Three Reasons To Be Hopeful From Indivisible's Co-Founder Leah Greenberg

She wants to take a minute to make the case for hope in 2024.

Indivisible is one of the most effective organizations at getting individuals to vote Democrat, Progressive, and Anti-MAGA. I published early on in our time together this year posts that demonstrated their creative, impactful approach to this years elections on all levels.

What follows is a letter from Indivisible’s Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director Leah Greenberg:

“I’m going to level with you. The vibes right now? They are not great! According to my inbox, there’s a lot of anxiety floating around about 2024…

Now, two years ago, as we geared up for the 2022 midterm season, things also looked pretty bleak. The most common smart-pundit take was that we were heading for a bloodbath. That summer, I wrote a piece called “The Case for Hope.” It talked through the reasons why -- in spite of dismal polls and bad vibes -- we believed we could pull out a win in 2022. 

Frankly, I think it held up pretty well. We did in fact deliver the best first-term midterm margin for a president in a generation. Now that the 2024 cycle is picking up, we’re seeing some of the same catastriphising. And so in spirit, HERE ARE THREE FACTORS THAT MAKE ME OPTIMISTIC:

1. The Dobbs backlash wave just keeps building

Every few months someone comes out with a take about how voters are moving on from Dobbs. And then we have another election and it turns out voters are still really, really mad. Our latest data point: this week’s special election for a Republican-leaning state House seat in Alabama. Democrat Marilyn Lands ran aggressively on reproductive freedom and IVF -- and she mopped the floor with her Republican opponent, winning in a 62-37 landslide.

This isn’t a Democratic district. It’s a district Trump carried in 2020. And yet, in the year 2024, when faced with an anti-abortion candidate and a pro-abortion candidate, these voters overwhelmingly chose abortion rights. 

Abortion alone won’t win the election -- but it’s the linchpin in a broader story we have to tell about the threat that MAGA poses to all our rights and freedoms. And all of our data suggests that that’s a story that resonates with a lot of voters.

2. Republicans are (once again!) lining up behind awful candidates

It’s hard to overstate how important candidate quality was in 2022. It’s why we not only held the Senate but expanded our margins: Democrats ran great candidates, and Republicans ran extreme MAGA weirdos. That same dynamic is setting up to repeat itself in key races. In Arizona, Ruben Gallego is facing off against fascist Kari Lake. In Ohio, Sherrod Brown is taking on Trumpist used car dealer Bernie Moreno. In North Carolina, Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson made national headlines for his musings about returning to an era when women couldn’t vote.

Candidate quality isn’t everything -- but in a tight national environment, it matters a lot. And I’d rather be us than them.

3. Elections are about choices, and that choice is only now starting to come into focus

Here’s the reality: some set of people are reliable Biden voters. Some set of people are reliable Trump voters. And some significant number of voters have not decided either how they’re going to vote or whether they’re going to vote at all. The polling we have suggests that most of those folks have negative views of both parties, don’t really like politics, and (in many cases) aren’t even paying attention right now. They also, as a group, don’t like MAGA, attacks on abortion, or fascist politics. Which is to say, they’re gettable for our side.

Now, here at Indivisible, we’ve been operating on the assumption that Trump will be the nominee for the better part of a year. But for the average voter, the reality that Trump will be on the ballot in November is only beginning to fully register. Coverage of his spectacularly fascist messages -- relegated to TruthSocial for much of the last few years -- will become mainstream headlines again. The steady drumbeat of court hearings, trials, and legal shenanigans will continue. And we’ll have opportunity after opportunity to contrast steady progress under Biden with corruption, cruelty, and chaos under Trump.

The reality of this choice is just now setting in -- and that means the opportunity to create that stark contrast begins now.

Now, what do all these factors have in common? To really take advantage of them, we’re going to have to do the work. Dobbs is terrible -- but will voters be thinking about Dobbs? The Republican candidates are awful -- but will voters know how awful? When it’s time to vote, who will voters be listening to?

We can’t rely on the campaign or the party to break through to the skeptics, the double haters, the disengaged voters. What we need are their neighbors, their families, their friends. 

We’ve got to create the surround-sound story about what this election is about -- and then we’ve got to make sure all those people we’ve reached get out to vote.”

One of the actions that I have stressed in my posts this year and I know is on your list regards donating to individuals and organizations that you believe will have a major positive impact on defeating Trump and his MAGA supporters. Indivisible is one of them and donating to them will support very positive, results-oriented actions:

https://indivisible.org/

I do not receive any remuneration for my support of any of the organizations I promote in my writings.