#everyone who lives in a republican congressional district:

[antiadvil]

you know what. fuck it. i'm running for speaker of the US house of representatives. my qualifications are that i'm loud and i have more people who like me than jim jordan

[mariacallous]

Under a clear blue sky, on a warm spring day, several dozen Virginians gathered in a suburban backyard near Richmond to plot the future of the Democratic Party. Not that this was what they said they were doing. This was a meeting of the Henrico County Democratic Committee, “dedicated to electing Democrats in Henrico County, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and nationwide,” and they had come to rally neighborhood support for Abigail Spanberger, a local girl made good.

Spanberger, a member of Congress and now a candidate for governor, lives in Henrico County—about 10 minutes away from that suburban backyard, she told me. Although she currently represents a more rural Virginia district, this is her home base, and the home team wants to help her current campaign. A local official introducing Spanberger thanked everyone present for spending “a lot of hours in offices and knocking on doors and writing postcards and delivering signs.” Another spoke about “getting the band back together,” reuniting the people who helped Spanberger during her improbable first run for Congress, in 2017, when she came from nowhere to beat a Tea Party Republican, Dave Brat.

The audience cheered when Spanberger talked, as she often does, about her notable career trajectory. Famously she served in the CIA, from 2006 to 2014 (and has always been circumspect about what, exactly, she was doing). When she returned home, she told me, “I thought I was done with public service”—until she was galvanized by the election of Donald Trump. Now, after three hard-fought wins in purple-district congressional races, her aspirations stretch beyond the Virginia governor’s mansion: She wants to change the way Americans talk about politics. “We want to turn the page past the divisiveness, the angriness, and just focus on brass tacks, good policy, and governance,” she says.

In today’s Congress, those goals are wildly idealistic. On both sides of the aisle, “divisiveness and angriness” attract headlines. Outrage, not brass tacks, produces attention. Marjorie Taylor Greene is repeatedly interviewed and profiled, even though she has never been associated with a serious piece of legislation. Matt Gaetz, known for nothing except being Matt Gaetz, is more famous than many important congressional committee chairs. Even among the Democrats, the ranking members of many important committees have a lower profile than the members of “the Squad,” a group who come from very blue House districts and have defined themselves to the left of the party.

Spanberger is part of a different, less splashy friend group, one that also includes House members Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, among others. Most are in their 40s or early 50s; many come from purple districts and swing states. They are sometimes called the “NatSec Democrats,” a phrase that explains their origins but doesn’t quite encompass who they are or what they do. Most, it is true, are veterans of the military or the intelligence agencies. Most entered Congress in 2018. Most hadn’t been in politics before that. Some of them were helped or encouraged by Moulton, a former Marine who was first elected to Congress in Massachusetts in 2014, made a quixotic run for president in 2020 and created the Serve America PAC, which backed 15 of the 28 Democrats who flipped the House in 2018. Moulton told me that Trump inspired a lot of veterans to consider political careers for the first time—and to run as Democrats. “He’s so uniquely unpatriotic and anti-American. I mean, this is a guy who didn’t try to hide the fact that he was a draft dodger. He said, The people who signed up were suckers. The people who got killed are losers.”

In retrospect, the members of this cohort turned out to be precursors of an important change, one that may end up redefining American politics. For half a century, the Republicans were the party that embraced patriotism most intensely, talked about loving America most loudly, and seemingly took a harder line on national security. But now the Republican candidate calls America “a nation in decline” and refers to the U.S. economy as an “unparalleled tragedy and failure.” That language has inspired a geographically diverse, pro-Constitution, no-nonsense backlash in the Democratic Party, a movement in favor of patriotism, concerned about national security, and convinced that only a democracy that delivers practical results can stay safe. The effect was clearly visible at the Democratic National Convention when Kamala Harris promised “to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth: the privilege and pride of being an American,” and when delegates responded by waving American flags and chanting “USA, USA.”

The Democrats who were in the vanguard of that backlash have been working together for some time. Spanberger, Moulton, Slotkin and others wrote a joint letter to President Joe Biden in December, for example, warning against Israel’s strategy in Gaza, on the grounds that “we know from personal and often painful experience that you can’t destroy a terror ideology with military force alone.” But national-security experience isn’t the only thing that links them. Tom Malinowski, a former State Department official who was also part of the group—he was elected to Congress from a previously a red New Jersey district in 2018, then lost in a close race in 2022—points out that although most of his cohort had never held elected office before, all of them had taken oaths to protect and uphold the U.S. Constitution. They came to Congress in that spirit. “We were very idealistic in our belief that our job was to protect democratic values and institutions in this country,” Malinowski explains, “and very pragmatic on the day-to-day work of Congress on issues like the economy, the budget, immigration and crime.” In other words, he explains, “we all believe the country would be fine if we had to compromise on issues like that. What was essential was not to compromise on democracy.”

Malinowski, who suggests calling the group Service Democrats, agrees that they are defined by attitude as much as issues. Although motivated to enter politics by their disdain for Trump, all of them say they are happy to work with individual Republicans. Sherrill told me that she thinks “getting as broad a coalition as possible on the legislation I want to see passed” is a sign of success. This outlook is very different from the obsessive hatred of compromise that has prevented the current Republican House majority from passing almost any legislation at all. “Anytime a Democrat supports a Republican piece of legislation, then it’s not good enough. It’s obviously not extreme enough, because then it’s a RINO bill or something,” Sherrill says.

The group’s attitude also redefines what it means to be a moderate in the Democratic Party. By an older standard, Spanberger, Slotkin, Moulton, Sherrill, and Crow might have been called progressives. They believe in abortion rights, for example—a cause once avoided by what used to be called conservative Democrats—and have joined pro-abortion-rights caucuses. But if, again, a moderate nowadays is someone willing to talk with the other side in order to find solutions, then this group is a bunch of moderates. Sherrill said she could see the appeal of what she described as a “progressive model” of politics: “deciding what you want and accepting nothing else until you get it.” But there is also a risk to that model, because you might not get anything at all. Had the Democrats in Congress been more willing to bargain with the Trump administration over the border, she thinks, they might have secured concessions for Dreamers, the children who arrived in the U.S. with their undocumented parents and have no citizenship status.

Still, the NatSec Democrats’ deeper objection is not to any particular ideological faction, but rather to politicians who, as Spanberger says, “don't actually want to fix anything,” because “performance is all there is.” As an example, she cited the border-control bill that was written and shepherded through the Senate by senior conservative Republicans but was then blocked—to the surprise of the bill’s authors—by Trump, who thought that fixing the border might help Biden. Her friends, by contrast, want to fix things: the border, the health-care system, even democracy itself. Having served in places that have collapsed into chaos, they know what it’s like to live in places that don’t have governance of any kind.

They also learned how to operate in that sort of chaos, which is useful now too. Elissa Slotkin, a Middle East analyst who was elected to the House from Michigan in 2018 and is now running for the Senate, says she still thinks the same way about solving problems as she did when she worked for the CIA, the National Security Council, and the Defense Department, among other previous employers: “My job is to identify real threats and go after threats. The No. 1 killer of children is gun violence. Mental-health issues, suicide, opioid addiction—those are real threats. I’m not going to spend a ton of time on things that I believe are exaggerated threats, like books or teaching Black history in our schools.” Spanberger, also used to being challenged, makes a point of traveling in the redder parts of her district and talking in detail about the agricultural bills she’s introduced in Congress: “You can’t both think I’m some crazy deep-state whatever, or some radical leftist,” and at the same time be chatting politely about meat-processing regulation.

Given members’ experience, the group’s special interest in foreign policy is unsurprising, but it doesn’t come cloaked in bluster. When speaking at the DNC, Jason Crow—an Army Ranger and paratrooper who served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan before winning a House seat in Colorado—contrasted “tough talk” and “chest thumping” with the “real strength and security” that comes from alliances, competence, and continuity. “I refuse to let Trump’s golf buddies decide when and how our friends are sent to war,” he said. Over coffee a few months earlier, Crow told me that isolationism’s appeal is overrated. An outward-looking America appeals to voters, especially those concerned about security. He reminds people, he said, that “America can be a great force for good, that we are at our best when America is engaged and American leadership matters,” and he thinks they listen and care.

Slotkin, who met me in a tiny Senate campaign office she keeps near the Capitol, also told me that voters respond to that kind of expansive message about America’s role in the world. She said she talks about her national-security background on the campaign trail as a way of explaining her other policies: “I really believe that in a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy, it’s essential that anyone from anywhere can get into the middle class. And if we don’t have that, it’s literally a security problem. If we become a country of the very rich and the very poor, it’s a stability risk.” She thinks her training helps her in a different sense too. Like Spanberger and Crow, Slotkin has also taken oaths to uphold the Constitution, and she, too, has been part of teams dealing with life-threatening situations. “You cut your teeth professionally, in jobs where mission is more important than self,” she said. “And in fact, if you put yourself ahead of the mission, you would have been fired for most of the jobs that we did.”

A few months after Spanberger’s rally, on a rather hotter summer day, I watched Mikie Sherrill deliver an equally pragmatic message. Speaking at an event held at the Ukrainian cultural center in Whippany, the congresswoman, an Annapolis graduate and ex-Navy helicopter pilot, was introduced by Thomas “Ace” Gallagher, mayor of Hanover Township. Gallagher is a Republican, but Hanover suffers from flooding, and Sherrill, he said, had helped his district get money and attention from the Army Corps of Engineers.

“She’s on the Democratic side of the aisle,” he told the room. “But for me, there are not two sides: There’s people that serve and work together and are focused on the common good. As for everybody else, they can do whatever they want to do, as long as they don’t get in the way of our good work.” Soon, he predicted, “you are going to see many people that are more moderate working together … on true solutions to our problems.”

Sherrill, who is expected to launch a run for New Jersey governor herself, seemed as surprised by this optimistic outburst of bipartisan goodwill as I was. “I look around this room, and I’m feeling a little emotional,” she said, and paid tribute back to Gallagher. “Again and again and again, we have come together here in the Eleventh District of New Jersey, to try to problem solve, to try to address the things that are scaring people, to try to make your life a little bit better, to try to just bring some rationality and sanity to a world that right now isn’t making a lot of sense.”

While she was talking—this was on Sunday, July 21—people in the audience started looking at their phones, whispering to one another. At the end of the event, the speakers asked the audience to contribute to Ukrainian charities, stepped off the podium, and learned that President Biden was no longer running for reelection. Two weeks earlier, Sherrill had joined what was still then a very small number of elected politicians openly calling for him to step down. Over lunch, she told me that she had been moved to do so because “we’ve all been saying Trump is an existential threat. But we’ve been acting like we don’t really believe it.” At that point, only two senators had publicly called for Biden not to run: Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Not coincidentally, both came from red states. In places outside safe blue states and blue districts, Sherrill told me, Democrats had been looking hard at the polling data and couldn’t see a path to victory.

Earlier, Sherrill had done a small event for Sue Altman, a Democrat who is running for Malinowski’s old seat, attracting the same kind of fired-up-to-do-something-positive crowd as Spanberger, a team of people who seem genuinely excited to knock on doors for a pragmatist who is offering to get things done. Young people in particular, Altman told me, “are sick of the negativity. They’re sick of politics as usual, and they want the government to work properly.” But it’s not a mass movement—nobody gets tens of millions of Instagram followers by finding long-term solutions to flooding in New Jersey.

On the contrary, in a world where social-media algorithms promote anger and emotion, where cable-news teams have an economic interest in promoting the fame-seeking and the flamboyant, charting a different course carries serious risks. The dull work of passing meat-packing bills in Congress, or fixing flooding in New Jersey—none of that will ever go viral on TikTok. Only people who still see politics through the lens of real life, and not through an online filter, will care. In a bitter Senate fight in Michigan, or a close governor’s race in Virginia, the contest could feature candidates who differ radically, but in style as much as substance.

But then, the same can be said about the candidates at the top of the ticket. In a sense, the presidential race is the biggest swing-state race of all. Like the other Service Democrats, Harris also took an oath, early in her career as an attorney, to uphold the Constitution. And like any Democrat running in a purple district, Harris also needs to appeal to a wide range of people who are “sick of politics as usual,” to get them to focus on real-world concerns—economics, health care, inflation—instead of culture wars, and to convince them that she is in politics to solve problems and not just to perform. If she looks down her party’s ballots, she’ll find plenty of allies who have been fighting that same battle for years.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sign going up on Pennsylvania turnpike

* * * *

The future of the Democratic Party on display

August 22, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

My overarching impression of the third night of the convention is that the future of the Democratic Party was on display, and it was beautiful sight! The bench is deep and will carry us forward for two generations. By my count, there were four future Democratic presidents (at least) on the dais on Wednesday evening. As on previous nights, the convention choreography was expertly crafted to communicate to all Americans—not merely the Democratic faithful. It was a fun, raucous evening capped by a terrific speech by Tim Walz.

It is odd to write about an event that most readers watched live. You saw it with your own eyes, so it feels presumptuous to assume that my observations are unique. Tonight, less is more. I will remark on a few highlights and then rely on readers to continue their cogent observations in the Comment section. I urge all readers to review the Comment section to see what readers of this newsletter community thought about the third night.

Tim Walz delivered

Tim Walz proved again that Kamala Harris chose wisely. Tim is an effective communicator who comes across as an “everyman” who is trusted by everyone. In the end, Walz morphed into a football coach giving a half-time pep talk about the state of the race. He said that we are “down by a field goal” and we have the ball and are driving down the field.

That metaphor signals that Democrats are the underdog but have momentum. That is the right message at this moment. We can take nothing for granted.

We have heard most of Tim Walz’s speech before, but he delivered it with new energy and purpose while remaining completely relatable and earnest.

Walz wisely began his speech by saying, “We are all here tonight for one simple reason: We love this country.”

In a line that will be on bumper stickers and posters in classrooms across America, Walz said that he ran (and won) in a deep red congressional district against steep odds, saying, “You know what, never underestimate a public school teacher.”

He listed his accomplishments as Governor of Minnesota, a prelude to listing Kamala Harris’s policy priorities. His state-level accomplishments align neatly with Kamala Harris’s campaign proposals. When Walz began to list Harris’s policies, he said, “Clip this portion of the video and send it to your relatives who are unsure about how to vote.”

Among the policies Walz mentioned were the following:

Cutting taxes for the middle class.

Extending the child tax credit

Taking on big pharma.

Making home-buying more affordable.

Fighting for freedom to live the life you want to lead.

Among the most important accomplishments described by Walz as governor, he said, “We made sure that every kid in state gets breakfast and lunch every day. So, while other states were banishing books, we were banishing hunger.”

Walz used “freedom” as a theme—contrasting the Democratic and Republican views of freedom. Walz framed freedom as respecting choices, including reproductive choices. He reprised the line, “We respect choices; and we have a golden rule: Mind your own damn business.” Republicans, on the other hand, see “freedom” as the right of government to interfere in your life.

Walz effectively addressed Project 2025 by saying, “I know, as a football coach, that when someone goes to the trouble of drawing up a playbook, they are going to use it!” He said Project 2025 is “an agenda that serves only the richest among us.”

He spent a few moments criticizing Trump, saying, “Trump's own people warned us about Trump. Leaders don’t spend all day insulting people.”

Two comments about events surrounding Tim Walz’s speech. First, the sight of Tim’s son, Gus, weeping with joy and saying, “That’s my dad” was heartwarming. More importantly, it spoke volumes about the love in the Walz family—a stark contrast to the fractured, transactional relationships in the Trump family. Gus’s reaction will “go viral” for being proud of his dad. You can’t pay for advertising like that.

Second, immediately before Tim Walz spoke, a former student introduced the football team members that Tim Walz helped coach to a national championship. Those players—now men—took the stage bursting with joy and affection for Walz. The GOP could not replicate that scene even if they hired actors from Craigslist.

As framed and delivered, the speech by Tim Walz was a home run.

The joyousness of the third night

During the prime-time hours, two musical acts pumped up the volume. Stevie Wonder sang Higher Ground, while John Legend and Sheila E. performed Prince’s Let's Go Crazy. Also, Neil Young granted permission to the DNC to use “Rockin’ in the Free World” as the “walk-on” music for Tim Walz. The performances helped sustain the energy and momentum from the first two nights.

Two special presentations

The organizers included two special presentations that addressed urgent issues: January 6 and Project 2025.

The video presentation on the violence of January 26 was impactful, frightening, and motivating. It needed to be done; indeed, how could Democrats not address it? This is the first post-January 6 presidential election. But, as Joe Biden found out, Americans do not seem to be motivated by dwelling on January 6. I wish it were otherwise. But they are responding to the forward-looking, positive message of the Harris-Walz ticket.

The organizers also addressed Project 2025 through Saturday Night Live cast member Keenan Thompson. Thompson interviewed four Americans and then explained how project 2025 would impact their jobs, personal choices, and access to healthcare. Although the subject is serious, the decision to approach it with humor was creative and engaging. The organizers continue to find creative ways to communicate to the American people.

Bill Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton gave a wonderful speech but went on too long and threw off the schedule for the rest of the evening.

Among Clinton’s memorable statements were his praise for President Biden, of whom he said,

Biden healed our sick and put the best of us back to work. He repaired our alliances. He voluntarily gave up political power. I want to thank him for his courage, compassion, class, service, and sacrifice. [Spontaneous eruption of chants, “Thank you, Joe.”]

Clinton urged the delegates to temper their joy with lessons from the past—harkening back to Trump's interference in Hillary Clinton’s campaign:

We have seen more than one election slip away from us because we were distracted by phony issues. This is a brutal business. I want you to be happy. But never underestimate your adversary. They are very good at triggering doubt and buyer’s remorse. We got to be tough.

He concluded by predicting that voting for Harris and Walz would be a generational gift:

If you vote for this team and bring in this team and their breath of fresh air, you will be proud of it for the rest of your life. Your children and grandchildren will be proud of it.

The rest of the lineup

Nancy Pelosi gave a speech.

Josh Shapiro gave a passionate, barnburner, forward-looking, traditional convention speech befitting a presidential nominee. While remarkable, it felt like he was auditioning for 2028 or 2032. In fairness, he wasn’t the only person doing so on Wednesday (or previous nights). He is a prodigious speaker with a long runway ahead of him.

Amanda Gorman, the poet and activist, delivered a beautiful, thoughtful poem. Among the many fine lines in the poem, I was struck by these:

“Cohering is the hardest task history ever wrote.” “While we all love freedom, it is love that frees us all.”

Oprah Winfrey rose to the occasion. Democrats need to get Oprah out on the campaign trail for Harris-Walz. She is a gifted speaker who oozes credibility and genuineness. She noted that she is registered as an independent and “voted on values.” She said,

Character matters most of all, and decency and respect are on the ballot in 2024. Let us choose loyalty to the constitution over loyalty to any individual. Let us choose optimism over cynicism. Let us choose common sense over nonsense.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore gave a short speech in which he established himself as a leading figure in the party's future for years to come.

Pete Buttigieg was amazing, as always. He is a gifted communicator who is able to connect with Americans across the political spectrum. He described dinnertime at his home with his son and daughter, a scene immediately recognizable to hundreds of millions of Americans. He contrasted his inclusive family with the exclusive, narrow vision of family being promoted by JD Vance.

Buttigieg reminded the delegates that Vance said, “People who don’t have kids don’t have a physical commitment to the future of the country.” Buttigieg said that his service in Afghanistan “outside the wire” was “pretty damn physical” even though Buttigieg did not have kids at that time.

Buttigieg closed by saying that Republicans had “doubled down on darkness” in choosing JD Vance as their vice-presidential candidate.

After the speeches concluded, delegates stayed in the convention hall floor, cheering and dancing, not wanting the third evening to end! They understood that what happened in the convention hall on Wednesday was historic—the passing of the torch to successive generations of Democratic leaders.

RFK Jr. will withdraw and endorse Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is withdrawing from the presidential race, announcing that he will endorse Trump. That endorsement confirms what we knew all: RFK Jr. was a stalking horse for Trump to help defeat Biden. The always smart Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, wrote:

My final thought is that Kennedy is so weird and now so universally recognized as weird and this endorsement — if that’s what it is — would appear so corrupt that I’m not sure it really plays as a positive. When I say corrupt, he’s been pretty visibly asking each campaign basically what their best offer is.

Kennedy’s support has shrunk to the low single digits, any impact on the presidential race will likely be de minimis.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[tomorrowusa]

Are you a high school senior who will be 18 years old by 13 February 2024 and who lives in George Santos's old district (NY-03)? You can make a big difference in the first US House election of 2024.

While Republican Santos won in NY-03 in 2022, Joe Biden carried this area in 2020 by a comfortable margin. The February special election is rated as a TOSSUP by pundits across the political spectrum.

With the expulsion of Santos, there are now 221 Republicans, 213 Democrats, and 1 vacancy in the US House. With the impending resignation of Kevin McCarthy, the GOP total will drop to 220; it's uncertain when a special election would take place for McCarthy's seat. So a Democratic victory in NY-03 in February would narrow the margin to 220 Republicans, 214 Dems, and 1 vacancy. And a victory in February would also give an advantage to Democrats in that district in the November general election.

The February election in NY-03 is being looked upon as a national bellwether. A Republican defeat would not bode well for Trump and his plans to become a dictator.

9,000 18-year-olds have an opportunity to register and vote in the election to fill George Santos’s vacant seat.  Most 18-year-olds in the district are not yet registered to vote. The third Congressional District includes parts of Queens and Nassau County. In these counties, only 6.4% and 18.5% of 16- and 17-year-olds, respectively, were preregistered to vote as of February 2023. The registration rates for 18-year-olds today are unlikely to be dramatically higher than these preregistration rates. 

You don't have to be 18 to register, but you must be 18 on or before Election Day to actually vote; that means February 13th for the NY-03 special election.

New York has relatively easy online voter registration, but you'll need a NY official ID to register.

Online Voter Registration | New York State Board of Elections

Personally, I think it's a good idea to register in person. The clerks can directly answer any questions you have without having to go through a complicated menu. Plus it feels like a rite of passage when you do it in person. You also have the advantage of getting some sort of hard copy receipt which can be useful if there's an electronic glitch.

For a map to find the cities and town in the district, click here.Then ask everyone you know in the district to make sure they are registered to vote and that everyone in their family has registered, as well. 

This is a general map. NY-03 covers parts of Queens and Nassau County – but not all of Queens and Nassau County.

This site is best known for letting people know who their state legislators are. But if you scroll down a bit on the left to Federal it will tell you which congressional district you're in.

^^^ So they haven't removed Santos from the search results. But the important thing is that it shows you're in the 3rd US House district in New York.

Of course any US citizen over 18 in NY-03 can vote in the February election. So share this information with anybody who you think isn't registered or has moved since the last election.

If you've moved since the last election, even if just across the street, you need to register at your new address. Voter registration is based specifically on geography.

[shaanks]

listen, I'm not inherently bothered by the fact that people from other countries don't have a good understanding of our politics or what causes the resulting atrocities they have to see on the news all the time. tbh it makes sense that they don't, bc no matter how much anyone attributes "not having a great grasp of what happens in other places" as a solely American trait, that's actually mostly just how people are.

political systems are complicated. the further away from your language and your country's version a political system is, the less intuitive it becomes to understand, and most people are just trying to survive in this world and don't have time for it. i get that.

what bothers me, really, IS the fact that people pretend this is an inherently American behavior, and that everyone else on the planet tooooooootally gets everyone else's politics at an intuitive level, like. two seconds before spouting the most insanely ignorant, insensitive, nonsensical take physically possible.

so lemme clear some stuff up. not that I'm sure it will matter bc mindlessly dunking on the people that live here for the actions of our genocidal government is what runs the best numbers on tiktok or whatever but like. here we go.

our voting system is complicated, has two separate layers that do not usually agree with each other, and has been stacked basically since the country was founded to purposefully minimize, diffuse, and disenfranchise anyone who isn't part of the ruling class (read: landed white men of a certain income and education, if you wanna go back and look).

there is a popular vote, then there is the electoral college. the popular vote sort of gives an idea of what the country's preferences are between (usually pretty monstrous) candidates, but it's filtered through a ton of weirdly shaped and purposefully obfuscated voting districts, and read based on percentages.

then there is a separate group of voters, called Electors, and those people make up the body of the electoral college. each state gets a certain number of electoral college votes, and the candidate who makes it to 270 of those votes becomes the President. the number each state gets is calculated as 2 votes for their senators and then a number of votes based on their congressional districts. are you following, is this fun?

they watch to see what the percentage of votes is from each congressional district. once it looks like there's a majority, they "call" that state in favor of a candidate, and cast their votes accordingly. (sometimes. there is a phenomenon called 'faithless electors' in which they cast the vote opposing the popular vote, but that's a story for another time.) also, since some states have relatively few congressional districts, and some have tons, certain entire states worth of votes "don't matter," and every election cycle the election basically comes down to the voting behaviors of a few key district-heavy states, called "swing states."

so, irrespective of how intense the support might be one way or the other for certain candidates, unless the votes are coming from a swing state, they mostly just kind of get. written off. they're counted! but very much treated as superfluous.

THEN, we get into the ways that presidential candidates are chosen to begin with. there are actually more than two parties in the US! Several, in fact! but due to the way campaign finance works, only the most well-funded ones end up having any say, and since corporations and their lobbying firms can basically pour money into our political system unchecked, that means that what we get are the Republicans and the Democrats. these two parties use their national conventions (the RNC and the DNC, respectively) to determine who will be the candidate representing them in the race.

usually, if there is an incumbent (a sitting president) eligible for re-election, that person will end up being their party's pick. either way, though, every candidate wanting to run for that RNC/DNC seat has to go through a number of debates and campaigning events to try to get enough traction to be voted for at their conventions.

sounds pretty straight forward, right? the problem is, you have to have money and more money and more money to be able to be competitive. for example, in 2012, it cost Obama and his campaign $2.9 million USD per day to fund his bid for the presidency. between his own money, campaign contributions, and the DNC money, in total, it cost more than $1 billion USD for him to become president.

does that sound like the type of money grassroots orgs have laying around? or that a normal person might be able to drum up? or that someone who is, say, an enemy of corporate America might be able to come up with on their own? probably not, huh.

also, since the majority of the money it takes to run ads, gain traction, and get elected DOES come from corporations, foreign direct investment (which ends up in the soft-money slush fund so it doesn't have to be reported as such), and wealthy private donors, who can shut the cashflow off at any time if they're unsatisfied with the way their candidate behaves, who do you think said candidates are more likely to be loyal to? or to vote or legislate in favor of?

the poor people (and most of the country IS poor, the studies consistently show that most of the US population is 1-2 missed paychecks away from homelessness) who already barely have a half-filtered say in how our government runs and where the power goes? or the people who are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into superPACs for them to play with?

before you even get to that step tho, remember that the RNC and the DNC are both in this for the money too. they might let an actually popular candidate play on stage for a while (Bernie Sanders is a good example), but anyone who might actually interrupt their stream of income is never getting the nomination.

we, as a collective, aren't picking monsters on purpose. our government and the rich people that own it have spent decades and generations setting up the system so that the only people who get to approach the seats of power are people willing to play the game, who are beholden to the highest bidder, and who don't care what happens to the actual country they're trying to run one way or the other.

gerrymandering is rampant, racism and sexism and corporate greed are the cornerstones of the government, and the only little bit of power we DO have doesn't even actually come from the raw power we hold as a population, but from the fact that the only thing that allows the us government to maintain political and military hegemony is the illusion of moral and ideological purity displayed by being a "democratic" society.

that's why no one has pulled the trigger on true mask-off authoritarianism yet. that's also why ANY attempt to band together and vote in our collective self-interest gets squelched. why do you think these bastards are so fucking scared of labor unions?

but I digress. First and foremost, the majority of the US wants an immediate end to the funding and militarization and support for Israel. Most Americans want a free Palestine, and the genocide to stop. y'all have phones and eyes and since everyone's constantly whining about how much of what happens here they have to see, I'm sure you've seen the protests and the mass mobilization of a hyper-militarized police force against those students, and anyone else who tries to substantively protest and push back against what's happening.

Most Americans want gun control. most Americans want nationalized health care. a good portion of the country wants UBI. most Americans want student debt forgiveness and free/affordable higher education. most Americans want high speed rail and cities that are pedestrian friendly and infrastructure that isn't crumbling and fucking rent control. most Americans want actual livable wages and an end to the necessity for tipping. most Americans want clean water and clean air and food that isn't killing us and a REAL response to climate change. most Americans want an end to the violence against and destruction of marginalized communities. most Americans want reproductive rights, they want access to reproductive care, they WANT all of the things that it appalls y'all that we don't have.

but, like many of the types of people y'all are so keen to make fun of, you've fallen prey to the fallacy that the actions of the government are the same as the will of the governed. that under-educated, sickly, poor people are at fault for the behaviors of global super powers. which is hysterical given how fucking cartoonishly evil and monstrous a ton of other world leaders are, and how easily you're able to distinguish between the actions of those governments and the will of the people involved in those cases.

the literal only thing we have, the only button left to us to press, is voting, and a lot of people don't even want to do that anymore bc of how little it seems to impact. we NEED to. bc if we really truly just roll over and give up the whole world is in for a fucking lot more pain. but it's understandable how people get to feeling that way. the government violently and effectively suppresses votes and protests where they can, and everyone else seems to feel justified in using dead children and homeless people and students who will never climb out of debt and people suffering from addiction who die condemned and in misery and the marginalized remnants of our government's past genocides as punchlines for your "hahahurrrhrurrr fat stupid fatty fat dumb ugly stupid FAT Americans hurrrhahahahaha" jokes.

you don't have to care. that's your business. but it feels like, if you're going to claim ongoing moral and intellectual superiority, maybe you ought to at least try to understand.

hope this helps.

[unnounblr]

There's supposedly over 161 million registered voters in the U.S., in 2024 (it was 168 million in 2020, apparently about 7 million people died or got taken off the registration, which might be voter suppression) a total of about 141 million votes have been counted for both Harris and Trump so far.

And there's millions more citizens who are eligible to vote but have never been registered.

Trump won the popular vote by about 5 million this time, but there's still about 20 million people on the voter rolls who evidently aren't part of the Democrat+Republican totals. Those 20 million (and, votes are still being counted, so the final total might be less, though I did round the Trump total up to 73 million and the Harris total up to 68 million, for my convenience) either didn't vote (at least for the presidency) or voted third party.

Since the electoral college is what decides who the president is, though, it does depend on where those 20 million live. And I'm doing this on my phone, and don't have the time or energy to do that statistical breakdown for every single state, how many registered voters per state vs. how many people did or didn't vote in that state.

Harris got about as many votes as Clinton in 2016, maybe a few million more, Trump got about as many votes as he got in 2020, if a little less.

A lot of the swing states that went for Trump, did have Abortion initiatives and other progressive initiatives on the ballot, many of which passed, and a few of them supposedly had local elections that went blue, even when the counties themselves still went for Trump, or the district voted for a republican for a congressional seat.

And, like, that's odd, honestly. Like, a possible explanation is that, progressive voters turned up, voted for a democratic mayor or state senator or governor or abortion rights or whatever, then left all the federal selections blank. Because while state legislatures and governors can't actually do a lot about foreign policy, they can, in fact, do things to people in their states and cities.

But for that to be true it would require a big difference between the vote totals for Trump+Harris in those states and the vote totals for those down-ballot races, and. There doesn't seem to be, at first glance? It seems like otherwise democratic voters, or voters who voted for progressive ballot initiatives. Voted for Trump anyway. And 20 million registered voters just didn't turn up.

And, to be cynical for a moment? It isn't like the Israel/Palestine conflict started on October 7th. Palestinians have suffered wrongdoing by the government of Israel since the modern state of Israel's founding, and Israel has had better weaponry and American support for a very long time and they've definitely dropped bombs before. And they've also had the illegal settlements in the West Bank for years.

And all of that was also already true in 2020, and Biden supported Israel back then too. His political stance on Israel didn't change between then and now. Biden already said he would never support Medicare for all, or single-payer healthcare, everyone knew he was moderate/conservative, right-wing, on a lot of issues. Biden in 2020 had some support from some "never Trump" Republicans who endorsed him as well.

And Biden could be associated with Obama and Obama's handlings of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as Obama's VP. And the U.S. armed forces who actually answered to Obama were the ones doing war crimes and drone and missile strikes for that.

But it seems like Biden was able to get away with it and get 10 million more people to vote for him, very possibly, because he was a white guy. The same complaints had a harder time. Sticking.

Its not like nobody had complaints about the Biden campaign's mismanagement. His history of gaffes, the time he was in a basement and nobody saw him for weeks.

Then again, maybe Biden just got lucky that Covid happened, and Trump clearly and obviously mismanaged it. And Harris, in turn, got associated with the slow economic recovery from Covid, lead by the Biden Admin, and with all the wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine that Biden evidently didn't do well enough resolving.

Wars that, again, had already been happening, going back to when Putin's Russia annexed Crimea back in 2014, and, again, the very long history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But I guess people don't care as much when it isn't in their news feeds or their social media timelines.

...Honestly. The thing that gets me about the popular vote totals is that. Trump went from 63 million in 2016, to over 74 million in 2020, and he's still at almost 73 million now.

So, yeah, there's 20 million people who didn't vote this year, aside from the millions who aren't registered, but. 10 million more people voted for him than voted for him the first time he won.

And. That's a lot scarier to me, in all honesty.

"I don't want to see anyone blaming abstaining voters for this!"

Of course you don't. The entire idea of abstaining was that you could pretend this didn't involve you. Not getting blamed was more important to you than doing any kind of damage control, more important than protecting any of the people you said you wanted to protect. And in this moment, I don't really care what you want. Of course, this isn't entirely your fault. Of course other people made this worse. But if you're going to pretend you had nothing to do with this, forgive me if I ignore you.

[cksmart-world]

SMART BOMB

The Completely Unnecessary News Analysis

By Christopher Smart

September 5, 2023

AGE OF RAGE: COUNCILMAN CONVICTED OF HURLING F-BOMBS

OK Wilson, this is serious. Park City Councilman Jeremy Rubell was found guilty of spewing the F-word at cross-country skiers and fined $160. Just imagine if everyone dropping the F-bomb was penalized by the judicial system. We could retire the national debt. Rage is fulminating from coast to coast. Thank you, Fox News. Passengers are punching out flight attendants, patients are threatening to kill healthcare workers and if you're on a local school board, watch out. Councilman Rubell lives next to the Park City Golf Course, which is used as a cross-country ski track in the winter. According to a police report, a group of skiers paused last winter near his house and Rubell flipped them off — just because. When the salutation was returned the councilman let loose with a slew of expletives that witnesses said went on for five minutes. "You f***ers are always doing this ... don’t worry, we’re going to shut you f**ers down." No Wilson, we don't know if he's a MAGA man, but like many people he's had it up to here. Some say 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump gave people permission to act out on their frustrations. But long before that, right-wing conservatives found ways to monetize hate. That's about as American as you can get. Patriotic hating. Land of the free, home of “up yours.”

WHO'S THE APPRENTICE NOW, FAT BOY

“You're Fired!” Then-real estate mogul Donald Trump gained notoriety when he hosted the popular reality TV show, “The Apprentice” on NBC from 2004 through 2006. The audience would wait each week for Trump's signature edict when he would bellow at the contestant (apprentice), “You're fired!” Don't look now, but Trump's criminal trial in Georgia will be live streamed and this time Trump will be the apprentice. But instead of looking to secure a job he'll be trying to stay out of prison. For that he'll need “not guilty” verdicts to each of the 41 charges leveled against him and 18 co-defendants. District Attorney Fani Willis will play host, but she's unlikely to question Trump directly, unless he takes the witness stand. That's about as probable as Trump not lying about his weight — 215 pounds? Ha! Willis will present evidence, like the telephone call on Jan. 2, 2021when Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “to find 11,780 votes... ” His strategy to stay in power was reminiscent of Borat romancing Pamela Anderson. If the former president was looking to advance as a coup director, the jury might have told him, “You're fired!” Who — except congressional Republicans — would hire this dude to pull off a coup d'tat. You're fired! And don't let the door hit you on the way out.

PROUD BOYS OR WHIMPERING WUSSES

That wonderful, patriotic group of white nationalist thugs, The Not-So-Proud Boys will be cooling their heels in the slammer with plenty of time to ponder whatever the hell they were thinking when they attacked the U.S. Capital on Jan. 6. The Proud Boys might want to consider a new name for their neofascist organization of “real men” — something like The Beaten Boys or The Whimpering Wusses. Convicted in federal court of seditious conspiracy are: Joseph Biggs, sentenced to 17 years in prison; Zachary Rehl, 15 years; and Ethan Nordean, 18 years. Proud Boys leader, Enrique Tarrio, was sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy. Those are the longest sentences of the 1,100 tried so far in the 2021 insurrection. Like most of the others, The Proud Boy leaders whimpered and sobbed upon sentencing: I messed up. I was seduced by the crowd. Bad judgement got the better of me. What happened to the breast-beating ruffians who bragged of “political violence.” Here's a coincidence: In a 2020 presidential debate Donald Trump said: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” An attorney for Biggs and Rehl said: “They're patriots, not terrorists.” And the Earth is flat and Jan. 6 was just a fun family outing filled with love and unity.

Post script — That'll do it for another fun-filled week here at Smart Bomb, where we keep track of Burning Man so you don't have to. Well Wilson, people go to the nine-day event in the middle of Nevada's Black Rock Desert for a variety of reasons, some of which we can't mention here. Back when you and the band took your annual pilgrimage there, only about 7,000 or so original thinkers and old hippies made the scene — this year, there were 70,000. These days some folks fly in on private jets and stay in luxurious camps with private chefs, all for a cool 50,000 bucks or so. These Bourgeois Bohemians give new meaning to “communing with nature.” If you're a celebrity you've got to be seen as Burning Man at least once. The spectacle is, more and more, for cool people who want to get noticed “connecting with their creative powers.” This year when heavy rains turned the ancient lake bed into a giant mud pit — the so-called “Burners” really did have to get creative. Comedian Chris Rock reported the portable toilets could not be emptied. There was an inch of water in every tent. Food and water were in short supply. Your'e right Wilson, if that doesn't get you in touch with nature, what would?

Well, we've lost another one. Jimmy Buffett has gone to the big Margaritaville in the sky. Seems like people just keep dying: Christine McVie, Jerry Lee Lewis, Meatloaf, Chick Corea, Bunny Wailer, B.J Thomas, Dusty Hill, Nanci Griffith, Charlie Watts, David LaFlamme and the list goes on. So grab the band, Wilson, and take us out with a little something for those Parrotheads:

Nibblin' on sponge cake Watchin' the sun bake All of those tourists covered with oil Strummin' my six string on my front porch swing Smell those shrimp They're beginnin' to boil Wasted away again in Margaritaville Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt Some people claim that there's a woman to blame But I know it's nobody's fault Don't know the reason Stayed here all season With nothing to show but this brand new tattoo But it's a real beauty A Mexican cutie, how it got here I haven't a clue I blew out my flip flop Stepped on a pop top Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home But there's booze in the blender And soon it will render That frozen concoction that helps me hang on Wasted away again in Margaritaville Searchin' for my lost shaker of salt Some people claim that there's a woman to blame But I know, it's my own damn fault (Margaritaville — Jimmy Buffett)

[pashterlengkap]

Two-thirds of New York voters want Santos out of Congress, poll finds

Two-thirds of New York state voters, including 58 percent of statewide Republicans, say that Gay Rep. George Santos (R-NY) should resign, according to a new Siena College poll. This poll concurs as a newly unearthed recording found Santos lying to a judge in 2017. The 2017 lie is just the iceberg tip of Santos’s many falsehoods. The poll found that 66 percent of voters statewide said Santos should resign from Congress. The percentage is an increase from the 59 percent of New York voters who said last month that he should resign. Related Stories George Santos cosponsors bill calling for rollback of LGBTQ+ rights No other LGBTQ+ House member backs the bill. “The ‘good’ news for Santos is that even in these hyper-partisan times, he’s found a way to get Democrats, Republicans, and independents to agree about a political figure,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “The bad news for Santos is that the political figure they agree on is him, and they overwhelmingly view him unfavorably.” Greenberg pointed out that the poll found that 72 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of independents, and 58 percent of Republicans all said they want Santos to resign. A January 23 Siena College poll found that 71 percent of New York City suburbanites think Santos should resign. Only 8 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of Santos. Earlier this month, 25 local constituents brought a petition to Santos’s New York City headquarters calling on him to resign, but he hid in his office, saying that he refused to meet with a “mob.” Santos has admitted to lying to “everyone” about his largely fabricated personal history. He has admitted that he lied about graduating from Baruch College and New York University, working directly for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and living at a fake address in his congressional district. Recently, a 2017 recording emerged of Santos lying to a judge about working for Goldman Sachs. He has provided no additional proof to back up claims that he lost four employees in the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, that he attended Horace-Mann college preparatory school, and that he is legally married to the man he currently refers to as his husband. He also claimed his Jewish grandparents fled Nazi persecution in Ukraine, but genealogical records showed that his grandparents were born in Brazil. Santos has since claimed that he’s not Jewish, but rather “Jew-ish.” Santos was part of Rio’s drag scene in the late 2000s (despite initially claiming that he was never a drag queen). He was a prominent “Gays for Trump” advocate in the late 2010s, and reportedly dated men while he was married to a woman. He and his now-ex-wife’s arrangement has led some to question whether he married so that she could obtain U.S. citizenship through Santos. Santos has also been accused of check fraud in Brazil and faces multiple ethics complaints in Congress as local and federal investigators examine his campaign finances. He has even been accused of stealing money designated for the medical care of a veteran’s dying dog. Republicans are quietly looking for someone to replace Santos. He is facing multiple ethics complaints as local and federal investigators examine his campaign finances. In Congress, he has aligned himself with rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and said in an interview that LGBTQ+ families “create troubled individuals.” http://dlvr.it/Sk6m1r

[robertreich]

6 Crucial Races That Will Flip the Senate

This November, we have an opportunity to harness your energy and momentum into political power and not just defeat Trump, but also flip the Senate. Here are six key races you should be paying attention to. 1. The first is North Carolina Republican senator Thom Tillis, notable for his “olympic gold” flip-flops. He voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, then offered a loophole-filled replacement that excluded many with preexisting conditions. In 2014 Tillis took the position that climate change was “not a fact” and later urged Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, before begrudgingly acknowledging the realities of climate change in 2018. And in 2019, although briefly opposing Trump’s emergency border wall declaration, he almost immediately caved to pressure. But Tillis’ real legacy is the restrictive 2013 voter suppression law he helped pass as Speaker of the North Carolina House. The federal judge who struck down the egregious law said its provisions “targeted African Americans with almost surgical precision.” Enter Democrat Cal Cunningham, who unlike his opponent, is taking no money from corporate PACs. Cunningham is a veteran who supports overturning the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision, restoring the Voting Rights Act, and advancing other policies that would expand access to the ballot box. 2. Maine Senator Susan Collins, a self-proclaimed moderate whose unpopularity has made her especially vulnerable, once said that Trump was unworthy of the presidency. Unfortunately, she spent the last four years enabling his worst behavior. Collins voted to confirm Trump’s judges, including Brett Kavanaugh, and voted to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial, saying he had “learned his lesson” through the process alone. Rubbish. Collins’ opponent is Sara Gideon, speaker of the House in Maine. As Speaker, Gideon pushed Maine to adopt ambitious climate legislation, anti-poverty initiatives, and ranked choice voting. And unlike Collins, Gideon supports comprehensive democracy reforms to ensure politicians are accountable to the people, not billionaire donors. Another Collins term would be six more years of cowardly appeasement, no matter the cost to our democracy. 3. Down in South Carolina, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is also vulnerable. Graham once said he’d “rather lose without Donald Trump than try to win with him.” But after refusing to vote for him in 2016, Graham spent the last four years becoming one of Trump’s most reliable enablers. Graham also introduced legislation to end birthright citizenship, lobbied for heavy restrictions on reproductive rights, and vigorously defended Brett Kavanaugh. Earlier this year, he said that pandemic relief benefits would only be renewed over his dead body. His opponent, Democrat Jaime Harrison, has brought the race into a dead heat with his bold vision for a “New South.” Harrison’s platform centers on expanding access to healthcare, enacting paid family and sick leave, and investing in climate resistant infrastructure. Graham once said that if the Republicans nominated Trump the party would “get destroyed,” and “deserve it.” We should heed his words, and help Jaime Harrison replace him in the Senate. 4. Let’s turn to Montana’s Senate race. The incumbent, Republican Steve Daines, has defended Trump’s racist tweets, thanked him for tear-gassing peaceful protestors, and parroted his push to reopen the country during the pandemic as early as May. Daine’s challenger is former Democratic Governor Steve Bullock. Bullock is proof that Democratic policies can actually gain support in supposedly red states because they benefit people, not the wealthy and corporations. During his two terms, he oversaw the expansion of Medicaid, prevented the passage of union-busting laws, and vetoed two extreme bills that restricted access to abortions.The choice here, once again, is a no-brainer.

5. In Iowa, like Montana, is a state full of surprises. After the state voted for Obama twice, Republican Joni Ernst won her Senate seat in 2014. Her win was a boon for her corporate backers, but has been a disaster for everyone else.

Ernst, a staunch Trump ally, holds a slew of fringe opinions. She pushed anti-abortion laws that would have outlawed most contraception, shared her belief that states can nullify federal laws, and has hinted that she wants to privatize or fundamentally alter social security “behind closed doors.” Her opponent, Democrat Theresa Greenfield, is a firm supporter of a strong social safety net because she knows its importance firsthand. Union and Social Security survivor benefits helped her rebuild her life after the tragic death of her spouse. With the crippling impact of coronavirus at the forefront of Americans’ minds, Greenfield would be a much needed advocate in the Senate. 6. In Arizona, incumbent Senate Republican Martha McSally is facing Democrat Mark Kelly. Two months after being defeated by Democrat Kyrsten SINema for Arizona’s other Senate seat, McSally was appointed to fill John McCain’s seat following his death. Since then, she’s used that seat to praise Trump and confirm industry lobbyists to agencies like the EPA, and keep cities from receiving additional funds to fight COVID-19. As she voted to block coronavirus relief funds, McSally even had the audacity to ask supporters to “fast a meal” to help support her campaign. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and husband of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, became a gun-control activist following the attempt on her life in 2011. His support of universal background checks and crucial policies on the climate crisis, reproductive health, and wealth inequality make him the clear choice. These are just a few of the important Senate races happening this year. In addition, the entire House of Representatives will be on the ballot, along with 86 state legislative chambers and thousands of local seats.

Winning the White House is absolutely crucial, but it’s just one piece of the fight to save our democracy and push a people’s agenda. Securing victories in state legislatures is essential to stopping the GOP’s plans to entrench minority rule through gerrymandered congressional districts and restrictive voting laws — and it’s often state-level policies that have the biggest impact on our everyday lives. Even small changes to the makeup of a body like the Texas Board of Education, which determines textbook content for much of the country, will make a huge difference. Plus, every school board member, state representative, and congressperson you elect can be pushed to enact policies that benefit the people, not just corporate donors. This is how you build a movement that lasts.

[didanawisgi]

Martin Luther King Jr., Guns, and a Book Everyone Should Read

BY JEREMY S. | JAN 15, 2018

“Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 89 years old today, were he not assassinated in 1968. On the third Monday in January we observe MLK Jr. Day and celebrate his achievements in advancing civil rights for African Americans and others. While Dr. King was a big advocate of peaceful assembly and protest, he wasn’t, at least for most of his life, against the use of firearms for self-defense. In fact, he employed them . . .

If it wasn’t for African Americans in the South, primarily, taking up arms almost without exception during the post-Civil War reconstruction and well into the civil rights movement, this country wouldn’t be what it is today.

By force and threat of arms African Americans protected themselves, their families, their homes, and their rights and won the attention and respect of the powers that be. In a lawless, post-Civil War South they stayed alive while faced with, at best, an indifferent government and, at worst, state-sponsored violence against them.

We know the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 refused to recognize black people as citizens. Heck, they were deemed just three-fifths a person. Not often mentioned in school: some of that was due to gun rights. Namely, not wanting to give gun rights to blacks. Because if they were to recognize blacks as citizens, it…

“…would give to persons of the negro race . . . the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, . . . and it would give them the full liberty of speech . . . ; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

Ahha! So the Second Amendment was considered an individual right, protecting a citizen’s natural, inalienable right to keep and carry arms wherever they go. Then as now, gun control is rooted in racism.

During reconstruction, African Americans were legally citizens but were not always treated as such. Practically every African American home had a shotgun — or shotguns — and they needed it, too. Forget police protection, as those same officials were often in white robes during their time off.

Fast forward to the American civil rights movement and we learn, but again not at school, that Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a concealed carry permit. He (an upstanding minister, mind you) was denied.

Then as in many cases even now, especially in blue states uniquely and ironically so concerned about “fairness,” permitting was subjective (“may issue” rather than “shall issue”). The wealthy and politically connected receive their rights, but the poor, the uneducated, the undesired masses, not so much.

Up until late in his life, MLK Jr. chose to be protected by the Deacons for Defense. Though his home was also apparently a bit of an arsenal.

African Americans won their rights and protected their lives with pervasive firearms ownership. But we don’t learn about this. We don’t know about this. It has been unfortunately whitewashed from our history classes and our discourse.

Hidden, apparently, as part of an agreement (or at least an understanding) reached upon the conclusion of the civil rights movement.

Sure, the government is going to protect you now and help you and give you all of the rights you want, but you have to give up your guns. Turn them in. Create a culture of deference to the government. Be peaceable and non-threatening and harmless. And arm-less, as it were (and vote Democrat). African Americans did turn them in, physically and culturally.

That, at least, is an argument made late in Negroes and the Gun: the Black Tradition of Arms. It’s a fantastic book, teaching primarily through anecdotes of particular African American figures throughout history just how important firearms were to them. I learned so-freaking-much from this novel, and couldn’t recommend it more. If you have any interest in gun rights, civil rights, and/or African American history, it’s an absolute must-read.

Some text I highlighted on my Kindle Paperwhite when I read it in 2014:

But Southern blacks had to navigate the first generation of American arms-control laws, explicitly racist statutes starting as early as Virginia’s 1680 law, barring clubs, guns, or swords to both slaves and free blacks.

“…he who would be free, himself must strike the blow.”

In 1846, white abolitionist congressman Joshua Giddings of Ohio gave a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, advocating distribution of arms to fugitive slaves.

Civil-rights activist James Forman would comment in the 1960s that blacks in the movement were widely armed and that there was hardly a black home in the South without its shotgun or rifle.

A letter from a teacher at a freedmen’s school in Maryland demonstrates one set of concerns. The letter contains the standard complaints about racist attacks on the school and then describes one strand of the local response. “Both the Mayor and the sheriff have warned the colored people to go armed to school, (which they do) [and] the superintendent of schools came down and brought me a revolver.”

Low black turnout resulted in a Democratic victory in the majority black Republican congressional district.

Other political violence of the Reconstruction era centered on official Negro state militias operating under radical Republican administrations.

“The Winchester rifle deserves a place of honor in every Black home.” So said Ida B. Wells.

Fortune responded with an essay titled “The Stand and Be Shot or Shoot and Stand Policy”: “We have no disposition to fan the coals of race discord,” Thomas explained, “but when colored men are assailed they have a perfect right to stand their ground. If they run away like cowards they will be regarded as inferior and worthy to be shot; but if they stand their ground manfully, and do their own a share of the shooting they will be respected and by doing so they will lessen the propensity of white roughs to incite to riot.”

He used state funds to provide guns and ammunition to people who were under threat of attack.

“Medgar was nonviolent, but he had six guns in the kitchen and living room.”

“The weapons that you have are not to kill people with — killing is wrong. Your guns are to protect your families — to stop them from being killed. Let the Klan ride, but if they try to do wrong against you, stop them. If we’re ever going to win this fight we got to have a clean record. Stay here, my friends, you are needed most here, stay and protect your homes.”

In 2008 and 2010, the NAACP filed amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court, supporting blanket gun bans in Washington, DC, and Chicago. Losing those arguments, one of the association’s lawyers wrote in a prominent journal that recrafting the constitutional right to arms to allow targeted gun prohibition in black enclaves should be a core plank of the modern civil-rights agenda.

Wilkins viewed the failure to pursue black criminals as overt state malevolence and evidence of an attitude that “there’s one more Negro killed — the more of ’em dead, the less to bother us. Don’t spend too much money running down the killer — he may kill another.”

But it puts things in perspective to note that swimming pool accidents account for more deaths of minors than all forms of death by firearm (accident, homicide, and suicide).

The correlation of very high murder rates with low gun ownership in African American communities simply does not bear out the notion that disarming the populace as a whole will disarm and prevent murder by potential murderers.

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated 1,900,000 annual episodes where someone in the home retrieved a firearm in response to a suspected illegal entry. There were roughly half a million instances where the armed householder confronted and chased off the intruder.

A study of active burglars found that one of the greatest risks faced by residential burglars is being injured or killed by occupants of a targeted dwelling. Many reported that this was their greatest fear and a far greater worry than being caught by police.48 The data bear out the instinct. Home invaders in the United States are more at risk of being shot in the act than of going to prison.49 Because burglars do not know which homes have a gun, people who do not own guns enjoy free-rider benefits because of the deterrent effect of others owning guns. In a survey of convicted felons conducted for the National Institute of Justice, 34 percent of them reported being “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim.” Nearly 40 percent had refrained from attempting a crime because they worried the target was armed. Fifty-six percent said that they would not attack someone they knew was armed and 74 percent agreed that “one reason burglars avoid houses where people are at home is that they fear being shot.”

In the period before Florida adopted its “shall issue” concealed-carry laws, the Orlando Police Department conducted a widely advertised program of firearms training for women. The program was started in response to reports that women in the city were buying guns at an increased rate after an uptick in sexual assaults. The program aimed to help women gun owners become safe and proficient. Over the next year, rape declined by 88 percent. Burglary fell by 25 percent. Nationally these rates were increasing and no other city with a population over 100,000 experienced similar decreases during the period.55 Rape increased by 7 percent nationally and by 5 percent elsewhere in Florida.

As you can see, Negroes and the Gun progresses more or less chronologically, spending the last portion of the book discussing modern-day gun control. It’s an invaluable source of ammunition (if you’ll pardon the expression) against the fallacies of the pro-gun-control platform. It sheds light on a little-known (if not purposefully obfuscated), critical factor in the history of African Americans: firearms.

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I highly recommend you — yes, you — read Negroes and the Gun: the Black Tradition of Arms.

And I’ll wrap this up with a quote in a Huffington Post article given by Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter: 

https://cdn0.thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/huffpo-maj-toure.jpg”

[whatbigotspost]

Do you think Texas will turn blue in the up coming election?

For the 2024 presidential? There's no way of telling, I think. Folks have been saying that Texas is purple the whole 11 years I've lived here (and probably before, but I can't speak to that) and we've yet to have any statewide races actually show a blue result at the polls.

From a theoretical perspective, the numbers are there because Texas' voter turnout is notoriously abysmal so anything is possible, if the non voting block can get actually mobilized. (We're still ranked in 10 states w/ lowest turnout in 2020.) But that mobilization would mean that Dems would have to inspire voters in a major way AND voting would have to become more accessible than it's been. At the national level, I see Dems doing very little to show the average non voting Texan that it would result in material benefit in their lives if they jump through the electoral hoops here to go vote for them come November 2024, so far. And speaking of those electoral hoops and obstacles, it's not looking good right now, as far as voting getting easier and not harder in the state. The current voter suppression law Texan Republicans are pushing is very, very, very bad. And of course, SCOTUS just decimated the section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. Republicans know that Texas' demographics pose an existential threat to their long codified power, so they are trying to make voting as difficult as possible for the working class, communities of color, disabled voters, etc. They appeal to ugly "culture war" shit (outlawing mask mandates, fighting "critical race theory," fighting trans girls/women in sports, making gender affirming care count as child abuse, outlawing abortion and putting bounties on it, etc., etc.,) because this is who they so much support. Their base of tried and true voters are the average Evangelical white, suburban/rural Texan.......those who are constant voters due to their happy embracing of white supremacy packaged as Christianity....and other ignorant bigotry. They are not voting based on what's actually best for material improvement in their own lives. Everyone knows: Texas is ridiculously important and outsized in the national political landscape. Should Texas reach a tipping point where the presidential race goes blue, the math of the electoral college gets pretty damn near impossible for a Republican to take the White House. Many, many other states would have to radically change to offset Texas going blue for a Republican to be president ever again. With a whopping 38 electoral college votes, that's more than other southern red states of Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina COMBINED. Progressive organizers and are aware of this and so they're doing every damn thing they can from an organizing level. Some to check out include: Texas Freedom Network, Workers Defense Action Fund, Texas Organizing Project, Texas Civil Rights Project, MOVE Texas, and Black Voters Matter Fund. But there is only so much that organizing can do. Republicans at state and national levels will keep fighting tooth and nail to try to prevent Texans from voting, and they have the power to make it hellish for the average person. Texas is part of a larger multi state coordinated effort by the GOP to keep unjustly in power by focusing on winning local (off presidential cycle) elections.... here's a good listen on that topic. The result is that after being elected by only a small part of the eligible voting block, state Republicans get to draw congressional districts, so it's why my congressional district is repeatedly pointed to as among the most gerrymandered in the country. Slimy state leadership, like Attorney General Ken Paxton do things like scare up a bunch of worry about voter fraud (when there's almost none in reality, and he himself is under indictment.) And Harris County (Houston) is picked on when their leadership tries to make voting easier with implementing things like drive through voting in a pandemic. The lack of justice in this new voting bill and potential power of the Texan voting block when unencumbered is why our good House Democrats broke quorum and fled to DC a few weeks ago (where they still are!) They're begging for national support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act which would supercede what their Republican counterparts are doing in this state during the special session.

But special interests (hellooooooo oil and gas) and the Texas Republicans in their pockets are deeply invested (LITERALLY!) in keeping the US as red as possible. Texas is an undeniable key to that, so it will be a major, major uphill battle to empower the people to overcome the choke hold that big money, voter suppression, gerrymandering, white supremacy, and a whole host of other obstacles here present. PFEW! TLDR; Texas could go blue, but it will take a lottttttttttttt to make that happen. If something transformational occurs at the national level, I'll feel more positive about the potential for 2024. No matter what, however, Texas is super important to the national big picture, so that's why I try to shout about this stuff as much as possible. But let's just say, I'm not holding my breath for it to turn blue any time soon, the way things are going.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The political possibility of cities

The coming year feels like an important one. Democrats have the chance to pass the For the People Act, which will reverse decades of right-wing voter suppression, steering the US away from the baked-in antimajoritarian characteristics of its politics

At the same time, a successful vaccine rollout (assuming variants can be controlled) will mean widespread "re-openings," most notably in cities, where we find the highest concentrations of virus-incompatible stuff: mass transit, elevators, theaters and "cozy" cafes.

Cities are of huge political significance. The rise and rise of inequality has been attended by skyrocketing rents in cities, largely driven by money-launderers and speculators who turned housing stock into empty safe deposit boxes in the sky.

Cities were also key to delivering the 2020 election: Biden took major cities by 13m votes, inner suburbs by 4m votes, and midsized cities by 1.5m votes. 80% of Biden's votes came from these three categories.

As Ronald Brownstein writes in The Atlantic, "If you draw an imaginary beltway around almost any major metropolitan area, Democrats are growing stronger inside that circle, while Republicans are consolidating their position outside of it."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/03/how-biden-could-partner-big-cities-and-suburbs/618294/

Last summer's BLM uprising was a mostly urban affair, but even before then, the GOP was waging war on cities, with Mitch McConnell cutting maintenance and relief funds for cities, and Trump demanding quarter for ICE snatch-squads.

America's urbanization is an unbroken trend, and cities are semi-autonomous, wildly imperfect, young, diverse and economically powerful. They are also politically important, and many of the reddest states would be blue or very purple if cities were given due representation.

Brownstein's account of cities during the Trump years makes the case that a Biden focus on mayors, rather than the deadlocked Congress and Senate, or the fringe ideologues who were crammed onto the Supreme Court, is the key to making real political change.

The deadlocked legislature is not a new phenomenon. Several presidential administrations have focused on executive orders and regulations from the administrative branch to effect change, but these are flimsy political wins. What one exec order can create, another can undo.

Net Neutrality is here, then gone, then (maybe) here again. Without legislation, these policies aren't worth the Federal Register pages they're printed on. But there are methods to durably inscribe policy, and these are primarily urban.

Mostly, we remember the negative ways that this occurs: redlining, driving freeways through Black neighborhoods or skipping over parts of the city when it comes to subway access. Infrastructure is policy - and it's among the most permanent forms of policy we have.

As recent years have demonstrated, the future is a chaotic place, but as Charlie Stross has noted, the elements of the future that are indeed up for grabs are actually pretty narrow: 90% of the future is here today.

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2019/12/artificial-intelligence-threat.html

Most of the homes people will be living in in 10 years are on the road today. Most of the people who'll be alive then are living today. most of the cars that will be on the road are already in service today.

Even sharp discontinuities like the pandemic don't change those facts much (Stross and I did a conference presentation last week where he said that maybe all the chaos of the past five years has reduced the present's share of the future to 80%, still a commanding majority).

Cities are places where administrative policies can inscribe themselves indelibly upon the future. As LA Sustainability Czar Lauren Faber O'Connor told Brownstein, "Every building in the country is basically a shovel-ready project."

A fed solarize/winterize subsidy for buildings makes a difference for decades to come: not just the carbon footprint of the built environment, but also the baseline expectations for decent buildings. It permanently alters the balance between energy companies and the nation.

Every local government could take the feds up on this, but self-owning culture war foolishness predicts that the benefit will accrue predominantly to the large/mid-sized cities and inner burbs that delivered the election to Biden.

Vehicles don't last as long as buildings, but they are remarkably durable. Biden wants to replace the fed fleet with EVs - he could subsidize cities to do the same, creating huge efficiencies of scale for EV production and demand for permanent EV charging infrastructure.

Of course, the future is transit-based, not private-vehicle-based. Just do the math: multiply the number of people who need to go places by the amount of highway a private vehicle operates, and you'll find an inescapable Red Queen's Race.

The more road we need for those private vehicles, the further apart everything gets. The further apart everything gets, the more cars we need. The more cars we need, the more road we need. The more road we need, the further apart everything gets.

If building mass transit is "socialism" then geometry is a socialist plot (and no, you can't fix this by moving cars into tunnels; do the math). Transit permanently alters where people live and work, and what they expect from their cities. A transit subsidy is a no-brainer.

Biden can't force the states to switch to carbon neutral energy sources, but he can subsidize municipal energy facilities' voluntary switchover, again, permanently altering the economics of fossil-fuel power generation.

Red states aren't red: they are gerrymandered purple states that punish and starve their economic and population centers in the name of culture war nonsense and white supremacy. There are opportunities to permanently alter this situation.

For example, the Biden FCC could resinstate the rule banning states from limiting municipal fiber, and then subsidize 100GB/s muni networks, with emphasis on the urban broadband deserts in the majority-minority neighborhoods created by redlining.

Once cities are operating profitable muni networks that connect *everyone* to service that is 1,000-10,000x faster than the aging copper lines that cable monopolists refuse to upgrade, those networks will become permanent facts.

(as with many anti-monopoly interventions, these will do double-duty: the cable companies' lobbying ammo comes from the monopoly rents that they extract from poor people; deprive them of those rents and you cut the supply lines in the war they wage on the public interest)

There's reforms coming to the Affordable Care Act: if one of these is a change to the rule that cities can only get federal health-care subsidies if their states permit it, then cities could opt-in to health care even when their gerrymandered GOP statehouses block it.

America has 50 governors, 435 Congressional districts, 100 senators and 9 Supreme Court justices.

America has 19,000 cities and towns and 3,100 counties. These local governments are far more accountable to the people than the larger political entities.

Officials in cities, towns and counties who deliver tangible improvements to their residents' quality of life will be rewarded with high approval ratings and re-election. The Trump years left the largest of these starved for friendly federal coordination and partnership.

Biden's cabinet already includes three prominent former mayors - Buttigieg, Walsh and Fudge - and the historically intractable task of directly coordinating with thousands of local governments is made far more reasonable thanks to digital technology.

History teaches that presidents can defeat America's antimajoritarian institutions by simply bypassing them.

When the pro-slavery Supreme Court struck down Lincoln's anti-slavery laws, he passed them again...and again...and again: "Let's see whose legitimacy tanks first."

Biden could write humane, sustainable equitable future on the country in indelible ink. He could also make permanent changes in the lives and expectations of people: increasing subsidies to local schools and wiping out student debt is a change that lasts for a generation.

As exciting as this is, it's not enough. The circumstances of rural life are range from bad to terrible, and they're only worsening. Saving the cities will save the vast majority of Americans, but it will still leave nearly 60,000,000 people in desperate circumstances.

This is unacceptable. Good governments look after all people, not just the ones it expects to win re-election from.

Working with local governments is a tactic, not a strategy - a way to erode corporate power and present alternatives.

It's the beginning, not the end.

Image: The Fifth Element/Luc Besson

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

John Lewis died tonight

(February 21, 1940 - July 17, 2020)

A lifetime civil rights activist, he was the last surviving member of the “Big Six,” leaders and organizers for the March on Washington, alongside Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young.

He was a Congressman, representing Georgia’s 5th Congressional District since 1987.  He was running for re-election this year in a majority black, majority Democratic district, with ceremonial opposition.  He was expected to re-win his seat in another landslide, but now it’s totally up in the air.

The primaries are over, the Democrats can’t nominate someone else.  The Republicans chose the WORST possible candidate; Angela Stanton-King is an ultraconservative black woman who was jailed for conspiracy for her involvement in a car theft ring.  She served two years, and was pardoned by Donald Trump.  She became a right-wing celebrity author, being sued for writing unflattering biographies of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, thinks gay people are pedophiles, and supports QANON whatever the fuck that is.  She was expected to lose heartily, but now she’s all but guaranteed the win.

I don’t know Georgia state laws; some states allow you to run posthumously, so Lewis’ name would remain on the ballot, and if he were elected the seat would be left vacant.  If they disqualify dead candidates, then the Democrats would need to run a write-in candidate and put all of their effort into this fledgling campaign.  But because it’s Georgia, a conservative state with an ultraconservative governor, what’s gonna happen is they’re just gonna call the race for Stanton King.  They’re gonna say that she is running unopposed, so she wins by default, disallowing the write-in candidates.

Suddenly, a Safe-D district will flip R, which would be a major victory for Trump and his goons because she the only prominent black woman who supports him.  She’s their token black friend, they’ll parade her around and shoot down every BLM argument by turning to her and having her say that ��All Lives Matter, cops are just doing their jobs, if you don’t break the law then you have nothing to fear, the system is just and all Americans are treated equally under the law.“  She’s their golden goose, she’s their “Get Out of Jail Free Card,” they can o and say whatever they want, assured that they have the support of a black woman (she’s the exception, not the rule; black woman vote 99% Democratic).  They will use her to crush any opposing voices by having her just say “that’s not true, never happened to me, I’ve never been pulled over for no reason, I’ve never been molested by a boss, I’ve had nothing but positive experiences, so therefore your negative ones must be your own fault.”  She’s their propaganda machine.  She’s their literal race card, which they can play whenever they want.

This District was safely Democratic, and it will become yet another Republican stronghold by 2022.  Georgia is a dumpster fire.  Not quite Florida levels, but they’re pretty high up the list of worst state in the union.  Kemp is actively trying to kill people by making it illegal to mandate masks in public (he wants people to VOLUNTARILY wear masks, saying the government shouldn’t force them, which is bullshit).  I’m telling you, we’re THIS close to masks being outlawed entirely.  Like the cops will start saying “masks make it hard for our facial recognition, people are getting away with more crimes, we need the make wearing a mask illegal,” and then poof, everyone is susceptible to the virus because Republicans Love Cops.

This is the worst news I’ve had all day.  I looked up to John Lewis.  I always wanted to meet him one day.  And his legacy is about to be tarnished by conservative cheaters and a Trump supporting white-collar ex-con.  God Damn them, and God Damn the United States.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 13, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Yesterday, the Census Bureau released information about the 2020 census, designed to enable states to start the process of drawing new lines for their congressional districts, a process known as redistricting.

Because of that very limited intent for this particular information dump, the picture the material gives is a very specific one. The specificity of that information echoes the political history that in the 1920s began to skew our Congress to give rural white voters disproportionate power. It also reinforces a vision of America divided by race: precisely the vision that former president Trump and his supporters want Americans to believe.

The U.S. Constitution requires that the government count the number of people in the country every ten years so that lawmakers can divide up the representation in Congress, which is apportioned according to population in the House of Representatives. (The Senate is by state: each state gets two senators.)

This matters not just for the relative weight of voices in lawmaking in the House, but also because of our Electoral College. The Electoral College is how we elect the U.S. president. Each state gets the number of electors that is equal to the number of senators and representatives combined. So, if your state has 10 representatives and 2 senators, it would have 12 presidential electors.

Censuses are never 100% accurate. It’s hard to count people, especially if they don’t want to be counted. Censuses also are inherently political, since a corrupt president will not want an accurate count: they will want areas that support their party to be overcounted, while areas that support the opposite party to be undercounted.

The 1890 census is a famous example of both of these problems. Indigenous Americans who were eager to avoid the observance of the federal government out of concern for their lives moved around to avoid being counted. The process itself was notoriously corrupt because in 1889 and 1890, the Republican Party had forced the admission of six new western states—North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming—that supported the Republicans, and had insisted that the new census would show enough people there to warrant statehood. So they were eager to find lots and lots of people in those new states but very few in the populous territories of Arizona and New Mexico, which they knew would vote Democratic. (I would love to write a whole post about the 1890 census, but I will spare you.)

Today, because of the pandemic, the results of the 2020 census have been delayed, and states are already behind in their schedules to redistrict for the upcoming 2022 election. (I know, I know, but it really is right over the horizon. Some states are already thinking about moving their primary elections because there’s not enough time to redistrict before them.) So yesterday, the Census Bureau released the information states need to begin that process. It released its record of the number of people living in each state and U.S. territory.

But in addition to needing to know the actual numbers of the count, state lawmakers need to know the racial makeup of their states, since there are federal rules about making sure minority votes aren’t silenced in redistricting by, for example, splitting a minority vote into small enough groups among districts that minorities essentially don’t have a voice (this is called “cracking”), or concentrating members of one group into a single district, so they are underrepresented at the state level (this is called “packing”).

So the material that came out yesterday was not the entire information from the census; it was just the material states need for redistricting.

It shows how many people there are living in America today. Population shifts mean that Montana, Oregon, Colorado, North Carolina, and Florida all picked up a seat, while Texas picked up two. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, California, and West Virginia all lost one. Within those states, cities have grown and rural counties have lost people. For the first time in our history, all ten of the country’s largest cities now have more than a million people in them.

The material released yesterday also shows the nation’s racial makeup. That information is confusing, as all self-identification on a form can be. It says that America’s white population has dropped significantly since 2010. According to the census, people who identify as white now make up 58% of the population while just ten years ago they made up 64%. But the census also shows that people who self-identify as a mixture of races has skyrocketed, climbing from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020. It seems likely that some of the drop in self-identification as white is due to people identifying themselves differently than they have in the past.

Urbanization and multiculturalism are not new to our history, and their appearance in the census led lawmakers to create an imbalance in our government in the 1920s. The Constitution says that a state can’t have a representative for fewer than 30,000 people, but it doesn’t say anything about an upper limit of constituents represented by a single representative. In 1912, when the country had 92 million people, the House had grown to 435 members.

But the 1920 census showed that more Americans lived in cities than in the country, at the same time that white Americans were all tied up in knots that those new urban dwellers were Black Americans and immigrants from southern and central Europe and Asia. Aware that continuing to allow more representatives for these growing numbers of Americans meant that the weight of representation would move away from rural white Americans and toward immigrants in cities, lawmakers refused to continue increasing the number of seats in the House. (They also passed the 1924 Immigration Act, which set quotas on how many people from each country could come to America.)

In 1929, lawmakers froze the number of representatives at 435 voting members of the House. While this number would bounce around as new states came in, for example, it has once again settled as the number of voting representatives today, when our population is 331 million.

That cap means that the size of the average congressional district is now 711,000 people, a number that is far higher than the framers intended and that favors smaller, more rural, whiter states in the House of Representatives. It also favors those states in the Electoral College, where they have more weight proportionately than they would if the House had continued to grow.

By identifying everyone by race—as it needed to, for redistricting purposes—yesterday’s census material also engages what sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields have called “racecraft,” which, by artificially dividing people along racial lines, reinforces the idea of race as the most important thing in society. Yesterday’s material does not mention, for example, income or wealth, which are not explicitly factored in when redistricting but which the last census material released on that topic suggested are at least as divisive as race.

The idea that race is paramount is, of course, the theory that the right wing would like Americans to believe, and the idea that white Americans are being “replaced” by people of color and Black Americans falls right into the right-wing argument that minorities are “replacing” white Americans.

For a century now, the machinery of redistricting has favored rural whites. With the 2020 census information reinforcing the idea that white, rural Americans are under siege, it seems unlikely that lawmakers in Republican states will want to rebalance the system.

But it seems equally unlikely that an increasingly urbanizing, multicultural nation will continue to accept being governed by an ever-smaller white, rural minority.

—-

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/12/redistricting-census-data-503994

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/08/10/census-race-population-changes-redistricting/

https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/567360-white-population-declines-for-first-time-in-us

https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/55/why-435/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/12/politics/us-census-2020-data/index.html

​​https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/coloring-outside-the-lines/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[antoine-roquentin]

This year marks Harold “Hal” Rogers’s twenty-first consecutive electoral victory in Kentucky’s Fifth Congressional District, making him the second-longest-serving Republican in Congress. He rode into office on the wave of the Reagan Revolution in 1980, and the governing style he’s employed in the Fifth District—which covers the rural, mountainous, Appalachian region of southeastern Kentucky—can mostly be described as Reaganite: pro–War on Drugs, pro–prison expansion, anti-regulation of extractive industries, and pro-family. The congressman has had to improvise a little over the years in response to changes in the economy and political system, but he’s well-positioned to do so: as a former Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the elite “College of Cardinals” that manages the government’s budget, and the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, he’s one of the most powerful men in Washington. Rogers has extraordinary discretion over where and how the government exercises power domestically and overseas, especially within the border regions; he can coerce other lawmakers to support his policies by withholding funding; and, crucially, he can funnel tons of “pork” back to his home district.

If you were to mention that to the average American, however, you’d probably be met with confusion. Hal who? Most people, when they think of powerful politicians from Kentucky, think of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who over the last decade or so has singlehandedly reshaped how Congress functions, and has all but ensured the prioritization of corporate interests within the federal judiciary. So you’re telling me there’s another powerful congressman from Kentucky who has control over virtually every aspect of my life? That is indeed what I’m telling you, my friend, and it’s no coincidence that both of these men come from the mostly rural state of Kentucky.

How did Kentucky come to mean so much at the national level? McConnell’s story isn’t that compelling. He is deeply unpopular statewide, but every six years he hyper-focuses on a handful of places in the state—Paducah, the Cincinnati suburbs in Northern Kentucky, the rural counties around Louisville (his hometown), and the rural counties in southern Kentucky—and makes enough empty promises and assurances to carry him to victory. He then launders his success as a success story for all of Kentucky, claiming that it allows the state to punch above its weight at the national level against states like New York and California. His voters eat this up, and McConnell plays off of it to increasingly cringe results (see: “Cocaine Mitch.”) At the end of the day it’s a pretty standard story of electioneering, manipulation, and voter suppression; Kentucky consistently ranks among the bottom ten states in terms of “electoral integrity.”

But whereas McConnell is motivated by the long-term viability of corporate domination of the United States, Hal Rogers is motivated by the long-term viability of corporate and personal domination of southeastern Kentucky. Make no mistake that this benighted region—long one of the poorest in the country—is Rogers’s personal dominion, his fiefdom. The fact that his name is on just about everything you see should be enough evidence to support this claim. To enter and exit the region you have to travel on the Hal Rogers Parkway, which used to be the Daniel Boone Parkway until Rogers renamed it after itself. Want to take your family on a weekend getaway vacation? You can check out the Hal Rogers Family Entertainment Center in Williamsburg, which contains a wave pool, water slides, and a mini-golf course. Or perhaps you’re addicted to drugs? Rogers has just the thing for you: the Hal Rogers Appalachian Recovery Center, which has outposts all across the region.

This last “amenity” that Rogers so graciously offers—drug rehabilitation centers—is rich with irony. In 2003 he created a program known as Operation UNITE (Unlawful Narcotics Investigations, Treatment and Education). UNITE is a brilliant form of rural social control. It ruthlessly enforces drug abstention through the traditional methods of law enforcement—undercover policing, kicking down doors—and, at the same time, encourages community members to snitch on fellow community members who they suspect of being involved in drug activities. The result is that no one trusts anyone: everyone is a suspect, all of the time. UNITE is the sort of program that engenders alienation, making it less likely that people will mount meaningful political challenges against the region’s political institutions, such as Rogers himself.

But Rogers’s UNITE program is even more ingenious than that. It sweeps you up in raids and undercover stings, and then sends you to treatment (likely in a building with Rogers’s name plastered on it), and then uses you as an example to the rest of the community about the harms of drug abuse. You will become a poster child, an educator, a warning from the future: Do not become me; I was lucky enough to make it out alive, and even then it was only through the help and compassion of good old Hal Rogers. In other words, Hal giveth and Hal taketh away. He is simultaneously good cop and bad cop, or, if you’re feeling biblical, the Old Testament God of Vengeance and Wrath and New Testament God of Redemption and Forgiveness. If you’re a drug user in southeastern Kentucky, you will eventually come under his all-seeing eye.

Of course, if you do not make it to (and through) the rehabilitation stage, you can go to prison, in which Rogers is also deeply invested. When southeastern Kentucky’s coal economy started going south in the 1980s and ’90s due to mechanization caused by an increase in strip mining (facilitated by Rogers’s loosening of environmental regulations), Rogers became the biggest advocate for prison expansion in the region. During his career he’s brought no less than three federal prisons to his district, and he’s currently working on bringing a fourth, to Letcher County, right on the border of Kentucky and Virginia. Either in jail or on the anti-drug education circuit, your story will eventually be used for Hal Rogers’s personal glorification.

This does not mean that all power is consolidated within the person of Rogers, however. The intricate system that’s slowly grown to facilitate the expansion of drug courts, rehabilitation centers, jails that counties rely on for revenue, and prisons is its own network of feudal control and peonage. Hang around outside any county courthouse in eastern Kentucky for long enough and you’ll see, like I have, people begging judges to sign off on this or that paper granting them this or that level of re-entry into their community (previously restricted as a result of being caught with this or that drug). Or hang around outside any drug counseling office long enough and you’ll hear, like I have, people casually discussing which local judges are the strictest and which are the most lenient. A lot of people’s lives are tied up in a system that is ruled mostly by whimsy and fiat.

If and when Rogers ever kicks the bucket—and this will have to be the way he leaves office, because he will likely never be defeated at the ballot box—all this will have been his legacy. Not just the buildings and highways and rehabilitative centers with his name on them. Not just the prisons and the beefed-up law enforcement agencies. Not just the ominous office building in Somerset, known colloquially as the “Taj Ma-Hal,” which houses a number of nonprofits with boring names like “Center for Rural Development” that Rogers helped create in order to vacuum up federal grant money from agencies like the Appalachian Regional Commission. It’s all these things, but it’s also something bigger: the remaking of rural political economy. Rogers’s model has been exported across the United States.

As the nation’s rural regions experienced deindustrialization, out-migration, drug-assisted suicide, or a combination of all the above over the last three or four decades, rural elites had to figure out a way to maintain control over their constituents. Many of them turned to Rogers’s example. For example, when Rogers launched UNITE in 2003, John Walters, then the White House drug czar, said that it would “serve as a model for the rest of the nation.” It doesn’t go by the name “UNITE” in every community, but if you go anywhere in rural America and listen long enough, you’ll hear the voices of people who are trapped within similar systems of manipulation, coercion, and foreclosure on the future. And you’ll also see, lording over them, the names and faces of men who have carved out their own kingdoms, which from the outside seem impervious to pressure from below. But that’s the thing about power: it doesn’t last forever, and it can always be beaten. It’s up to us to figure out how to do it.

[coochiequeens]

Oh now that the Democratic Party realizes that they need women’s votes they have no trouble identifying who is a woman.

Retired Virginia special educator Tina Clay says she will vote for Democrats in November. She's even text-campaigning for Beto O'Rourke's run for Texas governor. But Clay said some women she knows may not vote at all.

"There's always the busy young mother who just doesn't have time to get to the polls or someone else's husband is very conservative so she just votes as he votes," said Clay.

A resident of Loudoun County, Clay lives in Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton's district. However, because of redistricting Clay isn't sure if she'll be able to vote for Wexton.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee added Wexton to a list of 70 vulnerable members they are hoping to oust in Novembers.

The battle for Wexton's seat – and many others – underscores the uphill battle Democrats face to retain control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections. To do that, they'll need women like Clay and her friends and acquaintances, even as the party finds itself struggling to boost those voters' enthusiasm.

It's been a difficult political climate for Democrats on a number of fronts: an inability to pass voting rights legislation or the Build Back Better Act, a still-raging coronavirus pandemic, the possibility of the Supreme Court rolling back abortion access this spring and high disapproval numbers for President Joe Biden.

"I am hoping that we will pull together groups of women, women of color, working-class women, teachers and nurses ... everyone has enough crossover, in terms of what their concerns are, that we'll come together," Clay said.

Congressional Democratic leaders are touting passage of the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure law across the nation. But political experts and advocates told USA TODAY more is still needed to improve the lives of American women and their families.

"President Biden, Vice President (Kamala) Harris, and Democrats in Congress have spent the last year delivering tax cuts for middle-class families, funding to safely open schools and get kids back in the classroom, and relief for small businesses across the country," Gabriela Cristobal, the Democratic National Committee's women's coalition director, said in a statement to USA TODAY.

"While we are confident that that strong record will resonate with women voters in November, Republicans will be forced to run on their party’s efforts to enact strict anti-abortion laws and their record of voting against lowering costs for Americans."

The nationwide exhaustion with the ongoing pandemic and rising inflation rates have dragged down the public’s approval of Biden.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Biden's net approval ratings in the negative among all voters, including women, 44% of whom approve of him compared to 48% who disapprove.

Focus group surveys in Georgia, Texas and Michigan conducted by Navigator Research, a Democratic-aligned polling group, on Jan. 25 found that Black Americans' support for Biden declined 10 percentage points, from 86% to 76%, in 2021. For Black women between the ages 18-39 surveyed in Texas, 40% said they strongly approve of Biden and 36% said they somewhat approve of Biden.

A Morning Consult poll released in October found that Biden's approval rating among Black women Democrats was down to 41%, down 30 points since he moved into the White House. That same poll found 42% of Democratic women approved of Biden compared with 50% of Democratic men.

Biden’s poll numbers are just one signal that Democrats could face bruising midterm elections among women voters.

As the pandemic continues, many women of color and their families are bearing the brunt of its effects – whether it's high COVID-19 infection and death rates, paying higher prices for everyday items, or higher unemployment rates.

“For Latinas as a whole, my sisters are hurting because many of them were and are essential workers and they didn't have the luxury of staying at home,” said Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of the voting rights group Voto Latino. “And it's trying to figure out how do you as a government, how do you connect with those people that feel like they're drowning, not just financially, but maybe for the first time in a way that impacts their mental health?”

Hispanic women faced the steepest initial job losses during the pandemic among major demographic groups, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. From March 2020 to March 2021, the number of Latinas in the work force dropped 2.74%, the biggest drop of any group, according to UCLA's Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

Democrats have instead championed the infrastructure law to appeal to voters, arguing that the economy is rebounding under Biden’s leadership.

“In one year, growth is up, wages are up, unemployment is down. And this is just the beginning. The infrastructure law is going to result in millions of more good-paying jobs,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., at a recent news conference.

“People don't know what we've done, and we are making sure that they know,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich.

However, there were more than 1 million fewer women in the labor force in January 2022 than in February 2020, according to the National Women's Law Center.

Notably, the child care sector has lost nearly 1 in 8 jobs since the pandemic began, a factor that contributes to the difficulty for women reentering the workface.

Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century launched a $100 million media campaign in support of Biden and his policy wins in crucial battleground states in March 2021. The organization has created ads with influencers, including "Bachelorette" contestants, in order to reach women in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania who are not closely following politics.

In one ad, three former "Bachelorette" contestants – Mike Johnson, Matt Donald and Luke Stone – praise the Biden administration's success supporting American families through the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

“It's much more (than) hoping that women will get to political news, but trying to bring it to them in mediums and with spokespeople that they trust already,” said Cecile Richards, co-chair of American Bridge 21st Century. “Women care about these issues. It's not that they don't care. It's just very hard in the news clutter right now for them to actually understand ‘oh, this thing happened. And this is how it could impact my family.'’’

More than half of Vote.org’s users are women, according to the organization's CEO, Andrea Hailey. Along with influencers, the group also partnered with Fresh EBT, an app that allows low-income Americans to monitor their food stamp benefits, to register voters.

"Fresh EBT served over 3 million people, a large percentage of their user base are women," said Hailey. "And that generated over 300,000 people coming to Vote.org."

The partnership led to 50,000 new voter registrations, with 79% of the registrants being women.

Focusing on care and families key to appealing to women

Democratic pollster Brad Bannon cautions Democrats against solely focusing on the infrastructure law.

“I think it's important for the president and congressional Democrats to demonstrate the fact that they want to go further than that,” he said. “They want to expand Medicare benefits. They want to keep the childcare benefits. They want to push for health care benefits in general.”

For example, expanded Child Tax Credit payments, which were part of the American Rescue Plan, helped low-income families who struggled in 2021. The failure of Congress to pass the Build Back Better Act means the monthly payments are now stalled.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said at a recent news conference, "The Child Tax Credit, in a shortest period of time, has demonstrated its success. It should not be left behind. It should be at the center of whatever we are doing in terms of a reconciliation package in the future."

States making it harder for people to cast their ballots

Senate Democrats’ unsuccessful efforts to pass a federal elections law last year or this means that several state-level laws that restrict voting will remain in place during the midterms.

Hailey, of Vote.org, called the failure of the voting rights bill a “big disappointment.”

“Our message now has been to voters, the most important thing that people can do is show up in the midterm elections, in support of democracy,” Hailey said.

Passing an elections bill was a key priority for many Black and brown civic engagement groups, often led by women of color.

Using funding from American Bridge 21st Century's Bridge Together initiative, 1000 Women Strong, a Black women’s civic engagement group, will be organizing in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Michigan and Texas ahead of the midterms.

Shakya Cherry-Donaldson, founder and executive director of 1000 Women Strong, said the lack of federal voting rights legislation will not stop Black women’s organizing ahead of the midterms.

“Are these last two years what we want? No,” Cherry-Donaldson said. “But does that mean we give up or we then disengage entirely from a system that we know is bigger than us? No, we don’t.”

Allie Young, founder of the Indigenous grassroots organization Protect the Sacred, was one of the Native leaders who met with Vice President Harris last summer to discuss Native American access to the ballot.

Young led a “Ride to the Polls” program, an initiative where Native voters rode on horseback to cast their ballots in Arizona during the 2020 election, and is now working on a “Ride to the Polls 2.0” during this year’s midterms.

"Ride to the Polls 2.0 is really focused on the Native community, Native women and on a national level as well," Young said. "We're taking our initiatives from 2020 and expanding it to other communities and tapping into that cultural foundation."

For Indigenous people who live on reservations, it can be cumbersome to find accessible polling places or post offices. Same-day voter registration would make it easier for Native people who are able to make it to the polls to vote, Young said.

Reproductive rights: a wild card

The Supreme Court’s decision later this year on abortion rights could galvanize Democratic women if the high court guts Roe v. Wade. The high court is weighing a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi.

More than half of all states in the U.S. may ban abortion in some form depending on what happens as a result.

“I think the campaigns need to understand that they can't assume that women of color are going to come out, certainly not come out in the numbers that they need to win, without being champions for the issues that matter to us,” said Aimee Allison, founder of the women of color advocacy group She the People.

Haleema Bharooch, senior advocacy manager at Alliance for Girls and a 2021 She the People 25 under 25 women of color to watch awardee, said Democratic leaders are not meeting the needs of Gen-Z women of color.

“We're looking at the possibility of Roe v. Wade being gutted. And that is under a Democratic administration. So things have not been better,” Bharooch said.

Bharooch said Democrats don’t have a long-term strategy for culturally responsive civic engagement.

In Muslim communities, “we don't have people in our community or even the resources to do large-scale education and awareness that is culturally responsive, that helps our community to understand this issue better,” Bharooch said.

Karin Stanford, a political science professor at California State University, Northridge, said Biden has not done enough work to improve the lives of Black women voters in particular, whether it means securing reproductive rights or supporting other issues such as student loan debt. Black women are a cornerstone of the Democratic Party, among the most loyal voters to cast their ballots for Democrats.

“We're looking for substantive public policy that will impact us or address those bread-and-butter issues in our community, and he (Biden) really has not done that,” Stanford said.

When it comes to reproductive rights, Stanford said Biden could act now irrespective of what the Supreme Court rules.

“The issue of reproductive rights goes beyond (abortion). Black women have the highest rates of infant mortality around the country,” Stanford said. “And I'm thinking what can the federal government do? Block grants to states ... reproductive health facilities or at least facilities that will support women during pregnancy.”

In Atlanta, Shaun Davis is one of those female voters discouraged by some of the actions Biden and Democrats have taken over the past year.

"I don't feel like the Democrats are doing enough to take action. We worked so hard here in Georgia to get Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected (to the Senate) and that changed the shape of Congress," said Davis, a managing editor at Found, a weight care company.

She's voting for the Democrats anyway, she said, but that's more about her disagreements with Republicans than an embrace of the Democratic Party.

“I felt like they (Democrats) should have done everything they could to preserve voting rights. And I feel like the effort has been really lame and just kind of like, ‘oh, well, we tried,'" she said. "That's just enraging to me."

“It's much more (than) hoping that women will get to political news, but trying to bring it to them in mediums and with spokespeople that they trust already,” said Cecile Richards, co-chair of American Bridge 21st Century. “Women care about these issues. It's not that they don't care. It's just very hard in the news clutter right now for them to actually understand ‘oh, this thing happened. And this is how it could impact my family.'’’ So if don’t vote for them it’s because they don’t understand the issues because they don’t understand the news. Fuck them.