Opinion: State lawmakers should help make medication more affordable for Utahns battling chronic diseases
For many survivors and patients, a cancer diagnosis is often a matter of choosing between bankruptcy or death. That's what I was told by a survivor last spring. It has haunted me ever since. This legislative session, state lawmakers can ease that burden on Utahns by supporting HB52, sponsored by Utah House Rep. Candice B. Pierucci.
If enacted, the legislation would ensure prescription drug copay assistance is counted toward patients' out-of-pocket cost obligations. In return, biomedical research could be more impactful and critical medications could become more accessible to the state's most vulnerable patients.
As an Oncological Sciences Ph.D. candidate at the University of Utah, cancer research is essentially my full-time job. I'm pursuing high-level training in biomedical research because I want to utilize my education to lead impactful work and help people fighting diseases. The research I do is critical in the development of novel specialized drugs and clinical studies. Significant effort, time and money are needed for the creation of these types of drugs for patients with chronic disease — especially those with cancer diagnoses.
The costs of these new specialized drugs have become unfathomably high and, thus, many Americans rely on copay assistance programs to help pay for these medications. Typically, this assistance comes from the drug manufacturer, which patients can put toward the cost of their treatments to make them more affordable. Yet, unfortunately, current state law in Utah allows health insurers to block copay assistance from benefitting patients in the intended way. Through these mechanisms, copay assistance is not counted toward the patient's deductible or out-of-pocket maximum. As a result, when the assistance runs out, many patients are no longer able to afford their medication. This sometimes makes the individual, who already must deal with the anxiety of managing a troublesome disease like cancer, decide between 'bankruptcy or death.'
These mechanisms used by insurance companies to pocket a patient's copay assistance versus allowing them to put it toward their annual out-of-pocket costs are called 'copay accumulator adjustment' programs. Realizing that many health insurers are doing this, several states have already implemented countermeasures to protect patients. As of June 2024, 21 states have implemented policies that prohibit copay accumulator adjustment programs. Several more states, including Utah, are considering copay accumulator adjustment legislation this year. Lawmakers in our state have failed to pass a similar bill in previous legislative sessions.
I'm concerned with our legislators' lack of action on prohibiting copay accumulator adjustment programs. While I acknowledge the accessibility of therapeutic drugs is multifaceted and a complex issue, prohibiting copay accumulator adjustment programs is a layup for Utah's legislature. With all the effort, time and money the biomedical researcher community puts into their work — what is the point if, at the end of the day, the new therapies established from this industrious work are inaccessible to the individuals who need them the most?
Despite medicine being available to help treat their disease, 30% of adults noted in a study by Kaiser report not taking their prescriptions due to high costs. Even with a diagnosis of cancer, a disease that must be aggressively treated for prolonged survival, a fifth of patients still report skipping or delaying treatments due to drug costs. These numbers are even higher among Black, Hispanic, Asian and low-income patients. For reasons like these, it's no surprise that affordability is the leading policy priority for volunteer advocates with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN). While enacting HB52 is not an all-encompassing resolution to chronic disease treatment affordability, it would be a significant step in the right direction and display the Legislature's commitment to the health and wellbeing of Utahns.
I urge lawmakers to join the emerging community of states that are prohibiting copay accumulator adjustment programs. I'll once again be joining cancer survivors, patients and caregivers at ACS CAN's Cancer Action Day at the state Capitol on Feb. 11. I look forward to meeting with lawmakers and expressing my support for HB52. The benefit of passing this legislation is twofold; it will make the efforts of biomedical research more impactful and improve the health outcomes of the most vulnerable patients in our state.
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Washington Post
18 minutes ago
- Washington Post
How a Democrat turned independent could shake up a key governor's race
Good morning, Early Birds. Congrats to the formidable Coco Gauff — and to Spike Lee, who somehow attends every sporting event. Send tips to earlytips@ Thanks for waking up with us. In today's edition … The Detroit mayor looks to go statewide … A ski manufacturer jumps into a run for Congress … Trump's price promises take center stage in a new digital ad campaign … but first … President Donald Trump bypassed California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) this weekend by ordering the deployment of 2,000 California National Guard troops to quell protests against immigration raids in the Los Angeles area. The move was swiftly condemned by political leaders in the state and across the country and is the latest sign of how Trump plans to push the envelope on nearly every power afforded to the presidency. Justin Jouvenal and Alex Horton reported that Trump 'invoked a section of the Armed Forces Act that allows the president to bypass a governor's authority over the National Guard and call those troops into federal service when he considers it necessary to repel an invasion or suppress a rebellion.' Newsom 'formally requested' that the Trump administration return the troops to the governor's command Sunday, labeling its moves 'the acts of a dictator, not a President.' Newsom also said he would file a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration over the deployment, which he called 'immoral' and 'unconstitutional.' This will probably be the story of the week, with Trump's use of this power increasing the likelihood that he does it again in other cities and jurisdictions. 'We're going to have troops everywhere,' Trump said Sunday when asked about sending soldiers to California. Pressed on 'what's the bar for sending in the Marines,' Trump said, 'The bar is what I think it is.' Michigan's gubernatorial election next year was always going to be one of the most closely watched contests in the nation. And that was before the popular mayor of Detroit, a former Democrat, launched an independent bid. 'I think about the 2016 convention and the whole thing was Love Trumps Hate. And you look at what the Democratic Party has become, it has become a party of intolerance,' said Mike Duggan, the Detroit mayor who left his party late last year to announce a third-party bid. 'If you don't agree with the exact doctrine, you know, you are vilified, you are left out. And I think it has just been turning off more and more Americans, more and more Democrats.' Duggan added that Republicans 'of course have a lot of anger,' too. So it 'felt like a time in this country where people might want a different choice.' Duggan, who was first elected in 2013, has long been seen as a likely candidate for governor. But with a crowded Democratic primary — including Jocelyn Benson, Michigan's secretary of state, and Garlin Gilchrist, the state's lieutenant governor — Duggan opted for a third path, leading Democrats to accuse him of political expediency. (U.S. Rep. John James and Michigan Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt are the leading Republicans in the contest.) No matter his reasons, Duggan could be a threat to shake up the race. 'Right now,' Duggan told us, 'my goal is 20 percent from the Democratic side, 20 percent from the Republican side, and win with 40 percent of the vote.' Duggan's mayoral tenure has been defined by a rebirth of Detroit, with a focus on bringing in new jobs, greening the economy and reversing a decades-long population trend. He told us he 'would have been supportive' of Trump's tariff plan 'if it were done right' by targeting manufacturing jobs that fled to Mexico and China, but that the 'Canada tariffs made no sense.' 'Trump has zeroed in on an issue that needs to be addressed,' he said, but the president went too far in his plan. Duggan was a vocal surrogate for the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris presidential campaigns in 2024, regularly touting the Democratic duo for bringing 'Detroit's recovery back 10 years ahead of time' and even posting weeks before he left the party that 'KAMALA HARRIS is the LEADER we need to build on the progress we've made!' Duggan says he thought at the time that Harris was a 'better choice' and that he still believes it. But he now says he campaigned for her while harboring serious doubts about her and the state of his former party. Democrats are taking note of his campaign. Last month, the Democratic Governors Association timed the release of a digital ad accusing Duggan of corruption to the mayor's keynote speech at the Mackinac Policy Conference. The ad centers on a story from the Detroit News tying the mayor with 'events that outed a confidential FBI informant.' The attack raised eyebrows in Michigan, signaling that his former party is at least mildly concerned about what he could mean to the contest. Duggan hit back at the conference, calling his former party 'predictable.' 'Mike Duggan is already cracking under pressure and lashing out on the campaign trail,' said Sam Newton, a spokesperson for the DGA. 'The DGA beat attention-grabbing third-party candidates in Kansas in 2018 and Oregon in 2022 — and we're confident that we'll do it again in Michigan this cycle.' A spokesperson for the Republican Governors Association declined to comment on Duggan's campaign. Duggan told us he 'couldn't stop laughing' when he first saw the ad. 'It does seem kind of early,' he said. 'They only know one play. This is like the old Michigan football teams that ran the ball up the middle all the time. They only know one thing.' Polls show the mayor pulling support from Democrats and Republicans, something Duggan and his team regularly bring up. It's early, however, and not only has neither party selected a nominee, but the tens of millions of dollars that will be spent on this race have yet to harden voters' partisan preferences. Duggan has a tall hill to climb, both because he is, in his own words, basically unknown by people outside the Detroit metropolitan area and because history does not favor independent candidates for governor. The last time an independent won a governor's mansion was over a decade ago — Bill Walker, a Republican turned independent, won in Alaska in 2014 — and while there are high-profile examples of success, like independent Jesse Ventura in 1998, there are plenty of failures. In 2022, for example, independent Betsy Johnson garnered considerable attention as a possible spoiler for the Democratic candidate in Oregon, typically considered to be a safe blue state. Johnson wound up winning only 8.6 percent of the vote, not enough to stop Democrat Tina Kotek from defeating her Republican opponent by about 3.5 percentage points. 'Voting for an independent hasn't been people's experience, but I am finding … the idea is appealing to people,' Duggan said. He noted that when he declared for mayor ahead of the 2013 campaign, people counted him out before they got to know him because Detroit hadn't had a White mayor since the early 1970s. 'I can feel the same thing happening here. People are now really starting to understand.' Hi, it's Jacob Bogage from the economic policy desk diving into a key question surrounding Trump and Republicans' massive tax and immigration bill. Will this bill really reduce the national deficit? That's been Republican leaders' talking point the past week: There are two issues at play here. The first is Vought and Johnson's claims about spending cuts. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts $1.3 trillion in spending over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office — there's additional savings if you count new revenue, too. Johnson and Vought are asserting that by enacting those budget cuts, Republicans will 'bend the curve' on the national debt, or get the trend line on the debt (it's basically a vertical line now) to flatten out. But spending cuts in and of themselves are not deficit reducers when they are paired with new spending. The bill increases spending by hundreds of billions of dollars and cuts taxes by $2.4 trillion (plus another $500 billion, if you factor in interest costs), according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's more than enough to wipe out the projected savings and add significantly to the deficit. The other issue is Thune's claim about projected growth. That is based on the Laffer curve, a popular conservative economic theory that posits there's a Goldilocks zone for tax rates that maximizes government revenue and private-sector growth. Beyond that zone, high tax rates crowd out growth, according to the theory, and actually diminish government revenue because of smaller economic output. Like every economic theory, there's some truth and some problems with the Laffer curve. The bigger issue is how it's applied to this bill. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was loaded with more growth incentives than the current bill, and it still came up short on paying for itself by stimulating economic activity. Help me cover the tax fight, the IRS, DOGE and more. Follow me on Bluesky: @ And send news tips securely on Signal: jacobbogage.87. Can we make a deal? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will meet with representatives from the Chinese government today to discuss a possible trade deal between the two superpowers. While the Trump administration promised in April to strike 90 trade deals in 90 days — a goal it is dramatically behind on — no deal would be more significant than one with China. Somos Votantes, an organization focused on civic and voter engagement within Latino communities, tells us it is kicking off a six-figure bilingual digital ad today focused on Trump's failure to live up to his promise of lowering prices. 'Donald Trump promised to lower prices on day one — groceries, health-care costs — but what has he actually delivered?' a narrator asks in the ads titled 'Promised'/'Prometió' that will run on YouTube and digital streaming services in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin. 'Ridiculous trade wars with allies like Mexico, Canada and now the world, making prices go up for everyone.' The ad also hits Trump for 'letting Elon Musk slash good jobs and destroy cost-saving programs. … This is not what he promised.' 'This isn't about partisanship,' said Melissa Morales, founder and president of Somos Votantes. 'It's about promises that were made and broken.' Many of you are open to voting for candidates outside the traditional two-party system. 'We should all be voting 'Independent,'' said Terri McKenney, a Realtor in Gilbert, Arizona. 'The current two-party system is like a ballgame where the players are only interested in winning. Neither team particularly cares about the fans and their fate. Courtney Marsh, a reader in Springfield, Virginia, remembered studying former independent governor Jesse Ventura when she was in high school in Minneapolis. 'We studied the election in school, and I remember collectively my class was stunned by the results but intrigued by what would happen next,' she wrote. 'It has since made me at least take a deeper look at independent candidates, especially for state-level offices.' And Kristen Smith contributed the viewpoint of the two main parties: 'In a two-party nation like the USA, Independent voters are wasting their votes.' West Central Tribune (Willmar, Minnesota): When the Trump administration put out a list of immigration sanctuary jurisdictions, officials in Stearns County, Minnesota, were surprised to be on it. Las Vegas Review Journal: Nevada's legislative session did not end well, highlighting the partisan divisions in a state that will be home to a competitive gubernatorial contest next year. Ventura County Star (Camarillo, California): The feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk — in addition to playing out like a juicy political drama — could have a dramatic impact on California and the state's electric vehicle market. We plan to write about how cuts to Medicaid could have a dramatic impact on rural hospitals later this week. Do you rely on a rural hospital to get care? Do you worry about the solvency of that hospital? Do you use Medicaid to get care from that hospital? Let us know at earlytips@ Thanks for reading. You can follow Dan and Matthew on X: @merica and @matthewichoi.
USA Today
23 minutes ago
- USA Today
When is Trump's military parade? What to know ahead of June 14
The streets of central D.C. are soon to be filled with thousands of soldiers, massive tanks and artillery, and the cacophonic rumble of Vintage warplanes and sleek Blackhawks flying overhead. That's because the U.S. Army is marking its 250th anniversary with a pomp-filled procession through the streets of the nation's capital Saturday, June 14, showcasing military might in a display with few, if any, precedents. The date also coincides with President Donald Trump's 79th birthday. The parade, which will feature Army equipment, flyovers, musical performances and thousands of soldiers in uniforms from the past and the present, caps off a week of programming designed to celebrate the country's military might. Trump posted a short video address about the parade to Truth Social on Friday, June 6, inviting Americans to what he called an "unforgettable" celebration, "one like you've never seen before." "For two and a half centuries, the men and women of America's Army have dominated our enemies and protected our freedom at home," he said in the video. "This parade salutes our soldiers' remarkable strength and unbeatable spirit. You won't want to miss it. Just don't miss this one. It's going to be good." Here's what to know about the parade and day-long celebration in Washington, D.C. When and where is the June 14 DC military parade? The military parade is slated for Saturday, June 14, in the heart of Washington, D.C., spanning six blocks and bisecting the National Mall. Organizers say the procession begins at 6:30 p.m. ET. What are the events and performances at the June 14 celebration? Celebrations and associated events are set to take place throughout the day at the Army Birthday Festival starting at 11 a.m. ET. Members of the public can visit, where there will be military demonstrations, equipment displays and live music throughout the day, Army event organizers say Visitors can expect kid zones, more than 50 vendors and experience booths and meet-and-greets with "Army soldiers, NFL players, influencers and celebrities," according to the U.S. Army event page. Those feeling adventurous can show up early and take part in the Army's fitness competition, from 9:30 a.m. to noon. There will be several musical acts throughout the June 14 celebration, including country singer Scotty Hasting, a former Army infantryman who was wounded in Afghanistan, country singer Noah Hicks of Nashville and DJ Nyla Symone. The Army's birthday parade will cross in front of Trump's viewing stand on Constitution Avenue, just south of the White House, around sundown. The president is also expected to attend an enlistment and re-enlistment ceremony after the parade. A parachute demonstration by the Golden Knights and a fireworks display and evening concert will conclude the festivities. Where is the Army Birthday Festival? The festival is between 14th Street SW and the 12th Street Expressway on the lawn between Madison Drive NW and Jefferson Drive SW, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. It is next to the Smithsonian Metro Station NW entrance, which will be closed, organizers say, though the Smithsonian Metro Station SW entrance will be open. Information is also available on the Army's event website, What does the parade celebrate? Is it Trump's birthday parade? Though the parade is on the same day as the president's 79th birthday, event organizers and administration officials say it is solely to celebrate the U.S. Army. The administration has insisted that the Army's anniversary and Trump's birthday are a coincidence and that the parade is justified to honor soldiers' sacrifice. Plans for the June 14 parade began in earnest about a month ago. Yet as focus squares in on the U.S. Army's 250 years of existence, other branches are notably left out. The Navy, which also celebrates its 250th anniversary this year in October, has no plans for a similar parade, a spokesperson told USA TODAY. Neither does the Marine Corps, for its 250th in November. Inside the military parade: Tanks, cannons and soldiers sleeping in DC offices How to get tickets to attend in person Tickets for the parade are limited, but those interested in attending the parade on June 14 can RSVP here. Prospective attendees will be asked to provide their full name, phone number, email, state and zip code. Where does the 'Grand Military Parade' start and end? The parade will take place along Constitution Avenue NW, starting on Constitution Avenue NW and 23rd Street and ending on 15th Street alongside the National Mall, near the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Graphic of Parade Route: See where the procession will go through central DC How to watch the June 14 parade Events from the 250th birthday celebration, including the parade, will be livestreamed on all U.S. Army social media platforms. Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman, Tom Vanden Brook Kathryn Palmer is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her atkapalmer@ and on X @KathrynPlmr.
Atlantic
23 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The Real Problem With the Democrats' Ground Game
They called it the 'Big Send.' Democrats gathered in living rooms, libraries, and coffee shops across the country to write letters to millions of potential voters in swing states and competitive congressional districts, urging them to vote in November. During the 2020 pandemic election, the novel but decidedly 20th-century tactic had cut through the glut of digital messages that inundated Americans' cellphones and inboxes, and organizers hoped it would similarly boost turnout for Democrats in 2024. It did not. In a study set to be released later today, the group behind the letter-writing effort, the nonpartisan Vote Forward, found that personal messages sent to more than 5 million occasional voters deemed at risk of staying home last fall had no effect on turnout. (The group's campaign produced a modest increase in turnout among a second, slightly smaller set of low-propensity voters, but it still fell short of previous Vote Forward programs.) What's unusual is not Vote Forward's lackluster findings, but that the group is ready to tell the world about them. Every election, a constellation of progressive organizations sells donors and volunteers on the promise that their data-driven turnout programs will deliver victory at the polls. These mobilization efforts have taken on ever-greater importance in an era of tight elections, where the presidency and majorities in Congress can hinge on just a few thousand votes. Progressive groups are only too happy to brag about their wins; they're much less likely to divulge details about their campaigns that flopped. Driving this reticence is a fear that donations will dry up—or go to other organizations in a highly competitive campaign industry—if funders find out their money made little difference on the ground. In several instances, researchers told me, Democratic firms have either pushed them to suppress the results of studies that didn't produce desired findings or cherry-picked data to make the numbers look better. 'We have a people-pleasing problem in our party,' Max Wood, a progressive data scientist, told me. Yasmin Radjy, the executive director of Vote Forward and its progressive campaign arm, Swing Left, is trying to change that culture. Just as Democrats are now debating, sometimes fiercely, why their party's message failed last year, Radjy believes that to emerge from 'the political wilderness,' they need to have candid conversations about their organizing and turnout efforts. Radjy has been frustrated by what she describes as Democrats' lack of introspection and transparency. For months, she's been asking party organizers and consultants what they learned in 2024, and what they're going to do differently going forward. 'We've got to actually be honest about both what works and what doesn't work,' she told me. In the next election, 'if we are serving volunteers, donors, and voters reheated leftovers from 2024, we are doing it wrong.' The risks of a bad field operation are greater than people might think. The goal of any persuasion or get-out-the-vote program is to boost support for your party's candidate. Many make only a small difference in turnout, or none at all—especially in presidential elections, for which most people already know plenty about the candidates. The worst of these efforts, however, can backfire entirely. In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama built the largest field operation in history, relying on both data-driven targeting and community-organizing tactics in a way that revolutionized presidential campaigning. But a study involving more than 56,000 targeted voters in Wisconsin found that a visit from a volunteer supporting Obama appears to have turned some potential voters away from Obama's candidacy—in a state the Democrat won handily that year. The researchers suggested that people who rarely engaged in elections found the visits bothersome. During the Obama era, Democrats relied on support from infrequent voters to capture the presidency, although they struggled in low-turnout, off-year elections. They poured millions of dollars into research and organizing programs to identify and mobilize those voters. But since then, the parties' bases have shifted, and many of these hard-to-reach voters became Donald Trump supporters—especially working-class white voters and, in 2024, a large number of young and nonwhite people. Some Democrats worry that their party's vaunted turnout operation has, in recent years, produced a significant number of votes for Trump, reducing, if not negating, the benefits for their own candidates. Early last year, a top progressive data scientist warned donors in a memo that if Democratic mobilization groups 'were to blindly register nonvoters,' they could be 'distinctly aiding Trump's quest for a personal dictatorship,' The Washington Post reported. Radjy acknowledged that had been a concern, but she said Vote Forward's postelection study found no evidence that its letter-writing campaign helped Trump or Republicans. 'If we found that, it would hurt, but we would also share it transparently,' she told me. It's not clear that everyone else would. The biggest spenders in Democratic politics frequently test their turnout operations, in many cases through randomized controlled trials in which one group of people receives a particular form of engagement—a door knock, phone call, or text message, for example—while another gets nothing. (This is what Vote Forward did to test its letter-writing success.) After the election, organizers can check to see which group voted at a higher rate. These findings have shown that in presidential-election years, traditional canvassing methods have become less effective as voters get bombarded with campaign ads and reminders to vote. 'In a saturated environment, it's getting harder and harder for individual pieces of campaign communication to break through,' David Broockman, a political scientist at UC Berkeley who studies voting behavior, told me. 'I expect the effects of everything are just going to keep on going down.' Occasionally, the studies that groups conduct are widely shared, but some political organizations suffer from a phenomenon known as the 'file-drawer problem': 'A lot of bad results never see the light of day,' Joshua Kalla, a political scientist at Yale University who studies voter persuasion, told me. Wood, the data scientist, learned that firsthand. He told me he's worked with Democrats who have urged him not to publish studies with unfavorable findings: 'Basically the attitude is, There's a lot of hype and a lot of willingness to fund this work. And if you put this out, all the funders are going to clam up and point to this as a reason not to do it.' In other cases, he said, clients have misused data to make tactics seem more effective than they really are. Another researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating allies in the party, told me about working on a study that found a campaign tactic had produced no boost in turnout. When the researcher later saw a published version of the report with their name attached, however, the findings made it seem as if the experiment had been successful. 'The big problem,' the researcher told me, is that in addition to using research to improve campaigning, Democratic groups 'also use it as effective marketing or to try to get clients. People's incentives are misaligned.' Democrats have become much more sophisticated over the past decade in understanding how to assess the effectiveness of campaigns, said Yoni Landau, the CEO of Movement Labs, an anti-Trump operation that ran dozens of large-scale experiments last year. 'The challenge now is about political will,' he told me, 'whether the people making the decisions—the funders and the organization leaders—want to know whether it worked.' To incentivize rigorous studies, which can help address the file-drawer problem, Landau said Movement Labs is launching a program it's calling the Prove It Prize, which will encourage groups to test campaign tactics by offering money for experiments that produce positive results. For now, he said, many of the largest investments aren't tested, and the reluctance to share poor results remains 'very prevalent.' When I called around to some of the largest progressive campaign organizations, most of them told me they had done extensive studies on their field programs in 2024, or were in the process of conducting them. Hardly any would share details of what they learned. Jenny Lawson, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, told me the group would not risk sharing 'trade secrets with political entities that exist to end Planned Parenthood.' An official with another major group plainly acknowledged, on the condition of anonymity, that it feared a loss of donations and was unlikely to publish a study showing poor results. A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee told me it is conducting its own extensive postelection audit, incorporating 'insights from inside the DNC and from external partners in the ecosystem' that the committee will make public in the coming months. Many progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood, do submit their findings to the Analyst Institute, an organization founded in 2007 that both runs and collects experiments on voter-contact programs. The institute serves as a database for Democratic-aligned groups to share research on campaign tactics—successes as well as failures. But some people told me the party's file-drawer problem extended there too. Christina Coloroso, the Analyst Institute's executive director, told me its officials coach Democratic organizations to not expect huge positive results in presidential-campaign years. She acknowledged that groups can be reluctant to share data even within the Democratic community 'when the results don't look great,' but she said the institute allows its members to submit research anonymously to allay fears. 'It's true that we may not see every single test that exists across the ecosystem, but all the work that we do is to try to get to a critical mass of studies,' Coloroso said. The search for the decisive edge in political campaigns has always been a hunt for novelty. Any new tactic that works doesn't work that well for long. Everybody starts doing it. Voters get tired of—and sometimes quite annoyed at—the calls, the texts, the emails. 'The first time that people got direct mail, it was like printing money,' recalled Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the AFL-CIO who has been working on campaigns since the 1970s. 'Oh my God. I just got this letter from George McGovern or from Ronald Reagan. I'm going to read it, and I'm going to send a check here.' A generation ago, helped pioneer the use of email to raise money and drive engagement, Podhorzer said. 'Then it's quickly like, Who opens an email?' More recently, the new thing was text messages, which took off in 2020, when Democrats in particular relied more on digital communications—and old-fashioned letter writing. 'You just keep finding some way that people aren't expecting to hear about politics, and so they are actually open to it and listen to you. But then it gets completely swamped,' Podhorzer said. Conventional turnout methods—door knocking and phone calls, for example—can still have a big impact in low-turnout races, such as primaries, special elections, and campaigns for local office. But with the parties now spending more than $1 billion on the presidential campaign every four years, they've seen diminishing returns on each individual mobilization tactic. Vote Forward emerged out of a letter-writing experiment conducted during the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama, a deep-red state where the Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated Roy Moore, a former judge who had been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by several women. The turnout rate for people who received handwritten messages was three points higher than for those who did not. 'That was the holy cow,' Radjy said. 'This is a tactic that can really, really move the needle.' The impact of the group's letter-writing program has decreased over time, Radjy told me. Vote Forward found that its letters had no effect on the initial group of 'surge voters,' people who had participated in at least one major election since 2016. But the organization was able to expand its program to additional groups, mainly newly registered voters. Among these groups, the campaign boosted turnout by 0.16 percentage points, enough for Radjy to consider that part of the effort a success, because it was similar to the average effect for all previous measured presidential-election turnout programs. Vote Forward estimates that it drove an additional 9,000 voters to the polls nationwide. As paltry as that number might seem, it's larger than the total margin of victory in the battle for control of the House during each of the past two elections. The letter-writing program is also relatively inexpensive, costing about $175,000. The group has concluded that although it will still use the tactic in small campaigns, it likely will not do so in the same way in 2028. Democrats can take some solace in the fact that the nation's rightward shift last year was much smaller in the states where they campaigned most aggressively. That suggests that the hundreds of millions of dollars they poured into advertising and voter-turnout efforts did make a difference. And even the best ground game cannot overcome a flawed candidate or message. But the party's defeat is accelerating a broader questioning of its organizing and ability to connect with the millions of voters who are up for grabs in presidential-election years. 'Democrats have much bigger problems on their hands than what they're doing on the doors at the end of the election,' said Billy Wimsatt, the founder of the progressive Movement Voter Project, a clearinghouse for donors to Democratic groups. He said the party needs to learn from the success of the well-funded MAGA movement, which he calls a 'vertically integrated meta church' that, 'feels like one big purpose-driven team,' even with all its faults. 'Their billionaires are savvier than our billionaires,' Wimsatt told me, 'and they're more interested in winning.' Wimsatt is one of many Democrats who believe that the party needs to invest in much deeper engagement with voters—outreach that must start long before an election. So does Radjy: 'We need to be talking to people earlier,' she said. 'We need to be talking to people in a more curious and reciprocal way.' But first comes honesty about what went wrong in 2024. Democrats will appreciate it. They might even demand it. 'Even candor that is not rosy,' Radjy told me, 'is more appealing than rosy bullshit.'
