At last night’s State of the Union Address, President Biden showed that our strength is in the multi-racial, multi-generational, diverse coalition of voices that make up the Democratic Party. He reminded us that even in the face of navigating those healthy differences, on top of unprecedented MAGA obstruction and dysfunction, Democrats deliver for the American people. And on a night when MAGA Republicans were rooting for President Biden to fail — Biden showed up as the leader we all need in this moment.

Biden has achieved more in the first three years of his presidency than most presidents have accomplished in two terms — moving at a breakneck pace that he intends to continue into his second term. And he had the receipts to prove it.

Here are a couple highlights:

Abortion

Biden recognized that it is a core plank of the Republican platform to rip reproductive rights away from the American people. He knows we are under attack by a small, influential cadre of anti-abortion extremists who hold outsized sway over MAGA Republicans — going so far as to begin their quest to rip away in vitro fertilization in Alabama just a few weeks ago. 

But President Biden is committed to bringing reproductive freedom back to all Americans. He said: 

In its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court majority wrote “Women are not without electoral or political power.” No kidding. Clearly those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America. But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot and won in 2022, 2023, and they will find out again in 2024. If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose I promise you: I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.

Prescription Drugs

The president reminded us that, in the face of corporate greed and dark money special interests, his signature Inflation Reduction Act caps the out-of-pocket expenses on life-saving drugs, ensures that people with Medicare pay no more than $35 for a monthly supply of Insulin, and allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices for the first time.

And in a look to a second term, Biden let us know, “now I want to cap prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year for everyone!”

A Rebounding American Dream

Biden extolled the virtue of the Chips and Science Act “investing more in research and development than ever” and “creating tens of thousands of jobs, many of them paying over $100,000 a year and don’t require a college degree.”  

Biden noted that he was the first sitting American president to ever walk a picket line when he joined the UAW during their strike, cementing his legacy as a President for working people. In recognition of our strength and resiliency, he stated:

I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history. And we have. It doesn’t make the news, but in thousands of cities and towns the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.

And those are just a few of the many highlights (if you weren’t watching last night, watch a recording here or read the transcript here). The speech touched on mortgage relief, rental prices, education, tax fairness, shrinkflation, voting rights, and more… 

Most importantly, on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Biden regrounded us in the reality of what we’re facing in 2024: a choice between an expansive, hopeful vision for our country’s future, or MAGA’s vision of “resentment, revenge, and retribution”, rooted in absolute disdain for the American people and democracy itself.

There’s no denying it after this week — Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee, and the choice we face this November is clear. The choice is between reproductive freedom or sexual abuse, between closing tax loopholes or fraud, between a president committed to free and fair elections and one who would attempt an insurrection. 

If you see the choice as clearly as we do, here’s how you can help:

• Sign up to defend democracy from Trump with Project 2024: Majority Over MAGA. Our new electoral program will ensure Indivisibles all across the country have the opportunity to make a difference in the highest-priority races this cycle. This will include tactics like phonebanking, postcarding, and direct-to-voter texting along with our groundbreaking community conversation strategy: Neighbor2Neighbor. Sign up to be the first to know when we launch our tools in your area.
• If you are able, chip in to our efforts to defeat Trump. Phonebanks, postcards, texting, and door-knocking all cost money. We are working 24/7 this year to ensure that the thought of another Trump presidency turns out just to be a nightmare and not reality. But unlike MAGA and its dark money backing, we are powered by small-dollar donations from people like you. Chip in today. 

As President Biden said last night, “my lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy. A future based on the core values that have defined America: honesty, decency, dignity, equality. To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot.” 

Now is the time to come together as a people to defend those ideals.  

In solidarity,
Indivisible Team

The News

We’re living rent-free in Trump’s warped little brain.

Donald J. Trump himself posted to his social media network a 5,000-word Breitbart hit piece on me, Leah, and the entire Indivisible movement. As you would expect, the piece includes plenty of lies, antisemitic innuendo, and bizarro conspiracy stuff.

Gotta love when your enemies are obsessed with you!

I wanted to share a few thoughts of my own on this, since this kind of thing comes up every election season.

First — the strange thing about fighting a fascist movement is that it’s full of clowns and it’s also very dangerous. And those things are both true at the same time! We personally tend to lean into the humor of the situation when stuff like this comes up, because let’s be real: When clowns are being clowns, you gotta laugh. But we take the resulting right-wing attacks and threats seriously too. Please don’t think that just because we’re having a good chuckle right now, we aren’t also being careful about the risks and supporting Indivisibles to do the same.

Second — while this kind of right-wing smear campaign tends to pick up during the election season, it’s not new. And what I’ve come to realize over the years is it always follows roughly the same formula. Some right-wing hack takes a look at our website (or our strategy guide PDFs), slaps a giant caps-lock “REVEALED” label on the public communications we’ve already pushed out, and breathlessly reports about how they’ve blown the lid off a huge conspiracy. They claim that they’ve “DISCOVERED” materials on our website, or that they “CAUGHT” us on video at a meeting that had us on the public agenda. They get on our email list and “EXPOSE” what we’re saying to a million people.

There’s a reason they do that. They need villains who are sneaky, malevolent, conspiratorial. The alternative — that Indivisible is made up of regular people, in every state in the country, standing up for our values and organizing for our democracy — is unacceptable to them. They have to lean on conspiracy theories, because otherwise they might have to face the reality that they’re losing because their ideas are unpopular.

The simple fact is there are more of us than there are of them. Indivisible has to do its organizing in public because that’s where the people are; we don’t have another option! We started with a public Google Doc with lots of typos, for Pete’s sake!

Our strategy depends on people power; theirs depends on a minority subverting our democratic institutions.

We do our organizing in the open. We’re not afraid of people finding out about us: In fact, our success depends on people finding out about us. So we’ll keep doing what we’re doing as we look forward to the next Breitbart “expose.” And if you’re an Indivisible leader, just remember: You’re living rent-free in Donald Trump’s head.

Because there’s one thing they got right: We are the nationwide movement “hellbent on defeating Trump,” and Indivisible is indeed pushing “the pedal to the metal as it accelerates into the 2024 election season.”

The Brag

Here’s what pedal to the metal on winning in 2024 looks like.

There’s a lot to brag about these last couple weeks, but I’m going to focus here on the big thing that I’m excited about right now:

Indivisible has developed a massively impactful new voter contact tool. Every year we test new strategies to improve our electoral work. Some stuff works, some stuff doesn’t. We were blown away by the results of our newest experiment: Neighbor2Neighbor — a new tool we’ve developed over the last couple years that combines light relational organizing with traditional canvassing by giving volunteers a list of 10 sporadic Democratic voters to contact in their immediate neighborhood.

Our study, validated by an independent analysis, found that it’s TWICE as impactful as traditional canvassing. It’s effective, it’s easy to use, and it will be the star of our 2024 electoral program — which we launched this week: Project 2024: Majority Over MAGA. We’re also offering it to pro-democracy partners at no cost to boost turnout beyond Indivisible. Read more about it here. We want this to get very big once we open it up to the general public this spring — so read on to the discussion below to help me wrestle how to spread the message far and wide.

If I’m bragging about the movement and our work, I’m probably going to ask you to throw in some dough to help. We want to offer Neighbor2Neighbor to more pro-democracy partners; we want to reimburse more groups for their voter contact expenses; we want to buy more postcards and get more letters to the editor published. We want to get out more votes! This costs money, and for a grassroots-led and grassroots-funded movement like ours, getting more money means me writing these words: Please give us more money. 

That’s it — this isn’t a hard sell. Give if you can, and keep working towards a just democracy regardless.

The Discussion

How can we get as many people as possible actively engaged this year?

Here’s where my head is right now: It’s still early. Most normal people are not paying close attention to politics right now. It will be months before they do.

But our success depends on drawing more people into the movement. We need more people to help shift the narrative with op-eds, letters to the editor, and media-grabbing events. We need more volunteers to write postcards, make calls, send texts, and — most importantly! — knock on doors with Neighbor2Neighbor.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably not the target audience! I’m not the target audience either. We’re super engaged in the fight right already. But we need to reach beyond the choir and pull more people in. How do we do that?

My hope with Neighbor2Neighbor is that it is so damn effective, so simple to use, and so unintimidating (just talk to a few neighbors!) that it can be an excellent on-ramp to convert inactive allies into active participants in this fight. But inertia and cynicism can be tough to overcome.

So here’s my prompt for discussion: Think of two or three politically inactive friends who are also generally aligned with us. They agree Trump is the worst. They want MAGA defeated. They want abortion rights codified and democracy reform enacted. But they’re not engaged in doing anything about it themselves.

What do you think we could do to convince them to either use Neighbor2Neighbor (if they’re in a competitive district or state); or convince them to help recruit folks in key districts and states to use Neighbor2Neighbor (if they’re not in a politically competitive area)? What would you recommend Indivisible National do to supercharge that recruitment?

In answering this question, I’d encourage you to check out this post that walks through Neighbor2Neighbor. We have not yet launched national signup for Neighbor2Neighbor, but I want our recruitment to be as strong as possible when we do. The more people we get in, the more people we get out to vote, and the greater chance we have of winning across the board in November.

Thank you for offering your reflections, creativity, and ideas here! Looking forward to reading through your thoughts!

Until next time

Coming off a week like this, I can’t help but feel optimistic. The national election strategy launch call on Thursday with (future Senator) Andy Kim really just put me in the right frame of mind. If you want to get there, I’d encourage you to check out the recording here. It’s just so legitimately inspiring in national gatherings like this to see and feel the power of the Indivisible movement — power that is, as Trump’s Breitbart article breathlessly reports, “essentially unprecedented in world history.”

They ain’t seen nothing yet.

In solidarity,
Ezra