Robert Hubbell’s Democracy Brigade

by Rob Okun

647 words

A chorus of political rants both online and on cable news so loud and discordant that truth is MIA. Media continues to frequently underreport grassroots campaigns to extinguish authoritarian wildfires. Where to turn for cogent insights—especially with the midterms around the corner? Political analyst Robert Hubbell stands out as a critically important voice worth listening to now.

Since January 2017, he’s been publishing a newsletter on Substack, Today’s Edition, but it started accidentally, Hubbell says, as an email for family: “my effort—as a father and husband—to provide hope and perspective… after the unexpected results of the 2016 election.”

Soon, Hubbell recalls, what he was writing to his family, was being forwarded to friends. It “became a community of like-minded citizens devoted to preserving American democracy.” Today, upwards of 80,000 people read Today’s Edition.

It should be 800,000—or better yet, eight million—the number of people at the last No Kings protest earlier this year, who he champions in Today’s Edition. Rather than stoking outrage or unsubstantiated assertions, Hubbell’s writing is guided by three consistent pillars, the Daily Next reported:

1. Careful sourcing of claims from credible news outlets

2. Legal and constitutional context for major political events

3. A tone of cautious optimism, even when the news is difficult

Hubbell’s entry into political commentary grew organically out of those early family newsletters. As his readership grew, Daily Next noted, he drew on his background as an attorney. He has a knack for explaining thorny political and legal developments in a clear, organized, fact-based way. 

That approach distinguishes Hubbell in a media landscape fueled by provocative headlines. Readers consistently describe the newsletter as promoting clarity over anxiety, even when the news is unsettling.

Where Hubbell particularly excels is in capturing the depth and breadth of the grassroots resistance movement—especially contextualizing its successes. He stands out for consistently exposing the mainstream media’s blind spot in regularly failing to cover citizen activists’ tireless efforts to protect U.S. democracy under attack. (Rachel Maddow also does an excellent job highlighting the growing movement, as a major exception in her mainstream media platform.)

At the end of each day’s edition—which you can also listen to him narrate—he posts dozens of pro-democracy protest photos: people on highway overpasses, in small-town squares, on big-city streets, holding an array of colorful banners and clever signs–proof positive that a democracy brigade is alive and well. Still, as inspiring as those images are, they expose a weak spot: the make up of these citizen-activists skews racially white, and gray-haired. Hubbell is not alone in urging older activists to reach out to younger ones, particularly those in multicultural organizations confronting the climate crisis.

The family email from 2016 now resembles a rolling town hall. Followers don’t just read Hubbell—they talk back. His Sunday Comment section regularly overflows with reader-submitted grassroots protest photos from every region of the country: hundreds of images pour in daily, more than he can possibly publish. Every Saturday, Hubbell hosts a live stream where readers submit questions in advance and he answers them in real time. It’s democracy practiced in miniature: people show up, ask questions, are heard, and push each other to keep going.

In this fragile economy, it’s understandable if many people are too focused on putting food on the table, paying for medicine, or filling their gas tanks to join Robert Hubbell’s democracy brigade. But here’s what all of us can do: take 15 minutes to read Today’s Edition. Then forward it—to your sister-in-law, your coworker, your city councilor–anybody in your life who is aware of the dire threat facing our democracy.

There’s a five-alarm autocratic wildfire raging. It isn’t necessary to be an activist to feel the hot flames of fascism licking the edges of the Constitution. Robert Hubbell has donned his firefighting gear and stepped into the fray. What about the rest of us—what are we going to do?

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Rob Okun (robokun50@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is editor emeritus of Voice Male, which has long chronicled the profeminist men’s movement.