Simple: Elect more liberals

Reporter: "What do you say to people who think you and Senator Sinema are holding this whole thing up?"

Senator Manchin: "I'm not--we only have 50 votes. . .. All they need to do is we have to elect more--I guess for them to get theirs--elect more liberals."

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is a point of frustration and anger for many Democrats. He is standing in the way of a larger bill that would provide more social services and more support for green energy. Manchin explained himself to reporters:

I've never been a liberal in any way, shape or form. There's no one that's ever thought I was. I've been governor, I've been secretary of state, I've been in the state legislature, I've been a U.S. senator, and, I hope, voted pretty consistently all my whole life.

I don't fault any of them who believe that they're much more progressive and much more liberal, God bless them. And all they need to do is, we have to elect more liberals.

Manchin frustrates Democrats because he is telling them the simple, unwelcome truth. It is a 50-50 senate, and he got elected in West Virginia by being exactly who he is. Manchin is not the opponent of Democrats. He is the bellwether. He tells Democrats the balance point of American politics. 

Democrats who wish that Biden could be another FDR should be careful what they wish for. The New Deal was possible because the Solid South Democrats openly favored racist policies that maintained segregation and White supremacy.  FDR tolerated it as the price of keeping their support. The Solid South supported White working people. Democrats sometimes forget that.

Democrats also forget that the popular New Deal suite of programs created earned benefits and work programs, not free food. The WPA and CCC put unemployed people to work. Social Security was a benefit, based on quarters of taxed earned income. The GI Bill was a reward for wartime service. FDR understood that even in the Depression, with a quarter of the workforce out of work, people were skeptical of spending tax money to support idleness. Manchin understands it too:

My top line has not been — my top line has been $1.5 [trillion] because I believe in my heart that what we can do and what the needs we have right now, and what we can afford to do without basically changing our whole society to an entitlement mentality.

Manchin gave Democrats a challenge, put up or shut up. You think you understand where the votes are in America, then prove it. Try selling entitlements:

Take that on the campaign trail next year, and I'm sure that you'll get many more liberal, progressive Democrats with what they say they want.

Manchin thinks they will fail at that. Republicans will call it socialistic, fiscal conservatives will think it is too expensive, and rank and file voters will suspect that it is giving money away to the undeserving, the lazy, the improvident, and to people of other races and ethnicities. Reagan's "welfare queen" was Black and drove a Cadillac.

Manchin is a reality fix for Democrats. What works in Berkeley and Portland and Brooklyn, and what motivates the progressive activist base of the party, is not broadly popular across heartland America. Who says? The simple fact that Democrats don't have a working majority now and history suggests Democrats will lose votes in the 2022 election. Progressive Democrats see this as a reason to move boldly now, while they still can. Manchin sees it as the reason they must not. They are already out of touch with America, and this bill makes things worse.

Manchin, frustrating as he is, represents the center of gravity in American politics. If that weren't true, Democrats wouldn't need his vote.

Up close: An abortion story

     "A small cat was trying to kill a rabbit. The cat gave up and the rabbit hopped away."

         Jane Collins

Sometimes, at a time of peril, there is rescue and survival.

Across America people are marching today in protest of laws making making abortion inaccessible or impossible. The signs and petitions speak to a right, one affecting every American. It is a wholesale issue. But a woman who becomes pregnant experiences it retail, personally, one woman at a time. Depending on the time, place, and circumstances, it can be a welcome blessing. Or it can be a catastrophe.

Today's Guest Post is by a college classmate. She tells the story of her pregnancy crisis. She calls herself a "semi-retired writer" having written speeches for a Harvard dean and books including For the Love of a Soldier: Interviews with Military Families Taking Action against the Iraq War. She has a blog at: https://alicet4.com

Guest Post by Jane Collins              

It was 1971. I had just graduated from college. My only income came from making and selling paper mâché puppets in Harvard Square. That was enough to pay my expenses, since I shared a house in the country that had no running water, electricity, or telephone. When my housemates and I needed to go to town, we walked two miles and then hitchhiked from the main road. It was a good life: my first taste of freedom. I felt calm and happy, full of possibility.

Jane, with her mother and baby, 1977

Then I found out I was pregnant.

I panicked. To say I was not ready to raise a child is a huge understatement. I had just left a long term but unhappy relationship and had begun to see the love of my life, but we were so different that I wasn’t sure it would work out. And I wasn’t sure which boyfriend was the father.

I’d been using a diaphragm and spermicide. This method of birth control is supposed to be 92 to 96 percent effective. I was among the four to eight percent of women who get pregnant anyway. At this point in my life, pregnancy was an existential horror.

Abortion was illegal in New Hampshire. We had to get to New York, where Planned Parenthood was charging $250 for abortions. We did have that much, but only just. My new boyfriend and future husband owned a functional car. One of his friends loaned us a biofeedback device, which somehow measured your brain activity and beeped to let you know when you were calming down.

We went straight to the clinic. I attached the electrodes of the device in the waiting room. The nurses were fascinated with it and asked me a lot of questions, which I answered by talking about meditation. The procedure didn’t take long and didn’t hurt much. The nurses said I was the only woman they’d seen who smiled all the way through. I wasn’t happy. I was ending a life before it could begin. But it felt completely necessary, and I was at ease with the decision. I still am.

Most of the women in the recovery room, though, were weeping.

Afterwards, I felt weak and shaky, and I was bleeding quite a bit. A friend was letting us stay at their house in Long Island for a couple of days. To get there, we had to cross a bridge with a toll we hadn’t expected. We stopped the car and searched under the seat cushions to scrounge enough coins to pay the fee.

The only thing I remember from that stay in Long Island is watching a small cat try to kill a large rabbit. They were evenly matched. The cat hung on to the back of the rabbit’s neck while it hopped across the street. Then the cat found its footing and dragged the rabbit back across the street. This happened several times. Finally, the cat gave up and the rabbit hopped away. 

Jane and a granddaughter

 A couple of years later, I married the man who drove me to New York. We’ve been together for fifty years, through richer and poorer, in sickness and health. We have three children and three grandchildren, all of whom are way above average, and whom we love with all our hearts. None of our family would be here now if I had let that first pregnancy come to term.

There are many things in life that are beyond our control. Pregnancy should not be one of them. If you don’t like abortion—and nobody likes abortion—fight for free and easily available contraception. That would keep this sad procedure to a minimum. But women will not stop getting abortions if they need them. Having a baby determines everything for a woman—at least it does for women who are not rich. If you are forced to have a baby when you don’t want to, you are not a free person, and America is not a free country.

 

When is a "Coup" not a "Coup?"

When the election was stolen and you are just stealing it back.

John Eastman, the lawyer who urged Trump and Pence to void the election, explains himself:

If, in fact, the acknowledged illegalities that took place in the several swing states had a sufficient impact to alter the results—and evidence from audits in Arizona and Georgia, among others, points in that direction—then it simply must be acknowledged that the analysis in the memo was designed to prevent an unconstitutional election, not overturn it.

John Eastman is going through a reputation rough patch in the court of public opinion. 

He wrote an article for a conservative website, AmericanGreatness to explain himself. Click   He complains that "America's intellectual elites are bloodhounds" and they sniffed his blood when reporting on his six-point memo outlining a pathway for Pence to claim Trump won the election. Trump and Eastman met with Pence in the Oval Office on January 5 and Trump urged the Eastman plan for Pence to discard electoral votes, starting alphabetically with Arizona and then other swing states. Eastman wrote:

I noted that if all 84 of the contested electoral votes were disregarded on the grounds that they were based on the counting of explicitly illegal ballots, Trump would lead 232 to 222—a majority of the 454 actually “appointed.” 

Eastman predicted that would cause an uproar by Democrats, leading to civil disturbances, which would justify martial law, and that amid the chaos Republican state legislatures might vote to submit alternative slates of electors. A sympathetic Supreme Court might resolve the mess by naming Trump president. Pence refused.

Eastman and his memo look like justification for a "bloodless coup" in which the legal forms of constitutional government appear to be honored, when in fact they are not. Eastman's role was reported by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in Peril. He comes across as a traitor, a co-conspirator, an enabler of Trump at his very worst. 

Eastman says he wasn't cheating. He wasn't arguing that state legislatures, Congress, and Pence assert power they don't have. There is justification. Claim the election failed. If there was no legitimate election then everything and anything is possible. Republicans don't need to prove it. Just suspect it and claim it. That is what Eastman does, here this week, in American Greatness. 

Eastman cites Georgia and Arizona, with a link to a press release by a Georgia group that in July claimed massive voter fraud, a claim that has been examined and rejected by Georgia election officials. Whatever question and ambiguity about the election results that may have existed in the days after the election have been resolved by local, state and federal election  officials and by courts. In both Georgia and Arizona, the responsible officials are Republicans at nearly every position, people put under enormous pressure by Trump and GOP partisans to bend every rule to "find" votes for Trump or discard Biden votes. Hand count audits and third party audits couldn't find meaningful error. Eastman cited Arizona in the very week that the Cyber Ninja audit results were announced, reaffirming Biden's win. To claim fraud now reveals this is not about doubt. It is a strategy: Never, ever accept an election in which Trump lost.

Political punditry is circulating and reaffirming a meme that America's democracy is in trouble. Trump attempted a coup. The key ingredient is the one Eastman exposes, and it is a weak spot in our republic.  A strong and persuasive leader like Trump can create articles of faith that belie evidence. GOP activist partisans believe Trump, and people who think him foolish or dishonest stay silent out of political necessity. Trump enforces party and belief discipline. Opponents and doubters are called out as heretics, Republicans in Name Only. 

There is one safe haven, and that is to accept Trump's original premise that he is stealing back what is rightfully his. Eastman can hold his head high as an American constitutionalist and not a traitor so long as he claims election fraud, he keeps claiming it, and he claims it notwithstanding any audit or judicial decision to the contrary. An Eastman who believes in fraud may be deluded, but he can tell himself he isn't a traitor. 

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Trump voters are getting sick and dying

The higher the vote for Trump, the more COVID cases. The more cases, the more deaths.

It isn't just your intuition. 

Yesterday's post included a link to the "extremely detailed" report on the 2020 and 2016 presidential election. A close look at the detail at county and precinct level reveals how strongly people cluster into neighborhoods of like-minded people. That fine-grained report on election results combined with hospital and health department data allow people to examine the relationship between voting behavior and the incidence of COVID.

The conclusion is not surprising. It makes sense to think that how people voted in 2020 would be closely related to whether people get vaccinated and whether they follow behavioral practices like mask-wearing and social distancing. Trump downplayed COVID and the Fox/GOP vaccination message is about personal choice amid doubt and criticism of vaccines, masks, and social distancing. 

Two websites report on the county-level relationship between votes and COVID: 

The Why Axis:       https://thewhyaxis.substack.com  

ACASignups.net:   https://acasignups.net

This chart below shows the COVID case rate by counties, with each bar representing the Biden-Trump vote in a ten percent range. The bar on the left marks counties where Biden won 90% to 100% of the vote; on the right where Trump won over 90%. The intermediate bars represent ten percent increments, 80%-90%, 70%-80%, etc.

COVID cases: 

The chart below uses the same method for assigning a bar.

COVID deaths: 

The chart trend is smooth and it tells a vivid story: the higher the Trump vote, the more COVID sickness and death. At the extremes the death level difference is extreme: Nine-to-one more deaths.

A reasonable objection to these charts would be that the population numbers are not similar, and there are very few counties where the votes are 90%-plus for either candidate, or even 80% to 90%. Those are extreme places and are not generally representative. The charts below even out the population sizes, with each bar representing 10% of the U.S. population, approximately 33 million people.  Again, the bars are ranked from left to right, Biden vote to Trump vote, the 10% most Biden counties, the next 10%, up to the 10% most Trump-leaning counties.

COVID cases:

COVID deaths: 

The trend line is less smooth, but the pattern is clear, although less extreme. When using large, even sample sizes of 33 million Americans, the difference between the death rates drops from extreme Trump counties having nine times the death rate of extreme Biden counties down to five times the death rate when looking at two pools of 33 million people.

Vaccination rates as of September 18, 2021 show exactly the pattern one might expect.  Counties where people voted for Biden have higher vaccination rates than Trump-supporting counties. Again, each bar represents 33 million Americans, showing the lowest Trump-supporting counties (26% or less of the vote) up to the highest Trump-supporting counties (71% or more.)

Readers surely assumed something like this was taking place. What we did not know was the scale. 

Using large population numbers, based on county-wide votes, Trump-supporting counties have three-to-five times the COVID death rates as do Biden-supporting counties. In fact, if we incorporate what we saw in yesterday's post, that county data aggregates Trump neighborhoods with Biden ones, county-wide data obscures and softens the relationship between voting and COVID incidence. This is especially true in the middle bars, where counties are a mix of Biden and Trump precincts.  The two extreme bars on left and right, where the death rate difference exceeds five times, is a more likely representation of the actual case and death rate skew between Trump areas and Biden areas. In those extreme counties--urban ones like Multnomah (Portland) in Oregon where nearly every neighborhood is strongly pro-Biden, and rural bright red counties like Harney and Malheur in Oregon, where nearly everyone supports Trump--we see the relationship between Biden voters and Trump voters most clearly. Those are in the first two charts.

Whether the "true" skew is best understood as Trump voters having nine times the death rates of Biden voters, or only five times, we now have validation of our intuition and a scale for it.

 

Forget Red-State, Blue-State

America is not divided by states and not even by county. 

It is divided by precinct.

The marriage of the fifty states just isn't working out. I hear casual talk of political divorce. 

People on the left say Texas and Alabama and Wyoming and the Dakotas should do their own thing. They are standing in the way of what Blue-America wants and the planet needs. Go do your own country, where abortion is banned, where the minimum wage is $7.50, and where you can spread COVID to each other. Good riddance. Meanwhile people in "Heartland America" scoff at high-tax California and its West Coast ilk, with its expensive housing, the fussing over pronouns, and where people there illegally find sanctuary. There are red states and blue states and we don't even like each other anymore. 

The problem isn't at the state level. 

The New York Times publishes an "Extremely Detailed Map of the 2020 Election. Here is the link to it: Click: Extremely detailed 

There is an urban consciousness that votes Democratic and a rural one that votes Republican. Since there are urban counties, suburban counties, and rural counties, details at the county level reveal significant differences. But he real difference takes place at the precinct level. County numbers obscure the reality by aggregating diverse precincts. I looked closely at Jackson County, Oregon, my home. A large precinct in college town Ashland had 5,995 votes for Biden and 927 for Trump, an 84%-13% margin for Biden. Moving the curser two precincts away into a rural area showed a geographically large very rural precinct with a vote of 859 for Trump and 274 for Biden, a 74%-24% margin for Trump. Same county.

It is a mistake for Democrats to dismiss the Texas of Governor Abbott as foreign territory. After all, there is Austin, home of the University of Texas and a growing technology center. It is part of Blue-America, educated and diverse. It shows up as a big splotch of blue precincts with a 80%-20% Biden margin. But it isn't just Austin. All the big Texas cities are bright blue. A Dallas precinct shows a vote of 782 for Biden and 25 for Trump, a 95%-4% margin.

Pick an area of interest. I looked at Massachusetts. It is undeniably a blue state, but there are areas west of Springfield that are Trump country, with 10%+ margins for Trump. 

The differences in political orientation by neighborhood suggests both the sorting of people by lifestyle and the limitations of the message of each political party. Democrats are turning off rural people. Losing rural precincts 90-10 is a sign that Democratic message and policies have problems that go beyond race and cultural symbols. Rural people are the biggest beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act, with its expanded Medicaid that saved rural hospitals, yet they vote decisively against the Democrats who voted it in. Democrats are not being realistic about where a city-dweller's food and energy and building materials come from and what takes place to extract those things and get them to market. I liken it to the convenient blindness of people who eat meat but oppose slaughterhouses. 

Republicans speak of urban areas as hell-holes of violent crime, protests, arson, and racial conflict; something they will fix with better borders and hard-knuckle policing. The GOP under Trump represents and advocates for an America that was not so great for Blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, and people who are succeeding in the 21st century American economy. They lose those urban areas decisively. 

An American civil war won't take place between the states. It is taking place right now, as ongoing political disfunction because each party has retreated to the corner of its best precincts. It doesn't need to be that way. My U.S. Senator Ron Wyden gets out and around. His political home base is Portland, but until COVID he visited every one of the counties in Oregon every year, all 36, of which about 28  are undeniably rural. He won a majority of the votes in Oregon's sole bright red congressional district. He has said to me he isn't interested in running for president. 

Jon Tester of Montana, a Democrat with the approximate political orientation of Joe Biden, is doing the things a senator does when he is eyeing a run. He wrote his book, Grounded. Could a guy who operates a wheat farm and who looks like this possibly win a Democratic primary? Maybe not. He just doesn't look like a Democrat, and that is the problem.

Oregon Congressional Districts: Republicans took the deal

Republicans had something to lose.

Better to settle for what the bipartisan legislature came up with than what the Democratic Secretary of State might do.

The reality is that states that have the power to gerrymander Congressional Districts will likely do so. This especially advantages Republicans this year. Texas gained two Congressional Districts. Florida gained one. Both have Republicans in control of redistricting. It is a given that they are going to "crack and pack" which is the slang term for drawing CD lines in such a way that concentrations of opposition party votes get divided among larger areas with one's own party's voters in the majority. The other device is to "pack" the opposition into as few CDs as possible where they will win with huge majorities, thus wasting votes. 

Democrats do it, too, but have fewer opportunities. Maryland is a good example of a Democratic gerrymander. Oregon Democrats heard loud and clear from the national party that they had a national responsibility to Democrats to lend their weight to countering what Texas and Florida have done and will proudly do again. 

Oregon Republican legislators got what they thought was a good and fair map for state house and senate districts. This is no surprise; they shared in creating it. Republicans had something to lose if they blew up the overall redistricting plan because the federal side of it created a five-to-one Democratic congressional advantage. Democrats planned to pack Republicans into an eastern and southern Oregon district. Then their plan carefully allocated metropolitan Portland's Democratic voters among four congressional districts tilting them all slightly blue. Liberal Eugene's district, represented by Peter DeFazio, was to lose some Trump-oriented timber counties. 

Here is the proposed Democratic map:

Wasn't this unfair? Didn't Democrats feel guilty? Maybe a little. But they didn't want to feel like saps, either. 

Republicans take a narrow GOP advantage in Texas and divide its 36 districts by 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats. Florida takes its small advantage and divides its 27 seats by 16 Republicans to 11 Democrats. The message nationally was clear: Oregon, don't be fair with your extra seat. Be smart. This isn't civics class, this is real life. Play the game the way Texas plays the game. But in Oregon's tradition of politics, partisan power is denied, not celebrated, so the Democratic plan was arguably very reasonable and fair. It just happened to work out to create a likely 5-1 delegation.

Republicans had the power to stop the Democratic plan for Congressional Districts by denying a quorum, and they did so. Democrats adjusted the lines a little. Now the district boundaries create a tossup district, one that includes the area east of the Willamette River and the city of Bend. Bend is urbanized, prosperous, and it attracts well-educated people, making it Democratic. It is a competitive district, with a future likely to be growing more blue. Both sides can think they won; neither side need be embarrassed.

Here is the new map, just agreed to and signed into law:

Republicans took the deal, even though it might well be a 5-1 delegation. They sacrificed a potentially better deal on the congressional districts--one created by a panel of judges--to lock in the state boundaries as drawn with their help. They protected themselves against a a known threat. Had they not taken the deal a Democratic Secretary of State takes over redistricting of state legislative districts and could pack and crack herself. She could draw lines so that Republicans were put into the same district and forced to run against each other. 

In the end, it was hardball, threats, and hostage-taking. Democrats had the blunt instrument of a CD map that gave a 5-1 delegation, a strong opening bid. Republicans had the blunt instrument of denying a quorum which would blow everything up. Democrats gave Republicans power to share in making state district lines, which created a "hostage," a state legislative map Republican liked. Democrats had the blunt instrument of a Democratic Secretary of State. Republican state legislators chose their own electoral interests over pressure from the national GOP.

None of this is pretty, but in the end politics in a democracy worked. People acted on their own interests, compromised, were selfish and hypocritical, and they came up with something that a majority of people can live with.

Avoid the unvaccinated

Headline: 

"Oregon Nurses Association: Over 80 nurses to leave Asante after Oct. 18 deadline"

Comment e-mailed to me: 

"Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out the door."

A month ago I mentioned I got a haircut. About the time she was finishing, the stylist said she wasn't vaccinated.  "I did the research," she said. "Vaccinations are dangerous and COVID is a hoax." I observed here in this blog that I probably shouldn't have gotten a haircut, at least not from her. She wore a mask but haircuts are close work. She stands right next to 20 or 30 people every day and she isn't vaccinated. She is a risk to me. Breakthrough cases happen. It is important I not bring something home to my wife. Next time I get a haircut I will ask if the person is vaccinated. 

I have also written about a neighbor who opposes the COVID vaccination. His job is to deliver and install major appliances for a local company. That puts him in people's kitchens for a hour. I now know to insist that workers who come to the house be vaccinated, and in any case for me to stay well away from them. Are they COVID infected?  Who knows? That is the point. Their being vaccinated improves the odds for me.

We have seen protests on the side of people opposing vaccination requirements. There was a rally in Medford Saturday, billed as supporting workers' rights.

Employers are caught in the middle, but it is not clear they are hearing from both sides. Do they hear from customers who are hesitant to do business with people and organizations that are lax about mask requirements and who employ people at higher risk for spreading COVID? There are some like me out there. And what about employees who want safe working conditions and prefer not to share an office or delivery-truck van with someone who won't get vaccinated. Those workers have rights, too.

The e-mail correspondent who sent me the comment about nurses said, 

"I wouldn't want to be working next to a guy who won't get vaccinated against COVID during a COVID epidemic. I also wouldn't want to be working next to a guy who won't get vaccinated for typhoid during a typhoid epidemic."

Asante, Southern Oregon's regional hospital group, is insisting their employees be vaccinated. It is the Governor's order and they are complying. It is controversial. The County Administrator informed the local County Commissioners that Asante welcomed that order as a legal justification for requiring something they believed was good policy for the health and safety of patients and employees. Hospital employees who won't get vaccinated are placed on unpaid leave. The Jackson County Commissioners oppose vaccination mandates and questioned Asante's decision, given the nursing shortage.

I am happy with Asante's position. I applaud them. I have discretion on whether to get a haircut or to allow installation of an appliance, but if I am admitted to the hospital it probably won't be discretionary. I will likely have a "co-morbidity" at that moment, and breakthrough COVID would be a complication. Doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, all get up close to do their work and they all exhale. Their being vaccinated reduces my risk of their infecting me.  My correspondent said,

If nurses don't care about spreading COVID to the people in their care, then they are in the wrong profession, and should damned well get out of it. Peter, you can put them to work picking melons in the wide open outdoors of a melon field, but get them the heck away from sick people.

Customers and co-workers have an interest in avoiding high-risk people. Some employers are doing it willingly, and before the federal mandate. My former employer, Morgan Stanley, requires all employees who come into any office to be vaccinated. If I were still working there, I would appreciate the policy, and as a client of that office I appreciate it now. Unvaccinated people are more likely to get and spread the disease and I prefer to avoid that risk. I avoid Coastal, the handy farm supply store near my farm, because, although the employees wear masks, the store doesn't enforce the mask rule on customers very well, so many go unmasked. Will I catch COVID there? Probably not, but the odds are higher than if I shopped at a place where customers were masked and vaccination rates were high. I am not making a fuss about it. I just shop elsewhere.

Employees may not feel comfortable speaking out to say they want co-workers to be vaccinated. I liken it to smoking in offices 40 years ago. A person made uncomfortable by a co-worker's smoking just kept his mouth shut and put up with it. The smoker's right to smoke had priority. Their freedom. That was then. 

Now no one would insist on the right to smoke cigarettes in a hospital. It would be understood that their smoke risks and bothers others. Employers are more likely to feel empowered to require vaccinations if they understood that there is support for a vaccine requirement by customers and co-workers. The support is there.  

We need to speak up.

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