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Turning out voters in the progressive base, such as communities of color, women and millennials, as well as talking to voters who don't agree with us, is critical to winning again.

Knocking on doors to get out the vote, Tefere Gebre, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President, chats with voter Michael Brown, 68, about the right-to-work amendment, on October 8, 2016 in Woodbridge, VA (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The 2016 election is more than three months past, and we live each day with its apocalyptic consequences. We need to fight Donald Trump and what he stands for on multiple fronts. We need to fight the Muslim ban, the global gag order, the border wall with Mexico, rollbacks of consumer protections and health care, and a host of ethical issues. We must link all these fights to a political narrative aimed at restoring progressive power in this falls elections in Virginia and New Jersey and taking back statehouses and Congress in 2018.

BY Sarah van Gelder | February 23, 2017

But as we do that, were still debating what hit us last November. Reliable data is beginning to come in, and as always, there is a cottage industry of consultants eager to interpret it and chart the way forward (often without reference to how wrongheaded much of their advice and predictions proved to be in the last cycle). As the leader of a group of progressive donors, I have sat in at least a dozen election post-mortem discussions and read a stack of reports and PowerPoint decks. Ive learned a lot.

I dont pretend to have all the answers, and am distrustful of those who think they do, since humility is demanded of us after a stunning upset almost no one predicted. If your diagnosis is completely in sync with whatever you devoutly believed the day before the election, or translates into a single magic bullet or in the case of looking backward, a single culprit you should think again.

The way I look at it, at the presidential level the 2016 election was like the classic Agatha Christie murder mystery (I wont say which one and spoil the novel for those who havent read it) in which there are a dozen suspects in this case, James Comey, misogyny, overreliance on data and ads and underinvestment in the field, lack of an economic message, a flawed candidate, voter suppression laws, Russian interference, fake news and a host of other factors. In the end, each of them turns out to have taken a turn stabbing, poisoning, shooting, bludgeoning and strangling the victim.

When you win the popular vote convincingly but lose an election by about 60,000 votes in three close states, this is almost certainly true. (My own favorite culprit is that you can draw a clear forensic line from the 2010 election of right-wing Republican governors in Wisconsin and Michigan and their successful efforts to weaken the power of labor in their states to the razor-thin margins that shifted those states into the Trump column in 2016.)

There is one emerging conclusion that could very well become the dominant narrative about the 2016 election, and critical for elections to come, that I believe deserves much more analysis and context before it becomes set into stone, because the consequences are very high. It is that mobilization by which is meant turning out voters in the progressive base, such as communities of color, women and millennials has fallen short. We must shift to persuasion to start winning again; that is, talking with voters who dont agree with us, and who may have voted for Trump or third-party candidates.

Its not that I think persuasion is unnecessary or mobilization is sufficient I dont. But if we are not clear by what we mean by each, and if we dont avoid creating a false dichotomy between the two, the progressive base will fracture and well move backwards, not forward.

Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into 30-second ads that pollute the discourse and line the pockets of consultants and television stations are not the answer.

Heres what I mean. A mobilization strategy, which Hillary Clintons campaign largely seems to have followed, building on the two general election successes of Barack Obama, emphasizes the New American Majority of blacks, Latinos and Asians, along with young voters and a large cohort of unmarried women who, when they vote, tend to vote for progressive candidates. It requires investments in voter registration, because many in those communities are not yet on the voting rolls. If the registration gap could be narrowed or eliminated, the thinking goes, you can lock in a progressive majority for some time. It requires investments in turnout, knocking on doors, motivating voters, and getting them to the polls. But given the result last November, we now wonder, of course, whether the Obama strategy requires Barack Obama, or someone like him, who can inspire and galvanize.

Too often, a mobilization strategy presumes the allegiance and even enthusiasm of a voting group. But no one likes to be taken for granted. When candidates and parties speak to the issues most important to communities police violence, or immigration reform, or childcare, or student debt passion and turnout rise. The same appears true with some of the disaffected voters Trump turned out, who saw a candidate voicing their grievances with the elites of both political parties.

Further, to argue that mobilization is insufficient to win presumes that it has been fully backed with the necessary resources, but thats just not the case. Some key electoral field efforts in the past cycle moved more money to communities of color than in the past, but as someone who tried to raise money for black and Latino civic engagement, I know that money for those efforts came, as it almost always does, too little and too late, and in any case, is rarely sustained between elections, perpetuating a boom and bust cycle that saps the fight to build permanent political power.

Persuasion seems like common sense its what elections are all about, isnt it? But it, too, is contested ground. Many in the communities of the New American Majority and on the left of the Democratic Party fear, from the experience of the post-Reagan/Bill Clinton era, that its a synonym for triangulation for moving to the center, and muting or abandoning key progressive positions. After years of chronic underinvestment in low-income women and men of color, the progressive discovery of white working class men in the Rust Belt feels galling to many, particularly when a majority of college-educated white men and women, who are hardly marginalized, contributed heavily to Trumps Electoral College victory. For black voters whose communities are still feeling the ravages of a drug epidemic that was treated (by Democrats no less than Republicans) by prison-building, the sudden empathy with largely white communities disrupted by opioid abuse seems, well, it seems like racism.

Listening, and the relationships built from it, matter.

Moreover, while progressives have invested much in mobilization strategies for those who are with us, so far we know too little about what works to persuade those who are not. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into 30-second ads that pollute the discourse and line the pockets of consultants and television stations are not the answer. We have to step up investment in smart and targeted digital strategies, where we seem to have been bested by the Trump campaign last fall, and return to good old fashioned, year-in, year-out, face-to-face organizing in communities. Because listening, and the relationships built from it, matter. Powerfully.

A true New American Majority must have room for those left out of the economy no matter their race or geography. The pain of an unemployed coal miner, steelworker or other casualties of globalization is no less real than that of a struggling fast food worker or caregiver. It makes no excuses for the racism and misogyny fueling a too-large bloc of Trumps voters or even for those who swallowed their disgust at racism and misogyny to vote for him anyway to say that a shared interest in good jobs, a strong social safety net and functioning roads and bridges can forge an electoral coalition that will be powerful. Its an arithmetic issue, to be sure, but more fundamentally, its a moral issue. A progressive vision has to be one that most can see themselves in.

Its not that we dont know how to do this, or how to talk about this. Organizing groups like Working America, PICO and Peoples Action know how to have deep and ongoing conversations with white working class voters and most importantly, how to listen as do labor leaders like Mary Kay Henry of SEIU and such thought leaders and activists as Van Jones and Demos President Heather McGhee.

Such winning progressive candidates in purple states around the country as Senators Al Franken in Minnesota, Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin and Sherrod Brown in Ohio, not to mention the new Democratic governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, have shown that strong adherence to core progressive values on human rights and justice issues can and must be coupled with an inclusive economic vision.

Donald Trump peeled off voters in key states who felt betrayed by the elites of both parties. Those voters will be up for grabs when they realize as we must drive home to them that they were conned. The extremist and corrupt government that Trump is installing, from his family on down, will line its own pockets and dole out more hardship for working people. As that becomes clear, millions could turn away from politics completely or be ready to listen to a candidate or party really standing up for them.

No less than skeptical Rust Belt white men, voters of color and women and young people must be listened to and delivered to before they can be mobilized, and campaigns have to start treating them as agents, not targets. The persuasion of Rust Belt voters in economic distress must keep faith with progressive human rights values yet lead with credible remedies for economic pain, delivered by authentic messengers.

In the end, we must both persuade and mobilize. We have fallen short in both. Starting now, we have to do better. If we dont, well be embroiled in a potentially toxic debate that could do as much harm to progressives as any right-wing Republican.

Originally posted here:
Progressives Must Mobilize and Persuade And Get Better at Each - BillMoyers.com

After the results were announced, angry Ellison loyalists rose from their seats in the back of the ballroom at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel and tried to shout down outgoing interim chair Donna Brazile, chanting, "Party for the people, not big money!"

"This shows that the Democratic Party didn't learn their lesson," said Alexa Vaca, an Ellison backer and supporter of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the party's divisive 2016 primary race. "They are not going to be in touch with the people and they are not ready to move in a new direction despite the rhetoric."

The race for Democratic National Committee chair, normally a quiet affair managed by party insiders, emerged as a roiling public campaign, as progressives loyal to Sen. Bernie Sanders and establishment Democrats jousted for control of a depleted organization increasingly at loose ends after eight years in the White House and then Hillary Clinton's unexpected loss to Donald Trump.

In the run-up to the vote, both candidates had liberal luminaries making calls to members on their behalf. Sanders and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who spent the last two days in Atlanta, actively stumped for Ellison. On Perez's side, former Vice President Joe Biden and longtime Obama confidant and adviser Valerie Jarrett worked the phones.

Perez came up a vote short of a clinching majority on the first ballot, then captured 235 of the 435 votes cast on the second. In between votes, the Ellison camp sent out a text message to DNC members claiming that South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who dropped out of the running before a vote was cast, had endorsed him.

But the information was incorrect, and Buttigieg confronted Ellison backstage. A correction was sent out with an apology.

Still, after winning, Perez quickly moved to bring Ellison's supporters into the fold by appointing Ellison as the DNC's deputy chair, saying later that he and his new deputy had discussed giving the loser that spot "for some time."

Still, Ellison supporters questioned a process that put the chair in the hands of only several hundred people.

"The way the rules are set up is a big structural impediment to the DNC being fully in touch with this moment or any other moment," Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told CNN. "The winds of change cannot quickly come through the DNC. Maybe that's intentional."

National Nurses United Co-president Jean Ross, whose organization was the first national union to endorse Sanders in 2015, said she was "bitterly disappointed" by the result and accused Ellison's opponents of running a "smear campaign" against him.

"Those of in labor know power never concedes. Never," she said. "No, you have to take it from them. And they're not ready. They're going to fight us tooth and nail."

Ellison and Perez enjoy a friendly relationship, but their respective supporters clashed throughout the months-long process, which included a series of "future forums" around the country and a national debate on CNN.

Before the Saturday vote, Larry Cohen, the board chair for Our Revolution, a progressive group spawned by Bernie Sanders' primary campaign, railed against a Friday afternoon email from the American Jewish Committee that said the election of Ellison, who is Muslim, could "threaten the relationship between America and our ally Israel."

"That was a disgrace," said a visibly irritated Cohen, who formerly headed the Communications Workers of America. "I would have liked to see Tom Perez repudiate that letter. But he didn't do a thing about it."

More grumbling followed Brazile's announcement that plans to use an electronic voting system would be scrapped in favor of paper ballots because of slow convention center Wi-Fi. Ellison supporters still suspicious after what many consider a "rigged" presidential primary fight -- fretted that the candidate would not be able to view, in accordance with party bylaws, the names of potentially persuadable members after a first ballot.

After a contest in which the two frontrunners repeatedly sought to downplay divisions within the party, the finale recalled the contentious 2016 primary fight, which saw Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz resign from the chair in late July after hacked emails appeared to show DNC officials favoring eventual nominee Hillary Clinton.

The hard feelings lingered for months, and at least among stalwart Sanders voters and some progressive groups, the DNC race was viewed as a second chance at wresting control of the party from its establishment elders.

"The leaders of the Democratic Party missed an opportunity today," Dan Cantor, national director of the Working Families Party, said in a statement. "This vote may sting for progressives, particularly young people."

Ellison, who agreed to come on as deputy party chair, later asked his backers to stick with party.

"If they trust me, they need to come on and trust Tom Perez too," Ellison said of his vocal supporters.

We Will Replace You, a progressive group dedicated to seeding primary challenges against elected officials who fail to take a hard line against the Trump administration, said Ellison's defeat marked a failure in the party's efforts to coalesce the anti-Trump protest movement into a winning electoral coalition.

"The biggest question facing the Democratic Party establishment now is whether they will join the grassroots resistance against Trump," co-founder Waleed Shahid said. "While we wait for their answer, the American people are going to continue leading the fight in the streets and at the ballot box."

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Progressives threaten revolt after DNC vote - CNN

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In contrast, 36 percent said local governments should set bathroom policies governing youths who say they want to live as members of the opposite sex. Another 28 percent of respondents said state government should set the rules for transgender disputes, according to the poll.

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That adds up to 64 percent opposition and only 28 percent support for federal rule.

The two-to-one opposition is bad news for progressives, who are currently campaigning for federal politicians and federal judges to impose a national policy that would allow people to change their legal sex by simply declaring they have the gender identity of an opposite-sex person.

This week, President Donald Trump announced he is discarding Obamas May 2016 national K-12 pro-transgender policy and is delegating the issue to state and local governments. However, his administration has not announced whether it opposes the gay groups demand that gender identity should determine a persons legal sex.

The new Rasmussen poll also shows that only 38 percent of respondents favor allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of the opposite biological sex. That policy was opposed by 49 percent of Americans, including 64 percent of Republicans, 36 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of adults who say they are neither Democratic nor Republican. The Feb. 22 to 23 poll included 1,000 adults.

The public opposition to the transgender identity-before-biology ideology increases when the questions are asked about younger schoolkids. For example, an April poll by Civitas showed that only 7 percent of 600 North Carolinians strongly supported a judges demand ordering girls and boys in public middle schools to share locker rooms, bathroom, and shower facilities. The demand was strongly opposed by 72 percent of respondents.

The new poll by Rasmussen only asked about bathrooms, and so doesnt reveal political support for the underlying political demand by gay groups that a persons gender identity, not their biological sex, should determine whether they are male or female. In March, the Supreme Cour this expected to hear a case in which gay advocates want the judges to redefine the meaning of sex in a 1972 sexual discrimination law from biological sex to gender identity.

Thats a revolutionary demand, because if individuals can freely flip their sex from male to female or vice versa, then the nations many single-sex institutions will face enormous legal pressure to admit people of the opposite biological sex. For example, shelters for battered women may be forced to open their doors to men who claim battery, womens sports leagues will be forced to admitbigger and stronger men who claim to be women, and schoolbooks and parenting guides used by government grantees would be forced to define women merely as people who say they are women, effectively discarding the nations cultural history of women, girls and feminists.

Already, the Boy Scouts of America have decided to admit girls who want to live as boys, and have also begun changing their language to downplay their prior focus on the needs of young boys. Similarly, sports leagues for women have been forced to admit biological males and also to admit girls who are taking muscle-boosting male testosterone hormones.

Also, the progressive trend is forcing progressives to rebuke ordinary Americans who dont want men walking into the public bathrooms used by their young children. That politically questionable stance was highlighted by CNN anchorChris Cuomo, who entangled himself in a Twitter fight when he suggested that a father was being intolerant for saying he doesnt want his 12 year-old-daughter to share a public toilet with men who are trying to live as women.

Cuomo retreated from the fight by claiming that a court would decide if the gender-before-sex law would create safety problem by allowing sexual predators into bathrooms. But he ignored the larger issue that womens bathrooms and locker roomsand sports leagues would also become open to men who say they are women if fixed biology is deemed less important than changeable gender identity.

Arecent pollby a pro-transgender group at UCLA showed that only 23 percent of Americans think people should be allowed to switch their legal sex without any tests or approval by government agencies.

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Poll: Public Opposes Progressives' Federal Transgender Rule by 2 to 1 - Breitbart News

PUTNAM COUNTY, N.Y. - A group of Putnam County residents gathered earlier this week at the Mahopac Library to voice what seems to be a growing, common concern: the current political policies and climate in Washington, and its fallout on the rest of the country.

The group, which have named themselves the Putnam Progressives, started small - meeting with a group of about 10 in January.

After that, the decision was made to reach out to the community, to gauge general response.

"We decided to reach out to the community to see if there was a response," group member Baila Lemonik of Mahopac told Daily Voice.

Lemonik said the group expected 20 or so to come for the February meeting. Closer to 100 showed up.

Lemonick said the group is concerned about protecting the democratic values of people in the community and the country.

"So people can feel safe and taken care of - health care-wise, housing-wise," Lemonik said. "We want to keep people safe, healthy and living in a democratic society."

Lemonik said Sunday's meeting had representatives from every town in Putnam.

"The energy was incredible," she said. "The dynamic was powerful, wonderful... people were relieved that they're not alone in their fear for safety, health care... so many issues.

"We want people to know there's no reason for fear," she added. "Hope comes in numbers. All over the country, people are fighting about homophobia, bigotry, racism... we hope for this to be a catalyst for change.

Lemonik said the group is about supporting each other, but more importantly about action.

"Supporting each other is a nice side benefit," she said, "but we want to be about actions - voting drives, speaking to legislators, going to marches, to community events at town halls. Keeping immigrants safe, fighting for women's rights. Those are all at the forefront."

The group is currently looking for a place to hold its next meeting, tentatively set for March 26. Anyone interested in the Putnam Progressives or in attending their next meeting can check out their Facebook page by clicking here . Lemonik said a website will be up shortly.

"The message is that there are people in the area who are also unhappy with the way things are going in Washington," she said. "Change has to happen so people can feel safe."

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Putnam Progressives Group Forms To Protect Democratic Values, Fight Fear - Putnam Daily Voice

Members of Congress returned to their districts this week for Congressional recess met by hordes of angry constituents. Of Oberlins three representatives, only Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown made it through the week relatively unscathed. Protesters accosted 4th District Representative Jim Jordan at a public event in Marion, Ohio, Monday, turning a routine appearance into an impromptu town hall. More Ohioans lined the streets outside a private Republican fundraiser featuring Senator Rob Portman as a keynote speaker Wednesday night in Fremont, Ohio. Yesterday, hundreds of constituents in Cleveland held a mock town hall in Portmans name, since he failed to schedule one for the week.

These actions are one prong of local activism that has been newly invigorated in the month since President Donald Trumps inauguration. Progressives who feel that they have no voice in Congress are doing all they can to shift their elected officials even slightly to the left, particularly on key issues like the Affordable Care Act and Trumps cabinet nominees. These local actions aimed at producing change at the federal level have proven effective, as evident in the slow and contentious confirmation process, during which several Republican senators broke party lines after getting hammered by constituents.

While local organizing to shift national politics has dominated the news this week, we cannot lose sight of the potentially more important form of activism: local actions to produce local effects. Human rights issues are determined at local levels just as much as they are in Washington. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, Where after all do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person.

It is in the districts themselves that true progressive action can occur during Trumps tenure, not in D.C., where Democrats lack agenda-setting power and are desperately clinging to existing legislation like the ACA. Trumps new executive order that transgender students must use the bathroom matching their assigned sex, for example, will be rendered largely irrelevant if school boards install single-use stalls instead. Similarly, Oberlin City Council is attempting to protect immigrants from deportation raids by reinforcing its resolution to make Oberlin a sanctuary city, vowing not to request residents immigration statuses. In op-eds this week, Jackie Brant explains different methods cities can use to protect immigrants and Johan Cavert suggests modes of grassroots environmental activism, since the Environmental Protection Agency may soon be gutted with Scott Pruitt at its helm. All of these are critical social justice issues and cannot be overlooked with all eyes on the Capitol and White House.

Those opposed to the Trump agenda also cannot afford to ignore local elections. Over the past 10 years, the Democratic Party and the left more broadly have failed to run candidates in many state legislative seats, giving Republicans free reign in state capitals across the country. While Republicans undermine voting rights and leverage gerrymandering in their favor, Democrats have been slow to the game. However, its encouraging that President Obama and Vice President Biden have both turned to organizing around local elections in recent weeks.

From protecting the right to choose to labor laws to energy policy, what happens in state government matters. Progressives must not become so distracted by the ghastly circus in the White House that they forget to focus on where they can make the most impact the places they live. This dismal state of affairs cannot stand.

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The Oberlin Review : Progressives Should Focus on Local Activism - The Oberlin Review