“Republicans will pay for this!” “This is their death knell!” “We’ll take the House!"
Hope you enjoyed that moment, but, pardon my French… bull to the shit.
“Now that women know just being a woman is a pre-existing condition...” Actual voters put a pussy-grabber in the White House. Over the most qualified candidate in a generation. Who was a full-on, unapologetic feminist.
“They took away 20 million people’s health insurance...” Which they’d been vowing to do for seven years. And, in a year when they should have lost their majority, we couldn’t win over the most hateful, troglodyte GOP caucus ever.
The obstacles to Democratic control of Congress are not emotional, and emotions are not the answer. We don’t require more “enthusiasm.” We’re not lacking in progressive ideas and candidates, nor are we shy on appropriately moderate options. We don’t need better explanations of our positions. We’re not even hurting for dough right now.
We need voters. And our opponents have done a damn good job for decades of blocking our voters.
Gerrymandering. Voter ID. Roll purges.
Our problems are structural. And they will take a great deal of work to overcome.
Voter ID laws are unconstitutional poll taxes. That doesn’t get rid of them. The only way around them is to identify our voters and get them the IDs. We can’t just drive them to the polls, we have to drive them to the DMV six months earlier. And, if they can’t afford the new poll tax, we have to find a way to pay for those cards for them.
We have to make sure they are registered, and stay registered through the coming postcard purges, calling long before Election Day, checking for them and helping them re-register if they get booted.
And, on Election Day, we have to have already built those relationships. The phone calls can’t be, “Hi, I’m blah blah blah from the blah blah blah campaign reminding you to blah blah blah.” They have to be, “Hi, Phyllis, it’s Ashley. What time do you want me to pick you up?"
Unless we, as a party and as individual and organized activists are prepared to do the damned hard work to address our structural disadvantages, we will not take the House in 2018, nor the Senate, the state houses, the governors’ mansions. Not even the damn city councils.
We are the majority, in our policies, in our priorities, in our numbers. But Charles, as was said in another time, has got his shit together. And so must we, if our majority is ever again going to be reflected in our representatives.
Resistance means assistance. And, like all politics, it’s local.
Update/Request: Does anyone know if there is a national organization/fund to assist voters in need of IDs? I’ve been asking this for four years now and still don’t know how to help.
From the comments: It looks like VoteRiders is a good place to assist in the ID issue. Thanks to scorinaldi and CalBearMom for the link.
More resources: Voter Identification Project and Rural Voters