Dear Republicans

Hello,

I know the current President was likely not your first choice for your party's nominee back in 2015, but as the others fell by the wayside, I watched as your party came together to make him your standard bearer.  I know that some of you voted for him because you didn't want to vote for Secretary Clinton for a variety of reasons.  I know you thought the office would change him.  I know you liked the fact that he gave you some of things you wanted, a more conservative federal bench, deregulation to help your stock portfolios, comfort that he would not move us further down the road to a changing country.  For some of you he opposed the same people you opposed.  He also said things that you wished you could say in public without repercussions.   I know you also felt you could ignore his Twitter rants and childish nonsense.  So often we heard "watch what he does not what he says".  So now we had an election and in an epic turn out of voters. Joe Biden beat President Trump with a record number of votes cast on both sides meaning there was a great deal of enthusiasm for the President, but it looks from other Republican wins that there was also as much against.  

We are a divided country and that is not new.  What is new that the President is showing that he doesn't care about the American values.  Those values have helped us heal even when we have been so fully divided.  But now the President has been pushing out nonsense about a rigged election, that fraud exists everywhere he lost and having lawyers put their careers in jeopardy filing frivolous lawsuits whose filings read like the rantings of a people with no connection to reality.  In the mean time he firing our defense and national security human infrastructure to no real purpose.  Quotes are that he wants to make the next administrations life harder to have real accomplishments.

Beyond the holding up of both the financial support and the critical coordination with departments in the Executive Branch by members of his team, including the highly classified briefings are criminal negligence on the part of all involved.  Joking about a potential Trump second term or saying they will wait until after the Election is certified defies not only logic but reality.  

But what is worse is that the President has been actively trying to overturn the election with frivolous lawsuits that have been literally laughed out of court.  Today Trump's TV lawyers had a nearly two-hour press conference where they weaved conspiracy theories about Hugo Chavez, 7 years dead, being involved in the fraud and that was the sanest thing they said.  Tonight members of the Michigan State Legislature are being summoned to the White House in an attempt to have them over-turn the vote in Michigan.  Legally they can't, there is a law in Michigan that determines how Electors are seated.  But the President is abusing the power of his office to try to undo the election he so clearly lost. This is not the first attempt.  After Wayne County certified the ballots in the largest county in Michigan he called the Republicans on the Election board and now they want to rescind their vote to certify.  (They can't do that).  This is, in my opinion, a ham handed attempt at sedition.  

All that said, the President is watching the country burn as Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths are reaching new heights.  While his personal medical advisor, a radiologist, is telling people to ignore state suggestions about keeping Thanksgiving small because your elderly relatives are going to die soon.  

So, Republicans, it is time to cut ties with the woeful failure in the White House.  I know it is difficult.  Republicans tend to fall in line.  I know that you want to believe the crazy nonsense of a fraud election.  I know you are hoping you won't have to see a Democratic President who will once again have to clean up a Republican mess.  But seriously, if you want a party a year from now you have to stand against the tyranny that is snowballing before your eyes.  Please come out and say in no uncertain terms:

1.  Joe Biden is the President-Elect 

2.  The President should release the information and funds for the transition.

3.  The President should make a public concession and which the new administration success.  

4.  The President should not fire anyone and replace them with unqualified sycophants.  

5.  The President should work with the Biden team on the roll out of vaccines and other measures to combat the Covid pandemic. 

At this point those still carrying the President's water will not be treated kindly by history but there is still a chance to save some of your legacy and frankly your dignity.  Stand up for the country you claim to love and took an oath to serve.  It may be a hard by it is what is right.  There is too much at stake.  Stand up.  

Thank you, 

A Fellow American who wants the country to remain a beacon of freedom and democracy.  

Liberals to Left of Me and Moderates to the Right.

I joined the Democratic party in 1983 when I was first eligible to vote.  While I flirted with the Liberal party in New York for a bit I was always in support of most Democrats.  (A couple of times I went off the board because of protest votes).  For the most part I saw the Republican party as not the party of the people.  In all those years little has changed, except now they have embraced the conspiracy wing full on and many who call themselves Republicans live on an Earth Two, where alternative facts include the idea that our Covid pandemic is over, the Courts decide elections and President Trump has been good for the nation.  

But today, as the dust settles from what was the most bananas election cycle we see a Democratic party that is yelling at each other.  Moderates/Conservative Democrats were defeated or nearly so in some districts having been painted with the brush of the social democrats, in particular Representatives Osacio-Cortez (AOC) and Omar.  They are made at the rhetoric of Medicare for All and Green New Deal.  Progressives are saying that they came over to a candidate for President that they didn't like and deserve a seat at the table, even suggesting they will fight President Biden unless certain people are in the cabinet.  Several people are calling for the party to reach out to the 70 million Trump voters to understand their concerns and address them.  And Black women, who drove this election in many ways are waiting for the acknowledgement from many more people in the media who continue to follow their fetish of the Trump voter in the suburbs who appear to have flipped.  Look for CNN's New Day to have panels on this for years. 

Here is the thing, our party has always been diverse and have had people like AOC and Joe Manchin and everything in-between.  We need to listen to all voices and find a way to bring everyone to the table.  

For one thing, while there are clearly issues with the far left Democrats' ideas for much of middle America, they seem to know how to message.  We as a party can no longer allow the pundits on Fox News and OAN to define our positions.  In fact, we should create a team that goes on news programs, much like Pete Buttigieg has on Fox, to give our message.  The Sunday shows have been dominated by GOPers and the cable channels have tons of Republicans who comfortably lie because they make a good foil for hosts like Jake Tapper.  But when the people we need to reach don't trust the media they believe the lies.  

We need to remember that for the GOP the campaign never stops.  Watch this week, leaders of the GOP are all over television talking about 2024, while at the same time promoting conspiracies that the President actually won this election.  Ignoring the fact that the way this election has played out, though taking a longer time than expected because of Covid and mail in votes, the same way every other election has done in the last 100 years.  Calls are made based on statistics.  Rarely wrong and if so only in a singular state.  But the Trump campaign has even produced a false image of the Washington Times with a Headline PRESIDENT GORE that the paper (which is a right wing paper by the way) said never happened.  Yet someone told me his friend has a copy.  While I hate the idea, we need to be on campaign footing all the time.  Perhaps the Vice-President-elect should call a press conference and using her Attorney General skills debunk the nonsense fully.  Then the DNC should create a regular rapid response team to continue throughout the transition, at least, to offset the lies.  

We do not need to be nice to the  Lincoln Project.  Yes they were Anti-Trump and ran some powerful ads during the campaign.  But let's remember who they are.  They are right wing people who will attack President-elect Biden as soon as he starts to work on something that falls out of their ideological box.  The enemy of my enemy can still be my enemy.  Think Europe in 1946.  While there are calls for a Lincolnesque cabinet with Republicans and no progressives.  That is just not okay, we can send Steve Schmidt a cake and invite him to the inauguration we don't have to put him or John Kasich in the executive branch.

The current political climate will not allow many Senators who might be good for cabinet posts to be appointed.  Republican governors would replace them with Republicans and tip the balance of power.  So discussion of Warren, Sanders, Manchin, and Brown are non-starters.  Our bench in the party is both deep and diverse and I am certain that there can be a mix of ideas without embracing the fringes.  

But it is clear, there is a change happening in our party.  Your people who are more comfortable embracing ideas and policies that some see as too socialist are coming out to vote, have heroes to look up to, and will be the voice of the party in a few short years.  In the mean time the money needed to get people elected at every level still resides in the older Democrats whose similar visions in the 70s and 80s were doused be 12 years of Reagan/Bush and the rise of Southern Democrats who brought us Bill Clinton (a moderate in many ways) and helped a young Senator from Illinois become President thinking he was the progressive answer and turned out not so much.  So the battle inside the party continues.  

I think that a President Biden will find a way to knit the party together enough to wear out in public but not enough for G-rated photo shoot.  But we have to try.  We need to stop talking about reaching out to the Trump supporter and find out who in our party we disagree with and look for common ground there. Even if we take the Senate in January, and I am not sure we can, there will still be in-fighting and votes not cast for things that bother some members of Congress.  Hell, the right wing noise machine is already calling for Joe Manchin to switch parties.  Let's find a way to be a party that can disagree and fight for the common goal, to bring our country back, to take care of the vulnerable, to defeat the pandemic and rebuild the economic structure that makes us the engine of the world economy.  Then, when we have taken care of our own house, we can work with the neighbors.  

It Is Election Day

Good morning.  Today we will have what I think if the 6th time we are having the most important election of our lifetime.  This is the first time I am not sure if this is hyperbole.  

For as long as I remember it seems I wake up at 4:00 a.m. (now in standard time 3:00 a.m.).  Sometimes my mind is so full that it is hard to go back to sleep.  I see more and more people saying that this election today is about getting a good night's sleep.  That we aren't going to have to think about the President so that it makes restfulness difficult.  I don't think it is the President that is waking me up all the time but I do often find myself checking the news to see what is going on.  What I do know I have found myself worried about his actions throughout the Presidency during my waking hours.  There are many things that have me questioning the ability of our institutions to survive another Trump administration.   

He has attacked and gutted so much of the Executive Branch it is going to take a while to rebuild them when a new President takes over.  I had great faith in the established government but from early on this President decided to undermine the function of so much of the Federal system, calling anyone who challenged his actions as part of the deep state and allowing the ignorant to buy into this disgusting attack on so many long-term public servants.  This dismantling of the pillars of good government is dangerous for many reasons, including leaving us vulnerable to foreign and domestics attacks.

Domestic attacks are also a big worry.  President Trump has empowered the radical fringe on the right who travel in white nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-Semitic and Anti-Muslim circles.  Our country has always had a festering wound of hate and the President continues to keep it open poking at it with the dirty tool of language that is heard by these terrorists as encouragement.  Recent attacks on the Biden campaign bus is a great example.   

As Election Day neared we see cities across the country board up their downtown stores.  Many people say their fear the left rioting if the President wins.  But for many others the concern is the Trump supporters attacking if he loses.  Imagine the tension of a country that has to worry about the destruction of property because of an election.  Like a developing nation new to democracy trying to vote out a dictator.  This is not who we are. 

Today we as a country have our last chance to say this and so much more is bad for our country.  During the last several weeks the President has tried to stop people from being able to cast their vote or have their legal votes counted.  Throughout the country he and the Republican party have tried to tell people only votes counted on Election Day should count (that is lie) if votes are counted after the polls closer that is unusual and open to corruption (neither of those things are true) and of course the lies about mail-in vote fraud which is rare.  We may not know the winner of the election for President until Friday and that is okay.  All votes should count.  It is up to us to decide the direction of the country.  

So, as election day starts, if you voted, thank you, if you haven't get to the polls, and be prepared for a long haul.  Stay strong and know, regardless of the outcome, America is strong.  We have survived a number of things just in the last century or so.  Two World Wars, The Great Depression, the rise of both Fascism and Communism, and so on and so on.  Have faith, but if you are concerned vote Blue all the way down the ticket.  The time is now.