After Trump wins the ‘influencer election, why some Democrats need to create their very own Joe Rogan | EUROtoday

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In the wake of Donald Trump’s 2024 win, which defied each pollster’s predictions and the higher money reserves of the Kamala Harris marketing campaign, many on the left are debating about podcasts, of all issues. Is it time for Democrats to assist, or maybe create, their very own Joe Rogan?

“People saying Harris should have done Joe Rogan are missing the point. That wouldn’t have helped her,” argued The Nation authorized commentator Elie Mystal on X. “Liberals need to BUILD THEIR OWN JOE ROGAN. Somebody who can speak to the people he speaks to, without being a guy who wants to kiss ass to billionaires like Elon Musk.”

As The Independent has reported, males voted decisively for Donald Trump in practically each class. Trump and his allies helped unfold their message to this group by sitting down with quite a lot of podcasters, dwell streamers, and comedians with massive male followings and/or conservative-leaning politics, typically dubbed the “manosphere.”

And nobody on this media world is extra influential than Joe Rogan, the comic and UFC commentator who hosts the Joe Rogan Experience.

The present, which options quite a lot of visitors from the worlds of comedy, leisure, sports activities, and politics, is the highest present on Spotify and has an viewers of at the very least 14.5 million listeners. Some 80 p.c of these listeners are males, based on Edison Research, 67 p.c of them independents or Republican-aligned.

In the ultimate levels of the marketing campaign, Rogan interviewed Trump, Vice President-Elect JD Vance, and Elon Musk, the Trump marketing campaign’s most outstanding supporter. Then the host went on to endorse Trump immediately. (Rogan and Harris additionally mentioned an interview, but it surely by no means got here to fruition.)

While Rogan and his visitors ceaselessly chat about issues fully unrelated to politics, starting from medication to historical past to combined martial arts, his present stays the type of platform any marketing campaign would dream about.

Still, some are skeptical the Democrats ought to strive — and even may — recreate the Rogan expertise, however for the left.

As social media journalist Taylor Lorenz not too long ago argued, the right-wing media ecosystem, which incorporates shops just like the Daily Wire and platforms like video-sharing service Rumble, has obtained appreciable funding for years from conservative megadonors and traders, a pattern with out parallel on the left.

“Leftist channels do not receive widespread financial backing from billionaires or large institutional donors, primarily because leftist content creators support policies that are completely at odds with what billionaires want,” she writes. “Left leaning influencers argue for things like higher taxes on the rich, regulations on corporations, and policies that curb the power of elites. Wealthy mega donors aren’t going to start pouring money into a media ecosystem that directly contradicts their own financial interests.”

Others instructed it’s not that Democrats have to create a brand new Joe Rogan to win; it’s that they should create insurance policies that enchantment to the extra independent-minded males who make up his viewers within the first place.

“I think it could help if Democrats had a better media ecosystem to ensure everybody hears what they have to say, but one problem they’re facing is that many of the voters who decide elections do not like, believe, or agree with the things Democrats are saying,” progressive commentator Osita Nwanevu wrote on X.

“Democrats had their own Joe Rogan,” journalist Ryan Grim not too long ago famous. “Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020.”

Hasan Piker, one of many few extremely in style left-wing streamers, made the same argument on X on Wednesday, noting that the politics of the Democratic social gathering are usually not in alignment with the extra on-line corners of the left.

“Republican independent media is directly linked to the party in ways that the dems cannot recreate among the independent ecosystem because they’re ideologically opposed to bernie style populist sentiment the base wants to hear,” he wrote.