Life of Wry

Hung out at Dunloe Brewery tonight on Olive Dr with about 25 other folks, drinking beer and making Yes on 50 signs. What a hoot.

Here are about half of them. I detect a theme…

People can use them at Saturday’s NO KINGS march if they want, or hammer them into ground in their front yards. Or both.

Some shots on a day when we met at Farmer’s Market to train 22+ folks to canvass on behalf of California’s Prop 50, the only issue on the California November 4 ballot. Our state Senator Christopher Cabaldon and State Assembly member Cecilia Aguilar-Curry both showed up, as well.

Shari, Roxanne, Kelly and me… we were the canvass captains today.

Many, but not all, of today’s canvassers…

My completed turf.. I partnered with a guy named George and we canvassed a 75-home area near Playfields Park in South Davis..

And we got new lawn signs, as well. I added one to our lawn sign garden..

Ya know? It’s a minuscule little piece of the giant hot mess that is our country right now, but it feels good to work on something that is positive and may actually have a meaningful impact.. IF we are successful in passing Prop 50, and IF we have a free and fair midterm election in November 2026, and IF we are able to gain 5 democratic congressional seats, and IF that’s enough to result in a net positive for Dems in the House, overriding the Republican gerrymander scam…. THEN we might have a decent backstop on some of MAGA’s more egregious actions.

Yeah…. it’s a long shot. But it’s what we’ve got.

I started as a NO. That didn’t last long. As soon as the conversations about the pros and cons of Proposition 50 started happening, I realized YES was the only answer. Then I became a phone banker, a post carder, a canvasser, a canvass trainer, a two-time donator, and a lawn sign displayer. And today, a YES voter.

When it feels like the country is in a violent swirl down a filthy Trainspotting-like toilet (who could EVER forget that horrifically gross, retch-inducing scene), canvassing for a righteous cause (well, not that righteous, but I’ll explain that in a sec) can be a wee balm for the soul.

I mean, look at these young, obviously smart, ever-optimistic-about-their-futures Davis College Dems loading turfs on their smart phones and collecting high-priced, glossy literature on a GORGEOUS Saturday morning at Farmer’s Market so they can canvass the lovely tree-lined streets of upper-middle-class Davis where they will talk earnestly with conscientious fellow dems, who’ll cheerfully answer their front doors when they hear a knock, and kindly remind them to vote on November 4 in FAVOR of Proposition 50 — the Anti-Election-Rigging bill that Gavin has put on the California ballot in response to the appallingly deceitful move on the part of Texas Governor Abbot (at trump’s desperate command) to squeeze five Democratic congress members from their seat by gerrymandering the f**k out of the Texas congressional map. And those nice, conscientious fellow dems will do just that.

Prop 50 allows California to redraw five districts of its own, setting aside temporarily the districts drawn by our beautiful, fair, non-partisan election commission. By doing so, those previously red districts can move to the blue column and effectively render Abbot’s gains a wash.

Awful, isn’t it? Not the outcome, but the tactic. Feels super shitty. But we are not living in a functioning, fair democracy right now. That’s just fact. If they’re going to manipulate the election, they leave us little choice but to follow suit. Otherwise we’ve just handed them the keys to our democracy to ransack as they please. It’s a hail Mary. And probably not the last one we’ll throw. We’re hanging on by a thread here.

So canvass we did today. And wow, was it fun and satisfying. Those Davis College Dems evidently canvassed our neighborhood today, as I came home to a glossy piece of literature tucked under our door mat. Sherri and I worked the M-N Street neighborhood (with some Pomona, Lesley, Adeline and Lehigh mixed in). That is one deep blue neighborhood, I have to say. Nearly everyone we spoke with (about half the doors we knocked) knew about and was strongly in favor of the proposition. The few (2 or 3) who were on the fence came around. Not happily, but agreed this is existential. The conversations were sober and smart.

It was a worthwhile and very gratifying way to spend an afternoon.

Our president, worried he’ll lose the House in the 2026 midterms (with good reason), commanded Texas to redraw its congressional districts — five years before the census, when district lines are customarily revisited and redrawn per shifts in population — in such a manner as to flip five seats from Democratic majority to Republican. He believes this will go a long way toward preventing his defeat in a close race. Gov Abbot, eager to please, moved on trump’s demand right away. More Republican governors are now following suit and planning to rig the elections in their states, as well.

However, Dems need to win back control of the House if we have any hope of slowing down trump’s authoritarian takeover of our government. So.. as Republicans cheat with their partisan gerrymandering scheme, a move that totally undermines democracy, California is meeting the moment with Proposition 50, the Election Rigging Response Act. Newsom’s not standing by with a plastic fork in what will be a big-time knife fight.

California has had a Citizens Redistricting Commission since 2010 which oversees the drawing of congressional districts every ten years. We voted on that in 2008 and it has worked beautifully (and fairly). It may be tough to convince people to pause this practice, but I believe that most see trump’s move for what it is (cheating.. and if it works, catastrophic) and will be willing to temporarily gerrymander five of our own districts. It’s only for five years; we’d go back to the Citizens Commission in 2030.

I enthusiastically support this move. I participated in a training session today organized by CADem (the California Democratic Party) to become a canvassing trainer. Sister District Yolo and Indivisible Yolo are facilitating door-to-door canvassing every Saturday until the November 4 election. We will be talking to and mobilizing voters in support of Prop 50. We need to get out the Dem vote and pass this thing.

Our new lawn sign arrived today.

Everyday, the news in one sentence — courtesy of Matt, creator of WTFJHT — is gasp-worthy. But some days, it’s even more gasp-worthy than usual. Today’s WTF-Just-Happened-Today is a humdinger.

It’s probably important for posterity purposes to make sure my blog includes this artifact… a perfect representation of the trump-era version of America.. trump americana, if you will. If it’s filthy, amoral, illegal, unethical, ugly, vile, unprincipled, inhumane .. it’s a symbol of trump’s america.

He is one piece of shit, that tangle of pubic hair guy.

I know he’ll rot in hell and there is great satisfaction in that. But in the meantime, I hope this story just goes on and on and on and hope, especially, that it marks the beginning of the end for him.

I know. It won’t.

He’ll slither free, as he always does, escaping accountability. It should be a scandal as big as any other presidential scandal we’ve had. It should take him down. I mean, the President of the United States is best buddies with the most notorious sexual predator in US history. Who doubts that he was, at the very least, very well aware of what his buddy was up to all those years (it doesn’t take a cracker jack code cracker to decipher the above) and, at the very worst, partook of those heinous crimes himself. I have no doubt, I’ll just go on record with that.

I expect that at some point some incriminating information will come out and some men will finally be held accountable for the despicable crimes they committed and the lives they ruined. There has to be accountability. I don’t believe the public is going to let this one fade without that. But I do also believe that there is a very good chance trump will escape. Maxwell will lie, evidence will be lost or destroyed, the courts will somehow find a loophole for him to snake through. And his followers will believe whatever story he concocts, whatever fabrication his team serves up, and his media enablers will triple down on whatever that story line ends up being. Voila. Fake news. He skates free, changes the subject, returns his focus to Project 2025, continues his savage assault on our democracy, wins a Nobel Peace Prize, the world moves on.

But when/if those files are released — however redacted to protect him — do go ahead and imprison all the democrats who violated and abused one thousand girls. He’ll be the one to lock ’em up and throw away the key. And take all the credit for achieving justice.

(And absolutely, yes, do that!, imprison all who are guilty, whatever their political affiliation. But please, god, don’t leave trump behind.)

A bit of a surprise to me, I was invited to participate in a meet-up this morning with our Congressman, Mike Thompson. Mike asked Don S to gather a small group of local political activists to meet with him and share concerns from the frontlines. It was an impressive who’s who of representatives from a variety of activist groups and unions. I knew everyone and had worked with most.

I consider myself more of a line-level activist, someone who responds to calls and does a fair amount of work in teams, but I don’t lead those orgs. Most of the folks gathered this morning do.

Whatevs. I had some things to say and certainly understood the task at hand. It was a fairly productive 90 minutes.. some blah blah but also some urgent reality checks about the moment we’re in.

For my part, I wanted to hear more from Congressman Thompson about how, specifically, we go beyond politics-as-usual to fight what we all know is something new and far more dangerous than anything we’ve seen before. I want to know that we are supporting a congress member who’s going to work with us to push back aggressively on this administration NOW, not wait for the midterms to turn things around. Thompson is a solid Democrat… of the Blue Dog variety (“Democrats committed to bipartisan problem solving and fiscal responsibility”). He takes a more moderate position on most issues. Since trump’s come back into office, however, he’s gotten an earful from folks in his district (via townhalls and thousands of communications that constituents have had with him & his staff) and has upped his game. Thankfully.

Going forward, I hope he’ll use the resources and energy of the resistance, and I hope he’ll carry to Washington these messages and act on this energy.  The resistance movement is very sophisticated and has a lot to offer. I hope we have a partner in Mike.