To Do The Possible Is Better Than Sitting Frozen On The Sofa, Or, Saturday Morning at 11:00am

I am writing this post to encourage you to help flip the House – and at a stretch the Senate – this November. I’m not going to go through all the dreadful things Trump and his backers (for he is by no means solely responsible) have done, you area already familiar, but let’s consider how we constrain him. It’s doable. Red, white and blueable.

First, Are We On The Road Now To Effective Midterms?

1.  Starting January 2025 Trump’s administration has attempted to impose as horrific a regime as we had imagined
2. The current Supreme Court majority turns out to want a world antithetical in many ways to what I, and most of you, believe in
3. The Republican-controlled Congress has ceded its power to Trump and his henchpeople
4. All signs indicate a plan is in place to prevent a Democratic victory in the midterm elections, and that plan is now being carried out to the best of the administration’s ability

This is where our list starts to look up.

1. Mainstream media, which at first glossed over our terrible farce, has begun to report accurately if not passionately. Independent reporters and historians have stepped in to say out loud what many commercial TV stations and periodicals will not.
2. Lower courts, again and again, have repudiated efforts to weaken election processes. Local election officials in many states are resisting. Even the Supreme Court voted to allow counting of mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day.
3. Trump’s approval ratings are supremely low, with the New York Times’s “select pollsters” putting it between 30-38%. And the “best of the administration’s ability” doesn’t seem to be very good. Many of the people charged with executing this malevolent strategy are self-interested, incompetent and corrupt. This is terrible for governance, but good for our chances. We’re pretty competent.
4. Many groups around the country have plans of their own to inform, convince, support and fight for voters’ rights
5. We – just as individuals – can act in multiple ways and we are legion

Slightly Deeper Dive On What’s Been Happening 

Luckily for us, the New York Times has just published comprehensive reporting on, “The Many Ways Trump Is Trying To Tip The Scales For The Midterms.” Here’s a gift link. Please let me know if it doesn’t work for you. They lay out what Trump’s doing:

• Taking steps to nationalize elections
• Trying to tighten voting restrictions (Additional note on the SAVE Act: using reconciliation, rather than the usual process that the NYT addresses, is also likely to fail)
• Pushing for mid-decade redistricting
• Cutting election security (however, organizations are already informing local officials of what to do if troops were to show up at the polls)
• Undermining faith in the electoral system by questioning previous results
• Punishing those who have worked against election denialism

Again, very much worth a read, as a grounding.

A Deeper Dive On What We Can Do, Starting With Institutional Levers

Maybe America was established by privileged white men who just wanted to keep their money rather than pay it to a king across the seas, but somehow when they wrote a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution, it turned out they had to use higher moral values to justify their fight. And sensible people understand that to keep those values in place, you kind of have to apply them to everyone. Oops. So. What to do?

• Vote (No exclamation mark required. You just might want to check to make sure you’re registered.)
• Donate (Even if there’s no candidate you want to support, what about organizations like Swing Left, Indivisible, and the League of Women Voters. If that doesn’t appeal, one of the most impactful thing you can do is donate in support of local officials who are actually administering elections. Or fund the lawyers fighting the good fight.)
• Become active online, comment on public notices (For example, comment in support of mail-in voting)
• Advocate to your friends/community (For many of you this might be really hard. I have it easy, in a blue county in a blue state, with my blue family. I recognize that. But Marc Elias, the lawyer who’s been fighting the election undermining, in court, says it’s the one thing he asks us all to do. I’ll be wearing my We The People t-shirt to Spanish class next week. Small steps.)
• Volunteer with voting/activist groups (again, Swing Left will have a group near you, as will Indivisible. Take a look on their websites and they will show you where groups are active. They usually have Facebook groups. And guess what, they are mostly people pretty much like you.) You can:
  • Write letters (less effective than other actions, but also less effort, so, why not?)
  • Become a poll watcher (I am considering doing this at a poll inland of me. Have just begun to research. I’d do it with a family member – these things are so much less scary with a buddy)
  • Register voters (I especially love to do this on college campuses. I find the opportunities via my local Swing Left group, but they are also listed on Mobilize, where you can search by location. You sign up, a friendly group leader gets in touch.)
  • Canvassing (Scariest of all. Definitely take a friend. And here’s an anecdote. I canvassed two weekends ago in an area that was held by Republicans until California’s recent redistricting. I was struck by how passionate and informed several Democratic voters were, compared to when I canvassed in 2018. They all knew what was happening, and most notably, they all referred to being the “lighthouses” of their friends’ group. (I just made up that term, but I mean they inform and encourage their friends; they are leaders. I didn’t meet anyone like this in 2018.)

On Beyond Comfort Zones To Standing On Stairs?

I had vowed that if the Supreme Court overturned birthright citizenship I’d go stand on their steps with food, water, a sleeping bag and a sign, to stay as long as I was able. In an interview with Ami Fields-Meyer, the LOLGOP Substack reports that “standard democratic tools like courts and elections have a dismal 7% success rate against backsliding. Civil resistance boosts odds to 51%.” I have found Fields-Meyer series on Instagram, on how to become an activist, very informative. If we start with low conflict protests, say, becoming one of the little group of people on the corner outside the mall carrying signs of a weekend, move up to slightly higher conflict, say, No Kings marches, we may become prepared if more is needed. And we hope that never again will the Minneapolis sacrifices be required. Maybe just try a little activism, a little civil, if not disobedience, civil inappropriate. We do what we can, and then we learn to do more, has been my experience.

Where Is Hope To Be Found In Voting, When We’re Cynical?

Here’s the thing. The Supreme Court, and traditional leaders of American industry, along with the Trump-instigated MAGA crowd, might want to roll us back to 1950. However, there is no “rollback” as such that gets us to zero elections if we are to remain America. They can only take us back to when voting was denied to many, with an added fillip of “this election was fraudulent.”

I’m not sure even immoral powers that be (the sane ones) want a country without elections. I doubt they want full-on martial law. Not very fun. I think they’d like their full set of 1950 privileges back, but perhaps not at the cost of chaos. (I believe those who voted for this, and don’t have power, wanted their path to privilege cleared of help given to those who start further back. I don’t think they can get in the way of elections too much, because, power and lack thereof. After we win, we can help them.)

As a result, making it clear that hell no we won’t go, matters. Boycotts, strikes, protests, and most of all citizen civil disobedience like we saw in Chicago and Minneapolis, Portland and New Jersey, even California (and maybe elsewhere but it hasn’t made the news) matter for our future elections.

Finally, if your patriotism is questioned, I found this, on Critical Patriotism and its long history in our country, heartening.

We can do this, you guys. Or if we can’t, at least we will have tried our best. Have a good weekend. I’m sure it’s not lost on anyone that it’s the Fourth of July.