshrine their radical views into law. As long as Democrats seek to compromise with them, to treat them as though we were engaged in the politics of decades past, to negotiate with ourselves, to seek to "reach out" to those who refuse to hear, we will lose ground. 

What makes this struggle so difficult is that it has been engineered for decades by the opponents of democracy within our own country to look as though it were not a struggle at all, to look as though grave defeats were actually "our system at work." 

Baloney!

My optimism is based on the fact that those who believe in democracy, who reject the views of the radical right (which, we must be honest, is today virtually the entire Republican Party), are actually in the majority. Indeed, it is not even close. We are two-thirds of America.

This is true. Issue polling bears Rothkopf out. The struggle is to make our majority forces effectual and powerful. That's always the democratic (small "d") project.

Demographic change is also on our side. The white supremacist impulse of the right is a manifestation of their awareness a more diverse future is coming.  

I also believe that next generation leaders are emerging who will gradually gain more power. These leaders understand the urgency and gravity of the threat we face, that we are in fact at one of those turning points that will define what kind of nation we have... and they understand we cannot take past promises and guarantees for granted.

The sooner this new generation assumes the lead in this fight, the sooner rising generations of voters back them and turn out, the sooner the tide can be reversed. That is not to say older voices must be silenced, but those inclined to compromise and capitulate must be ignored. 

Throughout our history, strength in the face of grave threats, a refusal to meet the enemies of our democracy halfway, has guided our greatest victories, the ones we typically celebrate on Independence Day. 

We need to keep that resolve and spirit in mind as we enter the next phase of this struggle. And make no mistake, while the enemies of democracy have co-opted our system to advance their interests, they have also shown they would go farther, embrace violence, steal, cheat. ... 

Failing to hold them accountable for their crimes would be a defeat. Failing to turn out to deny them majorities in our Congress would be a defeat. Failing to call out their lies each and every time they advance them would be a defeat.

Failing to use every tool at our disposal to undo the damage they have done, reverse the unfair advantages they have given themselves, would be a defeat. And each of these defeats must be seen as every bit as resonant as those we once thought confined to battlefields. ... 

But ours cannot be a contest on a battlefield. The best of us knew that. Martin Luther King knew that. Lesbian feminist activist Barbara Deming knew that, teaching that nonviolent power can win, but only if we understand that our people may have to take most of the casualties. A hard teaching, but one that seems true.

But I have hope this July 4th, that thanks to the over-reach of our enemies and the resolve of many to call out and make clear their crimes, that we are starting to see the dangers we face for what they are.  

[S]uch an awakening along with the trends on our side will ultimately bring yet another set of victories that restore our values and our commitment to progress, to the great (if never fulfilled) aspirations that are America's greatest strength. 

I am not over-confident and none of us should be. But there are reasons to be hopefully, not the least of which is the essential spirit of the American people and the fact that we have not lost such battles before.

I agree with this framing. That's why we're going to Nevada to fight an election against Republicans alongside unionized workers. The particular NV Republicans we need to turn back are pretty dangerous specimens. This sort of campaign is not everything, but in this moment, it is one thing. 

A little more Tom Paine seems appropriate to the day: "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered ... "

A campaign operative's confession and cri de coeur

Tim Miller's Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell might not be to everyone's taste, but it sure was to mine. Miller made a career as a minor Republican campaign operative and media spinner over a couple of decades -- but knew in his gut that he couldn't stomach Donald Trump and bailed rather than work for the Orange God King. He now is a charming, queer fixture of the Never-Trump Bulwark (also not everyone's cup of tea).

Here's how Miller describes his new book:

Why We Did It is a book about the people who submitted to every whim of a comically unfit and detestable man who crapped all over them and took over the party they had given their life to. It’s about the army of consultants, politicians, and media figures who stood back and stood by as everything they ever fought for was degraded and devalued. The people who privately admitted they recognized all the risks but still climbed aboard for a ride on the SS Trump Hellship that they knew would assuredly sink. ... These people are not all barbarians or megalomaniacs. They are flawed men and women with shadow wants and desires. It’s just that in this case those desires allowed them to accept an unusual evil.

Being of the "what the hell is wrong with these people?" school myself, I wanted to know how Miller understood them. The book rewards with a history of how the Trump cult became ascendent within the Republican Party and with a taxonomy of its GOP enablers.

On the former point, Miller's answer is scary and convincing: the Republican Party has become what its most loyal constituency -- aggrieved old white men -- always wanted.

He got a glimpse while working on John McCain's campaign in Iowa in 2008. The candidate believed in honest, decent, if limited, public policies to enhance the lives all citizens. That's not what Miller encountered doing advance work:

A part of me realized that the party I had started volunteering for as an early pubescent teen was slipping away from me and the trajectory we were on was a dark one. The Republican voters I saw in Counciltucky [he didn't like Council Bluffs] weren’t looking for straight talk or paeans to national purpose. What they really wanted was to stick it in the other’s eye and be comforted by convenient lies. They just needed a leader shameless enough to give it to them.

As was likely the case for many confused Republican operatives, it was that anarcho-fascist Steve Bannon who offered insight into where the druthers of the GOP voters could be found:

“Centering the commenters” meant elevating the issues that most motivated core readers. Bannon would talk about the “hobbits” and “deplorables” who read Breitbart and how they powered the campaigns of the site’s favored anti-establishment candidates.  ... 

The result of this consistent elevation of and advocacy for fringe views was that it forced the political campaigns to respond to the things that highly engaged voters cared about. In theory, this is a good thing. In practice, it led to madness. People care about a lot of crazy shit to begin with, and when they are being goaded and inflamed by a [right-wing] propaganda machine it leads to fresh concerns that resonate emotionally, while being quite far afield from their daily lives.

Less inflammatory, more conventional Republicans didn't know what hit them when Donald Trump turned up, tickling the ids of GOP base voters.

It was the commenters, the hobbits, who had taken charge. And they were the ones dragging us along, no matter how we assured ourselves that we were in control.

Miller goes on to describe the flailing of his peer Republican campaign operatives and policy nerds when the party they thought they worked for vaporized and then was transformed after Trump's flukey 2016 election victory. He provides a taxonomy of enablers he names Messiahs and Junior Messiahs, Demonizers, LOL Nothing Matters, Republicans Tribalist Trolls, Strivers, Little Mixes, Peter Principle Disprovers, Nerd Revengers, The Inert Team Players, The Compartmentalizers, and Cartel Cashers.

The distinctions he draws between these groups are clearly of some importance to Miller, but I found these vignettes somewhat boring. These Republicans found lots of ways to be assholes, but I just don't care. Obviously, something (and it was more than a paycheck) was missing in these people. Here are some of Miller's conclusions:

• For many people in Washington, their party is more a part of their identity than their ethnicity, religion, or personal history. It’s how they see themselves and how everyone in their social network defines them. Shedding an ingrained identity that others use to define you takes courage, even if that identity is toxic and self-destructive. All of this makes the bar for removing “Republican operative” from a person’s identity pretty hard. 

• ... my friends who stuck around the GOP had a visceral loathing that I’m not sure I realized was there even when I was part of it. When we were sparring with our Democratic counterparts, some of us were kind of faking it, going along with the kayfabe. While the rest of them were employing faux outrage and gamesmanship as well, it turns out that underneath the performance was a much more deep-seated desire to see the other side punished. To watch them get owned. Their grievances were based in part in ideology, but more often it seemed like simple interpersonal annoyance and privilege. 

• They live in liberal bubbles and find their neighbors’ excesses grating. They are sick of being told what they should and shouldn’t say or do. They are embittered that the media is always being unfair to them. They are tired of diversity requirements that mean they lose out on jobs to “people of color.” They blanche at the DEI packets being handed out at their kids’ schools. ... 

•... All of that annoyance and envy bottles up until it boils over. ... They all wanted to cut the left down a peg. Put a cap on the diversifying cultural elite who were flourishing at what they perceived was their expense. Trump was the vehicle for doing it.

All that seems an inadequate excuse for selfishly overthrowing a 230-year-old evolving democracy -- but hey, I've never been a Republican.

Why did the individual named Tim Miller bounce out -- become a RINO -- and join active resistance to Trumpism? It's got to have mattered that he's gay and had already chosen to affirm his orientation while still on the GOP team.

Coming out was the best decision I ever made, by a landslide. If you happen to be reading this and are still on the fence, I’m telling you, you should do it. It improved my life in myriad ways, big and small. It widened the aperture through which I viewed the world and expanded my capacity for empathy. It saved me. ... 

... coming out still required me to unravel a mindfuck that was a quarter century in the making. The closet is omnipresent and omnipotent. It engulfs you. It makes everything you do a lie.

Before and for quite awhile after he came out, he lived inside the cognitive dissonance of  compartmentalization: diving into his gay "personal" life while he "contorted himself into defending homophobes."  He could sustain the dissonance for awhile; and then he could no longer. Coming out prepared him to bolt away from Trump.

• • •

What made this book for me was Miller's candid description of "The Game," the ethos (and sometimes flexible ethics) of the work of campaigns. Been there, seen that, participated in a small way in its pleasures and its corruptions. Some quotes from Miller:

I confessed ... that politics offered me the same kind of competitive outlet that sports fandom had.  

... The horse race mindset, taken to its logical conclusion, makes ideology subordinate to gamesmanship.  

... They were hacks through and through, adrenaline junkies who were in it for the fight. No matter which role they were in, staffers began to see themselves as tacticians in this made-for-TV blood sport rather than as functionaries in a system that is aimed to produce the best policy outcomes for their fellow citizens.  

... Whether something was the right thing to do only mattered to the extent that it was also the right thing to do politically. When the strategy, politics, and policy impacts all aligned: great. But when they didn’t, well, that was a concern for the wonks. Not our problem.

Although almost all the campaigns I've worked in pretty much every year since 1989 have been for the success of what I consider desirable ideological ends -- more fairness, more justice, more equity, less cruelty -- I know the delicious rush that is doing campaign battle. You do bizarre things that your project demands: for example, in the service of trying to end the death penalty in California, I found myself working side by side amicably with the consultant for the state's Roman Catholic bishops. He had previously steered the successful 2008 Prop. 8 campaign to ban gay marriage. We each brought something ... I've also promoted candidates about whom I had plenty of reservations -- but enough hope to make the effort palatable. 

Election work is indeed an ethically dangerous game, but also a hell of an absorbing racket.

Tim Miller provides a delicious picture of that life for a Washington DC operative. I couldn't help enjoying that story, even as I loathed his employers.

There is no bottom for Republicans

We live in a strange place and time. I find myself reading conservatives and Republicans. Why? Because the rare ones who can bring themselves to break with their racist and radically anti-democratic political party speak with a clarity that those of us who are more forward-oriented seldom match.

Liz Cheney believes in terrible things, most certainly guns for all and unconstrained U.S. foreign adventures. But she also seems to care about the country's faltering democratic vision.

Last week she braved that GOP citadel, the Ronald Reagan Library, to call out the political party which is ejecting her for clinging to belief in the rule of law and elections where the most votes win the prize. (Excerpts via Charlie Sykes.)

I ... know that at this moment, we are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before. And that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional Republic.  

And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials, who've made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man. 

No party, and no people, and no nation can defend and perpetuate a constitutional Republic if they accept a leader who's gone to war with the rule of law, with the democratic process, or with the peaceful transition of power, with the Constitution itself.  

... As we have shown, Donald Trump attempted to overturn the presidential election. ... 

... It's undeniable. It's also painful for Republicans to accept. And I think we all have to recognize and understand what it means to say those words, and what it means that those things happen.  

But the reality that we face today, as Republicans, as we think about the choice in front of us: We have to choose. Because Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution…. [LOUD APPLAUSE]

Not everyone was applauding. A Republican hack protested to Fox News inciter Laura Ingraham:

[Craig] Shirley predicted that the presidential library would face a backlash over its decision to host Cheney, the chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, which many Republicans in Congress have denigrated to Trump’s delight. The library, Shirley said, “is going to see donations trickle down because of this and attendance trickle down because of this.”

Dissenters from the Orange God King must be punished. 

In the country at large, Republicans cannot win a majority of freely cast votes. Oh sure, they can win in unpopulated and unprosperous rural areas. But most of us want something else, even if we're not very good at agreeing on exactly what. So Republicans have to rig electoral districts, rig election procedures, and ultimately rig the courts to try to hang on to power over the majority of us. They will not stop unless/until we stop them, outvote them, outlast them, and ultimately peacefully overwhelm them.

Friday cat blogging

We love Janeway's freckle. You might think from this picture that she was growing into being a matriarch -- and then she starts racing around, her tail flares out, and you remember the freckle.

While we go to Reno to do our bit for saving U.S. constitutional rule by way of the midterm election, Janeway is going to what we suspect she'll consider reform school: living with 3 other adult cats and a elderly dog. Also two animal-loving humans to whom we are very grateful. Will she return more mature? Will she remember us when we come home? Time will tell.

Amidst the clamor, momentary quiet

 

Gathering resilience ...

Gleaning in the Mission

The old fashioned definition of gleaning is "to gather (leftover grain or other produce) after a harvest." I think of the word as referring to gathering any food stuffs freely available. Gleaning in my mind is a little more agricultural than dumpster diving for left overs, but still something people in need do. And should be entitled to do.

And there's a street tree that has produced highly edible tasty plums right outside our house. If you were not observant, you might not notice the fruit.

It looks like any sidewalk tree.

But note the urban gleaner's foot descending from the tree.

 

Folks have been eating free plums from this tree for a week. I've having one that one of them offered me right now.

The residue of Brexit

Six years on, The Guardian revisits Brexit, Britains' messy divorce via referendum from the European Common Market and the project of a united Europe. The article is long and detailed but paints a convincing picture of Brexit failure.

On 23 June 2016, Geoffrey Betts, the managing director of a small office supplies business in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, had high hopes for his firm, and the British economy, when he voted for Brexit. 

“I thought we would be like … ‘here we go, here we go. We are going to become the most competitive country in Europe and we are going to be encouraging business.’ Now I think: ‘What have we done?’” 

His firm, Stewart Superior, has survived, but not without major restructuring and huge efforts to get around obstacles that Brexit has put in the way of the export side of the business.

For a lot of people in Britain, Brexit isn't working out as they were promised and had hoped. Add in the global pandemic, and the economy became mired in doldrums.

I've been convinced that the flat out insane vote for Brexit was the product of a creaky, elitist, oblivious political system that had delivered the poisonous Iraq war and a generation defining economic crash during the 2000s, but couldn't provide constructive leadership or widely shared prosperity to many Britons. (Yes ... that has all too much in common with the conditions that elected Donald Trump in the same year.)

Six years after the referendum which took the UK out of the EU, the economic case for Brexit is proving increasingly difficult for its supporters – including inside the Conservative party – to make. 

The impression was that there would be no downside. We would thrive outside Europe’s bureaucracy which was strangling our companies with red tape. The huge benefits of the single market – trading freely across borders, with common standards – were never highlighted by Vote Leave, and rarely by the crudely alarmist Remain camp, either. 

Only now, with the worst of the pandemic (probably) behind us, and ministers unable to blame Covid, is Brexit reality being laid bare. Next year the OECD calculates that the UK will record the lowest growth in the G20 with the exception of Russia whose economy is being drained by its war on Ukraine.

Going it alone attracted a slim majority of British voters in 2016. It now seems the Boris Johnson's Conservative Party may finally pay a price for the drag that Brexit is exerting on British well-being. Last week the Tories lost two special elections in areas they had controlled.

But, as in the United States, the damage inflicted on the national edifice by an impulsive vote by frustrated people will be hard to recover from.

Blog housekeeping notes

If you read this blog on a desktop or a tablet, you'll notice some changes to these pages. I decided that it was time to clean things up a bit.

The photo above shows what may get lost during the upcoming campaign season: Reno, Nevada is a beautiful place, when you get away from the casinos and when the air is clean. We'll be there through mid-November, duking it out for the Dems. Campaigns coincide with fire season, so clean air is not a given. But early in the morning and at sunset, the skies and surroundings can be breathtaking. Maybe by November, I'll have photos of the same duck pond and surrounding peaks after the first snow ...

Erudite Partner and I report for campaign duty in Reno at the end of the first week of July.

In the right sidebar, I've added links to summary posts about what's at stake in the 2022 midterm elections: governors, Senators, and Secretaries of State. After all, that's what we'll be focused on.

And here's a link for anyone who might want to get paid to dip deeply into the electoral fray this fall in several locations with UniteHERE, the national hospitality workers' union.

I've shortened the blog list at the right, cutting back to odd web outposts you might not encounter -- or, some of them, even want to encounter. I like a lot of variety. Makes me think.

Will I post every day during the campaign? Maybe not. This round will be a test of my aging body and stamina. But I've posted regularly if not deeply through campaigns before, so we'll see. I post to focus my own thinking, oftentimes, as well as share with others.

This very week will be a test of how much I'm driven to post. If it seems burdensome, I won't. The Erudite Partner and I are taking three days away at a hot springs to mark some significant birthdays. "Significant birthdays" are ones divisible by five -- and these qualify. Imagine I'll put up a few things here, if only pictures of relaxation before the storm.

On into campaign season ...

Pride Sunday

Tim Dobbins tells it like it is while the Rev. Kevin Deal looks on

I don't usually blog about church, but St. John the Evangelist (Episcopal) surpassed itself in the service this morning.

A parishioner contributed an appropriate prayer for the occasion:

Blessed are you, O God of all creation, you come to your people and set us free. At Stonewall Inn and Compton's Cafeteria, you raised up dykes and drag queen, trans women and queer men, sex workers and lovers, Black and Brown leaders, holy rebels Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Miss Major Griffin Gracy, who together cried out in one accord, "No more!" Strengthen each of us also to be who you have created us to be, and in the face of principalities and powers that desire our ruin and destruction, make us to stand for the dignity of every human being, through Jesus Christ, your Word made flesh, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. More Love! Amen.

In this season of Pride, the Episcopal Church also celebrates the Rev. Pauli Murray, civil rights activist, lawyer, poet, and priest. Murray was the first Black woman ordained among us, and also is more and more recognized as a person who refused to be confined within narrow definitions of sexuality and gender. 

Liberating God, we thank you for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from the chains of prejudice and fear, that we may show forth the reconciling love and true freedom which you revealed in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Altogether, an uplifting day in a season of fear, rage, and uncertainty.

2022 Elections: Senate contests Democrats should and must win

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because democracy is not a spectator sport ...

once again this summer and fall, I'll be blogging about "what is it really like to work on an election ..."

As some readers here may have heard, along with Erudite Partner, I'll be heading out to Nevada soon to spend yet another election season, working to re-elect two vital Democratic office holders, Governor Steve Sisolak and U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez-Masto. Under Sisolak, Nevada has raised its minimum wage, protected jobs for workers laid off in the pandemic, and made voting secure and easy for all citizens. Cortez-Masto was the first Latina in the U.S. Senate; Republicans think she's their best target to flip the Senate in this volatile year. We can help prove they are wrong!

The Culinary Workers Union ("UniteHERE" elsewhere in the country; mostly casino and hotel workers in Nevada) leads highly effective political campaigns that enable ordinary working people to build power in their state. These workers fight the greedy rightwing monsters who aim to strangle our democratic system. Nevada has more than its share of those crazies, but in recent years, slightly more hopeful voters just trying to build good lives for their families. Let's keep it that way!

If this appeals to you, UniteHERE offers jobs in Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania as part of the canvassing team. Click this link to learn all about it!

Friday cat blogging

Janeway guards her sunbeam. No, I won't disturb her. No printing for now.

Consider the alternative ...

We're not a happy country these days. We have a multitude of worries as this recent poll from the Pew organization catalogues.

Inflation tops the list, but health care,  gun violence, and even climate have us agitated as well. 

Catherine Rampell, an economics and data opinion writer at the Washington Post, makes some concrete suggestions for how people campaigning for Democrats might talk about our national anxieties. Here are her thoughts:

Assuming that Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to disrupt energy markets, then voters realistically face a choice between high gas prices and the rest of the Democratic agenda; or, high gas prices and the rest of the Republican agenda. So it’s worth considering what that “rest of” the agenda for each party actually entails.

[Democrats] have a shot at [passing] a ... modest package focused on climate, prescription drugs, and maybe some tax increases on high-earners and corporations.

So what do Republicans stand for? 

Their national leaders won’t say, even when asked directly; their state-level rising stars are mostly focused on fighting with Mickey Mouse and drag queens. But if you look at GOP actions taken over the past several years, including when they had unified control of the federal government, you get a sense of what Republicans are likely to prioritize. 

Mostly, Republicans seem to care about tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. They want to find ways to repeal Obamacare, or otherwise reduce access to health care by (for example) slashing Medicaid. 

They care about installing judges who will roll back reproductive rights. 

They care about supporting a president who used the powers of the state to further his own political and financial interests, rather than those of the American public he was sworn to serve. 

They care about supporting a presidency whose few purported diplomatic achievements, in retrospect, look largely like an excuse to meet potential investors who might fund Trump aides’ new private equity endeavors. 

They care about defending, at all costs, a president who cheered on the mob seeking to hang his own vice president. 

And they care about undermining the integrity of our election system and overturning the will of the voters, if and when vote tallies don’t go their way.

There are some of us who prize inaction on most everything but conservative judges and tax cuts for rich people. But most of us need to try to make government work to improve our lives.

What goes around comes around

Having yesterday introduced the subject of the wack-doodle Republican kook Kari Lake, who Donald Trump has endorsed for governor of Arizona, I can't resist passing on this one.

 

There's the lady herself, on the left, posing with her drag queen (former) friend, Richard Stevens. 

Can't have that kind of friend if you want a Republican electorate to vote for you. 

Paul Waldman at the Washington Post reports: 

Lake, like so many Republicans at the moment, has sought to use the new right-wing sex panic in her primary, accusing President Biden of promoting “this perverted sexual agenda of grooming our children.” And like other Republicans, she has taken particular aim at drag queens.

So much for old friends. Steven says they've known each for 20 years.

Waldman, as he often is, is insightful about Republican behavior:

First, until recently, even most conservatives had come to a place where they regarded drag not as a terrifying threat to the innocence of children but as a whimsical and amusing corner of the culture. Maybe you liked it (as Lake clearly did) or maybe it made you a little uncomfortable, but it was harmless. Nobody was terrified by “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

But now Republicans are supposed to say that drag is worse than satanic cults, the water fluoridation conspiracy, and the Garbage Pail Kids put together. So that’s what party leaders claim to believe.

Second, a key factor in the political normalization of gay rights was that by and large, Republican elites are okay with gay people. That is true to an extent of the Republican masses as well (or at least more true all the time), but party leaders move in circles where there’s a reasonable amount of acceptance of equality. ...

Go read it all -- it's worth it for this Pride Month.

2022 elections: governor contests that Dems need to win

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's nothing easy about any of these contests.

Juneteenth holiday observed

West Oakland during a 2021 Juneteenth celebration.  (Beth LaBerge)

The story of Juneteenth evokes pure joy. I linger every year on the thought of those enslaved people in Galveston in 1865 learning unexpectedly that their cruel bondage had ended, was gone for good. Is there anything in most of our lives that might unleash a comparable explosion of relief and delight? Perhaps if all the world's nuclear weapons were suddenly no more ...

The still-novel federal holiday is a consequence of our nation's ongoing reckoning with our past and with our future aspirations. It also comes out of our messy politics. Even good politics is messy.  Theodore R. Johnson, a writer at The Bulwark and the director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, explains. My emphasis:

Juneteenth is a civic reminder to pause and appreciate how far the nation has come. If Independence Day on July 4th is a day to honor all the nation got right, Juneteenth is a call to always right the things it gets wrong.

... the politics of how Juneteenth became a holiday is a lesson in the unserious ways we grapple with race in America. The unflattering fact is that Juneteenth is federally observed today primarily because there was no political penalty to be paid by congressional members who voted in its favor and insufficient political incentive for those who would block it to follow through.

... [it is] likely that both parties surveyed the political landscape and determined that Juneteenth was low-hanging electoral fruit that could signal to black voters that their voices were being heard—without incurring much backlash from other constituencies. A constant refrain within black America is that politicians either do not come around at all, or do so only when an election is near. Making Juneteenth a federal holiday was a way of both recognizing the strategic role that black voters play—especially in the urban metro areas of closely contested states—as well as a symbolic, low-cost move to help each party shape part of the electorate in its favor.

... the actual reasons for Republicans opposing MLK Day and Election Day as national holidays were not about budgets but about politics. In the case of MLK Day, Republican strategists worried that voters fresh off the Dixiecrat train [in the 1980s] would reject their new party making an overture to a recently enlarged black electorate. And in the case of Election Day, Republicans seem to buy the flawed argument that easier voting automatically leads to Democratic victories.

And yet, on Juneteenth? The Republican party got onboard, largely because it intuited that there would be no political cost for supporting it. Why is that? 

Hyperpartisan politics and voters’ entrenched partisanship have created conditions where there’s little risk of losing supporters to the other side on an issue to which most Americans aren’t paying close attention. ... 

... But the politics of Juneteenth’s ascendance to a national holiday is actually a story about a democratic system that is presently incapable of doing hard things, and choosing instead to take the easiest path available.

And that’s a shame. Because Juneteenth should be the commemoration of an America that does the hardest of things.

Father's Day

Roger Keating Adams  1905-1991

This stern likeness is a passport photo from the early 1970s. I suspect he looked "right" to himself in this pose. He would have been on the verge of retirement when this was taken.

My father probably wasn't very enthusiastic about getting the picture for a passport. He volubly disdained travel; it meant lots of discomfort and novelty for not much he wanted. The baseline of their sixty-year deeply loving marriage was that he could complain and then they'd do what Mother wanted, if she really cared.

Mother insisted on taking him to Ireland with this passport and, once there, to meet distant relatives. He didn't catch the travel bug; it rained. His verdict on Ireland was "they should put a roof over that country."

Yes, he was something of a curmudgeon. I often wonder what he would have said about Trump. In order to scandalize "polite society," I imagine he would have made nods toward approving of Trump as a roguish transgressor of bourgeois social propriety. But in reality, RKA was very much a creature of that propriety and lived by a set of strong, simple values: work hard, do your duty, be kind and sometimes generous, if you can. Any of us could do worse.

He would have seen immediately that Trump's various businesses were cons; he'd seen rich fraudsters before. In time, Trump's cruelty and lawless selfishness would have repelled him. But he would not have been very vocal about it. But Trump was never a right sort of man in his moral world.

I hope it comes across that, despite our considerable differences, we actually had a loving, respect-filled connection. He coud be warm, and was often sardonically funny. I loved my Father and he loved me. He's more than 30 years gone and I still miss him.

SF snapshot

I have gigabytes of photos from the Walking San Francisco project. Every once in awhile, I'll drop one here.

Escape thwarted.

Friday cat blogging

Today Janeway gives over her place to cats living amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Where there are humans, there are cats, even among the rubble of a grinding war.

Azovstal defender Vitaliy Zinchenko died May 5 covering his comrades from the enemy tank, receiving fatal shrapnel wounds. Via Euromaiden Press

Humans are cheered by their feline companions.

You can follow more Ukrainian cats at Feline Defense Force.

Why so many Ukrainian cats? In my experience, there are cats anywhere there are humans -- and small rodents. Ukraine was and is the "breadbasket of Europe," the source of much of the world's wheat. Perhaps cats got a head start on the project of taming human companions when they moved into ancient granaries to feast off the vermin population?

More seriously, the crowd-funded parts of Ukrainian defenses still need all the help they can get. Chef José Andrés reports that the Russians successfully blew up one of World Central Kitchen's food trains this week. World Central Kitchen is feeding thousands of displaced Ukrainians inside the country and across Europe. You can help.

Our dwindling rights

You may think the US Constitution gives you a right to demand a warrant before a federal agent comes on your property. You know, that Fourth Amendment thing about no warrantless search and seizure. (At least you are likely to think you have such a right if you are white, perhaps others less so.)

H/t SBCC; much more info at link

If you live in the area of the light orange line on this map, you have no such right. Two thirds of us live there  -- the darker orange middle is relatively less populated. The Supremes recently decided that agents of the Border Patrol (CPB) are acting in the interests of "national security" and were not included in the Congressional statute that allows you to sue state and local officials who violate your body and property illegally. So abracadabra, poof -- search and seize away CPB!

People suspected of being illegal immigrants will obviously suffer most directly from this extension of unchecked powers, but note that former President Trump and his compliant Justice Department used some of the 20,000 CPB officers to attack protesters in Portland and DC.