Forewarned is Forearmed

“Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after a pandemic will seem inadequate. This is the dilemma we face, but it should not stop us from doing what we can to prepare. We need to reach out to everyone with words that inform, but not inflame. We need to encourage everyone to prepare, but not panic.”

That was Michael Leavitt, the Secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush, speaking at the Pandemic Influenza Leadership Forum in 2007.

With more than 22 million votes already cast so far in the 2020 election, and outrageously long lines at the polls reported in several states, I find myself thinking about how Leavitt’s warning also applies to the national presidential election that is steadily accelerating to a finish in just 18 days. As I noted in the first edition of The Connector this past Tuesday, if you are a Democrat, or a small-d democrat who cares about the health of our democracy, positive signs abound. Biden’s lead in the polls has remained steady, and people are voting in massive numbers. A new analysis by the Associated Press finds that 8% of the people voting early had never voted before and nearly 14% had only voted in about half of the previous elections that they were eligible for.

To talk about needing to prepare for a confusing and dangerous period after November 3rd feels alarmist. People have been working hard for months, and some for years, to get to this point, where it seems as though Trump and, hopefully, many of the Republicans who have enabled him, are going to get beaten soundly. I want to be wrong. I want to be dancing in the streets sometime late on Election Night.

That said, it still seems quite likely that while Biden is going to soundly trounce Trump in the popular vote, at the same time the Electoral College vote may be much closer or plainly unresolved for several weeks after November 3rd. Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all won’t even start processing mail-in ballots until Election Day. There’s a lot of time and opportunity for Trump and the GOP to try to declare victory, or claim that the election is being stolen, and attempt to shut down ballot counting efforts. Grassroots Democrats need to understand how things could play out during this “overtime” portion of the presidential election, and why it’s so critical that we hold firm.

The best case scenario, spelled out here by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic, is that Trump will make a lot of noise about the election returns, but will never really do anything with the machinery of government to stop the count or muddy the waters. Wood thinks Trump is too lazy to do that work, and that while he will never concede losing to Biden, he’ll leave the White House by January 20th nonetheless, to pursue a lucrative and much less burdensome career as a TV personality.

If that happens, fine. But we live in a deeply divided country. Many of Trump’s supporters believe he really is about to win in a landslide, and they may turn from that belief to action. And thanks to the president along with a small army of disinformers, Republicans have significantly less confidence in the election process than Democrats or independents. Sixty-five percent of Republicans say they are “not at all confident” or “not too confident” that the election will be conducted in a fair and equal way, compared to 49% of Democrats and 58% of independents. While Democratic activists are preparing to protest to protect the results from Trump’s ongoing hints that he won’t accept anything but a victory, Republican activists are primed to see those protests as an attempt to unlawfully deny him his “landslide.”

There is also the 2000 election as precedent. In that year, the Republican party of George W. Bush was determined to make sure he won the closely divided state of Florida, and did everything it could to steer public opinion against Al Gore, in addition to fighting to shut down the state’s recount by turning to the courts. Unfortunately, Gore chose to tie one hand behind his back, and told his supporters to stand down while his lawyers saw the clock run out on them. Trump may not really want to fight to the wire, but a lot of people around him may push him to do so.

If, like me, you are worried that we are about to dive into the uncharted waters of a post-election overtime battle, then a new guide for grassroots activists written by Zack Malitz, Becky Bond, and Brandon Evans called The Count should rise to the top of your reading list for this weekend. You can read it at TheCountGuide.com. Malitz, Bond and Evans are seasoned political organizers; I’ve known Becky for more than a decade from when she ran political strategy for Credo Mobile and more recently from her pathbreaking efforts inside the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, helping to build its whole distributed organizing model.

The key point that The Count makes is, if we take Trump at his worst, and want to prepare for the worst, that we have to understand that the fight from November 3 to January 20 will center on political legitimacy, not just legal arguments. Malitz, Bond and Evans write:

If the results of this election are contested, it won’t be a legal battle that determines the outcome. It will be a contest of political will and power. Pleading with courts and Republican officials to do the right thing is akin to continuing to play a board game that the opposition has set on fire.

….If Trump tries to overturn the results of the election, 2020 will no longer be an election between two candidates. It will be an all-out war between the American people and a would-be autocrat seeking to destroy our country. Democrats must be prepared to use all the legal tools at their disposal to ensure that the election results reflect the will of the people.

…. Trump’s most dangerous weapon is paralysis induced by shock and chaos. The purpose of this guide is to help our readers – from ordinary people to Democratic Party officials at every level – prepare psychologically and materially for a high stakes battle to defend our constitutional government.

To save our country in a crisis, we will need to act quickly and decisively. And to do that we need to have a clear understanding of Trump’s strategy and what we can do to counter it.

If millions of ordinary people organize their communities, protest at an unprecedented scale, and execute a targeted strategy to win, and if Democrats in swing states and Congress take determined action, we will thwart Trump’s autocratic ambitions.

So, if you want to prepare yourself mentally for what could be ahead, set aside some time to read The Count. Forewarned is forearmed. You may recall the firestorm of frenzied activity that many grassroots activists dove into during the winter of 2017, calling and writing their Members of Congress, begging them to do things (like vote down Trump cabinet nominees) that ultimately did nothing to build the grassroots power needed to resist Trump. A lot of folks got their act together during that time, which is why the opposition to Trump is so strong now. But there’s no reason for us to be anywhere as disoriented again, should the post-election transition go south.

In the meantime, here’s one human thing you can do on top of all the phonebanking, texting, and canvassing underway: donate to Pizza to the Polls. They’re hard at work getting food to voters standing in line for hours to vote.