Between Nov. 5, 2024, and Jan. 20 of this year, Democrats licked their wounds, trying to figure out how and why they lost so badly. Once Donald Trump walked back into the White House, though, his opponents turned their attention to resisting his MAGA agenda. They are flailing, and that may be largely because they never solved their post-election, pre-inauguration puzzle. The “Resistance” is struggling for purchase because the people behind it still don’t understand precisely why they find themselves resisting rather than governing.
Politico recently published a trio of articles that could perhaps collectively be described as a Democratic Party postmortem. The articles featured Democrat strategists and three officeholders, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), and New York City councilman Chi Ossé (D) opining on what they think went wrong for them in 2024. They also shared their thoughts on why they are struggling to win the messaging war against President Trump and, indeed, the wider MAGA movement.
“Trump and Republicans have been able to grasp different types of media in how to get their message across that impacts society as a whole,” said Ossé, “and I do believe that Dem leadership is missing the mark, not only in the election but in our resistance 2.0. We need to be active in every medium.”
Perhaps three significant factors are at play, here. The fact that Trump’s new government efficiency pit-bull, Elon Musk, also happens to be the world’s richest man and the owner of perhaps the world’s most influential social media platform gives MAGA a big advantage. There is also Trump’s own understanding of the power of social media – and his not insignificant use of it.
Legacy Media Bubble
There is another pivotal factor, however, and one of the Politico articles touches on it. “Democrats’ weakness in reaching voters outside traditional channels — TikTok, not MSNBC; YouTube, not national newspapers — isn’t new,” the article observes. The political left’s decades-long dominance of the establishment legacy media has backfired in this information age. Democrats got too comfortable with the idea that The New York Times and the alphabet TV news networks such as ABC, MSNBC, and CNN, along with DC’s most prominent print newspaper, would always give them positive exposure and champion their agenda.
This became the Democrats’ echo chamber. They got comfortable with it – and complacent. They were almost never asked the tough questions and were rarely challenged, even if they made easily debunked claims.
By contrast, Republicans and conservatives have been crowded out in these traditional media platforms. They are constantly challenged, accused, berated, and shouted down. The legacy media, by shunning them, drove them to social and alternative media, which are now the most common platforms from which Americans get their news.
The Failure to Grasp MAGA
None of this goes to the heart of the Democrats’ problem, though, or explains why MAGA has arguably now become the most consequential grass-roots political movement in the history of the western world.
MAGA – Make America Great Again – was a reaction to years of failed policy and social/cultural destruction. Democrats have simply never grasped this fact. Instead, they have only doubled down on the same tired and discredited narratives. Raskin perfectly demonstrated this mental inertia during the interview he did for Politico’s “Deep Dive” podcast.
Asked where Democrats go from here in their effort to resist the Trump agenda, Raskin responded: “Overall, we have to work on a short-term, daily basis to defeat and block every authoritarian, fascistic move against the rights of the people, against the separation of powers, against legislative supremacy to be the lawmaking power.”
Stuck in the Echo Chamber
Naturally, Raskin’s interviewer did not challenge him on what was “authoritarian” or “fascistic” about anything Trump has done since returning to the White House. Then again, this was a Politico interview, and therein lay the problem. Democrats are talking about the need to compete with MAGA across the wider new media landscape, but they are forced to stick within the leftist echo chamber – which Politico inhabits – if they want their usual rhetoric to go unchallenged.
If Raskin appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast or One America News Network or The Blaze – or did an interview with Liberty Nation News – and described Trump as a fascist, he would be challenged to explain himself.
At least some Democrats appear to be on the verge of figuring out their decline in the public’s esteem. “I think the majority of the party realizes that the ideological purity of some of the groups is a recipe for disaster and that candidly the attack on over-the-top wokeism was a valid attack,” Sen. Warner observed. By and large, though, Trump’s political enemies are still stuck on the idea that Trump is a fascist, Trump is a racist. The 2024 election proved that Americans aren’t buying it. All Democrat efforts to compete with MAGA across the broader media and information landscape will be in vain if they do not fundamentally change the message itself.
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