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September 2019 Memo
Warren for President
September 24, 2019
Roger Lau
Campaign Manager
Warren for President
Strategy Memo, September 2019
At the start of this campaign, we laid out how Elizabeth is going to win the primary and the general election — by identifying the deep problems the country faces, creating plans to solve them, and building a grassroots movement to win in 2020 and make big, structural change in 2021 and beyond. And that's exactly what our campaign has been doing.
We've released dozens of plans in the past seven months, but they're really one big, simple plan: to break the stranglehold of corruption on Washington and put political and economic power in the hands of the people, where it belongs.
Elizabeth is the president America needs to tackle the corruption that's put opportunity out of reach for too many Americans — corruption that's rotting and undermining our democracy. She believes that big, structural change is how we're going to fix a government that works for the wealthy and well-connected and kicks dirt on everyone else.
From guaranteeing universal child care to canceling student loan debt; to ensuring tuition-free technical school, community college, and public universities; to reforming our broken immigration system; to fixing our unjust criminal justice system; to making sure that the people with the biggest fortunes pay their fair share in taxes, she's got a plan for that. And more.
Her agenda isn't just bold — it's popular across the country, with Democrats, independents, and Republicans. Seventy-four percent of people, including a majority of Republicans, support Elizabeth's Ultra-Millionaire Tax1, which would require the top 0.1% of Americans to pay a two-cent tax on every dollar of net worth over $50 million.
A majority of Americans (including people who don't even have student debt) support her student loan debt cancelation plan, which would cancel student debt for 95% of Americans who carry it and make a significant stride in closing the racial wealth gap.2 And 76% of Americans support Elizabeth's Social Security plan, which would immediately increase benefits for everyone by $200 a month and extend the solvency of Social Security for nearly two decades.3
To win in 2020 and get all this done, we need to keep building our grassroots movement — and here's what we've already accomplished:
Elizabeth has focused her time on meeting as many voters as possible. Since the start of this campaign, Elizabeth has taken more than 600 unfiltered questions at 134 town halls in 27 states and Puerto Rico — and taken over 60,000 selfies (at more than 120 hours in selfie lines!). This includes more than 100 events in the first four states that vote: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Elizabeth has held over 100 media avails with reporters and done hundreds of interviews while answering thousands of questions from the press. She's also been able to visit parts of the country that are often overlooked in a Democratic primary, from highlighting the need for safe, affordable housing in the Mississippi Delta to sharing her plan to protect public lands in Utah to talking about her plan to tackle the opioid crisis in the tiny town of Kermit, West Virginia.
We've built a strong grassroots organization in all four of the early states, with dozens of offices opened and hundreds of full-time organizers on the ground talking with caucus-goers and voters every single day. Together, our supporters have already personally contacted hundreds of thousands of voters in these four states alone.
It's all powered by over a million donations from all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico — and Elizabeth doesn't spend any time catering to wealthy donors. Elizabeth made a decision not to spend her time courting wealthy contributors, which means no phone calls to schmooze deep-pocketed donors or thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners behind closed doors. Instead, she's been able to make hundreds of phone calls to thank grassroots donors — who've chipped in any amount, even just $1 — and hear what got them in this fight. If you make a contribution today, you could be on the phone with Elizabeth yourself.
What's next
As we head into the fall, here's how we'll build on our progress, build out our team, and keep growing the movement that will elect Elizabeth and elect Democrats up and down the ballot next November:
We're launching an eight-figure digital and TV advertising campaign in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina to make sure we're getting Elizabeth's plans for big, structural change in front of voters and caucus-goers. If you've been to one of our campaign events in the early states or across the country, chances are you might be part of our ads. Right now, our biggest expense as a campaign is our staff, but as the campaign heats up, it will be on media to reach potential voters. Because we're 100% grassroots funded, we've built our team to spend your dollars as effectively as possible to help deliver victory. That means targeting our spend as precisely as possible to reach the people we need to turn out. It will be more digital than old-school broadcast television, and we have built an in-house staff to produce videos and ads rather than adopt the consultant-driven approach of other campaigns (and the big commissions and fees that come along with it). See some samples of what will be running here.
We're hiring state directors and organizers in a number of states that have primaries and caucuses in March. And we're targeting our resources to invest in places that will be critical to keeping the House, taking back the U.S. Senate, and regaining ground in key state legislatures in 2020. That includes states like Illinois and California, where Democrats won a whole bunch of House seats in 2018 in close elections that we'll need to defend. It also includes states like Maine, which has a competitive Senate race and Georgia, where there will be two Senate seats up for election.
Because of redistricting after 2020, Democratic gains in Congress and in the state legislatures could be erased if we let Republican-controlled state legislatures draw gerrymandered maps for 2022. So we're putting boots on the ground in places like Michigan and Minnesota, which will help flip state legislatures to Democratic control. And we're continuing to build the future of our party by investing in states like Texas and Florida. Remember: this election is about more than just beating Donald Trump — he's just the worst symptom of a corrupt system. If we want to make big, structural change, we need to make sure Democrats control the U.S. House and Senate and win important gubernatorial and state legislative races across the country.
We're expanding our efforts knocking on doors, making calls, and texting voters across the country.
Our grassroots supporters have already held thousands of house parties and are making face-to-face connections with voters in their communities every day. We've trained thousands of supporters at our barnstorms and Warren Weekend events. Our campaign is using Reach — a canvassing app designed to encourage voter conversations anytime and anywhere — to empower Team Warren volunteers across the country to have meaningful conversations with people in their lives about the issues they care about and how they'd like to join our movement. (Want to learn more about Reach? Sign up for a training!)
I'm grateful for everything you do for this campaign, and I couldn't be more proud of what our team has already accomplished.
Across the country, volunteers are working their hearts out — knocking on doors in the summer heat, making phone calls for a few hours a week after work, sending text messages that bring more people into the fight, inviting friends and neighbors over for house parties to talk about how they can get involved, and building this movement.
This is how we dream big, fight hard, and win. We've got a plan to make sure Elizabeth is the next president of the United States. And when she's in the Oval Office — when our plans go from big ideas to reality with the help of this grassroots movement — I want you to know that you helped make it happen.
Please pitch in to help elect Elizabeth and make the big, structural changes our country desperately needs. We're going to win — as long as we keep fighting side by side.
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1. https://thehill.com/hilltv/
2. https://morningconsult.com/
3. https://www.dataforprogress.
Copyright © 2019 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in
Action.
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