Imani Oakley

Senior Strategist

I'm a results-driven, strategy expert specializing in campaigns, politics, entrepreneurship, content, and story-telling.With more than 10-years of accomplishments in government, campaigns, media, and political organizing, I've developed an exceptional track record of leading high-pressure, multi-level, organizational strategy and execution.As a trusted, collaborative partner, my passion for uplifting diverse perspectives and strengthening community power has made me a transformative leader focused on helping marginalized communities create a common foundation to build power, win supporters, and move people to action.

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Democrats Thought Influencers Could Win the Youth Vote, But They Forgot One Thing: The Issues

When the word "influencer" first entered the cultural chat, older folks were quick to scoff, dismissing them as screen-obsessed clout-chasers with no real jobs, trading their followers’ attention for brand deals and viral fame. To them, influencers were the digital Pied Pipers, leading the youth astray in exchange for likes and paychecks.But as it turns out, the power of influencers was only frowned upon until corporations figured out how to cash in. Suddenly, influencers were brand ambassadors, affiliate marketers, and sponsorship magnets. In 2023 alone, the creator economy–which is fueled by influencer marketing–racked in about $250 billion.Even with all that cash flowing, the so-called adults in the room still didn’t respect influencers as serious figures, yet hyper-aware of how "parasocial relationships" created by influencers have the power to corrupt young minds. That is, until this election cycle, when white shoe Democratic consultants suddenly saw their potential and decided to throw money at social media stars in a last-ditch attempt to win over young voters.At the Democratic National Convention in August, influencers were given passes to tiki bar parties, exclusive access to private lounges stocked with free food and alcohol, and one-on-one interviews with some of the Democratic Party’s biggest names in the hopes to get Kamala and the democrats trending positively across all platforms. Meanwhile, in the background of all the fluff, protestors for a free Palestine were brutalized by Chicago Police forces outside of the event, and inside the arena a Texas Sheriff echoed the Democrats’ rightward shift to conservative messaging on the border and immigration, while trans representation was barely existent in the room at all.Even before the DNC and Kamala’s Presidential candidacy, The DNC hired influencers through firms like Pallette Media whose only jobs became using “Gen Z speak” to corral young people into supporting Joe Biden–a candidate old enough to be their great-grandparent–with policies that haven’t been considered progressive since before Gen Z was born.So what’s the problem?Well the first problem is that none of this pandering worked. Come election day, the vote margin among 18-to-29-year-olds for the Democratic presidential candidate from 2020 to 2024 diminished in every single swing state, except Georgia, with Michigan boasting a hard 24-point drop from 2020.Gee, I wonder what issue in particular could’ve caused that level of discontent in Michigan?The second problem is that young people are a part of our democracy and have real policy concerns, whether the old dog consultants like it or not, which is exactly why none of the pandering worked. When young people make-up nearly half of the eligible voting population in the United States, it’s almost like you might want to take their concerns seriously and actually address said concerns instead of just dangling a few Abercrombie model looking influencers in front of them and expecting a wave.

Pushing candidates so wildly out of sync with what young people actually care about, is like trying to sell young people skin care routines while those same young people are asking–at times even begging–for real policy solutions that will do things like bring an end to the genocide of Palestinians, secure some economic relief, and obtain a bit of gun law reform. You can’t slap a trendy filter on outdated policies and expect young people to double-tap.

Now, to be fair, Republicans have seen real gains from influencer content. From manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate promoting misogyny and outright violence towards women to conservative influencers like Charlie Kirk dragging young men into rightwing politics, to the post dobbs trad wife explosion, there’s a case to be made that influencers can, in fact, manipulate young people into supporting certain political beliefs and candidates. In fact, conservatives have had particular success globally in bringing male Gen Zers into their ideologies. For example, this cycle Trump made strong gains among young men, winning 56 percent of the vote, compared to 2020, when he won just 41 percent.But there’s a reason why these influencers are successful in dragging young people to the right, while democrats keep flopping to turn influencer followers into real voters: conservatives understand how to build parasocial relationships.Parasocial relationships are a one-sided emotional bond that a person forms with a public figure most often through media or technology. These relationships are purposely built by influencers through consistently engaging with their viewers, creating trust, and making content that comes off as relatable to their viewers.Conservative influencers are nothing if not consistent, constantly pumping their propaganda onto the screens of their young viewers, whether it’s an election cycle or not. Compare this to the newly crowned Democratic influencers who have just randomly been skyrocketed to stardom at the beginning of this Presidential cycle. Who are they? Where did they come from? Why are they all of a sudden bombarding my timeline with coconut content? It doesn’t make sense and young voters are smart enough to know it.When conservative manosphere influencers tell their–likely contrived–stories about how they used to be scrawny losers who couldn’t get a girlfriend but now they’ve made themselves into the ultimate “alphas,” the loser part is relatable to so many young men who believe that sex is out of reach for them, but the gym and a haircut isn’t. So they first try to copy what’s fed to them as the ideal male aesthetic. Then, when the content starts to pivot into more harmful rhetoric about women and their rights, these influencers blame young women for having standards that are either too high for any actual man to reach or too modern to be respectable. Afterall, the scrawny losers went to the gym, got jacked, got a fire haircut, and still can’t get laid! It’s obvious that today’s young women are the real problem!Again, these talking points tap into the anger young men feel from rejection and warps it into something that is both emotionally relatable and incredibly politically dangerous. This exchange between viewer and influencer builds trust because young male viewers see this content and think “he gets me.”But you know what’s not relatable or trustworthy at all? Hiring lefty influencers who typically make content about prison abolition, climate change, or rap culture and have them pivot to supporting “California’s Top Cop,” who supports fracking, and is so establishment that she comes off as antithetical to the rebellious roots of musical genres like hip hop. The hard pivot will break your neck from the whiplash if you let it, which is exactly why democrats have failed to move the young people using influencers as a strategy.Democrats would’ve been infinitely more successful if they actually ran on the overwhelmingly popular progressive policies that young people want and then recruited influencers who could make those policies trend because it already matched the flavor of their content. But the quick switch-ups will undoubtedly be noticeable among any loyal followings and will deeply fracture the sense of trust needed for these types of influencer-follower parasocial relationships to work well enough to mobilize young people to the polls.Ultimately, it’s time for old dog Democratic consultants to wake-up and realize that they can’t win without a strong youth voter turnout and they can’t TikTok dance their way to success. Historically, in order to win the Presidency, Democrats need a whopping 60 percent of the youth vote. Democratic consultants can continue to move from cycle to cycle looking down on voters under 30 because back in their day young people didn’t vote, or they can realize that times they are a changing. Gen Zers and millennials are out-voting Gen Xers and Baby Boomers when they were young and it’s led to real Democratic election gains–and now losses–since 2018. This increased turnout isn’t just the result of some brat memes or demure soundbites. It happened because young people know what’s at stake—and it’s not just clicks and likes.Their futures are on the line.

While Voters of Color Have Moved Forward,
Democratic Consultants Are Being Left Behind

As I’m writing this article, horrific videos of Palestinian children being burned alive while in their refugee tents are being shared across my timeline. And this is just the latest instance of violence inflicted on Palestinians by Israel, as part of its year-long campaign of open genocide, generations-long apartheid, and widespread crimes against humanity.While Israel’s mass violence certainly did not begin on Oct. 7th, it has never been more brazen, even going as far as to have hearings and protests where Israeli’s are advocating for the “right” to rape Palestinians as they please.As I write this article, I’m also feeling an immense amount of guilt and embarrassment that I share a party and an occupation with democratic consultants who believe campaigning on unabashed support for Israel’s immense violence–among other racially offensive messaging–is good politics.And evidently, my colleagues could not have been more wrong.Not only have democratic consultants failed to win an exceedingly important election, but they also have clearly abandoned the very people that once made this party great: their base of people of color.As a Black woman in this field, this past cycle alone I’ve been disturbed by the various ways in which racism has permeated the strategies of the democratic consultant world and, by extension, the Democratic party itself.Let’s take a moment to think critically about some of the quotes spit out by Democrats this cycle.“Arabs aren’t voting for Kamala because she’s a woman,” ignoring the fact that Arab women exist and pledging unyielding loyalty to continue to arm the entity killing their people is not the best way to endear your candidate to them.“Black men don’t want to vote for Kamala because she’s a woman,” ignoring the fact that Black men support abortion at a higher percentage than both their white and Latino male counterparts. A true slap in the face during an election cycle where the democratic consultant mantra was “abortion is on the ballot.”

“[An] innocent, young woman who was killed by an illegal,” unfairly criminalizing immigrants while ignoring the fact that just one cycle ago we made ourselves out to be the party that was against the racist and inhumane treatment of immigrants coming from the south of the United States border.All of these quotes–in combination with their underlying sentiments of racism and paternalism–serve as evidence that the Democratic party has never been more out of touch with its base of voters of color than it is today.Now to be fair, if one were living under a rock, one may arrive at the conclusion that it makes sense for Democrats to run on white identity politics, which values tough on crime rhetoric, war mongering, and dog whistles. After all, we have to do the work to bring white voters to our side right? And what better way to do that than throwing people of color under the bus, am I right?Well the thing is there is no evidence, at least in the past three presidential cycles, that proves that the strategy of white identity politics leads to winning races for Democrats.According to AP, at the end of this election cycle, despite every effort by consultants to make Kamala appealing to white people, Donald Trump still won 60 percent of the white male vote and 53 percent of white women. This isn’t much different than in 2016 when, according to Pew Research, Donald Trump won the white male vote by 62 percent and the white woman vote with 47 percent. In 2020, when Democrats actually beat Donald Trump, Trump still won the majority of the white vote with 57 percent of white men voting red and 53 percent of white women following suit.At this point watching my fellow democratic consultants get rejected time and time again by their preferred group of interest is just getting sad.White voters just aren’t that into you bro.But what about voters of color? Is it true that a hoard of men of color abandoned the Democratic party en masse because they just couldn’t stand to have a woman in charge or is the outlook on white women by white males being projected onto men of color? Well, let's take a look at the numbers.

In 2024, Kamala Harris won 78% of Black men and 89% of Black women. In 2020, Joe Biden won 87% of Black men and 95% of Black women, while in 2016, Clinton secured 81% of Black men and 98% of Black women. Similar trends are seen among Latino voters, who largely supported Democrats in these elections. Although men in these groups have shown less support for female candidates, Harris and Biden both also lost ground among Black women and Latinas. So, do Black women and Latinas also "hate women"? Does that conclusion really make sense?The Arab vote has also historically gone to Democrats. In 2016, according to EMGAGE, Hillary Clinton won the Arab vote by 76 percent. In 2020, Arab voters voted 81 percent for Joe Biden. But in 2024, Support for Democrats fell in seven precincts around the country with significant Arab American or Muslim populations, according to data compiled by the Arab American Institute. Additionally, the drop in Democratic support in Hamtramck, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights – three Michigan cities with the nation’s largest Arab American and Muslim populations per capita – represent nearly 27% of the 81,000-vote difference between Harris and Donald Trump’s tallies in the state.One can look at these numbers and jump to the conclusion that voters of color must hate women or crave Trump’s conservative messaging–because secretly, most Americans are conservative, and all this “woke” stuff is costing Democrats elections. Or, one can pause to recognize that sometimes thou protest too much. The old guard of Democratic consultants may have deep-seated biases and a personal distaste for “woke” politics, but that doesn't mean abandoning white identity politics actually leads to electoral losses.For starters, it is a huge assumption that every voter who did not vote for Harris, instead voted for Trump’s conservative agenda. The reality is a whopping 53 percent of Muslim voters voted for Jill Stein in protest to Harris’ unwillingness to commit to an arms embargo on Israel, in combination with her awful and curt response of “I’m speaking,” to protestors who have lost their entire bloodline due to Israel’s genocide.Additionally, very large swaths of voters decided to stay home this election in comparison to 2020. In 2020, according to the Brennan Center, voter turnout surged as more voters cast ballots than in any presidential election in a century, despite a global pandemic. This cycle, about 10 million more voters stayed home than in 2020. With numbers like these, there is zero indication that credibly leads to the conclusion that nonvoters want more conservatism. Rather, these stats point to the fact that neither candidate spoke to the needs of those voters.Moreover, in 2020, Joe Biden ran and won on much more outwardly progressive messaging than Kamala Harris ran on this past cycle. Civil unrest rocked the country in 2020 with the George Floyd uprisings in the same way that civil unrest is rocking the country now with protests for a free Palestine. If it were true that too much “woke” was driving people into the arms of Donald Trump, wouldn’t they have just ran there in 2020 when Joe Biden picked a Black woman for his Vice President and responded to the murder of George Floyd by saying the following quote:

“This is no time for incendiary...tweets. It’s no time to encourage violence. This is a national crisis, and we need real leadership right now -- leadership that will bring everyone to the table so we can take measures to root out systemic racism. It's time for us to take a hard look at the uncomfortable truths. It's time for us to face that deep, open wound we have in this nation. We need justice for George Floyd.”

The fact of the matter is that Biden’s bold and outspoken messaging against racism didn’t lead to a Trump victory. But you know what absolutely led to a Trump victory in 2024? Bold and outspoken messaging that pledged undying support for a racist Apartheid state committing genocide, racist rhetoric about immigrants, and racist paternalism towards Black men. The assertion that too much “woke” led us to a Trump win is not only absurd, but it’s the result of a much deeper issue among the democratic consultant class: there are too many conservative leaning white people making decisions on how to best connect with voters of color.White Democratic consultants–and savvy consultants of color who’ve figured out that in order to keep a job you don’t outshine the master–keep making the same mistakes because they are perpetually stuck in the Clinton, Bush, and Obama eras despite the fact that today’s voters of color think about and engage with politics in much different ways than they did back then. For starters, voters of color–especially Black voters–are much more college educated than they were in the previous eras, which undoubtedly leads them to grapple with issues in a different way than their predecessors. But perhaps more importantly than how informed voters of color are, voters of color have, for generations, watched their communities endure deadly levels of state violence followed by a bunch of lip service and promises made, but little to no promises kept.And they’ve taken notice.As a Black millennial, this isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed Black and Brown people facing horrific state violence caught on tape and shared across social media, while Democratic candidates, officials, and consultants chose to ignore the struggles of their core base. I saw this during the Black Lives Matter era, after which even more funding was funneled to police, leading to a record-high number of killings. I’ve also watched liberals shift from outrage over kids in cages to proudly endorsing tough border policies.And I’m not alone.I have Arab colleagues my age with Iraqi family members who were killed when the United States waged a nonsensical war against Iraq. I have Palestinian friends whose families have had their homes violently snatched by Israeli settlers as the United States continues to fund Israel’s crimes against humanity. I have Latino friends who have lived with the fear of being undocumented because this country treats their lives like a political football.And after generations of these hardships and generations of showing up for Democrats who continue to listen to consultants that think a good strategy is to pledge to continue these atrocities, voters of color are finally putting their feet down and saying “enough.”At the end of the day, if the old guard of white, conservative-lite, consultants refuse to evolve and win with a message that appeals to a multiracial voting bloc, then we as Democrats truly deserve to lose and we certainly will continue to.