Last night, I sat with my team in a freezing cold Northern Virginia strip mall parking lot as returns came in. The four of us gathered around our tethered laptops, frantically reloading the VA Department of Elections site, trying to understand what was happening. Democrats all over the state were ahead, right out of the gate, mostly by a lot. When the NY Times called the election for Lee Carter, our first Sister Race candidate to win last night, and perhaps our longest-shot candidate, I knew something wild and crazy was happening. The rest of the night did not disappoint.
We’ll publish a deeper analysis and debrief about VA and WA soon. But here are a few hot takes:
States can be sexy.
The federal government is dead to me right now. We have no significant leverage over federal politics, and we need to stop obsessing over federal races. Electoral power on every level is linked to the states — and that is where we have leverage right now. The Virginia and Washington elections last night show us that state level issues and politics resonate with both volunteers and voters. And we know that control of state legislatures influences national policy and power as well. The states are where the real difference is made — and voters and volunteers get it.
Down-ballot power.
This may be the first time in American history that a slate of lower chamber state legislative candidates carried a gubernatorial ticket. We’ll have to crunch the numbers more, but based on turnout and some other early data, it certainly looks like that may be the case. We spent a week in Virginia before the elections getting out the vote, and up and down the state, the number of yard signs for Democratic delegate candidates clearly outpaced the signs for Northam. That’s not to diminish the campaign that Northam ran, but rather to indicate the down-ballot exuberance statewide that got people to the polls.
Grassroots works.
We’re organizers. It is hard, but it is effective. Look at the history of grassroots organizing — it worked in the 1960’s and 70’s, and it works now. Digital tools can help, but at the end of the day, organizing gets results because of communities, real people, working together. There are no shortcuts. Groups like ours are tech enabled, not tech driven, and at the end of the day, it is our human volunteers that drive our success.
Don’t worry about too many groups.
Collaboration is working on the ground. There are a lot of grassroots groups right now. It’s ok. There’s concern, especially in the press, that there are too many groups and that everyone will duplicate efforts. It’s not true. On the ground, the activists working to flip VA and WA often overlapped between groups, and it worked just fine. At the organizational level, we’ll all work it out. But the important part is that the activists — the actual lifeblood of this effort and success — are activated. These are real people who have real relationships with each other. It’s a community. They’re in a bunch of groups. It’s fine.
Spreadsheets Aren’t Crystal Balls.
Data is useful and important. But there are also contextual factors that need to drive where we put our resources and time. Cheryl Turpin is a prime example. Trump narrowly won the 85th district in 2016. The VA House Democratic Caucus did not initially consider her a serious contender, and no other national post-election grassroots group that we know of decided to support her. But we knew that she had name recognition and institutional, local coalition support from her special election in early 2017. We also knew she was a high school teacher, with deep, inter-generational ties to the community. So we decided to back her — and were proud to announce our support for her early in the cycle, back in April. Last week, we spent an afternoon doing visibility for her in Virginia Beach (literally holding up Cheryl signs on a very busy, almost terrifyingly busy, street), I couldn’t count the number of former students who rolled down their windows and shouted, “Go Ms. Turpin, we love you!!” A spreadsheet won’t tell you that.
Back bold candidates.
Bold progressive ideas are not poisonous to or for Democrats. Many of the candidates we supported in VA were progressives — but none more so than the young socialist Lee Carter. We were proud to announce our support for him back in April. Frankly, he simply was not taken seriously by pundits and the establishment. His district was not considered a likely pick-up by any stretch. But we knew his district had plenty of Democrats, and that it was ripe for flipping. We weren’t afraid to back Lee, and his success should show the party and the rest of the country that it is possible for folks with bold positions and policy ideas to win, even in non-urban super liberal areas.
Dem party problems? Focus down-ballot.
Yes, we know the national Democratic party is having some problems. But the good thing is that local and state levels are largely insulated from the national-level party shenanigans. At the local level, people just care about what impacts their literal every day lives. Fixing that road by the post office. Opening a new health clinic. Raising the local teachers’ pay. They are not paying attention to the national party and its problems, and this is a very good thing for Democrats right now. I love Tom Perriello’s tweet the other day — if he had a dollar for every time a voter in VA asked about Donna Brazile’s book, his pockets would still be empty.
Last night was wild and crazy. It was an absolute blast. I have never experienced anything like it — no one has (well, not since 1899). But it doesn’t have to be the last time we experience it. Whether we can repeat depends on our ability to stay focused on states, stay strategic, and collaborative. See you on the field!
