Yes, door knocking didn't really happen this year. But some organizers and operatives say good riddance. There's a better way to beat Trump—if Dems are willing to throw out the playbook. My feature on relational organizing: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/relational-organizing/

Relational organizing is a buzzy new word with lots of apps to go with it. But at its heart, it's about empowering the grassroots to build movements the way the civil rights and women's rights movements did.

If you want to understand the power of relational organizing, look at Black Lives Matter. Word-of-mouth, hard conversations between friends and family, mobilizing 26 million protesters in just weeks. This is relational "completely unhindered and completely unleashed”

Democratic campaigns treat voters like pawns. They try to activate them, not empower them. Candidates are products, and when you don't like a product, you don't buy it. But the marketization of politics is a disaster for democracy. Voters quit the process, rather than fix it

Campaigns use the voter file to target voters, but the file is missing voters who move a lot or haven't voted, overwhelmingly poor, young, POC voters. The result is a politics that disengages with the communities most in need of political power.

Organizers believe that relational organizing—using existing relationships of friends and family to grow political engagement and community—will locate forgotten voters and make politicians accountable to their base. Also, the data show it's far more effective than door knocking.