Harris Takes Lead in the Tar Heel State!
Historic one-month turnaround gives democracy a fighting chance against the Republican Party's Trump-led authoritarian movement
Guess who just took the lead IN NORTH CAROLINA?
All eyes on you, Tar Heel state!
In a just-released SurveyUSA poll sponsored by High Point University, the Harris/Walz ticket has nosed in front of Trump/Vance (among registered voters).
Likewise, in 538’s updated polling averages, Harris has just today moved into the lead in North Carolina:
Just 75 DAYS until Election Day!
This is surely one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history.
Is that something that gets said a lot? Like, every four years, for decades now?
Yes.
But that does not absolve us of the responsibility of evaluating the accuracy of the statement for ourselves. Just because something is said a lot does not necessarily increase or decrease the truth of the statement.
The conformist reflexively agrees.
The contrarian reflexively disputes.
The independent thinker evaluates—using context, history, nuance, complexity, humility, ambiguity, and “multiple-things-can-be-true-at-once” as guides to stay fluid yet rooted.
Y’all know that We Need a Wave to Win By a Whisker, right?
And the stakes couldn’t be huge-er…
For Abortion Rights, Reproductive Freedom, and Reproductive Justice.
For the planet and the climate—for nature, the biosphere, and the Mass Extinction Crisis.
For Democracy, the Rule of Law, and the future of free and fair elections (i.e. the Democratic Vision and On-going Experiment that is the United States itself. The Republican Party wants to end that. Seriously.)
In the place of democracy and free-and-fair elections, for the last nine years, the Republican Party has been attempting to soft launch fascism, autocracy, and neo-nazism.
(Nobody likes an I-Told-You-So guy, so I’ll just quickly mention that 15 years ago I coined the term, the Ruthlessness Gap, to identify, name, and raise awareness about a concerning and increasing RightWingRepublican ruthlessness, extremism, and contempt for norms and laws. At the time, the Obama administration, I predicted that this “Ruthlessness Gap” would emerge as the most significant new dynamic in U.S. politics. Fifteen years after I made that prediction/observation, the Republican Party is collectively and officially trying to end U.S. democracy and install Donald Trump as a dictator.)
As unbelievable as it still feels to say it, one of the Two Major Parties in one of the world’s most powerful nations is openly proposing and practicing a dangerous and gleeful Politics of Violence, Threats, Intimidation, Dictatorship, Endless Lies, Racism, Theocracy, and Misogyny.
That’s what Charlottesville was.
That’s what the Jan. 6 Insurrection was.
That’s who J. D. Vance is.
If we don’t RUN THRU THE TAPE for these next 75 days, we could have Peter Thiel’s Puppet a heartbeat away from the presidency for four long years.
We could have Trump appointing TWO Bannon-pilled MAGA fanatics to the Supreme Court to replace resigning justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Given the off-the-rails rulings of the Court in its most recent terms, it is truly hard to convey, predict, or even imagine the transformation of law, politics, society, and daily life that could potentially result from that kind of total Right-Wing Extremist takeover of the current corrupt, MAGA-controlled U.S. Supreme Court.
Likewise with a potential President J. D. Vance.
NOVEMBER 5 is THE ONE DAY that we OFFICIALLY get to respond in a UNIFIED way.
We need some landslides, y’all, up and down the ballot, to Defeat Republican Fascism.
It cannot be overemphasized that the Democrats must WIN THE SENATE to guarantee their (and our) constitutional right for a Democratic president to be able to fill Supreme Court vacancies during her term in office.
Because of the Ruthlessness Gap, we now require a Democratic majority in the Senate to even begin the long, slow work of prying near-total power from an unhinged Republican-controlled Supreme Court that has overturned Roe v. Wade, overturned the Voting Rights Act, banned affirmative action, legalized bribery, and normalized blatant corruption by the Court’s own Republican justices.
The Supreme Court also, incomprehensibly, took it upon itself to re-write the United States government, the Constitution, and the powers of, and limitations on, the president.
First, the Court claimed authority over *every* government agency decision and regulation, arrogating unprecedented power to courts and judges with no relevant expertise, but perhaps with political and ideological fixations, or billionaire-funded priorities.
Then, to top it off, the SCOTUS crafted a special, Get-Out-of-Jail-Free decision for their boy, Donald Trump, granting unprecedented, unconstitutional legal immunity (for “official acts” aka, ‘whatever-we-want-it-to-mean,’ depending on whether the president is a Democrat or Republican at the time.)
Seriously.
Anyone who thinks this recent Trump-Is-Ahead-in-the-Polls Supreme Court decision, giving extinction-event-level new Powers and IMMUNITY to the “office of the president”…
… anyone who thinks the Supreme Court will apply that equally to a Democratic president must have been bunkmates with Rip Van Winkle.
Hell, the current MAGA Supreme Court won’t even let Dem presidents have the legislation they get passed.
The Roberts Court has invented a completely made-up, bullshit, fancifully fabricated “Major Questions doctrine” to enforce a kind of autocratic line-item veto on legislation and executive actions it would prefer not exist.
But, hey, checks-and-balances, the separation of powers, and three co-equal branches of government had a good run, did they not?
***
OK… the final night of the Democratic National Convention is starting… time to tune in, ramp up, and turn down for what.
WE HAVE 75 DAYS TO ORGANIZE A WAVE that puts Trumpism and this current authoritarian expression of the Republican Party in the dustbin of history.
God grant that we will have the wisdom to do it before it is too late. The alternative is too dangerous and terrible to contemplate.
We’ve got this. Stay focused.