Absent among all the finger-pointing over what ails the Democratic Party right now is discussion of all the ways that our campaign machinery is not suited to meet the demands of the moment. One of the best illustrations of this is the difference in how Republicans and Democrats decide what to say to the American people.
Republicans frequently decide what they want people to believe and then use lies, lots of money, and divisive tactics to get tens of millions of people to believe the horseshit they’re peddling.
Democrats, on the other hand, spend hundreds of millions of dollars on polling to essentially stick a very expensive finger in the wind to figure out where they should meet people. Less a theory of leadership, it’s more a way to avoid alienating anyone or taking the risk of proposing a new idea and failing.
Things weren’t always like this. In the old days, if you worked on a Democratic campaign, there were always policy people around generating ideas. Some were terrific, some were terrible, but there were lots of them.
I got my start in politics as a very small cog in a very large wheel of ideas. I’ll date myself by admitting that back then, we’d amass giant file drawers of reports which we used to generate lots of issue papers and memos and come up with policy proposals. Throughout the early years of my time in politics, there were always certified smart people you could call to answer questions and propose solutions.
With the exception of a very few campaigns at the top (races like President, U.S. Senate, and Governor) those days are over.
Today, the vast majority of Democratic campaigns decide what to talk about by hiring pollsters — often at the last minute — and asking consultants to weigh in before the poll goes in the field, usually a few days after you first hear about it. The pollster brings ideas that they have seen “test well” elsewhere, we consultants dump in our favorite messages, everybody hashes the questionnaire out via Google Docs or Zoom for a day or two, and then we ask voters what they think.
That’s it. There’s little to no strategic or philosophical discussion about the direction of the district or state or country, what values or ideals the candidate wants to advance, or how the various poll questions could fit together into a coherent world view. It’s like building an airplane with car parts, bike parts, and some wing flaps. We just get the poll out as fast as we can, plug the best-testing messages into TV, digital, mail, and other channels, and that’s that.
This is pretty depressing when you think about it. We are engaged in an existential battle against nutjobs who want to dominate every facet of society because they’re doing God’s work by implementing the Seven Mountain Mandate. (Look it up. It’s terrifying.) And all we’re bringing to the fight is a list of disconnected tidbits that were marginally more persuasive than the other disconnected tidbits we tested in a poll.
I wish I knew where all the idea people went. Did they go to law school? Get a normal job? Were they abducted by aliens?
Wherever they went, in their absence we’ve become hopelessly inept when it comes to connecting with voters through plans to, you know, make their lives better. We spend a lot of time packaging up polling language as “messages” without first constructing a world view that connects with voters.
Things have gotten so bad that I think we could take a lesson from the authors of Project 2025.
I really, really, really hate those guys, but you gotta hand it to ‘em. Somehow, Russ Vought and a bunch of other budding autocrats who never went to prom got the funding to spend years thinking about nothing but sending America back to pre-modern times.
As a result, on Day One of the Dumbass’s second term he had a fully-baked recipe for the vengeance and destruction he’s wreaking on anyone with the temerity to insist this country should work for women, or Black people, or gay people, or…
Despite the damage Project 2025 is doing to America right now, I think we can learn a lot from the aspiring Pinochets who put it together.
It’s broad. It considers every element of American life: work, home life, school, you name it. Their vision is a wretched caricature of America but it doesn’t leave much out.
It’s compelling. I disagree with every single proposal, but for many people who’ve been left behind in our plutocratic era, Project 25 links their worries and concerns to tangible policies and solutions.
It’s actionable. For every big-picture concern and American value they argue has been disregarded, the diabolical draftsmen of P25 provide a detailed to-do list about how to stick it to everyone that doesn’t own a MAGA hat.
I’m not arguing that we should have our own Project 2029. But I do believe we need to radically restructure the way that ideas get germinated in Democratic politics.
Next time, I’ll offer a few suggestions for how Democrats can start generating the ideas we need to inspire Americans from all walks of life.
2,763 is designed to encourage candid discussions about how we let that dumbass win twice and how we can prevent similarly terrible things from happening in the future. I’d love to know what you think, if you disagree, and if there are other hard questions that you think should be on the table. Everything is fair game, because, well, it needs to be at this point.