The Democratic Party Doesn’t Need a Joe Rogan. It Needs a Russell Vought

The Right is quietly building a regime. The Left is still chasing charisma. Russell Vought now says we're in a post bipartisan world. If only more democrats believed it.

Every few months, some version of the same liberal fantasy goes viral. Usually, it starts with a frustrated thread or podcast clip lamenting the Democrats’ “messaging problem,” followed by the suggestion that the Party needs a more charismatic figurehead. Someone who can talk to normal people. Someone who understands the culture war. Someone who could win over disillusioned white men in ball caps. The name Joe Rogan always comes up. Sometimes it’s Dave Chappelle or Bill Maher. Occasionally, a desperate soul will suggest Jon Stewart make a comeback.

What no one seems to realize is this: the Right is not winning because of Joe Rogan. The Right is winning because of Russell Vought.

You probably don’t know Vought’s name, and that’s the point. The former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Donald Trump, Vought is now the president of the Center for Renewing America. He is also the architect behind Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing plan to dismantle the federal bureaucracy and consolidate power in the executive branch. Rogan is a vibe. Vought is a weapon.

While Democrats retweet MSNBC clips and beg for TikTok influencers to clap back harder, Vought is building a fully operational ideological machine. It is not flashy. It is effective. It is not chasing virality. It is reprogramming government.

So why do Democrats keep trying to fight a regime with a vibe?

There is a long tradition of Democrats chasing cool. Barack Obama had it, and his presidency set a trap for a generation of political hopefuls who thought charisma could compensate for structure. Since then, liberals have mistaken applause lines for power. The Right, meanwhile, has been building institutions. The Federalist Society. The Heritage Foundation. Turning Point USA. Moms for Liberty. The Manhattan Institute. PragerU. Charlie Kirk and Stephen Miller may post inflammatory content, but behind them sit lawyers, funders, and strategists who understand that winning power is a different game than winning likes.

Vought is the anti-celebrity. He is not trying to host UFC fighters or trend on Spotify. He is drafting legal memos and personnel plans. He is preparing for day one, planning an actual takeover of the civil service. His team is identifying loyalists, compiling lists, and laying out legal frameworks. It is deeply authoritarian. It is also deeply organized.

Democrats, by contrast, still think the problem is who is saying the message, not how the message is being delivered, or where, or to whom, or whether there is an ecosystem to back it up. That is why they keep auditioning for the part of Joe Rogan instead of asking who their Russell Vought is.

Spoiler: they do not have one. Nor do they appear to have the stomach for one. Just earlier this week President Obama urged his followers to get tough, grow a spine, and stop navel-gazing. Each one a thing that this party in its current form loves to do.

When Democrats lose elections, they tend to say some version of: we had the better ideas, but we did not communicate them well. This is a dodge. It assumes the electorate is too dumb to understand, rather than acknowledging the party’s inability to meet people where they are.

Vought does not care if his ideas are popular. He builds the infrastructure to implement them anyway. Liberals obsess over language and nuance. Conservatives build shock troops and legal pathways.

Democrats do not just lack a centralized messaging operation. They lack mission control. There is no shared communications protocol between Democratic-aligned organizations. No war room with a unified voice. No coordinated campaign across media platforms with discipline, reach, and feedback loops. There are silos, NGOs, PACs, and a few powerful unions. But nothing that resembles a unified machine.

Instead, messaging happens on Twitter. And every 18 months, someone tweets: why don’t we have a liberal Fox News? (I’m as guilty as anyone.)

We tried. It was called Air America. (Yes, this was a thing and even Rachel Maddow was a host). It died. Because the donors did not back it, and the party did not understand what it was for.

In a recent report from Politico, Vought’s team at the Center for Renewing America was revealed to be actively preparing to freeze more than 30 billion dollars in agency spending by exploiting the timing of budget disbursements at the end of the fiscal year. Democrats called it a constitutional crisis. Vought called it restoring order ([Politico, June 2025]).

This is not a think tank fantasy. It is a legal strategy with real fiscal impact. And it is one of dozens of moves his network is coordinating before a single ballot is cast.

To be clear, charisma still matters. Effective communication still matters. The Democratic Party has plenty of brilliant advocates. But what it lacks are engineers. Architects. Strategists who are not interested in the spotlight, only in building lasting institutions.

We need a permanent, well-funded counterweight to the Heritage Foundation. We need a federalist-minded messaging strategy that speaks with different accents in different states. We need a new generation of digital war rooms that train candidates in meme fluency, content velocity, and narrative warfare. We need a robust talent pipeline of policy staffers, communications aides, and regional organizers ready to be deployed at scale. And yes, we need a Russell Vought of our own. A behind-the-scenes general drawing the blueprints for power and preparing to wield it when the opportunity comes.

This does not mean abandoning values or copying the cruelty of the Right. It means taking ourselves seriously. It means matching their resolve, not their rhetoric.

There is no single savior coming. No magical podcaster will fix what is broken. What Democrats need is an era of institution building. We need our own bench of Voughts—uncharismatic, relentless, obsessed with systems.

We need fewer viral moments and more internal infrastructure. We need to stop asking why don’t people like us and start asking what are we building that lasts.

Because while liberals host panels and produce documentaries, the Right is producing a future. And if we do not start creating the scaffolding for our own, we will find ourselves trying to reason with a regime that no longer has to listen.

The Democratic Party does not need a Joe Rogan. It needs a Russell Vought.

Someone who is not trying to win the moment, but trying to win the government.

And it needed him yesterday.

About the Author

Trent Harrington lives in Nashville, studied political communication at The University of Alabama, built an award-winning agency, and led successful campaigns across the South. His work lives at the intersection of storytelling, strategy, and the stubborn hope that ideas still matter.

And he really wants to move to Seattle, so lets get on this.🙏🏼