Time For A Break: Democrats Don't Need The Media

Bypass the Gatekeepers to Speak To The People

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the media is upset with the Democratic Party. You see, the latest complaint is that Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t having enough media availabilities or press conferences. The press has made similar complaints about other leading Democratic presidential candidates over the years, from President Joe Biden to former President Barack Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton. Like most media complaints, it is bunk, but it also creates a great opportunity for Democrats to break away from the need to attach themselves at the hip with the mainstream press.

The press collectively believes at all times that it must constantly be fed. Like an infant or toddler who doesn’t get their food at precisely the moment their bellies start rumbling, the press throws up these occasional tantrums. On the other side of the aisle, they are willing to put up with the abuse of the infantile Donald Trump because he gives them precisely the empty calories they want: Nonsensical outrage that attracts clicks and eyeballs and attention and leads to ad revenue and book deals and the like. That’s a big part of why Trump’s most recent media availability (it was not a press conference) even included props, because Trump is at his core an (unfunny) prop comic.

The dynamic with the Democratic Party differs from the media’s relationship with the GOP because the press has asserted itself as the alpha. Democrats come running for the media’s beck and call while the press collectively rolls over for Republicans. The reward the Democrats get for doing as their told by the press has been years of smears, lies, and deference to the right’s propaganda (Iraq, Trump) and overvaluing the right’s voters (oh great, another diner filled with Trump voters) even as the Republican Party has only achieved one popular vote plurality since 1988.

Technologist and proto-blogger Dave Winer came up with a concept eons ago called “sources go direct.” With the advent of blogging, the basic idea was that individuals no longer have to go through the traditional media filter, which often has little to no understanding of nuance or details, particularly on issues that each of us know better. I may have some slight quibbles with the utopian ideal of this concept, but it is a solid one, particularly taking in for consideration the laziness and corruption that have grown in force within the media over the decades.

Now, more than ever before, Democrats and liberals have the tools and power to embrace this ethos. Harris did not need to cater to media whims to launch her campaign and rocket ahead of Trump in opinion polling. In fact, the dominant mindset among the media hivemind before she took over for President Joe Biden was that she likely wouldn’t have been able to handle the baton if it was handed to her. That has clearly turned out to be false, and Harris has been able to seize the momentum not thanks to the press, but from the people. It was social media, particularly networks like TikTok that have fueled the rise of the vice president to be the next leader of the party. It wasn’t the media cartel - the New York Times, CNN, AP, Washington Post - and others, who are still hoping for another suckle on the Trump teat.

Harris and her campaign have been able to masterfully frame the election as a battle between normal progressive ideas and the weird conservativism of the right, not via sit-downs with stuffy news anchors and reporters working on their next book deals, but by constantly pumping out content via their existing press infrastructure and social media. Trump and J.D. Vance are reeling from being called “weird” because the Harris team has kept up a sustained attack without bending the knee to the press, who always insists that Democrats fight political battles with both hands tied behind their backs while Republicans are given carte blanche.

Now is the time to hit the accelerator on this process, not pull back.

The public, particularly the liberal base of voters that Democrats need to cultivate and keep at a fever pitch at all times (not just election years) deserves to be fed and catered to, not the press. These are the millions of people who will decide the future of the country, and it has nothing to do with building the retirement accounts of the Maggie Haberman and Jake Tapper contingent.

Harris owes the public an ongoing conversation with her and her running mate Tim Walz and the Democratic Party’s ideas and values. She doesn’t owe anything to the people who built up Trump and noxious ideas like George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.

In 2024, any one of us has the ability to reach an audience of billions at any given time. And when you’re in an elevated position like vice president and the official Democratic presidential nominee, that isn’t just a one in a million chance to “go viral,” but rather a completely viable communication lane. A Harris social media post can reach every single one of the people who are going to cast a ballot without being soiled by the ill-intent and craven needs of the media pack. If she speaks directly to camera and hits “post,” she no longer has to worry about whether the editors hiding behind their monitors have deemed it “newsworthy.” That is now for the potential audience to decide, not them.

The press still has the power, unfortunately, to shape ideas and initiatives, but leaders like Harris and entities associated with her like the Democratic Party and the wider liberal movement, can shape their message to respond to the public and not the press like never before. This is an opportunity that should not be passed up just to have the campaign shackled to the tired old media model that is going the way of the dodo.

Harris is on an upward trajectory in large part because she rightly went over the heads of the press. Her message is connecting with the hearts and minds of America and her political attacks are resonating because they are true, accurate, and not designed to curry favor with the double standards of the mainstream press. They should keep doing what is working and refuse to bend to the demands of the media.

Frankly, the relationship between Trump and the press, which follows in the footsteps of the relationship George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had with many of the same outlets, shows that you can just wait them out. Like a toddler who has a tantrum, let them complain and bellow and fume, and then they will lose interest. They are attracted to shiny, loud objects, not substance, and by generating her own heat, Harris can do what’s best for the people, not the elites who ultimately do not care about our well-being at all.

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— Oliver

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