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By Anna Rahmanan
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Democrats spent years warning all who would listen that the conservative influencer machine had forever changed Republican politics. Now the left is building a machine of its own.
One of the clearest tests just played out in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed’s Democratic Senate primary victory has given progressives a fresh argument that podcasts, YouTube shows, Instagram accounts and insurgent left media can be translated into political muscle. The race became a test of whether the left’s new media class can do what the right’s has done for years: make a candidate feel inevitable before institutions catch up. El-Sayed’s win does not settle that question, but it gives advocates of the model a powerful new piece of evidence.
The shift almost feels like a concession. Democrats are recognizing that modern politics often moves first through trust, then through ideology and, only later, through party, as demonstrated by President Donald Trump’s rise through the Republican Party. Voters may hear a campaign message from a senator, a committee or a television ad, sure—but they may only believe it when it comes from a host they follow, a creator they watch or a feed that has become part of their daily routine.
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That is the lesson Democrats are borrowing from the right, but it carries risk.
A media world built on social trust can elevate outsiders and weaken old gatekeepers. It can also reward factional loyalty and distrust of institutions. Can Democrats use the machine without being remade by it?
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Michigan Tests the New Democratic Media Map
El-Sayed, a former Detroit health director and progressive who previously ran for governor, spent months cultivating support across podcasts, creator networks and left-leaning digital platforms. His victory over Haley Stevens will inevitably be read as a validation of that approach, even if the result was shaped by many factors.
The contest is also consequential because Senator Gary Peters decided not to seek reelection, leaving Democrats to defend an open seat in a state won twice by President Trump. Former Republican Representative Mike Rogers is already preparing for the general election, making the Democratic primary a fight over both ideology and perceived electability.
The media divide has sharpened those tensions. El-Sayed’s supporters see independent left media as a way to break through a party structure they believe has been too cautious, too donor-driven and too dependent on legacy outlets. Stevens’ supporters argue that online momentum does not answer the central general-election question: which Democrat can retain a Senate seat in a state that both parties will contest aggressively.
The implications extend beyond Michigan. For many progressives, creator networks are no longer simply a way to communicate with voters. They are becoming part of the machinery of politics itself, helping candidates attract attention, raise money and build support outside traditional party structures.
Democrats are adapting to creator media because many of their old message vehicles no longer carry the authority they once did. The Democratic National Committee has already moved toward the creator model, working with more than 500 content creators through its “Influencer & Creative” program. The party has also launched rapid-response digital projects, including
@factpostnews, as it tries to answer Republican messaging in the language and tempo of social platforms.
Those efforts reflect a harder truth for a party accustomed to institutional validators: A Democratic committee can post a clip, buy a television ad or send a fundraising email, but a creator can make a political argument feel like it came from someone the audience already knows.
Pew Research Center last year found that about one-in-five U.S. adults regularly get news from news influencers on social media. The same Pew study found that 49 percent of people who regularly get news from influencers cited authenticity as a major reason.
For younger voters, the shift is even more pronounced: Pew found that 76 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 get news on social media at least sometimes, compared with 28 percent of adults 65 and older.
Sami Sage, co-founder of Betches, a digital media brand that built a large audience through lifestyle, humor, podcasts and social platforms, said the change from the Obama years is not simply a matter of Democrats using newer tools.
“The media environment between now and then is like comparing apples and orange soda,” Sage said to Newsweek. “In 2008 and 2012, you could still opt in and out of digital communications to a large extent, nothing was algorithmic and the landscape was not yet monetized. On top of that, retail politics and traditional reporting still ruled and dictated our collective reality. These days, there is no mutually agreed-upon collective reality, and it’s largely because the platforms where we receive information are structured to push extremes and falsehoods.”
The lesson is simple: In a fragmented media environment, persuasion can depend less on whether voters encounter a party-approved argument than on whether they encounter it through someone they already trust.
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The Conservative Lesson Democrats Are Reworking
Republicans arrived here first. Conservative politics spent decades building an alternative communications network through talk radio, cable news, partisan websites, podcasts and online personalities. Trump did not create that system, but his rise showed how powerfully a candidate could benefit from a media world that rewarded loyalty, conflict and direct connection with voters.
Democrats are now absorbing a selective version of that lesson by going beyond the creation of liberal versions of conservative outlets, instead trying to solve the same structural problem that conservatives solved first: How do you reach voters who no longer treat legacy media or party institutions as the main arbiters of political reality?
The 2024 campaign accelerated that lesson, with Trump’s media strategy including appearances in podcast spaces such as The Joe Rogan Experience, while Democrats faced pressure to expand beyond traditional campaign messaging.
Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits and supports young candidates for state and local office, said Democrats should treat creator media as long-term political infrastructure rather than a shortcut to reach. “I’m not sure Democrats have learned a ton, or at least, not the right things,” Litman said to Newsweek. “We need to be investing over the course of years, not months, and in culture-first messengers, not political ones. It’s not about finding ‘our Joe Rogan,’ it’s about empowering hundreds or thousands of creators over the next decade in the hope that a few will build big audiences and be able to connect them to politics.”
Sage echoed her sentiments.
“Depends which Democrats you’re asking about, but the ones who have been successful have ditched their reliance on talking points and are (at least conceptually) aware that lifestyle spaces are a more authentic (and less expensive) funnel to reach voters, because those influencers and creators are perceived as less partisan,” she said.
The New Media Machine Has Its Own Risks
The Democratic embrace of creator media comes with an obvious tension: The party wants the reach and intimacy of independent voices, but independence is what makes those voices valuable.
Creators and left-leaning outlets can help insurgent candidates gain attention, they can pressure party leaders to respond to issues that institutional Democrats would rather handle slowly and they can also turn intraparty disagreement into content.
Democrats have criticized Republicans for allowing that kind of media logic to reshape their party. But can Democrats draw energy from a similar structure without allowing it to set the party’s priorities?
“One of the challenges is that if we build a big megaphone but don’t have the good message to amplify, we’re simply making a weak argument even louder,” Litman said. “We have to make sure the substance works with the style.”
She also noted that the scale of today’s digital politics means candidates have less control over when and how they are seen.
“Instagram and TikTok didn’t exist in Obama’s first run in 2008, there was no comparable focus on video or omnipresent on-camera engagement,” Litman said. “It was a big deal for Obama to do something like Between Two Ferns [satirical talk show]; people called it unpresidential, whereas now something like that would be par for the course for any candidate, for any level of office to do.
“Candidates in 2008 to 2016, generally speaking, could expect to be recorded by trackers from the opponent who would follow them around with cameras; now every single supporter is a tracker with a camera in their pocket. There is no chance to be off.”
The strongest argument for the shift is democratic in the small-d sense: New media can weaken old gatekeepers and
give voters access to candidates who lack establishment backing. The strongest argument against it is institutional: Parties still need to nominate candidates, win general elections and govern with coalitions broader than even the most engaged online audiences.
Michigan has now provided an early answer, though not a definitive one. El-Sayed’s victory will strengthen the argument that creator networks can help propel candidates through high-profile statewide contests. Skeptics will note that one result does not prove a lasting realignment, nor does it guarantee success in a general election.
What it does suggest is that creator media is no longer sitting on the sidelines of Democratic politics. Whether party leaders are comfortable with it or not, these networks are increasingly becoming part of the mechanism through which activists organize, candidates emerge and political identities are formed.
The larger shift remains. Democrats are still figuring out how much influence creators should wield and whether audience-driven politics can be embraced without reshaping the party.
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