Democrats Don’t Need a Joe Rogan, They Need a Deep Story

One thing Democrats agree on is that Democrats have a messaging crisis.

After eight years of watching Donald Trump's constant blathering transform the GOP bubble into a giant cudgel used to pound reality and the Constitution, everyone to the left of Liz Cheney seems to agree: Democrats need to try something new.

However, easy solutions often create more problems than they solve. Here’s a quick assessment of some commonly proposed ideas.

False Solution 1: Chase the mythical middle

Self-proclaimed “centrists” have decided that the problem is “the things that the left was doing and saying,” according to Politico.

At a meeting in early March convened by the Third Way think tank, the party's conservative-leaning voices offered solutions like ”a move away from the dominance of small-dollar donors” to “get out of elite circles” and into “real communities.”

Of course, in the months since this brainstorm, these champions of aiming at the mythical “middle” are getting to see their fantasy makeover for the Democratic party play out in real time. In the UK, the Labour Party is piling on “centrist” fantasies—turning on trans people, trying to out-nativist the nativists, and fluffing up AI for the exclusive pleasure of tech giants.

The result?

“Labour's drop in the opinion polls in its first 10 months of power is the largest of any newly elected UK government in 40 years,” according to The Guardian.

When you offer voters watered-down Trumpism, they tend to prefer the real thing.

False Solution 2: An army of Joe Rogans?

Another proposal to take on the Republican capture of online media is to carbon copy the online dominance Republicans have built.

The New York Times reports that Democratic megadonors are being sold on funding an army of influencers in search of the mythical “Joe Rogan” of the Left. One problem with this theory: “casually right-leaning touchstones like Mr. Rogan's podcast were not built by political donors and did not rise overnight.”

But there's another problem with this plan, says Kate Starbird, who researches online rumors and disinformation at the University of Washington.

“The solution to the Democrats' messaging problem isn't to replicate the [right-wing] media ecosystem, but to recognize what makes it powerful, including the participatory storytelling and sense of agency it provides to its audiences, and to adapt those dynamics in ways that align with Dem/progressive values,” she wrote.

Making sense out of uncertainty

In Starbird's recent lecture “A Spotlight on Rumors,” she examines how “online rumors, misinformation and disinformation are created and shared in uncertain times.”

The entire lecture is worth your time. But for our purposes, I want to highlight two sections that show how Democrats can counter Trump and MAGA's weaponization of uncertainty.

Starbird notes recent research confirms something that readers of Dr. George Lakoff have known for decades: Rumors, like most ideas, are created through “collective sensemaking” that combines facts with frames. Frames, according to Dr. Lakoff, are “mental structures that shape the way we see the world.”

“People are misled, not just by bad facts, but also by faulty frames,” she notes.

And how do Republicans fuel their faulty frames?

They come from a wide cast of performers that Starbird compares to an improv team.

So it's reasonable to believe, like those trying to sell megadonors on their army of Joe Rogans, that all we need is our own team. But that misses the point, Starbird says.

It isn't about the performers. It's about the audience.

She says Democrats need to focus on “collaborative storytelling, where audiences can shape the stories and incorporate them into their own lives.”

And we have a good idea what this might look like.

The Mueller Investigation

For good and ill, the Mueller investigation—the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election—defined the early years of the first Trump regime.

It also served two needs for Democrats that they now sorely lack:

1. It provided the Democratic base with a “deep story” about what had gone wrong in America in which they could contribute to the collective sensemaking.
2. It allowed elected Democrats to effectively argue that something was being done about Trump's corruption.

The Mueller probe and the public fascination with it were paralleled by a more enduring rise of citizen activism, exemplified by Indivisible — the grassroots organization that emerged after Trump's 2016 election to coordinate resistance efforts. But the investigation was so absorbing that Republican jealousy of the narrative likely helped feed their QAnon fantasies.

Ultimately, this fixation placed too much faith in the courts and then Congress, which decided to take Mueller's report—which only makes sense as an impeachment referral—and shelve it.

However, you could argue that the probe constrained Trump and his team, shaping the narrative around them and ultimately helping Democrats take back the House, impeach Trump, and defeat him in 2020.

What is undeniable is that there will be no similar investigations to focus Democrats in 2025.

We can beat Republicans at improv

You can see how starved Democrats are to tell their deep story and see it reflected in their leaders.

They leap when it seems like Cory Booker is trying to break through the normalcy of this regime's malfeasance—such as when his marathon Senate floor speeches challenging Trump nominations go viral. And you see the vast appetite for something to believe in when Pete Buttigieg becomes an instant hit on Substack with his policy-focused takes.

But the right's power doesn't just come from big, loud voices. It comes from their synchronicity and cohesion, how they "Yes, and…" each other.

Donald Trump's endless grievances, especially around the Big Lie—his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen—give the GOP Improv Team a game they can all play. And Trump has a freaky talent for making his self-obsession rhyme with his audience's beefs with modernity, inciting their participation.

Cohesion is always tough for Democrats. But a deep story only succeeds if it activates an audience. This is something “centrist” Democratic donors are loath to do, but it's the only way to compete in this information landscape.

And storytelling is ultimately a democratic process that progressives excel at—in movies, music, advertising, and almost everything. Except politics.

That's why we need to activate America's creative community: the writers, the performers, the producers who entertain the world. Just as we funded artists during the Depression to tell the story of the New Deal through murals, theater, and film, we need to fund former government workers and connect them with the best storytellers on the planet.

If the story is great, the audience will sell it for you

Think of the stories that are unfolding in real time due to the actions of Trump and Elon Musk.

Think of all the good that the government has built since the New Deal, all the ways it has improved our lives and protected our future, and how that's all being destroyed to save pennies on the dollars being thrown to the wealthiest Americans.

And these stories will only get more critical to tell. We know this as we watch RFK Jr.—Trump's pick for Health and Human Services—prove why vaccinations were one of the greatest health care miracles ever by denying them to as many people as possible.

So yes, we need big, loud, compelling, well-funded voices to break out of algorithms. That's the only way to win over voters who have been sold on a distorted image of the Democratic Party.

But all the Joe Rogans in the world won't matter if they don't find great stories that their audiences will love and repeat to as many people as possible.