A post on Steven Vincent Benét and the Democrats’ longstanding reluctance to manipulate the courts.

Even today, while Blue Dog Democrat Joe Manchin is finally hopping mad over the hasty Barrett nomination, our own Dianne Feinstein is pooh-poohing the idea of court packing. It’s also become obvious that conservative Supreme Court justices pay attention to the timing of their replacements, and liberals do not. The only recent conservative justice to leave the bench under a Democratic President was Antonin Scalia, whose departure was unscheduled. (Last before him was the retirement of moderate-right Byron “Whizzer” White, in 1993.)

The connection to Benét is his famous short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster“, which he subsequently rewrote as a play and opera libretto. To summarize the plot, New Hampshire farmer Jabez Stone sells his soul to the Devil in return for years of good luck. Eventually Mr. Scratch returns to collect. Stone hires famed attorney Daniel Webster to try to save himself from Hell. Webster insists successfully that Stone is entitled to a trial, but the Devil in return picks the judge and jury. The judge is John Hathorne, who presided enthusiastically over some of the Salem Witch Trials. The jurors include the pirate Blackbeard and other malefactors.

Nevertheless, with his stirring advocacy (“You were men, once!”), Webster wins an acquittal, and moreover forces the Devil to agree never to bother a New Hampshireman again.

The Democratic leadership are all dreaming of their success as the modern-day Daniel Webster (who opposed the Democratic Party his entire career), who gets votes from Roberts, Gorsuch, the potential new Justice Barrett, perhaps even roué Brett Boofanaugh. Watch me salvage Obamacare, or even Roe! The conservative justices are not monolithic: Gorsuch appears to be the most sympathetic to Native Americans, including all the liberals, in at least a generation. But on cases that tilt the political playing field in the Republicans’ favor, they have never shown mercy. Bush v. Gore. Citizens United. Shelby County (Voting Rights Act). Voter ID cases. Cases on loosening rules for the 2020 pandemic. Not a single conservative defection.

Right now, the lily-white Republican Party, counting both its explicitly racist Trump vanguard and its business rump, attracts not more than 45% of the national electorate. Maintaining permanent minority rule is exactly why these Federalist Society judges are on the bench. Preservation of Republican supremacy has moved from the ballot box to the courts, and no amount of eloquence or legal brilliance will fix that. Six new progressive seats on the Supreme Court, on the other hand…

1. The final batch of postcards arrived. Tony the Dem has a good campaign for Jon Ossoff so stop by and get the cards while they are hot — let’s finish them off supporting Jon O. Let me know if you need help with getting addresses etc. We are out of Julie Oliver addresses so this will be our focus and probably our last postcard campaign.
2. We passed $35,000 and are heading to $40,000. Encourage nervous friends to donate instead of complain.
3. Need a buddy? Karen and Judy are busy texting and ready to help. Bill can talk you through phone-bank anxiety. Be ready to switch actions when it is too late to postcard or letter.
4. Finally, reminder about Votefwd from Sally. Look for the campaigns marked with the P inside the circle. Those are the Priority campaigns and go to Dem voters.

For anyone who has time to do something now that they are not writing postcards!

How to Help No Matter How Much Time You Have

1. Make Cure Calls

What You’ll Be Doing: Helping contact voters and walking them through the process to cure their ballots. 

Best for: Anyone with a computer and a phone! 

How: Sign up to make cure calls here

2. Organize a Cure Phone Bank with Your Friends

What You’ll Be Doing: Getting 10+ of your friends together for a virtual cure phonebank, where a trained member of our cure team will come and lead you in making cure calls! 

Best for: Anyone with a lot of like-minded friends who wants to help! 

How: Email ncchasecure@gmail.com with subject “Cure Phone Bank Party”

3. Become a Poll Observer!

What You’ll Be Doing: Being our eyes and ears on the ground during Early Voting and on Election Day. 

Best for: Volunteers on the ground in North Carolina.

How: Sign up here. 

4. Help Staff Our Foreign Language Hotline

What You’ll Be Doing: Staffing our Voter Assistance Hotline for foreign language callers. 

Best for: Anyone fluent in a foreign language! 

Notes: Work can be done staffing the hotline in shifts or on an “on-call” basis. For on-call work, you simply need to be available throughout the day in case a voter calls in a particular language. We know you might have questions about how that works, so just sign up and our hotline team will reach out to explain!

How: Sign up for foreign language hotline here

Want to Take Your Commitment to the Next Level? 

Opportunities for “super volunteers” looking to take on a bigger role in our team 

1. Join Our Cure Team  

What You’ll Be Doing: Leading and training volunteers in virtual phone banks to call disenfranchised voters and help walk them through the process of “curing” their ballot so that it is accepted and counted. 

Best for: Lawyers, law students, or legal professionals with recurring availability. 

Notes: Can be performed remotely, work is on a volunteer basis. 

How: Email ncchasecure@gmail.com with subject “Cure Team.” 

2. Apply to be a Vote Pro Volunteer Fellow

What You’ll Be Doing: Acting as a volunteer fellow, helping our staff to schedule and confirm poll observers, lead phone banks, manage our volunteers, and an assortment of work! 

Best for: Volunteers with 20+ hours per week to give, a strong level of comfort with using technology, and a willingness to take on a major organizing role working closely with our staff. 

Notes: Can be performed remotely, work is on a volunteer basis. 

How: Email othniel.harris@2020victory.com with the subject “Volunteer Fellow Application,” a paragraph about yourself, and a short description of how much availability you have to help and one what timeline.  

Want to Drop Everything for the Next Month and Join Us as a Full Time Volunteer?

Ok, this is a big ask – and honestly probably not right for most people – but if you think you might be up for it … 

1. Apply to be a Vote Pro Volunteer Deputy 

What You’ll Be Doing: Acting as a volunteer deputy to one of our Regional Voter Protection Directors, helping them with all aspects of our program on a full-time basis. 

Best for: Volunteers with a substantial amount of long-term availability (35+ hours per week), a strong level of comfort with using technology, and a willingness to take on a major organizing role working closely with our staff. 

Notes: Can be performed remotely, work is on a volunteer basis. How: Email othniel.harris@2020victory.com with the subject “Volunteer Deputy Application,” a resume, a paragraph about yourself, and a short description of how much availability you have to help and one what timeline.

(I will post a schedule for phonebanks later this week, but thought this looked just as good as phonebanks. But since it was not phonebanks, it might have more appeal to you, especially since every vote that is cured is a vote for a Democratic candidate. It’s like driving someone to the polls, you will have been responsible for a vote.)

Check out the thermometer! We have blown past $35,000.

Two Action Items

1. We have been asked to write postcards for Julie Oliver (TX-25). She was coincidentally added to the Red to Blue list today, which means the DCCC has quietly done polling showing a meaningful chance of the upset. We have a very few names left; get them while you still can. We still have addresses. Email Naomi if you want some (25 minimum).
2. Download the Vote Joe app on your smartphone and you can use it to text contacts in swing states, find out which friends (?!?) are still not registered to vote and much more. Victory2020 offers trainings for the app every day lots of other great activities listed there as well: https://www.mobilize.us/2020victory/

My presentation. The key takeaways are largely unchanged: Biden is winning the legitimate election. Even before the tax returns, Trump and the Republicans had abandoned traditional electioneering in favor of F.U.D. [Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt], hoping for some grievance they can bring to the stacked Supreme Court. The Roberts Court may fear that if they rule for Trump during the election in any way, and Biden wins, he will reciprocate by adding new seats.

Florida is the key to a Biden win so big it can’t be tampered with. Absentee ballots can be counted before Election Day, so by midnight Eastern Time the winner may be obvious. Florida is close.

The most pressing need for volunteers appears to be phone banking. The Wellstone Club has joined with Flip the West. From their email—

Join us on Wednesday afternoons. We are teaming up with Flip the West for a phone bank focused on flipping U.S. Senate seats in Iowa and Kansas, every Wednesday 3-5 (Pacific) from now until the November election. To register, click here or below.

You will get instructions by email after you register for a phone bank session.  If you have questions about how to get your computer set up for the calls – or about the Senate races, please call or text!  Ann Schwartz 510-387-4761.  

Training available Oct 3-4.  Would you like to phone bank, but not sure how to get set up? Flip the West is providing a weekend of training sessions, Oct 3-4.  There’s a one-hour “basic” session at 10AM on Saturday and 11AM on Sunday, plus much more.  For schedule and registration, click here or below.

We have a link for Florida texting, courtesy of Judy Stacey:

Calling all young people! We are hosting a GenZ friendbank this Thursday at 8pm EST to talk with our friends about their plan to vote! RSVP Here: https://www.mobilize.us/fl2020victory/event/333504/not a young person? share it with a young person in your life!!

I don’t see why the young at heart are being excluded.

Also from Judy, a second texting group, helping young voters with vote by mail.

If you can’t read this, it isn’t for you. También tenemos un hipervínculo por ser voluntario a textear en español. Flórida es un objetivo.

Don’t miss Bruce’s links.

Wednesday’s Indivisible CA statewide call was rich with ideas and opportunities for activism. Here are links for the call notes and chat box comments, which in turn provide links to key resources for national and state actions. 

At the state level, Nina Moussavi pointed out that seven of the State Strong priority bills are still awaiting signature by the Governor, and urged support for those bills at  leg.unit@gov.ca.gov. The  call notes have other links to state actions for TJ Cox, Christy Smith, and other key California races. In a discussion of upcoming propositions, various CA Indivisible groups provided links to published analyses of what’s at stake with each proposition. At the national level, Nina supplied extensive lists of actions and resources for the critical weeks ahead, all recorded in the chat box.

Agenda to follow. A busy two weeks.

Indivisible Elmwood
Time: Sep 27, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 862 0160 2035
Passcode: 830779

I don’t have a cool graph, but here is an updated look at Senate races. Most of the Cash on Hand figures are completely obsolete but it will be end of the month before anything more recent is available.

Besides changing my own bang-for-buck rating, I have changed the Pundit Assessments to match their current predictions. All changes went in our favor.

For an explanation of the re-rankings, see my longer post.

Jeff Carlock of EBAA has done his own calculation of bang for buck in the Senate races, which he has turned into the nifty graph below [filed under: Why didn’t I think of that!]

There’s one important variable that is missing, and not entirely easy to calculate, which is the candidates’ cash on hand, especially after the donation binge that followed RBG’s death.

Today’s NY Times article features Al Gross (AK), as having raised $3MM, doubling his cash on hand, and bringing him over the $8MM he told supporters was all he needed—with six weeks to go. Amy McGrath (who you can see in the chart is the least desirable competitive race for a donation) raked in many more millions out of spite.^{[footnote 1]} You also can’t tell from the chart that Bollier (KS) is far ahead of Marshall in cash, while Greenfield (IA) is not ahead of Ernst in cash, albeit she is in the polls.

I remain skeptical of Jaime Harrison’s chances or value as a contribution, fun as it is to watch Lindsey Graham squirm. In the latest 45-all polling, Harrison is already pulling 95% of Democrats while Lindsey has only 80-some of Republicans. Harrison needs them to skip the Senate race or vote third-party, and Graham will be abasing himself to the max in the confirmation hearings to avoid that. I wonder if it will be his opening or closing statement where he announces that Trump’s farts do, indeed, smell like roses. Harrison raised oodles this week, and more will accrue once the hearings are on TV.

Mike Espy in Mississippi is a better play than Harrison. He is running (again) against Cindy Hyde-Smith. She defeated him in the special election required when Thad Cochrane retired early for health reasons. Espy is now only 5 down in the polls, and should have been put on this chart, but he has a similar issue to Harrison’s: he is maxed out with the state’s large African American population and needs extraordinary good fortune with its whites. Espy’s haul this weekend was a record for him, but was still less than $1MM. I am sure he can use cash better than Harrison, who is reaching saturation.

You can see from the graph that Jon Ossoff (GA) remains an important recipient. The special election in Georgia is rounding into view: The Rev. Raphael Warnock is now ahead of Matt Lieberman in the polls, behind Republican Doug Collins, and close to appointed incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler. Remember, this is a jungle primary. There is zero chance that either Republican will get 50%, so the point is for Warnock to finish in second place and be ready for the runoff. I don’t know if more money is what Warnock needs to get Matt Lieberman (and two other minor Democrats in single digits) out of the race, or whether some other form of persuasion is necessary. Lieberman was ahead of Warnock early in the race, but his fundraising is weak and almost all Democratic leaders have endorsed Warnock. Maybe this isn’t the year for the Dems to run two white liberal Jews in Georgia?

Incidentally, the other BIPoC Democratic Senate candidates are Adrian Perkins (LA), Marquita Bradshaw (TN), and Nez Perce tribal citizen Paulette Jordan (ID), all of whom will lose big, but who would certainly appreciate a token contribution. (I suppose I should also include Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, but he is an overwhelming favorite.)

I am replacing Gross with Steve Bullock (MT) on our ActBlue page later tonight, not because I am giving up on Gross (I think he is closer to winning than the graph suggests), but because I will take him at his word that he can’t spend more than $8MM, which he has now raised.

^{[note 1]} This left-wing site suggests that McGrath isn’t even a very good candidate, although I doubt anyone could beat McConnell, and has been offered up by the Democratic Establishment because she would have no trouble raising money from out-of-state supporters. (I am not quite sure what the DSCC’s motive would be here: whether to force Mitch to spend in his own backyard so that he can’t redistribute his own funds, or to hope that McGrath would have so much money she could funnel some to the DSCC, or both.)

One reason to feel good about the Presidential race is that House polls show the Democrats in a slightly better position than Biden, who, of course, is still ahead. According to Nate Silver of 538, this is the opposite of 2016, where House races were relatively weak for Democrats. The Democrats’ pickup of six House seats was not impressive. To quantify this, in 2016, Republican House candidates actually received more votes than Democrats. In 2018, that swung nine percentage points to the Blue.

Nathan Gonzales of Inside Elections and Cook Political Report have made some recent prediction changes, most, but not all, in the Democrats’ direction. (Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball is due for update.)

Of Gonzales’ ten Tossups, 7 are Republican-held. The other three are Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL-26), Kendra Horn (the big upset winner of OK-5 last cycle), and Max Rose (NY-11: Staten Island and part of Brooklyn). He has no current D seat worse than Tossup.

This actually makes Gonzales more optimistic than I am about TJ Cox (lean D) and Christy Smith (Tossup to defeat Mike Garcia this time). An early September poll had Cox 11 behind, and the bad news is that Valadao had about his same percentage as 2018. Cox has bled support. He needs enormous Biden turnout with no ticket splitting. Smith is also behind in polling. Neither candidate is particularly hurting for money; they just don’t seem to be connecting with voters.

Polling in Iowa is looking good for all three seats we are defending (Finkenauer, Axne, and Hart to replace Loebsack, in descending order of lead). Unfortunately, JD Scholten’s only chance was Republican renomination of bigot Steve King, and the Iowa Republicans retired him in the primary. Scholten is double-digits behind, which is also why Biden is less than 50-50 to take the state. I have no idea if he is related to Hilary Scholten, who is our relatively long-shot (but closer then JD) candidate to replace Republican-turned-Libertarian Justin Amash in MI-03.

The flip side is that both pundits and polls are now giving us real chances in VA-05 (Cameron Webb) and CO-03 (Diane Mitsch Bush), which became competitive only because Republicans nominated extremist nuts. I found no polls of NC-11 in the last month, where callow Republican youth Madison Cawthorn was caught lying about his education, and even whether his ex-girlfriend dumped him before or after he was paralyzed in an automobile accident. (Before.) He was about 5 ahead when these revelations hit.

Darrel Issa is only barely ahead of Ammar Campa-Najjar in CA-50, too.

Bottom line here is: we are probably losing one or two seats, and winning as many as twelve. We start with two locks in NC from redistricting, four in play in Texas (TX-23 with Gina Ortiz Jones is at least Lean D; three tossup seats with D momentum; two more at the edges of possibility), and have more than one viable candidate in PA, OH, and NY. Then there’s a smattering: the only seat in AK, the only one in MT (surprisingly strong poll this week; Republican is a recent arrival to the state), Schupp even in MO-02, etc. We are playing offense all over the map.

1. We raced by $25,000 and will probably cross $30,000 today! Keep sending our link to friends–everyone is in the mood to donate.
2. Ann O. had lots of good suggestions for new phrases for Vote Forward letters. Highlight the election date and if you want more suggestions for phrases, email me.
3. Andy added a race to our list based on his updated analysis. We now have a link for Greenfield in the Iowa senate race. Some new interesting house race info–he’ll send out some info today or tomorrow.
4. I have lots of “buddy” offers so if you want to turn your new anger into a new form of action, feel free to email me. Scroll down to previous posts for lots of good links to actions.
5. Thanks to the many of you who are picking up postcards and letters from my porch (nearing 1,000 letters today). The TJ Cox campaign sent a lovely thank you for all the postcards. That race is neck-and-neck so every postcard is important.
6. Finally, a FUN EVENT for vote forward tomorrow late afternoon with

 Lin-Manuel Miranda from Hamilton

When: The kickoff event is on Monday (9/21) at 7:30 pm ET/4:30 pm PT
RSVP using this link: https://www.mobilize.us/votefwd/event/319667/?utm_source=lmm-referral