From the left-leaning western Massachusetts bubble, it’s tempting to think the Trump era will soon be over.
The evidence seems overwhelming: As COVID-19 cases have climbed for most of the summer, the president’s support has tumbled like an August meteor shower. The latest national polls all show President Trump trailing Democratic candidate Joe Biden by as many as 12 percentage points. Public opinion about his handling of the pandemic is far worse.
And all this before Biden announced his historic choice of Kamala Harris as his vice president and this week’s refreshingly unified Democratic National Convention. Black women — the heart, the soul and very reliable voters in the Democratic Party — are especially ecstatic.
“I’m jumping for joy,” Johnnette Cole, the first Black female president of Spelman College, a Black all-female college in Atlanta, reacting to the first woman of color on a major presidential ticket. “Today, 401 years after the first enslaved Africans came to what was then British Virginia, look what has happened.”
The stars are aligning, right?
Think again.
This race is far from over.
Just as we need to be fixated with wearing masks, we need to be laser-focused on winning this election. And not just by voting. We should also be working to protect voting rights for citizens outside of Massachusetts, especially disenfranchised populations in key swing states where the election is most in doubt.
One easy way to do this is by supporting the Movement Voter Project (MVP), an effective Northampton nonprofit that is supporting hundreds of local grassroots groups across the country that are mobilizing voters and strengthening progressive power at all levels of government. Next week, “Running for Democracy,” a virtual 5K road race fundraiser started by five local women and myself will be taking place at locations all across the country to raise money for MVP.
With two months to go until Election Day, the president’s race is more a toss-up than a slam dunk. Election forecasting guru Nate Silver said as much last week when he projected the president’s chances of winning in 2020 are the same as in 2016. He titled his blog post, “It’s Way Too Soon to Count Trump Out.”
The race will be decided not by the national popular vote, but by winning the Electoral College, an anachronistic system that awards candidates electoral votes on a state-by-state, winner-take-all basis. Which is why major battleground states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, with large blocks of electoral votes are so important. If the president can scratch and claw to win Florida by one vote, he gets all of the state’s 29 electoral votes.
As many painfully recall, the 2000 presidential election was decided in George Bush’s favor in Florida. The margin of victory — after a protracted recount and controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision — was fewer than 600 votes.
In other words: every vote matters, whether by voting individually in Massachusetts or by ensuring that others can vote outside of Massachusetts.
The Trump campaign is hard at work to prevent disenfranchised voters from being able to cast their ballots, whether with restrictive voter ID laws or wide-ranging roadblocks for mail-in voting.
The Movement Voter Project is trying to stop this.
Launched in early 2016, MVP has raised over $50 million for more than 350 local groups that are mobilizing voters and strengthening progressive power, especially among youth and communities of color. In just a few years, MVP-supported groups have helped:
■Virginia Democrats win state elections across the board in 2019.
■ Drive a historic and pivotal Black voter turnout in Alabama’s 2017 Senate race won by Democrat Doug Jones
■Democrat Maggie Hassan squeak out a 1,027-vote victory in New Hampshire’s 2016 Senate race.
The stakes are even higher today and the Movement Voter Project needs our support as it battles in dozens of states for free and fair elections. One way to do this is to sign up for “Running for Democracy.”
This virtual 5K fundraiser is simple, fun and easy. For a $20 registration fee, you can run or walk solo, join or organize a race group that will run or walk anytime from Sunday, Aug. 23, to Saturday, Aug. 29 — a week that coincidentally falls during the virtual Republican National Convention.
One race option, organized by Elaine Puleo and Barbara Bigelow of Shutesbury, will take place on Sunday, Aug. 23 at the University of Massachusetts Stadium in Amherst. The 5K course will be marked out and individuals and groups can run anytime between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Water and photo opportunities will be available.
Now is the time to act for democracy. By pounding the pavement next week, we can help get our country back on the right side of history.
As BZ Reily of Shutesbury, one of the race organizers told me, “I don’t want to wake up Nov. 4 to a second Trump term, asking myself, ‘Why didn’t I do more to stop this?” We can all do more — by running and walking for our Democracy.”
Peyton Fleming lives in Ashfield and can be reached at peytonfleming22@gmail.com