The Week Ahead DON'T DESPAIR, VOTE

The Week Ahead July 7, 2024 JOYCE VANCE JUL 8 I hear a lot of people expressing concern that voting won’t matter this November, people saying on social media and in conversations in person that Trump will steal the election or that the courts will. If you’re starting to think this way, I want you to stop right now. This is one of the oldest strategies in the voter suppression handbook: telling you not to bother voting because your vote won’t count, that it doesn’t matter. And that just isn’t true. We don’t have to look any further than the 2020 election to understand how powerful our right to vote is in the face of a would-be despot. Thinking Trump will just steal the election is a form of suppression. Don’t do that to yourself or the republic. If ever there was a time to prepare to vote, it’s the week ahead. Recent polls aren’t as good for Joe Biden as he might have wanted them to be and there are a lot of people on social media suggesting a Trump victory is inevitable. Of course, we know that’s not the case. Polls are mixed, and people pushing a certain narrative don’t always have pure motives and often aren’t who they pretend to be online. November is a long way out. Polls ahead of the snap election in France showing a quick, easy victory for Le Pen and the far right got it completely wrong. And as the Angry Staffer account tweeted this morning, “Polls don’t vote.” This is a good motto for us to adopt. Polls don't vote. People do. So this week, make sure you register if you aren’t already. If you have registered, check online at one of the sites like iwillvote.com to make sure you stay registered, have a plan to vote in November, and make sure your ballot gets counted. Make it your business to encourage your friends and your family to do the same. It’s very simple: We can't win if we don't vote. I’ve heard the word despair a lot over the course of the last few days. It's a difficult time, and we should all acknowledge that. The Supreme Court’s immunity decision was a travesty, both in its timing and in the substance of the decision. Joe Biden’s debate performance was very discouraging. The path forward isn’t clear yet. Whether you believe Biden should stay in the race or not—and I think it’s important to listen to all points of view right now, although I continue to support the Biden-Harris ticket—it's clear that the ones benefiting from the disarray in the Democratic Party are Donald Trump and Republicans. We should remember that and know that our ultimate commitment is to come back together and support the Democratic ticket to ensure Project 2025 doesn’t become the law of the land and Donald Trump isn’t filling open seats in the federal judiciary. Be alert to disinformation, and think carefully about the source of information you hear or read this week. For instance, Friday night, as Joe Biden was leaving his ABC interview, Laura Loomer and others on Twitter posted that Biden had a medical incident. It was demonstrably untrue, but it got widespread circulation. Utah Senator Mike Lee jumped on it. The lie took off even further from there, and the only pushback came from people like you and me (and my favorite food substacker Marissa Rothkopf) who called it out. That’s something important we can all do. The whole thing reminded me of the stories the National Enquirer ran about Hillary Clinton’s supposed bad health during the 2016 election. We know a lot more about the provenance of those stories after hearing David Pecker testify during Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan. And Lachlan Cartwright, a former editor at American Media, Inc., the National Enquirer’s parent company, did a tell-all of his own for the New York Times in April, highlighting some of the phony stories the Enquirer did about Hillary’s health: “‘HILLARY: 6 MONTHS TO LIVE!’ Cruel Bill Forces Her To Stay On Campaign Trail.” Cartwright wrote: “These covers came with doctored images of Clinton looking frail, bolstered by quotes from anyone who would say the right things and had a title that tenuously qualified him to offer an opinion. The Enquirer did employ real reporters who would comb through documents, cultivate sources and use old-school reporting techniques, but I was coming to terms with the other side of the magazine, where a headline was chosen and editors and writers spun up a tenuous story to match.” Social media can make it more difficult to discern where information is coming from. You would think a U.S. Senator would be a reliable source, but we live in times when it's worth doing our own due diligence. One source we can, ironically, have confidence in, is Project 2025, which the Heritage Foundation has made publicly available on its website, at least for now. You may want to download it in case it disappears. Some of it is interesting policy analysis, but the bottom line involves truly distasteful choices like ending Head Start and special education. We’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: the document itself is so long that I believe they are counting on people not to read it. It’s not a quick read, but it’s an important one, which is why we’ll continue to look at issues and influences on the document. It’s tempting to resort to memes, but there’s nothing like doing a deep dive for yourself to understand what Republicans are proposing for Trump’s next term, so we’ll be taking a look at the chapter on the Department of Education this week, but I’d encourage you to read along, read ahead, focus on your own interests, and review some of the summaries of Project 2025 that we highlighted in Five Questions with Congressman Jared Huffman on July 4. This week we will undoubtedly also be taking up legal issues like the delays the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling is creating in the Manhattan and Florida cases, and when the prosecution will return to Judge Chutkan’s courtroom for further action. Senators and Representatives will return to Washington, D.C., and Congress will be back in session. But this is, in my judgment, a good moment to dwell on our power as voters and to claim that territory, foregoing despair. Think your activism doesn’t count? Look what women in Arkansas did. On July 5, they showed up at the state capitol with enough signatures to put the state’s restrictive abortion law to a referendum vote by the people in November. If the formal count of signatures succeeds (there’s a 30-day cure period for the volunteers who ran this move to gather additional signatures if necessary due to duplicates, etc.), not only will Arkansans have a say-so in the state’s laws on abortion, which currently are among the nation’s most restrictive, but voters who might not otherwise turn out may be motivated to come to the polls. This was done by volunteer activists in the state. That’s what we can do if we don’t despair. So don’t. We’re in this together, Joyce