The following sub-posts are taken from the Galveston County Democrats, open forum, Facebook group/announcements. It includes the original post plus added comments.
Two Critical Elements in 2020 Election
Our opponent, and who he represents, have been whittling away at our laws and form of government for decades. We need a massive and decisive response AND someone to inspire us beyond what Obama did in 2008.
Our democratic choice of a challenger AND massive voter turnout go hand-in-hand for 2020. We need both. Both are critical for complete, immediate, and final success in 2020 so we can start to rebuild America for we the people.
Incidental Remarks:
From original post: "If he starts a war, defeating him gets even harder." And now we are on the verge of a new war with Iran. The Republican strategy for winning the presidency repeats.
Who's A Centrist?
On Minimizing Economic, Social, Racial, and Envrironmental Injustices, ...
... who's a centrist?
On either maximizing inequality or maximizing equality, ...
... who's a centrist?
On only empowering and protecting the wealthy or equally empowering and protecting all citizens, ...
... who's a centrist?
On either war or peace, ...
... who's a centrist?
On winning in 2020 or losing in 2020, ...
... who's a centrist?
The pool of centrist, blue-no-matter-who, voters was too small in 2016 to win and is not enough for winning in 2020. As shown below, Democrats lost 9.6 million votes in 2016 to third parties and the couch at home. The unified pool of all those voters to the left of the Tea Party IS large enough. They are inspired to vote by those who address the economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices they all suffer from and want addressed by our government.
We Must Move Forward ...
These lost votes were not centrist voters.
Democracy or Oligarchy - There is no Center. "But today the real contest is between the people and the powerful – the vast majority of Americans versus an oligarchy that’s amassed most of the nation’s wealth and power."
Maximizing The 2020 Democratic Presidential Vote - Democracy Must Shine in the Democratic Primary Process
Many Democrats assume it’s impossible to get more people of color to vote. That’s just not true.
We cannot afford a repeat of 2016 in 2020!!!
To that end, Democrats need a primary candidate selection process that maximizes both voter participation and the democratic process. This will assure maximum voter turnout in 2020. Those who both turn up to participate in the primaries/caucuses and feel it was a fair process, and those of like mind who watch from afar, will be more inclined to vote in the 2020 national election. Without both voters and a clearly democratic selection process, the inept, incumbent, DJT, could get re-elected with just his NRA and white evangelical base. As his approval polls among Republicans shows, they still admire him while he protects and advances their interests.
Who’s Voice of Reason?
Saying that there needs to be a “voice of reason” ignores that we all reason differently based on many factors.
There are two representative models of family/culture and we are all some mix of the two. On one end of this continuum is the Strict Father/Domination model. On the other, there is the Nurturant Parents/Partnership model.
Our national problem is that we have been tricked into letting a minority of exemplary Strict Father/Domination-reasoning, rich, homophobic, heterosexual, christianist, misogynistic, white men take control of our majority nurturant partnership culture.
Read Nurturing Our Humanity by Eisler/Fry for the latest research then help make sure the nurturant majority votes always and in significant numbers.
Winning in 2020 … UNITY!
"Gabby Hays had whiskers. Lenin had a beard."-- comedian George Carlin. My reference to the term "oligarchs" is apparently not what the owners of our media prefers to use.
Winning in 2020 - Rally Against ALL Who Abuse and Divide Us
- religious power brokers like Doug Coe, recently deceased, and The Family who have been secretly promoting a Christianity for the elite, a dictatorship of the divine, a theocracy, to all U.S. presidents since Eisenhower,
- Libertarian, no-compromise, billionaires like Charles Koch who have been secretly planning to neuter the federal government, eliminate majority rule, and assure billionaires can veto governmental decisions by re-writing our Constitution,
- national and international billionaires who use media to divide, influence, and blind us to their desire to rule by virtue of their wealth.
The 2020 election may be our last and best chance to build a more equitable, caring, and sustainable future.
Winning in 2020 - A Forecast based on US History and rebellion
- The nomination of a Democratic candidate that appeals to the greatest number of all those left of the Tea Party.
- A Democratic Party nomination process that exemplifies democratic principles and values
- Voter turnout overcomes massive, continuing GOP voter suppression efforts and other internal and external influences
- Population growth of 3.5%, Voting Age Population (VAP growth of 0.75% growth to 77.9%, Voting Eligible Population (VEP) growth of 0.70% to 71.95%, all relative to 2016
- Extremist Republican voter turnout has peaked at 28% as a percentage of VEP, this is in keeping with the following quote from John Dean from his book Conservatives Without Conscience: “Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds. … And they are so submissive to their leaders that they will believe and do virtually anything they are told. They are not going to let up and they are not going away.”
- Democratic voter turnout increases 1.42% over 2008 and 5.49% over 2016 as a percentage of VEP
- Third party votes are reduced 50% to 1.26% from 2016
- All this generates a 2.58% increase in the total vote for 2020. Seems possible
The result is Democrats win 53% of the 2020 total vote. These assumptions also lead to a total voter turnout of 64.1%. The closest historical, http://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present, numbers to this turnout rate last occurred in 1904 (65.5%) and 1908 (65.7%). The history of these early 20th century votes, https://youtu.be/GDtSSFEZY38, was that they were in response to another guided age after the civil war, the industrialization of the US economy and the abuses of the robber barons. Also, voter turnout for 2018 (50.3%), another revolt to a new gilded age, comes close to the rate of the 1914 (50.4%) midterms. So if the history of gilded ages is repeating itself, maybe voter turnout levels will repeat those from a century ago? See related graph of historical VEP rates.
Getting 64.1% of Eligible voters can provide a 53% portion of the 2020 total vote.
Our 2018 voter turnout forecasts an achievable turnout in 2020.
These lost votes were not centrist voters.
In another Pew Report they show that more Americans identify as Democrats.
Winning in 2020 with the estimated 53% of the total vote shown in the table included in above will require 12.6 million more Democratic votes than Obama got in 2008. That’s about 5.2% of the estimated eligible 2020 voter pool. Where will those votes come from?
- 3.6 million would come from those who voted for Obama in 2008 but stayed home in 2016,
- 6 million would come from those who voted for Obama in 2008 but went 3rd party in 2016,
- The remaining 3 million would come from those who didn’t vote in 2008 or 2016.
Winning in 2020 - There Rides a Peace Train …
- The abuse of the oligarchs in the late 1700s is alive and well in the early 2000s. We need a second Declaration of Independence:
- Oligarchs and their media are effective at dividing the 99%, and our Democratic Party, and getting us to battle ourselves instead of them
- We need all to the left of the Tea Party to Unite, including those left of ‘center,’ the center, and some from the right of center, Fusion Politics, intersectionality, to unite against the oligarchs and their divisive propaganda:
Our Declaration of Independence contains a list of abuses by the British oligarchs to justify our desire for independence. We need a new Declaration of Indepence documenting the decades of economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices pertetuated by today's oligarchs and their lackeys to justify reclaiming our government for the people.
"The morally right option is the one that maximizes equality by equally protecting and empowering the greatest number of citizens.” — C Andy Hailey
====================================
“Now I've been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, why can't we live in bliss,
“Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again”
— Cat Stevens’ Peace Train, 1971
Winning in 2020 - A New Declaration of Independence
The Oligarchs of the late 1700s have been replaced by the Oligarchs of the early 2000s. The 2020 Election should be framed as a second Declaration of Independence.
Winning in 2020 - More Than Just Climbing Out Of a Deep Pit
Winning in 2020 - Population Growth Benefits Democratic Candidates.
Winning in 2020 - The New American Majority That Elected Obama
"Cultural competence in campaigns and the rest of the progressive movement is needed now more than ever in order to connect with the New American Majority. It’s been thirty years since Andy Young cast down the gauntlet. We can’t afford to wait another thirty."
Winning in 2020 - It'a about the kind of government we will chose:
Post depression/post WWII and pre 1980s government: Government of, by, and for the People requires:
Winning in 2020 - Women of Color are Key
- WOMEN OF COLOR ARE 20% OF THE POPULATION AND MORE THAN A QUARTER OF ALL DEMOCRATS.
- WOMEN OF COLOR ARE ONE IN FOUR VOTERS IN KEY SWING STATES.
- WOMEN OF COLOR WERE CRUCIAL TO DEMOCRATS’ 2018 VICTORIES. TURNOUT AMONG WOMEN OF COLOR INCREASED 37% COMPARED WITH THE 2014 MIDTERMS. ASIAN AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER WOMEN INCREASED 48%, BLACK WOMEN 28%, AND LATINAS 51%.
- OVER THE LAST DECADE, WHEN TURNOUT AMONG WOMEN OF COLOR HAS BEEN ABOVE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE, DEMOCRATS HAVE WON. WHEN THEIR TURNOUT IS BELOW, DEMOCRATS HAVE LOST.
War/Peace and The 2020 Election
Right-wing authoritarians, predominantly Republicans, are the primary users of severe punishment for teaching their values and abusing those who don't support their values. War is their ultimate tool.
They start their abusive behaviour on children as young as 18 months and it continues into adulthood. It also extends beyound the family to the world at large. It is applied according to an imaginary social hierarchy based on sex, skin color, ethnicity, sexual orirentation or identity, wealth, etc. White, heterosexual, wealthy, misogynist, males are at the top of this hierarchy.
This punishment belief has given us the world record for over-crowded prisons, massive military presense around the world, and preemptive wars to get unethically elected Republicans re-elected.
Will the COVID-19 'war' help/hurt DJT re-election in spite of the abuse of so many who have lost their jobs, their small businesses, or their family members?
Equiping the Warriors to minimize harming them:
- Iraq: troops were ill-equiped to fight long-term war but money was created and defense contracts awarded to remedy the problem and enrich owners of the war machine.
- COVID-19: Hopitals, doctors, and nurses ill-equipped but politicians can’t find money or facilitate a national, effective, effort to remedy the problem. This resulted in competition for resources and enrichment of the producers of medical equipment.
- Iraq war: thousands of flag draped coffins are surreptitiously returned home.
- COVIND-19: thouosands of body bags stored out of sight in refrigerated trucks.
- Bush declares Iraq "Mission Accomplished" on a floating Weapon of Mass Destruction.
- DJT declares COVID-19 a hoax and it will be over by Easter Sunday.
- Lies from politicians about WMDs in Iraq to trick us into war.
- Lies from politicians abut the reality of COVID-19 to avoid stock market impact and avoid spending to protect and empower health care workers, other workers, and many others.
All wars are used for punishment and will harm many directly and indirectly. Some politicians hope war will get them re-elected, as in the past. A few hope and speak for peace. Can you hear them? If not, why not?
Winning in 2020 - Revisiting
"Winning in 2020 - A Forecast based on US History and rebellion"
The first post on estimating the 53/44 2020 win for Democrats is included at the end. I'll take a different approach this time.
Referring to the historical line chart showing voter turnout since 1789, you can see that our 2018 midterm turnout matches voter turnout prior to a time around the turn of the last century. If you if you go up vertically from there to the Presidential Election line and then push that level forward to 2020, you get a possible total voter turnout around 64% of eligible voters.
Next, I estimated the total number of eligible voters from US Census population information and from historical data from the Election Project at the University of Florida in Gainesville. This site provided the chart we used above and the historical VAP (voting age population) and VEP (voting eligible population) numbers on the left side of the voter estimate table below.
Historically VAP was about 76-77% of the population and VEP was about 70-71%.
Using historical numbers for VEP, VAP, and population, I estimated corresponding numbers for 2020:
241,365,589, 261,325,634, 335,462,945. Then, using the 64% of VEP to get total votes for president of 154,802,632.
With that total vote estimate and historical estimates for Dems, Reps, and Third Party, I get estimate the election results, which include the following assumptions:
- - The GOP vote, as a percent of VEP, seems to have peaked nationally at about 28%. That gives Reps 67,582,365 of the VEP votes.
- - Third party votes of Dem leaning voters is assumed reduced 2.4% from a 2016 record of 5.74% to 3.33% of total votes cast for 5,155,967 votes in 2020.
- - Voter participation, as measured by a reduction of those who don’t vote, decreases 2.6% from 38.44% to 35.86% for 86,562,957 votes in 2020.
- - That leaves, from the estimated total vote, 82,064,300 votes for Democrats. As a percent of total votes, this is a 5.5% increase in Democratic votes over 2016. This compares favorably to the 4.1% increase in Dem votes for 2018 over our Galveston county historical midterm average and the 13.3% for the national midterm change from 2014 to 2018 shown in the history line chart reference initially in this post.
Thus Dems could win in 2020 with 53.0% of the total vote to 43.7% for the Republicans. This is a conservative estimate compared to what happened in 2018. I hesitate to lower the Didn’t Vote numbers because there is still the threat of GOP Cult voter suppression.
Winning in 2020 - Chomsky Provides Historical Perspective
For all of us, who want to bring America up to the higher standards represented by other more progressive nations who are better at equally protecting and empowering all citizens, we need Chomsky’s historical perspective on the potential damage from a never Biden approach to the 2020 election. Listen to this interview.
There is a strong progressive movement struggling to bring about this elevation of America to this higher standard. Similar movements were in place and effective at forcing an earlier Democratic president to implement the New Deal. Which future president is the mostly likely to listen to this current movement? It’s not DJT!
The situation here is much like what happened in pre-WWII Germany and what happened more recently to the labor movement in Great Britain. We don’t want to replicate those failures for the sake of purity.
We, and the rest of the world, can’t let this American political cancer metastasize! Electing Biden is the only option for allowing a potentially better America. America will not survive another DJT term!
A key hashtag from Senator Sander's campaign is #NotMeUs. Remaining absolutely true to the “Us” means understanding that #NeverBiden is more about focusing on “Me,” and won’t provide for a massive, unquestionable, defeat of #COVIDIOT45 in November. Checkout the Chomsky interview.
Winning in 2020 - Why This Election Is So Important for Our Future
The 2020 election is about far more than which Democratic candidate will face off against the orange twit currently destroying America from inside the White House with a lot of help from his “friends.' We also need to stop his demented friends from trying to replace of our democratic political system with an authoritarian one and disable their use of our authoritarian economic system to finance their takeover!
The authoritarian destruction of our political system is thoroughly documented by Nancy MacLean in Democracy In Chains. Maclean details the deep, long, history of the right-wing authoritarian's stealth plan for America. This plan is financed by Libertarian billionaires like the Kochs and other wealthy families who are pushing our political system further and further to the extreme right using their ill-gotten gains from a broken neoliberal economic system that maximizes inequality for most of us and provides welfare only for the excessively wealthy.
Pushing our political system into this authoritarian right-wing dictatorship includes pinning the political pendulum permanently to the far right by re-writing our constitution during a constitutional convention initiated by Republican controlled states. The goal for this rewrite is to enshrine Libertarian economic ideology including corporate veto power over any government legislation, and eliminating majority rule, through legal means and division by blaming others. This right-wing, extremist, ideology is supported only by a wealthy minority and their minority of wannabe authoritarian followers eager to protect and grow their wealth at the expense of everyone else.
Division Through Blaming Others Keeps The Authoritarians in Control
Reaching their goals, these right-wing authoritarians are self-financing a permanent authoritarian political system that maximizes their protection and empowerment, maximizes inequality for everyone else and locks in their authoritarian political and economic systems. These authoritarian political and economic systems of America are discussed by professor Sheldon Wolin in Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.
This inverted political/economic system is well represented by the Libertarian ideology referenced above where an authoritarian economic system creates and uses an authoritarian political system to protect and empower the economic system which implements Libertarian economic goals like privatization of all public government functions. This is the reverse of Nazi Germany where the elected authoritarian political system used the existing authoritarian economic system to implement political goals.
As Wolin states about America's inverted totalitarianism, “Economics dominates politics—and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.” This ruthlessness has been made obvious during our current pandemic as our federal and state leadership put profit before people. We have hoarding, price gouging, immoral competition for vital medical supplies, massive unemployment due to delayed federal action, loss of health care with unemployment, and welfare for the corporations instead of keeping workers whole by replacing their lost income so they can avoid increased homelessness and hunger. Our authoritarian economic system is financing our conversion to an authoritarian political system and enshrining neoliberal goal of profit before saving people’s lives.
We need to take back our political system as a democracy and we need to democratize our economic system to disempower the authoritarian oligarchs and prevent them from the final destruction of our democratic republic.
To accomplish this, we need massive voter participation which we haven’t seen in over a century. We need a vast majority of ALL those left of the TEA party to vote. We need to grow our position in the House and take back the Senate with a guaranteed majority. Our candidates need to inspire this exceptional voter turnout by loudly addressing the massive economic, social, racial, and environmental injustices perpetrated by all the right-wing authoritarians since Richard Nixon.
The possibilities for the 2020 elections are many depending on voter turnout. Here are three possibilities:
1.) Democrats increase their House majority, get a solid majority in the Senate, and elect Biden. This should be taken as a demand by the voters to reverse the injustices of the right. This should result in government legislation that equally protects and empowers all citizens while also disempowering the one percent. We need a modern day Glass-Steagall Act that includes taxing stock trade transactions, stock property taxes similar to home property taxes, personal debt relief, and democratizing the workplace by enabling employee owned businesses. There would also be a national health care system that better responds to national emergencies like pandemics by putting people before profit.
2.) There’s massive voter turnout and Democrats get a plurality in both houses with a strong down ballot response, but DJT is re-elected through the electoral college again. This would still allow legislation to equally protect and empower all citizens while also disempowering the one percent by providing the Congressional votes that would override a DJT veto.
3.) We get a low voter turnout similar to 2016 and DJT is re-elected and Congress is little changed. Biden gets more votes but loses to the electoral college and loses 10 million votes to third parties and the living room couch. America falls under permanent right-wing, long-term, authoritarian control.
We need massive voter turnout and the election of Democrats willing to re-democratize our political system with laws that provide automatic voter registration, vote-by-mail, an election day holiday and reinstating the Civil Rights Act to stop voter suppression, and we need laws that democratize our economic system to prevent excessively wealthy authoritarian employers from buying our government. Corporations are inhuman and money is dumb. Coops are humane and individual voting a great equalizer.
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Take advantage of your lockdown and checkout the embedded links above and those below for backup information on our failing systems, who’s breaking them, and the possible fixes we must force:
For another perspective on our broken systems, here’s my short blog posting:
https://the-wawg-blog.org/two-broken-systems-more-democracy-is-the-solution/
Billionaires Wealth Surges as Pandemic Continues - Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes, and Pandemic Profiteers
“If this inequality isn’t treated with both short and long-term tax reforms and oversight, America’s 'pre-existing condition' of extreme inequality could overwhelm not only our economy, but our democracy itself.”
Nancy MacLean: The Origins of Today’s Radical Right - Video Recording, “ … she outlined the radical covert plan being implemented by the Koch network to change the rules of our government to make 'capitalism safe from democracy' while we are distracted by Trump.”
Professor Richard Wolff discusses the failings of authoritarian (state or private) capitalism and how democracy at work helps fix what is wrong.
COVID-19: How to Destroy America from the Top Down, from Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. “ … all of us live in a time and in an economic system that values our lives relative to our ability to produce profits for the rich … ."
Footenote:
--------------------------------In a recent Bioneers 2020 natioinal convention talk, one of the presenters showed what is possible from a national coordinated effort.
At the beginning of WWII, before the military-industrial-complex, America was producing 3,000 airplanes a year, far to few to win a war on two fronts. The nation was mobilized and capitalism was suspended. By the end of the war, Americans, in massively retooled factories, had built 300,000 airplanes.
We are a much richer nation now than then and could do so much more to create a sustainable world with a sustainable economy. Imagine retooling the military-industrial-complex for peaceful, sustaining, goals. And it just takes more of us participating to make it happen.
Thanks for your time, support, participation, and getting this far. Now let's bolster democracy everywhere.
What it took to defeat the evil of those who started WWII, is what we need now to defeat the same kind of evil that now runs our America.
Since WWII, the enemy of the United States has grown from within from a seed left over from WWII. We must all unite as The Greatest Generation did to take out the Kreeping, Krawling, Kudzu that has infested our land. We must unite to bring down the wealthy, double-high, RWA, traitors who are stealthily stealing our government from us.
The A-Team for winning WWII was a united citizenry. The A-Team for winning in 2020 must be a united citizenry against the RWA minority.
😤Rescuing America starts in November, 2020, and WE are ALL the A-Team!!!😤
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