I understand the assignment
For years now, as I’ve seen it, my job has largely consisted of two tasks. One has been to call out and correct the political media’s misleading narratives and failures, in order to educate the public accurately while pressuring the media to do better. The other task has been to convince all of you to get off the couch and get into the fight, with real world activism. Funny thing is, over the past month or two, those tasks have become somewhat obsolete.
The political media still isn’t doing its job as well as it should. But at least the media is no longer dishonestly playing Biden’s age while ignoring Trump’s similar age and far worse cognitive condition. At least the media is no longer flat out lying about what the polling averages are even saying, in an effort to convince us that Biden was hopelessly behind when the race was almost tied. Come to think of it, most of the media’s favorite lies were about Biden. But now the mainstream media outlets don’t dare lie about Kamala Harris because they know that mainstream audiences don’t want to hear it. And so now, suddenly, for the first time in the nine-plus years that I’ve been doing this, the media doesn’t need to be constantly checked in the way that the media usually needs to be checked.
And when it comes to real world activism, what I’m seeing right now is the stuff of dreams come true. I no longer have to beg or lecture anyone to get out there and phone bank or knock on doors. That’s now happening in spades. Most of you aren’t sitting there staring at your TV in fear about the outcome. You’re out there actively making a difference in the outcome.
So what’s my role in all of this supposed to be now? For the time being at least, the media doesn’t need to be called out and corrected on a constant basis. And you all certainly don’t need me to convince you to get off the couch and fight.
The truth is, ego aside, my role over these next few months is whatever circumstances need my role to be. Like the rest of you, I’m watching this rapidly evolving election and calculating how to make the biggest impact with my efforts. That means watching the media’s trends on any given day in order to see the ways that they might be trying to veer away from the truth, and preemptively try to steer them away from it. And more importantly, it means helping all of you highly motivated people to figure out precisely how to get the most of the work you’re willing to put in.
When you realize you’re winning, that’s when you want to figure out how to fine tune your efforts so that the win gets locked in and maximized. When it comes to which presidential swing states are truly going to be the most important, watch which states Kamala Harris and Tim Walz visit and use that as a guidepost. They have access to the kind of detailed internal polling that we don’t. If they’re focusing on this state and not that state, it means we should do the same.
And when it comes to the downticket races, keep in mind that the House will come down to the twenty-two most competitive races, and the Senate will come down to the seven (really four) most competitive races, and those races are probably not the same ones you’re going to hear about on TV. Remember, the media will focus on whichever races it thinks are best for ratings, and it’ll pretend those races are the closest, while ignoring the less “juicy” races that are in fact closer.
But really, this all comes down to all of us understanding the assignment. Feel the excitement, feel the joy, but use it as motivation to work harder and not an excuse to let up too soon. And if there’s some scary new thing in the media, use that as motivation to work harder as well. I’ve been saying for many years that elections always come down to people like you, and when I look around right now, I think you all get it. So let’s remember the assignment and go win this together 🙂
