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.
There's nothing inherently special about Joe Rogan, he's just a popular media figure who repeats generally right-wing talking points and presents a right-wing aesthetic, and thereby funnels his audience into that mode of thinking.
Liberals have several of their own equivalents of this figure on various talk shows and news stations, but people don't like them because they're smug dickheads who exist to cough up the same tired lib-shit that people are only ever more burnt-out on. And young people don't really watch television media anymore.
There are popular liberal / left figures online that democrats could tap into, but the most popular tend to be too far left of the party leaders to support. The democrats ultimately do not want leftists or even just "progressives", they want the moderate republicans -- the dragon they can't stop chasing -- and only tolerate the left flank of their party at best.
They literally just need better politics, and they're hellbent on rejecting that change, unless it's moving rightward and becoming a wussier version of republicans. So (god willing) they will die as a party, and they will deserve it.
Almost as if the democrats' political stances literally represent no one other than a portion of the bourgeoisie which is a problem if you are a political party that relies on votes. At least the republicans know how to grift their base.