We Need To Help Democrats Fight Differently
We Can Transform Political Pressure, Persuasion, and Reach to Grow A Movement Right Now This Spring
Democracy Is Being Actively Eroded As We Watch Live
This country is a freaking mess. No point in listing all the things here making that mess because it is a VERY LONG LIST.
As I’ve been writing this (on Thursday), Tennessee state legislators have been voting to expel three state legislators who stood up with Tennesseans to advocate for mitigating even a little bit of the danger from guns in the state.
This travesty has been happening right now today (more here) on Thursday afternoon (now evening). So far, Tennessee legislators have voted to expel a black man, Democratic Representative Justin Jones, and to not expel a white woman, Representative Gloria Johnson. Per Reuters, “the vote on Justin Pearson [is] expected later this evening.” Update: a second black legislator, Representative Justin Pearson, has now been expelled.
Now that two black men were expelled while a white woman was not expelled, everything just got way more intense. #Understatement.
The outrage from the assembled crowd shouting and screaming in and around the Tennessee statehouse has been incredible all afternoon and evening. That has intensified as it’s become more and more clear that there’s a glaring racism to the Tennessee Republican legislators’ actions, too.
^^ We need way more of this level of moral outrage and pushback. In Tennessee the moral outrage and leadership started with a fight to have less guns and more of a chance for kids to stay alive while they’re in school after a recent school shooting in Nashville. Now it’s going to be a fight about racism and equality, too. About fairness. About representation and about democracy. And about the rule of law, who gets to make it, and how it is upheld.
The spectacular commotion and moral courage shown by Democratic legislators and the assembled crowds in Tennessee right now today illustrates the entire point of this post — we can do more moral courage; we can drive the narrative; we can get big media coverage; and we can inspire voters in huge, noticeable ways that will make a difference for our future.
This organization, Shift the Country, is set up to help catalyze a whole heck of a lot more of this kind of outrage, emotion, commotion, and media attention in communities across this whole dang country this summer. Get involved with our events where we’re getting this shift started.
And live, on Chris Hayes on MSNBC, about 20 minutes ago a guest who’s name I didn’t catch said that what we’re seeing in Tennessee today is the start of the next civil rights movement. Damn straight.
Coincidentally, I started the main post below this afternoon to talk about how we can catalyze a movement. Perhaps it’s exactly the right time for us to ramp this shift up. Whatever we create here through this nonprofit can add to the cacophony that’s coming. Let’s bring it.
On to the main post…
The Mess In This Country Is Keeping Us From Solving Urgent Problems for Humanity — Including for Ourselves
Taking a step back… the big picture is even worse than the day-to-day nightmares of book bans, history denial, laws that terrorize trans kids, threats to women’s health, and so on because our social fabric is ripped to shreds, we’re in an active culture war pushed by one side, and we’re not collectively solving huge, urgent, dangerous problems for our country or for humanity.
Instead, we’re deadlocked on national decision-making and careening to the far-right in state and local decisions, policies, and laws in state after state.
Tennessee is only one of today’s examples; there are too many to list. Which state just made it legal to examine children’s personal parts to see if they’re trans, even though that sounds like abuse and assault? Which state just made it a prosecutable crime to get an abortion? That’s just a few examples of the dangerous and the atrocious in like the last 24 hours. That was before the Tennessee state legislature started voted on expelling democratically elected representatives of the people of Tennessee.
We’re tearing apart our educational system, weakening our ability to compete globally, deteriorating our health (don’t even get me started), and allowing our kids to be front-line assault-rifle cannon fodder in a culture that forgot how to take care of humans.
The lists go on.
It’s amazing that we’re the world’s leading superpower.
Amazing.
Do we want to keep it, though?
Do we want to uphold that mantle, and keep fighting for and backing democracies all over the world? It’s a fight for humanity: democratic governments support vulnerable humans better than any other form of government.
Do we want to take on climate change and actually do something to make it less bad? Or will we instead sit back and watch disasters get worse; watch the cascading effects of climate change unfold through feedback loops in interconnected systems? Programming note: the sit-back-and-watch approach only works until the next disaster hits you and yours.
We could keep the country… and get it on a more sustainable, equitable, forward-leaning path.
We could evolve it… get it closer to the dream of what the US could become… a true multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-cultural democracy where we work actively on the huge challenges we face and where we all have better ways to survive, thrive, and flourish.
The thing is, though, that the path we’ve been on is not going to get us there.
Don’t get me wrong: there are lots of fights to evolve this country, and lots of people in the fights. Millions.
But the way that the coalition of Democrats and their allies are fighting has not changed in decades even though the entire political landscape is different.
Again, for those in the back of the room:
The way that the coalition of Democrats and their allies are fighting has not changed in decades even though the entire political landscape is different.
People will argue that the mechanisms have changed. Yes, that’s true — a bit. We’ve got a whole lot of new get-out-the-vote technology. There are huge organizing efforts to get voters registered and voting. There are other organizing efforts like relational organizing and distributed organizing. It’s way easier to move money (like to us, for example, through our website or ActBlue). There are a ton of political data and email lists used and sold by thousands of campaigns. Swaths of volunteers send postcards and do phone/text canvassing.
^^ We need all of that. We need all of that.
But it’s not enough, and it’s not transformational.
The Republican party has transformed. Not in good ways, but it has transformed. There’s an enormous far-right media machine with huge radio, TV, podcast, and social media audiences. There’s an enormous, well-coordinated big donor machine. A growing flock of demagogues are bringing in big money from small donors with their outrageous, incendiary, shocking, persistent, and often made-up rage politics. The MAGA Republican party has taken the power of fear to an entirely different dimension with the fusion of all of that. Their messaging machine is tight. They’re wicked awesome at using emotional arguments to make points; otherwise called “framing.” They know how to drive media coverage. They’ve pushed a culture war for decades. Now they’re blatantly and openly supporting criminals, violence, insurrection, a coup attempt, and extremism. How does that path lead to a future where America and all Americans have a real chance to thrive and flourish?
Meanwhile, Democrats have been on defense since the 1980s.
Democrats have been on defense since Ronald Reagan and trickle-down economics. In fact, it’s worse than that. The whole country and its Overton window has shifted to the right due to influence from the far-right outrage + “family values” + “moral majority” machine. Both Presidents Clinton and Obama instituted policies pushed by Republicans as those ideas became more mainstreamed. The impacts have been extensive.
Time To Go On Offense
So are we going to go on offense or what? The whole coalition — Democrats and pro-democracy independents and ex-Republicans?
We could.
We can.
One approach is to stand back and hope that the President, members of Congress, state parties, and the Democratic National Committee will figure out some way to lead in new, different, brazen, forward-leaning ways. So far, it hasn’t happened.
Another approach is to help them lead in new, different, brazen, forward-leaning ways.
We can damn well push it ourselves.
We can push the party and its allies to get aggressive, to lead, to get loud, and to get media coverage. To fight. To fight like it matters. To fight in ways that resonate.
We can cheer-lead. We can cajole. We can beg and plead and push and nudge and encourage. We can lead by example.
There is no reason why we can’t — together — push a transformation in political pressure, persuasion, and reach.
We can push a transformation in political pressure, persuasion, and reach.
We can reach, inspire, and energize more voters than ever before by trying and combining a few new things.
5 Things, to be specific. It’s a fusion of stuff set up to create synergy and phenomenon if lots of folks do different pieces in lots of places.
Here are the 5 Things that make up this shift:
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We can grow connection (Thing 1), do more with community and coalitions (Thing 2), pressure or partner with businesses (Thing 3), empower moral courage (Thing 4), and raise a ruckus, drive the narrative, and spread it everywhere (Thing 5).
That’s the pitch. That’s the big idea.
It’s more powerful than a few words in a paragraph.
It’s big thinking leveraging sociology, society, human nature, and media to create a moral shift in this country. To inspire enough voters to get fired up and de-cynicalized enough to vote for a different future next time; to believe that we can take this country in a different direction.
It needs to happen in every community. We need to create a ruckus in every community. We need moral outrage in every community. We need it online and in the real world. We need collective, coordinated efforts at every level and in ways we’ve haven’t ever done. We need all the groups and all the people. We need all the ideas and the very big brains. We need the creativity and the energy.
We can do all that. We totally can.
Okay so here’s the deal. This nascent, emerging nonprofit called Shift the Country has been getting ready for a moment like this. Is there another group set up to help catalyze something like this? Not that we’re aware of. This here shift is unique. It’s ready. Help us grow it and help us get the word out.
Let’s build on what’s unfolding in Tennessee and work out from there. There will be ruckus. There will be reckoning. There will be viral moments. There will be local conversations. There will be uncomfortableness. There will be media coverage. There will be bravery and courage. There will be crying and emotion and deep fights. There will be anger and joy and outrage and inspiration.
There will probably be tragedy, too. No doubt more of that is coming… in a country where anyone can get a military assault rifle and where unrest and rage is rising.
Shift the Country is advocating for nonviolence. We’re advocating for big courage. We’re encouraging solidarity, support, connection, and community… and providing community spaces for it. Shift the Country is coaching, too, for when things get tough. We’re connecting. We’re creating the space to do big things.
We’re going all out. You can too by joining an event, by volunteering, by spreading the word about this work, by passing along our posts, by subscribing to our Substack, or by donating through the website or through ActBlue.
Let’s Touch Every Community
Finally… who is countering the far-right narrative in rural America?
Protests in far-off cities don’t reach locals out in Boondocks, USA who don’t watch cable news or who only watch FOX or who only listen to right-wing talk radio.
So who’s driving the narrative in rural America? Right now it’s mostly the MAGA Republican party.
But we could.
We could collectively drive the rural US narrative.
The Shift the Country 5-Thing approach is set up to transform political pressure, persuasion, and reach… everywhere up in this country.
We could do high-visibility community activities that get into the local gossip networks. We could create networks of solidarity and connection between rural Americans all over the place who feel overlooked and forgotten. We could bring ideas and inspiration to build on work that’s already been done and take it to new levels. Where is the movement in micro-cities in the US? Where is the action on Tribal land? Where is the coalition-building with diverse groups of advocates who have already done decades of work building connection and community? Where are the elected leaders frustrated by the far-right push? Can we empower and support and encourage them? Where is the commotion and the ruckus and the fuss?
Let’s bring it.
Let’s bring it all.
What’s The Best That Could Happen?
Far-right Republicans are able to maintain minority power against the wishes of the majority of Americans through their hold on three main things: 1) the Electoral College that elects the US president, 2) through the US Senate itself and its equal power to Senators no matter the population density of a state, and 3) in the required 60-vote filibuster non-Constitutional rule in the US Senate.
All three of those things give more power to rural states… where states with less people have disproportionate political power. This country was designed that way on purpose to keep power with the “landed gentry” — white men with wealth. The founders didn’t trust the masses in the cities.
It’s time for us to empower the masses everywhere.
What would happen if we could empower the masses in both the cities and in the country?
What would happen if helped build bigger, powerful, louder coalitions from ranchland to mountains to exurbs to microcities to small towns to lakes to hollers?
We could shift this country, that’s what.
We can help the coalition of Democrats and their allies to transform their approach to reach people in every part of America.
We could energize a true majority of Americans to turn out to vote in 2024 if we get going now on creating a national phenomenon that inspires and energizes voters. That’s what this work here is — starting with events and volunteers.
Together we can reinvigorate faith in democracy itself; in government; in the vision of America.
Together we can bring transformation.
Here’s some of the best that could happen:
It’s A Big Dream — Let’s Do It
This is a big dream, and it’s reachable.
You make a plan, and you implement it. Shift the Country just happens to be making a big huge plan that needs the help of hundreds and thousands of Americans.
It can be done, though. It can totally be done.
It’s going to be wild and risky and unpredictable and scary and awesome.
UPDATES: US Representative Jamal Bowman, D-NY, was on Alex Wagner on MSNBC Thursday night saying a lot of the same stuff that’s in this post. Including pressuring businesses. Including getting Democrats to get way more fired up… and helping them do that. Here’s 10 minutes of that 20-minute interview. Similarly, thought leader Anand Giridharadas was on Morning Joe on MSNBC Friday morning with a very similar message (no video available yet).
Here's How You Can Help & Get Involved Like Right Now
That’s the stuff to get this shift rolling.
On a personal note, I don’t think any other group is trying anything even a little bit like this. This is a big idea. It’s a gap-filler, as it’s taking on work that we didn’t see any other group doing — or the Democratic party. It’s more than a gap-filler, though.
It’s a synergistic, interconnected plan set up to create a movement — now. Turns out it might be exactly the right moment.
Let’s get to it.
We. Can. Make. Shift. Happen.
It’s on.
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This piece was first published on Substack here.