Jennifer Welch Thinks Democrats Need to Stop Playing Nice
The I’ve Had It podcast host argues that Democrats are losing because they keep mistaking restraint for strategy, while the right keeps winning through cruelty and narrative warfare.
If you’ve scrolled through pretty much any social or streaming platform feed lately, the odds are, you’ve heard Jennifer Welch call a national figure something deeply cutting - and hysterical - and no, I’m not just talking about Republicans. The reality TV-turned-viral podcast star has built an enormous megaphone over the past few years, yes, by always referring to Trump as “cankles,” but also by expressing her palpable displeasure with the Democratic Party’s lack of spine. According to Welch, Democrats are still approaching a radicalized Republican movement like it can be managed with conventional messaging, when what’s actually needed is moral clarity, sharper contrasts, and a willingness to hit back harder- and sometimes with more spice.
After joining her on “I’ve Had It” a few weeks ago, I invited Welch onto Gloves Off this week to get her thoughts on our current political moment. And lucky for us, our conversation came right on the heels of both the cringe-inducing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and a fairly hot (and 2016-PTSD-triggering) fight that’s still churning in our “big tent” between progressives who stan Twitch streamer Hasan Piker and the Democrats who hate (or fear) him…
I wanted to ask Welch about a certain moment I had caught from CPAC last weekend where the crowd cheered when asked about calls for impeachment hoping it was a sign of a deepening wedge on the right, and learned the man who was doing call-on-response on the CPAC stage was actually an alleged sexual abuser himself. This launched us into a conversation about the deeply hypocritical fusion of Christian virtue signaling with cruelty and abuse. In Welch’s words, Republicans keep “trotting out the sexual assaulters, the sexual abusers, the pedophiles,” all while pretending to speak for morality. She sees that contradiction as the kind of thing Democrats should be hammering relentlessly, not gently acknowledging and moving past.
“We have to talk policy, and we have to gossip,” Welch says. “We have to do reputational damage to their brand that is long-lasting because the way people vote now is different. There are vibe voters.” That idea sits at the center of our whole conversation. If Democrats want to win, she says, they need to learn how to define their opponents the way Republicans have defined them for years. Thankfully, they keep giving us fresh material!
That isn’t the only knock Welch has on the Democratic Party either. She has palpable frustration with party leaders like Chuck Schumer, who she doesn’t miss a beat in calling a “fascist collaborator” for failing to offer a clear opposition to Trump-era authoritarianism, and for treating the left as a problem rather than a source of energy.
Despite some political consultants’ frustration of “creators’” increasing influence over the political conversation today, Welch isn’t speaking as an outside critic throwing stones from a distance. Her rise in reach and influence is actually proof that audiences are hungry for voices who sound real, rather than poll-tested, and as she says, is an indictment of corporate media and a sign that people are building new political ecosystems outside the old guard.
I don’t agree with Welch on everything, but she and I do share a deep-rooted belief that the people who got us into this mess are decidedly NOT the ones who are going to get us out - and that by attacking those who are building influence by saying the true things many Americans are feeling, they are only reinforcing how deeply out of touch they are with an increasingly fed-up electorate. But don’t take it from us - that’s what primaries are for.
Listen to our full conversation on Spotify or Apple, or subscribe to COURIER’s YouTube channel for more clips from the interview.
Yes. Please, please please! The dems keep showing up with a clipboard tracking their corporate donors preferences while the pubes keep launching virulent and violent attacks on our diverse communities of all flavors. That's stupider than taking a knife to a gunfight. A clipboard and a schedule of committee meetings wont save anyone in this war...and it is a war. Maybe the dems living in the gated communities don't feel it, but those of us living under the direct assault do. They have declared a culture war, complete now with gunshots and the social weaponry of genocide against everyone who's not white, male, and christian. Unless of course you want an eventual repeat of France in 1799; Americans come in all flavors, not just vanilla.
If dems want to win elections then they should support leaders like Obama, Spanberger and Talarico that can grow the tent. Dunking on MAGA has its limits