Not gonna flip out man
Slow, Smooth, and Fast. Less "infrastructure". Go to the WAR Room.
Don't worry. Don't worry. I'm not gonna do … what everyone thinks I'm gonna do … and flip out man! All I wanna know is ... Who's coming with me?
So says Jim Breuer’s character in the 1998 stoner film Half Baked while completely melting down after getting fired from his job at a record store.
Some Democrats are flipping out.
Will that bring more voters along?
Yesterday we passed 25,000 subscribers. Thanks to all who have shared our work! So appreciative to all of you who have contributed and shared, growing this community from a few dozen people focused on winning the middle to where we are today. Fittingly, our post today covers the GOATs: Golden, Yglesias, Manchin, and an opportunity for Democratic staffers. Thanks for continuing to read and share, excited to share in more overperformance - and wins - in the years ahead!
Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast
Congressman Jared Golden is not flipping out.
That’s the takeaway from his latest newsletter, entitled For Democracy, Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast:
President Trump’s administration is pushing big political and policy moves, and many of these actions already face legal challenges. Some have already been temporarily blocked, pending review and appeals.
This is a sign the system is working, with the judicial branch mediating legal disputes and making sure that the other branches stay within constitutional guardrails. This process is slow by design. But in response to passionate calls for immediate action from those who oppose President Trump, some Democrats have been tempted to ring the alarm of “constitutional crisis” loudly and frequently.
But in this fraught moment, leaders shouldn’t aim to match the rhetorical pitch of Americans’ worst fears. We should react with discipline to ensure the worst does not come to pass. That requires composure in the face of chaos. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
…
In the months and years ahead, we need to remain calm, roll up our sleeves, and take on the difficult task that begins with a look in the mirror and continues with the hard work necessary to win back the confidence of the voters. Otherwise, Democrats will continue down the same path that led us here.
Read the whole thing here. And ICYMI, check out the guest post from Rep. Golden and four of his congressional colleagues in the Blue Dog Caucus from last Friday’s WelcomeStack: 30 Years of Slipping the Leash.
What else is working? The normal rules of politics.
As
points out, four new polls show Trump's approval rating sinking into the mid-40s. This quick dip is an accelerated version of what happens to most presidents as their honeymoon with the American people ends.Don't need more “infrastructure"
wrote earlier this week that instead of more “infrastructure” - building or growing more progressive nonprofits - Democrats need more freedom and independent-mindedness. Because many of those institutions are actually hurting Democrats:… there is a lot of enthusiasm for building new “infrastructure.”
And I get it. Many of us are incredibly alarmed by what Trump and Musk are doing, and people are eager to spend money fighting back. There are also a lot of people out there hustling to raise money for their own projects. Some of those projects are good, some are bad, and some are mid. But whatever your project, if you’re looking for funding, it’s almost always in your interest to argue that more infrastructure is needed. So I kind of feel like it falls to me to be the skunk at the party who calls this into question.
…
The keys to electoral politics — finding out what your voters think, and adopting some heterodox views that are popular with the electorate — are just not that complicated. Candidates don’t necessarily need a lot of infrastructure to execute on them. But what anyone working to elect Democrats does need is the freedom to do it without taking massive amounts of friendly fire.
A much harder question than “What will help candidates win in red-leaning districts?” is “Why has it come to be difficult to execute on this basic playbook?”
And the answer in many cases is not the absence of infrastructure but its excess.
Yglesias cites the critique of Indivisible that we wrote in Weak Tea Party. He notes that, eventually, Indivisible shifted to “explicitly organizing not against election denialists and people trying to cut Medicaid, but against the existence of the moderate Dem caucuses that serve as the bulwarks against MAGA trifectas forever.”
It’s fine for groups to explicitly work on moving the party left instead of winning, but people who want to focus on winning should be able to discern between those focused on ideological purity and those focused on winning.
The distinction that Yglesias draws is important, and something that shocked the Welcome team as we all stumbled into national politics: learning how to win red districts is knowable, but getting the Democratic “infrastructure” out of the way is complicated.
Figuring that out is key to building a sustainable majority.
As one Twitter user put it in a post retweeted by the Blue Dog:
make the TENT BIG
make it COOL and LOW PRESSURE to be a DEMOCRAT
welcome people from ALL BACKGROUNDS
EVERYONE has a place in the DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Join the WAR Room
While learning how to win tough districts is knowable, you still have to learn it. And while a lot of progressive infrastructure may be counterproductive, there is still too little investment in training for how to win over swing voters. So we encourage any mid-career campaign and political professionals interested in learning and discussing how to win close elections in difficult environments to check out the W.A.R. Room.
Short for Wins Above Replacement, the sports-derived shorthand for overperforming candidates, the W.A.R. Room is a virtual masterclass series. The 8-week, virtual night school will be followed by an in-person gathering in DC June 4-5.
Each week consists of one 75-minute Zoom seminar and a homework assignment. Approximately 20 students will be assigned to a single instructor for the entire course; each instructor will teach the core curriculum through the lens of their expertise.
The cost is just $75, and the deadline to apply is this coming Sunday. So go here now if you are a mid-career staffer in Democratic electoral politics.1
Thanks, Joe
Speaking of over-performance and the current importance of judges, a friendly reminder of how long judicial appointments can last: there are still 11 federal judges appointed by Ronald Reagan in active service.
Thanks to the electoral miracle that was Joe Manchin, a Democratic Senate approved more judges during the Biden era than during Trump’s first term.
Americans fired Democrats from the halls of power. There weren’t enough Manchins and Goldens to hold onto Congress.
Winning matters, and matters for a long time. It deserves our focus.
And that focus is incompatible with flipping out. Voters want a Low Pressure Resistance. Let’s not do what MAGA wants us to do. Who’s coming with us?