For Dems, less news is bad news

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Ben Wikler, the chair of Wisconsin's Democratic Party and a leading contender to run the country's, has won some acclaim from liberals for making an obvious point: Candidates need to go where the voters are. In terms of media, that means nontraditional and less politicized sources such as podcasts, YouTube and TikTok.

The 2024 presidential election featured a novel demographic split in which Kamala Harris did dramatically worse with voters who don't follow political news closely than with those who do. Wikler (disclosure: we went to college together) is basically correct that Democrats need to be present in a wider range of media outlets, including right-leaning ones. But Democrats need to do more than just show up. What they say, and how they say it, is as important as where they say it.

Admittedly, incorporating ideological elements into this strategy is probably something that is above the DNC chair's pay grade. Only elected officials themselves can make the choice to be interesting and relaxed in a variety of settings and with a variety of interlocutors — and to brush off the complaints that will inevitably come from interest groups if they do so.

Consider the tangled history of Joe Rogan and the Democratic Party. By 2024, he was a pretty right-wing figure whose eventual endorsement of Donald Trump seemed more inevitable than surprising. Just five years earlier, however, he was lavishing praise on Bernie Sanders on his show. The result? Sanders was attacked by his rivals for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination on the grounds that, by appearing on the show and seeking Rogan's endorsement, he was platforming transphobia.

If mainstream Democrats are going to say that Rogan's views on this issue are so beyond the pale that he must be shunned by people of good conscience, then of course he's going to become a Republican. Another consequence of these kinds of tactics is that Democrats narrow the range of venues in which they can present their message.

It's important to understand that this is not merely a tactical choice. There is, in fact, such a thing as a person whose views are so repugnant that his support is not worth courting. Even the most diehard proponent of an "I'll talk to anybody" approach to politics and communications has to recognize that there are limits. The question is where to draw the line — and whether Democrats are classifying too many widely held views as prejudiced even as they push an ambitious (and not always popular) agenda on climate change and economics.

It's not hard to see why many Democrats would object to a more tolerant approach: The decision to be present and respectful in a wider array of venues would send the message that the party doesn't regard these forums, and the views expressed in them, as out of bounds.

In the case of Rogan and Sanders it was, perversely, moderate Democrats trying to narrow the tent in an attempt to beat a leftist rival. More often, it is the reverse. Progressive donors have funded something called the Revolving Door Project, which monitors ties between the Democratic Party and the business community. At one point, it went so far as to complain that the Commerce secretary was meeting with too many CEOs.

That's not a taboo conducive to getting invited on many business podcasts. More broadly, these tent-narrowing efforts have a real impact. Most people have just a handful of issues that they care a lot about, and they pick up opinions on other things by looking at what their fellow partisans are saying. By becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent, Democrats created — on the elite level at least — a more ideologically coherent party able to legislate with narrow majorities. At the same time, this ideological rigidity served to alienate less attentive, less political voters.

People who pay less attention to the news and care less about politics are more likely to have a heterodox jumble of views. Today's Republicans may be something of a creepy personality cult, but beyond their loyalty to Trump, they are open-minded to the point of incoherence. To be a Democrat in good standing, by contrast, increasingly requires agreement to an ever-expanding checklist of interest-group concerns. Far better would be to have a single box that says, "Agree with Democrats about most stuff."

This is a problem of basic strategy: too much emphasis on managing the coalition, and not enough on expanding it.

As the co-host of a podcast about politics, I am certainly not going to disagree with a recommendation that more politicians go on podcasts. But the Democrats' success will ultimately depend less on media availability than on ideological flexibility.

Matthew Yglesias writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. A co-founder of Vox and a former columnist for Slate, he is also host of "The Weeds" podcast and is the author, most recently, of "One Billion Americans."

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Previously:
• 12/23/24: Too many Dems still don't get the working class
• 09/25/24: Harris' most important plan is unknowable
• 09/09/24: Why even a Harris transition would be challenging
• 04/04/24: In Baltimore, Biden can show how to build back faster
• 03/27/24: Raising the retirement age won't help anyone
• 03/13/24: Now Biden needs to show his moderate side
• 02/27/24: Will Dems ever embrace charter schools again?
• 10/19/23: Federal budget deficit: From freakout to eff you
• 10/05/23: Ramaswamy likes one of Jimma Carter's worst ideas
• 09/13/23: What happens when renewable energy isn't so cheap?
• 08/09/23: Is Bidenomics working? Ask your waiter
• 08/03/23: America's colleges are also facing a housing crisis
• 07/18/23: Bidenomics' became a doctrine by accident
• 06/20/23: America can fix its highways much faster, if it wants
• 06/07/23: The debt-limit crisis is over. Now on to the debt crisis
• 05/31/23: America needs more housing, but NOT more public housing
• 05/09/23: Football stadiums belong in the suburbs
• 05/02/23: Only Mitch McConnell can save the US from default
• 02/15/23: Biden's building boom will be needlessly expensive
• 01/25/23: Manchin's plan to avert a debt crisis just might work
• 01/10/23: George Santos doesn't deserve to be kicked out of Congress
• 10/03/22 Ron DeSantis and the rise of free-lunch conservatism
• 09/07/22 A debate over the deficit is just what America needs
• 09/03/22 College tuition is too high, but it isn't actually rising
• 08/02/22 Dems need more Manchins
• 06/30/22 Biden 2024? America needs to know now
• 05/30/22 The flaw in the progressive stance on guns
• 05/18/22 Biden can do much more to fight inflation
• 04/05/22 We'll miss globalization when it's gone
• 12/27/21 How 2021 could have been different for Biden
• 11/09/21 Where have you gone, Joe Biden of the primaries?
• 10/05/21What Dems need: More short-term thinking
• 06/02/21 Shh, Congress IS working