Progressives tend to live too much in their heads. We think politics is all about the best ideas, the right message, and a focus-grouped mix of policies. (Lately, that list would include maximizing social media engagement.) The number of campaigns political junkies have won in their heads and lost on the ground is beyond number.
Winning in your head is like bringing sports visualization training to the Olympics and thinking you’ll be competitive when you show up with no conditioning and no skills.
At some point, you have to play the game for real. At some point, you have to run the election and count the votes. At some point, you have to win on the ground instead of in your head. You’d best be good at it.
A long article in New York magazine chronicles the journey of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from “adrift, broke, and disillusioned” to holding a seat in Congress as “the face of a resurgent left.” A single, degreed, millennial Latina, in debt and supporting family, she confronted the post-Great Recession economic wasteland while debating politics from behind a bar.
But she did not stay in her head. After campaigning for Bernie Sanders in 2016, she watched in horror, Lisa Miller writes, as Hillary Clinton, even with “her elite education, multimillion-dollar war chest, institutional support, decades of experience, and recognizable name,” lost to an incompetent, “shady real-estate developer” type Ocasio-Cortez knew too well from bartending. It was time to do something.
That December, she and a friend took a short trip to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock in North Dakota. It gave Ocasio-Cortez space to contemplate options:
Ocasio-Cortez would later describe the experience as “transformative.” She saw how her anger, frustration, and isolation could be channeled, productively, into principled opposition, how historical grievance could be converted into strength, and how worldliness — cynicism and spiritual fatigue — weakened resolve. “There is something to be said for seeing and smelling and tasting and breathing” another person’s reality, Ocasio-Cortez has said. “Indigenous people who just wanted the same rights to their own land that anybody else had — it really internalized the intersection of racial and economic and criminal justice into one, and I felt like we had to do something.”
It would involve running and winning an election. Cynicism has no place there. Visualization won’t cut it. Complaining from the stands is just a mind game. She stepped out onto the field.
James Shelton last week at Daily Kos wrote of efforts 31st Street Swing Left to support state parties in Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia with a “neighborhood team approach.” Their goal is to grow state parties beyond the boom-and-bust cycles of campaigning, to reduce the duplication of effort of siloed campaigns, to see more money and emphasis placed on down-ballot races in redder areas, and more year-round outreach there. All good, needful stuff.
Two important caveats. As progressives, we cannot resist the impulse to set up new organizations rather than strengthening and improving existing ones from the inside — the very “duplication, lack of coordination, reinventing the wheel” Shelton’s group and many others want to see reduced.
Second, the vast bulk of organizing by candidates, parties, and independent groups goes into getting voters to the polls. State and federal legislative caucuses, the state party, the governor, etc. work on it. Every candidate. MoveOn, VoteVets, NAACP, Voto Latino, Swing Left, Indivisible, the League of Women Voters, EMILY’s List, OFA, DFA, and a dozen other groups all work on getting people to the polls. Do you know what they are not working on? What voters do with their ballots once they get there.
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. One echoed the infamous 1988 Willie Horton ad.
Snow lost that race. But even after all the money spent against him, John lost by 161 votes in a district spanning eight counties with an average population under 30,000. That count was less than the undervote in his race in his two largest counties. People there cast ballots but didn’t vote in John’s race.
North Carolina Judge Cheri Beasley is running for U.S. Senate this year after losing her state supreme court reelection bid in 2020 by 401 votes out of 5.5 million cast. Over 130,000 fewer votes were cast in her race than in the presidential contest. Over 130,000 voters went to the polls and didn’t vote in her contest.
That is where down-ballot candidates often lose. Only county parties are positioned, at least in theory, to address that, as I wrote before about Democrats’ “last mile” problem:
The focus on voter turnout is vital (and I address how local committees can support that in For The Win). Step 1 is getting the right voters off their couches, out their doors, and to the polls. We don’t bank votes, however, simply by getting people to the polls. The frenetic work that goes into that typically assumes what happens next happens on its own. But banking votes is not like the Sidney Harris cartoon where Step 2 is “THEN A MIRACLE OCCURS” and we win.
It is the reason to provide electioneering training and cover shifts outside polling places during early voting and on Election Day. Poll greeters need to be supplied with easy-to-read sample ballots or slate cards. It is the last opportunity to influence voters’ choices and how they fill out their ballots. And to make sure they do, and all the way to the bottom to minimize the undervote. We don’t pay it near enough attention.
Covid precautions surely contributed to Beasley’s 2020 loss on the field. There were enough undervotes in my county alone to close the gap. But there are 99 others spread across North Carolina. There are over 3,100 counties and county equivalents in the country. Most county committees are under-resourced and under-organized. They need help not just from the outside but from the inside.
Furthermore, party training geared toward precinct captains turning out their voters on Election Day is out of date. It’s not how elections have operated in decades. The majority of states have some form of early voting. Multiple states vote by mail.
Party trainings assume a precinct turnout model as though elections are still a one-day, 14-hour marathon at a time when two-thirds to three-quarters of the vote is cast before Election Day.
Addressing the undervote is a persistent blind spot that money alone won’t solve. Nor will neighborhood canvassing, nor the best ideas, the right message or a focus-grouped mix of policies. More of us need to get out of our heads and, like Ocasio-Cortez, onto the field.
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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.