Our Politics Are Broken. Our People Are Not.

I’ll have more to say soon about the election and the future of reproductive rights in soon, but right now, we all need to take a deep breath. We will rise again, we will continue to fight, and we will win more battles in this long struggle. But for now, today, it’s okay to just breathe.

Just a few thoughts for today:

As always, the immediate response from the media and pundits was to claim that we focused too much on abortion rights during the campaign. They said there was too much talk about women’s bodies, rights, and lives. Sensitive male egos couldn’t handle the focus on uteruses. They also argued that ballot initiatives on abortion allowed white women to vote for abortion rights in their states while still supporting Trump nationally (none of the states with abortion ballot initiatives were swing states where Kamala Harris had a real chance of winning). It’s crucial that we reject this narrative. None of these claims are true. Why white women vote the way they do is complicated, but voting is not a private matter, despite what the post-it notes in bathroom stalls suggested. Here in New York, for example, these private voting booths

were replaced by these small carrels

It is not difficult to see what your neighbor is doing in this new set up, particularly if that neighbor is a tall person. Then you have to walk your ballot across a wide-open space, with a poll worker watching you as you insert it into the machine. Now, imagine if your controlling partner is standing next to you at the carrel, and a fellow church member is helping you feed the ballot into the machine.

A far more important issue is that the Democratic Party is fundamentally broken. The "Davos Dems," created in the 1990s, prioritized corporate interests over community. They outsourced organizing to data firms and parachuted in people during election time from outside the community to do work that local organizers had traditionally done. That model collided head-on with the era of Bowling Alone (I always come back to that book), which describes an increasingly atomized, lonely, and disconnected society.

Trump capitalized on this void, offering millions of people a sense of belonging. His "cult" is actually a church—a place where people who feel ignored or left behind find meaning and connection. They don’t need to bus in volunteers; they already know each other.

About ten years ago, I met the head of NYC’s SEIU. He lamented that younger, newer union members viewed it simply as an insurance company providing benefits, without any real sense of community or connection to other members or the union itself. I asked him what they were doing to build community, and the answer was sending emails. In other words, nothing. Couple the lack of community with the constant bombardment of transactional fundraising appeals and you have people feel more alone than ever.

After 2016, rather than rebuilding the party, we built a parallel infrastructure—Indivisible, Swing Left, and others—to organize and turn out the vote. But that’s not enough. We need to create a political party for the 21st century—one with deep local roots, full-time organizers who connect people to one another, take care of people, build real community and do politics together. The Democratic Party needs to shift from a transactional model to a relational one.

Okay, that's enough for today. Your repro rights to-do list has just one item on it and it is URGENT:

1. Get abortion medication NOW. The first thing they are likely to do is push the FDA to ban mifepristone. AidAccess is currently filling 10,000 requests a day for what’s called "advanced provision" of the pills—meaning getting them now and keeping them on hand in case you need them later. Plan C has more information on where to get the pills here: Plan C - Pills in Advance. Tell every woman you know who might become pregnant in the next two years to get their pills now.

Our politics are broken, our people are not.