Category Archives: Stephen Golub

#PresidentHarris2024, 2024 General Election, Presidential politics, Stephen Golub, Vice President Kamala Harris

Your Vote: Fear Less, Regret Nothing

[The BenIndy received two submissions recently that warranted juxtaposition given the shared topic, timing, and connection between the authors. While independently crafted, these op-eds offer complementary perspectives.]

Photo by Phil Scroggs on Unsplash

No Regrets

By Betty Lucas, November 3, 2024

When I turned 18, my father drove me to the polls and insisted I vote the way he wanted me to vote. I believed him when he said he could find out how I voted. I later learned that all votes are private. Today, I regret that I gave away my vote out ofunfounded fear.

Now, recently on Fox News, some pastors are telling women it’s their duty to vote as their husbands wish! In the US, we are fortunate to have the right to vote, unlike some countries where there is no choice.

America is and has always been a nation of immigrants. Our history is of people fleeing a dictatorship. Meanwhile, Trump admires the dictators Putin, Orban and – it was recently revealed – Hitler. When individuals or the press disagree with a dictator, they are threatened with retribution and violence. A dictator’s playbook is to keep people frightened and uninformed and to demonize innocent individuals.

A wall is spray painted with the words 'No One Is Illegal'
Photo by Miko Guziuk on Unsplash

Some brush Trump off with, “Oh that’s just Trump being Trump.” No, he is telling us what his is going to do. Project 2025 will gut funding for education, Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and much more. High tariffs will hurt consumers, who will be forced to pay more. 

Trump’s wife is an immigrant. Some hardliners would consider Elon Musk an illegal immigrant. Yet they both demonize even legal immigrants and those who look or live differently. Christian core values are to love thy neighbor and to forgive others who have wronged you.

(From L) Plaintiffs Damla Karsan, Austin Dennard, Samantha Casiano, Taylor Edwards, Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Molly Duane and Amanda Zurawski attend a press conference outside the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas on July 20, 2023. A Texas state court will hear arguments from both sides in Zurawski v. State of Texas, a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of thirteen Texas women denied abortions despite serious pregnancy complications. | Photo by Suzanne Cordeiro for AP via Getty Images.

The Republican party used to stand for small government; now it is co-opted to track women’s health decisions. I hope you will consider all that is at stake in this election, not just that food prices are too high, or because you are angry and want change.

Democrats are not perfect, there is much to improve. If your car breaks down, you fix it. Democracy needs fixing, but we don’t burn down the whole government.

Did you know that Elon Musk has warned citizens to expect “temporary hardships” as he plans to cut $2 trillion from the federal government? He can afford temporary hardships, can you? 

I am not telling you how to vote. We are all in news silos, hearing only what we want to hear. Considering all the above, vote for the outcome you want for you, your family and the future of democracy. I am writing this to have no regrets before the most important election of my lifetime.

Don’t Freak Out! Five Reasons – Starting with Women – Why Harris Wins

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

By Stephen Golub, November 3, 2024, originally published on A Promised Land

Are you a Harris supporter stressed about the election? Me too.

Let’s not panic, though. Kamala’s (probably) got this. I’ve got five reasons why.

But first, you can start de-stressing by watching the Saturday Night Live clip above, especially commencing at the 5:45 mark.

Now, on to those reasons:

1. The Gender Gaps

American women (along with some men) will save the day in two ways: Far more women than men vote; far more women than men will vote for Harris. In fact, according to a Brookings Institution review, if those margins stay the same in 2024 as they were in 2020, “Harris could win Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada.”

In fact, the margins could prove even larger this year due to greater motivation and thus turnout by women: Many wise pro-Harris women are standing up for their rights; many macho pro-Trump men are simply standing up for supposedly standing tall. Pro-Harris fires could be fueled by the Supreme Court’s anti-abortion Dobbs decision, pro-abortion ballot measures (including in swing states Arizona and Nevada), Trump’s ever-more-misogynistic rhetoric and (though she’s downplayed this) Harris’s trailblazing status.

Even more to the point: Women far outnumber men in early voting, by a 10 percent margin, unnerving even leading Trump supporters. And one key group whose votes Trump seeks, young men, simply tend to not show up for elections.

2. The Passion Gap

A recent Gallup poll found that more Democrats (77 percent) are enthusiastic about voting than Republicans (67 percent) are. Another survey detected a similar 10 percent edge for Harris versus Trump supporters regarding feeling angry if their candidate loses. Enthusiasm and potential anger don’t necessarily turn into votes, but that underlying passion might still help.

3. The Puerto Rican Gap

Don’t underestimate the anti-Trump impact of the idiotic comedian who slammed Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” (while making a slew of other racist remarks) at Trump’s recent New York rally. This could well infuriate many Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania (which has almost 300,000) and other swing states. It certainly spurred superstar recording artist Bad Bunny to back Harris, making him part of the wave of Puerto Rican stars who reached out to over 340 million Instagram followers to show similar support after the rally.

4. The Momentum Gap

After a rough patch during which Trump seemed to be inching up, Kamala is regaining momentum in myriad ways. The final New York Times poll shows Harris up in four swing states, virtually tied in two and behind in one. A respected Iowa pollster’s survey showing Harris ahead there could combine with other recent poll results to be a harbinger for demographically similar swing states, even if Kamala (likely) loses Iowa itself. Survey results, including from Pennsylvania, indicate that she’s shrinking or even reversing Trump’s edge on the economy. And as I’ve already indicated, the fact that women are turning out much more than men in the early voting, with arguably much greater motivation to do so, could prove pivotal.

Now, what about all of those polls showing Trump tightening the race? For one thing, as I’ve noted, some recent surveys hold good news for Harris. But in addition, polling today involves so many subjective judgments by the even the best pollsters that the science is suspect. While this could work out to Trump’s benefit as much as Harris’s, it’s a reason to take surveys – and even averages across surveys – with a grain of salt.

In a development that’s gotten little press attention, Harris may benefit from an allied political action committee pouring up to $700 million into ads, social media posts and other messaging down the stretch, employing an unprecedented (though admittedly unproven), rigorous process for testing individual messages’ efficacy.

Finally, that SNL clip with which I opened this post shows it can’t hurt to close out the last Saturday of the campaign with a surprise star turn on the most popular entertainment show with folks aged 18-49.

5. The Get-Out-the-Vote Gap

Last but certainly not least, Harris has a more proven and organized get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operation than Trump does, a phenomenon I witnessed during my recent canvassing in Pennsylvania. While Elon Musk and others are mounting massive pro-Trump GOTV efforts using paid canvassers, they may well be fraud-plagued and less effective. This approach certainly failed when Ron DeSantis relied on it (and on the same strategist Musk is now using) in his ill-fated campaign. Harris volunteers are more likely to actually do their bit, in contrast with Trump contractors prone to scamming the compensation system.

Speaking of GOTV: I’m told that Kamala’s campaign knocked on 2.7 million doors last weekend alone. Even at this late date, you can go to the Harris campaign’s volunteer site, including to sign up to call voters in swing states. Having just done this, I’ll say that it’s far easier to do than it looks at first on the site. And bear in mind that even one persuaded or mobilized pro-Harris voter per two-hour shift can prove crucial when multiplied by volunteers’ millions of calls.

It’s not too late to act. As Coach Walz explains, “We’ll sleep when we’re dead.”

[Hat tips: BB, DW, AL.]
Benicia CA, Benicia City Council, Benicia city staff, Christina Gilpin-Hayes, Elizabeth Patterson, Stephen Golub, Tom Campbell

Stephen Golub: Public Service in Troubled Times

[BenIndy: This post was first published in the Benicia Herald (to subscribe to the Herald, scroll to the end to find instructions). You can find more from Steve not only on the BenIndy but also at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country, where he blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.]

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

By Stephen Golub, originally published in the Benicia Herald, August 11, 2024

Though the presidential campaign is already reaching full steam, things will get even hotter once we hit Labor Day and the attacks, counterattacks, hard truths, big lies, TV ads, online snipes and everything else really kick in.

Which brings me to praising Benicia’s public servants.

It’s never been easy to be an elected, appointed or contracted city official. I’m no expert, but decades ago I worked in the New York City Council President’s office and then on an anti-poverty program in one of the Big Apple’s sprawling bureaucracies. In both jobs, the work was exciting, challenging, difficult and stressful.

Benicia is about as far from New York City as you can get, in terms of being a far more pleasant place to live and work (though I’ll endlessly praise to high heaven NYC pizza and delis, and still get a tremendous charge out of visiting there). But in terms of American society and government, we live in far more distressing times in 2024 than we did when I started my government work way back when, particularly as the current presidential race inevitably turns ugly. And that comes on top of the everyday hassles and even harshness that government personnel can experience.

So please, let’s bear in mind that especially for Benicia’s elected officials governing can sometimes be a thankless task for which the main compensation is certainly not financial, relative to the tremendous time and effort they put in. That compensation comprises a small monthly stipend, plus health care coverage of which some can’t or won’t avail.

The true compensation instead, I would think, is the  satisfaction of doing some good in some ways. A price they pay involves significant amounts of time away from family and friends, for endless meetings and other commitments.

They also experience frequent requests, demands, carping and even condemnation from folks who may mean well but don’t walk in the Mayor’s or City Councilmembers’ shoes. True, such matters come with the territory. But when they become all too frequent they can be burdensome. (I got a brief taste of this a while ago when I was apparently mistaken for Mayor Steve Young by a fellow I was introduced to at an apolitical social gathering. The guy’s first words to me were along the lines of, “I want to talk to you about lights on the tennis courts.”)

This is by no means an argument against criticism of our elected officials or city staff. The freedom and ability to do so is part of what effective democracy is all about.

Nor am I saying that all officials everywhere should be held in high esteem. We can look to other localities and the national scene to find folks who’ve violated the public trust, and perhaps to Benicia’s earlier years before its modern era.

And I’m certainly not suggesting that our city officials are flawless saints. They’re human, just like you and me.

But one of the many things that keeps Benicia special is that by and large (and I know there have been exceptions to this rule) these officials and the rest of us keep things civil and functional.

This civility is especially important as the national discourse turns nasty. The next three months will be rough. Unfortunately, post-election disputes may be even rougher. I’ll continue to voice my own strong thoughts and feelings about what may well transpire in the presidential campaign.

But this column, today, fundamentally focuses on Benicia. I’m thankful that the city is led by Steve Young, one of the most even-keeled individuals I’ve ever met. We may well need his calm leadership here during the troubled times ahead nationally.

I’m also thankful for our current Council as a whole for its service, as praised by retiring Councilmember Tom Campbell.

And for folks such as former Mayor Elizabeth Patterson and former Councilmember Lionel Largaespada, spanning much of Benicia’s political spectrum, with whom I may disagree on some matters but for whom I have considerable respect for their own service.

And for community leader Christina Gilpin-Hayes, who recently tossed her hat into the City Council electoral ring for November, as well as for others for similarly seeking office here this year.

And for the city staff who keep Benicia running and thriving.

In some ways, we’re in the calm before the national electoral storm right now. Let’s be grateful for what we have as our local campaigns unfold, and for the chance to make Benicia even better.

[The Benicia Herald  does not have an online edition. Supporting local journalism is crucial for ensuring communities are informed and facilitates transparency and accountability during important local events and initiatives. You can subscribe to the Herald by email at beniciacirculation@gmail.com or by phone at 707-745-6838.

#PresidentHarris2024, 2024 General Election, Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris for President, Stephen Golub, Vice President Kamala Harris

Stephen Golub: Fly Me to the Moon (A Hopeful Film Resonates as Kamala’s Campaign Takes Off)

[Note from BenIndy: This post was first published on Stephen Golub’s blog, A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. There, Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.]

In a blast from the past, a hopeful film resonates as Kamala’s campaign takes off.

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

A Promised Land, by Stephen Golub, August 4, 2024

For a fun, relaxing time the other day, my wife and I went to see Fly Me to the Moon, the lighthearted Scarlett Johansson/Channing Tatum flick about an attempt at faking the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. Despite the enjoyable escapism, I couldn’t help comparing it with our troubled times.

A Time of Darkness, Division, Promise and Progress

I’ll start, though, by acknowledging that 1969 was far from untroubled. We were in the depths of the Vietnam war, wreaking havoc on that country while absorbing over 50,000 deaths of our own. The war and a host of other issues bitterly divided the United States. President Richard Nixon was hardly a unifying figure.

Still, if 1969 was far from an innocent time, it at least offered signs of hope and progress, starting with the massively moving  accomplishment of the moon landing itself. The seeds of the women’s rights and environmental movements had already been planted, with progress soon to flower in both fields.

And for all of Nixon’s sins, insecurities and instability, which became even clearer as the Watergate scandal came crashing down on him a few years later, some of his proposals (such as a guaranteed annual income) and achievements (the launching of the Environmental Protection Agency) would be considered progressive today in Democratic circles and anathema to Republicans.

That era also merits comparison with today in other respects. There was no Fox “News” or social media to pervasively present a perverse, fact-resistant version of reality to Americans. Which in turn meant that senior Republicans could and would force Nixon to step down when the actual reality of Watergate made that a necessity. Contrast that with today’s craven Republican leaders caving to Trump even after he sought to extort Ukraine’s president and distort U.S. foreign policy for political gain, and even after he chose to  support insurrectionists intent on tearing apart the Capitol and the Constitution.

Hope

Speaking of today… Fly Me to the Moon is by no means a great movie. But underlying the mix of humor, goofiness, romance, drama, cynicism  and commercialism marking the film, there’s an underlying spirit of hope. And hope, despite the darkness and craziness of 2024, is what many of us now feel for the first time in some time.

It started, obviously, with the leaders of the one flawed but functional major political party we have left persuading a diminished, unpopular president that his time had gone, that for the good of the party and the country he needed to step aside. It continued with his accepting that verdict, as painful as it was, and doing the right thing.

It’s culminated, for the moment, with the impressive rocket launch of Kamala’s campaign. In the wake of her debacle of a race four years ago, the first doubt about her could have been whether she could even run for president competently. The three months ahead will truly be trying, with lots of difficulties. But she’s off to an inspiring start.

What I find most promising is that she seems to have learned valuable lessons from that campaign, as well as from those of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. Those lessons include tacking toward the center somewhat, given the realities of winning the crucial, centrist swing states necessary to win the Electoral College, which is all that matters in a presidential campaign. That in turn involves playing up her prosecutorial credentials, as opposed to  previously playing them down.

Her strong start also involves standing steadfast on vital matters of principle (as well as political advantage), especially a woman’s right to an abortion and women’s rights in general; triggering an organic online buzz that might sway younger voters; and bringing on senior advisors from the successful Obama campaigns.

She’s smoothly parrying Trump’s ugly, racist, misogynist, nativist thrusts, most recently by not getting dragged into his pigsty over whether she’s Asian or Black. (Though I wonder how J.D. and Usha Vance feel about what Trump’s either/or attacks mean for their mixed-race kids.)

There’s another president Harris merits comparison with: Ronald Reagan. For all their dozens of differences, she’s coming across as her own kind of Reaganesque “happy warrior”: a blend of strong, stern, sunny, cheerful and hopeful. It’s a winning combination if one can pull it off. So far, she is.

Triumphing Despite the Troubled Skies

Inevitable troubles lie ahead, ranging from potentially legitimate negative stories to attacks on Kamala’s policy positions to Trump lying about  her at every nasty turn.

Which is where we all come in. By voting, donating and working for Harris. By influencing others to do the same. By holding on to hope, even during those days when things look dark.

Triumphing in November is all very doable. After all, we’re not talking about shooting for the moon.

2024 General Election, A Promised Land, Donald Trump, Gun violence, Stephen Golub

Stephen Golub: A Dark Day

[Note from BenIndy: This post was first published on Stephen Golub’s blog, A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. There, Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.]

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

By Stephen Golub, July 15, 2024

The Trump assassination attempt and its possible aftermath are so horrific on so many levels. For what it’s worth, here are two excerpts from my interview with the Indian TV station WION (World Is One News) a few hours after the attack. As you might imagine, they capture just a slice of my views on the matter. The American woman who’s also contributing is WION’s U.S. correspondent – with whom, you might note, I disagree on a couple of points.

In one of the clips, I refer to a Washington Post article that ironically appeared earlier in the day, on Trump-supporting, violence-advocating Christian nationalists. In its own way, it’s just as frightening as the shooting.

The days just seem to be getting darker lately. But let’s not give up on our creating light down the road.

MORE POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB’S BLOG, A PROMISED LAND: