Chapter 11 - The Reasoning Behind The Implementation Plan
Elena took a few minutes to reflect on what was said in the call with Caroline. Then she called the Congresswoman to inform her of what was going on. The receptionist said the Congresswoman was busy and would give Elena a call back at the next available free spot in her schedule. Twenty minutes later, Nicole knocked on the door to Elena’s office, reporting that there was a call from the Congresswoman. Elena asked Nicole to put the call through.
After they exchanged greetings, Elena informed the Congresswoman about the job offer from Caroline, which if accepted meant that she’d have to resign from the writing job for the Congresswoman and that they would be need to hire another writer to work with Jackie. Elena was surprised by the Congresswoman’s response. Jackie had already informed her that this was likely and a search was underway for another writer. Because the budget for the Congresswoman’s office was so tight, they’d need Elena’s resignation letter in hand before an offer could actually be extended to a new writer. Elena chuckled when she heard this. She had been prepared for the Congresswoman to be a bit upset about Elena’s departure. As the Congresswoman appeared to be expect it, all the worry was for naught. Elena began to say goodbye but then the Congresswoman interrupted her.
“Elena, I would like to talk about something else, if I may.”
“Sure, that’s okay.”
“The past few days I’ve been bombarded with visits from other members of Congress, mainly from the House, a few from the Senate. They want to know what you are up to and thought I might have a clue. Even though you are currently replacing Caroline while she is on vacation, that the entire staff went public with their real identities made them aware that something was up. Those in Congress want to be on top of things, if they can. I know that this same thing happened for the Congressman when Caroline was running things. In fact, the previous meeting I was in was with him. He recommended that I have a face-to-face meeting with you, though he was less sure about when that should happen. Would you be up for that?”
“That would be great. Let me give you a little bit about the timing part. Once Caroline receives my signed offer letter, she will release a video explaining the consequences from the stress she has been under, the personnel changes as a way to address those issues, and that she and I will remain in regular contact with each other so she can embrace the decisions I make as we move forward. A day or two after her video is released, I want to release another one, this time with me doing the talking. I want to explain what The Minute Women intend to do from here on out and, more importantly, why we’re doing it. This video might be longer than the others we’ve released. I haven’t yet written the text of what I’m going to say. That’s the next thing I need to do. After that video has been released, we probably should wait a few days for the content to be digested. You’ll likely get a lot of visits from members of Congress then. It would help me to get a pulse on their current thinking in light of what I say in my video. That’s what I’d like to talk about in such a meeting. You may have some other stuff to discuss as well. If you can find time then to meet, that would be great. For security reasons, we may have to keep such a meeting secret. I will talk to my guys about it, so they can recommend how we should go about having the meeting. If necessary, it can be a phone call. But I really would like to see you in the flesh.”
“All of that sounds good. I will be in touch in a few days after your video appears.”
* * * * *
Caroline’s video was released just 90 minutes before the Writing Group meeting was to start. Elena had already been scrambling in her plans for that meeting, given the calls with Caroline and the Congresswoman. She didn’t have enough oomph left to make yet other significant changes to what she wanted to talk about. She decided it would be better just to wing it.
When the meeting began they applauded Elena and each Writing Group member gave her a congratulatory hug. She thanked them warmly but then joked that she wasn’t sure congratulations were in order, given how much stress comes with the job. Then she said that Caroline told her the trick was to delegate as much as possible, so the staff bears some of the stress. That was no joke.
Then Jackie asked, somewhat impudently, “Elena, would you mind telling us how much you’re getting paid?”
Elena responded, “Actually Jackie, that’s a good lead in to talk about the compensation for the rest of you. I’m getting $5,000 per week plus full benefits. And I have total discretion as to how I use my time. The only performance target I have to meet is that Caroline has to generally agree with my plans for the organization. I’d want that anyway, so it really is not an additional burden.”
Then Elena continued, “Now let me switch to you. I think the moonlighting concept has outlived its useful life. I’m guessing that each of you has been working well more than 15 hours per week as of late. What’s a more realistic time commitment as we move forward? That’s one thing to consider. The other part is what your pay should be once having upped the time commitment. Caroline and I talked some about wealthy donors going directly to me and possibly directly to you, promising you big bucks in exchange for some influence on the work being done. I want to talk that through. I also want to note that Caroline is quite sympathetic to paying each of you quite a lot more, in part to keep you from being swayed by such advances. We may have to go to a bonus pay system, given the complexity in how many hours per week that you can commit to. It’s something for us to work through. It won’t be resolved at this meeting. But I do want you to know of a work rule that I will be imposing. If you are contacted directly by a high roller, you must report it to me immediately. I will then share the information with the rest of the group. In some cases it may be possible to accommodate the person. But if it will take us off course, we need to be able to say no, even if the person is willing to donate quite a large sum of money.
They went from talking about the money to considering their time allocation and tasking with the new work.
Alice said that after the semester ended she could take a leave of absence. But she needed to finish up teaching her current courses. She also remarked that her students became very enthused to learn that she worked for The Minute Women. She thought she might get a group of volunteers from that class who could be trained as the first set of Liaisons, and that after the semester was over other students from campus would likewise be interested in doing that. Elena thought it a promising way to start going about things. Exploiting the connections they already had made a lot of sense.
Jeffrey thought he might be able to go half time for a while at the State Department, focusing on morning work, leaving him with afternoons and evenings for The Minute Women. Elena explained that she’d like Jeffrey to be an observer at the training sessions, so he could learn what topics and what language got those in attendance charged up and what other topics they might find off putting. Then he could provide feedback about this to Alice so she could modify her approach.
Jackie told the others that she was recruiting to find Elena’s replacement in the Congresswoman’s office. Jackie had a couple of good leads and thought she might land someone within a week. She asked if that person should be brought into the Writing Group after that. Elena responded that Jackie should make the call on that one, perhaps after having the new person get established in the writing for the Congresswoman, so Jackie had good intuitions about the new person as a writing partner.
Then it was Elena’s turn. She said that for the next couple of days she’d focus exclusively on a speech she would like to give via YouTube on the plan for The Minute Woman from here on out and the reasoning behind it. When she had a decent first draft she would share it with the others and hope they could provide comments on it soon after that. The revised version would then be recorded. She said she was feeling antsy about delivering this and might want some of them there in the room with her as she spoke the lines, to calm her down. They all agreed to be there for the recording.
* * * * *
THE INITIAL DRAFT OF ELENA’S SPEECH
Greetings:
As some of you already know, I am Elena Campos, the newly named CEO of The Minute Women. In this respect, I succeed Caroline Mackay, the founder of The Minute Women. Caroline will still be involved, but in the future she will remain more in the background. She and I will confer regularly, so that we’re on the same page and, if necessary, to work through any issues that remain between us.
I want to use this opportunity to discuss our goals, what they are and why they are. Likewise, I want to discuss our action plan for achieving those goals. We are quite ambitious in what we have set out to do, yet I think the goals are within reach.
When Caroline first recruited me, via my co-writer Jackie, the clear emphasis was on restoring Roe, doing this by getting those Supreme Court Justices who were appointed when Donald Trump was President to step down, with this not be some tilting-at-windmills quest. Let me review the basis for these initial goals.
While we seemingly are preoccupied with the Big Lie, the events of January 6 and their aftermath, and with the spillover of this into our national politics, the truth is that Donald Trump committed crimes before he was elected President that impacted his chance of becoming President and he committed crimes during his Presidency, well before January 6. We have written about this extensively in our white papers, where there is ample documentation of this criminal activity.
Donald Trump was enabled in behaving this way by Congressional Republicans, who rather than practice checks and balances, as the Constitution mandates, instead made an opportunistic bargain. If Trump would nominate very conservative candidates to serve on the Supreme Court, as well as other high Federal Courts to which it is the President’s job to offer up the candidates, then those candidates would be approved by the slim Republican majority. In return, Republicans in Congress would look the other way at Trump’s misdeeds.
This conspiracy tainted the entire process. The judicial candidates themselves never seemed to acknowledge this. Further, while Trump may yet be held to account for some of the crimes he has committed, those in Congress who were part of this unseemly bargain never will be held to account, at least not in a court of law. The strongest form of punishment available to impose on them would be meted out at the ballot box.
As I have been thinking about these arguments over the months since I joined The Minute Women, I began to have a different perspective on these issues. As of now it remains unclear whether we will be able to return to normal in a post-Trump America, or if the road to an authoritarian future is where we are headed, one that supplants the democracy we once knew.
My guess is that a vast majority of Americans would much prefer a return to normalcy, yet feel helpless about the country’s move to authoritarianism. What we at The Minute Women are proposing offers a path for the return to normalcy, which if followed would also set a precedent to deter a move to authoritarianism in the future.
Under the present circumstances, the move to authoritarianism is much more likely to come from the Republicans, even if that party finds a different candidate than Trump for the next Presidential election. But further into the future, it could be the Democrats who go astray in this manner. We need effective deterrence both in the very near term and for the indefinite future.
Under the Constitution, the legal way to remove a high government official from office is via impeachment, followed by a Senate trial where the individual is found guilty. It takes two thirds of the Senators to produce a guilty verdict. Recently, the voting in these Senate trials has gone according to party lines, insufficient for a guilty verdict. Knowing this in advance, the vote for impeachment in the House constitutes a symbolic action only, expressing frustration with the situation, but doing nothing real to effect a change.
The Minute Women have as a goal to identify a large enough number of Senators who concur with our goals to make a guilty verdict a credible threat in a trial of a Supreme Court Justice who was nominated by President Trump, as well as in a trial of a Judge appointed to some other high court who was nominated by President Trump. Our target is 70 such Senators, leaving some wiggle room in case one or two get cold feet or experience severe illness or some other emergency situation that keeps them from voting in the Senate trial.
Under current circumstances, such a high target necessitates a cross-party appeal for support. The Minute Women will make such an appeal, but not directly to the Senators. The real power in this situation lies in the hands of the voters. The voters can collectively effect this change, if they so desire. The Minute Women will encourage this outcome through a program of education aimed at voters on the ideas we espouse. But before I describe the elements of that program, let me note one important part of our approach regarding current Members of Congress.
If a Republican member of Congress was clearly an enabler of President Trump, the voters have a right not know why the Member of Congress adopted that enabling position, why the person won’t continue to do that in the future, and why a stated embrace of The Minute Women’s ideas represents a real commitment to deliver on those ideas in the future, rather than merely lip service to placate the voters with no real follow through intended.
It will be the voters themselves who must decide whether the Republican Member of Congress is sincere or not. The Minute Women will not pass judgment on that for public consumption. We will make every attempt possible to remain nonpartisan, outside of the issues that are our focus. The explanation for our nonpartisan stance follows.
While we are idealistic in pursuit of our goals, we recognize that many of the candidates, current Members of Congress, and many voters too, are less idealistic and more calculating. If our efforts generate a sizable number of voters who embrace our principles, enough to sway an election, then the candidate will have incentive to embrace our principles as well. In contrast, if the numbers we generate are meager, the candidate can safely ignore our principles and run a different kind of race. Similarly, a Senator who is not up for reelection but is watching the numbers might commit to our principles well before the next campaign, to make the reelection effort easier. Doing so might make sense if we can mobilize enough voters now We are hopeful that some Senators not up for reelection will embrace our goals, so we can reach our goals sooner.
There then will be a question of how anyone knows the true number of voters who embrace our goals and trusts that the numbers we report are an accurate representation of the situation. This counting function will be an adjunct of our education efforts. We need to remain nonpartisan so that people believe our count to be accurate. We will take other steps as well to ensure the accuracy of the count. I will elaborate on some of these steps later in the presentation.
While our white papers have already reached some voters and Caroline’s readings of the executive summaries from the white papers, recorded into video, have reached many more voters, the numbers so far attained are not nearly enough to matter in elections. These numbers are assessed by reading the comments on our Website and on the videos. It is an imperfect measure, because not every viewer comments. The next step for us is an education campaign aimed at dramatically increasing the numbers and doing so to produce more accurate counting.
We will begin with an effort to train Liaisons, who are then in a position to educate other voters. Those who participate in this education effort may then decide to declare their embrace of The Minute Women’s principles and do so by registering on The Minute Women’s Website. We will refer to those registered as Affiliates. This registration process will include providing the name of the Liaison who led the education activity. The Liaison will independently report on who was present during the activity. We will cross check these reports for accuracy.
Some Liaisons will also be trained so they can teach others who want to become Liaisons. This is how the effort will scale up. Currently we already have an in with college students, so will begin our training of Liaisons with them. We also have another in with those who have left comments on our Website. With the former, we can provide face-to-face training, which we prefer as it tends to be more intensive. With the latter, we will likely have to content ourselves with online training. That can be effective too, especially if there are few participants in a training session, so all can engage actively.
We view these education activities as unlike anything else voters have experienced. For one, they will be opt in. Only those who request to meet with a Liaison will have the opportunity to do so. An individual may make such a request on behalf of himself or herself or on behalf of a small group of friends. If there is a group request, the Liaison will first contact the person making the request, to ensure the request is on the up and up. If the Liaison determines that the person making the request is earnest, then logistics for the group session will be worked out.
In the face-to-face version of the group education activity, we imagine all the participants sitting around a kitchen table where one of the participants live. We don’t want to include others who stand apart and just watch. The duration of the session might be anywhere from a half hour to 90 minutes. The Liaison will offer a follow up session for one and all in attendance, to be held somewhere after one week but before two weeks have transpired since the initial session.
During their training, Liaisons will be taught that potential Affiliates differ in their starting point and how receptive that will be to Minute Women principles. Those who are less receptive, but still willing to listen, need to work through their reservations. In large part, the sessions for them is so they express their own formative thinking. Their reluctance may have been experienced by other members of the group who got past that in some way. Sharing the experience of peers is therefore very important.
It may also be important, however, that the groups not be too heterogenous in their starting points. We would expect that those who are more reluctant will not speak up as much in a highly heterogenous group. With a group of friends, we probably can’t otherwise control this heterogeneity. With a group that is done online, we may have more control via the profile information that participants offer.
Even in the individual case, the education activity is not expecting there to be a flip of a switch in the mindset of the participant. That person will need to mull things over, a lot. The return visit is partly to chart any progress made in the thinking and to address any blockages that have emerged in the meantime. Perhaps still an additional return visit should happen. Maybe by this time some trust has been built between the participant and the Liaison, so their discussions can be candid. Not every participant will end up embracing our principles. We hope that many will. The relationship that develops between the participant and the Liaison is key in making that happen.
And we hope further that some participants will want to become Liaisons. We expect that if a friend is a Liaison or a neighbor is a Liaison, even if they hardly know each other, that will help in making the education activity accessible to the participant. It won’t be seen as the work of outsiders in this case. Our training of the Liaisons will enable them to incorporate some of their local situation into the activity and personalize it some to how they go about things.
What we want to avoid here is a high pressure sales approach. We don’t believe that will be effective at all and indeed might be quite damaging. So Liaisons will have no quotas as to how many Affiliates they create. We understand that the local circumstances can matter a lot in this, so we don’t want to set any quotas. We do expect that Liaisons will write up brief session summaries, so we can understand the focus of the discussion, where there was progress made, and where there remain stumbling points.
This brings me back to an earlier part of the presentation. The Liaison will ask up front if the participant is willing to identify their party affiliation. The participant can provide this information if they want or not, as they see fit. Later in the discussion, the participant will be asked about their concern for America’s direction and whether it is headed to becoming an authoritarian state. We expect there to be near universal concern about that, but we want to hear about it from each participant, to see if our expectations are confirmed.
Regarding the restoration of Roe, we will leave asking about that to the good judgment of the Liaison. Of course, we’d like to know where the participant stands on that. But a question about it might seem off putting and then hamper the rest of the conversation.
Before considering a different aspect of the education session, let me observe the following. As long as the numbers remain low, external groups who are opposed to our efforts probably are best advised to do nothing about us other than to keep monitoring the situation. Aggressive attacks on us might then backfire on them and actually help the numbers to grow. But if such growth seems to be happening of its own accord, then it is reasonable to expect that there will be attacks on us from external groups and it behooves us to anticipate those as best as we can.
One potential source of weakness, given that we are making a cross-party appeal, is that Democratic Affiliates dislike Republican Affiliates and vice versa, a consequence of our politics in recent years that hasn’t yet been rectified. Creating cleavage among the Affiliates along party lines in a way to damage the overall effort seems a strong possibility. So, part of the education activity must address participant attitudes about other Affiliates and aim to create a strong affinity for them, regardless of the party to which they belong, to enable the coalition of such voters to hold. We are still thinking through whether beyond the training sessions we should have group meetings for Affiliates from both parties, so they can talk through these issues. In the meantime, let me give our current thinking on the matter.
Consider a voter who in 2016 voted for Trump as President and possibly did so in 2020 as well, but now has Trump fatigue and wants a way out of that. Does this voter feel at all responsible for what happened when Trump became President? In other words, might the voter feel now that their Trump fatigue should have been anticipated much earlier, as there were many clues out there that bad things might happen with Trump?
Choosing to ignore those clues might have happened because friends and family ignored them, as did messaging in social media and on TV. Then the voter mindset might be termed a follow-the-crowd mentality. Becoming an Affiliate is wanting something else, to see things for oneself and make decisions for oneself. Moving from the earlier point of view to the latter point of view will be a slow and painful evolution of self. It is an act of bravery, to willingly embrace that pain.
Other Affiliates understanding that should feel empathy for this person, regardless of the prior voting behavior. Yet coming to that understanding will itself be slow and painful. We need for the Affiliates to undergo this process early, when the numbers are still modest, so they can move down this path as the numbers grow.
Now let’s turn this around. Those who voted for Clinton in 2016 likely felt frustrated at the time for a variety of reasons, among them that in the popular vote she won by 3 million. But it’s the Electoral College that counts. Another source of frustration is all the lies and double talk, not just by Trump but by other high ranking officials. Consider Senator McConnell talking about President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, on the one hand, in contrast to what he said about President Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. Yet these voters seemingly lacked agency to do anything about their frustration. They may still carry the frustration with them, although The Minute Women have offered a way for them to have agency. Republican Affiliates might then feel empathy for those Affiliates who voted for Clinton.
There is a bit of a paradox here in that the tone I will embrace in all the future videos and the tone we will encourage Liaisons to embrace will be level, as unemotional as possible. Yet we expect our Affiliates and our Liaisons as well to go through something of a catharsis in their experiences with The Minute Women. We believe that much other messaging about politics has stoked the audience; the ensuing anger makes them repress other emotions. We hope that our flat tone will help the audience to let it all out.
This would enable a shared sense of empathy which would, in turn, creates a bond among these voters. It is our hope that such a bond would be strong enough to withstand external attacks. Building this bond will not be easy. But it is absolutely necessary for our effort to succeed. It therefore needs to be part of our education effort.
Yet we should also be aware that if we do succeed then the ambition of Liaisons and Affiliates is likely to grow and that enhanced ambition might very well manifest in adding other goals to the list. Consider each of the following possibilities:
Should we develop a contingency plan for a legislative solution to restore Roe in case the new Supreme Court that is formed as a consequence of our efforts fails in doing that?
Should we consider the impeachment of other Justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for example, whose transgressions may warrant such treatment?
Should we branch into other legislative areas that are likely of common interest?
Our answer to each of these questions must be firm and clear - Not Now!
Let us keep the goals set out fixed until they are reached. If and when that happens a new commissioning might happen, to see if a sizable population of voters wants to achieve some of these other goals as well. Alternatively, it may seem that for the time being the authoritarian threat has been stemmed, in which case we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. This might diminish the will to take on yet other goals.
I do not know which of these is more likely. I only caution to not get ahead of ourselves. The goals we have set are extraordinarily ambitious in themselves. Let’s be content with keeping those as the target until they are reached.
This, I think, gives a reasonable overview of what we intend to do, how we intend to do it, and why this will be our approach. Let me close with one more item.
One member of our Writing Group, Alice, is an excellent teacher. Alice has told me on more than one occasion that the teacher can give a superb explanation on a topic, yet a student who heard the entire explanation nonetheless has questions that need answering to improve the student’s own understanding.
I’m not as good a teacher as Alice, yet I hope this has been a reasonably effective presentation. I’ve asked myself what I should do about the questions you voters have that still remain after viewing this presentation.
Caroline was reluctant to appear on TV news shows. That would have stretched her further, and she was already stretched beyond her capacity to bear it. The last few days, I’ve been feeling a good deal of that stress myself, so I can better understand Caroline’s position. But I have the benefit of our staff now being in the public eye, so the attention is not all on me. And I also know that Caroline has my back.
Therefore, I will try out in a limited way making myself available to TV news, if they want me. I will aim for afternoon shows, as that is where I best think I can reach the audience I’d like to focus on. We’ll see how things go after doing that for a while and perhaps do some fine tuning in such appearances as a consequence.
Thank you for watching this presentation. I hope you will seriously consider becoming an Affiliate or even possibly becoming a Liaison.
After they exchanged greetings, Elena informed the Congresswoman about the job offer from Caroline, which if accepted meant that she’d have to resign from the writing job for the Congresswoman and that they would be need to hire another writer to work with Jackie. Elena was surprised by the Congresswoman’s response. Jackie had already informed her that this was likely and a search was underway for another writer. Because the budget for the Congresswoman’s office was so tight, they’d need Elena’s resignation letter in hand before an offer could actually be extended to a new writer. Elena chuckled when she heard this. She had been prepared for the Congresswoman to be a bit upset about Elena’s departure. As the Congresswoman appeared to be expect it, all the worry was for naught. Elena began to say goodbye but then the Congresswoman interrupted her.
“Elena, I would like to talk about something else, if I may.”
“Sure, that’s okay.”
“The past few days I’ve been bombarded with visits from other members of Congress, mainly from the House, a few from the Senate. They want to know what you are up to and thought I might have a clue. Even though you are currently replacing Caroline while she is on vacation, that the entire staff went public with their real identities made them aware that something was up. Those in Congress want to be on top of things, if they can. I know that this same thing happened for the Congressman when Caroline was running things. In fact, the previous meeting I was in was with him. He recommended that I have a face-to-face meeting with you, though he was less sure about when that should happen. Would you be up for that?”
“That would be great. Let me give you a little bit about the timing part. Once Caroline receives my signed offer letter, she will release a video explaining the consequences from the stress she has been under, the personnel changes as a way to address those issues, and that she and I will remain in regular contact with each other so she can embrace the decisions I make as we move forward. A day or two after her video is released, I want to release another one, this time with me doing the talking. I want to explain what The Minute Women intend to do from here on out and, more importantly, why we’re doing it. This video might be longer than the others we’ve released. I haven’t yet written the text of what I’m going to say. That’s the next thing I need to do. After that video has been released, we probably should wait a few days for the content to be digested. You’ll likely get a lot of visits from members of Congress then. It would help me to get a pulse on their current thinking in light of what I say in my video. That’s what I’d like to talk about in such a meeting. You may have some other stuff to discuss as well. If you can find time then to meet, that would be great. For security reasons, we may have to keep such a meeting secret. I will talk to my guys about it, so they can recommend how we should go about having the meeting. If necessary, it can be a phone call. But I really would like to see you in the flesh.”
“All of that sounds good. I will be in touch in a few days after your video appears.”
* * * * *
Caroline’s video was released just 90 minutes before the Writing Group meeting was to start. Elena had already been scrambling in her plans for that meeting, given the calls with Caroline and the Congresswoman. She didn’t have enough oomph left to make yet other significant changes to what she wanted to talk about. She decided it would be better just to wing it.
When the meeting began they applauded Elena and each Writing Group member gave her a congratulatory hug. She thanked them warmly but then joked that she wasn’t sure congratulations were in order, given how much stress comes with the job. Then she said that Caroline told her the trick was to delegate as much as possible, so the staff bears some of the stress. That was no joke.
Then Jackie asked, somewhat impudently, “Elena, would you mind telling us how much you’re getting paid?”
Elena responded, “Actually Jackie, that’s a good lead in to talk about the compensation for the rest of you. I’m getting $5,000 per week plus full benefits. And I have total discretion as to how I use my time. The only performance target I have to meet is that Caroline has to generally agree with my plans for the organization. I’d want that anyway, so it really is not an additional burden.”
Then Elena continued, “Now let me switch to you. I think the moonlighting concept has outlived its useful life. I’m guessing that each of you has been working well more than 15 hours per week as of late. What’s a more realistic time commitment as we move forward? That’s one thing to consider. The other part is what your pay should be once having upped the time commitment. Caroline and I talked some about wealthy donors going directly to me and possibly directly to you, promising you big bucks in exchange for some influence on the work being done. I want to talk that through. I also want to note that Caroline is quite sympathetic to paying each of you quite a lot more, in part to keep you from being swayed by such advances. We may have to go to a bonus pay system, given the complexity in how many hours per week that you can commit to. It’s something for us to work through. It won’t be resolved at this meeting. But I do want you to know of a work rule that I will be imposing. If you are contacted directly by a high roller, you must report it to me immediately. I will then share the information with the rest of the group. In some cases it may be possible to accommodate the person. But if it will take us off course, we need to be able to say no, even if the person is willing to donate quite a large sum of money.
They went from talking about the money to considering their time allocation and tasking with the new work.
Alice said that after the semester ended she could take a leave of absence. But she needed to finish up teaching her current courses. She also remarked that her students became very enthused to learn that she worked for The Minute Women. She thought she might get a group of volunteers from that class who could be trained as the first set of Liaisons, and that after the semester was over other students from campus would likewise be interested in doing that. Elena thought it a promising way to start going about things. Exploiting the connections they already had made a lot of sense.
Jeffrey thought he might be able to go half time for a while at the State Department, focusing on morning work, leaving him with afternoons and evenings for The Minute Women. Elena explained that she’d like Jeffrey to be an observer at the training sessions, so he could learn what topics and what language got those in attendance charged up and what other topics they might find off putting. Then he could provide feedback about this to Alice so she could modify her approach.
Jackie told the others that she was recruiting to find Elena’s replacement in the Congresswoman’s office. Jackie had a couple of good leads and thought she might land someone within a week. She asked if that person should be brought into the Writing Group after that. Elena responded that Jackie should make the call on that one, perhaps after having the new person get established in the writing for the Congresswoman, so Jackie had good intuitions about the new person as a writing partner.
Then it was Elena’s turn. She said that for the next couple of days she’d focus exclusively on a speech she would like to give via YouTube on the plan for The Minute Woman from here on out and the reasoning behind it. When she had a decent first draft she would share it with the others and hope they could provide comments on it soon after that. The revised version would then be recorded. She said she was feeling antsy about delivering this and might want some of them there in the room with her as she spoke the lines, to calm her down. They all agreed to be there for the recording.
* * * * *
THE INITIAL DRAFT OF ELENA’S SPEECH
Greetings:
As some of you already know, I am Elena Campos, the newly named CEO of The Minute Women. In this respect, I succeed Caroline Mackay, the founder of The Minute Women. Caroline will still be involved, but in the future she will remain more in the background. She and I will confer regularly, so that we’re on the same page and, if necessary, to work through any issues that remain between us.
I want to use this opportunity to discuss our goals, what they are and why they are. Likewise, I want to discuss our action plan for achieving those goals. We are quite ambitious in what we have set out to do, yet I think the goals are within reach.
When Caroline first recruited me, via my co-writer Jackie, the clear emphasis was on restoring Roe, doing this by getting those Supreme Court Justices who were appointed when Donald Trump was President to step down, with this not be some tilting-at-windmills quest. Let me review the basis for these initial goals.
While we seemingly are preoccupied with the Big Lie, the events of January 6 and their aftermath, and with the spillover of this into our national politics, the truth is that Donald Trump committed crimes before he was elected President that impacted his chance of becoming President and he committed crimes during his Presidency, well before January 6. We have written about this extensively in our white papers, where there is ample documentation of this criminal activity.
Donald Trump was enabled in behaving this way by Congressional Republicans, who rather than practice checks and balances, as the Constitution mandates, instead made an opportunistic bargain. If Trump would nominate very conservative candidates to serve on the Supreme Court, as well as other high Federal Courts to which it is the President’s job to offer up the candidates, then those candidates would be approved by the slim Republican majority. In return, Republicans in Congress would look the other way at Trump’s misdeeds.
This conspiracy tainted the entire process. The judicial candidates themselves never seemed to acknowledge this. Further, while Trump may yet be held to account for some of the crimes he has committed, those in Congress who were part of this unseemly bargain never will be held to account, at least not in a court of law. The strongest form of punishment available to impose on them would be meted out at the ballot box.
As I have been thinking about these arguments over the months since I joined The Minute Women, I began to have a different perspective on these issues. As of now it remains unclear whether we will be able to return to normal in a post-Trump America, or if the road to an authoritarian future is where we are headed, one that supplants the democracy we once knew.
My guess is that a vast majority of Americans would much prefer a return to normalcy, yet feel helpless about the country’s move to authoritarianism. What we at The Minute Women are proposing offers a path for the return to normalcy, which if followed would also set a precedent to deter a move to authoritarianism in the future.
Under the present circumstances, the move to authoritarianism is much more likely to come from the Republicans, even if that party finds a different candidate than Trump for the next Presidential election. But further into the future, it could be the Democrats who go astray in this manner. We need effective deterrence both in the very near term and for the indefinite future.
Under the Constitution, the legal way to remove a high government official from office is via impeachment, followed by a Senate trial where the individual is found guilty. It takes two thirds of the Senators to produce a guilty verdict. Recently, the voting in these Senate trials has gone according to party lines, insufficient for a guilty verdict. Knowing this in advance, the vote for impeachment in the House constitutes a symbolic action only, expressing frustration with the situation, but doing nothing real to effect a change.
The Minute Women have as a goal to identify a large enough number of Senators who concur with our goals to make a guilty verdict a credible threat in a trial of a Supreme Court Justice who was nominated by President Trump, as well as in a trial of a Judge appointed to some other high court who was nominated by President Trump. Our target is 70 such Senators, leaving some wiggle room in case one or two get cold feet or experience severe illness or some other emergency situation that keeps them from voting in the Senate trial.
Under current circumstances, such a high target necessitates a cross-party appeal for support. The Minute Women will make such an appeal, but not directly to the Senators. The real power in this situation lies in the hands of the voters. The voters can collectively effect this change, if they so desire. The Minute Women will encourage this outcome through a program of education aimed at voters on the ideas we espouse. But before I describe the elements of that program, let me note one important part of our approach regarding current Members of Congress.
If a Republican member of Congress was clearly an enabler of President Trump, the voters have a right not know why the Member of Congress adopted that enabling position, why the person won’t continue to do that in the future, and why a stated embrace of The Minute Women’s ideas represents a real commitment to deliver on those ideas in the future, rather than merely lip service to placate the voters with no real follow through intended.
It will be the voters themselves who must decide whether the Republican Member of Congress is sincere or not. The Minute Women will not pass judgment on that for public consumption. We will make every attempt possible to remain nonpartisan, outside of the issues that are our focus. The explanation for our nonpartisan stance follows.
While we are idealistic in pursuit of our goals, we recognize that many of the candidates, current Members of Congress, and many voters too, are less idealistic and more calculating. If our efforts generate a sizable number of voters who embrace our principles, enough to sway an election, then the candidate will have incentive to embrace our principles as well. In contrast, if the numbers we generate are meager, the candidate can safely ignore our principles and run a different kind of race. Similarly, a Senator who is not up for reelection but is watching the numbers might commit to our principles well before the next campaign, to make the reelection effort easier. Doing so might make sense if we can mobilize enough voters now We are hopeful that some Senators not up for reelection will embrace our goals, so we can reach our goals sooner.
There then will be a question of how anyone knows the true number of voters who embrace our goals and trusts that the numbers we report are an accurate representation of the situation. This counting function will be an adjunct of our education efforts. We need to remain nonpartisan so that people believe our count to be accurate. We will take other steps as well to ensure the accuracy of the count. I will elaborate on some of these steps later in the presentation.
While our white papers have already reached some voters and Caroline’s readings of the executive summaries from the white papers, recorded into video, have reached many more voters, the numbers so far attained are not nearly enough to matter in elections. These numbers are assessed by reading the comments on our Website and on the videos. It is an imperfect measure, because not every viewer comments. The next step for us is an education campaign aimed at dramatically increasing the numbers and doing so to produce more accurate counting.
We will begin with an effort to train Liaisons, who are then in a position to educate other voters. Those who participate in this education effort may then decide to declare their embrace of The Minute Women’s principles and do so by registering on The Minute Women’s Website. We will refer to those registered as Affiliates. This registration process will include providing the name of the Liaison who led the education activity. The Liaison will independently report on who was present during the activity. We will cross check these reports for accuracy.
Some Liaisons will also be trained so they can teach others who want to become Liaisons. This is how the effort will scale up. Currently we already have an in with college students, so will begin our training of Liaisons with them. We also have another in with those who have left comments on our Website. With the former, we can provide face-to-face training, which we prefer as it tends to be more intensive. With the latter, we will likely have to content ourselves with online training. That can be effective too, especially if there are few participants in a training session, so all can engage actively.
We view these education activities as unlike anything else voters have experienced. For one, they will be opt in. Only those who request to meet with a Liaison will have the opportunity to do so. An individual may make such a request on behalf of himself or herself or on behalf of a small group of friends. If there is a group request, the Liaison will first contact the person making the request, to ensure the request is on the up and up. If the Liaison determines that the person making the request is earnest, then logistics for the group session will be worked out.
In the face-to-face version of the group education activity, we imagine all the participants sitting around a kitchen table where one of the participants live. We don’t want to include others who stand apart and just watch. The duration of the session might be anywhere from a half hour to 90 minutes. The Liaison will offer a follow up session for one and all in attendance, to be held somewhere after one week but before two weeks have transpired since the initial session.
During their training, Liaisons will be taught that potential Affiliates differ in their starting point and how receptive that will be to Minute Women principles. Those who are less receptive, but still willing to listen, need to work through their reservations. In large part, the sessions for them is so they express their own formative thinking. Their reluctance may have been experienced by other members of the group who got past that in some way. Sharing the experience of peers is therefore very important.
It may also be important, however, that the groups not be too heterogenous in their starting points. We would expect that those who are more reluctant will not speak up as much in a highly heterogenous group. With a group of friends, we probably can’t otherwise control this heterogeneity. With a group that is done online, we may have more control via the profile information that participants offer.
Even in the individual case, the education activity is not expecting there to be a flip of a switch in the mindset of the participant. That person will need to mull things over, a lot. The return visit is partly to chart any progress made in the thinking and to address any blockages that have emerged in the meantime. Perhaps still an additional return visit should happen. Maybe by this time some trust has been built between the participant and the Liaison, so their discussions can be candid. Not every participant will end up embracing our principles. We hope that many will. The relationship that develops between the participant and the Liaison is key in making that happen.
And we hope further that some participants will want to become Liaisons. We expect that if a friend is a Liaison or a neighbor is a Liaison, even if they hardly know each other, that will help in making the education activity accessible to the participant. It won’t be seen as the work of outsiders in this case. Our training of the Liaisons will enable them to incorporate some of their local situation into the activity and personalize it some to how they go about things.
What we want to avoid here is a high pressure sales approach. We don’t believe that will be effective at all and indeed might be quite damaging. So Liaisons will have no quotas as to how many Affiliates they create. We understand that the local circumstances can matter a lot in this, so we don’t want to set any quotas. We do expect that Liaisons will write up brief session summaries, so we can understand the focus of the discussion, where there was progress made, and where there remain stumbling points.
This brings me back to an earlier part of the presentation. The Liaison will ask up front if the participant is willing to identify their party affiliation. The participant can provide this information if they want or not, as they see fit. Later in the discussion, the participant will be asked about their concern for America’s direction and whether it is headed to becoming an authoritarian state. We expect there to be near universal concern about that, but we want to hear about it from each participant, to see if our expectations are confirmed.
Regarding the restoration of Roe, we will leave asking about that to the good judgment of the Liaison. Of course, we’d like to know where the participant stands on that. But a question about it might seem off putting and then hamper the rest of the conversation.
Before considering a different aspect of the education session, let me observe the following. As long as the numbers remain low, external groups who are opposed to our efforts probably are best advised to do nothing about us other than to keep monitoring the situation. Aggressive attacks on us might then backfire on them and actually help the numbers to grow. But if such growth seems to be happening of its own accord, then it is reasonable to expect that there will be attacks on us from external groups and it behooves us to anticipate those as best as we can.
One potential source of weakness, given that we are making a cross-party appeal, is that Democratic Affiliates dislike Republican Affiliates and vice versa, a consequence of our politics in recent years that hasn’t yet been rectified. Creating cleavage among the Affiliates along party lines in a way to damage the overall effort seems a strong possibility. So, part of the education activity must address participant attitudes about other Affiliates and aim to create a strong affinity for them, regardless of the party to which they belong, to enable the coalition of such voters to hold. We are still thinking through whether beyond the training sessions we should have group meetings for Affiliates from both parties, so they can talk through these issues. In the meantime, let me give our current thinking on the matter.
Consider a voter who in 2016 voted for Trump as President and possibly did so in 2020 as well, but now has Trump fatigue and wants a way out of that. Does this voter feel at all responsible for what happened when Trump became President? In other words, might the voter feel now that their Trump fatigue should have been anticipated much earlier, as there were many clues out there that bad things might happen with Trump?
Choosing to ignore those clues might have happened because friends and family ignored them, as did messaging in social media and on TV. Then the voter mindset might be termed a follow-the-crowd mentality. Becoming an Affiliate is wanting something else, to see things for oneself and make decisions for oneself. Moving from the earlier point of view to the latter point of view will be a slow and painful evolution of self. It is an act of bravery, to willingly embrace that pain.
Other Affiliates understanding that should feel empathy for this person, regardless of the prior voting behavior. Yet coming to that understanding will itself be slow and painful. We need for the Affiliates to undergo this process early, when the numbers are still modest, so they can move down this path as the numbers grow.
Now let’s turn this around. Those who voted for Clinton in 2016 likely felt frustrated at the time for a variety of reasons, among them that in the popular vote she won by 3 million. But it’s the Electoral College that counts. Another source of frustration is all the lies and double talk, not just by Trump but by other high ranking officials. Consider Senator McConnell talking about President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, on the one hand, in contrast to what he said about President Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. Yet these voters seemingly lacked agency to do anything about their frustration. They may still carry the frustration with them, although The Minute Women have offered a way for them to have agency. Republican Affiliates might then feel empathy for those Affiliates who voted for Clinton.
There is a bit of a paradox here in that the tone I will embrace in all the future videos and the tone we will encourage Liaisons to embrace will be level, as unemotional as possible. Yet we expect our Affiliates and our Liaisons as well to go through something of a catharsis in their experiences with The Minute Women. We believe that much other messaging about politics has stoked the audience; the ensuing anger makes them repress other emotions. We hope that our flat tone will help the audience to let it all out.
This would enable a shared sense of empathy which would, in turn, creates a bond among these voters. It is our hope that such a bond would be strong enough to withstand external attacks. Building this bond will not be easy. But it is absolutely necessary for our effort to succeed. It therefore needs to be part of our education effort.
Yet we should also be aware that if we do succeed then the ambition of Liaisons and Affiliates is likely to grow and that enhanced ambition might very well manifest in adding other goals to the list. Consider each of the following possibilities:
Should we develop a contingency plan for a legislative solution to restore Roe in case the new Supreme Court that is formed as a consequence of our efforts fails in doing that?
Should we consider the impeachment of other Justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito for example, whose transgressions may warrant such treatment?
Should we branch into other legislative areas that are likely of common interest?
Our answer to each of these questions must be firm and clear - Not Now!
Let us keep the goals set out fixed until they are reached. If and when that happens a new commissioning might happen, to see if a sizable population of voters wants to achieve some of these other goals as well. Alternatively, it may seem that for the time being the authoritarian threat has been stemmed, in which case we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief. This might diminish the will to take on yet other goals.
I do not know which of these is more likely. I only caution to not get ahead of ourselves. The goals we have set are extraordinarily ambitious in themselves. Let’s be content with keeping those as the target until they are reached.
This, I think, gives a reasonable overview of what we intend to do, how we intend to do it, and why this will be our approach. Let me close with one more item.
One member of our Writing Group, Alice, is an excellent teacher. Alice has told me on more than one occasion that the teacher can give a superb explanation on a topic, yet a student who heard the entire explanation nonetheless has questions that need answering to improve the student’s own understanding.
I’m not as good a teacher as Alice, yet I hope this has been a reasonably effective presentation. I’ve asked myself what I should do about the questions you voters have that still remain after viewing this presentation.
Caroline was reluctant to appear on TV news shows. That would have stretched her further, and she was already stretched beyond her capacity to bear it. The last few days, I’ve been feeling a good deal of that stress myself, so I can better understand Caroline’s position. But I have the benefit of our staff now being in the public eye, so the attention is not all on me. And I also know that Caroline has my back.
Therefore, I will try out in a limited way making myself available to TV news, if they want me. I will aim for afternoon shows, as that is where I best think I can reach the audience I’d like to focus on. We’ll see how things go after doing that for a while and perhaps do some fine tuning in such appearances as a consequence.
Thank you for watching this presentation. I hope you will seriously consider becoming an Affiliate or even possibly becoming a Liaison.
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