Actually I agree with Sen Chris Murphy here. The amount of work required to pull together a Shadow Cabinet, given the competition behind the scenes for each role, makes this a nonstarter. I mean, if the ex-President still held sway over the party, he could theoretically impose the order needed to create such a thing. Snyder’s idea is unrealistic.
That's a great point, and I hadn't heard it. Maybe something to build towards, long term, but not going to happen anytime soon and therefore not worth our near-term energy. Thank you for pointing that out. A straight-up briefing a la Marty Walsh is a great way to give us a focal point, to unify the energy. At the moment, there is just so much great stuff swirling around, but it's diffused like an essential oil atomizer.
If the amount of work is the problem, this sends a negative message: they won’t do the work but keep telling We the People must fight. Send us money, Fight, Show us you’re committed to democracy, We’re in it together. Sorry to say they don’t sound helpless, they sound classist, performing some kind of imagined togetherness. It is worrisome because Trump’s using similar messaging but https://www.garbageday.email/p/you-can-never-truly-go-back
I'd like to know how you did that. I delete, I block, I unsubscribe, I type out STOP in all caps, but the asks keeping coming like zombies in the Night of the Living Dead. I blame Obama. In 2008, he collected all our contact info, promising to have an ongoing dialog with his base, with surveys, televised town halls etc, on policy and legislation. But all we got was an unending stream of campaign donation solicitations from folks who got their hands on promiscuously distributed mailing lists.
I feel like the problem is new entities and candidates keep acquiring the 2024 lists. If you give even semi-regularly, you're subjected to a never-ending deluge. They're punching their gift horse(s) in the mouth. I'm not insider enough to be sure what the solution is, but it seems like something the DNC could address one way or another.
The problem with "organizing" as it is understood by the Democratic electoral industrial complex is (when people are involved at all) hiring people to deliver text, phone, or front door messages, their responses they use sed to sort them into easily targeted catagories who will be subject to further messaging. Politics for all its problems, at one time was about people who would engage, argue, persuade, compromise with other people. Alas, politics has now become a form of transactional electoral marketing rooted in data points and fueled by unlimited purchasing power in lieu of relational electoral engagement rooted in conversation among human beings and often fueled by genuine, often values based, source of motivation - a unique, and particularly American transformation of the "means of electoral production" from people based to algorithm based. This is what enables Democrats campaigns to confuse trying to tell people what they ought to feel with listening to what people do feel. Rock bottom can be a moment in which we must confront the reality that what we've been doing is not working, so we have get on a different - and more humanized - pathway.
This is all true. What I’m pointing to is the need for people who are upset at what is going on to get organized talking to others unlike them to start that process of listening and engagement. The lists and infrastructure don’t inherently have to be used the way the Democratic electoral industrial complex generally uses them. Indeed, we’ve had some candidates who deliberately ran their campaigns differently (and Marshall you were part of some of those!). Every Democrat in office could be doing this now; we have to shift people’s understanding of what is possible.
What I learned deep canvassing in Pennsylvania this cycle: The Dems need a plan to make housing affordable, for both renters or buyers. They need a plan to make health care more accessible and more affordable. The Dems need an environmental program that is strong and easy to understand. If they seemed committed to this and a powerful consistent messaging, repeated over and over and presented in an accessible way, it would counter what the Republicans did. I keep thinking about the disaffected Democrats I spoke with who are not paying much attention to the chaos we see since Trump took office. I suspect they don't think it has anything to do with them, and they don't care. At least not until planes start crashing, food is more expensive and unsafe, and drugs and vaccines are unavailable
Thanks for the shoutout, Micah. The daily public briefing is such a ridiculously simple, low-lift thing they could be doing right now, And you are right about the reasons why it's not happening. Meanwhile...
It feels to me that it has to be someone who has the resources and connections to employ an inside/outside strategy, but I'd be happy to hear that I am overthinking it.
You know better than I do what the Democratic landscape looks like right now but I have no hope for current leadership. My feeling is that if the left wing can unify, they can motivate an anxious and disgusted segment of voters - the ones most likely to be activists. Maybe the centrists will catch on over time.
We don’t need every vote to lead. But we must demonstrate leadership every day.
It feels like so much of the leadership is just sitting back and waiting for a swing of the pendulum. They don’t want to upset the donors.
There’s no perfect message. Buying social ads and spamming people is not going to win.
The answer is pretty straightforward. It’s not rocket science, it’s politics.
The daily briefing should in part be about empowering people to have conversations with others that are not involved and drive them to get fired up. It should be about going into a bar, bringing up a topic that’s going to be favorable for us and persuading others.
This will never be the answer because there’s not 10 to 15% of the ad buy kickback percentage for buying your neighbor a drink.
We need the million workers that are feeling under threat and the millions of allies to find the nearest person to them that’s persuadable and get them involved. Not a revolutionary idea, But it works.
We also have to acknowledge that people are suffering right now. And we give a shit. Actual jobs, support, aid, etc. Figuring out how to help people that are in trouble. Make sure we bring food to rallies.
You have some, leave some, if you need some take some.
The party should be spending some money on folks. The Democrats should take up some money to step in and actually help in crisis.
There are nonprofits and other organizations that are power building and doing effective messaging.
If elected leadership can’t figure out how to help and message, they should at least be pointing to every single one of these groups and encouraging voters and others to join them. People can belong to more than one thing at a time! There is no prohibition from elected officials, politicians or political parties, driving attention support, and even dollars to local nonprofits that are solving problems in people’s lives.
I’m headed back soon. The local media NEPA has been sucked up by conservative owners, so it is not a fair barometer.
I’m still getting my head around a plan and who the players are. The local Mayor in Scranton Paige Coggnetti is a real leader. She is one to watch and support. She is a real powerhouse and Democratic voice in the region.
A big part of the economy in Northeast PA is healthcare, universities, and military manufacturing ( Ukraine ). The older population really depends on Medicare . Oil and gas give the northeast portion of the state nothing but pollution as the jobs in fracking are more northcentral and west. I don’t think the people that I knew in Pennsylvania ever liked the idea of mismanagement on a grand scale. They all know that there is waste, but I don’t think people are into the haphazard way of cutting it or not following a logical process for making cuts.
They are not a Silicon Valley type folks. We have the experience of watching entire industries collapse. There is a wisdom about things that comes from enduring the collapse of textiles and coal. And a legacy of large companies just lying their faces off.
Three congressional seats are critical in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania 10, 7th, and 8th. They are all flip targets immediately .
Trying to find local leaders to support each of those areas is critical right now. We need candidates so that the anger and public response that’s coming now is able to crystallize into organized power building resistance.
SHUT IT DOWN. Congressional Democrats should refuse to vote for a continuing resolution to fund government when the current one expires March 14. Right now the appropriations previously determined by Congress are being ignored and overridden by our unelected acting president Elon Musk. Until Congress can grow a spine and figure out how to get their power back, any additional money being ordered up is just money to pay Elon his $8 million a day, and fund his sacking and pillaging of the federal government. It’s creating a private slush fund for Elon. Why give him more cash?
Three things the Democrats could do besides adopting the fetal position and taking a position of helplessness raises some great points. The fact that Sen. Schumer and Rep Jeffries are NOT great communicators - is the most important one. I would add that what the Democratic Party needs is not ONE resistance spokesperson but SEVERAL - who would address the groups where they have creds and hammer home the RIGHT messages but perhaps in a different order and in a manner that speaks to those groups. The GOP has its Latino and Latina voices shouting loud in southern Florida, the DEMS do not. And I wouldn't expect Pete Buttegieg to be a hit there, but maybe in other more white areas.
I agree. I’ve lived in the west, southwest, a year in New York, family in New England and now live in Iowa. Each totally different in priorities, knowledge of politics, breakdown of population by age etc. We are a very diverse population as we’ve evolved. Thus, yes, you would need several daily speakers, especially younger because Gen Z’s have become a smaller population and are still under 50% registered to vote. You don’t see increases until age 40 and by 60’s and up, it increases to 75+ for those 75 and up!
After following Sifry's link to Indivisible’s 'Payback Project', I discovered Indivisible's endorsement of Ben Wikler for DNC Chair dated Jan. 27th. Of course, Wikler lost to the more established/establishment Ken Martin, but it shows how little say a major grassroots organization like Indivisible has within the Democratic Party.
Who's party is it? Certainly not Indivisible's, nor Move On's, nor any of the left wing grassroots organizations that constantly ask their members to donate time and effort to help get D's elected. Makes you wonder why citizens want to support a political party that they have no say in?
I hope these dem elites realize that at this point, we of the democratic base dislike them much more than they dislike us. And I wish they would stop whining.
I was at the same local Indivisible meeting, which Congressman Latimer attended briefly, and am sorry we (the collective "we") failed to quiz him on the Gaza "Riviera" concept. It was just a few days after President Trump had first sprung this one on the world and maybe we all thought it was one of Trump's crazy, off-the-cuff throwaway lines that would quickly fade away after a burst of comedic ridicule online and on late night TV....but no such thing happens anymore. The idea is still out there without refutation by Prime Minister Netanyahu or any other Trump enablers, at home or abroad. We need our elective representatives to strongly, loudly and repeatedly call out even silly-sounding genocidal ideas. This applies even to those --- rather, ESPECIALLY to those --- whose candidacies were conceived by, and bought and paid for, those forces in accord with the Israeli government's strategy and tactics, as abetted by US. And even more especially it would apply to one who has now been appointed to the Middle East/North Africa subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee!
Here is the thing, Trump told us exactly what he was going to do. Project 2025 laid it out. What did Schumer et Al do for 2 months after the election? 🤔 Nothing but probably go to fundraisers in the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard.
I feel sorry for the Dems. Most were not elected to be the "resistance" to Trump. They had some vague ideas about abortion, climate change, and health care and that is it. They are not social media experts. They are not national leaders. They never wanted to be.
To make it worse, the whole system is based on seniority and age. So any leader that does emerge (AOC) is pushed to the back of the bus to wait for decades until it is her turn.
Remember, the anti Vietnam War Movement was not led by elected officials, but by citizens (you)
The ant-Vietnam (and anti Cambodia and Laos bombing) war movement brought students like me into the streets, by the millions. The message didn't have to be crafted by consultants on payroll, the marchers knew what they were about. Today, the shocked Democrats are aware that the values and the institutions that brought the United States great wealth, power and influence in the world, are under total attack by the MAGA and DOGE teams. But, they seem only to have a NEGATIVE message about how bad it might be. The real message is that CRIMINALS, TERRORISTS and foreign countries are going to eat us alive without strong US government institutions - and courts. I don't think they are perceived as protectors and reformers - limiting corporate power and dictators - but rather as enablers who had their chance but didn't do it.
We started w a well-organized local county Democratic Party. We studied the indivisible guide (indivisible.org) and decided to work w what we already had rather than set up an indivisible chapter (meanwhile someone else did, which is great). We are organized by state legislative district locally. We keep in touch w legislators at all levels, w unions, w orgs such as ACLU and state/local food bank, regularly knock on neighbors’ doors, identify needs for mutual aid…. And of course get out the vote in every single election.
Good ideas, all. So stop complaining about “the Dems” and do those things you think “they” don’t want to do. There’s nothing here you can’t do locally (organizing? town halls? amplifying what Pete Buttigieg says?). Wake up sheeple.
The Democratic leadership is pretty hopeless. I'm a little less down on left liberal civil society'--unions, non profits, faith based etc. what exactly have they been up to in this moment? Explore that please.
I see nothing about Dems doing anything about us oi polloi in terms of making our lives better. All I read was how to convince people vote for them through 1)Money 2)Town Halls that will not be attended by a plurality. Depressing
I’m not sure they fully grasp how poorly the fundraising emails and texts come across right now.
Very intrigued by the daily briefing idea. Hope that can get some legs.
Yes! Like Snyder's Shadow Cabinet. This will give us a voice. Love it.
Actually I agree with Sen Chris Murphy here. The amount of work required to pull together a Shadow Cabinet, given the competition behind the scenes for each role, makes this a nonstarter. I mean, if the ex-President still held sway over the party, he could theoretically impose the order needed to create such a thing. Snyder’s idea is unrealistic.
That's a great point, and I hadn't heard it. Maybe something to build towards, long term, but not going to happen anytime soon and therefore not worth our near-term energy. Thank you for pointing that out. A straight-up briefing a la Marty Walsh is a great way to give us a focal point, to unify the energy. At the moment, there is just so much great stuff swirling around, but it's diffused like an essential oil atomizer.
Good Ideas! I like weekly Town Hall Meetings in area impacted by policies.
If the amount of work is the problem, this sends a negative message: they won’t do the work but keep telling We the People must fight. Send us money, Fight, Show us you’re committed to democracy, We’re in it together. Sorry to say they don’t sound helpless, they sound classist, performing some kind of imagined togetherness. It is worrisome because Trump’s using similar messaging but https://www.garbageday.email/p/you-can-never-truly-go-back
I've blocked them all.
I'd like to know how you did that. I delete, I block, I unsubscribe, I type out STOP in all caps, but the asks keeping coming like zombies in the Night of the Living Dead. I blame Obama. In 2008, he collected all our contact info, promising to have an ongoing dialog with his base, with surveys, televised town halls etc, on policy and legislation. But all we got was an unending stream of campaign donation solicitations from folks who got their hands on promiscuously distributed mailing lists.
I feel like the problem is new entities and candidates keep acquiring the 2024 lists. If you give even semi-regularly, you're subjected to a never-ending deluge. They're punching their gift horse(s) in the mouth. I'm not insider enough to be sure what the solution is, but it seems like something the DNC could address one way or another.
Try marking them as spam in your email client. Phone, I have no idea.
Agree. Plus I don’t think we can buy our way out of creeping fascism and magauthoritarianism.
The problem with "organizing" as it is understood by the Democratic electoral industrial complex is (when people are involved at all) hiring people to deliver text, phone, or front door messages, their responses they use sed to sort them into easily targeted catagories who will be subject to further messaging. Politics for all its problems, at one time was about people who would engage, argue, persuade, compromise with other people. Alas, politics has now become a form of transactional electoral marketing rooted in data points and fueled by unlimited purchasing power in lieu of relational electoral engagement rooted in conversation among human beings and often fueled by genuine, often values based, source of motivation - a unique, and particularly American transformation of the "means of electoral production" from people based to algorithm based. This is what enables Democrats campaigns to confuse trying to tell people what they ought to feel with listening to what people do feel. Rock bottom can be a moment in which we must confront the reality that what we've been doing is not working, so we have get on a different - and more humanized - pathway.
This is all true. What I’m pointing to is the need for people who are upset at what is going on to get organized talking to others unlike them to start that process of listening and engagement. The lists and infrastructure don’t inherently have to be used the way the Democratic electoral industrial complex generally uses them. Indeed, we’ve had some candidates who deliberately ran their campaigns differently (and Marshall you were part of some of those!). Every Democrat in office could be doing this now; we have to shift people’s understanding of what is possible.
What I learned deep canvassing in Pennsylvania this cycle: The Dems need a plan to make housing affordable, for both renters or buyers. They need a plan to make health care more accessible and more affordable. The Dems need an environmental program that is strong and easy to understand. If they seemed committed to this and a powerful consistent messaging, repeated over and over and presented in an accessible way, it would counter what the Republicans did. I keep thinking about the disaffected Democrats I spoke with who are not paying much attention to the chaos we see since Trump took office. I suspect they don't think it has anything to do with them, and they don't care. At least not until planes start crashing, food is more expensive and unsafe, and drugs and vaccines are unavailable
Thanks for the shoutout, Micah. The daily public briefing is such a ridiculously simple, low-lift thing they could be doing right now, And you are right about the reasons why it's not happening. Meanwhile...
Simple means hard for dems
Joyce, if there's not a path for an elected Dem to do this, isn't there someone else who can?
It feels to me that it has to be someone who has the resources and connections to employ an inside/outside strategy, but I'd be happy to hear that I am overthinking it.
You know better than I do what the Democratic landscape looks like right now but I have no hope for current leadership. My feeling is that if the left wing can unify, they can motivate an anxious and disgusted segment of voters - the ones most likely to be activists. Maybe the centrists will catch on over time.
We need to be talking to regular people though. That's a critical element.
We are not in power, but we are not powerless.
We don’t need every vote to lead. But we must demonstrate leadership every day.
It feels like so much of the leadership is just sitting back and waiting for a swing of the pendulum. They don’t want to upset the donors.
There’s no perfect message. Buying social ads and spamming people is not going to win.
The answer is pretty straightforward. It’s not rocket science, it’s politics.
The daily briefing should in part be about empowering people to have conversations with others that are not involved and drive them to get fired up. It should be about going into a bar, bringing up a topic that’s going to be favorable for us and persuading others.
This will never be the answer because there’s not 10 to 15% of the ad buy kickback percentage for buying your neighbor a drink.
We need the million workers that are feeling under threat and the millions of allies to find the nearest person to them that’s persuadable and get them involved. Not a revolutionary idea, But it works.
We also have to acknowledge that people are suffering right now. And we give a shit. Actual jobs, support, aid, etc. Figuring out how to help people that are in trouble. Make sure we bring food to rallies.
You have some, leave some, if you need some take some.
The party should be spending some money on folks. The Democrats should take up some money to step in and actually help in crisis.
There are nonprofits and other organizations that are power building and doing effective messaging.
If elected leadership can’t figure out how to help and message, they should at least be pointing to every single one of these groups and encouraging voters and others to join them. People can belong to more than one thing at a time! There is no prohibition from elected officials, politicians or political parties, driving attention support, and even dollars to local nonprofits that are solving problems in people’s lives.
Marty, I know you were in the thick of things this past summer/fall in Scranton, PA. Are you still organizing there? What's the mood?
I’m headed back soon. The local media NEPA has been sucked up by conservative owners, so it is not a fair barometer.
I’m still getting my head around a plan and who the players are. The local Mayor in Scranton Paige Coggnetti is a real leader. She is one to watch and support. She is a real powerhouse and Democratic voice in the region.
A big part of the economy in Northeast PA is healthcare, universities, and military manufacturing ( Ukraine ). The older population really depends on Medicare . Oil and gas give the northeast portion of the state nothing but pollution as the jobs in fracking are more northcentral and west. I don’t think the people that I knew in Pennsylvania ever liked the idea of mismanagement on a grand scale. They all know that there is waste, but I don’t think people are into the haphazard way of cutting it or not following a logical process for making cuts.
They are not a Silicon Valley type folks. We have the experience of watching entire industries collapse. There is a wisdom about things that comes from enduring the collapse of textiles and coal. And a legacy of large companies just lying their faces off.
Three congressional seats are critical in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania 10, 7th, and 8th. They are all flip targets immediately .
Trying to find local leaders to support each of those areas is critical right now. We need candidates so that the anger and public response that’s coming now is able to crystallize into organized power building resistance.
SHUT IT DOWN. Congressional Democrats should refuse to vote for a continuing resolution to fund government when the current one expires March 14. Right now the appropriations previously determined by Congress are being ignored and overridden by our unelected acting president Elon Musk. Until Congress can grow a spine and figure out how to get their power back, any additional money being ordered up is just money to pay Elon his $8 million a day, and fund his sacking and pillaging of the federal government. It’s creating a private slush fund for Elon. Why give him more cash?
Three things the Democrats could do besides adopting the fetal position and taking a position of helplessness raises some great points. The fact that Sen. Schumer and Rep Jeffries are NOT great communicators - is the most important one. I would add that what the Democratic Party needs is not ONE resistance spokesperson but SEVERAL - who would address the groups where they have creds and hammer home the RIGHT messages but perhaps in a different order and in a manner that speaks to those groups. The GOP has its Latino and Latina voices shouting loud in southern Florida, the DEMS do not. And I wouldn't expect Pete Buttegieg to be a hit there, but maybe in other more white areas.
I agree. I’ve lived in the west, southwest, a year in New York, family in New England and now live in Iowa. Each totally different in priorities, knowledge of politics, breakdown of population by age etc. We are a very diverse population as we’ve evolved. Thus, yes, you would need several daily speakers, especially younger because Gen Z’s have become a smaller population and are still under 50% registered to vote. You don’t see increases until age 40 and by 60’s and up, it increases to 75+ for those 75 and up!
After following Sifry's link to Indivisible’s 'Payback Project', I discovered Indivisible's endorsement of Ben Wikler for DNC Chair dated Jan. 27th. Of course, Wikler lost to the more established/establishment Ken Martin, but it shows how little say a major grassroots organization like Indivisible has within the Democratic Party.
Who's party is it? Certainly not Indivisible's, nor Move On's, nor any of the left wing grassroots organizations that constantly ask their members to donate time and effort to help get D's elected. Makes you wonder why citizens want to support a political party that they have no say in?
Very well said!
I hope these dem elites realize that at this point, we of the democratic base dislike them much more than they dislike us. And I wish they would stop whining.
I was at the same local Indivisible meeting, which Congressman Latimer attended briefly, and am sorry we (the collective "we") failed to quiz him on the Gaza "Riviera" concept. It was just a few days after President Trump had first sprung this one on the world and maybe we all thought it was one of Trump's crazy, off-the-cuff throwaway lines that would quickly fade away after a burst of comedic ridicule online and on late night TV....but no such thing happens anymore. The idea is still out there without refutation by Prime Minister Netanyahu or any other Trump enablers, at home or abroad. We need our elective representatives to strongly, loudly and repeatedly call out even silly-sounding genocidal ideas. This applies even to those --- rather, ESPECIALLY to those --- whose candidacies were conceived by, and bought and paid for, those forces in accord with the Israeli government's strategy and tactics, as abetted by US. And even more especially it would apply to one who has now been appointed to the Middle East/North Africa subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee!
Here is the thing, Trump told us exactly what he was going to do. Project 2025 laid it out. What did Schumer et Al do for 2 months after the election? 🤔 Nothing but probably go to fundraisers in the Hamptons and Martha's Vineyard.
I feel sorry for the Dems. Most were not elected to be the "resistance" to Trump. They had some vague ideas about abortion, climate change, and health care and that is it. They are not social media experts. They are not national leaders. They never wanted to be.
To make it worse, the whole system is based on seniority and age. So any leader that does emerge (AOC) is pushed to the back of the bus to wait for decades until it is her turn.
Remember, the anti Vietnam War Movement was not led by elected officials, but by citizens (you)
The ant-Vietnam (and anti Cambodia and Laos bombing) war movement brought students like me into the streets, by the millions. The message didn't have to be crafted by consultants on payroll, the marchers knew what they were about. Today, the shocked Democrats are aware that the values and the institutions that brought the United States great wealth, power and influence in the world, are under total attack by the MAGA and DOGE teams. But, they seem only to have a NEGATIVE message about how bad it might be. The real message is that CRIMINALS, TERRORISTS and foreign countries are going to eat us alive without strong US government institutions - and courts. I don't think they are perceived as protectors and reformers - limiting corporate power and dictators - but rather as enablers who had their chance but didn't do it.
PS-I’m already doing those things on the local level. You can, too!
Great! Any lessons you want to share on how to build your local group successfully?
We started w a well-organized local county Democratic Party. We studied the indivisible guide (indivisible.org) and decided to work w what we already had rather than set up an indivisible chapter (meanwhile someone else did, which is great). We are organized by state legislative district locally. We keep in touch w legislators at all levels, w unions, w orgs such as ACLU and state/local food bank, regularly knock on neighbors’ doors, identify needs for mutual aid…. And of course get out the vote in every single election.
Good ideas, all. So stop complaining about “the Dems” and do those things you think “they” don’t want to do. There’s nothing here you can’t do locally (organizing? town halls? amplifying what Pete Buttigieg says?). Wake up sheeple.
The Democratic leadership is pretty hopeless. I'm a little less down on left liberal civil society'--unions, non profits, faith based etc. what exactly have they been up to in this moment? Explore that please.
Actually slightly MORE than a majority of voters didn't vote for Trump, as he didn't clear 50%.
I see nothing about Dems doing anything about us oi polloi in terms of making our lives better. All I read was how to convince people vote for them through 1)Money 2)Town Halls that will not be attended by a plurality. Depressing