One of Twitter’s more lucid and pragmatic tweeters, @SimonWDC delivered two extraordinarily thought provoking questions in the last 24 hours: how do we Democrats deal with President Biden’s declining numbers despite doing just about everything right and what words best describe today’s @GOP?

It seems September is our time to have deep thoughts about what to do as a party. Here are two of mine. We have to get out of letting our expressions of dismay at how awful Republicans are dominate our emotional spectrum. There is a place for that but it is overwhelming us as a party and that isn’t good. We need to express our joy and celebrate all the good things we do. It feels good to be a Democrat! We’re happy! We need to show that! Second, we are losing on propaganda. Misinformation is our bigger problem. We must get in front of it with a much more robust and assertive communications campaign. Jen Psaaki is great, but she isn’t enough. We need coordinated, positive, informative messaging EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME.

That’s it. Maybe a little early in the day and too soon after vacation, but I saw Simon Rosenberg’s tweets and writing and they had a tone I haven’t seen before. He’s right that we need some massive shifting, so I thought about it. It isn’t right that we aren’t doing better in the polls. And it strikes me that the best counterpoint to the depths to which the once honorable opposition has sunk is to be loud and proud of being honorable in response. We need those two things and we need them fast.

Written by Left of Center Co-founder Mara Dolan