Summary
Donald Trump’s 2024 election victory, influenced by support from podcasters like Joe Rogan, has sparked debate among Democrats about creating a left-leaning equivalent.
Rogan, whose show reaches 14.5 million listeners (80% male, largely independents or Republicans), endorsed Trump and hosted figures like JD Vance and Elon Musk.
Critics argue Democrats lack a comparable media ecosystem due to limited funding from megadonors, who oppose progressive policies.
Others suggest Democrats need to focus on appealing policies for independent-minded voters rather than trying to replicate Rogan’s media influence.
I bet this will go as well as when they tried creating Air America to combat right wing talk radio.
There is, and has been, a large number of left-wing podcasts. But the Dems don’t want to pump money into Chapo Trap House, Five-Four, or the Cool Zone network. They want Ezra Klein to be as cool as Rogan.
They refuse to meet people at their level, and its killing the party.
Yeah but I also absolutely can’t imagine any of these people going hard dem unless the Dems go hard left. Now I do think that a lot of the cracked folks, can be the left wing voices to alienated men, and I’ve noticed Robert Evans has been trying to be a voice of that for a long time (and serious kudos to him for it).
I also think that we only have one major left wing voice that has ever been particularly good at breaking people out of the alt right pipeline, Contrapoints, and I think we’d seriously benefit from encouraging further use of her tactics.
It seemed like every time I tried to listen to that, I kept hearing Randi Rhodes. Some of the others that came out of there still have good things to say, like Thom Hartmann and Cenk.
I don’t know what Al Franken has been up to lately.
But yeah, if there was something as funny as the Daily Show, but always something you could switch over to even on terrestrial radio, I think it’d be good to have something to combat all the hatriot radio…