Cause For Hope June 21, 2018June 20, 2018 Democrats are appalled by today’s Republican Party (obviously), but so, too, traditional Conservatives . . . George Will publicly quit, Joe Scarborough publicly quit, William F. Buckley, Jr. is rolling over in is grave . . . and, yes, traditional Republicans. E.g., Steve Schmidt, who ran McCain’s campaign against Obama. He just quit, too: 29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of The Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump. And my Uber driver, a former Missouri Republican legislative assistant. He told me, as he dropped me off on a ride in from Long Island (where he is represented by this appalling guy) that he couldn’t help overhearing my phone conversation (wherein I extracted big bucks from a San Diego couple) and asked, with some urgency, that I have someone contact him about volunteering. There are, of course, a great many people cheering Trump on, from out-and-out Klansmen to the corrupt and greedy (and worse and worse and perhaps worst of all) to tens of millions of really wonderful people struggling to make ends meet, looking for someone they think feels their pain (I would argue Trump feels nothing for anyone but himself) and who they think has a solution to their problems. If only he can vanquish the bad guys on their behalf (the press, the FBI, the Canadians) he will get them “great health care at a tiny fraction of the price.” He claims he never read the compendium of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside, though (because he constantly lies) it is more likely that he did, as Ivana alleged. Either way, it’s Germany 1934. (General background here.) Which is why everything turns on the mid-term elections. Will “checks and balances” be restored? Will the better angels of our nation’s nature prevail? Will we be the America that massacred native Americans and broke our treaties with them? Or the America that rode to Europe’s rescue and then conceived the Marshall Plan? The America that lynched thousands of Negros? Or the America that elected Barack Obama? The America of Senator Joe McCarthy and his reptilian aide Roy Cohn (Trump’s mentor)? Or the decent, hopeful America of Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush and Colin Powell? And, well, Steve Schmidt and Joe Scarborough and George Will and my Uber driver? I think we will be the latter. Reason #1: I inherited the happy gene. Reason #2: I believe in the American people (millions more of whom, even with Comey’s interference and Putin’s massive attack, voted against Trump than for him). Reason #3: We have so many great candidates. Beto O’Rourke to beat Ted Cruz in Texas! Former Governor Phil Bredesen to flip Bob Corker’s seat in Tennessee! While it would be very close if we can pull it off, we have a much better chance of taking the Senate than most people realize. And the House? Take the time to enjoy these short videos introducing two of the many wonderful candidates who could help us win it big: MJ Hegar’s story about “doors” — like the one from her helicopter the Taliban shot down and the one her father threw her mother through. Scott Wallace’s story — what a family history of service to this wonderful country! You will be inspired and given fresh hope. As always, if you’re in a position to help, click here. Each organizer hired now has time to snowball, via the volunteers she or he recruits and trains, into thousands of incremental voter registrations and many thousands of incremental votes.