The Wrongologist

The Daily Escape:

Doll House, Bears Ears National Monument, UT – June 2024 photo by Robert Villegas

Over the weekend, Wrongo and Ms. Right along with friends of the blog Gloria R., Pat M. and David P. saw the play “Suffs” on Broadway, NYC.

The plot is that it’s 1913 and the women’s movement is trying to get women the right to vote. They are organized by the suffragists, not suffragettes (they call themselves “Suffs”). “Suffs” traces their heroic and occasionally dangerous campaign from 1913 through ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. There’s a schism in the movement between the conservative old-line establishment Suffs, and a youthful breakaway group who want to emulate a similar movement in England, led in the US by Alice Paul who briefly spent time in the UK.

Paul and her group confront then-president Woodrow Wilson, who, after jailing the Paul group and allowing them to nearly die in a hunger strike, eventually tumbles to supporting the Suffs’ cause.

So much has changed since the passing of the 19th Amendment over a century ago, and yet this musical reminds us that we sometimes need to look back, in order to march into the future.

It was a sold out crowd. The audience was enthusiastic, and predominantly women. “Suffs” is a fantastic show that should be seen by anyone who loves Broadway, loves musicals, and needs a breath of hope in this bleak world. Like “Hamilton“, it invites us to learn something about the history of America. It’s a good show and it’s good for the world. Wrongo was emotional, remembering his time as an activist in the Civil Rights movement.

The show sets the stage early with the song, “Find A Way”:

How will we do it when it’s never been done?
How will we find the way where there isn’t one?

“Suffs” also makes us think about where we are today in America, along with what we can do to make it better. My lunch with the Broadway friends underlined that Democrats think it’s a scary time. Dan Pfeiffer wrote about how “Democrats are in a full-blown freakout over Biden”. Wrongo was the only one at lunch who thought that Biden has an excellent chance of winning in November. To paraphrase a line in the New Yorker by Lore Segal:

“The current situation is like two Democrats who are fighting a duel. On the count of ten, they turn and each shoots themselves in the foot”.

More from Pfeiffer:

“People are right to worry. This race is closer than it should be and the stakes could not be higher. It’s shocking that, after everything, Donald Trump is welcome in public let alone on the doorstep of returning to the White House. However, the level of defeatism among so many Democrats is unwarranted.”

Pfeiffer includes an interesting chart that shows detail from the NYT/Siena poll after the Trump verdict. In summary, people who voted previously, back Biden while Trump leads with the folks who vote less often, pay less attention to the news, and engage less frequently with politics:

Pfeiffer concludes by saying: (brackets by Wrongo)

“It is a challenge [for Biden] to tell his story and focus voters on the dangers of Trump. The presence of third party candidates and the divisions within the Democratic Party over Gaza make matters worse.”

Can you imagine how freaked out Democrats would be if our nominee had just been convicted of 34 crimes, found liable for sexual assault, had his business found guilty of financial fraud, favored banning abortion, and was on the unpopular side of almost every issue? Dems might say to voters:

Voter: “How is the game going?”

Dem Party: “We forfeited.”

Voter: “What! Why?”

Dem Party: “We were down two points at the start of the 4th quarter.”

So the question is, like it was for the Suffs, can we find a way where there isn’t one?

The answer is we can, if we really try. Wrongo thinks we have to become activists, not Party members. We need to be “warriors for democracy” or “freedom fighters” in service of defeating Trump and all MAGA candidates in November. From Simon Rosenberg:

“The Choice, The Contrast, Joe Biden Is A Good President – I’ve been thinking a lot this weekend about something I wrote to you about the other day – the idea of establishing a clear contrast in the election. It’s something I’ve been referring to as “the choice.” Central to my theory of 2024 is that regardless of where polling is today once the Biden campaign was able to bring “the choice” to voters in the battlegrounds Biden would gain and we would win…”

The new CBS/YouGov poll from last week confirms that making the election a referendum on Trump would be supported by Biden voters. Opposing Trump as a main motivation for voting for Biden has moved up by 7 points in the past 3 months:

In the same poll, Biden leads Trump among independent voters by two percentage points — 50% to 48%. It’s well within the margin of error, but importantly, it amounts to a 17 point swing for Biden in June compared to March’s polling.

Another thing Rosenberg points out is that polls around the world have been overestimating support for conservative candidates. The underperformance by Republicans in polls we’ve seen in the US also showed up in the European elections this weekend. Here’s The Economist: (Brackets by Wrongo)

“Consider the numbers. Ms. Le Pen’s [France] result is down on 2014, the previous European election. So is the Austrian Freedom Party and, more drastically, the Danish People’s Party and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands…. Alternative for Germany [AFD] also disappointed…on 10.8% it only modestly increased its support from 2014 and did less well than in the 2017 Bundestag election. The Lega [Italy] has made big gains, but it too seems to have done worse than was generally expected…”

The polls were off in India too, by a lot. Narendra Modi’s polls said his Right-wing party would sweep back into power, but they barely held on, and needed to share power in order to form a new government.

One of Wrongo’s lunch companions brought up David Sedaris’s quote in the New Yorker about the “Choice”:

“To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?’

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

Wrongo often talks about Biden needing better messaging. He should for example, say what Mitt Romney keeps saying:

“I don’t want my President to be someone who committed sexual assault…”

Or fraud. How can Trump be seen as a “winner” or a strong leader when he’s a rapist, a fraudster, a traitor, and a felon? We’re just beginning to see the negative impact of the guilty verdict. And “rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon” will take away from Trump’s preferred framing that he’s strong and Biden is weak. Biden is 81 and Trump turns 78 this week. This isn’t about age — it’s about their records.

But, we can’t sit on our hands. We have to become activists. Few of the Suffs women believed what they did as individuals would make a difference.

Few of the Vietnam activists believed they would bring about change.

And the activists of the Civil Rights movement knew how it was nearly impossible to win the vote, right up until the time they did win it.