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John --
Casting a dark shadow over next week’s
election is the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s
husband, Paul, last Friday—and the blasé or outright cruel reaction to
it in some quarters. Slowly but surely, political violence is becoming
normalized in the U.S., and most disturbing of all, some of our public
officials are responsible, directly or indirectly, for condoning it.
By suggesting that violence is no big deal or that the victims
“deserved it,” they set a tone that will continue to degrade our
politics.
Also just in
time for the midterm elections, U.S. law enforcement has circulated
bulletins warning that conspiracy theorists
could become violent around
Nov. 8. One of the bulletins, issued last Friday by the Department of
Homeland Security, the FBI, and the National Counterterrorism Center,
warned about domestic violent extremism related to “election-related
perceptions of fraud.” The conspiracy theory that purports that the
2020 presidential election was “stolen” is bearing dangerous
fruit.
As our co-chairs,
Andrew Yang, Christine Todd Whitman, and Michael Willner, wrote in
Newsweek this week, “While the unprecedented effort to overturn an
election failed, it planted seeds of doubt and suspicion that have
taken root throughout the electoral system. Election denialism is
nothing new, but it's gone mainstream. In particular, on the American
right, 61% of Republicans believe that the 2020 presidential election
result was fraudulent. Public officials and candidates, despite all
evidence to the contrary, promote and normalize that lie, making it
accepted as gospel among millions of Americans.”
At Forward, we stand on the side of
democracy, because it's not a partisan concern—it's an American one.
Lies about our election come at a steep cost. They destroy confidence
in our electoral system, suppress voter participation, and as we've
seen, can lead to violence. We know there is a better way.
OTHER NEWS &
VIEWS
More than 40% of Americans would
vote for a new party
“A
plurality of Americans are open to voting for a candidate from a new
party that sits between Republicans and Democrats, a new Public
Religion Research Institute poll finds, as a large majority of
Americans are dissatisfied with the current state of the U.S. and
partisan politics. Independents were unsurprisingly most likely to
consider a centrist option, with 57% saying they’d vote for a moderate
candidate, but Democrats were more likely than Republicans to cast a
ballot for a new centrist choice (with 40% of Democrats versus 34% of
Republicans).” —Forbes
Voters don’t think either party
has the right to govern
“Heading into the midterm elections, while likely voters are
split on which party they plan to vote for, they largely feel that
neither party has earned the right to govern after November. Overall,
51% of likely voters say Democrats haven’t earned another two years
controlling the federal government, while 39% said they have. Among
independents, 50% say Democrats don’t deserve another two years and
34% said they do, while Democrats and Republicans mostly answer in
accordance with their party. Yet things are no better for the GOP, as
55% of likely voters also say Republicans have not made a good case
for why they should be given control of Congress for the next two
years, compared with 35% who say they have. Notably, 61% of
independents say the GOP has not, while just 27% say they have (once
again, Democrats and Republicans largely answered in line with their
partisan views).” —FiveThirtyEight
Taylor: It’s 10 days until the
election. Do you know who’s on your ballot?
“Lies, conspiracies, and hate—especially
when promulgated by public officials—can fuel real-world danger, not
only to democracy but to people’s lives. The rise of these radical
candidates demonstrates the injurious impact of hyperpartisanship,
which significantly lowers our standards of candidate quality and
discourages good candidates from running at all. Character matters;
leaders who lack it have a corrosive influence on the whole of
society. The relative success of these candidates in the primary
elections speaks to the need for primary reform, so that candidates
are rewarded for unifying ideas that appeal to a broad swath of the
electorate, rather than for throwing red meat to an ideologically
extreme base.” —Miles Taylor in The Topline
Zakaria: Our primary
problem
“The primary
system American parties use to choose their candidates is extremely
unusual; no other major democracy has one quite like it. Primaries
ensure that the candidates chosen are selected by slivers of the
parties—around 20% of all eligible voters. And this selection is not
at all representative—these are the most intense, agitated activists,
often far more extreme in their views than run-of-the-mill registered
Republicans or Democrats. Add to this decades of sophisticated,
computer-enabled gerrymandering, and you get extreme candidates who
run in safe districts where the only threat to them is a primary
candidate who is even more extreme.” —Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post
Under
the two-party system, the nation’s challenges continue to mount—from
pocketbook issues like inflation to large-scale crises like climate
change to systemic problems like an outdated election system that
promotes extremist candidates. Add to that an unhealthy dose of
distrust, doled out by dishonest brokers who crave power, and you have
a recipe for suspicion, dysfunction, and, increasingly, violence.
Thankfully, Americans get it and are ready to move Forward.
All the
best,
The Forward Party Team
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