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How Trump Built His Coalition · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If you listen to Pod Save America, you're a politically
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  Speaker 1: engaged individual, which means you know there has never been
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  Speaker 1: a more important time to invest in pro-democracy media in
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  Speaker 1: this country. That's why you should add the Bulwark podcast
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  Speaker 1: to your rotation. Tim Miller, my pal, friend of the show,
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  Speaker 1: former Republican operative turned anti-Trump, pro-democracy crusader, interviews a wide
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  Speaker 1: range of guests, from celebrities to politicians to everyone in between.
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  Speaker 1: It's a great, really informative conversation with people of all
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  Speaker 1: Sarah Longwell, Will Salatin, and George Conway. You'll also catch
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  Speaker 1: the Bulwark Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another special episode of Positive America. I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
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  Speaker 2: I'm recording this on Friday, November 8th, just three days
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  Speaker 2: after the election that left us shocked, angry, scared, and demoralized.
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  Speaker 2: On our two earlier shows this week, we talked about
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  Speaker 2: the results and about Kamala Harris's campaign strategy. On today's show,
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  Speaker 2: we're going to focus on one thing, the voters that
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  Speaker 2: made the difference. Knowing how the race ultimately played out,
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  Speaker 2: there's no one better to talk to than today's two guests. First,
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to be talking with our friend Sarah Longwell
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  Speaker 2: of The Bulwark, who has run dozens of focus groups
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  Speaker 2: with swing voters this cycle, and Carlos Odio, co-founder of
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  Speaker 2: Equis Research and one of the real democratic experts of
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  Speaker 2: Latino vote. Let's get into it. Sarah, welcome back to
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  Speaker 2: Pod Save America under obviously less than ideal circumstances, but
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  Speaker 2: it's great to talk to you.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, welcome to my waking nightmare. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: How are you processing everything over these last three days here?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, one of the things that I'm
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  Speaker 3: trying to do is rather than sort of look at
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  Speaker 3: what just happened, I think a lot about what we've
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  Speaker 3: known for the last few years, right? Because I've... I
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  Speaker 3: spent a lot of time listening to voters. I do
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  Speaker 3: the focus groups multiple a week. And like, it's all
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  Speaker 3: in there. You know, it's all in there. We knew
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  Speaker 3: that people were really frustrated by inflation. It was the
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  Speaker 3: number one thing that we heard from people. You know,
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  Speaker 3: we start every focus group the same way. We say,
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  Speaker 3: how do you think things are going in the country?
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  Speaker 3: And left, right and center, the answer was usually not good.
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  Speaker 3: And inflation was the number one reason why. Just general costs.
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  Speaker 3: And you listen to young people talk about housing costs.
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  Speaker 3: And that frustration was palpable. And then there's just a
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  Speaker 3: bunch of big factors, right? Obviously, I'm sure you guys
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  Speaker 3: have covered this around what's happening around the globe. Incumbents
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  Speaker 3: are losing. It basically is the post-COVID inflation issue that
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  Speaker 3: seems to be driving people along with immigration, which I
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  Speaker 3: have too much annoyance for my more left-leaning listeners to
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  Speaker 3: said that that is just a massive vulnerability for Democrats
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  Speaker 3: and has been for a while. And so, like, that
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  Speaker 3: stuff was just all in there. We knew it. I
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  Speaker 3: will say, you know, I thought that she could eke
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  Speaker 3: out a win in the sort of industrial Northwest, the
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  Speaker 3: blue wall. And I was very focused on, could you
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  Speaker 3: offset what were clear slides with Hispanic voters, some Black voters,
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  Speaker 3: men in general, with, you know, doing a little bit
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  Speaker 3: better with white voters? Could you get more non-college white
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  Speaker 3: women to vote for her? And the fact is they didn't.
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  Speaker 3: And look, we always knew there was some tension between
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  Speaker 3: reproductive rights as an issue for women, along with the
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  Speaker 3: fact that they are the primary shoppers, often control household budgets.
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  Speaker 3: They were very, like, sensitive to how much groceries cost.
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  Speaker 3: I heard about it all the time from women in
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  Speaker 3: the groups. It was often brought up long before anybody
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  Speaker 3: mentioned reproductive rights. And so, you know, I guess, like,
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  Speaker 3: you know all that, but you sort of hope that
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  Speaker 3: Trump's being a felon, being an adjudicated rapist, being a
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  Speaker 3: horrible person trying to overthrow the last election, that the
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  Speaker 3: fact that voters hated him because they did hate him.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, like the number of people that's talking, we
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  Speaker 3: just have been doing a couple of focus groups the
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  Speaker 3: last couple of days. Just we're just checking in with
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  Speaker 3: people like, OK, why'd you vote for him? And people
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  Speaker 3: are like, yeah, I hated his guts, but I thought
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  Speaker 3: he'd be better for the economy. Which, you know, once
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  Speaker 3: you sort of process the fact that a lot of
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  Speaker 3: people who really don't like him as a person still
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  Speaker 3: voted for him for sort of policy reasons or just
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  Speaker 3: dissatisfaction with the way things are reasons, you're like, see
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  Speaker 3: how this happened. I've understood the political realignment for a while.
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  Speaker 3: I understand that Republicans are bringing together like non-college voters
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  Speaker 3: of all races and ethnic types and building relationships. a
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  Speaker 3: big coalition, and there are just more of those voters
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  Speaker 3: than there are these college-educated suburban voters. And that in
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  Speaker 3: that trade, Democrats now are likely to do better in
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  Speaker 3: off-year elections, but Republicans are going to be able to,
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  Speaker 3: with their sort of more populist stance, are going to
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  Speaker 3: be able to pull out more low-propensity non-college voters during
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  Speaker 3: these general elections. And so, you know, it was all
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  Speaker 3: in there. We knew all of it. It just didn't
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  Speaker 3: go the way we wanted.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, I said for a year I mean, basically
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  Speaker 2: since Kamala Harris became the nominee, I said this election
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  Speaker 2: is a coin flip. She's an underdog. As you and
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  Speaker 2: I spoke on a Substack forum a few days before
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  Speaker 2: the election, we thought she was closing strong.
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  Speaker 4: We knew all the.
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  Speaker 2: I listened to every one of your Focus Group podcasts.
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  Speaker 2: I've heard all these voters. I've looked at all the polling.
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  Speaker 2: The fact that three quarters of voters have said the
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  Speaker 2: country's on the wrong track for four years now. 70%
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  Speaker 2: of voters say the economy sucks. Biden's approval rating never
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  Speaker 2: gets above 41%.
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  Speaker 4: Like all that is.
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  Speaker 2: Recipe where she could lose now i thought if she
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  Speaker 2: was going to lose it would be a close-ish race
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  Speaker 2: like they would maybe you know i i later i
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  Speaker 2: read nate silver's model and his most his most likely
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  Speaker 2: scenario was she wins he wins all seven battleground states
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  Speaker 2: his second most likely scenario was she wins all seven
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  Speaker 2: battleground states so i sort of thought in there like
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  Speaker 2: maybe she wins michigan and wisconsin if he gets pennsylvania
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  Speaker 2: and the rest and it's ballgame But what I think
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  Speaker 2: I was stunned by, and in hindsight, I should not
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  Speaker 2: have been, was the movement in all the non-battleground states.
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  Speaker 2: 10 points in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, counties
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  Speaker 2: in Texas that are 97% Latino going, like Starr County, Texas,
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  Speaker 2: 97% Latino has gone for the Democrats for like 130
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  Speaker 2: consecutive years in presidential elections. Trump wins easily. Osceola County, Florida,
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  Speaker 2: which huge Puerto Rican population, which we thought the Tony
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  Speaker 2: Hinchcliffe joke would swing our way. And Trump gains 14
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  Speaker 2: points over 2020. Just the full scale of it, I think,
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  Speaker 2: was sort of a shock to the system for me,
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  Speaker 2: at least.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can understand why. And look, I'm not
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  Speaker 3: saying it's not for me too. I don't want to
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  Speaker 3: be like, boy, I just always saw this coming because
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  Speaker 3: I definitely thought she really could win. But, you know,
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: one of the other things, I sort of think back
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  Speaker 3: to all the things that I often say And I say, like,
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  Speaker 3: listen to them now with the ears of knowing this information.
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  Speaker 3: And you're like, well, one thing we knew is that
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  Speaker 3: a lot of these young people who were coming into
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  Speaker 3: the electorate, Donald Trump was not an aberration to them, right?
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  Speaker 3: Certainly for young Republicans who were coming into the mix,
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  Speaker 3: they came for Trump, right? They were attracted to something
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  Speaker 3: that Trump was selling. And as a result, like, he
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  Speaker 3: overperformed with young people. I mean, basically overperformed everywhere. But
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  Speaker 3: I will say, the thing that you're noting, which.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not saying it makes me feel better, but like
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  Speaker 3: as a practitioner, as somebody who was like thinking about
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  Speaker 3: the campaign, thinking about who was persuadable, thinking about who
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  Speaker 3: we could move, there is something in the totality of
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  Speaker 3: it that just shows you like this was sort of
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  Speaker 3: bigger than any one message. It was bigger than any
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  Speaker 3: one campaign. It was, I think, a lot of fundamentals
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  Speaker 3: that were always sort of stacked against her. And that
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  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that we shouldn't view this with an enormous
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  Speaker 3: amount of alarm, both in terms of what's about to
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  Speaker 3: happen and also what it says about us as a
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  Speaker 3: country that, you know, for a guy who tried to
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  Speaker 3: overturn the last election that a bunch of people in
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  Speaker 3: America were like, I'm fine with that. I still think
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  Speaker 3: he's better for the economy, so I'm going to vote
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  Speaker 3: for him. Or I like the way he owns the
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  Speaker 3: libs or I'm annoyed with libs. You know, I think
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  Speaker 3: that is alarming. But I also look, I'm I am
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  Speaker 3: come from the center right. And so there I think
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  Speaker 3: I am less resistant to some of the critiques of
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  Speaker 3: Democrats in a broad way than some people who are
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  Speaker 3: Democrats might be.
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  Speaker 2: Like myself, maybe.
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  Speaker 3: Yes. And I think it's fair for us to talk
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  Speaker 3: about those things. But like Joe Biden, in my opinion,
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  Speaker 3: never should have run again. And I felt like voters
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  Speaker 3: were telling us that from the start. It was very
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  Speaker 3: clear people didn't want him to vote run again. They
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  Speaker 3: thought he should be a bridge. And then, look, I,
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  Speaker 3: like everybody else, once it was clearly going to be him,
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  Speaker 3: I kind of got on board and I was annoyed
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  Speaker 3: with Dean Phillips and other people who were just like,
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  Speaker 3: I'm like, guys, this is just going to make it worse.
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  Speaker 3: But like, you know, him. like, from the time he
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  Speaker 3: picked Kamala Harris as his vice president, she was going
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  Speaker 3: to be his successor. He gets, you know, he finally
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  Speaker 3: has to drop out because it's so clear he shouldn't
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  Speaker 3: be running again far too late. Like, that was not
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  Speaker 3: the recipe for a good campaign. It wasn't the recipe
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  Speaker 3: for getting, and I listened to, and this is, I
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: just listened to voters. We were, you know, we're going
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: through all the tape in our office and just listening
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  Speaker 3: to things. And like, Something that came up a lot
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: was how uncomfortable people were with the fact that it
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  Speaker 3: just like became her and that there wasn't a primary,
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: that people didn't get a choice. Now, do I think
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  Speaker 3: that Dave Portnoy is right that it was a coup
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  Speaker 3: Biden dropped out? That's insane. She was his vice president.
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  Speaker 3: That's who replaces him when the president drops out. That
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  Speaker 3: being said, like the idea that voters still didn't feel.
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  Speaker 3: like they had a voice in that, they didn't have
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  Speaker 3: a choice, you know, there's all of that stuff's in
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  Speaker 3: the mix. And it's just, but those are like normal
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  Speaker 3: political gravity things.
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  Speaker 2: Given the totality of Trump's win and all the fundamental
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: points you made and the fact that every incumbent party
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: around the globe has gotten crushed post-COVID, in the midst
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: of inflation. It's hard to conjure some alternate scenario where
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: you get a different outcome, but it's also hard to
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: argue that we wouldn't have had a better chance if
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: after the midterms, President Biden had said, I'm not running.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: I'm going to, you know, doors open, everyone run. Maybe
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: he says he supports Kamala Harris, maybe he doesn't. She
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  Speaker 2: probably wins that primary anyway, but she has a year
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  Speaker 2: and a half to campaign, hone her message, become known
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  Speaker 2: to the public, win their support, run TV ads in
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  Speaker 2: those states. And you do, like, primaries are good for
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  Speaker 2: the person who wins the primary, right? You come out
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  Speaker 2: as a winner. And then she would have been the
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: nominee in, like, you know, April or something and around
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  Speaker 2: the time Trump was. And, like, maybe she has a
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  Speaker 2: better shot in that scenario, you know? Maybe someone else
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  Speaker 2: comes out of that primary, hard to say. But a
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  Speaker 2: world in which the president that the voters did not,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: including Democrats, did not want to run where 90% of
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: them said he was too old runs until a debate
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: blows up on national television to such a degree that
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: he has to drop out 107 days before the election.
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  Speaker 2: But it's not a recipe for success.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, these were suboptimal conditions, right? And I think, look,
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  Speaker 3: there was always a part of you that could say, well,
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe this is good for her, maybe
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  Speaker 3: a short primary. But I don't know, you know, that
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: we can kind of, these are all, you end up
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: sort of trying to debate the counterfactuals and I'm not
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: even sure how productive it is. But I do think
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: in this sort of fractured media environment, I've always thought
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: that the Biden campaign and then what became the Kamala
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  Speaker 3: Harris campaign was playing it a little safe. Like you
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: got to go to all these non-traditional places and do interviews.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: And that means, you know, we're in like a new
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: era of campaigning. Like she ran a very good technical
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: campaign if it was 2010. eight or four, you know, like,
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: but the, you know, I think we make far too
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: much of Joe Rogan, but let's just use Joe Rogan
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: as a stand in for non traditional media. Like, and
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: you and I talked about this on the thing. And
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: I was like, you know, the thing about Rogan and
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: his thing on Rogan is it's not for me. So
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: I can't sit there and be like, boy, I thought
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: he sounded really good on Rogan. But I will say
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: that a lot of voters can listen to him ramble
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: for two hours on Rogan and say, you know, that
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: guy's not Hitler. Like, he seems fine to me. And also,
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: I think he's right about X, Y, Z thing, whatever
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: it is. And he's sort of kind of funny in
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: a way that I do think Democrats are going to
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: have to figure out how to sound a little less
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: just like regular politicians. Because voters, it's different now. We're
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: in a different culture and climate around. Everybody's in our
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: face on our phones. And so people want to feel.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like they can know you. And like, you know,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I think voters never they understand certain things. And one
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: of the things they understand well is that right at
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: the end, everyone's just looking for their votes. And so
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: for Kamala Harris to come in with 100 days left
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: and be like, OK, like this is who I am now.
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: I'm somebody who campaigns with Liz Cheney and talks about
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: the lethal fighting force. Even if she was saying things
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: that voters might like, there was a real sense of
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: is that who she really is or was she this
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: person from before who was, you know, a big fan
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: of gender reassignment surgeries for convicted felons that taxpayers pay for, which,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: by the way. was availed of precisely two times, I believe.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: And so it is not, despite the $ 100 million that
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: went behind that ad, it is not the great issue
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: of our time, nor is it the deep concern of voters.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: But it did sort of paint her as this, what
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: people were already worried that she was, which is a
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: San Francisco progressive, which is generally a thing that is
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: tough for both swing voters and others who are sort
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: of like, That's not their jam at the moment. They're
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: looking for something different.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've really been wrestling with the– like I agree
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: with you on the media strategy. My sort of– my
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: hobby horse for the last couple of years has been
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: that the Democratic media strategy has to be everywhere all
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: at once, right? You got to do everything everywhere all
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: at once.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: Everything everywhere all at once.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: You got to do it all, right? You got to
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: do Rogan. You got to do Ponce de America.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: You got to do the bulwark.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: You got to do everything. And Trump has been doing
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: that for a very long time and that.
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: Works for him.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: But it's also hard to, like, I can say you
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: should do this differently. Maybe they could have responded to
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: that anti-trans ad. But ultimately, does any of that get
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: you six points nationally or three points in the battleground states?
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Probably not. So I've been trying to think about this
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: in the context of what lessons we can learn going forward.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Because the next time we're in an election, either in
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: the midterms or presidential, it's going to be a hopefully
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: better political environment for us, right? We will not be
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: the incumbent party. We've had multiple change elections in a row,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: and we'll have the opportunity to be changed. But some
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: of the dye was also cast here long before anything happened.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Democrats have now lost the economy. We've lost the voters
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: most focused on the economy in every election since 2012.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Even in 2018 and 2020, I just looked at the
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: exit polls. In 2018 and 2022, when we crushed voters
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: who listed either the economy or inflation as their top issue,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: we lost them by an average of 36 points. And
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: you can't win an election. You can't win a presidential
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: national election like that when the additional 50 million voters
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: who come in are more economically focused.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: And so there's like a lot of things to think about.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: So as you like, where do you think the Democratic
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Party went wrong here? It's like a couple of places,
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: even if we don't think it would necessarily change the outcome,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: but might have led to a closer margin or better
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: prospects for the future.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So just taking the big one that I've already mentioned,
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: which is not running Joe Biden, letting there be a primary,
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: you know, look, I happen to believe that the Democrats'
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: relentless focus on sort of small niche cultural issues that
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: keep them from sounding like they are talking like normal people,
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: you know, is a problem. And people are like, don't
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: just say like woke. And I'm not just going to
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: say woke. I am going to say, look, let me
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: answer this actually in a slightly different way that I
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: think will make sense. The Republicans actually do. You know,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: you look at Trump, you think he's so chaotic. There's
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: not actually a strategy. But America first is actually chaotic.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: coherent strategy. And there's this guy, Jim Banks, he actually
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: just got elected senator, but he was a congressman and
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: he would write these memos to Kevin McCarthy and it
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: would be like, here's how we're going to build a multi-ethnic, multi-racial,
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: working class coalition. And this is what we're going to do.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: We're going to paint the Democrats as buddies of big
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: business in Wall Street, which is easier to do now
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: that their coalition has made up much more of college
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: educated voters. We're going to hammer them relentlessly on immigration,
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: which is an issue that Democrats have never come up
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: with a position on that lets people say like, oh,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: these Democrats understand that we don't want just open borders.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: And I think the, I mean, when Biden finally did
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: the executive order to close down the border, I was like,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: the best time to do this was three years ago.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: I guess the second best time to do this is
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: right now. But like when she had to answer for that, right,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: when she was doing that town hall with Anderson Cooper
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: and he was like, so did you guys not think
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: this was a problem before? Like, it's obviously you've solved
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: it by shutting it down. Why didn't you do this before?
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: She didn't have an answer for that because the answer
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: is It wasn't a priority for us. We, you know,
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: and then we realized what a political vulnerability it was
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: and we made it a priority. And so then I
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: just think, look, you gotta, you gotta focus on working
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: class people. Like, and that's it. Like working class people.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: And that doesn't mean you have to like throw minorities
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: under the bus or like, you know, you don't have
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: to like attack trans kids, but I certainly don't do that.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: That is definitely not what I'm saying. But I do
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: think that like, that is not, I think at some
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: point Joe Biden did say something, you know, like the
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: trans issue is the is the civil rights fight of
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: our time. And I just think like, you know, the
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: focus on creating like what the government can do the
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: best is try to help. people like we want to
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: help people achieve the American dream. We need to talk
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: to working class voters about the way that we're going
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: to improve the economy and give them an opportunity, not
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: hand them stuff, but give them an opportunity to work
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: really hard and get ahead and to be able to
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: outline not just an economic like vision, not a PowerPoint vision,
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: but like a give people a sense of purpose and
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: like whatever. And like that's just not there. It's not
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: in the messaging. And that is what I would say.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: I think if you look, people are going to fight.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: If you want to do economic populism, I don't personally.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: But like, I do think that's what voters want. They
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: want a little more economic populism coupled with more moderate
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: social policies.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: It's such a hard thing because, you know, there's a
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: bunch of people like a great way to go to
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: get attention right now is to go on like Fox
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: News and say as a Democratic strategist and say.
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: Democrats are too woke.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: They do all these things, like they should stop saying Latinx,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: all these things. Then you're like, well, when did Kamala
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Harris do those things? Yeah, in this campaign, in this campaign.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: And so I say that only because we have a
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: broader branding problem as a party. Like we have allowed
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: the Republicans to brand us as the party of cultural elites.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: And so we have this cultural disconnect from working class
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: voters of all races that is preventing them from liking us,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: despite the fact that we just laid out our policies
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: and Trump's policies in a blind taste test. They're going
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: to pick ours almost every single time on economic issues, right?
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Higher minimum wage, tax cuts for the middle class, raising
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: taxes on the wealthy, protect social security, Medicare, all those things.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: But they don't trust us to do those things because
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: they don't believe that's who we're fighting for or what
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: we're focused on. And so we've absolutely lost a branding
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: war here. And we have to– I think for the party,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: we have to really think about how we fix that.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: And that was one of the challenges for Kamala Harris
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: was that she started as a blank slate. So she
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: immediately adopted– sort of in voters' minds, she cannot be
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: unique from the Democratic Party. When Democrats had a lot
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: of these same challenges– Barack Obama became the nominee, but
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: because he had had time to build up name ID
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: and introduce himself, he could be different than that caricature. Trump,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: same way. Republicans had this opposite problem of Mitt Romney,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Paul Ryan, cut Social Security and Medicare. We had done
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: a very good job as a party of branding the
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Republicans as sort of plutocrats who want to cut your
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Social Security and Medicare and take your healthcare away. Trump
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: comes along, redefines the party in sort of this America
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: first nationalist way. And despite having a bunch of policies
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: that are going to working class people, they think they're
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: more likely to trust him because he seems, which I
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: know is insane because he's a billionaire with a gold
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: toilet in his own airplane, but he is seen more
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: culturally similar because the anti-establishment, I guess, to than Democrats do,
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: no matter where, how Kamala Harris was raised or what
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: her personal story was.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: I think the other thing I'll just throw out there that's,
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: that was just an issue that came up a lot
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: is like, Look, these voters, there's a lot of there's
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: a lot of trading of voters. And so there's a
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: lot of ways in which Trump's Republican Party feels like
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: the Democratic Party circa 2006. But one of them is
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: on foreign policy. Like, you know, I just hear so
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: many voters talk about how they do not. And this
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: is again, this is sort of their America first posture
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: is like America first means I'm I don't like it
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: when we send money to Ukraine because that means we're
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: not spending it here in America. I don't like it
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: when immigrants get X, Y, or Z because it means
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: we're not giving it to Americans. And what they see,
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: so like the reason that the trans ad was so
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: effective is it was also, it wasn't just, it's not
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: about the trans issue per se, but she is for they, them,
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: Trump is for you, tags into what everybody already sort
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: of thinks America first is about, which is like Trump
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: is going to prioritize Americans, right? That means not immigrants.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: That means not Ukraine. That means not all these things.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: And like, you know, and that like people, people want
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: that right now. I mean, the way that I hear
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: voters talk about money being spent abroad to like support
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: Democratic allies, they don't want that. Not most Republican voters anymore.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: And that's a big change. But like if you ask me,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: so this none of this is me saying like I
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: agree with it. It's me saying like if you want
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: to know the why, I feel like voters have been
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: telling us for a while about this. And it's not
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: a question whether they're right or wrong. Like the macroeconomic
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: environment was quite good. But like the way voters felt
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: was that it was not good. Now, mostly those voters
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: are people making less than $ 100, 000. And those voters who
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: are making less than $ 100, 000, you know, on a family
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: income are made up of two working class people often.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: And those are the people that Democrats are losing because
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: they don't know how you're going to improve their lives.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: It's interesting you bring up the wars, right? And the
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: money and Ukraine and all of that. And this is the,
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: that's exactly, you're right.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: It's 2006.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: This is a perfect example. It was the way in
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: which we, I've been thinking a lot about post 2004
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Democrats because it's the most analogous time from our party
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: in the sense, like obviously as horrifying as the re-election
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: of George W. Bush was to me as a Democrat,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: the second election of Donald Trump seems so much scarier
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: and so much worse. But that election felt the same way, right?
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Bush had built He had done better with Latinos than
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: any president Republican in 20 years. Ken Melman was taking
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: over the RNC to become, you know, they're going to
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: do all this stuff. And it felt in there, all
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: those books were written, the emerging Republican majority that was
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: going to take over. And two years later, we get
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: the House and the Senate and Obama gets elected. But
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: one of the ways in which.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: And they demonized gay people in a big way, which
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: worked as part of the cultural.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: And and it caused a lot of Democrats to shy
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: away from our true beliefs because we're so scared of
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: that issue.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: And what.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: But one of the things that we became sort of
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: the America first party there. I mean, it was all
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: about ending the Iraq war so you could spend that
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: money here at home. I mean, this is a very
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: esoteric thing that only people of a certain generation will do.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: But when Bush tried to sell our ports to Dubai
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: and the Democrats stopped that in the Senate, that was.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: Who we were.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: And Katrina in that moment was an example of this
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: was horrible at home. because we were focused abroad. And
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: that was sort of the breaking point. And so Trump
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: now owns everything, right? He's going to be in charge
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: of it all. And we're going to have to find ways,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Democrats have to find ways as a party to get
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: back to that sort of messaging. The other thing that
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: I think is real that I'd be curious to take
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: on is that we are even when we were out
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: of power in from 2017 to 2020, we still remain
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: the establishment party. And people hate the establishment. Is that
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: sort of something what you get from your focus groups
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: as well?
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, although especially from Republican voters talking
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: about why they like Trump is that, you know, they
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: they think that. So this is the phrase that I
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: hear all the time. And I've been on a lot
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: of podcasts and things. So just forgive me if I've
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: already said this, but it's like the not a regular politician.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: I think I did say this earlier. But not a
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: regular politician is what people love about Donald Trump. And
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: he cultivates that because now he has been president already.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: So like he's pretty, he could have been the incumbent,
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: but his burn it all mentality, burn it all down mentality,
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: his anti-establishment. And look, I've got my buddy J.B. Last
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: over at the Bulwark being like, maybe Democrats should start
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: talking about, they should burn everything down too. And like,
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: Maybe they should start being more anti-establishment. And with all
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: this talk of preserving norms and institutions and when people
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: are angry, does that work? I think that's not quite it.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: I just think we are in an era where you're
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: going to be in change election after change election after
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: change election in part because I think human dissatisfaction is
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: going up because we have our faces in phones. that
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: show us something better elsewhere all the time. And I
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: think we are grappling with a moment in human history
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: where not only is our media environment deeply fragmented, not
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: only are we optimized for rage, but also like we
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: just always feel left behind because somebody else has it better.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: And we didn't used to be able to see that person, right?
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: We lived in a neighborhood where everybody in that neighborhood
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: was roughly had the same amount that we did. And
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: so like, you just felt like, oh, this is what
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: life is and it's okay. And if you get ahead
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: a little bit, that's cool. And now it's like, but
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: what about this person who gets to fly on a
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: private jet? Well, I have to do this. Or what
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: about this person, you know, getting to do this and
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: take these vacations? We'll have to do this. And I
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: see pictures of it all the time. Like the level
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: of chronic dissatisfaction, I think, could lead us to a
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: lot more change elections. And, you know, I do think
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: that getting to a place where Democrats are have some
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: leaders who understand how to talk to people, meet them
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: where they are, focus on the working class, broad swaths
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: of voters that look, that seem deeply invested in making
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: their lives better. And I get it. I'm not arguing
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump was making a case that he was going
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: to make people's lives better. Donald Trump came from a
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: place of grievance and selfishness and sociopathy. And like, you
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: want more people to see that. But man, I just
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: listened to so many people talk like, you know, we
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: use words like fascist and authoritarian and, Most people don't
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: know what the word authoritarian means. I mean, listen to
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: the way people use socialism and communism. They just, like,
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: throw it out there. People don't, like, really know what
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: they mean. They kind of know it's bad. But, like,
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: what does it mean? They don't know. They're like, eggs
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: are expensive.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: You hit on an important point here, which is, Donald
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Trump does not talk like a politician, right? And he probably,
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: and it's, that has been to his, like, we ridicule
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: that a lot as Democrats. We say he sounds dumb
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: or like a clown, and he often does. The things
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: he says are often insane. sharks and wind turbines and
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: whales and all that other stuff. But the fact that
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: he doesn't sound like a politician helps him. And Democrats probably,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: we all sound like politicians at a time in which
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: people hate politicians. And even like, I think Kamala Harris
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: ran a great race under impossible circumstances. She crushed it
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: in the huge moments, right? Her convention speech was great.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: She was amazing in that debate. But even when you
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: hear her talk about things like the Opportunity Society, like
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: that's just not a real term that people understand, right?
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: It sounds like focus, no offense to focus groups, but
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: it does sound like focus group gobbledygook, right? Where you
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: just take the things that people dialed high and you
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: string them together in a sentence and hope you find
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: some verbs to.
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: Go in there.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: But it's a thing we have to work on. Do
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: you see anyone in the Democratic Party on our bench,
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: which I feels very strong, you know, but who might
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: meet that moment is not a debate come off as
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: like an advocate for working class you're not a politician
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: or not establishment or something like that.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah i mean look i i love a josh shapiro
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: and i know that um uh i ultimately i think
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: i'm glad he wasn't uh her vice president this time
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: because that might have uh done real damage to him
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: i think he does people people think he comes off,
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: I think, at a very surface level. They're like, but
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: he's too much like her. He's sort of a college-educated,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: you know... But that is not how voters view him
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: in Pennsylvania. Like, he is very good at working with people.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: He is very good at speaking directly. That being said, like,
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: going back to this not-a-regular politician, I.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Just.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: I watched Mark Cuban as a surrogate this time, and
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: I was like, it's kind of like that, guys. Like,
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: a guy who, you know, owns a basketball team and
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: understands business that people see as successful, but also, you know, thinks,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: but like, who isn't a sociopath. And I bet that
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Mark Cuban has done a hundred things that would get
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: him canceled, like, or whatever. But like, Do I think
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: somebody like him could win an election? I do. And
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: I'm not just saying, like, go run celebrities, but I
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: do think that... And I honestly used to really dislike that,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: the just sort of reaching for non-traditional candidates, because it
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: feels gimmicky. And you want somebody who's, like, serious and
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: has serious policy chops and, like, can deal with other
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: world leaders. But I just... I can't shake after listening
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: to voters... just talk about how they just don't feel
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: like she really connected with them. And I listened to
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: her and I agree with you. Like you hear things
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: like opportunity economy and you're just like, okay. But like
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: it also, the idea that it was word salad or that,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: you know, she couldn't express policy views. I didn't think
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: that at all. Like Donald Trump sounds like a lunatic. But,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: and so you want somebody sort of better than him,
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: but you also want somebody who's kind of talking it
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: to voters in a way that feels straightforward, authentic, connects
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: with them where they are, even in terms of vocabulary, right?
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: They're just not, like, trying to talk over people or
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: talking in ways that feel like, man, this person's not really...
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: They're giving a boring speech. I don't want a boring speech. Like,
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: I want to laugh.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I want to be... And this is.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: Look, what do we do? It's changing all over our culture, right?
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: People don't want late-stage cable. They want Pod Save America
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: and the bulwark.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Because they want to, like, connect... to people. And they
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: also were like, hey, I know where you guys are
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: coming from. Like, you guys are those Obama bros. And
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: this is what you believe. And this is how you
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: talk about things. And with us, they're like, oh, you
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: guys are those Republicans who hate Trump. And they know
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: exactly where we're coming from.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: We're not trying to tell them anything that we're not.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: And they're like, OK, like you're giving it to me straight.
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: I feel like you're telling me what I what I want.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: And like that is much closer to how people are
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: consuming things now. And I think politics is going to
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: have to change a little bit in that direction. What
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: do you think? Who do you think?
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I honestly don't know. And I'm very, this is my
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: life experience here, which is, so I worked for Tom
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: Daschle in 2004 when he lost the job there. And
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I was obviously unemployed after that. And the party is
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out who's going to run, who's next. Like,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: is it Mark Warner? We need someone from the heartland
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: who can connect with voters because of what just happened
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: against 04. Evan Bayh calls me, tells me he's thinking
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: of running for president, hires me to be his communications
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: director because he's a Former governor from a red state
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: who can win a red state. And I worked for
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: him for two years. He drops out and I go
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: work for Barack Obama, Barack Hussein Obama from the south
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: side of Chicago, who then wins the presidency. And so
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: what we think now about who that person, the profile,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: the profile of that person, because it's going to be
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: very different four years from now or two and a
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: half years from now when we actually start picking a nominee.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: But one of my predictions before the election was that
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: if Democrats were to lose, that Mark Cuban would be
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: on everyone's shortlist very quickly because he can go on Rogan,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: he can go on Theo Vaughn, he can carry his
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: own on the all-in podcast and all of that. And
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: he speaks like... No, and that's for better or for worse.
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: I actually don't know a ton of what Mark Cuban's
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: policies are, but you can sort of see that in
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: the immediate aftermath of his loss, that's the sort of
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: person that people will immediately flock to because it's He's
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: not like Trump. I don't want to say that. But
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: he is a media personality, a businessman media personality like
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Trump was. So you can see people flocking to that.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: I just don't know.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Like, I look at it and I feel like everyone
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: seems like a politician and people do not want politicians.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: And Barack Obama was technically a politician, but he didn't
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: come off like a politician. And he was so new
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: to it that he was almost more celebrity than politician
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: because of how he got famous. The fact that he
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: was senator was almost like an afterthought for voters. And
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: so it's hard to be like... And maybe... the Trump
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: presidency is such a disaster that you will want someone
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: who is serious and experienced. And this is actually how
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Biden ended up winning amidst the pandemic. So maybe it
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: is like Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Speer, or maybe it's
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: someone like Ruben Gallego, a working class veteran Latino. Maybe
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: it's Wes Moore. There's probably some people out there and
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: we'll know more. But just this idea, I just feel
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: like we have to reevaluate what we say and how
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: we say it to people because the muscle memory is
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: all like focus grouped economic language that we're then gonna
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: say on CNN. And the biggest takeaway for me from
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: this whole election is Democrats have no capacity to reach
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: less engaged voters. Because what you can see is where
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: we spent a billion dollars on TV ads and we
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: had thousands of organizers knocking on doors and making phone calls,
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: we lost by three points. Where we had no presence,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: we lost by six points. And so somehow, Trump had
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: no presence there either, right? They're not running ads in
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: New Jersey and Connecticut and Rhode Island. Yeah, they're making
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: huge gains there. So something is filtering through to those
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: voters that is coming from their framework, and we are
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: offering no countervailing messaging to it. And so that, to me,
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: is a thing we have to absolutely think about in
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: terms of our media strategy, our investments, how we say it,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: who says it, where it goes, because this is it.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: We become the midterm party for time immemorial. We will
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: just keep winning midterms. And the Senate map is pretty unpleasant.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: So it's going to be possible but hard to get
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: it back next time. And maybe you can get the
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: House in a thermostatic election, but you're not going to
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: win a presidential election. You can't be the party. This
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: is where the Republicans were prior to 2016. You are
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: the party who can't win presidential elections. You can only
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: win midterms. And we cannot be that. And we're going
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: to have to do some dramatic, radical changes to avoid
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: that fate.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do think, you know, there's this conversation around
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: sort of the rights media ecosystem and how effective that's been,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: which I think is right. And one of the ways
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: that that came about, because I was on the right
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: when this was like one of the main complaints was like, well,
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: the left wing media. And so the right went and built, right,
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: its own media ecosystem. They built Fox first, but then
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: they built all these other things. And then, you know,
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: once basically anybody with a with a microphone that could
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: plug into a computer, could become a podcaster, all of
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: a sudden, I mean, I know Theo Vaughn because Theo
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: Vaughn was on Road Rules. I remember when Theo Vaughn
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: was on Road Rules, but I actually didn't quite know
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: that he'd become a famous podcaster until within this year.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: And those are the right-now-owns not just political podcasting or
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: political sort of non-traditional, it's like wellness. It's working out
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: and fitness. Like the number of people in the focus
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: groups where I'm like, hey, because we always ask, where
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: do you get your media? What do you read? What
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: do you listen to? What do you watch? And like
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: so many of them, I mean, a lot of people
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: say Rogan, I will say. There's just, there's a lot
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: of Rogan people.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: It's huge. It is the biggest media in the country,
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: hands down.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: And to the extent that the Barstool sports guys and
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Rogan and Elon, when they all got red-pilled, that opened
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: up a huge door to non-traditional voters to get their
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: information from people that they respected for entirely apolitical reasons
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: who were now giving them political information. And that political
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: information was essentially like, how annoying are these libs with
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: their woke stuff? And I don't know. And the thing is,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: it's one thing if you're like, well, it's all manufactured.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: You're saying things that aren't true. But it's another thing
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: when People are like, I don't know. I get my
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: emails from the person in HR and it says she, her.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: And like they're making me put my pronouns in my
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: email or any of that. And it's like all it
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: takes is that kind of stuff for people to be
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: like just annoyed enough to be like, yeah, I think
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Theo Vaughn's right. Or I think, you know, or to
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: get a little red pilled. And I do think that's
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: what's happening.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: You're right. There was a there is there is the
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: fully political right wing space. Right. Which is Fox News. Breitbart,
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Ben Shapiro, the Tucker Carlson podcast, Megyn Kelly, that stuff.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: But the right is now dominating nonpolitical spaces, right? It
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: is gamers streaming on Twitch. It's crypto conversations. It's a
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: lot of gambling stuff, which is like really where they're
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: nailing the young men. My wife brings up the wellness
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: stuff to me all the time. All the Instagram influencers
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: and the wellness podcasts are just all wellness. And then
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, there's just like a lot of
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: RFK Jr. Especially since RFK Jr. endorsed Trump, there's a
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: lot of Maybe Trump's going to get red dye out
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: of our snacks, which is a thing that a lot
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: of people are worried about, like they just banned it
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: here in California. And there's just no similar infiltration. Now,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: there is a very vibrant left-wing podcast space, right? I'm
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: not talking about Black Party, American Crooked, but there's also
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: streamers like Assange Piker and all these other people. But
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: the Democratic Party does not engage with them in the
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: same way the Republicans do, in part because they disagree
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: with us on some issues. Right. Like if Kamala Harris
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: had done something with some of these folks, she would
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: have had to answer a lot of hard questions on Gaza.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: But also, Rogan and Trump don't agree on everything either.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: And it's just the there has been all the there's
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: like this video going around Twitter that is responding to
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: the point, like, who's the left's Rogan? It's like, oh,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: it was, we had one. It was Rogan, right? When he,
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: you know, he endorsed Bernie. He was a big Obama fan. He,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: you know, supported, he was like very friendly with Andrew Yang.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: And our response to that was because we did not
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: agree with him on some things where he is very,
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: very wrong. Vaccines. a lot of transphobia and other things
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: on there, but we just cast them out as to
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: never go on there. And I can argue round or
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: flat whether Kamala Harris should have gone on that podcast
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: three weeks before the election, a month before the election, sure.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: In that last six days, you and I talked about
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: this before, it's hard to spend a day in Texas
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: that last day. But the fact that that is a
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: place where Democrats are not willing to go is a
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: massive problem.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: Rogan, I'm not, because we're talking about Rogan as like
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: a stand-in, like for- You have to be able to
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: go everywhere and talk to everybody. Like that's the new rule.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: The new rule is like and you got to be
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: able to do it in ways where like Pete Buttigieg
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: is probably the one that's so far the best at it.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: But like you sort of have to be able to shoot. No.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: Like here's the thing about let's say Mark Cuban. Let's
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: take him hypothetically. Mark Cuban probably believes like a real
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: hodgepodge of stuff that doesn't feel neatly Democrat or Republican,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: which is sort of what Trump's done. And people like that.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: You know why? Because they don't think things have to
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: fit neatly into a package for a political party. Like
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: that's one of the things that they like. And so
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: they're like, I don't know, you got some heterodox views
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: on this and you got these other things that I
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: think cool like that. And like, I don't have to
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: agree with you on everything. Like there's a reason that people,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: I think, reacted well to the idea that he had
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: RFK as a surrogate and Elon as a surrogate and
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Tulsi Gabbard. And, you know, I'm sitting here going, those
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: are all Democrats. Like, but then I'm like, oh, yeah,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: but so was Trump. You know, so was Trump. And
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: what they did was they built a new coalition out of,
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: you know, lib-hating Republicans and a bunch of people who
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: might otherwise be Democrats, but heterodox thinkers. I just think
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: of all the people that now Republicans I know tell
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: me they think are really smart. It's like Matt Taibbi,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: you know, and like, obviously, you know, the guys over
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: at whatever, what Barry Weiss is doing with the free press,
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: the sort of anti, like there's a whole massive political ecosystem.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: And I think that Democrats are going to figure out
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: how to engage with those people.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And we have to build our own version of it, too, right? Like,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: which we have been doing. And this is a very
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: self-interested hobby horse of mine. But Trump and all the
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: Republicans do all the right-wing media. They value it.
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: They nurture it.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: They put their arms on it. They view it in
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: their political interest to grow that ecosystem. And there are
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: exceptions to this. Some Democrats will do it. But for
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: the most part, There is not that, right? And that
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: was certainly not something the Harris campaign did a lot of.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: There were a couple examples, but, you know, didn't come
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: on Positive America, didn't go to Brian Tyler Cohen, didn't
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: do a bunch of other things like that where you
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: curry your news. Some of the real, like, large parts of,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: you know, the emerging parts of the progressive version of it,
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: like our political media apparatus, Democrats just don't see the
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: imperative in the same way. In part because, I mean,
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: it makes sense because Republicans believe the mainstream media was
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: biased against them. And Democrats do not believe that, even
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: if we have turned hard on The Washington Post and
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: The New York Times in recent years. The politicians themselves still,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: there's some, I don't know what it is, they feel
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: like an air of legitimacy if they do it on
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Ezra Klein's podcast instead of ours, yours or mine or
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: whatever else. And it's a very counterproductive way of thinking. Yeah.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, you got to just go where people, when
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: you say meet people where they are, it's like what
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: they're listening to and engage. They want to feel like
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: you engage authentically then with the people that they like,
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: who they trust. And look, I'm not saying it's a
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: good thing for our politics that so many voters trust
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Joe Rogan. It's not a good thing that that's where
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: they get most of their information. But you know what?
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: If that's what, if you know, if that's just a reality,
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: if that's where the ball lies, like play it as
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: it lies and be able to go on there and
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: like talk for three hours and like You know, have
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: it out. People will respect that. But that's what they
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: want to see out of people now.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: So you and I could probably talk about this for
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: hours and hours and hours. This has been my own
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: personal therapy is instead of disconnecting from the internet, I'm
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: just talking to as many people as I possibly can
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: and consuming as much information as I can to just
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: wallow in the misery. But thank you so much for
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: being here. You have made us much smarter as always.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: And we're very grateful for all the work you did
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: in this election.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate that. Can I ask you one last
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: question before we close? To be annoying. Do you think
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: the Democrats will run a woman again ever?
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Yes, I do.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, some people, you know, I've heard people
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: be like, Dems won't run a woman again after this.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: I think that we have to be able to, this
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: is always hard in shorthanded political discourse, but we have
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: to recognize that there is very clearly a lot of
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: misogyny and racism in our politics. It is some of
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: it conscious, some of it unconscious. It comes through in
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: press coverage and how women candidates are portrayed in the media,
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: what they can get away with.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: The kind of, just on that debate stage, uh, Joe
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: Biden four years earlier could tell Donald Trump to shut
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: his pie hole and Kamala Harris could never do that
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: as a black woman, right? The way that we traded.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: But at the same time that that happened, you did have, uh,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: women candidates like Tammy Baldwin, Alyssa Slotkin and Jackie Rosen
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: run ahead. And so there was work to do there.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: I absolutely believe, uh, we will have a primary process. Um,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: and I hope, I hope that we do not, as
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: we did in 2020, I think in 2020, we picked
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: the most electable candidate. The polling was pretty clear that
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Biden was the most electable. He was the only one
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: running ahead of Trump. But what we can't do, we
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: have to have a very broad view of electability. It
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: can't be just white man who can relate to white
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: voter in Wisconsin, which is how I think we were
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: thinking about it in 2020. But, you know, I absolutely
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: think we can and should. Interesting.
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: Thanks for letting me ask you.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Of course. Of course. All right, Sarah, thank you so much.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: Thanks, guys.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Bye.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, when we come back, I'm going to talk with
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Carlos Odio about what happened with the Latino vote in
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: this election. But before we do that, as you heard
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: us say on Friday's pod, the House is still in play.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: There are lots of races where the count is ongoing,
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: and they need your help. Taking the House majority is
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: our best shot at constraining Donald Trump, but it's a
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: huge lift, and those races need your support to keep
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: paying their staff and to help cure ballots that have problems.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: The best way you can ensure that every vote is
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: counted is to go to votesaveamerica.com and donate to their
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: House fund. It is really critical. There are also opportunities
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: to volunteer, especially if you live in one of these
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: key districts. Again, votesaveamerica.com. This message has been paid for
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: by Vote Save America. You can learn more at votesaveamerica.com.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: This ad has not been authorized by any candidate or
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: candidates committee. When we come back, Carlos Odio. Carlos, welcome
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: back to Pod Save America.
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: Dan, it is always good to be back, even under
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: these circumstances.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: You're one of the first people we thought of on
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: election night to try to figure out what happened and
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: where the Democratic Party can go from here. But before
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: we get into that, I just got to ask, how
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: are you doing?
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: It has been a very long week, as it has
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: been for many people. I don't feel special in that regard.
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: I will say that I haven't allowed myself a lot
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: of moments to think about or process what this all means,
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: because when you do get a break and you do
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: contemplate it, you know, my mind goes to people who
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: I love a lot, who I feel like have a
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: reason to feel unsafe, either because of things that this
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: next administration might do or because of what he's unleashed
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: in America, like what people feel emboldened to do. So
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: like many people, I'm mourning the fate of the country,
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: contemplating the bad stuff that can come, even while I'm
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: trying to understand how this came to be. And in
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: the midst of it, Dan, because you asked.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: And I did, yes.
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: Is that you have people blaming Latino voters for what happened,
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: which actually, you know, I'm fine to debate. That's a
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: data question. That's an empirical question. What's not fine is
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: what anyone who is Latino has had to face on
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: social media this week. I hope you get deported. I
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: hope you get thrown in camps. I hope you have
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: your passport because you're about to get thrown out of
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: the country. Go back home, Beaner. And what's amazing is
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: that these are coming from liberals. And it makes you wonder,
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: is this how people have felt about us all along?
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: So in addition to everything else, I'm now also mourning
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: the loss of decency, humanity, among the many things that
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump has robbed of us. And at the same time,
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: turning to what needs to get done next to protect
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: our people and bridge the divides so we can get
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: back to a better place.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Let's stipulate that exit polls are an imperfect vehicle to
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: analyze what happened yesterday. And that we will have another conversation.
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: Their polls, right. Which, as we have proven, are imperfect
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: before the election, after the election, during the election. And
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: that we will revisit this when we get better data
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: from Catalyst and Pew in a few months. But it
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: seems pretty clear, based on both the exit polls and
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: when you look at county-by-county results, particularly in counties with
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: large Latino populations, that there was a further shift among
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Latino population to Trump. What's your analysis of what we
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: know right now?
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I understand actually why people pounced on the
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: Latino numbers the way they did. These were eye-popping, frankly.
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: As much as my job is to document and explain
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: shifts in the Latino vote, I was surprised by some
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: of the numbers we saw. I live in Hudson County,
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: New Jersey. We saw massive shifts that I would not
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: have anticipated the extent to which they would be that
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: big And so, look, I think it is, I think
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: it is, I've always hesitated using the word realignment. I
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: feel like it isn't offered very much to this conversation.
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: But I think essentially what we're headed to is Trump
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: gained about eight points in support from 16 to 20.
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: I think it's going to be another eight to nine points.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: And so you're talking about nearly 20% increase in support
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: from 16 to 24, which.
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: I don't care what you call it. It looks like
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: a realignment. It sounds like a realignment. The question of
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: whether it's specific to Trump, you know, unique to Trump
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: or something more lasting is almost a moot point because
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: we've got another four years of the Trump era ahead
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: of us. So regardless of what it is, let's call
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: it the Trump realignment among Latino voters, it is the
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: current reality in which we find ourselves. There is a
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: difference in the battleground states, and I think we can
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: talk about that. Part of why I say you shouldn't
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: blame Latino voters is the shifts while they were eye-popping
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: are not the reason Donald Trump won. The battleground numbers
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: were not surprising. We actually knew, we've known all along
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: that we were going to have this kind of drop
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: among Latino voters in the states that mattered the most
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: for the electoral college. And it was already baked into
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: campaign strategy. It was baked into the forecasts. We had
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: narrowed this down to the point where it was the
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: blue wall, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. What was surprising was the
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: wider erosion, right? I mean, you had a six-point uniform
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: swing nationally. you had Trump overperforming his margins in nine
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: out of 10 counties that have been counted. That's not
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: a demographic story. You can't narrow that down to any
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: one group. That's massive. Even to the point that, especially
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: in a Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, you can't attribute what happened
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: there to Latinos. You know, in Pennsylvania, you could erase
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: the Latino shift and Trump still wins the state. One
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: point in white support in Pennsylvania is the equivalent of
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: 19 points of Latino support. So I think we have to,
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: as people who care hold both stories true, that there
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: is this wider Latino realignment that we have to contend with,
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: and that there is a story of this election that
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: is much broader. And something so broad requires big, large explanations.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: I think it's just, I want to just stipulate that one,
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: blaming voters for an election outcome is incredibly stupid and counterproductive.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: So dumb.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: It's just, it was yelling at non, you know, The
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: yelling at white women or non-college educated voters in 2016,
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: it's how you end up doing worse with them in
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: the next election cycle. And we lost ground everywhere, right?
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: And even in the places where we thought we would
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: gain ground, like the collar counties in Pennsylvania, Trump made gains, right?
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: In college suburbs where they're largely white and college educated,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Trump also gained grounds. Absolute failure across the board. I
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: want to dig into the Latino one with you because
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: it has massive implications long term. If this trend is
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: not reversed, because it takes the sunbelt out off the map,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: largely for Democrats. You can't win in Arizona and Nevada.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: The idea that Texas would turn blue sometime in our
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: lifetime is mathematically impossible with these sort of margins among Latinos.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: And it's the fastest growing population in the United States.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: And if you are losing ground with the fastest growing
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: population in the country, that's a bad thing.
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: You're on the wrong side of math.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: And we were after being on the right side of
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: math for a very long time. And it's like for
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: people like you and I who come from the Obama
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: world to then confront the opposite, right? The emerging Trump coalition,
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: as opposed to the emerging Obama coalition, is a very
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: hard thing to fathom and reconcile. Do you have a sense,
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: either looking at county data, what you guys did before
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: the election, or even digging into the exit polls about
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: what parts of the Latino population move? Was it mostly men?
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: Was it more working class? Or was it more sort
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: of broad-based and across the board?
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: You know, as you said, the exits are unreliable on
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: this point. And in fact, the Edison exits have Trump
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: winning Latino men, AP vote cast, it's actually a little
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: more reliable, has Harris winning Latino men. Really, we won't
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: know that level of demographic difference until we get individual
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: level data back from the official state voter files. I
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: think what we know right now, though, is a story
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: similar to 2020, which is that as much as there
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: are lots of different divisions in the Latino vote, right?
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: Like what falls under the Latino umbrella is a stitched
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: together group of very different communities and experiences. And yet
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: the shifts we saw cut across those differences. So as
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: we're trying to explain what happened, you need explanations that
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: span Lawrence, Massachusetts, which is heavily Dominican, where you saw
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: Trump gain 15 points in two-way support, and in the
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: Rio Grande Valley of Texas along the border, which is
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: very Tejano, Mexican-American descent, you need theories that explain both
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: of those, right? Like things that are unique to Venezuelans
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: in Broward County cannot possibly explain the shifts among Mexican-Americans
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: in Michigan or Wisconsin. So at this point, what it
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: appears to be is fairly broad-based. The people who shifted,
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: what they have in common is that they are Hispanic. Now,
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: we do know from our pre-election polling that there was
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: a wide gender gap in this election. And so it
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: is reasonable to say that there is a story that
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: will center around men. And I think what this moment
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: calls for is deep reflection about Latino voters. But then
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: we almost immediately have to ladder up to a conversation
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: about men across race. And from there to a conversation
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: about working people. And from there to a conversation about
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: a broader cultural and economic divide. We live on in
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: one reality, the people who are listening to a podcast
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: like this and the people who voted for Donald Trump
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: essentially live in an entirely different reality.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: I think there's a really important point here, which is
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: the gains towards Trump are so broad based across so
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: many different groups that like we were talking about the
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: Latino vote here that is incredibly consequential. But it is
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: also possible that the reasons why the Latino vote shifted
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: are not that different for why Trump made gains across
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: the country, right? And particularly among he won voters who
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: make under $ 50, 000, according to the exit polls with the
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: appropriate caveats. And when you have populations where more or
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: disproportionate number of that population makes below $ 50, 000 or below $ 100, 000,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: whatever income level you want to get, the Latino community
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: faced on a whole a tremendous amount of hardship from inflation.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: And so it's not shocking theoretically if one of the
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: reasons for the shift in this election towards Trump is
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: because of inflation, communities that disproportionately suffered more from it
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: would shift more, right? Yes.
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: Now, of course, this is about so much about the economy.
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: I mean, the backdrop to any analysis has to be
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: that there were the twin crises of inflation and migration
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: that have afflicted the globe. And any incumbent who presided
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: over this period of post-pandemic inflation has faced a major
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: penalty at their next election. That's the That's the starting line.
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: And then you have to ask yourself, well, could different
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: decisions have led to different outcomes? So did our president
• 56:16
  Speaker 4: rise to that challenge of the inflation and migration crises?
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: Or were we denying for a very long time that
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: it was even happening while voters were yelling, my grocery
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: bills are going up. And we were saying, no, the
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: economy's doing great. And so, you know, gaslighting voters is
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: generally a way to communicate that you don't actually hear
• 56:34
  Speaker 4: them or understand them. In addition to the president himself,
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: a man I deeply love. At the same time, voters
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: did not feel like he was up to the challenge.
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: And so that's your starting place. You know, when Kamala
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: Harris joins the race, she recovered a lot of voters.
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: She did better, I think, undoubtedly, than Joe Biden would
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: have done. Undoubtedly. And yet, some people were just far
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: gone at that point. There was no making up that deficit.
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: And so that's why I think we should think about
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: campaign tactics and what could have been done differently. But
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: at the end of the day, We're talking about such
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: a broad shift that we have to have a more
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: zoomed out look at what we were facing and the
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: fact that we probably lost a lot of these voters
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: much earlier in the cycle.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, before Kamala Harris ever became the nominee, right?
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: Correct.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: And so I do want to talk a little bit
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: about immigration in here. You know, you see this come
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: up in a lot of research about there's some liberal
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: assumptions about how Latinos voters feel about immigration. You have
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: pushed back on this a lot, particularly around how people
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: feel about the border and What role, if any, do
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: you think immigration played, particularly with the Latino community?
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: People try to simplify what is such a complex issue.
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: And I'll just give one example of where I think
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: the analysis is lacking. You hear a lot of swing
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: Latino voters saying in focus groups that they were upset
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: at their perception, by the way, a wrong perception, but
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: still their perceptions. that people crossing the border today were
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: being handed papers. They were being given legal status. Now,
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: their reaction to this was, well, what about my undocumented
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: family who've been working and living here for decades? This
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: was a sense of fairness, not of xenophobia, not of nativism.
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: It wasn't about turning against immigrants. It wasn't about thinking
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: that America should fundamentally rethink its relationship to immigration. It's
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: about saying, hold on a second. We were in line,
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: we are immigrants. And we feel like there are others
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: being handed benefits that we're not in the midst that
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: we're struggling. In the same way, by the way, that
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: as much as it pains me, because I support the
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: cause in Ukraine, people saying we're spending all this money
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: in Ukraine and there doesn't seem to be any money
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: for us who are struggling at home. This is not
• 58:52
  Speaker 4: about being anti-immigrant. This is not about being racist. It's
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: not about acting white. This is about saying I am
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: facing tough material conditions and I'm looking for someone to
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: take care of me.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: Now, the last time Trump was president, right, he engaged
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: in a series of cruel immigration policies, deportations, family separation,
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: et cetera. He is promising to do all of that
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: and more next time around. You and I, and I
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: am like you in this, I'm now on my third
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: podcast since Tuesday. I have tried to resist too much
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: of like second guessing of campaign tactics because I struggle
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: to find a strategic or tactical move made since Kamala
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: Harris became the nominee that changes the outcome here, given
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: the margins. But I think there are some lessons we
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: can learn from things they did or didn't do that might,
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: you know, project forward, right, as we think about what
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: comes next. Last time you were on, a couple weeks
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: before the election, we talked about, and both you and
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: I both lamented the fact that Democrats, Harris campaign on down,
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: were unwilling to talk about, to speak out against Trump's
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: proposed mass deportation policy. So we had sort of limited
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: the immigration conversation entirely to who was going to be
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: tougher on the border. One, Democrats are almost destined to lose.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: I am not attributing that to the huge swing here.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that that's why she lost. But just
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: what are your sort of thoughts on that in hindsight?
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 4: Look, my feelings on this are well documented. I think
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: if there's one decision that I thought was foolhardy was
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: to entirely cede to Trump, we allowed Trump to define
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: what his mass deportation plan was. You know, when J.D.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: Vance in the VP debate was asked about this. He said, no,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: we're going to deport criminals. That's not their plan. Their
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 4: plan is to deport anyone who is undocumented. They are
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: going to get dreamers. They want to get the spouses
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: of American citizens who've been working and living here for decades.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: And we just couldn't call them out on it. I
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: don't think that's why he lost. But certainly, I think
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: that would have been important. And now, especially that we're
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: facing this moment, I think seems doubly so that we
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: would have fought that debate. That said, here's the thing
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: we heard a lot in focus groups. People were voting
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: for Trump, the people who shifted for him. It was
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: about the economy. Let me be very clear. The sense
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: they got about Donald Trump in the midst of the
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: pandemic was that he would prioritize the economy above absolutely
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: everything else. Literally over human lives, he would value economic growth.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 4: And that was the takeaway from the pandemic. And so
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: if you have a voter who themselves in their own
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: life values the economic well-being of their family, they see
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: a kindred spirit. And what they did in voting was saying,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: I'm going to do that exact thing. I'm going to
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: put the economy above everything else. But that feeling also
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: impacts other things, which is voters told us in focus groups,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: we don't believe that Donald Trump is going to ban abortion.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: We don't believe he's going to repeal Obamacare. We don't
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: believe that he's actually going to carry out mass deportation
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: because we don't think he actually cares about those things.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: He's a businessman. He just cares about the economy. And literally,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: they would say, Mass deportation would wreck this economy. And
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: that's why we don't think he's going to do it.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: They threw it off as political rhetoric. And they kind
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: of have reason to do it, by the way. If
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: you look at Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSantis passed a draconian
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: immigration bill, right? We haven't talked about it a lot
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: since then. And let me tell you part of why
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: we haven't. Please do. Soon after it passed, Republican state
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 4: reps were dispatched to evangelical churches in in Hialeah and
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: in agricultural areas to reassure people that this wasn't real.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: To say, please tell your people, don't leave the state.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: This was about politics. We are not actually going to
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: come after you. So it is not irrational for a
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: certain kind of voter to view all of this as
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: pure political propaganda, as hyped up rhetoric, but that at
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: the end of the day, when it comes time to
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: make decisions, A belief that Donald Trump is just going
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: to do the practical thing. And we let him get
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: away with that.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: Now, it seems, you know, we can debate the degree
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: to which he's going to engage in the policies, but
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: immigration policy is going to get much crueler. There are
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: going to be more deportations. There are going to be
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: people who are not criminals who are deported from day one.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: And how do you think Democrats can go about having
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: that conversation? And if we do, is that a way
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: to begin to rebuild credibility with elements of Latino community?
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's an excellent question. Look, first of all, by
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: the way, whether Trump believes things or not, the people
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: he's going to empower are a bunch of psychotic freaks
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: who have a fetishistic desire to punish immigrants. So Stephen
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: Miller now is going to have an ungodly amount of power.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: And that's what scares me. Look, I think there's a
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: real danger here. I think in the context of an election,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: you have to hype up the threat. I think in
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: this moment, we have to be really careful not to
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: be hyperbolic. Meaning, Trump caught us in this a lot
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 4: last time. And by the way, it's a thing that
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: DeSantis has caught liberals on in Florida as well, which
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: is if we say he's going to deport 12 million
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 4: people and then he deports eight, he says, look at me,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: look how moderate I am. I'm so reasonable. He catches
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: in this trap all the time. You know, I think
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 4: what we really have to do is as much as
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: we can shape the mandate and say, if there was
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: a mandate here, it was to bring down prices. It
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: was to focus on the economy and the pain that
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 4: people were feeling. And that's what we're going to hold
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: you to. And we're not going to talk about the
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: rest of it because we're saying we expect you to
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: just focus on the economy such that when they are
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 4: overreaching and when they are doing things that are not
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: about bringing down prices, right, we can call them out
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: on it. Because even when we're calling them out on this,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: they have to be, it has to all still be
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: an economic argument as well, or we seem out of touch.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: This cannot be symbolic resistance.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: You and I are kindred spirits on this. I spent
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: a lot of time thinking about and getting a lot
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: of questions from people about why Dobbs did not deliver
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: another victory for Democrats, especially when you get the exit
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: poll and it's like 68% of voters think abortion should
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: be legal. And it's because the voters who think, there's
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: a large spot of voters who think abortion should be legal,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: but they prioritize the economy. And we lost those voters
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: by like 40 points. And the test here as we
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: go forward is people elected Trump to lower prices, raise
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: wages and make their life better. And every time he
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: does something that is not that, We have to point
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: out that he's not doing the thing he said he
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: would do. So when they get in there and they
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: start trying to put in place whatever their mass deportation
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: plan is, however many people it is, when his first
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: move is to a giant tax cut for corporations, when
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: they try to ban abortion or all the bullshit that
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: gets the MAGA base going, it is going to be
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: incumbent upon Democrats. And that will benefit us, I believe,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: with all voters, right? The ones we lost, the ones
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: that didn't turn out for us, Latinos, white voters, black voters,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: young people, et cetera, is he's full of shit and
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: we have to prove he's full of shit, that he
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: did not deliver on the thing he said he was
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: going to deliver.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: We've got to regain common sense. We've got to regain
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: common sense. And I think, you know, how many times
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: did he tell us that Project 2025 isn't his agenda?
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: You know, let's take him for his word. Hey, he's
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: not going to do Project 2025. He told us he's
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: not going to do Project 2025. We should take him
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 4: to his word. And then when he breaks that word,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: we again are trying to regain, at this point, the
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: common ground. You know, Kristen Solstice Anderson, who's Republican, pollster,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: Echelon Insights, had a great piece before the election about
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: this being a stop-the-madness election, but that both sides interpreted
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 4: stop-the-madness differently. That for Republicans, they thought that Democrats were
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: presiding over a period of madness, really, that was about
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: the economy, that was about the border, and so forth.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: You know, I think if we play our cards right here,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: we can regain the advantage on who represents order and
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 4: stability versus who represents chaos and madness.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: Last question for you. It seems pretty clear, both looking
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: both at exit polls, county results, that Ruben Gallego significantly
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: outperformed Kamala Harris among Latino voters. It also appears that
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: perhaps Jackie Rosen also did at least a little bit
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: better for Latino voters than Kamala Harris. Do you take
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: anything from the way they ran their campaigns that could
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: be lessons for Democrats going forward?
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: Well, first, I think it's a lesson for Republicans, which
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: is that to some extent, this was about Donald Trump
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 4: and it's about Joe Biden and that these gains do
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: not extend automatically to other Republicans. Where Trump, the businessman,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 4: had a unique anti-elite appeal, it does not extend to
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: them automatically and they should not take for granted that
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: they are going to have those votes going forward. I
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: think Ruben Gallego in Arizona really does represent a great
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: deal of hope and shows a path forward I mean,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: he is obviously Latino himself and proudly so. He didn't
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 4: shy away from that identity at the same time that
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: he was leaning into his working class identity, working at
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: his record as a veteran, talking to people about things
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: they cared about, showing up in their communities as much
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: as he can and not being scared to separate himself
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: from Democrats and saying, I will not follow any kind
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 4: of ideological line all the way down. That's part of
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: this is we have to establish that we have some independence,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: that we are not a faceless mob of people. We
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 4: have people with differing opinions. So I think there is
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: a path forward for a kind of multiracial, class conscious,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: progressive in substance, but moderate in style kind of Democrat
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: going forward. I take a lot of solace in the
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: fact that 2004 was a point where I felt incredible
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: despair as we all did.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 4: And that the Obama election was only four years later.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 4: A lot can change over a very short period of time.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: And I think a lot of people listening to this,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of people who I work with at Crooked Media,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: they are obviously too young to remember that. But it
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: was very similar. And there was a long talk about
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: the emerging Republican majority. Bush had done incredibly well with
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: Latinos from Texas, spoke Spanish. The new RNC chair was
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: going to spearhead this whole effort. And Bush had actually
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: done better with Black voters. He actually won Ohio because
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: he did much better with Black voters in Cleveland than
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: any previous Republican had done. And two years later, they
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: lose the House and the Senate. Four years later, Barack
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: Obama is elected. builds an entirely new coalition that is
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: incredibly diverse, moves those voters back. And so that can
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: be our future. Now, Democrats did a lot of things.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: They got lucky in some ways, but also did a
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: lot of things to get back there. And I think
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: it is a little bit analogous to what you're saying
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: about holding Trump to his promises, because Bush's first move
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: when he was reelected was to try to privatize Social Security,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: something he had not run on, something voters did not want.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: And Democrats beat him. And that was the beginning of
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: the downfall of the Republicans because they we unified. We ran.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: It's a different media environment, but made it a huge
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: deal everywhere in the country that this is what Bush
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: was trying to do. And we stopped him. And it
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: seemed like he had violated his promise to voters. And
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: we can do the same thing with Trump starting next year.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. And listen, we got to let him screw up.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: We got to let him screw up because if we
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: know anything about Donald Trump is there is no discipline.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: There's incompetence. When he hires people, he's not bringing in
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: the best people. And so I think there's going to
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: be a lot of overreach and we have to be
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 4: prepared for it. And what we certainly can't do is
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 4: lose hope as much as I think in the short term,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 4: people should disconnect and take a break. There's going to
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: be a lot of time to fight in the future.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 4: I think we've got to be ready and remain hopeful
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 4: in spite of the very dark moment in which we
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: find ourselves right now.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: That seems like a great place to leave it. Carlos,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: thank you for doing this. I know you're very tired
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: and you would very much like to disconnect yourself, but
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: you suited up for one more podcast interview. So we
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: appreciate it.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: The battle continues.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Dan. That's our show for today. Thanks to Sarah
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: and Carlos for joining. John, Lovett, and Tommy will be
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: back with a new show on Tuesday morning. Hang in there, everybody.
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