Former First Lady Michelle Obama recently indicated she would be getting her hands dirty in the 2022 midterm elections. On Monday, she announced her foundation, When We All Vote, in conjunction with 30 other organizations, plans to recruit and train at least 100,000 volunteers to register new voters. She also vowed to register one million new voters this year in the lead-up to the elections in November.
Michelle Obama has launched a campaign to get 1 million people registered to vote ahead of the 2022 midterms.
Obama says her foundation, When We All Vote, along with 30 other organizations, will recruit and train at least 100,000 volunteers to register voters.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 10, 2022
In an official letter titled “Fight For Our Vote,” Obama did the predictable thing and brought up the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“One year ago, we witnessed an unprecedented assault on our Capitol and our democracy,” she wrote. “From Georgia and Florida to Iowa and Texas, states passed laws designed to make it harder for Americans to vote. And in other state legislatures across the nation, lawmakers have attempted to do the same.”
She then did the predictable “let’s compare everything to Jim Crow” thing and compared voting laws in red states to “poll taxes literacy tests, and laws designed to strip away [Americans’] power,” and insisting that “we must give Congress no choice but to act decisively to protect the right to vote and make the ballot box more accessible for everyone.”
So much predictability.
Obama then detailed her plan for registering and recruiting Americans to secure Democratic victories during the midterms. She will also recruit an army of lawyers ostensibly “to protect voters in the states where the freedom to vote is threatened.”
On Twitter, the former first lady wrote:
In 2020, millions made their voices heard at the polls. But now, folks who oppose that progress are making it harder to vote. That’s why I’m asking you to join @WhenWeAllVote and 30 other organizations to turn out more voters and urge Congress to pass voting rights legislation.
In 2020, millions made their voices heard at the polls. But now, folks who oppose that progress are making it harder to vote. That’s why I’m asking you to join @WhenWeAllVote and 30 other organizations to turn out more voters and urge Congress to pass voting rights legislation. pic.twitter.com/hwgyyuTGy9
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) January 9, 2022
I’m going to be blunt.
It would be the very height of foolishness for the Republican Party not to take this seriously.
If Michelle Obama says she’s going to register one million voters, you better believe she is going to register at least one million voters in time for the midterm elections. You don’t have to like her, but she is more than capable of accomplishing this feat. She has the name recognition and charisma needed to mobilize Democrats to get the job done.
If the GOP fails to take notice and develop a strategy to counter this move, they will live to regret it later. Sure, the GOP might still take back the House and maybe the Senate, but this does not mean Obama’s effort will not have long-term ramifications in the future.
The Republicans need a comprehensive strategy to also register new voters. Fortunately, we already have a template to follow in conservative activist Scott Presler, who has been tirelessly traveling across the country to register new voters and training others to do the same. He told RedState of the importance of voter registration, pointing out the difference it can make. Presler told RedState via email:
Voter registration wins elections. In 2012, the Democrats had an advantage of more than 500,000 voter registrations in Florida. As that lead decreased, Republicans won the state in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Today, there are more registered Republicans than [D]emocrats in Florida.
If we want to win in 2022 and beyond, we must register new voters, sign up as Election Day Workers, & pass election integrity legislation across the country. Republicans are outpacing the [D]emocrats in voter registration in Arizona, Iowa, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, & Pennsylvania. 2022 presents a historic opportunity for the Republican Party and private citizens are leading the charge.
Presler also noted that the GOP must also focus on the working class, a voting bloc that has been largely ignored by the Democrats. “If the Republican Party wants to win and — more importantly — show it cares about working class America, we must introduce legislation that provides for medical freedom and patient protection,” he said.
He continued:
Think about who has been affected by the unconstitutional Biden vaccine mandates: nurses, firefighters, doctors, police, union workers, truckers, the military, grocery store workers, teachers, and construction workers. The very people, who — through their compassion and empathy — served us for the last two years during a pandemic are being told to get the vaccination or be fired.
They are told to get the vaccination or lose their pensions. The Republican Party has a historic opportunity to pass legislation on behalf of working class America. Our message is “We are going to fight for your jobs. We are going to fight for your families. We are going the fight for your livelihoods. We are going to fight that you, not government, get to dictate how to live your lives.”
Presler is spot on.
The Republican Party has an opportunity to not only wrest control of Congress from the Democrats, but also to expand its base, which is in sore need of growth. A bigger tent and voter registration efforts are key. Indeed, we saw this in the case of Jalen Johnson, a conservative candidate who won his race for city commission in Albany, Georgia, in a district that is 70 percent black. He told RedState:
So there’s a lot of people out there my age that are young black men that I went to high school with, that I knew probably didn’t have anybody registered in the vote. So, I knew the importance of rallying those votes because the way that I think of it, the way I think everybody should think about it is that every election year, there’s going to be hundreds of thousands of new eligible [voters].
The GOP must learn how to play the game smarter if it wants long-term success. It is not enough to “own the libs” or repeat empty talking points. We need more people like Scott Presler and Jalen Johnson. The party needs to raise up more leaders who understand how to seek out support from new voters. Otherwise, the Democrats will be back in power before we know it.
Source: This post first appeared on RedState
