Reasons to be brave
Stuart Stevens, former Republican strategist, called back this week to a post he wrote in The Bulwark in October 2020 “imploring my new Dem friends to finish the campaign with confidence and swagger.” Were he a leading Democrat, his message would be:
We are going to crush Donald Trump and the sickness he represents. There are more of us than there are of them. We are right. They are wrong. This is our moment. This is our destiny. Walk with confidence. Do not falter. Victory will be ours.
I once again make the plea. Arrogance is walking on the field, bragging you will win without having done the work. The Harris-Walz campaign and thousands of volunteers are doing the hard work. You’ve earned it.
No team wins the Superbowl thinking, “We might have a shot.” This is yours. Walk out and take it. You will look back at this moment with quiet pride and satisfaction for the rest of your life, knowing that when America called, you answered.
James Fallows takes Stevens’s cue to offer more Reasons to be Brave.
James Carville is not my go-to for advice because you know what he’s going to say whether he agrees with Democrats’ strategy or critiques it. Nevertheless, Fallows excerpts his New York Times op-ed on why he thinks Kamala Harris will be our first woman president. Mostly, for this:
My final reason is 100 percent emotional. We are constantly told that America is too divided, too hopelessly stricken by tribalism, to grasp the stakes. That is plain wrong.
If the Cheneys and A.O.C. get that the Constitution and our democracy are on the ballot, every true conservative and every true progressive should get it too. A vast majority of Americans are rational, reasonable people of good will. I refuse to believe that the same country that has time and again overcome its mistakes to bend its future toward justice will make the same mistake twice. America overcame Mr. Trump in 2020. I know that we know we are better than this…
A movement that marches with hope is 1,000 times as thunderous as a movement that marches with dread.
Fallows is betting that in the privacy of the voting booth Americans, women especially, will not choose “a felon “a convicted felon, who admires Adolf Hitler, whose mind is obviously deteriorating, whose most senior national-security staffers have warned urgently against him, who scoffs at Constitutional limits, who has no plausible platform, who knows nothing of US history, who brags about the most divisive Court ruling in modern history (Dobbs), who is a pawn of hostile foreign interests,” etc.
Liz Cheney, Harris and Barack Obama are working the “blue wall” states this week. Republicans are clearly unnerved by the chorus of voices from Trump’s first term — Cheney’s especially — warning the country they’ve served not to allow TFG near the White House again:
In all of these locales the message was: Precisely because time is short and the stakes are high and the prospects can be discouraging, it’s time to work even harder, rather than to give up.
Obama made this a standard riff. Each time he mentioned some new outrage from Donald Trump, the crowd would start to boo—and he’d immediately cut them off with: “Don’t boo! VOTE!” It became call-and-response. In her Blue Wall conversations with Harris, Liz Cheney would lay out their policy differences, but then say: We are absolutely together, in the only fight that matters.
Trump’s fascist movement has seduced a large fraction of the country. He’s ignorant, vengeful, and his dictator friends are scary. Exhortations of “we’re better than this!” fly in the face of proof after proof that we are not. And yet.
I keep returning to Dave Neiwert’s German language professor explaining how in the overwhelmingly Christian home of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, villagers living adjacent the Nazi death camps each morning, in their tidy Teutonic way, swept away the ash that fell on their windowsills overnight. Like many today, they blinded themselves to what was happening right next door:
“When the camps were liberated and their contents were revealed, they all expressed surprise and horror at what had gone on inside,” he said. “But they all had ash in their feather dusters.”
Yeah, we fought them over there so we wouldn’t have to fight them over here. Well, that hasn’t worked out. But we beat them before. We will do it again.
Stevens yesterday concluded that’s a good bet:
Race is remarkably stable. 47% of country is MAGA or open to MAGA; 53% isn’t.
The goal of Harris-Walz is to coalesce as much of 53% as possible. Today, Liz Cheney and Bernie Sanders are on the same side. That’s not a bad coalition.
The differences in polls are about the percentage of the 53% that Harris is getting. Trump stays stuck at 47%.
If you were for Trump, you were for Trump months ago. You are looking for someone else to be acceptable. He’s functioning as the incumbent.
Harris is winning a larger percentage of R’s than Trump is of D’s. She’s winning independents.
Could Trump win? Sure. But is there any element of the campaign that Trump campaign is performing at a higher level than Harris campaign? Think of it as a sports team match-up. She has better organization, more money, a better message and is performing at a much higher level than Trump. Most candidates are trying not to make mistakes at this stage of the presidential race. Exhaustion is a key factor. But Harris is improving. Maybe because she hasn’t been a candidate for a year and a half.
In campaigns, the question you ask every night is would you rather be your campaign or the other guy? I’d rather be Harris.
The only poll that matters is on Election Night. Remember that. Then gird yourselves for the backlash and sedition that will continue through certification aall the way to January 20. For now, I’m prepared to shed tears on Election Night. Tears of joy.
A woman, 58, called our county Democratic Party headquarters Friday with the other kind. Registered unaffiliated, she was angry that her mailbox is filled with attack flyers from Republicans and no mailers from Democrats. They’d stolen Harris signs from her early voting location. I tried to explain that Trump’s field team is incompetent, that Democrats are dedicating their resources to more effective turnout tactics. But the quavering in her voice revealed the real reason she was angry. She’s terrified.
The military widow was on the edge of sobbing for almost 15 minutes. Her late husband had spent a career serving this country. She, in turn, had spent her marriage supporting his work upholding the values for which the United States claims it stands. Staring down a fascist movement that’s overtaken many, both in the country and in the conservative area of the county where she lives, is more than she can bear. It broke my heart.
By the end, I had her relieved somewhat and chuckling through tears.
Our story is not over. Don’t count out America. It’s never a good bet, Joe Biden reminds us. We have reason to swagger.
Fallows too offered up a message from the 2011 Super Bowl about never being counted out. Because that’s who we are. That’s our story.
Enjoy.
Update: Forgot to convert the Eminem photo from html and it displayed something else. Fixed it.