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86,000 TO GO

Not for the first time, I wrote a different post this week and then deleted the whole thing.

It was a grand summary/mind-map of the intersecting stakes we face over these next couple weeks (and decades).

Here’s the issue with what I wrote:

My first job is to write things that are useful to you, and while poking at the weak spots in our systems is obviously useful, I just don’t think any of you who willingly signed up for our work really needs a reminder of what’s on the line here.

Not this week, at least.

Whether you come here for some single-issue or a more generalist understanding of what the hell is going on and what you can do about it all, you are almost certainly among the most likely people in the world to actually use your vote, especially with stakes such as these.

Fascism. Racism. Sexism. Abortion. Immigration. Maternal health. Care. Paid leave. Childhood hunger and poverty. Clean energy, clean air, clean water, housing, affordable and accessible healthy food, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, teacher pay, and so much more.

Rehashing them at length for you and the rest of our particular audience, however large and invested, at this particular moment, felt like a waste of both my time and yours.

Was it compelling? Sure. Was it additive, useful? I really don’t think so.

But I deleted it for another reason, and that’s more personal.

Writing it — putting it all into writing this week, adding it all up — took me to a pretty dark place. I felt awful. Overcome.

Shortly after finishing the first draft, I rushed out of the office to pick my kid up from an afterschool activity and within seconds of climbing into the car he quietly asked, “Are you mad at me?”

I will always write about the hard decisions and obstacles we face, and I will always try to help you understand how we can surmount, these, too, like all the others. But I also, equally, resolved a very long time ago not to bring this work home to my kids.

Not like that, at least.

His question made clear that this was a pool I could not swim in without real danger, without collateral damage. I quickly reassured him that no, I wasn’t mad at him, that I was sorry if I’d given him that impression, that I’d had a hard day at work, and that seeing him washed it all away.

You know the stakes.

You also know — better than anyone on this one habitable planet — what we’re capable of.

You know that all you can do is all you can do. That you can only control what you can actually control, but that you must exercise that control — that power — as much as you possibly can, as often as you can.

When each of us do that, we get Compound Action.

As Pennsylvania state rep Jordan Harris said recently, “We get the democracy we work for.”

So.

You cannot control millions of other votes, especially those already cast or lost to the other side.

But you can get your own vote out of the way, if you haven’t already. If you haven’t, you can resolve to bring at least one friend with you.

You can then spend every available moment using tools we endorse to get out the vote until it is done.

If you take nothing else from today’s post, understand this:

• Trump won the 2016 election thanks to just under 80,000 combined votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin

• Biden won the 2020 election in large part due to just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin

There are at minimum 43,000 of you reading this post today. Most of you are in the US. Alone, you can help power the forces of good to victory. Essential state and local races are decided by even less, by hundreds and even tens of votes.

But if each of you brings just one friend to vote with you, personally guaranteeing their vote exists at all, your power is doubled.

That’s 86,000 votes, spread across this great country, this idea of what we can be if we keep on fucking pushing.

But only if each of you commit to it.

If you commit — to act as if your decision to not only vote, but to guarantee one additional vote, has a moral consequence.

Let’s raise the stakes. Consider your personal commitment instead as a pact with the rest of us.

Hold up your end of the deal. We’re all relying on you. We cannot get to 86,000 without you — and your friend.

And if you do one better, if you text or call or knock on doors with the Environmental Voter Project, Swing Left, the League of Conservation Voters, or a similar organization?

If each of you convince just one additional stranger to vote, and to vote for good?

Well, it’s still going to be close.

But I have not put everything I have into this work to not use it to tip the scales of history. That’s the entire fucking point.

It’s the point of these essays, of Willow’s newsletter, the app, the starfish, of fighting the long defeat, asking the one question, of 200 podcast convos. All of it.

To tip the scales, while I’m still here.

Yesterday was my 14th wedding anniversary, and sometime in those 14 years, I realized that living a life of service to my wife and children was the very best life I could hope for, in my one quick trip to this wonderful planet.

My job is to show up for her, and them. Every day. That’s the job.

My other job is to show up for you. That other essay didn’t accomplish that, and it kept me from showing up for them. So I deleted it.

Even if you personally have very little on the line, voting — exercising your power, and extending it along with everyone else here to 86,000 votes, enough to maybe just tip the scales — that’s what Shirley Chisholm was talking about when she said, “Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.”

You’re here, part of this once-in-a-lifetime community, for a reason. You give a shit for a reason. Something keeps you up at night.

And you’re not alone, so take this mantra from my new friend Dr. Elizabeth Sawin with you on your way to vote:

“How can the solution to whatever keeps me awake at night also be the solution to what keeps someone else awake at night?“

— Quinn (follow me on our new app)