Crushed
Doomscroll 4.19.2026
Hello and welcome to another edition of Doomscroll - your favorite newsletter covering all things digital on the right! Let’s get to some scrolling.
Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about whether campaigns should hire a Creative Strategist. Pretty straightforward question; pretty straightforward answer. Half of you said yes and half of you said no. Literally. It was split 50-50. Glad we’ve got that settled! Anywho, you know what I think! Call it whatever you want, but someone who’s in charge of the big-picture details of managing a candidate’s image, branding, messaging, etc sounds like a good idea to me.
Ok. This week’s One Question is about fundraising. Democrat candidates are kicking our candidates’ butts in small-dollar fundraising and I KNOW I’ve talked about this relentlessly here in Doomscroll. But with all the Q1 numbers rolling out this week, I gotta ask again: wtf is going? Is it lack of donor enthusiasm on our side? Lack of messaging? Are too many donors just turned off by all the scam tactics or the sheer volume of asks they’re getting? Is it us? Are we treating our donors poorly - still? Or is it the candidates?
James Talarico raised $27 million in the first quarter of 2026. Jon Ossoff raised $14 million. Roy Cooper raised $13.8 million. Even Sherrod Brown managed to raise $12.5 million.
Michael Whatley? $5 million. Mike Collins? Just over a mil. Derek Dooley? $660,000. Michele Tafoya raised $2.2 million. Those are just a few. But the comparisons across the board with our Dem counterparts…ain’t great. I know *technically speaking* we *don’t* have a money problem. The committees are in a good position. The Super PACs are in a good position. The Trump war chest is reportedly going to start spending around Memorial Day… But on the campaign side? It’s looking bleak. Even Punchbowl (boo) said it this week: “[T]here’s no way for Republicans to spin this: Their candidates are getting crushed.”
Crushed.
So what am I missing? Do these numbers matter and if so, why are we getting crushed? P.S. You can say inboxing….you can also be wrong. (KIDDING!! WE’LL GET TO INBOXING LATER I PROMISE).
The above quote comes from an Axios story this week about how Republicans are kicking butt at using AI this cycle. And like - I don’t want to steal any thunder from my friends who deserve all the AI praise (s/o NRSC!)- but I almost DIED when I saw this nugget of information, tucked quietly in there about a third of the way down. If there was anything - at all - to make me feel like we are FOR SURE winning the partisan digital war it would be this. Banning the use of AI?! Interesting tactic, mis amigos! Just a thought.
—Let’s be friends!
It’s rare that a fundraising email these days makes me….smile. Yes, I said it. SMILE. But said phenomenon occurred just the other day when I saw a new email from Sen. John Kennedy pop into my inbox.
I thought to myself, “hey, that’s a new one, let’s click.” And then I read every darn word of that thing. And when he asked me to take a Friendship Quiz, I did it. Mostly out of curiosity (what questions does a fundraising team for a sitting senator put on a friendship quiz??) but also because if you’re going to be that creative you deserve some engagement. Here’s the other smart thing his team did: the button doesn’t link to a survey on WinRed. It links to a landing page with a legit quiz where you click through each question. And then once you submit it redirects to a donate page. I don't know, ya’ll. Maybe I’m just easily amused these days, but I liked it! And apparently Team Kennedy is putting some ad money behind it on X:
—You betcha it’s a great ad!
Something else that made me smile this week (gah make it stop!): This ad by Tom Tiffany, who’s running for governor in Wisconsin. I don’t know much about Tom Tiffany and I haven’t been following this race all that much, but I love it when I see a candidate not take themselves too seriously. This has everything you want in a hyper-partisan world: jokes, old fashion’s, a 94-year-old quilting mom, a little bit of policy, and a “you betcha!”. And then he even posted a little behind-the-scenes as well. LOVE IT.
—Reddy and Co
Earlier this week a staffer for Rom Reddy’s gubernatorial campaign in South Carolina posted a selfie video to the official X account promoting an upcoming event. The official account - not a War Room account or a Reddy HQ account. Is it the most compelling piece of content? No. But! It is an example of something I predicted a while ago - more and more campaigns will start featuring staffers in their content. If done well, this could be a game-changer. It shows a campaign is not just some abstract concept. It’s REAL people doing REAL work to elect a REAL candidate. Humanize campaigns, guys. Again - I’m not saying this is a brilliant video or anything, and of course there’s a fine line between using staff and making sure the candidate is still front and center - but I do think this is worth highlighting. If you want to try it, do it like this. Start small. Low stakes. Have a staffer promote an event! What could go wrong?
🤑 House Republicans are demanding answers from ActBlue
🙌 Finally…Instagram is going to allow comment-editing, but it must be done within 15 minutes!
▶️ Youtube pushed back on rumors that 90-second unskippable ads would be coming to the platform
📈 Google is bringing back Data Studio
📜 Apparently native document posts drive the most engagement on LinkedIn? Ok…
💵 Meta is expected to overtake Google in digital ad revenue by the end of 2026. Wow.
President Trump endorsed Houston Gaines in Georgia
SC gubernatorial candidate Alan Wilson released a new ad about his service in Iraq. Watch it here.
Ex-Governor, Congressman, and Olivia Nuzzi muse Mark Sanford is running for his old congressional seat (to replace Nancy Mace) and you can watch his announcement video here.
Perry Johnson and John James are neck-in-neck in one latest poll
Pres. Trump (and Elon Musk, apparently) have endorsed Marty O’Donnell in Nevada’s 3rd congressional district
Interesting story in Politico about Rick Jackson’s campaign for governor in Georgia. Like…everyone wants a candidate who can self-fund. Now here’s a candidate that is self-funding and we’re griping about it? Eh. IMO: He’s playing to win and you gotta respect it.
Looks like Republican Jobs hosted a pretty epic happy hour in DC this week!
Ok I promised we’d talk about inboxing again. Someone used the gossip form (<3) to share these thoughts (and throw a bit of shade):
You seem to be missing why inboxing matters. You point out that Democrats spend much more on lead generation than Republicans, but not why; it comes down to simple math. Meta, Google, Influencer Marketing, etc do not have positive ROI on the first touch. They only work if you can follow up with those leads on a less expensive channel. Without the ability to inbox, you can’t do that so you can’t scale spend. That’s why the strategies you think Republicans should adopt won’t actually happen. Without inboxing, the math just doesn’t work. I’m not advocating people pack it all up, they already have.
Well, I didn’t just get started in digital 2 days ago, so I do get this. I understand that if you think your emails won’t land, you’re not going to invest in growing your list via Facebook ads, influencer marketing, or anything else. That’s true especially if you think the problem lies in Big Tech bias. So…I don’t think I’m missing the big picture here. What I’m saying - and have said many times before - is that I ask people in our line of work all the time about inboxing. I get very mixed answers. Some people say it’s a huge problem. Some say they don’t have any issues. Some say…sometimes it is. I’m aware there have been some not great incidents in the last year or so (Who else remembers the SURBL incident of 2025???) and that those incidents seem to only happen to one side of the aisle. Not great, Bob. But one could argue those happen because we don’t always handle our lists properly. You could also argue it’s liberal bias in the tech industry. But either way you’re right about one thing: People have already packed it up. We need to solve this problem.
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
From the other side of the aisle:
OK so Wisconsin just had another Supreme Court election (the lib won in a landslide), but I thought this was cool:
But before election night, a newcomer had entered the race: a virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence that was texting voters, offering to answer their questions about the election, with an eye toward helping Taylor.
“Got any questions about (Chris Taylor’s) record and why it matters?” a message shared with WPR read. “I’m a virtual assistant standing by to answer your questions any time before you head to the polls on Tuesday. Just reply.”
I think this is great, and we should try it on our side! I even like that the message was up front about how it was AI. Seriously. I want to try this.
From the other side of the tracks:
I found this story - about Merrell’s latest ad campaign - to be interesting. Why? Because the nerd in me loves that they intentionally chose to talk about going “outside” rather than going to the “outdoors.” Imagine all the testing that had to go into that decision. Here’s more:
Framing the campaign around “outside” rather than something like “the great outdoors” is key to Merrell’s approachable messaging, McLeod said. Outside is everywhere and available, while the outdoors might seem more grandiose—and potentially not be everyone’s cup of tea.
“For some people, the outdoors just conjures up granola, mud,” McLeod said. “Some people don’t love that. But a lot of people like to go to the park. They like to go in their backyard. They like to go to summer festivals. They like to meet up in communities. And I think that broadens the aperture of what ‘the outside’ can mean to different sets of consumers.”
It might seem nit-picky - outdoors vs. outside - but I get it. When every ad dollar needs to stretch as much as possible, you have to get the creative right. Every word. Every color. Every image. Even the little things make a big difference!
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