Happy 2013, Democrats

The whole "Joe Rogan of the Left" thing is a time machine to 12 years ago. Come with me.

I promise we’ll get to Rogan in this essay. Bear with me through the Romney-Ryan stuff though. (SOURCE: YouTube.)

A fun fact I think about a lot these days: one of the authors of the 2013 Republican “autopsy” now runs an independent bookstore in Florida.

Let me back up.

Back in 2012, Republicans lost the presidency for the second time to Barack Obama. You may recall this.

And, reeling from that loss, the party looked around and thought they had to do some hard research, find out how they lost twice in a row, see what systemic issues they had. They commissioned this in-depth report that came to be known as an “autopsy” of the 2012 election.

The autopsy – which was formally known as the Growth and Opportunity Project – found that the GOP needed to work on showing that they cared. They needed to show a kinder face to voters, especially women and voters of color. They needed to move away from being the party of “stuffy old men” engaging in “corporate welfare.”

So.

A few years ago, towards the end of Trump’s first term, I reported on the legacy of that autopsy, and as part of my research, I reached out to the five listed authors.

They’ve taken vastly different directions. Ari Fleischer (George W. Bush’s press secretary) is now a loud and proud Trump supporter. Henry Barbour (former GOP Rep. from Mississippi) is less supportive – as a delegate at the 2024 RNC, he introduced a resolution to stop the party from using its money to pay Trump’s legal bills.

And then there’s Sally Bradshaw, a former advisor to Jeb (Jeb!) Bush. She has moved on from Republican political consulting.

In fact, as of 2016, when Trump was elected, she was no longer even a Republican – she announced that year that not only was she leaving politics to run a bookstore, but she was leaving the Republican Party.

She politely declined to talk to me, saying she had left all of this behind. From what I can tell from some cursory googling, she’s still in Tallahassee, selling books and living the good life.

Because she wouldn’t talk to me, I can’t tell you her attitude.

So let me imagine a hypothetical autopsy author. This person interviewed hundreds of Republicans and pored over polls and focus groups and slogged through the hell that is group project work and ended up saying, “Hey, fellow party members, voters say we don’t care. If we don’t make a special effort to reach out to nonwhite voters and women and young people, we’re going to be lost for a generation.”

And then not only did the voters choose the opposite of what our hypothetical author recommended (“grab ‘em by the pussy,” “they’re rapists”), but they won. No one needed any stinking report.

Anyway, our autopsy author might well throw up her hands and say “fine, whatever,” and go off to sell murder mysteries and romantasy paperbacks in a repurposed bungalow somewhere far from Washington, DC and actually come to think of it fuck that sounds good.

I think of all this as I watch Dems flounder around, throwing money at free tacos and – more importantly – the ongoing quest to find a Joe Rogan of the Left. Figuring out what it is that The Men want.

And I wonder…how helpful could this be, really?

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I’ve been talking to voters long enough to know this: Voters are sometimes bad at knowing what they want. They’re often bad at articulating what they want. And they’re very bad at knowing OR articulating what they’ll want in a year or three.

And a corollary: Parties try to guess what voters want – sometimes they even listen to voters – and in turn they are often phenomenally bad at knowing what a winning candidate looks like.

This is not me being a snob, I promise. I don’t even know what I want. Like, ever. Ask my therapist.

For example: for years, I was convinced that the worst kind of journalist to be, hands down, was a political journalist.

And now here I am, having done it for 10 years and having the time of my life with zero mental health fallout whatsoever.

(Q: Danielle, are you undermining or proving your point here?

A: Shut up.)

Anyway. To illustrate, I would like to introduce you to:

The iPhone principle

When the iPhone came out, bajillions of people, myself included, rolled our eyes at the tech dudes we knew who were lusting after one. This new pocket computer thing [waves hand] seemed deeply unnecessary. We all had cell phones already. Who needed a BIGGER phone with a screen that big? What on earth was so important that you’d need to email on the go, rather than at home? What was an app?

Hahaha sigh.¹

The point is that Steve Jobs, rest his soul, doesn’t seem to have asked thousands of people, “Hey do you want this?” He just made a really appealing thing and set it loose and watched it conquer the world. He changed what people thought they wanted.

Side note: you could also make this case about Joe Rogan. Get in your time machine and ask someone 10 years ago if they want to listen to two guys (it’s almost always guys) shoot the shit for two and a half hours (how is it always two and a half hours) about topics they are not experts in, in any way (saying “no but I’ve done a lot of research on this” and then talking about how fluoride makes you docile doesn’t count). Try it. Your 2015 person would have snorted and sighed and gone back to watching House of Cards.²

Now look at 2012. Republicans focus-grouped their image to death and asked thousands of people “hey what do you want?” then fastidiously wrote down the answers and analyzed them and then primary voters lit it on fire and walked away in slow motion while Carmina Burana played in the background.³

And so the GOP sat back and watched as this candidate who a lot of people found really appealing conquered the world.

Another example: in 2022, I was out covering midterms. And any time I talked to a Republican voter, I asked them: who do you want to run for president in 2024?

Overwhelmingly, they told me: Ron DeSantis.

Occasionally, I’d get a Nikki Haley, or Rand Paul, or maybe a media personality like Tucker Carlson.

But I do not recall anyone – anyone – saying Trump was their first choice.

And so I’d ask voters: Why not Trump?

Few of them disliked him outright, but most were simply unenthused. “He’s had his time,” they’d say. “But he’s too divisive. He makes people too mad. I mean, he did a great job. Now we’d like him to enjoy his retirement.”⁴

Come 2024, so many Republicans had changed their minds that Trump ran the primary table.

It is, of course, possible that what happened here is that voters got more of a taste of Haley and DeSantis and went, “No thank you.”

But also, 2024 primary voters didn’t choose Trump out of a sense of, “Ehhh well, he’s better than nothing.” There was fervor in that choice. Voters, in fact, did want him. Even if they weren’t voicing it, and perhaps even if they didn’t know it the whole time.

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True fact: 2028 is three years away

Caveat/disclaimer: Yes, I know that 2028, and also 2025, is not 2013. We weren’t talking constitutional crises or authoritarianism back then, the way we are now.

It is purely to say that Democrats’ sense of lostness now mirrors what Republicans felt back then.

None of this is to dismiss Democrats’ hand-wringing about winning over men. Or to dismiss research. If they want to win, sure, they should talk to voters. They should see how their message can reach MORE voters. They should look around, clear-eyed, about what policies voters are open to, and also (this is key) how to message on those policies without sounding like a 7-year-old in their first school play bumbling their lines.

The point of all of this is not just to try to win — and certainly not to be all things to all people — but to just show voters they’re listening.

At any rate, I offer two humble opinions:

1) Take all research for the next couple of years about “What Democrats Want in 2028” with like 9 tons of salt.

2) This goes triple for any listicle⁵ you see of Democrats for 2028. All you’ll get from any of these lists is the same dartboard of possibilities you’ll see on any other list. And any pundit who can claim to tell you what makes these people attractive to voters … well, see what I said earlier about voters not knowing what they want, and especially about voters not knowing what they’ll want in 3 years, and especially especially about anyone GUESSING what OTHER voters will want in 3 years.

And also to offer a theorem: to succeed in current politics, I think a Democratic candidate will have to say unpopular things. Or, to put a finer point on it, to say things that aren’t popular yet.

What a bunch of voters liked and still like – a BIG part – about Trump is that he says things that have previously been considered unsayable…for example, calling immigrants “rapists” and calling for mass deportations. The way his voters put it was that he “says what people are thinking.”

As a result, he made mass deportations popular among Republicans. It was what voters didn’t know they might want. He made them want it – or, he made them realize they wanted it, admit they wanted it.

I’d say the same of Bernie Sanders and Medicare for All. A large group of voters said “wait, that’s a thing? Sure, now I want that!”

I’m not saying Medicare for All is or isn’t the winning policy for 2028. I am saying that proposing things voters haven’t even thought much about yet might be.

Let me go even further: back in 2015 and 2016, when Bernie Sanders slammed the rich people at the center of Democratic politics? Heck yes people liked that. Not only because they disliked money in politics, but also, I think there was icing on the cake — it’s satisfying to stick it to the man, or in this case the woman who has been considered the presumptive nominee for forever.⁶

This also leads me to a half-baked theory I’ve been crafting in my head: I wonder if popularism is inherently doomed BECAUSE it’s popular. My view is that a significant share of American voters loves pushing back against the status quo. They love sticking it to the man. They love being Not Like the Other Girls.

This idea is a sort of Mobius strip, I admit – people like a thing but then don’t like it because they like it?

But I’ll also admit that it makes sense to me. I’ve written about having something related to this attitude – I love working at NPR but also back in the day loved being a loud idiot on Twitter and thumbing my nose at the idea of a staid, monotone NPR reporter. Which of course means my whole Twitter persona was enabled by the very NPR stereotype I was pushing back against.

I, too, am not like the other girls. And who doesn’t like to be righteously different?

I wonder if the key to Democratic success this time is finding a person who says something JUST enough outside of the Democratic comfort zone. Who shrugs off not just the ideas of elitism but of eminently tested, “failproof” messaging. This might look like a candidate being, yeah, a little meaner than past Dems (Tim Walz is trying this right now). Or maybe the opposite — “I can be sweet and kind, and I don’t care if you don’t like it.”

I’m spitballing here. I’m not saying the message should be offensive. I’m not suggesting doing the exact mirror of what Trump did. But I do think Democratic messaging going forward can’t feel like a Marvel movie, designed and polished to please everyone, meaning as a result it pleases no one…which I think is what the party has done for quite a while.

What I’m wondering is whether the party is looking for someone who, above all, lets a bunch of Democrats, all at once, look around and say, “Yeah, but I’m not like the OTHER Democrats.”

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LINKS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

MY STUFF:

How Trump made 30% tariffs feel like a relief. Let’s be clear — 30% tariffs on China are not low. Nor are 55%, which Trump says will soon be the rate. But in comparison to 145%? It’s…well it’s better. Here’s how those tariffs are going.

Trump threatens 50% tariffs on the EU. Remember this? Things change every 5 minutes don’t they. I’m not tired you’re tired.

Federal court shuts down Trump’s tariffs. But then an appeals court allowed them to stay in place. Things change every 5 minutes don’t they. I’m not tired you’re tired.

The Trump administration goes to war with Harvard. I went on our podcast Consider This with my very smart education-reporter colleague Elissa Nadworny to talk about Trump taking on Harvard, and it turned out great, and you should listen.

Trump and Elon broke up. And I went on Morning Edition to talk about it. Already feels like a month ago.

Here comes the G7. After tariffing everyone and threatening to annex Canada, Trump will head to Canada to talk to his fellow G7 leaders about global problems. Which [looks around this morning] definitely exist.

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NOT MY STUFF:

Square Theory. I don’t know how to even describe this article, but it melted my brain in the best way.

Why Smartfood Popcorn Doesn’t Hit Like It Used To. I KNEW SOMETHING WAS UP. I KNEW IT. Why can’t we have nice things???

YOUR OLD-INTERNET JOY OF THE WEEK: I don’t even know. Let’s do Weapon of Choice. It’s always fun. Know what? If you’re a paid subscriber, please drop your suggestions for future old-internet joy in the comments.

1. Bonus treat: when the iPhone came out in 2007, I remember a coworker of mine, a truly lovely and wildly nerdy guy named Doug, showing me a video of people singing about iPhones to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” and lo and behold, it was a New York Times-produced musical, thus proving that the Times has been innovating in ways the rest of us can only dream/nightmare about for nearly two decades now. Anyway, go watch it and join me in the waking nightmare that is my brain.

2. Hotchie motchie.

3. I used this imagery in an NPR article once and to this day am stunned that no one stopped me.

4. This is an amalgam of many, many conversations with voters. No one said this exact quote verbatim. I do still have the tape somewhere, though, because someday I’ll have a Pulitzer-worthy story that demands tape from a Wisconsin voter in their 60s on their porch in 2022 saying “no thank you” to Trump and by God I’ll have it.

5. I hate that “listicle” always makes me think of “testicle.” And yet it’s also somehow fitting. Anyway, this was in my head and now it’s in yours. You’re welcome.

6. Now to be clear, I think there was a hefty portion of people who were really pumped to just stick it to Hillary Clinton, but I digress.