Here’s a fun fact for your Friday: although the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, it wasn’t actually signed until exactly 248 years ago today, August 2.
But we typically don’t celebrate this day. It is relegated to the realm of “hey, here’s a fun fact”. (And don’t get me wrong—if I’ve been emailing you for any length of time, you know that I love a fun fact.)
Because at the end of the day, what people celebrate—what they remember—isn’t the formalities. It’s not crossing t’s and dotting i’s. It’s action.
Politics has changed a lot over the last 248 years, but some things remain the same. People remember action.
Voters won’t remember the minutiae of the parties’ policy proposals or every line of our candidates’ stump speeches. But they’ll remember who showed up in their communities and actually listened to their concerns. They’ll remember who delivered on policy that made their lives better—and who delivered on policy that made it worse. They’ll remember who gave a damn and took action.
For a long time, the Democratic Party hasn’t shown up the way it needs to, and we’ve paid for it at the ballot box. We haven’t been present in communities, we haven’t listened, and when we held power, we didn’t do enough.
But now we have an opportunity to change all that. That’s why from day one, it’s been our mission on this campaign to run a true one-hundred county race and to get out into places like Murphy, Marshall, Lumberton, Bolivia, Laurinburg. Members of my own party have told me that those voters are gone forever and that I’m foolish to even try, but I reject that defeatism.
I’m showing up, I’m listening, I’m spreading the message that Democrats are the party that will bring opportunity back to our communities, and when I’m elected Treasurer, I’ll use my office to deliver real change for taxpayers.
It’s time to be bold, to be loud about our values, and to spread our message from the Appalachian peaks to the Atlantic waves. But I can’t do it without your support. John, the success of this strategy depends on having the resources to truly compete—so if you believe that truly showing up everywhere is how our party starts to win again, can I count on you to support my campaign with a contribution today? Any amount will help.
