The Tao of Politics

Hello all,

Yesterday, some intrepid Davidson Dems traveled to Charlotte to participate in the annual ritual of precinct organizing. Just look at the fun these guys are having! As a result, Precincts 127 and 206 remain formally organized as political entities within the larger body of the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party (MCDP). As is the way with such meetings, there were delays and snags of various sorts and a good bit of milling around and waiting for things to happen, but watching it all unfold, it seemed like an epiphany of democracy. Messy, yes, bureaucratic, yes, but this is what it takes to build and maintain a group. Democracy requires patience.

The benefits of this granular work are two-fold: first, we’re building a powerful organization that can have a real effect on voter turnout and therefore, on election results. Mecklenburg County ranks 93/100 of North Carolina counties when it comes to turnout, which means we fail to produce tens of thousands of votes for local and statewide candidates. These votes can be decisive: recall that Gov. Cooper won in 2016 by a mere 10,300 votes. Things would be different in this state if we could have come up with another 401 votes to keep Cheri Beasley on the NC Supreme Court for another eight years.

But the benefits go beyond political effects, as important as those are. Occasions such as this can enlarge our social worlds. In Michael Puett’s book The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, the author observes: “If we understand the process of things emerging from the Way, then instead of simply living within all of these situations and worlds, we can gain the power to alter them. In our social worlds we can successfully generate new interactions, circumstances, and understandings.”  That’s what happened at that meeting yesterday and what can keep happening as we meet together and work together for the common good. We generate new interactions, circumstances, and understandings; I guess you might call that “the Tao of politics.” 

it’s appropriate to end by expressing profound respect for Aleksei Navalny, who died this week, surely on orders from Vladimir Putin. If you don’t know about Navalny’s astonishing bravery, you can read the highlights here. If you get Robert Hubbell’s newsletter, you’ll have an eloquent eulogy to Navalny, who famously said, “You are not allowed to give up.” For us, that means doing the work of politics: knocking on doors, making calls, planning meetings, attending meetings, demonstrating, donating. It means a resolute and cheerful refusal to be beaten down by bad news, bad polls, bad whatever, but to simply keep going, no matter what.

Have a marvelous week and don’t forget to vote!