Not Another F****in Substack

“Oh God, not another f***ing Substack”

I know you said it when you saw the link. Don’t worry, I have been beating myself over the head while working on this. Unfortunately, we find ourselves back in hectic “unprecedented times” and, well, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to get through.

Times are changing once again in Virginia and the nation as we grapple with another Trump Presidency. We Democrats are asking ourselves “how the f**k did we end up here, again?” Right now, it’s going to be one of those times to take a good hard look at how we talk to our voters, what we actually say to them, and how we build our party for the future. Right now, Millennials and Gen Zers who have worked in the Party, for Democratic candidates, with organizations on the Left, and with other allied groups are feeling like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the hill once more; moreover, that they’re being heard but not listened to.

I find myself in a similar time of reflection after spending my whole life in Virginia. In Virginia we have elections every year, and I have been working professionally in the political space for almost a decade as a campaign, communications, and digital professional. In that same time, I have held numerous positions within the Democratic Party as Virginia Young Dems President, a Member of the Democratic Party of Virginia’s Steering and Central Committees, Young Democrats of America Chief of Staff and Communications Director, a Delegate to the Democratic National Convention, among others. I have been interviewed, debated, and made appearances for local news outlets, national TV, and national radio as a political contributor and a spokesman for Democrats. I have canvassed, campaigned, and talked to voters face to face in Virginia in the Urban Crescent, the Shenandoah Valley, Southside, and Southwest. I have organized and campaigned in numerous parts of the country: Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, among others.

When you leave the beltway and step off of Twitter (or X or whatever they call it), you learn a lot more through real tangible experiences than through pontificating behind a screen. Throughout all that time in this space and across all those different places, I have been able to see and experience firsthand what works and what doesn’t; what people actually care about and what is just political theater. I have learned more from conversations with people on their porch about the issues that affect their everyday life than I have from any textbook on Political Science. I have been able to surround myself with friends who do the work on the ground or in elected office instead of influencers who parrot talking points. The answer among all these people has been clear to me since November 5, 2024: what we have been doing up until this point isn’t working anymore.

There are many out there who are treating 2025 like it’s 2017 again. That the old playbook of hits like “Make America Kind Again, “Drumpf”, or anything from the 1st Term Trump Resist culture will work again but the truth is it simply won’t. This message is not resonating with voters (especially young voters) like it used to. We cannot afford to just “resist” something anymore. We have to start proving to voters that we have something that they can vote for, not just against the other guy.

There are others who are lowering themselves to the same level as the Republicans, making trans people and immigrants scapegoats and claiming that Democrats’ defense of those communities are the reasons we lost. I can definitively say that if a voter didn’t vote Democratic in November based on an anti-trans or anti-immigrant ideal, they were never going to vote for us in the first place. So why kowtow to their worst instincts?

There are also huge swaths of the Democratic party and political Left who have written off rural communities as backwards, regressive, uneducated, white MAGA hotbeds. All despite knowing that a few decades ago, Democrats held strongly when Democrats championed farmers, unions, and the working class. Here in Virginia, our rural communities are some of the most diverse parts of our Commonwealth; in Southside these communities are largely Black and in the Valley we host a federally-designated area for refugee placement. Unfortunately, as we narrowed our mindset and bought into false stereotypes, we forgot these people and now too many have grown up in our country believing the lies and divisive rhetoric.

We should all agree that if we get back to campaigning on things that affect all of us and not get bogged down in the semantics and on the fringes, we can build a better future where we can pay our bills, feed our families, have a place that we can call home, educate our children, and get to work on time.

However, two things can be true at the same time. We can work to appeal to a broader coalition of people with messages that resonate while also not sacrificing our morals and throwing our trans siblings and immigrant populations under the bus.

Many in this broad coalition of Democrats have been clamoring to say it’s not worth it to run to the middle or to appease the Right on whatever made-up culture war bullshit they want to talk about that day. If we continue to play down on their level of made-up controversy, we will not win. We cannot allow people to suffer for political points. I don’t care what anyone says, I refuse to do that to any single person no matter who they are, no matter where they came from, and no matter who they voted for. We have never benefited politically from people suffering, period.

The fact is, we are hemorrhaging voters and support and we are bogged down with too much information and have allowed the Right to control the narrative. We think we can just throw money at a problem, like manufacturing influencers and buying large ad space to get attention, instead of working on what we are actually saying. We have chased the new shiny object or reacted to the new outrage, all while losing what we stand for. We played into the politics of fear and forgot about the politics of hope. So many voters question what the Democratic Party stands for to the point where we feel unmoored from our fundamental values. It’s time to get back to the basics. We need to relate back to everyday Americans and stand up for them. We cannot be the party of the minority. We must be the party of the opposition. And we need to do it in an accessible way.

Now, I don’t claim to know all the answers.. What I hope to do with this Substack is to share my experience in the Party, in campaigns, and on the ground doing the work. Many of you may not even make it past this one post and that’s okay! What I hope is that my perspective can be a part of the larger conversation that comes to reshaping our message and working our way through the chaos. I don’t intend to make money off this, and so I’m keeping this publicly available.

For those following along, or just popping in and out, these will be unapologetic dispatches from the New South’s next generation of Democrats where we’ll be adding a little more commentary on stances, tactics, and news on the Left. There are many different paths to become the Party in power; and while contending with the Right taking over our country by hook or by crook, we want to help Democrats help Americans. By helping Democrats return to being a Party for the people, we can succeed in making a government for the people by the ballot.

By the Ballot is an opinion series published on Substack. All views expressed are solely those of the author and should not be interpreted as reporting or objective journalism or attributed to any other individual or organization. I am not a journalist or reporter, nor do I claim to be one. This publication represents personal commentary, analysis, and opinion only.