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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Dan Pfeiffer
Read between
February 22 - July 1, 2020
The Democratic Party would be so much better off if we took the time and energy spent on what the message is and spent it on developing tools and strategies that ensure people hear what we have to say.
The lesson is clear. There is plenty of information that would cause all but Trump’s MAGA base to break with him, but none of that information is getting to those voters organically.
Too much of our political discourse is centered on persuading swing voters to vote for Democrats, and not enough is focused on persuading nonvoters to become voters.
Stacey Abrams is one of the most talented, smartest, and most charismatic politicians I have ever met.
Pushing to make voting easier and more accessible is the morally right and politically smart thing to do, but too often Democrats don’t push the envelope.
Voter fraud is a myth. A 2014 study also published in the Washington Post found that between 2000 and 2014, there were thirty-one incidents of voter fraud out of more than one billion ballots cast.
Democrats need to make a consistent and aggressive case to voters about why Republicans don’t want them to vote.
It’s our job as Democrats to make voting as easy as possible.
The best solution for democracy and Democrats is to eliminate the Electoral College.
It’s insane that we have a system that says that the person who gets fewer votes can still be president. Think of it this way: in 40 percent of the elections in the twenty-first century, the person who won the popular vote didn’t get the nuclear codes. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems like a giant problem.253
Eliminating the Electoral College would give everyone a say in who is president. No matter where you live, no matter how red or blue your state, your vote will count. More people would feel like a part of our democracy.
Push your governor to adopt the National Popular Vote compact to end the run of the Electoral College.
A Democratic Party that wants to fight for democracy can’t depend on an oligarchy to pay the bills. The only path forward for the Democrats is to radically change the system. We must fund the party the same way we win elections—by inspiring millions of Americans to invest in their own future.
Ultimately, Trumpism is a Faustian bargain between corporations and the racist demagogues leading the Republican Party—if you give us tax cuts and fewer regulations, we will keep funding your racist demagoguery.
The ability to raise real money from real people depends on showing those people that they have actual ownership of the campaign. The days of being able to court corporate executives on a Monday and send out a grassroots email on a Tuesday have come to an end.
Obama’s speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech: “The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history; that we are masters of our fate,” Obama said. “That’s the lesson of our past. That’s the promise of tomorrow—that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.”
But court packing, which we should call court reform because it is a more accurate and appealing term, isn’t radical at all.
The Constitution says nothing about how many justices should be on the Supreme Court. It’s up to Congress, and they have had a hard time making up their minds over the years.
The NRA brands itself as an association of hunters and hobbyists who love the Second Amendment and America.289 But that is a bullshit cover story. The NRA receives a significant amount of its funding from gun manufacturers. They rise and fall with the amount of weapons that are sold in America. It is in the financial interest of the NRA to ensure that as many guns as possible are sold in America.
Since the Republican Party depends on the NRA, they have the same incentives.
Workers’ rights must be at the center of the Democratic agenda.
This has been the Republican strategy for decades—demonize the voters that Democrats depend on in the hope that they can make it politically toxic for Democrats to stand with their own supporters.
The final part of a Democratic Party effort to repair our democracy is a plan to protect our country from a future Trump.
Future Democratic Congresses should also look seriously at reforming the War Powers Act to ensure a greater role for Congress in decisions around the use of military force.
The lesson Obama taught me was that when you have everything to lose, the only way to succeed is to run like you have nothing to lose. Obama’s message in 2012 is even truer today. The stakes are exponentially higher. Playing political prevent defense where we hope Trump falls under the weight of his corruption and incompetence is doomed to fail. Despite all of the preemptive compromise from Democrats in Washington, and the cautious centrism from the pundit class, I am hopeful about the future of the Democratic Party.
All across the country, there are people who are showing us the path forward. They are fighting back with the fierce urgency of now. They embrace the audacity of Obama. They are fighting like there is no tomorrow, because they know if they don’t fight, there will be no tomorrow.
As Barack Obama ended his stump speech in 2008, “Now, let’s go change the world.”
