Now What?
My plan for today’s newsletter was to provide a detailed after-action report on this week’s election. But since that’s all we’ve seen for the last couple of days, and since the people providing these reports have more information (and larger staffs) than I do, I’ll leave that work to them.
Here’s what I’m thinking about today.
In 2017, a group of former staff for Democratic members of Congress got together to begin to strategize about how to defeat Trump and the Trump agenda. They soon produced We are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump, and spearheaded a movement that resulted in the creation of thousands of Indivisible groups across the country, with millions of members. I have been a member of the Williamsburg Indivisible Group (WIG) since March of 2017. If you want to join an Indivisible group near you, go to https://indivisible.org/ and look around. This map shows the location of Indivisible groups:
As I was finishing writing this last night, I was on a Zoom activist call sponsored by Indivisible. Thousands of Indivisible members from around the country were on this call, listening to the founders of Indivisible, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, talk about the midterm elections, how to help in the Georgia Senate runoff election, the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress, and strategies going forward in the (likely) event that the GOP gains back control of the House. NOTE: They think the Senate is going to remain in the hands of the Democrats.
There is a lot of good information in We Are Indivisible, but I want to focus on one part of it today. The guide includes 19 “lessons” directed at people who want to bring about political change, and I’m going to talk about lesson #15 today: Mobilizing Versus Organizing. Here’s what this lesson says:
When you think of grassroots power, you might think of masses of people showing up at a protest, chanting, “Show me what democracy looks like!” Or maybe you think of a huge campaign rally or massive Election Day turnout. This is mobilizing: when lots of people take an action of some sort. Mobilizing is spending your power.
Mobilizing is important, but on its own it’s not enough for a simple reason: our opponents are entrenched and can outlast one-off mobilizations. What happens after the day of action is over? What happens after the votes are cast? If the answer is Nothing, because people go home, then the target of our mobilizations will know they can weather the storm.
Organizing is about building power. It’s about building a shared sense of purpose, developing leaders, settling on strategy, creating tactics, and, at the most basic level, just figuring out how to work well with others. If mobilizing is the big demonstration of power, organizing is the part that’s quieter but critical for the long haul.
Effective groups are always organizing so that they can mobilize at strategically critical moments—for advocacy, for electoral work, for everything in between. Fundamentally, this depends on developing and sustaining leaders within your group. Effective leaders continually develop volunteers, giving them greater responsibility and leadership roles over time. The best way to do this is the snowflake model, which focuses on building a web of interdependent leaders working to achieve goals together. Each leader functions like an arm on a snowflake, taking responsibility for a task or line of effort that’s part of the broader goal. The snowflake model allows groups to tap into the talents of their membership and it ensures the sustainability of the group; as leaders naturally move on, others are continually being groomed to step into their roles.
By continuously developing membership and leadership, Indivisible groups build a muscle they then can flex at key moments over time. The permanence of a local Indivisible group is an essential part of your power. Elected officials and other targets of mobilizations know that they can’t just wait it out—because you will still be there long after one particular march or election is over.
Greenberg, Leah; Levin, Ezra. We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump (pp. 197-198). Atria/One Signal Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Go back and look at the part in boldface type. This is exactly the situation we’re in. The votes have been counted, we’re all exhausted, we never want to see another political ad on television, and we want to go home, put our feet up, and binge-watch Outlander again. We can do that for a little while, but then we have to get on with the process of organizing so we will be stronger the next time we mobilize – whether it’s for a rally, a protest, or an election.
Political parties play a crucial role in the process of organizing. They conduct after-action reports on what worked (and what didn’t work) in the last election. They look toward the next election and figure out what they need to do differently if they want to improve the performance of their party’s candidates. They need to identify and then recruit possible candidates for the next election cycle. They need to work on creating name recognition for these candidates before the election process begins. They need to raise money to support the efforts of these candidates.
Next week, I’m having lunch with my friend Christine to talk about all of this. She has her ear to the ground as far as the local Democrats are concerned, and we’re going to talk about potential candidates, strategies, and planning. Plus she’s fun to be around, and I’ll enjoy spending some time with her.
If you are unhappy with the results of this week’s elections, you can commit to improving the results of the next election. Join your local political party organization. Attend their meetings. Volunteer when they ask for help. Participate in their organizational efforts as they prepare for the next election cycle. Find your local Christine and meet her for lunch, a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, or a nice walk.
Many people don’t want to have anything to do with this type of organizing, because they associate the activities of political parties with over-the-top campaign rallies or intrusive phone calls to voters. But there are opportunities for everyone to help. If you are an extroverted glad-hander, there are plenty of opportunities for you to glad-hand. If you are an introverted solitude-seeker, there are plenty of opportunities for you to provide administrative support to the party – keeping records, designing campaign signs and brochures, organizing the distribution of materials to voters, planning upcoming events, and so forth. You can do some of these things without ever going into the campaign office or talking to voters.
Democracy is not a spectator sport. If you participate only on election day, you are allowing other people to structure what your choices are on that day. The results are often baked-in before any votes are cast or counted, and this is done through the actions of the political parties at the local level. I hardly ever agree with Senator Mitch McConnell on anything, but he was right a few weeks ago when he said that “candidate quality” might keep the GOP from gaining control over the United States Senate. That determination is still up in the air, with the result probably depending on a Senatorial run-off election in George (again!). We can’t expect better candidates to emerge from the ether. We have to get to know people in our community, determine who has the skills, time, and interest in running for office, persuade them to run, and then help them get elected.
I can give you a quick description of how this can work. In 2019, Herb Jones, a strong Democrat from nearby New Kent County, joined WIG. Herb had decided to run against our incumbent Republican state Senator, Tommie Norment, and he wanted our support. He gave Tommie a good run in our GOP-friendly district and came away with 39% of the vote. Respectable – and more votes than anyone else had ever garnered against Wittman – but disappointing.
After the redistricting subsequent to the 2020 census, we found ourselves in a redrawn Congressional District where our incumbent GOP member of Congress, Rob Wittman, was going to have to appeal to a whole new set of voters on the outskirts of Richmond. This district still skewed Republican, but less so than our previous district. In February of 2022, we were getting worried – no one had stepped forward to be the nominee for the Democratic Party to oppose Wittman. We had talked to Herb earlier, and he said he wouldn’t be able to run unless he could accumulate a war chest of $1 million. (Wittman had $15 million in the bank and didn’t spend most of it). But as the filing deadline approached, Herb continued to listen to the people around him and finally agreed to file to be a candidate in this race. Herb ran a great campaign, showing up at as many barbecues, town parades, and civic association meetings as he could fit on his schedule.
He lost on Tuesday, gaining 42% of the vote. Better than 2019, but not enough to win. His major problem was money. The state and national Democratic parties decided to fund other campaigns with higher visibility and a greater likelihood of success. They funded Abigail Spanberger’s campaign in central Virginia, and she won reelection to her third term in Congress. They also funded Elaine Luria’s campaign in coastal Virginia, and she lost. If we had been able to recruit Herb earlier, we might have been able to help him more and he could have won.
In Virginia, we are already thinking about our next elections. Because our state elections are held in odd-numbered years, we will be electing representatives to our state General Assembly (the legislature) in November of 2023. Primaries will be in June. The filing deadline is in April. We need to be identifying and recruiting candidates now. Because of last year’s redistricting, we have some new districts that don’t include any incumbent legislators and other districts that include two incumbents. This needs to be sorted out within the next few months so that we have good candidates on the ballots.
Only a couple of states are in Virginia’s situation. Virginia joins Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Jersey in electing their state legislatures in odd-numbered years. Three states – Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi – elect their governor and other state-wide offices in odd-numbered years.
If you live in any of the other 48 states, you have a bit more breathing room before you have to start thinking about your next election cycle. But this means your local party organizations have more time to be effective organizers, not more time to sit back and do nothing.