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7/19/2022

JOE BIDEN DAY IN AMERICA?

IT’S TIME we celebrated Joe Biden.
   A decent man.
   A competent president.
   An inspired politician.
   A man we’d like to go for ride with in his classic Corvette.
   A longtime pal we’d like to chat with as he flips burgers at a backyard barbecue.
   A man who, after a lifetime of public service, traded retirement for the most horrendously confounding job in public or private life.
   A man who symbolizes the best of America’s aspirations, who represents, “the soul of America,” the inspired words that drove his candidacy less than two years ago.
   A man whom all of us cannot thank enough. A man we should never stop thanking.
   A man who, when we go to bed at night or get up in the morning, we must thank for rescuing us, and the rest of the world, from the most evil man ever to have the title of president.
   So let’s declare Joe Biden Day in America.

WHEN SHOULD we have the event?
   I’d say sooner.
   In case you haven’t noticed, Joe Biden is old. Perilously old. He’ll turn 80 on Nov. 20. Set aside the fact that he’s in a high-stress job that would be problematic for anyone at any age. He’s at a point when he could go at any moment, at a point in his life when every day is a gift.
   Wouldn’t it be better to say all the things that we’d want him to hear while he’s still chugging along, while our words still mean something to him, while he could use a bit of encouragement, rather than save all of that for obituaries, eulogies, Twitter declarations, mumbled thoughts while we circle his flag-draped coffin in the Rotunda?
   Time is precious.

BUT MAINLY, this man deserves a pat on the back, a good natured cheer, a little hip-hooray, perhaps a long-winded after-dinner toast, preferably detailed and fact-checked, heavy on humor, simmered in sentiment and laced with love.
   A boost from the home team.
   It’s something we all need. In fact, maybe we should take a moment, not just for Joe Biden, but for all the people in our lives who try their best to do good and who succeed more than we might imagine.

THE OPPOSITE has been going on for Biden, month after month after month.
He’s blamed for inflation. He’s blamed for pulling out of Afghanistan. He’s blamed for suggestomg voters send more Democrats to Congress (“Why should I? I voted for Biden, and he’s done nothing.”) He’s blamed for not using the extraordinary, limitless super-powers of the presidency to counter the Supreme Court’s disastrous abortion, religion and gun decisions. Biden's blamed for not using magic wand of the presidency to make Sen. Joe Manchin do his bidding on his ambitious Build Back Better program. He’s blamed for proposing such a sweeping program. Too many promises, too little results. He’s blamed for not being more charismatic, for not being a great orator, for not being inspiring, courageous, bold, idealistic. He’s blamed for the way he walks, the way he talks, for being the older person that we knew he was when we elected him, but now just a tad older.
   What hurts the most are attacks from people – like you and me – who are supposed to be his friends and allies.
   A couple of weeks ago, a parent who’d lost his son in a high school shooting chastised Biden during a White House ceremony that “celebrated” the rare, bipartisan itty-bitty piece of federal gun control legislation that was disappointing, but which was at least something.
   “We have to do more than that!” the anguished parent, Manuel Oliver, called out from the audience as Biden was listing the new law’s highlights. Mr. Oliver’s son, Joaquin, 17, was one of 14 students killed in Parkland, Florida in 2018. “We have to do more than that!” Mr. Oliver shouted again.
   Biden couldn’t have agreed more.
   “It will not save every life from the epidemic of gun violence. But if this law had been in place years ago, even this last year, lives would have been saved,” Biden said
   “But it’s not enough,” he continued, “and we all know that.”
   Condemning military-style weapons, he described what they do:
   “The most common rounds fired from an AR-15 move almost twice as fast as that from a handgun. Coupled with smaller, lighter bullets, these weapons maximize the damage done … and human flesh and bone is just torn apart … and as difficult as it is to say, that’s why so many people and some in this audience — and I apologize for having to say it — need to provide DNA samples to identify the remains of their children.”
   “Think of that,” Joe Biden said.
   Maybe those who were listening did just that: think about what those awful guns do to children whose only crime is going to school on the wrong day.

WE EXPECT TOO much from our leaders. Mr. Oliver at least had solid reasons for his despair, losing a child, then watching repeated gun violence year after year as states, and now the Supreme Court, are making guns ever easier to get and use.
   But his anger was directed at the wrong man. And so is the anger Biden faces from so many of us, who, instead of attacking, sniping, undermining the president, should be shoring him him up. And more importantly, instead of beating and kicking the old man, we should be doing our part to build in a national coalition to face the enormous challenges of our time, so that success doesn't depend on just one old man.
   I’m reminded of something the a labor official once told me about how rank-and-file members sometimes relate to their unions, comparing them to customers of a balky Coke machine. The customer puts in the right change, and when the machine fails to deliver, he starts beating and kicking the thing.
   But unions aren’t Coke machines, and to be successful, they need their members to do more – a lot more – than just pay their dues. Members need to show up at meetings, sign petitions, run for leadership posts, recruit new members, picket, and sometimes go on strike in a continuing battle that’s never completely won.
   The same can be said for our role as citizens in democracy. We have to do more than pay our taxes, vote when we feel like it and complain like hell whenever it fancies us. But democracy demands so much more, more than we’d like. Sometimes we have to join a candidate’s campaign. Maybe run for office ourselves. We have to write letters and leaflets and checks. Surely, we have to vote every time, over and over, again and again. Democracy gives us a lot, but it demands a lot.

I’M NOT SUGGESTING that Joe Biden is a perfect president. He was too old when he ran in 2020. But he was the one man who could – and did – beat Donald Trump. He definitely should not run in 2024; but he would be a fool to say so before his presidency is half-way done.
   There’s plenty I don’t like about Biden, including how he’s turned America’s back on the women and girls whom we left to the tyranny of the Taliban in Afghanistan. (I haven’t the slightest idea of how we could have remained in that country without hundreds, perhaps thousands, more Americans dying), And I surely didn’t like Biden fist-bumping the grotesque Saudi Arabian “prince,” who ordered the Washington Post’s columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, murdered and sawed into little pieces.
   What I do know is that Joe Biden is no Coke machine that deserves kicking and shouting at when he doesn’t or can’t deliver on every promise and every expectation. What Biden needs is our support. What democracy needs is citizens who are up to the difficult, frustrating, exhausting demands of self-government.
   We actually got a lot more than we bargained for when we elected Joe Biden: a man too old to be president but who outperforms his (and my) age group. He was many primary voters' second choice, and he turned out to be hard-working, capable, tireless, decent and the best president I’ve seen in my lifetime.
   I’m worried that the rest of us will do not do our part as active, conscientious, alert, caring citizens. We’ll leave it all to Joe, and then complain and pout and nitpick and second-guess the old man when things don’t work out.
   Democracy is in peril. Republicans, no longer a rational political party, but a Trumpian cult determined to take over Congress and return Trump to the White House, or even worse, elect someone just as evil as Trump, but smarter, better organized and more capable.
   It’s all too possible that we’ll look back on these years with Joe Biden, and realize that they were the last years that America had a president worthy of that office.

SO LET’S have Joe Biden Day in America.
   I’m open to suggestions. There could be rides in a classic Corvette. A hamburger roast. Maybe a bike race, although not too long. Maybe some face-painting – turning Democratic frowns into smiles. We could have a slogan-writing contest – lord knows Democrats could use a snappy bumper sticker or two to slap on their EVs. Surely, we could spend the day without mentioning the opinion polls. Obviously, some long speeches. Maybe a word or two from Barack Obama, or better still, from Michelle.
   Whatever we do, let’s do it with proper enthusiasm.
   And let’s do it soon.
   Before it’s too late for Joe Biden.
   And too late for us.

2 Comments

7/3/22

7/3/2022

5 Comments

YES, THE SUPREMES ARE BONKERS.
NEXT ACT: ENDING FAIR ELECTIONS

IT’S A HOLIDAY WEEKEND, and you’re absolutely within your rights to take some well-deserved time off from thinking about the Supreme Court as you try to recover from its just-concluded term of terror.

   How much can a citizen stand? There was the medieval abortion decision reminding women who’s the boss of them and their bodies. The planet-frying decision hobbling efforts to reverse climate change. The drive-by shooting down of a gun control law. The absolution the court granted to the praying high school coach and his worshipful football team.

   But there’s something more dangerous on the court’s agenda for its new session that begins this fall, a case that could mean the end of fair and democratic elections.
Sounds loony? I mean me. You're thinking that I’m sounding hysterical, over the edge, speaking in tongues, going, going and gone.

   But I swear, it’s not me, but the court which has gone bonkers. It’s decided to take up a North Carolina case that promotes an interpretation the Constitution that Trump fanatics tried to use, but failed, as they attempted to overturn the 2020 election.

   The issue is what's called the “independent state legislature theory,” a bizarre reading of the Constitution that would give state legislatures control of all aspects of voting – including substituting their own gang of Electoral College members to chose the next president, replacing the real electors pledged to the candidate whom voters actually chose at the polls.

   But, you say, the courts wouldn’t allow that kind of chicanery.

   Sorry – and this is the worst part – this theory says the state courts would not be allowed to intervene.

   In other words, state legislatures would have what dictators and authoritarians have dreamed of forever: absolute power.

AS AN EXAMPLE of how this could work, let’s re-run the 2020 election, in which Joe Biden won the popular vote, as well as the Electoral College tally, which is why he is now president of the United States.

   A reminder: voters in a presidential election vote for Candidate A or Candidate B. But the people who technically elect the president are members of the Electoral College, who are called "electors."

   Each state is allocated as many electors as they have Senators and members House of Representatives. So tiny Rhode Island gets four electors – one for each of its two members of the House, and two more for each of its two Senators. These electors are pledged to cast their Electoral College ballots to reflect how real voters cast their ballots. Rhode Islanders voted for Biden; its four electors did the same.

   But under the wacko “doctrine” that would give state legislatures exclusive control of elections, if the Rhode Island’s General Assembly didn’t like Biden’s victory, the legislators could appoint their own group of electors, who would then vote in the Electoral College for Trump. If other states did the same thing, then the worst president in history would still be making terrible history.

   Call it crazy. Call it absurd. Call it un-American. Just don’t call it impossible.

   With the Supreme Court just agreeing to review the North Carolina case, that means the court is seriously considering the independent state legislature doctrine. And we know after the court’s last batch of rulings that things could – actually, probably will – go very badly for the rest of us out here in normal, sane, common sense America.

DO YOU WANT TO HEAR the details? No, of course you don’t.

   Me neither. I was catatonic the entire morning after after reading a tiny article that the New York Times practically hid at the bottom of Page One, stuck there perhaps by editors who didn’t want to spoil their readers’ July 4th holiday. But lots of other news outlets, including the Washington Post, had similar accounts.

   The independent state legislature doctrine focuses on a couple of sections of the Constitution:

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1:

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

   (I have no idea what “the Places of chusing Senators” means, and I invoke my First Amendment rights in chusing not to waste my time or yours to find out).

Article II, Section 1, Clause 2:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

   There’s been lots of debate about these clauses, but bottom line, we’ve come to expect that electors will do what voters tell them to do, and that elections will be run fairly, and if they aren’t, the courts will sort things out.

   Nowhere in these sections, or in practice, does the Constitution prohibit state courts from intervening, as they normally do when legislatures go off the deep end.

   But we know how extremists are: they see “day” but they read “night,” and in this case, they say that the Constitution says that legislatures can do as they please, because the sections use the word “legislatures,” but not the word “courts.”

   Absurd? Absolutely.

   Courts are always there to review whether the other branches of government, governors, presidents, legislatures are playing by the rules. And our democracy depends on the checks and balances in which the three branches of government keep each other in line.

   The “executive branch,” the president, is a powerful figure, but not a king; and her actions can be limited by Congress and the courts.   The legislature – the House and the Senate—is subject to a president’s veto and what the courts have to say. The courts can be limited by Congress, the president and ultimately by amendments to the Constitution.

   It’s a foolproof system, except when fools are in charge, as they are in the right-wing, 6-to-3 majority of the Supreme Court and in more than half the country’s state legislatures, which are controlled by Trump-crazed Republicans.

Now, the North Carolina case is about whether House voting districts were fairly drawn, but it’s the independent state legislature doctrine within the case that scares experts. Here’s what some of them have to say.

   First, an article by Ethan Herenstein and Thomas Wolf, lawyers for the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of law:

   The nightmare scenario is that a legislature, displeased with how an election official on the ground has interpreted her state’s election laws, would invoke the theory as a pretext to refuse to certify the results of a presidential election and instead select its own slate of electors. Indeed, this isn’t far from the plan attempted by Trump allies following his loss in the 2020 election.

   And here’s what U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who also has been a U.S. attorney and a state attorney general, told the Washington Post:

   This phony ‘doctrine’ is an anti-democratic Republican power grab masquerading as legal theory. It was cooked up in a right-wing legal hothouse by political operatives looking to give state legislatures the power to overturn the will of American voters in future elections.

   Whitehouse went on to tell the Post that this was the same sort of scheme pushed by John Eastman, a Trump lawyer, as he and other Trumpsters tried to overturn the last presidential election, and it could plant seeds of chaos in time for the next one. The fact that the Court is even considering a case involving such an extreme idea shows how beholden it is to the right-wing donors who got so many of the justices their jobs.

OVERRIDE THE WILL of the voters? Change the outcome of an election? Can’t happen here. Too outlandish. Too far out. Even this Supreme Court would never condone such outrageous behavior.

   But we should ask people most affected by the Supreme Court’s recent rulings whether there’s a limit on the mischief the highest court can unleash.

   Ask a woman who’s been forced to give birth against her wishes because the Supreme Court took away women’s half-century right to abortion. Ask her whether the court has gone bonkers.

   Ask that woman’s kid what it’s like to be born on a planet that’s becoming uninhabitable, even as the Supreme Court decides that the nation’s environmental agency can’t control heat-rising gasses.

   Ask the same kid how safe she feels on New York City streets after the court shot down one of state’s gun control laws.

   Ask this kid if she thinks her chances of getting to play football will be improved if she joins the coach and the rest of the team in prayer, now that the Supreme Court has further blurred the lines between church and state.

   While were at it, maybe the rest of us should ask the coach, the football team, everyone on the sidelines and in the stands, if we can join them in praying that the Supreme Court will come to its senses.

   Please, please and please don’t let six black-robbed rogues go off the deep end, fall off the cliff, leap into the abyss and allow the end of fair and honest elections.

   Let’s all of us pray as hard as we can.

   And vote like crazy while we still can.

5 Comments

7/19/2022

JOE BIDEN DAY IN AMERICA?

7/3/22

YES, THE SUPREMES ARE BONKERS.NEXT ACT: ENDING FAIR ELECTIONS

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YES, THE SUPREMES ARE BONKERS.
NEXT ACT: ENDING FAIR ELECTIONS