Latest / Pod Save America / What’s the Story We’re Telling? + Sen. Ruben Gallego (Crooked Con)

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What’s the Story We’re Telling? + Sen. Ruben Gallego (Crooked Con) · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by MS Now. We
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  Speaker 1: more at ms.now. I'm Jon Favreau. We are live at CrookedCon.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: So this is a panel about the story that Democrats
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: choose to tell voters about what we believe, where we
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: want to take the country, and how we'll get there.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I'm biased as a former speechwriter, but I think figuring
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  Speaker 1: that out is one of the more important tasks for
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  Speaker 1: the party and one that is under-discussed. We talk a
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  Speaker 1: lot about issues, policy positions, slogans, specific messages. I think
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  Speaker 1: we don't talk enough about how they all fit together
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  Speaker 1: in a cohesive, persuasive narrative. And so I am very
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: lucky to be joined by some of the most brilliant
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  Speaker 1: strategists and storytellers in our party to talk to me
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: about this. My friends, Jen Psaki of MS Now.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: I did it.
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  Speaker 1: I remember it.
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  Speaker 3: It's not MS. It's fine. It can be either one.
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  Speaker 1: It's just rolled off.
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  Speaker 2: It was great.
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  Speaker 3: Happy to be here.
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  Speaker 1: Faz Shakir of More Perfect Union. and veteran Democratic strategist
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  Speaker 1: Rebecca Katz, Liz Smith, and Adam Jentleson. All right, let's
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: talk about the story coming out of Tuesday night, a
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  Speaker 1: good story for once. So the rosiest take on the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: results is that whether you're Zoran Mamdani or Abigail Spanberger
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  Speaker 1: or anyone anywhere else, Democrats who won focused on affordability,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: unlike Donald Trump, who campaigned on affordability and is now
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: building himself a gold palace. So if you're a candidate
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  Speaker 1: running in 2026, you focus almost exclusively on affordability with
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  Speaker 1: the message tailored to the voters you're running to represent
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  Speaker 1: in the place that you're running. Some will sound more
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  Speaker 1: like Mamdani, some will sound more like Mikey Sherrill or
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  Speaker 1: Abigail Spanberger, some will sound completely different, but that's okay
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  Speaker 1: because we're a Big Ten party, and as long as
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  Speaker 1: your campaign is focused on affordability, we're good. Is that
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  Speaker 1: story sufficient to help Democrats take back the House and
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  Speaker 1: potentially the Senate in 2026?
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  Speaker 4: Rebecca?
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  Speaker 5: Well, I think a good message coming out of Tuesday
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  Speaker 5: is that a lot of different kind of Democrats won.
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  Speaker 5: And that's good, right? Like, it is good. I mean,
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  Speaker 5: we should be saluting all of our Democratic candidates up
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  Speaker 5: and down the ticket. We had a great night. And
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  Speaker 5: there's this feeling of wanting to divide us a little bit. Like, well,
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  Speaker 5: this is the way that you have to win, or
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  Speaker 5: this is the way. But if we're going to be
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  Speaker 5: a party that wins big, we have to have a
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  Speaker 5: big tent. And we need candidates who can authentically speak
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  Speaker 5: to the constituencies they're running to represent. And voters can
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  Speaker 5: smell bullshit, right? And we have to know that when
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: you're talking about it, you have to have first-person experience.
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  Speaker 5: You can't just say, like, now I'm going to focus
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  Speaker 5: on cost. It has to be grounded in something that
• 4:23
  Speaker 5: you know.
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  Speaker 6: And I agree with Rebecca.
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  Speaker 7: You know what's crazy is I have worked against everyone
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  Speaker 7: on the stage in primaries in my life, except for Jen, because,
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  Speaker 7: you know, she has good taste.
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  Speaker 2: But....
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  Speaker 7: But four years ago, had we all been up here,
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  Speaker 7: we probably would have been getting a little saucy.
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  Speaker 3: I don't know.
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  Speaker 6: We'll see what happens here.
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  Speaker 7: But today, it really does feel more like we're starting
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  Speaker 7: to understand that we're all in this together. There's no
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  Speaker 7: one way to be a Democrat. For Democrats to become
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  Speaker 7: a majority party, let alone a durable majority party, we've
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  Speaker 7: got to let people run in a way that fits
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  Speaker 7: the communities they're trying to represent. So for instance, Azorin
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  Speaker 7: Mamdani makes a lot of sense in New York City.
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  Speaker 7: Probably not gonna win statewide in Virginia. Abigail Spanberger makes
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  Speaker 7: a lot of sense in Virginia. Probably not gonna get
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  Speaker 7: through a Democratic primary in New York City.
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  Speaker 6: And you know what? That's okay.
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  Speaker 7: And I think that so much of the fight right
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  Speaker 7: now that we need to think about as a Democratic party,
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  Speaker 7: and to your point about what more of the story
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  Speaker 7: is beyond affordability.
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  Speaker 6: Is we've gotta take on the status quo.
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  Speaker 7: And we've got to take on the establishment shit that
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  Speaker 7: is not helping our party. And I think you guys
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  Speaker 7: know exactly what I'm talking about. And I can see
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  Speaker 7: a coalition growing of next-generation Democrats, people maybe more in
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  Speaker 7: Rebecca's wing, some people more in my wing, getting together
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  Speaker 7: and saying, let's make life cheaper for people, and let's
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  Speaker 7: stop all the shit that isn't working, and let's fight
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  Speaker 7: the status quo that is very, very broken for most Americans.
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  Speaker 1: Faz, do you think Mamdani's message could win in places
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  Speaker 1: that aren't as blue?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. How you tailor it. The challenge that
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  Speaker 2: we're in, I'll try to introduce some degree of friction
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  Speaker 2: into this. Because we all agree on a lot of things.
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  Speaker 2: What goal are we trying to solve for? I want
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  Speaker 2: us to win elections. Let me state that. fully here.
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  Speaker 2: I want us to hold power. I want us to
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  Speaker 2: hold power to do things to address people's suffering.
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  Speaker 8: In the world.
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  Speaker 2: And in order to do that, in a world of
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  Speaker 2: greater wealth and income inequality, we're swimming in a sea
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  Speaker 2: of corruption. The political economy is completely broken. You want
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  Speaker 2: people who come in with a mandate of, I am
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  Speaker 2: going to do something. Now, if I polled this audience
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  Speaker 2: and I said, In the first 100 days of the
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  Speaker 2: Mamdani administration, what do you suspect he will do? Most
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  Speaker 2: of you will be able to give me an answer.
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  Speaker 2: You're going to highlight. And I could say, freeze the.
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  Speaker 9: Universal.
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  Speaker 2: Right. There you go. Thank you. Proven point. Now, if
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  Speaker 2: I ask you, and again, I'm so excited that they won. Now,
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  Speaker 2: what are Governor Spanberger and Governor Sherrill going to do
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  Speaker 2: in the first 100 days?
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  Speaker 9: They'll figure out.
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  Speaker 2: They'll be competent administrators and I think will do things
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  Speaker 2: to improve people's lives. I don't quite yet know what
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  Speaker 2: they are. Maybe some of you could argue to me
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  Speaker 2: that you know better and I'm not going to debate
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  Speaker 2: you and doubt you. What I'm going to debate you
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  Speaker 2: and doubt you on is that the mandate of this
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  Speaker 2: election didn't tell the people of New Jersey and Virginia
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  Speaker 2: what is next going to happen for their lives. And
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: in the interest of trying to change the Democratic Party brand,
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  Speaker 2: I want people running with the sense that we're going
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  Speaker 2: to win this election, not on the backs of people
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  Speaker 2: hating Donald Trump and the corruption that he stands for. Yes, that.
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  Speaker 2: And when we get into office, there are two, three,
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  Speaker 2: four things that we are going to do to address affordability.
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  Speaker 2: And here's why. And here's how. And on that score,
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  Speaker 2: we got some work to do. That's how I answered
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  Speaker 2: the Mamdani question. More people thinking about their concrete authorities,
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  Speaker 2: matching those authorities with how I'm going to get affordability done.
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  Speaker 2: and telling voters that you can hold me accountable for
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  Speaker 2: this when you put me into office.
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  Speaker 3: Don't we think FAS should run for office? I've thought
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  Speaker 3: this all the time.
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  Speaker 10: And I am announcing.
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  Speaker 9: We're in the suit, too.
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  Speaker 3: I moderated the DNC debate, and I was like, he
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  Speaker 3: should run for office. Okay, I just put him on
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  Speaker 3: the spot. Go ahead.
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  Speaker 11: I will sort of agree with the idea, maybe not
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  Speaker 11: giving you the friction you were seeking there, FAS, but
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  Speaker 11: that's sort of, how we roll. You know, I think,
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  Speaker 11: but I think about when I worked in the Senate
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  Speaker 11: in 2010 for Harry Reid with Faz, you know, there
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  Speaker 11: were 60 Democratic senators in that chamber and we had seats,
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  Speaker 11: Democrats held at least one seat in 36 states, right?
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  Speaker 11: Today we hold seats in 25.
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  Speaker 2: Just to.
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  Speaker 11: You know, driving the point home, we had both seats
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  Speaker 11: in Arkansas. We had both seats in West Virginia. We
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  Speaker 11: had a seat in Louisiana, in Nebraska, in Indiana.
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  Speaker 9: We had seats everywhere.
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  Speaker 11: And what that allowed us to do was to pass
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  Speaker 11: a lot of stuff. That Congress in 2009, 2010, when
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  Speaker 11: Barack Obama was president, those first two years were the
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  Speaker 11: most productive Congress. We did more, we helped more people
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  Speaker 11: with concrete improvements in their lives than any Congress since
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  Speaker 11: the great society under President Obama's leadership.
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  Speaker 9: And you need to win big.
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  Speaker 11: You know, winning by 50, getting just 50 votes in
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  Speaker 11: the Senate is not enough because you might lose a
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  Speaker 11: Democrat here, you might lose a Democrat there, someone might
• 10:00
  Speaker 11: have an health issue. You need to go big. And
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  Speaker 11: so we need to be able to win everywhere. And
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  Speaker 11: to do that, you have to think about what are
• 10:09
  Speaker 11: policies that appeal to a broad swath of people. So
• 10:12
  Speaker 11: in 2008, Barack Obama was against the Iraq War, and
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  Speaker 11: he wanted to bring universal health care, and he wanted
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  Speaker 11: to clean up the swamp in Washington, D.C.
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  Speaker 3: Right?
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  Speaker 11: Those are three things that were incredibly impactful, that affected
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  Speaker 11: millions of lives, but that got him to a victory
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  Speaker 11: of 365 electoral votes, right? So Democrats need to win.
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  Speaker 11: We need to bring concrete improvements to people's lives, but
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  Speaker 11: we also need to win everywhere.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Jen, I want to ask about the governing aspect of this,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: because not like we're getting ahead of ourselves. It'd be
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  Speaker 1: nice if we had another big majority in Congress and
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: in the presidency, but I do think One of the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: challenges we face, and you have faced this both when
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: we were in the Obama White House and then when
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: you were in the Biden White House, is you get
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: into office, the president does focus on passing legislation, ideally,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: that is going to make life better for people, that
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  Speaker 1: is going to bring down costs, in our case, health
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  Speaker 1: care in 2009. Then, of course, 2010 comes around, and
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  Speaker 1: many of the Democrats got voted out who improved, who
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  Speaker 1: voted for health care to improve people's lives. The question is,
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  Speaker 1: you want to run on a message of affordability. You
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: want to run on a message that you're going to
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: improve people's lives. But then can you talk about the
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: challenges of once you're in government and do that, communicating
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: with people that you are actually doing stuff to improve
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: their lives when you know that it has not fixed
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: all the problems and that people are still wrestling with
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: high costs, even though you pass universal health care, the stimulus,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: whatever it may be.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, one of the geniuses of
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: the Mamdani campaign, and I would argue also Mikey Sherrill
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  Speaker 3: ran on putting in place an energy emergency. There were
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: specific things in each of these races that I think
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: people really bit into in the States. is that it
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: was digestible and it wasn't an opportunity agenda, because what
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: the hell is an opportunity agenda, right? It needs to
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: be things that people understand, that you don't need to
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: read a 50-page booklet. Okay, I'm getting to your question.
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  Speaker 3: I think the thing about governing is that you run
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: and you talk about a lot of things because you're
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: in debates, because you're doing interviews, because you are having
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: town hall meetings, and that's a really important part of
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: the process. But when you get into the process of governing,
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: you have to pick your priorities. And you have to pick, usually,
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: one or two things to start with. It doesn't mean
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: those are the only things that you can do. But
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: so for Mayor-elect Mamdani, is he going to start with
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: universal child care? I mean, what is the first thing?
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Because you want to have something you can say you've done. Now,
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: with the Affordable Care Act, you and I lived through this,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: and I don't mean to bring back post-traumatic stress disorder
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: for all of us. And we all lived through it, actually,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: in different ways. I think at the time, we still
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: felt like, and to be fair, we didn't determine the messaging,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: I don't think. Where's Dan? Should we bring him out?
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding.
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  Speaker 3: Dan is brilliant. But one of the things that was
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: decided collectively by the team we were on is that
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  Speaker 3: we were going to talk about it as bending the
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: cost curve. Does anybody here know what that means?
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  Speaker 10: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: In the out years.
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  Speaker 3: In the out years, sorry. There was like a thousand,
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: you remember this.
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  Speaker 9: I remember, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: A thousand pages. Of course, I mean, it was a
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: complicated bill. And we talked about bending the cost curve
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: and how the bill was going to do that. That
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: was a terrible message because nobody understood what it was.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: And the Affordable Care Act, which I think President Obama,
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: who I understand was here last night. That's very cool.
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  Speaker 12: Good.
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  Speaker 3: He, you know, when he finally started talking about it
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  Speaker 3: as individual incremental things. then it started to become more popular.
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  Speaker 3: And I think this is a lesson for how you
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: talk about things on campaigns, but also how you talk
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: about things when you're governing, which is not like I'm
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: going to wow people with my opportunity agenda or my
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: thousand page bill. You're like, I'm going to wow people
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: with my, I'm going to cover people under the age
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: of 25, or I'm going to cover people with preexisting conditions.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm going to tell real people stories about how
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: it's impacting them and benefiting them. Would that have meant
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: that we would have won in 2010, the midterms? I
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: think I remember at a certain point we were getting
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: so beaten I like went home from the White House
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: because it was like tomorrow will be hard. Probably not
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: because there are cyclical things, but I do think that
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: there are lessons about messaging that can be taken away
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: from how we didn't do it effectively the first round.
• 14:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, just to jump in there. One of the biggest
• 14:44
  Speaker 5: problems we have with governing is weak Democrats, right? We
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: have a lot of people who are up there. They
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: get power and they don't do anything with their power.
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: And I think one of the things we saw from
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: Mayor-elect Mamdani on Tuesday night is he grabbed that microphone
• 14:58
  Speaker 5: and he said, let me tell you what we're going
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: to do. I have 104,000 canvassers that we just went
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: to elect me. Now we got to get this done.
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: And he used the power of the microphone to get
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: people excited. And we're going to go on to our
• 15:11
  Speaker 5: next big challenge. And I think so many Democrats, when
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: they have won, their first thing is going to be like, OK,
• 15:19
  Speaker 5: how do we compromise this? Instead of saying, how do
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: we get some big shit done? Because right now, we
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: have a lot of stuff that we need. And it's
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: about time that we get Democrats who actually stand for
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: something and then run and win and then achieve it.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: So let me ask, because I sort of worry about
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: this heading into the midterms. Because I think I've heard
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: various people on this stage and everyone else say, Democrats
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: don't just need to, we can't just run against Trump.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: We need an affirmative vision.
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: Yes, I agree with that.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Also, if we win the House and win the Senate,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: all the things that we promised the affirmative vision will
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: not happen if we take back Congress, because Donald Trump
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: will still be president for two more years and would
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: veto any legislation that we passed. And so I wonder
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: how you guys think about the story of the party
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that we're telling heading into the midterms, where you do
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: want to lay out an affirmative vision if you're running
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: for Senate or running for House, but at the same time,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: you don't want to get into this trap where you
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: overpromise things to voters that the Democrats will not be
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: able to deliver on once they get into Congress.
• 16:25
  Speaker 11: Well, can I actually, you know, this reminds me a
• 16:28
  Speaker 11: lot of 2006, right? When, when Democrats against, against the odds,
• 16:32
  Speaker 11: they took back the house and against the odds, they
• 16:34
  Speaker 11: took back the Senate. So they had control of both
• 16:36
  Speaker 11: chambers of Congress under president George W.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Bush.
• 16:40
  Speaker 11: That's actually not a bad situation because the Republican is
• 16:44
  Speaker 11: in power.
• 16:45
  Speaker 9: They're the president.
• 16:46
  Speaker 11: You can pass a lot of stuff with your democratic
• 16:48
  Speaker 11: majorities and, send it over to the White House and
• 16:51
  Speaker 11: let the White House, the Republican president of the White House,
• 16:53
  Speaker 11: block it, right? So the key thing is to get
• 16:56
  Speaker 11: those majorities to stay on message and then to start
• 16:59
  Speaker 11: passing things and show people, this is like show, don't tell,
• 17:03
  Speaker 11: show people what they could have if Democrats were in power.
• 17:07
  Speaker 11: We just, the last piece of the puzzle is we
• 17:09
  Speaker 11: need to get this Republican out of the White House.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: But this is, yeah, this goes back to my opening question,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: which is like the Rosie scenario where, and you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: It's the first week after the election. We're all feeling good.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Everyone's coming together. But there's a lot of, like, every
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Democrat can run their own race depending on where they are.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: But in victory, when we're all in Congress, they're going
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to have to come together and figure out what legislation
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: we're passing together as a party. And so there is
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: going to have to be some kind of agreement whether
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: you ran in a red state and won or whether
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: you ran in a more progressive campaign in a deep
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: blue state and won.
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: Right, and that's why costs... makes a lot of sense,
• 17:48
  Speaker 6: it's common ground.
• 17:49
  Speaker 7: And Democrats don't have control of anything in Washington right now,
• 17:54
  Speaker 7: but there sure is how winning a fight over healthcare costs,
• 17:58
  Speaker 7: and they're winning it because they picked a smart fight.
• 18:01
  Speaker 6: They picked a- Finally.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, finally, right?
• 18:04
  Speaker 6: They picked a smart fight.
• 18:06
  Speaker 7: They've been remarkably disciplined about it, and it's just one
• 18:10
  Speaker 7: issue that everyone can understand. If we do not extend
• 18:14
  Speaker 7: these subsidies, people's healthcare premiums will double. And so I
• 18:17
  Speaker 7: think we just need to keep things simple, and I
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: understand over-promising. People are very skeptical of politicians, but- I
• 18:26
  Speaker 7: think more than anything, what voters want right now to
• 18:29
  Speaker 7: hear from Democrats is that they understand that they feel
• 18:32
  Speaker 7: their pain, that they understand the most existential issue in
• 18:35
  Speaker 7: their life is affording to live every day. And in 2024,
• 18:41
  Speaker 7: a lot of voters did not hear that message from us.
• 18:44
  Speaker 7: We were going out there saying Bidenomics, everything with the
• 18:46
  Speaker 7: economy is so great that we're going to put our
• 18:49
  Speaker 7: slap our White House name on it. And a lot
• 18:52
  Speaker 7: of voters were hearing us talk about abortion, about democracy,
• 18:54
  Speaker 7: about climate as these existential issues, when the thing that
• 18:59
  Speaker 7: keeps them up at night is whether they can pay
• 19:02
  Speaker 7: their credit card bills, pay their mortgage, afford their child's childcare.
• 19:07
  Speaker 7: And I think until we meet voters where they are
• 19:09
  Speaker 7: on that, and that's the most important thing we can do,
• 19:13
  Speaker 7: I am sort of less concerned about overpromising. I just
• 19:15
  Speaker 7: want to see more Democrats going out and meeting voters
• 19:18
  Speaker 7: where they are on those critical issues.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: 2005, led into 2006, Speaker Pelosi, she's not Speaker Pelosi,
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, respective leaders of the House
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: and the Senate, decided that while George W.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Bush was privatizing Social Security, that they were not just
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: going to go into the next election cycle, this 2006
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: election cycle, with George Bush is bad. So they came
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: together and they said, hey, six for 06. We're going
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: to come up with six specific agenda items. And on
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: that list, and I urge you guys to go back
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: and look at it, one of those said, we will
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: pass an Affordable Health Care Act. Now, to John's point,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: it actually didn't end up passing in 2006. You know
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: what it did pass? It led to a 2008 election.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: And the framework of what those candidates campaigned on came
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: out of six for 06. Tell you another story. In
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: that number six items was raise the minimum wage.
• 20:15
  Speaker 9: To raise the.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Minimum wage from $ 5. 15 an hour higher. They come into Congress,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. They get a
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: minimum wage increase, demand it of Bush. He agrees and
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: puts it in, changes it from $ 5. 15 an hour to $ 7. 25
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: an hour. My friends, that is the last time we
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: ever raised the minimum wage. My point to John here,
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: and all of us, is that having the demands meant something,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: meant something for changing people's lives. And then the next
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: question that John was asking is, well, now you're governing,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: how do people know about it? And I want to
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: credit all the people on stage, but particularly Crooked, for
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: building a media empire. Because part of the problem, and
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to do it ourselves, is you get into power,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And you have to tell stories about what the hell
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: are we doing? And part of the reason why Trump
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: is still, he isn't at 5% as he should be,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: but he's probably at something where 40, because he's got
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: a right wing media ecosystem that is telling them every
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: single day that our hero is doing all these amazing
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: things while the rest of the majority of this country
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: realizes what the hell is going on. My point being
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: that we need this kind of ecosystem such that when
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: we're governing all of us who are doing media, John, myself, others,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: we have to be talking to the people in power,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: brought along in the journeys of what are you trying
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: to do, why are you trying to do it, and
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: help them animate the stories about their accomplishments.
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: Can I add one more parallel? We're all going to
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: get out our canes and wheelchairs. Talk about the 2006 cycle.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: I was at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that cycle.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I was Jen's volunteer at the end.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Thank you. The other reason, and this is tied to today,
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: the other reason Democrats won back the House in 06
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: is because of the culture of corruption of Republicans. That's
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: important because we used to have a crony of the week.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: We would put out a crony of the week. Don Sherwood,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: he was quite a crony. Anyway, my point about this
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: is that It's important to tie your proactive agenda, what
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: you're gonna do, you're gonna fight for working people, you're
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: gonna fight for childcare, you're gonna fight for cheaper transportation,
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: you're gonna fight for, you know, against energy prices going up,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: with what the other guy or gal is not doing,
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: because they don't care about you. They care about themselves,
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: they care about putting money in their pockets, and money
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: in billionaires' pockets as well. There's so much culture of
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: corruption stuff right now with the Trump administration and the
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: people around him, It is about having a proactive agenda,
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: and I think this is something that Democrats should have
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: learned the lesson from the last couple cycles about, but
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: it's also about tying it to why you're a better
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: choice and why your candidacy is a better choice than
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: the other person and who they do not care about,
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: which is working people. And that was very similar to 06.
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: And just going back there, we have to be able
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: to name an enemy, right? Like they're coming at us.
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: You need a crony.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: I mean, one of the things Senator Gallego was saying-
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: was about how, as we're dealing with health care costs
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: going up, and that's why we're fighting for premiums to
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: not explode, everything's happening with food stamps. And what they're
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: doing is they're pitting the middle class against the working class.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: They're getting everyone mad at each other when you still
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: have the bosses taking millions and millions of dollars. And
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: I think we have to clearly communicate those kind of messages.
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: and show who the enemy is, and it's not the
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: working people. We have to show that we're fighting for
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: the working people. And Democrats have not, I mean, we're
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: getting better at it, but I think last cycle, a
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: lot of Democrats didn't show that, and that's why we lost.
• 23:50
  Speaker 6: And, you know, right now, for instance, we get great example.
• 23:53
  Speaker 7: I'm sure you all saw the chaos on the news
• 23:55
  Speaker 7: about what's going on at the airports with all the
• 23:56
  Speaker 7: canceled flights. I think 10% of all commercial flights today canceled. Meanwhile,
• 24:01
  Speaker 7: you know what they're not canceling? Private jet flights. And
• 24:05
  Speaker 7: that shows exactly where the priorities are. And I think
• 24:09
  Speaker 7: there's some very low-hanging fruit for us in 2026, which
• 24:15
  Speaker 7: is something like the Stock Act, right? And frankly, this
• 24:19
  Speaker 7: is an issue where not everyone in the Democratic Party's
• 24:21
  Speaker 7: hands are clean. But I was talking with a candidate
• 24:24
  Speaker 7: yesterday who's running against a Republican who has quadrupled her
• 24:29
  Speaker 7: net worth in Congress solely through stock trades. And while
• 24:34
  Speaker 7: we're cutting food stamps and all that, while they're doing
• 24:37
  Speaker 7: all that stuff, they are quadrupling their own personal wealth.
• 24:41
  Speaker 7: And so to Rebecca's point, I think we need to
• 24:44
  Speaker 7: name these villains. To your point, we need to call
• 24:47
  Speaker 7: Ashley Hinson a crony of the week sometime soon.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, let's go.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Ashley, congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Free policy idea. Tax private jet travel. Tax yachts. That's good.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: And tax the rich.
• 25:04
  Speaker 8: There we go.
• 25:06
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  Speaker 1: season now streaming only on Paramount +. So the party
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: can't just develop the message and execute on a message
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: in a vacuum. The Republican Party gets a say, Donald
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Trump gets a say in what is covered and what
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: we talk about and what the national debate is. They
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: clearly are not going to want to talk about affordability.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: They have to say that now, obviously.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: Did you see Trump called it the affordability?
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: The affordability. And he said, I don't want to hear
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: about the affordability anymore. Which kind of signals to you
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: where this is going. And so, as they usually do,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: they will want to turn the debate next year towards
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: the issue terrain that they believe is more favorable to them. Crime, immigration,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: whatever the culture war of the moment is, it changes
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: every year.
• 28:17
  Speaker 13: And now.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: They can also back up that talk with real action,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: militarized cities, ICE raids, trampling on people's constitutional rights. I
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: very much get that voters, most voters, especially voters who
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: haven't had their rights taken away or their freedoms trampled on,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: do not care as much about these issues as they
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: do about the cost of living. And yet, I wonder
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: if it is practical or realistic for Democrats to think
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: that we can just run in 2026 on affordability and
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: cost of living and not talk about what is happening
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: all around us?
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: You know what voters hate?
• 29:02
  Speaker 8: Chaos.
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: They don't like chaos. Like they want things normal and good.
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: They want, so I think it's a little bit of both.
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: You know, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I just,
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: it's not one thing and there's not like one magic bullet,
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: but you have to show that like, I always say
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: that people take from the Bill Clinton years, triangulation and
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: all the like centrist stuff when really they should have
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: been taking like, I feel your pain. We kind of
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: missed that spot. So I do think we have to
• 29:27
  Speaker 5: have some empathy. We have to connect with voters. And
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: then we have to show them that we're going to
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: fight for something and we're going to protect them.
• 29:32
  Speaker 11: And it's defense and offense, right? I mean, in any strategy,
• 29:35
  Speaker 11: you have your defense and your offense. And I think
• 29:38
  Speaker 11: Democrats learned a really good lesson on immigration. the last
• 29:40
  Speaker 11: six months or so, where there were some folks saying,
• 29:44
  Speaker 11: don't talk about this issue. When Trump was, you know,
• 29:47
  Speaker 11: sending masked men on the street to grab people and
• 29:48
  Speaker 11: kidnap them and And people said, this is not a
• 29:51
  Speaker 11: favorable issue for Democrats, so don't talk about it at all.
• 29:54
  Speaker 11: But it was an issue that was in the news
• 29:56
  Speaker 11: all the time, and you had to talk about it.
• 29:58
  Speaker 11: But what Democrats did was they talked about it in
• 30:00
  Speaker 11: a smart way, to Rebecca's point about voters not liking chaos.
• 30:04
  Speaker 11: They said, this is about law and order. These are
• 30:05
  Speaker 11: violations of law and order. And they found a message
• 30:07
  Speaker 11: that resonated broadly. And they brought Trump's numbers on immigration down.
• 30:12
  Speaker 11: They showed that Democrats can win even on these issues
• 30:15
  Speaker 11: that don't start out as favorable to them. So then
• 30:18
  Speaker 11: you do that, you have your sort of defensive play,
• 30:20
  Speaker 11: then you pivot to your offense. But we don't have
• 30:23
  Speaker 11: to abandon these issues that don't start out as good
• 30:25
  Speaker 11: issues for us. Democrats can lean into those and they
• 30:27
  Speaker 11: can win on them too.
• 30:28
  Speaker 7: But I absolutely think Democrats can win the immigration argument.
• 30:32
  Speaker 7: And I say this, I worked on Tom Suozzi's special
• 30:34
  Speaker 7: election in 2024 and it was staked on the issue
• 30:37
  Speaker 7: of immigration. People thought he was dead in the water
• 30:39
  Speaker 7: because it was such a top issue and what he
• 30:42
  Speaker 7: did is this And how Democrats are gonna be able
• 30:45
  Speaker 7: to win this issue means you can't just decry the
• 30:48
  Speaker 7: lawless ice raids You got to start by just saying
• 30:51
  Speaker 7: something common sense.
• 30:52
  Speaker 6: We need a.
• 30:53
  Speaker 7: Secure border we are a sovereign nation and that is
• 30:58
  Speaker 7: part of being a sovereign nation and because most voters
• 31:01
  Speaker 7: are even as they're souring on Trump, they are not
• 31:03
  Speaker 7: going to listen to the other stuff we have to
• 31:05
  Speaker 7: say on immigration until we lead with something common sense
• 31:08
  Speaker 7: like that. Now, I think on immigration, we can also
• 31:11
  Speaker 7: go on the offense. And we've started to see some people,
• 31:14
  Speaker 7: especially mayors, doing this effectively by saying that what these
• 31:18
  Speaker 7: ICE raids do, they don't make us safer.
• 31:21
  Speaker 6: They actually make us all less safe.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 31:25
  Speaker 7: Because immigrant communities, if they're being raided, they're not going
• 31:29
  Speaker 7: to go and want to work with law enforcement. They're
• 31:31
  Speaker 7: not going to report crimes to the police. They're not
• 31:33
  Speaker 7: going to testify against criminals in court. And that makes
• 31:37
  Speaker 7: us all less safe. And I think we've got to
• 31:39
  Speaker 7: be comfortable feeling like we can go on offense and
• 31:43
  Speaker 7: take back the public safety conversation from the Republicans.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something that I feel like the party
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: has to figure out, especially as we head into national
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: elections in 2026 and especially 2028, which is like, what
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: is the story for the party on immigration? Like, what
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: do we stand for? And there's been, there has been
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: a couple choices, and I'm using immigration as an example,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: but I think it's probably the most salient one right
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: now because of what we're living through. There's a couple choices,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: which is we either moderate on the issue to take
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: it off the table, acknowledge that we need a secure border,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: and then that's it. We don't talk about it at
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: all and just try to like economic populism, costs, affordability,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: and try to bring the debate that way, or we,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: and I think we did this in 2019 and 2020,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: especially during the last round of presidential primary debates in 2020,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: we sort of take the backlash against Trump's immigration policy
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: as permission to go further left on immigration.
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: I mean, I was in Arizona last cycle, and one
• 32:50
  Speaker 5: of the biggest challenges we saw was that voters didn't
• 32:53
  Speaker 5: believe Democrats anymore. Because every cycle, Democrats said, were for
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: comprehensive immigration reform. And every cycle, we're like, this is
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: why it didn't happen. And at a certain point, we
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: were just promising and promising. And they just didn't give
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: Democrats any credit. So we just had to start with, OK,
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: first we need a secure border. And then we can
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: talk about how to, you know, pathway for dreamers and
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: all that. But it just, it was tricky. Like, the
• 33:18
  Speaker 5: Biden administration did not do a good job on immigration.
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: And it was felt all the way down. And we
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: have to be smarter going forward.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: That and there was an actual migrant crisis, that there
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: was a policy failure. It was a struggle that a
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: lot of towns and communities had to deal with. And
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: I'd go upstream on this question. It's not just immigration policy.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: It's a matter of are Democrats comfortable being enforcers? Enforcers.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: And when you own executive power and authority, you know,
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: you own the police department too. You own the military
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: as well. And some of the challenges, I think, of
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: the Democrats are they understood that they're scared of the
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: people who hold the guns or they don't want to
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: wield power and authority and give them direction. Because the
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: problem is on the other side, they give them the direction. Yeah,
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: go round everybody up, build this damn wall, go raid
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles. We have to have a vision of enforcement
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: that's not just law enforcement, by the way, government enforcement.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Would we be seen as a side that kills a
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: government program that isn't working. And too often, would we
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: fire somebody? Would we fire somebody? These were honest and
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: legitimate critiques of Biden, that you didn't fire anybody. You
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: don't hold the government agencies accountable when they do bad things.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: So you could empathize, and hopefully should empathize, with some
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: of this most Musk Doge thing. Maybe they'll come in
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: and get this squared away.
• 34:40
  Speaker 9: No, they did not.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: Fast flash forward. But there's a desire for, show me
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Democrats who are comfortable wielding power, authority, understanding enforcement is
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: part of the job. One of the reasons why I
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: think I love, you know, where's Lena? I don't know
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: if Lena Kahn is still here. But she owned that
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: in the economic realm, we're enforcers. We can bring lawsuits.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: We use the government sticks to do and accomplish things
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: with friction and own that I am not afraid of
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: that friction. I have a vision of using enforcement to
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: do good for America. That's what they expect of us,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: the greater good for the greater numbers.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: I would just add that if you look back on,
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: I didn't mean to cut off the clap. If you
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: look back at Tuesday, one of the reasons I think
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won in those states is
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: because they won partially on their biographies, which were national security,
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: which were strong. I live in Virginia. There were so
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: many ads run. My son was like, is seven. And
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: he was like deeply engaged in what the outcome of
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: the attorney general's race was going to be because it
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: was like the ads were so constant. And I don't
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: think I think sometimes Democrats as a party, I don't
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: even know who I'm referring to, run away from that
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: as an important part of a background. I mean, Abigail
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Spanberger ran with like people from law enforcement in her ads.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: That was very powerful. That worked in Virginia. I'd also
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: say I know you're deeper in polling, so you can
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: check me here. Trump has lost support, he's lost ground
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: in polling on things like deportations, right? And illegal actions
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: and overreach, there's different ways it's measured. I think he's
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: still near 50%, if not, I don't know where he is,
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: but right near 50% on securing the border or something
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: like that. So this point about what you say first
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Democrats need to be proud of being strong on securing
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: the border, on being a party that keeps communities safe.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: ICE raids don't keep communities safe. Neither does National Guard,
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: who are not trained to be in communities. That does
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: not keep communities safe. You know what else? It hurts
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: the National Guard. These are people who signed up to
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: serve their country, and they're being sent into communities to
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: do jobs that they shouldn't be doing. I'm saying all
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: this because I think sometimes there's a shying away from
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: a national security or a security background as being valuable
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: or important. And it is important. And I think it
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: is a way to combat some of this.
• 37:04
  Speaker 9: That's right. People want to be.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: Not for it. And that's we're debating here.
• 37:11
  Speaker 9: You're right. They want to be safe. They want a
• 37:13
  Speaker 9: secure border. You know, that's things that they sort of
• 37:15
  Speaker 9: agree with both parties on.
• 37:16
  Speaker 11: Then there are things they agree with us on when
• 37:18
  Speaker 11: it comes to immigration. They believe we're a nation of immigrants.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:21
  Speaker 9: They believe in a path to citizenship.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 37:23
  Speaker 11: They believe in treating people with decency and respect. And
• 37:26
  Speaker 11: even when there's enforcement that has to happen, that it
• 37:29
  Speaker 11: be done in an orderly way and not grabbing people
• 37:31
  Speaker 11: off the street. But in order to get people to,
• 37:34
  Speaker 11: you know, for the parts of immigration policy where people
• 37:37
  Speaker 11: agree with us to break through, we do have to
• 37:40
  Speaker 11: talk about a secure border. And once we do that,
• 37:42
  Speaker 11: then we can open that conversation and say, we believe
• 37:44
  Speaker 11: in fairness, we believe in a nation of immigrants, and
• 37:47
  Speaker 11: we believe.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: In treating people... And morality and humanity, which is an
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: important part of it too. Can I just add one
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: thing that I feel like, because we've given people lots
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: of assignments, I feel like we could take things off
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: their plates, because this just reminds me of, I am
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: out of the business of working in campaigns, unless Faz runs,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: and then maybe he'll want me, maybe he won't. I'm
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: just kidding. But I feel like there's no reason people
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: need to fill out questionnaires. Questionnaires are like the devil,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: and I'm sorry for people who work for groups, but
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: I just think that they are boxing candidates into things
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: that are unnecessary. Everyone's not going to agree with me.
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: We can debate this question. The other thing I would
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: say is, Spending time with editorial boards of national newspapers
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: is not a good use of time. Spending days or
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: weeks prepping for debates does not feel to me like
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: a good use of time. You guys can all disagree
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: with me.
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: I was going to go into the questionnaire.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: So I'm saying all these things because I think we're
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: talking a lot about what people need to do. And
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: I think the way that politics has evolved and running
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: for office has evolved means there, I mean, if there are,
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: if there are talking points coming from a national organization,
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: rip them up, burn them in your files. I mean,
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: it's these, there are some things that I think candidates
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: can take off their list is my point. And the
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: immigration conversation.
• 39:06
  Speaker 9: I support a question. The question should be, can you
• 39:08
  Speaker 9: beat the Republic?
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 39:10
  Speaker 7: And can I just say one thing, right? is when Jen's,
• 39:13
  Speaker 7: to put it more in like layman's terms, right? When
• 39:16
  Speaker 7: you're talking about questionnaires, think of the ad that got
• 39:20
  Speaker 7: the most attention from 2024. Kamala's for they, them. Donald
• 39:23
  Speaker 7: Trump is for you, for me, whatever it was.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: For us, yes.
• 39:28
  Speaker 6: You know where that ad came from?
• 39:30
  Speaker 7: It came from an ACLU questionnaire where all the candidates
• 39:35
  Speaker 7: were asked, do you support gender reassignment surgeries for, I think,
• 39:41
  Speaker 7: undocumented immigrants in detention or people in prison? And can
• 39:46
  Speaker 7: you tell me, Can anyone guess how many times, when
• 39:49
  Speaker 7: I was working for Mayor Pete, he was asked about
• 39:51
  Speaker 7: that on the campaign trail?
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Zero.
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: So why the heck, and.
• 39:58
  Speaker 7: Maybe you could answer this, because you're at the ACLU,
• 40:00
  Speaker 7: like why did the ACLU ask candidates to take positions
• 40:04
  Speaker 7: on issues that literally no voter would have even come
• 40:08
  Speaker 7: up with and cooked up in their mind?
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: I was there, so I'll answer that. That's not too hard. So,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: you know, The ACLU's job is to advocate for civil
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: rights and civil liberties in America. They bring lawsuits on
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: behalf of people who face serious issues. Their job is
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: to educate politicians. I worked for them prior. to this,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: but I certainly appreciate the notions. And then we get
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: questionnaires like Jen said. You stand on your own two
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: feet as a politician. You tear that up. You not
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: respond to it. But if I get a questionnaire from
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: Bernie from a Medicare for All organization, I'm responding to it.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: I'm letting you know this is something I care deeply about.
• 40:42
  Speaker 9: I want to let you know.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Also, I solicit knowledge. I solicit information. I'm not just
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: running to defeat the Republicans. Sure, I'm also trying to
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: learn something. about the economy. I'm trying to learn something
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: about this nation. I want to represent people's pain and suffering.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Right now, one of my challenges with our current modern
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: Democratic Party is it is not sufficiently grassroots enough. The
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: inputs into our party are not coming enough from regular people.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: This is a role that I wanted from the Democratic
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: National Committee. I want it from all of us to
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: feel like we are connected to the people who are suffering. Now,
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: if you're running for office, you want to hear the pain, right?
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: You want it to come up to you. It is
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: your job to stand on your own two feet and say,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: that's not what I believe. So if ACLU says, oh,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: you should say this, I say, with all due respect, no.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: I disagree with you. Thank you for your position. I
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: put more of the onus on Akamla Harris than I
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: do ACLU making an advocacy position that they believe in.
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: 100%. Blaming the groups is a cop out. If we're
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: going to win, we want people to feel engaged. And
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: right now, there's lots of different kinds of groups. They
• 41:46
  Speaker 5: stand for lots of different things.
• 41:48
  Speaker 8: It's important.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: You don't have to say yes to everything. But you
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: should show that you can open your ears and listen
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: and be curious about other viewpoints. And what we're doing
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: is we're taking a lot of cheap shots and we're
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: not paying attention to what voters want and what they
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: need to win. And that will include all of us.
• 42:05
  Speaker 5: And when we say your views don't matter and your
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: views don't matter, we're turning off voters. And I think
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: what we saw, you saw it on Tuesday, is we
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: need to bring more people in. We need to make
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: more people feel like they're a part of this.
• 42:16
  Speaker 10: So, Adam, I want to ask you this.
• 42:18
  Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:19
  Speaker 11: So it's one thing, you know, like if you want
• 42:21
  Speaker 11: to send questionnaires and, you know, I agree, actually, that
• 42:24
  Speaker 11: Democrats should take more agency and, you know, have the
• 42:28
  Speaker 11: stones to say what they believe and not, you know,
• 42:31
  Speaker 11: try to cater to the groups. But it's one thing
• 42:34
  Speaker 11: to ask the question. It's another thing because then in
• 42:36
  Speaker 11: a Democratic primary, the groups will spend millions and millions
• 42:39
  Speaker 11: of dollars. beating up the people who don't take the
• 42:42
  Speaker 11: positions that they want them to take. So it's not
• 42:44
  Speaker 11: this benign, oh, we're going to ask your views, and
• 42:46
  Speaker 11: then we're, you know, you do you, we'll do us. Like,
• 42:49
  Speaker 11: they come after you hard. And in a Democratic primary,
• 42:52
  Speaker 11: that really matters. And I think, you know, over the
• 42:55
  Speaker 11: last 10 years or so.
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: I mean, the biggest groups that went after Democrats were
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: AIPAC and crypto.
• 42:59
  Speaker 9: Well, that's... I mean.
• 43:03
  Speaker 8: It's not the lefties.
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: They don't have money.
• 43:07
  Speaker 9: A group is a group.
• 43:09
  Speaker 11: 2020, the ACLU had a lot of money and they
• 43:11
  Speaker 11: spent a shit ton against Democrats who didn't agree with
• 43:15
  Speaker 11: them on the questionnaires. They planted people in town halls
• 43:17
  Speaker 11: to ask the questions in the most provocative way possible.
• 43:19
  Speaker 11: And I think what happened there is that we lost
• 43:21
  Speaker 11: sight of the fact that vulnerable communities suffer when Republicans
• 43:25
  Speaker 11: win elections.
• 43:27
  Speaker 9: Period.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 43:28
  Speaker 9: And every Democrat... on the 2020 debate stage.
• 43:34
  Speaker 11: Would have been better for trans people, for every vulnerable
• 43:37
  Speaker 11: community in America if they had won, right? And we
• 43:40
  Speaker 11: collectively need to pull back a little bit and keep
• 43:42
  Speaker 11: that big picture in mind. When Republicans win, vulnerable people suffer.
• 43:56
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• 45:50
  Speaker 1: I do want to say, because I'm thinking about the
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: 2028 primary here, right? And how this is going to
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: play out. And I think Everyone on the stage, sort
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: of like, you know, various ideological corners of the parties.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: And it seems like there is agreement that if a
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: group pushes you to take a position as a politician,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: stand on your own two feet, say no. But the
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: way this comes up in a debate is the reason
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: that everyone except Michael Bennett raised their hand on do
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: you want to decriminalize border crossings is because Julian Castro
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: proposed decriminalizing border crossings. And so what happens is these,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: it's not just the groups and it's not just the
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: groups spending money and it's not the questionnaires, it's the
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: candidates who then decide in a primary, this is how
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: we have to differentiate ourselves from each other. And you
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: can imagine as we head into 2028, there will be
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: a candidate or two who says, yes, ICE has been
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: out of control and maybe we need a secure border,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: but we should abolish ICE. And I think we all know,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: we've all seen, I know, but we've all seen the
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: polling and we know that that is, Wildly unpopular, even
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: though ICE is very unpopular right now, more so than
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: it's been in a long, long time. But we know
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: that people want immigration enforcement. This is only to say
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: that I do wonder, as we head into 2028, if
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: we have, do you guys think that we have learned
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: the lessons of the 2020 primary? Or do you think
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: that we are?
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: I think we need to abolish the word abolish. Because
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: everything after it, people are very against.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, maybe this is a naive thing to say,
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: but I feel like part of what we don't see
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: people who may aspire to run for president do is
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: sit down with their advisors and actually decide what they
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: think and what they believe. And if somebody actually believes
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: that they want to limit ICE or... get rid of
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: ICE or reduce the funding for ICE, and all of
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: those things are quite reasonable, frankly. They just got a
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: huge amount of funding that's unnecessary. Then they should talk
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: about that with their advisors or with themselves or with
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: their family or whomever and then stand by it. And
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: I don't think that happens enough. I think people rest
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: on the laurels of their personal stories, of their great
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: charisma and of their ability to win in states, and
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: then they don't talk about the tough issues and the
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: tricky questions they're gonna get asked about when they get
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: on the debate stage. So it's like, what do you believe?
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: Start from there. Don't look at the polling. Maybe that's naive,
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: but that's, I guess, where I would start from right now.
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: Not just the debate stage, the attack ads. You have
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: to know what you stand for or why you're running.
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: I mean, I'm so glad that Governor O'Shea ran, but
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: the attack ads against her were really brutal. And it
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: was just again and again asking why are you doing this?
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: Why are you running? And I think we need to
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: show that we're running for a reason. And we have
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: to have thoughtful candidates who actually, like, know what they
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: stand for.
• 48:50
  Speaker 7: Well, I would say, but, you know, let's be fair
• 48:52
  Speaker 7: to Mikey. I mean, she won by 13.6 percentage points.
• 48:57
  Speaker 7: It was pretty clear to voters what she was running on,
• 48:59
  Speaker 7: which was, and I disagree with you on that one, Fez,
• 49:01
  Speaker 7: it was affordability. And it was the utility companies costs
• 49:05
  Speaker 7: there are skyrocketing in New Jersey. And she said, day one,
• 49:09
  Speaker 7: I will declare a state of emergency on electricity costs.
• 49:13
  Speaker 7: And we're going to see electricity costs keep going up
• 49:16
  Speaker 7: everywhere because of all this AI stuff, data centers, everything.
• 49:19
  Speaker 7: And this is we're going to have to figure out
• 49:21
  Speaker 7: how to, to come back with that. But I did,
• 49:23
  Speaker 7: I thought, I think it's important to say with Mikey,
• 49:26
  Speaker 7: she had a clear message that ad was tough, but
• 49:28
  Speaker 7: it's not like the rest of the campaign. She wasn't
• 49:31
  Speaker 7: able to articulate what she stood for.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: So, so to Rebecca's point and Jen's point about just
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: sitting down and thinking what you believe and what, what,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: You believe about the country, where you want to take
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: the country. So 1992, Bill Clinton wins by focusing on
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: the economy, but he also makes community and responsibility central
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: to his message. 2008, Barack Obama wins focusing on the economy.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: He also makes changing and reforming politics as usual central
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: to his message. Joe Biden focuses on the economy in 2020,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: also talks about democracy, fight for the soul of the nation.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: The next crop of 2028 candidates, what do you think
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: after a decade of dealing with Donald Trump and the
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: damage he's done to this country, in addition to economic
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: cost of living concerns, what are the other sort of
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: big picture, affirmative vision kind of stuff that you'd want
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: to hear from other topics and other areas that you'd
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: want to hear from Democrats?
• 50:30
  Speaker 11: I'd like to see a Democrat say, look, in America collectively,
• 50:34
  Speaker 11: we believe that if you work hard and play by
• 50:36
  Speaker 11: the rules, You should not fall into poverty. You shouldn't
• 50:39
  Speaker 11: go hungry. You should have everything you need to make
• 50:42
  Speaker 11: ends meet. And let's think about what we need to
• 50:45
  Speaker 11: do to make that happen. That's something that brings us
• 50:48
  Speaker 11: all together as Democrats. It's a core value for us
• 50:50
  Speaker 11: as a country. We have a big shift coming in
• 50:53
  Speaker 11: our economy with AI where there are gonna be shocks
• 50:56
  Speaker 11: that are economic. There are gonna be shocks that are social.
• 50:58
  Speaker 11: There are gonna be a lot of people out of
• 51:00
  Speaker 11: work with a lot of time on their hands. What
• 51:01
  Speaker 11: can we do collectively to make sure that that time
• 51:04
  Speaker 11: is put to productive ends and that people don't fall
• 51:06
  Speaker 11: into poverty? But I think we've lost sight of big
• 51:10
  Speaker 11: causes like that, of ending poverty in the richest nation
• 51:14
  Speaker 11: in the world. And that's going to take a lot
• 51:20
  Speaker 11: of ideas from all factions of the party, but I'd
• 51:22
  Speaker 11: like to see somebody put forward a big idea like
• 51:24
  Speaker 11: that and make it happen.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: I think one of the interesting things, given how fucked
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: up everything is right now, is that I don't think
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: people running, including people running in 2028, have an obligation
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: to defend. They need to defend rule of law, I
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: would like to see, right? They need to defend people's rights,
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: but I don't think they need to defend the existing
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: institutions exactly as they exist. And so I think it's
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: a moment where having big, bold ideas is important, and
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: they can take many forms. The other piece, which may
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: sound contradictory, but I think is important, is what Trump
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: has left us, is going to leave us with, may
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: he leave the White House, is a completely chaotic and
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: destroyed government system that isn't doing necessarily what it's supposed
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: to do for people. So there's an element of like
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: bold competence. I don't know what the exact thing is,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: but that I think I would like to see, but,
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: and maybe this is more of a 2026 thing, which
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: is kind of, there's no institutions are not popular. The
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: party is not popular. So to me, some of what
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: I'd like to see from candidates is free themselves from
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: feeling like they're obligated to defend everybody in power and
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: everybody who has a position of power in every institution
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: out there, even if they're defending values.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: Maybe I will surprise you with a non-policy answer a
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: little bit on this, which is, I'll tell you just
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: my personal reflection on where I feel we're at, which
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: is society around us is in a period in this
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: greatest country on earth in cultural decay. Cultural decay because
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: we see so much selfishness and greed and exploitation in
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: every damn corner of this economy and in politics. And
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: what it does for us and our children makes us
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: feel we are not connected to one another. No sense
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: that we are in an experiment together, that we're humans.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: We give a damn about each other. I care about
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: your life. You care about my life. No. Only get
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: rich off the back of somebody else. Only get power
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: over pushing somebody else down. What we got to think
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: about is something that addresses the sense that as AI comes,
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: there's a growing wealth and income inequality gap. There's also
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: a huge power gap. And the people who are being
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: left behind are saying, who cares about me? Who thinks
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: about me? And a Democrat who comes in saying, I
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: have a vision of a couple of things. A sense
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: of calling you into service. that government used to do
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: this thing. We urge people to sign up for the military.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: We urge them to Climate Corps. We give you mission
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: and purpose that is for the greater good, give you
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: jobs and opportunities that don't just mean you have to
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: go work at Google or Amazon and toil away at Uber.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give you a purposeful mission to save
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: our society and save our humanity together. And it's the
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: government's job to give you a sense of that and
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: provide opportunities. And alongside of that is to say, we've
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: got different ownership in the society. Right now, the ownership
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: is all from the elites. In order to have ownership,
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: different ownership design, workers on boards, co-ops, tenant unions. We've
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: got to rethink the model. We need democracy in an
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: economic sense. We've got authoritarians who rule in the economy.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: We've got authoritarians who rule in politics. We're going to
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: bring that power down, and people are going to have
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: it in our economy. And that's what Zoran is suggesting too,
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: that we're going to use our power and we're going
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: to have it reside with us. That's a vision I
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: think people would get behind. Amen. Great.
• 54:53
  Speaker 7: And I was about to say, I think I'm going
• 54:55
  Speaker 7: to surprise people more by saying I agree with Fez.
• 54:59
  Speaker 6: And I actually think.
• 55:00
  Speaker 7: That what Jen said and Adam said fits very neatly
• 55:04
  Speaker 7: in with what Fez said. Part of the reason why
• 55:07
  Speaker 7: we see this cultural decay is people do not feel
• 55:09
  Speaker 7: in control of their economic destiny anymore. Part of the
• 55:13
  Speaker 7: reason why we see this cultural decay is we see
• 55:16
  Speaker 7: this leader in the White House modeling the worst possible
• 55:20
  Speaker 7: human and moral behavior.
• 55:23
  Speaker 6: So we're gonna need to fix our government. We're going
• 55:25
  Speaker 6: to need to fix our economy.
• 55:26
  Speaker 7: And we, I think, really need to tap into that
• 55:30
  Speaker 7: spiritual longing, I think, that a lot of Americans have
• 55:34
  Speaker 7: from good moral leadership again.
• 55:37
  Speaker 6: And a sense of community and belonging.
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: But we're going to need candidates who are ready to
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: get to work, right? And I think when you're looking
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: at the candidates who are up right now, you have
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: to be able to pick some fighters. You know, like
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: there's going to be some tough primaries out there, And
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: I think we need to know, like, who's going to
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: go to Washington next cycle and be able to just
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: fight for our rights? And because if they don't, we're fucked.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: So I want to get back to the fighter thing.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: But first, like, FAS offered a vision. That is, like,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: has anyone, and it was grounded in the economy and
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: what we've been talking about. But it was beyond that.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, Liz, you mentioned there's a spiritual longing. There's
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: a cultural decay that Baz is talking about. Have you
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: guys heard any potential 2028ers put everything together like that yet?
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: I'm just wondering.
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, everyone pretends like no one's running, right? They
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: all pretend like they're not running.
• 56:40
  Speaker 6: We don't even have to name names.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you guys.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: Have heard this.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: I have not seen a kind of a total layout
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: of it. And I think though.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: So now FAS has to run.
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: So FAS.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I just had to jump in.
• 56:55
  Speaker 9: What did this panel turn into?
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: I literally, I've been like waiting for, I'm waiting for
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: a candidate to sort of put all that together. Because
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: I do think that we get into this like, all right,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: polls are saying affordability now.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: Great.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: We're going out there. We're talking about affordability. We're talking
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: about costs. We know it works. We have immigration. We
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: know how to deal with that. Secure border, but also
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: we don't like ICE. We check off all the boxes.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: And we're sort of missing the fact that we have
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: now been through hell for the last 10 years. With
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump, a lot is broken. A lot of people
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: are broken. We've been through a pandemic. We don't talk
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: about the pandemic. We still all have PTSD from that
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: and what it's done to people. And I think to
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: lead us out of that, you need someone who is
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: not just going to have like a great agenda, great plan,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: a lot of promises, going to go get stuff done,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: but as someone who can try to start healing the country.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: In a way?
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, one of the things, and as I was
• 57:50
  Speaker 3: listening to Faz, I was like, his answer is so
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: much better than mine and it's fine. But one of
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: the things I heard from him that I feel like
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: it starts, it's like you want people to creak the
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: door open and want to hear more from somebody, right?
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: I don't think we need to start or our expectation
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: should not be that somebody's first speech is they're laying
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: out their first hundred day agenda. To me, one of
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: the things that was so joyful about Tuesday was actually
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: watching these candidates with their families, you know, and like
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: their daughters and their husbands were crying and.
• 58:22
  Speaker 8: The new wife.
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was just, and I was like, these
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: people are normal, beautiful human beings who care about doing
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: something for the people they're going to represent. And That,
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: to me, it's just like the return of empathy and
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: caring about why you want to be in office and
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: why you want to govern. That, to me, is the
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: starting point. I'm saying something very obvious. It is extremely
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: hard to be elected president. And I always would say
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: this last summer when people were like, well, if there
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: was a primary, somebody would emerge and they would definitely
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: beat Trump. You're like, it is extremely hard to get
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: in there. But That's the first, to me, that's sort
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: of the first thing. Who do you want to creak
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: the door open to? Who are you looking for who
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: they're on a pod, like you want to hear more?
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: Who do you want to hear more from? And I
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: don't know.
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: I'm just, I'm going to name. some names. Like, I
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: don't know what he's going to do, but if you
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: looked at what Senator Ruben Gallego said on your stage today,
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: I mean, that man knows what he wants to do.
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: He's a former Marine. He's lived through it, working class,
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: got himself into Harvard, and he is ready for this fight.
• 59:25
  Speaker 5: And if he wanted to do it, I mean, that's
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: somebody who knows what the argument is.
• 59:29
  Speaker 8: All right.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: But I think there's a lot of good people. Like,
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: I think there's, it's like a very exciting time in
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: the Democratic Party right now. Like, Wes Moore is exciting. J.B.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: Pritzker is exciting. Gavin Newsom's exciting. Gretchen Whitmer's exciting. Bashir's exciting.
• 59:45
  Speaker 3: They're all exciting and different. I haven't named a thousand
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: people who I know are going to run.
• 59:49
  Speaker 9: Keep going.
• 59:49
  Speaker 8: I know.
• 59:51
  Speaker 11: I think you're, I mean, I think you're, we actually are,
• 59:53
  Speaker 11: you know, if our democracy survives, we're at a great
• 59:58
  Speaker 11: point if, you know, That's one small detail. But we
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 11: have an incredible bench. We've got incredible Democrats, an incredible
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 11: pool of talent. But I do think, you know, I
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 11: think it was George W. Bush who complained about, you know,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 11: that he was like, people are asking me about this
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 11: division thing, you know, and he couldn't do it, right?
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 9: It was like, he's like, what is that? And I
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 9: think that we as.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 11: A party have fallen into that a little bit. And
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 11: that's why your average Democratic stump speech sounds like a
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 11: laundry list, right? And so if I were a 2028er,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 11: I would just sit down with a blank sheet of paper,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 11: and I would say, why am I running? What's my vision?
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 11: What motivates me to be in this job, and where
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 11: do I want to take America? And that's what I
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 11: would say.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: You mentioned fighter. We need a fighter. Everyone's in agreement.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: We all like fighters. What kind of fighter? Are we
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: fighting the Republicans? Are we fighting Trump? Are we fighting
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: on behalf of people? Are we fighting.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 8: The oligarchy.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: All of the above.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 9: All right.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: We're fighting everyone.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 6: All of the above.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 7: But it's not just fighting for fighting's sake. You know,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 7: sometimes I hear people just going out to give these
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 7: speeches that go viral.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: But it doesn't actually... amount to anything.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 7: And so I want to see productive fighting, not just
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 7: performative fighting.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: And I think we've seen.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 7: Actually, I can't believe I'm praising the House and Senate
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 7: Dems right now, but that's been productive fighting.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: Over the health care. But after a lot of pushing.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 10: Oh, sure.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: Remember, they folded at the beginning of this year, and then.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 6: Everybody got mad, and now they're finally... I'm not on
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 6: their side.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: I'm not their defender, okay?
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 8: But I think people.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: Voters want to see a backbone. They want leaders who
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: believe in something. I mean, we were talking a lot
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: about 2005 and 2006. I was working for Harry Reid
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: also back then. And we had lost everything. We lost
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: the presidency, the Senate, the House. And he just stood
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: there and he said, we're going to fight. And people
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 5: weren't used to Democrats being strong. And we've looked so
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 5: weak for so long that if we just give people
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: a reason to stand up, to say, here are the
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: things we're going to get done for you, they're going
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 5: to turn out. They turned out on Tuesday. Let's turn
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: out a year from now. And let's make sure we
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: have a democracy in three years that we can actually
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: get a new president and get some shit done.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 10: We're going to leave it there. Perfect place to leave it.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Rebecca, Liz, Baz, Jen, Adam, thank you so much.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 9: Thank you guys all for being here.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: Great.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 8: Hi, everybody.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 10: Welcome to Crooked Con.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 13: My guest served in the Marine Corps in the House
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 13: of Representatives and is now Senator. Saying hi to friends.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 13: Senator from the great state of Arizona. Please welcome Senator
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 13: Ruben Gallego. Man, I am so glad that we are
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 13: doing this after a great election day as opposed to,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 13: you know, sometimes our job is to buck people up.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 13: Sometimes it's to temper their enthusiasm.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 10: And boy, it's more fun to be in that camp.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 8: Winning is good. Yeah.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 14: Democrats have forgotten that. Winning is a good thing. We
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 14: should enjoy it, too, when it happens. What was your
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 14: overall takeaway from what happened on Tuesday? So my takeaway,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 14: to get all poli-sci wonky on y'all, is that what
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 14: you saw, the winning coalition that we've had for years,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 14: came back together.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 8: Right, and what does that mean?
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 14: We had working class voters join with Latinos, with African Americans,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 14: and swing suburban women and men. And they all came
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 14: out and they said, we're pissed at this administration and Republicans.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 14: And especially when it comes to Latinos, the two reasons
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 14: I think you saw this big switchback was number one, affordability,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 14: had not changed. And it's actually gotten worse for these
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 14: working class Latino families. And you've got to remember the
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 14: way Latinos, unfortunately in this country, they build their wealth
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 14: by how many hours they put together. And they tend
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 14: to have kids.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 8: I have three kids. Groceries are really expensive. They're only
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 8: getting worse.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 14: And so everything they heard that was going to happen,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 14: if Trump won, has not happened. And then now you're
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 14: racially profiling and going after abuelitas, you're going after people
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 14: in the community that are not criminals. So those two
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 14: combinations got that community to move back. And you saw
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 14: other stuff happen. You saw the Indo community swing heavily
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 14: back towards Democrats. So again, I think the coalition came together,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 14: and it came together largely because of the total inaction
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 14: from the Republican Congress and this president just being a
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 14: total asshole.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 10: So I'm glad you brought that up.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 13: I wanted to ask you about Latino voters, because you've
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 13: talked about exactly what happened in 2024, and I'm curious
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 13: how you update it for what we just watched, which
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 13: is the erosion didn't happen early in the Biden administration.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 13: People gave him some space, but when the stimulus that
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 13: had come through COVID had started to lapse, when prices
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 13: didn't come down, that's when you started to see Latino
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 13: voters shift toward Trump. Then you had a bunch of
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 13: Republicans- do a bunch of gerrymandering based on what happened
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 13: in 2024. If you were a Republican House member in
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 13: Texas who's just been drawn into a district based on
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 13: certain expectations about the Latino vote, how nervous would you be?
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 8: So I would be very nervous.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 14: Now, when they draw these districts, you know, and I've
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 14: been involved, I was the chairman of BOLDPAC, which is
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 14: a Congressional Hispanic Caucus PAC, and we ran a lot
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 14: of people and were successful in the past. The way
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 14: that they do them in Texas, they actually draw these
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 14: heavy Latino low turnout districts next to these really rural
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 14: white Republican high turnout districts.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 8: So it looks like the district.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 14: Is Latino, but sometimes turnout is lower. So now the
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 14: danger that they have is that not only are Latinos
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 14: going to come and vote Democratic, that there's going to
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 14: be higher turnouts. Because from my experience in Arizona, a
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 14: lot of what I started around was fighting SB10, Sonny Church,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 14: or Arpaio. When you start doing these types of things,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 14: you start doing roundups, you start doing racial profiling, you
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 14: start dragging people out of their cars, the people that
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 14: actually respond first are younger voters. And they're going to
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 14: come out and vote fairly heavily, I think, in an
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 14: off-year election, and they're going to vote Democratic. And that's
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 14: going to end up, I think, fucking these guys that
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 14: are expecting a very sleepy and... right-leaning Latino voter. And
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 14: I just don't think that's going to happen.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 13: So you're somebody who also, I think, has been grappling
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 13: with what Democrats are getting wrong in trying to reach
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 13: a diverse coalition of working people. And part of that
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 13: is Democrats rightly, I mean, right now we're in a
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 13: fight about health care. We've been trying to stop Republicans
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 13: from eviscerating the safety net. But on the other hand,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 13: we don't talk enough about The good life. Not just
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 13: making sure people can survive, but actually have a fun,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 13: great time in America building wealth and going on vacations
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 13: and stuff.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 14: I mean, like, if you think about it, you know,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 14: the original labor movement, right? Like, when a labor movement started,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 14: what they wanted was not just for the, you know,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 14: that man or woman to just get enough money.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 8: To get by.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 14: They literally talked about the freedom and the power to
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 14: have time to raise your children, to go on vacation,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 14: to live and be involved in your community. If you
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 14: look at what they were talking about, that is literally
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 14: part and parcel of what we're missing now as Democrats.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 14: Because we talk about, for example, let's raise the minimum wage.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 8: Well, why are we thinking about the minimum?
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 14: What concept can we bring as Democrats to talk to
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 14: that middle-of-the-road worker who... Maybe they are making enough money,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 14: but they don't feel comfortable.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 14: And the other thing is that a lot of these
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 14: voters had parents that did get to live that life.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 13: Right.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 14: So, you know, if you're like a 45 ish year
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 14: old person like me, you remember your parents being able
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 14: to buy a home. You remember your parents having a car.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 14: You remember your parents taking you on vacation. And now
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 14: you're looking at yourself and you're like, I have no car.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 14: I'm still living with my parents. I have no home.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 14: And the job I get doesn't even give me any
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 14: type of really fun relaxation or assurances of a better life.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 14: And so when Democrats are talking about you know, to voters.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 14: And this is the thing that I did a little
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 14: different from other people last cycles. I talked to them
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 14: about really living a good, fulfilling life and that the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 14: Democrats are going to fight for you to have the good,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 14: fulfilling life. So that way you can spend time with
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 14: your kids. You can take a vacation. You can relax.
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 14: You can breathe a little easier. I had a whole
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 14: campaign commercial about doing things to make you just breathe
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 14: a little easier. I had people coming up to me like,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 14: thank God you finally, someone's talking to me about that.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 14: And we got a little too, we became too economically
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 14: wonkish versus actually talking to people about what the real
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 14: needs they.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 8: Want, which is stability.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 14: A future, an idea that things are going to get better.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 14: And I think when we think about things that way,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 14: when actually when we design policies that way, that's when
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 14: we start getting those voters to come back to us.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 13: What are some policy areas that you think would help
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 13: us tell a story that, yes, we are about making
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 13: sure that everybody can get by, people can get enough
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 13: food to eat, that we're going to fight for SNAP benefits,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 13: we're going to fight for Medicare, but we're also going
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 13: to fight for an economy where people can really be prosperous?
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 14: Well, I think, first of all, fighting is, don't detract
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 14: the idea of fighting. Because one of the problems that
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 14: I think Democrats have had is that a lot of
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 14: people don't think we're willing to fight. And a lot
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 14: of people think that we're basically these passionless, ghouls that
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 14: just aren't willing to go to the mat. And there
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 14: is a voter out there that will decide between a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 14: Democrat or Republican based on who they think is quote
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 14: unquote willing to fight for me and or tougher. And
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 14: a lot of times we find ourselves, when voters look
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 14: at us, they don't think that this person's willing to
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 14: go to the mat for me, right? So fighting, number one, matters.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 14: Number two, picking the right opposition. And not being afraid
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 14: of doing that, right? Whether it is the big corporations. Like,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 14: for example, on my campaign, there's two grocery stores that
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 14: were trying to merge.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 8: And from day one, I went right to town on it.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 14: Every day I could, I'd talk about stopping this merger,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 14: stopping this merger because it was going to, you know,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 14: increase grocery prices. And, you know, these are very big
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 14: employers in Arizona. And so people were telling me, like,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 14: you're going to tick off a lot of people because
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 14: you're going after these two groceries. I'm like, yeah, but
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 14: the person that's going to end up getting hurt is
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 14: a person that can't afford groceries because there's only one
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 14: grocery store in all of Arizona.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 8: And so picking that fight matters.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 14: And then lastly, I do think that when we do anything,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 14: any type of policy, the concrete is always going to
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 14: be more important than the atmosphere that it creates.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 8: What does that mean?
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 14: Like I've been like toying around with, you know, what
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 14: should we do about the minimum wage, right? First of all,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 14: we should stop calling the minimum wage. I think that's,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 14: You know, nobody wants to ever have a minimum, right?
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 14: You never want to work for anything minimum. But number two,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 14: like even when you're talking to a worker, you know,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 14: I think it's easier for us to say, you know, hey,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 14: we want to pay you, not 16, 17, let's pay
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 14: you the amount of money you need to survive, right?
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 14: Is that 20 bucks an hour? Then fine, 20 bucks
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 14: an hour. But let's be like proud of the fact
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 14: that I'm going to give you a wage that you're
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 14: going to be able to actually live and thrive under.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 8: Live and thrive.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 14: And don't be afraid to say it, like, you know what,
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 14: you're gonna get 20 bucks an hour, and that's gonna
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 14: make sure that that gives you $ 800 a week, that's $ 3, 200
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 14: a month, that's almost $ 40, 000 a year, family of two,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 14: that's almost 100, all these things that we just kind
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 14: of miss, because I think a lot of us nerds
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 14: don't understand that these working people are really effing busy.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 14: So we need to make sure that we can get
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 14: our message to them concretely, quickly, and not having to
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 14: actually go into a real deep policy statement about how
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 14: we're gonna make their life better.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 13: So in a recent interview with The Times, you said,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 13: we can't be afraid of failing. I think the biggest
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 13: mistake I've seen Democrats make, we're always afraid of failing,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 13: so we don't take risks.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 10: We just went through this election. The government is still
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 10: shut down.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 13: That is going to be hurting more and more people.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 13: Are Democrats going to hang together? And what is the
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 13: kind of daring and risk-taking you want to see that
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 13: we don't have right now?
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 14: Well, so the statement is both on a political side
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 14: as well as a policy side. So during the campaign,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 14: you say Chuck Roach over there was one of my consultants.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 8: We tested a lot of things.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 14: And I don't know if you guys follow the race,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 14: but For almost 18 months, I actually did not have
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 14: the support of the Democratic establishment because I was running
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 14: against a supposed Democrat, Kyrsten Sinema. But one of the
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 14: benefits of that is that we didn't have a lot
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 14: of DC consultants trying to constrain us. And so me
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 14: and Chuck and a couple of us, Rebecca, I don't
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 14: know if Rebecca Katz is here today, but we just
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 14: ran wild. We're like, let's just try anything, right? So
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 14: I did these boxing matches. We put up rodeos together.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 14: I went to lowrider shows. Did we put a lowrider
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 14: show together? We put a lowrider show together. You guys
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 14: are a lot of white people here.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 8: Lowriders.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 14: Lowriders are like these artists in cars that are really valued.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 8: In our Latino communities and largely by working class Latino men.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 13: Can I tell you something as someone who's not part
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 13: of that community, but sees low riders around LA? I
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 13: come from a community of anxious Jewish people, and whenever
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 13: I see these cars, I'm like, these streets cannot handle
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 13: these low riders.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 10: They're going to be.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 13: You're going to turn into a fucking parking lot and
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 13: we're going to scrape the whole bottom of the car.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 14: Those cars are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. They
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 14: know exactly what they're doing. But this is where it's
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 14: important though. This is where it's important. You as a
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 14: very nervous Jewish person should not be afraid to go
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 14: to a low rider show and shake hands.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 13: Right?
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 8: And like And I did, I mean, I went to
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 8: every effing festival I could find.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 14: You know, the Asian community is a growing community in Arizona.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 14: And there are, you know, through my education now, there
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 14: are multiple Asian New Year. So the Low Asian New
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 14: Year is different from, like, I think the Cambodian New Year. Like,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 14: they have different, so I would go to different New
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 14: Year celebrations and try all their food, right?
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 8: And then, like, suburban people.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 14: Like, suburban, like, swing voters, largely white voters, like, I'm like, okay,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 14: we need to get out there.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 8: Like, how do we get out there? I'm like, you
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 8: know what? We can do a pickleball. I don't even
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 8: play pickleball. I don't play pickleball at all, but I
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 8: know my mother-in-law always talked about pickleball. I'm like, you
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 8: know what? Let's do pickleball. So we did a pickleball tournament.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 14: I went out there, I put my headband on and I,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 14: and I had a Gallego branded pickleball and we did pickleball.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 14: But I needed to get out there. And guess what?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 14: I didn't know if it was going to be successful
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 14: or not. So you can't be afraid. We are not
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 14: the popular party anymore. We actually need to understand that.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 14: We need to work to get votes. We can't just
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 14: expect the votes to come to us.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 8: Same with policy. You know, don't boo me. Give credit
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 8: to Donald Trump. Before you go.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 14: Do you think they actually sat down and said, you
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 14: know what? Let's figure out the economic implications of no
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 14: tax on tips and no tax on overtime. Do you
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 14: think they actually sat down with the economists and said,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 14: let's figure out how this is going to work. Let's
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 14: talk to the Department of Labor. No, you know what
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 14: they did? They said, man, we really need to win Nevada.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 14: How can we win Nevada right now in a world
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 14: where the economy is not doing great? and I need
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 14: to be identified as someone who's pro-working class, I'm gonna
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 14: take this position on no tax on tips, and they
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 14: did it, and they figured out how to get it
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 14: done later, and they won, right? So we need to
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 14: kind of be thinking about that big picture, and not
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 14: necessarily get down into the weeds on something, and I
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 14: will give you actually a really good example that happened
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 14: last cycle with this last administration, and look, I don't
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 14: want to go back and blame everything on that, but
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 14: this is a good example of what things happen. So
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 14: almost seems like a zillion years ago, I'm in an Uber,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 14: and I'm driving, not driving the Uber, but now there's
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 14: nothing wrong with that, talking to the Uber driver in Spanish,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 14: he doesn't know I'm a member of Congress at this point,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 14: but gas is through the roof. And I ask him, like, well,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 14: you should be fine, because the reimbursement catches up, and
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 14: he tells me in Spanish, absolutely not, the gas is
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 14: so expensive, it's now blown, you know, blown any kind
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 14: of savings I get. So I get back to here, Washington, D.C.,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 14: talk to my staff, like, I have a really good idea.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 14: Right now the prices are so effing expensive, Why don't
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 14: we just raise the mileage reimbursement for drivers, right? And
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 14: that's a lot of people, small business owners everywhere. My
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 14: staff comes back to me a couple days later, like,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 14: guess what? You don't have to do that. The IRS
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 14: can just do it on their own. And I swear
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 14: to God, I thought I just saved the Biden campaign
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 14: because I call up, I'm like, man, I got a
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 14: great idea for you guys. You guys could just do
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 14: this overnight. I'm not going to tell you who I
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 14: talked to over there, but someone very high up.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 8: Like, oh, wow. Oh, wait, no, that's the IRS. I'm like, yeah, like, well,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 8: the IRS.
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 14: Is under the executive, you guys are the executive. You
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 14: literally can change this. And I said, like, look, just
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 14: add 25 cents. Like, 25 cents right now. You're like,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 14: you will literally get, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 14: of workers are going to be so happy. And now
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 14: they will know Biden raised my monetary reimbursement. That's like
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 14: people's money. I heard nothing for months.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 10: I'm so mad.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 8: For months.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 14: When I finally heard back, It did move, and I
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 14: can't remember how much, but it wasn't that much. And
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 14: I asked, why did you guys choose that amount? And
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 14: they said, well, we talked to some economists, and they
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 14: said that it likely wouldn't actually bring down the price
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 14: of gas, and it would actually create a bigger deficit.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 8: But you're going to lose the election. Why do you
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 8: care what that's going to do? And that's it.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 14: Now, think about what Trump would have done in that scenario.
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 14: He would have done $ 1, probably. If he increased it $ 1,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 14: it would have been bigly. And then he would have
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 14: gone to every swing state in front of every gas
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 14: station and said, I did this. and said we ended
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 14: up putting it through a Six Sigma process to figure
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 14: out whether we should do it or not, and then
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 14: we still lose elections.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 8: That is what I'm talking about. Don't be afraid to
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 8: make a mistake. Be bold.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 13: So I want to come back to what's happening in
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 13: DC right now. I knew we were going to be talking,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 13: and I was reading some of your past comments, and
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 13: I happened to see it when I saw that the
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 13: Senate Democratic leader was asked who he was voting for
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 13: in New York, and he said, I'm voting Boy, am
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 13: I voting.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: Adios.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 13: And it was very revealing to me because here is
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 13: somebody that is supposed to be the leader of the
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 13: Democratic Party. He is afraid to tell the left he
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 13: voted for Cuomo, if that's what he did. He's afraid
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 13: to give Republicans an issue if he says he voted
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 13: for Mamdani. And then where do we end up with?
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 13: A person who literally is saying, I don't stand for
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 13: anything in this moment. And You were asked about Mamdani,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 13: and you said what I think is not that hard
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 13: to string together. We don't agree on everything, but he's
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 13: part of our coalition, something to that effect. Why can't
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 13: Chuck Schumer say that?
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 8: Look, I don't know. And I'll be honest, I don't.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 14: So when we say we're part of a big tent,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 14: we have to mean we're part of a big tent.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 14: And that big tent goes everywhere. And I say this
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 14: to people on the far left.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 8: Like, you know what?
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 14: That means we have to accept people that are, you know,
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 14: for example, Jared Golden, who just decided not to run, right?
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 14: I don't know how we're going to win that seat, right?
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 14: But that also means that we have to accept people
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 14: on the left, like the new mayor, right? And again,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 14: we don't have to agree on everything. We are a
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 14: big tent, big policy party, and that's how we win.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 14: You don't see the Republicans doing this type of internal, like,
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 14: pearl clutching, right? When they have some crazy, wacko, that
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 14: wins whatever portion of the country, it's not weaponized for
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 14: a couple reasons. Number one, the press just doesn't, has
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 14: a double standard about it. But number two, even if
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 14: you did go to a Republican leader and be like,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 14: oh boy, that person that just won in red part
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 14: of the country and said crazy things is a Republican,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 14: do you support them?
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 8: They're gonna say, yeah, and then the story's done.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 14: And so I can't tell you what Chuck and a
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 14: lot of these other New York Democrats are thinking, But
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 14: I would have said one way or the other from
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 14: day one where I was, and then after that, move on.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 14: You made it a story by trying to avoid the story.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 14: And I think you just ended up hurting yourself more.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 13: And I think it speaks to something like a deeper
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 13: problem that I think you are trying to figure out,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 13: which is it is easier to be buffeted by events
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 13: when people don't know what you stand for. Now, you
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 13: are from one of the redder states in the world. of,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 13: at this point, any Democrat in the Senate, but you
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 13: are still believing very strongly in the need to fight
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 13: this shutdown to the end and make sure we get
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 13: health insurance for people and extend Obamacare, and yet some
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 13: people inside of the caucus seem to be wavering a bit.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 13: What is your message to your fellow Democratic senators who
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 13: are worried or wavering about why it is so important
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 13: that we not give in?
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 14: And so, you know, and I have actually... What I've
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 14: said is what I'm telling you guys is what I've
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 14: said in caucus. There's nothing like, you know. The one
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 14: thing I told them is that a shutdown hurts. But
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 14: it does eventually end. And federal workers get reimbursed. You know,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 14: SNAP benefits will go back out. What doesn't get reimbursed
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 14: is people losing health insurance. What people are going to
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 14: really feel pain is their health insurance premiums doubling.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 8: So for some people, thousands of dollars. And things are
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 8: so hard right now out there. I'm very lucky. I
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 8: don't know if there's any Phoenicians here. I live in
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 8: South Phoenix.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 14: It's a really working class Latino and African-American area. If
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 14: you go to the grocery store, I am still seeing
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 14: people take stuff out of their cart. I'm still seeing
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 14: people not fully pumping, filling up their tank. If the
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 14: Democrats are known as the people that allowed health insurance
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 14: rate premiums to double without a serious fight, you're going
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 14: to have those people that really want us to be
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 14: in that fight not believe in us. And I do
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 14: have a big take on what happened last year. Why
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 14: did Latino men and Latinos in general swing so far
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 14: against Democrats? Because they always knew and thought of Democrats
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 14: as the people that fight for me and fight for
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 14: working class people. And they were going through the hardest
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 14: situation ever. You know, for the mentality of a Latino
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 14: man is that they could always work hard to get
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 14: themselves out of any problem. Like they'll take on an
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 14: extra job, they'll cut here, they'll do whatever it takes.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 14: For the first time ever, while I was, you know,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 14: out there, these men were telling me that they felt
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 14: that they weren't going to make it.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 8: And I knew something was really bad.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 14: And what they felt was betrayal from the Democrats, because
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 14: we were supposed to be the ones that are looking
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 14: out for them. They didn't expect anything from the Republicans,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 14: because the Republicans have always been assholes to them. But
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 14: they did expect us to take care of them at
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 14: the biggest point of need, which is this sense of
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 14: failure that they weren't able to provide for their family.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 14: And our response wasn't even like, oh man, I'm so sorry,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 14: I have an emotional response, things are bad. It was
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 14: kind of like denial, like there was even a problem.
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 14: And when that happened, these guys just either didn't vote
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 14: or just.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 8: Went out on a revenge vote.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 14: And I bring this up because I think the same
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 14: thing is going to happen if we don't land this
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 14: plane on health insurance.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 8: This is what we're known for.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 14: In 2006, there's a guy named Harry Mitchell, member of
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 14: Congress from Arizona.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 8: He represented one of the most Republican districts in the state.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 14: I think it was like an R plus country. It
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 14: was like R plus 20. He won in a wave
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 14: year in 2006.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 8: 2010 rolls around.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 14: And it's the Affordable Health Care Act. It's down to
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 14: one or two votes. And I was on his veteran
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 14: advisory committee, and we're talking about it.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 8: I'm like, what are you going to do, Harry? He's like,
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 8: this is what I'm supposed to do. Like, I'm a Democrat.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 14: Like, if I'm not here for this, if I'm not
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 14: here to make sure people get health insurance, then what
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 14: else am I doing here? And he knew what he
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 14: was doing. He voted for the Affordable Health Care Act,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 14: and he lost the next election, right? if we aren't
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 14: here to give, provide, and protect affordable health insurance, what
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 14: is our cause? What are we going to say to
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 14: the voter about why you should elect us? Because they
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 14: don't understand CRs. They don't understand open government. They don't
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 14: understand appropriations. They understand Democrats help me have affordable health insurance.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 14: What is our cause if we don't have that at
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 14: that point? That's what I'm saying.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 13: You brought up that tough House vote, I was working
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 13: for President Obama at that time, and I remember the, really,
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 13: just the incredible work and strategy and legislating that went
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 13: into getting Obamacare through, because I will say this very briefly,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 13: it had passed the House, it had been on the
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 13: cusp of coming out of the Senate, Senator Ted Kennedy
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 13: passes away, Nancy Pelosi manages to get the House to
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 13: vote for the Senate bill, even though it was meant
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 13: to be revised and had all kinds of typos and stuff,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 13: to get that done. What lessons do you think Democrats
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 13: need to take right now from the way Nancy Pelosi
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 13: got not just the health care bill through, she got
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 13: a climate bill through, she got a bunch of hard
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 13: stuff through that caucus at a time when vulnerable Democrats
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 13: were worried? I'm curious just because this is the week
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 13: she announced she's stepping down.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 14: Well, I mean, there'll never be another leader like Pelosi.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 14: And I hope all leadership can move to be as
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 14: strong as she is. And I definitely wish that for
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 14: us Democrats. So from my experience working with her, she
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 14: had a very grounded understanding of success. And she guided
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 14: us to it. She said, this is the bill, this
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 14: is the policy, we're gonna move in this direction. What
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 14: are your issues? Let's work out those issues, but we're
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 14: gonna keep moving, right? And what I've seen happen a
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 14: lot of times with Democrats is we lose momentum all
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 14: the time. And we lose momentum, and when we lose momentum,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 14: we lose the will to fight, we start second-guessing ourselves,
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 14: we start getting into internal fights. And what we need
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 14: to be learning from the successes that she had is
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 14: always keep momentum. In my much younger days, I was
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 14: a Marine. The one thing they teach you in war
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 14: is keep your momentum, right? Momentum wins the day. Indecisiveness
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 14: kills or gets you killed. The same thing I've seen
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 14: in politics. It's like the party, the politician, the group
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 14: that has momentum and is moving is always going to
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 14: be more successful than the person that's standing still, trying
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 14: to figure out everything, making sure everything's exactly perfect before
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 14: they move. Because usually what I've seen so far, when
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 14: we do that as Democrats, we almost never even get moving.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 14: And so Pelosi's, uh, you know, approach of like, you know,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 14: leadership in motion, uh, is extremely important and something that
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 14: we need to remember. And I think hopefully leaders going forward, uh,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 14: are going to have the same opportunity.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 13: So you talked about your, your service in the Marines. Uh,
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 13: we've seen Trump deploy national guard to cities. We've seen
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 13: him threatened to invoke the insurrection act, but also seen, uh,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 13: an abuse of military power in these lawless killings. What
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 13: is your response to that as somebody who was in
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 13: the Marines? And it's got to be tough for somebody
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 13: who's currently serving who joined for patriotic reasons or for
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 13: personal reasons to get an education and to gain skills
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 13: and build a different kind of life to feel as
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 13: though they're being used in this way while at the
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 13: same time wanting to do their duty and fulfill their service.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 14: Yeah, no, I mean, I know the exact feeling because
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 14: I was in the Iraq War and I joined out
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 14: of sense of duty to my country even before 9-11.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 14: You know, I'm the son of immigrants. Like, my dad's
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 14: a convicted drug dealer. Like, there is no way I
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 14: should have been able to go to college. Like, I
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 14: just wanted to repay my country. So I joined the
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 14: Marine Corps Reserves. Like, so I wasn't trying to be,
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 14: you know.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 8: G.I.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 14: Joe, Rambo, or anything like that. I literally, and this
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 14: is prior to 9-11, I thought, like, I was just
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 14: going to conserve my time. Maybe I'll get activated or anything.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 14: It ended up, unfortunately, being one of the hardest combat
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 14: tours ever for the Marines. And number two, I got
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 14: called up not for Afghanistan, which I think I would
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 14: have been fine with, especially at that point, but for
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 14: the Iraq War, which I was entirely against. I knew
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 14: it was a legal war. But I could not not
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 14: go for two reasons. Number one, I was infantry. I
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 14: was trained infantry. I was getting sent with some guys
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 14: that were not infantry. And I felt a certain responsibility
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 14: that if I don't go, these guys are going to
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 14: potentially die.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 8: And this is during the height of the insurgency.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 14: Number two, I thought it would be weird if I
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 14: didn't go that someone's going to have to take my spot.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 14: And what happens if something happens to that person? I'd
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 14: have to live with that for the rest of my life.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 14: But even during the war, the whole time, I hated
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 14: it there. I hated everything that was happening there. But
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 14: I had to do my job, my duty, keep my
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 14: men alive, keep my honor, and keep myself alive.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 8: But I was mad.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 14: I was really, really mad. I can't imagine what these
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 14: young men and women are going to feel. But I
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 14: tell you what's going to happen. If they politicize the military,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 14: if you turn the military against US citizens, number one,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 14: first of all, the US military is going to lose.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 14: But number two, the US military is going to lose
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 14: its stature within this country because of being an apolitical
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 14: force for good. You're gonna have less and less people joining.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 14: And you're going to have a less amount of people
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 14: that will ever really think about the military in a
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 14: positive light and will think about it more as an
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 14: enemy versus people that are here to protect us. And
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 14: the other thing is, this is the problem with Donald Trump.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 14: He's never served. And he doesn't understand that whatever he
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 14: thinks he's gonna be able to do with the military,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 14: it's not going to happen.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 8: It's just not.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 14: It's, you know, leading, you know, and being in war
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 14: with like 18, 19-year-old boys, when people are actually trying
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 14: to kill you, it's hard, right?
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 8: You know, trying, you know, I remember grabbing a guy.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 14: After they tried to hit us with an IED and
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 14: pushing him out of a track and into a house.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 14: I literally had to grab this young man by the
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 14: collar to get him moving. So if they think that
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 14: these young 18, 19-year-old boys are going to be able
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 14: to do that against their fellow Americans, it's just not
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 14: going to happen. And also because he's so dumb when
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 14: it comes to the military. He thinks sending 1,000 military
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 14: personnel to a city of like 2.7 million is going
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 14: to do anything, right? Or like the amount of people
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 14: that he sends to like Los Angeles. It just doesn't
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 14: work that way. But what he will end up doing
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 14: is making us weaker because it's just going to internally
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 14: divide us as a country. It's gonna divide and create
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 14: more hatred. This is why he's trying to send National
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 14: Guardsmen from Texas into Illinois, because he wants that division.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 14: He gets more power the more angry we are at
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 14: each other and not able to train our actual anger
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 14: on him and try to stop him.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 10: One last question.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 13: It's been great to talk to you. We have the
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 13: momentum behind us coming out of Tuesday. What do you
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 13: think is the most important thing for us to keep
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 13: in mind as we try to win this fight over
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 13: the shutdown and then head into these consequential midterm campaigns?
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 8: We just won. How did we win?
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 13: Right.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 8: Look at that victory and figure out how do we
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 8: keep doing it? It's not that hard.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 14: Like there's this is not rocket science. We put a
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 14: coalition together of people that were mad. about the overreach
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 14: of this president when it comes to their rates or
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 14: racial profiling, and they're pissed about things being more expensive.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 14: That is not gonna go away going into 2026. So
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 14: just keep the focus, right? That is what you should
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 14: be focused on. That is the coalition you need. Let's
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 14: put it together and keep going.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 8: Keep it simple.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 14: Like we get way too complicated sometimes, right? The way
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 14: we win is that we have to be liked more
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 14: than the other people.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 8: Let's try that. I don't know.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 14: Take some popular positions and hold those popular positions and
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 14: talk about those popular positions. It's worked in the past.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 14: Just throwing that out there. If we're more liked than
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 14: the other side, we're going to win. If we're more
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 14: trusted than the other side, we're going to win. So
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 14: what should we do? We should do things that make
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 14: people like us and do things that make people trust us.
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 8: That's all you got.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 14: Like, simplest thing in the world. I should be a
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 14: political consultant. I can make millions of dollars doing this. Oh,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 14: if you're a candidate, if you do that, and as
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 14: long as you're not in the red district, you're going
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 14: to win. Do things that are popular and that people support.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 8: Be likable. I definitely have to say this. Be likable.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 10: And there's a politician saying, okay, be likable.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 9: How do I do that?
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 13: I have a terrible personality. I've been running for office
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 13: since I was 13 years old.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 10: Fuck.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 14: Even if you are that person that has been running
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 14: since you're 13 years old, at least.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 8: Be honest and earnest about it, right?
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 14: The worst thing is whenever you meet a politician who's
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 14: a nerd but is trying not.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 8: To be a nerd... Just be the nerd, dude.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 3: It's okay.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 8: Nerds win all the time. Actually, nerds win most of
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 8: the time.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 14: If you're like a little, you know, weirdo like me,
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 14: then go that route.
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 8: It's just authentic. But be likable. And the way you
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 8: most likely are more likely to be likable is if
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 8: you are who your authentic self is.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 10: Senator Ruben Gallego.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 8: That was great.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 10: Thank you so much.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 8: Thanks, everybody.
• 1:36:01
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