Dems Wonder: Should We Actually Talk to Conservatives?

Dang it. I’d hoped that they wouldn’t start asking this question until at least, oh … 2030 or so. 

Having watched Kamala Harris’ media strategy — total avoidance — crash and burn, however, has them doing some navel-gazing. Perhaps the strategy of forming squares within barely-noticed progressive media outlets doesn’t actually help win elections, some Democrats now say, according to Axios:

The once-fringe idea of Democrats appearing on conservative-leaning media is suddenly going mainstream in the wake of the party’s 2024 election losses.

Why it matters: Nearly a dozen House Democrats tell Axios that party members need to increase their appearances on conservative-leaning and non-traditional platforms, or risk irrelevance.

• They say they no longer can look past the huge audiences offered by Fox News and conservative podcasts, whose messaging power became evident when Republicans swept the White House and both chambers of Congress in last month’s election.
• “If half the country is watching and we gotta win 50% plus one, how can you reach anybody when you’re not talking where they go?” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) told Axios.

That’s what some of them say. Moskowitz already has a policy of engaging conservative media, and may end up as FEMA director under Trump as a result. Ro Khanna appears on a semi-regular basis on the Hugh Hewitt Show as well as Fox News. Jared Golden explains that he keeps it local more than national, but regularly engages conservative outlets in Maine just to make sure he’s speaking for himself rather than having his opponents do it for him. John Fetterman’s medical issues make media engagement more difficult, but he too has followed Golden’s general strategy of cross-ideological engagement on a local basis.

You know what we used to call that? Politics. Candidates go where the people are, not the other way around. But these politicians already knew that well before the last cycle, too, so they aren’t the best examples of a sea change among Democrats. 

So — have any Democrats actually changed strategy? The Axios report doesn’t really give too many examples of firm reversals. They quote one progressive who thinks it might be a good idea (House Dem Becca Balint), and another who wants to avoid Fox News and conservative media for “places of culture, sports” instead. Rep. Jasmine Crockett rejects the idea entirely, preferring not to engage people who disagree with the progressive agenda … which worked out so well for Democrats in this cycle. 

This goes beyond engagement, though, a point that Crockett and even Axios miss. It’s not just that Democrats won’t engage voters other than fellow true believers, limiting themselves to MSNBC, CNN, The View, and other progressive bubbles. (Bluesky would be another great example, where many of them fled to escape Elon Musk and the evenly balanced membership of Twitter/X.) It’s that they argue either tacitly or explicitly that opposing viewpoints are entirely illegitimate and even part of foreign intelligence operations, alienating tens of millions of voters by attempting to suppress their points of view. That’s why Joe Biden’s “garbage” comment resonated in the final days of the campaign, although by that time the Democrats had already lost the election.

Appearing on conservative media platforms might help Democrats, if in nothing else than forcing them to refine their arguments. But until they stop treating voters who disagree with their agenda like domestic terrorists or Russian sleeper agents, they won’t make any headway at all. 

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

• Merry Christmas, everyone! Andrew Malcolm and I discuss Joe Biden’s bizarre holiday gifts to the victims of murderers on Death Row, and what it says about Biden’s competence. 
• Has the mainstream media really entered “suck up mode,” or are media outlets just dialing down Democrat propaganda? Today’s media probably can’t tell the difference anyway, and Andrew and I explain why we need the Ron Luciano model of reporter apprenticeship. 
• And forget the “Die Hard” debate — what should truly be America’s Pie?   

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!