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The Battle for Minneapolis, and the Fight for Texas / Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weiner, later in the show, Democrats could win the Senate seat in Texas that's up this November, that's because Texas is not so much a red state as it is a low turnout state.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the basis of the campaign, Jasmine Croquet is running
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: to win the Democratic nomination for the Senate there, Steve Phillips will explain later in the show.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: But first, the Battle for Minneapolis, John Nichols has our report in a minute.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Minneapolis right now seems to be the target of the single largest deployment of immigration agents in the history of the United States, and the resistance there has been amazing.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been huge and hugely non-violent.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: For a report we turn to John Nichols, of course he's the nation's executive editor, and he's just returned to the magazine offices in New York City after several days in Minneapolis.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: John, welcome back.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's great to be with you, Chair.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well for starters, I think we should note that the size and the scale of the resistance there is really too vast to fully comprehend even the most experienced organizers who've been working there for decades, say,
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: They can't keep track of everything that resistance groups are doing.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you had a challenging job there.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You started with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's been a national leader developing the legal strategies of the resistance along with New York State Attorney General Tis James and California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And he has an article right now at thenation.com.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tell us about what Keith Ellison is saying and what he's doing.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, he's saying a lot, so many of the responses to what's happening in Minneapolis really go to what Ellison describes as first principles.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Core constitutional questions.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have a right to assemble a petition for the redress of grievances?
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I protest.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's his first event stuff.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then you get into the tenth amendment and
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: what protections that gives states from federal intervention.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: For Ellison, there's these core premises, but then there is the complexity of it.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Going into court to address issues like the mask issue, the identification issue, all sorts of other things.
• 2:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then at a broader level, and one of the things he's been addressing, is the basic question of should they be there?
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so he has multiple lawsuits and legal actions in play right now.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the challenges is that they are in a pellet court circuit that's very conservative.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So sometimes he will win a case at the local federal court level and then get it knocked down.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: at the appellate level or threatened at the appellate level, and this is before you even begin to talk about the Supreme Court.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: At the end of the day, he maintains a confidence that the core constitutional premises that are at stake here, as he writes in the article for the nation, people have a right to assemble a petition for the redress and grievances, they've got a right to speak, they have a right to move as they choose, they have to be given
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: as another amendment requires and all of those amendments, all of those premises are being undermined at this point by the Trump administration.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's at the top of the state government.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: From below, the size and the range of what people are doing to fight ice in Minneapolis really is awesome.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: On the one hand, they're the big experience, longstanding community organizing groups like Faith in Minnesota,
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: active as group of Christians and Muslims, they had a training a couple of weeks ago, downtown Minneapolis at the Convention Center, 5,000 people showed up.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was not a Zoom event.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was an in-person day-long training, 5,000 people.
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But there are also so many self-organized people in smaller groups, neighborhood groups, and groups doing things that most of us never would have thought of.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I learned there's a crew of carpenters going around fixing kicked indoors.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are tow truck operators who recover cars left behind after I say as abducted the drivers and just left the car standing there.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a people's laundry that for people who are afraid to go out will pick up their dirty clothes and bring them back clean.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And of course there's lots and lots of neighbors delivering food and groceries to families afraid to go to the store.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there are, of course, what's called the rapid response groups based in the neighborhoods, ready with whistles and video cameras, if ice shows up.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody really knows how many local rapid response groups there are, but the best estimate is at least 80, maybe a couple of hundred of them.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about those whistles.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're small, but they're a crucial weapon of the resistance.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right, and they are a symbol of it at this point.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: This has been an incredibly traumatic moment for Minneapolis.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yet at the same time, it has become a moment where everybody that I talk to said, you know, I know my neighbors better.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know my community better.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: There are huge groups of people that are involved on a daily basis and things like walking kids to school and back from school because they're parents.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: are concerned about leaving the house.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I went by one school where there were dozens of people gathered at around 233 o'clock in the afternoon getting ready to walk kids.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so this is quite a remarkable thing that's going on.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: at the heart of it is the whistle.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you go into any store, community market, or record store, or bookstore, or whatever, they're going to have a big bowl with whistles.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there for free, you can take as many as you want, and they have brochures that explain how to use the whistles.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the bottom line is that the whistles are used to alert people that ice is in the area, right, or that ice may be moving in some direction, the border patrol folks may be moving in some direction.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you might think that this is, you know, in this era of, you know, all of our technology, you know, cell phones and everything else, that, that, you know, it's sort of world-fashioned.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Quite the opposite.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: When people hear whistles,
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: They, a lot of people, especially in targeted neighborhoods, they know what the whistles mean.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the whistle is also a way of, you know, saying, you know, this might be the time to get out of the space.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or maybe try to move someplace else.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: When there is an actual confrontation, right, where ice is arrived,
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then, the whistle is sometimes the way to signal your neighbors very quickly, it's become such a big deal, John, that when Justin Vernon the guy who leads the much awarded band bone of air, he wore his whistle on his lapel when he went to the Grammys because he had been nominated for several Grammys.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: He had his whistle there and he explained it.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: on the red carpet, and what he said was, this is a symbol of the observers of everybody up in Minneapolis that is watching what's going on, helping their neighbors engaging in ways nonviolent ways to try and protect people, and what he said was that it's great to be honoring musicians and songwriters and folks like that, but the real heroes are up in Minneapolis and they're wearing a whistle.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: couple my other of favorite activities going on there.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's the chorus that sings late at night outside the hotel where the ice agents stay trying to keep them awake.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: The chorus has 2,000 people and there are organizations I'd never heard of.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: that have just sprung up on our doing incredible work.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Haven watch is a group of people who wait in their cars outside the building at forts knowing the wipple building where detained people are held by ice in deplorable conditions.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: sometimes they're released and haven't watched gives released detainees a coat, a burner phone, and a ride when they're put out in the cold with with none of those things.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did you get out to the did you get out to the wipple building when you were there?
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't go specifically to the Whipple Building, but it was very aware of it and very aware of what's happening with this program you're talking about and it's a big deal because it goes to something deeper as was explained to one organizer about how ice is operating.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ice raids often sweep up all sorts of people.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: they might take a couple dozen people out of an neighborhood.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that includes folks who are fully documented, have all their paperwork, U.S. citizens, and then they're taken out to this wiggle building, and they are there sometimes for a substantial amount of time.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: But ultimately, they show, you know, look, you've got no grounds to hold me here, and instead of returning them to their neighborhood,
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: they are put outside the door.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And remember, you're put out that door, sometimes at night, and sometimes it's substantial numbers, not just one person, but a number of people.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you may not even know exactly where you're at, right, in the city.
• 9:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so this program to get them home is a huge, huge deal.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's one other historical element in this whole story
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: fort snelling that ISIS detaining the people it picks up.
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: In 1862, fort snelling served as a concentration camp for native people, the Dakota, who had been captured in the US Dakota war, 1600 Dakota non-combatants, mostly women children and the elderly,
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: were held in a concentration camp at forts nowing for the winter of 1862 and 63.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: 300 died from cold and from disease.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then the survivors were exiled to what's now South Dakota.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there was a concentration camp at Fort Snelling in 1862 and 1863 and now there's a new one they are created by ICE for the people it has detained the native people of Minnesota know this story very well and so do a lot of other people in the Twin Cities now.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a lot of history here, John.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ice came into Minneapolis very unprepared, very unaware of the messages that it was sending of the trauma, frankly, that it was bringing on that when you are in a coffee shop or on a street corner or in the basement of a union hall with folks who are up there, they want to tell you the history that you just recounted.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: other aspects of this, not in order to, you know, it's not going to take out a historical tour or something like that per se.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: What they really want to do is give you some sense of what this occupation, which many people refer to it as, is doing to their city.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd found with a lot of people that they're very emotional about it.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: They were very emotional about what ISIS is doing to them,
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the other thing that I heard everywhere was real concern about what it's done to the economy in the city.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you come into a city like this and you create this chaos, right?
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you, you know, you've got the detentions, the deportations, the grabbing of children, all of the stuff that we're talking about.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you have
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: two instances where people were shot and killed on the street, Renee Good and Alex, pretty.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: You end up in a situation where people are not inclined to leave their homes.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so that means a lot of workers and restaurants and hotels and businesses are free to come to work.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It also means that a lot of people don't go.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: out to dinner or don't go out to shop in the ways that they might normally do.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And also that the downtown is, you know, people aren't coming in in the ways that they historically get the overall impact.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I heard about this from political figures, from business owners, from all sorts of other folks.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: is that this is, this Delta real blow to manyapolis's economy.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we end up in this situation where awfully a lot of people are deeply concerned, not just about the moment.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: People are most concerned about what's happening to their neighbors.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: The threats, the fear and all that.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: But they are also concerned about the future.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they are concerned that the Trump administration may deal a blow to their city that takes years and years to recover from.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's one other thing we should talk about.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The nation has nominated Minneapolis for the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Did anybody there talk to you about that?
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: is very interesting.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was in a shop one day and a young woman, we were talking about it all.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she said, you know, we got nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then she explained the whole process.
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, John, listeners to this podcast may or may not know that the John played a real role in this in, you know, kind of like reaching out to do the nomination and
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: being in contact with the Norwegian Nobel Committee and all that.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I can tell you is there are young people in Minneapolis who know that story.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: People were telling me about it unprompted.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: They didn't know it was from the nation.
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I can also say that when I did radio shows on WCCO, which is a big radio station up there, as well as television, other things.
• 14:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: is interesting.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: People engaged in that discussion in a classic Minnesota way.
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: They weren't really sure that they should be such a big deal.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then, as they talked about it and as they thought about it, they realized what we realized at the nation, that they are a big deal.
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: That their resistance is a model that will have relevance for years decades to come in how we deal with authoritarianism.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: John Nichols can read his report at thenation.com.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: John, thanks for talking with us today.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: To tremendous honor to talk to a son of Minnesota.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: It won't be easy for the Democrats to win control of the Senate in the November midterms, but it is possible.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: We have the whole Georgia that's John Ossoff's seat.
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: When the open seat in Michigan flipped Maine, the feeding Susan Collins, Flip North Carolina where we have a strong candidate that former Governor Roy Cooper, Flip Ohio, strong candidate Sheridan Brown, that gets us to 50.
• 15:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: We got to get to 51, how about Texas?
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: For comment, we turn to Steve Phillips.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: He wrote the bestseller, Brown is the new white, how the demographic revolution has created a new American majority.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: He also hosts the podcast, democracy, in color, and he writes for the Guardian, The Washington Post, and the nation.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And in April, his new book will be published.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is the wonderful title, our white men smarter than everybody else, playing offense in the fight for racial justice in America.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me glad to be here.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, no Democrat has won a Senate seat in Texas since 1988.
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's almost 40 years ago.
• 16:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why people say Texas is a Republican state.
• 16:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you say that's not really right.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: How would you describe Texas politically?
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fundamentally, Texas is a low voting state.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: People don't realize that because we, Texas has been so big in the popular culture.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you have Dallas Cowboys and the show, Dallas, and all of these different images of what Texas is.
• 17:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Texas is a majority of people of color.
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: The state is 61% people of color.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ellosable voters are 51% people of color.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the issue is not that it is this, you know, cowboy hat wearing conservative white person, which is what the mindset has been.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that the state is majority of people of color, but the voter turnout levels are dramatically different.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so Latinos and African Americans and Asians don't vote at his high level as the way population does.
• 17:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So a combination of active suppression, misinformation, et cetera, but that's what the numbers are.
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're four and a half million black and Latino did not vote.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: in the last election, who are eligible to vote in an election that was cited by around a million voters, Biden lost to say by 600,000 voters.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the problem is not it's being conservative, it's who is turning out to vote and at what levels are the different groups turning out to vote.
• 18:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it turns out Texas has the second lowest voter turnout rate in the country in 2024 to under 50% only Arkansas was worse, best my home state of Minnesota.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the Senate race there.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a primary on March 3rd, both parties have very contentious and important primaries.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Democrats' best chance would be if the incumbent Republican Senator John Corden is defeated in the Republican primary, which is quite possible by the right wing attorney general of the state, Ken Paxon, who's been impeached for corruption, but got off the line.
• 18:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: at Big Time Trumper, the latest polls of the Republican primary show the far right wing corrupt Paxton ahead of the incumbent Coranon by seven points.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the Democratic primary, we also have two candidates.
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Jasmine Croquette, the representative in Congress from Dallas, first elected in
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: state legislative representative from part of Austin, who's been in the state legislature since 2018.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: The pundit say this looks like a contest between a black progressive running against a white man with a background as a Presbyterian minister who has therefore cross over appeal to moderate Republicans.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you think?
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a deep seated and I would actually argue delusional hope and belief that there can be an age of enlightenment candidate that somebody who will just say the right things in the calm rational way and that'll bring all of these different crossover voters to us.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: there's no empirical evidence for that being the way to win.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Democrats have lost statewide in Texas for 30 years in a row, and then multiple times, they've tried to run these candidates who would have this mythical crossover appeal.
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The closest we've ever come in the past 30 years was better or worse candidacy.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 2018, for the Senate, where he ran an inspiring grassroots campaign that boosted enthusiasm boosted turnout, and he came within 200,000 votes of winning, that's the way to look at how do we go about winning in Texas, that model, and then how do you close that gap?
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, Crocket is the best positioned, and she has a lot of enthusiasm from the various
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: the better model, and then add in in additional 300,000 plus voters out of the 1.2 million black voters who did not vote last time.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a far more empirical, plausible, and achievable path to victory than the deep-seated hope that somehow people are going to gravitate over and back Talarica because he went on Joe Rogan Show and talked in calm terms.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, let me just underline the numbers here.
• 21:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Beto lost by 215,000 votes.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And remind us how many eligible black voters stayed home in 2024?
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: 1.2 million eligible black voters did not vote.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: That alone should be able to get us across the finish line.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what is the Jasmine Crocket strategy for victory?
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, she, fortunately, is really, very clear on and is trying to both replicate out even probably call it a combination of the Beto and the Obama appeal.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you've ever been in inspiring, unapologetic, strong, forceful candidacy.
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's been one of the fiercest critics of Trump over these past several years, and has really built a national brand and an identity.
• 22:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not trying to walk this moderate line and try to not upset people.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's forcefully unapologetically saying this is what the country should be and what they're doing is wrong.
• 22:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: We should go in a different direction.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: and she's really leaning into organizing and spending time in and boosting the infrastructure and the turn-out potential in the communities of colors, going to the churches.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's going, she's talking about, you know, creating just like rocket clubs of different local activists and whatnot.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the path we need to go in Texas.
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the entire history of the United States, only four states have ever elected a black woman to the Senate.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's remember who they are.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Illinois elected Carol Mosley Brown in 1992, first black woman ever elected to the Senate.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: 24 years later, the second was elected.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kamala Harris from California, 2016.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Eight years after that, 2024, just, we got two in the same year, completely unprecedented.
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Maryland, Angela, also Brooks was elected in Delaware, Lisa Blunt, Rochester, was elected.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you conclude about this for the candidacy of Jasmine Crocket?
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, it says a lot about this country, right, in terms of what are conceptions of leadership are.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so in her book, Cass, as a boy Wilkerson, she has this chapter where she says that we are all
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: stepping onto a stage where the roles were decided a long time ago.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's very clear who is the lead and who is the sidekicks.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have a picture of what leadership looks like in this country.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've had 46 presidents, all of them men, and
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: and all of them except for what our white.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the conception of what a leader is is very deeply rooted in the psychology and ethos of our culture.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so anyone running an aspiring for state-wide leadership has to deal with that reality.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I would say that's the essence of what the situations.
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've had four black women elected to the Senate.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have had no black women ever elected governor in any state in the history of this country.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: and that's not because we haven't had talented smart people it's because the conception of what a leader looks like is very different and so it's very important to have a candidate like Crockett but the flip side of that reality is that people who have been
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: alienated and marginalized and not had somebody to look up to become very excited and mobilized and galvanized the way that happened when Obama ran.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what people are missing is the really the catalytic potential for crocket to excite people who finally see somebody who looks like them and who sounds like them, who cares about their issues and then they will come out in larger numbers and sufficiently large enough numbers to win that seat.
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now the doubters on this issue point to the victory of Abigail Spanberger in Virginia last November, they say her surprisingly large margin of victory suggests it's centrist politics that are the path to power, especially for women, especially below the Mason Dixon line.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Virginia is a great example of a narrow aperture around trying to understand what's happening in politics and happening in social change within this country, and also people to kind of reinforce their pre-suppositions by looking at frankly cherry-picking data.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, Vanberger ran as Vanberger won and Vanberger is more moderate.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no question about that.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two points about that.
• 25:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is the reason that she won is because of the work of groups such as New Virginia majority run by tramwent, a woman of color, to boost turnout of people of color and to change the composition of the electorate in Virginia over the past 15 years to the extent that Democrats of one like 80% of the statewide elections because the electorate has changed.
• 26:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But more
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: is that if you say, oh, look at Spamberg, she won for a governor.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: They say nothing about who won Lieutenant Governor.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so Virginia elected Gazala Hashmi, the first Muslim elected statewide anywhere in the country as an unapologetic woman of color, Muslim elected to become the second puttap person, and poise to become the governor of Virginia four years down the road.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So where is that factor?
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: in this analysis that we owe with, it's a moderate white person as the way we have to go when they elected a Muslim as the lieutenant governor and an African-American as the Attorney General.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you said there's an even better example of how to win from the 2025 elections.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of Virginia, you look to New York City.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, absolutely.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It says we're totally, I think you're so many people trying to like look the other direction in terms of realizing the dominant story and politics in many ways was over at Mundami winning mayor of New York City that you have an unapologetic, progressive person of color.
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: running younger person, running and inspiring a whole generation of people to get involved in politics and get involved in social change.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's how he won, unseeding a longstanding incumbent.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: They made them any of the same arguments.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, well, Cuomo has this broad appeal, et cetera, but that it was the boosted turnout through the enthusiasm and the mobilization of the multiracial electorate.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: that propelled Mondami into this office, and that is a formula that not only worked in New York, but can work elsewhere, and the other part is that it's demographics are much more similar to Texas than even Virginia's are.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, that's a striking thing.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Most people don't think of Texas as having similar demographics to New York City, but remind us why that makes sense.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So New York is a majority of people of color city.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It has one dummy proudly said in his election night speech, the city of immigrants built by immigrants and will be run by a immigrant.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then Texas is 61% people of color.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's important to realize that, too, at all, this mythical and desire for that to be some kind of crossover, moderate voter, is to understand how deep within the Texas identity is this existential battle over what is the nature of this country?
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is this a multiracial democracy, or is this a white nation?
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Texas itself was formed.
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: because they wanted to continue to practice slavery.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's when they formed the Republic of Texas.
• 29:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And went to war with Mexico over the issue of being able to continue to practice slavery, so that the whites there could own black people.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then after that, then you had the United States weighing in around the whole Mexican American War where the United States took the majority of the land mass of Mexico, and the Treaty of Guadalupe, Hidalgo, and the 1840s.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And people say, I want my friends got married in a border town in Texas, and at the wedding reception,
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: is historically accurate and plays out in terms of the dynamics of the the situation and the struggle there.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So because of those realities, you have a situation where it's a majority of people of color, 61% of color, African Americans and Latinos and nations are 51% of the eligible voters.
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is really the proposition and the composition, which is also the piece of jazzman running and being part of the ticket, more of those than the Americans.
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Gina Hinoza, who is going to be the nominee for governor.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it would be running a Latina who as deep roots comes out of the border area as the nominee and the and the gubernatorial size.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you could have a very strong black and brown female lead ticket.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: which would be a way forward and also what I'm trying to argue in that piece is to show the empirical numbers that that is the greatest upside in terms of winning within Texas.
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, in Mombani, has shown what can happen when a young progressive candidate of color sets out an entirely different vision of what society could be.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: He captured people's imaginations.
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: He gave them energy and hope.
• 30:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: He inspired young people to turn out in large numbers
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It could happen in Texas if Jasmine Crockett wins the Democratic primary.
• 31:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Steve Phillips wrote about it in the nation magazine you can read his article, Jasmine Crockett can win the Texas Senate race if voters of color get to the polls.
• 31:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's at thenation.com.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Steve, thanks for talking with us today.
• 31:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me, I enjoyed it.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to Start Making Sense, a podcast from the Nation Magazine.
• 31:30
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• 31:33
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• 31:36
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• 31:39
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• 31:42
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• 31:46
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• 31:51
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• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weener, thanks for listening.