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Promised Lands
December 15, 2020
So my review of Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land came out yesterday on The American Prospect’s website and it’s been fun to follow the resulting...
Use Your Superpower
December 11, 2020
My good friend Marc Cooper writes a newsletter called The Coop Scoop with a very iconoclastic, “party of one” voice from what might be called the angry...
Mines in the Harbor
December 8, 2020
By the end of the day today, every state except possibly only Wisconsin will have certified its election results. By doing so by today, those results will be...
Look Back to Look Ahead
December 4, 2020
-“It could be a very long time before we can truly trust the polls again,” former Obama communications director Dan Pfeiffer writes, summing up his cogent...
Tipping Points
December 1, 2020
New data from the Fairfax school district in Virginia reported by the Washington Post shows that remote learning is drastically worsening the education gap...
We’re Not Done Yet
November 24, 2020
“If the systems hold, it will be because organizers held the systems to account.” That’s Harvard researcher Erika Chenoweth talking to Andrew Marantz of the...
Keep Calm and Protect Democracy?
November 20, 2020
Dear readers--Thank you to the many of you who filled out Tuesday's online survey about The Connector. If you haven't done so already, please take two...
Feet of Clay
November 17, 2020
Good news! The Orange Cheeto is dissolving before our eyes. Saturday’s “Million MAGA March” in Washington, DC was a bust. Perhaps 10,000 people came, as...
Not Making Sense
November 13, 2020
A few days ago, on my Facebook page, I shared a funny meme that was going around that was started by Paul Overbite on Twitter. It went, “And you may find...
Why “Stop the Steal” is So Dangerous
November 10, 2020
Four years ago, a few weeks after Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton, I got a panicked phone call from a friend in the tech world. He was in Bali,...
Protecting the Results
November 6, 2020
“I’ve seen some botched national convenings in my 25 years of organizing, and this one may take the cake.” That’s Jonathan Smucker, one of the cofounders of...
This Time is Different
November 3, 2020
I’m going to keep this edition of The Connector relatively short because we all have more important things to do today. But I want to address some feedback...
Reasons to be Cheerful
October 30, 2020
We are winning this election. Turnout is already at record levels. Young people, whose turnout in 2016 was half of those eligible to vote, are coming out in...
The 2020 Blue Wave, In One Chart
October 28, 2020
In 2018, the progressive organizing platform Mobilize supported hundreds of Democratic campaigns as they organized the efforts to get out the vote. By just...
If Biden Wins, Then What?
October 27, 2020
About six weeks ago, it occurred to me that with all the attention on the 2020 election and its possible drawn-out aftermath, we were in danger of missing an...
AOC and the Future of Politics
October 23, 2020
Tuesday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) went on the live-videogaming site Twitch to play “Among Us” and encourage watchers to vote. At one point,...
Slouching Towards Electoral Babylon
October 20, 2020
If President Trump declares himself the winner of the 2020 election before the votes are all counted, we are heading for deep trouble. According to a recent...
Forewarned is Forearmed
October 16, 2020
"Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist. Everything we do after a pandemic will seem inadequate. This is the dilemma we face, but it should...
Hello, World! It's The Connector, my new newsletter
October 13, 2020
Dear friend: Welcome to The Connector, my new newsletter. If you're getting this email, it's either because you were a subscriber to First Post, the biweekly...