On Juneteenth & History

When I first began teaching 8th grade Civics, the Summer reading assignment was an Annette Gordon Reed essay on Juneteenth and its history as a Texas-based celebration of freedom and Black joy.  That was followed with an essay written by historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage, who discussed the history of Confederate memorials.  Brundage’s work pointed out just how many of those monuments had been built either in the 1920s, at the start of the Great Migration and amidst the resurgence of the KKK, or in the 1950s, in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.  The readings were followed by a writing prompt;  students had two options.  They could identify how the United States should memorialize and mark our history of slavery and consider how the nation should celebrate the end of formal slavery.  Or they could make a proposal about what - if anything - should be done with Confederate memorials.

President Biden’s declaration of a federal Juneteenth holiday in 2021 - a very welcome event to my mind - made for a teachable moment in class.  Now we read and learn about Juneteenth in our discussions of the Civil Rights struggle that commenced in Reconstruction and continues today.  I remind my students that there is no national monument or memorial to the end of slavery or, for the that matter, the lives of enslaved people.  We discuss that truth even as we consider the abundance of Confederate memorials that litter the nation.  I’ve watched as Juneteenth has become more and more mainstream - and, quite frankly - corporate.  I envision a time in our not-too-distant future when the same Republicans who expressed skepticism about Juneteenth embrace it with press releases and social media posts that imply they have always been on board with Civil Rights for Black Americans.  That is what has happened with MLK Day, where the Republicans who vigorously opposed making Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday have come full circle and seemingly embrace King, even as they vote to gut the Voting Rights Act.

The blatant hypocrisy to be found in these GOP declarations highlights the path forward in my mind.  There is a continued need for a rigorous and mindful Civics education, one that truly wrestles with our history.  We must acknowledge that many of the good things about our nation’s story exist alongside the very worst sins of humanity.  Until we understand that, we cannot celebrate in good conscience.  I write this not to take away from the current celebrations of Juneteenth, which are a long-overdue, but to remind us that the story of our past must be told in full if we are to truly fulfill our potential as a nation and a people.

January Book Report: Invisible Child by Andrea Elliot

 I read Invisible Child for the faculty book club at school.  I knew of the story from having read some of it in the New York Times, where Elliot worked as a reporter and first conceived of the story.

The book follows the life of a girl named Dasani, born in 2001, and 8 years old and living with her family in a homeless shelter in Brooklyn when the story begins.  We follow Dasani, her parents, and her seven siblings for 10 years.  Elliot’s account is both compassionate toward Dasani and her family and condemning of the discordant and failing maze of social services for homeless families in NYC and, I suspect, the nation.

Dasani and her family are Black and that clearly has an affect on them.  They are homeless and often hungry.  They rely on a social services network that is painfully bureaucratic even while it spends millions of dollars each year without securing safe housing for children and families.  There are more than 75,000 homeless children enrolled in NYC public schools and Elliot’s account of the schools - especially McKinney Middle School in Brooklyn - reveals that these institutions are staffed by teachers and administrators who truly care but who are also trying to provide  education as a balm and solution amidst a torrent of disasters that befall poor children.  It’s too great a task in far too many cases.

 Elliot’s account of ACS and NYC social services is less compassionate.  Though sometimes staffed by people who genuinely care they are just as likely to be overwhelmed by rules and bureaucracy.  Services and care are often dismal as a result.  Since we are talking about children and families, dismal is a disaster. 

At one point, Dasani and her siblings are in foster care - separated from their parents and one another - at a cost in excess of nearly $50,000 a month.  That kind of money would - of course - be better spent housing, clothing, and feeding the family than it would be balkanizing them.  The separation is disastrous for many of the children, not to mention their parents.  The children who do survive it, do so with social and emotional wounds that may haunt them for the rest of their lives.  The best outcome is for a member of the family to be limping along but never thriving.

It is well-known that I prefer a happy book.  This story is not happy.  But it was utterly compelling and revealed a family that had complicated needs and problems but always - always - had love.  In that, there is happiness of a sort.  Love is clearly not enough but it is a start and a social services network that keeps that knowledge at its core might be able to truly help.  It should never be acceptable in this rich nation for a child to be hungry or homeless.  The problems that result from that are assuredly complex.  But, as Elliot thoughtfully demonstrates, the cure need not be worse than the condition itself.  

The Ides of January 6

When the House of Representatives met earlier this week to select the new Speaker of the House, I kept my fingers crossed in the hopes that Republican Kevin McCarthy - of whom I am no fan - would have a rough ride.  Like every other observer, I figured there would be a few defectors - enough to keep the job from McCarthy in a few rounds of voting - before everything settled down and he became the Speaker.  I think that McCarthy thought the same thing but wow….KMc and I were wrong. 

I could not be more delighted. 

From the advent of the racist Tea Party to the Trump-or-die Freedom Party wing of the GOP, I have been waiting for the Republican party to finally blow up.  It’s clear that mainline Republicans have little in common with the Matt Gaetz crew but Republicans have always been good at coming together for the good of the order, if not the good of the nation.  I didn’t think that selecting a new Speaker of the House would bring about a fracture of this magnitude, though it’s a fracture I’ve been waiting to see.

Trump’s nomination in 2016 left me convinced that a GOP breakup was imminent.  I could not believe that the decent Republicans still in the party could make their way forward with the Trumpers.  I was wrong and as the decent folks began to defect from politics all together rather than confront the elephant in the room, the remaining Republicans adjusted quite nicely to the lunacy, even holding on after January 6 when they temporarily had the power to cast Trump out.  I confess that I didn’t see the 2023 Speaker’s election as the point that the party would finally erupt into a circular firing squad.  Yet here we are and, while it lasts, I plan to enjoy it.

I know that it’s not good for the nation; I recognize that it’s a potentially significant fracture in democracy’s skeleton.  I think that if McCarthy does finally get the Speaker’s position, he’s already given away much of the power of the position and he will fail.  His defenders keep repeating that McCarthy is a “good leader.”  The week’s events - and the 11 failed votes to select the Speaker - suggest otherwise and, honestly, point out the real problem of the GOP.  All these years with no faction willing to stand up to the Tea Party, then Trump, and now the Freedom Caucus have left them rudderless and without the ability to lead.  This week’s events are a preview of the dysfunctional House we are about the experience with a Republican majority.  That’s not good for the GOP and it isn’t good for the nation.  At this point, I think the demise of the Republican party is the only thing that can save us.  It seems fitting that we arrive at this moment on January 6.

Saturday, 1/7 update: McCarthy was elected Speaker on the 15th vote but it's looking to be a title in name only, as he negotiated away much of the authority of the position to have the title.  Time will tell how regrettable that decision will prove to be.  I am still convinced that the GOP is fractured beyond recovery and cannot survive in its current incantation.

Climate Reality

My corner of New Jersey is about one inch above the water table on the best days and on Wednesday evening, as the remnants of Hurricane Ida washed through, we were reminded again of that fact.  This storm caused flash flood destruction everywhere and it was only by good luck and the fact that we never lost electricity that we survived largely unscathed.  For most of the night on Wednesday, our basement pump was running every three minutes, just staying ahead of the deluge.      

We’ve spent some time this weekend helping folks who weren’t as lucky as us and everywhere I look in my town is evidence of enormous water damage - wet basement items (including washers, dryers, refrigerators, furnaces, and hot water heaters) emptied onto the curbs of our town; houses moved off their foundations; ruined cars covered in the remnants of dirt that show how high the floodwaters rose.     

I vote on behalf of the planet and I believe in the Green New Deal.  So do the people around me who experienced devastation on Wednesday.  I grow weary of a nation of people who thinks it’s their right to ignore Mother Nature’s urgent call for help and I fear that the continued failure to take heed will bring even more devastation in its wake.     We cannot claim that we weren’t warned. 

In Praise of New Jersey

On Monday, a major water main in my corner of New Jersey broke, as 100 year old water mains will sometimes do.  The water authority notified us at once and a boil water order went into effect.  On Tuesday, while the boil water notice held, we were notified of places to pick up a case of bottled drinking water.  I drove over to one of the 6 locations and in less than five minutes, a case of water was loaded into my car.  The staff and I exchanged the standard Jersey “take care” message and I was home in 10 minutes.

New Jersey gets something of a bad rap nationally and the traffic is as bad as you’ve been led to imagine.  But there are pockets of extraordinary beauty all over this state and our government is good - smart (because it’s mostly Democrats who run the show), responsive, caring, organized, and not prone to bullshit or lies.  

As pandemic stupidity and anti-vaxing rages in the vast fly-over parts of this nation, I have grown to appreciate New Jersey more than ever.  The people here are a community; we look after and try to do right by one another.  

I’ll take it.

Loss and Hope

In the New York Times today there was an article about Covid (and it seems like every article is about Covid…..but that is a topic for another day), a chaplain at a hospital in California, speaking about the ways in which people are dying alone in the pandemic explained how she and her staff try to ease the loneliness and grief of families losing a loved one in the pandemic.  She explained how they look to find opportunities to make human connections in these moments.  One example really stood out to me.  She explained, “We Zoomed in a person’s son who was incarcerated, and she hadn’t seen him for years before she died.”

The description hit me like a sucker punch.  This seems so undeniably sad and such an indictment of our national character.  How can justice be served by punishing people who are incarcerated by denying them access to the people who love them?  How can we hope to build a strong community for all of us when we punish families in this way.  So much of the way we live has changed in the pandemic and I hope that when we get to the other side we work on treating people - all of us - better.  We need to re-think the ways in which we use prisons and jails in our justice system.  No one, no matter how terrible their crime, should be so isolated that they cannot see their family while they are incarnated.  There is nothing to be gained by such cruelty and so much of us that is lost because of it.

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.

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. 

A Neck Less Burdened

I was in the car Friday evening, half listening to NPR, when the top of the hour headline reported that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away.  I immediately pulled over to catch my breath and confirm the news.  With no confirmation at the New York Times website or even at NPR, I drove home trying to convince myself that I had misheard the headline.   The immediate silence of my phone let me briefly believe it.  But as I pulled into town my phone blew up with texts.  The overwhelmingly sad news was confirmed by each of those dings.

My son.

Then my sister.

And my mother.

Three friends.

It was true.

To say that we’ve lost an icon is to underestimate the value of RBG in the world, but especially in the world of women my age.  I am 52 and though I am well-familiar with sexism, I came of age with opportunities that Justice Ginsburg never had and that her work provided for women like me.  Because of her efforts, I came of age with a neck less burdened by the feet of powerful men.  It was the thing she sought when she appeared before the Super Court as a litigant in 1970s, working tirelessly to give women access to the equal protection of the law promised us all by the 14th amendment.  

It was a goal she continued to work toward when she joined the Supreme Court in 1993, only the second female justice on the Court.

I am grateful to Justice Ginsburg for a lifetime of work on behalf of true equality under the law.  It’s clear that she hoped to serve long enough to be replaced by a Democratic president.  She’s gone and we cannot give her that wish.  But we can honor her lifetime of service and her final wish by fighting harder than ever for a nation of justice for all.  She gave us our chance and the least we can do is work harder than ever to secure it for the next generation.  

Thank you, Justice Ginsburg.  Rest in power.

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.

Dreaming Big and Working Hard - Warren for President!

The primary season has been underway for a long time but tomorrow's Iowa Caucus, signals the start of actual voting.  I am glad it’s underway.  As the voting unfolds, I'll have predictions for every primary but today I plan to make clear my choice for the Democratic nomination.  

Representation matters, so it matters that Elizabeth Warren is a woman.  When she greets girls at her events and tells them that she’s running for president “because that’s what girls do,” my heart swells.  Always, but especially in the last three years, I am aware of the dangerous sexism and ugly mysogyny that pervades this nation.  Warren stands tall in the face of it, embraces her status as woman who was once a working mom, and shows her brilliant command of the issues at every turn.  She has a plan and it’s a good one.

And make no mistake: her plans are exceptional  They are well thought-out, ideologically unified, thoughtful, and practical.  Her own story as the daughter of a working class family informs her solutions to the nation’s problems.  And her solutions are well-fleshed out proposals rich with ideas.  Again, the contrast to the last three years of presidential “policy” is telling, but my support for Warren runs far deeper than that.  We need structural change and a nation that does more than give corporations and millionaires additional tax cuts.  Warren has a plan for that.

My support for Warren is because of her plans, all of them.  There are a lot, which speaks to the strength of her candidacy: she's not afraid to take a stand.  I especially support her detailed plans to address the needs of black Americans, ease the student loan burden, take on maternal mortality in the U.S., to address climate change, take on economic equality, and provide support for working parents.  I want major structural change and she has plans for that.  Warren is smart and capable and I respect her.  I love her boundless energy on the campaign trail and her belief in an America that works for all of us.  That matters in right now.

Work hard.  Dream big.  That is my America.  I want a nation that works for all of us.  I am so very ready for a change and look forward to President Elizabeth Warren.

The Framers Can’t Protect Us from Ourselves

As the farce that is the Republican-controlled Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump unfolds, I find myself turning toward the coming Democratic primary elections as a sort of tonic against the madness that is this trial.  It’s not that I don’t support the impeachment: I emphatically do and could happily add a half dozen more charges to the list.  But I can already see the writing on the wall:  the Republican Senators plan to carry water for their president and this entire process is going to be play acting of the very worst sort.

It’s not that the players lack seriousness.  The Democratic House managers believe the president should convicted and removed.  The Republican Senators are determined to protect their man.  And so we all go through the motions, in the process making a sham of the Constitution.

The resilience of the American experiment is thus being tested.  Watching that process unfold is disturbing and scary.  In his closing remarks on Thursday evening, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s emotional conclusion pointed out the fact that the Constitution demands we make decisions between right and wrong.  Then he made the most important point: “The Framers can’t protect us from ourselves.”

It boils down to just that.  We have our republic.  Can we protect and keep it?