President Donald Trump and the Republican Party had better be ready for a tsunami of new Democratic voters coming their way in 2020.
Far from the easy victory many pundits are predicting, there’s a strong chance that the president and his party (strong economy notwithstanding) may be overwhelmed by an unexpected wave of new voters coming mainly from the South and Southwest.
The same pro-China, communist-led organizations that almost won gubernatorial races in Florida and Georgia in 2018, and have almost turned once-reliably Republican Virginia blue, are aiming to mobilize a staggering 40 million new voters against President Trump.
If this network can mobilize just 20 percent of the new voters they are targeting, Trump will be a one-term president. Donald Trump Jr.’s recent prediction that the 2020 election will be a battle between “freedom and communism” will prove horribly accurate.
While most commentators are focusing on Midwestern “battleground” states, the American far-left is looking further South. The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and its allies are looking to the millions of black, Latino, and low-income white potential voters in the South and Southwest who lean heavily Democrat, but traditionally vote in low numbers.
If the FRSO can mobilize several million new Democratic voters in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona over the next 18 months, Trump will find victory extremely difficult—even if he makes some gains in Northern, Midwestern, and Western states.
Who Is Jon Liss?
Jon Liss is one of the most influential and little-known political operatives in the United States today. A longtime leader of the FRSO, Liss has been building political influence in Northern Virginia for over three decades. He has been active in Tenants and Workers United, the Rainbow Coalition/Jesse Jackson presidential campaign, the Fairfax County Taxi-drivers Association, and the Left Strategies Collective.Liss’s organization, FRSO, itself grew out of the Maoist “New Communist Movement” of the 1970s and has maintained ties to the People’s Republic of China. The FRSO is probably about 2,000 members strong, but it works in partnership with the 5,000 members of the equally pro-China Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the nearly 60,000-strong Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Mass Voter Registration
In recent years, Liss has led New Virginia Majority (NVM), an Alexandria-based voter registration operation that has signed up several hundred thousand, mainly minority voters to turn Virginia to Democratic-leaning from a reliably Republican state. NVM is able to micro-target potential Democratic voters by using sophisticated demographic information and maps generated by an FRSO supporter based in the Geography Department of Wuhan University in China.State Power Caucus
The lessons learned in Virginia, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, Arizona, and Texas are now being applied on a national scale to oust Trump.“Inspired by the disaster of Trump and Trumpism two years out, most organizers are engaged in barroom or coffee shop speculation about the 2020 election.
“Among the two dozen announced Democratic candidates, many debate: will it be Sanders or Warren, with their attacks on corporate Democrats? Will it be one of Hillary’s heirs, with their cozy relationship with Wall Street? Will Harris be the first Black woman nominated by a major party? If it’s Biden, do we sit it out?
“Dozens of state-based power building organizations have banded together to lead efforts to build a bottom up long term front against Trump and Trumpism. Over the last twenty-five years, state power organizations have grown to fill the political space created by the decline of Democratic Party local organization, the breakup and collapse of ACORN, and low levels of voter turnout. This reflects a shift from narrow Alinskyism and its very limited political engagement.”For years, communist-influenced groups such as ACORN and its spinoffs have chipped away at the Republican voting base in scattered efforts across multiple states. What Liss reveals here is an effort to consolidate these groups into one front to massively amplify their effects.
Building the Caucus
According to Liss:“Starting in the summer of 2017, many leading state-power organizations have come together as a caucus to support peer-to-peer learning and incubate innovate organizing practices. Included among the organizations that have been leading the State Power Caucus are New Virginia Majority, New Florida Majority, California Calls, Washington Community Action Network, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.
“We’ve also begun to assess the collective impact of state-based organizations. Looking at 2016, our rough estimate is that at most 4 million people were contacted and encouraged to vote. This is our high-water estimate. The actual number who actually voted is probably much lower still.
“Now, recall the 108 million people who were eligible but not voting? They are largely our ‘core’ constituency, or in other terms, they are our unorganized social base. This 108 million, when compared to the voting electorate, is more Black, more immigrant, more working class and poor.
“The long game to defeat white nationalism and move past neo-liberal corporatism is by building a bottom up movement of 40 million people.”
New Party, New Society
In a follow-up article on Organizing Upgrade, Liss makes it clear that the State Power Caucus aims to go way beyond defeating Trump. The real goal is to build a new mass socialist party that will eventually be able to challenge for state power.“I’m old, but a little too young to have lived through the New Communist Movement of the 1970s and its battles to form revolutionary parties and pre-parties, that is, to build a disciplined band of professional revolutionaries to carry out a political line. ... On the other hand, there is a unique, maybe even historic opportunity to build a political-strategic space to carry out electoral organizing.
“It’s time to create a ‘general command’ or a place where all organized groups of people who view elections as key area of struggle and who view growing a base of radical ‘new majority’ Democratic voters as a central task. To be explicit, new majority Democrats refers to women, especially women of color, Black and immigrant voters, and sectors of young and working-class voters.”It’s also imperative to support whoever the Democrats choose to challenge Trump:
“Our task is to build an organizational vehicle, what I call a ‘party-like space’ ... around the following points: a) build a stronger, larger base of voters of color, younger voters and women voters (in Virginia, for example, Black women voters have been the motor for all progressive change), b) support existing state power organizations that is ,some of the dozens of social movement organizations contending for state level governing power, or at least organizations that are outside of the Democratic Party structures c) agree to support the Democratic candidate who emerges to take on Trump in the general election.”So what would this party-like structure do? According to Liss, it would be “a valuable step toward a coherent approach for building a socialist movement.”
“On a strategic level, this party-like space would exist in order to build the foundations for a mass left organization capable of challenging elites in the two dominant parties, leveraging the strengths and demands of multiple movements, and making possible a struggle for life beyond Trump and Trumpism. Practical next steps should include:
Communist Inspiration
In order to illustrate the past successes of this approach, Liss cites the example of El Salvador’s often ruling FMLN, an electoral alliance built around the Communist Party of El Salvador.“In El Salvador, 5 organizations under life-threatening duress managed to unite to create the FMLN. They started with very different strategic positions but created a process for collaboration and coordination. Over time, many of the differences were not nearly as important as the need to work together. Again, while longer term strategic considerations may develop over time, getting this real work started for 2020 is the way to start.”
Credible Threat
The FRSO and its allies have enough people and resources to make possible their plan to mobilize 40 million new voters against Trump.Their leadership of the State Power Caucus and their control of 22 voter registration organizations in 15 states is no small army. Add to that massive funding from the Democracy Alliance, labor unions, and leftist foundations, and possible ongoing informational support from China. It’s clear that Trump has some serious under-the-radar opposition coming from the FRSO and the State Power Caucus.
These groups will work in California, Ohio, and other states, but the real focus will be Southern and Southwestern Republican-held states with high minority populations. North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona may well be the real battleground states this election cycle.
The outcome of the next election will either set the United States on a new upward spiral of freedom and prosperity, or it could send the United States and the West into a nearly unstoppable downward spiral into socialism and tyranny.
In World War II, the battle for civilization was decided in the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway Island, Normandy, and “The Bulge.”
The looming battle for civilization may well be fought in the ballot boxes of Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina.