I heard about Field Team 6 from a local Democratic Party activist. She told me that they were doing what the party wasn’t doing enough: registering Democratic and progressive voters in swing states and swing districts year-round. Folks tend to feel disaffected when organizers show up before an election and then disappear. This is about a relationship with folks you see at the supermarket or the gym.
If we didn’t know it already, we learned from Marc Cooper at our L.A. panel that this is how you win. To put it in Marc’s terms: This is how you fight fascism.
Jason manages to be upbeat without denying the country’s dire situation. The cool thing about having an event in L.A. is being able to listen to someone like Jason, a former TV writer who is funny as well as passionately committed to doing the political work that’s needed.
I’ve often thought that too many professions in the U.S. have become super-specialized. As a journalist, I’ve always been an outsider looking critically at government and organizations. I believe outsiders are more likely to come up with fresh approaches and logical solutions than people saying: “But we’ve always done it this way!”
What Jason talks about here is that, despite the disastrous outcome of the 2024 election, the victories in down-ballot elections laid the groundwork for 2026, and, assuming we still elections, 2028.
In the coming months, the Journal will be looking at elections as a whole. We’ll talk to experts, investigating claims that there was vote-tampering in 2024 (we doubt it, but let’s check) and at the pressing issue of whether Elon Musk’s DOGE boys will have the wherewithal to fix the next election. (Again: If we have one.)
You can watch the entire LA panel this coming Saturday. For the first week, it will be available only to paid subscribers. If you were thinking about supporting the Journal, that’s a nudge. At $35 for a regular membership, we are among the lowest cost memberships on Substack, and, frankly, we desperately need the funds.
But we don’t like paywalls. We get what it’s like to have limited funds, and we welcome your subscription, paid or unpaid. We’re happy to have you in the tribe.
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