being perfectly honest & I don't say this to dump on anyone volunteering for a candidate, bc y'all are doing the lord's work but

I have *no* idea why Democrats rely on their supporters convincing strangers for their GOTV efforts, or for their persuasion efforts

when was the last time you answered a call from an unknown number? when was the last time you bought something a rando door to door salesperson showed up & offered you? probably almost never.

I get the impulse & the reasoning behind cutting Trump supporters out of your life. you have to watch for your mental health & your physical well being, if either of those are in jeopardy by having a radicalized person in your life. that's not what I'm talking about though.

I'm talking about people who are casual friends & only have a passing interest in politics who could be persuaded to (a) show up & (b) vote for candidates you support, but have historically voted in a way you disagree with (if they've voted at all).

I'm going to go out on an insane limb here & assume they've put up roadblocks to prevent an average political organizing volunteer from reaching them. they're already tuned out & find political activities annoying.

so a rando person trying to convince them to do something they're completely not interested in will only turn them off further.

but someone they know & respect will have a greater chance of reaching them.

and Democrats don't focus their efforts this way.

they don't focus on talking to your own neighbors. or make sure their volunteers actually know the folks they're trying to convince. or focus on coaching people to talk to friends & relatives who aren't receptive.

I get it, there's only so much money & so much time to win an election, & with the way we're collectively bleeding right now, the urgency is too great to rely on just relational persuasion from people who are safe & privileged enough to do it within their own social circles.

but this falls into the same category as things like dealing with climate change, or fixing health care financing, or banning private money in politics, or reducing policing, or any of the rest of it: this is important enough to need to be dealt with now, & if not now, when?

the current model of organizing (relying on volunteers to go through precut lists of strangers) is very quickly becoming obsolete. people have cornered themselves off into their silos & I find it extremely unlikely a complete stranger is going to break through that.

there are increasing & perfectly valid concerns over privacy & data collection. people are increasingly hostile to the idea of their phone number & email address being given out for advertising purposes.

thse concerns ought to be respected & taken seriously, especially considering how Democrats have enabled a surveillance state over the past 2 decades. doesn't exactly inspire confidence in respecting privacy or reigning in private data collection when they're doing it themselves.

the beauty of the Democratic coalition is all of its factions, or as Senator Brian Schatz said, all of the different tribes of the Democratic Party. we absolutely don't all agree on everything, but the solidarity there & variety of opinions is a strength we ought to tap into.

we should be emphasizing how to have interpersonal conversations with people you love & care about above convincing strangers. some people don't have opposing points of view in their life & may need to be challenged by someone outside their orbit.

but we cannot continue to rely on this method of organizing writ large. it's impersonal, feels super corporate sometimes, & plays into stereotypes we all already have about each other.

worst of all though: it gets us out of our physical communities where our work is needed most.

my grandmother on my dad's side is 83 yo. she has voted Republican the past 30 years at least. the brand of reactionary, cut them all out of your life politics has made me unable to conceptualize how to speak to someone like her about why I think her voting choices are wrong.

that's partially a result of my own intellectual & interpersonal inability to get on her level, & I'll fully own up to that.

but imagine instead if the past 2 decades of Democratic organizing focused on how to have these hard conversations with people *already in your life*.

Greta Carnes deserves credit for employing this model of relational organizing on Pete's campaign. I wish I could have seen it blossom to its full potential. and I wish the party writ large would adopt this model as its primary model of engagement instead.

it's going to take a complete overhaul of Democratic politics to make it work.

but it's possible.

& I think necessary to dismantle the Republican Party as it currently exists & create an environment where a more accurate expression of our country's diversity is possible.

Democrats *have* to provide a more meaningful & more personal way of relating to one another when it comes to our most profound beliefs about society & government than calling a list of random people.

they also need to consider that people who are passionate about solving these problems may also be isolated themselves & don't have much of a capacity to reach outside of their own social circles.

tl;dr, no one likes phonebanking, no one likes being phonebanked, & relying on that as a strategy in a hyper partisan, increasingly private political climate is insufficient to take Democrats beyond their current share of power & break the stranglehold on American politics.