Kansas Shows We Can Totally Fire Up The Majority Of Voters
People in Kansas voted Tuesday to keep women’s rights, and to keep one of the fundamental aspects of modern society - access to abortion.
The pundit class is already making big declarations about the 2022 election in reaction: “Aha! Maybe Democrats can win even in 2022 after all! Even though we’ve said all year that they can’t because of an irrelevant historical mid-term election tendency that ignores the unprecedented moment we’re in!”
Suddenly the pundits realize (at least temporarily) that women are pissed. Sorry for swearing, but the rage is real.
The narrative that gets talked about out loud in the public discourse always misses too much hard reality. It misses the uncomfortable. It misses the rage. It misses the primal drives, fights, and fears of real humans. Plus, the media narrative is limited in scope by advertisers, and by those who hold the status quo. The people holding public discourse are often not those paying the greatest price when danger strikes, and when oppression hits.
A warmly smiling, lip-glossed news anchor safe in a coastal high-rise office building doesn’t have to figure out what her back-up plan is when she’s pregnant, high-risk, and many states away from a hospital that might not let her die if she has an ectopic pregnancy.
An anchor man going on frequent tirades about the injustice of rape victims having to carry pregnancies to term doesn’t sense the bite of the word he throws about. The casual discussion of so much trauma is part of the overwhelming cognitive dissonance that our public discourse misses.
Again: it misses the primal. The public narrative has a hard time understanding the fundamental rage of women and girls, and of their families. The voices of everyday people make it through in carefully edited clips of 10 seconds or maybe 30 seconds; woven through a story narrated by a reporter. It’s beyond filtered and polished. It hides and obfuscates.
It misses the primal. It misses the values. It misses what the majority of Americans are willing to fight for at a fundamental level.
The national narrative has been missing the rage of women. That guttural drive to protect their own lives, or the lives of their own unborn, or the lives of their already-born.
It doesn’t catch the lengths to which people will go to fight for the people they love. It doesn’t catch the deep, fundamental betrayal of trust millions of Americans are feeling about their fellow Americans.
The national narrative has been underestimating the likelihood that millions of Americans might actually be motivated to get out and vote for their own rights. For the rights of women. For the rights of their kids not to have to hide under a desk in a classroom so that privileged pale people can own military-grade assault rifles built for war.
The national narrative has even been doing its own bit to suppress the vote while it ignores the simmering rage of millions. That national narrative has been busy trying to convince us that Democrats have already lost in 2022 - even though our rights, freedoms, and the democracy itself are all at stake.
One really good bit of news about the vote to keep abortion access constitutional in Kansas is that it shows Americans haven’t been buying what the pundit class has been selling - the notion Democrats can’t win.
Rights can win. Freedom can win. Access to health care can win. Democrats can win.
Now we just have to convince the rest of the majority of voters in the US that that’s true.
And that’s where we come to two big challenges.
One challenge is that even given what was at stake yesterday in Kansas - only about 47% of registered voters turned out to vote. And that’s considered pretty good for the US - especially for something that’s not a presidential election. Our low voter turnout rates are one sign of a not-healthy democracy.
Are there ways we could get even more voters fired up about what’s at stake this fall in 2022- democracy itself?
We think so. Shift the Country has a 5-part approach for doing that. We’re building out our volunteer sign-ups to be announced shortly, and setting up virtual brainstorming/planning workshops starting in mid-August to work together to make that shift happen. At scale. And super-fast.
The other major challenge is that the national narrative misses something else: the sociology of the rural US, and the motivation of those who want to push against increasingly minoritarian Republican rule. The media misses deeper motivations and context.
There are millions of non-radicalized, sane, conscientious Americans in the rural US who have been gerrymandered and election-engineered out of having their voices heard, but they’re out there. They’re mad. And they don’t want to live in country where the minority of Americans get to drive so much in what is supposed to be a democracy. Millions are already living it - look at a map of which states have lost abortion access.
Republicans represent the minority of Americans - but act like the majority. There’s a lot of noise and spectacle and big talk. And bullying. And meanness. And aggression.
Republicans get their voters super fired up; driven by fear, and terrified of the uncomfortable. They’re pushing back against squishy, emotional people and concepts like feelings and inclusiveness and equity and trans people. They’re all in, too. They intend to hold on to the status quo - for their perceived place in the “social order.” And they’re making very, very serious progress in a lot of places. They’re fighting fights Democrats haven’t even organized to fight in school boards and for control of who counts the votes. When in reality - if we do democracy right, it shouldn’t matter who counts the votes. The majority should win. Straight up.
In Kansas, about 41% (374,611) of voters voted against women’s rights. That’s a large section of the citizenry. It’s intimidating, for sure. As that crowd can be. It’s a crowd with members that fly “F*** JOE BIDEN” flags in their yards across from a daycare.
The national narrative about what’s going in Kansas or anywhere in rural America can’t convey what it’s like to shop at a store where the trucks outside have “LET’S GO BRANDON” and “F*** YOUR FEELINGS” bumper stickers plastered all over them, and imagery of an angry cartoon kid peeing on “Libtards,” or President Biden.
The national narrative can’t convey what it’s like to live in a state where your Republican governor and legislature have forced kids to go to school without masks in the midst of a pandemic.
The national narrative can’t explain what it’s like to have your neighbors outlaw anything in schools that even references LGBTQ people and or anything about race or diversity.
The national narrative doesn’t show the tension in communities where people who have “Black Lives Matter” flags live next to people who were okay with the “Muslim Ban” and who (still) think it’s outrageous that Colin Kaepernick took a knee.
The national narrative can’t explain what it’s like to be related to people who flash a sickly, puritan smile while talking about protecting the lives of unborn children even as women are starting to die in hospitals where there are zero exceptions to abortion prohibitions.
It’s violating. All of it.
It’s not nice. People don’t want to live in a hostile, aggressive, mean society. They are maxed-out. They’ve had it.
The media hasn’t picked up on the massive, simmering presence of rage; because it doesn’t fit their 30-second sanitized soundbites peppered into two-minute stories about the very tips of the icebergs of the real stories.
But the question is - can we activate that widespread rage enough to counter the disengagement, apathy, overwhelm, and despair? Can we motivate and inspire and energize enough voters about what’s at stake in 2022 that they’ll turn out to vote - and to hold this democracy together?
I think we can.
I think what happened in Kansas this week shows that we can - even with only 47% of voters bothering to turn out. Even with that - the win to keep access to abortion was BIG.
A very, very clear majority came forward in one single vote to say that they want rights, modernity, choices, and freedom.
We can do so very much to help energize that majority in every state this fall to fight for what’s at stake for all of us. For a bigger vision, too.
What could we do if we won an actually overwhelming majority in the US Senate?
We could overturn the filibuster, pass voting rights, pass election protections, protect women’s rights, protect the rights of anyone to marry the person they love, act on climate change, actually invest in American communities, and the lists go on. It’s time to dare to dream.
This Kansas vote shows us more than anything else that we can. And we should.
Share this post with at least 3 friends if it resonates, and get folks signed up here to help us make this shift happen. Volunteer sign-ups and events will be announced through this Substack over the coming week, and those virtual workshops start August 15.
Keep the faith - in us, and in democracy.
We can do this shift. And we will.