Winning Big, Part 1: We Need a Landslide

September 8, 2024

This is a blog about how we can thrive over the next 500 years. In this first post, it feels odd to skip a grand introduction. But time is short and attention spans are shorter; the blog's purpose and a bit about me (Greg Bates) can be found here. Advocating for such a long-term perspective, it also feels disjointed to start by writing about an imminent event, the US election. But winning it is part of healing our divisions. I believe that mending those differences is the first of our three tasks needed to thrive for centuries. (In addition to healing divisions, the others are ending our emissions and replacing our consumer culture with one that repairs the world, to borrow Paul Farmer's phrase.)

Five Posts: How We Can Win Big in November

Today and the next four posts focus on winning the November election.

On the chance the prospect of 5 sequential posts is more than you want to read, here's the gist:

• If Donald Trump defines the election before Democrats do, he could well win. And he's perilously close to defining the election when he said the other day that he would "once again turn America into the manufacturing superpower of the world."
• the gist of the subtext: Because we can only persuade people to vote for us by promising to give them something they want (and not by trying to convince then that we are right and they are wrong), we have to identify common ground. That's the first step in healing our divisions.

I'm advocating we push for "Make Manufacturing Great Again" as the defining theme. I'm not sure I can stomach the allusion to MAGA; I'm definitely open to a better slogan. In any case, in these posts, I argue for identifying one top priority, defining our opponent, and galvanizing voters across the divide.

We have to get there before Trump does. And Harris has to be convincing that she will pull off revitalizing manufacturing.

Here's a table of contents. (And a promise: not all posts will be this long.)

Feel free to use the headings to guide your skimming.

Today in Part 1 we look at:

• A Landslide—Are You Kidding?

In Part 2 I discuss three keys needed to win big and explore the first one:

• The three keys to any election victory
• Defining this election, and
• How having a top issue = more galvanizing red meat.

In Part 3 I make the case for defining the election:

• Who should we define the election for?
• Why manufacturing wins as the top issue, and
• Action steps to push for this priority.

Part 4: Having used three posts to explore the need for a landslide and defining our election, we look at the second of the three keys:

• Define our opponent.

Part 5 looks at the third and final key:

• Galvanize voters on both sides of the divide.

Let's dig in and explore how we can make a difference.

A Landslide—Are You Kidding?

Aiming for a Democratic landslide seems unrealistic when the election is so close. Let's manage our expectations: don't we just need to win? No. We need to win the House, Senate, and presidency to move forward with a progressive agenda—or even with a centrist agenda! And, as Heather Cox Richardson just warned, political violence is both real now and is a growing possibility. A decisive victory could be instrumental in deterring extremists.

We need a kind of landslide in the presidential election not seen in years. We will almost certainly win the majority vote. And we have to win the electoral college, of course. But it's not enough to win a ton of electoral seats, though that would ensure victory. We need to make the answer to the following as large as possible: if the Democrats win, how many votes would have needed to be reversed to hand the election to Trump? The answer to that question (and not the size of the majority vote or the number of electoral votes) determines how close the contest is. The number of votes that needed to be switched determines whether we get our landslide.

The last election shows what that means concretely. In 2020, Biden won 306 electoral college votes to Trump's 232. And he got 7 million votes more than Trump received. Looks like a landslide. But Biden won by a whisker: switching less than 100,000 votes scattered across a few swing states out of the more than 154 million cast would have handed Trump his reelection. That's the number needed to switch a few key states and thus enough electoral votes to have given the election to Trump.

When Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to "find" 11,780 votes to swing the state, everyone who cared about democracy was horrified. I was also horrified by how small the number was that Trump needed to flip the outcome in that state.

Biden won, but statistically, 2020 was a tie. If Trump loses this year, a similarly narrow result might lead to chaos.

We need a decisive number of voters who decide the electoral college count. We need a true landslide.

But how?

Next: Winning Big Part 2: Defining the Election