Take Action
Take care of yourself. Touch grass. Play with dogs and babies. Go for a hike. Eat your favorite comfort food. Do the things that ground you and bring you joy.
Support House campaigns to fund ballot-curing operations. We have a narrow path to flip the House, or at least eat away at any GOP dominance.
Volunteer to cure ballots for key Senate and House races, both in-person or virtually.
Find your political home *now*, not after January 20th. We’re in for a rough ride.
Heartbroken. Devastated. Outraged. Terrified. Shattered.
Millions will significantly suffer in the U.S. and around the world very soon. I know that one way or another, I’ll be involved in fighting the harm coming our way, and most of you will need to be, too.
But right now, I’m surprisingly calm amidst the swirling emotions. Perhaps it’s from relief that the election itself is over, and the knowledge that I did everything I could. It’s liberating to have no regrets, regardless of the electoral outcome.
I have calluses on my hands from writing thousands of letters and postcards. I threw out my back while driving around Las Vegas and the Coachella Valley to GOTV. I phone and text banked more than I ever did before. I spent thousands of dollars on campaigns and hours more trying to fundraise and recruit volunteers for them - and so many of you joined me, thank you!
I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. And I was just one of millions who did all that they could, too.
Even with no regrets, I feel like I failed.
My eight-year-old nephew, late aunt’s kids, baby cousins, friends’ babies, and friends who are parents of transgender kids or are transgender themselves all deserved better. Day in and day out, these people are front of mind for me as I do this work, even if I don’t always communicate it. They - their collective present and future - are my why.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who I firmly believe ran an overall exemplary campaign with the difficult hand she was dealt in only 107 days, deserved better.
Black people, especially Black women, also deserved better. They, along with Jews and LGBTQ people, voted at the highest rates for Harris. Our communities stepped up collectively in powerful ways, and we were failed by our country.
I am grateful for every single campaign staffer up and down the ballot who uprooted their lives to serve their country. Same for anyone who volunteered.
Democracy only works when millions of us collectively engage in millions of little actions that build up towards the functioning system. As we can see, just voting alone isn’t enough. If you were capable of volunteering, but chose not to, it’s time to promise yourself to never make that mistake again.
We do have reasons to hope.
The election wasn’t a massive MAGA mandate. We’re a mighty 77 million to Trump’s 79 million. There are more Harris voters than populations of most countries.
Democrats’ ideas and many of its candidates remain quite popular. Millions of Trump supporters voted to raise the minimum wage, protect abortion access and marriage equality, expand paid sick leave, defeat school vouchers, and attempts to further politicize school boards. They broke GOP supermajorities in legislatures, maintained majorities or edged closer to flipping state houses, and sent Democrats to statewide offices and the U.S. Senate.
The policies Democrats offer are popular with voters, but it’s becoming clearer to me each moment that passes that we will have to change how we engage with the communities we claim to care about most.
When millions of working class, majority nonwhite voters in deep blue California, New Jersey, and New York are walking away from the Democratic Party by either voting GOP or not voting at all (thanks to the Electoral College, millions in blue and red states alike sat the election out altogether), we have no other choice.
Poll after poll made it clear that the economy was front of mind for voters (or rather, how they perceived it). It wasn’t transgender people. Even with immigration, it was really opposition an ill-defined idea of “illegal immigration” without articulating what legal immigration looks like.
We’re already seeing that Trump voters are shocked to discover that tariffs will mean taxes on them, not China.
My 13 year-old cousin (not a Trumper, but surrounded by many 8th grade boys red-pilled by social media) was horrified to learn that his favorite game console is will go up 40% in price. He couldn’t believe it when I shared with him that companies are already raising prices in preparation for tariffs.
“But with Trump, the opposite is supposed to happen!”, he said.
The following content helped me start processing how we can put one foot in front of the other in the days ahead. I may not agree with every conclusion made, but I do like how they got me to think, and hope you find them helpful, too:
TL;DR on Jon Stewart: The pundits don’t know s*%!.
Try to see Trump as his voters see him, Jay Michaelson
“I don’t mean the MAGA faithful, or the Christian conservatives that, together, make up around 30% of the American voting public. We know what they see. I mean the other 25%, the people who made the difference in this election. Rightly or wrongly (I think very wrongly), these people were not focused on ‘threats to democracy’, or Donald Trump’s felony convictions or mental health, or abortion or climate or the things many progressives think about. They were focused on other things, and in these dark hours, I’ve found it personally helpful to reflect on them, not because they are right, or point to things that Democrats should’ve done or said, but simply to lessen the surprise and confusion that so many of us are feeling right now. That is, to make the darkness visible.”
Find A Political Home, Ami Fields Meyer
“We are in a period of profound and prolonged political crisis.
Please understand that it is going to get very, very rough, and it will feel unending and relentless. You cannot be expected to absorb personally the coming waves of illiberalism, the autocratic power grabs, the corruption. You are not asked to respond on your own. But you are expected to respond, and to take part in building the new vision, the compelling alternative, the America to come.”
Item one: It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer., Michael Tomasky, The New Republic
“Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country. Not The New York Times. Not The Washington Post (which bent over backward to exert no influence when Jeff Bezos pulled the paper’s Harris endorsement). Not CBS, NBC, and ABC. The agenda is set by [Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, the Sinclair network, iHeartMedia, X, Joe Rogan]. Even the mighty New York Times follows in its wake, aping the tone they set disturbingly often.”
Latino Men Wanted Trump. Why?, The Assignment with Audie Cornish, interviewing Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha
“[Ruben Gallego] from the first day was very intentional about centering men, Latinos and working class people in the middle of his campaign….That means that everything that he did was to message to them about him being that person. He grew up with a single mother. He had three sisters. He never had a bed to sleep until he went to college because the girls had the bedroom. He slept on the couch. He made it intentional to have carne asadas, to make it intentional, to have boxing match viewings for the Canelo fight for any Mexican out there. The canelo fight. I remember fighting consultants in our own team that said we're going to do what with boxing and violence. And Ruben was like, yes, we're going to because this is where our community is. I kid you not. Last Friday, we sponsored a rodeo and had ten live bulls. These are things you normally don't see in a Democratic campaign that's very different. And leaning into the cultural competency of what Ruben Gallego as a candidate brought to this race.”
What can women do now?, Xochitl Gonzalez, The Atlantic (gift link)
“The situation isn’t hopeless, but it may require new tactics. The time for thumping on our chests and railing against the patriarchy might be past. The protests that felt so powerful in 2016 may have backfired to some extent, by causing the people women most needed to listen to their message to tune them out instead. But women can’t simply retreat, either—their lives and futures depend on it. The answer is engagement: soft diplomacy in everyday life. ‘We will continue to wage this fight in the voting booth, in the courts, and in the public square,’ Harris said in her speech. But ‘we will also wage it in quieter ways.’”
Let’s Talk About the White Woman Problem, Emily Amick
“However, liberals over the last decade have developed a social norm of forced ostracizing. Both cutting off communicating with Trump supporters themselves and those who try to talk to them. And again, you do you and protect your mental health. This is a big picture argument and not directed at you, dear reader, personally. Ostracizing and alienating conservative curious white women, the wellness girlies the scared girlies and the econ voter girlies won’t get us votes. I’m not going to give some big speech on empathy here right now because that’s not the entire answer either. I’m talking about the need to be the big tent and to spend time reaching out and persuading these women. Shame and scorn does not win votes.”
A Red-District Conqueror Wants Fellow Democrats to Look in the Mirror, Annie Karni, NYT (Gift Link)
“I just refused to let this race be nationalized. It’s not about the message. It’s about my loyalty to my community. The messenger is the message in a lot of ways. My awareness of my community has been durable, and it’s reflective in my vote record. That is a huge asset….People are putting their groceries on their credit card. No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.” — Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez
Almost all voting groups shifted toward Trump, except American Jews. Why?, Rob Eshman, The Forward
“One explanation as to why: It’s not because Jews are so liberal — it’s because we’re so conservative….It’s not Republicans that American Jews are allergic to. It’s insecurity and extremism.”