When It Comes to Political Campaigns, Give Till It Hurts

There is a saying: Democracy doesn't work unless you do.

I never really knew what that meant until the evening of November 8, 2016, when one of the worst United States presidents of contemporary history was elected to office. Sidenote: no one was running around then making fantastical claims of election fraud. Just sayin’

In the fallout of those next few weeks, I came to the painful conclusion that I didn’t personally do enough to help support my preferred candidate to victory. And in the depths of my despair, let me tell you, that was a big pill to swallow. I knew her loss wasn't my fault alone. Still, I knew I had to bear some responsibility in learning the lesson of preventing a similar devastating election outcome in the future. It frustrates me at times that in society, the actions of the individual "I" aren't seen as directly impacting the collective "we."

Looking back, I realize now I just did the bare minimum to support my candidate. I shared posts on social media, and I donated money to the campaign. Overall, I was just so naively over-confident, I didn't think there was a need to do anything more. I was happy in my feminist echo chamber and prepared to see a significant glass ceiling shattered. Instead, I ended up disillusioned and sick to my stomach. I'll never forget that feeling. I made a promise to myself that I would do whatever I could to never go through that experience again.

So I started attending protests and rallies. I posted less on social media and read actual news more. I responded to surveys and bumped up the amount and quantity of campaign contributions. $25 here and there may not seem like a lot on its own, but collectively, it adds up among many donors. It's about the "I" and the "we," remember. The Blue Wave swept through the midterms, and it appeared as if the sleeping lion had been awoken.

I followed the 2020 primaries with a distant focus. There were simply so many candidates at the start line, trying to untangle who would end up getting the nomination seemed counter-productive to me. Instead, I chose to trust the process. I believed that whoever ended up at the convention would be the best option of the lot, and I had hoped it would be the right person to unseat the incumbent. It turns out that two rivals in that primary process became running mates. The journey of politics rarely runs in a straight line.

I kept with my practice of not posting on social media, except for one statement I made a night or so before the election. We also donated more to a presidential campaign than we ever have before. To me, it wasn't a waste of our money but rather an investment. And for some of those donations, I got some cool swag I'm still enjoying today. I also did a couple of new things: I wrote letters, and I text-banked.

I learned about VoteForward from my mother-in-law. VoteForward is a website where you sign up to write and send a certain amount of letters by a specific time. The site has collected the names and addresses from eligible voters, I'm assuming from voter rolls, in every state. They then help manage how many letters are still needed and designate which states are battleground states. You don't know the political affiliation of who you are writing to, which I think is one aspect I liked about it.

Even though I knew it probably wasn't going to be a battleground state, based on the outcome of 2016, anywhere in the Midwest couldn't be taken for granted. Additionally, I have a family connection to Minnesota, and I used to live there, and, interestingly, there are a lot of Libertarians who live there. My intention with the letters I sent wasn't to be heavy-handed in my advocacy statement. Instead, just to share a bit of my story and hope it motivated the person reading it to vote.

VoteForward provided a base script and basic dos and don'ts for how to write your letter. I used their basic script but then added the following statement addressing my disability, "As a disabled person, I value and support government leaders who work to be inclusive, uphold our civil rights, and protect our healthcare." And then, I asked them to be sure they vote in the upcoming election. Nowhere in the letter do I actually name my chosen candidate. I hoped they would read between the lines.

I sent out 20 handwritten letters, and in all, it took me about two hours to complete. I've never felt so proud going to the post office when I mailed them. Still, I wanted to do more. But what? I wasn't about to do door-to-door canvassing while I was sheltering-in-place. And I have had complicated feelings about cold-calling since my days of working as a telemarketer. So that left texting.

To be honest, I was having a lot of feelings of resistance around texting as well. But I remembered what Barack Obama said once on his own campaign trail years ago: "Give till it hurts." Now, I don't think he actually wants people to hurt themselves for the sake of a political campaign. Instead, I think what he meant is, make your actions proportional to what is at stake. In short, find the courage or feel the urgency to go that extra mile beyond your comfort zone because that is where transformative change happens.

I signed up through MoveOn.org and got a crash course in Slack, and the weekend prior, through Election Day, I texted thousands of people who didn't live anywhere near my zip code. Much like the VoteForward letters I sent, the text messages were targeted to specific states. I remember I texted a lot to Georgia, and the message referenced quotes by Stacy Abrams. I didn't overthink things too much. I had confidence who was running this whole operation knew what they were doing, and my job was just to sit and click my mouse hundreds of times an hour.

Looking back, it was surprisingly easy, yet, still a bit uncomfortable. Sometimes people would text back mean or nasty messages. If you felt discouraged, you could go to the pep-talk Slack channel and be reminded that for every three shitty letters, there were seven that weren't. And that no matter what ends up happening on Election Day, my effort was part of a team of like-minded individuals, and it was appreciated.

As it turns out, my candidate won. Of course, it is impossible to quantify if all the small individual actions I did directly impacted the outcome. But I like to believe they did. What I know for sure is the regret I feel when I wonder if I had done the same four years prior, would my candidate have won then too?

That lingering wonder has changed me. This past September, there was a recall election for my state's governor. It was an abuse of the recall system, in my opinion. Again, I donated to the anti-recall effort, made my singular social media post, and I even tried to get a yard sign. But I wanted to do more. So this time, rather than text messaging, I made postcards. I ordered 50 blank postcards and printed a message that reminded people to vote, and respectfully asking that if they were undecided, would they consider voting against the recall effort. I then took an hour out of my day and scooted around my neighborhood, dropping the cards off in people's mailboxes.

The recall effort was defeated in a landslide. Did my tiny stack of postcards make a difference? I guess that is something you can decide for yourself. I know my answer.