The One Big Reason Why Dems Are Losing the Information War

The good news is, this can be fixed with a new approach.

When I read the interview that Harris Deputy Campaign Manager Rob Flaherty did with Semafor this week where he gave his thoughts on what went wrong with the 2024 election, some key points he made really hit home for me. That is because I said the exact same thing in an article on this platform three days after the election.

Democrats are losing the information/messaging war against Republicans for one major reason - MAGA created an alternative media ecosystem that pumps their messaging out to tens of millions of people every single day while Democrats currently have just a handful of small outlets like Meidas to counter them.

The reason why this has happened is quite simple and obvious - the leaders of the Republican Party and MAGA movement spent years establishing, cultivating, financing, promoting, and amplifying alternative media platforms and content, while the leaders of the Democratic Party have largely ignored them as they continue to feed their messaging and dedicate their time to increasingly less relevant legacy media outlets.

Flaherty said that political campaigns “are the last-mile marketers that exist on terrain that is set by culture, and the institutions by which Democrats have historically had the ability to influence culture are losing relevance. You don’t get a national 8-point shift to the right without losing hold of culture.”

He noted that Democrats reliance on traditional media and ads to get their messaging out fails to reach low-information voters who get their information from alternative sources. From the article:

The campaign knew from the beginning that the race was going to come down to voters who do not pay attention to politics or mainstream news and instead get their information from people on YouTube, their friends’ Instagram stories, or links or memes dropped in a group chat.

Flaherty said that there is a reason why this is happening: “Folks are seeking alternative sources of media and are turning away from political news because they don’t trust our institutions. They don’t trust elites, they don’t trust the media, they don’t trust all this stuff. So the party of elites and institutions is going to have a hard time selling to people in these places.”

I have covered the right-wing alternative media ecosystem since 2020. I watched it develop, grow, and become a powerful force in shaping public opinion. It largely happened organically as a result of a wave of right-wingers getting banned from social media platforms over covid content, anti-vaccine messaging, insensitive language on race and gender, election fraud conspiracies, then J6. Millions of right-wingers were deplatformed in 2020-2021, including Donald Trump.

They responded by creating their own platforms by necessity. RSBN, Rumble, Parler, Truth Social, Real America’s Voice, Frank Speech, TPUSA, Just The News, OAN - the list is endless of right-wing alternative media platforms. Then there are the podcasters - thousands of them, some with huge audiences built from nothing.

What is the one big reason why the Right has been so successful in building these alternative platforms? The leaders of their party nurture them, promote them, advance them. Donald Trump, JD Vance, Mike Johnson, Ted Cruz, Tucker Carlson - the list is endless of Republican Party leaders who constantly go on these podcasts. They give print interviews to writers and editors of relatively obscure right-wing platforms that few people have heard of.

But the leaders of the Republican Party go even further than that. Many Democrats have mocked Trump for posting obscure social media accounts who are Q-Anon adherents, or when he post videos or memes from people who aren’t famous or aren’t journalists. It comes across often as weird, strange and at times unhinged. But the point is that he is promoting those accounts, helping them gain followers, helping podcasters gain viewers and advertisers.

When Trump or Vance do an interview for a smallish podcast, that podcaster can clip and promote it outside their normal audience. They will gain lots of new subscribers and viewers. Then Trump himself will often post clips from these interviews - which fuels their growth even more. They end up with thousands of new subscribers, new advertisers, and can sell products to help promote their shows.

I watched Donald Trump do hundreds of podcast interviews from 2021-2023, most of them were with people you never even heard of. And he wasn’t even running in an election in those years. I watched him amplify thousands of social media posts from small accounts. So, while he was doing it to promote himself, he was simultaneously helping out the people he amplified, thereby helping to build the ecosystem.

I vividly remember Trump popping up on a health and wellness podcast in 2022 of a woman I never heard of who sold diet pills and related products. I had no idea why he was on there talking politics. Then I noticed that she averaged about 100,000 views on YouTube per episode. So, Trump was able to connect with 100,000 people who may not watch or read the news and don’t follow politics. Two years before the election.

I also saw Trump go on obscure religious podcasts that averaged only a few thousand views. But when he went on they got tens of thousands. He was not only reaching new voters by going to the places where they are, he was promoting those podcasters and helping them build their audiences, which helped him later in 2024 when those people told those larger audiences to vote for him.

Then there are the conferences. Almost every weekend, right-wingers are putting on more than one conference in a variety of places around the country where the leading elected officials, media personalities, policy think tankers, and campaign consultants are headliners. But these conferences also invite and even pay influencers and activists to speak and participate. This helps them build a following, and also helps the party identify and promote future stars.

Meanwhile, what have the leaders of the Democratic Party done in this genre? Let’s throw out election years when they are scrambling at the last minute to do some of these things. How many times did Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and other leaders of the party quote-tweet or post something from a smallish Democratic activist social media account in 2023? How many interviews did they do with progressive podcasters with less than 100,000 viewers in that year?

How many major conferences headlined by senior members of the Democratic party and media personalities, celebrities, and activists/influencers attended by thousands of people who want to get organized and mobilized to do something were held in 2023?

The answer to all of the questions above is - almost none. And that is why we are losing the information war.

We have the talent. People are out there talking away into their microphones, writing great columns on independent media, sharing ideas on policy, messaging and strategy. But the leaders of the party are doing virtually nothing to promote them. Is it because they are in their bicoastal urban bubbles, disconnected and out of touch with most of America? Probably. Not completely, but that is certainly an issue.

The only way this gets turned around is for the leaders of the Democratic Party to understand the value in the modern Information Age of a partisan alternative media ecosystem that can promote your program and your message. If the party continues to rely on network news, WaPo, and the NYT, it will continue to shrink, become more elitist, more disconnected from average Americans, and lose more elections.

But all it takes is an attitude and strategy change. Get off MSNBC and CNN and start doing some podcasts. If they don’t know where to find them, hire a staffer to find them - because there are plenty out there.

How cool would it be if Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Gavin Newsom, or some other prominent Democrat reposted one of your hot takes on their social media pages? Republican elected officials do this all the time. Trump does it all the time. Why don’t our party leaders do that? It would certainly help build up those accounts with lots of new followers. Elon Musk does that every day. Why don’t our leaders do that?

Maybe now they will, because …

"Failure is a part of the process. You just learn to pick yourself back up." ― Michelle Obama

It is past time for Democrats to wake up and get in the alternative media game. A game that they have been losing.

Badly.