With the confusing turmoil around voting by mail, I found myself double-checking my voter registration yesterday morning. After voting in 13 straight national elections, I'll be damned if I am going to be cheated out of my 14th.
I'm pretty sure it was a redundant "change-of-address" form I submitted to the California DMV, which is how most of us register to vote out here, but I did it anyway.
It's simple to understand people's fears that their ballots may not count this November. The current President has been explicit that he will withhold money from the postal service to ensure that the venerable service will not be able to handle the expected in-flux of ballots coming through the mail due to Covid-19.
If Trump has accomplished one thing of note during his term in office, it is to demonstrate for those who needed reminding just how fragile our democratic traditions really are. Here is a man so obsessed with his own electoral success that he is openly undermining public confidence in voting by mail.
He isn't doing this because there is any danger of fraud -- that is a fantasy that has been debunked many times. There is no systematic fraud in the vote by mail system.
He also isn't doing it because he fears more Democrats will vote that way than Republicans. There's no evidence for that either; in fact the opposite may be true.
He isn't doing it because he has some sort of a personal principle against it. He votes by mail himself.
No, he is doing it as part of a calculated plan to undermine your confidence in our election results. He intends to contest the election, which he desperately fears he is going to lose, since every credible poll shows him trailing Joe Biden badly.
When I think back about that my experiences with that voting system during my long lifetime, I remember going to garages, schools, libraries to cast my vote. When my children were small, I remember taking them with me to witness the process.
When my girlfriend, who was Japanese, asked to come one year, I took her. She wanted to see American democracy in action. Coming from a society where women are second-class citizens, she had trouble imagining a woman on the ticket of a major political party.
But there was a woman that year -- Sarah Palin was the vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 2008. She followed by 24 years Geraldine Ferraro's run for VP on the Democratic ticket in 1984. (Ferraro passed away nine years ago.)
This year we have Kamala Harris running for VP. Will the third time be a charm?
Meanwhile, of course, we all know what happened to the first woman who ever ran on one of the two party tickets for President. She won the popular vote by 3 million votes in 2016, and no Mister President, there was no voter fraud involved. You lost fair and square.
Trump's all-out assault on our democracy is frightening to any person who values it. The reason is that we have a fragile system that rests on the consent of the governed. And it presumes a certain decency of character that this President sorely lacks.
George Washington set the tone when he refused to run for a third term though he would have won easily. But it would have been legal for him to do so, which is why FDR did that in 1940 and again for a fourth term in 1944. That convinced those who care about our system to restrict the number of terms any President may serve consecutively to two.
Back to women running for office and voting, it was 100 years yesterday that women won the suffrage, on August 18, 1920, when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified.
It's vital to remember that women *won* the right to vote; men didn't just give it to them. Women organized, marched and demanded their rights in order to win them.
Over the past four years, the modern women's movement has organized massive demonstrations to demand that the remaining vestiges of gender discrimination, such as pay inequality, be eliminated.
The current President opposes those efforts as well and he treats women abysmally. So there is much work yet to do.
I've described democracy as fragile, but it also is strong and vibrant with great resiliency. With 77 days left before this year's election, we can all hope for a historical result, as opposed to the ahistorical vote in 2016.
Because of the anniversary, I've focused on women's rights today, but an equally significant moment is upon us for the struggle to attain cilvil rights for black people. The same high stakes await us on November 3rd in that critical battle to democratize our society.
Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever...Vote!
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* Jill Biden's powerful speech highlights convention's second night. (CNN)
* Trump erupts angrily at Michelle Obama's convention takedown but it boomerangs (AFP)
* High school students want schools to teach more Black history, include more Black authors -- Young people band together to demand change wherever they attend school: at large public systems, elite private schools or small parochial institutions. (Washington Post)
* DeJoy says he is ‘suspending’ policies blamed for causing mail delays ahead of election -- The postmaster general said retail hours would not be changed, neither mail-sorting machines nor blue mailboxes would be removed, no mail-processing facilities would be closed, and overtime would be available as needed. (Washington Post)
* The River Fire has torn through thousands of acres south of Salinas. The pandemic has complicated firefighting and evacuations.(The Salinas Californian)
* Record-crushing heat, fire tornadoes and freak thunderstorms: The weather is wild in the West (Washington Post)
* The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat, a Senate panel concluded Tuesday as it detailed how associates of the Republican candidate had regular contact with Russians and expected to benefit from the Kremlin’s help.The report, the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation, describes how Russia launched an aggressive, wide-ranging effort to interfere in the election on Donald Trump’s behalf. (AP)
* A former senior Trump administration official who is endorsing Joe Biden's presidential campaign said Tuesday that if President Donald Trump wins a second term he will "align with dictators around the world." (CNN)
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Recovering the confidence and ability to do simple tasks is satisfying in the wake of serious illnesses that precluded such activities. Yesterday I did two small tasks I hadn't done in over 18 months.I walked around a mall and located a place to eat a frozen yogurt for lunch.
That sounds simple. But as I only make out shapes and signs in a fuzzy haze, it was challenging to do so on my own.
After that, I got directions and continued walking until I found an ATM, where I withdrew some cash.
That also sounds simple and it was. Eluding the traffic was a bit trickier.
This is the middle of an extended period of medical visits for me, as we try to address chronic problems that could not be treated during the worst of the lockdown. That's because they were all considered "non-essential."
Thus, they became worse. There are many more appointments to come, according to Google Calendar, and hopefully, many more opportunities to regain simple functions that have been lying dormant.
For now, it's baby steps, one at a time.
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