Monday, July 17, 2017

Democrats keep losing elections. Here's how we can finally win.

Our candidates need to change the playing field—from campaigns driven by high-priced consultants and cautious poll-testing to ones built on genuine, one-on-one conversations with voters.

Dear MoveOn member,

It's not enough for progressives to just be anti-Trump.

The special elections that we've lost already this year have proven that. We must address the forces that helped create Trump in the first place, including inequality, stagnant wages, the shrinking middle class, and appeals to racism. Otherwise, we'll just keep losing.

To win, our candidates need to change the playing field—from campaigns driven by high-priced consultants and cautious poll-testing to ones built on genuine, one-on-one conversations with voters.

That's why I'm so enthusiastic about MoveOn's new Neighborhood Listening Project. MoveOn is training 1,000 emerging community leaders—a massive effort that's at the grand scale that this political moment and our country's future demand.

These MoveOn-trained organizers will knock on doors all over the country to connect with voters and understand, at a personal level, what's on people's minds. Along the way, they'll talk about a positive vision for our country, recruit volunteers, and build grassroots power. Crucially, many of these canvasses will take place in the swing states and districts that are going to be the most critical in next year's midterm elections.

This is just the kind of long-term organizing that we need to undertake to lay the groundwork to win control of Congress next year and secure more legislative and electoral victories in the years after. But this kind of organizing and movement building is incredibly intensive work, and I know that MoveOn has taken a big risk in launching this program before they'd recruited enough monthly supporters to fund it and then to sustain what they build.

That's why I'm writing you today on behalf of MoveOn. Eddie, will you chip in $5 a month to help support MoveOn's game-changing organizing?

Yes, I'll chip in monthly right now to help support MoveOn's long-term organizing to lay the groundwork to win control of Congress next year.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

Donald Trump and his cronies are still trying to push through one of the most destructive and unpopular agendas in history, and they have no interest in hearing what their constituents think, want, or need. They've stopped answering their phones, and they've refused to hold town hall meetings. If Republicans won't listen to the American people, MoveOn will.

Starting this week, the 1,000 community organizers that MoveOn is training (and who will, in turn, train thousands more progressive activists on how to canvass their own communities) will hold hundreds of listening canvasses that will reach tens of thousands of Americans at their doorsteps by the end of July. MoveOn is going to give participants the tools to continue canvassing this summer and beyond and share what they're learning, so we can lay the foundation for winning elections in 2018 and 2020.

MoveOn is thinking strategically—big and long-term—and, Eddie, I want to ask you to do the same. Can you chip in $5 a month to help MoveOn build organizing capacity in communities across the country to fight the Republican agenda now and kick Republicans out of office in 2018?

Yes, I'm in! I'll chip in monthly to start building right now to win back power in 2018.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.

This is so important that I'm going to say it again: It's simply not enough to just be against Trump. Progressives will win back power by listening to, connecting with, empowering, and bringing the American people together to fight for an economic and political system that works for all of us, not just the wealthy and the political elites. Let's do this—together.

Thanks for all you do.

–Robert Reich

Want to support MoveOn's work? The MoveOn community will work every moment, day by day and year by year, to resist Trump's agenda, contain the damage, defeat hate with love, and begin the process of swinging the nation's pendulum back toward sanity, decency, and the kind of future that we must never give up on. And to do it MoveOn needs your ongoing support, now more than ever. Will you stand with MoveOn?

Yes, I'll chip in $5 a month.

No, I'm sorry, I can't make a monthly donation.


PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

No comments:

Post a Comment