I recently wrote an article for Newsweek in which I pleaded with Democrats to refocus. When we lost the effort to save American democracy in the Senate at the beginning of the month, it was demoralizing. And Democrats shouldn’t give up on the federal level. But there’s a lot more to government and making a change in America than at the federal level. Earlier this month when the Ohio Supreme Court threw out the Republican legislature’s ludicrously gerrymandered congressional maps, there was a lesson there…and if Democrats can pick their chins up and pause outrage-tweeting for a moment, they will see that the Ohio win didn’t just fall out of the sky. It happened because Dems focused on overlooked, smaller, state, and local races that make a huge difference in power. Democrats may not be able to pass a big, sweeping federal law to comprehensively stop all election abuses, or to fix all of our problems. But that doesn’t mean they can’t grit and grind their way to achieve many similar protections and advances in the states and at the local level.<\/p>\n
One of the key leaders in understanding the importance of state and local politics, and doing something about it, is Amanda Litman. \u00a0She co-founded Run for Something, an organization dedicated to supporting people who want to run for office and getting smart, dedicated, progressive leaders in positions across the country that make a difference in American lives.<\/p>\n