Democrats Driving The Narrative

It's Refreshing & It's About Time

Well, here we are: President Joe Biden has stepped down as the Democratic presidential nominee after significant pressure following a very unfortunate debate with Trump.

Like many, I have been frustrated with how this has shaken out in many ways — although there’s no need to go into detail. It’s all so complex and nuanced and messy. Almost 24 hours after President Biden’s announcement, it’s looking increasingly like Vice President Kamala Harris is emerging as the most likely nominee — which brings its own set of complexities, analysis, and discussion points. But that’s not the point here today.

The point is that all of this is driving the national media narrative. It’s driving national media coverage.

In fact, the rising pressure, the controversy, and the questions drove enough media coverage last week that some of the spectacular absurdities of the Republican National Convention did not get as much coverage as they would have otherwise.

To be fair, on the one hand we do need Americans to see the carnivalesque thing that the Republican party has turned into… with all of its hate, scapegoating, misogyny, racism, and pushes toward oligarchy and autocracy.

On the other hand, since Trump slithered onto the national political scene in 2015 Democrats have had a very, very hard time getting media coverage or driving the national narrative.

This enormous kerfuffle over whether President Biden should step down has changed that.

As a side-note, it’s also shown that Democrats all over the place do in fact have a sense of the need for deep fights — and that we need to do the fighting differently than how it’s been happening.

The main point here, though, is that the coverage of Democrats is unlikely to drop off now before the election. It’s going to be wild. Now we have total extremes running against each other — a former prosecutor versus a current felon. A vibrant woman and person of color running against an older, angry pale man who is a flagrant misogynist and blatant racist. A thinker versus a blowhard. And so on.

Just the fact that this even happened in the first place is pretty breathtaking. Next we will need to see how the official Democratic party’s presidential nominee is selected. There will be legal questions and analysis. Several states’ delegates have already committed to VP Harris as the nominee. Yet since primaries were conducted all spring and early summer that selected President Biden as the nominee, some kind of process will need to occur to ensure that this selection follows some kind of Democratic and/or established procedure. The Democratic National Committee has already been out talking about the process.

There’s the question of the Vice Presidential nominee as well. There’s speculation all over the place on this, and on how it will be done. Names are being thrown out and evaluated… and that’s good to see no matter how we got here. Nice to see Democrats who are doing good stuff getting talked about.

In about four weeks, the Democrats have their convention in which the presidential nomination will be finalized. Coverage will no doubt be nonstop that week… but with all of this happening, whatever happens and whatever could happen at the Democratic National Convention will be much discussed in the lead up to it in the media.

Right now, there’s a bunch of excitement and clamoring as Democrats everywhere are lining up to say whether they support Harris as the nominee or not.

Vice Presidential hopefuls are making the rounds and making news.

There’s a sense of excitement by many… even after the frustration and exasperation about how this moment came about.

It’s a tough moment, but it’s showing some hope.

The media coverage is good to see, and I hope it does in fact continue as it could. Especially considering the surprising and often biased coverage over the past few weeks since the presidential candidate debate which spurred this whole thing in the first place. Many in the media seem to have been pushing President Biden to step down as much as the party was.

Despite all of that, here we are — and the coverage that’s happening right now is refreshing and needed.

We can help keep it up by rallying, having activities, and creating buzz ourselves.

There are a ton of ways to do it. We’ve got a whole approach spelled out here with a guide and lists ideas (idea list 1 — core stuff), idea list 2, idea list 3).

This nonprofit is set up to help raise a ruckus from here on out…

• Invite us to speak to your group to talk about ways we can raise heck and get the word out.

• We’re also set up for cheerleading and coaching to figure out how to do that.

• Holler if your group or your people or just you want to explore options and see what more we can be doing.

• Email us at team@shiftthecountry.com or sign up for a call with me to talk through options, invitations, schemes, plans, activities, coalitions, or whatever you might be thinking about.

Keep your wits about you, keep up your situational awareness, and keep the faith — in this democracy, and in the humans that make it up.

We can do huge things. Let’s do them.

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Vanessa Burnett is the Executive Director of Shift the Country, a unique nonprofit set up to drive civic engagement, public pressure, and voter turnout to create a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable democracy. Vanessa is a former homeland security professional with 25+ years experience in resilience, big disasters, wildland fire, emergency management, land management, continuity of operations, and disaster information sharing.