Ten Good Perspectives: What Democratic Campaigns & Communicators Need to Do NOW

Weekend reading that's well worth your time

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What Democratic Campaigns & 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