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Every time we get near an Election Day, I hear the phrase: “This is the most important election of your life!” I have heard this for decades. Do you want to know the truth? It is. And it has been every single time I’ve heard it. Every two years, more divisive, troubling candidates are put forward, aimed at pushing our government further and further to the extremist right. Courts. Laws. State houses and state Supreme Courts that run out of control and against the wishes of the majority in their own state. How does this keep happening? Because too many progressives gamble that others will vote and things will just turn out right. Or, heck, if we hold the White House, can’t the worst be stopped and then it just doesn’t matter? In fact, there is an incredible amount of damage being done every day in state houses, state courts, through county prosecutors offices and local sheriffs. Yet every election, people vote in one race, maybe another, but they don’t go through the ballot and make sure that they have voted for the right candidates in all of the races needed to prevent a disaster to our democracy. It’s a gamble, and it has to stop.
Over the last few weeks, I have enjoyed speaking to statewide campaigns, local campaigns, and campaigns for the U.S. House and Senate. The common storyline boils down to this: When they speak to voters, new voters are coming out eager to vote for Democratic candidates because of the Dobbs decision, because of the Supreme Court, because of policies steeped in hatred, because of Jan. 6. New voters are telling candidates they are eager to get out there and vote, and they will stand up to the Republican candidates who are running.
This sounds like a great start. Except the fact that it is only the beginning of the race. On one hand, young Democratic voters and flip voters are saying now is the time to vote to preserve Democratic majorities, to vote out Republicans who are out of control. Yet with redistricting and a lack of focus on races that aren’t big and on the airwaves, smaller campaigns are having greater concerns that they will get lost in the mix.
Even large campaigns have the traditional concerns that Republicans, by and large, can be undecided now but the majority will “come home” and vote Republican, even if they vote Republican for a terrible candidate. Just because they cannot convince themselves to vote for a Democratic candidate.
Because of that, several campaigns that see their race as close but with a lot of undecideds are concerned that they need to do everything possible, right now, to ensure victory.
As a football fan, I can sympathize. If you ask me about something that can make me pull my hair out, it is a football team that goes into prevent defense too soon. I will sit and scream at my TV: “The sure thing a prevent defense does too early is protect an imperfect lead and prevent you from putting this game away!”
This is where things get dangerous for Democratic campaigns, Democratic voters, and for our democracy in general. In 2016, many felt as though Hillary Clinton “had this.” There were even preplanned celebrations because the data looked so, so good. For more than a month before the election, groups sent up some warnings, and the warnings largely centered around whether or not we were going into prevent defense mode too early; sitting on leads. Meanwhile, a consultant would say, “We should have done everything possible to not sit on a lead but to completely suffocate the oxygen out of the room.” In Kansas football, we call this “the mercy rule”: High school football teams that lead by more than 45 points at the end of the third quarter are declared the winner. So if you are leading comfortably—21 points, 28 points—you keep scoring. You do not stop. You keep scoring until the game is over or you force the game to end. Period.
Now, I want you to think about this election. At stake is a Republican Party that has put forward a toxic agenda, one that includes stripping away basic freedoms and calls for taking away freedoms that make collective bargaining a real possibility. Calling to end reproductive freedom. Asking to end your freedom to read books. A platform that removes the freedom to marry for many. A platform that means we have a patchwork nation of laws and rules. A platform that removes your freedom by denying you the right to prove your innocence—or even have your innocence matter—once you’ve been convicted.
The Democratic Party is in a fight for the soul of America right now, and it is a fight where we are the party on the side of freedom. Without those freedoms being protected, setbacks are coming. We’ve had candidates call to end the right of women to vote, which would result in the end of women’s right to have any sway in government. Republicans can see a platform of the future that takes rights away by saying that you simply don’t need them, including the right to have any vote count by setting up a court that rules to allow state governments to strip your vote of all meaning through tampering with the Electoral College.
So, is this the most important election in your lifetime? Yes. Was the last election? Yes. Without it, you would have another wild conservative appointee on the U.S. Supreme Court and even more judges, more laws that doom our environment.
We have focused too long on what the Democratic Party, or any party, can give our voters. President Joe Biden has been more successful in his first two years than could ever have been imagined. We are at a place in our history where even more important than anything our party can offer is what our party will make sure does not happen. The Democratic Party will stand up to prevent the loss of freedom. We will stand up for the freedom to read a book, to be educated without fear of being bullied or outed by your school. We stand for the freedom of knowing you will not face being kicked out of your home as a teenager and forced into foster care or homelessness because of the position of your family. We stand for the freedom of reproductive choice. The freedom of women to vote and participate in the government. The freedom to have a livable environment and laws that help protect us all.
The Republican Party is the anti-freedom party. They want all of those freedoms taken away from you. They want you afraid of what the government can do to you, prosecuting you for using your own freedoms, firing you for expression, threatening you into staying hidden.
We are the party of freedom. Repeat this because it is very, very important: We are the party of freedom. Right now. And it isn’t a simple election on the ballot this fall, it is an election for state houses, state Supreme Courts, state attorneys general, governors, senators, House members who will help determine how free our future will be. If you want to see how freedom can stall, give Republicans the House and Senate. If you want to see individuals directly lose their freedom, give them controls over state courts, governors, and attorneys general.
If you want to see people have their own rights trampled and find yourself unaware, elect out-of-control sheriffs and district or county prosecutors. These races go unchallenged the majority of the time, and it must end.
We are nearing the end of September. Whatever polling data you see in any race, treat it as interesting but not definitive. I don’t care if you believe your candidate has things locked up or if your candidate is lost already. You do everything you can to help every race on your ballot, every single one.
That is what freedom is: It is the freedom to express what we believe, all of us, in every race, by voting the full ballot. That’s what Republicans fear most: that more people will use their own freedom to vote, and they will use that freedom to vote against them.