One Year Ago Today I Ruined My Life

One year ago today, on August 24th, 2024, I was freshly back from three days at the Democratic National Convention. 

I’d worked in politics nearly half my life, starting out as an intern on Barack Obama’s campaign when I was only seventeen years old, then as a field organizer for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Before Obama won the primary in 2008, I was an alternate delegate for Hillary in Kansas’ third congressional district, one of the youngest ever in the state of Kansas. 

After a series of disappointments with the establishment, I eventually found my way to the Bernie side of the party, working as a top fundraiser and strategist for progressive candidates, organizations, and super PACs. But somewhere around 2022, things started to feel different, and I took some time off, prioritizing caring for my young infant son over my career. 

When I decided to go to the DNC in 2024, I wasn’t entirely sure if I was ready to move on from politics completely, or if I’d find myself re-inspired. After I got home, I went to a dinner party in San Francisco, and when a friend asked me how the DNC was, excited to hear about it, I decided to say how I really felt about the party, finally unafraid to do so. “I’m not sure if I’ll be voting for Kamala. I hated the DNC.” I watched as a familiar expression of moral superiority began to spread across her face. “You’re saying that from a place of privilege” she chided me.

A lot of people have asked me what the exact moment was at the DNC that made me realize I wasn’t on board with the party I’d worked for nearly half of my life. The truth is, it was everything. The crowd that mindlessly chanted “joy”, the vasectomy van offering free tacos, the coronation of a candidate with zero policies or platform available, and the final straw: Oprah Winfrey. Her tone deaf lecturing turned me off so much, I left the building, getting an uber straight to my hotel, where I booked a flight home a day early, not even staying for Kamala’s acceptance speech.

photo credit: Jess T

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I left the dinner party early too, heading straight home, where I made a selfie video airing my true thoughts. On August 24th, 2024, I hit upload, announcing to my meager following of sixty people, many of whom were former colleagues and friends in politics, that I wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris.

@realevanbarker @realevanbarker ♬ original sound - Evan Barker

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There are moments in our lives that change us forever.

The first time our heart breaks. The day we get married. The day our first child is born. The first time someone we love dies.

When I woke up the next morning and saw millions of views, thousands of comments, and hundreds of messages flooding my inbox, I knew things would never be the same.  Even if I changed my mind at some point, I never would be able to go back.

In the past year, nearly all of my old political friends have stopped speaking to me. One of them said: “fascism doesn’t look good on you”, another said “why couldn’t you have waited until after the election?” The social ostracism has trickled out into my non political life, too. I’ve lost friends I’ve known for fifteen years. My toddler stopped getting invited to birthday parties. He was rejected from preschool. We even had to move to a new town.

Now that we are more than half a year into a second Trump presidency, I’ve been asked numerous times if I regret my decision to ditch the Dems, or if I’d publicly say sorry for what I did. 

The answer is NEVER. 

In fact, more Democrats should’ve had the courage to speak out about Kamala’s candidacy, and the direction of the party in general. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. It took me returning to “ground zero” of the machine at the DNC, to come to terms with what I’d known to be true for years, but wouldn’t allow myself to say out loud. 

The Democratic party stopped speaking to its working class base. 

The Democratic party lost touch with the pulse of America. 

The Democratic party needed to learn a tough, hard lesson. 

It still (kind of) amazes me that people continue to ask if I regret my decision to leave the party, instead of asking me what it would take for Democrats to win voters like me back. Especially when the data is so glaringly clear. Nearly every corner of the country shifted red this past cycle. Just look at these images from the NYT detailed map of the shift:

89% of counties across the country shifted red in 2024. In the past few months, I’ve heard many talk about how Democrats are “not too woke” but just “too weak”, that there was a failure of messaging, and that Joe Biden screwed the party over. There might be nuggets of truth to each of these statements, but overall, I believe most are still missing the big picture.

If the Democrats want to become a winning party again, they need to recognize that policy, and not messaging has led them to defeat. This means they need to stop only defining themselves against Trump, and decide what they are going to stand for. The days of mealy mouthed corporate speak are over. What the public craves more than anything is authenticity. 

Besides this, Democrats need to come to terms with accepting more heterodoxy within their own party. Throw the purity tests in the trash can. It isn’t a moral failing to have a different opinion when it comes to immigration, gender ideology, or identity politics. If the Dems want to truly be the party of diversity, then diversity of thought must be included.

I’m excited to launch my SubStack on the one year anniversary of when I finally found the courage to speak up. I hope you will subscribe and share my articles if you find them interesting. If you’d like to read some of my other pieces, you can check out the article I first wrote for Newsweek after my viral video, or read an essay I wrote for the Free Press in the days following the 2024 election. 

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Finally, if you ever get the chance, I hope you find the courage to be widely disliked at least once in your life. It will expand your world in ways you never thought possible. 

“When you free yourself

From the chance of a lifetime

You can be anyone they told you to

You can belittle every little voice that told you so

And then the time will come when you add up the numbers

And then the time will come

When you motor away

Oh, why don't you just drive away?”

— Guided by Voices