The Toughest Election Call Ever

Close presidential elections are no longer the exception in the United States. They're the norm. Since 2000, there's only been one that was won by more than five percent (Barack Obama in 2008) and five of the seven elections (including this year's) were declared "too close to call" by the pollsters and pundits. Twice, we've seen the popular vote and electoral vote split, which had not happened since 1888 and was considered unthinkable in modern times, until Bush vs. Gore in 2000. And it could happen again this year.

Politically, our country is split right down the middle—but ideologically, it's not. Most Americans actually share the same views on many major policy questions. Surveys of public sentiment consistently show supermajority support for abortion rights, gun control, LGBTQ rights, improving police accountability, preserving democracy, lowering taxes, reducing the flow of drugs into the country, and so on. Voters overwhelmingly prefer the policies put forth by the Democratic Party and its candidates—yet many, sometimes more than half, vote for Republican candidates who disagree with them. That's because our politicians—not our voters—are split ideologically. Extremist politicians and the partisan media figures who support them demonize their opponents to such an extent that half the electorate is taught to hate and mock one side while the rest vilify the other. I suspect many voters would be surprised to learn how much common ground they share with the "other" side. Instead, they stew in a toxic soup of vitriol, misinformation and, increasingly and alarmingly, political violence. This is how we find ourselves with almost half the electorate supporting a man who's a convicted felon, admitted sexual predator and proven liar (many times over) for president, while the other half recoils in incredulous shock and horror.

The consensus on issues is one of the reasons it's so difficult for a Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote. In the last 36 years it's only been done once, by George W. Bush in 2004 (and then, by a bare two percent). It doesn't seem likely this year, either. Of ten final polls by major firms, only one shows Donald Trump in the lead, by two points. Four of the other nine declare the race a flat-footed tie. The other five give the edge to Kamala Harris, by between one and four points. 

So who's going to win? (That's why you're here, right?)

I have never had a harder time answering that question, and I've been asked it a lot in recent days. I've been predicting election outcomes for almost 50 years and I've rarely gone back and forth as much as I have on this one. This has been an election unlike any in our history. The Democrats swapped out their candidate just before their nominating convention. The Republicans nominated a former president who tried to prevent his successor from taking office. The Democrats nominated a woman who's half Black, half Indian American. The Republicans nominated a man with 34 felony convictions and three more criminal cases pending against him. The Democrats nominated a Californian! The Republican candidate survived one very close call assassination attempt, and another thwarted one.

None of those things has ever happened before, and they complicate prognostication. Donald Trump's presence on a ballot confounds pundits, as does that of the first woman of color. Is there still a hidden reservoir of Trumpism, undetectable by modern polling even after eight years of tweaks? Or did the pollsters overcorrect after 2020, resulting in their underestimation of Democratic support in 2022 and '23? The narrow bunching of this year's polls suggests the race is indeed thisclose. The polling averages aren't as much help as some think, since they're inherently flawed, and have an uneven track record. Last time around, the Real Clear Politics average was off by almost three percent, and the 538 one missed by four. At this writing, RCP has Harris up by a mere 0.1%, while 538 has her ahead by a whopping 1.2% (ooh, a landslide!). 

So how can we know what will happen? We can't, of course. We will have to wait for the voters to have their say and the ballots to be counted. But I'm ready to make my best informed guess. I've been engaging in this exercise since the 1970s, predicting the Democratic and Republican nominees before the first primaries and caucuses, and then picking the winner on Election Eve in November, relying on a completely subjective mix of data analysis and gut feelings. I've never been wrong about the GOP nominee, going 13 for 13, despite going out on some significant limbs. When everyone thought Bob Dole would be the nominee in 1988, I went with George Bush. People thought I was crazy when I tabbed John McCain in 2008 when the punditocracy had already anointed Rudy Giuliani. I seemed even nuttier when I declared in 2016 that Donald Trump, not Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, would win the Republican nomination. I have missed a couple of times on the Democratic side. I boldly, and correctly, went with Michael Dukakis in 1988 when the conventional wisdom was on Dick Gephardt's side. But I stuck with Screamin' Howard Dean in 2004, when John Kerry came all the way back from an asterisk in the polls to capture the nomination. And I blew it in 2008, believing that Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, would be that year's Democratic nominee.

In the main event, I'm only 9 for 12 (75% ain't bad, but my aggregate accuracy rate of 87% for all my predictions is better). In 2020, I was only off by one electoral vote in my correct prediction that Joe Biden would beat Trump, and I was much closer than all the polling averages, and most major pollsters, on the popular vote. But I do have a blind spot: picking close elections when the Republican wins. The three elections I've gotten wrong were 2000, 2004 and 2016, all historically close races won narrowly by the GOP nominee. I deserve partial credit for 2000, when I sensed the weirdness in the air and predicted a popular/electoral split, something I'd never done before. I just got it backwards. 

So my confidence in picking this one is not exactly rock solid. It is certainly possible that Trump's support is being under-measured by the polls again, and even if it isn't, that an Election Day surge of enthusiastic MAGA bros, coupled with a historically huge early Republican vote and just enough erosion of Latino and Black votes for the Democrats, carries Trump to a sweep of the seven swing states and returns him to the presidency. His edge among less educated white men trumps the Harris advantage among women, and anxiety over the economy sways the voters who decide they just don't know or trust Harris enough to let her make history. If that happens—and it could—Trump could even win the popular vote, although I really don't think he will. But he could turn enough states red again to win what amounts to an Electoral College landslide in these polarized times, with 325 electoral votes.

But that's not what I sense happening. Kamala Harris injected extraordinary energy into the Democratic base, and she's sustained it through most of her truncated sprint to November. There is an extremely high level of engagement among women, in particular. The polling data shows a senior surge among older women, and even men. She's focused her final weeks on the trail on courting Latino and Black voters, especially men, to bring enough of them back into the fold to put her over the top. Even where Republicans have returned more ballots early than Democrats, women have a 10-12 point edge, suggesting many of those GOP women are actually voting for Harris (whether they're keeping it a secret from their husbands or not!). There's a small number of progressives who simply will not vote for her out of principled opposition to the administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza, and that could make a nominal difference in Michigan, but I think it's offset by the similar number of never-Trumper Haley Republicans who will either sit this one out or defect to Harris. While abortion is no longer the white hot issue it was in '22 and '23, it's still a motivating one for many, many women, and measures protecting abortion rights are on the ballot in ten states, including the battleground states Arizona and Nevada. I think there are enough Americans who are tired of Trump and simply can't stomach his shenanigans for four more years. We've seen that on the campaign trail in the election's closing days, too. Trump drew smaller and smaller crowds as he stumped desperately across North Carolina. There are clear signs of panic from his campaign: playing all-out defense in the must-win Tar Heel State, ground game surrogate Charlie Kirk literally begging men to vote on X, Elon Musk bribing voters with a possibly illegal (and fraudulent) million-dollar "lottery." The wind seems to have finally sagged out of Trump's sails.

Kamala Harris made the jump from San Francisco District Attorney to California Attorney General in 2010 by winning a close election over a very conservative Republican opponent, Steve Cooley. She won that race by fewer than 75,000 votes, shattering the 162-year hold that white men had on that job. If she'd been a white man, it wouldn't have been close. Then she became the state's first Black (and Asian) U.S. Senator, and the first woman vice president. At every turn, she's had to overcome both racism and sexism to win elections, with those prejudices turning what should be cakewalks into nail-biters. She's about to do it again. 

Here's the bottom line: Kamala Harris wins the popular vote, the electoral vote, and makes history as our first woman president, as well as the first California Democrat to win the White House. My official prediction:

POPULAR VOTE:

Kamala Harris  50.4%

Donald Trump  47.1%

That popular vote margin will carry her to close victories in her must-win Blue Wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. She'll hold closely contested New Hampshire, Virginia, New Mexico and Minnesota, and pick up one critical electoral vote from Nebraska's 2nd District (Nebraska and Maine each award one EV per Congressional district, and two to the statewide winner, and that system has never been more important than in this election). I do believe Trump is going to wrest Arizona from the Democrats. And Nevada is just oh-so-tough to call. But the abortion ballot measure there may draw just enough women, and independents, who make up an increasingly large share of the state's electorate, to squeak Harris over the top. 

The only remaining wild cards are North Carolina and Georgia. Those two are really tough to call this time. Every four years I predict the Democrats will finally win the Tar Heel State, and the Republicans hang onto it by their fingernails. This time, the liability of unelectable Mark Robinson as the GOP candidate for governor drags Trump down, and the surge of Black women voters turns the state blue. And if Harris can do that in Carolina, I think she will in Georgia too.

That would give Harris six of the seven battleground states, which frankly may be too many. Nevada and/or Georgia could swing the other way. 

But that's my call, so here we go:

ELECTORAL VOTE:

Kamala Harris  308

Donald Trump  230

A solidly respectable margin of victory for Harris, improving slightly on what Joe Biden got four years ago, and a lot more comfortable spread than the polls suggest.

I could easily be wrong. About all of it. Trump could win Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. 2024 could end up looking just like 2012. Harris could lose Nevada and Georgia and wind up below 300, but still with enough to win.

Don't bet any substantial sums of money based on my midnight analysis (yes, I've stayed up way too late finishing this). But there ya have it. 

I also predict that Congressional control will flip: the Republicans will reclaim the Senate but thanks in part to that large turnout for Harris, the Democrats will retake the House, which will mean more history: the first Black Speaker of the House, Hakeem Jeffries.

Tune in Tuesday night (and Wednesday, and Thursday...) to KCBS Radio when we will bring you all the returns and dissect them and figure out how and where I went wrong.

Your Super Bowl Par-Tay Playlist

This will drive a small but vocal segment of America inexplicably mad, but as a public service, we hereby present a playlist for your Super Bowl party—or in our case, our Super Bowl Par-Tay-Tay. With almost 300 songs to her credit, Taylor Swift has certainly written one to fit most any situation that arises in the game. So here ya go: whatever happens on the field, here's a song to cue up to meet the moment:

(As lifelong Green Bay Packers fans and shareholders, this would be a lot easier if Jordan Love had led our Pack to the Big Game. We'd just play "Love Story" over and over again. Sadly, that track is glaringly absent from this suggested soundtrack.)

Your team falls behind early? Shake It Off

Game is scoreless? Blank Space

Fight on the field? Bad Blood

Fumble? Mine

Intercept the ball? You Belong With Me

Unsportsmanlike conduct?  Look What You Made Me Do

Coach goes ballistic over a bad call? You Need To Calm Down 

QB doesn't see a wide open receiver? I Forgot That You Existed 

100-yard kickoff return? Untouchable 

49ers score lots of points? Gold Rush

Flagged for pass interference (Defensive back's version)? Innocent 

Flagged for pass interference (Receiver's version)? You All Over Me

Flip in momentum? Everything Has Changed 

Pulling away in the lead? Out of the Woods

Holding? Invisible String 

Score a touchdown? Seven

Kelce scores a TD? How You Get the Girl

TV shows Tay-Tay in the Kelce family box? ME!

Get away with a penalty but on the next play you turn the ball over? Karma 

Roughing the Passer? I Did Something Bad

Score the most TDs in the game? The Man

Run away from all the tacklers? Daylight 

Man to man coverage? You're On Your Own, Kid

Your Coach makes a genius play call? Mastermind 

Somehow escape a sure sack? Safe and Sound

Get sacked by Nick Bosa? I Knew You Were Trouble

Another fight between players? Sparks Fly

Skycam shot of both teams lined up? 22

Awesome TD dance? Style

Deliver a powerful tackle? Fearless 

Offense moves inside the 20? Red

Kicker missed a long field goal? This Is Me Trying

Offensive line keeps the QB from getting sacked? Clean 

One-sided, terrible game? Is It Over Now

Game comes down to one last play? 'Tis The Damn Season

Your team loses? Cruel Summer

Lose on a last second field goal? Would've, Could've, Should've 

Win a Super Bowl ring? Bejeweled

Your team wins in a blowout? Wildest Dreams 

Celebrate too long after you win? Champagne Problems 

Chiefs win AGAIN?? The Last Great American Dynasty

Why You Shouldn’t Leave The Second Half Of Your Recall Ballot Blank

California Governor Gavin Newsom has a simple message for his supporters: Just vote NO in the September 14 recall election. Don’t even bother voting for any of the 46 replacement candidates on the ballot. And many voters are doing just that, leaving the second part of the ballot blank. It’s a smart tactical approach for Newsom: reject the recall and don’t legitimize it by participating any further. It serves his interests well—but if you’re a California voter, it doesn’t serve yours. 

There is a real chance that Newsom will lose this election and be recalled. That remains unlikely, but it could happen. And if it does, perhaps as much as half the electorate will have abdicated its responsibility to help choose his successor, leaving that decision entirely in the hands of the people who want Newsom drummed out of office. 

Democrats and other Newsom supporters will howl and rail if Larry Elder, Kevin Faulconer, John Cox or some other Republican challenger takes Newsom’s job with a fraction of the support Newsom has. But by not helping to choose his possible successor, they are almost guaranteeing it will be someone they can’t stand. The governor could win 49.9% of the vote—perhaps nine million votes or so—and lose the recall. If only 50% of the voters bother making a choice on the ballot’s second question, someone like Elder could be elected with maybe one-third of those votes, or about three million. In other words, nine million Californians could vote to keep Newsom, and only three million could prefer Elder—and the conservative radio host would replace Newsom in office. In theory, if half the voters sit out half the election, one of the Republicans could win with even less than that, though public opinion polls suggest the top GOP candidate will probably pull about a third of the Republican vote. 

Rather than complain about such a scenario later, Newsom supporters have the power to prevent it, right now. After all, there aren’t just two dozen Republicans on the ballot. There are also nine Democrats, two Greens, a Libertarian, and ten candidates who list no party preference. Most of these folks are just that, regular folks (if you consider an adult entertainer, a cannabis policy advisor and a hairstylist “regular folks”). If instead of voting for no one, Newsom’s supporters coalesce around one of them, that person could win the replacement race in a landslide. Of course, Newsom won’t endorse any of them. He’s not going to muddy his message by repeating Cruz Bustamante’s disastrous “Vote no on the recall, but then vote for me” campaign of 2003. He’s not going to urge you to select Kevin “Meet Kevin” Paffrath, a real estate millionaire and YouTube personality who is a recall-supporting Democrat. He won’t tell you to support Joel Ventresca, a retired San Francisco airport analyst and progressive labor activist who’s run unsuccessfully for local offices, including Mayor of San Francisco. He’s not going to back Jacqueline McGowan, the aforementioned cannabis expert who is terrified that a Trump-loving Republican might capture Newsom’s seat. But that doesn’t mean that Californians who vote No on the recall itself shouldn’t make their voices heard just as loudly on the rest of the ballot, by voting for one of the 46 they find the most appealing (or least appalling). A winner from the non-GOP field might not have the preferred experience or knowledge, but could at least align ideologically with Newsom and not plunge the state into a year of legislative gridlock and hyperpartisan dysfunction (by the way, you can't just write in Newsom or Hillary Clinton or Steph Curry or your dog, either. A write-in vote for someone who's not a certified write-in candidate won't be counted. The Secretary of State will release a list of the qualified write-in contenders on September 3).

I know that hundreds of thousands of Californians, maybe even millions, have already voted. I know that many of them deliberately skipped the second question. I get that Newsom wants everyone to Just Say No. If he does lose to someone with so few votes, he’ll be able to argue the whole election was a sham, fueling his campaign to reclaim the office in November 2022. But I take my sacred voting right extremely seriously. Until 2020, I always voted in person. In more than 40 years of voting, I have missed only one election (an unexpected runoff after a special election for a state Assembly seat that happened while I was climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro). This ballot asks us whether the governor should be recalled, and if he is, who should replace him. Surrendering your right to have a say on that second decision goes against the very point of the franchise. 

Democrats outnumber Republicans in California by almost two to one. If Newsom can motivate enough of them to turn out, he should rebuff the recall fairly easily. But if enough of them sit this out, or even vote to remove him, he could be in trouble. Then, Democrats who leave the replacement question blank may end up feeling like those who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton did when they awoke on November 4, 2016 to President-elect Trump. 

I’m not here to argue for or against Newsom. It’s not my place to tell you how to vote on the recall itself, or how I intend to. But sticking your head in the sand is not participating in your democracy. It’s letting someone else make the choice for you. I’m not about to do that, and neither should you.

The Next President Of The United States...

Reading the last dregs of the 2020 tea leaves, late Monday night, November 2:

My track record took a severe hit four years ago when, like so many supposedly intelligent and well-informed pundits, I predicted that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump and win the presidency. Unlike most others, I did lay out a possible Trump path to victory, but I didn't think he would actually take it. I also missed on two U.S. Senate seats. Despite this stain on my reputation, I'm back to make a fool of myself in a public forum once again. Many of my peers gave up on making predictions after 2016, but it takes more than one badly blown call to retire my crystal ball.

(Just to refresh your memory, I did bounce back and get both of this year's presidential nominees right, correctly predicting before the primaries that Joe Biden and Donald Trump would square off in November—and Biden was hardly the trendy pick. In fact, I've never missed on the Republican nominee, going 12-for-12, dating back to 1972. I'm 10-for-12 on picking the Democrat, but now I'm only 9-for-12 on calling the winner of the general election, a no-longer-so-robust batting average of .750. In baseball, that would make you a superstar, but in politics, it just makes you wrong.)

So who's going to win tomorrow?

Well, here's one scenario: the polls are off again, underestimating the strength of President Trump's support. His massive late rallies energize his base, he matches the record early turnout by Democrats with an overwhelming mobilization on Election Day, and he just barely hangs on to the key swing states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio, while fending off the Blue Charge in Texas, Georgia, Arizona and Iowa. There does appear to be some polling momentum in the president's favor in Pennsylvania, and the campaigns know it, which is why we saw both tickets descend on the Keystone State again in the campaign's final hours. So let's say Biden locks up Wisconsin and Michigan, but loses his birth state of Pennsylvania, where enough rural white voters stick with Trump to give him a second term, with just 279 electoral votes, despite losing the popular vote to Biden again. Here's what that map would look like:

This is probably the best case scenario for the president. 

But I see no way Trump wins the popular vote, despite the insistent predictions of the many ardent Trumpkins in my Twitter feed (as USC political scientist Bob Shrum told me today, "The Twitterverse is not the voting universe. The Twitterverse was not the voting universe in the Democratic primaries. If you followed Twitter, you would have thought Biden had no chance.")

So Trump could make history again, becoming the only president to be impeached and win re-election, and the first to lose the popular vote twice but still win.

That's not what the polls suggest will happen, though. And yes, I know: the public polls are crap, They were wrong in 2016 and they could be just as wrong again. But here's the thing: the polls would have to be more than twice as wrong to blow it in 2020. I mean, colossally off the mark, the worst since 1948, and maybe even worse than that.

Let's examine that for a second. Four years ago, the average of the final, credible, reputable national polls gave Hillary Clinton a three to four point lead over Donald Trump. In fact, she won the popular vote by about two percent, which is pretty darn close. What she didn't do was carry Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, because of apathy among Black and progressive Democrats, in particular. The failure of maybe 100,000 of them to vote across Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia gave Trump razor-thin margins in those three states, and the presidency. The polls in those states overestimated her turnout and underestimated his, in some cases because of underweighting of the rural white voters who carried Trump to victory. But even if that happened again, even if the same polls were off by just as much, it wouldn't be enough for Trump to overtake Biden. 

Biden's lead has shrunk a bit in the closing 48 hours of this race, but it's still in the 7-8 point range, nationally. If the polls are as wrong as last time, he still wins the popular vote by about five points. If they're wrong in the direction they were in 2012, when they didn't foresee the massive turnout for Barack Obama, he wins by ten or twelve. But as we know all too well from both 2000 and 2016, winning the national popular vote, even by millions of votes, doesn't guarantee you the keys to the White House (does the White House actually have keys? If it does, the Secret Service probably carries them for its occupant).

So what will happen in the key swing states? Biden has narrow leads in many of them, but seems to be fading in Iowa, and Trump is closing the gap in Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. Biden could run the table and win them all, achieving an historic landslide no one thought possible in this highly polarized era. If he turns Texas and Georgia blue, and flips the states I just mentioned, and maybe Ohio too, he could even achieve a Reaganesque 400+ electoral votes. It would be an historic repudiation of a sitting president, and the country could look as blue as this:

But...no. I do think President Trump has played the closing days as well as he could after running a pretty dreadful campaign for months. The way his followers see it, he beat COVID19, he's on the stump around the clock, he's telling them what they want to hear, and that sure beats Joe Biden wearing a mask, stumbling through uninspired platitudes and holding "rallies" of a hundred socially distant people honking their car horns. I think Trump has tightened this race considerably, against all odds. So here's my bold prediction:

POPULAR VOTE
Joe Biden 50.8%

Donald Trump 45.1%

Those numbers could mean Biden beating Trump by almost ten million votes, far beyond Clinton's two million vote margin in 2016, when about 136 million Americans voted. This time, it looks like we will top 150 million and maybe even approach 160. At 150, that would mean Biden netting more than 76 million votes, to about 67 million for Trump. If Biden's margin is really this large, it is very difficult to imagine Trump still winning the Electoral College, and imagine the uproar if he does. 

But I don't think he will. I predict that Trump does hold serve in Florida, Texas, Georgia, Iowa and Ohio. But I think Biden upsets Trump in North Carolina, ekes out a win in Arizona, retakes Wisconsin and Michigan and scores a narrow win in Pennsylvania. That would give Biden 305 electoral votes, turning the tables on Trump's 2016 margin. That would look like this:

It's also conceivable that Biden wins Florida, which would get him to 334, or that he loses both Arizona and North Carolina and wins with just 279. In that case, Pennsylvania truly ends up being pivotal. But my final call is:

ELECTORAL VOTE

Joe Biden 305

Donald Trump 233

I could be wrong. I was four years ago. Unlike in past years, I have not been on the campaign trail since February, because of the coronavirus pandemic. It's much harder to tell what's going on from my home radio studio in Oakland than it is if I were out following the candidates, as in a normal year. But that's my best guess, and if 2020 has taught us anything, it's that you do what you can, accept what you get, and be grateful for another day.

Oh, one more thing: the Democrats hold the House and retake the Senate. Democrats flip GOP Senate seats in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Maine and one of the two seats in Georgia, and Steve Bullock pulls a surprise in Montana, while the Republicans reclaim Alabama, for a net Democratic gain of five, giving them a 52-48 edge in the new Senate. The GOP hangs on in one of the Georgia races, Iowa, South Carolina, Kentucky, Texas and Alaska.

Tune in Tuesday night (or Wednesday morning, or maybe not until Friday!) and let's see how I, and more importantly, America, did.

July 4, 2020

I had the great honor and privilege of being asked to be this year's Patriotic Speaker at the 59th annual Claremont neighborhood July 4th Parade in Berkeley, California. Each year since 1961, hundreds of neighbors have gathered to celebrate Independence Day with a parade, patriotic songs, entertainment and a guest speaker. The assignment is to deliver a "patriotic and uplifting speech" on the meaning of the day. I found the challenge a little bit daunting, given recent events. This year, the entire celebration had to be virtual, with the parade canceled and the performances and speeches recorded and posted on YouTube instead. Here's what I chose to say.

Friends and neighbors, my fellow Americans,

Today, the United States of America is 244 years old. Like many double centenarians, she is showing her age. This year, it’s more than the usual aches and pains and creaky joints that come with being almost a quarter of a millennium old. No, at 244, America can no longer see. She can’t hear. She’s fallen and she can’t get up.

Luckily, this country was founded by resilient people. Many of them were racist, genocidal, puritanical zealots, yes, but no one can doubt their pluck and resolve. And over the course of those 200+ years, her genetic makeup has been improved by the arrival of so many others from all over the world, generations of people just as determined and self-reliant as those first settlers, but with a more enlightened and ennobled view of the world around them and the people in it.

So today, as America lights the candles on a cake that she no longer has enough teeth to eat, we are here, standing ready to help her back to her feet. She’s been knocked flat before. She was torn apart by a Civil War that nearly killed her. She’s endured financial panics and deadly pandemics. In my father’s time, she had to fight back against the double roundhouse punch of a dire Depression and the existential threat of Nazism. So I’m here to declare that America does have the gumption to not only survive 2020, but to be rejuvenated by it, to emerge a stronger, better nation.

There is no sugarcoating what we’ve been through these last four months. We’ve lost beloved family and dear friends and neighbors. Our very way of life has spun into confusion and chaos. We’ve all had to make extraordinary sacrifices for the greater good. And just as we settled into a new way of being in the world, that world was ripped apart again, by yet another senseless, inexplicable, horrifying illustration of how much America has yet to learn.

But look how we’ve responded. How many miles we’ve walked through this neighborhood. How many smiles we’ve shared with neighbors we hadn’t met before. How many new nooks and crannies and front yard idiosyncrasies and garden gnomes we’ve discovered that we’d never had the time to notice. How many helping hands we’ve extended to feed and nurture those in desperate, dire need. How bravely so many of us have placed ourselves in harm’s way to help our fellow citizens survive.

And how many of us have raised our voices to say, it is time that America gets cataract surgery, and a better hearing aid, so that she can, at long last, see, and hear, and listen, to the very people who helped make her what she is, and can transform her into a greater version of herself. We may never be able to right historic wrongs, but we can certainly make sure she treads a different path in the centuries to come. We can read her the words of the new prophets, written in chalk on the sidewalks of this neighborhood. So many of our ancestors came here to be free. Too many others had their freedom stolen and were forced to help an uncaring America fulfill her dreams, while it obliterated theirs. But today, we must move forward as one, not ignoring our divisions, pretending racism doesn’t exist, but learning from them, healing them and, someday, closing them for good.

At 244, let us hope America is ready, finally, to truly become the land of the free. These last months have proven, yet again, she is already the home of the brave.

Happy Birthday America. Let us help you to your feet.

A Show Of Weakness

The presidentially endorsed “law and order” approach to peaceful political protest that we saw too many times over the past two weeks often flouts the law and it certainly doesn’t keep order. A militaristic “show of force” against peaceful demonstrators is antagonistic and counterproductive, and that’s been proven over and over again throughout American history. I wouldn’t expect President Trump to understand that, since he’s new to this and seems to govern by ego, but American police departments have known for decades that it’s a mistake to attack unarmed, law-abiding citizens. But since the killing of George Floyd, we have seen unprecedented displays of unprovoked violence by law enforcement officers against civilians peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights, including members of the media. And we’ve seen, time and again, how firing tear gas, pepper spray, pepper balls and “non-lethal bullets” at crowds of protesters only escalates conflict and leads to greater damage, more injuries and less trust and support of law enforcement.

In Oakland I was stunned to witness the police reaction to the protests. It’s one thing to go after looters and vandals. They can, and should, be identified and apprehended. But they’re a tiny minority. The vast majority of people protesting George Floyd’s death are just, well, protesting. There’s nothing illegal about that. To the contrary, protest is one of the foundational principles of our country. There’s simply no reason for riot cops to declare a peaceful gathering of Americans, no matter how large or how disruptive it may be to traffic, an “illegal assembly” and then break it up by force. It doesn’t work. It makes people madder. It doesn’t prevent violence, it causes it. It triggers the very thing the police presence is supposed to deter.

Here’s an example: In the summer of 1997, a monthly bike ride through San Francisco devolved into confrontational chaos. For five years, on the last Friday of the month, “Critical Mass” had been bringing hundreds of riders to The City’s downtown, both as a celebration of cycling and a protest of how hostile and dangerous the streets were for bikers. In 1996 and ’97, the events grew larger, with cyclists numbering in the thousands, often blocking major thoroughfares and snarling rush hour traffic. The mayor at the time, Willie Brown, was determined not to let these renegade riders hijack his City. So he ordered the SFPD to enforce the traffic laws and crack down on the bikers. Riot cops set up lines. Bikers were “kettled” on the streets and arrested by the dozens. Clogged intersections became battlegrounds. Some bikers brawled with cops, others with angry commuters tired of stewing in their stranded cars. Bikes were destroyed, their riders hauled away. The evening commute was a mess, downtown a war zone.

Over months of covering these protests, often broadcasting from a bicycle, I observed that left to their own devices, the Critical Massers would block an intersection briefly, whoop and holler, declare victory, get back on their bikes and move on. Only when the police arrived and created conflict by drawing battle lines and ordering the bikers to disperse did the protesters stand their ground and go to war with the cops. The monthly showdowns were increasingly destructive and, for the City, expensive. Why not, I wondered, just facilitate the rides, as the police had done in the past? Stop traffic when the bikes show up, let the cyclists have their way for a few minutes, then escort them on their way? Follow them through town, halt cross traffic so no one gets hurt, but let them make their point without trying to arrest them. Cops could even ride along with them.

Frustrated by the ineffectiveness of their militarized approach, Mayor Brown and the cops eventually returned to those very tactics. Nothing else was working and they came to their own conclusion that they had to try something different. Of course, it was a success. What had been a tense monthly clash became a peaceful celebration, a festival on wheels that eventually attracted families and children and became a mainstream cultural event. The City stopped spending a fortune on overtime, downtown businesses and motorists no longer had their windows smashed and their property destroyed, and over time, the cyclists, and the City at large, won. The bicycle advocates became a powerful political force, and today San Francisco is one of the most bike-friendly cities in America, with hundreds of miles of bike lanes and more in the works (although debate rages on within the cycling community about the effectiveness of Critical Mass, and over the pace of improvements to the City’s cycling infrastructure).

The notion that de-escalation would be more successful than applying force was not new. Countless studies and numerous government commissions had already reached that same conclusion over decades of research.

Yet here we are, a generation later, and America’s urban police departments still see traffic-stopping political protest as an excuse for armed conflict. It’s not. It just doesn’t work. Knocking down disabled people, gassing women and children, punching media in the face, just antagonizes and alienates Americans, and reinforces the message of the demonstrations. Using unjustifiable violence against nonviolent people who are protesting unjustified violence proves the protesters right: “Look, the cops are using violence again, even though it’s completely unnecessary.” Go after looters, sure. Target those who are ransacking Target. When police are attacked, they need to defend themselves. But gassing a peaceful crowd incites vandalism and looting, and galvanizes their allies. Disarmament, engagement and opening a dialogue with protesters defuses tension and prevents the very trouble the cops fear.

In college I took a course on national security policy from Lyman Kirkpatrick, a legendary former high-ranking CIA official. He was a fascinating but intimidating figure. We assumed, my classmates and I, that he not only knew where the bodies were buried, he had buried some of them himself. The course included a unit on the appropriate use of force, and when it was preferable to diplomacy. To our surprise, Kirkpatrick’s lesson was that force is almost never called for, and it should only be used as an absolute last resort. Force, he taught us, is destabilizing and destructive, rarely achieves the desired aim, and in almost every instance, a better result can be obtained through dialogue and diplomacy. Citing his own experiences during World War II and as one of the original officers of what became the CIA, and later leading U.S. intelligence efforts in Asia and Cuba, he taught us that history is littered with costly and avoidable military mistakes. There are exceptions, of course; fighting and defeating Hitler, rather than appeasing him, was inarguably necessary, for example. But a trigger-happy commander in chief might well have ignited a thermonuclear world war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than effect a peaceful result through de-escalation. A show of force, he argued, is almost always a show of weakness, of fear, rather than strength.

Yes, the battles in our streets are on a much smaller scale, and don’t threaten humankind, but the same lessons apply. In the Bay Area, at least, none of the George Floyd protests turned into “riots” until the police lit the fuse. A few dozen opportunistic criminals stealing things from stores is not a riot. It’s a smash-and-grab crime spree. Thousands of panicking people fleeing clouds of toxic smoke, with some induced to turn and fight back, set fires, throw bottles and trash cans and debris at the cops, becomes a riot. And using gas during a respiratory pandemic, when numerous studies suggest it could help spread the coronavirus, is especially dangerous and foolish.

We ask a lot of our law enforcement officers. We expect them to be patient and tolerant, to know when their lives are really in potential jeopardy and when they’re not, to make life-or-death decisions in a split second and always get them right. It’s a really tough job, one most of us could not and are not willing to do. But it’s not too much to ask that they not show up at a picnic and turn it into a wildfire because someone in the crowd may have a pack of matches in his pocket. Especially when decades of experience and research have already shown that they, and we, are much better off when they just let the people have their say.

Under Attack

I got tear gassed Friday night while covering the George Floyd protest in downtown Oakland. It was the first time I’d been hit with gas by police since 2003 in San Francisco, during a demonstration against the second Persian Gulf War.

The police didn’t target me on Friday. I was in the middle of a crowd of demonstrators, doing my job, when officers fired gas canisters without warning. They’d been pelted with bottles and firecrackers and sworn at for more than an hour, and frankly, moments before, I had marveled at their restraint. But then came the flash bangs, and the gas, and I was unable to flee fast enough to escape the noxious cloud that overtook everyone, including quite a few members of the media. Elsewhere around the country, journalists have been targeted directly during this spasm of protest triggered by the police killing of Floyd after he was accused of passing a bogus $20 bill in Minneapolis. I have friends and colleagues who have been hit hard with rubber bullets, dragged to the ground and arrested, hauled off in handcuffs without explanation, despite displaying valid press credentials, carrying obvious equipment and cooperating with police officers who refuse to explain why they’re arresting journalists. Many are journalists of color, left to wonder whether it's their profession, or their skin, or some combination of the two, that drew fire.

We know we take chances out there. I’ve been doing this for more than 35 years. We calculate the risks and do whatever it takes to get the story/the shot/the sound, without putting our lives in too much danger. I’ve covered literally hundreds of demonstrations that turned chaotic and violent. During the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, I was shot at by a looter and escaped by driving my rented subcompact through a gauntlet of burning buildings, the flames so intensely hot that I sped down the center stripe to keep the car from exploding. Once, a barricaded suspect fired at me while I covered a police standoff in the Bay Area, one bullet ricocheting off the pavement near my foot, another whistling past my ear. Covering countless demonstrations and wildfires, earthquakes and terrorist attacks, I’ve had too many close calls to count. Some would call me lucky. Others would be fair to call me a fool. Sometimes, as we check our VU meters to make sure we’re getting good audio of the whizzing bullets, or forget our surroundings while framing the shot of the cop with the riot gun, we somehow imagine we’re protected by an invisible force field, that as duly credentialed members of the Fourth Estate we are immune to the deadly forces cutting people down around us. Or maybe that’s just me.

Of course, we’re not. We’re just committed journalists, passionate about what we do. We believe we are necessary to a free and informed democracy. Our nation’s founders thought so too, enshrining our rights in the Constitution of the United States, and the courts have recognized and upheld those rights, time after time after time. But now, in this most perilous time when we are needed to bear witness and amplify voices more than ever before, those rights are not only in jeopardy, they seem to have evaporated. The media are held in contempt, not respect. The President of the United States openly derides us, calling us “Fake News” and “The Enemy of the People.” On Sunday, he tweeted that the “Lamestream Media” are “truly bad people with a sick agenda.” So it’s no surprise that so many people, including law enforcement officers and looters who use legitimate protest as cover for their crimes, see us as adversaries and targets, ignore our press passes and pleas, and knock us to the ground, both figuratively and literally. We diligently avoid interfering with the performance of the cops’ jobs, but some of them keep us from doing ours.

Even so, as targeted as journalists may feel right now, we still have enormous privilege compared with many, if not most, Americans. In my case, I’m a white man. I have press credentials, issued by the San Francisco Police Department and the State of California. I have my employer’s corporate attorneys to bail me out. If I get busted or hurt, it will be a “mistake” that brings a public apology. George Floyd couldn’t say the same. Nor could Eric Garner. Nor Michael Brown.

Friday night in Oakland, I tried to climb an onramp to cover protesters who had blocked Interstate 880. The entrance was blocked by police cars and crawling with heavily armed riot cops. They shouted for me to stop. Told me to turn around and go back. Shined a bright light in my face. From 30 or 40 feet away, I yelled “Media!” I shouted “I’m with KCBS, just trying to see what’s happening on the highway!” They barked, “Move back! Now!” I kept advancing. They tensed and stepped toward me. Some raised their guns. I was holding a three-foot long black pipe, part of a microphone stand I cannibalized at the start of the coronavirus pandemic so I could conduct socially distant interviews in the field. It dawned on me that it could easily be mistaken for a weapon. That they couldn’t hear my shouts over the hovering helicopter, the M80s and flash bang grenades going off down the block. That in the swirl of smoke just after nightfall, there was no way they could make out the press passes around my neck, the KCBS Radio logo on my vest, or even the CBS News emblazoned on my baseball cap. I stopped. I showed them my hands, hoping they didn’t think the mic stand in one of them was the barrel of a rifle. They kept their lights and weapons pointed at me as I slowly backed away, waved submissively, and then turned and walked as quickly as I could away from them. And all I could think was: Thank God I am white. 

That’s the reality of life in America, 2020. Yes, we journalists have become targets too, and it’s not right. It’s not legal. It’s not good for the country. But when it was all over, when I had washed the teargas out of my eyes and filed my radio stories and tweeted my last video, I went home to my comfortable house and my wife and kids knowing that I could go out the next day, wearing my N95 mask, without feeling like a target simply because of the color of my skin. And thanks to my status as a journalist, I will continue to have a front row seat to history and a backstage pass to life. I may have to dodge a few more bullets, but only if I put myself in harm’s way to do my job. Not when I go to a store. Or for a jog. Or simply walk down the street. America has a responsibility to protect those of us who tell its stories, who reveal its truths, who keep its citizenry informed. We, in turn, have an awesome responsibility to speak the truth about that citizenry, about this nation. Our society endures these violent convulsions every few years and nothing ever changes. Buildings get torched, windows get smashed, people get hurt and angry and tired and sad. Eventually, emotions subside, broken glass gets swept up, and life returns to what we call normal. Which, for me, is a life of extraordinary privilege and opportunity, but for those who don’t look like me and have the protections and access that I do, is a daily stroll through fear and anxiety. Too often for them, an innocent outing or yes, sometimes, a petty crime, leads to an indefensible murder, an inexplicably horrible moment of inhumanity like the killing of George Floyd and too many more before him.

And the sad, brutal truth is: Nothing. Will. Change. It never does. The racism won’t ever go away. How can it? Too many Americans don’t want it to. They don’t even believe it’s real.

Once, maybe a dozen years ago, during a similarly chaotic night of protest in Oakland, a police officer approached me and said, “I’ve been watching you all night. You move really fast. You never stand still, and you’re really quick. You’d be really hard to kill.” I wasn’t sure whether to thank her for the compliment, or express how unnerved I was that she had actually contemplated the difficulty of gunning me down.

Yes, we journalists are targets now. We’re not used to it, and it’s wrong. But black and brown Americans are targets every day, and have been for centuries, and they are terribly used to it, and as we advocate for our own protection, let’s not get lost in our indignation and forget to tell the truth about that.