Hi friends,
There is a pile of good news, so before I skip town, here are some items to warm your heart on this beautiful and cool November day.
Ukrainian troops liberated Kherson from nearly nine months of Russian control and sang and danced in the streets. This is big.
There remains a tremendous amount of work to stabilize, secure, and rebuild the city. There are landmines to remove, utilities to restore, and plenty of devastation.
It is moving to see the spirit of the Ukrainian people and not hard to visualize their eventual victory:
In the space of 24 hours, groups of locals repainted the city’s imposing concrete city signs in blue and yellow.
I wonder if folks have been painting Pennsylvania blue?!
The fact that Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is fighting for her political life should have Marjorie Taylor Greene quacking, in spite of her easy electoral win in the deep-red NW corner of Georgia.
While there are plenty of election-deniers who will join the House as freshmen, there are prognostications — and indications — that "sore loser politics" might be losing some of its gloss.
Nonetheless, Senator Elizabeth Warren offered some good counsel this weekend about next steps, given that the House may flip. Her suggestion is predicated on some recent history:
[Republicans] believe economic chaos weakens President Biden, so they are itching to use their leverage to hurt working families. This is the same strategy Republicans used after the 2010 midterms when they set off a debt-ceiling crisis, then demanded family-crushing austerity.
Warren believes that now is the time to nail down some common sense reforms so that we can focus on our recovery from January 6 and the pandemic. We do not need political or economic crises ginned up by people who wish to sow chaos.
Contact your Congressional delegation and urge them to pass electoral count reform and to end the debt ceiling. This is ready-made!
I know you know that Democrats held the Senate and that a win in Georgia’s runoff will give us an edge.
Nathaniel Stinnett of the Environmental Voter Project cautions that progressives love early voting, and there are just five or six days of early voting for the December runoff in Georgia. Turnout will be key!
Phone bank with the Environmental Voter Project or make a small donation to help get out the vote in Georgia.
If you are, as I am, disappointed that we must go again in Georgia to reelect Warnock, pause to consider the following. Chase Oliver, the so-called spoiler in the Georgia Senate race, ran with an educational goal and a principled challenge to the two-party system.
“That’s the real lesson I want people to learn,” he says. “Whether you voted for Raphael Warnock or Herschel Walker or me, we wouldn’t have to wait weeks later to see who’s going to Washington DC if we passed something common sense like ranked-choice voting.”
Chase is correct that to create a more democratic system, we need more options than the two major parties provide. Chase’s criticism of
leadership drafting a bill behind closed doors with giant corporate interests
is important. If this moves the state of Georgia to pass ranked-choice voting, I suspect there would be a sharp reduction in the number of quackers elected.
If by some miracle, she doesn’t top 50% when all ballots are counted, the ranked-choices will be tabulated. There will be none of the runoff madness that we’re about to see in Georgia.
There are some interesting facets of our recent electoral victories.
Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters believes that
“It’s fair to say… there was a green wave in the states across the country, a big green wave.”
In a number of states — Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota — Democrats now control the legislative and executive branches. These states were unable to pass sound environmental legislation and are now in a position to do so.
I haven’t even touched on many of the electoral firsts and the solid defense of reproductive rights! But I’ve got a train to catch.
with love,
L