I have to assume there’s something here to the class characteristic of the “outsider” candidates. Mostly that right wing lunatics are petty bourgeois and can fund an insurgent house/state senate run while our variety of fringe Dems are professional class at best and are still wholly dependent on donations and therefore the party to finance a campaign. When political strength is measured in wealth the left is naturally very weak
I think it has more to do with GOP/Dem media markets. While the GOP are petite-bourgeois, they tend to operate in the low-budget and prolific AM radio and religious circuit arena where advertising is incredibly cheap. Dem professionals tend to subscribe to a narrower and higher cost-to-access and more ostensibly non-partisan market of cable news and NPR and alt-rock radio, which are significantly more difficult to access.
Getting that initial bud of exposure and endorsement is going to be easier for the country club millionaire when all you have to do is show up on your buddy's ham-radio tier media network with 50,000 listeners.
I do wonder if the burgeoning Leftist Podcaster networks will change that into the future. Certainly, shows like Chapo beating the pants off Pod Save have some kind of effect on the shape of youth politics.
I have to assume there’s something here to the class characteristic of the “outsider” candidates. Mostly that right wing lunatics are petty bourgeois and can fund an insurgent house/state senate run while our variety of fringe Dems are professional class at best and are still wholly dependent on donations and therefore the party to finance a campaign. When political strength is measured in wealth the left is naturally very weak
I think it has more to do with GOP/Dem media markets. While the GOP are petite-bourgeois, they tend to operate in the low-budget and prolific AM radio and religious circuit arena where advertising is incredibly cheap. Dem professionals tend to subscribe to a narrower and higher cost-to-access and more ostensibly non-partisan market of cable news and NPR and alt-rock radio, which are significantly more difficult to access.
Getting that initial bud of exposure and endorsement is going to be easier for the country club millionaire when all you have to do is show up on your buddy's ham-radio tier media network with 50,000 listeners.
I do wonder if the burgeoning Leftist Podcaster networks will change that into the future. Certainly, shows like Chapo beating the pants off Pod Save have some kind of effect on the shape of youth politics.