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Hi, I’m Jiggy Geronimo, a progressive narrative strategist, consultant, and, most recently, a budding content creator 🫣. You might know me from one of those traumatizing webinars during the Count Every Vote campaign in 2020 or my time as Executive Director of the Research Collaborative. Now I spend my time as a freelance progressive comms consultant focused on how to source, curate, and deliver content at scale to defeat fascism.
But true to form, I’m thinking a lot about what happens after ballots are cast this November. When the biggest sore loser to walk this earth sees that MAGA is in for a shellacking in the midterms, we know what he will do. He will lie, lash out, and try to cheat. And we need to start planning now for how to stop him.
More on that below, but first…
Digital ad spending, by the numbers:
FWIW, U.S. political advertisers spent around $15.76 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
The DNC takes the top spot on Meta this week, just as Michigan’s Democratic primary wraps up (bless) and the political world collectively turns its attention to November. Progressive physician Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary, defeating Haley Stevens despite more than $60 million in outside spending — including a record $30 million from AIPAC’s election arm. He’ll now face Republican Mike Rogers in a race that could decide control of the Senate.
The rest of the chart is mostly the usual suspects, with the exception of the K.A. Whitmore Information Network. The group barely seems to exist online, and their ads have been pulled down by Meta for not complying with advertisement standards. Cracking the top ten only to flame out almost instantly is… an interesting strategy (?) to say the least.
Meanwhile, political advertisers spent around $16.9 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
The AIPAC-aligned United Democracy Project slots in at #3 after pouring nearly $800,000 into a campaign that ultimately came up short (sorry, Haley Stevens). Meanwhile, SLF PAC, the Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund, announced a $17 million opening ad buy for Michael Whatley in North Carolina. Former Dem Gov. Roy Cooper currently leads in the polls, so it’s safe to predict that we’ll be seeing SLF consistently on the charts from here on out.
…and lastly, on Snapchat, there was a glitch this week, so we don’t have the total YTD, but here’s the data for the top 10 spenders:
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Preparing for election sabotage and enforcing our win
If you close your eyes and transport yourself back to November 3, 2020, here’s what you might remember: the elevation of your heart rate as the early vote counts showed Trump ahead, panicked texts from friends asking if we were going to lose, and the shock of watching Trump confidently declare his victory in the middle of the night with millions of ballots still left to count.
The next two months brought a stop at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, attempts to pressure Michigan GOP leaders to overturn the election, a demand that Georgia’s Secretary of State find Trump 11,000 votes, and a deadly assault on our nation’s Capitol. But in the end, lawmakers certified Joe Biden’s win, he was sworn into office in January 2021, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
Don’t hate me for saying this, but I think 2026 is going to make the 2020 election look like child’s play 😬. It’s not enough to just win anymore. We have to win by margins that are too big to rig and prepare the American public to defend and enforce the outcome of our elections en masse.
The bad news: election sabotage is well underway
In 2020, the election sabotage really started on Election Day. This time around, it started on Inauguration Day. The Trump regime has already seized ballots from Fulton and Maricopa counties, launched investigations into election workers in several swing states, demanded voter rolls from states across the country while threatening to withhold funding from those that do not comply, tried to direct the USPS not to deliver mail ballots from counties that resist his orders, greenlit racial gerrymandering to eliminate Black districts in the South, and attempted (but failed) to require Americans to show a birth certificate or passport to vote.
The good news: we are winning
These are not the actions of a winner – they are the desperate actions of someone who knows they can’t win a fair fight. He’s doing these things because he knows he’s losing.
The structural fact that states control our elections is still standing between our shaky democracy and an autocrat dead set on controlling the outcome. Trump may be trying to nationalize the elections, but the Constitution clearly says elections are up to the states. And we will still count every vote. Our drumbeat from the aftermath of the 2020 election hasn’t changed and will apply come November this year too: Every ballot must be counted, period, no matter how long it takes or how loudly Trump and MAGA lie about the results.
In 2020, America hadn’t experienced a contested presidential election or insurrection in recent memory. We’re veterans now. Expectations for election sabotage are now baked into our plans and we now know that the midterm election isn’t truly over until the new Congress is seated on January 3, 2027. At the same time, six years have passed (though it might feel more like 20) and MAGA has refined their strategy, so it’s not enough to just run the exact same playbook.
The outcome we’re looking for is action, not trust.
In 2020, part of what got us through was a baseline assumption that the system would hold — that courts, secretaries of state, and election officials would do their jobs regardless of party. MAGA has spent the last six years relentlessly trying to take over control of elections and install election traitors in those very same offices. Fortunately, most election officials can still be trusted to do the right thing. We can and should remind people that election workers are our neighbors and that there are checks and balances in our election system. But we’re not trying to restore faith that the system will enforce itself. We’re trying to build a country full of people who understand that we are the enforcement mechanism. We need people ready to act when something happens — not people waiting patiently for institutions to save us.
That means shifting the entire emotional posture of this fight. We don’t build the people power necessary to enforce the results of this election through blind trust in the system. We build it through defiant energy and with millions of people who understand that protecting a free and democratic result is their responsibility, not someone else’s.
Voting is a tool and an act of defiance
Let’s be real, fam, the vibes are kind of bad. They want to overwhelm us, make us feel defeated, and silence us into submission. They’re doing everything they can to take away our votes and control the outcome. But telling people, “This is the most important election of our lifetimes” and that voting is the magic bullet isn’t the answer. Our big middle finger is to vote anyway, in the face of it all, as an act of defiance. And not only to vote, but to vote by margins that are so overwhelming that even the desperate cheeto can’t rig the outcome. That’s the vibe shift we need: from fatigue to determined defiance. Remember, Hungary ousted Orbán through an election with 80% voter turnout. Luckily for us, hearing about Trump’s desperate efforts to rig the midterms is actually motivating to most Americans, so there’s no need to shy away from talking about it.
What we need to do between now and Election Day
There are four things we need to do now – and I mean now, not in October.
Inoculate against the lies. We already know what he’ll say: some new iteration of the Big Lie. The goal isn’t to repeat the lie in order to debunk it. It’s to expose the motivation behind it (his desperation to hold onto power). If people have already internalized that by November, they’ll be primed to reject his lies.
Build social proof. People do things when they see other people doing things. Part of our job is making it visible, everywhere, that huge numbers of Americans across this country are showing up, voting, and refusing to accept a rigged election — through local organizing and mass distribution of content online.
Prime people for action. This is different from asking people to simply vote and wait for the outcome. We need people mentally and emotionally ready to do something concrete the moment it’s needed: show up to a rally, flood a county elections commission meeting, call their state legislator, join a coordinated action, or even, if it comes to it, shut the country down. We have to build that readiness ahead of time by explaining what to expect and preparing them for the actions we will need to take.
Build our coordination. Sure, we can build coordination on the fly (we did it in 2020), but it will be far more effective if we prepare now. Our organizations, coalitions, and communications networks will need to move quickly in November and December. The infrastructure for that coordination needs to come together now.
The core narrative
Here’s the story we need to be telling, over and over, between now and Election Day:
Trump and MAGA are losing and they’re desperate. Seizing ballots, demanding voter rolls, and postponing elections are not the actions of a winner — they’re the desperations of a loser. He’s trying to control the outcome of the midterms because it’s the only way he gets to hold onto power and keep enriching himself and his billionaire friends. They can try all they want, but we’re turning out in massive numbers and they can’t stop us.
Every time there’s election news, we just return to this drumbeat. We already have proof that this works. A few weeks ago, Trump delivered a primetime Big Lie address falsely claiming foreign interference in the 2020 election that he lost. Major news outlets didn’t even air it. We analyzed social media data and found that nearly 60% of content from left-leaning accounts delivered our inoculation messaging. We mocked Trump, named his intentions for meddling in 2026, and reminded audiences that he is full of hot air. As a result, what he hoped would be a bombshell moment turned out to be the biggest nothingburger ever.
It’s our job to make his efforts in November fall just as flat. And we do that by actively priming Americans right now to reject the lies that are coming and to be ready to enforce the results once they’re in. Because they can try all they want, but they can’t stop us.
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I look forward to every single FWIW and Jiggy Geronimo's discussion of the need for action and voting as an act of defiance is right on!
Too big to rig must be the battle cry! But unfortunately, only a small % of voters in a small number of districts will have the power to make it happen - and too many of them don't know it! We've built a tool to help people see quickly and easily just how powerful their vote is. Pass it on: U26.vote