Democrats are losing the digital arms race. It’s like going to war against a major superpower without an air force and hoping your ground game still prevails. It won’t. Times have changed.
Digital ads allow campaigns to reach people where they increasingly spend their time – online – in more targeted and efficient ways. It should be viewed as a core requirement for any political campaign, not a secondary aspect of the operation.
There are huge philosophical issues with the decision to invest in digital. The platforms are often run by nefarious leadership, the ecosystem doesn’t filter out all the misinformation, etc. But thinking digital is some optional thing in THIS election is wildly misinformed.
And having people who aren’t adept at digital ad targeting calling the shots, developing boilerplate content that isn’t driven by the data, is a huge waste of the hard-earned money people are donation to the campaigns – even worse than not doing the ads at all.
The opposition is already operating at a different scale – with dramatically different levels of reach and resources and sophistication in how those resources are targeted. Nothing Dems do on TV will even come close to the level of reach Trump has on digital. That has to change.
Originally posted as a Twitter thread. Re-posted with permission.
