The Only Real Lesson of This Week’s Elections: The More Organized Campaign Wins

In some places, progressives pushed their agenda forward, in others, conservatives wrested control

Micah Sifry
GEN
Published in
4 min readNov 4, 2021

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Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, who lost his re-election bid to Republican Glenn Youngkin, during an election night event on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The sky is not falling. No more than it was the day before yesterday.

Tuesday’s elections offer a clear message for the center-left majority of Americans who elected Joe Biden in 2020: if you want to change the direction of the country, voting isn’t enough. You have to get, and stay, organized.

In places where Democratic candidates and organizations worked in tandem, real gains were made this week. Likewise for Republicans. In places where candidates or organizations overreached and failed to build a broad base, they faltered.

National political observers, sitting at their desks far from the ground reality of elections all over the country, always try to create a simple narrative to describe a complex picture. It makes it easy for them to go on cable television and talk in grand terms. The reality of politics is America right now is more complex.

For example, on the hot-button issue of police reform, you’re probably hearing a lot about the failure of a Minneapolis referendum that would have replaced the city’s troubled police department with a new…

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Micah Sifry
GEN
Writer for

Co-founder Civic Hall. Publisher of The Connector newsletter (theconnector.substack.com)