What it is really like to work on a election: campaigns are ecological disaster areas

In order to stay organized, you must throw out materials that have become obsolete -- rap sheets, no-longer usable early voting door hangers, boxes the literature came in, turf notes. Out! Every day.

In order to keep going, everyone must be fed and watered (and soda-ed). We create 4 and 5 and 6 monster trash bags of food-associated garbage, everyday.

In order to stay healthy, we clean the bathrooms of paper towels and other effluvia -- more than once a day.

No wonder landlords aren't thrilled to rent to campaigns. We do what we have to do.

Criminal drug pushing

From the New York Times. Evidently the GOPers are willing to kill off the communities that support their diseased party to nudge up the profits of the drug companies. Vote these sickos out on Tuesday!

Crunch time

Volunteers pour into Reno today to do their bit to get out the vote for Jacky Rosen for US Senate. Early voting has ended and, if people voted their party tendencies, she is ahead. But there is a lot of pavement pounding yet to go in preparation for Election Day.

Who's afraid of who?

My new friend Roy Eidelson who has come to work on the UniteHERE Reno campaign to help flip a Senate seat shares a psychologist's perspective on a A Tale of Two Caravans.

It makes sense that Donald Trump is worried about an approaching caravan. But it’s not the one you’re probably thinking of: the few thousand desperate Central Americans who’ve banded together and are slowly making their way through Mexico toward the U.S. border. These migrants have broken no laws in undertaking their difficult and dangerous journey, and seeking asylum here is their legal right.

No, the caravan that’s actually giving Trump and the GOP panicky night fevers is comprised of tens of millions of U.S. citizens. Committed to countering the horrors of the past two years—and the past week—they’re heading to polling places across the country with a single goal in mind: to vote some of the president’s fondest enablers out of office. ...

Read it all here.

After all, we make this media ...

Kevin Drum has been thinking about whether our internet addiction makes the world a worse place. He thinks not.

I once wrote that the internet makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. Likewise, it might very well make good people better and bad people worse. But on average, that doesn’t mean the world is a worse place. So why does it seem so much worse?

That’s pretty easy: the internet boasts an immediacy that allows it to pack a bigger punch than any previous medium. But this is hardly something new. Newspapers packed a bigger punch than the gossipmonger who appeared in your village every few weeks. Radio was more powerful than newspapers. TV was more powerful than radio. And social media is more powerful than TV.

Contrary to common opinion, however, this has little to do with the nature of these mediums. Sure, they’ve become more visceral over time: first words, then pictures, then voice, then moving images, and finally all of that packaged together and delivered with the power of gossip from a trusted friend. But what’s really different is how much time we spend on them ...

Does all this mean that there’s more news than ever before? Of course not. Does it mean that there seems to be more news than ever before? Oh my, yes.

And that brings me circuitously to my point: broadly speaking, the world is not worse than it used to be. We simply see far more of its dark corners than we used to, and we see them in the most visceral possible way: live, in color, and with caustic commentary. Human nature being what it is, it’s hardly surprising that we end up thinking the world is getting worse. ...

Maybe I am not quite so sanguine as he is, but I think we'll adjust to preserve our humanity while enjoying our technological marvels. I could be wrong.

I'll find out if I'm wrong insofar as I engage with the real world alongside taking advantage of the immediacy of so much information, both painful and delightful.

Ilhan Omar is expected to be elected to Congress next Tuesday

This Somali-American Minnesota state legislator and refugee from Kenya will give the hallowed House of Representatives some new perspectives. Isn't that what so many people who've migrated here have brought to this country?

She explains why she runs for office:

“It is part of my Islamic teaching to make sure we are charitable,” Ms. Omar told me. “A huge part of the Islamic faith is that you can’t sleep with a full belly if your neighbors and those around you aren’t sleeping with a full belly.”

H/t to Wajahat Ali in the New York Times.

On community and hate

In the wake of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, Tara Isabella Burton posed the question "Why [do] extremists keep attacking places of worship?" Before this crime, there were the murders at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, the attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the 2008 shootings at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church ... the list goes on.

In these days of frantic campaigning, my quick reads of coverage of even the most dire events are little more than a skim. But I was struck by this:

... the attack on Tree of Life is part of another, wider, and no less worrying trend: the degree to which places of worship have become targets for acts that could be classified as domestic terrorism. In the past decade, houses of worship — from synagogues to Christian churches to Sikh temples — have increasingly become targets for extremist violence. Many of these attacks have been explicitly white supremacist or right-wing in nature, targeting perceived liberals, ethnic minorities, or women.

In each case, the attacks have been designed to maximize emotional effect. By targeting a house of worship, rather than a private home or business, the attacker has committed a powerful symbolic transgression: profaning a space that is both sacred and communal. Attacks on places of worship double not just as attacks on worshippers, but as attacks on the community itself.

In my haste, I read that last sentence as simply attacks on community itself -- not exactly what Burton is saying, but an implication very much there in her thought.

Do angry shooters vent their rage on people gathered in community because, somewhere in the reaches of their hate-addled brains, community itself is the enemy? People coming together for a purpose -- whether as a bowling club or to worship as they choose -- form communities, webs of human connection that sustain and enrich their humanity.

When rage comes to define individuals, human connection becomes difficult, maybe impossible. When elements of the cultural context excuse, even validate, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and religious bigotry, do those who for whatever reason feel themselves outside community feel the need to attack community itself?

So it seems.

Evil leaders mobilize lonely losers for their own purposes. That's how we get fascism -- when the losers for whom community has long failed or been broken accept the leadership of one who offers the false community of shared resentment and hatred. Our webs of human connection, of communal purpose, are our deepest defense against collective evil.

Yes on San Francisco's Prop. C

Working in Reno on one little piece of the most important election in recent US history (1858 comes to mind as comparable, but not many others) is likely to prevent me from writing daily blog posts here until after November 6.

San Franciscans have a chance to reduce the frequency of scenes like this. But will we rise to the chance?

Heather Knight writing in the SF Chron offers an insight into the opposition to a small tax on rich businesses to provide better services to people living on our streets:

Campaign finance disclosures show contributions to the No on C campaign from Stripe ($419,999); Visa ($225,000); Paul Graham, an investor in Y-Combinator ($150,000); Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey ($125,000); Lyft ($100,000); brokerage founder Charles Schwab ($100,000); venture capitalist Michael Moritz ($100,000); the Hotel Council ($50,000) and the Committee on Jobs ($30,000).

Yes, in one of the cities with the biggest income inequality gap in the world — where a household has to earn $300,000 a year to buy a median-priced home — CEOs are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent their companies from paying a small amount to house homeless people.

Not all out tech overlords are so small minded; one of the wonders of this San Francisco moment is that Marc Benioff of Salesforce has put his money behind a more humane vision for the city where his building looms. San Franciscans can show their vision of our future by voting YES on C.

H/t to Erudite Partner for the photo.

What can we do when our country seems engulfed by atrocities ....

We can remember to remind those around us that we love them -- and keep struggling for justice, generosity, and decency.

Yesterday several hundred people organized by the labor union UniteHERE knocked on thousands of doors in Reno and Sparks, Nevada, working for US Senate candidate Jacky Rosen. They were reaching out to people who don't habitually vote in Nevada's most hotly contested county; and voters are responding!

It seemed fitting. The Democratic candidate -- a supporter of raising the minimum wage, improving education so the state's young people can find good jobs, and ensuring that health care is available to all -- is one of Nevada's more prominent Jewish leaders.

According to Politico:

Rosen popped up on Democrats' radar after being elected president of her local synagogue — the largest Jewish temple in the state — in 2013... “The minute I found out she was a synagogue president, I knew she could do anything,” said Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), who recruited Rosen for the House seat [that Rosen won in 2016.]. ....

Administering a large voluntary organization whose members feel passionate about its mission probably is good practice for returning some civilizing integrity to our political hellscape.

Republican polices increase the cost of health insurance

Insurance can only be affordable if everyone signs up, especially healthy people who think they don't need coverage. Insurance adds up all our risk and divides the cost of care across all of us, sick and healthy.

By ending the tax penalty for failing to carry insurance and letting insurance companies sell junk plans that don't cover expensive illness (like cancer), Republicans are giving people who think they'll never get sick incentives to drop out of Obamacare coverage. So guess what? Insurance companies jack up prices because they are stuck with the sick people who cost them money.

You don't have to trust me about this. Kaiser Family Foundation explains it all in health policy wonk language.

H/t to my Facebook friend/health economist maven for the story.

Voting the California and San Francisco ballots

I'm feeling virtuous today; last night I got around to voting my absentee ballot. Couldn't very well do all this election work and forget to vote, could I?

The California ballot was not exciting. Gavin Newsom is going to be our governor; there's no evidence he's any less of a pretty face in an expensive suit peddling policies that enrich the wealthy than when he was our mayor. He finally waited out Jerry and here we are. Senator-since-1992 Diane Feinstein is putting away poor State Senator Kevin De Leon who never could make the sale of himself as an alternative. Diane would have served her state better by being willing to cede to a successor before they carry her out in a box.

To my mind, the only statewide contest worth caring about is electing Tony Thurmond to the position of Superintendent of Public Instruction. His opponent is a privatizing charter school advocate.

Only three of the statewide ballot measures seem worth much attention. Prop. 5 would further extend the scope of Prop. 13's restrictions on property taxes. The original measure has distorted and hampered local and state governance since 1979. The last thing California needs is more exemptions that shrink the tax base among residents who have lucked into real estate price inflation.

Prop. 6 is a Republican ploy to turn out their base by repealing a gas tax. Polls say it is failing; apparently Californians like the road and infrastructure improvements the gas tax funds.

Prop. 10 would allow localities to enact meaningful rent control. Real estate interests persuaded the state legislature to neuter local controls several decades ago and they are spending big bucks to keep rent control attempts hamstrung. I don't buy the idea that rent controls kill housing development; there's clearly money to be made in building housing in the California real estate market. Rent control might reduce the profit margins, but people gotta live. So I voted "yes" on Prop. 10.

Not living in a contested supervisor district, there's not much on the local San Francisco ballot of great interest to me with one vital exception: Prop. C. This is much the hottest local issue, imposing a small tax on San Francisco's largest businesses to fund housing, mental health and support services for our people who are living on the streets. As Joe Eskenazi explained in Mission Local:

Prop. C would raise the city’s expenditures on homeless issues from 3 percent of its budget to 6 percent — addressing San Francisco’s consensus No. 1 problem. More money is, in fact, a prime solution to the problem of not having enough money. And no serious person claims this city currently has sufficient resources to bring its homeless problem under control. ...

Sometimes voting seems useless, but there is almost always something or someone who matters a lot. Vote we must, unless we are content to be ruled by the other people who do vote.

It could be a lot worse: "fascism is not just a foreign problem"

When I talk with volunteers on the Reno campaign, they pretty much all say something like "I felt I had to DO something." And they are doing something.

Obviously I'm necessarily fixated these days on the domestic USofA, but I was pulled up short by this from a new friend describing what the descent into fascism and terror feels like in Brazil. In Brazil, it is a lot worse. It's long, but worth reading. We're working not to even have to be under a threat this acute.

Jair Bolsonaro, who is likely to win Brazil's presidential election next Sunday, just promised to purge the country of his leftist political opponents, threatening that "either they go overseas, or they go to jail." These are my dear friends--people who have dedicated their lives to social justice-- whom he has repeatedly promised to kill, imprison, torture, and exile.

I am feeling terrified and overwhelmed right now, unsure of the path forward. But as a first step, I am calling on my friends from other parts of the world to stand in solidarity with my friends in Brazil who are fighting to defend democracy. Please sign this international petition against fascism and be prepared to take further solidarity actions.

I have seen Bolsonaro speak, and it is hard to describe how repulsive he is (I was nearly arrested for flicking him off at one of his rallies). But just to give you a sense, below are some of his words that I have compiled from news articles. Keep in mind that the Wall Street Journal endorsed his candidacy, and Steve Bannon advised his campaign--fascism is not just a foreign problem!

ON TORTURE, POLITICAL PERSECUTION AND DICATORSHIP

• The former army man has spoken fondly of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985.“ The dictatorship’s mistake was to torture but not kill,” he told a radio interviewer in 2016.

• “I’m pro-torture, and the people are too.”

• “You won’t change anything in this country through voting – nothing, absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, you’ll only change things by having a civil war and doing the work the military regime didn’t do. Killing 30,000, starting with FHC [former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso]. Killing. If a few innocent people die, that’s alright.”

ON WOMEN

• Mr Bolsonaro got into a heated exchange with congresswoman Maria do Rosario in the lower house of Congress. “I wouldn’t rape you because you don’t deserve it,” he said, in response to remarks made by Ms Rosario claiming he had encouraged rape. Mr Bolsonaro later said he was not a rapist, but if he were he would not rape do Rosario because she is “ugly” and “not his type”. 

• “I had four sons, but then I had a moment of weakness, and the fifth was a girl.”

ON LGTBQ PEOPLE 

• In an interview with Playboy magazine in 2011 Bolsonaro said that he “would be incapable of loving a homosexual son … I would prefer my son to die in an accident than show up with a moustachioed man.”

• In May 2002, Bolsonaro threatened gay people after then-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso was seen in a photo holding a rainbow flag at an event in support of gay marriage. “I won’t fight against it nor discriminate, but if I see two men kissing each other on the street, I’ll beat them up,” he said.

ON BLACK PEOPLE AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

• “You can be sure that if I get there [the presidency], there’ll be no money for NGOs. If it’s up to me, every citizen will have a gun at home. Not one centimeter will be demarcated for indigenous reserves or quilombolas.”

• In a speech made last year, Mr Bolsonaro spoke about a black settlement in Brazil founded by the descendants of slaves. “They do nothing. They are not even good for procreation,” he said. 

• He has also reportedly referred to black activists as “animals” who should “go back to the zoo”

• During an interview aired by the Bandeirantes TV network in March 2011, Bolsonaro responded to a question about what he would do if his son fell in love with a black woman. “I won’t discuss promiscuity,” he said. “I don’t run that risk because my sons were very well educated.”

• He called Hatian and Syrian refugees "the scum of the earth"

ON THE LANDLESS WORKER’S MOVEMENT

• He has said that the Landless Workers Movement “should be treated as terrorists” and pushed for legislation arming landowners to kill them.

• “Here I want to say to the MST scumbags that we’re going to give guns to agribusiness, we’re going to give guns to the rural producer, because the welcome mat for a land invader is a bullet, 247 caliber."

This man is expected to win Brazil's presidency on Sunday.

One way Nevada lowers "the cost of voting"

A couple of days ago, the Washington Post's Wonkblog published a map of which states make it hardest and which make it easiest to vote, generating what they called the "cost of voting index." They found that in states that make voting more difficult "Low voter turnout is no accident." Accumulated barriers to participation -- registration hurdles, finicky identification requirements, small numbers of polling places or lack of provisions for absentees or no early voting opportunities -- measurably reduce turnout.

Working here in Reno on a campaign to elect Jacky Rosen to the U.S. Senate and Steve Sisolak as Nevada's Governor, I was surprised to see Nevada treated as a worse than average state for access to voting. Now on reflection, I get it: registration is not simple; absentee ballots are not automatic; and persons convicted of felonies face a complex process to recover their rights.

But here in Nevada's second urban area, Washoe County, I'm seeing a system that acts as if it really wants all the people to be able to vote. We're working to encourage supporters to go to 23 neighborhood Early Voting sites. These aren't forbidding places like police stations or county buildings; they are in the local supermarkets!

And once voters get there, they encounter helpful poll workers, Spanish language ballots if needed, and a generally welcoming environment. Most amazingly to me, "first time voters" are offered a certificate celebrating their participation!

What a way to make voters for life!

This is what "voter suppression" looks like

Indian Country Today shared this graphic from Standing Rock Sioux tribal authorities which shows members how to navigate the maze Republican North Dakotans have set up to keep them from voting. By demanding that voters use a street address -- something many Standing Rock Sioux on the reservation do not have -- the dominant GOP aims to disenfranchise potential Democratic voters. That many hoops to jump will almost certainly reduce Native voting.

In a strong article on the history of racist voter suppression, Michael Tomasky sums up:

Today’s Republican Party is not simply trying to win elections. It is simultaneously trying to rewrite the rules—gerrymandering and voter suppression are crucial to this effort—so that it never loses a federal election again.

Will we the people let them succeed?

'Nuff said ...

What it is really like to work on an election campaign: whipsaw time

Once GOTV starts, you are banking votes! You are no longer counting door knocks, or conversations, or even IDs. Real VOTES!

And, as secretaries of state post the party breakdown of votes cast, you become subject to the speculations of pundits who riff off the tea leaves they see in the numbers of Republicans and Democrats who have already voted.

Here in Nevada, we have a truly experienced pundit in John Ralston who all sides consider a sound observer. He thinks Dems kicked butt on the first day of early voting here in our turf in Washoe County

Been watching early voting a long time and I don’t think I have ever seen Dems win Washoe by 15 points — 49-34. It’s NV’s swing county, GOP has 2 percent edge. It’s only one day, we still need to see Clark [County = Las Vegas]. But that is a bad omen for Repubs.

— Jon Ralston (@RalstonReports) October 21, 2018

Good for Rosen and Sisolak! Dems also exceeded expectations in Clark County, that is Las Vegas, where most Nevadans live. But he also issues a warning:

Big show for first day and it peters out? Or a sign of what’s to come?

If you are working on a campaign, whatever seems to be happening and whatever pundits may say, GOTV is when you must execute your plan and work harder. If it is a good plan, and the voters are responding, all the better. You constructed your campaign around the best plan you could make and now is not the time for rethinking -- all your work is about turning out votes NOW.

Pundits will pundit, but you have to focus on what you can control, put away distracting emotions, and do what you can do. Trust the plan.

What it is really like to work on a campaign: from persuasion, to IDs, to GOTV

Early, in-person, voting begins today in Nevada. We're ready.

In the first phase of any campaign, the job is to persuade potential supporters to take an interest in the candidate. Much of that happens in media, through public events, and announced issue positions. But in a campaign like this one in Reno which canvasses potential voters who don't always get around to voting, persuasion can take place in doorway encounters. The job of the canvasser is to help the voter feel why this candidate's election might be personally important to her. It requires imagination, talking, and listening. Successful canvassers learn a lot about what ordinary citizens really care about.

After persuasion comes voter identification (IDs), compiling the most extensive list possible of voters who promise to vote for your candidate. That's what we've been doing here in Reno while knocking on over 65,000 doors since Labor Day in support of Jacky Rosen for US Senate and Steve Sisolak for Governor.

Any campaign swings into a much higher gear when voters begin to be able to cast ballots. This phase is called GOTV -- "Get Out the Vote." Now you have to go back to all those identified supporters and push them to the polls. You offer rides. You leave doorhangers at their entrances to tell them where the balloting is happening. You go back, again and again, until the Nevada Secretary of State indicates they have voted. The work is intense, but also more obviously fruitful than the long search for IDs. Finally -- voting is happening.

It used to be that voting was something that took place only on one Election Day. There were good features this; it encouraged us to think of ourselves as citizens engaging together in the ultimate enactment of civic unity. But it was also inconvenient and tended to exclude some who wanted to participate. Nowadays, in different forms in different states, elections take place over several weeks. This creates multiplying opportunities for campaigns to complete the work of turning out supporters; it also creates manic intensity among campaigners. That's where we are here in Reno, entering GOTV season, amped-up yet another notch in the always high energy business of sparking democratic energy.

What's enthusiasm? Could the answer be campaign cash?

This poll found exceptional enthusiasm about voting in the midterms, especially among Democrats, young people and people of color. Well good. If this is true, we'll elect some better politicians in a lot of places. But as a person who works in elections, I'm cautious about professions of excitement about voting. Because people think voting is something they should do, they sometimes declare an intent to participate -- but somehow don't get around to acting. So we'll see ...

But there is some measurable evidence of Democratic voters' enthusiasm about the election in fundraising numbers recently made public.

Democrats outraised Republicans in fully 93 of the 100 most competitive seats, as shown in this map. And the hauls themselves are extraordinary—at least for one side. Sixty-two Democrats in the top 100 races raised more than $1 million each in the third quarter, with only two being incumbents. In the many years we’ve been tracking this sort of data, we’ve never seen figures anything like this. (By contrast, only 16 Republicans brought in over $1 million—14 of them incumbents.)

Of course, money is far from the only factor that will determine who wins the House next month. But these numbers do ensure that Democrats will have the resources they need to get their message out over the stretch run. And the enormous upsurge in Democratic fundraising, powered extensively by grassroots donors, shows an intense enthusiasm that is not matched on the Republican side.

House Democrats awash in cash, Daily Kos Elections

CalMatters looked at the extraordinary cash flow in California. This too is a marker of Democratic enthusiasm, an enthusiasm rising up from the grassroots.

In campaigns, big money players get the most attention. But Democrats running in California’s seven most competitive congressional districts are vastly out-raising Republicans in small-dollar donations, a review of campaign disclosures shows.

Through Sept. 30, Democratic candidates running in the seven GOP-held seats where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in 2016 raised $40 million to the Republicans’ $18.7 million, filings compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show.

In donations of under $200, Democrats raised $6.4 million, almost 10 times the $671,000 raised by Republicans raised through the first three quarters of 2018.

... candidates can return to small-dollar donors multiple times to help fuel their campaign efforts, ranging from television ads to get-out-the-vote drives. They also know that people who give money vote and volunteer, if not for them then for candidates in their home districts.

There's genuine enthusiasm in all that small donation giving. The election will prove whether it can be turned into actual votes.

Just a smart business move

Visiting my mother-in-law in New York City in 2010, I heard frequent complaints about a new condo building that cut off her view of the river. "And they named it after Donald Trump!" I took a picture:
Today I read that the building's residents have freed themselves from the Trump branding.

The push to remove the Trump branding from 200 Riverside Boulevard began in 2017. In response to concerns raised by some of the 377 condo owners, the condo board began discussions of possibly removing the Trump name from the building’s facade.

... The prospect of expensive litigation with the Trump Organization scared many residents, and a small group vigorously opposed excising the Trump name.

An internal message board for residents showed that division.

“I am adamant that the sign should remain on the building,” a resident wrote. “We bought in the building with it. There is no reason to take it down.”

Another wrote: “Arguably, at one time the Trump name may have contributed something to the value of our apartments. That is clearly not the case today.”

Eventually a majority took their case for removing the name to court and this month they won the right to take down the Trump name.

They apparently had a good economic argument that getting rid of the Trump name was to their benefit, raising the value of the their units.

... Trump apartments in 2017 sold for an average of $1,741 per square foot in Manhattan, or 6.6 percent less than the average Manhattan condominium, according to CityRealty, an online apartment broker. At Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, average prices per square foot declined from $3,000 in 2013 to about $2,000 last year.

Trump may be making out like the bandit he is on his Saudi and Russian friends, but even for affluent condo buyers, he's a dud.

Historical midterm parallels

It's common to analogize President Trump to his bellicose Indian-killing predecessor Andrew Jackson or perhaps to Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's vice president elevated by assassination who worked to undo the good work of the Civil Rights Amendments. But presidential historian Russell L. Riley suggests another parallel to another president known for his racism: Woodrow Wilson, who became enamored of his own vision for the country and sought to make the midterm election of one hundred years ago all about him. Riley shares Wilson's manifesto to his fellow citizens, offered as World War I wound down; it sure sounds like Trump's baseless bravado about a "red wave." (Read it substituting "Republican" for "Democratic" -- Wilson was a Dem.)

“My Fellow Americans: The Congressional elections are at hand. They occur in the most critical period our country has ever faced or is likely to face in our time. If you have approved of my leadership and wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home and abroad, I earnestly beg that you will express yourselves unmistakably to that effect by returning a Democratic majority to both the Senate and the House of Representatives. … "

Wilson's party lost badly in the voting. Riley opines that Wilson's exhortations merely reminded voters that they were sick of being kept on pins and needles by a leader who thought his own ideas and impulses should override all opposition.

Wilson — like Trump — had made himself an unwelcome guest at the breakfast table, where most Americans prefer to begin their days without disagreeable intrusions from the White House. And there was, based on Wilson’s own proclamation, one good way for the citizens of his day to prevent more of the same: send the opposition party to Congress to stuff the president back into his constitutional box.

Vote we must.