The End of "Anti"

Being "Never Trump" Isn't Enough

I delivered this speech to the Democratic Women of South Orange County on Tuesday night. I want to thank Kim and Linda for their kind invitation and applaud the incredible work they do.

Thank you for having me. I was here two years ago and how far we’ve come…

I know we’re doing Q+A after I finish but let me spend a few minutes on what happened last week.

We lost. There’s no sugar-coating that fact and whatever you see in the media or opinion spaces that it ‘wasn’t that bad’ or ‘was closer than you think’ should be politely handed their walking papers. 

As former President George H.W. Bush famously said, “Close only matters in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

Many of my premises, most of them, were incorrect. I felt so confident saying, “There are more of us than there are of them.” There might be out in the universe, but there weren’t on Election Day.

Another is “Demographics is destiny.” That expression takes on a different meaning after Tuesday. We cannot and should not ignore it. As parties and political professionals we spend far too much breaking people into what they look like and not nearly enough time worried about, well, what worries them.

Most of what’s occupied the last decade for me, though, was the idea of being “Never Trump” or anti-Trump. To be sure, we must contest every move he makes as vigorously as we can. 

But to be simply “anti” deprives us of half the argument. We’re asking voters, our fellow Americans, to make value judgments on what we’re telling them about the other party, team, campaign; hoping they’ll intuit what we stand for.

That’s not how campaigns work. It’s never been how they work. It isn’t now.

We’re living with the result of this strategy: Donald Trump won the presidency. But he also increased his vote share in states like New Jersey and New York. Republicans took the US Senate, not surprisingly. They will likely retain control of the US House.

Most impactful, though, is that millions of Democratic voters stayed home. Like in 2016, they looked at their Democratic choice, and even against Donald Trump, found their own party nominee not worth getting off the couch. When all the votes are counted, turnout will be less than it was in 2020, during the depths of a global pandemic.

There is a great deal of analysis ongoing, some of it important, but that need not concern us here and now. Our task is far more fundamental, foundational, and important.

We turn away from Tuesday beaten and bloody, but nonetheless unbroken. Groups like yours are the heart, soul, backbone, arms, and legs of the work to be done as we move on from this moment.

Over the last eight years I’ve used words like “fight” and “resist” more times than I can count. I don’t know how many tweets, podcast episodes, Substack posts, or interviews were replete with the idea of “fighting” and “resisting.”

In too many instances, those words are performative. They might keep flagging spirits alive, and perhaps get a supporter to hit that donate button one more time. 

These words, though, give too many of us the false, cold comfort of feeling like something is happening, when in fact, all that fighting and resisting occurs at a place far away from the same voters so many claim to be representing.

There will be important acts of resistance among individuals far braver than I as we see Donald Trump and his administration take office in January. Democratic elected leaders, governors, members of Congress, and the like, will do their best to throw up roadblocks to Trump’s bulldozer, and I’ll give them credit in advance for their attempts.

We should lay the words “fight” and “resist” aside for now. Instead we should focus on the “work” of democracy, of community building, of communicating with our voters, and ultimately, the work of winning elections.

After all, that’s what this is all about. There are no moral victories in campaigns. They’re binary outcomes. You win or you lose. To you, my Democratic friends, I suggest that we need less pontification and more organization.

But Reed, you’ll say, we organized! You did. You have. You will. But what I ask of you, and of all of us, is to change the definition of “work” and “organize.” How are we organizing? To what end? When we get a group together, what are we telling them? More importantly, are we listening to them? 

“We must meet voters where they are” is both a frustrating and tired trope, but still true for all its over-use.

I was privileged to travel the country this fall. I went to most of the swing Electoral College states. I met people of all colors, creeds, and economic and educational backgrounds. With the notable exception of the man that chased us around in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, I met folks who not only felt left behind, they have been left behind.

When a member of the Duke University Democratic Club asks me where they should get unbiased information, we have a problem.

When a Black man in a poor neighborhood in Grand Rapids, Michigan said he’d vote for Kamala Harris because she was ‘the lesser of two evils,’ we have a problem.

When I drive through the town of Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, and see the enormous paper mill that went out of business two years ago, taking 900 jobs with it (in a town of 20,000) and I leave knowing that we have nothing to offer those people, we have a problem.

When my friends, who have no love for Donald Trump, feel completely alienated from their only alternative, we have a problem.

In short, my friends: We have too small a tent with too small a door.

I’ve fought alongside Democrats for five years. Democratic elites and leaders make it tough to be a Democrat and tougher to want to be one.

That’s why I’m here tonight. Because groups like the Democratic Women of South Orange County have been, and will be the spearhead in the work to be done: today, tomorrow, next month, and next year.

The work you focus on is not fancy, it’s not glamorous, it won’t be picked up by elite liberal media. But you do it, year in and year out, because you believe in your cause and you are right to do so.

You are ideally suited to the task ahead. We must listen. We must learn. We must get back to winning elections that we should win, and contest all races, up and down the ballot.

If half of life is showing up, then you’ve already passed the test. But now I need you to come with me just a little bit further. 

The problems Democrats have nationally are not of your making. Your work, though, will demonstrate to those same elites, that you know your people, your county, and your business.

Nationally, your party has a significant brand issue. That’s for another time.

The solution, that we, we, must begin tonight, is foundational. This won’t be easy, nothing worth doing ever is. But we must redouble our commitment to building and strengthening our communities every day of the year, not just two months out of every 24 when we ask voters to blindly give us their most precious civic gift: Their vote.

Each of us in this room is:

Pro-democracy. But that isn’t enough.

Pro-decency. But that isn’t enough.

Pro-America. But that isn’t enough.

We need to be pro-voter. Pro-progress. Pro-work. We will not be saved by polling, or metrics, or super PACs, or high-minded bullshit.

We will only save ourselves when we recommit to do the work necessary to convince our fellow Americans that there is indeed a better path, one which, as we used to say in Republican politics, ”lifts all boats” and leads not further into the darkness that Donald Trump and his gang offer, but into the light of a world in which they and their families can indeed make ends meet, reduce the enormous stress that uncertainty puts on them, and prove that they too can be a part of something bigger than themselves.  

We will do a lot that doesn’t work. When that happens, we won’t do it anymore. We will do some things that are helpful. We’ll do more of that. 

What we will not do, however, is play the victim. We all here share some responsibility for our current state. Now, we will dust ourselves off, look toward the sun, and return to tilling the fields of American democracy. Expecting that flower to grow on its own is both foolish and arrogant. We have been left wanting and we must earn our fellow Americans’ trust and then their vote.

I will not pretend to know what the next four years hold or believe that they’ll be easy. What I do know, with complete conviction and complete lack of reservation, is that the work we must do together starts in rooms like this with folks like you, in communities like yours. 

My friends, it feels as if the roof has fallen in. We must now strengthen the foundation and build from there.

Thank you.

News and Notes:

I’ve recorded this post over at The Home Front Podcast if you’re interested in watching or listening!

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