The farther we get from the debate on Tuesday night, the more Joe Biden looks like a winner. And I want to make absolutely sure he is the winner this November.
First up, the debates. Don’t read too much into my absence on the blog yesterday — I’m the only writer for Political Charge, so when I have a headache so terrible I could barely see straight (as I did last night), I had to take the night off from writing.
That said, it’s given me a chance to review all of the takes from the debate, some of which you’ve no doubt read yourself, but this, by James Poniewozik at the New York Times, is by far my favorite:
“The advantage to being the one who derails a debate is that people assign symmetrical blame for asymmetrical behavior. They throw up their hands and complain about the bickering from ‘both sides. So let’s be clear here: If the first debate was a dumpster fire, it is the president whose hands were stained with kerosene.”
As for Biden being a winner, I’ve not yet seen one poll that showed Trump as the winner. But in my mind, Joe Biden won in an even bigger way. In the 3 hours following the debate, he raised an astonishing $10 million. Over 60,000 of those donors were brand new to the campaign. And the best part? Nearly 100,000 people signed up to volunteer!!
Which brings me to my topic today: I am now text banking for Biden/Harris, and I thought I’d tell you about my experience with that so far.
First, I signed up for the text banking training, which you have to do to get access to the website they use to send texts. (They are running trainings every day — check out their next available dates HERE.) As they explained, in the age of COVID19, texts have become really, really important. Even if voters don’t respond to the texts, they do read them, which is a distinct advantage over email. Texts can also reach people who don’t answer phone calls.
The training itself didn’t take long — I had set aside an hour, but it only took about 40 minutes. I’ve also texted for Open Progress before, and the training was very similar. In a nutshell, you’ll get access to the campaign’s Slack channel — this is where you get the link to request access each day to that day’s voting assignments — and also where you can get your questions answered by moderators in real time if you have any questions while texting.
Once you pass their short quiz (to see if you paid attention during the training), you’ll also get access to ThruText, the website they use to text people. You won’t be using your phone at all. All the texts go through ThruText (but it looks like a normal text to the voter.) The text you’ll be sending is pre-populated for you, and you just hit send. You’ll send 300 texts in one batch. Then, you wait for responses. Out of 300, I think I’ve gotten on average 10-15 responses back. For any response you get, the campaign has a pre-written response you can use. They really do make it so easy. And of course, if you run into an issue, or you’re not 100% sure which response to send, you can go back into the Slack channel and ask.
I’ve been texting since this weekend, and I swear, I feel like I’m on such a high when I get through a batch of texts. It also helps to hear such great things from voters. My favorite response was when I was texting voters in Texas to ask if they had confirmed that they’re registered to vote, one lady said “Abso-freaking-lutely.” She was SO ready to vote for Joe Biden. Made my day.
I encourage you to try it. At least check out the training, and see what you think. There’s no obligation to volunteer if you take the training. Whether or not you take the next steps are up to you. If you have any questions about text banking, feel free to leave me a comment here on the blog post or by sending me an email through the Contact page at my site.
I want to make sure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris go to the White House, and I’m grateful for any of you who are already helping to make this a reality, and welcome those of you who aren’t yet to give it a try.
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TokyoSand, thanks you for encouraging people to vote. We must heed the wishes of Senator Bernie Sanders and former President Barack Obama and vote. There is no such thing as a perfect candidate and neither Biden or Harris are perfect.
When you hear the attack on these candidates, it is around socialism and anti-police. Two comments. Americans generally do not understand that our economy is a fettered capitalist model with socialist underpinnings – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the subsidies in the ACA, unemployment, workers compensation, etc. If we had a pure capitalism model, Donald Trump would have no money, as his companies went bankrupt six times.
The debate we must have when the smoke clears is what is the proper balance between the socialist underpinnings and fettered capitalism. It should be noted the president has spent 44 months (not 47 by the way) ice-picking away at some of those fettering rules, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren and, I would argue, Obama’s greatest accomplishment. This CFP Bureau works, but banks, credit card companies and payday lenders hate it, so it must be hobbled per this White House.
The anti-police stuff is a great example of a binary argument. We want better policing, which includes where do we spend our money? There is city in Kentucky that has made great use of more licensed social workers (which means mental health counseling) to go out with police when the suspect has mental health issues. In Alabama, there is a city that has made great strides in civil rights training with officers so they can better understand why African-Americans have greater concerns when they are stopped.
Yet, known of the above discussion fits on a bumper sticker, like “Build that wall” which would not solve much of anything.
Sorry for the diatribe. Keith
Your comments are on target