Democrats have a messaging problem. Adam Mockler has solutions

Adam Mockler was standing on the red carpet of one of Washington, D.C.’s glossier White House Correspondents’ Dinner weekend parties in late April when he said something that, within days, would become unintentionally hilarious.The 23-year-old progressive content creator and increasingly ubiquitous cable TV panel guest had been talking about CNN’s Scott Jennings, the conservative strategist who has become one of cable television’s most controversial MAGA combatants. Jennings, Mockler explained, was not actually the snarling partisan viewers saw on TV every night. Not entirely, anyway.“I find him to be a pretty affable person behind the scenes,” Mockler told The Advocate at the time. “He’s obviously kind of an asshole on TV, but he’s a nice guy.”One week later, Jennings would scream, “Get your fucking hand out of my face” at him on live television.By the time Mockler sat down with The Advocate for a second, much longer interview after the CNN blowup went viral, he already understood the irony. “The naïveté of me,” Mockler said with a laugh, “to think that I could go on camera and say he’s a nice guy, and then that not just blow up on me.” See on Instagram The moment became one of those cable news clips that now ricochet across the internet ecosystem before the segment has even ended.During a heated CNN debate about the Iran war on NewsNight with Abby Phillip, Mockler pressed Jennings on shifting Republican justifications for the conflict. Jennings, who had already tried to make fun of Mockler for being “up past your bedtime,” finally snapped when Mockler raised his hand while making a point that wasn’t going well for Jennings. Mockler’s hands, for the record, were never in Jennings’ face.For younger progressive audiences already skeptical of traditional cable news punditry, Mockler has emerged as a kind of Gen Z anti-establishment avatar that’s impatient with consultant-approved Democratic messaging, fluent in internet