I saw plenty of posts from friends who were out canvassing door to door and I made sure to thank them - something that I've since learned is totally infuriating. Why? Because someone else's civic engagement simply cannot be a substitute for your own civic engagement. That's not how it works.
Of course, everyone was certain that Clinton would win back in November 2016 - even the pollsters. Ooops.
It's now 2018, the country is going to Hell and our best chance of fixing it is by helping Democrats win their races on November 6th at the federal, state and local levels.
So please stop wringing your hands, stop trading angry tweets with Republicans, stop commenting on news stories about Trump's latest outrage, stop cursing fate, stop weeping for the future of humanit and sign up to help get out the vote. If you can't go door to door, you can make calls from home, you can send texts, you can write postcards. There is definitely something you can do to help.
If you're not sure who to join, check out Sister District (this is great if there are no competitive races in your state) or Flippable or Swing Left or your local Indivisible group or MoveOn - they'll tell you where to go. If you don't get off your ass to help, you don't get to complain if nothing changes.
As for myself, I organized a postcard writing party with friends. We hand-wrote notes on more than 240 postcards to infrequent Democratic and left-leaning voters in our swing district. And it was fun!
Despite a long-standing dislike of going door to door (I'm shy!), I plan to spend the weekend before the election canvassing for Antonio Delgado in my swing district. I should be going every weekend, but it's what I can manage.
If you're already doing all this and more, I hope you are kindly telling the people who thank you that you don't need to be thanked but you do need them to get involved.
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