ICE, ICE, Baby
Doomscroll 12.7.2025
This week’s edition of Doomscroll is sponsored by M2X.
Thank you, M2X! Check them out here, and keep scrolling for an interview with Lucas!
Hello and welcome to another edition of Doomcsroll - your favorite newsletter covering all things digital on the right! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. And just fwiw, while you’re busy Christmas party hopping, remember your friendly neighborhood Doomscroll author. Send those gossip tips, holiday swag items, and anything else that strikes your fancy to itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
🏆🏆 P.S. Don’t forget to recommend Doosmscroll. Top two referrers get a swag box curated by moi. You have until 12/14 to get your pals to sign up! Please and thank you!
Thanks to everyone who answered the last One Question about things you’re thankful for. You guys had some good responses and they made for some very pleasant reading. Hat’s off. This week’s One Question is all about looking ahead, and it’s this: What do you expect to be the biggest challenge digital teams will face in 2026? You can go big picture or get as granular as you would like. Maybe you think it will be finding new donors. Finding good talent. Fighting for budget (kill me). Or finding ways to compete for attention in a culture that is already over-saturated with entertainment and messaging. Or maybe it’s none of the above. No matter - I just want to hear what you think! Let your freak flags fly, as I like to say.
The above quote is from an unnamed House Republican, given to Politico earlier this week after the special election in Tennessee. I chose it for a few reasons - mostly because I know a lot of us are feeling anxious about the Midterms. But I also know, from my conversations with many of you, that there is some cautious optimism floating around. This quote captures both beautifully (IMO). Is 2026 gonna be a bitch? Yes. Does it need to be a bloodbath for the GOP? Absolutely not. If we play our cards right - and campaign well - we will, a year from now, hopefully be thinking that IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH WORSE. Just a thought.
—Gut check: a real banger of a text
I’m gonna start things off this week with a real banger. Check out this text I got from Georgia senate candidate Mike Collins:
I’ll be honest: I was kind of ready to skewer Collins and his team over this. Are we still tying to raise money off of ginning up outrage over conspiracies that NO WAY seriously happened!?!? And then I googled “Tulsi Gabbard, illegal c-sections, drug cartels” and oh em gee. This is a real story and it’s insane. And why had I never heard about it until Mike Collins sent me a fundraising text?! Anyway, that’s kind of beside the point. This is a good text and a good tactic. Finding ways to remind people subtly or un-subtly that a) the establishment is not on their side, b) the media is never giving them the full picture, c) there is evil in this world that needs to be stopped by good guys - is a combo that *should* consistently deliver. I like it. More of this, less DOGE checks. One last point: Seeing them rely on Tulsi Gabbard’s name in the text and on the donate page is interesting. It’s almost like using her as a surrogate without using her as a surrogate, know what I mean? I know this is nothing new, but if you want to test how one of Trump’s cabinet members does in the online fundraising arena, this is a good way to do it.
—Shotes Fired in Florida
Ok, ya’ll. I know there are a LOT of opinions in Florida about James Fishback and his candidacy for governor. I’m not looking to take a side on any of them. I JUST want to discuss his announcement video. When I see anyone put out a 3-minute video that’s mainly just them speaking directly to camera, I’m impressed. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. He’s clear about why he’s running and what he wants to accomplish. Even if there are some eyebrow raising moments (going after Byron Donalds by name, saying he won’t apologize for the state’s past while the camera pans over a Confederate soldier’s gravestone -wow), this is a guy who knows who he is and why he’s running. Can’t say that about every candidate these days. And honestly - this isn’t hard to do. And it shouldn’t be that expensive either. To be honest, I don’t know why every candidate doesn’t film something like this. You have to introduce yourself. You have to tell you story. You have to explain what you believe and connect with voters. If you can’t do that, why are you running again? Love or hate James Fishback…this is a good start to what will surely be an interesting campaign.
P.S. His website is way too bare bones. Seriously.
—Ugly in Kentucky
This is quite the fundraising email from Nate Morris, who’s running against Rep. Andy Barr to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate. I get that there are varying degrees to which Republicans are for or against any kind of immigration these days…and I get pointing to real-world tragedies as examples of what can happen when you elect the wrong kind of people. But this issue specially (the Afghan refugee program) seems so nuanced, no? But then again I’m sure voters won’t care - even if at the time of Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, many MANY Republicans were saying we had an obligation to assist Afghan refugees. But as this unnamed Republican strategist said, “Hey, if I’m Nate Morris, I’m using it.” Fair enough, I guess.
Ok. I gotta give this week’s merch shout-out to the NRSC for A) their ugly primary Christmas sweaters, and B) their ICE pint glass. mean….look at these things:
They even made some nifty (what I assume are AI-generated) videos to promote the things. Superb. My only quibble is with the “mug” text. That’s no mug, friends! Ice, ice, baby.
🤳 Meta shared some useful tips for reels. Check them out here.
🧐 Per Reuters - Sens. Blumenthal and Hawley are calling for a probe into Meta scam ads.
John Trobough is running for Congress in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District
Co/Efficient released a new poll in the Texas Senate race. Has Cornyn and Paxton basically tied with Wesley Hunt coming in third.
Bernadette Smith has decided to take on Mike Rogers in the Michigan senate primary
Georgia State Sen. Colton Moore has expressed a “strong interest” in running for MTG’s seat
Georgia activist Jim Tully IS running for the seat
Businessman Anthony Constantino is running for Elise Stefanik’s seat in New York
The “ShamWow guy” is running for Congress in Texas
Minneapolis attorney Chris Madel is running for governor in Minnesota
Aaron Guckian is running for governor in Rhode Island
NewsMax’s Betsy McCaughey might run for governor in Connecticut…
Tano Tijerina is hoping to flip Henry Cuellar’s seat in Texas
Alright guys, whether or not you’ve used the M2X platform yet, you’re in for a treat. Lucas is one of the head honchos over at M2X, he’s as smart as they come, and I’m thrilled he took the time to answer some questions for us!
First off, who are you and what do you do?
My name is Lucas and I run the day to day at M2X.
I come from a software engineering and data-science background where I spent years building analytics systems in high-pressure environments. Places where a single missed insight or a delayed report could shift outcomes worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That experience gave me a front-row seat to how bad most reporting tools out there are.
Campaigns and political operatives live in the same do-or-die world. The tools I saw everyone using were either built for the corporate world or required a PhD to run a simple report. So I helped build M2X specifically for political teams. The goal was to create a fast and flexible platform that lets data teams, digital agencies, and committees turn raw data into winning decisions in minutes instead of days.
For those unfamiliar, briefly explain what M2X is and what it does!
Agencies and campaigns generate a ton of data from their digital, marketing, and fundraising operations. M2X is a tool to manage all of that data and turn it into valuable insights. We offer a couple core services that organizations of all sizes can leverage:
Customizable real time dashboards
List Segmentation Tools
Predictive Modeling
Access to a team of data engineers
Ok, can you explain a little more about what makes M2X different from other reporting platforms?
Two things. One, is it’s totally hands off. M2X is built entirely for the end user. You tell us what you want and we go and build it.
Two is that all our clients are political. We understand this market so you don’t have to explain what Bill-Pay is or slates or anything else that won’t make sense to a generic platform.
One of the features that jumped out at me the most was the predictive modeling ability. How should campaigns or agencies be using that to fine tune their fundraising programs?
Our first generation of models were built to predict donor behavior allowing you to work smarter and not harder. These models allow you to do things like identify who is going to give and when. They help you create custom audiences by pulling donor sentiments and even tell you how much to ask for from each donor. For years people have been doing this based on their gut, M2X lets you make these decisions based on the data - which ultimately is going to reduce costs, save time, and raise more.
I love seeing new products like this on the right that help round out our tech stack. What’s the future look like for M2X? Anything coming down the pipeline that you can share?
2026 is going to be massive for us on the modeling side. We’ve already shipped four production models that the RNC and a handful of committees are actively using:
High-Value Donor propensity
Next Donation Amount + Date forecasting
Donor Churn prediction
Sentiment Analysis on every reply and inbound message
Over the next 6–12 months we’re rolling out a whole new suite of donor models. The one I’m most excited about right now is where we’re taking the sentiment model. We’re expanding it from pure classification into full generative mode. Instead of just telling you the donor is angry, grateful, or on the fence, our system will instantly draft a perfect personalized reply for that exact donor, referencing their past giving history and the issue they just wrote about. This is already in early testing.
Then in Q1 you’ll get all of this (plus the new models) on the mobile app we’re launching. Real-time scores, alerts, and now AI-generated donor replies in your pocket. Additionally the app will have natural-language querying. This means you can type or talk like you would to a data analyst: “How many doors did we knock in CD-07 last weekend compared to the benchmark?” or “What’s our current ROI on Meta prospecting by state?” and get the answer instantly.
Thanks so much, Lucas!
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
From the other side of the aisle:
The Washington Post recently did a deep dive into how the Democrats are building their own “digital media army.” It really is worth reading, if for no other reason than to get a taste for the kind of insanely-glowing coverage we can expect from the media the cycle over James Talarico in Texas. Let’s call him the Democrats’ 2026 Golden Boy. But regardless…if you’re launching a campaign and NOT reaching out to center-right content creators, you need to rethink things. That’s all.
From the other side of the tracks:
Couple things this week. First off: Uber released its first ever holiday ad, and I’m not crying YOU’RE crying. Oh the power of storytelling in advertising!
Also: Marketing Dive took a look at RC Cola’s comeback strategy, and I gotta say - it pleases me very much to see this. As someone who grew up on RC Cola (facts), I’d love to see this brand get some renewed love in the 21st century. Yes, they’re looking to capitalize on nostalgia (who isn’t these days), but also just being the unfussy option in a sea of complicated. Here’s more:
The campaign’s tagline — “Not a soft drink. Just a damn good cola,” — speaks to how the brand is positioning itself as an unfussy, affordable soda in a sea of functional options.
“We think that right now [we] can really stand out as the soda category has become dominated by a bunch of messaging around wellness and also happiness and crowd pleasing: wanting to be great for everyone,” Erica Hollington, director of brand marketing for Keurig Dr Pepper’s emerging brands, said in an interview.
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