Can you see me? Can you hear me?

If you have not already done so, I highly recommend you read Amy Pritchard’s Substack piece. I had already written the piece below. I want to expand upon the important message she is sending. If you care anything about the direction of the Democratic party, I highly suggest reading what she had to say, and then consider my observations/opinion that follows:

Imagine if you will.

After weeks of research, interviews and tenacity, you are at long last hired to manage the campaign of your dreams. You walk into the campaign headquarters. To your utter amazement to say nothing of confusion, you realize: there are no computers, no laptops or tablets. No mobile phones. No answering machines or voicemail. There is no online voter database to access, no online database for donors or access to donor profiles or giving history and what’s more, there are no digital mechanisms to track those voters or donors or how to find your voters and donors. And because this data does not exist online, you wonder just how you can put together an effective, strategic and successful field/donor/voter outreach program.

There are no apps available allowing you to design glitzy, glamorous eye-catching, carefully wordsmithed political ads and/or mailers. There are no apps to bombard your donors with text messages endlessly begging for money, because there are no cell phones.

There is no internet. No email. No spreadsheet or Powerpoint apps. There is no social media —- No FaceBook. No Instagram. No TikTok. There is no Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Slack platform, no Powerpoint. There are no podcasts, or bloggers, or newsletter platforms.

There are no printers. No fax machines. Only one mammoth copy machine, mimeograph machines and a telecopier.

There is no 24/7 cable news coverage.

Confused? This is what the infrastructure of political campaigns looked like in my day, 50 plus years ago. Before the advent of technology in or around Y2K.

Without the high-tech of today, political candidates and their campaigns relied heavily and almost exclusively on print and face-to-face engagement. There was no real-time news coverage; campaign news traveled slowly, limited by the speed of mail and the reach of newspapers. The absence of a 24/7 news cycle meant that campaign events and controversies unfolded at a much slower pace, and candidates had more control over their public image and messaging.

Before the advent of technology, candidates reached out to voters primarily through indirect, personal, and community-based methods rather than direct mass communication. So just how was information disseminated absent technology?

Campaigns used surrogates and supporters; print media; public events such as rallies, parades and speeches, banners, music & slogans; word of mouth, local gatherings, and community leaders played a significant role in spreading information about candidates and their platforms, making political events into public entertainment and fostering grassroots participation.

Unlike today, outreach by campaigns was highly localized, personal, and dependent on physical presence and printed materials.

With our massive dependence upon technology, the Democratic party has lost touch with its people. We no longer listen to what people are telling us. We spend less time in front of voters and more time behind the screen.

Campaigns have become a big business, relying heavily on consultants of varying degrees —- General Campaign Consultants; Fundraising Consultants; Mail Consultants; Media Consultants; Communications Consultants and Organizing Consultants. The three Democratic Party Committees - Democratic National Committee, The Democratic Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee —- all depend upon these campaign consultants and in fact, promote those they have a relationship. Consultants become rich while voters are left to languish by the wayside. In the end, campaigns listen more to consultants and less to voters.

Much has been made, and rightly so, Democrats have a “messaging” problem, we are unable to articulate to the voters succinctly, just what it is our party stands for. As a means of effectively communicating its “message,” Democrats are now asking high dollar donors to invest heavily in social media platforms such as podcasts as a means to effectively reach out to donors. We are sorely missing the point.

Don’t get me wrong. We NEED the technology to campaign effectively. But our dependence upon it has caused us to lose sight of the most important component of campaigning —- voters. Direct face-to-face contact with voters.

And while high-dollar donors are being courted to invest in infrastructure that already exists, voters are screaming —- Can you hear me? Can you see me?

We have lost our way.

Without question what is happening all around us is a five-alarm fire. And because of this immediate emergency, we are not thinking strategically. We are not thinking long-term. But then again, we never have. Not for decades. Instead of joining together, truly assessing and facing our demons, we react. We address what is immediately in front of us, instead of surgically dissecting precisely what has ailed us for the last generation. We do not listen. And frankly, we simply have not learned from our past mistakes.

For more than two decades I worked on countless campaigns while living in Washington, DC. It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago and attended a women’s political event I realized just how insulated those of us in Washington were to the rest of the country. Democratic women leaders were invited as special guests to a luncheon. The attendees: high dollar women donors, high-dollar in their own right, who were also very active politically. They raised legitimate concerns with the special guests, but were summarily dismissed and/or spoken over. In short, the special guests, women and leaders within the Democratic Party at the national level, made it clear, they knew more than those who were actually on the ground during the work. I was both sad and disappointed. It opened my eyes.

I was busted by a number of DNC delegates because of my disappointment over the DNC Chair’s race back in February. I continue to be disappointed. With the exception of being bombarded via text and email, multiple times a day for contributions to the DNC, I have seen no change whatsoever in the infrastructure nor the direction of the party. As of today, May, 29th, nothing seems to have changed. Nothing.

We have party leaders and influencers attacking a duly elected vice chair for having the unmitigated nerve to advocate challenging Democratic elected officials who are doing nothing more than warming a seat. This when there are leaders who could better and more effectively represent the voters of those districts. This very scenario occurred back in 2018 when AOC challenged a sitting member who was being groomed for a leadership position in the House. She was a pariah for a very long time. Her crime —- 1) she organized her community, a community who felt they were not being heard, they were not being represented, because their MOC spent the majority of his time in Washington, DC, instead of the district he represented and 2) she didn’t know her place.

I am the founder and chair of an organization —- Welead OC —- developing Progressive Women Democrats to run for city councils and school boards. I bring this up only to highlight what I’ve learned as a Women of a Certain Age —- as well as to emphasize the highpoints of Amy Pritchard’s Substack piece —- there were legions upon legions of volunteers who worked themselves into exhaustion. They were actually on the ground. Speaking to voters. Listening to what voters had to say. These volunteers never appeared on CNN or local news outlets. They weren’t what the rest of the world would consider VIP’s. But they knew what they were doing. They kept at it. Our candidates won because of strategic and targeted field/voter outreach programs. The candidates and their volunteers are battle-tested in red/purple districts. They know first-hand, the meaning of People-Powered campaigns and the values of the Democratic Party.

But you won’t see these volunteers being hired for campaign/political work. Because they don’t have the connections required these days to get themselves in front of the decision makers. Or, they’re too old, or they’re outsiders and in many cases, viewed, as the Chicago women activists, not as seasoned or knowledgeable as those in DC.

If the Powers that Be took the time to look around and do a deep-dive, they would see, as many others and I who do this work have seen, there is a massive pool of beyond qualified people, passionate about the values the Democratic Party represents. And they do what many in DC do not do —- they listen.

We can sit and wait and watch as the current administration and GOP Congress implode, because they may, there is no guarantee, or, as a party, take action that is outside our comfort level. It is the only way we can rebuild an institution that is well worth our efforts.