I’m getting ready to watch the Bills/Broncos game so this will be quick. I think the Bills will pull it off but the Broncos looked really good last week against the Chiefs. I’m in Denver right now and the level of Broncos fandom is far, far less than the level in Buffalo and Rochester.
But that’s not the point of the post. I was talking with my brother the other day and we were discussing the evergreen topic of how Democrats keep getting their ass kicked in the propaganda war with Republicans. The point I made is that there’s no way we’re going to win with a bunch of $5/mo Substacks. Don’t get me wrong, I subscribe to some and I support people being paid for their work. But it’s just like a swarm of gnats attacking a bear: unless there are millions of them, the bear’s going to win.
Similarly, Dems also seem afflicted by a set of grifters, the members of that set differing depending on who’s naming them. For example, MeidasTouch, a popular media channel, did a lot of shady fundraising in 2020. These go by the generic label of “resistance grifters”, which I think are characterized by groups getting a lot of attention but not engaging on the ground (generally) or if they do, they do so in a way that doesn’t make financial sense except as a way to line their pockets. I’d tag The Lincoln Project as a group that puts out decent ads but also has their hands out. Angry Black Lady is on a tear on Bluesky about resistance grift this morning if you want to see some of the charges against this group.
So we have fragmentation and grift filling the media vacuum for a party that only campaigns a few months of every two years. I don’t have a positive answer to what to do, and I have a game to watch, so maybe someone in the comments has thoughts for a better way. I do like the idea of a shadow cabinet, fwiw, but I doubt that the party as currently constructed will be able to do that. I also think there’s a difference between “resistance” and “resistance grift”. The former had some success during the last Trump term.
Baud
MeidasTouch may be grifting, but I think they have good Blue sky posts. The information they contain seems to be information people should know.
I don’t know anything else about them.
A Ghost to Most
I’m happy for Broncos fans, but last week didn’t prove a thing.
Also, the Wide Right Bills Bar in Denver has apparently closed. There’s still the Fax Bar near Casa Bonita.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The grifters at the Lincoln Project *produce* fantastic, hard-hitting ads.
But do they actually do any *meaningful* ad buys that the people whose minds they’re trying to influence would actually see? Best I can tell, they don’t because that would cost money and cut into their grift. If somebody knows more, please share.
As somebody put it four years ago right after the election:
And I never saw that change over the subsequent four years.
WaterGirl
So we think the people who are good at producing hard-hitting ads also need to be the experts at distribution and promotion of that information?
That doesn’t seem like the same skillset.
I don’t think we can fault the makers of great videos for the fact that our side has not YET figured out how to reach undecideds on social media.
TBone
Did George Conway’s PsychoPAC do anything worthy?
Hidalgo de Arizona
I think Democrats need to go old-school, dead-tree-print media, and make sure it’s physically delivered to people’s homes.
In an ideal world, I’d like for the Democratic party to set up a newspaper for every congressional district – yes, all 435 of them – written by one or two people who live in the district, with the *primary* purpose of covering what the congresscriter for that district is doing and how it impacts people and businesses in that district specifically.
Write it at a fifth-grade reading level, have each edition only be a few pages long, publish it once a week, have stacks of it sitting at the library and Democrat-friendly bars and cafes and, most importantly, mail a physical copy of it to the home address of every single registered Democrat in the district.
I think that would make a major difference, because every time someone asks “why are things screwed up?” or “what’s going on in the world?” there would be a physical piece of media *on their doorstep* to tell them.
twbrandt
I rarely watched Meidas Touch vids on Youtube because they struck me as just liberal clickbait.
Starfish (she/her)
@WaterGirl: Are the ads that the Lincoln Project produces winning over new voters or just getting existing voters to high five each other as we watch them drag Trump? It’s fun, but is it effective?
Fair Economist
The right wing media makes good money in the process of pushing out their propaganda. I don’t see why it should be different on our side. Their side started with the 80’s equivalent of $5 substacks (newsletters and low-rent radio/TV) and eventually there was so much money to be made they took over the media environment. IMO our only chance is to replicate it.
KatKapCC
@twbrandt: Yeah. After the election, they had numerous “TRUMP SUPPORTERS MELTING DOWN OVER [WHATEVER]” videos that were just a bunch of tweets and videos of maga dopes complaining about something, which…after two or three of those, it’s like, okay and?? What is the point here? Because noting that some of them are upset now doesn’t change their vote retroactively. Plus, there were at least a couple of clips that were from satire accounts, and the Meidas people didn’t seem to realize that.
scav
@Starfish (she/her): But, likewise, you can’t prove that they didn’t have an impact as life isn’t a double-blind experiment. In the real world, even doing everything right doesn’t always produce the desired results.
Fair Economist
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
I think this is a really good idea. One of the biggest predictors of Republican success is a news desert. If we can fix those, we’ll win back a lot of seats. Although I think there should be an online shadow for each of these operations as well.
Starfish (she/her)
From the Angry Black Lady thread, I saw
“Trump is going to destroy Democracy, give us your money,” is not a request for funding. It is a threat. And it is chipping away at the mental health of supporters.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: “Fan service” is a good way to put it because if you look at other fans service projects they don’t appeal to non-fans.
@TBone: Running ads in the media markets where Trump lives is the epitome of fan service.
RepubAnon
I’d suggest that the DNC give someone like AOC a social media channel similar to the Joe Rogan Experience.
Another suggestion: setting up a non-profit to help local community colleges with a journalism project covering local news and events. We need communication channels that are not owned by billionaires if we ever want our opinions aired.
Fair Economist
@KatKapCC: What seems to be coming out of the research is that what matters is getting your message seen a lot. Trump-bashing probably doesn’t get to the MAGATs much but it does reach the normies. If we can get the internet filled with stories of Trump destroying people’s lives over the next 2 and 4 years it will benefit us substantially in the next election.
Lily
M T has emailed me twice with subject line “Please confirm your email for” (them) — Shady, since I’d never signed up w them, never heard of them or given my email or any attention that I recall. Even moderately deceptive, targeting people’s automatic responses to increase their mailing list.
Fair Economist
@Starfish (she/her):
This is true. And yet, it’s what the right wing did (Trump fundraised off EVERYTHING and kept most of it for himself), and it worked.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@RepubAnon: AOC has a 8.1 million followers on Instagram. No need for Dems to do anything for her. She’s been pretty quiet since losing Oversight. We’ll see what’s next.
Hidalgo de Arizona
@Fair Economist: definitely have an online accessible version! But the key thing is that it can’t *just* be online; there need to be physical copies on people’s doorsteps to make it truly accessible. If we’ve learned anything from the last couple decades, it’s that most people aren’t going to go through the bother of looking for news online when they’re getting blasted with what they *think* is news through social media.
Starfish (she/her)
@Fair Economist: The rightwing was doing a lot of unethical things to fundraise, and I am not supporting a Democratic Party that is going to steal from lonely grandpas who are giving monthly donations of hundreds of dollars because they feel like the candidate is their friend who is going to have dinner with them.
TBone
Worth remembering:
https://www.freepress.net/issues/media-control/media-consolidation/who-owns-media
Add on the death of net neutrality and … BOHICA
The Issues:
https://www.freepress.net/issues
The blue arrows lead to a wealth of information and yes, this is about racial justice as well.
MagdaInBlack
@Starfish (she/her): Yes, I sure do agree with her on that one.
Poe Larity.
You get what you pay for, and one guy is willing to spend $44 Billion.
grubert
Expanding the meaning of “grift” to include people who pay themselves more then they absolutely need to and who don’t make wise decisions about how to accomplish their ends..
Might not be the best way to look at things.
KatKapCC
@Fair Economist: I don’t know, maybe if this was 2017 I’d agree with that. But we had four years of him ruining people’s lives, and yet a lot of those “normies” still wanted him back in office.
Glory b
@Starfish (she/her): The problem is we’ll never know.
Some seem like complaints about outlets just because we don’t like them, others may be legit, but who’s to say and how could we actually tell?
I’m wary of those who have legitimate, evidence based complaints vs those just off on a tear.
Angry black lady is correct most of the time, but there’s a few occasions where I thought she was questionable.
Of course, some would say the same about me lol.
Baud
@KatKapCC:
Who many lives did he ruin before Covid? Not that many people were directly affected by Trump during this first three years, so it’s really just forgetting about how he mismanaged covid.
Eolirin
I really don’t think a new messaging strategy or an attempt to try to reach people in new and interesting ways is going to make more than a marginal difference.
The people most prone to vote for Trump don’t pay any attention to politics. They definitely don’t listen to anyone outside of their pre-approved cultural bubbles. Republicans have already successfully gotten branding of Democrats to stick, and we don’t have ownership of mainstream media platforms that would give us a chance in hell of changing that dynamic. You need to be able to create a pervasive message that’s almost subliminal if you’re going to change that kind of everyone knows level of disconnect on a branding issue. You can’t just find the right words. You need to convince people that your values aren’t what they think they are despite the fact that they’re not paying any attention to anything you have to say. And they already know, as far as they’re concerned, so they’re not particularly persuadable. Even if that “knowing” is just, there’s no difference between the parties, all politicians are corrupt, money rules everything anyway, nothing I do matters.
So what has to happen, assuming we can ever get back into power again, is that we need our politicians and the executive branch to take active steps to fix the underlying structural imbalances that allow broad right wing media propaganda to occur, we need an end to the freedom for people to lie about politics without any repercussion, the donor network needs to be dismantled, we need to tax the shit out of the ultra wealthy so that they can’t funnel money into taking over the media, and we need strong anti-trust enforcement to go and break up the media monopolies that exist. Data privacy laws that effectively make social media unviable would be a bonus. And then we need a reinvestment in public education so that people have a basic understanding of civics and enough basic science literacy to understand things like public health issues.
This is basically how we beat back the attempts at Nazi subversion and McCarthyism in this country. We broke right wing media entirely with the fairness doctrine and an aggressive FCC. It’ll be harder because stuff isn’t going through public airwaves so there’d be a need to create new regulatory powers and have the Supreme Court be willing to back it.
And it has the problem that it requires the Democrats to be in power already to fix it, and the willingness to do what needs to be done, despite the fact that it’s likely to be at least somewhat unpopular with a large group of Americans. But this is the only way we realistically change things in a way that’s going to matter. It’s going to take a real crisis for us to get there.
Outside of that, all we can do is continue to work on the people we personally know, because we’re not going to reach anyone else. The media environment is entirely fragmented, and the online portion of it is deceptively tiny. Some tweets going out isn’t going to counteract people having Fox or some right wing radio lunatic on in the background, seeping into their brain, all day every day while they work. Those people then spread all of that through their direct social networks (and I don’t mean online), and most of those people aren’t paying any attention either, so they just absorb all of it.
The other thing that might do something is issue advocacy work, and tying that into supporting Democratic candidates, ideally without making it feel like the issue advocacy being engaged in is more about supporting Democrats than about supporting the issue. But this is only really going to capture very engaged people, so it’s going to only really help at the margins.
And going hard in on local elections and races. We don’t need to get as many people to turn out there, and even marginal improvements on engagement can completely flip elections at that level. If there’s a point to trying to focus on outreach and messaging changes, it’s in that context. But, I’ll note, social media is kind of crap for this, because it’s a super specific set of people you need to be able to reach, engage with, and get motivated to turn out. In person work is going to be best here too.
KatKapCC
@Baud: Do you really think things were hunky-dory in his first administration until Covid happened?
RevRick
@Starfish (she/her): Add to this candidates running against Republicans we hate, such as MTG or Ted Cruz, versus candidates in swing districts that don’t get the spotlight.
Eolirin
@Baud: The people who were affected were either made whole through government handouts (the farmers who got massively shafted by his tariff war with China), or constituencies no one else really cares about if they’re not actively hostile toward them, Muslim Americans, foreign students, people trying to immigrate here.
The child separation policies were particularly horrific and affected thousands of kids. But we don’t even blink when people shoot up schools anymore, so we’re inured to human suffering like that, if it doesn’t affect us directly. (I’m overgeneralizing, this is more of a gestalt feeling of the American public as a whole)
Sure Lurkalot
@Starfish (she/her): This too:
Voters didn’t seem to care about Trump talking about Arnold Palmer’s penis. And Rick Wilson doesn’t give a shit about democracy as long as he gets paid.
Baud
@KatKapCC:
I didn’t say that, did I? I said most people weren’t directly affected by him. Provide me a counterexample that he had widespread impact on people’s lives, that they should have attributed to him.
Baud
@Eolirin:
Yep, I agree. The biggest obvious negative impact he had was the Supreme Court, and we see how much people care about that.
Socolofi
It feels we are having the same fundamentally broken discussion.
RW propaganda has a huge business model associated with it. Why give away propaganda when people will pay for it? Fox is the anchor here – Morning Outrage with Karens, some real news, Evening Outrage by Manly Men. MSNBC tried to copy it, but has aimed at already informed upper class high income types.
I’d love to see something that aims more for the rural / smaller town type. Folks who love shows like Dirty Jobs or radio like Car Talk. And maybe it starts as a playlist on YouTube or something, I dunno. But fundamentally we gotta change something as PA is busy going the way of Ohio and Florida.
Steve LaBonne
@Eolirin: We’re deeply frustrated, angry, and often scared. It’s very understandable that many of us desperately want to find One Weird Trick for getting out of this mess. But wishing doesn’t make it so.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: We thought white women who vote Republican would care about Dobbs. Oh well.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Some of them do. As long as it’s in the form of a referendum and they don’t have to actually vote for a Democrat.
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: Aye, there’s the rub.
Kay
Grifterism in the D party got out of control from 2000 to 2008 or so. Democrats had lost big (well, Republicans and media robbed us in 2000) but we were vulnerable and vultures swooped in. Obama cut them all off – that’s part of why he created an entire campaign apparatus -but its probably time to clean house again.
Eolirin
@Baud: The effects of which weren’t even visible during his term, except to people who understood really technical things about how governmental regulations work.
It was just another thing that got shittier during Biden’s time in office.
Kay
Apples board voted to keep DEI, so that’s Costco and Apple.
Baud
@Kay:
Nice.
Starfish (she/her)
@Glory b: I think that what she was saying today is what has been going on in the past few major elections.
The issue is not that Democrats don’t have money. It is that Democrats are misallocating money. A lot of money is going to white grifters when it should probably go to smaller groups in different states.
There are states where they have no party left, and they need to make a longterm investment in growing the party there so the party can do outreach. Do the state parties have money to access the VAN? to send out campaign materials? In some places, they don’t.
Some of my Southern Democrats were really into a Facebook group called the Christian Left that was invested in not letting Republicans claim Christianity for themselves. I had never seen it until they started boosting it. So there is stuff like this that may be regionally popular that is not necessarily for everyone.
Glory b
@Eolirin: You are right about the Trump voters.
I mentioned some time ago that during the 2016 primary, Rachel Maddow’s hair was quietly but definitely on fire about how many more Republicans were voting g in their primary, and how many of them were NEW VOTERS who registered as Republicans in order to vote for Trump.
Their participation levels were significantly higher than Democrats and was boosted by those who previously weren’t involved at all.
They paid so little attention that they didn’t notice until he started saying the quiet/racist part out loud. THAT got their attention.
WaterGirl
@Starfish (she/her): My point was that maybe others should be making sure the ads are in front of the right people. Why fault the ad makers
Division of labor.
hitchhiker
A jury heard evidence that 45 pushed an acquaintance against a wall and brutallyshoved his fingers into her. That jury listened to the evidence and believed the woman. She was seeking civil damages not for the assault, but for his repeated lies about her and the damage those lies did to her reputation. She won. He owes her millions of dollars.
A judge and jury, who heard witnesses and conducted a civil trial by our rules, said that 45 is guilty of sexual assault and character defamation.
What I just typed is well known to everybody reading this here blog, and unknown to most of the people who chose to vote for him. What’s more, it’s just one of dozens of stories that all of us know, and none of them know. It’s to the point that there’s so much of it that when you start to talk about it you sound a little crazy and more than a little unfair.
That’s the problem.
I would frame the question we’re trying to answer this way:
How do we get and keep the attention of people who are already primed to believe we’re crazy and unfair? And when we have it, what exactly do we tell them?
MomSense
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I don’t think Meidas Touch or Lincoln Project are effective with the voters we need to win over.
DougL
@Eolirin:
Your comment at #29 is very perceptive imho. Folks (white rurals, working people but esp working men) are exposed to rw messaging all day – and most of it is NOT explicitly political, just cultural in the way that reinforces rw politics. And then it gets further reinforced at their church. We have nothing on our side that can compare. Only Hollywood and academia are on our cultural side (and usually explicitly NONpartisan) and rw of course has demonized those two vehicles. We are outgunned and outmanned in the words of Hamilton. We have to be much smarter and strategic as voters but that is the one thing we can never criticize.
@Eolirin:
Kay
I would suggest not getting too high brow with Dem messaging. You-all may find some of it dumb or cringey but Democrats need an entry point for less political people to plug in.
I was canvassing with newly political Obama people and we were chatting and one of them asked “was Nixon a Republican?” – I was (silent!y) amazed by this but they just don’t have the context we have.
Glory b
@hitchhiker: I don’t think they don’t know. Their media has told them it’s a horrible hoax and we’re out to get him.
Magas have a shirt where Trump is saying “They aren’t after me. They’re after you, I’m just in the way.”
I think they know. I also think they don’t care.
Eolirin
@Starfish (she/her): The real issue is that Democrats are faced with a number of asymmetrical and structural problems that mean that winning national elections is substantially harder for them than for Republicans.
One of those is being the party of civil rights in a country that has deeply embedded racism and misogyny in, especially, a majority of white voters. Another is having a base that doesn’t like being propagandized to, another is the media having a fundamental right wing slant that has been normalized as being “left wing, actually”. And that’s not getting into issues with the EC and the Senate. There are more. Including Russia and its constellation of criminal and political organizations and networks. That’s actually a pretty big one.
It’s kind of amazing that Democrats can win nationally at all, to be honest. And that when we lose we keep it pretty close.
MomSense
Democrats need to run a constant campaign, not just in the months before the election. It needs to be focused on one, central person with everyone else amplifying that message.
Kay
@Glory b:
They’re so identified with Trump now any criticism of Trump.is a criticism of THEM. It really is cult behavior.
Steve LaBonne
@Eolirin: This is why we’re in this longstanding cycle in which Democrats are only elected when they’re needed to clean up Republican messes, and then are quickly shown the door again.
Steve LaBonne
@Kay: I’m crossing my fingers that they don’t have anyone else with that kind of cult-leader magnetism after he leaves the scene.
Starfish (she/her)
@WaterGirl: The Lincoln Project is not a lefty film making organization with no knowledge of how to distribute ads to be effective.
Their project is to grift lefties.
Why are we invested in making excuses for them?
Kay
@Steve LaBonne:
Its true though. You say “Trumps a liar” and they’re “I am not!”
Wacky.
RevRick
Two thoughts:
First, the deciding swing voters are vibes voters. They have little or no connection to news sources. They instead pick up general feelings and get most of their information second-hand from friends and relatives grousing about “what’s happening.” Those stickers plastered on gas pumps with images of Joe Biden saying I did that were brilliant in that regard. It was total bullshit, but it conveyed the mocking message of incompetence that set the tone and context for everything else.
Second, I believe it is a huge error for Democrats to retreat from social media sites like Facebook and X, because that leads the field entirely to the right to set the tone and narrative. I have gone directly to Elon’s own posts and contradicted his comments. I am under no illusion that I will change his or MAGA minds, but vibes folks may be listening and I don’t want them to think he speaks the truth.
I understand why women may feel the necessity of getting away from trolls.
Eolirin
@Steve LaBonne: I feel this is a little bleaker than it needs to be. I’m still not entirely sure how much is Trump and how much is the Republican party.
I think Trump is giving them a boost that they need, because they have a real demographic problem, and I’m not sure what happens when he goes away. Assuming we still have elections at that point anyway.
But yeah, without at least racism animating things, FDR’s coalition would still be dominating US politics.
Kay
@Starfish (she/her):
I hate it because its our lack of confidence again “oh, Republicans know how to fight! My heroes!”
Have some self respect.
bbleh
I gave a substantial (for me) chunk of change to various candidates and groups the last cycle because I understand how important money is to an active campaign, but I routinely delete requests now — even from ones I supported — in large part because, as observed, we have
Which brings me to my main point, ie here we are again, a bunch of pretty-well-informed people on a nearly-top-10,000 political blog chatting about What Dems Should Do To Win, while the party leadership keep sticking their hands out but otherwise are almost entirely invisible (to me anyway).
Leave aside campaigning — there aren’t many elections coming up, and I’m pretty sure most people aren’t interested in hearing about the ’26 midterms just yet — but what about all the other stuff? Building organizations clear down to the precinct level, working on current issues at every level (which also builds/maintains organizations), taking loud public stands against Republican policies and/or for approaches consistent with Dem principles, even just contacting constituents or giving pep talks — all the things that professional politicians are supposed to be doing for a living?
In short, where are our party leaders?
Other than the occasional vid clip from Jeffries that’s circulated on social media, I have heard exactly nothing from any leaders or elected Dems — even my representatives — except requests for more money, and I’m hardly a “low-info voter.”
And yes, the Orange Guy isn’t even in office yet, and campaign season is exhausting and deserves a break, and “keep your powder dry” and blah blah blah, but ffs you don’t just disappear entirely after a loss. Anybody ever coach (or lead) a team?
You get a “bear” out of “gnats” when the gnats are organized and their actions are coordinated. (And I don’t buy the idea that Dems are inherently disorganized. I’m certainly willing to go along even with actions I don’t think are likely to be helpful if that’s what the party is doing, and I certainly don’t think I’m alone in that.) But organization and coordination requires leadership. If somebody’s gonna run for a leadership position, they need to step up and lead, and I ain’t seein’ that.
[ /rant ]
RevRick
@bbleh: Leaders aren’t worth shit without a mass of followers, who will do the nitty gritty work and reinforce the message.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: We also have a further left that really hates the more moderate left and is weirdly addicted to nihilist/counterintuitive “worse is better” attitudes, and right-wing trolls and moles are really good at exploiting that.
Multiparty parliamentary systems are a bit more resilient to this kind of sabotage, but in presidential/congressional ones that strongly favor two parties, it’s harmful.
Kay
@bbleh:
They’ve never led though. The Democratic base is always ahead of them. The base will come up with “what comes next” – they always do.
Steve LaBonne
@Matt McIrvin: Not necessarily as resilient as people often think, because the same kinds of compromises that have to be made within the Democratic Party are simply displaced to coalition negotiations among parties, and the same kinds of people are unhappy with them.
Xavier
When you’re arguing with people who lie constantly with impunity you’re fighting an uphill fight. But you still gotta do it.
grubert
@bbleh: where are they?
They do press conferences.. do they get covered? How do you get through the click-bait media mindset that hungers for crazy nonsense?
How do you keep Democratic voters if you decide to start making wild statements to get through the media filter?
It’s quite a paradox.. no sarcasm.
https://democraticleader.house.gov/live
wmd
We have what’s reported as a big advantage in Hollywood. The actors, writers, producers, etc know how to drive engagement and entertain while doing so. Not advertisements, programming ala Fox that pretends to be “news”, but functions as propaganda.
There’s also a fairly large amount of money from Hollywood flowing into Democratic campaigns. Direct more of that into content creation – content that entertains while also moving policy and opinion. The people doing the donating end up getting some paychecks for creating the content, which can then be reinvested in campaigns.
Yeah, I’m sure this has been suggested many times. Didn’t Reid Hoffman say he wanted to do this some years back?
grubert
LEADER JEFFRIES: “WE HAVE TO BUILD AN AFFORDABLE ECONOMY FOR HARDWORKING AMERICAN TAXPAYERS”
3 days ago
crickets.
But what Democrat really wants a Democratic Trump?
Steve LaBonne
@wmd: Hollywood was almost certainly a detriment in the 2024 election because Republicans have successfully smeared it even in the minds of a lot of people who aren’t hardcore MAGAs.
Kay
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/technology/tech-companies/apple-stands-by-dei-commitment-while-facebook-does-u-turn/ar-BB1rgTaG?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Here’s Apple story.
Starfish (she/her)
@bbleh: Everyone is taking their little potshots at you, but you are right.
Democrats need to invest in actual party building efforts beyond a campaign. The first year, that may look like your county Democrats are having a barbecue in the park. They need events where people talk to each other, share ideas, and grow the party and get proper candidates. If they lose, this is fine, and they will try again next year. But not having this means that Democrats will never win anything.
Steve LaBonne
Of course the elephant in the room is that as long as most white people continue to vote for Republicans we will continue to have a very serious structural problem, and nobody really knows what to do about that.
Another Scott
@Hidalgo de Arizona: I like this, as part of an everything – everywhere approach. My gut still likes the idea of putting Democratic messages on billboards everywhere – no ad-blockers for billboards. ;-)
Just about every month I get a mailed copy of “Imprimis” from Hillsdale College. “Over 6.6M readers” It’s a glossy pamphlet, maybe 10 pages. I occasionally skim it. It’s unrelenting RWNJ pieces about how everything is terrible and the monsters are going to kill us all in our beds because there aren’t enough good Christian Conservative
peoplewhite men in power.I’m not sure how I got on their mailing list (probably as a result of some very long ago donation to St. John McCain (I also donated to Bill Bradley at the same time…)), but if they want to waste money sending me such things, it’s less money for productive uses.
It was founded in 1972.
I assume, but haven’t checked, that a ballpark price for printing, addresses, mailing, is very roughly $1 a piece per month. $50-$100M a year? Even if that is a factor of 10 too big, it’s still a lot of money.
I bring this up because publications are expensive, long-term undertakings. There will be lots of pressures to spend the money on things that might give a faster return (e.g. Kay’s idea of having 1-2 paid people in every (precinct/district?). I think the 57-state / territory idea and the perpetual campaign idea are worthy as well, but they’re going to take substantial long-term investments as well. There’s never enough money to do everything that we want to do. Unless we get someone like MacKenzie Scott on board to fund something like an endowment for it??
But, of course, as always, If it were easy, it would have been done already. ;-)
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Steve LaBonne
@Another Scott: Publications that I didn’t request or subscribe to go straight into my recycling pile. Other people’s mileage may vary.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: Russia’s involved there too though. It’s not entirely organic.
Quaker in a Basement
Thanks for the heads-up on ABL. On my way to see it.
TBone
@hitchhiker: exactly.
Eolirin
@Steve LaBonne: To be fair, if most white people don’t vote for the Republican party, there is no Republican party.
Steve LaBonne
@Eolirin: That would give me hope if I had any belief that it can change in the foreseeable future. Though I do have some hope that some of the new voters Trump brought out of the woodwork will crawl back in when he’s gone.
glc
About the DNC
Baud
@grubert:
I think a few do.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Linky fail…
Unless we get someone like MacKenzie Scott on board to fund something like an endowment for it??
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: The Russians are like Sauron, they can only pervert and exploit tendencies that are already there.
TBone
@TBone: one of those little blue arrows leads to
Another Scott
@Steve LaBonne: Yup. It’s one of those very low return activities. But over time it can make a difference.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Eolirin
@Eolirin: And actually, I think we can look at Putin as a turning point in a campaign to undermine US political stability that goes back a lot longer; Putin represents a shift from a great power struggle between two nations into a power struggle between the ultrawealthy without any concern for border or nationality, and the rest of the world. Part of why it’s becoming increasingly successful is because of how global the collaboration on that endeavor is.
Starfish (she/her)
Elon Musk’s daughter is dragging her father into the sun again. How do we create funding infrastructure to get her message out?
Baud
@glc:
While there are valid critiques, the obsession with the DNC is completely MAGAesque.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: Sort of.
The analogy is the way that the Evangelical church leaders made abortion into an issue when it had been a wholly catholic concern because they felt there was an opening to use it as a political wedge issue to try to get segregation back. The audience did need to be receptive, but it also wasn’t going to be something that happened on its own without people getting out there and pushing it.
Russia does this with a whole host of stuff.
Gloria DryGarden
@Hidalgo de Arizona: I like your idea. Are you going to do it for your district?
stinger
It’s going to be hard to build the party from the ground up, everywhere and at every level, and run a perpetual campaign when people only donate during the weeks before an election and otherwise just delete requests for funding. Stuff costs money.
Baud
@stinger:
Correct. People are assuming a funding source that doesn’t necessarily exist, I think.
Baud
@Another Scott:
You broke the blog.
TBone
@Starfish (she/her): just one example of many, the one I highlighted is in Philly
https://www.freepress.net/issues/future-journalism/news-voices/projects
Eolirin
@Baud: I think the only thing that kind of levels the playing field for us there is that the grifting problem is way worse on the other side, and it swamps at least part of what would otherwise be an insurmountable organizational advantage.
Gloria DryGarden
@Another Scott: so, if not printed pub, perhaps sub stack groups. Or hire on to your congresscritter for this level of communication … join their blue sky following… write some great summaries, propose a paid job for it…
hold little socials and educational meetings at your libraries in the district…
just brainstorming. The idea has merit, if a way can be found.
UncleEbeneezer
@Glory b: Also, I love ABL but her own work/podcast relies on shitty abortion laws and the panic they inspire to encourage patrons/subscribers. When BoomLawyered asks for people to support their work, I feel like it’s no different than many of the people she derides as “Resistance Grifters.” Many of the people who use that as an insult are basically doing the same thing, imo.
TBone
Activist Toolkit
https://www.freepress.net/get-involved/activist-tools
Geminid
@Hidalgo de Arizona: Your comment made me think of an interview with Glenn Youngkin’s campaign team a few weeks after he beat Terry McCaullife in 2021. It was a man and a woman, and they had experience but weren’t that well known.
Anyway, the they talked about how they divided the state into 5 or 6 parts, analysed them, set vote targets and went about trying to meet them.
Northern Virginia was the most populous, and it has a lot of immigrants. One way Youngkin’s team targeted immigrant voters in Northern Virginia was by purchasing ads iinthe dozen or so small newspapers published in Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean etc.
This was a smart move, I think. Aside from whatever persuasive value the ad copy had, there was a larger message for readers: Glenn Youngkin sees us. He speaks our language.
And the publishers welcomed the extra advertising revenue. This was also a means of earning good will from business leaders with influence in their particular communities.
tobie
Dialing in from Florida to say I doubt a revised media strategy will make much of a difference. Two elderly women, clearly working at an advanced age because they have no savings, told me Trump’s going to help all of us. Saying you’re worried about Soc Sec or Medicare is fear-mongering to them. They have a need to believe Trump is great. This is cult-level worship. Even swing voters want to believe they’ve made the right choice. So Dems should hammer what they know: Trumps going to cut Medicaid that helps pay for your grandparent’s assisted living.
TBone
Feels like I am screaming into a void today.
eclare
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
My congresscritter, Steve Cohen, does that every few months, highlighting what he has brought to the district. Do other congresscritters not do this?
Seems like an easy thing for staff to do. I get it via email, but you can also request it be mailed.
Melancholy Jaques
@Steve LaBonne:
If the majority of women voted for president, senate, and congress with their abortion rights as a priority, the justices appointed by presidents Gore & Hillary Clinton would have prevented Dobbs.
Gloria DryGarden
@Another Scott: how much does a billboard cost. Have you priced that out?
can’t some branding experts rebrand Hollywood. Big money democrats donating to democratic campaigns, sheesh, they’ll always try to smear it and denigrate that. we just need great comebacks. Not good at that, but some people are branding experts.
Same as media sources writing the lame headlines for democrats, for Harris and Walz , and the positive sanewashed headlines for mr orange. Sickening, frustrating, but we don’t have to obey that garbage
trollhattan
Whew, this graph of Dem registration by age from NC, 2021 vs. 2025, is sobering. They slid in virtually every age group and the plunge among the youngest voters is my biggest surprise.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:peq4xtekvmsjqxjhraulguut/post/3lfkm3wvcjc2e
Melancholy Jaques
@MomSense:
I believe there were studies post-2020 that showed this to be true with respect to Lincoln Project. Their video ads on social media seem to be pretty good to me, so I have no idea why they don’t impact normies. Maybe they never see them?
Steve LaBonne
@TBone: Wonderful, inspiring service at church this morning and good conversation afterward. One of the main things that help me keep my head out of that void. We need our communities, of all kinds.
Michael Bersin
@Hidalgo de Arizona:
Slowly raises hand:
Show Me Progress
Gloria DryGarden
@eclare: so then, maybe we need to form community around that. Using Kay’s idea, have a barbecue, a tea, and education and idea colloquium…
it’s a leap, from a form email, all politics snoozing, at least from my person, to constituents knowing each other and connecting about furthering the democratic agendas.
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: Few of us (jackals and other politics junkies) really understand how normies think and react. I fear things like LP ads may be basically liberal porn that doesn’t resonate with them.
Starfish (she/her)
@eclare: They don’t. Some of them don’t have constituent newsletters, constituent calls, or constituent town halls. Some of them won’t take an interview with the local journalists. That is why they flame out immediately when exposed to the national press. They are just not accustomed to answering questions.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: this is kind of exciting. Are there video clips on YouTube? Can we learn from this example, how? Does mobilize need to have a library of all these ideas, and these examples?
Starfish (she/her)
@Melancholy Jaques: Some of them are mean, and some normies do not like mean vibes.
Starfish (she/her)
@Michael Bersin: You do a great job. Do you have a lot of readers who are local to you?
Melancholy Jaques
@Starfish (she/her):
I’ve been saying this for over 40 years, but I’m always told that I am wrong or that it can’t be done. The organizing needs to be from the precinct level up.
Right-wingers have churches, country clubs, fraternal organizations, gun clubs, and multi-level marketing networks. All of these have year round events & social activities that promote the members bonding with each other.
Democrats have the Black churches and nothing much more.
Gloria DryGarden
@Starfish (she/her): we definitely had some republican senator in Colorado who avoided all that, actively. It’s a blur now, but I think in the last 5-8 years.
and my congresswoman, diana degette, sends emails, but they don’t feel informational. More political smoothing. I think I got in her list because I wrote her about something.
Another Scott
@Gloria DryGarden: Google tells me that an ad on a digital billboard costs between $1,200 and $15,000 per month. There apparently are around 350M billboards (of all kinds, including around 17,000 digital ones) in the USA.
It wouldn’t be cheap, of course.
None of this stuff is easy, and there’s not going to be enough money, time, or people to do everything that we might want to do. It’s going to continue to be a slog. Here’s hoping that we find a decent compromise on the various approaches to make timely progress.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
eclare
@Gloria DryGarden:
My congressional district is about 70-30 D, so we’re already pretty united. And I have no clue what would work in other districts.
Melancholy Jaques
@Starfish (she/her):
Normies voted for Trump who is 100% mean vibes.His rallies are orgastic hate fests. Many normies equate cruelty with strength & honesty. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard low info voters say, “At least he says what he means.”
I think it’s a mistake to think that normies are good people who are bamboozled by slick right-wing con men. They have evil in their hearts and they respond to messages that activate that evil.
Baud
@trollhattan:
I’m not surprised about young voters. The hope and expectation about them was always overdone, in my opinion.
eclare
@Starfish (she/her):
Cohen hasn’t had a town hall in a while, but his office is very receptive, and he’s in the local paper either answering questions or submitting an op-ed from time to time.
His district is very safe. I hope he is mentoring someone to carry the baton. Cohen is getting older and has post polio syndrome.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Interesting.
A comment in that thread:
That’s a good caution, I think. I remember being quite idealistic at that age and refusing to vote for either of the major parties for a while (because they couldn’t do the “simple” and “obvious” things to fix problems). It took a while for me to grow out of that mindset…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: In three words, “white supremacy culture”. That’s the disease that has infected our culture since 1619.
Ruckus
@scav:
Doing everything leadership wise correctly doesn’t always strike a majority as the thing to do. Because sometimes the right thing to do has a price. At least to someone. Or a group of someones.
Have you ever been in charge of humans? Leadership or a boss of a group or company? I have and speaking from experience there is on occasion a cost for doing the right thing. Because of humanity there are almost always humans on both sides of the issue. People that want to do something that almost always ends badly, or people that want a bad or worse ending for someone else other than themselves. People that want to take risks that no one else see as anything near reasonable. Or in a war, do the unthinkable because of the numerous obvious risks. Or in a high risk job, for the same reason. But sometimes those are the best decisions because no one else will think to make them. And sometimes they cause complete failure.
Gloria DryGarden
@Another Scott: just throwing ideas around, thinking there are some great pieces of ideas, and some of it might be very effective.
im thinking about church sign boards, carefully worded messages, at churches some of us go to.
for example: grateful for rising employment rates, thanks to state/ national congress… I can’t refine this to perfection just now, but it’s a sketch of an idea.
Starfish (she/her)
@Melancholy Jaques: Exactly.
The DNC has no money to give your state, but they also get to choose your delegates. Make this make sense
So in this case, the state party is kinda corrupt, and the DNC is trying to fix it, maybe? I am not sure.
Like how do we make the Florida Democrats not suck?
Roland
Filipkowski and Wilson are wingnut mercenary grifters. Filipkowski was still a republican in 2021, he just needed to proof his grift before “leaving.” Wilson is a self professed scumbag for hire, and the fact that anyone on the left boosts their grade school taunts is embarrassing.
Every add is just focused on Trump and his lackeys in the laziest, crudest ways. They never tie these frauds to any policy positions, because they still share the same politics. This is just straight up grift.
Steve LaBonne
@Another Scott: People all over the world are in a “burn it all down” mood. My theory is that this happens once almost nobody is left alive who remembers what burning it all down actually looks like.
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: I was referring to my efforts to spread information about how to fight back with ideas from these people, which it seems no one is willing to read about, let alone support.
https://www.freepress.net/about/board
But I thank you for your camaraderie!
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
A complication is who are they thinking about while registering for the first time–are they focused nationally or state/local?
The youngest cohort in ’21 registered +9D and four years later, the next crop register +8R. Huge swing and while they had “old Joe” in the White House, they also had Black Nazi running for governor.
America is a nation of contrasts.
Steve LaBonne
@TBone: Oh, I got that, and thank you for your efforts. I just identified strongly with the feeling of yelling into the void. And it’s hard to breathe there!
Another Scott
@Starfish (she/her): Made me look.
It seems to be a power struggle in the Alabama party, painting the DNC as the bad guys.
An opinion piece from AL.com (from May 2023)
Dunno.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: *smiles
You mean, you heard me? Hahaha!
Gloria DryGarden
@eclare: are there any ongoing events that keep that going? Of course, I can’t answer that for denver, which is also pretty solidly D. I was more replying to your comment with a for everybody intent.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Thanks. Didn’t realize things were so bad there.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: [ snort! ]
It looks like the elephant in the room is “unaffiliated”.
CarolinaDemography.CPC.UNC.edu (from 11/2023):
The graph with that text is percentages vs year. The GQP has stayed mostly flat, the Democrats have fallen linearly (with a shockingly constant slope), and the unaffiliated have risen linearly.
Kinda points to a branding problem, which goes to the “vibes” stuff and the “they don’t listen to us because they’re in their own bubble” stuff. It might indicate a path forward.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Gloria DryGarden
@Ruckus: this is such an important point. It’s easy enough to blame, and say things and express frustration, but someone took a decision. We can always control an outcome. I wish more people could look into this inner angle on things, for more perspective, and less judgement.
Another Scott
@Baud: I don’t know if it’s the case there, but the pressure to stay the big fish in a small pond is real and insidious.
Here’s hoping they get things figured out and start pulling forward together.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Makes sense. We haven’t given people a good reason to identify with us.
Starfish (she/her)
@Another Scott: Yeah, this has been going on there for several years.
Anyway, my point is that when we see the national news, we pretend that Democrats don’t live in these areas and do not spend any time or effort on their problems. This lack of investment has consequences.
different-church-lady
Just spitballin’ here, but you know the saying, “The media is wired for Republicans”? Same thing with social media: rage addiction = engagement. Even if the company behind the app isn’t outright in favor of MAGA (or whatever) it’s always going to be the MAGA-types who give them more engagement, and it’s always going to be MAGA content that gets the most response. It’s about button-pushing, and with MAGA all the buttons are big, on the outside, and mounted on really long stems.
Which points to my increasing feeling that we don’t have a political problem: we have a societal problem.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Also, regular media.
NightSky
Greatly appreciate this discussion with so many good insights.
I would add one small note re messaging, based on my experience as a juror.
I was shocked at the lack of basic understanding and ability to think clearly by fellow jurors. But I was more disturbed that the lawyers did not realize this or did not bother to inform us or spell out basic facts we needed to consider, in 5th grade language w/o talking down to people. EX, in a civil case about a car accident, this included the relevant driving laws and what reasonable chiropractic care might be and cost. Since we were told NOT to look up stuff, I roughly equate this to average folks who are not well informed politically for whatever reason, are not well read or traveled, etc.
Soooo, be explicit, connect the dots, give memorable visuall examples, etc. Don’t assume vague terms like “save democracy” or “bodily autonomy” will be compelling for the kind of folks we need to attract to our side. Spell out some scenarios about how a particular issue could be a BIG PROBLEM for THEM (average voter, small business owner, minority family, our grandkids, etc). Assume they do not have the imagination, time, or motivation to think of this or look it up on their own.
Example: We are only now occasionally hearing about some women who have died or nearly so bc of lack of timely medical care related to abortion laws. Even w/o this data, we could have predicted this and spelled it out to people, and what it means to them, including to men if their wives, daughters,mothers die or become infertile bc of such laws. I have never heard our side mention that older women of every color, religion and economic strata, for example, also need good gyn care after age 50 and might lose access to good doctors bc good gyn MDs will choose NOT to work in a red state now? I never saw any media discussion of what life is like for average people and their children in Hungary, Russia, or other states run by oligarchs. I could rant more but will stop here for now. Thanks again for sharing your ideas, fellow BJs. Like Eolirin, I think we may still have a chance but I’m not sure we humans can do what needs to be done.
I have just watched and prepared to flee while half or more of the suburban community 2 miles north was ravaged by flames the past few days, and many friends lost homes/everything – in a crazy, unprecedented, extreme event. All I could think was, at least the victims of the fires and winds have some hope of fed and state govt assistance since Biden is still Pres for a few more days and we have a D-gov. Ds believe govt can help people in ways individuals can’t help themselves. Rs evidently don’t.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Partially because regular media has increasingly volunteered to position itself under the social-media puke funnel.
Steve LaBonne
@NightSky: Republicans only believe in rich people helping themselves, to everything in sight.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: No video. The interview was in print and Politico paywalled it.
But it’s a simple story. The campaign identified some small foreign language newspapers in Northern Virginia and purchased ad space with their messaging in the newspaper’s language.
I couldn’t say how well this worked. But Youngkin won by two points where Biden won by ten the year before, and he did improve Republican numbers in Northern Virginia. I thought one of the reasons Youngkin won was that he had an efficient and effective campaign operation, so this article caught my attention and tended to confirm my impressions.
Carol
I watched the Bronco’s game. You would have had more fun hanging out here…unless you’re a Bills fan, of course.
As for what we need, we need a rush limbaugh who can convince the heartland that the magats are destroying their country, their economy and their democracy; that the billionaires are running the place and not doing a good job of it nor are they helping the rest of us while their at it. Make it sound like the gospel.
wmd
@Steve LaBonne: Yes, photo ops with celebrities isn’t moving opinion.
Celebrities paying for good writing that tells stories as infotainment – the way Fox News propagandizing its audience… Surely there are writers that can sell snow to an Eskimo that would love to be paid to do some good.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
NC is fast-growing and their voter trends seem even more interesting, with that in mind. Might be more difficult to reverse.
CA is flat WRT population growth and has had affiliation movement anyway. R’s pulled ahead of NPP in ’24 after lagging behind in ’21, and also won back several counties from Biden.
https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ror/15day-presprim-2024/historical-reg-stats.pdf
Where movement is occurring demographically is also of interest.
https://www.ppic.org/blog/who-is-switching-political-parties-in-california/
Another Scott
@Baud: (Sorry – too late for me to fix. I’ll send up the WG signal.)
Best wishes,
Scott.
hells littlest angel
First Alison Gill, now the Meiselas brothers, vaguely accused of being grifters with no evidence (no, a link to a paywalled article doesn’t count as evidence). You complain that we’re weak, then undermine us with insinuations.
Another Scott
@hells littlest angel: I don’t know who’s a grifter and who is new to the business and paying more than they should. In power politics, just about everyone has a story to push.
Archive.IS version of the Rolling Stone story.
My bias is that fancy videos are no substitute for traditional in the trenches politics.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Blog is fixed.
Glory b
@Steve LaBonne: Say it louder for the ones in the back.
Another Scott
@Baud: WG works fast!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Another Scott
LP and MT got lots of attention, but ElevenFilms didn’t get as much. Maybe their overtly pro-Democrats message didn’t appeal, for some reason. I think they made excellent videos, but I didn’t need to be persuaded.
I don’t think they have a SuperPAC. Maybe that’s what’s required these days to get attention… :-/
Best wishes,
Scott.
Michael Bersin
@Starfish (she/her):
“We’re read by dozens.”
Readers are from Missouri and other places.
There’s too much to cover – legislation, campaign finance, politicians, the opposition, dissent, etc. – it’s like trying to take a sip from a firehose.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
I also wonder how many people actually take and read a newspaper any more. And if newspapers have raised prices because it is expensive to operate any more. The costs – a printing press, roll upon roll of paper, ink by the drum not a quart can, operators, writing staff, layout staff, editorial staff, delivery trucks, the building all of this is in, electricity, insurance for the company. And I’ve likely left off something, maybe a lot of somethings.
Ruckus
@Gloria DryGarden:
Thank you.
I’ve been put in positions, in the USN and in life that have really crappy results if the need at the moment was not handled well. Most all of us get in situations like this on rare occasions and often the results can never be great. One can make them far worse or a bit better. And often one doesn’t know how it will end up. Once in the USN I was on temp duty in the Shore Patrol and had a “discussion” with another sailor concerning his actions and the wrong response from either of us would, not just could have had a lot of repercussions. But, while standing face to face at a close distance he glanced down to see my hand on my night stick and it was part of the way out of the holster ring. Had he done one more thing and not backed down he risked a night stick forcefully run into his chest. Or other more sensitive areas. That I remained calm in my speech and he recognized the worst case might just be on his side, he relented and backed down. And all was well and quiet. BTW this was over 50 yrs ago and it’s still in there like it was yesterday. Do your part but don’t over play or over work what it takes to get on with life, it rarely works out as well when we do. Also BTW, he apologized and was shortly let into the Enlisted Club. Life goes on, good or bad for us. We are all a part of humanity, a bit that many seem to forget.