‘Lost To The Couch’: Democrats Seek To Use Very Strategy That Helped Trump Win White House

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) unveiled a new outreach program Wednesday in an effort to turn out likely Democratic voters who did not vote in the 2024 election cycle.

The DNC’s effort, dubbed “Local Listeners,” is aimed at more than a million voters they view as likely Democrats in “priority” congressional districts who voted in the 2020 election cycle but sat out in 2024, according to a news release. The committee will focus on training volunteers to attract low-propensity voters with a “listening first approach,” and will host a seven-week training program which includes sessions focused on “active listening” and “having difficult conversations about politics.” (RELATED: CNN’s Harry Enten Says Democrats Will Have Tough Time Taking Back White House)

“Local Listeners is a massive voter contact operation built on a simple but powerful idea: If we want to keep earning back the trust and support of voters, we have to listen to them. This program modernizes the way we are talking to and hearing from the voters that we need to win elections now and for years to come,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a Wednesday statement. “The Democratic Party is done with waiting until the last minute to engage voters — these conversations need to happen early and often. And the win-win with this program is that we’re also training thousands of volunteers to be voices for our Party on the frontlines of their communities.”

“While Republicans ignore Americans, preferring to serve billionaires instead of everybody else, Democrats aim to reach over a million voters in the next few months,” Martin continued. “And we’re going to talk about what matters in their lives: affordability, freedom, a shot at the American Dream. That’s how we win in 2026 and beyond.”

The DNC did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Over 2,000 volunteers have signed up for the DNC’s new program thus far, with 93% volunteering for the first time since 2024, according to the news release.

“We didn’t lose to [President] Donald Trump. We lost to the couch,” DNC Deputy Executive Director Libby Schneider told Politico in an interview published Wednesday. “We saw our voters, many of our important voters, stay home.”

“Obviously, that is a trend that cannot continue,” Schneider added.

A key element of Trump’s successful political strategy in 2024 was connecting with voters who were not typically seen as supporting Republicans but had been identified by his campaign as being persuadable to vote for the GOP, Politico reported.

Schneider also told Politico that the DNC’s new outreach program is part of the period of “self-reflection” Democratic Party organizers had following Trump’s 2024 election win.

“The work started immediately after we lost, and it was sort of a self-reflection of … what can we do differently and what is within our control?” Schneider told the outlet. “This is one of those things that it’s a no-brainer that it should live with the DNC, and that we should have been doing it for a lot longer.”

Several analysts previously told the DCNF in May 2025 that encouraging low-propensity Trump voters in the 2026 midterms may be key for Republicans to maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder of liberal donor network Way To Win, told Politico that she thinks potential former Vice President Kamala Harris voters who stayed home in 2024 simply “didn’t like what they heard.”

“They weren’t uninformed, right?” Ancona told the outlet. “They just didn’t like what they heard. So that’s why I feel like it’s so important for any engagement plan to recognize how kind of burned and cynical these voters are.”

The DNC said in a Wednesday press release that volunteers for the new initiative will also “be trained on how to capture qualitative information from their conversations with voters, which will allow the DNC to identify key themes and share those insights with the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] to inform their messaging on the ground in target congressional districts,” The Hill reported.

In August 2025, center-left think tank Third Way published a memo highlighting 45 words and phrases they want Democrats to refrain from using because “no ordinary person would ever dream of” saying them. Some of the phrases mentioned in Third Way’s memo included “birthing person,” “cisgender,” “deadnaming,” “heteronormative” and “patriarchy.”

Additionally, Martin told Politico in an October 2025 interview that there is “not a day that I don’t go home wanting to pull my hair out” in his gig as the DNC’s chairman.

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