Why Dems lost the presidency

Let's explore what happened on issues media pros and marketers should pay attention to

This happened, so let’s talk about why.

Quick intro: I know emotions are high, but I want to spend some time discussing why the presidential election outcome occurred. Before reading any further, can I ask we do this without anyone getting upset? Challenge: impossible for some, but I’d say if you read this Substack you’re open to rational, calm discussions without throwing stones. If not, you would have left already (we explore lots of things here).

No matter your party, as marketers and strategists we must be able to take a look at a situation as dispassionately as possible, and understand different perspectives and motivations. So in a minute we’ll briefly go through what I see really happened, which I think will be an interesting exercise for some of you. I have friends on all sides of the political spectrum and all over the country. I call them frequently and listen to them. I travel all over for work and interact with everyone along the way, no matter blue collar or white collar. This is in addition to following news and ideas online from many different media sources and viewpoints. It’s part of my job to understand the world, and honestly I don’t think you belong in communications if you don’t feel similarly. And, just because someone didn’t vote the way you did doesn’t make them evil or a bad person. They see the world differently. That’s okay! We should champion diversity of thought. We don’t all have to agree on everything. A side we oppose might even be wrong about certain things. That doesn’t mean they aren’t our fellow citizens and we can’t work together and collaborate, and debate why we don’t agree. As soon as that stops happening things fray. I’m hoping sharing a brief postmortem on the election might help.

I want to also preface with we are not doing this as any sort of political exercise. I just have continued concerns (perhaps illustrated below) that much of the marketing and media sector is unwilling or unable to look at issues neutrally and from first principles. As someone who is by nature not a political animal as well as data nerd, I think I’m able to do this with minimal baggage.

I’ve already been reading much cognitive dissonance on the topic of the election outcome (how could it happen!?). So with my analyst hat on here are some core observations. And if your first impulse is to call something you don’t agree with a “right or left wing talking point” or whatever, I think you should consider if you are prioritizing origin over truth. And anyway, for this discussion, a lot of that is moot now.

Dems ran a deeply inauthentic campaign: 100s of celeb endorsements from Hollywood are cringe. “Brat summer” feels childish, which contrasts the reality of the world being at an existential and serious place. It’s contrived and not what many wish for in a politician, certainly not independent voters the Dems lost. In ancient Roman times actors were considered low status for a reason, and while there certainly can be great voices and influence here, this isn’t really how the celeb industrial complex works in the marketing space. It might be able to sell widgets or concert seats but electing a president isn’t a consumer good, and messages from unserious people don’t work. Ricky Gervais lampooned this tactic quite well. I tweeted about this here if you want to join that discussion. We could have a whole separate discussion around how Trump is also a celebrity but there’s a big difference in positioning and what that means to voters. Also given he’s the one campaigning that’s moot, the big celeb endorsements and Kamala interviews feeling like they were from a script were what was bad. Watch this video and see if it clicks for you why. Also, stop worshipping celebrities, their age is ending, don’t be left holding that bag (save for something like athletes endorsing sporting gear, that makes sense).

Trad media is increasingly unreality and the thing in a bubble: I’ve written on this before, that the internet is the real world. This is at the same time legacy media is engaged in a race to the bottom as part of a subprime attention bubble. There’s a ton of durable research from many different organizations that trust in media is slipping (many reasons for this, sadly a lot of them are voluntary, but the good news is it can be fixed if people wish — I’m not a media permabear, and hope they improve).

Anyone still relying on playbooks from a decade ago (and there are many) are probably setting themselves up for failure, and this extends well beyond political campaigns. The problem is compounded when the vast majority of campaign people live in this bubble and decide to ignore the ground shifting under their feet. The internet is in its 3rd proper decade and I fear few communications pros still fully grasp what this means and how to analyze it appropriately. I stated last year and just the other week not to dismiss Twitter/X, while many wrote it off it because they don’t like the management or what media competitive to it wrote. It might have cost them the election, and it’s definitely costing them ongoing influence with many smart, well-intentioned heterodox people who want to collaborate with the world. The other social networks like Instagram and TikTok just aren’t the same, sharing filtered selfies isn’t real influence, in a lot of ways they’re actually an echo of the trad media bubble.

ESG is nonsense and people are over it: companies are doing absurd things to tick boxes to raise fake scores (similar nonsense as the ratings agencies in the financial crisis). This is actually tied to marketing, because it manifests here in many ways (both on the ad and organic media side of the trade). Remember none of this was ever about actual diversity or helping people, these did the opposite and simply divided America. They just don’t accomplish the things they claim to. As a Jewish person watching the rampant antisemitism across America post October 7th I witnessed this, as did many others (we saw people on the left side with terrorists of all things). We could write any number of essays on this topic alone, and our industry trades have entire sections dedicated to this stuff with many of the stories being bizarre, suffering from a kind of moral inversion against western values. It’s okay we got some things wrong, let’s just not continue repeating mistakes. Here is a critique on DEI as one example from a conservative, one from a liberal, and here’s one from trad media. You might not like Matt Walsh but his movie on this topic should leave you at the very least asking questions about why so many clear grifters are here. If you believe it’s off limits to critique an ideology, that’s something you should personally sit and think about.

Americans hate the notion of too much government control: like it or not people are feeling the vibes of government overreach. There’s an expansive empire of 430 federal agencies now, they’re harassing not just business owners and people who want to build things, but also a guy who peacefully has a pet squirrel. This squirrel issue sounds silly but actually well serves us as a symbol.

source

Americans don’t want more government in their lives, and the Dems have from a positioning standpoint become branded the party of an infinitely expanding power (to be fair both parties do this, I’m just sharing perception). Still …the left is openly starting to campaign against the first amendment which should be concerning for all, it’s our most important right all others stem from.

Science is being muzzled for political ideology: as just one recent example, The NIH spent $10 million on a study to evaluate adolescent gender medicine and the researchers didn’t release the findings because they’re ideologically inconvenient. It’s a remarkable story and emblematic of so much. The world demands honest communications on things like this, and the withholding of data simply hurts patients and health. I’m not saying both parties aren’t guilty of similar issues here but it’s especially bad if the party with all the power in government, academia and media are doing so. I know many of them likely take issue with this and don’t agree, which is great. Let’s hope they speak up. Perception is reality and doing nothing means the poor branding on one side will continue to stick.

Young people, specifically young men are struggling: a friend of mine John is one of the few trad media journalists who has been talking about this one for awhile, and says it succinctly below.

Others like Scott Galloway have made impassioned talks expanding on the issue (watch below if you’ve not seen this one). And yet young people (men in particular) continue to be cast aside. Any society doing this is headed down a bad path. Further, the dems advertising basically treated young men like fake caricatures of what being one is actually about. It’s a big disconnect, especially when they were purposefully excluded from the Democrats ‘inclusivity’ literature.

And look, this is really just the tip of the iceberg, I’m not going to get into larger issues like inflation or foreign policy etc. Those matter of course too, but I think these types of issues and others are actually more important for many of us in marketing or communications (let’s be honest, we’re not the ones controlling interest rates). We are making creative work and that involves understanding the world.

You don’t even have to agree with everything above to at least understand why people might think things were going wrong, or at least strange and made a choice in the election with this in mind. For awhile everyone was gaslit against critiquing or even really discussing certain issues. I am glad this is ending, as it’s altogether unamerican and illiberal. And if we want to get back to a normal country without insane candidates, we have to have a better discourse and more honest communication. Or the insanity will continue to be weaponized against us (from both parties, the ‘woke right’ is real, too).