Democrats Throw Money at a Problem: Countering G.O.P. Clout Online

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/politics/democrats-influencers-
trump.html

Six months after the Democratic Party’s crushing 2024 defeat, the party’s 
megadonors are being inundated with overtures to spend tens of millions of 
dollars to develop an army of left-leaning online influencers.

At donor retreats and in pitch documents seen by The New York Times, 
liberal strategists are pushing the party’s rich backers to reopen their 
wallets for a cavalcade of projects to help Democrats, as the cliché now 
goes, “find the next Joe Rogan.” The proposals, the scope of which has not 
been previously reported, are meant to energize glum donors and persuade 
them that they can compete culturally with President Trump — if only they 
can throw enough money at the problem.

Democrats widely believe they must grow more creative in stoking online 
enthusiasm for their candidates, particularly in less outwardly political 
forms of media like sports or lifestyle podcasts. Many now take it as 
gospel that Mr. Trump’s victory last year came in part because he 
cultivated an ecosystem of supporters on YouTube, TikTok and podcasts, in 
addition to the many Trump-friendly hosts on Fox News.

The quiet effort amounts to an audacious — skeptics might say desperate — 
bet that Democrats can buy more cultural relevance online, despite the 
fact that casually right-leaning touchstones like Mr. Rogan’s podcast were 
not built by political donors and did not rise overnight.

Wealthy donors tend to move in packs, and some jaded liberals worry that 
the excitement could cause money to flow into projects that are not fully 
fleshed out. They argue that the latest pitches on the left are coming 
from operatives who are hungry to meet donors’ demand for a shiny new 
object. In a break from the past, some of the Democrats’ new ventures are 
for-profit companies.

And so far, there are still more ideas than hard, committed money: One 
Democratic operative described compiling a spreadsheet of 26 active 
projects related to creators, over a dozen of which are new since 
November. But a few of the efforts have ties to major donors that could 
give them liftoff.

“It needs to start with a legitimate investment,” said Marissa McBride, a 
Democratic strategist who leads a donor group called Mind the Gap. But she 
added, “There has to be something that is happening organically as well.”

Shedding a ‘Hall Monitor’ Reputation
The first out of the gate has been Chorus, a well-publicized liberal 
nonprofit group co-founded by the Democratic influencer Brian Tyler Cohen.

But others have stayed under wraps until now. In November, Ms. McBride and 
other liberal operatives gathered in Washington for a series of meetings 
to survey the election wreckage. At the headquarters of American Bridge, 
one of the largest Democratic donor networks, they eventually hatched a 
plan for a for-profit media company called AND Media, which stands for 
“Achieve Narrative Dominance.”

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The company, incorporated in March, says it is aiming to raise $45 million 
over the next four years. The group hopes to have a $70 million budget 
over that time frame based on predictions of $25 million in revenue. It 
says it has raised $7 million so far. Ms. McBride and Christian Tom, who 
led digital strategy for the Biden White House, have pitched the company 
to American Bridge donors as a broad cultural project.

Hoping to move away from “the current didactic, hall monitor style of 
Democratic politics that turns off younger audiences,” AND Media will 
focus on directly funding influencers and co-producing their content, 
opening a creator talent agency and starting by “inking deals with four 
‘flagship’ creators,” according to a business plan shared with The Times.

Another effort with ties to major donors is called Project Bullhorn, which 
is meant to pool contributions to back creator projects. The money is 
running through Jason Berkenfeld, who has advised the political giving of 
Eric Schmidt, the billionaire former Google chief executive, and others. 
Mr. Berkenfeld pitched the project to major Democratic contributors at a 
briefing this month featuring Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Mr. Berkenfeld is seeking to raise $35 million in the first year for 
Project Bullhorn and aligned work, according to two people who have spoken 
to him. He is largely trying to amplify existing influencer networks: An 
early recipient of the money he raises will be a fund backing left-leaning 
creators on YouTube. Another will be a “matchmaking service” to book these 
creators on YouTube shows and podcasts.

Project Bullhorn plans to include a for-profit arm that will “have the 
potential to reap significant returns,” according to a concept document 
obtained by The Times. “We will need to create self-sustaining businesses 
if we want to build an echo chamber with sufficient scale and reach.”

‘We Can’t Afford to Wait’
All of these programs are somewhat similar, and they will compete for 
scarce capital. Democratic strategists and fund-raisers say that many 
major liberal donors are still being stingy with their money — and that 
the few laying out cash are more focused on legal efforts to fight the 
Trump administration.

One of the top aides on former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 
campaign, Rob Flaherty, and a digital media executive, Mike Vainisi, have 
been in conversations with donors in recent weeks ahead of what is 
expected to be a multimillion-dollar fund-raising round for a new for-
profit company called Channel Zero. The group is meant to provide back-
office services to content creators who already have large followings.

Mr. Flaherty is also advising Project Echo, a new four-year $52 million 
influencer program from People for the American Way, a progressive 
nonprofit group. The group is spending about $10 million of its own money 
and pitching donors for the rest, according to its president, Svante 
Myrick.

A program called Double Tap Democracy, meanwhile, is working with 2,000 
mostly apolitical creators who generally have smaller followings.

The project was started by Rachel Irwin, who led a $30 million influencer 
program last cycle for Future Forward, the biggest Democratic super PAC. 
But there was tension during the campaign over the size of the influencer 
program, which some donors wanted to be even bigger, according to a person 
briefed on the conversations.

Ms. Irwin incorporated Double Tap late last year. She received an initial 
grant of about $250,000 from Future Forward and has raised money from some 
Silicon Valley donors. She has argued to others that the party did not 
invest early or enough in cultural talent in the last election, and that 
she is trying to learn from her experience at Future Forward.

“We can’t keep running these programs late in the cycle, only to break 
down after or treat these relationships as transactional and expect 
success,” Ms. Irwin wrote to allies in a March email seen by The Times. 
“Every day we don’t engage online is a missed opportunity — and we can’t 
afford to wait.”

To some Democratic operatives, the repeated gatherings of donors to mull 
such ideas has felt like a ceaseless calendar of cattle calls.

Aides to the liberal donors George Soros and Laurene Powell Jobs held an 
idea-a-thon in February in Washington. This month, about 50 digital 
operatives presented their proposals at a hotel in Austin, Texas, at an 
event organized by Civic Resolve, a think tank backed by a Walmart heir. A 
gathering hosted by Future Forward this month in Half Moon Bay, Calif., 
featured a session on “Return on Culture” that paired Nimay Ndolo, a 
progressive content creator, with Jeff Lawson, a Democratic megadonor who 
recently bought the satirical website The Onion.

And Mark Gallogly, a private-equity veteran and Democratic donor, has 
invited contributors and operatives to the latest of a series of 
gatherings on this issue on Tuesday in New York.

Mr. Flaherty, the former Harris strategist, who has been at some donor 
events, said emulating the right’s success would take time.

“The key is building off what’s already resonating and investing in it,” 
he said. “If it all goes into more tools for delivering poll-tested 
messaging, it’ll fall flat with its audience. At that point, you might as 
well just buy ads.”


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November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Every day is an IQ test. Some pass, some, not so much.

Thank you for cleaning up the disasters of the 2008-2017, 2020-2024 Obama 
/ Biden / Harris fiascos, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.