How to Break Through
A Discussion with Organizermemes
After an election cycle defined by information overload, misinformation, message fatigue, and a rapidly shifting digital landscape, it’s harder than ever to know what’s actually working—and who’s shaping the conversation. I sat down with Organizermemes, one of the sharpest and most relentless online voices, to talk about what it really means to “meet the moment” in Democratic politics right now.
From what it means to empower staffers and digital directors, to the limits of polish and the promise of meme culture, this conversation pulls back the curtain on how political communication is evolving—and what Democrats still need to learn to compete in digital spaces.
Kellie:
Are there people you feel are really meeting the moment right now in the Democratic Party, communications-wise or otherwise?
Organizermemes:
I think there's better and worse. Part of our problem is that we're having these binary moments. There's a scale—some people are hitting eights, some people are hitting twos. I don't think anyone's hitting a ten right now. But a ten is usually impossible. No one really knows what's working and what's effective.
There are definitely people starting to hit their stride more. I think the fact that Tim Walz, Bernie, and AOC are going around talking to people is clearly a smart move. Cory Booker did a good job forcing people to pay attention.
I think a lot of the commentator class and smaller-level people are where we’re also struggling—because we look to “actual” leadership when leadership usually comes to consensus by staffers. But we don’t often think about the staffer aspect of it.
Even the DNC Twitter account is doing better than it was two months ago. After they got virally shamed for that one infographic post, it seems like they reevaluated what looks correct in this moment. That’s interesting.
Kellie:
So you feel like maybe we need to be taking more of a bottom-up perspective—because elected officials aren’t just deciding what to say out of thin air?
Organizermemes:
Right. A lot of it is someone’s digital director now being able to tweet more organically than they could four weeks ago, or someone booking the tour dates for politicians.
I don’t subscribe to Great Man Theory—though some individuals definitely play outsized roles—but I think a lot of this is much more rising tide. If all Democrats are hated, it doesn’t matter if you’re the one exception. But if Democrats start getting on board with something different, everyone has more opportunity to do more.
It’s also interesting that people are still looking at this through the progressive vs. non-progressive lens, which was the dominant framing from 2016 to maybe 2023. Now it seems more like “movers and shakers” vs. the gerontocracy—the comfortable.
You asked who’s doing a good job—I think Kat Abughazaleh, who’s running for Congress. I have no idea how that’s going to go, and I’m biased because we’re friends. But she clearly has a different messaging position than what you would’ve seen a year ago, or five years ago
Kellie:
You mentioned staffers posting more organically, and one of the big struggles for digital folks is this idea that, “I could be good at my job if my boss didn’t take eight hours to approve something—or wasn’t so afraid to say the wrong thing that we just don’t say anything at all.”
You post a lot yourself, so that’s obviously different, but I’m curious about how you think about the balance between being relentlessly on-message versus sheer volume. What’s more important?
Organizermemes:
People can tell when you’re posting something out of fear—something that’s gone through 15 layers of approval. And at this point, we’re competing against slop. Your perfect one video per week doesn’t cut it.
Maybe this is stupid, but—think about BreadTube vs. MrBeast. MrBeast just makes stuff constantly. I average like 75 posts a day—some of it is sent in, sure—but the quality wildly ranges. I post whatever I’m feeling (with some self-censorship—I’m not burning every bridge). But maybe one of those posts hits and gets 250,000+ views.
No one cares that there are typos. Part of that is the meme format, but also—no one is going to die because you used the wrong “your.” If you’re not putting out a bunch of stuff, people aren’t seeing you. Every post has a chance to go viral in its own place.
I know I’m in a privileged position—you can’t be running for president and posting typos every day. But there’s got to be a middle ground. And the real issue isn’t the typos—it’s the young professional vibe.
Everyone in our world has been to college. No one plays video games. That’s an overgeneralization and it’s gendered a bit, but people are so buttoned up and worried about their careers that they don’t take risks.
This industry is cutthroat. It makes sense. But it’s safer to do the same thing over and over again with no risk and no reward, than to swing for the fences. If you’re running digital for a boring senator who’s going to win by 20 points, maybe don’t take a big risk. But if you do, and you fail, it all comes crashing down on you.
Kellie:
Do you like the kind of content that Jeff Jackson puts out—the direct-to-camera TikToks?
Organizermemes:
I do. A lot. Jeff Jackson might be the best poster in American politics. And not just because of TikTok. I remember in 2016, before he was a national figure, he was posting on Facebook about what was happening in the North Carolina Senate.
He was interesting, he was approachable, and I followed him then. I also did a project on Reddit, and if you look at subreddits like r/Raleigh or tiny NC town subs, his posts from 6-8 years ago were still the top-performing piece of content.
He clearly worked to connect with people all over. TikTok gave him more reach than any politician before him. And while that cooled when he voted for the TikTok ban, he still understands something fundamental: people want to understand what’s going on. If you explain it in a way that’s real and accessible, they engage.
He demystifies the process. It’s not all partisan talking points. It’s about incentives. He explains why things are broken. That changes how people see the chaos. When you know how the magic trick works, you’re not fooled.
Honestly, he might not be Attorney General right now if he hadn’t blown up on TikTok.
Kellie:
What do you think worked in 2024? There’s been a lot of talk about what we did wrong. But what should we hold onto or expand?
Organizermemes:
I think a lot of the online stuff toward the end really helped. Brat Summer wasn’t perfect, but it showed what enthusiasm looks like. Kamala had to make up a lot of ground. She didn’t close the gap entirely, but you could see the impact.
Going on Call Her Daddy was smart. People were skeptical, but the comments showed that she was reaching voters we needed. That was one of the moments I realized we were in trouble—because if those listeners were 50/50, that was a bad sign. We should be winning that group 75%+.
Kamala’s team did solid digital. The influencer program worked. It scaled well and got billions of impressions. But the internet won’t save you. The bigger problem is we didn’t build digital infrastructure five or ten years ago. We didn’t invest in liberal creators the way the right did with Ben Shapiro & co.
Short-term, we did the best we could. And I hope the takeaway isn’t that we should stop investing online. If anything, people are finally talking about how to reach young voters online. That’s a huge step forward. I just hope we follow through.
The takeaway from this conversation isn’t that there’s a single right answer or one perfect messenger—it’s that our ecosystem is strongest when more people are empowered to create, connect, and communicate boldly. Whether it’s a senator’s digital aide finally being allowed to tweet without five layers of approval, or a congressional candidate taking a new tone that cuts through the noise, the future of political communication is being built from the ground up. We can’t afford to play it safe. The question now isn’t just what worked in 2024—it’s whether we have the courage and creativity to build what’s next.