The New York Times has a new report on Democratic donors’ plans to dig out of the wreckage of the 2024 election, and it’s a classic example of how this party has no real ideas of their own, as donors are searching for “the next Joe Rogan.” That Rogan’s staggeringly popular podcast did not come from the bowels of the GOP does not seem to register to wealthy Democrats, as the party is looking at where Rogan is now and saying ‘do that’ without any appreciation for how he became so influential and right-wing.
Rogan did not start out being political, and his influence has been absorbed into part of a larger ecosystem the GOP has cultivated for decades. As the mainstream media has beclowned itself and convinced nearly everyone of every ideological stripe that they are not to be trusted, alternatives began to boom, and the vast majority are right-wing. Rush Limbaugh was the first big advancement in this modern war against reason, as his immense popularity on right-wing talk radio eventually landed him a short-lived ESPN gig where he learned the limits of his racist shtick. Joe Rogan now regularly spouts conspiracy theories that may even make Limbaugh blush, but Rogan is a product of this right-wing informational environment more than a driver of it. Democrats could never repeat Rogan’s kind of success because they are dragged down by the weight of being the only party who operates within objective reality, and our informational environment is geared to reward the most incendiary takes.
Donald Trump won 91 percent of “news desert” counties, defined as areas where there is no local coverage of any kind, by an average of 54 percentage points. It’s clear as day that the less factual information that exists, the better Republicans do in elections. That elite Democrats are focusing on Rogan instead of the dynamic that radicalized him is just further proof of how reactive they are and how they only know what they see on their TV talk shows that are melting their brains (it’s also proof of how unable they are to see collective problems and instead focus on individual actions). Few folks in Democratic politics knew who Joe Rogan was when he spent most of his time commentating on UFC and talking about DMT on his podcast, but as soon as Rogan’s smooth brain interacted with the vast disinformation network the Republican Party has built over the last half-century, it was inevitable that he would wind up this way.
But as anyone who has actually listened to a fair amount of Rogan can attest (confession: I used to listen to his DMT diatribes with Duncan Trussell before it became a full-blown right-wing podcast), he is not really that ideological. He’s just kind of a dumb guy who generally believes whatever the person in front of him is saying and like most Americans, does not trust the status quo. This actually makes him a very good interviewer, as being a dumb guy asking dumb questions is one of the best ways to elicit thoughtful and informative responses, and Rogan’s interview with Bernie Sanders in 2019 is still better than the vast majority of mainstream media’s interrogations of one of America’s most popular politicians. There is a world where Rogan does not become as radicalized by the right-wing as he has, but it requires an entirely different mainstream media and Democratic Party to facilitate it. But when the informational environment is completely overrun by GOP propaganda, most of what gets put in front of Rogan these days is right-wing ideology.
Plus, the Republican Party has effectively already tried this strategy of creating an expressly political Rogan, and it’s people like Charlie Kirk. While Kirk also has a depressingly wide scope of appeal, no one on the left is freaking out saying we need to find ways to rebut Turning Point USA’s influence. That kind of braindead depravity has long been baked into GOP politics. Rogan is unique because he arrived at this political moment without being expressly political.
Rogan is also part of the counterculture, which is the most difficult part of this nut for the Democratic Party to crack. Through their defense of the vastly unpopular status quo, the Democrats have definitionally become a conservative party. The Republicans are seeking to upend the status quo (to fascism, albeit), which to the low information news consumer, makes them look more like a party rooted in this country’s future, while the Democratic brand is wedded to its gerontocracy pining for the past. Any Rogan cosplayer who tries to do his shtick from the perspective that would please your average Democratic donor would get clocked by the vast majority of Rogan’s listeners in an instant as a fraud not worth listening to.
There are Rogan-esque countercultural types out there the Democrats could embrace, but the problem is the bulk of them lie on the left who Democratic donors spend most of their time trying to marginalize. Hasan Piker is perhaps the only lefty Twitch streamer with the scale and reach of the litany of right-wingers who make up the space, but his unwavering support for Palestine makes him anathema to most of the Democratic Party elite. Chapo Trap House is another example thrown out of a lefty podcast with some reach, but both suffer from the same problem all left or liberal political programming has: explicitly political podcasts tend to not have much reach outside the political audience they appeal to, and the right has made inroads on the back of podcasters who talk about things other than politics. Us here at Splinter would love to keep our growth trajectory on the upslope and take up some of this space as a lefty/liberal counterprogramming to the right-wing madness, but we are well aware of where our core readership lies (lefties, liberals and some partisan Democrats who love to hate-read us), and we are far, far away from coming anywhere close to Rogan’s reach and I can’t see a world where we ever will.
Even if a liberal Rogan was able to break through the partisan nature of political audiences, any Rogan type that the Dems want to push would have to take serious shots at the Democrats in order to gain any kind of credibility in the eyes of a populace where vast majorities say they dislike the Democratic Party, and there’s very little evidence that this self-serious group of gerontocrats are willing to accept that kind of extreme reputational hit, because doing so forces them to admit that their strategy to get to this moment has utterly failed.
The Democratic Party is somewhat of a failed institution. It is still capable of winning majorities in Congress, and most state-level Democratic Parties are much nimbler and more in touch with their voters than the national party (New York excluded), but the overall Democratic brand is toxic. The national party relies entirely on poll tested phrases and proposals that any normal person can instantly see are completely disingenuous, and the only way to create a liberal Rogan is to let creators speak honestly about what an immense disappointment the Democrats have been for most of young people’s lives. Even then, a Rogan type would likely not leave the liberal/lefty echo chamber because Joe Rogan and the litany of other right-wing/right-wing curious podcasters like Theo Von are not the chief drivers of this right-wing moment.
Democratic donors would get far better use of their money by funding local journalism across the country that documents how the GOP is screwing their districts over. This would not be hard to do, even Josh Hawley is out here screaming that the Republicans are being too evil in their desire to strip poor people of their health care. This would also make it far easier for a liberal Rogan to organically rise on the back of this information coming from sources that people trust.
Any podcaster funded and endorsed by the Democratic Party is destined to fail outside of the liberal tent, because the party has no credibility anymore in the cultural zeitgeist. What Democratic donors are describing in this NYT report is basically MSNBC but for young partisan Democrats. Simply launching podcasts and online streaming networks with a bunch of dudebros rebutting GOP lies with McKinsey-written talking points will not move the needle to the degree Democrats want, because the entire point of Rogan’s popularity stems from his explicit anti-political views for years which gave his current political turn more credibility, all while advertising his show as explicitly not political (even though it clearly is at this point).
That Rogan turned hard to the right-wing later on is proof of the decrepit informational environment around him, and changing that dynamic is the key to spreading liberal views among the populace. Donors should start with funding good local journalism to produce work that can naturally counter the Republican Party’s propaganda, and only then should they consider funding an army of Rogan wannabes who can amplify it. Doing the latter before the former is just the Democrats reenacting the “how do you do, fellow kids” meme, which is the only way this group of doddering gerontocrats know how to talk to anyone under the retirement age.
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