Why Do Democrats Keep Posting Videos of Themselves Pumping Iron?
By: Tim Murphy (Mother Jones)
A mildly satirical (and slightly critical) take on the Democratic Party from a friendly source.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
After a historic setback in 2024, the Democratic rebrand appears to be working out.
No, seriously—the rebrand is that they're all filming themselves working out. In late September, Manny Rutinel, a Democrat challenging Rep. Gabe Evans in Colorado, posted a video of himself doing bicep curls while blaring "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath. The week before that, a very energized Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed was in Washington, DC, challenging JD Vance to a squat-off. Before that , it was Indiana secretary of state candidate Birch Evans Bayh IV—please, call him Beau—airing an ad in which he racked weights and bench-pressed while lamenting that "most politicians are weak."
Video by Peter Berger
You could keep going back, if you wanted—to Cait Conley, running against Rep. Mike Lawler in New York's Hudson Valley, flipping over a tire while shouting "let's fucking go"; to the former Maine Senate nominee Graham Platner, swinging a kettlebell in his backyard; to former Rep. Colin Allred, recording his denunciation of James Talarico before the Texas Senate primary with steam coming off his head after a garage workout; to Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, talking to TMZ about the workout video he posted after a visit to the US Naval Academy.
Some of these antics are just a reflection of these candidates' personalities. Allred, for instance, is a former NFL linebacker. Pumping iron is a thing El-Sayed likes to do (and doand do), and he's worked it into his campaign as a way to connect with people and reach new audiences. There is often an explicit contrast to bad conservative messaging in this glut of videos—Rutinel, like fellow Coloradan Rep. Jason Crow before him, was making light of Pete Hegseth's poor form and transparent insecurity, just as Gavin Newsom—who has not posted a workout video—was making light of RFK Jr.'s shirtless workout with Kid Rock in a TikTok of his own.
But if you'll excuse me for overexamining things for a minute, I think there's also something more subtle (well, not that subtle) at work here. After the 2024 election, a common shorthand for what had gone wrong with the Democratic Party was that people perceived Democrats as—in the words of one focus group and many, many talk-show interviews—"weak and woke." (There were infinite corollaries to this, including Sen. Elissa Slotkin's suggestion that the party lacked "alpha energy," Sen. Ruben Gallego's assertion that voters thought they were "wussy," and Newsom's belief that "we've appeared weak and meek . ")
The "woke" part has probably consumed the most oxygen and engendered the most debate within the party. It has also been addressed, in a variety of ways, in a frenzy of TV ads and ill-advised Reels. But the "weak" part is straightforward: The solution is to not be weak. It's to be strong, to stand up for yourself, to speak plainly, and when possible—and this really gets to the root of where things went wrong—not to be an octogenarian who walks at a shuffle and speaks at a whisper while voters go mad over inflation. There are many ways of doing that, but as a practical matter, if you want to show you have energy and can do real-person things and dispel misconceptions about Democrats Like You, well, you can always just try picking up something really heavy.
Political messaging can be alarmingly reductive sometimes. Candidates and consultants are borrowing things they've seen or used before. Why did candidates start filming themselves driving through their hometowns, eyes curiously off the road, talking about the values that forged them and the neighbors who were left behind? Who was the first elected official to stand in front of a bunch of televisions blaring attack ads and say, very solemnly, "you've seen the ads"?
All of these workout videos call to mind another campaign trope. One of the hottest campaign trends to emerge in the Obama years was filming yourself shooting stuff. It was a conservative-coded but not exclusively Republican genre. In fact, it may have even worked best when it was Democrats doing it—cutting against type, while demonstrating that they weren't like all the rest. Former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin famously filmed himself shooting "the cap-and-trade bill" during his first election. When he ran for a final term in 2018, he shot his opponent's lawsuit to gut the Affordable Care Act. (Kind of the full Joe Manchin experience, to be honest.) When Seth Bodnar, the independent running for Senate in Montana, recently filmed himself shooting a Flock camera, he was following in the footsteps of former Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who strapped "REAL ID cards" to clay pigeons 18 years earlier.
Even as the polls predict a big year for Democrats, the party's national reputation is still underwater. There's dissatisfaction with party leaders, and big fights still to come on foreign policy, on Big Tech, and on health care. Turning things around will be a heavy lift. But that might be one thing they're getting used to.
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If the friendly press doesn't take Democrats seriously then maybe the Democratic Party has deeper troubles than being out-of-touch.
Maybe they’re doing it because Republicans have been doing it.
It has also been pretty fashionable to attack the masculinity - or straightness - of political opponents. The whole thing seems pretty childish, but since it’s bound to appeal to somebody who votes, I guess they might as well.
Because Republicans ...
Democrats are mimics of Republicans. They're not an alternative.
What I’m saying is these are tactics for getting elected and they don’t have much to do with political ideology.
Candidates on both sides these days have to pro-actively shape an image counter to the one they know their opponent will fashion for them. Republicans always accused Democrats of being weak pacifist liberals so Democrat candidates now days post clips of them working out or firing guns at a gun range. Democrats accuse Republicans of being racist sycophants sucking up to a convicted felon and accused pedophile in order to stay in power, so Republican candidates post clips of themselves working out and firing guns at a gun range. They know they're not allowed to publicly hide from their lord and master Donald so what choice do they have but to re-play the oldie-but-goodies.
That lends considerable support to my comment.
Doesn't that mean there are no longer viable alternatives?
Would Democrats have been any different had Hillary Clinton won in 2016? If Democrats are so very different than Republicans then explain how Joe Biden and Kamala Harris became leaders of the party. Democrats were quick to defend Joe Biden's physical failings -- from bicycle falls to tripping over his own feet.
I think the country itself would be different. I do not think we would be seeing such a divide in our nation. Republicans would have rightly rejected Trump and gone on to have different leaders and likely would have won in 2020 after a lackluster but rather normal Clinton presidency. And we would have seen the standard fiscal conservatism leading the way as it had for decades which had supported candidates like both Bushes, McCain, Romney, who knows, maybe we would have had a fairly productive growth period and be under our second term of Jeb Bush if he'd been nominated and elected in 2020. That to me would be a hell of a lot more preferable to the dumpster fire and absolute decimation of Presidential norms and the disgusting gaudy gilding of our nations once Whitehouse.
Would there still be "politics" played in Washington? Would legislators still be telling half-truths and making empty promises to get elected? Of course there would be. But one thing is for certain, Donald Trump would have been left at the bottom of the fucking dumpster bin as he should have been and laughed out of politics in 2016. Republicans had the chance but they decided to jump on the Trumptanic and now we're all having to fucking cling to floating debris as the America we once knew breaks apart.
I think the outlook for the midterms is hopeful but way far from a sure thing. There are people who will use information like this article to claim both partys are an equivalency. I will say over and over that this type of thinking gave us a Trump presidency , twice. This is a very unstable atmosphere.
Democrats are mimics of Republicans. They're not an alternative.
Its true. Bernie Sanders always trying to convince us he's actually a true MAGA right-winger! AOC always mimicking right-wing extremists
The list is endless!
Sanders is not a Democrat. AOC is as much a Democrat as Trump is a Republican... which is to say they are both populists.