2022 can turn into a political dream come true-Part 2

                                                                                                                                                Dec. 24, 2021 

[In the holiday and year end spirit, if you click on the links, a few of them reveal musical treats.] 

This is the second installment. As with most TV serials, you’re advised to check out the first installment before taking this on, but the intro here will bring you up to speed.

Ted Lasso

I’m pulling out songs and lines to prompt you to believe, as Ted Lasso might tell you to, that the beleaguered Democrats have the opportunity of a campaign-time to take over the Senate with room to spare. 

The conventional wisdom is dire for the Dems. 

The Senate is divided 50-50, and as we approach the new year, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, one of the Dem’s 50, seems to be saying he’s not backing President Biden’s seminal Build Back Better legislation that contains provisions for universal pre-school, a child tax credit, home care for older Americans and people with disabilities, and climate change initiatives with jobs for displaced workers. Without the legislation, Biden looks like an albatross around the neck of any Dem running for the Senate. 

Then there’s covid. There’s always covid. The fate of covid has come to dictate everything from inflation to world markets, meaning the economy, stupid. It also looms over how families and schools cope, whether college and pro sports get played, how governments are perceived to respond, and the favorability of presidents, which in Biden’s case hovers at about 42%. 

As it is, four incumbent Democratic Senators - Raphael Warnock in Georgia, Mark Kelly in Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, and Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire - are considered vulnerable in the 2022 elections. If they lose, that would eliminate the razor thin and compromised Democratic majority, and leave the Republicans with a four-vote unified majority. 

In the first installment, I staked out the case that Dems can win Senate races in five states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida, which would leave the Dems up one critical Senate seat even if they lose all four of the states they now claim, though tenuously. 

I’m about to move to the high wire and suggest that there are five more states ripe for Democratic pickin.’ My invocation to Dem strategists and moneyed interests is don’t become obsessed protecting the back flank of incumbency at the expense of five, make that ten, harder to get gettables. 

It isn’t even 2022 yet and word is seeping out incrementally, as the Washington Post reports, that the now dominant omicron variant of covid appears to be less severe than the delta strain. Is it possible that the iron curtain of covid may lift with enough time before the elections? News on covid will evolve daily for the next ten months until the 2022 elections, so don’t get cocky or complacent. 

One lesson as I roll out this installment’s five additional gettables is that although there is only a year before the 2022 elections, there IS a year before the elections. 

Time enough for covid and inflation to ease, for supply chains to open up, for the enacted $1.2 trillion infrastructure package to be more visible to the public it benefits, for Manchin and Biden to come to terms on how to Build Back Better, for the public to appreciate Biden’s accomplishments, and for the investigations into sedition committed by notable GOP lawmakers last Jan. 6 to bear the fruit that we know is thriving on the vine.

Lotta livin' to do

6. Iowa Incumbent Republican Chuck Grassley still has a lot of livin' to do to become the oldest person to serve in the U.S. Senate. At 88 years old, he’s a few months younger than Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California. Grassley will be 89 as of election day. Feinstein’s seat isn’t open until the 2024 elections, and as a way to keep her campaign committee active, she’s filed paperwork indicating she’ll run again. Both are years behind the bar Strom Thurmond set by remaining Senator of South Carolina until he retired in 2003 as the only member of either chamber of Congress to reach the age of 100 while still in office. Iowa has been slip slidin’ away since Dem. Tom Harkin retired from the Senate in 2014. For 30 years before that, back to 1984, Iowa sent one Republican, Grassley, and one Democrat, Harkin, to the U.S. Senate, and Democratic candidates won every Presidential election but one. When Harkin retired, Joni Ernst won the

Slip slidin' away

open Senate seat and was re-elected in 2020. Iowa bleeds red now, and controls the governor’s office and both state houses, allowing Iowa to engage in voter suppression tactics, as I’ve documented before. Bleak, due in part to a state Democratic Party, whose closely-held secret of ineptness leaked out nationally when they botched the bellwether Democratic caucuses in 2020. Yet, the state party continues to usurp control over the campaigns of Senate candidates. To be seen if they do again. This time, the Dems have a clear internal frontrunner for the nomination to oppose Grassley in former Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer . They also have three other candidates since a fourth withdrew last month. As the year ends, there are 660,000 registered Republicans; 610,000 registered Dems. Active Independents hold the power. They number 576,000. Iowa is red, can you show us some

Roses are red

blue? I don't sleep at night 'cause as a Grinnell alum, I'm thinking of you.

7. Alaska Incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski has been one of Alaska’s senators since 1980, when her dad left the seat to become governor. She, Susan Collins, and Mitt Romney are the three GOP senators most often mentioned who might be inclined to break the Republican stone wall on legislation. They formally recognized Biden as president, and after all, Murkowski voted to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. For that, in March, she was officially censured by the Alaska GOP Central Committee, which resolved to find a GOP alternative to her in the buildup to the 2022 election. Trump jumped right in and has endorsed a Republican to oppose Murkowski. She’s campaigning as a pro-life Christian. Last year, Alaska voted for a non-partisan primary system with ranked choice voting, in which the top four names on the ballot, regardless of party, advance to the election. That means that on the non-partisan primary ballot, there will be Trump’s hand-picked choice and Murkowski, whom Trump’s candidate has, in Trump-style, dubbed "Biden’s Chief Enabling Officer," and whichever other candidates surface. Ranked choice voting is designed to encourage candidates to run and discourage negative campaigning, a tough challenge when Trump has a bullseye on Murkowksi. To make matters quirkier, Manchin has endorsed Murkowksi all the way from West Virginia presumably over any to-be-announced Democratic candidate. Quirkier yet is that Sarah Palin has floated her candidacy and plans to run…if God wants her to. Oh yes, the Democrats. A Washington Post columnist is staking out the position that a Dem can win, so I won’t be the first. The Dems have many options, the most obvious Al Gross, who lost for the Senate in 2020, though he raised a state record of $19.5 million in funding. His Twitter account self-identifies in part as an orthopedic surgeon and commercial fisherman. Wikipedia heralds one of his achievements as having the first bar mitzvah in Southeast Alaska. Though Alaska is considered a red state and Trump won in 2020 with 53% of the vote, in 2016 he won with only 51% of the vote. In the spirit of ranked choice voting, bring on all comers. This caveat: In ranked choice voting, once the final four candidates from the primary get to the election, the ones with broadest appeal tend to have better chances of winning. As fans of Northern Exposure know, life

Northern Exposure wisdom

is nasty, brutish and short, the universe is a hostile place, and the Declaration of Independence doesn’t promise happiness. I’m going to enjoy this one. 

8. Kentucky Incumbent Republican Rand Paul deserves whatever he gets. He supports a Constitutional amendment limiting Senators to two terms. He’s served two terms. He’s running again. He’s not in favor of self-imposing term limits. That would result in some senators leaving office and others staying. Not fair. Charles Booker, a former Democratic state representative, is seeking to enforce term limits the old fashioned way, by defeating Paul in the 2022 election. Booker ran in 2020 to take on Mitch McConnell, Kentucky’s other senator and defacto leader of the GOP (sorry, Donald) and lost in the Democratic primary. So he knows the campaign territory and the funding lanes. In his first fundraising quarter (Q3 2021), he raised $1.7 million from 55,000 individual donations. Not a bad start. Kentucky is a red state and it’s Mitch McConnell’s state. It’s also a state with a Democratic governor, Andy Beshear. During the recent tornado devastation that pummeled Kentucky, Beshear was visibly empathetic and ever-present. The Louisville Courier Journal featured a photo essay documenting Beshear and the Lieutenant Governor handing out shoes to victims in Western Kentucky, a Republican stronghold. The tornado has thrown Paul into a precarious position. He, like McConnell and Beshear immediately petitioned Biden for federal disaster relief. In Paul’s case, it presented a dilemma because he’d vocally and legislatively opposed relief in many situations, invoking the fiscal conservative mantra that relief funds should be offset by budget reductions elsewhere. For instance, in response to Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in 2017, and even voting against aid for first-responders who answered the call on 9/11. A video of one of Paul’s speeches on the Senate floor is being circulated throughout Kentucky and beyond: "People here will say they have great compassion and they want to help the people of Puerto Rico, the people of

Grinch who stole progress

Texas, and the people of Florida, but notice they have great compassion with someone else's money." In time for Christmas present, Booker’s campaign came up with a clever video, The Grinch who stole Progress.

9. Missouri Incumbent Republican Roy Blunt is retiring. When he announced, he became the fifth GOP Senator to move on. USA Today framed the story this way: Sen. Roy Blunt won't run for reelection, complicating Republicans' bid to retake the Senate. Missouri has become a red state, flaming red in the case of the other senator Josh Hawley, who defeated two-term Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill to become, at 39, the youngest member of the Senate. Hawley has become a force to be reckoned with. On Dec. 30, 2020, he said he would object to counting the electoral votes for the presidential election and he became the first senator to announce formal opposition to Biden’s election. The day before the Jan. 6 insurrection, he tweeted that while he was in Missouri, “Antifa scumbags” came to his DC home and threatened his wife and daughter. Local police reported that the protests were peaceful. A photo of Hawley raising a fist at the Jan. 6 insurrection has become iconic. Recently, almost a year later, the Kansas City Star’s editorial board published a piece urging the Senate investigative committee to “use every tool it has to explore Hawley’s role in the chaos.” The reason Hawley figures into the 2022 senate race is that he and Trump complicate the GOP selection process in arriving at a standard bearer. Will a Hawley/Trump-oriented nominee emerge from the GOP primary in August, and what homage will be paid in the process considering that Hawley seems to be a more glaring liability for Republicans than Trump? As of the Sept. 30 reporting period, five GOP hopefuls have raised nearly $1 million or more each to run that gauntlet. As for the Dems, McCaskill is not running. "Nope. Not gonna happen. Never. I am so happy I feel guilty sometimes," she’s tweeted. Got it? As with the GOP but without the gauntlet, the Dems have a number of announced candidates. Only one, Lucas Kunce, a 14-year Marine vet, has raised more than $1 million. Another, Scott Sifton, a former state legislator, is getting there. If you can’t show me, it doesn’t mean a thing in Missouri. Hit it, US Navy Band’s Country Current. 

Missouri, Show me

10. Louisiana Incumbent Republican John Neely Kennedy is a sanctimonious and unapologetic embarrassment. He was one of six Republican senators who voted to sustain an objection to Arizona's electoral votes presented by Ted Cruz and Rep. Paul Gosar during the counting of electoral votes last January. His recent interrogation of Saule Omarova, Biden’s nominee to serve as Comptroller of the Currency, was hilarious in how inane he chose to be. You have to watch it to believe it, and pay attention to how Omarova managed to hold back her reaction to how bizarre his line of questioning, in which he addressed her as comrade, was. Bring back Senator Joe McCarthy, Joseph Welch and the call for basic decency. Louisiana uses a unique election system, often called the jungle primary, in which all candidates

Louisiana

run in one election regardless of party affiliation. If a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, they win. If not, the top two face off. Louisiana is a deeply red state. Trump won with nearly 60% of the vote. Yet it has a two-term Democratic governor in John Bel Edwards. So there’s hope. Luke Mixon, a political newcomer, has announced he’ll take on Kennedy. At this point, Mixon is the hope. Kennedy is the embarrassment. Louisiana, Louisiana. Your time to wash him away, your time to wash him away. 

And that makes ten.

 #####

2022 is a political dream come true

 

                                                                                                                                              Dec. 21, 2021 

[In the holiday and year end spirit, if you click on the links, a few of them reveal musical treats.]

Democrats, I’m pulling out every cliché, song, and line to inspire you. 

The elections of 2022, less than a year away, provide all the opportunity to take over the Senate with room to spare. 

There are 34 U.S. Senate seats up for election in 2022—14 seats held by Democrats and 20 held by Republicans. More GOP seats than Dem seats at stake. Not a bad starting point. 

I’m going to dispense with the palpable negatives in this one paragraph because I don’t want to dilute the inspirational message below. Sure, President Biden’s favorability of 42% or so is alarmingly low. Inflation is through the roof. The omicron variant has a stranglehold on the markets worldwide. You’d hardly know the economy otherwise is recovering. Covid has run amok again, thanks to omicron and Republican-induced vaccine resistance. The political right knows how to take advantage of big and little lies relentlessly. The Democratic Party can’t hold its own. West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, a Democrat, shows all signs of being smugly content to make Biden’s first term a legislative failure. Historically, the political party of first term presidents gets whooped in the first off-year elections. Four incumbent Democratic Senators - Raphael Warnock in Georgia, Mark Kelly in Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, and Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire - are considered vulnerable in the 2022 elections by many pundits. If they lose, that would eliminate the razor thin and compromised Democratic majority, and leave the Republicans with a four-vote unified majority. That’s plenty to kill the spirit. 

Democratic Party, you cannot let that happen. The American public and the world deserve better, need better, and ultimately must demand better. To rally the masses, I’m pulling out one cliché, song, and line after another. 

Accentuate the positive

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don’t mess with Mr. In-between. 

There are ten states with potential flips to Democrats, according to the Dream Team of Jack Doppelt and his motivational delusions. 

1. Pennsylvania 

Incumbent Republican Pat Toomey is retiring. The Dems have a number of attractive candidates in the offing. The GOP has Dr. Mehmet Oz, frequent guest on Oprah before he started his own show. As an influencer doc, he’s promoted hydroxychloroquine to fight covid and dietary supplements and foods that falsely promise weight loss. The Trump-endorsed candidate withdrew after his estranged wife, accused him of abuse. Biden carried the state in 2020. Oz is polling well and we know celebrities have the name

Wizard

recognition to win. So..we’re off to see the wizard, the woeful wizard who’s Oz, we hear he is a whiz of a wiz if ever a wiz there was, because, because, because, because, because of the woeful things he says. 

2. Wisconsin 

Incumbent Republican Ron Johnson is a doofus of the highest order. In 2016, he was reelected with 50.17% of the vote, so he’s vulnerable. He rejects climate change, says he doesn’t when backed into a corner, also says that scientists who attribute global warming to human activity are "crazy" and that climate change is "bullshit." He touts debunked covid remedies, like mouthwash, and favors a move that would allow the

Duh Duh Ron Ron

Republican-controlled state legislature to take over the administration of Wisconsin elections. Most glaring and pronounced, he sticks with the redrock belief that Trump won Wisconsin and the election. Because the state legislature is GOP-controlled and passes voter suppression bills, Wisconsin is often mischaracterized as a red state. Johnson is the only statewide-elected Republican in Wisconsin. He’s served two terms (beating Russ Feingold both times) and is being coy about if he’ll run again. Someone told me that his name was Ron, duh duh Ron Ron, Duh duh Ron Ron. That’s Crystals clear. At last count, there were more than a dozen Democrats raising money for the race. Count them. See the money trickle away. Dems, keep your eyes on the prize, and remember the only thing the Dems do wrong is stayin’ in the wilderness too long. 

Keep your eyes on the prize

3. North Carolina 

Incumbent Republican Richard Burr is retiring. The Dems appear to have their act together. This week, one of the prospective candidates withdrew, leaving a clear path for Cheri Beasley, a former state Supreme Court Justice. The GOP is divided between two candidates, one supported by Trump. I view the recurring scenario of a Trump candidate vs. an outlier within the GOP as the under-recognized wild card for 2022. How will they avoid a brawl when a mean-spirited puppeteer, who neither forgives nor forgets, is pulling strings and dangling his pride? How will the GOP recover after the primary? Beasley is African American in a state whose population is about ¼ African American. Over the past ten years, by census data, the state’s population grew by 17%; the black population by even more. In 2020, the turnout for Black votes overall was 68%, according to the state’s Board of Elections. That can go up. As it was, nearly 20% of the 2020 vote was African American. In my mind, I'm countin’ Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine? Now can't you just feel the moonshine? 

Countin' Carolina

4. Ohio 

Incumbent Republican Rob Portman is retiring and Trump needs to be heard. Another arena for the under-recognized wild card. Ohio is textbook. A conservative organization, Club for Growth, has been running ads attacking one of the GOP Senate candidates, J.D. Vance, by using footage of him from 2016, when he described himself as a “Never Trump guy” and called Trump an “idiot,” “noxious” and “offensive,” according to Politico. Trump, got that? Club for Growth is running the ad because it’s backing a different conservative. Vance is running as a pro-Trumper, and the ads make Vance look hypocritical. Trouble is for Trump, it makes him look bad too. That is not ok. Trump wants the ad killed. Friction afoot in Ohio. The candidate for the Dems will likely be Tim Ryan, a Congressman who represents a working-class district in northeast Ohio and has been re-elected nine times. Here too, it looks like a Democratic Party, once the primary is over, can be unified and in a position to support a respected lawmaker. Then again, Trump won Ohio in both 2016 and 2020 by 8 points. That’s a lot. However, there’s Sherrod Brown, the other Ohio Senator who’s a Democrat. He was re-elected by 6 points in 2018. I call that a historical draw. Time to drum up some Ohio state fight. Come, on Ohio. Smash Thru to Victory, Dems. We'll cheer you as you go. Our honor defend for we'll fight to the end for old Ohio. 

Ohio fight song

5. Florida 

Incumbent Republican Marco Rubio is a formidable sleeze. GOP Governor Ron DeSantos is igniting the political right and toting Rubio with him. As in 22 other states, the GOP has a trifecta, controlling the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislature, and they know how to use it. In 2016, Rubio announced he wouldn’t run for a second Senate term. He ran for President and dropped out when Trump beat his butt in the primary in Rubio’s home state. Rubio got 27% of the vote. What to do? Change his mind and run for Senate re-election. He won. Rubio and DeSantos are both mentioned as presidential material for 2024. But first, 2022…by two years. Both Rubio and DeSantos are running for re-election at the same time. Who’s to say if potentially divided loyalties, efforts and fundraising will affect the GOP or the Dems more. The punditry is primed to paint the state red. Rubio has sharpened his campaign message to the old and tired, running against Biden and his “Build Back Socialist agenda." Rubio's likely opponent is US Rep. Val Demings, who served as one of the seven managers in the Senate impeachment trial of Trump, though there are about ten other Dems in the hunt. Rubio is targeting Demings…and Biden, as his Facebook page makes clear. 

X A champion of Biden’s Build Back Socialist agenda 

X Called plans to defund the police ‘very thoughtful’ 

X Described a violent riot as a ‘beautiful sight' 

X Supports illegal immigrants voting in our elections 

The Real @ValDemings is too radical for Florida. 

https://floridianpress.com/.../rubio-says-floridians.../ 

Florida, is this really how you roll? Is this is how you do when the world turns ugly, proud to be young, stick to your guns, love who you love? 

This is how we roll

Each of the five races is a statewide, or local, example, and should stand alone, if there’s guiding truth in the overused line commonly attributed to Tip O’ Neill, former Massachusetts Democrat and Speaker of the House, that “all politics is local.” 

If that were the case, there wouldn’t be so much handwringing about Biden, and Rubio wouldn’t be milking it. But of course, it’s not the whole story.

Biden and the Dems need to message much more effectively so that when the clock turns into election year 2022 in a few weeks, each of the Democrats seeking Senatorial office have legs to stand on. 

Biden can start today by deploying some ju jitsu-like moves to turn Trump’s aggressive, out of control, actions against himself and the political right. 

Oh, ho, ho, ho, Biden, time for some kung fu fighting. Bring it as fast as lightning. Trump is saying he’s

Kung fu fighting

vaccinated and boosted so he can take credit for creating the vaccine. Thank him for providing a good example to his resistant followers. If they follow his lead to vaccinate and get boosted, no need for mandates. Bow to your adversary. [Ed. note: As it turned out, that's just what Biden did in his talk, though in an understated way.]

Other underplayed messaging includes:

• Biden’s successes in recalibrating the judiciary to appoint lifetime judges to a federal bench that has become, along with the Supreme Court, the province of the far right. It may yet return some legitimacy to the American judicial system. Biden’s gotten more judicial nominees confirmed through the Senate than any president at this point in his first term in decades. Almost half of the 61 judges he’s nominated to the lower courts have been confirmed, according to Five Thirty Eight. 

• Biden is addressing climate change. It matters. If the Republicans persist in opposing and blocking efforts to save the planet and states from steroidal natural disasters, it needs to be on their heads, in every state where people have experienced the heartbreak and trauma of forest fires, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes. And don’t neglect the families of workers in the coal industry, in Manchin’s West Virginia and in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Illinois and North Dakota, who suffer in the short run from environmental efforts that redirect resources. Direct job training and hirings in higher paying industries where people live have to be front and center and available in 2022. That’s where subsidies should go to build back better. 

• For those clamoring about the debt as a reason to oppose Biden’s Build Back Better proposal, a big leap for mankind would be to reduce military spending. The House and Senate have passed a $768 billion defense bill, awaiting Biden’s signature. It will increase the Pentagon’s budget by $24 billion more than what Biden himself asked Congress for. You can and should reduce the amount to what you requested. Better yet, less. The military budget is out of (your) control. Nobel laureates have called for cuts of 2% a year for the next five years in all military budgets worldwide. It’s not just the deadly drone airstrikes, as the New York Times recently revealed, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and what it’s left in its wake for the Afghan people under Taliban rule, and the purposeful lies justifying the Iraqi War, if that weren’t enough, that leads to the obvious, though ignored, conclusion that the bloated funding is compromising, not ensuring, national security and has been for years. Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes. They send you down to war and when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?" They only answer, "More, more, more." When you announce the reduced budget, be clear that none of the reductions are coming out of funding for bases anywhere within U.S. borders. That's where members of Congress have constituents and where constituents have jobs. And those are just starters. Get crackin.’ 

If only these five statewide Senate wins come to pass, we won’t need no stinkin’ Manchin, and there’s more.

Don't need no stinkin'...

The second installment of five is right here.

#####

The Mississippi abortion case will owe its legacy more to Bush v. Gore and Plessy v. Ferguson than to Roe v. Wade

                                                                                                                                                  Dec. 4, 2021

Listening to the oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case was instructive. It allowed me to have a more nuanced sense of whether the Supreme Court is an entrenched political body that is to be feared, not trusted. 

I have felt that to the core ever since the Bush v. Gore opinion in 2000 that hoisted George Bush into the presidency, deploying the Equal Protection clause to contrive election law reasoning that had never been used before, and has almost never been used as precedent since. The Court shamelessly predicted it wouldn’t. 

I’ve tried to keep from concluding that the Court is a bastion of political conservatism that decides the hottest button issues in ways that purport deviously to be fair. The conservative legal community and the justices who emerge with the “seal of right” from The Federalist Society, which self-describes “as a group of conservatives and libertarians dedicated to reforming the current legal order” now control the legal order. In its 40 years in existence, The Federalist Society pulls the strings behind the processes for choosing lifetime justices, and therefore for the Court itself and for most of the lower courts in the federal system. 

Still, I take no comfort (why would I?) in seeing it all coming since 2000. I continue to resist the obvious conclusion that the right has just taken over the levers of government – law enforcement, the courts, and the presidency under Trump – along with the hearts and minds of 40% of the American public, the unbridled mudslinging and divisive vitriol, and huge swaths of regions in the country, and their state legislatures and governors’ offices. Before I succumb to going into full counter-revolutionary fervor with fist in the air, I keep needing to re-examine what I see right before my eyes. 

Enter Wednesday’s oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi abortion case [you may want to check out the transcripts here]. 

The Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart opened oral arguments with rhetorical guns blazing in defense of the fetus: “Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey haunt our country. They have no basis in the Constitution. They have no home in our history or traditions. They've damaged the democratic process. They've poisoned the law. They've choked off compromise. For 50 years, they've kept this Court at the center of a political battle that it can never resolve. And 50 years on, they stand alone. Nowhere else does this Court recognize a right to end a human life.” 

Seemingly in the way of the fetus are Roe and Casey, which have anchored a woman’s right to an abortion to the Constitution. Together they serve as precedent (or “stare decisis”) for a woman’s liberty and privacy rights to choose how to deal with her pregnancy for about half of its duration. The presumption, if not the rule, is to not overrule precedent, because courts and society come to rely on precedent as they do a law. 

Seemingly in the way of precedent as our societal guardrails is the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which even grade school kids are taught was the ignominious decision to create “separate but equal” schools to segregate blacks from whites. The Court majority then rationalized that the separate systems were ok because the black schools weren’t “a badge of inferiority.” 

As the same grade school kids know, though many may not quite appreciate, it took 58 years for a differently constituted Court, known as the Warren Court, to gingerly and unanimously issue the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 that held “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional. The opinion, after 58 years of stasis, segregation and badges of inferiority well beyond the schools, unleashed a revolution in the U.S. not seen since the Civil War and not seen again until the viciously contested end of the Trump administration. 

The conundrum for a Court that is fair, non-partisan and not rigged by bedrock political allegiances is to find reasoned bases for either invoking precedent or overruling precedent. The conundrum for the rest of us is to discern between honest conservative legal thinking, on the one hand, and political conservatives fashioning clever judicial covers for deeply held political positions on the other hand. 

The Justices are no fools. Chief Justice Roberts was keenly aware of the festering societal perceptions of the Court’s illegitimacy in 2012 when he abandoned the conservative orthodoxy to hold key provisions the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, constitutional. The thinking is he did that to overcome the stench left behind by Bush v. Gore, or simply put, to save the Court. 

Dozens of articles have been published, laying out the case that the Court’s legitimacy is teetering on the brink. [To cite a few, Is the Roberts Court Legitimate? from National Affairs Fall 2021 issue, Chief Justice Roberts’s Health Care Decision Disrobed: The Microfoundations of the Supreme Courts Legitimacy from the American Journal of Political Science in 2015, Chief Justice Roberts and the Legitimacy of the Judiciary from the Center for American Progress in 2020, The Lie About the Supreme Court Everyone Pretends to Believe: Justices love to proclaim their impartiality, all evidence to the contrary from the Atlantic this past September, and Critical Moment for Roe, and the Supreme Court's Legitimacy from The New York Times a few days after the oral arguments.]

Since Bush v. Gore, the Court’s legitimacy as a fair, non-partisan body has been further undercut by a judicial selection process that stripped then-President Obama from the opportunity to appoint Merrick Garland to the Court ostensibly because the vacancy surfaced within a year of the 2016 presidential election, and four years later allowed Barrett, Trump’s last of three Supreme Court picks, to join the Court eight days before election day 2020. Thousands of citizens had already voted in an election Trump would lose. 

There is little doubt that one goal in the right wing’s efforts in the Mississippi case to provide a fetus with a right to life commensurate with a woman’s right to choose an abortion is to do it without the appearance of impropriety. So the oral arguments need to look clean. 

The Mississippi Solicitor General brought up the 7-1 Plessy v. Ferguson decision first when he invoked the case, noting that the lone dissent recognized that the majority in creating “separate but equal” was wrong. 

Justice Barrett brought up Plessy and Brown as a paradigmatic illustration of precedent not being “an inexorable command.” 

Justice Kavanaugh was prepared with a litany of cases of overruled precedent, almost of which were cases in which the decisions reflected progressive advances in society – separate is not equal, the need for one person/one vote, the state’s authority to regulate business during the New Deal, Miranda warnings, defendants’ rights, and same sex marriage. He obviously chose cases in which the minority liberal justices and the public would have to agree that precedent sometimes needs to be overruled. Clever, but risky in that it left open the flank that limiting or ending a woman’s right to abortion is not a progressive advance for society. Then again, it is a monumental advance in a fetus’ right to life. 

The give and take turned to the importance of framing Plessy as a decision that was wrong when it was made in 1896. Both the conservative and the liberal justices seemed comfortable with that. 

It allowed Justice Kavanaugh to invoke a concept of “neutrality.” In effect, admit that the Court decision was always wrong and make it right. Ideal to eliminate Roe as wrong then and now. Justice Breyer seemed to agree that Plessy was wrong when it was decided because it relied on the misguided judgment that “separate but equal” was not “a badge of inferiority.” His thinking seemed to rely on the predicate that Roe and Casey were correct when decided, leaving Mississippi to have to argue what’s changed since to justify overruling it. Fifty years and no scientific breakthroughs, no changes in societal norms or attitudes, as with Plessy and Brown. Almost 60% of Americans consistently say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. 

With the arguments seeming to veer toward a head-on collision of whether societal circumstances need to materially change before the Court should resort to overruling precedent, a lightbulb in Justice Alito’s brain lit up. If that’s right, he queried, what should the Court have done if Plessy were re-argued the year after its decision. Nothing would have changed societally in a year. 

When one of the lawyers for the Jackson Women's Health Organization evaded the set-up, Alito persisted. Were the experiences from 1896 to 1954 needed to realize that Plessy was wrongly decided? 

The lawyer caved and answered that because Plessy was wrong when it was decided it should have been overruled even one year later without the change of any societal circumstances. That answer was a tactical surrender and a potentially critically wrong answer in that it provides just the cover the conservative justices need to appear on the up and up when they overturn Roe and find a fetus to have rights too. The Court is being neutral by letting states (and the people, as they put it) decide among competing rights. 

I sensed as I listened and cringed that Breyer and the lawyers for the Jackson Women's Health Organization fell into a trap because they couldn’t say out loud that Plessy unfortunately was not obviously wrong to the society of the era when it was decided. It would indeed take years and years of Jim Crow, of institutionally enforced “inferiority,” of restrictive covenants, and of colorline breakthroughs before the Warren Court would try to right 58 years, in fact centuries, of wrong. 

As Justice Sotomayor summarized, the Mississippi state legislature knew quite well what it was doing in taking on Roe head on. It noted, what we've all taken judicial notice of. The Supreme Court has three new justices. She asked rhetorically: "Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?" 

Mississippi’s final thoughts in rebuttal before the oral arguments ended were: “Justice Kavanaugh, you had it exactly right when you used the term “scrupulously neutral.” A woman has an interest, as does “the unborn child too whose life is at stake in all of these decisions.” 

He culminated by underscoring lone dissent in Plessy and said: “It took 58 years for this Court to recognize the truth of those realities (that the U.S. should not tolerate any caste systems) in a decision, and that was the greatest decision that this Court ever reached. We're running on 50 years of Roe. It is an egregiously wrong decision that has inflicted tremendous damage on our country and will continue to do so and take enumerable human lives unless and until this Court overrules it.” 

Yes, it has been 50 years since Roe. Yet, there is no indication it was wrong when decided other than in the minds of those whose political and religious indoctrinations tell them it was. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the composition of the Supreme Court and the other federal courts. 

That leaves the courts to be feared, not trusted.

####

Defang the police and disavow the FOP

 

                                                                                                                            Oct. 29, 2021 

                                                                                                                            Updated Nov. 17, 2021

The head of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police turns heads. The current one, John Catanzara, manages to attract attention and frame debates as if no one’s been watching him or his predecessors for years. 

With the sly calculation of a Trump, Catanzara has turned law enforcement’s entrenched structural aggression on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. His banner of choice is freedom. Freedom to not vaccinate against a pandemic that only two weeks ago claimed the life of Dean Angelo, Sr., after succumbing to pneumonia complications from COVID-19, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. 

Angelo had also served as FOP president. Angelo’s tour of service included the period in 2014 when Black teenager Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times and killed by white police officer Jason Van Dyke. 

Freedom for police to not vaccinate when the department has the lowest vaccination response rate by far

of any city department, according to city data (see chart above). 

Catanzara has headed the FOP since May 2020. In only a year and a half, he’s invoked freedom to defend those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and freedom to express frustration that the presidential election was stolen. He told WBEZ the day after the insurrection that there was no violence. What happened was an inconvenience and media hyperbole. “Never for the rest of my life will you ever convince me,” he declared, that that many people voted for Joe Biden. 

Freedom is what is taken away, he said, when people are forced to vaccinate against a virus, just like people in Nazi Germany were told they wouldn’t be hurt by being forced into showers. He apologized for speaking off the cuff and mentioning showers. He has invoked the freedom to apologize for his Jan. 6 observations too, posting a message on the union’s Facebook page. 

Catanzara doesn’t throw around apologies lightly or often. He seems to prefer the comfort of the wiggle room. 

In Jan. 2017, Catanzara wrote on Facebook of Muslims: “Savages they all deserve a bullet.” He’s said he wasn’t referring to Muslims. That fulmination surfaced in Dec. 2020, only months after Chicago’s rank and file police elected him their FOP president. It took only that long for the police department to consider if he should be terminated as a cop for multiple inflammatory social media musings he’d posted over the years. 

Later in 2017, while he was assigned to Hubbard High School on the city's Southwest Side, Catanzara posted a photo of himself on social media, holding an American flag and a sign that read, “I stand for the anthem. I love the American flag. I support my president and the 2nd Amendment.” He was reprimanded for violating department rules that prohibit officers from making political statements while on duty, according to ProPublica, and removed from public view the initial flag post and nearly all posts before then. 

This past February, Catanzara was suspended for a month without pay from the police department for authoring the obscene and inflammatory social media posts, and for filing false police reports. The suspension is an intriguing nuance since his salary as head of the FOP is paid by the union. Catanzara makes $96,060 in base pay as a police officer, according to Block Club Chicago, for which the union reimburses the department since he works for the FOP full-time. In 2018, two years before being elected to head the FOP, Catanzara grossed $115, 686 as an officer.

The head of the FOP speaks for the city’s 12,000 sworn police officers and thousands of retirees. It is particularly scary for Chicago residents that Catanzara was elected in a runoff election with 55% of the police vote. Among his credentials were that over his 25 years on the force, 50 complaints were lodged against him. He was punished for nine, resulting in seven suspensions, according to a 2020 story in Chicago Magazine. 

How we the people and we in the media allow truly malignant public officials to seize political bully pulpits with impunity is a puzzle worth solving. Mainstream journalism can only do so much to muzzle a rabid dog who represents a few thousand constituents wearing uniforms and badges. 

Police unions, at their best, have emerged as "one of the most significant roadblocks to change," 

as The New York Times put it. “The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.” 

With the Fraternal Order of Police as the voice of law enforcement and Catanzara as their mouthpiece, communities are left to fear, not trust, those who are to serve and protect them. 

Maybe one way out is to recognize strategically that the FOP is, after all, a labor union (though it began in 1963 as the United Chicago Police Association, open to management as well as to the rank and file). Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that during the pandemic-drained year of 2020, the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions (the union membership rate) rose modestly from the year before to 10.8%. More than 14 million workers were unionized last year. Within the public sector, the union membership rate was highest in local government (41.7%), which employs many workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as police officers. 

So far this year, the labor movement seems to be experiencing a resurgence. In a story this week, Bloomberg Law depicted today as “a moment with the flavor of 1945” and the specter of strikes by what we now call “essential workers.” The parallels are bottled up grievances (during World War II and during covid) being unleashed, and workers having renewed leverage to strike and demand higher wages. “To recapture that sort of leverage,” the story ventured that “U.S. labor will need a movement that mobilizes enough people to force reforms.” 

It is worth musing on what might meld a labor movement now. Might it isolate public sector workers from private sector workers or in other ways divide workers to go after pieces of the same pies, or might sparks emerge from common goals? Are police unions integral to, or anathema to, a labor movement? 

If the FOP looks like a union, bargains like a union, but squawks like bullies, is it a movement duck? Or is it an antagonist to a resurgent labor movement? 

We might take a page out of the Minnesota playbook. In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder there in May 2020, the affiliated unions of the Minnesota AFL- CIO banded together to call for the immediate resignation of Bob Kroll, the head of Minneapolis’ police union. 

The statement read, with hyperlinks included, “Bob Kroll has a long history of bigoted remarks and complaints of violence made against him. As union President, he antagonizes and disparages members of the Black community. He advocates for military-style police tactics making communities less safe and the police force more deadly. Despite his conduct, Kroll was reelected with an overwhelming majority. If Bob Kroll does not value the lives that he is sworn to protect, then we can only expect more death under his leadership.” 

Sound familiar? 

The statement concluded: “The Labor Movement is rooted in the fight for justice. Bob Kroll’s actions and the ongoing lack of accountability in the Minneapolis Police union are not just. Bob Kroll must resign, and the Minneapolis Police Union must be overhauled. Unions must never be a tool to shield perpetrators from justice.” 

The statement also noted: “The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis is not, nor has it ever been a member of the Minnesota AFL-CIO.” 

Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 is the nation’s largest local FOP chapter, according to In These Times, and not among the 300 affiliated unions member of the Chicago Federation of Labor, the umbrella organization for Chicago and Cook County’s labor unions. 

Injustice Watch, the nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism outlet that does in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality, recently published a well-documented timeline of Chicago FOP presidents’ turbulent relationship with race and police reform. 

Keeping Chicago safe from the vestiges of a virus that calls for communal solidarity also calls for the FOP to become toothless and caged. 

It is up to us, the public and the news media, to defang the police, and it’s up to the labor movement to disavow the FOP.

Update Nov. 17, 2021: 

Catanzara used the police disciplinary case against him to make a public announcement on Nov. 15: 

He is retiring from the police department, continuing as FOP president and planning to run for Chicago Mayor in 2023. 

What that means is since he’ll no longer be a cop, the disciplinary action against him is officially dropped. He can continue as the official voice of the FOP. Though he will no longer receive pay as a cop, he will be paid as head of the FOP and he will receive his police pension. And once he forms a political campaign committee for mayor, Catanzara will reclaim a bully pulpit fueled by fundraising dollars. 

Clever as a Trump. 

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Democrats and the political left face the prospect of checkmates to every move

                                                                                                                                            Nov. 3, 2021 

One year ago to the day, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump for president. 

Fact? Contested fact? Or the national disgrace of a stolen election? 

Ever since then, we’ve not been able to see the political forest for those three trees. The trees block almost everything. Sunlight. Civil discourse. Congressional legislation. Climate change. 

What they don’t block is the political right and the Republican Party from seeing the forest very clearly. They like what they see and they know how to use it. 

The evidence lurks behind the trees. 

The statewide elections Tuesday in Virginia and New Jersey resulted in landslide proportion shifts away, in only one year, from two blue state presidential victories. If it were only one state, the post-election analyses might cling to state-specific issues – a lackluster Democratic gubernatorial candidate and school-related hot button issues in Virginia and covid mandates and property taxes in New Jersey. 

Those issues mattered, of course, but the all-encompassing reality for Democrats and the political left is that they face the prospect of checkmates to every move. 

They stand for stasis. No matter what they touch, they have little to show for it. It goes well beyond the stalemate in Congress over Biden's Build Back Better plan, now tied to a $1.75 trillion framework on spending and climate change (see Fox News' contorted analysis). Not a single Republican will vote for it, but the prevailing message is that the Democrats can’t get it done in the face of resistance from two Senate Democrats. 

The Democrats tout the “unprecedented” victory of issuing subpoenas to Trump’s aides and allies to deepen the investigation into the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol. Then even further, the “unprecedented” contempt of Congress finding against Steve Bannon. Other than paper votes, the Democrats are stalled by legal proceedings before they produce anything that benefits the voting public. Trump himself is the target of innumerable civil cases and threatened criminal prosecutions against him that are also tied up for the foreseeable future in appeals and the painstaking clatter of due process in the hands of a man and entourage who have beating the system down to a fund-raising science. 

The painful irony is that the political right and Republicans don’t need to get anything done. They are the loyal opposition to the uncertainties of progress. The groundwork has been laid for the political right and Republicans to say anything about anything with impunity. For instance, that critical race theory is rife in public schools or that the 2020 Presidential election results are suspect or that paid family leave is a bad idea, if the Democrats are proposing it. Countering the propaganda comes off as defensive. 

Climate change? Prove it and by the way, your proof can’t be trusted. 

Covid vaccines? Your science and data keep changing. Can’t trust that, especially if you’re a parent. 

Presidential elections. If Biden won in 2020, why does almost half the country not trust the results? A poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) finds that that the vast majority of viewers of conservative-leaning cable TV believe Trump's claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him (82% of Fox News, 97% of OANN, Newsmax Viewers Believe Trump's Stolen Election Claim: Poll). As for the future, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds that only 33% of Republicans say they’ll trust the results of the 2024 elections if the candidate they support loses. Even among Independents, only 68% say they’ll trust the results if the candidate they support loses. 

No wonder states with Republican governors and GOP-controlled legislatures can conjure up voting integrity issues from the 2020 elections even though Republicans fared better in those elections than Democrats except for the presidential race. Voter suppression laws are needed to ensure that phantom voter integrity issues seem real.

If you’ve seen The Queen’s Gambit or Searching for Bobby Fisher or any other chess movies, you can appreciate the dramatic epiphany when players can see the whole chessboard and not just the chess pieces in front of them. The political right and Republicans see it. They’re masters. Trump is a grand master. The political left and Democrats, even when they’re allied on issues or legislation, play the game at a rudimentary level. Checkmates appear to be inevitable. 

I saw the frustration if not the inevitability in David Plouffe, Obama’s former campaign strategist, Tues. night on the MSNBC’s election night coverage. “The national environment ended up being really terrible tonight for Democrats,” he said as he seethed, and focused on the ominous swing in white women without college degrees. Exit polls had them going for the GOP candidate by 75 percent, he cited — a nearly 20-point increase from Trump’s share a year ago. He characterized the trend as a “nightmare scenario.” 

A few days before the election, Plouffe tweeted about the political right and the GOP: 

More than 20,000 followers liked it and 4,500 retweeted it. 

Combine his election night appearance and his pre-election tweet, and the checkmate scenarios appear even to the casual observer. 

The Dems try to move the ball. They fumble. The right pounces. Critical race theory, Defund the Police, Black Lives Matter become an assault on America as we know it. 

There are no refs. 

Vaccinations, mandates, masks, remote schooling, and event cancellations to keep neighbors, fans, teachers and classmates safe become an attack on personal freedom and liberty. 

The bedlam at the Capitol on Jan. 6 becomes the persecution of a president whose rightful election victory is an elaborate cover up. Add to it that the drip, drip, drip of prosecutions of cult-driven insurrectionists is soon to become a vendetta by a partisan Justice Department that just won’t let it go. 

Those who are trained in wielding the power of propaganda, big lies and deny, deny, deny counter-offensives don’t surrender in politics any easier than they do in chess when on the cusp of checkmate. 

#####

A prof’s goodbye reflections at retirement

                                                                                                                                        Jack C. Doppelt

                                                                                                                                        Sept. 13, 2021

I have the glorious and lifetime benefit of having Margie as my wife, and Sylvie and Noah, now 30 and 28, in featured roles as our kids. The three of them took it upon themselves, with my files and me as unknowing yet not fully unsuspecting email collaborators to contact clusters of former students and colleagues to have them share recollections of our times together at NU and Medill.  

The notes were heartwarming, tear-inducing and achy. They also reminded me of the opportunities Northwestern and Medill provided me that I could not have gotten had I chosen any other paths. For these last 35+ years, I got to teach at one of the best journalism schools in the U.S. and I was following in the footsteps or the Grinnell College pros who'd inspired me.

Sarah, who’s now a diplomat in Uzbekistan, suggested that I think of retirement as a re-deployment. Re-wirement has also been suggested. I'm going with Sarah, as I treasure the memories my students recounted for me: 

There’s prof the tough guy:

Staci, who'd just entered the grad program as an accelerated master's student, recalled being an AMP depended upon the successful completion of her legal reporting class. She was displeased that I assigned her to the branch courts, which she took to be the bottom-of-the-barrel. She brought up the inequity of her situation as an AMP and I re-assigned her to the criminal courts at 26th and Cal. She got a C on her first story, her first C ever. She complained to her adviser, then Dean Ed Bassett who told her that I was “just trying to toughen her up; that she’d been coddled throughout her NU life. Time now to be a professional.” I was the first person, she wrote, to push her to think outside the box, to focus on the work, not the grade. She received her final grade on her last story in the mail during spring break. It was an A+. My comment: “This story is better than anything I read in the Sun-Times or the Tribune (on this topic). I knew you had it in you.” I’ve been invited to both her kids’ bar mitzvahs.

There’s prof the easy mark: 

Apparently I could get emotional in class. Not very welcome now. Felicia recalled that I told her class that a mentor of mine had died. A couple I knew well had gotten a divorce. My voice broke. I got teary eyed. I had graded the students’ assignments. They’d done fantastic work. I was proud of them. I’d brought the class bagels and orange juice. I needed to celebrate and they were whom I wanted to celebrate with.

Antonia recalled that when I brought up an ethical quandary about whether publishing graphic photos was appropriate, I cried thinking about what happened to the kids in the photo. 

Lynn appreciated that I listened actively, engaged, suggested, acted, accepted, gave, smiled, and loved. As a result, she thought I made people feel heard; feel worthy; feel included and accepted. 

Jenny and Jonah recalled our walks along the lake. 

There’s prof the explorer and collaborator: 

Hannah to whom I refer by her last name, as she does me, recalled that as a sophomore, she was in the first Immigrant Connect class to have an opportunity to travel internationally and report on refugee experiences across the globe. She wrote that the trip was ambitious in every sense; packing bags of camera equipment they’d never used before and traveling to foreign countries with complex international dynamics. They worked at all hours to find sources, figure out transportation in new cities and understand the nuanced resettlement policies of the region. The trips would have been challenging for any seasoned reporter, let alone a class of 20 journalism students who’d only recently learned to write a nutgraf. Instead of focusing on the size of the undertaking, she recalled, my advice was to find the small, universal moments in the storytelling. I wanted to know about the dinner routines of the refugee families they interviewed. In retrospect, she couldn’t believe Doppelt pulled this off. Two years later, she, another student and I traveled together to a refugee camp on the Burmese border of Thailand to cover stories of Karenni refugees. We discovered that our guide moonlighted as a radio DJ for the camp. The guide proudly led us back to his “station headquarters” and presented us with a stash of CDs. We listened to the music together. 

There’s prof the pathfinder: 

Jessica described teaching as putting invisible guard rails in place while allowing students to find their own way. 

Lauren, to whom I refer by a shortened version of her last name, thought of me as wheedling new opportunities for students. I hadn’t known I wheedled. 

Karen, to whom I also refer by her last name, as she does me, took my legal reporting class that was taken out of the curriculum long ago. She started grad school, thinking she wanted to work for someplace "cool" like Rolling Stone and ended up falling in love with legal journalism. She stayed at her first job for years, working under Steven Brill at The American Lawyer. 

I was freshman adviser to Marshall in 2010. He was on the cocky side and lost in a cornucopia of course options. I buckled and allowed him to enroll in a couple of 300-level courses. He dropped a higher-level stats class, but the public opinion class catapulted his life’s work. He used the spare time from stats to volunteer for a Senate campaign. He exemplifies the political geek. Working now for CNN, he’s covered the Russia investigation, Trump’s impeachments, voting rights during the 2020 election, and the fallout from the Capitol insurrection. I’m counting on him to keep our governments honest. He just got engaged, on his knees in shorts in 100 degree heat. 

Cloee appreciated that while remaining invested in sharpening and honing her skills, I saw the dreamer in her and pushed her toward those dreams, starting at Medill with reporting on the mass resistance and resilience at Standing Rock.

Zoe recalled with amazement that at age 19, she sat in living rooms with refugees from the DRC and Yugoslavia, asking them questions about their lives and futures. 

Julie recalled her independent study in 1992 during which she explored 1st Amendment protections for digital publications and the potential for online publications to revolutionize mass media. She went on to become a founding member of Wired magazine's digital team. 

Maudlyne, an immigrant and a refugee long before becoming a student, gushed, thinking of me as a visionary and a changemaker, and viewing "A Social Justice Journalism Approach to Immigrant and Refugee Issues” as pushing boundaries in education and in journalism. 

There’s prof the conscience of journalism: 

Michael cautioned that journalism can be a shady business. Lots of shortcuts available, plenty of opportunities to sacrifice truth for personal gain…Thanks, most of all, for being such an unerring North Star. 

Edie took away that you can do journalism and do good; that you don’t have to be hard-edged and ruthless; that that you can be compassionate and empathetic; and that those traits actually play in favor of doing great journalism. 

Linda recalled me urging students to do social justice reporting before the term even existed, as she put it.

For Ezra, who works for NBC News, social justice has always been the foundation to build upon and the lens to look through.

Lynn thought of me resisting the urge to pool in calm waters where like minds gather. 

Kevin, who now leads media strategy for a nonprofit that focuses in part on asylum and refugee issues, wrote that his lesson was that journalism need not be a dispassionate, disconnected, staid, or corporate endeavor. 

There’s prof the rule bender: 

There were encounters I couldn’t do now, and probably couldn't then. Now we're not supposed to discuss students’ distress. We have experts for that. Reshmi recalled that in 1999, the year of Chicago’s biggest snowfall in 50 years, she came to my office to air how she should handle a potential arranged marriage that she wanted no part of. The guy had flown in from Texas over the weekend, they went to a jazz bar where he smoked, and the date went badly. She used me as a sounding board, and at some point, she had a eureka moment. She would call her dad, who was a doctor, and tell him the guy blew smoke in her face all night. Voila, her dad agreed it wasn't a good match. 

Belinda, to whom I refer by initial, recalled that I allowed grad students to bring drinks to their final exam – real drinks. She took hers while sipping a beer. I think she made that up. She begs to differ.

Kevin filled in one of the many blanks in my memory by recalling me dancing alongside a live band at a Jordanian café during a Refugee Lives trip to Amman. 

Lauren recounted that during the initial year of a short-lived joint program with the law school, I lobbied to bend a fledgling curriculum so she could cover the U.S Supreme Court. 

Carolyn reminded me that the first year of Medill’s global program was apparently in 1996. I visited her in Prague for her residency at Radio Free Europe. I came to her immediately after visiting another student in Madrid, who over dinner had broken up a bar fight between Danes and Germans. Carolyn apparently needed to one up him so as we were riding on a bus, she jumped off, pulling me along so she could go bungee jumping. I told her she couldn’t do it as part of the program. It was just getting started, for bungee sake. She said ok, you’re not my adviser, you’re here as my friend, and she went. We’ve been friends ever since. 

Carolyn bungee jumping (Prague, 1996)

There’s prof the friend and voice for life: 

Lori, who would seek me out when she returned to campus with her dad, her sister, her brother and later her daughter who graduated in 2018, reminding me of the generational perpetuity of a university. 

Students are never too long gone to appreciate praise. When Jenny published her first book, I finished reading it in the car. I couldn't get out until I finished a story, and let her know it was like listening to something really compelling on the radio.  

Virginie recalled how an NU partnership with Sciences Po in Paris resulted in a dinner in a Russian restaurant in Montparnasse with crazy violinists electrifying the venue and later, in me attending the baptism of her daughter. 

Roxana recalled the website, social media, interviews, and rallies on her behalf when she was imprisoned in Iran. 

A number of students recounted that for years, they couldn’t get my voice out of their heads. One wrote that my voice surfaces like Jiminy Cricket’s at various decision points in her journeys. 

As Danielle put it, I was in her head, talking constantly, urging her to slow down, dig a bit deeper, consider the other side, reject the facile argument, honor the profession. It must have been maddening. 

Don’t write off your relationship with students. Max and I hadn’t connected in more than 20 years since graduation. He was at Esquire working on a story that was bananas intense, as he put it, and involved sealed court documents showing up anonymously. We talked it through for hours. 

Lynn, who considered me a game changer in her life, has come to know my family well, and described my enchantment with my family as mesmerizing. She gave me a compliment that only a friend for life would know I’d take as a compliment. She wrote I remind her of Jimmy Carter. 

It can take years for students, as it did for Leezia, to get comfortable transitioning from calling me Prof Doppelt to calling me Jack. I knew we hit the point of full return when she wrote to convey that she’s proud of me. 

Gabi looked to Maya Angelou to advise we all as profs: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

The last words I save for Apoorva who invoked her Buddhist mentor: "Education is to ignite a flame. When teachers burn with a passion for truth, the desire to learn will be ignited in their students’ hearts. When teachers are excited about culture and beauty, the creativity of their students will leap up like a bright flame." 

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