Emotions are high and the primary, like too many before it, is being framed as a battle between the left and the establishment. But at it’s heart, it’s a battle for the right to take on Mike Rogers and (hopefully) represent ALL of Michigan in the Senate. It is also a key part of the effort to take control of the Senate back from the Republicans.

And right now, that’s being forgotten by most of the online discussion--even by those who are arguing the election should be decided by the person who is most likely to keep the seat blue.

I don’t know who will win the nomination. Primaries can be unpredictable, polls are not always accurate, and they don’t all say the same thing here.

Here’s what I do know: our job, starting as soon as there’s a winner, is to get the most votes in November.

There are many ways to do that. You can try to convince people swing and independent voters to flip or you can try to change the electorate and bring out new voters. Some nominees moderate their positions to appeal to the other side, some bring in the big names or try to consolidate their party, and so on.

I’m guessing both candidates in Michigan have their own ideas, but with a late primary, they will have to execute their plans quickly.

Republicans in both the Michigan Senate race and next week’s Wisconsin gubernatorial race consolidated their primaries early and have been able to build on their party and aim for the voters in the middle, the infrequent or new voters or some combination of the two.

If we want to win in November, we have to do all of this in less time. Step one means moving on from the primary in a way that expands the winner’s vote, instead of isolating it. And we can all be a part of that.

I know, I know: outrage builds engagement online. Social media is an all of nothing place, where strident and hyperbolic statements are easier and often more satisfying than nuance.

But we only fight for a loss by gloating, dunking on the losing side’s supporters, or continuing primary fights when the primary is over.

Elections are choices. We have to convince voters that their vote matters. That it’s worth the time and effort. That one candidate is better than the other, amongst the two options on the ballot.

If you worry that Abdul can’t win the general, starting tomorrow you are only making it true if you spend time saying it. His loss, if it happens, can be at least partially blamed on you telling people he can’t win (and therefore that there’s no point in turning out). Is your hot take worth that?

If you think Haley is too moderate or don’t like her supporters, does that mean you think Rogers is a better fit or that his supporters are more palatable? Not voting is an option and any voter can decide that someone holds a position that is just disqualifying, but it’s also worth thinking about who is more likely to shift positions toward you if elected and pushed by the electorate.

And if you decide that the winner is just unpalatable and you can’t support them, you could move onto any of the literally hundreds of races with great candidates that Democrats need to win across the country.

Today, before the primary is over, think about what you would say to one of the other candidate’s supporters tomorrow if your candidate wins. How will you argue that they get over their disappointment and learn to love/like/hold their nose and vote for your candidate? Think about what’s compelling and what ADDS VOTERS.

That’s the job we all have starting tomorrow. We can’t just close ranks and hope that we can win with the people who already support our candidate, deciding that anyone who didn’t want us from the beginning deserves what they got. That math doesn’t math. So my ask, before the “what does it all mean” think pieces are all written, is that we spend the few weeks we have until Election Day trying to win more people to our side than tear down the people there with us.

If you’re one of her many followers, you know that Isabel Klee (@simonsits on instagram) said goodbye to her sweet dog Simon last week. It’s sad, of course, for the loss of life, particularly for people like me who love dogs. And Klee is a moving storyteller, which makes her telling of this end very poignant.

Social media is full of meaningful tributes to Simon and Klee and what they’ve done for foster dogs and rescues, as it should be. Her love of Simon is clear and the example they’ve set is lovely.

But as someone who can count on two hands the number of movies that have made me cry, I was a little surprised to find myself sobbing after watching her take her dog on one last hike.

That’s grief in a nutshell. It hits you in the big moments and the small ones. It can be a punch in the face or a gnawing reminder that something isn’t quite right. A broken heart and an open nerve.

Grief is thinking you’re getting through your season of loss and moving forward, but finding yourself sobbing over an instagram reel from someone you’ve never met about a dog you never will.

Grief is coming to terms with the permanence, in this life at least, of losing someone from your life for good. I have never been good at that. I spent my career working largely in political campaigns because I believe in the possibility of change. I believe that no matter how big the mistake, how broken the thing or system is, we can work together and support people and efforts to fix it. And death does not allow that.

Nothing I do will change the fact that I’ll never get to talk to my mom again.

I will get used to it, I know. At some point, I will stop trying to call her when I’m traveling to let her know I got there in one piece. The shows we watched together will end and I will mourn the loss of something else we shared (although, thank you to Ted Lasso and Slow Horses for new seasons coming soon that will make me think of her). At some point, I will stop bringing down random encounters with old friends by answering “how are you?” with “Well, my mom died,” but as the people I’ve run into this year know all too well, that has not happened yet.

At some point, I will learn how to deal with seeing her chair empty or her dog sometimes looking for her, but however long that takes, her loss will still remain.

I have nothing profound to say about grief, and if I did, many would have already said it in better and more beautiful ways. I don’t have a thesis for this post or any lesson to offer. But I was reminded this week that grief can hit you at any time, in a variety of ways. That it can last longer than the questions about how you’re doing from even the most loving parts of your support system.

So I guess all I want to say is this: if grief has punched you in the face this week, whether in the form of a sweet lost dog on the internet or in any other odd way, I hope you had a good cry and made your own way through it. Grief will find a way out somehow. We don’t get to decide how or when, we just have to give each other and ourselves a little grace.

What I cannot understand is why those candidates are almost always men.

Think Beto O’Rourke in 2018. Pete Buttegieg in 2020. Zohran Mamdani during his 2025, carrying into his time in the Mayor’s office. And this year, it’s been Graham Platner, James Talarico and Abdul El-Sayed, to name just a few.

Let’s be clear: I am not saying these candidates did not deserve press attention or that they did anything wrong to get it. While not all of them were my chosen primary candidates, I believe this list includes some truly talented communicators and some hard-working teams that earned the attention.

And I am not saying that no woman ever becomes an internet sensation. But as someone who spent seven years working for an organization aimed at electing women and is still very much focused on it, I think the attention doesn’t match what’s deserved. When women candidates get some love from the internet or the podcast or media world, they often get less of it, for a shorter time, and it can be harder for them to get there.

This is a sensitive subject, I know. Most people, and particularly people who consider themselves progressive, do not believe they would lift up one gender over the other. We want to believe that our favorite candidates got the attention because they are the ones who deserved it, and that anyone who’s not there didn’t deserve it. We don’t want to think that our go-to sources or pundits have any blind spots–and we really don’t want to believe we do.

But blind spots are real. Here’s my confession: in 2006, I worked at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It was a successful year for Democrats–we flipped 30 seats (double what we needed to take back the House) without losing one incumbent, despite some of them running in very red seats. It was the year Gabby Giffords, Tim Walz, Chris Murphy and more were elected for the first time. We didn’t win every targeted seat, of course, but we were proud of our wins and to be honest, it wasn’t until much later that I realized that many of the top targets we didn’t win were women candidates. I didn’t examine what that meant or if maybe we weren’t

I’m not proud of that. I had spent my entire career up to that point working for men and I didn’t know what I didn’t know or what I never noticed. Since then, I’ve had the chance to work for and with many women running across the country and I know that as varied as their experience and stories are, they all face challenges in getting the attention they deserve.

My ask is not that you vote for the women running just because they’re women. I don’t. My ask is that we are all honest with ourselves about the news we’re consuming, who we’re sharing, who gets our attention and our resources and our support. Here are a few things we can do:

• Examine and address our own blind spots: Be honest with yourself about how you judge candidates. Do you forgive things for some candidates that are non-starters for others? Do you judge some candidates for something you don’t notice in others (think all of the times pundits and even some reporters said Hillary Clinton just shouted her speeches with no commentary on Sanders or Trump’s speech delivery)? As my friend and best selling author Jennifer Palmieri notes, we often hear “there’s something about her I just don’t like” about women candidates. What if that something is just her gender? Ask yourself who you have not paid enough attention to, or who you have dismissed too easily. You may not always like the answers, but understanding them is key to being a better political activist and voter.

• Be a discerning consumer: Women make up the majority of voters. The gender gap is real, and women, in particular women of color, vote more for Democrats. We have not come near accurate representation in most offices (way to go Nevada, with the first majority women state legislature), but women are electable and running in many of the top races up and down the ballot. If your favorite influencer, podcaster or TV show is only featuring men, ask them why. Point out women you’d like to hear more from. Flag that you’d like to hear more from the candidates that make up much of our party.

• Share someone different: Most importantly, share some of these candidates. Democrats have a huge opportunity this cycle, given the political environment. And we NEED to win races up and down the ballot and across the country. So maybe instead of sharing the same candidates everyone has seen, we highlight some of the rockstars hiding in plain sight. And make no mistake, they’re out there. Looking for a progressive candidate with a great story and impressive accomplishments? Let me introduce you to the great Peggy Flanagan. You like state legislators getting it done? Come to my own home state of North Carolina and meet Senate Minority Leader Sydney Batch and Rep. Vernetta Alston. Interested in working class candidates, how about flight attendant Ka

  ela Berg in Minnesota or Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin? In every state, for every ideology and every demographic, there are interesting candidates across the country. And when they are women and/or candidates of color, they don’t get the positive news about them shared as much. You can help, simply by sharing more.

It’s exciting–and great news–when political activists fall in love with a candidate. We need more enthusiasm for our candidates, not just against theirs. But here’s hoping we can expand that love toward some new candidates.

For the first time in recent memory, Democrats might be stealing the news spotlight from Donald Trump. In the last week alone, another long-time Democratic House member lost her seat to a DSA primary challenger, the Michigan Senate race became a two-person race after McMorrow dropped out, and the bottom is falling out of Platner’s campaign after what seems like a credible accusation of rape.

How we handle this news and any sort of fallout coming from it could make all the difference in November.

We are in the midst of a potential blue wave. Voters are anxious for change. They know that Trump has focused on gold embellishments and ballrooms while the economy burned. Democrats have momentum: we’ve flipped 30 state legislative seats since Trump got re-elected, and Republicans have flipped none. And Republicans seem to know it, retiring in record numbers.

But in the aftermath of this recent news, we are working hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We are too busy dividing into factions and attacking each other to take down the Republicans.

We have a lot of work to do to win in this election. Here are a few ways to start:

• Stop focusing on the races that are done. If you’re still worrying about what Zohran Mamdani’s or any other DSA win means or how Mallory McMorrow lost or why “the establishment” shouldn’t have gotten behind Janet Mills, can I interest you in the literally thousands of races–against Republicans–that are still being fought? Voters care more about what we’re going to do for them and how we can improve their lives than any sort of “fight for the soul of the Democratic party.” If you don’t like that a certain faction won a specific primary, then go find a primary that’s not done and work for a good candidate there. For all of the attention on a handful of Senate races, there are several other Senate races, dozens of House races and thousands of state and local races that could have as much impact on people’s lives that could use your voice, your attention and your resources. This is not to say that we should never look back and figure out what’s moving voters, what we can do better and what we got wrong. But the POST in post mortems is an important part. We have a few short months to determine who controls many levers of power in the next few years. Let’s get that done first.

• Stop attacking other voters. Winning elections means expanding your base and convincing more people to support your candidate. It’s great when people fall in love with a candidate and make their win your mission, but closing the circle around your candidate and attacking voters who express doubts are not good ways to win. Calling out a legitimate red flag does not make you a tool of the establishment. Liking a candidate who is supported by a group you don’t like, be it AIPAC or DSA, does not make you an enemy of the party or progressive values. You can reject a candidate for any number of reasons, but attacking potential voters for that candidate is just counterproductive.

• Talk more about our values and agenda instead of making GOP attacks for them. Here’s another hill I will die on: we need to be talking more about why people should vote for our candidates. Instead of attacking Democratic voters or repeating lines the Republicans will no doubt use against us in the general election, what if we told voters what we believe, what we have done and what we will do once we’re back in power? Can we all resolve to share at least one good thing (an accomplishment, a great clip, a race that’s not getting enough attention) for every attack or outrage we share?

There are legitimate debates to be had about the direction of the Democratic party long-term, about what policies and candidates are best-suited to win, and so on. But this election is coming fast and we need to make sure we don’t miss that opportunity for the sake of online debates and political vitriol. Fight for your candidates and your values and let’s win in November.

Today is my mom’s 75th birthday. After more than a decade of challenges from a very rare blood disease and kidney and heart failure, she passed away last month and is not here to celebrate it. But good women and good moms deserve to be celebrated no matter what, and frankly, I’m missing my mama, so I wanted to share a little bit about her.

Cathy Reynolds was a fiercely loving mother, sister, wife and grandmother. She was a great friend, a UK Wildcats fan, a progressive Democrat, a woman of faith, a Marine spouse, a high school math teacher who survived having her daughter in class, and so much more. She hosted great dinner parties, spoiled her dog, believed we should put more women in charge, and taught me so much over the years. Here’s just a little of it.

Change happens. Life is about how you adapt. A little while after they got married, my dad joined the Marine Corps, where he served for 27 years as a helicopter pilot. That meant many moves across the country (and later, overseas), many deployments and one war. It meant changing careers to one more conducive to my dad’s job. It was not what she planned. But she made a plan and made it work for all of us. She was fearless in those new situations–or so I thought. Maybe she was afraid the whole time, but she just kept going. Throughout all of the moves and the shifts, she focused on what she needed to get done, not where her life was supposed to take her. The same happened when she got sick, and when my Dad died. Those things changed her life immensely, but she found ways to keep going with a strength that still amazes me.

Be a fan of something. Throw yourself all in. My mom was a huge fan of the University of Kentucky. Growing up, a love of college basketball was encouraged in our house, even when my sister and I fell in love with a school that often played (and sometimes beat) her Wildcats. She loved her team so much that she made it through Rome in the middle of the night to watch her Wildcats win the national championship when they were stationed overseas, and she talked trash about Duke basketball to the Duke surgeon who did her kidney transplant. And in her later years, she threw herself into women’s sports, particularly UK volleyball. Some of her happiest moments were when she had basketball on the TV and volleyball on her tablet and her Wildcats were winning both.

Things are just things. They’re not what matters. It’s not that my mom didn’t appreciate nice things. My mom was a generous gift giver. She had fantastic taste and over the years and throughout her travels, she collected some beautiful things. But she always knew that things were less important than people and their feelings. When she moved in with me a year ago, she was so understanding about getting rid of things to make everything fit together in one house. And when my senior beagle had an accident on one of her handmade rugs or the nervous rescue chewed up an expensive chair, she wouldn’t let me dwell on it, noting that she loved the dogs far more than those things.

Tell your people how you feel while you still can. The thing about going into hospice care and knowing that you’re in kidney and heart failure is that you have time to tell people the end is coming. And it gives people time to tell you how they feel about you. Mom read many of those kind and beautiful notes to me and I know that each and every one mattered to her. They also mattered to me–and made me so grateful that she had the time to feel that love.

This was not my first experience learning the lesson that you don’t get the time back. After my mom got sick, I started calling my parents every night and going home to visit more. When my dad died suddenly and unexpectedly a few years later, I was so grateful that I had spent all of that extra time with him.

Our lives can be overwhelming, but consider this a sign from the universe to answer when an old friend calls and you’re a little busy. To reach out to your family when you’re thinking of them. To go to that lunch or send that text. And to tell your friend, your partner, your neighbor, what they mean to you. We save so many wonderful thoughts for eulogies and social media after someone passes. What if they knew it in advance?

Happy birthday, Mom. Thank you for teaching me that it’s never a bad time for telling someone you love them.

And then I read this story from Axios, with some top strategists arguing the best path to victory is for the party to nominate a straight, White, Christian man. And it reminded me why organizations like EMILYs List and Lillian’s List still have to exist. It’s not because the voters reject women candidates. It’s because the system wasn’t made for them and the so-called experts have concluded that that fact creates insurmountable challenges. And they won’t stop telling voters about it.

I am not naive. I am not dismissing the very real sexism women candidates face. Or the racism candidates of color have to overcome. The homophobia, the transphobia, the ableism, these are just a few of the ways we other candidates who don’t look like the standard issue, straight-out-of-central casting white guy in a suit.

These issues are real, and they matter. We should all be fighting to create a system that judges all candidates by the same metrics. We should all call out the sexist comments, the microaggressions, the othering that happens in our society. And we should notice that the people with the loudest and most powerful voices are mostly the same as the people we elect, but not the same as the people we represent.

But acknowledging these things is not the same as dooming these candidates as unelectable.

Here’s the thing: every candidate faces problems. Sometimes it’s their identity: people questioned whether America would elect a Catholic or a Black man president and American voters proved them wrong. Bill Clinton was too young and counted out repeatedly during his first primary. When Donald Trump entered the race, much of the media and political establishment failed to take a bigger-than-life reality TV host seriously and thought he would never win the primary, much less the White House. Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were too young and inexperienced to win, Laura Kelly and Andy Beshear were too Democratic to win re-election in their red states.

The truth is, we’re not great at predicting how our neighbors will vote in elections, especially not this far from the election. Early polls tend to be based on name ID–in early 2019, the two candidates who polled the best were the two who had run nationally before. Prior to that, horserace polls predicted Presidents Gary Hart and Bob Dole, among others. And too often, the political and media establishment takes those polls and tells us that those candidates are the electable ones, or even worse, tell us that other candidates are not electable.

We allow “experts” to tell us who can win, despite their incredibly flawed records. Candidates who fall outside of that “electable” category can face challenges getting media attention and raising money, creating a narrative and reality that makes it hard for them to win. We’ve made them unelectable. They didn’t start that way.

So rather than letting some Democratic pundits tell us who is electable, what if we take control? What if we picked candidates who were compelling, who had good stories they told well, who had the qualifications and lived experience to do the job? What if we supported candidates who provided good contrast to the other side, and who could run a good solid campaign? What if we recognized that the same ideas that got us here might not be the ones that get us out?

There are countless reasons campaigns win or lose. Flawed punditry should not be one of them.

Since then, we have seen quick and decisive actions around the country. In the first few days alone, states and municipalities have moved to change the names of holidays, celebrations and other memorials to Chavez, as activist groups grapple with the impact of these revelations.

It can feel bad to tear down the very real accomplishments of people who did wrong in the midst of all their good. And yet, there was no pause from the people who continue this movement in acknowledging the troubling nature of this story and the need to address it.

But it’s not just the activists falling from grace. We have watched as universities and news networks hand consequences to some (and notably just some) of the people in Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit. And just this week, after outcry over a video and a domestic violence arrest, ABC announced it was canceling the already-recorded and heavily-promoted upcoming season of The Bachelorette. (For more on this, read this excellent Substack by the great Jo Piazza–and follow her while you’re at it.)

And as we see all of this happen, Donald Trump sits in the gold-crusted Oval Office, starting wars, building ballrooms and escaping any sort of accountability for any of his bad deeds. How is a man who has been credibly accused of multiple cases of sexual misconduct getting to sit in judgment of others? Is it fair that lawyers, CEOs, authors, professors and more have paid a higher price than the President for their involvement in Epstein’s depraved world? And why is it that other governments have taken action to punish people for their Epstein ties and ours has simply slow-walked the release of the files?

The answer? It’s not fair. It’s shameful. It undermines our sense of justice.

But it doesn’t change what we should do.

We can think it’s wrong that Trump has not been held accountable for his actions. We can work to take control of Congress in 2027 and the White House in 2029, so we can hold the gavel, have investigations with teeth, nominate and confirm judges and justices that believe in justice. But right now, we can’t change what happens to Trump.

That doesn’t mean we should let others off the hook just because Trump is. Accountability is important and so is our demand for it.

We demand action to show the next generations that there should be–and sometimes are–consequences for bad acts. To show survivors that their lives and their stories matter too. We do it for Ana Murguia, Debra Rojas and Dolores Huerta, all of the Epstein victims, and everyone whose story we may never know. And we will keep it up until the consequences reach all the way up.

They are trying to reduce Senator Mark Kelly’s rank and pay for the same statements. They are retaliating against people who are observing ICE actions. And Trump called an Olympic skier who offered mixed emotions about representing the US “a real loser.”

There are many high-minded arguments you could make for why free speech matters and open criticism of our government should not be infringed. You could note that the country gained its independence through, among other things, protest. That the founding fathers believed freedom of speech and the right to hold your government accountable was so important they put it in the very first amendment.

But beyond these valid arguments, there’s a tactical communications reason the Trump administration shouldn’t be doing it. Each of these actions just shines a spotlight on how unpopular their actions are. If you believe that voters stand with you, you work to get them to see what you’re doing. Witness the Biden administration and inflation: they knew voters blamed them for the economy, so they worked to show voters what they were doing and win them over. The Trump administration isn’t trying to win a debate. They’re trying to shut it down. They know that voters knowing what they’re doing isn’t helpful. It’s exactly why they’re tanking in approval ratings.

When a group of elected veterans and former intelligence officers remind the military of their duty to ignore unlawful orders, your response tells voters everything they need to know about your plans. The best response–and hopefully the accurate one–would be: We agree! This is exactly how we feel and how we’re leading. Thanks to the Democrats for joining us in supporting the law and supporting the military!

That’s not what they did, and it should worry all of us. Because when you threaten to court martial a literal American hero because he reminded service members that they don’t have to follow illegal orders, you seem to be signalling that you are making or are planning to make illegal orders. When you launch investigations into members of the opposition party who have served their country, voters know that it means you are desperate to shut down these questions. All of this highlights the fact that you are worried about seeming authoritarian, and by trying to charge those elected officials with a crime, you prove that you are, in fact, exactly that.

Worried about immigration protestors? Arresting them for observing or for speaking out is wrong and a violation of their constitutional rights, but it’s also a bad look. If the Trump administration truly believed that it was on the same side as the voters on immigration issues and particularly on their immigration raids and ICE policies, then have the debate. Shutting down the other side simply proves that you know you’re losing the political fight.

And from a strictly communications perspective, attacking Olympians for criticizing American policies draws attention to their attacks. It means there will be more stories about that critique, and perhaps more importantly, it ensures that more athletes will be asked not just about the comments but about Trump’s response. It means we are likely to see more criticism and more athletes standing up for their teammate in the face of a thin-skinned presidential bully.

What they’re doing is anti-democratic. It is, or should be, un-American. We should all care about that–I certainly do. But as a communicator, I also look at what our comms actions can tell us. And this isn’t just truly terrible policy. It’s bad comms work. And it’s the clearest tell yet that they know their agenda is deeply unpopular.

Sounds draconian and old-fashioned in an era when reporters and media take many forms, when influencers interview principals and reach huge audiences. And it is. Count me as a person who believes the good old days, on this front, weren’t always so good. Though it can be taken too far, there are plenty of good reasons for staff to participate in stories about staff. First, a president’s or candidate’s team matters, and knowing more about the people who are driving the policy and getting the work done is important. It’s also helpful to shine a light on what campaigns and political staffers do, which can encourage more people to consider public service.

These types of stories are sometimes called beat sweeteners, a suggestion that the reporter will offer a glowing profile in exchange for good relationships, exclusives or sources afterwards. But a read of the excellent Vanity Fair story or the accompanying photos shows how flawed that assumption is.

I don’t fault the Trump team for agreeing to a number of long interviews and photo sessions with the Vanity Fair team. But the entire situation, from the story and photo themselves to the attempted spin afterwards, can offer guidance to other communicators as they navigate staff profiles and other stories.

1. Reporters and photographers owe you nothing. No matter how friendly the reporter is, how long you’ve known them or how much you think they align with your interests, they are doing a job. Their interests are NOT your interests. They want to tell a story, but it may not be the story you want. Do not assume they will clean up your comments or frame things in a positive light. Do not assume they are there to make you look good.

2. The media can only use what you give them. Thus far, the Trump team has only tried to argue with the accuracy of one quote. They have complained plenty, but they have not denied that they said what was printed. And while they may not like the lighting, filter or detail of the photos, they took each one. If you don’t want to appear a certain way, don’t take the picture. If you are worried about the backdrop or the positioning, say something. And if you don’t want to be quoted saying something, don’t say it.

3. Missing context is not unusual. A reporter isn’t required to put everything in the context in which you give it. Profiles and stories are not interview transcripts. Reporters can and will correct your facts, pull out what they think is most important, and pull different quotes into a broader narrative. That’s not the same thing as false context or fake news. It’s standard. And if you’re worried about how one sentence will make you sound, think twice about saying that one sentence.

4. Going off the record is not a risk-free endeavor. First, a reminder of the rules: going off the record is not the equivalent of Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. Just because you say it doesn’t mean it applies to anything after it, and certainly not to anything before it. Off the record agreements are just that–agreements. If you are in an interview and you want to go off the record, you must get agreement from the reporter that you are, in fact, off the record. And it’s not a blank check. Also, while I have no inside knowledge of this particular interview and no reason to believe this is the case, keep in mind that even the best reporter can make a mistake. If you are saying something to someone whose job is to report out what you say, be aware that that could apply to everything you say.

5. The comms team’s job is to prepare for any blowback. Every interview you do for a major profile should be recorded. This gives you the opportunity to factcheck quotes, offer full context as needed, and most importantly, prepare for any possible blowback before the interview happens. Given the speed of the “Susie Wiles is an American hero” narrative that was pushed from high-ranking Republicans after the story appeared, the Trump team might have done just that. (Some of the mocking social media posts afterward suggest they might have done a little too much, but the memes were entertaining and they were, in fact, less about the story than about the response, which might have been better for Wiles.)

Sometimes bad stories happen. Even in profile pieces. And while staffers don’t control the headlines or the placement or the story itself, our job is to control what we can.

Election Day, 2025 was a great night for Democrats. As they have throughout the year, Democrats overperformed in practically every election. Candidates from every part of our big tent won, with many making history. It was a shot in the arm of hope and a reminder that when we do the work and fight back, we can win across the country.

I celebrate all of those wins. But after spending the last decade working to elect women up and down the ballot, I want to drill down on the importance of a few of those wins specifically.

I started at EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, on Election Day 2017. That night saw the election of historymakers like Hala Ayala, Elizabeth Guzman and Kathy Tran, groundbreakers like Jennifer Carroll Foy. The excitement of that night led to midterms where more history was made: a record number of women governors, the first two women in their 20s elected to the House, the first two Native American women and first two Muslim women elected to Congress, the first women in several districts around the country. Democrats needed a minimum of 23 seats to flip the House, and we were able to do that just with women.

Since then, we had a record number of women running for president, the first woman Vice President, the first woman of color as a major party nominee for president, and elected women breaking new ground all across the country.

We’ve made huge progress, and we made more this month. But we still have so far to go.

Women make up more than half of the voters in this country, but we are still vastly underrepresented in nearly every part of government. For all the work that has been done and the progress that has been made, more than one third of US states have never elected a woman governor (and no Black woman has ever been elected to lead a state). We’re at record highs in women’s representation in state legislatures across the country…at just 33.5 percent. And only four states have ever had majority-women legislatures.* Congress is not much better. We are currently at a record number of women in Congress (making up a whopping 28.4 percent), but it’s worth noting that there have been more episodes of NCIS than the total number of women who have EVER served in Congress.

During her incredible victory speech, Gov-elect Abigail Spanberger noted that no one had ever called a Virginia governor mom before. Spanberger added, “It’s a big deal that the girls and the women that I’ve met along the campaign trail now know with certainty that they can achieve anything. It’s a big deal that women older than me, who forged the path in dreams, hard work and the belief that change and progress would be possible, so that so many of us could follow in their footsteps, in any career, in any role and any challenge.”

She’s right. It matters that we can see every American can see themselves in government, in office, in leadership. If you don’t understand that, ask yourself if that’s because you have always seen people like you in the rooms where decisions are made.

Our system of government was built by–and for–wealthy white men. It was, quite literally, not built for us. And too often, those white men are considered the standard, with everyone else falling in some other category that doesn’t quite measure up. They’re judged if they talk about the history they make or if they don’t, asked if they’re running “as a woman” or saddled with sexist attacks, all of which reminds voters that they are not the norm.

It’s all of that “otherness” that allows too many people to question whether those women are qualified–and to raise the question of whether they’re just being supported because of their gender. And to those people, I’d point them to Govs.-elect Spanberger and Sherrill, to Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, to the doctors, teachers, legislators, policy wonks, social workers, lawyers, veterans currently serving in office and proving the power and value of women in office. And I’d ask those questioning women’s qualifications if they really think the only reason women haven’t run or won in more spaces is just because they’re not good enough?

Changing the face of government requires intentional work. The status quo will not change itself. I will celebrate the day when we no longer have to celebrate firsts. But in the meantime, 2025’s elections remind us that this work is worth doing.

*For more stats and great research, the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers provides some phenomenal resources.

That’s a problem, right? Conventional wisdom says it’s always best if our best candidate has a glide path to the nomination, saving them money and allowing them to focus their attention on their Republican opponent.

Conventional wisdom isn’t always right.

Count me among the growing list of political hacks who believe primaries are actually good for candidates and good for the party. I believe my party’s nomination is worth something and doesn’t belong to anyone just because they’ve been around a long time, got there first or are thought to be the favorite.

Primaries are often how we shake up the status quo and change the face of government. Without primaries, you wouldn’t have many of the women who are in Congress. You might not have many of the historic firsts in government. Primaries are often how you get different viewpoints and perspectives in office, and I think those are vital.

From a political standpoint, primaries also often make for better candidates and better wins in the general election. They allow voters to hear more about the candidates and their policies and how they react to breaking news. Candidates get better over time, so for new and untested candidates, primaries allow them to figure out how to better connect with voters. They get more natural at speaking, hone their message, get better at answering media questions. They also get to deal with attacks and vulnerabilities early and fine tune their answers before they have to hear them on TV or in debates against Republicans just before Election Day. In media training, I often note that we throw out the first pancake. Primaries allow us to get the first pancake out of the way long before most voters are paying attention.

All of this makes primaries viable and often productive. And that’s a good thing, because no position is owed to or owned by any one candidate. If you meet the criteria and you’re willing to do the work, you have a right to run. If you want the seat, you should be willing to work for it.

That said, there’s a major caveat to the idea that primaries can be good and productive: we as voters, activists and political organizations have to find ways to support our particular candidates without turning against or turning off the voters we will need to win the primary. We do our candidates no favors when we attack other voters. We do not help them win when we close the circle around them rather than try to bring more people in.

• Don’t make assumptions or attacks about why someone might support another primary candidate. Saying supporters of another candidate are ill-informed or naive, or are bought by some special interest, both attacks I’ve seen in current primaries, are counterproductive. First, it’s often untrue. Second, it is no way to build support for your candidate. You don’t want someone assigning your motives for you, don’t do it to others. You can like a candidate because you like their experience, you appreciate what they represent or how they communicate, you want more elected officials like them, you think they’re the most likely to flip the seat, or just because, in an annoying question pollsters used to ask voters all the time, you think you’d like to have a beer with them. You can pick them for literally any reason–that’s your right in a democracy. But just think about it–if someone said you only like your candidate because you’re young and naive, or because you’re a tool of the establishment, does either make you want to support the other candidate? Most likely it makes you either dig in further or want to stay home and stop engaging. Our goal should be winning votes for our candidates. Candidates with exclusionary supporters tend to get excluded from the next election.

• No candidate is perfect. We shouldn’t pretend they are or adjust our values to make it seem like it. Throughout my political career, I’m pretty sure I’ve never worked for a candidate I agreed with on absolutely everything. I suspect I’ve never known a human I agree with on absolutely everything, for that matter. So it’s ok to declare someone the best candidate and to work hard to elect them without signing on to every one of their views or every one of their supporters. And it’s ok to say that you are troubled by an attack but still support your candidate instead of saying “I no longer believe this is problematic.” For years, we’ve watched as some evangelical leaders twisted themselves in knots to excuse Trump’s actions–do you want to be that transparently hypocritical? If not, you don’t have to join in the attacks on your candidate, but you also don’t have to defend them. There’s a lot of value in supporters reaching out to the candidate to say that they have taken a position that is troubling to you, or to ask them to apologize for something they’ve done (or amplify said apology). The answer shouldn’t be pretending your values have changed.

• Purity tests for candidates can be challenging. Purity tests for supporters just make it harder to win. Democrats are going to need to win over independents and some Republicans to flip seats in the midterms. We are also going to need to fire up and turn out all Democrats, even the ones who support other candidates in the primary. That means being open to people who don’t support all the same things we do, who criticized our candidate but are willing to come around.

We can come out of primaries more ready to take on the general election and win important seats, if we focus more on sharing our candidates’ background and agenda (yup, I still think that’s a critical part of our communication) and create an environment where people can come on board, rather than feel like there’s no place for them after the primary’s over.

The internet is full of hot takes about what Democratic leaders are doing wrong and how they can win in November.

My own hot take is not about them. It’s a direction for us, the online progressive community, on how we can change the narrative and win back some voters. The path forward is simple: we need to share more positive news.

That’s an unusual piece of advice for me. I spent a decade as an opposition researcher, and more time after that doing rapid response. On Hillary Clinton’s campaign, while some of my colleagues were focused on telling voters about Hillary’s life and record and plans, I worked with the team focused on Trump. It was a dark place (as Secretary Clinton has noted in the years since, we did try to tell everyone…), but that’s the work that I did for years in politics. Punch back, hit hard, define the opposition.

I offer my background here to note that I understand the drive of and need for outrage and attacks on social media. And to be clear: we still need to do that. It’s imperative to call out any attempts to demean our neighbors, to trample our rights, to abuse their power. If we stop talking about their worst actions, we make them acceptable, and we can’t let that happen.

But it’s also imperative that we give voters a reason to trust us. A reason to believe that we are the agents of change they need. And in the coming elections, a reason to vote for us.

As activists, as advocates and as Democrats, we need to offer more than the ways in which we oppose the Trump administration or the Republicans on the ballot. We need to show our work. And we need to show our wins.

Why?

• Voters need a reason to believe that it matters to stay engaged. Right now, potential voters are facing a wave of bad news and countless reasons to despair. They are hearing (not wrongly) that the administration is trampling their rights and taking authoritarian action.

• Voters need to understand what Democrats stand for, not just what we stand against. And they need to hear when we get it done. Again, both are important, but our policy work matters and our wins matter even more. People need hope. They need to know that government can work for them.

• The GOP talks about their agenda. So do we. Their commentary and news interviews may be full of lies and half-truths, but Trump and his allies are talking about what they want to do. While he has broken most of his campaign promises, he did offer a clear agenda: ending wars, cutting costs, boosting the economy, fighting crime, deporting immigrants, MAHA, and so on. We need to more than prove him wrong. We need to talk about what WE want to do, beyond just opposing them.

• Women and candidates of color are particularly vulnerable when we only share the negative. For most of our history, most of our elected officials have been mostly rich, mostly older white men. Especially in this era of attacking DEI, candidates who don’t fit that mold often have to spend time defending their identity and existence. They get less attention for their accomplishments and their work, so we need to make a deliberate effort to ensure that happens.

So, how do we fix it?

• Find the wins and share them: Democrats have overperformed in nearly every election in 2025. Just this week, voters in Fairbanks Alaska replaced a right-wing mayor with Democrat Mindy O’Neall. Newly elected Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva won with a higher margin than Kamala Harris did in her Arizona district. Democrat Caitlin Drey flipped a legislative seat in an Iowa special election, breaking the Republican supermajority in the Senate. Each of these are wins worth sharing.

• Balance the outrage and attacks with our agenda: The constant barrage of bad news–and the challenge with getting anything through Congress–can send a message to voters that it doesn’t matter who we elect. The victories around the country show how much it matters. From Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and New Mexico legislators making their state the first to have universal child care to Michigan lawmakers passing a budget with free school lunches and billions for needed road repairs, Democrats are passing an effective and reasonable agenda that actually helps families across the country.

• Hold Democrats accountable, but acknowledge and amplify when they do something well: Yes, we should expect more from our party and its leadership, and we should call them on it when they’re making mistakes. But don’t lose focus on the opportunity to lift up interesting and inspiring candidates. And not just the ones running in the big races or running against the most newsworthy Republicans. Right now, there are state and local candidates doing terrific work. Find them and put them in your feed.

Social media is a dark place because there are a lot of dark things happening. Despair is a natural reaction–and often a truthful one. And we can’t ignore what’s actually happening in this country. But we can also be part of keeping voters and activists engaged. We can show people a path forward that can make a difference. We can tip the balance at last a little in our direction and away from the bots and the bullies. We can change the narrative.

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