DNC’s Local Listeners initiative will target one million ‘infrequent’ voters in battleground districts
Democrats are launching an aggressive campaign to win back voters they lost, not to Donald Trump, but to the proverbial “couch,” as they look to regain support ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
On Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rolled out a new initiative called Local Listeners with the goal of targeting over one million “infrequent” voters in key battleground districts. Seeking to build on the party’s string of off-year election victories, which extended into 2026 with an upset in Texas last weekend, the DNC is betting that early, localized outreach will be crucial in winning back these voters’ trust – and their ballots – this time around.
“If we want to keep earning back the trust and support of voters, we have to listen to them,” DNC chair Ken Martin said in a statement, shared in advance with the Guardian. “This program modernizes the way we are talking to and hearing from the voters that we need to win elections now and for years to come. The Democratic Party is done with waiting until the last minute to engage voters – these conversations need to happen early and often.”
Courting the middle/right doesn’t mean diet-fascism or shitty, means-tested versions of policy people actually like. “Free healthcare” is more popular across all demographics than any compromised policy.
Yah, I keep pounding this wardrum for unity and trying to explain how left and right basically want the same things but one side is made of blubbering toddlers who can’t disconnect emotion from policy.
But you can mobilize them, you can push them to be your useful tool. Why does only Steve Fucking Bannon get away with manipulating dumb people? I don’t get it.
Push free healthcare, push social safety nets, call it “tax refunded emergency financial care” or something so they nod in agreement instead of spit and rage about socialism. Push for social services and regulations on businesses that are ruining their communities, remind them they pay taxes and deserve something back for it. Stop finger-wagging about race and gender issues, THEY DO NOT CARE.
THEY ARE DUMB. Jesus christ why aren’t more people using that fact as a tool for good. Most progressives have succumbed to the feed and the algorithm of rage bait and hate and now just want revenge and vindication, even if it means the world burns. They are the same.
Anything that’s means-tested or sounds complicated is off the table, because like Obamacare, most people will understand on some level that it won’t help them, but they will easily be convinced they will pay for it. “Free healthcare” has such power because you can’t add any complications that make it difficult and shameful and complicated to use.
Anyone else you wanna let the right cleave off our coalition? Why not throw women under the bus too? Letting the weirdos who promote checking genitals in women’s restrooms have their way with one marginalized group doesn’t help us advance in other areas, if anything it energizes them with red meat.
It’s wild that every time I say that pushing social equality pushes dumb americans away it’s INSTANTLY treated in bad-faith and like I want to “throw X under the bus”
Bro, we can have all the equality and social protections if we can just turn the right away from the oligarchy that is worming their tentacles into their discourse, they don’t care either way they’ve just been turned against these people because they’re adherent to a “side.” Break the “side” break the hate and xenophobia.
Focus on one issue that will wedge the base and the rest will crumble, but every time we try to force people to care about people they don’t care about, and make no mistake, they don’t just hate people different than themselves, they hate anyone who isn’t them or their immediate family, they double down harder because they are children. We have made negative progress trying to butt heads against them, and I’m quite sure that the left broadly doesn’t care and just wants to feel righteous for fighting a losing fight and doesn’t actually care about actual better outcomes for marginalized people. If they did, they would care a lot more about seizing power instead of being the most smug and inclusive person in line for the showers.
I hear you, I understand you, and I feel for you. Therefore, we’re gonna Pokémon GO to the polls.