The Democratic Party’s YouTube channel tells you everything you need to know about why it keeps losing the propaganda wars. With a mere 86,000 subscribers, “The Democrats” trail numerous accounts devoted to sumo wrestling highlights, text-based video game history, and tutorials for styling curly hair. Their recent “Daily Blueprint” videos pull numbers that would embarrass a small-town weatherman, as most hover between a few hundred and a few thousand views.

This digital disasterpiece hasn’t appeared in a vacuum. A new poll from Unite the Country, a Democratic super PAC, shows the party’s credibility with voters has plummeted even further since last November’s losses. Voters now perceive Democrats as “out of touch”, “woke”, and “weak”, with approval ratings below 35% among white men, Hispanic men, and working-class voters. Only 35% of Democrats are optimistic about their party’s future, down from 57% last July. The YouTube ghost town reflects this broader collapse.

Even their attempts at viral content fall flat. The party’s YouTube Shorts, designed specifically to catch fire on social media, rarely crack 10,000 views. Watch Senator Mark Kelly monotonously “debunking” Texas flood conspiracies while his microphone pops and his phone clicks incessantly, and you’ll understand why young voters scroll past without a second thought — just as their eyes glazed over when they watched sexagenarian Minnesota Governor Tim Walz nervously taking notes while debating a much more confident JD Vance in the autumn.

Unable to connect authentically with voters, the Democrats lurch between two doomed strategies. First, they decide they need their own Joe Rogan — some mythical moderate or at least vaguely manly podcaster who can win back men and swing voters with three-hour conversations about psychedelics, conspiracy theories and martial arts. When that predictably goes nowhere (because such a person cannot easily exist within the Democratic coalition), they pivot to whichever progressive just went viral on TikTok.

The latest example of this whiplash is unfolding right now, as party insiders are hurrying to learn from Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidate who won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary over stale and pale former governor Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani, who has collected endorsements from key progressives such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, represents everything the party establishment fears and desires simultaneously: authentic engagement with actual voters, coupled with politics which prompt party stalwarts to host “communication and organizing” breakfasts while also giving the older guard heartburn.

The confounding part is that polling consistently shows Democrats have more popular positions than the Republicans on healthcare, social security, and climate change. Americans actually agree with them on many substantive issues, including a recent shift on immigration. But watch any video on their official channel and you’ll see why that advantage evaporates. Centrist Democrats see a few progressives getting millions of views and conclude they need better social media managers who can teach them to replicate AOC’s Instagram aesthetic or Mamdani’s YouTube energy.

AOC and Mamdani are masters of social media. They produce slick, well-edited videos that hone in on key issues for voters. Whether it’s Mamdani speaking with Trump voters in New York or AOC discussing healthcare while chopping onions, they’re not following a script designed to seem “relatable”.

Meanwhile, the Democratic establishment keeps trying to produce the perfect witch’s brew of messaging: a little bit populist, a little bit progressive, and all center-left for a fictional “median voter” who exists only in the fevered imaginations of political consultants.

The latest polls about Democratic unpopularity underscore what successful gut-instinct politicians across the spectrum already understand: voters will respond to strong natural performers. Whether it’s Donald Trump’s contradictory but always blunt pronouncements, Bernie Sanders’s unwavering Left-wing statism, AOC’s progressivism, or Mamdani’s street-level economic populism, Americans gravitate toward politicians who stake out clear positions. The Democratic establishment’s obsession with focus-grouped messaging creates exactly the kind of mushy, overproduced, and under-watched content that dies on YouTube — and everywhere else.

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Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work

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