Tom Rinaldo
Tom Rinaldo's JournalMost wouldn't call me religious, but my overwhelming feeling is expressed in two words
Thank God
Two names: Stacey Abrams and Bernie Sanders
Their political ideologies overlap but are not identical. They both worked to reach a broad range of center left voters, but their core constituencies are not identical. They broadly agree on the direction our nation needs to take, but their specific short term agendas, no doubt, are not identical. There will be a robust ongoing debate inside the Democratic coalition about policy priorities, issue framing, and the best routes to increase our share of the electorate. I expect those two will differ on such matters at times, perhaps sharply. Where, exactly, we go from here has yet to be decided, but this OP isn't about the near future, it is about the recent past.
Both Stacey Abrams and Bernie Sanders, each in their own unique way, worked to build and mobilize key elements of the Democratic coalition over the last few years. They were not unique in this, but their contributions were high profile, and the ultimate fruits of their labor in this regard made a critical difference in the 2020 Presidential election, when both the African American and the youth vote surged in key states enabling this Joe Biden win, which would not have been possible without that level of increased turn out from them.
This OP isn't about arguing about who is more right or wrong about this or that policy or approach. It is about acknowledging that the efforts made by the likes of Stacy Abrams and Bernie Sanders over a period of several years to energize, mobilize and help turn our core center left constituencies, made a crucial contribution to ensuring that the next President of the United States will be Democrat, Joe Biden. Jobs well done.
We underestimated the power of brainwashing
Yes, there is latent and often blatant racism behind support for Donald Trump. Yes there are fervent one issue voters, who will vote for Trump simply because he vows to overturn Roe V Wade, or because he strongly supports "gun rights." Yes there are those who will vote for Trump because they know on which side their bread is buttered, and thus advance their own narrow economic self interests. And yes there are "low information" voters who are not well educated and/or poorly informed about the issues that effect us all. Yes there are also tribalists who automatically give the advantage of the doubt to whoever is wearing their own team colors. But it is much more than all of that combined. There is brainwashing.
It is easy to be critical of those who succumb to brainwashing when you yourself can't identify with them. It is easy for me to accept that budding new racists get indoctrinated into white nationalism, for example, when I start out viewing them as being particularly vulnerable to recruitment into that toxic creed, or in other words, if I see them as inherently unlike me. But while brainwashing might be most easily effective against those who are most vulnerable to it, far fewer people than that are actually immune to it.
I have seen too many instances where people who I would characterize as being left of center fall victim to what I see as brainwashing. I moved to San Francisco in 1977, and when I first arrived there The People's Temple and its pastor Jim Jones were well regarded in liberal politics. The vision that the Peoples Temple embraced was multi-racial, multi-culteral, humanistic and avidly behind advancing social justice on every front. The Peoples Temple, for a time, was a player in Democratic local politics. Many political activists belonged to it. Many well educated and socially conscious people were drawn into it, and the sense of community and inclusion they felt inside its ranks. It was painful years later to watch video interviews with Peoples Temple members who one way or another avoided a deadly fate in Guyana. Though I did not know those people personally I still recognized them, they weren't much different than me.
There are other examples, some of them relating to those among us who suffered from the feeling of a spiritual void, ranging from those who were ensnared by the Moonies to those who became followers of this or that eventual cult leaders. There are, and have been, relatively extremist political movements on the left also dominated by central figures and bold ideological views painted in primary colors. Many of us heard of the late Lyndon LaRouche, whose movement (according to Wikipedia) "originated within the radical leftist student politics of the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of candidates, some with only limited knowledge or connection to LaRouche or the movement, ran as Democrats in the United States on the LaRouche platform."
Brainwashing does not just affect stupid and/or uninformed people. Once the infection begins it often spreads to ohers, much like a potential viral pandemic. The body politic in America had no built up antibodies to someone like Donald J.Trump. The last political figure in America who remotely compares to Trump in his ability to remold minds through propaganda and lies was Joseph McCarthy, and that was almost 70 years ago. Americans were not psychologically prepared by our recent political past to reject a constant thundering waterfall of lies. We knew how to respond when small lies were injected into the political discourse. Small lies can be fact checked and debunked, and those who tell them usually reacted with discomfort, and one or another form of chagrin when confronted with evidence that refuted them. America was not prepared for the introduction of Hitler's propaganda tactic, the use of the Big Lie, a totally fabricated alternative reality that defiantly proclaims itself the truth in the face of any and all evidence to the contrary.
The fact that The Big Lie now originates from the highest office in the land, one that for generations Americans have come to venerate as the focal point for our democracy, allows it to permeate through many of our rational defenses against it. We have become conditioned to expect lies to be retracted by reputable figures when the evidence doesn't support them. We have been conditioned to regard any siting President of the United States to be, essentially by definition, a reputable figure. Trump was a figure given a high profile national profile for many years prior as a reality TV star. Credible news networks covered his bombastic and hate riddled campaign rallies repeatedly and in full during his "novel" 2016 campaign, supposedly for news value but in reality for ratings. Cult figures ordinarily can not win 1/100th of the exposure that our assumed to be reputable media granted to Donald Trump. And then he seized the Bully Pulpit.
The Right wing news media in America cynically broadcasts to a hermetically sealed bubble. It is a hugely profitable business that's made mega millionaires out of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who front for it. At this point it is essentially one and the same with the National Enquirer in regards to objective truth. This propaganda echo chamber is fully deployed now and sanctioned from on high, and it is extremely effective at what it does, unrestrained as it is from any need to convey the truth. I say all of this not to excuse any of the racists in America who have crawled out from beneath their rocks, nor to excuse those who refuse to even look at evidence of their own embedded toxic prejudices. I say this not to minimize the caustic influence of greed in America, or the glorification of selfish individualism that runs rampant in our culture. Nor do I dismiss the danger from fundamentalist religious forces that seek to sit in judgement over us all, controlling the options open to us to conform to their own concept of morality. I say this because we need to both know and understand our enemy. We are up against more than just racism and ignorance, more than intolerance and greed. We face a full blown cult of personality in America today, one that is as much psychological and cultural as it is purely political. And to combat that we need to develop more than just sensible policies and better framed talking points. We need to somehow initiate deprogramming on a mass level.
I am now pretty confident Joe Biden will be our next President AND I am depressed as all hell
...about the nation that we live in. It doesn't help at all that it seems most likely that Republicans will retain control of the Senate which will severely curtail Biden's ability to make essential fundamental structural changes. Still we will once again have an Attorney General who believes in the rule of law. We will have directors of our various intelligence agencies who are not covertly assisting Putin. Biden won't be able to get a Treasury Secretary confirmed through the Senate who strongly advocates a progressive path forward, but he will be able to get some competent moderate type Democrat confirmed. There are still two or three Republican Senators who will allow Biden to appoint his own team to the Cabinet, as long as his picks are moderate technocrats and not perceived as seeking to implement an overtly progressive agenda. The EPA will once again be headed by someone who believes in science, for example, and Biden's FDA head will also.
That's the relatively positive way of looking at the probable result, and the net positives of having a Biden presidency replace a Trump presidency are far from being insignificant. But the fact remains: Far, far too many Americans seem perfectly willing to let Trump lead America toward increased racial animosities and autocratic rule, which bodes poorly for our immediate future as a nation. It is deeply sobering and disturbing to confront this truth, though with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the White House, we will remain in the fight for a better America.
Report from a trusted friend about Democratic efforts at combating voter harassment.
He works with elected Democrats. He is part of a network organized by Party insiders to respond to reports of voter harassment throughout the nation. Trusted people are working phone shifts covering specified regions. I am unclear how many people may be covering the same regions simultaneously. I think he said he personally handled responses to 50 reports of voter intimidation this morning.
He says there have been numerous incidents reported nationally that have led to hundreds of actual arrests, including intimidating behavior by those with guns and those physically making access to polling locations hard or impossible. BUT he assures me that this is NOT bad news because in reality Democrats had carefully prepared for these type problems and these incidents are being dealt with effectively. A LOT of advance planning went into preparing responses to voter harassment, he said, down to the level of knowing ahead of time who in which law enforcement agencies would respond positively to requests for intervention. He assured me that, specifically, PA's Attorney General is extremely well prepared for this, and highly effective at shutting down harassment.
His overall message was, hey, we knew this was inevitable but we planned for this down to the smallest detail and that planning is paying off and problems ARE being dealt with efficiently and effectively when they emerge. He is not freaked out about all of the issues they are being forced to deal with because the systems they put in place to deal with them are functioning exactly as planned for.
When record breaking voting totals are announced, remember...
Relatively speaking, not a whole lot of folks live in rural areas. Trump can only potentially turn out small numbers of small town and tiny hamlet new voters. The real reservoirs for potential new voters are urban and suburban, and young voters everywhere.
July through September represents the high water mark for a Covid-19 economy
The third quarter began after all of the pandemic necessitated Spring closures were eased, and after those closures contributed to the first wave of infections finally cresting and receding. But, more importantly, it consisted of warm weather months that allowed people to spend their time and money outdoors. Now a chill has descended over most of the nation and people are heading back indoors, just as the next major wave of this pandemic sets in. Of course it didn't hurt that stimulus money was still flowing during the first two months of the third quarter, but even leaving that aside, conditions for a partial economic recovery hit their sweet spot that is fading increasingly now as days grow shorter and nights grow long.
Burying Trump and the Elephant He Rode In On
That is the goal, and it can only be achieved with a landslide. Of course electing Biden/Harris is critically important, but the stakes in this election are much larger than that alone, which is why "overconfidence" is not a relevant concern. There is no political target reachable that can warrant slackening off during this election, no level of support for Biden we can possibly attain that can ever be "enough". It's like the psychology involved in setting a fund raising goal, if you hit it early then you simply raise it. A budding authoritarian movement must be smashed, and nothing we can achieve during one election cycle can finish that job, it's just a question of how much damage to "Trumpism" we can realize this time around.
We do this in two ways. One, we fire up our own side to take on any and all opposition, both up and down the ballot. Two, we depress the hell out of the other side, causing some of them to stay home on Election Day. We see it as proof of our strength and a source of pride to overcome every obstacle to voting. This time around let our opposition wonder if it will ultimately make any difference if they go to the trouble of voting or not.
It is setting our sites too low to look at early voting numbers and hope that Democrats are banking enough votes in advance to overcome a probable Republican advantage on Election Day itself. Where is it written in stone that significantly fewer Democrats will turn out to vote on Election Day than will Republicans? It is within our power to effect that. We are successfully executing phase one of this election, by decisively winning the early vote. Next comes phase two. If we can surge on Election Day also we can have the major landslide that we dream of, but to do so we must frame what is at stake correctly. I repeat, it's about much more than just electing Biden/Harris.
For anyone concerned about a woman's right to choose, the answer is: VOTE
For anyone concerned about runaway climate change, the answer is: VOTE
For anyone concerned about back breaking student debt, the answer is: VOTE
For anyone worried about affordable health care and preexisting conditions: VOTE
For anyone worried about an out of control Dept. Of Justice persecuting political enemies: VOTE
For anyone who believes the U.S should stand with other world democracies rather than tyrants: VOTE
For anyone who thinks Black Lives Matter: VOTE
For anyone who cares about poverty growing while wealth flows to the top: VOTE
For anyone who believes in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic with everything we've got: VOTE
For all those who stand with the Dreamers: VOTE
For all who believe the United States should never rip children away from their parents: VOTE
For all those who believe that Voter Suppression must finally be ended, once and for all: VOTE
Of course the list of reasons to vote this year is virtually limitless, so I'll rest here for the moment. But this is the final point that needs to be driven home, now.
For all of those who remain skeptical about whether voting ever makes much of a real difference, who think the system can not change, here is the chance they have been waiting for to finally find out. This is the year many fellow skeptics have already decided this time they too will vote. This year can be the experiment for what can change if two thirds of Americans actually vote. This is that moment: VOTE!
Rides To Drop Off Boxes?
Is there anyone out there organizing anything like this? We all know about organizing volunteers to offer "Rides to the Polls" on Election Day, but this year the main choke point seems to be a danger of mail in ballots not making it back in time to be counted in the final results due to mail slowdowns. Now, on top of that, with the current make up of the U.S. Supreme Court the chances are growing that in some states ballots postmarked by Election Day but delivered after Election Day will end up being discarded regardless of what current State laws currently allow.
IMO Democrats now should discourage mailing in ballots if possible when other options are available, and we should be helping make other options accessible. Not everyone is able to make it to a ballot drop box in person, or to the local Board of Elections where Drop Boxes are not provided. Further, some State Laws prohibit dropping off a ballot other than your own at a Drop Box. One way around that is to provide rides for voters so that they can safely deposit their own ballots in person.
A widely shared perception of a rapdily approaching and inevitable Blue Tsunami
is our best public defense against any threat of election theft. Trump is trying his best to assert confidence now in the opposite, a Republican victory strong enough to regain the House. This on top of his claims that the only way he can lose is if the election is rigged against him. These are political mind games laying the groundwork for a power grab. In order to blunt or even reverse Democratic gains in the upcoming 2020 election, by "less than legitimate means", it is imperative that Republicans push the narrative that a victory for them still remains within grasp. And, in my opinion, it is imperative that Democrats exude confidence that the nation is turning toward Biden and away from Trump.
We no longer exist in the political landscape that dominated the latter half of the 20th century. Many of us now share a growing fear of possible vote manipulation on a scale large enough to reverse the results of a fair election. In prior decades a side that was leading in the polls often saw an upside advantage in downplaying their lead to the public, the better to boost voter turnout for their side through the fear that the outcome rested on a relative handful of votes, so that no one could afford to "sit this one out."
There is still some truth in that political creed, but it now needs to be balanced by an updated reality. We know Russia will do anything it believes it can get away with to help Donald Trump remain in office, possibly up to and including manipulating vote tallies. Meanwhile we also know that voter motivation on our side remains white hot, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are favored to win locally. Personally, I have far more fear of the potential deadly consequences of allowing a political narrative to grow that this election "can still go either way" than I do of lulling Democratic voters into complacency by feeding the public perception that Trump is headed toward a resounding defeat.
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