Here’s something I see a lot: “the most important thing you can do is spread the word about the threats to democracy!!” You’ve probably seen that elsewhere on Substack, or on social media, or in many of my own posts.
But if our goal is “saving democracy,” then is talking about the threats to democracy the winning strategy?
The answer is probably some version “maybe” or “it depends which voters.”
To start, let’s agree that “saving democracy” means getting people to vote for Democrats and other pro-democracy candidates in 2026 and 2028. So that’s our test: does talking about how hard Trump is working to block, cancel, and throw out votes drive more people to the polls to vote for pro-democracy candidates? Let’s dig in.
Talking About Sabotage Motivates Voters Who Are Already Motivated
There’s research (focus groups and national surveys) showing that talking about the anti-voter agenda makes people who already care about voting more motivated and more likely to push their friends to vote. Defiance is a motivating emotion! It’s been the fuel of countless movements against authoritarian governments.
But were those voters going to vote anyway? The research can’t tell us, but—based on the rest of the research I outline below and what I’m learning in my work in this field everyday—I suspect many of them were. The voter who gets fired up when you tell them the government is trying to take their vote probably already reads three election newsletters and votes in off-year elections.
Motivating these voters feels good (and it is good!), but measured against our test it doesn’t add many new votes for pro-democracy candidates. The voters we still need are the ones on the fence about turning out at all. So what does “spreading the word about the threats to democracy” do for them?
Fear Keeps the Fence-Sitters on the Fence
The same research found that many voters are simply tuned out of the news, especially about voting. When these less-engaged voters were asked whether the attacks on elections connect to the other things the Trump administration is doing to their lives (like higher prices), a lot of them said no.
Moreover, only about a quarter of people think that voter suppression could ever get so bad that it would change the outcome of an election. Voters are more likely to believe someone who tells them that voter fraud is real and it’s the thing that could steal an election.
So when we say “your vote might be blocked,” a tuned-out voter doesn’t necessarily hear “go vote in defiance!” Some hear “voting may be pointless.” Anat Shenker-Osorio, who has spent years testing messages for progressive campaigns, has found that “fear is incredibly suppressive to a progressive base.”
We also know that repeating a claim in order to debunk it makes the claim more familiar, and science tells us that the more familiar we are with a claim the more we believe it’s true. This phenomenon—the illusory truth effect—holds up even when people know a claim is false.
That means any time we talk about a threat (even when trying to debunk it) we actually make more people believe it’s true. Think of it this way: a post that walks through all the reasons Trump doesn’t have legal authority to sabotage election results actually teaches the reader that the results could be sabotaged.
During the 2018 midterms, researchers showed voters tweets warning about voter suppression. The warnings didn’t change whether people said they would vote. The tweets did, however, lower people’s confidence that the election was legitimate. (When the same warnings came paired with something the reader could do, like calling a hotline or asking for a provisional ballot, the damage to confidence disappeared.)
Bob Bauer Warns Legal Commentators Against Overdoing It
This week Bob Bauer, President Obama’s White House Counsel and my onetime boss, wrote about this phenomenon as it applies to legal commentators. His case study is a much discussed piece by former federal judge Michael Luttig warning that the “final battle for America’s democracy” comes on January 3, when House Republicans might refuse to seat newly elected Democrats in Congress.
Bauer doesn’t wave the threats away. Trump’s assault on voting “warrants a healthy measure of concern, perhaps sometimes rising to a level of alarm,” he writes, and explaining it to the public “is a service.” His worry is that we could fail in the opposite direction by seeding “undue and damaging alarmism, which potentially drives voters from the polls and undermines their confidence in the legal institutions on which they depend for ultimate protection of their voting rights.”
In plain English: the January 3 plot is very hard to pull off for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that Mike Johnson won’t be Speaker of the House when seating of the new House takes place. Turning an unlikely scenario into a campaign issue “simply elevates it.” Bauer even names the debate I’m having with myself in this post: warnings might “stimulate voter turnout powered by defiance,” or they “could also have the opposite effect.”
This Year, Collective Joy is the Strategy
Traumatized people don’t turn out to vote if all we feed them is more trauma; they motivate when they can picture something better for themselves and their communities. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan found that nonviolent movements succeed more often because more people join them, and people join fights that look like they’re winning. I made the case last week that celebrating our wins is a pro-democracy strategy.
A Columbia and Harvard study last December found that online influencers who don’t usually talk about politics had about three times the influence on their audiences’ political views as partisan influencers did. People trust the friend who isn’t selling anything. The most persuasive way to people to do anything has always been a neighbor saying “I’m going, come with me.” Minneapolis proved that in January, when 50,000 people marched at twenty below to drive federal forces from their communities.
Determination, joy, collective action. That’s how we fight back.
Looking in the Mirror, and Looking Ahead
I’m hardly innocent here. Scroll my archive of posts and you’ll find FBI raids, ICE in the voter files, a canceled election in Louisiana, and a Justice Department threatening to jail election officials. I’ll keep covering those stories, because explaining what Trump is doing to our elections in plain language is a main reason this newsletter exists.
Now, however, I have a sharper understanding that explaining a threat and getting people to vote for candidates who’ll stop the threat are two different things—especially if you’re talking to voters not already on your side.
My conclusion, for now, is that we lean into joy, determination, and collective power. Don’t pretend the attacks aren’t happening, but zoom out from each one. There will always be more attacks than I can write about, and my goal isn’t to keep up. What I can do is help you understand the attacks in a way that makes you feel like part of a movement that’s bigger than any of them. That’s how we get more people to the polls.
Three places to start:
We Are America, and We Vote leads with real people and everyday heroes. Watch the video and send it to a friend.
It’s Ours is about claiming this election, and our future, as ours to run. Join the team.
Hands Off Our Vote has trainings and events for protecting the vote in your own community.
Thanks for reading.