The Post-Election Rant

 Maybe it's too soon to write this. I need to heal both physically and emotionally from what transpired. I've had an ongoing sinus and bronchial infection since before Election Day. They swabbed me twice at Urgent Care and said "It's not COVID, not RSV, not flu." I had a flu shot in October. They couldn't tell me what was wrong, just to rest and hydrate. I'm not terribly good at either of those things. I try to walk in my neighborhood every day, about a mile and a half, and I do sit-ups, push-ups, stretches and a yoga pose involving balance most mornings. I'm always afraid that if I don't exercise, my heart will stop or I'll get fat. Emotionally, I don't know what's wrong. I went back to my former therapist, but I didn't have much to tell him, only to show him my paper calendar, scribbled all over every day in October, and totally blank in December. 

Three things made me ill. One was riding in the WVU Homecoming parade in a vintage Mustang convertible, which I loved, except it was cool out, and we were stopped for a long time, while the unfiltered exhaust from the car wafted back over me. I love old cars, but this 1964 1/2 Mustang had a 3-speed on the floor, no pollution controls, and an AM-only radio. It's a pretty car, a classic, but I'd rather drive my 2012 Suzuki. Another thing that didn't help was coming back one night from West Virginia's Northern Panhandle, about 70 miles away, driving uphill out of Wheeling on I-70, under reconstruction for what seems like years, going 50 in a 45 mph zone, in the left lane, where the right lane is about to disappear in a few feet, and there's a car there, and a giant truck getting up within two feet of my car, blasting his horn and flashing his lights at me. The trucking company was VSP. I regret that I didn't contact them as soon as I got home. The last thing to send me into a spiral, was when a friend in Morgan County said I should look at Nate Silver's "Five Thirty-Eight." I did and it said that I had a less than one percent chance of winning and that I might get thirty-three percent of the vote. 

My committee thought all along that I would win. I knew that this was an overwhelmingly Republican district. I went to as many events as I could in as many places as I could. I met some wonderful people, almost all Democrats, putting up a fight for their values. In Morgan and Hampshire Counties, I was fussed over by the Democrats. Morgan County found me an old Humvee to ride in for their Apple Butter Festival Parade. Neither Morgan nor Hampshire Counties had any other Democrats on their ballot. 

Alex Mooney, my opponent, never showed up anywhere in the District, even though he was unknown in north central West Virginia and the northern panhandle. His claim to fame was an endorsement from Donald Trump. His primary opponent, David McKinley, the long-time Congressman in out area and the Northern Panhandle, was endorsed in the Republican primary by our Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin. McKinley used to be a climate-change denier, but the last few years suggested we should study the problem for twenty years or so before taking any action. He is a totally-owned subsidiary of the coal industry. That didn't help him in the primary. I had no endorsements from anyone. The national Working Families Party endorsed me, but the local chapter head wouldn't return phone calls from my campaign manager. West Virginia Can't Wait interviewed me, and then said they couldn't endorse me. The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which endorses LGBT candidates, had me fill out a complicated form, then told me it would be sixty days before they could make a decision. I emailed them after sixty days, and they responded that they would not endorse me. The national Democratic Party, the DCCC, ignored me. All of these groups asked me almost every day to send them money for other candidates. The week of the election, I blocked all of them. 

Mooney and I were together on an interview with the Morgantown Dominion-Post. We took turns answering the same questions. I was nervous about going up against a five-term congressman, but I spoke more clearly and forcefully than he did, and in my opinion, I gave much better answers, even given that we are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. The article about the interviews, written by David Beard, who I think is a Republican-leaning reporter, made Mooney sound better than he was.

Still, the Dominion-Post endorsed me, which was a surprise. Not that I wasn't the better candidate, but that they tend to ignore me as much as possible. I also spoke to Leah Willingham, an AP reporter based in Charleston. We talked for a long time, but the article she wrote was mostly about Mooney's plan to challenge Joe Manchin for Senate in 2024. I ran into Senator Manchin at a West Virginia Federation of Democratic Women luncheon in Charleston, and I introduced myself. He said "Good luck to you" and walked away. His communication manager handed me his business card. I spoke with him, and requested an endorsement from Senator Manchin. He said he would talk to Manchin's campaign manager, who would get back to me. He didn't.

So Mooney won in 26 of the 27 counties. I won in Monongalia County, my home county and the second largest in population in the district. I beat Nate Silver's prediction of 33% of the vote by getting over 34%. Mooney announced a week after the election that he would challenge Joe Manchin for U. S. Senate in 2024. Manchin says he hasn't decided if he will run again. He's older than I am, so I can see his issue.

I met good candidates from all over the district, running for State Senate and House of Delegates. That "red wave" that didn't happen nationally, did happen in West Virginia. All of the seats in the House of Delegates were on the ballot; only twelve of one hundred seats were won by Democrats. In the Senate, Barbara Evans Fleischauer, a long-time House of Delegates member, lost a Senate race to Michael Oliverio, who had been in the Legislature as a Democrat at one time, but is now a Republican, and  the state representative of ALEC, the corporate lobbying group. The people who lost wanted to put coal miners' health above coal company profits, wanted to bring infrastructure money into West Virginia, reduce medical costs and expand Medicaid,  and bring back the Extended Child Care Tax Credit, that had lifted 40,000 children out of poverty in our state.

We're all depressed. I'm sure people had their reasons for voting for Republicans, who are anti-abortion, openly hostile to LGBT people and immigrants, and consistently put corporations over people. They support pollution, and are anti-public schools. Many people have talked about giving up, and if they can, moving away. I understand that, but now that I'm well-known, at least among active Democrats in the northern part of the state, I feel an obligation to stay and fight for my people.

Today, Saturday, November 19, I rested much of the day, although I got out to walk once the temperature went above freezing, and my physical symptoms are starting to subside. I'm out of politics for now. A friend, a retired union organizer, suggested I run again in two years. It's doubtful.

For now, I'm grateful to the group of women who managed the campaign, worked the website, created the graphics, put ads on Facebook and Google, and took care of the lawn signs. Democratic Party members in overwhelmingly Republican counties welcomed me with open arms; candidates for local offices became my friends. I had about two hundred donors, all friends, family members, people I met in the district and out, and people I don't know from out-of-state who must have heard about my campaign somewhere. I had no corporate money and ran an entire campaign on $25,000. I'm deeply grateful to everyone who worked or donated to the campaign, and I'm proud of what we accomplished.

Charlottesville

I was in Canada the weekend of the Fascist marches and demonstration in Charlottesville.We didn't watch most of it, and didn't see what a big deal it turned out to be.

We came home, and I watched the HBO video, read the comments from the president of the Jewish congregation in downtown Charlottesville, and read as much as I could.

At the Morgantown City Council meeting on August 15, and previously on Facebook, I had asked for a meeting with members of City Council, the Monongalia County Commission and West Virginia University, and their respective police departments to firm up plans in case there was a similar march here in Morgantown.

I was out last Thursday downtown for an event at WVU, the Human Relations Commission and a social gathering. I took the PRT, WVU's ingenious driverless mass transit system, to get downtown and walked between the venues. I didn't stay long at any of them. Joe had a meeting, and I thought I would catch up with him at temple to get a ride home. Our signals were crossed on that, and the PRT had an emergency shut down. I got home much later than I expected, and way tired. That's when I lost it.

There was an op-ed piece in our local paper that day from Michelle Malkin, a truly horrible person, IMHO. Her response to criticism of the President over Charlottesville was "What about Black Lives Matter?" I also got a response from Morgantown's mayor, someone I like and consider a friend, who brushed off my concerns by saying he was sure the Morgantown police could take care of anything that might come up.

I get Black Lives Matter now, and "intersectionality." I will admit to (generally) being white and "passing" for straight, at least when I'm alone and not with Joe. My parents made choices for me in housing and schools that were not available to African-Americans. I had financial help from my family that a vast majority of Americans of any race could not imagine. I expect to be taken seriously. That's how I was brought up, as a White Male in the South.

And yet, when I was concerned about heavily armed young men with Nazi flags standing outside a Reform synagogue in a liberal college town, I was told to worry about African-Americans instead, or to not worry, it wasn't a big deal. That hurt, not so much the former from Malkin. I wrote a scathing letter to the editor about her, which was published this past Saturday. I was more hurt by the Mayor's response. I accused him in my response of not being worried because he is "straight, white and Christian." "Clueless" might have been a better adjective. My husband is the rabbi at the Reform synagogue in a college town 235 miles from Charlottesville, according to Google maps. And my family had relatives in Poland in 1939, who were murdered by the Nazis. That Nazis marching in America did not upset the Mayor, or the President for that matter, meant to me that my life doesn't matter. And Black lives matter even less.

This past Sunday, there was an article in Morgantown's Dominion-Post about preparations for events like those in Charlottesville. The reporter, Alex Lang, quoted me, but also sought out the local police and WVU officials. Apparently, they have thought about this issue, and there are plans in place.

Tonight, I attended a panel discussion about Charlottesville put on by the History Department at WVU. The speakers were good about putting events into perspective. They explained that many of the monuments to Robert E. Lee and others were placed in the early part of the twentieth century, to emphasize white supremacy, and that schools named for Confederate heroes were often built in the 1950s and '60s during the battles over school integration.

Ultimately, the issue is not about statues. It's about white people, almost always young white men, feeling threatened by Blacks, Jews, gays and women, and feeling left behind, like it's someone else's fault. I asked the panel tonight where the hatred of Jews comes from, and the embrace of Nazi flags and admiration of Hitler. The panelists said that young people have no knowledge of what Nazism really meant, no idea about Jim Crow or the Civil Rights Era.

Some of this is prejudice handed down. I know what Baltimore, where I grew up, was like in the 1950s and 1960s. People don't believe me when I say it was totally segregated, not just by race, but also by religion, and not just between Jews and Christians, but socially between Catholics and Protestants, between German Jews and Russian Jews. The Civil War was still an issue in Maryland 100 years after it was over, and to an extent, still today.

It's late and I'm rambling. The talk tonight put things into a historical perspective, and the failing Trump regime, which encouraged outbursts from Nazis and Ku Klux Klan people, will not last. As to racism, anti-Semitism, and our fear-based culture, our only hope is to be open with everyone about who we are, present everyone with a friendly face, and demand much better from our politicians. I'm working on being a good politician, writing letters to the editor (another went out today) and being open, in our city at least, about who I am.