Amanda Litman
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amandalitman.bsky.social
Amanda Litman
@amandalitman.bsky.social
60K followers 1.2K following 3K posts
Co-founder & President of @runforsomething.net & RFS Civics / Writer x2: http://runforsomething.net/book & WHEN WE'RE IN CHARGE, out now at whenwereincharge.com / Mom, also x2

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amandalitman.bsky.social
Quick snapshot of the @runforsomething.net candidate sign-ups -- we're building a party of fighters, not folders.
November 10, 2025 at 4:07 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Well, we got six nice days.
November 10, 2025 at 1:18 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Spotted on the big screens!
November 7, 2025 at 4:24 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Another amazing @runforsomething.net win: Mekkai Williams, a 21 year old student & mental health advocate, won a seat on the Hempfield School Board in PA, flipping control from red to blue for the first time EVER. lancasteronline.com/news/politic...
November 6, 2025 at 9:45 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
I wrote this yesterday. I love being right. open.substack.com/pub/amandali...
That 2017 election woke up the muscle of winning that we had let atrophy over 2014 and 2016. It gave our collective side the push we needed to bring energy (and resources) into the 2018 midterms and the 2020 election. Tonight in NYC, VA, CA, NJ, and hundreds of other races across the country, we're going to remember what it feels like to win. I can't wait. See you on the other side.
November 5, 2025 at 4:09 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Looking at sign-ups at runforwhat.net this morning - rise & shine, time to get on the ballot for 2026!!
November 5, 2025 at 1:48 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
In Ulster County, NY, @runforsomething.net candidates Laura Donovan and Dominick Marino flipped seats red to blue against Republican incumbents. Laura won by just 36 votes!!
November 5, 2025 at 4:15 AM
amandalitman.bsky.social
2026 is going to be a good year to run for office, no matter how long the odds. runforwhat.net
Every single county in VA swung blue.
November 5, 2025 at 1:35 AM
amandalitman.bsky.social
This is what I mean - this is the kind of amorphous shit that drives me insane.

Which Democrats is it directed at? Who should have done something different? Why should New York City voters factor in the swing voters in the midwest when picking our mayor?
November 4, 2025 at 4:37 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Always grateful when reporters like @rtraister.bsky.social take my bits seriously. nymag.com/intelligence...
As Amanda Litman, the co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits and trains progressive candidates under 40 to run at state and local levels, texted me the day after the Reddit story broke, “Ask Janet Mills what Reddit is.” “Heard of it,” Mills told me, “but I’m not on it. And I don’t have tattoos and I don’t have anonymous names.”
November 3, 2025 at 5:53 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Early vote numbers in NYC paint a picture of an electorate I don’t think anyone could have predicted.
November 3, 2025 at 12:39 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
More than half of all millennials & gen Z believe the American dream doesn't exist.

Only 36% of those over the age of 65 agree.

That's the generational divide in a nutshell.
November 2, 2025 at 7:06 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
I love the NYC marathon.
November 2, 2025 at 5:18 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
"This wasn’t about ideology. It was about honesty. Mamdani didn’t sound like he was reading a script. He sounded like someone who understood the pressure they live under — and had ideas for how to relieve it." dellavolpe.substack.com/p/after-ever...
October 29, 2025 at 3:26 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Got a theory of the case on how Democrats can win? Recruit the candidates who hold those values & help them win. Otherwise you’re simply encouraging people to say shit they don’t genuinely believe — which we know is the kiss of death!
October 28, 2025 at 1:10 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Imagine how bleak your life has to be to make you find me online and send me this email. Sad!
October 25, 2025 at 7:41 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
So nice to meander around the Boston Book Festival with @patrickroath.bsky.social, who’s primarying Rep. Stephen Lynch to bring new leadership to the House. Worth checking out this race - it’s under the radar but high key opportunity for generational change.
October 25, 2025 at 6:59 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
I'll be voting yes on all the NYC ballot referendums because we've got to disrupt the current system that has gotten us into this housing crisis in whatever way we can. amandalitman.substack.com/p/your-2025-...
Proposals 2, 3, and 4 are all about making it easier to build more affordable housing. Gothamist has a great explainer on the proposals and why they matter, as does The City. Read all the details if you want. If you simply want to trust me: I’ll be voting yes on all these because right now, among other solutions, NYC needs to build more housing ASAP. The City Council has been sending a ton of (possibly illegal?) mailers against the proposals because from their perspective, the changes would undermine the council’s power. I think this is a feature, not a bug. Right now, individual city councilmembers can kill new housing in their districts, usually in response to community boards or individual criticism — that has led to wildly inequitable development with some (usually wealthier) communities building basically no new units in the last few years. The housing crisis is too urgent to let egos or local cranks have the final say in how we solve it (and if you’ve ever been to a community board meeting, you know what I mean.) Time to try something new. Proposal 5 is to create a new digitized unified city map. This feels like a no-brainer; I’ll be voting yes. Wild we have to vote on shit like this! Proposal 6 moves local elections to even-numbered years. I’ll be voting yes on this, too. It’ll help increase voter turnout and save the city money. It won’t take effect immediately because it requires a constitutional amendment so the state legislature has to vote affirmatively on it in two consecutive sessions, then go to a statewide ballot, but this is a good first step.
October 24, 2025 at 9:16 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
IRL alert: I'm speaking at the Boston Book Festival on Saturday at 12pm -- come say hi! bostonbookfestival2025.sched.com/event/27cFN/...
October 24, 2025 at 5:12 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
The headlines will be about the toplines for Platner vs Mills but woof, these numbers for Jared Golden. scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcont...
October 23, 2025 at 1:30 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Worth the read -- both because he points out I've been right for the last 5 years but also, more importantly, for the thoughtful nuance & questions about the moment of transition we're in.
After the end, Gideon's campaign still had $14.8 million on hand. It was the sort of experience that does not so much lead to recriminations as demand them; duffing what had seemed like a winnable election, and one in which Gideon led in most reputable public polls for much of the way, fit into a long, broader story of abstracted, consultant-scented, one-size-fits-all national-level Democratic campaign incompetence. Amanda Litman, co-founder of the progressive organization Run For Something, told The 19th News after Gideon's loss that the DSCC's tendency to run qualified and cautious races built around national issues and argued almost entirely through advertising was indicative of the party's longstanding disregard for state political cultures and the realities of retail politics. "A sustained campaign of year-round contact is far more effective than $100 million spent on ads,” Litman said. “You don’t believe an ad; you believe a person." Maine really is different, just in general and also in its politics, but Litman's point is even more convincing in 2025 than it was in 2020. Traditional media channels have never been more warped or occluded or co-opted; every screen is a sheer surface of scams and derangement and idiotic noise; what solidarity or even basic coherence can be reclaimed from this onslaught will necessarily come from and be made by people being and working together. The rest of it, everything else, is just too hard to trust.
October 23, 2025 at 12:50 AM
amandalitman.bsky.social
I don't usually agree with Welcome PAC but this is spot on, and is why @runforsomething.net is investing in expanding the map into a dozen red & purple states as part of our Battle Up plan. www.welcomestack.org/p/how-a-nati...
As districts become less competitive, talented candidates stop running. Local party infrastructures atrophy. Voter engagement plummets. Brain drain of young operative talent accelerates. And extremist candidates face even less resistance, making districts even less competitive over time. And that’s where the race to the bottom compounds each cycle, making rural and ‘small-state’ America increasingly uncompetitive. Once “laboratories of democracy,” rural red-leaning states are now becoming “laboratories of extremism.” When we give up competing, the consequences aren’t just political; Medicaid expansion gets blocked, even as voters overwhelmingly support it. Entire counties terraform into maternity care deserts. Public schools start endorsing Christian nationalism. Citizens get shut out of the process, with districts redrawn behind closed doors. The problem isn’t just the map. It’s the paradigm through which national pundits, party leaders, and consultants see the map. Insistence on a purely partisan paradigm for competition means the system gets stuck in a feedback loop. The opportunity landscape shrinks. Battleground states are saturated with low-margin dollars. And everywhere else gets left behind.
October 22, 2025 at 7:53 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Too many Democrats are trying only to win the next election - @runforsomething.net is doing the work to win the next 10.
October 20, 2025 at 6:10 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Not to be on my generational schtick again but man this is such a millennial (complimentary!!) way of thinking about social media -- and it's absolutely core to how Zohran Mamdani's been able to effectively communicate in 2025. www.wired.com/story/the-bi...
October 20, 2025 at 2:53 PM
amandalitman.bsky.social
Spot on from @chrislhayes.bsky.social: Want better campaigns? Recruit better candidates who have the skills (and the stomach) to win the attention wars. Get better people to @runforsomething.net www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/o...
Recruit candidates who are good at getting attention and talking to people. It almost seems ludicrous to state this explicitly, but if you're going to compete in this new environment, you need candidates with a natural aptitude for attracting attention and then holding it. The ancient Greeks called this quality charisma, and it's the word we still use to describe it (or, as the kids say, rizz). You would think that charisma would be an obvious criterion for success in contemporary electoral politics, but somewhat oddly, that's less often the case than it would appear. When parties and campaign committees are searching for candidates to recruit and then support in key contested races - the 20 or so most competitive House districts or swing-state Senate seats - they are primarily looking for candidates who can raise or donate enough money to buy enough ads to be competitive. It's hard to overstate how much the ability and willingness to raise money is the quality that matters most in traditional candidate recruitment and support. While money still definitely matters - just ask the Pennsylvania senator and former hedge fund chief executive David McCormick - its relative import is waning fast. If you stop thinking about candidates as magnets to attract checks and start thinking about them as people magnets, you expand the pool of good candidates. I've met incredibly charismatic, bright, capable people from all walks of life, from acupuncturists to general contractors to bodega cashiers and beyond, and essentially none of them are rich enough or know enough rich people to be able to plausibly run for office and certainly would never attract the support of Democratic Party campaign arms. Maybe if there's an upside to this strange new world, it's the possibility of more of these people having what it takes to win. There is, of course, no universal template for campaign victory. Many of the calculations of cost, benefit and risk will depend on the race itself and the dynamics of the electorate. What will not vary is the need to solve the fundamental problem of attention: attracting the attention of the voters you will need to win in an era when this attention can no longer be purchased in bulk from TV networks. If Democrats want to build a party that can win back the country, first they need to figure out how to capture its attention.
October 19, 2025 at 2:04 PM