Redefeat Trump (RDT) was founded by David Lytel, a Democratic campaign professional.  He co-founded Democrats.com (1999) and Majority Messaging (2021), which together have helped many hundreds of Democratic candidates and committees raise many millions of dollars. 
 
David was the first person hired in the Clinton White House specifically (in 1993) to work full time on guiding the growth of the Internet.  He was also co-developer of Whitehouse.gov, called by Wired “easily one of the best sites on the Net.”  A former member of the Ithaca City Council, he holds a B.A. with honors from Brown University, an M.S. from Ithaca College and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University in American Politics and Government.  After receiving his doctorate he worked at Harvard’s Kennedy School and taught at Georgetown.
 
In 2004 he founded and ran the Committee to Redefeat the President, headquartered online at redefeatbush.com.  It organized Tuesday Night Democratic Clubs where it provided volunteers with cell phones and lists of unregistered voters.  To find unregistered Democrats it created the inverse of the voter file, a file with the names of eligible people not registered to vote. It made calls into the swing states of Oregon and Pennsylvania so we could make evening calls on both coasts.  Our list focused on women 18-45 whose names did not appear on the voter roles who were likely to register as Democrats.
 
More than 1,000 volunteers participated in the over 200 ReDefeatBush Calling Crews held in Washington DC, Bethesda MD, Arlington VA, Annapolis MD, New York City (various locations), Westchester County NY, Chicago IL, Amarillo TX, Los Angeles CA, Berkeley CA, Oakland CA, Santa Rosa CA, and Alameda CA. This effort generated over 100,000 telephone calls, contacted more than 10,000 voters and sent out thousands of voter registration applications that needed only to be signed and put in the mail.  We cannot say with certainty how many were mailed to their local boards of elections.  Our approach was to provide a place for activists to come together on a sustained basis over time. Drinking was also involved after the work was completed.
 
David is the Democratic campaign organizer with the most experience with PACs designed to redefeat Republican presidential candidates.  These include both Bush and Trump, who were inaugurated despite losing the “popular vote,” which in every other country is simply referred to as “the election.”

Thank you for your support of Redefeat Trump and for lending your voices and efforts to the society-wide rejection of Trump, and what he stands for and against.  We have in our hands the most potent weapon against tyranny and dictatorship ever invented– free and fair national elections.  Yes, approaching 250 years old our republic may have some vestigial organs.  The electoral college, the grotesque malaportionment that gives the minimally populated square states of the west the same power in the U.S. Senate as California, and a Supreme Court that gives powers to a president that the Constitution does not.  These all come to mind.  

We have triumphed over much worse: An agreement among Whites making each African American worth 3/5 of what each White person is worth, Supreme Court decisions denying citizenship to former slaves, a civil war, a long and profoundly racist post civil war era, the selection of the U.S. Senate by local elites rather than citizens. Among the ways we have changed our country for the better have been the ability to put laws directly to the vote of the people, to recall elected officials, giving the half of the population that is female the right to vote, civil rights and voting rights for non-white American citizens, the laws necessary for LGBTQ Americans to carry forward their quest for full acceptance, profound legal jeopardy for officers of the law who attack and kill the people they are meant to serve, equality of expenditure on both men and women’s collegiate sports, cars, drugs and workplaces that are safe, at least minimal standards for clean air and water and the recognition that human activity that causes climate change must be addressed.  And all the rest.  Gay marriage, trans friends and neighbors and the progressive goals as yet undreamed.

No progressive achievement in our history has come to pass without first being adopted by the Democratic Party and its members.  We are the vanguard.

We can, we will and we must overcome these obstacles standing in the way of a more perfect union.  In time and with our help, the genuine will of the people — rather than cheats for whom no lie is too big — will be expressed and enacted.