Fatal flaw: Democrats keep losing the media war — here's why

Saturday afternoon, Donald Trump held a rally in Las Vegas. It was streamed and mentioned on social media millions of times within an hour of his repeating his “No tax on tips” mantra. By the time Facebook, Meta, X, TikTok, and Instagram were done with the weekend, using their now-heavily-tilted-to-Republicans algorithms, it’s safe to bet Trump’s rally got hundreds of millions of impressions.

Senator Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, read the most boring speech ever on the floor of the Senate condemning Trump, evoking the Democratic version of the old “tree falls in the forest” question. I listened to it online (couldn’t find it on social media), but, frankly, it was so deadly tedious that I can’t remember a word he said.

Being media savvy — and exploiting the hottest new media — isn’t a new thing. You’d think Democrats would have figured this out by now; they sure did in past generations.

Richard Nixon was a crook, but few Americans (other than Jimmy Hoffa) knew it in 1960. But he lost the White House to John F. Kennedy because he didn’t know how to use the hot new communications medium that had burst on the scene in just the previous two decades: Television. His refusal to wear makeup and play to the camera for the debate, according to many presidential scholars, cost him the election.

While Calvin Coolidge was the first president to use radio in 1923, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first really radio-savvy president. He rallied Americans to his cause with “fireside chat” radio addresses — starting in 1933 just weeks after he was inaugurated — that were often listened to by as many as a third of Americans.

Because FDR kept in regular contact with the people, explaining every step he took while making fun of Republican obstruction and hammering “economic royalists” for the Republican Great Depression, American voters elected him to the presidency four times.

If Joe Biden had done the same during his four years, reaching out to the American people every week and heavily using the new (social) media, explaining and bragging on his many successes and blaming Republicans for their obstruction, either he or Kamala Harris would be in the White House today.

Instead, like with professional media personality Ronald Reagan in 1980, we ended up with the president who NBC spent millions teaching how to do media and to promote his brand.

It’s way past time for Democrats to figure this out.

We no longer live in the radio era or even the age of television. Paul Harvey and Ed Sullivan are dead. Radio advertising revenue is in the crapper, the victim of podcasts; TV networks are laying off staff as they watch their ratings crater; even major old-line newspapers like The Washington Post are desperately trying to reinvent themselves for the social media century.

In the 1930s, if it didn’t happen on radio it didn’t happen. In the 1960s it was television. Today it’s YouTube, X, Facebook, TikTok, and Bluesky.

Thomas Carlyle is credited with articulating the “Great Man Theory of History,” which suggests that many of history’s major hinge points were the result of individuals with uncommon charisma and talent for leadership.

Democrats, in the era of JFK, understood — and delighted in — the power of charisma. Republicans got the memo after Nixon went down in flames; they found a TV star of their own with Reagan. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were similar vessels of charm and animal magnetism.

More than half of America’s newspapers are dead, radio and TV are struggling, and about half of all Americans get all or most of their news from social media.

And yet, when you look across the media landscape right now pretty much all you see is Donald Trump.

In the face of a growing fascist threat from Trump and his captive GOP, America desperately needs Democratic politicians who can lead, inspire, and energize. Who will fight back, and stand up for American values. Who can win elections.

If Democrats don’t start using political theater and fielding candidates talented enough to capture a social media audience, our country is doomed.