Before moving ahead to twoness
by Tom Sullivan
A friend sent a DKos post about a new organization, It Starts Today. The group hopes to "restart the 50-State Strategy" by raising small-donor money for every Democratic House and Senate race in the country, regardless of candidate. The reason is the Democratic Party has been playing the strategic targeting game at least since after 1994 and in the process losing ground in large swaths of the country:
Every time, it made sense in the short term. And, every time, this decision to be “strategic” and “efficient” also caused us to abandon more and more districts, essentially ceding them to the Republican party. As a result, each Democratic wave—think 2008—got reversed fairly quickly, as the Republican party rallied around a consistent message and fought back. Meanwhile, each Republican wave—think 2010—became that much harder to undo, as the Democratic Party focused on an increasingly smaller pool of “competitive” districts.
If you don't show up to play, you forfeit. It's been shortsighted, clearly, for Democrats in Congress, for winning the presidency, and for being able to advance an agenda when Democrats win it. Mark Warner put it bluntly when he told Yearly Kos in 2006, "[W]e cannot just go after 16 states and then try to hit a triple bank-shot to get Ohio or Florida." Yet that's how the party plays it again and again.
So, what did I think of this new funding idea?
A good one. Bypasses elected pooh-bahs in Washington accustomed to picking local candidates for us. But still too D.C.-focused. You can't fund viable candidates you don't have. Or you end up funding candidates who basically aren't viable, money or no money. Chicken or egg? Not to discount the serious dampening effects of REDMAP and "gerrymandering on steroids," but you can't run money itself for Congress. At least not yet. You have to run strong candidates .... with money.
Generally speaking, viable congressional or statewide candidates start at the school board or city council level, then advance to the county level or state legislature and perhaps to D.C. or statewide office. (This path has its own pitfalls, but that's a topic for another day.) Viable candidates rarely spring fully formed from nowhere.
Plus, Washington is less relevant than state legislatures from whence come senators and congressmen and governors and a ton of legislation that affects people's daily lives at the state and local level. They define the character of a state, control redistricting and, as we have seen in Republican hands, work diligently to restrict voting rights.
President Hillary wasn't going to help with that. Neither was President Bernie. It's a local problem that must be solved locally. Relying on state and federal courts is not enough. Winning seats in Congress is not enough. Anyone disappointed by what Barack Obama didn't accomplish over eight years knows holding the presidency is not enough.
Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy was about more than winning seats in Congress. It was about taking moribund county parties in places Democrats haven't been competitive and turning them back into functioning political organizations. It was about electing Democrats at the local level and building a farm team for advancing to state capitols and to the nation's capital. It was about building infrastructure from the bottom up, not from the top down, and in places national Democrats ignore.
A week ahead of one congressional election, our field team leaders made a sweep through the rural counties to check on the local parties' preparations for Election Day.
So how was it going? we asked one group.
"We're done," they said. "We called through our lists and put out the signs. We're done," they said again with confidence.
They caught us glancing at each other in disbelief.
"You mean," they asked, "you want us to do ... more?"
Yes, we nodded. And yes, they did. And yes, we won.
That was a few cycles ago. But it's not unusual for committees in out-of-the-way, red counties. They don't do more because they don't know what more to do, or they assume more takes resources they don't have and never will. Rural counties where big campaigns don't go get little exposure to the kind of nitro-fueled, SUNDAY-SUNDAY-SUNDAY, 20-something-staffed national campaigns where they can learn what "big organizing" looks like. Yet those places are where the state House and Senate seats lie that Democrats must flip to win back state legislatures across the country and build a strong national farm team. Wellstone and other groups train candidates and campaign managers. But few state organizations teach counties the nuts and bolts of supporting them at election time. State parties may provide a local field organizer and teach counties VoteBuilder and precinct organization. But not effective mobilization and campaign coordination across a countywide slate of races.
It is gratifying that since offering the For The Win election mechanics primer here, it has gone so far to 33 states. Over half the requests are from red states; the rest mostly from red areas of blue states. A few readers who have seen the link hope it is some grand strategy for winning back Washington in 2020. It's not. Like Dean envisioned, it is for teaching neglected, under-resourced county organizations something more basic: how to put their pants on one leg at a time and tie their shoelaces, in that order. On a shoestring, speaking of shoelaces. It's a primer, not a comprehensive manual. We're not asking people to master long division. That comes later. And hopefully, so does winning back state legislatures.
There has been a flood of new volunteers for #TheResistance groups that have grown in power and influence since November 8. Indivisible, Our Revolution, and others. Some volunteers are veterans, but many others are new to political organizing. Every other enthusiastic recruit who walks into our headquarters for the first time wants to do messaging because the Democrats suck at it. (And they do.) But when Democrats can't recruit candidates even to compete for local races, much less provide them solid logistical support, messaging is down the list of their problems. And if county organizations don't have the organizational wherewithal for effective Get-Out-The-Vote actions, they really don't have the resources for setting a national progressive narrative.
Woody Allen once created an imaginary spring course calendar. The description for Philosophy I explains, "Students achieving oneness will move ahead to twoness." Many of us want to skip the first part. Others don't know there is a first part. That comes with training and experience.
* * * * * * * *
Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.
Special thanks to John Moriarty.
