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Indivisibles,
It’s here, our last monthly newsletter before Trump’s defeat! We choose those words carefully. It’s not blind optimism, or naive reliance on polls, or belief in the inevitability of our success. Victory has not always been assured. But we see the work you and fellow Indivisibles are doing around the country. We are going to win this. And we are going to remake our democracy.
We write these monthly emails to give you a sense of what we’re seeing from the national level, and to give you a chance to engage directly. As always, feel free to reach out directly at @ezralevin and @leahgreenb on Twitter. And if you read to the end of this newsletter, you’ll get a picture of our newborn baby Zeke -- three weeks old tomorrow and already ready for the post-Trump era.
We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for
A little less than 4 years ago, we tweeted out a link to our newly baked Indivisible Guide -- you can read the original thread here. With the Guide, we hoped to do one simple thing: explain how people power could work in that moment to stop Trump. At the time, we felt one thing very clearly: there would be no shining knight riding in to save the day. We could not count on Republicans to find their conscience. We could not count on Democrats to find their spines. We could count on one thing: us.
When we wrote the Indivisible Guide, we hoped only that it would be useful to a growing resistance to Trump's racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism. We were frankly surprised when the 23-page Google Doc went viral, and absolutely shocked when “Indivisible” groups started sprouting up around the country.
Nearly four years later, Indivisibles have built the kind of nationwide grassroots-driven powerhouse that we could only dream about after Trump’s election. You rallied against the Muslim ban. You defeated the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. You turned the Trump Tax Scam into a political liability for his entire party. You rallied with immigrant communities against family separation, the wall, and the attack on Dreamers. You built the single largest midterm margin in the history of the republic and flipped the House. You held Democrats’ feet to the fire to demand impeachment. You made Trump the 3rd impeached president in U.S. history. And now, as part of a powerful, surging progressive movement, you’re about to make him the first president to lose reelection in over a generation.
We did this together.
And now, with days to go, we are winning this election. Voters are turning out in historic numbers and are on track to choose Joe Biden by historic margins. Biden’s up by double digits in national polls, up in all the key battleground states, and even competitive in supposedly “Republican states” like Iowa, Texas, and Ohio. Democratic senators challenging pro-Trump incumbents are up in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, and Maine. That alone would flip the Senate, but they’re also competitive in Iowa, South Carolina, Alaska, Montana, and Texas, among others! And if that weren’t enough, the volunteer and fundraising energy on our side is objectively unprecedented. Indivisible is blasting through its GOTV voter contact goals, as are Democratic campaigns across the country.
Trump is a loser. His enablers are losers. We are winning.
Despite all that, are you overwhelmingly anxious right now? We are too.
If we’re so close to victory, why do we all feel so worried? Why can’t we sleep? Why are we biting our nails? Why are we furiously checking the polls? Why are we signing up for yet another phonebank shift at 2020.indivisible.org (had to sneak that in there)?
The reason we’re worrying is not because we’re unsure who’s going to be the choice of the people; we know that already. It’s because of two challenges: first, the electoral college, which systematically distorts our electoral results, and second, because we know that this year, we aren’t just going to have to vote -- we’re going to have to insist that the will of the people is respected. You can hardly turn on the news or read a newspaper without seeing Trump’s wild claims that he will contest the results or threats to the count from Republican legislators, Republican-dominated courts, and right-wing actors.
No serious person believes that Trump will win the most votes. Republicans are signaling loud and clear that they think their path to remaining in power is to subvert the vote, through legal or extralegal means. And that’s not an accident -- it’s part of their broader anti-democratic strategy. It’s the same strategy that led them to put Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court in the middle of an election, in defiance of every precedent. They know their agenda isn’t popular, so they try to stay in power by undemocratic means.
That’s the source of our anxiety -- and maybe yours too. But let’s be clear: the power is ours. We will vote in record numbers, and then we will demand that we count every vote, and come January, we will swear in a government that reflects the will of the people.
And once we do that, we need to ensure that we’re never in this position ever again. We need to make the structural reforms necessary to ensure that our right to vote is protected, that our courts are balanced, and that our voices count equally.
Here’s how we’re going to do that:
- Build a wave so big that it overcomes any wall. We are ahead right now. Our coalition will overcome the barriers they’ve tried to throw up. We can win in a landslide election by using our remaining days to get out the vote: 2020.indivisible.org.
- Demand every vote be counted. If Trump tries to challenge the results, we’re ready. Join one of the more than 450 events planned for after the election to ensure every vote is counted and that there is a peaceful transfer of power here: ProtectTheResults.com.
- Get ready to fix our democracy after we win. We cannot keep playing defense against GOP attacks on representative democracy. After Democrats win a trifecta, we must push them to pass structural reforms to our democracy. Eliminate the filibuster, admit D.C. as a state, reform the courts, get money out of politics, end gerrymandering, expand voting rights. When we win this election, we won’t have saved our democracy -- but we will have earned the opportunity to fix it.
There is so much about the Trump era that is chaotic and out of our control, but all of this is firmly within our control. We focus on the things we can change, and we’re going to change them. And we’re going to win.
What you told us about court reform
Speaking of what we can change, we sent our last monthly newsletter before McConnell steamrolled Amy Coney Barrett on the court. With the support of just about every single Republican senator, the Republicans appointed yet another ultra-conservative Justice to the court. Now 16 of the last 20 Supreme Court appointments have been made by Republicans. With Barrett’s appointment, there is a 6-3 reactionary conservative majority that is antagonistic toward abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and voting rights.
In our last newsletter, we asked you what you thought of court reform options. The results were stark. 80% of you told us that the Supreme Court would be important during a Biden presidency. 81% of you supported instituting term limits for justices, with only 6% opposed. 73% of you supported expanding the size of the court, with only 9% opposed. Keep in mind these responses came in even before McConnell packed the court with one more extremist.
Biden has maintained an openness to reforming the courts. Since we sent our survey out, he’s committed to appointing a bipartisan commission to study the issue and make recommendations. If we take the presidency, flip the Senate, and hold the House, we will have the opportunity to advocate for court reform next year. And you know what that means: we need to use these last few days to build that trifecta: 2020.indivisible.org.
Until next month
We can’t wait to write the next monthly newsletter with our attention fully focused on the post-Trump era. We’re going to get there, and we’re going to do it the way we’ve accomplished everything these past four years -- by standing Indivisible together. Good luck -- we will win.
In solidarity,
Ezra and Leah
Co-Founders and Co-Executive Directors, Indivisible
PS: You made it to the end, so we present to you our smiley new baby Zeke! Born three weeks out from election day, he will know the Trump era only from the history books. He’ll grow up in a world where democracy is on the rise and the future is full of possibility.
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