Democrats look for an organizing upgrade

Last week, Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin published a new memo outlining the party’s organizing priorities and principles. You can read the full memo for yourself, but he basically wants the DNC to support year-round organizing programs, coordinate with community groups, integrate digital and on-the-ground tactics, and build a talent pipeline. Those aren’t exactly groundbreaking concepts, and the memo mostly contains a bunch of phrases and buzzwords that are often repeated by professional Democrats in Washington. 

The most notable part of Martin’s document, however, was a section on the party’s technology and data systems. 

“Our organizing deserves tools and data systems built for usability, adaptability, and real-time learning,” Martin wrote. “That’s why we’re launching a process to acquire new organizing tools that will allow us to expand our methods for interacting with voters — both in person and online.”

If you haven’t been following along, Democrats are in the midst of a conversation about the need to overhaul their once vaunted volunteer and voter contact machine. A recent article in the New York Times highlighted concerns about the party’s longtime core CRM, Votebuilder, and the company that builds and maintains that software, Bonterra. Votebuilder was created in the mid 2000’s to optimize the way Democratic campaign organizers and their legions of volunteers conduct door-knocking and phone banking efforts, giving downballot campaigns the ability to easily access and update the party’s massive database of American voters. However, those old school “cold outreach” tactics that so much of the party’s technology infrastructure was built around are seeing diminishing returns in each election cycle. 

For example, in the 2023-2024 cycle, I’m told Democratic organizers and volunteers made around 300 million phone call attempts, and only 3% were successful. While completely outrageous, this stat shouldn’t be surprising - when was the last time you picked up the phone for a random cold call from an unknown number? 

“Campaigns are faster, more data-driven, and more tech-enabled than ever. But the strategies we’re scaling haven’t kept pace,” wrote Jose Cornejo of Democrats’  tech-focused Higher Ground Institute just last week. “Too often, our tools help us do more – but not better.”

Within that context, the DNC’s new Request for Proposals announced by Martin in his memo and described by DNC Chief Technology Officer Arthur Thompson in this Medium post ​​seems really interesting. Is the DNC looking for vendors to build a next generation CRM to replace Votebuilder? Are they instead looking for a bunch of innovative smaller tools to focus on tracking different outreach tactics? I unfortunately can’t say. That’s because when you email the DNC’s RFP-specific email address, an autoresponder says that potential bidders have to sign a non-disclosure agreement as a precondition to receiving the RFP. 

I reached out to the DNC’s tech team to hear more about what specific types of technology they’re looking for, and haven’t heard back. 

The DNC isn’t the only part of the progressive ecosystem looking to upgrade it’s organizing technology. In February, The Movement Cooperative, a major data and tech sharing hub for progressive organizations, announced its own RFP process for a next-generation voter contact CRM. 

“We have to start building for the next 10 years,” The Movement Cooperative’s Julia Barnes recently told Campaigns & Elections. “And we can’t do that with tools that were built for door-to-door canvassing and phone banking.”

It’s never too early… 

Whether you like it or not, the 2028 presidential pre-campaign is in full swing, with a trio of candidates making some moves last week. 

First off, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear began running Facebook ads for his political action committee, “In This Together PAC.” These types of early advertising campaigns are common among politicians who want to raise money to support like minded candidates and raise their own profiles along the way. Pretty much every candidate running for President in 2028 will deploy a similar strategy ahead of the midterms. In the past, I’ve also seen many elected officials (like Mike Pompeo and Kristi Noem) launch similar efforts only to ultimately back down from running a national campaign. 

Meanwhile, Martin O’Malley, who was Governor of Maryland ten years ago, is trying to stay in the mix. He’s currently spam texting grassroots Democrats to donate to his own political action committee, “Win Back Our Country.”

And lastly, controversial former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has decided to go on a humiliation tour, where he appears on people’s shows and podcasts and learns how unpopular he is. The latest stop on this tour was the always-excellent “I’ve Had It” podcast, where host Jennifer Welch absolutely goes off on his pre-baked talking points.

The Vice President becomes a meme, again

Vice President J.D. Vance is once again leaning into his Dan Quayle era, becoming the butt of many internet jokes this week. This time around, its because he was one of the last people to meet Pope Francis before he died. Internet users have casually responded to the news of Francis’ passing by accusing Vance of killing the late Pope and being the Anti-Christ. 

Hundreds of posts about the Vice President of the United States killing the leader of the Catholic Church have received millions of views on social media platforms like Instagram and X. 

More things you should read: 

• Is Google on the brink of a breakup? Tech journalist Casey Newton says maybe. 

• This week in Senate campaign launches: Sports radio host Nathan Sage is running for U.S. Senate in Iowa against Republican Joni Ernst, Activist and podcaster Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, and so is U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens. 

• AOC’s fundraising numbers are off the charts.

• Apparently Open AI is building a new social media network? What could possibly go wrong?

• Speaking of social media, TikTok is getting its own version of “Community Notes.”

• We may have found aliens on a distant planet, but Trump’s planned DOGE cuts at NASA will “eliminate future space telescope and other astrobiology projects,” and cause the search for extraterrestrial life to “basically stop.”

• I have no idea what “Dark Woke” is but the New York Times wrote about it. 

• Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik gave a podcast interview with POLITICO on the state of American politics that I found really interesting. You can listen or read the transcript here, and view Sosnik’s slide deck (packed with some great charts) here. 

One last thing: Pete’s POV

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