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Buzz words and the words that voters use. Democrats win when we use voters' words and phrases... [1]
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Date: 2025-05-27
I am the first to admit it: i am all about winning. Pre-election fights about this or that have little interest for me. Except, of course, when they do.
The post-Covid hangover of re-connecting with voters has won plaudits for Hope Springs from Field PAC [dated website] volunteers everywhere we are canvassing. And i’ll say that our volunteers continue to be surprised by this.
“We’re knocking on doors every weekend — so why do they (voters) continue to say this?” one volunteer asked. But we are knocking on new doors — and won’t even get to our Second round of canvassing until July. It will be the first time that we go back into neighborhoods where we’ve knocked before to follow-up with doors we might have missed.
Saturday was the first time this year that we’ve allowed volunteers to take walk sheets home for doors they knocked on where no one was home. Some of our volunteers have been asking for this from the beginning and it look like 40% of our 4,000+ volunteers did so. In Ohio, though, it was more than 70%! Those who did will call those houses/voters with phone numbers and use an abbreviated Issues Survey for those voters who agree.
The Washington Post has a story up about the “debate over left-wing buzzwords.” I’d quibble a little about buzzwords being confined to the left but maybe that’s to get eyeballs. We all use buzz words. But here’s the thing: one of the reasons Hope Springs volunteers talk to voters in these 14 Swing States is to find the words and phrases voters are actually using. It’s obvious from the second question we ask.
But the whole argument around buzzwords is a minefield. Even for president felon:
The battle unfolded on a particularly emotional front in the 2024 election, when GOP leaders seized on the view of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and other Democrats that people have a right to choose their own pronouns. Trump aired ads declaring “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you” that were considered highly effective by strategists on both sides.
But this weekend, he wished us a “happy Memorial Day,” largely considered a faux pas by veterans groups:
Memorial Day honors military members who died in service, and the Wounded Warrior Project encourages wishing people a “meaningful Memorial Day” rather than a “happy Memorial Day” in recognition of the solemnity of the occasion.
Words matter. Not that i’d consider president felon as a careful or considerate user of the English language. But he’s a hypocrite here — he wants us to accept his usage of the term genius to describe himself or 225 pounds as his weight when it is clear to all that neither are true. Apparently, it’s only wrong when we try to define ourselves. (I’ll admit i have issues when traitors pretend they are patriots but that could be a personal problem.)
But it isn’t the ability (right) to define ourselves that is the real debate here. What we are interested in is the language of voters so that their language can be used by Democratic campaigns. It’s one of the myriad reasons why we are knocking on doors a year out from the next election (except in Virginia and New Jersey, which have gubernatorial elections this year). And the fact is the language that voters use evolves over time — and election cycles. So Hope Springs is on top of that!
Hope Springs from Field PAC began knocking on doors again on March 1st. We target Democrats and unaffiliated voters with a systematic approach that reminds them not only that Democrats care, but Democrats are determined to deliver the best government possible to all Americans. The voters we talk to continue to tell us they come away more invested in governance and feel more favorably towards Democrats in general because of our approach.
Obviously, we rely on grassroots support, so if you support field/grassroots organizing, voter registration (and follow-up) and our efforts to protect our voters, we would certainly appreciate your support:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/hopemobilization Hope Springs from Field understands that volunteer to voter personal interactions are critical. Knocking on doors has repeatedly been found to be the most successful tactic to get voters to cast a ballot and that is the goal of what we do. Even though we don’t open up access to that data until after the primaries have concluded, i and other organizers are in regular contact with candidates all the time. I text with several Democratic Senate candidates regularly and many of our organizers have relationships with candidates or their campaign staff from their states where we will discuss our current findings in this area. I even write about this occasionally here at Daily Kos (recent example). The debate discussed in the WashPost article is more inside-the-beltway thinking (the Post is, after all, not only inside the beltway but a key collector of it). And, as Elissa Slotkin argued, “More important, she [Slotkin] said, is the Democrats’ need to confront Trump with “alpha energy,” which she described as a sort of plainspoken toughness leavened with compassion.” She is, after all, a farm girl who morphed into a CIA analyst before running for Congress. And i suspect we can all agree that “The notion that Democrats must communicate better in the 2026 and 2028 campaigns is increasingly accepted within the party.” We actually hear voters say this at their doors. And they are generally astounded that we (Democrats) aren’t better at this. “Haven’t we learned this?” one voter asked me not recently. I continue to argue that one of the reasons why Democratic messaging has gotten worse is a result of the fact that we got away from knocking on doors during Covid. Canvassing is less central than it used to be in Democratic campaigns, with many Democrats arguing that digital should take priority. I’ve personally found that we should rely on a “combined arms” or “all of the above” in campaign tactics. But — even more importantly — Democratic and unaffiliated voters than lean towards the left miss the voter contact that Democrats used to excel in. We at Hope Springs have accumulated a lot of observation sheets where this is mentioned. One voter in Ohio made this observation: “I correlate the demise of Democratic strength in the state with the lack of this kind of think [voter contact by canvassing].” And that’s something we organizers discuss periodically. But there’s a reason why our Ohio volunteers have been the most fervent demanders that we reboot our phone calls during the week to the houses we knocked on Saturday. “When I tell people I am calling because I just knocked on their door last weekend, voters perk up. I think they assume I am just down the street from them and even though they probably threw the lit away, they know I am for real here.” The fact is, even though we knocked on 10,207,329 doors in our regularly canvassing and collected survey responses from 529,868 voters at their doors, volunteers who took the work home after Harris became the nominee collected another 43,294 responses from voters over the phone. This tactic was also effective in the 2023 referendum in Ohio. I’d personally argue that the WashPost was off the mark in their argument that As Democrats wrestle with who to be in the era of President Donald Trump, a growing group of party members — especially centrists — is reviving the argument that Democrats need to rethink the words they use to talk with the voters whose trust they need to regain. All of us need to talk to voters in the language that voters use — and that language is different in different states, even in different parts of those states. By trying to draw universal conclusions, they miss the point. Voters are telling us what they want to hear about and it isn’t the same thing every where. We need to listen to what voters are telling us — again, one of the reasons why Hope Springs from Field exists. But we could use your support, which is why we continue to ask for financial help.
Hope Springs has been called “the most comprehensive, organized grassroots voter contact project out there right now. It is truly astonishing that it is grassroots-based!” Not sure why it is “astonishing,” but i probably have more faith in grassroots or self-organized efforts because of my experience with Barack Obama’s early days in 2007.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/27/2324506/-Buzz-words-and-the-words-that-voters-use-Democrats-win-when-we-use-voters-words-and-phrases?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
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