Democrats hoping to win back the House need to get a Paramount+ subscription, and fast. If seeing is believing, then watching every episode of Yellowstone would help candidates realize that family is still the most important thing for most Americans.

Sure, there are more popular shows than Yellowstone, but those shows—like policies on the far left and far right—attract specific and narrow audiences. The nationwide appeal of Yellowstone stands out in a media climate in which tailoring content to a devoted and demographically narrow group is the easy way to success. What’s harder is holding a mirror up to Americans and giving them a new perspective on the challenges right in front of them. But that’s what Americans need and deserve from their leaders, and it’s what they get from Paramount’s hit show.

Shows like Succession depend on New Yorkers and San Franciscans for their audience. Viewers in those cities apparently can stomach watching unlikable characters trade their humanity for influence. But you can find fans of John Dutton, the patriarch of the family at the center of Yellowstone, in every city in America. The show’s fourth season pulled in an average of 10.4 million viewers per episode. The highest proportion of Yellowstone viewers might be in Montana and Wyoming, but you’ll also find fans across the Midwest, deep in the South, and in small and large towns across the U.S.

A simple attribute makes the show compelling to many Americans: It’s about a family trying to stay together. Economic, political, and cultural changes seem to come out of nowhere to challenge the Dutton family’s cohesion. In some cases, those changes seem to cause irreparable damage. But the Duttons rarely take the easy route and let the damage become permanent. Instead, they deal with the imperfections of one another. The characters can be so flawed and their wounds so deep that their attempts to mend relationships are hard to watch.

Americans can sympathize. They’ve spent the past two years trying to understand Covid and vaccination, negotiate childcare responsibilities, and navigate a turbulent economy. They’re looking for leaders that recognize the importance of family and the value of stability. Candidates and writers alike should save stories of excessive wealth, new technology, teenage love triangles, and navel-gazing for the folks lucky enough not to have real problems. The more compelling message—and the harder message to convey—is one that addresses daily struggles head on. The popularity of Yellowstone, as well as the success of candidates willing to tackle tangible concerns, makes it clear that Americans from coast to coast are receptive to reality-based messages.

Shows like the aforementioned Succession and Squid Game transport viewers to a world they’ll never experience. That’s how a lot of Americans feel when candidates talk about equity instead of inflation, climate change instead of jobs, and social infrastructure instead of potholes. Those topics, however important they may be, are untethered to the here and now.

Sure, Squid Game had some relatable aspects—a father trying to provide for his daughter, for example—but folks watched because it was so unlike real life. That fact made it fun to discuss at happy hours, but, like a discussion about the difference between equity and equality, such conversations had no real substance. It was a distraction that let people step away from their problems and spend hours discussing the meaning of each episode.

In a similar way, folks watch Succession to see individuals so different from themselves that they become objects of fascination. It’s captivating to follow siblings as they debate who will be the next CEO of the family’s international business, but it’s far from relatable. And while it’s enthralling to think of a world in which posturing is more important than actually working, that’s not how Americans pay rent. Their distance from reality is what makes shows like these easy to watch.

It is similarly easy to discuss on Twitter topics that have no real impact on daily lives of most Americans, but those discussions avoid grappling with the harder topics. A wide swath of Americans want shows and leaders willing to get into the weeds with them. How are they going to deal with their children’s substance abuse? What are they going to do about their siblings’ recent struggles with the law? When are they going to feel like they’re actually economically secure?

Yellowstone explores “the forgotten chapters of the American experience”—at least that’s how the show’s co-creator, Taylor Sheridan, thinks about it. Democrats and Republicans alike would do well to read those chapters. The daily experience of most Americans doesn’t involve anything that can be settled in a Twitter war. The daily battle takes place on unglamorous battlefields and requires physical labor—waking up early, working hard, and staying up late to get ready to do it all again.

Entertainment has a time and place. But now’s not the time to let our political discourse drift into the irrelevant, not when financial uncertainty is so widespread. Democrats might want to take a page out of Yellowstone and tackle the substantive issues of daily life head on. If they don’t, more and more Republicans eventually will, and come November they’ll experience the same sort of mass appeal as the Duttons.

Kevin Frazier is the editor of the Oregon Way, a nonpartisan online publication. Currently, he is pursuing a J.D. at the UC Berkeley School of Law and an MPP at the Harvard Kennedy School.