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      Progressives are a minority in America. To win, they need to compromise | Michael Lind

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      “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined,” lamented King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose costly triumph in 279 BC inspired the phrase “Pyrrhic victory”. In 2020, the Democratic party learned what King Pyrrhus was talking about. They recaptured the White House and narrowly held on to the House of Representatives. And if the Democrats win both Senate runoffs in Georgia, they may yet capture the Senate. But Republicans increased their share of the House, making it easier for them to recapture it in 2022, and they control a majority of state legislatures whose redistricting plans for the US Congress can help the Republican party.Perhaps the greatest blow has been to the progressive interpretation of American politics. Most progressives have understood Trumpism as the last gasp of a dwindling, reactionary white male population. The future of the Democrats, it was said, lay with women and minorities. And yet in 2020 white men shifted more toward Biden than white women did. Black and brown Americans still voted mostly for Democrats, but there were significant shifts toward the Republicans among black and Hispanic voters and all of the Republicans who took contested seats from the Democrats were minority group members or women.What a winning coalition would look like depends on which issues unite the progressives and non-progressivesThe mystery is not why the progressive wave that was supposed to establish a new era of progressive politics did not materialize. The mystery is why anybody believed that there would be a progressive wave. After all, progressives – defined as voters who are both socially and economically liberal – are a minority of the American electorate. According to Gallup in July 2020, only 26% of Americans identify themselves as liberal, compared with conservative (34%) or moderate (40%).Not only are progressives a minority of American voters, they are also a minority of Democratic voters. According to Pew, in 2020 only 47% of Democrats described themselves as “liberal” or “very liberal”. The majority of Democrats are “moderate” (45%) or “conservative” (14%).Voters of color are mostly Democratic, but that does not mean they are leftwing, as black support for Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary proved. Only 28% of black Americans and 30% of Hispanic Americans identify themselves as liberal. In our two-party system, consistent progressives can be part of an electoral majority only if at least half of their Democratic coalition is less progressive. What a winning coalition would look like depends on which issues unite the progressives and non-progressives. There are only two choices. The Democrats can be an economically liberal party, with socially liberal and socially conservative wings, or they can be a socially liberal party, with economically liberal and economically conservative wings.The New Deal/Great Society coalition that transformed the US in the mid-20th century, between the presidencies of Franklin D Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, was an example of the first kind of coalition. Most New Deal/Great Society Democrats supported economic programs that made life better for the working-class majority, from social security in the 1930s and Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s to the minimum wage and pro-labor laws.But even outside of the Democratic south, an anomalous region with an apartheid society and a backward economy, the Democratic party was not a socially liberal party. Northern trade union members were often Catholic, with traditional views of sex and marriage. The midwestern agrarian wing of the New Deal often combined populist support for farm families with religious fundamentalism, while northern progressive Democrats tended to be influenced by Social Gospel Protestantism. Asked about his political philosophy, Franklin Roosevelt responded: “I am a Christian and a Democrat.”Today’s Democratic party is the opposite of the New Deal coalition. In the past generation, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have transformed the Democrats into a socially liberal party, with economically liberal and economically conservative wings. Catholic and Protestant opponents of abortion have been made unwelcome in the party, and more recently Democrats have made support for gay marriage and gender fluidity litmus tests. But white, affluent college-educated Democrats tend to be less religious and more socially liberal than African American and Hispanic Democrats, giving Republicans the opportunity to pry away some Democratic voters of color with appeals to their values.Making social liberalism a litmus test has allowed the Democrats to pick up some moderate Republicans and libertarians who are alienated by the Republican religious right. Biden won in part because most voters who supported the Libertarian party in 2016 appear to have voted for the Democratic presidential ticket in 2020. But attracting small-government free marketeers to the Democrats comes with a price. Republicans and libertarians who convert to the Democratic party tend to combine their liberalism on social issues like contraception, abortion and gay rights with hostility to higher taxes and more government spending. These converts reinforce the neoliberal wing of the Democratic party at the expense of the progressive wing.The Clinton-Biden strategy of attracting more affluent white voters to the Democrats by stressing social liberalism rather than economic liberalism has already converted the party into something FDR and LBJ would not recognize. Of the 100 counties with the highest median incomes in the presidential election of 1980, the Democrats won only nine, with 91 going to the Republicans. In 2020, Biden won 57 to 43 for Trump. In 2018, the Democrats won back the House of Representatives by winning all 10 of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts, and 41 of 50 of the wealthiest.These affluent voters prefer Democratic policies on abortion, gay rights and climate change – but only as long as they do not have to pay higher taxes. Back in 2015, Hillary Clinton promised that, if she were elected president, there would be no tax increases on households making less than $250,000. Biden went further this year, promising that taxes would not go up on households that make less than $400,000 a year.Because it is impossible to fund the Nordic-style welfare state of which American progressives dream without raising taxes on the merely affluent as well as the super-rich, the Democratic party’s pandering to the affluent on taxes means that there will not be a Green New Deal, a major expansion of social insurance and social programs, or massive public investment in infrastructure. To appease the Democratic party’s new high-income voters and donors, the last two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, abandoned their ambitious spending plans once elected and pivoted toward austerity and deficit reduction. It remains to be seen whether Biden will do the same.Progressive Democrats have a choice. They can continue to be junior partners in a whiter and more gentrified Democratic party that nods toward racial justice and environmentalism and sexual freedom, but says no to a new New Deal. Or they can try to rebuild something like the New Deal coalition and win back sociallymoderate and conservative voters – some of them voters of color – who favor expanding social security and a higher minimum wage, but oppose affirmative action and abortion and decriminalizing illegal immigration. In either case, progressives must accept that they are only a quarter of the US population and cannot hope to win or exercise power without teaming up with people who reject many progressive views. More

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      From A Very Stable Genius to After Trump: 2020 in US politics books

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      A long time ago, in 1883, a future president (Woodrow Wilson, a subject of this year’s reckonings) studied political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in a classroom in which was inscribed the slogan “History is Past Politics, Politics is Present History”, attributed to Sir John Seeley, a Cambridge professor.That was before the era of the made-for-campaign book.Politics books in this election year fell into three broad categories. The ordinary, ranging from “meeting-and-tells” to campaign biographies that outlived their relevance. The interesting, those which made tentative starts at history or contained some important revelations. And the significant, those few whose value should live past this year because they actually changed the narrative – or are simply good or important reads.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the books also fell in descending categories numerically. Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post read 150 books on Donald Trump and the Trump era for his own book, What Were We Thinking. Virtually all readers, however, will be content with simply a “non-zero” number, to quote a Trump campaign lawyer.First, the ephemera and the expected offerings of any election year. Scandals in and out of government; tales of the extended Trump family; attempts at self-justification; books, some entertaining, by correspondents; how-to guides to politics meant to be read and applied before November.The permutations and penumbras of the 2016 campaign continued to produce new books: Peter Strozk’s Compromised is the story of the origin of the investigation into the Trump campaign from one FBI agent’s perspective, strong stuff and persuasive though omitting facts inconvenient to him. Rick Gates’ Wicked Game contains some new inside scoop, but the real stuff presumably went to the Mueller investigation of which Strzok was briefly a part. Donald Trump Jr’s Liberal Privilege had a double mission: to encourage votes for the father in 2020 and perhaps for the son in 2024. American Crisis, New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s early book on the coronavirus outbreak, highlighted his programmatic vision rather than soaring prose, a choice appropriate for the year but quickly forgotten as the pandemic rages on.Second come those books that made one sit up a bit to pay attention: a new insight, important facts revealed; “worth a detour”, in the language of the Michelin guides. Psychologist and presidential niece Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough explained the pain of the Trump family over two generations and how that pain has influenced our national life for ill. David Frum was among the first to predict Trump’s authoritarian dangers. This year, Trumpocalpyse, well-written and insightful as always, focused on the attacks on the rule of law and “white ethnic chauvinism” as hallmarks of Trumpism, whether its supporters are poor or elite. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Pulitzer-winning Post reporters, chronicled Trump more deeply and successfully than most in A Very Stable Genius. Trump’s anger at the book showed they hit their target.Stuart Stevens’ It Was All a Lie takes Republican history back a few decades in a punchy mea culpa whose themes will be important in the debate over the future of the GOP. Among the Democrats, a rare good work by a politician, Stacey Abrams’ Our Time Is Now, as well as her triumph in political organizing in Georgia, marks her as an important force.For quality in financial journalism and the importance of its topic, not least to current and future investigations of Trump and the Trump Organization, Dark Towers by David Enrich on Deutsche Bank offers as full an analysis of the bank and its relation to Trump as is likely to be public absent a further court case in New York.Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor with the Mueller investigation, wrote Where Law Ends, a strongly-written account in which he regrets his boss not having pursued further, notably in not issuing a subpoena to Trump and then in not making a formal determination as to whether the president would be charged with obstruction of justice. Weissmann’s frustration is understandable, but readers may judge for themselves how fair or not he is to the pressures and formal restrictions on Mueller himself.There is a subcategory here, of books on foreign and security policy. HR McMaster’s Battlegrounds attempts to explain his working theories (“strategic empathy”) modified for current realities and arguing against American retrenchment and isolation. In The Room Where It Happened, former national security adviser John Bolton told of Trump begging for China’s assistance and wrote that Trump was not “fit for office” – the tale would have been better told to the House impeachment committee. David Rohde’s In Deep demolished the theory of the “deep state”. Barry Gewen delivered a new biography of Henry Kissinger’s life and work. Traitor, by David Rothkopf, sought to chronicle the Trump administration while seeking to reverse its effects and giving a history of American traitors.Finally, the significant – those few books that contributed importantly to the year’s narrative, or that deserve a reading next year.There was another Bob Woodward book, Rage – with tapes. The big news was that Trump was aware of the dangers of Covid-19 yet chose not to publicize them and that Dan Coats, then director of national intelligence, thought Putin had something on Trump. Woodward got the stories others chased. Michael Schmidt’s Donald Trump v the United States is another serious book, with a strong argument of how deeply the attacks on the rule of law by the Trump administration, notably by Trump himself, threaten democracy. Schmidt’s recounting of efforts to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey are sobering, and his revelations on how the Mueller investigation was narrowed to focus on criminality rather than Russian influence in 2016 form a useful corrective to Weissmann.Politics meets history in a few volumes, notably Thomas Frank’s plea against populism, The People, No, contrasting Trump unfavorably with FDR. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser teamed for a masterpiece biography of former secretary of state James Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington, that reminds us what (and whom) the Republican party used to call leadership. It’s a serious book that recalls Baker, Gerald Ford’s campaign manager in 1976, did not challenge the election result because Ford lost the popular vote. It also shows the truth in Seeley’s aphorism about the relation of politics and history, with many insights into one of the best recent practitioners of politics, fondly remembered for his statesmanship at the end of the cold war.Molly Ball’s well-researched and enjoyable biography of Nancy Pelosi makes sense of the most powerful woman in American history. Thomas Rid’s Active Measures, on disinformation and political warfare – Clausewitz for the cyber era – finds fresh urgency in light of recent revelations about major cyberattacks on the US government.Two books merit a final mention. As the Trump administration comes to a close, Ruth Ben-Ghiat analysed Trump’s actions and personality from the comparative perspective of fascist leaders since Mussolini and chillingly noted not only the actions that pointed to authoritarianism, but how deep the danger of going down that path.Strongmen is a vital book and a warning. Ben-Ghiat sees in Trump a “drive to control and exploit everyone and everything for personal gain. The men, women and children he governs have value in his eyes only insofar as they fight his enemies and adulate him publicly. Propaganda lets him monopolize the nation’s attention, and virility comes into play as he poses as the ideal take-charge man.” Dehumanizing rhetoric and actions against immigrants (and even members of Congress) and appointments of people whose motivation was loyalty rather than law has real cost to a political system whose fragility at points is evident. It takes both individual action and courageous will to preserve democracy.On a happier note, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith in After Trump offer a legal, sometimes quite technical roadmap to reform of many norms of government that have been eroded. Some are obvious, others will prove controversial, but let this urgent discussion begin with Congress and the Biden administration.Of which, this year also saw the publication of A Promised Land, the first volume of memoirs from Barack Obama, whom the new president served as vice-president. Well-written despite being policy heavy, at times deeply moving, at others not as detailed as many readers might wish (despite its length), Obama is reflective both about the nature of power and about himself. More, his book serves once again to remind the world of the contrast between him and his successor. He is rightly proud to have written it – and to have written it by hand, to encourage his own deep thoughts about his presidency and the country he was honored, and sometimes troubled, to lead.To learn more about the president to come, Evan Osnos’ Joe Biden: American Dreamer is an excellent place to start: his political skills, life tragedies and conviviality are here in equal measure. Osnos ends with a Biden speech about dispelling America’s “season of darkness” – a fervent hope for the new year ahead. More

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      To keep the Democratic coalition together, Biden will have to be the Great Balancer | Geoffrey Kabaservice

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      It may just be a function of the circles I travel in, but very few people I know are happy with the election results. Republicans are unhappy that Donald Trump has lost his reelection battle with Joe Biden and will become a one-term president. Democrats are unhappy that the predicted blue wave did not materialize, which means that Republicans will likely maintain control of the Senate and Mitch McConnell can thwart any ambitious Democratic legislation. And my Never-Trump friends are unhappy that the outcome did not deliver the complete repudiation of Trumpism, and the subsequent reformation of a chastened Republican party, that they had hoped for.Like many people, I am guilty of having placed too much trust in the pollsters. But I really didn’t think a progressive tsunami was about to crash over the national landscape. The last time there was a genuine Democratic wave election, in 2008, its enabling condition was deep Republican demoralization over the George W Bush administration’s economic and foreign policy failures. Trump’s supporters, by contrast, are more fired-up than ever, despite his administration’s inability to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic and its accompanying economic dislocations.One lesson to be drawn from this election is that US politics nowadays is more about tribal, identity-based divisions than policy disagreements. But it’s hard to know what other definitive lessons to draw, because in a narrowly decided election all explanations are plausible.My own belief, for what it’s worth, is that Trump would have won re-election handily if not for the pandemic and his botched response to it. He had the advantages of incumbency that helped his three presidential predecessors win second terms. His base considers him infallible and enough voters outside his base were sufficiently satisfied with the pre-coronavirus economy that they tolerated all the ways in which he was unfit for the presidency. But character is destiny, and the same qualities that allowed Trump to win the presidency – his rejection of advice and experts, his unerring preference for personal advantage over the national good – ensured that he would lose it through his mishandling of the pandemic.And while the Democrats clearly are the majoritarian party, now that they have won the popular vote for an unprecedented seven of the past eight presidential elections, the country on some basic level continues to reject progressivism.I don’t for a second buy the leftwing argument that if Senator Bernie Sanders had been the Democratic nominee, he would have won a smashing victory against Trump and swept in a Senate majority. Given the Senate results and the fact that nearly half of the electorate voted for Trump, I find it hard to credit the argument that the country as a whole yearned for the kind of radical change that didn’t even command a majority in the Democratic party.It’s true that the Republicans’ entire election strategy was based on the expectation that Trump would run against Sanders. When that didn’t happen, they had to fall back on the charge that Biden, despite his decades-long reputation as a centrist, was somehow the puppet of those who would impose terrifying socialist tyranny upon the land.The implausibility of this claim allowed Biden to flip the Midwestern states that had decided the election in 2016, mobilizing more Black voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 while peeling away just enough working-class whites and conservative suburbanites to win narrow majorities. Sanders, who didn’t win a single primary victory in the Midwest, could not have built such a coalition.One lesson to be drawn from this election is that US politics nowadays is more about tribal, identity-based divisions than policy disagreementsThe more economically populist and libertarian-ish aspects of progressivism have considerable electoral appeal, as was evident in the states (including some red states) that passed ballot measures liberalizing drug laws and, in Florida, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. But in California, perhaps the leading progressive state, voters rejected initiatives to reinstate affirmative action, impose rent controls, and classify rideshare and delivery workers as employees.But while Republicans’ dire warnings of an impending socialist dystopia didn’t work against Biden, this line of attack succeeded in allowing them to retake many of the House seats the Democrats flipped in 2018. Republicans tied these most moderate and vulnerable Democrats to far-left ideas such as the Green New Deal, free college, Medicare for All, and defunding the police. Angry centrist Democrats blamed their progressive colleagues, during a private post-election conference call, for costing the party critical seats and reducing the Democrats’ House majority to a thread. The Washington Post reported that moderate representative Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat from Virginia, heatedly insisted that “we need to not ever use the word ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again”, or else “we will get fucking torn apart in 2022”.The claim that the Democratic party has become a Trojan Horse for socialism also seems to have resounded with large numbers of Hispanics, particularly in states such as Florida and Texas where the Biden campaign performed much worse with these voters than Clinton did in 2016. Republican ads warning that Democrats would turn America into a socialist country may have succeeded in scaring Hispanics whose families fled dictators such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.More generally, it’s becoming clear that while most minorities vote Democratic, many don’t share white progressives’ views on issues like the need to cut police spending, the desirability of open immigration, and the nature of systemic racism. The writer Matthew Yglesias notes that progressives’ preferred term to refer to people of Latino origin – Latinx – is used by only 3% of US Hispanics, and that this divergence is symptomatic of white progressives’ “tendency to privilege academic concepts and linguistic innovations in addressing social justice concerns.” White progressive researchers also are shocked to find that minorities often support Trump’s racist rhetoric or policies – particularly when directed against other minority groups whom they also dislike.Then again, there are a host of other reasons why at least some fraction of Hispanics and other minorities may be breaking away from the Democratic coalition. These could include the appeal of Trump’s brand of swaggering masculinity, immigrants’ attraction to conservative ideas of individualism and upward mobility, and the growing tendency of non-college-educated minorities to see the world in similar terms as Trump’s base of non-college-educated whites. Or it could mainly be that, under the unique circumstances of this pandemic-year election, Republicans did a better job of engaging with minority voters, while the Democrats’ choice to suspend door-to-door canvassing, rallies, and other in-person means of voter mobilization was a critical error.A Biden presidency is likely to operate under both the external constraint of the Republican Senate majority and the internal constraint of the need to balance between its moderate and progressive wings. While this all but rules out big, ambitious reforms, it is possible that a Biden administration might succeed in passing more pragmatic measures like an economic stimulus, increased state aid for Covid-19 relief, and incremental criminal justice reforms. It’s even possible that there may be bipartisan action to combat climate change; two-thirds of Americans think the federal government should do more on climate, with particularly high levels of concern among coastal residents. But will progressives revolt against what they will see as too little, too late?If the Democratic party succeeds in realigning the college-educated, suburban middle class away from the Republican party while still holding onto its minority supporters and at least some fraction of the white working class, we might finally enter the long-predicted era of Democratic dominance. But the 2020 election showed that these constituencies, as well as the party’s moderate and progressive factions, have interests and priorities that are in high tension with each other. If a President Biden can keep the party together, history may remember him as the Great Balancer.Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: the Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party More

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      The Georgia runoff: an historic battle for control of the US Senate

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      Reporter Khushbu Shah discusses the runoff in Georgia. Republicans have 50 seats in the Senate and the Democrats 48, so much hangs on the outcome of the 5 January electionOn 5 January, control over the US Senate will be decided by Georgia’s runoff, where the Republicans Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue face the Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff respectively in two races. With the Republicans holding 50 seats and the Democrats 48, the results will play a key role in Joe Biden’s ability to legislate and govern during his time as president. Donald Trump lost the state of Georgia, which had previously been a longtime Republican stronghold, but polls indicate a tight contest in both Senate races.Khushbu Shah, editor in chief of the Fuller Project, talks to Mythili Rao about the runoff and what the candidates are offering. Huge amounts of money have gone into this election, with billionaire Republicans on Wall Street opening their wallets to try to protect Perdue and Loeffler’s seats. Khushbu also discusses Georgia’s long history of voter suppression and the impact it could have this time. Continue reading… More

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      As Biden won the presidency, Republicans cemented their grip on power for the next decade

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      Democrats lost big in state elections which could cost them when new political maps are drawnWhile the world focused on the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in November, some of the most consequential contests were in state legislative races between candidates many have never heard of.State lawmakers have the authority to redraw electoral districts in most US states every 10 years. In 2010, Republicans undertook an unprecedented effort – called Project Redmap – to win control of state legislatures across the country and drew congressional and state legislative districts that gave them a significant advantage for the next decade. In 2020, Democrats sought to avoid a repeat of 2010 and poured millions of dollars and other resources into winning key races. Continue reading… More

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      Democrats again look to Black voters to win Georgia runoffs and take the Senate

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      As James Brown’s funk classic Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud pulsed through the mobile sound system, Cliff Albright marched up a steep roadway, bellowing into a microphone trying to get people out of their doors.
      “Let’s go y’all,” he said. “Black voters matter every day, everywhere.”
      Albright and other members of the organization he co-founded, Black Voters Matter, walk with pride in these central Georgia neighborhoods. And for good reason.
      Turnout here in Houston county soared in the 2020 election. And although the county, staunchly Republican for decades, stayed red – Joe Biden narrowed the margin by over 6%. It’s in no small part due to the months of organizing here to mobilize the county’s Black voters, who make up around a third of the population.
      It was also the later vote tallies, from mail-in voting here in Houston county, that helped propel Biden past Trump to flip the state of Georgia. A fact that many people in these communities celebrate with a deep source of pride.
      “We put a lot of work in here,” Albright said, as he handed out literature, face masks and an invitation to a drive-in watch party of the evening’s US senate debate. “It’s been all year round, because we say Black votes matter 365. We do work not just around elections, but on the issues.”
      As early voting starts on Monday in the crucial Georgia Senate runoff elections, organizers like Albright, critical players in the efforts to flip the state from Republican to Democrat for the first time since 1992, are once again gearing up for another election.
      Black and minority organizers, who have for years been pushing to turn this state’s rapidly diversifying demographics into a more progressive politics, are being called on again to secure two Senate seats that would effectively hand Democrats control of the US legislature.
      Albright is optimistic that the communities he has worked to mobilize will turnout again and predicts, in fact, a rise in turnout.
      “You’ve got people now who have seen Georgia flip, when previously believed their vote might not matter. And what they’ve seen is that, you know what, if we come out in record numbers we can actually change the state. So some folks who may not have done it in November, who now want to be a part of it,” he said.
      As Trump continues to undermine the result in Georgia, and the election at-large, Albright believes the president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud, significantly directed at many communities of color around the country, will serve as extra motivation.
      “The fact that he [Trump] is out here trying to target us, to take our votes away, I think that’s going to stir up even more excitement,” he said. “If Trump keeps acting a fool, it’s going to backfire.”
      Black Voters Matter’s outreach efforts in central Georgia have been led by Fenika Miller, a lifelong resident of the city of Warner Robins, who has spent most of her career in grassroots organizing here. She admits feeling exhausted after the year-long election season. Thanksgiving was her first day off all year. It also marked the first time she had slept for eight hours.
      “This year feels like a three-year election cycle,” she said.

      [embedded content]

      Miller was also selected as one of 16 Democrats, including former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, to cast an electoral college ballot for Biden on Monday, an honor she believes is a reflection of her community’s hard work.
      “The last time Georgia flipped I was a high school student. And the first time I’m going to cast a vote as an elector is going to be for a Democratic president. That’s a big deal,” she said.
      Miller is one of a number of Black women, including Abrams, that Democrats relied on in November who will be out again in January, empowered by the result last month.
      “Black women are leading our movements,” she said. “We are on the frontlines in a way that people don’t always necessarily see. We didn’t do this work to save our country, we did it to save ourselves, our families, our communities, our jobs, our childcare, just the basic things that our community needs.”
      Grassroots organizers across Georgia say the Covid-19 pandemic and protests over racial injustice helped spur people to motivate voters in ways they previously haven’t seen before.
      “Covid has highlighted to people how policy impacts their everyday lives and that elected officials make those policies. If you look at whether I get a stimulus relief for my business, some elected official makes that determination,” said Helen Butler, the executive director for the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a group that works to get people registered to vote. “They knew it all along, but Covid has really brought it home because it is impacting so many people.”
      Nse Ufot, the CEO of the New Georgia Project, the voter registration group Stacey Abrams started in 2014, said the group had learned from the 2016 and 2018 elections in the state and become more vigilant about watching the entire registration and election process. That includes making sure that registered voters actually make it on to the rolls and aren’t wrongly removed once they’re there, she said (Georgia has faced scrutiny in recent years for its aggressive – and sometimes inaccurate – removal of voters). On election day in November, she said organizers showed up at polling stations that had been removed to give voters new information about where to go.
      “In the past that would have just meant that people were frustrated,” she said.
      Still, severe obstacles remain.
      Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger announced last month his office was investigating the New Georgia Project, focusing on an effort to get supporters to write postcards to people encouraging them to register and vote. Raffensperger suggested the group was soliciting votes from people who are ineligible, noting that he had received postcards from New Georgia Project addressed to his son, who died two years ago. Ufot strongly denies any wrongdoing, saying her group relies on state and other data to figure out where to send the postcards.
      Earlier this year, a nonprofit, the Voter Information Center, drew ire from election officials across the country for using faulty data to send misleading or incorrect voting information.
      “The fact that they’ve had three press conferences from the capitol stairs as opposed to reaching out to us tells us everything we need to know about their priorities and what this is designed to do,” Ufot said.
      “We use real lawyers to defend us and to defend our work. Every dollar that we have to spend to defend ourselves against the nuisance and partisan investigations is a dollar that we aren’t able to put into the field to register new voters and have high quality conversations about the power of their vote and the importance of this moment.”
      After years of investing in organizing, Ufot said it was rewarding to see the work pay off.
      “I’m definitely one of those people that’s like ‘you weren’t with us before November. Where have you been?’ Our position, our posture, is welcome to the fight, welcome to the work, grab a shovel,’” she said. More

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      AOC's cooking live streams perfect the recipe for making politics palatable

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      When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or talk up a storm about the minimum wage, healthcare and the existential struggle for democracy.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s latest Instagram live stream found the youngest woman ever elected to the US Congress standing at a chopping board with two lemons and a plastic jug as she expounded her political philosophy.“Both Democrats and Republicans,” she said, scooping up a lemon with her right hand, “when they indulge in these narratives of commonsense policies being radical,” – setting the lemon down on the board again – “what they’re trying to do is really shorten the window of what’s possible.”A twee icing contest on The Great British Bake Off this is not. And as far as we know, Gordon Ramsay, Ina Garten and Nigella Lawson have never been heard to exclaim, “Shoutout to my fellow radicals!” as Ocasio-Cortez did last Thursday night.But for anyone worried that politics might become a little too boring under Joe Biden’s presidency, “AOC”, as she is universally known, is bringing comfort food. The 31-year-old New York Democrat has gained a vast social media following with her intimate videos of cooking, fashion tips, furniture assembly and behind the scenes in Congress.Rep. AOC: “All these Republicans and all these folks who were anti-shutdown are the same people who weren’t wearing masks who forced us to shut down in the first place.” pic.twitter.com/85bW0lNefU— The Hill (@thehill) December 11, 2020
      This may say something about a public craving for authenticity in politicians: Biden, Donald Trump and AOC’s mentor Bernie Sanders have it, as far as their supporters are concerned. Similarly Ocasio-Cortez, from a working-class family in the Bronx, comes over more like your relatable drinking buddy than a Washington stiff but combines it with a millennial’s instinct for social media and a timeless star quality.But it is also proof that entertainment and politics have become mutually indistinguishable. The trend arguably began 60 years ago with the televised Kennedy v Nixon debates, received a boost from Bill Clinton playing saxophone on a late-night talkshow and reached its apotheosis with Trump, who went from reality TV host to reality TV president.So Ocasio-Cortez offers a glimpse of where we’re heading. Her Instagram live streams typically begin with the type of bit that might feature on daytime TV before pivoting to policy. It is a technique that serves journalists, novelists and other storytellers well: first hook your audience with something engaging, then move on to the substantial idea you really want to talk about.A cooking video last year began with Ocasio-Cortez in an unglamorous kitchen, rinsing rice in the sink. What are you making? asked viewers. The answer: chicken tikka masala. “I am missing ginger, which is a really big bummer,” she said, before fielding questions on everything from Medicare for All to presidential impeachments.In last Thursday’s edition, lemons were a suitably sour match for Ocasio-Cortez’s mood in a country where 3,000 people a day are dying from coronavirus, Congress has stalled for months over providing economic relief – and Biden appears in no hurry to put her progressive allies in his cabinet.Wearing a “tax the rich” sweater, the congresswoman was visibly more angry and frustrated than usual. “If people think that the present day is like radical far left, they just haven’t even opened a book,” she said with expressive hand gestures. “Like, we had much more radicalism in the United States as recently as the 60s.“We talk about how labour unions started in this country. That was radical. People died, people died in this country, it was almost like a war for the 40-hour work week and your weekends. And a lot of people died for these very basic economic rights. We can’t go back to that time.”She added: “Doubling the minimum wage should be normal. Guaranteed healthcare should be normal. Trying to save our planet should be centrist politics.”She became even more irate as she talked about Covid-19. Hands resting on a plastic jug, she said animatedly: “Here’s the thing that’s also a huge irony to me, is that all these Republicans and all these folks who were anti-shutdown are the same people who weren’t wearing masks who forced us to shut down in the first place.”The final 12 words of that sentence came in a rapid staccato, accompanied by Ocasio-Cortez’s left hand clapping or chopping her right for emphasis. “I wanna see my family,” she said. “I haven’t seen my family in a year, like many of you all. I wanna be able to visit my friends without being scared and I wanna be able to hang out with my friends when it’s cold outside and not have to be outside.”If anyone was depending on AOC for their dinner that night, they were in for a long wait. Ilhan Omar, a fellow member of “the Squad” in Congress, teased her on Twitter: “@AOC you forgot to tell us what you were making tonight sis.”Ocasio-Cortez confessed: “I tried to make salmon spinach pasta but got carried away about how jacked up our Covid response is and how badly we need stimulus checks and healthcare that all I did was zest a lemon I’ll post my meal when it’s done.”And she eventually did post a photo for “accountability purposes”. (Her pet dog looked intrigued.)The style has been honed over time. Last year there was the live stream of Ocasio-Cortez in her unfurnished apartment where she had been sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Again, relatable. “I’ve been living like a completely depraved lifestyle,” she said, chewing on popcorn (top tip: add ground pepper) and assembling a table. “There’s something very satisfying about putting together Ikea furniture.”But she also delivered meat in the sandwich. “Your grandchildren will not be able to hide the fact that you fought against acknowledging and taking bold actions on climate change,” Ocasio-Cortez warned opponents. “We have 12 years left to cut emissions by at least 50%, if not more, and for everyone who wants to make a joke about that, you may laugh but your grandkids will not.”Another classic of the genre came in August this year when Ocasio-Cortez shot a video for Vogue about her skincare and lipstick routine. On one level, it was glamorous and fun. On another, it was a golden opportunity to riff on patriarchy, the gender pay gap and what it is to live in systems largely built for the convenience of men – in a medium that was infinitely more digestible than a dry university seminar.“The reason why I think it’s so important to share these things is that, first of all, femininity has power, and in politics there is so much criticism and nitpicking about how women and femme people present ourselves,” she said. “Just being a woman is quite politicised here in Washington.“…… There’s this really false idea that if you care about makeup or if your interests are in beauty and fashion, that that’s somehow frivolous. But I actually think these are some of the most substantive decisions that we make – and we make them every morning.”One of the keys to understanding the phenomenon of Ocasio-Cortez, and the backlash against her, is her years of working as a bartender and waitress. Critics seek to portray this as a weakness, with Twitter jibes such as “Shut up and sit down, bartender”. On the contrary, it is a strength, a schooling in the art of conversation and listening.Ocasio-Cortez shot back last year: “I find it revealing when people mock where I came from, and say they’re going to ‘send me back to waitressing’, as if that is bad or shameful. It’s as though they think being a member of Congress makes you intrinsically ‘better’ than a waitress. But our job is to serve, not rule.”The US constitution stipules that the president must be at least 35 years old. Ocasio-Cortez turns 35 less than a month before the next election. She is already campaigning from her kitchen without knowing it. More