Wrong Again, Democrats: Paying “Influencers” Misses the Boat
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.
