If you’re like me, sleep (or lack of) has taken on a whole new dimension now that we’re in the final sprint toward election day 2020. The routine goes something like this.

4 am: Startle awake with an unshakable four-year-old knot of dread. Open eyes and await adjustment to darkness. Reach for eyeglasses. Grasp for phone. Avoid knocking over water glass. Review New York Times and Washington Post headlines. Dip into Instagram. Engage in futile mental gymnastics to expel anxiety. Rummage around in the recesses of brain synapses to capture words to convey disgust, anger, and fear. Cancel failed brain synapses. Resign to the fact that words are wholly inadequate.

5 am: Stop reading news breaks. Put down the phone. Surrender to emotional exhaustion. Close eyes. Break out all idiosyncratic tricks to fall back asleep. Wake up at a reasonable time. Go about daily work and tasks while harboring dread about the next news cycle. Repeat the next day.

If you can relate to the above, you may want to watch an emotional video recently aired by Jimmy Kimmel. The video, produced by Kimmel and his wife, Molly, catalogues the struggles of their son, Billy Kimmel, who was born with congenital heart defects — a pre-existing condition that has required multiple surgeries. Kimmel, Molly, and their production crew have managed to find the images and the words that should – if Americans are paying attention and if enough of us still care about one another – move voters to vote with their hearts and save protections for the more than 100 million Americans with pre-existing conditions.

I’m pretty certain Kimmel’s video won’t derail my 4 am routine, but it sure gives me a glimmer of hope.

The post Vote with Your Heart appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Republican governors, state legislators and secretaries of state have become shameless in their attempts to reverse the results of legitimately passed ballot initiatives. What they’re doing goes far beyond the coy, clever, clandestine dirty tricks that Republicans have honed over many years. They’re not just working behind the scenes: they’re out in the open, declaring publicly their intention to undo what voters have officially said they want.

This is not a rogue strategy: Judging from news reports from a variety of states, this is a trending Republican policy. According to the Washington post,

“In the past two years alone, legislators have filed more than 100 bills across 24 states aimed at reversing ballot measures, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which focuses on advancing progressive priorities through ballot initiatives.

“It’s a power grab,” the center’s executive director Chris Melody Fields Figueredo said last month. “It’s an attempt to take that power away from the people. It is counter to why we have democracy in the first place.”

“The ballot-measure process is under attack,” said Justine Sarver, the executive director of the center. “There were many successful measures in 2016, and we’re seeing many conservative governors saying, ‘I’m not going to implement that.’”

Case in point: Missouri

In November 2018, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved [62% to 38%] a constitutional amendment—dubbed “Clean Missouri”—that will impose campaign-contribution limits, restrict gifts to legislators, and change the way state legislative districts are drawn, to eliminate partisan gerrymandering.

But almost before the last vote was counted on the Clean Missouri initiative, Republican Governor Mike Parson vowed to get behind a legislative effort to repeal it—even though, he acknowledges, his support of a reversal doesn’t look good to voters. [This isn’t Parson’s first screw-the-voters effort: After Missouri voters approved a 2011 initiative that would have shut down inhumane “puppy mills,” Parson—then a state legislator—led a successful legislative drive that put puppy mills back in business even before the new law could take effect.]

Rumor has it that one Republican legislator is preparing to pre-file a bill in the 2019 Missouri legislative session that would undo Clean Missouri immediately. And within days of Clean Missouri’s decisive victory, a new group—with the Orwellian name “Fair Missouri”—began raising money for a new ballot initiative that would erase what voters had just approved.

Missouri is not new to this game. The state has a sordid recent history of undermining, invalidating and/or sabotaging voter-approved initiatives. Here are a few examples:

• 1999: MO voters vote against concealed-carry permits for guns.
  2003: MO GOP legislature passes concealed carry law.
• 1990s: MO voters vote for caps on campaign contributions.
  2008: MO GOP legislature removes the caps.
• 2011: MO voters pass puppy mill ballot measure. Missouri Republican-dominated legislature reverses it before it can take effect.
• 2015: St. Louis and Kansas City voters pass city minimum wage hikes.
  2017: MO GOP undermines the wage hike with its own state- mandated minimum wage.
• 2016: MO voters–again–approve caps on campaign contributions. Missouri Republicans launch a court fight against the new rules.
• 2018: MO voters overwhelmingly reject GOP’s Right to Work legislation via ballot measure.
  2019: MO GOP files the legislation again.

It’s legal

For the record, it’s not illegal for Missouri’s legislature to pass laws that reverse the provisions of voter-approved ballot initiatives. According to Ballotpedia, only two states—Arizona and California—have actually made it illegal to change an initiative substantively without sending it back to the voters. In fact, 11 states (and D.C.) can change or repeal initiatives at will, without any restrictions on how soon, or with what majority the legislative body can act.

But, while it may be legal, thumbing your legislative nose at voters reeks of unfairness and a sore-loser, anti-democracy mentality.

“There’s little disagreement that, after offering the choice up to people at the ballot boxes, it’s symbolically fraught to take it away,” writes Sarah Holder, at CityLab. Holder quotes former Washington DC mayor Anthony Williams as saying, “We are facing a situation that is never good for a democracy. The people appear to have spoken, and yet their elected officials are saying, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.”

As we learned in eighth-grade Civics class, ballot initiatives came about as a way for citizens to be a final check and balance on their representatives. That’s an important principle, and it should be respected. Unfortunately, in Missouri as in too many other states, too many elected officials clearly regard “the will of the people” as merely a suggestion, rather than as a right, and they’re making it their official policy to salute voters with their middle-fingers.

The post Reverse the vote: Undoing the will of the people is now official Republican policy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It has always been hard to unseat an incumbent candidate. The advantages of already possessing a legislative title like State Representative or State Senator are immense. But you know what makes unseating incumbents even more difficult? Allowing them to run unopposed.

In Missouri this year, 72 incumbent candidates for seats in the State Legislature are running without an opponent in the general election. Of those, 53 are Republicans, and 19 are Democrats.  The Missouri legislature has 163 total members. Currently, 117 are Republicans, and 45 are Democrats.

That’s a lot of non-competition in a country that calls itself a democracy.

Missouri’s legislature is dominated by Republicans, who wield their veto-proof majority like a weapon of mass destruction. Our Democratic Governor, Jay Nixon, has been virtually powerless to stop some of the incredibly short-sighted, unfair and damaging legislation passed by the Missouri House and Senate. Examples? This year, Missouri lawmakers passed a Stand-Your-Ground law that is the first such piece of legislation passed anywhere since the ignominious George-Zimmerman-Trayvon-Martin shooting of 2012. They also passed a no-permit-needed-concealed-carry law. Missouri has officially joined the ranks of the most right-wing legislatures in the country.

Clearly, some Missouri legislators need replacing. The usual factors stand in the way: blatant gerrymandering of legislative districts; the built-in name recognition and institutional power of incumbency; the connections to lobbyists, power-brokers and funders.

But by far the best way to get elected is to not have an opponent. So, it’s sad to see that, in so many of Missouri’s state legislative districts, no one has stepped forward to offer opposition in the general election. In so many cases, the stopper is a sense of hopelessness: the belief that there is simply no way to win. Plus, why put yourself out there—exposing yourself and possibly your family to the public abuse that has become a routine part of campaigns– if you’re just going to lose, anyway?

Money is a big issue, too, and campaign costs are escalating. Even the most local races are spending more than ever. Some candidates for state legislative positions are amassing campaign war chests of unprecedented size. I’m guessing that some are piling up the money as a way of demonstrating that opposition is fruitless. Also, knowing that they don’t really need all that money to run against nobody, many will probably share the bounty with other like-minded campaigns, as a way of building power alliances that will come in handy later.

Here are a few numbers [from Missouri Times]:

Sheila Solon, running uncontested in the general election for a safe Republican seat in House District 31 has $93,084.13 in her campaign fund.

Mike Bernskoetter, running uncontested in the general election in the overwhelmingly Republican 59^th House District, has amassed $63,379.72 in campaign funds.

Bonnaye Mims, running uncontested in the general election in the predominantly Democratic 27^th House District, has $32,656.95 in her campaign treasury.

Of course, uncontested elections are not confined to Missouri. Unfortunately, they may be on the rise, and some observers say that gerrymandering is the main culprit.

• According to Richard Winger, of Ballot Access News, in 2012, there were 5,984 regularly scheduled state Senate and House races. About 2,000 of those were in districts where the candidates ran unopposed. Winger says that about 33 percent of all state legislative-district elections in 2012 had only one candidate per seat in the race—and  it’s likely that the vast majority of those candidates were incumbents running unopposed. Many of those races can be won with a mere 3,000 to 5,000 votes or so, depending on the year.
• In 2014, one-third of candidates for the Texas legislature ran unopposed, according to Burnt Orange Report.
• In 2016 elections in Illinois, “even if Republicans win every race where they have a candidate, they cannot win back control of the chamber. That’s because there are too many races where Democrats have an unopposed candidate,” Ballotpedia says of House elections.
• In the Illinois Senate this year, “of the 40 districts up for election, 30 have already been decided because of unopposed candidates,” says Ballotpedia.

I understand why people, on both the Democratic and Republican sides, choose not to run. I wish, though, that Democrats—especially progressive Democrats– would at least try—if only to counteract the right-wing message that dominates Missouri elections and politics. This year, especially with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, there may be an opportunity for Dems to switch some seats—but that won’t happen when there’s no one listed on the Democratic side of the ballot. It’s sad for Missouri and for small-d democracy, too.

The post Uncontested: One of the worst words in a democracy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Now that it’s 2016, it’s time to fact-check some of the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it predictions that President Obama’s critics made before his 2012 re-election. In an article published today, Think Progress highlights four big things that were supposed to happen by 2016, if Obama were re-elected. [Spoiler alert: They didn’t.]

1. Gas was supposed to cost $6.05 per gallon.

In March 2012, on the floor of the United States Senate, Mike Lee (R-UT) predicted that if Obama was reelected gas would cost $6.05 per gallon by the start 2015. Lee said that gas prices would rise 5 cents for every month Obama was in office, ultimately reaching $6.60 per gallon.

Lee was not alone. Newt Gingrich, running for the GOP nomination, predicted that if Obama was reelected he would push gas to “$10 a gallon.” Gingrich said he would reduce gas prices dramatically by reversing Obama’s energy policies. Gingrich flanked himself with campaign signs promising $2.50 gas if he was elected.

Today, the nationwide average for a gallon of gas is $2.00.

Some of the reasons for the decline in gas prices were beyond Obama’s control — including weak international demand and OPEC’s failure to reduce supply. Also driving prices lower was increased gas production in the U.S., which has doubled over the last 6 years. The policies that Lee, Gingrich and others criticized — the rejection of Keystone XL pipeline, more EPA regulation and limiting drilling on public land — have not gotten in the way of historically low prices.

2. Unemployment was supposed to be stuck at over 8%

In September 2012, Mitt Romney predicted that if Obama is reelected “you’re going to see chronic high unemployment continue four years or longer.” At the time, the unemployment rate was 8.1% and had been between 8.1% and 8.3% for the entire year.

What would breaking out of “chronic high unemployment” look like in a Romney presidency? Romney pledged that, if elected, he could bring the unemployment rate down to 6% by January 2017.

The unemployment rate currently stands at 5.0% and has been under 6% since September 2014. Since January 2013, the economy has created over 7.8 million new jobs.

3. The stock market was supposed to crash

Immediately after Obama won reelection in November 2012, many commenters predicted that the stock market was toast.

Charles Bilderman, the author of the “Intelligent Investing” column at Forbes, wrote that the “market selloff after Obama’s re-election [was] no accident,” predicting “stocks are dropping with no bottom in sight.” Bilderman said that the policies the Obama administration would pursue in his second term would “crash stocks.”

On Bloomberg TV, investor Marc Faber predicted that, because of Obama’s reelection, the stock market would drop at least 20%. According to Faber, “Republicans understand the problem of excessive debt better than Mr. Obama who basically doesn’t care about piling up debt.” Faber joked that investors seeking to protect their assets should “buy themselves a machine gun.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average currently stands at 17,425.03 and, despite a downturn in 2015, is up over 27% since Obama was reelected.

4. The entire U.S. economy was supposed to collapse

Rush Limbaugh predicted that “the country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected.” Limbaugh was confident in his prediction: “There’s no if about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut wrenching, but it will happen.”

The economic free fall would begin, according to Limbaugh, because “California is going to declare bankruptcy” and Obama would force states like Texas to “bail them out.” California currently has a $4 billion budget surplus.

Limbaugh added, “I know mathematics, and I know economics. I know history. I know socialism, statism, Marxism, I know where it goes. I know what happens at the end of it.”

Limbaugh said the economic apocalypse could take “a year and a half, two years, three years.” It’s been three years and two months since Limbaugh’s prediction.

The U.S. economy grew at a respectable 2% in the 3rd quarter of 2014, following 3.9% growth in the second quarter.

Happily, for Americans of all political persuasions, predictions for Obama-geddon didn’t pan out. In fact, we’ve actually had a pretty decent run. I shudder to think how things might have been–especially for people without membership cards for the top 1 percent club–had we elected Mitt Romney in 2012. And with today’s Republican field of presidential candidates, we could be in even deeper doo-doo if one of them makes it all the way. Any Democrat would be better than any of these clowns. As a very smart person [my sister] said here on Occasional Planet yesterday, make it your most important New Year’s resolution to vote in 2016.  And for gawd sake, vote for the Democrat.

The post It’s 2016: What happened to all those dire, Obama-geddon predictions? appeared first on Occasional Planet.