The Democrats' secret weapon: Grassroots volunteers!

September 6, 2024

There are many stories worth discussing on Thursday evening as I write this newsletter. Many have a negative spin, so I will instead begin by sharing my experience at two grassroots events over the last 48 hours. I do so because I believe that they reflect what is really happening on the ground in the effort to elect Kamala Harris—efforts that are almost entirely ignored by the media. The scale, energy, and organization of the two grassroots groups are remarkable. They gave me a boost of confidence about the 2024 election—and they should do so for you, too.

Many readers of this newsletters are heavily involved in grassroots organizations and see the day-to-day commitment and hard work of volunteers. If you are already connected to a volunteer organization, you know what I am talking about. But for those who are not, trust me when I say they are a thing of beauty and hope.

On Wednesday, I joined Third Act in the launch of its Georgia Working Group. Bill McKibben is the founder of Third Act (and the climate organization 350.org). Third Act was created 2-1/2 years ago to build a community of volunteers 60 and older who are determined to create generational change to protect the climate. For understandable reasons, Third Act is focused on safeguarding democracy—a precondition to enacting legislation that will protect the climate. In little more than two years, Third Act has attracted 70,000 members nationwide.

Third Act’s mission focuses on three goals: to convince banks and investment funds to divest from fossil fuels, to influence public utility commissions to adopt climate-friendly energy policies and to protect democracy by focusing on the upcoming elections.

Third Act has “working groups” across the nation. Although it is already 70,000 members strong, it is seeking volunteers to focus on GOTV efforts, including phone banking, letter and postcard writing, and registering seniors in high school to vote. The most frequent constructive suggestion I receive from readers is to “write about the climate crisis more!”  Concern about the climate is the most important issue to a significant portion of the electorate—especially younger voters. If you are interested in an organization that focuses on the climate and democracy, Third Act wants you!

I was impressed and humbled by grassroots volunteers who are dedicated to long-term, generational change that will benefit our grandchildren and great grandchildren. And they see the election of Kamala Harris as the most important short-term step in achieving their long-term goals. Join them!

On Thursday, I appeared at a fundraiser by Democrats Abroad for Harris-Walz. Before discussing the fundraiser, I want to highlight the mission of Democrats Abroad: to ensure that Americans living abroad register, request their ballots, and vote. Millions of Americans living abroad are eligible to vote. In the 2020 presidential election, votes cast by Americans living abroad exceeded Joe Biden’s margin of victory in several states! Americans abroad could provide the winning margin in 2024—just as they did in 2020.

If you know someone living, studying, or visiting abroad, you must reach out to them and urge them to visit www.votefromabroad.org to ensure that they are registered to vote as an American citizen living abroad and have requested their ballots.

The event hosted by Democrats Abroad was amazing. Thousands of volunteers attended the event, and dozens of speakers were present, including Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Colin Allred, Ruben Gallego, Alexander Vindman, Eric Holder, Jane Fonda, Kyra Sedgewick, Cory Booker, Ed Markey, Maxwell Frost, Beto O’Rourke, David Hogg, Politics Girl, Simon Rosenberg, Jessica Craven, Scott Dworkin, me, and many others.

Most impressively, we were joined by “house parties” of American voters and activists worldwide. Hearing them describe their love and pride for America was touching and inspiring.

The energy was infectious! I have rarely felt more motivated and hopeful after an online event. The execution of the complicated event was flawless—a good sign in an election where organizational skills and professionalism are at a premium.

In an election where some states may be won or lost by a few thousand votes, Democrats Abroad is determined to turn out tens or hundreds of thousands of new voters—a secret weapon in a grassroots movement that is itself a secret weapon.

The events hosted by Third Act and Democrats Abroad were just two of hundreds of grassroots events this week. They represent the hundreds of thousands of grassroots volunteers working to turn out the vote in November—which will be the deciding factor. Today, now more than ever, we have every reason to be hopeful but no reason to be complacent! Read on!

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“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

I received a slew of emails today forwarding articles or posts about Nate Silver’s updated election forecast for the presidential race. Sadly, Nate Silver has become a partisan in the fight for democracy—and appears to have his thumb on the scale against Kamala Harris. Silver currently works for a firm owned by Peter Thiel—the Republican megadonor and weird Elon Musk wannabe.

At a high level, you should know that Silver has decided to “factor out” about 2% of Kamala Harris’s support in polls because he believes it is a temporary “post-convention bounce.” As I wrote previously, if Silver believes that the sea-change that occurred when Joe Biden withdrew is like anything that happened in 2020 or 2016, he should take up another profession. Moreover, Silver appears to call “tied” races in favor of Trump and includes dozens of low quality polls created by Republican operatives to “flood the zone.” According to Silver’s critics, he fails to discount those low quality polls when calculating the “average” of polls.

In August, Donald Trump raised a stupendous $130 million dollars. Kamala Harris raised $300 million in the same period. For both candidates, most of the donations were less than $200. Donations are not votes—but small donations can be a surrogate for enthusiasm, and enthusiasm drives turnout. That is what Nate Silver is ignoring when he discounts Kamala Harris’s polling lead because he dismisses the unprecedented wave of enthusiasm that her candidacy has generated. So, ignore Nate Silver and get back to work!

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JD Vance tells Americans to accept school shootings “as a fact of life.”

In a shocking display of callousness, JD Vance effectively told Americans’ to “get over it” in response to the mass killing at Georgia’s Apalachee High School. Vance said,

I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able.

First, Vance is resorting to “blaming the victim”—the school—for not being an armed fortress.

Second, the notion that “security” will prevent school shootings is demonstrably wrong. The “psycho” that Vance referred to is a 14-year-old student at Apalachee High School. You can’t protect school kids from their classmates who. have access to guns.

Third, like every other politician in the pocket of the NRA, Vance wants to talk about every solution other than regulating weapons of war.

JD Vance appears to lack empathy or basic human emotions. Except for greed and lust for power. Those human emotions he understands all too well.

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The normalization and sane-washing of Donald Trump's mental deterioration

At a meeting of the Economic Club of New York, Trump was asked a pre-cleared question about the specific legislation he would pass to address the cost of childcare. His unintelligible answer is a clear sign of mental deterioration. But the audience applauded his answer and the New York Times “sane-washed” the answer to make it sound intelligible. That would be the same New York Times that wrote dozens of articles criticizing Joe Biden’s mental state because he speaks with a stutter.

Here is Trump's answer to the question about legislative solutions for the cost of childcare (credit to Parker Molloy on Twitter for transcribing Trump's answer and the NYT sane-washing of his answer):

Well, I would do that . . . We had Sen. Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about ...child care is child care. You have to have it — in this country you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to — but they'll get used to it very quickly — and it's not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care, that it's going to take care. I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We're going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it's, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in. We're going to make this into an incredible [country that can] afford to take care of its people, and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people, but we're going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It's about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we're a failing nation, so we'll take care of it.

Here is how the NYTimes reported Trump's answer:

After his speech, Donald Trump was asked how he might address rising childcare costs. In a jumbled answer, he said he would prioritize legislation on the issue but offered no specifics and insisted that his other economic policies, including tariffs, would "take care" of child care. "As much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it's, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in.

Nowhere in Trump's answer did he say he would “prioritize” childcare. He said the opposite. He said he would prioritize tariffs—a tax on the middle class—and the revenue from the tax on the middle class would be substantially larger than the cost of childcare. That comparison is not a promise to do anything about childcare—despite the Times’ effort to make it sound like Trump said so.

The appropriate response to Trump's answer should be a headline something like, “Trump suffers medical emergency during speech, audience applauds.”  

The “sane-washing” and normalization of Trump after the public flaying of Joe Biden for speaking with stutter is shameful. But it gets worse. The publisher of the NYTimes, A.G. Sulzberger, believes that the Times’ failure to report the truth about Trump is somehow noble and impartial.

On Thursday, Sulzberger wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that warned against the dangers of tyrants who throttle freedom of the press. See A.G. Sulzberger, Washington Post, Opinion  How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America.

Jamison Foser writes about Sulzberger’s hypocrisy in Foser’s Substack blog, Finding Gravity, in an article entitled, The New York Times' publisher understands the threat Donald Trump poses. The Times should act like it.

I can’t improve on what Foser wrote, so I excerpt his blog below, but you should read the entire article:

Writing in the Washington Post, Sulzberger attempts to preempt such criticism:

“As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of journalistic independence, I have no interest in wading into politics. I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection. It is beyond shortsighted to give up journalistic independence out of fear that it might later be taken away.”

This is a familiar stance, and it is bullshit.

It is bullshit because critics of the Times do not ask the paper to “cast aside neutrality and directly oppose [Trump’s] reelection.”³ That’s a straw man Sulzberger invents because he does not dare engage our actual argument, which is that the Times is not neutral, and does not even define the term correctly, and the paper often deploys double standards and false equivalencies that benefit Trump and the Republican Party.

You will never, ever see AG Sulzberger engage with the argument that the news media should tell its audience true things in proportion to their importance. He is terrified of it, because he knows the Times fails that test every day. And so he instead pretends that critics want the Times to “cast aside neutrality and directly oppose” Trump.

Well said! We are witnessing the moral collapse of the major media in the US. They seem incapable of rising to the challenge of writing truthfully about an aspiring dictator who has attempted to overthrow the Constitution and vows to do so again. He is a criminal, conman, coup-plotter, and insurrectionist who is in obvious mental decline. But the Times re-interprets his gibberish into intelligible soundbites and pretends that his statements have meaning when they are utterances designed only to forestall his sentencing to prison.

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Opportunities for Reader Engagement

Join Healthcare Leaders for Democracy and Movement Voter Fund to help strengthen our healthcare system on Sept 12th at 8:00 pm Eastern / 5 pm Pacific time.

You will hear from Dr. Don Berwick, a pediatrician and one of the nation’s leading experts on healthcare quality and accessibility and former Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Dr Berwick and others at the forefront of these efforts will make the case that registering and turning out voters to elect the right people at the state and national levels is the key to protecting our healthcare system and democracy. 

Healthcare Leaders for Democracy is a volunteer initiative within Movement Voter Fund, consisting of healthcare leaders and others who are committed to improving healthcare in America and protecting our democracy. We raise funds in support of the Movement Voter Fund. The Movement Voter Fund website is here. Movement Voter Fund is a national organization that supports several hundred grassroots groups across the country to register and turn out voters, especially focusing on swing states and marginalized communities.

This free Sept 12th Zoom event is a fundraiser for the Movement Voter Fund.  More about the Sept 12th virtual event with Don Berwick and registration sign-up here.

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Abortion Care and Reproductive Rights in North Carolina: Where We Are Now and How to Shape the Future

On Sunday, September 15, 4-5:30 p.m. Eastern, join Durham and North Carolina Democrats for an online event. We will hear from: physicians  Dr. Amy Bryant, (who successfully challenged an NC medication abortion law), Dr. Ashley Navarro and Dr. April Miller, maternal health expert Kristin Z. Black, PhD MPH and NC Legislators Senator Natalie Murdock and Representative Marcia Morey about the impact of current laws on patient health and outcome, provider morale, events in the NC Legislature and what we can do.  

Jessica Craven will join us to discuss ways to take action.  We must win, or these life- threatening bans will be enacted nationwide—We are not going back!

Joe Biden lost NC by only 74,483 votes out of the five and a half million cast, a margin of 1.3%.  If we turn out our voters, we win.  The event is free, but your donations will fund paid Democratic GOTV organizers on the ground in Durham and throughout North Carolina. When Durham goes blue, NC goes blue. Please donate what you can; every little bit helps!

Let’s help fund NC4ABORTION to assist those unable to afford care, including those traveling to NC from states with even more extreme abortion bans. We will have more information on that during the event. Register here.

Or Donate to NCDems or Donate to NC4ABORTION

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Concluding Thoughts

Special counsel Jack Smith was back in front of Judge Chutkan to discuss the process for determining whether the superseding indictment of Trump complies with the Supreme Court’s “Alice-in-Wonderland” immunity decision. Judge Chutkan has ordered Jack Smith to disclose evidence by September 10 and submit briefing by September 26. Trump's lawyers howled in protest, claiming that Justice Thomas had “directed” them to move to dismiss the case on the grounds that Jack Smith was not properly appointed. Justice Thomas did no such thing, but the comment by Trump's counsel smacks of collusion between Thomas and Trump's defense counsel.

And Judge Merchan will issue on order on Friday, September 6, regarding Trump's sentencing in the Manhattan fraud / hush money convictions.

The DC election interference case and the Manhattan hush money case both present additional wildcards for Trump—who has already lost the momentum he had in early August. While we cannot count on the criminal cases to prevent Trump's election, we should recognize that they are yet another obstacle that he has created for himself. Kamala Harris should do all she can to capitalize on those obstacles and remind Americans that it cannot elect a president facing jail time for fraud and election interference.

Both developments remind us that we should be open to the possibility of additional unexpected twists and turns in the 2024 election that could work to our benefit. I was sorely disappointed to see MSNBC effectively write-off John Tester’s prospects in Montana and assume that Democrats have no possibility of winning Senate races in Texas and Florida. That kind of talk is self-defeating and self-fulfilling—and hurts the prospects of other candidates up and down the ballot. Remember that time—in 2020—when Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff both won long-shot elections in Georgia?

We have the momentum. We should ride it for as long and as far as it will take us. Don’t let anyone tell you that any election is out of reach—especially this year, when issues like reproductive liberty are on every ballot in America! Let’s keep pushing as hard as we can and be open to the possibility of converting on more unexpected opportunities!

Talk to you tomorrow!

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Daily Dose of Perspective

This is the second time I have featured an image of the North America Nebula. It is 2,600 light-years from Earth and has a diameter of 90 light-years. This incredible image was taken with an 11-minute exposure from my backyard in Los Angeles.