The Daily Edge gave me a chance to answer a few questions about the 2022 elections and it turned into something I’ve been meaning to do for a while — explain what this Blue Walls newsletter is all about. Nobody asked, I know. So consider this my vision board or your partner describing a sex dream you weren’t in.
So here’s our mission statement:
After the 2016 election, I realized that the thing I’d spent most of the last decade doing—making C+ jokes about Republicans on the internet—was not only ineffective. It was probably detrimental, even in the very small sphere of influence I had, about the size of a dorm closet.
Constantly laughing at Republicans creates the false impression that they’re just a joke—and in comedy, nobody actually gets hurt. But people are definitely getting hurt. And the comic veneer of the GOP helps cloak the real damage they’ve done, want to do and will do.
…
As 2022 approached and I figured I’d need a place to vent or my family and dogs might flee, I decided I better give myself a project. And that project just couldn’t be about retweets, likes or clicks. Social media is good for one thing—spreading. What it spreads is mostly whatever those brown lines Charles M. Schulz drew around Pigpen. But it also spreads forms—donation forms, forms to volunteer on campaigns, newsletter signup forms—with probably too much ease.
That has led to candidates raising shitloads of money. Which is cool, except that money too often goes to the wrong places. Let’s look at the classic example.
Amy McGrath raised almost $100 million to lose to Mitch McConnell by like a thousand percent. She probably lost by the same exact percentage that she would have if she spent no money and just issued a press release that said, “Mitch McConnell is a c*nt, and not in a good way.”
That $100 million could have been used to win countless races, whole state legislatures. Multiple state legislatures.
This is personal to me because I actually live in a state where this money could have made a huge difference, where Republicans who poisoned a whole city, in one of the worst acts of environmental racism in recent history, still control both state houses.
So inspired by the “Give Smart” approach pioneered by your pal @BobbyBigWheel and Data for Progress and now institutionalized through the awesome States Project, I decided to launch Blue Walls to make it easy for people to use the limited resources—time, money, goodwill toward humanity—to the best possible use.
That’s the goal: Posts that promote effective actions people can take while sitting on their ass.
I hope you’ll read the whole Q&A.
You may also notice that I told TDE that 2020 was the most important election of our lifetime. Something I also say about 2022.
It turns out that has been true for every election since 2014 — when Republicans captured the Senate and prevented Barack Obama, the only president elected twice with at least 51% of the vote since Dwight Eisenhower from filling a Supreme Court vacancy (or replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg should she had decided to retire earlier). And it will likely be true for every election for the rest of our lifetime. So get used to it.
But 2022 is important for so a few crucial reasons, but the main one involves a clear attempt to take Donald Trump’s argument to Mike Pence about why Republicans are allowed to steal elections and make it the law of the land:
Republicans have given up on winning the electoral college the way they’ve given up on winning the popular vote.
Republicans have concocted a legal fantasy — the Independent State Legislature Theory — that would allow them to win the presidency with the votes of key gerrymandered state legislatures. And at least four Republicans on the Supreme Court buy this filth.
The best way to convince Republicans on the Supreme Court to reject this fantasy is to win at least some of the key state houses that would make this “theory” useless to their goal of stealing the presidency.
If you’ve read this far, you probably know this already. But I think it’s something that cannot be repeated enough. So, again:
Republicans have given up on winning the electoral college the way they’ve given up on winning the popular vote.
Republicans have concocted a legal fantasy — the Independent State Legislature Theory — that would allow them to win the presidency with the votes of key gerrymandered state legislatures. And at least four Republicans on the Supreme Court buy this filth.
The best way to convince Republicans on the Supreme Court to reject this fantasy is to win at least some of the key state houses that would make this “theory” useless to their goal of stealing the presidency.
And this why the States Project’s state specific slates in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona are so important.
Anyway, this is probably I’ll the ruminating on the big picture I will do for a while, as I try to figure out how to make this newsletter as useful as possible.