Thirty-Three Reasons to Vote for a Woman

For brief descriptions of and links to recent posts, click here. For an inverse-chronological list with links to all posts after January 23, 2017, click here. For a subject-matter index to posts before that date, click here.

For a note on whether Trump’s acquittal was the people’s will, click here. For comment on our impending Stalinist empire, click here. NOTE TO READERS: The following reasons are to vote for a woman are, in part, my response to President Trump’s State of the Union Speech, which I would mark A+ for show and F for truth. They are as seen by a man, in rough order of importance:

1. President Trump, the quintessential showman and macho male, is not known for his truth or accuracy. In his hour-and-twenty-minute speech, he didn’t once mention climate change, student debt, gun violence, his failure to sign a big national infrastructure bill, or his own incessant incitement of hate for immigrants and minorities. As Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in her rebuttal, you have to watch what Republicans do, not what they say. The women who are competing to be the Democratic presidential nominee, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, will level with you and at least try to do what they say. They won’t ignore climate change—humanity’s greatest challenge ever—the massive debt that hobbles college grads as they begin their careers, or three years with no big money for national infrastructure, just to make themselves look good. They’ll try honestly to get things done for our kids, understanding that you can’t begin to solve real problems unless you acknowledge them.

2. During the last 60 years, male presidents have escalated or begun three needless, costly, destructive and mostly futile foreign military adventures: Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam and George W. Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq. The primary motivations for these blunders were domestic politics and male machismo, compounded by appalling ignorance of relevant foreign facts (or deliberate deception) and the lack of any coherent initial strategy. A female president would at least lack the male machismo. Warren and Klobuchar, in particular, are unlikely to make war based on ignorance or deception. And both would be more cautious than these two historic male warmakers because both are laser-focused on improving the lives of American families at home.

3. The latest two of our massive, high-cost, little-gain military misadventures are recent enough to be top-of-mind for many voters. As a result, both Democrats and Republicans—and even Tea Party members—are sick of war. So a female predilection to solve problems by other means, which past warmongers have labeled “weak,” now confers a political advantage.

4. Either Warren or Klobuchar will restore our membership in the Paris Agreement to slow climate change, and either will work hard to transform our energy economy and, in so doing, create millions of good, non-outsourceable jobs.

5. Either Warren or Klobuchar will increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance and will do so without regard to the profit or loss of private insurers. If you like delayed Medicare for All, vote for Warren. If you like Medicare for All who Want It, vote for Klobuchar.

6. A woman can heal our deep divisions just as a mother suppresses sibling rivalry, by treating everyone the same.

7. A female Democrat will be less likely to tolerate a “winner take all” economy, in which the number of billionaires grows wildly while millions of families struggle to feed their kids.

8. Warren or Klobuchar will focus on the problems that modern families face and the challenges of their children, including the need for help in caring for children and retiring massive college debt.

9. Neither Warren nor Klobuchar would tolerate ripping children away from the arms of asylum-seeking mothers and fathers.

10. Neither Warren nor Klobuchar is campaigning on, or will govern with, prejudice, hatred or disrespect for any racial, national, ethnic, religious, linguistic or sexual group.

11. Either Warren or Klobuchar would restore our nation’s foreign alliances, diplomacy and standing in the world.

12. Either Warren or Klobuchar would attract scientists back to government work, and restore our nation’s respect for science and our support for scientific research.

13. Men have governed this country for its entire history, but our nation is in decline. Trump himself implicitly recognizes that decline by promising to “Make America Great Again.” He accelerates that decline by habitually refusing to tell the truth. It’s time for a new kind of leader.

14. Enough states have now ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. It’ll become part of our Constitution if only Congress extends the deadline for ratification. A female Democrat is most likely to work for that extension and sign it into law.

15. A female Democrat will not tolerate government interfering with women’s private childbearing and family decisions, thereby also interfering with their religious freedom.

16. A female president will inspire and encourage girls and women to become leaders, not just in politics, but in business, sports, and academia, too.

17. A female president will not appoint judges who harbor misogyny in their hearts or have histories of mistreating women.

18. A female president will clamp down on sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, by regulating, by fostering and signing legislation, by exhorting the public, and by setting a good example.

19. The primaries can test “electability” only if every voter picks her or his own first choice, without regard to how others might vote. You have nothing to lose, and your party and the nation have everything to gain, if you vote your own heart in the primaries. Don’t try to second-guess others.

20. Warren and Klobuchar are both well-qualified to be president and free of historical “baggage.” Neither has Hillary Clinton’s record of blunders and misfortunes. Each can easily avoid Clinton’s mistake of failing to show up late in the campaign in key states ultimately lost by small margins. So Hillary Clinton’s narrow 2016 loss in the Electoral College says absolutely nothing about another woman’s chances to win in 2020. Even with all her baggage and mistakes, Clinton won the popular vote by a plurality of over two million, at a time when most of the nation didn’t really know her opponent and many voted for him on hope and a prayer.

21. There is no reason in policy for refusing to vote for a woman. The Dems have one for every taste: Warren the progressive and Klobuchar the moderate. Take your pick.

22. There is no reason in strategy for refusing to vote for a woman. If most voters really won’t elect a women, that conclusion will emerge from honest and authentic primary voting in which every voter chooses what she or he wants, rather than guessing what others might want.

23. Either Warren or Klobuchar will bring courtesy, tact, diplomacy and grace back to the White House. Remember the no-scandal, no-drama Obamas?

24. Trump’s disrespect for and mistreatment of women are not matters of conjecture or things he can credibly deny. We have him on tape, over and over again. A female candidate can take full advantage of attack ads based on those tapes by offering a simple and effective remedy: electing her.

25. Many women (and men, too) are understandably angry at the Trump administration’s habit of belittling, disrespecting and even insulting women, especially journalists. A female nominee will give these voters a constructive channel for their anger and will excite their enthusiasm.

26. Donald Trump simply can’t handle strong, competent women, let alone female experts. With the right approach, a female Democratic nominee could get under his skin and stay there. She might make him seem even more unhinged than he often appears.

27. Trump won in 2016, we are told, with “novelty” and a shock wave: breaking all the rules, plus being crude, vulgar, selfish and nasty. A female opponent could provide novelty of a more constructive sort.

28. A big reason why Trump won in 2016 was that nobody outside New York really knew him. New York rejected him by the landslide margin of 22.5%. After seeing him at “work” for three years, the nation now knows him as well or better than New York. Trump’s electoral “magic” is a myth, carefully concocted by Republicans and Fox, and bought by our gullible “mainstream” media as an easy way to make “news.” Like a fog in strong sun, it will disappear in the coming general election under the glare of relentless Democratic attack ads. It’ll disappear faster if women unite against him.

29. Any doubt in persuadable voters’ minds about having a female in the White House will vanish at the stark choice between a smart, caring, empathetic woman with good, consistent policy proposals (progressive or moderate) and Donald Trump. Fighting fire with fire, or crudity and cruelty with more of the same, would backfire.

30. President Obama won twice, with indisputable electoral- and popular-vote margins, with the aid of gentleness, decency and sweet reason. Warren or Klobuchar could, too.

31. Women are men’s wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, grandmas, aunts, nieces and lovers. They need our protection from this woman-hater and his crude and sometimes violent followers. What better and less violent way to protect them than replace him with one of their own?

32. It would be marvelous poetic justice to swap a woman for a misogynist on the rough hundredth anniversary of women’s suffrage.

33. Women are not a minority group. They are the majority of the US’ population, its registered voters and its likely voters. Get them committed to your party, and you’ll have the nucleus of a winning coalition for as far as the eye can see. You’ll change the present dismal course of history.

Our Own Stalinist Empire

In two essays beginning 12.5 years ago (here and here), I argued that neither side “won” the Cold War. I predicted that the US’ own “Stalinist Period” lay in the future.

Little did I know how hard and fast it would come. Anyone my age (74), with some knowledge of Russia and/or Russian, can see how far gone we are already.

Congress already had forfeited its constitutional power to declare war before Trump ever ran for president. Tuesday the Senate abandoned Congress’ power of impeachment by refusing even to hear witnesses in a strong case against him. Today or tomorrow, it will confirm its abandonment by acquitting Trump entirely along party lines.

Change the language and the date, and Trump’s speech Tuesday night could easily pass for one by Stalin himself. Confuse the people with a mass of optimistic statistics, some accurate, some fudged, and some made up. Say nothing about the real problems threatening the stability of your society or even the habitability of the planet. Demonize your political enemies with simplistic tribal labels: “capitalist exploiters” in Stalin’s case, “socialists” in Trump’s. Have a phalanx of sycophantic apparatchiks, whose careers depend on your approval, lined up clapping and cheering, each fearful he (nearly all are men) will fall out of favor if he stops clapping too soon. Only Trump’s using heroes and objects of his imperial largesse as human props was new.

Slowly but inevitably, pundits and non-sycophant pols are coming to realize how precariously we Americans are dangling on the precipice of Stalinism. Sure, our press is much freer than Pravda and Izvestia once were. But our own Stalinists did the Russians’ one better. They discovered that you don’t have to control all the news media or kill journalists (at least not yet). All you have to do is have your own brilliant propaganda organ, Fox, which the law can’t touch because it’s private, and a journalistic credo that “objectivity” means treating both sides the same, so that one side can keep moving the goalposts right.

Just today, two thinkers took aim at the details of Stalinism coming to America. Caroline Fredrickson described how letting only the “right” people vote has been a strategy of Republicans since Reagan:

“Paul Weyrich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Moral Majority, explained his support for vote suppression at an evangelical Christian campaign rally for Ronald Reagan in 1980. ‘Many of our Christians have what I call the “goo goo” syndrome — good government,’ he said. ‘They want everybody to vote. I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people.’”

Now that strategy has borne bitter fruit, with Trump’s narrow win in 2016. If Trump wins again in 2020, it’ll cement Stalinism as our national fate.

It gets worse. Our National Archives and federal agencies are busy destroying or refusing to preserve key historical records, under the pretext of lack of funds or changes in media or format. According to Matthew Connelly, a history professor at Columbia:

“President Trump has long made it a practice to tear up his papers and throw them away. It is a clear violation of the Presidential Records Act, which is supposed to prevent another Watergate-style cover-up. When the National Archives sent staff members to tape these records together, the White House fired them.”

Connelly also notes that the CIA “has a long history of destroying records related to the overthrow of democratically elected governments, mind control experiments and torture.” If that strikes you as similar to what the Nazis did in their death camps as Allied troops closed in, you’re not alone. But in this case, there are no Allied troops to come to the rescue.

Stalin himself was a bit crude. Our own Stalinists are cleverer and more effective. They understand that they don’t have to put millions in gulags or exterminate them. All they have to do is control what most people “know” and, as a backup, which of them can vote. (Putin now controls Russian TV and has his legions of Internet trolls, while letting the “intelligentsia” prattle away in their own little circles.)

The Stalinists may not even have to control a majority. All it may take is 40% or so.

This coming presidential election is a test. If they “pass” it, the Stalinists will have won. We will have become the Empire of the United States. And if our Empire survives its stormy birth, who knows how long it will last, with the all power of the Internet, big data, AI and the surveillance technology that Americans are developing for China in the Stalinists’ hands, or in the hands of giant corporations that depend on the Stalinists (and China) for profit?

Maybe Orwell was right: it just took a little longer than he thought, until 2020, not 1984. If you think this is an existential election for democracy in the United States, you may have no idea how right you are. Even democracy’s survival this year doesn’t necessarily mean victory. The Stalinists will keep on fighting, manipulating and undermining democracy until (if ever) the Republican party dissolves or reforms itself completely. How likely is that?

Was Trump’s Acquittal the People’s Will?

A majority of senators voted for acquittal, but all were Republicans. Not a single Democrat or Independent voted for acquittal, and one Republican, Mitt Romney, voted to convict and remove Trump for abuse of power. But what about the people whom the senators are supposed to represent? What was their will?

To find out, I prepared a spreadsheet showing the 2019 populations of all the states whose senators voted for acquittal on both charges. For states with only one of two senators voting for complete acquittal, I used half that state’s population. The total population represented by senators voting for acquittal was 142,877,764.

That’s just 43.62% of the total 2019 population of the fifty states. (The District of Columbia and our territories, including Puerto Rico, have no say in the Senate.) Senators representing the other 56.38% of the people—a clear majority—voted to convict and remove the president.

So acquittal doesn’t look so much like majority rule or the people’s will, does it? If we had a parliamentary democracy like Britain’s or India’s, it would have no trouble removing Trump by majority vote of no confidence.

But our Senate was designed from the outset for minority rule, so that the then slave states could keep their slaves in bondage. Our Founders were arrogant enough to engrave that maldistribution of political power in stone for the ages, decreeing in Article V of the Constitution that “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” They could not foresee that the new nation they were creating would some day dump slavery (by its bloodiest war ever), become a global power, and change beyond recognition.

Although it’s the source of much of our division and acrimony, the Senate’s skewed structure wasn’t really the problem this week. Even if its vote on Trump had been strictly proportional to population, it would have acquitted him because the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote (67%) to convict. That was never in the cards.

Fortunately, although our Electoral College is as anachronistic as our Senate, it’s not quite as unfair. At least with respect to the 2016 election, it came much closer to majority rule, as this spreadsheet on states that picked Trump by a margin of 3% or more shows.

The Democrats can dump Trump this November just by duplicating the popular-vote majority that Hillary Clinton won, plus redistributing it a bit among the states. They can do that by focusing relentlessly on the seven states that neither candidate won by a 3% or more margin in 2016, as follows:

States Up for Grabs
State	Electoral Votes	Trump 2016 Margin
Florida	29	2%
Pennsylvania	20	<1%
Michigan	16	<1%
Wisconsin	10	<1%
Nevada	6	-2%
New Hampshire	4	-<1%
Maine	4	-3%

So let’s stop whining and dreaming of amendments to our Constitution (other than the ERA) and get to work! This year will be our last chance to save our democracy.

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