One of the first big lessons I learned in my labor relations work, particularly during labor strikes and organizing defense, was that labor unions are communications organizations, mostly. Sure, they bargain on behalf of the rank and file, and their leaders all too often wet their own beaks with union dues money, but their true power resides in their ability to mobilize a targeted workforce.
This puts employers at a decided disadvantage, because a package delivery company is not, by design, a communications organization. It’s a logistics and delivery organization. A school district is an educational organization, but the teachers’ union is a communications organization. A hospital is a healthcare organization, but a nurses’ union is a communications organization.
So, when it’s time to deal with that collective bargaining agreement that’s about to expire, or when it’s necessary to deal with a workforce that’s ripe for union organizing, employers that are not built primarily to be communications organizations now have to contend with a professional communications organization that exists to mobilize the workforce against them. Unions are great at framing themselves as the victims of “greedy corporations” and “fat cats.” That’s projection.
If you really want to see greed, follow a union boss around for 24 hours. Growing up where I grew up, you get to know unions and union people.
Not that long ago, I was hanging out at an old friend’s neighborhood sports bar. It’s one of those unpretentious places that are a hub for all kinds of people at all levels in town. I once sat at the bar in that place watching the Pitt game between the Allegheny County controller (another old friend) and a Common Pleas judge with whom I had served on the St. Patrick’s Day Parade committee. No shortage of amiable — if not politically misguided — Democrats in this place.
On this more recent visit, I met a former union boss who stops in from time to time, far more often than I do, which is occasionally. He told me stories of what it was like before and after he went to jail for “a little of this, a little of that.”
He definitely liked his life better before jail, which was better than he deserved. For me, the takeaway was as it says in the Book of Godfather, “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.”
Make no mistake, the business of organized labor is to communicate in order to mobilize membership and get what it wants. Want higher wages? Get members on board with a strike. Want new work rules? Organize a protest. Want to unionize a non-union workforce? Conduct a discreet, then aggressive, campaign to smear the employer and frame the environment as toxic, and explain why, all of a sudden, it’s necessary for this group of blue-haired baristas to start paying union dues.
While the business objectives fall within “labor,” outside of the mediation rooms, the courtrooms and negotiating rooms, the tactics are largely communications ones. And the truth is, without the ability to mobilize membership through effective communication and persuasion, union reps don’t have as much power when they go to bargain for a new contract, or when they go into those legal proceedings.
Labor unions have long been the anchor movement for the left. They’ve been the R&D laboratory for so many of the tactics we see the left employ to this day. Labor’s “corporate campaign” strategy is one example.
In a corporate campaign, or “top-down campaign,” the union makes the dispute personal for the leaders it’s trying to influence and intimidate. Instead of just relying on picketers in front of a steel plant’s gates, for example, it will send some of its most radical demonstrators to the homes of the company’s CEO and other leaders. This is pure intimidation.
The left used the corporate campaign tactic to intimidate U.S. Supreme Court justices in 2021 when leftists organized a protest outside of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home in Chevy Chase, Md. A group called ShutDownDC organized the protest over an abortion case.
On May 2, 2022, we saw the leak of SCOTUS’s Dobbs opinion while it was still in draft form. Immediately after that, almost on cue, the left used the same tactic once again outside of Kavanaugh’s home and that of Chief Justice John Roberts. They framed the protest as a “candlelight vigil,” but it was a thinly veiled way to send a message of intimidation to the justices.
A few days later, on May 9, ShutDownDC/Ruth Sent Us gathered 100 leftist nut jobs and set up camp outside of Justice Samuel Alito’s Virginia home. Two days after that, smaller groups visited the homes of Justices Kavanaugh, Roberts, Alito and others, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett. On May 14, the theater kids in the group donned their Handmaid’s Tale costumes for the occasion, never once sensing the irony that, while their Handmaid’s Tale narrative to demonize conservatives is a fiction, the left’s embrace of hijabs is real.
The 2022 SCOTUS intimidation campaign continued through May and June of that year, peaking at Justice Clarence Thomas’s home on June 24-25, where leftists chanted “No privacy for us, no peace for you” outside Thomas’s private residence.
The left has a massive and sophisticated communications**-and-**command-and-control infrastructure that the right does not. It consists of labor unions, including teachers’ unions; academia; the legacy media; NGO-backed groups funded by laundered taxpayer money; Hollywood; and most of the big social media platforms. All are structured for the primary purpose of communicating to the masses, and they are controlled by the left.
In 2026, we can add some new assets to this longstanding communications infrastructure, including America’s network of mosques, Antifa, Black Lives Matter (BLM), MoveOn, ActBlue, and a few others.
America vote like your life and your country depends on it, because it does Translated from Arabic this reads “The candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Abbas Huss at Friday prayer” Abdul El-Sayed is a Trojan horse for the Islamic Takeover of America. He is as this mosque for votes which is why the caption is worded “The candidate Abdul El-Sayed” We have to stop this
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) October 31, 2026
This is what Republicans are up against when they now run for any office from school board up to the White House.
Of course, President Donald Trump and the Republicans could not have won in 2024 the way they did without some infrastructure of their own, but compared to what the Democrats have long had in place, they’re relatively new to the game.
Trump had money and access to money. He had his own media clout and natural talent, and even in a hostile media environment, he was always able to control it through power of personality. In 2024, he had Laura Trump placed well at the Republican National Committee (RNC), which was “yuge.”
The Republicans have long had the support of the military, farmers, law enforcement, and a sizable chunk of Christian churches. But while these are critical segments of the Republican base, they are not singular, cohesive communications/political organizations in themselves. That’s why the left has had an advantage in this respect.
Charlie Kirk knew this
One person who saw all of this and took it upon himself to change it was the late Charlie Kirk. What he did through the creation of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) was visionary and critical to the future of the conservative movement, and to getting Republicans elected going forward.
There is no doubt that the public murder of Kirk had a massive and direct impact on the 2026 midterms. From the mercenary reactions of Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly, to the lack of Kirk’s charismatic presence, everything changed on the right.
Credit to Erika Kirk and the team at TPUSA for keeping it together in spite of all of the obvious headwinds they would have faced anyway with the loss of Charlie. But even more kudos to them for weathering the manufactured storm thrown at them by some whom we had thought were “the good guys.”
Looking ahead to 2028, conservatism will need TPUSA like never before, because of the infrastructure it brings, because of its existing team, and because it will be a critical platform to grow in influence in ways that, up until his death, only Charlie Kirk could have dreamed.
To be sure, conservatism will need strong, fresh new voices who become the keepers of the conservative flame. In professional sports, you build winning franchises around some initial key players. Conservatism can and should build around Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), and actively seek to attract more like him.
As an aside, I’m deliberately avoiding naming presidential contenders for 2028 for two reasons: first, it’s too early to start playing favorites; and second, if Republicans are playing the long game, they can’t just focus on who the next presidential candidate will be and build only around that.
The point is, I’m not saying Gill should be president someday. What I am saying is that he provides the prototype for the types of people we want to put up against the James Talaricos and the Abdul El-Sayeds of the world.
MAGA isn’t going away if it’s given proper reason to stay united. America First is a movement.
Musk v. Soros
If handled right, Elon Musk may be the right’s answer to George Soros. Musk’s X platform, though only one tech platform among many, and not the largest, may be the most influential. It’s still the primary place for free speech.
Veterans’ organizations are still solidly on the right, and they do provide existing communications and mobilization infrastructure.
Republicans know this, of course, and have tapped it all in their campaigns for decades. What was unusual in Trump’s 2024 campaign is how he was able to invade some historically Democrat voting blocs. He peeled off large segments of demographic groups that included black men, Hispanics, the working class, and married women with kids. Working with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., he was able to create “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA).
The Republicans would do well to revisit all of this as a step toward helping to create more formalized stand-alone political/communications organizations in each of these areas. Sometimes, this could mean creating organizations from scratch. Other times, it could mean identifying existing organizations that could serve as foundations for the building of much more ambitious groups. I’m not talking about creating front groups, mind you. I’m talking about the establishment of viable, popular, and growing entities that power conservatism regardless of who is in power in the Republican Party or in Washington.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) was one such group for many years before it ran into some issues of its own in 2021.
By November 2027, Republicans will need to have enough of this sort of communications infrastructure in place to do a trial run of what it will need to do in 2028. They will need to tighten up the infrastructure they can control and build it out so that every Republican running in local elections next year knows that he or she is part of something larger, and that it all has momentum.
We need an attack machine
Parallel to all of this, Republicans will need an attack infrastructure. Today’s politics have moved well past the notion that you can save your attacks on your opponents for the final 30 days before Election Day. The Democrats have demonstrated that the attack must be waged 24/7, 365 days a year, long before an election.
Republicans need well-funded, ongoing attack machines that focus on who on the Democratic side stands a fighting chance of rising into party leadership. They should be treating Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) each as though he is already the party’s nominee. Perhaps none of these guys makes it through the primary season. It doesn’t matter. Now is the time for Republicans to go on the attack and to attack everything that moves. In the process, they will sharpen strategies and tactics of their own. They will identify the issues that are resonating with voters through the process itself, not just through detached polling.
Related: We Are Not Going Back
Democrats need to be put on their heels. They need to be put on the defensive. Republicans need to become aggressive.
It looks like we’re stuck with Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) in the Senate. That’s too bad. It just places more of the burden on Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who will be the Republicans’ congressional leader, to become much more dominant as the voice of the opposition in Washington. This can’t all be placed on Trump from this point forward.
MAGA, America First and the RNC need to come together quickly to finalize a blueprint for the communications infrastructure necessary to sustain relentless attacks on the legacy infrastructure the Democrats already have in place.
There is one advantage that Republicans have that the Democrats do not. We’re on the side of the truth, not lies. We’re on the side of peace, not violence. We’re on the side of the people, not the government. We’re on the side of Americans, not foreigners.
This is powerful. The truth is powerful, so powerful that it’s made Republicans complacent and sometimes lazy in recent years on the tactical front. We’ve taken too much for granted. We can’t do this anymore. It’s time for the right to leverage what we have, and to quickly build what we need, to win at the local level in 2027 and at the federal level in 2028.
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