I would point to Stacey Abrams' 10-year project in Georgia as "Exhibit A" for long-term year-round organizing leading to Democratic wins - culminating in 2020 when Georgia shocked the nation by electing Joe Biden, Raphael Warnock, and Jon Ossoff. Abrams' work involved a series of organizations like the New Georgia Project and Fair Fight which registered voters, fought voter suppression laws, and did extraordinary GOTV in November generals and January runoffs.
Arizona is another good example which started in response to Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio with Latino organizing led by LUCHA that eventually elected Mark Kelly, Katie Hobbs, and Ruben Gallego.
Stacey Abrams inspired inside/outside efforts in other states like Minnesota under Dem chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin under Dem chair Ben Wikler, and most recently North Carolina under Dem chair Anderson Clayton.
There are many more examples in battleground counties like Harris County TX (Houston) where Lina Hidalgo built a winning coalition in the face of vicious attacks from local billionaires and powerful state Republicans.
This is a really excellent piece and a discussion we all aren't having enough! I am starting to think that a lot of these problems are because a lot of well intended people calling the shots have a decades-out-of-date understanding of what a community is. They seem to think a community is a place where everybody knows each other, and there are community leaders that especially everyoneee really knows. They also seem to think a community is a place where everyone has the same jobs, goes to the same church, the same barbershop, and is in the same labor unions. This was true in most places in the US 20-30 years ago and is still true in a few places now, but IMO most organizing strategies are trying to leverage forms of social capital that simply don't exist anymore. It's not that the members of a community are totally alien to each other or share nothing in common - but I feel like if we could update our definition of what a "community" is - and how maybe a shared space model can apply to a new civic society - we could really have better longterm organizing that benefits the democratic party 🤞🏼
Some friends pointed me to your blog. Really interesting stuff! I had a couple thoughts on your “good things vs good tactics” and “does any of this work” posts.
First, most effectiveness discussions I’ve seen evaluate Democratic tactics in isolation, even though campaigns are adversarial. What “works” depends on what the other side is doing. Your Warshaw cite suggests we’re probably not getting great ROI on the last dollars spent on TV ads. If Democrats are leaning on expensive, low-yield tactics while Republicans invest in long-term narrative infrastructure, that’s a strategic asymmetry that won’t show up in a Dem-only analysis.
Second, you reference the short-termism at play in how we allocate analytical attention. I think this is a really important point. Short-term effects are typically easier to measure, so they tend to dominate our focus. But there’s good reason to think the biggest levers are longer-term and harder to quantify. If we think long-term strategies can be powerful (and I’d argue recent Republican successes point that way), we shouldn’t ignore them—we should invest in reducing our uncertainty about them. Otherwise we risk focusing on second-order effects and missing the bigger picture.
On your “horse blinders” point, it’s not obvious to me that candidate policy positions are the main problem (in light of point 2 above). Trump’s “tariffs” pitch was a mess but worked well enough, because it activated a preexisting belief that Republicans are “better on the economy.” That belief isn’t founded on any evidence that I’m aware of. It was constructed by decades of messaging. Which I guess leads me to a hypothesis: group identity and long-term emotional (“affective”) narratives are more powerful than either policy alignment or specific campaign tactics (and we are under-invested in understanding them, to our detriment).
To be clear, I think policy matters a lot… but you have to win to put it in place. And if voters aren't hearing us through an identity or emotional lens, the policy may never land. I think if we’re thoughtful we can blend strong policy argumentation with an improved identity/emotional framing. I’d love to see more discussion of this in left-Analytical circles; feels like a big area where we still haven’t built out the toolkit.
I would point to Stacey Abrams' 10-year project in Georgia as "Exhibit A" for long-term year-round organizing leading to Democratic wins - culminating in 2020 when Georgia shocked the nation by electing Joe Biden, Raphael Warnock, and Jon Ossoff. Abrams' work involved a series of organizations like the New Georgia Project and Fair Fight which registered voters, fought voter suppression laws, and did extraordinary GOTV in November generals and January runoffs.
Arizona is another good example which started in response to Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio with Latino organizing led by LUCHA that eventually elected Mark Kelly, Katie Hobbs, and Ruben Gallego.
Stacey Abrams inspired inside/outside efforts in other states like Minnesota under Dem chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin under Dem chair Ben Wikler, and most recently North Carolina under Dem chair Anderson Clayton.
There are many more examples in battleground counties like Harris County TX (Houston) where Lina Hidalgo built a winning coalition in the face of vicious attacks from local billionaires and powerful state Republicans.
This is a really excellent piece and a discussion we all aren't having enough! I am starting to think that a lot of these problems are because a lot of well intended people calling the shots have a decades-out-of-date understanding of what a community is. They seem to think a community is a place where everybody knows each other, and there are community leaders that especially everyoneee really knows. They also seem to think a community is a place where everyone has the same jobs, goes to the same church, the same barbershop, and is in the same labor unions. This was true in most places in the US 20-30 years ago and is still true in a few places now, but IMO most organizing strategies are trying to leverage forms of social capital that simply don't exist anymore. It's not that the members of a community are totally alien to each other or share nothing in common - but I feel like if we could update our definition of what a "community" is - and how maybe a shared space model can apply to a new civic society - we could really have better longterm organizing that benefits the democratic party 🤞🏼
Some friends pointed me to your blog. Really interesting stuff! I had a couple thoughts on your “good things vs good tactics” and “does any of this work” posts.
First, most effectiveness discussions I’ve seen evaluate Democratic tactics in isolation, even though campaigns are adversarial. What “works” depends on what the other side is doing. Your Warshaw cite suggests we’re probably not getting great ROI on the last dollars spent on TV ads. If Democrats are leaning on expensive, low-yield tactics while Republicans invest in long-term narrative infrastructure, that’s a strategic asymmetry that won’t show up in a Dem-only analysis.
Second, you reference the short-termism at play in how we allocate analytical attention. I think this is a really important point. Short-term effects are typically easier to measure, so they tend to dominate our focus. But there’s good reason to think the biggest levers are longer-term and harder to quantify. If we think long-term strategies can be powerful (and I’d argue recent Republican successes point that way), we shouldn’t ignore them—we should invest in reducing our uncertainty about them. Otherwise we risk focusing on second-order effects and missing the bigger picture.
On your “horse blinders” point, it’s not obvious to me that candidate policy positions are the main problem (in light of point 2 above). Trump’s “tariffs” pitch was a mess but worked well enough, because it activated a preexisting belief that Republicans are “better on the economy.” That belief isn’t founded on any evidence that I’m aware of. It was constructed by decades of messaging. Which I guess leads me to a hypothesis: group identity and long-term emotional (“affective”) narratives are more powerful than either policy alignment or specific campaign tactics (and we are under-invested in understanding them, to our detriment).
To be clear, I think policy matters a lot… but you have to win to put it in place. And if voters aren't hearing us through an identity or emotional lens, the policy may never land. I think if we’re thoughtful we can blend strong policy argumentation with an improved identity/emotional framing. I’d love to see more discussion of this in left-Analytical circles; feels like a big area where we still haven’t built out the toolkit.
This suggests a depressing world where persuasion is dead and you simply cannot make people agree with your policies on the merits.