Political Activism Is Easier Than Ever

Remarkable stories about Democrats raising money just keep coming in. Two more from Wednesday are worth noting, because they mark what looks like an important change in the nature of political activism.

In North Dakota, a Republican-backed plan threatened to discourage Native Americans from voting by requiring identification with a street address. Many reservations don’t use formal street addresses, so tribal identification cards often don’t include one. A local group was rushing to get new cards or other documents to everyone affected, and on Wednesday the liberal site Daily Kos got involved and raised $100,000 to cover the costs.

Then there’s a group called Data for Progress, which targeted a handful of state legislative seats that they calculated had the most potential to turn Republican-majority chambers into Democratic ones. Ryan Grim has the story of one of their beneficiaries, a Minnesota candidate who was surprised by a windfall of some $15,000 from the group. Not huge, but enough to allow the campaign to do everything it hoped to do and more to reach voters.

Technological change is obviously helping drive this kind of thing. Political entrepreneurs are also looking for new ways of changing the system and rank-and-file activists are finding new ways to cooperate.

But one other factor stands out: Today’s ready availability of political information makes this stuff far easier than it would’ve been in, say, the 1980s. Back then, even information about individual House contests was hard to come by at the national level. Pioneering publications including the Cook Political Report (from 1984) and its eventual competitor, the Rothenberg Political Report (now Inside Elections), along with the Hotline (from 1987), began collecting detailed information for national political players. All were very pricey subscription services, though. They were great for lobbyists who needed to know what was happening in obscure races but not readily available for regular citizens.

So it would’ve been extremely difficult for a newly formed activist group to compile a list of key state legislative contests to target back then. Connecting with willing donors would’ve been hard too. Even moving the money to where it was supposed to go would have been a challenge.

At any rate, this kind of activism is here now, and it’s happening within parties (albeit outside of the existing party structure). How it will change the parties, both their formal organizations and their broader networks, is anyone’s guess. How it’s changing elections is hard to say too. But it’s something new and important, even if we don’t quite understand it. Yet.

1. Samara Klar and Yanna Krupnikov on how to appeal to independent voters.

2. At Mischiefs of Faction, a terrific discussion between Julia Azari and Seth Masket about Bob Woodward’s new book.

3. Barry C. Burden and Rochelle Snyder at the Monkey Cage on the decline in uncontested elections in this cycle.

4. Heather Vogell, Andrea Bernstein, Meg Cramer and Peter Elkind look into what the Trump Organization has really been up to in recent years. A major investigation.

5. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Timothy L. O'Brien on business ties between Saudi Arabia and Trump – as well as Jared Kushner.

6. Perry Bacon Jr. on the three black gubernatorial candidates this year.

7. Philip Klein asks a pretty good question about Ben Sasse.

8. And David Byler on why the Senate math looks better for Republicans than one might think.

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