I wrote about AIPAC and its decision to fund insurrectionists and against democracy in a brief piece that I posted on this blog in March of this year.

EVOLVE: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations, the newsletter of Reconstructing Judaism, solicited an op-ed from me on the impact that AIPAC is having on elections.

You can read it here – https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/aipac-has-stepped-way-over-the-line/

The following comes from the “pen” of Heather Cox Richardson, Ph.D., an American historian, professor of history at Boston College, and an author of six books. She writes a daily column on American politics and history that I read religiously. Her column that she posted today (August 28, 2022) suggests that history has a habit of repeating itself, mostly because bullies appear in every generation and every era and they are all essentially the same – cowards:

In a speech Thursday night, President Joe Biden called out today’s MAGA Republicans for threatening “our personal rights and economic security…. They’re a threat to our very democracy.” When he referred to them as “semi-fascists,” he drew headlines, some of them disapproving.

A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee called the comment “despicable,” although Republicans have called Democrats “socialists” now for so long it passes as normal discourse. Just this week, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) called Democrats “radical left-wing lunatics, laptop liberals, and Marxist misfits.”

Biden’s calling out of today’s radical Republicans mirrors the moment on June 21, 1856, when Representative Anson Burlingame of Massachusetts, a member of the newly formed Republican Party, stood up in Congress to announce that northerners were willing to take to the battlefield to defend their way of life against the southerners who were trying to destroy it. Less than a month before, Burlingame’s Massachusetts colleague Senator Charles Sumner had been brutally beaten by a southern representative for disparaging slavery, and Burlingame was sick and tired of buying sectional peace by letting southerners abuse the North. Enough, he said, was enough. The North was superior to the South in its morality, loyalty to the government, fidelity to the Constitution, and economy, and northerners were willing to defend their system, if necessary, with guns.

Burlingame’s “Defense of Massachusetts” speech marked the first time a prominent northerner had offered to fight to defend the northern way of life. Previously, southerners had been the ones threatening war and demanding concessions from the North to preserve the peace. He was willing to accept a battle, Burlingame explained, because what was at stake was the future of the nation. His speech invited a challenge to a duel.

Southerners championed their region as the one that had correctly developed the society envisioned by the Founders. In the South, a few very wealthy men controlled government and society, enslaving their neighbors. This system, its apologists asserted, was the highest form of human civilization. They opposed any attempt to restrict its spread. The South was superior to the North, enslavers insisted; it alone was patriotic, honored the Constitution, and understood economic growth. In the interests of union, northerners repeatedly ceded ground to enslavers and left their claim to superiority unchallenged.

At long last, the attack on Sumner inspired Burlingame to speak up for the North. The southern system was not superior, he thundered; it had dragged the nation backward. Slavery kept workers ignorant and godless while the northern system of freedom lifted workers up with schools and churches. Slavery feared innovation; freedom encouraged workers to try new ideas. Slavery kept the South mired in the past; freedom welcomed the modern world and pushed Americans into a new, thriving economy. And finally, when Sumner had spoken up against the tyranny of slavery, a southerner had clubbed him almost to death on the floor of the Senate.

Was ignorance, economic stagnation, and violence the true American system?

For his part, Burlingame preferred to throw his lot with education, morality, economic growth, and respect for government.

Burlingame had deliberately provoked the lawmaker who had beaten Sumner, Preston Brooks of South Carolina, and unable to resist any provocation, Brooks had challenged Burlingame to a duel. Brooks assumed all Yankees were cowards and figured that Burlingame would decline in embarrassment. But instead, Burlingame accepted with enthusiasm, choosing rifles as the dueling weapons. Burlingame, it turned out, was an expert marksman.

Burlingame also chose to duel in Canada, giving Brooks the opportunity to back out on the grounds that he felt unsafe traveling through the North after his beating of Sumner made him a hated man. The negotiations for the duel went on for months, but the duel never took place. Instead, Brooks, known as “Bully” Brooks, lost face as a man who was unwilling to risk his safety to avenge his honor, while Burlingame showed that northerners were eager to fight.

Forgotten now, Burlingame’s speech was once widely considered one of the most important speeches in American history. It marked the moment when northerners shocked southerners by calling them out for what they were, and northerners rallied to Burlingame’s call.

President Biden’s Twitter account has recently been taken over by new White House’s Deputy Director of Platforms Megan Coyne, who garnered attention when she ran the official New Jersey Twitter account with attitude, and it seems as if the administration is taking the new saltiness out for a spin. “All the talk about the deficit from the same folks that gave an unpaid-for $2 trillion tax cut to the wealthy and big corporations. It makes you laugh,” the account said tonight. “Under my Administration, the deficit is on track to come down by more than $1 trillion this year.”

The author of the 1990 novel, The Devil’s Advocate, Andrew Neiderman, was a guest this week on MSNBC’s The Beat with Ari Melber (August 22, 2022). Neiderman’s book was made into a movie in 1997 starring Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves. During the filming, the stage and film star Helen Miren, the wife of the film’s director Taylor Hackford, told Neiderman that she regarded his book as a morality play in which the characters embodied the personification of absolutes.

The book and film are about an aspiring Florida defense lawyer named Kevin Lomax (played by Keanu Reeves) who accepts a high-powered position at a New York law firm headed by the legal shark John Milton (played by Al Pacino). Neiderman explored how ambition, temptation, vanity, and the pursuit of power can compromise one’s conscience and ultimately be one’s undoing. He explained on The Beat that what he wrote more than thirty years ago presaged what is happening across America today:

“Milton (Pacino) is the personification of evil and Kevin (Reeves) is the personification of every man in his quest for success and wealth. Over time, good and evil, the standard of behavior has changed. … Winning has become the new good and losing has become the new evil. If you accept that, if you live that life, if you think winning is IT, then all the sisters and brothers come along with it, like hypocrisy, denying the facts, refusing to believe things in front of you, distorting, lying – Trump is said to have lied more than 30,000 times in his four years as President – that is the new standard that we are fighting against. If we accept that, if winning and losing are the new good and evil, then everything else is okay. It’s okay to be a hypocrite. It’s okay to lie. It’s okay to look at a fact and say it’s not there because what I want the most is to win. The best examples are the two Supreme Court Justices who lied to Congress saying they wouldn’t overrule Roe v Wade, and then when they could, they did it; and it’s okay. Nobody is asking for them to be removed from the Supreme Court. They lied to win.”  

Lying, cheating, hypocrisy, distorting and fabricating facts, denial of the truth, denigrating, humiliating, and delegitimizing opponents, saying anything and everything to win power, increase wealth, and become the top alpha-dog, all these are corruptions of the best of America’s tradition of secular religion, culture, and values that emphasize humility, industriousness, honesty, integrity, compassion, generosity, tolerance, and appreciation of the “other.”

Those who embody the corrupted self-centered “morality” did not invent it in the last number of years. Remember the 1987 film Wall Street starring Michael Douglas, a barracuda stock-broker who proclaimed that “Greed is good!” Contemporary practitioners merely capitalized on the worst of the human condition, emphasizing the yetzer ha-ra (“the evil inclination”), monetized and weaponized it, accelerated it, and over time, facilitated its spread into politics, government, business, the media, and in other arenas.

The current malignancies that are metastasizing throughout our culture raise a fundamental question for us all – “What is a successful life?” Our response tells us who we are, what we value, and that to which we aspire.

Here are two quotations that resonate with me:

“Those people are a success who have lived well, laughed often, and loved much; / Who have gained the respect of intelligent people and the love of children; / Who have filled their niche and accomplished their task; / Who leave the world better than they found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; / Who never lacked appreciation of earth’s beauty or failed to express it; / Who looked for the best in others and gave the best they had.” –Bessie Anderson Stanley (1879 – 1952)

“Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue… as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.” –Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)

The story of James Meredith (b. 1933) took place long ago, but the principles of equality under the law and that no one is above the law make his story as relevant today as it was when it played itself out 60 years-ago in Mississippi.

Meredith was a former serviceman in the United States Air Force. In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education, he tried to integrate the University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”) by applying for admission in 1961. He was accepted, but his admission was revoked when the registrar learned that he was a Black man. Meredith sued and a federal court ordered the university to admit him, but when Meredith tried to register for classes on September 20, 1962, he found the entrance to the office blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett (1898-1987).

On September 28, 1962, the Mississippi governor was found guilty of civil contempt and was ordered to cease his interference with desegregation at the university or face arrest and a fine of $10,000 a day. Two days later, Meredith was escorted onto the ‘Ole Miss’ campus by U.S. Marshals setting off riots that resulted in the deaths of two students. He returned the next day and began his classes. In 1963, Meredith, who was a transfer student from the all-Black Jackson State College, graduated with a political science degree.

For those of us who remember the intensity of racism (especially in southern states) in those years, as well as the non-violent principles of the civil rights movement led by Dr. King and the violent reaction against all integration in the southern states, Meredith’s story was huge. It grabbed the national headlines and was a prominent account highlighted on the evening television network news for many days.

Finally, on September 30, 1962, President Kennedy addressed the nation on radio and television. He described the legal steps that led to Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi and his own role as President who had sworn at his inauguration “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Kennedy said:

“In this case in which the United States Government was not until recently involved, Mr. Meredith brought a private suit in Federal court against those who were excluding him from the University. A series of Federal courts all the way to the Supreme Court repeatedly ordered Mr. Meredith’s admission to the University. When those orders were defied, and those who sought to implement them were threatened with arrest and violence, the United States Court of Appeals consisting of Chief Judge Tuttle of Georgia, Judge Hutcheson of Texas, Judge Rives of Alabama, Judge Jones of Florida, Judge Brown of Texas, Judge Wisdom of Louisiana, Judge Gewin of Alabama, and Judge Bell of Georgia, made clear the fact that the enforcement of its order had become an obligation of the United States Government. Even though this Government had not originally been a party to the case, my responsibility as President was therefore inescapable. I accept it. My obligation under the Constitution and the statutes of the United States was and is to implement the orders of the court with whatever means are necessary, and with as little force and civil disorder as the circumstances permit.“

President Kennedy also addressed the greater issues at stake; namely, the importance of the rule of law and the final authority of the law courts to affirm and to dispense justice in a democracy.

Kennedy told the nation:

“The orders of the court in the case of Meredith versus Fair are beginning to be carried out. Mr. James Meredith is now in residence on the campus of the University of Mississippi.

This has been accomplished thus far without the use of National Guard or other troops. And it is to be hoped that the law enforcement officers of the State of Mississippi and the Federal marshals will continue to be sufficient in the future.

… our Nation is founded on the principle that observance of the law is the eternal safeguard of liberty and defiance of the law is the surest road to tyranny. The law which we obey includes the final rulings of the courts, as well as the enactments of our legislative bodies. Even among law-abiding men few laws are universally loved, but they are uniformly respected and not resisted.

Americans are free, in short, to disagree with the law but not to disobey it. For in a government of laws and not of men, no man however prominent or powerful, and no mob however unruly or boisterous, is entitled to defy a court of law. If this country should ever reach the point where any man or group of men by force or threat of force could long defy the commands of our court and our Constitution, then no law would stand free from doubt, no judge would be sure of his writ, and no citizen would be safe from his neighbors.”

JFK articulated not only what was at stake in 1962 in Mississippi, but what is at stake today for the Department of Justice, the Georgia and New York courts with respect to the Trump-led insurrection leading up to and taking place on January 6, 2021, as well as Trump’s theft of and illegal transfer of government property including many top-secret classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after he left office.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has shown that those principles of American democracy articulated by President Kennedy that have guided the United States for 230+ years since the ratification of the Constitution are guiding him and the DOJ. Though 70 percent (according to polls) of Republican Party voters (approximately 50 million Americans) continue to believe in and advance the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, I have faith that AG Garland, the DOJ and relevant courts will act according to the law “without fear or favor” including a potential indictment and prosecution of Trump in the days, weeks, or months ahead.

As I listened to the American presidential historian Jon Meacham read a definition of a “Gentleman” last week on his daily 6-minute podcast called “Reflections of History,” I couldn’t help but measure myself against this lofty standard and think about how our nation would be different and better-off if more of our leaders behaved according to its prescriptions.

The definition was penned by the 19^th century English theologian, scholar, and poet, Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890):

“A gentleman has his eyes on all his company. He is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd. He can recollect to whom he is speaking. He guards against unseasonable illusions or topics which may irritate. He is seldom prominent in conversation and never wearisome. He makes light of favors when he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort. He has no ears for slander or gossip. He is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out loud. From the long sight of prudence he observes the maxim of the ancient sage that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults. He is too well employed to remember injuries and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned on philosophical principles. He submits to pain because it is inevitable, to bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is his destiny. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust. He is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, and indulgence. He throws himself into the minds of his opponents. He accounts for their mistakes. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that because not only has his philosophy taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness of feeling which is the attendant on civilization, not that he may not hold a religion too in his own way even when he is not a Christian. In that case, his religion is one of imagination and sentiment. It is the embodiment of those ideas of the sublime, majestic, and beautiful without which there can be no large philosophy.”

I once again feel shocked, dismayed, angry, and frightened by Trump’s ongoing lawlessness, hubris, pathological lying, malignant narcissism, and the sycophantic response of the Republican Party leadership and extreme right-wing anti-democratic media in the wake of the FBI seizure of classified documents from Mar-a-Logo.

I keep wondering – When will this end? Is there no bottom to Trump’s depravity? Will top Republican House and Senate leadership and well-known Fox Cable leaders ever stand up and say ‘Enough!?’

I posted the following writings on the theme of tyranny by Stephen Jay Greenblatt a few years ago, but thought it timely to do so again. Professor Greenblatt is an American Shakespearean, literary historian, and author at Harvard University who wrote a superb volume called Tyrant – Shakespeare on Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 2018) in which he describes Shakespeare’s Richard III.

What follows are a few quotes from his book that describe as well as anything I have seen the nature of the tyrant as embodied by Richard III and Donald J. Trump (pages 53-54):

“Shakespeare’s Richard III brilliantly develops the personality features of the aspiring tyrant already sketched in the Henry VI trilogy: the limitless self-regard, the law-breaking, the pleasure in inflicting pain, the compulsive desire to dominate. He is pathologically narcissistic and supremely arrogant. He has a grotesque sense of entitlement, never doubting that he can do whatever he chooses. He loves to bark orders and to watch underlings scurry to carry them out. He expects absolute loyalty, but he is incapable of gratitude. The feelings of others mean nothing to him. He has no natural grace, no sense of shared humanity, no decency.

He is not merely indifferent to the law; he hates it and takes pleasure in breaking it. He hates it because it gets in his way and because it stands for a notion of the public good that he holds in contempt. He divides the world into winners and losers. The winners arouse his regard insofar as he can use them for his own ends; the losers arouse only his scorn. The public good is something only losers like to talk about. What he likes to talk about is winning.

He has always had wealth; he was born into it and makes ample use of it. But though he enjoys having what money can get him, it is not what most excites him. What excites him is the joy of domination. He is a bully. Easily enraged, he strikes out at anyone who stands in his way. He enjoys seeing others cringe, tremble, or wince with pain. He is gifted at detecting weakness and deft at mockery and insult. These skills attract followers who are drawn to the same cruel delight, even if they cannot have it to his unmatched degree. Though they know that he is dangerous, the followers help him advance to his goal, which is the possession of supreme power.

His possession of power includes the domination of women, but he despises them far more than desires them. Sexual conquest excites him, but only for the endlessly reiterated proof that he can have anything he likes. He knows that those he grabs hate him. For that matter, once he has succeeded in seizing the control that so attracts him, in politics as in sex, he knows that virtually everyone hates him. At first that knowledge energizes him, making him feverishly alert to rivals and conspiracies. But it soon begins to eat away at him and exhaust him.

Sooner or later, he is brought down. He dies unloved and un-lamented. He leaves behind only wreckage. It would have been better had Richard III never been born.”

To those Democratic commentators, politicians, office-holders, and every-day pundits (i.e. many of us) who believe that indicting Trump for his numerous crimes will inflame his base and result in the Democrat’s loss of both Houses of Congress in 2022 and the Presidency in 2024, I don’t buy it. To the contrary, if recent trends continue that began following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade and a string of legislative victories by Congress and the Biden Administration, the Democrats could not only hold both the House and Senate come January but increase its margins. Though conventional wisdom in off-year elections does not favor the party in power, it could be very different this year.

Consider all the positive things that have happened since Biden became President. He restored dignity to the Oval Office. He successfully got passed two very large bi-partisan funding bills through Congress on Covid relief and Infrastructure. After the Court’s reversal of Roe v Wade, millions of American supporters of abortion rights and women’s reproductive health were provoked by their rage into action, similar to the reaction of much of the country after the Trump inauguration and the police murder of George Floyd. In the deeply red state of Kansas last month, a ballot bill protecting women’s reproductive health and freedom passed by 18 percentage points. In the past two months, Congressional Democrats passed a series of laws concerning guns, climate, health care, prescription drug prices, taxation, semiconductors, science, and technology – perhaps the greatest legislative effort since LBJ’s Great Society.

Add all these accomplishments and phenomena to the powerful impact on public awareness of the January 6 hearings (gratitude to the House Committee is due), the fact that nearly 1000 indictments have been brought by the DOJ against insurrectionists, and the current multiple court cases facing Trump in NY, Georgia, and the DOJ, and the November mid-terms look much brighter than they did only a few months ago. Though anything can happen between now and the mid-terms, the Democrats have a solid record of progress and hope to run on as opposed to Republicans who are dominated by Trump’s grievance and negativity and are fixated on the Big Lie of election fraud.  

Many Democrats, however, have a bad habit of refusing to accept good news when it comes, and instead equivocate and complain about what was not accomplished. All the above is, in fact, good news in an imperfect world and a democracy in which compromise is necessary.

Should the Democrats hold both houses of Congress and expand their numbers, imagine what else can be passed on behalf of women’s health and abortion rights, childcare, universal pre-K education, judges and criminal justice reform, electoral reform, college debt relief, climate, and more. Yes, Trump and Trumpism will remain a dangerous threat to American democracy and the moral health of the nation, but we cannot allow ourselves to become depressed or paralyzed by anxiety and despair.

Gandhi’s reflection is worth remembering: “When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.”

What can we do as individuals to support Democrats in the mid-terms? First, of course, is to vote and get everyone we know to vote when the time comes. Second, we can contribute dollars especially to Democratic candidates in purple states for those seats currently held by Republicans. And third, we can join campaigns in helping to get out the vote everywhere in the country where it will matter to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.

If you wish to help, go to “Vote Save America,” a project of Pod Save America Podcast – https://www.votesaveamerica.com/ – and volunteer on line. There is a lot each of us can do from our computer terminals and homes to support candidates throughout the country.

Consider sending this blog to your Democratic voting friends including Democrats, Independents, and anti-Trump Republicans.

It seems to me that President Biden has been wildly successful as President in his first 18-months in office despite a 50-50 Senate, a bare Democratic House majority, and a recalcitrant obstructionist insurrectionist Trump-Republican Party that shows no allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, or Biden’s legitimacy as the duly-elected President of the United States.  

To paraphrase the late 17^th century playwright William Congreve: “Hell hath no fury like a President scorned.” Biden gets far too little love as his tanking approval rating suggests. At the time of this writing, he stands at 39.3 percent approval and 55.6 percent disapproval.

I took time this week to compile – as best I could – a list of Biden’s accomplishments thus far. But first, a disclaimer. I am a Joe Biden fan not only because I respect his long governmental and political experience as a Senator, Vice-President, and foreign policy expert, but because as a religious man he exudes a measure of humility, honors all faith traditions, and respects American democracy enough to not try and legislate his religious views on the country as a whole. He is also what we might call our “Chief Empath and Mensch.”  Though Joe has made his share of mistakes over his long career, for the most part, he has amassed a large treasure-trove of accomplishments especially during his presidency.

Yes, Joe is now getting older; and yes, most of us lose a measure of mental and physical acuity as we age. But it seems to me, according to everything I have seen and read about him, that Joe is still mentally sharp and in command of his policy objectives. He is certainly physically fit, though he appears stiff, likely due to suffering from lower back pain. Relative to most everyone, Biden is politically wise after a lifetime serving the public interest, savvy about how the American political system ought to work, and emotionally and morally guided to do the best he can do as President for the vast majority of Americans.

Biden’s stutter and his way of dealing with that disability are often misinterpreted as signs of confusion and a lack of focus. His advisors and those close to him affirm that he has what it takes to do his job, arguably the most difficult of any in the world.

Many of us seniors, naturally, may be inclined to project our own situation onto Biden, for better and worse. Whatever we conclude about him, however, does not necessarily mean he cannot handle the demands of the presidency. He certainly seems to be doing just fine based on his record to date and the quality of people he has appointed in his administration. Only Joe Biden knows what he can actually handle and what he can’t. If he thinks he can effectively serve as President in a second term, God bless him, and I’ll support him fully.

Here is my list of Biden’s accomplishments in his first 18-months in office:

• The restoration of dignity to the Oval Office after four punishing years of the most corrupt President and lawless self-serving administration in the history of the country.

• $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package which drastically increased investment in the national network of bridges, roads, airports, public transport, national broadband internet, waterways, and energy systems.

• $1.9 trillion COVID relief deal that provided direct payments of up to $1,400 to many struggling U.S. citizens and temporarily extended unemployment support by $300 per week, channeled $20 billion into the COVID vaccination program, provided $25 billion in rental support and a further $350 billion into state, tribal, and local relief efforts, raised the maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program support by 15 percent, invested $120 billion into K-12 schools across the nation, gave 209 million Americans the full dose of the COVID vaccination and 249 million (74 percent of the U.S. population) at least one dose of the vaccine.

• Federal judge appointments – Biden has so far has nominated 130 individuals to federal judgeships of which 76 have been confirmed. 80 percent are women and 53 percent are people of color.

• Supreme Court – Biden nominated the first Black woman ever to serve on the United States Supreme Court when he nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

• Federal Executions – Biden restored the pre-Trump status-quo and imposed a suspension on federal executions while the Department of Justice assesses the existing procedures and policies.

• Climate change – Biden re-joined the international Paris Climate Accord immediately upon assuming office thereby reversing Trump’s unilateral withdrawal in 2017, and he allowed the United States to continue to work with global players in the worldwide drive to deter the climate’s deterioration. He joined an additional agreement aimed at reversing deforestation as well as presenting a 100-country strong pledge to reduce greenhouse emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will invest billions of dollars to protect Americans from droughts, fires, and floods while moving America closer to our climate goals. (See specifics of the soon-to-be-passed Inflation Reduction Act below).

• Roe V. Wade – Biden has called for a national law codifying Roe V. Wade.

• Health Care – Biden strengthened the Affordable Care Act by expanding eligibility and extending the open enrollment period. Thanks to tax credits in the American Rescue Plan, a record 14.5 million Americans signed up for coverage in 2021 through the ACA, including 5.8 million new customers. At the same time, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan made quality coverage more affordable, with millions of families on ACA plans saving an average of $2,400 yearly on their premiums.

• Transgender Service Members – Within his first week at the White House, Biden issued an executive order overturning the Trump-era ban on openly transgender members of the U.S. military.

• Unemployment – When Biden took office, the unemployment rate stood at 6.3 percent. Upwards of 10,000,000 jobs have been created since January, 2021, including 642,000 American manufacturing jobs. Jobless claims are the lowest since 1969. Unemployment stands today at 3.5 percent.

• Afghanistan – Though it was a chaotic withdrawal and disastrous mistakes were obviously made, Biden ended the American military presence in Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the loss of thousands of American lives and far more injured, as he promised in his campaign.

• NATO and the Western Alliances – Biden restored NATO after years of undermining by Trump. In the last month, NATO admitted Finland and Sweden thereby expanding its reach.

• Ukraine – Biden has led the Western alliance and NATO in support of Ukraine against Russian aggression and led the U.S. to be the largest contributor of sophisticated arms and weapons to aid Ukraine in its self-defense.  

• Introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act (pending with a probable vote next week) that will address the globe’s changing climate, give Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices, extend health care subsidies under the ACA for three years, and raise money by requiring corporations to pay a minimum tax to lower the federal budget deficit.
• Gun legislation – Biden signed into law the first major gun safety legislation passed in decades. Though the measure failed to ban military-style weapons, it does include funding for school safety and state crisis intervention programs. It includes granting $750 million to help states implement gun crisis intervention programs which can be used to manage red flag programs as well as for other crisis intervention programs such as mental health, drug and veteran courts. It also includes affirming Red flag laws, allows courts to temporarily seize firearms from anyone believed to be a danger to themselves or others. The law includes juvenile records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System which provides a more comprehensive background check for people between 18 and 21 who want to buy guns. It bars guns from anyone convicted of a domestic violence crime.

• The United States Chips and Science Act (CHIPS) – Invests $280 billion in areas like semiconductor manufacturing and scientific research to bolster competition with China.

• Comprehensive Toxics Act (PACT) – Improves health care and benefits for veterans exposed to toxic substances (e.g. 9/11 first responders and victims of military burn pits) – passed largely by Democrats and Jon Stuart’s advocacy in shaming Republicans who cynically threatened to vote against the bill to deny Democrats a victory and then, when the public’s criticism was too intense, shifted course and voted for it.

• Killing al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri – with a huge Biden shout-out to America’s intelligence services that had been undermined by Trump.

• Gas prices – Hit a 50-day low. Gas prices had peaked above $5 a gallon but have fallen every day for more than six weeks. Today the average national cost is closer to $4 a gallon, though in Los Angeles, gas remains above $5 a gallon.

Biden’s Approval Rating – It seems incredibly odd that Biden’s approval numbers remains so low given the above list of accomplishments. Perhaps, these legislative wins will result in a ratings bump. A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in early July found that 64 percent of Democrats wanted someone other than Biden to be the party’s nominee in 2024. A CNN poll later in the month put that figure at 75 percent among Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters. Those numbers, however, can change. Remember that Biden had a 55% approval rating during his first six months in office.

Why are Biden’s approval numbers so low? Here are a few possible answers:

• Baked-in attitudes among Republican election deniers and the lingering suspicion among too many Americans that, despite all facts to the contrary, Biden’s 2020 election victory was illegitimate.

• Biased news coverage among cable commentators, right-wing and local media, and among some in the mainstream media that never seem to miss an opportunity to cast Biden’s successes in a negative light.

• Biden’s advancing age.

• High expectations that Biden raised in his campaign to pass legislation assuring more affordable child care, help for the elderly and those who care for them, less expensive preschool, efforts to confront the cost of housing, student debt relief, tuition-free community college, money to cover health care for the poor in states that have refused to expand Medicaid.

Mario Cuomo once said that “politicians campaign in poetry, but they govern in prose.” Biden certainly is not the most eloquent of presidents, but his record thus far suggests that his prose is strong. In the end, that is what is important.

What might be the future of the Biden Presidency? It is hard to tell, but if past is prologue it could be very good indeed.

I have always appreciated Dan Rather, from the time he got beat-up as a reporter on the floor of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, to when he was embedded on behalf of CBS News on the ground in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion there, to when he became CBS’s Evening News Anchor after Walter Cronkite retired, and after he left CBS News to report and write on other platforms.

I have listened to him over many years. I love his down-home speaking style, his recall of Texas aphorisms and folksy imagery, the accented sound of his voice, and his wisdom.

I read religiously now his email postings in his series called “Steady,” and the one that came today (August 2) is to-the-point of what we all face in these times. I offer it below.

I’m not the only one who regards Dan Rather as a national treasure. He has earned it.

“Sometimes I remind myself that I haven’t talked to an old friend in a while. There are a lot of excuses, of course. Days pass by. Everyone is busy in some way. But when I do decide to pick up the phone or write a note, I am almost never disappointed. 

“How are you?” I ask. It can be a throwaway line, a perfunctory conversation starter meant to elicit an “I’m okay,” and then move on. But I mean it, and I want to know. 

These are difficult times. We all know that. There is a lot that is dispiriting. There is a lot that is demoralizing. There is a lot (more than we might want to admit) that can be outright terrifying. 

We all try to soldier on as best we can. We carry burdens that are personal, professional, communal, and familial. Fate strikes us all in unique and unpredictable ways. 

And then there is all that hangs over us at the national and global level. We talk about it often here — the threat to democracy, our climate crisis, a pandemic, attacks on our constitutional rights, and on, and on. 

But where we can find hope, support, empathy, and resilience, is in our human connections, our communities, our networks of friends and family. Age, distance, the pandemic, financial burdens, and many other hurdles can make that closeness more difficult to maintain.”