Every Politician Is an Influencer Now
Lawmakers are pivoting to a content-first strategy above everything else.
How to Make Friends and Influence Voters
with reporting by Lauren Egan
Now in its third week, the government shutdown is keeping the lights off across much of Washington, but it’s shining a big, bright light on the ways Capitol Hill is changing. Gone are the days in which network television was king. Now politicians who want to get their message out are taking to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and podcasts. It seems as though every elected official in Washington is on a quest to become a digital influencer or content creator.
After Democrats finished holding court in a televised press conference on the Capitol’s east steps during the first week of the shutdown, many of the assembled lawmakers immediately broke out into small groups with their staffers to record selfie videos and standups in lieu of the customary conversations with reporters and camera crews. The same thing happened again following an identical event on Wednesday.
Throughout the hallways of the Capitol, House Democratic lawmakers have been recording direct-to-constituent videos excoriating the political opposition and highlighting their Republican counterparts’ absence from Washington over the past month.
It marks a deeper shift in media strategy. Democratic lawmakers—or, more accurately, their millennial and Gen Z staffers—have long been laughed at for producing out-of-touch posts that are light-years away from their bosses’ actual personalities. Media-facing lawmakers are now putting the gimmicky trendposting behind them and getting their normal faces, voices, and personalities back into their online content.