Inauguration Day!

I took these pictures of the sunrise on January 11 because the light was splendid and the color made me stop to enjoy the sight.

Because even the darkest of nights comes to a close.

Because this kind of beauty fills me with hope.

In a few short hours, a new president comes into office.  Finally, we can shed the avarice, greed, and incompetence of the old.  With President Biden, there is Kamala Harris, our first woman Vice President.  Both are cause for great celebration.

Desmond Tutu once said that, “Hope is being able to see there is light, despite all the darkness.”  He and his nation overcame a greater challenge than we face but today, far all the ugly darkness that has been these last four years, I feel the hope.  I see the light.

My heart is full, y’all.  Hope is on the way.

Hope, Fear and Everything in Between

I can’t be the only person who felt that the past few days have been 96 hours of time filled with a historical and political significance greater than such a small amount of hours can rightfully contain.  As long as I’ve taught, I’ve explained to my students that political time is different than regular time, in that significant political events can happen suddenly and that the conflagration and reverberation of them can consume our attention for far longer than the moment lasted.  At the same time, a hard month or a year can feel interminable as you live through it though as historical time such days can often amount to less than a hill of beans.

Both of these things are true, though rarely at once.  And then along comes January 2021 to shake all that what we think we know.  Today I remind myself that there are some things - important things - that we do know.  

Some - perhaps many - of the January 6 Insurgents were bent on ugly violence toward a democratically elected government.  They call themselves patriots even as they fly the flag of a racist - and failed - rebellion.  That is not patriotism.

Donald Trump, a man who won the Electoral College without winning the popular vote, deluded himself into believing that meant something.  After a lifetime of self-absorption he never once considered anything, least of all an oath to uphold the Constitution, more important than his own desires.  Our democracy will pay a price for this far longer than he will govern.

Courage, in the form of some members of Congress and their staffs, some Capitol Hill police officers, and some of our leaders, can inspire.

Other so-called leaders inspire only contempt as they wickedly flee the sinking ship that is the Trump Administration.  Worse yet are those who defend it, hopeful that their own ambitions can find fruition in what remains of the Trump coalition.  Shame on them.  

Cultivating democracy is hard work but the work of us all, undertaken with hope and sustained through our effort and engagement, even as that is hard.  Especially when it is difficult.  President-elect Biden says we can do hard things and we can.  Indeed, we must.

The Deplorables

 I had so many thoughts about Wednesday’s events tumbling about in my head as I tucked into bed that night,  My mind was still whirring when when I got up on Thursday to catch up with the overnight news.  My challenge that day was too quickly make sense of it all so that I could talk it over with my three classes of 8th grade Civics & Citizenship students, using our shared knowledge of Civics and history to try and understand.  When I first proposed teaching this class, I thought that the topic was timely.  But I had no idea how timely it would be.  Throughout the 2020 election season, we’ve explored and discussed the events of the day.  When we broke for Winter Break, my plan for Thursday’s class had been to review how Electoral College certification worked and then to discuss the Georgia Senate elections.  I was ready for that.  Insurrection by Trump’s merry band of deplorables took me by surprise.  

In hindsight, that was foolish on my part.

When class started today, the language of choice for participants in the Capitol Hill takeover was protesters turned rioters.  By the afternoon, they were insurrectionists.  That word gave my afternoon class a better tool to wrap their minds around the events.  The promising news is that the 8th grade saw the events for what they were: an intemperate and foolhardy collection of people bent on while denying the legitimacy of our most recent democratic election because the outcome did not suit their desires.  My students also understood quite clearly that the rules for this mob were different than the rules that BLM marchers faced in their Summer protests. 

That ability to see truths will serve them well as our understanding of the January 6 Insurrection unfolds.  For my part, I hope that the collective memory that lingers from the event is of the way that American democracy endured and triumphed in the aftermath.  As an American, that must be by goal.  I am here for the hard work to come.  For now, that will have to suffice.

Real Life Conversations with T: Millions and Millions edition

The backstory: As we watched the January 6 Senate debate unfold (more on that soon), Kelly Loeffler, Republican from Georgia, stood up to speak.  I turned to T and offered a thought.

Me:  That woman spent $100 million of her own money to get re-elected to the Senate.

T:  No…she spent $100 million to lose the Senate race.

Truth.  Democrats picked up both the seats in Georgia’s January 5 run-off election and with it control of the U.S. Senate.  That good news was overshadowed thanks to the Wednesday’s events at the Capitol.  But when the dust settles, the victory of Rapfael Warnock and Jon Ossoff will matter a great deal.  In these hard times, that is good news.

November 6

Today is my birthday and, like an extra treat, I had the day off from school.  It’s been such a tentative week, filled with hope at one moment and dread in the next so I slept in a bit.  Then, while I stood in the morning sun of the kitchen to pour my first cup of coffee, T came downstairs to let me know that Biden and Harris had taken a slim lead in the Georgia vote count.

In that moment, it felt like the morning sun shone a bit brighter.  The glow of that hopeful light has stayed with me all day.  The warmth of the day, the growing certainty in the outcome of this election, my confidence that help for our nation is truly on its way, has made for a very nice day.  After a nervous week, I can't stop smiling.  In this year of years, that alone is worth celebrating

Though I repeatedly told my students we would not know the outcome of this election on Tuesday, I hadn’t quite realized what that uncertainty would feel like.  I have spent the better part of the last four years convinced that November 3, 2020, would be the day we began the process to bail ourselves out of the disaster that is Donald Trump.  I never wavered in my confidence that he would lose re-election.  But as election day came to a close, though I knew we’d have to wait a few more days to know the outcome, for the first time since he took office I considered the prospect that Trump might win re-election.  

It made for a hard week.  Today, as the clouds cleared to reveal the blue skies of a Biden/Harris victory, I feel hope - real, true, and powerful hope - and I am so profoundly glad of it.  I sat in the backyard all afternoon and gloried in the feeing.  That's happy!

Election Day

On election day 2016, I came home and started to put together the snacks that would form our celebratory Election Night supper.  As I listened to the news on NPR, I sliced cheeses and set out crackers for our customary cheese tray.  I was excited and confident that the end of the night would see a Hillary Clinton victory.  I’d been waiting since I was 16 and at the age of 48 I would finally see a woman elected president.  

We all know how that turned out.

Since that day, we’ve had ample cause and time to regret the outcome of the 2016 election.  No more so than this year, when the steep cost of presidential incompetence shows itself in a daily death count that makes me heartsick.  For every cheese tray I’ve made since 2016 (and we love a cheese tray, so there have been plenty) there is a moment when I reflect on that horrible day in 2016.  I remember the day's excitement as it curdled to dismay and then fear.  I remember the dull anxiety that took hold as we waited out the last days of 2016 and the cold January day in 2017 when I listened too Donald Trump take the oath of office.  

Today is the start of taking back our government.  The list of problems that President Biden and the Democratic Congress will inherit is long and frightening.  But we are a nation filled with smart people who are willing to do the heavy lifting necessary to solve these problems.  And with a president and a Congress willing to lead,  a people willing toe compassionate and kind, it can be done.  It must be done.  This election is a referendum on whether or not we really believe that all of us are created equal and deserve liberty and justice for all.  With all of my heart, I know that the answer is yes.

Let’s. Go.

Election Day Eve

I have an app on my phone that I use to countdown to the anticipated events of life.  Most of the time, the events are the small treats that make up my happy world: a countdown to my birthday, or to a concert to which T and I have tickets, sometimes a countdown until JT comes home, or until the first day of Spring.  Nearly everything to which I look forward is lovely but not necessarily of major consequence.

And then there is the countdown I’ve been watching since the day Donald Trump took office in 2017 and I begin to hope and work toward a new president being elected in 2020.  It’s been a long, long time coming, this day.  I remember November 2019 when we reached 365 days until the 2020 election and I dared to think we might dodge a bullet.  

2020 said ha! to that and then some and as these long days of pandemic anxiety have ticked past I’ve measured time against the coming reckoning.  

Today, with election day just 24 hours away, I feel the first glimmers of lasting hope that I have felt since 2018, when Democrats did so well in Congressional elections.  I had hope in 2016 as well and nothing in the last four years has let me forget how hard that Electoral College loss proved to be.  This time around, fear and  uncertainty still loom; given what happened in 2016, I’m understandably nervous  But there has been so much activism and energy since then.  With each passing hour, I remind myself that lightening won’t strike twice.  Today, I feel excitement and hope that our nation may yet turn the corner from the self-induced wound that is Donald Trump.  And as the countdown ticks through its last hours, my hope grows and grows.

Frontyard Flowerbed in November

As if to prove that I can’t just wear flip flops forever, Mother Nature has delivered a cold rain for most of the past week.  Today is no exception.  

The last few nights have been cold and the front yard flowerbed has been worn down by it all.  

We’ve had one night of frost; more is surely on the way to join the shorter daylight that last night's time change brought us  As we slip into Winter’s cold and quiet, I have plans to clean out this flowerbed and plant some bulbs for next Spring.  The chore will likely wait until the week of Thanksgiving, when I look forward to my first week off from work since last Christmas.  Though it’s hard to say goodbye to warm days, I feel hope that this nation will turn a corner after Tuesday's election and that hope will keep me warm in the coming days.

The Degradation of Democracy

 For as long as I have taught classes on government and politics, I have taught my students that in a democracy citizens get the government that they deserve.  What I mean by that is that democracy requires cultivation.  There must be active participation of the citizens.  To function well, those citizens must do their part - they must try to be informed; they have to ask hard questions and search for real answers.  They must be prepared to reject the lies and deceptions of charlatans.  It’s not easy and it’s made frustrating by politics, the grab for power that all participants in the process sometimes engage in.  But the work to cultivate democracy must happen.  Failure of the citizens to do that work results in the degradation of democracy.  When that happens, the work to restore democracy becomes harder still because the citizens have lost the habits of good citizenship.

I thought of this as I watched the disaster that was Tuesday night’s presidential debate.  It was a real-time display of the shame our republic has become.  To be sure, at the heart of our current crisis is Donald Trump.  He cares only for himself, a fact made apparent over and over since he began his bid for the presidency.  That he has been enabled by a political party so eager to grab power that they are willfully blind to the damage they’ve done to the republic makes the situation much worse.    

On Tuesday night, Joe Biden lost his way more than I would have liked.  The yelling and shouting over one another in a time supposedly devoted to a serious conversation about our national path forward was disgraceful and further proof of the crisis we are in.  A candidate would have to be superhuman not to take the bait from Trump.  But even in the midst of it, Biden persistently regrouped, and sometimes acted like a responsible leader, redirecting the conversation to the needs of his fellow Americans.  It couldn’t have been easy to do; it certainly wasn’t easy to watch.

At the close of the night, as the president of all Americans refused to condemn white supremacy, it felt as if we had achieved a new national low.  In the midst of a series of national crises, including a pandemic he has deliberately and cruelly mismanaged, Donald Trump did what is no longer the unthinkable: he blew the racist dog whistle that he used when he first launched his malevolent ambitions.  This time it was less a whistle than it was a siren.

And so here we are, at a national low point willfully brought on by a man who lied when he swore to uphold our Constitution and the imperfect democratic republic that it created.  Trump is in it for himself and that could ruin us all.  We are in a crisis: a crisis of democracy, a crisis of conscience, and if the president succeeds in persuading his supporters that voting is flawed despite ample evidence that it is not, our low-grade Constitutional crisis will blow up with a fevered roar.  

There is a remedy and it can be found in the citizens.  We must actively participate; we must cast our ballots and we must follow that vote by putting in the hard work to cultivate our democracy.  We must recognize and believe that the whole of this nation is greater than its parts.  I have always believed that we have this power within us. I know the obstacles ahead but still I live in hope.

September Book Report: No Ordinary Time

All summer long, in preparation to once again teach 20th century history, I read (and re-read) books about the last century  One of the very best re-reads was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 1994 Pulitizer Prize winning history, No Ordinary Time, about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the Home Front in WWII.  

The book is carefully researched and thorough; the context of the Roosevelt story is present as the narrative flows well and the reader is never in doubt as to the challenges of the period.  Neither is there doubt about the power of good, capable, strong, measured, and steadfast leadership.  Though the 1940s did not receive (or demand) the transparency that Americans now need in their leaders, neither was the secrecy of the era about deception or a cover for the ignorant and selfish cowardice that I see and hear so often from our current president and his political allies.  

If anything, Franklin Roosevelt took care to provide Americans with the truth always accompanied with a sense that together we could accomplish great things, not just for one another but also for the world.  I miss that sense that our national purpose must be greater than ourselves.  

In the very last speech that he wrote, in April of 1945, as the war in Europe was coming to a close, Roosevelt wrote words reminiscent of his oft-quoted, 1933 reminder that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”  This time writing, “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith,”  the president set the stage for the post-war challenges he knew his nation would face.  Roosevelt would never deliver the words in the form of speech because he died later in the day that he wrote them.  But the words are a solace and comfort today.  

I’ve read these words before but in early September, as I was ginning up for the start of a hybrid teaching school year and watching the events of our coming November election with anxiety-tinged hope, I thought again about our need to face fear and doubts with active faith.  The words have provided comfort throughout this month and, I suspect, they will give me hope for the rest of this crazy year. 

August Book Report: The Nickel Boys

Since I finished reading it, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen to me that The Nickel Boys book might very well be the best book that I have ever read.  I’m a voracious reader so those of you who know me understand what  high praise this is.  This novel deserves it.

Set in Florida in the 1960s, Colson Whitehead’s writing pulls together the story of two teenage boys - Elwood and Turner - who find friendship with one another after they meet at The Nickel School, a juvenile detention center cum reform school of sorts set in Eleanor, Florida.  When the novel first opens, we meet Elwood, a Black teenager who has been raised by his grandmother and is nearly a Senior in high school.  Elwood is bright and hard-working and as he reads and listens to the words of Martin Luther King, Junior, we learn of his plans to attend college, to make a promising life for himself.   We clearly see that he can achieve this modest goal and he comes so close…..

But it’s not to be - something the reader can feel coming with a sickening dread - and Elwood finds himself at The Nickel School, accused of a crime he didn’t commit and descending into a world of fear and injustice that no one deserves.  The fictional Nickel School is based upon a real-life horror, the Dozier School of Florida, which operated for 111 years and is responsible for the kind of systemic injustice that Americans prefer not to think about it.  The Nickel Boys invites the reader to think about it; to think long and hard about the nation we are.

When the Pulitzer Committee awarded the 2020 novel of the year to The Nickel Boys, the committee declared it, "a spare and devastating exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption."  The novel is spare but it is not sparing.  Reading it in the Summer of 2020, amidst the stories of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many, many more African Americans let down by the systems charged with protecting them, the novel’s truths rang with a persistent reminder that we must call out the injustices we witness.  

All In for Joe

Later tonight, Joe Biden will give a speech and accept the Democratic nomination for the presidency.  In that moment, it will feel like help is truly on the horizon for this nation.

Joe Biden wasn’t my first choice for the Democratic nomination but I am enthusiastic in my support of his candidacy.  Together with Kamala Harris, this ticket represents the power of hope and reasoned leadership in a nation that is badly in need of both.  This isn’t just about removing Donald Trump from power (though that is the most important thing we can do to save our democracy).  This is about leaders whose rhetoric reflects actual knowledge and compassion with a commitment to unite us; to move us in the direction of caring deeply for one another.   

The issues that need attention are legion: racial justice, equal rights for women and the LGBTQ community, climate justice. healthcare for all, support for families, a re-organization of our economic priorities, a national plan for dealing with this pandemic (and those that may follow)…..it’s a daunting list.

Justice. Science. Truth. Responsible and compassionate leadership.  It is no exaggeration for me to say that the future of the republic hinges on this election.  Let's go!

Thoughts on the Pandemic

I began a paper journal when the quarantine lock down started.  I have maintained it on a daily basis and my notes and musings are now well into a second book.  It’s filled with details about the COVID-19 and is also a record of the anxieties and fears that have accompanied this strange time.

Because I find it reassuring (or perhaps because I am a weirdo), I’ve also made a record of the case numbers in New Jersey.  I can see the high point in April quite clearly.  In the last month, as the state begin to report it on the daily COVID-19 dashboard it maintains,  I’ve also begin to record the rate of transmission.  For a while, we were below 1, meaning that each case resulted in less than 1 additional positive test.  In the past week, my state’s rate of transmission has tipped upward.  Case numbers are still well below the thousands of daily cases we recorded in April, but thanks to a transmission rate above 1, we remain squarely in a very scary danger zone   Because we have a good contact tracing program, we know the source of these transmissions: large house parties on the Jersey shore.  It’s clear that even in hard-hit New Jersey, a place where virtually all of us know someone affected by this virus, it’s been difficult to get all of us to take the necessary cautions.

In mid-July, it looked like the Northeastern states could re-open in person school of some variety.  With each day that passes, I grow more anxious that we will be unable to manage that successfully.  The prospect of remote school is so unsettling…..we know that children will suffer and lose from it……and yet here we are.  

My fear is only eclipsed by my anger, a place I do not like to occupy.  I count myself among those who felt that getting to 2020 was a victory.  As the year began, I started to count down the last months of Trump in the White House.  But as the days remaining stretch before me with a pandemic in their wake, and a pandemic in our future, I am starting to fear the nature of the recovery from the Trump disaster that we can expect.

The cost of Trump isn’t just the more than 150,000 people who have died from this disease.  It the cost of the racism and lies, the failure to take responsibility and to lead, losses that will linger long after the disease has been vanquished.  I’ve always believed that in a democracy we get the government that we deserve.  But no one deserves this, a misery made worse by the vain and ignorant man some of us (though not a majority!) selected to be at the helm of our government.  

My Back Deck Desk

I am immersed in prepping my Civics and Citizenship class and rather than sit at my desk, I’ve taken operations outside whenever possible.  So it was that Sunday found me working on the back deck  in the afternoon, after spending much of my morning on the front porch.

Staycation is the name of the game this Summer and while I will miss the adventure of seeing someplace new, I am grateful for the blessings of this back deck, where I can enjoy the sunshine and the shade and even fit in a bit of a nap.

Civics and Citizenship

For most of my time as a middle school teacher, I’ve taught at 7th grade history class that spans the time from the founding to the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation.  I know the period well and I like to study and teach it.  I’ve used the point at which the Constitution is adopted to insert some Civics into the mix but the focus has been more on early American history.

Last fall, as my colleagues and I were thinking about revisions of our curriculum, I knew that a change I wanted to make was to insert more civics education into the experiences of my middle schoolers.  We decided that we could revise 8th grade history to take on this challenge.

So I will be teaching a new course come the fall, a class to be called Civics and Citizenship.  We’ll explore American history from the vantage o=point of the meaning of the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution.  The course is driven by the meaning of those amendments and the ways in which the ending of slavery and the requirement of equal protection of the law seeks to both fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence and makes our Constitution a meaningful and important document.

Since I first conceived of the idea behind the course, I’ve been reading and thinking about it.  This summer, as I’m on the runway to the launch of the class,  I am organizing lessons, reading assignments, and pulling together the documents that will be the foundation of the course.  As I do that, I’m thinking about what Civics and Citizenship mean and for the next year, as the course is launched, I will record my thoughts here.

I’m excited to create and teach this course and even more excited to do it now, when thinking about our history and what it means to be American is as important a task as it ever was.

An Ugly History

I usually reserve the first posting of the month for something about my garden.  That post will go live later today.  But this morning my mind is whirling with the events of the weekend, with last Monday’s killing of George Floyd, and with thoughts of how a path forward can be paved.

I stand with the demonstrators and I believe in the power of peaceful protest.  As a student of American history, a teacher preparing a class for the fall of 2020 predicated on the idea that the promise of the 1776 Declaration of Independence and the 1787 Constitution were not made real until adoption of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment in 1868, I know that the American story is fundamentally a story of racism and inequality.

Trump and his white supremacy views don’t help.  But they only the latest in the vein of ugly racism that is our nation’s founding truth.  Until we acknowledge that, we can’t confront or deal with it.  

We are none of us free until all of us are free.  That we ignore this truth is our great national shame.

Truth and 2020

I have a vivid memory of reading about each of the lives of the people killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. For some time, I had taken to doing this for every mass shooting - as if knowing more about the people killed by massive gun violence would be another thing I could do to end the needless deaths.

Sandy Hook was especially hard for me because so many children were involved.  But I did it, convinced that this time things would be different.  Surely, I told myself, this nation would not bury so many 1st graders without taking action to prevent more mass shootings.

I was wrong, of course, and to this day I remain stunned by our callous national indifference to a preventable phenomena.  After Sandy Hook, I continued to support anti-gun measures.  But I quit reading obituaries.  It was too hard on my heart.

I think of this as I mark our approach to 100,000 American dead because of COVID-19.  This morning’s New York Times sits on my desk, its tiny font showing me just of fraction of the people we have lost.  

It’s not as if I didn’t know.  New Jersey has been hit hard by the virus.  I know people who have died of COVID-19.  I know people who are grateful to have survived it.  But the depth of this loss is powerful when viewed in this fashion.

When this new year began, I wrote in my journal that I was glad of the arrival of 2020 because it would be the year that we discard Donald Trump and elect a new president.  I’m not the only person who breathed a sigh of relief that we had made it this far without an epic disaster made far worse because of Donald Trump.

And here we are.

In all fairness, a pandemic is bound to leave its mark on our nation and the world - that’s why its called a pandemic.  Trump is not directly responsible for each of the 100,000 dead in this nation.  But his failure in leadership matters to all of the dead, to the families they leave behind, to all of us.  

The United States is, at best, an imperfect nation.  But our leadership in the world has mattered; it still matters.  In this time of universal need, we could be making a difference.  There is a need to coordinate a worldwide effort to create a testing regime, to organize a national system for contact tracing that could serve as a model for other nations to follow, to organize our own national resources to look after states’ needs for medical supplies so that the supply of ventilators, medications, and PPE needn’t fall short.

The list is long; much longer than this.

Instead, our president has lied and dissembled; has dodged responsibility, and has purposely failed to lead.  He has settled for 100,000 dead as if that is not an epic failure.  Under the NYT headline read the words, “They Were Not Simply Names on a List.  They Were Us.”  We must hold this truth close as we find our way forward.

Political Reality Check

It’s no secret that I am a progressive liberal with a longstanding belief that social justice must be at the core of our democracy.  I don’t oppose capitalism per se;  I believe that there is much to be valued about regulated free markets. But neither do I believe that billionaires are good for our nation.  In the big picture, I see the social democratic style systems of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland as much more egalitarian than the system we live with today in the United States.  Frankly, I prefer them.

I suspect that the United States is not nearly egalitarian enough in our nature to create the underlying political culture for such a system in the United States.  We value individual liberty more than social equality.  But we do have the ability to be much better than we currently are and the pervasive social and economic inequality we live with now is gravely in need of reform.  A tax on incomes greater than a million a year is just the start, but it’s a badly needed beginning.  As our economy evolves and the sorts of middle class manufacturing jobs that were the backbone of our mid-20th century economy are no longer financially sustainable in world markets, we must actively create opportunities for a new economy.  It must be one that sustains and supports people who long for decent-paying jobs.  People seek to live with their families in good homes with safe neighborhoods, well-functioning schools and a reliable, affordable system of healthcare.

These are modest goals and that we cannot achieve them for everyone right now should be a source of deep and grave concern to all of us.   We cannot be the richest nation in the world and have 1 in 4 of our children living in poverty.  

These are the goals of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  In my estimation, Warren’s plans to achieve this kind of America are better developed than Sanders’ policy prescriptions.  But the two candidates are literally the opposite sides of the a well-conceived progressive coin.  Their ideas are not revolutionary; they are evolutionary and progressive.  They were at the core of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society.  They are noble and good.

The hand-wringing and ominous warnings that “socialism” won’t fly; that moderate Democrats won’t vote for a progressive or will vote for Trump instead is the ridiculous fear-mongering and bullshit that got us into this system of grave inequality.  Protection of the top 10% and billionaires will not save us.  The ultra wealthy do not care about the rest of us.  They never have and they never will.

We need serious reform; systemic change of a sort that tells the truth about the inequality we experience and confronts racism.  We need ideas and policies that strengthen the economy for all of us, provide healthcare for all of us, recognizes global climate change and harnesses science and reason to respond to it.

The list of policies we must change is bigger than this and we all know it.  In the face of Donald Trump and his systematic degradation of our nation, arguing for some imaginary “return to normal” is the very worst kind of incrementalism, the kind that ignores the suffering of the most vulnerable among us and advises them to be patient and wait.  

I won’t do it and we can't wait.

I want change; big change; systemic change.  I know that leadership and good ideas win elections.  I want a nation that truly acts as if it believes that all of us are created equal and that we all deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I want it now.

The Granite State Votes Today

Before I make a New Hampshire prediction, it seems appropriate that I acknowledge the mess that was Iowa.

In terms of my own prediction, I was off-base.  I didn’t see Buttigieg trending upward as significantly as he did; neither did I see Biden tanking.  The confusion on the evening of the caucus was nothing compared to the nonsense which followed.  It’s especially frustrating to have such a chaotic start to a campaign in which we - the Democrats - absolutely must demonstrate measured competence.  Given the generally good economic numbers, the only way to beat Trump will be to hammer home his failures as a role model.  The examples here are legion - prayer breakfast, Twitter, any rally speech he gives - but we cannot take it for granted that the nation will reject Trump because he’s a debacle of a human being.

In light of the mess that followed the Iowa voting, it seems more hopeful than ever that the Iowa Caucus has died.  It should do so, largely because Iowa may be a nice place but it is in no way representative of the nation and the caucus process, where voters are expected to hang out for 90 minutes on a cold Winter evening, is not very democratic.  Parents without childcare may not attend; Iowans with jobs to work that night are not included.  Running in Iowa costs campaigns loads of cash when it works; when it doesn’t, it’s a huge waste of time and resources.  It’s time to be done with it.

New Hampshire shows promise as a more organized affair though, like Iowa, it’s a costly and unrepresentative contest.  It appears that Buttigieg got more of a boost out of Iowa than Sanders, largely because exceeding expectations will do that for a candidate.

I think that New Hampshire will be a Sanders win.  Buttigieg and Warren will follow at second and third respectively.  I think Klobuchar will come in fourth and Biden will come in fifth, literally limping his way into Nevada (another caucus - yikes!) and then South Carolina.

Here we go……

Iowa Caucus Predictions

Today is the day!  More accurately, I suppose, tonight is the Iowa Caucus.  In the current Real Clear Politics average, Sanders is ascendent, and I think he will win Iowa tonight.  But how do the rest stack up?  

First round voting starts at 7 pm Iowa time.  Iowa’s caucus rules permit caucus-goers whose first choice does not garner 15% in the first round of voting to cast a second vote.  

I think that Klobuchar will come in 5th and it’s where her voters will go on second vote that interests me.  She’s a moderate and midwesterner, so Biden and Buttigieg are the most likely places for her voters to go.  But she’s also a woman, so Warren should pick up some of Klobuchar’s supporters.  I think Warren picks up more than Buttigieg and that places her third when the evening is done.  Biden will get more of the Klobuchar voters than Sanders at second vote but it won't be enough to overcome the Sanders momentum.

So I think the final vote comes in as follows:

Sanders

Biden

Warren 

Buttigieg

And then we’re off to New Hampshire.  Predictions for the Granite State will be next week.  It’s nice to be underway, y’all, and I am keeping my eye on the prize: a blue White House in November.