For months, pundits have decried the absence of a “Joe Rogan of the left” — an online media figure who can galvanize young men to support Democrats in the way that popular right-wing creators like Rogan, Adin Ross, and the NELK Boys have done for President Donald Trump. Now, it appears that Democratic operatives have a $20 million plan to build such a figure.
Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to Stacey Abrams, said instead of propping up a creator who checks the perfect ideological boxes, Democrats should embrace the online spaces for young men that already exist.
For example, creators like Hasan Piker, a left-leaning creator with over 5.5 million subscribers on Twitch and broad popularity among young men, has largely been ignored by the Democratic establishment. Piker’s political content leans farther left, sharing a populist economic message paired with strong criticism of U.S. foreign policy in Israel.
“There is a tendency to shy away from those spaces because our favorite thing to do in the Democratic Party is to, pardon my language, shit on the left,” said Smith.
Joe Rogan was the liberal Joe Rogan. What they should do is study how he fell to the right because that’s basically how everyone in America did. There’s plenty of his podcasts material to work with. In his very early years he had plenty of scientists and actual doctors and interesting people on there where he would just shut the fuck up and listen. It took years for his public opinions and guest pool to devolve to what they are now.
Money. The answer is money. No study is needed, it was just greed. You’re not going to come across some grand character arc of a “good guy turning into bad guy” with some kind of study. He was always a greedy bad guy from when he started on Fear Factor. The more outrageously dumb his podcasts became with really off the wall guests, the more money came in.
I think there’s also an anti-intellectual streak in this country where some idiots think that contrarianism is a shortcut to the truth.
I listened to a lot of joe Rogen back in my podcast years. It was definitely the money and he pretty much said so a long time ago when he signed that deal to spotify. He was so excited to be even richer, that’s when he fell to the darkside, it was spotify.
Right now the biggest difference between the left and right is structural.
The right is rushing towards the middle of their group. They insist that everyone toe the line on MAGA orthodoxy. Anyone outside of that (even more traditional conservatives) is driven out into the cold.
The left is casting as wide a net as possible. They’re trying to include as many groups as they can and basically grabbing up anyone who feels alienated by the right. There is no orthodoxy besides “stop the right at all costs.”
This is a problem for the left if they’re hoping to replicate Joe Rogan. There’s no orthodoxy to appeal to, no centre of gravity to rally around.
The GOP grew itself as the “big tent party” because it masterfully understood how to get many divergent interest groups in line. I think a lot of this just has to do with the authoritarian might that’s always been central to the Republican party, and how the liberal culture is more “your refined, college educated uncle who’d rather go get high in the garage than get involved in the fight.”
I don’t think we need one central orthodoxy, rather we need a drum being beat loudly, and no one on our side has strong arms.
That’s my uncle. PhD in theology. Former Catholic priest (and missionary in Bolivia). Former teacher. Now spends a lot of time meditating, doing yoga, taking pilgrimages to India, reading, fighting climate change. Has a lot of left wing friends in South America who have suffered horrendous atrocities by far right governments.
He’s really the old school left though. Young leftists come in a million different varieties.
They should take the $20 million and fund actual journalists.
Lol, could you imagine the type of journalist the DNC would give 20m to?
Yeah, it’s called editor of the NYT
Because they don’t want someone who’s actually left. They want someone who pretends to be left while actually shilling for Democrats, who are neoliberal (i.e. economic right-wing).
Or even more general: Someone who’s popular will almost by definition be anti-establishment, because the establishment is often shit and someone who isn’t willing to say that won’t be authentic. Even non-leftist insurgent voices (David Hogg seems pretty mainstream progressive, for example) are immediately attacked, so an authentic speaker would never stay in their good graces.
The only person that can defeat Joe is Bill Burr. He’s left centrist and that Boston accent pulls people from the right because he’s relatable and unassumingly based.
Bill Burr should be considered a leftist icon.
At some point the person inhabiting the role described in the article has to want to be a political player and it seems Bill just doesn’t.
The irony here is that if the dems improved overall to be more likeable then he would champion them and people in general would gravitate that way. The bar is so painfully low at the moment.
Maybe the DNC should push policies that help people instead of pretending like they need a cave man podcaster dyed blue.
TLDR: democrats stay on brand being complete and utter shitheads.
I see that your favorite thing to do is also to shit on the left
Democrats want nothing to do with the left.
The establishment left
Without even saying goodbye? So rude…
The Left Cheney party.
David hogg should start a podcast. He would do great! And he could start with how the dnc just screwed him over. Democrats love to hate each other just as much as Republicans love to hate democrats.
The Democrats are never going to be able to build a liberal Joe Rogan because a liberal is going to have to stay extremely Centrist to appease the Democrats. So they’re not going to appeal to the left and they’re not going to appeal to the right, so they’ll start veering right more because that’s where the money is going to be. I mean hell people say Joe Rogan used to be left. I don’t agree with that I think he was just a fan of weed and got swept up in Bernie Sanders enthusiasm, I don’t think he was actually ever a leftist. However he chased the bag. Because it was a big fucking bag. That’s why he’s where he is now.
I think this misses that a lot of people “are Democrats” simple because the only other choice is Republican in our 2 sided system.
Which is why those voters will always be stuck in the uni-party hell. Throwing any vote at these neo-lib/neo-con parties is literally voting against your own self interest, because they are working for the elites/oligarchs. I would classify this ‘vote for XXX no matter what’ mentality as a ‘user error.’
Yeah but can you blame people, really?
There’s one party that wants to actively destroy the county and everyone in it, with a mob voting for them.
Then you have the other party that will sit back and watch it happen, but not actively help it quite as much.
I mean fuck. I don’t like the second option but I want to prevent the first one because it seems worse.
All this…All of it. ☝️
I don’t think there is a leftist anywhere on earth that is dumb enough to be an alternative to Joe Rogan except maybe myself. And I don’t wanna.
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Someone doesn’t realise who their sponsors are and who they work for.
Too easy
Best we can do is 100 percent unthinking support of Israel while you go die in a gutter. If you disagree you’re antisemitic. What, why won’t you vote for me?
We all live in a bizarro world where it’s the voters’ fault for not voting for you.
The politicians don’t need voters anymore they need donors.
I mean it’s already John Oliver?
Gotem
They already tried the “Dirtbag Left”. The problem was that, if they’re meant to be edgelord assholes, they don’t stay reliably left.
It’s almost like anyone with any cultural reach and appeal would rather gnaw off their arm than be the puppet of a bunch of octogenarian war criminals
So a liberal idiot?
