Democrats have fallen far behind in the communications race. The world of the media is changing rapidly, and Republicans are many steps ahead of their opposition.
Toward the end of the 2024 election, the asymmetry between the parties became crystal clear. While Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, tried to make up lost ground by going on podcasts such as Call Her Daddy and The Howard Stern Show in the final weeks, it was too little, too late. President-elect Donald Trump had been working those platforms for years, as had Trump supporters such as Steve Bannon, whose own podcast, War Room, has become essential listening for MAGA acolytes. When Trump went on The Joe Rogan Experience for a three-hour schmooze fest in late October, tens of millions of Americans tuned in.
Democrats need to make up for lost ground in the new world of media, which includes podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, and X. To reach huge parts of the electorate, it has become increasingly important to talk to the very hosts and show producers who many established politicians have dismissed, derided, and ignored.
This is not the first time that the world of media changed faster than Democrats who were wedded to older forms of communication. During the 1980s, conservative talk radio built a massive and loyal audience that became the base of the new Republican Party. The talk radio universe helped galvanize conservative voters who were essential to the defeat of President Bill Clinton’s sweeping health care plan in 1994.
In an eerie parallel to today, Democrats only realized what was happening once it was too late—when Republicans reclaimed power in both houses of Congress on Capitol Hill for the first time since 1954.
In a historic black-and-white photograph, radio host Bob Grant sits at a desk and appears to be yelling as he gestures with animated hands. His eyes and mouth are wide open.
Radio host Bob Grant at work in New York in 1976. Mel Finkelstein/NY Daily News via Getty Images
During the 1980s and 1990s, Bob Grant hosted one of the most incendiary talk shows on the air. After arriving to New York City from Los Angeles in 1970, Grant started his East Coast career at WMCA before he moved to WOR. He finally settled at WABC in 1984.
Grant, who was born to a family of Italian immigrants in Chicago, had attended the University of Illinois and launched his career as a reporter. The pioneer of the form started his path to fame by filling in for the legendary Joe Pyne, a World War II veteran whose syndicated show on NBC became well known for his belligerent rhetoric and contentious guests, including members of the KKK.
Not long after Grant joined WABC, avid audiences tuned in to hear Grant’s Long Island conservative populism from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. every weekday. His shows consisted of endless rants about a liberal world gone wrong. The fraught back-and-forth exchanges that he had with his listeners were a feature, not a bug.
“A typical Grant show,” the Washington Post reported in April 1987, “consists of callers expressing violent disagreement or disagreement with him. Many conversations end with Grant screaming at the caller—‘Get off my phone, you jerk!’”
Poor Americans, Grant said, were living off of welfare payments rather than working. Feminists threatened the sanctity of the family while civil rights leaders practiced a form of reverse racism that blamed whites for everything and forgave rampant crime. The emergent gay rights movement threatened everything.
Grant embodied the racial backlash to the 1960s, calling New York City’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins, a “washroom attendant.” One of his most famous interviews was with 38-year-old Bernhard Goetz, the white man who became something of a cult hero after he shot four young Black men in the subway. Grant praised Goetz for what he had done. The interview played well with audiences who loved calling in to complain about what they perceived as dangerous and racist Black Americans.
Grant only became more aggressive as time went on, insulting Martin Luther King Jr. a “slimeball” in 1993 and referring to African Americans as “savages.” Immigrants were another favorite target, with Grant often talking about the nation being invaded by undocumented persons in the 1980s. He called for a repeal of the reforms established by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, writing in a 1996 book that it was necessary to fight back against hostile foreign powers who were attempting to “occupy and colonize us” through the “flow of illegal aliens from Third World countries.” He called undocumented immigration an “act of war” from countries looking to take on the United States militarily. Grant and like-minded broadcasters started to generate a bigger base of immigration restrictionists who, by the 1990s, would emerge as a powerful force within the party.
According to the 1987 Washington Post profile, Grant had special appeal with the “working stiff, the guy who works a shift in a factory, the guy who pays $4 a day in bridge tolls just to go to and from work.” Yet many Democrats and mainstream Republicans ignored Grant as a crank and extremist with no business being on air. At the time, the major television networks, newer broadcasters such as CNN, and the big city newspapers saw talk radio as just a carnival show.
But the skeptics were wrong. In 1987, with President Ronald Reagan’s backing, the Federal Communications Commission did not extend the “fairness doctrine” that had been put into place in 1949. The doctrine had been important to broadcasting, stipulating that television and radio stations had to air both sides of any political issue, since they were “public trustees” who had received licenses to broadcast from the federal government. In 1969, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that upheld the FCC’s right to impose this requirement. While some radio broadcasters, such as Grant, had violated the rule, its existence had created a legal threat significant enough that it created incentives for most shows to avoid opinion and stick to straight reporting.
Rush Limbaugh wears a white button-up shirt with a tie as he smokes a cigar in a radio studio, smoke wafting about in a cloud around his head. A microphone, notes, and blocky desktop computer are visible on the desk in front of him.
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh smokes a cigar during his radio show in 1995.Mark Peterson/Corbis via Getty Images
Once the FCC lifted the requirement in 1987, conservative talk radio boomed. By 1995, there were 1,130 talk radio stations in the United States, and conservatives constituted approximately 70 percent of the listenership, according to the Washington Post.
Though Grant had pioneered the medium, Rush Limbaugh became one of the biggest stars. He would eventually claim that his syndicated show reached more than 20 million people on 600 radio stations. He kept up the attacks on “feminazis” and “commie-libs.” Countless other program hosts mimicked his style during the 1990s as talkback radio became a major platform for the conservative movement and its allies in the Republican Party to build support for issues and energize the base.
Republican leaders took conservative talk radio seriously, as historian Brian Rosenwald argued in his book, Talk Radio’s America. Limbaugh was honored with an opportunity to sleep in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom in 1992 at the invitation of President George H.W. Bush. Republicans on Capitol Hill made sure to feed hosts with information and share the message for the day as they prepared their shows. After he was inaugurated in 1993, conspiracy theories about Clinton swirled throughout this all-talk ecosystem.
Talk radio became a devastating cudgel against Clinton’s sweeping health care plan, which he unsuccessfully tried to move through Congress in 1993 and 1994. As the political scientist Theda Skocpol wrote in her classic book Boomerang, “[p]ortrayals of the Clinton plan as a bureaucratic takeover by welfare state liberals became regular grist for Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing hosts of hundreds of talk radio programs.”
When Republicans won control of Congress in 1994 for the first time since 1954, Republicans credited figures such as Grant and Limbaugh.
“Without talk radio shows,” Gingrich later said, “without all the alternative media, I don’t think we could have won. The classic elite media would have distorted our message.” Talk radio listeners were key to the victory of a number of candidates, such as Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania who defeated incumbent Democrat Sen. Harris Wofford. After the victory, the GOP even invited Limbaugh to address the Republican freshman class in early 1995. They were well aware of reports that listeners of conservative radio had voted for Republican candidates by a margin of 3 to 1.
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Grant remained a force throughout the 1990s and until his death in 2013. WABC finally removed him from the air in 1996, when he commented on a report that Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who was Black, had been in a plane crash in Croatia. “My hunch is that he [Brown] is the one survivor,” Grant said. “I must have a hunch. Maybe, ‘cause at heart, I’m a pessimist.”
Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who had his own talk show after leaving office, said he was “disgusted” by the comments. But Grant’s exile from radio was short lived. WOR hired him within a few days, and he eventually returned to WABC in 2007. Like Trump, he was an advocate of birtherism during the early years of Barack Obama’s presidency as conservatives questioned the birthplace of the first Black U.S. president.
Fox News, which went on the air in 1996, mimicked the style of conservative talk radio. The programs on the cable network were openly political in the presentation of news, fueled by a provocative and sensational form of delivery that played to the anger and frustration of viewers. The success of the network provided a massive platform for Republican politicians and conservative activists to promote their issues.
Democrats did eventually find liberal outlets to try replicating the success of Republicans. Air America was an experiment in liberal talk radio between 2004 and 2010, though the station never reached big audiences and ultimately foundered. Liberal bloggers gained prominence after the war with Iraq, presenting news in a quick, conversational, and partisan manner. Their audiences remained limited, however, and they tended to operate in a sphere that was disconnected from mainstream Democratic politics. The same was true with emerging online efforts such as MoveOn. The biggest success would come with MSBNC, which offered a hospitable home for Democratic voices by the early 2000s.
Still, the reach never rivaled Fox News. The 2024 election renewed questions about the overall political impacts of the left-leaning broadcasts compared to the formidable communications infrastructure of the right.
Donald Trump leans in close to talk to Joe Rogan, a crowd of people visible behind them. Trump wears a navy blue suit and red tie, while Rogan wears a black button-up shirt.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump (right) talks with Joe Rogan during a UFC event in New York City on Nov. 16. Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC
The imbalance is highly significant because today, as in the late-1980s, the ground has shifted again. Legacy media is struggling to maintain the same audience share. New “alternative media” platforms are proving to be less alternative than people thought. The world of podcasts and social media programming is demonstrating its capacity to reach large and extremely loyal audiences, and it’s becoming a more important source of news for voters—particularly younger voters—who are distrustful of traditional outlets.
Progressive broadcasters need to build a much more robust menu of programs, building on programs such as Pod Save America and other liberal outlets but reaching the same kind of audiences that Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, Dan Bongino, Bannon, and others reach collectively.
As much as Democrats focus in the coming months on issue priorities and internal leadership changes, the party needs to think about how and where it tries to sell its message. The challenge will not simply be where to appear—elected officials also need to do better speaking in the kind of informal, conversational format that Trump put on display with his three-hour interview on Rogan’s podcast.
They also need to engage with hosts on platforms that have been primarily, though not exclusively, hospitable to conservatives. Sen. Bernie Sanders, it’s worth noting, had a successful interview on Rogan’s show in 2020.
During the 1980s, Democrats missed the boat when they dismissed the impact that a host such as Bob Grant might have on mainstream politics. They have made the same mistake in recent years. Now is the time for the party to course correct or face the prospect of many more years of feeling that their voices are being drowned out in a world that they don’t understand.
