There are less than two months until the 2020 US Elections. Recent news from the US has been so horrific that I tuned out for the last couple of weeks, but the viral media cycle involving Trump's "losers and suckers" comments made me seek out something hopeful – cause there may be nothing more cynical than the Commander-in-Chief calling dead US soldiers "losers and suckers". I found that something in the movie, Knock Down the House, which Netflix posted to YouTube a few weeks ago.
I started this blog fifteen years ago, about the time I joined the Walpole Peace and Justice Group. We hosted speakers, made banners and posters, stood in the Town Commons, and protested the Iraq War. This was in the wake of our failed efforts in 2002 to help Democratic nominee Robert Reich run for Governor of Massachusetts (the election Mitt Romney won). This was particularly frustrating, not only because the Democrats lost the general election, but because our efforts during the primary were thwarted by a caucus system that felt rigged – we arrived at our local caucus to find that most of the candidate choices had already been decided by some committee somewhere.
In 2004, we suffered through George W. Bush's re-election and the "ratification" of the Iraq War. Later, in 2006, we worked on Phil Dunkelbarger's primary campaign to unseat Stephen Lynch, who had voted for the Iraq War. That effort also did not get past the primaries. Each loss, including Bernie Sanders' primary loss in 2016, was personally and sharply painful. In my memory, the energy of each lost campaign faded quickly. However, the Sanders candidacy seems to have passed its momentum to a new generation. So, my watching Knock Down the House felt hauntingly familiar, but refreshingly hopeful.
The movie focuses on four Democratic primary candidates in the 2018 mid-terms, but centers on the out-of-left-field victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Of the other three that lost in 2018, two are running again this year: Cori Bush in Missouri's 1st Congressional District, and Paula Jean Swearengin for a Senate seat in West Virginia (both made it through their primaries). The other 2018 candidate, Amy Vilela, who ran for Nevada's 4th CD in 2018, worked for Sanders in the 2020 Presidential Primary, and plans to run again in 2022.
In the movie, Vilela speaks to Ocasio-Cortez on primary night about the primary process, when it is clear she will not win (Ocasio-Cortez will, of course, go on to win her primary as well as the general election):
Vilela: Some of us have got to get through. It's not about any one of us individually, it's about the whole movement.Ocasio-Cortez: It's just the reality that in order for one of us to make it through, a hundred of us have to try.
Bush's chances to win in the general election are promising, especially as Ferguson and BLM are now central cultural causes. Swearengin's chances are quite long, but she's a strong voice for progressive issues in a state that desperately needs to hear them. I'm glad she's running and speaking truth to power, especially in West Virginia. I hope both of them, or at least one of them makes it through; I hope there are hundreds more trying.
Since the middle of July, Georgia and Portugal have settled back down to new base-levels. Georgia's seven-day average case count is hanging around two thousand (1,905.1, down from thirty-six hundred); Portugal's is around three hundred and fifty (356.4, up from two hundred).
I extended the X-axis to allow for the longer time line on the graph, so the proportion is square and the lines are flatter. I also extended the Y-axis to 'un-hide' the highs in the daily data-points.
As for the seven day average for deaths, compared to the middle of July, Georgia is at sixty (58.9, up from twenty-five) and Portugal is at three (3.0, down from four).
cases: 27,431,816 global • 6,476,890 USA • 60,507 Portugal
deaths: 895,273 global • 193,404 USA • 1,843 Portugal
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