Democrats Need to Get Emotional on Messaging

August 31st, Tulum, Mexico

Last Thursday, I was sitting in Tulum, Mexico, at a Boston Pizza franchise (exquisite Mexican cuisine, I know), trying to watch the University of North Carolina football season opener against the Golden Gophers of Minnesota. The Tar Heels started their season unranked with little fanfare. 

Honestly, the game wasn’t even on my radar until a friend shot me a text just prior to the game asking me how I was feeling about our chances of winning. His text gave me a good excuse to walk across the street and watch some good old-fashioned American football for the first time since February.

Navigating American sports channels in Mexico can sometimes be challenging. Nonetheless, I consulted the translator app on my phone and scribbled on a napkin the game I wanted to watch in Spanish for the bartender, David. 

David acknowledged my request. About three minutes later, the giant television in the center of the bar was changed to the ACC Network, where the Western Carolina Catamounts were attempting to upset the 24th-ranked NC State Wolfpack.

I suppose someone saw the words “Carolina del Norte” and ignored the “Estado” part. Anyway, this was a UNC football game, not a UNC basketball game, so I shrugged it off. I settled in and started rooting for the Catamounts, even though they hadn’t beaten an ACC football team since before I was born.

I saw the first political ad around the start of the 2nd quarter. It was an attack ad against Vice President Kamala Harris. It was textbook racist Republican fear-mongering. The sound wasn’t on, but I could visually interpret the gist of the ad.

Harris is soft on crime. She let an “illegal” get away who then committed another crime and harmed someone. I thought to myself, “This is Willie Horton all over again.” The ad then cut to a female white victim and closed with the ultimate albatross. Kamala Harris is wait for it . . . “a San Francisco liberal,” aka a younger version of Nancy Pelosi.  

Even though I am registered to vote in Maryland and was watching the game in Mexico, I knew that the vast majority of eyes on the game were exclusively North Carolinians. 

I lived a total of 23 years in North Carolina, one of the few swing states that will determine the fate of our democracy. I know that this kind of ad resonates with voters in the Old North State. I furiously started texting some of my political friends, livid over the fact that an attack ad against Harris was running in my home state during the start of the college football season.

I tried to rationalize in my mind that the fan bases of both schools competing are largely conservative anyway. Hence, the ads were likely preaching to the choir, but I also know that plenty of Independent and persuadable voters were also watching the game. 

The attack ad on Harris ran twice during the game. Before halftime, I saw a different ad attacking the Democratic nominee for North Carolina Governor, Josh Stein, another competitive race. The ad tied both Stein and Harris to Biden, which leads me to believe Biden is polling much lower in NC than Harris and Stein. 

I watched the entire game, and I did not see one single ad promoting the Harris-Walz ticket or attacking the former President of the United States, a convicted felon who encouraged an attempted coup on January 6th, 2021.

I will say this until I am blue in the face. DEMOCRATS HAVE TO GET BETTER AT MESSAGING. And this includes tugging at the heartstrings and telling stories. Most political ads for both sides are predominantly written by white men who write polling language that regurgitates the same old talking points and then draft campaign messaging based on those polling results.

And too many times, their “wisdom” turns into milquetoast, cookie-cutter ads promoting policies that no one cares about except the people living in echo chambers. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of talented people in the political industry who make dynamic, thought-provoking ads, and I have had the pleasure of working with some of them.

But more often than not, our ads are the brainchilds of self-important elitists who couldn’t hold a conversation with the average person walking out of Walmart without their nose being up in the air. Tapping into one's emotional intelligence and putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is vital to winning races. 

You have to watch every GOP ad with a grain of salt. And I know that for every “bad guy” that Harris allegedly let get away, there are hundreds of hardened, violent criminals she successfully prosecuted and made California and the rest of the United States a safer place because of it. 

I have managed a lot of women running for public office, and one of the things trailblazers teach you is that women politicians need validators, especially male ones, to lend more legitimacy to their candidacy (which is absolutely ridiculous but indicative of the America we live in). This is another reason why Tim Walz was the right choice as the VP pick. He is a man’s man, whatever the hell that means.

I didn’t watch any of the Democratic National Convention last month. My Airbnb in Tulum only had streaming services, and I wasn’t about to ask a joint in Mexico to flip on American politics. I followed the highlights and kept up to date with clips from friends on social media. 

In my opinion, former Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan from Georgia delivered one of the most striking and compelling speeches, wherein he differentiated between being a Republican and voting for Donald Trump. 

Duncan admitted that as a Republican, he did not agree with all of Harris’ policies but was voting for her because it was “the right thing to do.” I am paraphrasing his more eloquent words, but the point is here was a Republican communicating to a broad audience what a serious threat Trump is to the country and still standing by his conservative beliefs. His speech should be turned into an ad and run on Fox News 24/7. 

This is another mistake that I believe the Democratic Party makes, which is assuming everyone watching Fox News is a dyed-in-the-wool, MAGA Republican who cannot be converted or saved. I’ve traveled all around the country, and at some point around the early 2010s, Fox News became America’s default “news network.”

It was turned on in every McDonald's. It is played on televisions at the gym, restaurants, airports, you name it. And yes, many Fox News watchers are not persuadable, but I do believe that some are, especially if you showcase Republicans against Trump. This race is going to be so close that Democrats will need more than a few of those “somes.” At the very least, an ad featuring Duncan’s speech may infuriate the MAGA Republicans so much that they change the channel.

Republicans rely on fear to win elections. Fear is an emotion. In 2016, Democrats relied on anger. Trump said this. Trump did that. 

At the end of the day, most people didn’t care that Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women or childishly denigrated women and minorities by calling them outrageous and disgusting names. 

I was the Communications Director for the Iowa Democratic Party during the 2016 election. That election taught me a lot about my country, and the fact that the 2024 Presidential race (our second attempt at running a woman for President) is this close tells me even more about my native land. And no, it isn’t flattering.

I don’t know what it is like to live as a person of color in America, and I never will. But I do know what it is like to live as a woman in the United States. 

I know what it is like to be bullied, mistreated, and slandered by sexist members of your own political party who are supposed to be champions for your gender.

Some of the male political operatives rallying around Harris and maybe even writing her ads urging you to vote for her are the same men who expect women to schedule the meetings, take notes during the meeting, and clean up after the meeting. 

And that’s why I know how steep of a mountain we have to climb to elect a woman President in a country where we don’t even pay women, especially women of color, equally.

But, right now, this is an all-hands-on-deck moment like no other, and from what I can tell, the Harris-Walz campaign has torn up some of the pages from the old playbook, which is a step in the right direction because we all know what the definition of insanity is. 

Kamala Harris cannot win this election with Democrats alone, and I think the establishment is finally starting to understand the importance of the Electoral College, one of the most egregious flaws of our democracy. I’m certain our founding fathers never intended for the fate of our democracy to hinge on six or seven states. 

It took some convincing, but I now believe that Biden made the right decision by choosing not to run for re-election. It was a selfless, patriotic act of a true statesman. I worry that still too many Democrats think that since we switched pitchers in the ninth inning that we can just trot back to the dugout with a win. 

I’m glad the Democratic National Convention was jubilant and hopeful. I am elated that voter registration has sky-rocketed, particularly among Black women. I am optimistic that we have learned from the mistakes of 2016. But I have seen this movie before, and it doesn’t end well.

I never want to feel the kick-in-the-face despair I felt the morning after the 2016 election ever again. 

Messaging that tugs at the heartstrings. Tactical and strategic targeting of voters. Registering and motivating voters. Politics is an art and a science, but it isn’t rocket science. 

The despicable, antiquated policies and platforms of MAGA Republicans are the biggest reason that the country is so fractured and divided. 

But, the Democratic Party bears some of the responsibility for not providing a more attractive alternative to the racism, sexism, homophobia, and downright authoritarianism of the other side.

It’s pretty simple really: the right messaging to the right audiences. It’s football season. It’s time for Democrats to take thought-provoking, in-touch, emotional messaging to Americans in their living rooms, in bars, and even in their man caves. 

But what do I know? I’m just a political hack who desperately hopes I am not singing one of my favorite Randy Travis songs on November 6th.

P.S. For those of you keeping score at home, Tar Heel football won its season opener 19-17 after the Golden Gophers missed what would have been a game-winning field goal. Minnesota accidentally set off fireworks in our honor after the win, and we appreciated the sentiment. Awevo!

Email monica@workhorsestrategies.com, and let’s get started.

GO HEELS!

Monica Biddix
Workhorse Strategies, LLC
Principal and Founder