'We’ll get to inaugurate our first Black woman President on MLK Day'
Join us tonight at 6 PM ET/ 9 PM ET to talk with Billy Wimsatt, the founder of the Movement Voter Project, which acts like a mutual fund to support local, trusted organizers who can turn out the “undecided about voting” voters who will push Harris/Walz and downballot Democrats over the finish line.
Before we get into why I’m so optimistic and grateful, let’s walk through how this race looks on the ground and where it will be decided.
The polls are closer right now than they were in 2016 or 2020. In both of those cases, Donald Trump outperformed his final poll numbers. There’s some reason to believe polling has gotten better. I also think that Dobbs changed the electorate in ways that men, in particular, aren’t particularly interested in finding. However, my interview with Jessica Calarco, who does a lot of research with younger parents, left me slightly pessimistic about my “Hidden Dobbs Backlash” theory that I’ve had for more than two years.
Regardless, this election is within what Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Dems, calls the Margin of Effort. And that effort will show up, or not, on the ground.
I say “or not” because if you read Greg Sargent religiously (which is really the only way to read or listen to Greg because his work is that important), you’ll know that Democratic activists who know how the ground works best are worried:
…some Democrats are now second-guessing some of the moves made by the most powerful pro-Harris Super PAC, Future Forward. Last year, the group secured the blessing of President Biden and his senior advisers, making it the top repository for big contributions from the party’s wealthiest donors. The PAC—which has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars—is a highly influential actor in setting national messaging against Trump, and in determining how an immense pool of party resources will be distributed to broadcast it.
But there is rising urgency about Future Forward’s strategy in the closing days of the race, according to numerous Democrats from other party-aligned organizations. They fear the PAC has still done too little to reach low-engagement nonwhite voters, both by failing to put enough resources into targeted digital advertising—as opposed to traditional TV and broadly focused digital ads—and by being slow to share resources with groups experienced in mobilizing these voters.
There is still time to fix this problem, many of these Democrats say, and the PAC’s resource sharing has improved in recent days. But time is running out.
You can read this as a story about professionals whose job is to raise and spend money jockeying for more money, which is what they’re supposed to do.
But Billy Wimsatt of the Movement Voter Project, which has touch points with hundreds of local organizers in all the states that matter most, is worried about what they’re seeing on the ground:
Under the circumstances, our partners are doing a remarkable job. Thanks to our collective support, they are running the largest ground game in history. But the other side is running a much stronger campaign and ground game than last time too. It will be a war of inches.
I hope that I’ve made two things clear this year to anyone following me: 1) no matter how high Trump’s legal bills may go, Republicans will never want for money anywhere where victory is possible (especially when trillions in tax breaks for the richest are on the line) and 2) the right starts with a ground game that just doesn’t exist on the left, and that’s ever-present ground game of megachurches, gun clubs, bars where Fox is on 24/7…
The advantage we have on the left is that our passion is genuine, built out of human desire to improve our children's and neighbors' lives. The right, meanwhile, relies on transmogrifying the anxiety about a perceived loss of white male domination into unchecked support for policies that only aid the richest and most indifferent among us. That works! But it’s like a coal-fed locomotive that must be constantly stoked with manufactured hatred and cash.
In contrast, we can do a little with a lot, especially when we invest in the right things.
“TV and digital are necessary but there are diminishing returns on investment,” Wimsatt wrote. “What makes a concrete, outsized difference is deep, local, relational organizing of exactly the kind MVP supports.”
While you think the Harris campaign and its aligned Super PACs would cover the big gaps in the grassroots ground game we’re seeing, that has not happened yet—and may not. And even the billion dollars Harris/Walz has amassed is nothing compared to the $44 billion Elon Musk amassed to buy Twitter and turn it into a GOP Super PAC.
That’s why we focus on raising money and attention for the ground game. It’s a perfect pairing with the downballot focus we have had all year, as we’ve obsessed, especially on flipping Arizona and defending the Democratic trifecta in Michigan.
The ground game and downballot races matter for a simple reason—that’s where our money and effort matter most. Big funders can decide whether to throw millions more to contest Senate races in Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, or Texas. And that matters a lot. But the trifecta we won in Michigan, which has given school kids free breakfast and lunch, launched a clean energy bonanza and expanded my daughter’s reproductive rights, was won by a swing of just 340 votes.Control of the statehouses in Arizona and Michigan will come down to thousands, if not hundreds, of votes. We can make the most difference there, especially if we fund both the candidates and the ground game.
We’ve just passed over $100,000 in the earlyworm fundraisers we’ve set up to flip Arizona, keep Michigan, and fund local organizing through MVP. That’s stunning to me, given I didn’t have the guts to ask anyone to fund anything just seven months ago. Now, thanks to everyone who has given, I can say that we have at least doubled the contribution of my salary to the cause of keeping America a multiracial democracy or something that resembles it. I cannot imagine having done anything else with 2024; I only wish I had the capability and capacity to do more and to do it effectively.
But I’m eternally grateful for anyone who aided this effort to make a little difference when it matters most. I hope I’ve provided some insight, and I’m thrilled that Ball of Thread, which has taken up a lot of my time (and is now a top 2% podcast!), exists because I genuinely believe Marcy Wheeler’s work is the only way to understand how we’ve gotten so close to fascism with some hope we can pull out.
When I hired myself to work full-time for Democracy in February, I dreamt I’d find some way to make my thing–my particular blend of clowning, analyzing, and obsessiveness on how politics works to make change happen–a full-time job. I have not figured that out. So, as soon as the last votes are counted, I’ll try to head back into the marketing mines to find some use for my skills that a chatbot hasn’t yet replaced.
But for now, I will stay focused on the only thing that matters–winning everywhere we can. Speaking to Billy Wimsatt of MVP tonight is a high point in the most satisfying year of my life.
I first encountered Billy’s work in the mid-90s when a great friend gave me a copy of BOMB THE SUBURBS: Graffiti, Race, Freight-Hopping and the Search for Hip-Hop's Moral Center. It remains among my favorite bound things.
The variety of the contents insides, which includes “stories, cartoons, interviews, disses, parodies, and original research,” was so idiosyncratic yet precise in its search for purpose. It gained notoriety from Tupac Shakur, who said it was the best book he’d read in prison. More than anything I came across in my youth, it connected the hip-hop music and culture I loved with a sense that trying to make change in any way you can is a responsibility–even for a dowdy dork like me from the northernmost corner of the San Fernando Valley.
That was the thought I took into what resembled my adulthood.
Nearly thirty years later, as the Movement Voter Project's founder and executive director, Billy Wimsatt still inspires me with what we should and could be doing. And if we all hear that call, there’s no way we can lose.
“We’ll be dancing in the streets!” as Billy wrote. “As a poetic touch: We’ll get to inaugurate our first Black woman President on MLK Day.”
So tonight, we’ll talk about that. Let me know what you want to know.
