The Vampire Consultant Class Wants the Democratic Party’s Blood (and Money)

Professional Democrats are pitching the party’s donors on a wide range of projects aimed at winning back voters. Are they worth it?

(Composite / Photos: Shutterstock)

PowerPoint Politics

RAHM EMANUEL FAMOUSLY said that one should “never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

Now his party is facing a crisis—and Democratic consultants are keen on not letting it be wasted.

Over the past few months, the party’s consultant class has been pitching new ideas to help Democrats repair their damaged brand. They’re rubbing elbows with deep-pocketed donors at five-star hotels and pitching them on eight-figure strategies to reverse the party’s steady loss of support with working-class voters and to deal with a base increasingly made up of wealthy college-educated elites.

The efforts have caused a mini-uproar among professional Democrats, some of whom worry that the party will actually worsen the problem it’s trying to solve: looking painfully robotic as they outsource their efforts to come across as authentic.

“The people who are pitching clients on their solution to talk to working-class voters or young men—they’re looking at them like it’s a zoo and they’re just like, ‘Can you believe these people exist?,’” said Ammar Moussa, the director of rapid response for the Biden-turned-Harris campaign.

The dominance and ubiquity of the consultant class has been a longstanding problem for Democrats. In his 2006 book Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized By People Who Think You’re Stupid, longtime Time magazine columnist Joe Klein argued that the political consultants had run amuck, sucking the life out of politicians with their message-tested speeches and leading to the decline of relatability in American politics.

Klein gave the example of a Jimmy Carter aide who one month after the 1976 election delivered the president-elect a 10,000-word memorandum on political strategies for incumbents, arguing that he needed a continuous polling operation and offering detailed suggestions, including that wearing cardigan sweaters would somehow help him remain popular. During the Clinton era, the consultant Dick Morris commissioned a 259-question survey to help inform Clinton on how to approach a State of the Union address.

“Democrats have always been this way, but it’s become even more so,” said James Carville, the lead strategist on Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign, in an interview with The Bulwark.

“People lose sight of the fact that politics is by and large a candidate-driven enterprise. But it is a Democratic article of faith that enough expertise and enough dollars can solve any problem, up to and including authenticity,” Carville added. Reflecting on the new projects that Democrats are now cooking up to combat Trump, he said: “They are just so reflective of the way that the institutional Democratic mind thinks.”

One of those new projects, as the New York Times reported, is code-named SAM—an acronym for “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.” The proposal is geared toward reversing Democrats’ declining appeal with young men, especially online, by studying “the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces.”

But that’s far from the only consultant-driven initiative that has some Democrats wondering just how much money the party intends to light on fire before the next election.

AND Media—another acronymized project that stands for Achieve Narrative Dominance—is hoping to raise $45 million to fund influencer content that moves away from “the current didactic, hall monitor style of Democratic politics that turns off younger audiences.” As the party continues its myopic search for the Joe Rogan of the left, Project Bullhorn, another new initiative aimed at boosting influencers, is asking for $35 million to fund left-leaning creators on YouTube.

The vast array of white papers and astroturfed podcast ideas betray the fact that Democrats still have little idea of how to talk to or connect with a significant segment of the country. And it suggests that the party is not grappling with the fundamental reason it’s not resonating with voters—not the methods by which its positions are communicated, but that the positions themselves are unpopular.

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NOT EVERY DEMOCRAT was willing to disregard the wave of consultant proposals as money sucks. Some even held out hope that they would prompt new, creative thinking; that the party needed to try out different ways of reaching people. However mockable their acronymized names might be, some strategists said that the projects being proposed are actually quite nuanced.

“Many, if not most, of the people who pitch this stuff are very smart and thoughtful and have identified real shit that needs doing,” said Pat Dennis, the president of the Democratic-led opposition research group American Bridge 21st Century, which has been involved in some of the ideas being pitched to donors. “Just like how Democrats in government always regulate every dollar we spend until we can’t do anything. . . . We do the same thing with campaign spending. We scrutinize every dime for if the Twitter cool kids like it.”

But others in the party, and those who recently left it, couldn’t help but contrast the consultant-driven approach to the one adopted by Donald Trump. Although some political consulting firms have emerged out of the Trump era, the president has largely relied on a tight-knit group of advisers and his own gut instincts. It has certainly been unconventional, a sewer of scandal, and driven our politics to a dangerous place. But the results have been two successful elections and a realignment of national politics.

“The Democrats don’t have a messaging problem so much as a leadership problem. Who speaks for the Democratic party? No one knows. They can’t resolve that, so they do what they know how to do—spend money on consultants,” said Andrew Yang, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic primary nomination, before becoming an independent. “The longer the party resembles a corporate bureaucracy, the longer it will remain in the wilderness.”

🫏 Donkey Business:

— Sen. Cory Booker has a new book deal following his record-setting Senate floor speech last month. Stand will be published November 11, perfect timing for the New Jersey senator to make some book-tour stops in Philadelphia and Atlanta and other cities that happen to be important for 2028 presidential hopefuls (just taking a guess here).

— House Democrats are planning on a June 24 caucus election to fill the party’s top job on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee following the death of Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Politico’s Nick Wu reports. A caucus election might sound like a total snoozer. But as Nick writes, the contest is “shaping up to be a competitive four-way race that could test Democrats’ adherence to their seniority system for committee leadership and appetite to elevate younger members.”

Just a few months ago New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lost her bid for the position against Connolly, which frustrated some members of the party who felt like it was time to pass the torch to a younger leadership (and given Connolly’s death, they had a good point). Reps. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts, Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, and Robert Garcia of California are all expected to run for the position this time around.

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My open tabs:

— Adam Friedland Could Be the Millennial Jon Stewart. But Does He Want That?

— Fame and Frustration on the New Media Circuit

— They’re 15. Wait Until You Read Their Newspaper.