Chop Wood, Carry Water 8/15
You're the secret sauce.
Hi, all, and happy Thursday!
Things are continuing to look promising, mainly because of you. I’m hearing from so many of you about the people you’re registering, the postcard parties you’re holding, the canvasses you’re attending, and more. It makes my heart burst with pride.
Look, the fact that the polls are moving in our direction is great. The fact that Trump is an awful candidate and JD Vance is the dysfunctional gift that keeps on giving—shout out to the postmenopausal females on this list!—is also helpful. The fact that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are excellent, energetic, brilliant human beings and stellar campaigners is also terrific.
But ultimately those things alone will win zero elections. What will win elections, and I mean up and down the ballot, is the tireless effort that you’re putting in to talking to voters right now. Period.
So while I love seeing new indicators of the burgeoning Harris-Walz movement, what I love even more, because it moves me deeply and gives me hope, is watching all of you continue to do the work that you were doing anyway, because your loyalty has never been solely to a candidate or even to a party, but always to the health of our democracy. I love your courage. I love your steadfastness. I love your persistence.
It is because of you that we will win.
Thanks for that, you incredible Americans.
Now let’s get back to work.
P.S. — Apparently the link to the Hollers for Harris call was broken. Sorry about that. The correct link is here. There’s also a Caregivers For Harris call today— register here, but it does conflict with my “What project 2025 is All About” call, which is ALSO today. Phew! Thursdays are bananas.
Call Your House Rep (find yours here) 📲
Hi, I'm a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is _______.
I’ve just heard that, with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz at the top of the ticket, House Republicans are pivoting from their failed impeachment probe into President Biden to targeting Harris and Walz, despite having no evidence pointing to even a slight impropriety. This enrages me. The House of Representatives isn’t intended to be weaponized or used as an arm of a Presidential campaign, but that’s exactly what Republicans are doing. I want Republicans to cease and desist right away. If they can’t attract voters through their policies then maybe they don’t deserve to be in politics. Shame on them.
Extra Credit ✅
Worried about Republicans who may refuse to certify the election results?
Courage for America just launched the “Courage to Certify” Campaign with a Day of Action, including a press call joined by Rep. Joe Morelle (NY-25), Ranking Member of the Committee on House Administration, Christine Wood from Declaration For American Democracy, and Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and Officer Michael Fanone, both of whom were gravely injured while defending the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. They spoke on the need for Congress to certify the results of the 2024 presidential election and reject the extreme, anti-democratic agenda of Project 2025.
CFA has also launched a Courage to Certify letter campaign here. It allows you to send a letter directly to your representative demanding that they commit to certifying the 2024 presidential election. Please share it widely!
Get Smart! 📚
Sister District has conducted extensive research to understand the phenomenon of ballot roll-off—when a person votes in the race at the top of the ballot, but then skips voting for state legislative races. Other research they’ve done shows that partisan control of state legislatures is often decided by very narrow margins. In their latest report, they bring these findings together, focusing on closely contested legislative chambers in 2020 to illustrate why roll-off matters.
They looked at 13 competitive, Republican-controlled state legislative chambers in 2020 and determined the number of additional seats Democrats would have needed in order to gain the majority in each of these chambers. They then calculated the total number of votes it would have taken to win those majority-making seats, using the districts where Democratic candidates lost by the narrowest margins. Finally, they calculated the amount of roll-off, or how many more votes Joe Biden received than the Democratic state legislative candidates, in those same districts.
The results will amaze you—and show concretely why roll-off is important.
Please see their new report here. All of their previous research on roll-off can be found here. And please, talk to everyone you know about roll-off and why it matters!
Spread the Word! 📣
Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, Medicare has negotiated lower prices for certain prescription medications for the first time in the program’s history. Today, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced the new, lower prices for the first 10 drugs selected for price negotiations — saving patients on these medications an average of $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs per year!
Here’s the White House Fact Sheet.
Would you kindly post the below (or something like it) on your social media? We need to spread the word!
🚨JUST IN: Medicare just announced reduced prices for 10 of the most common prescription drugs for enrollees!
In 2022, these prescriptions cost seniors $6,000+ in out-of-pocket costs per year for just ONE of these medications. Not on the Biden-Harris Administration's watch!
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/medicare-cost-lower-medication-diabetes-blood-thinners-rcna166385
Give 💰!
This is very exciting! I just got invited to speak at a fundraiser for the Mecklenberg County, NC Dem Party on August 26 with Representative Jeff Jackson! Also speaking will be NC Dems Chair Anderson Clayton and Mecklenberg County Dem Chair Drew Kromer!
As you likely know, Mecklenburg County, NC has more Democrats than anywhere else in North Carolina, but voter turnout there has lagged behind the state average and similarly sized counties, leaving tens of thousands of Democratic votes on the table.
In 2022, about 185,000 Democrats in Mecklenburg didn’t vote — 150% of the margin between Cheri Beasley and Ted Budd in the US Senate election that year! A Democratic majority in North Carolina runs through Mecklenburg County, and MeckDems have an ambitious plan to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors of voters! This is going to be an amazing event and the money raised could well tip the balance in this critical swingy state!
RSVP at: https://join.meckdems.org/blue
donate: https://donate.meckdems.org/bluedonate
Win Races! 🗳
From activist Steven Schear:
Montana Now Has the Second Most Important Race in the Country.
Polling has us ahead in every Senate seat we need to win to hold the Senate – except one. FiveThirtyEight reports several polls showing Jon Tester trailing his GOP opponent Tim Sheehy by 3 to 5 points. Sheehy is not an obviously extreme MAGA candidate like Bernie Moreno in Ohio and Kari Lake in AZ. He is a handsome ex-Navy Seal with a ton of money running in a state that Trump won by 16 points in 2020.
This race is still very winnable. Tester is popular. Montana voters have a history of ticket-splitting, and Sheehy has almost no history in Montana. The polls showing Sheehy ahead are Republican operations, so they are not trustworthy. But in the absence of polls showing Tester ahead, this race looks like it could go either way. If we lose, our chances of holding the Senate are unfortunately very low.
Montana is now the most important Senate battleground state in the country. It is also the battleground state with the smallest population. In 2020, 588,000 Montanans voted for President, compared to 6.9 million in Pennsylvania. That means that talking to one voter in Montana has the same impact on Senate election results as talking to 12 voters in PA. Speaking to Montana voters at their doors or on the phone will have an outsized impact on our chances of holding the Senate.
Please Help Tester Win.
I generally don’t support giving money to candidate campaigns. Usually none of that money goes to building lasting party infrastructure that helps create lasting power. Tester’s race is an exception. We need him to win and his campaign is best positioned to buy advertising and organize canvassing. So I encourage you to donate directly to his campaign here.
Even better, sign up to phonebank for Tester here. And if you can, go canvass for Tester. Montana is stunningly beautiful, so you can combine an outdoor getaway with a door-knocking expedition. Sign up to canvass here.
Winning Tester’s race would give us a fantastic chance of achieving a federal trifecta in November. Please do as much as you can to help him.
Chop Wood, Save the Planet 🔥
There’s a Climate Voters For Harris call on Friday, August 16 from 3-4:30pm EDT / 12-1:30 PDT. This is a virtual event and you can join from anywhere. RSVP here!
Resistbot Letter (new to Resistbot? Go here! And then here.) 💻
[To: the Department of Justice] [H/T]
Instead of a Resistbot we’re going to write to the DOJ today. Contact them here.
Say something like:
I’m writing in support of a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D), Dick Durbin (D) and nearly two dozen other Democratic senators. The letter urged your agency to take more action to protect election workers, citing “an ongoing barrage of threats and abusive conduct.”
The letter praised the agency’s 2021 establishment of the Election Threats Task Force and other efforts to address threats to election workers, but acknowledged “that the law enforcement response to threats in 2020 was ‘inadequate.’”
It also cited a recent Reuters investigation that revealed how election workers get little help from law enforcement in response to threats and harassment. This must change!
This issue is something that I, as an American citizen, care about deeply. Our democracy depends upon election workers’ being kept safe!
I join these Senators in asking the DOJ to please do more to protect election workers this November. Thanks!
OK, you did it again! You helped save democracy! You’re amazing.
Talk soon.
Jess
As soon as I get my shipment of cards from Etsy I’ll be writing postcards for Tester right here in West Yellowstone MT. I’m also going to visit his campaign headquarters in Missoula when we go visit our daughter this weekend 😊
I believe one can only be post menopausal once one has died, since menopause means the end of menses. So women are menopausal once they've finished menstruating, not post menopausal. BTW. it's glorious to be in that phase of life! And we can apparently thank Vance for encouraging us to seize our power to defeat the cave men.