Source: Politics<\/p>\n
The Department of Government Efficiency created its own account on X<\/a> last November, amassing 4 million followers with a stream of news on contract cancellations and other cuts to the bureaucracy. Elon Musk has posted relentlessly on the social media platform he owns, promoting his own voice on an algorithm he controls<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, started a rapid response account<\/a> in January with about 121,000 followers, a fraction of DOGE\u2019s reach. And Democrats held traditional rallies outside the USAID and Treasury buildings, where Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, was mocked on late-night TV<\/a> and by even some within his own party<\/a> after leading a chant of \u201cWe will win!\u201d<\/p>\n It was a halting response by Democrats to a flood of pro-DOGE messaging. And what was worse, according to interviews with more than a dozen Democratic elected officials and strategists, was that they were doing it on the wrong platform \u2014 convening a conventional show of resistance for local and national TV cameras, as Schumer did while holding a carton of eggs<\/a>, while largely leaving unanswered the torrent of MAGA orthodoxy and, in many cases, disinformation<\/a> online<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the online war, said Chi Oss\u00e9, a Democratic New York City councilman who has built an online following<\/a> through his short-form, explanatory videos, you \u201cdon\u2019t see those folks anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTrump and Republicans have been able to grasp different types of media in how to get their message across that impacts society as a whole, and I do believe that Dem leadership is missing the mark, not only in the election but in our resistance 2.0,\u201d Oss\u00e9 said. \u201cWe need to be active in every medium.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, in the early days of Trump\u2019s second term, they\u2019re getting swamped. The rapid response account the DNC started in January is a fifth of the size of @RapidResponse47<\/a>, the Trump White House\u2019s account. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, has almost a million followers. But Musk, who has posted hundreds of times over the last month, has more than 217 million followers. Some Democratic groups, like MoveOn.Org and Human Rights Campaign, are posting far less on X<\/a> \u2014 if not leaving the site completely for Bluesky, a left-leaning version of X with far fewer users and nowhere the same audience reach.<\/p>\n Conservative personalities hold five of the top 10 podcasts on Spotify<\/a>, while for liberals, only the New York Times\u2019 columnist Ezra Klein cracks that list. When Ben Shapiro, the controversial conservative podcaster<\/a>, posts on Facebook, 9.4 million people are following along, compared to about 1.8 million for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)<\/a>.<\/p>\n Three months after their losses in the November elections \u2014 and now three weeks into Donald Trump\u2019s presidency \u2014 some Democrats concede they are losing an asymmetrical battle with the president and his MAGA allies, where Trump and Musk have dominated online spaces over the last month. And there is no consensus among them about how to fix their rapid response problems or who\u2019s to blame, these Democrats said.<\/p>\n \u201cRepublicans are running circles around Democrats for how to connect to the culture today,\u201d said John Della Volpe, director of Harvard University\u2019s youth poll and an expert on Gen Z. \u201cPeople are still asking me in these post-election meetings, \u2018Who is Theo Von?\u2019 Even if they had the best message, you can\u2019t connect if you\u2019re not part of modern American culture, if you\u2019re not injecting yourself into these spaces where people already are.\u201d<\/p>\n Democrats\u2019 weakness in reaching voters outside traditional channels \u2014 TikTok, not MSNBC; YouTube, not national newspapers \u2014 isn\u2019t new. One post-election analysis from Navigator Research<\/a>, a Democratic research project, found that a majority of \u201cswing voters\u201d and new Trump voters last year got their news primarily from social media and alternative sources, like podcasts. Broadcast and cable news were far less popular amongst those two groups, the research found, while half of Kamala Harris\u2019 voters got their news from broadcast TV outlets.<\/p>\n \u201cRepublicans\u2019 ability to speak into the ecosystem is sharper, more precise and Democrats are behind in that,\u201d said Dan Sena, a longtime Democratic strategist and former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Sena, like other Democrats, noted that Republicans benefit from a broader media ecosystem that amplifies their message, where a story can travel from a Republican influencer\u2019s video to Musk\u2019s X feed to Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast to Fox News, reaching millions of viewers along the way.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a fight for the attention economy, and today the Republicans are winning. No doubt,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Sena warned that the fix won\u2019t come from the Democratic National Committee, DCCC or other affiliated party arms, therefore, it\u2019s \u201cnot even a fix we can expect right now,\u201d he said. Instead, \u201cthat\u2019s going to come through our candidates pushing back, getting their own internal communications sharper as we head into 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe leadership vacuum IRL is causing a messaging vacuum online,\u201d said Kyle Tharp, a progressive researcher who tracks digital political trends through his substack, Chaotic Era<\/a>. \u201cEven though there are some bright spots, Democrats are still getting steamrolled online and there\u2019s not a lot they can do about it because there\u2019s not a single coordinating body or person to push an offensive message.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know how fixable that problem is right now,\u201d Tharp added.<\/p>\n There are some exceptions among Democrats who are piercing through, including Ocasio-Cortez, who regularly goes viral with her Instagram live videos and posts on X. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first Gen Z member of Congress, frequently spars with Republicans online, as do Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).<\/p>\n Some Democrats are sharpening their language, which can often generate more online attention, though not without risk of turning off some voters. On Wednesday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) posted a clip of himself on CNN<\/a> calling Musk \u201ca dick\u201d because \u201cwhat the American public wants is for us to actually bring weapons to this bar fight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey should be creating bait of their own. Be more aggressive, be more outlandish,\u201d said Tim Miller, a former GOP strategist who now hosts a podcast on The Bulwark, a site founded by anti-Trump Republicans. \u201cI think they should be doing 700X of what they\u2019re doing, in terms of output, volume, platforms, speed.\u201d<\/p>\n And there\u2019s also some evidence that at least some Democrats have gotten the message. Progressive influencer Brian Tyler Cohen spoke to Senate and House members at their respective meetings this week about how to engage on social media, according to two people familiar with the meetings and granted anonymity to discuss private events. Jeffries appeared on Cohen\u2019s show<\/a> and Jon Stewart\u2019s podcast<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n Nine Democratic senators joined Pod Save America for a series of live interviews<\/a> last week, beaming in from Schumer\u2019s office. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)<\/a> and Schatz appeared on<\/a> Adam Mockler\u2019s YouTube show in recent weeks. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) popped up<\/a> on The David Pakman Show, another YouTube show for progressives. The DNC hired the staffers behind the @KamalaHQ X account to run its new @FactPostNews<\/a> efforts, which can be found on X, BlueSky, Threads, Instagram and Facebook.<\/p>\n But even Democrats acknowledge those efforts are the exception in their party. Thirty-five-year-old Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who like Oss\u00e9 has used social media to push through his political priorities, called the national Democratic response to Trump, \u201ctoo slow and too tepid and not meeting the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust like the printing press or the radio or the TV, social media is now how we communicate and if we\u2019re not adapting to this new environment, we\u2019re not going to get heard,\u201d Talarico said. \u201cIf our party doesn’t keep up, we\u2019re going to be left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n