Friend -

The stakes in 2022 could not be clearer. Steve, Reed and the team have laid it out. This really is a battle of democracy vs. autocracy, and all of us have a role to play.

We all have to come together to defeat this authoritarian movement and save our democracy. That’s why I’m proud to join the Lincoln Project. 

I have spent the last four decades as a Democratic Party consultant fighting Republicans over issues such as taxes, health care and foreign policy. Those were important issues in the politics of yesterday, and hopefully they will be important again in the politics of the future. But today there is one issue in America: Will the American experiment survive?

During the Trump years, I watched with admiration as Republicans of conscience and decency stood up and spoke up for America. They were called anti-Trump, but I always saw them more as pro-democracy. They were Republicans. I am a Democrat. But those labels mean little today. 

There are no longer two healthy parties in America. The catastrophic mistake for our nation is to continue to see the fight as Democrats vs. Republicans, left vs. right. We are at war with an authoritarian movement fueled by former President Donald Trump. It includes many of the 147 Republicans who signed on to treason with their Jan. 6 votes objecting to Joe Biden's win, and it has grown since then.

We have to stop them, folks. That’s our sole mission at the Lincoln Project. But we need your help. Can you step up now and help support our work?

We have all lived in an America with two political parties for generations. It is the only way we understand to participate and speak about our politics. A two-party lens is the only way the news media knows how to cover Washington and, of course, elections. It’s why so many of us cannot give up on the idea that there must be a two-party solution to the danger of the moment. I wish it was possible. It’s not. 

The authoritarian movement now holds so much power within what was the Republican Party that officials of goodwill are either purged or held hostage – out of cowardly fear for their political careers or even out of fear for their safety. It’s what the rest of us do now that matters. It's time to choose sides and take action: to fight this authoritarian movement and become one of President Abraham Lincoln’s guardians making sure that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth.

Every American, every corporation, the news media and the social platforms need to understand that there are no longer two functioning political parties in our country. Straddling between them is failing to understand our circumstances and the threat of an authoritarian movement that seeks to take power by any means. It’s time for all Americans to join this fight. Not one party over another. But all Americans against an authoritarian movement and its poison until it dies and another generation of Americans ensures that our democracy lives. 

Are you with us, Friend?

As citizens, we must join each other in a pro-democracy coalition that confronts the authoritarian movement in our midst at every turn. President Biden and those trying to govern must find compromise and common ground wherever they can to get things done, and we all must give them the room to do so. But there is no compromising with those who continue to fuel the authoritarian movement with lies. 

This is what we’re up against in 2022. We will succeed if the American people come to understand the threat and the danger and join in the pro-democracy coalition to defeat it.  

Each of us, in our own way, can and must do our part.   

This is not about policy or petty politics or our individual histories and past partisan fights. It’s about the future of our democracy and, as Lincoln's guardians, making sure it survives. That’s why I am joining the Lincoln Project in this cause, and I hope you will join me in supporting them.

I’m honored to be with you in this fight.

Joe Trippi
Senior Advisor
The Lincoln Project