What Are You Going To Do About The Election?
What Are You Going To Do About The Election?
"Nothing" is not an acceptable answer
As of today, Friday, it’s 59 days until the election (Here is a countdown clock).
The kids started third and 8th grade this week. My birthday and the Jewish high holidays are coming up too. For all these reasons, the fall always feels like an energetic time to lay out fresh intentions, as we’re starting new routines.
Speaking of which-now is a great time to upgrade to a paid subscription. I’m offering a limited-time 20% discount. And I’m holding a special live Zoom call for paid subscribers only - September 19 at 8pm ET/ 5pm PT. We will answer your questions about thriving and raising thriving kids in the polycrisis. Registration link is after the paywall on this post.
I want to ask—what’s your plan for engaging around your desired outcome in the presidential race?
There are 59 days left. That’s nine weeks. How many days can you dedicate? How many hours per week? How much money?
Ways To Get Involved Before Election Day:
With the exception of going door to door, I have personally done each of these in the last few election cycles.
1. Donate and Fundraise for the Presidential campaign: Here’s my personal fundraiser link for Harris-Walz. If you donate through this link, as a Golden Hour reader, I will thank you by name in an upcoming issue.
2. Donate and Fundraise for grassroots support for Democrats across the board: Movement Voter Project; Come to a special Zoom fundraiser I’m co-hosting Sept 11.
3. Phone- or Text-bank with People’s Action: You can do it from home, by yourself or on a live Zoom with others for company.
4. Volunteer to knock doors with Swing Left
5. Write letters to help with turnout with Vote Forward — Kids can help!
Write and let me know what you’re doing! I’ll help keep you accountable.
I’ve found that donating my time as well as money builds a muscle of democracy and social cohesion that is useful in all kinds of situations. Starting conversations with our fellow citizens generally feels good! And it models the right thing for our kids.
To be clear, I don’t think you should do this because Kamala Harris is brat, or whatever. As
has observed, votes should be viewed more like a chess move than a valentine—a strategic step, not a declaration of love.As I’ve written, I was really energized by Biden dropping out and Harris entering the race, all those long six weeks ago. I was happy for the precise reason Rebecca Traister described in New York Magazine:
”I felt that our national political narrative was finally accurately mirroring our national reality: Everything is scary, we have never been here before, we don’t know if we can do this, and precisely because these stakes are so high, we are at last going to act like it, by taking unprecedented, untested, underpolled, creative measures to change, grow, and fight at a pitch that meets the gravity of the urgent, existentially important task in front of us.”
Sounds like polycrisis politics to me!
This giddy feeling, this sense of openness, was of course temporary. With their eye on swing voters, the Harris campaign rushed headlong into the arms of the conventional. Within the context of a historic, unprecedented campaign, they’ve played things really safe, with messages and policies that feel very polled, very tested, very demure.
Some of these positions are disappointing to progressives. They’re certainly disappointing to me. (Other positions of hers are, of course, bothersome to centrists and NeverTrumper Republicans who are also voting with their heads, not their hearts).
On Gaza: The DNC could have given a Palestinian-American a platform at the convention—it’s hard to see what that would have cost them. Harris promised, after all, in her speech to be “president for all Americans.” And now, especially at this moment when the deaths of even more hostages have pushed Israelis to an even greater level of outrage toward their own government, it would be great to hear Harris speak about the urgency of ending this war, which is metastasizing to the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran, and name the necessity of getting rid of Netanyahu. Chuck Schumer did it six months ago and he’s not exactly a leftist.
On the climate: Harris is pursuing a position of what Reuters calls “strategic ambiguity,” conspicuously abandoning her more progressive stances of the past. I hope it turns out to be strategic, but it’s also weak and fundamentally dishonest. Fracking, which she used to oppose, is bad! It’s not only an environmental disaster, it’s a bad bet economically! The jobs it has produced have no guarantee of lasting. “Fracking has been, for nearly all of its history, a money-losing boondoggle.”
Given these disappointments, I’m inspired, as I often am, by the tack taken by the youth climate group, the Sunrise Movement.
Before they endorse, the group wants Harris to commit to the rest of the Green New Deal, and they’re asking her to push for a cease-fire in Gaza as well.
They told the Washington Post that they’re hoping they will retain more credibility in conversations with undecided Gen-Z voters by emphasizing what a disaster Donald Trump would be, not how Kamala Harris is the solution to all of our problems.
At the same time, by flexing their power to help Harris win, they will have more leverage to keep pressing their demands when she is (hopefully) in office.
This is strategic. This is playing chess. And it feels truthful at the same time. We can own the ambiguity, the ambivalence, the contradictions of this moment, and resist a binary frame.
I very much look forward, personally, to calling and writing President Harris, and even showing up at the White House gates, and saying, “I campaigned for you. I volunteered for you. I donated to you. I voted for you. Now we need you to do what’s right for our kids.”
In case you’re interested in exploring this logic more deeply, adrienne maree brown shared this document on her Instagram that’s like a whole online course about left strategy in the era of MAGA.
Basically, with the looming threat of a wannabe fascist convicted felon, centrists are going to demand that progressives shut up and get in line.
The alternative is to join that broader chorus, without forgetting who you are and what you want.
“the problem is not, to coalesce or not coalesce, but the character of coalition, and how the Left retains independence and integrity and exerts influence in a coalition.” - Al Richmond
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Register for my back to school Zoom call for paid subscribers only
This is an excellent source too. They have great resources including letter writing parties you can join online, in person or how to have your own.
https://www.climatechangemakers.org/
great article and very helpful links, thank you!!