Democrats Plan to Spend Tens of Millions of Dollars to Create an Astroturf "Authentic" Propaganda Podcasting Army

Their theory about the loss of the 2024 race is, get this, they just don't dominate the media enough.

This new effort is led by a group calling themselves "AND -- Achieve Narrative Dominance."

Because owning the entire corporate media just isn't enough to keep the public gaslit and giddy on lies.

Democrats Throw Money at a Problem: Countering G.O.P. Clout Online At private gatherings, strategists and donors are swapping ideas to help the party capture the digital mojo that helped President Trump win. Yes, there's a price tag.

Theodore Schleifer

Six months after the Democratic Party's crushing 2024 defeat, the party's megadonors are being inundated with overtures to spend tens of millions of dollars to develop an army of left-leaning online influencers.

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."

As many have said, the left already had its own Joe Rogan. He was called "Joe Rogan." The left decided to excommunicate him because he did some Youthful Experimentation with ivermectin and noticed that most of what the left says is just lies.

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.

They own the entire media, from the networks to Hollywood, but "can't compete culturally" with the right.

That sounds like a problem bigger than what a couple of astroturf podcasts can solve. If you're that disconnected from the rest of the country that you can't influence the country despite owning every network, magazine, publishing house, and movie studio -- maybe you need a couple of years of introspection to figure out why that is before you just dump a hundred million dollars into More of the Same.

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.

Oh, I forgot -- they also took over sports broadcasting. And comic books.

But still they can't "compete culturally."

Many now take it as gospel that Mr. Trump's victory last year 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.

Say, New York Times, were there any Biden- or Democrat-friendly "journalists" at the New York Times?

The quiet effort amounts to an audacious -- skeptics might say desperate -- bet that Democrats can buy more cultural relevance online, despite the fact that casually right-leaning touchstones like Mr. Rogan's podcast were not built by political donors and did not rise overnight.

The reason the right is powerful in the online space is the same reason it was powerful on AM radio -- because the left blackballed us from all positions in the corporate media and forced us to much-inferior platforms. But we thrived, because we tell the truth, and you lie, and it doesn't matter how inferior your platform is when you have the truth.

A Democrat explains that this astroturfed, billionaire-paid effort must also have an "organic" component, however tiny:

...

"It needs to start with a legitimate investment," said Marissa McBride, a Democratic strategist who leads a donor group called Mind the Gap. But she added, "There has to be something that is happening organically as well."

Shedding a 'Hall Monitor' Reputation

...

In November, Ms. McBride and other liberal operatives gathered in Washington for a series of meetings to survey the election wreckage. At the headquarters of American Bridge, one of the largest Democratic donor networks, they eventually hatched a plan for a for-profit media company called AND Media, which stands for "Achieve Narrative Dominance."

The company, incorporated in March, says it is aiming to raise $45 million over the next four years. The group hopes to have a $70 million budget over that time frame based on predictions of $25 million in revenue. It says it has raised $7 million so far. Ms. McBride and Christian Tom, who led digital strategy for the Biden White House, have pitched the company to American Bridge donors as a broad cultural project.
Hoping to move away from "the current didactic, hall monitor style of Democratic politics that turns off younger audiences," AND Media will focus on directly funding influencers and co-producing their content, opening a creator talent agency and starting by "inking deals with four 'flagship' creators," according to a business plan shared with The Times.

People will flock to watch your highly-scripted billionaire-paid "authentic organic propaganda" if you just make it with cheaper cameras and microphones! You just need the veneer that this is DIY and bottom-up!

Another effort with ties to major donors is called Project Bullhorn, which is meant to pool contributions to back creator projects. The money is running through Jason Berkenfeld, who has advised the political giving of Eric Schmidt, the billionaire former Google chief executive, and others. Mr. Berkenfeld pitched the project to major Democratic contributors at a briefing this month featuring Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Mr. Berkenfeld is seeking to raise $35 million in the first year for Project Bullhorn and aligned work, according to two people who have spoken to him. He is largely trying to amplify existing influencer networks: An early recipient of the money he raises will be a fund backing left-leaning creators on YouTube. Another will be a "matchmaking service" to book these creators on YouTube shows and podcasts.

Project Bullhorn plans to include a for-profit arm that will "have the potential to reap significant returns," according to a concept document obtained by The Times. "We will need to create self-sustaining businesses if we want to build an echo chamber with sufficient scale and reach."

Straight-up admitting they're trying to build an "echo chamber" with antiamerican billionaires' dirty cash.

And they can't stop admitting it:

...

Mr. Flaherty is also advising Project Echo, a new four-year $52 million influencer program from People for the American Way, a progressive nonprofit group. The group is spending about $10 million of its own money and pitching donors for the rest, according to its president, Svante Myrick.

A program called Double Tap Democracy, meanwhile, is working with 2,000 mostly apolitical creators who generally have smaller followings.

So, shoot democracy twice in the chest?

...

To some Democratic operatives, the repeated gatherings of donors to mull such ideas has felt like a ceaseless calendar of cattle calls.

...

Mr. Flaherty, the former Harris strategist, who has been at some donor events, said emulating the right's success would take time.

"The key is building off what's already resonating and investing in it," he said. "If it all goes into more tools for delivering poll-tested messaging, it'll fall flat with its audience. At that point, you might as well just buy ads."

You are buying ads. You've already admitted you're just spending money on "Project Echo" to pay people to repeat Democrat propaganda, but pretending to be DIY basement podcasters while doing so.

Related, from last year:

Inside the Secretive $700 Million Ad-Testing Factory for Kamala Harris

Future Forward has ascended to the top of the Democratic political universe, but it has also drawn suspicion and second-guessing.

The biggest super PAC in American politics is in the middle of an unparalleled spending spree, unleashing more money on television advertising in the closing weeks of the 2024 race than the campaigns of Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris combined.

The group, known as Future Forward, has ascended to the pinnacle of the Democratic political universe with remarkable speed, winning over some of the world's richest people with grand promises of a "Moneyball" method to political advertising that it has pitched as the most sophisticated ever undertaken.

The group is, in some ways, an ad-making laboratory masquerading as a super PAC, testing thousands of messages, social media posts and ads in the 2024 race, ranking them in order of effectiveness and approving only those that resonate with voters. Ad makers produce roughly 20 potential commercials for every spot that ever airs. And Future Forward has conducted nearly four million voter surveys since Ms. Harris entered the race -- and more than 10 million since January.

"They're probably the most analytics- and evidence-driven PAC I've ever seen," said David Nickerson, a political scientist who ran the experiments division of Barack Obama's 2012 presidential campaign.

Publicly, Ms. Harris and Democratic leaders are appreciative of the group's work. But Future Forward's insular approach to spending the staggering $700 million it has raised in combination with its affiliated nonprofit group has led to suspicion and second-guessing, including inside Ms. Harris's headquarters.

...

Founded by a group of wonkish Obama campaign veterans, Future Forward is animated by the idea that a blend of data science, political science and testing can usher in a new era of rigor in advertising. The group's ads were widely praised in 2020, and Future Forward earned the coveted designation as the official super PAC first for President Biden and then for Ms. Harris.

They have no solutions and no agenda that they can admit to, because all of their ideas are insane, vicious, and Satanic.

So they always revert back to the same "new strategy" -- billions of dollars of billionaires' money on propaganda designed to trick the public into thinking it's "organic."

posted by Ace at 03:40 PM

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