This is one reason our party's approval is in the toilet

[Donkees]

35. ''The other component of Shakir's pitch involves a subject with which he is deeply familiar: media''

Bernie Sanders’s ex-campaign manager wants to rebuild Democratic party: ‘What new ideas are we bringing?’
This article is more than 6 months old
Faiz Shakir launched a last-minute bid for DNC chair and wants to mold it in to a working class, inclusive organization

The other component of Shakir’s pitch involves a subject with which he is deeply familiar: media. In 2021, Shakir founded the progressive non-profit news outlet More Perfect Union with an explicit aim of “building power for the working class”. Since its founding, More Perfect Union has produced viral content on everything from fast fashion to the exploitation of Uber drivers. More Perfect Union’s YouTube channel now has more than 1.3 million subscribers four years after its creation, while the DNC’s YouTube channel has roughly 77,000 subscribers despite launching 14 years earlier.

“They don’t value the channels as important properties of trying to talk to people because they aren’t a grassroots organization by nature,” Shakir said.

In the wake of Democrats’ losses in November, it has become conventional wisdom that the party has a “media problem”, but Shakir frames the issue as more of a platform and messaging problem. He accused the DNC of over relying on gimmicky language rather than presenting a concrete strategy to confront an unjust economy, and he pointed to More Perfect Union’s coverage of efforts to cancel medical debt and unionize Starbucks employees as a potential template for how the party can use content to send a pro-worker message to voters.

“Those kinds of things help build the case and the mandate for the direction of what the Democratic party would be if it came back into power and deliver us good content too,” Shakir said. “If you’re telling those stories, I tend to think those videos would do a hell of a lot better on YouTube than whatever [the DNC] is posting right now.”

Shakir presented a similar argument when asked about Democrats’ attacks on Trump during his first days back in office, as the party has publicly wrestled with the question of how much of its attention should be spent on condemning the new administration’s every move versus presenting a positive vision for the future of the country. Shakir implored Democrats to link their larger pitch for building a pro-worker economy with their criticism of Trump’s policy proposals.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/30/dnc-chair-election-faiz-shakir