Note for the day:
The Playing to Win Resources page has been added as a link under Calling All Jackals.
Let’s highlight part of the Playing to Win Resource page today:
2020 Primaries
Presidential Election Calendar
Check Your Voter Registration Regularly
Check to See if You’re STILL Registered to Vote: Vote Save America
Donate to Voting Rights Organizations or Organizing
Barack Obama & Eric Holder’s Gerrymandering & GOTV Organization: All On The Line
Stacey Abrams’s Voter Protection Teams: Fair Fight 2020
Vote Save America’s Field Organizers for Battleground States: Leave It All on the Field
Beto O’Rourke’s Organizing Grassroots Volunteers: Powered by People
Black Leaders Organizing their Communities on the north side: BLOC
Ballot Box Equality at the Ballot Box across Indian Country: Four Directions
Latino Leaders Organizing the Communities on the south side of Milwaukee : Voces de la Frontera
Help Democrats Abroad contact their voting states to confirm registration or register: Democrats Abroad
The Political Home for Black Women: Higher Heights
The resource page – with all the suggestions and resources from previous threads – now has its own link under Calling All Jackals here and at Playing to Win. Additional links will be added as you provide them in ongoing threads.
What is Playing to Win?
The goal is a poll-free, spin-free, prognostication-free, media-free, what’s-wrong-with-the-other-candidate-free-zone – a political thread where the focus is on ACTION: What can be done to help our candidates, and what are we doing to help them, every day?
The hope is that this will help provide inspiration, and encourage action, as an alternative to anger, frustration and despair.
*****
A couple of our jackals requested a regular political “action” thread, which we are calling Playing to Win. We’ll keep this up for as long as there is interest.
The goal is a poll-free, spin-free, prognostication-free, media-free, what’s-wrong-with-the-other-candidate-free-zone – a political thread where the focus is on ACTION: What can be done to help our candidates, and what are we doing to help them, every day?
The hope is that this will help provide inspiration, and encourage action, as an alternative to anger, frustration and despair.
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
Let’s try Thursday late mornings and Sunday afternoons.
You asked for easy ways to find these threads:
· there’s a link in the sidebar under Calling All Jackals (on computers & tablets in landscape mode)
· there’s a link in the hamburger menu bar (on mobile)
· click on the Playing to Win category that shows up just under the byline at the top of the post
· if you’re super lazy worn out from all your work canvassing and calling and texting, click here
Everyone is free to chime in about what they are doing for their their preferred candidate. What actions are we taking at Balloon Juice, individually or collectively, to help candidates we believe in?
What might you like to do, if you weren’t stuck on not quite knowing how to go from thinking about doing something to actually doing something?
· Make calls
· Canvass
· Write postcards
· Text for your candidate
· Donate
· Register people to vote
· Give people rides to the polls to vote
· Bring food and drinks to campaign offices in your area
· Be an election judge
· Be a poll watcher
· Put together a bullet list of what you like about YOUR preferred candidate
· Go to a battleground state to work on a campaign.
· Use your frequent flyer miles to send a volunteer to a battleground state
· If you live in a battleground state, host a volunteer who could stay at your house
· Share a great informational article about YOUR preferred candidate
· If you have campaign connections, connect interested jackals with that campaign
· Organize a postcard-writing campaign and help other BJ peeps get started
What else are you doing?
Tell us what actions you’ve taken today, whether it’s calling or donating or canvassing or writing postcards or talking to someone about your candidate, or anything else that’s on that list. Or even something that isn’t!
Forget the other candidates. Tell us what you LIKE about your candidate.
Share your worries or concerns about canvassing or other activities. What’s holding you back?
If Playing to Win appeals to you, what else would you want to see in this space?
The Senate Is In Play
wmd
All on the line allontheline.org/ is working to get legislators that won’t gerrymander. Eric Holder is leading it.
WaterGirl
@wmd: That’s the first item on the list, though I had credited it to Obama and not Obama & Holder. Will fix that now.
PsiFighter37
Warren out according to NYT and CNN.
guachi
Yup. Came here to mention Warren drops out. I guess she pulled a Klobuchar and stayed one day longer than her nemesis.
randy khan
@PsiFighter37:
You beat me to it.
I wonder if she’ll endorse anyone right away. My first guess is no, but I’ve been wrong about so much this cycle that you should assume I’m wrong about this.
randy khan
@guachi:
It feels that way, doesn’t it?
guachi
@randy khan: I think with Bloomberg dropping just below viability in Texas and California (which really helps Sanders) that Warren will net more delegates than Bloomberg.
If Bloomberg had managed to net 150-200 delegates out of Super Tuesday then Sanders stood no chance of winning. Now, it’s a fight at least for a few more contests.
BGinCHI
Warren was easily the best presidential candidate in my lifetime who won’t actually be president.
Not sure this country even deserves her right now. We’re too afraid of taxes and the good government can do; we don’t understand how money warps health care delivery and education; we spend far too much on defense.
We need someone who will change the Reagan paradigm. I was hoping it would be her.
UncleEbeneezer
Thank you for this series of posts. One of the things I plan to do in the next few days is finally reach out to some old friends who I’ve mostly lost touch with (many have surely unfollowed me because of Intra-Dem political disagreements and/or my constant challenging of them on racism…talking about white supremacy/misogyny honestly loses you a lot of white/male friends) to urge them to do more than just vote. This list of links will be an excellent resource for my email.
H.E.Wolf
ETA: Thank you, WaterGirl, for the twice-weekly posts and the list of links!
* * *
I’m all about “shéer plód”. There’s value and uplift in (seemingly) humdrum work.
1. The public-health Prevention & Containment phrase of the week in our locale is “social distancing”, so I’m working from home on data entry and GOTV postcards.
2. I kept an appointment to meet at a coffee shop and start someone else on the postcard track. We sanitized the entire table (and ourselves) before we began, somewhat to the bemusement of nearby customers… but I bet we’re trendsetters. :)
3. I’m maintaining a list of local folks who (absent a pandemic) would like to volunteer when the coordinated campaign office opens up.
C Stars
The local organization that I have volunteered with before (i.e. a few textbanks and some postcarding parties, nothing huge) mainly organizes through FB.
I had to block FB yesterday because I was getting tempted into too many pointless comment fights with Berners.
So now I have no access to their calendar of events.
A while back the main administrator of the group tactfully suggested I might consider making them a website….
I guess I know what I have to do now.
chris
@WaterGirl- This is very cool. But, cuz there’s always a but, a large flashing orange link to the resources page on the front page might be useful for folks in a hurry. Just sayin’.
Hope this doesn’t count as foreign meddling in your election.
Elizabelle
This belongs in this thread too, because have to celebrate all our non-keyboard commandos here. People who get out there and mix it up in real life.
I am so proud of everyone here who supported Elizabeth Warren: who voted, who volunteered, who contributed, who believed in her. Who cared so deeply about the outcome.
Applause to all of you. It may not seem like it, but it mattered.
Mary G
I am on an IV so I can’t link on my phone, but Cal Cunningham won the primary in North Carolina to run against Thom Tillis, so I began one of my $5/month contributions to him. Tillis might be vulnerable or not, but I am donating to all the Senate candidates once they are in.
ETA: Looks like Cunningham is up by two points in the last poll.
WaterGirl
@chris:
Well, it’s not flashing orange, but I put a link to the Playing to Win Resources page under Calling All Jackals. It’s in the menu bar / hamburger on mobile
I also added it to the Note for the Day up top.
Elizabelle
@Mary G: Yea you, and good luck with that IV.
North Carolina is one state south of me. Will have to spend a weekend or more there canvassing for Cunningham. Go purple towards blue, North Carolina!
WaterGirl
@Mary G:
You are an inspiration, Mary G.
Cheryl from Maryland
Wrote postcards for Mike Espy in the Mississippi Senatorial special election against Cindy Hyde-Smith. Espy is giving it another go and is ahead of Hyde-Smith in fundraising. If he becomes the official D candidate after the Mississippi primary this month, most postcards and donations are in my future. I want the GOP to have to defend their Senate seats EVERYWHERE.
chris
@WaterGirl: Excellent! Wish I could use it.
WaterGirl
@Cheryl from Maryland:
So say we all.