There was a time last summer when the Democratic Party was cool.
Kamala Harris had just stepped in as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in the waning days of Brat summer. She went on the popular podcast “Call Her Daddy.” Tim Walz’s outdoorsy drip led to a Chappell Roan-inspired camo trucker hat. The memes were flowing, and the party’s mood was high.
That moment has long passed. With Donald J. Trump back in the White House, the culture of dude-heavy pop-podcast programming, provocative insults and so-called masculine energy that helped him get there seems like the dominant one. And to some, the response from the left during the previous Trump era — defined by an earnest “resistance” to the president’s agenda — appears outdated and cringe.
As liberals try to get their groove back, some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric aimed at winning back voters who have responded to President Trump’s no-holds-barred version of politics.
It’s an attempt to step outside the bounds of the political correctness that Republicans have accused Democrats of establishing. And it requires being crass but discerning, rude but only to a point.
Online, it has a name: “Dark woke.”
“Republicans have essentially put Democrats in a respectability prison,” said Bhavik Lathia, a communications consultant and former digital director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “There is an extreme imbalance in strategy that allows Republicans to say stuff that really grabs voters’ attention, where we’re stuck saying boring pablum. I see this as a strategic shift within Democratic messaging — I’m a big fan of ‘dark woke.’”
“Dark woke,” for now, is a meme that lives mostly online. But its roots have been sown throughout the party for years. In the waning days of the Biden administration, memes about “Dark Brandon” often referred to the version of the former president that conservatives most feared. Outside the party, the “dirtbag left,” the term for a cohort of leftists provocateurs who eschew civility politics, inspired headlines for their unrestrained derision of conservatives and liberals alike.
Every so often, these political currents would come to a head. During a meeting of the House Oversight Committee last May, Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, found herself in a spat with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, after Ms. Greene made a gibe about “fake eyelashes” that the chair, Representative James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, declined to prosecute under the committee’s rules on decorum.
“Mr. Chair, a point of order,” Ms. Crockett said. “I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling. If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde bad built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”
Ms. Crockett’s moment became a meme. It was printed on T-shirts. It got her an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel. And now, Democratic strategists say, it has become a perfect example of “dark woke.”
The reach of Ms. Crockett’s comment seemed to show that Democratic clapbacks could permeate into cultural spaces, giving the leaders who delivered them new platforms to spread their ideas. To a new, younger generation of Democratic staffers, this was exactly the link they had seen their opponents exploiting for years.
“All these new staffers, we grew up seeing extremely vile content overflowing from right-wing spaces into regular spaces,” said Caleb Brock, 23, the director of digital strategy for Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California. “We’re ready to combat that by any means necessary.”
Democrats have looked within their own ranks. Chi Ossé, the Brooklyn councilman whose meme-fluent, sometimes confrontational presence on X has put him on the radar of national Democratic organizers, says he was recently asked to help the Senate Democratic Caucus with their social media strategy.
“Being able to use this strategy of being raw and unapologetic and unabashed about our beliefs is something our base really wants,” Mr. Ossé said. He referred to a quote by one of Mayor Eric Adams’s advisers, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who said, “When they go low, you gotta dig for oil.”
It goes against the well-known credo of Michelle Obama, who in 2016 preached, “When they go low, we go high.” Instead, some Democrats want to see how low they can go, too.
In April, Ms. Crockett made headlines again when she referred to Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who uses a wheelchair, as “Governor Hot Wheels,” a remark that many in the disability community found offensive. (Ms. Crockett’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)
That backlash, however, was short lived. Lately, the bar on acceptable speech seems to have been set low enough that “you would have to catch someone saying a slur or something for it to really break through,” said Tyson Brody, a Democratic strategist and opposition researcher.
“People are pretty forgiving,” he added.
But others say there is a line that Democrats should be sure to toe as they ramp up their attacks.
“You don’t have to be cruel to be sharp,” said Annie Wu, 29, a communications strategist based in Philadelphia who has worked for both Mr. Khanna and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “We can be bold, we can be petty, we can be punchy and still have a moral compass. We don’t have to replicate the right’s formula.”
Still, Democrats have embraced some aspects of the right’s tool kit. As Trump advisers like Elon Musk have used slurs and profanity online, communications consultants for Democratic politicians have encouraged — or allowed — more swearing. Profanity, Mr. Brody, 38, said, is often seen as a “shortcut to authenticity,” though it can also be overused and backfire.
“I know I’m doing something right when the Fox News crowd is all just bitching at me like crazy,” Mr. Walz said at a town hall in Lorain, Ohio, this month. “I’m loving it. Elon Musk was crying last week, ‘Tim is being mean to me!’”
In an email, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee said the party’s main account on X had gained one million followers since the beginning of the year, pointing to several examples of viral moments — some embodying the principles of “dark woke” — that had garnered some 800 million impressions across platforms in the same time period.
It’s not resonating with everyone. For some, the universal truism that it can never be cool to try so hard applies here. Others, too, have criticized Democrats for seeming to place a premium on affect over policy.
Alex Peter, a lawyer and left-wing commentator who makes content under the handle LOLOverruled, said the Democrats’ new focus on viral “dark woke” posts was just “a lot of hot air.”
“Part of the problem with the mainstream Democratic Party is that it all kind of rings hollow,” Mr. Peter, 33, said. “I don’t care about another clapback. People want concrete deliverables.”
Republicans, as well, do not seem fazed. Vish Burra, 34, the press secretary for the New York Young Republicans Club, said the Democrats’ fledgling attempts to go dark woke were not a significant threat.
“They’re getting spicier and being more vicious in their attacks,” said Mr. Burra, who has advised the former Representatives Matt Gaetz and George Santos. “Whatever. You have no power against us. The best you can squeeze out is Chuck Schumer on TikTok and Cory Booker going on for 25 hours?”
