Our first-ever presidential endorsement – Kamala Harris!
We dream of a country beyond poverty, prison, and pollution. The specter of a full Republican electoral sweep and implementation of Project 2025 is a threat to everything we value as an organization. While we are committed to a common ground approach to work on these issues, one presidential campaign is more clearly aligned with our climate and justice goals.
Join us in supporting Vice President Harris on November 5th!
By Janos Marton, Executive Director
Despite coming up through left-wing organizing and civil rights lawyering, I’ve dedicated the last four years to working in common ground coalitions, particularly on the issue of criminal justice reform. It’s an intentional choice I made when I joined Dream.Org at the start of 2021, given its reputation as a progressive organization that worked across the aisle, because I believed then, as I do now, that the only way to end mass incarceration by having a message and set of policies that can resonate in red states as well as blue ones. Working towards common ground has meant lifting up Republicans when they do the right thing, and rejecting rhetoric from my own allies that further polarizes our country.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve experienced a series of unprecedented moments in American politics, including an assassination attempt, controversial Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, and a president withdrawing from a reelection race. Yet as the dust settles, the fundamentals of our politics are little changed, and it is very likely that we will have a close race for the presidency and the possibility of divided government. That reality will continue to prove the necessity for common ground work in the years ahead.
To further our relationships with unlikely allies that were built upon common ground, our team traveled to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, just as we’ve previously attended conservative conferences, including CPAC. The Republican Party exuded confidence at the RNC. They were bullish on their chances and as unified at a convention as they’ve been since 2004, the last time they won the national popular vote.
We experienced three Milwaukees. The first was a predominantly Black, liberal city, already a punching bag in Wisconsin state politics, that grimly beared hosting a convention that cut off large swaths of downtown to anyone who wasn’t a delegate. Other than hotels, I can’t imagine the city benefitted much financially from the imposition. The second was the social side of the convention that is typical for both parties – uplifting events hosted by advocates and other special interest groups. In these settings, like a reception for clean energy conservatives, the mood is less vitriolic, and while attendees are nearly all Trump-supporting Republicans, they do not all consider themselves MAGA. The keynote speaker, Reince Priebus, even spoke of the need for bipartisanship and improved Republican positioning on the subject of clean energy. These are the kinds of events that keep us hopeful that common ground collaboration is possible. The third Milwaukee was the one people saw on their television, the ugly rhetoric that came from the convention podium. Republicans offered little in the way of a positive vision for the American people, choosing to focus on fear and anger, the demonization of immigrants and “Democrat-run” (aka Black) cities.
In the late moments of a tense chess match, a player can offer their opponent a draw, which someone staring down a stalemate might accept. The recognition that both Democrats and Republicans maintain certain advantages over the past half-century has meant striking deals and accepting “draws” that allow our federal government to function. Having won control of the federal judiciary and salivating at control of the White House, Senate, and House in 2025, Republicans believed they were closing in on checkmate. Uninterested in a draw, they created Project 2025, an extreme right-wing wishlist that would dismantle decades of work expanding rights and moving our country forward. This is not just a written document full of ideas; committees have been working in private on staffing and implementation details for months. Their belief is that by showing up prepared, they can achieve their goals more efficiently than the last three times one party had unified control of government. (Democrats in 2009 and 2021, Republicans in 2017.)
If you combine Republicans’ electoral confidence with the Project 2025 blueprint and their total lack of interest in presenting a unifying message at the RNC, it’s obvious that MAGA right-wingers were ready to steamroll their opponents with far-reaching proposals that previously seemed impossible. On issue after issue, Project 2025 Republicans will not feel any need to reach out for common ground support. They will eliminate the filibuster and if they have the party-line to vote to sweep in massive policy changes, they will. Given where polling sat in mid-July, this fever dream seemed like it could come true.
Then President Biden announced that he wasn’t running for reelection and endorsed Vice President Harris to be the Democratic nominee. This fourth quarter pivot energetically mobilized progressives to stand behind Vice President Harris, posting massive fundraising numbers, rally crowds, and voter registrations. This brought the election back to being a close race, one in which a small chance of a Democratic trifecta remains on the table. My deepest hope for this country is that Project 2025, which is still a strong possibility, will now not come to pass. But to leave any possibility to chance is beyond what I can stomach.
A commitment to common ground doesn’t mean an abdication of political preference, especially during elections, especially during a general election in which control of the federal government is at stake. The difference between a Project 2025 agenda and the status quo (let alone unified Democrat control of government) is massive, whether on climate and clean energy policy, LGBTQ+ rights, choice, education, and even basic concepts like civil service, which allows our massive federal government to operate through crises regardless of who is in power. Even criminal justice, where President Trump had a strong first term record, the party is aiming in a very different direction. There is no question that even those of us committed to common ground must do everything we can to prevent Project 2025 from coming to pass. I’m sympathetic to the notion that elections have consequences; after all, it’s what democracy is supposed to be about, and the American system makes enacting change so difficult that one could colorably argue that if Republicans do assume complete control of government, the people’s choice had some hand in it. Thus, Project 2025 must be cleanly defeated at the ballot box.
Though there are countless substantive policy reasons to mobilize against Project 2025, there is an additional issue that resonates for me personally. People of color make up the entire leadership team at both Dream.Org and the 501c4 affiliate, Rebuild the Dream. We don’t talk about it nearly as much as we do our commitment to common ground and centering directly impacted communities, but it’s an important part of our organizational culture. We’ve all worked places where “DEI hire” was a whisper whenever someone of color was brought in. Thankfully, that’s not something we have to worry about here, because together we’ve built and grown a strong national organization with Black, Latino, and Asian-American leadership. I find the “DEI hire” attacks (and the much uglier versions) on Vice President Harris disgusting, particularly because unlike the racist 2008 attacks on Senator Barack Obama, these attacks are coming from members of Congress (not professional flamethrowers like Rush Limbaugh) and are not being denounced, as Senator McCain gracefully denounced those attacks. After four years in this common ground network, I know that my conservative friends and colleagues are not the ones who are going to be lopping sexist and racist attacks on Harris, and I won’t paint everyone on the right with a broad brush, just as I would expect them not to do the same of our side. But this version of the national Republican Party has decided that such rhetoric is ok, and that is an attitude that must be defeated in November.
Despite my personal support for Vice President Harris, our daily common ground work continues. Just last week, Senators Manchin and Barrasso released a bipartisan framework for permitting reform, a little understood issue that is central to making the clean energy revolution possible. A messy compromise proposal, this legislation represents a chance to make energy more reliable and affordable for all communities if it can pass during the lame duck session. And barring a Project 2025 scenario, November 6th will mean getting back to work on a host of other issues. I’ll refuse to give up on common ground as long as two political parties are left standing with enough power that the choice is either work together or get nothing done.
That balance is at risk this November with Project 2025 and the burn it all down MAGA approach to politics and policy. That’s why I’m going all in for the Democratic ticket and I hope that the majority of America does too.