Why you should still vote for Democrats
Honestly, they're pretty much all we've got
Sree’s newsletter is produced with Zach Peterson (@zachprague). Tweet by Adam Parkhomenko.
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“VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO” has become pejorative in liberal circles, and I get it. Mass shootings, police violence, the rise of right-wing militias, Covid ignorance — the list goes on and on and on.
We got Joe Biden elected, gave Democrats a (slim) majority in the House and Senate, and we got bigger police budgets and a completely off-the-rails-Supreme-Court. The Biden administration, and Democrats more widely, seemed woefully unprepared for the cascade of society-changing decisions from the high court — this is especially egregious given that the Roe decision was leaked weeks before the official decision was released.
I will still support Democrats at every level of government in every foreseeable election, and you should too.
It sounds terrible — and it is — but, there is simply no other choice. Right now, we are caught in a two-party death spiral, and we have to accept the situation as it is now, for the 2022 midterms and most major elections over the next couple of cycles at least. Perhaps a third-party candidate can win here and there, but, especially at the federal level, it’s Democrats and Republicans and that’s it. We simply have to keep electing Democrats.
The problems here are myriad, but it all stems from one fundamental issue. We have one party that is extremist in every terrible way. The Republican Party is a party for rich, religious white people (and for poor, religious white people who think they have a shot at becoming rich). Every other voter has nowhere to turn but to the Democratic Party, which then has to try to wrangle every other constituency.
It’s an impossible proposition, and there’s going to be more in-fighting within a party with a larger, more diverse voter block than in a party with one demographic. The results are not good. Democrats seem to be horse-trading away simple wins, and communicating poorly across the board, because they are doing those things. They have to (or, feel like they have to), to get buy-in from their own caucus. Joe Manchin and AOC are in the same party — Republicans have an ideological spread that goes from Ted Cruz to Jim Jordan. It’s just not the same, and we’re all paying for it.
The one thing we can all do right now is elect more Democrats. Republicans have as little institutional power as they’ve had in politics in years, and look what they are capable of. If they come to control the levers of power again, I’m not sure the next January 6th isn’t a bit more successful than the last.
It all starts with the Supreme Court.
Where to even begin? Republicans have trotted out “judicial activism” as a slur to describe liberal judges for decades. As they were doing this, they ran a remarkably well-funded judicial activism-based coup that has done more to re-shape American society (and the administrative state itself) in the last month than any Congress has done in the last two decades.
The Guttmacher Institute has everything you need to know about the Roe decision. It is very much within the purview of Congress to codify the right to an abortion, and it should have happened 100 years ago. It can happen next week, if we make it happen.
The court also continued its tradition of chipping away at the administrative state with its decision on the EPA’s power to regulate emissions. This is a huge blow against any sort of clean power future in America — this, at a time when the country needs to have embraced clean energy a decade ago. We are killing the Earth before our children and grandchildren even have the chance to see it, and the court is taking away the power of the government to do anything about it.
Next up for the court will be making any marriage a crime that isn’t between a man and a woman. Stone Age anti-sodomy laws are likely to return, and a trove of other erosions of liberty. People need to vote (they really do, en masse), and they need to do it soon, because the court is coming for voting rights.
There are things Congress can do right now. Jamelle Bouie lays it out expertly.
For decades, Republicans have held their collective noses to put any Republican they can get into office. Democrats are not good at doing this, and we’re paying the price. Amazingly, after the fallout from the Roe decision, the White House comms director gave this quote to the Washington Post:
Joe Biden’s goal in responding to Dobbs is not to satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. It’s to deliver help to women who are in danger and assemble a broad-based coalition to defend a woman’s right to choose now, just as he assembled such a coalition to win during the 2020 campaign
Attacking the liberal wing of the party is a novel approach, that’s for sure.
- Sree
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A word from Armory Square Ventures
Business journalist Elizabeth MacBride recently interviewed ASV Partner and Co-founder Pia Sawhney about venture capital in under-ventured regions and the genesis of Armory Square Ventures.
See that piece in Forbes and at the original video interview she conducted with Pia for Times of E, a journalism initiative sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and MIT’s Legatum Center for Entrepreneurship & Development.
Elizabeth has been tracking American small business owners for some time and co-authored a book on the topic titled The New Builders with venture capitalist Seth Levine, Co-founder of Foundry Group.
This week we draw your attention to a column Seth recently published titled "Take Your IRR With A Grain of Salt." He calls attention to how VC firms track their returns, suggesting the process is more nebulous as it currently stands than many realize. We encourage you to take a look.
Tech Tip w/ @newyorkbob: Withings ScanWatch Horizon is a Sleek, Health-Conscious Companion
By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.
There was a time—before the age of smartphones—when the hallmark of a true geek was a Casio Databank electronic wristwatch, complete with a monochrome LCD screen and a tiny keypad. Thankfully, today’s smartwatches are sleeker-looking and offer features far more useful than a four-function calculator.
The Withings ScanWatch Horizon “health hybrid smartwatch” succeeds at masquerading as a mild-mannered analog diving watch, but offers sophisticated health and wellness features like a blood oxygen sensor and a medically validated electrocardiogram sensor which can detect atrial fibrillation.
In addition to its analog clock hands, the face of the $500 unit features a small, circular electronic readout at the top which can show the time and date as well as text messages and other notifications and a small “subdial” for tracking the progress of users’ workouts—like swimming, running or swimming—against their goals.
Despite its sophistication, including three sensors on its back, the ScanWatch Horizon is easy to use. A single rotating control pushbutton and the free Withings Health Mate mobile app manage all features. The clock hands automatically glide out of the way if they happen to be blocking the electronic display when a notification or alert comes in.
Most functions such as the ScanWatch Horizon’s step counter, distance tracker, heart rate monitor and blood oxygen monitor work easily and need little configuration from the user. However, its electrocardiogram sensor may require a prescription before users can get data out of it, depending on which state they live in. The app provides a short questionnaire which can automatically send ECG data to medical professionals for analysis before a free prescription can be issued within a day or two, according to Withings.
The water-resistant unit has a GPS receiver and an altimeter, comes with both dress metal and casual synthetic rubber wristbands and has a battery rated to last 30 days on a single charge. While the unit’s single ECG sensor is medically approved, Withings is careful not to equate it to the multi-sensor devices in doctors’ offices and warns that it can’t detect heart attacks or other medical issues.
The modest-looking ScanWatch Horizon doesn’t look like a fitness or health device and lacks a color display, but that’s the point: It’s designed as a quiet, reliable everyday companion meant to inform, not shout or entertain.
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