Hello, World! It's The Connector, my new newsletter
Dear friend:
Welcome to The Connector, my new newsletter. If you’re getting this email, it’s either because you were a subscriber to First Post, the biweekly email I wrote for Civic Hall’s news-site Civicist, or because you signed up when you heard I was leaving there, or because we’ve crossed paths over the years. If you don’t want to keep receiving these emails, just hit the unsubscribe button down below. Otherwise, I hope you’ll give me a few minutes of your day and read on!
When I decided this summer that it was time to move on from Civic Hall, I knew that one of the things I wanted to do was keep writing a newsletter broadly about politics, but to be honest I also felt I needed some time to clear my head and think about what I wanted to focus on before diving back into the rhythm of a regular email. Well, I’ve changed my mind. There’s too much going on. So, instead of presenting you with a nicely finished product, I’m just going to let this evolve.
Those of you who have been reading me for a while will find some things familiar. I’m still going to pay close attention to the intersection of politics and technology. I still also care very much about civic tech, the use of tech for the public good. But right off the bat, three things will be different. First, you should expect that I will be more openly political than the last few years, when I was working for Civic Hall, which is a nonprofit organization. Second, I’m going to I’m going to devote more attention to issues of organizing and movement-building. That’s because I believe mass movements, when they are organized, are what change culture and politics in big ways. And we need big change right now, if we’re going to get out of the mess(es) we’re in. And third, I’m going to write longer and in a more essay-ish style, at least for now. At some point I may shift back to the “links-and-commentary” aggregator model that was First Post’s style. But we’re in a very turbulent time, and right now I think it makes sense to try to understand the big picture.
The Moment We’re In
I’m a 58 year old, white, Jewish, American man. I’ve been politically aware since 6th grade, when I was on George McGovern’s team in the mock election vote in my junior high (Richard Nixon won my suburban Long Island school in a landslide, a precursor of what happened that fall). I remember underestimating Ronald Reagan, who I thought was an amiable buffoon of a president, until he got re-elected. And I remember how George W. Bush soared in popularity after 9-11, and also got re-elected, despite having plunged the United States into a quagmire in Iraq. In 2015, when Donald Trump started drawing crowds, I took him very seriously. His presidency has been an utter disaster, but at least 40% of the country is still with him. We’re not out of the woods yet. Nor will we be if Joe Biden wins next month’s election.
That said, take two minutes and watch this video, featuring the words of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
It’s a moving tribute, and describes in a very fitting way the moment we’re in. But there’s one problem with it. Ginsberg says the “true symbol” of America isn’t the bald eagle, “it’s the pendulum,” and that when it swings too far one way, it inevitably swings back. Political scientists call this the “thermostatic” theory of American politics–if the party in power moves too far in one direction, it triggers a counter-reaction in the public, and eventually that party loses power if it fails to self-correct. (You can pick up a bit more of this idea here, in Tom Edsall’s often trenchant New York Times column.)
I don’t think the pendulum theory was ever true, and it’s especially not true now. The pendulum doesn’t swing on its own; organized people push it (and so does organized money, often much more successfully). America’s politics have reached a very dangerous point because of a concerted, decades-long, deliberate effort to make people hate government and redistribute wealth upward. Both political parties have been willing partners in this shift. It’s only now that we’re seeing a concerted effort on the part of grassroots actors to try to change course.
A Reason to be Optimistic
I’ve been tracking (and participating) in the rise of grassroots organizing in resistance to Trumpism since late 2016. Two years, in The New Republic, I wrote that grassroots organizations had effectively “rebuilt the muscle” that Barack Obama let atrophy after his 2008 election. Now I’m even more optimistic about the massive swarm of activity devoted by thousands of groups focused on turning the tide in November. (I’ll have more on this in two weeks, when my latest New Republic piece on this comes out.)
It’s also reasonable to be optimistic about how this election is shaping up. Three weeks before Election Day, it looks like Biden-Harris will beat Trump-Pence soundly. No one is taking for granted that they will win, as many supporters of Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Sixty-three percent of people aged 18-29 say they are definitely going to vote, compared to 47% in 2016. And perhaps most important, grassroots Democrats have been pouring time and resources into key states for years. Democrats are donating at literally ten times the rate they did at this point in 2016, according to ActBlue. And in July and August, the most recent months for which full data is available, there were 16.8 million donations made on ActBlue totaling $725 million–more than double the total made for the entire third quarter of 2018!
But I’m Still Nervous
All that said, we are all skating on thin ice into a murky future. As Barton Gellman aptly put it a few weeks ago in The Atlantic, if the election is at all close, all the warning lights pointing toward a political crisis are blinking red. Trump and his allies have been claiming for months that the only way Democrats could win would be by cheating, and he has refused to say that he will accept the election results if they don’t favor him. On top of that, it’s going to take a while before we know the final vote tallies in many states.
Two weeks ago, I spent the evening participating in an election simulation game designed to get participants thinking about the challenges that may arise during the days after November 3rd. Participants were randomly assigned to one of five teams, each meant to represent a different real-world actor, including a national labor union, a state-based progressive coalition, a “Never Trump” Republican PAC, a DC-based network of democracy groups, and a Philadelphia-based local Antifa collective. The scenario we were given to react to had one element that surprised me–low turnout on Election Day, despite predictions, which hit me like a gut punch to the chest. (Could COVID really cause that to happen?) The other elements were less surprising, but equally confounding. Picture lots of off-duty cops hired by local Republican party operatives monitoring polling places around the country that are predominantly in communities of color; add an incident involving Proud Boys assaulting some Black voters at a site in Philly; and then toss in Attorney General William Barr announcing a 9pm curfew for Washington, DC.
What is the right next move in this scenario? Take to the streets to demand that state authorities guarantee that all votes will be counted or trust that they will do their jobs impartially?
I’ve spent some time the last few weeks looking at how grassroots Democrats are planning to deal with the post-election transition. There is a big national coalition called Protect the Results, with more than 100 sponsoring groups, that was put together and is being led by Indivisible National and Stand By America. And there is another network of actors centered on The Frontline, which is rooted in organizers from the Movement for Black Lives and the Working Families Party. Protect the Results has more than 100,000 people who have already pledged to take to the streets if Trump tries to steal the election, and it released an organizing tool-kit last week urging people to sign-up for and organize local protest events that are tentatively scheduled for November 4th, the afternoon after Election Day.
As the Protect the Results tool-kit explains, “If Trump declares victory before all the votes are counted, makes unfounded claims that the election was ‘stolen,’ tries to stop votes from being counted, or otherwise threatens the integrity of the election or the peaceful transition of power, Protect the Results will activate nationwide mobilizations.” It adds, “We think the likelihood of activation is high and ask that groups plan their events for 5pm local time on Wednesday, November 4.” (So far, there are 142 events on PTR’s national map; scroll down to mid-page to see it.)
Those are all good triggers for action, but I worry that this plan may fall apart for a variety of reasons. First, it’s far from clear that the millions of Americans who have been suffering from Trump’s maniacal policies are going to accept any possible Trump victory. What if Biden wins the election by twice as many votes as Clinton did, but Trump still ekes out an Electoral College victory? Will people really accept him as legitimate? Should they? Or, to make things harder–what if Biden wins by 6 million popular votes but three or four states have a variety of disruptions (cyber or otherwise), causing the electoral tally to tilt toward Trump? Given the existential dangers Trump represents, should Americans accept him as president if he again loses the popular vote?
Here’s another hard question: Should Democrats rush to the streets the day after the election? What if that has the effect of giving the GOP the pretext it needs to “justify” shutting down vote counts? Nelini Stamp, a veteran national organizer with the Working Families Party, made this point on her Facebook page last Wednesday. She wrote:
Ok so 2000 was bad and there were a lot of mistakes made during the contested election.
AND, I am worried we are over correcting a bit.
A few thoughts:
- If we act really quickly after 11/3 … we WILL play into the Republican and right wing playbook, they want to see people take the streets immediately after the election so they can stop counting votes. They will use “insurrection” or the many DOJs and election integrity commissions they have to say “we can’t count votes peacefully due to unrest” we must just submit the votes as is.
We need to prepare for all scenarios and that includes winning y’all, we are so used to losing I think we’re just preparing for all the bad with contested and not anything for if we win out right.
Some tactics are going to ensure us losing so please really think about the masses, what the right wing is setting us up to do and think about.
There isn’t a silver bullet on any of this but please also think about tone. I will uplift the people of Puerto Rico there was music, joy, Drag shows, caballero actions, people were singing and it was also disciplined every night when they needed to get Ricky out. They succeeded because it was someone everyone wanted to join, everyone had a role because of the tone. So please please if your scenario planning think about tone.
Ok that’s it for me, your very worried organizer friend.
Nelini’s point, which I share, is that in a fast-moving and confusing environment, things can spiral the wrong way. And this is where the biggest strength of grassroots progressives–that we are decentralized and fairly self-reliant–may also be a weakness. As I’ve long argued (alongside scholars like my friend Zeynep Tufekci), the Internet is really good for helping a large group of people coordinate around a commonly understood goal. It actually complicates things horribly when we don’t already agree. It is very good at “no” and terrible at “yes.” Uniting in concerted action to get more votes to Biden than Trump is a relatively simple coordination problem compared to figuring out how to respond rapidly to changing circumstances.
As best as I can tell from reading the history of civil resistance movements, from Poland to Egypt, one thing is clear. When a movement has clear, accountable leadership, with established channels for two-way communication between leaders and supporters, it has a much better chance of winning in an extended struggle for power. In the days after November 3rd, as we hope to put an end to Trump’s four years of misrule, this may be our biggest challenge.
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Reminder to readers who are registered to vote in New York: Make sure to vote for Biden-Harris on the Working Families Party line. We need at least 2% of the statewide vote, or 130,000 votes (whichever is higher) for the WFP to keep its ballot line. Your vote counts toward Biden-Harris, but by voting for them on the WFP line you also send a message to national and state Democrats that you want them to fight harder for things like universal healthcare, a true living wage, a more equitable tax system, affordable housing, and full funding for public education. Go to VoteWFP.com to learn more and sign the pledge.
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That’s it for today. Please share The Connector with others. Send me your feedback via msifry-at-gmail-dot-com. As I said up top, it’s a work in progress. But aren’t we all?
Micah