Category: Living in Society

My cohort of septuagenarian and octogenarian political activist friends organized an event before the primary. (Some nonagenarians are still around, yet are taking a well-deserved break. Their work beginning with the Adlai Stevenson campaign is appreciated, they earned their spurs). We held a “meet the candidates” event for local voters, something not often done these days. All five primary candidates for county supervisor showed up to speak briefly and to shake hands and chat for a couple of hours.

In August, we fired the engines for the fall campaign to put on another meet the candidate event, which also served as our kick-off event. First Congressional District candidate Christina Bohannan was our keynote speaker. We had eight candidates in all and more than 65 attendees. It was good turnout for a small, rural city.

After kicking off the campaign we began planning and doing: we finished our third postcard party with seven people writing postcards to voters for our house and state senate candidates; planned a meet and greet event for a state representative who is not well known after redistricting; deployed a sign crew to get out the word about our candidates; and are deploying a door knocking crew to the far western part of our new state house district, where one of our members was raised. I started a special newsletter to facilitate communication, although most of our planning is done in person and via email. Phone calls? Only when we have to. Text messages? No. I would describe this as off grid organizing.

What does off grid organizing mean? Barack Obama described it as well as anyone could last night: “It was great to be back in Pennsylvania today. If this election is making you feel excited or scared or hopeful or frustrated or anything in between, don’t just sit back and hope for the best. Vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Vote for Democrats up and down the ballot who will fight for you. Then help your friends, family members, neighbors and coworkers register and make a plan to vote.”

With the demise of the coordinated campaign, we feel left on our own. The county party was able to hire a couple of organizers that work out of the First Congressional District campaign office in the county seat, yet we rely on them only when we have to. We know what we need to do and just do it. If there is a bill for advertising, we split it up and pay it. To promote our local races, we reach out directly to the state house candidates and find they are very willing to have us support them. In any case, a state house campaign is separate and different from a district wide or statewide campaign. Down ballot races are very important, so a cookie-cutter campaign doesn’t work well.

The county organizers telephone us to ask for our help. We do what we can. What hinders us, especially door knocking, is the large number of our group that have trouble moving around and are in the midst of cataract surgery, hip or knee replacement, diabetes, arthritis, or other ailments of aging. We had a conversation this week about door knocking and to a person felt it is not the kind of campaign that is needed. The number of doors a campaign knocks is no longer a meaningful metric. How deeply we penetrate social networks matters so much more. When the campaign office calls us, we politely decline.

The 2022 election cycle was my last experience door knocking and it was an eye opener. I tried to make it to every door knocking event that was in my county and my state house district. To a person, people contacted required no additional information about the election or candidates. They knew the candidates, had a plan to vote, and did it mostly on their own. If they were not going to vote, no entreaties from a stranger would change their minds. People yelled at me from behind closed doors, “Go away!” The world has changed since I re-activated in politics during the 2004 campaign.

So what do we do to get Democrats out to vote? We talk to people, in person or via the telephone. We talk to people we have known for years, and in some cases, for decades. We make sure they plan to vote. We don’t take this for granted. We ask if they need a ride to the polls. We share information and discuss issues in the campaign.These are normal conversations between rational voters. We need more of that.

Eventually my cohort and I are going to die or move to a home. Until we do, at least this campaign, we are activated.

Solon Area Democrats got together for a meet the candidates event on Sept. 28 at the Solon Public Library. The room was packed. Eight candidates and elected officials spoke, then we broke the group for one-on-one conversations between candidates and voters. We could feel the energy in the room.

Our featured speaker was congressional candidate Christina Bohannan, who has been rising in the polls. We have a distance to go to elect her, yet it seems possible this cycle. The aforementioned energy will hopefully carry her across the finish line.

Most notable about the event was the reunion of many area people who worked on previous campaigns, including a nonagenarian whose first political campaigning was for the Adlai Stevenson. She wasn’t the only nonagenarian present. It was good to see old friends again. The point of the day was to kick off the final push into the November 5 election. This group has been activated. What will they do?

I scheduled a door-knocking event in the afternoon but it was a bust due to lack of volunteers. The house and state senate candidates from my district took a walk list. I did too. That was it. While in person voter contact can be a positive motivator, that contact will have to come from other places this cycle. It will come from the 65+ people who attended our event. The method will be word of mouth among family and friends about the importance of this election.

In a recent post, I suggested there is a new way to canvass, and based on Saturday’s experience, that is both likely and correct. The number of doors a campaign knocks is no longer a meaningful metric. How deeply we penetrate social networks matters so much more.

37 days from the election there is excitement among Democrats. One hopes we will make some gains in closing the gap between us and the Republican majority this cycle. At minimum, we should be able to break the Republican super majority in the state senate and increase the number of Democratic state representatives. There is no time for analytics. We must continue to do two or three things each day to elect Democrats. That is how we will win and move forward.

Time is flashing by in the run up to the Nov. 5, general election. I had our county organizer run walk lists for our event on Sept. 28. I hope to work some of them before then. Election day will be here in 43 days, so no time to lose.

I have only a couple of priorities. Encourage Democrats to vote. Encourage people to vote the whole ballot. Encourage voters to have friends and relatives to do likewise. That’s pretty much the ball game.

I read in the Washington Post House Speaker Mike Johnson cannot wrangle his caucus and doesn’t have the votes to prevent the government from running out of money on Sept. 30. That means he will again rely on Democrats to keep the government open. It would be an electoral disaster for Republicans to shut the government down right before the election and they know it.

Expectations for the election 43 days out are that Trump will win Iowa by a lesser margin than in 2020. Two of the U.S. House races are competitive and Democrats Christina Bohannan in first district and Lanon Baccam in third district stand a chance of flipping those seats. It is important to note that flipping five or six U.S. House seats nationally is all it would take to flip the House to Democratic control. Iowa Senate Democrats need one more seat to break the Republican super majority. They seem likely to do that, yet unlikely to flip the chamber because their numbers are so far down. In the Iowa House, Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst said she would like to see the minority move from the current 36 to somewhere in the 40s. That, too, seems possible.

I had hoped to be out of elective politics by age 72. That won’t happen this year, and I continue to do two or three daily things related to the election. I will continue for the next 43 days.

On a cool, clear evening, a group of 20 local folks met in the nearby city for a house party hosted by Christina Bohannan’s campaign. At 49 days remaining in the campaign, the ask by the organizers was modest: volunteer for the campaign every week or two, or from four to eight times before the election. A line to sign up for volunteer shifts queued in front of the organizer’s table after everyone introduced themselves.

The big news and discussion at the event was Ann Selzer’s Iowa-Des Moines Register poll which released over the weekend. Selzer found Trump’s lead in Iowa deteriorated from +18 against Biden to +4 against Harris. “It also shows a sharp divide between men and women likely voters — Trump leads with men 59% to 32% over Harris. Harris leads with women 53% to 36%.” Four points is still a significant hill to climb, but damn!

This makes sense in Iowa where the Republican Governor and legislature pummeled public education and women’s reproductive rights during the last two general assemblies. Women are expected to play a significant role not only in this election but in restoring the American Dream.

The American what?

When I came of age after finishing graduate school, Ronald Reagan was president and despite an advanced degree, military service, and being a white male with the privilege that means, the American Dream was the stuff of legends. When I married soon after graduate school, the American Dream was on life-support. It existed for my parents, but not for me and certainly not for our child. Is the term “American Dream” still relevant? We hope so.

I’m working on a project with Thom Hartmann, whose new book, The Hidden History of the American Dream: The Demise of the Middle Class — And How to Rescue Our Future is driving this line of thought. My review will be out the week the book is published in early October.

For now, a gathering of 20 people bonded in the enterprise of electing Kamala Harris president and gaining a Democratic majority in the U.S. House will suffice. The American Dream has little chance as long as Republicans rule in our government. Who doesn’t want to be a part of electing Democrats in 2024?

In advance of her Sept. 13 trip to Johnson County, Iowa House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst spent time with the author talking Iowa politics.

The interview covered the prospects for Democrats to gain House seats in November, impacts of the new private school voucher program, converting support for access to abortion into votes, water and air quality in Iowa, transparency about the recent school shooting in Perry, and other topics.

The Truman Fund fund raiser she is headlining on Friday the 13th asks the question, “Tired of Being Scared?” Learn more about the event at this link.

During the interview we referred to the Harkin Institute conference on Sept. 25 and 26, Industrial Farm Animal Production, the Environment, and Public Health. Learn more about the conference here.

The full, unedited audio of my interview with Leader Konfrst can be found here.