Democrats are doubling down on the same flawed organizing strategy that has failed them before.
 | By Laura Reston Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Almost half a million people showed up in Washington the day after Donald Trump's inauguration, desperate to find purpose and camaraderie in the spirit of mass protest. Many walked away convinced that they were at the vanguard of a rebirth of liberal activism. |
As Lara Putnam, a professor who studies power and history, and Micah L. Sifry, a writer who covers tech and organizing, describe in a guest essay this week, Trump did inspire a remarkable surge in Democratic energy: Volunteers formed "resistance" organizations, opening thousands of chapters across the country; millions more took to the streets to protest gun violence and march for science; and the Democratic Party raised ungodly sums of money. But very little of this activity seems to have mattered. |
In January of this year, when Lara first approached me with this story, she told me she thought the tactics favored by Democratic strategists were not only largely ineffective but, in some cases, could even backfire — alienating the swing voters Democrats wanted to win over and exhausting core supporters by endlessly telling them that democracy hangs in the balance with every deadline and piece of legislation. As Lara and Micah put it in their piece, the Democratic Party has treated their volunteers like "cash cows, gig workers, and stamp machines to be exploited." |
In their piece, Lara and Micah offer a different approach — suggestions informed by what Lara has seen while embedded with progressive organizing groups in Pennsylvania, in the crucial swing districts outside Pittsburgh. Volunteers there threw house parties while local leaders knocked on doors, capitalizing on existing ties to people within the community. "If democracy is indeed on fire, the thing to do is to stop asking people to buy water bottles and organize them into fire brigades instead," Lara and Micah write. "Neither the national Democratic Party nor progressive leaders seem to have learned that lesson." |
It's telling that after the fall of Roe there were fund-raising campaigns, petitions and a few isolated protests but no real mass grass-roots movement ready to rise up, no standing army of liberal volunteers who could snap into action. Party leaders were left fumbling for an action plan. This essay tells the story of how we got here — and it offers a warning for Democrats as they try to avert disaster in the midterms. |
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