My wife and I have this thing that we say to each other on a particularly tough day for our country.
I might say to her, “Wow. What a tough day.”
Then she’ll say, “A tough week.”
Then I’ll say, “A tough month.”
Then she’ll say “A tough year.”
And we’ll go back and forth like that – because it’s true. It’s a tough few days for our country, but the truth is, it’s been tough for a while now. Of course, each of us have had beautiful moments, and beautiful days, with laughter and joy, but it’s been a tough for a while now.
The United States is the only nation in the world with more guns than people. And as I said last week, second place on that list is not even remotely close. Experts estimate that we have over 350 million guns in circulation and that as many as 100 million of them are literally weapons of war – AR15’s and AK47 assault rifles – designed for fast, mass human carnage.
They don’t require skill. They don’t require licenses. They don’t even require registration in most states. All that you need to be able to slaughter 22 people at Wal Mart is a bunch of bullets – and in this nation – they’re plentiful.
And that’s all it takes – one weapon of war, clips that can hold a hundred bullets, and one person evil enough to walk out into the world to use it.
In El Paso this Saturday morning, the shooting victims range from the age 2 to 82. Babies and elders. Mothers and fathers. Sons and daughters.
The shooter, a white supremacist, drove nearly 700 miles, that’s over 9 hours, so that he could get close to the Mexican border and, in his own words, shoot as many Mexicans as possible. We learned late last night that before he walked into the Wal Mart with his weapon of war, he left everything in his car, and walked into the Wal Mart to see if the store was full of Latinos. It was.
So he walked right back out to his car, got his assault rifle, put on shooting glasses and protective ear covers, and started shooting every single person he saw. 22 have died so far.
And just like that, he committed the deadliest race-based hate-crime in this country since the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. And I need us to understand that we live in that age. We live in the age of the deadliest hate crime in nearly 100 years. Not the 50s or 60s, but 2019.
And in the shooter’s white supremacist manifesto, I counted at least 8 different phrases that were literally cut and pasted directly from Trump’s speeches and tweets – from “fake news” to “send them back” to all the talk of this country being “invaded” by Mexicans – his manifesto was literally just a mashup of Trump-isms.
That’s why Congressman John Lewis was right when he tweeted last night that can and should be laid at the President’s feet.
But right now – the nation feels genuinely helpless. Trump’s in the White House and conservatives control the Senate. They refuse to do a single thing about guns. They refuse to do a single thing about the minimum wage. They refuse to do a single thing about healthcare. They refuse to do a single thing about voter suppression or Russian interference in our elections.
But here’s the thing – WE can do something about this.
We have to.
And yes – a big part of what we can do is defeat Donald Trump, and I think that’s where all of the energy and all of the eyeballs are right now, but I wanna have us put our eyes on the Senate.
If you go now to HowWeFlipTheSenate.com – that’s HowWeFlipTheSenate.com – I am a part of a brilliant team that has started a new campaign to flip the Senate from red to blue, away from conservatives in 2020, because here are the 3 scenarios in front of us:
- The Democrats beat Trump and take back the White House, but Republicans still maintain control of the Senate. And we already know what that means. We say it in 6 years of the Obama administration – that will mean that nothing will get done. Republicans even stole a Supreme Court nomination from Obama.
- Or scenario #2 could be even worse. Trump wins reelection AND maintains control of the Senate. And that is a nightmare scenario that means we’ll see 4 more years of exactly what we have right now.
- But at HowWeFlipTheSenate.com we are proposing a 3rd scenario – where Democrats defeat Trump AND take back the Senate, but doing so is going to be one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. 22 Republican seats are up for grabs and we’ll honestly need to fight in all of them, but we’ll have to win North Carolina and Kansas and Colorado and Louisiana. It’d be great if we also beat Mitch in Kentucky – and we can do it. But we have to fight like our lives depend on it – because they truly do.
I’ve gotta run, but sign up now at HowWeFlipTheSenate.com and let’s get to work!
