Herding Cats:

The Problem Isn’t Just Structural. It’s Behavioral.

Democrats are not just losing the information war because the other side has Fox News and a billion-dollar propaganda ecosystem. That’s a big part of it, sure—but it’s not the whole story. The comms asymmetry isn’t just structural. It’s behavioral. It’s psychological. It’s us.

Let me break this down for you, because until we understand the real problem, we’re not going to fix it. And if we don’t fix it, we’re not just going to lose elections. We’re going to lose democracy.

1. Democrats Want to Be Smart. That’s a Problem.

Democrats are smart people. Progressives, especially. They value intelligence. They curate it. They showcase it. They want to look smart, and more importantly, they’re terrified of looking stupid. This seems like a good thing—until you realize that effective propaganda often requires you to say things that sound stupid to smart people.

Take this for example: I say “Republicans want to steal your Social Security.” Immediately, I get the pushback. “Well, that’s not technically how the Social Security Trust Fund operates…” Yeah, I know. I have a PhD. I understand the mechanics. But voters don’t. And frankly, they shouldn’t have to. What they understand is retirement money, and what Republicans want to do is take it away.

To move public opinion, you have to say things that cut emotionally. You have to speak with moral clarity and rhetorical punch, and that means tolerating a couple of PhD bros on Twitter telling you “well, actually.” That’s political Twitter. It’s not America. It’s a funhouse mirror for ideologues. You are not talking to voters when you post there—you’re talking to people who think they are the voters.

Democrats, in their obsessive need to be accurate and sophisticated, self-sabotage. They sand the edges off every message. They bury the lead under 400 words of context. Republicans are out here yelling “THEY’RE COMING FOR YOUR KIDS!” and Democrats are workshopping a 17-point white paper on the child tax credit.

2. Democrats Don’t Want to Be Mean. That’s Also a Problem.

Let’s talk personality. Liberals are, by nature, empathetic. They care about the collective good. They believe in cooperation and consensus and peace and justice and being kind. That’s beautiful. That’s moral. That’s also completely incompatible with war.

And make no mistake: we are at war. Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government. When he failed, he spent four years plotting his return. This isn’t politics as usual. This is an authoritarian movement, and we’re still out here trying to fight it with Michelle Obama’s “go high” strategy.

No. That era’s over. Going high doesn’t work when the other side is trying to burn the building down.

Republicans know how to be mean. They know how to ridicule. They know how to attack, to shame, to dominate. And they do it because it works. It activates their base. It demoralizes the opposition. It wins elections.

Democrats are still clinging to the illusion that if we just stay nice enough, we’ll shame Republicans into good behavior. If we just keep modeling decency, they’ll return the favor. That’s a fantasy. We’ve wasted ten years on that fantasy, and what we got in return was January 6th, book bans, abortion bans, and a Supreme Court that looks like a Federalist Society dream journal.

You don’t reason with fascists. You beat them. And to do that, you’re going to have to get a little mean.

3. Democrats Have No Hierarchy. We’re Fighting a War With No General.

You ever try to run a business via committee? It’s a disaster.

Democrats love egalitarianism. We love decentralization. Every voice matters. Every group gets a seat at the table. We have quotas! That’s great—until you need to move fast and hit hard. Then it’s a mess.

The Republican Party, under Trump, functions like a paramilitary. It has a leader. It has message discipline. It has an ecosystem that pushes the same line across every medium every day. You can hate the message, but you have to admit—it gets through.

What do we have? We’ve got fifty state parties doing fifty different things and a digital strategy that looks like it was designed in 2012. Everyone’s rowing in a different direction. Every swing race for itself! Everyone wants consensus. No one wants to take the wheel. No one wants to look political.

We are the first people in history trying to fight a war with no general.

You want to fix the comms asymmetry? Here’s where it starts: kill the bureaucracy. Dismantle the endless committees. Stop pretending we can crowdsource a communications strategy. Put one person in charge. Give them the resources and the authority to execute. And then follow the damn orders.

You don’t win wars with vibes.

4. Democrats Still Think Facts Win Elections. They Don’t.

This one’s going to hurt, but it needs to be said. Facts don’t move people. Stories do.

Republicans get this. They’re out here building cinematic universes—The Pedophile Democrats, The Border Invasion, The Deep State Coup. The Russia Hoax. It’s all bullshit, but it’s compelling. It’s got villains and heroes and stakes.

Democrats counter with… charts. Data. Peer-reviewed studies. The Mueller Report. That’s not going to cut it. You think voters are doing policy analysis in the voting booth?

We keep trying to convince. Republicans are trying to win. One side is fighting a war for hearts and minds. The other is handing out spreadsheets and direct mailers with small print.

If you want to win elections, you need to make people feel something. You need to scare the shit out of them. You need to make them laugh. You need to make them angry. That means talking in moral terms, not legalistic ones. That means leading with emotion, not nuance. That means propaganda.

I know. That word makes liberals squeamish. But guess what? If you’re telling the truth in emotionally resonant ways to inspire action—that’s still propaganda. And if we don’t start doing it, we’re going to lose this country to people who mastered it twenty years ago.

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In Conclusion: Fix Your Behavior, Not Just the Structure

You want to fix the comms asymmetry? Great. Build some infrastructure. Fund the media. Amplify trusted voices. Create a messaging command center. Compete in the digital space.

But if you don’t fix the behavioral problem, especially among the electeds and swing race candidates who will control most of the paid comms money, none of it will matter. You cannot decentralize your way to victory. You cannot committee your way to message discipline. You cannot empathy your way out of fascism.

You have to change. You have to get mean. You have to get loud. You have to be willing to look dumb. You have to centralize. You have to politicize. And you have to understand: this is not a debate. It’s a rhetorical war.

And we’re losing it.

-Rachel