The only way Democrats can win...
Diving into the numbers...
Welcome to the big Sunday edition of Progressives Everywhere! We’ve got just two days before Election Day, the Trump campaign is literally trying to drive American democracy off the road, and progressive groups are going all-out to turn out as many voters as possible.
With so much going on, we’ve got a packed newsletter today. We’re looking at voter suppression, getting out the Black vote, turnout statistics in key states, and revisiting our key legislative candidates. Near the bottom of this email, we’ve got a graphic presenting all the major candidates we’ve supported with millions of dollars in donations this year, which you can use to keep score on Tuesday night.
But first, thank you to GoFundMe donors: Martin, Andrew, Kerry, Matthew, Laura, and Steven!
Turning out the Black vote
While much has been made about the suburban shift toward Democrats over the last half-decade, the reality is that Democrats cannot win elections without massive turnout in Black communities. Knowing this, Democratic candidates tend to spend October and then early November visiting Black churches and anonymously fretting to political reporters about whether it’ll be enough to win.
This year’s unprecedented early voting turnout has left us with reasons for both optimism and concern. There are indications of a big turnout of new Black voters in Georgia, despite the egregious voter suppression in the state, while there is a lot of energy in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina, as well. On the other hand, numbers look a little bit dicey in Florida thus far.
Black voters requested fewer absentee ballots and tend to vote in person (46% say they plan on voting in person in Florida), so we shouldn’t read too far into any early numbers, but given the stakes, it’s impossible not to obsess over every little data point. Thankfully, there are a number of activist groups, non-profits, and grassroots organizations out in communities, doing the hard work of getting out the vote in the face of voter suppression (and, as we saw yesterday, racist police violence). A lot of money is also part of the equation.
Yesterday, I caught up with Kevin Harris, the Chief Campaigns Officer at the venerable progressive (but non-partisan) institution People for The American Way. He’s helping spearhead the group’s Defend the Black Vote campaign, which is trying to overcome voter suppression and help set record turnout for Black voters. An edited version of our conversation is below.
Tell me about the Defend the Black vote campaign.
Our Defend the Black Vote campaign is a nonpartisan effort inspired by the fact that we know that African American men are a demographic that is skeptical in many ways about our institutions and skeptical about the importance of voting and whether or not it really makes a difference. We see that as a direct threat to democracy. Our democracy is stronger when more people participate in the process. And our democracy is stronger when we have a system that doesn't work against people voting, but actually urges people to vote.
The focus is on this community, to make sure that they understand what the stakes are, that their vote does matter, and that there are ways in which to overcome voter suppression. The fact that there is voter suppression is not ever something that we should ever allow to become normalized in our society.
How do you convince people their vote matters when politicians often don’t really follow through on their promises? One side is better than the other, but even for Democrats, a lot of promises they’ve made to the Black community have gone unfulfilled over the years.
You make sure that you're honest with people and you explain to them that voting is one part of the solution, but it is not the entire solution. First, start with getting folks in power who are aligned with your values. Then you have to also do follow-up work to make sure that those folks are held accountable, and that they actually follow through on the things that they campaign for.
So we see the Defend the Black Vote effort as a part of a multi-layered strategy to really engage African-American males. Beyond this election, one of the things we're going to be focused on is a new Voting Rights Act and we're going to need African-American males at the table, because it's something that directly impacts them. Then there are a lot of additional changes and reforms that need to be made to our criminal justice system. But when we don't vote, we're really fighting these fights with one hand tied behind our back.
Do you think the Black Lives Matter protests that broke out nationwide after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the political response to them, generally motivated Black voters or served as proof that nothing changes?
I think it motivates the vote. I think that people are frustrated, they are in pain. And I think they recognize that we have to use every tool at our disposal to make sure that we do something to make our voices heard and to make sure that we're speaking out against these and justices. So I think that what these tragedies have done is sort of awakened a spirit among a lot of folks to say, I just want to do everything I can to bring about some change. You see that in these long lines, you see that in people waiting three or four hours. You see it even in places like Texas, where records are being broken.
There are some good turnout numbers in swing states, but Black turnout has been low in Florida, especially the Miami area. They certainly have voter suppression, but do you think there’s any particular reason for that? Anything regional? Do you expect a surge this weekend?
I'm optimistic that we'll see a surge. I don't know why [it’s been lower], there could be regional reasons. I think that that's something we may not know until after Election Day and all the ballots are cast, when we can go back to take a look at what occurred. But I do believe that across the board, there is reason for optimism, in terms of people believing that their casting a ballot is a powerful way to make a change and make a difference. I think we have to keep talking to people; it goes back to what I said earlier about before honesty. There are a lot of folks who feel marginalized or left out of our systems and our processes and our institutions.
Black voters have been particular targets of disinformation campaigns, both in 2016 and now this year. Republicans were focused on deterring the Black vote in Florida in 2016, and it seemed to have worked to some degree. How do you combat something that’s so pervasive, with sophisticated targeting?
You have to show up to the battlefield. One of the reasons that we selected text messaging, for example, as a part of our methods of engagement is because it reaches people on their cell phones. We know that folks who want to suppress the vote, that's one of the ways in which they're going to be reaching out to folks.
In addition to that, there is a digital advertising component as well as a streaming radio component. What that does is create a comprehensive experience for the folks that we're targeting. They're getting text messages from us, when they go on to a streaming service to listen to music they're hearing ads, and when they go on Instagram to check in on their friends they’re also seeing our ads. Cell phones are a method in which a lot of the suppression tactics are being deployed and the misinformation tactics are being deployed. We have to be real about that and we have to match it, we have to show up to the battlefield.
Important News You Need to Know
It’s getting scary out there — not just at the polls, but on the way to the polls, as well. At the same time, voters continue to turn out in record numbers, telling MAGA degenerates to sit on their burning crosses and then casting their ballots. Democrats have tended to shy away from fights over the last three decades, but I think things will be different this time around — the voters are demanding it.
Electoral College: The one thing I appreciate about Donald Trump is that he belches the quiet part loud. He publicly and openly insisted on confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court so she could deliver him the election, and now that she’s in RBG’s stolen seat, Trump is making all kinds of claims about how the court will force swing states like Pennsylvania to stop counting votes at midnight of Election Night.
It’s not just his ignorant bloviating, either — ABC gave Trump adviser Jason Miller free air time to declare that merely counting ballots would represent Democrats stealing the election. (TV networks keep acting as if they have to treat both sides like normal political parties, as if one weren’t openly trying to destroy democracy and incite racial warfare. They can’t seem to grasp that it’s as if they’re giving Nazis unchallenged air time in 1932 Germany.)
With the Supreme Court’s conservatives licking their chops to deploy convenient new constitutional principles they invented out of whole cloth, there exists the very real possibility that SCOTUS tries to steal the election for Trump. So what happens then? Can anything be done about it?
The House of Representatives doesn’t have to accept SCOTUS’s ruling, nor does it have to accept obviously skewed results from Republican legislatures (see why it’s so important to flip these legislatures blue?!). That would set up some unprecedented showdowns and legal maneuvering. The whole thing is spelled out in this excellent article, but much of it would come down to how willing Democratic governors and leaders in the House are to play hardball. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, so it’ll be up to us to pressure them into stiffening their backbones.
Texas: After nearly three decades as a rock-solid GOP stronghold, Texas officially became a battleground state this year. Sensing their hold on its 38 electoral votes slipping away, GOP operatives and lunatic racists in Texas have openly declared war on Democrats and their voters, using the court system and SUVs in a multi-front assault meant to steal votes and crush skulls.
Saturday was a particularly aggressive day for GOP chicanery and chest-thumping. After being denied by the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, a couple of trolls are trying to get a federal court to toss out over 127,000 ballots cast via curbside voting in Harris County. It’s a blatantly undemocratic request that smacks of desperation, which is the general state of the Texas GOP right now.
Unfortunately, even as the Texas Supreme Court on Sunday again tossed out a duplicate request made in state court, a notoriously far-right federal judge agreed to hear the case on Monday. This guy is a troll in a black robe with an execrable temperament who has made several ghastly partisan decisions over the last decade. The case could go all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Harris County’s clerk is fighting the case, of course, and is trying to get people who voted via curbside to join a lawsuit over it.
If they succeed, they’d be tossing 10% of the record-shattering turnout in Harris County, which is home to Houston and much of its suburbs. Remarkably, there are other counties in the state that have experienced even higher turnout increases than Harris County. Most of them, as you’ll see on the map below, are Democratic-leaning counties, with the cities of Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso, as well as the Rio Grande Valley.
While we don’t know the partisan split of the early vote, we can make some informed inferences based on past elections.
For example, we’re seeing a huge surge in Hays County, where voters have already topped the 2016 turnout number by a whopping 38%. Hays was a long-time Republican stronghold until 2018, when it went for Beto O’Rourke by a whopping 15%. Students at Texas State got a lot of credit for that historic flip and this year, the state leads the nation in the early youth vote.
Williamson, which has the second-highest increase in votes from 2016, went from GOP fortress to voting by nearly 3% for Beto O’Rourke. That doesn’t mean Biden will win the county, but keeping it close would be huge.
In Montgomery County, they’ve already topped 2016’s turnout number by 14%. It ranks as the county with the highest turnout percentage in the state thus far, which could be good news for Democrats as well. It’s a largely suburban county where Democrats are targeting two State House seats that they nearly flipped in 2018. One of those candidates, Sharon Hirsch, is a Progressives Everywhere interviewee/endorsee.
North Carolina: While it doesn’t get the attention of the Midwestern states or Texas, NC could very well prove to be one of the most consequential states in this election. North Carolina has 15 electoral votes and competitive races all the way down the ballot, with a US Senate seat and legislature (which we’ve covered in some depth this year) primed to flip blue.
With the caveat that we don’t know how Election Day turnout will look, I’m cautiously optimistic about North Carolina. Thanks to the Secretary of State sending out mail-in ballots all the way back in September, over 4.5 million people have voted early, which matches 95% of the state’s 2016 total and 62% of its registered voters. Estimates suggest that more than six million North Carolinians could wind up voting in this election. And so far, Democrats have a distinct advantage.
Graph via Old North State Politics, a site very much worth reading:
Registered Democrats have cast 37% of the early ballots, while Republicans account for 32% and independent voters 30%. While Democrats have a big advantage in mail-in ballots, those account for less than a million of the overall vote total, while 3.2 million North Carolinians have voted in person (with Democrats maintaining a .6% lead there). That mitigates some of the risk that Republicans will trounce them on Election Day — a fair number of them have already voted. In fact, Democrats and Republicans have just about the same number of registered voters available to turn out on Tuesday.
The other mystery here is which way independents will vote. While they’ve leaned GOP in the past, yesterday’s CNN poll had Biden up 51-38% among independents while up 51-46% overall. That said, the polls are a bit all over the place in the state, with Biden clinging to just a .3% lead in the RCP average.
No matter what happens, we should know Election Night, as the state’s Board of Elections announced today that most of the ballots will be counted and reported by late Tuesday.
Other states: We’ve been covering the legislative elections across swing states for the last two years, but if you want a succinct summary of the races to watch, here are some helpful links:
Election Scorecard!
I’m proud that Progressives Everywhere has interviewed dozens of progressive Democratic down-ballot candidates and raised money for more than 70 of them this year. For the most part, we’ve helped out candidates running to flip state legislatures, though we’ve also helped some great progressives running for Congress.
Below, we’ve got a scorecard of all the candidates we’ve supported financially this year. We’ve also raised plenty of money for progressive organizations, but since they’re not running races themselves, we haven’t included them here. After the election results are in, I’ll report back with how our candidates performed!
I’m really proud to announce…
This week, Progressives Everywhere surpassed over $5.1 million dollars raised for progressive Democratic candidates and causes. Isn’t that cool?
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