Q: Why do people take an instant dislike to Justice Samuel A. Alito? Â A: It saves time.
Alito spoke in Rome dismissing criticism from foreign officials who he said âlambastedâ his opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. Alito spoke at a conference promoting religious liberty, saying:
âI had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law…â
Alito called out Prince Harry as making a particularly hurtful comment. What Harry said at the UN:
âThis has been a painful year in a painful decade….Climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all. The few weaponizing lies and disinformation at the expense of the many. And from a horrific war in Ukraine, to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom, the cause of Mandelaâs life.â
Alito said in response:
âBut what really wounded me…was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision…with the Russian attack on Ukraine…â
Joe Manchin has done it to the Dems again. After laying out his conditions for supporting a scaled-down version of Build Back Better, he decided at the last minute that he couldnât support his own conditions.
For nearly two years, the Dems have tried to create a package that Manchin could support, including funding for renewable energy and electric vehicles. Manchin has now indicated he canât go that far, which jeopardizes Democratsâ chances in the Midterms.
Manchin blamed inflation (now at a 40-year high). Backing a $300bn bill that offers tax credits and funding to clean energy would, he argues, push pocketbook costs higher for Americans, although economists have disputed this. From the Guardian:
âA less charitable view of Manchin is that he is dangerously conflicted due to his own investments in fossil fuels… and that his judgement has been warped by the largesse of the industry, which has donated more money to him than any other senator.â
Congress hasnât been able to pass anything to reduce climate change, despite public opinion being clearly in favor of doing just that. We expect Congress to pass laws that reflect the publicâs opinion. But finding 60 Senate votes for anything vaguely controversial isnât likely to happen in America today. The result is a set of federal laws that do not reflect what Americans actually want. On to cartoons.
Bidenâs Saudi visit went well:
The fake (not fake) very real dilemma of the pregnant 10 year-old:
Back to school clothes for 4th grade:
Pence was nearly kidnapped by his Secret Service detail. The fly knew:
Is the Demâs 2024 flavor appealing or appalling?
Images from the Webb telescope enter popular culture:
Before dawn, Kennebunkport, ME – June 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photo.
Even though the first public hearing about the Jan. 6 attempted coup happened last night, Wrongo doesnât intend to write about them for a few days. The hot takes are all over the media, and itâs doubtful that we will know much about how the public is reacting for a few weeks. Once again Wrongo cautions that the media will cover this like a political contest when it isn’t. It really is about the health of our democracy.
And did you realize that only 21% of Americans over 18 read a newspaper every day? Cheryl Russell of Demo Memo has statistics from the General Social Survey showing how precipitously newspaper readership has fallen. She says that in 1972, 69% of the American public read a newspaper every day:
âNow, the share of adults who never read a newspaper (40%) is far greater than the share who read a newspaper daily. Fully 57% of the public reads a newspaper less than once a week…â
This also has implications for how broadly the findings of the Jan. 6 committee will be shared. As does the fact that FOX wonât be airing the hearings and plans to counter-program with GOP members of the House and Senate presenting real-time disinformation as the facts are aired.
Speaking of not knowing the facts,  YouGov reports on an economic survey showing that seven out of 10 Republicans think weâre currently in a recession. More than half of all independents and 43% of Democrats also think the same. They sampled about 1,500 US adults online between May 28 – 31, 2022, with a margin of error of ± 3%. Here are the results:
How can we be in a recession when our unemployment rate is at 3.6%? When wages are up 5.6% over the past year, and consumers still are spending money like crazy?
People may believe weâre in a recession, but the US economy added 1.2 million jobs in the past three months. Yes, inflation is the highest itâs been in 40 years, but higher gas and food prices donât mean weâre in the midst of an economic slowdown. Maybe the survey was poorly worded, or maybe, since people really never read in depth about whatâs really going on in America, they never learn whatâs really happening. This will be very damaging to the Democratsâ mid-term chances.
Next, you may have heard that there was a âpolitical earthquakeâ in the California primaries, that Dems did poorly because of the âcrimeâ issue, and that will hurt Democrats all across the nation.
A recalled San Francisco District Attorney didnât cause an earthquake, and neither did a Republican-turned-Democratâs advancing in the LA Mayor race. Former Republican and billionaire Rick Caruso spent $40 million on his mayoral primary! His opponent, Karen Bass, spent $3 million on her campaign. He won the primary by 3 points, although she is the likely winner in November.
What WAS an earthquake was the anemic voter turnout. Only about 19% of Californiaâs registered voters actually voted.
There was no sign of an anti-Democratic wave in CA. Candidates from both parties that were expected to make the general election did so. Probably the weakest performances by incumbents were posted by Republicans David Valadao and Young Kim, who struggled to defeat challengers running to their right. In particular, Valadao, who voted to impeach Trump, appears to have advanced to the general election.
And in CA-41, moderate Democrat Will Rollins advanced to the November election against Republican incumbent Ken Calvert, who voted to overturn the 2020 election results. Rollins has a decent chance to win in November in what is a 50-50 district.
Finally, Larry Sabato reports on the redistricting landscape now that most state redistricting is complete:
The total number of competitive districts has declined from 84 to 75.
The number of super-safe Republican districts (those where Biden won 40% or less) increased from 112 to 131.
The number of super-safe Democratic seats, 127, while similar to the Republican total, is down slightly.
There are 211 seats where Biden received 49% of the vote or less, and 202 seats where he won 53% or more.
Sabatoâs Crystal Ball rates Republicans having 214 seats as safe, likely, or leaning Republican. That means that if they hold those seats, they are just four additional seats from controlling the House. They rate the Democrats as having 193 seats as safe, likely, or leaning Democratic.
That means if both Parties hold serve, there are just 28 seats in play in the 2022 mid-terms. For the Democrats to retain control of the House would require them to win 25 of those 28 seats.
If the Dems want to retain control of the House, what message should they be telling voters who: a) Donât read newspapers; b) Think the economy is crashing; and c) Fail to turn out in Democratic and Independent-leaning Congressional Districts?
The NYT thinks the real question is whether the âmessageâ of the Jan. 6 hearings will âresonateâ with voters. We know that the Republicans now deny that Jan.6 was an attempted coup. We know that the Big Lie, the Great Replacement Theory, and the idea of the Second Amendment uber alles, are mainstream views of the GOP. The Times shouldnât be covering the mid-terms and the hearings as if they are sporting events â the future of the American experiment is on the line.
Along the way to becoming a Party that totally supports violence, for years, Republicans have been a Party of Senators who do nothing to solve Americaâs problems.
And it isnât simply their position on government spending. Once upon a time, Wrongo considered Republican concerns about government spending and budget deficits a serious viewpoint. But since they give tax cuts to the wealthy and to corporations whenever theyâre in power, they have lost all credibility on spending.
Under Republican rule, the US left the international consortium to blunt climate change. They walked away from an Iran nuclear deal that leaves the world in a much less safe place. They politicized the pandemic and mocked efforts by public health officials to prevent Covid from becoming the endemic disease it is today.
Going back five decades, they steadfastly opposed national health insurance for the millions of Americans who had none. Their opposition continued by causing the Clinton plan for health insurance to crash on takeoff. Republicans fought the ACA during the Obama administration, although it passed without a single Republican vote in 2010. They fought to overturn it throughout the Trump years.
Today, the Senate is in a position to act on multiple measures, including gun control, that would improve the lives of millions of Americans. They could vote tomorrow. But they wonât because neither Party can muster a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
The 2022 mid-terms provide a moment for all Americans, including Democrats, Independents, and a few Republicans to do some serious soul searching. They need to answer the question: Do you want a government that does nothing or a government that tries to solve problems?
Do you want to elect representatives who despise government, or do you want men and women who bring informed views and respect for our Constitutional democracy to the House and Senate?
Wrongo was in high school when the book âProfiles in Courageâ came out. It was ghost-written for then-Senator John Kennedy (the original JFK, not the current empty suit from Louisiana). The book profiles Senators who defied the opinions of their Party (and constituents) to do what they felt was right. Most of them suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity because of their actions.
Today, no one expects to see a Senator of either Party act solely on the basis of moral courage. It is a terrible shame that it takes more courage for a politician to say or do the right thing than they can muster.
But thereâs no public mandate for do-nothingism. And the structure of the Senate empowers a minority who doesnât want anything to get done. When legislators refuse to legislate, theyâre telling the American people that they couldnât care less about urgent issues like gun violence, fair wages or voting rights.
Theyâre happy to sit on their hands despite Americans needing their help.
This is anti-democratic. If there was strong public support for do-nothingism, at least our governing institutions would reflect public opinion. But the Senate doesnât reflect what the public wants.
The Senate has changed drastically since its âProfiles in Courageâ days. It was conceived as the body that would cool the passions of the House and consider legislation with a national perspective. But today, the Senate has become a body that shuns debate, avoids legislative give-and-take, proceeds glacially, producing next to nothing.
Wrongo worries that in the mid-terms, Democrats will run mainly against the Big Lie, and their sparse record of legislative achievements. They should run against the âDo Nothing Republicansâ in the Senate.
The Democratic Party is more diverse ideologically than the Republicans. This is a messaging challenge for them. The Republicanâs coalition is narrower. Itâs more ideologically homogenous. Given the Senateâs skewed geography, Republicans need only appeal to their base and little else, to succeed. That allows them to use simpler messages.
In âThe Cause, The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783â by Joseph Ellis, he says that before the revolution, colonists didnât think of themselves as Americans. They described their fight for independence as âThe Causeâ, an ambiguous term that covered diverse ideas and multiple viewpoints. It succeeded in unifying them against the British.
Running against âDo Nothingâ Republicans would also use an ambiguous term covering multiple viewpoints. It would allow Democrats to move away from the idea that they have to sell a wider array of ideas to a wider group of voters.
It might also energize both Dems and Independents at a time when they are dispirited.
âCops nationwide canât stop crimes from happening or solve them once theyâve occurred.â
According to data published by the FBI, the rates at which police forces are solving crimes are at historic lows. In the case of murders and violent crime, clearance rates have dipped to just 50%, a startling decline from the 1980s, when police cleared 70% of all homicides.
We know that murders have increased since 2019, and violent crime (broadly defined), has also inched up over the same period. OTOH, property crimes are down, contrary to what Republicans and their Partyâs news outlets would have you believe when they obsessively show videos of LA, San Francisco, and Portland.
And all crime, including the murder rate, remain well below 1990 levels. Sammon points out that crime today is much more distributed geographically than before. It used to be that Los Angeles and New York accounted for 13.5% of all murders nationally; now itâs only 4%.
While crime clearance rates have dropped to all-time lows, police budgets have reached all-time highs. In the business world, we would say that the marginal dollar of investment is producing a negative return compared to the forecast. In the business world, that gets you fired. Sammon quotes University of Utah law professor Shima Baradaran Baughman:
âIncreases in police officers or police budgets have not been shown to reduce crime or make us safer.â
And clearance rates can be easily manipulated. They are not a proxy for crimes that have been solved since they equate to arrests. More from Baughman:
âAll they tell us is whether there has been an arrest made in a case…not whether that person is actually ….eventually convicted of the crime…â
He says that convictions are a better measure of whether a crime was actually cleared, and those numbers are substantially lower than the already abysmal national clearance rates.
The Guardian points out that proponents of increasing police budgets argue that more law enforcement is the solution to more violence. But Samuel Sinyangwe, a policy analyst who founded Mapping Police Violence and Police Scorecard, notes that:
Since the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations call for police budgets to be defunded, not a single major American city has slashed its police funding. In fact almost all of them have increased spending on their police forces. Biden released a budget proposal for an additional $30 billion in law enforcement and crime prevention efforts, including funding to put âmore police officers on the beatâ.
America needs to answer the question of why police departments havenât been able to convert increasing budgets into more effective crime-solving.
Meanwhile, the Uvalde murders underscore police forcesâ inability to prevent crime from happening and/or stop them in progress. Weâve been slow to get the real story from the local police, but itâs clear that the police response to the shooting in progress was shameful.
While record police budgets arenât keeping crime from happening, thereâs some evidence that more resources in investigative work might improve clearance rates. But todayâs police budgets prioritize presence on the streets instead.
The problem is that police reform is really hard. There are what appear to be intractable cultural issues within departments. The police unions need to be brought to heel. More accountability is a necessity. And their relationships with the community are terrible. If you suggest that your town or city shift some law enforcement resources to support the social work aspects of the job (thereby freeing cops to focus on actual law enforcement), you will be accused of wanting to âdefund the policeâ, and the idea will die.
Time to wake up America! Both Democrats and Republicans want police budgets to grow. But neither have any answers as to how incremental dollars will help make the police more effective at their jobs! Progressives have been scapegoated by Republicans for their anti-police funding attitudes, but theyâre the only political group saying we shouldnât continue throwing more good money at a failed solution.
Itâs a fact that our police departments arenât solving crimes, despite devoting larger and larger sums to them. And heavily policed communities have good reason to continue to mistrust police involvement, thereby also depressing case closure rates. Failing to solve crimes only adds to that; why would marginalized communities respect a police force that doesnât do its job particularly well?
To help you wake up, watch and listen to Rob Hustleâs 2021 rap, âCall the Copsâ. Itâs a lyric video:
Wrongo intended to write about domestic issues today. One domestic issue is how Republicans and the Right-wing media pivoted over the weekend from being pro-Putin and his War, to now saying Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine. Is that proof that the sanctions are working?
Itâs hard to turn away today from Ukraine news, despite knowing that Bidenâs State of the Union (SOTU) speech is tomorrow night. The Republican reply will be given by Iowaâs Governor Kim Reynolds. This happens at a time when there are big differences of opinion about the most important issues facing the nation by Democrats and Republicans.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, 71% of US adults rated strengthening the economy as a top policy priority, followed by reducing health care costs (61%), addressing the coronavirus (60%), improving education (58%) and securing Social Security (57%). The survey was conducted between Jan. 10-17, 2022 among 5,128 adults.
But as expected, the top issues were very different for those who identified as a Republican or as a Democrat. When asked which issues “should be a top priority for the president and Congress to address this year,” the top five regarded as most important by Democrats were:
Top 5 priorities, according to Democrats (percent saying issue should be a top priority)
Dealing with the coronavirus outbreak (80%)
Reducing health care costs (69%)
Improving the educational system (66%)
Dealing with global climate change (65%)
Strengthening the nation’s economy (63%)
Hereâs the Republicansâ top-five list:
Top 5 priorities, according to Republicans (percent saying issue should be a top priority)
Strengthening the nation’s economy (82%)
Dealing with the issue of immigration (67%)
Defending the country from future terrorist attacks (65%)
Reducing the budget deficit (63%)
Reducing crime (60%)
Strengthening the nation’s economy is the only priority that both Democrats and Republicans rank among the most important. Two of the Democrats’ top priorities are among the five lowest-priority issues for Republicans. Only 11% of Republicans think global climate change should be a priority (vs. 65% of Democrats). Just 35% of Republicans think dealing with the coronavirus outbreak should be a priority (vs. 80% of Democrats).
Conversely, two of the Republicans’ top priorities are among the five lowest-priority issues for Democrats. Only 35% of Democrats think immigration should be a priority (vs. 67% of Republicans). Just 31% of Democrats say the budget deficit should be a priority (vs. 63% of Republicans).
All of this may be on display at the SOTU and the Republican reply on Tuesday.
Returning to Ukraine, itâs reported that Ukraine and Russia have agreed to have low-level delegations meet, hosted by Belarus, to discuss ending the war. It’s unclear what exactly might be achieved from these negotiations, given that Putin’s War appears to be aimed largely at removing Zelensky from power.
Finally, assuming that Russia wins either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, that will almost certainly be followed by a Ukrainian insurgency supported by NATO. The US military knows a lot about how many troops it takes to hold ground when most of the locals want you dead.
Many military studies say that the number needed is 10 troops to one insurgent. From The Dupuy Institute (TDI): (Brackets by Wrongo)
â…TDI amassed data on 109 post-World War II insurgencies, interventions, and peacekeeping operations between 2004 and 2009. [TDI]…found that….While overwhelming numbers were not required to defeat an insurgency, force ratios above 10-to-1 nearly always produced a counterinsurgent victory. Conversely, lower force ratios did not preclude success, but conflicts with two or fewer counterinsurgents per insurgent greatly favored an insurgent victory.â
Remember in this case the insurgents would be Ukrainians, and counterinsurgents the Russians. More from TDI:
âWhen force ratios were assessed together with the nature of the motivation for the insurgency, TDI found that….when facing broadly popular insurgencies, counterinsurgents lost every time they possessed a force ratio advantage of 5-1 or less, failed half the time with odds between 6-1 and 10-1, but succeeded three-quarters of the time when outnumbering the insurgents by 10-1 or more.â
Ukraineâs pre-war population was 44 million. Letâs assume that 20% would support an insurgency, and that 2% would participate in an insurgency. That would be 176k Ukrainian insurgents. Following the 10-1 ratio would mean Russia would need to keep 1.76 million troops on the ground to win, an unsupportable number. Cutting the number of insurgents in half would mean Russia would need 880k troops to occupy Ukraine, still an unsupportable number.
This could mean that an insurgency in Ukraine could succeed as easily as it did in Afghanistan.
Time to wake up Putin! You might win before you lose in Ukraine. To help you wake up, watch the Saturday Night Live open, where the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York performed âPrayer for Ukraineâ:
Nathrop , CO – December 2021 photo by Haji Mahmood
âAnd now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never beenâ – Rainer Maria Rilke
Wrongo hasnât published predictions since 2018, because while it became increasingly hard to imagine that things would get worse, every year they did. Every year. Itâs his fervent hope that despite evidence, things wonât turn out to be even more terrible in 2022.
This year, maybe we should avoid saying âHappy New Year!â in favor of âHopeful New Year.â Letâs simply resist saying âWeâre doomed!â, because thereâs always reason for hope, even in the darkest times.
Pandemics do not go on forever. Even before vaccinations, eventually everyone who was susceptible was infected. Covid wonât be any different. Ever so slowly, more people will get vaccinated, and better treatments will be found. We should remain hopeful that 2022 will see the pandemic fade.
Our economy is humming along. We have a normal President who displays empathy and common decency, and (rarely) zero common sense. But weâre going to elect a new House in ten months, and most polls show the forecasted outcome to be Republicans in control.
If that happens, any progress made so far in the post-Trump era will end. If we are to avoid that, the Democratic Party will need more than a fresh coat of paint and a kitchen renovation, because the Party looks a lot like grandmaâs house just before it goes on the market.
That doesnât leave a lot of time for a makeover. The NYT said it best in its âEvery Day Is Jan. 6 Nowâ editorial:
The violence every American witnessed at the Capitol one year ago demonstrated the will of Republicans to take over our democracy. And while the select committee in the House promises a detailed accounting and, presumably, some sort of referral for action to the DOJ, time is short.
Time is short for all of us.
In state after Republican-controlled state, efforts continue to put in place, under cover of law, mechanisms for Republicans to overturn elections results not to their liking.
So, the Capitol riot is continuing in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court. The fact that half of Americans watched Jan 6 in real time and have concluded that it was a legitimate effort to prevent Bidenâs election and to restore Trump to office suggests that the decades-long project of the Right wing is nearly complete, unless we intervene. More from the NYT:
âDemocrats arenât helpless, either. They hold unified power in Washington, for the last time in what may be a long time. Yet they have so far failed to confront the urgency of this moment â unwilling or unable to take action to protect elections from subversion and sabotage.â
That means Democrats must shelve Build Back Better and throw everything they have at voting rights. The mealy mouth discussion by Sens. Manchin and Sinema about what might happen if the filibuster was suspended, is an artful dodge when the threat to democracy is so clear today.
Temporarily suspending the filibuster is not radical; standing on the sidelines and not doing anything to stop Republicans from ending our democracy is radical.
Time to wake up America! Democrats need to force the issue on their leaders. Wrongoâs view is âno money until Voting Rights are passedâ. That means zero donations between here and the mid-terms unless Democrats act on voting rights. It means Wrongo replies to every tweet and email solicitation with that message.
To help the Democratic Party wake up, hereâs âWake Up Everybodyâ, originally by Harold Melvin and The Bluenotes, featuring Teddy Pendergrass. Teddy left the group for his solo career after this album.
Today we listen and watch John Legendâs 2010 cover of the tune, backed by Questlove and the Roots Band along with Melanie Fiona, and Common. The song is as strong today as it was 47 years ago when it was released:
Sample Lyric:
The world won’t get no better
If we just let it be
The world won’t get no better
We gotta change it, yeah, just you and me
Evan Osnos reports in the New Yorker that it was Sen. Manchin who suggested to Biden that the physical infrastructure bill and the social infrastructure bills be split from each other:
âIâm saying we can get an infrastructure dealâa traditional infrastructure deal….Then we come back on human infrastructure and look at the needs.â
Osnos goes on to say that even after the bills were split, and after months of giving ground to Manchin on the social spending particulars, Manchin never budged from an unreconstructed conservative talking point: give Americans too much help, such as extended unemployment insurance, and they will become lazy and dependent. Manchin told reporters:
âI cannot accept our economy, or basically our society, moving towards an entitlement mentality.â
Manchinâs opposition to the Build Back Better (BBB) bill has ended the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) program. According to the Treasury Department, in West Virginia, it delivered payments to 305,000 children. And statewide, 93% of children are eligible for the credit, equaling the highest rate in the country.
ABC reported that Manchin questioned whether parents would misuse CTC payments to buy drugs. In private conversations, Manchin also said he believed paid family leave would be exploited by West Virginians to go hunting during deer season. Bloomberg says heâs wrong:
Looking at the chart, people overwhelmingly have used it for food, rent, utilities and to buy clothing and education. The poorer the family, the greater chance the CTC will be spent on necessities: a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found 91% of households making less than $35,000 per year used the money to pay for food, shelter, clothing and other necessities. They also found that Black and Hispanic families were more likely to use their credits on education-related costs, such as school supplies.
An October survey by the Census Bureau found that 25% of parents with young children also use the credits to pay for child care. Manchin is worried that there will be people gaming the system, and since perfection is unattainable, we shouldnât be giving these kids and their parents anything.
His attitude is one that many Americans agree with. They think that since they arenât going hungry, thereâs no reason for anyone else to be hungry, either. Itâs a vestige of the Protestant work ethic. They think that people like CTC recipients shouldnât get free stuff, because it is taking something from them.
Itâs an ugly, selfish way of looking at life.
America has successfully stigmatized being poor. How many in the bottom quartile of income are conditioned to believe they donât deserve help? While corporations and the top 1% always lobby for financial assistance, and welcome it when it comes.
There are persistent rumors that Manchin will switch Parties. That shouldnât be the Democratsâ objective, but to the extent there is a purity test to be a Democrat, it probably includes helping poor children and their struggling parents.
OTOH, the Build Back Better bill isnât fully dead, nor is the voting rights bill. Thereâs a whole year left of appointing and legislating before the Republicans (possibly) retake Congress. Maybe weâll want 50 Senators until then?
Democrats know that few of those judges would have been confirmed without Manchin voting for cloture to end debate on their nominations. If Manchin were to change Parties and stop voting with the Democrats on procedural issues, almost none of the remaining White House appointments would be filled.
It seems clear that IF some version of BBB does pass the Senate, it wonât include all of the progressive goals. Wrongo assumes that both immigration reform and the CTC may need to be dealt with separately.
What Democrats will then need to decide is whether theyâre willing to hold their noses and vote for a bill that includes $500 billion in climate change investments, plus a critical childcare provision, more for health care, and a few other goodies.
Hereâs another seasonal tune, âChristmas Wrapping” by The Waitresses from 1981. This year marks 40 years since this holiday classic was released. In the song, the lead singer hints that there is a guy she met at a ski shop that she regrets not having the time to date. Later, she realizes that she must go back to the store, and meets the guy she had wanted to connect with:
Shouldnât we be on the side of democracy? Georgiaâs Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock says yes. He spoke in the Senate on Tuesday, and what he said is consistent with Wrongoâs thinking.
Warnock asked why the Senate could suspend its rules in order to pass an increase in the debt ceiling by a simple majority but couldnât do the same thing for something as critical to our democracy as voting rights. From Warnock:
âBefore we left Washington last week, we in this chamber made a change in the Senate’s rules in order to push forward something that all of us think is important. We set the stage to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, and yet as we cast that vote to begin addressing the debt ceiling, this same chamber is allowing the ceiling of our democracy to crash in around us….Be very clear, last week we changed the rules of the Senate. To address another important issue, the economy. This is a step, a change in the Senate rules we haven’t been willing to take to save our broken democracy, but one that a bipartisan majority of this chamber thought was necessary in order to keep our economy strong.â
The Jan. 6 attempted coup and the many state anti-voting laws passed by Republicans subsequent to that, come from the same poisonous well: A growing anti-democratic movement of fellow travelers including American conservatives, Right-wing extremists, and political entrepreneurs on the Right who have made the Republican Party their political vehicle.
Theyâre close to winning in the 2022 mid-terms. If the Senate adjourns without acting on voter suppression, it will help them get there. Buzzfeed reports that in some states, Republicans are going door-to-door in order to “check” to make sure there arenât any illegal voters in your home:
âIndividual election deniers and grassroots groups are canvassing for election fraud in states…including New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska.â
Theyâre targeting registered Democrat voters. Itâs part of a broader effort by Trump supporters and Republican Party leaders to cast doubt on our elections going forward. In Colorado, a member of the Three Percenter militant group is helping lead the canvassing effort. According to the Colorado Times Recorder, that member suggested volunteers carry firearms to provide security for the group as they went door-to-door.
Let’s call this what it is: Voter intimidation on a multi-state scale. It’s a message that if you are a registered Democrat, the Trump cultists know who you are, and where you live. This intimidation should be illegal, but it’s not.
And itâs another part of the problem that the Senate needs to address right now.
The Democrats have what amounts to less-than-a-majority in the Senate in favor of suspending the filibuster rules for voting rights. In June, Majority Leader Schumer outsourced an effort to garner a filibuster-proof majority on voting rights to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA), but Manchinâs effort failed.
Despite that, Schumer was able to finesse the filibuster to act without Republican votes to increase the debt ceiling. He was also able to corral all Democratic Senators, including Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, who are on the record as being against any change in the filibuster rules.
But voting rights, the most fundamental of all Democratic principles, are being sacrificed to the crusty parliamentary rule that these same two Democrats have so far refused to consider. This week, Schumer appointed a group of Democratic senators, who lead the talks on voting rights legislation, to spearhead discussions with Joe Manchin about how to change the Senate rules. They met with Manchin on Tuesday.
Itâs time for Sen. Schumer to wrestle Manchin and Sinema to the ground, and make them vote to suspend the filibuster rules a second time.
âThis is, I believe, a democratic emergency, and that without very strong and systematic pushback from protectors of democracy, weâre going to lose something that we canât afford to lose about the way we run elections.â
Weâre facing a crisis. Biden and all Democrats have to make this a âwhose side are you on?â issue for Washington politicians and for voters everywhere.
Warnock has a powerful message. Heâs the one Democrat willing to speak about the elephant in the room. Watch his speech:
Christmas lights, New Milford Green, New Milford CT – December 2021 photo by Tom Allen. New Milford was founded in 1709.
James Fallows writes a column called âBreaking the Newsâ. His most recent article looks at the growing mismatch between the formal structure of the US government (two Senators per state and the House ceiling of 435 members), and the astonishing population growth in the US since the Constitution was ratified in 1788.
Fallows says the main problem is that modern America is running on antique rules that are too hard to change and too easy to abuse. He sees a Constitutional shift from protecting minority rights, to enabling minority rule, which ultimately means a denial of democracy. A system that is not steered by its majority will not survive as a democracy.
Fallows outlines the changing nature of big vs. small in America. When the Constitution was being negotiated, two issues were big states vs. small states, and slaveholding states vs. non-slave states. At the time, the three most populous original states had around 10 times as many people as the three smallest. That was behind the agreement to the two-Senators-per-state deal. But today, the three most populous statesâCalifornia, Texas, and Floridaâhave about 45 times the population of the three least populous, Wyoming, Vermont, and Alaska.
Second, the ceiling on the size of the House of Representatives must change. Fallows observes that when the country was founded, there were 65 members of the House. For the next century-plus, the size of the House increased after the Census, following changes in the US population. Just before World War I, the number was capped at its current level of 435. Today, the US population is about 90 times larger than it was in 1788, but the House is just 7 times as large.
Today thereâs a bias against the needs of urban and suburban populations. Thereâs also a distinct small-state bias in the Electoral College. Each stateâs representation in the Electoral College votes equals itâs number of Senate and House representatives. As House membership expanded through the 1800s from 65 to 435, House seats became relatively more important in Electoral College totals, and Senate seats relatively less so. From Fallows:
âTo spell it out, in the first presidential election, Electoral Votes based on Senate seats made up nearly 30% of the Electoral College total. By 1912, the first election after House size was frozen, they made up only 18%.â
If the House were expanded, then the Electoral College outcome would more closely track the national popular vote.
Jill Lepore writing in the New Yorker, says that the US Constitution was the first national constitution that provided for its own revision. Article V is the amendment clause. The founders knew that the Constitution was imperfect; Article V left a Constitutional means for making it âmore perfect.â Without an amendment provision, the only way to change the rules is to overthrow the government.
But itâs extremely difficult to amend our Constitution. Lepore says:
âThe US Constitution has been rewritten three times: in 1791, with the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments; after the Civil War, with the ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments; and during the Progressive Era, with the ratification of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Amendments.â
She points out that by contrast:
â…American state constitutions have been amended over 7,500 times, amounting on average to 150 amendments per state.â
While state governments freely change, the US Constitution doesnât. Americaâs older, but not necessarily wiser.
We could approve the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes. The Electoral College has 535 votes, with 270 needed to win the presidency. In 2020, had 21,461 Biden voters actually switched to Trump, Trump would have won the Electoral College with 270 votes, despite Biden winning nationally by 7 million votes. Each of those 21,461 Biden votes (5,229 in Arizona, 5,890 in Georgia, and 10,342 in Wisconsin) were 329 times more important than the other 7 million votes.
The Compact would end the âwinner-take-allâ laws in the 48 of 50 states. If passed, the Compact would award their electoral votes in proportion to the votes the candidate receives. Article II gives the states exclusive control over the choice of method of awarding their electoral votes, so they can reform the system if they choose. The Compact would go into effect when enacted by states comprising at least 270 electoral votes.
Time to wake up America! Our current ineffective federal government must change. Otherwise, democracy is doomed.
To help you wake up, watch âPeace Trainâ, the 1971 anthem of hope and unity written by Yusuf/Cat Stevens, performed here by Playing for Change. This version features Kebâ Moâ playing in CA, along with Yusuf playing in Istanbul, Rhiannon Giddens in Ireland, along with musicians from 12 countries:
