2020 is gonna be war
And we've got a new battle in PA
So, not a great week for democracy or Democrats. A historically bad one, even. But there are plenty of lessons to take from the impeachment trial, the debacle in Iowa, and the aftermath of each.
Before we get to those, though, let’s talk about another upcoming special election. This one, in suburban Pennsylvania, has gone under the radar but is another important race in a flippable district. Democrats need to flip 9 seats to take over the PA State House of Representatives, and this election is taking place in Bucks County, a longtime Republican stronghold where Democrats finally flipped county government just last fall.
The seat up for grabs, HD-18, is a bit hard to prognosticate. Republican Gene DiGirolamo won re-election there easily in 2018, but he was a popular 23-year incumbent. Now that it’s an open seat, it’s anyone’s game in what is, again, a rapidly blue-ing district.
Running for Team Blue is Harold Hayes, a union plumber and father of two who is well-known in the community. He’s already working tirelessly to win his neighbors’ votes and Progressives Everywhere will have more with him in the next week or two. But because the election is on March 17, we are starting the fundraising now. A win would be a big boost to the party that could use one and another step toward taking unified control of one of the most crucial swing states.
CLICK HERE to donate to Harold Hayes via Progressives Everywhere’s ActBlue page!
Iowa
The Problem: A lot of people deserve some blame for the mess at the Iowa Caucuses, but there were a few major culprits here:
Shadow, the very appropriately named insider tech vendor that cobbled together the disastrous app;
The DNC, for taking a hands-off approach to the crucial kickoff contest after forcing the Iowa Democratic to radically alter its caucus plans;
The Iowa Democratic Party, for being more focused on celebrity than preparation and contingency plans for the big changes;
The incredibly outdated and plainly stupid caucus system, which disenfranchises hundreds of thousands of voters and is almost impossible to understand.
The Lesson: The bigger and more centralized the organization, the more likely that it’ll be using donor money to hand out contracts to buddies and working in its own interests. That’s why Progressives Everywhere has always focused on directing donations to individual campaigns, which are far better at spending money on actually campaigning, as well as advocacy organizations focused on particular issues in specific states. Giving to the DNC is like lighting cash on fire.
The War
I was in suburban Pennsylvanian this weekend, and without fail, any conversation about the Democratic presidential primary ultimately came to the same point:
“I’ll vote for whoever Democrat nominee is,” they’d say, “but it’s gotta be someone who people around here, in the suburbs, will vote for, too.”
And every time, I’d give the same answer:
“I think that if someone is still considering voting for Trump, after all he’s done, they’re gonna just vote for Trump, no matter who the Democrats nominate.”
Democrats have long been obsessed with scoring that elusive, fanciful “swing voter” in presidential elections, often to the detriment of turning out their base. Running against Donald Trump, three years into the most unhinged and mendacious presidency in history, magnifies that mistake.
The House impeachment hearings were about proving that Donald Trump had committed egregious crimes; the trial in the Senate was about prosecuting him for those crimes, but also preventing him from committing even worse sins against our battered democracy. As Democrats predicted based on his past behavior, the second Trump was acquitted, he went on a rampage, engaging in a three-day burst of seething and bitter speeches, vengeful policy announcements, and autocratic personnel decisions, all driven by a foaming lust for power and pats on the back by Lou Dobbs.
He fired the Vindman brothers. The Treasury Department sent info on Hunter Biden to Senate Republicans. And the Department of Justice moved to ban election-related investigations, giving Trump carte blanch to cheat however he wants without recourse.
And the cheating and dirty tricks are already underway. In Iowa, the difficulty that precinct leaders had reporting the caucus results was exacerbated by right-wing trolls who jammed the line once the Democratic Party’s phone number was posted online. The Trump campaign and right-wing groups, meanwhile, are engaging in massive disinformation campaigns on social media already to discredit Democrats and whip up a venomous strain of reactionary fear. And Trump is using the power of the government to literally block Democrats from the polls in New Hampshire on primary day.
They will stop at nothing to interfere with a fair election; we know because they’ve done it already. And now thanks to the impeachment trial, they’ve learned that there are no consequences.
Things are only going to get worse, so if by November, anyone is even considering voting for Trump, they’re not worth trying to convince otherwise. Better to support a candidate who can get new voters out and excited while also turning out the Obama voters who stayed home in 2016. I’m not saying I know for sure who that candidate is, but that’s my criteria when I think about who I’ll vote for in the primary.
A note about our crowdfunding campaign: Progressives Everywhere will always be a free newsletter. Together we've raised over $800K for progressives candidates and causes! We’ve grown so much that it costs $100 just to send this email, and there are other costs as well. To help, you can subscribe to our $5 a month premium edition (which comes with weekly bonus issues) or make one-time donations at GoFundMe (you’ll be thanked in future public editions of the newsletter). I know you are asked time and again for money in this campaign cycle, but any little bit helps!
What are you thinking about and reading this week? Let’s talk in the comments!