Why Data Won't Save Democrats
Only the candidate can be authentic
Katwater is one of the smartest Democratic technologists so when she lays out her plan for 2025 I believe it deserves a thoughtful reply. In a nutshell, Katwater advocates
evolving the voter experience from transactional extraction to a place of authentic exchange.
I agree wholeheartedly with her thesis.
But how?
Katwater believes we can get from here to there through a massively deep dive into Democratic data and communications, starting with research.
That’s where I disagree - and the reason is Donald Trump.
Trump did not win with research. He won with lies - which were fully amplified by the entire Republican Party and a massive right-wing media ecosystem led by TruthSocial and X.
Trump’s 2024 campaign began on election night 2020 when he lost all the battleground states (the Electoral College) and the popular vote by 7 million votes - but insisted he actually won.
That was the “Big Lie” - that the 2020 election was a gigantic fraud.
As Jack Smith’s report makes clear, Trump’s “Big Lie” powered the violent insurrection on January 6 to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as President.
The insurrection failed when the Capitol Police heroically regained control of the Capitol. Yet even after all of the violence, a majority of House Republicans voted against the certification of key battleground states - with absolutely no evidence of fraud. They were using their actual floor votes simply to amplify Trump’s “Big Lie.”
When Democrats won the House in 2021, they formed a Commission to tell the full story of January 6. A few brave Republicans joined them - notably Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
The Commission presented powerful first-hand testimony and video - and Democrats and independents were convinced. But Trump and MAGA insisted the evidence was false - and the insurrectionists were patriots.
Throughout 2024, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris tried valiantly to make Trump’s threat to Democracy a campaign issue. But there was a major problem: rightwing media insisted on amplifying Trump’s Big Lie.
Which brings me back to Katwater.
There was simply no amount of research or messaging that could have overcome the Big Lie in particular - or any of the many other lies at the center of Donald Trump’s campaign, from “sleeping her way to the top” to “Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs.”
And this last example is important - because the only possible antidote to Trump’s lies was Harris’ authentic response in real time during the debate.
When Trump completely surprised Harris with that lie, she did not call a timeout to huddle with her pollsters for instant research and message testing.
She did exactly what an authentic human would do - she shook her head in utter disbelief and told him he was lying. It was the single best moment of the entire campaign - because it was real.
And here’s the larger point: authentic communications begins - and ends - with the candidate.
No one else can do it - not the Harris campaign, not the Democratic Party, not outside superpacs.
Only the candidate can be authentic.
After she did her job, it was up to her 75 million supporters to do our job - to amplify her authentic message.
And many of us did exactly that through our social media accounts by posting, sharing, and commenting.
In fact, we all did our job so well that Trump decided he would not debate her again - because he knew he would lose.
But Trump never admitted that - instead he rolled out yet another lie that he actually won the debate, and rightwing media amplified that lie just like all the others.
Which brings me to the larger point: in the age of social media, all politics is real-time, around-the-clock information warfare between Team Red and Team Blue.
Team Red is fully organized for information warfare - and Team Blue is not.
And that is the problem we must solve in 2025.