Flywheel Optimism
Flywheel Optimism
Pragmatic politics reinforced, featuring Janelle Bynum
Matt Yglesias recently made the case for optimism about fitting into an increasingly coherent center left ecosystem:
Building more media outlets that actually care about pragmatic, workable politics is a necessary part of fixing the overall landscape — there is (I hope) a flywheel between media work, policy work, electoral work, and organizing and fundraising.
What does flywheeling look like? Check out Oregon state Representative Janelle Bynum across those functions.
Here’s her attitude on policy:
Rep. Janelle Bynum, D-Clackamas, keeps a ceramic winged pig on her desk in the Oregon House. Bynum collects pigs with wings, she explained to her colleagues on Thursday, because she believes in the possibility of the Legislature accomplishing great things.
“I’m an optimist,” she said. “They say when pigs fly, something will happen, so that’s why I keep the pig.”
That pig took flight – with a boost from Bynum – on Thursday afternoon as the state House passed the $210 million Oregon CHIPS Act, a semiconductor funding bill Bynum and other supporters view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to secure the state’s future in the tech industry and guarantee high-paying jobs for thousands of Oregonians.
“We’ve never had this kind of pro-business, pro-worker, pro-Oregon collaboration in recent history,” Bynum said. “We’ve never had this.”
In a few paragraphs, Bynum demonstrates all the lessons for moderates that NewDEAL Leaders founder Debbie Cox Bultan outlined in “Growing Up Center Left”:
Ideas matter
Compromise is not a dirty word
We must focus on the world as it is
The party of government needs to make sure government works well
It just so happens Bynum is herself a NewDEAL Leader, the network representing the state and local leaders who often emerge as national torchbearers for the Center Left. Bynum’s leadership on CHIPs legislation won the organization’s National Ideas Challenge.
How about electoral politics? Bynum is running in a congressional primary against the Far Left candidate we featured in Oregon Fail for knocking out a moderate Democratic incumbent in order to … see the Biden district flip red in the midterm. The “Warren Democrat” who cost Democrats a House seat is running again for the seat (side note: as we await a government shutdown, sure would be handy to have an extra Democrat in the House), but Bynum has already beaten the GOP incumbent twice in general elections for lower office.
Can Bynum get out of the primary? NewDem Action Fund, the political arm of a caucus of moderate Democratic House members, has endorsed. And her ActBlue link was promoted by Yglesias’ Slow Boring, the largest demonstrated marketplace of pragmatists online.
You can do the same as part of our Win The Middle slate here.
And give the flywheel a push.
Which turn was it?
The Flywheel concept invoked by Yglesias conjures up exponential growth, a breakthrough surging to a new level of impact. The business strategist who popularized the phrase describes the visual:
Picture a huge, heavy flywheel—a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle … Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing and, after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster, and with continued great effort, you move it around a second rotation. You keep pushing in a consistent direction. Three turns ... four ... five ... six ... the flywheel builds up speed ... seven ... eight ... you keep pushing ... nine ... ten ... it builds momentum ... moving faster with each turn ... twenty ... thirty ... fifty ... a hundred.
Then, at some point—breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks in in your favor, hurling the flywheel forward, turn after turn ... whoosh! ... its own heavy weight working for you. You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel builds upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort. A thousand times faster, then ten thousand, then a hundred thousand. The huge heavy disk flies forward, with almost unstoppable momentum.
Now suppose someone came along and asked, “What was the one big push that caused this thing to go so fast?” You wouldn’t be able to answer.
When Learning From The Far Left, we see a dynamic ecosystem that broke through and moved the party (too far) - but no one single push was responsible.
There is good reason to be optimistic that the center left faction flywheel will break through. Similarly to the Far Left, its force will be accelerated by both new organizations and those who’ve been pushing in the right direction for a while.
Take the (13th Annual) New Deal Leaders conference last fall, the one where Bynum won the Ideas award. The lineup represented organizations like Third Way that have been pushing for twenty years alongside pragmatic social media evangelists just past the drinking age.
Consistent Optimism
We share the optimism of Yglesias and Bynum. Over the past two years, we’ve been guided by a few core tenets on how the center left faction gets more traction:
Action to build the faction. The path for moderate Democrats to win the middle is obvious to those who see it, but organizing through action is required. Faction heft is like a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets.
There’s no magic bullet to get there, and no single wheel-pusher - it will take all the pieces Yglesias lays out (“media work, policy work, electoral work, and organizing and fundraising”), from many sources. Even after the breakthrough, the breakout point won’t be obvious.
Consistency is key. It is especially hard for centrists to avoid the Doom Loop of shifting focus (this is about optimism, distractions for another day).
Community feels good. At this point last cycle, this Substack had 282 subscribers. Now, that many joined in just the last few weeks. We’ve passed 10,000 across platforms, including Twitter and the pleasantly engaging Threads. We have gone from gathering around one table to in-person gatherings with more than 400 unique partners, fueled by hundreds of financial supporters (extra appreciation for recurring PAC donors and paid Substack subscribers).
There’s one more function to add to the list from the top: Talent. We need an abundance of moderate staffers.
And we literally need one right now, who’s willing to relocate (somewhere cool, we promise!) ASAP.
Email us at info at thewelcomeparty dot org with that special someone who will work long hours doing the wide range of tasks required to reach out and bring people in - and for a real chance at making the push that breaks through. Give the pig wings, with the optimism that your hand moves the flywheel that protects our democracy.