Liberals Too Tired From All That Winning To Want Their Own Joe Rogan
Or How To Lose A Lot Of Guys In 10 Days
“Kamala Harris should’ve gone on Joe Rogan” has quickly become the new “Hillary Clinton should’ve gone to Wisconsin.” Now the Financial Times reports that Harris “ditched” the Rogan podcast interview because of “progressive backlash fears.”
Campaign adviser Jennifer Palmieri admitted on Wednesday, “There was a backlash with some of our progressive staff that didn’t want her to be on it, and how there would be a backlash.”
That’s a pretty weak sauce excuse. Harris agreed to a Fox News interview that less than 8 million people watched compared to the 50 million people who watched Rogan’s Donald Trump interview on YouTube.
However, anything less than an actual endorsement — highly unlikely — wouldn’t have changed the trajectory of the race or made Harris or Democrats in general more appealing to Rogan’s “manosphere” audience. This has led some Democrats to suggest that we need a “Joe Rogan for the Left.” Many liberals have sneered at the thought — there could never be a Rogan for the Left because liberals are just too darn smart, cultured, and politically powerless. They can’t be bothered with podcasts and the TiketyTok. This smugness is neither justified nor constructive.
Liberals do in fact need a “Joe Rogan,” someone who connects with young people and low-propensity voters.
The Rogan Effect
Joe Rogan’s audience is predominately young and male. His podcast ranks number one among Black listeners, and more than 20 percent of his audience is Hispanic. Overall, his audience is more larger and more diverse than Saturday Night Live, where Kamala Harris made a cameo appearance before Election Day.
Young voters were key to Barack Obama’s 2008 landslide victory. They preferred him over John McCain by 68 percent to 30 percent. Obama won 54 percent of young white voters, a record-setting number for a modern Democrat. According to NBC News exit polls, Trump made significant gains with both young men and young women. In 2020, Joe Biden won young voters by 25 points, but this year, Harris won them by just six. Maybe Democrats should’ve nominated someone even older than Biden — like the ghost of LBJ: “Sure, he’s dead, but he ain’t woke! LBJ/Kathryn Hahn 2024.”
Republicans accuse “radical leftists” of “grooming” defenseless young people and changing their genders during home room, but only 5 percent of young adult Americans actually identify as trans. It’s an even smaller number (300,000 total) among children between the ages of 13 and 17. Unfortunately, a much larger number of young people overall are shifting to MAGA. Men aged 18 to 29 have moved 30 points to the right since 2020.
Rogan is a very effective rightwing cultural influencer, and his young audience is primed to embrace MAGA. During his interview with Trump, Rogan said, “The rebels are Republicans now. They’re like, you want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to like buck the system? You’re a conservative now. That's how crazy. And then the liberals are now pro-silencing-criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech and regulating the First Amendment. It’s bananas to watch.”
This is a farcical statement, considering that Trump’s 2024 platform was more culturally and politically regressive than Ronald Reagan’s morning in America, but Democrats are not in a position to challenge that nonsense. They aren’t a consistent presence on social media, where most Hispanics get their news. They mostly avoid podcasts when it’s not election season. Meanwhile, just 23 percent of MSNBC’s audience is working class and only 14 percent are blue collar workers. The median MSNBC viewer’s age is 70. The average age for Rogan’s audience is 24.
“There is a massive amount of rightwing radicalization that has been occurring, especially in younger male spaces,” liberal podcast Hasan Piker observed recently. “Everything is completely dominated by right-wing politics.”
“If you’re a dude under the age of 30 and you have any hobbies whatsoever, whether it’s playing video games, whether it’s working out, whether it’s listening to a history podcast or whatever, every single facet of that is completely dominated by center right to … Trumpian right,” Piker said. “Everything they see is right-wing sentiment.”
The key here is that young men are becoming more conservative through exposure to content that, while superficially apolitical, is steeped in MAGA ideology. Liberals have compared Joe Rogan to The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, which only reinforces the larger disconnect. The Daily Show’s current median viewership age is 63. It has about 570,000 nightly viewers and just 30,000 of them are between the ages of 18 to 34. Given the outsized role math plays in political elections, Democrats do in fact need someone with Rogan’s audience size.
When Kamala Harris appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alexandra Cooper opened with what felt like a warning/apology to her audience: “I do not usually discuss politics or have politicians on the show because I want Call Her Daddy to be a place that everyone feels comfortable tuning in.” You’d never hear Rogan or Dave Portnoy at Barstool Sports explain why they’d invited a political figure onto their show, even someone genuinely controversial. Their very lifestyle is casually political.
Left-leaning podcasters/social media content creators tend to have deliberately apolitical brands. The attractive young white woman showing off her home remodel could be a Democrat or a Republican. She might’ve posted a pro-Harris Instagram message before having to close the comments, but it’s an outlier amongst the rest of her content.
Yes, there are many liberal podcasts out there, but they are overtly political. Like The Daily Show, if you’re following them, you’re probably already on the Democratic Party’s fundraising list.
Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, told Teen Vogue, “There are a number of reasons Trump appealed to young men. First, he showed up in the places they congregate online. He engaged with the podcasters and influencers they follow and trust. More than most other voters, young men are more politically homeless — they have a negative view of both political parties. They do not trust the politicians to serve the public interest, or the political process. Trump offered an easy shortcut. Despite all the stupid and offensive comments, young men also found Trump likable.”
We need cultural influencers who can make liberal ideology relatable to young audiences. Whenever liberals dismiss the idea of a “Joe Rogan on the Left,” it seems as if they can’t imagine a working-class Black or Latino guy on our team. Even after this year’s electoral setbacks, there are still more center-left members of that demo than MAGA, but Democrats need to become part of that culture all year round.
We can’t just sit back while an entire generation of men (and women) identify with MAGA’s supposed “bomb-throwing outsiders” and associate Democrats with the “status quo” or social conformity. It’s not just bad politically. It’s untrue! The liberal lifestyle shouldn’t require a white-collar job or a post-graduate degree.
Similar to this, I've argued that the Left needs its own answer to Fox News--an obviously left-leaning major television and Internet channel that (1) puts out effective messaging on every issue, (2) provides saturation coverage of the issues the Left needs covered, and (3) uses enough glam and hooks to drive viewership and sustain itself financially. Republicans have Fox, we have nothing.
The response I usually get comes down to "we don't want to be like them" (yes, batting above our weight politically, wouldn't want that!), "we shouldn't have to lie to win" (never said anything about lying, spin is not lying, messaging is not lying) or "never happen, people with money just want Republicans to win and would never fund this (I'm not talking about a charity case but a self-sustaining media model to meet a real need in the market and besides, liberals have no problem raising billions for losing election campaigns--a different media atmosphere would pay off far better).
Note from a divided house: I hate Joe Rogan so much. His noise is pervasive and CONSTANT. Every time my husband is tinkering in the garage. Every day in his office, or crashing on the couch in the evenings. (Rogan is a YouTuber as well as a podcaster, was actually on YouTube first — and THE BALLS ON THAT ONE to spread his victimization BS about the YouTube algorithm— it’s . Just. I can’t anymore.) Every road trip, for hours. And even if I don’t personally have to hear it, I get told damn near every day about all the “awesome” things these crazy people are gonna do, because they said so on Rogan.
Like everything else that poisoned my husband, it was ok for a while but now it’s just nails on chalkboard. And what I really hate is exactly what you said: it’s all political, without seeming political. It’s the fucking frog-boiling that is absolutely killing me. And apparently it’s killing an entire generation now. And it just makes me ill. How are my daughters ever going to have reasonable relationships with men?