Built for a Different War

Why Progressive Institutions Can’t Compete in Today’s Media Battlefield

Has Trump become the Right’s MLK? Certainly not for his moral leadership - for forcing his version of reality onto a nation that would rather look away.

For decades, leaders who wanted to shape public discourse focused on winning over journalists, policymakers, funders, and civil society elites. Mastering this game meant securing op-eds, speaking on panels, and schmoozing at funder retreats. These traditional gatekeepers determined what ideas were legitimate, setting the boundaries of mainstream debate.

But that era is over. Today, these gatekeepers matter less than ever. They’ve lost the power to dictate, or in many cases even influence, the popular understanding of political reality. And for leaders trying to engage a broad, multiracial working-class audience, elite approval has become a distraction. The resource-rich, influence-poor networks of traditional power are delivering diminishing returns by the day.

The problem isn’t that leaders don’t see this shift—many do. The real problem is that our institutions, strategies, and funding priorities remain stuck in a broken model. The progressive movement continues to pour resources into outdated influence tactics—broadcast advertising, performance marketing, media relations teams, policy shops, and think tanks—while the right has spent decades methodically building a sprawling ecosystem of decentralized (but powerfully coordinated) narrative infrastructure. The Left isn’t just losing the battle for the nation’s conscience and culture—it’s failing to even show up where the fight is happening.

The Cost of Playing by the Old Rules

Despite billions spent on the 2024 election, working-class voters of color did not increase their trust in the Democratic Party. Labor unions, once a backbone of political power, are struggling to remain relevant in the daily lives of workers. Institutions that once channeled influence to mass audiences are failing to connect—while the right’s media machine grows stronger.

Many progressives still think their problem is messaging: crafting the perfect slogan, landing the right talking point, tweaking the framing to be more “persuasive.” But the real challenge is distribution. The other side has no illusions about this new reality, and they mock us out in the open about it. FOX News’ chief prime time troll, Jesse Watters, called out our outdated approach on his show recently, and it's hard to find fault with his argument:

“We are waging a 21st century information warfare campaign against the left and they are using tactics from the 1990s. They are holding tiny little press conferences. They’re holding tiny little rallies. They’re screaming into the ether on MSNBC. This is what you call top down command and control. You get your talking points from a newspaper and you put it on a broadcast network and then it disappears. What you're seeing on the right is asymmetrical. It’s like grassroots guerrilla warfare.”

If our ideas don’t reach people in the spaces where they actually spend their time—TikTok, YouTube comment sections, hyper-niche micro-communities—we don’t exist. There can be no counter-narrative, no persuasion, and no political power until we take control of the information pipelines that shape consciousness and worldview itself.

This isn’t the first time progressives have faced a seemingly insurmountable media environment. During the Jim Crow era, civil rights leaders understood that their struggle wasn’t just about laws—it was about storytelling. They harnessed the power of television to make racial injustice impossible to ignore. The question today is whether progressive leaders will be bold enough to do the same in an era where algorithms, not newspapers, dictate what the public sees, believes, and acts upon.

What It Takes to Win Today

The solution isn’t to abandon traditional power networks—it’s to recognize that they are no longer enough. To win in this era, progressive leaders must fundamentally rethink their approach to influence. That means:

1. Go Low: Stop talking over people’s heads. The right dominates because it meets people where they are—feeding them content that taps into their fears, interests, and everyday experiences. Progressives need to do the same. We flood resources into policy experts but underfund the storytellers, meme-makers, and tabloid-style communicators who shape popular consciousness. That’s our elitism showing—and it’s costing us the trust of most Americans.

2. Beat the Algorithm Until We Can Rebuild the Algorithm: For more than a decade, progressives tried to regulate and reform away the growing power of social media platforms owned by Big Tech while building limited reach within them. That fight was and is essential, but we are losing it—big time. The media Americans consume most is arguably more captured and less regulated than at any point in the last 100 years. Meanwhile, the right has leveraged these unregulated platforms to shift values, mobilize disengaged audiences, and create an ecosystem of despair that fuels oligarchy and neo-fascism. We need to fight on this battlefield now—not wait for a future in which the rules change in our favor.

3. Trust Over Transactions: Political influence is built through sustained relationships, not one-off engagements. Leaders need to live in the spaces where people are forming their political and cultural identities, rather than parachuting in with one-off campaigns. That means deep engagement with online creators, digital subcultures, and community-driven spaces—not just broadcasting messages but co-creating narratives. The days of communications planning following a three-year grant cycle, the splashy campaign launch, the once-a-quarter thrashing for a “viral” moment—they’re over. Influence now requires relentless cultural intelligence: attacking the algorithm every day, pivoting in real time, and keeping people talking about, educated on, and emotionally invested in our values.

Change is Hard; I Know Because I’m Doing It Too

I spent the better part of 2023 existentially stressed, trying to intervene in the dynamic above - as a consultant, a board member, a friend, and a communicator with my own stories to tell. In 2024, I decided to act and began building for what is now NewWorld. That meant a mindset shift, towards a practice that is expert in building political influence through messaging—but also understands its primary purpose as rewiring how information flows in an era dominated by algorithmic gatekeepers. That’s why we’re building an infrastructure designed for cultural intelligence, narrative strategy, and digital agility.

We’re not just “defending against” misinformation—we’re preemptively shaping narratives by building deeper partnerships with new media creators, and expanding our model for rapid response teams equipped to deliver our best strategies in the places where they can win. We know that ideas don’t spread on their own; they need infrastructure, repetition, and resources. I’m pointing my brain and my team at what matters most: strategies that move the majority of people, on the platforms where they actually spend their time.

The Future Belongs to Those Who Adapt

The old pathways to influence are broken. The leaders who succeed in this era will be those who invest in new infrastructure, and prioritize cultural resonance over existing organizational cultures.

In some ways Trump really is the MLK of the right. Certainly not because of an ability to inspire the best in people, or contributions to justice, but because of his relentless tenacity and success in forcing his view of reality on those of us who would rather look away. But we have been here before, and the beauty of this moment is that we don’t need the man to learn the lessons of the movement. We can make a generational change in how we narrate how power works and who it works for, but we have to choose to be serious about what it will take. And we have to back up that choice with the courage to let go of what no longer serves us and embrace what we urgently need.