Now what?

A call for party unity

Photo taken in Gloversville, NY, Memorial Day Weekend, 2024

Please join me in unifying around Blake Gendebien, who is our presumptive nominee for the Special Election that will happen in NY-21. It is important that, together, we support the efforts to elect a Democrat to Congress when Stefanik resigns.

OK — so now what?

I’ll let Blake and the Democratic County Committee Chairs have the task of walking you through the details on the next steps on the NY-21 campaign.

So that adds to the questions floating all around the country right now: “Now what?”

In general, there is a nagging question that has me, at least, experiencing sleeplessness, lack of concentration, weird appetite, and endless social media scrolling. As I spoke about on my last video, “So – how are we supposed to live through a coup?”, the important thing to do is to engage in self-care. These are tough times. You need deep sleep, exercise, and nutritious food. We need you to be battle-ready, even if your battle station is just picking up the phone to your elected officials.

My message will change slightly, but I’m not going away

Now that I am no longer a candidate for office, I will, in some ways, be more free to write, and will be more free to broaden the scope of topics beyond NY-21. In some ways, the Dems did me a favor. I can be less guarded, and can write and speak without regard for whether something I write here could get taken out of context and amplified in the various forms of North Country press.

I will continue to write on Substack and in other spaces. And I hope you will continue to read.

For example, I no longer have to hold back when I go to ask the hard questions

If you follow me on Blue Sky, you know that I have been asking some variation of, “Is this the day they arrest Elon Musk and The Gang of Boys?” It bothers me that they are free-ranging through our data and computer systems.

The reality is, who will arrest them? We don’t really have a normal Department of Justice to issue a complaint. I’m sure the Capitol Police would love to do something, but it’s not really their jurisdiction. DC Police? I honestly don’t know. The charges that I propose are violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S. Code § 1030. Since I am not an elected official, I can simply do what I’m doing: talk about it on social media and hope that somehow, somewhere, somebody is working on it.

In response to Elon and The Gang of Boys rummaging through our treasury and personnel systems, House Democrats will introduce the Taxpayer Data Protection Act. Hakeem Jeffries, announced on Feb 6, 2025, in his news conference that “House Republicans are doing the bidding of an unelected, out-of-control billionaire puppet master.” Good for Jeffries for introducing a bill.

The bad news is that Elon et al have probably accessed, downloaded, copied our data. For all we know they have already sold our data to goodness knows who. It doesn’t take very long. So for a judge to say Elon and his Gang of Boys now have “read only” access is encouraging. But let’s not kid ourselves. Much of the damage has already been done.

Don’t these judges and lawmakers watch television crime shows? It takes seconds to steal data. Whoosh!

But I am frustrated that we are 2-3 steps behind “them”

As a Democrat, I am terribly frustrated. It feels like we are 2-3 steps behind “them” and their destruction of our nation’s critical systems. We can introduce bills. That’s what Congress is there to do. We can file lawsuits.

But I am concerned: we need a plan for what to do if Trump suspends our court systems. Please don’t tell me they can’t do that. There is very little evidence that they were listening to Biden’s team during Trump Transition Training 2.0 for what they “can” and “cannot” do.

For that reason, I was actually encouraged that the Trump team filed a lawsuit against Chicago for its sanctuary city policies. Apparently they still think the court filings are, in some way, effective deterrents.

The court filings and the injunctions are part of our process. And they serve to slow down the ongoing carnage. But even with the lightning-fast speed with which the courts have been scheduling hearings, it all seems so slow. It’s like watching another form of January 6, 2021, but over many days and weeks.

It isn’t all bad

The local mobilization efforts are encouraging. People are taking to the streets all over the country, often joined by lawmakers in Washington DC. People are calling their elected officials. Admittedly, I am great at protests, but not so great at making phone calls to my electeds. I get angry when they don’t answer the phone. That’s me. For those of you who are OK with the daily calls to answering machines – please keep up the good effort. I need you to handle my share of that load.

Hakeem Jeffries has advised House Democrats that they are to conduct regular town hall meetings and let people know what is going on. I applaud this. Of course I got on social media and groused something to the effect of “Why weren’t they doing this already?” But when it comes to listening to constituents – better late than never. (Sidebar: I’m considering launching a sort of virtual coffee and discussion of issues, similar to town halls. The only hesitation is that we are all already so overwhelmed. I don’t want to add to the cacophony. I also don’t want to compete with our NY-21 nominee.)

Jeffries also asked House Dems to regularly update social media, and offered a recommendation for how frequently to do so. I noted that he recommended that House members post to TikTok. Really? I get so confused. Is TikTok “in” or is TikTok “out” in terms of Congressional favor? As with most things in Trump world, it seems like the sale of TikTok is being packaged as part of a negotiated deal.

The tax cuts

I just spent about an hour and a half watching AOC’s message to her voters. Highly recommend…if you can, please set aside some time to do so. She does an excellent job of talking about what you can do now. She also does an excellent job of alerting us to the fact that all of this chaos is a build up to the expiration of the Trump tax cuts. These tax cuts are vitally important to the billionaires who have surrounded Trump. In fact, they contributed heavily to his re-election so that they could get even deeper tax cuts. Did you know that they want $4 trillion in tax cuts?

Did you also know that they plan for $2.3 trillion of those cuts to be paid for by slashing the budget for Medicaid? No wonder they are running around breaking things. The purpose for all of this chaos is that they want us to be disoriented and distracted, at least until they get the tax cuts.

“Extending the expiring tax cuts would:

Do relatively little for households with low or middle incomes. Households with incomes in the top 1 percent (who make more than roughly $743,000 a year) would get tax cuts averaging $61,000 a year, compared to only about $400 for households with incomes in the bottom 60 percent (who make roughly $96,000 or less). Those tax cuts would come on top of the large tax benefits that wealthy people will receive from the 2017 law’s permanent corporate tax cuts, which are tilted even more heavily toward wealthy people than the expiring individual tax cuts.

Add trillions in debt, much of it to benefit the wealthy. Extending the expiring tax cuts would cost $4.2 trillion over the decade 2026-2035, and roughly half of the benefits would go to people making over roughly $320,000 (that is, people with incomes in the top 5 percent).” Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

It’s sick and it’s wrong. The elderly, the disabled, the poor – they will find life exponentially more difficult if and when these tax cuts go into effect.

You can do something

I started this article by asking for party unity. That’s even if you are not in NY-21. I’m hearing a lot of discontent as I talk to people. Get active with Indivisible, and any of several other organizations as we head into the Special Elections and midterms.

We need you to vote blue, even if you are wondering, “What the hell are the Democrats actually DOING?” They are doing things. This will be a long haul.

Make political engagement your new hobby. Even after all of the damage from Trump 2.0 is done, it will take decades for confidence in our systems to be restored.

But we must move forward with hope and a shared commitment that we can build a better future after all of this is over.

NY-21 needs a LOT of help with getting more Democrats to register to vote

Remember that one of the biggest uphill climbs that Democrats have in NY-21 is the disparity in voter registration numbers. We need a long-term commitment for year-round voter registration every day between now and the next presidential election to overcome the deficit of approximately 81,000 vote advantage in registered Republicans versus registered Democrats. I wrote about that issue here: “Attention NY-21 Voters”.

While I am disappointed to not be the nominee for NY-21, I am committed to party unity in support of the Democrat who is.

But please understand that it’s not all about the candidate nor is it all about the money they raise. Please don’t shout about the lack of DNC spending in upstate NY (no — I don’t know whether they will invest in the Special Election or not). In NY-21, we really need to identify and triage some of the root causes for the dominance of Republicans in rural upstate New York. Top of that list: let’s get some more Democrats on the voter registration rolls.