Democracy Diary: Time to democracy

Vote Early. Help your friends plan to vote early. Knock Doors. Make phone calls.

(In a minute I'll tell you why it is awesome news that TFG was in Iowa today -- bet you never thought you'd hear me say that!)

I made phone calls again tonight, this time to voters in Georgia. Please join me! Sign up here: https://www.mobilize.us/moveon/event/480027/

Some things I heard tonight from people I called:

"All my friends and I went to vote together last night."
"Sure, I'll ask people to vote for Democrats."
"I haven't made phone calls since the Obama campaign, but I'd love to."

My very smart friend Laurie Belin at Bleeding Heartland says it's anyone's guess how it's going to turn out. So we all need to make calls.

Simon Rosenberg has been pointing out something interesting on Twitter:

1. Democrats are outperforming Republicans in early returns. By a lot, in many cases. They're outperforming 2020, sometimes by a lot. And these are not polls, they are based on returned ballots in early voting, using models that predict whether someone is R or D (if that's not known). No idea how accurate Target Early data was in predicting 2020, but it's interesting.

2. All the polling data showing Rs ahead is being created to skew R. It creates a narrative that (a) tries to discourage D voting by making us think there’s no point and (b) sets Rs up to claim voter fraud if they don't win (which they're going to claim anyway, but this is part of the R strategy to "flood the zone" with shit until people are so confused they give up on trying to understand anything (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/impeachment-trial-trump-bannon-misinformation)

Now - TFG would not be in Iowa today if the Rs had the state in the bag. I don't think Grassley and Reynolds were expecting to need bailing out. The fact that Iowa's in play?

It means no one knows what's going to happen, but we could see Kansas-referendum-style outcomes.

Vote early. Help your friends make a plan to vote early. Knock doors. Make phone calls: https://www.mobilize.us/moveon/event/480027/

Democracy is a verb.

(And then we need to talk about what we’re going to do when MAGAs claim voter fraud whenever they don’t win. It’s what they do, even though voter fraud basically doesn’t exist. On the other hand, Republicans have created the most fraudulent election system since the Civil Rights era.)