Let's Do This: It's Time To Focus on What You Can Do

Not what Democrats should do

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

You are seeing these articles, these hot takes, these tweets, these posts everywhere right now:

Here is why Harris lost. Here is what she should have done. Here is how Democrats can win in the future. It was inflation. It was the border. It was racism. It was Biden. Harris didn't distance herself from him enough. Harris wasn't populist enough. Harris and Democrats weren't centrist enough. Harris and Democrats weren't progressive enough. Democrats need to do better with Latino voters, with rural voters, to excite the left more, to build a better media operation, and here is how they can do all that. They need to punch left. They need a bigger tent. Democrats need to be more like Sanders and Warren. Democrats need to be more like Tester, Allred, Brown and Osborn.

I know this type of post-election content very well. In the aftermath of the 2004 election, when I wasn't drunk, I wrote dozens of these articles at MyDD, the blog where I first made my name in politics. Although it was not really my primary intention—I honestly just wanted to get my thoughts out about how Democrats could do better in future elections—the notoriety and following that I gained from these articles really helped to sustain post-election traffic to MyDD, and as such was crucial to maintaining blogging as a full-time job. 

Here is the funny thing: even though I have an outstanding memory, I actually can't remember much about what I wrote in those articles. This is not because I drank quite a bit during off-hours at that time—I simply do not remember much about what I was suggesting Democrats should do following the 2004 elections. As such, it seems likely that few others remember what I wrote, either. There probably aren't many Democratic staffers who took my advice to heart, and it is hard to imagine that what I wrote made any impact on how any campaigns where run, basically ever.

After the 2016 election, my life was in a different place. My wife and I had a particularly uncooperative—though very sweet—toddler at home. I had temporarily quit drinking during the election season, both to help my son with potty training at night, and because Trump was generating breaking news so regularly that there were basically no off-hours anymore. I had to be alert and ready to work at all times of the day.

I did try at first to participate in that season of postmortems. Most of my contacts and peers were of the opinion that Clinton had lost because she was not enough like Bernie Sanders, while I was of the opinion that she lost primarily because of the democratic deficit in the country—aka, the Electoral College. However, what I most remember about those discussions was how, on one evening in November when I was about to explain to the country how to fix Democratic politics, I was also struggling to get my small child to stay in bed. My hubris and presumption just felt absurd, and so I stopped writing articles of that nature and never really looked back.

What I decided to focus on instead was what I could control, and what I could do, without the need to convince anyone else. At that time, I was running the email and activism programs at Daily Kos, and so I had significant resources at my disposal. In the weeks immediately following the 2016 election, our email list had grown rapidly from about 2,000,000 to roughly 3,000,000 primarily on the strength of a viral petition in favor of electing the president by national popular vote. Our fundraising for Democratic candidates in special elections was so large that it made headlines, We helped drive turnout to the numerous, large protests that were taking place back then, and also helped to generate unprecedented letter and call volume to congressional offices. I feel confident those efforts played at least a small part in the eventual defeat of the Obamacare repeal in the summer of 2017, and it all felt a lot more satisfying than any postmortem article that I ever wrote.

Now, I know that few of you reading this will have access to political resources on this scale. Heck, I don't even have access to resources at that scale anymore—not by an order of magnitude. However, I think the lesson is the same. This is a time to focus on what you can control right now—what you can actually do—and less on what you think would happen if only other people would just listen to you and act as you believe they should.

Without having to get anyone else's approval, and without having to presume that you know The One True Path Forward, right now you can control what media you will consume, what organizations and candidates you will support, what meetings or rallies you will attend, what petitions or letters you will send to your elected officials and other decision makers, and more. In this regard, the first such decision you need to make is if you stay engaged in politics at all, although if you are reading this article then you likely have made that decision already, and I applaud you for deciding to stay in the fight.

This isn't to say that there is no place at all for "Here Is What Went Wrong/Here Is What Democrats Must Do" articles, as it absolutely is important to analyze your past efforts and try to figure out ways you can improve. What I know that I can do is continue to operate Bowers News Media, and help Matt with Wolves and Sheep, as engines to try and help you better understand and take action for Democrats and for democracy. That is something I can control, right now, and so that is what I will focus on, and leave it to others to figure out exactly what it is that Democrats simply must do.

So forget, for a moment, what you think Democrats should do. Think instead about what you should do.