The Message Is Clear. The Infrastructure Is Missing.

A Substack exclusive conversation with Charles Duhigg on mobilizing vs organizing, and building movements that last.

The State of the Union handed Democrats a simple but powerful message to run with going into the midterms: “Are you better off than you were before?” For most Americans, the answer is no.

The question now is what will Democrats do with it? Will they capitalize on the moment, or let it slip away? Trump and the Republicans told us business is booming, wages are up, costs are down, and we’re in “the Golden Age.” Americans know that’s not true. That disconnect is exactly how Democrats lost in 2024, and Republicans capitalized on voters’ frustration to sweep the House, Senate and White House.

But a message alone isn’t enough. Without a strategy to repeat it, embed it, and organize around it, you miss the moment.

Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who writes about the science of communicating. He looked into why MAGA has been so successful as a communication tool, and what Democrats can learn from its strategies.

This conversation is available exclusively to Substack subscribers.

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5 Takeaways

1. Build Back Better Infrastructure
   Republicans didn’t reinvent the wheel on successful campaigning, they copied it from Obama’s 2008 strategy. Specifically, building an infrastructure to push down leadership. It’s a franchise. Volunteers are empowered to lead local mini-campaigns on behalf of the candidate, and do what works for them. Democrats have forgotten how to do that.
   
   It’s telling that the book Groundbreakers, about the Obama strategy, is required reading for the Republican National Committee and Turning Point USA.

   
   

2. Mobilizing vs. Organizing is the Core Divide
   Mobilizing is getting people to do things. Organizing is turning people into leaders who will get things done. You need both to be successful. But organizing is much more important early on. Organizing is building infrastructure so that millions of people feel investment in a movement. Mobilizing includes No Kings, the Women’s March, getting people to call their reps and donate money. It’s viral, it drives headlines, but it dissipates quickly.
   
   A protest is a tactic in search of a strategy. It should be an expression of community, not an attempt to build one.
   
   

3. Get to “Yes,” but Keep Core Values
   MAGA has created a huge tent. The only requirement to join is willingness to wear the red hat and say Trump is the greatest thing ever. It doesn’t matter what else you believe. The movement is looking for a way to get to “yes,” welcome anyone in, and grow the ranks. The left, however, often imposes purity tests: if you hold certain beliefs, you’re not welcome here. It limits growth.
   
   A successful movement builds the biggest coalition, without compromising on core values. There’s disagreement within the Democratic party about what those should be, but the technique for figuring that out is an election. A crowded field of 2028 candidates will put forth their own sets of core values, and we’ll get to decide which one works.
   
   MAGA has no core values beyond fealty to Trump. That lack of internal integrity threatens the movement, and we’re going to see that play out in the midterms.
   
   

4. Optimism Needs Realism
   Trump ran on the promise of an optimistic future that never materialized, because it wasn’t realistic. He’s incapable of acknowledging reality at all, per his performance at the State of the Union. (Everything’s great! We’re winning! Beef is cheap!) Biden and the Democrats made this same mistake in 2024, in refusing to acknowledge the reality that Americans were hurting.
   
   One of the biggest disagreements within the Democratic party today is whether to be conciliatory and move to the center, or stay purely committed to what some see as fringe. We can look at Zohran Mamdani’s campaign in New York as proof the latter can be successful. Mamdani remained relentlessly committed to a handful of core beliefs, and never wavered. But the rest of his platform, and now his governing, has been centrist, conciliatory, and realistic. And it’s working.
   
   Compromise and ideological purity can coexist. At the end of the day, we have to be realists and optimists.
   
   

5. We Need to Talk
   Charles put it plainly. We need to learn how to talk to each other again. He reminded me that the best moments in this country’s history happened when people knew how to disagree with each other in a civil, productive way. During the Civil Rights movement, before World Wars 1 and 2, after the Great Depression - people disagreed about how to get things done, but they found a way to connect and move forward.
   
   The Constitutional Convention was just a bunch of people who hated each other, coming together and arguing for months, then writing the Constitution we live with today. It worked before, it can work again.