You’re the Message Now: Aim Wisely

“Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Brilliant though he might have been, I have to believe Sun Tzu would have had real problems with political social media. I can only imagine his first question after spending time sorting through the figurative smelly landfill of random thoughts just thrown out into the ether at warp speed and max volume – “How can there be true success when so few ponder or deliberate before making a move?”

This would be a fair question, and it’s paraphrased from one of Sun Tzu’s actual statements. Many of us are in such a hurry to show that we instantly grasp the central truth of a complex matter that we make statements that are regrettable a few days later, or even self-defeating in the long run because we’re not looking at the biggest pictures in our haste to judge. So, can we take a little time right now and ponder what we’re really trying to accomplish with what’s left in the 2020 election cycle? Is it really in our best interests for the next few months to squabble over the supremacy of political identities, when perhaps we ought to focus on the serious policy issues at stake and how to get solutions implemented?

As it stands today, we’ve got gigantic concerns with a deadly global pandemic, “regular” health care, racism, societal violence, a looming economic depression or recession, climate change, voting rights, reproductive rights, equal rights, education, debt and deficit, housing and homelessness, air and water quality, energy choice and supply, the courts, extreme wealth inequality, and to keep this paragraph short a frighteningly uncertain future thanks largely to COVID-19.

As you might guess, I’m going to side with policy over identity as the broad category of top importance right now, but policy’s a tough sell on social media. It plays out more like Broncos vs. Raiders when they’re both having a good season – we paint our faces and wear our baseball caps in the colors of our ideological home team, yell rude phrases at the opposition, revel in “our side’s” victories, and rub any failures or embarrassments or scandals in the faces of our opponents.

We’re wired to have emotions and personal leanings, which is good in many types of relationships, but maybe not always in the serious business of choosing a leader. One of the harshest realities for folks from the political center to the far left in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary was that the candidate who most closely matched many peoples’ identities didn’t win. Obviously, Bernie supporters preferred the hardest-core democratic socialist in this race, but others didn’t get their woman, person of color, member of the LGBTQ community, environmental activist, or even Mayor of New York City. There were at least 29 Dems who launched candidacies for 2020, and while some of them were long-shots, most were highly successful people who had something significant going for them, which naturally meant there were lots of disappointed supporters at some point in the campaign.

So, I’d like to try steering people away from personalities and ideologies, and toward policy and structure. Let’s remember, the President will indeed have a personality, but it’s also a position with a well-defined legal and Constitutional structure (of course, not immune to abuse). Whoever holds the position has power to veto even the best legislation; to nominate Supreme Court justices and federal judges, along with powerful heads of departments like the EPA or Education; to issue executive orders; and to improve or damage relationships within the nation and with the rest of the world. At this point, many left-leaning voters are just not likely to get the personality they supported even a few short months ago, but they probably can get some type of victory over the next few years in a high percentage of the most vital policy areas. No one person can unilaterally bring about most policy advances anyway, so we will need appointees and elected officials with differing specific skill sets and mind sets to work within coalitions, and we simply can’t get the successes people are after without electoral victories at the presidential and congressional levels.

Notice – there was not a single name in the paragraph above. Only stone cold machinery.

Now, back to real people and social media and Sun Tzu’s advice of not acting “unless there is something to be gained.” Consider this sentence my strong endorsement for Joe Biden in 2020, because a Biden victory can both free us of the Trump national nightmare and put us in a decent position for that wide range of policy victories in the future. So, I will plead with my friends from the political center to far left to understand that nothing is to be gained by posting online snark or negativity about Biden at this point in the game, especially if one hasn’t done the due diligence to make sure that what’s being spread is not false or misleading. With this, I’m not trying to silence anyone or ask people to cover up any factually proven transgressions – I’m just asking folks to do some fact-checking before posting, and to consider the potential impact of spreading negativity or indifference since it might actually help destroy your chances of winning policy advances for the next four years.

And in the real world, we should all take a second to acknowledge that the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces” recently joined forces to work on Democratic Party platform proposals!

But in my past few months on social media, I’ve been reading too many comments saying Democrats “didn’t learn their lesson” from Hillary’s loss in 2016 by allowing Biden to be the party’s nominee in 2020. Here is why this bothers me enough to write about it. First, it’s based on false equivalence – that Biden is Hillary basically because he’s a centrist and is connected with the Dem establishment, or because they’re both “not Bernie.” Second, it singles out only one political comparison, when democracy itself is thousands of years old with millions of elections from which to learn. And third, it plants weeds of negativity that can grow to overshadow the harvest value of significant policy benefits if Dems capture the Presidency and Congress in 2020.

I might not care about any of this enough to write at all if we weren’t, pardon my French, in a goddamned national emergency. Two major situations stand out – the public health and economic double-whammy due to COVID-19, and George Floyd’s recent murder in Minneapolis begetting demonstrations and violence in the streets, which shone a bright spotlight on long-standing societal problems including systemic racism and domestic militarization. But I don’t have to tell most people that things are seriously troubling right now – I’m just hoping we have the will and ability to get back on track, and the wisdom to understand that we’re in a true win or lose situation with the 2020 election.

If we care about our future at all we must be realistic about this Presidential race, especially since we’re still operating under the Electoral College system, and spreading unnecessary trash about a candidate might persuade enough voters in key battleground states to avoid voting or cast protest votes. Remember, Hillary lost three states in 2016 by incredibly narrow margins – Michigan by a mere 10,704 votes, Wisconsin by 22,748, and Pennsylvania by 44,292 – and those states will almost certainly be battlegrounds again in 2020. Even if we assume that most people won’t be swayed by online comments, playing around the margins can still pose enormous risks without any corresponding reward, since even unwittingly helping to take Biden down by dampening enthusiasm for his campaign can only get you four more years of Trump.

I’m also writing because COVID-19 will probably impact the election cycle by threatening in-person campaign activities that until this year were standard practices, like door-to-door “ground games,” house parties, or big live rallies. Combined with declines in print journalism staffing and questionable levels of political depth in some of our traditional media, it all means social media could have an oversized influence on how people perceive what’s at stake.

As we saw in 2016, foreign powers understand the power of social media and the gullibility of some percentage of American users. Foreign interference in our election should have been one of the major takeaway lessons from 2016, and I hope more Americans will better accept their responsibility in 2020 as to what they share with hundreds or thousands of people, who might then share the same stuff with hundreds or thousands of others, and so on. They call effective online messaging “viral” because it spreads, and in this case sharing bad political viruses could be catastrophic in its own way for the future of our nation.

So, let’s pretend we’re Yang Gangers who want to Make America Think Harder (MATH). There are about four full months left in the election cycle, many of us post something political at least a few times a month, millions of people are doing some version of the same, and any given person may have hundreds or thousands of total followers on social media. Ask yourself – how many people during this election cycle will read these posts, take them to heart, and share them with others? You don’t have to bother with actual math to know it’s a gigantic number – just consider how rapidly “Karen” became a slur about entitled white women instead of merely a really common name. This means today’s social media influencers of all levels have a choice to use their power in the pursuit of positive or negative outcomes, and in 2020 the consequences or rewards of positive or negative outcomes are unfathomably enormous.

I’ll use my mid-level social media influence to work toward electing Biden and defeating Trump (there’s no need to choose between the two actions) in 2020, but I’d like to use part of the following piece to debunk any notion that the only relevant lesson we can work with right now was about Dems nominating a centrist. There are clearly many other lessons we can learn from political history and some pertain to 2020, plus there are obvious reasons why 2016 and 2020 are actually really different when you dig beneath the face value.

And before getting into specifics, here’s one final reminder from Sun Tzu – “Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.” To my friends who will be spreading the online message in 2020, please try to understand what you’re truly aiming at before pulling the trigger – and people might enjoy the longer-term fruits of this advice if they can reposition weapons of thought that are actually aimed at their own foot, before firing.

McGovern ’72 – Leftists Can Lose in Landslides

In 1972, a leftist Democratic candidate went up against an ethically-challenged incumbent Republican, a basic script some would have liked to see play out in 2020. Just remember, the candidacy of George McGovern didn’t go so well. McGovern lost to Richard Nixon in one of the worst Electoral College landslides in history (520-17), and the popular vote wasn’t close (60.7% – 37.5%). In comparison, the centrist Hillary actually won the popular vote in 2016 by nearly 3 million votes, but lost the Presidency only due to our arcane Electoral College system.

Of course, McGovern and Nixon were different people living in different times than Bernie and Trump – but there are fair comparisons to be drawn. McGovern’s platform was quite progressive for the time, including support for a version of universal basic income, a version of a national health care system, withdrawing from Vietnam and providing amnesty for draft dodgers, increasing minimum wages, reducing military spending, and decriminalization of marijuana. Like Bernie, McGovern also had strong support from his time’s pop culture, especially musicians and actors/actresses. And Nixon, despite his claims to the contrary, was a crook.

The slogan “acid, amnesty, and abortion” right-wingers used to discredit McGovern was like most slogans an unfair reduction, but it had that catchy alliteration and it stuck. And that’s why Bernie supporters who tout polling numbers from early parts of campaign cycles of the past need to accept that the Republican messaging machine would have mobilized into an all-out “attack” mode – unlike anything Bernie ever saw in a Democratic primary – had he become the actual nominee. This would have included a steady diet of old clips of Bernie’s kind words for Castro, relentless repetition of “socialism” without mentioning the more accurate “democratic socialism,” gruesome graphics of gazillions of greenbacks representing the costs of his proposed programs without mentioning the benefits of any of them, and all the other stuff from this Guardian story that opposition research dug up on the Bern long ago.

My main lesson for this section was found in the title. Leftists can indeed lose in landslides, even if devotees see the platforms and positions as undeniable gospel truth. America has historically only had isolated periods of time in which hard-core leftism enjoyed some higher level of popularity. Combined with relatively small percentages of actual active adherents and practically limitless right-wing funding for opposition media and advertising, veering hard left has never been a guaranteed path to nationwide victory. But to be clear, this lesson does not mean that a leftist couldn’t win – Bernie has obviously been competitive, for example – and it doesn’t mean I would never vote for a leftist, and it doesn’t mean any candidate of any type is assured victory or doomed to defeat solely based on their broad political identity. I’ll prioritize the possibility of serious policy benefits for the nation over the identity of the President, and again I’d like to point out the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces” as evidence that I’m not alone.

To be fair, Reagan vs. centrist Walter Mondale in 1984 was also lopsided. Mondale did quite a bit better than McGovern in the popular vote, losing only by 58.8-46.6%, though he was blown out in the Electoral College by 525-13. But the races to follow were all over the map. Use your own definitions about who’s centrist or liberal or progressive (it’s a pursuit for which I’ve lost most of my enthusiasm because the label-first approach has grown too banal and self-righteous and litmus-testy for a complex world) – but I’ll say liberal-ish Michael Dukakis lost to Bush I in 1988, while centrist Bill Clinton won twice in 1992 and 1996. Al Gore, a centrist, won the popular vote in 2000 narrowly but lost in the Electoral College. Next up, you can find sober reports saying the next two Dem candidates, John Kerry and Barack Obama, were among the most liberal U.S. Senators of their time. One won twice, one lost once.

So, here’s a secondary lesson – no campaign from the past is a perfect predictor of another election. The players and circumstances matter. Reagan was not Trump. The left and right wings of 1972 and 1984 were not the left and right wings of 2020. Centrist Dems and liberal Dems have both won and lost. And to lead into my next section – Biden might be a centrist but he is not a Clinton.

The Clintons – Enquiring Minds, Dynasty and Vast Conspiracy

I voted for Hillary in 2016, and regret dearly that we didn’t wind up with a President who had been an attorney, First Lady, leader in the old-timey fight for national health care, U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of State. Still, I can’t deny that she had baggage – even if messaging about some of it has been quite unfair – that made it tough for some people to vote for her.

The history of demonizing Hillary goes back decades. She quite visibly led a White House task force during Bill Clinton’s first term in office to work on proposals for a national health care system, long before Obamacare or recent discussions of systems like Medicare for All. Today’s progressives may have fair points if they say that neither the Clinton proposal nor Obamacare were the systems the nation really needs, but national health care at any level – including the actual Medicare – has always generated intense opposition from American corporate interests and the political right. The proposal coming out of Hillary’s task force was tarred with the derogatory name of “Hillarycare,” and she became a symbol for government overreach as far back as at least 1993.

Hillary’s 2016 campaign was also more than a bit of a package deal. Of course, her husband Bill Clinton was impeached but not removed from office for lying about his really intelligent Rhodes-Scholar-thinking-with-his-penis sexual infidelities in the Oval Office. But the history of “The Clintons” also includes a lengthy record of events or associations that people can refer to with one word or phrase, again whether this is fair or not. Thanks in part to right-wing repetition, people with some political awareness will have at least heard about most of them, and many will elicit negative mental connotations because that’s why spinmeisters spun them the way they spun them. Vince Foster. Travelgate. Whitewater. Her e-mails. Paula Jones. Clinton Foundation. Filegate. Benghazi. And here’s a link to a decent short compilation about the Clintons’ major controversies, in case you forgot.

Some number of Americans also had a fairly natural negative reaction to considering that Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton might have been the major-party nominees in 2016 – since either of the two actually becoming President could perpetuate family dynasties. We didn’t break away from the British Empire just to replace monarchy with dynasty, now did we?

Even the most “enquiring” minds don’t expect pure truth from the tabloids, but Hillary running for President was an especially attractive target for trashy hit pieces. The mainstream media didn’t do her many favors during the last part of the campaign either, as the James Comey announcement and her use of a private e-mail server got her plenty of damaging “we must be fair and balanced even if Fox News coined the phrase” media coverage.

Even today, she’s still an “it girl” as a symbol and a target for her dearest friends in the vast right-wing conspiracy. In early June, fact-checkers had to dispel social media posts saying Hillary was on trial for Benghazi. In April, Donald Trump Jr. joked that she might have had Jeffrey Epstein poisoned. And even I had a tough time not being concerned about reports that she had a role in the suspicious killing of Clinton Foundation investigator Kenneth McCormick.

Well, not really, since Kenneth McCormick is actually just Kenny from South Park. Psych!

And finally, people who weren’t associated with the far right did their own damage, spreading countless messages that Hillary was a hawk, a neoliberal, or just plain cold and unlikeable. Green Party candidate Jill Stein even stated on the record that Hillary had the potential to do more damage in office than Trump. I suspect Stein’s assertion turned out to be wrong…

Again, Biden’s not a Clinton. You can assume the Republican messaging machine of 2020 will feed you a steady diet of Burisma and Tara Reade if that story still has legs (and I don’t know the truth about Tara Reade any more than you do), plus they’ll be digging for any other type of dirt they can find. They might even need to talk about – gasp – “policy” if the dirt doesn’t stick. But compared to the combined record of the Clintons, real or exaggerated, and decades of portraying Hillary as the very face of all that’s wrong with left-wing America, right-wing messaging operatives just won’t have the same arsenal of weapons to bogeyman Biden.

It would be great, then, if folks who won’t benefit from a right-wing victory wouldn’t spread what the right would love them to spread, especially when people don’t have the evidence to back up the accusations and name-calling.

Progressive Presidential Candidates – No Wins to Show

Bernie is by no means the first leader of a progressive movement in U.S. history. In fact, a period roughly from the 1890s to the 1920s is literally referred to as the “Progressive Era,” and there is fascinating reading available about the reforms our developing nation experienced as a result of courageous Americans fighting for necessary change. One of the greatest books I’ve read, “The Bully Pulpit” by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, covered parts of this era in great detail and emphasized the muckraking writers who helped expose abusive practices in need of reform, like dangerous workplace conditions in meat-packing plants. The more things change…

However, the Progressive Era never resulted in capital-P Progressive presidencies. Robert LaFollette ran under the Progressive banner in 1924, but only finished third with about 16% of the vote. Henry A. Wallace ran as a Progressive in 1948, finishing fourth with about 2.5% of the vote. And the most famous Progressive Party candidate of all, former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, took about 27% of the vote in 1912, finishing second but most importantly, splitting the Republican vote that could have gone to incumbent William Howard Taft and instead handing victory to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Big hint – Bernie running as a third-party candidate today would fairly obviously split the votes of the left and hand the Presidency to Republicans. While some people deny or understate this likelihood, Bernie gets it and did not choose to run as a “spoiler” in either 2016 or 2020.

It would be unfair to limit this discussion to candidates belonging to something technically called the Progressive Party, since other parties (including the Democratic Party, by the way) can espouse small-p progressive values. But fast-forward to modern times, and it’s worth reading this piece from the Washington Monthly, which includes the following recap on recent results from higher-profile leftist campaigns.

“It’s also that this (Sanders losing to Biden) is the fourth consecutive defeat for Sanders-style revolutionary leftist politics in the Anglosphere: Sanders lost to Clinton in 2016; Sanders-style revolutionary candidates lost most of their Congressional races in 2018 while moderates were much more successful; Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to Labour politics was obliterated in Great Britain by buffoonish Boris Johnson’s Tories in a direct Sanders-Trump parallel; and now Biden has emerged victorious in 2020 despite having lagged far behind Sanders in fundraising and field capacity.”

And documented U.S. history includes the “lessons” of candidates from other leftist minor parties who could only muster single-digit popular vote results:

* Populist: James B. Weaver ran for President with the People’s Party in 1892, also known as the Populists – a party described as left-wing, agrarian, and anti-big-business. He got about 8.5% of the popular vote.
* Socialist: Eugene V. Debs ran four times as a Socialist, getting about 3% in 1904, 3% in 1908, 6% in 1912, and 3.5% in 1920. Allan L. Benson got about 3% in 1916, and Norman Thomas took about 2.5% in 1932.
* Green: Ralph Nader got about 2.75% of the popular vote in 2000, and Jill Stein took about 1% in 2016.

Depending on how you tally, there could be a dozen lessons in this section alone about the far left’s actual record of success in nationwide races, but no matter the number of examples we’d better be honest that the record is zero-for-whatever.

In fairness, I’d entertain a discussion about the relative leftness of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who won four times and implemented some progressive Depression-era economic programs – though we ought to factor in to what level these programs were borne out of stark necessity. If any readers are interested in returning the fairness, you could guess that a Biden administration would almost certainly need to craft its own programs to address our current economic challenges, so history is yet to be written here. In breaking news, Bernie himself just said Biden could wind up as the “most progressive president” since FDR after Biden-Sanders Unity Task Forces negotiations on Democratic Party platform proposals.

Meanwhile, I’m holding off a bit on defining FDR as a progressive because those interested in a comprehensive analysis could easily find some racial disqualifiers and he very clearly approved the Manhattan Project, which helped usher in the age of nuclear proliferation under which Nagasaki and Hiroshima were obliterated and much of the world lived in fear of annihilation. As I suggested before, reducing a person to one political label obscures complexity. But when asked directly about his political philosophy, FDR could have tried donning a leftist’s beret but said instead, “I’m a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.” That’s straight from the horse’s mouth.

Yet despite results of Presidential elections, the record of progressive policy advances over the years has been substantial, looking back into the Progressive Era or the New Deal or the Civil Rights movement or the Great Society. I’m fully aware some would say the advances haven’t been bold enough, but I’ve worked in the state-level legislative branch and will tell anyone who cares to listen that it’s not always easy to pass legislation in the face of opposition. There may be extended negotiation, deal-making, and deal-breakers – so real progress tends to take time, unlike the one-off instant solutions we all offer on social media.

Today’s progressives might still get a Green New Deal or large parts of one, along with advances in progressive economic policy in the years to come, and they should take credit for their determination if it happens. But they also ought to consider that the “progress” part of progressive could be stonewalled for four long years if they place all their strategic eggs in the basket of getting only one type of President “or bust.”  As readers will see in the next section, an actual “bust” is completely possible, and the consequences of this most recent bust have been catastrophic.

Trump’s Got a Record Now

In 2016, it was still possible for a casual observer to follow Trump’s campaign and not be horribly concerned because, frankly, some of it just didn’t seem real. I heard or read statements along the lines of “he’s just campaigning, and won’t actually govern like this.” Those thoughts turned out to have been super-ultra-mega-wrong, and anyone who does not want four additional years of the same can easily find a stupendous amount of reading material about the disastrous Trump presidency, including this outline of his checkered history before taking office.

I suspect most readers already know at least the headline-level lowlights, but those who are really interested in the breadth and depth of Trump’s record can turn to “The Weekly List” by Amy Siskind. She has meticulously recorded the worst events that could make readers think “this is not normal” every week since Trump took office, yet you’re definitely not stuck with only Siskind as a source. This has been sort of a Golden Age for political nonfiction, so you could check out full-length books like “A Very Stable Genius,” “Fire and Fury,” “It’s Even Worse Than You Think,” “Trumpocracy,” “A Warning,” John Bolton’s latest “The Room Where it Happened,” Mary Trump’s “Too Much and Never Enough,” or others in case you’re stuck inside for quarantine or isolation.

Still, here’s a top-five list of undeniable disasters I hope folks don’t reward with inaction or protest votes in 2020:

1) COVID-19 Titanic-Sized Shipwreck: As of early July 2020, more than 130,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 and there had been more than 3 million reported cases (though most people assume actual case numbers are vastly higher due to underreporting) – plus, there was no real end in sight. The stock market initially went into free-fall, unemployment claims then went through the roof, and countless Americans were either left homeless or wondering how much longer they’d have a place to live. So, in essence we had a deadly public health crisis plus the makings of an economic depression or mega-recession. In fairness, Trump’s not to blame for all of it and other nations had serious COVID problems, but certain responses from our feds were too small and too late, there were reports that Trump ignored warnings, plus he very clearly lied to the American people about the dangers and even potential medical treatments. The lies helped enable some of his supporters and political allies to spread messaging that threats were overstated and we could practice business as usual, many everyday Americans followed by ignoring even the simplest recommendations of best practices, and oddly enough in mid-June new infections and hospitalizations in a number of U.S. states were again starting to trend upward. The wrong leader was and is at the helm.

2) Impeachment: If you would have told me even a few months ago that impeachment wouldn’t be #1 on a list like this, I would’ve thought you were crazy before thinking twice and accepting the possibility. That’s because Trump’s campaign and presidency has been a long series of “it can’t possibly get worse” moments, but it always does, which worries the hell out of me because it’s only July. So, even after known Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, he decided to propose a deal with the President of Ukraine, involving military aid, in an attempt to get dirt on Biden that would be useful for Trump’s 2020 campaign. Despite knowing there was no way the Republican-controlled Senate would vote to convict, Democrats in the House had little choice but to bring up Articles of Impeachment against a President who attempted to use a foreign power to advance his own political interests going into a crucial election cycle. Also, the Mueller Report led to 34 indictments and the investigative process helped make names like Manafort, Flynn, Stone, and Cohen into household words. Today, Trump is the only U.S. President in history to run for reelection after being impeached.
3) Resurgence of Hate and Violence: I started working on this piece before George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis but felt there was no choice about adding this item. It’s number three on this list, but I struggled and still struggle with whether impeachment was actually worse. In June, the nation was embroiled in protests in nearly every major city over Floyd’s killing, which led to undeniably tense situations even before complications arose. Trump openly called for tougher anti-protest responses, including threats to call out the U.S. military, plus there have been reports that outside groups attempted to incite violence or commit acts of destruction in order to pour gasoline on the figurative and literal fires. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of Americans attempting to exercise their First Amendment rights to peaceful protest wound up tear-gassed, beaten, shot with rubber bullets, or otherwise traumatized. Leadership matters, if only in this case because actions or statements from the top can either enable or discourage violence or escalation, and the consequences of not changing leadership at this point in time might include a whole bunch of people getting hurt or killed.
4) Tax Bill Full of Goodies for the Wealthy: For those who call themselves a progressive or socialist and are interested in being scientific about it, you’d better admit that the people who need progressive economic policy got a cold, hard, sharp and unprotected shaft thrust repeatedly and unlovingly you-know-where under Trump. At a time of cyclical highs in wealth inequality, the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 quite predictably gave the largest breaks to those who needed them least. Try this story from Vox based on a number of reports if you need a reminder about the impacts of the tax bill, and don’t forget that it also helped the yearly budget deficit hit about $1 trillion during decent economic times – before COVID-19 multiplied this year’s probable deficit by three times or more.

5) Courts Lurch Rightward: The Trump-era appointments of conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court got the most press, but as of June 2020, Trump had nominated and secured Senate confirmation for 200 Article III federal judges (including Gorsuch and Kavanaugh). Some folks on the far left in 2016 ignored or downplayed the painfully obvious consequences of giving Trump power over court nominations, but the results have proven them dead wrong. Remember, it’s tough to say whether Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will outlive Keith Richards, but she won’t be able to serve forever – as Keef will not be able to Riff Hard eternally. The 2020 election will literally decide if we have to live through four more years of right-wing Supreme and federal court-packing, and federal court confirmations are lifetime appointments, so the consequences of losing the Presidency here would be catastrophic to progressive values now and into the longer-term future.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a brief excerpt from the Huffington Post about Trump’s 200th successful nomination, the new 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Cory Wilson:

So seriously folks, if you actually want four more years of Trump, don the red MAGA hat and wear it with pride. But if you’re reading my blog, chances are you don’t! Please try to be honest with yourself and admit that trashing Biden right now is a self-defeating action with horrific potential consequences and no real upside.

Congress 2018 – Beyond the Bubbles

It’s easy to get stuck in geographic or social media bubbles, but we’re dealing with a nationwide election in 2020, and if you’re interested in winning at this scale you must recognize that much of America is politically different from liberal enclaves like Boulder or Berkeley. For those who might cling to “the lesson” that running moderates is wrong, try to consider a different and very tangible lesson from just two years ago – the 2018 midterm election.

Democrats recaptured the House of Representatives, picking up 41 seats in the process and winning the nationwide popular vote total for House races by nearly 10 million votes. But remember, the gain in congressional seats – the statistic that matters in determining control – wasn’t from leftists winning in traditionally Democratic districts, since Democrats already held these seats. Just to use the rising star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as an example – she did knock off an incumbent centrist in her 2018 primary, but her district is heavily Democratic and she won her NY-14 general election by roughly 78-13%. The most recent Cook Partisan Voting Index rating for this district is D+29, and some actual margins in recent elections have exceeded even this lopsided Cook rating. So, once AOC won the primary, there was nearly zero risk for her to go as far left as practical without perhaps wearing her own baseball cap saying “Communism Is Good,” because a Democrat was going to win the district.

Instead, the Democratic congressional pickups in 2018 were typically in more politically balanced districts. Some of this success was because people were unhappy with Trump or GOP excess, and politically savvy people knew Democratic control of the House could deny him and his party some power. For those interested, try this list of the 41 pickups, and I’ll highlight that at least 24 of these races were decided by 5 percentage points or less. This included Democratic pickups in the traditionally “red” states Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Georgia, and Utah.

So, don’t underestimate the word “swing” in swing district, since it literally means things can swing right back, or in this case back right. Even though I’d like to hope Trump’s abysmal record will lead to even larger Democratic gains in 2020, actual centrist Democrats trying to hold these congressional seats might report that people don’t overwhelmingly want the federal government to veer hard left on everything. Turn to this story from the New York Times for perspective, which details the challenges a few Dems newly elected in 2018 from centrist districts faced as constituents reacted with concern after months of intense media publicity about “The Squad,” four newly elected leftists, including AOC.

Simply as possible, it takes majorities to wield power in nearly any governing body. Democrats taking back the House gave the left one piece of actual federal legislative power while Republicans had the Senate, the Presidency, and for practical purposes the Supreme Court. This got Dems the power to impeach, the “power of the purse,” the power to stop the worst right-wing bills – and the first yellow bricks on the road to serious shots at passing progressive legislation if Dems can also win the Presidency and the Senate in 2020.

Of course, the Presidential election is officially decided in the Electoral College. Again to keep it simple, under this structure Dems in 2020 need to appeal to centrists in states like Michigan and Wisconsin more than they need leftists in California, since all of California’s Electoral votes will without a doubt go blue while battleground states are still up in the air. The 2018 House elections were quite favorable for Democrats, but it wouldn’t have been that great in practice without narrow victories in centrist districts, and Dems will also need strong electoral performances from these districts in 2020 to win centrist states. Folks on the farther left should consider acknowledging, even begrudgingly, that they will benefit from narrowly left-of-center victories if they want a power structure that can actually win advances in health care, progressive tax policy, environmental protections, clean energy, worker compensation and conditions, public education, and general health and safety.

And centrists should acknowledge the best of the progressive movement, whether it’s to build winning coalitions or to collaborate on policy that will lead to effective modern-day solutions. I personally give progressives and the farther left serious credit for their new energy and bold ideas, which, to use hackneyed political catch phrases, “pushed the envelopes” and “moved the goalposts” as to what might be considered feasible in the next phases of American development – and I support a lot of these ideas. I’m just hoping everyone will understand the need to win some boring old political numbers games in 2020 if anyone hopes for actual progress in policy, and the Presidency is of enormous consequence if only because the progressive bills many people desire can just be vetoed if the wrong guy’s in office.

Conclusion: Focus Your Friends’ Eyes on the Prize

I do not expect people to support the same candidates I do, and I respect diversity of thought if it’s high-quality thought. I would have voted for Bernie in the general election if he won the nomination in either 2016 or 2020, and I’ve said this often, on and off the record. Over the course of the 2020 primary cycle, I seriously considered Warren, Harris, and Klobuchar at different times. While I didn’t see Yang as presidential in 2020, he said a lot of things that resonated with me and he seemed to understand certain modern realities better than any other candidate. But none of them struck me as a complete package – while Biden has given his life to public service, he’s served in the White House, he has a wealth of experience in both foreign and domestic issues, and if he wins our nation may have a chance of regaining some of the respect and stature we lost under the current occupant.

So, as it stands today, we either elect Biden or we suffer through four more years of Trump, but there’s one big caveat unique to 2020. Nobody knows what might happen to either one of these two older men if they get COVID-19, plus there have been some recent posts floating around that Trump might even consider dropping out of the race. On top of this, a fair number of people who might be considered or constitutionally required to replace Trump or Biden in case of serious illness or death are also in prime at-risk age groups – including but not limited to Bernie, Warren, Pence, or Romney – with another large group of potential replacements at least in their 50s or 60s. We might wind up with the 38-year-old Iowa Caucus winner Mayor Pete after all!

But should something happen to any party’s nominee, much of what I’ve written in this essay about policy and messaging and demographic strategy will remain relevant. While Trump and Biden have their own distinct personalities and behavioral traits, the basic policy platforms of most major-party candidates won’t be horribly different than platforms of the current front-runners. In short, a generic Democratic candidate will favor issues like robust advances in clean energy and a stronger national health care policy, while the Republican will favor tax breaks that tend to favor the wealthy and increased military spending. Details will obviously differ between personalities, some potential leaders would certainly ask Congress to approve bolder proposals than others, but the broader basics of major-party politics are super-predictable.

No matter the candidates, folks who are contributing to these millions of social media posts every day before November will still have the opportunity to either build or destroy support for the candidate who will work toward getting them the highest percentage of what they want. The results will literally determine some level of your reality for the next four years, so please understand that you have a choice.

With your actions and your words, you have the power to help or hinder, to spread messages of inspiration or negativity. Please act wisely, and move not unless you see an advantage.