924: Good Things Aren’t Always Good Tactics
Charlotte Swasey separates what works from what feels good
Interested in reading a “grimly essential questioning of the Power-Building-industrial-complex?”
That is how Lara Putman described Good Things Aren’t Always Good Tactics by
.For Groups Chat, the massive progressive nonprofit industry represents something of a blob. There’s a sense that a lot of the organizing associated with the progressive movement is either “total bullshit, just a jobs program for leftists always ready to attack centrists” or, on the other end of the spectrum, “an intimidating army of foot soldiers building real power.”
Swasey cuts through the fog of Democratic organizing strategy with a pointed argument: long-term power-building efforts often confuse moral worth with electoral effectiveness. Community engagement, relational organizing, and “building agency” may feel virtuous, but that doesn’t mean those programs help Democrats win elections.
Swasey draws a few sharp distinctions:
Organizing ≠ mobilizing ≠ GOTV ≠ persuasion
Campaign-cycle field work is measurable and often effective
Long-term organizing is mostly unproven, often underfunded (or funded in a cyclical way that models must account for), and rarely held accountable to vote-producing outcomes
Her central question: Do these programs actually generate new Democratic votes — at a cost comparable to traditional campaign tactics? Too often, the answer is “we don’t know,” or worse, “trust us.”
Swasey isn’t dismissive of civic renewal or the real benefits these programs can bring to communities. But her core critique is clear: if you take donor money to help Democrats win, then your work should be evaluated based on whether it helps Democrats win. “Empowering organizers” or “leading local movements” may sound great, but if it doesn’t increase Democratic vote share, it’s not an electoral strategy. It’s a social good. And that’s fine! Just don’t confuse the two.
In a funding environment where money arrives late and attention spans are short, Swasey makes a tough but crucial point: strategy must be designed for the world we live in, not the one we wish we lived in.
Here is Swasey, in the provacative, structured, and practical style that she’s applied to other issues on her Substack Medium Data.
I think it’s great that people are building relationships and helping community members meet each other. I want citizens to feel like they can go to their local government or community for help, and to feel like they understand how government works, and that it’s serving them. Having organizations help with this seems extremely good.
However, when I am evaluating the tactics of the campaign arm of the Democratic party, really all I care about is “does this make Democrats more likely to win?”. And there are two ways to make Dems more likely to win, mechanically- make more people be Democrats, or make more Democrats vote (or, make Republicans less likely to vote, but that’s out of scope here).
That narrow focus means that all the positive goods that could be produced by these programs don’t really matter to my evaluation unless they help Democrats win. Which may feel harsh, especially since the line between “Democratic party organization” and “general nonprofit” is sometimes thin. But if you’re functioning or marketing yourself as a Democratic organization, or getting funding that is intended to help Democrats win, that’s the outcome I am interested in. All the other positive effects are at best a nice bonus.
This doesn’t mean I am imposing a time bound on possible effects- “this produces a bunch of Democratic votes, but not for like 5 years” would be a great effect. Difficult to prove, but great. I’m mostly trying to narrow the discussion from “things which are good” to “things which help Democrats win”.
Even the DNC is really very messy about mixing generally good things with tactically electorally useful things. See Ken Martin’s “Visions for Organizing Everywhere” for an example.
2. We Build Up and Support Community Leaders
Organizers are the heart of our programs — and we will empower them as such. We reject the notion that organizers are temporary workers meant to execute static scripts or manage spreadsheets.
Instead, we will recruit, train, and support organizers as facilitators of community power. They will have the tools and autonomy to build volunteer leadership, train others, and reflect the values and culture of the communities they serve. Our organizing staff will not just execute tactics — they will lead local movements.
[obligatory DNC sidenote, I will believe this talk about not having people be temporary workers when I see it. Get through one of the usual between-election funding panics without firing people and then we can talk.]
As written, this reflects an explicit commitment to have Democratic organizers do stuff which sounds very nice and positive (lead local movements! nice!) but isn’t directly related to the cause of “Democrats winning”. That ambiguity of purpose is part of why I find this all so complicated to talk about.
Read the full piece, and subscribe to her work. Only 924 days until the next presidential primary, and these are the types of hard questions that need to be asked and answered.
