Political scientist Lester Spence, who describes himself as an Afro-realist, has observations about the 250,000 people who've canceled the Washington Post in outrage at Jeff Bezos' decision to kill the paper's endorsement of the Harris-Walz ticket.
Political scientists who study comparative politics came up with a term to describe a certain type shift from democratic states to non-democratic ones. "Democratic backsliding." They came up with that term to describe transitions that didn't happen immediately, through a military coup, or something like it, but slowly. And they've recently begun using the term to describe the US. Free press tampering is often something that comes with backsliding--either politicians or oligarchs gradually or abruptly reduce the ability of journalists to report.
What happened to the Post and the [LA] Times is a sign backsliding is taking a turn for the worse. The Post IS NO LONGER FREE IN THE WAY IT WAS LAST WEEK. Once he makes this move, what prevents him from coming after the news next? Take a look again at the quote above. What prevents HIM from coming after those things now that he's done this?
THIS is what people responded to. And people chose this, WHILE UNCOORDINATED, because this was the best signal to send. Far better than canceling Amazon Prime (although that could be next) because an amazon prime cancellation can be read in a dozen different ways.
Now on that response. You're suggesting that mass cancellation can only hurt. But compared to what? What other action would've been better? If there's an action that could've been better...why didn't Post staffers coordinate it? why didn't you coordinate it? I'm pretty sure a draft of the endorsement exists. Why didn't the board send it out? Anonymously even?
I suggest that we're already down a dangerous path. Instead of telling people "STOP" in the absence of ANY OTHER ALTERNATIVE...the answer should be to tell people "GO." And use that energy to develop the internal institutional strength to contest the changes in the paper. ...
We have a few more days to prove that Jeff Bezos bet on the wrong horse. Let's keep working.
• • •
And since I'm sharing from Spence, here are some fragments from the Johns Hopkins University professor's own first experience canvassing Philly for Harris-Walz.
I didn’t know what I’d expect to see because I’d never done door to door canvassing before. But there were about 150 or more of us, and of this group I imagine maybe four or five were paid by the campaign (not the Harris Walz campaign but by the group we were working with). The rest of us were volunteers. The youngest I met were in undergrad. The oldest I met were in their sixties and early seventies. It was a multiracial group, and, tellingly, international.
(Foreign nationals cannot donate money or participate in decision making in any domestic political committee but can volunteer their time in other ways.)
... Although the vast majority of these door knocks went unanswered, maybe about 20 percent of the time someone answered the door. The bulk of these folk were fervent Harris supporters—again this last push is about getting people we already know are likely to vote for Harris to do so. There were a few exceptions.
The white brother who answered the first door our crew knocked on spent twenty minutes telling us how scared he was of the Democratic Party, in part because of their response to the George Floyd Protests, and when January 6 was brought up, he said “that was four years ago.” ...
The white brother who answered the first door our crew knocked on spent twenty minutes telling us how scared he was of the Democratic Party, in part because of their response to the George Floyd Protests, and when January 6 was brought up, he said “that was four years ago.” ...
... Perhaps the best story of the two days happened on Saturday. Near the end of our run one of the crew ran into an elderly voter who wasn’t able to get to the polls because she wasn’t mobile, and she was concerned that her mail ballot wouldn’t get to her in time. I went to talk to the sister myself and collected her information so I could help her. My plan was to talk to people at the top of the food chain because technically there was only so much we could do. Maybe we could get a ballot and bring it back to her.
I ended up running into an election judge around the block from her. She wasn’t on our list—I think she stepped outside and saw us door knocking, and I told her what we were doing. She then told us who she was, what she did. So I took the opportunity to ask her how we could help her neighbor. She gave us permission to go back to the neighbor with her information. We told her the neighbor’s name but she didn’t recognize it.
When we went back to the neighbor, the neighbor laughed. “Oh. I know her. I taught her son!”...
I ended up running into an election judge around the block from her. She wasn’t on our list—I think she stepped outside and saw us door knocking, and I told her what we were doing. She then told us who she was, what she did. So I took the opportunity to ask her how we could help her neighbor. She gave us permission to go back to the neighbor with her information. We told her the neighbor’s name but she didn’t recognize it.
When we went back to the neighbor, the neighbor laughed. “Oh. I know her. I taught her son!”...
That's how elections like this one are won -- one vote scratched out at a time, finding our people.
This afternoon I go back to this work, calling into Pennsylvania with the UniteHERE national phonebank.
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