These days most of my prayers (and I bet yours too) have to do with who will rid us of our vile, noxious, insane president?
A lot of people are praying that Mueller’s Report will be the answer.
Everyone wants to see it. The House voted unanimously to make the report public 420 to 0. When does that ever happen? 80% of Americans want the report to be made public. Adam Schiff, who leads the House Intelligence Committee, has promised that he will be sure to get us the report come hell or high water.
There has been so much build up about the Mueller report, so much faith and trust put in Mueller, almost like he is the Messiah or the Second Coming, it’s as if his report will be the answer to all the problems facing this country.
Spoiler Alert- Mueller”s report will not be the answer to our prayers.
It will not answer our prayers because it will not rid us of Trump. No matter what the report contains Trump will be enraged and aggrieved and claim he is a victim. He will use the report to bellow that there was no collusion just like he said about a million times. We know this man by now. He has been our president for two years 59 days, 8 hours, 13 minutes and 28 seconds as of this moment. Every moment of it a nightmare.
What is the answer to our prayers?
The options we should have available to us, namely impeachment, the 25th Amendment, or indictment of a sitting president are unavailable. Why? Because Trump has successfully locked in about 40% of the electorate and he has terrified Senate Republicans into protecting him by threatening them with primary challengers. Cowardly Republicans would never expel Trump if he were impeached by the House. They whisper behind their fans that they hate him and remain silent in the public space. Even when Trump shockingly trashes John McCain who has been dead now for some 7 months, only one Republican speaks up against that.
Our remedies are not evident. Impeachment will not happen if the Republicans protect Trump. Indictment will not happen if the prosecutors follow the DOJ opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted until he leaves office. The 25th Amendment will not happen because the vice president has to be on board and he is a Trump enabler.
So, what IS the answer to our prayers?
The short answer is that unless Mueller has a bombshell WE THE PEOPLE are the answer. We are going to have to vote him out and we will need to do so overwhelmingly, ideally in a tsunami, so he doesn’t get away with a bogus claim of vote fraud.
The good news is that the effort to build the tsunami is alive and well but it is not getting covered by mainstream media.
There has been a huge grassroots response that formed after Trump was elected and is currently working to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. 2018 was evidence of that new energy that began with the Women’s Marches. This resistance movement has been growing and building very quietly but effectively in the grassroots across our country. We all saw the surprising blue wave that turned out to be bigger than anticipated that flipped the House bringing more women, scientists, and former military into Congress along with far more progressive ideas and attitudes. There were also many state legislatures that turned a deeper shade of blue or moved from red to purple including governorships that went from GOP to Dem.
That did not happen by chance. That was the result of a lot of organizing and effort, money, door knocking, phone banking, and talking with friends and neighbors.
Here is just a glimpse at what is going on.
- “Resistance” groups formed after Trump was elected including but not limited to these: MoveOn, Swing Left, Indivisible, Sister District and many others.
- Women’s fundraising groups like Invest to Elect here in Chicago and many others that banded together to raise money- millions of dollars- to support the candidacy of outstanding Democrats.
- Act Blue became a huge funding source for candidates acting as a feeder for small dollar donations so that candidates did not have to rely on donors who might want to pay to play.
- Over a hundred tech related political builders got active and have created digital platforms that are renovating politics. In Chicago a group organized by Genivieve Theirs, New Founders, is working to change politics by infusing technology with ideology and action. These tech groups are working on projects such as connecting voters in red states with voters in blue states so they can bridge the divide, as well as solving other political problems using technological innovation.
- Facebook has been forced to police political sites and remove false political information on its platform. They have removed millions of fake sites (although they and other platforms need to do more).
- The Democrats have also learned from their mistakes and are building a playbook for 2020 based on that knowledge (see my recent blog post about that). The DCCC, DLCC, DSCC and DNC all deserve our support.
- There are Democratic superPACs working to recreate trust in the Midwest with voters who went for Trump after voting for Obama twice.
- Fox News is beginning to turn against some of the most right-wing voices on their platform. Lachlan Murdoch is taking over from his father and he has already hired a Democratic commentator, Donna Brazile and kicked out Judge Jeanine Pirro. This is in part a response to advertisers who are removing their powerful ad dollars from the shows of shock jock right-wing commentators including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. You can thank Media Matters for America and American Bridge for much of the success of that campaign, by-the-way. Fox is becoming aware that they are seen as Trump media mouthpiece and they are not happy about that. Sean Hannity is rumored to be considering leaving Fox when his contract is up next year.
- The ACLU has been hard at work protecting civil rights and a very active group of next generation young supporters have stepped up to volunteer and take an active role in our democracy by doing thing like going to the border to conduct credible fear interviews with asylum seekers.
The grassroots is rising up but this phenomenon is not getting covered by mainstream media. The media is too busy chasing after Trump and clucking about his inane tweets. This extraordinary resistance movement is powered by women in the suburbs, women of color, Millennials, LGBTQ, and college educated people. It has been building in response and in reaction to Trump.
2018 was not a one-off. As we ramp up for 2020 these groups are already hard at work.
The real solution to Donald Trump is a popular vote that sweeps him out of office and back to being a citizen who CAN AND WILL be indicted. I can’t wait for that. But we can do a lot even now to get our country back in 2020.
Join your local Indivisible. Join your local Democrats. Support Media Matters for America and American Bridge. Support the DNC, DCCC, DSCC, and DLCC because they are all working to create the tsunami that will rid us of Trump. And as the election gets closer, be an active part of the team that gets out the vote!
