Ruth Bader Ginsberg made the world a better place for each and every one of us. We mourn her passing. May her memory be a blessing.
There are things we can control in life. Death, unfortunately, is not one of them.
First an inescapable truth: If McConnell succeeds in replacing Ginsberg (and that is an “if”) it will alter the supreme court and push it to the right in a distressing and awful way. And having Donald Trump pick RBG’s replacement is an awful pill to swallow.
But…
We have had awful supreme courts in this country before. The supreme court has almost never been a leader for good — it has almost always pulled us back and had to be pulled forward with the force of national movements for good. We have faced tough courts before. It isn’t ideal. But we can do it again.
But…
This is already motivating us:
Democratic donors gave more than $12.5 million in two hours to the ActBlue donation processing site, a rate of more than $100,000 a minute.
and
But...
This will hurt them in November
and the same thoughts from someone on the other side of the aisle
But…
this isn’t over yet
Honestly, the only people less happy about this than us are the republicans running for reelection in tight races right now. This is a no win for them. If they push this through, we will destroy them. If they don’t, the right will abandon them.
I join you in mourning for RBG and worrying about the court, but I implore you to join me in not letting despair take over your heart.
Remember that Ginsberg herself warned against negative emotions. “Anger, resentment, envy. These are emotions that just sap your energy,” Ginsburg said.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg saw awful times and much hardship. Her life was not easy and her accomplishments were accompanied by heartbreak and setback. But she didn’t give in to despair and she didn’t give up. She kept fighting. She wasn’t optimistic because life was easy and things went well for her. She was optimistic because she worked her ass off for everything she got.
She earned her optimism.
May her memory be a blessing. May we all feel her optimism and dedication. May we all embody her joy and grace and tenacity.
May we honor her life by fighting like hell for her legacy.
It has never been more important for us to take the White House and Senate. We have 45 days to make that happen. 45 days. Let’s honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg by doing all we can in these 45 days to ensure her legacy.
What can we do?
Donate!
Click here to donate to take the Senate
Click here to donate to Biden.
ACLU — Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, has filed 20 lawsuits and counting to ensure every eligible voter can vote by mail.
Non-financial ways to help:
- Volunteer with the Democratic party Explore their centralized hub for grassroots volunteer opportunities to take action on your own time.
- Volunteer with the Biden campaign You can get training to text for Joe, make phone calls for Joe, host an event, or attend an event.
- Get involved with Postcards to voters. Postcards to Voters are friendly, handwritten reminders from volunteers to targeted voters giving Democrats a winning edge in close, key races coast to coast.
- Volunteer with Beto to turn Texas Blue Over the recent months, thousands of Powered by People volunteers have stepped up to help us reach the Texas voters who will decide the most important elections of our lifetime. Join them!
- Register voters in key battleground states. Vote Forward has active campaigns going in 8 key states to encourage under-represented (potential) voters to register. In 6 of them, the packet you send to each potential voter will include the actual voter registration forms and instructions with pre-paid postage for that state. The folks at Vote Forward have collected data on this technique and determined that it does, indeed, appear to increase voter registration.
- Text voters in key Senate races Payback Project has a comprehensive, four-pronged approach to make sure Republicans Senators are held accountable for their actions, their votes, and their enabling of Donald Trump.
- Organize your community online The Democratic National Committee’s digital organizing team put together a list of ways you can keep organizing in your community online.
- Do whatever we can to promote Biden in tweets and posts and emails and wherever. The same goes for other D candidates. Help them get positive recognition!
- Find out how to be a poll worker on election day. Use this link
- sign up to be a voter protection volunteer with the Biden Harris campaign
- Swing Left offers virtual tools to help you maximize your impact on the closest races in Super States across the country. Swing Blue has a wonderful list of ways you can help from your home and links for each one of you are motivated
- register for protect the results which is building a coalition of voters to mobilize if Trump refuses to accept the election.
We Can Win In November
Poll numbers look good for Biden
The top rated pollster Siena College/NYT Upshot gives Joe Biden a 17% lead in Maine, a 9% lead in Arizona, and a 1% edge in North Carolina. The polls were taken September 11-17 (10-16 for AZ) from likely voters by Siena, which is rated A+ by 538.
Also out this morning is a poll by Morning Consult giving Biden a lead of 9% in Wisconsin. The poll shows Biden ahead 51% to 42% over Trump.
This poll was taken September 7-16 from likely voters. Morning Consult is rated B/C.
New poll just popped up on 538 by EPIC/MRA, a B+ pollster. Biden leads in Michigan by 48% to 40%. Democratic Senator Peters ahead 45% to 41%.
Minnesota and Wisconsin show why Trump is in deep trouble
Hillary Clinton won Minnesota in 2016 by about 45,000 votes out of nearly 3 million cast. Naturally, it was a key target for the Trump campaign. However, it might not be in play at all — one more sign that the electoral landscape has shifted dramatically in Democrats’ favor since 2016.
The FiveThirtyEight polling average has Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with nearly a nine-point lead in Minnesota. The Post/ABC poll released Wednesday shows a blowout, with Biden leading President Trump by 16 points among likely voters in the state. Even if this is an outlier, Minnesota would not be competitive for Trump if he were behind by half the distance.
The reason for Republicans’ problems reflects Trump’s national problems. “Trump’s large deficit in the Post-ABC poll of Minnesota is rooted in lukewarm support among the White voters without college degrees on which he has long depended and lopsided opposition among women and college graduates,” The Post explains. “Overall, White voters without college degrees in the poll split 51 percent for Trump to 48 percent for Biden. There is a sharp gender divide within that group of voters, with Trump leading by 23 points among men while trailing by 19 points among women.” Recall that Trump won White voters without college degrees by 27 points in this state in 2016. He lost the women’s vote in 2016 by only seven points.
Their guy:
ABC town hall shows Trump faces great peril outside Fox News bubble
In a way, the Tuesday night town hall really was an ambush. It was an ambush of facts and follow-up questions that blew more big holes in the protective shield his propagandists have tried to construct around a record of extraordinary failure.
Our guy:
There is a steady drip of more and more people coming out for Biden from the right → Former Pence aide says she will vote for Biden because of Trump’s ‘flat-out disregard for human life’ during pandemic
Troye is the first Trump administration official who worked extensively on the coronavirus response to forcefully speak out against Trump and his handling of the pandemic. She joins a growing number of former officials, including former national security adviser John Bolton and former defense secretary Jim Mattis, who have detailed their worries about what happened during their time in the administration while declaring that Trump is unfit to be president.
and Democrats are GOTV like mad:
Democrats roll put enhanced online voting portal to get out the vote
Democrats, as usual, want to make sure that every eligible person is registered and able to vote in November's general election, and they've beefed up their online tool, called I Will Vote, to make that simpler and safer for voters around the country. The site is also available in Spanish.
The Biden campaign has also developed a robust election protection program, chock-full of high-powered lawyers to fight voter suppression before and on Election Day, and to combat what will be a vicious Trump effort to contest the election results when he loses.
POLL: Democrats Plan to Mail Ballots Much Earlier Than Republican Voters
The partisan war over how voters cast ballots in a pandemic isn’t just leading more Democrats to plan on voting by mail this fall; it’s also leading far more Democrats than Republicans to heed United State Postal Service warnings to play it safe and get ballots in the mail well before Election Day.
Virginia sees massive early voting lines ahead of general election
Long lines packed with hundreds of voters were seen across Virginia Friday as in-person early voting kicked off there and in other states for the upcoming November general election.
Online videos showed masked and socially distanced Virginians lined up as far as the eye can see in the city of Fairfax to vote in the unprecedented presidential election amid the coronavirus pandemic.
A longtime poll worker in Fairfax told CNN that she had never seen turnout like Friday’s on the first day of early voting.
and the courts are on the side of people voting:
and...
and: Judge blocks Michigan's ban on transporting voters to polls
A federal judge has blocked Michigan’s longstanding ban on transporting voters to the polls, ruling it conflicts with U.S. election law.
District Judge Stephanie Dawkins Davis in Detroit issued an injunction Thursday against enforcing the restriction in November’s presidential election. A form of the prohibition has been on the books since 1895.
and:
Trump has worked hard to stop people, and so far it isn’t working:
Trump’s bluster and millions haven't stopped universal mail-in voting plans
President Donald Trump has spent $20 million of his political war chest to stop it. He riffs about it at rallies. He tweets relentlessly about it.
Yet six months into a crusade to stop universal mail-in voting, Trump hasn’t yet prevented a single state from sending voters the unsolicited ballots he claims, with minimal evidence, are ripe for fraud
and there is a lot of enthusiasm for our team:
Why are people sending the Biden-Harris campaign $19.08?
The notifications wouldn’t stop. It had been 24 hours since former Vice President Joe Biden announced that Sen. Kamala Harris would be his running mate in his quest to win the White House. Soon after, the phone of the Democratic Party’s chief fundraiser was buzzing every other minute, alerting him that the campaign had just received another donation of exactly $19.08.
It’s not uncommon for campaigns to solicit donations for particular amounts, like $7 or $23, to make the ask stand out, but a number that precise, down to the red cent, was strange.
“I’ve never seen people give in such a specific increment ever before,” says Clayton Cox, finance director for the Democratic National Committee. But Cox, who was active in his college’s Greek system, knew exactly why.
The ladies of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. were springing into action to support one of their own, Harris, who pledged at Howard University as an undergrad in the 1980s.
But why $19.08? That’s the year the AKAs, the oldest Black sorority in America, were founded. “The week after she was announced, I was getting one every 15 minutes,” says Cox. “It was that frequent.”
As of Friday, the Biden Victory Fund (a joint fundraising effort between the campaign and the DNC) had received more than 11,000 of these donations totaling almost $219,000, according to DNC Deputy Communications Director Chris Meagher.
and for this guy too:
With an update:
Biden is fighting on every front → Biden campaign adds more staff in Texas
Joe Biden's campaign is expanding its staff in Texas, bringing on 13 more people as the state continues to look competitive with just over seven weeks to go before the November election.
The Democratic nominee's latest hires, shared first with The Texas Tribune, include several experienced Democratic operatives from the state. They include Dallas Jones, a Houston political consultant who will serve as Biden's Texas political director, and Jackie Uresti and Jerry Philips, who will each serve as political advisers to the campaign in Texas. Uresti was Hillary Clinton's 2016 state director, while Philips brings deep experience around Texas House politics and previously was executive director of the House Democratic Campaign Committee.
and we have great allies in GOTV → within two weeks, Snapchat registered almost half a million new voters
Utilizing its platform, Snapchat, the popular social media app, is registering new voters ahead of the election on Nov. 3. As of this report, the app has registered 407,024 people, according to data reported within the app. A spokesperson confirmed with Axios that the tally seen in the app’s “Register to Vote” portal represents the number of users who registered to vote via the app.
Snapchat is commonly used by millennials and Gen Z, including a wide number of people who recently turned 18 years old and who will have the ability to vote for the first time this year.
On the lighter side
I am so proud and so lucky to be in this with all of you ❤️ ✊ ❤️