Happy New Year, Democrats
I’m optimistic about Democrats in 2024.
The country is better off today than it was four years ago. The economy is growing, jobs are increasing, prices have steadied and the stock market is booming.
We have a President focused on leading, governing and uniting – not a would-be dictator obsessed with 24-hour tweeting, insulting and dividing.
Freedom and democracy stand strong, despite despots abroad and rising authoritarianism at home.
In North Carolina, the Democratic Party is stronger than it’s been since Republicans took the legislature in 2010.
Democrats have great leaders in Raleigh, superb candidates for 2024 and a newly energized and determined army of new, young grassroots activists and organizers in all 100 counties across the state – thanks to Chair Anderson Clayton and her leadership team.
Democrats are contesting 168 of the 170 legislative races, even in the face of gerrymandering. They’re fighting everywhere, not just waiting and wishing for demographics to move their way.
Yes, President Biden’s poll numbers concern me. But he and his campaign team have 10 months, a billion dollars and all the powers of the Democratic National Committee and the White House to fix his problems.
Yes, I’m concerned that many Americans have been seduced by the myths, hatreds and Big Lies of the Trump-MAGA crowd.
But I have fundamental faith in the goodness and decency of most Americans.
Here is something to keep in mind before you start doomscrolling and deconstructing every twist and turn in 2024: The vast majority of Americans haven’t begun to tune in to politics.
That fact is hard to grasp for those of us who live and breathe politics.
We see Trump’s unhinged holiday post – “…rot in hell…Merry Christmas” – and don’t understand why voters don’t immediately conclude that such an angry, vengeful, hate-filled, lying, lunatic, criminal, insurrection-inciting would-be dictator should be in prison, not the White House.
Here’s why: They aren’t paying attention.
“The average swing voter thinks about politics four minutes a week,” Jim Messina, President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, in an excellent deep dive into the Biden campaign that ran in New York magazine.
I firmly believe that, as swing voters tune in, they’re going to turn against Trump.
They’re ripe for the same kind of “Morning in America” campaign that won a landslide reelection for Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Democrats can ask, as Reagan’s team did then: Why would we go back to where we were four years ago: Nazis (Trump’s “very fine people”) parading by torchlight, a nation torn by racial bitterness, the economy in free fall, Americans dying by the thousands, hospitals overwhelmed and corpses stored in freezer trucks because of an epidemic Trump denied and dismissed.
President Biden has healed that hurt.
He has stood up for democracy at home and freedom abroad.
Instead of more tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations, he has invested in America: roads, bridges and railroads; jobs, manufacturing and internet connectivity.
He has expanded the safety net, made healthcare more accessible and lowered the cost of medicines, like insulin, which is now capped at $35 a month on Medicare.
And Biden and Democrats are standing up for women’s right to make their own decisions about pregnancy, without interference from right-wing politicians.
The 2023 elections in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia showed how powerful that issue is.
I predict that in 2024 decency, democracy and your right to decide – whether it’s about your sexuality, your health care or your vote in a free, fair and non-gerrymandered election – will triumph over the dark, divided, dystopian future that Trump and MAGA offer America.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year, Democrats
I’m optimistic about Democrats in 2024.
The country is better off today than it was four years ago. The economy is growing, jobs are increasing, prices have steadied and the stock market is booming.
We have a President focused on leading, governing and uniting – not a would-be dictator obsessed with 24-hour tweeting, insulting and dividing.
Freedom and democracy stand strong, despite despots abroad and rising authoritarianism at home.
In North Carolina, the Democratic Party is stronger than it’s been since Republicans took the legislature in 2010.
Democrats have great leaders in Raleigh, superb candidates for 2024 and a newly energized and determined army of new, young grassroots activists and organizers in all 100 counties across the state – thanks to Chair Anderson Clayton and her leadership team.
Democrats are contesting 168 of the 170 legislative races, even in the face of gerrymandering. They’re fighting everywhere, not just waiting and wishing for demographics to move their way.
Yes, President Biden’s poll numbers concern me. But he and his campaign team have 10 months, a billion dollars and all the powers of the Democratic National Committee and the White House to fix his problems.
Yes, I’m concerned that many Americans have been seduced by the myths, hatreds and Big Lies of the Trump-MAGA crowd.
But I have fundamental faith in the goodness and decency of most Americans.
Here is something to keep in mind before you start doomscrolling and deconstructing every twist and turn in 2024: The vast majority of Americans haven’t begun to tune in to politics.
That fact is hard to grasp for those of us who live and breathe politics.
We see Trump’s unhinged holiday post – “…rot in hell…Merry Christmas” – and don’t understand why voters don’t immediately conclude that such an angry, vengeful, hate-filled, lying, lunatic, criminal, insurrection-inciting would-be dictator should be in prison, not the White House.
Here’s why: They aren’t paying attention.
“The average swing voter thinks about politics four minutes a week,” Jim Messina, President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, in an excellent deep dive into the Biden campaign that ran in New York magazine.
I firmly believe that, as swing voters tune in, they’re going to turn against Trump.
They’re ripe for the same kind of “Morning in America” campaign that won a landslide reelection for Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Democrats can ask, as Reagan’s team did then: Why would we go back to where we were four years ago: Nazis (Trump’s “very fine people”) parading by torchlight, a nation torn by racial bitterness, the economy in free fall, Americans dying by the thousands, hospitals overwhelmed and corpses stored in freezer trucks because of an epidemic Trump denied and dismissed.
President Biden has healed that hurt.
He has stood up for democracy at home and freedom abroad.
Instead of more tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations, he has invested in America: roads, bridges and railroads; jobs, manufacturing and internet connectivity.
He has expanded the safety net, made healthcare more accessible and lowered the cost of medicines, like insulin, which is now capped at $35 a month on Medicare.
And Biden and Democrats are standing up for women’s right to make their own decisions about pregnancy, without interference from right-wing politicians.
The 2023 elections in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia showed how powerful that issue is.
I predict that in 2024 decency, democracy and your right to decide – whether it’s about your sexuality, your health care or your vote in a free, fair and non-gerrymandered election – will triumph over the dark, divided, dystopian future that Trump and MAGA offer America.
Happy New Year.