Democrats: People Are Persuadable

Why Democrats should do the work of bringing voters to their side.

For two decades, Democrats have engaged in what is popularly known as thermometer politics — pull out the thermometer, take the temperature and pander to the public’s mercury scale. Candidates will then contort themselves to reflect what they believe voters already think. Most voters are not ideological. They are not activists nor protestors. They are not reading white papers, press releases or house and senate bills. People are busy, skeptical, distracted, often politically inconsistent and full of hypocrisy. And that is not a flaw in the electorate — it is one of many frustrating facts of our democracy.

So Democrats have to shift away from thermometer politics and become thermostats. You see, thermometers take the temperature.

Thermostats set the temperature.

Enough with the hedged language and the consultant-tested half measures that say a lot but communicate nothing. If a Democrat believes in neighborhood flood protection — they should take a stand, make the case relentlessly, and do it with clarity, repetition, and the willingness to persuade. Politics is not about waiting for the perfect voter to appear. It is about doing the work of convincing the many imperfect ones who already exist.

We saw this play out in the New York City mayoral race, where current Mayor Zohran Mamdani took the issue of crime nearly completely off people’s radar and placed “cost of living” front and center in the mind of the majority.

Credit: Getty Images - Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Consultants will tell us persuasion is slow and politically finicky voters are a waste of time. That’s not true. Finicky voters are persuadable. They are an opportunity. The Party that takes on that responsibility wins. The party that assumes loyalty and speaks ambivalently loses.

Democrats need to stop chasing every imaginary suburban diner swing voter with ideological gymnastic talking points. Articulate a position, stand firmly in it, and then organize, communicate, and repeat it until the argument breaks through.