So Let’s Put Together a Democratic Party Ad Campaign
Photo by Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0
The Democrats have had a bad couple of weeks when it comes to messaging. One of the first big mistakes was, apparently, this tweet right here:
Here’s what Democrats did in February: pic.twitter.com/tHhyLTkOyN
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) February 28, 2025
Let’s get our “Graphic Design Is My Passion” jokes out of the way and merely note that it’s a wall of text that is not particularly inviting. Well, the intertubes noted the heck out of that and came up with a bunch of invective. So *MUCH* invective that the DNC Chief Media Officer got defensive about it.
“the “check out this giant laundry list” template always used to bang for us. it’s full of tiny text on purpose!! but the internet thinks we are morons this time.”
It only got more defensive from there.
A couple of days later, there was a bunch of Democratic Politicians who all started posting the same thing. A clip from Trump and then a short speech.
Here’s Cory Booker reading it:
Sh*t That Ain't True: Trump promised to lower prices on day one, but costs have only gone up. pic.twitter.com/XovVlAogOt
— Sen. Cory Booker (@SenBooker) March 4, 2025
And here’s one of the critics who found film of 20 Senators all reading the same thing:
Wild.
22 Senators, all Democrats, were just caught using the same script and clips word-for-word.
Most important question: WHO IS WRITING THE SCRIPT?
* * * pic.twitter.com/xOgJSYC9Bl
— Professor Iratus Genium (@PGenium) March 4, 2025
Instead of this being an opportunity for people to say “Finally! The Democrats have a clear message and they’re all on the same page for once!”, this was, instead, an opportunity to ask “WHO IS THE PUPPETMASTER WRITING THE SCRIPTS FOR THESE PUPPETS TO READ?!?”
There was a whirlwind of activity and Elon Musk even offered a Cybertruck to whomever found out who wrote the speech. And, as it turns out, it was Corey Booker.
Clearly you are triggered by the truth.
It was me. Keep your truck. https://t.co/Ub99KTjfFa
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) March 4, 2025
In both cases, hey, I can see what they were going for and, hey, the message didn’t hit. These things happen.
Well, there was also a State of the Union address and Donald Trump gave an incendiary speech and, hey, Trump got heckled a bit at the beginning. They had to call in the House Sergeant at Arms to escort Al Green to a place where he could yell without disturbing the speech. Al Green gave a firey speech on the floor the next day saying “I’d do it again!” and then got bipartisanly censured the day after that.
And, worse than that, Mediaite is reporting that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is calling the most agitated in his caucus to his office and explaining to them why this is not working.
A source insisted that the members in question were “not getting yelled at.”
“They are not being talked to like they are children. We are helping them understand why their strategy is a bad idea,” the source said.
As I said: A bad couple of weeks.
They aren’t doing a good job when it comes to messaging. Let’s brainstorm. What message would work? What would go viral, get people to laugh and think a little, and, most importantly, get squishy people in the middle to come back to the Democrats as we build up to the most important election of our lifetimes?
What stunt do *YOU* suggest?
Democrats – the party that makes America work for all the people.Report
Okay, my thought is that the Democrats have a bit of a problem right now with the whole “Omnicause” thing. It’s probably not their biggest problem but it’s adjacent to their biggest problem and so one of the best ways to tackle that is to deny that it exists.
I like what Corey Booker was kinda trying to do but by giving a full script he screwed up.
What you need is to allow each of your politicians’ personalities to shine through.
Have Elizabeth Warren give her response to what Trump said and then get all Warren on it. Classic Warren. Have her talk about the “nickeled and dimed” stuff as only she can. When Schumer gives his response, have him talk about Brooklyn and Queens, like it’s the early 80s (when he started as just a Congressman). You’ve got other senators and congressmen from other parts of the country and get them to do it BUT MAKE IT THEIR OWN. Have Fetterman give a Fetterman response that is pure Pittsburgh. Have Marie Gluesenkamp Perez come out and talk about the need to be more West Coastian in our responses to Trump. Bring in Gavin Newsom. Bring it Pritzker.
One of the points to make in the middle of the speech is “we don’t all agree on everything but we do agree on THIS:” and then put in something about America Works Hard and We’re Working Hard for You! or something like that. Talk about the importance of fairness and justice and whatnot. But have each individual politician make it their own because each one has a charming personality and let each person be charming while talking about what they care about.
We don’t all agree on everything… but we agree on (positive message) and we agree that we all have to stand up against the worst things that Trump wants to do.
And the positive message has to be broad. It’s a big tent. You don’t have to agree with everybody on everything. You just have to agree that America Can Do Better.Report
I really like this suggestion Jaybird, I think it does a good job of combing coordination and individuality.
I also recommend Radley Balko’s recent article discussing what the Democrats could do to act as an effective opposition:
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/three-things-the-democrats-can-doReport
I like Balko and his three suggestions strike me as fodder for the choir, not the heathen.
I see why the choir would like them… but we’re trying to get people back. I’d give Koz a similar speech about how this isn’t about people who voted for Trump either.
The one thing I might incorporate from his suggestion might be a little contrition “okay, we got over our skis… we understand why we were a less attractive choice and we’ve changed. Here’s how.”
“Look at how awful Donald Trump is!” might not work because I’m not sure that what you see as awful will resonate. Seriously, have Jamie Raskin come out and talk about DEI?!? Are you trying to get Vance elected?!?
But the town halls idea is good. Dems should do that.Report
Yeah yeah. And I’d tell you that trying to get people back is a bad thing to be about in the first place. I did tell you that in fact.
Trying to get people back is in the abstract a reasonable thing to want to do for a political party but we’re not in the abstract. For the American Democratic Party in 2025, it’s a misperception of its situation and an attempt to address a problem at the wrong level.
The problem of the Democratic Party is who they are, what their intentions are, want they want. Who the Demos are caused what what the Demos did (at the policy level) which caused what the Demos said (at the message level).
Trying to improve the circumstances of their situation at the message level without addressing who they are and what they did, that’s not the solution to anything, _that_ is the problem.
A problem, I should note, that you correctly criticized them for:
Going thru all the little tactics and all the little flaws of the Demos’ message and persona
(and all of its successes for that matter) is a stupid exercise. This iteration of the Democratic Party is _supposed to lose_. It might be different for a different party.
Therefore, the challenge for the Democrats right now is how to be a different party that’s worthy of winning, instead of how to be the same party just more electorally successful.Report
The Republicans under Mittler might have been a party worthy of winning compared to Obummer but it wasn’t until the Orangefarbener Korporal pulled off a win against arguably the weakest Democratic candidate since Mondale (and he only SQUEAKED a W out).
2020 was weird. BLM, Covid, Impeachment Numero Uno…
And now 2024 had him win against the weakest Democratic candidate since Mondale.
I’m not seeing “worthy of winning” anywhere.Report
Well yeah. In America we have the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Republicans are not the Democrats and the Democrats are not the Republicans. The are not situated in the same place, and they don’t have the same problems.
Libs want to believe the GOP isn’t worthy of winning, or governing. Unfortunately for them, in reality that’s not the GOP’s problem. That’s the Demos’ problem, as we talked about above.
GOP’s problem is about how we break the sclerosis of PMC-entitled governance while preserving the appearance and reality of normality of government, the economy, and culture.
Demos are finding it hard now to a significant extent because for them to address their issues given their situation would require them to really look hard at their situation and how they got there and it’s just too painful for them.Report
Libs want to believe the GOP isn’t worthy of winning, or governing. Unfortunately for them, in reality that’s not the GOP’s problem. That’s the Demos’ problem, as we talked about above.
It is the year 2021. Change the nouns.
That’s where we are.Report
What’s PMC?Report
Professional Managerial Class.
You know the people who were able to do their jobs 100% Work-From-Home with just a laptop and a cellphone?
Those guys.Report
Yeah yeah yeah this is all bullsiht, at a fundamental level. This is more clear when you look at the Radley Balko link below together with Jaybird’s comment to see the full panoramic sense of the failure of lib in America.
At this point in his career, Radley Balko is a certified grade A TDS mouth-foamer, and Jaybird is well, Jaybird. But in this case they share the same bad intention. That is, we should be inclined to create scenarios where Demos _lose_, not where they win. _That_ is in the best interest of America, and maybe at some level the best interest of Demos as well.
To strategize in favor of the Democratic Party now, is to empower libs’ contemporary corruption: that the larger populace and voting base is reduced to be a target is libs’ message manipulation, instead of the final authority of legitimacy that all factions must be accountable to.
But beyond that, this premise is simply objectively wrong as well. Ie, the idea that it’s the libs who really have the real clue as to what’s going on the Trump Administration whereas the actual voters are mindless NPCs, it’s simply not true.
As it relates to trans, as it relates to southern border migrations, as it relates to inflation, Middle East, Biden’s cognitive decline, Kamala’s emptyheadedness, in each of these things in addition to being sovereign the voters were also just plain right and the libs were and are wrong.
Therefore, in order to imagine the legitimate rebirth of Democratic Party and the mainstream American leftism associated with it, libs should not be talking about what they should do or say in order to improve their standing in public opinion. Instead, they should be thinking about who they should _be_ in order to be a legitimate vessel of public trust.
And to that end, they need to have a real public accounting of all the distortions and misrepresentations they have been a part of, going back to at least one full Presidential cycle.
“I, as lib, misrepresented the extent of President Biden’s fitness in office and I am sorry. As a consequence the voters fairly and accurately repudiated my representations and my candidate.”
Rinse, lather, repeat.Report
Donald Trump got 1/3rd of registered voters to agree with you. It happened to be enough to get elected again, but it’s says precisely nothing about what the American voters want or support, especially the 36 million who withheld their votes entirely.Report
NO KINGS
NO SLAVES
NO NAZISReport
“I chose the impossible… I chose RAPTURE.”Report
I would like to see Team Blue running on economic growth and good government. “Economic growth” would include “free trade”.
Trump is creating massive disruptions in business. Maybe someone can make ads where the auto industry explains why his tariffs destroy auto jobs and they built their businesses around the trade agreements Trump himself forced through last time.Report
Kamala Harris did run on economic growth in as much as she celebrated the success the Biden Harris administration had pulling our nation back from the brink after the pandemic. A great many people – you included – panned that growth. So you will forgive us leftists if we don’t believe you actually want Democrats to do this.Report
I voted for Harris. However Harris ran as an empty suit. My strong impression was she was sincere about being pro-choice and her identity policies and insincere about all of her other positions.
Big picture, the fiscal sanity wing of the GOP is in the process of being removed from the coalition and will become swing voters.Report
There’s a guy who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination twice, whose message seems to be really resonating, based on the size of the crowds throughout the Midwest, and his general popularity. I’d go with what he’s saying and work out from there.Report
He’s a hair aged at this point. Does he have an inheritor?Report
Unfortunately, I don’t think he does. I think a lot of people thought that it’d be AOC, but she has a at least three problems:
1) She’s nowhere near as good as he is at staying on message.
2) She sees the path towards her ascendance as lying within the Democratic Party establishment, which happens to currently be Dubya-in-’08 levels of unpopular, and even if it weren’t, will constantly try to restrain the message. One thing Bernie has consistently done is remain independent of the Democratic Party and its strict control of messaging.
3) Whereas Bernie is broadly popular, AOC is narrowly so.
Bernie is unique, in that he comes from a very small state, where he could campaign for Senate (or anything) without requiring a whole lot of money, so he has been able to operate outside the Democratic Party for his entire career. While we might get some potential Bernie successors (look at Greg Casar, e.g.) who are better at AOC at staying on message, and might be able to gain broader appeal, all of the current stable of young progressive Dems come from bigger districts/states, and operating without the Democratic Party’s funding is pretty much impossible.
The hope was to move the Democratic Party towards Bernie, so you wouldn’t need a single true Bernie successor, but would have many, and from them you could choose the best/most talented for national visibility, but the Democratic Party has so far resisted any move to the left, even when Biden was doing a few things that were at least in the same area code as Bernie (though I think they were more Warren-type policies than Bernie-type). The push to the center post November 2024 has been even stronger, and is, I have no doubt, responsible for those Bush-like approval ratings.
So yeah, I don’t think we’re going to get a Bernie successor, and I don’t think the party is going to adopt his message. So we get to watch them flail, trying to convince people that actually, with the exception of the Dems needing to be more xenophobic and transphobic, the status quo they’ve been selling should be enough for everyone.Report
It seems silly to go back and relitigate 2016 every time the left loses an election but one thing that strikes me as being a major mistake (with perfect hindsight) that I did not notice at the time was the branding of support for Bernie as being sexist.
The “Berniebros”. Remember that? Supporting Bernie not because of Socialized Medicine or because of the millionaires and the billionaires but because they hated women.
And this messaging stuck with a bunch of people. Remember the picture of Bernie sitting outside at the Biden inauguration? Wearing those mittens? That picture was used as evidence that Bernie held Harris in disdain.
Ah, good times.
Anyway, to run with what you’ve said, I think that movement to the left might be a good play if it is done in such a way that it allows for, for example, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez to remain firmly in the “NOT ME!!! I’M A MODERATE!!!!” camp.Report
Yeah, I still see a certain type of liberal still using “Bernie Bros” pretty regularly. Basically the BlueSky set.
I also think the moderates and “Frontliners” (the people in tough districts who are likely to have serious GOP challengers) are doing it wrong, and I think Bernie’s popularity in conservative Midwestern towns is evidence of that. What’s more, I think if you ran Bernie-style (not AOC-style, but hyper-focused on economic issues) campaign in many districts currently represented by Republicans you could pick up a lot of wins.
But they’re not gonna listen to me, and why should they, I won’t vote for Democrats anyway. But I would like to see a viable opposition party with actual ideas.Report
Ezra Klein, of all people, has a campaign you should check out.
“You cannot be the party of working families when the places you govern are places that working families cannot afford to live.”
And so he’s arguing for “Abundance”. He talks about the high speed rail debacle and how it’s evidence that California-style ain’t a style that other states will want… because it’s incapable of achieving the goals it claims are important.
So maybe he has one.Report
Klein has been advancing this argument for a while, I think it has a lot of potential as a political direction.Report
As messages go, it’s great. The biggest problem is that if you have an organization in charge of a city that has failed to run it, getting rid of a handful of people at the top won’t change much.
California’s high speed rail problem will not be fixed by changing governors nor some key mayors of some key cities. Even if you did a full replacement of the state House, it wouldn’t make it possible to end up with HSR in 2035.
So there’s a bit of a downside for people who embrace the message.
But, in the short term, it’s a good message.Report
I think Koz’ response is the most important here. He’s all in on DJT, even to the point where he wrote an endorsement here on this site. His litany of grievances is nothing the extant Democratic party can do anything about, nor should it. I mean where do you even start with this? They’re pissed off about something in Washington that seems to be only the fault of the Democratic Party.
Truth be told, if any of the economic grievances listed were sincere, the pitchforks would already be out for Trump. Perhaps unfairly, since saddling any man, Dem or Republican, with the blame for the state of the American economy is just absurd, but that’s the game the American electorate plays.
Perhaps the best the Dems can do right now is play defense while the current hysteria plays itself out. Too bad there’s no Joseph Welch to ask, “Have you no sense of decency?”Report
Well, one of my fundamental assumptions is that there are three groups of voters.Report
Which group voted for this?
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/03/11/2025-03989/addressing-risks-from-perkins-coie-llpReport
MeReport
Take us through this, please.Report
I dunno, it seems pretty clear to me. I support the President retaliating against Perkins Coie for its misconduct against the best interest of America.
That said, I do want to elaborate a bit on the big-picture subject of the the thread, specifically a tweet-thread from a woman much more lib than me, to describe what meaningful accountability for Demos might look like.
x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1898835873338425733
That, because the essence of the Demo message last cycle was to lie to the American people, that we should demonstrate a new sense of purpose as a party and to that end we should punish the individuals most clearly responsible.
It really is a meaningful act, unlike joining in on Al Green’s clownshow which Radley Balko wants. The only thing wrong with it, as Kelsey describes it, is that her case is narrowed to Biden’s cognitive decline (and she only mentions political figures).
If we extend her thread to the pundit class, as well as subject matter, ie, trans, Biden-era southern border migrations, and inflation, there’s a lotta lotta libs and Demos who are culpable.
It would be very difficult for the Demos to actually execute on this, but somehow if they did, it would be a number of actions where collectively the Demos could hope to be a legitimate vessel of public trust instead of what they have been.
I personally am not holding out very much hope of this, but if a lib ever says there’s nothing the Demos could do, just realize that he’s wrong.Report
“I dunno, it seems pretty clear to me. I support the President retaliating against Perkins Coie for its misconduct against the best interest of America.”
I’ll bet you can do better than this.Report
Optimist.Report
Hope springs eternal.
Besides, Koz is probably about as close as I’m ever going to get to a Trump true believer. He’s kind of interesting.Report
Hmm ok, let me try again.
Lying, misrepresentations, distortions, demagoguery, corruptions, etc are bad things in our discourse. And if in some circumstances such things seem unavoidable or necessary, they should never be entirely routinized.
Unfortunately in America things have deteriorated to the point where such things are foundational to the practice of contemporary liberalism. This is a bad thing, certainly for America as a whole, and maybe even for the libs as well.
Therefore, as the liberal Kelsey Piper argues, we should collectively repudiate those libs who have particularly corrupted our politics in the context of the last Presidential election, in the twitter thread mentioned below:
https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1898835873338425733
Kelsey is in particular talking about the President Biden’s inner circle who were most responsible in promotion if the distortion that President Biden’s mental strength was perfectly acceptable.
And certainly we should be faulting those people but in addition, I think we should also punish in the same way those who promoted the central distortions of the Biden era: inflation, transgenderism, and migrations, pundits and pols both.
In this way we can hope to end the sleazier practices of lib politics and return truth and honest discourse to prevalence in America.Report
Off the top of my head, I’d have to say “People who would vote for Trump no matter what”.
Though I admit some mild interest as to what discovery is going to dig up.Report
Probably. Anyone that matters to the fate of the Dems.
I must say the airing of personal grievances in the Federal Register is something I didn’t have on my history of the United States bingo card.Report
There was an article a few weeks ago by Kevin Williamson called ‘Where’s the Omelet?’
https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-putin-ukraine-war/
It is mainly about Trump’s foreign policy and Ukraine in particular but I think the general sentiments could be applied writ large. He is going to break a bunch of eggs with the implication that he’s making an omelet (the best omelet, an omelet,
so good, people tell me there’s never been one better, not in the history of our country) except that at the end there won’t actually be an omlet, just a mess.
I think you’re right that at this current moment there’s not much the Democrats can do besides let this play out to some degree. Elections have consequences and they lost. Eventually they then have to come up with a vision about what a better future (or omelet) actually looks like, and sell it with something resembling a authenticity. For the time being it’s probably too early for that. Things had to get really messed up during the Bush years before Obama calibrated a compelling counter punch. I expect this will be similar.Report
Agreed. We’re less than 2 months into DJT’s presidency and the administration is keeping all its campaign promises, love them or hate them. No one ought to be surprised, especially given the trifecta, and yet people are.
Personally, I’ll never understand the mindset of someone who thinks Donald John Trump is presidential timber, but there are enough of them to have won him the presidency. For now, 4 corners is good enough for me. We just have to see if the Dems can even execute that.Report
There’s a bunch of House Dems all tweeting out the following (word-for-word):
This is followed by an opportunity to freestyle. “Let’s get it done.” “I am ready to vote today!” “Period.”
It could be worse, I suppose.Report
Presented without comment, an article about how moving to the right worked for Gavin Newsom.
https://capitolweekly.net/ca-120-gavins-podcast-presidential-run-or-empire-building/
Actually, I will make it least one comment, because it’s extremely clear, as article makes out, that 80/20 is bullshit.
It turns out the majority of Democrats don’t have a problem with trans people in sports at any of the levels that are being impacted, especially not youth sports, and at most care about the Olympics and maybe the major leagues.
And they also think the issue is literally unimportant.Report
Or to quote this Blue Sky comment, which perfectly sums it up:
https://bsky.app/profile/docvivileandra.bsky.social/post/3lknqmyt36j2b
“Wow, it’s almost like the only people who care about trans issues are either strongly supportive or strongly opposed, and Democrats risk losing the former while having no chance of winning the latter, and the wider electorate doesn’t care either way no matter what binary answer they give in polls”Report