What Works: Two States, Two Strategies, Two Results
Ever since the 2008 presidential election in which Barack Obama won North Carolina, the Tar Heel State has been regarded by political observers as the Southern state in which Democrats were most likely to win statewide races.
North Carolina was included in all the lists of “toss-up” states. The Democratic Party spent lots of money on Senate and Presidential races. The expectations of winning and flipping the state from red to blue were high. Those expectations have not been realized. Both US Senators are Republicans. Republicans have won the last three presidential races by margins ranging from 75,000 to 175,000.
Georgia has been the surprise Southern state for Democrats. Much redder than North Carolina not that long ago (Obama lost Georgia by 200,000 in 2008 and 310,000 in 2012) the Peach State last year carried Joe Biden and elected two Democrats to the US Senate.
What happened? Why has electoral politics played out so differently in the two states? What can be learned?
Three Harvard political science professors set out to find the answers and recently published a preliminary report on the different strategies followed in the two states and the different results.
The title to their paper sets the stage: “Social Justice Campaigns and Democratic Party Gains: How Georgia’s Partisan Reformers Overtook North Carolina’s Moral Advocates.”
The goal of the efforts in both states has been to advance social justice, increase opportunities, reduce inequality, expand health care, and lift up the disadvantaged. The strategies for achieving those goals, however, were very different in the two states.
In North Carolina, “Forward Together” was started in 2007 and led by the Rev. William Barber, then the newly elected president of the North Carolina NAACP. It was a coalition of more than 100 advocacy groups, unions and religious congregations.
Their agenda was a moral agenda and deliberately non-partisan. Their strategy was to demonstrate, march and protest. By 2013 the annual march to the General Assembly in Raleigh attracted tens of thousands of participants. That same year the “Moral Mondays” civil disobedience sit-ins attracted national attention and resulted in some 1,000 being arrested.
In 2014, as part of a “Moral Freedom Summer” campaign, field organizers were hired to do voter registration. The effort was not successful. Few new voters were registered. “After 2014, the Forward Together coalition turned back to urban protests and annual marches pushing for their longstanding progressive policy menu.” Participants were primarily progressive-minded metropolitan activists.
The message was not focused. “The coalition of NAACP ‘partners’ was called a ‘Black-Brown-White’ ‘transformative moral fusion’ alliance, where each group would embrace other partners’ causes, ranging from educational development to civil rights, from unionization to social services, from gay rights to women’s reproductive freedom. ‘Every issue was equally important,’ in Barber’s view. ‘Our most directly affected members would always speak to the issue closest to their own hearts. But they would never speak alone.’” Republicans and many Democrats “pigeonholed it as a laundry list of far-left causes.”
None of the activities of Forward Together were explicitly connected to the Democratic Party. Rather, “Reverend Barber’s plan (was) to ‘win by changing the conversation for every candidate and party’ and educating ‘voters about how candidates have voted or committed to vote on issues that are part of our shared moral agenda.’”
Demonstrations were directed at “extremists” – a euphemism for Republicans. Democrats were never identified as the alternative to the “immoral” extremists. Most of the participants were college educated progressive metropolitan liberals.
After analyzing North Carolina election results the Harvard professors concluded, “Moral Freedom Summer outreach did not achieve any discernible electoral impact. … We also looked for longer- term electoral impacts from 2012 to 2016 and 2012 to 2020 and found no evidence of significant Moral Movement effects.”
In Georgia, the recent push for political change and social justice started in 2010 was led by Stacey Abrams, then the newly elected Democratic minority leader in the Georgia House. From the beginning, the effort was identified with Democrats and focused on voters and elections. The goal was to put partisan clout behind social change.
Initially, Abrams traveled the state meeting with local Democratic officials, county party chairs, people who wanted to run for office, grassroots leaders and activists on their home turfs spreading hope and making contacts. The 250,000 vote deficit in recent elections was “a difference Democrats could turn around. It’s time we make it known that it’s safe to be a Democrat again.”
Her message was “relatively moderate” with three themes: economic security, educational opportunity, and individual freedom. The emphasis was on broadly popular partisan goals.
The New Georgia Project was started in 2013 to help poor people get benefits under President Obama’s health care law. It combined insurance enrollments with voter outreach and voter education. “People had to be educated about how the GOP-run state government distorted implementation and why it might matter to vote specifically for Democrats.”
Even when registered to vote people “must be repeatedly encouraged actually to submit ballots for each election, maybe using new procedures when Republicans repeatedly change the rules. Abrams-inspired organizing therefore stressed weaving continuous, community level ties.” The organizers hired were members of the local community.
“To connect the dots between partisan control of government and policy changes, ordinary Georgians needed to hear things spelled out by trusted people – not just once, or during a single election cycle, but again and again.”
As in North Carolina, initial efforts to register new voters were not particularly successful, but unlike North Carolina where the effort was abandoned, Abrams and her associates repeatedly revised and updated their tactics, persevering through the multiple years it took before winning in 2020.
The report summarizes the strategies in the two states to achieve social reform and build power.
In North Carolina, marches, protests, and public events were used “to attract media attention, in order to move public opinion and thereby press politicians and leaders of all stripes to aid the poor and minorities.”
In Georgia, the strategy was to use voter outreach and education to win elections and change officeholders
The professors conclude that political change is achieved more readily through “sustained, grassroots organizing aligned with a political party than by mounting issue-focused protests and nonpartisan moral appeals.” Reformers “do better if they frankly tie grassroots outreach to partisan candidates and causes.”
What are the takeaways for Wisconsin?
Results are likely to be bigger and more enduring if organizational capacities are persistently deployed on the ground.
Success requires persistence and learning from defeats and set-backs along the way.
Democratic victories are more likely when statewide party and civic capacities are built rather than relying on metro support alone.
Issues are moral. Political parties are messy. In politics, however, issues do not stand alone. The moral and the messy mix. Issues are embodied in a candidate, who is embodied in a Party. It takes a Party to win a majority to make change. All the major issues are decided on Election Day but only candidates and parties are on the ballot. If Democrats are to win, we have to embrace not only our issues, but also our Party.
This blog borrows freely from: Social Justice Campaigns and Democratic Party Gains: How Georgia’s Partisan Reformers Overtook North Carolina’s Moral Advocates. Theda Skocpol, Caroline Tervo, and Kirsten Walters Harvard University, July 2021 -- Click here to download the full report
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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