How We Take the Senate
It is incredibly difficult to flip Senate seats — that’s the conventional wisdom, and it usually wins out. But what if we stop thinking traditionally and get radical with our politics?
We created The Lefty League to do the things that traditional candidate campaigns and traditional PACs won’t. Instead of running after big money and watering down positions to appease the industries and individuals profiting from today’s oppressive status quo, we’re focused on growing a grassroots coalition of tens of thousands of small donors who are ready for the Democratic Party to embrace radical change.
Radical change is what the people are waiting for: Five core Lefty League positions enjoy broad popular support, especially among the younger and minority voters who are the fastest-growing segments of the Democratic coalition.
Your early support will allow us to promote these winning issues in each of the 34 states with upcoming Senate elections — every $1 helps us reach 50 or more people with issue-focused Democratic messaging.
Focusing on a broadly popular left agenda not only motivates the Democratic base, it excites the independent voters who can help flip the script. Traditional wisdom says the Republicans hold their Senate majority with 51 to 54 seats in 2021 — well, this is a dogfight we’re ready to win. We’re not going to sit on our hands and let America continue its slide into division and inequality. We’re fighting for a bold agenda, a progressive revival.
Let’s look at some numbers:
Medicare for All. The Kaiser Family Foundation has been running tracking polls on single-payer health care, the kind of program supported by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, for 20 years. KFF’s polling first saw support for single-payer hit 50% in 2016 — and support is up to 56% as of April 2019. It’s not just that the majority supports single-payer, it’s the raw enthusiasm for federal health insurance that makes Medicare for All a winning issue. A whopping 94% of Democrats support expansion of federally-supported health insurance, and 77% of independents.
Medicare for All is a winning issue for Democratic Senate candidates — will you donate today (and share this link with your friends!) to help us reach independent voters with this progressive message through 2020?
Federal Job Guarantee. Universal employment was part of FDR’s proposed “Second Bill of Rights” in the 1944 State of the Union — and it’s seeing a resurgence in the 2020 presidential campaigns. Polling last year by Data for Progress with YouGov Blue found 56% support among eligible voters.
$15 minimum wage. The “Fight for 15” is led by frontline union members, and more elected officials and candidates are getting on board. They should! A January poll by The Hill with HarrisX found that 55% of voters support a $15 minimum wage. Ask about an increase to less than $15 and overall support soars to 82%.
Green New Deal. Republicans love to hate on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and are unified in trashing the Green New Deal (resolution text here) as scary socialism. But the Spring 2019 Harvard IOP Youth Poll should frighten the GOP instead. Ocasio-Cortez, despite pulling back from personal use of social media, is taking Democrats to new heights on Twitter and Facebook — just in time to encourage the surge of voters under 30 who say they plan to vote in party primaries and caucuses. Harvard IOP found that 43 percent of young voters plan to participate, up from just 36% at this time in 2015. And it’s the environment that is firing them up:
Protecting the environment is now central to both domestic and foreign policy agendas of young Americans. In the Spring 2015 poll, 32 percent agreed with the statement “government should do more to curb climate change, even at the expense of economic growth” — 23 percent disagreed (Net agreement: +9). Today, we find that agreement has increased to 46 percent, while disagreement has dropped by seven points, and now stands at 16 percent (Net agreement: +30).
Free College. Fee-free public college and university is another keystone of the progressive agenda for 2020, and in nine polls with PSB Research for the Campaign for Free College Tuition (CFCT) since 2016, 73 to 81 percent of Americans have expressed support for state programs supporting free college. The issue polls strongest with young people, African-Americans, and Latinx respondents — and dips in support appear to come from competing ideas for how to administer the program, not policy disagreement.
Support for this “Big Five” of progressive policies is strong — and The Lefty League is committed to talking up this agenda at every juncture. We plan to raise at least $1 million from small donors this cycle, and to fund at least 50 million advertising contacts to remind voters that with a Democratic Senate, we can have achieve this bold agenda. Our average donation is $21 — we don’t need to appeal to lobbyists and bundlers or to water down our advocacy. We just need you!
