Waking Up to Trump

When I was small, I sat with my parents one night listening to election returns on the radio. My parents had told me whom they voted for (they both voted the same) and that they very much disliked the opposing ticket. They probably told me why as well, but I didn’t understand. As I watched them listen to the radio that night, I saw their faces frown. And frown and frown some more.

“What happens if he gets elected?” I asked.

“Remember that movie we saw last week?” my Dad asked, referring to a film about failed terrorists who were carried away kicking and screaming by the police. “Well, if he gets elected, that will happen to us.”

Let me explain that my parents were not terrorists, nor were they criminals. I believe my father was afraid that some serious and unConstitutional government over-reach might occur. Why he thought that overreach might grab us, I do not know, nor do I understand why he thought it was a good idea to pass these thoughts on to me. It doesn’t matter.

What does matter is what went through my mind when the candidate in question was elected.

“Oh no!” I thought to myself, worry rising quickly to panic. But as soon as I realized what my Dad’s words really meant–the end of life as I knew it–a kind of switch flipped in my mind and I calmed right down. I didn’t put the matter into words, but if I had, it would have been something like “well, that’s so awful it can’t possibly happen, therefore I don’t need to worry about it.”

I was, as I said, very small, but my impulse was a broadly human one. The temptation is going to be very strong to tell ourselves Donald Trump’s election can’t be ‘game over’ for the climate, that’s too horrible, so I’m not going to worry about it, much.

Well, it can and it might be–but at the same time we don’t have anything to lose by fighting like hell on this one, and we might just pull a miracle out after all. The question I want to address with this post is therefore ‘what does fighting consist of? What can we do now?’

We can think clearly about our objectives. We can examine our options.

We can come together to protest Mr. Trump’s election–not that doing so will oust him, but it will show solidarity to those who fear his presidency, many of whom are feeling very alone right now. And coming together is a good way to build moral and to network. A good place to start is the National Women’s March on DC, on January 21st. As far as I can tell, men are welcome, though the focus is women’s issues.

We can try to actually oust Mr. Trump, but it’s a long shot. Impeachment won’t work, he has to do something wrong while in office first (prior transgressions don’t count), and some of us would rather not wait. Anyway, removing Mr. Trump from office would simply inaugurate Mike Pence, who is not really any better. But it is possible for the Electoral college to actually choose someone else. That’s a long shot, and if it did work would trigger a serious backlash, but this is actually what the Electoral College is for–it’s a safety valve in case some unqualified, potentially disastrous person wins the election by charisma. So, there is a petition you can sign.  You can also contact individual electors and ask them to vote for Ms. Clinton (Or Ms. Stein, or Mr. Johnson, if you really want). Please be polite when you ask.

We can work to shield and support people made vulnerable by either Mr. Trump himself or his supporters–members of racial and religious minorities, refugees, LGBT folks, many women. We can work together to block Mr. Trump’s more disastrous appointments, orders, and other actions (and make no mistake, he has promised several disasters). We can play defense as hard and fast as we can. We can make progress where possible.

And we can be kind to each other.

This is not currently a nation of kindness, of communication. Many, perhaps most, Trump supporters feel disenfranchised, unheard, and denigrated, that’s why they voted for Mr. Trump. The Trumpers, in turn, are not–many of them–being kind. They are not listening.

Lest I be accused of justifying hatred, let me point out that the fear and rage that fed the Trump movement is misdirected and dysfunctional, and nobody who finds themselves on the wrong end of it owes anything to their abusers. Yes, abusers. But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you. The mostly rural people who swept Mr. Trump into office are absolutely right to feel ill-used, because Mr. Trump and his ilk are ill-using them. And that is not fair and it is not right. I’ve written about this before, in the context of climate deniers and climate skeptics. Same problem. The point is this country is hurting every which way right now, and some people are hurting others in their pain. Collectively, we need to stop doing that. Unless you are currently fighting to be heard yourself, it’s time to really listen. And everyone needs to be kind.

I need to acknowledge that I’m not confining myself strictly to climate, though that remains my focus  overall. It is Mr. Trump’s promise to undo President Obama’s climate legacy that motivates me to write this post and do this research. But Donald Trump’s other transgressions are too serious and too frightening not to acknowledge. He is not a normal statesman and the opposition to him is not normal party politics. Even many within his own party are deeply frightened and offended by him. If you lean Republican, let me assure you that the political neutrality neutrality of this blog on issues other than climate remains intact. If you are a Trump supporter, let me say I will not attack you personally on this site and that I firmly believe Mr. Trump is not going to look out for your interests, either.

In subsequent posts I’ll get into detail and provide resources, links, to-do lists, especially for blocking, protecting, playing defense to win. Now, as my very wise husband just said, it is time for sleeping. And then tomorrow it will be time to wake up.

Jack vs. Jenny for Climate

I could do an entire series on Presidential contenders and climate change, but barring a major change in the field I probably won’t. There is no real reason for me to cover the Republicans, unless one of them comes out strongly in favor of climate action (something I dearly wish would happen), and I’m guessing that  the Democratic field is more or less set, now. Yes, a Warren campaign would be fun to see, but she has disavowed interest for this cycle and we badly need her in the Senate right now. Her political star is rising and she will have time to run for President (and quite possibly win) at some point in the future. Joe Biden has run before but has no plans to do so now. His Presidential boat has probably sailed sailed. Martin O’Malley has shown some interest, and he certainly has his merits, but nobody outside of Maryland has heard of him and he has not announced.

So, we’re looking at Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

We’re also looking at the most important American Presidential election the world has ever seen. I’m not indulging in hyperbole, this is the big one. President Obama has made an important start on dealing with the problem, but he’s only been able to act through executive order, which means his successor could wipe out all his gains with the stroke of a pen–and without US leadership, much of the world’s climate response will fall apart. It’s not that the US is a shining example of climate concern–we’re rather the opposite–it’s that a huge portion of the problem belongs on our doorstep and everybody knows it. We got rich and powerful as early adopters of fossil fuel, and the only way to get countries like India and China to forgo their fair share of that wealth is for us to bite the bullet and clean up our own mess. And since the chance of getting a climate-sane veto-proof majority on both houses of Congress is roughly nil, and since we really don’t have time to wait another four or eight years  to act on this issue, the upcoming Presidential election is basically about saving the world. Or not.

So, the big question is, which Democrat should climate-sane people support? Yes, I said Democrat; the place to create a viable third party is in state and local elections. Who can go toe-to-toe with whichever champion the Kochs decide to anoint?

(The title of this post, by the way, is a reference to the male and female Democratic hopefuls; most people know that a male donkey is correctly called a jack, but less well-known is that female donkeys are jennets or jennies. I find the idea of “jenny” as a technical term for an animal completely charming. And, the unfortunate connotations of “ass” notwithstanding, donkeys make fine political mascots–they are extremely strong and sure-footed, and they have a reputation for not letting people push them around.)

Personally, I would love for Mrs. Clinton to become President. She is clearly capable of doing the job and it is simply ridiculous that the United States hasn’t had a female chief executive yet. But I hardly ever hear her speak on climate and she has a reputation (which may or may not be deserved) for political expediency. Would she really make the issue a priority if it got in the way of her ambition? Mr. Sanders clearly has no problem whatever with political integrity (if he were interested in lying to improve his image, he wouldn’t call himself a socialist) and his loyalty to liberal, progressive causes is unassailable. And while it’s true that he seems a long-shot for the White House, so did Mr. Obama, and for almost exactly the same reasons (complexion aside, of course). But those were first impressions, and the moment clearly needs more than that. So, let’s take a look at these people. And since both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders have extensive experience in office, we have something other than campaign promises to look at.

Bernie for President?

Bernie Sanders’ senator’s website (as opposed to his campaign website) includes a poll on climate change. The first question asks respondent to choose between cutting Medicare and similar programs and imposing a carbon tax on “big polluters” as a method of deficit reduction, so the political bent of the poll is obvious. The point is to frame climate change as a liberal, progressive issue and to paint any objectors as big-business bullies who want to take money away from old people. I don’t really like such bald politicking, and I worry that it could backfire by further alienating social and fiscal conservatives from the environmental cause, but at least Bernie and his advisers are willing to put a lot of their eggs in the climate basket. That’s a good sign.

(I make a point of using respectful last-name address here, but Bernie likes to be called Bernie, apparently).

Bernie Sanders is a career grass-roots politician with a long record of dedication to economic and environmental issues. He has been almost continually in office since 1981, first as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, then in the US House of Representatives and now the US Senate, where he currently serves. He is 73 years old, so we can expect his physical fitness to be questioned at some point, but Mrs. Clinton is almost as old as he is and both belong to a long-lived generation. He has spent much of his career advocating for the middle class and for alternative energy, especially distributed solar energy (household solar panels rather than the solar equivalent of a big power plant).

He is currently ranked 1st on climate leadership within the Senate and in recent years has sponsored or co-sponsored a number of important climate-friendly energy bills (that went nowhere, unfortunately). He is certainly aware of oil money in politics and openly refers to it as an adversary he intends to conquer by mobilizing massive grass-roots support–an inspiring image. He attended the People’s March for Climate Change (as did I) and is responsible for a brilliant little political move earlier this year; he amended a bill that would approve the Keystone XL Pipeline with a question on climate change, forcing Senators to go on record as to whether they believed climate change is real.

However, Mr. Sanders has stopped short of asserting that all remaining fossil fuel should stay in the ground. There is some speculation that he might say it, but he hasn’t yet. And of course there is the question of whether he can get elected in the first place, given that he is an outspoken giant-killer. Giants don’t like giant-killers and they fight back.

Hillary! Hillary! (maybe)

Hillary Clinton actually had a very good voting record on environmental issues as a Senator–87%, according to the League of Conservation Voters, a record that would have been higher had she not missed some votes while campaigning for President eight years ago. In that campaign, she included an ambitious climate action plan in her platform.  On climate alone, in fact, her record is nearly as good as Mr. Sanders’, it’s just that he talks more than she does about it. Almost more to the point, Mr. Clinton has supported exactly the same climate policies as Barack Obama, both as a presidential candidate in 2007 and 2008 and when she was Secretary of State. That means that she has disappointed environmentalists and will probably continue to do so (as Secretary of State she championed fracking overseas, ostensibly because natural gas produces less carbon dioxide when burned than coal), but she is a vocal opponent of climate denial and has stated that “the unprecedented action that President Obama has taken must be protected at all cost.” Wherein she is absolutely right.

Where does this leave us?

So, where does all this leave us? In a pretty good position, actually. It means that whichever of the current two hopefuls actually get the Democratic nomination, we’ll have a major-party candidate who takes climate change very seriously and will, if elected, preserve and possibly extend Mr. Obama’s critical executive actions and diplomatic work on the issue. And it’s encouraging that they each have a passionate fan base that has been calling for their champion to run since approximately twenty-five minutes after Mr. Obama took office for his second and final term. We could win this.

The question really comes down to which one is more likely to beat a Republican and which one, if elected, is going to be better able to enact the climate-sane policies they both want.

At this time, I actually think that Bernie Sanders is the more electable of the two, and not because, or not only because, he is male. The issue is that neither of them are going to be able to win with a centrist, appeal-to-moderate-Republicans strategy–though Mrs. Clinton may try, since she seems to be temperamentally a pro-establishment moderate Democrat. The problem for her is that a lot of people really dislike her and always have. Frankly I do think sexism is part of it; as a candidate, Bill Clinton had a serious political problem in the person of his powerful, outspoken wife, who quite clearly was going to help him run the country if she could. A female President is no longer quite so scary a prospect a quarter-century later, but the venom spit on her then still clings to her career. She remains the target of an ongoing series of ad-hominem attacks thinly veiled as controversy and scandal. She can’t make people like her who don’t already. Like Mr. Sanders, Mrs. Clinton is only going to be able to draw additional votes by mobilizing people who would not otherwise vote at all–and as a pro-establishment politician, she’s unlikely to be able to do that. Bernie Sanders can and already is; radicals have been trading Bernie Sanders quotes on Facebook for a couple of years now.

But could Bernie Sanders use the Executive Branch effectively if Congress proves as intractable for him as it has for Mr. Obama? As an experienced legislator he clearly knows how to work with the Legislative Branch, but that won’t help if it refuses to work with him and that may happen (see my earlier comment about giant killers). Maybe he can, but he’s something of an unknown in that respect. Mrs. Clinton, in contrast, has extensive experience with executive power and diplomacy, and while she’s even more likely to face a hostile Congress (see my earlier comments about people disliking Hillary), it is entirely clear that she can and will play hardball when necessary. We will not lose President Obama’s climate actions on her watch.

We have time in which to make up our minds (or to watch registered Democrats make up theirs, in states with closed primaries). What we do not have to for is to be lackadaisical about making sure that everyone gets out to vote this time. We cannot see a repeat of the recent mid-term election, when liberal and progressive voters stayed home and pro-business, anti-climate candidates swept gubernatorial and congressional races in state after state.

The Earth has to win this one.