We lost a giant this week when Senator Bob Dole passed. Some of you may know I worked for Senator Dole – my first presidential race. And even though we lost, I wasn’t fearful for the country. There was a sense that that was a more normal time where you had two different candidates with different backgrounds and views – and you put it to the country to choose – and win or lose, the country would be in good hands.

I’ve worked on four Presidentials since, and I never worried that the candidate on the other side would put the country in danger.

Donald Trump changed that thinking for me. I’m telling you this because for too many, that sense of urgency, that sense of danger – that America is actively in danger because of what Trump and his acolytes are doing – is not there.

I know it is difficult to grasp where we are at this moment because it’s so different than where we’ve been. We all have this natural human instinct to try to make something seem like it is normal.

We got in this, The Lincoln Project, with two missions – to defeat Donald Trump and to defeat Trumpism. I’ll be honest. Last year around the end of October I was trying to convince myself that if we beat Donald Trump, The Lincoln Project would continue, but I could maybe pass the baton and feel good about it. But then what happened after the election is just extraordinary, and it’s impossible to walk away from.

The need for The Lincoln Project – and this surprises me, to be honest – is greater now than it was perhaps even a year ago.

Look around. The Democratic Party is a governing party, and that’s to their great credit. But what that means in real terms is there’s no one out there who is saying what The Lincoln Project is saying. No one on the Democratic side really has the freedom to say what we say. President Biden can’t go out every day and say that Republicans are a threat to democracy and have become an autocratic movement because he has to work with these people. The Lincoln Project, I think, has a key role here in setting the terms of what the 2022 election is going to be about. 

We are the air cover for the Democrats and in 2022 more than any other year they are going to need it. There are only three times in the last 125 years that the party in power gained seats in an off year. I worked in the last one, in 2002 – and we won seats because we nationalized the race and galvanized America around a shared belief in a threat.

Then, it was national security. Now, if we are to have a shot at defeating Trump and what the Republicans have turned into, we need to nationalize the race around a core issue again.

The issue is plain and clear to you and to me. Democracy itself is on the ballot. That’s it. I don’t think people get yet just what’s going to happen if Republicans win. They think McCarthy might be speaker?

I think that they’re going to put Kevin McCarthy’s head on a spike and these people are gonna do what they really want to do, which is follow their worst instincts. Someone like Jim Jordan will be Speaker of the House. But don’t take my word for it. Matt Gaetz said out loud this week that he’s going to try to make Trump speaker. And if you are following the news you know that Greene and Gaetz and Jordan run this party now. Not McCarthy.

We have to ask ourselves what that will mean for the country.

There’s a message for Democrats in all this. What would you lose if Republicans win?

More than a third of the electorate normally doesn’t vote in an off-year election, and those are disproportionately Democratic voters. Looking at the elections this year the enthusiasm gap is hugely in favor of Republicans. They are fired up and they will vote.

This urgency is exactly what we are speaking to at The Lincoln Project. You may have seen the report that January 6th was “just practice.” I believe that. You probably do too. One of our core missions between now and next November is getting enough voters to believe it – and to act on that belief. We have to make it clear that the power to change the inevitable Republican victory does not lie in the hands of “someone else”.

It is you, and it is us. That is our sense of purpose. Not waiting around.

In January, we’re going to make sure everyone knows just how close we came to losing our democracy on the 6th – and what it means for the future. And we’ll be launching some ambitious new initiatives for you to get involved and be our voice.

For now, as we near the end of 2021, and as we look at the magnitude of the fight we face – I do have some good news. Earlier this year, we launched an ambitious 2022 fund where every dollar we raised is going into helping Democrats win next year. So far we’ve set ourselves up to win by raising over $2 million from grassroots supporters alone. Over 60,000 individual donors have stepped up – including many of you reading this.

Before the year ends, we need to make sure that fund can support what only we can do – defining the races that matter most and saying what needs to be said, even if others can’t or won’t say it. Please consider helping make sure we are ready.

What you are going to hear a lot of from us over the next eleven months is the following: Stop waiting for someone else to make it happen. We are the cavalry. It’s going to be us because it has to be.

This is not about any one person. It’s about what all of us can do. Senator Dole said it best: “When it’s all over … it’s not who you were … it’s whether you made a difference.”

We are that difference.

-Stuart