By Alan Hirsch
The Blue Wave made its first public appearance in Davis last Saturday. “I’ve never seen this many Democrats in a room…even for an election victory party” said Bob Schelen, Chair of the Yolo County Democratic Party.
A crowd of 200 largely new faces to party politics came together last Saturday August 25th for grassroots campaign training at the Davis Senior Center. This training was organized by eight local progressive and regular Democratic Party groups that have formed the Yolo Blue Wave Coalition.
This unexpectedly high turnout is a sign that the 88.5% of Davis residents, who voted against Trump and the GOP, in the last 18 months have seen the results…and not only aren’t they accepting, they are even more concerned.
The meeting’s purpose was to help local residents be effective participants in campaigns; in particular, taking back Congress from the Republicans who hold seats in 14 California Congressional districts outside of Yolo County.
Participants spoke not just about Trump, but about a need to return accountability to Washington where corruption, scandal and divisiveness now seem the norm. A survey of the attendees pre-event also turned up a high level of “fear,” “anger” and “frustration” with the political process in Washington.
The gathering got a briefing from Andrew Truman Kim of the statewide organization “Flip the 14” on how Democrats can re-take the house of representative. Kim described how there are 600,000 registered Democrats in these currently GOP held districts that typically do not vote in midterm congressional elections. Studies show that by making a personal contact, for example by simply sending a post card, volunteers can cut through the social media clutter and dramatically increase turnout on Election Day.
Kelly Wilkerson, of the Davis Sister District group, gave the example of how Davisites have already proven this works: They sent 5000 post cards and texts to voters in a Legislative race in Virginia
for Democratic candidate Cheryl Turpin last year. This upped voter turnout, and flipped this district from Republican to Democrat.
The group also heard from Shabbir Safdar of the Bay Area group CalAway Team on how to be effective doing door to door canvassing of registered Democrats. He described how face to face contact with voters at the front door creates memorable events, and increases voter turnout.
The 70% of the attendees at this training were made up of middle aged or older woman. Three-fourths were not involved currently in any campaign, and half have not been involved in any political action before, even the 2016 Hillary campaign. The female-skewed demographic of this public event reflects a July 2018 Washington Post poll that indicates that by an unprecedented 3:1 margin college educated women reject Trump.
Also unusual was the attendees came not to be informed of policy issues, but to get involved in nuts and bolts of campaigns for Democrats. Each attendee sat through 90 minutes of training on such activities as post carding, canvassing, phone banking, texting, and even how to hold small dollar fund raising coffee for a candidate in your own home with your friends.
Putting the training into action, attendees were given an extensive list of local opportunities planned over the ten weeks remaining until the Election. These four events below are open to anyone who wants to get involved but missed the training:
- Write Post Cards to voters at two parties, Saturday and Sunday of the Labor Day weekend at 2pm. Attendees will be writing to Democratic voters in San Diego where the Republican Congressman was just indicted for stealing campaign funds. Meet at Davis Democratic HQ. 911 3rd Street (near the car wash). Questions: ResistDavisCA <AT> Gmail.com
- Join neighbors who will be carpooling & canvassing registered Democrats in Congressman McClinton’s district in El Dorado Hills. One of our messages is McClintock voted against funding enhanced fire protection service with the US Forest Service. Organized by Davis’s SisterDistrictCA3 people will meet at 9am sharp at “Mace Park & Ride” (behind Ikedas). They will return to Davis by mid to late afternoon. You can sign up for other canvasing at CalAwayTeam.com.
- Big Day Outreach Party – Bring a friend! Saturday 9/8 12:30 – 5 at 911 3rd Calling to replace McClintock in congress with Democrat Jessica Morse. (IndivisibleYolo)
- Overview Meeting. Learn about almost daily post card parties and other Davis activities at Sister District CA3 monthly meeting Wed Sept 5th 7 pm 2222 Muir Woods (common room).
Other interested volunteer and concerned citizens can find opportunities by checking out Facebook pages of members of the YoloBlueWave Coalition, including IndivisibleYolo, SisterDistrictCA3, Davis College Democrats, Berniecrat-Labor-Alliance, Yolo Progressives, Davis Democratic Club and Yolo County Democratic Party.
In addition, a weekly list of local volunteer campaign activities is also available at the Davis Farmers Market Resistance ‘Lawn Sign Table’ or send an email to ResistDavisCA<at>GMail.com.
Get Tickets To Vanguard’s Immigration Rights Event
LOL, and electing Democrats is going to change that?
Keith may not be aware that many believe that there was not any “corruption, scandal and divisiveness” until the Russians hacked the election and got the guy with orange hair and the GOP congress elected. We just need to stop the Russians from buying Facebook ads and hacking and we will soon be back to a blue honest (corruption, scandal and divisiveness free) congress (and in two years from now Elizabeth Warren will win and fix everything)…
Newcomers running as outsiders against corruption is likely to be a very salient theme this year.
Good point, Trump won as a newcomer outsider against the ‘swamp’ to fix Obama’s mess. He won.
Warren will fix things just as Carter, Clinton and Obama fixed them before her? LOL
“and electing Democrats is going to change that?”
Given that all things are relative, before the 2016 election, I would have said no. Now with Trump occupying the WH and naming an unprecedented number of corrupt Cabinet members and aides, I would say yes. The shear number of departures from his administration under suspicion or proven corruption tells me the amount of corruption will decrease with replacement.
Look above, that’s how Trump campaigned and won, to fix the ‘swamp’.
Trump promised to drain the swamp. He neglected to say he would replace it with a cesspool.
One cesspool is another person’s swamp depending on what side of the equation you’re looking at things. Don’t kid yourself, I can name several scandals and corrupt politicians associated with Obama. Do you want to go down that road?
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The Mueller witch hunt “success” has not changed Trump approval ratings. The Democrats are in big trouble lacking a platform except race-baiting, identity politics, anger and resistance. But the voting republic isn’t buying it. The Party is splitting… going hard left while some new congressional candidates have found some success being more like Trump in platform and ideas, but with actual language skills.
And all the old white liberals that managed to exploit their media friend connections and leveraged the crash of the economy (that their big government ideas caused) to blame Republicans and capitalism and CEOs and economic success (except for those like Hillary Clinton who became a millionaire with pay for play government positions) and win the political prize with Obama… well that charade is over. The people know how deceitful and destructive the platform was to the American people.
My belief is that the Democrats are toast… even if they can win back the house on the energy of protest, youth and anger. They will never be the same party that Davis liberals dream of.
False narrative.
Correct. His base of support is still locked in around 40%.
Doubtful.
The ‘generic ballot’ polling indicates otherwise.
Very doubtful. We’ll see in November.
It is a false witch hunt which was premised by a phony Steele Dossier pushed by biased agents in the FBI and Justce Dept. under Obama and bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton.
moderator: edited off topic comment removed
“Correct. His base of support is still locked in around 40%”
De-Trumpification will be necessary, based on the model that was so successful in Germany.
Jeff: Are you sure that it hasn’t changed his approval numbers?
This just out today: “President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a high point of 60 percent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that also finds that clear majorities of Americans support the special counsel’s Russia investigation and say the president should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”
General rule it takes at least a week for opinion polls to catch up with events.
Hey look, last quarter’s GDP got revised up to 4.2%. That’s what Americans care about.
Thanks, Alan, for the very helpful presentation on tabling. “Never sit behind the table!”
A little bod to assert that a few postcards flipped a district. Did they provide any reason they are making this claim?
“Kelly Wilkerson, of the Davis Sister District group, gave the example of how Davisites have already proven this works: They sent 5000 post cards and texts to voters in a Legislative race in Virginia for Democratic candidate Cheryl Turpin last year. This upped voter turnout, and flipped this district from Republican to Democrat.”
Newsome wants open borders and Medicare for all including illegals. You think we have a housing shortage now, wait until the floodgates open.
Citation?
“Newsome wants open borders and Medicare for all including illegals. You think we have a housing shortage now, wait until the floodgates open.”
Well at least it should make up for the equally fictional hordes of people leaving California because of the excessive taxes and regulations on corporations, your ilk has been pedaling for decades.
Thread cleanup: 5 comments removed.
I find it humorous… “Davisites” working to flip things Democrat, and ostensibly Republican folk saying they (R’s) are “the answer, the truth, the light”(guess we shouldn’t “monkey” with that, as the R candidate for Florida Governor has said)…
Well, here’s the reality… representing Davis… Democrat Assembly member, Democrat State Senator… Democrat member of US Congress…two Democrat US Senators…
Registered Republicans are the third largest registration group in CA. (slipping election by election). Democrats are slipping, too, but a tad more slowly. Trend is showing up nation-wide,but not to extent as it has in CA.
Independents and third parties are the only growing registration groups in CA. That will accelerate more, I predict, as the R’s hug the far right, and D’s hug the far left.
Should be interesting…
“a phony Steele Dossier”
Of course you wouldn’t know that much if not most of the dossier has been independently verified by multiple sources. Manafort and Cohen’s trials confirm large parts of the collusion claims. BBC and the UK independent have also confirmed the Russian tampering sections and Trump’s awareness of some of the discussions. More than just a pee tape, it is a portrait of espionage and treason. Your ilks refusal to accept that you elected a traitor and own responsibility for his crimes and desecration of our democracy. That is why de-Trumpification will be necessary. You felt righteous in seizing power at any cost, even treason.
Or as Obama also has said:
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/watch-obama-used-phrase-monkey-around-in-2008-no-leftist-outrage/
Context is what turns a phrase into a dog-whistle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics#United_States
There’s a long list of prominent Democrats who have used the term:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2018/08/30/flashback-heres-a-bunch-of-democrats-saying-monkeying-around-n2514415
Yes, Keith. Context is what turns a phrase into a dog whistle.
No, biased race baiting politics from the left is what turns the phrase into a dog whistle