All politics are still local

This year’s presidential election is a singular event. This is the first time in my life that a serious presidential candidate has openly campaigned for an end to our democracy. And should the Orange One win, he could actually have the support to do it.

Especially if we take a Biden victory for granted. Or, conversely, if we get caught up in the differences within our coalition, and ignore the country’s most significant peril.

I like Andy Borowitz’s take on the presidential choice: it’s between someone who’s pledged to defend democracy and someone who’s unable to spell it.

For all the concerns about Biden’s political weakness, there are powerful forces favoring a Democratic victory: the strength of the economy; the distaste for Trump’s excesses; the continuing reaction to the Dobbs decision (ending the Roe v Wade protections); and the frequent electoral victories in 2023, following the widely unexpected results in 2022 throughout the country, where the latter included statewide Democratic wins in Arizona.

Positive perspectives are emphasized by Simon Rosenberg in his “Hopium Chronicles”, for instance the one at https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/major-biden-speech-on-january-6th. Despair is not warranted at this point.

But the real divisions within the left (for instance about Israel/Palestine) and dissatisfaction about what Biden’s adminstration HASN’T done could lead to electoral disaster. Too many voters could go for 3rd party candidates or just stay home. We particularly need to convince low-propensity voters that their vote matters, as “landslide Mayes” could point out (after her 280-vote win for Attorney General our of millions of votes cast).

Arguably, the best strategy for success at the top of the ticket may be energizing voters about races near the ballot’s bottom. If we can convince voters to come out for their local candidates (school board, state legislature, county positions), they will, with high likelihood, vote the same way at the top of the ticket. Just imagine someone voting for their local Democratic candidate and then voting for Donald Trump. That’s not likely. But the opposite is often true – a fair number of Republicans in AZ vote for the Democrat at the top (due to revulsion about MAGA) and then revert to their party orientation for local candidates. Work on the local level is incredibly important.

Many of us are working to get signatures on the petition putting abortion rights on the ballot. This may well be the key to turnout that will give our state better outcomes. If this citizen effort were to fail, the consequences for women in this state would be dire. But if it succeeds in bringing more low-propensity voters into the election, there will be consequences beyond abortion rights. We can deliver the state’s 11 electoral votes to the pro-democracy presidential candidate, Joe Biden. And we can change the partisan balance in the state legislature, removing the MAGA caucus from its current position of control.

And once that latter balance changes, we can actually start to work on fixing some of the real problems in the state: slowing the unlimited and unaccountable flow of funds for vouchers, shoring up our water security, and so much more.

So getting better legislators, school boards, and county officials is important for all the obvious reasons. But the process of getting them can also lead to success in a critical national election, one that may well be existential for our democracy.