Democrats are spending $20 million trying to get Joe Rogan listeners to like them

Republican candidates’ Tour De Podcast had a significant effect on the 2024 presidential election. Donald Trump and JD Vance went on shows like The Joe Rogan Experience, advertising themselves as relatable guys who just wanted the best for the little dude (and, of course, to eradicate “woke”). Their success in wooing digital denizens–particularly young white males, who make up a major chunk of the audience for conservative podcasts–was so significant that Rogan and right-wing streamers like Adin Ross ended up being thanked in official victory speeches.

Now, Democrats are spending $20 million trying to figure out how to reach those same young men–and potentially turn them into blue voters. (Chances there, we’ll admit, are looking slim.)

The Speaking with American Men project, aka SAM, will spend the next two years conducting research about men who believe they’re “invisible to the Democratic coalition,” Ilyse Hogue, who co-founded SAM, told Politico.

“Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong,” she added, citing data from SAM’s initial round of research. That research included 30 focus groups and a national media consumption survey. Overall, it showed many young men feel “neither party has our back,” but they tend to sway more toward Republicans because they’re seen as “confident and unafraid to offend,” while Democrats are “overly-scripted and cautious,” per Politico.

“[Y]ou’ve got this weak problem and then you’ve got this, ‘I don’t think they care about me’ problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer.” Hogue said.

One focus group respondent, for example, said he admires Andrew Tate and Trump because they’re “truthful, honest, to what they believe in.” (Guess we’ll just forget the whole rape and sex trafficking thing.)

So what’s the solution? Hogue’s advice echoes what former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg

told Flagrant host Andrew Schulz in an April episode of the podcast. When asked about why Democrats balk at going on conservative-bait shows like Rogan’s, Buttigieg explained, “Look, there’s a lot of reasons to hesitate, right? If you’re going into a place that you know is not ideologically friendly or not aligned with you, like there’s reasons to think twice about it. And I think a lot of people in my party do.”

But, said, “My take on it is, you can’t blame somebody for not embracing your message if they’ve literally never heard it. And a lot of people will never hear what we have to say if we’re only talking to people who are friendly to us.”

Hogue says something similar. SAM’s preliminary advice for Democrats is to “supercharge social listening” on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and Discord.

“Democrats can’t win these folks over if they’re not speaking the language that young men are speaking,” she said. “Most people I talked to, Democratic operatives, have never heard of Red Pill Fitness, which is just huge online.”

That statement alone shows how stunningly out of touch top Dems are. The redpill manosphere movement has been around for years, pulling the exact young men they want to target further into conservatism, with zero liberal counterweight.

Perhaps SAM will find what we already know: that if Democrats were willing to take a risk and appear–well-prepared–on shows like JRE, they might be able to present their platform to voters who’ve only heard about it through the potentially distorting lens of conservative mouthpieces.

As Buttigieg put it, “I grew up in a world where you watched a TV story about some controversy, you heard the conservative opinion, you heard the liberal opinion. And the point is, you’d think about it.”