Election Night Rag

Depending on where you live, there are a few hours left to vote. If you haven’t, it would be an excellent use of your time.

The results of that vote, and whether it’s respected, will determine what we’ll talk about tomorrow. I’ve written letters and gotten on phone banks to encourage people to vote, some with nonpartisan organizations. Now what?

With so much on our minds, I feel like the clergyman who asked at a friend’s wedding whether anyone remembered what the preacher said at their weddings.  We need some cheer.

Wanda Fischer on Hudson River Sampler played two wonderful songs about voting: Schooner Fare’s We the people sings out good news: “We, the people, will be heard.” Then Wanda played Steve Goodman’s Election Year Rag which got you “Jump[ing] on that old bandwagon,” after stopping by “the Precinct Captain’s house … [to] scarf up some lame duck stew.” Oh my, do I love that lame duck stew!

To paraphrase one of my favorites: We’ve a ballot to hammer out justice, ring out freedom, and sing about the love between our brothers and our sisters, all over this land. The land,  as Woody Guthrie told us, is “your land, … my land, made for you and me.”

Let this be a night for singing the songs of freedom, of the people’s rights to vote, that celebrate America’s contribution to the freedom of people everywhere.

All I want is a government that does what we can’t do for ourselves. We can see a doctor but our doctor can’t stop the pandemic from spreading. To stop it for anyone, we must stop it for everyone, lest others, essential workers, minorities, other decent people, will continue spreading it because none of us is an island. We need a government that protects public health.

I want government to improve the economy for all of us. With decent jobs that support our families, we’re not at each other’s throats as some of us have been. If we’re all at work, life will be safer for everyone. And if we’re all at work, we’ll be sharing the work that makes life better for everyone.

I want government to take seriously the threat of foul air and water to our lungs, the climate, and the floods, droughts and forest fires many already struggle to survive.

I want a world where people of all backgrounds are perfectly safe when stopped by policemen, when the old movie mantra of bringing people in dead or alive is confined to the movies.

I want government to protect us from all terrorism, where white nationalist terrorism isn’t protected – we are.

I want government to protect us from all foreign threats, bounties on our soldiers, sabotage of our computers, fraud on the internet, or election disinformation.

I want government to honor and protect conscientious, nonpartisan employees who follow the law as servants of the public, not campaign staff for presidents of either party, and an attorney general who protects America against lawbreakers high and low.

I want a government which protects voters rights to vote, rather than tossing ballots from people who followed the law as it was when they voted, a government that respects bipartisan honesty and fairness of the election system.

I’m guessing you do too. The best thing you can do right now is to vote.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on November 3, 2020.

My feelings about this election

It’s hard to describe my feelings. The great founding documents of our country seemed like they’d always be with us. When we participated in the Civil Rights Movement we thought were working for a better America. We never believed it could all disappear. We were brought up reciting the Gettysburg Address. We knew parts of the Declaration of Independence by heart. Some of us knew deals with the devil of slavery underlay the creation of the Constitution but also knew it had given us a platform to make a better world for everyone. We took it all for granted. Until the White House tenant threatened to take it all away.

I was born in New York City. Before I was four years old I knew this country was fighting with everything at its disposal to defeat Hitler and his Nazi butchers, who were exterminating Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gays, Poles, Slavic peoples, political opponents, people with disabilities and those Hitler called “useless eaters” in concentration camps. I felt safe in Brooklyn, and proud. I remember telling myself I lived in the greatest city in the greatest country in the world. How great is that. Kids are naïve but I believed in and loved this country. I thought I knew what it stood for and what it stood for was great, admirable, and indeed the world admired us for it.

Our country’s Founders understood that people in a democratic republic must learn to share and care about each other. John Dickinson signed our Constitution, paid a fine to free slaves and wrote, “By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!” In 1782, Congress approved our national motto, e pluribus unum, out of many one, for the Great Seal of the United States.

This country opened its arms to Christians, Jews and Muslims. Universities, founded on sectarian lines, gradually widened their welcome. The Founders repeatedly described the need for immigration. The public school movement intentionally brought rich and poor together. The 19th century Army, recruited on ethnic and linguistic lines, needed an integrated fighting force. Teddy Roosevelt told us that “the military tent, where all sleep side-by-side, will rank next to the public school among the great agents of democratization.” By the end of the 2nd World War the Army played a large part in breaking down ethnic and religious barriers among us. Soldiers formed friendships with men all over the country, introduced each other to their families, often to future brides.

Corporations broke down barriers among employees so they could work together. Integration preceded Brown by centuries – race was just the latest barrier to break down. It was breaking down before World War II, when African-American stars like Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson were wildly popular with national audiences on stage, screen, radio and opera. The world was changing before Jackie Robinson stepped onto Ebbets Field. National polls revealed that the public supported Brown. Martin Luther King would say, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

It’s pretty personal for me. I married a North Carolina girl, whose ancestry traces to the British isles, and always felt welcomed by her family.

So when Trump encourages people who celebrate Hitler and display their guns to scare and intimidate public officials, suggests they use their Second Amendment rights to lock up candidates, that there are good people among those who spawn hate crimes, and threatens not to accept the election results, he cuts the very guts out of the country I love. I don’t know how to express how sad, depressed and anxious I feel. Alan Paton wrote a book about South Africa he called Cry the Beloved Country. I stop myself from crying while there is still a chance to save it.

We all need to vote.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on October 27, 2020.

For the Left Wing of the Party

Did you feel safer in the Biden-Trump debate with Joe, who spoke like a caring uncle, or Donald with the demeanor of a raging bull? We know enough about Trump’s admiration for Hitler, his bringing extremists into Republican politics, to realize that his coy remarks  about what his supporters could do with their “Second Amendment rights,” his calls to “Liberate Michigan”, “Liberate Minnesota,” “Liberate Virginia,” and to “go into the polls and watch very carefully” while intended to protect deniability, were in fact aimed at the extremists among his supporters, the Klan, Proud Boys, Nazis, white supremacists, and gun toting extremists, inviting them to keep Black and Brown people and others likely to vote Democratic away from the polls or at least prevent their votes from counting. That world’s not safe for any of us.

Defeating the bully in the White House isn’t all people like me want from elections. We want environmental action, action to bring police and prosecutors under control, nominations to bring the courts back to the side of justice for all. We want tax policy that doesn’t make you and I pay more taxes than billionaires like Donald Trump (who claims to be a billionaire) or Warren Buffet. Buffet had the grace to object.

Joe won’t get me all I want – no one could. I’ve been working for equal rights since I graduated from law school, walked into the office of the NAACP in New York City and worked as a full-time, unpaid volunteer on their legal staff. Joe wasn’t my candidate in the primaries but the American people weren’t ready for her, which means we have work to do. That’s about building support within the party and the public, not about tearing the house down around us. Go for it in the primaries: educate, explain, build. But building for the future in the general election requires grace, teamwork and joining with other party members in expressions of mutual respect.

We could seek purity if we had a parliamentary system which includes minority voices, and doesn’t force compromise candidates. But Big Donald makes clear the dangers of the presidency by concentrating power in his hands.

Our system has other ways to take account of minorities except where voters are so polarized that they shun candidates who merely try to take account of everybody’s needs. In such states, prejudice against Black and Brown Americans can leave them with zero influence in the legislature and every harm done to minorities wins applause, leading to the most hateful policies. That, thank God, is not the way it’s supposed to be. When lawyers could prove polarized voting, they often got courts to redesign voting districts so that minorities could elect candidates and get into legislatures. We’re not in heaven and have made mistakes but, yes, we’ve made progress.

I respect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and others like them but they’re supporting Joe. There is no path to success by way of Donald Trump.

Obama never got the free hand that Mitch McConnell gave Trump with the help of white supremacists, gun-toting militias, Proud Boys, and the Nazis who rose from defeat by American soldiers in World War II.

No movement that could consistently defeat opposition candidates in primaries has taken over the Democrats. So Democratic leaders have to function as coalition builders. Those of us who want more should build and prepare to flex some muscle in future primaries. But electing the bully will cut off democratic alternatives. He and his supporters have no respect for democracy and will do their best to close it off. They want to rule like slave-owners and tyrants.

Parties respect and cater to people they can get to the polls. Sitting elections out doesn’t convey protest. Politicians read no-shows as apathy, lack of interest, people they don’t need to worry about. Let me make the point another way – the most extreme and violent people in the Republican Party are terrified the people will elect Biden and depose Trump. There’s a reason for that.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on October 20, 2020. I posted an earlier version on Sept. 30 under the title “Uncle Joe or Donald the Bully” without waiting to put it on WAMC.

Voting Rights vs. Big Donald

It is illegal to injure, coerce, threaten, or intimidate people trying to vote or conspire to. So-called “Second Amendment rights” are no defense to those crimes, merely the means of committing them.

Armed extremists among Big Donald supporters have already responded with strong-armed methods to keep people from the polls. People with no compunction against kidnapping and “overthrowing the Government by force or violence,” which we used to call treason, responded to Trump’s call to “liberate Michigan” by trying to kidnap its governor and overthrow its government.

Instead of disavowing it, Trump has been encouraging the violence among his supporters. Many of us saw him tell a national audience at the First debate:

“I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because that’s what has to happen. I’m urging them to do it.”

Trump Jr. called for an “army” of supporters to “protect ballots.” “Army for Trump” ads intimidate voters. Protecting ballots mostly means blocking those Biden supporters who are easy to identify because of the color of their skin. Trying to rig the election, Trump covers his crime by claiming Democrats are planning to.

Trump’s been talking to Second Amendment extremists for years. He told them that if Hillary Clinton were elected and

gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. … Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”

Democrats sued Republicans nearly forty years ago to stop and prevent them from blocking African-Americans and other Democrats from voting, passing out false information about how to vote, threatening and scaring honest and legitimate voters away from the polls. Republicans settled the lawsuit by signing a consent decree that they would not intimidate voters or target African-Americans to prevent them from voting. That consent decree had no end date.

But Big Donald has the tender-ego rule – democracy is only for people who’ll vote for him – otherwise he might have to be a sore-loser. And he has the tender pocketbook rule to protect his corrupt gains.

A judge lifted the consent decree two years ago, saying it wasn’t still needed because it had worked. Republicans accurately responded that lifting that consent decree was “huge, huge, huge, huge” because it’s much harder and time-consuming to prove illegal behavior than to enforce an existing consent decree. Now they have almost free reign especially after the Court in Washington gutted the Voting Rights Act. So Fearless Donald claims the election is rigged and proves it by rigging it himself. He’s determined to use every falsehood and dirty trick to keep people away from the polls who might vote for Democrats, or prevent their votes being counted.

So now the parties are locked in war games: Republicans work to prevent Democrats from voting or having their ballots counted in swing states, and Democrats work to prevent Republicans from getting away with it. Independent groups like ProtectDemocracy.org have organized to protect the voting process.

In addition to legitimate poll workers, voters in swing states will need supporters, observers and attorneys, helping them get to the polls without fear, security for guarding ballot collection boxes, and cameras to document strong-armed methods to corrupt the election. For all of us, it means vigilance, videos of misbehavior, prompt legal action, and organization to make sure people get to the polls – not for our egos but for our safety and the democratic country we’ve long treasured. Voting is one of the most important things we can do for our country and for each other.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on October 13, 2020 or later in the week because of the Senate hearings.

Strategies for Working People—Unity vs. Let’s You and Him Fight

I want to talk with Trump’s white supporters for a moment. Workingmen and women, white and black, have real grievances. Big shots want you to play Let’s You and Him Fight because then nobody gets anything and all of us slave for the bosses. That’s a game of rhetoric. Some big shots bellow about bad people coming across the southern border – women and children mostly – or Black people with the effrontery to suggest that cops shouldn’t be shooting them in the back. Some whites object that Blacks are trying to be higher on the pecking order but there isn’t a single job produced by that rhetoric and it won’t shrink the deaths of despair from drink and drugs that have been taking too many white as well Black lives. White men and women want, need and deserve jobs – decent ones that you can take care of your families with. But all Trump gave you is that bellowing. Everyone knows how to create jobs – things need to be built and improved – some talk about infrastructure ‘til they’re blue in the face but Republicans block it – first they didn’t want a Black president to take credit for improving our infrastructure but they insist everything should be produced by capitalistic magic – a fancy way to say they don’t want to do anything for you or the country. The internet and electrical grids need to be improved and hardened – including the retraining that could create a real income stream. But they stopped Obama, and they stopped the work. What good did that give you? Bragging rights? Try and feed your families bragging rights.

The other strategy is unity, working together, forming or growing unions, welcoming everyone so unions get stronger. That’s what Republicans really fear because unions and unity could really get you better jobs, better pay, better lives and better futures. They’ve been cutting back on union rights since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. I know – only us old guys remember that but it’s been continuous for seven decades – so that unions have been shrunk to a fraction of their former strength. Unions once gave you power, not just bragging rights but money in your pockets.

If we built what this country needs, the country would be stronger and the work would be here in the U.S. The big shots don’t want that; they don’t care about what our country needs or what you need for a decent future. They can invest their money all over the globe. They can have their companies buy company stock back with company dollars and increase its value – that’s a pure financial gimmick, not a reflection of what the company can do – just stock manipulations and it doesn’t do a thing for you.

I don’t believe that our country should withdraw from the world – that would leave us in a dangerously weak position. But we have been watching countries all over the globe, on literally every continent, narrow the gap toward our strength by simply investing in what they need, and investing in the education that produces the trained and educated talent they need. But this government is driven by people for whom only dollars and votes talk – so we’d better get the votes because we sure haven’t got the dollars. Unions and unity can bring those votes together and design strategy that will lead to common objectives.

Either we work together or undercut each other. If we are to get beyond Trumpian bellowing to real results, we have to unite. If we can do that, we’ll all be holding our heads high – and winning what we all need – jobs, salaries, futures – instead of hot air.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on the WAMC Northeast Report, on October 6, 2020.

 

To prevent a coup – strengthen the military spine

Two weeks ago, I commented about Jefferson’s fear of a presidential coup. Last week I spoke about using nonviolent methods to prevent a takeover by the incumbent president, who told Chris Wallace on Fox that he might not leave the White House if he loses the coming election. Afterward, I expressed my concerns and showed a copy to Ian Shapiro, a friend and polymath who’s done brilliant work on both foreign and domestic policy. He sent me back a portion of his new book on economic insecurity, The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It. I quickly realized we were approaching the same problem from different angles. Insecurity makes people want to believe that Trump is leading them to better days. And getting Ian’s message across will help protect us against a presidential takeover.

The Army is a crucial player in any takeover. American military tradition is stanchly against political activity and devoted to defending the Constitution. There would be great resistance at all levels to using the military politically, especially to end politics by takeover. And because the military contains a large cross-section of America, we all influence it. Military diversity makes it harder to unite on unauthorized, unpopular activities in conflict with American military tradition, especially if they depend on secret planning.

But presidential takeovers in other countries force us to the sobering realization that a perverted commander-in-chief can pervert the military, given enough time. That makes all the work we’re doing to prepare for this election crucial to prevent White House treason – even though he’s talked about it openly. Concerted opposition to Trump and to takeovers, expressed in a vigorous campaign, make it less likely that the military will participate in a coup.

But outside the military, Trump has been constructing other forces which respond to him – using or threatening to use the National Guard, border guards and other armed federal agents in Portland[1] and elsewhere to stir up trouble where peace had reigned. Even more serious are the private militias that conduct their own training with their own arsenals. The great bulk of domestic terrorism has come from those groups. Instead of fidelity to the Constitution, they aim at violently defeating American government in order to achieve undemocratic aims in conflict with the Constitution and the law. Some American elections have been overturned by force of arms.

Unreconstructed admirers of Civil War secessionists would gladly reverse the results of the Civil War. Guns and racism have become closely entwined. Gun shows and private militias confront us with a plethora of racist and conspiracy theories making the point.[2] Their treasonous impulses fuel my strongest objections to gun rights today – guns are not being used for self-defense but for calculated murder, intimidation and political takeover.[3]

Trump’s outrageous racism and complements to racist killers are obvious efforts to get those armed but irresponsible groups behind him, ready to function as a palace guard to keep him in office regardless of the election. Private militias, like gangs and criminal cartels are dangerous because they oppose democracy, are divorced from national values, and expect to gain from violence. Instead of respecting peaceful demonstrations, they’ve spawned provocateurs in places like Portland, to give Trump an excuse for shutting democracy down. They and their standard-bearer in the White House must be stopped. And we have to keep up the fight for government of, by, and for the people.

[1] Washington Post Blogs, A violent send-off on feds’ final night at Portland courthouse, July 31, 2020 Friday 12:07 AM EST

[2] John A. Wood, THE PANTHERS AND THE MILITIAS (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002); Kenneth S. Stern, A FORCE UPON THE PLAIN: THE AMERICAN MILITIA MOVEMENT AND THE POLITICS OF HATE (Norman: U. Okla. Press, 1997); Southern Poverty Law Center, “Terror From the Right: Plots, Conspiracies and Racist Rampages Since Oklahoma City,” http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/terror-from-the-right (visited Jan. 23, 2014).

[3] Stephen E. Gottlieb, Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics 173-77 (NYU Press, 2016).

How Can Trump Be Stopped?

I wonder what Germans could have done to stop Hitler in 1932, before or after he had the keys to power.

One option was to fight back. Some believe we have to. Actually, some Germans fought back well before the takeover, but the German government was much harder on leftist fighters than on Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Leftist violence, justifications aside, became an authoritarian excuse, the way Trump wants to use any defense of democracy here.

The major alternative is the Mahatma Gandhi/Martin Luther King nonviolent response. Leaders of protests – against Trump, abuse of our Black and Brown fellow citizens, and against the violence, racism and murders by the Alt-screwy – overwhelming choose nonviolence.

That got India free of Britain but Muslim Pakistan left largely Hindu India anyway. Martin Luther King’s nonviolent approach ended formal legal segregation and won new Civil Rights Laws but left too many African-Americans out of the education, jobs, homes and opportunities they deserved, another partial victory. Maybe that’s all we get in life.

And we can vote. We must vote. Whatever we do on the streets will be backed or undercut by what we do at the polls. It may be an act of faith, but it will prove the most important prayer we’ll ever voice.

Why? I think violence is doomed and we must stay clear of it. Actually, King wasn’t nonviolent. That’s a hard truth, but King’s success depended on his own supporters getting their heads cracked in front of cameras for national television – not unlike what Trump’s troops are doing to people in Portland. There were many, Black and White, who, like John Lewis, had the courage to board busses for the Freedom Rides toward violent racists waiting with firebombs to force them out of the busses and with clubs to bludgeon and bloody them when they came out. I never had that courage, but have enormous respect for those who did. I played a bit part in the Civil Rights Movement, from the safety of legal offices and demonstrations where I didn’t expect trouble – I Marched on Washington to hear King describe his dream, and I joined demonstrations in places like New York City. The movement needed more bravery than I had.

Why? Because some people are moved by changes in national sentiment and by the bravery and decency they see on television news. Let’s be clear, we need institutions of power to back off, like Marco’s Army did in 1986, when confronted with “streets gradually teeming with people to quietly face off … armored tanks …[with] linked arms and prayers and flowers and songs.” But if it’s Duarte’s violence in today’s Philippines, Tiananmen Square in 1989 where peaceful pro-democracy protestors were crushed under relentless tanks, instead of Manila with flowers in 1986, if it’s either bloodthirsty repression or a sense of humanity that stops the armies short, it matters what the soldiers do and what the generals do. Trump is shaping a force under his command and preparing troops with practice maneuvers against demonstrators. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that the public will recognize nonviolence or who’s attacking whom when Trump creates violent incidents, or how the regular Army will respond.

If those in command of the guns, tanks and other weapons, say to each other this is not what we do in a democracy, then Trump better leave fast, maybe to visit his dear friend Vladimir Putin. But if they react that it’s a sadistic joy to mow the unarmed down, no arms could stop them.

There’s another issue. Recent events eroded respect for some police departments. But, depending how events go, there could be significant confrontations between the Alt-Screwy and pro-democracy protestors. In that case the police may be all we have. Yes there must be ways to reform the way they operate, but it’s not just that they have to learn community policing, it’s also us who have to invite the police in, break bread with them, so that we get to know each other. We do need them.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast  on WAMC Northeast Report, on July 28, 2020.

If you don’t show, you don’t count

If you don’t show, you don’t count.

That’s true in many ways. If you don’t show up in the WAMC fund drive, you don’t count in its survival or in the quality of programming it can carry. And you leave the station’s underwriters less confident of what their efforts can do. Showing up matters.

If you aren’t planning to show up to vote, don’t fool yourself that it won’t matter. Or you might think that you’re sending a message. But the message received isn’t necessarily the same message you think you’re sending. The way politicians count no-shows is that you and those like don’t count. If you’re not likely to show up at the polls, politicians are not likely to spend much time worrying about your problems and how to convince you they are the good guys. They won’t spend much effort trying to help people like you and they won’t waste campaign time trying to explain to you and people like you why their policies matter or the other guys’ policies don’t.

And if the pollsters don’t think you’re going to show up at the polls, that changes what they tell us is likely to happen, and it deepens the discouragement of people like you. Politics won’t help you because not enough people like you show the pollsters and the politicians that you demand to be counted.

In other words, not showing up at the polls has consequences way beyond the election. It generates a vicious cycle. Who is going to care about your generation or your part of the country or your place in the economy if you don’t vote? Voting is the coin of the realm. It’s the currency from which politicians determine what to worry about. It’s what we have to pay to get attention. The other stuff, money, only matters if it can get votes. If your vote isn’t in play, you, your friends, family and others like you are not counted. That’s part of why voting is a civic duty. It’s not just something we do for ourselves, like buying a pair of socks. It’s something we do to set the scales of politics.

Even commentators like myself pay attention. Who’s out there that can get our message? Who’s out there that may run with our message? Who’s out there that needs to be or can be reached and persuaded?

Of course, understanding the issues matters. Many of us are convinced, for example, that Trump is playing for suckers lots of the people who are supporting him for economic reasons. We’re convinced that he’s covering his failures with pittances and throwing the benefits to others. But my point goes way beyond that because even if you make a mistake, the very fact that you got to the polls changes everything. Don’t stay home.

And when you get to the polls, don’t shrug off things that can go wrong at the polls – broken machines, difficulty getting the machines to reflect your choices, long lines to vote at too few voting machines, long distances to get to the polling places you are assigned. Make an objection. Go to a judge. Go to the reporters. Or get to one of the lawyers fighting to make our system cleaner and more democratic. You make a difference by being counted.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, October 16, 2018.

 

 

Organize to Vote

All of those who took part in recent demonstrations – the women’s marches, Black Lives Matter and others aimed at protecting civil liberties, immigrants, the vulnerable and the less advantaged – we are not a minority.

But demonstrations aren’t enough. This country is ruled by ballots. Protests matter when ballots threaten. Nonvoters are routinely discounted. So the next step is to organize to vote.

That’s where demonstrations become a major opportunity. Those who marched can be helped to register or they can help others register and vote.

Marchers need to be asked: whether they are registered to vote; whether they are registered at their current address; whether they are registered to vote in the primaries; whether they have been getting to the polls and voting; and whether they know others, in this or any other state, who need help or encouragement to register and vote. Would you get registration forms for others?

Demonstrations can lead to votes in other ways.

Demonstrate at the Board of Elections to make a difference by showing we want to vote, we’re signing up to vote, we’re ready to vote. Let’s show up where it matters.

Demonstrate outside the 100 foot or other state defined zone where electioneering is prohibited, showing and sharing the fact and the joy that we voted, and you voted, and we performed our civic duty for each other and we did it together and we’re celebrating – those are demonstrations that can make a difference.

What’s crucial about the demonstrations we all took part in doesn’t end with the message. That’s the beginning; that’s what got us fired up and brought us together; that’s what made clear our commitment and our shared sense that acting as a people is empowering. But what matters is converting that commitment – the joy, the fire in our hearts and the messages we marched for – into votes.

Democracy depends on what happens at the voting machines. It’s run by votes and the threat of votes. Even campaign contributions are ultimately about votes. Voices are most powerful when they lead to votes. If we vote, we count. If we stay home in disdain because we’re not satisfied, we’re politically irrelevant. Vote. Count. Take back our democracy – for us, for all of us, for the people. Don’t let the moneychangers and the slick talkers take the forms of democracy for their own benefit. We vote; we count; and we celebrate.

Why look at that now? Because the organization that makes voting happen, the organization that makes the voices of the people matter at the polls and on the ballots, all that organization starts way in advance. Because every state has its deadlines. And back before the deadlines, organization is not instantaneous. Let’s create our political snowball. Let’s terrify the politicians with our strength so that they’ll actually have to behave democratically, according to the rules, principles and methods of democratic government.

Wouldn’t that be refreshing!

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, May 2, 2017.

The Outdated Economics of Conservative Ideologues

Some of you may have been following Shankar Vedantam on NPR or the discoveries of Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist on the Princeton faculty, and their demonstration of the irrational ways that people very naturally and ordinarily reach decisions. Indeed, for quite a long time it’s been apparent that rational decision making often demands too much of people. As Cornell’s Vicki Bogan said in a talk in Albany, the rational choice model of economics assumes that people:

• Think like Albert Einstein
• Can store as much memory as IBM’s Big Blue
• Can exercise the will power of Mahatma Gandhi
• … [and] make unbiased forecasts

Nobel Prizes have been awarded to psychologists and economists who have been studying human decision making, showing that people literally can’t do what conservative economic theory expects them to. The rational man doesn’t exist, and for that reason, markets often don’t protect us. For both businessmen and consumers, rational choice is often impossible; it’s just too hard. Sometimes things aren’t currently knowable. Sometimes they’re beyond the capacity of individuals, even if institutions can figure it out.

A trip to the grocery store helps make the point clear. Even though much of the information exists, I can’t know enough about all the ingredients of the goods I buy, and their impact on my body, and still take the time to do my work and have a life to live. I have to trust someone or something else. But consumer ignorance shapes what businessmen have to do to survive. Those who cater only to the most informed, cater to small markets and often go under.

One consequence is that the market doesn’t protect us. That’s why workers’ compensation was started many decades ago – workers couldn’t figure out the odds of injury and didn’t have the ability to protect themselves as cheaply and effectively as informed employers could. Government stepped in to move that burden of knowing and choosing from the employee to the employer.

Those are examples. The broader impact of what is now called behavioral economics is that the economic theory of market ideologues is thoroughly discredited nonsense. It doesn’t work. A couple of decades ago there was a big debate about the efficient market theory which claimed that the market had it right even though individuals could be wrong. But they couldn’t tell me whether the market had it right the day before or the day after the crash. In other words it was nonsense on stilts.

That’s one of the reasons the public, all of us, have to get out of the glare of the outdated economics coming from conservative ideologues. It’s one of the reasons why it has been so important that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have moved the Democratic Party to the left. That shift also clears the way for Hilary Clinton to return to the roots of the modern Democratic Party in the Great Depression, in Roosevelt’s New Deal, in being a party with heart.

Hilary and Bernie both have a lot to offer, but just as big a key to progress will be the Senate and the House of Representatives, which have blocked Obama’s efforts to push this country toward better, more caring solutions at every turn.

— This commentary was broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, April 26, 2016.