With every tick, the election clock feels like dread closing in on Americans.

A recent Forbes Health survey shows that over 60% of participants consider their mental health to be under siege, grappling with everything from mild anxiety to deep distress as the political circus intensifies. A LifeStance Health survey backs this up, revealing that a staggering 79% of Americans feel anxious about the upcoming presidential election, exposing a nationwide mental health crisis fueled by political chaos. Younger generations are taking the hardest hit, with nearly two-thirds of Gen Z and millennials feeling serious stress. Many are changing their social media habits and hitting pause on major life decisions.

There’s even a text hotline to help stressed-out voters cope. According to the American Psychological Association, politics has become a significant source of chronic stress, significantly impacting our physical and mental health—and it’s only getting worse.

A future we never wanted is being forced on us. Just like a self-driving car follows a programmer’s instructions, we find ourselves without real control.

This election has devolved into a nightmare of fierce partisanship, marked by assassination attempts, courtroom battles, and the threat of prolonged battles over a contested outcome, even possible violence. Social media feuds, strained family dinners, and alienated neighbors only make it worse. The left warns about “fascism” and “the last free election,” while the right screams about “woke elites” and a “Communist takeover.”

Staying politically engaged feels like swallowing broken glass. How did we get here?

While it’s undeniable that the 21st century has handed us a parade of dystopian delights—9/11, the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic—leaving ordinary folks feeling trampled, betrayed, and thoroughly disempowered by the responses—the truth is, the rabbit hole goes much deeper.

Take, for instance, a little nugget you won’t hear most politicians mention—America has been slipping into the mold of a developing nation for quite a while now. For decades, we’ve seen something emerge in place of the more egalitarian, hopeful America we once knew, and it’s not a Communist or fascist America (yet). It’s a Third World America: a country divided not by party membership, but by economic realities. Noted economist Peter Temin has shown that U.S. citizens now live in two distinct sectors: roughly 80% in the low-wage sector and about 20% in the affluent sector.

People get sorted not so much into red and blue worlds but into different financial systems, living conditions, and educational opportunities. When they get sick, deal with the law, travel—you name it—their experiences are like night and day. They exist in separate spheres. Pretty much the only way for someone in the low-wage sector to break into the affluent one is through a top-notch education—but that path is riddled with obstacles, even if you can find the money.

For most, escape is a distant dream.

The well-educated affluent sector makes decisions, sets the agenda, while the rest are just trying to survive—and getting sicker and dying younger. One cohort makes moves, while the other is caught in the aftermath.

As a rule, here’s what usually happens when a country splits into a dual economy:

• The low-wage sector has hardly any say in public policy.
• The high-income sector keeps wages down in the low-wage area to secure cheap labor for their businesses.
• Social control is used to keep low-wage workers from pushing back against policies that favor the wealthy.
• The main goal for the richest in the high-income sector is to cut taxes.
• Social and economic mobility become rarer.

Does any of this sound familiar? Sure, social media magnifies divisions among Americans, but interestingly, ordinary people within the Republican and Democratic parties aren’t so very far apart in the basic things they want, never mind what Fox or MSNBC tells you.

• Across party lines, the majority of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy and big corporations.
• Most Americans want to increase Social Security benefits and oppose cuts.
• The majority favor higher taxes on the wealthy to keep Social Security robust.
• Most U.S. adults think the federal government should guarantee healthcare coverage for everyone. The majority favor single-payer—a single government program for healthcare.
• A bipartisan majority of voters want to expand Medicare to cover long-term, in-home care services.

And on it goes. Americans see very little real action from politicians in either party on these issues. In fact, they often see the opposite. Misleading rhetoric won’t make their concerns vanish.

The electorate is not stupid. Most Americans know perfectly well that their wages have not kept up with inflation, no matter how politicians try to spin it. They see the ever-rising costs of essential goods—keeping a roof over their heads, seeing a doctor, and going to college. They realize that the rich are profiting off their hard work and refusing to contribute their fair share in taxes. Black men, in particular, are worse off than they were before the pandemic—and people wonder why they aren’t supporting the status quo as they once did.

Americans sense the gap between the rich and poor is wider now than it used to be, and they are correct. No politician can erase the following facts: Over the past 40 years, the richest 1% of Americans have experienced the fastest income growth. From 1979 to 2021, the average income of the top 0.01%—about 12,000 households—grew nearly 27 times faster than that of the bottom 20%. By 2021, the top 1% earned, on average, 139 times more than the bottom 20%. Income inequality has reached extreme levels. The pie is being gobbled up by the rich, leaving miserable slivers for hard-working people.

The U.S. income divide wasn’t always this extreme. In the early 1900s, social movements and progressive policies fought Gilded Age inequality, advocating for fair taxes and unions. The New Deal provided crucial support for ordinary people, including social security and labor protections. But those efforts have faded since the 70s—or been crushed—deepening inequality and leading to serious social, health, and political consequences that Americans now recognize.

In theory, democracy is supposed to adapt to the needs of the people, ready to handle crises and promote peaceful political change. But how’s that working out? With wealth concentrated as it is and the rich able to manipulate the political system, not very well.

Capitalism promised abundance but left us with long hours, workplace surveillance, insecure jobs, and little control. Rather than delivering prosperity, it’s given rise to increasingly predatory entities that undermine the businesses we depend on and reduce us to sitting ducks—like private equity—an industry that lines the pockets of politicians from both parties while gaining control over everything from emergency rooms and nursing homes to classrooms and housing markets. We’re getting looted, but the private equity industry often operates behind the scenes, making it difficult to pinpoint why many businesses are delivering subpar services and taking advantage of consumers.

We know we’re being preyed upon, underpaid, and our work often strips us of our humanity. With scant parental leave and unaffordable childcare, it’s no surprise many are hesitant about having families. This year, 30% of 18-34-year-olds are unsure about having kids. Elon Musk giving away his sperm won’t change that.

Neoliberalism—where the market rules all—has crushed us by prioritizing profit over well-being, widening inequality, and dismantling social safety nets. As public services get privatized and deregulated, the basics we need to live become harder to access. This focus on market solutions leads to job insecurity, with workers facing unstable jobs and stagnant wages while the rich keep getting richer. Both Republicans and Democrats have jumped on the neoliberal bandwagon since the late 20th century. Conservatives were the initial champions, but many liberals jumped aboard, resulting in a bipartisan push for globalization, trade deals, and welfare reform that has entrenched neoliberal principles across the board.

The result is that with paths blocked to economic security, social status, and political influence, people feel loneliness, rage, and resignation—or all of the above. A future we never wanted is being forced on us. Just like a self-driving car follows a programmer’s instructions, we find ourselves without real control. We’re not in the driver’s seat—and we know it.

Politicians, fully aware of the deep alienation out there, spin narratives that frame policies benefiting the wealthy as vital for efficiency and economic growth, masking their true motives with fake promises of individual success that distract us from the widening wealth gap and completely ignore our collective well-being.

Meanwhile, in a world plagued by war, climate change, disease, and the chaos of demagoguery, the familiar is fading. The new—like advancements in AI—feels increasingly bewildering and downright frightening.

German sociologist Max Weber offers valuable insight into the psychic depths of our current dynamics, highlighting how rationalization distorts human behavior and shifts power. In a rationalized world, logic and efficiency overshadow community, family, and empathy. As these connections fade, relationships turn transactional, pushing us to prioritize personal success over collective well-being. This focus on efficiency leaves us feeling isolated in a society that values numbers over genuine experiences. We’re told this is progress, but it often feels instinctively wrong: We become cogs in a machine, disconnected from the meaning of our actions. Our emotional and ethical lives shrink, leading to disillusionment with our social and political worlds.

Weber warned that this shift could eat away at the trust and morals needed for good governance, anticipating that charismatic leaders would rise to challenge the lifeless norms created by elites. We find ourselves in a deep crisis in the ways we understand ourselves and relate to others and our circumstances.

Publisher Judith Gurewich, a sociologist and practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst, points out that our old tactics for pretending things are different no longer work. She argues that the work of Weber can shift our focus from individual experiences to a broader collective understanding.

Gurewich suggests that part of the anxiety of the electorate “comes from the fact that the stupidity of their leaders is so much greater than their own.” Plus, the current election has magnified feelings of helplessness. “All is exposed,” she points out. “We are completely at the mercy of some play of dice. It doesn’t matter where they land: It’s going to be bad or it’s going to be horrible, and people feel powerless to do anything. They can go in the street as much as they want, but they feel that nothing is changing. So there is a sense of implacable logic.”

We find ourselves in a bewildering, Kafkaesque world where words no longer seem to matter. Gurewich highlights “Verstehen,” a key concept from Weber that focuses on understanding social actions by grasping people’s motivations and meanings.

“Weber argued that if you give people a reason to suffer—one that is logical and meaningful—they will accept that suffering. He compared this to different types of religions, where people might refrain from eating because there’s a story behind it that makes sense. For instance, they may believe they must endure hunger for the salvation of their souls. The narratives people hold onto provide meaning in their lives, even if suffering is part of the equation. But current politics offers no narratives to make the suffering meaningful to anyone. Capitalism doesn’t even have to justify itself anymore.”

This may be why beyond the anxiety, a disillusionment has spread over the political processes—a dangerous environment where people become apathetic or, conversely, radicalized, seeking out alternative movements or leaders who promise change without addressing the underlying issues. Politicians can tap into this vulnerability, stoking fear and division to gain support, while genuine concerns get sidelined. Ultimately, the erosion of meaning in suffering can destabilize the political landscape, making it ripe for populism, authoritarianism, or other disruptive forces that thrive on discontent and chaos.

So here we are, looking over a political abyss, and it’s clear that this is about more than just electoral anxiety; we’re facing a crisis of meaning. Voters are fed up with a system that churns out candidates who offer little more than empty slogans and theatrical performances. The pain of disconnection—between our lived experiences and the hollow narratives spun by our leaders—leaves us disenchanted, lacking meaningful stories to anchor us, looking for something real.

If we really want to reclaim our democracy, we need leaders who not only grasp the depth of our suffering but also present a vision that speaks to our shared humanity. Otherwise, we’re just going to be stuck as passive spectators in a political theater that’s lost the plot and doesn’t serve us anymore.

Over four thousand Pennsylvania residents who live overseas just had their right to vote challenged by a group using data from a billionaire-funded outfit. As Sam Levine wrote for The Guardian:

“So far officials in Bucks, Lancaster, Lehigh, York, Cumberland, Dauphin, Beaver, Centre, and Lycoming county have all received challenges, said Andy Hoover, an ACLU spokesman.”

Many of America’s rightwing/neofascist billionaires don’t want you to vote. And they’ve funded extraordinary efforts across multiple states to put that desire into law.

Reporter Greg Palast has been busy this year documenting efforts by Georgia Republicans to hang onto control of their state by preventing Democrats from voting. Most recently, they’ve passed a law that allows any individual in Georgia to challenge the right of a virtually unlimited number of people to vote.

As a result, as Palast documents in his new movie (produced by Martin Sheen and George DiCaprio, and narrated by Rosario Dawson) Vigilantes, Inc. America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, thousands of Georgia citizens trying to vote today will discovered they’re no longer registered.

Most will think it’s just them, not realizing it’s part of a massive, national effort by Republicans and the billionaires who fund them to prevent Democrats from voting.

“Carry Smith wrote her PhD thesis on the Voting Rights Act and challenges to the right to vote in Georgia,” writes Palast.

“Now dig this: Smith, the expert on challenges to voting rights, lost her vote because a Republican vigilante challenged her registration—along with 900 other Savannah voters—until she was forced to make an appearance proving her right to vote at a meeting of the Chatham County (Savannah) elections board.

“Half of the others challenged still lost their vote in this do-or-die battleground.

“Adrian Consonery Jr. was also challenged, in this case, by officials in Cobb County, Georgia. The elections officers claimed that the signature on his drivers license ‘didn’t match’ the signature on his ballot. Were these local pols forgery specialists? No, they were Republicans. No problem, they told Consonery, a student in the middle of his finals; all he had to do was drive to their offices, eight hours away, and re-sign his ballot.

“Why were Smith and Consonery targeted? At this point in the Ugliest Election in Memory, you won’t be shocked to learn that Consonery is Black and Smith is of Cherokee heritage. (I’ve reported that America’s Tribal members are the number one target of vote suppression tactics.)

“But who knows the motivation of the Savannah vigilante Helen Strahl—who used a Georgia ‘challenge’ statute last deployed in 1946 by the Ku Klux Klan. I tried to speak to Strahl, the self-appointed vote-fraud hunter who attacked Smith and 900 others in this majority African-American city. Was it racism? Or was it a purely a partisan attack on voters expected to vote for Kamala Harris.”

In a few small ways I helped Greg put this movie together but, even after writing an entire book about Republican efforts to block Democrats from voting (The Hidden History of the War on Voting), I was shocked by what he discovered.

The last time there was a concerted effort like this to challenge individual Americans’ right to vote was in 1946. It was done by the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia, running through a front group they started called Vigilantes, Inc. Now they’re back with a vengance, although they’ve traded in the sheets and hoods for law degrees and billionaire funding.

Just between 2017 and 2019, Brian Kemp and friends removed at least 538,485 people from the voting rolls in Georgia, ensuring that he could beat Stacey Abrams in the race for governor by around 50,000 votes.

And now, under this new revival of an old Klan law, the people profiled in Palast’s new movie have challenged tens of thousands more. All in the name of stopping a “voter fraud epidemic” that isn’t happening now, never has happened, and never will happen.

Three years ago, Ari Berman and Nick Sergey detailed for Mother Jones magazine how the billionaire-funded Heritage Action for America helped draft voter suppression legislation that’s now law in dozens of states, with a particular target on the swing states.

Heritage spent a small fortune of its billionaire’s money in “Arizona, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Texas, and Wisconsin” to pass and defend legislation making it harder for students, low-income people, Blacks, Hispanics, and seniors to vote while making it easier for partisans to challenge the right of people to vote or have their vote counted. As Berman and Sergey note:

“Every Tuesday, the group leads a call with right-wing advocacy groups like the Susan B. Anthony List, Tea Party Patriots, and FreedomWorks to coordinate these efforts at the highest levels of the conservative movement. ‘We literally give marching orders for the week ahead,’ [Heritage Action Executive Director Jessica] Anderson said. ‘All so we’re singing from the same song sheet of the goals for that week and where the state [voter suppression] bills are across the country.’”

Kemp, with billionaire backing, won his election against Stacey Abrams by 54,723 votes, a fraction of the number of Black people he’d just purged from the rolls.

In the two years leading up to 2020, Kemp’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger (pronounced Raff-ens-Purger), purged another massive 309,000 voters from the rolls, so Palast hired the same company Amazon uses to confirm addresses to check the list: 198,351 were wrongly purged.

Palast, along with the Georgia ACLU, Black Voters Matter Fund, and the Georgia NAACP, were successful in getting about half of them put back on the rolls, which is why Joe Biden won that state by a mere, as Trump said, “11,780 votes.”

These purges have since spread out of Georgia and are now — with major billionaire funding — accelerating across the country. Keep in mind that, as NPR’s Domenico Montanaro explained:

“Just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College."

Palast did a similar analysis in 2020 in then-GOP-controlled Wisconsin where 135,000 voters were about to be removed before the election.

Using that Amazon contractor’s name-by-name analysis, he found that about a third of the list, “almost entirely Black people in Milwaukee and students in Madison,” were on the purge list incorrectly. Luckily, the Palast Investigative Fund and Black Voters Matter filed that information with a bipartisan elections commission and stopped the billionaire’s purge so Biden was able to win that state by about 10,000 votes.

“Now,” Palast told me, “we have at least 20 states using this same purge system.”

Most recently, Republican billionaires rolled out a new strategy to get around legal challenges to Red states purging millions of voters: voter vigilantes.

While most states allow whistleblower citizens to challenge the vote of an individual they know and believe is voting illegally, Georgia’s SB202 (written with help from the billionaires who fund Heritage) was the first law in the country since the 1940s to allow “unlimited” challenges to voters by people who aren’t government officials.

The benefit of this system is that states are banned by law from purging people via “list maintenance” within 90 days of an election, but the Supreme Court just ruled that a citizen vigilante can submit voter purge lists right up to and on election day, when it’s far too late for purged voters to re-register and vote.

“In 2022, 149,000 voters were challenged in Georgia,” Palast told me, “not by the government, but by vigilante vote fraud hunters using specious data. There have been two federal court rulings thus far that have allowed this to continue, so it’s now spreading to other states.”

Palast told me about one Georgian, Marjorie Taylor Greene ally Pam Reardon, who challenged 32,000 voters, heavily focused on Black people and college students, using a list from the group True The Vote, who produced the discredited movie 2000 Mules (premiered at Mar-a-Lago by Trump himself) that falsely claimed millions of votes were “stuffed” into drop boxes by mostly Black people across the nation.

Another voter vigilante Palast identified, Chairman of the Ft. Benning area GOP Alton Russell, challenged over 4,000 voters, “capturing a substantial number of Black soldiers.” Russell sees himself as a vigilante, wearing Georgia native Doc Holliday style clothes with a loaded six-shooter on his hip.

The Palast Investigative Fund, Black Voters Matter, Georgia NAACP, and Georgia ACLU found that not one single voter challenged by Reardon, Russell, or any of the other vigilantes who challenged hundreds to thousands of Georgia voters, was a fraudulent voter. They were able to stop the Reardon purge, but Russell’s challenge was sustained and all 4,000-plus were removed from the rolls.

This, Palast told me, “is what election attorney Mark Elias calls the ‘Big new unseen threat.’” And there’s virtually no coverage of this in any of our nation’s mainstream media.

Palast notes:

“Georgia and Texas are not red states: if people were allowed to vote they’d be Blue states.
“Their brand of voter vigilantism has now legally spread to Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. They’re now mass challenging literally hundreds of thousands of voters, and True The Vote has put out the call to get 100,000 volunteers to submit these challenges. They’re probably the most effective vote suppression organization since the Ku Klux Klan.”

Raising the stakes, courts approved the Georgia legislature’s plan to require new voters to prove their citizenship when registering to vote, an effort that Mike Johnson tried unsuccessfully to take national earlier this year.

That billionaire-funded effort will hit married women particularly hard, as the National Organization for Women (NOW) details in a report:

“According to the Brennan Center for Justice, one third of all women have citizenship documents that do not identically match their current names primarily because of name changes at marriage. Roughly 90 percent of women who marry adopt their husband’s last name.
“That means that roughly 90 percent of married female voters have a different name on their ID than the one on their birth certificate. An estimated 34 percent of women could be turned away from the polls unless they have precisely the right documents.”

This hits Black women even harder than white women, and, because Black women have been the key to both the Obama and Biden presidencies, this is a reality not lost on Republicans. Particularly in a country and era where most elections are decided by one or two or three points.

None of these games Republicans are playing would be legal if we had an absolute right to vote or if the NVRA were enforced. Unfortunately, billionaire-supported Republicans on the Supreme Court have repeatedly ignored it, even when referenced in voting rights lawsuits.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, Red State governors can radically cut back on the number of polling places and voting machines so that working class people are forced to stand in line for five, six, in some cases in 2022 11 hours to vote.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, legislators in Georgia made it a crime to give a bottle of water or a slice of pizza to somebody they have forced to stand in line for 11 hours to vote.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, about 40 million registered voters nationwide have been removed from the voting rolls since 2014, so when they show up to vote they are given “provisional ballots” that, in Red States, are often never counted unless there is a lawsuit.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, back in the 1960s William Rehnquist helped organize “Operation Eagle Eye” in Arizona to pull together a volunteer army of large and often uniformed white men to challenge Black, Hispanic, and Native American voters at the polls. It was so successful it kicked off Rehnquist’s political career, taking him all the way to Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Republican armed vigilantes have returned, surrounding Arizona ballot drop boxes challenging Hispanic voters.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis was able to prevent almost a million mostly Black Florida citizens from voting if they owed fines or fees to the government.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, Louis DeJoy could slow down the mail just in time for the election and not face any legal consequences.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, in 2000 then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush threw over 90,000 African Americans off the voting rolls, supposedly felons barred from voting, just before the election that Jeb’s brother George “won” in Florida by 537 votes. Yet, not a single one of those Black voters was, Palast and the BBC found, a convicted felon.

—Because we don’t have a right to vote, the Supreme Court told the Republican governor of Ohio — and now all governors — that he could remove millions of big city registered voters from the rolls because they hadn’t voted in the previous election and/or didn’t mail back a postcard.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, Red State legislators have been able to force through laws requiring citizens to jump through extraordinary hoops like getting IDs they normally wouldn’t need or use, just to vote.

— Because we don’t have a right to vote, Republicans in multiple states are making it extremely difficult to vote by mail or drop off your ballot at a convenient dropbox.

The press says the “Big Lie” is that the election of 2020 was stolen from Trump, but the real Big Lie — that was amplified by billionaire Trump and toady Johnson at their press conference earlier this year at Mar-a-Lago — is that non-citizens vote illegally and therefore all these voter purges and other challenges are necessary.

While it requires lawful due process — your day in court — to take away your gun, Red state governors and secretaries of state can now take away your vote without even telling you.

If Democrats can hold the Senate and White House and take back the House, the first order of business next January — along with blocking billionaire and corporate money from our elections — must be to pass legislation explicitly granting a legal right for average people to vote.

Today’s the last day to beat back this neofascist billionaires’ scheme: Vote!

There’s a dirty Trump trick you need to look out for. He used it in 2020 to try to overturn the election, and he’s going to do it again. But it doesn’t work if you know it’s coming.

Watch out for Trump to exploit something elections experts call the “red mirage” to prematurely declare victory before all the votes are counted.

You see, in almost every election, Republicans appear to take an early lead. That’s the red mirage. Then that lead gets smaller throughout the night, which is called the “blue shift.”

This happens because Republican votes tend to be counted before Democratic votes.

Trump’s nonsense claim that the votes counted earlier in the night were more legitimate than those counted later became the underpinning of his entire Big Lie, culminating in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

It’s not magic. Votes are counted by precinct, and Democrats tend to live in more densely populated, urban precincts, while Republicans tend to live in more sparsely populated, rural ones. It just takes longer to count the votes in a precinct with a lot of people than in a precinct with fewer people.

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In Georgia, for example, there are more than 300 times as many people living in Fulton County as in deep-red Glascock County. If Fulton County has 300 times as many ballots to count as Glascock, obviously Glascock is going to finish counting first.

In 2020, when numbers came in from counties like Glascock first, it made it look like Trump was leading in Georgia, when he really was not. It was a red mirage.

Also, Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, and mail-in votes take longer to count.

Anyone who follows elections knows about the red mirage and blue shift, as the former political director of Fox News, Chris Stirewalt, has testified: “In every election, and certainly a national election, you expect to see the Republican with a lead, but it’s not really a lead.”

But in 2020, Trump pretended that the blue shift was surprising and suspicious. He said: “We were winning in all the key locations by a lot, actually. And then our number started miraculously getting whittled away in secret.”

There was nothing miraculous or secret about it. But it’s easy to see why people who don’t know about the red mirage could be tricked into thinking that something unusual had happened.

According to Trump ally Steve Bannon, that’s exactly what Trump was counting on: “What Trump’s going to do, is just declare victory, right?” Bannon said before the 2020 election.

“But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner. He’s just going to say he’s the winner. The Democrats — more of our people vote early that count. Theirs vote in the mail. And so they’re gonna have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s gonna take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”

Bannon said this in October of 2020, before the election. And this is exactly what Trump did on election night.

Not incidentally, Bannon is advising Trump to do the same thing again tonight.

As Trump said on Election Day 2020: “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” Wrong.

Trump’s nonsense claim that the votes counted earlier in the night were more legitimate than those counted later became the underpinning of his entire Big Lie, culminating in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

It looks as if the 2024 election will be close. Early tonight, Trump is likely to appear to be ahead and again use that early lead to falsely claim victory.

Mirages can be confusing, but if you know what they are, you won’t be fooled by them.

Please help spread the word about the red mirage so people know what to expect tonight.

It is both complicated and simple.

Liberation is not voting. Voting is a tool. Liberation is the ability to lawfully declare and defend the full humanity of everyone. This election is not about liberation. No single election can or ever will be. This election is about defense and blocking the most immediate threat to our survival so our social movements can continue to struggle toward winning everything our people need to live good lives.

In 2020 when our coalition of social movements defeated former U.S. President Donald Trump, we not only blocked his second term, but we made room for what immediately followed. When President Joe Biden took office in 202, his day one executive orders included rescinding Trump's Muslim ban, canceling construction on the Keystone pipeline, implementing and extending moratoria on deportations and evictions, rejoining the Paris climate agreement, and firing the anti-union lawyer Trump appointed as the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. And beyond that, social movements were able to pressure Biden to forgive 175 billion dollars in student loan debt. It mattered then and it matters now who will be president. Not to mention the actual progressive policies that cities and states have been able to pass during this period. Our movements will be better positioned to win more things if we defeat Trump.

And that’s not the lesser of two evils; it’s a strategy. If the coalition to defeat Trump and elect Harris wins, that means we are less likely to lose more Supreme Court justice seats, which means legally we won’t be less human under the eyes of the law.

I'm saying I'm voting for Kamala Harris because all of what Trump represents and will deliver is bad for our movement.

Y'all, fascism has a definition. Fundamentally, fascism is a far-right authoritarian political movement aimed at controlling government. We don't currently live under fascism, corporate Democrats are neoliberal and not liberatory but they're not actually fascists. Trump and MAGA Republicans are fascists because they lie about the legitimacy of elections that they don’t win and have shown they will attempt coups and set fires to ballot boxes and threaten election workers. Trump and MAGA Republicans know their policies are devastating for everyone except billionaires and that their policies don’t actually have the support of the majority of people, so they can’t actually control government without violence - i.e., if they allow democracy to continue. They understand that what our social movements have won is an obstacle to implementing the policies they want.

So basically, I'm saying I'm voting for Kamala Harris because all of what Trump represents and will deliver is bad for our movement. Having a fascist president will destroy (astronomically) more lives than having a neoliberal capitalist president. And because I made a lifetime commitment to ensure that our people are recognized as full humans, I have developed politically to not abandon options that get us closer to or push us away from that commitment. Because my goal is liberation, like it is for so many of you, and because we simply do not (yet) have the political power to influence (let alone make) liberatory decisions/policies/laws (in perpetuity), I’ve come to the conclusion (because preserving life is always my immediate goal and liberation is my north star), that even when the options are unsavory (which is not new, they have always been at the presidential level), a choice to take action within the political system we all live in, must be made.

It is complicated. And it is simple.

Politically, we are and have been in the realm of strategies vs. strategies. Our opposition: capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist goal since 1865 is to strip away every hard-fought and strategically won right from our freedom movement—like the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. More recently, these forces have been joined by evangelical Christans in repealing Roe v. Wade. And striking key provisions from the Voting Rights Act. That’s their overarching strategy. That’s the great America our opposition wants. And it is complicated and it is simple. And for 159 years our freedom movement has been utilizing our own (one of many, I might add) strategy to fight back. Yes, elections and voting. There are millions of people who now have the right to vote, not because it was given, but because it was a strategy that won. A political campaign that countless numbers of people across many southern states, throughout multiple decades, dedicated innumerable hours to. Because our ancestors in political struggle understood 159 years ago that elections and voting are a brilliant vehicle to use as we move towards our ultimate goal of liberation.

Y’all. It is complicated. And it is simple. They are both imperialist. One a fascist imperialist and the other a capitalist imperialist. And there is an ocean of difference between the two.

And we might be in the fourth quarter of humanity. I am not being alarmist or hyperbolic when I say this. We have limited time to decrease carbon emissions such that the planet doesn't reach a climate "tipping point" from which humanity cannot recover. We can't lose another four years, and we may lose way, way more than four years, because every time Republicans gain power, they change the rules of the game in order to move closer to one-party, minority rule that can't be challenged through democratic channels (fascism). So we have to be able to shift climate policy—but we're potentially headed into a political reality where everyday people won't be able to impact any policies.

It isn’t true that every time when we fight, we win, but when we don’t fight, we’ll definitely lose.

Much significance will happen at the end of Election Day, and a countdown will begin at 11:00 p.m. PDT on November 5th. While everyone’s attention will be on who our next president will be, the U.S. The Air Force will test-launch an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile with a dummy hydrogen bomb on the tip from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The missile will cross the Pacific Ocean and 22 minutes later crash into the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Air Force does this several times a year. The launches are always at night while Americans are sleeping.

This is what nightmares are made of—between 1946 and 1958 the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, and the result is that the Marshallese people have lost their pristine environment and face serious health problems. Our environment is threatened here as well. Not only did the indigenous Chumash people lose their sacred land to Vandenberg Air Force Base, but also America’s Heartland presently has around 400 ICBMs stored in underground silos equipped with nuclear warheads that are ready to launch at a hair trigger’s notice. Named “MinuteMen III,” after Revolutionary War soldiers who could reload and shoot a gun in less than a minute, ICBMs not only put Americans at risk of accident, but they put all life on earth in danger.

ICBMs are not viable for national defense. They are a relic of a bygone era having been invented by Nazi Germany, and their presence only escalates the risk of nuclear accidents or conflicts. A single launch could lead to a nuclear exchange that would annihilate cities, contaminate the environment, and cause irreversible harm to our planet’s ecosystem. Once an ICBM is launched, it cannot be recalled. I don’t want a nuclear strike or accident to happen. We can change course now, and our first step is to decommission the ICBM program also because it is a staggering financial burden to maintain.

Nuclear weapons only provide the terrifying threat of annihilation, either by command or by accident. Nuclear weapons and ICBMs only make the world less safe and strip us of security.

The U.S. plans to spend over $1.2 trillion on nuclear modernization over the next 30 years, which means new, larger nuclear bombs and new, larger ICBMs called Sentinels that will need to be tested. This massive investment in outdated technology diverts critical funds away from humanitarian needs like healthcare, education, and healing climate change—issues that directly impact our quality of life, and our children’s future.

I teach 4th and 5th graders Creative Writing. I adore children’s imaginations, but when my students were given the assignment to write about something important to them, they wrote lines that broke my heart. This is a wake-up call for us adults to face the reality we have made for our children.

“Such a shame, a perfectly good planet, trashed.” Claire, age 9.

“What would you think about no nature in the world? No trees, no butterflies, no birds or bunnies at all! Most important of all, no people. There would be no technology, no schools, no history, no entertainment; everything we have worked for would be wasted. What would you think about a beautiful world that basically had nothing? I think I would absolutely hate it.,” Brynn, age 9.

Other than destruction caused by industrial global warming and by war, which the children are all-too aware of, this child does not know what actually could turn nature and civilization to nothing in a matter of minutes; she doesn’t know about “nuclear winter” or how vulnerable we are to a nuclear accident. Most people don’t.

The claim is that nuclear weapons are deterrents, but it is diplomacy that creates alliances and peace. Nuclear weapons only provide the terrifying threat of annihilation, either by command or by accident. Nuclear weapons and ICBMs only make the world less safe and strip us of security.

As the warring ruling class seems to be pushing for nuclear brinkmanship, on this election night let us not be distracted. By decommissioning ICBMs, the U.S. could lead the world in reducing the nuclear threat and encourage other nations to do the same. For the sake of our health, environment, and the safety of future generations, it’s time to scrap the ICBM program. We owe it to our children to invest in a future that prioritizes peace and sustainability over destruction.

As it is we the people who possess the right of self-determination, we must confront the material reality of our homeland and face what it will take to protect it. Do we have the courage to change our country for the better and ensure our futures? Yes we do, and now is the time to take action.

“Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress,” said Daniel Ellsberg, U.S. military analyst, economist, and author of "The Doomsday Machine."

May we cancel this nightmare weapons program for once and for all and give our children the security that they deserve.

Tell Congress: Cancel Sentinel Missile Program—More Than 700 Scientists Agree: https://secure.ucsusa.org/a/2024-cancel-sentinel-letter

Learn more about the dangers of ICBMS and get involved. https://defusenuclearwar.org/eliminate-icbms/

They’ve withstood a global pandemic, power outages and even swarms of bees to help oversee one of the most accurate election processes in the world.

But nothing has presented more of a threat to millions of U.S. election workers and volunteers than the scourge of disinformation coursing across social networks in 2024. Complicating matters further is the small handful of bad actors who seem determined to transform these online lies into acts of violence at the polls and during the immediate aftermath.

These include lies about noncitizen voters that some of the most powerful online influencers are spreading, including Bad Actor Number One — X owner and far-right propagandist Elon Musk. Last week, he marked his second anniversary at the platform’s helm by continuing to boost the false claim that Democrats were transporting hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants into battleground states to skew the vote toward the party's candidates.

Again, none of this is true. “Election experts agree that noncitizens voting in federal elections is virtually nonexistent” reports Issue One, a national pro-democracy group that works to strengthen and defend the country’s election systems.

The money driving the disinformation

In its most recent report, Issue One revealed some of the dark web of secretive donors supporting the spread of such election disinformation. It’s a rogues gallery of former Trump administration officials with extensive ties to Project 2025, the far-right effort to dismantle U.S. democracy—and the system of checks and balances at its core—and replace it with an unconstitutional authoritarian regime.

Musk himself is a major source of support for the disinformation cabal. He has funneled tens of billions of dollars into efforts to remake U.S. politics in his image. In 2022, Musk spent $44 billion to take control of Twitter (now X), and has spent tens of millions more in an apparently illegal effort to pay for votes this year in Pennsylvania.

Last week, Wired’s Vittoria Elliott revealed Musk as the money (more than $100 million and counting) behind a political action committee created to compile and amplify false reports of election fraud—and use these lies to disrupt the vote count. Elliott’s reporting links Musk’s effort with the disinformation-spewing “Election Integrity Network” that Issue One exposed.

Shelter from the storm

In the eye of this tornado of lies stand the election workers themselves.

For years, members of this mostly female civic workforce have warned about threats to their safety. In 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice set up its Elections Threat Task Force to assess threats of violence against election workers and, when needed, prosecute those who act on these threats.

Over and again tech execs like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg demonstrate their true values when they choose not to spend more on election protection.

David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, has led efforts to safeguard U.S. election processes, paying particular attention to the election administrators and public servants who voters encounter as they cast their ballots. “The fact is somehow the hundreds of thousands of election workers and the millions of volunteers who worked on the 2020 election managed the highest turnout we had ever had in American history,” he said during a recent Free Press webinar. And they did so, Becker added, in the middle of a global pandemic.

“Their work has withstood four years of more scrutiny than any election … in world history,” he said. In that time, Becker noted, they’ve been threatened and harassed “not because they did a bad job, but because they did an outstanding job. They’re American heroes in many ways [but] as we head into this election, they're exhausted.”

Unfortunately, these heroes aren't getting any relief from the technology platforms, which have retreated from previous commitments to safeguard election integrity. And this retreat isn’t just happening at Musk’s X.

X is backsliding, but so are other platforms

In an analysis released on Nov. 1, my colleague Nora Benavidez and I found that nearly every platform has avoided dialogue and accountability around the elections. “With few exceptions, the election-integrity problem has worsened since a 2023 Free Press research report found that the largest and most widely used platforms—Meta, X, and YouTube—were backsliding on commitments they made in the wake of the 2020 elections, as ‘Big Lie’ content overwhelmed much of social media,” we wrote.

Recent reporting and research indicate a trend of declining social-media engagement on public posts that provide useful information about the voting process, including information that would debunk the sorts of lies that vilify election workers. This trend has been documented most extensively on Meta-owned platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, that have hundreds of millions of users in the United States. According to Free Press’ 2024 polling, more than half of voting-age Americans are using social-media apps to access news this election cycle. These platforms have the expertise to implement election-integrity measures. They have the resources to invest in human moderators and staffing. But over and again tech execs like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg demonstrate their true values when they choose not to spend more on election protection.

Poll workers pay the cost of this negligence. With more and more people in the United States using social networks as a source of news and information about voting, it falls on companies like Google, Meta, and TikTok to stop recycling widely disproved lies about the voting process and stand with election workers in defense of our democracy.

But don’t let the swarm of lies keep you from the polls. “What the voters of this country are experiencing is that voting for the vast majority of people is going to be convenient and easy and secure and safe,” Becker said during the Free Press webinar.

“And that’s the message I really want voters to understand … as some people might be on the fence wondering whether they should turn out or not. Turn out and vote. You’re going to have a good experience.”

Let’s hope he’s right.

It’s official; the Republican Vice Presidential nominee declared school shootings “a fact of life.” That’s what JD Vance said at a rally in Arizona when asked about the recent shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, right after he told the crowd “We don’t have to like the reality that we live in, but it is the reality we live in.”

As a high school student, I’m terrified to know that the fate of students like me might soon be left in the hands of candidates who have accepted that we will always have to live in fear and whose only plan is to bring more guns into our schools. These reactive approaches only put students at greater risk and fail to address the root causes of the gun violence epidemic. High schoolers like me deserve more than that, don’t we?

I was 14 years old when I realized that school was not safe. I was riding the bus to school the day after the Uvalde shooting, where an 18-year-old killed 19 children and two teachers with an assault rifle in a Texas elementary school. My friend turned to me with concern in his eyes and asked, “You know what to do if this happens here, right?” I did know. Like most other kids in America, I’d been preparing for a school shooting since I was in elementary school. Lock the door. Cover the window. Hide as far away as possible—in a closet, or under a desk. Don’t let yourself become a target. Locate the first aid kit in case one of us is shot. Stop the bleeding. Wait for help.

So no, gun violence does not have to be a fact of life, and we refuse to accept it. We won’t “just get over it,” as Trump said after a school shooting in Perry, Iowa.

I’ve been preparing for a school shooting since I was five. While kids in other countries were at recess, I was huddled with my classmates in a corner being told to stay quiet and not move as people banged on the classroom door. They used to tell us we were practicing in case a bear got into the school, and I thought that was the most terrifying thing in the world—a bear in our school hallways. But now I know that the truth is far scarier––and far more likely. That day as a 14-year-old riding the bus to school, I realized that the real danger wasn’t some distant threat, but the “fact of life” that anyone could easily access a firearm and kill us. From then on, I became cautious about who I opened the door for at school. And I began to fear for my life every time my principal went over the speakers to announce a lockdown.

And I’ve done more than change my mindset—I’ve taken action. Two days after the Uvalde shooting, I helped students at my school lead a walkout to remember the victims and call for gun safety legislation. Since that first protest, I’ve devoted my time in high school to gun violence prevention, working with March For Our Lives, a youth-led gun violence prevention movement. To JD Vance and anyone who thinks similarly, let me tell you from the young people of America: we do not accept being killed by guns in our classrooms and in our communities as a “fact of life.” Our “fact of life” is that the time we’re meant to spend on school and with friends is instead spent doing what politicians should be doing for us: fighting for a future free of gun violence.

So no, gun violence does not have to be a fact of life, and we refuse to accept it. We won’t “just get over it,” as Trump said after a school shooting in Perry, Iowa. Instead, we will change these so-called facts of life. We will fight for a country where a 14-year-old can’t access an assault rifle from his dad, as in the recent Apalachee High School shooting. We will fight for a country where students like those at Apalachee will never have to drag their teacher’s dying body across the floor and use their clothes to try to stop his bleeding. And we will fight for a country where teachers and students won’t lose their lives simply for attending school.

In 2025, when the next mass shooting happens––statistically about twice a day in America––we will either have a president who tells us to “get over it,” or a president who demands, “We have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all.” I want the latter. I want lawmakers who are determined to do what it takes to help students like me feel safe at school. I want an administration that keeps military-grade assault rifles out of the hands of dangerous civilians and will pass safe storage laws so that no one can access someone else's gun to hurt themselves or others.

But right now, what I want doesn’t matter. I’m not old enough to vote yet, and neither is the majority of young people and students who bear the brunt of the gun violence epidemic. So instead, I’m using my voice to urge you and every other eligible voter, to please vote for gun violence prevention candidates in this upcoming election. Please vote for my life and future. As Vice-President Harris reminded us, “It doesn’t have to be this way."

Tight elections often come down to who has the strongest close. Kamala Harris has certainly had a strong one. One of the strongest elements has been her support for Medicare at Home, which would expand Medicare to include in-home care. There is plenty of evidence that this issue moves voters, and for swing voters looking for one more data point in that decision, this could be the tipping point.

Harris spoke about Medicare at Home when appearing on the Howard Stern Show earlier this month. This part of the conversation with Stern scored in the 95th percentile in determining a voter's opinion of Harris as a candidate, far outpacing all other messages.

This aligns with what we’ve found in Wisconsin. Senior Voters for Care, of which I am affiliated, teamed up with Hart Research Associates to conduct a poll of 800 likely voters over 55 in Wisconsin on views on long-term care.

The poll found that 71% of swing voters and 64% of independent voters said that if a candidate had a plan to provide more funding for long-term care, they would view that candidate more favorably. Kamala Harris has that plan.

The issue of long-term care has been a hot one in the state as a number of conservative county boards have pushed to privatize county-owned nursing homes despite their being five-star facilities and, in most cases, on solid financial footing. The issue has stirred up a hornet’s nest with seniors across partisanship, flooding into county board meetings, marching (and driving their tractors) in local parades, and organizing to stop the sale every step of the way.

The number of Wisconsinites 75 and older is projected to grow by 75% over the next two decades. If the state’s senior population continues to grow as projected, it will need 10,000 more registered nurses, CNAs, and home health care aids by 2030.

The most popular solution among those polled to the state’s looming care crisis was raising caregivers' wages to help attract and retain workers. Ninety-three percent of the people polled supported this measure, including 87 percent of Republicans and 93 percent of independents.

Nearly as popular was expanding Medicaid to increase access to necessary long-term care, with 87% overall backing this initiative, including 93% of Independents.

This is a big deal because Medicare at Home is essentially these two solutions put together, though even better, in that it would expand one of the most popular social programs in the country–Medicare. Chances are that support for this proposal would have outpaced the question we asked because, through Medicare, this long-term care benefit would be available to all of us, while Medicaid is only for those of us with low incomes and very little wealth. Because Medicare does not cover long-term, many families spend down their savings to qualify for Medicaid.

My family is spending my mom’s life savings and the money made from selling her house to pay for her assisted living care at $6,000 a month. It’s a common experience for many voters.

The poll found that 71% of swing voters and 64% of independent voters said that if a candidate had a plan to provide more funding for long-term care, they would view that candidate more favorably. Kamala Harris has that plan.

The Vice President’s plan to win the Presidency banks on some rapidly aging states. Wisconsin's 85-and-over population is expected to double between now and 2040. Michiganders over 85 are the state’s fastest-growing age group, and Pennsylvania’s over-65 population is already more than 2.2 million.

Medicare at Home is the right policy at the right time and appears to be good politics. If enough people heard about it in the campaign's closing weeks, it could be one of the parts of her strong finish that helps put her over the top.

Democracy is on the ballot this Tuesday.

The election is only one step in a protracted process.

Between the election, and the presidential inauguration on January 21, 2025, there is an almost three-month long period—what Barton Gellman has called “an interregnum”—that will furnish Trump and his team of MAGA attorneys with many opportunities to litigate, intimidate, obstruct, and even attempt to overturn a Harris-Walz electoral victory by legalistic if not legal means.

Democrats and democrats more generally have learned the lessons of 2020, and have organized an extensive legal effort, headed up by Marc Elias, to defeat election obstruction in the courts. The need to hold the line politically against such obstruction is well understood.

But this will only be necessary if Kamala Harris wins the election.

And this will only happen if she is able to obtain enough votes in the crucial swing states necessary to win 270 electoral votes. Winning the popular vote will not be enough. The Electoral College is where this election will ultimately be decided. This is why the Harris-Walz campaign has been campaigning so furiously in Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin, and especially Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Tlaib is a brave and savvy political leader who has consistently spoken up against oppression and who, as the only Palestinian-American in Congress, has spoken bravely on behalf of Palestinians in the face of outright hostility expressed by Republicans but also by many Democrats.

And because the race is so tight, and every vote counts, and because so much of importance rides on the outcome, it is important, now, to think critically, in an intelligent way, about a very disappointing thing which happened this weekend: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s unfortunate refusal, at a UAW campaign rally in Detroit, to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket.

Tlaib’s rationale is both straightforward and legitimate: the Biden administration’s strong and unwavering support for Israel’s criminal campaign of murder and destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, and the Democratic Party’s refusal to allow even one Palestinian-American to give voice to Palestinian concerns at the party’s convention last summer, represent intolerable disregard for Palestinian lives. As she explained: “Our trauma and pain feel unseen and ignored by both parties. One party uses our identity as a slur, and the other refuses to hear from us. Where is the shared humanity? Ignoring us won’t stop the genocide.”

Tlaib is a brave and savvy political leader who has consistently spoken up against oppression and who, as the only Palestinian-American in Congress, has spoken bravely on behalf of Palestinians in the face of outright hostility expressed by Republicans but also by many Democrats.

When she was attacked last year for her criticisms of Israeli war crimes, I strongly defended her in two pieces, published in rapid succession, that received substantial attention: “To Censure Rashida Tlaib Would Be to Censure Democracy Itself,” “and ““The Attacks on Rashida Tlaib Are Attacks on the Ethos of Pluralist Democracy .” In a third piece, “Defending and Respecting Rashida Tlaib’s Standpoint Does Not Mean Abandoning My Own ,” I also offered a sympathetic criticism of some of her rhetoric, which I thought alienated many allies to her cause.

It is in this spirit that I am writing now. I am not one of those who believes that Palestinian and Arab-Americans are under a moral duty to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket, or that they are somehow morally blameworthy should they refuse to so vote on grounds of either conscience or simple identity. For all politics involves mobilizing identity, and the Harris campaign is going all out to mobilize women in support of reproductive freedom and women’s health--as it should do.

Tlaib is not only a Palestinian-American citizen. She is also a member of Congress and leader of the Democratic Party and the progressive left more generally.

As I stated last week, in “A Few Words to Those Currently 'Uncommitted' to Voting for Harris ,“ many Arab-Americans are clearly so disgusted by Biden administration policy that they cannot support Harris, and it would be both foolish and morally tone deaf to tell them that their sense of identity is less important than any other. Arab-American fellow citizens have a right to feel outraged and ignored and to act accordingly.

At the same time, I also observed that:

’Uncommitted’ voters in some swing states, especially Michigan and Arizona, can turn the election for Trump or against him, and thus for racist authoritarianism or against it. Such voters can have an outsized influence on the future of American politics and thus the future of the world. There is an enormous political responsibility in this, a point recognized in an open letter circulated this week by Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats and community leaders, which emphasizes that ‘voting for Harris is not a personal endorsement of her or of the policy decisions of the administration in which she served. It’s an assessment of the best possible option to continue fighting for an end to the genocide, a free Palestine, and all else that we hold dear.’

The question I want to pose here regarding Tlaib’s decision is a question of political responsibility.

Tlaib is a Palestinian-American citizen, whose family is currently in danger in Israel-Palestine. As a citizen and as a conscientious moral individual, she has every right to refuse to support or to vote for Harris, by abstaining, or voting for Jill Stein, or whatever. It would be presumptuous for anyone to judge her as an individual, for only she knows what the current destruction of Palestine means to her and those whom she holds most dear.

But Tlaib is not only a Palestinian-American citizen. She is also a member of Congress and leader of the Democratic Party and the progressive left more generally.

And she has a distinct political responsibility that comes with this leadership. It requires that she be accountable to her constituents. But it also requires the she exercise the judgment necessary to truly lead, and to act publicly in ways that promote the interests of her constituents; the policies she cares about; and the survival of democracy itself. What she does publicly is by nature about much more than her. And her decisions carry more weight than ordinary citizen decisions.

A second Trump administration, especially linked to a buoyed MAGA Republican Congress, would be a simple disaster for everything that Rashida Tlaib has long bravely supported, from civil liberties to the dignified treatment of immigrants—including Arab immigrants—to justice for Palestinians. For Trump is an ally of Netanyahu and his Greater Israel agenda, and he will surely green-light even more aggression, dispossession, destruction and death for Palestinians than we have seen over the past year.

Rashida Tlaib is not morally wrong for refusing to support the Harris campaign. But her refusal, I submit, is politically mistaken, because it is likely to bring about results that are politically noxious for her supporters and their values, and for American democracy more generally.

A second Trump administration, especially linked to a buoyed MAGA Republican Congress, would be a simple disaster for everything that Rashida Tlaib has long bravely supported.

Back in early January 2019, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, then newly elected to her first Congressional term, made a bold and highly publicized declaration: “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker!” She was immediately attacked for her lack of “civility.” One of many, I defended her, in three pieces” “On Calls to Impeach the Motherfucker,” “Why We Need to Listen to Rashida Tlaib,” and “Is ‘Motherfucker’ the Concept Political Science Now Needs?”

My basic point was a simple one: Tlaib’s controversial comments were entirely appropriate ways of talking about tyrannical then-president Trump, and her candor indeed established her as an outspoken and exemplary defender of democracy, a true leader of her party. In doing so, I quoted from her “offending” January speech:

President Donald Trump is a direct and serious threat to our country. On an almost daily basis, he attacks our Constitution, our democracy, the rule of law and the people who are in this country. His conduct has created a constitutional crisis that we must confront now. . . Each passing day brings new damage to the countless people hurt by this lawless president’s actions. We cannot undo the trauma that he is causing to our people, and this nation. Those most vulnerable to his administration’s cruelty are counting on us to act — act to remove the president and put this country on a path to true justice. . . his is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. What should we be as a nation? Who should we be as a people? In the face of this constitutional crisis, we must rise. We must rise to defend our Constitution, to defend our democracy, and to defend that bedrock principle that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States.

More powerful words in defense of democracy have rarely been spoken by a U.S. Congressperson.

It is obvious that much has changed since then. And especially since October 7, 2023, when a brutal Hamas attack on Israel precipitated almost a year of Israeli attacks on Gaza (and the West Bank, and Lebanon), attacks so brutal, destructive, and murderous that they do not even merit the description “retaliation.” This Israeli policy has been deplorable and criminal, and it deserves to be vocally criticized.

In the past year, Tlaib’s brave action as the lone Palestinian voice of and for Palestinians in the U.S. has been exemplary. Her call for a cease-fire, her denunciation of the Israeli war and of U.S. military support for it, her calls for Palestinian self-determination—she has done these things as only she could do them. And in doing these things, she has acted not only on behalf of the rights of Palestinians—an eminently noble commitment!—but on behalf of a more accountable, humane, and just U.S. foreign policy, in the Middle East and more generally. She has called out the hypocritical aspects of the Biden administration claim to be all about “democracy,” and she has done so in the name of democracy itself.

And it is concern for democracy that will hopefully lead her, at the last moment, to endorse the Harris-Walz ticket.

Tlaib, through her well-earned influence with scores of thousands of Arab-American citizens, especially in Michigan, can still– even in this late moment—well turn the outcome of this election. By making a statement like the open letter circulated by Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and progressive Democrats, and declaring that “voting for Harris is not a personal endorsement . . . . It’s an assessment of the best possible option to continue fighting for an end to the genocide, a free Palestine, and all else that we hold dear,” she can help to elect Harris and to keep Trump at bay. In doing so, she would also further cement her stature as a Democratic leader and indeed she would strengthen the party’s Progressive Caucus and especially her “Squad” colleagues.

Alternatively, she can decline to say anything. This might be the righteous choice. But it may well produce the worst possible political outcome—a second Trump administration.

Tlaib bears a tremendous burden of responsibility.

I hope she foregoes the righteous choice in favor of the politically right one.

A great deal hangs in the balance for us all.

I am, of course, deeply uneasy about this election. I know that I am not alone. And, like millions of others, I remain dispirited and sad about Donald Trump’s enduring popularity—even as he shows us, more and more brazenly every day, exactly who he is. And, like millions of others, I am terrified by the prospect second Trump presidency. And I remain dispirited and sad to live in a country that just might elect Donald Trump president—again.

My hope has been tested—seriously tested—but I remain hopeful.

Someone said of Trump a few years back: "He's like a toddler with a gun." My partner Katherine's response: "I see him more as the nation's drunken, abusive spouse, insisting we put the kids in the car and go for a drive with him..." Indeed.

We watch Trump and wonder: How can this be happening? How did this cruel, misogynistic idiot win a presidential election? How, after all of these years of brazenly and transparently being who he is, can he remain a compelling candidate for President of the United States? How can this happen in America?"

It is, of course, about voter suppression, the growing power of dark money, Fox News’s brilliant, relentless lie machine, the profound limits of the Democratic Party, and the reactionary absurdity of the Electoral College. But it is way more than that. In 2020, 74 million US voters voted for Trump. And, after nearly four years of mind-boggling incompetence and cruelty, and four more years of being an relentlessly and increasingly revolting version of himself, 44% of Americans (including most white Americans) "approve" of Trump.

Kamala Harris is not a perfect candidate. The Democratic Party is deeply flawed and limited. And inequalities are deeply rooted in our institutions. But we have to beat Trump.

The sad fact is that many of Trump’s supporters—most, perhaps—vote for him not in spite of who he is, but because of who he is. This Trumpian tragedy is doubly tragic because it makes so much sense. We can decide that Trump is an anomaly. But, in fact, Trump looks and acts a lot like America. He personifies, evokes, celebrates and embraces a dark but essential part of the “American Story.”

Trump is... Loud. Arrogant. Ignorant. Entitled. Racist. Violent. Misogynistic. Homophobic. Orientalist. Self-centered. Self-important. Idiotic. Punitive. Full of shit. A glutton who whines that he is not getting his fair share. An assaulter who insists that nothing happened (in fact he is the real victim!). A liar who has no interest in uncovering or facing the truth. A liar who vilifies anyone who tells the truth; anyone who holds up a mirror to him. He is a perpetrator who effortlessly and shamelessly engages in denial, erasure, and the re-writing of history. He is a victimizer, and a victim-blamer. He is grandiose and vacuous. He's gotten rich on the un(der)paid labor of disempowered workers—human beings he sees as disposable "takers" and "losers," and by ripping off his suppliers, and claims that his wealth is about his unique awesomeness. He claims credit for things he hasn't done. He's megalomaniac who uses his power to expand his power and wealth. His relentless pursuit of his interests requires no justification. He is a rapacious accumulator of wealth who happily and insistently works people to death. A money-grubber who happily sends disenfranchised workers into the meat packing plant, because our sausages (and the meat industry's profits) matter more than the lives of people of color we can't see. He is indifferent to a million Covid deaths in the USA, and millions more around the globe. "Freedom and prosperity," after all, comes at a price.

Like America, Trump is sure that he is #1 at everything. Like America, Trump insists—with a toxic mix of indifference, ignorance and grandiosity—that "no one" has "ever" done what he has done. Trumpian Exceptionalism. That's why the rules don't apply to him.

Like America.

Trump has incited and defended white supremacists and bragged about sexual assault. He has incited a coup, and he has implored his followers to turn their rage (and violence) on immigrants and people of color. He has separated kids and parents and put the kids in cages. He has pardoned his crooked friends and demanded that his critics and political rivals be imprisoned. He has lied a million times—often with shocking brazenness. He doesn't care. Cruelty and cruel indifference are his brand.

This is from the obituary of Professor Scott Lilienfeld, a psychologist who, before passing away on September of 2020, studied psychopathology, among other things. Professor Lilienfeld and his colleagues, the New York Times reports, identified "three underlying personality features that psychopaths share: fearless dominance, meanness, and impulsivity. The psychopath does what he or she wants, without anxiety, regret or regard for the suffering of others."

If I had to describe Donald Trump in two sentences, these would do.

If I had to write a biography of America, these sentences could be part of the first chapter.

This dark, violent and essential part of America has been "hiding" in plain sight every second of every day for 400 years. When, every so often, it becomes undeniable—the torture at Abu Ghraib, the murder of George Floyd, or one more racist mass shooting, for example—our national narrators insist that it is a deeply troubling anomaly. A shocking—and, perhaps, unprecedented!—example of precisely what "America" is not. But, in fact, plunder, racism, misogyny, violence, denial and erasure are essential and long-lived parts of the biography of the United States.

Trump is, perhaps, in some important ways, unusual, extreme and anomalous. But 44%—including most white voters—"approve" of Trump. White men voted for Trump by a two to one ratio in 2020.

This struggle is grueling and, often, disheartening because there are, of course, some very well-funded people who are determined to bend the arc of history toward oppression. And 44% approve.

But beside, inside, and despite our dark past and present, the U.S. is overflowing with love, creativity, generosity, empathy, solidarity, humility and possibility. And this has (and we have) the power to change everything.

Our dark, violent, exploitative, hidden history is—of course, and thank goodness—only part of the story. There is also the part of the American biography that has given us Toni Morrison, rock and roll, Bob Dylan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Black Lives Matter, W.E.B. DuBois, Jack Kerouac, Joe Hill, James Baldwin, Dr. King, Aretha, Howard Zinn, Julius Erving, Paul Robeson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Woody Guthrie, Sherilynn Ifill, and Star Tavern in Orange, NJ. There is the part that has given us millions of heroic healers, and millions of heroic organizers and activists for voting rights, fair housing, economic equality, environmental justice, work place safety, affordable education, LGBTQ rights, accessible public spaces, de-militarization, and educational opportunity, and against war, racism, sexual violence, police violence, border violence, and the destruction of the planet. This gives me hope.

Our violent, oppressive history is embedded in our economic, political and social institutions. The arc of history has to be bent—actively and intentionally—toward justice. The arc of history bends as the result of energetic, fearless, heroic and hopeful struggle. This struggle is grueling and, often, disheartening because there are, of course, some very well-funded people who are determined to bend the arc of history toward oppression. And 44% approve.

Let’s vote. Let's recognize and reckon with our dark history. And let's struggle heroically and humbly, and let's collaborate in inspired and inspiring ways, to bend the arc of history toward justice—as so many others have before us.

I am hopeful.

Kamala Harris is not a perfect candidate. The Democratic Party is deeply flawed and limited. And inequalities are deeply rooted in our institutions.

But we have to beat Trump.

I am hopeful.

It is widely believed, including by experts, that this presidential election could be one of the most important in U.S. history. And polling data still marks it as too close to call. Various groups of voters who might normally vote, but decide to sit this one out, could decide the outcome.

On the Democratic side that includes a significant number of people who will not vote for the party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, because of the support that the Biden administration has given to Israel’s current military campaign. This support includes about $18 billion in weapons shipments from the United States to Israel.

More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military operations in the Gaza Strip on October 7, following a Hamas attack from there that killed about 1200 people, mostly Israeli citizens. Public health experts have stated that the Palestinian death toll is likely considerably higher.

The majority of Palestinians killed have been women and children, often in Israeli bombings of civilian areas which include hospitals, schools, aid distribution points, emergency services, residential buildings and tents. American surgeons working in Gaza have documented multiple cases of pre-teen children killed with a single bullet to the head. The World Food Program warns that just 20 percent of the required basic food aid is being let in by Israel. The food situation is so bad that the Biden administration issued a complaint to Israel over the issue; Israel responded by banning UNRWA, the main source of humanitarian aid in the strip.

“Israel’s Imposed Starvation Deadly for Children” is the headline for a report from Human Rights Watch, one the most prominent human rights organizations in the United States.

Israel has banned foreign media from entering Gaza and has killed so many local reporters that the Committee to Protect Journalists has called it the “deadliest period ever for journalists.”

For those who believe in the sanctity of human life and our shared humanity with people of different nationalities, religions, and ethnicity, it is clear that we have a big stake in tomorrow’s election. We have a dire need for a new foreign policy that shares these basic human values.

One place where there is a large number of voters who feel strongly about this is Michigan. It has more than 300,000 people of Middle Eastern or North African descent. It is one of the three swing states (along with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) that together would provide Harris with the most likely path to winning the electoral vote and therefore the presidency.

Current polling shows Michigan too close to call right now, so the Arab-American vote could make the difference; NBC News notes that recent polls show this vote “breaking roughly evenly between Harris and Trump, while they have typically broken closer to 2-to-1 for Democrats in recent elections.” And more than 100,000 voters in Michigan last year voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary, protesting Biden’s support for Israel’s military in Gaza.

It is not only Michigan where Democratic voters are horrified by the mass killing they see in Gaza and now Lebanon, where at least 1800 people have been killed by Israeli forces in the past five weeks. There are millions of people throughout the United States who feel the same moral revulsion. And it could cost a close election in another swing state.

But Trump would be worse. Most importantly he has a Congressional and powerful funding base—including a billionaire who has contributed hundreds of millions to him and the Republican Party—that would continue to push him to support violent extremism. His political base would put much less, if any, pressure on him to end the war; or even to stop it from expanding. And his likely cabinet choices would also be less willing to bring about a negotiated solution to the conflict.

Trump’s return to the presidency would also consolidate and allow for the expansion of minority rule in the United States. Under this system, Democrats need more than 40 million more votes to get the same 50 seats as Republicans in the Senate. And then the filibuster means they need 10 more for most legislation.

Our system of minority rule has also allowed two presidents since 2000 (George W. Bush and Trump) to take office after losing the popular vote. The election of 2000 brought us the Iraq War, which was found to be based on lies, took the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and led to further avoidable violence in the region.

Trump and his Senators abused their power to get a 6-3, hard right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. A Court with unprecedented corruption. And a court that took from women their right to control their own bodies.

Trump will not last forever, but his party’s system of minority rule could be here for decades, as the Republicans continue to use their control of the Supreme Court and much of the judiciary, state legislatures, and the executive branch to tilt the electoral playing field further—through voting restrictions, gerry-mandering, and attacks on organized labor, with a focus on swing states.

All this does not diminish this urgent moral imperative of putting an end to the mass killing of innocent civilians in the Middle East, and our own government’s support for the attacks. But our ability to stop this and other crimes in which U.S. foreign policy is involved, is being eroded every day as the United States becomes less of a democracy.

So, for those who believe in the sanctity of human life and our shared humanity with people of different nationalities, religions, and ethnicity, it is clear that we have a big stake in tomorrow’s election. We have a dire need for a new foreign policy that shares these basic human values. This election may well determine how much we can make progress towards this goal—immediately as needed in the Middle East—and in the foreseeable future.

When I learned, as an adolescent, that Hitler had been an elected head of state, I was incredulous.

I don't know how I learned this. Not from my parents and not from the nuns who taught me for 12 years of school. I was utterly ignorant about pre- and post-World War II Germany. My father had served in the Pacific. In my neighborhood, as a child, our teams were divided, for far-ranging games of war, between the Americans and the Nazis. Having never heard the word before, let alone seen it written, I imagined the bad guys as K-N-O-T-S-I-E-S, pathetic little balls of snarled string.

In college, with better information than my hometown rah-rah newspaper's, I became an anti-war activist. Ever since the Vietnam War era, I've been challenged with the question, "Would you oppose all wars/ What would you have done about Hitler?" To which my answer became, "Hitler was elected. There were plenty of chances to stop Hitler before six million Jews died and he started that war."

And now I wonder where those chances were, and what I would have done. Because I have learned how Hitler was loved by his people. And I have seen something like it in my country now.

Germany's infatuation with Hitler ended badly for everyone.

Hitler was seen by many Germans as a savior. They credited him with restoring the German economy after the Great Depression, and restoring German pride—and its army—after their humiliating defeat in World War I. They loved how he wanted to preserve the purity of German language and culture, and Christian religion. They loved how he hated the people they hated—an elite that they felt looked down on them. Professors, doctors, lawyers and businessmen were suspect. Many of them were Jewish, and Hitler easily convinced his supporters that Jews were "poisoning" German blood.

The oaths of the military and civil service were changed from loyalty sworn to Germany to loyalty sworn to Hitler. Here is the oath of Hitler Youth:

"In the presence of this blood banner which represents our Fuhrer, I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to the savior of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God."

Alfons Heck, a former member, wrote of how it caused an eruption "into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria... we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil' From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul."

People gathered outside Hitler's residence to catch a glimpse of him, and women shouted their love and that they wanted to have babies with him. He got thousands of love letters a year. German psychoanalyst and author Alice Miller spent her professional lifetime analyzing "good Germans" and writing about it. They were consumed with guilt, after the war, for having allowed the Holocaust, and shame, for having loved Hitler. The trauma was inherited by the next generation, and she wrote of how that affected Germany too.

The German dictator's rule ended in suicide, in a bunker, where the generals our current presidential candidate says he wished he had told their leader the truth they'd been afraid to until it was unavoidable: he had lost the war. Germany's infatuation with Hitler ended badly for everyone.

Our would-be dictator starred on American television for 14 years, longer than any American presidency lasts. As a television actress, I know the power of the medium, and the characters we play. Every week for 14 years, people saw Donald Trump in their living rooms, impeccably dressed and made up, judging others with authoritative discernment, separating the weak from the strong, the wheat from the chaff, in elimination rounds that climaxed the drama every week: You're Fired. He was sometimes tender, being cruel only to be kind, and the contestants hopeful for his approval, bristling with Hollywood clothes and make-up, accepted his word as final.

He was never that man. The character wasn't real. And today's version is far from it. The TV star controlled his performance. The candidate can't.

He assumes the mantle of peacemaker, criticizing war. He claims to have opposed the War in Iraq. So did I. He distrusts the "Deep state"—I have done so for years, doubting everything from our rationale for the war in Vietnam to the official story of the Kennedy assassination and the denial of involvement in Central America. But for me, the stance involves study and practice of nonviolence. Donald Trump, even as he preposterously lies that he's something like Martin Luther King, foments violence. Peace comes from within. A man whose family, businesses, administration, and relationships were—and remain—in violent turmoil cannot bring world peace. He knows only how to deal with problems by making them go away, as he did on TV: elimination rounds. Certain groups, departments, organizations, individuals—and, maybe, countries—must be eliminated for peace to come. You're Fired! It seems so simple: final solutions like you've never seen before!

In Hitler's day, a lawyer with the tragically ironic last name of Frank wrote, "I can say that the foundation of the National Socialist State is the National Socialist legal system[...] since we know how holy the foundations of our legal system are to the Führer, we and our people’s comrades can be sure: your life and your existence are secure in this National Socialist state of order, freedom, and justice."

Albert Speer, author of Inside the Third Reich, wrote that, as German morale dropped, Hitler's crowds had to be organized. Spontaneity no longer drew them. Hitler also became "angry and impatient...when, as still occasionally happened, a crowd began clamoring for him to appear." This echoes ominously with the current Trump rallies, which are shrinking, where the crowd sometimes waits for hours before he appears—and then he comes bearing insults.

This is the moment, for those of you who are still undecided, when we can stop the dictator. Don't elect him.

In mid-June I went to Nashville for a reunion of old friends who were activists with the Southern Student Organizing Committee, a group founded in 1964 by young Southerners inspired by the sit-in movement and devoted to dismantling racism all over the South and the nation. Like Martin Luther King Jr., we also went to work to end the war in Vietnam. In Nashville we shared stories about having stood up early—when it was dangerous—for racial justice and against a tragic war.

But today, decades later, we were staring into the vacuum of a terrifying potential disaster: Donald Trump—candidate of fascism and racism, enemy of women’s rights, friend of American billionaires and Russian oligarchs, and the guy who wants to dismantle U.S. democracy—could be (re)elected President.

My old friends—who stood up to George Wallace and Richard Nixon back in the day—were all committed to defeating Trump. But back in June many shared a troubled question about the Democratic incumbent. “Biden did a great job in the White House, but isn’t he too old to make the case against Trump—and for a better future—in this election?” Only a few months later—after Biden bravely stepped away and Kamala Harris and Tim Walz began energetically taking on Trump—celebration and optimism have reigned on our follow-up Zoom calls—because now we had a candidate who could talk with the American people—about making life better for working Americans. And many SSOC veterans, especially those in Georgia and North Carolina, have been working hard to build the movement that we hope will win in those key swing states.

Clearly, the Harris team (and Democratic operatives) have made saving democracy and reclaiming abortion rights as their key issues. When your opponent is a self-declared fan of Hitler and an enemy of democracy—and brags about getting rid of Roe v Wade—clearly saving our democratic political system and guaranteeing reproductive rights have got to be key to your primary message to voters. She and Tim Walz have been doing that—with joy and energy. And supporters are working hard to get all those folks who understand the Trump threat to come out to vote.

But an even larger group of Americans keep telling pollsters that the economy is their major concern. Many have faulty memories— of Trump’s White House years as a time of prosperity—and of the Biden-Harris years as COVID-driven chaos and inflation. As a result, many Democratic Party operatives and media pundits have pushed Harris to distance herself from Biden—and, to some extent, she has done so.

Even in the narrow context of today’s political debate, many Americans just don’t want to remember how big a medical and economic mess Trump left for Biden and Harris to clean up.

But this “Don’t talk about Biden” strategy has prevented Harris (and Democrats) from being able to tell a powerful story about the Biden-Harris presidency—and it has limited her ability to talk about what is wrong about the economic system—and to about what kind of economy agenda we need to build for working Americans.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris literally saved the U.S. and the world economy. They won the White House in 2020 in part because Donald Trump showed voters he was incompetent in the face of the COVID pandemic. And as a result of that pandemic-driven economic shutdown, Biden and Harris had to take on and reverse the most serious recession since the Great Depression. The amazing thing is that they actually pulled it off. When Biden and Harris took office, Americans had endured 8 months of official recession—and four years ago, the Trump unemployment rate was 9.2 percent. Deaths from COVID, which began in Trump’s last year in office, far from getting better, were at a deadly all-time high when Biden was sworn in.

Today, as a result of very ambitious policies that Biden and Harris put forward—and got passed through a divided Congress—the U.S. unemployment rate came down to below today’s 4.1%, and—if the Fed doesn’t blow it (or if Trump doesn’t win)—interest rates are coming down and inflation is stabilizing at 2.1% annual rate (down from the peak of 9.06% in June 2022). This Biden-Harris economic recovery is the envy of many other advanced nations that are still struggling to reduce unemployment. And we needed to remind voters that Biden and Harris surprised many economic experts by achieving a “soft landing”—getting jobs growing and bringing inflation down without tipping the economy into another recession. Ronald Reagan didn’t have such a great record when he ran for re-election declaring it was “Morning in America.”

Now clearly, working class Americans, white and black, don’t feel like it is Morning in America. But that feeling that the country is on the wrong track is not a recent development. For decades now, the very wealthy have gotten astronomically richer, and corporations have gained greater and greater control of our political and economic system, while middle-class and working-class people have seen declining real wages and fewer opportunities for themselves and their kids. Americans have been worried about their economic prospects for decades.

But even in the narrow context of today’s political debate, many Americans just don’t want to remember how big a medical and economic mess Trump left for Biden and Harris to clean up. And, since Democrats have been instructed to not talk about the Biden years, voters are now hearing just one explanation from Trump about what caused the post-COVID inflation: “Biden and Harris did it.” In other words, Trump blames the very Biden-Harris policies that helped Americans get through the COVID recession—and got the economy growing robustly.

Although not too many voters have heard it, Democrats have a different explanation: As the pandemic—worsened by Trump’s idiotic failures—literally shut down the global economy, the fragile international supply chain network froze up. And during the long period when the global factory system shut down—everything from food to cars to computer chips were stuck in container ships circling the globe or stuck in ports, huge parts of the U.S. economy were either forced to shut down—consumers experienced major shortages on store shelves or car dealers. Biden and Harris worked successfully to untangle these supply chain problem -- but the temporary shortages created huge opportunities for American corporations to raise prices and keep prices high (known as price gouging) for months and months. The painful result: higher prices for groceries, gas and oil, housing, and other essentials.

The Biden stimulus worked—the economy is growing and the inflation rate has come down for a rare “soft landing.” The Biden economic program wasn’t the cause of inflation. And without the Biden-Harris economic agenda, over the past few years Americans would have been struggling with the worst of both problems: high unemployment AND inflation.

Having revived economic growth and gotten the overall inflation rate going down—now at an annual rate of 2.1%—Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic nominee and began to lay out a positive agenda to take on corporate price manipulation and real shortages in food, housing, energy, and health care.

She vowed to break the power of corporations to take advantage of shortages to raise prices and keep them high. This dynamic is most obvious in the food sector (where corporate concentration gives corporations great power) and in the health care sector, where she and Biden have already begun to force pharmaceutical companies to compete on the price of essential drugs. And public health insurance, like Medicare and Obamacare, are still too dominated by corporate insurance companies. In housing, although interest rates are going down, Harris pledges to fight for a long-term project to build more housing, break the power of speculators in the rental market, and help first-time home buyers with up to $25,000 to cover their down payments. And in energy, where the prices of gasoline and other fuels have come down, she also pledges to continue to support alternative sources of power, like solar and wind, and hydro—all of which will bring down prices for individuals and for utilities.

Keep in mind that Donald Trump has advanced no ideas at all for reducing inflation. He did meet with oil industry CEOs to demand $1 billion to finance his campaign in return for massive huge policy giveaways – and if you think that would lower energy prices, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on all imports would increase inflation dramatically, according to economists right, left, and center.

A Harris presidency would work to reorganize each of these key sectors to bring down prices—while creating new public systems to help families with other basic needs, like free or subsidized child care (and in home senior care), the costs of which is now borne almost entirely struggling middle class and poor families.

Based on polling that shows inflation and the economy are the top issues for many voters, some progressive analysts have been arguing that Kamala Harris and her campaign are not talking enough about her economic agenda.

Pollster Stan Greenberg has been making the case that the Harris-Walz campaign would be pulling strongly ahead if they were doing more to educate voters on Harris’s economic plans. He cites a TV ad tested by the super PAC Future Forward that garners strong support when tested with working people:

In that ad, (Kamala Harris) said, ‘When I am elected president, I will make it a top priority to bring down costs. We should be doing everything we can to make it more affordable to buy a home and more than 100 million Americans will get a tax cut. I will help families; letting you keep more of your hard-earned money. As president, I will be laser focused on creating opportunities for the middle class that advance their economic security, stability and dignity.’

Greenberg argued “Closing positive with Harris battling for the middle class and helping everyone on their very top issue will engage and unite the Democrats’ base. That will shift the trajectory of this race.”

Certainly, the next two days will tell if he and other progressives are right.

How Harris could have distanced herself from Democratic orthodoxy

Kamala Harris has been constantly pressured—by the media and some Democrats—to show how she would distance herself from Joe Biden and Democratic orthodoxy. As we have seen, the Biden economic agenda was remarkably successful—and that may be one good reason why she refused to attack the Biden-Harris economic strategy. But in response to this pressure, she has shifted her campaign to attacking Trump as an extremist. Greenberg and other progressives argue that she should have campaigned more on her anti-inflation plans and the larger economic agenda she has put forward.

Here's another approach: Kamala Harris—as candidate and as our new President—could distance herself from several generations of Democratic leaders. For decades now, several generations of activist movements have pushed energetically for a new economic agenda for the Democratic party. It has been a hard slog, but we have made progress even with party elites.

1. Inflation killed the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, who was the last Democrat who had to deal with high inflation. Prices were rising by 9.9% and remained high throughout his term. Shorly after he took office a coalition of progressive groups called Consumers Opposed to Inflation in the Necessities met with Carter and made the case that he should fight inflation in the key “basic necessities” sectors where increasing prices were driving inflation. Carter ignored us and instead listened to more conventional voices, and he tried various experiments in “deregulation,” none of which worked. Finally Fed Chair Paul Volker raised interest rates to 19 percent, precipitating a recession. And Carter lost his election to Ronald Reagan, who attacked him for 13 percent inflation and high unemployment. The good news is that Kamala Harris (and Joe Biden) took another path—and that new approach is working.

Kamala Harris—as candidate and as our new President—could distance herself from several generations of Democratic leaders.

2. Trade Policy advanced by conventional Democrats has ignored the economic pain and devastation caused by treaties like Bill Clinton’s NAFTA and his sponsoring of China joining the World Trade Organization. Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama both fiercely promoted another, even more ambitious treaty, known as the The Trans-Pacific Partnership. Eventually, both realized that voters hated these job-killing trade deals, but not until they greatly damaged the Democratic brand with heartland working class voters, and they gave up on the TPP. Many people remember the 1999 “Teamsters and Turtles” demonstrations in Seattle that brought together over 50,000 protesters—union members, environmentalists, family farmers, indigenous rights activists, faith-based groups, and solidarity organizations—to confront global elites attending the ministerial meetings of the WTO. Slowly, those groups have moved Democrats to understand the need for a trade policy that preserves and creates good jobs, reduces global warming and creates prosperity. The Harris campaign has broken with the old “free trade uber alles” agenda of the Democratic Party. And just in time, because she will forge a more functional trade regime that is more progressive than the mindless and opportunistic trade agenda of Donald Trump.

3. Industrial Policy is closely related to trade. For years Democrats joined Republicans to denounce any kind of industrial policy (except for military spending) aimed at making American industry more productive, cleaner, and more competitive—or to help create new high-tech industries that can anchor economic development and replace jobs lost to mechanization. But there has been a citizen movement demanding action. And polls show that most Americans—especially blue-collar workers—strongly support smart industrial policies. Biden and Harris made huge strides in this new direction with the passage of The American Recovery Act, which helped revive all sectors of the economy. The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022—to rebuild our semiconductor industry. The Inflation Reduction Act—which included $369 billion for a climate initiative to reduce greenhouse emissions and promote lean energy technologies. This legislation put an annual cap of $2,000 for out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for those insured by Medicare—and helped improve Obamacare, which was a beginning of an industrial policy for the huge and costly American health industry.

4. Investing in a Stronger Social Contract for Middle-Class and Working People—by Ending Austerity, Taxing the Rich, Growing the Economy.

The creation of Social Security by Franklin Roosevelt and Medicare by Lyndon Johnson marked major milestones in the ongoing quest to put an economic floor under the lives of working folks and poor people. After many battles which pitted the vast majority of Americans against Republicans (and conservative Democrats) who wanted to cut benefits or “privatize” these beloved social insurance programs, a new generation of activists have learned to stop attacks—and many are now working to expand and improve Social Security and Medicare, long harmed by conservative governments. And while we must protect the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans are working to transform Obamacare into a more comprehensive and less expensive system of health care.

If we want to live as well as the social democratic countries of the world, we will need to greatly improve our health care system.

Most advanced capitalist countries guarantee child care, pre-care education, paid family and medical leave, and in-home or community care for seniors and people with disabilities and their families. And if we want to live as well as the social democratic countries of the world, we will need to greatly improve our health care system.

Today there is a growing movement to win these expanded social insurance plans that can help make individuals and families more secure—and people who work for small businesses and corporations more productive.

Our crazy system of financing college and trade school education was so bad that when young people started talking about wiping out student debt—and making state universities tuition free, the idea took off like a rocket in the political debate—and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris became the champions of this big change. If Kamala wins the White House, we can expect her to keep pushing.

Popular programs like these are expensive. But our corporations and billionaires pay less in taxes than most other wealthy countries. Big coalitions like Americans for Tax Fairness are working for fair taxes—and an end to the Trump tax giveaways to the rich and corporations—that would provide us the resources we need to invest in a stronger social safety net.

5. Donald Trump thinks global warming is a hoax, but most Americans know we must act boldly to reduce carbon emissions. Unfortunately, for years Democratic leaders tried to achieve this by putting a tax on energy consumption—which would have raised costs to working Americans. Bill Clinton tried to pass a carbon tax in 1006, but even Democrats wouldn’t vote for it.

Eventually, after being schooled by climate activists—and by labor unions, who came to understand that transforming our energy system will mean good jobs—the Biden team proposed and got passed a historic legislation that used Federal funds to invest in energy conservation and new forms of green energy production. Those investments are producing millions of new jobs, many of them union jobs.

6. American workers have a right to be represented by a union. This proposition is increasingly popular today as billionaires and monopolies have come to dominate the economy and work places. The best unions have become creative about helping workers organize to secure rights at work and better lives for their families. And the Biden-Haris administration has not only taken important symbolic steps to support worker struggles—like Biden and Harris’s support for the historic United Auto Workers strike— they have made real change—for example by appointing Jennifer Abruzzo to the post of general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board. She has charted a dramatic new path to strengthen and defend workers rights to organize and to challenge anti-labor employers. Democrats have long given lip service to passing a new labor law—known as the Pro Act—to strengthen worker rights. And if Kamala Harris wins the Presidency—with a Congressional majority, she should be expected to write and pass an even tougher labor rights bill that can begin the process of guaranteeing that American workers have the kind of rights at work that workers in other advanced countries won years ago.

If we want a government that works for a better life for Americans, we must get big money out of politics.

7. We must take our democracy back from the wealthy and corporate elites. It is hugely important that we stop Donald Trump’s systematic attacks on our democratic system. But even when we defeat him—we will still have a political system that is dominated by massive amounts of money—including an obscene $134 million this year from crypto-currency investors to buy elections for House, Senate and White House. The U.S. now has a legal framework in which the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allows corporations and billionaires to flood elections with unlimited money—and which allows lobbyists to reward Members of Congress to do their bidding. And in order to use democracy to clean up the system we are going to have to make the U.S. Senate more democratic—by abolishing the filibuster that now requires a super majority in order to pass any significant changes. And grass-roots Democrats have discovered that we need to change party rules to prevent mysterious and evil dark money from dominating the system for nominating Senators and Members of Congress. If we want a government that works for a better life for Americans, we must get big money out of politics.

8. The rich have gotten richer and they have hollowed out the middle class.

The economic gap between the very rich and the rest of us has been growing dramatically for the past 30 years and more.

Income disparities are now so pronounced that America’s richest 1 percent of households averaged 139 times as much income as the bottom 20 percent in 2021, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

In the 1980s, when the Economic Policy Institute was founded as a think tank for working people, EPI’s early research began to demonstrate that the income and wealth of the richest Americans was pulling away from middle-class and working Americans. At first establishment economists denied the trend—or they said it was only temporary. Today everyone—left, right and center— acknowledges the problem, and the debate is about what to do about it—or about whether we can or should do anything about it. But most working people now know what growing inequality is doing to their families. And they want solutions. And one of the first battles Kamala Harris will face require us to rally the country to put an end to the Trump tax cuts for the rich and corporations that did so much to accelerate inequality of income and wealth.

All of the inter-woven movements for economic change described above aim at making the U.S. a society where there are fewer extremes of wealth and income—and where the very wealthy do not have the power to block the aspirations of the rest of us for a better life.

The New Centrism

In May, the respected New York Times senior reporter David Leonhardt wrote an important article entitled “A New Centrism Is Rising in Washington: Call it neopopulism: a bipartisan attitude that mistrusts the free-market ethos instead of embracing it.” Here’s what he wrote in his article in the Times:

For decades, Washington pursued a set of policies that many voters disliked and that did not come close to delivering their promised results. Many citizens have understandably become frustrated. That frustration has led to the stirrings of a neopopulism that seeks to reinvigorate the American economy and compete with the country’s global rivals.

A defining quality of the new centrism is how much it differs from the centrism that guided Washington in the roughly quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, starting in the 1990s. That centrism—alternately called the Washington Consensus or neoliberalism — was based on the idea that market economics had triumphed. By lowering trade barriers and ending the era of big government, the United States would both create prosperity for its own people and shape the world in its image, spreading democracy to China, Russia and elsewhere.

Winning this election is just the beginning of the work that needs to be done...

That hasn’t worked out. In the U.S., incomes and wealth have grown slowly, except for the affluent, while life expectancy is lower today than in any other high-income country.

Americans lean left on economic policy. Polls show that they support restrictions on trade, higher taxes on the wealthy and a strong safety net. Most Americans are not socialists, but they do favor policies to hold down the cost of living and create good-paying jobs. These views help explain why ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage and expand Medicaid have passed even in red states. They also explain why some parts of Biden’s agenda that Republicans uniformly opposed, such as a law reducing medical costs, are extremely popular. This is where the center of gravity in the country is.

Leonhardt is right that this new neopopulist approach to economics is very popular across the spectrum of Americans—with those who didn’t go to college and those who did, with men as well as women, with people struggling to stay middle class and with working class and poor people—white, Black, Hispanic and Asian. But this new popularity is not just the result of “new thinking” by academics and policy advisers. What he calls this new “centrism” is now making sense to voters and politicians alike because of the work of several generations of progressive activists—from my old friends fighting for civil rights and against a terrible war—to today’s generation of activists fighting for economic equality, to break the power of corporate manipulation of our political system, and to build an economic system that can build a better life for all Americans. That multi-generational movement (See the Solidarity Agenda) has helped shape the Biden-Harris presidency—and we all must hope that our work has helped to put Kamala Harris into the White House. And, after all our work, we will need to take a breath, get some rest—and then get to work to make that new agenda a reality.

Assuming Kamala Harris wins the election, it will be due in part to her campaign to fight back against the Donald Trump’s destructive attacks on women, on democracy, and against his desire for authoritarian power. But her victory will also be due to her ability to lay out an economic agenda that builds on the record of her service with Joe Biden’s administration—which represented a sharp break with Republican and Democratic neoliberalism. But winning this election is just the beginning of the work that needs to be done to create a better life for the American people.

We are one day away from the election, and too much is at stake for Black people. The questioning around Vice President Kamala Harris' Blackness and misconceptions about her plans for Black people continue to distract voters from the far-right, destructive manifesto fueling Donald Trump’s agenda, Project 2025: a dangerous declaration of oppression that risks civil rights and the democratic fabric of our nation.

Project 2025 details a disturbing vision for the future of Black people in this country: One where we have no rights, no control of our bodies, none where we can’t afford groceries, we can’t afford housing, where our children can’t even learn their own history because it is erased and whitewashed, and where politicians can spread dangerous lies about Black people without recourse. This manifesto seeks to erode the authority of vital government agencies, giving unprecedented power to the executive branch, leaving so many Black communities devastated. By threatening discrimination laws and targeting initiatives promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, Project 2025 will unravel decades of hard-fought civil rights progress.And with little to no federal oversight historical patterns of discrimination against Black communities will also worsen.

Black communities know what it’s like to be at the hands of a government without checks and balances and no accountability.

One of the key civil rights standards Project 2025 seeks to eliminate critical safeguard that addresses unintentional discriminatory practices, is a backbone of civil rights protections. This is the disparate impact standard in discrimination cases. In 2013, in one of the largest fair lending cases in the DOJ’s history, Black customers in the Chicago area brought a large lawsuit against Wells Fargo after they paid $2,937 more in broker fees for their homes than similarly situated white customers. Without the disparate impact standard, the federal government would have been unable to demonstrate that Black communities had suffered disproportionate harm at the hands of Wells Fargo. At a time when the nation is grappling with a housing crisis, eliminating the disparate impact standard would exacerbate existing disparities and leave Black communities vulnerable to discriminatory housing and lending practices.

Project 2025 also seeks to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in our schools and businesses. In June, a U.S. federal court of appeals court deemed an Atlanta private equity fund unconstitutional for providing grants to women-owned and Black-owned companies, ignoring the systemic barriers that have historically excluded Black women from investment funding. And following the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, conservatives attacked critical programs designed to increase the number of Black medical doctors. In a world where Black mothers are dying more than anyone in childbirth, the need for Black doctors is needed more than ever. The Project 2025 manifesto seeks to take this further and delete all references to diversity, equity, and inclusion from in our federal regulations and legislation. But let’s be very clear about what this will mean: these efforts will sabotage contracts, harm Black-owned businesses, and perpetuate historical injustices within Black communities.

Project 2025's agenda will wreak havoc on Black communities in a way we haven’t seen since Jim Crow. Black communities know what it’s like to be at the hands of a government without checks and balances and no accountability. As we are one day out from the election, Black people must vote in mass. We must recognize the urgency of this threat to our democracy and lean on tangible solutions to defend our rights for many generations. It’s time to take back our power, and let our voices be heard. Vote like your life depends on it because it does. We need all hands on deck to protect our future.

In communities across the nation, millions of immigrants are living in harmony with native-born residents, with neighbors, coworkers, and friends collectively caring for each other. Yet we rarely see those stories uplifted on the nightly news or on the front pages of local newspapers; those stories never go viral on social-media platforms. That’s because these kinds of stories don’t help the politically powerful in our country, and they don’t boost the profits of corporate media empires.

Instead we see, on repeat, the lie that noncitizen immigrants are voting in droves. People with millions of followers—like Elon Musk—are routinely spreading this lie on social media.

We see hateful rhetoric about immigrants of color. During a Univision town hall last month, Donald Trump re-upped the notorious lie about Springfield, Ohio’s Haitian community.

Our nation has yet to reckon with the deadly role our media system has played in the creation and distribution of narratives that have harmed countless people, including Ohio’s Haitian community.

We see coordinated campaigns to dissuade Black and Latino voters from participating in our democracy, with baseless claims that the U.S. election might not happen, or that police will be monitoring polling stations to round up voters who lack the “proper” documentation.

The intent of this rhetoric is to scare voters of color from going to the polls, to pander to anti-immigrant sentiments, to stir up fear and hysteria, to drive voter turnout of white people who are scared about the changing demographics of this country, and to legitimize authoritarian power grabs based on lack of trust in our electoral process.

And our nation’s dominant media and tech companies are complicit in all of this.

Far-right figures, including Ohio’s junior senator, continue to spread the falsehood that Springfield’s Haitian immigrants are eating pets. Both traditional and social media have amplified this conspiracy theory—and an entire community of innocent people continues to live in fear.

Many of us understand that these are outlandish lies—yet they are resonating with people who have fallen prey to anti-Haitian, anti-Black, and xenophobic talking points that are disseminated on media outlets like Fox News or on social-media platforms. This is part of a pattern in media coverage that stretches back hundreds of years.

The nation’s earliest newspapers supported enslavement by profiting off ads promoting the sale of enslaved people and the recapture of those who fled for freedom. In the ensuing years, powerful media institutions supported lynching and racial segregation.

More recently, several newspapers apologized for their histories of supporting segregation and white supremacy. But these outlets have yet to redress the harm they’ve caused or their roles in supporting racial hierarchies. Meanwhile, local-TV newscasts dehumanize communities of color through their crime coverage, reporting that has long proven lucrative for media conglomerates.

It’s not surprising that most people in the United States know very little about immigrants of color since the dominant narrative in corporate media portrays immigrants as criminals who are dangerous invaders.

The sober truth is that racism is profitable for social and traditional media companies alike. If-it-bleeds-it-leads coverage and “copaganda” serve as strategies to attract larger audiences. And powerful media figures are happy to look the other way if it means this incendiary rhetoric will help their companies’ bottom lines. Former CBS chairman and CEO Les Moonves admitted this when discussing the 2016 Trump campaign at an investor conference:

“Who would have thought that this circus would come to town?” said Moonves. “But, you know, it may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. The money’s rolling in.” Never mind the harmful impacts that Trump’s white-nationalist screeds were having on Black and Brown people across the country.

Many media executives share this sentiment, which helps explain why so little coverage illustrates the humanity of people who are forced to leave their homes and loved ones to escape violence and political instability stemming from histories of colonialism, and environmental destruction resulting from climate change. It explains why there are so few stories on people who are seeking employment and a better life for their families.

Even less coverage focuses on how U.S. foreign policy has economically, politically, and socially destabilized countries in the Americas like Haiti—and prompted thousands to flee their homelands. Despite our country’s long history of interventionist policies in Haiti—which has included an occupation and the support of deadly dictatorships—the public knows very little about the country, and the people we are told to fear.

“Haiti has been and continues to be the main laboratory for U.S. imperial machinations in the region and throughout the world,” University of British Columbia Professor Jemima Pierre wrote last year.

University of Toledo Professor Ayendy Bonifacio’s article “Tracing the Anti-Haitianism Behind the Springfield Scapegoating” explains that when Haitians overthrew their colonial enslavers to form the world’s first Black republic in 1804, it struck “fear into the hearts of slaveholders and their political allies, who wielded considerable influence over the nation’s major newspapers.”

Bonifacio notes that “during and after the Haitian Revolution, the U.S. press frequently reported on the supposed barbarism and primitiveness of Haiti and its people. Indeed, stories have circulated about Haitians eating animals and practicing cannibalism since the country’s founding.”

This anti-Haitian—and anti-Black—rhetoric has extended to other communities of color. In recent years, the Asian American Pacific Islander community has suffered from an increase in xenophobic news coverage that has criminalized both immigrants and U.S.-born residents. Reporting that fomented anti-Asian hate played a significant role in the adoption of racist policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The Los Angeles Times and The Seattle Times issued apologies over the past decade for supporting the imprisonment of Japanese Americans.

Meanwhile, hateful government policies and the media coverage that propped them up resulted in the deportation of more than 1 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the early 1930s—and then again in a 1954 campaign with the racist name “Operation Wetback.” The latter received supportive coverage from papers like the Los Angeles Times, which acknowledged in 2020 that the publication had served as an “uncritical mouthpiece for Washington.”

Our nation has yet to reckon with the deadly role our media system has played in the creation and distribution of narratives that have harmed countless people, including Ohio’s Haitian community.

We need government policies that support the development of a new media system that redresses this history of racism and xenophobia—a system where journalism supports the realization of a multiracial democracy rather than one that undermines it.

Most people I know seem to be holding their breath right now. There is, of course, an uncertain and deeply consequential election right around the corner. And a vast swath of the country is grappling with loss after two huge climate-exacerbated hurricanes. Many places, including my home state of Vermont, are struggling with the aftermath of less well-publicized climate disasters that are no less devastating for those in their epicenter.

Questions abound. Will the election results affect my Social Security? Will the hurricanes disrupt critical supply chains? Can my dad’s farm recover from the storm damage?

And, most of all: What’s coming next and how can we be ready?

Of course I don’t have a crystal ball. But, having worked with governments and civil society trying to head off the worst of climate change for more than 20 years, I’m certain of the trend: more destabilization, not less. Tougher shocks in more rapid succession.

The exact timing, degree, and location of those shocks is hard to predict. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to prepare. Uncertain times are uniquely suited to an approach I call “ multisolving”—acting in service of multiple goals with a single action. For example, multisolvers plant orchards that feed people and cool cities; they design solar panels that provide clean energy and habitat for native plants. Their work has shown me that some types of action are likely to be beneficial no matter what comes next. Here are five:

1. Nurture connections. The surprises to come are more likely to be complex than simple. For example, Covid-19 affected health, labor policy, supply chains, education, and more. No single person or entity can predict—or address—such far-reaching impacts. But, by building trusted connections among healthcare, labor, educators, community groups, and others, we have better odds of navigating an emergency together. And reports from places like western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene show how connections between neighbors can be a source of vital assistance during disaster recovery. What connections in your world could use a little more tending?
   
2. Prioritize health, defined broadly. If you knew that tomorrow was going to be a challenging day, but you weren’t sure if the challenge would be a math problem, an interpersonal conflict, or a flat tire on a busy road, you could still prepare. You might make it an early night, eat a solid breakfast, and drink plenty of water. Attending to your basic health is worth it even when you don’t know exactly what you will face. And that applies beyond our individual bodies. A healthy forest can withstand stronger storms, new pests, or a dry summer better than a weakened one. An organization that’s invested in good communication and trust can pull together better in a crisis than one with simmering tensions. Boosting the health of the systems you are a part of is almost always worth it.
   
3. Invest in equity. An equitable society is better able to respond to emergencies. If all workers had paid sick leave, it would be easier to limit the impact of the infectious diseases made more likely by climate change. If communities situated near chemical plants had the power to influence health and safety policies for those industries, the air and water we all depend on would be safer. No matter what crises loom, there are always ways to stand up for equity. Vote for candidates who prioritize it. Donate to organizations that embody it. And lift your voice in support of it.
   
4. Simplify, slow down, and build in some slack. Figuring out ways to live a little more lightly and slowly can be a wise reaction to tumultuous times. If your schedule has a little space, there’s more flexibility when shocks hit. Same if your bank account has a little surplus. If your pantry has a little extra, there’s more to share with a neighbor in need. If your team sets less ambitious quarterly goals, you’ll all be a little less stressed when bad weather shuts down your supplier. And, since the economy’s ravenous use of energy and materials is destabilizing the planet’s natural systems, every time you can slow down and consume less makes future shocks a little less likely. We don’t all have equal power to create space and slack, so ask how you can give more space to members of your community. Give a generous tip at the cafe, watch the neighbor’s kids for an afternoon, and know you are contributing to a more resilient system.
   
5. Get good at learning and sharing what you’ve learned. In unpredictable times, everyone must learn and adapt. The question is whether we can do so quickly and gracefully. Can we let go of old thinking about what’s safe or what’s feasible? Can we try a few options and pay careful attention to what works best? Are we willing to admit, even loudly, when something was a bad idea? I hope so because we just don’t have time to repeat each other’s mistakes.

In offering this list, I don’t mean to imply that I think the coming years will be easy or even safe for all of us. There’s good reason to expect difficulty, loss, and suffering that wiser, earlier action could have averted.

But I also try to remember that uncertainty cuts both ways. We don’t know what dangers are lurking, nor do we know what new possibilities might open up, some of them spurred by how people respond to the dangers. Here’s some good news: Connecting, fostering health, prioritizing equity, building in slack, and getting good at learning are excellent preparation for moments of opportunity too. In the shadow of uncertainty, let’s invest in the actions that enable us to both cope with crises and step into opportunities. I predict the future will be rich with both.

With just a few days left until Election Day, the fact that the race to the White House between U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump remains extremely tight is truly mind-boggling. Reason dictates that the Democrats should be set to win a landslide, but what could very well happen instead is the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

Unfortunately, there are some good reasons why this is a tightly fought election. First, the cold truth is that Kamala Harris is not an inspiring leader. What’s even worse is that she is a flip-flopper. She’s changed her position on fracking and on the infamous border wall (she is now against fracking natural gas bans and seems to be leaning in favor of building more border wall) and hasn’t done enough to explain her policy positions on several issues, including Medicare for All. Rational voters would not fail to take notice of such shortcomings in a presidential candidate.

Second, Kamala Harris represents a party that has lost the working class and is perceived as being one with the elites. Harris’ own campaign has been too focused on winning over wavering Republicans, preferring to share the stage with Liz Cheney and billionaire Mark Cuban over progressive icons like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez (D-N.Y.), and attacking Trump as a threat to democracy.

Neoliberalism is incompatible with democracy as it alters society’s balance of power overwhelmingly in favor of big capital, transforms citizenship into an exercise of consumer choice, and undermines policy initiatives aimed toward the common good.

Both strategies appear to have backfired. First, because working-class people represent a much larger segment of the electorate than wavering Republicans, and because cozying up to anti-Trump Republicans and receiving the endorsement of the warmongering Cheneys has alienated progressives. Second, exhorting citizens to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket because Trump represents a threat to democracy isn’t making inroads with average folks who are mainly concerned with how to make ends meet. Most adult citizens have no confidence in U.S. institutions and in fact mistrust the electorate system, which is why millions of citizens do not bother to vote and the voter turnout in the U.S. trails that of many other Western countries.

Third, Harris has not distanced herself from the Biden approach on Israel and Gaza, which has been nothing short of a moral catastrophe, and has subsequently alienated the young, progressive and non-white voters who overwhelmingly sided with President Joe Biden in 2020. Not only that, but she and the Democrats have managed to create the impression among a large swath of voters that they are now the real warmongers, which is not far from the truth.

In the meantime, Trump’s support has remained stable and defined in spite of what he says. Trump exerts a cult-of-personality influence over his followers like no other populist leader in the Western world. Of course, this is the result of the ongoing erosion of the political culture in the U.S. under neoliberalism, which has essentially become the dictatorship of big financial capital. Neoliberalism is incompatible with democracy as it alters society’s balance of power overwhelmingly in favor of big capital, transforms citizenship into an exercise of consumer choice, and undermines policy initiatives aimed toward the common good.

Neoliberalism must be understood not only as an economic project, but also as a political and cultural project. And nowhere else in the Western world is civil society’s neoliberal transformation so pronounced as it is in the United States. Even the right to unionize, a fundamental human and civil right, faces massive challenges due to the political power of the corporate world. This is because democracy in the U.S. has always been of a very fragile nature and the consolidation of democratic ideals has faced resistance and opposition down to this day. Under such circumstances, the rise of the authoritarian strongman government that Donald Trump represents must be seen as an inevitable outcome.

Indeed, the unwavering appeal of Donald Trump among his supporters, in spite of all his crimes and scandals, speaks volumes both about the nature and scope of the cultural divide in the U.S., as well as about the political and economic effects of neoliberalism. This is the only way to understand why the white working class and less-educated voters, the traditional base of the Democratic Party, have flocked to Republicans in recent decades and now represent Trump’s base. White working-class and less-educated voters broke ranks with the Democratic Party when the New Democrat faction severed completely its ties with the “New Deal” policies and embraced in turn economic policies that are the backbone of the neoliberal project.

By the same token, the old stereotype of the Republicans as the party of the rich and the elite no longer holds sway with many voters. And there is ample evidence to explain why this is the case. Virtually all of the wealthiest congressional districts across the country are now represented by a Democrat, while it is the Republicans who claim to represent the people who struggle.

In the end, it is probably not mind-boggling at all that election polls show a very close race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, more than 80% of registered voters said that the economy is the most important issue for them in the 2024 presidential election. And in a final Financial Times poll, voters expressed preference for Trump over Harris to lead the economy.

Of course, analyses that expose Trump’s myths about the economy and warnings by experts that his own economic plans would worsen inflation and wreak havoc on U.S. workers and businesses while increasing the gap between the haves and the have-nots either do not reach his supporters or simply leave them unfazed. In either case, indifference to truth is a symptom of our extremely polarized times and, in a society that has lost its vision for the common good and has allowed in turn the rich to hijack the political system, all that matters now is that people believe in their own reasoning. Demagogues like Trump are fully aware of the existing social realities and not only exploit the available circumstances but make an art out of the belief that reality is what you make of it.

As sad as it may be, the 2024 presidential election is a choice between neoliberal fascism and neoliberal business as usual. Some would say there is still a difference between the two options; others might call it irredeemable politics. But these are the only two choices that U.S. voters have.

For seniors and their families, the choice in this election couldn’t be clearer. Before Donald Trump took office, our organization did not endorse candidates for president of the United States. But Trump was such a four-alarm fire for us and our members (older Americans across the country), that we felt a duty to endorse Joe Biden in 2020, breaking with nearly 40 years of precedent. This cycle, we have endorsed Kamala Harris as the candidate who will genuinely protect seniors’ interests, including the two programs in our organization’s name, Social Security and Medicare. We have also endorsed scores of candidates for House and Senate as “champions” for older Americans.

From a policy standpoint, this is a no-brainer. Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden, has pledged to protect Social Security and Medicare from Republican proposals to cut both programs—by raising the retirement age, means testing, and reducing COLAs. But she also has endorsed the idea that the wealthy should begin contributing their fair share in payroll taxes, which would go a long way toward safeguarding the financial health of both Social Security and Medicare. With additional revenue flowing in—plus billions of dollars in savings on prescription drugs from the Inflation Reduction Act—we could not only strengthen, but expand, seniors’ earned benefits.

In October, the vice president laid out a plan to expand Medicare to cover long-term, in-home care for seniors (and people with disabilities). That is a historic proposal. Under the current system, seniors must impoverish themselves in order to qualify for long-term care under Medicaid—and may well end up in nursing homes. Otherwise, the main alternative is for families to provide home care, often at a high financial and personal cost.

Kamala Harris also wants to expand traditional Medicare to include hearing and vision coverage. We have been fighting for the enhancement of benefits for decades, because seniors’ health and safety depends on proper hearing and vision care. These coverages were part of President Biden’s original Build Back Better plan, a noble effort that can be revived with a new Democratic president and Congress.

On the other hand, it’s almost laughable that anyone would think Donald Trump is the better choice for seniors and their families. Trump is unserious about policy, except insofar as it helps him score political points. He knows that Social Security and Medicare are tremendously popular, so he claims he will protect them, while embracing proposals that could devastate both programs.

Many of Trump’s public statements over the years do not inspire confidence. He once called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” comparing America’s most successful social insurance program with a petty criminal enterprise. This year, he said he’d be “open” to cutting “entitlements,” a comment his campaign tried to walk back in the face of understandable backlash.

Each year that Donald Trump was president, he submitted White House budgets that would have cut Social Security and Medicare by billions of dollars. He recklessly suspended the FICA payroll tax during the pandemic and said that he hoped it would be “eliminated” entirely, never mind that this is Social Security’s main funding source. Now, he proposes to repeal taxes on Social Security benefits that were put in place during the 1983 reforms (signed into law by President Reagan) to help fund the program.

The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, hardly a liberal group, estimates that Trump’s plans would cost Social Security up to $2.75 trillion over ten years—and would accelerate the projected depletion of the program’s trust fund reserves by three years. That’s just six years from now!

In the end, though, this election comes down to values. Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz came from the middle class and understand the struggles of working Americans. Harris was raised by a single mother in a modest Oakland neighborhood and cared for her aging mom when she was dying of cancer. Tim Walz lost his father at age 19, and credits Social Security survivor benefits with keeping his family from falling into poverty. These candidates’ lived experiences inform their policies affecting seniors and families.

The Harris/Walz ticket reflects the preferences of most Americans across when it comes to seniors’ earned benefits. Public opinion surveys consistently show that bipartisan majorities of Americans oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and agree that the wealthy should begin contributing their fair share. On the other side, the now-infamous blueprint for a second Trump term, Project 2025, calls for radical changes to Medicare that would end the program as we know it. Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025, has advocated raising the Social Security eligibility age and other cuts to the program.

Donald Trump has (unconvincingly) attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, but he is a member of an elite financial class that focuses on lining the pockets of the already wealthy and powerful. It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that the GOP has recruited millionaire candidates for Senate in key battleground states who, unlike their Democratic rivals, do not represent the interests of working people. Many of these candidates have supported raising the retirement age and privatizing Social Security, while championing more tax cuts for the rich. Their hostility to the interests of seniors is apparent. The GOP Senate contender in Wisconsin even suggested that nursing home residents aren’t truly capable of voting.

This election will determine whether current and future seniors—and their families—can count on the government to keep the promises of Social Security and Medicare and to improve eldercare. Growing old in America is increasingly costly. Without these bedrock programs, not only seniors, but their family members in the “sandwich generation” will find it even harder to navigate the cycles of life. In this clarifying light, the choices for President and Congress shouldn’t even be close.

On Tuesday evening October 29, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the Ellipse, supplanting—with unifying oratory— Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric that prompted an attack on the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. Advocating a platform that both protects and expands freedoms, Harris has donned the mantle of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

During the 2024 Democratic National Convention, most media interpreted the repetition of “freedom” as a reclamation of that word from the Republican Party. But what I heard was FDR’s "Four Freedoms Speech," and I still do. That speech was President Roosevelt’s State of the Union address presented to a joint session of Congress on January 6, 1941. Yes, precisely 80 years prior to Donald Trump’s Outrage on the Ellipse and inside the selfsame Capitol Building where MAGA followers tried violently to usurp power. In addition to defining democratic freedoms, Roosevelt denounced dictatorial tyranny in his address, making his words from that January 6th resonate today as a rebuttal to Trumpism.

Before naming freedoms that unite and protect people, Roosevelt painted a picture of the irrational fears that divide. Unlike most State of the Union Addresses, FDR concentrated not on the internal condition of our union but on threats to all democracies. The President broadened his framework because he spoke at a dire moment: Hitler had conquered most of continental Europe and was terrorizing England. In the speech, Roosevelt never names Hitler and Nazism or Mussolini and Fascism but speaks of “dictators” and “tyranny,” making his warnings easily applicable to our own time.

Roosevelt emphasized that dictators succeed by attacking “…the democratic way of life …[with] poisonous propaganda to destroy unity and promote discord,” a prescient portrait of Trump’s language. Autocrats do not offer policies for debate in a public forum; instead, they fill their audience with fear. “Fear” already had a prominent position in Roosevelt’s rhetoric. He had powerfully laid claim to that word in his first Inaugural on March 4, 1933 when he proclaimed that “…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror….” In 1933, fear resulted from the Great Depression—a fear of unemployment, of homelessness, of starvation, of bank failure. By 1941, that fear had extended to “…assailants [of democratic life] still on the march.” Fear remains today, and Trump uses it to promote a mythic past with restricted liberties, which provides a narrative to the MAGA mythology.

FDR realized that fear obstructs progress and, in his January 6th, 1941 address, cautioned that it “… paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Paralyzes!

FDR spoke from intimate experience of how paralysis limits motion. As an antidote, FDR prescribed expanding freedoms. His 1941 State of the Union defined four broad and basic human rights, now known as Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. While FDR’s first two Freedoms were established in the First Amendment, the latter two, “from want” and “from fear,” evoked either the expansions granted by his New Deal (such as Work Projects, Unemployment Insurance, and Social Security, all of which alleviated both want and fear) or FDR’s intentions for further augmentation (such as increased medical coverage, job opportunity, and pay equity). Roosevelt believed his “vision [was not for] a distant millennium… [but] attainable in [his] own time….” Part of what makes his address painfully relevant today is that many of Roosevelt’s goals for further rights remain unfulfilled in this new millennium.

Kamala Harris has now revived those goals. Her policies heed FDR’s warning against tyranny by amplifying his call to expand liberties. Like President Roosevelt, Vice President Harris believes in democratic progress.

On January 6, 1941, Roosevelt described American history as “…a perpetual peaceful revolution … adjusting itself to changing conditions … [as] today’s best is not good enough for tomorrow.” But now we must recognize that 1941’s tomorrow is today. Harris’s enlarged Freedom from Want includes freedom for reproductive health, home ownership, and caregiving, while her aspirations to protect Americans from gun violence, climate change, and voter suppression fall under Freedom from Fear. Kamala Harris could lead our democracy towards a better tomorrow if we the people show up for our “…rendezvous with destiny,” as FDR also once said. To give her that opportunity, it's up to us to elect her—along with a Democratic Congress—on November 5, 2024.

During my childhood, one consistent theme was bragging to family and friends out of state about Michigan’s lakes, great and small. I remember being horrified when I got to college in Chicago and met a Minnesotan who was equally proud of her lakes and believed they had more lakes and better hockey.

Eventually, I got over the lake contest to focus on protecting freshwater for everyone, but in 2023, I became green with envy for what Minnesota has anew.

Under Gov. Tim Walz, Minnesota passed one of the most impressive legislative packages in the United States, developed by a diverse coalition of climate experts, transit activists, union leaders, and racial justice organizers over years.

When I think of Minnesota today, I think of learning from them about the future we deserve.

I want to achieve what Minnesota signed into law with a one-seat Democratic majority in Michigan—and I believe it’s possible if we elect the Harris-Walz ticket on November 5.

Gov. Walz signed a renewable energy standard into law in Minnesota, even while supporting the best green bank law in the country, with strong labor and environmental justice standards, to implement and maximize the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. As our air is sullied by Canadian wildfires and our water is threatened by agricultural runoff, Michigan needs stronger standards too.

Thanks to Walz’s leadership, no kid in Minnesota is hungry at school, with free breakfast and lunch guaranteed to students. Some don’t need it and bring their own lunch, but guaranteeing full bellies will keep kids healthy and help them learn. No student in Michigan should be hungry during math class either, and Harris has already put forward policy proposals. That would be an excellent start at reducing food prices.

Minnesota has also passed arguably the best transportation policy in the country, pushed by legislators and advocates for safe streets and celebrated and signed by the governor. This bill would prioritize projects that protect clean air, expand freedom of movement, and reduce traffic too.

Imagine if Michiganders could take a reliable train home from the bar or have the option to take a speedy bus to work if a car was in the shop. We need policies like this that benefit people in Michigan and across the country. Harris was inspired by these efforts and picked Walz in part to invest in clean transportation and safe streets.

Minnesota also legalized marijuana, and under Gov. Walz’s leadership, they didn’t stop there. They created an office to expunge records of people impacted by over-criminalization of weed and provided incentives and benefits for impacted families to get a head start in the legal marijuana business. Our state incarcerates far too many of our neighbors, and many more would be supportive of recreational use and growing the tax base. Vice President Harris has echoed that she would support legalization, and creative public policy work like that in Minnesota is what will be needed to do so in an equitable way in states like ours.

I certainly do not agree with Harris and Walz on every issue, but since electing them is one step closer to climate progress, free school lunch, fast trains, and legal weed, I will be voting for them on November 5.

I still brag about Michigan and Detroit-style pizza to anyone who listens, and I still play pond hockey in February with my siblings when I can. I’m even still riding our Lions’ win over the Vikings to be first in the conference.

But we all deserve healthy kids and safe streets, so when I think of Minnesota today, I think of learning from them about the future we deserve—and I believe it is within reach.