Democracy Diary: Doorknocking.

Because democracy is a verb. What are you doing to democracy?

So I’ve been door knocking.

I hate door knocking. Like really, really hate it. When I get to my turf, I generally sit there for a few minutes in the car breathing and trying not to cry. I’ve always hated being seen, a problem that got vastly worse for me during the pandemic.

I had to quit canvassing, my first job out of college, because I was so bad at it and hated it so much. Even though it meant that I had no idea how to enter the career I’d wanted for years, and even though it meant I had to go to work at a temp job for a boss whose behavior barely qualified as human.

But this is important.

Nearly 300 Republican candidates on the ballot across the country have promoted the Big Lie that Biden lost in 2020.

Every patriot who cares about democracy and evidence-based reality needs to be out working for Democrats this election season. I can’t even imagine how painful it would be to me if Dems had lost touch with reality and embraced autocracy, and my commitment to democracy required me to vote for Republicans. But research shows that, in countries that have fended off autocracy, that’s exactly what has to happen (See _How Democracies Die_.)

Republicans failed in their first duty to protect democracy by not preventing the rise of autocrats in the first place.

Some of them are now voting for — and encouraging others to vote for — Democrats to fulfill their duty to democracy.

This is great, but the amount of gerrymandering and voter suppression that have come into play since Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 has skewed the playing field so much that Dem wins will be hard, even though Dem policies are vastly more popular. (This is, in fact, WHY Republicans have worked so hard to gerrymander and suppress voters — they won’t embrace wildly popular policies that increase the middle class, protect women’s rights, protect workers, and protect the vote. This is b/c there always seems to be one US party that’s committed to more blatant and extreme forms of racism and classism, and right now, it’s the R’s.)

So I’m doorknocking and calling voters in Georgia, where things are going to be dicey.

Let me know in the comments what you’re doing to democracy. It will help me when I’m gathering my courage to get out of the car and knock on the next door.