Practice Empathy

This is potentially the most challenging of all my proposals, but for that reason it might be the most important. For better or worse, our politics has become more about managing emotional states than about the actual policy of governing. There is no other explanation for the profound disconnect between President Biden’s impressive accomplishments and people’s negative feelings about his term in office. This unsettling contradiction is at the heart of our political struggle. There is no quick fix.

For starters, however, our party needs wholeheartedly to throw ourselves into the shoes of those whose votes or dollars seek. Consider our voters or potential voters. We must do more than pay lip service to addressing what is going on in voters’ day to day lives and what is motivating them as they think about politics. Too often we assume we can get in touch with voters simply by digging deep into polls. But we can learn at least as much about voters’ concerns by looking to the actions they take every day. This lesson is important as we craft our message, but let’s focus here on analyzing how our interactions with voters feel to them.

Our cavalier attitude toward voters’ felt experience is manifest in longstanding political practices. Think about all the direct mail that political campaigns, and especially outside groups, send, and imagine what happens when people receive 10 or so of those in a day. Straight into the recycling bin go the flyers without a moment’s thought. Fewer people are getting news from respected news sources and broadcast ratings are plummeting. But when we look at the budgets at our campaigns, we are still loading up on T.V. ads. Yes, we have also taken the leap into digital ads, but even as we do that the attention span of media scrollers grows shorter and their skill at ignoring ads is nothing short of remarkable. For the most part corporate advertisers know this too, spending money not to create demand for a product but merely to position their product as an option for a decision to purchase that has already been made. While we like to think that knocking on doors is different, strangers arriving at doors in a Ring Doorbell world, easily become yet another thing to be ignored. It is too easy for the voter to simply tune you out, which is even likelier when voters live in a region where it’s unpopular or even lonely to take our side. The rest of the plans I offer in my quest for Chair are about how the Party can break through. But in addition, here I am urging a fundamental shift in attitude. Our task is to sit in the shoes of this voter as they get an unwanted call, another piece of mail, or see the same ad for the two hundredth time, or even get a knock at the door from a stranger. Every move we make must focus on moving overwhelmed voters from a defensive “don’t bother me” stance to an “I am interested in what you have to say mode”. This challenge has been neglected as we consider what we do.

As crucial as empathy is needed for voters, the still greater problem of empathy comes with respect to donors and people who might otherwise wish to engage in the party but for whom we have no clear role.

Let’s start with the small dollar Democratic donor. My sense is that this donor now receives on average roughly 10 asks for money per day from various Democratic committees and causes, either via text or e-mail. Personally, I have probably had days with 100 requests. Building a system whereby a donor is literally ignoring you 10 times a day, is building a system that is designing you to be ignored. A request does not work simply because it succeeds in bringing in some money. Each request most also help to build, not tear down the overall brand.

Although never eager to turn down a buck, Corporate America understands this. Seldom do companies send mass texts. Consumers generally receive e-mails only from stores they have signed up for and almost never at the frequency of political solicitations. Democratic texts and emails feel at once overwhelming, manipulative and assaultive. Yet for a huge number of people this is how they experience the Democratic Party. Roughly 15 million people have an ActBlue account. These people want to be a part of the Democratic effort, but their desire to be donors is met more often by another request than by anything approaching respect. There are plenty of reasons why things are done the way they are now, and again more of my plans will explore this. But again the fundamental point is for us to ask ourselves how what we are doing lands with the people on the receiving end; how it makes them feel; and how likely it is that they will respond positively in the future.

To some degree ours is a variant on the story of the boy who cried wolf. In the real story, the boy cried too many times, and everyone stopped coming when the wolf appeared. In our case as the texts and emails roll on, some percentage of the people will keep coming back no matter how many times we ask. What that means is that we don’t see the reaction of all those who don’t come and who hold a grudge against us. We can revel in the attention and funding we do receive. But what happens when the time comes, perhaps at election time, when, to win the day, we need every last Democratic-leaning person to be working and voting flat out. Our parable might be the Dr. Seuss tale where all the whos down in Whoville had to shout as loud as they could for Horton to hear. If some tune out, we are truly cooked. Every fundraising request needs to ask, how will this make the person who receives it feel? Crucially, this means that to some degree the tactics that might have the best dollar response by trigging a fear or loss aversion response might have the worst impact on everyone else.

Beyond those who give to this party, there are others who want to be involved in a lot of different ways. Yet that also can be fraught. The Democratic Party and its candidates, while in theory wanting all sorts of help, beyond financial contributions, primarily boil volunteer participation down to two main things. We ask people to knock on doors, and to make phone calls. Although there are all sorts of other activities that could be used or helpful, these two so dominate what campaigns hold out to the grassroots, that if these are not one’s cup of tea, it’s easy to get discouraged. The party and its campaigns stress these as the major ways to help and you aren’t up for that, then you get a sense that there isn’t much you can do. Indeed, those who come to the Party with an idea they think might improve it, the odds are good that the staff they encounter don’t have time or interest in listening. This relationship with volunteers, while often respectful, too often remains at a distance. The coldness is hard to thaw because ,as mentioned before, staffers are so transient and because meeting the goals of the campaign is often more important than making people feel valued. Far too often the person who walks in because they want to help ends up not feeling wanted or needed. Examples are all too real of people who wanted to volunteer and couldn’t or didn’t because the campaign failed to respond. This problem is easier to identify than fix, but tackling it will be one of my priorities as Chair.

Conclusion.

There is always more concrete actions to take and many ways to think about increasing our empathy. Obviously, we can’t change all our approaches overnight. But an empathetic mindset is what we need to strengthen our brand. How does what we do make people feel, and how can that we make those feelings better.

Jason Paul