Happy Election Day! And happy one-year anniversary to Deciding to Win, the postmortem report charting a path forward for a Democratic Party that can win durable majorities.
We’ve spent much of the last two years immersed in numbers, from analyzing new gerrymandered districts to the $2.5m that thousands of you contributed directly to candidates on our Win The Middle slate. From the cost-per-point of television ads to the latest poll results on the millions more we invested in outside support for candidates.
The coming hours and days will focus greatly on a metric we have long focused on: performance relative to expectations for candidates representing different ideological factions of the Democratic Party.
We are proud that our candidates have overperformed so significantly over the last two cycles. We are encouraged to see more groups across the party use similar benchmarks. And our democracy is greatly benefitting from the type of expanded competition we have long called for.
But this is about more than numbers. In part because, as a British economist said, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.”
Spinning Left
The post-election spin from the left has started early, previewing a faction ready for a big narrative battle to define 2028.
All the big progressive acronyms (CPC, WFP, AOC) put out memos today. The Congressional Progressive Caucus took a shot at the Blue Dogs, bragging about their earlier endorsements of “Bernie Dogs.” AOC touted raising $3 million for other candidates (while raising $38 million into her campaign account), backing up her midterm marker that “if Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere.”
Centrist Crutch is Gone
While a quick perusal of Deciding to Win will disabuse a rational reader of the idea that any leftist can win anywhere, there is almost certain to be a left-wing win in a swing district tonight. Which relieves centrists of argument-killing facts like “Justice Democrats and Bernie’s Our Revolution have never flipped a seat from red to blue,” which we have cited many times.
It will be healthy for everyone to retire that line, because we should sound much more like the Working Families Party memo:
We don’t measure our impact by a single race or election cycle, but by how we build our wins, year after year. Because that’s how we will create a third force in American politics capable of fulfilling the promise of a government by and for working people. That’s our north star, and I have a feeling that tomorrow will bring us much closer to realizing that goal.
The measure of success has more to do with human beings in our community than with any single metric. That’s why organizing beats debating.
Community Wins
Our community gets stronger every year because of smart politics and strong investments. But mostly because of you. Yes, you - the reader, the amplifier, the donor, the encourager.
My favorite part of Election Day so far is that last night I realized somehow Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet had fewer than 7,000 followers on X. The whole weekend was spent talking about a different Michigan congresswoman, not the only one who won a Trump district. So I tweeted to follow her, and Matthew Yglesias amplified it to his million followers, and now she has more than 7,000. If you’re not one of them, follow her!
I also noticed Jamie Ager has just over 2,000. Follow him on X! And on Substack! Actually follow all of them - they’ll need the support.
Because these Trump-district winners will face a tough time when they get to DC - like Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, they’ll likely face middle school harassment - and we can’t repeat what happened after the last Blue Wave in 2018.
Remember The Humans
The leader of DFP (yet another progressive acronym, Data for Progress) today challenged Welcome to put out a memo on Haley Stevens. So here it is:
The Haley Stevens saga is a reminder that despite all our polls and message testing and forecasts, the many millions raised and spent, politics is (for now, anyway) driven by real, live, complicated human beings.
I’ve never had occasion to meet Stevens - she does not represent anything close to a Trump district (Harris won hers by more than 16 points), and is not particularly centrist (last session she was rated as more liberal than 40% of the House Democratic Caucus). She is not an electoral overperformer, with her last three WAR scores rounding to zero.
She is a human being, though. Affected by antagonistic behavior from other humans - from perceived slights to high-profile verbal assaults. Public reporting over the last two years makes it clear that, unlike most humans, she is an especially frequent target of ridicule and manipulation.
I’ve heard enough firsthand experiences from other candidates to get a directional sense of what that can do to someone. In the months before we launched WelcomePAC in 2021, we conducted dozens of interviews with different political stakeholders to understand what programs would be most effective. A Democratic member of Congress from a blue district said that leftist “psychological warfare” was incredibly effective. That it was effective even when the target rationally understood it and expected it. That you could be a successful, well-adjusted adult and still be affected by it.
That it would make you do things you normally wouldn’t do - and make you far less likely to stay in politics.
Political science research backs this up. Andy Hall’s 2019 book Who Wants to Run? How the Devaluing of Political Office Drives Polarization showed how the personal cost of campaigning and holding elected office increased while the benefits decreased. This weeded out moderates in favor of ideologues.
It has taken us years to understand just how sharply the costs have increased to the humans we are asking to win majority-making seats.
I am in awe of those who are able to accept this all-consuming vocation. Criss-crossing the country to raise money and criss-crossing districts to win votes all so that you can take unholy hell from both MAGA and DSA and - if you’re lucky - commute to a second full-time job in Washington, DC, where you’ll be expected to STFU about the promises you made to voters while you press the vote button when told to and dial for dollars to do it all over again in two years.
The two candidates we wrote most about back then were Joe Manchin and Jared Golden. Manchin had activist groups attacking him nonstop. Golden had that AND a primary challenger from the left. Both have endorsed Republicans this cycle, which the press secretary for the Working Families Party reminded me of today.
“The Democrats” will win tonight. And many groups will claim credit, with data thrown around all over the internet. But remember that behind each big win is a human being, and they will need a community to support them.
That’s why we’re building this community now, so tonight’s winners don’t face it alone.
So follow the Win The Middle slate on social, send them congratulations, be there for them when it’s hard, and bring more people along.
