935: A Healthy Bubble
Step out of it for a 2028 preview
You underrate how insane the 2028 presidential primary is going to be.
Yesterday, Groups Chat members saw a chart showing one indicator of why: the top three fundraising Democratic House candidates are social media celebrities in safe seats, while the top fundraising Republican is in a swing district.
It got a ton of traction on social media. Seems weird, right? MAGA has a reputation for piling small-dollar donor cash on safe-seat extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, while Democrats have grabbed headlines for holding an overall cash advantage.
Some asked if Democrats would look better if we zoomed out to more candidates.
Well, we expanded the chart from the top 4 fundraising candidates to 16 and … it looks worse:
The top 8 fundraising House Democrats outside of leadership raised more than $18m, compared to just $11m for the top 8 fundraising House Republicans not in leadership.
But as the chart shows, all the Republican money was in competitive districts. Meanwhile, 91% of the Democratic money was in districts where the presidential election was decided by 18 points or more.
Now, that doesn’t mean that competitive Democratic candidates in Trump-won districts aren’t working their asses off to bring in the resources needed to win. Just yesterday, Janelle Stelson in PA-10 announced a remarkable $500,000 raised in just the first 48 hours since launching. You should join our community in supporting her run against Freedom Caucus leader Scott Perry, who we named the ‘most vulnerable extremist’ last cycle when Stelson’s overperformance made this one of the closest races in the country.
The Crazy Bubbles Up
But the chart does capture something scary. Most people in our community live in a healthy media bubble, consuming fairly objective and data-driven information.
There are biases of course, but it is downright healthy relative to where millions of Democratic donors spend their time.
For the past decade, I’ve spent an uncomfortable amount of time in extreme activist spaces. It’s strange!
And sometimes scary. Sadly, I was not surprised to see this story in Axios last week:
At town halls in their districts and in one-on-one meetings with constituents and activists, Democratic members of Congress are facing a growing thrum of demands to break the rules, fight dirty — and not be afraid to get hurt.
"We've got people who are desperately wanting us to do something ... no matter what we say, they want [more]," Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), the chair of the center-left New Democrat Coalition, told Axios.
Liberal voters have angrily accosted Democrats at town halls for — in their view — not doing enough to counter President Trump's agenda.
In response, some Democrats have tried to up the ante: Heckling Trump, mounting rogue impeachment attempts, and getting tackled by law enforcement and even indicted in their efforts to scrutinize the president's deportation campaign.
What we're hearing: The grassroots wants more. "Some of them have suggested ... what we really need to do is be willing to get shot" when visiting ICE facilities or federal agencies, a third House Democrat told Axios.
"Our own base is telling us that what we're doing is not good enough ... [that] there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public," the lawmaker said.
A fourth House Democrat said constituents have told them "civility isn't working" and to prepare for "violence ... to fight to protect our democracy."
A fifth House Democrat told Axios that "people online have sent me crazy s*** ... told me to storm the White House and stuff like that," though they added that "there's always people on the internet saying crazy stuff."
A sixth House Democrat said that when they try to persuade voters to channel their frustration into a focus on winning back Congress in 2026, "people who are angry don't accept that. They're angry beyond things."
"It's like ... the Roman coliseum. People just want more and more of this spectacle," said a seventh lawmaker.
Zoom in: Many lawmakers said these voters tend to be white, well-educated and live in upscale suburban or urban neighborhoods.
"What I have seen is a demand that we get ourselves arrested intentionally or allow ourselves to be victims of violence, and ... a lot of times that's coming from economically very secure white people," said an eighth House Democrat.
The bottom line: "The expectations aren't just unreal. They're dangerous," the eighth House Democrat said.
A ninth lawmaker told Axios: "I actually said in a meeting, 'When they light a fire, my thought is to grab an extinguisher,'"
"And someone at the table said, 'Have you tried gasoline?'"
The 2028 presidential primary is going to be absolutely insane. The first primary is in 935 days.
It is not enough to be in a healthy information environment. We need to take action together. So support Janelle and the other dynamic candidates in tough races on our Win The Middle slate here, and become a paid member of our Welcome community for daily updates from the groups focused on winning in 2026.
Perhaps what house members are describing is voter frustration that none of our leaders or up-and-comers has yet shown they can light up the socials the way FDR, Reagan, or Clinton gained mass fellowship through the medium of their day. An attractive combination of backstory, identity, and voting record isn’t sufficient or perhaps even necessary. We expect our leaders to engage with us more directly than ever. To do that at scale requires absolute mastery of social media.
The problem is that Democrats are out of power and until they get back into power there’s not much they can do. It does seem pretty bad that representatives are being told to be soldiers.