Ben Wikler, the chair of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party and a leading contender to run the country’s, has won some acclaim from liberals for making an obvious point: Candidates need to go where the voters are. In terms of media, that means nontraditional and less politicized sources such as podcasts, YouTube and TikTok.

The 2024 presidential election featured a novel demographic split in which Kamala Harris did dramatically worse with voters who don’t follow political news closely than with those who do. Wikler (disclosure: we went to college together) is basically correct that Democrats need to be present in a wider range of media outlets, including right-leaning ones. But Democrats need to do more than just show up. What they say, and how they say it, is as important as where they say it.

Admittedly, incorporating ideological elements into this strategy is probably something that is above the DNC chair’s pay grade. Only elected officials themselves can make the choice to be interesting and relaxed in a variety of settings and with a variety of interlocutors — and to brush off the complaints that will inevitably come from interest groups if they do so.

Consider the tangled history of Joe Rogan and the Democratic Party. By 2024, he was a pretty right-wing figure whose eventual endorsement of Donald Trump seemed more inevitable than surprising. Just five years earlier, however, he was lavishing praise on Bernie Sanders on his show. The result? Sanders was attacked by his rivals for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination on the grounds that, by appearing on the show and seeking Rogan’s endorsement, he was platforming transphobia.

If mainstream Democrats are going to say that Rogan’s views on this issue are so beyond the pale that he must be shunned by people of good conscience, then of course he’s going to become a Republican. Another consequence of these kinds of tactics is that Democrats narrow the range of venues in which they can present their message.

It’s important to understand that this is not merely a tactical choice. There is, in fact, such a thing as a person whose views are so repugnant that his support is not worth courting. Even the most diehard proponent of an “I’ll talk to anybody” approach to politics and communications has to recognize that there are limits. The question is where to draw the line — and whether Democrats are classifying too many widely held views as prejudiced even as they push an ambitious (and not always popular) agenda on climate change and economics.

It’s not hard to see why many Democrats would object to a more tolerant approach: The decision to be present and respectful in a wider array of venues would send the message that the party doesn’t regard these forums, and the views expressed in them, as out of bounds.

In the case of Rogan and Sanders it was, perversely, moderate Democrats trying to narrow the tent in an attempt to beat a leftist rival. More often, it is the reverse. Progressive donors have funded something called the Revolving Door Project, which monitors ties between the Democratic Party and the business community. At one point, it went so far as to complain that the Commerce secretary was meeting with too many CEOs.

That’s not a taboo conducive to getting invited on many business podcasts. More broadly, these tent-narrowing efforts have a real impact. Most people have just a handful of issues that they care a lot about, and they pick up opinions on other things by looking at what their fellow partisans are saying. By becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent, Democrats created — on the elite level at least — a more ideologically coherent party able to legislate with narrow majorities. At the same time, this ideological rigidity served to alienate less attentive, less political voters.

People who pay less attention to the news and care less about politics are more likely to have a heterodox jumble of views. Today’s Republicans may be something of a creepy personality cult, but beyond their loyalty to Trump, they are open-minded to the point of incoherence. To be a Democrat in good standing, by contrast, increasingly requires agreement to an ever-expanding checklist of interest-group concerns. Far better would be to have a single box that says, “Agree with Democrats about most stuff.”

This is a problem of basic strategy: too much emphasis on managing the coalition, and not enough on expanding it.

As the co-host of a podcast about politics, I am certainly not going to disagree with a recommendation that more politicians go on podcasts. But the Democrats’ success will ultimately depend less on media availability than on ideological flexibility.

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(With assistance from Carolyn Silverman.)

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is the author of “One Billion Americans.”

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