There are many reasons why the Democratic Party has seen a precipitous decline in support. We can all name many of them because they are so obvious. 

But one of the bigger reasons why people--especially younger people--are fleeing is the huge disconnect between what Democrats say and what they do. Democrats are liars, hoaxers, and, above all, phonies. It's why the left can't meme: there is no there there. Joe Biden's brain is the perfect metaphor for the average Democrat strategist. Even leftists are disgusted with the Democrats, and have been for some time. 

I have an exclusive new story today, published in partnership with RealClearInvestigations, on the covert $9.1 million Dems spent last year to promote Kamala Harris through influencers. They money went to TikTok comedy sketches, Instagram moms, YouTube talk shows and more. pic.twitter.com/Fudo7UyvL1

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) March 31, 2025

The Harris campaign was the apotheosis of this trend toward hollowness. The entire campaign was a fake, from beginning to end. The Democrats tried to turn the least popular Vice President in American history--a woman who couldn't get a single vote in the Democratic primaries for the 2020 presidential nomination--into a cultural icon. 

That worked out as well as Disney's Snow White and the Seven Nightmares. 

Harris's campaign began with the "Brat" rebranding, which at the time seemed an odd branding choice. "Brat" was the hot album among post-teens whose cultural horizon began in March 2024 and ended in August 2024. Shallow, meaningless, ugly, and proud to be marginally naughty, the "Brat Summer" campaign was a lame attempt to attach stodgy and unlikeable Kamala Harris to a cultural moment whose lifespan was measured in weeks and whose relevance to politics was negative. 

But the Democrats poured all they could into it, because they have no ideas. Shallow was at least a strategy. So shallow it was--a campaign pushed by high-dollar consultants and funded by Democrat billionaires. 

The abrupt withdrawal last year of President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, followed rapidly by his replacement with Vice President Kamala Harris, irked many voters left out by the process. Yet social media seemed to ooze with enthusiasm and Gen Z-friendly hipster appeal. 

Influencers flooded the web with neon-matcha green pro-Harris videos synced to beats from singer Charli XCX's album “Brat” released last year. The poppy rave videos, gushed journalists, showed that Harris embodied the confidently independent "brat" vibe conveyed by the music. Social media pages bubbled with memes celebrating Harris as the voice of queer and black youth, in contrast with the Republican agenda of white supremacy. Digital creator Amelia Montooth, in one viral TikTok video, kissed a woman and tried searching for pornography, actions her sketch suggested would be banned if Harris lost the election.

Harris, a career politician favored by the Democratic Party’s establishment, never quite fit the bill as an icon of activist movements. But the sudden influencer buzz seemed to transform the stodgy former prosecutor into an icon of the cultural zeitgeist. 

As it turns out, the tidal wave of enthusiasm was not entirely genuine. Much of the content, including Montooth’s videos, was quietly funded by an elusive group of Democratic billionaires and major donors in an arrangement designed to conceal the payments from voters. 

This reminds me of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton sitting down with Cardi-B and rhapsodizing over the pathos of her song WAP, which stands for Wet Ass P****y. It truly was a profound song:

Whores in this house
There's some whores in this house
There's some whores in this house
There's some whores in this house (hol' up)
I said certified freak, seven days a week
Wet ass pussy, make that pullout game weak, woo! (Ah)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, you fucking with some wet ass pussy
Bring a bucket and a mop for this wet ass pussy
Give me everything you got for this wet ass pussy

Beat it up, nigga, catch a charge
Extra large, and extra hard
Put this pussy right in yo' face
Swipe your nose like a credit card
Hop on top, I want a ride
I do a kegel while it's inside
Spit in my mouth, look at my eyes
This pussy is wet, come take a dive

It is a wonder that Hillary didn't win, you know!

Harris may not quite put out the Cruella de Ville vibes that Hillary does, but she is as much a cultural trendsetter as she is. Tying Harris to "Brat Summer" was as doomed to failure as linking Hillary Clinton to stripper culture. 

RealClearInvestigations obtained internal documents and WhatsApp messages from Democratic strategists behind the influencer campaign. Way to Win, one of the major donor groups behind the effort, spent more than $9.1 million on social media influencers during the 2024 presidential election – payments revealed here for the first time. The amount was touted in a document circulated after the election detailing the organization’s accomplishments. 

The hidden social-media effort coached creators on phrases, issue areas, and key themes to “disseminate pro-Kamala content throughout the cycle.”

Way to Win

The effort supported over 550 content creators who published 6,644 posts across platforms, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and X. Way to Win coached creators on phrases, issue areas, and key themes to “disseminate pro-Kamala content throughout the cycle,” a post-election memo from the group noted.

The look behind the curtain reveals that at least some of the image-making around the Harris candidacy was carefully orchestrated by the same types of covert social media marketing often used by corporate brands and special interest groups. Such campaigns provide the illusion of organic support through the authentic appeal of trusted social media voices.

Democrats understand, intellectually, that Trump's appeal is his authenticity, and as a creating of a political class that works diligently to keep the plebs in their place, they assumed that they could purchase authenticity if they threw enough money at it. 

Hire credentialed experts and they surely cannot fail! Throw in a few Harvard and Yale guys and victory is ours!

In a series of internal presentations about the influencer campaign, Way to Win emphasized its data-driven approach. "We know what messaging works," noted Liz Jaff, a branding strategist working with Way to Win, during a call with donors last year. She touted the use of an AI-based focus group tool developed by Future Forward, the Harris campaign’s primary SuperPAC. 

Jaff also explained the process for developing talking points that could be inserted into organic-appearing messages and posts on social media. “We then convey that to the influencers who take that into their own words,” continued Jaff. “We then test those videos and see what needs to be boosted,” she added, referencing paid media efforts to amplify specific TikTok videos or favored streamers. 

The lofty promises of message mastery, however, often fell short. Way to Win directly financed a series of clunky YouTube shows and liberal identity politics-oriented social media skits designed to bring voters out to support the Harris campaign and Democrats more broadly. There’s little evidence that such measures moved any significant numbers of voters during an election in which Democrats lost historic levels of support from key constituency groups – the youth vote, Latinos, and black men swung significantly to Donald Trump last year, upending decades of voting patterns.

The Democrats' strategy was to create the appearance of authenticity, and they focus-grouped their authenticity and sketched out talking points to ensure that it was totally organic, you know. 

Experts! That will work!

There is a reason why Bernie and AOC have risen so far in the party--whatever you think they are, they are. Jasmine Crockett isn't who she plays in public, but she plays it really well. Like a real con man. 

There is always an element of play-acting in politics, so a genuinely authentic politician is a relative rarity. Their emergence is usually tied to a crisis, and anybody who has followed the Republican Party for long knows that we have had our share of inauthentic "leaders." 

It's hard to say whether the Democratic Party will continue its decline into cultural irrelevancy. Currently, it is propped up by big money, the Pravda Media, and a Brownshirt activist base who are far more radical than the people at the top feel comfortable with. But it's all they have. 

The closest analog in contemporary politics is the Conservatives in the UK, although they at least are not plagued by the consultant class the Democrats have in abundance. 

The failure of the "Brat Summer" and Harris campaigns have led Democrats back to their golden oldie--a billionaire-funded campaign of riots, domestic terrorism, and lawfare. The best such a campaign can do is stymie Trump, and the worst it might do is help him survive some of the inevitable drop in support that will accompany his Reaganesque attempt to remake government. Reagan took enormous political damage from his fight against inflation, and Trump will from his attacks on government bloat. 

The ineptitude of the Democrats may just keep his support stronger and help him get through the painful couple of years of readjustment that are sure to come. 

Are you as tired of being lied to and manipulated as I am? I bet you are. 

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