My DC SOTU Trip Recap

I have spent the better part of the last several years being professionally annoyed at the democratic party’s messaging.

It’s actually the reason I started doing this work. Before Motherhood for Good, I spent fifteen years in marketing as a digital producer/strategist at ad agencies. I know what it takes to craft messaging and tactical solution systems that move people to act. I know what it looks like when a brand understands its audience and what it looks like when it absolutely does not. And for a long time, watching Democrats campaign or speak publicly at all was like watching someone try to sell you a house by reading you the zoning ordinances out loud. Technically accurate. Painfully lame.

Which is why I want to share a behind the scenes look at my time in DC this week covering SOTU to share how things are operating and why I was…pleasantly surprised. Impressed, even.

Before we get into this: I wrote everything below before the U.S. and Israel carried out strikes on Iran this weekend, including one that killed children at an elementary school. I will be sharing more about that on IG throughout the week from trusted, reputable sources and I considered holding this piece, but what I observed in DC feels more relevant now, not less. So here it is, with that weight acknowledged.

One other quick note: I have never been paid by the DNC, and they have never shaped my content in any direction. Everything here is just me. (I actually had to buy my own ticket to a conference I was speaking at once, so. 😅)

Alright. Here’s what I saw.

First of all, I didn’t go to cover the State of the Suck. I was more interested in covering the dem response to it, and if I’m being honest, to get more facetime with fellow creators and people who work within the party and at the orgs that make all this work happen. So I was looking forward to that but still went in with a healthy amount of skepticism, which, if you’ve been here a while, you know is basically my love language when it comes to the democratic party.

One of my longest-running frustrations with them has been their stunning inability to talk to different people in different ways or like regular people at all. To meet people where they are instead of issuing a press release in the general direction of the American public and calling it communication. I wrote about it here. I’ve watched them lose winnable rooms by being boring when they needed to be human, and playing an old game that the right-wing ecosystem abandoned years ago. I hate when we’re stuck being safe and slow.

So as I was darting around for 15 hours on Tuesday from pre-scheduled meetings eager members to create content, to a lunch at the Library of Congress, to setting up my station in the Capitol at the newly established creator row, I realized…dems had their shit together?

After years of organizational chaos, Hunger Games-esque activations, and a never-ending web of group chats, the left seemed to come to SOTU week with actual infrastructure, pre-planned coordination, and what appeared to be an actual strategy. Different groups had different activations planned for different audiences. They’d thought about who they were trying to reach and seemed to plan different events and tactics to serve the different segments of the party in a more direct way.

And it was abundantly clear that they’ve finally started building real systems to work with independent media and content creators rather than just tolerating us like an unpredictable guest who shows up unannounced. Which, to be fair, is a valid concern lol.

I was involved with the DPCC side of things. (That’s the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, basically the messaging and strategy arm of House Democrats, for those of you who, very reasonably, do not spend your free time memorizing congressional acronyms.) The day (and lead up to it) was astonishingly well-organized (shout out to MVP Mayra), genuinely collaborative, and run by people who clearly understood the assignment.

Leader Jeffries’s buy-in on reaching people through new media was evident throughout. Whatever your feelings about him on any given issue (and I know those feelings are complicated for many), I do believe the man understands that people are not getting their news from the six o’clock broadcast anymore, and he’s actually doing something about it. Credit where it’s due.

In the morning we gathered as a group in Congresswoman Lauren Underwood’s office, as she co-chairs the DPCC and has an immense amount of cool factor, and then headed out to one-on-one conversations with members of Congress that were excited to welcome us into their offices. Like, sure, their staffers might have been more excited to have them doing something more modern, but everyone I spoke to was a genuine delight.

Then we headed over to an insanely beautiful lunch at the Library of Congress, which is one of those places that makes you feel simultaneously proud of and furious at this country. The architecture is doing a lot of heavy lifting for American democracy right now, is all I’ll say. All remaining co-chairs of the DPCC joined us and took time to have real conversations with us, and Leader Jeffries also joined to thank us for being there and for our work.

In the afternoon we had a couple more house member one-on-ones, then made our way over to the Capitol—THROUGH THE TUNNELS. We did not get to take the tram but I can confirm it does exist as we walked along side it, and I was particularly surprised to learn its track is quite short. It seems like a moving sidewalk would have sufficed? The area we camped out in at the Capitol had an entire creator row set up; stations for independent creators and livestreamers, with members and their guests cycling through constantly. This wasn’t a drive-by to say hi or just the freshman class, many spent real time with creators having actual conversations, playing along with different ideas, and being overall wonderful sports. Leadership included.

It was also just so fun for me personally to spend time with some creators I really admire and connect with several members—and people who work in their offices or in one of the various committees—that I’d love to bring onto the podcast or do a live Substack with at some point. More soon.

1. Everyone is pissed. But that looks different on different people, and that distinction matters.

Every single member I spoke with is livid. And not in a performative sense. The difference is in how that anger shows up, and that depends on who they are, where they’re from, and critically, what they’re hearing from you. Their constituent. (The person who can actually vote them in or out.)

I believe this is worth sitting with for a sec, because a lot of the online conversation tends to sort dems into two buckets: spineless losers vs. fighters. What I actually observed was messier and more human than that. People are trying to figure out what works. And the clearest signal they have about what their district wants is what comes through those phone lines and inboxes. And just because you don’t think someone four states away is doing a shit job doesn’t necessarily mean their constituents do, too.

Which is my long way of saying: follow it all but focus most of your energy on who represents you. Call them often. Make sure they know who you are. It makes a difference.

For instance, I saw lots of people on the internet furious that ANY dems would actually have the audacity to attend the speech. They wanted a full boycott. So I want to share a small part of a conversation I had with Rep. Jimmy Gomez that offers a different perspective. He, a son of immigrants, told me: “I’m going to the State of the Union because they don’t want us here. My presence is the protest.”

We cannot call ourselves progressives if we walk through life thinking our own lived experience is the only one that matters.

2. Ilhan Omar had the most meaningful and memorable acts of defiance of the night.

Rep. Omar has never been quiet in the face of this president. But things are move urgent now. More visceral. If you didn’t know, the immigration community she belongs to and the district she represents have both been at the center of ICE’s lawless attacks for months now. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were her constituents. The people Trump has been demonizing, surveilling, and dragging out of their homes and communities? She knows them. They are her neighbors, friends, and community members. They elected her to fight for them.

So when Trump got to the immigration part of his speech and specifically called out Somalians to paint them as dangerous, she did not sit quietly and absorb it with practiced, camera-ready composure. She let him have it.

She shouted over him, and it appeared to be the one moment of the entire night that actually got under his old, orange skin. He looked TRIGGERED. And I thought she looked powerful. Because she is.

3. Several Epstein survivors were in the room. He didn’t mutter one word to or about them.

Several survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse were in that room as members of congress can bring one guest and several democrats chose to have them there in this moment. The president of the United States who campaigned for years on getting to the bottom of the Epstein list and delivering full transparency—but has since used the full authority over the Department of Justice to cover up the most corrupt and dangerous child sex trafficking ring in modern history because his involvement has been uncovered—could not give them ten seconds of acknowledgment to offer sympathy or compassion for the trauma they have endured.

This was obviously not an oversight. It was a deliberate, calculated choice made by a man with extensive documented proximity to Epstein and his network. He protects himself. He protects predators who know too much about his involvement. He is one.

I spoke with California congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove after the speech who has had a chance to look at the un-redacted files. She told me plainly: we cannot let this get buried under the news cycle. The files, the survivors, the connections, it needs to be talked about every day and we can’t let up on them.

4. The messaging is finally getting specific, and specific is what cuts through.

It was clear that they all had cohesive messaging points to continue to come back to because across every single conversation I had, one theme was consistent: affordability. Cost of living. The yawning gap between what Trump promised American families and what is actually happening to their bank accounts.

He ran on lowering prices. Prices are not lower. Meanwhile, he and his loser sons have grown their own personal wealth by the billions since this term started. That is not spin. That is corruption. And I heard members not just using that word but getting specific: naming the deals, naming the beneficiaries, naming what was traded and who paid for it.

I’ve said for a long time that the corruption angle needs more airtime. For one, because it’s incredibly fucked up and unprecedented in every sense of the word. But two, it’s actually an interesting narrative that regular people can understand and relate to. It feels like a show on HBO, but with a more unbelievable plot. He is a conman who is transferring wealth from working people to the billionaires who protect him. That story is true, it’s concrete, and more people need to hear it told plainly, without the legalese, without the hedging, without the seventeen-syllable qualifications.

Just: he’s stealing from you. Here’s how.

5. A thought on where we’re actually pointing our anger.

I am not telling anyone to pipe down, here, especially given what we’ve seen transpire over the weekend. I personally think anger is an underrated emotion. It is clarifying, motivating, and when you learn to aim it, can be an incredibly powerful tools (see: men). Our elected officials should always be fair game for criticism, that is not just our right, it is our job as constituents.

But I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I want to throw something out there.

How much of our collective energy is going toward dunking on members of Congress who don’t represent us, may be from districts with completely different needs and political realities, and whose voting records, as frustrating as they may be, were never ours to change in the first place? And how much of that same energy is going toward consistent, direct, relationship-building contact with the people who do represent us? Toward finding and supporting candidates who actually reflect our values before the primary is already over and we’re choosing between bad and worse?

I’m not saying stop paying attention to what’s happening nationally. Obviously don’t do that. I’m saying: what if we got a little sharper about where we aim? A viral quote-tweet of a Democrat we’ve already written off might make us feel better, but is it. productive? Calling your own rep for the third time this week, showing up to a local candidate forum, donating twenty bucks to someone running for state assembly, that stuff is productive, even when it doesn’t feel as satisfying.

Our collective anger is not the problem. But I’m also not wholly convinced that certain dems are as big of a problem as threads likes to think. At least, not even remotely as much as the fascism busting down the door.

See also: snippets from my conversations with Congress members Gwen Moore, Tim Kennedy, and Eric Swalwell. I also had a chance to speak with Minority Whip Katherine Clark and her guest, the amazing Skye Perryman from Democracy Forward.

Long and boring as fuck. No new information. Abundantly full of lies. Zero stars.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING. Texas has their primary Tuesday, Wisconsin will elect a new Supreme Court Justice in April (VOTE 4 CHRIS TAYLOR), and the midterms are coming faster than any of us are emotionally prepared for, so we gotta be ready. Here are a few things you can do:

Show up IRL when you can. I know. Life is full and your couch is comfortable and hell is a political event. But there is something that builds in you when you physically show up somewhere like a town hall, a meeting, a rally…whatever it is that doomscrolling at midnight genuinely cannot replicate. You don’t have to do it every week. Just sometimes. Stretch that discomfort muscle.

Keep calling your elected officials. I know I sound like a broken record. I am a broken record on purpose. The calls matter. This is a long and consistent game. Remember that 5 Calls is a great app that makes it easy for you to see the top issues people are calling about and gives you scripts to call the people that represent you.

• Dan Shafer and I had a Substack Live last week to debrief the big week in Wisconsin politics. We talked about the assembly finally passing Pospartum Medicaid and Gail’s Law, and Speaker Vos’ retirement announcement

• I spoke with Governor Gretchen Whitmer ahead of her final State of the State about the wins she’s still dishing out and what’s next for her

• I caught up with Judge Chris Taylor who is running to be the next Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice! If you live in Wisconsin or know folks who do, please make a plan to vote by April 7th!

• Amanda Merkwae of ACLU of Wisconsin and I chatted alllllll about surveillance and you’re not gonna wanna miss this one.

Thanks for reading! Enjoy the rest of your weekend as much as you can.

Kate