V is for Voting

Famously, presidential candidate Bill Clinton posted a reminder note that said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  A cue that wonky policy sound bites or nuanced discourses on the pro and cons of a particular policy only go so far with the average voter.  For most voters, it comes down to kitchen table issues:  

Can I pay the mortgage or rent? 

Can I feed my kids?

Can I afford a middle-class life?  

They measure these questions against the previous few years:  Am I better off today than I was four or two years ago?

For conservatives and Republicans, continuing failures to successfully manage kitchen table issues – remember 2008 and 2020, the Great Recession and then the COVID pandemic – brought them down a path to embrace the most divisive candidate, and then President, in modern American politics.  Kitchen sink issues were replaced by xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, gynophobia and its corollary misogyny, and racial animus.  

The basic kitchen table question must be revived.  Am I, and the people of Louisa, better off today than they were January 20, 2025?

I say, “No.”  The people of Louisa are worse off by most kitchen table measures.  

Louisa’s farmers are hard hit.  High diesel and gas prices, record fertilizer costs combined with low prices for commodities, and disappearing lucrative foreign markets, like China, are crushing Louisa, and American, family farmers.  This is the result of Trump’s misguided tariff war with China.

While unemployment remains at 3.9 percent, core inflation continues to shrink paychecks.  Wage shrinkage from inflation continues to be a self-inflicted wound.  Trump’s economic nationalism, which includes steep tariffs on most countries, continues to drive inflation up and shrink real wages.  

The disastrous never-ending war on Iran continues to keep gas at over $4.00 a gallon and diesel at over $5.00.  Borrowing money is increasingly costly as investors sour on America’s ten-year bond, raising interest rates for mortgages, credit cards, car loans, and small farm and business loans. 

Food Insecurity: The Louisa Resource Center Council’s Food Bank has seen record numbers of visitors, I learned, over the past year.  Louisa County Public Schools this  summer — starting June 8 — began a summer school age nutrition program serving meals at various locations throughout the county. The meals are free of charge, and available for any child ages 2 to 18. No ID is required. This program speaks to the ongoing food crisis for vulnerable children in our county. How is it we have the first trillionaire, yet our children go hungry?

Housing costs in Louisa soar:  Housing costs have been increasing for well over a decade.  The median sales price for a home in Louisa is $445k, up from $234k a decade ago.  The price per square foot, however, increased close of 6 percent over the past year.  This is a huge rise, directly correlated to Trump’s tariffs.  His recent 50 percent tariff on Canadian wood products, will only make matters worse regarding affordable housing.

Access to health care continues to shrink: Deep cuts to Medicaid and Medicare subsidies and the elimination of the Affordable Health Care Act premium subsidies have left many folks in Louisa County with no health care or delayed health care, many of them vulnerable children.

Meanwhile, as the denizens of Louisa pay the price for Trump’s mismanagement of about everything he touches, he and his family have profited to the tune of $2 billion dollars, mostly in the dark world of crypto currency.  The swamp he promised to drain has turned into a deep sea of corruption.

You can also frame the “are you better off today” question in terms of our democracy.  Is America’s democracy better today than it was before January 20, 2025?

I think most Americans would respond with an emphatic “No.”

By most measures, America is backsliding from the hallmarks of liberal democracy:  Pluralism, the rule of law, a healthy civil society, a government with three coequal branches, government transparency, equal access to voting and representation in government at local, state, and federal offices.

Sustained attacks on America’s institutions such as a non-partisan civil service, an apolitical military, Congressional powers, the federal courts, an independent justice Department have severely degraded America’s 250-year experiment.

Our Justice Department has become so rotten that a man was arrested and charged with vandalizing the Lincoln reflecting pool just to support Trump’s claims that his embarrassingly botched reflecting pool make over was sabotaged.  Prosecutors lied to and mislead the grand jury that indicted him.   This is what dictators do.

Despite all these challenges and threats to our democracy, we must still care …. and take the time and effort to vote.  The Democratic primary is this coming Tuesday, August 4.  Get out and vote for one of the three Democratic candidates for our district (Tom Perriello, Rob Tracinski, and Suzanne Krzyaowski).

As for this November, Rep. John McGuire (R) must go.  He has done nothing over the past two years for the folks of Louisa County or the 5^th Congressional District.  His main job has been to kiss Trump’s big, beautiful orange ass. His legislative achievements for Louisa: a ‘big fat nothing burger’ as right-wing influencers are fond of saying.  Mostly culture war stuff.  He did vote for the big, beautiful bill, however, which crushes Medicaid and Medicare services to Louisa’s poorly paid working class and her seniors, and refuses to reign in Trump’s never ending illegal war with Iran.  As for Louisas farmers, he has been a big fat zero.  

Seems he is more interested in the stock market as he bought Nvidia stock twice this year and other stocks that his House Committee assignments oversee.  Once a couple of weeks after Trump purchased his own Nvidia shares.  Hmmmm?

Now, as we near the November mid-terms, Trump is increasingly signaling he will not accept the results.  He is positioning the Justice Department, the country’s intelligence services, and the Department of Homeland security to support his claims of fraud.  Will the military stay above the fray or go all in with Trump? What will the Supreme Court do?  

This raises the very serious question that are on many minds.  Will there be a peaceful transfer of power after the mid-terms?  Voter turnout this November must be huge. A democratic win must be overwhelming. Not by one or two points but by tremendous majorities.  Trump won’t dare to challenge a massive electoral loss, especially in deep red counties and states.  At least I hope he doesn’t.  But he is crazy, and not all there, so who knows.  If he does, then we must be prepared take a different tact, massive civil disobedience in coordination with court action. 

So, ask yourself, and ask your family or friends, are we better off today than we were in January 2025?  No. So, let’s get out and make our voices heard next week and in November.