At donor retreats and in pitch documents seen by The New York Times, liberal strategists are pushing the party’s rich backers to reopen their wallets for a cavalcade of projects to help Democrats, as the cliché now goes, “find the next Joe Rogan.”
[…]
The first out of the gate has been Chorus, a well-publicized liberal nonprofit group co-founded by the Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen.
But others have stayed under wraps until now. In November, Ms. McBride and other liberal operatives gathered in Washington for a series of meetings to survey the election wreckage. At the headquarters of American Bridge, one of the largest Democratic donor networks, they eventually hatched a plan for a for-profit media company called AND Media, which stands for “Achieve Narrative Dominance.”
The company, incorporated in March, says it is aiming to raise $45 million over the next four years. The group hopes to have a $70 million budget over that time frame based on predictions of $25 million in revenue. It says it has raised $7 million so far. Ms. McBride and Christian Tom, who led digital strategy for the Biden White House, have pitched the company to American Bridge donors as a broad cultural project.
It’s worth noting, I think, that most of the big right-wing influencers are absolutely artificial and propped up by far-right billionaires. Imo this is partly because a majority of conventional TV media was (at least perceived as) liberal-aligned, so they felt they needed to invest in alternate methods. Dem-aligned billionaires already have billions invested in traditional media, so they won’t invest in alternative media. Not to mention that, as billionaires, they’re doing fine under Trump, even if they find him distasteful. That leaves people who built their audience organically, who are, as far as I can tell, at least socdem and therefore not acceptable to the dems. There’s no way out for the dems except for the party to die.
Yeah, but it’s a mix, right? You wait for someone to become mildly successful, to find the right nerves to hit, the right formula to corner an audience, then you prop them up and promote them to help them get bigger. I mean, not all, there’s like the Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro types that are fully just mouthpieces, but then you’ve also got streamers who tapped into something organically. At least, that’s my impression, I don’t watch them or know anything about them, really.
Having thought on it a bit, I think both types exist, with the notable difference that the less artificial ones are onboarding younger people accidentally, while the more artificial ones are deliberately trying to onboard older people. Like, how many 30 year olds (who aren’t already massive chuds) are going to become fans of Andrew Tate or Asmongold, and conversely, how many 17 year olds are going to start watching Ben Shapiro? How much the different demographics matter is up for debate, but dems are definitely lacking in the group that targets younger people, and probably also need to invest in media that appeals to people who have checked out of the political process because the dems don’t fucking do anything even when they win.