Nobody said it would be easy

In times of chaos, when an assault on the very foundations of moral decency is under attack, it's hard to know where to go to find the unvarnished truth.

When I joined Substack, I came here with an established track record of digital activism and advocacy for social justice. I wanted to use this platform as a vehicle to deliver the truth in long form, however ugly and uncomfortable it might be from time to time. I have learned over the years that it takes time and trust to build a community willing to listen to what you have to say and be prepared to support what you do.

Although I have now lost nearly a thousand subscribers immediately following my recent four-part piece on Gaza, my work still receives over a million views each month, indicating that someone out there is listening. I see my work for better or for worse as a vocation. In an ocean of lies, fairytales and disinformation, the truth is all too often swimming against the tide, and while I may represent but a grain of sand on miles of beach, I believe that ‘from little acorns mighty oaks grow’. Honest commentary that commands respect in the social media space has tragically become a scarce resource.

In these challenging times, pushing against the tide of lies and deception can be exhausting. Indeed, it can take a mental toll on those desperate to preserve moral decency, integrity and a sense of fairness in this dog-eat-dog society. In a world obsessed with quick fixes to problems, people are struggling to accept that there is no quick fix to the tyranny we find ourselves living in.

Refuge for those who believe in a living wage, healthcare as a human right, affordable childcare, paid family leave and a fair shot at achieving the American dream is becoming scarce in the new corporate media landscape. A landscape where the current Trump regime is twisting the tourniquet to stem the flow of truth, while flooding the zone with dangerous rhetoric that threatens the very values on which America was built. There are no longer any political rules of engagement, just all-out tribal war designed to divide us and keep everyone in a state of perpetual fear.

I certainly don’t have all the answers. However, what I do know is that I understand the threat and the reality that if the Democrats are unable to cast aside self-preservation and insider stock trading to focus on a people-first agenda, then America as we know it will not survive Trump and Democrats will be cast into the political wilderness for a generation. The reality is that in the American political system, in times of an existential threat to representative democracy, there is no margin for error. Any attempt at a third-party solution will simply allow the tyranny to deepen. It’s a moral tragedy that the Democratic Party has a monopoly on opposition.

This is not lost on corporate America, and special interests have infected Democratic politics as it has GOP politics. It’s like a cancer that has metastasised to become equally as malignant as some republican special interests. You simply cannot claim to speak for the people when they are screaming and you are not listening. The true tragedy is that the Democratic Party is blessed with the brightest and best political talent of a generation. Still, the establishment, many of whom have served the party and their country well over the years, simply don’t have the good grace and sense of patriotism to put people before the legislative gravy train and allow a new generation of hungry leaders to serve the American people.

US politics is at the most critical inflexion point of a generation, and Democrats are paralysed with fear of alienating voters. Note to self, we are way past that point. All polls show that even amid tyranny, the American people have diminished faith in Democrats. This is at the very time when Trump is so far under water, his swollen ankles might explode. The truth is that the American people trust neither party to act in their best interests, which is a plague on both their houses. The political system seems to most to be no longer fit for purpose. It is easily manipulated, has abandoned age-old checks and balances and prostituted itself to the highest bidder. That’s not representative democracy, it’s societal abandonment. US politics is now a high-priced hooker, and she’s happy to wear either a red or a blue dress, while being happy to make greedy fantasies come true.

A Gallup poll, released yesterday, mirrors my points and makes for some interesting reading. Jeffrey M. Jones points out:

Democrats Regain Advantage in Party Affiliation

followed by:

Shift occurs even as Democratic Party favorability falls to record low

Americans’ party affiliation has flipped back toward the Democratic Party after the Republican Party held advantages for most of 2023 and 2024. However, these changes in party preference are occurring at a time when the Democratic Party’s image is at an all-time low and slightly worse than that of the Republican Party. Further, Americans are no more likely to believe Democrats are better than Republicans at managing the federal government or bringing about changes the country needs.

It’s well worth looking at the whole piece to get a better understanding of the dynamics. You can see from the graph below that there is little shift, despite what Trump is doing. Now, either this is because Americans are in a coma or because they have lost faith in both parties, and I’m pretty sure it’s the latter.

Below is the key chart. You can see the loss of confidence in the Republicans, but no shift towards Democrats. It supports the position that there is no confidence in either party.

The final chart I’m including relates to the overall favorability of Democrats. You can analyse it in any way you like; there’s not a lot of good news for Democrats. This merely reasserts my view that Dems are simply viewed as the lesser of two evils and that my friends is a problem.

I have repeatedly said that there is no lack of enthusiasm for tapping grassroots supporters for money. I quote from the latest of a string of begging emails:

… Can you chip in $3 now to help us reach our goal?

$3 because a strong fundraising showing will send a powerful message to Trump and his allies: that there is serious opposition to their efforts to hand a giant tax cut to the wealthy while the rest of us foot the bill.

Just for the record, Trump does not give a damn about Democratic fundraising; he can just issue an executive order to outlaw ActBlue and don’t think he won’t if it becomes a threat. The harsh reality is that Democrats outspent Trump in 2024 and lost the House, the Senate, the White House and the popular vote. Might it be an idea to focus on a vision and not yet another ‘Defeat the fascist’ campaign? (he said with head in hands, letting out a deep sigh).

Do I believe in state-level investment to support state and local candidates? I think it is absolutely mission-critical and should have been done years ago when Republicans were investing tens of millions to build red-state trifectas. Better late than never, as they say. The problem with this is that it takes a considerable amount of time and investment to build out the required infrastructure at the state and local level. I worked with a small number of state-level candidates in 2022, who were simply left to fend for themselves, as were many congressional candidates who were adjudged to be fighting uphill battles. I did free Ads for a number of them. The overwhelming response from each was, ‘What’s the catch? What do you want from me?’ They were speechless when I said, ‘Nothing, I just want you to win.’

Now you can argue that my meagre altruistic contribution was just a grain of sand on a long shoreline. But you would be missing the point. Elections are a gold rush for election strategists, media creators and the whole election industrial complex. It’s not about a vision for a better tomorrow where no family is left behind; it's about MONEY and gorging themselves on the hard-earned donations from hard-pressed Democratic supporters. These people get paid regardless of who wins.

I know for a fact that new Democratic congressional candidates who don’t have political connections or independent wealth are regarded as non-club members. They are instructed on how to play the game; they must raise x thousand dollars before even passing go. It’s an inherently corrupt system at its very core. Nobody sits down with the candidate and says ‘Tell me about the vision you have for representing the community you are looking to represent.’ The system is fundamentally flawed, perpetuating the same old politicians who sell the same old politics and represent the same old party. I have seen the process with my own eyes, and it’s not fit for purpose.

In the Democratic Party, anyone with a vision and a passion for public service should, if they are good enough, have a path to elected office regardless of wealth, race, sexuality, or connections within the party. That’s why I believe in the Obama Foundation, and the work it does with young leaders is so important. Democrats sadly have a reputation for spending tens of millions of dollars on candidates with name recognition through political connections, fighting barely winnable seats, which are duly lost. These vanity project races are wasteful and serve no useful purpose.

It takes decades to fix the political neglect and incompetence that have frankly dogged both parties. So where do we go from here? The first point I would make is that throwing money at the problem will NOT fix what is a structural issue. The main obstacle to progress is that candidates like AOC have to fight the democratic establishment before they can even get past the bouncers on the door, and almost a decade on, she’s still regarded as a liability by those who wanted to deny her access to the club from the outset. I use AOC as an example purely because her career is now well-known, and I would argue that her journey should be the template, not necessarily for her left-leaning politics, because I understand that too many are yet to catch up with such a visionary.

I use her as an example because of the way she has become an astute political operator who understands the importance of the balance between branding and committed engagement with the constituents she represents. She is one of the rare politicians who can straddle national policy imperatives with local needs. She has an unambiguous political position and has built up a depth of knowledge that sees her feared by Republicans despite their claims she’s a low-IQ communist. It’s about knowing who you are, standing by what you believe, always with an eye on compromise for the greater good. The party has a lot to learn from her, but instead, they lock her out.

I have been around politics all my life, albeit not American politics, but I can tell you that regardless of where you live, the principles of representative democracy are the same. I can say to you with an assured sense of confidence that without a change at the heart of the Democratic Party, they are destined to lose again, and this time, rest assured, it will be all over, if indeed it’s not over already.

I am ever the optimist, and I am a firm believer that the Democratic Party has within its ranks some extraordinary political talent and potential leadership giants; however, unless they are unleashed to realise their exceptional potential, the American dream will wither on the vine. Democrats face a significant problem right now in that only a revolution within the party can deliver a winning team, but we are just a little over a year away from midterms if they are allowed to take place. The burning question is whether there is enough time to recover from a revolution to fight not just the midterms but the critical seats up for grabs this November? My instincts tell me there is, and it would be a bold move that pays off.

In my piece tomorrow, I’ll outline what that revolution needs to look like. Many times, people comment on my work, saying, ‘Talk to us about solutions.’ The first thing to say is that there is no magic bullet for decades of political neglect and frivolous spending on vanity campaigns. There are deep-rooted structural problems that need to be addressed. The burning question is whether Democrats have the balls, the vision and the will to make the changes required.

What I would say is this. Democrats need to spend their money wisely and look beyond their so-called tried and tested methodology that failed catastrophically in November. You can rest assured that Trump will control the whole social media space and a large section of the corporate media. That represents the most significant challenge bar none. Voter rolls are going to come under attack, as will ActBlue. AI will be extensively used to profile voters politically, and I have little doubt that Trump will employ Palantir to assist with that. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, should underestimate the impact AI will have on the campaign. Agentic AI will already be in play wargaming the campaign.

Democrats may find that, in a bizarre twist, what appears to be a counterproductive move on the surface could actually be a strategic advantage. An analogue approach to the task at hand may prove to be the answer, deploying the largest people-intensive ground game in political history. We’ll discuss this further tomorrow. What I do think will be essential is to invest in building on the existing network of independent fact-based information providers. Obviously, the MeidasTouch Network is an excellent anchor point for a coalition bringing together prominent voices in the independent news space. We have to approach this from a new angle. This campaign will need to be hybrid, combining digital activism with in-person campaigning to reach voters where they are.

Digital content is not cheap to produce well, but it can be created at a fraction of the cost of network media buys. Network media will remain important in the immediate term, but digital now has a much broader reach. The challenge lies in establishing distribution for the content beyond the social media bubble. If the algorithms are tweaked as expected, a viable alternative distribution network will need to be available. It’s all about the detail. You can be the best influencer in the world, but if Trump instructs the platform owners to silence you, that can be done at the flick of a switch.

Look, I’m not setting myself up as some sort of campaign guru, but I have a deep knowledge of both AI, messaging and content creation for which I am widely respected in the social media space. I have a body of work here that now extends to over 200 pieces, many of which offer deep analytical assessments of policy and social issues. The reason I love Substack is that it provides readers who have the means and are as passionate as I am about social justice and the preservation of democracy, the opportunity to invest in my work to become a stakeholder in this collective battle to defeat the existential threat this administration poses not just to the US, but globally.

No matter where you live, you can invest a few cents a day to get daily assessments and deep dives on issues that we all need to be aware of. Someone commented on my post yesterday about tariffs.

They said:

We all need to understand that as a result of the tariffs, we, the people, are going to pay and pay and pay. Unfortunately, the people that do not understand this, and still believe the exporting countries pay the tariffs, do not read or believe these articles.Another said:

Another said:

All well and good. But the average American adult, reading at 7th grade level, simply won’t understand.

These two people are, of course, correct, so the question then is, should I be writing or producing graphic novels instead? The answer is, of course, no, to the latter, but I do understand the point, and that is why I think Ads and short films can help bridge that gap.

I can do that too, and with Internet-connected TVs, YouTube will be a critical delivery mechanism for political messaging. I’ll cite this as an example:

This was a 49 second Ad produced for Sarah’s primary 2022 campaign free of charge by me. (this is from my archive library not from the campaign site) This ad was very successfully run on her YouTube campaign channel and across social media too. As a 49 second Ad. It had great traction on social media, but on YouTube the local view rate in her constituency was impressive, but even more impressive is that over 80% of viewers did not bail out until between 35 and 45 seconds.

This longer form Ad Went Viral on Twitter in 2022:

I understand the need for messaging to connect emotionally to resonate and when it does it REALLY DOES.

Since I began writing on Substack, Paid subscribers have helped fund a series of Ads aimed at bridging the gap between written and visual messaging. Here are a few examples.

I’m not in this to make money, subscription barely cover 70% of my costs at the moment. This is a personal mission for me and the only limitations I face is the ability to do more. I have the in depth knowledge, the skill set, the production and writing ability to make a difference, but I could do much more. It’s all about partnership funding to increase the output.

Don’t misunderstand, I’ll be here regardless, this is simply the fact that I am in this moment being underutilized. I can call on a coalition of creators and even have the Programming skills to lead a development team to streamline a messaging strategy. If beyond subscribers there is anyone out there prepared to support a bigger picture project, you know where to find me. I’m not messing around, I’m all in.