In Tuesday’s Message Box, Dan Pfeiffer examined the immense messaging deficit that Democrats face heading into 2022.
As Dan & Jon say on the Pod, “It’s not good.”
Today in the Daily Beast, Wajahat Ali echoes Pfeiffer’s sentiment, clearly frustrated that favorability for the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill is low, despite the fact that individual provisions of the bill are immensely popular.
We’re losing the messaging war.
But I take issue a bit with Ali’s implication that Democrats aren’t trying to communicate the bill. Yes, they can be doing more, and they can be doing it better. But there’s another problem that people just overlook: traditional media outlets are not incentivized to simply host Democrats and surrogates who are on a mission to “sell” policy to the American people.
Media companies want clicks and eyeballs, and they will always revert to the left vs right narrative and focus on the legislative stalemate being forced on us by the government-hating GOP.
So, it’s not that Democrats aren’t communicating. We have to acknowledge that it’s exceptionally difficult to break through.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully supportive of Ali’s suggestion that Democrats step up their media blitz. I’m just skeptical that it’s enough by itself to do the job.
But that’s where we come in.
As you know, DemCast believes that everyday folks sharing strategic messaging in their social media feeds (what we call “digital door-knocking”) is key to modern political activism and the communication goals of our movement. The GOP has bot armies and troll farms to carry their message.
On the left, there’s just us. Every day, the need gets bigger for a distributed communication network to amplify the left’s agenda.
If you agree, take a moment to forward this post to someone who might not know about DemCast, and urge them to sign up.
Calendar
A reminder that our digital rallies, Zoom meetings & high-priority partner events are shared on our calendar. Some social media pushes coming up this week:
- Thursday – A Digital Rally for Virginia! At 7pm ET, join this huge rally with great VA guests like Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria, and at the same time use our DemCast toolkit to spread word about the crucial November elections!
- Friday – Build Back Better Digital Rally! From 1pm-3pm ET on Friday, we’re going to take the baton for the Democrats and help sell the BBB agenda. Just before the rally, we will update the calendar item with the hashtag & toolkit!
Stay Up To Date!
Facebook: By popular demand, we finally created a DemCast public Facebook group last month so that we can help keep everybody updated on-platform. Join here!
Texting: When we’re about to begin a digital rally or convene for a Democracy Briefing, we’ll often text folks to remind everyone that we’re about to roll. We don’t spam. You can text “AMPLIFY” to the number below to sign up for text alerts!
Fall Campaign
As many of you know, we kicked off our fall donation campaign last week. With updates to our social sharing tools and outreach/texting tools, we need to raise $50,000 this fall to keep our efforts going heading into the 2022 midterms. Please click on the button below and consider a gift to DemCast so that we have the resources we need to coordinate the messaging army that the left so desperately needs:
Thanks so much for your activism.
