Kay has written a lot about the Moral Mondays protest movement in North Carolina. PPP believed it made a big difference, and if it can work there, it can work anywhere.
Moral Mondays became a very rare thing- a popular protest movement. In August 2013 we found 49% of voters had a favorable opinion of the protesters to only 35% with an unfavorable opinion of them. And their message was resonating- 50% of voters in the state felt state government was causing North Carolina national embarrassment to only 34% who disagreed with that notion.
Pushing back hard on McCrory worked. The seeds of his final defeat today were very much planted in the summer of 2013. And it’s a lesson for progressives in dealing with Trump. Push back hard from day one. Be visible. Capture the public’s attention, no matter what you have to do to do it. Don’t count on the media to do it itself because the media will let you down. The protesters in North Carolina, by making news in their own right week after week after week, forced sustained coverage of what was going on in Raleigh. And even though it was certainly a long game, with plenty more frustration in between, those efforts led to change at the polls 42 months after they really started.
The reason to fight back against Trump is that’s it the right thing to do. But it’s also good politics.
Loss leader
Is it outside of the realm of possibility that Trump will order that people who cost him popularity or money should be arrested on phony charges? How long before he is ordering the killing of American citizens?
Stifling dissent is blood sport now for the animals around him every day.
cmorenc
I really, really hope Dr. William Barber can stay healthy enough to continue his excellent leadership and inspiration for the movement. I went to an early voting site for the Nov election where by coincidence, he was conducting an interview with one of the cable TV networks only 10 feet from where I was standing in line, and while his mind and soul are full of energy, his physical health doesn’t look all that good (and by that, I’m not referring to his physical handicap that forces him to use a cane for walking). He’s one of the most inspiring speakers I’ve ever heard, and I’m not that much of a church-goer myself. But he looks like a strong candidate for a cardiac hospital ward at some unpredictable moment after leading a march.
Major Major Major Major
I love New Order.
Agree that folks could learn a lot from Moral Mondays, too.
cmorenc
I really, really hope Dr. William Barber can stay healthy enough to continue his excellent leadership and inspiration for the movement over the next 4 years and on to the future after that. I went to an early voting site for the Nov election where by coincidence, he was conducting an interview with one of the cable TV networks only 10 feet from where I was standing in line, and while his mind and soul are full of energy, his physical health doesn’t look all that good (and by that, I’m not referring to his physical handicap that forces him to use a cane for walking). He’s one of the most inspiring speakers I’ve ever heard, and I’m not that much of a church-goer myself.
Michael Bersin
“…Push back hard from day one…”
This. Absolutely. Without question.
Roger Moore
I think a lot of Obama’s supposed 11 dimensional chess skill was a matter of trying to do the right thing and having that turn out to be effective politics. He was focused on long-term policy issues instead of winning the 24 hour news cycle. Unfortunately, sometimes the 24 hour news cycle matters, as Comey’s October Surprise shows.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: he also had the benefit of Voltaire’s prayer: O lord, make my enemies ridiculous.
Eljai
I would love to see Moral Mondays all over the country. It’d be a great way to get progressive messaging out there. And it could even help bring new leaders and voices into the fold.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, this. So what if Ryan, The Trutle and Trump all absolved Trump of losing the vote by Dukakis levels, they aren’t the God-Emperors of the US. We just need to keep on saying “Trumps is a cheat and loser” over and over again.
Mnemosyne
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
“He won on a technicality.” Haven’t conservatives been claiming for years that they hate it when criminals get let off “on a technicality”?
Trump won on a technicality. How is he better than the murderer who gets set free that way?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m not one of those who thinks Warren is infallible, but I think she’s a good leader for our side, preaches to the choir but gets that choir good and riled up. She and Eric Holder were both speaking at a conference of D state legislators today, that I’ve been sort of following on Joy Reid’s twitter feed. I’m glad to see they’re both there and focusing on that level
Yutsano
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It REALLY gets under his skin when he’s reminded he’s a popular vote loser. He might still win the Electoral College, but he did not get the popular vote. That needs to be shoved in his face over and over.
Doug R
@Mnemosyne: He hasn’t won yet.
Yes, I know most of the electors are lemmings, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
I always thought it was just him making the best of whatever hand he was dealt, with enemies who kept dealing him pretty good hands. The ur-example is Syria, where Congress started to raise a stink before any action was even taken, but nobody agreed on exactly what he was doing wrong or what he should be doing instead. Obama’s reaction was quite sensibly to put the ball in their court – “you think I overreached in Libya? Well, you’re quite right. Here you go: I’ll abide by your decision.” To which none of them could do anything but stand there and stutter “uhhhhhh…”
Steve Holmes
A couple things about Moral Mondays that should be noted: The protests were against specific policies, not some general “Dump McCory” it was protests against him not expanding medicaid (and how that was hurting regional hospitals), protests of unemployment insurance cutbacks, protests to changes in enviromental policy, etc. I think all push back needs to be directed to issues.
Secondly it is an inclusive movement, including PoC, LGBT, Religous groups, Unions. It is looked on favorably because you can see yourself joining in.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: meanwhile, Putin has gone hog-wild in Syria, contributing significantly to a massive refugee crisis that’s partly responsible for the rise of Le Pen in France, etc. What obama did has not led to stellar results.
ETA: plus, you know, Aleppo.
TriassicSands
If 50% of the voters feel that state government is causing NC national embarrassment, then why did 50.5% of NC voters choose Trump? I don’t think polling means much anymore, because American voters are too stupid and too ignorant and definitely too fickle to be relied upon. Maybe the 50% who thought state government was causing the state embarrassment think that allowing African Americans to vote without being hassled endlessly is a cause for embarrassment. Maybe they think that electing Trump will make Amurka great again and Hillary Clinton, with all those credentials, knowledge, and experience would cause the state even more embarrassment.
The worst polling question of all is the right track/wrong track question. Without knowing why a person thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction, the answers are meaningless. I think the country is headed in the wrong direction because it just elected Trump. Trump supporters think the country is headed in the wrong direction because they see the US as being overrun by “those people” and governed as a socialist autocracy.
lamh36
jacy
It’s important to remember this is a long slog. The bullshit on the right has been percolating a long, long time before it spewed everywhere. We need to be resolute and realize that it’s going to be exhausting, but we need to keep hammering the same things all day, every day for as far into the future as we can see. And further.
Two Good Essays:
Now Everything Counts
We Ain’t Gonna Play Trump City
TriassicSands
@Mnemosyne:
Trump won on a technicality?
Not really. The Electoral College is not some minor rule or regulation — it is the system by which we elect a president. The system worked exactly as it was designed by the framers.
@Yutsano:
Reporters should all wear tee shirts with the following quote on them:
“The Electoral College Is A Disaster For A Democracy.” — D. Trump
Reporters? Damn, all real Americans should wear those shirts.
The Moar You Know
@TriassicSands: Because they hated Hillary more. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand why, that’s what happened.
sunny raines
“The Media” will indeed let you down:
http://cadaqu.com/media-why-did-you-do-it
SatanicPanic
@TriassicSands:
This is all well and true, but it’s also a technicality- most people wouldn’t be happy if you said “OK, show of hands, who wants to do X?” and then you responded with “while people who want to do X technically outnumber the people who don’t, we’re going with the don’t for X reason”. That Trump didn’t win a majority is easy to understand, the electoral college is indefensible and making people defend it will cause them to make fools of themselves, and most importantly, “Trump won on a technicality” is good messaging. Don’t mess up a good thing!
TriassicSands
@lamh36:
Once again it only takes a racist or two to protect the murderers of unarmed African Americans. The Electoral College means we can’t elect the most popular candidate and or jury system means it is extremely difficult to convict police officers who use excessive force. Our system is in dreadful shape.
It sounds like prosecutors are going to take another swing at murderer Michael Slager. I hope so. The question is with so many Americans being racist, is it possible, without lots of luck, to put together a fair-minded jury?
FlipYrWhig
@The Moar You Know: Also, there’s something almost abstract in a lot of what a president does, while what a governor does wrong shows up as problems that complicate everyday people’s lives. In a weird way I wonder if someone like Trump could win any office _other than_ president. Most political offices have to show results. Trump ran on setting a tone, not on showing results.
Chris
@Major Major Major Major:
What Obama did was punt to Congress because it was pretty much the only play. He could’ve tried to enforce his “red line,” but with Congress howling about the outrageous and unprecedented use of executive power in Libya without consulting them, it would’ve been difficult to get anything effective out of it. Or he could’ve decided we were going to ignore the whole thing, in which case Congress would’ve been howling that he was a weak-kneed appeaser. Actually putting the ball in their court was pretty much all he could do.
TriassicSands
@SatanicPanic:
Language matters and if Democrats want to shout Trump won on a technicality, I’m not going to run around the country correcting them. Getting rid of the EC is close to impossible, given that the states it helps most have to agree to give up their present advantage. If calling the EC a technicality helps, I say fine, but that doesn’t make the Electoral College in any real sense a mere technicality. When that expression is used in criminal proceedings, it means that something relatively minor allowed a not-guilty verdict. But if a prosecutor can’t get 12 votes for a guilty verdict, we don’t say the accused got off on a technicality because the jury system acquitted him.
Roger Moore
@Chris:
I think your example is more or less what I was talking about. He was thinking about policy while they were trying to score political points by shouting from the sidelines in the hopes of winning the news cycle. The big point I would make is that talking about “the hand he was dealt” obscures an important point: your hand depends in part on how you played previous hands. Some of that may be about image and winning news cycles, but the biggest thing is that policies you enact change the way the future will look. By abandoning interest in policy, the Republicans have also abandoned the ability to help their future situation by adopting good policies.
Mike in NC
Governor-elect Roy Cooper (D-NC). Has a nice ring to it. Hope he cleans house in getting rid of the Tea Party trash that McCrory brought onboard.
Major Major Major Major
@Chris: just saying that it still had negative consequences.
SatanicPanic
@TriassicSands: Fair enough. I just want to rub it in their faces.
Mnemosyne
@TriassicSands:
See the thread above: a cop who shot a man in the back on camera just got a mistrial because of a juror holdout.
Most laypeople would say that the cop got off on a technicality. How would you describe it in 5 words or less to a layperson?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: A technicality is a loophole on the law. This guy got off because the jury couldn’t decide whether or not to convict him.
SiubhanDuinne
@sunny raines:
Thanks for posting that.
But in the name of the beloved FSM, I really really wish people would learn the difference between “imminent” and “eminent.” That glaring error in the poem was hard to get past.
cmorenc
@Mike in NC: Governor-elect Roy Cooper (D-NC). Has a nice ring to it. Hope he cleans house in getting rid of the Tea Party trash that McCrory brought onboard.
agorabum
So the moral mondays people protest against specific policies and are led by organized and professional individuals who are very careful about the impressions they give off during protests.
There is a lesson there somewhere…
Major Major Major Major
@agorabum: Is the lesson ‘more puppets’?
J R in WV
@TriassicSands:
You don’t understand the jury system, not at all. If the prosecutor doesn’t get 12 jurors to all unanimously agree that a defendant is guilty, then if some jurors vote guilty and some vote not guilty, that is a mistrial, not an acquittal.
For a defendant to be found not guilty requires the jury to unanimously agree that the prosecution didn’t prove the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And I also point out that this verdict doesn’t ever refer to the defendant as innocent, but as not guilty, which is not the same thing at all.
Yes, I’ve been on several criminal juries. Why do you ask? We found two different defendants not guilty in two different trials for two different crimes, unanimously. I have also been on a grand jury, where there are 17 jurors (this varies by state I’m sure) and it only takes 12 jurors to hand up an indictment to the bench.
I’ve also been on civil trial juries, where there is no prosecutor, but a plaintiff and a defendant, and two sets of lawyers, one for each side. That jury was 7 people, 6 jurors and an alternate, in case someone becomes ill or otherwise cannot participate in deliberations.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Now compress that down into 6 words or less for a bumper sticker that says the same thing better than “He got off on a technicality.”
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: “The jury couldn’t decide.”
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
And someone seeing that on the back of your speeding car thinks, “Wut?”
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Somebody seeing yours wonders who got off on a technicality. They’re both awful.
Kay
McCory is particularly awful because he was supposed to be a moderate technocrat.
It’s just amazing how quickly they bought him, and how completely. Ugh. He should apologize to the whole state for being a horrible, weak person.
Kay
I heard Barber speak on 2 occasions and a big part of his message is public education- parents, teachers and kids.
Democrats could start supporting public education again. They could try that. Parents are pretty fierce advocates.
Kay
The Democrat who won in Louisiana (gov’s race) also ran on public education.
That’s two. Maybe not a trend but it can’t hurt.
Betsy
@The Moar You Know: @TriassicSands: That may have contributed, but more important was a deliberate and well-financed campaign of voter suppression.
Chris
@Kay:
There is no such animal in the Republican Party.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
“Trump won on a technicality.” We’re taking about the election, not the SC mistrial.
And while it’s probably true that a majority of the Founding Fathers would agree that the Electoral College worked exactly as designed by preventing a mere woman from becoming president, I’m not sure that’s a winning slogan for our side.
TriassicSands
@Mnemosyne:
Sorry, you haven’t convinced me. Technicalities are things like violations of Miranda rights or mishandling evidence. A juror voting for acquittal isn’t — in my mind anyway — a technicality. It’s the system working as it was designed with a racist or rogue juror subverting the verdict.
5 words or fewer:
A racist juror. Or if you want all 5 “There was a racist juror.”
KS in MA
@Major Major Major Major: So do we!
TriassicSands
@J R in WV:
Sorry, I messed up what I wrote. I do understand the jury system, but you’re right I should have worded it differently. I’m juggling several things here and I was careless.
What I should have written is that juries don’t provide technicalities and they don’t decide technicalities, which are generally things that prevent the jury from even getting to decide on a verdict. Miranda violations, mishandling of evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, etc. Sorry for the carelessness.
I’ve always found the difference between “not guilty” and “innocent” to be troubling. You are “innocent” until (or unless) proven guilty, By virtue of being tried and the jury rendering a verdict you lose the presumption of innocence and now it’s just that the prosecutor couldn’t convince a jury to convict — you may have committed the crime or you may not, we just can’t prove you did, but you are no longer deemed innocent of the crime.
That can seem very unfair. In some cases, for example with DNA evidence, it ought to be possible to find a verdict of “innocent.” The problem there is it would create a two-tiered judgment system in which people who are only found “not guilty” carry a stigma when compared with those who were found innocent (we know with certainty that you did not commit the crime) that might be unjustified. They, too, might be innocent, but there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove that.
Major Major Major Major
@KS in MA: Sometimes it’s not enough.
Jeffro
AY
MEN
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Kay: McCrory was never a moderate technocrat.
jefft452
@TriassicSands: “The system worked exactly as it was designed by the framers.”
Not really, no
As designed, it was intended to choose Electors, who would debate and use their best judgement to elect a POTUS , not “a slate of electors chosen by a political party pledged to vote for that party’s nominee”
The EC was NOT designed to ensure that every now and then the less popular candidate would win
It was NOT to benefit “small” States, the FF’s did not fear that roundhead MA and cavalier VA would team up against roundhead RI and cavalier GA
It was NOT in case the great unwashed voted the “wrong” way, since the great unwashed couldn’t vote anyway
It was set up in an era without mass communication and travel between States was a grueling major journey – it was purely practical (it seemed like a good idea at the time)
The Dudeist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am just sad that we have to fight for what is right all the time it seems. We are right, these Trumpistas are wrong. When I see them being interviewed, they say things like drain the swamp yet when it’s pointed out that he’s adding to the swamp, they rationalize it.
Argh.