how we changed the vote
There are 35,000 registered voters in Huron County, Ohio. 20,000 are unaffiliated, and it’s getting worse. Vitriol .. the constant barrage of phone calls and texts and direct mail that filled 2020 .. drove away more than 3,000 of those Democrats, right into the ranks of the unaffiliated.
And then there’s 2023. Democrats comprise just 9.4% of the registered voters, yet last November, 44% of all registered voters in the county voted Yes for Issue One, Ohio’s protection for Reproductive Rights. That happened because everyone worked together, tirelessly. But most of all, this victory happened because the special election was about basic rights, about the kind of core values that are held by most Americans, the kind they recognize and care deeply about.
INSPIRE
“Inspire” is the word we’re missing. It’s the emotion we’re missing, as Democrats, as Americans who care about guiding this nation towards a future as a truly just society. If we’re not inspired towards our ultimate goal, if we don’t see it clearly, how will we get there?
MAGA inspires. Trump inspires. They inspire a sense of emotional identity, of enduring passion, something far deeper and far stronger than politics. Why don’t we inspire? Forget the next election campaign and the latest issue, why doesn’t the Democratic Party itself inspire? Why doesn’t who we are as a party cause Democrats to stand up with pride all over this country, sweeping independents and unaffiliated with them?
politics versus identity
Politics is how you make things happen.
Politics is about getting people elected, the endless campaign work, the messaging and meetings and rounding up volunteers and getting out the vote. And money. Politics is about endless amounts of money, and all the problems that brings.
Politics is also the art of governing. It’s about the mechanics of passing legislation, deciding on which issues to take on, fighting over policy and fending off (or giving into) the endless interest groups that overrun everything. Above all, politics is about compromise. Be it be it a local campaign for city council or passing a budget in the House of Representatives, politics is very, very much the art of the possible. It’s not about perfect, or even desirable, it’s about possible.
Identity is something else entirely. It’s permanent. It’s who we are. It’s why we got into this in the first place. Identity is our core values, the unchanging truth that makes us Democrats. Unchanging, and universal. As true twenty years from now as it is today. As true for all of us as it is for any of us. It means we are Democrats first and foremost, no matter who we are or where we live, or what else we believe.
We need both.
FILLINg a hole
The Supreme Court has spoken, and it’s going to go on speaking for a long time. But what is it really saying? That decision on gay rights isn’t really about gay rights, and the decision on affirmative action isn’t really about race. Deep down, these decisions … all of them, including Dobbs and those endless ones yet to come … are really a statement about a giant hole in this country, a spiritual hole: the lack of commonly accepted, fundamental American values. We don’t have those values written down anywhere, the basic beliefs that say who we are.
America has never had such a statement of values. Ever. For the first two hundred plus years, it didn’t matter. Nobody agreed on national values, so basically there weren’t any. Racism and injustice were ingrained in society. They were accepted. As a result, social progress was tough. It was bought very, very slowly, one agonizing issue at a time.
We have a story
We have a story that begins with with FDR, a mythical figure who was actually a very real human being, a man crippled in the prime of his life, yet who found the courage to abandon the precepts of his wealthy upbringing and work for the common good. His story is our story as Democrats: leading this nation out of a national catastrophe, then through a World War, and in the process creating the vision of a government that works for the people. That story that led to Social Security and workers rights and an end to child labor, then on to Medicaid and Medicare and voting rights and every other bit of social progress inspired by his vision. FDR’s story is indeed our story, even today, the endless struggle to keep that vision of a government of and for the people alive, and to make it work. FDR did nothing less than found our party and lay the emotional foundations for the idea of a truly just society.
The Real Meaning of the Fourth of July - Part 1
We own values. Our core beliefs are who we are, and they’re powerful. Yet, we Democrats never seem to recognize it, we never seem to look deeper. We cling to policies, and purity tests, and squabbling. We divide ourselves endlessly. We take apparent victory and turn it into defeat, and we do it over and over again. And each time we scratch our heads and ask “why?”
The Republicans understand we own values, that’s why they have spend so much time and money demonizing us. It’s why they’ve had a giant organization working in the background for decades, just to destroy our identity. They fear our values because they’re American values, because they stand for this country’s future, because deep down most Americans want to believe in them.
But these core values are never going to really be seen as our values … as our identity … until we stand up and declare them, till we own them. And there’s no better example than the Fourth of July.
Why we need a Democratic Creed
We need to stand for something. Our identity needs to be bigger than the next election, bigger than policy, bigger than all the events crashing around us. As Democrats, we need to stand for something so basic and so true that it inspires each and every one of us, something that unites and gives meaning to everything we do.
We have existed too long as a machine to win the next election. Of course we need to win the next election. We need to win the next ten elections, and we have to work our butts off to do it. And that's exactly why we need purpose, and vision. It's why we need to inspire. A party official recently said, “We need to find another Obama to inspire us.” No, we need our party to inspire us. We need to inspire us.
MOVING UP in the U.P.
Democrats 101 author J.M. Purvis was the first person the Democratic organizers thought of as they planned their first annual Rural Summit in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, April 14th and 15th. Purvis opened the conference in front of 140 Democrats from rural counties across Michigan. See Jim’s opening remarks here.
The summit was the brainchild of the Rural Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party, chaired by Cathy Albro. Special thanks to the Chippewa County Democratic Party for purchasing 140 copies of Democrats 101 so every attendee would have the book. We made additional copies available at our information table in the conference lobby, and several Democrats made donations to help us cover the costs (Thank you!!)
vision and values
Democrats 101 is excited to partner with the Lorain County Democratic Women’s Club (OH) and State Representative Joe Miller (OH) for this tri-state major event.
Democrats and the 4th of July
The Declaration of Independence is the soul of our party. It’s all right there at the beginning: all men are created equal … inalienable rights … life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You don’t need anything else, that is the real Democratic Party right there. That is who we are deep down, our touchstone, and we should celebrate it. The Fourth of July is our holiday, the parades, the fireworks, all of it. It’s one big celebration of what we have been striving for ever since FDR became President. We haven’t finished the job, not by a long shot, and the whole thing is under attack right now. But there is a Common Thread, a clearly visible Democratic moral purpose that runs through all of the social and economic progress of the past ninety years, and we should be proud.
am i an american?
As you watch the January 6 hearings, take a moment to reflect on the deeper issue. Horrible enough that Donald Trump and his sycophants stumbled through an attempted coup and a mob attacked Congress, but all that is the result of something, it isn’t the cause. This is what we really should be asking ourselves: how did a man like Trump become President in the first place? How did white supremacist fringe groups who used to be isolated both physically and culturally, turn into nationally organized movements capable of organizing and carrying out something as massive as storming the Capitol? (Or Charlottesville, remember that image, the parade of Hitler-torches?) How did we get to the point that in the aftermath of January 6th, more than a quarter of this country … that’s more than 80,000,000 people … viewed the mob as defending freedom or acting out of patriotism? That’s what should really scare us. This whole thing has become deeply entrenched. It’s gained an aura of legitimacy that is going to be terribly difficult to put back into the box.
WE ARE IN A MESS
We’re in a mess. Our country is in a mess, our party’s in a mess, and it’s likely to get worse next November. If we want to fix things … and we can ... then the first thing we have to do is step back and recognize what’s really going on. We’re not suffering from a failure of effort, we’re suffering from a failure of vision.
Our country is in the middle of a vast, slow-motion social revolution, a true moment in American history. We’ve had political upheaval before, economic disasters far bigger than this one, wars even, but the amount of change going on in social norms, the upheaval in the basic tenets and traditions that control our everyday lives, that has never really happened before. And it isn’t about to stop, not for a long time.