NOTE:  I am writing this post as I await Bernie Sanders’ statement on the state of the campaign for the Democratic nomination scheduled for 1:00 pm this afternoon.

As an empirical pragmatist, I cannot believe in heaven or any other place in which we supposedly live after our time as a living, breathing human being is over. However, as an empirical pragmatist, I do believe in eternal life.  It is called legacy.  Jesus, George Washington, Gandi, Martin Luther King live on because of their values and the lives they led.  And it also applies to less virtuous people.  Adolf Hitler will be part of our discourse for decades if not centuries to come.

So how does this apply to Bernie Sanders?  Today, the Vermont senator has one of those rare opportunities to seal his legacy for better or worse.  If I were a Sanders’ advisor, this is what I would say to him.  “Senator, do you really want to go down in history as the person who was responsible for four more years of Donald Trump in the White House?” I am not suggesting if Sanders stays in the race, Trump will win in November.  But it is more possible.  And the “Bernie factor” will be a topic of discussion for years to come.

So Bernie, consider that scenario compared to the following remarks I have prepared for your 1:00 pm announcement.

Today America is at a crossroads.  And each of us must decide what matters most.  Our own ambitions or the general welfare.  We now know what it looks like and how it feels when our leaders put their own interests above the nation’s interest.

That is the decision I face today.  And as much as I think we could still win the nomination and the presidency, at what cost?  Politics becomes an afterthought in light of the crises we face.  A health crisis.  An economic crisis.  And most important, the existential threat of a president who is unwilling to tell us the truth and is unprepared to deal with a potential nationwide disaster.

We have accomplished a lot in this campaign.  We have raised issues that needed to be part of the national debate.  And I will continue to press these issues with the next president of the United States.  And today I am announcing I am endorsing Joe Biden to be that person.  Joe is a friend and a good, decent person who wants many of the same things I and my supporters want for the American people.

I have talked with  vice-president Biden and we have agreed to curtail all future political activities and focus on helping Americans deal with the current health crisis, which the World Health Organization just said is now a global pandemic.

To all of you who have been part of this campaign, I urge you remain part of our movement.  We are not done.  But for now, we have a more urgent calling.

Much has been said recently about how some aspects of the Sanders campaign mirrors Trump’s.  The rabid loyalty of  some of his supporters.  Verbal attacks against the media and the “establishment.”  If Sanders wants to demonstrate this is an unfair comparison, today is his opportunity.

In 10 minutes we will learn a lot about Sanders’ legacy.  Will it be as the person who put aside personal ambition to ensure Donald Trump spends the next four years anywhere but 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or the individual who made his own goal of “defeating Trump” just that much harder.

For what it’s worth.
Dr.. ESP

I know many of you are disappointed the race for the Democratic nomination has come down to a choice between two white males, especially when the original field included so many exceptional women of varied experience and vision.  So am I.  As I listened to Elizabeth Warren announce the suspension of her campaign, I could sense her deep disappointment and pain.  The realization she would not be “the one,” as Barack Obama became for African Americans, weighed heavily on her and must have been personally devastating.

And I asked the same question many of her supporters must have pondered.  What does it take for a woman to rise to the highest office in the United States? Especially when 29 other countries currently have a female head of state and 75 countries have previously had the same distinction dating back to Yevgenia Bosch, who, in 1917, became chairwoman of the People’s Secretariat of Ukraine.

What is even more tiring is the plethora of excuses why clearly qualified women who throw their hats in the ring have fallen short.  Some are specific to a candidate, e.g. Hillary was a victim of Clinton fatigue or she had too much baggage.  Others are more general including media bias, holding female candidates to a different standard and, of course, good old fashioned American misogyny.  But instead of focusing on the candidate, what if the problem is a structural problem with the way we choose our national leadership or a failure by the party to establish and support a career ladder designed specifically to prepare women to demonstrate their bona fides to sit behind the Resolute Desk.

I will start with the structural issue. Of those 29 current female heads of state, an overwhelming majority serve as prime minister instead of being a popularly elected president.  Just imagine.  If we also had a parliamentary system of government, Nancy Pelosi would be prime minister!  When the decision who leads the country is made by one’s peers, a lot of the noise associated with plebiscites disappears.  Appearance is just not that important.  Ask Golda Meir.  Or likability in the case of Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady. Even in Pakistan, where Islam with its laws restricting women’s rights is the official state religion, Benazir Bhutto was chosen prime minister by parliamentary members of the ruling party.

Well folks, I would not hold my breath waiting for a revision of Articles I and II of the Constitution.  Which makes the second option, examining the career path by which a woman can more easily overcome the roadblocks, real and perceived, to win the Democratic Party nomination and a majority of the electoral college the only alternative.  (WARNING: In the interest of truth in advertising, please note that my own government experience consists of working for three governors and six years as a policy director at the National Governors Association (NGA).  My opinions may be influenced by that exposure to executive versus legislative branch elected officials.)

In 2003, a friend and colleague asked me if I would have lunch with one of his friends, a cattle rancher and Democratic party leader in Nebraska, who was contemplating a run for governor in the upcoming election.  Before offering any insights or advice, I asked, “Why are you running and what makes you think you can win in a state that is trending Republican?”  His reply made sense.  His rural values were more akin to those of the average Cornhusker than the typical Democratic candidate who hailed from Omaha or Lincoln.  And he favored conservative positions on many of the issues (e.g. pro-life, gun rights) which set him apart from Democrats who lost statewide races.  Right, it made sense if you were running for Congress in Nebraska, but not governor.  I told him, “You are not running for legislator-in-chief.  You’re running for chief executive of a large enterprise.  Focus on your executive credentials.  Talk about what is not working and how you are better prepared to fix it.”

Want a definition of irony?  The potential candidate’s wife joined us for lunch.  When he pushed back, she was the one who urged him to pay attention.  I wondered who in this family was responsible for the success of their cattle ranch or whether she would have made a better candidate for governor.

Why do I share this story?  Because I believe the first woman president of the United States will be a former governor, not a senator.  The Republicans get it.  If she had not been so batsh** crazy, Sarah Palin was on the path to the White House.  And what are the rumors circulating in Washington today?  Trump will scapegoat Mike Pence if the coronavirus reaches catastrophic proportions and will replace him with Nikki Haley.  Not Senator Joni Ernst (Iowa), Susan Collins (Maine), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) or Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia).  NO!  Nikki Haley, the former GOVERNOR of South Carolina.

Mark Twain once said, “I was never able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.”  To this day, I believe Dianne Feinstein should have been the first presidential nominee of a major party and would have had a better than even chance of winning the general election.  Why?  On November 27, 1978, Feinstein proved she was up to the task when she became mayor of San Francisco following the assassinations of mayor George Moscone and councilman Harvey Milk.  It’s easy to be president when everything is fairly calm and routine.  The true test is crisis management, and no one did it better than Feinstein.  She then went on to win re-election twice despite her moderate positions on many issues, contrary to the more liberal preferences of Bay City voters.

Imagine if Walter Mondale, in 1984, wanting to make history, had chosen Feinstein as his running mate instead of congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro.  Feinstein would have had both the executive experience and national recognition to be a contender for the 1988 Democratic nomination.  That’s what I call a career ladder designed to shatter the glass ceiling.

This was not the only lost opportunity.  In 2002, three Democratic women were elected governor.  Jennifer Granholm (Michigan).  Janet Napolitano (Arizona).  Kathleen Sebelius (Kansas).  Notice anything their respective states have in common?  None are solid blue.  And all three won re-election four years later.  Someone must have thought they had proved their executive skills.  And as I think about about a different scenario in 1984, I wonder if the 2008 nomination contest would have been fundamentally different if one of these three woman had been in the mix.

When I chose political science as my major in college, my dream job was to work on Capitol Hill as personal staff to a representative or senator or as committee staff.  But fate, as she does, took me in a different direction.  Though I did eventually end up with an office across the street from the Capitol, it was in the Hall of the States with NGA.  Just as I posted a few days ago (You Say You Want a Revolution), great ideas are tested at the state and local level.  So are great people.  If the Democratic Party could think about the long game, they would create a counterpart to Emily’s List with the sole focus on grooming women to compete for governor in all 50 states.  Maybe they could call it Nellie’s List, in honor of Nellie Ross, the first female governor,  a Democrat in 1925 from (drum roll) Wyoming.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.

~February 8, 1968

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

~Revolution/The Beatles (1968)

1968 was a good year for quotes, if nothing else.  The first one, above, was made by a U.S. Major in reference to the bombing of Ben Tre, South Vietnam as reported by AP correspondent Peter Arnett.  It seems particularly relevant when some members of the Democratic Party are telling us we need to blow up the party to win elections.  The second presents an oxymoron similar to jumbo shrimp or civil war.  If revolutionaries and evolutionists both want to change the world, is the pathway an evolutionary revolution?

There is considerable evidence this seemingly contradictory approach to change is more than a theory.  It is an empirical fact dating back to the founding of the United States.  The American Revolution did not begin as a colony-wide uprising following adoption of the Declaration of Independence.  It started with the Boston Tea Party, a localized event on December 16, 1773.  Likewise, armed resistance commenced on a knoll called Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775.  In the modern parlance of social experiments, you might refer to these two  episodes in the battle for independence as “pilot projects,” which following “proof of concept” were scaled up to become the Revolutionary War.

The concept of testing ideas at the state and local level is embodied in the the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.  In the case of New State Ice Co. v Lieberman (1932), Justice Louis Brandeis labeled this school of thought as “laboratories of democracy.” In a dissenting opinion, Brandeis wrote:

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

Consider the following examples where dramatic changes in national policy, some might call revolutions in governance, occurred through the process of evaluation at the state level before deployment through federal mandate.  One of the earliest instances was women’s suffrage.  Fifty-one years before passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, the Wyoming legislature, while the future state was still a territory, passed the Wyoming Suffrage Act of 1869.  Several states followed suit, further demonstrating the world would not implode if females were allowed to vote.

In 2010, we witnessed the same sequence of adoption unfold when it came to the Affordable Care Act.  Many of the provisions had been tested in Massachusetts under Governor Mitt Romney’s leadership.  More recently, enactment of marriage equality laws in six states and the District of Columbia precipitated a showdown in the Supreme Court which guaranteed, in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges (2015),  the right of marriage to same-sex couples under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment.

The “laboratories of democracy” approach has not always resulted in nationwide ratification of a political or social movement.  Perhaps, the best example is the so-called “Kansas Experiment” in supply side economics and the stimulus power of large income tax cuts enacted in response to the 2013 election of Republican Sam Brownback as governor.  The enabling legislation was repealed in 2017 after the tax cuts resulted in a soaring state deficit, draconian reductions in education spending and anemic job growth compared to neighboring states.  Louisiana under Republican governor Bobby Jindal mirrored the experience in Kansas.  Politically, both states elected Democratic governors, a clear sign of dissatisfaction with these failed experiments.

SIDE NOTE:  One might ask why Donald Trump and the Republican Congress did not take this into account when they enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 which has more than doubled the deficit compared to the last year of the Obama administration.  Simple.  States which lost revenues had to cut back services because their constitutions require balanced budgets.  When citizens realized they missed valued public services which vanished as the necessary revenues to maintain these services disappeared, they demanded repeal of the tax cuts.

Which brings me to Bernie Sanders and Medicare for All.  His cause would be much better served if he had followed Justice Brandeis and the history of other political and social revolutions in American.  You do not need to destroy the Democratic Party to save it.  A more realistic path would have been to follow the Beatles who reminded us change comes from a combination of revolutionaries and evolutionists who all want the same thing.  Proponents of Medicare for All would be better served to find a state that is willing to test it, moving any assessment of success as a national health care system from speculation to empirical analysis.

And those too impatient to test their ideas before demanding everyone accept them need to pay attention to the second verse of the Beatles’ “Revolution” when they warn:

But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Lines and chains used aboard a ship especially in working sail and supporting masts and spars.

~Definition of Rigging/Merriam-Webster

Reference to “rigging” elections does not appear in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, but we all know what it looks like.  Rigging an election is when you close polling places in locations with high concentrations of your opponent’s supporters.  Rigging an election is purging voting rolls because of insignificant inconsistencies in registrations (e.g., middle name versus middle initial).  Rigging an election is accepting concealed carry permits as identification but not student IDs. Rigging an election is weaponizing hacked information provided by the Kremlin.  Rigging an election is extorting the leader of a sovereign nation to manufacture dirt on an adversary you fear can defeat you.

We also know what “rigging” is not.  Emotional endorsements from your colleagues and former opponents who have known you for years, a ground-swell of support from a demographic with whom you have built relationships over an entire career and generating unprecedented and unanticipated turnout when you opponent claimed that was his secret sauce.  And finally, it is not “rigging” when elected officials and party leaders (i.e. super delegates) prefer a lifelong member of the party over an insurgent who is still hesitant to wear the party label.

You know what you call that?  Democracy.

Anyone who fails to see that, regardless of party or ideology, is admitting their own support is not strong enough to win fair and square.  Every time Bernie Sanders does not  tell Donald Trump he is wrong when he tries to delegitimize  Biden’s success as the result of a rigged process, he is admitting he too does not believe in democracy.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP