By Wilnelia Rivera and Katherine Adam
Although prepared for Turnout! Mobilizing Voters in an Emergency, this essay remains as pertinent today as a vision for a progressive agenda. Indeed, for current debates and races at all levels of government, Rivera and Adam’s message about “focusing on the values of community, interconnectedness, and care for everyone” rings true, particularly for reaching low-propensity voters – Editors.
The United States is entrenched in a “war” with COVID-19. Though our enemy is invisible to the naked eye, the virus appears in the public conversation through metaphors around victory and battle, comparisons of ventilators to missile production, and Donald Trump taking the mantle of a “wartime president.”
War framing may be apt for the earliest phases of this crisis; we are after all possibly turning to policy measures such as the Defense Production Act to mobilize resources in response to a surprise invasion. But if we care about true relief and recovery for the long term, it is not enough. As we emerge from our immediate public health crisis into a difficult period of economic and cultural recovery of unknown length, what becomes our country’s longer-term response? Will we put in place long-needed safeguards that create a more equitable, just, and healthy society, or will we further exacerbate inequalities?
Those who in this moment best succeed in communicating and organizing a transformative vision of America will win the 2020 election and set a path for the decades ahead. For progressives, this should mean developing a narrative around COVID-19 that speaks to a potential new coalition who shares a set of fundamental values, paired with a historic turnout effort that aims to expand the electorate in November.
If we can empathize with everyone’s historic and emerging epidemic-related hardships—while unifying in our steadfast opposition to rising individualism, authoritarianism, and xenophobia—the dynamics are ripe to create a potentially historic electoral realignment.
Electoral realignments occur when voters organize and/or reorganize into another political party. Such moments in national elections are exceedingly rare. One example was the 1932 election, which ushered in the New Deal. While the election of Barack Obama in 2008 could have been another example, it failed to coalesce and sustain a new electoral coalition and by 2016 over 1,000 Democratic seats were lost across the country and Republicans dominated.
However, since the election of President Trump in 2016—well before this present crisis—movement professionals, activists, candidates, researchers, and pollsters began documenting significant changes to the American electorate. These changes signal the emergence of a new potential political force: Republican-leaning, college-educated suburban women realigning with the Democrats, combined with historically lower-voting Black women, Latinx people, other women of color, and millennials turning out in massive numbers. Galvanizing this coalition will be critical to moving forward a post-COVID vision that supports all people.
Hints of this coalition emerged in the “Blue Wave” of 2018, when Democrats flipped the House by a much larger margin of seats than projected and exceeded the historic turnout levels of the Obama coalition. Experts overlooked the rising disaffection against the Trump administration from college-educated, suburban Republican women, and they missed the deep motivation of Black women, Latinx people, other women of color, and millennials to vote as an act of defiance. As a result, Democrats resoundingly took back control of the House of Representatives. This included the upset victories of Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07)—who defeated a long-time Democratic incumbent in Greater Boston, Massachusetts—and Congresswoman Lauren Underwood (IL-14), who as a first-time candidate prevailed in a contested primary before defeating the Republican incumbent in Naperville, Illinois. Both relied on changing parts of the electorate and driving up the turnout of historically low propensity voters to win.
Many view the pre-COVID 2020 Democratic presidential primaries as a setback in this strategy because older and suburban moderate voters were more motivated than the lower-propensity, but more progressive, voters we need to turn out in the general election to make a coalition work. These older and moderate voters were not willing to take the perceived risks associated with an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders nomination. However, the collateral impact of the COVID-19 public health and economic crisis creates a reset button — not around a new candidate, but a new agenda and movement.
The key will be developing a narrative that speaks to the values of the nascent coalition we want to turn out to take a bold vote that is worth the “risk.” For decades these electoral groups—though not yet voting in coalition—have been consistent in their support for policies that promote equality, equity and a strong social safety net. COVID-19 is fundamentally a crisis of these very issues. It has made evident that your ability to combat this pandemic or build a new normal is largely dependent on your zip code, income, and education.
Uneven healthcare access discouraged many Americans from seeking testing or treatment in the early days of the virus. With 24 percent of Americans lacking any paid leave, unknown numbers of people went to work sick. This has only been made worse by insufficient medical supplies, a shortage of hospital beds, and healthcare labor shortages.
A compelling narrative for the future will bring people together by focusing on the values of community, interconnectedness, and care for everyone. It will also affirm the fact that these values can be embodied in policies and investments that create a stronger country: economic safety nets, deep equitable access to good health care, and safe, just communities for all.
Communicating these values will become difficult as unemployment rises and budgets are cut. Proposed investments in the safety net—particularly the scale of types needed for Medicare for All or universal paid leave—will be painted as roadblocks to economic recovery. It will become harder to ensure equity in the face of conservative efforts to craft policy that provides support only to some, with exclusions of others based on race, gender, immigration status, criminal record, or work requirements.
We need both a movement that believes in “deep democracy” and a political operation that fundamentally understands the extraordinary nature of our times. We must recognize and build off the human, community, and local assets who have been on the front lines of this work. For example, these include the reproductive justice activists and organizations in the South and Midwest battling conservative state legislatures and Governors. The latter pair are using this crisis to continue their assault on safe and legal abortion access, harming low-income people, women of color, millennials, as well as transgender and gender nonconforming people.
President Trump has his base and conservative movement squarely behind him. All candidates must be bold in unleashing a movement and political operation that builds and turns out the new coalitions of voters ready for progressive change and to rebuild the U.S.
We must also remain even more vigilant in preventing foreign and domestic voter suppression efforts and electoral interference, and it is imperative that we move forward efforts to institute a national mail-in ballot system this November. Our government must balance the safety of all Americans and recognize that our current election system in this context is not equipped to administer a clear, nor safe, election.
The United States is approaching a defining moment. As we look upon this historic crossroads, let us choose the path that brings us together to harness the power of all those who have been denied it. To quote Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, “Those closest to the pain, should be closest to the power.”