[Peace] [Peace-discuss] Letter to the News-Gazette, on the coming election

Tue Oct 9 03:04:31 UTC 2018

Here's another way of looking at it.

I disagree that the world would be worse off on net if Democrats take the
House. I think the world would be better off on net. I think that it would
help us end the Saudi war in Yemen, which is pushing millions of human
beings to the edge of starvation. I think we can end the war if we can get
a vote in the House. So far the House Republican leadership has blocked a
vote in the House. We're trying to get a vote as soon as possible, but if
Dems win the House, then I'm confident that we'll get a vote in January if
not before. I think that outweighs the anti-Russia issue. I don't contest
at all that the anti-Russia thing embraced by many Democrats is quite
bothersome. But, Russia has nuclear weapons and a big army and a seat on
the UN Security Council and while the U.S. may pursue destructive policies
towards Russia and we should oppose those policies, the U.S. is not about
to invade Russia or start bombing it, while Russia has those means to
defend itself, which it will continue to do. Yemeni children have none of
these things to defend themselves from U.S. bombs. So I think the Yemeni
children should be a higher priority for our defense. Plus, while Trump has
advocated, justly in my view, for better relations with Russia, his actual
policies have in some respects been more aggressive than Obama. Obama
rebuffed neocon pressure to arm Ukraine. Trump acceded to it. This is not
to gainsay that Obama did bad things in this regard and Trump did good
things. Just that it's not one-zero.

But regardless of all that, the overwhelming likelihood is that whatever
happens with Betsy vs. Rodney will not determine control of the House. It's
a competitive district, and Betsy could win. But it's not a district
Democrats need to win in order to take the House. According to 538, Dems
have a 5 in 7 or 3 in 4 chance of winning the House, depending how you
count, while the chances of Betsy beating Rodney are 3 in 10 or 2 in 7 or 1
in 4, depending on how you count. These are estimates, of course, but it
shows where an educated reasonable guess lies: it's more likely that Dems
will take the House than it is that Betsy will beat Rodney. If Betsy vs
Rodney is close - if our votes matter - Dems are very likely taking the
House anyway. If the contest for the House is close, then Rodney is
probably beating Betsy anyway. There's a good chance that Dems will take
the House but we'll still be stuck with Rodney. We have far greater
potential to influence whether we're stuck with Rodney than whether Dems
take the House.

So I think there's a strong case that we should focus more on whether we're
represented by Betsy or Rodney, over which we have more control, than over
whether Dems or Rs control the House, over which we have much less
influence, and which is not likely to be influenced by Betsy vs. Rodney.

And there I think it's very much a slam dunk that we'd be much better off,
from an anti-war point of view, being represented by Betsy than by Rodney.
Not because Betsy would be perfect on all imaginable anti-war things; she
wouldn't be. But she'd be good on some important things which are in
contest. She'd be good on Yemen. Whereas Rodney is a big fat zero on all
war and peace issues, including Yemen, and also Iran. I've tried ever since
Rodney was our Rep. to get Rodney to do things, even bipartisan things,
simple things, defend-our-Constitution things, for less war. Zero, nothing,
zip, nada, he never did anything. He's completely hopeless on war and peace
issues, as far as I can tell, a robot of the pro-war Republican leadership
in the House. Tim Johnson was much better, night and day, reachable, we
brought him around. Rodney Davis is a brick wall on war and peace. With
Betsy she will be good on some things and we have a chance to move her on
other things, to participate in national efforts to move Congress by moving
our Rep. With Rodney Davis our chances are zero. He just doesn't give a
damn what people in Champaign-Urbana think about anything, he's made that
perfectly clear many times, we are not his base, he does not care at all
what we think about anything and doesn't pretend to.

So I would urge people to think most about what we an do with respect to
the matter at hand that will contribute the most to allowing us to
participate meaningfully in national efforts to move Congress towards less
war in the future. And I think it's pretty clear that means focusing on
whether we want to be represented by Betsy or Rodney, rather on whether we
want Dems or Rs to control the House.

On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 9:24 PM Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> How should those of us opposed to America’s eight wars and war
> provocations vote? We have one vote to influence US government policy in
> the next two years: that comes in next month’s election of a representative
> to the US House, in the seat held by Republican Rodney Davis.
>
> Davis’ opponent is a conventional Democrat, Betsy Dirksen Londrigan. They
> generally agree on the neoliberal and neoconservative policies followed by
> all recent US governments, Republican and Democrat alike - policies that
> have produced more war and accelerating inequality.
>
> Given a choice between two bad candidates, one should of course vote for
> the less bad. Here party affiliation makes the important difference,
> because the House is organized by parties, not the views of individual
> members. Of the two major political parties in America, the Democrats are
> the more pro-war today:
>
> (1) their challengers for House seats include a large number of pro-war
> CIA and 'military intelligence' veterans;
> (2) 'Russiagate' is their fantastical attempt to insure that Trump doesn't
> depart from the belligerence against Russia and China that characterized
> the Obama-Clinton administrations; and
> (3) they are employing identity politics to defeat those few anti-war
> votes in Congress (cf. Rep. Michael Capuano in Massachusetts).
>
> The Democrats should not be given control of Congress. They are the
> greater evil - the greater threat of war - at the moment.
>
> I’ll reluctantly vote for our feckless Republican Congressman, Rodney
> Davis, in order to forestall the Democrats’ gaining control of the House of
> Representatives.
>
> —CGE
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