Elon Musk’s Stunning $250 Million Favor to Trump Should Wake Up Dems

Perhaps most interestingly, Wikler says the party must invest much more in building an “independent, progressive media ecosystem.” That idea is often bandied about, but critically, Wikler says the Democratic Party should actively “accelerate the success” of that ecosystem, by breaking news via those outlets and doing high profile interviews there, with the express goal of elevating and empowering it, something the GOP does with Fox News. Also essential: Marketing these outlets to voters who don’t follow political news at all.

“It’s the people least likely to seek out information about either party who we lost in this election,” Wikler said. “They’re generally younger, more working class.” For the party, he said, “solving the information problem has to be a core focus,” requiring a “constant effort to get out of our heads and into the minds of the extraordinarily diverse electorate that is getting information from a dizzying array of places.”

Martin, the Minnesota state chair, says the party must invest “significant resources” in a comprehensive, granular mapping out how different political demographics get electoral information, including via non-news sources. Martin also sees the information problem as directly linked to a Democratic brand problem in which “the majority of Americans now believe the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor.” As Martin notes, Republicans have been allowed to keep up a “constant drumbeat hammering away at our brand.”