Should progressives vote? Of course!

In the 2022 election, the Arizona legislature continued to have the narrowest of Republican margins, 16-14 in the Senate and 31-29 in the House. As in the previous legislative session, where they had the same margin, it has not (and did not) keep them from passing the most viciously reactionary anti-person bills that they could. But there was a big difference. Arizona elected a Democratic Governor, who set a record vetoing many of these bills, including those almost banning abortion, forbidding treatment for trans children, decreasing funding for public schools while increasing private school vouchers, destroying the environment, etc.

It makes a big difference. And it demonstrates that voting IS important. I know a lot of people who say it doesn’t change the basic system, and it doesn’t, but it can make a real difference in preserving the non-fascist parts of that system, and importantly, in the lives of many Americans. A lot of the folks urging non-voting live in states that will go Democratic even if they, and their friends don’t vote, such as California, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Oregon, etc. And while few of them live in very “red” states, it may not matter there – they’ll go Republican anyway. But in “swing” states like Arizona it makes a big difference. While the GOP held their narrow margin in the legislature and even flipped two congressional seats (going from 5-4 Democratic in 2020 to 6-3 GOP in 2022) through gerrymandering, they cannot gerrymander the statewide vote; thus our Democratic governor – and Secretary of State and Attorney General and all statewide offices.

Of course, the Republicans can try to manipulate the vote, who is eligible to vote, and how the votes are counted (see “Kari  Lake”), disenfranchising many, and that is another big reason to turn out to vote and turn them out! It is bad enough that we have an undemocratic Electoral College resulting largely from an undemocratic allocation of Senate seats (Wyoming, population 585,000, has 2; California, population 39 million, has 2. And each of the 52 Congressional districts in California has more people than the whole state of Wyoming!) At this point we are still able to have non-gerrymandered statewide votes that elect better state officials and control the state electoral vote.

There are more states where this can make a difference than the “usual suspect” swing states of Arizona, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and maybe a couple of others. I used to live in deep “red” Kansas, where the legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, but the voters elected a Democratic governor, which they do sometimes to limit legislative excesses – because the governor is elected statewide and not subject to the gerrymandering of legislative districts.  And in 2022, 60% of votes in a statewide referendum rejected an anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution. In nearby Missouri, a former swing state, the GOP controls the legislature, governorship, and statewide offices, and has used their power to gerrymander and further limit the influence of urban centers like Kansas City and St. Louis. Other states, including Ohio, can be in the same situation. Referendums have had significant clout in many states like Arizona, which is, of course, why the legislature continues to try to overturn them, to make them harder to pass, and has even tried to outlaw them. Their approach is “if democracy doesn’t go your way, limit it”. And stack the courts. Twice in this 21^st century, 2000 and 2016, presidents have been elected with a minority of the popular vote, and at least in 2000, the election was essentially decided by the Supreme Court. For the first 20 years of this century, only once did a Republican win the popular vote (George Bush in 2004) but they have held the presidency for 12 of those years.

We need to continue the struggle for human rights, against climate change, against destruction of the environment, and for the rights of workers, drastically limiting the amount of control that corporations and billionaires have, and the wealth that they have that leads to that control. Voting for Democrats is not enough to make it happen. But it is the most likely method we have of maintaining a system that permits the organizing and other work to make progress, rather than criminalizing it.

Caucusing for Bernie in Kansas

On Saturday March 5 I went to a nearby high school in Kansas City, KS, where I live, to the Democratic Caucus so I could caucus for Bernie Sanders. I had never been to a caucus before; in 2008, intending to caucus for Barack Obama, I came late and couldn’t get near the school. This year one had to register between 1 and 3, and we got there early; the lines were long and there were still people in line at 3 (they got in; we waited). I’m not quite sure why the process takes so long; part of it is needing to ensure voters are registered Democrats (or, also time-consuming, register them on-site); some may be poor organization.

Wyandotte County, where KC, KS is, is one of the few Democratic counties in Kansas, and I was not too surprised at the large turnout, which in fact set a record for this particular caucus with over 1,0000 people, beating 2008. The fact that there were more Sanders than Clinton supporters was obvious early; as we searched for seats, we found ourselves in the Clinton section because, well, that’s where the chairs were – we, of course, moved. They tried putting us in groups of 10, lining us up in chairs, but as the crowds swelled they eventually had to move us up to the gym, with the two groups facing each other like fans of opposing basketball teams. There were a lot more Bernie supporters.

It took a long time, but finally the count was in and Bernie won 782-231. Then we could elect 12 representatives to join the other caucus reps in our KS Third Congressional District (143 in all) on April 2. Bernie won the state by 2:1 and will get 23 of Kansas’ 33 delegates. He also won Democratic caucuses in nearby Nebraska, as well as Oklahoma and Colorado. So he is popular among Democrats here in this deep red state.

But I get the sense that he is maybe not so popular among the Democratic establishment. As I said, this is a Democratic county, and several elected state representatives and a state senator were there; all but the senator, who ran the show, were caucusing for Clinton. Each side got one speaker, and the Clinton speaker indicated that she had been a Democrat for 45 years, and that now was Hillary’s “time”. There was a sense that these “new” people who were here, caucusing for Sanders, were perhaps interlopers, not true Democrats, not paid their dues.

And probably that is true. The cool thing about the caucus is that, even though it takes hours, compared to very little time to vote in a primary, you get to actually see all the people and interact with a lot of them. My group of 10 had a couple of retired people, 5 or 6 young people, some working and some students, and a couple of middle-aged people. Virtually all the young people were on the Sanders side. While there was a much higher proportion of African-Americans on Clinton’s side, there were many on Sanders’; they were a smaller percent, but maybe as many. There were also older people, retired people, working people, and a lot of people who had not been previously invested in the political process. So, maybe they had not paid their dues, maybe they had not earned their “chops” with the Democratic party. So what? They were Americans, and they were here now, and they were newly invested in caring who was the next president. That is 100% good. It could help the Democrats win. Even if the person they elect is not the one chosen by those who have been long-term Democrats.

There is a good chance that Clinton will win the nomination, and I will vote for her against whichever of the right wingers, mostly proto-fascists, wins the Republican nomination. I think lots of people will. But I fear that a lot of the folks who turned out for Bernie will not bother to vote. Is it a victory for the Democratic establishment if they get “their” candidate nominated but lose the general election? It is, as President Obama demonstrated twice in winning the presidency (and yes, Republicans trying to block him appointing someone to the Supreme Court, the American people HAVE spoken!) about bringing new people into the political process. This is the goal, both for the Democrats and for democracy.

The politicians from the legislature talked about how hard it is being a Democrat in that body, and how terribly reactionary the atmosphere in Topeka has become. They want us to elect more Democrats to the legislature. They also talked about how important it would be to not only elect a Democratic president, but to replace many of the Republicans in the House and Senate. And, yet, what are they doing in Kansas? In 2010, the blue-dog Democratic congressman from the 3^rd district retired, and a 34-year old Republican legislator was elected to the seat. In 2012, when he was completing his first term, the Democrats ran NO ONE against him! This year, there is someone, a legislator told me at the caucus, actually two people, one someone no one has ever heard of and the other someone whose name he couldn’t even remember. Is this the way the Kansas Democratic Party will take back what should be a winnable seat? Why are none of these relatively well-known legislative leaders running? Gave up already?

Of course, Kansas is a red state, and will go Republican in November. Our reprehensible Electoral College system means all of its votes will go to the Republican, whatever happens in the popular vote. This means that even if there is a huge increase in the percent of Kansans voting Democratic in November compared to 2012 (and there will be, because of the immense unpopularity of Governor Brownback and his minions, whose policies have bankrupted the state), it will have no greater impact than it did in 2012.

Indeed, most of the states where there have been caucuses or primaries have been solid red; Clinton’s big victory in South Carolina will avail the Democrats nothing in November. Only a few blue states (MN, MA, VT) and swing states (VA, CO, NH, NV) have voted so far. In this sense, it is irrelevant whether Clinton or Sanders win the red states, except to the extent that who is the eventual nominee may impact how many new, young, voters turn out in the general election in OH, PA, VA, FL, NC, CO and possibly NH and NV where the election will be decided.

It is pretty clear that there will be many more if Bernie is the candidate, and none of them will be dissuaded by Republicans calling him a Jewish Socialist. On the other hand, Clinton may bring out a larger African-American turnout in these swing states. But this has to be the question now: how can we vitalize both the Democratic Party and democracy?