Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016 was one of the worst days of my life. I am sure it was for you, too. Hate and racism had won, and now the whole world was going to suffer.
But unlike most people, I did not have the option of calling in sick. I work on the Daily Kos Activism team, and we had to get up and get as much work done that day as we could.
That's when we realized Hillary Clinton won the national popular vote—2.9 million more folks had cast their ballots for her. Trump had only won because of the Electoral College.
We knew amending the U.S. Constitution was next to impossible, but my boss Chris Bowers told me about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. If enough states pledge their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, we could ensure it never happens again.
So with the limited energy I had that day, I set up a Daily Kos petition urging states to adopt the National Popular Vote compact. We put the petition up on Facebook, created a pop-up ad on the Daily Kos website, sent out an email—and then called it a day. Because I was tired.
As I wandered the streets of San Francisco still feeling terrible, I sat down on a bench in Dolores Park. That's when I pulled out my iPhone and realized something incredible: more than 600,000 people had signed our petition. People were turning their outrage into action.
Over the past 17 years, Daily Kos has grown to become a progressive media powerhouse and a driver of grassroots activism. We are currently $85,524 from our May fundraising goal. Can you support our work at Daily Kos by giving $5 today?
This is what I do at Daily Kos every day. We have an all-star team of kick-ass writers who produce excellent content, and the Daily Kos Activism team takes our community to the next step. Rather than just have Daily Kos be a place to read the news, we give our community members an opportunity to make the news.
I closely track what stories on Daily Kos are grabbing our readers' attention—and whether there are any tangible actions we can ask our readers to take. I set up online petitions, and write emails. Some of these petitions go viral, and we turn them into long-term campaigns, just like we did with the National Popular Vote.
Daily Kos is the largest online platform for progressive news and action, but we would not exist without generous donations of readers. Can you chip in $5 to help us today?
In the past two months, we have successfully gotten three states to join the National Popular Vote Compact. We also won at the Nevada State Legislature and are awaiting the governor's signature, and have passed bills in the Maine State Senate, the Oregon State Senate, and the Minnesota State House. We are inching closer and closer to the 270 electoral vote mark.
(Every time my 15-year-old nephew sees me, he's always asking for updates on where we are with the National Popular Vote compact. He is a big fan of the work that we do.)
All of this work costs staff time & resources, and we are a small team here at Daily Kos. That's why we need your generous support of $5 today to keep doing what we do.
I first met Markos Moulitsas in June 2003, at a Howard Dean house party that I was hosting in Berkeley. He had just started this new political blog called Daily Kos, but I had no idea what that was. I started reading the website, and it has been my daily source of news ever since.
Ten years later, I stopped practicing law and took a job on the Daily Kos Activism team. I just celebrated my six-year anniversary on staff, and hope we can continue to be an effective political juggernaut as we fight Donald Trump and the Republican agenda every single day.
Winning the next election will not be enough. That's why no matter what happens in 2020, we need Daily Kos to effectively organize progressives and deliver political victories—at the ballot box, in Congress, and in state legislatures. With your generous support, you have my pledge that we will continue to fight for your values and our country.
Please chip in $5 today so that Daily Kos can keep fighting.