Knock Down the House(2019)
dir. Rachel Lears
Four outsiders take on their own party's incumbents.
Where to watch: Streaming on NetflixLetterboxd ↗
In 2018, a Bronx bartender, a coal miner's daughter in West Virginia, a grieving mother in Nevada and a nurse in Missouri each run for Congress with no political experience and no corporate money. Rachel Lears follows their campaigns from kitchen-table doubts through canvassing, fundraising and primary night, against incumbents their own party has backed for years. Not all of them win.
Why it’s here
It shows what it actually takes to challenge the people who hold your side's seats: door knocks, small donations, a party that would rather you waited, and a primary most voters never see. What's punk is candidates who take on their own team's incumbents with nothing but a story and a volunteer list. What's pedagogical is how plainly it shows how primaries work and why they matter. Note: all four candidates are Democrats and the film is sympathetic to them, so treat it as a case study of an insurgent campaign, not a neutral account of how candidates get chosen.
Where This Film Lives
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