Just a follow up on the recent top quality diaries by ericlewis0 and Kerry Eleveld on President Biden’s fundraising surge since the State of the Union address, and the strongly positive reception he and his policies have gotten. (Even more amazing because of the way that NYT/Siena and other polls, as pointed out in a couple other recent diaries on the topic, really are way off today due to outdated likely voter screens and inability of adapting to the way smartphones screen out telemarketer and spam calls—and oversample MAGA voters.) This has become one of the best times to do canvassing and GOTV because Joe really did knock it out of the park on Thursday and the strong response from voters is absolutely there. Biden and his team have done an amazing job keeping their ear to the ground and really listening to voters on the street, and being really pragmatic instead of just blindly ideology driven. Tuned in to voters but with enough of the Dark Brandon streak to show he’s tough and means business. Very good reasons to keep flying high with the pragmatic optimism that Kerry talked about in another diary after the SOTU.
Voters are responding well to nearly every theme President Biden touched on. He was strong and feisty, and the annoying bullshit headlines about “he’s too old” or “can he handle the job at this age” are falling away. The President kept his focus on domestic issues close to Americans concerns and things that directly affect them, most determine how they actually vote. He understood the importance of better border policy and a careful yet humanitarian immigration policy, focused on helping both American workers and immigrants including the Dreamers (instead of the “corporate immigration” policies of things like cheap labor and H1B’s), and learned from Tom Suozzi’s success in making the issue our own. He addressed concerns about cost of living and housing that are very real for voters with actual policies, as Clinton and Obama were so good at doing, didn’t get distracted by the rosy talk about misplaced measures like GDP and “disinflation” that just irritate voters and mislead about where Americans are. (GDP alas, now goes up too much for the worst reasons like housing bubbles and hospital bills—and Biden and his speechwriters now seem to get that more too.)
But Biden also stayed true to his commitment to the international order, standing up to Putin’s aggression and helping in Ukraine’s just war of self defense, with huge implications for US leadership of the free world and security commitments we’ve made to dozens of countries. Absolutely a “failure is not an option” case and this has been strongly supported by the voters too, including by Republicans as we’ve been seeing. Even for those usually tuning out foreign policy, this really is something the American people are powerfully behind the President on. Biden hit another homerun with his strong words and calls to the GOP to do its job in fighting Russian aggression, as none other than Ronald Reagan himself built his legacy on. And where needed, to use whatever means necessary to continue these commitments around Republican obstructionism as we pass the supplemental aid bills, including through the ring trade, seizing Putin and the oligarchs assets to pay for the damage they’ve done, Excess Defense Articles and whatever “creative accounting” he has the power to do to provide arms and support to Ukraine. (After all, “that tank and artillery really are worth just $1” even more when we actually save on costs by removing it from storage and maintenance).
The enthusiasm in the base is especially strong, and so is the fundraising. Almost any of us who’ve done phone banking, door to door or other canvassing have had the not so pleasant experience of those long lulls, when even our own voters and volunteers just aren’t very enthusiastic to contribute as donors to fund the more and more expensive campaigns. (A blight on our democracy but it’s what we have to deal with, at least until Citizens United is overturned.) But that time is not now! That last or next to last question at the end of the knock on door survey or phone call, the one we’re always so nervous and hesitant on asking because of the disappointment we’re usually expecting or preparing, even from long voting Dems. “Would you be interested in donating to our campaign efforts?” It’s returning yeses now, enthusiastically so. In fact in another small and yet important sign of good news here, these donations are coming despite ongoing worries about financial security—a clear sign that Americans are now seeing that Biden and the Democrats also recognize their concerns and are putting together policies to address them.
The new donors are confessing they are still quite concerned about their finances with the rising cost of living, and especially rent and housing, healthcare and costs of school, daycare and college for their kids. And so it’s worth mentioning this as a reminder of how important it is to continue addressing these bread and butter personal finance concerns, why despite the good economic news Americans do feel a sense of anxiety and precariousness with these costs. Again it’s worth reminding—GDP and terms like “disinflation” are no-no’s when canvassing or campaigning. They just don’t reflect Americans’ actual concerns and measures of their economic well being, mainly based on buying power and monthly budgets. (If they ever did—GDP too often esp in the US goes up for the wrong reasons just like RFK famously warned.) Even more when college, daycare, housing, groceries and healthcare expenses have already gone up way beyond wages even with the lower inflation at the moment (and the wage increases have been inadequate, while most Americans can’t easily switch jobs to get those higher wages and are stuck).
And yet, again the Biden campaign is breaking fundraising records including donations from exactly those Americans with financial anxieties. A sign that the American public now appreciates Biden really gets them on these concerns just like Clinton was so famous for doing, and they trust he has genuine policies to deal with these cost of living concerns. All and all, a great showing, great follow up and a great time to be a Democrat. And a great (and actually) fun time to be doing canvassing, GOTV and fundraising. So if you’ve ever wanted to try out phone banking and door knocking for the first time, maybe in a gentle environment with a more friendly audience to get the hang of it, now is a great time to do it! It can be a little anxiety filled and tough the first time you do it, calling or knocking on doors of strangers including many Republicans in Swing States, that we need to win over. But it’s the motivation and success of our volunteers to do it that got Obama and Biden elected in 2008 and 2012 and Biden and Harris in 2020. Just like Kos wrote in his own recent diary on this, the stakes now are nothing less then saving American democracy, so let’s f---ing go! We’ll need the same for 2024, and with the wind in our sails now, this is the perfect time for new phone bankers and canvassers to jump in! Biden and the Democrats have the advantage and this is the time to press it and build on that momentum, and only we can lose it now.
On that point, the only possible dark clouds we’ve been seeing on the horizon are with the latest version of this dumb talk about a TikTok ban—gotten a very negative response in the field—pushed by many House Democrats who should know better. It’s not about personal preferences (we’re not much fans of the app ourselves) but the reality is it’s become so large, significant and targeted of a communications tool and it’s way beyond just cute cat videos now. It’s absolutely critical to a lot of our own outreach and campaigns especially with younger voters that we urgently need to win in November (esp with the tight margins we had in the Electoral College in 2020), very important for small and startup businesses to be viable and reach clients (we’ve just been learning more about this). And it’s a bigger resource than we first realized for helping share teaching tips and recipes, people all over to muck-rake and share concerns about everything from a polluting company to an abusing halfway house and just connect up institutions. Even just considering Taylor Swift fans doing wonders for us on mass voter registration and opposing Republicans’ anti-women bullshit since Dobbs, it’s a must-use and must-know app—President Biden himself got a huge boost from it leading into the SOTU by connecting up with TikTok influencers. If there’s one notorious Achilles Heel for progressives a lot of us are painfully aware of, it’s that tendency to lose momentum and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by getting distracted, losing focus and failing to strategize and set priorities. Let’s avoid any own goals now—victory is ours if we keep our eyes on the ball, and focus on the issues and priorities of Americans just as our President laid out on Thursday night.
Edit—ugh. And speaking of that last point about potential own-goals and that infamous habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, this is really looking to be a lot potentially worse than first thought as more comes in. Much worse. This potential disaster needs to be nipped here in the bud. Things and assumptions move very fast in social media land apparently, and the TikTok of 2024 is practically a universe apart from the one of 2022. It now seems more of a crucial business app for its main users to reach and build clientele than just a frivolous app for cute cat or dog videos, so much that now, it’s basically critical to very livelihoods of millions of Americans. Especially entrepreneurs, small businesses and e-commerce—everyone from Ebay and Etsy sellers to designers of labels, T-shirt vendors or the new restaurant opening up. Especially for Millennials and Zoomers who are our most important voting bloc to grow in November.
Again worth mentioning, a big part of why Biden’s speech registered so well and we could grow our fundraising so fast, is Biden’s team was smart enough to plug in with big TikTok influencers are who help greatly to reach our voters and donors, the same way Taylor Swift and her fans plug in to help with voter registration drives to fight the GOP’s war on American women and girls—this dumb TikTok ban talk is a direct attack on the very influencers who are at the heart of our strategy to get the votes and fundraising to win in November.
Not going into huge detail here but for technical factors beyond what we can understand, that app has a good enough algo or AI that it has the highest yield for new and growing businesses, and relationships they’ve put a lot of sweat, time and billions of dollars into. We’ve seen varying numbers but at a minimum something like 170-180 million Americans are using it often and something around 200-250 million have downloaded it, and the app has apparently helped a lot of up and coming businesses to reach clients abroad they never could before so early. With so many people now stressing about making the next month’s rent or mortgage payment, or affording hospital bills or their kids groceries, a lot of Americans depend on this income to keep afloat. This dumb ban talk by House Democrats of all people is directly threatening the livelihoods of a huge number of Americans, we’d gain almost nothing from it but we’d piss off a huge voting bloc on an issue that’s more fundamental than anything on their voting decisions. Terrible optics and policy.
Not to mention re-introducing criticisms we’re out of touch with young voters, getting into legal trouble and setting precedents for Republicans to ban even American apps from donors to their rivals, doing nothing to actually protect American businesses or citizens against foreign competition (TikTok is now internationally owned and run with very heavy American investment in it, if not a majority) and as a bonus, setting off a trade war that devastate the US economy and stock indexes and hurt our companies sales abroad. In an election year. It would be the same mistake Trump himself made in 2020 but much, much worse the way how much things have changed already since then. Not just a political own-goal, this is massive political malpractice that would cost us the election in November. Too much to cover here (and not fun to have to get into this in an otherwise good news article) so getting together a separate Diary on it.
