I’m nowhere near a political insider. Aside from reading Kos, Mother Jones, and The Nation to stay informed, I typically engage in very little hands-on political activity in-between cycles.
Crunch times are a little different, though. I live in Omaha (NE-02), so we are a swing district in years when the Democratic presidential candidate is running at least four to five percentage points ahead. In 2016, I was a volunteer manager for the Nebraska Democratic Party’s (NDP) voter protection hotline. I still remember sitting at party headquarters on election day, hoping for hundreds of calls from people needing help to cast their ballot, only to stare at my silent phone for most of the day. The lack of energy, with Clinton only ahead about two percentage points nationally, was palpable.
This year feels different. Biden is up about 10% nationally. As a block captain for the NDP, I’m responsible for getting 79 of my close neighbors—a mix of registered Democrats and progressive independents--to cast their ballots (14 down, and 65 to go!). We talk with each other now from across yards, from the opposite sides of streets, with a driveway between us, but the energy is there.
Many of the neighbors I talk to are panicked about the direction our country has taken. The Trumpist impulse led our state’s governor, earlier this year, to threaten to withdraw funding from any locality that opted to require masks in government buildings. As of today, Nebraska has the fifth-highest rate of Covid cases per capita in the country, and the Omaha metropolitan area, with a population of one million souls, has fewer than 25 open ICU beds remaining.
We fear how much worse things could get if Trump wins four more years: potentially millions dead from Covid-19, regular eruptions of political violence encouraged by Trump, wholesale corruption, an energized white nationalist movement, and the continued hollowing out of our democratic institutions.
I don’t think it is alarmist to say that many of us here in Omaha—a small purple dot in a sea of red--feel that our country is in peril. Trump and Trumpism must be resoundingly defeated at the ballot box.
We really need all hands on deck right now. Biden could still lose. Or he could win, but with so small a margin of victory that widespread Trumpist violence and a Supreme Court decision authored by Amy Coney Barrett will be the most likely results.
If you want to get involved in the effort, but don’t know how yet, there’s a virtual training for the Biden-Harris campaign Call Crew on Monday night—and another on Tuesday night and another on Thursday night and another on Saturday. Sign up now. You can still make a difference without ever leaving your home. The work is often mind-numbingly boring and the victories feel miniscule in relationship to the need, but this is how campaigns are built.
This year, more than ever, we need every single person pulling their hardest all the way across the finish line. Every. Single. Person. From the heartland, I’m begging you. Join us. Help us.