I spent 15 hours yesterday working in my precinct in Pennsylvania. Yesterday there were important primaries across the state. A state that many commentators say is crucial next year. So I was surprised to see there was barely a mention of it on Daily Kos. Under President Obama local Democrats were close to obliterated in many places. For the last 3 years many of us political neophytes have spent our time rebuilding a lot of that infrastructure. As a result of that effort, in my town Democratic turnout was double that of the same election 4 years ago (Republican turnout was the same as before — supporting Kos’s theory that we need to turn non-voters into voters, not convert Republicans).
For the first time we had more Democrats than Republicans turn out for an odd-year primary in my county. We had candidates in places no Democrat had run in recent memory. In the town next to mine a Democratic candidate for judge I helped gather signatures for lost her primary to a cross-filed Republican by 150 votes because the local party lacked resources to staff the polls or send out mailers. The Democrats running for school board there almost lost their primaries to Republicans as well.
I was therefore disappointed to only be able to find two 2020 candidates that mentioned these primaries in a critical battleground state (I only checked the better known candidates — if your candidate said something I’d love to know). One was Trump, who held a rally and tweeted in support of a candidate. The other was Bernie Sanders, who tweeted about the Philadelphia Sheriff’s election. Worst of all, Joe Biden staged his campaign launch on the weekend before the election in Philadelphia — diverting resources from canvassing — without mentioning any of the local races in his address.
Leadership needs to recognize that the people that are critical to their success spent yesterday building the party for them. While turnout was higher than before, it was still low. Even in my relatively successful town it hovered around 30%. It surely would have improved with more coverage. School boards, judges, commissioners, councilors, sheriffs, constables and so on deserve more attention then the Trump outrage of the moment. Trump came to Pennsylvania for the election. Where was everyone else?