The Stone Soup Initiative
Values, Service, Victory: Rediscovering the Soul of the Democratic Party
A decade ago, Democrats completed a remarkable shift from 2004's political wilderness to filibuster-proof majorities in Congress and control of the White House, but then we allowed the Tea Party, our own hubris, and ultimately Donald Trump to change who we are as Democrats.
It’s time to return to what we know works and what America desperately needs: A Democratic party that seeks to represent all of America, listens instead of lectures, and leads through shared values and service.
We know how to win because we’ve done it before. And we have much better tools now than we had a decade ago when Democrats were in a similar position after the 2004 election.
Eleison developed and led the faith outreach and communications programs for all the major statewide races in 2006 and was a lead on “Red-to-Blue” in 2008. We’ve spent the last decade growing our data and understanding of voters based on what they value, during a time when Democrats increasingly focused on defining and understanding voters primarily by the demography of how they were born. We now have a list of 110 million values voters with over a decade of values-based behavioral tags built from responses of those voters to hundreds of advocacy, service, and political campaigns we've engaged them with.
We believe that a return the better angels of who we are as Democrats (and better tactics to win) begins at the local level. So we're using our list and access to our system to launch our Stone Soup Initiative for down-ballot races. Any state-level campaign willing to commit to tithe volunteer hours to service to their community can participate. And all participants will get free access to our email systems, lists, and values data. Already, we've had our first partner contribute another ingredient to the Stone Soup Initiative with an offer to provide campaigns that commit to tithe at-cost digital advertising for all ads based on values models built from the email program.
