LET'S NOT LEAVE ANYTHING ON THE TABLE

There is still $250 on the table to match an additional $125 in donations to the DLCC.  Let us not leave anything to chance! Any small donors to fill up the bucket?

ONWARD!

The first day of my challenge was a splendid success. With four donations of $100 each and one donation of $200 matched by $600 from the Palmeters and $600 from me, we have now donated $1800 to the DLCC.  Let us wrap this up today with a total of $400 more in donations to be matched by $800. Remember, any donation of $10 or more will be matched so dig deep, let us know about your donation, and perhaps in 48 hours total we will have generated $3000 for local and state elections in this cycle. 

A CHALLENGE

I read the 27 comments to my post yesterday and although they were, as usual, thoughtful and knowledgeable, they offered no guidance on what to do at this terrible moment. Save for one.  David Palmeter suggested we donate to the DLCC – the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. Here is what he said.  

"It’s vital, in the coming midterms, not only that Democrats not lose control of the House and Senate, but also that they begin the long climb back to control of a majority of state legislatures. It will not be easy.

When it comes to fundraising, state legislatures are an orphan. The money goes to the big races: Presidential, Senatorial, and Congressional. That’s fine, but if you’re a small contributor like I am, your contribution to a nation-wide or even state-wide race is at most a drop in the bucket. It will not be missed if doesn’t arrive, and will have little impact on the outcome.

The impact of your small contribution to a state legislative race will be far, far greater. A worthy recipient of your small donation is the DLCC—the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee."

So I pose the following challenge to my readers:

 

I will match your donations the DLCC dollar for dollar up to a maximum of $1000. You may donate as little as $10 and as much as you wish. If you will post reports of your donations as comments to this blog post, each time they total $100 or more I will donate an equal amount until I reached my $1000 limit. Obviously I have no way of checking whether you have actually made the donations so I am simply counting on you to be honest.

DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES

Biden has said that he is not in favor of expanding the Court.  No surprise there. This is a long shot, but I think it is our only chance. First, we must weaponize the outrage at the Supreme Court decision so as to hold the House and win two more seats in the Senate in the midterms. (I did not say this would be easy.) Then the Democrats must use these wins to pass legislation writing the Roe decision into law. This will almost certainly be challenged by opponents of abortion and my guess is that the right wing majority on the Court would use the occasion to prohibit all abortion as in violation of the Constitution. This would then generate a political uprising that would compel Biden to support expanding the Court.  We are in for some hard times, pretty clearly.

 

Apropos my last post about Gregory of Tours, I am going to stop trying to write humorous or witty blog posts. Apparently there is something about the medium that makes humor impossible. Oh well, as Michael Sandel demonstrates, there is always stand up

LITERARY ECHOES

Gregory of Tours was a sixth century bishop whose work A History of the Franks is one of the few historical accounts of Western European happenings in the Merovingian period and hence much prized by historians. Sixty-four years ago, when I was preparing to teach Social Sciences 5 at Harvard, I read Gregory’s book. Truth to tell, it is a rather boring chronicle of the bloody doings of minor Merovingian lords of the period. I particularly recall Gregory’s account of one especially egregious minor Merovingian aristocrat who spent his life pillaging and killing and generally creating mayhem in his little part of Western Europe. This reprehensible character managed to live to a great old age – perhaps into his 80s – and died peacefully in his bed, “thus demonstrating God’s implacable justice,” Gregory wrote sanctimoniously but not very persuasively.

I thought of old Gregory when I read that Henry Kissinger is now 99 years old and still offering bad advice to all who will listen.

WE LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES, TO QUOTE THE OLD CHINESE CURSE

I was so angry last night that I lay in bed with clenched fists snapping at our cat. This is now playing out pretty much as I anticipated. There is more than three months before early voting begins so one might imagine that the outrage will die down and people’s attention will turn to other things, like the price of gasoline. But there are now going to be an endless series of attacks in the states on abortion providers, women seeking reproductive health care, blue states offering a haven for those women seeking abortions, But and so on. Every one of those stories will generate enormous attention and trigger great anger. It is even possible that this will produce an outpouring of young people to the polls. Biden’s instinct pretty clearly is to go small on this issue but I do not think the voters are going to allow him to do that.

 

Meanwhile, astonishingly, the Justice Department is going after high officials in the former administration who played a role in stage managing the production of slates of phony electors, and I have begun to think that they are actually aiming to kill the King – or, more precisely, the former king. This may just possibly be a fundamental turning point in American politics and barring some unforeseen accident, I will actually live to see it play out.

 

Before I forget, let me thank the anonymous commentator who explained to me that what I saw on my shower curtain was mold, not dirt. I realize this is not quite as important as the future of democracy in America, but it really warms my heart to gain clarity on this small issue.

GAME ON

And so it has happened, as we knew it would. The Supreme Court decision, coming on the heels of the brilliant presentatio by the January 6 Committee, presents the Democrats with an opportunity, if they have the courage and the wit to seize it. An all-out assault on Trump and the Supreme Court – statehood for DC, enlargement of the court, an all court press to defend individual rights and the elements of democracy. Does Biden have the stomach and the focus and the intelligence for it? Somehow, I doubt it, nothing less will do. Forget gas prices. This is existential.

 

We shall see.