We are all overly proud of our university educations. They become that “only tool in the toolbox.” The whole world looks like a problem to attack with better ideas, more facts, sharper analysis, populist policies, smarter messaging, etc.
North Carolina Chief Justice Cheri Beasley fell short in her bid for reelection on Nov. 3 by 3,000 votes. Since then, local boards of election counted absentee and provisional ballots. The lead in her race flipped multiple times over the last couple of days. When I awoke this morning, she led by 35 votes out of 5.4 million cast. There will be a recount. Every vote matters.
Despite Joe Biden winning the presidential election, Democrats are asking themselves why they failed to win seats in the House of Representatives. Why they failed to gain control of the U.S. Senate. Why the polls were wrong again. Etc.
Moderates in Congress blame progressives and slogans born in street protests. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx blamed the DCCC and candidates’ lack of internet engagement. One of the first comments I saw on social media: How do we reach Trump voters?
Time after time, huge (apparent) Democratic vote leads run up in blue cities during early voting evaporate on Election Day when returns come in from smaller, red counties in the countryside where Democrats have little foothold or organization.
While promoting his 50-state strategy, Howard Dean would say, “We’re going to be in places where the Democratic Party hasn’t been in 25 years.” And, “If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win, and that’s not going to happen anymore.” The 50-state strategy lasted through the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, both Democratic landslide elections. Then it was gone.
You can’t win if you don’t show up to play. If you do show up, you’d best have “game.”
That is not about better policies or messaging, but basic, competent organization at the county level.
On election night 2006, retired quarterback Heath Shuler defeated 8-term incumbent Republican Rep. Charles Taylor to win the congressional seat in North Carolina’s 11th District. Shuler lost the largest Republican county in the district by 3,000 votes that night. Losing there by 3,000 votes helped Shuler flip the seat. He did not to have to win every county. Shaving Republican margins in the red ones was critical, and he had the organization on the ground to do it.
Four years later, NC state Sen. John Snow was not so lucky.
John Snow was the last Democratic state senator standing in North Carolina’s far west. Jane Mayer wrote about his 2010 reelection race in a New Yorker piece titled “State for Sale.” Conservative kingmaker Art Pope poured almost a million dollars into that one race. His PACs sent two dozen attack flyers into John’s district in North Carolina’s far-western tip. One echoed the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad.
Snow lost that race. But even after all the money spent against him, Snow lost by 161 votes in a district then spanning eight counties with an average population under 30,000 — by less than the undervote in his race in his two largest counties. People there cast ballots but did not vote in John’s race. Shuler’s well-funded congressional campaign had game. Counties in Snow’s district did not. As a candidate well down-ballot in 2010, his race was an afterthought for many voters.
Chief Justice Cheri Beasley is not in the fight of her political life because of poor messaging or insufficient internet engagement. Candidates in down-ballot races like hers have little of either to run on. Raising large sums is unseemly for judges. They have no expansive campaign teams. They rely on the Democratic Party to deliver votes for them. If it can.
But the basic organizing strategy of the party is top-down (and ass-backwards). In presidential years especially, the big money and media presence of the presidential campaign dominates organizing strategy at the state level. Money and organizers flow into the few, big blue cities where reside large blocks of Democratic voters. And then, only in blue cities in swing states. It’s logical. It’s efficient. Until the dozens of red, rural counties Democrats ignore begin reporting votes and their leads slip away.
You can’t win if you don’t show up to play.
Democratic candidates who run statewide races campaign and organize where they can find votes in bulk: in larger cities. Candidates who run in districts do not have that luxury. They need votes in their own districts whether or not there are cities of any size in them.
Democrats organize as if marquee candidates heavily promoted in blue enclaves will help down-ballot candidates win. But if their more-rural counties had game, they might elect local candidates and the marquee ones and take back state legislatures from Republicans in the process. Or at least shave Republican margins out there enough so Democrats’ statewide contests are not hanging by a thread.
The problem with that kind of grassroots infrastructure-building is no one wants to do it. The incentives are not there. There’s no money in it for campaign consultants, for campaign vendors. There’s no resume-building credit for budding politicos hoping to move up swiftly to the big game. And those of us enamored of our own smarts are too busy trying to game out what clever, intellectually appealing strategies we conceive will accomplish all of the above.
With our university training, we suppose we can win elections with grand ideas that will change hearts and minds. Perhaps that too is ass-backwards. Perhaps mastering the nuts and bolts of winning elections out where Democrats’ skills are the weakest will work where our top-down strategies fail. That was Dean’s vision. It seemed to work while the party allowed it.
Last week, I commented on President Obama coolly sinking a three-point basketball shot from the corner. All net. He didn’t do that with progressive policies, killer messaging, or right-thinking. He did it with skills, skills we cannot expect rural committees to manifest in “visualize world peace” fashion once every general election after a 1-hour Coordinated Campaign training.
Winning is itself persuasive. Democratic committees out in the provinces that don’t go to sleep for two years between elections will by their very daily presence over time persuade rural neighbors Democrats do not have horns, tails, and bits of baby between their teeth.
We keep looking for ways to think our way to victory rather than doing the grunt work of year-round organizing. Stacey Abrams didn’t turn Georgia blue on Joe Biden’s campaign coattails. He won the state on hers.