The Electron Pencil

Pencillistas, help me out. I’m starting to feel…, well, optimistic.

Millions and millions of Americans are marching, ringing up their representatives and senators to the point of distraction, organizing, planning general strikes, hollering, rallying, joining advocacy groups, contributing to threatened social service outfits, standing behind immigrants and refugees, and otherwise doing a lot of little things to demonstrate their utter disgust for President Gag.

The Women’s March On Washington

[Image: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images]

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Can it be that by 2020, we’ll be laughing about that deranged mistake we made four years previously?

Or am I just dreaming?

You tell me.

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Tried & True

Adding to my fresh outlook, those on my side of the fence seem to be adopting a lot of the strategies and tactics of the Tea Party-ists. That is, flood local meetings and town hall get-togethers featuring state- and local-level elected officials and raise holy hell.

In California, a fellow named Ezra Levin, a former staffer for Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), has written a manual for dissent and resistance in this Age of Trump. Levin saw Tea Party-ists disrupt Doggett’s meetings with the public in the earliest days of the anti-Obama insurgency. He watched as those disruptions became national news, leading to a widely-held perception that a majority of Americans despised Obama and his Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.

Levin: He Wrote The Book

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In any case, true Tea Party believers were inspired and emboldened. They worked like mad to get their message out there. The result? The ascension of President Gag with both the House and Senate and some two-thirds of statehouses firmly in Republican hands.

Can some coalition of liberals, Democrats, progressives, and even left radicals replicate that stunning success?

The next four years will tell the tale.

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C’mon, Kamala!

New US Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) was one of the speaking stars last night as Dems held the Senate floor to rail against the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Sec’y of Education. DeVos’s Senate consent is hanging by a thread right now, with the possibility that Mike Pence may have to cast the first vice presidential deciding vote for a Cabinet nominee in history.

Harris

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Harris is a rising star on the national political scene and, as such, is the second in my series of profiles of possible Democratic challengers to President Gag in 2020. Here we go:

Kamala Harris

• US Senator, Calif., 2017-2023
• Attorney General, Calif., 2011-2017
• District Attorney, San Francisco, 2004-2011
• San Francisco City Att’y’s Office (Chief, Community and Neighborhood Division), 2000-2004
• San Francisco District Att’y’s Office (Managing Att’y — Career Criminal Unit), 1998-2000
• Deputy District Att’y, Alameda County, 1990-1998
• B: 1964 Oakland
• Howard U. Bachelor of Arts
• U. of California-Hastings, Juris Doctor
• Her parents brought her to civil rights protests in the ‘60s & ‘70s
• Pushed program for drug dealers to earn high school diplomas and get jobs
• Pushed programs to reduce recidivism
• Increased felony conviction rate while DA
• Created Hate Crime Unit while San Francisco District Att’y
• Fought against gay-trans panic defense
• Issues:

LGBTQ: Supports same-sex marriage

Housing: Introduced a Homeowner Bill of Rights as California’s Att’y Gen

Guns: a vocal gun control advocate

Death Penalty: Opposed

Immigration: supports no inquiries by local law enforcement into individuals’ immigration status

Abortion: 100% positive rating from NARAL

Environment: a record of strong prosecutions of polluting businesses as San Francisco District Att’y

[Click here for a complete rundown of Harris’s positions.]

[Click here for The Pencil’s first contender profile, Kirsten Gillibrand.]

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