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Launched in 2006, Epolitics is written and edited by Colin Delany, who has helped nonprofits and political campaigns use digital tools in effective and creative ways since the days of the political internet. He is also a frequent speaker and trainer and the author of How to Use the Internet to Change the World – and Win Elections. Contact him at cpd@epolitics.com.

Hi folks, thank you so much for your patience! Long-time readers may remember that I was in Texas most of last year, helping my 88-year-old mother after my father died. She endured four hospital stays in 2025, including three rounds of pneumonia and two broken hips, but a couple of months ago, we were able to make our escape in one ten-hour journey via road and air from East Texas to the District of Columbia. It’s been quite the time, and I honestly haven’t had the cognitive surplus to write anything substantive since the hip incidents in July.

But Mom and her geriatric cat have now settled into an assisted living place in Upper Northwest, and my siblings and I are wrapping up the sale of my childhood home in Texas. With the hardest fifteen months of my life (so far!) over, let’s get back to work. Thank you for sticking with me.

The Most Precious Political Commodity in 2026

If you’re running for office in 2026, you probably have a problem: How the hell do you get noticed? You’re not alone! Politicians, activists, comedians, corporate brands and everyone else trying to build a public audience confronts the same obstacle.

Ad after ad, video after video, text after text…even without a war sucking up all the air, we’re endlessly bombarded with messages trying to get us to do something that usually will make money for someone else. The attention economy is real, whether you’re Clavicular or running for Congress, and its dynamic forces us to compete for eyeballs in a crowded space.

With AI slop flooding our feeds, candidates may have an even harder time catching people online this year than ever. And attention, whether earned or bought, is a prereq for persuasion. If voters don’t know a campaign exists, the best policies and the most compelling story won’t change their minds. Still, attention only starts the process. To seize our minds and (preferably) hearts, candidates and causes really need to create connection.

Voting is at least as much an emotional act as a logical one. How people FEEL about a candidate (or cause) often outweighs everything else. Fundraising works in a similar way, since people tend to break out the credit card when they’re all fired up, not at the end of a long deliberative process. In practice, connection usually depends on a dash of head and heart, with emotion more often the deciding factor. People go with their gut, based on an intuitive sense of who candidates are and what they stand for.

What creates connection? Any encounter with a candidate or campaign could start the process, whether in person, through a volunteer, on TV or online. People CAN feel a strong emotional bond with via video, news coverage or ads alone, without any direct contact with at all — just ask Obama and Trump. But wise campaigns go out of their way to create opportunities to build connections over time.

Of course, negative stories, images and videos can poison a potential relationship before it has a chance to grow. That’s why successful campaigns generally try to shape and nurture ties with voters or donors through as many channels as they can, knowing that an emotional bond can go a long way toward sustaining support through hard times on the campaign trail. Which leads us to:

Rule #1: Never miss a chance to turn a fleeting encounter into a sustained connection

Digital tools excel at maintaining relationships on a vast scale, but connection has to start somewhere. In-person event? Have someone handy to gather email address and cell numbers, preferably entered directly into a spreadsheet or grassroots app on a tablet or phone. YouTube video? Make sure the candidate or cause is easy to identify and include clickable links. TV ad? QR code, URL or Facebook page — you get the idea.

Rule #2: Make it easy

Don’t make people work to get involved! The website should have obvious email signup and social media follow options, for a start (Pro tip: don’t hide the “Donate” button). Similarly, Facebook pages, Bluesky accounts and Instagram profiles should feature links back to the website or other digital channels. Yard signs? A URL can’t hurt. Put simply, every piece of content should include options to stay engaged. Pro tip #2: Try adding extra links to Facebook posts via the comments.

More Good Practices

• Use digital tools to enable one-on-one relationships. Personal contact with the campaign, staff or volunteers almost always makes more difference than any other form of campaign outreach. Digital tools can help, though! Field organizers routinely mass-text volunteers to start conversations, and candidates can do the same. I remember seeing Deray McKesson talk about using a peer-to-peer texting app to send a message to all of his donors at once, launching a bunch of one-to-one conversations from what’s often more of a blast medium. Likewise, an email signup could trigger a message from a local organizer and an invitation to coffee.
• Different channels can reinforce each other in other ways, too. Before canvassers try to talk with priority voters, try to reach them with Facebook/Instagram ads in advance. When you’re sending fundraising emails, try priming the pump and reinforcing the ask with more social-media ads. Rinse, repeat and multiply — it’s all about the virtuous circles.
• Trusted messengers can break through the communications clutter. Whether you’re a family member or a famous YouTuber, trust opens a lot of doors. On one end of the spectrum, relational organizing and political data could help identify a volunteer whom a priority voter might listen to. At the other end, a podcaster can introduce a you to a whole lot of people, most of whom may not to be able to vote for you but who may be persuaded to donate.
• Don’t just talk about yourself! On social media in particular, try to mix it up. Feature volunteers via photos, videos and stories. Link to news articles relevant to the issues you’re running on. Have staff or volunteers interact in the comments, using a little nudge to start a snowball rolling. Make a joke here and there.
• More More Video. Social-media algorithms love short video these days, so it behooves us to try to create it. Likewise, online ads come in lengths as short as six seconds, putting a premium on concise messaging. Longer-form videos have a role, too, and not just those podcast interviews. Way back in 2008, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe posted weekly videos intended for volunteers and staff, helping them understand the strategy that underlay their work — and reinforcing the connection they felt with the candidate.
• Think of canvassers and callers as local ambassadors. Train your volunteers to handle conversations at the front door, on the phone or in front of the WalMart. As much as possible, have volunteers canvass and call close to home, not halfway across the country. Something that rarely hurts? Having a candidate whom voters in the district can relate to as well.
• While we’re at it, all of your supporters are potential ambassadors within their own personal and professional circles. Create content for them to share and let them know about it. Pro Tip #3: Asking supporters to share a video is a nice break from begging them for money.
• Watch out for channel saturation. I am already receiving a whole bunch of fundraising texts I never signed up for, and I’m expecting orders of magnitude more between now and November. Since political texting really took off about a decade ago, campaigns have relied on voters and donors actually paying attention to them. In 2026, I wonder if that will still be true. If your plans heavily involve texting prospective donors and persuadable voters out of the blue, you may want to have backups ready just in case. Similarly, take a good look at all of your outreach channels. What could possibly go wrong? Better to think about it now than in October.

Of course, as with all digital campaigning advice, Your Mileage May Vary, and tactics that work well for one campaign could yield eyeball-melting failure for another. But for all but the highest-profile campaigns this year, attention is a scarce commodity, and connection more precious still. Wise campaigns will nurture it, hoping to transmute voter and donor love into electoral gold in November.

– cpd

Please share this post: The Most Precious Political Commodity in 2026

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Launched in 2006, Epolitics is written and edited by Colin Delany, who has helped nonprofits and political campaigns use digital tools in effective and creative ways since the days of the dot-com boom. He is also a frequent speaker and trainer and the author of How to Use the Internet to Change the World – and Win Elections. Contact him at cpd@epolitics.com.

Welcome, new readers! And everyone else, thanks for sticking with me through another sparse publishing period. Let’s get right to it — on with the show.

Quick Hits: September 28, 2025

• Ten lessons Democrats can learn from Catelin Drey’s big win.
• The Fundraising-Industrial Complex Is Eating American Politics. “New data reveals campaigns burn about a third of donations raised just asking for more donations”.
• Innovation Will Be Driven by the Need to Meet Voters Where They Are.
• Memo Calls on ActBlue to Ramp Up Enforcement of New Policies. Featuring friend-of-Epolitics Josh Nelson.
• Right-wing Facebook scammers are grifting off Charlie Kirk’s death.
• Right-Wing Activists Are Targeting People for Allegedly Celebrating Charlie Kirk’s Death, and ‘War Is Here’: The Far-Right Responds to Charlie Kirk Shooting With Calls for Violence.
• Why Charlie Kirk Mattered So Much to the Right. “Kirk reimagined what it means to be a modern right-wing political figure. His most lasting legacy may be that he showed the Republican party the way to compete in today’s frenetic media world.”
• How Charlie Kirk Used Controversy—Often Delivered in Person—to Construct Our New Media Ecosystem.
• With few facts about the Kirk shooting, wild speculation abounds. [Published shortly after the shooting].
• How Charlie Kirk’s social media machine rewired a generation’s politics.
• The Fallout from Charlie Kirk’s Death Online. Including “Google Search spikes and unprecedented engagement for right-wing social media”.
• Social Platforms Duck Blame for Inflaming Divisions Before Charlie Kirk’s Death.
• Why Right-Wing Outlets Attacked Wikipedia After Charlie Kirk’s Shooting. Once again, the facts have a liberal bias.
• Global politics happens on Discord now.
• All the Sad Young Terminally Online Men.
• What Democrats Can Learn From Charlie Kirk. Creating a “culture of belonging”.
• Trump Downplays Post Threatening Chicago, Saying He Wants to ‘Clean Up’ City. C.f. Trump Angrily Tells Reporter His Own Truth Post Is ‘Fake News’.
• DOJ Deletes Study Showing Domestic Terrorists Are Most Often Right Wing.
• I Gazed Into the Abyss of Truth Social’s Streaming Service. “Truth+ exposes the grift and grief at the heart of Trump’s big media bet.”
• We Analyzed Thousands of Videos by MAHA Influencers. Here’s what we found.
• The Influencer FBI. “The skill set required to succeed online may not always translate to effective law enforcement.”
• Yet ANOTHER Right-Wing Payola Media Scandal!
• A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers, pledging them to silence and controlling content. Many were not amused. C.f. Why Dems Keep Screwing Up Media Efforts.
• Instagram Account Promotes Holocaust Denial T-Shirts to 400,000 Followers. Meta: It’s cool, yo.
• Beyond Our Borders: How Foreign Disinformation Exploits America’s Pain.
• At least 19 killed, hundreds injured in protests after Nepal social media ban.
• How ICE Is Using Fake Cell Towers To Spy On People’s Phones.
• Google admits the open web is in ‘rapid decline’. Adios, digital commons.
• Newsletter Frequency Test: The Strategy Behind A 500% Engagement Surge.
• Consumers Are Warming Up to Digital Ads and AI, Report Finds.
• I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong. “Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact.”
• She Fought the Far Right Online for Years. Now She Wants to Do It in Congress.
• Why Feminists Must Defend Encryption.
• ActBlue Enters the Digital Organizing Game With New Acquisition.
• How to Turn a Brain Dump into a Strategy Using AI.
• The Virtual Reality Hype Cycle: Lessons for the Age of AI.
• Stop Chasing Magic Words. Start Connecting. “Yes, words matter. But authenticity matters more.”

– cpd

Top photo via Pixabay

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Virtuous circle: ©iStock/jntvisual

Follow Epolitics on Substack, Bluesky, Threads, or Twitter/X. This post was also published on Substack.

Launched in 2006, Epolitics is written and edited by Colin Delany, who has helped nonprofits and political campaigns use digital tools in effective and creative ways since the days of the dot-com boom. He is also a frequent speaker and trainer and the author of How to Use the Internet to Change the World – and Win Elections. Contact him at cpd@epolitics.com.

Welcome, new readers! If you missed them, check out Sunday’s collection of 39 excellent stories about digital politics and advocacy and the last Tuesday Tip, explaining why Democrats and progressive should promote stories from Fox News and its ilk when it’s to their advantage. On with the show.

Tuesday Tip: The One Good Way to Use Someone Else’s Email or Text List

David Hogg is still spamming me — and he’s definitely not alone. Democratic primary candidates have been adding me to their lists in numbers since mid-summer, but Republicans have joined their ranks in force in the last few weeks.

People have been buying and selling political lists for ages, at least since direct mail and phone solicitation came on the scene. But with just about every political campaign of any scale creating an email or text-message list, the number of spreadsheets circulating for cash or friendship these days must be ridiculous.

Sometimes a candidate brings a legacy list from a previous career or campaign, but more often the campaign or consultants pay for one. Naturally, many buyers upload the list post haste and start spamming away. Equally unsurprising: I find many of their appeals in my spam filter, not my inbox. I can actually trace a bunch of Republican signups over the years back to Newt Gingrich’s list, which I joined in maybe 2010 to keep an eye on it. The current conservative wave includes organizations and campaigns alike, and several of them seem to be connected to the same sender. Buy once, spam repeatedly!

We’ve covered several reasons why you SHOULDN’T email people out of the blue before. Recipients tend not to open unsolicited messages, dragging down the performance of the entire list. Victims also tend to mark them as spam, which can put the hurt on a campaign as well. A surprisingly small number of spam complaints can cripple an email-fundraising operation, at least until it makes enough changes to get out of “spam jail”. I assume similar factors apply to text-message appeals as well.

But I know a way to use a list that landed in your lap without abusing it. I covered the tactic in last spring’s training on effective and ethical list-building (shout-out to sponsor Civic Shout), and it’s also in my digital-campaigning ebook:

I do know of ONE good way to put someone else’s list to work, ethically and often effectively: instead of using it to spam people, you could upload it to Facebook (and some other platforms) as a “custom audience”. Facebook et al will match your list to users’ email addresses or mobile numbers to what it has on file and then allow you to target ads specifically at those people. That way, THEY can decide whether they want to bite or not.

You can also create lookalike audiences to target people similar to your donors or activists across everything Facebook knows about us, which is not creepy at all:

[L]ookalike targeting [typically] uses a custom audience as the basis for outreach to “similar” people, with the assumption that they’re more likely to be interested in your issues than a random sampling of the population (you can choose the “lookalike percentage” — how closely the new people resemble the ones on your list — during setup). When you upload your supporter list and choose lookalike targeting for recruiting ads, you can turn a small list into a bigger community in a short time.

You might upload a list of your own donors and use lookalike targeting to try to expand your fundraising base. As more people sign up, you can feed their information into the system and further refine your targeting. You’ll create a circle virtuous in more ways than one: ever-improving and completely opt-in.

Communicators can create custom and lookalike audiences from other sources besides spreadsheets, including people who’ve engaged with a particular piece of content on Facebook or who’ve gone to a defined place on a website. The latter can connect you with people who land on your donation page but who don’t make it all the way to the thank-you page, for example.

Whatever the source of a list, the basic concept is the same. Dangle bait in front of an audience, see who bites, and target more people who look like them.

For more, check out the list-building training or drop me a line to chat. Next tip next week, Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise.

– cpd

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Welcome, new readers! Be sure to check out my six-part 2025 digital politics training series, now live on YouTube. On with the show.

Quick Hits: September 7, 2025

Welcome to the waning days of summer! As usual, Trump’s been barraging us with so much madness that it’s hard to keep up. I’ve started at least three articles in the last couple of weeks that I’ve had to shelve because events overtook them. Fortunately, plenty of our peers have been on top of things. Let’s dive into a curated selection of excellent stories related to our digital-politics moment. More to come.

• Political Ad Spending Expected to Hit Nearly $11 Billion in 2026.
• Democrats spotlighting inflation as they target vulnerable House Republicans in Labor Day weekend ads. “The DCCC [was] launching the five-figure ad buy in 35 districts it says are ‘in play.’ The ads [ran] on Instagram and You Tube and [were] aimed at young men between the ages of 18 and 44”.
• White House launches TikTok account with Trump saying ‘I am your voice’.
• White House’s New TikTok Push Epically Backfires. Hahaha: “Less than 24 hours after the White House launched a TikTok page, its videos have been inundated with comments about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.”
• Why Everyone Should Stop Freaking Out About Gavin Newsom’s Social Media, as bTeam Trump Responds to Newsom Trolling With Sad Mad Men Meme.
• Preposterous ICE videos have a holy war to sell you. “Religious-themed government videos portray a grim, never-ending battle between us and them.” At the same time, The Trump Administration Is Using Memes to Turn Mass Deportation Into One Big Joke.
• Trump’s pick to lead BLS ran Twitter account with sexually degrading, bigoted attacks, and An Account Using the Same Name as Trump’s BLS Pick Posted Red-Pilled Conspiracy Theories.
• So Far the Only Thing Trump Has Won From Russia Is More Ridicule.
• Amy Klobuchar: What I Didn’t Say About Sydney Sweeney. Deepfake!
• Super PAC aims to drown out AI critics in midterms, with $100M and counting.
• Can AI Help Fundraisers Create Deeper Connections With Donors? Following up after Quiller.ai gets acquired.
• The Single Word That Explains Why Chatbots Sound So Human. One word for you: pragmatics.
• AI Stokes Concerns Among Political Voiceover Talent.
• It’s happening: People are starting to talk like ChatGPT.
• The Trump administration is trying to suppress public input. What should advocacy organizations do? Shutting down the API that helps orgs deliver rulemaking comments.
• Spam PACs Raise Money by Deceiving Seniors. “One 89-year-old woman made 7,532 donations totaling $68,666.”
• BREAKING: Only a $5 Gift Can Stop the Lies About Mothership! And, Bad News and Good News on the Fundraising Front.
• Maine Democratic Senate Candidate Sits at Nexus of Spam PAC Network.
• Chinese Hackers Pretended to Be a Top U.S. Lawmaker During Trade Talks.
• When podcasts do what the legacy press won’t. “Unconventional hosts are cornering politicians in ways legacy outlets rarely attempt”.
• Everyone Hates Him. Why Is His Podcast so Popular? Surprise! It’s Ted Cruz.
• Stop Chasing Gimmicks: The Case for a Permanent Progressive Media Structure.
• Video Briefing: How to Reach Working Class Voters Through the Platforms and Media They Use Most.
• Why the Democrats’ Digital Strategy Is Doomed to Fail. “What happens when you produce content so tightly controlled? So desperate for heart emojis? It feels flat and sterile, devoid of any of the qualities that helped Zohran’s videos break through.”
• How to Run Digital Like It’s 2025.
• We Can’t Talk to People That Way. “Professionalized language has bled into our public-facing communications and isolated us from the people we need to be reaching”.
• The Future Is Already in Their Feed: What the New Catalist Memo Tells Us About Winning the Information War.
• Canvassing Giant Progressive Turnout Project Buys Into New Tech. Moving away from VAN.
• The Party Outside the Party. “Understanding the Democratic PACs working around rather than in the Democratic Party”.
• Rethinking Canvassing: From Knock-and-Go to Layered Organizing.
• Democratic voter-registration strategies may not be working, as some traditionally Democratic voters move away from the party. C.f. Democrats Need To Get Serious About Partisan Voter Registration.
• A history of statistics in political life.
• How Techno-Fascists Are Engineering Our Surrender. “They’ll target our identities, our values, our pain. And they’ll dress it up as principled resistance.”
• On American exceptionalism: “America is exceptional not because God wills it so, or because it has the strongest military, or because capitalism is the best economic system on Earth (although it probably is). We are exceptional because we aspire to an ideal that we know can never be met.”

– cpd

Image by Iván Tamás from Pixabay

Please share this post: Catching Up: Thirty-Nine Good Stories about Digital Politics & Advocacy

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Welcome, new readers! Catch up fast with these recent highlights:

• How to Build a Democratic Persuasion Machine in 2025
• NC Democratic Party Gives Grassroots Tech to Down-Ballot Candidates – For Free
• David Hogg is Spamming Me
• How Did Democrats Forget These Three Things about Field Organizing?
• You can also dig into my six-part 2025 digital politics spring training series, now live on YouTube, and my ebook, How to Use the Internet to Change the World – and Win Elections.

Now, on with the show.

Why Democrats & Progressive Should Share Stories from Fox News

Introducing a new feature, Tuesday Tips & Tactics! We’ll raid the vast Epolitics archive, my ebook and the hundreds of pages of notes I’ve collected in panels and conferences for good ideas you can put to use right away. The article below first appeared in February 2021, and though some of the names would change today, the essential idea holds true. Note that ACRONYM was a project of what’s now Courier.

Nobody on the political left wants to share stories from Fox…but we should. The idea naturally rankles. Why should we boost a news outlet that consistently distorts our views and actively turns people against us? For one reason: sharing Fox News stories can help us reach Americans who would otherwise tune us out.

Most grassroots conservatives take it as an article of faith that liberals lie to them, a sentiment encouraged by Fox News itself. But progressives can use the fact that Trump supporters have been trained to ignore information produced outside the right-wing bubble to our advantage. When we can find stories in conservative media that include something beneficial to our work, sharing the Fox version of story or even a clip of Rush Limbaugh can help us connect with people who won’t pay attention to anything else.

This idea came up repeatedly during ACRONYM’s post-election debrief a few weeks ago. Before the election, their team used the reactions to their own digital advertising to identify themes resonating with conservative voters from week. When they found a topic that worked, boosting relevant news stories to potentially persuadable people, including articles and videos from Fox, often performed better than other content. For example, they might create a video ad from Fox News clips or share a relatively straight-news Fox story about the economy or the pandemic. One ACRONYM staffer described Tucker Carlson as their “golden goose” — when they could promote one of his videos, their engagement rate went through the roof. Stories from the New York Times, MSNBC or CNN simply did not perform as well with the voters they needed to reach.

Since content from Fox News or right-wing talk radio comes from a trusted source, it creates a “permission structure” for conservative audiences. Wrapped in familiar paper, the package won’t be ignored automatically as it would when it’s in a story from an outlet they’ve been told to dismiss. Naturally, groups on the left should frame each piece carefully, for instance using a headline or the introductory text or preview image in a Facebook post to highlight the parts we want people to take away. We might also pick Fox quotes for the substance of a digital ad but link to a video of our own that pivots off of them to make a progressive point.

However we manage to jujitsu a story to our advantage, though, information from a trusted messenger can help us get at least a toe in the door. The trick, of course, is to find the stories in the first place, and I do not envy those with the job of sorting through hours of disinformation and bile. Pity the poor interns….

Hah! Now we should extend our pity to a poor, hard-working AI.

– cpd

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First launched in 2006, Epolitics is written and edited by Colin Delany, who for close to three decades has helped nonprofits and political campaigns use digital tools in effective and creative ways to achieve their political, policy and organizational goals. For more, contact him at cpd@epolitics.com.

Welcome, new readers and new paid subscribers! I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate all of you. And, greetings from New Orleans, the city of my birth! I rolled in Wednesday evening for Netroots Nation, which wrapped up with an excellent party last night that began with a second line parade to the venue. It was a great gathering as always, with many old friends and the chance to meet new ones, and you’ll see the first fruits of my extensive note-taking in the piece below.

Readers may remember that my family was planning to move my mom to assisted living close to me in DC three weeks. We kept having to postpone the trip for logistical reasons, which naturally gave her time to fall and break her hip. Oof! A gut punch, but we’re doing the best we can.

She has a pin on one side and a partial replacement on the other, but she’s been out of the hospital and in a rehab nursing home since the beginning of August. So I’ll be driving back to East Texas tomorrow, with good tunes on the stereo and fond memories of Netroots on my mind. If Mom can get her strength back, we still hope to get her to the East Coast and me back home in the lovely DC neighborhood of Mt Pleasant soon. Fingers crossed.

On with the show.

The North Carolina Democratic Party Gives Grassroots Tech to Down-Ballot Candidates – For Free

In a Netroots Nation session this week, North Carolina Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton revealed something that the audience was audibly surprised to hear. She said that her party now gives every local, state and congressional Democratic candidate free access to vital grassroots tools, including the Votebuilder voter-data platform. Many or most other parties charge candidates for Votebuilder access, meaning that campaigns on tight budgets may delay using it or eschew it altogether.

Rather than nickel-and-dime their candidates, North Carolina Dems have raised enough money to pay for Votebuilder access for every credible candidate, both in the primaries and in the general election. That’s a big deal! As Anderson pointed out, many more campaigns across the state will be adding data from canvassing and other outreach to the voter file early and often, including from areas where the party has had relatively little voter contact in the past.

That voter data is more likely to stick around than before, since campaigns will updating a central repository of information. In the past, some might have used an alternative to Votebuilder that didn’t add to the state party file, and the results of their voter outreach might be lost after Election Day. Instead, NC Dems have created a compounding benefit: every campaign that employs the system helps create a web of voter data that future campaigns can rely on.

Of course, depending too much on a single platform brings its own vulnerabilities, and the national Democratic party is already looking for alternatives to Votebuilder/NGP VAN. In that case, though, NC Dems could of course pivot to a different standard data-management system if they needed to, bringing campaigns along for the ride. That transition would probably not be a whole lot of fun, but it’s at least an option.

Besides Votebuilder access, the NC party also provides tactical and technical training for candidates and staff, and it helps campaigns set up ActBlue accounts to begin fundraising online as soon as possible. Once the primaries are decided, the party pays for the winners to access Mobilize, a powerful toolset for managing events and volunteers. Anderson noted that she’d LIKE to help primary campaigns get Mobilize as well, but that the platform is too expensive for them to afford it early for everyone. Once again, though, having campaigns on a common platform means that data can survive and that other candidates should have a head start getting grassroots outreach programs up and running in the future.

These decisions by the North Carolina party demonstrate a commitment to the kind of persistent, sustained field outreach that I think is essential for long-term voter persuasion. Democrats can’t just keep preaching to the faithful; we must connect with skeptical voters in bulk and (whenever possible) via people they already trust, including friends and family. This week’s redistricting feeding frenzy only hints at how far the other side will go to tilt the political field in their favor, and Dems will likely need huge vote margins to overcome many of the structural obstacles Republicans are building to a fair and representative vote. Once the midterms have passed, Democrats must look to 2028 and presidential-year turnout. With many occasional voters showing up at the polls then, mobilization alone won’t cut it — Democrats need to coax millions more Americans into our tent.

Other state parties should look to North Carolina’s approach to grassroots tech as an example, just as people on the Netroots panel with Anderson mentioned that THEY see persistent field organizing campaigns in Michigan and Wisconsin as an inspiration. Party leaders should approach a tool like Votebuilder as a means to build capacity for the entire Democratic movement, not as a short-term money-maker. With autocracy in the air, Democrats had better be playing for keeps.

– cpd

Top photo via Wikipedia

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Epolitics is written and edited by Colin Delany, who has helped nonprofits and political campaigns use digital tools in effective and creative ways to achieve their political, policy and organizational goals for close to three decades. For more, contact him at cpd@epolitics.com.

Welcome, new readers! Check out these upcoming events:

• The 20th Annual Netroots Nation, held this year in New Orleans August 7-9. It’s been one of my favorite events since I first went in 2008, and this year I’ll be delivering two trainings at the main event and a third one this week as part of a virtual pre-conference.
• The latest big-league training from the Center for Digital Strategies, a three-month immersion in AI for Nonprofits and Advocacy.
• You can also dig into my six-part 2025 digital politics spring training series, now live on YouTube, plus recent articles on list-building and political persuasion.

Now, on with the show.

Epolitics: Nineteen Years and Counting

Thank you so much for being a part of the Epolitics community! Longtime readers may remember that I normally live in DC but have been down in Texas since December. My father died right after Thanksgiving, leaving my declining and 87-year-old mom alone in my hometown. My siblings have been pitching in as well, but since I’m self-employed and have no kids, I could pack up the cat and head South for as long as I was needed.

But this part of our family’s journey is about to end. On Wednesday, my older brother will drive us the three-odd hours to the airport in Houston, and my mom and I will fly to DC and her new home in an assisted living place in the District. Delany’s have been living in East Texas for more than 170 years, but we will be the last for now.

Many of you will have cared for an aging parent, and you’ll know how much work it is — and how rewarding it can be. Keeping up a blog/Substack while taking care of her and doing my normal consulting work has not been easy (I had to take a break while I was formatting this piece to walk her to the bathroom), and I appreciate your patience more than I can say. With mom in a safe and happy place, I plan to crank up the frequency here. And, I look forward to publishing ideas and perspectives from some of you as well. But overall, I do not regret a moment of the seven months I’ve spent here with her.

I launched Epolitics.com nineteen years ago this month, which blows my mind. Back then, it was a rare site covering the craft of digital politics and advocacy. Now, we have plenty of company, with newsletters like Chaotic Era, FWIW, and The Connector joining practitioners like Will Robinson, Amy Pritchard, Mike Nellis and many, many others in writing and talking about the power of digital tools to change minds and build political support.

Whether you started reading Epolitics yesterday or all the way back in 2006, thank you again for being a part of this community. I have a funny feeling that we’ll have plenty to talk about in the years to come.

Quick Hits: July 21, 2025

• How MAGA influencers put pressure on Trump, Bondi over Epstein. But note that Epstein’s not the ONLY thing they’re mad about.
• Trump Talks About Anything but Epstein on His Social Media Account. Desperate to distract from Epstein by any means necessary…including today’s release of MLK surveillance files.
• Why Democrats are (still) bad at the internet, particularly when it comes to influencers and social media. No biggie, right?
• Democrats Need to Tell the Story of the Big Ugly Bill, and not just in high-profile targeted districts. We need a national narrative.
• Organizing Organizers, a modest proposal.
• This right-wing YouTuber is having a moment. “The fastest-growing political accounts show that the platform’s architecture rewards not just relentless output, but also the creation of highly optimized, sensational videos that follow an almost algebraic formula to game the algorithm. Political actors who are able to understand and follow that formula can grow unprecedented clout and influence heading into the midterms and beyond.”
• Do They Have Your Attention Now? At least some Dems may understand the influencer/attention economy.
• Democrats’ 2024 Autopsy Is Described as Avoiding the Likeliest Cause of Death, but we may still learn a few things.
• Why Grok Fell in Love With Hitler, and what it reveals about the “black box” of generative AI.
• The Road to MechaHitler. Reality has a well known liberal bias, and trying to tweak AI to avoid that fact does not seem to work elegantly.
• Five things I believe about actually-existing AI today.
• Trump Era Phase Two. How does an insurgent movement hold on once it’s the Establishment? Nonstop conflict.
• ‘Who Killed Love?’ A Video Game Plays to Male Resentment in China.

– cpd

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Welcome, new readers! Epolitics has covered digital politics and advocacy since 2006, and I’m excited to welcome you to the community.

• Drop me a line if you want to chat about anything related to digital politics or anything I’ve written here. For almost thirty years, I’ve worked with campaigns and nonprofits to help them use digital tools to change the world, and I’m happy to share that experience.
• If you haven’t had a chance yet, take a look at my six-part 2025 digital politics spring training series, now a convenient playlist on YouTube
• Check out the Center for Digital Strategy’s AI for Nonprofits and Advocacy program, now accepting a new cohort of enrollees!

Now, on with the show.

MAGA Trump Fury, Rubio AI Impersonator, DCCC OBBA Ads, SSA Puff Email & More

MAGA vs. Trump vs. Dems

Is MAGA truly up in arms about the Trump Administration’s inability to deliver the goods on Jeffrey Epstein? Judging from a conversation I just had with a QAnon-adjacent friend in my East Texas hometown, quite possibly. To him, it was a sign that even the Trump people had been coopted by the powers behind the scenes. No client list? No credibility.

Could the right wing have unleashed one conspiracy theory too many? Well, maybe. It’s possible that the most out-there of Trump’s supporters might start to drift from his orbit, but we should never underestimate the connection he has with the MAGA base. My suspicion is that they’ll find ways to rationalize “betrayals” like this and Trump’s resumption of support for Ukraine, but we should definitely watch for longer-term disillusionment among their ranks. It wouldn’t take that much erosion to swing a few House districts here and there next year.

Hospital closures might break off some support as well, at least if voters ever realize the Big Beautiful Bill is the cause. With that possibility in mind, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is buying Meta ads in the districts of 35 House Republicans highlighting how Medicaid cuts hurt rural hospitals. The ad buy is in the “four figures”, which I hope means four figures per district, not a few thousand dollars spread over 35 separate areas.

Also note the DCCC’s recent attempt to pin grocery prices on House Republicans, which they appear to have given to Fox Business News as an exclusive, perhaps as an incentive to keep the story on screen longer. As with the Facebook ads, it’s necessary but not sufficient! Dems and allies should be preparing to spend orders of magnitude more time and money persuading voters than went into this campaign. Are they?

More Quick Hits:

• Did you get that bizarre fluff email last week from the Social Security Administration, which I’ll emphasize is a branch of the federal government? The message was essentially a press release praising the Big Beautiful Bill for lowering taxes on social security benefits. You will be shocked to hear that it did not mention that the tax cuts will naturally accelerate Social Security’s eventual insolvency. The message was so out of the ordinary that I thought I’d received as a member of the working press, but apparently it went to everyday people with online accounts with the SSA. Your tax dollars at work! And a reminder of how much Trump will use the executive branch to warp the information space in which we live.

• Elon Musk’s Grok AI [hearts] Hitler! Lots and lots and lots of antisemitic and pro-Nazi content, perhaps because of access of unfiltered content from Musk’s Twitter/X. Definitely in character, since for Musk, it’s always Springtime for Hitler.
• An AI mimics Marco Rubio: “An impostor pretending to be Marco Rubio contacted foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress by sending them voice and text messages that mimic Rubio’s voice and writing style”. We shall see many more events like this in the months and years to come! To help, Alexandra Petri lays out a few signs it wasn’t actually him.
• Be sure to read these two important pieces from Will Robinson! First, The Stories Democrats Aren’t Telling (But Should), because “If there’s one thing Democrats should have learned by now, it’s this: voters don’t just remember what you did – they remember how you made them feel.” Next, People Are Our Power. So Why Aren’t We Training Them? Because, “Let me be blunt: we are failing to train the people who want to help us win.” Don’t miss either piece.
• In a similar vein, see Amy Pritchard’s Five Hard Truths about What We’re doing Wrong. A small sample: “We Reward Relationships, Not Results…You can lose a campaign and still get rehired. You can run the same ineffective strategy and still get funded. You can burn through staff and never be held accountable.” Testify, sister. Though Epolitics naturally wonders how we got left out of the grift.
• The Democrats Have an Authenticity Gap. “What creates the ‘relatable dude-bro’ audience is organic connection, not donor checks.”
• About that almost-revolution in Quebec: “‘The importance of social media really can’t be overestimated here,’ Lewis said. ‘They became incubators for this very specific kind of cell-based, networked extremism.'”
• Citizen journalists step up: “And now in this moment when L.A. needs as many eyes on the streets as possible, L.A. Taco has become indispensable.” Hunter Thompson: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
• Reagan Invoked the ‘Welfare Queen.’ The New G.O.P. Target Is a Lazy Gamer. “Republicans targeting safety net programs once invoked women they claimed were living lavishly on government funds. Now as they seek to pare back Medicaid, the imagery has changed — but not the argument.”
• Hakeem Jeffries’ floor speech as a sign that Dems are waking up to the new reality?. “‘Said the first House Democrat who spoke anonymously: ‘So much of politics has turned into showtime, and so we do showtime.'”
• And finally, Trump wants to tariff Brazil over its trial of his buddy Bolsonaro, a move that would jack up the prices of cofeee. Harold Myerson: “A lesser man might be deterred by the economic consequences and political fallout from this threatened tariff, but give Trump credit where credit is due: His commitment to overthrowing democracy in Latin America’s largest nation will not be deterred by such mundane considerations. Up the fascists! Drink less coffee!”

– cpd

Top photo by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

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Welcome, new readers and new paid subscribers! Thank you so much for being part of the Epolitics community. I’ve been running Epolitics as a blog and now a Substack for almost twenty years, and I’m excited to welcome you aboard. Digital politics is a radically different animal than it was in 2006, but so many of the same rules still apply. Including some basics that seem to be forgotten all too often, as we shall see below.

David Hogg is Spamming Me

David Hogg is spamming me, but the one he hurts could be himself.

On June 20th, a “Welcome to the Team” message from Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve appeared in my email inbox. Had I signed up for his list? No, I had not. The message itself wasn’t too bad; it was long, but since it was intended as an introduction, I forgave it. Did it ask me for anything but money? No, it did not — it included no attempt to treat me as something other than an ATM with legs. Of course, I assumed more appeals would be coming, and I was not wrong.

I received five more messages from Leaders We Deserve over the remaining ten days of June, for a total of six for the month. Four more have arrived in the first five days of July, making a total of ten unsolicited messages from one organization in just over two weeks. I have given them no money, and I only clicked on a single donate button to see where it went (an ActBlue landing page). Yet the messages continue to pile up.

Now, I have nothing against Hogg and have actually written about him and his Parkland peers as a model for distributed organizing. I also have no problem with his drive to unseat certain Democratic incumbents, since the party needs fresh ideas and no elected official should feel entitled to a seat. I do think Hogg was wrong to push challenges from a position on the Democratic National Committee, but that’s because I believe the party apparatus must remain as neutral as possible to keep its legitimacy.

But I do have a problem with spam, which a stream of unbidden donation appeals clearly is. Leaders We Deserve or its fundraising consultants have obviously purchased or otherwise acquired lists of past Democratic donors, and they have not been shy about using them. I’m sure they’re having some success, since quantity has a quality all its own and even a blind pig finds the occasional acorn. Then why do I object?

Counter-Productive Tactics

When you email a bunch of people out of the blue, even from a name as well known as Hogg’s, some recipients are going to mark the messages as spam. Others will ignore them, particularly after the first two or three, and your open and click rates will usually drop.

Email Service Providers like Gmail, Yahoo, MSN and AOL track overall performance for big senders, and low open and click rates can put your appeals in the “promotions” or “other” tab in recipients’ inboxes. Worse, spam complaints can kill your messages dead! I’ve worked with a client before who’d ended up in “spam jail” with a couple of the big ESPs, and it’s a tough spot to escape. No matter how good your content is, if no one sees it, it may as well not exist. Also note that sending to people who haven’t opted-in to a list generally violates the terms of service for mass-email systems, not that many of them seem to police it.

List-buying is an old practice. One small example: In 2016, Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump after he dropped out of the presidential race, but Marco Rubio ended up with Christie’s donor list. I recall hearing from a friend who specialized in political email deliverability that Rubio’s open rate dropped significantly after he started sending to Christie’s supporters, as one might expect when spamming a list of people who actively didn’t back him in the first place.

I did check my spam filter to see if any messages from Leaders We Deserve had landed there, and none had so far — a sign at the least that they got their sender settings right. I DID find a recent Republican National Committee email flagged as spam, but I approved it so I can bask in the light of their future missives. The RNC message provides a cautionary tale for Hogg, though, showing that even big political organizations can find themselves in deliverability trouble.

Generic Content

Since I love you all, I went through each of Hogg’s fundraising appeals looking for themes. What I mostly found was bland writing all about Leaders We Deserve, with little to lay out what’s in it for me as a donor. Overall, nothing about them made these messages stand out from the scores of similar emails I get every week.

An early entry in the sequence even employed one of the spammier tactics out there, the “we’ve checked your record and you haven’t donated yet” scam. Really? You checked MY record individually? I’m touched! No, you just ran a database query for people on your list who hadn’t donated yet and tried to guilt them into giving you money. It’s about as bad as the “renew your membership” emails from an organization you’ve never joined (I’m looking at YOU, DLCC). Blech.

I will note that the July 3rd message announced support for a young, progressive candidate in the race for Raul Grivalva’s congressional seat in Arizona, with a donation split between Hogg’s group and the campaign. THAT one gave people a concrete action to take to help someone running for office more than a year before the midterms. It also might tempt donors who might not be excited about giving to Leaders We Deserve but support the goal of building a younger political bench. One email out of nine ain’t bad!

Disrespecting Activists

Spamming people out of the blue, treating them like cash machines and employing cheap, manipulative tactics all suggest one thing: a fundamental disrespect for potential donors and supporters. To Leaders We Deserve, our only apparent value is the contents of our bank accounts, not our ability to contribute time, creativity or passion to a cause. Millions of Americans are primed to act now to help save our democracy. Why not help them find outlets that work for them and still benefit you and your political goals? Some people can donate, yes, but others need options too. Sign a petition! Share content on social media! Recruit a friend! Something that doesn’t require the transfer of funds, and that does require consent.

Despite our rough introduction, I’ll keep watching Leaders We Deserve to see what they’re up to. Heck, I might have joined their list on my own if they hadn’t spammed me first. For now, though, nothing says “we’re an authentic voice changing the political system” like adopting some of the worst practices of the Old Regime.

Better Ways to Build Lists

Instead of investing in spam, Leaders We Deserve could build its list organically. That approach lets potential donors choose to come on board because they want to, not because their names were on a spreadsheet someone ended up with. I covered plenty of good practices in my recent Effective & Ethical List-Building and Online Fundraising 101 trainings, a few of which I’ll summarize below. Note that old-school list-building is often slow — trench warfare rather than blitzkrieg — but lasting relationships take time to build.

• Use an acquired list as a basis for a Facebook Custom Audience. Expand via Lookalike audience if you want to expand the tent. Run acquisition ads on Facebook and Instagram against the audiences. Anyone who comes in through the ads has chosen to follow you, so you can email them with abandon. As people sign up, use the new names to create an expanded Custom Audience and Lookalike to refine your targeting beyond the initial list.
• Run acquisition campaigns in other online channels, including activist communities like Civic Shout, Daily Kos or Care2. When possible, go fishing in ponds that are already well stocked with potential donors.
• Roll out joint actions with allies or partners, in which both of you promote the action and reap the rewards in the form of new names
• Go on YouTube shows, appear on cable news, recruit influencers and reach out to relevant online niches to help spread the word to new audiences. Note: Epolitics is available for bribes! Our small-but-mighty community might just make all the difference your success or failure. Just be sure to have an easy action (such as a petition signature) for readers, viewers and listeners to take.

Watch the full training series for more. The final takeaway? An organization helmed by someone as well known as David Hogg shouldn’t have to scrape the bottom of the tactical barrel to raise money. For now, my dollars are staying in my bank account, not going to his.

– cpd

Photo: by freezelight – Spam wall, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link, via Wikipedia

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Welcome, new readers! If you haven’t had a chance yet, be sure to check out:

• My six-part 2025 digital politics spring training series, now live on YouTube
• The comprehensive digital campaigning ebook, “How to Use the Internet to Change the World – and Win Elections”
• Recent Epolitics articles on topics including field organizing, information war in America, social media bubbles and the new political communications landscape.

How to Build a Democratic Persuasion Machine in 2025

Protests may have brought millions of Americans to the streets in June, but Democrats and our allies still have a whole lot of our fellow citizens left to persuade. The president’s approval rating may have gyrated over the past few months, but based on what we saw in his first term, it’s not likely to plummet much below 40%. And even if he were as unpopular as Democrats wish, we’ve still lost the trust of millions of Americans.

The left can look to the midterms with some confidence, given Democratic candidates’ strong performances in special elections since Trump took office. But if we don’t connect with more-occasional voters who’ve left the fold, or with new voters reluctant to give us a chance, Democrats could easily lose big when a broader swath of Americans turn out to vote for president in 2028.

As my friend Will Robinson and others have laid out, Democrats need to build a new media machine that reaches voters where they actually spend their time in the here and now. But digital media is just part of the equation — a full-on persuasion operation would include more. Crucially, it would put everyday Democrats and progressives to work on the ground, both as part of organized canvassing operations and as personal ambassadors in their own social, family and community circles.

What should go into a Democratic persuasion machine? I’ve taken a first stab below, and I’m happy to hear what readers would add, subtract or change. While a single entity could take on this project in theory, we don’t have to have one organization handling all the pieces. Many different groups can collaborate, just as voter-turnout groups do via the state tables today. I’d suggest that the Democratic National Committee and state parties should run the national grassroots tookit, for example, assuming leadership can get its act together, and Dem IEs and nonprofits would naturally take on much of the rest.

The key idea is that we have to reach voters through many channels at once — one-and-done campaigns simply won’t cut it. And as we’ve discussed here before, outreach needs to start long before election season, since persuasion takes time. When possible, we’d connect with voters through people they already know and trust, whether that’s a friend or neighbor or a podcaster they listen to. In a perfect world we’d hit the ground tomorrow, but more likely the pieces of an effort like this would come together at different times. But something had better be in place by the end of this year or we’re missing the opportunity to connect with people while they may be open to changing their minds.

Persuasion will often work better when carried out by organizations and activists who already know how to talk with voters with whom Dems have lost ground, from Midwest farmers to Latinos on the Texas border to Black men in Philly. But their work will be easier if our movement is also targeting the same people with organic content on social media, outreach to influencers, and ads on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, streaming TV and anywhere else we can reach Americans via digital channels.

I’ll have more to say about most of these topics in the months to come, but let’s start with a 30,000-foot overview. Note that this outline expands on an earlier article I wrote in 2019.

Anatomy of a Democratic Persuasion Machine

A comprehensive effort to reach persuadable voters should include:

Self-organizing activists. ANY of us can be an influencer, and the most important political action most of us can take is to talk with our friends, neighbors and family. Activists can do better work if they have easy-to-use advocacy tools (including relational organizing apps) and easy access to content. The Democratic Party should create a single platform to help them do it, and we should treat it like the essential piece of movement infrastructure it would be. Fortunately, we already have some good models, including the MyBarackObama platform from 2008 and 2012. As we have seen, the right excels at meme wars, and we need a whole lot of new voices to counter them effectively. Remember those millions who showed up to protest on June 14th — Democrats can and should capitalize on their energy.

Persistent field organizing in critical areas/communities. Nothing beats face-to-face contact for persuasion, and field organizers must be on the ground early, to give them time talk with voters and volunteers often enough to build trust. This is an area where the diverse groups on the left can play an essential role. Organizers can also plug into local activist networks built via the party grassroots tools or recruited by Indivisible and similar organizations.

Organic content via official social media channels. Particularly as unbiased information becomes harder to find, activists and organizers need content to back up their outreach, including via social media. Outside groups and individual activists will step up with videos, photos, memes and more, but high-profile Dems need to follow Chris Murphy’s lead and start thinking like new-media newsrooms. For example, the Democratic National Committee may have turmoil at the top right now, but the DNC digital staff is stepping up regardless.

Organic content via influencers. Prominent Democrats also need to get themselves onto shows on YouTube, TikTok, Substack and wherever else influencers reach the public. Some funders and organizations will try to foster new voices — influencers in the making — which can help build capacity in the long run. But Dems need to get out there now, and those of us in the community who can actually engage with hosts and viewers about things they care about should be pitching influencers who are broadly popular or prominent in the right communities. Should Kamala Harris have gone on Joe Rogan’s show last fall? Yes. Be ready to surrender message control, but enter the arena regardless.

Paid content via influencers with strategic audiences. Some on the left may recoil at the notion of paying influencers, but instead, think of it as fostering independent voices who can help spread the word. Several platforms can already connect advocacy and political campaigns with influencers, including Social Currant, Vocal Media and People First. These platforms are particularly useful when you need to reach local and niche influencers, and they offer the chance to start supporting someone before they make it big. Big campaigns and orgs can reach out to nationally popular podcast hosts like they would any other publisher, too.

Community or niche-topic-focused Facebook pages and other social media communities, like those run by my friends at Real Voices Media. Community pages typically feature a mix of content, most of it focused on the page topic but sometimes including advocacy, political or policy-related stories. While they would run most content organically, they can also serve as the hub for targeted advertising.

“News pages” on Fb/Insta/etc that highlight/boost stories relevant to a region or community. With local news a shadow of its former presence across much of the country, most stories will disappear into the aether without many people ever having a chance to see them. “News pages” highlight stories that may not otherwise reach voters, and once again, page managers would run ads to make sure stories reach the right audiences. Note that the Harris campaign spent millions on news-page ads last year.

Facebook/Insta/YouTube/streaming TV/web video/banner and other digital ads targeting priority audiences. Paid advertising isn’t likely to be that persuasive on its own, but it provides extra opportunities to touch voters with messages they may be seeing through other channels as well. And for some voters, they may be the only contact that’s achievable in the real world. Though no data model will be perfect, careful targeting can help stretch an ad budget,. Voter file-targeted ads can also support other outreach work, for instance reaching a pool of voters before they’re contacted by field organizers and volunteers to prime the pump. Ads don’t replace face-to-face contact, but they can help open the door for organizers, volunteers and their messages.

Nothing ambitious here at all! Actually, everything on this list has been done before, and plenty of Democrats and allies know how to each part of it right. What we need are:

• Leadership
• Funding
• Planning
• Coordination

Dear readers, if you know folks who can help getting any piece of this machine rolling, please spread the word. I’m happy to help make the case in any way I can.

And as I wrote toward the beginning of this piece, I’d love to hear what YOU think. Thank you.

– cpd

Top photo via Pixabay

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Welcome, new readers! If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out these recent highlights:

• Elon Musk’s Social Media Bubble Did Him No Favors
• Ten Good Perspectives: What Democratic Campaigns & Communicators Need to Do NOW
• How Did Democrats Forget These Four Things about Field Organizing?
• Sen. Chris Murphy’s Master Class in Modern Digital Communications

Top photo (NOT from Los Angeles) by Ramon Perucho from Pixabay, edited.

Disinformation and Dueling Narratives Fly Online During LA Protests

As protesters faced-off against police in Los Angeles over the past few days, a parallel struggled has raged online. People took to the streets Friday after ICE agents launched raids across LA County and swept up undocumented immigrants looking for work or showing up for scheduled meetings and hearings. From subReddits to TikTok to the White House’s official social media feeds, two versions of reality have since dueled for hearts and minds, as the WaPo described:

Amateur videographers and online creators shared some of the mayhem’s most-talked-about videos and images, often devoid of context and aimed at different audiences. Clips showing officers firing less-lethal rounds at an Australian journalist or mounted police directing their horses to stride over a sitting man fueled outrage on one side, while those of self-driving Waymo cars on fire and protesters holding Mexican flags stoked the other…

“If you’re on the pro-ICE side of this, you need to find visual images of these protests that look really scary, look really dangerous because that’s what’s going to draw human attention,” [researcher Laura Edelson said]. But if “you don’t think that ICE should be taking moms away from their families and kids, you’re going to have a video that starts with a crying child’s face.”

Donald Trump surely hoped that sending phalanxes of federal agents into a city like LA, where a third of the population was born in another country, would create a blast of shocking images and video that would bring Americans to his side. And he’s already used the violent acts of a relatively small number of people in the crowd to bring in the National Guard and the U.S. Marines. But polling so far does not show the public rallying to Trump’s view in big numbers, and perhaps images and video from the scene have played a role:

The protests have become the biggest spectacle yet of the months-long online war over deportations, as Trump allies work to convince Americans that the issue of undocumented immigration demands aggressive action. But immigrant families and advocates have also been winning attention, and seeking public support, through emotional clips of crying families grappling with removal orders, anti-ICE gatherings and young children in federal custody.

Videos have a particular power to bring people to react from the heart, since they can take them face-to-face with events in a way that words and even photos cannot. As Brookings researcher Darrell West put it, they can “encapsulate the emotion of the moment.” They can also profoundly distort what’s happening on the ground, as the NYT noted today:

The flood of falsehoods online appeared intended to stoke outrage toward immigrants and political leaders, principally Democrats.

They also added to the confusion over what exactly was happening on the streets, which was portrayed in digital and social media through starkly divergent ideological lenses. Many posts created the false impression that the entire city was engulfed in violence, when the clashes were limited to only a small part…At the same time, false images spread to revive old conspiracies that the protests were a planned provocation, not a spontaneous response to the immigration raids.

In this universe, a pallet of Malaysian bricks becomes a George Soros plot to arm demonstrators, while a still image from Blue Thunder becomes an action shot from the scene. Roy Scheider is on the case! The Russkies have been joining the content-sharing fun, of course, since their digital agents rarely miss an opportunity to tapdance on a rival country’s raw nerves. But as usual, we’ll surely do most of the damage ourselves:

“[Jeremy Lee] Quinn, who also documented Black Lives Matter marches and the U.S. Capitol riots, said viewers on the left and right treat viral videos like weapons in their arsenal…’You end up with a far-right ecosystem that thrives on these viral moments,’ Quinn said.”

We will not escape this dynamic soon, if ever. Dueling visions of reality will become weapons in every political and cultural fight we wage, and the situation will not improve as AI gets better at warping the world in realistic ways. Fact-checking won’t help much, either:

Disinformation in situations like these spreads so quickly and widely that efforts to verify facts cannot keep up, said Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, an advocacy organization that studies the intersection of media, technology and the law. She described it as part of “a much longer effort to delegitimize peaceful resistance movements.”

“Information warfare is always a symptom of conflict, stoked often by those in power to fuel their own illiberal goals,” she said. “It confuses audiences, scares people who might otherwise have empathy for the cause and divides us when we need solidarity most.”

Mission accomplished! In a country divided not just about opinions but facts, the only way to counter disinformation seems to be to share our own messages far, wide and often. Disinformation has a real advantage on that front, since you can spin a truly enticing narrative when you don’t have to worry about the truth. It’s more fun that way, too:

– cpd

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Welcome, new readers! If you haven’t had a chance yet, be sure to check out:

• My six-part 2025 digital politics spring training series, now live on YouTube
• My digital campaigning ebook, “How to Use the Internet to Change the World – and Win Elections”
• The vast archive of content on Epolitics.com, dating back to 2006

What Democratic Campaigns and Communicators Need to Do: Ten Good Perspectives

Hi folks, I’m traveling this weekend, but I wanted to highlight ten incisive articles about the current Democratic messaging, organizing and campaigning predicament and how we get out of it. For a framing of the problem, check out my piece from April How Democrats Ended Up in the Digital Media Ditch. I’d love to hear YOUR ideas too, in the comments.

• Amy Pritchard: Progressive Infrastructure: a Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight. If we don’t invest in our people, we’ll keep losing them: “A serious people crisis undermines every campaign, organization, and message we try to deliver, and few are doing anything about it.”
• Will Robinson: The New Empire: How the Right Built a 24/7 Culture Machine — and Why Progressives Must Catch Up. Examining the essential components of a relentless modern messaging juggernaut; part of a must-read series.
• Mike Lux: The Media Hellscape Democrats Need To Do Something About. “But even if all these working class projects get things right, and Democrats start talking a better game on reaching regular folks, the million dollar question: where and how does this great new message get delivered?”
• Mike Nellis: Stop Trying to Make a Liberal Joe Rogan Happen. “We don’t need a mirror image of Rogan. We need authentic voices who move culture, not just politics.” And we need a whole lot of them.
• Micah Sifry: Can We Change the Democratic Playbook? “Two prominent progressive organizers argue that it’s time we prioritize relationships and networks over data-driven transactional targeting, while a third asks hard questions about power-building.”
• Frank O’Brien: Call for More Authentic Digital Fundraising In Democratic Campaigns. “STOP using techniques as a substitute for a powerful message and START using them in support of one.” One of many, many cries in the wilderness about spammy, exploitative fundraising tactics, and c.f. this piece by Dave Leichtman in Epolitics a decade ago — this problem has been real for a long long time.
• Laura Dawn: The Elephant is in the Room. “But somehow that critical advice turned into a rigid protocol of outsourcing messaging to professionals, testing and refining talking points, and then repeating the talking points in ad buys, media appearances and stump speeches. The result? A sterile, overly calculated approach that lacked authenticity and failed to engage voters in an era when people crave raw, unfiltered connection. Meanwhile, the right wing has been playing a completely different — and far more effective — game.”
• Murshed Zaheed: About some Congressional Democrats’ frustrations with Bluesky. It’s time for Democratic leaders to build relationships with the activist base, not turn our backs on grassroots passion.
• The Up & Up: Warning Signs for 2028: “When I talk to Gen Z Americans, it’s clear they’re not checking out of politics because they don’t care. Of course they do. They’re stepping back because they feel like the current political system is fundamentally broken and neither party is offering a solution to match the scale – or specifics – of their challenges. The danger for both parties is less that young people will vote for the other side, it’s that they’ll stop believing electoral politics can deliver the change they need.”
• Elizabeth Wilner & Chuck Todd: Dems Need A Newt Of Their Own. A reminder that Democrats have been dealing with the same damn problems for decades. Can we do something about it for once? A sobering read sent over by my friend B.

– cpd

Top image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

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Welcome, new readers! If you haven’t had a chance yet, be sure to check out:

• My six-part 2025 digital politics spring training series, now live on YouTube
• Recent articles related to digital politics and advocacy on the Epolitics Substack
• My digital campaigning ebook, “How to Use the Internet to Change the World – and Win Elections”
• The vast archive of content on Epolitics.com, dating back to 2006

Top image: Frozen bubbles, by rihaij from Pixabay

Elon Musk’s Social Media Bubble Did Him No Favors

Was Elon Musk a victim of his own fan club? A Francis Fukuyama column I read yesterday sent me back to the New York Times feature that reconstructed the Twitter/X environment in which the billionaire lives. To do so, reporters created a new account and followed the same users that Musk sees in his feed, “including world leaders and business tycoons alongside conspiracy theorists and far-right influencers.” They then analyzed 175,000-odd individual posts to get a sense of what Musk actually sees when he looks at his pet social-media property.

The results? Not surprisingly, the review “revealed ample praise for Mr. Musk and his various priorities, mixed with a torrent of right-wing outrage over progressive politics.” Perhaps most significant for Musk’s performance on the political stage, the analysis also “highlights the ways that social networks can create information bubbles.”

Many people have observed that Musk is pretty damn bad at politics. He often appeared mystified that people would take issue with what DOGE was doing to our government and those who depend on it, and he completely failed to understand that making himself the center of attention during a judicial election in Wisconsin might backfire. He had problems with personal politics, too, as witnessed by clashes with cabinet members that degenerated into shouting — and possibly shoving — matches.

Part of the issue, of course, is that he’s never HAD to be good at politics before. He’s run his companies with relatively little interference, and his name has never appeared on a ballot in this country. As long as he stayed in his lane as a marketer, hype-man and company-builder, he could play to his strengths. But like many successful people, he fell for the idea that being good at one thing makes you good at other, unrelated things. And to someone who doesn’t understand it, politics may look easy. But political skills are usually learned through hard experience, and as Sam Rayburn said when LBJ once gushed over JFK’s Whiz Kids, “I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.”

For this reason alone, DOGE was likely destined to become a Dunning-Kruger brigade from the start. But I suspect that Musk’s information filter bubble played a big role in why he thought he COULD change the structure and direction of the U.S. government without breaking much of a sweat. When just about everything you see and read tells you how smart and wonderful you are, you’re likely being set up for a fall.

I’m reminded of Peter Biskind’s book on the New Hollywood generation of the late ’60s and ’70s, particularly the film directors he profiles in harsh detail. Again and again, they ditched their first wives when their films brought in big money and bigger acclaim, and again and again, they didn’t direct another good movie for years (or in the case of George Lucas, ever). The wives who had known them BEFORE they made it big could tell them when they were wrong, but after these women were gone, the men often had no one in their lives who could call them on their bullsh*t. Star directors created real-life filter bubbles for themselves, and it did them no good.

Likewise, Musk has created an information environment for himself where he rarely encounters criticism and where even his worst business ideas land on sympathetic ears. Of course, I’m sure Musk has to use other channels beyond just Twitter/X at times, but I suspect he would also wrap himself with fans in those spaces as well. With tech oligarchs already embracing a worldview that sees the billions of other humans on this planet as lesser beings, saturating your social-media feed with sycophants is only going to reinforce your sense of exceptionalism.

And then you go into politics, where other people (literally) get a vote. Some outsiders have entered the political world and done well; others (think Schwarzenegger in California) have discovered that getting things done in politics is a whole lot harder than they imagined. If newcomers can open themselves up to constructive criticism and put time into learning how to bring people on board, they have a much better chance of succeeding. But when you live in a bubble, no one is pushing you to change. And that, I suspect, is a big reason for Musk’s downfall.

Will we see a similar effect on a larger scale with Donald Trump himself? In his second term, he’s surrounded himself with True Believers who do not question his whims and desires, however corrosive to democracy they may be, and he routinely dismisses critics as crazy or communist. Musk’s reckoning came quickly, but he also flew very close to the sun (and the ketamine) very fast. Will Trump’s information bubble help lead him to failure as well? If so, it’ll take a while, and he may take the rest of us with him. Unfortunately, no post on social media can ease the sting of national collapse.

– cpd

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A big welcome to our new readers! Last weekend’s piece on Democratic field organizing has been rocketing around the web, and because of the attention it’s drawn, we’re now joined by a fresh cohort of digital politics enthusiasts. Thanks for taking the plunge!

If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out:

• My six-part 2025 digital politics spring training series, now live on YouTube
• Recent articles related to digital politics and advocacy on the Epolitics Substack
• The vast archive of content on Epolitics.com, dating back to 2006

And of course, keep sharing the Democratic field organizing piece! I wrote it to help people who are pitching long-term persuasion and mobilization projects to Democratic funders and leaders, and I’d love your help getting it into the right hands. Thank you.

The Most Important Thing Most of Us Can Do this Holiday Weekend

Memorial Day is upon us at last, and I hope you can get some time off! While you’re talking with friends and family this weekend, you may want to take a break from talking and thinking about politics. But if the opportunity presents, remember that, for most of us, the most important role we can play right now is ambassador within our own social circles.

Trump and company delight in flooding the communications zone with so many outrages that most don’t break through to people who don’t follow politics obsessively. And when everyday people do hear about illegal deportations or the fiscal horrors of the tax bill, they’re likely getting a version of the news that’s filtered through Fox News or some dude on TikTok.

In the information environment in which we find ourselves, trusted voices still have an opportunity to break through the bullsh*t and the clutter. So if you can, try to help the people you spend time with this weekend understand what’s actually happening in America and what they can do to help stop it.

For a primer on best practices, let’s revisit the “Quick Guide to Personal Advocacy in the New Trump Era” I wrote a couple of week’s after Trump’s inauguration. I think it holds up well, and let’s take a moment to celebrate Elon Musk’s withdrawal from the center of the political stage! He was indeed a juicy target. Now, of course, Democrats and anti-authoritarians have to find a new high-profile punching bag, but with Trump’s approval back down to its normal (negative) level, he seems intent on filling that role himself.

Have a great weekend! More to come from Epolitics soon.

A Quick Guide to Personal Advocacy in the New Trump Era [Revisited]

• First, get loud. This moment is too serious to be shy.
• Communicate with your congressmember and senators, regardless of party. Democrats need to get a spine, and Republicans need to know that voters in their districts are not on board with lawlessness.
• Mass emails to congress via advocacy organizations don’t hurt, but they also don’t do a whole lot on their own. Email, yes, but also call. Leave Facebook messages. Engage with the congressmember’s account on X. Don’t stop at one contact, because Trump and Musk won’t be stopping for four years. If you’re in a Republican district, call the office at least once per week. Try calling district offices, since they’re usually more focused on constituents. They’re also easier to visit.
• Consider joining and working with a local Indivisible group. They’ll have resources you can draw on, and they’ll also connect you with others for mutual support.
• Install a secure, encrypted messaging app for your communications related to organizing. Best choice: Signal, which I just installed for the first time. WhatsApp is also encrypted, but it’s part of Facebook and hard to trust these days.
• Most importantly, you are an ambassador to your friends and family and within your social and professional circles. Connect with people one on one. Go on social media and online communities to amplify news stories and speak the truth. It’s going to take a lot of us to slow this train down, so we must bring as many Americans on board as we can.
• Trump and Musk are trying to flood us with so many outrageous acts at once that they can keep us from concentrating on what they’re doing. Relatively few headlines are going to break through the clutter, and most people will have no idea about the details. You can help connect them stories that might move them.
• Contact people through the usual channels you use to contact them: text, DM, social media posts, etc. Consider calling them, since a call brings an emotional connection that text usually doesn’t. If you can meet in person, even better.
• Similarly, use the online channels that are part of your everyday life. If you’re on Facebook all the time, share reliable information and reach out directly to people via Facebook. Likewise TikTok, LinkedIn, X, Bluesky, etc. The more you use a channel regularly, the more organic your outreach will be. Note that images and video typically have more punch than text alone.
• Pro tip: If you’re posting news articles on Facebook, X or even LinkedIn, don’t put the link in the body of the post. Instead, put the link in a comment on the post or a reply on X. These platforms penalize posts that contain links, and if you put the link in a comment, your post is far more likely to be seen.
• This fight doesn’t have to be partisan. Plenty of Republicans and independent voters will not be cool with undermining the government, censoring reality or subverting democracy.
• Be factual. We don’t NEED to be hyperbolic; reality is bad enough right now.
• Some people who like Trump are not big fans of Musk. Consider leading with the idea that Musk is taking over the government.
• Be understanding and empathetic. Listen to what people say when they reply to you. Respond with links to credible information. Don’t get angry if they disagree with you, and circle back later.
• Donate to nonprofits working on issues you care about. Bonus points for supporting organizations that are actively resisting the administration, but nonprofits across the board are likely to need your help, including local social-service organizations.
• Stay connected with like-minded friends and family. You will get discouraged and depressed at times, and we can help each other through what’s going to be a hard few years.
• If you have the ear of a Democratic elected official, tell that person to buckle down and get serious. Our republic is at stake.

Stay strong, folks! They win if we give up. Who knew we’d be defending democracy in America in 2025? I’m glad we’re in the fight together.

– cpd

Image by Albrecht Fietz from Pixabay

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Follow Epolitics on Substack, Bluesky, Threads, or Twitter/X. This post was also published on Substack. Read to the end for more resources on how Democrats should adapt to 2025’s political and media environment.

How Did Democrats Forget These Four Things about Field Organizing?

Those of us who want to keep a constitutional democracy have a lot of persuading and mobilizing to do. That process will include conversations with voters across the country, the more of them face-to-face the better. But is Democratic field organizing up to the moment?

Many Democrats (including me) thought that the party had a big advantage on Election Day 2024, regardless of what else had gone wrong that year. We were told that our robust and well planned field operation had been built to turn out enough of the right voters to win close elections, even in the face something like Elon Musk’s pricey but chaotic Republican equivalent. Needless to say, that prediction didn’t turn out too well.

Could a better field campaign have overcome the Biden hangover and low Dem voter enthusiasm? We’ll never know. But judging from the earful of complaints I’ve received from field organizers since the fall, including at February’s RootsCamp, too many Democratic campaigns and organizations have forgotten some of the basic practices that fueled grassroots success a decade ago. I’ve honestly been shocked to hear how much the Democratic state of the art seems to have slipped, in four areas in particular.

The Obama Example

First, let’s start with a shining example of grassroots competence: Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, which turned out voters with data-driven precision and a whole lot of hard work, helping him win the ’08 primary and beat Republican candidates for president twice. One key to his success? His campaign standardized its field operation across the country, as I described in my 2009 ebook on the ’08 digital race:

How the Obama field operation organized their volunteer teams deserves special mention, in part because their grassroots GOTV technology depended on it and also because it provides an excellent model for community-based organizers of all flavors. The structure evolved in the primaries and went national during the general election season. Its critical features:

• The campaign developed a clear team structure for the volunteer operation, replicable just about anywhere and with standard roles for each member. Each volunteer team included a leader (to hold everyone accountable), a data manager (because data doesn’t exist unless it gets in the system), a phone bank coordinator, a campus coordinator and a volunteer coordinator.
• Training was absolutely vital, both for team members and for the individual neighborhood volunteers they organized.
• Teams had clear vote-getting and voter-contact goals and were held accountable for them.
• Example: for the general election, the Obama organization fielded 400 teams in the state of Missouri, supervised by paid campaign staff, with each team covering 8-12 voting precincts and starting work weeks or months before November 4th.

One thing stands out about this system: it required a lot from volunteers, both in terms of training and in actual sweat. To keep them working, the campaign was careful to let them in on the kind of strategy details that campaigns usually strive to hide. One trick to motivating people: let them know how their efforts fit into a larger framework, in this case via David Plouffe’s online video briefings, so that they know that their work has context and is actually valued. If you want to create a successful national grassroots outreach effort, focus on context, training and accountability. I.e., take your people seriously and they’ll return the favor — they want to know that they aren’t just blindly making calls or knocking on doors.

A lot of campaign wisdom in a short block of text! Let’s look at three areas where today’s Democratic campaigns seem to be missing opportunities.

Starting Early

I’ve heard repeatedly from field folks that campaigns were already into GOTV season by the time grassroots organizing got rolling in 2024. That left little time to:

• Recruit volunteers
• Train them, including via mock voter conversations
• Contact voters in person repeatedly to begin to build relationships
• Update voter data with canvassing results
• ID Dem voters who needed shoring up
• ID persuadable voters
• Reach them enough times to make a difference, whether in what they felt about the candidates or in the likelihood they’d turn out.

Instead, since they started so late, canvassers could often drop literature and do little else.

Had they started months earlier, grassroots volunteers and staff could have begun contacting voters well before traditional campaign season. They would have worked in a more relaxed political environment, before TV and digital ads flooded people’s screens and their opinions hardened. As an experienced campaigner pointed out on a recent panel I attended, election season is the most difficult time to start building a narrative. By starting late, Democrats missed the opportunity last year to talk to people when they may still have had an open mind.

They also missed the chance to talk with people repeatedly to build rapport. Instead of catching targets every few weeks over a period of several months, they could only knock on doors or make calls at the last moment and hope someone would answer. They also had fewer chances to hold conversations around less campaign-centric settings such as community gatherings, church services or the local coffee shop, which would allow for serendipitous meetings with voters who may not have appeared on a priority list generated by a data model but whose votes might be up for grabs.

Instead, Democrats need a SUSTAINED presence in communities where elections are likely to be decided, and anywhere else they can afford it, too. Persuasion is a long-term game, and when you start at the last minute, you don’t have much chance to change hearts and minds.

Taking Volunteer Training Seriously

Face-to-face conversation is one of the few things that can break through and reach people in an insanely crowded media environment, but only if those conversations go well. Late-starting field campaigns also give themselves little time to train volunteers to go back-and-forth with voters, some of whom will be skeptical or even hostile.

I’ve heard from 2024 field organizers that their volunteers would usually show up full of enthusiasm, but that too often it didn’t last. They might find themselves stuck in an office with little to do, or they might be sent out to canvass voters without much training or even understanding of how their work fit into the campaign. If they encountered hostile voters, they may not have known how to handle the situation gracefully, leaving them frustrated and demoralized.

When they did manage to hold a successful conversation on the phone or at someone’s door, their lack of experience with the miniVAN or other campaign apps meant that the data they gathered could be inaccurate or unusable. In that case, the campaign wouldn’t really know WHICH data was corrupted, making it harder to trust any of it to be accurate.

By contrast, as we saw above, Obama’s campaigns poured resources into volunteer training, much of which took place remotely via digital video. Zoom wasn’t even a dream in 2008, but YouTube already existed, as did video hosting inside individual websites. Training ensured that members of volunteer teams knew their jobs and knew each other, giving them the confidence to go out and meet voters in the wild.

It also helped them step into their roles before campaign staff were on hand to organize them, letting the campaign build a national field presence months before the general election. Once the campaign itself moved into a particular state, whether in the primary season or as they built out the apparatus in the fall, staff could parachute into an operation that was already running and help it work more efficiently and effectively. They didn’t have to build an entire field operation from scratch and on the fly.

Motivation & Context

Let’s take another look at David Plouffe’s weekly videos from 2008. A problem field campaigns often encounter is finding ways to put people to work productively. Sometimes, they get so many volunteers at once that they don’t have much of substance for them to do. Instead, they may be left stuffing envelopes with little interaction with others or much idea of WHY envelope-stuffing matters.

Naturally, top-down campaigns usually suffer more from this issue, since they leave relatively few decisions to grassroots managers in the first place. And since political people tend to be cagey about campaign strategy on a good day, they’re often reluctant to let junior staff in on the details, much less unvetted volunteers.

By contrast, Plouffe’s videos reflect a mindset that respects volunteers and the grassroots organizing they do. He took a risk by speaking openly on web videos about what the campaign was trying to accomplish, but it paid off. I know Obama volunteers who devoted forty hours a week or more to the campaign for months on end, buoyed by the understanding that their work fit into a well planned machine. By taking volunteers seriously, the campaign ensured that the volunteers would take their work for Obama seriously, too.

Voter Data Feedback Loops

Because Obama’s people trusted their volunteers and invested in their success, the campaign could also trust the data they reported after talking with voters. Unlike Clinton in Michigan in 2016, Obama’s staff used it to help make real decisions about where to put people and money. David Plouffe said after the campaign:

…In our own campaign, polling was just one way we viewed how we were doing in a state in the general election. We had a lot of voter identification work. We had a lot of field data. So we’d put all that together and model out the election in those states every week. So we’d say, okay, if the election were held this week based on all our data, put it all in a blender, where are we? And obviously, with technology today, we could measure this very carefully. We don’t have to wait for a state to report in how they did that night; we can look at it, down to the volunteer level, because we trusted our volunteers. We gave them the voter file, we said here are the people on your block, you go talk to ’em, you record the result of the conversation. We in Chicago could look at that…

…It makes you enormously agile. You’ve got real-time data, and that makes you make scheduling decisions and resource-allocation decisions and where to send surrogates and you’re adjusting those by the end multiple times a day. Not just down to the media market, but down to chunks of voters in those media markets. We’re not doing as well as we need to here, so we’ve got to throw a lot of our resources in there. These guys are making a surge in a media market, we’ve got to go try and correct that.

In 2012, if I remember correctly, those decisions included where to send high-level surrogates such as Michelle Obama herself. After the president’s reelection, Democrats continued to enjoy the fruits of his labors, including in Virginia’s 2013 off-year elections. Terry McAuliffe won a tight race for governor that year in part because of a statewide turnout machine that incorporated the same kind of voter-data feedback loops the Obama campaign employed. But not for long: By 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was happy to tell grassroots staff and volunteers what to do but was much less interested in listening to what they were hearing from voters on the ground.

How Did We Get Here?

Which brings us to the question of how we ended up here. The pandemic clearly played a role, since the Biden campaign and many other Democrats avoided in-person conversations with voters in 2020. Most field organizers are young, and many of those who were working to elect Kamala Harris last year would have had less experience with a robust grassroots operation than their predecessors a decade ago, in the immediate post-Obama era.

But another idea has come up in conversations with field folks: trust. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was run from on high, with little input from the staff and volunteers who were actually talking with voters:

The Clinton campaign was a top-down disaster. Early on at the Brooklyn headquarters, they had come up with a model of who her likely voters were, and a plan based on the assumption that they wouldn’t be able to change the minds of anyone who wasn’t already with her, and that it was about turning out more of the people who were. Nervous for weeks of the final stretch, staffers on the ground begged for more help and attention. They were turned down, told not to worry.

Worked great, didn’t it! In 2020, Covid hamstrung Democratic campaigns, but Biden’s team did have a couple of thousand paid staff on the ground and was at least holding conversations with voters over the phone. Still, with many people stuck at home, the campaign emphasized digital content along with advertising to reach the public.

By the summer of 2024, field seems to have become an afterthought. Biden’s state-level organizers pleaded with leadership for the resources to allow them an early start, but like other parts of the Democratic apparatus last year, the grassroots campaign seemed frozen. Harris’s ascension to the top of the ticket at least opened the spigots, but by the time funding made it down to the people knocking on doors, no time remained for the kind of in-depth voter engagement Obama’s team had emphasized in a dozen years before.

We Can Do Better

How do Democrats get out of this hole? Look to our own past, for a start. Michigan Dems were in a bad place after 2016, but instead of folding, then-Sen. Debbie Stabenow took money out of her own campaign fund to hire field organizers and begin a long-term canvassing operation in the state. From my own experience in Michigan, the state Democratic party also emphasized building the vote from the bottom up, by investing in down-ballot campaigns for state legislature and local offices.

Their work paid off in a Biden victory in 2020 and a successful midterm year in 2022. Trump won the state last November and Dems lost control of the state House of Representatives, but they held on to a U.S. Senate seat and suffered fewer losses down-ballot than they might have in a losing presidential year. Had the party not invested in the infrastructure to reach voters at scale and over time, I suspect they would find themselves in a far worse situation than they are now.

The people who give money to Democratic organizations and the people who run them must take notice. I’d argue that one of the biggest changes has to be cultural. I constantly hear the complaint that big Democratic donors don’t like to pay for infrastructure; they tend to want their name on something more exciting than office rent and the slow grind of talking to voters on the ground. Those among us who have funders’ ears must keep taking them practical plans for long-term persuasion, including field and digital outreach. Small-dollar donors can also help fund new infrastructure, though Dems will have to treat them with the same respect they need to show to field volunteers.

The leaders of Democratic organizations need to embrace the urgent need for sustained engagement, too. Dumping money into advertising at the last minute — much of it on broadcast TV — isn’t enough to win in today’s media environment. By the time voters see ads in September or October, most of them will already have made up their minds, if they see the ads at all.

Real persuasion has to start early, and when possible, it needs to include contact from people whom the targets trust. Those trusted voices can and should include influencers with relevant audiences, but deep canvassing and persistent field campaigning help Democrats talk with the same voters over and over, building rapport and (we hope) opening hearts and minds.

Digital, streaming, cable and broadcast TV advertising can also play a role in long-term persuasion, particularly when they’re reaching the same communities and people campaigns are also targeting for field outreach, as can organic content campaigns. Finally, Democrats can and should mobilize individual supporters and activists to become evangelists within their own social circles.

I’ll have more on those two topics soon, but for now, let’s end on a sober note. Grassroots Democrats have the motivation to help change minds, and many of them have the skills from past campaigns. What they need is resources, leadership and context. It’s up to donors and leaders to make sure they have them, and it’s up to campaigners and practitioners to push donors and leaders to do it. Will we rise to the moment? We’d better.

For more on how Democrats can adapt to 2025’s political and media environment, see:

• How Democrats Ended Up in the Digital Media Ditch
• Sen. Chris Murphy’s Master Class in Modern Digital Communications
• Will Robinson’s recent work, including Building a Media Ecosystem to Meet the Moment

– cpd

Top image: 2008 Obama field team, via Wikimedia

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