The Futile Quest to Build a 'Liberal Joe Rogan'

The Intercept

2 days ago

For months, pundits have decried the absence of a 'Joe Rogan of the left' — an online media figure who can galvanize young men to support Democrats in the way that popular right-wing creators like Rogan, Adin Ross, and the NELK Boys have done for President Donald Trump. Now, it appears that Democratic operatives have a $20 million plan to build such a figure.
The proposal, titled 'Speaking With American Men: A Strategic Plan,' from Ilyse Hogue, the former president of the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America, and John Della Volpe, polling director for the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, is one of several pitches floating around in Democratic policy spaces aimed at making up ground with demographics the party lost in 2024. The plan was immediately panned online by critics who argued that young men would view this type of approach as inauthentic.
In the last election, young white men swung aggressively in the direction of Trump, voting for him by a 28-point margin, after supporting Joe Biden in the last election.
Online media has largely been credited with the shift, particularly among young white men.
In an analysis of 320 of the most popular online shows across platforms such as Youtube, Rumble, and TikTok, Media Matters found that right-leaning shows were significantly more popular, accounting for roughly 82% percent of the total following of online shows analyzed. It also found that 9 out of 10 of the most followed online shows were right-leaning. Evidence suggests that young men are absorbing what these far-right streamers are sharing. A survey ahead of the election from the Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice found that more than 40 percent of young men trust one or more misogynistic voices online.
The plan would raise $20 million from Democratic donors, which the project's leadership has reportedly already begun to collect, to study the 'syntax, language, and content' that's popular among young men in online spaces, then develop content that spreads an 'aspirational vision of manhood that aligns with Democratic values without alienating other core constituencies' and partner with influencers.
Experts on masculinity and gender in politics argue that while it's good to research why young men left the party, investing millions to recreate a 'Joe Rogan of the left' fundamentally misunderstands why young men moved so rapidly to the right — and misses an opportunity to woo them back.
'To try to create the next Joe Rogan, it's [misguided],' said Gary Barker, president and CEO of Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. 'Because it's going to come across as preaching and a kind of lab-designed android.'
Last year, Barker and Equimundo released a report on the 'Manosphere,' tracking how young men engage in online communities and why. Barker's research suggests that young men are attracted to these spaces out of a desire for community and for someone to speak directly to them about their social, political, and economic anxieties.
Right-wing influencers and Republicans fill that void, stoking those anxieties and creating a useful scapegoat in women, minorities, and immigrants. 'They've talked to men about their feeling of anxiety and said, 'You're right to feel anxious. You're not the problem. Tear it all down,'' said Barker.
However, Barker said that Democrats shouldn't be trying to recreate that strategy even if it would work for them. 'You don't want a Democratic Mr. Beast,' he said. 'It's horribly manipulative. It's exploitative of people. I'm not sure if we can get something so big online that doesn't follow a playbook that's either exploitative, exaggerated, or harm-inducing. And if we do, I think it's going to feel like it's preaching to you.'
If Democrats want to win back young men, they'll have to prove to them that their economic and social issues matter to them, said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of 'The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy.'
Deckman's research found that young men's political shift toward Republicans was heavily influenced by the economy. 'A lot of young men feel that the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for them. And the Democratic Party certainly didn't have an answer for how their policies or their vision might help them get a better paying job,' she said.
While Deckman's research suggests that young men felt chided by the Democratic Party instead of helped, nostalgia for the economy under Trump was a significant factor in their shift. 'For a lot of young men, especially those that don't pay a lot of attention to politics, they remember the economy being better under the first Trump administration,' she said.
A more populist economic message could resonate with this group of voters, argued Deckman. 'There's an economic blueprint that can emerge that is less elitist and less about giving tax breaks to billionaires. I think that has a broader reach, but for whatever reasons, I think a lot of young men aren't hearing that message from Democrats, and I kind of struggle with it. Is it a messenger issue, or is it they're just not receptive to it?' she said.
Barker argues that the real problem is that Democrats have been trying to sell a 'piecemeal' approach to economic issues that feels automatically inadequate for the issues we're facing.
'Piecemeal compensatory social policies don't work. I mean, they work for some segments of the population, but they don't take on the root of what's driving so much of the inequality, which is leading to white men's death of despair, and has always been part of people of color's economic challenges,' said Barker.
Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Stacey Abrams, said instead of propping up a creator who checks the perfect ideological boxes, Democrats should embrace the online spaces for young men that already exist.
For example, creators like Hasan Piker, a left-leaning creator with over 5.5 million subscribers on Twitch and broad popularity among young men, has largely been ignored by the Democratic establishment. Piker's political content leans farther left, sharing a populist economic message paired with strong criticism of U.S. foreign policy in Israel.
'There is a tendency to shy away from those spaces because our favorite thing to do in the Democratic Party is to, pardon my language, shit on the left,' said Smith.
Aside from entering authentic online spaces that already connect with men, both Smith and Barker said the most important way to reach young voters is in person. 'We get the best out of young men [when] we actually go and see them face to face,' said Barker.
Smith pointed toward the success of youth conservative movements like Turning Point USA as an example of how ground game can make a huge difference with the groups Democrats are trying to win back.
'I honestly believe it would be better for us to have a bus tour than to spend a bunch of money on research that is cold,' she said, 'Turning Point did that sort of investment where they did a tour to different college campuses, and that's how they got in contact with these young people.'
Republicans have created a space for young men to blow off steam, Barker said. Now, Democrats need to find a way to offer them something better.
'Trump did not offer men anything that will make their life better,' he said. 'What he did is he offered them a place to yell at the wind for a little while. It doesn't seem like it should be that tough for us on the left to at least pull them in, out of a space where they're just yelling at the wind.'