And the winner is . . .not Chump Trump.

Biden won going away. By more than 5.5 million votes. He blew Don the Con out in the electoral college by an historic landslide. Really. He won 306 electoral college votes, the same amount Trump won by in 2016, when the orange bloviator used to hand out maps of his electoral college victory to visitors and claim it was the greatest wipeout in history. Not the Trump is insecure and craves adulation. Never mind that Tricky Dick won 49 states in 1972. Ignore that Trump won his victory by about 77,000 votes in three states combined, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, the so-called Blue Wall. Biden reclaimed those three states by a quarter million votes combined and flipped three more states Trump won in2016, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. Yeah, that's right, Georgia. 

I think that when Biden calls at the White House on the morning of January 20th, he ought to bring the Baby Huey president a gift--a framed picture of the electoral college victory that Biden won, entitled An Historic Wipeout of an Incumbent President. Yeah, that's what I think. It'd be perfect, a perfect gift for the departing president perfectly outlining the 306 votes that Biden won over the biggest election loser in presidential history.

Trump should look forward to departing the presidency. Even more time for golf. No more boring briefings which cut into his TV time. He won't have to salute North Korean generals anymore. Angela Merkel won't be around to throw candy bars at. No more annoying powerful women around to feel inferior to like Nancy Pelosi or Angela Merkel. He can surround himself with even more foolish and feckless women than the gibberish-spouting Kellyanne Conway, the stupid, lying bimbo Kayleigh McEnany, the pathetically untruthful Sarah Huckaby Sanders and the hopelessly corrupt Hope Hicks.

It's a shame Trump's going to spend his last two months in office doing nothing about the raging pandemic but everything about subverting our democracy by denying the incoming president classified briefings so he can be fully informed when he takes the reins of power, that is whenever L'il Richie Rich isn't stamping his foot wherever he's sulking and railing that the election was rigged, somehow, thus turning his 71 million cult followers into vacuous conspiracy believers for the rest of their lives. None Dare Call It Treason.

We can now announce . . . .

 I dragged myself off to my motel room in 2016 at 11 pm in Newport News on election night after a 16 hour stint being an inside poll observer in that town (apparently SE Virginia doesn't have any democratic lawyers, so they have to reach 300 miles up to Arlington and Falls Church to find lawyers willing to drive down there for three days). I switched on the TV set and settled into bed ready for an exciting night watching the returns come in leading to a Hillary Clinton victory. Remember how she was 99% certain to win?

I had been inside a bubble all day since 5 am locked into a polling precinct place in the poorest part of town where the tally at the end of the night was akin to 80% Clinton, 11% Trump and 9% those faux candidates the pothead Johnson and the useful idiot Stein so nothing had prepared me for what I saw within a minute of turning the TV on. I have watched enough presidential returns to know that something unimaginable and momentous was afoot. Florida was gone, North Carolina (where I had canvassed) was gone, Clinton was losing in Virginia (where I had canvassed) with 95% of the vote in, but some returns from Democrat-rich Fairfax County were not yet in (where indeed Hillary eked out a thin state victory). I switched off the light and went to sleep with the TV set still on.

At about 4 am the change in the tone of the announcers woke me up in time to hear, "We can now announce that Donald Trump has just been elected as the 45th president president of the United States. I instantly knew, lying there in darkness in a strange bed all by myself in a seedy motel room far from home, that a bottleneck had arrived that my life was flowing through at that very moment. Into the one end my past life entered, a proud, confident American who knew America for all its faults was exceptional, and out the other end was emerging a citizen who knew he no longer knew his country and was fearful of the future, both for himself and his country. I felt like this moment actually might be a death knell of either myself or my country.

Sound overblown? America and its democratic institutions have become empty husks of themselves in four short years, no longer a world leader and having become the laughing stock of the world in its response to the worldwide pandemic with the most deaths and infections from it by far. Me die as a result of the occurrence of that moment? How about the threats or perhaps eventualities of dying by COVID-19, nuclear war with North Korea, a one-off nuclear exchange with a state like Iran (I do live in the DC blast range), shot by a heavily armed militiaman or soldier at a protest or denied necessary medical care by administration-ordered retrenchments in the health-care networks so the super rich could get get another hefty tax cut.

The last four years have been horrible for America and Americans who care to keep informed.

Last night felt pretty much the same as that 2016 moment for me, mingled with incredulity because Americans have seen what's happened in the past four years (caged and orphaned children, separated families, a quarter million Americans dead unnecessarily, unemployment at record-level, a looming depression, racism exposed and coddled, assassination plots against political or governing leaders tacitly encouraged, rampant corruption, allies cast aside, adversaries embraced etc. etc. etc.) , but I when I went to bed last night I still thought Biden would win, barely, the electoral college, perhaps by 270-268.

The political landscape was even more bleak when I woke up this morning, with no chance of the Dems taking the senate, the Dems losing seats in the house and Biden temporarily behind in his Blue Wall reclaiming bid, but I still think Biden will win, barely. We know that Biden will win millions more votes than Trump nationwide--so much for one person one vote--yet he has only one one tenuous path to a nail biter victory. But Dems are used to this; the last two Republican presidents, both tenures being utterly ruinous for the nation, were both outvoted yet entered the people's house (Dubya Bush thanks to a single vote--GOP appointed Scalia's).

Next perhaps I'll recount last night's fevered dream while I fitfully slept, no TV blaring this time to wake me up into an ongoing nightmare.

The Recent Ruination of American Exceptionalism

There is less than a week to go before we can start restoring America to its former greatness. Unfortunately the first priority will be to get some control over the coronavirus and by January 20th, and we will have wasted a full year in that endeavor thanks to the recklessness a minority of American voters four years ago who voted for a crass failed businessman to "Make America Great Again." Any critical thinker then could have seen that was a dangerous put-the-tooth-under-the-pillow wish with ten minutes of Google research.

I voted early over a month ago, and although I have done nothing for any campaign this time, unlike in 2016, 2017 and 2018 when I worked hard for democrats, to good success in 2017 and 2018, and clearly the nation's immediate, rapid decline starting in 2017 wasn't because of anything that I left undone in 2016. Because I am in a vulnerable category for the coronavirus, I have chosen not to put myself at risk by working within the confines of a campaign and potentially become a further burden upon our straining health care system by getting sick.  

Also, I have been hearing hospital administrators lately talking about rationing health care and making choices about who to treat because their hospitals have no further capacity. I understand triage and I have no doubt my care would be placed behind that of reckless, maskless young people who got themselves sick by attending packed GOP functions if health care started to be rationed in Trump's America in the face of all the hot spots everywhere. In other words, people over 65 like me would be sent home to die there with no treatment.

I talked my gardener into voting early and he voted for Biden. I talked my neighbor's live-in adult son into voting early and he voted for Biden. This week I talked the young man living at his parents house across the street into promising that he would vote. So I consider that I multiplied my vote by two and a half times.  

I am retired, my 401K has gone down over 60% this year and my social security check was late this month but I have sent a $25 check to 23 democratic incumbents or challengers, mostly senatorial candidates because the soulless grim reaper, aka Moscow Mitch McConnell, has shown us all that true Machiavellian power in the US resides in the senate where a paltry minority of the population can control negatively the lives of the large majority in this country. But I mailed contributions to a few representatives as well like Wendy Davis in TX and Max Rose in NY. I admire Davis because of her heroic efforts in an 18-hour filibuster while trying to block draconian restrictions being put upon a woman's right to control her own body in \Texas a few years back. I am from conservative Staten Island and I wish good luck to the unflappable, feisty Rose!.  

And I put a Biden sign in my yard and on my car. If I ever meet any of my grandchildren, I won't feel totally embarrassed if they complain to me about the total and hopefully not irretrievable ruination of American excellence under Trump.

A Two-fer . . .

Ernesto, who mows my lawn, called me yesterday, which he almost never does.  He's a friend of mine, a Bolivian who has been here for thirty years and a citizen since 2000.  He speaks passable English (I am envious when I sit outside with my next door neighbor occasionally--she is his brother--and those two start speaking together in an indigent dialect from South America which means that they speak three languages, including of of course Spanish, whereas I can only speak one) but he is not fully up on politics in America so I do my best to inform him.

He told me that he had just voted early at City Hall and it only took him five minutes--in and out with no one else there except for the registrar.  He thanked me for informing him of the existence of early voting and where to go and when it was open (M-F 9-5 untill election week) because he wasn't sure otherwise if he would have gone to his local precinct at the elementary school on election day and waited on line during a pandemic to vote otherwise and getting an absentee mail-in ballot was otherwise too cumbersome for him in Virginia (you have to obtain the proper application form, fill it out correctly, send it to the proper place, receive the ballot back, fill that out correctly, including fulfilling properly all the requirements for the return envelope including a proper signature in the right place. and sending it back so it'll arrive in time in an era when the U.S, mail is being deliberately being slowed down by Postmaster Louis DeJoy, a Trump sycophant).

I was gratified to hear from Ernesto because I had offered to take my neighbor, her husband and her two adult children to City Hall to vote when I went  to vote early but they were no shows when I knocked on their door at the prearranged time.  I then issued a standing offer to drive any of them to City Hall during early voting hours but a complicated series of reasons why they had no time to do this whenever I suggested a time made it dawn upon me that although they revile Donald Trump, they were going to vote, if at all, on their own time.

I felt bad that I really had no other plans to work in this election--I am too much in a suspect group health-wise to physically electioneer during a pandemic--besides voting early myself, sending modest checks to democratic senatorial candidates and putting up a Biden sign in my yard.  Receiving Ernesto's call out of the clear blue yesterday was a delight.

I voted . . .

 In these cataclysmic times, I executed my plan to vote on the first day early voting started in Virginia last month, on September 18th.  I drove down to City Hall at 10 am armed with a notice dated in August from my bank which came addressed to me at my residential address indicating that a check I had deposited had in fact been deposited.

I walked in with a face mask on and was met by a sheriff's deputy to whom I announced that I was present to vote.  He directed me towards the city's registrar office without requiring me to go through any security, where there was no there aside from a receptionist behind a plexiglass shield and the registrar and two polling volunteers.  The receptionist asked to see my driver's license whereupon I presented her with my bank account note (Virginia dropped its photo ID law this year after the democrats reclaimed both chambers of the statehouse although it still requires suitable documents) which she examined with a sour face and then handed me a voting slip which I gave to the registrar who gave me a ballot in a folder and a free (the pandemic you know) pen to fill it out with.

The choice for president/VP was easy as were the choices for senator and representative and it took but a second to mark those blank ovals.  I didn't know a single thing about any of the four persons running for three spots on city council so I left those blank and read carefully the two proposed constitutional amendments and marked "yes' on both of those (I'm a democrat you see, and since I discerned through the incomprehensible legalese that they were both measures intent on lessening burdens on poor people and "totally" disabled veterans, in other words giving money away, of course I voted for those), slipped my ballot into the scanning and counting machine and handed my folder back to a volunteer (did she wipe it down for the next voter who showed up?).

I asked if I was the first person there so far and was surprised to hear that 32 other voters had already preceded me that morning and that a third of the registered voters in the city had already made applications for mail-in ballots.  With such a crushing response already in the very first hour of voting seven weeks out from election day it was and remains clear to me that Trump is going to go down in a landslide and the country, and the world, will awaken from this four-year, horrific nightmare.

It finally came . . .

 On the first of the month, I prodded myself out of my numbing COVID-19 self-quarantine and made a plan to address the upcoming election, now a mere five weeks away.  There are 206,000 Americans who tragically won't be voting because they're dead unnecessarily thanks largely to our tax-cheat president's massively inept coronavirus response leading directly to the still continuing lack of reliable testing, contact tracing, provision of PPE, disclosure of truthful, non-divisive information etc.

I went to the city registrar's office and found out that I was indeed registered to vote and when and where early voting started, and I voted thereby on the first available date.  I went to Joe Biden's campaign website and for a $50 contribution, ordered two buttons, a bumper sticker and a Biden/Harris yard sign.

It finally arrived yesterday and I immediately planted it in my front yard.  I took a picture, which I ordinarily would have posted here but a few months go I lost the ability to transfer photos from my computer to my blog, and I no longer have the ability to put photos into this blog except for pictures from previous blog posts.

So now I parse out twenty-five dollar checks to democratic senatorial candidates and wait for January 21st, Joe Biden's first full day in office when patriotic Americans who aren't beholden to foreign money or influence can start making America Great Again.  Meanwhile my Biden yard sign stands out like an evergreen tree in a pine forest as I have yet to see a single Trump sign anywhere in town.

The problem with Act Blue

 I'm trying to do my best to help restore American greatness--I've already voted, in person so my vote won't get caught in any election day invalidation by being mailed in and never arriving or being counted too late after the current president has created the deepest constitutional crisis since the Civil War by declaring the election invalid on election night. I'm not going canvassing door-to-door like I did in 2016 ned 2018 nor doing poll-watching like I did in 2016, 2017 and 2018, I'm in the high-risk group for COVID-19. What I think is most crucial, beyond ousting our corrupt, faux president is to throw the senate out from the corrupt, soulless grip of Moscow Mitch, so that the tail no longer wags the dog, wherein 53 venal anti-patriotic senators representing about 29% of the population jam their values (none that I can discern besides getting themselves rich and maintaining power) and judges (young, pro-big business and rabidly antichoice) down on the majority of Americans, who think otherwise, are patriots and value principles and concern for all our citizens.

So I contribute $25 to contested senate races, so far sending a check to Dr. Barbara Bollier (KS), Mark Kelly (AZ), Amy McGrath (KY), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jaime Harrison (SC) and MJ Hegar (TX). The trouble is, except for one example, those are in response to solicitations that come in the mail that I can return a check to. For Harrison, I googled his name and found a site where it listed an address I could send a check to for his campaign. For the rest, like the Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, Montana, Iowa and Virginia races, I get mired in an inescapable maze of the Act Blue payment system for those democratic candidates, with no way to get to a page which tells me where I can send a check to. First off, these pages want too much information from me and I don't trust their security in terms of safeguarding my on-line payments. I can't understand exactly what I'm supposedly paying for or how many times. I learned in 2018 about "recurrent payments" that appear a fortnight later on my credit card no matter how closely I read the fine print and that are a pain to get rid of. 

Never again, democrats, sorry! I'm retired and watch my nest egg go down dramatically each month in Trump's Amerika and fear for the future of Social Security under the administration of the kleptocrats in charge. So I sit and wait each day for the mail to arrive (or not as has been happening lately) in the hope that another solicitation will arrive for a democratic challenger for senate so I can contribute. I voted in person already--have you?

Past time for change of administration

Careful now!

Moving forward.

DeJoy's Contribution to Amerika

 In Trump's Amerika: 

He is busy destroying the United States Post Office, an institution enshrined within our constitution. The vehicle for this demolition is his lackey mega-donor Postmaster DeJoy, who is busy removing sidewalk postal boxes, high-speed mail sorting machines (selling these million-dollar machines for scrap-metal) and prohibiting overtime or trips back to the PO by carriers for more mail.

Is it working?  Within this past month, I mailed out a credit card payment on August 17 that was due on September 8.  It is still not there, the bank is calling daily for its money and I have been assessed a late charge.

I have a rental unit that is one of the pillars of my retirement stream of money.  The tenant who has lived there for ten years has never missed nor been late with a payment.

The rent that was due for September still hadn't showed up by Monday, September 14.  I called my tenant and he said he had mailed it out on the first or second as always, which I fully believe.  He sent out a second check by expedited mail at an excessive cost, which I told him to take off the rent, which showed up today.  The original check is still in a place unknown. Do you think the mail has been slowed to a point approaching disablement?

Voter supression of vote-by-mail during this pandemic?  Absolutely.

My Plan To Vote

What's your plan to vote? I have mine. 

Last month I went to the City registrar's office to research it and I discovered: 

i.) I am registered; 

ii.) Early voting opens at City Hall on Friday September 18; 

iii.) The ID requirement now is that I have to bring proof that I live at my registered address. A current utility bill addressed to me at that address will suffice--so I have put my last electric, and gas, bill next to my passport to bring;

iv.) There is no dumb requirement anymore of attesting to a reason why you're voting early. Formerly I always swore that I would be outside of the city limits on that day (it didn't matter when during the day or how far or for how long) and so on election day I would always walk up to the McDonalds a few blocks away and buy a cup of coffee there--it is across the street from Falls Church in Fairfax County; and 

v.) I did NOT make application for a mail-in absentee ballot. If I had, and I did it correctly, I would have to present the actual ballot sent to me by the state or, if I didn't receive it yet (or ever, given the current state of the Post Office under the direction of Trump's yes-man Postmaster DeJoy) or the dog ate it or I lost it or forgot it--no vote for me till I came back with that actual ballot. Or I could mail in the ballot, if it ever came, or I found it, or I taped it together after I got it away from the dog, hoping it would be received by the Friday following the Tuesday election, postmarked before or on November 3, and it fulfilled the proper requirements such as the signature was placed in the proper spot and it matched, by some stranger's scrutiny, the signature on file at DMV or on my original registration. Your signature doesn't change over time, does it? Did you impatiently scrawl that signature because you were in a hurry?

vi.) Voting early in person, and not by mail-in, assures that my vote will be counted immediately at 7 pm on November 3, because the ballot will already be in the polling machine and can be run off instantly electronically along with all the other votes cast in person on November 3. Thus I will not potentially contribute to Trump's possible "red mirage," where he could declare victory on November 3 if he is ahead before the absentee (mail-in) votes can be added to the total and give the true result. Absentee (mail-in) ballots are opened only after 7 pm on November 3 and need to have the envelopes examined for a proper signature, the envelopes slit open and the ballot extracted, smoothed out, and fed into the machine to be counted, a laborious process that could take up to a minute each. Trump could use the time delay inherent in counting these votes to sow confusion and declare further (true) results invalid and give his uneducated, unstable and infatuated supporters all the time and excuse they need to go home and get their long guns to take to the streets in an effort to enforce an illegal vigilante result.

So in summation, here in Falls Church, Virginia, three days from now on Friday September 18th, I will be knocking on my neighbor's door at 10 am and three of us will drive down to City Hall. I will have my utility bill in my pocket, with my driver's license as a backup, and we will vote in this existential election for the democracy we formerly knew.

Oh, and bring a mask. And leave your guns at home, you'll have to pass through a metal detector, and the last time I was there they put my name and phone number down on a contact tracing list.

Changes

I don't do much with this blog.  Mostly I just post experiences and musings on it.

I have a facebook account to which I post once most days, musings mostly.  I regard each platform as a mostly hopeless way of leaving the door open for a rapprochement of sorts with my three estranged sons, the divorce you know.

Once a year I change my profile picture, to a photo from the year prior.  Last year I posted a picture from the second week of the current administration, enroute to another demonstration against an amoral president, just like in the sixties and seventies all over again.

This year I am posting a picture from November when I was doing more than just protesting, I was actively working in my own small way against the current president's outrageous use and abuse of power by working against his enablers and volunteering to work for the Democratic candidate opposing the Republican incumbent congresswoman in Virginia's Tenth District.  I am proud to have been a small part of the blue wave last fall that put our country back on the path to a republican democracy again, with checks and balances.

The 2018 Election Cycle

The recent elections were a great success for the Democrats, and a needed palliative for the stressed Republic.  The results irreversibly set the Republican party on a downward spiral where it will have to re-invent itself in a number of years, a sad state for the great party of Lincoln, our greatest president.  It's going to have to grow a backbone, develop or remember a sense of principles first and maybe read or re-read the blueprint for our country, the constitution.

The great achievement of all the Democratic volunteers and voters who came out was to win a double digit majority in the House in order to achieve a much needed and hitherto not present check on our out-of-control, incompetent faux president.  It is unfortunate that there really was no realistic path to retaking the senate for the Democrats, leaving in place the outsized influence of the extreme-right Federalist Society, which controls the list of judges promoting some sort of Christian understanding of and application of the law that is primarily underlaid by some personal belief in a biblical sense of justice in our secular nation, that the lazy president uses exclusively to nominate judges to the federal bench.  The Democratic success in the election lies in how close the party kept the Senate ratio in preparation for the 2020 election, which presents a far more favorable path to the Senate majority for the Democrats.

On a national scale, Democrats flipped seven governorships while losing none of their own, six state legislative bodies were flipped from red to blue and about 300 individual state legislative races replaced a Republican incumbency to a Democrat, boding well for the party's future.  In Virginia's eleven Congressional Districts, three districts were flipped from red to blue despite the extreme Republican gerrymandering of districts after the last census, including the one I worked on where Democratic challenger Jennifer Wexton ousted Republican incumbent Barbara Comstock in a formerly rock-solid safe Republican seat.  The ratio of Virginia representation in the House switched from 7-4 Republican to 7-4 Democratic.

Individually, I delighted in the turning out of his governorship Scott Walker in Wisconsin, a union-busting, lying ("As long as I am governor, I will always cover pre-existing conditions.") GOP SOB in Wisconsin, and the flipping of my boyhood home of Staten Island from red to blue, thereby eradicating the last Republican Congressional District in all of New York City.  I have been disappointed in the apparent results coming out of Florida and Georgia, where racism, and corruption and racism, have driven the incomplete results so far.  Unquestionably, Tuesday was a great day in the struggle to make America great again after a couple of extraordinally dark years.

Flipping the Tenth: The first congressional seat to flip.

Election day dawned raining steadily and I drove to my assignment handing out sample democratic ballots at the River Bend Middle School polling place 35 miles west in Loudon County.  I stood under a temporary shelter shoulder-to-shoulder with my republican counterpart for three hours, handing out blue sample ballots while Mark handed out green sample ballots as voters approached the precinct.

My encounter with Mark was amicable, after all we're both Americans although we were diametrically opposite politically (he voted against republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock in the primary in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District because she was not aligned closely enough with Trump, although she voted in accord to his directives 98% of the time) and we would ask voters as they passed by if they wanted a sample ballot, blue for democrats or green for republicans, and offer forth our respective samples and the voters would take one or the other or both or decline altogether in a very interesting dynamic.  Usually voters would make a beeline for one ballot or the other, giving the undesirable ballot a small but noticeable berth, while a few voters would reach out for both, although they were the same except for color and the oval darkened next to either the democratic or the republican candidates.  Mostly older persons, especially men, would take the green ballot and younger persons, especially women, would take the blue ballot, all unfailingly polite although a few had stern looks at me, or Mark.

At least three times a family with trailing children would come up and the man would take the green ballot while the woman would come over and take my blue ballot, and then the family would enter the voting place together.  Then my relief came and I drove home to watch the returns, happy to end my canvassing and polling in an effort to contribute to flipping the Tenth, in order to present a check to the ongoing abuse of presidential power that the republicans in both houses have refused to do.  And the first returns were good, as the Tenth was the very first congressional seat to flip from red to blue, within 45 minutes of the polls closing.

As the night progressed and the democrats proceeded to take the house by double digits some disappointment set in, such as when the racist gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis (he referred to his African-American opponent as a "monkey") was voted in by Floridians, but also the union-busting Scott Walker lost his governorship in Wisconsin.  Ultimately, the president lost the house massively and thereby received a needed reality check to his king-like countenance and imperial demeanor and actions such as setting in place policies to tear children from their mother's arms at the border and caging them.

Flipping the Tenth: The day before

The Monday before election day I canvassed in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District to the west of me for three hours, completing my assignment of knocking on 47 doors (or at least walking by them) in the hopes of speaking to 75 registered voters inside those houses.  I was working a list that had been worked for the two days prior, with notes of conversations the Jennifer Wexton campaign volunteers had with persons who opened their doors and check marks for the designation, Not Home. My instructions were to knock on every door in the hopes of speaking to a person in those Not Home houses, and to converse again with those who had been actually contacted either or both of the two days before.

I was dubious about re-canvassing houses where the people had already said the day before that they were voting for Wexton or against Barbara Comstock, the two-term republican Congresswoman. My common sense doubt proved itself at the first two houses where occupants answered.  At the first, a child answered and declared who I was and who I was working for and asked to speak to her mother.  The young girl went off to get her mom, leaving the door ajar. A moment later the door invisibly closed and I heard the lock click.

At the next house where the door opened, a trim well groomed elderly man listened to my preamble and came out on the porch with a hard look on his face and announced that this was the third day in a row "you people" have come by and noting my University of Colorado cap I graduated from that university), said "You must have come straight from Colorado [where they have legalized recreational marijuana], been smoking' that weed, and think that if you bother me enough times I'll do what you want.  Take me off your list!"  My thoughts flashed back to my second day of canvassing where such a menace-laden situation had developed suddenly and the occupant threatened to shoot me.  I learned a long time ago (during my policeman days) that the best initial response is deescalation and I hurriedly and pointedly made scribbling marks on my clipboard, and looked up at him and winked.  His visage softening a little with hints of mirth, he said, "I have never voted for Comstock but by God this could put me over the edge.  Now, when you leave, young man, be careful going down those stairs so you don't fall or I'll surely get sued."  I apologized, said I could understand how he would feel annoyed, lamely blamed all those voters who stayed home in 2016 because the outcome was so "certain" and, uh, I was merely following orders.  We got to talking about old times and departed a few minutes later as friends waving goodbye to each other.  But I thereupon junked the experiment of chatting up yet again persons in houses where a pollster had already talked to the occupant(s) that weekend, marking the Not Home box as I walked by the house.

This quickened the completion of my dedicated list on this rain-soaked day, and all other persons I spoke with were positive and some even grateful that I came by.  I am very encouraged and fairly confident that this district will vote blue today after four decades of being in the republican column.  My reward for my final canvassing effort in the Tenth was running into my Congressman Don Beyer at the Wexton HQ, about to go out and canvass himself for Wexton.

Flipping the Tenth: The final Sunday

On a beautiful fall day I travelled twenty miles outside of the beltway to canvass in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District, held by the GOP for four decades. Not after tomorrow!

In an affluent compact subdivision of narrow culture-de-sacs sprouting off secondary through-roads like buds off a branch, I knocked on 59 doors in the hope of speaking to 81 registered voters and had a response from about half the houses.  The energy to vote was palpable as, unstated, a referendum on Trump two years in.  The door-answerer in a couple of houses gave me guarded, laconic answers to my conversational questions about how they were inclined to vote and I got the message to back off and I thanked them for speaking with me and left, realizing the favorable contrast of polite tight-lippedness to the unhinged threat to shoot me in the initial exchange, as happened to me further west in the district on my second day of canvassing.

I ran into a lot of pockets of fervent occupants on my dedicated who had plans for the whole household to vote for the democratic challenger Jennifer Wexton against the republican incumbent congresswoman Barbara Comstock. A man who answered at one house where I was seeking four registered voters said that he was a fifth occupant of the house, and all five were voting for Wexton.  Is that a signal of what's coming down tomorrow, or an outlier in this "safe" red district?

We're all Americans, and all (except for Indians) immigrants.  We all work together, and get together to point towards a greater future for our country, like the great cross-pollination of southerners and northerners, city-dwellers and rural boys, easterners and westerners in the great American wave of soldiers who swept across the Pacific and the Atlantic in WW2 winning that tragic conflagration by cooperating magnificently for a more humane world by the Greatest Generation, my parents and for many Americans, their grandparents.

Flipping the Tenth: The last Saturday

My earlier predominant impression from canvassing for democratic challenger Jennifer Wexton in Virginia's Tenth Congressional District, currently held by two-term republican Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, referred to in her district often as Barbara Trumpstock, was reinforced today when I knocked on 39 houses in an attempt to speak with 59 registered voters about committing to vote on Tuesday.  About half the houses listed on the dedicated list answered their doors and the motivation to cast their vote was palpable as many putative voters expressed an eagerness to vote and disclosed detailed plans to do the deed ("I'm going to vote at 6 a.m.  Thank you for coming, I admire what you're doing.").

I didn't have any tense interchanges, although one woman was watching me from inside her car at the curb as I walked up to her house, just drove away from me as I asked her child when she came out of the house after I knocked if her mother was around and she said yes, she's in that car, and I respectfully walked up to the car.  I'm just trying to save your nation for myself and mine and also for you and your child, mom, both minorities, and your child is very polite and you are very rude.  One man on the same block in this affluent subdivision 15 miles outside of the beltway, came out onto the porch when I stated my purpose in knocking and shook my hand, announcing that he was a republican but he was voting democratic "this one time."

One man recently here from Texas asked how Wexton was doing and when I said polls showed her up ten points, effusively said he was glad to hear that and he was voting for her.  I urged him to make sure he made a plan to do so and went on to another house where four voters were listed as occupants and I spoke to yet another occupant who said the four listed voters were out but all five of them were voting democratic.  On the other hand there were a couple of houses where the door answerers pithily said they had already submitted their private ballots and I got the message.

There were a couple of houses where I spoke to twenty-something potential voters and they both sheepishly said they didn't know anything about the issues or candidates but they would ask their dad.  Lame!  They'll live for decades with the choices imposed upon them by others, as the stacked supreme court will attest to, as the future slowly unfolds.

Flipping the Tenth

The GOP, led by Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, its soulless coldblooded undertaker, busily kept spading the Great Republic underground by putting on the Supreme Court a second sexual predator, making two on its male contingent of six, counterpoised by its three female justices all appointed by democrats, to go along with the faux justice the republicans added last year, occupier of the purloined seat stolen from the popularly elected President Obama the year before.  Depressing, yeah, but don't get mad, get even.  Into the breach, again.

So I drove 30 miles out to Manassas Park at noon to canvass for state senator Jennifer Wexton, who is running for Congress in the Tenth District opposing Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, a rare Republican incumbent in Northern Virginia.  After 5 minutes of group training, I was given a script, a tally sheet, a stack of campaign literature, and a dozen sheets of dedicated names and addresses of prospective democrats in a neighborhood.  An exclusive neighborhood full of half-million dollar homes 30 miles further west in Haymarket.  Future Congresswoman Wexton.

Finding the locale of winding roads and cul-de-sacs in this well-manicured neighborhood solely by dint of my car's Garmin, I spent about three hours canvassing the area alone, knocking on doors at about thirty specified addresses, finishing half my sheets.  The results were  surprising, especially given that this was definitely enemy territory for angry democrats.  Training.

Not so fast, this is what my limited sampling revealed to me at least, and it seems to me at least that the Donald's base is starting to fray, in educated, suburban coastal regions at least.  And I didn't experience anything but courteous encounters.  The target subdivision.

All tallies are approximate:

Knocks on doors:  30
No answer, whether somebody was home or not (left rolled-up literature on doorknob):  15
Self-declared Republicans definitely voting "independent" (for Wexton/Senator Tim Kaine):  3 (two of those households had couples who were both voting blue) (two of those households were minority occupants)
Household where the male was voting red and the female was voting blue:  1
Household where the male occupant was returning to a "straight party line vote" (blue) for the first time in a long time:  1
Definite No to Wexton:  1
The rest Undecided still, some asked for literature, many stated they would vote for Kaine at least.
Issues briefly discussed or stated as important:  Second Amendment, 3 (once strongly); Right to Life, 1; Local Traffic (it's horrible out there!), 1; coddling criminals (a smear campaign against Wexton, a former prosecutor), 1.

Some Notes:
The number of Undecideds for Wexton who stated they would vote for Kaine is probably due to two reasons--lack of knowledge about Wexton or her positions; and the ballot alternative to Democrat Tim Kaine is Republican Corey Stewart, a Stars and Bars waving faux-Confederate (he's from Minnesota) who is described in some circles as a racist.  The Rebel Heritage bit doesn't necessarily play well in Northern Virginia.
One passerby walking his dog signed a Pledge to Vote card after a discussion about traffic; guns; and criminal defendants.
I was going to engage from the sidewalk one man working in his driveway about Wexton reaching out to her constituents to see what issues were important to them, as an opener, till I saw the Comstock sticker on his parked BMW.  I walked on to my next listed address nearby instead.  It was the only openly partisan sign I saw in the subdivision.
Three persons reached out in a spontaneous handshake after our brief discussion.

A cracked license.

The sickening, unbelievable diminution of America's greatness that I woke up to on November 9, 2016, a wound inflicted upon our great republic by a selfish, short-sided minority of our very own people, enthralled voters chasing a chimera, which hopefully will not ultimately prove to be fatal to our democracy, spurred me to activism.  That extended to voting this week in the primaries in my city where the incumbent Democratic congressman and senator are in absolutely no danger of losing their seats in November, so long as the Russians don't intrude into the process even worse than they did two years ago in aid of our current president, the Kremlin's puppet.

I walked into the polling place and had to spend five minutes in the practically vacant gymnasium while the voter officials scrutinized my driver's license.  In the first forty years of my voting life, I would just announce my name, and vote.  But the current vogue of voter suppression requires a photo ID to vote.   Don't you remember George Washington getting carded at the voting booth?

My OL was cracked right across its bar code.  The official looked at my license, asked me my name and address which I confirmed verbally, the address on it was proper for the precinct and matched their rolls, it wasn't expired and had my picture on it (no smiling!), and then she put it in her optical scanner.  I was not comfortable with having my license scanned but these are the gymnastics our elected officials have foisted upon us in order to exercise our right to vote.  The machine failed to recognize my OL.  The crack, remember?

They took it out and re-inserted it at least half a dozen times.  They puzzled over it.  I suggested the crack across the bar code, from normal usage, but which didn't invalidate my driver's license so far as I know, was preventing the machine from registering the license.  They were literally scratching their heads over what to do.  They finally got a reading on about the sixth try, seating it just so, I guess, and allowed me to cast a ballot.  I foresee lots of problems coming up in November with this system.  They could see who I was from my photo ID which was the preferred one, a driver's license, and the information it bespoke of which I verbally confirmed, yet I had to wait for long minutes while they took this extra step with their little scanning gizmo.  I hope I remember to bring my passport as backup in November.

Record or Assist

It was cold and rainy on election day Tuesday but at least I had the opportunity of working inside all day, although I walked outside several times to introduce myself to every observer, volunteer and candidate out there doing hard duty handing out sample ballots, blue for democrats and green for republicans, to voters as they walked up to enter the local high school to vote. All were unfailingly polite.  

Inside, there was a stark difference in what I perceived my duty to be as an inside poll observer and what my republican counterpart's assigned duty was. All day I stood or sat near the check-in table and watched for problems voters encountered in being enabled to cast their ballots--wrong precinct, no longer living in the district, their name spelled wrong in the voter rolls, their sister voted previously in their name because the staffer couldn't decipher the Asian name properly, the voter couldn't understand English and required assistance but couldn't write either and thus couldn't sign her requires-assistance form--and followed them discretely to the chief's table to stand by and listen to the problem's resolution. Almost always there the situation was resolved in favor of the person being entitled to vote, sometimes after a call being placed to the registrar. Three provisional ballots were cast (the aforementioned sister/brother mix-up, for instance), often the voter was sent to one of the other two precincts to vote and rarely the voter was turned away, usually after being registered on the spot to entitle them to vote in the next election. I never felt the need to intercede with the election officials in support of a voter and only made one or two suggestions to them all day, and asked them questions about situations or procedures several times. I often spoke conversationally with the officials to varying degrees during slow moments, having introduced myself to each of them and made a point of remembering their names. It was an efficient organization with heart there.

The other poll observer had a different reason, obviously, for being there. Aside from getting up occasionally to go outside to make a call on his cellphone I assumed or use the facilities or stand in order to stretch his legs, he sat in a chair within 3 feet directly behind central check-in person and furiously thumbed his I-phone all day, doing his best mark on his "app" (I presumed it was a registered voter list or perhaps a list of persons that party had contacted during the campaign) the appearance of every voter who checked in as they announced their name and the name was repeated back to them by the staff member. Never did I see him wander around the voting room by the officials' tables except to plug in his back-up battery, nor did I see him converse with the staff except in the course of a situation arising out of him placing his chair initially so close behind the check-in person's chair that that officer complained that the observer was in such proximity with him that he was uncomfortable and felt interfered with in the performance of his duties. He literally couldn't get up from the table without the observer moving his chair back. (He also conversed with staff in the course of graciously being offered a donut or two during the long day.) The chair incident produced the day's only "drama" as my friend across the aisle, Joe, termed it. 

The staffer who felt Joe was too close to allow him to do his duty properly requested him to move back permanently and the observer refused, saying he couldn't hear the names as they were announced otherwise and to do his "job" he needed to be right there behind the staff member. Thus the right of the observer to be able to see and hear everything being done and said at the check-in table clashed with the right of the staffer to be free of interference or influence in the performance of his duty, and this stand-off at the fulcrum point of the free and transparent operation of our basic voting rights pulled in the Board of Elections Directer and Mr. Dan Dodds, who I presumed was the roving Republican operative assigned to that district.

In my opinion, Mr. Dodds was a pissant, and I watched from my perch five or six feet behind the check-in table where they had set up a table for the observers as in the back, the twenty-something tall gaunt man argued down in an angry voice, with much finger jabbing interspersed with backhanded slaps across the sheaf of important papers he was clutching for awe-inspiring emphasis, with the diminutive fifty-something Director who was standing her ground even as, at one point, the rover had a metal chair slung menacingly over his shoulder as he gesticulated. In a word he was, in my opinion, nasty.

Order was restored to the process with a compromise as the two came out and together moved Joe's chair to a spot about 32 inches behind the staffer's chair and declared that that was the redline, for both of us. Joe tried his dictated location and claimed that he still couldn't hear but Mr. Dodds spoke to him like one would rebuke a dog, telling him to do his "job," to get busy with his "app," and that that spot was "final." Then Mr. Dodds stalked out, obviously an important personage with more places to be on that day.

The rest of the day was long and uneventful for us. Joe liked history, and had brought two books to read, and we talked history and books sometimes. I tried to time our quiet discussions for when a crowd of voters came in and he tried to time them for when a voter was spending an inordinate time at the table, indicating a problem. I offered him a cracker smeared with spicy tuna from a small tin I had for lunch, which he declined, and he had a bag of nuts in his pocket which he would occasionally go into the hallway to nibble from, of which he offered me none. We got along famously, and I even told him that I had observed that the voting machines were set at zero that morning before the polls were opened at 6 a.m., something he hadn't observed in person, as that apparently was on both our checklists.

During the long day I had the opportunity to reflect upon which course of inside poll observation action was better--to record on your hand-sized computer every voter who comes in so that at HQ they can selectively utilize their phone banks to get out their voters, or to look out for problems as they develop inside the voting area and follow them through to their resolution, thus allowing as many voters presenting themselves to vote as possible. Since the permissible number of inside observers is limited, doing both is well-nigh impossible. I'm not surprised at the very different choices each party made in this election, and I wonder what it augurs for the future of voting and inside observing.

The Silver Bullet and The Lone Ranger

Nate Silver at Five ThirtyEight has spoken--FBI Director James Comey gave us President Trump.  I don't think either side of the political aisle likes Comey, who roams the corridors of power in Washington unilaterally intervening whenever he sees problems that only he can discern, and then dispenses resolutions that sometimes fly directly in the face of long-established norms but no matter, he consults sagely before acting with--himself.

Neither side trusts this hifalutin Lone Ranger who wields greater independent power than the infamous J. Edgar Hoover did at the height of nearly four decades of criminal chicanery.

Comey destroyed our democratic process last October with his infamous "private" letter to Congressional leaders (Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz won the race to publicize it, within minutes) about initiating another (baseless) investigation into Hillary Clinton's missing e-mails rather than see (in his mind) the independence of the FBI "destroyed."  If finding those emails is so important, perhaps the president can ask his handler Putin for them.

Remember Rose Mary Woods and the missing 18 1/2-minutes?  We somehow survived that gap and we'll survive this one, and I also seriously doubt those missing emails would provide the scienter necessary to prosecute Hillary Clinton (I know, Lock Her Up!).  If there was criminal intent in those emails, the president's comrade would have already released them from his treasure-trove of hacked content.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/

#/:~/)  "Am I doing ok?  I'm president.  Hey, I'm president!  Can you believe it, right?"