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Robert B. Hubbell's avatar

Robert Hubbell here, the Democratic "cheerleader" referred to above. Here is a portion of a note I just sent to Micah:

Hi, Micah. Thanks for your reply. I stand by my criticisms, but note the following:

I linked to your op-ed. Readers of my newsletter can and did read your op-ed. They did not need to rely on my summary. You can read their reactions--in their own words--in the Comments to my Substack. I suspect comments from my readers reflect the comments you received in the NYT comments to your article.

You are clearly experienced and accomplished, and therefore understand the argumentative techniques that you used in your op-ed. Since you were writing an opinion piece, you were not bound by academic or scholarly objectivity or precision. But, at root, you chose to set up a straw man argument (i.e., that postcarding is ineffective) by selectively citing an outlier study that was small, non-randomized, and used an endpoint not consistent with the postcarding campaign it studied. But I am sure you knew all that when you cited the study—without mentioning contrary research.

You are free to selectively cite whatever research studies you choose in an op-ed. But neglecting to mention that there are many other, larger, more-controlled studies that find a positive effect on turnout was, in your words, incomplete. It was fair criticism by me to note your omission.

But beyond using postcarding and letter writing as a straw-man argument, your suggestion those efforts are “chum” to attract small-dollar voters was gratuitous and not grounded in any evidence. In the interest of brevity, I chose not to address other comments that attempted to denigrate the cohort of postcard and letter writing volunteers, e.g., including that "impassioned newcomers are [treated] like cash cows, gig workers and stamp machines to be exploited."

Such criticisms were offensive to people entering activism for the first time in their lives. To suggest that they are victims of a con is wrong, confusing, and groundless. And suggesting that organizations like reputable organizations like Vote Forward are using volunteers as “cash cows” for fundraising is offensive.

Based on responses to my article by academics, researchers, and organizers, I will likely have more to say about the state of research on the effectiveness of postcarding and letter writing.

Finally, I make no apologies for trying to maintain morale among Democrats when the media and cynical operatives do nothing but war-dial defeatism, cynicism, and criticism. When Democrats finally prevail over Trumpism, I am sure you will explain in great detail why everything we did was wrong.

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Barbara D's avatar

Yep, came here from the NY Times article. I have been driven almost crazy since a month after the Jan 6 insurrection.. Emails started flooding in from all over the country - multiple times a day, multiple times a week. In the beginning I was both repulsed and fascinated by them. I added a folder to my email called "politifcal email spam" to which I sent all the political emails so I wouldn't have to see them after I glanced at them. I stopped saving them after the volume hit 5,000, which was well before the end of 2021.

I am an 83 yo progressive via being a child of the New Deal. Before I even had any clue to what he was talking about, my father talked at the dinner table every night about the Depression and how bad it was, how people suffered and FDR was elected President and initiated programs the would improve lives or ordinary people. Growing up, I knew that all the good things happening in my life pointed back to FDR.

I am a few years older than Bernie Sanders, but I was growing up in Queens at the same time as he was growing up in Brooklyn. When Sanders set up his portable podium in 2015 to say he was running for President and why, I understood him immediately and I rejoiced. After a long drought, politics was finally alive again.

His two runs for the Democratic Presidency were disappointing and disheartening - not because of Bernie but because of the behavior of the Democratic Party. The second run was the worst ending in what I call "Murder on the Orient Express", Albert Finney version.

So after being a die-hard Democrat for almost all my life. my feelings about the Democratic Party is somewhat negative, to say the least.

But the elected progressive congresspeople are going the wrong way. If I understand rightly, a congressperson can be in the progresssive caucus if the vote against progressive issues no more than 30% of the time. But these pseudo-progressives have voted against progressive issues may more than they're allowed: 50%, . . .up to 100% of the time. Shontel Brown who voted against progressive issues 80% of the time and the CPC endorsed her over Nina Turner. They're trashing their own franchise.

I'm stopping here because I could go on forever

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