Porter McNeil, an Illinois-based communications consultant, was Illinois Communications Director for the Kerry-Edwards’ presidential campaign. He assisted with the 2021 “factory town” report (American Family Voices & 21st Century Democrats) and was re-elected in 2024 to a seat on the Rock Island County Board.
In August 2000, fresh from the Democratic National Convention, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman flew overnight from Los Angeles to begin a four-day Mark Twain-style boat ride on the Mississippi River.
Their “Setting Course for America’s Future” trip charted a political path across the sand bars of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri and critical blue-collar swing counties. That trip represents one of the Democratic Party’s top challenges in 2026 and 2028. The path to 270 and a congressional majority in Congress runs through rural regions and working-class factory towns across the Midwest.
And so it should come as no surprise that it was former President Bill Clinton who logged long hours in the 2024 general election campaign to shore up support for Democrats in Michigan cities—Muskegon Heights, South Haven, Benton Harbor—where voters are not used to seeing presidential candidates. The master at retail politics, he knows Democrats need to connect with the working class.
Whatever blue-collar blueprint Democrats draft for 2026, they have to double down on working class voters—Black, Hispanic, white, Asian—among whom they lost ground in November. Good campaigns are a mix of strategic communications to both persuade undecideds and inspire true believers.
Heading into 2026, Democrats must be the party of change and reform—not the party more interested in defending special interests in Washington, DC. And just as farmers rotate their crops to keep the soil more fertile, Democrats in Washington should rotate their leadership posts more frequently to allow for new ideas and energy. The incoming Trump Administration’s overreach will give Democrats opportunities to react, which may help swing the electorate our way, but we must have a policy agenda for the middle class ready to go.
“We need a rebrand … our brand is toxic in so many places,” said former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan during a November 30 appearance on MSNBC. Ryan is pushing the party to adopt a strong, unifying economic opportunity message. “We are the party of the middle class – white, black, brown, gay, straight, north south … If you’re a working-class person, the Democratic Party is for you and here’s how we’re going to build that future.”
And if we don’t, we risk remaining the party that wins votes clustered in the urban areas but loses entire regions and nearly 90 percent of the counties across America.
At the same time, much of that won’t matter unless Democrats can improve the elephant in the room: the media landscape. Having great candidates, with effective messages, won’t matter if entire swaths of voters never see or hear them.
Perhaps living in the heartland—surrounded by the right-wing echo chamber—has given folks like me a more acute sense of the red team’s advantage going back many years. As a statehouse staffer in early 1995, I had the chance to meet President Clinton in Galesburg, Illinois. As a small crowd stood in line to shake his hand for a photo, I strategized about what I would say to him during my 30 seconds with the Commander in Chief.
After a quick hello and great to meet you, I said, “Mr. President, Democrats have to get moving on talk radio.”
“Oh, yes, we’re going to do that, absolutely,” he responded enthusiastically.
Conservatives since then have been on offense in “flyover country.” It’s time for Democrats to turn that around.
Top photo was originally taken by Flickr user Loco Steve in October 2010. Also available through Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
4 Comments
The medias are already quite blue, the problem with the Democrats has other causes
To put the Democrats back on the saddle, the author of this piece proposes to amplify liberal voices on talk radio, one of the few places with conservative voices (Go Rogan).
Below is some recent data and quality analysis by media experts that show how biased towards the Democrat Party our media landscape already is.
“##The Liberal Media: It’s No Myth##
Many people think the mainstream media have a liberal bias. Media spokesmen,
however, usually deny such claims. So who’s right? Is there a left-wing bias, or has the right wing conspired not only to influence the media but also to create a false image ofunfairness? Some scientific evidence is available in a continuing study, A Measure of Media Bias, by Tim Groseclose of the University of California at Los Angeles and Jeff Milyo of the University of Chicago, presented last March at Stanford University’s Workshop on the Media & Economic Performance. These researchers set up an objective measure of bias in U.S. television networks,
newspapers, and magazines. The main finding is that the liberal inclination is pronounced. Although Fox News
emerges as conservative, it is not nearly as far to the right as many outlets are to the left.
(…)
The researchers used this information to calculate a right- vs. left-wing indicator for each media outlet — effectively, an ADA rating. The assumption is that media outlets that refer favorably to conservative think tanks are reasonably characterized as conservative, whereas those that refer positively to liberal think tanks are
plausibly labeled as liberal. The final product (in a preliminary table provided by the authors) was a list of computed ADA ratings for the media outlets.
On the conservative end, Fox News Special Report came out with a rating of 27; that is, 12 points more conservative than the 39 of the median member of the House. The only other right-of-center outlet was The
Washington Times, at 34.
On the liberal end, Newsweek had an astonishing rating of 72 — that’s 33 points more liberal than the House median. Other highly liberal outlets included The New York Times, Time magazine, the CBS Evening News, USA Today, and NBC Nightly News. These scores ranged from 62 to 64, about 25 points above the House median. For viewers seeking truly “fair and balanced” reporting, the best outlets were ABC Good Morning America and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The ADA scores for these programs were 39 and 41, respectively.
Places moderately left of center were CNN’s NewsNight with Aaron Brown (49), The Washington Post (53), NPR’s Morning Edition (55) and ABC WorldNews Tonight (55).
Because of problems in data collection, the list excluded The Wall Street Journal, but it will be added soon.
Also excluded is talk radio, which seems to have a conservative bent.
Bottom line: The Groseclose-Milyo study shows the media are skewed substantially to the left of the typical member of Congress. Thus, if the opinions of
viewers and readers are similar to those of their representatives, the media slant is far to the left of that of most of their customers.
Robert J. Barro (author of this book review) is a professor of economics at Harvard University and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution”
Karl M Sat 7 Dec 11:39 AM
Just to clarify one very small point in the post...
…few farmers in Iowa do the kind of extended crop rotation that really helps soil. Some argue that given the way conventional industrial corn and soybeans are raised, alternating between them shouldn’t even be called crop rotation. And choosing to do corn after corn is increasingly popular.
PrairieFan Sat 7 Dec 3:44 PM
As requested--- "Policy Agenda...ready to go"----and---"a strong, unifying economic message": "The U.S. economy is broken. Time for a New West!""
To Mr. McNeil, Karl M, and all other readers——As requested, I respectfully offer a “policy agenda…ready to go” and “a strong, unifying economic message”—- see below.
In 2023, the following, short, American Economy paper was published in Bleeding Heartland. This paper is now available for reading and review on Google. Just enter my name or the title of the paper:
“The U.S. economy is broken. Time for a New West!”
Further, I offer the following, respectful challenge to all—-Please show me how the economic ideas presented in that paper are wrong!
Finally, as explained in the above paper, Democrats, in 2024, have reason for political optimism—-because the Trump/Republican Party “America First” agenda is destined to fail!
In 2024, while Trump/Republican Party support “America First” economic policies, unfortunately for the American people, the big, private-sector manufacturers/industrialist do not!!! They are all multinational corporations—all primarily Global-Economy centered—and no longer American-Economy–centered. Yes, “It’s still the economy”—-but, in 2024, what is the nature/structure of “the economy”—and the answer to that question makes all the difference!
Richard Sherzan
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Richard Sherzan Sat 7 Dec 3:53 PM
U.S. Constitution----American Economy---And---Trump/Republican Party's "Waiting For Godot" "America First" Economic Agenda!
One additional comment (to highlight, underline, and explain all my remarks, herein):
The American people, through the U.S. Constitution, created the American free-market economy, based upon the following fundamental assumption: economic growth and prosperity, through the existence and effective functioning of a “public-private economic partnership”. American History supports this conclusion.
In 1900, at the beginning of America’s urban-industrial society, all American corprations were national corporations, or American Economy-centered, in terms of profit, technology, and long-term growth.
However, in 2024, all big American corporations–the U.S. manufacturing/industrail base—are now mutinational coporations, or Global Economy-centered, in terms of profit, technology, and long-term growth.
The above change, since the 1970s, in the economic nature/structure of the American Economy—national to multinational corporations— is, at bottom, as Shakespeare would say, “the rub” of all economic turbulence, insecurity, and uncertainty in the U.S. today—-including, in midwest “factory towns”.
In 2024, America’s above, traditional, “public-private economic partnership” is broken and no longer exists.
Democrats need to Wake-Up to the above new economic reality–and create new economic policies, for a new, strong, long-term “public-private economic partnership” for the U.S. economy, and for American people–going forward, in the Global Economy, and going forward, in the 21st century.
The playwright Samuel Beckett authored the Play—“Waiting For Godot”. The Trump/Republican Party’s “America First” economic agenda, can be correctly described as another “Waiting For Godot” economic agenda.
In 2024, there is no American-centered manufacturing/industrial base for “America First” economic policies to effectively incentivize, through traditional measures–lower taxes, reduced regulation, tariffs, etc. Or, to put it another way— using a quote, about Oakland, California, from the writer Gertrude Stein, by way of analogy: “There is no there there”–to incentivize. There no longer exist any America-centered or America-first manufacturing/industrial base to incentivize!
The investment/employment data of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) support the above conclusion—as well as, the “mission statements” of the above multinational corporations.
In 2024, it is time to stop/end all “Waiting For Godot” economic policies and agenda!
Finally, in support of, and as evidence for, all my post comments, I offer the following 2024 economic-security report– as Exhibit # 1: “2024 Report to Congress”— by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Richard Sherzan
Richard Sherzan Sun 8 Dec 10:44 AM