You can’t win if you don’t show up to play
Howie Klein this morning addresses why it’s important that Democrats recruit candidates (even “feckless” ones) and run everywhere. Run For Something is working on that. So is North Carolina Democrats’ new state chair, Anderson Clayton, 25. She’ll appear on a featured panel next week at Netroots Nation-Chicago with three other women state chairs: Lavora Barnes of Michigan, Shasti Conrad of Washington, and Jane Kleeb of Nebraska.
“In 2022, we left 44 seats uncontested last cycle,” Clayton told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi in May. That cannot happen again. “Democracy is not democracy without choices.”
Plus, you can’t win if you don’t show up to play.
Democrats need to give voters a reason to show up, Klein writes. What matters to them is results. In Minnesota, for example, where Democrats in 2022 won a narrow trifecta. Democrats chose to show voters what they could do with their narrow governing majorities. They passed transformsational legislation to benefit constitutents (Down With Tyranny):
“The house speaker, Melissa Hortman, said state Democrats viewed the trifecta as a fleeting window to legislate aggressively. ‘Having Republicans in control of part of state government for the last 10 years and being prevented from doing really anything progressive at all created a lot of pent-up demand to chalk up some progressive victories,’ said Hortman.”
Working with grassroots community activists, Democrats passed laws protecting women’s Choice, unions, renters’ rights and voting rights. “During the same session that the felony re-enfranchisement bill passed, the state passed the Democracy for the People Act, which, among other reforms, allows 16- and 17-year-olds to preregister to vote, establishes automatic voter registration in some state agencies, requires voting materials be available in the three most commonly spoken languages in the state, and penalizes voter intimidation and lies.”
That and a lot more.
Republicans, naturally, complain about “overreach” about which they’d have no qualms if it was them. Klein’s friend, Dorothy, a Democratic political operator from California, tells him:
“Democrats need to focus on where they are going– not how they are going to get there, on outcomes instead of process. For example– not getting your pay docked if you have to take time off to take your child to the doctor even if it’s for a well-baby checkup, being able to afford enough bedrooms to house your family, knowing that the foods you eat are safe to eat, knowing the water you drink is safe to drink, knowing the air you breathe is safe to breathe, knowing that that guy standing next to you is not carrying an AK-15, knowing that if you need an abortion you can get one. Democrats need to tell people what the outcomes will be if they vote for them. They don’t need lectures on history. They don’t need to know where we once were or how we got where we are today. They need to know what Democrats will do for them now.”
Dorothy is quoting the Gospel according to Anat Shenker-Osorio:
“Inspire through outcome, not process,” says progressive messaging guru Anat Shenker-Osorio, citing an example from a pollster.
“When we are walking through the grocery aisle and want to buy brownies,” she begins, “what is the image on the brownie box? The brownie! What’s not staring you in the face? The recipe! … We need to stop messaging our policy and talk about what our policy achieves.”
Outcome, not process. “Paint the beautiful tomorrow.” Run everywhere. And once in office, fight like hell for the deliverables.