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.”
Lol. Lmao.
“If we want to keep earning back the trust and support of voters, we have to listen to them,”
“This program modernizes the way we are talking to and hearing from the voters…"
The problem isn’t that democrats don’t have a modern way to listen and talk to voters. The problem is, democrats know exactly what the voters want, but refuse to give it to them because it’s inconvenient to their donors.
Have they considered actually standing up to MAGA?
And what about actually delivering something of value to their voters, in the places where Dems have a majority such as state and city governments?
No, they haven’t. They won’t go against their donors.
If you are paying yourself to train to better understand the average person, you have immediately lost.
You are incentivized by the wrong thing nowDemocrats need to replace First-past-the-post voting in states they control. Then they can be whatever they want.
European countries that don’t have FPTP are just as fucked up as the ones that do.
The same is true of term limits. US states that have implemented them don’t have any better governance than those that didn’t.
This is a campaign that should never stop
Depends, will dems use this as a pretense to move to the right or will they convince themselves its a messaging issue, and republican-lite policy is actually tHE Most Progressive eVAr!?, its the voters who are bad and dumb.
The last several federal elections have had the highest voter turnout in US history. Our problem isn’t laziness or lack of voters, our problem is the people who voted fucking hate democrats. They largely weren’t all MAGA turds, in fact if you actually read the exit polling many of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 were Obama voters or Bernie supporters.
They didn’t vote for Trump because they’re racist monsters, most of them voted for Trump because they’re dumb and they don’t watch the news and when they do they see Democrats acting like pathetic losers while corporations drive our prices up. Millions of people voted for Trump because bird flu had driven egg prices up, and they associated that with Biden and Harris.
Dems don’t want “more voter turnout” they want more of their own idiots and boomers to vote for the status-quo.
If we want to fix this situation with our only actual funded “opposition” party and have a chance of taking the country back for citizens we have to flush ALL incumbent representatives out of the legislative branch. We start this in the States. Each state is a nation, those states have great power. DNC is a container, we pour out the contents, replace it with something new and use that to reform the federal government.
They can’t sabotage every election, they can’t put fucking ICE agents around your local school board voting in new management, they can’t be in every town electing a mayor. This is why Mamdani and other progressives won powerful state positions recently. Don’t be apathetic, don’t burn out because the dems are weak and awful and fake, make new politics. Get involved in your community, go to progressive victory and volunteer to help actual progressive candidates and ignore the paid DNC shills.
In the months leading up to the election i had so many Democrats knocking on my door i started going off on them, asking if they talked to each other at all, telling them i was feeling harassed. I literally almost threw away my ballot i was so pissed, when one asked me to send her pictures of me voting, I told her to fuck off.
They don’t care about us.
Democrats will try anything but policy.
Two words:
President Clooney
Guess the one benefit of living in a deep red Midwestern state is they’ll never try that crap here. Not gonna waste breath on people that value donations over human lives.
Being Mamdani without the policies isn’t being Mamdani. America’s appetite for Obama types is waning.
Yeah better to be Katie Wilson than Obama
Shut down ICE. You’ll be the party in power. Fix voting access, nationalize mail in voting resources (states run the elections)
Promote down ballot leftists
Repeal citizens united
They’ll never lose another national election
They aren’t looking for a list of things to DO.
They are just looking for the right lies to tell.
These feel like pipedreams when looking at the current DNC. Or maybe they’ll just talk about it then do bupkis when they’re in power like last time.
They have the power not to fund ice now. They chose to give them money again.
No mention of changing any of the policy stances, alliances with far right war criminals, and other substance based reasons for what they pretend to be laziness or apathy.
As usual, they’re taking the Aaron Sorkin approach to politics where it’s all about giving the right speeches and pretending to listen (while refusing to take action based on what they’re told by prospective voters) and what you actually DO is immaterial 🤦
Until they stop acting like the country (and by extension the world) is a ridiculously condescending work of fiction with themselves as the main characters (and thus the only ones that REALLY matter), they will keep losing out on critically needed votes and therefore be accomplices to the ravages of fascism their carelessness enables.
so you can’t choose between far right criminals?
you’d rather help keep one far right criminal in office?
good to know
we don’t need you anyway anymore
Then blame everyone under the sun except themselves for their failures.
It’s not like anyone told them supporting a genocide would be bad for voter turnout. How were they supposed to know? /s
How does the genocide go now huh. Trump give you what you were looking for there.
I am truly sorry I failed to spin genocide as popular. The only way the dems could have won was by doing what the people they were asking to vote for them wanted, to prove that they would honor their side of the deal.
Super easy, barely an inconvenience… do the opposite of everything happening in the current administration. Don’t court the middle/right. Publicly recognize the lack of accountability and publish plans to do so.
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.
call it “tax refunded emergency financial care”
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.
Stop finger-wagging about race and gender issues, THEY DO NOT CARE.
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.
Volunteers will undergo a seven-week training program on how to better engage these voters, including sessions on “active listening” and “having difficult conversations about politics”.
Seven weeks of paychecks for the consultants, but the party members they actually want to go out and do the real work of talking to people are just expected to volunteer. Sounds like the Democratic party I know and loathe.
