Martha Mitchell was once one of the most famous women in America. A conservative socialite from Pine Bluff, Ark., and wife of President Nixon’s attorney general, she was known for her sharp wit and even sharper tongue. Time put her on its cover, calling her a “figure of ridicule to liberals and a public embarrassment to many a traditionalist Republican.” She was the “Mouth of the South,” the second-most in-demand GOP speaker after Nixon himself.
But when she spoke the truth about Watergate, Nixon’s allies tried to destroy her. They labeled her crazy, mocked her in the press, and even drugged and held her against her will. Her name now defines the Martha Mitchell effect, which occurs when someone tells the truth but is dismissed as delusional because it sounds too outrageous to believe.
Democrats are quickly falling victim to the Martha Mitchell effect.
For years, we’ve been sounding the alarm on Donald Trump — his corruption, his attacks on democracy, his reckless rhetoric. Much of the country tunes us out. Why? Because when everything is an outrage, nothing is.
We’ve become Martha Mitchell, shouting into the void, convinced that if we just scream louder, voters will finally listen. Worse yet, we keep pulling the wrong fire alarm, so to speak. Instead of making the case for how we’ll actually improve people’s lives, we’ve positioned ourselves as defenders of democracy— a message that might resonate in Washington and in college faculty lounges, but not in the places where elections are decided. And that’s not on the voters — that’s on us.
We’re fighting the wrong battles in the wrong places
Take USAID, for example. When Trump gutted it, Democrats predictably rushed to defend it. And where did we hold our big press conference? Outside a government building in Washington, D.C., talking about the importance of foreign aid. We framed this as a threat to democracy.
Voters didn’t hear that. What they did see and hear was: Here are some more Washington insiders defending more Washington bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, where are the Republicans? Everywhere. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is inexplicably riding a horse at the border. Phil McGraw, former host of the daytime talk show “Dr. Phil,” is tagging along with ICE agents on immigration raids. And earlier this month, President Trump became the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl.
Where are the Democrats?
I’ll tell you where we should have been. As Rahm Emanuel recently said, we should have been in grocery stores across America this weekend protesting the rising costs of eggs (which have blown past record highs) and putting the blame where it belongs — on Trump.
Here’s the thing about pocketbook issues: Voters don’t need to be reminded of them. They experience them every single day.
My grandmother, who lives on Social Security, knows when the price of eggs goes up. My brother and his family of five know when gas prices inch up. My parents’ small business feels it every time health insurance premiums rise.
Voters don’t need us to point these things out, but we do need to ensure they know who is responsible — and what Democrats are going to do about it.
I have two Democrats need to learn from this. The first is to stop pretending the system isn’t broken. Voters already believe Washington is failing them. Pretending otherwise makes us look out of touch. Bill Clinton understood this in 1992, when he ran to “end welfare as we know it.” He positioned himself between Republicans who wanted to eliminate welfare and Democrats who wanted to protect a clearly broken system as it was.
Four years later, he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, shifting control of welfare to the states and ending six decades of federal government dominance. In doing so, he also preserved critical support for those in need. He didn’t just defend the status quo, he reformed it. And voters rewarded him.
If Democrats refuse to acknowledge that our government isn’t working the way it should, Republicans will keep making the case that we’re the problem — and voters will believe them.
The second lesson is to stop sounding the alarm and start offering solutions. The Martha Mitchell Effect isn’t just about being dismissed — it’s about being dismissed because of how you sound.
The message from that press conference outside USAID didn’t land in living rooms across America. Most voters didn’t even know what USAID was, and even those who did struggled to understand why its funding cuts were an existential crisis. Once again, we pulled the fire alarm when all Americans saw was a controlled burn.
When we constantly sound the alarm over crises that don’t affect people’s daily lives, we come across as disconnected at best and hysterical at worst. Eventually, voters stop listening. They don’t want a party that just yells about threats to democracy or reflexively defends a broken status quo. They want leaders who focus on the issues that matter to them — who understand their struggles and actually work to make their lives better.
Democrats need to get out of Washington and into the real world. If we don’t, we’ll become just another Martha Mitchell.
Brad Howard is a Democratic strategist who is the founder and president of Corcoran Street Group and who currently serves on the District of Columbia’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission. An Obama administration alumnus, he previously served as chief of staff to former Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), and as spokesperson for the House Blue Dog Coalition; U.S. Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.); and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
