Justin Meszler

Over 300 events are scheduled to take place tomorrow in communities across this country standing up to Donald Trump's attack on our democracy and attempt to rig the 2026 election. Sign up for an event near you at FightTheTrumpTakeover.Com ‼️

Gen Z is showing up and showing out this morning for our 2025 #FightForOurFuture Summit!

Many smart and well-meaning people are quoting the article with their disagreement with the strat - and who knows, maybe I'll eat my words and this will be unsuccessful. But here's my take, for what it's worth. Happy to chat more with folks about what they think...

With that being said, it all comes down to execution. Who’s going to be primaried? How do these challengers differ? We should all be wary and watchful when there’s a lot of cash in play. But I’m just saying, there’s potential for this to be very productive.

There was a whole lot of money last cycle, and it could have been spent way more strategically. Party leadership should also work on this. I’m just arguing that David's initiative here may also be strategic.

Those arguing for a DNC Vice Chair to be focusing on delivering funds to other needed areas — like down-ballot elections, investment in “red” states, expansion in battlegrounds — are right that money should also be prioritized there. The good news is, we have a lot of $ to spend!

For those arguing that the Dem party should stay united and not have these fights: a united Dem party lost handily in November. Unity amongst our partisan selves isn’t gonna cut it.

I have my policy preferences for shifting the Dem party, but broadly, the vibes are off right now. We're living in an era of contested truths. Fragmented news. Messages rarely cut through the noise. Above all, we must demonstrate that we get people and their dissatisfaction.

People are sick of how things are, and they blame politics (and parties) as usual. Rebranding is in order. People want to see fight. Change. Obama, Trump ran against the party establishment. This is not a new idea.

Ultimately, @davidhogg.bsky.social's effort could strengthen the national Democratic Party. Voters rejected the party last November. Something's gotta give. Ruffling feathers is good here, and a hostile-style takeover from a senior leader broadcasts a new message.

The Democratic brand is toxic, especially to young people (the growing electorate!). No one’s happy right now. While many Dem policies are popular, attaching the Dem label to yourself is a big crutch. This doesn’t have to be the case.

Here’s why this is exactly what the Democratic Party needs right now. 🧵

TLDR: never a better time for anti-establishment rabble-rousing

🚨 NEW: We just launched a one-click email tool to contact all Democratic Senators who are still undecided on the CR.

Contact them and tell them to vote NO here ⬇️

win.newmode.net/votersoftomo...

And uhhh if you read this far, wow thank you. I would love to continue the convo with you! I’m pretty interested in exploring this topic more…let’s chat! Because some things have to change here.

Until then, see you on the doors/phones 🤓

25/25

So how do we move forward? It’s not going to be one thing that makes us win. But entertainment + culture forward content is where the battle was won this cycle.

And I don’t have a guide for putting all of these ideas into practice…That’s for us to figure out together.

24/25

We’ve also lost the longer term battle about being fun. Brat summer was a really cool step in the right direction, but those cultural influences didn’t target young men.

23/25

So how do we influence the nonpolitical influencers? We return to core problems with Dem’s image and who would want to be associated with Dem leaders and ideas. Much has been written and reposted on us losing authenticity when we tried to ignore Biden’s age…

22/25

Harris going on their podcast (or them doing off-color pro-Harris pranks) would have been absurd to their audience. Affecting culture is a lot more subtle and time consuming than booking an occasional podcast appearance or booting up Twitch once or twice…

21/25

The significance of Donald Trump doing content with the Nelk Boys is not that he was on their podcast. Rather, why was the Nelk Boys’ audience excited about Trump coming on in the first place? How were they predisposed to like him?

20/25

Nonpolitical creators’ willingness to embed and promote a political message speaks volumes about a policy or candidates’ positive reputation in culture. And it also reinforces and creates that reputation…

19/25

2. Nonpolitical voices doing political content: ex. Alex Cooper hosting VP Harris on Call Her Daddy, or often more implicit, such as Biden-disparaging jokes on Kill Tony.

This kind of content reflects and shifts the cultural image of politicians and parties…

18/25

1. Political voices embedding themselves in culture: This is Ben Shapiro doing movie reviews. Or, Tim Walz on SubwayTakes.

This content gets people familiar with political voices and more open to seeing and agreeing with their political takes later on…

17/25

The answer is not just more political podcasts or videos. Sure, more may not hurt, but it’s not the holy grail solution. That’s not how we first reach people. The answer is in culture and entertainment-first media. And there are two categories of this content I’ve seen:

16/25

Political content falls in the trap of siloed algorithms. How many persuadable people actually consume explicitly pro-Democratic organic content? Or is it mostly just political gremlins like myself and those seeing this thread? (sorry, yes, you’re a political gremlin too)

15/25

It can be easy for non-youth political decision-makers to confuse youth messaging and youth punditry since they may only be consuming the punditry (on Twitter, TV, mainstream news).

Reaching youth voters is much more complicated than that...

14/25

On some youth voices, a cautionary note: There’s a difference btwn messaging about the youth vote versus youth messaging. The former is punditry—which is still needed for young people to be taken seriously and for youth orgs to get funding! But it’s not youth outreach…

13/25

The DNC-aligned youth creators (Chris Mowrey, Harry Sisson, etc) do good work, and some testing have shown those TikToks are quite persuasive! But is it actually reaching persuadable people? I don’t fully know—I’d be curious about their audience + reach…

12/25

More content is generally better, so I don’t want to disparage anyone’s ideas or plans to start a podcast. We need as many value-aligned folks taking action. So, start that podcast, king! (I already have enough to listen to though so sorry if I don’t tune in)…

11/25

But in the meantime: how do we change the content that’s out there and what young people, especially young men, are consuming? That’s where a lot of the conversation has immediately been post-election.

So let’s talk about content creation!…

10/25