In case you have not been thinking about it, there is an election in your area soon. It will happen six weeks from today, on the first Tuesday of November, which falls on Nov 3rd this year.
And it matters.
It will not affect national offices, and, except in a few select locations, it will not affect state offices. But in almost all locations it will affect municipal and county level offices. These offices matter, and thus the election in your area matters.
What does a party exist for except to generate and support candidates for office? What was the 50 State Strategy about if it was not about building enough organization throughout the land to compete effectively for offices at ALL levels? When I worked to sell that strategy back in ‘06, I explained to potential donors that the Dems needed to become a party that could compete for offices even in the reddest of places and even for the smallest of morsels. And I believe in that goal. We did not build it just so we could use it every two years, when national offices are at stake. We built it to change the country.
And we all know that we must change counties and municipalities from red to blue if we are to gain and hold a secure grip on power at state and national levels. The repugs hold lots and lots of county and municipal offices that, demographically, they should not, but they regularly win them due to their success in off year elections. This is purely a turnout problem in most places. Indeed, this year, a 10% increase in D turnout could dramatically change the composition of county and municipal administrations across the land.
The tragedy of the Dems is that we have lots of irregular voters.
That is why YOU must volunteer NOW to help out over the next 6 weeks. And you must be there at the end for the GOTV phone banks. If you were there last year, you learned that the boiler room part of politics is very important. This year, far more than last year, it will be the place where elections are truly won or lost. This is the cycle in which phone calls can win an election for a D candidate for school board or ward commissioner or poll worker. A few hundred calls can make the difference. Knocking doors until you have 40 contacts could change your town. This is the cycle where your help will be most appreciated because the numbers – of both likely voters and volunteers – will be very small.
Be one of those voters. Get registered if you need to. Get others registered. Mark Nov 3rd on your calendar with the word VOTE. Order up an absentee ballot if you need it. Make sure that your kids and friends and relatives are gonna vote too. Do it!
And be one of the volunteers. Help out. Make some calls. You don’t have to sit there until forever, you don’t have to go in every day, and you don’t have to eat bad food and stay up all night. All you have to do is go down to your local democratic party hq and help out a bit. In lots of areas, an increase of 5% of D turnout will change a county or municipality this year! Get involved in trying to make that happen. If you can’t do that, at least go down there and donate some food or something. Send your local or county Dems a few bucks or something. You can find them on the internet, or by contacting your state Dem office.
If you want to do something now that will have a practical effect on the scary mid-term elections next year – if you want to help prevent losses, even create net pick ups for the D’s, then listen closely: there is NOTHING you can do now to help those elections in Nov of 2010 except to help the D's win local and county offices in 2009. Winning this year will help us next year.
Do something. Make the 50 State Strategy payoff. We can’t affect the whole country all at once this year. We can only work on changing our own local situations. From the water board to the courts, from the city library system to the county sheriffs.
Here is an example of what is going on out there this year: In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the R’s enjoyed a 30K advantage in voter registrations until the Obama voter registration drive of last year. The county is now over 20k weighted for the D’s. No Dem has ever been elected there to the County Courts. But this year, there is a real chance to elect one, since there are an unprecedented 7 openings on the bench. See their campaign website: Judges We Can Believe In.
Those are the stakes, and you are the difference maker. Contact your county Dems. Renew ties with your precinct leaders. Find the time to lend a hand.
Get out there!
Be The Change!