NOVEMBER 7, 2025 | OPINION | By Fiona Frankel
Can there be a liberal Joe Rogan? The question has moved throughout Democratic circles for years, as the Republican strategies for voter connection appear to constantly upstage establishment Democrat tactics, both in approval ratings and, more importantly, election results.
Joe Rogan, a self-proclaimed “American” (in response to pressures to identify as Democrat or Republican), does not focus his popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience explicitly on politics. He has interviewed countless figures across a variety of fields, from renowned filmmaker Quentin Tarantino to YouTube personality Mr. Beast to beekeeper Erika Thompson. Yet he has been highly effective in galvanizing audiences, particularly young men, to tune in to politics when they otherwise would not.
There is plenty of literature on the effectiveness of figures like Rogan: they recognize the alienation and loneliness that young men across America are feeling, when it appears that no one else does, and create scapegoats in the women apparently rejecting them, the immigrants purportedly stealing their jobs and the minorities supposedly receiving special treatment.
Joe Rogan, Nelk Boys, Adin Ross: their content does not explicitly align with a particular partisan, but it does inspire anti-establishment, populist sentiments that the Republican Party has successfully captured and that the Democrats have utterly failed at.
Emerging around 2008 through Barack Obama’s campaign, the Democratic Party identified itself as the catch-all party, welcoming voters from a variety of demographics and characterizing the Republican Party as consisting of predominantly white, wealthy elites. Yet by 2016, after two terms of Obama, this deteriorated to somewhat of a reversal; the left is widely known as the party of the educated elite, increasingly out of touch with the interests of the common man.
Much of this derives from the left’s inability to escape its depiction by the right. Democrats’ top issues have been forcibly formed around combating narratives created by Republicans, which are largely unpopular and serve a small minority of voters. They have doubled down on immigration and transgender rights, which, though aligning with the base of social liberalism, are largely unpopular and ideologically incoherent with the priorities of the majority of voters.
The same phenomenon does not occur for the right, however. This is because the left, as it has emerged as the party of elites, has also become the party of experts, dependent upon facts and the elitist, unattainable education that party leaders seem to flaunt. Consequently, Democratic identity is tied to knowing what’s right and remaining educated on the world, being constrained by this very characterization.
Trump and the rest of the Republican Party are not similarly restrained. Back in May on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when asked if he must uphold the Constitution, Trump responded, “I don’t know.”
Most recently, when asked during CBS’s 60 Minutes why he pardoned Canadian crypto multi-billionaire Changpeng Zhao, who was found guilty of money laundering in 2023, Trump responded, “I don’t know who he is.”
When Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was asked about Trump’s answer, he was similarly ignorant. “I don’t know anything about that,” Johnson said. “I didn’t see the interview.”
The Republican Party has successfully feigned ignorance when confronted with difficult questions, an impossibility for the opposite party. Perhaps in early 2024, Joe Biden could have—and likely did—fly under the radar with illiterate non-answers, excused by his old age and stumbling rhetoric. Yet his successor, Kamala Harris, would have arguably been attacked had she given an answer as nonsensical as “I don’t know,” undeniably somewhat due to the combined forces of racism and sexism acting against her as a Black female candidate.
As a result, though both parties experience flaws in their platforms, Democrats have been held solely responsible for justifying the inconsistencies in their platform. These very inconsistencies have grown increasingly prevalent since 2016, as the party makeup has been divided between predominantly educated elites and the working class.
In recent years, Democrats have consistently positioned themselves as increasingly pro-establishment, creating a platform of unrelatability and alienation from voters. During her 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton visited a working-class family home in East Harlem, her expression of disgust as she stood in the humble kitchen inspiring countless memes.
The solution to Democrats’ characterization as elitist, as well as how to bridge the gaps within an increasingly divided party, has been debated over time. The proposal for a uniting figure such as Joe Rogan, however, exemplifies a fundamental misunderstanding of the Democratic Party and where it stands today.
The ‘big-tent party’ that Democrats present themselves as captures too many ideas, positions and ideologies that are opposed to one another. A figure able to argue for educated elites and working class voters alike, whose priorities somewhat antagonize one another, is virtually impossible.
This is not to say that figures such as Rogan have successfully captured the entire Republican Party. However, the broader sphere of social media has been far more successfully utilized by the right, most obviously by Trump. Trump is viewed as funny, an unfiltered television personality not restricted by the boundaries of censored political demeanor, while Hillary Clinton’s blue pantsuits and perfectly coiffed bob reflects her occupation within the establishment.
Democrats, by contrast, have failed to connect on a personal level with voters, though not for lack of trying. One month before the election, Harris was interviewed on Alex Cooper’s sex-focused podcast Call Her Daddy, discussing her upbringing, reproductive rights and the economy. But this attempt was also coupled with Harris’ historically short campaign, her refusal to ideologically depart from Biden’s unpopular political positions and her moderate stances on controversial issues like Palestine and immigration. She was unable to distance herself from the realistic depiction, fueled by the right, that she embodied establishment liberalism and an inherent ideological difference from most voters.
The model of political engagement that makes figures like Rogan so effective is that they oppose politics as it currently exists. They are comfortable taking stances against political authority because they are not, or at least appear not to be, a part of the system they voice opposition to.
Trump, for example, grew up supported by several trust funds and attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the most prestigious business school in the country. In 2022, the Trump Organization was found guilty of 17 counts of criminal tax fraud. Yet to Republicans, Trump has been able to curate a persona of the common man, relatable to the average voter who feels suppressed by woke culture and liberated by Trump’s unrehearsed rhetoric.
Several figures have emerged as contenders for a “liberal Joe Rogan.” Hasan Piker, a Turkish-American influencer known for his leftist commentary and currently standing as among the most subscribed Twitch streamers, has gained a following for his criticism of both parties, particularly pertaining to the genocide in Palestine. Some have described him as the “Joe Rogan of the left.”
Piker, though, rejects this comparison. His response, in a recent interview with NPR, encompasses the very issue with this phenomenon. “A Joe Rogan is not going to solve [Democrats’] problems. They need to change their policies… There was a guy out there who actually was organically doing exactly the things that I was saying. And he had tremendous success in the Democratic primary in the New York mayoral race,” Piker argued.
Zohran Mamdani, as Piker referenced, has indeed experienced success taking a populist approach to presenting a socialist platform. He began his campaign asking voters about their top five issues, then created his primary policies based on their answers.
Saikat Chakrabarti, a candidate for California’s 11th congressional district and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff, has taken a similar approach, chatting with voters on San Francisco street corners, farmers’ markets and municipal transit buses. He uses TikTok frequently on the campaign trail and freely criticizes the Democratic establishment.
Both Mamdani and Chakrabarti represent a new era of leftist politics entering the political sphere. The Democratic Party’s success is far less about finding a suitable voice to discuss and capture voters, and far more about changing policy to listen to the needs of the constituency. As long as the left continues to lose its focus on affordable healthcare, housing and education and increasingly relies on unpopular, unrelatable talking points applying to minute portions of the electorate, they will continue to lose. A liberal Joe Rogan is likely unattainable, but it is also ineffective without a simultaneous shift in party priorities.