The Mass Dems Listening Tour Report: How Much Listening Was There?

In the beginning of the year, the Massachusetts Democratic Party conducted a “listening tour,” and by “listening tour,” I mean they held nine Zoom meetings (tour the Commonwealth without leaving your couch!).

The series of listening sessions were designed to get feedback from the party about the priorities, concerns, etc., of Democratic voters and activists. That resulted in a report released last week.

Let’s unpack the report.

The Listening Tour at a Glance

Listening Tour sessions were held on weeknights through January and February of 2025.

All sessions were held on Zoom to ensure individuals who would not be able to travel to in-person sessions were still able to have their voices heard. Sessions lasted 1.5–2 hours, depending on the number of attendees and individuals interested in speaking. To ensure all speakers had equal time, each speaker was given two minutes to speak and could track their time through Zoom’s timer function.

Let’s be clear: these were not held on Zoom to ensure that people who could not travel in person could make their voices heard. That is the case for making events hybrid, not for eliminating any in-person component. The Democratic State Committee (on which I served for four years) was notoriously terrible at hosting meetings in transit-accessible locations, but that doesn’t mean that no such places exist. The party chair was simply not interested in being present in communities or in offering an opportunity for party activists to connect and network: community-building does not occur on a Zoom event where you have limited speaking time and no engagement with the others in the room beyond texting.

Now to the summary of what they heard:

Involvement and collaboration with local Democratic groups, especially in Central and Western Massachusetts and Bristol and Plymouth counties.

*Participants were concerned about the increasing influence of Republicans in the state’s rural areas and asked that MassDems focus more energy on uplifting candidates and committees in those areas.

*Participants hoped that this increased energy would include the hosting of more MassDems events outside of Boston and in Central/Western Massachusetts.

*Participants think the party should take an active role in aiding communities without DTCs to form one. (In this report, “DTC” or “local committee” refers to Democratic Town, City and Committees alike.)

It is genuinely unclear to me what the second bullet point even means. The state party convention is held in Worcester, Lowell, or Springfield, and the party does not hold many events other than fundraisers. The Massachusetts Democratic Party is not *not present* in Central and Western Mass because it is too busy holding events in Boston; it is not present anywhere.

The other two points — engaging more in rural areas and forming DTCs in areas without them — are both good. There are too many communities without functioning committees: whether they exist and do nothing or do not exist at all (the former is thornier to address).

Concern over Democratic politicians’ stances on the war in Gaza.

*Participants worried that Democratic politicians’ conflicting views on the war in Gaza may have contributed to the outcome of the 2024 election and may be alienating either Arab-American or Jewish voters.

Many people in the listening sessions criticized former President Joe Biden’s unyielding support for the Israeli government’s destruction and starvation of Gaza as a violation of fundamental progressive values (and in mine, for MA-07, such activists also praised Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley for boldness and moral clarity). This bullet point — framing the problem as merely “conflicting views” — is written in a glib fashion that does a disservice to those points.

Attendees expressed their support for transparency at all levels of government.

This, similarly, is glib to the point of misrepresentation. People complained about the lack of transparency in the Massachusetts Legislature, which has the second largest Democratic supermajority in the country. They were not talking about the federal government or their local governments (we have expansive open meeting laws for local governments). Chair Steve Kerrigan is redirecting focus from the State House.

Improvement in messaging and focus on policies that are popular with the base.

*Participants told us they wanted the party’s messaging to reflect issues from across the state and to be specifically tailored to the working-class people who make up the majority of our state and our party.

*Great focus was put on featuring economic themes in MassDems messaging.

*Some participants urged caution with regard to messaging to conservative voters, and hoped to avoid negativity to hopefully draw these voters to vote Democrat; others wanted the party to hit back hard on harmful Republican policies.

Missing here is acknowledgement that many of the individuals speaking to the first two bullet points were calling for the Party to actually support its own platform. The Massachusetts Democratic Party has arguably the most progressive party platform in the country (I was on the platform committee in 2021 and take credit for a few of the planks in it), but none of our elected officials (statewide or state legislative) give it any regard when it comes to policymaking. Indeed, many of them run afoul of it on a daily basis, which questions what the party stands for.

Protecting marginalized groups

*Participants expressed concern for the rights of many marginalized groups, including immigrants, LGBTQIA+ folks, BIPOC and women, and urged the party to stand up for those groups whenever possible.

Say it louder for those in the back.

Support for Democratic candidates

*Participants urged support for Democratic candidates across the Commonwealth, including in traditionally red or purple areas.

If the party has one job, it’s to support its own candidates, so this should go without saying.

So, some of those “takeaways” were misrepresented, but what was left out? Not present at all were repeated points about the fact that the Massachusetts Democratic Party should have a full-time chair (not a part-time one receiving a full-time salary, busy with another full-time job) and that the party is consultant-heavy. Indeed, the party pays some of its “strategic advisor” consultants more money than it pays its staffers, a direct contradiction of basic professed values from the Party. In other words, things that challenged party structure itself were left out.

Moreover, the report’s lack of attention on the national situation was jarring. There was little recognition of the urgency of all of our officeholders doing more beyond hand-waving about “navigat[ing] the challenges and uncertainties of this new administration together” and stock lines about Democrats fighting for the party’s values (when our elected leaders so often fail on that front).