Georgia on My Mind…5 Lessons for Democrats
— For 2024 and Beyond
This fall, I went to Atlanta to canvass for Reverend Raphael Warnock. A lot of folks there thought it was ridiculous that a run-off was necessary, and the more than $400 million spent in the Walker-Warnock contest underscores that absurdity. But Georgia has required run-offs for general elections where all candidates receive less than 50% since a noted segregationist lost his election and blamed the Black vote. On the unspoken rationale that poorer folks have less ability to come out for a second election, Georgia codified runoffs in 1968, and in 2020 mandated they would take place in a tight four-week period in the midst of the hectic Thanksgiving to Christmas holiday season.
I was not alone in this effort. A remarkably wide variety of people from every state came out with various volunteer groups, committed to doing what they could to help Warnock and combat voter suppression. The race was important for Democrats to be able to push forward their agenda and nominations in the Senate’s committee structure. It helped that the battle was between someone who is thoughtful and committed to making government serve the least advantaged and someone who didn’t seem able to fathom why his scandal-ridden personal life and childish, wandering remarks gave even the reddest voters pause. One super-canvasser in my cohort flew in from Hawaii; another was a Duke student skipping her last classes and study week before finals; there were civil rights leaders of all stripes, and a fair number of retirees finally able to do the activism they dreamed about.
During early voting days, people were standing in line to vote for hours, due mainly to the paucity of voting sites and their limited capacity — another feature that seemed designed to suppress the vote among anyone who needed to clock in for a job. We were mystified as to why we were canvassing the well-off and diverse McMansions in the northern suburbs, at least until we saw a New York Times article that mapped the key swing precincts around Atlanta — a Rosetta stone that showed those prosperous suburbs were where the purple ticket splitters lived.
One of those ticket-splitters, a nice South Asian woman who ran a business, complained to me that she was losing faith in the Democrats’ ability to manage the economy. She was well-informed, and knew that inflation and a tight labor market really weren’t a Democratic creation, nor did she have any concrete sense of what Republican policies might be, but she wanted a change. On the other hand, she hated Walker. We talked about our political tiredness and the stupidity of polarized and ideological politics, and I hoped she’d realize that fixing the economy was not going to hinge on who won the Georgia senate race.
As election day neared, our focus turned from persuasion to just getting people to find their way to the polls. Another lady I spoke to was discreet about her vote but overwhelmed by the logistics of casting it. She was elderly and frail, and lived in a couple of rooms at an out-of-the-way long-stay hotel with musty halls and patched ceilings. Nonetheless, she was a registered and active voter. We got the locally-based brother of one of our colleagues to give her a ride to and from the polls.
On Election Day, we were stationed in East Point, a southern Atlanta suburb that is overwhelmingly black with many poor communities. Here, racism was not just structural, it was palpable. Middle-class suburbs with their Magnolia-style welcome signs sat next to areas with shacks. A police car tailed my Black co-worker as he canvassed in one of the nicer areas, and he took the hint and left rather than risk a confrontation. We leafletted at a large Kroger supermarket, where the manager and clientele were fine with us standing outside, but the white property manager, looking like Colonel Sander’s low-class cousin, followed me in a white pick-up and told me to clear out now. We cleared out. The night before, I had read up on this area and found a Super Giant that served as the main grocery for a huge swath of poor neighborhoods. We went there, and were welcomed by virtually every store in the mall, and watched customers arrive and leave not in shiny vans but informal taxis and buses.
Again, the Democratic Party sent us to knock on doors in higher-end suburbs that had fresh campaign literature dropped from the day before. This seemed a terrible waste of energy, so we moved to finding rides to the polls for voters at the major bus depot. Lots of people were very glad to go, and each tired mom and working person who got to their polling station seemed a tremendous victory. Lots of people were angry that the Georgia state legislature was making it difficult to vote, and that the Republican Party thought people would just reflexively vote for a football hero.
Other reporters have drawn the obvious lessons from Georgia: the quality of the candidate matters a lot, the swing voters hold the keys, and Georgia is growing bluer by the minute with young people and people of color voting in record numbers. Even so, it was a heart-stopping close election for what seemed like a no-brainer choice.
So the lessons I drew for the Democrats in 2024 were these:
- Dem campaign managers — please don’t have us talk down to voters and try not to harass them either. Ask your volunteers to listen to them and figure out what their interests really are. Be helpful and informative, not nagging. Yes, just about everyone knows how to use a smartphone. Make information easily accessible in one click.
- Mobilizing the vote takes years, not weeks. Atlanta turned out because community groups have been working their neighbors constantly. They know their neighbors a lot better than the young party administrators moving from state to state. Don’t just thank them; listen to them. And donors — don’t just pour millions into the campaign in the final weeks — nurture these grassroots efforts continually. Sometimes local groups will be a much better investment than an overwhelmed party apparatus.
- People are willing to vote, especially when they think a lot hinges on their choice. But getting them to vote means helping them overcome their obstacles, whether that’s tired legs, long work shifts, reading and understanding the fine print, getting them a lift to the polls and home, or suing to get longer poll hours. Georgians have lots of these problems, but they exist all over the place. Don’t forget the disabled, the institutionalized, the incarcerated, and the retirement home dwellers.
- Women candidates are just as good as male candidates, but they need extra help in overcoming bias, especially with male voters. The Democrats can’t just field lots of highly qualified women and pat themselves on the back. They need to support them like crazy and address sexism directly. Everyone we met knew Stacy Abrams and knew she was smart. That wasn’t enough.
- You can’t count on someone’s vote just because they voted for you before or received you in a friendly way. You must earn it, and then make people believe you earned it. Democrats have to speak to the issues that middle-class swing voters worry about — the economy, the labor market, and crime — as well as the issues that motivate their base, and do this early and often. The vast majority of people aren’t stupid, even if they sometimes vote for vacuous football stars, and they vote their interests and anxieties. So framing those interests and worries in credible, positive and policy-forward ways is pretty important.
These are lessons the Democrats would do well to heed, especially if they are thinking about shifting primary schedules to favor more diverse states than Iowa and New Hampshire.
