Barbarians!
They are at the gate. They’re at the side door, too, and the back door, and crawling through the basement windows. They’re everywhere, because the Barbarians aren’t really a person, they’re an idea: that social progress can be turned around, that history can be undone, that if you close your eyes tight enough, you can make it 1950 again.
Yes, Donald Trump is real. And so is the threat of another Trump Presidency. And, yes, we have to do everything in our power to defeat it, every bit of campaigning, every attack ad we can think of. But if defeating him in November is all we do, then we’re going to be left standing right where we were in the aftermath of 2020, the same place we’ve been for the past twenty years: stuck in the mud, looking at an endless struggle to win 51%.
The Barbarians have a message. They have a powerful message, and it’s about more than Donald Trump. It's a clever message that allows you to believe whatever you want as long as you close your eyes and join in. It’s powerful because it’s simple, it’s universal (for them), and it’s emotional.
how we changed the vote
There are 35,000 registered voters in Huron County, Ohio. 20,000 are unaffiliated, and it’s getting worse. Vitriol .. the constant barrage of phone calls and texts and direct mail that filled 2020 .. drove away more than 3,000 of those Democrats, right into the ranks of the unaffiliated.
And then there’s 2023. Democrats comprise just 9.4% of the registered voters, yet last November, 44% of all registered voters in the county voted Yes for Issue One, Ohio’s protection for Reproductive Rights. That happened because everyone worked together, tirelessly. But most of all, this victory happened because the special election was about basic rights, about the kind of core values that are held by most Americans, the kind they recognize and care deeply about.
An open letter from a red county Democratic Chair
Like many of you, I am a Democratic Party Chair in a very red rural county (Huron, Ohio) where just getting a Democrat to run for office is almost impossible. But, I look at my grandkids and think I have to do something. Something to begin the necessary conversations to raise awareness of the dangerous times we are in.
Those conversations cannot begin with policies. We have to reach common ground first. Freedom, Justice and Opportunity are values that are difficult to claim as belonging to only one party - they belong to all of us, Democrat, Republican, Unaffiliated. Defining Democrats as having these values is critical to having our views listened to and having credibility.
2024: Chaos, or unity?
The chaos part is easy. “2024” means November 5th, and that means fear. Trump. That one word. And we’re all determined to stand against him. All the way. But is that enough? Is that even the right way to look at it? If we attack him relentlessly, then defeat him again the same way we did in 2020 .. by the same margins .. what changes? What will another 51% victory leave in its wake?
The forces that created Trump will still be there. MAGA and its adherents, and the vast money machine that created them, will still exist. So will the deep tribalism they have managed to create. Their ability to take fear and hate and a coordinated campaign of lies, and turn it into a political machine capable of challenging for control of government, that will still be there as well.
And once we’ve defeated Trump permanently .. and losing a second Presidential election will do just that .. what do we do? Once we are no longer united by fear of Trump, what becomes of us? Do we go back to fighting each other, Progressives versus Moderates, elites versus the heartland? Do we go back to pushing this policy and that while regular Democrats, the lifeblood of our party, go back to feeling alienated and demoralized? Fear of Trump has united us. What will unite us once he’s gone?
INSPIRE
“Inspire” is the word we’re missing. It’s the emotion we’re missing, as Democrats, as Americans who care about guiding this nation towards a future as a truly just society. If we’re not inspired towards our ultimate goal, if we don’t see it clearly, how will we get there?
MAGA inspires. Trump inspires. They inspire a sense of emotional identity, of enduring passion, something far deeper and far stronger than politics. Why don’t we inspire? Forget the next election campaign and the latest issue, why doesn’t the Democratic Party itself inspire? Why doesn’t who we are as a party cause Democrats to stand up with pride all over this country, sweeping independents and unaffiliated with them?
FILLINg a hole
The Supreme Court has spoken, and it’s going to go on speaking for a long time. But what is it really saying? That decision on gay rights isn’t really about gay rights, and the decision on affirmative action isn’t really about race. Deep down, these decisions … all of them, including Dobbs and those endless ones yet to come … are really a statement about a giant hole in this country, a spiritual hole: the lack of commonly accepted, fundamental American values. We don’t have those values written down anywhere, the basic beliefs that say who we are.
America has never had such a statement of values. Ever. For the first two hundred plus years, it didn’t matter. Nobody agreed on national values, so basically there weren’t any. Racism and injustice were ingrained in society. They were accepted. As a result, social progress was tough. It was bought very, very slowly, one agonizing issue at a time.
the real meaning of the 4th of july (part 2)
This nation was founded on change. People were uprooted from the very roots of their existence to come here. Most people gave up everything and everyone they had known, then were forced to invent a completely new way of life in a virtually unknown world. Even native Americans were forced by events into adapting to endless change.
That process of change has been endless throughout our history, inventing new ways of doing things, and fighting through endless obstacles to do it. Only historians can properly mark all the turning points, but certain eras stand out. There are certain periods of time that stand out, when national events and circumstances led to major changes in our very fabric as a society.
Why we need a Democratic Creed
We need to stand for something. Our identity needs to be bigger than the next election, bigger than policy, bigger than all the events crashing around us. As Democrats, we need to stand for something so basic and so true that it inspires each and every one of us, something that unites and gives meaning to everything we do.
We have existed too long as a machine to win the next election. Of course we need to win the next election. We need to win the next ten elections, and we have to work our butts off to do it. And that's exactly why we need purpose, and vision. It's why we need to inspire. A party official recently said, “We need to find another Obama to inspire us.” No, we need our party to inspire us. We need to inspire us.
MOVING UP in the U.P.
Democrats 101 author J.M. Purvis was the first person the Democratic organizers thought of as they planned their first annual Rural Summit in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, April 14th and 15th. Purvis opened the conference in front of 140 Democrats from rural counties across Michigan. See Jim’s opening remarks here.
The summit was the brainchild of the Rural Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party, chaired by Cathy Albro. Special thanks to the Chippewa County Democratic Party for purchasing 140 copies of Democrats 101 so every attendee would have the book. We made additional copies available at our information table in the conference lobby, and several Democrats made donations to help us cover the costs (Thank you!!)
a sixth organization adopts the creed
The Ashland County Democratic Party in Ohio is the 6th organization that has adopted The Creed from the book Democrats 101. Find out here why counties are adopting The Creed.
Democrats and the 4th of July
The Declaration of Independence is the soul of our party. It’s all right there at the beginning: all men are created equal … inalienable rights … life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You don’t need anything else, that is the real Democratic Party right there. That is who we are deep down, our touchstone, and we should celebrate it. The Fourth of July is our holiday, the parades, the fireworks, all of it. It’s one big celebration of what we have been striving for ever since FDR became President. We haven’t finished the job, not by a long shot, and the whole thing is under attack right now. But there is a Common Thread, a clearly visible Democratic moral purpose that runs through all of the social and economic progress of the past ninety years, and we should be proud.
WE ARE IN A MESS
We’re in a mess. Our country is in a mess, our party’s in a mess, and it’s likely to get worse next November. If we want to fix things … and we can ... then the first thing we have to do is step back and recognize what’s really going on. We’re not suffering from a failure of effort, we’re suffering from a failure of vision.
Our country is in the middle of a vast, slow-motion social revolution, a true moment in American history. We’ve had political upheaval before, economic disasters far bigger than this one, wars even, but the amount of change going on in social norms, the upheaval in the basic tenets and traditions that control our everyday lives, that has never really happened before. And it isn’t about to stop, not for a long time.