The New York Times is happy to report that the wealthy donors of the left have begun moving money to find someone, anyone, who can sell left wing ideas to the people in the same way Joe Rogan sells right wing ideas.
As the Times reports, the rich donors of the Democrats have spent time at retreats trying to find their own Rogan to the point where it's become a central focus:
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. Mr. Trump’s victory last year, many now take as gospel, 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 strategy is sound. An online support system is integral to the survival of a Party in this day and age, but I'm not entirely sure they get why Trump's online support was so popular.
A lot of the issue is that online was the only place Trump would be supported. Outside the positive press he would receive on Fox News, all other legacy media outlets were openly hostile to a point where the truth was a tertiary concern. When your options are limited, you use what you can, and most pro-Trump voices only had the internet and their preferred platforms.
But let's focus on what the left sees as the greatest prize; their own Joe Rogan.
The thing is, if there's anything that truly reveals the ignorance the left possess about the people, I think it's this. They fundamentally don't understand Rogan's appeal. They just see a personality that seems to be popular and will spend millions trying to replicate that success.
But Rogan's success isn't necessarily personality-driven. There's nothing addictive about his voice, he has no catchphrase, and he's not shocking for shock's sake. Rogan's appeal is based in something that the left has rejected in its entirety.
Rogan is willing to be wrong.
Rogan's entire show is dedicated to listening to people talk, hearing them out, and letting the people decide for themselves if something is true or not. There's no agenda to be right, or at the least, it's very rarely that. Rogan doesn't discriminate in terms of guests. He doesn't try to stop them from actually saying anything in order to make sure his guest's narrative isn't established.
Rogan's entire show is learning from his guests, reconfiguring his perceptions based on the information given, and pushing back only in the name of getting to the bottom of the subject. There isn't a left-leaning host in the running at this time that will do that, because the left's entire strategy is to create a narrative and maintain it at all costs. It cannot be questioned, and if it is, the questioner needs to be destroyed.
I have no doubt that the left can find an appealing personality, but even the most shiny person can be shrugged off if what they're peddling is a singular idea that cannot and will not be questioned or shaken. There's nothing interesting about a static perspective based on a political party's agenda.
Rogan's show is fascinating and entertaining because his guests have the runway to launch ideas and concepts you may not have thought about previously or had been hidden from you by information gatekeepers. The left's "Joe Rogan" will devolve into playing defense of the left's narratives, just like every other legacy media outlet is having to in the age of the internet. Guests will come on and be constantly interrupted, fought with, and nothing will be learned.
I'm getting bored just thinking about it.
The left will only crawl out of this hole they're in when they embrace the fact that they're fallible and in desperate need of a reality infusion. More importantly, they need to stop looking at people as things to be programmed and see them instead as intelligent creatures who want to learn, discover, and decide for themselves.
They won't do this, however, because an authoritarian body cannot stand the idea of anyone having that kind of agency.
And this is why the left will never have their Joe Rogan. They won't allow him to exist.
