Just one example of the thinking we'd like to see change. These ads got around $4M each in AZ and OH. Party brands are open source. Everyone gets a say. But it's possible the image of the party might improve if we stop spending millions of dollars each cycle telling voters how wrong we are.

The path forward for Dems is less a question of moving either left or right, but a move towards strength. They can define the new center with a strong story that works for all kinds of voters, one built on the foundation of belief in the dignity of our neighbors and affordability for everyone.

Harris tacked right and lost. This strategy failed because persuadable and mobilizable groups of voters experience campaigns as stories much more than through ideological prisms. The 2025 candidates understand the assignment and their campaigns spent much less effort performatively moving right.

@davekarpf.bsky.social @brianbeutler.bsky.social @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social @gelliottmorris.com @gregsargent.bsky.social and @danpfeiffer.bsky.social.

And we're sure we're missed a few!

The good news is that while the big establishment substackers and PACs might be aligned, there’s a growing chorus for change. At the bottom of the post we included links to thoughtful critiques of the “move right to win” argument from @katelynburns.com @adambonica.bsky.social @pbump.com

The enormous effort and money Dem campaigns put into moving right did nothing to persuade gettable voters because this was based on an incorrect understanding of what voters want and how they think. This had a massive opportunity cost, inhibiting Dems from focusing on voters' actual concerns.

In a few weeks we will release a report summarizing the 9 research projects we executed since the election with much more detail on this diagnosis. Bottom line: voters really wanted change and didn’t think Harris would deliver it, in part because she said “nothing will change.”

What we’ve found instead was that some chronic downward trends for Dems turned acute and formed a sort of rogue wave for Dems in 2024. The actual interrelated problems, vs being too far left, were:

AFFORDABILITY-INEQUALITY +
CUMULATIVE RIGHT WING MEDIA ADVANTAGE +
MOVEMENT OPPOSITION

The Just Move Right hypothesis struck us initially as being a bit simplistic, a bit too conveniently aligned with the DC establishment’s pre-existing beliefs and opposed to their ideological opponents'. The more we’ve talked to voters over the past year, the more this explanation has unraveled.

Last week’s election results should move this debate forward. Two mods won, but Mamdani did the most to address the big structural deficits Dems have been accruing. His message based on government that actually works and treating everyone with dignity led to an almost 4x increase in the 18-29 vote.

Good luck and a huge thank you to everyone doing e-day GOTV tomorrow. Power to the organizers, and please give us a listen and a share after your doorknocking shift!

A laser focus on telling voters a clear story about why things feel so broken and how we can heal division and fix the problems has much more upside for Dems than chasing the laser pointer of moving right on cultural issues, as we think the VA, NJ and NYC results tomorrow will (hopefully) show.

of what actually has gone wrong, which is that right wing ideas and governance have led to a system where the rich use division and fear to turn us against each other and take all the money. But as we found in previous research, when presented with that story, these voters almost all already agree.

One thing we DID not hear was concerns about Democrats supposed lack of moderation on social issues. It's not what's on people's minds all, it's not how they think about things, and it's not what they're concerned about. They want bipartisanship, but it's coming from an absence of a clear story

Voters almost always hate the ads we show them in these things, but they surprised us by staying pretty nice things about our #NoKings ad. It seems to be holding up well as the basic storyline for the Trump era.

They wanted change, a surprising number are paying attention to what's going on, they see Trump isn't delivering anything good. A pattern we keep seeing is that even people who report they are doing OK financially feel this way. Almost nobody is looking at this economy and thinking it's working ok.

There is a LOT of pessimism out there. They don't have kitchen table concerns so much as concerns that AI is going to take their job and the kitchen table is going to get repossessed while ICE carts off their neighbors. Most of them had a pretty good sense of what was in the OBBB, and they hated it.