We won big last night. Don’t let them steal our momentum this time.
Last night a Democrat won a mild upset in the key bellwether city of Jacksonville, Florida (so much for the Democratic Party of Florida being dead), while a Democratic-aligned Independent candidate won a major upset in the Republican stronghold of Colorado Springs. On top of that, the Democrats took care of business in Pennsylvania by winning the potentially competitive special election they needed to win in order to keep the Pennsylvania state house majority.
It all adds up to a lot of winning momentum for the Democratic Party and its supporters going forward. Once you have proof in hand that you can win these kinds of elections, it motivates your side’s supporters to want to put in even more work on the new round of competitive elections. It reminds me of when we won the Pat Ryan special election in August of last year – but not in a good way.
We worked hard and won that Pat Ryan special election, proving we could win the close toss up races by putting in the work, and making clear that the House majority was there for the taking in November. But then the entire media (on both sides) decided to go with a “red wave” narrative for ratings, and it demotivated a whole lot of people on our side. It then became more difficult to convince folks to put in the work on the competitive House races. There was more of a sentiment of “Why? We’re going to lose anyway.” And sure enough, we did lose the House – by a grand total of just 3,300 votes across the five closest races.
If we’d stuck with the momentous feeling we had coming out of the Pat Ryan special election, if we’d have ignored the media, if we’d all kept putting in the work on the competitive House races instead of pouting, the Democrats would control the House right now instead of Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Democrats didn’t fail last November. We failed. The media lied to us about how we were going to get blown out, too many of us fell for it, not enough of us put in the work down the stretch, and as a result we left a number of winnable races on the table.
Now here we are again today, with proof anew that the Democratic Party knows what it’s doing with elections, that voters are more sick of the Republican Party than ever, and that competitive races are winnable if we make just a little bit of effort to put them over the top. The question is what we do with it this time. We have a year and a half until the November 2024 elections. Last time around, the media was able to con us into giving up on our winning momentum in just three months.
But we have to find a way to do it differently this time. We have to take last night’s winning momentum and hang onto it. We have to treat it as precious. We have to remember how real it is. And if we’re looking for motivation, we have to remember just how dishonestly, obsessively, egregiously, and harmfully the entire media lied to us heading into the 2022 elections. We have to remember that our “friends” at MSNBC were lying to us about the midterms just as horribly as our “enemies” at Fox News were lying to us about the midterms. These people all have the job of breaking us down until we’re no longer capable of doing anything but staring helplessly at our screen. They’re all our enemies, when they lie to us.
And they will lie to us again. No cable news talking head ever convinced you to spend more time staring at your screen by showing you a path to victory. And their job is to get you to stare at your screen. That goes for Twitter and Facebook pundits as well. These people aren’t on your “side” any more than a used car salesman who happens to like the same kinds of cars as you.
Last night was proof that the Democrats can win every election where the demographics allow for a close race to begin with, if we roll up our sleeves just a little bit and get involved in those races. Nonpartisan experts have identified twenty-two House races that are likely to be competitive toss ups in 2024. We have to help the Democrats win sixteen of them in order to take the majority. Can we do that? Absolutely. Last night was a reminder that we excel at winning those kinds of toss up races when we focus on them. We just can’t allow anyone else to make us forget that we are in fact in a position to win big if we keep at it.
