Articles

Steve Phillips, The Guardian

The surest way to lose a battle is to not fight. Despite this fairly obvious logic, President Joe Biden and too many Democrats seem to have adopted a political strategy for the midterm elections of avoiding as many fights as possible. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Democrats worried about President Biden’s plummeting polling numbers and the party’s prospects in the midterm elections have stumbled on the solution to their problems: nominating and defending Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. By unapologetically championing racial equality in the form of finally putting an African American woman on the Supreme Court, they have both energized their base and garnered the support of a meaningful majority of the American people. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Guardian

Rightwing legislators across the country have seized on the bogeyman of so-called “critical race theory” as the latest weapon in their centuries-long practice of trying to scare white people that their hold on the country is slipping away. A total of 14 states have now passed legislation restricting how and what teachers can teach about race and racism in America. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

After Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives in the 2020 elections, many were quick to conclude that the party had moved too far to the left, driving away Latino voters in the process. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Terry McAuliffe’s defeat in Virginia shows what happens when you are in a war, and only one side fights. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

In light of Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s actions repeatedly obstructing progress on policies that would foster greater economic, and racial justice, momentum is gathering for an effort to back a Democratic challenge to her in the 2024 primary when she comes up for reelection. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Nina Turner has been criticized for a lot of things in the wake of her loss in the Cleveland, Ohio, special election last week. The conventional wisdom is that her politics were too leftist, and that she was too confrontational, to win in a time when Biden-like moderate politics are the order of the day. Those takes are nonsense; the race was eminently winnable. If there is a single critical mistake Turner made, it was placing her campaign in the hands of strategists who squandered her financial firepower on ineffective and ill-conceived expenditures. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Alarm bells are ringing about the dangerous implications of the behavior of the Republican Party. By doubling down on defense of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, punishing any members who reject that lie, refusing to support an investigation into the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, and unleashing a fusillade of voter suppression legislation across the country, many see these actions as an ominous new trend in American politics that threatens the foundations of our democracy itself. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

If Democrats want to hold onto control of the House and Senate in 2022, they should talk more about defunding the police, not less. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

The 2020 election showed that there is a right way and a wrong way for Democrats to try to win in states where they have historically lost. The extent to which they have learned those lessons will be revealed by the ways in which they pursue the winnable open Senate seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina next year. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

When I first met Stacey Abrams 10 years ago, I knew right away that the work she was doing in Georgia had great potential. While Stacey has graciously credited my wife and me as being among her first national supporters—even joking that we supported her before it was logical—the ingredients for success in Georgia were there all along, if you knew what to look for. Now that the world has come to marvel at the Georgia miracle, we should be thinking about what states are next and what lessons from the Georgia journey can be applied to the political transformation of other states. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Too many congressional Democrats are making a potentially fatal political miscalculation about the reason the party lost several seats in this year’s elections. And those incorrect interpretations of why Democrats lost at least 12 seats could lead to grievous missteps that will imperil their majority in 2022. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Who is in charge of the Democratic Party? In particular, who is in charge of its strategy and spending? That’s actually a surprisingly difficult question to answer—and it shouldn’t be, at a time when the party and the country face critical challenges that will affect millions of lives for years to come. Read more.

Steve Phillips, Medium

Much of the post-election analysis runs the risk of missing what is happening in American politics and what is on the horizon. Multiple factors played a role in the election outcome — increased turnout of voters of color, erosion of support for Trump among college-educated whites and seniors, and an extraordinary and unexpected increased turnout of Trump voters. Rather than attribute the results to any one single factor, as too many pundits are doing, the more instructive approach is to examine what the data shows about where the country is heading. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

In the final few weeks of the election, with Joe Biden looking strong (fingers crossed!), winning the Senate is a critical imperative in terms of rebuilding this country and reversing the damage caused by Trump. For the average activist, the best way to help in these final few weeks is to focus on Georgia and Texas, in particular the voter mobilization work happening in those states, as they are among the winnable races that could use the most help. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Why do we settle for mediocrity when we should be insisting on excellence? Having spent the past few weeks working on a report card grading the Democratic super PACs and the more than $600 million they’re planning to spend on the fall elections, my main takeaway is that we tolerate far too much mediocrity in progressive politics. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

What are we waiting for? If this is not the moment to finally come to terms with the United States’ 401-year legacy of government-sanctioned, anti-Black oppression, then, pray tell, when will that moment be? Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Bernie and I just talk about what’s next.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent statement on the New York Times’ podcast The Daily reflected what’s on the minds of many who poured their time, energy, and resources into the progressive candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The New York Times

As Joe Biden formally begins his vice-presidential selection process, he needs to find a running mate who strengthens the Democratic ticket in the areas where he is weakest. The nomination contest has highlighted three sizable shortcomings that imperil his quest to defeat President Trump. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

After months of dancing around the issue of diversifying the Democratic ticket, the remaining viable candidates finally got more specific on Sunday, with Joe Biden firmly pledging to choose a woman as his running mate, and Bernie Sanders saying that “in all likelihood” he would follow suit. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Guardian

Donald Trump understands the importance of African American voters much better than Democrats and progressives do. Trump and his team are making sizable and smart investments in efforts to chip away at black support for Democrats. Yet those who want to oust Trump from the Oval Office are spraying millions of dollars in election spending in every direction except the African American community. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Guardian

Now that the first four contests of the Democratic nomination have concluded, it’s clear that whoever wins the nomination will owe their success to the love and support of people of color. The question is, will the nominee love them back? Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

The Democratic nomination contest is at a pivotal point, especially for the left. Progressive issues are ascendant, moderate candidates are vote-splitting, Bernie Sanders tops the polls, and Elizabeth Warren just had a very strong debate performance in Nevada. And yet despite the tantalizing proximity of progressive victory, there remains a glaring hole at the heart of the left’s strategy: the failure to prioritize the fight against white nationalism and racial resentment—the sources of this president’s power, and the cornerstones of capitalism’s structural inequality. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

The impeachment trial in the US Senate is clearly a constitutional and moral moment of truth. It is also an excellent opportunity to advance the nitty-gritty work that will defeat vulnerable incumbent Republican senators and allow Democrats to recapture control of that critical chamber when voters head to the polls this November. It is easy for progressives to get excited about compelling candidates—people with impressive life stories and hard-hitting ads—and then shower resources on those candidates. And, yes, charisma and well-crafted ads are nice. But as Virginia Democrats’ success last fall demonstrates, robust, statewide voter mobilization operations are better. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

Life under this presidential administration has brought many dark days of despair. Looking ahead to the 2020 elections, many members of the media see doom and defeat. Away from the White House, however, this year also offered up ample reasons to hope as we head into the next. Here, then, is the evidence of things not seen: 10 stories from 2019 that should renew your faith in politics. Read more.

Steve Phillips, Democracy in Color

The Democratic National Committee faces a moment of truth as it grapples with the unintended consequences of debate qualification rules that have left the African American and Latino candidates off the stage (Andrew Yang was the sole person of color to qualify for the December debate). Underlying the reluctance to make changes in the qualification criteria is an unstated sentiment that it is inappropriate to explicitly take racial issues into account. The realities of racial fears and prejudices loom so large over this election, however, that it is impossible to not factor in race. While the DNC faces a difficult choice, whatever decision it makes — and making no changes is also a decision — will speak volumes about its values, savvy and strategy. Read more.

Steve Phillips, The Nation

It is clear that Democrats’ success in Virginia’s state elections earlier this month offers significant lessons for the national Democratic Party. By winning seven seats in the state legislature, Virginia Democrats flipped party control of both houses; with their Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, they now have control of every statewide office for the first time in more than two decades. Journalists have mined the backstory to try to understand how a formerly red (or, at best, purple) state is now completely controlled by Democrats; The New York Times attributed the outcomes to 30 years of demographic shifts, including a major increase in South Asian residents. It’s a significant change: People of color went from making up 24 percent of the state’s population in 1990 to close to 40 percent today. Read more.