This post is a little later than usual because I wanted to let all the facts wash over me.
You know, absorb all the spin, gloating, whining, pontificating, fear mongering etc. of last Tuesday’s off-year election before informing/assaulting/insulting you with my Take From State 48. Ready or not, that time has come, but first let’s review the mosh pit consensus from Right, Left, and Center.
Heard this one a lot: the Democrats have been hijacked by their party’s left wing which dares to say America may not be a great nation.
Saw this with my own bespectacled eyes: Trumpers successfully branded the Dem Left scary by calling them socialists and communists.
Saw this too: The so-called Democrat “moderates” got hung up fretting that their leftist intellectual colleagues don’t understand working class voters.
Heard this in many conversations: Endless COVID, $4/gallon gas, and empty store shelves amplified the uneasiness of swing Independent voters.
And this new, gleeful, take from those in the GOP who hate Trump but love his tax cuts and court packing: Virginia shows we can effectively push divisive culture wars, without letting the Crazy Uncle out of his Mara Lago basement.
All sides agree if this continues, it will deliver control of Congress and eventually the White House to our traitorous former president.
From that nasty stew, I saw very direct and quite scary messages:
Law Enforcement reform is in big trouble even with polls showing some support for rethinking policing. Minneapolis voters are backpedaling, caught in a real-life murderous crime wave compounded by a rogue police department that isn’t doing its job. The risk-reward of reform doesn’t add up for the good guys, especially with polling this close. Some“working class” Minnesotans do believe George Floyd should have just complied with the street gang wearing badges, and he’d still be alive. Fear is winning the police reform debate in a Blue state and a Blue metro. Bad.
Virginians who don’t live in the DC burbs consider Robert E. Lee an American hero, not the traitor who murdered thousands of his fellow citizens so that he and his wealthy planter friends might continue to own people. Purging those facts from classrooms is like denying the Holocaust. But, “parents should have a say in how their kids are educated.” Apparently in Virginia and elsewhere, it’s too uncomfortable to hear about slavery and its ongoing legacy. The denying is underway.
The many school boards that will welcome pandemic-denying, CRT hating new members believe in covering up America’s true history and punishing science. They’ll do this all in the name of “God” and “patriotism” and “freedom’ and “’murica.” See you at the book burning and the stoning of heretics. By the way, the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. I read that on Facebook so it has to be true. Is that Lee Greenwood music I hear?
Those once derided as “fringe” members of American society - the Klansmen, Nazis, and Conspiracy Theorists - are in the mainstream and actually governing in places like Arizona. They’ll keep giving wealthy corporations more power, roll back the rights of people of color, the rights of women, and the rights of LGBTQ people. Immigrants from anywhere but Scandinavia aren’t welcome.
So that’s where we are. Who to blame for last Tuesday?
Start with the Republican leadership at every level. They’ve embraced the baseless Big Lie, denied January 6th was an attempted coup, fostered white nationalism, consistently put the ultra-wealthy ahead of everyday people, exploited fear through their own flavor of evangelical Christianity and anti-science, advocated for the humiliation and destruction of anyone that challenged them, and created the falsehoods of “alternative facts” spread through propaganda by FOX News.
Sharing honors are the Democrats, who just cannot or will not pull themselves together and govern like our lives depend on it. No exaggeration. Our lives depend on it. Start with their outright failure to explain to the “working class” why their left wing isn’t the second coming of Stalin. In fact, their proposed changes will lead to positive outcomes. Deliver this message and you’ll get their votes:
Want to stop paying thousands for daycare? Want affordable insulin and other drugs? Want to stop arguing with wealthy insurance companies about why you need any sort of healthcare? Want a free education at a community college? Want to breathe better air? Want to start doing something about killer hot weather, wildfires, and hurricanes? Want guaranteed paid parental leave? We can do that and pay for it by taxing the folks who’ve spent decades buying the votes of their Republican puppets in Congress?
You’d vote for that, right? Message to Dems: DUMP THE 2020 PLAYBOOK. TELL VOTERS A BETTER LIFE CAN START NOW!
And while you’re at it, show some freaking unity!
Tell Senators Manchin and Sinema to sit down, shut up, and get in line or you’ll find someone who will. They both can be primaried, especially Sinema, whose poll numbers aren’t promising. Remind Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, that their constituents demand an end to 400 years of discrimination, NOW, not when it’s politically convenient.
Lean on these senators the way LBJ did with Dixiecrats who resisted his groundbreaking Civil Rights Act. Govern tough.
Be Bold With Vaccine Mandates
On the pandemic, which polls show is the top deflater of President Biden’s popularity, it’s past time the President delivers mandates with consequences. Please, Trumpers, don’t start whining about your god and your rights.
Science is science. Religion is religion. The virus is science. COVID has zero to do with what any god wants or doesn’t want, and you can’t pray it away. The virus ain’t going to be converted to any religion any time soon. It’s not part of “God’s plan.” It just wants victims. Just ask the 21,000+ dead Arizonans. Want to be “Pro Life?” Stop the next Delta variant from killing thousands more. Love thy neighbor, as some nice guy once said, and stop ignoring vaccines and masks .
Message to healthcare workers who won’t get the jab: Get the shot or turn in your license. Your refusal isn’t “protecting my rights.” You’re imposing a dangerous, selfish act on the rest of us. You are extending the pandemic. The Supreme Court, with your Trump-appointed justices leading the way, found religious exemptions to be invalid. Your duty is to manage COVID and improve our odds of survival. Do it or get out.
On Confronting The Threat To Democracy
Finally, let’s talk honestly and directly about the scariest message sent last Tuesday to Democrats and left-leaning Independents. Confronting the threat to American democracy that is a QAnon Congress and another Trump presidency is imperative.
Freedom will not survive another four years of Mad King authoritarianism aided and abetted by Mitch McConnell and Republican governors like Doug Ducey, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, Kristi Noem, and now Virginia’s Trump Light, Glenn Youngkin.
Freedom can’t be entrusted to wacky Republican state legislatures who snack on crazy pills (see Arizona, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, etc.), to Supreme Court justices, and to local school boards. We get the Texas vigilante abortion laws and flat earth schools.
Freedom is threatened by vigilantes and white supremacists. They’re emboldened by people in office, like our own Congressman Paul Gosar, and people seeking office, like Kari Lake, the GOP front runner in the race for Arizona Governor.