Statement from the National Federation of the Blind on the Harmful Stereotyping of Blind People in Political Discourse
BALTIMORE, Feb. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Federation of the Blind strongly condemns the inappropriate and harmful stereotyping of blind people that has been highlighted in the response to a recent Congressional hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency. The online mockery and skepticism directed at a blind witness reflect a broader aggressive and deeply troubling pattern in today's political discourse—one that wrongly assumes blind people, and people with disabilities more generally, lack the capacity to participate fully in public life, including in complex and technical fields. We specifically condemn all media outlets that are actively perpetuating these horrible misconceptions and are falsely validating low expectations that harm our society.
Amplifying misunderstanding about blind people is never appropriate and should never be exploited as comic relief. The idea that blindness equates to incompetence is not only false but profoundly damaging. Blind people serve as scientists, lawyers, educators, engineers, and business owners. We navigate and contribute to society with skill, knowledge, and independence, often despite systemic barriers and outdated misconceptions about our abilities. The public ridicule and dismissive attitudes being used to reject a blind expert witness in last week's hearing perpetuate the very discrimination that blind Americans continue to fight against in employment, education, and civic participation.
The use of disability as a political tool—whether through outright mockery, insinuations of unfitness, or performative outrage—dehumanizes people with disabilities and reinforces harmful stereotypes. It will not be tolerated by blind people, who vote and pay taxes, and it should be rejected by all Americans. We call on all elected leaders, policymakers, and media outlets to engage in informed, respectful discourse that recognizes the capabilities of blind individuals rather than exploiting ignorance for political gain.
The National Federation of the Blind remains committed to challenging these misconceptions and advocating for a society where blindness is understood not as a limitation, but as a characteristic that does not define one's ability to contribute meaningfully. We are prepared to work closely with elected officials and media professionals to provide accurate and meaningful information about the true lived experience of blind Americans.
About the National Federation of the Blind
The National Federation of the Blind, headquartered in Baltimore, defends the rights of blind people of all ages and provides information and support to families with blind children, older Americans who are losing vision, and more. Founded in 1940, the NFB is the transformative membership and advocacy organization of blind Americans with affiliates, chapters, and divisions in the fifty states, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico. We believe in the hopes and dreams of blind people and work together to transform them into reality. Learn more about our many programs and initiatives at nfb.org.
Stephanie Cascone
National Federation of the Blind
410-659-9314, extension 2244
443-934-0666
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Associated Press
13 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Global Times: At Rizhao Port: Small phone screen unlocks code to transform, upgrade China's global trade
BEIJING, June 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- In the sunlit repair depot of Rizhao Port of Shandong Port Group, Xu Guannan stands in front of a giant 17-ton wheel loader. This beast of a machine, capable of lifting 3 cubic meters of coals in one scoop, is not humming well these days, sending its work efficiency down. Initial reports suggest the machine is hit by overheating problems, but dozens of parts could be the culprit. A traditional repair work would by this time start climbing this behemoth and try to scout for faulty parts, guided by hunches and experience. Instead, Xu, deputy head of the Technology Innovation Center of Rizhao Port, reached into his pocket to grab his smartphone. From the small screen, Xu accessed the interface of a digital repair manual developed by his team of software engineers and powered by the latest artificial intelligence (AI) tool DeepSeek, which analyzed the problem in a flash and gave the answer - a ventilation valve on the gearbox is at fault. This is just a snapshot of the high-tech-powered, smart operation of Rizhao Port, which has earned the highest praise for its successful transformation and upgrade over the years. On the afternoon of May 22, 2024, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, visited Rizhao Port, the Xinhua News Agency reported at the time. Xi said that Rizhao Port, as a new port after China's reform and opening-up drive, has transformed itself from a traditional port into a modern one through scientific and technological innovation in recent years. It has not only made the cargo throughput among the forefront of the country, but also accumulated experience in developing new quality productive forces through the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, which is worthy of praise, Xi said, according to Xinhua. Currently, as global trade has encountered profound turbulence due to rising unilateralism and protectionism in certain parts of the world, China's focus on building modern ports and developing new quality productive forces underscore its unwavering commitment not only to high-quality development at home, but also to mutually beneficial trade with the rest of the world. This is also the underlying logic of China's development of the port economy: Let the world share China's opportunities. China is committed to building world-class ports to expand its 'circle of friends' of trading partners, contributing to the stability of global supply chains. 'Chinese model' Such a commitment translates into real action at Rizhao Port: autonomous trucks glide across the docks, guided by AI precision; Towering cranes, controlled remotely from a sleek command center, dance in perfect sync, unloading megaships with balletic grace. Behind this futuristic symphony of machines working seamlessly together are years of dedicated efforts to transform this once modest port into a high-tech titan, earning accolades as a 'Chinese model' for the transformation and upgrading of traditional terminals into fully automated container terminals worldwide. For Xu and his team, that means harnessing the country's latest technological advancements to empower the port's operation. Since last year, Xu's team sorted out and compiled a total of 400,000 paper maintenance log entries in the past 10 years for the port's dozens of wheel loaders and made all the information digitalized into a knowledge graph. 'In a way, we perpetuated old repair masters' wisdom through digitalization and AI,' Xu told the Global Times. The adoption of large language model is just one facets of the port's efforts in harnessing the hardcore power of technology to empower the port's smart operations. Tian Zhendong, a first-grade technician at the Technology Innovation Center of Rizhao Port of Shandong Port Group and a holder of the National May 1 Labor Medal, works at the port's 100-million-ton dry bulk cargo terminal. The terminal handles the transportation and storage of over 70 types of cargo across five major categories. Following recent technological upgrades, it is now home to over 80 sets of automated equipment across 10 major categories and operators control these machines from an office building located thousand meters away. In addition to remotely control portal cranes, a total of 24 industrial robots were employed to do the heavy and dirty job of cleaning coal-carrying rail cars and removing sticky coke. This solution alone has greatly improved unloading efficiency and slashed labor cost by 70 percent, Tian said. 'Our attitude toward automation is: once it's installed, we must use it. If we don't use it, we can't discover problems to help improve the system, and we can't truly enjoy the high efficiency automation brings,' Tian told the Global Times. Such a devotion from Tian and other workers at the port helped build the world's first parallel, open and fully automated container terminal, which handles about 6 million TEUs a year with dozens of operator-less ship-to-shore (STS) container cranes and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) working in harmony around-the-clock. The automation resulted in a single machine efficiency boost by 50 percent and reduction in overall cost by 70 percent, according to Rizhao Port authorities. Green development Smart operation is just one aspect of Rizhao Port's transformation witnessed by Tian, who started working at the port in 1989 and a second-generation port worker. His father participated in the construction of Rizhao Port in the 1980s, witnessing the port's transformation from a small fishing village on the East China Sea coast into a major coal port in China. 'In the past, city residents who live nearby the port area can tell the main cargo being transported in the port in a given period by the color of the powder dust clinging on their windows - red is iron and black is coal,' Tian said. One defining moment of the port's history, Tian recalled, is a State Council guideline policy in 2022 stipulating support for Rizhao Port to become a smart and green demonstration port for bulk dry cargo. 'With the emphasis on ecological protection in the past decade and dedicated efforts in greening the port's operation area, we have a cleaner port and a cleaner city nowadays,' Tian said, 'The theme color of Rizhao Port's story has changed from one of red and black to one featuring green and blue.' Ultimately, efforts to ensure smart and green operations are aimed at bolstering Rizhao Port's core function of handling cargoes. And in that regard, the port has also seen remarkable achievements: the port is the world's youngest port achieving an annual throughput of 500 million tons; it ranks first in China in the throughput of seven types of goods, including iron ore, soybeans, petroleum and coke; and it has become a vital port supplying raw materials and bulk commodities to the 'World's Factory.' Powering exports During the visit to Rizhao Port in May 2024, Xi learned about the local progress in promoting the smart and green development of the port, and expanding the opening-up, according to Xinhua. Rizhao Port's transformation is aimed at not only supporting the country's high-quality development, but also promoting high-level opening-up. The point of having a world-class port lies in serving world-class trade, as some workers at Rizhao Port told the Global Times. In recent years, companies in and around Rizhao city have seized the opportunity to advance port-industry-city integration and leveraged the port's shipping links with more than 100 countries and regions. Rizhao Port served as a vital link efficiently bridging production resources with global demand and effectively facilitating the global expansion of more 'Made in China' products. Wuzheng Group, a major player in China's agricultural and commercial vehicle industry located in the nearby Wulian county, offers a prime example. Rizhao Port's advantages in land transportation, efficiency, and marine transportation costs have provided the company with efficient, economical, and reliable logistics services, giving its overseas businesses a high-quality boost, according to Liang Yong, head of the company's international cooperation department. 'A three-wheeled vehicle, great at traversing inferior roads, is produced every three minutes on average at our plant and most are sold overseas to countries in Africa, including Ghana, Burkina Faso and Tanzania,' Liang Yong, head of the company's international cooperation department, told the Global Times. In May, Wuzheng Group exported 1,000 diesel-powered tricycles customized for West African mining areas through Rizhao Port, setting a new record for a single shipment of Chinese diesel tricycles to Africa. Behind that number is real stories of how 'Made in China' products changing lives in countries and regions. Liang said that many African customers told him how the three-wheeled vehicles changed their lives and help them pursue better a life. Wuzheng Group is hardly alone in leveraging the advantages offered by Rizhao Port to expand exports. Rizhao Yulan Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park, which is located just 15 kilometers from the port area, is also one of the companies utilizing the resources brought by the Rizhao Port. The company's highly automated plant transforms steel rolls into tinplate, a premium product having great overseas demand for its use in the making of cans used for storing fast-moving consumer goods like infant formula and beverages. 'Most of Shandong's steel production occurs near Rizhao, where our facility is based,' Wang Dawei, deputy general manager of Rizhao Yulan New Materials Co, 'This grants us access to low-cost raw materials. At the same time, we benefit from the port's extensive shipping routes, facilitating our global exports.' With over 80 container shipping routes from Rizhao and over 360 shipping routes of Shandong Port Group, Rizhao Port is a major node in the New Eurasian Land Bridge Economic Corridor as well as an important link of the Belt and Road Initiative. In addition to more destinations of exports, the types of goods shipped from Rizhao have also expanded to include new products such as new-energy vehicles (NEVs). In March, a batch of NEVs from Rizhao Port were officially shipped, marking a leap in the port's business related to the 'new three' of China's tech-intensive and green exports - NEVs, photovoltaic products, and lithium batteries, according to local media reports. The development story of Rizhao Port provides a footnote for China's steadfast efforts to strengthen its connection and exchanges with the rest of the world despite rising unilateralism and protectionism. Building world-class ports is one major aspect of those efforts, and China has made great strides - China is now home to eight of the world's top 10 busiest ports in terms of cargo throughput and seven of the world's top 10 ports in terms of container throughput, data from the Ministry of Transport showed. 'Port serves trade, and automation can make a port better. It is precisely this pragmatic attitude toward technological transformation that has enabled us to achieve what we have done so far and empowers our pursuit of a better tomorrow,' Xu said. View original content: SOURCE Global Times
USA Today
31 minutes ago
- USA Today
When is Trump's military parade? What to know ahead of June 14
The streets of central D.C. are soon to be filled with thousands of soldiers, massive tanks and artillery, and the cacophonic rumble of Vintage warplanes and sleek Blackhawks flying overhead. That's because the U.S. Army is marking its 250th anniversary with a pomp-filled procession through the streets of the nation's capital Saturday, June 14, showcasing military might in a display with few, if any, precedents. The date also coincides with President Donald Trump's 79th birthday. The parade, which will feature Army equipment, flyovers, musical performances and thousands of soldiers in uniforms from the past and the present, caps off a week of programming designed to celebrate the country's military might. Trump posted a short video address about the parade to Truth Social on Friday, June 6, inviting Americans to what he called an "unforgettable" celebration, "one like you've never seen before." "For two and a half centuries, the men and women of America's Army have dominated our enemies and protected our freedom at home," he said in the video. "This parade salutes our soldiers' remarkable strength and unbeatable spirit. You won't want to miss it. Just don't miss this one. It's going to be good." Here's what to know about the parade and day-long celebration in Washington, D.C. When and where is the June 14 DC military parade? The military parade is slated for Saturday, June 14, in the heart of Washington, D.C., spanning six blocks and bisecting the National Mall. Organizers say the procession begins at 6:30 p.m. ET. What are the events and performances at the June 14 celebration? Celebrations and associated events are set to take place throughout the day at the Army Birthday Festival starting at 11 a.m. ET. Members of the public can visit, where there will be military demonstrations, equipment displays and live music throughout the day, Army event organizers say Visitors can expect kid zones, more than 50 vendors and experience booths and meet-and-greets with "Army soldiers, NFL players, influencers and celebrities," according to the U.S. Army event page. Those feeling adventurous can show up early and take part in the Army's fitness competition, from 9:30 a.m. to noon. There will be several musical acts throughout the June 14 celebration, including country singer Scotty Hasting, a former Army infantryman who was wounded in Afghanistan, country singer Noah Hicks of Nashville and DJ Nyla Symone. The Army's birthday parade will cross in front of Trump's viewing stand on Constitution Avenue, just south of the White House, around sundown. The president is also expected to attend an enlistment and re-enlistment ceremony after the parade. A parachute demonstration by the Golden Knights and a fireworks display and evening concert will conclude the festivities. Where is the Army Birthday Festival? The festival is between 14th Street SW and the 12th Street Expressway on the lawn between Madison Drive NW and Jefferson Drive SW, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. It is next to the Smithsonian Metro Station NW entrance, which will be closed, organizers say, though the Smithsonian Metro Station SW entrance will be open. Information is also available on the Army's event website, What does the parade celebrate? Is it Trump's birthday parade? Though the parade is on the same day as the president's 79th birthday, event organizers and administration officials say it is solely to celebrate the U.S. Army. The administration has insisted that the Army's anniversary and Trump's birthday are a coincidence and that the parade is justified to honor soldiers' sacrifice. Plans for the June 14 parade began in earnest about a month ago. Yet as focus squares in on the U.S. Army's 250 years of existence, other branches are notably left out. The Navy, which also celebrates its 250th anniversary this year in October, has no plans for a similar parade, a spokesperson told USA TODAY. Neither does the Marine Corps, for its 250th in November. Inside the military parade: Tanks, cannons and soldiers sleeping in DC offices How to get tickets to attend in person Tickets for the parade are limited, but those interested in attending the parade on June 14 can RSVP here. Prospective attendees will be asked to provide their full name, phone number, email, state and zip code. Where does the 'Grand Military Parade' start and end? The parade will take place along Constitution Avenue NW, starting on Constitution Avenue NW and 23rd Street and ending on 15th Street alongside the National Mall, near the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Graphic of Parade Route: See where the procession will go through central DC How to watch the June 14 parade Events from the 250th birthday celebration, including the parade, will be livestreamed on all U.S. Army social media platforms. Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman, Tom Vanden Brook Kathryn Palmer is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her atkapalmer@ and on X @KathrynPlmr.
Atlantic
32 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The Real Problem With the Democrats' Ground Game
They called it the 'Big Send.' Democrats gathered in living rooms, libraries, and coffee shops across the country to write letters to millions of potential voters in swing states and competitive congressional districts, urging them to vote in November. During the 2020 pandemic election, the novel but decidedly 20th-century tactic had cut through the glut of digital messages that inundated Americans' cellphones and inboxes, and organizers hoped it would similarly boost turnout for Democrats in 2024. It did not. In a study set to be released later today, the group behind the letter-writing effort, the nonpartisan Vote Forward, found that personal messages sent to more than 5 million occasional voters deemed at risk of staying home last fall had no effect on turnout. (The group's campaign produced a modest increase in turnout among a second, slightly smaller set of low-propensity voters, but it still fell short of previous Vote Forward programs.) What's unusual is not Vote Forward's lackluster findings, but that the group is ready to tell the world about them. Every election, a constellation of progressive organizations sells donors and volunteers on the promise that their data-driven turnout programs will deliver victory at the polls. These mobilization efforts have taken on ever-greater importance in an era of tight elections, where the presidency and majorities in Congress can hinge on just a few thousand votes. Progressive groups are only too happy to brag about their wins; they're much less likely to divulge details about their campaigns that flopped. Driving this reticence is a fear that donations will dry up—or go to other organizations in a highly competitive campaign industry—if funders find out their money made little difference on the ground. In several instances, researchers told me, Democratic firms have either pushed them to suppress the results of studies that didn't produce desired findings or cherry-picked data to make the numbers look better. 'We have a people-pleasing problem in our party,' Max Wood, a progressive data scientist, told me. Yasmin Radjy, the executive director of Vote Forward and its progressive campaign arm, Swing Left, is trying to change that culture. Just as Democrats are now debating, sometimes fiercely, why their party's message failed last year, Radjy believes that to emerge from 'the political wilderness,' they need to have candid conversations about their organizing and turnout efforts. Radjy has been frustrated by what she describes as Democrats' lack of introspection and transparency. For months, she's been asking party organizers and consultants what they learned in 2024, and what they're going to do differently going forward. 'We've got to actually be honest about both what works and what doesn't work,' she told me. In the next election, 'if we are serving volunteers, donors, and voters reheated leftovers from 2024, we are doing it wrong.' The risks of a bad field operation are greater than people might think. The goal of any persuasion or get-out-the-vote program is to boost support for your party's candidate. Many make only a small difference in turnout, or none at all—especially in presidential elections, for which most people already know plenty about the candidates. The worst of these efforts, however, can backfire entirely. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama built the largest field operation in history, relying on both data-driven targeting and community-organizing tactics in a way that revolutionized presidential campaigning. But a study involving more than 56,000 targeted voters in Wisconsin found that a visit from a volunteer supporting Obama appears to have turned some potential voters away from Obama's candidacy—in a state the Democrat won handily that year. The researchers suggested that people who rarely engaged in elections found the visits bothersome. During the Obama era, Democrats relied on support from infrequent voters to capture the presidency, although they struggled in low-turnout, off-year elections. They poured millions of dollars into research and organizing programs to identify and mobilize those voters. But since then, the parties' bases have shifted, and many of these hard-to-reach voters became Donald Trump supporters—especially working-class white voters and, in 2024, a large number of young and nonwhite people. Some Democrats worry that their party's vaunted turnout operation has, in recent years, produced a significant number of votes for Trump, reducing, if not negating, the benefits for their own candidates. Early last year, a top progressive data scientist warned donors in a memo that if Democratic mobilization groups 'were to blindly register nonvoters,' they could be 'distinctly aiding Trump's quest for a personal dictatorship,' The Washington Post reported. Radjy acknowledged that had been a concern, but she said Vote Forward's postelection study found no evidence that its letter-writing campaign helped Trump or Republicans. 'If we found that, it would hurt, but we would also share it transparently,' she told me. It's not clear that everyone else would. The biggest spenders in Democratic politics frequently test their turnout operations, in many cases through randomized controlled trials in which one group of people receives a particular form of engagement—a door knock, phone call, or text message, for example—while another gets nothing. (This is what Vote Forward did to test its letter-writing success.) After the election, organizers can check to see which group voted at a higher rate. These findings have shown that in presidential-election years, traditional canvassing methods have become less effective as voters get bombarded with campaign ads and reminders to vote. 'In a saturated environment, it's getting harder and harder for individual pieces of campaign communication to break through,' David Broockman, a political scientist at UC Berkeley who studies voting behavior, told me. 'I expect the effects of everything are just going to keep on going down.' Occasionally, the studies that groups conduct are widely shared, but some political organizations suffer from a phenomenon known as the 'file-drawer problem': 'A lot of bad results never see the light of day,' Joshua Kalla, a political scientist at Yale University who studies voter persuasion, told me. Wood, the data scientist, learned that firsthand. He told me he's worked with Democrats who have urged him not to publish studies with unfavorable findings: 'Basically the attitude is, There's a lot of hype and a lot of willingness to fund this work. And if you put this out, all the funders are going to clam up and point to this as a reason not to do it.' In other cases, he said, clients have misused data to make tactics seem more effective than they really are. Another researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating allies in the party, told me about working on a study that found a campaign tactic had produced no boost in turnout. When the researcher later saw a published version of the report with their name attached, however, the findings made it seem as if the experiment had been successful. 'The big problem,' the researcher told me, is that in addition to using research to improve campaigning, Democratic groups 'also use it as effective marketing or to try to get clients. People's incentives are misaligned.' Democrats have become much more sophisticated over the past decade in understanding how to assess the effectiveness of campaigns, said Yoni Landau, the CEO of Movement Labs, an anti-Trump operation that ran dozens of large-scale experiments last year. 'The challenge now is about political will,' he told me, 'whether the people making the decisions—the funders and the organization leaders—want to know whether it worked.' To incentivize rigorous studies, which can help address the file-drawer problem, Landau said Movement Labs is launching a program it's calling the Prove It Prize, which will encourage groups to test campaign tactics by offering money for experiments that produce positive results. For now, he said, many of the largest investments aren't tested, and the reluctance to share poor results remains 'very prevalent.' When I called around to some of the largest progressive campaign organizations, most of them told me they had done extensive studies on their field programs in 2024, or were in the process of conducting them. Hardly any would share details of what they learned. Jenny Lawson, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, told me the group would not risk sharing 'trade secrets with political entities that exist to end Planned Parenthood.' An official with another major group plainly acknowledged, on the condition of anonymity, that it feared a loss of donations and was unlikely to publish a study showing poor results. A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee told me it is conducting its own extensive postelection audit, incorporating 'insights from inside the DNC and from external partners in the ecosystem' that the committee will make public in the coming months. Many progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood, do submit their findings to the Analyst Institute, an organization founded in 2007 that both runs and collects experiments on voter-contact programs. The institute serves as a database for Democratic-aligned groups to share research on campaign tactics—successes as well as failures. But some people told me the party's file-drawer problem extended there too. Christina Coloroso, the Analyst Institute's executive director, told me its officials coach Democratic organizations to not expect huge positive results in presidential-campaign years. She acknowledged that groups can be reluctant to share data even within the Democratic community 'when the results don't look great,' but she said the institute allows its members to submit research anonymously to allay fears. 'It's true that we may not see every single test that exists across the ecosystem, but all the work that we do is to try to get to a critical mass of studies,' Coloroso said. The search for the decisive edge in political campaigns has always been a hunt for novelty. Any new tactic that works doesn't work that well for long. Everybody starts doing it. Voters get tired of—and sometimes quite annoyed at—the calls, the texts, the emails. 'The first time that people got direct mail, it was like printing money,' recalled Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the AFL-CIO who has been working on campaigns since the 1970s. 'Oh my God. I just got this letter from George McGovern or from Ronald Reagan. I'm going to read it, and I'm going to send a check here.' A generation ago, helped pioneer the use of email to raise money and drive engagement, Podhorzer said. 'Then it's quickly like, Who opens an email?' More recently, the new thing was text messages, which took off in 2020, when Democrats in particular relied more on digital communications—and old-fashioned letter writing. 'You just keep finding some way that people aren't expecting to hear about politics, and so they are actually open to it and listen to you. But then it gets completely swamped,' Podhorzer said. Conventional turnout methods—door knocking and phone calls, for example—can still have a big impact in low-turnout races, such as primaries, special elections, and campaigns for local office. But with the parties now spending more than $1 billion on the presidential campaign every four years, they've seen diminishing returns on each individual mobilization tactic. Vote Forward emerged out of a letter-writing experiment conducted during the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama, a deep-red state where the Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated Roy Moore, a former judge who had been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by several women. The turnout rate for people who received handwritten messages was three points higher than for those who did not. 'That was the holy cow,' Radjy said. 'This is a tactic that can really, really move the needle.' The impact of the group's letter-writing program has decreased over time, Radjy told me. Vote Forward found that its letters had no effect on the initial group of 'surge voters,' people who had participated in at least one major election since 2016. But the organization was able to expand its program to additional groups, mainly newly registered voters. Among these groups, the campaign boosted turnout by 0.16 percentage points, enough for Radjy to consider that part of the effort a success, because it was similar to the average effect for all previous measured presidential-election turnout programs. Vote Forward estimates that it drove an additional 9,000 voters to the polls nationwide. As paltry as that number might seem, it's larger than the total margin of victory in the battle for control of the House during each of the past two elections. The letter-writing program is also relatively inexpensive, costing about $175,000. The group has concluded that although it will still use the tactic in small campaigns, it likely will not do so in the same way in 2028. Democrats can take some solace in the fact that the nation's rightward shift last year was much smaller in the states where they campaigned most aggressively. That suggests that the hundreds of millions of dollars they poured into advertising and voter-turnout efforts did make a difference. And even the best ground game cannot overcome a flawed candidate or message. But the party's defeat is accelerating a broader questioning of its organizing and ability to connect with the millions of voters who are up for grabs in presidential-election years. 'Democrats have much bigger problems on their hands than what they're doing on the doors at the end of the election,' said Billy Wimsatt, the founder of the progressive Movement Voter Project, a clearinghouse for donors to Democratic groups. He said the party needs to learn from the success of the well-funded MAGA movement, which he calls a 'vertically integrated meta church' that, 'feels like one big purpose-driven team,' even with all its faults. 'Their billionaires are savvier than our billionaires,' Wimsatt told me, 'and they're more interested in winning.' Wimsatt is one of many Democrats who believe that the party needs to invest in much deeper engagement with voters—outreach that must start long before an election. So does Radjy: 'We need to be talking to people earlier,' she said. 'We need to be talking to people in a more curious and reciprocal way.' But first comes honesty about what went wrong in 2024. Democrats will appreciate it. They might even demand it. 'Even candor that is not rosy,' Radjy told me, 'is more appealing than rosy bullshit.'
