To all the people typing #HRC2020, please consider this.
From the moment on May 31, 2008 that the Rules and Bylaws Committee threw Hillary Clinton delegates Obama's way, a faction of the Democratic Party began saving money.
We called ourselves PUMAs, and the money we saved was with an eye toward a future Hillary Clinton candidacy.
This PUMA faction remained close-knit over the years via social media. There are Facebook groups and a network of people who stayed connected. We were not closed or secret. We were not afraid. We were public, open, and proud. We encountered abuse and fought back. We were dedicated to Hillary and her agenda.
When Hillary declared in April 2015, this faction sprang into action. We were ready. We had stayed in training. We donated, signed up to start fund raising, joined various campaign committees, and volunteered.
Some younger folks quit jobs to join the campaign, travel around the country at their own expense, and volunteer in battleground states. Bear in mind that when they did this, they gave up income and job benefits including health insurance and retirement plans while their student loans remained due. They did it anyway.
The rest of us signed up to volunteer locally. We phone banked, knocked on doors, and traveled en masse by bus to nearby battleground states on weekends to walk the neighborhoods and knock on doors.
Campaigning was at least a part-time job for us. For some it was a full-time job, and we paid to do it. We did it with pleasure and devotion.
All campaigns come to a frenzied end. 2016 was no exception. The primary season and then the general were furiously busy no matter what your role in the campaign was. It was a two-step that we had not been through in 2008. We poured everything we had into it.
After the results on 11/08/2016, the battle was not over. Soon thereafter, official recounts were initiated. We had to round up folks to participate in recounts in some states. The work continued. Many volunteered.
It is very easy to type a hashtag, especially if you had little or no investment in what was done between April 2015 and December 2016.
You are not only demanding that Hillary run and do it all again. You are demanding that all the people who made these sacrifices jump back into action with ease.
Here is the truth. Those that relinquished their jobs to volunteer then had to find other jobs and begin all over again - and, as I said, many still have student loans to repay.
The rest of us depleted our "discretionary spending" budgets over a seven year period to support that campaign.
None of us will be in the same situation in 2020 as in 2016.
Those in their 20s then who gave up their jobs will be going into their 30s in new jobs, building new retirement accounts (we hope), and seniority.
Those in their 30s and 40s then will be inching toward retirement while facing increasing heath benefit premiums as well as college tuition for their children.
Those in their 50s and 60s then will be retiring and no longer have the resources to support another campaign at the amounts they donated in 2015 and 2016.
This last was the demographic with the most money to contribute in the last campaign.
The folks who were in their 70s and 80s in 2016 (also large donors and very active at the younger levels) are and will be dying out. All the stress, in money and man hours (strange expression - woman/man hours) will be on veterans in the 30 - 70 age group.
There is not a huge base (as we had in 2015) that will be in their 20s in 2020 that is dedicated to Hillary. That demographic has been decimated by the Bernie Sanders incursion into the Democratic Party.
To demand that Hillary Clinton run again is also to put extra stress on the base that has stood behind Hillary for ten years.
I am not saying what Hillary will or should do. That decision, always, is hers alone.
I am saying that when you make this demand, I hope you have a plan to gather resources supplementary to those we are losing which are many.
I have not seen any of the #HRC2020 folks state, as many did spontaneously in 2008, that they are putting savings away for the 2020 campaign. I have not seen any swear that they will quit their employment to campaign.
The #HRC2020 contingent appears to be nothing but a cheering section.
It does not happen by magic. It does not happen by hashtag. It happens by hard work. It takes money, and for most of us that means that it takes savings.
Not one of us who campaigned hard has regretted the work or the expense. We would do it again. But those are not the people I see demanding Hillary to run again.
Many of us are spent. We need time to catch up with what we spent over the 2015-16 campaign cycle. We cannot save in three years what we saved in seven. Our resources have changed in many cases.
It is way too early to talk about 2020 anyway. If Democrats cannot win Congressional seats in 2018, the Trump agenda threatens to bulldoze all of us.
Put that hashtag to bed unless you are prepared to put your money and your livelihood behind it right this minute and declare so.
I should not even have to tell you to do this since everyone who made that promise in 2008 did so spontaneously, with no prompting whatsoever, made good on that pledge, and worked their hearts out in the last campaign.
It is easy to type. It is not so easy to do the hard work. If you did not campaign, if you did not contribute, please spare us your comment.
