Stacey Abrams Just Gave Democrats a Blueprint for Saving Themselves Opinion

[elleng]

couple of weeks ago, Stacey Abrams' political organization quietly pulled off a political master stroke: Her organization wiped out $212 million in medical debt for 108,000 people across five states. But Ms. Abrams didn't only profoundly help a lot of Americans; she also created a blueprint for a more effective form of American politics. The question is whether Democrats are paying attention.

And they need to be—badly. The coming years will be rough no matter what the Democrats do, and they could be downright disastrous for our country. History says the Dems should lose around 37 seats in the House next year. They face tough odds in the Senate. State legislatures and governorships are tilting away from them. And Republican mapmaking advantages could help to lock in wins for the remainder of the decade.

But that's only half the problem. There are also structural advantages like the fact that Republicans get half the votes in the Senate for representing just 43 percent of the country, as well as an enthusiasm gap; in the recent Virginia and New Jersey elections, Democratic candidates actually exceeded their vote totals from the previous election—but Republicans still exceeded them by way more. Together, this means that Democrats don't need to match Republican voter enthusiasm to win; they need to lap it.

Unfortunately, just trying to persuade the voters who usually show up in elections won't cut it, not when so few voters are willing to flip between the parties—under 10 percent. So the only way to have a prayer is to bring in lots of voters off the sidelines, both by re-engaging infrequent voters who turned out for President Biden and by creating additional waves of new voters who have never cast a ballot before.

But to do that, the usual tools are surprisingly ineffective: Big policy accomplishments rarely move the needle because voters (and more importantly, nonvoters) simply don't process and thank the party in charge for their achievements in time for the next election. In fact, polling after the passage of the infrastructure bill showed that almost two thirds of Americans still think the Biden Administration hasn't accomplished "very much." . .

This is why the Abrams approach is worth paying attention to. Instead of promising people hazy benefits in the future, her tactic engages potential voters by solving their biggest problems now. The politics come later.

This is hardly new thinking by the way. It was in fact the exact strategy of bygone political machines, and one that led them to dominance: First reach out to underserved communities to provide needed social services, and then mobilize them in future elections. And while those machines were corrupt, that doesn't mean that the outreach to people in need was wrong, or that serving overlooked minorities wasn't righteous.

Medical debt is the ideal problem to focus on.'>>>

https://www.newsweek.com/stacey-abrams-just-gave-democrats-blueprint-saving-themselves-opinion-1649944?

[babylonsister]

1. I like the idea of

listening to Stacey Abrams, most definitely!

But this? polling after the passage of the infrastructure bill showed that almost two thirds of Americans still think the Biden Administration hasn't accomplished "very much." . .

No one will notice until they see physical progress or family members start getting hired. Way too premature to poll this bill that only passed very recently.

[Scrivener7]

2. She's a damn genius. Why isn't she head of the DNC?

[lees1975]

3. Exactly