Building a Permanent Majority in California

California’s progressives have much to celebrate from last Tuesday: the elevation of Nancy Pelosi to Speaker; the victory by grassroots candidate Jerry McNerney against the environmental eviscerator Richard Pombo; and the eventual victory of nearly all of the down-ticket candidates. That’s the good news.

The rest of the nation experienced a Democratic tsunami. A week ago today, few predicted that the Senate would change hands and while the House victory seemed highly likely, the magnitude did not. But somehow, California bucked the trend. Even in this year of progressive change, the statewide Democrats had to campaign hard to win their races and could not rely on an extant infrastructure to get them there. Steve Bing’s bucks, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore could not convince voters to pass Proposition 87, which should have been a shoo-in in an anti-corruption year like this one.

What happened? Put simply, there is no progressive infrastructure in this state and certainly none at the level of the California Democratic Party. The Courage Campaign hosted a conference call last Thursday with Congresswoman Hilda Solis, MyDD’s Chris Bowers, pollster Joel Wright, and Frank Russo. More than 100 people joined the call, having sent in questions in advance or asked them live on the phone. Based on the comments before, during and after, the conclusions were clear.

As Joel Wright put it, the California Democratic Party simply failed. The Party says it attempted about 750,000 contacts. As of the end of October, it had made about 135,000 actual contacts. With 7.1 million registered Democrats, Democratic registration at about 42% and dropping, decline-to-state at about 20% and rising and a headwind of considerable speed at the top of the ticket, we might think that a bit more attention would be given to voter contact and turn out; it was not. And even though the state is hopelessly gerrymandered, what might have happened in a year of a Democratic tsunami had a real turn out machine been at work? Might we have won at least the Doolittle seat in Congress? Might Propositions 86 and 87 have passed?

Some of the on-line groups and some of the newest groups in the nation did much better. A great group called the Bus Project, in Oregon, made 200,000 voter contacts during the election cycle. Last I checked, Oregon has about a third as many residents of LA County, less than a tenth of those of California, but somehow this new group managed to contact nearly twice as many voters as did the CDP. And of course nationally, MoveOn contacted well over a million voters, and MoveOn is only eight years old. The CDP is what, 80 years old? The difference, it seems, is that MoveOn, the Bus Project, and our own Courage Campaign embrace distributed power, encouraging people to take action in whatever way fits their capacity to work. For example, in one day, MoveOn members at over 1,600 houses across the country watched our Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers and then made calls to voters. Another night, they had a conference call with Al Gore.

The Courage Campaign gained the attention of otherwise disinterested voters by teaming up with other groups and by presenting an online ad against Propositions 85 and 90 (that even took on Rumsfeld). We and others tried to empower the grassroots, to support new ideas and to encourage people to take action themselves rather than pretending that orders from on high will generate enthusiasm.

We did alright this time, but think about 2008. With fifty five electoral votes, no Democrat can make it to the White House without California. Everyone takes this state for granted, happy to take money out of the state or put money into individual campaigns that vanish the day after the election. As "blue" as we allegedly are, we should have a registration and turnout machine to beat the band. Think of how different Tuesday would have been with such a machine. We might even have taken advantage of the national trend.

Imagine a popular Governor Schwarzenegger campaigning with someone like John McCain. Imagine "investors" on the right, such as the Sebastianis and others who backed Prop. 85 (again), spending money on registration and turnout. And imagine progressives, fighting a couple of nasty initiatives in November 2008, unable to focus on defending the state nationally, yet again on the defense with no coordinated effort in progress.

My friend John Emerson tells me that the Clinton campaign spent $10 million to win in California in 1992. They won then only with the help of Ross Perot. Think about how much it would cost today to hold California in a contested election: $50 million? More? Prior to 1992, the last time California voted Democratic was in the LBJ landslide of 1964.

The Courage Campaign is building the infrastructure to be sure that the state stays Democratic. We’re not sure what’s going on at the CDP, but we’re not waiting to find out. There are lots of great progressive activists out there, ranging from groups like the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley to some county committees to clubs. And of course without labor, as this election showed nationally once again, there’d be no turn out machine at all. Put it all together, harnessing the energy of online activists, old line activists, and labor, and California would indeed be unbeatable. It’s time to build for 2008, to have an affirmative agenda and to support progress in California. We cannot wait.

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