June 10, 2019--No Need to Vote

I've been hearing from friends who live in blue states that they're not planning to vote next year.

"You must be kidding," I've been saying. "You're lifelong liberals, Democrats, you can't abide Trump, and yet you plan to sit on your hands in November? The 2020 vote may turn out to be our last chance to rid ourselves of him. I'm not sure I want to be involved with you if this is your plan."

"Before you cut me off," one said, "I live in deep-blue Massachusetts. There we can already chalk up the Electoral votes for whoever the Democrats nominate."

"Or California where I live," another said. "Last time around it gave Hillary more than a four-million vote plurality. So what does my vote mean?"

"Then there's New York," one of my oldest friends said, "My vote won't count there either. The Democrat always wins at least 60 percent of the vote."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," I said and was tempted to change the subject so we could remain friends.

"What's the counter argument?" my California friend asked, "So Biden or the nominee wins by 'only' three-and-a-half million popular votes. But still he cleans up in the Electoral College."

"You're right that what happens with the Electoral votes will determine who becomes president but the national vote also counts in some big ways."

"Enlighten me."

"First of all the potential size of the Democratic plurality will contribute to repudiating Trump. He won't be able to claim that there's fraud if the vote against him adds up to many millions. No matter what states the votes come from. As we know he's all about size."

"Fair point."

"Then there are the potential political consequences. With a big plurality the winner's coat tails will be longer and maybe more Democrats will be elected to Congress. This then could contribute to what legislation gets enacted and, perhaps most important, who can get confirmed to the Supreme Court. In other words, the size of the vote could enable the winner to claim a mandate. Pressure by the electorate to push Congress to protect the environment, women's rights, a sensible approach to foreign affairs. All sorts of things you support that have been gutted by Trump and his administration."

In general, after these conversations pretty much everyone says they will rouse themselves vote to help run up the numbers.

We'll see. 

April 19, 2013--Two Americas

I don't know what to make of my America.

During the past 10 years I've read a lot of American history and am not naive about our Founders' commitment to democracy (in fact, most warned against democracy itself, fearing mob rule); who was included and who wasn't (in various ways women, slaves, the poor, and the propertyless); and, since then, the bumpy, incomplete road to securing rights for all.

I've come to prefer the Declaration of Independence--because of its inclusive vision--to the highly compromised Constitution.

But when 90 percent of the population support something as simple and commonsensical as expanding background checks to include people who buy guns at gun shows or via the Internet, when in spite of this the Senate votes it down, in a somewhat bipartisan way, I despair for my country.

What does representative democracy mean when something that has the support of almost everyone--including a clear majority of Republicans and even NRA members--is soundly defeated?

I can only conclude that it means that a central component of our tripartite government no longer represents us. It represents 7-9 percent of the population who, though ignorant of its original intentions, are fanatically devoted to protecting Second Amendment rights as absolute and sacred.

I know who these folks are. The dead-enders, the paranoid black helicopter crowd. I can look across my lawn here to see one--Dick Morris and his wife whose most recent instant book is The Black Helicopters Are Coming.

They preppers cling, yes they cling, to their assault weapons to defend themselves from their own government. When the black helicopters come for them, they'll be ready to fight back. This is really what it is all about--being prepared to fight the U.S. government. And, of course, to keep weapons manufacturers, who underwrite the worst of the NRA agenda, among the nation's most profitable businesses.

It's their country now, not mine.

If the Sandy Hook parents couldn't mobilize 60 votes in the Senate, what can I do?

I have never felt more powerless. Write letters? To whom? Tweet? Again, to whom? And to what purpose other than attempting to make myself feel better? About something like this, however, it's hard to fool myself that letters and few thousand dollars of campaign contributions will make any difference.

Which of the 46 senators who voted to defeat background checks and who are running for reelection (reelection being the meaning of their lives) is vulnerable? Perhaps only the three Senate Democrats. Wouldn't that be ironic--they'll get knocked off in spite of their cowardly vote and the Republicans as a result will retake control of the Upper House.

It may be close to time to concede that we do indeed live in two Americas. Not red or blue states. That's not fine-grained enough. Look at the 2012 electoral map by county and you will immediately see that by geographic mass almost all of this country is red. The blue parts are mainly concentrated around cities.

So perhaps like black folks who sought relief from segregation by moving north during Jim Crow days, like Eastern European immigrants who clustered on New York's Lower Eastside; and how for other reasons gay people flocked to relatively hospitable cities and, for career reasons, actors found their way to Hollywood and financiers to New York City, maybe it is time for those of us who do not want to have our lives defined by the NRA, weapons manufacturers, so-called right-to-lifers, and antievolutionists, perhaps its time to secede internally--by county, by city, not state as in 1861.

Let's leave to their own devices those fearfully scanning the skies for black helicopters or living in terror of other forms of armageddon. Let's consider decoupling ourselves from their narrative in favor of our own. Maybe it's finally time.