The 2020 election cycle is finally mostly over, although there’s still a bunch of counting and re-counting and lawyering up yet to come. This cycle seemed like more of an eternity to me than 2018, since I started following the Presidential race in mid-2019 – about the time Kamala Harris went after Joe Biden pretty hard in a Democratic presidential debate – and I’ve been involved personally at some level at least since precinct caucuses in early March 2020.
There’s no need for a long intro here, because it was a long cycle and a long ballot so there’s plenty to write about. But my overarching point with what’s to follow is that I firmly believe we need a political renaissance in this nation – a period of heartfelt, moral, rational, and reasoned action that will set a foundation for a better future. I’ll only ask the reader to hear me out.
Time for Sober Repair
Congratulations Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and may you lead the nation well!
When I tried to go to sleep on Election Night, Biden was only ahead 220-213 in projected Electoral votes. The next couple days were better but still a little unnerving, as Biden eventually pulled ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and finally Georgia and Pennsylvania. But Saturday morning, my neighborhood erupted in cheers and howls and even some amateur horn playing, and I knew it was finally over. Biden/Harris for the win!
Yet overall, the national “blue wave” does not seem to have delivered the Dem trifecta many people expected (yep, I expected it too). The Senate political balance was close and yet to be determined on Nov. 10, and it seems as if we might need to wait for two future runoff elections in Georgia to really know the balance for the next two years. The Democratic House majority also seems to have narrowed slightly compared to the last cycle. It wasn’t an overwhelmingly great election for Dems, but one result is really worth a little dancing in the streets.
We’re soon to be rid of Trump, after four disastrous years, and we’re not only rid of that one guy. It also means no more Betsy DeVos, William Barr, Rudy Guiliani, Kayleigh McEnany, Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, and a list of others, at least in positions of power at the highest levels of government. It means we might get an actual environmentalist to head the EPA, a person sharing a majority of the nation’s views on public lands at Interior, or a non-pharmaceutical lobbyist to lead Health and Human Services. We’re rid of the embarrassing tweets, the long list of lies in official statements, the scandals, and the constant exaggeration about the importance of everything that happened under his watch and about his competence. I was done with him five years ago when he said he knew more about ISIS than the generals, but that was merely the tip of a Titanic-sized iceberg of lies and tall tales closing in on our ship of state.
We’re rid of him and we should celebrate, but let’s be brutally honest with ourselves right here and right now – if we don’t learn long-lasting lessons from the Trump experience, bleak will be our future.
Here, instead of talking detail or policy, I’d like to expand on the title to this blog post. There are more than two choices moving forward, but I’ll pose two for framing purposes – now that we have the opportunity, should we set our longer-term sights on revolution or renaissance?
I’m going to come down on the side of pursuing renaissance, because done successfully it’s more comprehensive and future-based than the alternative. The word basically means “rebirth,” and when we look the historic period of time literally called “The Renaissance,” the simple Wikipedia definition says “its influence was felt in art, architecture, philosophy, literature, music, science and technology, politics, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry.” Sounds good to me!
Revolutions are dangerous, as you can gather from Maximilien Luce’s “A Paris Street in May 1871.”
Revolution works once in a while, but it’s a blunt instrument, prone to overreach and violence, with effectiveness often dependent upon raw power – and there have been highly consequential failures. I visited Paris a few years ago and was especially taken by Maximilien Luce’s painting of dead people lying in the streets, casualties of flat-out warfare during the revolutionary Paris Commune years. Of course, revolutions don’t need to be violent, but extreme positions naturally lead to extreme reactions. And I just don’t believe we’re “there” right now as a society – we might need bold-to-extreme actions in several areas, but I just don’t see the benefit of burning it all down when we have the tools to repair quite a bit of what isn’t working properly.
I can’t prove this with polling numbers, but I think overall the 2020 election results show that most Coloradans and most Americans are interested in some sober, detailed examination of our challenges and potential solutions. And for the revolutionaries, I have to ask a couple deadly serious questions. What is the end game, and what are the likely consequences? Without good answers here, John Lennon gave my reply back in 1968 when he wrote “Revolution” – “Don’t you know that you can count me out.”
Courts and Complicity
RIP, RBG, who did not get her last reported wish of not being replaced until after the election.
If any area of our federal structure needs renaissance-level revamping – and actually attainable revamping – it’s our system of polarized political appointments to the courts. So many of us recoiled in grief when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, since we knew it would give Trump and Mitch McConnell the opportunity to create a lopsided conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course, Amy Coney Barrett was rushed through the nominating and confirmation process, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority for the time being with awfully important cases potentially going before the court in the weeks and months to come. It’s still not completely out of the realm of possibility that the Supremes might have something to do with the outcome of the election, and it’s brought up some not-so-pleasant memories of the Bush v. Gore battle in the year 2000.
I try not to spend a lot of time on rhetorical questions, but we’re planning a renaissance so here goes – why should we have blatantly liberal or conservative Justices in the first place? Since I was young I was told the U.S. government was based on a “system of checks and balances,” but our Constitution was drafted before the ascendance of political parties. As it stands for at least probably the next two months, our top court is in danger of being more of a rubber stamp than a check or a balance, since partisan Presidents and partisan Senates were able to nominate and confirm partisan Justices in their own mold. That’s exactly what just happened with Barrett, and what recently happened with Brett Kavanaugh.
There were nine Supreme Court Justices in this ancient picture (white guy on the left is a clerk), and nine in 2020. It’s time for an expansion and a balancing.
Unfortunately, unless Dems earn a Senate majority it’s unlikely that the Biden administration will be able to do as much about this as many of us hoped for. Notably, there has been recent talk about expanding the Supreme Court to more than nine members, which I think would be the right thing to do if it becomes possible. There is no reason, Constitutionally or rationally, that the Court needs to be nine members, and having a bigger Court might minimize the impact of any one Justice retiring or passing away. Plus, after Mitch McConnell’s running out the clock for 293 days on Merrick Garland’s nomination while Barrett got the ultra-fast-track, there’s a legitimate and serious need for better ideological balance.
Sort of lost in the spotlight on the Supremes is the fact that Trump and McConnell also appointed at least 216 total federal judges during the Trump years, at least as of late September. Barrett herself was actually a Trump appointee to circuit court, back in 2017. In very brief, this is important because a whole bunch of cases might go before Trump appointees in circuit or district court, where judges might hand down partisan rulings with no guarantee of successful appeal. And with a 6-3 Supreme Court majority, partisan conservative rulings would probably have to be awesomely bad for the Supremes to overturn.
There are good ideas out there to reform the federal court process, some attainable and some probably not in the near-term. Lifetime appointments might have been a decent idea back in the 1780s, but today with longer life expectancies it means younger Justices like Kavanaugh or Barrett might serve for three or four decades unless impeached. Unfortunately, it seems as if it would take a Constitutional amendment to implement term limits, even if the language in the Constitution only saying Justices “shall hold their offices during good behavior” seems a little squishy. At the state level in Colorado, we have bipartisan nominating commissions for both the state Supreme Court and judicial districts, which seems to me like it could offer a big improvement over the potentially highly partisan federal process.
But if we’re going to have a renaissance, some of this has to come down to personal morals and standards. Presidents ought to nominate judges based on talent and character, not on partisan ideology, and Senators should keep the good of the nation and the legitimacy of the courts at top of mind during confirmation hearings. Law professors and legal influencers need to help discredit and discourage using the courts as tools of political ideology as they teach and guide potential judges of the future.
And I titled this section Courts and Complicity intentionally. We can lay some rightful blame at the feet of politicians – but we, the voters, also have to understand our role in determining the power structure. I hate saying “I told you so,” but in 2016 I warned everyone I could that the courts would take a sharp turn to the right if Trump was elected, with consequences including real threats to progressive values. Some segment of voters did not take this seriously, and we all need to take a hard look in the mirror as why we’re in the situation we are in today. We can’t change history – but we also cannot let this happen again, and we can’t completely blame the people who simply used political power their polar opposites forfeited.
Hick Wins: Structure Matters
John Hickenlooper just secured a seat in the Senate for at least six years!
The Democrats may or may not regain the Senate majority in 2020, but John Hickenlooper’s win over incumbent Cory Gardner in Colorado was a Democratic pickup, and this might be a difference-maker in 2022 or 2024 if the majority doesn’t flip this year. Majority control of the Senate is a big deal, and that’s why I made it a point to write a couple blog posts during the election cycle and weigh in on social media about the importance of electing Hick. Colorado voters did the right thing, by choosing to try to win this piece of political structural power and to get past strict adherence to political identity.
Being a Boulder resident, I know a lot of people from the left of center who had problems with Hick as a centrist candidate, but he was electable in a high-profile statewide race. Several candidates in the Dem primary field would not have even come close to matching qualifications with Gardner, who has about 15 years of experience as an elected official – 10 of those years in Congress, including service on key committees such as Foreign Relations. Hick’s resume was different but competitive – deep Colorado life experience, a degree in the sciences, practical private-sector business experience, two terms as Mayor of the largest city in Colorado, and eight years as Governor.
Plus, this was always going to be a mega-expensive campaign since the GOP would undoubtedly spend big to try holding on to this seat, and between them Gardner and Hick raised more than $70 million for the race. Sad to say, but this indicates the “I’ll never take large donations” altruistic approach could have easily been a recipe for defeat, especially if the other side’s campaign would just continue spending. Hick’s campaign generated enough cash to compete on TV and carry on all the other aspects of a successful run for major office. Future candidates might underestimate this sort of distasteful part of campaigning but they would do so at their own peril – and in a close race for something like control of the Senate, taking this personal risk might lead to serious collective consequences.
I understand some people are sick of hearing the word “electable,” but in Hick we got exactly just that, and it worked. Hick’s toughest challenge before the general came from former Speaker of the (state) House Andrew Romanoff, and while I’ve met him and really like him, we’d all better be honest that he’s never won anything bigger in a general election than a safe House seat in Denver. Instead, Coloradans got beyond political identity judgment with our collective actions, and voters got a candidate with name recognition, a resume, and the ability to run a difficult campaign – a tough combo to defeat.
Would I have liked a candidate farther to the left than Hickenlooper? Probably, but I can’t look at the nationwide results in 2020 and conclude it’s a great time to fire up the old leftist vs. center-leftist ideological squabble within the Democratic Party. Repeat after me – Republicans are not going away.
Despite his disgraceful record in office Trump only lost the Electoral College by fairly narrow margins in a handful of states, picking up at least 72 million votes in the process. I’d have to assume that some voters had a special affinity for Trump, but most were just conservatives or Republicans voting in hopes of maintaining conservative policy, or acting from a place of party loyalty. And Trump’s job approval rating hovered somewhere in the 40s for the last few years – only dropping a few points here and there when, say, he got “impeached” or something. Please remember, if the 40-something percent actually turns out to vote while big percentages of registered voters don’t turn in a ballot, that’s a powerful voting bloc! The left and center-left both need to keep the number 72 million in mind, because they’re not going to defeat a base like that without collaborating and joining forces to put up their own big numbers.
Here’s one closer-to-home reminder that the GOP is not dead. Despite campaigning utterly without experience or substance, Lauren Boebert won in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District by about the Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of R + 6 for that district, and there was even a Libertarian in that race who took 2%. Boebert might have been the worst major-party Congressional candidate to reach the general election ballot I’ve ever seen in Colorado, but the demographics of this district meant command of policy and personal demeanor played second fiddle to ideological or political loyalty.
Hope is wonderful, but folks should not have realistically looked at any of the red states on this map as easy blue Senate pickups.
So, blame Chuck Schumer for not taking back the Senate if you will, but I’ll have a hard time buying that well-known incumbents Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, and Lindsey Graham only won re-election because their opponents weren’t progressive enough. Also, it’s a big “no sale” for me should anyone pitch that the people of Iowa and South Carolina were clamoring to see how far to the left they could go. Look at the map at right, and I’d be surprised if serious analysts not in the throes of a pipe dream could look at the red states and say any of them except perhaps Maine could have reasonably been expected to flip to blue – and the moderate conservative Collins just won Maine for the fifth consecutive time in 2020 by a solid margin.
Folks on the farther left should keep working on the bolder and finer sides of issues they believe in, and center-leftists should listen to leftists with open minds, but without electoral victories and holding power in legislative chambers, tangible sweeping policy victories will be difficult at best. I think the voters of Colorado mostly understood this point in 2020, and we get some renaissance points in political science for acknowledging this existence of power structures. It would be tremendous if Dems somehow won the two Georgia runoffs, but even if they don’t, Dems have chances of getting to 50-50 or better in the Senate in 2022 or 2024, and if that happens Hick will be one of the 50 able to pass legislation that might be more progressive than he is.
Rights: Renaissance, not Regression
The late Rep. John Lewis risked his life fighting for civil rights and voting rights, and unfortunately 2020 proved that the struggles continue.
In 1964 and 1965, America took enormous action in the right directions with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. But what the ever-loving hell happened 55 years later, in 2020?
George Floyd and Breonna Taylor murdered by law enforcement officers. Racism and a whole bunch of other discriminatory “isms” making very open comebacks. People waiting 10 hours in line at a polling place to vote. GOP operatives putting up fake ballot drop-off boxes, and somebody setting fires inside of legitimate drop boxes. Unwillingness of some officials to fully implement voting by mail despite the threats of potentially deadly COVID-19 contagion for those in crowded indoor polling places. Uncertainty over voting deadlines, or even whether a given ballot will count. And I’m virtually certain for the first time in my life, the very reliability of the U.S. Postal Service was called into question just in time for an election with large numbers of mail ballots after Trump appointee Louis DeJoy took the reins at USPS. C’mon.
As with my section on the courts, a lot of the renaissance we need surrounding human rights has to come down to personal and collective values. I have been heartened to see that some of the recent response to Floyd, Taylor, and other tragedies has included a renewed call to treat people of all races, sexes, religions or lack thereof, preferences, and identities with basic respect and full equality. Furthermore, I really believe a majority of Americans want the hateful tide of 2017-2020 to turn. I haven’t seen such an outpouring of interest and awareness about equal rights and human rights since the 1960s and 70s, and if this commitment continues and expands into the future, maybe we’ll get somewhere as a society.
Kamala Harris will be an inspiration for many for her personal characteristics, but she’s also got a great resume and will be an important player in the Biden administration.
Plus, it’s worthy of celebration that in Sen. Kamala Harris we now have our first woman Vice President (-elect), our first Black Vice President, and our first Indian-American Vice President rolled into one!
That we still have problems with voting after having been a democracy or democratic representative republic or whatever we call it since the 1780s also seriously troubles me. Here, we need wise and decisive federal legislative action to make sure all eligible Americans are able to cast a vote that counts, easily and quickly, regardless of their city, county, or state of residence. In Colorado, we’ve had a system in place since 2014 that any state could have basically just copied, and I personally started posting about this on social media in early April when it became apparent that voting in person could pose COVID-19 risks.
Coloradans get ballots in the mail, we usually have several weeks to analyze candidates and issues before marking the ballot, and when it’s voted we can put it back in the mail or deliver it to a drop box. We can vote in person if we want, but only a tiny percentage of voters do so, and the vast majority do not have to spend hours in line waiting for an open voting booth. Elections officials manage ballot security, and they also get big percentages of ballots back before Election Day so voters can quickly get a good idea of how races are going. As we all saw right after the polls closed, some states have laws prohibiting processing of mail ballots before in-person ballots, and that meant we saw misleading early statistics and had to wait days to see the real results. Not so in Colorado. It would be crazy to go back to our old system, not to mention an enormous aggregate waste of precious time.
Instead of adopting the Colorado model, going into the last week of the election cycle there was great concern around how each state would handle things, and serious uncertainty over whether people might be disenfranchised. And since we still have winner-take-all state elections that in most cases determine 100% of a state’s Electoral College votes, even small percentages of disenfranchised or suppressed voters could easily swing the results in a key battleground state. We must never forget the prime example to date – the contested 537-vote margin in Florida 2000 that gave George W. Bush 25 electoral votes and the Presidency. We have serious systemic problems in a few key areas right now, and I hope officials of the future will look to Colorado as a guide to a smoother, more dependable electoral future.
Simply, we have the templates, the technology, and the money we need to implement a modern and functional voting system in every state, yet some parts of our nationwide system are still extremely substandard. I believe a renaissance must include the study of history, and I’d say it’s time we re-embrace some of the civil and voting rights spirit of 1964 and 1965 after we say “good riddance” to 2020.
Colorado Ballot Issues: Did We Reach Overload?
I’m actually a fan of the initiative and referendum process in Colorado. There are times when the state government can’t or won’t do what the majority of the people probably want, and there are times when the state government probably makes a mistake. At that point, the people can step in by petitioning to run a ballot measure, and while the record is mixed a number of initiatives have provided good results.
This year’s Colorado Blue Book was about 115 pages long!
But there are also times when we’re asking voters to make binding decisions on too many things without giving them the time that’s really necessary to understand finer points of all or most issues. I fear that’s what happened in 2020, when we got 11 state ballot measures, most of which had some level of complexity that many voters would not understand simply by reading a ballot title.
How many of our 3.3 million voters really knew the pros and cons of gray wolf reintroduction until a few months ago? Real detail about fetal viability at given time periods past conception? The impacts and benefits of the Gallagher Amendment in functional detail? Expense and likely use of paid family leave? Enterprises in Colorado and services they provide? The real history of the Electoral College and the myths sold to us against moving to National Popular Vote?
I have been extremely fortunate to have jobs over the past 20 years that literally forced me to learn issues on the ballot in great depth, plus I’ve hit the books for my own interest. I just don’t believe the broad majority of voters really have the time to do much more than skim the Blue Book on the totality of issues. This means TV and social media fills the vacuum, and I seriously question how many voters made next-to-uninformed decisions on issues of reasonably large consequence.
But I’ll give special thanks to all the people not involved with campaigns who tried to break this information down into digestible chunks, so voters could make at least semi-informed decisions without a gigantic time investment. All things considered, I’m mostly happy with the state ballot results with a few exceptions detailed below. Of course, it’s a “win some, lose some” world, but I can still wonder if state voters couldn’t have done a little better in 2020 with stronger immersion in the true pros and cons.
Colorado Ballot Issues II: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Colorado voters decided to stay with the National Popular Vote effort by passing Prop 113!
The good – I was relieved and ecstatic to see Prop 113, the National Popular Vote, win even if by only a narrow margin. Beyond the surface, it’s actually a fairly complex issue that I’ve studied and written about in great detail, and the “Yes on 113” campaign had to fight off a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding, some of which unfortunately came from Boulder media. Despite some head-scratching newspaper endorsements against 113, it still won in Boulder County by about 70%-30%, and I feel heartened in knowing a lot of people understand it’s time to break free of a system cobbled together in 1787 when slaves counted as 3/5 of a person to determine Congressional seats and therefore Electoral votes.
I was having a really hard time watching the drama in individual states following Election Day and understanding how anyone can still support the current use of the Electoral College. On late Nov. 5, estimates at the time said Georgia might get decided by plus-or-minus 1,000 votes out of almost 5 million cast (actually more than 14,000 on Nov. 11), yet all 16 Electoral votes go to the winner and 16 Electoral votes could easily swing an entire election. With more than 140 million individual votes in nationwide, we election geeks were all biting our nails over a small batch of returns from the Vegas area, while Biden was ahead in the national popular vote by more than 4 million votes. And as of Nov. 11 Biden was ahead by about 5 million votes!
The National Popular Vote effort still needs enough states totaling 74 Electoral votes to go into effect, and I can’t say for sure that I’ll even be alive if/when it finally happens. But for now, I’m just glad we didn’t slip backwards by defeating Prop 113. I’m also glad we didn’t slip backwards by passing Prop 115, the 22-week abortion ban. I wish I could say the roughly 18-point loss for 115, coupled with resounding defeats of past Colorado anti-abortion measures, means organizers will finally quit trying to take measures that would rescind abortion rights to the ballot. But for now, a whole bunch of people fought hard to defeat 115 – remember, early polling suggested closer results than what actually happened – and I’m pleased with the eventual outcome.
The bad – Again, I’m a fan of the initiative process, but losing some of my enthusiasm for fiscal ballot measures since random proposals can set a big chunk of the state’s fiscal policy in a completely non-comprehensive manner. Specifically, passing Prop 117 in 2020 means we’ve given the right-wing messaging machine a chance to shoot down what could be really beneficial state enterprises, the exact same way they shoot down statewide tax measures. Passing Prop 116 solidified our regressive state income tax structure, giving larger tax breaks to the wealthy and a pittance to those who really need help, and by cutting state revenue we’ve reduced the state’s ability to fund programs that might benefit lower-income Coloradans.
In essence, putting fiscal policy on the ballot via initiatives seems to have made Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute a sort of special-level 101st legislator, one with the ability to bypass the Joint Budget Committee or fiscal analysts or transportation planners or human services providers who might understand what’s best for the state or the broader range of people. What he’s doing with the support of conservative organizations like Americans for Prosperity is of course perfectly legal, but in a renaissance state voters ought to give his proposals much greater scrutiny when he tries it again next election, and the election after, and the election to follow.
The ugly – I’m not sure how Colorado put up such blue results in 2020 yet overwhelmingly approved Amendment 76. Maybe it was misunderstood, maybe this was a casualty of ballot overload, and there certainly wasn’t much of a “vote no” campaign. But darned if we didn’t just amend the Constitution and in turn make it illegal for 17-year-olds who will turn 18 by Election Day to vote in primaries. Are we still that scared that Mexicans might someday legally vote in an election? I wanted to think we weren’t, but at least some of this scoreboard suggests otherwise.
Amendment 76 was a ballot measure better suited for the Colorado of 2005 than 2020, but here we are – it’s stuck in the Constitution and we can’t change it without another vote of the people. I’m not sure if it was well-publicized that a Florida-based organization headed by a former Republican legislator from Missouri provided much of the funding for this campaign, or that Florida and Alabama just passed similar measures. On the positive side, it’s really the only thing from this year’s election results that made me spit out my coffee and think “WTF?,” so I probably shouldn’t complain too much, and maybe someone will run another measure to fix what we did with A-76 in election cycles of the future.
City of Boulder: Odd Years from Here on Out, Please
Boulder voters got an extremely long ballot, but about 30 items in they hit some pretty important City of Boulder issues to boot. Two measures in particular had a reasonable amount of complexity – one to drop our multi-year electrical municipalization effort (2C), and another to change the way we select the city’s mayor (2E). We’ve all heard of “down-ballot” races that voters don’t pay full attention to, but this year’s city measures took down-ballot to an unfortunate extreme since a few of them were far too consequential to deserve placement past the point of ballot fatigue.
Between lack of prolonged media coverage and competition with big-ticket items, neither of these issues got the comprehensive vetting they really deserved. In my opinion, local media gave way too much attention this year to the petitioning problems with the Bedrooms Are For People campaign that didn’t even make the ballot. And the reason that Bedrooms ultimately did not get enough petition signatures for the ballot is because even-year City Charter amendment measures are considered “special elections,” with higher signature requirements than odd-year Charter amendment proposals. You’ll hear differently on Twitter, but if you don’t trust me read this guest op-ed from the Camera that Bedrooms proponents didn’t re-tweet.
The stronger petition signature requirements in even-numbered years are actually good in my opinion, since it means city residents might not need to focus on as many city issues in a year like 2020. In even-year elections, we’re almost always likely to have big state and federal candidate races plus consequential state ballot issues, and by keeping city stuff mostly in the odd-numbered years, voters stand a better chance of having time to seriously focus on a list like the 11 state ballot issues we had this year, as opposed to 16 when you add city measures to the mix.
Proponents of Boulder 2C named the franchise proposal the “Great Green Deal.” While I’m not sure AOC would have loved this title, time will tell how green Boulder’s electric future will be.
And of all the issues on the ballot, 2C on the “muni” was certainly among the most voluminous and complex, even in comparison to issues like Gallagher or paid family leave on the state ballot. It involved giving up on an effort that slightly more than half the city voters have supported over an entire decade. It involved approving a 20-year franchise agreement with Xcel that in itself was 100 pages long. Beyond the franchise agreement, detail-oriented voters could have spent hours pondering all of the associated cost, environmental, corporate structure, revenue, and self-governance issues. Yet 2C was only officially placed on the ballot on Sept. 1!
I would have preferred putting 2C on the ballot in 2021, giving city residents a full year of solid info and good vetting, then giving the ballot measure nearly undivided attention on an odd-year ballot. It’s impossible to say if this would have made a difference in the results, especially given that muni measures of the past were close to 50-50 affairs, but I do believe city residents who have supported the muni for a decade or more deserved a little extra time and broader venues in which to make their case.
It’s no secret I was no fan of 2E, the direct mayoral election with Ranked Choice Voting, and I wrote a pretty detailed blog post plus a letter to the Camera in opposition, but it won bigly and sure, I’ll eat a little crow here. I will give the proponents fully deserved credit for running a campaign and selling this measure to voters, but again, I don’t believe there was great two-sided vetting in the local media or elsewhere. My list of potential problems with this ballot measure remains on the record, and if I’m alive in a decade I might be able to say “I told you so” when some fairly predictable consequences occur at some point. But I’m also not going to move out of Boulder in protest. The Mayor will remain only one vote out of nine on Council, and we won’t have our first direct election until 2023, which by the way indicates to me that we could have run something like 2E in 2021 and had a more focused community discussion before voting.
The renaissance element for this section – let’s seriously consider what voters can really handle over the course of an election cycle, and keep future Presidential year ballots somewhat manageable by handling most City stuff in the odd-numbered years. I have great respect for Boulder but it’s not more important than the nation or the state, and I don’t doubt that many voters can learn quite a bit in a couple months, but with separation of what we put on the ballot in given years we can all give more complete attention to issues facing each of our separate levels of government.
Revolution II: Turn Down the Heat
I know most of the people who will read this post are not interested in fostering violence within our nation right now, and thanks for that. But it’s been rearing its ugly head throughout 2020, and it’s time to dial it back for a whole bunch of reasons.
With no shortage of glaring exceptions, we’ve in so many ways had a great run as a nation throughout the course of my life. The U.S. established a mighty economy, high-quality institutions of education, great scientific or commercial research and development, and literally became a world superpower after World War II. No doubt the U.S. has been imperfect, but why burn it all down when we could fix or improve the parts that aren’t working?
Again, when it comes to violence and destruction, what’s the end game? We had a Civil War from 1861-65 and it didn’t go well or end well. Modern-day mass violence would obviously harm or kill innocent people – and it might just take out the person on the verge of a cure for COVID-19, or people ready to launch enterprises that would revive the economy, or officers who protect our generally peaceful way of life, or maybe everyday beloved human beings whose needless death would rip the hearts out of families or communities. And again, for what?
So many of us are going through rough times right now, but ideas like plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer just aren’t part of the pathway to building a better nation.
That a fair amount of violence within our nation (or threats thereof) is coming from white males is not lost on me as a white male, and while I might understand various reasons for frustration, I can’t appreciate the course of action. I actually had my first real gun in my hands in my teens, but part of my gun safety training included discussions of standards and morals, so while I support responsible gun ownership for self-defense I believe it’s detrimental to our future that they’re now being used in peacetime society as tools of intimidation. If unchecked, it threatens to make us weaker as a society, especially if violence depletes our population, our collective economic potential, our aggregate brain power, our attractiveness as a place to do business or visit, our culture and sense of community, and our ability to defend against outside forces or challenges.
I have no real answer here, but I believe a renaissance would require taking a closer look at our glorification of weapons and violence, along with a hard look at the potential consequences I described in the paragraph above, and then doing everything possible to minimize the likelihood of America turning into a haven for needless hazard. The Founders actually put a definition of “treason” in the Constitution – “Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” And while one segment of society hangs their hats on the 2nd Amendment, we need to take another look at a key part of the 1st Amendment, which guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
But rather than relying on the force of law or accepting unacceptable levels of internal terrorism or violent conflict, I’d rather see some voluntary self-de-escalation, some calls for de-escalation from political leaders regardless of party, and a transfer of everyone’s energy toward the betterment of a still beautiful and promising nation.
Information: Bubbles Only Bounce Off Each Other
We need solutions to heavy problems, but trust me on this even if you distrust me on all else – true solutions are more like lengthy equations than binary “blue vs. red” snap judgments. For a timely example, we hopefully all want treatments or vaccines for COVID-19, but scientists must go to painstaking lengths to evaluate more than a few considerations even after coming up with genius-level concepts or products. To what percentage will they be effective? Might there be better options? Do some treatments work better for certain types of people? What are the side effects? Can they cause unintended harm or even death? And what happens when the virus mutates?
Political polar opposites like John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon could stand together and respectfully exchange ideas, even if they disagreed. This type of what humans once called “debate” might still work today!
The same goes for governing and civic affairs, if there’s any level of complexity to an issue. But today, so many people are getting all or most of their information from only one shade of a colorful spectrum of limitless thought. Not only that, but discourse has gotten mean-spirited to the point where people often can’t share respectful points that differ from the limited content of a person’s chosen bubble. This means we’re less likely to look at the detail or context that might help make a reasonably good position or proposal into something that’s actually effective. Even the discomfort of having something disproven gives everyone a chance to re-think or refine their course of action.
Political bubble information and discourse is even happening in Boulder local politics to a certain extent. This makes me sad because I’ve always thought of this city as free-minded and intellectually curious, which would have to mean not relying on talking points and occasionally leaving our insular circles to engage in thoughtful discourse. But harmful single-dimensional thought was really-to-dangerously bad in other circles beyond Boulder this year, and our nationwide election cycle included foreign disinformation, sloppy social media sharing, deepfake images, biased think tank output, awful TV ads, and flat-out lies disseminated widely.
In the long-term, life stuck in our little bubbles might lead to real problems, and it’s largely because thought precedes action. So, while it was tragic that 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse decided to go to Kenosha and carry a dangerous weapon around town before killing two people, my real questions include – how did he decide it was a good idea to do this? What got into his head? And why wasn’t there a comparably powerful alternative message in his thought process?
If we’re going to have a renaissance, we’ve got to get back into multidimensional thought so we can identify problems or needs, examine the key details within an issue, weigh out the possible benefits or consequences of an action or inaction, and monitor results so we can adjust if things don’t work perfectly. This doesn’t mean we should carry open-mindedness to the point of becoming doormats for the “other side” – since part of high-quality thought is discernment, with not only the right to disagree but also the responsibility to disagree if detail and logic suggests it’s the best course of action. Multidimensional and critical thought has to be part of a template for good long-term solutions, built to last, and I fear if we don’t take this to heart we are in for nothing but a future of blunt conflict followed by trying to fix the inevitable destruction.
Love, Love, Love
Strange days have found us
And through their strange hours
We linger alone
Bodies confused
Memories misused
As we run from the day
To a strange night of stone
Thanks for reading if you’re still with me. I wrote a lot because we just went through a lot, and I think there are lessons available for the taking if we choose to be receptive.
But unlike most of my other posts, I’m writing in the strangest time I’ve ever known. Frankly, we don’t know if anyone reading or writing this post will be alive a month from now, whether the risk is from COVID-19 or violence or fire or lord knows what. Jim Morrison wrote “the future’s uncertain” in Roadhouse Blues like 50 years ago, plus The Doors recorded a song and an entire album titled “Strange Days,” but it all sounds like uncharacteristically heavy understatement from the Lizard King compared to what’s going on right about now.
Still, there’s reason for hope – a vaccine possibly on the horizon, a new administration coming to Washington, and maybe a whole bunch of people motivated to move forward with practicality and positivity.
I want to conclude this whole thing with a plea for love as a guiding value, and say that if I loved you once I love you now. Good people are working on good things, and if we can get through this rough patch I’m looking forward to copious hugging (with consent, of course) and quests for a future in which we all can take pride.
