The things people are most concerned with right now do not show up in the daily news. They are long-term problems that have reached a breaking point. (The frogs are out of the pot and hopping mad!) We only learn about these by listening to real people, and we only win these voters by showing them that we are laser-focused on what matters to them, not Trump, Republicans, or whatever corporate media deems relevant.
I HATE the News
I have a confession to make. For most of my life, I have not closely followed the day-to-day news despite being a communications professional. I needed to experience the media environment more like a swing voter to see what breaks through. Turns out, I was right. For the last two months or so I have been scanning the news from six+ major sources every day. The results? I was less able to talk to people who were not following those stories closely and less able to sense what mattered to them. Plus, my anxiety level shot through the roof!
Trying to write a newsletter or column about what is happening in the news on a daily basis sucks, which is largely why I totally failed to do it. You sit at a computer, you read, you analyze, you produce. Your mental “inputs” are second-hand, limited to what is happening online and what qualifies as “legit” news. To meaningfully reach persuadable voters and motivate our own people, you need to be able to connect with what is happening in their lives. Being stuck at a desk keeps you away from observing, experiencing, and learning about the real world and - it puts you in front of the firehose.
Just this week, I tried to process stories about the record national debt, Trump’s crypto bank, Florida primary results, Amazon drone deliveries, firefighter staffing shortages, Europe’s rivers drying up, our reservoirs drying up, Trump’s threat to bomb Oman, Trump’s cozying up to North Korea, record gas prices, sailors in inhumane conditions, detainees in inhumane conditions, Blanche and Patel violating the Hatch Act, the West Bank, Trump’s killing off the federal anti-money laundering program and deleting all the data, just as we found out that he was chucked out of his own bank for money laundering, and on Fox News, seven days of “trans people in the WNBA” and “up-to-birth abortions” even though neither exist.
The Real World
Fortunately, I have people in my life who drag me away from my desk. Here is what the people in my real world are dealing with. A couple with four jobs can’t afford childcare and don’t have the bandwidth to seek out financial help. Retired people get stuck in A.I. customer service hell when they try to cancel subscriptions or find a health provider in their network. Young adults just entering the workforce have to choose between dead-end retail jobs and entry-level “professional” jobs that pay less. Many of these jobs have part-time hours and unpredictable schedules. Adults live with their parents because they can’t afford rent. Parents can’t afford to have their kids in school sports. Some don’t have cars. Others pay through the nose for cars that break down. Nobody can afford college. Everybody is nostalgic for summers when you could comfortably spend time outside. Maybe one in ten of these people have time to follow the news.
The best advice I am able to provide comes from the insights I collect from the real world, including focus groups which are always fascinating.
Much of what’s in the news is important; it impacts people’s lives. The problem is that news is now custom-designed to capture your attention and feed your anxiety. It compels you to react to what Trump and Republicans are doing and saying, which lets them control the agenda. It defines as radical any economic perspective that does not conform to free-market conservatism. It is a negative and alarmist. You get sucked into this vortex of details and consumed by the horse-race. When you talk to voters, you think, “If they only knew what I know, they would vote the right way,” so you end up trying to educate them instead of listening to them, or just giving up because the effort feels futile.
So - I quit. I will still read the news, just not quite as thoroughly. I will double down on plugging myself into the real world: travel, observe candidates, talk to voters and volunteers, maybe give a little advice. Out there on the campaign trail are the people who give me food for thought and, more importantly, hope for humanity.
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The Frogs Are Hopping Mad
What did I learn from this experience? It made me realize that following the news too closely makes us focus on what changes every day and ignore what happens slowly over time. That’s a problem because, right now, the voters are all about what has been happening slowly over time.
We all know the metaphor. If you put a frog into already boiling water, it will jump out, but if you put a frog in water and raise the temperature slowly, it will boil to death before noticing the change. Well, the frogs are hopping mad and out of the pot. People have been slowly squeezed by corporate America and the decrease in the real buying power of wages over decades. Until just recently, public figures have dismissed their concerns as “vibes.” Many still do. What is different now is that the blatant corruption and sheer arrogance of Trump, Musk, and others have pushed voters over the edge. The American people have moved very quickly from being mad about the cost of living, to believing that the whole system is broken, to being livid that Big Money has corrupted our government to rig the system in their favor.
I wrote all about that in my recent piece:
People do not see these real concerns reflected in the mainstream news and public debate, but they are responding very positively to economic populist messaging whether it comes from Democratic Socialists, “regular” Democrats, Independents, or even the occasional Republican.
How to Signal Your Priorities
Talk about what matters to voters. Not about Republicans and Trump.
We all remember the Donald Trump signs that said, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.” This slogan worked, but maybe not for the reason you think (appealing to anti-trans hate). It wasn’t so much her positions as her priorities. It made the case that Kamala Harris wasn’t focused on the things that were important to most people. BTW - I do not recommend trying to flip this message and use it against Republicans. In voters’ minds, it would trigger the memory of a message that worked very well against us. They would dismiss it as “he said, she said.”1 This year, voters do not want to hear us talk about Trump.2
Talking about Trump and Republicans tells the American voters that we are focused on Trump and Republicans, not them. The way we convince voters that we are focused on what matters to them is to talk exclusively to them about what matters to them. Here is what I have heard loud and clear from American voters this year, and the feeling is pretty much unanimous:
We are sick to death of hearing about Trump and watching Democrats and Republicans fight. Stop fighting against each other and start fighting for us, and that means standing up to the moneyed interests that have corrupted our government and broken our economic system. We need you to be leaders, not politicians. We have lost hope. We cannot see the way out of this mess. Speak to us, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. Tell us how you are going to make our lives better. Help us visualize what a better future for America looks like.
One Example: Setting the Agenda in Iowa
Democratic candidate Josh Turek is doing better than Democrats usually do in the Iowa Senate race. He’s talking about the abnormally high cancer rates in Iowa, particularly among people who have been exposed to heavy levels of pesticides.3 Does “Big Ag” want the election to be about cancer rates? Hell no. Is it something people in Iowa care deeply about? Yes. Was that a story in the news? It wasn’t, but it is now. He made it a story by making it a pillar of his campaign and talking about it all the time. Taking on “Big Ag” shows the people of Iowa that Turek will stand up and fight for them.
It’s called “following” the news and the political debate for a reason. We get stuck in a cycle of reaction, when we should be setting the agenda. A leader focuses on what matters to people and makes it the news. Right now, that is corruption and economic fairness, but we can use specific or local issues to illustrate how they impact people’s lives. We might find those issues in the news. But we’ll definitely find them out there in the real world.
Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!
In solidarity, always,
BTW - Apparently I was #100 in U.S. Politics yesterday! Just for one day though. It was nice while it lasted! :-)
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Contact me at antonia@antoniascatton.com or (202) 922-6647
False Equivalence is Trump’s Teflon | Antonia Scatton | Nov. 23, 2025
“I have only run across one debate strategy that is nearly impossible to beat: their use of projection to inoculate themselves against future criticism by creating false equivalence. In other words, they accuse us of doing the things that they are already doing or intend to do in the future, so that when we criticize them for doing it, it just sounds like He Said, She Said.”
New research by the Center for Working Class Politics (CWCP) and the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative (RUBI) shows that kitchen-table populist language works across every demographic, especially working class and rural people, that mentioning Trump and Republicans backfires among the groups we most need to persuade, and that framing in terms of race-class divides performed worst of all.
Antonia, you are right on. Anat Shenker-Osorio talks about being thermostats, not thermometers. SET the topic, don’t just REFLECT the topic. There was nothing about “Critical Race Theory” in the news till Chris Rufo put it there. Republicans know very well how to seed the conversation with their issues; Democrats get stuck in a cycle of just responding (and thus amplifying). I can’t watch TV news any more—they just react to the latest horrific proclamation or deed. Very few bring up important stories that need coverage. Thanks for this!
Thanks for this reframe.
We suggest folks seek out and add local journalism to their information diets instead of centering corporate national for-profit news. It also helps focus on “zone of influence”.
We built this 50-state, searchable directory to help folks find reliable sources. https://www.mediaanddemocracyproject.org/journalism-directory
I personally find the AP (has an app, global, a non-profit) to be a reliable least biased US source of primary need for national / international events.