Month: August 2020

Dog Days

It’s August.  In Pataskala, Ohio it’s the time for heat, humidity, thunderstorms and dust:  the dog days of summer.  Speaking of dogs, ours want to stay in the air conditioning, except for KeeLie, the new addition.  She has to go out and patrol the backyard, bark at the unseen neighbor on the other side of the fence, and peer through the gate at the dog next door.  

For thirty-six years August was a time of excitement for me.  After a summer of relaxation and coaching, August meant it was time to go back to work.  August meant going back to school:  planning, and preparing, and writing on the now obsolete chalkboard, “this is as good as it gets”.  On the first day, kids thought that meant “Dahlman’s” government class, but what it really meant was that this was “as good” as my handwriting would get.  It would deteriorate as the school year went on.

Those first days of school were always exciting.  It’s not many careers that let you have a clean slate every year, a chance to fix the mistakes of the previous year, and have the challenge of being better than you were before.  

Southwest Licking

I had the privilege of teaching in the same school system throughout my entire career.  It was a district on the far edge of Columbus, Ohio’s growth.  What started out in 1978 as a rural school, with “tractor day” in the parking lot and blue corduroy Future Farmers of America jackets in the hallway, changed over the years.  Now it’s a suburban district, where the few farmers left are hassled for driving slow combines on the roads, or fertilizing their fields.  

As a growing district in Ohio, the Southwest Licking Local School District was often strapped for money.  There were several years when we started school in August under a financial cloud.  Tax levies failed, cuts were threatened, and young teachers were unsure whether they would have a job come April.  The school district used the only leverage the really had by threatening to cut sports and bussing:  an empty stadium on football Friday night hung in the air.

Hope Springs

Kids are eternally optimistic.  And for thirty-six years they were absolutely right.  Even when sports were actually cut, back in 1980, the coaches ended up volunteering to do the jobs they should have been paid for.  The crisp, new dollar bill we “earned” that year is still framed on a bookshelf.  And in 2003 when the Administration decided to keep spring sports but only allow one coach for each, sending me out to supervise sixty boys in track and field alone, my staff jumped in and we split the one paycheck four ways.  

The kids haven’t changed.  Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, football players have run sprints in the heat, and the Cross Country runners have covered hundreds of miles on the roads.  They believe that somehow, the virus will not stop them from their chance to compete.  And their coaches believe:  my friends have spent the summer preparing the woods for the thousands of runners, even though they cannot visualize how it would be possible for three hundred to line up for the gun and maintain social distance. 

It’s August.  Here in Ohio many of the “big” school districts have already made the call to avoid contagion.  They are going to start school “online” rather than in person.  But even though they are keeping kids out of the hallways, they still are out on the fields, getting ready for a season they may not have. 

Going to School

Teachers at Southwest Licking report to school on Wednesday.  They will prepare their classrooms, already overcrowded from school growth, to keep “social distance” between students. The national “norm” of six feet has already been shrunk to three.  There isn’t enough Plexiglas in the world, and there’s a reason that a new school is rising in the fields nearby.  The Governor has ordered all students, kindergarten through twelve wear masks.  After decades with teenagers, I’m skeptical.  The halls will still be packed, and the adolescent “declaration of independence” will be made with full oral nudity!

Who is at risk?  The disease that proves over and over that it will spread, regardless of politics or religion, is still growing here in Ohio.  The chart for Licking County, our county, looks like the final approaches to Mt. Everest (Ohio).  We know that kids aren’t immune, despite the President’s assertions, but we also know they are at lower risk of serious illness.  Their parents and grandparents are not so lucky.  And neither is the school staff.

Into the Soup

There are few job positions that require adults to drop themselves into such a viral soup.  Medical folks certainly are at greatest risk.  It’s why we made a national emergency over getting them protective gear.  And prison guards are in “the soup”.  They have suffered along with the inmates in the enclosed cells and tight spaces of confinement.  In Ohio, 940 prison staff have been diagnosed with COVID, and more than 5000 prisoners (Marshall Project).

So teachers are torn.  They want to teach.  Most got into education because they love the profession.  Money helps, but they want to do their job.  And teachers know full well, that in person education is qualitatively so much better than online education.  But teachers also know that there often isn’t even enough money for the basics, dry erase makers and copies on the Xerox machine.  PPE might be on the list today, but will soon be too much to afford.   And teachers and kids both are doomed to fail to socially distance.  Ultimately, that kid that needs a hug will overwhelm the “rules” of COVID.

It is an oddity of our COVID world:  the kid on the football field or in the woods running is at less risk of viral infection there, than in the classroom.  And so are their coaches.  

The energy this August isn’t about excitement, it’s trepidation.  I don’t envy my friends this year, those coaching and teaching, and those making the decision about whether they go to school in person or in front of a computer.  It’s not just about the big race, or the football game, or the hallways.  

It’s a life and death call.

“We the People, of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…” – Preamble, US Constitution

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” – Martin Luther King

More Perfect

It is an intentional grammatical error in the Constitution, where Madison sets the goal for the new Republic the Founding Fathers were creating:  forming a more perfect Union.  Madison didn’t make a mistake, nor was it a criticism of what they wrought in creating the government.  It was common sense, that while they were creating something brand new in the world, that from the birth they needed to strive to perfect it even more.  Newborns are almost always perfect, yet parents continue to make them “more perfect” throughout childhood.  So should the citizens of these United States.

And one of the most important “perfections” was in the right to vote.  As the Fathers sweltered authoring the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1786, in most of the states only twenty-one or older, white, male, Christian, freeholders (land owners) were given the franchise, the right to vote.  That only consisted of twenty percent of the population.  Voting was exclusive at the beginning of our representative democracy.

Freeholders

The first restriction to fall was the “freeholder” rule, but it took some time.  By 1828, and the election of Democratic Populist Andrew Jackson, the vast majority of states allowed twenty-one year old white men the franchise.  But it took until 1856 for the last state to abolish the property clause, North Carolina.  Other groups, women and free black citizens, were pressing for the right to vote, but generally were denied the opportunity.

The next great leap in broadening the vote was the Fifteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War.  It supposedly granted suffrage (the right to vote) to black men, including those freed from bondage by the war.  But soon after, the “compromise” that resolved the election dispute of 1876 ended the Reconstruction era, and Jim Crow Laws were put into effect, taking away those rights.  Poll taxes, grandfather clauses (you could only vote if your grandfather could) and bogus tests (how many jelly beans in the jar) all served to make sure that black men couldn’t vote.  And for those who tried to anyway, there was always the Ku Klux Klan’s terror and murder to emphasize the point.

It would take until 1965, almost a century later, for the Voting Rights Act to be enacted by Congress, enabling the words of the Fifteenth to become action.  One of the prime motivators of that Act, Congressman John Lewis, died last week.  It isn’t ancient history. 

It was in 1887 that Native Americans who chose to disassociate themselves from their tribes could become United States citizens.  Prior to that they were treated as foreign nationals, though the US had little regard for their national rights.  But after 1887 Native Americans could technically vote. Then states established some of the same restrictions that the Jim Crow Laws placed on Black men.

Suffrage

In 1920 the Congress and States agreed to the Nineteenth Amendment, granting suffrage to women.  While this included both Black and Native American women, many states still applied the unfair restrictions.  But 1920 did effectively double the number of eligible voters in the nation.

In 1924 all Native Americans, regardless of tribal status, were granted citizenship.  And in 1943, in the middle of World War II and the Nisei Internment camps, Chinese immigrants who attained citizenship were granted the right to vote as well.

1961 saw the passage of the Twenty-Third Amendment, granting the District of Columbia electoral votes in Presidential elections.  Prior to that, Washington DC residents had no say in the choice of President.  However, the District was only granted three votes, the minimum for any state, and symbolic representation in the Congress only.  There still are no Congressmen or Senators from Washington, DC.

The Twenty-Fourth Amendment banned the poll tax, taking away the strongest tool in the Jim Crow toolbox.   The 1965 Civil Rights Act put teeth in laws guaranteeing minority voting rights, and the Supreme Court ruled in Harper v Virginia Board of Electors that paying taxes could not be a qualification for voting. 

And finally, in 1971, the voting age was reduced from twenty-one to eighteen.  This was in response to the Vietnam War protests with the slogan, “old enough to fight, old enough to vote” resonating with the American people.

Reversion

In this century, the United States has taken a different direction.  While the laws remain on the books, the trend has been to make voting more difficult.  Dozens have states have instituted voter identification laws, aimed at solving a voter fraud problem that doesn’t exist.  In recent times, the number of actual voting frauds has been miniscule.  Here in Ohio there have been fifty-one convictions for voting violations out of the many, many millions of votes cast in the last two decades.  And there have been zero convictions for fraud at the polls (Heritage). But because one political side claims, “fraud is widespread”, many states require state identification cards to vote.

For suburban white America, Voter ID Laws don’t seem like an onerous requirement.  Doesn’t everyone have a Driver’s License? And if they don’t drive, they can surely get a State ID card.  But both the license and the ID card require fee payments, ranging from $8.50 (Ohio) to $29 (California).  And it also requires time, time to go the Division of Motor Vehicles, wait in line, and apply for the card.  And for those who live in the city and don’t own a car, it requires finding public transportation to the DMV or getting someone else to drive.

Lining Up

But if you really don’t want to let people vote make them wait in line for hours to cast their ballot.  And the easiest way to do that is restrict the number of polling places, especially in the urban areas. Ask the voters of Atlanta.  That way folks have to miss work, find childcare, and stand in the weather to vote.  Somehow, by the way, that doesn’t seem to happen in the suburbs.  Or in Kansas or Kentucky or Wisconsin, simply close all of the urban polling locations, and put one big one in a location accessible only to those with private transportation.  

Mail-In Voting

So the mythical voter “fraud” problem is used to keep folks who live in urban areas and are less likely to drive from being able to vote.  It is no mistake that those folks generally vote for one political party over the other.

That same mythical problem is now being used as a cudgel to try to prevent mail-in balloting.  That’s been used in the United States since the Civil War.  We call it absentee voting, here in Ohio. There have been a total of seven convictions in Ohio for absentee ballot fraud in the past twenty years (Heritage). It’s just not a thing.

Some will argue a “difference” between mail-in balloting and absentee voting.  President Trump just yesterday argued that mail-in balloting in Florida is safe, but in other states is not.  But in the state of Oregon, the entire election process is done by mail.  Voters register with the state, and as part of that process give a signature.  A few weeks before the election, those voters are mailed the ballot.  Those ballots are then filled out, signed and returned, either by mail, or dropped off an official drop box (Oregon).

Oregon has had a total of fifteen voting offenses in the past twenty years (Heritage).

Here in Ohio we don’t have “mail-in” balloting.  We have absentee balloting, requiring the registered voter to send a request for a ballot, then get the ballot, then return the ballot.  But in Ohio, even the act of sending every registered voter an application to return to get an absentee ballot is seen as “political”.  It’s as if somehow folks should “try harder” to get the ballot, but what it really smacks of is voter suppression.

Arc

The arc of American History moved for almost two hundred years towards greater inclusion and more voter participation.  But in the last twenty years the arc has flattened, and worse, now that COVID has given us all an education in graphing, bent in the wrong direction.  We are living in an era when some of the most powerful are interested in preventing voting, at least for those who have differing views.  

I can’t think of anything that is more Un-American.

But Martin Luther King was right.  The arc of the moral universe does bend towards justice.  Those who are trying to restrict the vote will find that citizens will overcome the barriers, and change the rules so that every eligible citizen can take part in our government.  It’s the American thing to do. 

No one else was in the room where it happened
The room where it happened, the room where it happened
No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade, how the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens, but no one else is in the room where it happens 

• The Room Where It Happens – Hamilton the Musical (of course)

At the Table

So Steve Mnuchin, Chuck Schumer, Mark Meadows and Nancy Pelosi walk into a bar.  If that sounds like a bad joke, you’re right, but that’s the “team” negotiating the most recent COVID recovery bill.  Of course, the joke’s on them:  we can’t recover from the COVID pandemic until we actually get control of it, something that doesn’t look likely to happen until a new administration takes the reins in January.  But anyway, those four are trying.

If it sounds like there’s a missing cog in the not so well oiled machine of Congressional compromise, you’re right.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn’t “in the room where it’s happening”.  And don’t assume that the Secretary of the Treasury and the White House Chief of Staff are speaking for him.  They are negotiating for the President.  McConnell has been neutered, cut off from a place at the table by his own divided Republican Senate membership.  Twenty of the GOP caucus have backed away from the Leader and the President, and demand that, “Too much money has been spent, and we need to stop”.

A Weakened President

What they are really saying is:  Trump’s in re-election trouble, and when he’s gone we will need to go back to our traditional conservative constituency and donors, and tell them something good.  So we are going to say that we stood against excessive spending and prevented the unemployed from getting more money for not working.  They need to get out and support the economy, so we tried to force them out.  

Of course unemployment is still somewhere north of eleven percent.  Over sixteen million Americans are collecting unemployment benefits.  And it’s not like there are a lot of jobs out there. The jobs folks used to have in restaurants, tourist industry, and lots of other industries aren’t available.  But for those twenty Senators, standing against “excessive” spending is more important than helping Americans through the COVID crisis.  And they no longer see helping President Trump as helping themselves.  

Can’t Lead

So Leader McConnell can’t lead the Senate Republicans in negotiations, when more than a third of his caucus is against everything on the table.  In fact, if the President, Schumer and Pelosi agree, McConnell may have to bring a bill to the floor for debate where the Democrats get the bill passed with minimal Republican help.  It will take all forty-seven Democrats and at least thirteen Republicans to get to the magic sixty-vote margin. 

And, if McConnell was completely candid, I think he would be more in line with the twenty holdouts then the President or the rest of the negotiators.  But he too is faced with a political crisis:  her name is Amy McGrath, the Democratic candidate for the Senate against McConnell back in Kentucky.  He currently holds a comfortable polling lead, 53% to 36% for McGrath, but for the first time in years, his campaign is being matched dollar for dollar.  And McConnell has absolutely hitched his wagon to Donald Trump.  His personal “favorability” rating is less than thirty percent.  Should the Trump Campaign continue to “go south” McConnell’s own fate will get shakier as well.

So McConnell cannot break with the President.  In fact, he will have to bring the Senate in line with the President’s view.  Traditionally Republican leaders won’t bring bills to the floor of the Senate without having a Republican majority to pass them.  It’s not the same as the discredited “Hastert Rule” in the House of Representatives, but it is a way to maintain control of the legislative process.  But with a rump caucus of twenty sitting in opposition, it will require the full cooperation of Minority Leader Schumer and the Democrats to get the President’s bidding done.

On the Table

So what’s on the table for negotiation?  For the unemployed, it’s additional benefits.  Most states pay fifty percent of previous earned wages as unemployment, since the first COVID bill, the Federal government has added $600/week to that amount.  But that ended last Friday.  Also, the government suspended mortgage foreclosures and rent evictions since April.  That too has ended, and millions of Americans are faced with a future “on the streets” as the thirty-day eviction processes begin.  

And there’s the “rebate” of tax money, similar to the $1200 checks sent out to Americans in May.  This time dependents over sixteen are included.  And the PPP, forgivable loans to businesses, would be extended.  There’s also a liability protection clause added to protect businesses from customers or employees that get COVID while working, shopping, or eating there.

Then there are the “extraneous” items that seem like they don’t really belong.  There’s a couple billion dollars for a new FBI building. And there’s additional funding for the F-35 multi-role fighter project.  

The House of Representatives have already put their cards on the table as well, with the Heroes Act.  While there is some agreement on many of the above items, the Democrats have also included mail-in balloting throughout the country, a non-starter for many in the Senate.

Making Sausage

It’s election time, and the United States is in the middle of a pandemic.  Almost five million Americans are diagnosed with COVID, and close to 160,000 have died.  Unemployment is high, schools are questioning whether they can open, and “normal” life is completely disrupted.  Trying to help the voters would seem to be a no-brainer for all members of the House, the Senate, and the President himself.

In a “normal” political world, the “sausage” would get made.  Both sides would get some of what they want, and lose some of the things the wished they had.  There would be a law, helping most people, and making both Republicans and Democrats look like they cared.  Most are running for re-election, you’d think that would be motivation enough.

Three Republican Senators are not running for re-election, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Pat Roberts of Kansas.  Eleven more Republicans are not up for re-election is 2020.  For the retiring Senators, they are looking forward to earning money by influencing others.  Alexander discussed this when he explained his impeachment vote.  He wanted to be able to “hang out” with his friends.  That lobbying requires that they be in “good stead” with the clients, most of whom are traditional conservatives.  And for the eleven looking at running again in 2022 or 2024, they are protecting their standing in the post-Trump era.

On Principle

So politically it might be more “astute” for them to stand on “principle” and try to block COVID aid.  Their future careers are more important than the current plight of the nation.  So there may not be a COVID aid bill passed in the next few weeks.  And if it doesn’t happen by September, it may well get lost in the political turmoil of the election campaigns.

Too bad for the unemployed, who won’t be able to stay in their apartments or their homes. And really too bad for America, bereft of real leadership in its moment of crisis.

Cartoons

When I was a kid, one of childhood’s traditions was cartoons on Saturday morning. At the time I didn’t realize it was actually a “parent trick”:  I would watch early morning cartoons, and Mom and Dad would get an extra hour or two of recovery time from Friday night.  They were smart, and everyone was happy.

It was the 60’s.  Cartoons were hand drawn, and included traditional characters like Bugs Bunny and Road Runner.  There also were the “shows”, like the Flintstones, that told the story of a white suburban family in stone-age times.  Kids could all relate to Fred Flintstones’ car; we used our feet for brakes on vehicles too.  

It was only as I got older, really right at the end of my Saturday Morning cartoon viewing; that the first automated cartoon came out, Speed Racer.  I guess I remember it best for the opening sequence of every show, as it seemed like dozens were killed in car wrecks as the singers joyfully called out, “Go Speed Racer Go”!!

If the Flintstones represented a mythical past, The Jetsons represented exactly one hundred years in the future in 2062.  They too were a white urban family, living in a huge apartment floating far above the ground in Orbit City.  Robots did “the dirty work”, though they could be quirky, like Rosie the Jetsons’ housekeeper.  To kids of the 1960’s, the Jetsons set “the future”.  We expect flying cars, soaring buildings, robot assistance and vacations on the moon.  And don’t forget Astro the dog could talk, though I’m not sure I want my three pups to be able to discuss dinner every night!

Halfway There

We are kind of on the way to a Jetsons future.  No we don’t have the flying cars yet, but Amazon already is delivering packages by drone.  And we don’t have Rosie the Maid robots, but I was surprised to see an IRobot lawn mower moving along the other day.  Houses can be controlled from our phones (not mine, we still have to turn lights on and off manually) and we have “wrist radios” just like another cartoon, Dick Tracy.  So forty years from the Jetsons we are headed that way.

The Jetsons never got too much into detail as to how their world was powered, but their flying cars ran on power capsules, not liquid fuel, so we can guess that they have passed the petroleum era.  And why shouldn’t we?

Fossil Fuel

Look, whatever political stand you take, fossil fuels are not the fuels of the future.  Sure we’ve found that fracking has extended the life of petroleum.  And we have turned our technology into wresting the last expensive bits of gas and oil from the earth.  But it’s a zero sum game; there is a finite end to fossil fuels.  Meanwhile, we risk ground water from fracking, the oceans from deep well pumping, and pristine wilderness from oil exploitation.  

Transportation will probably be the last industry to give up petroleum.  Planes and trucks are going to need it, and it’s hard to imagine a recreational vehicle pulling a camper that could run on batteries.  But there’s a whole lot we can do to move away from fossil fuels, and it’s inevitable that we will have to do it.  And it has that most important benefit of protecting our future.  The Jetsons might have been telling us more than we realized.  Their soaring apartments are far above the ground, maybe the environmental changes brought by fossil fuels literally forced them to live in the clouds.  

Solutions

We know that there is a clock ticking, a clock that will run out by 2050.  The changes to our environment that we are making from fossil fuel pollution will be unalterable if we don’t stop.  And we can, and we can do it while creating an entire new opportunity for mass employment when we do it.

Let’s just think about some “easy” things we can do, today, to change the future.  We have huge swaths of land filled with suburban housing.  If each of those houses were equipped with solar energy shingles, linked to battery storage units in the house, we could move our households to sixty to eighty percent renewable energy.  Yes, there’s a significant “up front” cost, but over decades it pays for itself.  In the meantime, we don’t use coal or gas created electricity from the grid.

And that electricity grid needs to move to renewable sources as well.  Solar is one, wind farms are another.  We should be making huge investments in those industries, instead of taking $60 million bribes here in Ohio to prop up old nuclear plants or build new fossil fuel generators.  In the US, electric power generation represents 32% of greenhouse gas pollution (EPA).

Generate power at home, make the grid non-polluting, and then plug in your electric commuter car.  28% of pollution comes from transportation activities; we can reduce a lot of that by moving to electric cars.  It might be better to create more mass transportation, but if Americans are addicted to their individual vehicles, as both the Flintstones and the Jetsons showed, then let’s have traffic jams with non-polluting cars.

Flying Cars

It’s 2020 and the clock is ticking on our environment.  Storms are stronger and more frequent, areas like Central America are facing droughts that are driving folks to migrate north, tides are getting higher, and the whole world is warming.  We can still “dodge the bullet”, and we can do so and employ a whole lot of folks.  It’s really not even a question of technology:  it’s a question of will.

We know what that cleaner environment will look like.  A strange “benefit” of the pandemic was that for a few weeks we stayed at home, and pollution literally went away.  We saw what could be done.

So while we do all of our fighting about stopping a second term of Donald Trump, add this to the list of why a Joe Biden Presidency would be better for our world. He is committed to a renewable energy America by 2040.

And that still gives us twenty-two years to get our flying cars!!

Purists

There are some of us who are “purists”.  We were the ones who had faith in Americans to see through the Trump campaign back in 2016.  We thought we saw Mr. Trump as he was, a charlatan, a “one trick pony” actor who was playing “The Apprentice” on a national scale. 

We read the national polls going into November of 2016.  And we fell for the “scientificity” of polling in October.  Sure, Trump had clawed back much of the advantage Clinton held throughout the summer and fall, but she still held a lead.  That critical “margin of error” in tiny type at the bottom of each graph, wasn’t really important, was it?  And the fact that Trump had climbed within that margin, aided by FBI Director Jim Comeys’ leaked letter to Congress, should have sounded alarms.  It didn’t.

Nightmares

And there is that other factor, the one that still haunts us today.  That somehow polling didn’t reach the “closet” Trump voter, the one that won’t admit to voting for the man, but in the secrecy of the voting booth still commits the deed.  Afterward, many of us made a big deal of the “closet vote”. But reality was there weren’t that many.  Vote counts were all within the polling margin of error.  Looking back, I think it was more a matter of hubris. We thought,  “How dare someone we knew, maybe even our friends, vote for ‘that man’?  Of course they wouldn’t admit it, even to pollsters.  They hid their ‘evil’ intentions.” 

And the “purists” share a searing memory.  That moment, somewhere in the middle of the night, when we realized that Barack Obama was going to be succeeded by Donald Trump.  That somehow, someway, the America that had progressed to the point of electing the first Black President, instead of choosing the first woman, was now electing — him.  All of the issues we hoped could be resolved by Hillary Clinton were now at risk.  It wasn’t a nightmare, because we weren’t asleep.   We cried for America.

Even Worse

We had no idea how bad it would really be.  Many tried to find a way to hang on to progressivism.  It was called “the Resistance”, and the purists signed on from inauguration day on.  Millions marched in the streets, chanting “not my President”.  But, of course, he was.

There were small victories.  John McCain, of all people, saved the Affordable Care Act.  The Supreme Court stopped the “Muslim Ban”.  The FBI investigated Russia’s involvement, and when Comey was fired, we had great hopes for the Mueller Investigation.  And, Donald Trump, President, was the third in history to be impeached.

But Trump had great victories as well.  The Border Wall, whether it really is being built or not, was a winning issue for the President.  And environmental rules have been slashed.  America stopped its leadership on climate change and renewable energy.  And perhaps saddest of all, children are still being separated at the border, in spite of Federal Court intervention.

The one unifying theme of the Trump Administration has been a cavalier ignorance of the Constitutional norms of America’s Democracy.  They’ve broken all the “rules” to improve life for the 1%.  And they have committed the most egregious sin of all:  incompetence.  The “team” that came in, the Trump Organization writ large, failed to protect America from the ravages of pandemic.  They didn’t just fumble the ball they threw the entire game.  In industrialized nations, our response rates as one of the worst.  It costs thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.

A Grand Alliance

There is an old phrase: “beggars can’t be choosers”.  We are an America in crisis.  Resistors cannot be Puritan about who can join our cause.  We must accept the aid of other Americans, wherever they are coming from, and whenever they “saw the light”.  Maybe it’s the “Never-Trump” Republicans, like those in the Lincoln Project.  Sure, they remain traditional Republican conservatives, and in normal times they would be battling progressive ideas. 

But we are not living in normal times.  They bring their skills to the table, and we should embrace their energy.  We need them to reach out to their kindred spirits, now “closeted” Republicans who cannot stand to vote for Trump again.  The Lincoln Project Republicans can legitimize their vote.  While they cannot embrace “the Resistance”, or heaven forbid, Black Lives Matter, they can see McCain’s campaign manager, and a Republican candidate for White House Counsel, George Conway, as leaders they can follow.  

And, my Resistance friends remember this.  The President has already hinted that he won’t accept the election outcome.  He doesn’t have to, but it would absolutely help if there were an overwhelming mandate to remove him from office.  We need every vote, not just to win, but also to win decisively and end the Trump reign.  

“The Enemy of My Enemy is my Friend”.  If you are voting against Donald Trump, you are welcome to the cause.  Whether you were a “Resistor” from the beginning, or a realist who finally recognizes the incompetence of the pandemic response, welcome.  We can argue about our philosophical differences later.  Right now we are in an existential crisis, perhaps at the crossroads of our Democracy. 

Late or early, welcome to the Resistance.