The Fatal Flaw in Democrats’ Plan to Create a Left-Wing Turning Point USA
Imagine a Democrat — any Democrat — walking onto a college campus and telling students, “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. Prove me wrong.”
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 grew into a full-fledged political brand. Kirk’s signature approach — his “prove me wrong” rallies — struck a chord with students across the country. His unique blend of preparation, intelligence, ambition, and personality, paired with a willingness to engage respectfully with students 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. Being 18 at the time 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 used digital platforms to amplify his campus exchanges, transforming local debates into viral moments and pushing his message far beyond any single quad.
The result was a political phenomenon. It’s not hyperbole to say the organization helped drive 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 far harder than it appears.
That doesn’t mean the Democrats won’t try. In fact, that’s precisely what Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, is planning. Perhaps the autopsy results of the 2024 election that 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. The DNC envisions the NYCT as a left-wing version of Turning Point and hopes to emulate its success with young voters.
The NYCT will include “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 death, and how it’s even grown beyond that. 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,” Line added.
Joey Jones identified the fatal flaw in the DNC’s plan to create a left-wing version of Turning Point USA immediately. He said, “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.’”
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.
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. Charlie 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 never quite rings true. 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.
NEW: Fox News hosts CALL OUT Democrats for trying to replicate TPUSA by setting up a new liberal committee called the ‘DNC National Youth Coordinated Table’.
Fox’s @guypbenson: “Woah. They have their work cut out… That is a massive movement on the right, and I see the… pic.twitter.com/e8ta9KEjoH
— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) December 20, 2025
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
The Democrats already have the equivalent: Nearly every college professor.
And let’s not forget the Teacher Unions.
Right. This is like the Dems threatening to redistrict blue states. You’ve already SHOT that quiver, guys. You’ve got nothing left.
Remember the “Coffee Party”?
More like Coughee party.
The lefty Charlie Kirk attempt will fail for the same reason lefty talk radio has failed the several attempts to launch that = lefties do not know how to defend their positions in the face of reasoned debate. They run on emotion.
An oldie but a still true = Never play chess with a pigeon. The pigeon just knocks all the pieces over. Then shits all over the board. Then struts around like it won.
Absolutely correct, they run on emotion. Logic and math are kryptonite for liberals
Reminds me of past leftist attempts to ape what the rightists did.
Air America for leftist* talk radio.
The Coffee Party for leftist* political organizing and demonstrations.
* I say leftist because “liberal” is so misused.
(Every time I see that picture, I see CK holding a large hypodermic needle. It’s how the light hits the mic. Then one sees it IS a mic. Not making light of Charlie; just seeing something in the picture that is not there.)
Their problem is that when you actually say aloud the stupid things that they believe, it really sounds retarded
The left is physically incapable of treating people in a disagreement with the decency and class of a Charlie Kirk.
Too much emotive and performative impotent rage for that.
Just like they needed a left wing Rush Limbaugh. Air America was a bad joke.
As always, the problem is that nobody wants to listen to their message, they think they just need to change how they wrap it up.
The left is absent authenticity.
They think that if you’re a guy and put on a dress you can call yourself a woman.
And that’s why they think that they can replicate what Kirk did just by copying him.
Not gonna happen.
It will be fascinating to see them try. Maybe they will accidentally discover civil discourse along the way ? Anything is possible.
It will be fun watching them knock over their OWN tables.
It’s not that as much as we’ve been running into the wind for so long that we are used to opposition. They aren’t.
The left is incapable of debate. They are intolerant of dissent. They can only attack when challenged.
Charlie Kirk was the moderate approach.
That’s why they will fail.
I don’t get this organization. I turn the channel every time I see Erika Kirk- shades of Tammy Faye Bakker.
Erica is not Charlie. Not throwing shade on her but their skills complemented each other.
The willingness to talk with anyone, hear their point of view, truly listen v simply ‘waiting for your turn to speak’, refrain from demonizing them, remain aware that their (often kooky) views/opinions are shared by others that we also want to influence/convince, refuse to censor, ostracize or call for deplatforming is a really tough thing to ask of people who are intolerant of dissent from their own ideological orthodoxy.
Leadership Institute in Virginia has spent decades training people of all ages, including young people to work on campaigns.
Cleaning up the voter roll so that only citizens can vote, which is a requirement in the Minnesota Constitution, would change everything. Leftists whine, moan, and complain. It’s a WMC crowd and that’s their life.
Cleaning up voter registration rolls to remove improper and/or invalid registrations is one thing each person could work to do locally without waiting/hoping for someone else to get it started. If nothing else each County probably gonna need a named plaintiff for the lawsuit to force the County Clerk/Sec of State/Elections Board to do their job and maintain accurate voter registration lists.
a leftwing turning point?????
ahahahaaaaa
blm is stronger than ever
Kirk’s signature approach — his “prove me wrong” rallies
This wasn’t Kirk’s move –this was TPUSA copying Crowder’s ‘Change My Mind’ events.
The leftists do not want a discussion. The leftists want a pulpit.
First time to correct a major misconception
TPUSA isn’t just campus tours if it was it would be about as relevant as Steven Crowder.
Turning Point correctly identified and registered Republican Voters and encouraged them to get to the polls. I can’t claim Trump would have won without them because they easily registered enough people to say without them that under 2% of the vote going to Trump wouldn’t have been there.
It also held highly influential political rallies.
Second Charlie Kirk routinely encouraged the campus Groypers who no doubt if given the opportunity would be glad to engage with a left wing equivalent of Turning Points.
They would be a lot freer to speak at a left wing versions events than at the Charlie Kirk events because unlike Charlie Kirk the left would actually try to make them seem like the mainstream right and would want maximum attention on them.
There are hours worth of footage of Charlie Kirk refusing Groypers and telling them to fuck off.
Those same Groypers would show up to leftists willing to engage them.
Finally a left wing turning point doing zero campus change my mind/debate type tours would still identify left leaning voters and register them like Turning Points so would still make a difference.
Danny, that comment needs some serious editing. I suggest you try again.
Actually, I followed it without too much difficulty. It has some interesting points.
One is that a left-wing TP would register leftists like TP registered conservatives., True, but moot. There are already dozens of ☭ orgs registering students — it’s another threat like further redistricting, that orange is squeezed pretty dry. But before TP, nobody was registering conservatives.
Second is that the new org would give a voice to fringe supremacists, and the fear is that this would delegitimize conservatives. But we already have a MSM to do that, and meanwhile it would come with tasty side benefits. Imagine the optics when TP meetings remain the violence-free fora they always have been, while rallies by the new LW org devolve into street fighting in city after city. It would be like having an answer to Antifa.
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