The 2024 Election is Upon Us
This newsletter is ramping up for an election with everything on the line
I hate to be the one to say this, but the 2024 campaign is here. The Iowa Caucus is less than two weeks away, and if the polls are correct, indicted insurrectionist Donald Trump could have the nomination sewn after the South Carolina primary on February 24th.
I won’t argue this is the most important election in history because I did that in 2016, 2018, and 2020. I’m sure you are sick of people making that claim every two to four years. What matters is that the 2024 election is damn consequential.
If Trump wins, abortion could be banned nationwide, health care and prescription drugs will be more expensive and out of reach for millions, every effort to fight climate change will be reversed, and workers will be under a relentless assault from the most pro-corporation president in history.
But perhaps most importantly, democracy is on the line. On the campaign trail in 2022, former President Obama laid out the stakes of the fight against MAGA extremism:
Will the United States continue to be a nation that tries to live up to the principles of democracy?
When true democracy goes away, we’ve seen throughout history, we’ve seen around the world, when true democracy goes away, people get hurt. It has real consequences… Governments start telling you what books you can read and which ones you can’t. Dissidents start getting locked up. Reporters start getting locked up if they’re not toeing the party line. Corruption reigns because there’s no accountability.
If the 2024 election resembles the two prior elections, in a country of 330 million people, the fate of American democracy will be decided by a margin smaller than the number of people attending a single college football game.
The idea that the fate of democracy could come down to such an impossibly narrow margin can be debilitating. But I would encourage you to look at it a different way. To think a handful of votes will decide it all can be empowering too. In that scenario, the work of campaign staff, activists, and volunteers really matters. That extra canvassing shift, an additional hour of textbanking jammed into a busy day, or a single strategic decision can make an impact.
Our actions this year will determine the outcome. Let’s not squander this rare opportunity.
How We Win in 2024
My operating theory of this election is that whichever side wins the information war will win the election. The 2024 election will take place in the most chaotic and unpredictable information environment that I have ever seen. The digital and media landscape has shifted dramatically. Elon Musk rendered Twitter — once the place where political news was surfaced and shared — utterly unusable. Facebook, once the most dominant media platform in the world, moved away from politics and news. People have turned away from political news since 2020. The reach and influence of traditional news organizations has dwindled. TikTok emerged as a major news source for younger voters, which poses all sorts of potential problems. It has never been more difficult for voters to follow the news or for politicians to get attention.
Navigating this information environment, where news is hard to find and misinformation runs amok, will be the primary focus for Message Box this year. Political communications is shrinking — moving from the front page and Facebook to our group chats and text chains.
If you have been a subscriber over the last year, you may have noticed me test-driving some new types of posts to adjust to the media landscape. In addition to analysis of political events, polls, and the larger trends shaping politics, I want Message Box to be a resource for people at every level of politics, including everyone trying to persuade the people in their lives to get off the sidelines and vote against MAGA extremists up and down the ballot.
This year, you will see more of the following:
Information guides to put the defining moments of this campaign into perspective, like this one detailing the GOP’s efforts to impeach President Biden;
Message guidance on how to talk about important topics and events based on my experience and the available polling, like this one about Trump’s pledge to be a dictator on “day one;”
Curated selections of the most informative content about the election; and
Posts highlighting important stories that were neglected because the media is broken.
If you want to support this work, I hope you will consider becoming a paid subscriber.
This newsletter started as a one-off project while I was stuck at home during the 2020 election. In the ensuing years, it’s grown into a much larger enterprise — 50,000 total subscribers, taking more time with more overhead, including editing, research, and web hosting costs. Writing for and getting to know this amazing community has been an unexpected privilege. Any support is greatly appreciated, but mainly, I want to thank you for coming along for the ride.
What happens in 2024 is entirely up to us. As dark as our politics seems, the United States is defined by a growing, diverse, progressive majority. The last two elections spotlighted a strong anti-MAGA majority in the six battleground states. In other words, we control our destiny. If we turn out to vote, we win.
Thanks very much for what you are doing. You are among a handful of sensible, informed, thoughtful commentators on the fight of our lives. And, yes, until we have excised Trump and Trumpery from the body politic, every election is the most important election of our lives. As a cancer survivor, I can say it's just like every successive chemo treatment is the most important of your life, until you beat the disease.
I love this, but one major thing that I think is missing from the discourse is local elections. If we can get people to care about local offices it will have up ballot effects. local elected officials are the ones that actually implement the laws. I live in texas. You hate the abortion bans? 3 of the 9 TX supreme court members are up for election. You feel like the IRA has not come your way? you are right, TX legislature and government has been actively stymying that. You know about the tennesee 3 that got kicked out of their ultra republican legislature for talking about gun control... You know who re-instated them? their city council members. Flood for climate change can include parks and native plants that everyone can enjoy, or it can be dredging canals deeper and wider so that more oil tankers can enter shipping channels. One of the reasons we have 2 old folks running for president is that for years we have ignored the bench, ignored the left and right feild ignored 2nd base and just talked about the pitcher. it's a team, we need a deep bench. we need folks on local levels to inspire folks to vote down the whole ballot, and vote in the 4 elections that will happen in texas this year (primary, primary run off, school board, general election..... and honestly some special elections too). mobilizing people to understand the local stakes and local elections IMHO will help get that football field of voters out to vote. the ones that are kind of Meh.. about this whole thing. If they see it as just a repeat of biden v. trump... it isn't motivating. local issues are more salient. focussing on the exact perfect thing that biden should do is looking for a silver bullet. the complex problems we are facing require silver buck shot. we need lots of local and grass roots solutions and voices in order to make biden successful and in order to put a power check on trump if he wins.