Good morning from Peru everybody. I find myself in a unique position relatively.
The problem with many, not all but many of you regular Democratic voters, is that you are surrounded by other Democratic voters. You have your college jobs in big cities or college towns, and naturally socialized with people like you.
Me… I’m a military veteran, that owns forbidden guns. I am a hard-core weightlifter. I work in a blue collar industry surrounded by 95% Trump voters. Guys, who are just like me… Except for liking or not minding Trump.
I don’t explicitly say who I’m going to vote for. What I do, take advantage of conversations to undermine Trump. Point out, the guy was born Rich. He is rich, but he’s a lousy tipper. I ask people if they would ever want to have a boss like him.
Honestly, it’s unlikely I will change anyone’s vote… But maybe I could reduce the enthusiasm so someone is too lazy to go vote for him.
My second strategy, which I just thought of, is to encourage my daughter and her friends at Michigan State, to vote. It is a swing state.
But at the end of the day, the key thing to connect with other people is to empathize and understand them. It’s so rare among political partisans. All three of my best friends plan on voting for Trump.
Anyway, I refuse to be sucked into the hate. It’s all love for me.
I'm the token uneducated, blue collar guy here. You can recognize me by my poor grammar and occasional bullet points. (a remnant from my military days).
I think it's a horrible indictment of the US education system that someone that completes 13 years of school is considered 'uneducated'. Don't sell yourself short!
Sell what you got my man, what you got seems to be in demand, sometimes internationally on different projects if I remember correctly.
You are doing the right thing to fit your environment. Encourage the chicks you know to vote like you're doing, as for the dudes, if maybe they don't feel like they know, well maybe they shouldn't. With the gender gap and liberalism seen simply as a feminized thing now for a couple decades, for Dems, clear communication of stakes to female voters will be key, alongside a subtle, or not so subtle, "you gotta get it right because the boys can't tell the fucking difference between government and pro-wrestling, so they could fuck it up." "Cleaning up after the boys is what real women do." and a subversive/semi-subversive, "the men in your life may whine, but you don't need to tell them who you voted for."
I am literally married to the most un-political woman alive. She literally has no interest in anything public policy related. She never votes. Has no passionate issues she cares about. She works hard, is loved by everyone, pretty much one of the most awesome people I know.
I review reports for my group. The biggest problem is when people try and sound to smart by writing run on sentences or long ass paragraphs.
I'm not all surprised that good lawyers use bullet points to make information clear. (and I assume like to hide things in long paragraphs in contracts).
With contracts it depends in part on how adversarial you're being but that *mostly* doesn't characterize the ones I've dealt with -- inter alia because any changes are almost always sent in redline and the ones that are a hundred pages long as mostly due the complexity of the ideas and contingencies being expressed rather than because anyone has a hard-on for longer rather than shorter contracts. (Ambiguity can be strategic but also the longer a contract is the more of a pain it is for both parties' attorneys to assess. Most licenses I've dealt with have been on the lower end of 2-5 pages).
Good lawyers try to use headings for contracts too (although almost uniformly for convenience, in fact typically you'll have a disclaimer that the headings aren't meant to form any kind of substantive part of the agreement and are just there for convenience.)
You can't. They are ridiculously too parsimonious on text formatting.
And even when I try to do it fully with text, it insists on turning all short returns into long returns, which makes the list look longer than it should be.
A return with no space (<br> in HTML) versus one with a space (<p> in HTML). If you try to create a new line immediately after the previous one with no space, Substack turns it into a <p> tag even if you didn't want to.
I do not have your blue collar street cred. But I have a lot of similar hobbies. I lift. I also have the forbidden firearms. I camp and am involved with a lot of my older son's athletics. It puts me in lots of dude places with dudes who are into or open to Trump. I also come from a pretty conservative family.
Trump of course has no chance of winning Maryland and I also don't really debate it with people. What I do say is that I don't like it when people constantly play the victim card. I say that I am tired of a rich guy out claiming he is somehow the victim, and being put upon by his own actions, whatever one thinks of them. This echoes conservative sentiments about all the victimology out there, and I get a sense at least creates some food for thought.
“I don’t explicitly say who I’m going to vote for.” I’ve always done it this way. I think that swing voters, or even partisans with doubts, don’t trust someone who always has the same answer to every problem. Heartbreak of psoriasis? Vote Republican/Democrat!
I’m also around a lot of Trump voters and come at it from maybe a weird place. I’m sympathetic and here’s my thing: I think he either isn’t competent to do the things you think he cares about, or doesn’t actually care. He had 4 years; why didn’t he X? It seems like maybe he doesn’t know how to do it, or he only wants to be president and doesn’t care to do those things. *Shakes head ruefully*; it’s a shame.
I don’t know that this is effective, but I’m certain that it’s better than screaming about fascism. And for what it’s worth, if Trump is genuinely taking on the administrative state, I’m putting every spare nickel I can find on the administrative state.
i’ve had a similar thought of late, namely, invoking the specter of Trump’s endless legal jeopardy, now that it’s beginning to sink in, as he faces jail time, and so on. “Gee, I’m kinda worried the poor bastard won’t be able to govern the country, what with all his legal troubles. It’s a shame he hasn’t been more careful about stuff.” Trump‘s legal situation won’t impact the MAGA faithful, of course, but perhaps persuadables might be concerned?
One thought I had is that when possible anti-Trump and anti-Republican or anti-conservative people should embrace simplicity and not be so quick to embrace complexity or ambiguity, which non-scholastic folks simply register as evasion and lack of confidence.
Trump, and conservative media in particular, get more and more complex and conspiratorial with their theories and explanations for the hidden hand behind things. Sometimes, it would seem to me, in front of a more working-class, low-trust audience, the counter-point should not be to blame manipulation, Russian trolls, fake news, framing, misinformation, narratives, or anything fancy at all like that. Instead, just be short, sweet, and skeptical as fuck. Say, "I don't know, that sounds kind of complicated man" while giving them the arched, skeptical, "you're nuts" brow. Or, "I think there's a simpler explanation" and just say how the claimant has a simple financial or political motive to say the BS unbelievable thing they are saying. Then....drop the mike...and let it sink in.
I find that the the more specific I go and the less abstract, the more persuasive I am. Most people will be reasonable about a specific policy idea if it's not a culture war issue.
I live in the upper Midwest and most of my coworkers are pretty conservative and this tracks. Everybody worries about family members getting sick and being able to pay for it. So the prescription drug coverage has great potential as a breakthrough issue.
One area where I would push back on avoiding wide criticism is wealth. I've learned to never underestimate the general public's (both conservative and liberal) distaste for rich people. Outright class war rhetoric is risky, as a lot of not-rich people think they might be rich some day, but I find that if I talk about "all the tax cuts the GOP always passes" and how "our families never see a dime of that" that gets people shaking their heads. Then I'll follow it up with something like "the Dems only seem to care about all this woke stuff and the GOP only cares about the rich." Kind of puts in sharp relief which is the lesser of two evils.
Well, and you can add to that, it's possible to vote in Dem primaries, for red-state heterodox Dems who aren't so keen on wokeness. The Mary Peltolas and Jon Testers of the world.
He's running as an independent for Senate in Nebraska, and has said that if elected he'd first try to talk Angus King and Lisa Murkowski into starting a center-out coalition, with one of them running to become the effective Senate Leader. One presumes that would fail and ultimately he'd caucus with the Dems, but hey, if he wants to give it a try...
There was a surprise poll last fall that found him already beating incumbent Deb Fischer. That was probably an outlier, or was weighting its demographics badly. But a more recent poll a week or two back found him only down four. Fisher's net-favorable is 8-10 points underwater, and if Osborn can (a) hang onto the ratio of independents and Republicans who say they'd vote for him, and (b) get Dems to turn out at the same rate they did in '20 and vote for him as well as Biden... he actually wins.
Thanks for the note. Don't underestimate the power of reducing enthusiasm for Trump. A forgone vote is a huge win. Also, don't sleep on the number of Trump supporters for whom the act has worn thin. His true base is unshakeable, but he definitely has benefited from many reluctant voters. If enough of them stay home or leave the top of the ticket blank, that's a big deal. A criminal conviction will obviously help with that.
Yeah, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that a lower-turnout general election helps Biden and Democrats. If you can't get a conservative to vote for Biden, perhaps get them to stay home
As someone living in Florida, this post resonates with me. Most of my friends are Trump supporters and where I fall short is that I don't do a good of empathizing with them.
That being said, I've taken to posting positive economic news without any commentary on social media since everyone thinks we're living through the great depression. Maybe I'll incept one person into thinking the economy is actually pretty decent right now?
I find it tough when the same people (good friends of mine) who lament the economy in justifying their support for Trump drive $1000 a month cars, regularly spend $500 on fancy dinners and take several expensive vacations a year.
They then further argue that Trump is better for the economy because "things were better under Trump." I accept that people feel differently about that then I do but when I try to explain that Trump's stated policies will actually make things worse they aren't receptive to the idea that what worked in 2019 might not work so well this time around.
So yeah, I find it hard to empathize with their feelings for a number of reasons.
yes... but do your friends work hard? Did they generally get where they are by following the rules. Marriage, job, investing, etc... when you recognize that generally (not always), successful people usually put in some effort, then you can see why they feel "entitled". You have to be careful not to degrade their success (this is a big no no)...
Also, come to terms with people justify things with gut feelings. Trump is their tribe... its unlikely to change things. Be subtle. Don't judge.
"Also, come to terms with people justify things with gut feelings. Trump is their tribe... Don't judge."
Rory, I'm sorry I'm about to validate all the stereotypes of stuck-up elites condescendingly looking down on Real Americans(TM), but yes, I do judge. This is personal for me. I grew up in the People's Republic of Poland, my whole family hated the USSR and kept hoping for the day when Poland would be free, and we looked to America as this shining beacon of freedom and democracy (yes, we did look at America through very rose-colored glasses back then). Eventually, I came to the US and became a US citizen. I knew by then that America had its flaws, including some really bad ones. But I always, always took it for granted that the American people loved and valued democracy.
Never, in a billion trillion quadrillion years, would I have dreamed that the POTUS would repeatedly lie about losing his reelection, refuse to concede, and then incite a freaking goddamn mob to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power...
And the reaction of half the country would be somewhere between "meh" and "but his opponent is worse" and "good for him!" and "but he's MY TRIBE, right or wrong!"
No. Just, no. I'm not saying that all Trump voters are bad people; of course not! But this mindset of "This person did [xyz horrible thing] but they're from my tribe, so I support them no matter what"? Yes, I judge the hell out of that.
I think Rory would point out that if your goal is to "feel" better about yourself then judging them works. If you want to actually persuade them, you need to make *them* feel like you are not judging them.
Well said and if I'm being honest I sometimes have a hard time divorcing my personal feelings about my friends and my feelings about their politics. I wish I were able to not judge my friends who thinks Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Trump and that the Vaccines likely killed millions of people. Kudos to those who can.
Well, folks in the old country (Poland) have wavered in their democratic commitment, at least once, yes? Nearly half of them were ready to PiS it away in reelecting the right Populists. They might PiS on Polish democracy again. Other refugees from leftist tyrannies, Cuban-Americans, Venezuelan-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans have shown them quite OK with, or unworried about the threat of dictatorial action by Trump or the Republicans. Why? Because they are even more embittered at Leftism and its anti-property-ism than anti-democracy per se, and they simply give Trump, and all Republicans, more benefit of the doubt, all the time, for *hating Leftism harder* than Democrats. That's enough for them to assume GOP and DJT is always better. There is no more vivid demonstration of this, than in one of the iconic January 6th storming of the Capital photos, one of the banners one of the insurrectionists was carrying was the old *South Vietnamese* flag. It's not enough enough the South Vietnamese couldn't set up and manage their own democracy and had to take refuge in our. This particular one had to undermine ours too.
Have you read Monica Guzman's book "I never thought of it that way." It is actually quite good and gives some good practical advice on questions to ask folks to get them to talk less about their positions than their values and needs (which are often more sympathetic) but also easier to connect with and to talk about why you share those values and it is leading you to vote another way.
The most important group of swing voters are affluent women who usually vote R to keep their taxes low, but favor abortion rights and find Trump obnoxious. They are reachable
It seems to me that a lot of the Trump/Republican voters may or may not have problems with their team and its leader, but they *really* hate the Democratic brand. I mean, just look at all those crazy Democratic protesters on Ivy League campuses (you know, the ones yelling "F**k Biden"). Maybe people like you Rory could help shake up their thinking by proudly proclaiming yourself a Democrat. Yep, even a blue collar, gun toting, weightlifting military vet is a Dem. Maybe, just maybe, it would put a chink in their image of the other party.
I live right next to UCLA and spent a lot of time hanging around and observing the encampment on Dickson Plaza there. I can confirm.*
I also believe that Biden dislikes them far more than you and I do. And -- unlike the MAGA folks and the Jan. 6 rowdies regarding Trump -- they hate and despise Biden too.
* However, the thugs who attacked them late one night last week should all be in jail. Besides the stupidity of creating some sympathy for these protesters.
I live in NYC so the general elections are meaningless. But I always try to vote in the Democratic primaries since that is what actually shapes my political leaders. This is where you can hopefully find and support a Jared Golden or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez who can better represent Democrats and be more aligned with your beliefs. My wife is similar to yours where she pays absolutely no attention to politics so I just give her a list of who/what to vote when we go haha.
It's great to see you back! Very interesting to hear from someone who is friends with Trump voters.
You're right, I am one of those people who have almost no Trump voters in their circle of friends/family/acquaintances. (I'm in academia.) The one exception I can think of is this one guy in my dojo who has MAGA-coded stickers on his car. He's a good guy. But we've never spoken about it, because there's an unspoken but firm rule in our organization - no politics talk in the dojo. It would poison the atmosphere. Anyway, I really like and respect my fellow practitioners, but we don't really socialize outside of practice. So it's not like I can walk up to him and say, "So, how about that election? You're not going to vote for Trump, are you?"
I think this is another layer of difficulty in reaching out across the aisle. Not only are we mostly siloed, with Democrats befriending Democrats and Republicans befriending Republicans, but also, cross-partisan associations tend to work mostly based on "First rule of the [dojo/club/team/whatever], we do not talk about politics. Second rule, we DO NOT talk about politics."
My family is all liberal/progressive/democrats. The one thing I've noticed is that they take disagreement a little bit more personally than my Trump friends. Sure the Trump guys will be obnoxious, but after any argument... its back to college football and car talk. My brother and sister though get pissed... like I will not talk politics with them if I think they will disagree. It makes me limit what I think on subjects.
I sort of feel like this might be a thing.
But I do like the aspect of "dont talk about politics" in neutral settings. Its when you can really appreciate humanity.
That’s why I’ve never hated Trump voters and the Trump adjacent even though for me it was clear from the beginning that he was a man I could and would never vote for.
Ultimately persuasion is really hard, even when it’s among people you love and who are your friends. And persuasion is a process - you have a plant a seed and nurture it. You can do that with friends and colleagues, you can’t really do that online where the incentives are much different.
Another thing I do with Trump voters is mention religion and how little Trump practices the faith (not at all) and how much Biden does.
I never liked Trump, but after he was elected... I didn't think he was as bad as people made it seem. I was wrong.
I just remind myself that for 95% of people, in two alternate universes... Trump wins or Biden wins... their daily life won't be much different (hopefully).
My happiness dispends on a lot more than what my marginal tax rate is.
I thought a large part of the criticism of Trump in his first term was overwrought. However, while I don't think he'll make himself dictator for life in a second term, I do think a lot of the guardrails will be off in terms of corruption because Trump is almost certainly going to be much more effective at staffing a second administration with personal loyalists rather than mainstream Republicans and also will have a better idea of what he can get away with.
I turned on him when he abandoned the Kurds. I spend a lot of time in the middle east, some of it supporting and working with the Kurds. Pisses me off that he sort of threw them under the bus.
Rory and matthew offered good suggestions, but I’d add that if you’re *not* planning to get a concealed carry permit and at least sometime actually carry a concealed pistol, a full size 9mm pistol is probably the way to go. Such a pistol (sometimes called a combat pistol or duty pistol) is going to be the most versatile, reasonably powerful yet still controllable for a new shooter, and reasonably accurate. Matthew’s suggestion is the Beretta 92F; the Glock you mentioned is another in the same class, as is the S&W M&P 9 that Rory has. Other good choices are the Sig Sauer P320 (the US military’s recent replacement for the Beretta) and the CZ 75. They’re all roughly at the same price point - you can get “better” pistols in this class for more money, but I wouldn’t recommend that until you know what you’d be paying for.
Spend some time at a range that rents a variety of pistols and try several until you find one you like. I absolutely hate Glock triggers. Lots of people praise Glock triggers to the heavens, but I hate them. The CZ 75 has a fantastic trigger, IMHO. But try both, annd others, and go with what you like to shoot. Same for things like grip size, sights, safety, slide release, etc. It’s all got to feel good for your hands regardless of what someone recommends.
Two more important things: Invest in some professional training. Good training should include everything about operating a firearm: safety, theory, marksmanship fundamentals and practice, maintenance, pistol selection for purpose, and legal considerations. Also give serious thought to where you will store the weapon and how you will transport it. A trigger lock is the absolute minimum if you have an otherwise secure place to keep the gun. A safe is better. Leaving it in a car is in most cases irresponsible. As to transportation, it’s one thing to get a license in the state you live in, but can be quite another when you cross state lines, especially in the northeast.
Finally, if you are considering (now, or in the future) concealed carry in a serious way, you’ll want a pistol made for that purpose. But please learn to shoot very well before considering that.
I'll add that if you're going to donate downballot, do it early. I've run some state senate ad campaigns before and the marginal value of a $ in the month before the election is like zero, at least on the ads side.
I am glad you are giving your audience concrete suggestions for giving.
While it's true those are all important House races, precisely because the House is in the balance and everyone knows it, Democrats as a rule will overinvest in House at the expense of other high-ROI things. It's not a waste to help, but it's not the highest utility use of scarce funds. A few of my favorites are these three:
* Working America: this is for me a killer app because they have been shown (through RCTs) to generate loads of Democratic votes from a working class population that is persuadable if you engage with them on issues they care about (so, $15 min wage and workplace safety, and not, say, policing). Importantly, because WA is an affinity group for working people, when WA approaches its members (all in electorally important states) about political stuff, they are a (rightly) trusted messenger. This is also very high marginal utility because the average progressive donor wants to give to feelgood (and important!) stuff like outreach to young people of color, and not to people who may have voted for Trump in a previous election but could be added to our coalition. They deliver votes at a fraction of the cost even of "hard money" gifts to campaigns. WA received my largest political gift.
* Voter Participation Center: they are doing super important voter registration work in all the electorally important states, and it pays evergreen dividends because a newly registered voter who votes once tends to do it in the future, too.
* The States Project: these guys are best in class at helping to win critical state legislative seats. Pro-democracy caucuses hold narrow majorities in Michigan and have the opportunity to win new ones in places like Arizona and New Hampshire. This is doubly important: 1) state legislators are responsible for huge amounts of the policy that most impact our daily lives (abortion rights, gun safety, Medicare access, etc.), 2) state leges in these states can do things to interfere with the conduct of elections and even, as we saw in 2020, try to send up false slates of electors. So even if all you care about is the top of the ticket, this is a critical investment to assure that any Biden win is respected.
Very belatedly replying with a 1) thanks and a 2) sure, give to Tester. Not just an inexpensive market, but every marginal vote a campaign or program dollar yields is just more valuable in a small population state. A new voter in Montana is more helpful to a statewide candidate than would be the case in most states.
I would also give to Dan Osborne, the Independent candidate in Nebraska. I'd dismissed his chances for months, but polling keeps showing him with a puncher's chance to steal a seat.
Having spent a few years working in political comms, I've definitely sent my fair share of fundraising emails back in my day. It's a hard balance between communicating the urgency of hitting very real fundraising goals, and not pissing off the audience.
Different firms take different approaches. Where I worked, we always thought of it as a sort of newsletter first, and a fundraising machine second. But of course, the candidates and orgs that hired us knew that. Moral of the story, spammy B.S. like what Bo is referring to is absolute garbage, but it's also been so normalized that good candidates and orgs do it without a second thought.
One difficulty is that no matter how real the fundraising goals are to the orgs internally, you can't get donors to either know or care about that. The orgs' metric targets are not the donors'.
Ben, you should write about this, even if it doesn’t involve half-baked takes. I’ve always thought that these fundraising “deadlines” were total BS. If not, I’d like to know when and how they matter.
I work in political campaign compliance, so I have some expertise here.
Political campaigns are required to periodically report how much they raised (depending on the candidate and the time of year, this could be quarterly, monthly, etc.).
These deadlines don't really matter for incumbents, but they do matter for challengers - parties use measures of "how much did X raise last quarter?" to decide if a candidate is legit and worth supporting, or just a rando who'll never be able to pay for TV ads.
While sometimes, it's obvious (State Senator running for Congress? Probably worth investing in) for other roles (attorney, small business owner, military vet, etc) it's hard to know if they have fundraising capacity or not, until you see the results.
I look at it as the price of NOT being the person who is willing to knock on doors, that seems more time consuming and something I personally am not willing to do.
Maybe we could have people, we'll call them Demosthenes, write rabble rousing populist Trumpist claptrap on Reddit and screeds on Tik Tok, while, in contrast, others, we'll call them Locke, write Biden friendly statesmanlike missives with unbelievable Tik Tok production values.
“If you want to dedicate time and not just money to good causes, then consider getting a part-time job and giving that money.”
Matt’s logic is impeccable but I doubt many people will do this. People who volunteer get a sense of belonging and solidarity. People who moonlight to wire money to the DNC get to be an infinitesimally small cog in a wheel.
For those who want to *do* something to feel emotionally invested, but want it to be more useful than a largely pointless phone bank, you can write letters for VoteForward. The cost-of-vote-generated math is fuzzy because it's hard to consider the "cost" of volunteer time, but in lower turnout elections each 100 letters generates between 2-5 votes that otherwise would not have been cast. Which is insane. In higher salience elections like of course the presidential, that number will go way down, but call it 1 vote ballpark. So if you write 400 letters to Democratic-inclined voters in places like PA and AZ, you can tell yourself you netted an expected 4 additional votes.
Well said. Volunteering probably doesn't do much, but I wonder how many excellent politicians got their start, and their initial motivation, from the thrill of joining like-minded volunteers on phone banks and door knocking campaigns.
Even if one doesn't become a successful politician, I don't think we should denigrate one of the few remaining venues to fight against the Putnam-like "Bowling Alone" tendency of our society.
There I sort of disagree. Pickleball is better than activism. I have lots of Republican pickleball friends. I don’t call Trump an insurrectionist and they don’t call me a communist. We hit the ball back and forth and talk about who dinks well and which women have the cute skirts. That’s community!
Any thoughts about creating an ActBlue page that bundles these donations together into a single contribution? Would certainly make it easy to donate and spread the word
Great advice, as a former political hack I'd say Matt's totally right about the money side, but old school electioneering can still work for down ballot races that most voters know nothing about. So yeah, canvassing for Biden (or Trump!) is probably not worth your time, but a school board member? A state supreme court judge? That might move some votes as you could easily be the only piece of info about the race they get.
Having said that, I'm down for having a "Biden sign war competition" on here.
My personal feeling is that the effect a yard sign is going to be to magnify whatever partisan lean your neighborhood has, and whether the sign is for Trump or Biden doesn't actually make much difference. In other words, a Biden voter will be just as motivated to vote for Biden by Trump signs as Biden signs, and a Trump voter will be just as motivated to vote for Trump by Biden signs as Trump signs.
That said, people do take notice of trends in signage. For example, if there's a particular house that has always had signs for Republicans every election cycle, but this time, has either nothing or a Joe Biden sign, that makes a much stronger statement than a Biden sign in front of a house that has always supported Democrats.
I feel like rural Trump voters have a sort of monopoly on big political signs. Like I've just never driven down the highway in a rural place and seen a massive Dem candidate sign.
Ben, you have to be the change you wish to see in the world ie make a giant Biden sign in your home area. Others are doing their parts: Milan is editing all summer, I had to go get more beers for NBA finals games, go get some paints and brushes and get on this thing!
If it is going to be Kent again, then it would make sense that it could fail to make the top 8 on those grounds. Democrats still have to stay frosty out there, though.
I’ve never heard that expression. To me, “stay frosty” sounds like “maintain a frosty (cold, unapproachable, unlikable) demeanor “ but based on the context, it clearly means something else?
I very much doubt there's a billionaire reading the comments, but just in case. The maximum donation per House candidate is $3300. There are 435 House seats. Donating the maximum to each is $1.43 million. Before you start giving soft money, make sure you've maxed out your hard money.
You shouldn't give a cent to a SuperPAC if there are still candidates that you can max-out your hard money donations to.
I believe that hard money given to one race can be transferred to another race and remains as hard money.
Hard money given to those candidates near-certain to win can then be transferred at their discretion. Not ideal, but those that do end up with far too much money (e.g. AOC) do use it that way.
The candidates with minimal chances of winning (and usually not much money) are different, in that they will spend it and not really enhance their odds of winning by much. It's probably still useful in building organisations in places where the party is weak, mostly because a max donation is large in proportion to their campaign - that is, getting a campaign from $20,000 to $23,000 is going to have more impact than getting one from $200,000 to $203,000.
Why not just give the money to the DCCC and let them figure out where the money will get the biggest bang for the buck? Letting funds be transferred between races seems like a very clumsy bank shot approach.
Is money donated to a candidate in a non-competitive race that you hope is re-routed to an optimal race truly “harder” than money donated to a relatively well-targeted third party?
The principle here is right but the application is wrong: contributions go further than SuperPac money *as to a particular race* but giving in the vast majority of House races is a waste.
The brilliant scientist (atomic bomb, human genome) Leo Szilard turned his mind to US elections, and figured out that the most effective donations, dollar for dollar, would go to close Senate races; each Senator has enormous power but in a small state with a close election every dollar counts a lot. He founded Council for a LIvable World, https://livableworld.org/ , which identifies close races and gathers checks that are donated directly to the campaigns. (They now do House races also).
Interesting that he had such a small role in Oppenheimer. When they made a TV movie about the Manhattan Project 30 or so years ago, Szilard was one of the main characters.
Have we just given up on the Senate forever, then? It’s true that the Senate map this year is tough, but if we ever want to get it back, we still have to fight for every seat every election. It’s possible that Senate campaigns are just all overfunded, and we should give more money down ballot, but that’s not the argument Matt made, and if everyone has given up on Tester, Gallego, Brown, and Casey because the senate is a foregone conclusion, then we are just doing damage control, and can forget about liberal legislation for a decade or more.
I think Matt would agree with you that those Senate races merit contributions too. I suspect he focused on the House races on the assumption that SB readers are more familiar with the Senate races which also get more national coverage. Personally i really appreciated the list of 8 House races - i had a pretty good sense of where to focus my Senate $ but had no clue where to start in terms of the House.
That said, given the challenging Senate map and the persistently bad Biden poll numbers, I don't think anybody should be too optimistic about liberal legislation til at least 2029. We should try to remind optimistic, but without a miracle in November, damage control is the best we can hope for over the next few years.
I don’t know, would he agree? I appreciate the suggestions for house races, and if someone threw out a list of state races which would make a difference I might throw some money that way, too. I’m just worried that this year, with the map being what it is, the Senate races might get written off by some people and underfunded.
Today I received a spam from some PAC which purported to be supporting these close senate races but we all know it’s better to send money to the campaigns not the PACs, right?
Agreed, but it's more likely that contested senate races will draw enough funding that small donations by SB readers are unlikely to have as much impact than in house races. And, given that the dems are more likely to win the house than the Senate, maybe it's worth saying that people should donate to senate candidates only after maxing out house donations (a heavy lift)
That's a good point. I'm assuming that the senate is lost for 2024, but it's really helpful to look ahead 2/4/6 years to the next fight, since the terms are so long. Every won seat could be the tipping point down the road.
Good morning from Peru everybody. I find myself in a unique position relatively.
The problem with many, not all but many of you regular Democratic voters, is that you are surrounded by other Democratic voters. You have your college jobs in big cities or college towns, and naturally socialized with people like you.
Me… I’m a military veteran, that owns forbidden guns. I am a hard-core weightlifter. I work in a blue collar industry surrounded by 95% Trump voters. Guys, who are just like me… Except for liking or not minding Trump.
I don’t explicitly say who I’m going to vote for. What I do, take advantage of conversations to undermine Trump. Point out, the guy was born Rich. He is rich, but he’s a lousy tipper. I ask people if they would ever want to have a boss like him.
Honestly, it’s unlikely I will change anyone’s vote… But maybe I could reduce the enthusiasm so someone is too lazy to go vote for him.
My second strategy, which I just thought of, is to encourage my daughter and her friends at Michigan State, to vote. It is a swing state.
But at the end of the day, the key thing to connect with other people is to empathize and understand them. It’s so rare among political partisans. All three of my best friends plan on voting for Trump.
Anyway, I refuse to be sucked into the hate. It’s all love for me.
I think you were an avid commentor before my time. But good to have you back legend.
I'm the token uneducated, blue collar guy here. You can recognize me by my poor grammar and occasional bullet points. (a remnant from my military days).
I think it's a horrible indictment of the US education system that someone that completes 13 years of school is considered 'uneducated'. Don't sell yourself short!
To be fair I have an online college degree.
But I have to sell myself short…. I’m only 5’4” (don’t feel sorry for me… I bench 365)
Sell what you got my man, what you got seems to be in demand, sometimes internationally on different projects if I remember correctly.
You are doing the right thing to fit your environment. Encourage the chicks you know to vote like you're doing, as for the dudes, if maybe they don't feel like they know, well maybe they shouldn't. With the gender gap and liberalism seen simply as a feminized thing now for a couple decades, for Dems, clear communication of stakes to female voters will be key, alongside a subtle, or not so subtle, "you gotta get it right because the boys can't tell the fucking difference between government and pro-wrestling, so they could fuck it up." "Cleaning up after the boys is what real women do." and a subversive/semi-subversive, "the men in your life may whine, but you don't need to tell them who you voted for."
I am literally married to the most un-political woman alive. She literally has no interest in anything public policy related. She never votes. Has no passionate issues she cares about. She works hard, is loved by everyone, pretty much one of the most awesome people I know.
Don't sell yourself short: I had to go to law school to get the importance of bullet points and bullet-point like document structure drilled into me.
I review reports for my group. The biggest problem is when people try and sound to smart by writing run on sentences or long ass paragraphs.
I'm not all surprised that good lawyers use bullet points to make information clear. (and I assume like to hide things in long paragraphs in contracts).
With contracts it depends in part on how adversarial you're being but that *mostly* doesn't characterize the ones I've dealt with -- inter alia because any changes are almost always sent in redline and the ones that are a hundred pages long as mostly due the complexity of the ideas and contingencies being expressed rather than because anyone has a hard-on for longer rather than shorter contracts. (Ambiguity can be strategic but also the longer a contract is the more of a pain it is for both parties' attorneys to assess. Most licenses I've dealt with have been on the lower end of 2-5 pages).
Good lawyers try to use headings for contracts too (although almost uniformly for convenience, in fact typically you'll have a disclaimer that the headings aren't meant to form any kind of substantive part of the agreement and are just there for convenience.)
What’s wrong with bullet points?
And, uh, how do you make substack do them in comments?
1. Start with a number
2. Write something
3. Hit enter
I guess it’s more numbers s lists than bullet points.
- not as easy
- but works.
You can't. They are ridiculously too parsimonious on text formatting.
And even when I try to do it fully with text, it insists on turning all short returns into long returns, which makes the list look longer than it should be.
Just write in markdown and I'll render it in my head.
Explain short versus long returns?
A return with no space (<br> in HTML) versus one with a space (<p> in HTML). If you try to create a new line immediately after the previous one with no space, Substack turns it into a <p> tag even if you didn't want to.
Maybe a little more in the past, but Rory's commenting level has always been contingent on his traveling.
haha... I just happen to have an easy job in Peru.
Rory's an OG
I do not have your blue collar street cred. But I have a lot of similar hobbies. I lift. I also have the forbidden firearms. I camp and am involved with a lot of my older son's athletics. It puts me in lots of dude places with dudes who are into or open to Trump. I also come from a pretty conservative family.
Trump of course has no chance of winning Maryland and I also don't really debate it with people. What I do say is that I don't like it when people constantly play the victim card. I say that I am tired of a rich guy out claiming he is somehow the victim, and being put upon by his own actions, whatever one thinks of them. This echoes conservative sentiments about all the victimology out there, and I get a sense at least creates some food for thought.
The best thing you can do is to show that normal people (especially men) don't have to fall into the Trump stereotype. Its subtle.
“I don’t explicitly say who I’m going to vote for.” I’ve always done it this way. I think that swing voters, or even partisans with doubts, don’t trust someone who always has the same answer to every problem. Heartbreak of psoriasis? Vote Republican/Democrat!
I’m also around a lot of Trump voters and come at it from maybe a weird place. I’m sympathetic and here’s my thing: I think he either isn’t competent to do the things you think he cares about, or doesn’t actually care. He had 4 years; why didn’t he X? It seems like maybe he doesn’t know how to do it, or he only wants to be president and doesn’t care to do those things. *Shakes head ruefully*; it’s a shame.
I don’t know that this is effective, but I’m certain that it’s better than screaming about fascism. And for what it’s worth, if Trump is genuinely taking on the administrative state, I’m putting every spare nickel I can find on the administrative state.
i’ve had a similar thought of late, namely, invoking the specter of Trump’s endless legal jeopardy, now that it’s beginning to sink in, as he faces jail time, and so on. “Gee, I’m kinda worried the poor bastard won’t be able to govern the country, what with all his legal troubles. It’s a shame he hasn’t been more careful about stuff.” Trump‘s legal situation won’t impact the MAGA faithful, of course, but perhaps persuadables might be concerned?
One thought I had is that when possible anti-Trump and anti-Republican or anti-conservative people should embrace simplicity and not be so quick to embrace complexity or ambiguity, which non-scholastic folks simply register as evasion and lack of confidence.
Trump, and conservative media in particular, get more and more complex and conspiratorial with their theories and explanations for the hidden hand behind things. Sometimes, it would seem to me, in front of a more working-class, low-trust audience, the counter-point should not be to blame manipulation, Russian trolls, fake news, framing, misinformation, narratives, or anything fancy at all like that. Instead, just be short, sweet, and skeptical as fuck. Say, "I don't know, that sounds kind of complicated man" while giving them the arched, skeptical, "you're nuts" brow. Or, "I think there's a simpler explanation" and just say how the claimant has a simple financial or political motive to say the BS unbelievable thing they are saying. Then....drop the mike...and let it sink in.
And swear while you do it. Swearing is the new sincerity.
I find that the the more specific I go and the less abstract, the more persuasive I am. Most people will be reasonable about a specific policy idea if it's not a culture war issue.
Yes.. this is a good tactic. Just phrase it as your pet peeve... dont go to wide in your criticism.
I live in the upper Midwest and most of my coworkers are pretty conservative and this tracks. Everybody worries about family members getting sick and being able to pay for it. So the prescription drug coverage has great potential as a breakthrough issue.
One area where I would push back on avoiding wide criticism is wealth. I've learned to never underestimate the general public's (both conservative and liberal) distaste for rich people. Outright class war rhetoric is risky, as a lot of not-rich people think they might be rich some day, but I find that if I talk about "all the tax cuts the GOP always passes" and how "our families never see a dime of that" that gets people shaking their heads. Then I'll follow it up with something like "the Dems only seem to care about all this woke stuff and the GOP only cares about the rich." Kind of puts in sharp relief which is the lesser of two evils.
Well, and you can add to that, it's possible to vote in Dem primaries, for red-state heterodox Dems who aren't so keen on wokeness. The Mary Peltolas and Jon Testers of the world.
Also, some folks might find Dan Osborn interesting: https://osbornforsenate.com/
He's running as an independent for Senate in Nebraska, and has said that if elected he'd first try to talk Angus King and Lisa Murkowski into starting a center-out coalition, with one of them running to become the effective Senate Leader. One presumes that would fail and ultimately he'd caucus with the Dems, but hey, if he wants to give it a try...
There was a surprise poll last fall that found him already beating incumbent Deb Fischer. That was probably an outlier, or was weighting its demographics badly. But a more recent poll a week or two back found him only down four. Fisher's net-favorable is 8-10 points underwater, and if Osborn can (a) hang onto the ratio of independents and Republicans who say they'd vote for him, and (b) get Dems to turn out at the same rate they did in '20 and vote for him as well as Biden... he actually wins.
Thanks for the note. Don't underestimate the power of reducing enthusiasm for Trump. A forgone vote is a huge win. Also, don't sleep on the number of Trump supporters for whom the act has worn thin. His true base is unshakeable, but he definitely has benefited from many reluctant voters. If enough of them stay home or leave the top of the ticket blank, that's a big deal. A criminal conviction will obviously help with that.
Yeah, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that a lower-turnout general election helps Biden and Democrats. If you can't get a conservative to vote for Biden, perhaps get them to stay home
We’ve seen it in every special election. Lower the salience, and drive out the base.
As someone living in Florida, this post resonates with me. Most of my friends are Trump supporters and where I fall short is that I don't do a good of empathizing with them.
That being said, I've taken to posting positive economic news without any commentary on social media since everyone thinks we're living through the great depression. Maybe I'll incept one person into thinking the economy is actually pretty decent right now?
I find empathizing pretty easy. Most people are good...
I find it tough when the same people (good friends of mine) who lament the economy in justifying their support for Trump drive $1000 a month cars, regularly spend $500 on fancy dinners and take several expensive vacations a year.
They then further argue that Trump is better for the economy because "things were better under Trump." I accept that people feel differently about that then I do but when I try to explain that Trump's stated policies will actually make things worse they aren't receptive to the idea that what worked in 2019 might not work so well this time around.
So yeah, I find it hard to empathize with their feelings for a number of reasons.
yes... but do your friends work hard? Did they generally get where they are by following the rules. Marriage, job, investing, etc... when you recognize that generally (not always), successful people usually put in some effort, then you can see why they feel "entitled". You have to be careful not to degrade their success (this is a big no no)...
Also, come to terms with people justify things with gut feelings. Trump is their tribe... its unlikely to change things. Be subtle. Don't judge.
"Also, come to terms with people justify things with gut feelings. Trump is their tribe... Don't judge."
Rory, I'm sorry I'm about to validate all the stereotypes of stuck-up elites condescendingly looking down on Real Americans(TM), but yes, I do judge. This is personal for me. I grew up in the People's Republic of Poland, my whole family hated the USSR and kept hoping for the day when Poland would be free, and we looked to America as this shining beacon of freedom and democracy (yes, we did look at America through very rose-colored glasses back then). Eventually, I came to the US and became a US citizen. I knew by then that America had its flaws, including some really bad ones. But I always, always took it for granted that the American people loved and valued democracy.
Never, in a billion trillion quadrillion years, would I have dreamed that the POTUS would repeatedly lie about losing his reelection, refuse to concede, and then incite a freaking goddamn mob to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power...
And the reaction of half the country would be somewhere between "meh" and "but his opponent is worse" and "good for him!" and "but he's MY TRIBE, right or wrong!"
No. Just, no. I'm not saying that all Trump voters are bad people; of course not! But this mindset of "This person did [xyz horrible thing] but they're from my tribe, so I support them no matter what"? Yes, I judge the hell out of that.
I think Rory would point out that if your goal is to "feel" better about yourself then judging them works. If you want to actually persuade them, you need to make *them* feel like you are not judging them.
Well said and if I'm being honest I sometimes have a hard time divorcing my personal feelings about my friends and my feelings about their politics. I wish I were able to not judge my friends who thinks Biden is a bigger threat to democracy than Trump and that the Vaccines likely killed millions of people. Kudos to those who can.
Well, folks in the old country (Poland) have wavered in their democratic commitment, at least once, yes? Nearly half of them were ready to PiS it away in reelecting the right Populists. They might PiS on Polish democracy again. Other refugees from leftist tyrannies, Cuban-Americans, Venezuelan-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans have shown them quite OK with, or unworried about the threat of dictatorial action by Trump or the Republicans. Why? Because they are even more embittered at Leftism and its anti-property-ism than anti-democracy per se, and they simply give Trump, and all Republicans, more benefit of the doubt, all the time, for *hating Leftism harder* than Democrats. That's enough for them to assume GOP and DJT is always better. There is no more vivid demonstration of this, than in one of the iconic January 6th storming of the Capital photos, one of the banners one of the insurrectionists was carrying was the old *South Vietnamese* flag. It's not enough enough the South Vietnamese couldn't set up and manage their own democracy and had to take refuge in our. This particular one had to undermine ours too.
This really needs to be emphasized more in society.
Have you read Monica Guzman's book "I never thought of it that way." It is actually quite good and gives some good practical advice on questions to ask folks to get them to talk less about their positions than their values and needs (which are often more sympathetic) but also easier to connect with and to talk about why you share those values and it is leading you to vote another way.
The most important group of swing voters are affluent women who usually vote R to keep their taxes low, but favor abortion rights and find Trump obnoxious. They are reachable
True that... but we run in different circles. My wife works as a cashier. I work with millwrights.
It seems to me that a lot of the Trump/Republican voters may or may not have problems with their team and its leader, but they *really* hate the Democratic brand. I mean, just look at all those crazy Democratic protesters on Ivy League campuses (you know, the ones yelling "F**k Biden"). Maybe people like you Rory could help shake up their thinking by proudly proclaiming yourself a Democrat. Yep, even a blue collar, gun toting, weightlifting military vet is a Dem. Maybe, just maybe, it would put a chink in their image of the other party.
True... Im close, if not totally sold. Unfortunately, those blue haired college protestors ruin the brand for me as well.
I live right next to UCLA and spent a lot of time hanging around and observing the encampment on Dickson Plaza there. I can confirm.*
I also believe that Biden dislikes them far more than you and I do. And -- unlike the MAGA folks and the Jan. 6 rowdies regarding Trump -- they hate and despise Biden too.
* However, the thugs who attacked them late one night last week should all be in jail. Besides the stupidity of creating some sympathy for these protesters.
The funniest video I saw this week was when protestors and counter protestors were singing "Fuck Joe Biden" back and forth to each other.
Counter protestors are almost worse that protestors. Better to ignore people, not act dumb as well. And that racist dude at Ole Miss... asshole.
Why cant people be civilized.
I live in NYC so the general elections are meaningless. But I always try to vote in the Democratic primaries since that is what actually shapes my political leaders. This is where you can hopefully find and support a Jared Golden or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez who can better represent Democrats and be more aligned with your beliefs. My wife is similar to yours where she pays absolutely no attention to politics so I just give her a list of who/what to vote when we go haha.
Hi Rory,
It's great to see you back! Very interesting to hear from someone who is friends with Trump voters.
You're right, I am one of those people who have almost no Trump voters in their circle of friends/family/acquaintances. (I'm in academia.) The one exception I can think of is this one guy in my dojo who has MAGA-coded stickers on his car. He's a good guy. But we've never spoken about it, because there's an unspoken but firm rule in our organization - no politics talk in the dojo. It would poison the atmosphere. Anyway, I really like and respect my fellow practitioners, but we don't really socialize outside of practice. So it's not like I can walk up to him and say, "So, how about that election? You're not going to vote for Trump, are you?"
I think this is another layer of difficulty in reaching out across the aisle. Not only are we mostly siloed, with Democrats befriending Democrats and Republicans befriending Republicans, but also, cross-partisan associations tend to work mostly based on "First rule of the [dojo/club/team/whatever], we do not talk about politics. Second rule, we DO NOT talk about politics."
My family is all liberal/progressive/democrats. The one thing I've noticed is that they take disagreement a little bit more personally than my Trump friends. Sure the Trump guys will be obnoxious, but after any argument... its back to college football and car talk. My brother and sister though get pissed... like I will not talk politics with them if I think they will disagree. It makes me limit what I think on subjects.
I sort of feel like this might be a thing.
But I do like the aspect of "dont talk about politics" in neutral settings. Its when you can really appreciate humanity.
"(I'm in academia.)"
Um, your name is drosophilist. Lol.
So much this for me too.
That’s why I’ve never hated Trump voters and the Trump adjacent even though for me it was clear from the beginning that he was a man I could and would never vote for.
Ultimately persuasion is really hard, even when it’s among people you love and who are your friends. And persuasion is a process - you have a plant a seed and nurture it. You can do that with friends and colleagues, you can’t really do that online where the incentives are much different.
Another thing I do with Trump voters is mention religion and how little Trump practices the faith (not at all) and how much Biden does.
I never liked Trump, but after he was elected... I didn't think he was as bad as people made it seem. I was wrong.
I just remind myself that for 95% of people, in two alternate universes... Trump wins or Biden wins... their daily life won't be much different (hopefully).
My happiness dispends on a lot more than what my marginal tax rate is.
I thought a large part of the criticism of Trump in his first term was overwrought. However, while I don't think he'll make himself dictator for life in a second term, I do think a lot of the guardrails will be off in terms of corruption because Trump is almost certainly going to be much more effective at staffing a second administration with personal loyalists rather than mainstream Republicans and also will have a better idea of what he can get away with.
I turned on him when he abandoned the Kurds. I spend a lot of time in the middle east, some of it supporting and working with the Kurds. Pisses me off that he sort of threw them under the bus.
Any favorite pieces you own? After I went shooting with my buddy it got me interested in getting one myself down the line.
Rory and matthew offered good suggestions, but I’d add that if you’re *not* planning to get a concealed carry permit and at least sometime actually carry a concealed pistol, a full size 9mm pistol is probably the way to go. Such a pistol (sometimes called a combat pistol or duty pistol) is going to be the most versatile, reasonably powerful yet still controllable for a new shooter, and reasonably accurate. Matthew’s suggestion is the Beretta 92F; the Glock you mentioned is another in the same class, as is the S&W M&P 9 that Rory has. Other good choices are the Sig Sauer P320 (the US military’s recent replacement for the Beretta) and the CZ 75. They’re all roughly at the same price point - you can get “better” pistols in this class for more money, but I wouldn’t recommend that until you know what you’d be paying for.
Spend some time at a range that rents a variety of pistols and try several until you find one you like. I absolutely hate Glock triggers. Lots of people praise Glock triggers to the heavens, but I hate them. The CZ 75 has a fantastic trigger, IMHO. But try both, annd others, and go with what you like to shoot. Same for things like grip size, sights, safety, slide release, etc. It’s all got to feel good for your hands regardless of what someone recommends.
Two more important things: Invest in some professional training. Good training should include everything about operating a firearm: safety, theory, marksmanship fundamentals and practice, maintenance, pistol selection for purpose, and legal considerations. Also give serious thought to where you will store the weapon and how you will transport it. A trigger lock is the absolute minimum if you have an otherwise secure place to keep the gun. A safe is better. Leaving it in a car is in most cases irresponsible. As to transportation, it’s one thing to get a license in the state you live in, but can be quite another when you cross state lines, especially in the northeast.
Finally, if you are considering (now, or in the future) concealed carry in a serious way, you’ll want a pistol made for that purpose. But please learn to shoot very well before considering that.
I like my Smith and Wesson MP9. Just easy to use. not expensive. My favorite to shoot is my Zastava AK. because... just fun.
Noted. I was shooting a Glock 17 and some sort of AR. Gotta see about going hunting one of these days.
Yes you do. Voter street cred for when you run for Governor.
For hand guns I like the Bereta 9mil or 10 mil.
It's what I used in the army.
It is good to see you again. I hope you will start commenting more often again.
If Michigan is that close, Trump wins.
I can only do what I can do.
Excellent. More of this in life. And thanks for working with rescue dogs... that's an awesome thing to do.
This might be the most directly useful SB post ever
+1 for appreciating news you can use!
We are glad to be in Jared Golden’s Maine district and supporting him to the extent we can.
I'll add that if you're going to donate downballot, do it early. I've run some state senate ad campaigns before and the marginal value of a $ in the month before the election is like zero, at least on the ads side.
Gotta build the war chest!
I am glad you are giving your audience concrete suggestions for giving.
While it's true those are all important House races, precisely because the House is in the balance and everyone knows it, Democrats as a rule will overinvest in House at the expense of other high-ROI things. It's not a waste to help, but it's not the highest utility use of scarce funds. A few of my favorites are these three:
* Working America: this is for me a killer app because they have been shown (through RCTs) to generate loads of Democratic votes from a working class population that is persuadable if you engage with them on issues they care about (so, $15 min wage and workplace safety, and not, say, policing). Importantly, because WA is an affinity group for working people, when WA approaches its members (all in electorally important states) about political stuff, they are a (rightly) trusted messenger. This is also very high marginal utility because the average progressive donor wants to give to feelgood (and important!) stuff like outreach to young people of color, and not to people who may have voted for Trump in a previous election but could be added to our coalition. They deliver votes at a fraction of the cost even of "hard money" gifts to campaigns. WA received my largest political gift.
* Voter Participation Center: they are doing super important voter registration work in all the electorally important states, and it pays evergreen dividends because a newly registered voter who votes once tends to do it in the future, too.
* The States Project: these guys are best in class at helping to win critical state legislative seats. Pro-democracy caucuses hold narrow majorities in Michigan and have the opportunity to win new ones in places like Arizona and New Hampshire. This is doubly important: 1) state legislators are responsible for huge amounts of the policy that most impact our daily lives (abortion rights, gun safety, Medicare access, etc.), 2) state leges in these states can do things to interfere with the conduct of elections and even, as we saw in 2020, try to send up false slates of electors. So even if all you care about is the top of the ticket, this is a critical investment to assure that any Biden win is respected.
Huge like for this. I want to read more posts like this from pundits.
What about Jon Tester? That's a huge Senate seat in an inexpensive market where he's a clear underdog but not a lost cause.
I'll probably already end up indirectly funding him, like I have done so for every time he has run for the Senate.
Tester has a pretty stable, if small, lead in the polls thus far. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/senate/2024/montana/. Definitely worth donating to.
Very belatedly replying with a 1) thanks and a 2) sure, give to Tester. Not just an inexpensive market, but every marginal vote a campaign or program dollar yields is just more valuable in a small population state. A new voter in Montana is more helpful to a statewide candidate than would be the case in most states.
I would also give to Dan Osborne, the Independent candidate in Nebraska. I'd dismissed his chances for months, but polling keeps showing him with a puncher's chance to steal a seat.
Montana Republicans surprisingly nominated a somewhat normal candidate this time.
I have been discouraged from giving by the flood of requests.
Especially the ones that reference meeting their quarterly , monthly hourly funding goals.
The text messages are absolutely maddening.
Bo, WAKE UP, This is an EMERGENCY!
Republicans are planning on STEALING YOUR LIVER while you SLEEP!
DO NOT wake up in an ICE BATH!
Will you give $25 DOLLARS TODAY?
Reply IHATEDEMOCRACY to stop these messages
Having spent a few years working in political comms, I've definitely sent my fair share of fundraising emails back in my day. It's a hard balance between communicating the urgency of hitting very real fundraising goals, and not pissing off the audience.
Different firms take different approaches. Where I worked, we always thought of it as a sort of newsletter first, and a fundraising machine second. But of course, the candidates and orgs that hired us knew that. Moral of the story, spammy B.S. like what Bo is referring to is absolute garbage, but it's also been so normalized that good candidates and orgs do it without a second thought.
One difficulty is that no matter how real the fundraising goals are to the orgs internally, you can't get donors to either know or care about that. The orgs' metric targets are not the donors'.
100%
Ben, you should write about this, even if it doesn’t involve half-baked takes. I’ve always thought that these fundraising “deadlines” were total BS. If not, I’d like to know when and how they matter.
I just might!
I work in political campaign compliance, so I have some expertise here.
Political campaigns are required to periodically report how much they raised (depending on the candidate and the time of year, this could be quarterly, monthly, etc.).
These deadlines don't really matter for incumbents, but they do matter for challengers - parties use measures of "how much did X raise last quarter?" to decide if a candidate is legit and worth supporting, or just a rando who'll never be able to pay for TV ads.
While sometimes, it's obvious (State Senator running for Congress? Probably worth investing in) for other roles (attorney, small business owner, military vet, etc) it's hard to know if they have fundraising capacity or not, until you see the results.
People here aren't appreciating how hilarious this comment is.
Why would you read these things? I just immediately delete all such messages. And later on, I'll send some more money to the DCCC and the DSCC.
It's not inherently bad to give to the DCCC/DSCC, but don't they also spend money in primaries sometimes to protect incumbents in safe seats?
To me, that is a bad use of my money - I want to help Ds beat Rs, not help Jamaal Bowman keep his seat.
I give them money after the primaries are over.
Unfortunately, that style of harassment with the (totally fake!) funding goals has been shown to work year over year.
It's sort of similar to the audience problem in the news. The problem is us! The donors. We respond to those fake funding goals.
Same for me. I think the barrage of requests after donating are a huge turnoff that makes me hesitate to do it again.
Seriously. I wish I could put cash in a box or something. Giving is not with being spammed for years.
I even gave blood earlier this year when the blood mobile came to my office. I now get multiple texts a day.
Hit stop
All political donations should be anonymized.
Me too, I was pondering how to give anonymously as I scrolled comments
For somewhat obvious reasons, anonymous political giving is illegal.
Same. No matter what I do (including burner email addresses)I get added to so many fucking mailing lists, text messages, phone calls, etc.
I swear, I'm more willing to pay extortion to keep off mailing lists than I am to contribute politically at this point.
Don't all the emails or texts offer unsubscribe/Stop options ?
The annoying bit is when campaigns share your email. So I have to opt out of one campaign for every state it feels like.
Maybe Matt should explicitly recommend giving a fake email when donating.
Not necessarily fake, but an email account you use specifically for these purposes is a good idea.
It look like you struck a chord:
https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-is-terrified-of-your-grassroots?publication_id=159185&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=g2psg&utm_medium=email
I look at it as the price of NOT being the person who is willing to knock on doors, that seems more time consuming and something I personally am not willing to do.
Yes and I exercise them, but others appear.
Yeah, the Democrats' text messages are a huge own goal. I now send them all to spam and will avoid donating to the Democrats in the future.
Maybe we could have people, we'll call them Demosthenes, write rabble rousing populist Trumpist claptrap on Reddit and screeds on Tik Tok, while, in contrast, others, we'll call them Locke, write Biden friendly statesmanlike missives with unbelievable Tik Tok production values.
Next stop, world government!
“If you want to dedicate time and not just money to good causes, then consider getting a part-time job and giving that money.”
Matt’s logic is impeccable but I doubt many people will do this. People who volunteer get a sense of belonging and solidarity. People who moonlight to wire money to the DNC get to be an infinitesimally small cog in a wheel.
For those who want to *do* something to feel emotionally invested, but want it to be more useful than a largely pointless phone bank, you can write letters for VoteForward. The cost-of-vote-generated math is fuzzy because it's hard to consider the "cost" of volunteer time, but in lower turnout elections each 100 letters generates between 2-5 votes that otherwise would not have been cast. Which is insane. In higher salience elections like of course the presidential, that number will go way down, but call it 1 vote ballpark. So if you write 400 letters to Democratic-inclined voters in places like PA and AZ, you can tell yourself you netted an expected 4 additional votes.
Well said. Volunteering probably doesn't do much, but I wonder how many excellent politicians got their start, and their initial motivation, from the thrill of joining like-minded volunteers on phone banks and door knocking campaigns.
Bernie and the Clintons both got their start in the anti war movement.
Even if one doesn't become a successful politician, I don't think we should denigrate one of the few remaining venues to fight against the Putnam-like "Bowling Alone" tendency of our society.
There I sort of disagree. Pickleball is better than activism. I have lots of Republican pickleball friends. I don’t call Trump an insurrectionist and they don’t call me a communist. We hit the ball back and forth and talk about who dinks well and which women have the cute skirts. That’s community!
Those are our two choices?
They are two salient choices in my life. I made far fewer friends volunteering for Bernie than playing pickleball
Any thoughts about creating an ActBlue page that bundles these donations together into a single contribution? Would certainly make it easy to donate and spread the word
Great advice, as a former political hack I'd say Matt's totally right about the money side, but old school electioneering can still work for down ballot races that most voters know nothing about. So yeah, canvassing for Biden (or Trump!) is probably not worth your time, but a school board member? A state supreme court judge? That might move some votes as you could easily be the only piece of info about the race they get.
Having said that, I'm down for having a "Biden sign war competition" on here.
My personal feeling is that the effect a yard sign is going to be to magnify whatever partisan lean your neighborhood has, and whether the sign is for Trump or Biden doesn't actually make much difference. In other words, a Biden voter will be just as motivated to vote for Biden by Trump signs as Biden signs, and a Trump voter will be just as motivated to vote for Trump by Biden signs as Trump signs.
That said, people do take notice of trends in signage. For example, if there's a particular house that has always had signs for Republicans every election cycle, but this time, has either nothing or a Joe Biden sign, that makes a much stronger statement than a Biden sign in front of a house that has always supported Democrats.
Yard signs can matter a lot in local races - it helps me know who has a real campaign and who just paid the $500 fee or whatever to get on the ballot.
I feel like rural Trump voters have a sort of monopoly on big political signs. Like I've just never driven down the highway in a rural place and seen a massive Dem candidate sign.
There is a huge on painted all across a barn at the 110 exit off 1-90 in the heart of rural Washington. It always makes me smile.
love that
It is also repainted every season with care that can only be described as love.
Route 1 in Delaware has a huge "Biden" sign painted on the side of a barn in the middle of a bunch of corn fields.
Ben, you have to be the change you wish to see in the world ie make a giant Biden sign in your home area. Others are doing their parts: Milan is editing all summer, I had to go get more beers for NBA finals games, go get some paints and brushes and get on this thing!
Live the dream
Nice piece, but was a bit surprised not to see Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on the list
I'm sure JSG will have plenty to say about MGP shortly.
If it is going to be Kent again, then it would make sense that it could fail to make the top 8 on those grounds. Democrats still have to stay frosty out there, though.
Stay frosty is the best military phrase that's used in civilian life. Should actually be used more!
I’ve never heard that expression. To me, “stay frosty” sounds like “maintain a frosty (cold, unapproachable, unlikable) demeanor “ but based on the context, it clearly means something else?
I always understood it to mean, "just chill," "play it cool," etc. -- don't take action, stay calm and wait. But maybe I'm wrong?
Watch more action movies!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03Tr8OX28Vw&t=37
It really is, and I'm trying to do my part!
I very much doubt there's a billionaire reading the comments, but just in case. The maximum donation per House candidate is $3300. There are 435 House seats. Donating the maximum to each is $1.43 million. Before you start giving soft money, make sure you've maxed out your hard money.
You shouldn't give a cent to a SuperPAC if there are still candidates that you can max-out your hard money donations to.
Surely a dollar in soft money aimed at a 50/50 vote is more effective than a dollar in hard money aimed at a .01/99.99 or 99.99/.01 vote.
I believe that hard money given to one race can be transferred to another race and remains as hard money.
Hard money given to those candidates near-certain to win can then be transferred at their discretion. Not ideal, but those that do end up with far too much money (e.g. AOC) do use it that way.
The candidates with minimal chances of winning (and usually not much money) are different, in that they will spend it and not really enhance their odds of winning by much. It's probably still useful in building organisations in places where the party is weak, mostly because a max donation is large in proportion to their campaign - that is, getting a campaign from $20,000 to $23,000 is going to have more impact than getting one from $200,000 to $203,000.
Why not just give the money to the DCCC and let them figure out where the money will get the biggest bang for the buck? Letting funds be transferred between races seems like a very clumsy bank shot approach.
Is money donated to a candidate in a non-competitive race that you hope is re-routed to an optimal race truly “harder” than money donated to a relatively well-targeted third party?
The principle here is right but the application is wrong: contributions go further than SuperPac money *as to a particular race* but giving in the vast majority of House races is a waste.
A superb post. Nothing to add except thank Matt for this. Will definitely share.
The brilliant scientist (atomic bomb, human genome) Leo Szilard turned his mind to US elections, and figured out that the most effective donations, dollar for dollar, would go to close Senate races; each Senator has enormous power but in a small state with a close election every dollar counts a lot. He founded Council for a LIvable World, https://livableworld.org/ , which identifies close races and gathers checks that are donated directly to the campaigns. (They now do House races also).
Interesting that he had such a small role in Oppenheimer. When they made a TV movie about the Manhattan Project 30 or so years ago, Szilard was one of the main characters.
Have we just given up on the Senate forever, then? It’s true that the Senate map this year is tough, but if we ever want to get it back, we still have to fight for every seat every election. It’s possible that Senate campaigns are just all overfunded, and we should give more money down ballot, but that’s not the argument Matt made, and if everyone has given up on Tester, Gallego, Brown, and Casey because the senate is a foregone conclusion, then we are just doing damage control, and can forget about liberal legislation for a decade or more.
I think Matt would agree with you that those Senate races merit contributions too. I suspect he focused on the House races on the assumption that SB readers are more familiar with the Senate races which also get more national coverage. Personally i really appreciated the list of 8 House races - i had a pretty good sense of where to focus my Senate $ but had no clue where to start in terms of the House.
That said, given the challenging Senate map and the persistently bad Biden poll numbers, I don't think anybody should be too optimistic about liberal legislation til at least 2029. We should try to remind optimistic, but without a miracle in November, damage control is the best we can hope for over the next few years.
I don’t know, would he agree? I appreciate the suggestions for house races, and if someone threw out a list of state races which would make a difference I might throw some money that way, too. I’m just worried that this year, with the map being what it is, the Senate races might get written off by some people and underfunded.
Today I received a spam from some PAC which purported to be supporting these close senate races but we all know it’s better to send money to the campaigns not the PACs, right?
Right. Even if we lose the Senate, losing it 49-51 is much better than losing it 48-52 (or . . . )
Agreed, but it's more likely that contested senate races will draw enough funding that small donations by SB readers are unlikely to have as much impact than in house races. And, given that the dems are more likely to win the house than the Senate, maybe it's worth saying that people should donate to senate candidates only after maxing out house donations (a heavy lift)
That's a good point. I'm assuming that the senate is lost for 2024, but it's really helpful to look ahead 2/4/6 years to the next fight, since the terms are so long. Every won seat could be the tipping point down the road.