The Verb Holiday

A distinctly American welcome into a big tent

Nov 28, 2024

A section of Emerson’s essay on Friendship always comes to mind today:

“I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new”.

has a wonderful reflection on new and old friends, and why Thanksgiving is the best holiday:

When I had only lived in the United States for a couple of months, I met a new acquaintance for coffee. We had a nice conversation about literature and grad school, about New York City and smoked fish. As I was taking my leave, she off-handedly asked me what my plans were for Thanksgiving.
“Oh,” I said, not quite sure what to say. “I don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving.”
“What do you mean, you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving?” she asked, barely trying to hide her incredulity.
“I’ve never been in the States for the holiday before,” I offered, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I… haven’t really made any plans.”
“Oh, that’s simple, then,” she declared. “You can’t be on your own for Thanksgiving!”
A week later, I was at her parent’s house in upstate New York, sitting between her grandfather and a friend of her brother’s who wasn’t able to make it home for the holidays. In all, about twenty five people had gathered, including members of the nuclear family, some more distant relatives, and about a dozen friends.
…
That day was the start of my conversion. Ignorant about the nature or the purpose of the holiday when I first arrived on American shores, I have since embraced Thanksgiving as my favorite holiday. And as I reflected on what it is about Thanksgiving that is so special to me over the course of the years, I gradually came to recognize that I see it as an embodiment of a distinctly American sense of community: one that cherishes the strong ties we didn’t choose while embracing the ones, strong or weak, that we do.

Thanksgiving is a noun, but best practiced as a verb. “A public acknowledgement or celebration of divine goodness”, according to Merriam-Webster. But also a welcoming in, a merger of a core group with tangential recruitment of anyone who can help celebrate that goodness.

When we decided to name our organization The Welcome Party, we had the verb in mind. Strengthening the center-left required action, both within a nuclear group and an extended group.

On our team, we often talk about being the tailgate party that most anyone would want to stop by - even fans of the other team. These are themes that will be present in a lot of homes today (and outside a lot of stadiums).

Over the last three years, we have felt both a tremendous sense of community in a growing core and an eagerness by many to be welcomed in. Thanks for coming into our community. We are grateful for you!

Emerson’s essay begins “We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.”

May we speak it more over the next year. And if you find yourself needing a break from family, friends, or football please find our foundational writing below.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We Are Welcome

The Welcome Party and WelcomePAC are affiliated organizations that strengthen our democracy by advocating for a robust center-left faction and supporting Democratic candidates who can welcome in independents and moderate Republicans.

Every week, we reflect on various facets of our work, usually within one of these categories:

1. The future is faction.

There’s a lot to be learned from the political entrepreneurs who spun out of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and powered the rise of the far-left faction that elected AOC and the Squad. Moderates should take a page out of the far-left playbook by organizing and building a coherent and robust center-left faction within the Democratic party that can connect with and win the middle.

Organizing Beats Debating (Apr 2022)
What the Center Can Learn From AOC (Mar 2022)
“Popularism” but for Organizing (Dec 2021)

2. Democrats must be a big-tent party in order to win sustainable governing majorities and save democracy.

That means reaching out to and welcoming in moderate independents and center-right Republicans. Democrats can mount serious challenges against anti-democracy MAGA Republicans in potentially winnable GOP-held seats by running brand-differentiated moderates (including former Republicans) who can win red-to-blue crossover voters.

Who decides who’s a Democrat? (Feb 2022)
Empathy for the Middle (Jun 2022)
Joe Biden: President of Independents (Apr 2023)

3. Far-left candidates consistently underperform while brand-differentiated moderates overperform and win purple — and even red — seats.

The far-left has never flipped a single seat from red to blue — and far-left candidates incur a “progressive penalty” in swing seats and blue strongholds alike. Meanwhile, moderates who differentiate from their party’s toxic cable news caricature overperform (and win) in the most competitive districts in the country.

4. The far-left has peaked.

Not only has the far-left never flipped a single seat, but the “Squad” has seen its growth (which unfolded only in some of the bluest districts in the country) slow dramatically since its inception in 2018. The slowdown in momentum has also unfolded in the entrepreneurial groups that powered the far-left’s rise, with flashy and disruptive upstarts like No Excuses PAC and New Consensus appearing to have fizzled out entirely with little to show.

Has the far-left peaked? (Mar 2022)
Bad Week for Team Red (and Red Roses) (May 2023)
Justice Dems in Disarray (Jul 2023)

5. There’s no such thing as “The Democrats, Inc.”

The “Democratic Party” is little more than a loose-knit network of institutions (committees, think tanks, media outlets, organizing and advocacy groups, etc.) and individuals (politicians, activists, voters, etc.). There is no centralized decision-making apparatus to define priorities, make tradeoffs, and allocate resources. This means “The Democrats” are simply whoever within the coalition steps up and does the real work of organizing and investing.

But don’t “The Democrats” do that? (Jan 2022)
Time for Democrats to Stand Up for “The Democrats” (Jun 2022)
Lost Dogs (Jan 2022)

6. Volatility, not polarization, is the defining feature of contemporary electoral politics.

The flip side of rising polarization at the partisan fringes means that volatility among the shrinking (yet still substantial) population of depolarized swing voters in the middle becomes all the more important in deciding the outcomes of today’s close elections.

What the Polarization Hawks Aren’t Saying (Feb 2022)
Enough with the Polarization Porn (Apr 2023)
A Very Special Special Election (Aug 2022)

7. To harness volatility and win the middle, listen to the candidates who have actually done it.

There’s no use in asking Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (who represents a district Joe Biden won with more than 73% of the vote in 2020) for her take on why Democrats win or lose in swing districts. Instead, Democrats and the media should pass the mic to the candidates who have run (and won) in those kinds of highly competitive seats for a real sense on what it takes to win the middle and save our democracy.

Listen to the Democrats Who Are Actually Trying to Win (Sep 2022)
Interview: Tim Ryan’s Theory of Everything (Feb 2023)
Interview: Everybody Knows a Murphy (May 2023)

8. The political marketplace is predictably bonkers.

The Democratic marketplace is full of organizations and candidates acting and investing rationally at the individual level, but these actions aggregate into something irrational and inefficient at the ecosystem level. The result is an environment in which longshots in unwinnable seats are showered with millions of dollars while candidates running in far more winnable battlegrounds may go underfunded.

9. The most effective way for centrists to exert an influence on our politics is through moderate partisan factions, not third parties.

Vaguely defined anti-partisan centrist groups like No Labels and Andrew Yang’s Forward Party dilute moderates’ political power by diverting critical resources away from the center-left and center-right partisan factions where they could have a real impact and toward quixotic third-party efforts that are doomed to lose in our “first past the post” electoral system.

10. We need a new game plan to save our democracy.

Democrats responded fiercely to Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016, but the energetic reaction was co-opted by the far-left and grew into a slash-and-burn approach that has not delivered reliable victories. It’s time for a more sustainable and disciplined big-tent movement to defeat Trumpism over the long haul and save our democracy.

Second Wave Resistance (Jun 2023)
Are Democrats Too Exhausted or Distracted to Save Democracy? (Feb 2022)