Weak Tea Party

Stop listening to the losers & start helping more winners

The same people who told you everything was fine in 2023 are now telling you to call your representatives.

Don’t listen to them.

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The phones are jammed in Congress.

But not red phones. Democrats are getting swamped by outraged constituents whipped up by progressive nonprofits like Indivisible and online personalities like Simon Rosenberg.

You’ve likely seen the many videos and tweets of Democratic elected officials doing performative nonsense that draws mockery from across the political spectrum.

Weeks into the second Trump Administration, why are Democrats doing performative nonsense?

The Indivisible Cycle:

In Step 1, nonprofit groups like Indivisible and online personalities like Simon Rosenberg grow their (profitable) social media followings and email lists by whipping up outrage.

But getting attention is only the top of an acquisition funnel - they then need people to take action. So you get emails like this, sent to hundreds of thousands of people:

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Unfortunately, that causes Step 2: Democrats do performative nonsense to appease the activists whipped up to jam phone lines.

That’s how you get Chuck Schumer leading a chant ridiculed not only by MAGA, but by normies from all sides like former Democratic Representative and Senate candidate Tim Ryan:

Democratic leaders are, unsurprisingly, not too happy about being forced into performative nonsense that gets them ridiculed.

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Here’s a story that broke last night from Axios:

A closed-door meeting for House Democrats this week included a gripe-fest directed at liberal grassroots organizations, sources tell Axios.

Why it matters: Members of the Steering and Policy Committee — with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in the room — on Monday complained activist groups like MoveOn and Indivisible have facilitated thousands of phone calls to members' offices.

• "People are pissed," a senior House Democrat who was at the meeting said of lawmakers' reaction to the calls.

• The Democrat said Jeffries himself is "very frustrated" at the groups, who are trying to stir up a more confrontational opposition to Trump.

• Some Democrats see the callers as barking up the wrong tree given their limited power as the minority party in Congress: "It's been a constant theme of us saying, 'Please call the Republicans,'" said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).

• The other side: "People are angry, scared, and they want to see more from their lawmakers right now than floor speeches about Elon Musk," Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg told Axios.

People are angry and scared? That’s good business for Indivisible.

Divisible & Risible

Anger and fear - along with millions of dollars from big-money donors - fuel the misnomered activist group Indivisible. Modeled after the Tea Party, the group has spent nearly a decade focused on division. Like the original revolutionaries in Boston, love throwing stuff overboard. They just never seem to have a workable plan for what to do next.

Indivisible’s failures partially stem from our common critique of the DC-centric corporatized progressive nonprofit groups: they focus on purity tests and intra-party clout over winning swing voters.

Their concentration of power among DC’s progressive elite was best articulated by scholar Theda Skocpol in the progressive outlet The American Prospect in 2021. In the aptly titled “Resistance Disconnect”, Skocpol argues:

More than any other part of the massive post-2016 resistance surge, the newly formed Indivisible network looked as if it might play a unique civic role, bridging long-standing divides between national and local levels and perhaps filling in the crucial middle tier of state-level and regional coordinating bodies. Building civic ties alongside the Democratic Party at all levels portended an enormously constructive achievement for the American center-left.

Unfortunately, Indivisible, so far, has not realized that potential. Since 2017, national Indivisible leaders have raised tens of millions of dollars from major donors, but have not devolved significant resources away from Washington, D.C., to empower democratically accountable state and local leaders. Instead, Indivisible directors have invested most of their resources into running a large, professionally staffed national advocacy organization, leaving local groups and networks largely on their own. This shift in priorities comes at a time when persistent organizing by locally rooted groups between as well as during elections remains more urgent than ever.

Indivisible stayed the course in the years after Skocpol’s critique. After Democrats lost the House in 2022,¹ the co-founder said:

“The great thing about having your strategy being proven correct is that you don’t have to rethink your strategy…We would have, if the red wave materialized. But it didn’t…”

As we told the New York Times at the time “it kind of feels like Democrats are celebrating in the locker room because we lost by four.” Indivisible was popping champagne and doubling down on a failed strategy, even though the Democrats who won did so by creating distance between them and Biden’s toxic Democratic brand.

An Indivisible co-founder has touted experience working for Rep. Tom Perriello during the Tea Party wave as a template for Indivisible.² A Time Magazine profile contains a fascinating line from Perriello:

“I make it a point not to think that far ahead. Planning ahead is an excuse not to do what you're called to do right now.”

MAGA is currently far stronger than the opposition party, in large part because the opposition’s leaders have intentionally not planned ahead. They have not course-corrected. They have interpreted losses merely as near-wins, with complete victory around the corner.

Maybe if they attack moderate Democrats more, maybe if Democrats just “fight harder.”

And Hakeem Jeffries isn’t happy about it. He’s got a House to win back, but the profitable progressive outrage industry wants to burn it down instead. Like David Hogg, the leaders of Indivisible are not the cause of all problems ailing Democrats. But they are clear examples of an outrage industry creating a doom loop.

And it is important for them to change their behavior! Millions of Americans want change, and they are following groups and online personalities that too often reinforce counterproductive actions.

We need to call out the Doom Loop, and reinforce a win loop. What Welcome and friends ask - persuade winnable voters in the middle and support candidates in tough districts - may be effective to beat MAGA, but it doesn’t hijack the part of our brains that outrage cash transfers to Indivisible and Simon Rosenberg.

To help us build that Win Loop, join us as a paid subscriber to learn from & support winners - or donate to those Democratic winners here.

Democrats are getting a lot of hate calls right now, so show winners some love. We need more of them.

1. For more context on this, see Check Your Resistance

2. Perriello is a tough one for me: before I got into politics, he was the politician I most admired. An outsider and “darling of the religious left”, Perriello displayed “a brand of conviction politics” that “transcends the narrow ideologies of left or right.” We need those sorts of leaders now, just with a longer-term plan.