Lead Your Network (2/13/21)
The news cycle is coming at us at a whiplash pace and the pandemic is about to have its two-year anniversary. It is exhausting to keep up the daily fight for our democracy and the vigilance for staying safe. We have an administration passing bills to help better people’s lives yet the airwaves are filled with stories about papers being flushed down White House toilets. The number of bombshells that have been dropped since Trump arrived on the political scene has scarily normalized deceit, conspiracy theories, racism, and so much more. The Republican party with the help of Fox News keeps its voters in a constant whipped-up state of fear and anger. They continually demonize their opponents and exaggerate or lie to fire up their base while they fan the flames of distrust in government. No doubt, history tells us that democracy is in a dangerous place right now and on the brink of crumbling.
We speak often about messaging and how the Democrats are not good at messaging. We have wondered when will there be a unified democratic message from the DNC. And if we learned anything from our recent visit from Sam Cornale from the DNC or from guests like Congressman Tom Malinowski it is that we need to shift our thinking. The Democratic party is not a cult of personality. We are a wide tent. The DNC, while working hard, does not have a budget to effectively be in all 50 states and they don’t run the party messaging. We also know that the media is not going to fix this mess. Their incentive structure requires them to report on the sensationalized stories that sell, not the positive news out of the Biden administration.
Instead, let’s look at the last three years since the Democrats took the House in 2018 and added the Senate and White House in 2020. Count our successes. We have extraordinary accomplishments worth defending with the same vigor we approached 2018. That vigor was the difference between success and defeat in 2018 and 2020, and will be in 2022. That vigor means starting with our own actions and re-awakening our family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues to re-engage. Write postcards, donate, phone bank, text bank, or canvass. Start with one action and grab a friend. Call a neighbor who was active before the last election but has taken a step back and ask them if they would like to write a postcard, come hear a speaker, or join our giving circle. Our job is to be the leaders of our own network. Each of our networks linked together can make an army. That army is what will bring success in November!
Note: If you have friends who have written postcards with us at some point in the past, but haven't written in a while, reach out to them and offer to help them get started again. We have postcards and can help them choose campaigns and request addresses.