Never again should humans detonate atomic munitions. It is 90 seconds to midnight according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock. Read what you can do to mitigate the dangers in our nuclear armed world by clicking here.
It’s go time! Tonight’s virtual Iowa kickoff for the Harris for President campaign will be bigger than the Democratic State Convention. Her candidacy sparked a change in attitude, a change in possibilities, and the beginning of a short, tough campaign to elect her as president. Click on this link to join at 7 p.m. tonight.
Not from Iowa? Progressives for Harris are hosting a separate event with some of our favorite progressive legislators tonight at the same time. Click on this link to join Progressives for Harris.
It’s time to figure out how we elect Kamala Harris President as well as down-ballot Democrats. It’s go time!
The weeks remaining until the Nov. 5 general election are likely to be a stemwinder. If not careful, we could fall under the spell of the 24/7 news machine whose stories circulate frequently in our news world and are often out of touch with our communities. It could be easy to get caught up in the excitement without substantially contributing to the Democratic election effort.
Meta’s new social media platform Threads asserts they do not promote political news on their platform. Specifically, they say, “we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads.” To get your political content on Threads, follow accounts with the kind of information you seek. This seems like a net positive. We should all be pro-actively curating the feeds of our social media accounts.
What should a progressive do regarding news?
Find a small group of close friends with whom you can discuss news and what it means. I have multiple groups like this and they provide consistency and sanity in a turbulent news environment which includes generous doses of disinformation and misinformation. Some of us in the groups have weathered many political campaigns together and that base of experience is useful in interpreting events in this year’s campaign. We aren’t always right about things yet we are less often wrong. We can usually tell what story is full of malarkey and what isn’t.
Connect directly with campaigns if you can: the further down the hierarchy the better. Essential to having a meaningful presence in the Iowa State Capitol is electing more Democratic Senators and Representatives. They have a different task from Kamala Harris and U.S. House candidates in getting their names known in a district. They also need to know a larger percent of the electorate personally. Their on the ground perspective from voters provides information in a way like no other. What is heard at the doors while knocking for a state house candidate is news gold in the currency of a campaign.
There is a role for breaking news from traditional news outlets. I subscribe to the Washington Post, but pick your major news outlet. When a major story breaks, like the prisoner exchange with Russia last week, they can quickly deploy a large team of journalists to gather information on the story. When I hear something is going on, I go to the website and see if they are reporting anything. Breaking news is never perfect, far from it. It is a way to bring relevant stuff on our radar for monitoring.
The distinction between social media and email in news gathering is significant. Email can have a much broader reach than social media. For outbound messaging it is clear. I recently attended my high school class reunion. The planning committee wanted to distribute and make available photos taken at the event on a web page. We posted the link on our Facebook group with 91 members and sent it via email to 100 email addresses. By far, the emailed link got more views, by a factor of 1.7:1. For inbound messaging there is even a stronger case.
I wrote previously, “Some journalists found a way to make a living outside the world of newspapers. It is increasingly clear that with the rise of potentially profitable podcasts, substacks, YouTube channels, and the like, there is more money to be made in these new entities than in writing for a newspaper. There are important essays to read in this fragmented news media, yet our formal news environment is the worse for these one-off entrepreneurial enterprises.” I subscribe to specific journalist substacks with the benefit of receiving news analysis that goes beyond what one might find in a social media feed. By following a specific author, I gain insight into their world view by seeing how they report on different topics.
So what am I saying?
Get news from actual humans. Activate your network of friends to evaluate the news environment: have a place to go to discuss the news. Join a state house campaign and talk to voters in that context to know what is news at the grassroots level. Curate your social media feeds to produce the kind of news that is of value to you. Learn which journalists are doing straight up reporting and analysis and which are ideologues. Follow the former. Subscribe to at least one major news outlet plus a local one if it’s any good. Read some of those hundreds of daily emails in your inbox for the news content. Know which ones are valuable and unsubscribe from the laggards. Be open minded yet skeptical. Use your personal network to root out disinformation and misinformation.
May sound like a lot to do, yet I predict you will be more effective and happier if you can manage these things. Obviously, keep reading Journey Home
I had been mowing with my John Deere lawn tractor for about 15 minutes. Life was good as I prepared the yard to be more presentable when overnight guests arrived later in the day. I stopped, turned off the engine to move something, and when I returned to the driver’s seat the engine would not crank. After trouble shooting to see if I could resolve the issue, I called the repair shop and they picked it up that day. They said they would have it for three weeks, most likely, because of a backlog of work. I’ll have to hire someone to mow as the lawn will turn into a jungle of natural habitat if I don’t.
We brought the equipment home from my father-in-law’s estate before the turn of the millennium. When it breaks down, there is always a question of whether repair parts will be available. The company says, “Nothing runs like a Deere,” yet they no longer make or stock every part for every model going back to the company’s founding in 1868. Planned obsolescence has become part of their business strategy. If my tractor can’t be fixed because parts are not available, I’m not sure what I will do. There are several suitable models under a thousand dollars. I really don’t want to spend that kind of money to mow the lawn half a dozen times a year. There is a case to replace it now to avoid future price increases. I would rather have just finished mowing the lawn than deal with this now.
This personal experience feeds into the broader issue of Right to Repair. When we own something, like my John Deere tractor, we shouldn’t have to beg the dealership to have access to repair parts and fix it. I’m not that mechanical as a basic social skill so I rely on others for car, tractor, chainsaw, trimmer, home appliance, and other repairs. We are subjected to their rules, and one of those is availability of repair parts. I bought more than a few new appliances because repair parts were no longer manufactured or stocked. It’s a rook deal!
When I worked in transportation I became aware of increased technology used in mechanical devices, Class 8 vehicles particularly. This changed the landscape in multiple ways. Importantly, equipment developers sought technology to make things better or comply with new laws. It was one more component to include in an automobile or refrigerator that cost something, and when the initial sale was made, increased net margin for the seller and manufacturer. What is often forgotten is any new maintenance issue related to failure of electronic components. There are no work-arounds when a computer chip fails.
When my John Deere would not start, I quickly diagnosed the problem as an electrical failure. I’ve had the tractor long enough to recognized the layers of failure it demonstrates. When I was on the phone with the service writer they agreed. So now we wait.
We bought a quarter acre lot in 1993 because it was available. We liked the proximity to the state park hiking trail and the public school system. There was abundant room for a garden and an orchard. What we didn’t foresee then was the inability to get ahead financially enough to completely eliminate the lawn in favor of a giant garden. Such projects are the endeavor of youth, so I’ll be dealing with mowing for as long as we live here. We don’t plan to move. We’ll stay and deal with interactions from a variety of service technicians. I’d better maintain a friendly relationship with them. Life could be worse.
July was a tough month in so many ways. Yes, I’m still on that. What was supposed to be an escape from the digital world turned into a constant search to understand what was happening and then write about it for the blogs. I’m taking a couple days off after this one. If that’s possible.
Couple of thoughts:
If you can’t feel the excitement behind the Kamala Harris campaign for president, you may be an igneous rock. A constant meme in the Obama campaign was “Fired up. Ready to go!” The Harris crowd won’t need, doesn’t have time for memes. The energy is infectious. It is less that 100 days until the election, so let’s stick to fundamentals and go elect her!
The vice presidential pick is imminent since the campaign announced they would make a joint appearance in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, August 6. Whoever she picks is fine with me. I have my faves yet they don’t matter in this calculation.
Did not know Trump would do us a solid by selecting J.D. Vance as his vice presidential pick. Based on his book, I’m not even sure Vance’s mother liked him. He is the product of an ivy league education and campaign contributions from the likes of Peter Thiel, David Sacks, and the crypto currency crowd. It seems like there is nothing behind the mask, and that should benefit Harris. Factoid: Vance is Pence with the first two letters changed.
The rain in Big Grove has been abundant. I watered the garden one time since July 1. Even though two plots lay fallow, the rain is boosting yield in an amazing way.
Importantly, my spouse has returned to the Grove from helping her sister all of July. It is good to be reunited.
With constant rain, it’s been difficult to mow the yard. In the tall grass there are depressions that appear to be nesting or sleeping spots for deer. Providing habitat is more important that manicuring a lawn. That’s who I’ve become and I’m good with it.
Time to do some self care and get ready for the sprint to finish. Will need all the energy and creativeness I can muster. So, shall we all.
The Washington Post reported Monday that William Calley died at age 80 on April 28 in a Florida hospice. It is fitting he died in obscurity. He will not be missed.
More than anything else about the Vietnam War, the My Lai Massacre, for which he was found personally guilty of murdering 20 people, epitomized my view of what was wrong with the war. In all, U.S. estimates place the number of dead in the operation between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians, most of whom were women, children, or elderly men. My Lai had a profound influence on me, leading me to protest the war in the streets as information about it slowly became public.
I wrote about Calley in my memoir of entering the military:
The combination of willingness to serve and the end of the Vietnam war led me to seek out the Army recruiter and set aside concerns about risking my life by saying it was better for peace lovers to join the military and lead, rather than leave it to the likes of Lieutenant William Calley, the convicted war criminal who was responsible for the 1968 My Lai Massacre.
Calley was an example of what was worst about the military during the Vietnam era. The March 16, 1968, My Lai Massacre of more than 500 people, including young girls and women who were raped and mutilated before being killed, was particularly on my mind. We could do better than that. I believed the only way to address problems like My Lai was for people like me, who valued non-violent means of conflict resolution and common decency, to enter the military and do a better job of leading it. Later, in 1976, while I was stationed at Fort Benning, William Calley was locked up in the stockade.
Father’s military service played a role in my decision, as did the opportunity of youth and being single. I have no regrets in following Father’s footsteps and joining the Army. Why did I enlist? I felt the U.S. Army at the end of the Vietnam War was a despicable mess. (An Iowa Life, Unpublished Memoir of Paul Deaton)
The Washington Post story is a reasonable history of that time and Calley’s role in Vietnam. I recommend reading it here. This passage from the article rings true.
Almost from the very beginning, Mr. Calley polarized Americans who variously deemed him a war criminal or a scapegoat, a mass murderer or an inexperienced officer made to take the fall for the actions of his superiors. Defenders argued that he had been forced into a brutal conflict with an often invisible enemy, then blamed for the horrors of the war. (William Calley, Army officer and face of My Lai Massacre, is dead at 80, by Harrison Smith, Emily Langer, Brian Murphy, and Adam Bernstein. Washington Post, July 29, 2024).
While I was attending Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning in 1976, Calley was across base in the stockade. I had conversations in my quarters with other officer candidates who felt Calley was a scapegoat. I maintained he was an incompetent murderer. May he burn in hell for all eternity.
Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) said this week, “I really encourage you to think about what you can do in your community.” She was talking about supporting Kamala Harris for president. I find her statement significant because of the inward-turning focus on things we can each do to turn out voters for our candidates.
During the last two years, I wrote repeatedly that traditional voter activation methods don’t bring the rewards they once did. It is comforting to work in a campaign office, knock on doors, make phone calls, write postcards, attend fund raisers, and the like. As we embrace such comfort, we can also walk away from the people we may most likely influence in our personal social circles. Traditional activities don’t apply the same way in rural communities like in Michigan or Iowa where there are a lot of them. It simply takes more time to door knock rural voters. Time that could be spent more productively.
Certainly if a person feels comfortable letting someone else design a campaign’s work, and you get along with staff and other volunteers, go for it! Most campaigns do good work, and they have trouble covering their assigned turf. Similarly, state legislature candidates work in a different universe than a county, U.S. House district, or statewide campaign. Joining a specific state legislative campaign brings a different focus to the work. By their nature, they require a broader appeal and a focus on which no party and Republican Party voters can be persuaded to vote for them. Voters usually can get to know the candidate personally.
While there is no longer a coordinated campaign in Iowa, those organizations did a marginal job of covering the bases all the way down the ballot. It has always been incumbent on state house candidates to track their own activities and results unless their district is a densely populated urban area. This speaks to the difference between working a campaign and winning an election. The latter is most important.
The Democratic Party offers structure and training for people to work more on their own. I recommend people wanting a do-it-yourself, individual path to helping elect Democrats check out the training portal, located here. What I am finding is the Reach application helps me post on social media in a meaningful way. The Discord server is wild but still has a lot of Democrats united in purpose. The automated reminders get a little annoying, yet they serve to keep me on track. This is perfect for people who have trouble traveling to the local campaign office, work outside the home, or have child or elder care responsibilities at home. Life is what you make it, and many of us have an independent streak in us. This is a sanctioned and positive way to get involved.
What can we do in our communities to elect Kamala Harris and down ballot Democrats? Answering the question starts with taking a moment to analyze how we fit into society. So do it. Don’t take too long as the counter shows less than 98 days until the election.
The week since President Joe Biden announced he would not accept the nomination for president has been a roller coaster. From the immediate relief and hope of people glad Biden stepped aside, to the backlash of right wing politicians, emotions have run a gamut. When the 45th president spent time at a Friday campaign rally calling Kamala Harris “liberal” and claiming that “Democrats replacing Biden on the ticket amounts to a ‘coup,’” we know our target was successfully engaged. Some sources report a polling surge for Harris: as many as six points in key states. A single poll is not definitive, yet it is a positive sign Harris’ elevation to the top place on the ballot is positive to many voters.
The less than 99 days remaining before the November election is not a lot of time. Republicans and their foreign backers are expected to make quick work of returning to the misogyny-laden campaign of 2016. While Kamala Harris arguably possesses more positive attributes than Hillary Clinton did — and less negative baggage — she will be the target using a playbook developed by the Trump campaign in the run up to the 2016 election. I wrote about this in a letter to the editor of Little Village Magazine.
A lot changed in political campaigns since I worked my first for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Democrats and Republicans are now at a place where established patterns repeat each cycle: marching in parades, having a booth at the county fair, putting up sign advertising, and canvassing voters. These may be comforting, yet campaign action has moved.
Both major parties use big data to inform their campaigns.
Perhaps the most dramatic change was the way Trump campaigns used Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to scrape personal data about tens of millions of voters from the internet, and then custom target voters with tens of thousands of distinct daily ads designed to either persuade people to vote for Trump or not vote at all.
Progressive radio host Thom Hartmann wrote that on the day of the third presidential debate in October 2020, team Trump ran 175,000 variations of ads micro-targeting voters. These ads were, for the most part, not publicly seen.
This is way beyond showing up to meet candidates at a county fair.
Despite this use of technology, elections reduce to staying engaged with candidates, and working to cast an informed vote. That pressure from social media to disengage from politics? Someone is working to make us feel that way. We must resist and vote for who best serves our interests. (Letter to the Editor of Little Village Magazine, Paul Deaton, July 15, 2022).
There is a clear wave of support for Kamala Harris as she became the presumptive nominee. Donations to her campaign surged, as did the number of new volunteers. Republicans are already saying, just seven days in, that Harris won’t survive the boost in popularity, that it will be transient and gone before we know it. With less than 99 days until the election, we have little time for self-doubt. We must roll up our sleeves and get to work because so much is at stake in the November election.
Just like that, there is excitement in the air as Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee for president. It’s hard to believe it was less than a week ago. The dynamics of everything political changed. Many more people find themselves asking, “What can I do to help?” Historian and political journalist Heather Cox Richardson reported the excitement Friday morning:
People are turning out for Harris in impressive numbers. In the hours after she launched her campaign, Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. On Monday, around 20,000 Black men rallied to raise $1.2 million. Tonight, challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million (UPDATE: $8.5 million) and tens of thousands of new volunteers. (Letters from an American, July 25, 2024. Heather Cox Richardson).
Thursday I took training from the Democratic National Committee in online engagement. There were so many people in the session, it load tested the applications they use. The surge of participation is palpable. It is also a good thing 100 days before the election.
What should we do to help elect Democrats?
The answer to this question is not what you may think: contact the local party and volunteer to knock doors, make phone calls, write post cards, donate money, and host events. Some campaigns need these things, yet they can become a placeholder that prevents more effective campaign work.
About door knocking. The 2022 election cycle was my last experience door knocking and it was an eye opener. I tried to make it to every door knocking event that was in my county and in my state house district. To a person, people contacted required no additional information about the election or candidates. They knew the candidates, had a plan to vote, and did it mostly on their own. If they were not going to vote, no entreaties from me would change their minds. People yelled at me from behind closed doors, “Go away!” The world has changed since I re-activated in politics during the 2004 campaign.
Where door knocking continues to pay dividends is when the candidate does it themself. In an Iowa state house race, this interaction is crucial. In a U.S. House District, it is impractical because of the size of the districts. The further up the ticket, the less important door knocking becomes. The most vigorous door knocking campaigns by a presidential campaign I recall were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In those campaigns, especially in 2008, we contacted every voter we could think of, and phoned or door knocked until the polls closed. The takeaway from those three campaigns was if one is door knocking, a lot depends upon the database and the person writing walk lists. One only gets so much time at the door. If I were to door knock for Kamala Harris today, how would the down ballot races be handled? Voter history and existing data may not be as important in 2024 as it once was.
Door knocking is not as effective today as working our own personal networks with existing relationships with voters. In a previous post I wrote:
I was on the board of a local non-profit supporting the elderly. People would help out and we were glad for the help. Some made it very clear they didn’t want to get into discussions about politics as they knew some of us were Democrats who often wrote letters to the editor to the newspaper. We were able to do some good things with that group and we didn’t really suffer by holding off on political talk. (Don’t Talk Politics, Blog for Iowa. Paul Deaton).
What I am proposing, and what the Democratic National Committee is recommending, is to know whether people in such groups are with us on a candidate. That’s whether or not the group talks politics. In this election, with Trump on the ballot, and new restrictions on when an abortion is permissible in Iowa, we will count on a large number of voters who split the ticket. This type of canvassing is more complicated than asking a yes or no question at a stranger’s door and faithfully recording it in a database. The presumed depth of knowledge about our relationships should lend ease to how we proceed both to and from the voter identification phase.
The organizing about which I’m talking here is simple and straightforward. I’ve written before about “the way Trump campaigns used Facebook and Cambridge Analytica to scrape personal data about tens of millions of voters from the internet, and then custom targeted voters with tens of thousands of distinct daily ads designed to either persuade people to vote for Trump or not vote at all.” That is a different bag of cats than the idea of working with people you know to identify Democratic supporters and encouraging them to vote based on a personal relationship.
With a new presumptive nominee, this may be a new and needed way to canvass
July is ending better than it started.
The June 27 debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden launched weeks of political uncertainty. I did not watch the debate, yet its impact hit me and so many of my friends who are Democrats. We didn’t know what to expect.
On July 13 a shooter attempted to assassinate Trump. To a lay observer, it was clear whoever set up security for the Pennsylvania rally left gaps in security coverage the candidate should have had. Why would security leave a roof within line of sight of the speaker’s podium and within range of commonly available weapons unsecured? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on July 23.
On July 17, Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 while in Las Vegas. He returned to Delaware for isolation and treatment. He continued to execute his role as president through and after resolution of the illness on July 24 when he returned to the White House.
On Sunday, July 21, after noon, President Biden announced he would not accept the nomination of his party as president. While insiders knew this was coming, most of the nation was surprised. It brought closure to the post-debate period. Democrats quickly rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris who has already secured enough delegates to become the party’s nominee. In addition, she has done well in fundraising for her own campaign. People seem willing to engage in our politics again. As one commenter on Threads said of July 24, “I swear to god this entire day feels like Joe lit the Beacons of Gondor and Rohan freaking ANSWERED.”
The month has been exhausting, mostly because all of these things matter.
Personally, the High School Class Reunion was a big deal, and my spouse has been at their sister’s home helping out all month. With a couple of exceptions — Independence Day parades, a home owners association meeting, a political fund raiser, and the reunion — I have been pretty isolated. I need to spend more time with people right now.
I also need to work to make sure August is a better month.
Journey Home 
You must be logged in to post a comment.