Why Democrats need to have a 24/7/365 conversation with the American people.
If I say the words, “fast food,” what do you think of?
Chances are, the first thought that came into your head featured a mouth-watering Big Mac, the Hamburglar (for readers of a certain vintage), or one of the earworm jingles that the McDonald’s Corporation has spent decades embedding into our psyche.
Even if you can’t stand eating under the Golden Arches, the company’s unquestionable success in positioning itself as the quintessential American fast food (or in today’s term, “fast service”) has created a situation where every new competitor in this space — be it healthy burritos or very unhealthy corndogs — inevitably faces a comparison with Mickey D’s.
A big part of McDonald’s success can be traced to its never-ending advertising on every surface that can be advertised on (or in). The company spends billions of dollars every year to make sure that no TV, billboard, iPhone, or flat surface in this great nation of ours is bereft of its ads.
And this advertising onslaught never pauses. In fact, that’s one constant I can remember throughout my life. We’ve gone from cassettes to Spotify and Must Watch TV to YouTube TV, but McDonald’s has had a table reserved in my subconscious for as long as I can remember.
The notion that consistent and continuous communication makes a big impact is not controversial among the consumer goods companies, local health departments, and weird companies selling wacky products in your newsfeed that all understand the benefit of shellacking people with never-ending appeals.
But then there’s the Democratic Party.
Today, when media of every sort is deluging us at home, work, soccer games, and in the bathroom (don’t judge), the Democratic Party still largely operates a bespoke media approach, of interest to those few voters who wait until after Labor Day every two or four years to start thinking about who to vote for.
If you’ve been shellacked by Russian bots and Fox News messaging for 9 or 20 or 50 months before you start receiving videos of the Democratic candidate talking to-camera about Very Important Topics, guess which party wins that contest.
This disparity in communications sequencing is yet another instance where Democratic campaigns haven’t kept pace with the many changes in how Americans receive and process information.
We’re the yeoman farmer leisurely plowing the field behind his beloved steed while the Republicans are running an industrial mega farm and pumping designer chemicals into the local grade school’s water supply.
How did we reach this point? I think there are four main reasons.
Nobody wants to be first. A curious logic has evolved among many Democratic and progressive donors where nobody wants to be the first one to contribute to a candidate, a PAC, or a campaign. Sure, there’s plenty of money raised every fundraising quarter, but much of the big money — the money that makes the difference — stays on the sidelines until late in the election cycle. There are likely a lot of reasons why the person who cuts the check doesn’t want to be first (and maybe wrong) but this reluctance to be first-to-market hamstrings Democrats while Republicans are piling up a big advantage among voters.
Our campaign calendar is from 1958. I often joke that if I could buy everyone in Democratic politics a single gift, it would be a calendar. The election always comes on the same Tuesday in November, but in many regions of the Democratic world, people act like they have all the time in the world throughout the winter, spring, and deep into summer when endorsements — and money — finally start to flow. Meanwhile, MAGA has been assaulting our candidates and our brand for months.
A scarcity mindset. As hard as it is to believe from looking at the vast sums spent during the 2024 election cycle, many spending decisions in the Democratic world are still made from a scarcity mindset. There’s a general fear that the money will run out before Election Day so we need to hold our resources until late in the cycle. As a result, late money floods into campaigns that have trouble figuring out ways to spend it, resulting in a situation that a good friend of mine refers to as having “more money than sense.”
Resistance to change. I’ve spent a lot of time in this newsletter explaining why I think Democrats’ resistance to changing our tactics and strategy is placing not only our party but our nation at risk. The late-starting nature of our campaigns is Exhibit A. And while I can hear some people saying, “Well, we only had 107 days to beat Trump in 2024,” there were a thousand days before that where we clearly didn’t do enough to set the stage for a successful electoral environment.
So how do we change this sorry state of affairs?
Instead of offering a five-point plan for earlier and better campaigning, I’ll relay a story my therapist tells me when I pay her to patiently listen to me explain how I’ve done the same dumb thing yet again.
The story goes like this. You’re walking down the street and you see a hole in front of you. It doesn’t look too deep, so you assume you can walk right through it and you try. As a result, you fall into a deep chasm and need to be rescued by your local Fire Department.
The next week, you’re walking down the same sidewalk, a little older and a little wiser. This time, when you see the hole you tell yourself that you’re not going to let that damn void in the concrete get the best of you this time and you attempt to hop over it. This works out about as well as your first attempt did and you sheepishly await help getting out of the hole as you sit at its muddy bottom.
Finally, a few weeks later, you’re ambling down the street heading to a meeting. It’s a beautiful day, the birds are chirping, and the sun is shining. Suddenly, you spot the hole, which has been vexing you for weeks. And you know what you do? You walk around it.
That’s it. You just decide to stop stepping in that damn hole.
And just that simply, you change the situation and your life.
So I guess my advice for Democratic campaign pros who can’t understand why liars and frauds and sex criminals keep winning campaigns is simple: “Stop stepping in the hole.”