I have a new piece up at The New Republic, “Why Centrist Democrats Keeping Being Wrong About Elections.”
I also had the chance to join Greg Sargeant on his podcast to discuss how Democratic leaders can compete when the media environment is increasingly stacked against them.
The TL;DR version is that Dem consultants keep pretending we are living in 1992. Kamala Harris spent her entire campaign talking about her focus on “kitchen table issues,” and now a bunch of centrist consultants have released a report declaring voters think Democrats are out of touch! Time to nominate moderates, stop talking about climate and trans people, and message the hell out of “kitchen table issues!”
I’m not interested in relitigating the debate over what type of candidate Democrats should promote. (Read Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach. They’ve got that one.)
Instead, what I’m trying to argue is that the Democratic Party does not directly control voters’ impressions of the Democratic Party. Focusing on slogans and policies is a form of consultant tunnel-vision. If you want to succeed at political communication in 2025, you have to pay attention to the changing media environment. And this isn’t simple a matter of Republicans being better at social media. Republicans own all the social media platforms, and are buying all the mainstream media platforms. If you want to win elections, you’re going to need a bigger megaphone!
There’s more in the piece, please give it a read.