For years, political insiders assumed young voters would drift left. That assumption was turned on its head when Charlie Kirk founded Turning Point USA just one day after graduating high school in 2012.
What began as a scrappy campus effort quickly evolved into a full-fledged political brand. Kirk’s signature approach — his “prove me wrong” rallies — struck a chord with students nationwide. Kirk’s unapologetic Christian faith, along with his unique blend of intelligence, personality, ambition, and willingness to engage respectfully with those who disagreed with him, proved to be a winning combination among young voters.
But Turning Point’s success wasn’t just about Kirk’s hands-on campus outreach. Just 18-years-old when he founded the organization, he instinctively understood how and where young people actually spend their time online. Social media wasn’t treated as a supporting tool, but as the engine of its growth. Kirk’s strategic use of digital platforms to amplify his campus exchanges, enabled him to push his message far beyond any single quad.
The result was a political phenomenon. It’s not hyperbole to say the organization was the key driver of President Donald Trump’s unprecedented popularity among young voters in 2024.
Turning Point’s success continues to confound political professionals. While many have tried to copy its formula, doing so has proven difficult.
That doesn’t mean Democrats aren’t trying. In fact, that’s precisely what Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, is planning. Perhaps the autopsy results of the 2024 election, which he decided not to release publicly, prompted the idea.
In an interview with Newsweek last week, New York State Sen. James Skoufis announced the DNC’s creation of a new group, the National Youth Coordinated Table, which he will chair. Envisioned as a left-wing version of Turning Point, the DNC hopes to emulate its success with young voters.
The NYCT will unite “the Young Democrats of America, the College Democrats of America, the High School Democrats of America, and an array of left-leaning organizing groups.”
Skoufis told Newsweek that while the NYCT is not being launched as a direct response to Turning Point’s spectacular success, its backers believe it can “replicate some of the civic opportunities that organization provides.”
A central component of the initiative will be a fellowship program designed to train “hundreds, if not more” young Americans for Democratic campaign work and activist organizing. Set to roll out in the coming months, Skoufis said, the fellowship will feature paid training “from the DNC and organizations that sit at the Youth Table.”
The problem is that Democratic methods of persuasion run in the opposite direction of conservative ones, and it’s hard to imagine that any amount of training could undo the party’s entrenched “my way or the highway” approach to community organizing.
Imagine a Democrat — any Democrat — walking onto a college campus and telling students, “Socialism is the best economic system. Prove me wrong.” Or, “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. Prove me wrong.”
How long would their commitment to open debate last? Would dissent actually be welcomed — or would the first conservative challenge expose how little tolerance there is for real disagreement, turning the exchange into yet another exercise in dysfunction?
Newsweek reached out to Brilyn Hollyhand, 18, the former chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council. He was “unimpressed,” telling the media outlet:
The Democrats are desperate. After we broke their monopoly on our generation, they’ve lit tens of millions of dollars on fire to study my peers and I, like we’re aliens. I’ll save them all the time and money and answer their golden question for free: They lost us because they labeled our masculinity toxic, called us Hitler Jr., and their closing pitch the week of the election was to label us all garbage. They had four years to make life easier for my generation and somehow managed to make it even worse. There are not enough influencers or talking point memos in the world that can win them back Gen Z.
A weekend panel at Fox News addressed the DNC’s plan and arrived at a similar conclusion. Contributor Molly Line noted, “There’s really nothing comparative to what he [Kirk] built among youth across America and the interaction and the exchange of ideas and how it carries on in the wake of his assassination. … And then you try to compare that to something that’s being orchestrated [by the Democrats].
“To really capture the youth, someone has to bring it up organically — from the youth,”she added.
Her colleague, Joey Jones, identified the fatal flaw in the DNC’s plan: “You can’t do what Charlie Kirk did with Turning Point USA on the Left because it’s antithetical to what the Left stands for. The Left doesn’t stand for ‘prove me wrong.’ The Left doesn’t stand for ‘let’s discuss the big ideas and questions.’” Bingo.
Democrats have become adept at smearing their opponents and tearing down ideas they oppose, but they are far less capable of listening to an individual or engaging seriously with views outside their own ideological boundaries.
VENEZUELA’S LONG WAR AGAINST THE U.S.
Any attempt to suddenly present themselves as open-minded or respectful of dissent is bound to feel performative. You can’t train authenticity, and you can’t manufacture open-mindedness where none exists. Kirk didn’t have to fake openness to debate — it was the foundation of his approach.
This difference is what separates a political brand that resonates from one that lacks credibility. The bottom line is this: the Democrats are seeking to imitate a culture of debate without embracing the values that made that culture possible in the first place.
