Back in 2016, I and others staffed the county Democratic party office. Besides distributing signs for various local and state candidates, we got 50 Hillary signs and gave out the last one the day before the election.

Things are different in 2020.

We across the Wisconsin (highly gerrymandered and deeply red) 7th Congressional District started getting requests for Biden signs… in July. We ordered 2,000 of the “Wisconsin Biden for President” (center, above) signs in early August, and they were gone as soon as the various counties got them.

Our county party cannot keep up with the demand for Biden-Harris signs. We get 50 or 100 at a time, and they are already spoken for by the time we get them. We anticipate getting out 500 or more signs in our county before the election. (The most common comment we get when a person orders a sign is that they are sick and tired of seeing the drumpf-spence signs everywhere and want to fight back.)

This is all happening in the 7th CD and my deeply red county.

Last night was the Princess Bride reunion fundraiser for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which nearly 100,000 people tuned into. According to the state party chair, it was the biggest fundraiser the state party had ever seen. The recommended donation was $27, although no donation was required. If only half the people donated $27, that’s $1,350,000, enough for some good stuff.

The cast of Parks & Rec is hosting a town hall fundraiser on Thursday for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin; donations encouraged but not required. Those Hollywood folks are helping us out.

All this is to say that we are (very) cautiously optimistic about our state going for Biden. And, as the party chair said last night, as goes Wisconsin, so goes the election. The most recent polls, from late August to early September, show Biden leading in the state by 6.3% to 8%. What is particularly remarkable about that is the two polls that show him ahead the most are the ones done by Fox News and by Rasmussen; the latter has always been more favorable to Trump than the rest of the polls in the past.

I am cautiously rather than generally optimistic because we all remember what happened in 2016. Hillary was ahead in the polls and won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes but lost in the electoral college. We cannot let that happen again.

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If you are so inclined, you can send postcards to voters encouraging them to vote for progressive candidates. Sign up here to become an approved writer. Sadly, none of our Wisconsin campaigns appear to have signed on this election season, but Amy McGrath’s campaign to unseat that despicable senator from Kentucky is getting a lot of play. Getting rid of McConnell is almost as important as dumping drumpf.

Back in January 2018 the Democratic candidate in a special election for our state senate seat roused postcard writers. Our candidate won in a landslide, the second election to foretell the blue wave in November of that year. I was phone banking for her and enlisting other volunteers and got three postcards myself, one from California, one from Minnesota, and one from Wisconsin. They still live on my bulletin board as a reminder of the power of grassroots efforts.