If you haven’t taken a moment, I strongly encourage you to read Monique (aka TealBomb) Teal’s fantastic post, a tribute to this community and our spirit of volunteerism. Our community has done so much for candidates, campaigns, and organizations over the past year that as we approach the end of it I look back and think: Did that really happen? Am I in a state people had given up on as ‘too red,’ to now find a two-term Democratic governor? An LGBT Native American congresswoman elected by double digits? Did I watch us capture statewide races in Arizona and Pennsylvania, and statehouse races as we went? All of those events happened, and they were all documented so well here. Peregrine kate talked about her own experience in Michigan, where Democratic candidates captured every chamber of government. I still haven’t found the words to discuss Kansas. But rather than talk about states and races, I wanted to take a short moment to talk about the journey and how important our community has been in shaping the message and bringing entirely new energy into a midterm election.
In the beginning of 2022, I set a key goal of how many candidates we could bring in to talk about their races on Daily Kos, and how many organizations would speak about why those races were important. The race could be big or small; Daily Kos readers gave every candidate a chance to be heard and offered encouragement. More than once I heard from organizations that the positive feedback they received from Daily Kos users represented the kind of mental health relief and support they needed. Some candidates came from races that others had given up on, potential spots all over the country where due to a gerrymander or simple registration imbalance, there wasn’t a strong path for a Democratic win. Still, these candidates put themselves on the line to spread their message and to help encourage Democratic turnout for their state, and to give Democratic voters in their district a reason to vote.
I think of campaigns where the struggle to get out every day can be very real, because of the knowledge you are unlikely to win. What keeps those candidates going? What keeps organizations out there representing their voters and their members? You do.
Commitments to mobilize on multiple platforms, responses to Daily Kos emails, click-throughs on links at the bottom of staff diaries: all of that, every time, big or small, was a sign to campaigns, organizations, and even voters in faraway locations that you cared about what happened to them and to our country. That is a pretty powerful message to send.
Some stories and moments this cycle sit with me in significant ways, not because of a win or a loss, but because of the commitment shown by volunteers, the action and belief put in, and the fact that at every turn, people stayed put to encourage others.
In states that were difficult for us from the beginning, staffers and young people combined and offered encouragement, hope, and knowledge. Thank you to so many for fighting for states like Texas, Ohio, and Florida, which may have been out of our reach but where we turned out voters and shared stories that rippled nationwide.
We never know what story we share that might change someone’s motivation, anywhere else in the country.
Some community stories resulted in private meeting notes I said I would not relay until post-election, including local community members who read BoiseBlue’s diary and said stories like hers inspired them to keep working, or ClimateBrief and the following of Russia’s unjust war against Ukraine.
Every time you shared a story, tweeted it out, talked about it on TikTok, put it on your Facebook page, or emailed it to a friend, someone was encouraged to know that they were not alone.
It can be hard to be a Democratic candidate sometimes. Mental health can be a real issue for people who work in politics continuously. I have long contended that campaigns need breaks now and again or they make mistakes and they can burn out.
Keep welcoming people and making new voices feel heard. It’s how we build our Democratic future together.
We must get out the Democratic vote for Senator Raphael Warnock in the December runoff. Write heartfelt, personalized letters to Georgia voters with Vote Forward to turn them out again.
Daily Kos recruited more than 50,000 volunteers to get out the Democratic vote for the November election. Chip in $5 to help us get out the vote for the Georgia runoff.