Day 35: The Mobilizers

29 Sep 2020 By Susan Barsy in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: 2020 election, activism, political engagement, political innovation, political parties, voting 3 Comments

Election 2020 is the most important election of our lives. It is also the most unusual, because of COVID, because of Trump’s dirty tricks, and because underneath the titanic struggle between Trump and Biden is a creaky, deaf party system that many voters loathe.

The “nationalization” of political campaigns under the direction of an army of political consultants and ad directors has reached the limits of its efficacy. Citizens are tired of slick ad blitzes, tech-only wizardry, and political negativity. They are tired of being reduced to a statistic, tired of being bombarded with impersonal appeals.

In the interstices of all this, something truly extraordinary is happening. Americans are organizing themselves in more authentic and locally appropriate ways. They are mobilizing their friends and families, reaching out through personal networks, developing bloc-specific agendas, hoping to multiply the influence of their constituencies at the polls.

The ideological agenda of the new mobilizers may be a bit vague. They don’t operate at the pleasure of a political party. Their overarching mission is to preach the power of civic engagement to groups underrepresented in the polity. The Minnesota Youth Collective, for instance, asks prospective members to take a pledge to be civically engaged: “Young Minnesotans are the largest voting bloc in the state, and we’re ready to use that power to get things done for our communities. By filling out this quick form, you’re making a commitment to join this fight with us, whatever that means to you.”

Similar groups are springing up all over the country, sometimes banding together to increase their visibility:

Alliance for Youth Action (national consortium)
BLOC: Black Leaders Organizing For Communities (WI)
Engage Miami (FL)
LIT: Leaders Igniting Transformation (WI)
Voces De La Frontera (national)
Voting While Black (national)

These groups could have an unexpectedly large effect on the presidential election, precisely because they are mobilizing communities that the national party system has cynically neglected for years. They lie outside the aegis of the Biden campaign and may be reaching voters whom political polls miss.

Image: “Electioneering in Georgia,”
from this source.

Day 39: The Trump Voter You Know

25 Sep 2020 By Susan Barsy in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: 2020 election, Donald J. Trump, political engagement, Republicans, voters 2 Comments

Do you know someone who voted for Trump in 2016 or is planning to vote for him in 2020? How would you characterize that person? Do you know or have an idea about why he or she voted for Trump?

Dissuading Trump voters continues to be important in securing a win for Biden. A strange sort of asymmetry is at work in this election, wherein a cluster of personality values and social fears tends to hold voters to an overtly authoritarian leader (Trump) at the expense of other considerations and ideals. Trump voters may be highly educated or affluent, but they’ve lost faith in the federal government. They are pessimistic about citizenship and politicians. They think federal action is harmful to their own interests. They don’t want the government aiding or protecting “undeserving” groups at their expense.

Trump voters seem to think that if other groups gain, they themselves will suffer, as if there aren’t enough American “goodies,” like wealth or respect, to go around. They want to keep black America down, newcomers out, and like the idea of forestalling true equality even if that isn’t a realistic possibility.

Your thoughts? Help me round out what I have gathered from personal observation by writing a detailed comment. Many thanks.

Image: from this source.

Day 44: The Non-Voters

20 Sep 2020 By Susan Barsy in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: 2016 election, 2020 election, Donald J. Trump, Hillary Clinton, non-voters, political engagement, turnout, voting 2 Comments

Cartographer Philip Kearney has put together this map showing the scale of non-voting in the presidential election of 2016. In that election, the percent of Americans who could have voted but didn’t far exceeded the percentage of votes cast for either Trump or Clinton. Each grey county represents where the sentiment of apathy exceeded the votes cast for any one candidate.

Overall, according to a Knight Foundation report, Americans eligible to vote behaved this way in 2016:

41.3% Didn’t Vote
28.5% Voted for Clinton
27.3% Voted for Trump
02.9% Voted for Another Candidate

The inset on Kearney’s map shows that only in a few states did active sentiment for one candidate or the other truly prevail.

Image: from this source.
Republished with permission.

Day 48: Don’t Just Vote, Volunteer

16 Sep 2020 By Susan Barsy in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: 2020 election, anti-Trump sentiment, civic culture, political engagement, Swing Left, voting 1 Comment

I think of 2020 as “the year of everything,” when nearly every day brings news of something bizarre or extraordinary. Beginning with the impeachment and the pandemic, continuing on with the protests following the police killing of George Floyd, now with the unprecedented West Coast forest fires, historic events are reshaping US society. How peculiar that all this is happening while many of us are cooped up at home, with many of our normal channels for congregating, communicating, and witnessing closed.

How, though, will COVID affect the November election and the anti-Trump campaign? It’s possible that, even as the candidates themselves do less, stay-at-home conditions may foster an unprecedented political mobilization. For some of us, staying at home results in our having more time. Once we have figured out how to cast our own ballots safely, we have plenty of time to influence how one of our nation’s most crucial presidential contests turns out.

The Biden campaign can’t pivot quickly enough to come up with a brand new style of voter mobilization. That’s where new initiatives like The Last Weekends come in. The Last Weekends is a consortium of left-leaning and anti-Trump activist groups that in 2018 pioneered its signature approach to getting out the vote, mobilizing volunteers nationally to work together in concert on the last three weekends prior to Election Day. That year, voter enthusiasm helped turn the US House blue.

Now the group is back, with an impressive platform aimed squarely at dealing an electoral defeat to Trump and spineless Republican Senators. Visit the Last Weekends website to find location-specific ways to volunteer.

If you are a committed Democratic voter, you may also like the Swing Left website. There, enter your zip code to learn the most effective ways to volunteer / give during the 2020 campaign. Almost everything about Swing Left’s campaign, which includes hosted “events,” is virtual. Its focus is on a dozen or so “super states” that together will determine the outcome of the presidential election. Swing Left’s operations are compliant with the CDC’s COVID recommendations and prioritize personal safety and public health.

If you’re tired of Trump’s presidency, join the groundswell that will put Joe Biden in the White House. Don’t just stay at home, volunteer!

Image: Carol Highsmith, “Old voting house on the Johnston property, where everyone in Washington County would go to cast their votes during the early 1900s.” Leroy, Alabama. From this source.

Day 50: A Mighty Blue Wave

14 Sep 2020 By Susan Barsy in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: 2020 election, Blue Wave, Democratic Party, political engagement, presidential elections, US politics, voters 2 Comments

If the election is close, Donald Trump can challenge the results in one or two states. But if Biden wins big in too many states, Trump will have to concede. Biden’s victory will be beyond legal challenge. The will of the American public and of the states will be clear.

This has got to be the goal of every patriotic American: to bring in the vote for Biden on such a scale that, on November 3rd, Trump will be utterly rebuked, rejected, and humiliated.

There is always something mystical about American elections. Polls only imperfectly register what the electorate thinks and feels. Polls only imperfectly register where the electorate is heading, and pundits’ speculation only partly explains why.

The people’s will is not easy to subvert, particularly given the layers of state and county government that administer elections. Since 2016, many states have improved their voting systems, making them more impervious to manipulation. The free and fair conduct of an election is precisely what the unworthy occupant of the White House fears.

With good reason. All across the country, ordinary Americans are gearing up and diligently aligning themselves into a Mighty Blue Wave. They are encouraging one another to rise up and vote, knowing that a massive voter turnout for Biden and other Democratic candidates will favorably resolve an excruciating political crisis and put our battered and burned nation in a position to build back better.

The incumbent president has used every trick he can think of to tear down the traditions, values, and institutions that are intrinsic to the nation’s prestige and integrity. He has insulted and demeaned the very citizens whose rights and welfare he is supposed to defend. He has denied aid to states whose economies are the backbone of national prosperity. Now, his fate is in the hands of every American he has put down and betrayed.

Image: Immigrant children wave flags as they recite the pledge of allegiance in E.V. Nadherny‘s “They Sang of America: Sweet Land of Liberty” (1906),
from this source.

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Tag Archives: political engagement

Day 35: The Mobilizers

Day 39: The Trump Voter You Know

Day 44: The Non-Voters

Day 48: Don’t Just Vote, Volunteer

Day 50: A Mighty Blue Wave