For those who have asked: What is the Dem strategy?
I attend town halls and organizer meetings and follow Dem leaders on social (but not so you don't have to...you still should!)
I hear a lot of folks wondering what the Democratic party (leadership and electeds) are doing about the chaotic, rapid dismantling of every government institution we have frankly taken completely for granted. And because they’re wondering, they’re assuming nothing is happening.
It’s actually one problem with this 24/7 information river we all dip into. Because so much information is always on, always available, we assume we would have seen anything important to be seen. But there are two major mechanisms for information getting out of bubbles to people who aren’t directly searching for that information: Traditional media amplification and algorithmic social media amplification.
If you look at who’s in control of both of those mechanisms, it begins to be clear why you may not hear certain news or be aware of certain narratives. Any of you who have tried to grow your reach in today’s environment know that it sometimes feels like a black box, and you know that unless you’re willing to pay for it, you are unlikely to get the kind of organic boosts of your fascinating content that used to come easier.
I personally address this by opting in. I follow my electeds (and lots of other electeds and leaders who aren’t from my district or state). I don’t just follow them on social, I subscribe to their newsletters. That’s where they talk about the everyday stuff they do. [Side note: Did you know that if you’re having an issue with passport renewal (or other similar problem with a federal agency), you should call your congressperson’s office? That if you’re going to DC, you can meet with them? That’s literally their and their staff’s job to help their constituents navigate issues with the government.]
I actually go to both virtual and IRL town halls. I belong to a local chapter of an advocacy group that highlights different issues and recommended actions every week. I subscribe to a bunch of newsletters (although regular review and refresh of your sources is something I also recommend).
In this current environment both top-down leadership driven strategy and people-powered grassroots strategy are important, required even. You do not have to go it alone if you are interested in taking action on the issues you care most about.
Top-down Leadership-Driven Strategy
Having gone to my congressperson's town halls and following both my own and other Dem leaders on social (electeds and DNC leadership), there are three main prongs to their current approach. I've learned about these from listening to them directly because the media certainly isn't invested in helping them get this word out. I'm also listening to them, instead of listening to pundits and other people who tell them to talk louder, but when they talk tell them to DO something, but when they do things, tell them that they aren't loud enough. When I first heard these three prongs from my Congressperson, I wasn’t sure whether it was a party-level strategy or just his own articulation of his priorities. But I’ve since heard multiple leaders reiterate these three things, so I assume it’s a coordinated effort:
1. Legislate: Even though they are in the minority and cannot even control getting legislation out of committee and to the floor for a vote, they are writing, co-sponsoring, and proposing legislation. They are trying to find cracks in the GOP's fear of P4547, so that they'll be ready when one of two things happens...either getting the majority back in 2026 or seeing P4547's popularity sink enough that some GOP congresspeople will peel off and vote their conscious, not their fear. None of them are peeling off right now. Ultimately, legislating is a Congressperson’s job, so they are trying to fill the pipeline.
2. Litigate: Congresspeople apparently don't have the standing to sue themselves (I did not know this), so instead, they are running a rapid response team that finds and/or partners with the right litigants to combat every P4547 action. There are TONS of lawsuits happening. The GOP is losing most of the decisions here, and in fact, they are abiding by most of them, too. Again, I would not be surprised if you didn’t realize it. The chaos and destruction gets full coverage. The quiet reversals and take-backs, not so much. (My personal opinion is that the Administration will try their hardest to resist abiding by immigration-related decisions that don't go their way because they hope that most people will not rise up in outrage to support immigrants. I wouldn't be surprised if half the stuff they're doing they don't expect to maintain, but they want to create enough chaos and overwhelm that people let the immigration-related abuses slide. They want a white country; it seems pretty straightforward.)
3. Communicate: When all else fails, lots of us like to slam the Dems for poor messaging. And what we should probably be really mad about is poor amplifcation. (From the two aforementioned channels that have owners who are either actively supporting the Administration or at the least are obeying the Administration in advance.) Dems are doing town halls in red districts where GOP congresspeople fear to tread. They are holding regular press conferences. They are live streaming those. They are dedicating certain days to concentrate messaging on certain issues, like healthcare one day, veterans another, and so on. They are fanned out across social media with these messages. Again, I am sadly not surprised that I need to follow them directly to know this...because it does not fit the media narrative about hapless Democrats to feature their communications. What the Dems don’t yet have is a dominant army of supportive traditional and social media channels that parrot and promote their messaging, whatever it is. MSNBC is not actually functionally the same as Fox News or OANN or Newsmax. And there isn’t the same personality-driven, “just regular folks” network of podcasters either. This is a real problem.
People-powered Grassroots Strategy
Blue advocacy groups (a la Indivisible, for example) are organizing protests and marches and mailing efforts and boycotts etc. There have been protests in every state. Those protests are getting larger, and they’re popping up in more places. Dem lawmakers are showing up in person for many of these, but these are people-driven actions, as they should be.
Does it work? Tesla's stock has tumbled. Target's stock has fallen, as has Walmart's. Such things take time, but they are about showing and building support.
I was not mad about the economic blackout day because I had no illusions that it was going to bring big companies to their knees, but it was a way to get millions of people to feel like they were part of something, and could contribute to expressing their dissatisfaction. Hopefully just a first step for many people who participated.
My advice is always to look to JOIN others in their efforts. You are not required to reinvent the wheel. You are not required to be anyone’s savior. Pick any issue you care about; there are groups focused on it. And there are general political outreach groups like Indivisible, Swing Left, Sister District, Postcards to Voters, and more. Many have local chapters and feature local actions (which I think is critical both to influence the future and to be closer to seeing the impact of your actions). Tools like 5Calls and Resistbot exist to support everyday people raising their voices to their representatives. I’m advising a start-up called Tech 4 Rights that aims to do the same, but better.
And voter registration drives are always helpful and can be done year round (vs. get out the vote drives which are really tied to specific times). We really have more of a get-people-registered issue than a get-out-the-vote issue, since only about 70% of people who are eligible to vote are registered to vote. And if you’re not registered, you don’t get all the postcards and phone calls and texts and voter materials…unregistered people can be forgiven for not being on top of everything going on, given that information gap.
It would be great if major companies and academic institutions were not obeying in advance and ceding to a mandate that doesn't exist, so I hope we the people let such organizations hear our voices (or our wrath as the case may be) too.
Read my book Road Map for Revolutionaries to get more ideas about how you can be a more effective everyday activist.
Both people-driven and leader-driven words and actions are needed to bolster one another, provide back-up, and break any narrative that this Administration’s actions are what "most" Americans wanted.
I think some of us as individuals also need to take on the effort to keep talking to people with whom we disagree...both people who voted for P4547 while holding their nose, and people who stayed home (whether because of apathy or in protest).
There is a slice of people on the left who spend way more time bashing the people with whom they are more ideologically aligned instead of the people they obstensibly consider the actual enemy. I think this is a poor strategy, but it's likely borne of feeling the GOP will never listen to them, but Dems at least will. This slice is very, very loud. But they're not helping, IMO. I learned my lesson on this in 2016 and personally pursue a policy of public praise (i.e. on social media, for instance) and private critique (via direct communications) of the people I want to win at the end of the the day. Nonethless, it's a free country...at least for people criticizing Dems right now 😬
Hope this helps. Everything I share above is exceedingly easy to find with a quick Google. And if you don’t know who your actual government electeds are, this is the one link I’ll share: Who are my representatives?
Lastly, I hope this has educated a lot of us about exactly what and how much our government does. The demonization of civil servants is appalling, and I think our lack of knowledge of what the civil service handles is part of what has made this entire slash and burn approach so shocking. We’re shocked they’re doing it, and we’re shocked at how much is reliant on these federal agencies we know little about.
I'm curious: What else would you like to see? What other ideas do you have for our leaders and representatives? What are the ways in which you stay plugged in while keeping your sanity? How are you activating? Let me know:
Thanks, as always, for reading This Week-ish. I had to get this off my chest, and now I’m “logging off” for the weekend :)
Thank you thank you thank you
I'm doing all the same things you are. I see the results of these resistance actions in Arizona, where both of our D senators have gone to RURAL RED areas and held town halls for which they were thanked. Bernie and AOC also came here to big audiences. And I am writing on my Substack to remind people how things work.