I was a Dem Staffer for the Garland Hearings - here's what I learned from one of the Democrats biggest failures

I constantly get DMs and comments with a sentiment akin to - but the Dems won't do anything.  And these are real people, not bots, some of whom have been following me for quite a long time (I check when you message me, by the way).  I think there’s an inclination in some circles to cast aside the sentiments of the TikTok crowds due to the overwhelming nihilism of the content on that platform, one that reflects both the lived reality of many people as well as the algorithmic preference for outrage. But the people sending me DMs are often other middle-aged professional women, informed about politics and truly of the belief that “The Dems” (capital) are actively choosing not to do whatever needs to be done to protect our rights.

I was one of Leader Chuck Schumer’s Senate Judiciary Committee counsels during the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Merrick Garland (now Attorney General). Garland was chosen in particular because of his pristine record, his white maleness, his total milquetoast personality - no dirt for Republicans to find to use as a cudgel to block his nomination. And so what they did, to functionally steal a Supreme Court seat from Democrats, was create an arbitrary rule that Presidents don’t get to nominate a Supreme Court Justice in the final year of their term. They came up with some flimsy justifications for said argument, but we should consider the premise on face value: presidents just shouldn’t get to do this one very important thing they were elected to do for 25% of their term. Facially bananas. 

But they did what Republicans do so well, which is they kept repeating the same message.  Even though, as a sane person who has some sense of pride in my intellectual honesty, I would be unable to stand firm to rhetorical attacks on something so obscene. But they didn’t. They had the votes, and all they needed was pretense. 

As a Dem staffer, I showed up to work every day trying to figure out how I could help the American public realize that Republicans were stealing a Supreme Court seat before their eyes.  I wasn’t dense and neither was anyone else around me, we knew what was happening. We had briefing books full of arguments, we worked nights and weekends. We did press conferences and media hits and everything that was within our bailiwick as members and staff of the United States Senate. 

I have a lot of criticisms of the Democratic party writ large (and I will tell you some, in the following paragraph). But I think there is this idea that there is some lever that national Democratic leadership is choosing not to pull, that there is a case that could have been filed that would be a gotcha where a judge (hopefully played by Maya Rudolph) could just decide that fairsies sharsies reigns supreme and punish the Republicans for being very bad boys. Americans are looking for the proverbial pill rather than a perscription to eat their broccoli and go on walks. 

My takeaway, though, from the Garland fiasco, was that what was missing wasn’t on the inside of Democratic leadership, it was on the outside. Where were the advocacy groups and messengers who could educate the public on what was happening? Where was the activation of people to affect actual change, strategically? Instead, what I saw was advocacy groups sending out petitions to build their email lists so they could raise money. I saw the left speaking to themselves, freaking out in blue echo chambers. 

But more than anything - where were the people?! My girlfriends did not give a f*ck. I tried to explain: this is how we are going to lose abortion access. They were like: stop being hysterical, Emily. (I have received some apology texts in recent years!)

Because when someone tells me “The Democrats won’t do anything” all I can think is - the Democrats are US. 

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden - none of them will save us. We have to do the work. It sucks! I hate it! I am tired enough from working and a health crisis and horrible internet dates. And you are probably tired from trying to get dinner on the table again, and working a job that doesn’t pay enough and the fact that the show you want to watch is never available on one of the seven streaming channels you pay for!

So here are my 3 takeaways from being part of one of the Democrat’s biggest failures in recent years:

1. We need to invest in messaging infrastructure: 

Watching the conservative movement harness the power of social media in incredibly effective ways to reach new and disengaged voters, while democrats continue to focus on getting traditional media hits, has been one of the most painful things about the last decade. That is why when I left Senator Schumer’s office I started @EmilyInYourPhone, because rather than bitch and moan about what was missing I thought - I’ll give it a try. 

We seem to assume that as long as we are morally and factually right, and if we can get the media to cover us fairly, that people will vote accordingly. We’ve focused on building institution-based social media accounts instead of personality-based ones (this particular point violates the fundamental underpinning of social media which is parasocial relationships). Over the past year or so, there has been a shift to realize that more work needs to be done to fund social media messaging, but we are literally a decade behind. 

Conservatives, on the other hand, got to build audiences before the Meta politics ban, when followers were cheap to acquire and going viral once or twice actually meant something. Instead of building this infrastructure, we relied on the fact that many people who already had large platforms (celebrities, models, etc), were sane thinking people who cared about the arts, LGBTQ+ lives, and so would say go and vote blue once a cycle. But the amount of volume that is required in this day and age is not something that can be done for free. It’s something that requires investment. 

I want to talk about the message for a second - the polling, the focus groups, the over-edited politispeak talking points! If you want to know why America doesn’t respond to Dem talking points, just look at the consultant industrial complex that takes millions of dollars to come up with talkers that are reactive to what people already think and doesn’t shape how we want them to think.

“Critical Race Theory” as a messaging pivot never would have come about in the world of Dem messaging, but it galvanized the heck out of the right. The “parents rights” movement is a great example of leading with a message; the issues themselves are nothing new (the conservative movement's dedication to vouchers started non-coincidentally with Brown v. Board of Education), but the way conservatives have targeted disaffected women with an inclusive community of “joyful warriors” and “mama bears” works well. They’ve expanded their culture war to wellness and conspiracy and all types of things that Democrats so often leave on the table. 

We need to stop spending so much money developing messages and start spending it on doing the actual messaging. 

2. We need people involved in politics, not just donating money:

There’s a constant churning on social media: driving outrage and then directing that towards either burning it all down or signing a petition/donating $5. It’s emotionally satiating like a Law & Order episode: you feel agita and then receive a salve of disobligation. The thing is, democracy can’t be outsourced. 

One of the reasons I wrote my forthcoming book, Democracy in Retrograde is to make the argument that the only thing that can save democracy is everyone holding a little bit of the mantle. We are awash in a return to minoritarian rule nationally, and are seceding controls of our towns, villages and states to moneyed interests who want to create a government brought to you by Hobby Lobby.  

If ‘The Dems’ are us (which they are), the establishment needs to start communicating that to the people who are part of it. We need to speak to them where they are and how they want, but we also need to empower them to get involved and take action on the issues they care about. Who hasn’t been at a party talking politics where someone bemoans the lack of civic education in this country? It’s wild that the main reference we all still have is Schoolhouse Rock. In the book we have lots of different ideas as to how people can get engaged in politics, including a quiz to find your civic personality, worksheets, journaling and a word jumble. And there’s an appendix where we answer all the Gov 101 questions I get every day on instagram, because the first step to changing the government is understanding how it works.

The Dem establishment needs to start calling people in. We need folks to step up and take responsibility for shepherding this country into a better future for all. Everyone doesn’t need to do everything, but we need to ask everyone to do something.

3. We need to play the institution building game:

I’m really excited to read a book that just came out this week, The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, because it chronicles what has been an obsession of mine the last couple years. The right realized that they were always going to be the minority, that deregulation and lowering corporate taxes and Christian Nationalism were not hugely popular things in this country.  And so what they did was invest in building organizations like ALEC, the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Federalist Society and all of other places Leonard Leos had his fingers and toes in to set a glidepath for their power.

I often hear people lament that the conservative are playing chess and we’re playing checkers. The right has access to a lot of things we don’t: buckets of cash, nefarious players, willingness to lie, homogenous base, a relatively care-free attitude to indictments, friends with yachts, etc. We don’t need to copy it all. But we do need to let go the obsession with immediate results and the constant hair on fire attitude that compels that. 

Turning Point USA has supported (through salaries and staff members) a number of influencers over the years. One that I’ve been particularly interested in is Alex Clark because her demo is the same as mine: women of a certain age who care about politics but don’t want to mainline it.  Turning Point supported her for years before her social media following grew. And even today, though she has been far surprised by her gen Z counterparts, they know that they are methodically building a powerful weapon: a grown unmarried woman with a full time job who will prosthelytize about how everyone needs to go off birth control and that mothers shouldn’t work while their kids are home. 

There is a dearth of resources on the left that makes the competition fierce - it’s a fight or famine mentality that has created much of the culture I discussed above - the asking for donations is a necessary act but one that has been done at the expense of messaging about values, outcomes and possibilities. 

Conclusion

The internet's comment sections are often more a reflection of people’s emotional state rather than their closely held beliefs. But while we still are a democracy, we the people have the power to build a party and a government that reflects our will. You don’t like what The Democrats are doing?! GREAT, LET'S CHANGE IT.