Wrong Again, Democrats: Paying 'Influencers' Misses the Boat

Yahoo

23-05-2025

When I joined the race for Democratic National Committee chair a few months ago, there was one area of consensus among all the candidates—including the eventual victor, Ken Martin. One of the big lessons of the loss from the last election cycle was that we collectively spent too much money on TV and digital ads, driven in large part by decisions of well-placed and well-heeled Democratic consultants.
We're about to fall into the same trap in 2025. The new flavor of the moment, though, isn't TV ads; it's 'influencers.' According to reporting in The New York Times, liberal donors are now planning to spend ungodly amounts on creating an 'army of left-leaning' digital creators of all stripes and styles. Having realized that we're outgunned by the right in both reach and scale of conversation online, we're now doing what Democrats often resort to—spending money to try to solve the problem.
This mindset masks a deeper issue: spending money to create content with no editorial vision or strategy. When we don't have organic grassroots appeal and we are not sufficiently connected to huge numbers of real Americans, we paper over that problem by trying to pay to reach people in unidirectional ways (paid ads, paid influencers, paid organizers). We need to focus less on the pipes and tactics of contacting people and put more emphasis on the content vision and ideas of what people find authentically and organically engaging.
The inputs into the Democratic Party's elite have strayed from meaningful conversations that ordinary citizens find interesting. We're losing in the attention economy, as MSNBC host Chris Hayes has written. I believe a big part of the reason for that is that Democrats aren't talking about economic justice and class-based issues in compelling and interesting ways, at a time when those class-based problems are dominating the lives of everyday Americans in every possible way. These conversations are more likely to be heard on right-leaning podcasts than on left-leaning ones. But if we engage them, the conversations speak to the broadest ideological spectrum of Americans.
I talk daily to candidates wanting to run for office, and I pose this simple question to them. If I dropped you into a random town hall in any city in America, and you didn't know anything about who was in the room, what would you say to them in order to get them to agree with you? Many have no idea what they'd say; others want to pander to pablum about 'Costs are high,' or 'We need to rebuild the middle class,' or 'Donald Trump is terrible.'
The answer must start with the reality of what we are seeing in this economy. We know the basic story that connects with voters: Corporate CEOs, monopolists, and the passive-wealth-generating elites of America have rigged an economic and political system to prioritize their needs over ours. If we are to have any chance of creating better lives for future generations, we have to be willing to wrestle power back from them through working-class solidarity. And we need politicians who have the integrity, conviction, and knowledge to be unbought and unbossed by these powerful actors.
But right now, we aren't sufficiently grounded in the lived experience and language of working Americans, who expect leaders to understand the reality of their daily struggles and own the friction with established power. To earn credibility, we have to name the culprits who deprive them of liberty. We must elevate potential solutions to give people a serious chance at a secure retirement, health care, decent wages, housing, and education in an increasingly complex and rigged economy.
The consulting and funding classes are still not sure what content people actually want to consume—because they have no ways of engaging organic feedback from regular people outside of paid polls and focus groups. The social listening inputs into the left-of-center architecture are broken.
If I tell a leading Democratic strategist that I want to make an ad about three global asset management companies that would help explain how they're profiting off the lives of working people, here's what I'd expect to hear in response: 'People don't know what asset managers are.' 'That's too complicated of a topic!' 'We need the financial industry's donations and support, so this is counterproductive.' I could go on.
This exact video about Blackrock and other asset managers is currently the most-watched video on More Perfect Union's YouTube page, with 6.6 million views and counting, and finding great appeal with Trump voters. And it's not an anomaly for us. We're one of the fastest-growing digital media companies since the launch of Vox, and at a moment when there's lots of ink being spilled about the right model for growing the Democratic voting base and winning back working-class Americans with compelling information, we think more funders and outlets could stand to learn from an approach that is already working in speaking to people beyond their politically polarized viewpoints.
The current conversations playing out on the left about culture, authenticity, and influence are illuminating a central challenge for the Democratic Party in this political moment. We've been told versions of, 'We need to be willing to go on Joe Rogan's show!' or, 'We need more Joe Rogans of our own!' or, my personal favorite, 'We used to have Joe Rogan!' All of these are missing the point.
Without speaking for Rogan, let me just suggest that most leading platforms and podcasters want depth of knowledge, integrity, and conviction from guests who have something meaningful to convey. In my view, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Lex Fridman, Andrew Schulz, and so many other prominent online influencers have hosted and liked Bernie Sanders not because he chose to go on their programs—it's because of what he had to say! Sanders has had the integrity and conviction to take on power with a meaningful message about the priorities and needs of regular people who are getting screwed—which happens to be compelling and interesting content for these shows, which the audiences want to hear more discussion about.
The other side understands this proposition.
The arguments that helped elect Donald Trump didn't start in consulting offices in D.C. or at exclusive donor meetings, speculating about a cultural 'vertical' to fill with poll-tested talking points. They started with the things Americans were saying to one another in their day-to-day lives—and what they were sharing in comments sections and everyday meetups. Keeping their ears to the ground, conservatives found people were fed up with masking mandates and were angry about school curricula deprioritizing basic math, English, and science skills in favor of other factors as students came back after missing a year. People were worried about the flow of illegal immigrants across the border, its impact on jobs, wages, and public investments. There were serious issues about public safety in our cities, amounting to threats to their way of life. The right created enemies in the out-of-control, out-of-touch, far-left politicians as they discussed these issues.
That's not to justify any of the right's disinformation campaigns around these matters. But the feelings that their target audience had were real, and the people crafting the campaign's messaging knew it.
As a result, in political terms, populism largely exists on the right. But I also want populism of the left. We need movements to be connected to the emotions of real people at scale. It's worth considering this: Would Bernie's very successful 'Fighting Oligarchy Tour'—the greatest, record-breaking-turnout events Democrats have put on this year—ever have happened if the consultant-driven language police had been in charge?
They tell us, 'It's the economy, stupid.' They tell us, 'It's the authenticity, stupid.' Now, 'It's the influencers, stupid.' Next election cycle, they'll tell us it's something else, stupid.
How about this? Let's first invest in getting to know people's economic lives, then create the content that evidences their pains and struggles, and finally—with policy depth—connect those struggles to tangible solutions.
The voters aren't stupid, and they never have been. So let's stop treating them that way.