Each weekday on YouTube, uploaded amid a scattershot of offerings from TV news networks and “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the Democratic National Committee offers 10-to-15-minute episodes of the Daily Blueprint — part briefing, part pep talk, part war room dispatch. It’s the party’s latest effort to seize control of the narrative, one scroll-stopping thumbnail at a time.
The broadcast is a product of the DNC’s “War Room,” a messaging operation to build public support and counteract what it calls “misinformation” from the right.
A DNC spokeswoman says although it is a “new platform” to inform supporters, “this isn’t a news show.”
“We’re using the news of the day to push our messaging priorities to our partners, our supporters, and to voters across the country – and to get people involved in this fight in a new way every day,” said Hannah Muldavin, the host and DNC’s deputy communications director.
But on the Democrats’ YouTube channel, the Daily Blueprint is described as “the Democratic Party’s official morning news show.”
Ken Martin was elected as the new DNC chair in February, following the party’s significant losses in the 2024 election and the second inauguration of President Donald Trump in late January. Martin devised the “War Room” as an attempt to grapple with the Democrats’ new reality as the opposition party.
“The launch of the Daily Blueprint is an exciting new step for the Democratic Party — it cements our commitment to meet this moment and innovate the ways we get our message across in a new media landscape,” Martin said in a statement.
In this media landscape, the DNC has taken ambitious stabs at Trump and top White House advisers. @TheDemocrats has recruited leaders from the popular @KamalaHQ accounts, who have brought the same comedic tone they used to amass support for the Harris campaign.
For example, the Democrats have shared pictures of JD Vance with a comically bloated face, a meme that both Vance’s supporters and detractors have used in various ways. One TikTok post received 74,000 likes.
“We know not everybody consumes media the same way, and we want to do better at reaching them, because we’re really confident that people are frustrated with Donald Trump,” Muldavin said in an interview.
She said this live, daily show is a unique step for the DNC and a way to expand its audience on YouTube.
The show is still in its early days, but initial viewership has been modest.
While the YouTube channel has 84,700 subscribers, the first Daily Blueprint video has just 9.000 views. Subsequent episodes have drawn smaller audiences: The video from Thursday, June 12, has 1,000 views.
The show’s limited engagement hasn’t gone unnoticed. Some early viewers criticized the DNC for focusing too heavily on Trump and not enough on alternative Democratic policies or solutions.
Other comments joined the call for concrete, actionable responses by the Democrats, and some questioned the reasoning behind the project.
That tension — between partisan messaging and substance — was echoed by Jeffrey Berry, a professor emeritus of political science at Tufts University with a focus on American politics.
“In today’s constellation of sources of news, information and opinion, the Democratic Party’s new initiative will be a dim light at best,” he said over email.
But David Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, said the DNC is employing an age-old messaging tactic.
Karpf referenced Saul Alinsky’s 1971 book “Rules for Radicals,” which explains 10 lessons for community organization. Lesson five: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
“It is deeply not new,” Karpf said. “They are drawing on a deep well of communication practices for how when you are out of power, you fight those who are in power, which is largely pointing out the flaws in what they’re doing and poking fun at them.”
The DNC argues that strategy is already paying off. In one ploy for press coverage, the DNC flew a plane over Mar-a-Lago trailing a banner that read “Welcome to Qatar-a-Lago.” A background document from May 28 provides statistics on growing disapproval of Trump and the GOP — 52% of Americans believe Trump is using the office for personal gain, 57% of Americans “oppose the GOP tax scam to give handouts to the rich” and only 39% of Americans say the economy is on the right track.
Reporting by Columbia Journalism Review and Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism in February 2024 cautioned against mixing advocacy journalism with political campaigning, which Seton Hall University journalism professor Matthew Pressman called “dicey.”
“Not least because the average reader is unlikely to differentiate between local news content published by politically-affiliated organizations and that produced by independent news outlets adhering to contemporary norms,” author Stuart Anderson-Davis wrote in CJR.
Muldavin spends considerable time on air criticizing Trump and the GOP in the “What You Need to Know Today” segment, but she also features “Democrats on Offense” and ends with “What You Can Do,” highlighting national and grassroots efforts by the party and how voters can contribute.
Criticism of the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” now in the Senate, dominated the first week’s coverage, alongside support for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California as Trump sent the National Guard and the Marines to address protests in Los Angeles. The episodes highlighted less prominent news stories, too, like the Democratic attorneys general winning a lawsuit to restore AmeriCorps-funded programs in 24 states.
The broadcast featured one guest in its first week — Ofirah Yheskel, director of external affairs at the Democratic Governors Association, praised New Jersey’s gubernatorial candidate. Muldavin discussed eventually featuring reporters or constituents as “voices of people on the front lines that are doing something.”
James Hamilton, director of the Stanford Journalism Program and author of “All the News That’s Fit to Sell,” explained over email that there are five incentives for supplying information: advertising, subscription, nonprofit, partisan and self-expression. The DNC’s new program “relates to the partisan impulse, aimed at changing your vote.”
Before the 1870s, many American newspapers were subsidized by political parties, until the high-speed printing press made it possible to reach more people at lower costs, he said. Then, newspapers saw nonpartisan coverage as a better business model to reach a bigger audience and to attract more advertisers.
“Fast forward to today, where you don’t need to invest in an expensive printing press to reach an audience,” he said. “The startup costs of a partisan outlet online are relatively low, which helps explain the introduction of new partisan outlets such as the DNC’s Daily Blueprint.”
The reshaping of the White House press corps to favor conservative media also explains the DNC’s initiative, according to Karpf.
“That further moves critical voices out of the news environment,” Karpf said. “And so the Democrats are essentially saying, as the party out of power, we need to speak for ourselves, let’s try to do that through a YouTube channel.”
