An open letter to Blue Ripple Politics readers, from Adam and Frank:
Thank you so much for reading our Blue Ripple Politics posts and giving to the ActBlue pages we organized. Now that the dust has settled, we thought it would be a good time to look back at the 2020 races, and forward toward elections in the next two years. How can we work together to keep the Blue Wave rolling?
On the positive side, the blue Federal trifecta is great news. We’re proud that Blue Ripple readers donated over $80,000 to Democratic candidates and causes across the country and helped make that happen. But there were also disappointments: losses in key Senate and House races that looked winnable, as well as many state legislatures. So, this is a good time to take stock, plan for the future, and start laying the groundwork for success in the coming years.
What we learned in 2019-2020
Georgia was by far the shining success for Dems in 2020. A closer look at key elements in the Peach State might help us figure out how to extend that success to other purple states and House districts in the coming years. It’s notable that many of the Dem gains in Georgia came from Blacks voting in record numbers. This was particularly evident in the diverse Atlanta suburbs, which delivered significant numbers of votes to Ossoff, Warnock, and Biden, and also sent Carolyn Bourdeaux (GA-7) to Congress as the nation’s only red-to-blue flip. (Yay, Carolyn!)
That’s not to say that the candidates themselves weren’t great – they were! But much of the credit for Team Blue’s success was due to community groups that used their deep, long-standing, and effective relationships with voters of color to get out the vote. And those GOTV efforts didn’t just magically materialize in 2019-2020; they were the result of years of effort that laid the groundwork.
Looking at Dems’ experience in Georgia and other states, it seems like there are three things folks like us can and should do to help the Blue Wave in the coming years:
Get better about identifying target districts: We want to help Dems donate in districts that are flippable or need defending, but it seems like a lot of funds may have gone into extreme long-shots where it had less impact. In retrospect, we could and should have looked harder at where the real opportunities are, based on demographics and existing local organizing.
Support community organizers far in advance: A decade ago, flipping Georgia blue would have been a pipe dream – but effective organizing made the difference. If we want to do the same thing in other states (Texas!), we need to support community organizers now to prepare for 2024.
Fund organizers and non-profits focused on voting rights. Voting rights are under attack in 28 states, including GA and AZ, both of which are key to the current Dem federal trifecta. We need to do even more to support the work of groups like Democracy Docket and the Brennan Center that are shining a bright light on efforts to curtail voting rights, and push back forcefully in court and on the ground. And then we need to win state legislative seats to insure those rights are preserved.
What we’re going to do differently in 2021-2022
Here at Blue Ripple Politics HQ, we have a few ideas about how to identify the best opportunities to support Team Blue in the coming months and years:
Focus: Most importantly, we’re going to declare some “majors” where we hope to get the best insights and help folks have the biggest impact – almost certainly Georgia and Texas, and maybe 1-2 others. (But don’t worry: we’ll probably also make some House race recs in other states as we get closer to the ’22 election.)
Improve our modeling: We’re developing new tools to analyze House district “flippability” based on demographics, and experimenting with cool tools (hello, unsupervised clustering!) to explore both long-term trends and short-term opportunities to win elections. We’re also trying to extend our data efforts to smaller geographic units so we can get smarter about state legislature races.
Identify on-the-ground organizers: Groups like Fair Fight, New Georgia Project, and Mijente were critical to Dems’ success in Georgia in 2020. What are the analogous groups in Texas? We’re going to spend more time talking with local experts, journalists, etc. to try to find the most effective and impactful organizations to fund today in support of Team Blue.
To kick off our ‘21-’22 efforts, we’ve set up two ActBlue pages — one for community organizing groups and another for voting rights groups — to raise funds for the organizations mentioned above. Please consider setting up a recurrent monthly donation to help them continue their great work during the “off season”.
We’re excited to continue sharing what we learn and accomplish with you – please stick with Blue Ripple Politics via our email list (see bottom of our website; best method), Twitter, Facebook, and GitHub, and thanks for your continued interest in our “labor of love” efforts on behalf of Team Blue!
Onward!
Photo by Markus Winkler from Pexels.