On the Anniversary of the Attempted Overthrow of American Democracy

Today I print a letter by my friend Jeff Deiss to his Senators and Congressman. It is a letter which I wholeheartedly support. I will be sending similar letters to my congressional delegation as well. I invite you to do the same.

A year ago was the darkest day in American democracy in my lifetime.  The real possibility that a strongman would be able to override two centuries of gradually improving American democracy was shocking, something I never believed possible.  It seems clear that 2021’s ultimately successful transition of power to a democratically-elected Administration has not been enough to assure that the processes in place can be comfortably depended upon going forward.  Many States have enacted laws that diminish the rights of voters and the power of the majority of voters to see their choices honored.  A year later, the situation remains precarious, and the stakes remain high.  

Therefore I am writing to urge you to support a Senate rule change that will end the filibuster for a single bill on voting rights. 

I know that the filibuster rule has held a long and often honorable role in Senate deliberations, assuring that compromise and bipartisanship are used in enacting laws.  So I do not urge this lightly.  But the dangers to our democracy now transcend the importance of a traditional moderating rule of the Senate, however wise or respected.  

If the will of the people as expressed in free and fair elections is allowed to be compromised, our democracy is lost.  Given the choice between preserving our democracy or the filibuster, the decision must be to end the filibuster rule this once in favor of protecting voting rights. 

January 6 Commission and What's at Stake

The January 6 Committee is about to start hitting the country with absolutely damning information about what Trump and his team were up to before and during the insurrection. If we're fortunate it will destroy and discredit him. We'll have to see. Majorities of Americans already hold him culpable, according to a Washington Post University of Maryland poll released today. Republicans in general and his partisans in particular have drunk the cool aid. The New York Times editorial today said the nation is at an unprecedented critical juncture where a major national political party is openly attempting to thwart democracy and has resorted to violence to do it. This is true and we live in a fraught time. The Times editorial calls on everyone to fight against this. They call on the Democrats in the Senate to lift the filibuster so they can pass the elections and voting rights bills and safeguard democracy. They call on citizens to fight for fair elections and vote against those trying to corrupt them.

The two things to keep in mind are, first, that we are on the side of righteousness, and second, that we are the majority. Despite what you may see in Tulare County, remember, even there the Republican edge is shrinking, Devin Nunes' formerly easy 30-point wins fell to only 5 and 8 percent in his last two elections. So, I want you to keep some facts in mind. The Democratic candidate for president has gotten the most votes in 7 of the last 8 elections. The Republican candidate only got the most votes once in the last eight elections. It's been since 2004 that George W. Bush, a wartime incumbent (who himself had been elected with a minority of the votes thanks to the electoral college system in 2000) was the last GOP aspirant to get more votes than the Democrat. Clinton in 92 and 96, Gore in 2000, Obama in 2008 and 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020 all outpolled their Republican adversaries. The GOP candidate for president has gotten the most votes once in the past thirty years. Democratic Senators represent 35,000,000 more people than their Republican counterparts. Democrats beat Republican candidates in the national popular vote in the House by 8.6% in 2018 and by 3% in 2020. Republicans are not the majority. They are the minority. That is why they are now doubling their efforts to gerrymander like crazy and tip the election process against fairness and equality. They know most people are against them, and that stacking the deck is the only way they can win. 

John F. Kennedy said: "In the long history of the world only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility-I welcome it." He referred to his generation's role in saving freedom from foreign totalitarianism in World War II and then the Cold War. Ours concerns saving it from would-be internal totalitarians. I admire what Kennedy did. It is our privilege to be called upon to fight this same recurring age-old battle in our own day. If we fail then what he and my dad did, along with millions of others, including the 400,000 who didn't come home and the hundreds of thousands who were maimed, did all that for nothing. And that just ain't good enough.