Democracy is dying and the DNC is AWOL
TAT readers,
This is a tough essay to write but someone must tell the truth about the grotesque and proverbial incompetence of the DNC. I don’t say this as a partisan but simply because the DNC is the only organization with the checkbook and reach, to fund and support the resistance, which is a non-partisan movement. I am avowedly against even the concept of political parties, but our republic is hanging on by a thread and someone must lead. Ken Martin and his DNC crew are not the ones to do it.
The overwhelming majority of their so-called “playbook” is one of those types of books we all read to help us get to sleep, uninspiring, tepid and devoid of anything that heals the decades long DNC malaise. I’ve covered this before in an “autopsy” essay on the loss in November of 2024, and a follow up last July. There has been an absence of leadership or innovation from the DNC in the 16 months since the last presidential election. Their work should have begun on November 6th of 2024, however there is scant evidence in the public arena that the DNC even still exists.
As most readers know, I’ve spent a career in the influence profession, mostly in counterterrorism and geo-political campaigns. I’ve researched, strategized, planned, executed and assessed influence campaigns and often, where people’s lives were at stake. I know what we all should have seen months ago and yet, I see little or nothing of any of it, even until today.
They are nearly absent from the influence battlefield. I am though proud of the many volunteers, rally attendees and heroic Dem congressmen and women, exhaustively informing and reporting to us via events, videos, hearings and news reporting. They cannot do it alone. Without leadership though, competence in campaigning, analysis of target audiences and funding, even the expected gains in November will pale in comparison to what could be achieved. If the Trump administration and enabling spineless Republican congressmen weren’t so horrific and treasonous, there would be no resistance movement at all.
Many of the my comments in the body of this shorter than normal essay, will be sharp and succinct, because if we don’t poke DNC leadership in the hindquarters with something sharp, they’ll continue wringing their hands and wasting your hard-earned dollar donations again on 1990s campaigning. The GOP has a well-funded, aggressive and take-no-prisoners campaign organization and, they play for blood. They are 16 months ahead and control our government. Even in the children’s story the Tortoise and the Hare, at least the tortoise began the race at the same time as the hare that he ultimately defeated. The DNC hasn’t left the starting line.
Now, let’s get this essay away from the starting line.
Onward
The following will focus on four primary failures of the DNC:
Failure to even have a narrative of their vision for the midterms. Make no mistake about it, political campaigns are Narrative Warfare or NW for short.
Failure to have an offense
Failure to amplify all of the good being done by those making a difference
Before beginning, we must acknowledge the reasons that the resistance is far behind the GOP’s juggernaut of influence.
The MAGA GOP controls the government and has legislated voter suppression and gerrymandering for nearly two decades.
The GOP will use any means to win, regardless of legality.
The GOP has exercised immense coercion over reporting media with major mainstream news already cowering under the pressure.
The GOP-led US Congress has a long track record of enabling nearly any “emergency powers” for Trump and henchmen to deploy armed thugs into our streets, therefore intimidating and frightening
opposition voters from voting.
They control or extort most of the elite wealth crowd into supporting them.
The DOJ will protect them and in most cases, so will our current SCOTUS
They have a 16 month head start
There are more items to list but I suspect you get the point by now that we are in a deep hole and with only our hands to dig out with. Still, part of American identity is to succeed as an underdog. It is simply part of who we are and this has been a reliable identity trait from the very birth of our nation. We were overwhelming underdogs in 1776 when we took on the globe’s premier power, Great Britain. Americans root for the underdog in sports, movies, books etc. We the people revel in the challenge and the midterms are no different. The excitement in the rallies such as last Saturday’s, is a strong indicator of how taking on great power, supercharges us.
Failure to even have a narrative of their vision or related supporting narratives for the midterms.
We must have a narrative about what we want, how it helps restore democracy, how we will go about it, how our movement will help the American people, and that narrative must be honest and not the standard “promise everything” and backpedal later. After a couple of decades of bizarre conspiracy theories, false promises, miss and disinformation, the American people are fed up with the BS. We want straight talk, not bluster and BS. For example, “No Kings” is a good message but messages wither and die in time, unless they are connected to narratives. Without a core narrative, messages have the life-span of a fruit fly.
What unites us is a common and age-old American narrative, that so long as we’re united, we can overcome any hurdle. This makes part of our resistance narrative, the fact that we’ve overthrown abusive kings before. We know we can do it and that is our resilience going forward. Since well and professionally crafted narratives trigger deeply embedded identity, it becomes essential to have a unifying narrative. This is why those shouting things like “blue wave” or “go Democrats” are defeating the cause. The narrative required to overcome our long odds, must include everyone, regardless of their political affiliation. If not, the underdog narrative won’t work against a deeply entrenched fascist party like today’s GOP.
There is no such narrative at the moment and in fact, there are no established leaders either. Without a unifying narrative, the GOP will use messaging again to divide and conquer the resistance, just like they did in 2024, when they used the war in Gaza, to divide the Democrats. They used the Bernie Bros in 2016 to split the opposition. It’s up to us to make sure this doesn’t happen. That’s why I have been so opposed to progressives leading so many of the rallies. It’s not that their causes are not worth it, but in an election that requires middle America to come together, progressive issues in the lead, puts off independents and Republicans crossing over for this one election only. Unity is above all else until the Trump-era GOP is no longer a viable party to most Americans.
Failure to have an offense
So when I was growing up, Baseball was America’s national sport and for many, still is. Any Little Leaguer knows that you cannot win a game, with defense alone. You must score runs. At the moment, the resistance is playing only defense and no matter how good a job we’re doing, we cannot win without scoring. Not only can we not win without offense, we still must play defense concurrently. Yes, multi-tasking is the answer. The question is, who will do what? This requires strategy, organization and the ability to tailor both to individual races, regions and causes. This requires expertise in analysis of individual races in different parts of the country.
The past election, the left failed miserably by trying to use the same messaging across the nation. Sure there were great crowds for VP Kamala Harris, but how did that speak to voters in very different states. I can assure you as a Texan raised in the Midwest and after spending the first two plus decades of adulthood in California, canned and standardized national messaging would have failed in all three. People and states have their own unique identities too. Speak uniquely to the local identity, not what works at the national level.
As a Texan now, I know how poorly past Democratic messaging has worked in Texas. If the DNC doesn’t know how, then they should get the hell out of the way and just pay the bills to people and candidates who do. Again, I’ll use Texas as the example. James Talarico is rocking Texas and his style which is very different from other candidates, is rocking the Texas GOP’s world. They are off balance and the usual anti-Democratic propaganda and lies they have used for decades, is useless against him. If the national party meddled in his campaign and demanded national messaging, the magic he’s creating would evaporate overnight.
Failure to amplify all of the good being done by those making a difference
Every day I scan mainstream news, social media, and scour websites that allow me to “take the pulse” of what’s occurring around the nation and the world. Every day I see videos of fierce resistance by the Democrats in congress, calling out Republicans consistently lying, stonewalling, breaking the law and violating our constitution. Where the hell is the DNC in making these heroic battles for law, order and morality into national stories? As the old saying goes, “the silence is deafening.”
When competing in Narrative Warfare, silence or being reactive only, is tantamount to losing. The GOP has dominated national narratives for a couple of decades while the Democrats sit around with their hands in their pockets. In NW whenever something occurs, you must be first out with your narrative, in order to establish the meaning of whatever occurred. If not, the opposition sets the national narrative. In between events, you must sustain the core narrative of the campaign itself. Again, the DNC is silent on both accounts. Due to their silence, the media picks up the narrative of the GOP instead. After all, they have to write about something.
A perfect example of this was during the 2024 election cycle. The GOP droned on and on about the southern border and inflation. What they promoted was just as dishonest as their utterances today, but without anything from the DNC, the false narratives dominated anything the left said in a counternarrative. For the record, counternarratives alone, are as described in the last paragraph… a commitment to losing. We are now 16 months into having zero offensive narrative. This is an enormous DNC, self-imposed obstacle to overcome.
Summary
My friends and fellow Americans. We have the numbers, the motivation and the historical DNA to be the successful underdog in this campaign. I am not suggesting the DNC has no role, but if they won’t listen and learn, they need to get out of the way and let others lead. There are ample options in and outside the Democratic Party. What we’re up against is pure evil and I don’t joke about evil. What the resistance needs now is their checkbook and their network. If they are willing to remove their heads from where they don’t need a haircut, by all means, give them a leadership role, but not exclusively. After all, our resistance to the current evil regime is in fact, non-partisan.
Having been to a few of the large No Kings rallies, I’ve talked with a wide variety of Americans with varying political beliefs, who simply want our constitutional republic back. We want law and order, our constitutional rights, to be equal before the law, to be safe from adversaries like Russia, to be able to afford a respectable life and home as the fruits of our labor, a future that we don’t have to fear, a life free of monopolies and their oligarchs, and most of all, free from tyranny. This is what our nation was founded on.
American history is full of heroes who refused to give up on our fledgling republic. They defied the odds and carved out a nation unlike anything that came before. Despite our flaws, we’ve moved those founding principles forward in order to embrace the “better angels of our nature.” That spirit of liberty is not lost, but obscured by those that would divide us for their own purposes. I don’t know about you, but President Lincoln’s iconic quote at Gettysburg, still inspires me to protect and defend that “more perfect union” referred to by President Lincoln in his first inaugural address.
Let’s get the DNC back into shape and continue to unify the resistance with all Americans, regardless of party.
Onward
Paul