The failure to communicatie

In the wake of the 2024 election, Democrats are in the midst of a period of self-reflection, trying to figure out what went wrong. The book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about Joe Biden’s infirmities and the administration’s attempt to keep them under wraps is rehashing old news and giving us new sordid details. Catalist, the Democratic data firm, presented a report that gave a look at how key groups of the electorate shifted toward Republicans. More reports are coming and the party may go through a period of reckoning. 

One report in particular caught my attention. A group called Higher Ground Labs issued a report on the party’s tech infrastructure. One section noted that Democrats failed to match Republicans’ organic reach, specifically in digital media.

“Democrats substantially outspent Republicans in digital advertising, and 2024 marked the first cycle in which influencer marketing became a widespread and institutionally adopted practice. Yet, conservative media achieved significantly greater organic reach across platforms—revealing a critical gap in resource allocation and strategic prioritization within our media approach.”

Since the early 2000s, Democrats have built a communication infrastructure that is centrally controlled and based on paid advertising. Conservatives have built a broad, decentralized infrastructure across mediums that reaches communities all day, every day whether an election is pending or not.

Conservatives increasingly control the means of communication. They’ve bought radio stations, newspapers, televisions stations, and digital properties. These properties have become the filter through which information reaches communities.

Conservatives seem to have instinctively understood the way communication was shifting. The late conservative media personality Andrew Breitbart famously declared, “Politics is downstream of culture.” Conservatives moved into cultural spaces of the digital universe while progressives largely stayed in political ones.

Joe Rogan was a former comedian and mixed martial arts commentator who built a huge following based on his interviews and observations, not his politics. Dave Portnoy started Barstool Sports as an irreverent media property that thumbed its nose at polite society. Their influence is based on entertainment value, not their political leanings, but their political opinions carry weight with their audiences.

And it’s not just national shows. Conservatives have been building infrastructure for decades. In North Carolina, AM radio stations like WPTF in Raleigh and WBT in Charlotte are dominated by conservative commentators whose perspectives both reflect and influence cultural perceptions. Programming is not just political commentary.

North State Media, which is owned by a group of conservative leaders and donors, has been buying up small-town newspapers around the state for years. Other conservative-leaning media outfits own more newspapers in the state. They aren’t just dominating editorial pages; they are controlling how news is covered.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group owns television stations in Asheville, the Triangle, the Triad, and eastern North Carolina. They influence what is covered and how its covered. During the first Trump administration, Sinclair required its local outlets to run commentary by Trump advisors.

Progressives have failed to understand the decentralization of communication and the interactive nature of the digital universe. They are still predominantly talking at people instead of to or with them. They have built a political infrastructure based on force-feeding target audiences messages through paid advertising. They’ve established non-profit entities designed to engage the base or run press operations to attract the attention of traditional media outlets. Unfortunately, a lot of those outlets are no longer trusted by the people progressives need to reach.

I started PoliticsNC, in part, in response to what I felt was a failure to effectively communicate. Over the years, I’ve put together several proposals for what I called a communications hub. The main premise of the proposals never changed: Progressives need to be engaging in more places and on more platforms with more voices.

While the proposals got a lot of interest, none received funding. Higher Ground’s report on the the state of the progressive digital media environment makes those proposals feel relevant again. The problems that existed in 2013 are even more apparent today. Maybe it’s time to dust them off and trot them out again.

Progressives need to retool and overhaul their communications infrastructure to bring it up to date. Over the past decade, they lost the ability to communicate with whole swaths of the country, especially in rural communities. Even if their ideas might resonate with people in those areas, progressives are never reaching them. Meanwhile, conservatives have figured out how to reach and influence groups that Democrats consider their base—young people, African Americans, Hispanics.

There’s a lot of commentary now about progressives finding their own Joe Rogan. That’s close, but not quite right. They won’t change the dynamics with one or two trusted influencers. They need to establish multiple networks of influencers talking about relevant topics, not just politics. Many of those influencers should be local with hundreds or thousands of listeners instead of millions.

Podcasters are emerging as modern daily newspapers. They cover a variety of topics, sports, culture, current events, etc. What’s relevant is how they talk about these topics, not just what they discuss. Give people a lens through which to view the topics at hand. Discuss the subjects people want to hear and learn about. Cover local sports, North Carolina history, food, the arts, music, and, yes, local politics.

The digital space is still wide open and still evolving. The communication environment is dynamic, not static. While podcasts dominate the media environment right now, they may be passé in a few years. New and emerging technology might change the way we get information again.

The progressive political leaders and organizations need to re-engage and better understand how the modern media landscape influences people. I suspect it will take new voices from people willing to challenge the old gatekeepers. The future is less about controlling the narrative through talking points than trying to shape it through offering perspectives that resonate.

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