Say What You're For
My conversation with Anat Shenker-Osorio
Technical note: we are experimenting with editing software, so if you see weird jumps in the video — it’s probably my fault.
I had the extreme pleasure last week of speaking with
about many many things, but I wanted to share a brief summary of what we discussed with you here.What we talked about:
Her Journey From Theory to Practice:
Her early work was influenced by scholars like George Lakoff, Eve Sweetser, and Zoltán Kövecses. She sought to apply metaphor analysis and empirical testing to political messaging — shifting campaigns from gut instinct to strategies that are informed by culture, and by social science.
Habits Are Hard to Break:
Despite her best efforts, Anat found many clients failed to adopt better messaging. Habits, cognitive biases, and institutional inertia often overpowered the research.
Say What You’re For:
Her core messaging principle is clarity and affirmation: stop saying what you're against; start saying what you're for. Negative framing often reinforces the opposition’s message.
The Problem with Testing:
Many campaigns conduct excessive or narrowly framed message testing (e.g., MaxDiff, RCTs) that fail to reflect real-world attention dynamics. Testing often avoids measuring mobilization, which is harder to quantify than persuasion but crucial to winning.
Organizing vs. Research: Shenker-Osorio criticizes the Democratic Party's reliance on message testing over grassroots organizing, and the turn to field efforts driving turnout at the expense of building lasting community power or strong ties between voters and the Party.
Persuasion Windows:
Major disruptions (e.g., COVID) offer rare opportunities to shift public opinion. Progressives often fail to capitalize on these moments with bold, affirmative narratives.
Democrats and Messaging:
Many Democrats reject transformative messaging out of fear or donor pressure.
This leads to a discourse that affirms right-wing frames while failing to energize the base.
To change status quo Democrats, it’s as useless to persuade them as it is to “reach across the aisle”. There’s no outstretched hand waiting to grab yours, so we simply have to out-organize them.
Hope and Power:
Change comes when grassroots movements shift public behavior and expectations — not when Democratic leaders lead.
We can’t wait for them to do something - we have to do put our bodies out into the world. [As Frank Zappa once said, “I’ll do the stupid thing first, and then you shy people follow”… but remember “stupid” is in the eye of the beholder.]
Final Notes:
Anat’s work is available free at ASOCommunications.com, including messaging guides on immigration, labor, abortion, and more. USE THEM.
Her podcast Words to Win By focuses on successful progressive campaigns and the messages behind them. You can subscribe to the Substack as well, here:
That’s it.