The House Republican vote this week to extend tax cuts to America’s richest while stripping critical health care from America’s poorest underscored just how crucial it is for Democrats to win back the House in 2018.
To that end, the health care vote itself serves as an opening salvo in that battle wherein Republicans made the bet that scoring short-term political points with their base was absolutely more important than saving people’s lives. It’s unconscionable and, if anything, it boosts Democrats’ chances of flipping the two dozen seats they need to reclaim the majority. As Cook Political Report wrote after immediately shifting its ratings in 20 races to be more favorable to Democrats:
House Republicans' willingness to spend political capital on a proposal that garnered the support of just 17 percent of the public in a March Quinnipiac poll is consistent with past scenarios that have generated a midterm wave.
The upcoming town halls next week (as well as the vulnerable GOP members who duck them) will provide an early gauge of just how well Trumpcare 3.0 is going to play for Republicans. All this leads to the inevitable question of whether Democrats can turn the roiling energy in the streets into electoral successes at the ballot box. For any of us who have marched and perhaps marched again, this is the question lingering in the back of our minds: Does protest power translate to electoral politics?
New research reported this week suggests that not only is the progressive appetite for protest not waning, but the marches are absolutely bringing in a whole new pool of participants who hadn’t previously engaged in political activism. Sociologist Dana Fisher has studied every major progressive march in D.C. since Donald Trump took office and all of them—from the Women's March to the science, climate, and tax marches—have attracted scores of first-time marchers. In fact, not only have many attendees never protested, they haven’t even been previously involved with the political groups or coalitions organizing the marches. They’re bona fide political neophytes in the best of all possible ways.
“Across the board, the marches are bringing out not just new people but people who are not members of those coalitions,” Fisher said. “People who are really new to participating in anything.”
That’s potential gold and, while we can’t with 100 percent certainty say that will push Democratic turnout off the charts, we can say that we are already seeing signs that protest power is indeed transforming the electoral landscape.
That enthusiasm has been reflected in the level of Democratic engagement that has been channeled in GOP-friendly districts in Kansas, Georgia, and now Montana. Not only has Democratic turnout skyrocketed in the elections already held, but activist involvement both within the districts and outside them has begun to reconstruct those elections in unexpected ways. We have seen that anecdotally and also in terms of the cold hard cash raised by the campaigns from small-dollar donors. Of course, Daily Kos readers have been an integral part of that mix. (By Friday evening, in fact, more than 25,000 Daily Kos donors had rallied to contribute to our 2018 flip-the-House effort following the GOP’s maddening attempt to strip millions of health care. Seriously, the energy is just unprecedented.)
But this week’s repeal vote raises the prospect of another opportunity: attack ads. As we noted Thursday, those ads are practically writing themselves after House Republicans rushed a vote on a completely mysterious bill that threatens to strip healthcare from millions, balloon the deficit, and uniquely benefit America’s wealthiest.
In recent years, attack ads have largely become the domain of political action committees, or PACs, that are legally prevented from coordinating with campaigns directly but often do the dirty work of flaying their opponents. That leaves a candidate’s campaign itself to focus on GOTV efforts and building a positive biography.
Super PACs, in particular, can take unlimited sums of money while also providing a funding loophole through which their contributors can be kept secret. For that reason, they have been fueled by high-dollar donors who can anonymously dump tons of money into any race they deem critical.
But a new PAC called Fight Back PAC is attempting to open an equally potent door to the small-dollar donors who have already been flexing their muscle in support of Democrats like Jon Ossoff in Georgia and Rob Quist in Montana.
Like many of us, the PACs’ founder, D.C.-based Julie Norton, attended the Women’s March. Later that evening, as she marveled over coverage of the national mind meld that had unfolded, she listened to commentators wonder aloud if the energy would amount to any meaningful change. That’s when she had a thought: The way to turn those millions of people into electoral power was to give them a meaningful way to contribute money.
Norton, a managing director at SKDKnickerbocker, is a Beltway insider by any reasonable standard, which frankly was on my mind when I spoke to her earlier this week. But as she explained the new venture, which is entirely independent of SKDK, it seemed like it might be one of those innovative nuggets that organically emerges in times of great change.
The idea is mainly to focus on candidates who might not otherwise gain as much attention (if any) from wealthy donors or the Democratic national party—tier-two candidates and political newcomers, Norton says, with the potential to also donate some funds to other resistance organizations. This seems like a good start. Instead of focusing on races and candidates that require lots of money to move the needle a little, funnel the money to places where a little boost can go a long way.
“We want to set them up for victory if there's a wave election,” Norton says of tier-two candidates and first-time candidates. By helping them stretch their budgets further, Norton hopes to help candidates both “get better known, and expose the weaknesses of their Republican opponents.”
The timing couldn’t be better. Given the surge of progressives interested in running for elective office, there’s going to be a lot of first-time candidates who could use a little boost. Many of them may have great biographies but will have never engaged in serious fundraising before. Norton notes that the DCCC along with groups like Emily’s List have been overwhelmed by interest in their candidate trainings.
But how does a Beltway-based PAC steer clear of the conventional wisdom of the Washington consultant class? Norton is working to set up local activist councils to help identify diamonds in the rough.
“They'll be our eyes and ears out in the field,” she says, comparing the effort to that of being a talent scout. “They'll be able to identify really promising upstarts.”
Fight Back PAC made its debut in Montana this week, launching its “Montana Fight Club” with an ad that paints Quist’s opponent, Greg Gianforte, as a Trump-aligned millionaire and carpetbagger who’s out of touch with Montanans.
Production of the ad was donated by another Washington outfit looking for ways to contribute to the Resistance—MeanGreen Media. But how much the pro-Quist ad airs and how much air time can be bought will depend on how many people donate to it.
In this way, it’s really an “If you build it, will they come?” proposition, Norton explains. “This is the first real planting of the flag to see if it works—launching it and seeing whether the grassroots will give us the money to run it.”
Now for a caveat: This isn’t necessarily an endorsement of Fight Back PAC. But after speaking with Norton, I thought the concept was worth putting on the map for readers to consider and even debate below. It’s a slightly different proposition than donating directly to a campaign and hopefully the new group will be vetting candidates and promoting races that might otherwise slip under the radar.
But regardless of whether Fight Back PAC attracts grassroots support, what the effort does symbolize is the profound recognition by progressives across the nation—including those in the Beltway—that a sleeping giant has awoken and that the usual channels for engaging local activists might be woefully inadequate to harness the energy of an emerging era.
This is the juice of this deeply unsettling and yet exhilarating moment in history: a burst of new energy is ushering in new ideas and new opportunity. That’s good news for Democratic chances in 2018, but even better news for the future of our country.