Stories Democrats could tell

Should we make people rich? Should we fight loneliness? What's the bigger goal?

First: Hi to the hundreds (!!) of new subscribers who signed up after last week’s update on our Saturday dinners! For those new here:

I’m Amanda - in my day job, I’m the co-founder and president of Run for Something — you can get weekly updates from me on that work over here.

This is my personal Substack - where I write about whatever’s on my mind — usually a mix of politics, parenting, books (mine & others), and leadership. Previous topics have included advice for new parents, how to avoid getting grifted in politics and a lot about my new book, WHEN WE’RE IN CHARGE.

Before I write anything else about the Democratic Party, an important always-true disclaimer: All of this is just from me — not the org!!

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As we move at a snail’s pace through 2025 and people begin to lay out theories of the case on how Democrats are going to win back power — abundance! moving left! moving center! more social media! more ads! more cursing! Project 2029! — I am once again finding myself LOL’ing.

As I wrote back in May:

It’s all just so small. Too many people are trying to win the last election instead of trying to win the next ten.

One simple trick to fix the Democratic Party

I’ll repeat myself, in case you don’t feel like going back to read the full thing: My number one suggestion, always and forever, is finding and supporting candidates who are values-driven, authentic communicators, and can break through in a personality-driven attention economy. (That’s why I do what I do for a living!)

And, distinct from that work, there’s an interesting opportunity right now to think bigger and beyond the current frameworks to ask:

What new story could a Democrat tell?

I’m not talking just about policy positions. I’m talking about the bigger picture: Things like “restore the soul of America” (ala Biden 2020), or “hope and change” (ala Obama 2008) or “make America great again” (sigh), or any of the many iterations of restoring the American dream/rebuilding the American dream/the promise of America for working people/etc that candidates try to ladder their policy positions up into.

Consider that while Zohran Mamdani’s campaign was specifically about affordability and cost of living, the bigger story he was telling was actually about “afford to dream,” and about imagining beyond this moment for what else could be possible.

"Almost forgot that this is the whole point"

It was a big vision, illustrated by his specific proposals.

That kind of hits-you-in-the-feels-and-also-affects-your-day-to-day-life combo of vision + policy is what we need more of.

In that line of thinking, I have two sort of off-the-wall story suggestions for people to chew on as we ask: What could the next Democratic story be?

These two stories are not poll-tested or focus grouped. I’m not saying these are the stories that will absolutely 100% win elections, nor will they be right for every candidate, nor am I saying these are the only new stories available to us.

But I want to toss these out as options to illustrate what I mean: We can and should think outside the usual frameworks that politicians lean on. The “American promise” or “American dream!!” feels empty right now. So what else might we consider?

Possible story #1: You should be rich.

There are a lot of ways to talk about the policies that materially impact people’s lives — stopping the oligarchy, raising wages, fighting for working people, cutting taxes, etc.

But I think sometimes we get lost in the sauce and forget to make it personal.

I would love to see a candidate try tapping into the direct self-interest people have and make it clear: I want to make you rich.

Imagine a candidate who told the story like this:

I want you to be rich — I want you to work less and for your money to go further.

To make that happen, I’m going to cut through the bullshit and build more homes so you can pay less for housing and live wherever you want to live without having to spend hours commuting each day.

I’m going to supercharge clean energy investments so your energy bills go down and your bank accounts go up.

I’m going to make sure you’ve got paid family leave, so you can take time with your new babies without missing a paycheck, and I’m going to get you cheap childcare options so you’ve got more money to spend on toys for your kids.

Your health care will be affordable and accessible — no more going bankrupt to pay for the medical care you’d die without.

You deserve to be rich. You’ve earned it.

I can’t promise you’ll be a billionaire — although if you are one of the few of those, your taxes are going to help us fund the rest of this stuff — but I can promise I’m going to orient every lever of government with the end of goal of you having more money to spend on the things you care about: family, friends, and fun.

One could see more policies falling under there — ways in which you explain the things government will do more for you in a way that benefits your bottom line.

Is this a different way of selling more investment in public goods and more government services? Sure. That’s the point! It’s a different way of packaging what most Democrats ultimately agree are the goals (to various extents.)

Make it personal and make it explicit.

Possible story #2: You’re lonely — I want to fix it.

Everyone is lonely!! It’s literally killing usand it’s the fertile ground for fascism.

This is a personal obsession of mine (see: the dinners we host every week!) and I think it should become a political obsession of the Democratic Party.

I was delighted to see

Brian Beutler

ask in his newsletter: “Can policy fix the loneliness epidemic?” (because I love it when people say things I agree with) and he suggested a few smart ideas that could be bucketed under a candidate’s war on loneliness, including tech regulation and community incentives. But I think it could be bigger than that!

Again, imagine a candidate who makes this their story — same basic policy planks as above (just for the sake of comparison), but with a different framing:

Everyone is lonely and it’s hurting our country. You’re lonely. I’m lonely. And it’s killing us.

I want to fix that.

I’m going to build more housing so you can afford to live near your friends and family, or your job, or wherever you want, and I’m going to make public transit more plentiful so you can spend more time with your people and less time alone in your car.

I’m going to do everything I can to mitigate climate change, so you and your loved ones can gather under shady trees in beautiful parks, without sweating or freezing.

I’m going to give you paid family leave so you can spend time bonding with your new kid when they’re born, and I’m going to get you universal childcare so you’ve got more money in your pocket to pay for the babysitter so you can go to dinner with your friends.

You’ll be able to afford the health care you need — yes, physical health, but also mental health care — so you can be present for your loved ones.

Our loneliness has many root causes — our screens, our cars, our stress, our exhaustion with how hard it is to simply survive that we don’t have the energy to thrive.

Every single person and department under my power will have a clear directive: What can you do to bring people together?

A candidate could add on some of the specifics that Brian mentions in his piece — regulations on tech, bans on cell phones in schools, more investment in the arts, four day work weeks, better unionization laws, etc.

They could also literally run a campaign that bring models what they mean: Lots of in-person connection and community-building, hosting social events as much as they are campaign events.

It won’t work for every candidate. But man I think it could really hit from someone who genuinely believed it.

I also think it would be tough to argue against, in the same way affordability is hard to rebut. “No, no one is lonely, stop saying that’s a problem” is just a silly and obviously untrue thing to say.

This might feel a little touchy-feely. But I have a suspicion that touchy-feeliness is going to be back in fashion after four years of this bullshit. (As I’ve said before: One of my hotter takes is that the collective pendulum is going to swing back toward kindness and compassion because actually, living under a hostile asshole mostly sucks.)

You tell me: What other stories could we try?

One of the things we tell people thinking about running for office is they need to be able to answer a key question: Why should voters want you to win?

Not why do you want to win — you want to win because winning is great and losing sucks — but why do voters want you to win; what are you going to do for them?

Similarly, this is one of my mantras of leadership in When We’re in Charge — good leadership centers not on the leader but on the people being led.

What is the story Democrats can tell about what we’re going to do for voters? What are we going to change about their lives that they can feel? It’s not about us (the party), and it’s not even about Trump (although fuck that guy, and accountability for him and everyone complicit in his administration should be part of all this) — it’s about the people, in the least cheesy way possible.

Are we going to make them rich? Help them make friends? Bring them more joy? Find meaning?

This is a moment for asking different, bigger questions. Consider this a brainstorm kick-off.

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Two book recs:

• A Physical Education by Casey Johnston - I’ve never been one for weightlifting (my bad knees don’t love squats so I never did much beyond Peloton strength classes and right now, not even that — just physical therapy, because two pregnancies in two years absolutely destroyed my core and back) but I loved this deeply researched memoir about one writer’s journey into strength, her own body, and food. It’s got a lot about disordered eating (so tread gently if you must) but mostly it’s empowering and engaging, and made me want to one day try to lift heavy shit again.

• Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley - a romantic story and a comedy and also a coming of age story (kind of) about Coralie, an Australian woman who moves to the UK, meets handsome Adam, and becomes a stepmom/mom over the course of a decade. She loses herself, finds herself, has complicated feelings about her marriage and family, and makes some excellent jokes. I really enjoyed this.

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Recommended reading:

• I went back and re-read the From Girl Boss to No Boss article again to try and cohere some thoughts around it, and came away with this:
  

  (1) Issie Lapowsky, the journalist, did a good job of explaining why this is so messy (and not new! mommy wars, changing roles of women in the workforce, how the statistics tell a different story, etc — these are all tales as old as time!)
  

  (2) Stories of women re-imagining their relationship to work and ambition are absolutely powerful and meaningful to the individual struggling, looking for language or guidance on how they’re feeling. AND: In the aggregate, I worry there is danger in lifting them up (and especially in glamorizing it) in the context of a political movement trying to push women out of the workforce. AND: I don’t want the GOP to set the terms of what we’re able to talk about! AND: Based on all my interviews for When We’re in Charge, the desire to leave institutions and build your own thing is not a uniquely mom or woman thing; it’s a broader generational shift enabled by the rise of the internet, content creation as a source of income, and (among many other things) a health care market that makes getting coverage possible outside of an employer.
  
  I don’t know how to square any of those circles. Just a lot of ANDs.

• Relatedly: the inimitable

  Anne Helen Petersen
  has an excellent look at The Great Feminist Exhaustion, plotting (broadly speaking) how women are feeling right now re: feminism & the status quo. The only thing I’d add to it: Follow the money! It is (ironically and hypocritically) lucrative to be a vocal “fuck feminism & fuck you too” adherent. The same cannot be said for the other three quadrants.

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A stranger on Goodreads called my book: “A sharp, inspiring manifesto for young leaders ready to reshape power. Litman distills real-world wisdom into bite-size guidance showing how to lead with courage, clarity, and community. No fluff, just actionable insights for the next wave of changemakers.”

You can pick up a copy of When We’re in Charge in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute.

Another option: Get your book along with an excellent I DO NOT DREAM OF LABOR tote bag at the Crooked Media shop.