Democrats’ model for winning national elections is like waiting for the Olympics to start training. That model is not, as we say, sustainable.
Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was the most top-down “grassroots” effort ever. Touting itself as the people-powered effort it was and training activists in selling the candidate by telling their personal stories, the campaign was otherwise heavily metrics-driven. Orders came down from and data flowed up to national headquarters on Michigan Ave. in Chicago.
It wasn’t for everyone. Many volunteers here threw themselves into what felt like a national movement. Others felt like cogs in a huge machine and left. Local chiefs had to forward door-knock and phone-call tallies daily to Michigan Ave. If the numbers didn’t arrive on time or if production wasn’t sufficiently large, they would hear about it and/or be replaced.
But with a candidate worthy of a Shepard Fairey poster atop the ticket, it worked. The late NC Sen. Kay Hagan tried to pattern her 2014 reelection campaign on the Obama model. But Hagan wasn’t Obama. The result was Sen. Thom Tillis.
Amidst the rancor of the 2016 Democratic campaign, it soon became clear Hillary Clinton’s effort was a different animal. From the vantage of the provinces, it quickly became clear Clinton could not inspire the army of volunteers who worked the streets for Obama in 2008. Volunteers weren’t being asked to tell their stories or even to knock doors.
Clinton’s local organizers tasked volunteers with calling potential recruits to come in and call potential volunteers to come in and call for more volunteers, etc., etc. The point of this hall-of-mirrors approach, it seemed, was to build a volunteer army to unleash at the 11th hour to get any Democrat who could fog a mirror to the polls once early voting started. What that base-turnout approach here missed was a lot of D-voters were going to vote R. Some of her local paid team were so disheartened by that plan that after hours they came to work with us, the local Democrats’ turnout operation. They wanted to go to sleep at night feeling they’d done something productive with their day.
While I hoped like crazy Clinton would prevail, I feared if she won using that campaign model, it would become the nationally recognized template for winning. So much for that concern.
Now, it’s 2020 and everybody wants to get in on the action. Again:
Some of the Democratic Party’s most powerful factions are joining forces behind a massive organizing program in six battleground states — an effort aimed at minimizing the damage from a potentially protracted primary and giving the party’s eventual nominee a fighting chance against Donald Trump’s political machine.
Dubbed Organizing Together 2020, the effort was assembled by one of Barack Obama’s battleground gurus, Paul Tewes, and is hiring hundreds of staffers in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina and Arizona. The party’s biggest union supporters and top progressive groups, as well as several governors, are powering the initiative, which has not been previously reported.
National co-chairs include Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Backing the effort are a spread of national groups like the NEA, SEIU, and Indivisible. Politico reports the group expects its efforts to “dovetail” with the efforts of other get-out-the-vote groups and the national party.
“It’s filling a gap so it’s not simply a candidate-centered effort,” said Color of Change spokesperson Rashad Robinson. “All the things that are unsexy about elections, if they don’t happen, and if you aren’t building that infrastructure, you’re going to face big challenges.”
Whether Organizing Together dovetails, duplicates, or dilutes other efforts, the problem with “building that infrastructure” is it is not built to last past the general election. The day after Election Day, money dries up and staffers go home. What remains are empty storefronts and surplus office supplies. In two years, the boom-bust cycle begins again.
Democrats’ model for winning elections is like waiting for the Olympics to start training. It relies too heavily on the campaign industrial complex to succeed. With a naturally talented and inspiring enough candidate atop the ticket, it can work. But it’s not a formula for winning back state legislatures ahead of 2021 redistricting. It’s not a recipe for advancing amateurs up the ladder from city council to county commission to state legislature to U.S. Senate or beyond. Lasting infrastructure is not connected to candidates’ messaging or election-year fundraising.
Political campaigns are not just contests of ideas. They are contests of skills. A lot of what wins elections is mastering the kind of unsexy nuts-and-bolts mechanics behind them. Those skills do not develop overnight by throwing money at campaigns. The only people who develop such skills in the existing model are semi-pro gypsies who live to campaign, or political staff who develop their chops working for elected officials. Where Democrats need those skills is at the real grassroots underfunded by state and national organizations because they are not sexy enough to fund long-term. Howard Dean got that.
I address a lot of how to correct that situation here and here and here. Get local and get busy, please. Don’t wait for a fat check from the DNC or George Soros. It ain’t coming.
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