Vote Joe to Show You Give a Shit

We’re only a few hours from election day now, and I decided to go back and look at what I wrote after Trump won in 2016. Here’s what I wrote:

Remember this feeling. Remember how revolting tonight has been. Store this memory away, and come back to it in 2018, 2020, and in every other local, state, and national election.

Apathy has created this reality. Our generation does not vote with the consistency or conviction of older voters who hold different values than we do.

We cannot wake up and care about politics once every four years. Everyone needs to use this loss as a motivating tool to increase our engagement in the political process and to reform the Democratic Party to ensure this never happens again.

The rest of the world is looking on in shocked disgust that Trump has won, and Russia successfully influenced our election. History will not look kindly on America today, but let’s use this as the moment that we decided, together, as a generation, to start giving a shit.

November 9, 2016

I still remember that pain, and I pray enough people have decided to give a shit in the past four years that we can wrest control of our democracy away from power-hungry, fascist-adjacent conservatives who actively try to undermine our democracy through voter suppression, divisive rhetoric, and white supremacy. I don’t want to feel that way again.

The polls may be comforting right now. You might think an 89% chance is pretty great. But I don’t know how you bake into a model the abhorrent tactics conservatives are employing to sow distrust in the election’s outcomes:

• Voter intimidation (Trump telling his supporters to “watch the polls” and supporting the caravan of supporters who swarmed the Biden tour bus in Texas this weekend)
• Court cases to toss ballots in the garbage that were collected appropriately (see: Harris County curbside voting)
• Voter suppression (too many to count: Voter ID laws, limits on voter registration, weird rules for who can vote absentee, closing of polling locations in minority neighborhoods, etc)
• Republican states and courts putting limitations on when absentee ballots can start to be counted.
• Brett Kavanaugh arbitrarily arguing that we need to be able to announce the winner on election night for literally no reason
• Trump openly and repeatedly refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power
• Trump sowing distrust in the validity of absentee votes and saying he won’t commit to waiting for all ballots to be counted before declaring himself the winner. Think about this. The Republican party is intentionally making it hard to count absentee ballots quickly, and they are planning on de-legitimizing the validity of absentee ballots counted after election day. This is in total bad faith.

When you add to that laundry list of antidemocratic tactics the fact that we know that Russia and Iran are interfering in our election, it sure can be hard to trust that our election will be fair.

But we can only control what we can control. We can ensure everyone we know has voted and supported Joe Biden. Because without a landslide win, we will be in murky territory tomorrow night. If it’s not a landslide, demand that all votes are counted before a winner is announced. It very well might be election week or election month by the time we know who won. Indeed, it’s very possible that Trump may look like he’s winning tomorrow night, only to lose key states as more absentee votes are counted in the days following.

So get out and get us across the finish line. Show that you give a shit.

Vote Joe to Save and Improve Lives

As of writing, ~229,000 people in the US have died due to COVID-19. The US Civil War had ~215,000 combat deaths and World War II lost ~291,000 Americans in combat, putting COVID-19 up there with the bloodiest wars in American history in terms of death count.

Notice that this Business Insider analysis put 240k as the high end of the estimate back in March 2020, and we’re already at 229k seven months later.

But COVID-19 did not have to be this morbid. Globally, there have been 1.18 million deaths due to COVID-19, meaning the US holds 19.4% of the world’s deaths due to COVID-19, but we are only 4.25% of the world’s population. We must hold our elected officials accountable for that overrepresentation in the global COVID-19 death count.

COVID-19 in America

The Democratic party in America committed early to trusting scientists and taking the precautions necessary to flatten the curve, while the Republican Party stoked anti-science sentiment and mocked mask-wearing and social distancing, claiming that Democrats were overreacting to the virus. Here in Wisconsin, Governor Evers tried to institute a statewide stay-at-home order only to be struck down by the conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court. A conservative militia in Michigan wanted to kidnap Governor Whitmer (and Governor Northam in Virginia!) due to restrictive policies that slowed the spread of coronavirus.

The rest of the world prevented cases much more easily than we have in America, and I truly believe the difference is the prominence and presence of the Republican party in America. Through decades of climate skepticism and sowing distrust in scientific authorities, the Republican party’s logical endgame when COVID-19 arrived was to belittle the gravity of the virus and to kick and scream as our nation’s scientists explained the steps we all needed to take to save lives. Out of a desire to have things go back to ‘normal’, Republican politicians across the country have challenged mask mandates and have reopened businesses only to then preside over outbreaks in their backyards. The virus doesn’t care what your politics are, and as the virus spread from the mostly Democratic cities in March to now the Upper Midwest in October, setting new records as we head into flu season, it is clear that we as a country have failed to meet this challenge. The next nine months or so until we get a vaccine will be dark, and I’m not naïvely thinking that Biden winning will immediately end the virus. But when Fauci suggests this week that we should consider a national mask mandate, I know Biden would take that advice seriously.

At this point, we all know the story of how we got here. Trump knew COVID-19 would be bad in February and he downplayed it. He suggested it would be gone by Easter. Then he said warmer weather would make it go away. Seriously, the list of his lies about COVID-19 are incredibly sad. He desperately wants this to go away, and I do too! I wanted to believe him when he said we’d have a vaccine before the election. But his constant, unapologetic lying only leads to more deaths. As President, the buck stops with him, but he’s desperate to avoid blame. At the last debate when asked about the deaths from COVID-19, he, absurdly, responded, “I take full responsibility. It’s not my fault.”

Republicans claimed throughout this year that the economy needed to remain ‘open’ and that the ‘cure can’t be worse than the disease’, but those strategies to keep states ‘open’ even in the spring ruined our chance at containing COVID-19 and then opening up businesses after the virus got under control. A number of countries around the world took the appropriate steps to test, contract trace, and issue public health guidelines that people took seriously, and those countries are now closer to normal than anyone. Look at how New Zealand handled it. Or South Korea. A quick, intense public health response in the spring could have made a world of difference and could have allowed more businesses to reopen sooner, saving workers’ jobs and promoting well-being.

Instead, we have a record 40 million people filing unemployment due to COVID-19, obscene numbers of evictions and homelessness, and billionaires earning half a trillion dollars during the pandemic while workers suffer. The Trump administration did do one thing right, and that was the $1200 stimulus check sent to each American earning under $75,000. While only a single payment, we need to consider direct payments to citizens as a form of social security more often; it’s why I’m a huge proponent of a universal basic income. I wish the Trump administration had made the stimulus check a monthly tool to keep people afloat in the midst of economic turmoil and job loss.

The Economy

But if you look at Biden’s and Trump’s actual plans for the economy, even the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs agrees that a Democratic sweep would lead to a faster economic recovery than continuing to entrust our government to the Republican party. And Moody’s estimates that Biden’s plan would create 7.4 million more jobs than Trump’s plan.

Biden understands how many jobs can be created in sectors like clean energy, education, and caregiving while also committing to policies that will help working people like a $15 minimum wage, universal sick leave. And his anti-poverty plan actually gets me pretty excited. According to analysis, it could life 20 million Americans out of poverty, cutting the poverty rate in half through interventions like universal section 8 housing vouchers, a $3,000 per year child allowance, and Senator Harris’s LIFT act that will provide new tax credits for low-income households. This is genuinely big deal — for the wealthiest country in the world to still have 41 million Americans in poverty is a testament to our inability to empathize with those struggling to put food on the table and an overreliance on rugged individualism as the explanation for who’s successful and who isn’t.

Healthcare

But perhaps the issue most brought into focus by the COVID-19 pandemic is healthcare. We saw this year how poorly our healthcare system is set up to handle a massive pandemic. When someone has to rely on their job for their health coverage, losing your job often means losing your health coverage. And this year, a lot of people lost their jobs, and thus their healthcare. In the middle of a pandemic. And beyond the immediate health crisis of potentially contracting COVID-19, we are also facing a second surge of healthcare needs as financial insecurity, social isolation, and other social determinants of health have seen dramatic increases in prevalence due to the pandemic, leading to a tidal wave of mental health issues. We need to separate employment from benefits generally, but thankfully due to Obamacare we have more folks covered by Medicaid and an ability to purchase healthcare coverage on the insurance exchange. Now that’s under threat too. Trump repeatedly has said he wants to get rid of Obamacare, and he might get his chance shortly after the election, when the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court decides on a case that may wipe away Obamacare, throwing even more people off of their insurance in the middle of a pandemic.

So on one hand we have Trump, looking to throw millions of people off of their insurance, but on the other we have Biden aiming to build upon Obamacare and add a public option that will drive prices down and force private insurance companies to stay competitive with a government-run plan. Is it a perfect plan? No. Do I wish it was a single payer plan? Of course. But in the middle of pandemic, we’ve seen how our healthcare system isn’t equipped to meet our country’s needs right now.

Kaiser Family Foundation

So the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic led to more deaths than expected and his economic plan is decidedly worse for average working people. Trump wants to throw people off of health insurance while Biden wants to drive costs down and make insurance more widely available.

It’s pretty clear who would save and improve lives if elected.

Vote Joe to Defend Diversity

At America’s core is a central struggle: are we a country that embraces multiculturalism and immigrants from around the world (as evidenced by the Statue of Liberty and our ‘melting pot’ analogies), or are we a country for, by, and of white people?

The Origins of the American White Caste

I recently read Witnessing Whiteness by Shelly Tochluk, which empowers white people to do ally work by reconciling their whiteness with the privileges it bestows upon us (whether we know it or not). It’s not to say that white people cannot have it tough — of course life can be hard for white people — but we will always benefit from structural racism that treats whiteness as the default and as ‘normal’. But perhaps the most interesting part of the book was a chapter on America’s history of whiteness.

Tochluk’s research found that America (and really the world) didn’t think of itself in racial terms before the late 17th century. But then came Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, where poor Black slaves and poor white indentured servants rose up against the plutocratic elite to demand better working conditions, wages, and an overall fairer economic system. In the wake of that successful rebellion, those in power sought to divide the poor against each other by passing and enacting laws that granted more rights and freedoms to white people and fewer rights and freedoms to Black people. This intentional division sparked the social construction of race and ‘othered’ Black people in particular to a category frequently treated as subhuman. The white bourgeoisie weaponized race to stew hatred within the multiracial proletariat in order to protect their economic interests.

This founded the identity of ‘whiteness’ as an American ideal, which we can see in America’s perception of Manifest Destiny and in how settlers treated Native Americans. We also see this in the 1800s and 1900s as immigrants from around the world moved to America but only the immigrants of European descent eventually assimilated into the dominant caste of American society. And if you look at how America determined its naturalization laws for who can become an American citizen, as early as 1790 our laws explicitly stated that someone had to be white to become a U.S. citizen. But even more shockingly — that prerequisite of being white to become a citizen remained in place until 1952! That’s 162 years of requiring whiteness to become a citizen. (There were a few exceptions over the years; namely, in 1870 America allowed newly freed Black slaves to become citizens, and Native Americans were granted citizenship on a tribe by tribe basis up until 1924. And the law concerning birthright citizenship only explicitly included all racial minorities in 1940.) That means that immigrants from around the world had to petition to (and aspire to) be considered ‘white’ in order to naturalize, and there were examples of people from Mexico, Syria, India, and Arabia occasionally getting approved as ‘white’ while other compatriots were denied.

I also recently listened to the audiobook of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, which convincingly argues that the world has seen three major caste systems in its history: the Indian caste system, Nazi Germany’s intentional persecution of Jewish people, and America’s ongoing subjugation of Black people since they were first brought to America as slaves. On first blush you may revolt at such a claim, but when you consider the lessons Nazi Germany deliberately learned from white America’s racism and methods to suppress Black Americans, the comparison rings true. The Three-Fifths Compromise, a Civil War instigated by the Confederacy to protect the right to enslave Black people, Reconstruction, Plessy v Ferguson, the Tulsa Massacre, Brown v Board of Education, lynching, the KKK, Jim Crow laws, the Southern Strategy, the war on drugs, redlining, gentrification, broken windows policing, the Flint water crisis, the school to prison pipeline, police violence, Dylann Roof, Amy Cooper, Walter Wallace Jr: America’s history is inseparable from the violent, constant oppression of Black people.

When you look at the long history of structural racism in America, it’s hard to argue that we ever truly wanted to be multicultural and a home to “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” as the Statue of Liberty puts it. Every step of the way, Black Americans face hurdles, resistance, and skepticism. So when politicians argue that we’re beyond race or that they don’t see race, or, let’s say, they claim they are on par with Abraham Lincoln, understand that there is still a whole lot wrong with race in America, and it’s on us (in particular the white us) to do the work to rectify the generations of compound disadvantage heaped upon Black Americans.

Evidence of Systemic Racism

Do you really need a list of ways in which Black Americans are disadvantaged? Okay, here’s a (non-exhaustive, but exhausting) list:

• Black workers have historically earned far less income than white workers.

• The racial wealth gap means the median Black American owns ~$150,000 less in wealth than the median white American.

Figure 1. White families have more wealth than Black, Hispanic, and other or multiple race families in the 2019 SCF. Source: Federal Reserve Board, 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances.
Notes: Figures displays median (top panel) and mean (bottom panel) wealth by race and ethnicity, expressed in thousands of 2019 dollars.

• White high school dropouts on average have more wealth than Black college graduates.

• Black mortgage applicants are more likely to be denied loans than white applicants.

• Black women are 2-3 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

• Black people are more likely to be killed by police officers than white people.

MappingPoliceViolence.org

• Black people use marijuana about as often as white people but are arrested at significantly higher rates for possession.

• Black prisoners make up the largest demographic of incarcerated people, way outpacing their overall representation in society.

• Black Americans disproportionately are getting COVID-19 and dying from it compared to white Americans.

• Black Americans saw a marked decrease in self-assessed life evaluation during the Trump administration compared to similar self-assessments by white Americans.

• Black Americans face higher unemployment rates during the COVID-19 pandemic than white Americans.

The list could go on and on. Even something as innocuous as property taxes can disadvantage Black people, as property taxes are dependent on property tax assessments but these assessors do not account for the lower rate of home appreciation in minority neighborhoods, effectively charging minority homeowners a higher property tax for living in a nonwhite neighborhood.

From the moment Black Americans are born to the moment they pass away, they face an uphill battle that is meant to discourage them. It’s like running up a down escalator. You can make it to the top, and some will, but it’s pretty hard to pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you have to put in so much effort just to stay where you are.

The Divider-in-Chief

But what does this have to do with this election? Diversity of course means much more than just Black vs white America, and Trump has a long record of ‘othering’ groups that don’t conform to the white Christian American mold:

• Trump placed an ad in 1989 in four NYC newspapers, including the New York Times, calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five, who were five Black and Hispanic young men wrongfully convicted of raping a jogger in NYC.
• Trump was a major voice of birtherism that questioned President Obama’s citizenship.
• At his campaign kickoff in 2016, he claimed that immigrants from Mexico were bringing crime, drugs, and were rapists.
• He criticized a Muslim gold star family as they mourned the death of their son who was killed during his service.
• He claimed that a U.S. judge of Mexican ancestry could not be impartial in a Trump University lawsuit.
• He mocked a disabled reporter.
• He instituted a Muslim ban to prevent travel to the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
• He said there were “very fine people on both sides” after white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia chanted “Jews will not replace us” and murdered Heather Heyer.
• He called predominantly Black countries “shithole countries”.
• He banned transgender citizens from serving in the military.
• He (and Jeff Sessions) knowingly separated children from their parents at the border in detention facilities in order to deter immigration. This may be the most overlooked part of Trump’s record — what has happened at the border under his watch is abhorrent and criminal.
• In the wake of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and Ahmaud Arbery murders (among many more), Trump frequently calls Black Lives Matter a hate group and sent in federal officers to Portland to quell protests.
• During the 2020 presidential debates and town halls, Trump repeatedly fails to condemn white supremacy and the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Similar to the waves of evidence of systemic racism in America, the list of Trump’s transgressions against minorities is endless. I just got tired finding links to everything. And I’m sure you read this and thought of five more I missed. But when you hear Trump claim that he’s been the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln, the evidence clearly suggests otherwise. And with 91% of Black Americans voting for Clinton in 2016 and only 6% for Trump, it certainly seems that Black Americans know which political party actually represents their interests and don’t fall for revisionist history arguments about how Lincoln was a Republican and how Democrats owned slaves. These arguments are easily refuted by an 8th grader in Social Studies class who knows how party ideology has switched over the years.

How is Biden Better?

During the primary, Biden consistently polled the highest with voters of color, and in particular the Black Democrats in South Carolina bucked Iowa and New Hampshire’s trends and gave Biden the key win he needed in the primaries to consolidate his coalition and dwarf the rest of the field. He’s done the work and built the trust with communities of color over decades in politics, and it does mean something that America’s first Black president chose him to be his VP.

This isn’t to say Biden doesn’t have his issues. Back in January I ranked Biden 7th in the Democratic primary field and had this to say:

From his dismissive treatment of Anita Hill at the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 to his vote for the Iraq war and his dreadful record on criminal justice policy (that absolutely contributed to the mass incarceration problem we have today), he’s been on the wrong side of a lot of issues over time and he’s been late to adapt his views and acknowledge the role he played in some of these areas, (e.g. supporting the Hyde Amendment). 

I still believe Biden is weaker on race relations and progressive solutions to systemic racism than Bernie or Warren would have been. But there are reasons to be optimistic. His Lift Every Voice plan seeks to address racial inequities, and while it can improve, it’s miles better than Trump’s Platinum Plan (and, come on, Trump won’t actually follow a plan anyway). He’s willing to admit when he was wrong in the past, and two members of his inner circle are Black women, the Democratic Party’s core constituency. He chose a Black and South Asian woman as his VP in Kamala Harris, and he hired former Bernie 2016 national press secretary Symone Sanders to advise his campaign in the early stages of the primary.

But on a related, and more human level, I trust Biden to exercise empathy when it comes to understanding the impact of systemic racism and discrimination on the basis of sex, race, gender, religion, immigration status, or anything else. Biden’s firsthand experience with loss crystalized his ability to channel empathy for whomever he meets who has lost a loved one due to police violence, COVID-19, military duty, cancer, or any other determinant. That empathy cannot be taught, but it is critical in reflections on American society and the policy remedies that must be considered to achieve justice.

As Biden reiterated at the last debate, he will be a president for all Americans, which will be a welcome change.

Vote Joe to Defend Democracy at Home

The fight to protect liberal democracy is not only a fight overseas, as I wrote in my previous post. At home in America we face a democratic deficit that would make us raise our eyebrows if it were the case in a different country. At every level of government, the Republican party has fought — and succeeded — in tipping the scales to overvalue their own voters and impose minority rule.

The Electoral College

We elect the president through an archaic process called the Electoral College, which allocates electors on a winner-take-all basis within each state. Instead of merely tallying the total number of votes in the country and choosing a winner by popular vote, we instead immediately write off ~40ish states as too Democratic or too Republican to matter, leaving the actual election up to a few swing states that could feasibly go either way. So not only does someone’s vote in swing state Arizona carry more importance than someone’s vote in reliably Republican Tennessee (even though both states are worth 11 electoral votes), some states have a disproportionate amount of power due to the sheer mathematical way we determine a state’s electoral college allotment. Each state’s electoral college value equals the number of their seats in the Senate plus the number of seats in the House, so some states are disproportionately valued in the electoral college.

For example, according to the Washington Post after the 2016 election,

“Wyoming has three electoral votes and a population of 586,107, while California has 55 electoral votes and 39,144,818 residents. Distributing the electoral vote evenly among each state’s residents suggests that individual votes from Wyoming carry 3.6 times more influence, or weight, than those from California.”

Rural (and generally whiter) states carry more weight than their urban (and more diverse) counterparts, and since Republicans tend to perform best in rural communities (with Democrats performing better in urban areas), the Electoral College quite literally overvalues Republican voters compared to Democratic voters. It should come as no surprise that since the year 2000, two of the three times a Republican won the Presidency, they won without winning the popular vote. Bush lost the popular vote by approximately 0.5% in 2000, and Trump lost it by 2.1% in 2016. And according to 538, there’s a 9% chance that Trump wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote. (For comparison, he only has a 4% chance of winning the popular vote.) We need the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to instead elect the popular vote winner, and we need it yesterday.

The Senate

The Senate is arguably even less democratic than the Electoral College. By giving two seats to every state, it clearly overvalues less populous (and frequently Republican) states. And since the Senate acts as the more important legislative body, responsible for Supreme Court confirmations among other duties, it is incredibly difficult for Democrats to win a majority. During the impeachment trial, we saw this come to the fore as senators representing 153 million Americans outvoted senators representing 168 million Americans to block additional witnesses at the trial. Even worse, the Senate under Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to be fair, has embraced another arcane tradition called the filibuster to essentially prevent legislation from passing with fewer than 60 votes in the Senate, so any progressive legislation is essentially held hostage unless we get a supermajority of 60 seats. By definition it’s anti-democratic when a majority of Americans are subject to the will of a much whiter, much more rural minority.

The House

And then there’s the House. In theory, it should be fairer, as House seats are allocated by population, but in 2010 we saw a concentrated effort from Republicans across the country to redraw congressional maps at the federal and state level to benefit Republicans after the 2010 census. By ‘cracking and packing’ electorates, they were able to craft maps that ensured the Republicans secured more seats with fewer votes necessary. For example, take our adopted home state of Wisconsin and its state Assembly, the lower house of our state government. According to the Milwakuee Journal Sentinel in 2018:

“GOP Gov. Scott Walker lost his bid for re-election by roughly 1 percentage point Nov. 6 to Democrat Tony Evers. Yet Walker carried 63 of the state’s 99 state Assembly districts.  

In fact, the data show that 64 of the 99 districts are more Republican than the state as a whole, based on their vote for governor.

In other words, Republicans enjoy a built-in 64-35 advantage in the partisan makeup of the 99 Assembly districts. In a hypothetical 50-50 election, in which there are equal numbers of Democratic and Republican voters in Wisconsin, no one crosses party lines and independents split down the middle, that translates into a massive 29-seat GOP advantage in the Assembly. That’s very close to the 27-seat margin (63-36) that Republicans won last month.”  

But gerrymandering isn’t restricted to state legislatures. An analysis of gerrymandering in US House races from 2012 to 2016 found that 59 seats per race shifted due to partisan gerrymandering. Yes, both parties are guilty of this, but Republicans got a net gain of 19 seats per election due to this practice. As we prepare to draw new maps following the 2020 census, Democrats have been far more vocal in calling for nonpartisan commissions to redraw state maps, taking the power out of the hands of the politicians. As the common refrain goes: “Voters should pick their politicians. Politicians shouldn’t pick their voters.”

The Supreme Court

In 2016, Mitch McConnell executed a brazen, calculated strategy to refuse a hearing to replace the recently deceased Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. At that moment in February 2016, with President Obama having already nominated Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the bench, the balance of the court sat at four justices nominated by Democratic Presidents and four nominated by Republicans. This vacancy would shift the balance of the court to the Democratic side if Obama could confirm Garland. So McConnell made a huge bet — that he could convince America that we shouldn’t nominate a new Supreme Court justice during an election year, and that Donald Trump would upset Hillary Clinton to win the Presidency. We all know what happened next. Four years later, Trump stole that seat and nominated Neil Gorsuch to the bench, and when the swing vote Anthony Kennedy retired a few years later, Trump nominated the aggressive Brett Kavanaugh to replace him, cementing a 5-4 conservative-leaning court. And then, as if 2020 couldn’t get worse, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a progressive icon, passed away two months before the election. So what did Mitch McConnell do? Did he accept the rule he so fiercely clung to in 2016 and waited until after the election to replace her? Of course not. Instead, we now have flagrant hypocrisy from Senate Republicans like Lindsay Graham (R-SC):

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, ‘Let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination,’ ” he said in 2016 shortly after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. “And you could use my words against me and you’d be absolutely right.”

NPR

He didn’t care. So here we are, with a deeply unpopular President who lost the popular vote working with Senate Republicans who represent a minority of Americans to cement a 6-3 conservative leaning court. And because Supreme Court justices serve for life, Trump’s nominees are all in their 40s and 50s, likely to serve for 30-40 more years.

All three branches of government have antidemocratic systems in place that overvalue the voice of white, conservative Americans, which in turn overrepresents Republicans in national politics.

Americans often say that we love democracy, that our Founding Fathers were geniuses who shouldn’t be second-guessed, but the way our democracy is functioning proves that something needs to change, as a person’s vote matters more or less based on where they live within this country. It’s not unpatriotic to admit we have a problem – patriotism is loving your country so much that you can point out where we need to get better.

And this isn’t even getting into the issues related to the lack of accountable democracy for American territories and protectorates like Puerto Rico and American Samoa, nor the taxation without representation happening in Washington DC. Or the fact that Republicans openly tried to manipulate the 2020 census by including a citizenship question to discourage immigrants from filling it out in order to decrease overall numbers of residents in primarily blue states to then decrease funding for those cities and states.

The ‘Red Mirage’ in the Making

We’re slowly walking into a major national crisis in the coming weeks. Republicans have spent decades trying to convince America that voter fraud is a rampant problem that swings election, like when Trump casually claims that ‘millions voted illegally’ in 2016 or when Republicans fabricated lies that illegal voters were bussed from Mississippi to Alabama to swing the Alabama special Senate election in favor of the Democrat Doug Jones. These are frankly untrue, but in the face of a pandemic where Democrats are more likely to vote by mail than Republicans due to the (stupidly) partisan divide on how dangerous the pandemic is, we have seen Republicans across the country seek to discredit the legitimacy of absentee voting.

These efforts to discredit mail-in voting dovetail sickeningly well with the Republicans’ decades long voter suppression efforts in Democratic-leaning districts and/or bases by enacting voter ID laws, restricting when and how you can register to vote, purging voter rolls, closing polling locations to leave only a few sites in some of America’s most Black neighborhoods, and preventing formerly incarcerated citizens from voting. And now, the 2020 election offers a serious chance for Republicans to cash in their chips. Because record numbers of voters are voting by mail, we likely will not know the result of the election on the night of November 3rd. In fact, it may take weeks to determine the winner as mail in ballots will take time to count and as states differ on when they will start processing ballots and by when a ballot must be received and postmarked in order to count. Some analysts are talking about a ‘Red Mirage’ on November 3rd where Trump looks like he’s winning in key swing states because the election day in-person vote is more likely to lean Republican vs the mail-in vote which will lean Democratic. So if Trump claims victory on November 3rd only for more votes to come in and flip a state’s electoral votes to Biden, there’s a strong chance Trump will seek to discredit those ballots with cries of voter fraud. And with a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court in charge of sorting out any election questions, we could be staring down the barrel of a constitutional crisis. Trump already refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and he never promised to avoid claiming victory on election night. We are in this situation due to calculated antidemocratic systems that pervade every level of government.

And, of course, in the background of all of this lives a shady system of business interests masquerading as SuperPACs to fund politicians and secure favorable policy to help secure higher shareholder profits. The Citizen’s United court case (which allowed companies to essentially spend as much as they want on political races) was decided by a conservative court and exemplifies what McConnell and other Republicans are counting on: even if they lose majorities in Congress and the Presidency, the Supreme Court can step in and enshrine conservative policy while striking down any progressive policy passed by Democrats.

So what can we do?

Number one: Admit we have a problem. Number two: Tackle the corruption and symbiotic relationship between profit-obsessed business and politicians. I supported Warren in the primary, and this was her number one issue because without fixing this, we really can’t make meaningful change on climate change, health care, education, or any other policy we want to pass. Joe Biden understands what the Republicans will do if he wins — he saw it as Vice President, and by strengthening his relationship with Warren, I’m optimistic he will take on corruption in a similar manner.

But everything should be on the table. We should consider structural reform for the Supreme Court, ranked choice voting across the country, multi-member districts, statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington DC, and an abolishment of the Electoral College. Because if we don’t make these reforms, a smaller and smaller percentage of Americans will hold the rest of the country hostage with no incentive to change plans or policy.

But none of this happens if we don’t elect Joe Biden. And realistically, Joe needs to win the national popular vote by seven or eight points to make it clear on election night that Trump isn’t going to win. We need to prepare for a result where we truly don’t know the winner for days after election night, as ballots get counted. Otherwise, the ‘Red Mirage’ may lead to a ‘Red Minority’ entrenched for four more years.

Vote Joe to Defend Democracy Abroad

Hey everyone – in advance of the election on November 3rd, we wanted to share a few of the reasons why we are enthusiastically supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We will post a few articles highlighting a few of our main reasons why we are supporting him in the coming days.

That Night in Copenhagen

Election day in 2016 will forever be seared into my memory. In Denmark for an important work trip, I went to bed early in order to wake up and watch the results in real time. In a solitary hotel room in Copenhagen, I watched as my country slowly, and unpredictably, descended into the Trump era. After hours of solemnly watching returns, I then had to get ready to work a full day and face my Danish colleagues who no doubt would have questions about the morning’s events. To the Danes I knew, Trump was fascinating — and nobody took him seriously. It felt like a bad joke that had gone too far. Faced with numerous questions of how this could happen in America, I shrugged and had to re-evaluate my own understanding of my country (and in particular the Midwest). A country that had elected its first black president (and then Nobel Peace Prize winner) had swung hard in the other direction and elected a brash, inexperienced reality television personality to the most important job in the global West.

Trump immediately was ridiculed around the world. After Trump’s inauguration and his doubling down on “America First” (a problematic slogan tied to anti-Semitism in World War II), comedians around the world created an avalanche of parody videos mocking the concept of America First, like this one that claims “America First, Denmark Second”. He was comedic fodder, a buffoon. But this sentiment wasn’t restricted to Denmark. I was lucky to work with a group in Helsinki Finland from 2017 to earlier this year, and through those trips to Finland and other countries in Europe, the same morbid curiosity arrived each time I said I was American to a local. International polling supports this claim, as Pew shows the collapse in favorability ratings for the US among our allies and a serious lack of confidence in Trump.

A Troubling Trend

But the election of Donald Trump wasn’t an anomaly. It was, and continues to be, a disturbing trend in the rise of ‘strongman’ type far right leaders elected on the back of nationalist rhetoric. We saw these themes rise in the Brexit vote of June 2016 (and the subsequent ascent of Boris Johnson as UK Prime Minister), in the continued reigns of Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Modi in India, and maybe most notably Bolsonaro in Brazil. Every country seems to be facing a rise in far right populism, but luckily the world has battled back a few similar movements in France’s Le Pen and the Finn’s Party in Finland. Make no mistake, the Western world is largely locked in a battle between these far right, anti-democratic nationalists, who wish to shatter political norms, seize power, antagonize others, and lead by fear, and everyone else who still believes in a healthy democracy.

We saw this in 2016 and we are seeing it again in 2020. The Democratic Party coalesced around the more moderate candidate, who then positioned themselves in the acceptable middle for the electorate. Hillary had Mike Bloomberg speak at the National Convention; Joe had John Kasich speak at his. The coalition necessary to defeat far right populism spans the center-right to the far-left, so we should not be surprised that our nominee largely sits in the middle of that coalition. However, thanks to the tireless efforts of progressive activists, the normalized party platform both in 2016 and 2020 has been the most progressive its ever been. As Andrew Yang said during the convention in August, “The magic of Joe Biden is that everything he does becomes the new reasonable.” And thanks to the work of those activists we have Joe Biden on stage at the debate this week calling for a full transition away from oil and forcefully arguing for a $15 minimum wage. We can achieve real progress in a Biden administration.

Trump’s Record

Aside from the broader themes of global politics, when you actually look at Trump’s foreign policy record, it’s abysmal. He has routinely embraced his far right nationalist autocrats (Putin, Kim Jong-un, etc) over our allies, threatening the stability of NATO, arguably the best peacekeeping alliance of all time. Trump’s disdain for mainstream media, refusal to say if he’ll accept the results of the election, and his ‘joking’ about staying in office for beyond eight years, are just a few examples of Trump flirting with unabashed authoritarianism.

Thankfully, we haven’t entered a full-scale military conflict, but Trump’s constant preference for Putin over our allies meant zero consequences for Russia’s known interference in the 2016 and now 2020 elections as well as the literal bounties put on American soldiers’ heads in Afghanistan. This is a man who said that Americans who died in military service are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’ and mocked a mourning gold star family while he dodged the draft during Vietnam. And, of course, Donald Trump became the third president of all time to be impeached for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden by withholding military aid. This man does not care about our troops or our allies; he cares about himself.

Joe’s Record

Meanwhile, Joe Biden met many of these same global leaders as Vice President and had two kids serve in the military. This is a man who understands the sacrifice made by gold star families and will bring a steady hand and a reaffirming of democratic values to the Presidency that will restore America’s image abroad.

Yes, Joe voted for the war in Iraq, and it was a massive mistake, which he acknowledges. He also pushed Obama to remove troops from Afghanistan faster than other advisors recommended, and he wants to rejoin the Paris climate agreement. In general, I want America to scale back our omnipresent military presence all over the world. We shouldn’t think of ourselves as the world’s police. But in this election it’s really a question of who we trust with the full force of the US military behind them, and that’s not even a question.

Joe Biden will restore America’s image overseas as a leader of the free world and a bastion of liberal democracy. We cannot tempt fate for four more years and risk getting America in a major foreign conflict with Trump at the wheel, denigrating our allies and cozying up to authoritarians.

2019 Pre-Oscars Movie Power Rankings

Hey everyone — here’s this year’s rendition of my annual movie rankings. Overall I think it was a pretty weak year full of average films, but there are a few gems in there toward the top.

As always, my opinions are fact and you’re wrong if you disagree. Just kidding, let me know what you think!

34. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

This is what happens when a studio rests on the lore and hard work of brilliant people before them, using a trusted brand to put out a thoroughly average, meh movie. The ninth and final chapter of the Skywalker saga (and the third and final chapter under the new Disney ownership) turned in a performance so predictable, unoriginal, and boring that it leaves serious doubts on if Disney will do the Star Wars universe justice or continue to put out average movies like Solo and Rise of Skywalker.

33. I Lost My Body

A depressing French love story between an orphan who works dead end jobs, a librarian who orders a pizza from the orphan, and the orphan’s severed hand, this film went over my head I think. The severed hand anthropomorphizes as a rat type thing that is on a mission to find the couple again, and there are a lot of themes that hit on the importance of your hands, like the orphan’s love of piano and his interest in carpentry. I don’t know; it was weird.

32. Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

The sequel to the everything-is-awesome original Lego Movie, this one lands less than the original. Focusing on a journey to a new world that seems too good to be true and that feels nefarious, we see Chris Pratt and the gang execute a narrative about sharing toys and embracing creativity and other ideas for fun. It was fine.

31. Detective Pikachu

The first big-budget Pokemon film outside of the Ash Ketchum canon (that I’m aware of), Detective Pikachu seems to be the first gamble from the Pokemon brand that they can also construct a universe of film content that can model what is already happening with Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the like. As someone who played Pokemon as a kid, the return to the universe is nostalgic and fun, but the plot itself doesn’t mimic the traditional Pokemon stories as instead we investigate the disappearance of a young man’s father, discovering he also shares a strange bond with a Pikachu (played by Ryan Reynolds). It’s an enjoyable movie, if not entirely groundbreaking.

30. Frozen II

The sequel to the massive hit from 2013, Frozen II brings back Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Sven, and Kristoff on a journey to visit the past and to unlock some family secrets. Sequels are hard and this felt a little formulaic since they likely felt like they needed to repeat some of what made them successful the first time. Still, there are some great songs in there and the message is great as always.

29. Toy Story 4

The fourth installment of the Toy Story franchise follows Woody and the gang as they move to a new kid’s home, learning how to love a new kid as much as Andy. While I don’t think it stuck with me as much as the previous ones, it still carries with it strong messages of love and helping others who need it.

28. Captain Marvel

Marvel’s final entry before Endgame, Captain Marvel introduces a badass, powerful superhero in Brie Larson’s self titled Captain Marvel. Having a movie about a female superhero is a win in itself, but to have her be a kick-ass pilot who also seems to be the most powerful avenger out there was a fun thing to witness as we saw some traditional twists and turns throughout the movie.

27. Spiderman: Far From Home

The first chapter of Spiderman after the Infinity saga, Far From Home sees Peter Parker on a school field trip to Europe, when his goal to make a move on his crush is put on hold when a new villain starts rampaging in Europe. Last year I loved Into The Spiderverse partially because it felt like it had to be animated, but Far From Home seemed to meet that challenge by saying that anything is possible to show if you use drones.

26. Missing Link

A British adventurer, who dreams of fame and fitting in with the upper echelon of society, seeks the famed Bigfoot in America only to learn that Bigfoot instead recruited him for a mission to go find his relatives, the Yetis in the Himalayas. Powered by fun performances from Hugh Jackman and Zach Galifianakis, this film offers a fun reminder that friends can come in all shapes and sizes. It also can be tied into today’s society by comparing the ruling class’s denial of evolution in the movie to today’s climate denialism. Putting your head in the sand (and intentionally silencing critics) is never a good look.

25. Klaus

The origin story we didn’t know we needed, Klaus explains the beginning of Santa Claus through the eyes of a spoiled aristocrat whose father forces him to be a postman in the furthest north island in the country. Welcomed by warring families with generations of hatred towards each other, the postman must drum up demand for letters or else he will be on the street when he returns home. Luckily, there’s an old, bearded man on the island who happens to enjoy making toys for kids who write to him. The postman builds the lore around Santa Claus for his own self-interest as the children in the town slowly change the attitudes of the town by helping others and doing everything to get on Santa’s ‘nice list’.

24. Dolemite Is My Name

I watched the whole movie and didn’t know it was based on a true story until the very end. This outrageous story follows a black singer-turned-comedian-turned-anything-that-will-earn-fame named Rudy Ray Moore as he skyrockets into fame through some vulgar comedy and eventually gambles on a self-made movie that white film executives don’t give a chance in hell. Eddie Murphy is excellent as the lead, and the shot-for-shot remakes of scenes from the real movie are spot on.

23. Midsommar

An A24 thriller set in a Swedish commune, Midsommar follows a few American anthropology students, including the guy from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Chidi from The Good Place, and the brother from Sing Street, as they go to Sweden to visit their Swedish friend Pelle’s village during their midsummer celebrations. Chalk full of foreboding symbolism and cultish themes, some of the shots are stunning but incredibly creepy.

22. Rocketman

This year’s edition of the jukebox musical biography covers the story of Elton John, played by the dynamic Taron Egerton. After the relative success of Bohemian Rhapsody and Rami Malek, I’m sure Egerton thought he was on his way to a best actor nomination, only to be crowded out by a particularly strong category this year. The film covers Elton struggling with his parents, falling into the drugs and sex associated with rock’n’roll, and floundering to figure out who exactly he is and how he can be happy. I never listened to Elton John much, but I definitely more of an appreciation for him after this.

21. Booksmart

A high school coming-of-age buddy comedy centered on two friends who are tired of being the do-good, bookworm, career-focused girls in class, Booksmart offers a rebellious night on the town for the two hilarious leads. Complete with confronting crushes, realizing that grades aren’t everything, and an awesome karaoke cover of You Oughta Know, it’s a non-stop barrage of jokes. The Malala joke in particular stuck with me.

20. El Camino

An epilogue to the critically acclaimed series Breaking Bad, El Camino picks up on Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) after the events of the show. Director Vince Gilligan brilliantly lays out the events for Pinkman since we’ve last seen him, using non-linear storytelling to show how Pinkman finds himself in an awful situation yet again and trying to escape from the meth industry. With cameos from a number of Breaking Bad characters, including Walter White (Bryan Cranston), it’s a great return to that universe. I’m not sure how accessible it is to folks who haven’t seen the show, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

19. Avengers Endgame

The conclusion to the Infinity saga, Endgame runs for a full three hours, but it really needs it as the Avengers have to travel back to previous times and eras to reverse the events in Infinity War. A dramatic romp through previous movies and with a weird cameo from a fantasy football analyst, the saga ends on a high note, but not without some causalities and some changes. While this film on it’s own wasn’t as compelling as Infinity War, it still represents a remarkable, decade-long commitment to this story and a brilliant corporate gamble that this would be worth it. They proved that films living within a universe can work to great effect.

18. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

A sad, relevant window into gentrification and the racial wealth gap, this film centers on the story of a third-generation black man in San Francisco named Jimmy Fails. Illustrating the difficulties black Americans face across the country, we see how intergenerational wealth perpetuates white privilege. Jimmy adores a house his grandfather built and will do everything possible to hold onto it, even doing the upkeep against the owner’s wishes. My favorite movie about Bay Area gentrification is Blindspotting from last year, but A24s entry this year is still worth the watch.

17. Ad Astra

Every year there seems to be one space-based blockbuster drama. This year’s entry is Ad Astra starring Brad Pitt as an astronaut in the not too distant future where commercial flights are offered to the moon, countries warred over precious resources in the Arctic Circle, and the USA established a base on Mars. Literally following in his father’s footsteps, Pitt ends up journeying out to Neptune to track down his father, who ventured out on a one way mission to find extra terrestrial life. I loved the build up of the movie, and the world-building was fascinating. But the actual encounter with his father and the resulting resolution of the ‘surge’ and ET plotlines underwhelmed me, and too often Pitt’s narration turned subtext unnecessarily into text. Regardless, it was a fun escape for a few hours.

16. Once Upon A Time In… Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s latest production offers a(nother) nostalgic look back to old Hollywood and how things used to work. It follows Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his former stunt double and best friend Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) as Rick’s career spirals down and then back up through various acting gigs. But in the background of the film is a subplot that slowly takes over the film, following a group of kids living on a ranch. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say I wasn’t very taken by this movie. I enjoy most Tarantino films, but this one felt repetitive in its nostalgic look back on the 60s/70s in Hollywood (reminiscent of Green Book‘s nostalgia, though less of a racial nostalgia, and La La Land, though less compelling). I also just think I missed some required reading before watching the movie. I’m pretty it’s supposed to be about a story I’m supposed to know, but I didn’t know it.

15. The Two Popes

Anthony Hopkins plays Pope Benedict XVI while Jonathan Pryce (known to me primarily as the High Sparrow from Game of Thrones) plays his successor, Pope Francis, in this beautiful film that follows the events from 2005 to 2014 that led to two papal elections in short succession. Coming at Catholicism from different ideologies and belief systems, the bulk of the film focuses on the dialog between the two popes on everything from theology to football. Jonathan Pryce, who got a best actor nomination for this, pulls off a brilliant performance and shows how a man with strong convictions and belief can change even an institution as rigid as the Vatican.

14. The Edge of Democracy

Over the past 5 years or so, Brazil’s government encountered partisan turmoil that acts as a microcosm of what we’re seeing in a number of countries: a resurgent right-wing supremacy movement vs a workers-rights leftist party. Popular leftist president Lula and his successor, Dilma, faced investigations from a conservative judge on the influence of dark money on their time in office. They titled the investigation, “Operation Car Wash”. A conservative majority in Congress plus a conservative VP waiting in the wings to seize power meant that the conservatives succeeded in impeaching Dilma and imprisoning Lula without any firm evidence of wrongdoing but instead arguing that the opposition’s politics were impeachable on its own. This incredibly dangerous maneuver resulted in the conservatives controlling all branches of government, only for the VP (now president) to be directly connected to dark money interests from Brazilian corporations. But this time, his party wasn’t so gung ho about impeachment. Brazen partisanship has resulted in gutting of social programs, like Bolsa Familia (a famous conditional cash transfer program), and austerity for Brazilians in poverty. The ultra wealthy waged a war on the classes beneath them and walked away unscathed. Today, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro frequently compares himself to Trump, and he has the capitalist kingmakers to thank for his office. This is a very prescient film to watch in the midst of the 2020 primary — Democrats (and centrists who don’t support far right policies!) must band together to defeat Donald Trump. Other countries look to us for guidance, and we cannot let them down again by empowering far-right nationalism to entrench itself further.

13. The Lighthouse

Two seafaring men (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson in two fantastic performances) charged with upkeep and maintenance for a lighthouse battle the elements, superstition, social isolation, and each other to try to remain same. Shot in black and white, this thriller from A24 has you uneasy the whole time. Dafoe in particular excels with his perfect, sailor dialect and his big pipe, while Pattinson descends into hysteria more and more. It’s definitely not a movie for everyone, but I like the gamble from A24.

12. Ford v Ferrari

Christian Bale excels at playing neurotic geniuses who focus intently on one thing. We saw it in The Big Short, and now he’s done it again in Ford v Ferrari. Playing Ken Miles, an obsessive racecar driver in the 1960s, he teams up with Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), a former driver himself who makes a deal with Ford Motor Company to get them into racing and to beat Ferrari at a landmark race in France. Damon and Bale work well together, and it is refreshing to see Bale back in a British accent (as I didn’t know he was Welsh until a few years ago). With a plot centered around this big race, car company rivalries, and bureaucratic hang-ups, it feels like a classic sports movie, and it had me laughing with adrenaline pumping during some of the race scenes.

11. American Factory

President Obama’s production company created this documentary that follows a new automobile glass factory that opened up in Dayton, Ohio. The Chinese company Fuyao received plaudits from everyone for investing in Ohio, but when the factory isn’t performing as well as the Chinese plants, tensions rise as the Americans try to unionize (partially thanks to Senator Sherrod Brown). These jobs offered a lifeline to these American workers, but the working conditions and benefits are far worse than when GM had a plant in town. It’s hard not to think of globalization, income inequality, the ruthlessness of capitalism, and how worker’s rights vary so widely around the world, which grants an advantage to companies like Fuyao who pay very little for workers in China who have only a day or two off each month and are drilled like a military unit to optimize efficiency. Until there is a global floor on worker’s rights, I struggle to see how American manufacturing can compete internationally. Unless you’re a country like Finland, where 90% of the workforce is unionized and there’s a reinforced culture of unionizing, it’s hard to make it work for workers in all sectors. And that’s not even getting into the fact that automation is replacing jobs at a rapid pace each year. This is partially why I support a basic income, because it grants workers more power to say no to jobs like this and divorces someone’s ability to survive from whether they have a job or not. To ensure better working conditions for all, we need to enact serious, seismic legislation to ensure worker’s rights (and nonworkers’ rights) are protected in an increasingly precarious economy. But really this story is one that we’ve seen all too often — a wealthy corporation can invest millions to fight a vote by regular people that would hurt their profits. We saw this in my hometown with a vote on municipalization of our grid, when Alliant Energy spent dozens of times more money campaigning than our local pro-municipalization group. They won by less than ten votes.

10. Us

Jordan Peele followed up Get Out with this horror film that sees people confronted by an uprising of upside-down, inverse versions of themselves. Led by a terrific performance from Lupita Nyongo, it leaves you with dozens of questions and realizations well after you’ve left the theater. Strong themes of racism and politics pervade the film, but I don’t think it lands as well as it did in Get Out.

9. Little Women

Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s book by the same name offers a star studded cast with Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Timothée Chalamet, and Bob Odenkirk. It follows four sisters as they grow up with different ambitions and goals in an era when society saw marriage as the only economic and logical option for women of their age. You can’t help but love this family who puts others first and it’s frankly refreshing to see a good movie about good people doing good things in the age of the antihero.

8. Joker

The gripping, gritty origin story of Batman’s enemy, Joker is a well-produced, well-directed film that grounds one man’s transformation from a working clown and caregiver with a mental illness to a fully fledged villain. Hitting on themes of child abuse, child neglect, income inequality, social anxiety, and many more, we see the titular character slowly descend into an antisocial person (who honestly might be an incel) who starts acting out and descends into nihilism. The film is absolutely right to call out the dangers of cuts to mental health programs and the power dynamics at play in society between the wealthy and the working class. Joaquin Phoenix is simply brilliant, acting with such raw but complicated emotion, and it’s no surprise to me that he’s a best actor nominee and that he won that category at the Golden Globes. In a vacuum, it’s a great movie. However, it’s hard to look past the message it seems to be sending. Suggesting that folks feeling left behind in society today, and especially those with mental illnesses, will inevitably walk down a path towards antisocial behavior is dangerous and misleading, and the glorification and justification of this destructive behavior leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

7. The Irishman

Scorsese’s 3.5 hour return to mob/gangster storytelling brings back the all-star cast of Pacino, Pesci, and De Niro reprising their prototypical roles in the New York and Chicago mob and union scenes during the 60s. While reminiscent of Goodfellas with the fast talking dialog and the constant 50s/60s music in the background, it asks bigger questions of what this life does to your families and how you live with yourself after a lifetime in such a violent profession.

6. Knives Out

What if you took a whodunnit plot, centered it on a famous mystery genre author, and added Daniel Craig as a detective talking in a wild Southern accent? Knives Out offers a fun, twisty journey through the death of the patriarchal grandfather author, offering motives and clues throughout for who may be responsible for his death. I don’t want to spoil any of the plot, but it felt like a very well-designed murder mystery party that highlighted the absurdity of privilege and inheritance.

5. Marriage Story

A vivid look into a divorce, Marriage Story follows a certified genius, controlling theater director (Adam Driver) and his star actress wife (Scarlett Johansen) as they agree to separate. Laura Dern arrives as a divorce attorney, delivering a performance straight out of her Big Little Lies wheelhouse, and the film highlights the difficult, harsh nature of divorce proceedings once lawyers are weaponized. The standout scene to me is the fight in Driver’s LA apartment as the couple fully descends into insults and vulgarity after trying to sort things out themselves, like they originally intended. While a slightly self-indulgent, romanticized view of theater and acting, it still proves a great film and a great look into modern love and relationship dynamics.

4. Jojo Rabbit

A quirky, absurd film about a boy (Jojo) in Hitler’s Youth in Nazi Germany finding and befriending a Jewish girl who his mom is hiding in the attic, Taika Waititi’s newest film packs multiple genres into two hours. Waititi plays Jojo’s imaginary version of Hitler with comedic flamboyance and over-the-top acting, but the movie takes serious turns and hits dramatic plot points, ushered forward by performances from Scarlett Johansson and Sam Rockwell. This was easily one of the funniest movies of the year.

3. Uncut Gems

Adam Sandler? In a serious role as a sports gambling addict, New York jeweler? And Kevin Garnett, the NBA star, as a main character? This feels like a movie that should never have been made, but A24 turns in a fantastic film yet again. Centering on an uncut gemstone from a mine in Africa that obsesses Kevin Garnett during the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals, we see Sandler’s character uneasily go through this period in a loveless marriage and in a serious chunk of debt to someone who doesn’t mess around. This uncut gem is his best chance to cash out and make everything okay, and during the movie the circular, rotating camerawork keeps you glued to the screen with a sense of dread, waiting for one of his gambles to go wrong. An adrenaline-pumping thriller, it leaves you connecting plot devices hours after the movie, and it’s one of the best movies of the year.

2. Parasite

This stunning, genre-bending story of a poor Korean family slowly but surely profiting off of relationships with a wealthy family is easily one of the best movies of the year. Full of commentary on income inequality, capitalism, and copious plays on the ‘parasite’ theme, the film explores the lifestyle differences and the inherent caste system of capitalism. It’s at its best as you see the lengths poor people have to go to try to earn a living, and right when you think it may fall into a mystical bootstraps lesson, it turns that on its face, showing how hard it can be to have a plan to escape poverty and then execute on it. I laughed, I gasped, I got chills — this film has it all, and the garden party scene will stick with me for a long time.

1. 1917

Two young British soldiers in World War I are given a nearly impossible task to deliver an order to another battalion to prevent a massacre. Directed and shot in a way such that every scene follows the soldiers on their journey with a single shot style, this is a cinematic masterpiece. It honestly feels a little like a video game mission as you control your character through different levels on a quest — the level in the German bunker, the level with the plane crash, the night level in the French town; this film is brilliantly shot and the scenes stick with you well after the film ends. I also absolutely loved the scene of the British soldier singing “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” as his company prepares for battle. That scene on the front lines of the battle caused chills and you can’t help but feel for the dedicated soldier stopping at nothing to prevent his fellow soldiers from falling into a trap. I enjoy war movies, but it takes a special war movie to be my favorite of the year. 1917 manages that feat, and it absolutely must be seen in a theater to fully immerse yourself in the imagery and the sound of war. Surely this will win Best Picture.

 

 

 

 

 

Caucus Power Rankings: #1 Elizabeth Warren

Hey all,

Here’s our final edition of the Caucus Power Rankings. As a reminder, here’s where we landed:

• 1: Elizabeth Warren
• 2: Bernie Sanders
• T-3: Andrew Yang
• T-3: Pete Buttigieg
• T-5: Amy Klobuchar
• T-5: Tom Steyer
• 7: Joe Biden
• 8: Michael Bennett
• 9: Deval Patrick
• T-10: Tulsi Gabbard
• T-10: Mike Bloomberg
• 12: John Delaney

Arguments For:

Josh — #1 — Back in 2016, when Bernie Sanders announced he was running for president, I remember thinking, “Oh nice! He’s great. I still hope Warren runs, though.” I have been a Warren fan since her work on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and her appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2012. A girl who grew up in Oklahoma with three brothers who served in the military, Warren dreamed of becoming a teacher. Later on, she discovered law and worked her way through a few law professor jobs until she landed eventually at Harvard Law, teaching law and specializing on bankruptcy law. Throughout that journey, Warren researched what was preventing American families from financial security, an area of research that led to a transformation from identifying as a Republican to becoming a progressive advocate for consumer’s rights.

In the wake of the Great Recession of 2009, Warren relentlessly fought for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a governmental agency watchdog that would punish banks and other for-profit institutions on behalf of consumers who don’t have the time or resources to fight these behemoths themselves. Obama wanted Warren to lead the agency, but in an ironic twist, Republicans fought against her appointment so vociferously that she ended up running for Senate instead and defeated incumbent Republican Scott Brown. So instead of having Warren running an agency, now these Republicans had to deal with her fighting spirit and her relentless focus on helping everyday Americans.

Since her evolution from Republican to Democrat, Warren now stands as one of the most progressive Democrats in elected office, and her 2020 platform says as much. The rallying cry of the Warren campaign is, “I’ve got a plan for that.” As you would expect from a researcher and professor, Warren excels in detailing out exactly how she will improve America. Farhad Manjoo from the NY Times said it well when he wrote a piece titled I want to live in Elizabeth Warren’s America. Among her detailed proposals are plans to break up big tech, address the opioid epidemic, fight maternal mortality, combat climate change (with a $2 trillion price tag), introduce a wealth tax on the wealthiest Americans, introduce universal child care, Medicare-for-All, and many, many more. Go check out her policy page and click around. You have to scroll to see all of her plans, and then on each plan you have to scroll more to actually read them all! She’s thorough, detailed, and ready to enact big, structural change when she gets into office.

Warren’s top priority is to fight corruption in politics and in industry, and I find her argument compelling. Right now, Democrats face uphill battles to win the Presidency (due to the Electoral College disproportionately valuing rural states), the Senate (because of geography of Democratic/Republican support, the House (because of geography and gerrymandering), and the Supreme Court (because the Senate and Presidency must both be held by the same party to appoint a new justice), and these challenges are exacerbated by the revolving door of congressmen and lobbyists as well as a number of ways that sustain this unhealthy stasis in Washington. Read the highlights of her plan here — if Democrats want to make progress on making elections fairer and if we want to re-balance our political system, then we need to address the systemic corruption in Washington first. As for fighting corruption in the economy, Warren lays out a robust plan to make capitalism work better. Please read through it. If we truly want to make an economy that works for all instead of the shareholder capitalism we see today, we should fight for her ideas of ensuring worker representation on corporate boards and to prevent CEOs from profiting off of stock buy-back programs that inflate their pay. Warren’s critique of America is that we need to fix the corruption we see in government and in industry first, and then we will have a chance to tackle more issues as well once the deck is stacked more fairly for the average American.

I also believe that Warren stands the best chance of uniting the Democratic Party. I’ll be interested to see how the raw totals of the first votes and final alignment on caucus night go, because I believe Warren is a lot of peoples’ second choice. My progressive friends are almost all Warren or Bernie supporters, and no other candidate (other than Yang) offers a chance at progressive unity behind a candidate, while she is also friendly enough to the mainstream Democrats that she could get the Biden/Hillary wing of the party to support her as well. We see this potential to unite the party in the endorsements from the NY Times and the Des Moines Register. As I wrote in the Bernie piece yesterday, we need all Democrats to get in line behind our nominee so that we can all focus on defeating Trump, who is sitting there waiting for a nominee to bully while sitting on an insane war chest of campaign fundraising. Warren gives us the best chance to unite and take him down. And with that Democratic unity comes those coattails that will help us win the Senate and keep the House. Then, with those anti-corruption plans in place after her first two years in office, the deck will be stacked more fairly to help Democrats retain their seats in line with their actual vote totals, instead of having to win the popular vote by 6 points nationwide to win the House.

Further, I believe Warren is the best equipped to take on Trump. Having her roots in Oklahoma and having her brothers serve in the military, she can speak to the middle of America with more authenticity than Trump, and with her campaign’s focus on income inequality and having billionaires pay their fair share, she can turn the election into a billionaire who has profited off of and has contributed to the corruption we deal with today versus literally anyone else. Framing the election as are you on the side of the billionaire or on the side of everyone else will be an effective message that can win back those Obama-Trump voters and can drum up the turnout we need to sweep the election.

Sam — #1

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been seen as one of the greatest champions of progressive causes at the federal level. While her ascent to the US Senate has provided her with experience professionally, administratively, and politically, Senator Warren’s background provides the human element that so many look for in a great candidate.

Born in the working class in Oklahoma, Senator Warren grew up in a family with three older brothers who all served in the military. During her youth, Warren’s father had a heart attack and had to quit his job as a salesman due to the permanent disability it left him with. While he was able to get a new job as a janitor, Warren notes how the economic struggles for her family left an indelible mark on her. Her dream to become a teacher took a couple detours when she first got married and had to drop out of college to raise her children. After going back to school and then earning a law degree, Warren became one of the leading law professors in her field, eventually earning a position at Harvard teaching bankruptcy law. Her research gave her deeply personal experience “in the weeds” of economic struggle, with the plurality of cases resulting from the cost of healthcare.

In 2008, as the Great Recession deepened, Warren was appointed to a US Senate panel to provide oversight for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. Through her professional experience and time in the Senate oversight panel, Warren proposed the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The bureau, which was signed into law in 2010, was tasked with learning lessons from the Recession to protect consumers in the financial sector in a host of fields, ranging from banks and securities firms to payday lenders, mortgage servicing operators, and providing foreclosure relief. While Warren would have been the perfect choice to head the CFPB (after all she created the bureau), Republicans believed she would be over zealous made it clear Warren would not receive approval from the Senate. Warren would thwart the GOP’s attempted to prevent her molding of policy by beating incumbent Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown in 2012 and becoming the leading progressive in the Senate.

Senator Warren’s campaign reflects her progressive policy commitments. From the beginning, Warren has refused to accept corporate donations, relying entirely on grassroots support from small donors. However, its Warren’s policy proposals that have become the cornerstone or her campaign. With one of her favorite slogans “I’ve got a plan for that,” Warren appears to be the most extensively prepared candidate in the field. Her website’s section on plans are broken into the larger policy proposals, including tackling corruption, strengthening democracy, creating Medicare-for-All, rebuilding the middle class, and supporting a Green New Deal. Within each of these groups you will notice 10-20 subsection plans, providing a thorough breakdown of each subsection element and how it addresses the larger problem. Warren will rebuild the middle class by implementing her famous 2-cent wealth tax. Her explanation for this wealth tax is brilliant and simple, noting that for every dollar someone makes over $50 million, they’re simply asked to pitch in 2 cents. I hardly think they’ll suffer.

Warren has the best ability to unify the party, bringing together the establishment from her time in the Obama administration and the Senate with progressives and activists that drive the progressive agenda and grassroots campaign infrastructure. Warren’s focus on working and middle class struggles from her upbringing and own experience in the heartland give her authenticity that Trump will never have. Her fervent belief of having the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes again to give those in the middle class the opportunity get to live the American dream: get an education, advance in their profession, and receive the economic gains that have eluded the middle class since the 1970s. Lastly, her emphasis of rooting out corruption stands in stark contrast to Trump’s promises to drain the swamp that have ironically lead to the most corrupt administration in modern history.

Arguments Against:

Josh — Looking at polling, Warren took a big hit in the fall of 2019 after she faced questions on how to pay for Medicare-for-All. She responded by producing a costing scheme that doesn’t raise taxes on the middle class by one penny, but the damage had been done by Mayor Pete and Warren hasn’t regained momentum since then. She excelled in the summer last year as she was releasing plan after plan, but there are only so many plans to release, and as the electability question played a larger role on voters’ minds this winter, she seemed to take a hit as people lazily compare her to Hillary and worry that nominating a woman will again result in a Trump win. But Warren is not Hillary — she’s far more progressive and isn’t currently under investigation. Besides, Hillary won the popular vote and should have won in 2016, so there’s no reason why Warren can’t perform as well if not better than Clinton.

Warren also gets critiqued for sounding a condescending school teacher with her speaking style, which to me sounds like flagrant sexism that should have no place in this primary. We never heard this critique about former professor Obama.

I know I have refuted arguments against Warren so far, but I do have areas that I am concerned about. While she says she’s open to a universal basic income, I would love to see her include it in her plan to transform America’s economy. And I do worry that she and her staff take the bait too often on attacks, like the leak of the Bernie/Warren tape last month after the Bernie campaign supposedly told volunteers to say that Warren only appeals to white, educated voters. She also bit too hard on the Trump Pocahontas bullshit (sorry Mom, couldn’t think of a better word) by producing the DNA test and playing his game. She needs to stay above those attacks and reorient everything back to income inequality, corruption, and her vision for America.

Sam — First off, I want to restate what Josh noted regarding the Warren “condescending school teacher” critique. This is flagrant sexism that doesn’t have a home in this primary, the progressive movement, the Democratic party, and in American politics and society.

Warren’s biggest struggle has come from her implementation plan for her version of Medicare-for-All. Frankly, I’m not sure how this is a fair critique considering her plan is more flushed out that Bernie’s version and is projected to cost less. Additionally, the media has had a fixation on the price tag of the Medicare-for-All plans while completely ignoring the cost savings for Americans. Will you pay more in taxes? For Warren’s plan, some will but lower and middle class earners won’t. But everyone will no longer pay health insurance premiums, copays, or deductibles. Whether its fair or not, Warren’s polling numbers have taken a hit beginning in Fall 2019 after unveiling her healthcare plan.

Now, staking out the progressive policy of Medicare-For-All can be viewed as a argument against Warren and Bernie. I can understand preferring a government-provided public option that competes with all the private healthcare insurance options out there. But the argument for supporting Medicare-for-All, even if you’re fine with a public option that doesn’t utilize one government plan for all, is that it gives Democrats a better starting position to negotiate from when developing healthcare policy. While I go back and forth between Medicare-for-All and a public option and which would be better, the argument against the cost of Medicare-for-All is legitimate, and will take a lot of political capital and time that cannot be regained.

I would also agree with Josh’s critique that Warren’s campaign has taken the bait twice. Taking a DNA test to address Trump’s “Pocahontas” racism was not the right answer. Her campaign would have been better off rising above it and throwing down more plans to address income inequality and stuck to the issues. Additionally, the recent feud with the Bernie has created additional division amongst the progressive activist wing. I think that Bernie missed the opportunity to take responsibility for any comments that may have been perceived as saying a woman can’t beat Trump, even if he never intended to say that. We all make mistakes and sometimes our communications can be misconstrued. I think both campaigns seemed to think there was opportunity in doubling down. The best way forward is for Warren’s team to refocus their efforts on the purpose of the campaign: addressing income inequality, fighting corruption, passing a Green New Deal, and implementing every plan in the Warren tool belt.

Final Thoughts

So that’s it. 12 posts in 12 days to break down the candidates in the Democratic primary. I hope you all have found these helpful, and I encourage you to reach out to us if you have any specific questions on the candidates. To my Iowa friends in particular, I cannot stress how important it is to caucus today. Witnessing the 2008 caucus was one of the most formative nights of my life, and being a part of the 2016 caucus was a thrill. When you go to the caucus today, remember to be Iowa nice and to be friendly with everyone else there who is supporting another candidate. We need to support each other and come together after this primary. That’s why Sam and I chose to format these posts with arguments for and against each candidate; we tried to be objective and helpful, and hopefully these posts have helped you make up your mind and we hope you support your favorite candidate tonight. This is the chance to vote for your favorite candidate, and it doesn’t have to be who you think is most electable. A person is only electable if they 1) win the primary and 2) win the general, so by definition all of these candidates or all but one will be unelectable. If you vote for who you like the most, and if others do the same and agree with you, then your favorite candidate may be electable. Happy caucus night, Iowa.

Caucus Power Rankings: #2 Bernie Sanders

Hey all,

Here’s our next edition of the Caucus Power Rankings. As a reminder, here’s where we are right now:

• 2: Bernie Sanders
• T-3: Andrew Yang
• T-3: Pete Buttigieg
• T-5: Amy Klobuchar
• T-5: Tom Steyer
• 7: Joe Biden
• 8: Michael Bennett
• 9: Deval Patrick
• T-10: Tulsi Gabbard
• T-10: Mike Bloomberg
• 12: John Delaney

Arguments For:

Sam — #2 — It was early spring 2015. The field was beginning to form to determine the Democratic party’s next candidate for president. For the most part Hillary was seen as the only candidate worth watching unless Vice President Joe Biden joined the race. A little known senator from Vermont had announced his intentions to run in summer of 2014 and had started to gain some publicity for his policies and the crowds he was drawing. I remember reading news articles thinking, “this Bernie Sanders guy sounds like the New Deal in modern form, and he looks about 10 years younger than the New Deal too!” It didn’t fully hit me that Bernie was officially on the scene until a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, in July 2015 drew over 8,000 people. While many who were otherwise of the belief that Hillary was the only logical option for moderate or progressive Democrats, it was clear that Bernie had the ability to bring progressive issues to the forefront: achieving universal healthcare coverage, tackling big pharmaceutical companies, taking on the big trusts of the countless sectors of the economy, and seriously addressing climate change. The progressive wing had its candidate, and they went whole hog. The energy of his campaign continued to build, leading to a near tie in Iowa and a 20+ point victory over Hillary in New Hampshire. While the 2016 campaign ultimately was unsuccessful for Bernie, Trump’s victory left the door open for him to have one more shot at realizing his political revolution.

Now in 2020, Bernie has become the undisputed standard bearer of the progressive wing of the party, maintaining his consistent progressive campaign message and continuing the call for a political revolution that he has had since he first entered in politics as the Mayor of Burlington in the 1980s. His policy platform, since the 2016 campaign, has been his greatest asset. Additionally, his ability to garner support amongst his grassroots base has resulted in a pivot back towards progressive policies that the Democratic party has not seen since the 1970s, and has not successfully implemented since the 1960s.

Bernie’s progressive policies tend to lean populist as well, helping him truly connect with the working class and labor forces in a way that Democrats have struggled to do. His strong support of collective bargaining, Medicare-for-All, increasing the minimum wage to $15/hour, and systemically addressing income inequality by making the millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes have created many fully-committed Bernie supports from the masses of working class voters yearning for true, populist progressive change. In addition to the aforementioned populist policies, increasing funding for public education and reducing the roll of voucher programs, free college, increasing funding and management of natural resource conservation, and aggressively investing in renewable energy to combat climate change has created a grassroots army that continues to have a presence nationally without taking any corporate money or super pac funding. With the drive to bring out first-time voters and scoop up Obama-Trump voters who want to see change that helps the government work for the people, Bernie’s campaign is currently firing on all cylinders. If his momentum continues, we could see the most progressive presidential candidate since LBJ and FDR.

Josh — #2 — In 2016, I was fully aboard the Bernie bandwagon. Faced with a choice between Hillary and Bernie, it was a no-brainer for me to support Bernie. In fact, at the 2016 caucus, I gave the speech at our precinct to lay out the case for Bernie. What I said then still resonates today. From Bernie’s time as Mayor of Burlington to his time in the House and now in the Senate, Bernie Sanders has consistently stood on the right side of history. A vocal critic of the war in Iraq and an unabashed supporter of economic and racial justice, Bernie is proud to be a democratic socialist, and he is the reason why so many progressive policies (Medicare-for-All, free college, etc) are now mainstream in the party. I know many (often older) voters cringe at the ‘socialist’ word after decades of attacks from the right on communism during the cold war, but communism is different than socialism, and socialism is different than democratic socialism. Democratic socialism maintains a democratic government while encouraging the government to play a larger role in regulating and/or operating sectors of the economy that put profits above the well-being of society. There are some sectors that are too important to leave to the private sector alone — areas like education, health care, criminal justice — and democratic socialists advocate for a restructuring of these sectors to improve the outcomes of the average person. I like to think of democratic socialism as the logical conclusion of Rawl’s maximin principle, where you can (and should!) permit inequality only insofar as it maximizes the well-being of the worst off in society (the minimum).

While Bernie seems like an anomaly politically, he’s not. As he’s quick to point out, every other major country in the world provides health care as a human right, and indeed many countries have entire parties that adhere to democratic socialism, and those countries consistently perform better than the US on key metrics like life expectancy, infant mortality, and happiness. When Democrats say we want democratic socialism it means we want to model our government more like a Nordic country, not like the USSR. It is frankly idiotic American exceptionalism to believe that we cannot learn from other countries and adopt the best of breed social policies from other countries to improve our country’s well-being, yet that is too often the rhetoric of Republicans and Democrats. Hillary in 2016 jumps to mind, when she said in a debate, “Well, we’re not Denmark. We’re the United States of America.”

I will say, however, that American democratic socialists face an uphill battle. The countries that successfully enacted democratic socialist policies consist of significantly more homogeneous populations and cultural solidarity than we do in America. To achieve the same policies in America means establishing that solidarity across the wide variety of cultures and backgrounds that make up our melting pot. America took a big gamble as a new nation by self-defining as a country of immigrants, inherently saying that we will create a society that accepts you, no matter where you come from. Establishing democratic socialism in America would be an astounding accomplishment that flies in the face of critiques of multiculturalism. But we’re an exceptional country, right? So let’s go for it.

Apologies for the digression on democratic socialism, but to get back to Bernie, another major thing going for him is his fundraising model. While almost every politician spends multiple hours per day on the phone calling wealthy donors to beg for contributions to fund their campaigns, Bernie proved in 2016 that a fully grassroots, no-wealthy-donors approach can work and can out-raise traditional candidates with traditional fundraising strategies. His 2020 campaign built on 2016’s success and is now an unstoppable juggernaut of consistent contributions that frequently surpasses all other candidates’ fundraising quarters. His fundraising base also has a tendency to churn out blitzed donations whenever there is an attack on Bernie’s campaign. For example, an anti-Bernie Super PAC recently released an ad that questions Bernie’s fitness for the presidency after the heart attack he suffered a few months ago, and in response his base raised over $1 million in retaliation. Going through a primary and a general election campaign, that pattern of fundraising off of opponents’ attacks will prove a valuable tool for Bernie, turning any criticism into a turn-out-the-base rallying cry.

Bernie’s campaign also is taking an Obama-esque approach to the primary, as they are focused on turning out first-time caucus-goers and expanding the electorate. Bernie performs second (behind Biden) with people of color in the primary, and they are organizing like crazy for the Hispanic population in particular. I also think it’s worth mentioning that he got the endorsement of the rockstar progressive icon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. AOC is the next great American progressive hope, and she has done a fantastic job deputizing for Bernie while he has been in Washington for the impeachment. In recent polling, Bernie (of course) dominates with voters 18-34, but he also leads with people up to age 64! Once you hit 65 the voters prefer Biden, but the lazy stories of Bernie Bros and how he’s only a candidate for young people are way off pace. Bernie appeals to a lot of voters that the Democratic establishment has historically ignored, and it’s showing in these polls in the run-up to the caucus. As of now, it looks like Bernie will win, comfortably, on Monday night.

So if you believe in coattails and wanting a candidate that will also energize and turn out a base that can elect senators and house representatives and other offices up and down the ballot, Bernie has a strong case to be that candidate. His inclusive campaign rhetoric (not me, us) and his emphasis of the need for a political revolution can provide those coattails to lead Democrats to victory.

Arguments Against:

Sam — Since 2015, some of the diehard supporters among Bernie’s base have a problem. Not a made up, social media creation. While the “Bernie bro” troupe has been used over and over, the fact that many base supports for Bernie have a “Bernie or bust” mentality in 2016 that, fairly or not, appeared sexist as well as antithetical to ends of enacting the populist progressive policies Bernie championed: we cannot have progressive federal policy without progressives in control of policy. Now, Bernie does not get enough credit for the support he provided for Hillary in 2016, but the image amongst his supporters still continued. Additionally, some of these fissures have reappeared this year during the “feud” between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie during the last debate before the Iowa Caucus. Bernie’s grassroots supporters are the strength of his campaign, but at times they also appear to be a potential weakness for the progressive policies he holds so dear. Its hard for primary voters to understand how so many Bernie supporters in social media have completely dismissed the idea of supporting Warren as their second candidate, considering Warren is the second most progressive candidate. This has some beginning to worry that, for some dedicated supports, their backing of Bernie verges on a cult of personality: the idea that Bernie can do no wrong. The comparison to Trump’s extreme cult of personality following is ironic to say the least.

Lastly, Bernie’s seem to be planned out at a slightly higher level than Warren’s plans. Bernie’s commitment to maintaining his main, broad talking points lead to a small level of weakness here. While his progressive policies are surely planned out, they do not seem to be as implementation-ready compared to Warren’s plans for anything and everything.

Josh — Like it or not, Bernie (and more specifically, his supporters) have an image problem. Establishment Democrats still blame him and his supporters for the loss in 2016 for not getting in line. And to refute that point, it’s frankly ridiculous and absurd to accuse Bernie of losing the election for Hillary. He cast the final vote at the convention! He did over 35 rallies for Hillary! He encouraged all of his supporters to vote for her! Bernie voters got in line just as much as Hillary voters got in line for Obama in 2008, and it’s lazy blame avoidance from establishment Democrats that are bitter than anyone dared challenge Hillary for the nomination. Also, now Hillary and Biden are refusing to commit to backing Bernie if he wins the nomination. The sheer hypocrisy of this is laughable. Basically, only progressives have to commit to backing moderates if we lose the nomination. This is why people hate the establishment and the DNC. But we can only live in this world with this DNC, so that animosity between the Bernie camp and the establishment may lead to more self-flagellation instead of a solidarity and a group focus on Trump. No matter who the candidate is after the primary, all Democrats need to support our candidate against Trump, but for now, friendly competition is healthy as long as it remains friendly, and you should vote for your favorite candidate in the caucus/primary.

I will say, however, that the cult of personality around Bernie worries me. His stans on Twitter stop at nothing to demean and destroy anyone who dares to criticize Bernie. We saw this with the Warren/Bernie debacle from a few weeks ago where (a vocal, small, but loud portion of) Bernie Twitter immediately began smearing Warren as a liar, a traitor, and a snake. I fear what will happen if Bernie gets elected and then makes a mistake in office — maybe a policy he passes isn’t as progressive as he’d promised, or he isn’t able to get anything major through Congress in his first two years. Are these Bernie supporters ready for Bernie to disappoint them? Or is that even possible? I really liked President Obama but there are plenty of areas that I was disappointed in during his time in office. This subsection of Bernie supporters can come as more against the GOP and against the DNC than for something. The politics of antagonizing others doesn’t work as well when you’re the party in charge.

Anyways, aside from the image problem, my main critique of Bernie (which isn’t much of a critique because he’s my #2, keep in mind) is that he’s less detailed on policies and I think less prepared for the presidency. If we do manage to secure majorities in each house of Congress and we win the presidency, we need to move from day 1 with multiple detailed bills ready to go to address the campaign promises he’s making. But I don’t get the vibe from the Bernie camp that his policies are designed, written, and ready to go on day one. And maybe he doesn’t have to be that prepared right now, but I’m a policy guy.

Caucus Power Rankings: #T-3 Andrew Yang

Hey all,

Here’s our next edition of the Caucus Power Rankings. As a reminder, here’s where we are right now:

• T-3: Andrew Yang
• T-3: Pete Buttigieg
• T-5: Amy Klobuchar
• T-5: Tom Steyer
• 7: Joe Biden
• 8: Michael Bennett
• 9: Deval Patrick
• T-10: Tulsi Gabbard
• T-10: Mike Bloomberg
• 12: John Delaney

Arguments For:

Josh — #3 — Be still my heart. For those who don’t know, I am a massive fan of the idea of a universal basic income. I discovered the idea my junior year of college, then I created a self-study class at St. Olaf to study it further. I gave a TED-style talk on it at the St. Olaf version of TED talks where I guessed that UBI could play a major role in politics in the next few elections, and I pursued a masters in Social Policy and Planning at the London School of Economics to dive deeper into this idea. I wrote my master’s thesis on a theoretical transition–and the political feasibility–in the UK from universal credit to universal basic income, which I later submitted to a journal and to the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) call for submissions in 2016 (you can slog through it here). My thesis’s main conclusion was that if UBI is to become a mainstream idea, then a major party in the UK needs to include it in their policy manifesto.

Two years later, in walks Andrew Yang. I am friends with a lot of people in the basic income community thanks to my attendance at the BIEN 2014 Congress, so I quickly heard about Yang’s long-shot campaign in the latter half of 2018. Core to his candidacy is the belief that we need a universal basic income (he brands it a freedom dividend because it polls better, lol) in the USA to combat technological automation and to prepare for 21st century challenges in the labor market. I actually wrote a piece about how I see parallels between Yang’s support of UBI and some thoughts from Oscar Wilde. I was thrilled to see someone running on the UBI platform, but then things started to turn. He got on a Freakonomics podcast and he took any media opportunity he could get. I remember seeing him post on Facebook that he was thrilled to finally make the list of candidates in a 538 poll back when there were 25ish candidates in the race. For a guy with no political experience and a background in tech and entrepreneurship, he was just happy to be included in actual polls around December 2018.

But then, something else happened — he connected with a small but significant base of voters: often young and male, they saw what Yang proposed as a new look at politics and a significant change from traditional Democratic and Republican ideas. Yang’s slogans, “Not left, not right, forward” and “MATH: Make America Think Harder” allowed him to court some of those disaffected voters who hate the back and forth between the two parties and he gave people the ability to imagine a world where everyone has an income floor, among many other never-before-considered policies like treating data as a property right, telling the NCAA to pay athletes, and to encourage MMA fighters’ unionization. He’s so far outside the bounds of normal politics that it has almost a Bernie 2016 vibe to his campaign, and it’s paying off. He is a candidate of the internet, and at 45 years old, he’s also one of the few candidates that I think truly understands the internet. His endorsements are also an incredible list of people: Elon Musk, Dave Chappelle, Donald Glover, and Antonio Bryant, to name a few.

At the CNN debate a few months ago, they had an entire ten to fifteen minute debate over a universal basic income versus a universal jobs guarantee. Without Yang in this race, there is no way such a debate would have come up, and as a result, Tulsi Gabbard endorsed the idea, and Elizabeth Warren suggested she was open to it provided the data and research backs it up (which it does). Yang has done America a massive favor by getting UBI out there. Support is growing in the public, too. A recent poll found that 66% of college democrats support UBI and according to a Hill-HarrisX poll, support is about 50/50 now across the public, improving 6 points in UBI’s favor from February 2019 to September 2019.

Aside from his signature policy, it’s worth noting that he is the last major candidate of color left, and he is also the first major Asian-American to run for President since Hiram Fong in 1964 (although it’s worth noting that Tulsi Gabbard and Kamala Harris also have Pacific Islander and Asian heritage as well). His general affect also brings people into his corner — his jovial, quirky performances in debates and his acknowledgement that only crazy people dream of running for president normalize Yang and you get the sense that he’s just enjoying every minute of this race. In the run-up to the caucus, he is going on a 17-day, 4 stops-per-day, bus tour in Iowa to get his message out. For a guy who was just happy to be included in a poll in late 2018, it’s truly remarkable that he is now the 6th or 7th  overall and that he has outlasted more traditional candidates like Jay Inslee and Kamala Harris.

Sam — #4 — So now that you’ve made it through Josh’s TED Talk deep dive on Andrew Yang’s Universal Basic Income policy of the Freedom Dividend, I guess you now see that you still have to read my thoughts on Andrew Yang. I’ll let you stretch and grab some coffee.

Back? Great! While I started my last piece noting that Mayor Pete was the dark horse candidate that emerge out of nowhere to become a serious contender, Andrew Yang may be on an even crazier ride national relevance. Beginning the race as a successful tech-CEO who just refused to wear a tie to any debate (or ever?), Yang was at very awkward at first, seeming to try and find his niche within the crowded primary field. His first calling card was to stick to the Freedom Dividend, the aforementioned UBI policy that promises a federally-guaranteed stipend to all Americans of $1000/month. At first blush this would seem like a crazy policy proposal to offer at this level. However, as Josh’s piece on Yang’s Freedom Dividend points out, the state of Alaska already has a UBI policy from oil revenue that grants $1200/year to every citizen of the state.

Yang then began to gain momentum through a base created strongly from young, college educated males with a strong internet presence. As Josh noted, his slogans of “Not left, not right, forward” and “MATH: Make America Think Harder” call for a new approach to politics and federal governance. This is both challenging Americans to take policy more seriously while simultaneously not taking ourselves so seriously. Wearing no tie on national television with a MATH lapel pin is a clear message that, frankly, resonates with a lot of Gen X and Millennial voters. Additionally, his policies are mostly progressive while also focusing on policies that rarely get air time in a national debate, such as paying college student athletes.

Yang has been more light-hearted than the rest of the field as well. He regularly lets any form of guard down, from admitting that he missed having his friend Cory Booker on the debate stage but predicted, rather joyfully, that Cory would be back! Maybe Yang knows something we don’t know. Yang is regularly cracking jokes in interviews and on the campaign trail. Yang’s policy positions and presence in this primary have been such a breath of fresh air and brought up a number of policies that never get the light of day nationally. We should all be grateful that Yang bet on himself when very few, including Josh and I initially, gave him much of a chance to get past the first debate. We’re better of with his success.

Arguments Against:

Josh — People don’t take him seriously. Because he’s on such a joyride through the campaign and he doesn’t pose much of a chance of actually winning, people aren’t really attacking him in debates and they aren’t threatened by him. This also shows itself in how the media has covered Yang’s campaign. The #YangMediaBlackout is real (and thoroughly documented by UBI legend Scott Santens on Twitter), as he spoke the least of any candidate on stage at every debate, and MSNBC frequently either omits him from graphics or in this case, genuinely shows a different Asian-American man’s photo instead of Yang’s photo. Now, I know this feels less like an argument against Yang than a plea for the media to cover him fairly, but I do count this as an argument against him. Nobody in establishment politics treats him as a serious candidate, and you have to wonder if the country feels the same way. Further, you do have to mention his dearth of political experience — he has never held elected office, which can be worrying, and he has zero foreign policy experience. And in this age where everyone is a pundit, few people fully believe that he can win the nomination, so they support other candidates instead. I’m guilty of that too — I put him third even though I think I agree with him on policy more than anyone else in the field. If we had ranked choice voting (another policy he supports) I’d be tempted to put him first.

Sam — In short, Yang is not being taken seriously outside of folks like Josh and I and his diehard supporters on Twitter. He hasn’t been seriously challenged since he is not expected to last much longer than New Hampshire, which leaves all serious voters from having a true test of Yang’s pros and cons. I do agree with Josh that the Yang Media Blackout is real and preventing his campaign from getting serious attention outside of debates. But on the other side of that coin, Yang also does not get attacked or forced to address the very tough policy and candidate profile questions. Yang’s resume just does not stand up to scrutiny for the office. Yang does not have experience in governing, let alone the public sector. Yang made it all the way to #4 for me because his campaign has been braking the mold, addressing difficult questions that society faces but regularly get looked over by Washington. And because I truly believe that more studies, research, and pilot programs for UBI need to begin to be given the time of day and considered as a truly viable option to address some of the greatest economic and fiscal challenges of our day.

Caucus Power Rankings: #T-3 Pete Buttigieg

Hey all,

Here’s our next edition of the Caucus Power Rankings. As a reminder, here’s where we are right now:

• T-3: Pete Buttigieg
• T-5: Amy Klobuchar
• T-5: Tom Steyer
• 7: Joe Biden
• 8: Michael Bennett
• 9: Deval Patrick
• T-10: Tulsi Gabbard
• T-10: Mike Bloomberg
• 12: John Delaney

Arguments For:

Sam — #3 — The only candidate in 2020 to generate as much energy and enthusiasm for their campaign as Bernie or Trump has been Mayor Pete Buttigieg. His natural charisma and total confidence in being able to provide full, complete, concise answers has been one of the most important and impressive parts of the 2020 campaign. Honestly, this is partially due to the total lack of proper sentence structure, proper English, and a vocabulary beyond using the phrase “very, very” once a paragraph. Though in fairness Trump doesn’t really do paragraphs either.

There are a few qualifications that make Mayor Pete so compelling, either in qualifications or in drawing attention. First, he’s the youngest candidate in the field, and yet speaks with a charisma and understanding of issues of someone in their 60s whose been working on the issues for decades. Second, Mayor Pete is the first (openly) gay major candidate to run for president. While support for LGBTQIA people and rights are at an all-time high, with a recent Gallup poll at 73% support of gay marriage today compared to 32% in 1987. Third, Pete has executive experience at the local level. Being a mayor in a moderate sized city of 100,000, Pete had to be able to administer the local government. Fourth, Pete has excellent experience and qualifications. Not only did he attend Harvard and Oxford, he has served in the Navy Reserve since 2009, serving a tour in Afghanistan in 2014. If he were to win the primary and the election, Pete would be the first democratic president to serve in the armed forces since JFK and first president to serve in a combat zone since George HW Bush. This not only speaks to his experience in serving the country, but also to his much more real understanding the need for excellent foreign policy, that must include the use of the State Department, and the consequences on the human level when the US needs to utilized the military.

Pete’s exerpeicnce, academically, militarily, and professionally, along with his pretty-darn progressive policies but still emphasizing that some amount of bipartisan support is needed to pass any legislature make Pete’s campaign very appeal in Iowa.

Josh — #4 — Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, offers the most charisma of any politician I have seen since Obama. His intellect and eloquence soar through his speeches and his answers to questions, and you can tell that he is a really, really smart guy. You have to be smart if you went to Harvard and were a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. (Side story: apparently Pete also self-studied Norwegian in order to read more books by a favorite Norwegian author, as only a few of the author’s books were translated into English. I mean, who does that??)

Also the first major openly LGBTQIA candidate running for president, Pete’s campaign is breaking down barriers and providing a role model and example for young LGBTQIA kids (and, for that matter, older members of the community as well who fought so hard for the expansion of rights we have seen in the past ten years). Of course, the work isn’t done on LGBTQIA rights; there are serious threats to transgender people in particular that deserve our attention and support.

Pete’s rhetoric and speaking skills make him an attractive candidate to take on Trump, but he has a few other things going for him as well. At his age (38 years old) he offers a distinct generational argument to take on Trump, and he’s also the most prominent Democrat I’ve seen (outside of Iowa’s own Rob Sand) talk about his faith and Christianity in a manner that refuses to concede religion to the Republicans. His outlook on Christianity truly highlights compassion, empathy, and helping one another instead of using the Bible to discriminate against others or to justify military intervention. Further, while Mayor of South Bend he decided to serve in the military and he deployed to Afghanistan for seven months with the Navy Reserves, giving him credibility on foreign policy and a chance to directly contrast himself with Trump. He’s an impressive young man, and his ambition is palpable as he has managed to gain traction in this field even though he’s never held a major political office before. Lastly, his focus on the day after the election and needing to bring together a bitterly divided country is compelling and is exactly what a lot of voters like to hear.

Arguments Against:

Sam — As for the not so great parts of Pete, there are a few. First, Pete has seemed to still be searching for how progressive his policies are. During the campaign, he slowly made his policies more progressive until Elizabeth Warren hit the top of the Iowa and New Hampshire polls and began being attacked from every side. When Warren started to fall, Pete seemed to hedge back to make his policies less progressive, with the biggest policies being Medicare-for-All-Who-Want-It (public option, universal healthcare) to supporting tuition-free college for everyone but the upper class.

I don’t buy the argument that “Pete has been on this well planned trajectory and has cleverly crafted his rise in politics by going to Harvard then joining the Navy then moving back to South Bend to run for mayor! Its the perfect crime!” First off, to think any person who didn’t have some kind of greater ambitions and plans is being a little naive. I believe that when Mayor Pete ran for DNC Chair and saw that he greatly exceeded expectations that he should continue to push his expectations. He did not expect the surge he saw in popularity and the polls last summer, as they went from little to no staff to going on a hiring spree. I think he hoped to run for president, increase his name recognition, and run for Congress or governor down the road. Having said that, his struggles with the African American community in South Bend are real and a problem. Additionally, his inability to garner support amongst minorities, particularly African Americans and Latinos, are a major issue and concern. Pete has to be able to connect and get support outside of white progressives and white working class voters.

Last, his comments that he won’t back away from fundraising and appealing to the upper class of the left are probably necessary in order for Pete to have a successful campaign, but he has to live with the consequences. Yes, Obama raised money from that group of donors in 2012, but the need to raise from small donors and have an army of grassroots donors, field staff, and volunteers are the structure that are necessary to win in Iowa, New Hampshire, and through Super Tuesday. Oh and that thing called the general election. Without support from minorities, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party, and without the grassroots army, its hard to see how Pete makes into Super Tuesday, let along as see him as the right candidate to represent the Democratic Party of 2020.

Josh — My largest problem with Pete Buttigieg stems from his ideological evolution during this primary. At the first debate, when Pete was taking every interview he could and was eager to make an impression, he argued that it didn’t matter what policies Democrats say they support because Republicans will call them all socialist anyway, so why not swing for the fences and fight for progressive victories. But, somewhere in the fall of last year, he seemed to intentionally rebrand himself as the moderates’ next great hope. Likely seeing that Bernie and Warren had an insurmountable lead on the progressive wing, he saw a potentially weak Biden as a target in the moderate lane and made the leap. All of the sudden, at the next debates he was chastising Warren for Medicare-for-All and was espousing his new Medicare-for-All-Who-Want-It plan, offering a new-and-improved moderate version of Pete Buttigieg.

Further, his ambition gets smelly. Whether true or not, his whole career path seems manufactured to give him a perfect resume for political office and indeed the presidency. Harvard, Oxford, working for McKinsey, signing up for the Navy Reserves in 2009 and deploying in 2014, and running for DNC chair in 2017, Pete seems to have put a lot of time and effort into calibrating his image and his profile to optimize his chances in a campaign like this. On the McKinsey point, I think he’s probably surprised at the blow back he’s received since that has come to light. A ‘prestigious’ consulting company, it’s supposed to have the reputation of being where smart people work, but the issue is that places like McKinsey contract with some of the worst companies and governments in the world to manage and execute projects that end up furthering inequalities and harming people.

Lastly, I think he has a fundamental issue with his candidacy, and that concerns his campaign’s inability to attract support from people of color. This story first seemed to break a few months ago during the Pete surge (around the time of the Liberty and Justice dinner), but since then they have not improved their numbers with people of color. He legitimately has gotten 0% in black support in some polls, according to the NY Times. And now, just days before the caucus, the NY Times again published a story reminiscent of the Kamala Harris piece that doomed her campaign, as Pete campaign staffers of color came forward and shared their stories of not being heard on the campaign trail and not being given a chance to help fix this critical issue. No Democrat can win the White House without the support of people of color, and the black community in particular. If Pete isn’t able to connect with people of color, they will stay home and we will lose to Trump again.