Why Democrats are (still) bad at the internet
Also inside: an org takes aim at swingy House districts with anti-OBBB ads, how “slopulism” came to dominate Trump’s @WhiteHouse accounts, and more
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Hi everyone – I’m Patrick Stevenson, long-time FWIW reader, first-time guest author. Most recently, I served as Deputy Assistant to President Biden for Digital Strategy at the White House, and before that, I spent a, uh, hazardous length of time running the digital and mobilization teams at the DNC.
For today’s FWIW, this is part one of a two-part series on how Democratic campaigns and organizations are doing online halfway through 2025. Light stuff for a summer Friday!
More below, but first…
Digital ad spending, by the numbers:
FWIW, U.S. political advertisers spent about $8.3 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
You probably don’t recognize two of the top 10 spenders on the list this week – American Relief Programs and USA Veteran Benefits. Both run AI slop-ish advertisements imploring (seemingly mostly seniors) to take advantage of alleged government benefits, and have a healthy dose of Trump in the ad creative. American Relief Programs is registered in Wyoming, and USA Veteran Benefits to a wholesale company in Philadelphia. Hmm!
Meanwhile, political advertisers spent just under $2.1 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Save My Country Action Fund ran a battery of ads in 10 swingy House districts held by Republicans who just voted for the GOP budget that slashes Medicaid. Looking at specific states, they seem to be focusing on California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.
On X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers in the U.S. have spent around $5.4 million on ads in 2025. According to X’s political ad disclosure, here are the top spenders year to date:
…and lastly, on Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent around $1 million on ads in 2025. Here are the top spenders year to date:
Abortion Finder dropped a vlog-ish style ad using a popular TikTok sound and showing folks exactly what to look for on their website.
Tired of burning money with Care2 or Meta ads?
It’s 2025, and groups like Common Cause, Earthjustice, and Amnesty International are leaning on Civic Shout to acquire ROI-positive donors and activists. See how you can, too.
Why Democrats are (still) bad at the internet
Last year, while I was leading digital creator engagement at the White House, we reached out to a top Senate office ahead of a presidential visit to their state. We asked a simple question:
“Are there any digital creators in your state we should invite to meet the President?” Their response? “We don’t keep a list of creators.”
Now, imagine if that same office had said they didn’t keep a list of in-state reporters. It’d be seen as a fundamental failure of political communication. Not knowing your top in-state creators? Until recently, it was just…normal.
Halfway through 2025, most Democratic leaders have started to say the right things -- that digital matters, that we need to show up on podcasts, that the party has to meet people where they are. That’s good. We should be doing those things. (Though not everyone needed to start their own podcast. But that’s another post.)
The problem is, while we’ve embraced the optics of digital, we haven’t updated the strategy behind it.
Too many Democratic decision-makers still haven’t fully reckoned with just how cooked legacy media is -- and that blind spot is holding back the kind of data-driven communication overhaul our party actually needs.
It’s time for a reality check. The media landscape has moved on -- and our strategy is struggling to keep up. But with this comes an opportunity to rethink and reshape how we’re thinking of media relations as a means of reaching voters.
Traditional Media is Shrinking. Creators Are Surging.
Let’s try a quick blind comparison. Here are three media outlets based on their reported reach:
A: 1 million people per night
B: 2.5-3 million people per day
C: 18 million people per day
If that was all you knew about these news outlets, how would you prioritize them? A + B aren’t nothing, but C is clearly the place most people get their news from out of the three, right?
Now tell me how you think these outlets are prioritized in real life by Democratic leaders and strategists:
A: MSNBC’s primetime lineup -- in Q2 reached about 1 million viewers a night -- only 96,000 of them between the ages of 25-54.
B: The Washington Post -- daily digital traffic cratered to around 2.5-3 million users as of mid-2024.
C:
-- recently claimed he had 130 million views on TikTok in a single week, about 18 million views a day.
To put a fine point on it: the daily audience of the entirety of The Washington Post is equal to that of a single high-performing video from a top news creator. In fact, there are scads of twentysomething digital creators who are at this point, statistically speaking, running laps around entire teams of legacy media professionals.
Do you feel like Democrats’ comms strategy -- even as newly creator-and-podcast-friendly as it may be -- reflects that reality? Imagine how exciting and fresh it would be if we proportionately allocated our time and effort to where people’s eyeballs actually are.
If You’re Going to Do It, Do It.
Another symptom of our outdated and non-data-driven approach is the resources Democrats sink into running their own social accounts, often with no clear theory of impact, minimal audience, and some truly bleak engagement rates. Seriously: There’s a good chance you are pulling more likes on a good post on your personal IG than some of these orgs that have six-figure followings with two strategists and a designer running the account.
There are exceptions. @KamalaHQ worked not because it was a campaign priority, but because the team had room to run. I have seen a lot of approval processes in my day, and that was among the loosest. That gave talented staff space to move fast -- and the algorithm rewarded them.
Most orgs aren’t set up that way. Instead, their digital teams are often tasked with producing safe, hyper-branded content that algorithms hate so…they can say they posted something. With many digital teams potentially spending the bulk of their time on this kind of content, we’re burning critical “win the internet” resources on stuff that never had a chance of reaching anyone, let alone persuading them.
In fact, according to data from Resonate, out of the top 100 political entities across social media platforms, only five of them represent a progressive institution or elected official. The numbers show institutional accounts just don’t break through in the online political conversation, and therefore shouldn’t consume a large amount of resources.
This is exactly the kind of gap that strong creator relationships can fill – giving trusted partners the facts and freedom to say what your comms team can’t. It’s totally fine if your org doesn’t want to throw bombs on the brand account. The problem is when you get stuck in between: trying to look like you’re doing internet-y stuff, without being able to actually do it.
To Be Continued!
Next week in Part 2, I promise we’ll be more positive! We’ll get into what’s actually working: the campaigns and orgs doing interesting stuff, the creator engagement strategies that are actually working, and how the 2028 invisible primary (which has very much started, by the way) is already being shaped by this shift.
Tired of burning money with Care2 or Meta ads?
It’s 2025, and groups like Common Cause, Earthjustice, and Amnesty International are leaning on Civic Shout to acquire ROI-positive donors and activists. See how you can, too.
More from around the internet:
Nathan Taylor Pemberton dove deep into “slopulism” in the New York Times this week – highlighting how right-wing meme culture has seeped into this administration’s management of @WhiteHouse.
Creator economy legend Jim Louderback covered YouTube’s perceived crackdown on AI slop farms. If you’re looking to learn more about the creator economy more broadly (would you believe that there are other things happening in the creator space beyond the search for the liberal Joe Rogan??), I highly recommend both Jim’s newsletter, along with
– a super-concise weekly roundup of creator economy news.The Resonate team (
here on Substack) contextualized Epstein-related post volume against other recent big news spikes. If you work in political social media, their newsletter is a must-subscribe.
That’s it for FWIW this week. This email was sent to 24,422 readers. If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, would you mind sharing it on X/Twitter, Threads, or Bluesky? Have a tip, idea, or feedback? Reply directly to this email.
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Question. In your example, Aaron Parnas claims 18 million posts a day, presumably a very high day. But I looked at Resonate (which you recommended, thanks I subbed) and they report that yesterday he had the "2nd most liked left-leaning post" with 1.5 million views, so presumably a high day. These numbers don't square. Can you clarify? Thanks.