Thursday, November 19, 2020
Reaching Out to Trump Supporters Is Pointless
73 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. He doubled down on all his worst vices, and he was rewarded for it with 10 million more votes than he received in 2016.
The majority of people of color rejected his cruelty and vulgarity. But along with others who voted for Joe Biden, we are now being lectured by a chorus of voices including Pete Buttigieg and Ian Bremmer, to “reach out” to Trump voters and “empathize” with their pain.
This is the same advice that was given after Trump’s 2016 victory, and for nearly four years, I attempted to take it. Believe me, it’s not worth it.
[I]n late 2016, I told my speaking agency to book me for events in the states where Trump won. I wanted to talk to the people the media calls “real Americans” from the “heartland,” — which is of course America’s synonym for white people, Trump’s most fervent base. Over the next four years I gave more than a dozen talks to universities, companies and a variety of faith-based communities.
My standard speech was about how to “build a multicultural coalition of the willing.” My message was that diverse communities, including white Trump supporters, could work together to create a future where all of our children would have an equal shot at the American dream. I assured the audiences that I was not their enemy.
I reminded them that those who are now considered white, such as Irish Catholics, Eastern European Jews, Greeks and Italians, were once the boogeyman. I warned them that supporting white nationalism and Trump, in particular, would be self destructive, an act of self-immolation, that will neither help their families or America become great again.
And I listened. Those in the audience who supported Trump came up to me and assured me they weren’t racist. They often said they’d enjoyed the talk, if not my politics. Still, not one told me they’d wavered in their support for him. Instead, they repeated conspiracy theories and Fox News talking points about “crooked Hillary.” Others made comments like, “You’re a good, moderate Muslim. How come others aren’t like you?”
I’ve even tried and failed to have productive conversations with Muslims who voted for Trump. Some love him for the tax cuts. Others listen only to Fox News, say “both sides” are the same, or believe he hasn’t bombed Muslim countries. (They’re wrong.) Many believe they are the “good immigrants,” as they chase whiteness and run away from Blackness, all the way to the suburbs. I can’t make people realize they have Black and brown skin and will never be accepted as white.
I did my part. What was my reward? Listening to Trump’s base chant, “Send her back!” in reference to Representative Ilhan Omar, a black Muslim woman, who came to America as a refugee. I saw the Republican Party transform the McCloskeys into victims, even though the wealthy St. Louis couple illegally brandished firearms against peaceful BLM protesters. Their bellicosity was rewarded with a prime time slot at the Republican National Convention where they warned about “chaos” in the suburbs being invaded by people of color. Their speech would have fit well in ”The Birth of a Nation."
We cannot help people who refuse to help themselves. Trump is an extension of their id, their culture, their values, their greed. He is their defender and savior. He is their blunt instrument. He is their destructive drug of choice.
Don’t waste your time reaching out to Trump voters like I did. Instead, invest your time organizing your community, registering new voters and supporting candidates who reflect progressive values that uplift everyone, not just those who wear MAGA hats, in local and state elections. Work also to protect Americans against lies and conspiracy theories churned out by the right wing media and political ecosystem. One step would be to continue pressuring social media giants like Twitter and Facebook to deplatform hatemongers, such as Steve Bannon, and censor disinformation. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.
Just as in 2016, I don’t need Trump supporters to be humiliated to feel great again. I want them to have health insurance, decent paying jobs and security for their family. I do not want them to suffer, but I also refuse to spend any more time trying to understand and help the architects of my oppression.
I will move forward along with the majority who want progress, equality and justice for all Americans. If Trump supporters decide they want the same, they can always reach out to me. They know where to find me. Ahead of them.
As a gay American hated by much of Trump's base simply because of who I am, I 100% agree with this assessment.
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Republicans Continue to Pander to Trump's Inability to Admit Defeat
No one expected Donald Trump to handle a defeat in the 2020 election well. It was predictable he’d deny that he really lost and allege the vote was rigged, that he’d tweet wild and misleading things, and that he’d lash out in absurd and sophomoric ways. All that was inevitable.
What’s been more disturbing is how far he and his allies have been willing to push it, not content only to delegitimize the election, but actively seeking to invalidate it.
This was the vista briefly opened by the refusal of Republican canvassers in Wayne County — which includes Detroit—to certify the county’s election results on Tuesday. The rare 2-2 deadlock on the board was resolved when the two Republicans agreed to certify the election in an exchange for an audit of precincts where there’s a mismatch between the number of ballots recorded as cast and the number of ballots counted.
Trump cheered the brief refusal to certify (“A Republican WIN!”), and reportedly blocking certifications is part of the Trump strategy going forward.
Trump’s central failing as president has been his inability to distinguish between his personal interest and the public interest. No president in memory has made less of an effort to allow the institution of the presidency to shape him and to conform to the constraints it imposes. Instead, he’s acted as if he’s the host of "Celebrity Apprentice," merely relocated to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and with more Twitter followers.
[Trump] successfully branding the election as stolen is second best for Trump's own purposes.
It takes away some of the sting of defeat, and the millions of his supporters who think it was rigged will fortify him in all future endeavors. They will watch his TV interviews, subscribe if there is a Trump digital media property, give him continuing clout in the GOP, and perhaps support him if he runs again in 2024 to avenge the wrong done to him in 2020.
Elected Republicans have been giving Trump lots of running room, on grounds that he should have the chance to ferret out fraud and to have his day in court.
This is fine as far as it goes, so long as results that withstand scrutiny are honored.
In Wayne County, the discrepancies that motivated the Republican canvassers were vanishingly small. According to the Detroit Free Press, the majority of Election Day precincts and absent voter boards with mismatches had discrepancies of three or fewer votes, amounting to roughly 387 votes. Trump lost Michigan by about 150,000 votes — and slightly overperformed in Wayne County. —
According to Robert Costa of the Washington Post, Rudy Giuliani’s endgame is to block enough certifications to get the election into the House. If this is an accurate rendering of the thinking, it makes zero sense.
The House takes up a presidential election if no one gets a majority of the appointed electors; in other words, a candidate can be below 270 electors and still win. . . . . . This means that the Trump team could block the certifications in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada — and still lose to Joe Biden, 233-232.
To go down this route, the Trump team would have to pile another implausibility on top of blocking certifications in multiple states and have the legislatures appoint Trump electors in stark defiance of the election results—precipitating a constitutional crisis that Trump would ultimately lose, and deserve to.
Trump has such a strong hold on the GOP base that Republicans feel the need to play along with his deep-seated inability to admit defeat. The slogan of counting every “legal vote” is a safe harbor that all Republicans can hew to, but it should go without saying that it must mean counting — and certifying— valid votes for Joe Biden.
It is far past time that moral and decent Republicans - assuming being a Republican nowadays isn't mutually exclusive with such characteristics - throw Trump overboard and allow him to sink into irrelevance.
Virginia’s Governor Supports Legalizing Marijuana
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said Monday that he supports the legalization of marijuana, following the release of a study that found Virginia could generate $300 million in taxes from the sale of the substance.
Northam (D) plans to work with the General Assembly on legislation during the regular session that convenes in January, although the process could take two years to play out.
The legislature passed a bill this year that decriminalized possession of marijuana, creating a $25 civil penalty for a first offense. That measure, which passed with bipartisan support and which Northam signed into law, also mandated a study on the issue of legalization by members of Northam’s Cabinet and staff. That group plans to issue its report at the end of the month but supports legalization. The governor had campaigned on the issue of decriminalization when he ran in 2017 but had not previously expressed support for full legalization. He called a news conference Monday to discuss the topic.
“We are going to move forward with the legalization of marijuana in Virginia,” Northam said. “I support this, and I’m committed to doing it the right way.” He added that “the time is right” and pointed out that Virginia would be the first state in the South to legalize marijuana.
Northam said that he has never personally tried marijuana but that he has come to support legalization after learning about how communities of color are disproportionately affected by its criminalization.
He said studies have shown that minority and White populations use marijuana in similar rates but that people of color are three times as likely to be arrested for it. He also said he has seen the benefits of marijuana-derived substances in treating children with epilepsy and other disorders in his practice as a pediatric neurologist. And he said he has followed public opinion polls that show increasing support for legalization.
Two-thirds of Americans think marijuana should be legal, according to Pew Research Center data.
Sen. Adam P. Ebbin (D-Alexandria), who sponsored a decriminalization bill this year, said he was already working on a legalization measure for next year and was thrilled by Northam’s support.
Northam’s working group of staffers, led by Agriculture Secretary Bettina Ring, has been meeting with stakeholders from Virginia and other states since July. They are looking at ways to regulate the industry and its products, ensure public health and public safety, and oversee taxation.
Northam also said that the marijuana industry in Virginia must be equitable for minorities and small businesses and that there will be an effort to ensure those factors are considered when granting business licenses.
Health Secretary Daniel Carey said the state’s approach will also emphasize the collection of data to understand the impacts of marijuana use. He said Virginia will use lessons learned from other states, as well as from the tobacco and alcohol industries.
A separate study commissioned this year by the state legislature and released Monday found that it would take two years and between $8 million and $20 million to set up a commercial marijuana market in Virginia and that it could ultimately generate $300 million in annual sales tax revenue.
According to the study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC), over the past decade, law enforcement in Virginia has made between 20,000 and 30,000 marijuana-related arrests. Ninety percent were for possession of a small amount of the substance. Only 7 percent of those arrests resulted in a jail sentence.
Though Black and White Virginians use marijuana at about the same rate, JLARC found, Black Virginians are 3.5 times as likely to be arrested and convicted.
Four states voted to legalize recreational marijuana possession this year, including Republican-dominated South Dakota. Mississippi legalized medicinal cannabis. Across the country, in the past decade, 15 states and D.C. have legalized marijuana possession for any reason; 20 more allow medical use. And possession of small amounts of marijuana is no longer a crime across the border from Virginia in neighboring Maryland.
Expect Republican opposition.
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
We Cannot Trust the Current GOP in Power Again
So how do I feel two weeks after our election? Awed and terrified. I am in awe at the expression of democracy that took place in America. It was our most impressive election since 1864 and maybe our most important since 1800. And yet, I am still terrified that, but for a few thousand votes in key states, how easily it could have been our last election.
Stop for a second and think about how awesome this election was. In the middle of an accelerating pandemic substantially more Americans voted than ever before in our history — Republicans, Democrats and independents. And it was their fellow citizens who operated the polling stations and conducted the count — many of them older Americans who volunteered for that duty knowing they could contract the coronavirus, as some did.
That’s why this was our greatest expression of American democratic vitality since Abraham Lincoln defeated Gen. George B. McClellan in 1864 — in the midst of a civil war. And that’s why Donald Trump’s efforts to soil this election, with his fraudulent claims of voting fraud, are so vile.
If Trump and his enablers had resisted for only a day or two, OK, no big deal. But the fact that they continue to do so, flailing for ways to overturn the will of the people, egged on by their media toadies. . . . How do you trust this version of the Republican Party to ever hold the White House again?
Its members have sat mute while Trump, rather than using the federal bureaucracy to launch a war against our surging pandemic, has launched a war against his perceived enemies inside that federal bureaucracy — including the defense secretary and the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration — weakening it when we need it most.
Engineering Trump’s internal purge is 30-year-old Johnny McEntee, “a former college quarterback who was hustled out of the White House two years ago after a security clearance check turned up a prolific habit for online gambling,” but Trump later welcomed him back and installed him as personnel director for the entire U.S. government, The Washington Post reported.
A political party that will not speak up against such a reckless leader is not a party any longer. It is some kind of populist cult of personality.
That is why we are so very lucky that this election broke for Joe Biden. If this is how this Republican Party behaves when Trump loses, imagine how willing to tolerate his excesses it would have been had he won? Trump wouldn’t have stopped at any red lights ever again.
And the people who understood that best were democrats all over the world — particularly in Europe. Because they’ve watched Trump-like, right-wing populists in Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Belarus, as well as the Philippines, get themselves elected and then take control of their courts, media, internet and security institutions and use them to try to cripple their opponents and lock themselves into office indefinitely.
Democrats abroad feared that this same political virus would overtake America if Trump were re-elected and have a devastating effect.
Seeing an American president actually try to undermine the results of a free and fair election “is a warning to democrats all over the world: Don’t play lightly with populists, they will not leave power easily the way Adams did when he lost to Jefferson,” the French foreign policy expert Dominique Moïsi remarked to me.
That is why Biden’s mission — and the mission of all decent conservatives — is not just to repair America. It is to marginalize this Trumpian version of the G.O.P. and help to nurture a healthy conservative party — one that brings conservative approaches to economic growth, infrastructure, social policy, education, regulation and climate change, but also cares about governing and therefore accepts compromises.
Democrats can’t summon a principled conservative party. That requires courageous conservatives. But Democrats do need to ask themselves why Trump remains so strong among white working-class voters without college degrees, and, in this last election, drew greater support from Black, Latino and white women voters.
There is a warning light flashing for Democrats from this election: They can’t rely on demographics. They need to make sure that every voter believes that the Democratic Party is a “both/and” party, not an “either/or” party. And they need to do it before a smarter, less crude Trump comes along to advance Trumpism.
They need every American to believe that Democrats are for BOTH redividing the pie AND growing the pie, for both reforming police departments and strengthening law and order, for both saving lives in a pandemic and saving jobs, for both demanding equity in education and demanding excellence, for both strengthening safety nets and strengthening capitalism, for both celebrating diversity and celebrating patriotism, for both making college cheaper and making the work of noncollege-educated Americans more respected, for both building a high border wall and incorporating a big gate, for both high-fiving the people who start companies and supporting the people who regulate them.
We need our next presidential election to be fought between a principled center-right Republican Party and a “both/and” Democratic Party. Great countries are led from a healthy center. Weak countries don’t have one.
Like A Petulant Child, Trump Fires Officials Who Reject His Lies
Trump on Tuesday fired a top Department of Homeland Security official who led the agency’s efforts to help secure the election and was vocal about tamping down unfounded claims of ballot fraud.
In a tweet, Trump fired Christopher Krebs, who headed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS, and led successful efforts to help state and local election offices protect their systems and to rebut misinformation.
Earlier in the day, Krebs in a tweet refuted allegations that election systems were manipulated, saying that “59 election security experts all agree, ‘in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.’” Krebs’ statement amounted to a debunking of Trump’s central claim that the November election was stolen.
Trump's behavior is increasing reminiscent of Hitler's final days in the Führerbunker as it became more and more difficult for Hitler to cling to his delusions.
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