Next Indivisible Elmwood meeting: Sunday, June 6, 4:00 pm, at the Elmwood Resistance HQ. [UPDATE: Ben Moses (VA HD–59) will join us by Zoom, 4:15–4:30.]

Remember that on Friday, June 4, Ann Overton is collecting items you wish to donate to the EBAA Garage Sale. Email her for directions and to determine if your donation is an accepted item.

A new group, Central Valley Matters, is holding a Zoom fundraiser on Thursday, June 10th, at 5 PM. The recipients are Valley Voices (located in Kings County), Valley Forward (located in Fresno County), and the Dolores Huerta Foundation (located in Kern County). RSVP and more information here.

And right now: Postcards4VA has addresses for the Delegate races in Virginia. We will try to have some Virginia-specific postcards to give out; our Blue Wave cards aren’t quite apt.

Tony the Democrat also has postcard campaigns going.

In the NM-01 special election, as of Friday, early ballots from Democratic registrants were outpacing Team Red’s by over 2:1. The election is June 1. Democrat Melanie Stansbury has also outraised the Republican by over 2:1. I wish Democrats would stop trying to win elections by flooding the zone with expensive yet mediocre ads—and I especially wish they would stop asking us for donations to do it. [UPDATE: Separate post on result. Short version, Big Blue win.]

“Minutes”. Long time since I wrote that.

We started with a champagne celebration of being able to get back together again.

I continued with a discussion of the elections held since last November. Although Jon Ossoff raised more than any Senate candidate before, with Raphael Warnock in second place, credit really goes to Stacey Abrams and her ground game. We followed that with a collapse in the TX-06 Special Election. We were going to lose this in the runoff, but we didn’t even make it to the runoff, and the fault seems to lie with Democrats who don’t understand teamwork. I didn’t mention at the meeting, but another good example is the late Alcee Hastings, whose Blue seat will sit vacant until early 2021 through a combination of local Dems who don’t want to resign their current positions early and Hastings’ belief he had to run again in 2020 as an 84-year-old man with advanced pancreatic cancer.

We can redeem ourselves with a good performance in the NM-01 Special Election to replace Deb Haaland, now Secretary of the Interior. This is a Blue district and anything less than a double-digit victory will encourage Team Red. Despite the hysterical emails you receive, early voting, although disappointing in numbers, is excellent in party breakdown.

The focus of odd-year elections is again Virginia. Our old friends Nancy Guy and Alex Askew are running for re-election to the House of Delegates. Their districts seem to have become a little safer. Guy won by 41 votes last time, but Biden won by about 15 points. East Bay Activists Alliance, which has a picture Guy and Askew unlabeled[!] on their front page, will be phone- and text-banking for them again. I have volunteered for a big challenge: HD-59, where Dr. Ben Moses is taking on the Republican incumbent. Trump won this district by 20-plus. Besides having to peel away Trump voters, there is a Libertarian who might siphon conservatives unhappy with the Trump brand. I am going to ask Moses to Zoom into one of our upcoming meetings to give a pitch. Don’t give him your rent money. This is to lay the foundation for the Democratic Party in an area it has been invisible for decades. He is on track to get enough for that.

We also discussed what 2020 California loss we would like to help win back. Naomi and I have become partial to CA-21, where we canvassed for TJ Cox. (Districts may get renumbered in the decennial reapportionment.) There is already a promising D candidate, Bryan Osorio, currently Mayor of Delāno. Not Deläno nor Deləno. Osorio is a child of Mexican immigrants and a first-generation college graduate: Berkeley 2018. Christy Smith doesn’t seem to know how to win her district, and Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy are in strong positions. Bruce and Babette Jackson think we should make a target of McCarthy anyway. Two Democrats are already in the race against him.

Judy Stacey explained that the bill to allow non-LEO sheriffs has been bottled up by Democrats. It was not a good Legislative session for progressives.

Bruce, sometimes known to phone-bank targets as Bruno, has his own post on democracy protection, Joe Manchin edition.

Ann Overton announced an EBAA garage sale to support the Movement Voter Project. The sale itself is not near Elmwood, but you can drop donations off with her on Friday, June 4. Email her first, because only specific items will be sold.

Non-political: Janice Weingrod has a show upcoming at the Moss Gallery, at 2980 College in Elmwood near the movie theatre. Hours are 12:00–4:00 pm, May 27 through June 19.

We discussed how we want Indivisible Elmwood to move forward. Everyone is happy to be meeting in person. Naomi and I would like some other people to host on occasion. This will give us a chance to grow by bringing in friends without asking them to go to strangers’ homes. There was support for this. We would like to be at 20 to 25 active members, realizing not all will attend meetings, but still be available for postcard and phone campaigns.

[EDIT: May 25, minutes are above] We haven’t seen each other in a long, long time. We are putting in-person Indivisible Elmwood back on the schedule, with an initial meeting for May 23, 4:00 pm at the usual safe house. Naomi and I are both fully-vaccinated (Pfizer). We expect all of you are, too. Yes, there will be chocolate brownies. And a lot to catch up on. RSVP.

“Isn’t this where we came in?”

Four years ago, we were getting the Virginia Democrats into within a coin-flip of state control. Now it is time to defend and extend.

I have volunteered, via Bluebonnet, to do data diving for Ben Moses, the Democratic candidate for the 59th House of Delegates [Assembly] district. He’s an M.D. and served as an Army doctor. Great bio. This district is in green on the map. No cities, and the only town you have heard of is Appomattox, where Robert E. Lee surrendered.

This is a tough district, the eleventh-most Trumpy out of one hundred. But the Republican incumbent has convictions for DUI, illegal hunting, and minor weapons violations. He is also a pathetic fundraiser who may have to be bailed out by the larger party, taking away contributions that could go elsewhere.

I don’t want to reveal the Moses campaign’s plans and inner workings, but it is a matter of public record that he has already raised more than the Democrat from last cycle, with six months to go. This is the first time the Democrat has serious professional organizing. I am considering hosting a fundraiser for him as an Indivisible Elmwood event. Who would be interested?

Of course, the candidates we have supported before, Alex Askew and Nancy Guy, also need funds for their re-election. However, Joe Biden carried their districts by about 10 points. They need to get identified Democrats who have voted before to go to the polls. Moses needs to turn out infrequent and new voters, which will be more expensive.

Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has introduced SB 271, the Sheriff Democracy and Diversity Act, to allow all registered voters to run for Sheriff — reverting back to the eligibility requirements in place from 1850 until 1989.

“Liberal” Alameda County has a particularly bad sheriff, a Republican friend of ICE, manager of notoriously abusive Santa Rita Jail, and promoter of militarized policing. A major reason is the 1988 requirement that restricted sheriff candidates to law enforcement officers in reaction to the 1980 election of reformist prison lawyer Michael Hennessy as Sheriff of San Francisco.

Indivisible Elmwood has nominated SB 271 to California State Strong for endorsement by the state Indivisible organization. The coalition supporting this bill now seeks endorsements and support letters from all possible organizations, professional associations, religious congregations, local governing bodies, institutions, etc. Please promote this bill widely. Contact Judith Stacey: judith.stacey@nyu.edu for additional information, to arrange a zoom, and/or to provide a support letter or endorsement. Thank you so much.

Weiner’s full press release.

Fact Sheet.

Sample support letter.

I doubt any of you are waiting for Indivisible Elmwood to make its declaration, but we have flipped both Senate seats in Georgia. Senator Raphael Warnock. Senator Jon Ossoff. Not entirely how I expected the Democrats to regain control of the Senate! Al Gross didn’t come close and the insipid Cal Cunningham made the always-fatal mistake of cheating on his mistress.

We sent a great deal of money, postcards, letters, texts, and phone calls to help make this happen. The margins are close. Every act helped. Sometimes you get the miracle.

Far better than the average article in Politico, Tim Alberta gives us the timeline of the ginned-up fraud claims in Michigan, stopped when one small-town conservative lawyer clearly said: No.

Sample

And when [Republican Senate candidate John James] says he’s troubled that half of Michigan’s voters feel they were cheated, he would do well to remember that he was the one telling them they got cheated in the first place.

Tim Alberta, The Inside Story of Michigan’s Fake Voter Fraud Scandal

About five minutes after I closed our Election Night Zoom fifty years ago (or so it feels), Atlanta reported its first results and the NY Times Georgia needle lurched from +1 Trump to +0.4 Biden. (The final result is +0.2 Biden.) My mood brightened, and by the time I went to sleep, early next morning, Wisconsin and Michigan had counted enough for Biden to have pulled even.

Nothing, however, saved our down ballot results. We lost all the toss-ups, and some we were expected to win. I can’t pretend to have definitive answers, but partial results follow, of which the most important, for Indivisible purposes, is the first.

We thought that more voter engagement and higher turnout were unequivocally positive signs.

And this is false. Turnout was the best in a century—but! We discovered there was still a huge reservoir of pro-Trump voters who had not voted in 2016. Biden lost Texas (not close) with more votes than Trump got there in 2016 (not close either). Trump got more votes than Obama ever did, and I believe in every state we flipped, Trump ran better in defeat than he had winning in 2016.

Democrats seem split about whether to get even more infrequent but pro-D voters to the polls (youth turnout was still only ~55%), trying to win over rural white Trump voters, or (my preference) discouraging rural white voters enough they revert to non-voting.

As someone who formerly believed this postulate, I don’t know what to say: I think it is important we try to increase political participation and have a better-informed citizenry, but about half of the increase is from citizens who are “informed” by Newsmax, Facebook, and other disinformation sewers.

To keep things in perspective, the reversal of the 2018 Wave leaves the situation we expected after the 2016 election.

That is, a moderate-sized Presidential Victory, a narrow House majority, and a very close Senate. Unfortunately, we have to hope this is enough to start undoing the damage of the Trump Regime.

We were partially a victim of our own polling leads

Late-in-cycle polls showed R down ballot candidates improving, apparently as Republicans against Trump decided Biden was going to win and they could cast their usual ballot, except for President.

Democratic messaging still needs work

Bruce is, of course, correct that Defund the Police is an idiotic slogan and a gift to the Republicans. Biden repudiated it, but it was still out there enough to be used in anti-D ads. What makes this doubly annoying is that a majority of the country thinks we have serious problems with policing as currently constituted. Better slogans on the same issue could have been used as positives.

The Cunningham and Gideon campaigns are coming in for special messaging criticism, too much of the old “Watch me work across the aisle” nonsense that hasn’t worked for Democrats since the dawn of time: see Donnelly (IN), MacGrady (NC-09 twice), etc. Of course, Cunningham made the same terrible error as Gary Hart: he cheated on his regular mistress, who then blabbed to the press.

Outreach to Spanish-speaking voters failed in Florida and especially Texas

Before jumping to the wrong conclusion, note that there was no similar failure in Arizona and Nevada. Beto O’Rourke has written on what he thinks went wrong. (Note that when AOC, Beto, and sacrificial lamb Doug Jones all make similar comments about party errors, they are probably on to something.) I’ve heard that our Spanish-language ads were late and few, which can not be blamed on lack of money: Democrats everywhere had plenty of money. Some of the problem was R willingness to ignore the coronavirus and do canvassing as usual in areas that need it. This may help us down the road by killing off more of their volunteers and supporters. In Florida, I’ve heard that the D are too associated with “socialism”, while on the other hand Bernie Sanders did better-than-average there, so, hmmm. Historians of race relations point out that one way groups like Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants might assimilate into the dominate, white American society is by joining in oppression of African Americans, following a path trod by German, Irish, and Italian immigrants generations back. Let’s see what we can learn looking at the results more closely. And, let’s clone Stacey Abrams and send her to Miami-Dade, the Rio Grande Valley, and North Carolina, because she will find any voters we can get but haven’t.

Grab some caffeine –time to get back to work!

Bill has 2000 postcard addresses. Email. Georgia address are as popular as Beanie Babies back in the day; ask soon or they will be sold out. We still have postcards on our porch if you need a refill. Let us know so we can replenish if needed.

Vote Forward opened a letter-writing campaign. Please note, if you go to that page, they have revised instructions for content.

There are a great many excellent organizations working in Georgia. Ossoff campaign. Warnock campaign. Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight. Abrams also has a 501(c)3 organization, Fair Count, for tax-deductible donations. Black Voters Matter is also, apparently, a 501(c)3.

Indivisible Elmwood was founded to get rid of Trump, and that mission has been accomplished. The national Indivisible organization was a great help posting their guide, not so much to work out a set of policies, but helping Democrats gather and fight. Indivisible Berkeley is disbanding, while Indivisible East Bay plans to continue organizing.

We will gather for a discussion about our future Sunday, November 22, 4:30–5:45. Zoom link.