Kamala's Massive Campaign Workforce
170,000 volunteer signups during her first week of campaigning for president
The Associated Press reports that 170,000 people have signed up to volunteer in the week since Vice President Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket, a staggering figure going into August.
No Democrat since Barack Obama, who inspired roughly 2.2 million people to volunteer for his presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, has fielded a clipboard army of canvassers to do the hard election work of registering voters and later, getting out the vote.
Social distancing guidance during COVID prevented Joe Biden from doing much in-person, tactical organizing like knocking on doors (canvasing). This mundane work often means patrolling supermarket parking lots and high school football games asking everyone who will listen they’re registered to vote. If registered, do they know anyone who still needs to register? Will they need a ride to the polls in November? Are they interested in volunteering for the campaign? And so on.
Voter registration is the essential to turnout in November. If potential voters ain’t registered, or are registered incorrectly (wrong address, etc), they could get turned away at the polls on Election Day. Sometimes people are registered correctly but get kicked off the voter rolls for a variety of reasons. A registered voter might get stripped from a state’s voter rolls for having the same name as a convicted felon or a dead person. GOP-controlled statehouses have a long history of disenfranchising residents of primarily black and brown voting precincts.
In short, even when voters do everything right, plenty can still go wrong, which is why Democrats register everyone early and often. When in doubt, register to vote. Fill out the form, just in case, especially in communities of color. Winning Democratic campaigns for president will make sure the paperwork is properly submitted and accounted for, so I’m eager to learn the Harris campaign’s voter registration tallies. Even if just a tenth of the 170,000 of Harris’ volunteer sign ups are reliable and motivated, that’s still an army of campaign operatives unlike any Trump world has faced.
Relatively few volunteers came out for Hillary Clinton’s doomed presidential run in 2016. In contrast, a lot of Trump motivated an angry nation of white grievance voters who were checked out on politics to register to vote, often for the first time, then turn out at the polls. Pollsters tend to overlook eligible voters they don’t expect to participate in a given election, perhaps because they’ve never voted or registered before. If Harris can leverage her volunteer army to register, then turn out these low-key ‘unlikely’ Democrats to the polls in November, it will be a catastrophe for Republicans and the MAGA movement they rode in on.
Lastly, it’s too soon to tell what impact hundreds of thousands of activated Harris volunteers could have on Congress. Just a week ago, Biden was a lead balloon dragging down-ballot Democrats from the top of their party ticket. Vulnerable Democrats distanced themselves from their own nominee for president or outright asked him to step aside. By contrast, Harris quickly consolidated support among all wings of the party, raised $200 million, signed up 170,000 volunteers, and completely perplexed the MAGA camp, which has struggled since the candidate switch to define their new opponent.
This is all to say, watch this space. And by “this space” I mean voter registration tallies of likely Democrats in battleground states. If these registrations spike upward like everything else so far about about Kamala’s new presidential candidacy, Trump and J.D. Vance will need more than white grievance and MAGA jackassery to be competitive at the polls in November.
Editor’s Note: Thanks for reading! Don’t be a stranger. We love hearing from you. The House is in recess until September. Senators return to the Capitol tomorrow for one more week before adjourning for August, as well. Send us your questions for senators. And if you’re a House-side reader, have a safe and happy recess!