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The Task Before Us

2018 August 7 Primary Ballot Final Turn-In for the ten counties of Congressional District 5  (Source: Secretary of State of the State of Washington.)

(see the P.S. below my writing for one fine point on this data)


Dear Group,

Here is the take-home before dwelling on the details: 205,393 registered voters in Congressional District turned in ballots in the August 7 Primary Election. 232,197 registered voters did not bother to vote. Among those 232,197 non-primary-voting registered voters, there are many Democrats who tend only to vote in presidential election years and many disgusted Republicans who can be convinced over the next seventy-two days to cast a ballot by November 6th.

The obvious practical purpose of the Primary Election, in cases where there are more than two candidates, is to chose who advances to the General Election in November. (Washington and California are the only two states using this “top two” or “jungle” primary.)

The Primary Election serves a second purpose. It is a large (but very non-random) poll that speaks to electoral strategists of possibility. State and federal strategists from both Parties have looked at the Primary numbers in eastern Washington–and they all see possibility in those 232,197 non-primary-voting registered voters. The board is prepared and it is game on. The wild card is the energy of unpaid volunteers.

More votes in the Primary beget organization and money as applied to the General Election. The “wave” analogy is apt. There is a wave building all over the ten counties of Congressional District 5. It has been many years since there has been a Democratic challenger for nearly every seat in every State Legislative District (3,4,6,7, and 13) that overlaps with U.S. Congressional District 5. (District 13, overlapping Lincoln County from the west [part of CD5] is the single exception and only for an unchallenged State Senate seat).

The numbers from the Primaries are attracting attention in places like Legislative District 6 where Jessa Lewis, Kay Murano, and Dave Wilson, all thoughtful, energetic Democrats, look very competitive. (District 6 is a weirdly shaped district drawn to nibble at Spokane from the west, north, and south.) Then there’s District 4, east and Northeast of Spokane, where Matt Shea looks more like a wingnut every day, and Ted Cummings and Mary May, two intelligent, reasonable, upright Democrats are gaining strength. Up in District 7, the vast northeast, Karen Hardy, Randy Michaelis, and Mike Bell are offering good reasons for Democrats to step out the shadows and vote. All of these good people offer possibility, team effort, and boots on the ground that eastern Washington hasn’t seen in years. Here’s the link to a great map to show you all these territories and how they overlap. 

You can slice and dice the Primary Election results until you turn blue (or red), but those results, with 232,197 registered voters sitting out the Primary speak of possibility. Who are these people who didn’t vote? Let’s get out and have a conversation with them.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Ballots are tallied by county in Washington State. Fun fact: Of the ten counties in U.S. Congressional District 5 county borders are shared with CD5 in every case except for the western border of Walla Walla County. That means some few voters captured in my spreadsheet above in Walla Walla county cast there ballot in U.S. Congressional District 4 [between the incumbent Dan Newhouse (R) and Christine Brown (D)]. 

P.P.S. If you like numbers I recommend a smartphone app “WA State Election Results” you can search for and download for free. https://results.vote.wa.gov/results/current/ , the WA Secretary of State website offers the current Primary numbers. Under the “Research” dropdown menu on that page are data for years of past elections.

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The Republican “Final Solution”

Dear Group,

Last Monday I experienced a wave of recognition, then nausea, as I read the “1600 Daily,” an  email I receive from “The White House” every day and sometimes twice a day. I’ve copied the relevant piece for you to read at the end of this section. 

Many months ago I read an opinion piece in which the author asserted that deporting 11 million “illegal” aliens living among us just wasn’t practical; it could never happen; it was logistically impossible. At the time I concurred. I couldn’t imagine it: people taken into custody and summarily deported when they dropped off their citizen children at school, young children removed from their mother’s arms at the U.S. border, horror stories of youths who discover they’re not U.S. citizens only when they sign up at college, students who then face potential deportation. All that and more I couldn’t imagine. 11 million deportations? No way, thought I. Not practical. Couldn’t happen. Inhumane. Un-American. Unthinkable.

I have news. It is happening right now, it is creeping up on us. If we don’t pay attention now some of us will only recognize Trump’s and his Republican Party’s “Final Solution” too late and to our belated national shame. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Representative likely to win a seat from the Bronx in November is vilified by some as an extremist for calling to abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). At first I thought Ocasio-Cortz’ stance against ICE was a politically bad move at best, but increasingly shrill emails defending ICE from the White House like the one I copied below have convinced me otherwise.

That “impossible” goal of deporting 11 million people living peacefully among us is exactly what is happening, and ICE is at the center. My thinking turned on reading How Trump Radicalized ICE in The Atlantic magazine. I strongly recommend you read it, too.

The Trump, Sessions, Miller, Bannon, Identity Evropa strategy is clear: First, demonize all immigrants as rapists, murderers, subhuman lowlife–exactly the same strategy used by Hitler against the Jews in the 1930s. Once dehumanized it is easy to justify inhumane treatment, easier for we citizens to look the other way, to believe it is “not our problem.” The vomit coming out the White House is clear: ICE’s “life-saving mission,” “saving victims,” “the heroes” who “save” us. Save us from what? The neighbors we’ve known for twenty years, people whose children are U.S. citizens, people who pay taxes, people with whom we break bread?

Surely most ICE agents are not monsters, neither was every member of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. Trump, der Lider, tells us and the ICE agent theirs is an honorable job, a sometimes distasteful job, but a job that must be done, a job necessary to safeguard our wives and children from the threat of the illegals. 

That McMorris Rodgers wanly tries to carve out a narrow non-citizen safe place, a “renewable legal status,” for the Dreamers (the few who remind her of herself) in her failed compromise immigration bill is small comfort. That the Trump, Sessions, Miller policy of family separation at the border was stopped is small comfort. The overall strategy is clear: Instill terror in the immigrant community, get the citizens of U.S. to turn away from them, frighten immigrant and mixed immigrant families into self deportation. Praise ICE agents for doing “the hard work.” It’s hard and distasteful but someone has to tear parents from their citizen children. It’s the right thing to do! Use ICE to deport as many of the 11 million as possible who haven’t already succumbed to fear of the Trump government. Do it all before the voters understand they have become complicit in an inhumane policy worthy of Hitler himself.

This is Trump’s, his Republican Party’s, and by default McMorris Rodgers’ “Final Solution” to the immigrant “problem.” It doesn’t matter the motivation, whether it is racism or curbing the potential electoral power of immigrants become citizens. It doesn’t matter that McMorris Rodgers believes she’s sincerely not a racist. The inhumanity of this policy, the manifest parallels of this policy with those of 1930s Germany is there for all to see. I don’t know whether to weep or vomit–but I do know I will vote.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

From the “1600 Daily” received from the White House August 20, 2018:

The Day Ahead

President Donald J. Trump hosts a Salute to the Heroes of ICE and CBP, recognizing the dangerous, important work of America’s border officers. Watch live at 3 p.m. ET.

The life-saving missions of ICE

From saving victims from human smugglers, drug cartels, and criminal gangs to protecting American citizens from crime spilling across our border, President Trump understands the dangerous conditions our border officers face each day. To show his appreciation for their service, the President will highlight the life-saving missions of these heroes today in an event at the White House.  

Even with widespread public support for ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), many Democrats have embraced the previously fringe position that the agency should be abolished. A recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll revealed that even with the left’s recent push, only a quarter of Americans want ICE eliminated. 

The heroes who protect our borders are a vital piece of our national security. Getting rid of ICE would be devastating to the safety of American families, particularly those living in communities across the Southwestern United States. Our border officers are the first line of defense for these vulnerable Americans: During the 2017 fiscal year, ICE arrested more than 127,000 aliens with criminal convictions or charges. 

President Trump promised that he would secure our borders and keep our communities safe. Today, he is honoring the public servants who risk it all to help achieve that. 

Watch a Salute to the Heroes of ICE and CBP live at 3 p.m. ET.

The stories: President Trump stands with the victims of illegal alien crime
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Immigration and Consolidation of Power

Dear Group,

Fundamentally, the immigration issue is about money and power. All Republican rhetoric to the contrary, there is no immigration emergency. While we can argue about the state of representative democracy in the USA, there is still power (economic and political) in voting, and power in controlling who gets to vote. The Republican Party has its hands on most of the levers of power and is busy grasping for more, but by raw votes it is still the minority party–and with the rise of Trump the Republican Party has sold its soul to nazis and white supremacists in order to build the minority it has. The purpose of all the breathless Republican rhetoric on immigration is retain the minority votes on which it governs.

This insight comes to me courtesy of analyzing the two immigration bills McMorris Rodgers and the Republicans constructed and then could not garner enough votes even to pass the House, H.R. 4760 and H.R. 6136. The bubbling, distracted media mostly failed to highlight two basic things about these bills:

1) Neither of these bills actually offers the Dreamers more than some limited form of legal status. McMorris Rodgers will tear up over the Dreamers stories, but then she returns to Congress, maneuvers to avoid a vote on a bill that would actually offer them citizenship, and “works hard” to craft alternative Republican bills that offer the Dreamers contingent, renewable legal status but no path to citizenship. She stood right in front of me at Green Bluff on May 29th and (in answer to a pointed question) admitted the Republican bill she was working on did not offer a path to citizenship. She wants it both ways. She wants credit for being sympathetic to the Dreamers, but her sympathy only extends to a select few…and keeps citizenship out of reach even for them. She knows she could have the votes of Democrats for a clean Dream Act at any time, but she will do anything to avoid such a vote. Her legislative actions betray her real values. 

2) The vast majority of the words in these two bills are about curtailing legal immigration. Have a look. These bills toss some money at border security (Trump’s wall, etc) and make a tiny nod toward doing something for the Dreamers. All that is to distract attention and inflame passion in the Republican base. The real intent is to further limit the already dwindling legal influx of brown people. All of Trump’s yelling about rapists, murderers, and MS-13 is aimed at imprinting fear and loathing of all immigrants in the minds of his listeners. Focus on this, not that.

Fundamental Fact: The Republican Party already represents only a minority of Americans, and a minority of American votes. I highly recommend you click and read Doug Muder’s “Minority Rule Snowballs.”

Do any of you remember the soul-searching the Republican Party was doing about ten years ago, the attempts of George W. Bush to speak Spanish and appeal to hispanic voters, the media articles noting America was destined to become less white, more brown and Asian, the hand-wringing over the demographic fate of the Republican Party if they didn’t find a way to attract votes from people of color?

The Republican/Libertarians faced a tough choice: either find a way to attract the votes of this growing electorate or fire up the flapping fringe of the Republican Party, the fringe that has always been there, the John Birchers, the Nazis, and the Klan, the fringe that William F. Buckley, Jr. (before his death in 2008) successfully fended off from respectable Republican mainstream involvement for decades. 

With Trump, aided by the evil genius of Steve Bannon, they chose to welcome and energize the flapping fringe. Trump gathered enough votes to become a minority president in part based on this strategy. 

Now Representatives in electoral jeopardy like McMorris Rodgers are busy disguising their sympathies with the flapping fringe that helped elect her “positive disruptor.” She may be a sympathetic mom with a tear in her eye for the Dreamers but she legislatively maneuvers to rob them of a chance at citizenship. Don’t let her get away with it. We are better than that.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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Roll Up Your Sleeves

Dear Group,

The General Election on Tuesday, November 6, is in just seventy-seven days. It is the last chance we have, as citizens and voters, to slow or stop Donald Trump’s consolidation of autocratic power. If he succeeds with Mitch McConnell in the outright theft of yet another seat on the Supreme Court AND the Republican/Libertarians retain majorities in both houses of Congress, however slim, Trump will have his small, oligarchic hands on the levers of all branches of government. The vaunted “checks and balances” we learned about in junior high fall away. As Devin Nunes said right here at the Spokane Club with McMorris Rodgers nodding along with him, without the Republican majority in the House, “All this goes away,” including their ability to threaten the Mueller investigation by impeaching Rosenstein.

We in eastern Washington have a key role to play.in this struggle. McMorris Rodgers, with her toothy smile, mom persona, and her veneer of supposed Christian values is a supreme enabler of her “positive disruptor,” Mr. Trump. For the very first time in her political career starting fresh out of the Fundamentalist Baptist Pensacola Christian College she is facing a formidable electoral challenger in Lisa Brown. Lisa Brown has the charisma, the mom credentials, the education, and the life outside of politics that exceed everything McMorris Rodgers pretends to offer. 

We are blessed in Washington State with a government that encourages voter participation, a government that has not gerrymandered its voting districts to a fare-thee-well in favor of Republican majorities they way they are computer-engineered by Republican controlled state governments elsewhere. 

We have a Primary Election behind us that gives us hope but offers no comfort in complacency. Winning in November depends on sustained efforts to reach Democratic voters, to convince the undecided, and to mobilize them all to vote. 

Do not wake up on some morning following the General Election on November 6 after they’ve finally counted all the ballots and lament, “If only I had…” because then it will be too late.

There is not just one thing you can do. There are many, but the single most effective thing an individual can do is have meaningful conversations with people they don’t know. Canvassing is a great way to make those happen, though good conversations can happen anywhere. 

Here in eastern Washington we are blessed with a good solid, intelligent, civic-minded Democrat running for almost every office on the ballot. Lisa Brown’s candidacy will help each of them, and the work each of them puts in will help Lisa Brown. My point is this: pay attention to your local candidates, meet them, get to know them, support them with canvassing and with money. It all helps.

Last Wednesday ninety-two unpaid local volunteers showed up for voter contact training with the Lisa Brown campaign at Youth For Christ on N. Ash St. Hook up with the Lisa Brown Campaign or with the Wa-Democrats (see links below in “Calendar”) Commit to a day a week. Join a group. Canvass with a friend. Go out with the group afterward. Compare notes. Have bite to eat. Make new friends. Politics is a social endeavor.

Check out the canvassing links in Calendar below. Join the Indivisible canvass next Monday.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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CMR’s Flash Town Hall

Dear Group,

Last Friday the Indivisible email went out as usual at around 5AM. In it I highlighted an announcement I had gotten wind of by email only at 7PM the evening before. At 7AM Friday, two hours after the Indivisible email posted I received a report from one of my readers the town hall signup link on Eventbrite was reporting “Sold Out.”. 

Sold out over a twelve hour period overnight? Really? This isn’t a Rolling Stones concert. What’s going on? How many places were offered? How many held back? Checking the “Facility Specifications at the Spokane Convention Center website was inconclusive. The “Centennial Ballroom” can be any of Ballrooms 300A,B,C,D or combinations thereof. Assuming a “Classroom” configuration that could mean they offered anywhere from 115 to 690 seats. In response to a direct inquiry to the Convention Center people, a reader was told the room McMorris Rodgers rented (whatever the partitioning) will be set for a capacity of 300.

Last August McMorris Rodgers held a tightly controlled town hall at Gonzaga at which there were empty chairs in spite of a crowd outside. Is this a repeat?

The conditions of attendance are interesting, too:

All attendees will be required to show proof of residency within the 5th Congressional District at the door. Proof of residency may include a drivers license or a utility bill with the name of the constituent and their address printed. Failure to show proof at the door will result in being denied entrance.

Tickets to this event are free. There is one seat per ticket. Please contact the office at 509-353-2374 with any questions regarding this event.

PLEASE NOTE: For the safety of everyone participating in this event, all bags will be subject to search prior to entry into the facility. Additionally, no signs of any kind will be allowed inside the auditorium.

With an opaque sign-up and the requirement of proof of residence at least McMorris Rodgers won’t be able to claim the tough questions are coming from paid protesters bused in by George Soros from outside the district.

Please call (509-353-2374) and inquire why the Convention Center says there are only 300 seats in a venue that can hold 690 in a “Classroom” configuration. Asking where and when the town hall was first advertised might also be instructive.There is also a means through a tab at the signup link on Eventbrite down toward the bottom at which you can “contact the event organizer.”

Will she add to the seating? It’s seems enough of a challenge for her to respond to a small, mostly friendly audience up in Green Bluff (also chronicled here and here) 

A good many McMorris Rodgers’ constituents might be wearing face masks (if it is still smokey, as seems likely) and carrying signs outside the event on Thursday, wondering why the seats were so few and so briefly advertised.

Here’s what might be a better outlet for frustrated energy–get out and canvass.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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Rejoice! Join the Parade! Local Politics in Action

Dear Group,

Everybody loves a parade, right? Well, here’s your chance…a great chance to participate, get out in the great community of eastern Washington, and make a positive, joyous political statement. There is a long tradition of politicians marching in parades, smiling, and “kissing babies.” It is a tradition Democrats used to engage in with gusto. It’s time to get back to those roots. More than a hundred of us marched in the parade at the Hillyard Festival with Lisa Brown, Maria Cantwell, and local Democratic candidates. McMorris Rodgers’ followers were far outnumbered. Babies were kissed, candy strewn, chants shouted, and songs sung. The parade watchers were delighted. The buzz was fun.

This weekend, August 17 and 18, the National Lentil Festival is held in Pullman, Washington, heart of the great agricultural region, the Palouse, the center of U.S. production of lentils. A whole lot of lentils are exported to China and India where lentils are still more of a staple food than here in the United States. It is no secret that Palouse farmers are uneasy over Trump’s disruption of agricultural export relationships carefully nurtured over decades. McMorris Rodgers only pays lip service to defending our region’s interests against Trump, her “positive disruptor.” 

Not a single Representative, Republican or Democrat, currently represents the interests of northwest agriculture on the United States House Committee on Agriculture from WA, OR, MT, ID, or WY. It is about time to change that. Lisa Brown pledges to seek a position on the House Committee on Agriculture, the same committee upon which the great Tom Foley served, including six years as Chairman of the Agricultural Committee.

So get out and take part. Take a road trip to Pullman (meet there at 10AM) and engage in regional fun. Invite two friends! Meet up with friendly people including Lisa Brown and Maria Cantwell. March in the parade. Feel the energy. (See two boxes above “Dear Group” for details.) Then learn about lentils. Re-learn the lessons of our region’s agricultural roots. Celebrate. Send a positive message! Here’s a link: https://lisabrownforcongress.com/event/pullman-lentil-festival-parade

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

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McMorris Rodgers’ Answer to Summer Smoke

Dear Group,

Yesterday morning I tried to run…no, not really, heavy exertion was dangerous. The surrounding hills were nearly lost in the haze. The particulates clung to my tongue.  Each summer for years now we have spent weeks breathing smoke and experiencing a vague feeling of dread. When will the smoke herald a fire whipped by dry wind that will race through town? How many more summers before people like McMorris Rodgers are forced to acknowledge this is more than a problem of forest cleanup? How much more time is there?

The local climate trend and the reason for it are clear. Water and fire are the main players in the global warming story in the Inland Northwest. Climate models all point to longer drier summers with earlier runoff. Drier summers produce drought-stressed trees with less resistance to disease and beetles. Warmer winters fail to kill bark beetle larvae. Wet springs with earlier runoff combine with drier summers to add to the load of dry fuel on the ground. 

Seventeen of the eighteen hottest years (globally) since modern record-keeping began have occurred since 2001. (See a particularly striking animation of the data here at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s website.) The evidence for both correlation with and causation from the burning of carbon fuels and release of other greenhouse gases is overwhelming…and either incomprehensible to McMorris Rodgers or simply denied.

In the midst of the smoke and worry what has McMorris Rodgers been up to in Congress? Are she and her handlers studying the science, looking into the future, proposing solutions, paying attention? Are they leaders? Are they intellectually equipped to lead?

Here’s the answer: On July 19 the U.S. House passed H.Con.Res.119 – Expressing the sense of Congress that a carbon tax would be detrimental to the United States economy. 

McMorris Rodgers joined with all but six other Republicans in the House to make this declaration and send it off to U.S. Senate (where it will surely be ignored…at least until after the November election).

If the United States (and the world) is ever going to curb its addiction to burning carbon and begin to address the global warming that is already happening it will require government action. The only free market friendly government action available to us is some form of tax or fee that predictably raises the cost of carbon-based fuels. (My hands-down favorite is the “carbon fee and dividend” scheme put forward by the Citizens’ Climate Lobby.) Otherwise we are condemned to ever increasing mop up operations to deal with the consequences of the accelerating climate change: manual reduction of forest fuels, sea walls, hurricane and tornado recovery efforts, and addressing global migration and conflicts precipitated by climate disaster.

All but thirteen Republicans (seven did not vote) in the U.S. House took the time out of their busy schedules to state an article of their faith: H.Con.Res.119 effectively confirms Trump’s dismissal of the whole of climate science as a Chinese hoax. If that were not so, why would they bother, unbidden, to take off the table the only free market-based mechanism to encourage renewable energy and energy conservation?  

Their are two choices. With this Resolution the Republicans are either declaring a race to the bottom or they are expressing science denial. Either one is a disqualification for public office. Supposedly we elect officials with intelligence and foresight to represent us in government. We elect them with the conviction they are smarter than we, that they engage in the due diligence necessary to reasonably look into the future and act in our best interest, the best interest of the country, and the best interest of the world. 

By casting a vote for this uncalled for declaration of faith, McMorris Rodgers and her Republican/Libertarian brethren have demonstrated their miserable failure to understand and protect that interest. 

No amount of forest cleanup or defense of Snake River dams (McMorris Rodgers’ two favorite responses to any question about climate change) offer the slightest likelihood of slowing the climate change that is already upon us. McMorris Rodgers gratuitous vote for H.Con.Res.119 is a declaration of her short-sightedness.

McMorris Rodgers does not represent me. Send her packing in November.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry