Aaron Huertas: Anyway, tapping the sign. And looking at the date here, I've had very little additional to do say about this for the past two+ years. It's pretty obvious stuff from an operative perspective, but leadership largely isn't there www.aaronhuertas.com/messaging-is...

General point: Stancil's criticism of Democratic strategy is broadly correct and like other people who share it, it's always telling that the counter-arguments rarely address the core point about actions and demands driving salience (rather than e.g. messaging or shallow media tactics / stunts).

You don’t have to do anything crazy. Just respond the way politicians respond to every single other politician caught in a severe scandal, from George Santos to Al Franken to Bob Menendez: insist over and over that he leave politics and not seek election. Literally just apply the normal standard

Specific point: You can't scientifically A / B test this criticism the same way you can with narrow tactics like ads, mailers or email subject lines. The universe where Durbin is roasting Clarence Thomas and holding repeated anti-corruption hearings demanding he resigns can't be created in a lab.

Even more specifically, operatives are drowning in data about how our programs perform, but once people stop responding to our programming they kind of disappear form our data, e.g. all the otherwise engaged people who stop subscribing to political emails and texts because they don't like spam.

Anyway, tapping the sign. And looking at the date here, I've had very little additional to do say about this for the past two+ years. It's pretty obvious stuff from an operative perspective, but leadership largely isn't there www.aaronhuertas.com/messaging-is...

Messaging Does Not Generate Attention, Action and Provocation Dowww.aaronhuertas.com Every time Democrats lose or even just underperform in an election, we see a series of recriminations about their messaging, particularly how poorly it performed compared to Republican's messaging, an...

And just adding to this: the universe where Democratic leadership is holding a dance party in the street post-conviction or pushing for a fast-track 2nd impeachment or 2nd impeachment with drawn out witnesses is all very Not Testable. These are political choices made on other grounds.

Also if you're getting mad at Stancil don't forget to get mad at Dan Pfeiffer and a bunch of other operatives who are well-established enough (him) or burned out enough (me) to make these points publicly. www.messageboxnews.com/p/why-dems-s...

Why Dems Shouldn't be Shy about Trump's Convictionwww.messageboxnews.com Too many in the party are allowing Trump and the Right to define a major moment in the campaign

I just took a survey that was A/B testing Biden ads. Voted for the ones that mentioned 34 felonies in addition to having positive Biden messaging.

Plus Dems haven't lost a lot of elections since 2016, quite the opposite, yet people won't recognize that and get off our backs

I actually find the electoral landscape quite alarming! J6, election denial and Dobbs *only* counting for a few points is very scary and should prompt leaders to revisit fundamental assumptions about the political environment and how voters relate to the parties and candidates.

Dobbs has not been the electoral winner it could have been (losing a generational battle is bad!). 22 is only comparable to a hypothetical even worse result if Dobbs doesnt happen, but otherwise is not an actually good election. 24 so far doesnt seem to be shaping up to be much better

Yeah, beating expectations was great but there's that small matter of losing the House

which you could lay almost entirely at the feet of SCOTUS and Coumo

And more generally c3s getting gerrymandering reform in largely Democratic states rather than Democrats maximizing gerrymandering to push Republicans into suing for peace

The Presidential landscape IS terrifying, because last time Biden won the electoral college by what, 33K votes in five states? Not sure "messaging" can overcome such tight margins, though. I hold onto the fact that incumbent usually win because people are lazy AF

I would really like to feel confident that electioneers in the D party, who really do want to win, have internalized these ideas and I just don't at all feel that way.

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