MoveOn is leaving private equity giant Bonterra for non-profit tech platform Action Network. Plus, what the "too woke" vs "too corporate" debate is missing about the Democratic party.
this is very jam packed — I wish I could go point by point, but nobody wants to hear that. :)
This is the first I've heard this statement, though: "The thing is, as I reported back in 2017, and others have documented as well, Obama and his circle didn’t just let that massive muscle wither away—they actively smothered it because it was seen as a threat to party insiders."
My real political being was born with Obama 2007, and I wrote a very naive, very earnest proposal to Change.gov immediately upon his election proposing that "“The Change We Need” requires an educated, informed, active public," and then proceeding to lay out a plan for creating a Department of Public Engagement to do just that. Many years later, in 2017, I met a woman whose husband had been tasked with creating and running a department of that same name. Major inner-circle fighting, she told me — paired with the economic crisis — led them to abandon the project. I never heard about it being a threat to party insiders, but that tracks with the cascading levels of ongoing revelations about party leadership (of which the interview with JO'MD is emblematic) that makes me feel like the zillions of hours (including being away from my husband and young children) I've spent working on its behalf have been almost entirely wasted. I can't be the only one who feels that way.
Back in the early days of the first Obama Administration, there were people who tried to push real public engagement, launching the "We the People" online petition site, for example. Same with their professed commitment to more open government--they started posting the White House visitor logs. But it quickly became apparent that this was largely "transparency theater" and not meant to actually change the real power flows around the Oval Office.
Micah: We definitely don't always agree (e.g. I'm definitely in the Ruy Teixiera corner in the Ruy vs Bernie debate), but I 100% agree you with about the Democrats need to embrace relational organizing rather than the current model.
Every week for months, my Dad was gathering his group of fellow Torah study members to write postcards to swing state voters on behalf of Joe and then Kamala. Learned about it a couple of months after he started and then didn't have the heart to ask why he thought it would persuasive for Pennsylvania voters to receive postcards from random people from California.
1) thanks for the tech update. Always helpful. 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
2) dems disconnect is real...
Just listened to a podcast on this book "Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right. Book by Arlie Russell Hochschild" where the author says
a) research shows that white liberals are the MOST likely to disconnect with people who say things they don't agree with (think blocking that uncle on social media)
b) liberals look down on poor white "trash" (vote against their self interest!)
It is critical that Dems / liberals /etc get out of their blue city bubbles and listen to others and find common ground.
Or?
Feel good about their #lookdownism and pat themselves on the back.
Micah: Two notes of appreciation for you. First, for your ongoing tech coverage, where you lift the tent flap so we activists can see what the staff people are seeing. Second, for your workmanlike coverage of "Whither the Democrats?" Always your links are among the most useful as I work to curate non-obvious views to temper all the superficial hot takes striving to stave off the deep reflection that this moment requires.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I will take Door Three. I said it;s not if the party foes left of right, it should go DOWN to and be party accessible and intermingled with its purported constituiences. Tnx for listening to the O'Malley crap. I couldnt make it past 5 minutes
NGP has major problems. You used to be able to get a dedicated sales person and they'd even gift data for small political districts like NYC council. Now you have to go to the state party.
Someone I once gave a business card to must have entered two personal email addresses and a business email address. I only donate from of my personal email addresses, yet I receive fundraising emails to all three. My business email begins with my first name, yet the solicitations sent to it are addressed to someone I never heard of named Ron Pediano, who lived in a different Zip Code. Few campaigns were willing to correct this, even when I had a personal relationship with candidate. I called a candidate I knew three years ago who sent an email addressed to Ron, and she said she'd have her digital team address this. I continued to receive emails addressed to Ron and I wound up buying media for one of her primary opponents. They both lost. I wonder how much aggregate money from Ron, campaigns across the country lost.
The software is also buggy. It leaves out voters that match your criteria, such as voting habits and patterns. I would look for people on the Van generated list and they would be missing. Usually, the person met the search criteria.
I think you have to combine multiple data sources, NGP, L2 and Board of Election.
I've used the Action Network to send mail for campaigns that couldn't afford NGP, but still possessed email lists too large for Constant Contact or Mail Chimp, with web hosting companies requiring the entire list to have opted in.
Both sides are right (or wrong) when it comes to blaming election loses on being too far left or too moderate. There needed to be bold but pragmatic economic proposals. There was no healthcare proposal. Eliminating the entire private health insurance industry is never going to happen, as would happen under a single payer or Medicare for All proposals, but a public option with income based premiums deducted as a payroll tax for those who want it, could be achievable.
Harris and the party in general needed better inflation messaging. Republican and even the so called mainstream media created a narrative that inflation was causing mass suffering. Trump dupped people into believing that he'd restore prices to what they paid in 2019. The truth is prices increased because of Covid related supply issues and businesses not materially affected by the supply chain collapse, many of which supported Trump and the GOP in general, taking advantage and raising prices because they could. They needed to message that the inflation, which is now under controlled, would have been the same or much worse under Trump, whose current economic proposals would make inflation worse.
On the other hand, Trumps, "They vs You" ad was amazingly effective. The Democrats could have have countered the commercial without throwing the Trans community under the bus, by flipping the narrative and saying its Trump and the GOP that's obsessed with gender identification, while it's the Democrats who would implement policy that would actually improve your life.
There's "Woke", "Overly Woke" and "Not Woke Enough". Being Woke is not a bad thing. Systematic racism is real. People of color still suffer paradoxically from both over and under policing. They are discriminated in both housing, employment, healthcare and despite affirmative action, even education. Being woke means that you fight to combat racism, sexism, homo and trans phobia.
However, not every issue can be simplistically evaluated by the binary of oppressed/oppressor. I consider this binary to be overly woke. Jews and Israel by extension are mislabeled as white oppressors, while Arabs and white North Africans are considered indigenous oppressed people of color. As a Jew, while I at times benefit from "White Privilege", like when I go for a post midnight run, many times I don't. Recent survey data has indicated that 25 percent of all employers won't hire Jews and book stores are boycotting Jewish authors, in many cases without regard to their Middle East opinions, yet Jews and dealing with antisemitism are not allowed to be part of the intersectional unicause. I used to think that right wing antisemites were more dangerous to Jews than anti-Zionists, because the white nationalists had guns, but that's flipped since Oct 7, based on the actions of Pro-Palestinian mobs in the United States and Europe. The Netherlands soccer pogrom is the strongest example worldwide why Jew need a viable Israel more than ever. Protesting against Israel days after Oct 7, even before Israel retaliated is an example of being overly woke.
Many of the Orwellian curriculums in Republican led states, the kind that say slavery was "beneficial" for the slaves, refuses to recognize that racism against blacks exists or even existed are examples being not woke enough. Refusing to teach about the Oklahoma Black Wall Street Massacre is another example of being inadequately woke.
Harris or Biden for that matter, may have won the election if Oct 7 didn't happen. The Democrats lost votes from supporters of both sides of the conflict. Trump won Dearborn, despite his first term Muslim ban, with Anti-Israel Jew Jill Stein and her Arab antisemitic running mate finishing second and Harris finishing third. Trump successfully ran ads targeting Dearborn and other Arab enclaves stressing Harris's husband's Jewishness and simultaneously ran creative positioning Harris, Biden and the Democrats in general as being hostile to Israel and empathetic to Hamas supporters. While some polling data indicates 70 percent of Jews still voted for Harris, the Jewish population surveyed were small subsets of a larger voting universe, making the data highly volatile and the results suspect. Many Jewish Democrats who before Oct 7, would never have voted for even a traditional Republican, let alone Trump, seriously considered voting for him because they believed Harris/Biden and the Democratic party in general were not supportive of Israel enough, despite Biden objectively being the most pro-Israel president in our country' s history. Every cross word towards Netanyahu or is Israel's prosecution of the war was magnified. New York and NJ were close because both states bled Jewish support.
As always, I applaud your candor and honesty. Let's hope that those who should be hearing your thoughtful and helpful advice are reading your substack. I know I recommend it to everyone who is keenly interested in politics.
One piece you didn't cover is how the Saudi government is the money behind Bonterra....they bought all of these Democratic staple organizations and I've been worried all along since they are evil in their own right, but in bed with the Trump/Kushner clan so undermining Democrats....no that couldn't be....yes, it is....
The Saudi money connection is interesting and another reason for Democrats and progressives to shift their tech spending choices. But I haven't seen any reporting suggesting that they are interfering in any way with Bonterra's operations. I assume you are thinking of this piece by Akela Lacy, who follows this stuff closely. https://theintercept.com/2023/04/23/saudi-arabia-democratic-party-campaign-ngp-van/
This won't solve the "how do we pay for it" problem of supporting progressive governance at scale, but wanted to put a plug in for Local Progress, a non-profit that supports progressive local electeds. (Full disclosure: I work there, but this is not a sales pitch because memebrship is free.)
this is very jam packed — I wish I could go point by point, but nobody wants to hear that. :)
This is the first I've heard this statement, though: "The thing is, as I reported back in 2017, and others have documented as well, Obama and his circle didn’t just let that massive muscle wither away—they actively smothered it because it was seen as a threat to party insiders."
My real political being was born with Obama 2007, and I wrote a very naive, very earnest proposal to Change.gov immediately upon his election proposing that "“The Change We Need” requires an educated, informed, active public," and then proceeding to lay out a plan for creating a Department of Public Engagement to do just that. Many years later, in 2017, I met a woman whose husband had been tasked with creating and running a department of that same name. Major inner-circle fighting, she told me — paired with the economic crisis — led them to abandon the project. I never heard about it being a threat to party insiders, but that tracks with the cascading levels of ongoing revelations about party leadership (of which the interview with JO'MD is emblematic) that makes me feel like the zillions of hours (including being away from my husband and young children) I've spent working on its behalf have been almost entirely wasted. I can't be the only one who feels that way.
Back in the early days of the first Obama Administration, there were people who tried to push real public engagement, launching the "We the People" online petition site, for example. Same with their professed commitment to more open government--they started posting the White House visitor logs. But it quickly became apparent that this was largely "transparency theater" and not meant to actually change the real power flows around the Oval Office.
Ask the President Twitter? 🤔
heartbreaking.
Micah: We definitely don't always agree (e.g. I'm definitely in the Ruy Teixiera corner in the Ruy vs Bernie debate), but I 100% agree you with about the Democrats need to embrace relational organizing rather than the current model.
Every week for months, my Dad was gathering his group of fellow Torah study members to write postcards to swing state voters on behalf of Joe and then Kamala. Learned about it a couple of months after he started and then didn't have the heart to ask why he thought it would persuasive for Pennsylvania voters to receive postcards from random people from California.
Micah, I rely on you to inform me about a lot of this stuff, and I appreciate all the research you do.
I don’t know what will work, really.
I do know what WON’T work. The same shit that got us here will keep us here. Who can throw out all those party leaders? It won’t be their protégés.
I don’t know which is the right answer, but I’m willing to try most any change that will connect us to those we want to serve.
Be well my friend.
1) thanks for the tech update. Always helpful. 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
2) dems disconnect is real...
Just listened to a podcast on this book "Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right. Book by Arlie Russell Hochschild" where the author says
a) research shows that white liberals are the MOST likely to disconnect with people who say things they don't agree with (think blocking that uncle on social media)
b) liberals look down on poor white "trash" (vote against their self interest!)
It is critical that Dems / liberals /etc get out of their blue city bubbles and listen to others and find common ground.
Or?
Feel good about their #lookdownism and pat themselves on the back.
Adding that book to me "to-read" list. This is definitely a problem.
Micah: Two notes of appreciation for you. First, for your ongoing tech coverage, where you lift the tent flap so we activists can see what the staff people are seeing. Second, for your workmanlike coverage of "Whither the Democrats?" Always your links are among the most useful as I work to curate non-obvious views to temper all the superficial hot takes striving to stave off the deep reflection that this moment requires.
Thank you.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I will take Door Three. I said it;s not if the party foes left of right, it should go DOWN to and be party accessible and intermingled with its purported constituiences. Tnx for listening to the O'Malley crap. I couldnt make it past 5 minutes
NGP has major problems. You used to be able to get a dedicated sales person and they'd even gift data for small political districts like NYC council. Now you have to go to the state party.
Someone I once gave a business card to must have entered two personal email addresses and a business email address. I only donate from of my personal email addresses, yet I receive fundraising emails to all three. My business email begins with my first name, yet the solicitations sent to it are addressed to someone I never heard of named Ron Pediano, who lived in a different Zip Code. Few campaigns were willing to correct this, even when I had a personal relationship with candidate. I called a candidate I knew three years ago who sent an email addressed to Ron, and she said she'd have her digital team address this. I continued to receive emails addressed to Ron and I wound up buying media for one of her primary opponents. They both lost. I wonder how much aggregate money from Ron, campaigns across the country lost.
The software is also buggy. It leaves out voters that match your criteria, such as voting habits and patterns. I would look for people on the Van generated list and they would be missing. Usually, the person met the search criteria.
I think you have to combine multiple data sources, NGP, L2 and Board of Election.
I've used the Action Network to send mail for campaigns that couldn't afford NGP, but still possessed email lists too large for Constant Contact or Mail Chimp, with web hosting companies requiring the entire list to have opted in.
Both sides are right (or wrong) when it comes to blaming election loses on being too far left or too moderate. There needed to be bold but pragmatic economic proposals. There was no healthcare proposal. Eliminating the entire private health insurance industry is never going to happen, as would happen under a single payer or Medicare for All proposals, but a public option with income based premiums deducted as a payroll tax for those who want it, could be achievable.
Harris and the party in general needed better inflation messaging. Republican and even the so called mainstream media created a narrative that inflation was causing mass suffering. Trump dupped people into believing that he'd restore prices to what they paid in 2019. The truth is prices increased because of Covid related supply issues and businesses not materially affected by the supply chain collapse, many of which supported Trump and the GOP in general, taking advantage and raising prices because they could. They needed to message that the inflation, which is now under controlled, would have been the same or much worse under Trump, whose current economic proposals would make inflation worse.
On the other hand, Trumps, "They vs You" ad was amazingly effective. The Democrats could have have countered the commercial without throwing the Trans community under the bus, by flipping the narrative and saying its Trump and the GOP that's obsessed with gender identification, while it's the Democrats who would implement policy that would actually improve your life.
There's "Woke", "Overly Woke" and "Not Woke Enough". Being Woke is not a bad thing. Systematic racism is real. People of color still suffer paradoxically from both over and under policing. They are discriminated in both housing, employment, healthcare and despite affirmative action, even education. Being woke means that you fight to combat racism, sexism, homo and trans phobia.
However, not every issue can be simplistically evaluated by the binary of oppressed/oppressor. I consider this binary to be overly woke. Jews and Israel by extension are mislabeled as white oppressors, while Arabs and white North Africans are considered indigenous oppressed people of color. As a Jew, while I at times benefit from "White Privilege", like when I go for a post midnight run, many times I don't. Recent survey data has indicated that 25 percent of all employers won't hire Jews and book stores are boycotting Jewish authors, in many cases without regard to their Middle East opinions, yet Jews and dealing with antisemitism are not allowed to be part of the intersectional unicause. I used to think that right wing antisemites were more dangerous to Jews than anti-Zionists, because the white nationalists had guns, but that's flipped since Oct 7, based on the actions of Pro-Palestinian mobs in the United States and Europe. The Netherlands soccer pogrom is the strongest example worldwide why Jew need a viable Israel more than ever. Protesting against Israel days after Oct 7, even before Israel retaliated is an example of being overly woke.
Many of the Orwellian curriculums in Republican led states, the kind that say slavery was "beneficial" for the slaves, refuses to recognize that racism against blacks exists or even existed are examples being not woke enough. Refusing to teach about the Oklahoma Black Wall Street Massacre is another example of being inadequately woke.
Harris or Biden for that matter, may have won the election if Oct 7 didn't happen. The Democrats lost votes from supporters of both sides of the conflict. Trump won Dearborn, despite his first term Muslim ban, with Anti-Israel Jew Jill Stein and her Arab antisemitic running mate finishing second and Harris finishing third. Trump successfully ran ads targeting Dearborn and other Arab enclaves stressing Harris's husband's Jewishness and simultaneously ran creative positioning Harris, Biden and the Democrats in general as being hostile to Israel and empathetic to Hamas supporters. While some polling data indicates 70 percent of Jews still voted for Harris, the Jewish population surveyed were small subsets of a larger voting universe, making the data highly volatile and the results suspect. Many Jewish Democrats who before Oct 7, would never have voted for even a traditional Republican, let alone Trump, seriously considered voting for him because they believed Harris/Biden and the Democratic party in general were not supportive of Israel enough, despite Biden objectively being the most pro-Israel president in our country' s history. Every cross word towards Netanyahu or is Israel's prosecution of the war was magnified. New York and NJ were close because both states bled Jewish support.
As always, I applaud your candor and honesty. Let's hope that those who should be hearing your thoughtful and helpful advice are reading your substack. I know I recommend it to everyone who is keenly interested in politics.
One piece you didn't cover is how the Saudi government is the money behind Bonterra....they bought all of these Democratic staple organizations and I've been worried all along since they are evil in their own right, but in bed with the Trump/Kushner clan so undermining Democrats....no that couldn't be....yes, it is....
The Saudi money connection is interesting and another reason for Democrats and progressives to shift their tech spending choices. But I haven't seen any reporting suggesting that they are interfering in any way with Bonterra's operations. I assume you are thinking of this piece by Akela Lacy, who follows this stuff closely. https://theintercept.com/2023/04/23/saudi-arabia-democratic-party-campaign-ngp-van/
Thanks for sharing your analysis!
This won't solve the "how do we pay for it" problem of supporting progressive governance at scale, but wanted to put a plug in for Local Progress, a non-profit that supports progressive local electeds. (Full disclosure: I work there, but this is not a sales pitch because memebrship is free.)