The people push back

Amid the din of Trump spewing lies, DeSantis endorsing hate, and most GOPers enjoying the ride to strongman rule, it's worth noting more muted developments which signal majorities of us aren't ready to give up on a more equitable, more inclusive country. 

Ohio: Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom this week dropped off 422 boxes of signature petitions with the Republican Secretary of State, aiming to qualify an initiative on the November ballot to protect abortion rights through the state constitution. They claim these contain about 700,000 names, far more the 414,000 needed.

Campaigners must first contend with an August vote by which abortion opponents aim to increase the winning margin required to amend the Ohio constitution from 50 percent plus 1 to 60 percent. So right now abortion rights advocates are campaigning to keep the current rules. This will be a tough fight, requiring intense organization to prevail in a very low turnout environment. But polls show that if they can prevail, well over 50 percent of Ohioans want to keep abortion legal in the November election. 

We can help #ProtectChoiceOhio climb these tough hills by donating here.

National: If you are like me, your email at the end of June was flooded with appeals from Democratic candidates for cash they could report at a fundraising deadline. (And if you are like me, you try to be strategic about these urgent messages, using trash liberally.)

But a summary in The Hill reports small donors on the Democratic side of politics are punching above our numbers.

Democrats are more likely to have donated to a political campaign within the past two years than Republicans, according to a new poll. 

The NBC News poll of 1,000 registered votes found that, in total, 30 percent of registered voters made campaign contributions within that period.  

Out of those voters, 37 percent were Democrats, 26 percent were Republicans and 22 percent were independents, according to the outlet. 

“It speaks to the new era we’re in where the small-money Democrats are just swamping the small-money Republicans,” Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster with Public Opinion Strategies, told NBC.  

As a practitioner of retail politics, I try to remember that I can become mesmerized by visible signs of political enthusiasm, like candidates' lawn and window signs, and usually don't know whether such manifestations mean anything. But small donor contributions at this scale make for a meaningful measure, much as number of doors knocked and voter conversations do. One hopes the campaigns figure out how to use the money well, but simply collecting it from so many donors increases democratic (small-d) engagement.