Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Adam Brandon - How Independents Can Break The Logjam In D.C.

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Interview Only w/ Adam Brandon - How Independents Can Break The Logjam In D.C. · The Chuck ToddCast

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to
0:02
Speaker 1: you by Chapter. Now, almost everything you hear about Medicare
0:06
Speaker 1: is somebody quietly trying to steer you somewhere. And you're
0:11
Speaker 1: skeptical of that, as you should be. I get it.
0:14
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a federal lawsuit going on right now
0:17
Speaker 1: over exactly this. Companies that branded themselves as unbiased while
0:21
Speaker 1: allegedly pointing people toward whatever would pay them the most
0:25
Speaker 1: as some sort of broker. So if your default is
0:28
Speaker 1: to distrust everyone in this space, honestly, I get it.
0:31
Speaker 1: I'm a bit distrustful these days myself. That's the whole
0:34
Speaker 1: reason I want to tell you about Chapter. They're independent
0:37
Speaker 1: Medicare advisors whose entire model is that their advisors are
0:41
Speaker 1: not paid to push any one plan. They're just trying
0:45
Speaker 1: to help. Yes, there's compensation that goes with it. but
0:47
Speaker 1: it's across the board is what they're trying to do.
0:51
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they're advocating for you.
0:52
Speaker 1: They're not the insurance companies themselves. They're an actual person
0:56
Speaker 1: who actually goes through your doctors, your prescriptions, your needs,
1:01
Speaker 1: and then compares them to every single plan available to
1:04
Speaker 1: find the best one that will work for you and
1:06
Speaker 1: hopefully save you a couple dollars too. And here's the
1:09
Speaker 1: part that sets chapter apart. They don't disappear once you've
1:14
Speaker 1: been in They will keep advocating for you. They're kind
1:17
Speaker 1: of like almost like a concierge service. You're just there.
1:19
Speaker 1: I need help. You're like customer service. You know, the plan,
1:22
Speaker 1: you know, help me navigate this again. So you ever
1:24
Speaker 1: get hit with a wrongful medical bill, they'll help you
1:28
Speaker 1: fight it. They want to stay an advocate for you
1:31
Speaker 1: even after you've done this. So look, I get it.
1:34
Speaker 1: I think there's all sorts of space. You see a
1:38
Speaker 1: lot of people are throwing themselves in this healthcare space.
1:41
Speaker 1: What I like about these chapter folks, I've spent time
1:44
Speaker 1: with them. This is a very transparent organization. It is
1:48
Speaker 1: Medicare and all of its affiliated stuff can be very confusing.
1:53
Speaker 1: The whole point of this is to make this easier
1:56
Speaker 1: and less confusing. OK, so look, take the skepticism you
2:00
Speaker 1: already have in all of this, point it at your
2:02
Speaker 1: own plan for 20 minutes. It's free. There's no pressure.
2:06
Speaker 1: And then call chapter today at 980-734-4200. Well, I've made
2:17
Speaker 1: no secret on this podcast that I think one of
2:20
Speaker 1: the bigger problems we have with our politics is there's
2:25
Speaker 1: a lack of choice. And I think voters have been
2:28
Speaker 1: demanding it. And my latest framing that I've been using,
2:32
Speaker 1: whether it's in speeches or whether it's in this podcast
2:38
Speaker 1: or others, is, The voters are begging for the market
2:42
Speaker 1: to meet their needs in politics, but they only have
2:44
Speaker 1: two ways to communicate. And my next guest here is
2:48
Speaker 1: gonna help me walk through it, but they have two
2:49
Speaker 1: ways to communicate and they have been shouting, they've been
2:53
Speaker 1: screaming for this. Their one way to communicate is voting
2:56
Speaker 1: and they have voted out any party that's been in
2:58
Speaker 1: power every single election since 2012, whenever they've gotten the
3:02
Speaker 1: chance to do it. And the second thing they've done
3:04
Speaker 1: is when they've been offered a choice to register with
3:06
Speaker 1: one of the two major parties, They've instead chosen door
3:09
Speaker 1: number three. Whatever the door number three is in their state,
3:12
Speaker 1: it can be independent, no party affiliation, however one brands it.
3:16
Speaker 1: And those are the only two ways voters can express
3:18
Speaker 1: their distaste for the system. The question is, can the
3:21
Speaker 1: system meet voters where they're at, or is there going
3:25
Speaker 1: to continue to be this forced binary conversation? So joining
3:29
Speaker 1: me now to have this conversation is somebody who's in
3:34
Speaker 1: the middle of this independent movement, Adam Brandon, along with
3:38
Speaker 1: Heather Manchin. Yes, that last name should be familiar with you,
3:41
Speaker 1: daughter of the former independent senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin.
3:48
Speaker 1: And they have launched the Independence Center. And he's here now, Adam.
3:55
Speaker 1: Our paths have crossed quite a few times over the years,
3:58
Speaker 1: both in the democracy space and also the regular old
4:03
Speaker 1: journalism and principle space. So, welcome. Good to see you.
4:07
Speaker 1: And tell me what you're up to. Tell me exactly
4:10
Speaker 1: what the goal of this group is and the independence.
4:14
Speaker 1: Give me the full name.
4:16
Speaker 2: Sure. So I don't want to. There's a couple organizations,
4:19
Speaker 2: but I'll just start off this way. I came to Washington,
4:22
Speaker 2: I can't believe I'm saying this now, like almost 25
4:25
Speaker 2: years ago. And the main thing that was motivating me
4:28
Speaker 2: back then was debt and deficits. I'm a fiscal guy,
4:33
Speaker 2: just so everyone is clear on what I came to
4:35
Speaker 2: Washington for was to get our debt and deficit under control.
4:38
Speaker 2: So at the time, I thought the best way forward
4:40
Speaker 2: for me was in Team Red. And because at least
4:43
Speaker 2: Team Red was giving me a lot of like they
4:46
Speaker 2: were talking like they cared about debt and deficits. Now,
4:48
Speaker 2: their actions are a little different than what they say,
4:51
Speaker 2: but at least that's where I was. And then for
4:54
Speaker 2: on the journey I've been on in my old organization,
4:56
Speaker 2: which was one of the one of the original Tea
4:58
Speaker 2: Party organizations, I watched how the base that we worked with,
5:02
Speaker 2: the conservative activist base, moved from being very serious about
5:07
Speaker 2: debt and deficits to I don't know if they really
5:10
Speaker 2: matter anymore. There's other issues we'll deal with. I've stayed
5:13
Speaker 2: the same place. I do think that debt and deficits matter.
5:16
Speaker 2: So I had to rethink for myself, how was the
5:19
Speaker 2: best way to accomplish this? And I saw the rise
5:22
Speaker 2: of independent voters. And when we started to get into
5:25
Speaker 2: trying to understand who these independent voters were, I found
5:28
Speaker 2: that independent voters, they care about debt and deficits. They
5:31
Speaker 2: care about immigration. They care about healthcare. They care about
5:34
Speaker 2: all of these major issues. They just lost faith that
5:38
Speaker 2: either party was gonna be able to do something about it.
5:40
Speaker 2: And then they also liked, hey, Democrats have some good
5:43
Speaker 2: ideas here and Republicans have some good ideas here. Maybe
5:46
Speaker 2: if we can merge these two things together, we could
5:48
Speaker 2: actually get legislation. So part of my journey was, About
5:52
Speaker 2: three years ago, I shut down the organization FreedomWorks, one
5:55
Speaker 2: of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.
5:57
Speaker 2: After you spend... You know, 10 years being president, doing
6:00
Speaker 2: everything possible to keep the organization alive to then in
6:03
Speaker 2: one weekend decide.
6:04
Speaker 1: FreedomWorks was a was a was connected with the Koch network, right?
6:08
Speaker 2: It was not actually. That's a misconception. We were one
6:10
Speaker 2: of the few conservative groups that were not connected to
6:13
Speaker 2: the Koch network. We actually were born in a split
6:16
Speaker 2: away from them, ironically. But we were we were a
6:19
Speaker 2: Tea Party organization. We were really backers of the Freedom Caucus, again,
6:23
Speaker 2: fiscal conservatives. but it ran its course. And I still,
6:26
Speaker 2: but the issue still remains. So it's a long way
6:29
Speaker 2: of saying that my only hope is there's not a
6:32
Speaker 2: Republican or Democrat way to solve our fiscal nightmare. You
6:35
Speaker 2: got to put people together. You got to start having
6:37
Speaker 2: not only conversations of Republicans and Democrats, you have to
6:40
Speaker 2: have retirees and young people having conversations as well of
6:44
Speaker 2: what do we want to do here? So- I sort
6:47
Speaker 2: of set up an organization called the Independent Center with
6:50
Speaker 2: a few colleagues of mine. And then in April of
6:52
Speaker 2: this year, I was getting breakfast with the mansions. And
6:56
Speaker 2: they said, look, your strategy that you guys are talking
6:59
Speaker 2: about running independence, we have decided that this is probably
7:02
Speaker 2: the best path forward for the country. So we temporarily,
7:06
Speaker 2: the Mansions had Americans Together. I had Independence Center. We've
7:09
Speaker 2: created a vehicle for this election called the Independent Leadership Council,
7:13
Speaker 2: which is our merged organizations. But most of our activity
7:18
Speaker 2: is going to be coming out of what's called the
7:19
Speaker 2: Independent PAC. And what is so funny about the Independent
7:23
Speaker 2: PAC is is when the independent PAC, when I went
7:25
Speaker 2: to register it, no one was cyber squatting on it.
7:28
Speaker 2: That's how much people didn't care about independence. I literally
7:31
Speaker 2: went in, signed my name, registered the independent PAC. So
7:34
Speaker 2: there's a couple organizations, but look, what we are doing
7:37
Speaker 2: is we've merged our efforts together to just try and
7:40
Speaker 2: get two. I mean, maybe we get lucky, you get three,
7:42
Speaker 2: but we've got to get some independence elected from outside
7:45
Speaker 2: the system.
7:46
Speaker 1: So I want to peel away a bunch of things.
7:49
Speaker 1: Let's start with ILC. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Because there is a,
7:54
Speaker 1: you said, independent leadership council. I'm old enough to remember
7:57
Speaker 1: a different letter as the first letter, but the L
8:00
Speaker 1: and the C. I assume that is not an accident,
8:03
Speaker 1: that the ILC and the old Democratic Leadership Council, which
8:07
Speaker 1: was essentially what I would call the modernization effort inside
8:11
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party that started by Al Frum, popularized by
8:16
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton in the late 80s, early 90s. That is
8:19
Speaker 1: an intentional callback.
8:22
Speaker 2: Look, I'm a 90s boy. I graduated high school in 1996.
8:25
Speaker 2: And I when I look back on.
8:29
Speaker 1: My listening to a lot of Oasis these days right now, I.
8:31
Speaker 2: Actually went just so you know, I went to Buenos
8:34
Speaker 2: Aires with my high school friends for the reunion tour.
8:37
Speaker 2: That's how much Oasis.
8:38
Speaker 1: That's how 90s you are. That's how 90s I am. Right.
8:41
Speaker 2: But when I think back on American politics, look, you had.
8:46
Speaker 2: Republicans and Democrats fighting, but they were getting stuff done.
8:49
Speaker 2: They were actually legislating. They were actually governing. Yes, you
8:52
Speaker 2: had shutdowns when Gingrich and Clinton were fighting, but stuff
8:56
Speaker 2: got done. Real legislation was getting done. So I think
8:59
Speaker 2: when you look back on when the system worked. It
9:02
Speaker 2: was working in the 90s. We had surpluses. We had
9:05
Speaker 2: people that were fighting, but they were doing it in
9:07
Speaker 2: a way they got stuff done. And so, yeah, I
9:10
Speaker 2: think I look back at the 1990s as an era
9:12
Speaker 2: we can learn from as a society.
9:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, I go hot and cold on it because I'm
9:18
Speaker 1: more convinced than ever that The basically 1948 to 2001
9:24
Speaker 1: is an outlier in American history. And that's my concern
9:28
Speaker 1: in that, look, our natural state is polarization. And if
9:32
Speaker 1: you look, if you separate out that period of time,
9:35
Speaker 1: if you take... Basically, the Cold War and the eight
9:40
Speaker 1: years of peace dividend that we thought we were getting,
9:43
Speaker 1: the end of history. You had ideological diversity in the
9:49
Speaker 1: two parties, by the way. Even in the 90s, what's
9:51
Speaker 1: interesting there, because I concur with all that, but you
9:55
Speaker 1: also had a different, you know, you sort of had
9:57
Speaker 1: two different generations that were meeting each other in the 90s.
10:00
Speaker 1: You had the new Gingrich culture warriors that were coming in,
10:03
Speaker 1: but you still had the old, you know, you had
10:06
Speaker 1: a lot of John Kasich in there. OK, you had
10:08
Speaker 1: a lot of guys that were of the of that
10:11
Speaker 1: old Rockefeller wing, whatever you wanted to call it. I
10:13
Speaker 1: know that sounds like a negative to the conservatives. But
10:16
Speaker 1: also the Democrats still had you had you had quite
10:19
Speaker 1: a few of the blue dogs. You know, that was
10:22
Speaker 1: still there were still a healthy chunk of them. You know,
10:27
Speaker 1: there were still enough of them that in 2010, when
10:30
Speaker 1: they passed health care, they had to do carve outs
10:33
Speaker 1: for the for the handful of pro-life Democrats that still existed. Right. And,
10:38
Speaker 1: you know, so I you know, I go back and
10:42
Speaker 1: forth about whether is that is, you know, did or
10:45
Speaker 1: did our. did our politics just allow for a little
10:49
Speaker 1: bit more of that back then? There was an expectation
10:52
Speaker 1: from it. Have we just nationalized everything and there's just
10:56
Speaker 1: no room, and so now we need a third party?
10:59
Speaker 1: The two parties used to offer room. You could be
11:01
Speaker 1: a pro-choice Republican, you could be a pro-life Democrat, you
11:05
Speaker 1: could be a pro-gay rights in the Republican side, and
11:09
Speaker 1: you were given some space In the era of Trump,
11:13
Speaker 1: there's no space. You're not allowed to- You just talked
11:15
Speaker 1: about my journey right there.
11:17
Speaker 2: Look, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and the area
11:20
Speaker 2: that I grew up in was very, on social issues,
11:24
Speaker 2: was pretty tolerant. Gay marriage and abortion were not the
11:29
Speaker 2: big issues when I was growing up in my area.
11:32
Speaker 2: But the fiscal issues definitely were something that appealed to me.
11:35
Speaker 2: And so when I started working in Washington professionally, I
11:38
Speaker 2: took those values into what I was doing. I've always
11:40
Speaker 2: been known as pretty hardcore on a lot of economic issues.
11:43
Speaker 2: But I'm pretty live and let live when it comes
11:45
Speaker 2: to all the other stuff. I used to have a
11:48
Speaker 2: home within the team red, within the GOP. But at
11:52
Speaker 2: the end, I didn't. It was interesting being a professional,
11:55
Speaker 2: being someone who worked in the industry. When you look
11:58
Speaker 2: at things like the grassroots activism, you look at the fundraising,
12:01
Speaker 2: you There was no room for my for my positions anymore.
12:05
Speaker 2: You either were all in on Team Red and Team
12:08
Speaker 2: Red was by then all MAGA or you're out. One
12:12
Speaker 2: of the two. I couldn't believe I watched it happen.
12:15
Speaker 2: And it did happen. So what I see is the
12:17
Speaker 2: parties have become smaller and smaller and smaller tents. But
12:21
Speaker 2: nature hates a vacuum. So what that's creating is this
12:23
Speaker 2: new big tent in the middle. And that's what independents
12:26
Speaker 2: to me are becoming is this big tent, which, by
12:28
Speaker 2: the way, I hope we get into this. They do
12:30
Speaker 2: believe in things. It's not.
12:32
Speaker 1: And I guess this is the question. And I, you know,
12:34
Speaker 1: I've always, you know, these words are not synonyms and
12:38
Speaker 1: we treat them as which is independent centrism and moderate. Yeah.
12:42
Speaker 1: And they get they all get thrown in that somehow
12:45
Speaker 1: if you're not with one of the two parties, you're
12:48
Speaker 1: automatically a moderate.
12:49
Speaker 2: Correct.
12:49
Speaker 1: If you're not with one of the two parties, you know,
12:51
Speaker 1: and you can't be both a moderate and an independent
12:53
Speaker 1: and a centrist. Right. I think that they are the
12:56
Speaker 1: Venn diagrams can overlap at times. But, you know, for instance,
13:00
Speaker 1: I describe my independence is I'm an incrementalist. It's not
13:04
Speaker 1: that I want to be an incrementalist. I'm an incrementalist
13:07
Speaker 1: because I know the only way to move a country
13:10
Speaker 1: of 340 million people is one step at a time.
13:14
Speaker 2: And I'm going to say it's practical, but I'll because
13:17
Speaker 2: it's fine.
13:18
Speaker 1: But I don't you know, what I would say is
13:20
Speaker 1: that it doesn't mean I'm afraid of a big idea.
13:22
Speaker 1: It just means that I believe in implementing it the
13:25
Speaker 1: way we implemented Social Security, which is first we'll start
13:28
Speaker 1: with the widows. Then we'll keep, you know, and then
13:31
Speaker 1: you sort of because if you and by the way,
13:34
Speaker 1: I use this with same sex marriage. Civil unions look
13:39
Speaker 1: ridiculous now in hindsight. But I promise you, had we
13:42
Speaker 1: not taken the civil union step in order for us
13:44
Speaker 1: all to see how ridiculous this was, we wouldn't have
13:48
Speaker 1: gotten to same sex marriage as fast as we did.
13:50
Speaker 1: So I could make this, some people say, well, incrementalism
13:54
Speaker 1: sets us back. And I'm like, oh no, I could
13:56
Speaker 1: make a case where incrementalism like civil unions actually accelerated
14:01
Speaker 1: movement because you realized, what the hell is that? What
14:05
Speaker 1: are we fighting about? What is this distinction? This is stupid.
14:09
Speaker 1: And then we realize it and we, as a society,
14:12
Speaker 1: move on. And so I think the hardest part here is,
14:17
Speaker 1: is there a coherent third way? Or is this just
14:21
Speaker 1: a bunch of, you know, center left people and center
14:24
Speaker 1: right people that are kind of got to get in
14:27
Speaker 1: bed together for a while to sort of reform the
14:30
Speaker 1: two major parties.
14:32
Speaker 2: Right here, you can't really see this, but this is
14:34
Speaker 2: a most recent polling that we've gotten out of the
14:38
Speaker 2: field that I'm going to be going over on a flight.
14:41
Speaker 2: I've got a five-hour flight tonight that I'm going to
14:43
Speaker 2: be pulling over this. And it's on all of these
14:45
Speaker 2: critical issues. But what is amazing on a lot of
14:48
Speaker 2: the big ones, health care, immigration, debt and spending, what
14:52
Speaker 2: we're seeing is the independent voter actually has a more
14:56
Speaker 2: cohesive vision on where it should go than base Republican
14:59
Speaker 2: and base Democrat.
15:00
Speaker 1: Give me an example.
15:02
Speaker 2: So immigration, what independent voters are looking for is more
15:05
Speaker 2: like the 2013 bill. They're looking for something similar with
15:09
Speaker 2: Canada has where you have a point system. So it's
15:13
Speaker 2: not a free for all. You kind of target who's
15:15
Speaker 2: coming into the country, but it's pretty robust. It's a
15:18
Speaker 2: pretty aggressive form of bringing in people to the country.
15:21
Speaker 2: And then the other thing that people want is they
15:24
Speaker 2: want a robust guest worker program. So people who are
15:27
Speaker 2: showing up to do construction work or to pick grapes
15:29
Speaker 2: or you know, any of those work in hotels, there's
15:32
Speaker 2: a dignified legal way for there to come in and
15:35
Speaker 2: to leave. And we can start bringing these things above board.
15:38
Speaker 2: And it's not that controversial, right? It's like, this is
15:40
Speaker 2: what majority of Americans want. They want to know who's
15:43
Speaker 2: coming in. They want a secure border, but they also
15:46
Speaker 2: want to have robust levels of immigration that actually help
15:49
Speaker 2: prop up the country and the economy. And also is
15:52
Speaker 2: very humane. I mean, this is an area where independence
15:54
Speaker 2: could absolutely lead on. And because it's like once they
15:59
Speaker 2: kind of plant the flag, like, look, this is where
16:01
Speaker 2: the majority of Americans are, then that could create the
16:04
Speaker 2: opportunity for jailbreaks from Republicans and Democrats who also want
16:07
Speaker 2: to support common sense legislation. To me, immigration is probably
16:10
Speaker 2: the easiest thing for us to solve.
16:13
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, my frustration with both the debt and immigration,
16:16
Speaker 1: it's sort of like we don't need new plans. Yeah, right.
16:19
Speaker 1: They're sitting on shelves like, you know, you want you know,
16:22
Speaker 1: you want to start to deal with the debt, you know,
16:24
Speaker 1: the three percent solution. is one that seems pretty easy
16:28
Speaker 1: to begin implementing. 3% spending cuts, 3% tax hikes. We
16:32
Speaker 1: could argue how you implement them each, and you need
16:34
Speaker 1: to have some care about not everybody gets the 3%
16:37
Speaker 1: whack in every direction. Maybe something gets a 6% whack
16:41
Speaker 1: while we do a 1% over a year, whatever it is.
16:45
Speaker 1: But the basic structure, it's sitting on a shelf. The
16:49
Speaker 1: issue is political will, right? And I guess ultimately, What
16:53
Speaker 1: you're trying to do is elect people that can provide
16:56
Speaker 1: the spine or the will. Is that my way of
17:00
Speaker 1: pushing your agenda?
17:01
Speaker 2: Yes, but I have learned, look, I have spent my
17:04
Speaker 2: career learning the wrong lessons. or learning the right lessons
17:07
Speaker 2: after seeing the wrong thing. And one thing that I
17:10
Speaker 2: constantly did throughout my career is you get these great
17:12
Speaker 2: young candidates. They would come to Washington. They'd be so
17:15
Speaker 2: excited to get to Washington. And then when a few years,
17:18
Speaker 2: you're like, what the heck happened to this person? I
17:21
Speaker 2: remember that they were like going to solve this problem
17:24
Speaker 2: and fix this. And then I meet up with them later.
17:27
Speaker 2: And it's like their soul had run out of their face.
17:29
Speaker 2: And when I would talk to a lot of people,
17:31
Speaker 2: often it was the deals and getting on a committee.
17:34
Speaker 2: People don't realize that you have.
17:36
Speaker 1: To- The House rules in particular are essentially anti-democracy. I
17:42
Speaker 1: don't know how else to put it.
17:43
Speaker 2: They really are. Look, what a congressman has been reduced
17:46
Speaker 2: to in our world today, and we wonder why we
17:48
Speaker 2: have this legitimacy deficit now with our elected officials. As
17:52
Speaker 2: an elected official, if Chuck Todd runs for Congress in Cleveland, Ohio,
17:57
Speaker 2: and you get elected, your number one job is going
17:59
Speaker 2: to be either, are you going to vote for the
18:01
Speaker 2: Republican for Speaker or the Democrat for Speaker? And once
18:03
Speaker 2: you do that, you can go on your way.
18:05
Speaker 1: Right.
18:06
Speaker 2: And people, there's this term we use inside Washington called
18:10
Speaker 2: the four corners, the speaker, the minority leader, the majority
18:14
Speaker 2: leader of the Senate, minority leader of the Senate, those
18:16
Speaker 2: four offices end up controlling all legislation. That's not how
18:21
Speaker 2: the system is supposed to work. So this is why
18:24
Speaker 2: we look at this incredible opportunity. If you could get
18:27
Speaker 2: independents elected outside of the system, like literally Mr. Smith
18:32
Speaker 2: goes to Washington style stuff who come here and be like, look,
18:35
Speaker 2: I'm going to come for a term or two. Notice
18:37
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Speaker 1: That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash chuck. So, look, I, you know,
20:55
Speaker 1: without giving away too much here, I was involved in
20:58
Speaker 1: an organizing meeting about sort of like, OK, what does
21:02
Speaker 1: it take to change house rules? And, you know, the
21:05
Speaker 1: idea is if you can essentially elect enough group, enough
21:11
Speaker 1: house members, they don't all have to be independent. They
21:13
Speaker 1: can be sort of, you know, D's and R's who
21:16
Speaker 1: simply want to have an opportunity not to let leadership
21:20
Speaker 1: tell them what to do. Like we saw what happened.
21:23
Speaker 1: There was this example, Jared Golden and Marie Glucincan Perez
21:26
Speaker 1: basically went against leadership on a rules committee vote in
21:30
Speaker 1: order to get a piece of legislation that Jared Golden
21:32
Speaker 1: cared about onto the floor to actually get a vote.
21:35
Speaker 1: And so we had some members of Congress, and I
21:38
Speaker 1: don't want to name names because it would get them
21:39
Speaker 1: in trouble, but it was a bipartisan group essentially saying, OK,
21:43
Speaker 1: you know, what, you know, what what's it going to
21:45
Speaker 1: take here to break? Because technically the House can gets
21:49
Speaker 1: to write brand new rules on January 3rd. of every
21:53
Speaker 1: odd numbered year, right? It's a new Congress and you
21:56
Speaker 1: don't have to, you know, this idea that a bill
21:58
Speaker 1: has to go through the rules committee before they decide
22:00
Speaker 1: to bring it to the floor is a choice. There's
22:03
Speaker 1: nothing in the constitution about it. And listen to this.
22:06
Speaker 1: We had one member of Congress say this to us.
22:10
Speaker 1: All I want is just let us, every member of
22:13
Speaker 1: Congress should be able to put one bill on the
22:16
Speaker 1: floor for a vote every day. Two years, meaning every Congress.
22:22
Speaker 1: And I sat there and realized, I wonder if you
22:25
Speaker 1: told the American people that that's not the case. There
22:28
Speaker 1: is no guarantee that their elected official can even get
22:33
Speaker 1: a bill on the floor if they want to. It's
22:37
Speaker 1: just astonishing to me. Like, you know, I always say
22:42
Speaker 1: sometimes it's the story not reported that is the bigger story.
22:46
Speaker 1: What if I told you an individual member of Congress
22:49
Speaker 1: does not have a right to introduce a bill on
22:53
Speaker 1: the floor of Congress throughout their entire term without getting
22:57
Speaker 1: permission from a committee or a member of leadership. What
23:00
Speaker 1: do you think the average voter would think of that?
23:02
Speaker 2: Well, I was just talking about committees and how you
23:05
Speaker 2: have to pay to get on committees. When I tell
23:07
Speaker 2: people these committees.
23:07
Speaker 1: On the House side, you do. That is not the
23:09
Speaker 1: case on the Senate side. I've learned, I've had some
23:12
Speaker 1: friends who- You know, only in Washington do you develop
23:16
Speaker 1: friends who were former parliamentarians.
23:18
Speaker 2: Right, right.
23:19
Speaker 1: But like, you know, the beauty of the Senate is
23:22
Speaker 1: if Dan Osborne refuses to caucus, if Brian Bangs refuses
23:26
Speaker 1: to caucus, he gets a committee.
23:28
Speaker 2: That is true.
23:29
Speaker 1: You do. All senators are guaranteed committee slots and you cannot.
23:33
Speaker 1: So there is actually a lot more power for an
23:37
Speaker 1: independent senator if they choose to use it.
23:39
Speaker 2: Well, that's actually, now I don't want to get too
23:41
Speaker 2: far off of where, I mean, originally my project was
23:43
Speaker 2: very focused, going to be focused on the House of Representatives.
23:46
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's the bigger problem. I think the
23:48
Speaker 1: House is the sickest organ. I look at it as
23:50
Speaker 1: if the democracy, like we've got to fix, no other
23:54
Speaker 1: organ is going to work properly until the House works better.
23:57
Speaker 2: Chuck, I'm so glad you're saying that because one of
23:59
Speaker 2: the things that shocked me in Washington is that for years, again,
24:03
Speaker 2: when I was working on the Republican side, one of
24:05
Speaker 2: the things we always complained about was all this power
24:07
Speaker 2: going to the White House.
24:09
Speaker 1: Right.
24:09
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden it's like, well, Trump
24:12
Speaker 2: gets elected and everyone is suddenly fine with all this
24:14
Speaker 2: power going to the White House. I have a complete
24:17
Speaker 2: shock to that. I don't care if you're a Republican
24:19
Speaker 2: or a Democrat, you need to pull that power back.
24:21
Speaker 2: And yeah, and that's why for me personally, in the
24:24
Speaker 2: long run, independence, we need to take the House of Representatives.
24:27
Speaker 2: And what does that mean? Well, look, in a Washington
24:30
Speaker 2: that is like right now, the majority is two. But
24:32
Speaker 2: I think we're getting into an era where majorities are
24:34
Speaker 2: going to be in the single digits for a while.
24:37
Speaker 2: If you have 10 independents who are not caucusing with
24:40
Speaker 2: either party, all kinds of crazy stuff could start to
24:44
Speaker 2: happen quickly in the House of Representatives. And, of course,
24:47
Speaker 2: my goal is that you make the House really boring.
24:51
Speaker 2: You get someone like a General Petraeus to be the
24:53
Speaker 2: Speaker of the House, whose job is just to make
24:55
Speaker 2: sure the body moves on time and the Speaker is
24:58
Speaker 2: not a political position anymore. And you were talking about
25:02
Speaker 2: individual members' offerings. People forget about the House Freedom Caucus,
25:06
Speaker 2: which has been really which is identified today as like
25:09
Speaker 2: a Trump support group. When the Freedom Caucus was founded
25:12
Speaker 2: in the first moments, it was because David Schweikert, congressman,
25:16
Speaker 2: was struck from his committee for just trying to offer
25:18
Speaker 2: an amendment on spending that he knew he was going
25:20
Speaker 2: to lose. But he wanted to offer an amendment. And
25:23
Speaker 2: then when he got in, the Republican leadership didn't want
25:26
Speaker 2: to embarrass themselves by having a legit spending amendment. And
25:30
Speaker 2: they punished him. Well, that was what the Freedom Caucus
25:32
Speaker 2: was about, is a small group could come together and say,
25:34
Speaker 2: you know what, we're going to force these amendments. And
25:37
Speaker 2: so that is a lesson I learned from that point
25:39
Speaker 2: in my life, which is a small group in the
25:41
Speaker 2: House can come together and actually, if they're serious, start
25:44
Speaker 2: forcing real legislation.
25:45
Speaker 1: Well, Adam, and this is something that I think that,
25:48
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny what you just said about the
25:52
Speaker 1: Freedom Caucus, right? What it was trying to be and
25:56
Speaker 1: what it's become are two different things.
25:57
Speaker 2: Two different things.
25:58
Speaker 1: And it's now the brand is... What we really need
26:01
Speaker 1: in the House right now is, and I don't want
26:04
Speaker 1: to hear the words problem solvers caucus, and I say this,
26:06
Speaker 1: no disrespect to Nancy, who's done a lot of work
26:11
Speaker 1: in this space, but this problem, sometimes the caucuses get
26:15
Speaker 1: too big, and the bigger they are, the less they do.
26:19
Speaker 1: It's clearly, it's just something so you could say you're
26:21
Speaker 1: a part of it, and it feels like it's something
26:24
Speaker 1: you send out in direct mail during campaign time, but
26:26
Speaker 1: you don't actually... there isn't a pack there, but what
26:31
Speaker 1: you really need is a, is a, is a almost
26:33
Speaker 1: like a shadow rules committee that will do everything they
26:38
Speaker 1: can to break the cartel, right? We basically, it's the
26:41
Speaker 1: two party cartel here that has prevented the people's house
26:48
Speaker 1: from react, responding to the people. I mean, it's as
26:52
Speaker 1: simple as that was the founder's intent and we don't
26:55
Speaker 1: have founder's intent.
26:57
Speaker 2: No, no. Look, the founders also knew about the great
27:00
Speaker 2: Roman Cincinnatus who came out of retirement, helped save the
27:03
Speaker 2: early Roman Republic and had all this power. And what
27:06
Speaker 2: does he do? He goes back to his farm. It's
27:08
Speaker 2: where we get the name Cincinnati today. But our founders
27:11
Speaker 2: knew about Cincinnatus. That's one of the reasons George Washington,
27:16
Speaker 2: after all that power, he gave it back. And I
27:18
Speaker 2: think that when we look at the problems of where
27:20
Speaker 2: we're heading to in the future, I Maybe we just
27:23
Speaker 2: look back at what our founders kind of thought this
27:25
Speaker 2: country should look like, where you have more citizens who
27:27
Speaker 2: are getting involved in the process, people who get involved
27:29
Speaker 2: in the process who are not necessarily career politicians who
27:32
Speaker 2: really want to get in, serve, go back home. I
27:36
Speaker 2: think that that would strengthen our system. But what we
27:39
Speaker 2: have right now, there's a couple trends that are coming
27:42
Speaker 2: together I find incredibly exciting. And this may be my
27:44
Speaker 2: most controversial take, but I am watching the value of
27:47
Speaker 2: money in politics collapse.
27:49
Speaker 1: It's funny you say that. Yeah, it is. It is
27:53
Speaker 1: sort of like, it's sort of like how I feel
27:56
Speaker 1: about NBA salaries. Like when I hear these contracts, you're like,
27:59
Speaker 1: is it even real money anymore? Like everybody's a 50 million,
28:03
Speaker 1: making $ 50 million at some point in their career if
28:05
Speaker 1: they're just an all-star. And suddenly now every race is a,
28:09
Speaker 1: you know, every race is a $ 10 million house race.
28:12
Speaker 1: Every Senate race is a $ 100 million Senate race. Eventually
28:15
Speaker 1: there's real money involved. But it is clear, I'm with you, that-
28:22
Speaker 1: if you're smarter, you can use smarter money, I think.
28:28
Speaker 1: You can moneyball this.
28:29
Speaker 2: So exactly. Look, I'm a Cleveland Indians fan or Cleveland
28:32
Speaker 2: Guardians fan. That's how small teams compete, right? You figure
28:35
Speaker 2: out we're not going to be able to go get
28:37
Speaker 2: your 330 hitters and sign them for a long contract.
28:40
Speaker 2: We've got to get young guys and put them together
28:43
Speaker 2: and try and get them to play well. But AI
28:46
Speaker 2: does allow us to do research and data analysis that
28:50
Speaker 2: lowers the cost. Looking at like Seth Bodnar, who's running
28:54
Speaker 2: for Senate as a three way. There's a Republican. There's
28:57
Speaker 2: a Democrat. There's Seth Bodnar in the Montana Senate race.
29:00
Speaker 2: And in all candor, this is a we're getting heavily
29:03
Speaker 2: behind him. Millions and millions of dollars.
29:07
Speaker 1: I don't know if the math works, but I hear you.
29:10
Speaker 2: I'm really confident on this one, actually, that we can
29:13
Speaker 2: pull this off and I could get through the exact
29:15
Speaker 2: numbers of how it goes. But he needs two hundred
29:17
Speaker 2: and ten thousand votes. Mm hmm. The Senate seat in Montana,
29:22
Speaker 2: 210,000 votes. When you think of it that way, and
29:24
Speaker 2: here's the good news, using some modern technologies, we're able
29:28
Speaker 2: to map out where those 210,000 votes are in groups
29:31
Speaker 2: of 10, 15, 30,000, and then hyper-target our message at them.
29:36
Speaker 2: It takes money. It takes millions of dollars. It just
29:38
Speaker 2: doesn't take tens of millions.
29:40
Speaker 1: Of dollars.
29:41
Speaker 2: That's what's different.
29:45
Speaker 1: At what point do you think, you know, like for me,
29:49
Speaker 1: this independent movement, I view it through two prisms. One
29:55
Speaker 1: is it's an attempt to force the two parties to
29:57
Speaker 1: reform themselves. That was the experience. Our experience with what
30:02
Speaker 1: I would call successful independent periods, whether it was Teddy Roosevelt,
30:06
Speaker 1: George Wallace, or Ross Perot, they all had an impact
30:10
Speaker 1: on the parties. You can debate the individual people were
30:18
Speaker 1: talking about there. I don't want to get into the
30:19
Speaker 1: politics of these individuals, but they had that way. It
30:22
Speaker 1: impacted the two parties. Is that the movement you're building,
30:28
Speaker 1: or do you want to see a permanent structure here that.
30:30
Speaker 2: Breaks up the- Honestly, this is a funny question. I'm
30:33
Speaker 2: sitting in donor meetings, and they're like, what is your
30:34
Speaker 2: long-term success? And I give them the worst answer. Honestly,
30:37
Speaker 2: I don't know. But what I do know is this.
30:40
Speaker 2: If you can prove that independents as a group, this
30:44
Speaker 2: political group, can be a political force. That is gonna
30:47
Speaker 2: change everything. If you can prove that you could get
30:50
Speaker 2: elected outside the two-party system, that changes all the incentives overnight.
30:56
Speaker 2: So once you do that, then you start seeing what
30:59
Speaker 2: is possible and what is capable. And I would like
31:01
Speaker 2: to think that once you do that, my lessons, again,
31:04
Speaker 2: my time in Washington, actually, I'll take Peter Meyer, who
31:07
Speaker 2: was a Republican Congressman from Michigan, He told me something
31:12
Speaker 2: that was really he's like, look, Adam, I mean, we
31:14
Speaker 2: were talking about him. He's like, the only way the
31:16
Speaker 2: Democratic Party is ever going to change is if the
31:19
Speaker 2: Republican changes. And if the Republican Party, the only way
31:22
Speaker 2: the Republican Party is going to change, if it's forced
31:24
Speaker 2: to from the outside. And by the way, I'm pretty
31:27
Speaker 2: sure if I was talking to a Democrat member, they
31:29
Speaker 2: would probably say the other way around.
31:31
Speaker 1: So by the way, it's true, though. I mean, it's
31:33
Speaker 1: already happened. I always say it this way. I said, look,
31:36
Speaker 1: and I had. Jared Moskowitz, I recently ran into and
31:40
Speaker 1: he goes, you know, when you first said this, I
31:42
Speaker 1: didn't believe you. And now I do. And I said
31:45
Speaker 1: this because I said it before 24. I said the
31:48
Speaker 1: second election of Trump is going to change the Democrats
31:50
Speaker 1: more than the Republicans. And and here we are 18
31:54
Speaker 1: months later. And it's done exactly that. Right. There's always
31:57
Speaker 1: a moment. Both parties do this. You get to the
31:59
Speaker 1: point of you think, well, they're wrong about this. This
32:02
Speaker 1: will blow up in their face. And then when it doesn't,
32:05
Speaker 1: you're like, well, you can't beat them. Join them. And
32:07
Speaker 1: if they're gonna operate this way, then there's a democratic
32:11
Speaker 1: think tank going, huh, how can we abuse executive power?
32:15
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. They're like building their own. And I'm like,
32:18
Speaker 1: and their argument is, well, if this is the rules,
32:20
Speaker 1: then we've got to play within the rules that are.
32:23
Speaker 1: And I'm like, All right, well, that's why you're not
32:26
Speaker 1: a reform party. Neither major party will ever be the
32:30
Speaker 1: party of reform because they're too entrenched in grabbing power.
32:35
Speaker 2: So I had one of the most fascinating things in
32:37
Speaker 2: my new world here in the last couple of years
32:40
Speaker 2: is I've spent more time in the last year talking
32:41
Speaker 2: to Democrats than I have my entire career. Which has
32:45
Speaker 2: been fun. It's been interesting. I've learned a lot. And
32:48
Speaker 2: what's funny is the things I always assumed about them,
32:50
Speaker 2: they always assumed about me. And that's kind of like
32:52
Speaker 2: so funny when you actually sit around.
32:54
Speaker 1: And- It's funny that when you sit around and you
32:55
Speaker 1: find out, oh, you're a three-dimensional person? You have feelings?
32:59
Speaker 1: It's funny what talking does.
33:03
Speaker 2: But I talked to someone and they actually said this
33:05
Speaker 2: with a straight face. They're like looking at where- Look,
33:08
Speaker 2: a lot of the money coming into Washington comes from
33:10
Speaker 2: blue states. And people make this wrong assumption. Red states
33:13
Speaker 2: actually are getting more federal dollars because their populations are
33:17
Speaker 2: now older and poorer than your typical Democrat base. And
33:21
Speaker 2: so I was talking to a Democratic operative that is like,
33:24
Speaker 2: let's get these Republicans where it hurts and let's keep
33:26
Speaker 2: the money where it's coming from. And we could start
33:29
Speaker 2: stripping money from red areas. And it's like, they're serious
33:33
Speaker 2: about this.
33:34
Speaker 1: Well, that's what Trump did. I mean, that's the thing. Right.
33:37
Speaker 1: Trump is punishing blue state universities and trying to reward
33:42
Speaker 1: red state universities.
33:44
Speaker 2: I should have been a history professor at some point.
33:46
Speaker 2: But when you go back to ancient Greece, this is
33:49
Speaker 2: how they lost their democracy. When you go back to
33:52
Speaker 2: the fall of the Roman Republic. It was a similar
33:55
Speaker 2: thing that started to happen, the bread and circuses and
33:58
Speaker 2: the power moving from the legislature up to the executive.
34:01
Speaker 2: You go to medieval Europe, you go to medieval Florence,
34:05
Speaker 2: medieval Venice, you then get back to the Americas. You
34:08
Speaker 2: look at what happened to all the republics in South America.
34:11
Speaker 2: It's generally the same things. You see this power moving
34:13
Speaker 2: from the legislator to the executive. And then what do
34:16
Speaker 2: they do? They start stripping the state to reward theirs
34:18
Speaker 2: and punish. And I think we're We're really close to
34:22
Speaker 2: that right now.
34:23
Speaker 1: And I think- We're behaving like a Latin American country.
34:26
Speaker 2: We really are. I mean, look, we're basically becoming Brazil.
34:29
Speaker 2: And in a lot of ways, when you look at
34:30
Speaker 2: our politics, and Brazil's a great country, but it's not
34:33
Speaker 2: the United States.
34:35
Speaker 1: And it's a very flat, by the way, you want
34:37
Speaker 1: to talk about a fragile democracy. I mean, they slipped
34:39
Speaker 1: into an authoritarian regime for a period of time.
34:42
Speaker 2: It can happen here. Yeah, it can happen here if
34:44
Speaker 2: we're not. In fact, history says that's what almost inevitable.
34:48
Speaker 2: And that's what our job is, is to prevent that
34:50
Speaker 2: from happening. Look, I got a five and a three
34:52
Speaker 2: year old. I'm very concerned about their country that they're
34:55
Speaker 2: going to be growing up in. And that's why we're
34:57
Speaker 2: doing this project.
34:58
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what's realistic this cycle. You've got...
35:03
Speaker 1: You have more independence on the ballot than I can.
35:07
Speaker 2: I mean, we're trying to quantify it. You have more
35:09
Speaker 2: serious independence on the ballot right now than any period
35:12
Speaker 2: I could.
35:12
Speaker 1: Actually, before I get there, why can't the Libertarian Party
35:17
Speaker 1: be an alternative? Because I say this, you strike me
35:20
Speaker 1: as a libertarian.
35:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I am. I mean, look.
35:23
Speaker 1: Now, what I always say is, actually... I think our default,
35:27
Speaker 1: I think America's default is libertarianism. Meaning essentially that's how
35:34
Speaker 1: we were built on a foundation of libertarianism, which may
35:37
Speaker 1: explain why the party itself doesn't work. Because frankly, both
35:41
Speaker 1: parties believe in their definition of freedom, but they, but
35:46
Speaker 1: there's other parts where they're, they're not like, you know,
35:48
Speaker 1: they're not a pure libertarian on, you know, their cultural
35:51
Speaker 1: freedom here, but not fiscal freedom and vice versa. Right.
35:54
Speaker 1: And that's always, But what's your diagnosis as to why
35:58
Speaker 1: the Libertarian Party can't become a more serious player?
36:01
Speaker 2: So I go back to when I came to college
36:04
Speaker 2: in 1996, one of the first things I scoped out
36:07
Speaker 2: was where's my Browns backer bar here in D.C.? Because
36:10
Speaker 2: I grew up every Sunday was about the I watched
36:13
Speaker 2: the slop on a day on a weekly basis. So
36:15
Speaker 2: we'll get off of that topic. But when I went
36:17
Speaker 2: into the Browns bar, I'm a pretty good Browns fan.
36:20
Speaker 2: I've even been a season's ticket holder. But they had
36:22
Speaker 2: a raffle there. And I didn't know who the fourth
36:26
Speaker 2: round draft pick in 1984 was. And people were ragging
36:29
Speaker 2: on me like I'm not a real fan. So what
36:32
Speaker 2: I learned then about the Libertarian Party is you get
36:34
Speaker 2: into the libertarians. It's like everyone then has to argue, OK,
36:37
Speaker 2: we're all libertarians. But who is the most libertarian in
36:40
Speaker 2: this room?
36:41
Speaker 1: I'm not for driver's licenses.
36:44
Speaker 2: I think you should be able to own a nuclear missile.
36:46
Speaker 2: I think you should. We should privatize sidewalks. And it's
36:49
Speaker 2: kind of like. This is we have an opportunity. So
36:52
Speaker 2: in my book, I wrote the exhausted majority that came
36:55
Speaker 2: out a week ago. The founder of the Cato Institute,
36:58
Speaker 2: Ed Crane, who was one of my mentors in life,
37:00
Speaker 2: you know, he and I were talking a lot about this.
37:04
Speaker 2: And he even agreed with me that the problem with
37:06
Speaker 2: the Libertarian Party, which he helped found in the 70s,
37:09
Speaker 2: was that it almost doesn't want to win. It wants
37:12
Speaker 2: to be right.
37:12
Speaker 1: Right.
37:13
Speaker 2: It wants to be pure.
37:14
Speaker 1: Well, this goes to my favorite quote I've been over-quoting
37:17
Speaker 1: in the TV show Andor, right? Where he says, do
37:20
Speaker 1: you want to fight or do you want to win? Right.
37:23
Speaker 1: And I think both parties' bases right now want to fight.
37:27
Speaker 2: They don't want to win. Well, I see. But for me,
37:30
Speaker 2: the argument that I do to my libertarian fellows is
37:32
Speaker 2: that when America wants a small L libertarian, not big L,
37:36
Speaker 2: because big L is dogmatic. Small L is practical. Mm-hmm.
37:41
Speaker 2: And so I consider myself a small libertarian. I would
37:43
Speaker 2: like the smallest state possible, but I believe there should
37:46
Speaker 2: be a state. I'm not going to say... Like you
37:48
Speaker 2: look at American healthcare, I think the reform is not
37:51
Speaker 2: like just canceling all federal spending on healthcare. I think
37:55
Speaker 2: it's like we should... But there are changes that we
37:57
Speaker 2: can improve the system and have a more limited government
38:03
Speaker 2: system that allows for markets, but still... ensures that we're
38:06
Speaker 2: going to be giving everyone the care that they need.
38:08
Speaker 2: Like that to me is like, so I'll, I'll, I'll deal,
38:10
Speaker 2: do a lot of deals again, going back to this
38:12
Speaker 2: practicality to start getting slices of the loaf to get
38:15
Speaker 2: to a society to me that is prosperous and is
38:18
Speaker 2: in the government is very clear, small, and in its lane. Um,
38:21
Speaker 2: I'm not hiding those, but that also means I'll get
38:23
Speaker 2: in a room with someone who's on the farm. You know,
38:25
Speaker 2: one of my best friends is a Marxist professor. I mean,
38:29
Speaker 2: I still hang out with him. He's one of my
38:31
Speaker 2: best buddies from high school. But we get into arguments
38:34
Speaker 2: over the right size.
38:34
Speaker 1: By the way, this shouldn't be a shock anymore. I mean,
38:37
Speaker 1: it really bothers me. I mean, all of my friends
38:40
Speaker 1: in the 90s, you know, I got out of college
38:42
Speaker 1: in 94 and we all had political disagreements.
38:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. But it was.
38:47
Speaker 1: But it was. It's just normal.
38:49
Speaker 2: We've learned from each other.
38:50
Speaker 1: Now, I don't know. You know, I always now think, well,
38:53
Speaker 1: I grew up in a pretty bipartisan area and I
38:56
Speaker 1: grew up in a bipartisan family. So maybe, and that's
38:59
Speaker 1: where I start to question myself. Well, okay, I might
39:02
Speaker 1: be an outlier. I happen to grow up in Miami-Dade County,
39:06
Speaker 1: and Miami is one of the more bipartisan urban areas
39:09
Speaker 1: you're going to find in the country. And it certainly
39:11
Speaker 1: helps me understand today's America. That's the beauty of Miami. Miami,
39:16
Speaker 1: tomorrow's problems are today, and Miami used to be our motto.
39:18
Speaker 1: But I do think we went, and I don't know
39:26
Speaker 1: when it happened, but at some point we decided you
39:30
Speaker 1: cannot socialize with people you politically, that you knowingly politically
39:35
Speaker 1: disagree with. And I don't understand where that began. And
39:39
Speaker 1: I don't under, you know, you know, I guess it's
39:41
Speaker 1: social media, right? I mean, we, we, it made it
39:43
Speaker 1: easier to identify people. folks that way. I think social
39:50
Speaker 1: media gets too much blame. I mean, the fact is
39:51
Speaker 1: we were polarized in the 19th century. We didn't have
39:53
Speaker 1: social media. So you can't tell me that social media
39:56
Speaker 1: is the polarizer. Social media maybe amplifies it. But that's something,
40:02
Speaker 1: I don't know how we cure that one.
40:04
Speaker 2: So my theory on that is that what I noticed
40:08
Speaker 2: is when politics became entertainment for people, that's one thing.
40:13
Speaker 2: But the other thing that I noticed, and frankly, sometimes
40:18
Speaker 2: I look back at the work I used to do
40:19
Speaker 2: and I ask myself, well, was I a big part
40:23
Speaker 2: of driving some of that? Maybe. I look back, I
40:25
Speaker 2: didn't think I was at the time, but I might
40:28
Speaker 2: have been. Is this existential nature that we're putting into
40:31
Speaker 2: American politics where this every election is the most.
40:34
Speaker 1: Important of my- Have you ever voted in one that
40:37
Speaker 1: wasn't important?
40:38
Speaker 2: I mean, come on. Like, it's like, this is a
40:40
Speaker 2: little too, and it becomes existential then. And it's like,
40:43
Speaker 2: and I watched in my career where Democrats went from
40:46
Speaker 2: being wrong to the enemy to being fricking evil.
40:52
Speaker 1: Un-American, right.
40:54
Speaker 2: But look, you mentioned Miami-Dade. I grew up in Cleveland
40:57
Speaker 2: where I remember family picnics. We had the union workers there.
41:01
Speaker 2: We had the people from upper income. You had everyone
41:05
Speaker 2: mixing in my family in Cleveland. And that's one of
41:08
Speaker 2: the reasons I feel very blessed to be from Northeast
41:10
Speaker 2: Ohio is that experience was, I look back on it,
41:15
Speaker 2: you were forced to deal with people who had different
41:16
Speaker 2: views from you. And it made us better and stronger
41:19
Speaker 2: in a stronger community.
41:22
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Speaker 1: of 2026. Not to go off unattended. This is why
42:59
Speaker 1: I worry about the gutting of America's public school system.
43:02
Speaker 1: Like I understand it's all being done through the prism of, hey,
43:05
Speaker 1: it's all about what's best for your kid. But all
43:08
Speaker 1: of a sudden we are siloing ourselves away from each
43:10
Speaker 1: other even more than ever. And I don't think we
43:15
Speaker 1: understand the unintended consequence of all that.
43:17
Speaker 2: That is a great point, especially I will I could
43:20
Speaker 2: talk for. you know, I would not, this is not
43:22
Speaker 2: an official issue. This is not something that I'm working
43:25
Speaker 2: on an independent in my heart for national service. Like
43:30
Speaker 2: you get people to go serve for a couple of years.
43:32
Speaker 2: And a lot of that going back to when I
43:34
Speaker 2: was growing up, I heard so much from my, you know,
43:38
Speaker 2: older people in my family about what the GI bill
43:40
Speaker 2: did for them, what world war two meant for them
43:43
Speaker 2: and how it mixed people up and how it, And
43:46
Speaker 2: I think there's things we can learn from those periods
43:48
Speaker 2: of policy going forward.
43:50
Speaker 1: Adam, an obvious, you know, it's funny. I've been obsessed
43:53
Speaker 1: with national service. And I am convinced now that this
43:58
Speaker 1: is going to be, that we actually will have an
44:00
Speaker 1: opportunity for national service. Because I look at, you know,
44:03
Speaker 1: I've got two, I've got one out of college and
44:06
Speaker 1: one in the middle of college. And the job market sucks.
44:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
44:10
Speaker 1: But, you know, two or three years of service is,
44:14
Speaker 1: After college, frankly, as a bit of an AI transition
44:19
Speaker 1: as this economy, there is multiple ways that this will
44:23
Speaker 1: be both good for society, good for the country, good
44:25
Speaker 1: for the economy, healthy for young people. I think in this,
44:29
Speaker 1: as our fear of AI job displacement grows, and this
44:33
Speaker 1: is only going to grow.
44:35
Speaker 2: It's a real fear. You've got to take it seriously.
44:37
Speaker 1: I think you do. And in fact, frankly, that was
44:40
Speaker 1: part of the motivation of the GI Bill. It was like, hey,
44:43
Speaker 1: we got to do something with all these soldiers. They
44:46
Speaker 1: need some skills. We're putting them all back in. They
44:48
Speaker 1: need some skills. Let's give them the GI Bill. Let's
44:51
Speaker 1: basically let them decide what skills they want. Here's a
44:55
Speaker 1: bucket of money for you to do this. You pick
44:58
Speaker 1: your skill. We're not going to tell you what skill
44:59
Speaker 1: to have. This is America. But go get some. We're
45:02
Speaker 1: going to provide you the opportunity to do this. I
45:05
Speaker 1: think that this is what a really good, smart set
45:10
Speaker 1: of political leaders would be running on right now on
45:12
Speaker 1: dealing with AI. It's like, look, we got to manage this.
45:15
Speaker 2: Okay, but go back. AI has not been a partisan
45:19
Speaker 2: issue just yet, right? I mean, we know that, you know,
45:23
Speaker 2: we just listen to what Trump is talking about. He's
45:25
Speaker 2: just like, let it all fly. And I'm not really
45:27
Speaker 2: sure what the Democrat position is. And I think there's
45:29
Speaker 2: a position in between the two that is a logical position.
45:34
Speaker 2: I know that, you know, for our kind of close
45:36
Speaker 2: with a lot of the arguments we're going to be
45:37
Speaker 2: making to voters about our independent candidates, it's going to
45:40
Speaker 2: be on AI. But there is a middle path forward
45:44
Speaker 2: that there are certain guardrails that we want. Like, look
45:46
Speaker 2: at all these studies that are coming out about, I
45:49
Speaker 2: was reading one recently from China with 25,000 students that
45:52
Speaker 2: showed the more AI they were exposed to, their scores
45:54
Speaker 2: went down in the classroom. I think we need to readjust.
45:58
Speaker 2: So I think we need to rethink some of these things,
46:00
Speaker 2: which is exciting. It's an opportunity.
46:02
Speaker 1: And we get to remodel the public school system, but
46:04
Speaker 1: it's a remodeling that's necessary anyway.
46:06
Speaker 2: But there's another point here, too. It's like we're also
46:08
Speaker 2: in this crisis of loneliness. And I'm seeing this with
46:11
Speaker 2: my own parents who are very elderly right now. I mean,
46:14
Speaker 2: they're kind of getting struggled to get out of their cocoon.
46:16
Speaker 2: And then I talk to young people in my family
46:17
Speaker 2: and they're really lonely. And it's like all of these.
46:20
Speaker 2: But what party can deal with that? You got Republicans
46:23
Speaker 2: running around screaming tax cuts. OK, the 90s want their
46:27
Speaker 2: issue back. And then Democrats screaming about DSA like, I
46:31
Speaker 2: don't know, the 60s want their issues back. And it's like,
46:34
Speaker 2: so who's talking about these issues, about the crisis in
46:37
Speaker 2: education that we have right now, the crisis that we
46:39
Speaker 2: have in loneliness? I think these are issues that the,
46:41
Speaker 2: that independence can jump on and explain that these issues
46:46
Speaker 2: of where, where we're going, we need to be addressing these.
46:48
Speaker 2: And these are the issues of the future.
46:51
Speaker 1: So realistically on this map, there are more opportunities for
46:54
Speaker 1: independence to get elected to the Senate than there are
46:57
Speaker 1: to Congress. I mean, Kevin Kiley is in, I think
47:00
Speaker 1: is in as good of a place as anybody can be.
47:03
Speaker 1: We'll see, right. What happens there in Cal in California.
47:06
Speaker 1: But again, And let's focus on the House. Finding independents
47:12
Speaker 1: to run the House, is the issue finding good candidates?
47:16
Speaker 1: What's been the issue? Because finding independent candidates to run
47:20
Speaker 1: has been actually pretty successful. Why is the House a struggle?
47:24
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of that came down to,
47:27
Speaker 2: the other one I would say right now, if I
47:28
Speaker 2: was going to place a bet, who's going to run
47:30
Speaker 2: as an independent, when is Bill Hill in Alaska?
47:34
Speaker 1: There's one, right. That's the one where the Democrat took
47:37
Speaker 1: the knee, right?
47:38
Speaker 2: Correct. Correct. And so you and then there were some
47:42
Speaker 2: others like I'm looking at Chris Getty and he was
47:44
Speaker 2: in a suburban district in Chicago. Michael Bridgeford, who had
47:48
Speaker 2: a great start running in Iowa's first district. I just
47:51
Speaker 2: think the problem there for a lot of these House
47:53
Speaker 2: candidates is. Frankly, the movement just doesn't have the backbone
47:57
Speaker 2: yet to support a lot of these house races as
47:59
Speaker 2: much as I would like them to. That's one of
48:01
Speaker 2: those hard gut check moments for me is that we
48:04
Speaker 2: still don't have a group of volunteers. The parties have
48:06
Speaker 2: the groups of volunteers. You had to put a lot
48:08
Speaker 2: of effort into signatures and stuff like that. Well, that
48:11
Speaker 2: took a lot of early energy out. So there's a
48:13
Speaker 2: lot of lessons I've learned. And some of these House
48:16
Speaker 2: Senate races, which if you had asked me a year ago,
48:18
Speaker 2: I'd have been like, no, they're not going to come together. Boy,
48:21
Speaker 2: I look dumb now. They really did come together. And
48:23
Speaker 2: I think there was just some natural advantages in some
48:26
Speaker 2: of these districts. Again, I mentioned Bodnar. Todd Achilles is
48:30
Speaker 2: going to get that Idaho Senate district a lot closer
48:33
Speaker 2: than people think. Now, Idaho is still a pro-Trump state.
48:37
Speaker 2: So will that be enough to carry Reich over? I
48:40
Speaker 2: could tell you right now, the big issue for Reich
48:43
Speaker 2: running in that state is he's 83 years old.
48:45
Speaker 1: That's right.
48:45
Speaker 2: When people find out that he's 83, they all of
48:47
Speaker 2: a sudden start looking at Todd Kelly. It's like, there's
48:49
Speaker 2: weird things happening. But look, my goals for this cycle,
48:53
Speaker 2: I don't care if it's House or Senate. Let's get
48:55
Speaker 2: two people elected. Let's get two independents elected so that
48:58
Speaker 2: when we.
48:58
Speaker 1: Get to 2000... Because one can get explained away, two can't.
49:02
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I'm saying. By the way, our strategy
49:05
Speaker 2: in my organization is that we want to win one three-way.
49:08
Speaker 2: That's why we picked Montana, Seth Bodnar.
49:10
Speaker 1: Oh, to prove that you can win a three-way and
49:12
Speaker 1: not just take a knee strategy.
49:14
Speaker 2: Correct. Because I think going forward, if that's the only
49:17
Speaker 2: way we can win, that may open up the movement
49:20
Speaker 2: to a lot of shenanigans by parties to say well
49:22
Speaker 2: I'm an independent you know running in a deep blue
49:25
Speaker 2: or deep red place that's not the goal so in
49:27
Speaker 2: fact we can prove we can fight on the field
49:30
Speaker 2: look I don't want to say this is a George
49:32
Speaker 2: Washington strategy, right? But it's like you got to take
49:34
Speaker 2: all your energy and figure out and like attack the
49:36
Speaker 2: British baggage train and take your victories where you can.
49:41
Speaker 2: So I also what we've learned in this cycle, I
49:43
Speaker 2: think going forward to the next cycle, you're going to
49:45
Speaker 2: see in the West, particularly the Mountain West. I would
49:48
Speaker 2: expect in 28, you're going to have candidates in Arizona.
49:50
Speaker 2: You're going to have candidates in Colorado. You're going to
49:52
Speaker 2: have some of these other mountain West.
49:54
Speaker 1: It's funny how some States sort of their profile stays
49:57
Speaker 1: the same through generations. Right. So my first cycle covering
50:01
Speaker 1: politics was 92. And it was the, and basically we,
50:05
Speaker 1: I create, We built a beast at the hotline at
50:09
Speaker 1: the time, the electoral scoreboard, we called it. And we
50:12
Speaker 1: would put out a map every week of based on
50:15
Speaker 1: where the polls were, who's leading in the map. And,
50:19
Speaker 1: you know, there was points in time in the summer
50:20
Speaker 1: where Perot was at 300 electoral votes. Just, you know,
50:24
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Basically, before there was real clear, Nate Silver, right?
50:28
Speaker 1: We were the OG on this stuff. Sometimes I think
50:33
Speaker 1: we created a monster. Yeah. But what was interesting is
50:37
Speaker 1: we noted that there was this crescent moon in the country,
50:41
Speaker 1: and essentially everything west of the Mississippi, Perot had real traction.
50:45
Speaker 1: And really outside of, I think Connecticut was the only,
50:48
Speaker 1: and Maine were the only two essentially east of the
50:52
Speaker 1: Mississippi states, and Florida, which was different than almost the
50:57
Speaker 1: other southern states, where the west in particular, Perot's one
51:03
Speaker 1: of his best performing states was Utah, but I think
51:06
Speaker 1: he was over 20 in Montana. I think he was
51:09
Speaker 1: over 20 in a couple of those plain states. There's
51:16
Speaker 1: natural independence out there, isn't it? It's almost like the
51:19
Speaker 1: more of the default.
51:21
Speaker 2: Well, let's go back to, and we're actually in the
51:23
Speaker 2: field again. We keep going in the field to test
51:25
Speaker 2: these things. And one of the reasons is that Americans
51:28
Speaker 2: are pretty fickle, move pretty quickly on a lot of issues.
51:32
Speaker 2: There is being very static, but it is interesting to
51:34
Speaker 2: watch how this election is about affordability, and we're starting
51:38
Speaker 2: to see a lot of shifts to this election may
51:40
Speaker 2: be more about AI in the close than it was
51:42
Speaker 2: about affordability in many ways. It's fascinating to me. But
51:46
Speaker 2: I think one of the problems when we look at
51:50
Speaker 2: the voters, we're used to this outdated system that is
51:53
Speaker 2: based on what's called a PVI model, partisan voter index.
51:56
Speaker 2: This district is plus five Republican, plus three Democrat. And
52:01
Speaker 2: that model was literally built in the 1930s when everyone
52:04
Speaker 2: really was falling neatly into these two camps. What I
52:08
Speaker 2: would love to start to see is an evolution where
52:11
Speaker 2: You have because like the real reality is if you
52:13
Speaker 2: take an independence, some of these states you just mentioned,
52:17
Speaker 2: Arizona is not going to be even split between Republicans
52:20
Speaker 2: and Democrats. It's going to be a plus five independent.
52:23
Speaker 2: Colorado is going to be a plus four independent. And
52:26
Speaker 2: if you start thinking of the month of the states
52:28
Speaker 2: in that light, it changes everything.
52:31
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny you say that. Like I always say,
52:32
Speaker 1: you know, Virginia is a blue state, but it is
52:35
Speaker 1: not a liberal state. No. Versus and just like Utah,
52:39
Speaker 1: it turns out to be a red state, but it
52:42
Speaker 1: is not a MAGA state.
52:44
Speaker 2: It's not nearly as red as people think it is.
52:47
Speaker 1: Right. It's light red.
52:49
Speaker 2: But it also it's a very different type of red.
52:51
Speaker 2: It's a it's a Rob Portman red. It's a Mike
52:54
Speaker 2: DeWine red. It's not necessarily a MAGA red. And I
52:58
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what that looks like.
53:00
Speaker 2: And look, we haven't even gotten into so much of
53:02
Speaker 2: this when I'm looking at who the independent base is.
53:05
Speaker 2: There's this giant line of age 50 in the American population.
53:10
Speaker 2: If you're over 50, it's hard for you to see independent.
53:14
Speaker 1: Well, because you see that it's not that you're not,
53:17
Speaker 1: but I wonder if the over 50 crowd, because that's me.
53:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm 48, so I'm like right there.
53:24
Speaker 1: Looks at the Perot example and say, look, he was
53:26
Speaker 1: the best version of this. And, you know, at the
53:30
Speaker 1: end of the day, people still default to their two parties.
53:33
Speaker 2: Chuck, when you went to the supermarket, you had Skip
53:36
Speaker 2: and you had Jiffy Peanut Butter. Those were your choices, okay?
53:38
Speaker 2: My choices when I was growing up. If you're under 50,
53:42
Speaker 2: you are a digital native. You grew up with Amazon.
53:45
Speaker 2: You never went to a travel agency. You just grew
53:49
Speaker 2: up on the internet. You grew up with 50 different
53:51
Speaker 2: types of peanut butter.
53:52
Speaker 1: Well, this is why I don't understand why there's not more.
53:56
Speaker 1: I do think that... Well, and this gets at to
54:01
Speaker 1: where do you spend your efforts in this movement, okay?
54:04
Speaker 1: I think the only way we're going to fix our
54:06
Speaker 1: politics is to break up the two parties.
54:08
Speaker 2: Yep.
54:10
Speaker 1: And I think we'd be better off as a four
54:12
Speaker 1: or five party system. I think I said to you earlier,
54:15
Speaker 1: I'm a Madisonian on this. We've got a problem with factions. Well,
54:19
Speaker 1: the only thing worse than four factions is two factions, right?
54:24
Speaker 1: Like we actually need four factions, five factions so that
54:27
Speaker 1: there is no majority. so that every government is a
54:31
Speaker 1: coalition government. Because ultimately it always has been. We just
54:36
Speaker 1: have had the illusion that we're going back and forth
54:38
Speaker 1: between parties.
54:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, very true. I mean, and frankly, I would love
54:43
Speaker 2: to spend all my time working on a political party
54:46
Speaker 2: that's socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Like that's my home.
54:49
Speaker 2: That's where I'd like to be every day. But that's
54:52
Speaker 2: and hopefully I get there someday before the end of
54:55
Speaker 2: my career. But for right now, I like this broad
54:57
Speaker 2: tent that I'm finding in the middle here of these
55:00
Speaker 2: independent voters, which even though it's so much fun, I
55:03
Speaker 2: always say this about it, like the fundraising team I've
55:06
Speaker 2: put together. One of my people from FreedomWorks, Tea Party
55:10
Speaker 2: person and someone who just joined us from Emily's List. Right.
55:13
Speaker 2: Like that is an insane room that works. And we
55:17
Speaker 2: always joke about how crazy it is that it actually works.
55:20
Speaker 2: But what we're seeing and this gets back to, I think,
55:22
Speaker 2: the American strength is like we're stronger when we don't
55:25
Speaker 2: agree all the time. We're stronger when we actually have
55:27
Speaker 2: to argue through things a little bit and we have
55:29
Speaker 2: to actually score points and present a coherent argument. That
55:33
Speaker 2: makes everything, that's the competition that makes things stronger and better.
55:38
Speaker 1: And that's what- Is political competition a good issue to
55:42
Speaker 1: push voters for? Because that's the other problem we have
55:46
Speaker 1: is a lack of competition, particularly in the two bases.
55:49
Speaker 1: And one of the interesting strategies that I know my
55:51
Speaker 1: friends at Forward have thought about, I know you guys
55:53
Speaker 1: are thinking about, which is, you know, the uncontested House members. Right.
55:59
Speaker 1: Should they be the ones that that are targeted first
56:02
Speaker 1: with independent candidates. Okay.
56:04
Speaker 2: Now that's a, we got to get into primaries when
56:06
Speaker 2: you start talking about that one, because that's where it
56:09
Speaker 2: starts getting harder, but we have begun to see, and
56:11
Speaker 2: this is some of the big lessons that I'm learning
56:12
Speaker 2: right now. I used to think that there was only
56:15
Speaker 2: 25 congressional districts, the districts that were plurality, majority independent.
56:20
Speaker 2: They were the only districts that could support the independent movement. Boy,
56:23
Speaker 2: was I wrong. I actually think you could go into
56:25
Speaker 2: deep red and deep blue districts because of the lack
56:28
Speaker 2: of competition. So remember I said this age 50 line?
56:33
Speaker 2: What we found is that you're a spoiler. Really, we're
56:37
Speaker 2: hearing that from people over age 70. And when you
56:40
Speaker 2: go under 50, it becomes a positive because people are
56:44
Speaker 2: hearing that what you're spoiling is a broken system if
56:46
Speaker 2: you're under 50. And what we're also hearing is that
56:49
Speaker 2: people are telling us, I like competition. So I don't
56:52
Speaker 2: view you as a spoiler. I view you as you're
56:55
Speaker 2: putting in competition. And frankly, I think that is part
56:58
Speaker 2: of those American values. Competition does make things better.
57:01
Speaker 1: So if you're that is a way to you think
57:05
Speaker 1: that is a persuasive issue with some independents? Oh, yeah.
57:09
Speaker 2: We're especially younger independents. They want choices. Like what we
57:13
Speaker 2: keep hearing when we did our initial surveys and studies
57:16
Speaker 2: on who the independent voter is, what it came back
57:19
Speaker 2: with is the most common two different lanes. On social issues,
57:23
Speaker 2: we heard tolerance. And what tolerance is, live and let
57:27
Speaker 2: it live. We generally think that abortions should be like
57:30
Speaker 2: what Bill Clinton said, safe, legal, and rare. Gay marriage, settled. Now,
57:36
Speaker 2: on some of the other issues, like you start talking
57:39
Speaker 2: about sex to kindergartners, the general reaction to the group is,
57:43
Speaker 2: why are we talking about sex to kindergartners, whether it's
57:45
Speaker 2: gay or straight or trans or whatever? Can we let
57:48
Speaker 2: kids be kids? And maybe we shouldn't even be talking
57:51
Speaker 2: about these things to young children. So you start seeing
57:53
Speaker 2: these nuances on these issues. So it's very live and
57:56
Speaker 2: let live, very... Let's move on. And what I thought
57:59
Speaker 2: was interesting is the word tolerance. It doesn't necessarily mean acceptance.
58:03
Speaker 2: It means like you could be this and I could
58:05
Speaker 2: be that. We could be great neighbors and never have
58:07
Speaker 2: to agree on things.
58:09
Speaker 1: It's called pluralism, right? Nobody realizes that pluralism is ultimately
58:13
Speaker 1: what this American experiment is about.
58:16
Speaker 2: But isn't it awesome?
58:16
Speaker 1: When we govern with people we disagree with. Yeah.
58:18
Speaker 2: That's great. And then on the economic issues, what we
58:21
Speaker 2: saw that people really kept saying they wanted is more choices.
58:24
Speaker 2: And they felt that the government and monopolies and others
58:28
Speaker 2: are making choices for them. Like even on an issue
58:30
Speaker 2: like health care, like most people don't have a choice
58:33
Speaker 2: in health care. Look at these Obamacare exchanges. They're often one,
58:36
Speaker 2: you know, you get a choice of one or you
58:38
Speaker 2: get a choice of two. And so people just look
58:40
Speaker 2: around their lives and they're like, I don't get as
58:42
Speaker 2: much choice as I would like. And so we start seeing, well,
58:44
Speaker 2: there's where you start having this mesh of a If
58:47
Speaker 2: we could be socially inclusive and economically work to give
58:51
Speaker 2: people choices because we also see an affordability, that's a
58:54
Speaker 2: choice issue. If I can't choose where I live, you're
58:57
Speaker 2: taking my choices from me. So there is something really.
59:01
Speaker 2: And then when we've seen in all of this, I
59:02
Speaker 2: know there's this talk that young people in America are
59:05
Speaker 2: crazy radical. Well, try this out. You want young people
59:08
Speaker 2: in America want today? they want to retire they want
59:12
Speaker 2: to work and go on vacation they want to buy
59:15
Speaker 2: a house I mean bonkers radical stuff yeah that they want.
59:20
Speaker 2: I mean, what they just want is the same American dream.
59:23
Speaker 2: But why are they voting DSA? Why are they voting
59:25
Speaker 2: for this or that? Well, if you're feeling the system
59:27
Speaker 2: is broken and not listening to you, you're going to
59:29
Speaker 2: pick the hot choice.
59:39
Speaker 1: Well, you're going to pick the ones that are, you know,
59:41
Speaker 1: I've always said if my choice is change or status quo,
59:46
Speaker 1: even if I don't like the change, I don't like
59:48
Speaker 1: the status quo. It's like that was the Kamala Harris problem.
59:51
Speaker 1: There was only one change candidate on the ballot because
59:54
Speaker 1: she didn't offer change. She said, no, no, no. You know,
59:57
Speaker 1: she never even gave herself a chance to offer change. Right.
1:00:00
Speaker 1: She ended up sticking by him. And Trump was in
1:00:04
Speaker 1: a change in election environment. There was only one candidate
1:00:06
Speaker 1: for change.
1:00:07
Speaker 2: Well, to see independence can be what's so fun about
1:00:10
Speaker 2: independence is is you could be the most practical, calm, level-headed.
1:00:14
Speaker 2: At the same time, it's the most radical thing in
1:00:16
Speaker 2: American politics today at the same time, which is really exciting.
1:00:19
Speaker 2: And I kind of juxtapose what we're trying to do
1:00:22
Speaker 2: to like when Steve Bannon talks about burning the system down. Well,
1:00:26
Speaker 2: he talks about burning the system down, but then you
1:00:28
Speaker 2: live in a pile of ashes. What we're talking about
1:00:31
Speaker 2: doing is, yes, we're pissed off and upset at the
1:00:33
Speaker 2: current system, but we also want the system to work.
1:00:35
Speaker 2: We're talking about Congress. The goal of this is Congress
1:00:38
Speaker 2: is a functioning body again that is actually doing its
1:00:41
Speaker 2: job on time and actually watching the purse strings and
1:00:45
Speaker 2: is actually passing legislation and actually going to conference committees
1:00:48
Speaker 2: and things like that.
1:00:49
Speaker 1: Whoa!
1:00:50
Speaker 2: And so that's the type of change I think that
1:00:53
Speaker 2: we could bring. And that's exactly what the country needs.
1:00:57
Speaker 1: Two more quick questions. And then I know we got
1:00:58
Speaker 1: to land this plane. One is, does corruption pop? Yes.
1:01:03
Speaker 1: As a swing voting issue, you think?
1:01:04
Speaker 2: So this is what I think. And this is what's
1:01:06
Speaker 2: devastating for me. Because I'm look, I'm a free market guy.
1:01:10
Speaker 2: Capitalism is really negative. But entrepreneurship is really positive. And
1:01:15
Speaker 2: so when we've done focus groups, what we see is
1:01:17
Speaker 2: that younger people look at Wall Street and they look
1:01:20
Speaker 2: at all the deals and everyone getting ripped on the
1:01:24
Speaker 2: crypto insider trading rumors and everything else that you see.
1:01:27
Speaker 2: And so they look at capitalism as rigged right now
1:01:30
Speaker 2: and not free market. But the reason they love entrepreneurs
1:01:33
Speaker 2: is that actually they love the competition. So it's interesting
1:01:37
Speaker 2: if you look at an issue just in the black
1:01:39
Speaker 2: and white area, it leads you to the wrong conclusions.
1:01:41
Speaker 2: You got to get down a little bit and you
1:01:43
Speaker 2: start to see the nuance there. And the nuance is
1:01:45
Speaker 2: people do want free market.
1:01:47
Speaker 1: They want real capitalism.
1:01:48
Speaker 2: They want real capitalism.
1:01:50
Speaker 1: So the better message here is, look, this is a
1:01:53
Speaker 1: perversion of capitalism. This isn't what it was supposed to be.
1:01:56
Speaker 1: They want competition. They want to see that. It's interesting
1:01:59
Speaker 1: that the better messaging there is sort of, yes, you're right.
1:02:02
Speaker 1: This system is broken. Right. You know, this... This version
1:02:06
Speaker 1: of capitalism has been perverted by a bunch of greedy
1:02:10
Speaker 1: monopolists or whatever it is. But that doesn't mean you
1:02:13
Speaker 1: have to go to socialism.
1:02:14
Speaker 2: It's an interesting- How ridiculous is it that Team Republican
1:02:17
Speaker 2: is still talking about a free market in healthcare? Where
1:02:19
Speaker 2: is this free market exist in American healthcare? It is
1:02:23
Speaker 2: a completely managed system, completely regulated by the government, and
1:02:26
Speaker 2: the government's spending all the money. protecting the free market
1:02:31
Speaker 2: is silly. Let's talk about the reality of the situation
1:02:34
Speaker 2: and where the money is and how we're spending it.
1:02:36
Speaker 2: And by the way, I thought this was really interesting.
1:02:39
Speaker 2: When I worked at FreedomWorks, one of the last things
1:02:43
Speaker 2: I worked on was a bipartisan debt commission. Democrat Peters
1:02:46
Speaker 2: out of San Diego, Republican Huizenga out of Michigan. The
1:02:50
Speaker 2: first group, when we got that thing through committee, never
1:02:52
Speaker 2: saw a floor vote. The first group to come out
1:02:55
Speaker 2: and really that I heard that all the offices were
1:02:57
Speaker 2: calling me, hospitals. That's what I didn't see coming. But look,
1:03:01
Speaker 2: if you're going to start tinkering with Medicare, Medicaid, that's
1:03:05
Speaker 2: a lot of hospital money and they don't want you
1:03:06
Speaker 2: to touch that. So the only way I think you're
1:03:09
Speaker 2: going to really drive change in America is if you
1:03:11
Speaker 2: have these independent candidates that are elected. with an independent
1:03:14
Speaker 2: base that doesn't have the claws and talons of the
1:03:17
Speaker 2: swamp kind of when all the interest groups kind of
1:03:19
Speaker 2: sucked into them yet to actually show America here is
1:03:22
Speaker 2: a new vision forward. And that to me, you were
1:03:24
Speaker 2: asking earlier, what is victory in all of this? I
1:03:27
Speaker 2: think if once independence starts showing a big platform forward
1:03:30
Speaker 2: and how we can lead our way out of some
1:03:32
Speaker 2: of these problems, it's going to force the two parties
1:03:34
Speaker 2: to either address the issue or Who knows? Maybe we
1:03:38
Speaker 2: put one of these two parties out of existence. Maybe
1:03:40
Speaker 2: the splinters parties. Who knows what success looks like? But
1:03:44
Speaker 2: when independents make their mark in politics, it's going to
1:03:47
Speaker 2: change everything.
1:03:48
Speaker 1: So Bodnar's priority one to you? After that, what, Bangs, Osborne, Achilles, Kylie.
1:03:54
Speaker 2: Kylie and Bodner, my work, we're going to be spending
1:03:56
Speaker 2: a lot of money on Kylie. We've put money in
1:03:58
Speaker 2: a lot of different races right now. But when I'm
1:04:01
Speaker 2: looking at the clothes, I know the first two we're
1:04:03
Speaker 2: really looking at is getting Kylie and getting Bodner across
1:04:06
Speaker 2: the line. And then we're looking at other races, too.
1:04:08
Speaker 2: Like there's some other ones we haven't mentioned. Like I
1:04:11
Speaker 2: really have to give a shout out over. You go
1:04:12
Speaker 2: to Indiana, the Secretary of State.
1:04:14
Speaker 1: Yes. No, I was just there and I've become pretty
1:04:16
Speaker 1: friendly with the former mayor. And it's really his campaign
1:04:21
Speaker 1: manager who made all this happen.
1:04:22
Speaker 2: I mean- I know, right?
1:04:23
Speaker 1: The Republican Party is going to have minor party. They
1:04:26
Speaker 1: may finish third in this race, which because it's a
1:04:29
Speaker 1: fascinating little problem in the state constitution.
1:04:32
Speaker 2: And then you go up to Maine, independent running in
1:04:34
Speaker 2: Maine as an independent for governor, like You may have
1:04:37
Speaker 2: a couple of people get elected federally. You may have
1:04:40
Speaker 2: some state people who win. And then what I think
1:04:43
Speaker 2: quickly starts to happen is then we have to call it.
1:04:45
Speaker 2: So like if we do get some people elected to
1:04:47
Speaker 2: the House, you got to support them.
1:04:49
Speaker 1: Right.
1:04:49
Speaker 2: It's like you've got to make sure that you're there
1:04:51
Speaker 2: with support. So the campaign continues after day one to
1:04:54
Speaker 2: build that up. And then immediately I'll tell you, like,
1:04:57
Speaker 2: it is amazing how many people have reached out and like.
1:04:59
Speaker 2: I found out about this movement. How do I run?
1:05:01
Speaker 2: I want to run in 2028. And so that's why
1:05:03
Speaker 2: it's so important to get a couple wins in this
1:05:06
Speaker 2: cycle to prove the point so that we could start
1:05:09
Speaker 2: building a whole. And this is where all the outside
1:05:11
Speaker 2: groups would exist. We're all going to have to get to.
1:05:13
Speaker 2: I'm already talking to people about some December rendezvous where
1:05:16
Speaker 2: we could get together and start figuring out, OK, you're
1:05:19
Speaker 2: going to do grassroots. You're going to do comms. You're
1:05:21
Speaker 2: going to do this. You start figuring it. You're going
1:05:23
Speaker 2: to work within the party system. You're going to work
1:05:25
Speaker 2: outside and figure out what that looks like.
1:05:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, there is this coalition of groups
1:05:31
Speaker 1: that want to open up primaries, that want to basically
1:05:35
Speaker 1: break up the duopoly. And I think there's enough in
1:05:38
Speaker 1: common there where that group can be its own, not
1:05:41
Speaker 1: an ideology per se, but agree on a set of
1:05:45
Speaker 1: principles that bring us a different infrastructure.
1:05:48
Speaker 2: Go back to the civil rights movement. When you think
1:05:51
Speaker 2: of the civil rights movement, you had people like Martin
1:05:54
Speaker 2: Luther King Jr. basically preaching Gandhi, and then you had
1:05:57
Speaker 2: Stokely Garmichael showing up with pistols. They were all part
1:06:01
Speaker 2: of the same movement. And then I think about that
1:06:04
Speaker 2: stuff that happened before this, because when we study the
1:06:07
Speaker 2: civil rights movement, all of a sudden it's the freedom
1:06:09
Speaker 2: riders showing up with buses burning and things like that.
1:06:13
Speaker 2: All that happened beforehand... you know, at the synagogues and
1:06:17
Speaker 2: the churches and all of that. That's what's happening right
1:06:20
Speaker 2: now in the independent movement is the beginning of that
1:06:23
Speaker 2: organization coming together. And that's why it's so important we
1:06:26
Speaker 2: get a couple of victories. And if we don't get victories,
1:06:28
Speaker 2: we at least have to have some really good losses
1:06:30
Speaker 2: that we can learn from. But frankly, I think this
1:06:33
Speaker 2: is going to look like a lot of the Mondami
1:06:35
Speaker 2: race where a week out, he was down and then
1:06:38
Speaker 2: searched to the end. I think you're going to get
1:06:40
Speaker 2: a couple independents elected. And once that happens, politics is
1:06:44
Speaker 2: going to change. It's like, It's not it's it's not
1:06:47
Speaker 2: going to change overnight. But when you prove you can
1:06:50
Speaker 2: change the incentives, all of a sudden everything does change. Well,
1:06:53
Speaker 2: we're always going to replace MAGA as the driving force
1:06:56
Speaker 2: in American politics, not the essay. It's going to be.
1:07:00
Speaker 1: Well, look, there's this how much of these new independents
1:07:03
Speaker 1: are just motor voter enrollees and how many of them
1:07:07
Speaker 1: are doing it as a choice? What do you think
1:07:09
Speaker 1: that percentage is? Because we see this scallop number of 45%. Now,
1:07:14
Speaker 1: motor voter puts a lot of people just automatically defaulting
1:07:18
Speaker 1: as no party or independent, whatever the state is. So
1:07:21
Speaker 1: what would be your guess? You've done some of this research.
1:07:25
Speaker 1: Who are the truly passive indies?
1:07:28
Speaker 2: So we found about 25% of the population is what
1:07:32
Speaker 2: I call the socially tolerant, fiscally responsible. 25%. Not a majority.
1:07:37
Speaker 2: That's a hell of a lot of Americans right there.
1:07:39
Speaker 2: And especially since they do tend to congregate in certain
1:07:41
Speaker 2: districts in certain states, it could be a disproportionately powerful group.
1:07:46
Speaker 2: But I also when I push down to it, what
1:07:48
Speaker 2: I'm really seeing is that your base Republican and your
1:07:51
Speaker 2: base Democrat are each probably around 15 percent of the population.
1:07:55
Speaker 2: So about 70 percent of the population, I believe, could
1:07:58
Speaker 2: support an independent candidate. if they feel they're viable, if
1:08:01
Speaker 2: they see them, that they're real. And if they think
1:08:04
Speaker 2: that they could actually like, Oh, this person stands free,
1:08:06
Speaker 2: but it's hard to cut through the clutter. Like we're
1:08:08
Speaker 2: not just competing against Republicans and Democrats. We're competing against
1:08:11
Speaker 2: Sunday night football for attention. We're competing against soccer practice
1:08:15
Speaker 2: for attention. So it takes a lot. And that's why
1:08:17
Speaker 2: I keep coming back to how we were using, you know,
1:08:20
Speaker 2: vertical video to really target into the voters. Because I
1:08:24
Speaker 2: think it's, this is like the, the, the, the emperor
1:08:27
Speaker 2: has no clothes. The minute that, that, that, Because Americans,
1:08:30
Speaker 2: one of the biggest challenges is they think they're the
1:08:33
Speaker 2: only independent out there. They don't realize half the, when
1:08:37
Speaker 2: the aha moment, like really close to half the population's independent.
1:08:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:08:40
Speaker 2: Then all of a sudden they're like, well, let's do
1:08:42
Speaker 2: something about it.
1:08:43
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you don't, something's unbelievable until it happens.
1:08:46
Speaker 1: Nobody thought Trump could win. Nobody thought a MAGA movement
1:08:48
Speaker 1: could take hold until it did. And, you know, whatever you,
1:08:51
Speaker 1: whatever folks think of that, good or bad, you know,
1:08:54
Speaker 1: the point is, is that it is, you know, once
1:08:58
Speaker 1: you cross that barrier, right, of of it can, you know,
1:09:02
Speaker 1: the hockey stick moment happens, then you don't know where
1:09:07
Speaker 1: things go. Right. And it sort of changes the calculus.
1:09:09
Speaker 2: So this is how awesome this is, the 250th anniversary
1:09:11
Speaker 2: of America this year. And I think we're getting into
1:09:17
Speaker 2: a rebirth that would make the founders very, very happy
1:09:19
Speaker 2: because George Washington, when he left, everyone remembers his final
1:09:24
Speaker 2: speech for don't getting involved in international entanglements.
1:09:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the other important one, yeah.
1:09:28
Speaker 2: It was like he warned against not partisanship, but factionalism.
1:09:31
Speaker 2: That's what he was warning against.
1:09:32
Speaker 1: Adam, I go a step further. We've only really had
1:09:36
Speaker 1: two independents as president. Yeah. One is Washington. Yeah. And
1:09:40
Speaker 1: I think the other one's Eisenhower. And... And what's interesting
1:09:46
Speaker 1: is the two most important farewell addresses ever delivered to
1:09:49
Speaker 1: this country that have been incredibly prescient and have turned
1:09:53
Speaker 1: out to be exactly the right things we should have
1:09:56
Speaker 1: been listening to at the time. is the military industrial complex.
1:09:59
Speaker 1: I mean, this Pentagon is running out of munitions. How
1:10:02
Speaker 1: the hell did this happen? You wanna talk about corrupt process?
1:10:06
Speaker 1: This is not a money problem. I am really pissed
1:10:10
Speaker 1: off here as a taxpayer. For 25 years, all we've
1:10:14
Speaker 1: done is given the Pentagon more tools because, hey, we're
1:10:17
Speaker 1: fearful of another 9-11. We're fearful of all of these
1:10:21
Speaker 1: people coming to get us. And we can't even, we
1:10:24
Speaker 1: can't number one, have enough troops to provide relief. to
1:10:27
Speaker 1: sailors on the USS Lincoln? And number two, we can't
1:10:31
Speaker 1: even give them bullets? Are you kidding me? Where's this
1:10:34
Speaker 1: money going? You want to talk about, you know, so
1:10:39
Speaker 1: the fact is Washington and Eisenhower, they could be North
1:10:43
Speaker 1: Stars to this movement.
1:10:43
Speaker 2: Let me throw in a third because I'm going to
1:10:45
Speaker 2: throw in a third because I, after some podcasts, got
1:10:47
Speaker 2: a long letter from someone and I went and checked
1:10:50
Speaker 2: it out. Do you know Abraham Lincoln ran that in
1:10:53
Speaker 2: a unity ticket for his reelection? He ran first as
1:10:56
Speaker 2: a Republican when he got elected.
1:10:57
Speaker 1: But it was a fusion. Yeah. Well, right. He was right.
1:10:59
Speaker 1: It was a fusion ticket. Yeah.
1:11:01
Speaker 2: So that's so cool when you see that in the past,
1:11:03
Speaker 2: this stuff has happened. And guess what? It's up to
1:11:05
Speaker 2: us to do it again.
1:11:06
Speaker 1: And like now he ended up with the wrong vice president,
1:11:09
Speaker 1: as it turns out.
1:11:10
Speaker 2: Well, fair enough.
1:11:11
Speaker 1: That is that was that was a it was it
1:11:13
Speaker 1: was a part of the plan, though. You know, it
1:11:15
Speaker 1: was important to get elected. He needed to get reelected,
1:11:18
Speaker 1: you know, and it was important to send that message that, hey,
1:11:21
Speaker 1: there was going to be you know, this was going
1:11:22
Speaker 1: to be a there's no doubt. Right.
1:11:24
Speaker 2: But.
1:11:25
Speaker 1: It did produce perhaps our worst president. Yes.
1:11:28
Speaker 2: Well, no, I'm not going to get into that one
1:11:31
Speaker 2: because I don't want to get, I don't want to
1:11:32
Speaker 2: stick my foot in something by getting.
1:11:34
Speaker 1: No, I mean, the debate, Andrew Johnson debate is one
1:11:37
Speaker 1: that you can get, you know, when you're having the
1:11:39
Speaker 1: battle of who's the worst, you know, there's a few competitors.
1:11:43
Speaker 2: Now you are a nineties guy because you did sit around,
1:11:46
Speaker 2: because I did sit around my college dorm drinking cheap beer,
1:11:49
Speaker 2: having that argument, right?
1:11:50
Speaker 1: Like Well, I think, you know, I always said, well,
1:11:54
Speaker 1: James Buchanan always has to be one, because if you've
1:11:56
Speaker 1: lost the year, if secession happened on your watch, you lose.
1:12:00
Speaker 2: Right.
1:12:00
Speaker 1: Like, you know, that used to be my argument. But
1:12:02
Speaker 1: I'm now, you know, Johnson did more to damage things
1:12:06
Speaker 1: than I think we.
1:12:08
Speaker 2: I just think it's important for Americans to realize this
1:12:10
Speaker 2: is a really difficult situation and you should be alarmed.
1:12:13
Speaker 1: Right.
1:12:13
Speaker 2: You should be alarmed at everything you're seeing in the
1:12:16
Speaker 2: news today. But we've gone through 1968. We've gone through
1:12:22
Speaker 2: the 1930s. We've gone through a civil war. We've gone
1:12:26
Speaker 2: through some really hard stuff. This isn't the first time
1:12:29
Speaker 2: as a culture in a country we've gone through really
1:12:32
Speaker 2: hard stuff. And I think we have this myth that
1:12:35
Speaker 2: our democracy is so strong nothing could ever happen to it. No,
1:12:38
Speaker 2: it is incredibly fragile. That's why it's so precious. And
1:12:41
Speaker 2: that's why people need to get involved. This is my
1:12:44
Speaker 2: other big lesson. This is a fight at Thanksgiving with
1:12:47
Speaker 2: my parents-in-law. They're like, politicians don't listen to us. I'm like,
1:12:50
Speaker 2: you'd be shocked at how much they do. If you
1:12:53
Speaker 2: call your congressman, but if you ever got off your
1:12:55
Speaker 2: butt and went and visited your congressman's office and told him,
1:12:59
Speaker 2: the congressman will hear about that. They are scared of
1:13:01
Speaker 2: their voters. And that is something we still have with
1:13:05
Speaker 2: all of AI, with all of this.
1:13:08
Speaker 1: No, they are. They just need a better, right now,
1:13:10
Speaker 1: they're only scared of their primary voters.
1:13:12
Speaker 2: Well, now we got to blow them up and scare
1:13:13
Speaker 2: them with other stuff.
1:13:14
Speaker 1: If you scare them with the middle, it's amazing what
1:13:17
Speaker 1: they'll do.
1:13:17
Speaker 2: And once they do that, they will react. And then
1:13:19
Speaker 2: I think we'll look back and be like, man, that
1:13:21
Speaker 2: was a weird era in American culture. And I'll tell
1:13:23
Speaker 2: my kids about it. But it's like, look, we're stronger.
1:13:25
Speaker 2: And look at what this country we have today. We
1:13:27
Speaker 2: regenerated ourself. That is the strength. When we stop regenerating ourself,
1:13:31
Speaker 2: that's when we're all going to, that's when the culture goes.
1:13:34
Speaker 1: Adam, I got to land the plane here, but- Come on,
1:13:36
Speaker 1: let's keep playing.
1:13:36
Speaker 2: This is fun. Like we didn't even get into 90s
1:13:38
Speaker 2: baseball and all that other kind of fun stuff. You
1:13:41
Speaker 2: want to hear about my Browns a little bit?
1:13:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear you. I mean, you know, you could
1:13:45
Speaker 1: talk about that great coaching staff that was in the
1:13:47
Speaker 1: Cleveland Browns Super Bowl victory in 2000, right? Oh, my God.
1:13:51
Speaker 1: Is that Ravens team, the Ozzie Newsome team?
1:13:55
Speaker 2: I have a poster, not a poster, I have a
1:13:59
Speaker 2: Bernie Kosar jersey, you know, kind of throwing to my
1:14:01
Speaker 2: Ozzie Newsome jersey. And all my Baltimore friends are like,
1:14:04
Speaker 2: Ozzie Newsome? I'm like, just It's a dangerous ground you're
1:14:06
Speaker 2: on now.
1:14:07
Speaker 1: It really is. Well, Bernie's a friend being a hurricane. Oh,
1:14:11
Speaker 1: that's right.
1:14:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:14:14
Speaker 1: You want to talk about one optimistic man. That guy
1:14:16
Speaker 1: always every day wakes up with a smile on his face,
1:14:18
Speaker 1: no matter how bad things get for him.
1:14:20
Speaker 2: And they are pretty hard. And he is just a
1:14:21
Speaker 2: wonderful human being. So that would a great place to see.
1:14:23
Speaker 2: We agree on that. That's something we can agree on
1:14:25
Speaker 2: all day long.
1:14:26
Speaker 1: There you go. And get rid of Deshaun Watson as
1:14:29
Speaker 1: the starting quarterback. Anyway, Adam, this is terrific. Independent working people,
1:14:34
Speaker 1: if they want to support what you're doing.
1:14:36
Speaker 2: Independentcenter.org. Independentcenter.org. IndependentPAC.org. for our political activities and for the
1:14:44
Speaker 2: things we're doing with Joe Manchin and his incredible family,
1:14:46
Speaker 2: which the more I get to know them, the more
1:14:48
Speaker 2: amazing they are. The Independent Leadership Council.
1:14:52
Speaker 1: Sounds good. All right, brother. Good to see you.
1:14:53
Speaker 2: Thanks very much.