Elections: Advice to Democrats (Communications Part 2)
January 29, 2025
1. A/The Primary Communications Problem Facing the Democratic Party
I’m certain that if I spoke to 1,000 political activists, no one would disagree with the statements that:
The Democratic Party and its elected officials, candidates, and strategists are TERRIBLE at combating the disinformation, misinformation, and lies that pervade the political process these days;[1]
This failure cost the Democratic Party at every level in November 2024; and
The Democratic Party (as evidenced by events since the inaugural last week) have no effective plan to eliminate these problems.
2. How to Eliminate This Problem
As an independent voter, even I was frustrated, exasperated, and most often furious at the state of affairs. I was particularly frustrated because in my professional career, I was a research director working for a national association of local government officials. Every day, my staff and I had to answer a flood of calls from the membership, the media, and even members of the public about virtually every aspect of local government. Through that experience, I learned how to anticipate information requests; craft in advance fact-based responses; get them out the door to the requestor with lightning speed; analyze utilization to enhance productivity; and do this all in a cost-effective manner (i.e., money doesn’t grow on trees).
Drawing up that experience, here’s my recommendations to the Democratic Party:
Form a Rapid Response Team at the National Level staffed by people of diverse public policy backgrounds who also come from every corner of the US;
With input from the membership and voters, craft a continuously updated list of topics about which one could readily assume a need for fact-based information;
Prepare one- or two-page briefing documents on those topics, vetted by a volunteer team of subject matter experts (representing all areas of the country and interest groups);[2]
Create a network of rapid responders to supplement the in-house rapid response staff (e.g., elected officials/party staff and trained volunteers from every area of the county and every type of subject matter expertise);[3]
Provide training for all members of that network on utilization of those briefing documents;
Do extensive outreach to all electronic and print media (including podcasters and social media leaders) about the rapid response network and how it will operate;
Network members should be scheduled so they can push out these documents 24/7/52; and
Collect and analyze extensive data on the utilization of the briefs to promote continuous improvement of the process.
Unlike a press release, these one-pagers should be just the plain facts, no quotations to allow them to be universal.
Furthermore, the one-pagers MUST be printable and in a format easy to share (i.e., PDF) to maximize the potential for distribution (e.g., email, door knockers, newspaper ads, and social media attachments). They also should carry descriptive titles so they could be saved by the distribution teams (and recipients) for future reference.
3. Possible Templates
I realized that one of the most valuable uses of the one-pagers also would be to promote general understanding of and support for government programs. With that thought in mind, I developed a template for that type of communication. The top and bottom text would be standard, but users would insert into the central box a short description of a federal, state, or local government program to be promoted. [See PDF for the sample]
Good To Do List you've featured here, Sharon, let's hope some Dem's will take some solid good advice!! Thank You, and will reStack ASAP 💯👍