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Be of Your Place: Phil Gardner on the Blue Dog Revival · Blue Dog Radio

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Blue Dog Radio.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: We spend a lot of time on this show going somewhere.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: A farm in North Carolina, a water project in the Central Valley, a football game in South Texas, places where politics are lived and the arguments come with real weight and consequences.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: With the midterms approaching, we're zooming all the way out and talking about the project itself.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: What exactly is a blue dog in 2026?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: What are we looking for when we meet somebody who wants to run for Congress?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens if this thing actually works?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Phil Gardner has spent nearly two decades in politics.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: He managed Marie Gloosen Camperez's upset campaign in 2022, helped with the revival of the Blue Dog coalition that followed, and is now co-founder and senior advisor at Blue Dog Action.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about why Americans are so unsatisfied with the current state of things, the difference between being from a place and merely representing one on a map, why Phil asks congressional candidates what they were like in high school, and the lesson he thinks Democrats should have learned from Jared Golden.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually we get around to hope.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Here's Phil Gardner.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Phil, welcome to Blue Dog Radio.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: How would you describe this political moment that we're living in right now?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Very turbulent.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I often feel like the whole country's been on this merry-go-round for about 10 years now, ever since a certain person came down that golden escalator.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I think everybody is ready to get off the merry-go-round.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's also a moment that has been building, I think, long before he showed up on the scene, going back even to the financial crisis in the late 2000s, and you'd see populist movements like Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party forming around them, and the Iraq War.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it, you know, history is an unbroken chain, so it's it's hard to know exactly where to start.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: But the president is both a product of that environment and a result of our country's uh political and economic and social establishment becoming very out of touch with most Americans and folks wanting a change.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: And he, much better than the Democratic Party, I think, has been able to reflect and embody that difference from the establishment, however you want to define the establishment.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there are a lot of voters who, over the last 10 years, have been uh ready to give him a try every few years, even if they don't agree with everything he says or does, or even outright dislike things he says and does.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I think there are many voters who enjoy the sort of middle finger that he gives to the establishment.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: We're now at a moment here in 2026 with the midterms coming up where he is the president, his party controls Congress, and they can't deny, well, they do deny, but the reality that most people can't deny is that things are not going well in the country.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they have done nothing to address the rising cost of living and affordability crisis that was really exacerbated by what started happening during the pandemic.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: And not only have they not done anything about it, they've made it worse.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: The war in Iran has caused energy prices to skyrocket in a way that it's not really clear there is any public policy solution to it, even if they were to somehow end the war tomorrow, because forevermore, that energy supply chain in the Gulf, it's never going to be seen as something that is safe and secure and reliable anymore now that folks know that it can be disrupted in this way and that Iran will try and do things to uh take advantage of it.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the spell is sort of broken out there.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: All that adds up to uh a political environment that is kind of like the first midterm in Trump's first term in 2018, when Democrats did very well, but the economy is much worse than it was in 2018.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you have all the things that were heavily damaging the Republican Party brand back in 2018, now even worse in 2026.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think also there's a lot of people in the country, left, right, and center, um, or however the political spectrum's uh an invention of man, not something found in nature.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think they're just tired of the show.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I think the president's, I think he's lost some of the showmanship and luster that originally people were attracted to and that people, you know, loved on the apprentice and such.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a long way of saying I think we're reaching a moment where the country is once again ready for change, ready to show the president and his allies in Congress that they're not happy with the direction they're going.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: And this being a two-party system, there is one party who will benefit from that, and that will be the Democrats.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Are Americans actually as far apart as the politics would suggest?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Americans are not.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: I hate to do the like uh us versus DC type of thing because there are many normal Americans who live in DC and the surrounding areas.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: But for DC or the Beltway or the political establishment there in the nation's capital as a concept, they are the ones who are out of touch with the rest of the country.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: There is broad agreement out here uh and around the country on what is important in life and what matters and how tough it is for many people who are working very hard and doing the right things and trying their best um to get ahead or not fall behind.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the people in this country really fucking hate the people in power in DC of both parties.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: They really fucking hate them.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh people in DC kind of rationalize that as, oh, those folks out there, they don't get how tough things are here, and this is just the way it works.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I think have for many decades just sort of written that off as like, you know, yokels out in the in the country not getting the reality of things.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I think things are really finally beginning to catch up with um folks in DC who have been living in their own bubble.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: And um I think that is presenting a lot of these turbulent politics that we've been living through, and and it is not always pleasant and almost always stressful and anxious in any given week to live through these sorts of times.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: But I think things will get better when DC starts to change.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: People are not unhappy for no reason.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: They have very good reasons for being very unhappy.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: So take us back to the beginning.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why did you believe that Blue Dog Action Project needed to exist and what was missing in this political environment that you felt BDA could fill?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: You know, longtime listeners, Blue Dog Radio, I think, know uh some of the Blue Dog story and and the sort of core notions of what a blue dog is and what it's being, but I'll just restate some of it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: The Blue Dog political identity is something that was started 30 years ago in the wake of when Newt Gingrich took over Congress uh in 1995.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it was formed by Democrats who felt they didn't really have a place in the Democratic Party as it was heading towards, and felt that the big Democratic Party losses in 1994 were partly a reflection of the Democratic Party getting out of the mainstream of the country, and especially in the districts those original Blue Dogs were from.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: They felt they were being choked blue by the left and the right, uh, is what the lore is.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: And over those 30 years, Blue Dogs have been involved with almost every major policy fight that's occurred in Washington, D.C.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: The late 2010s and into the early 2020s, you know, it's it's hard to keep something really going at full steam for multiple decades, especially if you don't adjust to the changing world around you.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: It is very much adapt or die.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: And there were a lot of changes in how political uh parties and political operations and campaign spending were happening in the rest of the political ecosystem in the mid-2010s, partly as a result of the Citizens United decision, but also as a result of new technology and just sort of changing habits of how people consume news and information, and that growing dissatisfaction with Washington, D.C.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: starting to bubble up.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there were um moments in the Blue Dog's past where they got way too focused on K Street instead of being focused on Main Street and um, not even Main Street, just a dirt road.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think some folks in the past in the moderate political space have thought that being acceptable and popular in DC was the same thing as being modern and acceptable to voters outside of DC.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: The lobbyists on K Street are not the median voter.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: The median voter are the people out in these folks' districts and such.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: There was uh an inability to change and adjust, and that took the blue dogs to a very low point where they were literally a vote away within their internal caucus from being voted out of existence.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um they sort of wanted to change the name and basically become something totally new and different, or actually not different at all, but what they had been, just with a different name.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: And most of the blue dogs at the time decided not to go in that direction.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: And the the key instigator of keeping the blue dogs around was Jared Golden, uh, one of our blue dog leaders from Maine.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And he in early 2023 started to work on this blue dog revival, uh, as I as I sometimes refer, because it's not a sort of a formal thing.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: There's no sort of you know secret plan that's been written down.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: It was a new burst of energy, a new approach to a changing political environment.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: And again, that adapter die mentality.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I have worked in in politics mostly here in Washington State, here in Tacoma.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: At that point, it had been about 15 years, and I managed um Rick Luce and Camp Perez's 2022 campaign, uh, which was uh against Joe Kent the first time.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: This was um a big upset for folks who had not been been following it closely.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Marie got to Congress, and after she won, there was this buzz about her and the type of politics and the things she represented and the potential, broadening the Democratic Party, making it more relevant and useful to rural.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: But we didn't really know exactly where that would go or how to quantify it because she didn't fit easily into a box, uh, including the boxes that existed in DC for the most part.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: But she got to know Jared shortly after coming to Congress, and Mary Paltola from Alaska was also a new member that year.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: And eventually the the three of them decided to take on this work of reviving the Blue Dog Coalition, reviving the Blue Dog movement, and making it into something that really mattered and could make a real impact for these members' districts and the communities they represent.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I was working as Marie Senior Advisor at the time after the re-elect and got involved with that work at a staff level.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: And over the course of 2023 and 2024, did a lot of development work to sort of stabilize the patient in a way, I think I might quantify it.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Folks liked what they saw.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: And then the 2024 election came, and obviously the president won again.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: And that was very upsetting to many people, myself included.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: But Marie and Jared both got re-elected.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Mary came very close and overperformed, but they they threw a lot of money against her.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: But Marie and Jared won, and you had this moment where these two Democrats who had been saying there's a different way to do this, there is a way to appeal to folks who might vote for Trump, they both won.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: And there was then this energy after the 24 election to get the Democratic Party going in a better and a new direction.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we wanted to capitalize on that moment and take advantage of it and do our part and do our bit.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so I actually decided to step away from the direct day-to-day involvement with uh their official offices and campaign operations because it was legally required and we were growing in capacity, and then stepped away to uh eventually then form this group, Blue Dog Action, uh, with Jared Golden's former uh chief of staff, Asia Woodward.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: It has been a journey over the last 18 months since then.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: In the year 2026, what actually makes somebody a blue dog?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's five core values that we do hold on to as Blue Dogs going back to that founding uh 30 years ago.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: And two of them are officially written into the bylaws of the coalition, which are national defense and fiscal stability, which is this notion that the federal government's core responsibility is keeping people safe and passing a budget, keeping the government open, funding those services, making decisions.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: So national defense and fiscal stability, but then also bipartisanship, independence from party leadership when the moment calls for it, and place-based politics, sort of localism.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: And those other three are not official blue dog values, but are things that the whole coalition has believed in for 30 years.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so, in terms of what a blue dog is today, I think it's still those five things at their core.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: That is uh what unites all of our candidates.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And as we go out and try and find new folks interested in running as blue dogs and being blue dogs, those are the common threads we look for.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: But I think in addition, as you look at the blue dogs who are leading the group and our candidates, what sets them apart from other Democrats is they are not political creatures.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: They are, you know, normal people, some might say.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: I know normal can sometimes be a you know a word that the right throws at LGBTQ people.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And as a you know, a gay man, I, you know, I hear all that.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: But uh I also think we can overcomplicate the language policing.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I think normal working class people who have jobs that are not politician, who have jobs beyond lawyer or business person, and there's some good lawyers, some good business people out there, but folks who know what it's like to work on their feet for a living, to live in rural communities, to serve in our armed serv, our armed forces, serve in local government, various forms of other public service, um, teachers, nurses.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_02: I think what makes for a blue dog is that they are somebody who deeply loves where they're from and the sense of community and the sense of belonging that the places they're from bring them.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: And they want to fight for where they're from.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: They want to fight for their people and they want to go to DC and hold on to who they are.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they want to go to DC and be a part of the mix and make an impact, but they don't want to become of DC.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's how I think of the candidates and elected officials.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: But I I think broadly speaking, for you know, uh a blue dog ideology or something, perhaps, you know, philosophy, I think I'd prefer.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we often say the blue dogs are a faction of the Democratic Party for the working class without socialism.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: And most people, most voters in this country are working class.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Most people, most voters are not socialists.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it seems to us that there should be a faction of the Democratic Party explicitly working towards advocating for the working class without socialism.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think focusing on those results, focusing on the real impacts, and not focusing on what's online, those are all things that I think make for what a blue dog is today.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: When you're evaluating somebody who wants to run for Congress, what are you looking for?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And what is the difference between someone who might look good on paper and someone who actually connects with their district?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's a know it when you see it type of thing for me at least.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I've been lucky enough to have, you know, worked in this field for about 20 years now and have met many, many candidates of different offices and different types and kind of have a sense of who I think's gonna click and who I think may struggle.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think I look at our blue dog incumbents who have successfully proven an ability to win and hold seats as great examples.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Jared Golden, of course, Maurice Lusen Cam Perez, uh Adam Gray, Vicente Gonzalez.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, even some blue dogs who don't represent red areas, like Mike Thompson, um, who represents Napa Valley Wine Country, born and raised there, still lives in the same home his great-grandfather bought when he immigrated from Italy.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Not one you you sort of see in the headlines is breaking with the blue dogs all the time, but or sorry, breaking with the Democratic Party all the time, but very much a man of his place and of his home and comfortable with who he is, also Purple Heart recipient and combat veteran.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so as I talk with these folks who are running for Congress and interested in being a blue dog, I am looking for similar values like that.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: Folks who uh know the place they're from, know what it's like to really be a part of a community.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's funny because I uh the folks I talk with, and and Blue Dog Action does not make the endorsement decisions nor formally endorse Blue Dog Pack, the member-driven arm, is the one who does that.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: But um, we all chat in in Blue Dog World.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm talking with these candidates and trying to figure out how they're going to behave in in office, how they're gonna vote, what they're gonna prioritize, how they're gonna interact with the political system.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's tough to know because they themselves don't know.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: And most of them have never been in a political environment for a lengthy period of time.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they've had some incidental contact and and you know, vote regularly and involved in local civic stuff, but uh DC's a its whole beast.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so if if you've never been there and you don't know what it's like, how even if you were trying to be honest, you don't fully know.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I I ask folks, um, I got this idea from Marie.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: I I love to ask folks, what were you like in high school?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that one, it it I think just sort of catches folks off guard a little, because it's not the sort of thing they typically get asked in canon interviews now, and maybe I'll have to throw that question out because everybody's gonna hear this.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it just sort of, you know, you you see some some character.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, what you're like in high school is not what you're like for the rest of your life, but it it's just sort of seeing how they react and and what they're willing to share and and how they they view themselves and and life.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I love to ask them, what is your favorite thing about your part of your state in comparison to the rest of the state?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't want generic, you know, here's the best thing about, I'll just say Michigan, since we have nobody in Michigan right now.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what's your favorite thing about your part of Michigan compared to the other parts of Michigan?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that really can get a better sense of how much they know their place and how much they they feel passion for it specifically.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then I also asked them some questions like back in 2025, you know, what did Joe Biden do wrong?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: What is wrong with the Democratic Party?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh a willing, if they're unwilling to deviate from the party line and and not criticize the party in a you know a one-on-one conversation with me, then it's pretty unlikely they're gonna do that with with public office in a public platform.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, though, we want folks in Congress as blue dogs who are gonna stick with the pack, the blue dog pack, when shit gets rough, when the moments come.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so we're looking for character, we're looking for integrity, we're looking for principal values.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're even honestly looking for a bit of stubbornness.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: If if if we hear an anecdote where somebody's sort of been at a little bit of a stick in the mud and been a little stubborn because of something they really believed in or really thought was right, uh, that's encouraging.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: We can't predict exactly what folks are going to be like.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: And also we're not really here to to mold and shape and push people to be a certain way, because I just don't think that works.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: And also, I don't really have time to do that.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: So, how I view what we're building here and what the Blue Dogs and Congress are building is a place where folks who want to go to Congress and be themselves and be of their district and do the politically tough things within the Democratic Party, a place where folks who choose to want to do that can have a place to do that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: But ultimately it's up for them how they want to do it and what they want to do.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: So when the dust settles, what will you be looking at to understand what this election has told us?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think it'll be interesting to see which candidates not just win, but who overperform is the sort of electoral analysis term uh compared to other Democrats.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a little, I I honestly don't actually know specifically what metric I'm gonna be looking at yet, because in some states, there's also like statewide races where you can compare a candidate to on this the baseline here in Washington State.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: This year we happen to not have any statewide elections, so that's sort of a different ballgame.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: But also comparing it to like the 2024 presidential baseline, I mean, the the politics are shifting.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump is never going to be on a ballot again in this country.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's it's gonna have to be a mix of new new things and new metrics than what.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: What I think a lot of the electoral analysis community has been very focused on for many years now.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: But uh I'm also gonna be looking for candidates who, you know, maybe came a little short and seeing what is the difference between the ones who really pulled off these upsets, who really pulled off these big wins, and the ones who who fell short and and why was that?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: And my belief in theory is that the candidates who are going to overperform are the folks who are like the the blue dog incumbents who overperform.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's folks who are a genuine reflection of their district, not a genuine reflection of their party.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: What does the Blue Dog Project need to build over the next two years that doesn't necessarily exist today?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: We need to keep our blue dogs in office, those who want to keep serving in office.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's totally fine when folks decide they've done their public service and want to step back and focus on their family or just a different phase of their life.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: But we need to protect and defend these folks who are going to flip these seats in 2026 and make sure they have uh the support around them and the space to be themselves and be a voice for their district and not get caught up with whatever the national online outrages of that moment.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: And specifically, we need to avoid repeating what happened in 2018, unfortunately, and this predates my time with the blue dogs, but you can look at uh electoral data to show this.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: There were a bunch of Democrats, great candidates, many of them blue dogs, who flipped seats that Trump had won by double digits in 2016.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: They flipped those seats blue in 2018.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then they lost in 2020 and they lost in 2022.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: And they would tell you, moments of honesty, that they were very focused on staying in line with their party base and staying in line with the mood of the country at the time.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh the 2019, the Democratic presidential primary that was unfurling at that time, with all these 20 candidates who were sort of all racing as much as they could to be as to the left as possible and on the theory that that was what the party base wanted.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: And the one exception to those folks who flipped double-digit Trump seats in 2018 was Jared Golden.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: And he got re-elected in 2020, got re-elected in 2022, got re-elected in 2024.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And if he'd run again, he would have been re-elected this time.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it is very rare in politics or any sort of social science where you have a natural experiment that just so clearly shows what is effective and what keeps voters in your big, broad electoral tent.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: It is very rare to have an example so clear as the Jared Golden versus other folks who came in in 2018 in deep red Trump seats.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Jared came into Congress.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: He did vote to impeach Donald Trump.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: He split his vote, though.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: He voted yes on Article I and no on Article II.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: And he also was the only House Democrat to vote against Bill Back better back in uh 2021.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he did eventually, you know, when once the Inflation Reduction Act came into play, he's he supported that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_02: But he broke with the party in a way that folks in the White House and folks on the Hill thought was, you know, I think almost outlandish to them at the time.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: And how could you, you know, think for yourself instead of what the leadership is telling you to do.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: But he's the one who did things differently, and he's the one who lasted.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the ones who didn't, they moved on to other things in life, uh, I'll put it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: And so that doesn't mean that every blue dog needs to vote in a very specific way.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: There is no blue dog litmus test.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know exactly what's coming down the pipeline in 2027 and 2028.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: But if you don't vote differently from other Democrats, then you're not different.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if you want to be a different kind of Democrat, then you got to be different from the other Democrats.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: And you've got to find ways of proving that to folks, that all this stuff you said on the campaign trail about being an independent voice and posing the bad ideas that can come out of both parties and being true to your place and not your party, it's gonna be put up or shut-up time.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I have a lot of confidence that the blue dog candidates who will win this time and who will come in to serve, and I I don't want to predict electoral outcomes, but you know, I think of Jamie Ager in North Carolina, who I saw a poll this morning with him up by 13.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: And this was a seat that started in solid Republican at the start of the cycle.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump won it by 10 points.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Jamie's a farmer out there.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Folks, I mean, if you're listening to Blue Dog Radio, you know who Jamie Eger is.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: Folks who I just have total confidence are gonna come in and remain themselves and carry on that same legacy, that same impulse, that same philosophy that this Blue Dog revival has had over the last three and a half years.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: Marie's gonna get re-elected, Adam Gray's gonna get re-elected, Vincent State's gonna get re-elected, they're gonna have a lot of reinforcements, I think.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm excited to see how that plays out specifically, because we can't predict it precisely.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: But unlike in 2019 or even last Congress and sometimes this Congress, the folks who want to be themselves and be for their place and for their district, they're gonna have a crew around them in Congress and uh an outside political operation infrastructure to support them and give them that opportunity to really be true to themselves and to their place.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: My last question: when you think about the America that the next generation is going to inherit, what gives you hope?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: I just have hope because America it's so much bigger than any one man or one person, no matter how bad or corrupt or criminal that person might be if they happen to find their way into the White House.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the president is a convicted felon, and then the American people voted for him.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I think people don't really know what to do with that sometimes, and so they sort of memory hole it, but that is the trajectory, and that that's not good.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: But I have over the last 10 years, as we've watched this era sort of unfurl, just become more and more confident that a lot of the core cultural foundation of the American people is never going to tolerate anything other than a representative democracy.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think if you look at American society, democracy is so embedded and interwoven into the fabric of even our day-to-day lives outside of politics, things you you don't even sort of really think about until you start to look at it.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: But like just the notion of voting, like HOAs, student councils, boards on companies, even, you know, I mean, this notion that we're gonna have sort of like dictatorial authoritarian direction, I just don't think the American people are ever gonna accept something like that.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we have 250 years now of history to back that up.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: We have a constitution that, you know, there's a reason the founders gave us an ability to amend it, but it has held up pretty well over these 250 years.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: And no matter what folks uh in the White House or around them may try uh or think they can scheme up, uh, and there will be schemes that they will try.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm confident they will throw doubt on the outcome of the elections and try and do all these sort of you know media spins and stuff.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: And in a way that was, you know, similar to the what tragically happened on January 6th ultimately, where, you know, multiple law enforcement officials ended up losing their lives because of election denialism.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: But he also didn't stay in office.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: And like, even if January 6th had gotten worse, I think the military would have come in there and shut that shit down.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I I think folks get very anxious about the future and and they see what's happening, and I get that.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: I share those anxieties.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have spent years talking to folks, working on the front lines of activism and and political causes.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: But I I just have faith that the country is bigger and better than what any one person and and the henchmen around them might try and do.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: And that gives me hope because I think it is a collective spirit that is very hard to sort of artificially create elsewhere, as we've occasionally tried when we've tried to do nation building.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: But I think after this length of time, it is something firmly rooted in who we are.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to say I think everything's gonna work out to the extent that I don't want that in the tape, but I have hope because we are a nation of problem solvers.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: We are a nation of builders, we are a nation of imperfect people who sometimes make mistakes and then realize it and adjust.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: But we've done a lot of good.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of good in the world and a lot of good here.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the next generation and every generation that comes after them.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's an innate thing about being a young person and having hope and possibility and and energy to do stuff.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that will never stop.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I think some of these blue dogs coming in are gonna be part of that, and maybe even ones who are a generation older than me still still have that at heart.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what gives me hope.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's just so many good people out there doing good things.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I view what the blue dogs are as a voice for all the things about America that we know are are right and good, and and what this country really can be on its best days.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Phil Gardner, thank you so much for coming on Blue Dog Radio.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Here's something that gets pretty close to the heart of the whole Blue Dog project.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Be of your place.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Know where you're from, know who sent you, go to Washington, participate fully in the work, and somehow resist becoming of Washington, DC.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's harder than it sounds.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Phil talks about the Blue Dogs who survived because they were willing to prove their independence when it actually cost them something, and about building an infrastructure around the next group so they have room to do the same.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: And still, it's really bigger than any election.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: We are still a country of builders, problem solvers, and imperfect people capable of recognizing when something isn't working and adjusting.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in that, there will always be room for eternal hope and optimism.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are a lot of worse places to end up.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, thank you for listening.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: This has been Blue Dog Radio.