KJ

It's so hard to believe that Joe Biden is now president, that Kamala Harris is now actually for real the vice president, that after four years of horror and two weeks of holding our breath and waiting for the other shoe to drop, in the end the transfer of power went smoothly and according to plan.

Not to discount the amount of work that I'm sure went into making it appear seamless. I have to imagine that's the case on every Inauguration Day, but especially this time. But it seems that the MAGA-heads and Q believers have lost steam, if the lack of organized demonstrations is any indication. There could be any number of reasons for that: the growing number of arrests, the fact that their beloved leader, the former president (and how wonderful it feels to type that), is no longer able to egg them on via social media, the fact that other elected officials have dropped the stolen election storyline. Even Ron Watkins, who many people agree is probably the current QAnon, is hanging it up. I doubt all this is over -- white supremacy remains a powerful force in this country, and I doubt they will all give up so easily in the long run -- but the wind is out of their sails for the moment, and I only hope that we will take this opportunity to decrease their power and influence even further.

As for President Biden and Vice President Harris, I will say this: welcome, congratulations, and thank you. I look forward to being disappointed in you as my elected executives the normal amount, rather than trepidatiously checking the news every day to see what fresh hell has been released. You have an enormous task in front of you, and I intend to hold you accountable to doing it right.

The General Services Administration has finally acknowledged the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and released the funds for Joe Biden's transition team to begin their work.

I won't quite say that this delay is unprecedented -- George W. Bush's transition wasn't authorized by the GSA until mid-December 2000 -- but in 2000 the outcome of the election was legitimately in doubt, with everything coming down to a single state and three-figure vote margin. To put it lightly, this is not the situation in 2020. I'm glad to see it, but it's criminal that it took so long. (Maybe literally? Probably not, alas.)

I really wonder what's going on behind the scenes at the White House. Is the soon-to-be-ex-president finally accepting reality? Or did the rest of the administration decide to move on, potential tantrums be damned? What I wouldn't give to be a fly on that wall.

Anyway, good news, for the president-elect and for the rest of us.

Black lives matter.

Trans rights are human rights, and all gender identities are to be respected.

I commit to do what I can to uplift and promote marginalized voices, to work toward securing human rights of all kinds with my words and my money and what little influence I have, and not just in this moment when we're all thinking about it, but going forward and for always.

---

I have a bad habit of making the assumption that anyone who knows me, knows what I believe, and so things like this go without saying. But that's not enough anymore, and if I'm being honest it never was enough. So I'm saying it, and I'm asking you all to hold me to it.

I spent a fair amount of the evening checking in on Twitter for news about today's election. While not everything went the Democrats' way, getting control of both houses of Virginia's legislature is a pretty huge win. A Democratic trifecta in Virginia has implications for gun control, voting rights, and control of redistricting in the state. On a national level, I've also heard talk that Virginia is now in a position to ratify the Equal Right Amendment, making them the 38th state to do so... and that would put the ERA over the finish line to be an official part of the US Constitution. It's not a guarantee, because when Congress passed the ERA in 1972, they put a seven year limit on ratification. Whether Congress has the right to remove that time limit is a big old open question, so who knows how it would actually play out. A story to watch, anyway.

Also, Kentucky appears to have elected a Democratic governor, although it's super close and likely to go to a recount. But it's harder to see that one as a harbinger for big Democratic gains next year, since every other statewide office went to the GOP by a comfortable margin. The Republican incumbent governor was *wildly* unpopular, in part because he said things about teachers that even his GOP colleagues thought went too far. Still, Mitch McConnell is almost as unpopular, so can we dare to hope? If nothing else I expect the Democrats will make a credible run for his seat next year. Another story to watch.

San Francisco had a municipal election today -- for some unfathomable reason, our citywide officials are all elected in off years, so we get to have an election every single November. Lucky us. Anyway, the most important race is an open seat for District Attorney; because we use ranked choice voting and there are four candidates, all with some shot of winning, we won't know the outcome for awhile. There were also some propositions because of course there are some propositions. The one that's gotten the most buzz was Proposition C, an attempt by Juul to take out a ban on selling vaping products that was passed by our Board of Supervisors last year. It's failing, badly, as expected. One proposition that might pass is a hefty tax on Uber and Lyft -- as of this writing, it's running ahead, at exactly the 66.6% that it needs to pass. My issues with the ride hailing companies are legion, too much to go into right now (but if you want to hear the rant another day, let me know); for now let's just say I'll be very happy if this goes into effect.

What does not make me happy is low voter turnout. I made it to the polls less than an hour before they closed, and according to the voting machine, I was the 27th person to vote in my precinct. A lot of Californians vote by mail -- you're allowed to be a permanent absentee voter here -- but still, that seems pretty shameful. In my wealthy/upper middle class neighborhood, in a state with some of the strongest voting rights laws in the country, the most likely cause of low turnout is apathy, and there's no excuse for that. Let's hope it doesn't persist into 2020.

It feels like I should call this post "my very preliminary thoughts on the Democratic primary", but with something like 25 people running is that ridiculous? Anyway, in the scheme of things it's still way early, but with the first debate coming up soonish, and many thoughts swirling around in my head, I wanted to set them down in some sort of order. Especially since, unlike most other topics relating to politics, my local friend circle has not been discussing this issue at all, which feels kind of weird, really. Maybe we're all avoiding the topic because of our trauma from last time.

Anyway. So I haven't decided on a candidate yet, but there are folks I'm more and less interested in, and a few "oh hell noes". Of course, it should go without saying that I will support whoever gets the Democratic nomination, because I would support a fiery hat of bees over the current occupant of the White House. But I feel compelled to say it anyway, because it seems like almost any time someone expresses an opinion about the candidates, the trolls descend to demand the disclaimer -- especially if it's a negative opinion about one of the white dudes, funny how that works. So anyway, disclaimer made, and here we go.

( Roughly in order of my current interest in them as of this writing. )

If you don't want to talk about this yet, I entirely understand, but I also welcome conversation. Who do you like, and why? We can also talk about who you don't like, but overall I'd like to keep the conversation more positive. One thing I'd rather not get into is this nebulous (and usually sexist and often racist) concept of "electability". You know what makes someone electable? If we elect them. That could be anyone at this point. We've got a long ways to go, and whoever we choose can win, if we do the work to get them there.

I haven't posted anything about politics for awhile, have I? At least not here -- if you follow me on Twitter, you've likely seen that it's almost all politics, all the time, with occasional forays into fandom and cute stuff, because if I can't lighten the load with fandom and cute stuff then I can't do anything.

But I find that I can't leave today's disaster unmarked, even though I don't have anything to say that hasn't been said already. It's frustrating and enraging and terrible, and I can't even begin to think about the long term ramifications about having such a man as one of the nine people making the most important decisions about our country, and yet it's hard to feel any kind of hopeful feelings about the Supreme Court anymore. Not after the slow chipping away at Roe v. Wade, and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and their choice to reverse almost every lower court decision in order to uphold the immigration ban. And especially not after the travesty of the Merrick Garland situation, when the GOP made it plain that they were going to take over the court no matter what it took. The Supreme Court was never going to save us; now they are especially not going to save us. Even if Democrats win back both houses of Congress, and hold them long enough to get a Democratic president elected in 2020, we can never count on the Court to be the last line of defense, ever again.

It's awful and it's terrible and I especially feel for everyone who has experienced sexual assault, for the old wounds that this battle must have opened, and I'm so sorry. I hear you and I see you and whatever you need, I'm here.

Still, I'm glad we fought. And that we'll keep fighting. And that I already see us taking the energy from our righteous anger and carrying it forward to Election Day next month, and beyond to whatever work needs to come next. Although I don't blame anyone for despairing right now, I always prefer action, and to that end I've given money to a number of Democrats running for Senate and signed up for Postcards to Voters. I'm sorry I didn't start with action earlier, rather than just sharing information, but I'm determined to do what I can from here on in.

One of my favorite metaphors for activism right now is staggered breathing. It's a concept from choral singing -- when you need to sing a long note, or sing through a long passage with no rests or breaths, everyone takes their breath at a different times. The sound will continue unbroken, and no one ever runs out of air. It can work the same way with activism. If you need to take a break, to just breathe, do it. I promise, the rest of us will keep singing until you can come back in.

I've been trying not to include too many links about the various sexual harassment and assault stories, even those more relevant to politics, because I know that they're triggering for some people, and I wanted to keep my linkspams more accessible. The downside is that I haven't been able to share a number of articles and essays that I really liked, so I'm going to put a bunch of them together here. I'll continue marking them as I go forward. Obviously this does not cover every single scandal that's broken -- I'm focusing on bigger pictures issues where I can.

The name: a few weeks ago, T and I were out walking around a large local construction site. One of the human-door side entrances had "MANGATE" hand-painted over a white signboard; apparently "Man Gate" is the official term for a construction site gate that's not large enough for equipment (not "Person Gate", ahem), but we didn't know that, and it struck us as funny. Then T said "Mangate" should be the official name of the continuing scandal, and I decided he was right.

• Many of the best takes have come, naturally, from journalist Rebecca Traister. I particularly liked this one: "Your Reckoning. And Mine. As stories about abuse, assault, and complicity come flooding out, how do we think about the culprits in our lives? Including, sometimes, ourselves." Rage, she says, is the defining quality of this moment, that and the fear that in the long run, nothing will really change. It's a long read, and very personal, and so worthwhile. I hope Traister writes a book about all this.


• Speaking of rage, Uma Thurman's response when asked about the Hollywood allegations was both chilling and powerful.


• ThinkProgress reports on the long and awful process that a staffer has to go to in order to report sexual abuse or harassment by a member of the US Congress.


• Roy Moore corner: you may have heard that Roy Moore and his wife fabricated a letter of support from a group of fundamentalist Christian pastors. 60 actual pastors struck back with a letter of condemnation.


• Moore has also threatened to sue a number of the publications that ran stories about his predatory behavior, including the Atlanta Media Group, which broke the story about Moore being banned from a shopping mall for creeping on teenagers. The Atlanta Media Group blasted back.


• Meanwhile, guess who has Moore's back? That's right, the President of the United States. Who is surprised.


• Of course, the Onion gets it right.


• Okay, that's enough Roy Moore. The Myth of the Male Bumbler delves into why men claiming they just don't understand how to behave properly is little more than setting themselves up for plausible (not that plausible) deniability. This includes moments like Jon Stewart being shocked, shocked by the allegations against Louis C.K. when he was specifically asked about them a year ago.


• Ellen Page shares a powerful and personal statement about the harassment she's endured in Hollywood.


• Chef Amanda Cohen writes a scathing piece on the restaurant industry, and talks about how men have gotten away with rampant abuse for decades.


• On the uselessness of the grand public apology, especially from men who aren't facing any allegations themselves.


• Jessica Valenti shares thoughts on why conservative women stand up for sexual predators.

Wow, how did I go almost a month without doing one of these? Clearly I'm not going to catch everything, but here's some highlights/more recent stuff.

• If you read only one thing on this page, make it Ta-Nehisi Coates's excellent "The First White President", a stark appraisal of how Trump's presidency is a direct response to Obama's. This is from almost a month ago, so I hope you've already seen it, but if not, you must.


• One of the hot stories lately has been the escalation of the NFL anti-racism protests (and that is what they are, at their root, not any of this nonsense that people have tried to dig up about patriotism and respect for the troops). One of my favorite responses comes from Bob Costas, of all people, who says some excellent things about sports and the conflation of patriotism with support for the military.


• A New York Times editorial reminds us that protest is almost never popular at the time it happens. NFL fans may be booing now, even as more players and even the owners start getting involved, but history may take a very different view.


• I found this Newsweek article about Trump's history with the NFL to be pretty telling. It's not particularly a secret that Trump has made several attempts to purchase an NFL franchise, but he's been blocked by other owners as well as outbid. What I hadn't realized was that he ran the USFL (a short-lived would-be competitor) into the ground in his desperate attempts to be accepted. The story is pure Trump from beginning to end, and might explain why he's so quick to go after the owners now. If nothing else, make sure you read the letter from another USFL owner to Trump.


• Vox has an interesting and depressing article about psychic numbing and the difficulty of getting people to care about large-scale tragedies.


• The big topic in my newsfeeds a couple of weeks ago was Hillary Clinton's new memoir and the (depressingly predictable) backlash to it. This take from Quartz uses the coincidence of Bernie Sanders introducing his "Medicare for All" bill at around the same time to compare and contrast the way the media talks about Sanders versus how it talks about Clinton. Spoiler alert: sexism is involved.


• Some of the book got leaked in advance, primarily sections where Clinton talks about Sanders and his effect on the race. (Mostly leaked by CNN, and isn't it interesting that these passages, sure to be controversial and re-spark infighting among the left, are the ones they chose? Instead of, say, one of the apparently many passages where she blasted the mainstream media for their terrible and imbalanced coverage? I wonder why THAT might be.) This analysis of the leaked text points out that her critique of Sanders was both balanced and fact based, but who cares about that when you can promote a "lady was mean to a man!" narrative?


• Really excellent BuzzFeed article on private-public spaces built by tech companies and why they're no substitute for a genuinely public commons. It's nice that Apple wants to think of their stores as "town squares", but will that last when someone wants to have a picnic there, or a political protest? Somehow I don't think that's going to fly.


• Another thing I missed was the announcement that DACA will be sunsetting, but that The Occupant is open to signing a DREAM Act-like bill if it passes Congress. (And for once that's not just words; Five Thirty Eight estimates that DACA could likely pass Congress with no trouble, although that doesn't mean it will ever come up for a vote.) Since anti-immigrant sentiment is one of the main issues that got him in the White House, this seems like a contradiction, but I thought Chris Hayes had a good take on why even his most hard-core anti-immigrant supporters might be okay with it: opposition to Obama was never about the policies themselves, but about the fact that a black man was implementing them. White people have taken the power back; as long as that's the case, what happens next doesn't really matter. Racism, my friends. It's the engine that drives so many things.

July was a busy time for me at work, and then I went on vacation, and as usual political events moved really quickly. It seems like years have passed since the last time I did one of these, although in reality it was just under a month. So it goes when you're on Trump time. But Congress is on its summer recess (mostly -- the Senate pulled a procedural trick to keep the chamber officially in session, so that Trump can't make any recess appointments; this isn't an unusual practice, though), and the big man himself is on a seventeen day vacation (because he's been SO HARD at work these last several months, you know), so maybe things will be a little quieter for a bit, and we can catch up.

It's nice to think so, anyway.

• The big story on Twitter this weekend is an anti-diversity memo making the rounds internally at Google. The full text was leaked to Gizmodo; I'm not going to link to it, since it's 1. easy enough to find and 2. the same tedious MRA/alt-right bullshit we've all seen a million times about how women are too emotional to be good coders and "meritocracy" and why Google's REAL diversity problem is not enough Young Republicans (although Anil Dash's short version is pretty entertaining). However, I will link to this ex-Google employee's response, which is excellent. I also direct you to Dr. Nerdlove's Twitter thread on why "at least it's promoting discussion" is exactly the wrong response.


• The Washington Post examines exit poll data from the last few president elections in search of "Trump Democrats" only to find that they basically don't exist. Most of the voters who switched from Obama to Trump were Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote for Obama. Yet another reason for the Democrats to stop chasing this demographic and focus on pleasing their actual base.


• Speaking of, yet again more nonsense about the DNC/DCCC giving money as support to anti-choice candidates. Stop. Just stop. It's never helped us before and it's certainly not going to help us now. I will never forget how anti-choice Democrat Bart Stupak almost derailed the passage of the ACA by pushing for anti-abortion provisions. I don't believe in ideological purity tests, and I know that not every regions of the country is willing to elect loud and proud abortion activists. Candidates and elected officials can believe whatever they want, and take more moderate positions on the issue. But when it comes down to it, if you are a Democrat, you support reproductive rights. The end.


• That said, I have a huge issue with purity politics in general. Bustle has a good article on why women politicians in particular are hurt by an insistence on ideological purity. I'm really ready to be done with circular firing squads now.


• On the lighter side, sort of, it recently came out that Trump considered buying the San Francisco Giants back in the 1980s. Sports writer Grant Brisbee reacts with the appropriate levels of existential horror.


• On the occasion of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller impanelling a grand jury, Vox presents a really handy explainer of the probe, what Mueller's authority is, and how the investigation might go.


• Hey, remember back when we thought Trump's real endgame for his campaign was to launch his own TV network? Well, would you take a look at that.


• Because of the time gap since my last post, I missed the rapid rise and meteoric fall of never-quite-officially White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci (aka "The Mooch"). He'll be a great trivia answer in about ten years. Anyway, Jay Smooth had a great take on the whole thing.


• The central topic of my last linkspam post was the Senate's continuing attempts to ram through some flavor of ACA repeal; as we all know, that didn't happen, in dramatic eleventh hour fashion. One of my favorite stories about that night comes from Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, who shared his view from behind the scenes.


• You may recall a senator with cancer who got a lot of attention for his last-minute no vote. I'd rather celebrate Senator Mazie Hirono, who flew to DC from Hawaii right after surgery for Stage 4 cancer, held the line on every vote, and gave a beautiful, impassioned speech.


• Speaking of credit where credit is due, let's not forget two other Republican Senators who have stood firm against ACA repeal, almost unwaveringly from the beginning: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.


• Here's an interesting report on the number of Congressional challengers who have already filed to run in 2018 and comparing them to other elections at this point in the cycle. It's worth reading the whole thing, but the upshot is that, in wave elections like 2006 and 2010, opposition party candidates file early in considerably larger numbers than those from the party in power, usually about twice as many. This year? It's an order of magnitude. (209 Democrats vs 28 Republicans.)


• In the interest of this post not being five million pages long, I'm not even going to get into the whole Donald Trump, Jr., saga, but I was amused in an eye-rolly sort of way by this report from The Hill that Junior is "miserable and can't wait for his dad's presidency to end". Join the club, kid. (Note, autoplay video at that link.). Also, from the BBC, an article on whether this might be the smoking gun, and whether a smoking gun is even enough anymore.


• Finally. this article is a little older, but it's from the man who coined the phrase white fragility, and it is a very good examination of the subject. Every white person should read this essay with an open mind and a willingness to learn.

This is it folks, this is the big one. I don't need to tell you that, I suppose, but here we are. Even in California, where my Senators are firmly No-votes and leaders in the resistance, there are things we can do to stand up and fight -- here's a short to-do list for anyone who lives in a state with two Democratic Senators.

A few links on healthcare:

• Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey went through the bill, line by line, to point out some of its more terrible effects.


• Politico reports that the Senate Democrats will be playing hardball. Placing our calls in support of this tactic is one of the important things that blue-staters can do.


• With the urgency of our desire to kill this bill, I've seen a resurgence of the desire to call Senators from other states. Here's a good Twitter thread on the importance of NOT doing that, tempting as it may be, especially when there's evidence of Astroturfing from the other side. I know it's scary, but this time, fighting fire with fire would do more harm than good.

And other things:

• The Brookings Institution put out a scathing editorial on voter suppression in the United States, a good overview of recent court decisions with some damning statistics.


• The Associated Press published a report on the effects of gerrymandering, and it's not pretty.


• It probably shouldn't come as a surprise that the Democrats lost the special election in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, and in fact the narrow loss continues the trend of being competitive in districts that ought to be safe GOP, but given how much effort and money we poured into that district, it's also understandable that people were disappointed. But the rush of pundits and BernieBots to blame Nancy Pelosi for the loss is both a headscratcher, and almost unbearably stupid. Charles Pierce explains why.


• And maybe before you get too invested in demonizing one of the most powerful women in the Democratic party, maybe you should consider who is in the trenches, doing the actual work in places like the Georgia 6th.


• Meanwhile, another Congressional special election flew completely under the radar: the South Carolina 5th. The Republican won that seat as well, but by an even smaller margin. This is not a seat that any polls suggested ought to be competitive, and the Democrats spent almost no money here. This ought to scare the GOP; we'll see if they heed the warning.


• Maryland and the District of Columbia have sued Donald Trump for violations of the emoluments clause and other conflict of interest laws.