On her first day canvassing for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania, “I began to sense a dissonance between the celebrity-inflected exuberance of the Harris campaign and the bleak mood and raw divisions I encountered in the streets,” Julia Preston writes.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
Who would have thought that 4 years of non-stop propaganda and multiple "news" agencies repeating that same propaganda would lead to an uninformed electorate. It is truly a mystery.
hi Kitty, we'll need to get public-voice-conversations rolling before Ben gets involved. I created https://CanUListen.com for us to hear answers and add our own (in voice). With enough voices, we can incentivize candidates and elected officials to join our live town halls & respond to us.
how about virtual, hosted happy hours talking about topics that are important to those inside and outside the cult? we can't convince them, but maybe we can plant a seed that helps them perceive reality from a slightly different viewpoint? (and they could plan seeds in us, if they turn out correct)
Trump is a "celebrity." Why does his celebrity influence voters more than the ones who supported Harris? I'll give you a guess. It starts with "rich" and ends with "white guy."
I agree that 'white', 'male', and 'rich' won a lot more votes than 'female' and 'black'. But IMHO, a bigger issue (in hindsight) is that Kamala chose to focus a great deal on democracy, decency, and woman's health while more voters were locked into inflation (affordability) and immigration (fear).
Those too. And sadly their concern with those were thanks to a media ecosystem obsessed with horse race politics and propaganda instead of speaking truth to power and educating a public that is increasingly incapable of critical thinking.
hi RWM, ready for another go at influencing the media ecosystem? I created https://CanUListen.com for us to hear answers and add our own (in voice). With enough voices, we can incentivize candidates and elected officials to join our live town halls & respond to us (and dent the consultants, lobbyist silo)
lets assume corporate media strives for profits and fails in everything else. what can we do to support the media (podcasters? sub-stackers?) that we believe speak truth to power and educate the public? how about join virtual guided spontaneous hours they host to strengthen the 'educated' community?
I think celebrities endorsing Team Harris did a good job via doing what they were already supposed to do, and this had a very positive contribution to Harris campaign, having no relation with the votes that were not being able to achieved! They need a seperate strategy to be gotten!
We can't afford to ignore these voters between elections. There is a need to organize Dems in every city and town and put out a constant, consistent message; "we care about you. This is what we will do for you." Dems doing food drives, having tables at every community event, showing up for
+1 We need to move away from the "politics only matters once every 2 years for about 6 months" mentality. Reps need to be involved in their communities & there should be locals ensuring involvement & turnout, feeding info back & forth as things are happening, incl. bad news about the GOP.
"This is what we will do for you" probably is what wins elections but I prefer "this is what we can do together". Food drives, tables at community events can have a big impact, but I believe talking in hosted events with the 'our side' and 'the other side' in voice can also help bridge the divide.
+1 sister. The problem is this - I’ve seen this type of organizing done by the “activist groups” - more left leaning types. The Dem leadership is right leaning and has no intention of bringing in those groups to have power in the coalition
We need to take over the leadership. Numbers equal power. You can't storm the group. Just join and be helpful.....I'm doing that now with a board I'm on. The person that runs it is 88 and had made the board something nobody wants to deal with. I'm currently being...helpful.
My experience canvassing in PA was similar, especially in the range of personalities I met. One wrinkle I’d add is the lack of coordination between the Harris/Walz campaign and local Dem congressional races. We’d bump into each other and overlap. Not efficient and a waste of resources.
Mainstream media is the problem in America. Repeating lies to the gullible. Working people do not have the time to research politics...they have to actually physically work long hours. Whoever has the loudest voice, with the most time and claims the most attention wins.
was it the media's fault, or our own? there were a lot of podcasts across the spectrum. think corporate media will lose out to news celebrities (podcasters with large following)?
hi Mauc, if we get public-voice-conversations rolling it could pierce the cult. I created https://CanUListen.com for us to hear answers and add our own (in voice). With enough voices, we can incentivize candidates and elected officials to join our live town halls & respond to us & what we have in common.
interesting question, how are we changing our spending post election. I am moving away from amazon. eg. I joined the local co-op and now bag/box groceries for others 3 hours a week ( 24% discount). could you share your question (in voice) with our community and we hear the answers together?
I know the fight over privacy has been lost for over a decade, but I still manage to be shocked from time to time. This is bonkers. And for what result?
"Is it too soon." Every time I tried to explain to anyone that maybe this wasn't a "perfect campaign" I got the ugly "dead eye."
we need a fresh start, a really fresh start
If only I could read, this article without subscribing. Nevertheless I resonate with the
celebrity-inflected issue. Personally I was turned off by Megan thee Stallion, the DJ, and a few of the various other appearances that cheapened the Kamala convention for me.
The gap between what Kamala’s campaign decision makers thought voters cared about (based on expensive expert analysis) and what canvassers like @juliaprestonnow.bsky.social actually heard on the ground in IMHO determined the voting outcome. Let's listen & talk about this article in voice! 123vv.me
Harris got 44% for being democratic. She had 100 days to pull in doubtful voters.
Trump got "market religion" televangelists/Christians to sway the Latino/Black communities. Young men still think someone else is causing their problems. Workers are in bad economic situation & think change will help.
when someone said "voting doesn't make a difference" ( or "my vote will not matter, 1 vote does not matter") how do you respond? were you able to change any opinions? it's a 'mao dun' 矛盾 because our way of life depends on voting but there has never been a national election determined by a one vote.
As someone who canvassed for Harris I agree entirely with this article. Everyone complaining about it in the replies should actually read it. If you had a different experience canvassing I’d love to hear it but this is pretty much what I saw as well.
I door knocked for a local candidate this cycle. A Latino man came out of his house and walked across the street to me to tell me how much he hates that Dems expect his vote because of his skin color. (It’s an extremely reductive way to look at people.) He also hated yard signs. 🤷🏽♀️ #BeBetterDems
Tarries not only bring a new tax burden to the middle class but also close markets when nations institute retaliatory tariffs. The threat of high tariffs on select industries is a great vehicle for both political and economic extortion. Good times….
Stop condemning the Democratic party for what went wrong. The American people are what went wrong. It is obvious that, more or less, 50% of Americans are not bright enough to realize that the power players of the right don't care about anyone but themselves.
I agree in the belief that most of Donald's voters will regret their vote, but there is also the possibility that they were correct and today's institutions need wrecking (although I would much prefer folks chosen for competence, decency, and experience running important institutions).
No, we can also put accountability on the Democratic Party. They needed to ensure Biden didn’t run for a 2nd term so that we could have a primary and not get stuck with a candidate that finished second to last in the 1st round of the 2020 primaries.
What could have been, does not excuse the fact of the choice the people had before them. One, a proven criminal, amongst other unsavory things, and two, a bi racial woman with a pretty solid resume, regardless of how she made it to the top of the ticket.
This is such a brain dead take. Sure a lot of Americans aren't smart, but it's the democrats job to win them over anyway, and many didn't see any reason to believe kamala would help them. It's the democrats job to better educate them
This whole thing shouldn't have been about Dem vs Rep. To choose a criminal over anything or anybody else is absurd. There is a time for politics, and there is a time to do the right thing. He's a rapist and a crook! Kermit the frog would be a better choice!
It's easy to say that in our shoes, but a lot of people care more about their personal economic situation and didn't find any reasons to vote for her. Biden's promise for stimulus checks was more effective.
The joke will be on the people who thought about their own personal gain. Trump's circle doesn't give a rat's ass about Joe public and his financial situation.
Okay but we can't rely on the GOP wrecking the country as means to win elections. So far the only time democrats have won elections this century is immediately after a gop caused recession.
Harris lost bc of misogyny/racism, period. You think she could solve that & her campaign could get those people who've been worked up since 2016 to hate women, BIPOC etc, to suddenly listen to reason & love? Those people are full of hate, it fuels them. Will take decades to reverse. Not Dems' fault.
How the media helped trump and fascism win:
“From walking my Allentown turf, I learned that not even the most disciplined campaign could bridge, in one hundred days, the enormous disconnect between Harris and the voters who might benefit from her proposals.”
They falsely gave trump credit for Obama’s economy: Voters associated Biden with higher prices for basic needs and virtually nothing else. They seemed to think that Trump’s term had ended with the stable economy of 2019, rather than with the pandemic and the steep economic downturn that followed.
Cult-like atmosphere accounted for some of the vote, but I think there's a different explanation for the bulk of Donald's vote. The economy has been doing great for the winners, but folks getting squeezed more inclined to vote for the wrecking ball or sit out the election.
Republicans stole 2000: https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/vote2000/report/ch9.htm
I don’t believe any state with a republican statehouse has clean elections. Not after reading two different House reports showing how republicans used voter suppression to steal their states away from democrats. Because it happened twice so far.
@meeche.bsky.social how do you know about all this stuff? your profession? I skimmed part of both links, one of which was 400+ pages. is there any chance any of this gets beyond the experts who wrote it? does the common citizen have power beyond (a) vote and (b) donate money?
I volunteered for Ohio in 2024 (from my safe blue state) so I was heavily invested. Everything we saw and heard that day showed Kerry winning Ohio. But he didn’t. So I read this report when it came out. The media, however, buried it. I then read the FL 2000 report which shows GOP stole FL in 2000.
Our media failed us: This is what I was up against: Trump was broadcasting on some direct wavelength with his followers, and he had drawn them into his alternate universe of looming economic disaster, menacing migrants, and outrages perpetrated by Democrats only he can fix.
our media does what makes them money, which is the way our system works. fortunately or unfortunately, we get what we choose to consume. think traditional corporate media will lose out to social media based media? there were a lot of good podcasters digging into issues.
how much do you believe "social media news is no better". there were some very good podcasters. if for every 100 social media channels, 90 are in accurate, 10 are accurate, then we can say social media is failing society, but are we on the same page that some of social media is good media?
Others echoed Trump’s dark visions of millions of criminal migrants rampaging across the land, though there was little sign of them in northeast Pennsylvania.
it's an effective sales job when large numbers of people fear something they have never experienced, and nobody they know has ever experienced... but they heard someone they respect talk about it.
Another voter insisted that all Trump had asked for after the 2020 election was “a recount” of the national vote, as if that were a remotely feasible, or legal, proposition.
A retired police officer shouted me down when I asked him to explain his support for Trump, given that the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, had injured a hundred and forty law enforcement officers. “That’s a lie!” he said, even though I had the latest Justice Department report on rioters.
I met an older woman, a registered Dem. She said her whole family was under online siege by maga militants who were accusing her of preparing to subvert upcoming count. Another volunteer I met had been confronted by an armed Trump supporter.
I canvased this year for local Democratic representatives and what I found counter productive was the list of homes we were given, they were all democrats. I wanted to speak with Republicans, Independents and people who don’t vote. Made no sense to me whatsoever.
I've done canvassing for lots of candidates over the years and have found the targeted households the same: either people who always vote & can be persuaded to vote Dem (3d party, I, R) or strong Dems who hardly vote. Regular voters who are strong D or R are skipped.
The campaigns I've worked on go to R-leaning doors in the summer and very early fall, when there's time for more persuasive conversations. I found ~3 undecided voters per session during that time. That number gets smaller in the fall, and then you switch to getting out the Dem vote in October.
Depends on your organizer and the data they're given, I guess. I've heard the opposite issue: Canvassers getting sent into R neighborhoods and being cursed out by Rs.
Here's hoping we getting a statistical, bird's eye view breakdown of where people were sent in each state I guess.
in daily life, do you have / find much opportunity to talk with the 'other side'? much opportunity to talk about things we have in common with the 'other side'? in my life, feels like modern living = more siloed in lots of ways.
When I’ve gone door-to-door, the lists that are generated from the dems have always been Democrat friendly. I think they don’t really want to set people up for confrontations. We were always told to just check in to encourage voting and to see if they needed any help getting to the polls.
That's one specific kind of canvassing! It's the get out the vote kind, where you're trying to make sure your potential voters actually do go vote. Talking to independents and Republicans is a different kind of canvassing, maybe a different team.
yeh, it especially depends on when in the campaign. toward the end especially you're wanting to make sure they vote, not be trying to change peoples' minds.
I did read mutterings that the PA ground game campaign was kind of jacked.
I often feel that what really has happened is that while poverty is low, the population itself having exploded in recent decades has created a critical mass (along with internet access) to where the poor are just collectively 'more aware' of their situation and also likely to vote.
20 years ago I doubt your typical poor person's politics were shaped much by the cost of housing. Things had been stable for a long time, and their access to information about this was weak. Today, not the case at all.
The celebs are all old media celebrities. Type in Disney review and you will see Ben Shapiro pop up. The right has been programming kids online for years all done through Game, Movie and TV show reviews.
This is in the context of the disastrous DNC when the Palestinian American lawmaker wasn’t even given 5 minutes and Muslim Women for Harris disbanded and withdrew their enforcement and every time a protestor was engaged Harris said “I’m speaking” rather than “I’m listening”.
Then they brought Bill Clinton to Michigan to literally give genocide apologia and they kicked out a Muslim delegate from one of their events who did not say a word and was not wearing any Palestine paraphernalia. The kind of Muslim who'd vote for her after all this must have zero self worth.
Even with enough time the sense that the campaign was listening to donors rather than voters proved a killer. This is what “celebrity driven” means on the ground.
Happens in business too, raise a lot of money and what the investors think becomes more important than understanding customers and their evolution. Do you feel your voice and views would ever make it to the top / decision makers in a political campaign?
Not as long as the DNC continues to not ban dark money particularly AIPAC and Its dark money United Democracy Project. That might change if Zogby gets the number two position at the DNC.
You clearly follow this closer than I do. how did you learn about James Zogby? I only learned about him after reading the link you sent. from the article, "Too little is done to create a sense of “belonging” to the party or any sense of excitement and engagement." any thoughts how to address this?
in Colorado like most states young people are registered independents but the Sanders campaign found them. The NGP Van canvasing maps which targeted registered Dems were blind to them. Elizabeth Warren as a surrogate had decent-sized rallies but it never got us volunteer contacts.
I was doing young voter outreach as part of the Clinton Campaign in Northern Colorado after the convention all the young volunteers we identified at the caucuses completely disappeared. The New Yorker story above brought me PTSD from the convention.
Through climate activists when Biden denied IRA funding to a climate justice group because they were pro Palestine. First heard of Zogby when he was on platform committee representing Sanders campaign in 2016 when Clinton campaign compromised on everything except Palestine. Not one inch.
They were doing the best that they could with the limited time that they had. They were not listening to donors they were listening to political strategist who need to retire.
Whether it was the donors, consultants, or strategists or all of the above what the campaign was not in touch with were voters, e.g. those who were begging her to end the genocide, and even after the election that may end our Republic there was still no come to Jesus. https://youtu.be/7WRozJhQLM4?si=27vwciVfKJOqTxJS
They expected Harris to pull off a miracle in 100 days. She is also conflating the DNC with the Biden/Harris/Walz campaign. She appears to have an agenda. She is going everywhere badmouthing Harris. Harris is not the President - Biden is the president and he controls foreign policy not Harris.
The reason they needed her to pull off a miracle was because all the internal polls downballot were showing an apocalypse because of Gaza. Harris was doing great in her polling until she girlbossed grieving Palestinian Americans in Detroit. She almost did but failed to differentiate from Biden.
I read your article and am interested in year around organizing, but perhaps in a different way. Have you had experience with year-round organizing? Ideas on what works and what does not?
The dissonance was bt people excited to have a leader w/great ideas to help *everyone* & misogynists, racists & those who hate to see others happy. There was nothing wrong w/the Harris campaign, it was incredible. There was nothing they could said to the misogynists & racists to change their minds.
The campaign should have featured regular people who didn’t get tax cuts, who used Obamacare, who need social security, who fought for the country .. but hey let’s get Swift and Springsteen
There was no time to create a proper campaign, and regarding Swift and Springsteen, strategically speaking, it was a quicker way to reach ordinary Americans.
If that was the focus there should have been a battle on the streets and mass protests shutting down life .. the Dems instead chose to pander and not really include everyone .. not saying they didn’t try but did you think Dems (or GOP) actually fought for you ? Look at inflation and housing policy
Dems are so close to Tech and Wall Street they forgot about the little guys .. sure they passed decent legislation compared to GOP but they didn’t include the MAGA folks in the message ..
There's a way to include more in the conversations. I created https://CanUListen.com for us to hear answers and add our own (in voice). With enough voices, we can incentivize candidates and elected officials to join our live town halls & respond to us in a way that talks to what we share in common.
Perhaps not talking with the media enough, not interacting with voters in public ways to promote his accomplishments. Leaders tend to talk and not listen, and live within their bubble (except the moment they need something, like a vote).
Kamala Harris' speeches and TV apparences are extraordinarily boring. Lots of dead air, clichés and awkward staccato. She sucks the charisma out of a room.
Some of us were inspired by the choices Kamala made, like framing the election in terms of freedom. but according to vote count, most folks probably saw her speeches as you described. in hindsight, I think she / her team misread voters (and did not hear what the canvassers were hearing).
Charisma? Most of us were happy with an experienced person with integrity who hadn’t spent a lifetime committing crimes. But apparently, many Americans wanted to be lied to in a charming way.
Biden Harris record should have been impressive to Americans. But the tea party, railing against Obama, was always whitelash for his election. Americas roots are racism & misogyny. It stopped Hillary & Kamala. The media stoked hatred against women, minorities, and gay people.
Comments
Truth became lies
we need a fresh start, a really fresh start
celebrity-inflected issue. Personally I was turned off by Megan thee Stallion, the DJ, and a few of the various other appearances that cheapened the Kamala convention for me.
Trump got "market religion" televangelists/Christians to sway the Latino/Black communities. Young men still think someone else is causing their problems. Workers are in bad economic situation & think change will help.
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/trump-loves-the-poorly-educated-and-social-media-clamors-idUSKCN0VX2DE/
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“From walking my Allentown turf, I learned that not even the most disciplined campaign could bridge, in one hundred days, the enormous disconnect between Harris and the voters who might benefit from her proposals.”
Trump commands a movement that he has been fuelling with dark delusions and unapologetic bigotry since he first entered politics, in 2015.
I don’t believe any state with a republican statehouse has clean elections. Not after reading two different House reports showing how republicans used voter suppression to steal their states away from democrats. Because it happened twice so far.
I met an older woman, a registered Dem. She said her whole family was under online siege by maga militants who were accusing her of preparing to subvert upcoming count. Another volunteer I met had been confronted by an armed Trump supporter.
Here's hoping we getting a statistical, bird's eye view breakdown of where people were sent in each state I guess.
I did read mutterings that the PA ground game campaign was kind of jacked.
which begs the question, how much did the campaign even matter?
This is *the* necessary part of canvassing but you *need to follow up*. By Biden waiting so long he set up Harris for failure.
https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/detail/2024?cmte=C00799031&tab=targeted_candidates
Through climate activists when Biden denied IRA funding to a climate justice group because they were pro Palestine. First heard of Zogby when he was on platform committee representing Sanders campaign in 2016 when Clinton campaign compromised on everything except Palestine. Not one inch.
https://medium.com/@AbsoluteUnitOfAccount/the-two-things-the-democrats-whiffed-on-that-cost-them-presidency-de785f9ee451
But we all rallied because there was no choice.