Indivisibles,
Welcome to your monthly newsletter from us two -- Leah & Ezra, the
co-executive directors of Indivisible. The purpose of these monthly emails
is to give you a sense of what we’re seeing in the Indivisible movement,
and to get your thoughts to have a big conversation across the entire
Indivisible movement. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
BOOK. IS. PRINTING.
Yes! It’s done! We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump
is finally out to the printers and will be shipping to folks on November
5. We can’t wait for this to be in your hands!! We’re planning a book tour
around the country and will be sending out dates and locations very soon.
We’re not going to be able to go in person everywhere, but we’d love to
join your Indivisible group for a talk on the book virtually if you’re
planning to put something together. [ [link removed] ]If that’s of interest for your
Indivisible group, let us know here. We’ll also plan to do some virtual
book clubs events around the week of launch.
Just as a reminder: this book is for the movement — 100% of our proceeds
from the advance and book sales are going to Indivisible’s Save Democracy
Fund. We want this book to help recruit for the movement and make the push
for saving American democracy. We hope it’s helpful! [ [link removed] ]And as always, it
would be great if you could pre-order the book here to help us get it on
the New York Times best seller list. All the pre-orders count toward the
first week of sales, and it’s that first week that’s most important for
getting on the bestseller lists.
Follow up on last month’s question: what should saving democracy look like?
Thanks to the more than 1,500 of you who took the time to give us your
thoughts on the big democracy reform survey last month! This is heady
stuff, and frankly we were a little worried that it was too wonky and in
the weeds. But the feedback you shared was GREAT! And we found your
responses to the survey fascinating (and helpful!). You can click the
thumbnail image to expand it and see detail:
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In short, within the Indivisible movement, there’s lots of support for all
of these proposals, with the one exception of lowering the voting age to
16 and 17 year olds (which had a plurality but not majority support). The
quantitative data only tells some of the story -- you all submitted a ton
of great comments -- we hear you on the urgent need for campaign finance
reform, anti-gerrymandering, election security, and automatic voter
registration. We agree! All of this is in the For the People Act, which
the House passed earlier this year, and which Indivisible strongly
supports. And thank you too for the podcast and book recommendations!
We’re adding those to our list!
So what are we going to do with all this? Behind the scenes, we’re taking
these results to media, campaigns, and federal legislatures. We want them
to understand how much support there is in general for democracy reform
and we want them proposing their own ideas for rebuilding democracy after
Trump. We want presidential candidates to try to “out-democracy” each
other, and we want congressional leaders introducing new, popular,
pro-democracy legislation. As for public work, please stay tuned, we have
some big plans on the lead-up to the release of the book on November 5!
Last note on democracy: a couple months ago, we surveyed you all on a
related democracy issue -- eliminating the filibuster (about 70%
supported, 12% unsure, 8% no). Mitch McConnell has pledged to be the “Grim
Reaper” of progressive legislation, and he’s called democracy reforms a
“power grab” and “socialism”. Then, just last week [ [link removed] ]Mitch penned an
op-ed in the New York Times warning Democrats that they better not
eliminate the filibuster.
So if you wondered why we were asking you about the filibuster a few
months ago, it’s because we knew it was going to become a live issue! And
we’re not cowering in response to Mitch’s threats. Instead, Indivisible
put together a [ [link removed] ]campaign website to push to eliminate the filibuster.
Mitch wants a veto over everything Democrats want to get done in 2021, but
we’re not going to let him have it.
What we’re reading: The politics of resisting and defeating Trumpism
We’ve not had this section of the newsletter before, but we thought it’d
be fun to share some of the things we’re reading.
Most recently we’re reading [ [link removed] ]this interview with Rachel Bitecofer.
Bitecofer is an academic statistician whose political forecasting model
was among the most accurate in the business in 2018. And now she has a
message about how to win 2020. If we could sum it up, it’d go something
like this: when we fight, we win. She finds that Democrats don’t serve
themselves by playing gently with Trump. She argues they’ll do best in the
2020 by generating energy and turnout among their base. The interview is
well worth a read!
This lines up with another thing we’ve been reading -- [ [link removed] ]this new memo
from Data for Progress. Data for Progress took a dive into the argument
around “electability” by polling specifically in 42 swing districts across
the country. What they found was pretty surprising! They’re looking at
“net favorable” rating -- approval minus disapproval. In these districts,
Trump net favorable is lower than the three Democratic contenders they
tested -- Biden, Warren, and Harris. That’s great news! What they also
found: Warren had the highest net favorables, followed closely by Harris,
with Biden several points lower. This is a bit counter-intuitive, given
that Biden is often presented as “more electable” than Warren and Harris
(among others).
What these studies tell us is that there’s a compelling argument for
national leaders who want to beat Trump: fight back hard, generate energy,
and mobilize your base! This isn’t all just political theorizing --
there’s a way to put this into practice right now. In the next 30 days,
Congress is going to decide whether or not to fight back against Trump’s
funding request for his anti-immigrant agenda. Indivisible is holding a
national week of action once Congress gets back next month -- [ [link removed] ]you can
check out Indivisible’s Defund Hate week of action website here. We
believe standing with immigrant communities is the morally right thing to
do. What Bitecofer and Data for Progress point to is that it’s also the
way we ultimately defeat Trump.
Question for you this month to come: how are we doing?
We’ve been doing these monthly newsletters for about six months now. We
like writing them because they give us a chance to sit down and reflect,
speak directly to the movement, and gather ideas, concerns, and other
thoughts in a systematic way. We love the amount of engagement we get on
everything from wonky topics like the filibuster to mobilizing to build
support for impeachment ([ [link removed] ]hello Impeachment August!) to input on big,
game-changing democracy reforms.
Last month was big long survey, but we don’t want that to become standard
practice. We want to keep it easy for you to share your thoughts and
feedback. So this month, we’re keeping it simple. How are you liking these
newsletters? Are you getting something out of them? Are they too long (the
answer is yes -- sorry)? Are there things you wish we’d cover? How can we
make this conversation with the movement more engaging for you? [ [link removed] ]We
really welcome any and all feedback (including criticism!) here.
And with that, we end another another monthly Leah/Ezra newsletter. As
always, please feel free to follow up directly with us on Twitter -- we’re
reachable at [ [link removed] ]@Leahgreenb and [ [link removed] ]@ezralevin. Until next month!
In solidarity,
Leah & Ezra
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