I know it's not Thanksgiving yet, and the election isn't quite over, but I am feeling very grateful today. I hope and expect I will be feeling that way even more so tomorrow night, and in the days to come, but after tomorrow the election analysis and what to do next stuff is going to keep me pre-occupied to be thanking anybody. And if, God forbid, everything somehow goes wrong tomorrow, the ashes in my mouth will taste way too bitter to be feeling grateful to anything or anybody. Don't think that's going to happen, but I figure either way I should write this today. Here's my list:
I am grateful that field organizing and working with grassroots volunteers is actually in fashion again, and in so much bigger a way than it has ever been in my lifetime. I came into politics in the era where TV dominated everything in terms of a campaign's budget, and where field got just the scraps off the table- I had to fight like crazy in every campaign I was ever a part of for field to get any money at all. Perhaps even worse, the hip theory of the day was to centralize and mechanize everything- if you were doing mailings, have a mail firm do it rather than getting volunteers to stuff envelopes; if calls were to be made, have paid call centers do it rather than volunteer callers; etc. etc. This started to change in the 2004 cycle, when more was invested in field organizing than in any election cycle in history, by a factor of maybe five, than ever before, but it was still a highly centralized, bottom down kind of operation.
In this election, all that changed for the better. The field operations have been both heavily invested in and volunteer-oriented, with literally hundreds of thousands of volunteers trained and mentored in how to build on organization. It's been one of the great joys of my life to see it unfold, and to see the candidate, the times, and the organization all work to inspire people to volunteer who had never been politically active before. I have several friends and family members, from all age ranges (many older than I) who are actively volunteering to help in a political campaign for the first time in their lives, and who are totally into it. It makes me feel good about democracy again.
I am grateful for the diversity this campaign has represented. It's not just that our candidate was born of a mixed race couple, that he is the son of an immigrant, that he has an African Muslim name, that he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia and has an Asian-American sister. To have a candidate like that compete successfully for President is an astonishing thing. But it's more than that: the movement that we have seen flower in this election truly is more diverse than any in American history. The work to register and turn out all kinds of immigrant communities as well as more traditional African-American and Hispanic communities has really been impressive, both by the Obama campaign and by outside organizations like the We Are America Alliance.
It's not just racial diversity, either. The remarkable work, again by both the campaign and outside groups, to turn out young voters has been exciting to see. The fact that unmarried women, a highly Democratic and progressive demographic, will likely vote in record numbers, is another tremendous factor changing the electorate.
Literally everywhere you look, the electorate is changing for the better.
I am grateful for a stronger, tougher, smarter, more aggressive progressive movement. For most of my political career, the progressive movement in this country has been pretty weak- fragmented by constituency and issue, on the defensive rather than on the attack, passive in the face of the inside-the-beltway conventional wisdom. That has all begun to change, as new strategies, new leaders, new technology, new organizing and communications methods have begun to emerge.
What we on this blog like to describe as the "Open Left" is a huge part of all this, as online blogging and organizing is changing the way politics is done for the better. But it's not just bloggers and online activism that has revitalized progressive politics. Organizations are getting smarter and more aggressive, and activists at the local level are standing up and demanding change. It's an exciting and gratifying time to see this newly effective and energized movement emerge, and to be a part of it.
We are living in scary times for America, with the economy melting down, two wars in progress, climate change on the verge of wreaking mass devastation, and a host of other huge problems. But this campaign, the millions of people who have been a part of it, and the progressive movement that helped shape and propel it, have given me some hope again.
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