Welcome to Nuts & Bolts, a guide to Democratic campaigns. I’ve helped write this series for years using information from campaign managers, finance directors, field directors, trainers, and staff, responding to questions from Daily Kos Community and staff members, and addressing issues that are sent to me via the site’s Kosmail platform.
Every year candidates face a lot of struggles; one of them is to punch back at a conservative engine that is well-funded and spread out. When it comes to promoting their points of view, conservatives use bots, social relays, their huge network of AM radio stations, and Sinclair and Fox News when it comes to television. In many of these cases, they do all of that with no cost attached. Pundits and candidates don’t have to pay Fox News to spew talking points and they don’t have to pay AM radio talk show hosts to have them on for puff interviews.
So how do Democrats cut through all the noise and raise their profiles? How to find donors, and volunteers, and get actual feedback from people within the progressive movement who might be helpful to one’s goals? This is what I do at Daily Kos every day. Let’s talk about why utilizing the Daily Kos platform can make a big difference for a campaign.
You don’t have to be endorsed
Campaigns are big and small, and the smaller the campaign, the harder it is to come up with resources. In order to raise money, more and more campaign consultants will tell candidates that they have to spend a fair amount of money to even get started. The pattern works like this: Get your closest friends, family members, and allies to make maximum donations at the beginning, and invest that into a fundraising program to start bringing in more money. Continue to inject more money into fundraising to raise more money. All along, fundraising expenses can grow, and the amount of money spent on consultants and fundraising increases at an equal rate to the money brought in.
This creates an escape velocity problem. You have to keep the fundraising coming in at a high rate, because the moment it slips, you could find your cost-to-return math stops working out and you’ve spent far too much on bringing in too little.
This is where Daily Kos comes in. It’s critical for candidates, especially those who are not endorsed or candidates who are often below the radar. While many fundraising programs cost money, posting a simple story on Daily Kos, using it as a platform to raise attention to yourself, does not cost a thing and does not require you to be an endorsed candidate.
In the last election cycle, several major candidates used the Daily Kos platform to get their message out and raise funds—including candidates like now-Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. Other candidates this cycle were in very small, local elections, but made comments or posted stories that helped them grow as both better campaigners and also raised some funds.
Now, let’s do the math. If Daily Kos readers united to contribute $500 to a very small campaign where the normal budget to run is $20,000, then they contributed 2.5% of the total campaign's expected cost. For the campaign, the cost of getting that information out to them is zero dollars. You don’t have to worry about spamming people, looking bad, securing an endorsement, or paying in. Candidates are free to join here as a community member and link to your own ActBlue to raise funds.
Utilizing our platform has never been easier
Do you know that utilizing the Daily Kos platform to talk about your own race, at every level, has never been easier? In 2016, many candidates wanted to post here, but were unsure of what would help them be successful. In the time since then, we’ve developed guides and onboarding help. I respond directly to candidates who want to build an account and discuss their issues.
Candidates find us through presentations made to state organizations, guides we make available at the Help Desk, and often just by talking to me directly—and all of us work to ensure that candidates get the best experience possible in connecting to the readership of Daily Kos.
This huge shift continues to improve every cycle. I continue to try and refine ways to allow new and different voices to feel welcome. In this last election cycle, the number of Black candidates on Daily Kos continued to increase, and the number of local and state candidates also increased. This matters. It allows our community an opportunity to build the Democratic Party of the future by providing these candidates the tools they need to succeed.
Many of these candidates are first-time candidates, testing their ideas here to receive feedback and get support. That support can be a donation or volunteering for a campaign—but just as crucial? Messaging! Refining the way they talk about issues in their community and building up their own name identification to voters is essential.
Forget everything you know about stigmas
In 2014, a reader of Nuts & Bolts sent me a message that contended they would never post to a site like Daily Kos because it was “too progressive” and would hurt their campaign. I only remember the year because I remember the campaign and the situation surrounding it. Fast forward eight years: We have to forget the old logic that says it is easily possible for Democratic candidates to pretend to be Republican-lite to sway moderates. I will say it right now, that strategy is a losing one. Republicans will always contend all Democrats are the same as Bernie Sanders, or attack them for siding with Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, or whoever they decide is the next evil incarnate—as long as they think it will win.
For today’s GOP voters, that’s all they need to say and Democrats—progressives especially—are not going to win over those voters no matter what they do. If you are planning a strategy of winning conservative voters and a big part of that strategy is to ignore free-to-use outlets because it might make you seem less conservative as a Democratic candidate, well, let me tell you that whoever is providing you that advice does not understand why people vote the way they do.
When local candidates and state candidates make use of a platform like Daily Kos, they get a friendly audience that can help them grow into better candidates.
Isn’t that what we all want? To build better campaigns designed to win?