March 27, 2026
What number of pro-democracy Substack authors over-focus on gloom and doom and ignore organizing, and who’s bucking that development.
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This text is republished with permission from the writer. Learn extra from Micah Sifry at his Substack, The Connector.
Afew weeks in the past, Susan Wagner, founding father of the activist group Markers for Democracy, posted an pressing plea on the Grassroots Connector Substack. Addressing an array of liberal pundits, she begged them to alter their focus:
All of your applications, podcasts, livestreams, and Substack content material feed the general public a gentle weight loss plan of all of the evils of MAGA and Trump. The message is relentless: Democracy is collapsing. Establishments are failing. Our opponents are ruthless. You hardly ever, if ever, function grassroots tales or host activists from organizations which might be a part of the answer. Excluding such voices is greater than an annoying oversight.
There is just one purpose for 2026—to win each potential election and loosen the MAGA maintain on this nation. Successful requires all-hands-on-deck which requires a convincing narrative. For instance, sports activities followers must consider their staff can win with a view to present up at stadiums. And sportscasters are masters of speaking up their staff’s possibilities, specializing in strengths, not detailing the risks forward. Your readers and listeners, like sports activities followers, want the hope that at this time’s activists convey. That is exactly the angle wanted to stage a decisive win for democracy.
…All of us, you included, must be knowledgeable of concrete actions being taken to save lots of our democracy. Grassroots activists recounting small and huge examples of organized resistance throughout the nation are lacking out of your protection. The resistance didn’t begin in Minneapolis; we now have been organizing and rising since 2016. The choice to disregard this vital volunteer effort contributes to the narrative that people are helpless, that few care, and that nobody can do a lot to alter the inevitable seizing of rights and energy. Completely nothing of the type is true or inevitable, however with out your assist, that could be the prevailing standing.
Sadly, you’ve created an echo chamber. Each week the identical consultants make the rounds with the identical anxiety-provoking messages. This leaves listeners with an incomplete image of the political panorama.
Wagner’s phrases struck a chord for me, however I puzzled if empirically, it actually was true. I don’t watch cable information as a result of I discover it largely vapid, performative, repetitive, and anxiety-provoking, however I do learn numerous newsletters, and significantly these by authors centered on democracy. So, with a bit AI assist, I made a decision to take a more in-depth look. Have our main pro-democracy writers shaped an echo chamber? And are they failing to cowl pro-democracy organizing?
To make this a manageable venture (which means, one thing I might do in a day given what this Substack generates income-wise!), I made a decision to give attention to two issues. First, being attentive to how usually pro-democracy authors have been utilizing Substack Reside to draw and drive consideration, I constructed a community evaluation of “who’s speaking to whom.” I seeded the community with an inventory of some probably the most distinguished websites and authors I’m acquainted with: The Contrarian (which is led by Jennifer Rubin, previously of the The Washington Submit), The Bulwark, historians Timothy Snyder, Heather Cox Richardson, and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, economist Paul Krugman, political strategists Simon Rosenberg, Rick Wilson, and Michael Podhorzer, and writer Anand Giridharadas. After which I went again a 12 months, scraping every of their Substack websites to determine Substack Reside visitors, after which construct a graph exhibiting a number of co-appearances as stronger ties and particular person appearances as weaker ones.
The second factor I did was a lot easier: Focusing simply on that core group of 10 websites/authors, I seemed for mentions by them of “No Kings”—the identify of the most important pro-democracy push within the nation—because the finish of January, when the No Kings coalition introduced that March 28 (this Saturday), could be the subsequent day of mass nationwide protest. What I discovered stunned me.
For the reason that starting of February by way of final Friday, lots of the main lights of the pro-democracy punditocracy have all however utterly ignored No Kings 3. Timothy Snyder, Rick Wilson, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Paul Krugman, or The Bulwark by no means talked about it (although Bulwark editor at giant William Kristol did handle to put in writing a put up on February 11 that seemed backward at “the huge turnout on the No Kings demonstrations in June and October”). Anand Giridharadas talked about the “no kings” message in passing. Heather Cox Richardson gave it a plug on a Fb “politics chat” on March 3. Solely Simon Rosenberg, Michael Podhorzer, and Jennifer Rubin gave No Kings 3 actual consideration.
Present Subject
This has shifted, barely, in latest days. Final Saturday, Snyder devoted his complete “Interested by…” publication, which has 437,000 subscribers, to “No Kings, Freedom!” Likewise, additionally on Saturday, Ruth Ben-Ghiat famous briefly to her 210,000 subscribers that she could be doing a Substack Reside with preacher Diana Butler Bass “to prepare” for the No Kings protests.
Why haven’t so lots of the most distinguished pro-democracy writers energetic at this time mentioned so little about No Kings 3? Do they suppose it’s passé? Do they suppose one thing aside from mass, extremely seen, public protest goes to cease and reverse America’s slide into authoritarianism? Clearly not, which leaves me to surprise in the event that they suppose organizing and mobilizing is beneath them, one thing higher left to lesser “names.”
Due to course there are many different Substack authors who do a superb job of centering organizing of their writing. I’m pondering of Robert Hubbell, whose “In the present day’s Version” publication frequently options photographs from protests all around the nation; Jess Craven’s “Chop Wooden, Carry Water” which can also be every day and chock-a-block with calls to motion (and likewise features a household of state-focused newsletters); and “We The Folks Dissent” by Ok. Starling, which is mainly all protest information, on a regular basis.
However it’s nonetheless regarding that No Kings 3 hasn’t gotten extra consideration from a few of our greatest attention-mongers. Don’t assume that individuals know one thing large is coming this weekend—most Individuals are too busy and pay little consideration to many of the information. And in the event that they don’t find out about it, they received’t come.
On Logrolling and Backscratching
So who do the main pro-democracy writers function of their consideration streaming machines? Right here’s the community graph:
I ought to say proper from the beginning that that is, in fact, an incomplete image. There are simply a number of dozen extra websites and writers that one might embody in mapping this complete ecosystem. However I’m not an expert information scientist; maybe the great individuals who wrote the e book Community Propaganda and produced amazingly data-rich charts exhibiting all the political information ecosystem in 2016 might practice a few of their instruments on the Substack politics panorama. Actually there’s loads of relationship information to be mined merely from who recommends whom!
However right here’s what I discovered, as tough and soiled as it’s. 9 of these ten websites/authors are carefully linked to one another, showing on one another’s Substack Reside exhibits usually within the final 12 months. Solely Richardson, whose “Letters from an American” Substack has 2.8 million subscribers, isn’t within the middle circle—probably as a result of she already has a huge viewers and doesn’t must hustle extra to construct it. Just a few of parents within the middle have shut collaborators who present up in a center ring. After which there’s a wide selection of different visitors who’ve been on the core group’s Reside exhibits a couple of times.
Notably, only a few of the folks on this visualization of “Who’s Speaking to Whom” are political organizers. Most work in media as talkers, or in politics as commentators. A handful, like Norman Eisen and Marc Elias, are deeply concerned in pro-democracy work within the courts, so that they’re nearer to the organizing trenches. Somebody like Jeremy Ben-Ami, who runs J Road, is clearly a political organizer, and should you squint you may spot David Hogg, Stacey Abrams, and Corbin Trent out on the periphery. However even after the spectacular quantity of grassroots pushback from locations like Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis, and the huge No Kings protests of April and October 2025, the pro-democracy chattering class hasn’t put the leaders of these efforts wherever on their collective radar.
Folks like Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg of Indivisible, Doran Schrantz of Religion in Minnesota, Cristina Jimenez of United We Dream, Maurice Mitchell of the Working Households Occasion, Ian Bassin of Shield Democracy, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, Chris Dols of the Federal Unionists Community, Alex Winter of #TeslaTakedown by some means don’t get known as a lot by these people’ bookers. And it’s not like these organizers are press-shy or afraid to go on a dwell present.
What Explains This?
I get why hosts of cable TV information exhibits may not invite organizers onto their nightly applications. They’re in a steady rankings struggle in opposition to their competitors, their revenues are primarily based on viewers share, and so they can’t threat shedding their viewers’s consideration. However Substack’s pro-democracy authors aren’t topic to the identical company market pressures. So why are they performing like a pack? Why do they have a tendency to speak to lots of the identical folks, together with one another? And why do they offer organizing brief shrift? I’ve a number of theories.
One: In case you are attempting to construct a big viewers of Substack subscribers, of whom solely a fraction pays to subscribe or donate, amount and velocity beats high quality. Going dwell is a quick method to reinforce a connection along with your subscribers, be they free or paying. And going dwell with somebody who additionally has a giant following might be one of the environment friendly methods to achieve new subscribers. This produces a model of the “winners take all” impact, the place folks already wealthy in viewers consideration select to hang around with and amplify different folks additionally wealthy in consideration.
Second: In case you are an writer with any following in any respect, Substack is an endorphin machine. You might be handled to a relentless stream of suggestions within the type of likes, feedback, and shares. (Notably, Substack doesn’t give readers a method to dislike a put up.) Optimistic suggestions makes everybody really feel good; however it may be addicting. Going Reside on Substack provides in additional optimistic suggestions, within the type of a dwell viewers chat thread. And a few of these authors now get dwell adoring audiences within the 1000’s; who wouldn’t need to bathtub in that sort of consideration? This previous weekend, I noticed a buddy activate Substack Reside (you get an e-mail notifying you, should you’re a subscriber) and he didn’t also have a visitor or a plan to speak—he simply wanted to do some work on the pc and wished to supply his followers the chance to hang around and watch!
Third: Pontificating in regards to the newest outrage of the day is straightforward to do out of your desk. It’s quick and low cost (see level One). Reporting on the ins and outs of organizing or producing a brand new perception from the complicated combine of stories that flows round us continually, that’s laborious and sometimes costly. In the most effective of each worlds, websites/authors with the varieties of huge audiences a few of these pro-democracy authors have constructed would use the cash they’re making to rent extra precise journalists. Some are doing that, like The Bulwark, which has folks like Jonathan Cohn and Adrian Carrasquillo devoted to beats like healthcare and immigration, respectively. However what does Heather Cox Richardson with the thousands and thousands of {dollars} she have to be making from her huge and devoted subscriber base? I don’t know.
Fourth and final: Political writers and commentators are simply responding to what political information shoppers need, although that shopper mindset is one thing these writers and commentators helped construct and reinforce day by day. They don’t attempt to produce in-depth protection of actions as a result of these tales, after they do seem, are likely to get fewer views and clicks than one other rant about Jeffrey Epstein or the Orange Cheeto. Or each.
Sadly, these tendencies mix to supply a star-system of high-quality speaking heads and a dumbed-down viewers that by no means fairly figures out why the information and commentary on provide simply makes it really feel worse. Final fall, I noticed this on show once I caught the Bulwark’s dwell present at New York Metropolis’s Symphony Area. This was a recording of their lead podcast, that includes Bulwark writer Sarah Longwell, editor Jonathan V. Final, and writer-at-large Tim Miller. The Higher West Facet viewers gave them a hero’s welcome and roared mightily at their jokes, however many of the dialog was extremely self-referential. (Watch right here should you suppose I’m incorrect.) Longwell, Final and Miller spend a lot time doing dwell exhibits with one another by Zoom or Substack Reside that they didn’t really feel like they needed to change a factor for an in-the-flesh dwell viewers. After some time, I finished laughing on the puerility of their jokes and walked out early.
Is that this fixable? Sure, from each the highest and the underside. The individuals who handle these large Substacks are their very own bosses; there’s no community honcho telling them how you can run their websites. And folks like Susan Morgan have already supplied them an awesome listing of potential visitors to function who’re extra concerned within the on a regular basis struggle to defeat authoritarianism; they don’t have to start out from scratch in contemplating who to focus on. From the opposite finish, readers and subscribers can vote with their ft and their checkbooks. In the reduction of on the cash you give to Substack stars who dwell an excessive amount of on a budget manufacturing of gloom and doom, and shift your {dollars} to websites that actually cowl what’s taking place on the bottom.
Oh, and don’t overlook to point out up someplace this Saturday for No Kings 3!
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I missed this put up when it got here out two months in the past, however it’s simply as present now. Haley Bash nails what’s incorrect with all the large webinars progressive organizations hold having. Whereas they permit small numbers of workers to achieve giant numbers of individuals, they flip the viewers into shoppers somewhat than energetic individuals, and as she writes, “thus they start to behave like critics,” including, “We’ve educated folks to watch and decide, to not co-create.” Learn the entire thing.
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