Salem Political Snark

Chamber of Commerce political action: "It's quiet...too quiet"

Suddenly it hit me. The political part of my brain had been freaking out over national politics, as it always does. 

Biden's approval rating sucks. Senate Democrats need to do away with the filibuster for voting rights legislation, but Sinema refuses to do this. The 2022 midterms look like a Dem disaster in the making. What's up with Kamala Harris' disappearing act, since I thought she'd run in 2024 rather than Biden.

But then it dawned on me that locally, when it comes to political activities of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, as the saying goes, It's quiet...too quiet. 

I realized that it had been quite a while since my liberal sensibility had been outraged by something the Chamber of Commerce was doing -- which in years gone by happened all the time. 

It's hard to believe that the Chamber has come to accept the current 6-3 progressive majority on the Salem City Council as something they can live with. Sure, maybe Chamber leaders have decided that they'll stay out of city council races, but as much as I'd like this to happen, I doubt that it will.

So I'm wondering whether this is just the calm before a political storm brewing as the May 2022 election for mayor and four city council seats nears. Or has something changed with the Chamber of Commerce that I'm not aware of.

Follow the money is usually a wise political adage. 

But when I headed off to the state political contribution reporting system, ORESTAR, the two Chamber of Commerce PACs I'm familiar with displayed not much of it... money.

The Chamber web site still plugs the Build Jobs PAC. It only has $5,978 though, with no cash contributions in 2021.

The Create Jobs Coalition has $394, with a $500 cash contribution in 2021.

Of course, things can change quickly. In 2020 I wrote about how the Chamber of Commerce apparently tried to hide $25,00o in PAC money. Big donors like Mountain West Investment Corporation can change the monetary political landscape with a single check.

For now, though, I'll hope that my 2017 post, "Chamber of Commerce no longer running Salem. Let's keep it that way," holds true.

When I first got heavily involved in Salem politics about four and a half years ago (after the horrendous needless killing of the U.S. Bank trees got my ire up), fellow progressive citizen activists would tell me, "The Chamber of Commerce runs this town." 

Well, this isn't true any more. And that's a very good thing. 

Salem, and the nation, needs more social capital

My wife and I had a pleasant, albeit low-key, Thanksgiving.

Laurel's apple pie tasted great. The Trader Joe's meatless roast turned out fine once I realized that because I forgot to put the frozen roast in the refrigerator a full 24 hours before it went into the oven, that's why it was mushy. After another 15 minutes of cooking, the roast was perfect.

Not so perfect was the news I woke up to on Friday. A new Covid variant was freaking out the world, including me.

The world reacted with alarm on Friday to the highly mutated new coronavirus variant discovered in southern Africa, as the United States, the European Union and nations across the globe imposed new travel restrictions, financial markets swooned and visions of finally emerging from the pandemic started to dim.

Just two days after the world learned of the variant, the World Health Organization officially labeled it a “variant of concern,” its most serious category — the first since the Delta variant, which emerged a year ago. The designation means that the variant has mutations that might make it more contagious or more virulent, or make vaccines and other preventive measures less effective — though none of those effects has yet been established.

Yeah, the financial markets sure did swoon. Actually, plummet is a better word to describe the carnage. The Dow dropped 2.5%, 905 points. The NASDQ and S&P 500 declined 2.2% and 2.3%. Investors were spooked by the prospect of renewed Covid-caused economic disruption.

It'll take a few days before scientists can figure out whether the new variant, Omicron (15th letter of the Greek alphabet, though it sounds like a supervillain), is more dangerous than the Delta variant we've been dealing with.

Hopefully it isn't. Or at least not much more so, due either to increased transmissibility and/or greater virulence.

Regardless, what worries me the most isn't that scientists and pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna won't be able to come up with sound advice to deal with Omicron, along with updated vaccines to combat its spread, but that the United States is too politically fractured to handle another Covid wave.

We're the only advanced country where public health measures like wearing a mask and getting vaccinated have been politicized.

Because of the inexcusable malevolence of Trump, Fox News, and Republican leaders, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died unnecessarily as a result. We've known what needed to be done to combat the pandemic. Once vaccines were developed, we've had the tools to prevent Covid.

But what we've lacked is the social capital needed to transform what could be into a vibrant what is reality. 

A story in the October 2021 issue of Scientific American, "Social Resilience," contains a definition of social capital: the ability to solve problems and thrive by forming mutually trusting, engaged relationships and networks.

The focus of this story is on the ability of people in Black communities to work together for the common good even though those communities often are disadvantaged in other respects. 

In fact, Mattis and other Black researchers have found that even in the most resource-poor neighborhoods, high levels of social capital not only exist but are used as a means to buffer the community against systematic oppression. In a world racked by a pandemic and climate disasters this form of social consciousness, they say, should be celebrated and deeply studied.

I learned in the story that the first use of the term social capital was in 1916, "when L.J. Hanifan, a progressive serving as West Virginia's state supervisor of rural schools, used it to argue for community involvement in schools."

The individual is helpless socially, if left entirely to himself. If he may come into contact with his neighbor... there will be an accumulation of social capital, which may immediately satisfy his social needs and which may bear a social potentiality sufficient to the substantial improvement of living conditions in the entire community.

Here in Salem, as in most places in the United States, we suffer from an excess of individualism. The story quotes Traci Blackmon, a Missouri pastor.

In the Black community we have to take care of ourselves... Black people, in my opinion, and all nonwhite people have this sense of community embedded in our DNA out of necessity that says we have to share what we have in order for everybody to be okay.

Yet here in Salem, lots of well-off people, mostly Republicans, refuse to wear a mask in indoor public spaces because they reject the notion that everybody has an obligation to help protect other people from coming down with Covid-19.

That sort of selfishness is the opposite of the altruistic social capital on display in Black and other nonwhite communities -- which are less materially well-off, but more advanced morally.

It'd be great if the next Mayor of Salem (Chuck Bennett isn't running again) could make it their mission to foster more of a sense of community in our city. Bennett and City Manager Steve Powers have been almost completely silent about the need for everyone to do their part to combat Covid.

The progressive city councilors have been more vocal, but none of them have the sort of soapbox that the Mayor could command. 

Naturally there always will be vehement political disagreements among Salem citizens. But we should be able to come together for important common purposes like fighting a new Covid variant, should Omicron prove to be a marked danger. 

Increasing Salem's social capital should be viewed as important as making sure our city has adequate financial capital. Black communities have a lot to teach us in this regard, as the Scientific American story made clear.

Oregon Democrats thankful their redistricting maps are legal

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Oregon Democrats got a double dose of good redistricting news this week. So quite a few Dems will be happier at the dinner table tomorrow, while Republicans will stew about the legal decisions.

On Monday the state Supreme Court upheld the redistricting maps for the state legislature. 

Up, in, around or out?

It's a question facing dozens of incumbent lawmakers and scores of potential challengers after the Oregon Supreme Court on Monday removed legal obstacles to implementing new legislative political districts.

The justices dismissed two lawsuits against new maps for 60 House and 30 Senate seats approved by the Legislature and Gov. Kate Brown on Sept. 27.

The complaints filed in court claimed claimed Democrats had created districts that would build on their current supermajorities in Salem. At the end of the most recent session, Democrats had a 37-23 advantage in the House and 18 of the 30 members of the Senate.

In its decision, the court ruled that the plan for districts that would go into effect with the 2022 election was not illegal, even if it had a partisan lean.

Then today, Wednesday, a special panel of judges issued a ruling saying that the legislature's Congressional redistricting map, which could give Democrats at least four and maybe five of Oregon's six House seats, was legal.

Oregon is closer to moving ahead with its new Congressional district and new boundaries for five others after a panel of judges ruled Wednesday that work to draw the new boundaries didn’t illegally favor Democrats.

Most independent analyses have Democrats winning at least four, and likely five, of the state’s six congressional districts. Registered Democrats make up about one-third of the state’s voters – the largest party bloc in Oregon. Democrats have held four out of five seats in the U.S. House and both U.S. Senate seats.

Four Republicans led by former Secretary of State Bev Clarno sued to block the Congressional redistricting plan, arguing that a potential 5-1 Democratic split didn’t reflect the reality of the state. 

But in their unanimous 14-page opinion, five retired circuit court judges appointed to consider the case determined that the new map was better for Republican candidates than any in the past 30 years. 

“The evidence included expert testimony which compared 50 years of Oregon’s history with congressional districting,” they wrote. “That evidence demonstrated that the enacted map was well within the range of plans that legislatures and courts have adopted in Oregon for the past 50 years and that the enacted map is more favorable to Republicans than any map since 1990.”

The opinion is interesting reading, especially if you're a political junkie. Or, an avid Democrat. Republicans will find it infuriating, but hey, that's the nature of politics.

This passage about urban and rural voters likely will particularly irritate Republican leaders, since they objected mightily to the Congressional map splitting the Portland area among multiple districts. But the panel of judges found this to be a desirable feature.

Turning briefly to issues raised by the amicus curiae, it is evident on the record that the Legislative Assembly considered the importance of drawing districts with both rural and urban elements. FOF ¶¶ 59, 62, 101, 156-60. Indeed, because Oregon has only six congressional districts, “each will necessarily include diverse communities of interest. A plan that includes within one district communities having vastly different concerns does not violate either statutory or constitutional requirements.” Perrin v. Kitzhaber, No 0107-07021, slip op at 6 (Multnomah Cnty Cir Ct, Oct 25, 2001). There is no evidence that rural interests were disrespected. To the contrary, SB 881 amplifies rural voices by including substantial rural and agricultural communities in all six of Oregon’s congressional districts, thus ensuring that each of Oregon’s members of Congress represents rural interests and concerns.

Nonetheless, a Republican state legislator hopes to have the 2022 session of the Oregon legislature advance a proposal for an independent redistricting commission.

Sorry, Representative Bonham, but it's extremely unlikely that the Democrats who control both the state House and Senate are going to want to give up their control of the redistricting process.

In every state under Republican control, the GOP is busily drawing hugely gerrymandered Congressional districts in an attempt to regain control of the House of Representatives. If every state operated under the same independent redistricting rules, then sure, Oregon should be a part of this.

Just don't complain when Oregon Democrats play politics with redistricting in a considerably milder fashion. Bonham's Republican party isn't creeping toward anti-democratic authoritarianism, they're running headlong toward it.

So it's good that Oregon's maps have been upheld legally, even though the Congressional map approval by the special panel of judges can be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

Since the panel voted unanimously against the Republican effort to overturn the map, almost certainly the Supreme Court would go along with this.

Unwise: Salem Mayor wants 60 more police officers

Of all the things that Salem needs, 60 more police officers should be way down on the priority list.

But I've been told that this is what Mayor Chuck Bennett is calling for, apparently during a recent City Council work session about the 2022 Policy Agenda.

Adding 60 officers to the force is a big deal that needs to be justified with extremely solid data and reasoning, not just because the Mayor or Chief Womack likes the idea. 

Here's a thoughtful analysis of this seemingly unwise notion that someone sent to me.

I would like to suggest that you snark on Mayor Bennett for his ridiculous support for hiring 60 more Salem Police Department officers when Salem already employs more police department employees than any other major city (over 100,000) in Oregon. Here is a spreadsheet with the latest data for 2020 from the FBI that was just released about a month ago:

Download 2020 FBI Data on Police Dept. Staffing

We do have fewer officers than other cities at 1.07 per 1,000, but that is really pretty close to the average of 1.17. If we hired 60 more that would shoot up to 1.42 which would put us at the top in that category, and far above the average.

We are not experiencing a “crime wave” in Salem (as the Mayor implied) as may be the case in other cities like Portland. We have had six murders so far this year which is about average. Here is a spreadsheet that shows some crime data through September, compared to the same period last year.

Download SPD Crime Offenses

“Crimes against persons” (mostly assaults — homeless people?) is up 30%, but property crimes are down 33% and “crimes against society” like drug offenses, DUI, and traffic violations are down 51% (thanks largely to Measure 110).

Overall, I would say the Salem Police Department workload is going down. Not up.

In Mayor Bennett’s remarks he compares the Salem Police Department to the police department in Dayton, Ohio for some strange reason. He says that they have 500 officers compared to our 200 and they are a smaller city.

I looked it up and in 2019 Dayton reported 363 officers to the FBI, not 500, so the Mayor is wrong. Their population in 2019 in the FBI data is 140,427, so the Mayor was right about that.

But I also see in 2020 FBI data that their violent crime rate is more than twice that of Salem! They reported 1,366 violent crime incidents to the FBI for 2020 vs. only 623 for Salem. So they need more cops.

This shows that crime does not correlate with population as people like to assume. Salem’s crime was significantly higher 20 years ago (true of nearly all cities) when our population was much lower. So the fact that our population is growing does not necessarily mean we need more police.

Finally, the Mayor stated that we need more police to achieve “Vision Zero” traffic fatalities which Councilor Stapleton had brought up before the Mayor’s remarks. That’s bogus.

Twentieth-century traffic enforcement with police cars staking out and chasing violators in cities has been thoroughly discredited. Some cities are starting to move away from this altogether:

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/cities-consider-taking-police-out-of-traffic-stops/600912/

Twenty-first-century traffic enforcement can be handled more cheaply and effectively with speed cameras and red light cameras. And Vision Zero is mostly about redesigning streets for lower speeds, not hiring more police. Portland has a long list of Vision Zero strategies that they are pursuing and none of them involve more police.

https://www.portland.gov/transportation/vision-zero/making-streets-safe?fbclid=IwAR2o17ygmPC_RyXp4gAEE8borH4Rx4fu8qf6bNDDR4PE4FDSp-5WWIUVq9A

Hiring 60 more officers would probably require adding at least a couple million more to the $52 million Salem Police Department budget, already about 1/3 of the entire General Fund.

The City Council needs to consider the “opportunity cost” of doing this — continued underfunding of our parks, library, city planning, code enforcement, etc. I have come to the conclusion that our new Police Chief may be a pretty brazen empire builder — much more so than his predecessor.

He already has a Cadillac police department and he wants more.

2022 Salem City Council and Mayor races get interesting

Even though we're still six months away from the May 2022 election that typically decides City Council and Mayor races (50 percent + 1 vote and you win outright, even though the election is a "primary"), things are already getting really interesting. 

The Statesman Journal has a story that describes the current state of affairs: "Salem City Council set for a shake-up in 2022. Here's who's in and who's out so far."

Tom Andersen, the Ward 2 city councilor, isn't running for re-election. He was the first progressive elected to the City Council and serves as the unofficial leader of the now six-person progressive majority on the nine-person council (eight city councilors plus the Mayor).

The Statesman Journal story says:

Councilor Tom Andersen, of Ward 2 in south-central Salem, said he will not seek re-election and will instead run as a Democrat in the primary for the newly redistricted House District 19 in the Oregon Legislature. 

The seat is currently occupied by Republican Rep. Raquel Moore-Green.

House District 19 has been a stronghold of Republicans for more than two decades, but recent districting efforts have moved the more conservative areas of Turner, Aumsville and neighbors east of Salem outside city limits into other districts. 

According to the new legislative maps, House District 19 is now comprised of neighbors in Andersen's Ward 2, South Salem and southeast Salem. 

It'll be interesting to see who files to fill Andersen's shoes. (Which should be of the bicycle variety, since Andersen is an avid cyclist.) Ward 2 leans decidedly leftward, so this City Council seat should remain progressive.

In Ward 4, Casey Kopcho has filed to run. Jackie Leung, the Ward 4 city councilor, hasn't indicated whether she intends to seek re-election. I wouldn't be surprised if Leung doesn't seek another term. She's a progressive who doesn't strike me as being all that enthused about City Council goings-on, though I could be wrong about this.

And this statement in the Statesman Journal story sort of implies that Kopcho could be Leung's hand-picked successor, since it isn't the sort of thing someone planning to run against Leung would say.

Kopcho said he aligns with many of Leung's positions and wants to bring more accountability along with a focus on homelessness, housing availability and economic recovery to the council. 

Jim Lewis, the Ward 8 city councilor, won't be running again for his West Salem seat. He's a conservative, so this would be an appealing pick-up for progressives. Micki Varney ran against Lewis in 2018 and would be a strong contender if she enters the Ward 8 race.

I suspect that Chris Hoy, a progressive, will seek re-election to his Ward 6 City Council seat. But as always is the case in politics, what's suspected often turns out otherwise.

Chuck Bennett isn't seeking another term as Mayor. He's a moderate, by and large, so a good fit for a position that is elected citywide (obviously). Salem tilts leftward, yet has a substantial number of conservative voters.

It's great that Hollie Oakes-Miller has filed to run for Mayor. She came close to beating Jose Gozalez in their 2020 Ward 5 City Council race. For some reason the progressive Salem "establishment" didn't get behind Oakes-Miller, though I did. Yet with minimal funding she did very well against Gonzalez, who is fairly conservative.

Oakes-Miller, like Bernie Sanders, doesn't shy away from using socialist to describe herself. If the Chamber of Commerce backs a conservative candidate for Mayor, debates between this person and Oakes-Miller will be hugely entertaining.

City Council struggles with managing vs. ending homelessness

Tonight the Salem City Council had a work session on its 2022 Policy Agenda.

I watched some of it, but I have a low tolerance for discussions of this sort that tend to have elected officials and staff talking at length without really coming to grips with key issues in a fashion that ordinary people can relate to.

(If you have a high tolerance for this, the work session can be viewed here.)

Of course, maybe I missed a part of the work session where city councilors did come to grips with the top priority of the City of Salem -- dealing with homelessness.

A post that appeared today on the CANDO (Central Area Neighborhood Organization) blog, "News from the Continuum," is a masterful summary of how Salem has been handling homelessness. I highly recommend it. 

In short, not as well as was planned, but better than before. The post says:

Referring back to the tally publicized last June in the "City Puts 8.1 Million Toward Salem's Sheltering Crisis" announcement, here's how things have turned out as we head into winter:

I liked how the post aptly describes a central question facing city officials is whether to prioritize managing homelessness or ending homelessness. This is sort of akin to the age-old question of whether treatment or prevention is more important in health care.

Mayor Bennett asked about "sustainability", "how long can we do this" (i.e., pay for programs that manage vs. end homelessness).  Hoy continued to defend, sans evidence, management programs as an "investment", and asserted that such programs were what "the public" wanted.  Bennett (the Mayor) said what the public wanted was for the City to "make it go away."        

I think the Mayor is right.

After many years of shuffling homeless people around Salem -- letting them sleep on downtown sidewalks, then stopping this and allowing unmanaged homeless camps in two city parks, followed by closing down those camps and doing other things, like managed camps of tiny homes -- citizens are tired of ever-changing temporary efforts to manage homelessness.

If Congress passes the Build Back Better bill, hopefully this will allow Salem to make real progress in ending homelessness in our city, rather than merely managing the problem. Of course, just as treatment and prevention both have to be part of health care, managing homelessness will be needed so long as it still exists.

Income inequality seems to be a root cause of homelessness. This obviously is too large a problem for any city or state to deal with. It's a national issue. But this shouldn't stop city officials from focusing on efforts to end homelessness in Salem. 

Tiny home camps are better than no homes at all. However, getting homeless people into real homes should be the top priority.

Crisis response team for Salem showing some life

Good news!

City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke sent me a message today about state grant money being available for a Salem mental health crisis response team similar to Eugene's highly successful CAHOOTS program. 

This comes after the crisis response effort Nordyke has been pushing for met with a setback in September, when the Marion County Board of Commissioners balked at allowing Salem to use state funds that went to counties for crisis stabilization services.

As you can read below, $10.5 million in state grant money is coming directly to Salem, so Nordyke hopes a chunk of that can be used for a crisis response team pilot project.

Hi Brian, hope you are doing well. We have a work session on the city's strategic priorities for next year on Monday. Wanted you to be aware of this.

 

It looks like the $10.5 million in state grant money that City Council just agreed to accept at our November 8 council meeting can be used for operating costs for “crisis response.”

 

Here's the fine print from the grant agreement:

 

"Recipient shall use the Grant for the purpose of a site acquisition, preparation, and temporary or permanent shelter purchase. The funds will also be used for operating costs for potential shelter sites, unsheltered site cleanup, sobering center, or crisis response." (Emphasis added.)

 

I brought up this provision in the grant agreement near the end of the last City Council meeting on November 8, after Council voted to accept the grant. The previous cost estimate we received from United Way for a mobile crisis unit was around $540,000, if memory serves.

 

The way I read this grant agreement provision is that the City can use a portion of the $10.5 million to fund a mobile crisis unit pilot project, and still have almost $10 million dollars to invest in other projects to reduce homelessness.

 

Council will consider its strategic priorities for the upcoming budgetary year FY 2022-2023 at the upcoming City Council work session on November 15. I will be urging the Council to keep a mobile crisis unit on the list of priorities for the coming year.

https://salem.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=9937966&GUID=ECB9A56F-0DD1-4B20-8BE7-E01D116DA9F4 

 

Vanessa Nordyke

Salem City Council, Ward 7

City phone: (971) 707-3732

 

Hopefully a non-police program like this is in Salem's future

Rep. Kurt Schrader not running for re-election in Salem's district

The good news for Salem progressives is that Rep. Kurt Schrader won't be representing this area any more, which now is in the 6th congressional district, since Schrader often acts more like a Republican than a Democrat.

The (possible) bad news for central Oregon progressives is that Schrader has decided to run in the 5th congressional district -- his current district -- which after redistricting includes Bend.

Moderate is the charitable way to describe Schrader.

A more accurate way is to call him an obstructionist, since he delights in standing in the way of President Biden's priorities, most recently delaying a vote against the Build Back Better bill when he and four other House Democrats demanded to first see a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the bill. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed Democratic lawmakers who held up passage of the Build Back Better Act by demanding to see analysis on how it would impact the budget deficit.

...The vote on the Build Back Better Act was postponed to later this month after five moderate Democrats demanded to see analysis from the CBO on the bill's long-term impacts on the budget deficit. They ultimately to agreed to back the Build Back Better Act by the week of November 15 if the CBO's estimate is consistent with the cost projected by the White House.

If the fiscal estimates on the bill raise issues, "we remain committed to working to resolve any discrepancies to pass Build Back Better legislation," Reps. Ed Case, Josh Gottheimer, Stephanie Murphy, Kathleen Rice and Kurt Schrader said in a statement.

But their stance prompted criticism from Sanders, who questioned why the lawmakers were not similarly concerned by CBO analysis showing the infrastructure bill would increase the federal deficit.

"Interesting. Conservative Dems want to make sure that Build Back Better is fully paid for at exactly the same time that they voted for an infrastructure bill that, according to the CBO, increases the federal deficit by $256 billion," Sanders tweeted on Saturday. "Not very consistent!"

In September Schrader also was one of three Democrats who opposed allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices.

It'll be interesting to see how Schrader does in the May 2022 Democratic primary for the 5th congressional district, since Jamie McLeod-Skinner has filed to run against him, and she's an avowed progressive.

Although Schrader lives in Canby, which sits squarely within the new fifth district, federal law does not require members of the House to reside in the district they represent.

That opens the door for Schrader to choose which seat he wants to seek.

It also opens the door for former congressional candidate and Terrebonne resident Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who announced Thursday in a virtual event that she plans to seek the 2022 Democratic nomination in the fifth district.

The home McLeod-Skinner shares with her wife Cass sits just six miles north of the boundary separating Deschutes and Jefferson counties, the line lawmakers used to separate Oregon’s redrawn fifth and second congressional districts.

Her candidacy could once again provide a more liberal challenge to Schrader’s five-term incumbency should he decide to remain in the fifth.

Schrader has long faced criticism from some within his own party for being too moderate. That criticism has grown in recent months as Schrader and a small group of centrist Democrats has hampered efforts by Congressional leaders and the Biden Administration to pass a massive, $1.75 trillion reconciliation and infrastructure package focusing spending on social programs.

Schrader has repeatedly said that it’s the price tag he takes issue with, stating that he can’t support the spending plan even at half the cost of the $3.5 trillion package that Democratic leadership pushed for earlier this year.

Bad and good news for Oregon Democrats after Tuesday's elections

Yesterday was horrible for Democrats. There's no other way to put it. 

After going for Biden over Trump by ten points in 2020, Virginia elected the Republican candidate for Governor, Glenn Youngkin, by several points. He was endorsed by Trump, but avoided an overly close connection with Trump. And it looks like the GOP will recapture the Virginia House of Delegates

Almost equally disturbing for Democrats was the close race for New Jersey Governor. That state went for Biden over Trump by sixteen points in 2020. The incumbent Governor, Democrat Philip Murphy, beat his Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, by just 1 percent or so.

What could this mean for Oregon?

Well, Oregon voted for Biden over Trump by sixteen points, 56% to 40%. Exactly the same margin as New Jersey. So, sure, Oregon could elect a Republican Governor in November 2022, and Democrats could see their margin in the state House and Senate whittled down or even eliminated.

But wasn't the bad showing for Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey caused by a much larger turnout of passionate Trump supporters, compared to other voters, something that's much less likely to happen in the 2022 midterm election?

Not really.

In Virginia at least, where there's been more analysis of yesterday's results, the problem for Democrats was that Republicans got a larger share of the vote across the board, including independent-leaning suburban voters who were a big part of Biden's victory in 2020. 

That said, there was indeed lower turnout among 2020 Biden voters, probably because they're disturbed by how little of Biden's agenda Congressional Democrats have been able to pass so far, even though they control both the Senate and House, albeit by very slim margins. 

The main good news for Democrats in Oregon and elsewhere is that this is November 2021, a year from the 2022 midterms and three years from the 2024 presidential election. 

There's still time for Congress to pass the two infrastructure bills, physical and social, hopefully along with some sort of immigration reform, policing reform, and most importantly, voting rights legislation. I've been bothered by the lack of urgency from Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress.

They seem to think there's a good chance Democrats will maintain control of both the Senate and House following the 2022 midterm election. Well, that chance was slim prior to yesterday's results in Virginia and New Jersey. 

Given how poorly Democrats performed, the odds now are considerably higher that Republicans will be in control of one or both houses of Congress after the 2022 election. So Biden needs to pull out all the stops, including pressuring Manchin and Sinema to do away with the filibuster for voting rights bills.

However, one more bit of bad news is that Virginia and New Jersey hadn't passed voter suppression legislation. This shows that Republicans can win elections in blue states fair and square. It'd be nice if the GOP realized this means they can stop with trying to make it harder to vote. But that isn't going to happen.

On the good news front, in Virginia Glenn Youngkin was chosen as the Republican governor candidate in an unusual fashion that seemed designed to prevent a Trumpist crazy candidate from being nominated. 

Seven candidates competed in an unusual and controversial "unassembled convention" Saturday, when 28,000 Republican voters and activists cast weighted and ranked-choice ballots at dozens of locations across the state after the party opted against a standard primary.

It seems unlikely that Oregon Republicans will be able to resist choosing a far right-wing candidate in their primary to pick the GOP candidate for governor. Youngkin would be viewed as too moderate by most Republicans, so I'm betting that Oregon will see a more Trump-like candidate go up against the Democrat nominee.

Youngkin benefitted from being a fresh face in Virginia politics, while McAuliffe had been governor before (Virginia doesn't allow the governor to serve two consecutive terms, for some weird reason).

This makes me think that former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who has announced his candidacy for Oregon governor, could be an appealing choice. He wouldn't have the political baggage that other candidates like House Speaker Tina Kotek would bring to the race.

Regardless who the Democratic candidate is, it seems clear that their campaign can't be based on being opposed to Trump. That didn't work for McAuliffe in Virginia, though it was successful for Joe Biden when Trump was still president, still on Twitter, and still saying his usual crazy stuff.

My other piece of advice for Oregon Democrats in 2022 is to campaign as aggressively and with as much passion as Republicans have been doing. Social/cultural issues are going to keep on being emphasized by Republican candidates, since that worked well for them in Virginia.

Race has to be handled more wisely by Democrats than decrying attacks on Critical Race Theory. Sure, that isn't taught in schools other than colleges.

But Youngkin appeared to benefit by appearing Obama-like in his view that America's goal should be to view people as who they are, not as Black, Brown, White, or whatever. Wiser political minds than what I possess are arguing persuasively that Democrats have to find a way to talk about race that doesn't serve up Republican talking points like the horrible "Defund the Police."

Minneapolis voted down a proposal to do away with the police department, even though that's where George Floyd's murder happened. Blacks don't want to do away with police; they want common sense reforms of how police departments operate.

The woke far left can't be allowed to dominate Democratic politics, not in Oregon, not anywhere else. There's a big difference between pushing popular issues like paid family leave and lowering the price of prescription drugs, and pushing highly controversial topics like all whites are racist, even if they don't know it.

Here's a sampling of tweets I've come across that are related to yesterday's election.

 

Sustaining Democracy book fizzles out on how to do it

I loved Robert Talisse's Sustaining Democracy book. Until I read the final chapter.

Then I felt the same letdown as when I put in many hours watching a TV series that promises to eventually tie together compelling plot threads in a satisfying fashion, only to find that the final episode falls flat.

But this doesn't take away from the brilliance of Talisse's analysis of what typically goes wrong in a democracy. It has a certain Marxist feel, since he persuasively argues that a democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction.

In brief, his argument is that democracies want citizens to be actively engaged in politics.

Ideally they're able to balance democracy's twin goals of (1) viewing all citizens, political friends and foes alike, as having an equal right to participate in the democracy, and (2) pursuing justice.

Problem is, these goals tend to diverge.

The more avidly people engage in fighting hard for justice, the more they come to see their political opponents as standing in the way. This leads to an attitude of, If something has to go, viewing the opposition as equals or achieving justice, let's dump the equality thing.

So, we get partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, intense efforts to not only win elections but to ensure that our opponents never have a chance to get back in power and undo the justice that we hope to achieve.

Talisse goes into much more detail, of course, along with discussing how belief polarization makes the situation even worse. He defines this as "the phenomenon by which interactions among like-minded people tend to result in each person adopting more radical versions of their shared views."

Taken to an extreme, this makes allies into enemies.

I've encountered this on Facebook groups frequented by fellow progressives. To offer an example, I support the Black Lives Matter movement. However, I decry the protests in Portland where businesses were vandalized.

That seems like a reasonable view. My political tribe should be able to accept differences of opinion about protest tactics, since we agree on the overarching goal of police reform. But I've been attacked as a fake progressive because I don't share the most extreme left-wing view.

Tallisse describes that dynamic in a sophisticated fashion.

Isn't it ironic? The democrat's dilemma arises in cases where it seems to us that treating our opponents as our equals impedes justice. Yet this very stance winds up undermining our political objectives.

To see how this works, let's rehearse a familiar line of reasoning: We see the opposition as advocating policies that are out of step with what justice demands, and this leads us to conclude that sustaining democratic relations with them only gives them an undeserved political advantage.

It then strikes us that by suspending democracy with them, we improve the chances of achieving justice. Hence, our zeal for justice occasions the democrat's dilemma. It supplies a compelling rationale for the claim that we should indeed suspend democratic relations with out opponents.

But this reasoning is flawed. The very same zeal for justice that motivates us to suspend democracy with our foes also heightens our exposure to belief polarization, which leads us to overstate our opponent's vices and to inflate our reasons for regarding them as divested from democracy.

Moreover, we have seen that once we have disengaged from our opposition, belief polarization works to dismantle our capacity to recognize good-faith disagreement among our allies. Our political coalitions thus devolve, which also damages the prospects for achieving justice as we see it.

Passages like that caused me to rapidly read his book. I found his take on democracy and politics to be right-on. As befits a philosophy professor whose focus is research on democratic theory, Talisse writes about the perils of how we're going about democracy in a gripping fashion.

Often I felt like I was reading a thriller novel. The suspense was building. The book was convincing me that our democracy faces serious problems that go way beyond the current Democrat - Republican, Biden - Trump freakouts. 

I could hardly wait to read the final chapter on how democracy can be sustained in the face of those threats. 

Sadly, I felt letdown.

In the end, Talisse sounded too much like an armchair philosophy professor and too little like a practical saving-democracy warrior. I was hoping for ideas that could actually be implemented, ideally with support of both major political parties.

Instead, I got an inward-looking, contemplative, sit-back-and-ponder suggestion for how democracy can be sustained.

I have laid out a two-step proposal. First, we can manage belief polarization within ourselves by establishing practices and habits that keep us mindful of the vulnerability of our political views to reasonable criticism. This calls us to seek out and engage with ideas of our reasonable critics.

...Second, we must supplement our public political engagement with occasions of political reflection by creating forms of distance from the fray of partisan politics. We must make space for political reflection, imagination, and self-examination.

OK. Nothing wrong with those ideas. But they seem totally inadequate to fix our ailing democracy.

The hordes are attacking the castle of our democracy with flaming balls of tar and volleys of arrows. I just can't see how looking inward is sufficient to prevent the potential destruction of what we need to protect with all our might.

I mean, here we are with Trumpist Republicans (meaning, a clear majority of one of our two major political parties) wrongly believing that the free and fair 2020 presidential election actually was fixed and crooked, and that Trump actually beat Biden.

Now those Trumpists are busily constructing what amounts to a catapult-like scheme designed to lob dangerous projectiles into the 2022 and 2024 elections that's a serious threat to our democracy.

There's no way only but a few Republicans are going to engage in the sort of inward-looking political exercises Talisse views as the best bet to sustain democracy. The GOP is going all out to win elections at any cost, even if that cost is anti-democratic.

So Talisse has written the right book at the wrong time. While its analysis of the problem is great, its advice as to how to deal with democracy's problems in the United States isn't in tune with what really is going on.

In fact, Talisse comes close to admitting this when he states repeatedly in his book that there's no obligation to play nice with people who refuse to abide by democratic norms, civil behavior, and reasonableness. 

Hopefully at some point in the future Talisse's final chapter will make sense for a kinder and gentler American democracy. At present, it would be a disaster for citizens to do anything other than fight the Trumpist attempt to subvert our democracy with passionate vigor -- not inward-looking contemplation.