The Extraordinarily Important Midterm Elections

It is only 19 days until the midterm elections in the U.S., and since there are some who will be voting early (and some may have already voted), I am writing about those extraordinarily important elections now—although I realize that this post will not likely change how anyone will vote. Still . . . .  

John Darkow in the Columbia Missourian (10/12)

The most important elections on November 8 are those for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, although there are also significant gubernatorial and other state elections as well.

For example, each state’s secretary of state is quite important as they could skew elections, as The Washington Post clearly delineated last month in an article titled "What an election denier could do if elected secretary of state.”

By far, though, the most important elections are in the 34 states that will be voting for a Senator. The voters in those states will determine which Party will be in control of the Senate for the next two years.

And, as is true every two years, all 435 Representatives in Congress will be elected in November.

The winners of many of those 469 elections are almost certain already. In my home state of Missouri, the Republican candidate for Senator has a 99% chance of winning according to FiveThirtyEight (538), the website that focuses on opinion poll analysis

And Rep. Sam Graves in Missouri’s sixth district (where I live) will almost certainly be re-elected for a twelfth term as a U.S. Representative. So, for us Missouri (and sixth district) voters, voting is important mainly for statewide and county offices.

But there are several states where the senatorial election is of great importance. According to 538, the closest, and thus the most significant, races currently are in Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Ohio.

The most troubling elections on November 8 are those that include candidates who do not accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

 “A majority of GOP nominees deny or question the 2020 election results” is the title of an October 12 article in The Washington Post. According to author Amy Gardner, there are 291 candidates who have challenged or refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory—51 percent of the 569 analyzed.

In spite of warnings that citizens should not vote for candidates who deny or question the outcome of the 2020 election even though there is ample evidence that it was a fair election and there is no proof whatsoever that it was “stolen,” sadly, many will vote for those nominees anyway.

The article mentioned above links to a list of the deniers in every state. The Missouri Republican candidate for the Senate and for the sixth district are both on that list—and as I indicated above, both are almost certain to win their respective races.

The November 8 elections are extraordinarily important because the future of democracy in the USA is in grave jeopardy if those who deny or disregard election results take control of Congress.

The October 10 opinion piece by eminent columnist Eugene Robinson (b. 1954) was titled, “The 2022 midterms are the most important of my lifetime.” (Click here to read that article without a paywall.) Here is part of what he wrote:

Vital issues are at stake on Election Day. Abortion rights are gravely threatened after the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Voting rights, especially for minorities, are imperiled. Efforts to fight climate change and make the transition to a clean-energy economy would at least be slowed if Republicans took either the House or the Senate.
       But the overarching issue is what President Biden calls the fight for “the soul of this nation.” Do we continue our halting but undeniable progress toward making the Constitution’s guarantees of rights and freedoms apply to all Americans? Or do we reverse course?

“Will the U.S. Remain a Democracy?” was the title of my May 25 blog post. Now, nearly five months later, it is even more questionable that democracy will prevail in this country. To a large extent, the answer to the question depends on the outcome of the November 8—and the 2024—elections.

How will you vote?

Rep. Liz Cheney: Speaking Truth to Power

My May 15 blog post was about columnist Michael Gerson, whom I called a man of integrity. This post is about Rep. Liz Cheney, whom I see as a woman of integrity. But please note: being a person of integrity doesn’t mean that such a person’s ideas/opinions are always correct.

Rep. Liz Cheney, a Woman of Integrity

The Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives met on the morning of May 12 to consider Cheney’s leadership role in their Party. The candid Wyoming Representative spoke briefly at the beginning of that meeting and led a short prayer, closing with these words:

Help us to speak the truth and remember the words of John 8:32 — “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” May our world see the power of faith.  

Rep. Liz Cheney on May 12, 2021

Less than twenty minutes later, Rep. Cheney was set free from her powerful position as the chair of the House Republican Conference (HRC) because of her unwaveringly speaking the truth about the lies still being propagated with regard to the 2020 election.

A person of integrity is one who consistently speaks and acts in harmony with their core beliefs in spite of the negative consequences that might result. In other words, a person of integrity tells the truth when it would be to their personal advantage to lie or at least to keep quiet.

Rep. Cheney is a woman of integrity because she is speaking the truth to power, denouncing the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election even though, as she knew well, continuing to do so would likely lead, as it did on May 12, to her ouster as the third ranking Republican Representative in the House.

Rep. Liz Cheney, an Opponent of the “Big Lie”

During the entire four years of the Trump presidency, Rep. Cheney was a loyal supporter of the President. She voted in line with Trump's position 93% of the time. But she consistently disagrees with his persistent position that the 2020 election was stolen and that he was actually re-elected.

To support his attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, DJT and his allies repeatedly and falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had really won the election.

U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz subsequently contested the election results in the Senate. Their effort was characterized as “the big lie” by then President-elect Joe Biden—and that designation has, for good reason, been regularly used in this regard ever since.

On May 16, Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday asked Rep. Cheney if House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Elise Stefanik, Cheney’s successor as HRC chair, are “being complicit in the Trump lies.”

Cheney’s straightforward response was: “They are, and I’m not willing to do that.” (See a 40-second clip here.)

Rep. Liz Cheney, a Proponent of Problematic Ideas

Those who are not conservative Republicans find much objectionable in Rep. Cheney’s political views and public statements about political matters. To give just one example, she is sometimes called a “warmonger,” and not without reason.

A May 16 post on NewYorker.com states that “Cheney, like her father [the Vice President from 2001 to 2009], is a committed hawk and a believer in the aggressive use of American power.”

Rep. Cheney has a right to her own opinions and political views, but there is a difference between opinions and facts. We can either agree or disagree with someone’s opinions, which cannot be objectively verified to be either true or false.

But it is different with facts: they can only be acknowledged as being true or denied by lying. Rep. Cheney accepts the facts about the 2020 election and speaks that truth to the powers that oppose her.

So, in spite of her problematic ideas, Cheney’s championing the truth about the 2020 election is a mark of her integrity. And in this regard, as one D.C. newspaper headlined on May 14, “Incredibly, Liz Cheney Is on the Right Side of History.” That is because, in expanding words MLK, Jr., made famous:

The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward truth.

Hawley with Blood on His Hands

This is not the blog article I intended to post on January 10, but little did I know when I made my Jan. 5 post, partly about the end of the election season in the U.S., that it was going to end so violently.

Hawley, the Embarrassing Missouri Senator

In that Jan. 5 post I wrote, “Embarrassingly for many of us Missourians, last Wednesday Sen. Josh Hawley announced his intention to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, which will lead to hours of debate tomorrow on what should be merely a routine matter.”

On Jan. 6, Hawley (b. 12/31/79) not only persisted in calling the presidential election into question, even after the insurrectionist mob stormed the Capitol, he cheered that mob on as DJT had done in his inflammatory speech at the “Save America” rally earlier in the day.

Here is the photo of Hawley taken early on Wednesday afternoon by Francis Chung, a photojournalist for E&E News:  

As Katie Bernard wrote for the Kansas City Star this morning, this image “seemed to crystallize Hawley’s week-long role as the face of the Electoral College challenge to Biden—and the chaos it unleashed.”

Again, this is highly embarrassing to many of us Missourians—and adds to our ongoing and deep disappointment that he defeated Claire McCaskill, the highly qualified incumbent, in the 2018 senatorial election.

Hawley, the Outspoken Evangelical Christian

Senator Hawley is also an embarrassment for those of us who identify as Christians—as is much of the conservative evangelicalism with which he has long associated.

As John Fea, a university professor and prolific blogger,  pointed out yesterday, “The U.S. Senators who objected to the Electoral College results were almost all evangelicals.”

Described as “a conservative, evangelical Presbyterian,” for many years Josh Hawley has been clear in his support of the issues most important to the Christian Right: a strong advocate for “religious freedom” and strong in his opposition to abortion and gay rights.

Back in 2015 at the beginning of his campaign to become the Attorney General of Missouri, he was lauded by Don Hinkle, the editor of The Pathway, Missouri’s conservative Southern Baptist newspaper.

As Hinkle pointed out, Hawley had worked on the Becket legal team that “won two of the most important religious liberty cases of our time.” One of those was the highly publicized Hobby Lobby case refusing to include abortion drugs in the insurance provided for their employees.

Hawley has also taught at Blackstone Legal Fellowship, a program seeking to train (conservative) Christian lawyers. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled that organization “an extremist group.”

 Blackstone is an arm of Alliance Defending Freedom, which SPLC has designated as a hate group since 2016. That is largely because the “freedom” they defend is the freedom to discriminate against LGBTQ people and to block legal abortion activities.

Hawley, the Co-instigator of Sedition

It seems manifestly obvious that DJT instigated the insurrection of January 6. But more than anyone else, Hawley was the leading co-instigator.

On the afternoon of that fateful day, the editorial board of the Kansas City Star declared, “No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol other than one Joshua David Hawley.”

The headline for that editorial unequivocally stated their assessment of Hawley’s involvement in the chaos at the Capitol: “Assault on democracy: Sen. Josh Hawley has blood on his hands in Capitol coup attempt.”

Accordingly, Heather Cox Richardson wrote yesterday, Hawley “watched his star plummet today.” Former Senator John Danforth (R-MO), his key mentor, said supporting Hawley was the “worst mistake of my life.”*

In addition, one of Hawley’s major donors called him “an anti-democracy populist” who provoked the riots. And Simon & Schuster canceled Hawley’s new book contract.

What Hawley did, most probably intending it to greatly enhance his viability as the 2024 Republican candidate for the presidency, may, in stark contrast, have essentially ended his political career.

And perhaps the terrible events at the Capitol on January 6 will mark the beginning of the end of Trumpism and of the conservative evangelical Christian support of a very flawed President.

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* Part of my 11/15/17 blog post was a positive assessment of former Senator Danforth. And here is what Fea posted this morning about Danforth and Hawley.

The End and the Beginning

Today (January 5) is the end of the Christmas season and today and tomorrow mark the end of a long and contentious election season in the U.S. Tomorrow is Epiphany, the beginning of the post-Christmas era, and tomorrow also should be the beginning of the return to normalcy in the U.S.

The End of the Christmas Season

For many people, the celebration of Christmas ends on December 25 and attention is then focused on other things. In some traditions, though, Christmas Day is the beginning of a lengthy celebration and today is the twelfth and last day of Christmas.

In this tradition, Epiphany is celebrated on January 6. The Gospel writer Matthew tells the story of the first gentiles to receive the revelation (epiphany) of Christ. That is the account of the Wise Men of the East who came to revere Jesus, the newborn king. 

In the fifth chapter of his 2019 book Postcards from Babylon (which is being made into a documentary  available for viewing, for a price, on Jan. 21), author Brian Zahnd writes about “the dark side of Christmas,” King Herod’s massacre of the baby boys in Bethlehem.*

Because the Persian magi (magicians) were looking for the new king, “it made sense,” as Zahnd writes, “for them to inquire in the capital city of Jerusalem, but by doing so they unwittingly set in motion terrible events” (p. 68). Herod, the tyrant King of Judea, tried to destroy the new king-to-be.

So, as the celebration of Jesus’ birth ends today on the twelfth day of Christmas, we recognize the epiphany of the Wise Men tomorrow. Epiphany, sometimes called “Three Kings Day,” marks the beginning of the universal appeal of Christianity.

Even though their desire to see the new king triggered cruel action by King Herod, “the baby king escaped the gruesome infanticide ordered by the paranoid king” (Zahnd, p. 72). So, we celebrate Jesus’ escape but grieve over all the “collateral damage” caused by tyrannical King Herod.

Today, people around the world are still compelled to choose whether to follow those known for their love of power, such as Herod and others who aspire to be autocrats, or to follow Jesus, the one whose life and teachings were characterized by the power of love.

The End of the Election Season

The important presidential and congressional elections in the U.S. took place on November 3, but they are not ending until today and tomorrow is the designated day for the final certification of the winner of the presidential election.

The election season ends with voting today for both of Georgia’s U.S. Senators, and seldom have senatorial elections been of greater significance.

Then tomorrow should (finally!) be the end of the presidential election, but never has that formal congressional certification of the electoral college votes been under so much attack.

What should be a routine day tomorrow in Congress is now fraught with uncertainty because as esteemed opinion writer Colbert King of the Washington Post writes, “President Trump, a buffoonish one-term wannabe autocrat, will not accept his election loss.”

King further predicts that tomorrow (Jan. 6) “will be a day of acrimony, probably to Trump’s delight.” As early as Dec. 19, DJT tweeted: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6^th. Be there, will be wild!”

Embarrassingly for many of us Missourians, last Wednesday Sen. Josh Hawley announced his intention to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, which will lead to hours of debate tomorrow on what should be merely a routine matter.

Then on January 2, Sen. Ted Cruz and 10 other GOP senators announced that they would join Hawley in opposing certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

That same day, DJT made a ludicrous, and most likely illegal, telephone call to Georgia election officials asking (demanding?) them to change the voting results in that state.

But tomorrow should, thankfully, end the contentious election season and begin a new day in which the Biden administration will vigorously seek to Build Back Better.

May it be so!

+++++

* That was one of the massacres I wrote about in my 12/26 blog post.

Elections Have Consequences: 1844 and 2020

James K. Polk, the 11^th President, was born on November 2, 1795. As mentioned in my Oct. 30 post, Polk’s 125^th birthday anniversary in 1920 was the day when Warren G. Harding celebrated his 55^th birthday—and was also elected the 29^th POTUS.

Polk, elected in November 1844, was a successful President. His four years in office clearly indicates that elections have consequences—as they all do. 

Polk: One of the Best Presidents?

Presidential historian Andrew Bergen ranks Polk as the seventh best President of the first 43 in the history of the U.S. (see here). That is higher than what is found in most rankings, but Polk is regularly ranked in the top one-third. And yet, he is not widely known—although ten states have a county named for James Polk.

(Polk County, Missouri, where June was born and where we were married, was named after James’s grandfather. And now we live in Clay County, Mo., named after Henry Clay, whom Polk defeated in the election of 1844. My 4/20/17 blog post was titled “The Feats of [Henry] Clay,” and mentions his loss to Polk.)

Harry Truman summed up Polk’s legacy in these words: “James K. Polk, a great President. Said what he intended to do and did it.” Accordingly, Bergen states, “Polk followed through on every single campaign pledge that he ran on in 1844,” and that included not running for re-election.  

Election Consequences of 1844

But Polk’s “successful” presidency doesn’t mean that we should broadly praise him. Rather, there is much that should be denounced. Elections have consequences, and those consequences from the 1844 election were not good for many people in the U.S.

Polk is regarded as a protégé of Andrew Jackson, instigator of the deplorable Indian Removal Act of 1830, and that is one reason the consequences of the election of 1844 were not good for many. He was a strong advocate of “manifest destiny” (a term coined in 1845) that resulted in the extermination of many Native Americans.

Further, the annexation of Texas, which he strongly supported, was linked to the strengthening of slavery in the U.S., for annexation gave slavery room to expand. Subsequently, one indirect consequence of Polk’s election was the Civil War, which started just twelve years after his presidency ended.

Election Consequences of 2020?

The guest host on the Nov. 9 Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC kept repeating the words “radical normalcy” with reference to President-elect Joe Biden. That is one of the hoped-for consequences of this month’s election—a reversal of the abnormalities I wrote about in my 10/30 post and that this very lengthy WaPo Magazine article details.

Just as he promised, President-elect Biden has already set up a panel of experts to draw up plans on how best to find ways to control the covid-19 pandemic. And as an indication of the “radical normalcy” in that move, there were no family members or cronies selected for the team.

As a Nov. 9 WaPo article says, Biden’s appointed task force is “a group made up entirely of doctors and health experts, signaling his intent to seek a science-based approach to bring the raging pandemic under control.” This will surely lead to one very positive consequence of the Nov. 3 election.

Further, according to this Nov. 11 WaPo article, another encouraging consequence of the recent election is how “Biden aims to amp up the government’s fight against climate change.”

Of course, some evangelical Christians see negative consequences resulting from the election. For example, on Nov. 10, a conservative Christian Post reporter declared, “Biden planning to reverse Trump’s pro-life policies by executive order.”

It remains to be seen, of course, what all the consequences of the 2020 presidential election will be. I am hoping for, and expect, mostly positive ones that will, indeed, help save the soul of the nation.

TTT (Things Take Time)

For many years, I have used the abbreviation TTT for my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018)—and I still encourage people to read that book. But this post is about a different meaning of TTT, one that I learned from a Japanese friend decades ago: things take time. 

The Presidential Election: TTT

As everyone knows, the U.S. elections were held two days ago, on November 3. But the results of the presidential election are not certain even now, although it is most likely that the Biden/Harris ticket will narrowly win.

The election results for most states won’t be “officially certified” until November 23 or later. And actually, the result of the presidential election is not official until January 6, the day a joint session of Congress meets to count electoral votes (cast on December 18) and declare the winner.

Things take time, and this year it is taking a much longer time than usual for the apparent results of the presidential election to be ascertained—and who knows what will happen between now and Dec. 18 or Jan. 6.

There will be recounts, lawsuits, angry tweets, and falsehoods told by the likely loser, who late on election night made numerous false and misleading statements in speaking to his supporters (see here).

The Return to Normalcy: TTT

As I wrote in my previous (Oct. 30) blog post, the election of Joe Biden would be the beginning of a return to normalcy as the many abnormalities I mentioned in that post—and that was by no means a complete list—would be righted.

However, even if Biden is inaugurated on January 20, current adverse conditions in the nation won’t get better immediately. Things take time.

The ongoing effects of the pandemic, the lingering economic/unemployment challenges for many, and current cynicism about government, etc. will take a long time to overcome and for there to be a sense of normalcy again.

Some, no doubt, will be disappointed, feeling that change/recovery is happening too slowly. There will likely be criticism of the new administration for not doing enough fast enough.

But, again, things take time—and patience seems to be much more difficult for us USAmericans than for the people of Japan, whose national beginning is said to have been in 660 BCE, a very long time before 1776.

The Re-building of Environmental Protection: TTT

Over the past nearly four years, we have seen much that has been wrecked in this country—and it takes much longer to build, or re-build, something than to wreck it.

The lead article in the October 31 issue of The Economist reports, “Of the 225 major executive actions in a studiously catalogued list of the Trump administration’s deregulation 70 . . . are environmental rollbacks.”

With broader criteria, an articlein the Oct. 30 Washington Post claims that “as Trump’s first term winds to a close, he has weakened or wiped out more than 125 rules and policies aimed at protecting the nation’s air, water and land, with 40 more rollbacks underway.”

There are numerous critical challenges that the new President faces. Of immediate urgency, of course, is controlling the spread of the covid-19 pandemic and dealing with the lingering problems caused by it.

But perhaps the biggest challenge, the one that is most critical for the future well-being of the country and the world, is re-building programs necessary for protecting the environment—and then taking bold measures to combat global warming.

Things take time—but dealing wisely and effectively with environmental issues is something that needs to be done sooner rather than later.

A Return to Normalcy?

No one in this country is unaware that next Tuesday, November 3, is Election Day. Many U.S. citizens have already voted, but what result can we expect from the presidential election? Can we expect a return to normalcy? 

Is this also Decision 2020?

Past Appeals for Normalcy

In his campaign for the presidency in 1920, Warren G. Harding’s slogan was “return to normalcy.” On May 14, he made his famous “Return to Normalcy” speech that included these words:

America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; . . . .”

That sentiment proved to be an effective and fruitful appeal to the American voters, who were ready to move back to “normal” after the disastrous “Great War” and the equally disastrous effects of the Spanish flu.

On November 2, which happened to be his 55th birthday, Harding was elected, receiving over 60% of the popular vote, the highest percentage in a presidential election up to that time.

While the same words were not used, there was some similarity with Dwight D. Eisenhower’s campaign of 1952. There was no pandemic just before that election, but the effects of WWII were still being felt, and then the Korean War had been raging since 1950. Many hoped for a return to normalcy.

Eisenhower won that election with over 55% of the popular vote and over 83% of the electoral votes.

In “What Joe Can Learn from Ike,” a perceptive 10/10/20 article in The Atlantic, author Ted Widmer points out that “Eisenhower instinctively understood how deeply Americans wanted to calm down and get back to normal.”

Accordingly, Widmer states, Ike “pursued a policy of strategic blandness.” That was a successful strategy, for as noted, he won by a landslide.

Present Need for Normalcy

This is a time of considerable abnormality in the USA. As in much of the rest of the world, the covid-19 pandemic has greatly altered the normal activities of most Americans and taken the lives of more than 230,000—and at present, the situation is steadily getting worse, not better.

But perhaps the greatest abnormality is linked to the man occupying the White House. Without elaboration, here are some of the most blatant abnormalities associated with DJT.

** It is abnormal for a President to lie so much.

** It is abnormal for a President to seek political help from the heads of other countries, especially those who head a totalitarian government.

** It is abnormal for a President to have so many family members working in the White House.

** It is abnormal for a sitting President and his family to profit financially so much while in office.

** It is abnormal for a President to be so disrespectful of women, Blacks and other People of Color, immigrants and asylum seekers from other countries.

** It is abnormal for a President to expect the Department of Justice to serve his personal and political interests.

** It is abnormal for a President to be personally involved in the celebration of a new Supreme Court justice.

** Etc.

Future Hope for Normalcy

Many of us are eagerly hoping for the election next week to be the beginning of a return to normalcy in this country. Such a return would not happen immediately, though. Things take time, and I plan to write more about that next week.

It will certainly take many more months for life to return to anything like normal because of the covid-19 pandemic.

But I am hopeful that next week will be the beginning of a return to an administration committed to truthfulness; to respect for, and the endeavor to seek the well-being of, all citizens; and to civility.

Maybe the USA was never fully like that, though, so instead of a return to normalcy my main hope and prayer is for the beginning of a much-needed new normal that embraces, among other things, truthfulness, respect, and civility.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

FYI: November 2 was also the birthday of James K. Polk, the 11^th POTUS. The election of 1844 was from November 1 until December 4, although Polk is said to have won the election on November 5.

Following the example of Heather Cox Richardson, I am posting below some hyperlinks to articles directly related to what I have written above.

“Trump is averaging more than 50 false or misleading claims a day” (WaPo, 10/22)

“Ballrooms, candles and luxury cottages: During Trump’s term, millions of government and GOP dollars have flowed to his properties” (WaPo, 10/27)

“Former U.S. attorneys — all Republicans — back Biden, saying Trump threatens ‘the rule of law’” (WaPo, 10/27)

“All the small things you can look forward to in a Biden administration” (WaPo, 10/27)

 

Votes for Women: The Battle of August 1920

As is being widely publicized this month, women in the U.S. were given the universal right to vote 100 years ago this week, on August 18, 1920, when Tennessee became the 36^th state to ratify the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

June posing as a 1920 suffragist

Women’s Voting Rights before 1920

Women in most of the U.S. states did not have the right to vote in presidential elections before 1920.

For example, my paternal grandmother was born in 1881, so she turned 21, the voting age for men back then, in 1902. In the presidential election of 1904, though, she could not go to the polls with her husband George, whom she had married earlier that year.

Grandma Laura Seat was also unable to vote in the elections of 1908, 1912, or 1916. In the Declaration of Independence, the words “all men are created equal” still meant men instead of people 140 years later.

At the July 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton adopted the motto, “All men and women are created equal,” and they demanded the right to vote. That still hadn’t happened 68 years later when Grandma Laura was not legally permitted to vote in 1916.

But the situation changed in August 1920.

The Suffs and the Antis in 1920

The U.S. Congress passed the 19^th Amendment on June 4, 1919—but it had to be ratified by 36 of the 48 states in order to become part of the Constitution. The battle for and against ratification in Tennessee, the 36^th state, was fiercely fought in August 1920.

That battle between the “Suffs” (those for women’s suffrage) and the “Antis” (those opposing suffrage, which included many women) is engagingly told in Elaine Weiss’s 2018 book The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. And what a battle it was!

The strong women Antis emphasized several dangers the 19^th Amendment posed, including the dismantling of “white supremacy, states’ rights, and cherished southern traditions” (Weiss, p. 44).

Somehow, I had not previously realized how so much of the opposition to women’s suffrage was by southerners, still indignant over the outcome and effects of the Civil War and adamantly opposed to Black women gaining voting rights.

The Antis also included many women who were part of the conservative Christian evangelicalism of the South and linked with the fundamentalism that was growing in strength throughout the 1910s.

Among many other things, the Antis attacked the Suffs because of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Woman’s Bible (1895, 1898).

On the other hand, the Suffs were single-minded in their advocacy for women’s suffrage—and, regrettably, because of that single-mindedness they compromised on other matters of social justice, especially with regard to the rights of African Americans.

But, could the 19^th Amendment have been ratified otherwise? Perhaps not. Thankfully, it was ratified by Tennessee on August 18 and took effect on August 26, 1920. Surprisingly, though, most women didn’t vote in the November election that year.

What About 2016 & 2020?

It is reported that in the 2016 presidential election, 63.3% of eligible women voters went to the polls but only 59.3% of eligible men voters did.

Given the 72-year struggle (from 1848 to 1920) for voting rights, though, why would nearly 37% of women not vote in the last presidential election? Perhaps some of them still agreed with the Antis of 1920, although surely almost all women today think they should have the right to vote.

If just a small percentage of those women who didn’t go to the polls had done so, the 2016 election would likely have turned out differently, for of those women who did vote, 54% of them voted for Clinton whereas 53% of men voted for Trump.

In this centennial year of women’s suffrage, many of us are hoping that a far greater number of women will vote on November 3. “Votes for women” didn’t elect a woman president in 2016, but voting women can (and probably will!) make Senator Kamala Harris the first female vice president in U.S. history.

Faith, Politics, and the Common Good

Robb Ryerse is an interesting guy, and I am pleased to introduce him and his book that was published earlier this year under the title Running for Our Lives: A Story of Faith, Politics, and the Common Good.

Meet Robb Ryerse

Some of you may have heard of Ryerse: he has had two articles published in Time magazine this year. The first (dated 1/31/20) is titled “I'm a Pastor Who Ran for Congress as a Republican. Here's Why I'm Encouraging My Fellow Evangelicals Not to Vote for Donald Trump.”

Just two weeks later, Time published his next opinion piece, “I Questioned the Sincerity of Donald Trump’s Pro-Life Stance. The Response From My Fellow Evangelicals Was Troubling.”

Time introduced both articles with these words: “Robb Ryerse is a pastor at Vintage Fellowship in Fayetteville, AR and the political director of Vote Common Good.” And they give the title of his new book, which is about his 2018 congressional campaign.

Ryerse was born in Ohio in 1975. He graduated from a conservative seminary in Pennsylvania and he was the pastor of traditional, fundamentalist churches for ten years before having a crisis of faith and then starting the new “post-denominational” church in 2006.

(Here is the link to the introduction of Robb on Vintage Fellowship’s website.)

His first book, Fundamorphosis: How I Left Fundamentalism But Didn’t Lose My Faith (2012), tells the story of his theological transformation. His new book tells how he ran in, and decisively lost, the 2018 Republican primary seeking to unseat incumbent Steve Womack for the Third House District in northwest Arkansas. 

Hear Robb Ryerse

Ryerse’s book is fairly brief and not particularly profound. But it is the intriguing story of a Republican and a former evangelical Christian running for political office—and now actively campaigning against DJT.

I encourage you to read Robb’s book—or at least to click here and read my brief summary of and quotes from his book.

As one who has had a hard time finding much to agree with in most Republican politicians since Senators Mark Hatfield and John Danforth, I found it refreshing to listen to the honest reflections of one who continues to claim he is a Republican—although he is much different from most Republicans in Congress now.

While most of the book is basically about Ryerse’s experience of deciding about, training for, and actually making a spirited run for Congress—and then losing badly—the last four chapters look toward the future and are about seeking the common good in voting.

Please listen to Robb’s 40-second YouTube statement about seeking the common good.

Heed Robb Ryerse

Ryerse is not running for another political office at this point, but he is still actively working in politics. Since the fall of 2018 he has been employed by Vote Common Good, the organization I posted a blog article about in October 2018.

In his book, Robb asserts,

Letting the common good motivate our Election Day decisions means voting for the candidates who are advocating for policies that will do the most good and have the greatest positive impact. . . .
     The common good should especially be the motivation for Christian voters (p. 131).

These are good and important words that I sincerely hope all you readers will heed.

*****

I was sent a free copy of Ryerse’s book by Mike Morrell of Speakeasy on condition that I would post a review or blog article about it. I was happy to receive, to read, and now to post this article and to recommend the book, which was definitely a profitable read.

2020 Vision

Similar to what I did at this time last year, I am basing some of this last blog posting of 2019 on a special issue of The Economist, the highly respected British news magazine that has been published since 1843. Fairly early in December, I received that issue titled “The World in 2020” and found much of considerable interest in it. First, though . . .

Happy New Year of the Rat!

As I have often done, I am beginning this end-of-the-year/New Year’s posting by referring to the Japanese (and Chinese) zodiac. Following the ancient 12-year cycle, 2020 is the year of the nezumi in Japan.

In English, the East Asian New Year is usually called the Year of the Rat, but the same Japanese word is used for rat and mouse, so New Year’s greetings, etc., are often portrayed by images that look more like cute little mice than repulsive rats. For example, look at this picture of a Japanese New Year’s card: 

Despite the prevalent negative feelings about rats in this country, June and I have a somewhat different sentiment, for two of our children were born in the year of the Rat. In Japan that is not considered a bad thing at all; people who are nezumi-doshi (born in the year of the Rat) are said to be “charming, honest, ambitious, and have a tremendous capacity for pursuing a course to its end” (from “The Twelve Signs of the Japanese Zodiac”).

U.S. Politics in 2020

In my 2018 end-of-the-year blog posting, I wrote that there seemed to be “a strong possibility” that the President would be impeached” in 2019. Well, I called that one right.

I also wrote that the President probably would not be removed from office by the Republican-majority Senate. That decision is now part of the political agenda for the beginning of 2020, but the likelihood of the Senate not convicting the President is probably stronger now than it was a year ago.

The biggest political question for the U.S. in 2020, of course, revolves around the November 3 election. Who the Democratic Party will choose to go up against DJT is anybody’s guess at this point. And even though there is a strong appeal to Democrats and Independents to “vote Blue no matter who,” the populist support for DJT is amazingly strong and resilient.

Daniel Franklin, the editor of “The World in 2020” issue of The Economist writes that there will be “a febrile [= “having or showing a great deal of nervous excitement or energy”] election in November.” He adds. “It will be ugly.” That prediction will almost certainly prove to be true.

Editor Franklin goes on to say that the artificial intelligence he consulted “reckons Mr Trump will lose.” (Can we trust that prediction, or is there “fake AI”?)

The U.S. Economy in 2020

Last year The Economist repeatedly mentioned the possibility of a financial recession in 2019. That, fortunately, did not come to pass. In fact, since Christmas the U.S. stock market has hit all-time highs.

However, for 2020 the editor-in-chief of The Economist not only predicted “febrile politics” but also a “faltering economy.” He writes, “Unfortunately for Mr Trump, a noticeable cooling of the American economy will challenge his claim to have made America great again.”

Will that prediction be more accurate than the similar one was for 2019? Who knows? Certainly, no one has 20/20 vision of what will happen in 2020.

Personally . . .

Although it will not mean a major shift of emphasis, I decided on Christmas Day to start spending more time, especially at the beginning of each day, thinking about “eternal” / “spiritual” matters rather than temporal/political concerns—not that those two spheres are unrelated.

Throughout the coming year, I hope to keep firmly in mind the following words recorded in 2 Corinthians 4:18.

We don’t focus on the things that can be seen but on the things that can’t be seen. The things that can be seen don’t last, but the things that can’t be seen are eternal (CEB).

It remains to be seen how much this will affect the blog articles I will be writing and sending to you, my dear Thinking Friends, throughout 2020.

Happy New Year to each of you!