Okay, then here’s the question today for Democratic office holders: How many people supporting Democratic policies need to get out in the streets before you raise some hell against the GOP in Congress?
But, perhaps one of the polling/statistics wonky number gurus that so successfully reassured us that Hillary couldn’t lose to Trump could work up a useful workable formula to calculate what it would take. It might be helpful for them to design a standardized ratio showing the number of demonstrators per individual senator needed for that office holder to confidently take a stand.
Call it: the People in the Street (PITS) to Senator/Congressman Backbone (SCB) analytical formula. The rating could be formulated to be individualized and broken down by state by individual Senators and for Congressmen by district. For example Senator “X” from a majority “red” state might need a higher ratio of demonstrators in the street.
I imagine in a safe “Blue” state, for a recently re-elected Senator or Congressman, the scientific ratio might be as low as 500-1,000 PITS to achieve 1 SCB. This would mean 500-1,000 demonstrators would be all it would take for a liberal-leaning Senator to show some spine and vote no or even filibuster a Trump nominee. A “Red” state Senator coming up for re-election would need double or even triple the number of people in the streets, perhaps as high as 3,000 or 5,000 PITS to gain one SCB.
I’d bet Five Thirty Eight and Nate Silver or maybe The Princeton Election Consortium might tackle it now that the election has ended. Well, maybe after the Super Bowl and Oscar predictions.
Until that formula is available I have to nod in agreement with Charlie Pierce, who says: Filibuster the Damn Supreme Court Nominee! But imagine, as Pierce dreams, the great feeling of satisfaction it would give to the Democratic base to have Neil Gorsuch get left twisting in the wind the way Merrick Garland did. What chance would you give that happening – a thousand to one odds?
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election and immediate overtures toward authoritarianism, many of us have found ourselves unexpectedly grieving the loss of the America we have trusted since childhood. One of those folks came to me with a letter she had felt compelled to write to an estranged friend who was a Trump supporter. After weeks of anguished internal debate, she finally could not bring herself to send it. I thought it perfectly expressed the sadness and anger that divides us now; so I asked if I might share it with our GMD readers. She does not want me to mention her name so let’s just sign her “anyonymous” with a small ‘a’.
“So I have become one of “those” people. You know, the ones who have let the election spill over into their personal lives, someone who has lost a friend because of it, a friend I still care about but with whom I cannot figure out how to continue a relationship. I cherish my friendships. Lucky as I am to have family I genuinely love, there is a difference. Families have to accept you; friends choose to. To me, that is pretty sacred. So how could I let this happen? This was not an “unfriending” on Facebook. This was face to face across a small desk and was very painful for both of us.
We tried to talk. I apologized for withdrawing after November 8th. I could not pretend that all was well, and I thought it might take a few days to get back to normal, which then turned into more than a couple of months. I mean how does this happen? This was a friend, and the election was over and we had always voted differently. Yet, we had always had each others’ backs.
The apology did not go well. During my absence she had had some difficult times and I had not available. And I believe, like me, she valued our friendship. She felt betrayed and angry over my withdrawal. But soon the apology devolved into respective and familiar talking points. We had been in similar territory before over the years, finally pledging to not talk politics. And so the hardest thing to try to explain and answer was what had changed this time, and why I, too, felt betrayed when I had been the one to withdraw.
” What was different,” she asked. “What was different this time?”
And even now I am not sure why I could love before and find it so elusive now. But I think it has to do with choices truly mattering and that maybe I had not been honest before in our relationship by sidestepping them. Politics do matter. And choices and politics have consequences.
For me, the measure of character is how we treat each other, especially those more vulnerable and powerless. In any human interaction, my friend would most certainly treat people with kindness and respect. But she voted for someone who does not, someone who targets the vulnerable and powerless and weak; it is so easy to blame them and cull the herd. It’s what bullies and dictators do.
As one of our greatest writers said, we all bleed when cut. It seems to me that some people judge their blood, their pain more worthy, their hopes more legitimate. And while I do believe in an “illegitimate” president, I don’t believe in an illegitimate human being. And I just can’t get around that, try though I might.
I admit I am a holdout to “let’s look for the positive.” If anyone who has been struggling does well under our new regime, I will be happy for them. But I fear these gains might be made at the cost of our collective soul. Because, kind and caring as my friend is to those around her, her vote supported someone who treats people as throwaways because he just knows they are “ very very bad” people.
She has often talked to me about her belief in personal responsibility, which is important to me, too. And since she made a choice in her vote, I think that brings the responsibility of accepting that there are those in her life who will act or react based on it.
To maintain our relationship I would feel betrayed by having to pretend the things she supported by her vote are acceptable. If I have to not talk politics or discuss my deep feelings and values in order to stay friends, then I have a choice to make, too.
Following the Women’s Marches held all over the country (and world) the day after Trump’s inauguration, a lot of the discussion was about what comes next. Some of it ran something like this: “Glad to see you all out demonstrating, but don’t forget, come November, get out, knock on doors, and help elect us.”
A good and not unexpected reminder from party organizers to be sure. But elected officials are finding another feature in the big march’s aftermath – their own feet may be more quickly held to the fire.
One example took place in Rhode Island, and the feet in question belong to Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. He, along with 13 other Democratic Senators (see link here) voted to confirm Congressman Mike Pompeo as Donald Trump’s CIA director. Days later over a thousand people showed up at Senator Whitehouse’s regular town hall meeting in Providence to protest his yes vote.
Pompeo has notably close ties to conservative billionaire puppet masters Charles G. and David H. Koch. Their company, Koch Industries, and its employees have contributed $357,000 to Mr. Pompeo since 2009. And the New York Times has called him “… one of the most overtly partisan figures to take over the C.I.A.”
The AP reported: Senator Whitehouse has hosted dozens of such events, starting from when he first ran for Senate in 2006, but they are typically sleepy affairs.
The video shows people in the crowd angrily shouting and jeering as Whitehouse speaks, and Whitehouse telling them he understands many people disagree with his vote.
“You can’t normalize these appointments!” one person yelled. And; “Take responsibility! Be accountable! You work for us” And others spoke the obvious question for any Democratic office holder:“Why would you vote yes for any of them?”
Following the meeting it was confirmed that Whitehouse admitted he may have been wrong to vote in support of Pompeo. And in a statement released Monday he said: “While Pompeo would not have been his choice, he knows the intelligence community well and “can be a check on dangerous impulses from the Trump White House.”
Senator Whitehouse and others likely shouldn’t expect “sleepy” town hall gatherings to return in the near future.
And closer to home, it’s worth wondering what effect the thousand of marchers that showed up recently in Montpelier had on our new Governor Phil Scott. Maybe Republican Scott was reminded how blue Vermont is. It seems he embraced his better instincts quite readily. And after briefly mentioning a “time-out” and flubbing his response on the Syrian immigration issue during his campaign he is now opposing his party’s President on the immigration ban more vocally than he might otherwise (not) have done.
On his seventh full day in office (a Friday, also Holocaust remembrance day) Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting refugees and migrants entering the United States from seven mostly Muslim nations. Notably, none of these seven countries have business ties to Trump’s private businesses.
Quickly, it became clear how sweeping Trump’s directive was: […] administration officials confirmed that the sweeping order also targeted U.S. legal residents from the named countries — green-card holders — who were abroad when it was signed. Also subject to being barred entry into the United States are dual nationals, or people born in one of the seven countries who hold passports even from U.S. allies, such as the United Kingdom.
Spontaneous demonstrations against Trump’s Muslim ban at many U.S.International airports quickly started and grew in size over the day Saturday as confusion and fear mounted among immigrant travelers. At JFK more than a thousand people turned out to protest and Taxi drivers joined in, protesting the ban by refusing to take fares from the airport.
And finally, following a complaint filed by the ACLU in New York Federal Court against enforcement, a judge in Brooklyn granted a stay, temporarily halting the DHS from enforcing Trump’s immigration ban.
It was a first step, and more battles with the new administration will follow. But seven days in and it looks like the good guys gained a little — won one — against Trumpism.
By Sunday afternoon, nearly every congressional Democrat had condemned the executive order, including Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who faces a 2018 reelection campaign in a state Trump carried by 35 points. None defended it, but several remained silent. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, cautioned that Democrats can only do so much to try to stop Trump, given their diminished powers on Capitol Hill.
Sunday musings in a flu and Robitussen-induced fog:
Congressional Republicans have all the power to stop Donald Trump’s march to catastrophe, but recognizing that they have been effectively castrated by fear of populist revolt from their base, we are left frantically looking for a “Plan B” before the Doomsday Clock strikes twelve.
Apparently our best legal opportunity to curb the insanity is to get him into court for anyreason and force him to testify under oath. This has been suggested repeatedly in the media but, IMHO, hasn’t gotten nearly enough traction.
The man appears incapable of distinguishing truth from fiction and it is unlikely that he can restrain himself from at least one boldface lie in the course of any sworn testimony, no matter how brief.
Therein lies the easily pulled lynchpin to impeachment.
I would guess that, by the time he lies under oath, at least half of all congressional Republicans would leap at the chance to push him toward the exit sign if given that opportunity through a simple impeachable offense such as perjury.
They’ll know, of course, that they will still have Mike Pence (God forbid!) to do their rightwing bidding…but Pence is considerably less likely to launch a missile strike on a whim. We might actually survive to to see another election.
The beauty is that Donald Trump has done so many nasty and double-dealing things to so many people over the course of his personal and business history that the opportunities for court-ordered depositions abound.
What the public and the media must do is find some way to reassure his myriad victims that they have the opportunity to do the country a great service simply by dragging his ass into court.
Donald Trump will inevitably do the rest. He is programmed to lie even about trivial things. He simply can’t help himself.
This past week saw national Republican lawmakers holding a retreat strategy meeting in Philadelphia. They found themselves literally cornered by protestors at a downtown hotel, surrounded by a protective barrier of garbage trucks-I wonder if this will soon become standard procedure for Republicans.
At the close of the gathering a chartered train was forced to leave the station empty as attendees were unwilling to risk walking past protestors.
[…] the city deemed to protect the Loews Hotel where they were staying by using trash trucks to block off the streets — a ghost train of sorts was there to carry them off, back to Washington, D.C., this morning. When protestors arrived at 30th Street Station late this morning, to greet the visiting GOP one last time for the week with messages of dissent and resistance to an increasingly aberrant, toxic presidency, they soon realized: None from the party had the courage to enter the station, and take the train that had been chartered on the GOP’s behalf.
“They totally had a private chartered train waiting for them at the station that pulled away empty because none of the GOP were willing to walk into the station,” one protestor on the scene told us. “The Amtrak agent had called for the boarding of the charter train number, over and over announcing its departure,” she said, “and then conferred with the protest organizers, who then announced it to the crowd.” Whereupon the crowd cheered. It was a fitting and triumphant end to a week that saw so many in Philadelphia responding to the absurd madness and craven greed of the Trump presidency in a way that the city’s founders would have been both proud of, and there for.
I first got involved in advocacy and political organizing during the 2004 presidential elections. People around me at that time, and one professor in particular introduced me to ideas that I hadn’t thought about before. I’m going to list them here and then share a little bit about what I think they mean in the context of President Trump’s inauguration and the incredible mobilization of demonstrators for the Women’s March that followed this past weekend. I hope this spurs a discussion here on GMD about what happens next in Vermont and beyond.
1. Civic Responsibility – Our political institutions are inherently adversarial and require a diversity of opinions and ideas to evolve.
2. Privilege – The special advantages that one group of people has that another does not are invisible to many of us, but are real and powerful.
3. Organizing – There is a difference between strategy and tactics. Effective communications, field work and fundraising require skills that can be taught. Learning how to effectively organize and mobilize people is the way to bring about change in a democracy.
My first reaction to the Women’s March was something like “Where the hell were all of these people last year?” I was running for a seat in the Vermont House (a race I narrowly lost) so I was deep in the thick of talking up Democratic candidates, attending and putting on events, making phone calls and knocking on hundreds of doors. Over and over I heard people say things that scared me about hating politics, hating all of the candidates and NOT voting. I heard longtime Democrats say they weren’t coming to help work at the campaign HQ because of what the Dems did to Bernie or because of one of Hillary Clinton’s scandals.
A lot of people who were mobilized by the 2008 Obama campaign (and even 2012) were MIA in 2016. Why didn’t people feel the same sense of civic responsibility? Some thought that there was no chance Trump would win. Some felt betrayed by the DNC and the Party’s (very predictable) resistance to a challenger from the outside in the form of Bernie Sanders. People weren’t excited about Hillary as a candidate in the same messianic way they were excited about Obama. So, they excused themselves from organizing and mobilizing and the leaders of the Democratic party, including Hillary Clinton, had no effective message to fire them up.
What does this have to do with Privilege? The first campaigns I worked on were about global access to health care, especially HIV/AIDS treatment. I felt (and initially had to be called out) when I was 19 that my privilege and the power it gave me obligated me to do what I could to advocate for people who did not have the same privilege and power. I still feel that sense of obligation and I feel strongest when I help lift up voices that aren’t as powerful as mine. I was proud to work with Migrant Justice to get Driver’s Privilege Cards for undocumented farm workers. I loved working on the campaigns of women who were running for State Senate.
A photo has gone viral that to me captured a troubling aspect of the difference in the acknowledgment and the manifestation of privilege between serious advocates and first-time demonstrators, not to mention between white and minority participants in the marches. If you were wearing a PussyHat and taking selfies, please don’t take offense. I’m glad you were out. Thanks for demonstrating. Just listen to what Angela Peoples had to say, too.
Angela Peoples holding sign (Kevin Banatte)
The people I was trained by when I was bird-dogging John Kerry and Howard Dean while they were running for President in 2004 taught me that good campaigns have a clear strategy. Our strategy in 2004 was to get the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria funding by raising the profile of global health issues during the presidential campaign. Our primary tactic was to bird-dog the candidates, showing up at every public appearance and asking whether they would Fund the Fund. We had a clear ask of all of the candidates that was directly connected to the accomplishment of our goal.
Marching and demonstrating is a tactic- not a strategy. I spent some time at womensmarch.com trying to figure out what the march was officially about. Friends and family have told me that it was about “being inspired”, “making voices heard”, “solidarity”, “protesting Trump’s illegitimate election”, “protecting reproductive rights” and a host of other reasons. I could not for the life of me find a single concrete “ask” on the website.
Angela Peoples, the woman in the photo with the sign said,
“[Fifty-three percent] of white women voted for Trump. That means someone you know, someone who is in close community with you, voted for Trump. You need to organize your people.” And some people said, “Oh, I’m so ashamed.” Don’t be ashamed; organize your people.
Angela Peoples knew why she was at the march. She wanted to be inspired and she wanted to guard against complacency. She recognized that the Women’s March had to be the beginning of something, not the end of something. The key to achieving any of the disparate and diverse goals of the marchers would be sustained organizing and engagement.
So are you ready to take responsibility for your part? Are you ready to exercise and protect the privileges that we have to speak, demonstrate and run for office? Are you ready to organize? Come to a meeting, bring your friends. Organize your people. It’s going to be a long four years and there’s plenty of work to do.
This letter is to comment on Sen. Pro Tem Tim Ashe’s comments regarding the S.8 bill on the scope of an ethics commission and its powers, as published in the VTDigger, on January 17, 2017. His comments strike me as lacking administrative experience. I hope that my comments can help him to understand that serious lacks of ethics in Vermont’s governments seriously undermines trust in fair decision making throughout the State.
Proper ethics standards should not be vaguely determined by each incoming governor and rescission of those by the previous governor. It is inadequate to accept an officials statement under oath denying conflict of interest. Officials can, intentional or unintentially, confuse separation of their private and public interests. It is time to establish a full court press for ethical behavior by elected and quasi-judicial office holders and to define definitions and processes, by statute, to abolish such conflicts. The current Judicial Code of Ethics provides a starting point for such definitions. An ethics process which addresses all complaints of conflicts of the public’s interest, anticipated or not, needs to be established. The core of S.8 is that the citizens of the Vermont must be able to trust in the honest legislation, administration and enforcement of the laws of Vermont.
Sen, Ashe’s comment implying $300,000 is an exorbitant cost to assure honest government is not a service to the public of this State. Assurance of honest government is worth far more and should have a higher priority than any other Vermont expenditure.
Secretary of State Jim Condos is far better experienced and informed than is Sen. Pro Tem Ashe. That opinion is based upon forty-six years of observing the politics of Vermont and being delinquent tax collector, constable, listor and chair of a planning commission at the town level to being Vice President of the Northwest Citizens for Responsible Growth. NWCRG members observed conflicts of the public’s interest, corruption, in its losing battle against a Walmart Store in St. Albans. The Walmart permitting process that occurred is an ethical embarrassment to our State.
It is important and necessary that a dedicated group for the purpose of acting in response to ethics complaints be established. Of perhaps greater importance is where it should be located, in this State’s government. The organization must be removed from all politics of state and local government. I recommend that it report to the Vermont Supreme Court and be governed by the VSC’s Judicial Code of Ethics.
It need not be ‘a full-fledged, large bureaucracy’ as envisioned by Sen. Ashe. ‘Experience of what kinds of complaints are coming in’ is irrelevant. All should be considered for legitimacy. Complaints should be encouraged and rewarded, as found justified and worthy by judiciary.
To substantiate the above comments concerning the permitting of the Walmart Store in St. Albans, a chronology of ethics problems which I composed during that legal battle is available at: http://witchcat.ws/Consequences/timeline.html.
Donald Trump and his newly minted Press Secretary/attack dog, “Spike” Spicer, just spent the first day of his administration whining about the turnout for his inauguration and attempting to bully the press into confirming his false assertion that it was the biggest turnout in history.
It was speculated that, in typical Trump fashion, this was a diversionary tactic to distract from the unflattering super story of the day, the “Women’s March on Washington.”
Aerial photos left little doubt that the first Obama inauguration drew a vastly greater turnout than did Trump’s little do, nevertheless Trump and his stooge eagerly and persistently plunged into perjury in defense of his fragile ego.
Aerial photos also delivered the unmistakable message that turnout for the “Women’s March” dwarfed the modest captive gathering on the mall the day before.
How must it feel for Donald Trump to gaze upon the photos from across the country of the throngs and throngs of demonstrators who rose in coordinated opposition to his agenda, all in a single day? Does he understand that the volume of demonstrators across America who braved traffic jams, dangerously crowded subway cars, and other inconveniences to take a stand against him probably numbered in the millions but still represented no more than half the number of votes by which Hillary Clinton won the popular vote?
If he does, Kellyanne must have him hog-tied in the White House mess to keep him from tweeting away his rage. All he wrote was
“Watched protests yesterday but was under the impression that we just had an election. Why didn’t these people vote?”
Newsflash, Donald, these people did vote and you lost the popular vote.
The streets were full around the world. Millions of people came out to protest against the Pussy-Grabber in Chief. Led by women, but men, women, and children were everywhere.
I’ve been going to marches and demonstrations for almost fifty years, and the feeling in Montpelier yesterday was about the greatest I’ve ever experienced. Plus, we had 15-20,000 people on the streets of Montpelier, double the population of the city. Probably the biggest political gathering ever in the state of Vermont.
I think it’s entirely appropriate to just bask in the good feeling for a bit, but I also have some random thoughts about the event.
The first person I saw there was our own NanuqFC, another long-time activist, and we noticed the same thing: we didn’t know most of the people there. This was not the usual suspects. I am sure that for many of the people there, and not just the ones who were six months old, this was their first demonstration. What a great thing, especially if we can get them to stay involved.
Second, intersectionality has come to Vermont. Listen to the speakers and watch the people in the crowd and intersectionality and diversity were front and center.
Third (okay, this is a lighter note), the signs. Tons of homemade signs full of humor, hope, anger, and idiosyncrasy. Plus, unlike the Tea Party and Trump supporters, we know how to spell.
I appreciate all the thousands of people who came out and dedicated a whole day to opposing the short-fingered vulgarian. Even if you only walked across town in Montpelier, that was a minimum of three hours. My question for all those people is did you spend the same three hours making phone calls or knocking on doors? If you spent twenty-four hours or so traveling to Washington, how many hours did you devote to defeating Trump in 2016?
If you came to the march yesterday but were too busy to work on the campaign in 2016, will you be back in 2018? Because, really, as much as I love a good demonstration, I’d rather be knocking doors in October than standing around in the cold in January. We need each other, and we need the work that the hours and energy can produce.
Finally, one of the best signs I saw from yesterday said, “We’re going to see you all at the next Black Lives Matter march, right?”
Yesterday’s marches around the world were tremendously energizing, but energy isn’t just something to have, it’s what you need to do something. Let’s all be ready for the next thing.
Okay, then here’s the question today for Democratic office holders: How many people supporting Democratic policies need to get out in the streets before you raise some hell against the GOP in Congress?
