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Posts published in October 2020

Idaho women bullish on Biden

richardson

Three and a half months ago, Kassie Cerami* and I created a new Facebook group titled Idaho Women for Biden. We each invited several of our closest women friends and, in just 48 hours, the group had grown to 400 members. In a week, we had reached 1,000 members, all without spending a penny in promotion. The growth was completely organic; women invited other women.

We quickly came to understand that many women had been reluctant to join because the group was public. They feared retribution by neighbors and worried that their kids would be ostracized at school. Nevertheless, they put their fears aside and joined because they couldn’t stand the thought of four more years of a Donald Trump presidency. They were more than ready to consider Joe Biden.

After a couple weeks, we decided to make the group private and, after Joe Biden named his running mate, we changed its name to Idaho Women for Biden-Harris.
Now, three and a half months after our first post, Idaho Women for Biden-Harris boasts 10,500 members. Our members cover a wide range of the political spectrum.

Some would prefer that Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic nomination; others wish they could vote for Mitt Romney. All are supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Many tell us they are voting for a Democrat for the first time.

Group members reside in all 44 Idaho counties, and come from every nook and cranny in the state. Most hail from Idaho’s larger cities: Boise, Meridian, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho Falls, Moscow, Pocatello, Lewiston, Nampa, Twin Falls, Eagle, and Caldwell. But many others come from Idaho’s smallest towns, places like Greencreek and Rockcreek, Moyie Springs and Soda Springs, to name a few.
Members include educators and entrepreneurs, health care providers and homemakers, retail workers and realtors, lawyers and librarians, models and mechanics. Some are Idaho natives; others are transplants. All adhere to the group’s norms of civility, kindness and respect.

It's always tricky to rely on anecdotes to get a sense of the mood of the electorate, but the membership of Idaho Women for Biden has provided a number of insights; it has become something of a 10,000-member focus group.

Thanks to Facebook’s analytics, we know that, in the last 28 days, our page has had 450,000 posts, comments and reactions. By any measure, that’s impressive member engagement. We’ve heard story after story of women in their 50s, 60s and 70s voting for the first time. Others, who had not voted in years, returned to the polls. Many women tell us they’ve convinced their Republican husbands to vote for Biden, persuading them that their daughters’ futures deserve nothing less. We’ve been deeply moved by accounts from women from rural towns who thought they were alone and isolated in their political beliefs only to discover that some of their neighbors are also group members.

We know from national polls there is a sizeable gender gap in the presidential campaign: Biden receives much stronger support from women than does the current occupant of the White House. Based on our experience with Idaho Women for Biden-Harris, it would appear Idaho women are no exception. Each of our members has her own life story and her own reasons for joining the Biden-Harris campaign. In this brief video, four members share their thinking.

If 10,500 Idaho women are this bullish on Biden, that bodes well for Tuesday’s general election.

*Kassie Cerami is the state lead for Idaho for Biden and served as the Idaho state director for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Women will save America

johnson

If Donald Trump wins a second term next week – and for the record I don’t believe he will – it will mark as great a turning point in the American experiment as anything since the Civil War.

The sense that the country can be governed by anything approaching a middle ground consensus will be gone. An economy that has barely hung together over the last few months will unravel, likely at stunning speed, as millions of Americans will face more than unemployment. They will lose homes and automobiles and food. It is indeed going to be a bleak winter.

But there is at least huge one reason for optimism and it’s only fitting. One hundred years after women finally won the battle to vote they are going to save America. Really.

A “gender gap” has existed between the two political parties for years. Donald Trump has made the gap the Grand Canyon of American politics. Women, make no mistake, are going to determine the next president. Moms and grandmothers don’t have a huge propensity to fail us and they won’t this time.

Trump knows he’s in big trouble with women voters and goodness knows he should be. His weak plea in Wisconsin this week – “Suburban women, you’re going to love me. You better love me.” – is not the closing argument of a winner. Nor is his whiny begging recently in Pennsylvania. “Can I ask you to do me a favor, suburban women?” Trump said during a rally in Johnstown, earlier this month. “Will you please like me? Please.”

As Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei reported this week new “Gallup polling finds Trump remains above 50% with rural residents, white men and white adults without college degrees, but Trump has “dropped nine points just this year with suburbanites — falling with both men and women — to 35%.”

Trump won that demographic in 2016. Trump’s rickety standing with this critical group has been driven by women. They just aren’t into him anymore.

“In 2016, Donald Trump didn’t have a record. In 2020, now, he does,” said Susan Del Percio, a Republican strategist and adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “That record is one that is really quite offensive, I think, to many Americans male and female, but especially women. And he leans into it.”

Pundits – including this one – too often over think politics. For many, maybe even most Americans, the presidential choice comes down to a pretty simple calculation: who do I want in my living room every night for the next four years? We’ve had four years of bluster, bombast, boasting and bungling. We’re ready – perhaps women most particularly – for something different.

The Politico journalist Tim Alberta put a fine point on it recently when he wrote “if Trump loses, the biggest factor won’t be Covid-19 or the economic meltdown or the social unrest. It will be his unlikability.”

All across America, Alberta wrote, “in conversations with voters about their choices this November, I’ve been hearing the same thing over and over again: ‘I don’t like Trump.’ (Sometimes there’s a slight variation: ‘I’m so tired of this guy,’ ‘I can’t handle another four years of this,’ etc. The remarkable thing? Many of these conversations never even turn to [Joe] Biden; in Phoenix, several people who had just voted for the Democratic nominee did not so much as mention his name in explaining their preference for president.”

The conservative writer Kevin D. Williamson – he writes often for William F. Buckley’s old magazine The National Reviewhad a similar observation. Trump’s disreputable personal character, a glaring fixture of his very public being, but a feature largely ignored by his male supporters, is, Williamson says, finally catching up with him. The Twitter fights, the petty, mean name calling, the failure to assume any responsibility for his shortcomings or obvious mistakes has become disqualifying for many, many voters who once saw the guy as an agent of change. Instead he has become the spreader of division and disorder, not to mention a virus.

“Trump’s low character is not only an abstract ethical concern,” Kevin Williamson writes, “but a public menace that has introduced elements of chaos and unpredictability in U.S. government activity ranging from national defense to managing the coronavirus epidemic. Trump’s character problems are practical concerns, not metaphysical ones.”

Trump went into the last two weeks of the presidential campaign with a crazy agenda. He’s been trying to convince Americans that what we are all living with daily, a pandemic that he has downplayed and mismanaged at every step, was going away. And he manufactured, and with the help of rightwing news organizations and social media, then transmitted a vast array of conspiracy theories about his opponent and the previous president of the United States. Trump has run not on a second term agenda – he has none – but on the same old litany of grievance, resentment, racism and fear that fueled his rise in the first place.

Nothing so clearly illustrates this reality than the president of the United States going this week to his must win state of Wisconsin, a “state is in the midst of a full-on coronavirus crisis, setting new records for hospitalizations and sitting near the top of the list for per capita cases.” Against all logic he declared the virus contained.

The White House actually issued a press release this week claiming that defeating the pandemic was one of Trump’s signature accomplishments, a transparently ridiculous claim, as the writer Robert Schlesinger says, on par with “the Vichy government listing defeat of Germany among its accomplishments.”

Donald Trump will win Idaho’s four electoral votes, but by a smaller margin than four years ago and the reason will be the votes of women, the same voters who have deserted him in the Philadelphia and Atlanta suburbs, in places like Maricopa County, Arizona and even in Omaha. Top of the ticket races in Idaho all favor the GOP, but the margins for Republicans are likely to be smaller than normal. Trump has no coattails and the stench of his presidency will infect the entire ticket.

Trump drew an inside straight four years ago against arguably the most unlikable presidential candidate in modern history, a woman who still won the popular vote by three million. Women are going to save American democracy in a few days. They’re just not into this guy. They’ve had enough. And they’re right.
 

Atlas shrugged, Trump too

jones

Having failed in his half-hearted effort to corral the coronavirus, Donald Trump has now pretty much given up and decided to let the virus run its course. The hope seems to be that he can keep his supporters convinced, at least until election day, that the country can be fully opened and the virus will miraculously go away. It won’t work that way, of course, but so long as the strategy gives him his best shot at re-election, who cares?

The plan is much like the so-called “herd immunity” concept employed by the socialist government in Sweden--fully open the country and let the virus do its thing. Responsible epidemiologists call it morally reprehensible because it could unnecessarily kill upwards of a couple million Americans. Experts say the Swedish Covid-19 response has been a disaster.

Trump has called Dr. Anthony Fauci a “disaster” and ignored his advice, while placing growing reliance on Dr. Scott Atlas, a person without epidemic expertise. Atlas has been instrumental in promoting the dangerous herd immunity concept. As daily infections increase at an alarming rate, Atlas merely shrugs and rails against protective measures like wearing masks, social distancing and increased testing and tracing to find and snuff out virus hotspots. Atlas is a cheerleader for unchecked virus spread, he has Trump’s ear, and hundreds of thousands of American lives are needlessly at risk as a result.

Trump continues to downplay the need for rigorous testing. He has refused to spend $9 billion appropriated by Congress to ramp up testing. A comprehensive testing program would reveal the true extent of coronavirus infections across the country, which Trump thinks would hurt his election prospects. He does not want to know and does not want voters to know.

Trump ignores the rapidly-climbing Covid-19 infection rate, claiming the end of the pandemic is just around the corner. Actually, the worst part of the pandemic is just getting started. The U.S. reported 85,085 Covid-19 cases on October 23, an all-time daily high, and daily infections will likely exceed 100,000 in short order. The U.S. is expected to suffer a half million Covid-19 deaths by the end of February, although 130,000 of those lives could be saved if all of us just wore masks.

Idaho is one of the states suffering a spike in cases. There were 1,139 new infections statewide on October 23. A University of Idaho model “estimates about one in 30 eastern Idahoans have Covid-19 and are actively spreading the virus.” Hospitals in Coeur d’Alene and Spokane are at capacity because of the coronavirus surge and hospitals are starting to fill up elsewhere in the state.

Most of the spread around the country is attributable to Donald Trump’s cavalier attitude toward the virus. Trump holds rallies with thousands of closely-packed, unmasked people, which is bound to result in heartache for many of his own supporters and their loved ones. If Trump would just ask that each of them wear a mask out of respect to him, it would go a long way toward giving them a measure of protection. Instead, his rallies have aided and abetted the virus--acting as super-spreader events--according to a USA TODAY analysis.

The experts repeatedly tell us that the main job of the government in a pandemic is to tell people the truth and act upon that truth. That is Trump’s greatest failing. A comprehensive Cornell University study of 38 million English-language pandemic articles found that our President was the “single largest driver” of coronavirus misinformation--about 38% of the overall “misinformation conversation.” The country will continue to suffer grievous injury as a result.
 

The vote spread

stapiluslogo1

Nearly everything we’ve gotten, and had to endure, from this pandemic has been bad, and we will all be happy to be rid of it. But it has brought us a few good things, and we’re actually in one of them now.

In much of the country, this year is full of new rules and schedules related to when and how you vote. In some places, like Oregon and Washington, this whole business of “voting early” is nothing new. But in many others, like Idaho to some degree, there have been changes.

One key for how to consider the new form of voting - not entirely new in Idaho, of course, but much expanded in its reach - involves what’s often called “vote by mail.” But that’s a misnomer: Even when you get your ballot by mail, you don’t have to return it that way. A better way to think of the change from one-day polling-place voting (not that this has vanished from Idaho either) is to think of what we have now not as “early” voting but as “spread-out” voting. It’s not that all votes are cast a couple of weeks ahead of what we think of as deadline day - in this case, November 3. It’s that the voting takes across a period of weeks.

Two big advantages accrue to that: one in the bigger good government picture and, one that affords an asset to candidates and parties interested in taking advantage of it.

The first advantage is the relative quashing of late-breaking negative campaigning. I’ve seen it over the years, and if you’ve been around awhile, so have you: The news story or ad or mailer or flyer drop, or whatever, that contains some (hopefully) devastating attack against the opposition, delivered only two or three or four days before the day everybody votes, which would be on a Tuesday. That means weekends before election day (I’ve seen this notably in some church parking lots) can be sensitive times indeed … if everyone’s voting on Tuesday.

For a candidate, recovering from such an attack at that time can be hard: There’s often not time enough to get a rebuttal message out. People have time only to absorb the initial message and react reflexively, which often means emotionally and thoughtlessly. But such tactics can work.

Suppose, though, the voting is spread out over two or three weeks. There’s no one precise moment when dropping the bomb is going to help enormously.

Spread-out voting tends to make for more careful and reflective voting.

From a political organizer’s point of view, there’s a tactical advantage to spreading out the vote.

While the votes cast by a voter remain confidential throughout the process, the fact that a specific person voted becomes public information once the ballot reaches the county elections office. That means, ordinarily, that if a political organizer wants to determine who has voted, they can.

Why might this be important? Once a person has voted, you can scratch them off your to-do list: No longer any need to try to reach that person, by phone, mail or otherwise. They’re done. On the other hand, if you see that someone hasn’t voted, this is a person you still want to get after if you think they’re one of yours. If you’re a day or two out from election day and this batch of voters hasn’t been accounted for, you can go after them.

In theory that same principle can apply on election day, but there instead of days to learn who has and hasn’t voted and to act on that information, you have hours and minutes. You can go after those people, in theory, but there’s hardly any time to make a dent.

Don’t be surprised if spread-out voting catches on in a big way even after this Covid-19 year is done. A lot of people stand to benefit.

A note from last week: A reader pointed out that the totals I listed for party membership in the Idaho Legislature were out of date. They were. The current numbers are: the state Senate, 28 Republicans and seven Democrats, and in the House, 56 Republicans and 14 Democrats.

 

Idaho catches up

schmidt

Back in May, when Idaho had come out of the shutdown and there was an all-mail-in primary election, I pointed out how counting Covid deaths was tough. I suggested instead we track “excess deaths”, that is the number of people who are dying above what is expected.

Back when I wrote that Idaho only had 16 reported Covid deaths. Now we are above 500. But the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare reports that for the period January through September 2020 our state has had 861 “excess deaths”. That is, lots more Idahoans are dying than expected. It is about a 9% increase above the baseline.

But if you have time to look at the graph on the CDC website for Idaho excess deaths, you will see that almost all that excess occurred after July. And a graph, from the New York Times shows a very steady increase in cases. We are now posting weekly highs, week after week. Maybe we are catching up.

Idaho’s health care providers and hospitals are feeling it. Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d’Alene is at 99% capacity, cancelling elective surgeries because their ICU is maxed out. Southeastern Idaho is also seeing rising cases and hospitalizations.

Of course, it could just be a blip, a bump, a bit of a bother, not really something to get too worried about. Maybe an extra thousand deaths in a year is something the rest of us can live with. At least we are getting back to having sports.

We are all tired of this pandemic, aren’t we?

I don’t think it’s tired of us yet.

Our Governor and Republican legislators are very proud of our economic growth, one of the most rapid in the nation. They should be, it’s impressive. We have lower unemployment (3rd lowest) and high GDP growth. It helps Idaho’s population is booming also, unless you like the solitude.

So, what would be acceptable in exchange for your beloved economic numbers? Ten percent excess deaths? Twenty percent? After all, it’s just us old people dying from the infections.

But healthy growth, healthy communities show some discipline. What Governor Little hears is Idahoans want more freedom. How long are you going to expect me to wear this stupid mask?

We had an early shutdown in Idaho when numbers were quite low. Did the social isolation help our communities not get infected, or were we just ahead of the curve and now we are catching up? We can’t turn the clock back and conduct that experiment, but the curve we are seeing right now calls for some action. And the unpopularity of that action will be directly related to the amount of courage it takes to do it.

Governor Little knows his Idaho, and he hears from and listens to all sorts. He knows the numbers and watches the curves, reads the reports. But he also knows there’s a small but vocal wing of his Idaho Republican Party that don’t like him, don’t like his moderate and sensible ways. They’d dump him for an Ammon Bundy type in a minute.

But my experience with Brad Little says he’s got the discipline and the courage to help lead us through this. It’s going to be rough, these coming months.

I learned about diving through the surf on the Southern California beaches. You have to time it right or the wave pushes you down and you tumble in the sand. If you come up too early, while it’s still cresting you get pulled over, back into the washing machine. After a few spins, it’s hard to know your way up. But it’s fun to get out past the waves.

We’re catching a wave now. Let’s hope we get out beyond.
 

Again, for emphasis: An endorsement

stapiluslogo1

Re-running our endorsement in the presidential contest. Now get your vote in, right away.

In approaching a half-century of writing about politics, I’ve never written a candidate endorsement before. Now, in this fearsome fall of 2020, it’s beholden on us all to speak up.

This is an endorsement of Joe Biden for president.

I’ll try to keep this as short and simple as I can. The case can be made best at length - whole shelves, maybe libraries, of books make the case either for why Biden should be elected on November 3, or - especially - why the incumbent, Donald Trump, should not. But there seems little point in rehashing all of it; I’d be writing and you’d be reading (if you were that determined) for weeks.

You could argue that I made an endorsement - or, actually, anti-endorsement - four years ago. Then, I published a series of 100 posts outlining 100 leading reasons - not the only reasons, just those I thought most crucial - why electing Trump would be an enormous mistake. Nearly all of it, I think, holds up; the negatives those 100 posts pointed out then have sprouted over the last four years into much of the walking catastrophe we’ve seen since. Still, that was only an argument against, and it applied only to what might happen: Once in office, Trump should be judged primarily on the basis of what he has done there.

And we should remember a few of those reasons …

Trump has been the most dishonest public figure - not just president, not just political figure, but the most dishonest public figure of nearly any sort - in recent generations. Nothing he or the people who work for him can be relied upon, and that has been the case since day one. The outright lies alone number in the thousands.

Trump cannot be depended on to protect our country. We cannot even tell, from the weight of his actions and statements, whether his loyalty is primarily to this country. He repeatedly has taken the side of dictators and adversaries of the United States over our own people, over the troops he commands and the intelligence agencies that work for us. We know that he has held secret conversations - under unusual, even unprecedented conditions - with leaders of countries adversarial to us, and not reported back to us what was said. He and his family have had business dealings with several of them. He owes, we are told (and this appears to be undisputed) hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, we know not to whom.

Trump has done whatever he can to turn the government of this country - the government we pay for and that operates under our authority - into a service bureau for his personal benefit. He sees the Department of Justice not as an agency to deliver legal service for the country, rather as a personal legal service for him. One agency after another is seen in a similar light: The Department of State, in one atrocious example, has been perverted for use as a political dirty tricks operation. (And let it be remembered: The case for impeachment from a year ago was and remains rock solid.)

Trump has divided this country more than any president before him. The election of Abraham Lincoln may have helped trigger the Civil War, but he spent his whole presidency in a crusade for union and unity. In contrast, Trump has declared flatly his loyalty to people who “like” him and virtually declared war on everyone else. He has tried to start baseless criminal actions against his political opponents, leading supporters in chants calling for imprisoning his opponents. He has tried to undermine and damage one institution in this country after another, including the news organizations which are among the few checks on him. He has found one group after another to serve as a target to inflame his base, to the point of repeatedly encouraging white supremacists and their activities. He has lent implicit egging-on support to the id of his base to attack other Americans - which led with easy predictability to the recent conspiracy to kidnap and possibly kill a state governor; to which his response was to blame that conspiracy on the governor. The Trump Administration's own FBI has called groups like this one of the top threats facing the country today; Trump offers them comfort and support. (The frequently extremist court appointments many of Trump’s supporters like so much also have contributed, badly, to this nation’s divisions.)

Trump has demonstrated no awareness or understanding of the principles of justice and liberty this nation always has aspired to. He does not even give lip service to such concepts as freedom and the aspirations of individuals. He has made clear that in his world view, only one individual matters - himself.

Trump has undermined our ability to govern ourselves by making repeated statements and actions aimed at undermining our elections - most notably the next one, and perhaps worst of all by refusing to say he would accept the verdict of the election results. Or maybe worst of all his (and often his party's) efforts to jam, manipulate or suppress the vote - to deprive Americans of their right to choose their leaders. Either way, his statements and action show he is uninterested in a government of, by or for the people: He is a dictator wannabe, and will be if he can get away with it.

Trump is hopelessly incompetent. He was a vastly overrated businessman - by many accounts failing badly and needing his 2016 presidential campaign as a personal marketing gimmick - but as president he has been much worse. “I alone can fix it” was a lie from his first nominating convention; like a large wild animal in an antique shop, he has demolished or damaged nearly everything he has touched, not least the reputations of the people so unwise as to work in his administration, and the once-proud political party whose banner he carries.

Trump has turned fact and science into an irrelevancy. In a universe of "alternative facts," we have a government of only incoherence, whether the subject is climate change, foreign policy, education or almost anything else.

Trump has damaged our standing internationally. He has mindlessly torn up useful agreements and damaged our key alliances, and given priceless assistance to almost every nation around the world that wishes us ill. He has managed to get wrong almost everything about our most complex relationships - notably China.

Trump has damaged and continues to try to further damage the well-being of our people. The most obvious example is in his thoughtless and self-centered approach to the Covid-19 pandemic, a weak and counterproductive miasma that has made him the reason tens of thousands of Americans have died. Not content with that, his administration has moved aggressively to take health insurance coverage away (formerly through legislation and now through a still-alive legal case his administration is backing) from tens of millions of Americans - a breathtaking attack on his fellow Americans at any time, but bad almost beyond belief in a time of pandemic. He has damaged the governmental agencies he is supposed to manage; his attempts to wreck the Post Office, on an apparent mission of personal spite and for his attempted political benefit, is only one recent example. Trump’s base likes to credit him for an economy faring well pre-Covid-19, but that was simply a continuation of the economic structure set in place during Barack Obama’s second term; the economy’s collapse this year (by no means over) would have been far less painful under reasonably capable administration.

Much else - many other issues or concerns that ought to be disqualifying for a president or any other office of public trust, and probably ought to be included here - may be debatable. But these points are clear, established and for all meaningful purposes irrefutable. You need no more than the public record and Trump's own statements and actions to anchor them. There is no substantial positive case, for anyone other than a true believer, for the incumbent.

These problems are not ideological: They do not relate to a “liberal” or “conservative” point of view (whatever those may be). These problems are worse. Each and every one of these problems should constitute a clear disqualifier from the presidency.

Donald Trump is by a very long shot the worst president in the nation’s history, and whoever your choice for second place was a whole lot better.

And the subtext of all this, across the board, is that all of it would get much worse in a second term.

But enough about the incumbent. I write here to endorse Joe Biden.

The first point in doing that is to emphasize that none of what I just said about Donald Trump is or would be true of Joe Biden. Unlike the incumbent, he is not ignorant of the nation, its operating principles and aspirations, the needs of its people, or the functioning of its government. His loyalty to the nation and its people is without question. How successful he would be at healing the divisions is an unknown, but he would at least try, rather than deliberately become the human wrecking ball the incumbent is. He would almost instantly improve our standing in the world and our relationships with other nations. He would re-establish some stability and an ability to practically cope with problems (Covid-19, for one example), an ability the current leadership lacks completely.

But the case for Biden doesn’t rest just on a relative absence of negatives.

He is deeply experienced in governing, and he has a good track record. He was a loyal and from all appearances highly capable vice president, and a central advisor in the Oval Office for eight years; he knows how the place runs, and could step in competently on day one. He served respectably in the United States Senate for decades. His own state - during periods both when it was dominated by his own and by the opposing party (it has shifted over time) - approved of the job he did. He chaired two major committees, and was commonly spoken of positively by members of both parties. Republican John McCain famously was a close friend. Biden has not served in the military (and neither did Trump) but family members have, and he has had a close tie to the national defense (and he does not trash it, as the incumbent so often has).

Probably more important than all this, you can hear in Biden’s speeches and his interactions with people - not just now, in the campaign, but through the decades - his awareness and understanding of what the United States is, the principles that animate it and make it a special place. He understands those things and internalizes them.

Biden also has an understanding of the substance of the presidency, the serious problems and the changes coming, foreign and domestic. He does have a grasp of the real world, not the construct of fantasy-conspiracy illusions so sadly popular in his opposition.

Biden has shown a level demeanor, a calm temperament and an ability to cope intelligently and appropriately with setbacks and problems. He has shown that he understands the office of the president and the federal government are not about him but about the people of the country, and he has not only said explicitly but demonstrated that he can and will act in the office in the larger good, not on the narrow behalf of himself and his most intense supporters.

Oh, and while this ordinarily wouldn’t be so big a point of distinction between two presidential candidates, it is in this case: Joe Biden, from all appearances, history and description, is a decent guy who cares about other people. When that quality is so completely absent in the opposition, it does matter.

Much of this does not, in itself, make Joe Biden a super-spectacular choice for president. Many people I have known, including quite a few politicians of both parties, have had many of these qualities too. They are not on the ballot. Joe Biden is. And he has what it takes to be a good president.

Some elections I have seen over the last half-century have involved difficult choices. This is not one of them. Considering the alternative - and don’t delude yourself that anyone other than the Democrat or the Republican is a real option - this should be the easiest presidential choice of our lifetimes. Of our nation's history, for that matter.

So here’s the endorsement: In the general election, vote for Joe Biden for president.

(photo/Gage Skidmore)
 

About the commander in mischief

jones

Those individuals responsible for ensuring the safety of this great nation are among the most respected Americans. While public confidence in some of our institutions has flagged in recent years, confidence and respect for the U.S. military has remained remarkably high. A 2019 Pew Research Center poll found 83% confidence in the military “to act in the best interests of the public.” Only scientists polled as well.

Military leaders who make it to the top ranks have been fully vetted for competence, temperament, and patriotism. Despite having their own political preferences, they have a culture of acting in a non-partisan manner and a great number maintain that posture into retirement. Only when the nation is confronted with great danger do they step forward to raise the alarm.

Retired four-star Air Force General Chuck Boyd, a highly-decorated Vietnam veteran who was held for seven years as a POW, felt compelled to join almost 500 other senior military and civilian officials in signing a September letter supporting Joe Biden. The letter said Donald Trump “has demonstrated he is not equal to the enormous responsibilities of his office...Thanks to his disdainful attitude and his failures, our allies no longer trust or respect us, and our enemies no longer fear us.”

General Boyd, a Republican like many of the other letter signers, said he did not believe military leaders should involve themselves in presidential politics, “but this year is different. Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law that makes a democracy possible has been so egregious I’ve decided to speak out.” He continued, “I believe that our democracy will be in shatters by the time he has served two terms.”

Retired four-star General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 19 months, recently said of Trump: “The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me….He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” Although I believe Kelly hung with Trump too long and failed to stand up to his most shocking policies, like separation of families at the southern border, he certainly had the opportunity to get a sense of Trump at close hand.

Retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, a soldier with a legendary reputation for speaking truth to power, who served Trump as National Security Adviser for 13 months, said Trump has been “aiding and abetting” Vladimir Putin’s efforts to undermine public confidence in our electoral system.

Retired four-star General Jim Mattis, who served Trump as Secretary of Defense for two years, said, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people--does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.”

Mattis, Kelly and McMaster had the opportunity to work closely with Trump and to learn how he operates. A soldier doesn’t attain the ranks they have achieved without coming to understand and accurately assess the soul and character of those with whom they work. Trump comes up woefully deficient in their studied eyes.

So, what do we do? I would suggest following the sound advice of Sully Sullenberger, a former Air Force fighter pilot and the airline captain whose nerves of steel saved the lives of 155 people in what has become known as “the Miracle on the Hudson.” In a remarkable video Sully unabashedly says, “Vote… Him...Out.”
 

Vote – if you can

rainey

We’ve voted.

Couple of weeks ago. Mailed ballots. Except, we didn’t use the mail to return ‘em. Went to city hall polling place and dropped ‘em in the box. Just to be sure. Couple days later, receipt was acknowledged by Maricopa County. Done!

Filled out the ballots at home - when we had time - and after reading what we needed to from the voter information pamphlet. No rush. No fuss. No l-o-n-g lines. Absolutely secure. Done!

Why doesn’t every state do this?

Given what Republicans have done to suppress voting access across the country in the last few years, it’s easy to blame the whole party. Which would be wrong. In many states, the GOP has worked with Democrats to create secure voting and assured access. Democrats still think and act the same way.

But - this year, some state Republican parties have pulled out all the stops, actively working to limit access or outright steal completed ballots. California. Where the GOP put out ballot deposit boxes labeled “official.” They aren’t. Dems and some cities asked the GOP to remove ‘em. GOP said “NO.” Seems local authorities, the Dems or the state didn’t want to take legal action beyond the requests. So, the ballot-stealing boxes are still out there. Pilfering completed ballots.

We’ve seen lots of pictures of people in long lines, waiting to vote. Stories of folks waiting 10 hours - or longer - to gain access. Texas Governor ordered counties to remove all ballot collection boxes but one - one - per county! Texas has several cities of more than a million population. One with 4-million. Imagine the lines. But, worse, imagine how many people just didn’t vote because of the restriction. Again, access denied.

Other states - mostly in the Southeast - used all sorts of gimmicks to deny citizens the right to vote. Some required certain ID information many poor people don’t have for one reason or another. Two states wanted birth certificates or other proof of citizenship. Several, like Texas, reduced the number of polling places or shortened hours polls would be open. Especially in areas with a lot of Black residents. In Georgia and Florida, both Black and Hispanic communities hit hard by state restrictions. More roadblocks.

I’ve long believed - if you’ll pardon a personal opinion - that voting for the office of President should be run by the feds. One ballot used under a single process in all states.

All of us, at times, operate under one federal law. Nothing new about that. When I was a private pilot, my license was issued by the Federal Aviation Administration. My military driver’s license was federal. I’ve had several federally-backed home loans. My VA benefits operate under federal law. And, there are many, many other singularly federal laws we don’t even think about. Uniform. Everywhere.

Imagine. A single presidential ballot. Used in all states and territories. All using one federal law. The same “rules-of-the-game.” Everywhere. Down-ballot, each state could go it’s own way. But, on top, a national vote under uniform rules.

I know. I know. Such thinking is that of an old guy out in the desert sun too long. But, it makes sense, damn it!

Should Democrats prevail in sweeping the Presidency and both Houses of Congress - as seems likely - the first order of business should be restoring - or even rewriting - the federal voting rights act.

Couple of years ago, SCOTUS gutted the existing law, part of which put certain requirements on states known to restrict voter access. Even forcing offending states to submit to SCOTUS oversight if a voting law was to be changed. I can’t forget Chief Justice Robert’s comments at the time SCOTUS acted. He noted past violators of the Constitutional guarantee of voting “seem to have learned their lessons” and issues of abusing voters were “things of the past.” Yeah. Sure.

So, here we are. Several years down the road. And the “offending states” -absent that old oversight - are at it again. Same states. Same old tricks. With largely the GOP erecting hurdles between citizens and their ballot boxes. Congress must act.

A few days ago, I heard a well-respected Republican leader of the past say, if the Party took a national beating up and down the ballot, it could mean the GOP would be nearly non-existent for a decade or two.

Maybe that’s what’s driving this Republican effort to keep voter and ballot apart. If it is, then congressional action should be swift, replacing safeguards to bring these underhanded activities to an immediate halt.

Here in the desert, in our “55+” world, it’s worth noting how us old folks do things a bit differently. Politically speaking. As you drive through our senior neighborhoods of some 90,000+ retirees, you’ll usually see Trump signs placed close to the sidewalks for easy viewing. Biden signs, on the other hand, are mostly placed back, near the front door. That’s because Biden signs are stolen or defaced in much larger numbers. Seems Trumpers hereabouts outnumber the Biden-backers. At least publically.

Which is odd. We have a lot of retired military living here. A lot. Most have bumper stickers or back-window indications of such. You’d think - given our President’s comments regarding the military - alive or dead as “suckers” and “losers” - that anyone who’s lived a military life would not be a DJT supporter. But, many are! Seems odd to me to see a retired “gunny” in our neighborhood still backing Trump. But, he is. Lots of others, too.

In our world these days, we seem to be under attack from many things. COVID-19 has us hunkering down. At least some of us. Climate change - maybe the single largest “attack” we face - is all around us. In some states - too many states - local governments seem to be attacking voting rights and other civic privileges.

Then, there’s our President, who’s been conducting a four-year frontal attack to destroy agencies of federal government and our faith in long-standing institutions. He’s attacked our rule-of-law, our trust in many forms of governance. He’s subverted restrictions on the Presidency to enrich himself and many of his friends. His entire term seems to have been used to attack truth, civility, trust and responsibility. He’s worked to destroy just about everything he’s touched.

Now, facing a perilous future of many lawsuits, some serious federal and state charges and doing so without the protection of high political office he’s enjoyed and used for his own benefit, he’s attacking the voting process. The constitutionally-protected franchise guaranteed to all. Sadly, we’re not likely done with a major political party attempting to block citizens from exercising that franchise.

People we elect to high office in November have a huge job ahead of them to clean up the mess. To attract good and qualified people to serve. To restore confidence and faith of the people in their own government. To undo the damages of the last four years.

It’s a big job. But, it can be done. That’s why we vote.
 

Spread out those votes

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In much of the country, this year is full of new rules and schedules related to when and how you vote. In some places, like Oregon and Washington, this whole business of “voting early” is nothing new at all, and for those encountering new approaches, a few lessons from the experienced may be worth considering.

One key to how to consider it involves thinking not of “early” voting but of “spread-out” voting. It’s not that all votes are cast a couple of weeks ahead of what we might think of as deadline day - in this case, November 3. It’s that the voting takes place over a stretched-out period of time.

And there are two big advantages to that, one in the bigger picture - the good-government picture - and one that affords advantages to candidates and parties interested in taking advantage of it.

The first advantage is the quashing of late-breaking negative campaigning. I’ve seen it over the years, and if you’ve been around a while, so have you: The news story or ad or mailer or flyer drop, or whatever, that contains some (hopefully) devastating attack against the opposition, delivered only two or three or four days before the day everybody votes, which would be on a Tuesday. That means weekends before election day can be sensitive times indeed … if everyone’s voting on Tuesday.

Recovering from such an attack at that time can be hard to do: There’s often not time enough to get a rebuttal message out. People have time only to absorb the initial message and react reflexively, which often means emotionally and thoughtlessly. And the kind of candidates who engage in those kinds of behaviors, as many have over the years, often aren’t the kind of people you want in elective office. But then, such tactics can work.

Suppose, though, the voting is spread out over two or three weeks. There’s no one precise moment when making the information drop is going to help enormously; it immediately affects the votes of only a few people, and afterward there’s time to pause and review.

Spread-out voting tends to make for more careful and reflective voting.

From a political organizer’s point of view, there’s another advantage.

While the votes cast by a voter remain confidential throughout the process, the fact that a specific person voted becomes public information as soon as the ballot reaches the county elections office. That means, ordinarily, that if a political organizer wants to determine who has voted, they can.

Why might this be important? Once a person has voted, you can scratch them off your to-do list: No longer any need to try to reach that person, by phone, mail or otherwise, from this point on. They’re done. On the other hand, if you see that someone hasn’t voted, this is a person you still want to get after if you think they’re one of yours. If you’re a day or two out from election day and this batch of voters hasn’t get been accounted for, you can go after them.

In theory that same principle can apply on election day, but there instead of days to learn who has and hasn’t voted and to act on that information, you have hours and minutes. You can go after those people, in theory, but there’s hardly any time to make a dent.

Don’t be surprised if spread-out voting catches on in a big way even after this Covid-19 year is done. A lot of people stand to benefit.