Democrats Face ‘Existential Threat’ By Ignoring New Media, Progressive YouTuber David Pakman Says

Progressive YouTuber David Pakman says Democrats face an “existential threat” heading into the 2026 midterms because they largely depend on “stale” media like network and cable TV channels to share their views. And when they do make the occasional appearance on new media programs, Dems come across as uptight phonies, Pakman added.

“I know that I may be potentially burning some bridges by talking about this,” Pakman said. “One of the things that we learned during the 2024 election was that the Democratic Party doesn’t really seem to get new media and independent media, and they continue to do the kind of stale thing of the Sunday shows that very few people watch, and buttoned up interviews — trying to be as least-controversial as possible, occasionally dropping in a swear word or whatever, to try to be a little more provocative and relatable. And it’s all pretty disingenuous.”

Pakman said he was optimistic Democrats were starting to understand how important podcasts, YouTube shows, and other forms of new media were following Kamala Harris’ loss to President Donald Trump last November.

“I had high hopes that the corner was being turned,” Pakman said, after he met with senior communications officials for Harris and former President Joe Biden last December.

Those hopes took a punch to the gut, though, after Pakman tried getting in touch with an unnamed Democratic politician earlier this year. Pakman said he had a prior relationship with the elected official, but that the pol’s comms team still told him to email their generic email address in order to ask some questions.

“Shuffling me off to an ‘Info at email,’ which goes into a black hole, it’s just where all of the crap goes — I know we will never, ever, ever hear [back],” Pakman said. “And this is the fundamental problem. That sort of way of dealing with independent media is how all of us will end up going, ‘Screw this elected official. Let’s endorse the challenger. Let’s fundraise for the challenger.’ This is exactly the problem that we are talking about.”

Pakman is a veteran left-leaning YouTuber who has been cranking out videos on the platform — where he has 3.3 million subscribers — for more than 15 years.

He was in the news this week after Taylor Lorenz reported for Wired that a “dark money group” was paying Pakman and other liberal creators thousands of dollars per month “to push the party line.” Afterwards, Pakman said on X the piece was “fully debunked,” without going into detail about it.

Pakman, in his YouTube video, said California Gov. Gavin Newsom was a rare Democrat who understood the power of new media. But unless others follow suit, he does not expect Dems to perform well in the 2026 midterms.

“This is not looking good,” Pakman added.

You can watch his full take via his YouTube clip above.