Looking for Just the Right Message is a Fool’s Errand

It Takes More Than Words to Connect

There is a disconnect between the Washington based leaders, funders and consultants who run our Party and candidates and voters in districts and states that must be won for Democrats to govern.

That disconnect was obvious in the announcement earlier this month of a $50 million Democratic super PAC targeting the “working class” and aimed at winning back the House of Representatives in 2026.

The “Win Them Back Fund” will begin by spending extensively on research. “Crafting and developing a credible working-class message … is the single best thing we can do as a Party,” Mike Smith, the President of the new PAC said.

Note the words. It’s them we have to win back. They have become strangers. And we need a lot of research to figure out a message that will connect with them. This from a Party that once was identified with labor. A Party that didn’t need research to know the magic words to connect. But now has a Georgetown educated lawyer, whose career has been limited to lobbying and political consulting in D.C., leading the effort to find the words to win them back.

The Party might have learned from its experience in last year’s presidential race when Future Forward, the main Democratic super PAC, raised and spent $950 million creating messages that had little apparent effect.

The story in October, a month before the election:

“Future Forward, has ascended to the pinnacle of the Democratic political universe with remarkable speed, winning over some of the world’s richest people with grand promises of a “Moneyball” method to political advertising that it has pitched as the most sophisticated ever undertaken.

“The group is, in some ways, an ad-making laboratory masquerading as a super PAC, testing thousands of messages, social media posts and ads in the 2024 race, ranking them in order of effectiveness and approving only those that resonate with voters. The group made and tested 1,048 ads since Aug. 1, and conducted over seven million surveys of voters since then.”

After the Democrat loss in November, the effort was defended as a success because in the states where money was spent Republicans increased their vote by a smaller amount than they did nationally. We didn’t lose by as much.

In announcing the new PAC, Smith mentioned three Democrats who had outperformed the national ticket and won in Republican leaning, mostly rural, Congressional Districts. “The through line for those candidates and those races was an economic focus, working-class message that resonated with a broad spectrum of voters. … We have a story to tell and a game plan to replicate.”

The words sounded suspiciously like walking down the same road we have walked before: a one-size, fits all strategy designed by D.C. consultants and focused on right “messaging”.

It is precisely those characteristics that have been decried by candidates who have won in difficult, Republican leaning, rural districts. For them, the most important contribution to winning was trust. Trust in who you are as a person. In what you believe. In why you are running. In what you will do. Trust is the theme that runs through their stories.

A state senate candidate in Maine: “What much of the party establishment doesn’t understand is that rural life is rooted in shared values of independence, common sense, tradition, frugality, community and hard work. Rural folks vote on what rings true and personal to them: Can this person be trusted? Is he authentic?”

A congressional candidate in Washington State: “It is important to be open, candid, predictable and independent. For voters to have a sense that I’m telling them what I actually think and am listening to them with curiosity and honesty … that this person is not trying to make themselves acceptable ... Someone that doesn’t mind upsetting people in the party, that doesn’t mind the elite professionals being mad at them …”

A congressional candidate in Michigan: “Voters reject anybody they feel is not like them and is not talking straight. A lot of what they see from people on both sides of the ticket, frankly, are talking points, generalities, promises that aren’t kept, language that they don’t actually use.”

Andy Beshear, Governor of Kentucky who won re-election 12 months ago in a state that Trump carried by 30 points, makes the point that while some are talking about political strategy and messaging, the way forward is about “focus” and “action” and “results”.

“Focus on what people wake up thinking about – which is not politics but their job, how they are going to make ends meet, the next doctor’s appointment, the school they will drop their kid off at, their safety.

“The way forward is not complicated, but it takes work and discipline … We do this through policy and by taking direct action that gets results. …The Democratic Party must show the American people that it cares about creating a better life for each and every American and re-earn the public’s trust.

“None of this means we abandon important values and principles. As governor, I have vetoed numerous anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice bills … even if some voters might have disagreed with the vetoes, they knew the next day I would be announcing new jobs, opening a new health clinic or finishing a new road that would cut 20 minutes off their commute.

“Earning trust and showing people you care about them also require that we talk to people like normal human beings. And that we are not afraid to share our “why.” For me, my why is my faith, and I share it proudly. I vetoed anti-LGBTQ legislation last year because I believe all children are children of God. And whether people agree with my decision, they know why I’m making it. They know where I am coming from.”

Perhaps the elevation of messaging to the place of prime political importance is because media is the arena in which consultants make their reputations and their incomes. It is also the easiest part of a campaign to do from a distance.

The message, however, doesn’t stand alone. The message has to fit the candidate. The candidate and the message have to fit the district. You are running to do something. Something important enough to you to motivate you to run. Something important enough to others to motivate them to vote for you.

Crafting a message that makes those connections for a particular candidate in a particular race is difficult. The temptation for consultants is to repeat messaging used in other campaigns that don’t fit this candidate, these voters, this campaign.

The evening before one election, I listened as Michael Bakalis, the Democratic candidate for Illinois governor, talked with a few friends about the campaign just ending. A campaign that had given him the one opportunity for fulfilling his lifetime ambition. Early on he had hired two consultants from out-of-state. The messaging they crafted was for a conservative Democrat running to the right of a liberal Republican.

It was not a message that fit. Looking back over the campaign that last night, Bakalis said with obvious regret, “I went through this whole campaign and never once talked about anything that I was really interested in.” That lack of authenticity, the absence of passion, registered on the voters.

Last October, about a month before the election, David Brooks made a similar observation in a column he wrote for the New York Times. Noting that the Harris campaign had slowed down from its fast start, he suggested she could finish strong by showing the American people her “strongest, most acute and controlling desire, the ruling passion of her soul.”

He recognized how difficult that might be. “Surrounded by consultants and strategy memos a candidate can lose herself within the machinery.”

We tend to think of campaigns (and all of politics) as a debate. If you speak the right words and make the stronger argument you win. But politics is a play, not a debate. Actors arrive on stage with a history and a personality. There are words to speak. Actions to take. A goal to achieve. Challenges to face. Obstacles to overcome. The play weaves all the pieces together into a story. Draws us in. Gives us understanding. The play that resonates is the play that wins.

Every play is different. But everything in the play has to fit. “Right to Repair” worked for the Congressional candidate in rural Washington who was the owner of a vehicle repaid shop and was talking from her lived experience. It was just an add-on and didn’t fit in Western Wisconsin where the candidate was presenting herself as a part-time waitress.

There are no magic words. Life is more complicated than that. Connecting starts with authenticity and trust. The secret can’t be found in polling. It can’t be mass produced. It is personal. It is local. You build from there.