Latest / Pod Save America / How Do We Push Back on Authoritarianism? (Crooked Con)

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How Do We Push Back on Authoritarianism? (Crooked Con) · Pod Save America

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1:26
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody.
1:26
Speaker 1: You probably heard us talking about CrookedCon in this feed
1:29
Speaker 1: the past few weeks, just a few times. If you haven't,
1:32
Speaker 1: this was a first-of-its-kind thing for us, bringing together some
1:35
Speaker 1: of the party's leading politicians and best strategists with Crooked
1:38
Speaker 1: hosts from across the network for difficult but fun conversations
1:42
Speaker 1: about where we go next. The big event finally went
1:44
Speaker 1: down on Friday. It was incredible. We're going to be
1:47
Speaker 1: sharing some of our favorite conversations and moments with you
1:49
Speaker 1: all here. Today, we're bringing you my conversation about fighting
1:52
Speaker 1: back against the Trump administration... Then you'll hear Tommy's conversation
1:56
Speaker 1: with the key strategists for Zoran Mamdani, Mikey Sherrill, and
1:59
Speaker 1: Abigail Spanberger about what they learned from their races and
2:02
Speaker 1: how we can best position ourselves for success in the
2:04
Speaker 1: midterms and beyond. Hope you enjoy them, and there's more
2:07
Speaker 1: coming soon. So one topic we thought it was important
2:15
Speaker 1: to talk about today is the fierce campaign to fight
2:21
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's assault on democracy, the rule of law. and
2:24
Speaker 1: Americans who disagree with him, including people and organizations here
2:29
Speaker 1: at CrookedCon today. Fortunately, we have two incredibly talented and
2:35
Speaker 1: dedicated people leading the fight joining me today, Sky Perryman
2:39
Speaker 1: of Democracy Forward and my old friend and colleague Norm
2:42
Speaker 1: Eisen of Democracy Defenders Fund. So the two of you
2:51
Speaker 1: together have probably sued Donald Trump more times than anyone
2:54
Speaker 1: else in America over the last year, I think. How
3:00
Speaker 1: did you get into this particular line of work, Skye?
3:03
Speaker 3: Start with you.
3:04
Speaker 4: Suing autocrats.
3:06
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
3:07
Speaker 4: Professions that did not exist some time ago.
3:10
Speaker 6: Well, it's great to be here, and I'll just say
3:13
Speaker 6: at Democracy Forward, we've always known that suing your government
3:19
Speaker 6: or suing an autocratic actor can help change behavior, and
3:22
Speaker 6: it still does. But when we started looking in 2023,
3:25
Speaker 6: actually— At early reports of Project 2025, we started seeing
3:33
Speaker 6: what far-right organizations were doing, and then that sort of
3:36
Speaker 6: developed more in 2024. We knew that if this administration
3:41
Speaker 6: came into office, contrary to what it said on the
3:43
Speaker 6: campaign trail, that there would be a very quick... effort
3:47
Speaker 6: to dismantle so much of what means so much and
3:50
Speaker 6: serves so many people in America. And that the American
3:53
Speaker 6: people would have some tools. They could get in the streets,
3:56
Speaker 6: but the autocrat would probably start threatening them. You could vote,
4:00
Speaker 6: but there wouldn't be an election around the corner. But
4:02
Speaker 6: the ability to initiate litigation against your government when your
4:06
Speaker 6: rights are violated was a really powerful one, not just
4:09
Speaker 6: to stop terrible things. Today, we've yet again stopped the
4:13
Speaker 6: administration from trying to stonewall the SNAP funding. We've won
4:17
Speaker 6: several court orders on that. Those have real-time implications for people,
4:25
Speaker 6: but it was more than that. It's also the ability
4:27
Speaker 6: of people to stand up publicly and say, I have
4:31
Speaker 6: rights that you cannot take away, and I'm going to
4:34
Speaker 6: force you publicly to defend what you were doing to me,
4:38
Speaker 6: what you were doing to my community, and what you
4:40
Speaker 6: were doing to my neighbors. And so that's how we
4:41
Speaker 6: started building this strategy.
4:44
Speaker 3: Norm?
4:45
Speaker 5: Well, I got my start in tough legal battles representing
4:50
Speaker 5: Favs and Tommy Vitor in the White House.
4:54
Speaker 3: That prepared me for anything. We behaved, mostly. Mostly.
5:02
Speaker 5: I'm bound by attorney-client privilege not to disclose those stories. I.
5:12
Speaker 5: Got my start fighting Trump's authoritarianism in his first term.
5:20
Speaker 5: I have the dubious distinction of being the first person
5:25
Speaker 5: to sue him first in both of his presidential terms.
5:33
Speaker 5: And Sky and I are and I are kind of
5:38
Speaker 5: siblings in the fight against authoritarianism. She and I and
5:43
Speaker 5: our organizations co-hosted with a conservative group the largest gathering
5:51
Speaker 5: in 2024, late summer 2024, to warn, because everything that
5:58
Speaker 5: has happened was right there out in the open. And
6:03
Speaker 5: we have over 200 cases in legal matters at this point, Favs,
6:12
Speaker 5: against Trump. It started when I applied to be a
6:16
Speaker 5: member of the Doge. I strongly favor government efficiency and effectiveness.
6:25
Speaker 5: And Katie Miller, Stephen Miller's wife, the spokeswoman for the Doge,
6:30
Speaker 5: told the New York Times, we don't want Norm, he's
6:32
Speaker 5: a Democrat.
6:34
Speaker 3: Boom, lawsuit number one.
6:40
Speaker 5: Maybe if she had a lawyer like Favs used to have,
6:44
Speaker 5: she wouldn't have said that to the New York Times.
6:48
Speaker 5: And then often working in partnership and in coalition, Sky
6:54
Speaker 5: and I, together with the ACLU, are probably the most frequent. litigants,
6:59
Speaker 5: but there's a wonderful big coalition also including Protect Democracy,
7:05
Speaker 5: Public Citizen. We have met him at every turn. Our
7:13
Speaker 5: cases have included stopping his birthright citizenship executive order. No,
7:20
Speaker 5: Donald Trump, you don't get to choose which baby's born here.
7:24
Speaker 5: Our citizens, we stopped his effort to take over elections.
7:30
Speaker 5: We won the Lisa Cook case at SCOTUS. With working
7:36
Speaker 5: with Sky, we've saved tens of thousands of jobs in litigation,
7:41
Speaker 5: preserved labor unions. Oh, we got every AmeriCorps kid rehired.
7:47
Speaker 5: That was our case. We don't only play defense. We
7:54
Speaker 5: go on offense. We disqualified Alina Haba. That's been a
7:58
Speaker 5: template for cases all over the country. And we were
8:03
Speaker 5: in court today. We were deployed across all of the
8:06
Speaker 5: places where there were elections to stop those monitors, to
8:10
Speaker 5: stop attempted election subversion, and won a case in New
8:15
Speaker 5: Jersey to protect ballots.
8:18
Speaker 3: So that's been our story. It's a good story.
8:23
Speaker 1: So here's how The Atlantic has described the works that
8:27
Speaker 1: both of you do. This backbone of the Trump resistance
8:30
Speaker 1: has as much in common with political organizing and investigative
8:33
Speaker 1: reporting as it does with legal theory.
8:37
Speaker 3: Sky, do you agree with that?
8:38
Speaker 1: And sort of how do you think about the work
8:40
Speaker 1: that you do?
8:41
Speaker 4: I do agree with that.
8:42
Speaker 6: And one of the things we want to make sure
8:44
Speaker 6: people understand, we're in court a lot and we win
8:47
Speaker 6: a lot, but we don't believe that it's the courts
8:50
Speaker 6: that are going to save the country or that's the
8:52
Speaker 6: courts that are.
8:53
Speaker 4: Going to get us to a new chapter.
8:55
Speaker 6: We believe it is the people and the power of
8:58
Speaker 6: people to use the courts and to initiate litigation is
9:01
Speaker 6: a huge power, as I said. But what we've seen
9:04
Speaker 6: in a fractured media environment is And with the underinvestment
9:09
Speaker 6: in investigative reporting, right, with the fact that we don't
9:12
Speaker 6: have as many journalists anymore that have the freedom and
9:16
Speaker 6: the economic ability to engage in deep investigative journalism, is
9:21
Speaker 6: that the cases that we are building and the stories
9:26
Speaker 6: that we are telling in our cases are actually now feeding,
9:32
Speaker 6: to some degree, the narratives that you see in the
9:34
Speaker 6: public square. So it used to be that you would
9:36
Speaker 6: go read the news, the lawyers would read the news,
9:38
Speaker 6: and they would go to court.
9:39
Speaker 4: With what they saw in the news.
9:40
Speaker 6: A journalist recently said to me, I feel like we're
9:42
Speaker 6: reading your court papers and we're reporting on them. So
9:46
Speaker 6: in the case that Norm mentioned, where we have sought
9:49
Speaker 6: to save as many civil servants' jobs as we can,
9:53
Speaker 6: our nonpartisan civil service, and we've blocked a bunch of
9:56
Speaker 6: them from being fired, in this shutdown, there were thousands
10:00
Speaker 6: of individual pages of stories in many of those cases
10:03
Speaker 6: about the harms that people would, you know, about the
10:07
Speaker 6: harms that people would experience. In the case that we
10:10
Speaker 6: at Democracy Forward are litigating with the ACLU, where we
10:12
Speaker 6: have challenged the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, right?
10:15
Speaker 6: A case that many people didn't want us to bring,
10:19
Speaker 6: because they thought we were walking into the president's trap,
10:21
Speaker 6: that immigration was some big, powerful issue for him, but
10:26
Speaker 6: that we brought anyway.
10:27
Speaker 4: The stories of Mr.
10:29
Speaker 6: Garcia and people who have been removed from this country
10:33
Speaker 6: without process, who, when you learn their stories and their backgrounds,
10:38
Speaker 6: those stories have changed the way that Americans, not just
10:41
Speaker 6: here at CrookedCon, view things, right?
10:44
Speaker 4: They've changed the way that.
10:45
Speaker 6: Americans, even folks like Joe Rogan and others, are seeing
10:49
Speaker 6: the world because of those stories. So I agree with that,
10:52
Speaker 6: and I think that there's a lot of this mobilizing
10:55
Speaker 6: narrative building that's happening through the courts that then, of course,
10:58
Speaker 6: others are amplifying, which is really great.
10:59
Speaker 5: Yeah.
11:00
Speaker 7: Norm?
11:03
Speaker 5: Similar impression. We brought the very first case, again, going
11:11
Speaker 5: on offense under the Federal Tort Claims Act, suing for
11:16
Speaker 5: the illegal deportation of a Venezuelan to Seacott. And the
11:24
Speaker 5: story of Adrian Nerey Rangel, he's a barber. He's not
11:31
Speaker 5: a member of Tren de Aragua. He did a tattoo
11:35
Speaker 5: to honor his daughter, and the tattoo was misinterpreted. The
11:41
Speaker 5: next thing you knew was he was in Seacott. Those
11:45
Speaker 5: kinds of stories are very powerful drivers to shift the
11:50
Speaker 5: public narrative. I will also say Donald Trump's plan, and
11:58
Speaker 5: it was clear.
12:00
Speaker 5: When we did our conference in August 2024, was to
12:06
Speaker 5: flood the zone. So Sky and I and our colleagues
12:10
Speaker 5: in this, it does take a village in this big coalition,
12:13
Speaker 5: we have met flood the zone with rule of law
12:16
Speaker 5: shock and awe. And that narrative, Donald Trump, if you,
12:23
Speaker 5: we're gonna bring a bazooka to this knife fight. And
12:27
Speaker 5: that narrative that Sky and I and our colleagues and
12:30
Speaker 5: our wonderful organizations and everyone we work with and the
12:33
Speaker 5: clients and co-counsel, that narrative has also sent a message
12:39
Speaker 5: to the press. You don't have to be afraid of
12:42
Speaker 5: the big bad wolf. And that has been a story
12:46
Speaker 5: that really, I think, has been an important one over
12:50
Speaker 5: the course of the year.
12:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sky, to the point you made about the suit
12:55
Speaker 1: against the Alien Enemies Act, I know that both of
13:00
Speaker 1: you guys and your organizations, like right after, like on
13:03
Speaker 1: inauguration day or right around then, immediately started suing Donald Trump.
13:07
Speaker 1: And there were some You know, Democrats, Democratic strategists, officials,
13:13
Speaker 1: politicians were probably a little nervous about that, I presume,
13:16
Speaker 1: because they thought, well, Donald Trump wins this victory and
13:19
Speaker 1: maybe we should. look for ways to work with him
13:22
Speaker 1: instead of just fight everything he does.
13:24
Speaker 3: They had a Doge caucus. There were Democrats in the
13:27
Speaker 3: Doge caucus.
13:29
Speaker 1: And you disagreed with that. What was it like? Did
13:33
Speaker 1: you second guess the decision at all? What was the
13:35
Speaker 1: strategy like in thinking, we're going to go at it,
13:37
Speaker 1: we're going to do the legal shock and awe?
13:39
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think the decision was really about
13:41
Speaker 6: the American people, which is that the American people are
13:45
Speaker 6: not supportive of, of this extreme agenda, which we could
13:49
Speaker 6: already see on the campaign trail was gonna happen, but
13:51
Speaker 6: you certainly saw it in the transition period, right? This
13:55
Speaker 6: was an administration that on the campaign trail acted like
13:58
Speaker 6: they didn't know who Russ Vogt was, right? They'd never
14:01
Speaker 6: heard of anybody that rhymed with Project 2025 because Project
14:05
Speaker 6: 2025 was deeply unpopular, not just with progressives and liberals
14:09
Speaker 6: and moderates, but also with conservatives, right? And so this
14:13
Speaker 6: was an administration that got into office without leveling with
14:17
Speaker 6: the American people about what they were gonna do, we
14:19
Speaker 6: could see in the transition that they were laying the
14:22
Speaker 6: groundwork to start day one with this shock and awe campaign.
14:28
Speaker 6: And the real thing for us was, how are we
14:31
Speaker 6: going to show people that you actually still get to
14:34
Speaker 6: be in charge in your country?
14:36
Speaker 4: The people get to be in charge.
14:38
Speaker 6: And what we know about this administration, and I think
14:41
Speaker 6: some were a little confused at the beginning, but people
14:43
Speaker 6: are coming along.
14:44
Speaker 5: It's good.
14:45
Speaker 2: We love it.
14:46
Speaker 6: What we know about this administration is they know what
14:48
Speaker 6: to do with weakness. They know what to do with it.
14:52
Speaker 6: split people off, pick people off, engage in a settlement,
14:55
Speaker 6: try to, they do not always know what to do
14:57
Speaker 6: with strength. They know what to do with weakness. They
15:04
Speaker 6: don't know what to do with strength. And so if
15:06
Speaker 6: you could find a way to show up with the
15:08
Speaker 6: strength of the American people, It's not just the lawyers
15:11
Speaker 6: that are suing, okay? In the first days of the administration,
15:15
Speaker 6: when we went into court to stop the federal funding freeze,
15:18
Speaker 6: you want to talk about SNAP being a crisis? Think
15:20
Speaker 6: about if there was no federal funding at all in
15:23
Speaker 6: any community, Meals on Wheels.
15:25
Speaker 4: Head Start, the whole thing.
15:27
Speaker 6: We showed up with the American Public Health Association, with
15:31
Speaker 6: the National Council of Nonprofits, right? We just showed up
15:34
Speaker 6: on SNAP with the Council of Churches. with people and
15:37
Speaker 6: communities across this country that may have different interests or
15:41
Speaker 6: be committed to different things, but that all are committed
15:44
Speaker 6: to a country and a government that needs to serve
15:46
Speaker 6: all of us. And so I think that was in
15:48
Speaker 6: those early days, you just have to have faith. We
15:51
Speaker 6: had faith in the people. The people did not vote
15:55
Speaker 6: for Project 2025. They may have voted for some immigration reform.
15:59
Speaker 6: Everybody wants comprehensive immigration reform, but they didn't vote for
16:02
Speaker 6: disappearances in masks, people walking the streets, And so that
16:07
Speaker 6: confidence in the people, I think, is what drove us
16:09
Speaker 6: in those early days.
16:12
Speaker 1: You both have so many cases, so many lawsuits. How
16:16
Speaker 1: do you decide which cases to publicize in a big, organized,
16:24
Speaker 1: coordinated fashion?
16:27
Speaker 5: Well, the theory of change informs that. How are we
16:41
Speaker 5: going to actually restore democracy, stop this backsliding, then go
16:50
Speaker 5: forward again? In political science literature, it's called a democratic U-turn.
16:57
Speaker 5: It happens more often than you might think. Over 70%
17:01
Speaker 5: of the time in the past, the post-Cold War era,
17:04
Speaker 5: when you've had an experience like we're having, the democracy
17:08
Speaker 5: is able to recover and make a U-turn. So I
17:13
Speaker 5: attempt to, I think of it in our org, we
17:18
Speaker 5: think of it as court of law and court of
17:20
Speaker 5: public opinion. and we have very smart people we talk
17:25
Speaker 5: to who tell us this might really work. So for example,
17:29
Speaker 5: and Sky's done the same thing, we have been very
17:33
Speaker 5: focused on the Trump-Epstein files because they go to, there's
17:39
Speaker 5: kind of a triad, I was talking with Ben Rhodes
17:44
Speaker 5: backstage about this, of affordability, healthcare, and corruption. And other
17:51
Speaker 5: than tearing down the East Wing unpermitted, there's no better
17:58
Speaker 5: example of the corruption than these Trump-Epstein files. We know
18:04
Speaker 5: they exist. We know they're being hidden. So we hired
18:07
Speaker 5: some of the team. We worked with the victims. We
18:09
Speaker 5: actually hired some of the lawyers who got the big
18:12
Speaker 5: settlements for the victims on behalf of Epstein. We started
18:16
Speaker 5: a FOIA program. campaign filed the very first FOIAs. Both
18:20
Speaker 5: we and Sky are litigating Epstein issues, and we're not
18:24
Speaker 5: letting up on that.
18:26
Speaker 3: I just had a conversation.
18:29
Speaker 5: I just had a conversation with the lawyers for the victims,
18:33
Speaker 5: and let me tell you, they are mad as hell,
18:37
Speaker 5: and we're not letting up because that, so that's an
18:39
Speaker 5: example of the kind of issue you're looking for the
18:42
Speaker 5: issues that break through and communicate and the corruption to
18:47
Speaker 5: the American people.
18:57
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Speaker 3: Norm mentioned the East Wing.
22:01
Speaker 5: Yes.
22:01
Speaker 1: I heard that you guys are filing or have filed a.
22:05
Speaker 3: Suit on that.
22:06
Speaker 6: Yeah, we've opened an investigation, which will probably result in
22:08
Speaker 6: a lawsuit. We're working on some other legal remedies there.
22:12
Speaker 6: And I think we see the demolition.
22:15
Speaker 3: We're on it.
22:19
Speaker 4: We're on it.
22:20
Speaker 6: And, you know, we were doing that at the same
22:21
Speaker 6: time we were having to build the case to win SNAP.
22:25
Speaker 6: And you might think, I mean, there's SNAP, and then
22:27
Speaker 6: there's the demolition of the East Wing, and what do
22:29
Speaker 6: the two things have in common?
22:31
Speaker 4: And we really.
22:32
Speaker 6: View what the president has done to the East Wing,
22:35
Speaker 6: and I think most Americans we're seeing are viewing it
22:37
Speaker 6: this way, as a metaphor to what he is seeking
22:41
Speaker 6: to do to our country and to the people of
22:46
Speaker 6: the United States.
22:46
Speaker 4: And so we think it's a really important....
22:53
Speaker 6: It's really important from a legal perspective. I mean, you
22:57
Speaker 6: have someone that truly does think he is a king.
22:59
Speaker 6: I mean, he says this without irony, leveling off public buildings.
23:03
Speaker 6: But it's also really important from a symbolic perspective that
23:06
Speaker 6: we are not going to allow this president to level
23:10
Speaker 6: the American people, to level our Constitution, to level our
23:14
Speaker 6: democracy without requiring a public accounting.
23:17
Speaker 4: And that's what we're doing.
23:18
Speaker 2: Thank you.
23:23
Speaker 1: One thing I don't know if enough people appreciate is
23:27
Speaker 1: just how fast you guys have to move.
23:30
Speaker 3: And how much work goes into this.
23:32
Speaker 1: I think we see Trump do something awful, seems unconstitutional,
23:37
Speaker 1: seems like he's breaking the law, and then I think
23:40
Speaker 1: We're all just used to then waking up the next
23:42
Speaker 1: day and be like, oh, there was a lawsuit filed
23:44
Speaker 1: and he's going to court. And you guys have lawyers
23:47
Speaker 1: that are just, you know, they see the executive order,
23:50
Speaker 1: they see the action, and then they're just up all night, right?
23:53
Speaker 3: How does it work?
23:54
Speaker 4: I mean, sure.
23:55
Speaker 6: I mean, we've got lawyers up all night right now
23:57
Speaker 6: because we're waiting. We've already had five states have gotten
24:00
Speaker 6: their full SNAP payments, and there's going to be more tonight.
24:02
Speaker 5: And so.
24:04
Speaker 6: It is a round-the-clock thing. So I think there's a
24:08
Speaker 6: few things. One is this is a known playbook. You know,
24:11
Speaker 6: the thing about Project 2025 is they, like, laid it
24:14
Speaker 6: all out. So there was a lot of this preparation
24:16
Speaker 6: work that Norm and I and ACLU and many of
24:20
Speaker 6: our colleagues actually in our Democracy 2025 meetings coalition. There
24:24
Speaker 6: are over 650 organizations that are actively doing what they
24:28
Speaker 6: can do to contribute to what has been, and I'm
24:31
Speaker 6: just going to say this and we'll get an applause
24:32
Speaker 6: for it, what has been the largest and most successful
24:35
Speaker 6: affirmative litigation effort against an executive branch in United States history.
24:39
Speaker 6: I mean, that we have accomplished at this point, if
24:46
Speaker 6: you compare a And we are largely doing it without
24:50
Speaker 6: elite law firms doing their share of the pro bono work, right? Because,
24:55
Speaker 6: so this has been a real collaborative effort. But what
24:58
Speaker 6: it looks like is what you think it looks like. One,
25:01
Speaker 6: there's a playbook. And so those things we can prep for,
25:04
Speaker 6: we can plan for, we can work with each other,
25:05
Speaker 6: we can share information and make sure we know which
25:08
Speaker 6: communities are going to be affected.
25:10
Speaker 4: How can they get into court? Do they know that
25:11
Speaker 4: they can get into court? And line that up.
25:15
Speaker 6: And then you have the Trump factor, which is sort
25:18
Speaker 6: of whatever just happens on a given day. And that
25:21
Speaker 6: does require a lot of caffeine and a lot of
25:23
Speaker 6: amazing lawyers on our teams, amazing lawyers who truly do
25:28
Speaker 6: work through the night to get into court the next
25:30
Speaker 6: morning to ensure that the American people have their voices heard.
25:35
Speaker 6: And then the other thing we have, which we are
25:37
Speaker 6: really starting to focus on, and we want all of
25:39
Speaker 6: you to focus on, is what we call the kind
25:42
Speaker 6: of non-shiny object stuff. So not everything that this administration
25:47
Speaker 6: does is happening on truth social or at a big
25:50
Speaker 6: signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
25:52
Speaker 4: Or bulldozers at the White House.
25:55
Speaker 6: There are a number of things that are happening throughout
25:57
Speaker 6: the federal branches of our government and agencies throughout the
26:00
Speaker 6: government and communities that the administration actually doesn't want to
26:04
Speaker 6: answer about. And they don't want to even say that
26:07
Speaker 6: they're doing anything. And so we do a lot of
26:10
Speaker 6: work to detect what those things are and then to
26:13
Speaker 6: make sure that we can also get into court, not
26:16
Speaker 6: just to challenge what's happening, but also to expose what's happening,
26:19
Speaker 6: which links back to your question about investigative journalism and
26:22
Speaker 6: making sure that people know what their government is up to.
26:24
Speaker 3: Norm, did you want to?
26:29
Speaker 5: The secret is not to sleep.
26:36
Speaker 3: Sleeping your dad, right? It has been very good.
26:39
Speaker 5: The litigation economy has been very good for Diet Coke
26:43
Speaker 5: and Red Bull. Some of the cases, we drafted our
26:50
Speaker 5: birthright complaint, which was the first of the complaints filed.
26:57
Speaker 5: on day one, and then when the Supreme Court ruled, oh,
27:00
Speaker 5: you've got to have a class action, we had a
27:02
Speaker 5: class action on file two hours later. And now we're
27:06
Speaker 5: back at the Supreme Court. We drafted that complaint over
27:10
Speaker 5: the summer of 2024. So some of it is having
27:14
Speaker 5: cards up your sleeve. Some of it is having this incredible,
27:20
Speaker 5: as Sky says, it has been an extraordinary coalition. And
27:24
Speaker 5: I should also shout out, they operate in parallel to
27:29
Speaker 5: the democracy groups, the democracy litigating groups, the AGs. have
27:34
Speaker 5: been absolutely superb litigating partners.
27:37
Speaker 4: We're often, we.
27:39
Speaker 5: Did a Doge case, they did a Doge case against Musk.
27:42
Speaker 5: We did an AmeriCorps case, they did an AmeriCorps case.
27:45
Speaker 5: Sky did the Snap case, the AGs did the Snap case.
27:49
Speaker 5: Occasionally we work together, we're in a case together. And
27:53
Speaker 5: so the AGs have been wonderful partners. And I think
27:58
Speaker 5: it is part of the reason that you have multiple
28:03
Speaker 5: groups that are ready at all times. You know, no
28:06
Speaker 5: one org could have met flood the zone with rule
28:10
Speaker 5: of law shock and awe. But having a large coalition
28:14
Speaker 5: and clients and the labor movement ready to do that
28:19
Speaker 5: has made the difference.
28:25
Speaker 3: You guys have had a lot of wins.
28:27
Speaker 1: You're also facing a very conservative Supreme Court majority, much
28:30
Speaker 1: of it appointed by Trump himself. Frequently when they offer
28:34
Speaker 1: a limited or temporary ruling in favor of Trump comes
28:38
Speaker 1: via the shadow docket with no opinion. I think this
28:42
Speaker 1: leads some people, you know, who casually pay attention to
28:44
Speaker 1: politics to think, well, since we don't have the court, like,
28:49
Speaker 1: What's the use here? Are the courts really holding up?
28:51
Speaker 1: Because maybe we win in some of the lower courts,
28:53
Speaker 1: but then when it gets to the Supreme Court, we lose.
28:56
Speaker 1: How much of an impediment to your strategy is the
29:01
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, or have you found the Supreme Court?
29:05
Speaker 8: You want to start?
29:06
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think that the birthright case is a good example.
29:12
Speaker 5: The Supreme Court is tilting the playing field. They haven't
29:16
Speaker 5: It is not a sheer playing field. You don't have
29:19
Speaker 5: to do rock climbing. You got to pump your legs harder.
29:21
Speaker 5: It's terrible what they've done with the shadow docket. But
29:25
Speaker 5: you can win there. The Lisa Cook case proves that
29:29
Speaker 5: you can be successful at the Supreme Court. I think
29:32
Speaker 5: we've learned how to bring cases to the Supreme Court.
29:35
Speaker 5: So in that birthright case, you know, there was the
29:38
Speaker 5: safety valve moment. safety valves, including class actions. And in
29:45
Speaker 5: one of the big, this story will illustrate, I think,
29:53
Speaker 5: how you deal with the Supreme Court in this day
29:56
Speaker 5: and age. In the tariffs case, we represent a large
30:01
Speaker 5: group of conservatives, and Favs, you and I were Obama
30:05
Speaker 5: people from early on, much earlier since we were in
30:10
Speaker 5: law school together, when Favs was still enjoying his elementary education. We,
30:22
Speaker 5: in the tariffs case, represent a coalition of two dozen conservatives.
30:30
Speaker 5: Many people who I had fought my entire professional career.
30:36
Speaker 5: Bill Kristol, I debated the Iraq war. He's now on
30:39
Speaker 5: my board. Joe Walsh, who founded the Freedom Caucus.
30:45
Speaker 3: He's the treasurer.
30:48
Speaker 5: And so we put together this coalition and they wanted
30:53
Speaker 5: to we filed a brief with the with the Supreme Court.
30:57
Speaker 5: They wanted to convey the message to the court. This
31:00
Speaker 5: is not a liberal issue. This really is a conservative issue.
31:05
Speaker 5: And it is. So you have to do things like that.
31:09
Speaker 5: And I think it's working. Yeah.
31:11
Speaker 6: Yeah, the thing I'll just say is a few things.
31:16
Speaker 6: One is we just need to remember our history, that
31:19
Speaker 6: but for some decades in the last century and a
31:22
Speaker 6: smattering of wins in this century, the United States Supreme
31:26
Speaker 6: Court has not been an institution that has easily promoted
31:32
Speaker 6: our democracy and the equality of all people.
31:34
Speaker 4: And I say that with a love for the court and.
31:37
Speaker 6: Judges and a legal process and as a person that
31:40
Speaker 6: leads an organization that's in court all the time. But
31:43
Speaker 6: I do think that we need to remember that all
31:45
Speaker 6: of the fights in this country, the fight for abolition,
31:49
Speaker 6: the fight for women's rights, the fight for civil rights,
31:52
Speaker 6: the fight for LGBTQ rights, these wins were not handed
31:56
Speaker 6: down by the Supreme Court. They were hard fought wins
32:00
Speaker 6: that went up and down the court system many times
32:04
Speaker 6: before you achieved the ultimate thing that you sought to
32:07
Speaker 6: achieve at the court. And we're trying to make sure
32:08
Speaker 6: that people understand that. And that legal work was incredibly
32:13
Speaker 6: important in shaping the law and building movements and ultimately
32:16
Speaker 6: in prevailing. But in this moment, we want folks to
32:20
Speaker 6: know a few things, everything that Norm just said. But
32:22
Speaker 6: then also, there have been about 500 cases in the
32:28
Speaker 6: last 260 or so days against this administration because of
32:32
Speaker 6: the extreme activity. The vast majority of those cases will
32:36
Speaker 6: never go to the Supreme Court, whether on the shadow
32:38
Speaker 6: docket or whether on the merits docket. And so part
32:41
Speaker 6: of the work here is to make sure that when
32:44
Speaker 6: this administration oversteps and it harms people in communities, people
32:47
Speaker 6: in communities can access a lawyer, and we do all
32:49
Speaker 6: of our work pro bono, as do many of the
32:51
Speaker 6: organizations that we work with, that they can access a
32:54
Speaker 6: lawyer and that they can get into court. The second
32:56
Speaker 6: thing is that this administration has actually been backing off.
33:00
Speaker 6: Many times when we go into court, before even a
33:03
Speaker 6: case goes up on appeal, the administration either declines to
33:07
Speaker 6: appeal it or walks away because they don't want the
33:09
Speaker 6: public pressure. That is how there is now $ 7 billion
33:12
Speaker 6: in the public school system this year that the president impounded.
33:17
Speaker 6: Because we and the AGs went to court and they
33:20
Speaker 6: did not, they backed off. So there's a piece of that.
33:23
Speaker 6: And then there are the cases that will reach the court.
33:26
Speaker 6: And I think what Norm said is correct. It's bringing
33:28
Speaker 6: forward the salient voices that we know will mean something
33:32
Speaker 6: to the court. It's working to construct our cases in
33:37
Speaker 6: the best way. And then what I say to people
33:40
Speaker 6: like you guys is that the Supreme Court tomorrow upholds
33:45
Speaker 6: our rights. The next day you gotta be out marching
33:48
Speaker 6: because this president and this administration is still gonna find
33:51
Speaker 6: a way to violate your rights. And if the Supreme
33:54
Speaker 6: Court tomorrow does something terrible and doesn't uphold your rights,
33:59
Speaker 6: you better be out in the street marching because this
34:02
Speaker 6: administration will take that decision and try to do something worse.
34:06
Speaker 6: So the net of it is we all have got
34:08
Speaker 6: to be engaged. We've got to be supporting each other,
34:11
Speaker 6: building community, out marching, doing things like this.
34:14
Speaker 4: That's what we've got to.
34:14
Speaker 6: Do, kind of regardless of what the court does in
34:18
Speaker 6: this moment. And that's what we are really trying to
34:20
Speaker 6: hope that people focus on.
34:21
Speaker 3: On that note, yeah.
34:25
Speaker 5: I'll be marching with a sign that says term limits
34:28
Speaker 5: for Supreme Court justices.
34:30
Speaker 3: That's my.
34:33
Speaker 8: Sign.
34:35
Speaker 3: Last question.
34:37
Speaker 1: People are used to being asked to march, to organize,
34:40
Speaker 1: to vote, to donate, to run for office. Is there
34:43
Speaker 1: anything people can do to help with the legal battles
34:48
Speaker 1: that you guys are fighting?
34:49
Speaker 3: I know you're always looking for plaintiffs. What can people do?
34:54
Speaker 5: Well, I know Sky appreciates contributions to Democracy Forward, so
35:01
Speaker 5: I mustn't be shy about asking them for the Democracy
35:04
Speaker 5: Defenders Fund. I will say we also have an outlet.
35:13
Speaker 5: It's no Crooked. It's no Pod Save America. But we
35:16
Speaker 5: do have the contrarian. All profits from the contrarian go
35:21
Speaker 5: to fund the litigation also. And the most important thing
35:26
Speaker 5: you can do, I'll end where, and then let Skye
35:29
Speaker 5: have the last word, but I'll end where she began.
35:32
Speaker 5: We won't be saved without the litigation, but the litigation
35:37
Speaker 5: alone will not save us. And the ultimate salvation of
35:41
Speaker 5: American democracy, and I'm hopeful, my teacher, President Havel, when
35:49
Speaker 5: I was a diplomat in Prague, the great dissident, Vaclav
35:53
Speaker 5: Havel told me, you Americans, you're too optimistic. Don't be optimistic,
36:01
Speaker 5: but be hopeful. And I am very hopeful because of
36:07
Speaker 5: the people power that we saw just on Tuesday, growing
36:12
Speaker 5: and growing day after day, that the litigation is helping,
36:17
Speaker 5: but that ultimately the American people, every one of you,
36:21
Speaker 5: all your friends and family, get them out there in
36:25
Speaker 5: the streets, peaceful protest, and vote, vote, vote.
36:29
Speaker 9: Yep.
36:32
Speaker 6: And I'll just say the thing that I say often,
36:35
Speaker 6: I mean, you can go to our organizations and support them.
36:37
Speaker 4: We love that. Sign up and get updates.
36:39
Speaker 6: But the number one thing that an autocrat uses is
36:44
Speaker 6: not redistricting. It's not a PAC Supreme Court. It's not
36:48
Speaker 6: any of those things. It's people giving it's people believing
36:51
Speaker 6: that they have no power. And so what we've been
36:54
Speaker 6: doing at Democracy Forward in addition to the litigation is
36:57
Speaker 6: really focusing on building community. Because when we're in community
37:00
Speaker 6: with each other, when we defy isolation, when we come
37:02
Speaker 6: to places like this and say, I'm going to get
37:05
Speaker 6: together with some folks and defy isolation, even if I
37:07
Speaker 6: want to go be alone, we can overcome. And at
37:13
Speaker 6: Democracy Forward, we've got some programs called Dinners for Democracies
37:16
Speaker 6: and Coffees for Change and ways that you can engage
37:19
Speaker 6: in your own community with those that may not be
37:21
Speaker 6: ready to get out in the streets. And then we
37:23
Speaker 6: obviously want everyone out marching and demonstrating and protesting as well.
37:33
Speaker 1: Norm and Skye, I just want to say you two
37:36
Speaker 1: and all the lawyers and everyone on your staffs, that
37:39
Speaker 1: have been working so hard.
37:40
Speaker 3: You guys are heroes of this movement, unsung heroes.
37:43
Speaker 1: And I'm really glad we got to talk today.
37:47
Speaker 4: Thank you for singing.
37:48
Speaker 1: Well, because I'm hoping- Won't you sing to us, Babs?
37:51
Speaker 2: I'm always singing for you guys.
37:54
Speaker 1: But we are, on behalf of everyone, we are just so,
37:56
Speaker 1: so grateful for all the hard work you're doing and
37:58
Speaker 1: for what you're doing to help save this democracy.
38:00
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Speaker 2: All right, live from CricutCon, I'm Tommy Vitor.
40:41
Speaker 8: I'm thrilled to be joined by some of the smartest,
40:45
Speaker 8: winningest strategists in the Democratic Party, who are just coming
40:48
Speaker 8: off huge election victories in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.
40:54
Speaker 8: Alex Ball was Mikey Sherrill's campaign manager. She's also worked
40:57
Speaker 8: on the Hill, the DCCC, Emily's List, tons of campaigns.
41:01
Speaker 8: Morris Katz was a top strategist, an ad maker for
41:03
Speaker 8: Zoran Mamdani. He's also worked for Dan Osborne's Senate race
41:07
Speaker 8: in Nebraska, a bunch of other stuff. And Samson Signore
41:11
Speaker 8: was Abigail Spanberger's campaign manager.
41:13
Speaker 2: He has also led statewide.
41:15
Speaker 8: Coordinated campaigns and done a bunch of hotly contested elections.
41:19
Speaker 8: So we're going to talk about how they won, what works,
41:23
Speaker 8: what the future of the Democratic Party looks like based
41:25
Speaker 8: on these elections, and we're going to have some fun.
41:28
Speaker 8: So first question to everybody. What's like the 60-second version
41:31
Speaker 8: of why you won?
41:32
Speaker 2: Start with Alex.
41:33
Speaker 10: Yeah, thanks for having me.
41:34
Speaker 2: Thank God we all won. This would be really bleak, but.
41:39
Speaker 2: Excited to be here.
41:40
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I think this isn't going to shock
41:42
Speaker 10: anyone in this room, but affordability. I think having a
41:45
Speaker 10: disciplined message and also having the right messenger is really
41:49
Speaker 10: how we got it done. I mean, we were just
41:50
Speaker 10: relentlessly focused on talking about driving down costs for New Jerseyans,
41:56
Speaker 10: how what was coming out of Washington was going to
41:58
Speaker 10: make matters even worse, and why Mikey was the effective, trustworthy,
42:02
Speaker 10: and competent leader to be the one to deliver going forward.
42:06
Speaker 5: Morris?
42:07
Speaker 7: I think it's two Pod Save America appearances over the
42:10
Speaker 7: course of the campaign is the key to... No, I think,
42:13
Speaker 7: you know, similarly, a laser focus on an affordability crisis
42:18
Speaker 7: and also a real willingness to name the villains who
42:21
Speaker 7: are responsible for creating this moment of gross income inequality.
42:25
Speaker 7: And then I think just on top of that, kind
42:27
Speaker 7: of a refusal to allow ourselves to be confined by
42:31
Speaker 7: what politics has been. and a relentless pursuit of investing
42:34
Speaker 7: in what politics can be, bringing young people out, immigrant communities,
42:38
Speaker 7: communicating in ways other people have disregarded, and all having
42:42
Speaker 7: that around this laser focus that government can do more,
42:44
Speaker 7: government can do better, and government can address this affordability crisis.
42:49
Speaker 11: Absolutely, and thanks for having me, Tommy. Abigail Spanberger won
42:52
Speaker 11: because she was laser focused on costs while Republicans in
42:55
Speaker 11: the Commonwealth of Virginia were focused on divisive culture wars.
43:00
Speaker 11: And I think that Virginians and Americans broadly are tired
43:03
Speaker 11: of chaos and division and they want a return to normalcy,
43:08
Speaker 11: a return to the basics, and they want to focus
43:11
Speaker 11: a little bit less on politics. And in Abigail they
43:13
Speaker 11: had a steady pragmatic, focused leader who was laser focused
43:19
Speaker 11: on what matters most, lowering costs, boosting the economy, and
43:22
Speaker 11: keeping communities safe. And that's one of the reasons, and
43:24
Speaker 11: I have to do a quick brag here, that we
43:26
Speaker 11: had a 15 point margin on Tuesday the largest margin
43:34
Speaker 11: in Virginia since JFK was the president. And we won
43:38
Speaker 11: the LG, AG, and we flipped 13 state house seats,
43:42
Speaker 11: delivering the biggest state house majority since the 80s. And
43:46
Speaker 11: I think as of right now, we have the highest
43:48
Speaker 11: winningest margin of the three, so.
43:50
Speaker 2: I'll be talking about the future of the party later.
43:54
Speaker 2: We're gonna talk more shit, don't worry, that's just the beginning.
43:56
Speaker 8: So Donald Trump has blotted out the political sun for
44:00
Speaker 8: like the last decade. How did you guys think about
44:03
Speaker 8: the way to divide your messaging between reacting to whatever
44:07
Speaker 8: he did that day versus what you wanted to talk about,
44:10
Speaker 8: which was obviously affordability?
44:12
Speaker 2: Jump ball here for anybody.
44:14
Speaker 11: Yeah, I'll take the first one. We were less focused
44:16
Speaker 11: on Trump and more focused on the consequences of Trump.
44:20
Speaker 11: Because again, we were laser focused on lowering costs across
44:23
Speaker 11: the board. And the times that we spoke out against
44:26
Speaker 11: Trump is when he roiled Virginia's economy. So you saw
44:31
Speaker 11: Doge federal workforce cuts that just gutted jobs across Virginia.
44:38
Speaker 11: You also saw the gutting of healthcare that spiked premiums
44:41
Speaker 11: for folks across Virginia. And just a couple of weeks ago,
44:43
Speaker 11: shuttered three rural health clinics. So from our perspective, it
44:47
Speaker 11: wasn't about Trump's personality. It wasn't about the destruction of
44:51
Speaker 11: the East Wing. It wasn't about the latest truth social thread.
44:54
Speaker 11: For us, it was staying laser-focused on the consequences of
44:58
Speaker 11: Donald Trump to Virginia's economy.
45:01
Speaker 7: I think we took this approach of the idea that
45:04
Speaker 7: we weren't going to treat Donald Trump like the end-all,
45:07
Speaker 7: be-all of the problems that New Yorkers were facing, and
45:11
Speaker 7: that viewing his power, his election, as a result of
45:14
Speaker 7: a fundamentally broken political system. And one of the first
45:18
Speaker 7: things Ron did after the election was he went out
45:20
Speaker 7: to one of the areas that flipped most dramatically towards
45:23
Speaker 7: Trump in the entire country and interviewed people on the
45:26
Speaker 7: street who had voted for Donald Trump and talked to
45:28
Speaker 7: them about his platform, his affordability agenda. And by the
45:31
Speaker 7: end of it, persuaded many of them to support him.
45:34
Speaker 7: And we ran this campaign kind of going right at
45:36
Speaker 7: the center of what Donald Trump claims to have his
45:39
Speaker 7: kind of political brand be. He ran an entire campaign
45:42
Speaker 7: centered on lowering costs and did nothing to lower those costs.
45:46
Speaker 7: And I think you can kind of have your cake
45:47
Speaker 7: and eat it, too, by going at him in that angle.
45:50
Speaker 8: Alex, you guys like there's a bunch of data that
45:53
Speaker 8: Nate Cohn at The New York Times wrote up that
45:55
Speaker 8: showed that you guys persuaded a bunch of Trump voters
45:57
Speaker 8: to vote for Mikey. How did like what did you
46:00
Speaker 8: see in your data? How did you target them? Like,
46:03
Speaker 8: how did you think about trying to get those crossover votes?
46:07
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, so historically, Mikey's always won over about
46:11
Speaker 10: 25 percent of Republicans, 60 percent of unaffiliated voters. So
46:16
Speaker 10: we knew she had that crossover appeal. I think for us,
46:19
Speaker 10: we were incredibly proactive on issues around the economy. So
46:24
Speaker 10: we saw energy rates spike this summer and we were
46:27
Speaker 10: hot out the gate with a state of emergency where
46:30
Speaker 10: we said we were going to freeze utility costs. We
46:32
Speaker 10: got there probably three or four weeks before Jack Cittarelli did,
46:36
Speaker 10: which was just a huge misstep on his part in
46:38
Speaker 10: my mind. And we also, we went on offense on taxes.
46:42
Speaker 10: So we had our outside expenditures signaled to them to
46:46
Speaker 10: go after him for raising property taxes at every level
46:49
Speaker 10: of government. So by the time we got to the
46:52
Speaker 10: end of the summer, we saw Fox polls showing that
46:55
Speaker 10: we were leading on traits of lowering taxes, lowering costs,
47:00
Speaker 10: who you trusted most to tackle the problems of the
47:02
Speaker 10: economy and utility costs, which are just historically traits that
47:06
Speaker 10: Democrats are not going to win on. And I think
47:09
Speaker 10: a lot of that had to do with the fact
47:10
Speaker 10: that Mikey's service background, people saw her as someone who
47:13
Speaker 10: was coming at problems from a place of service and
47:16
Speaker 10: wanting to deliver for people and not as a place
47:18
Speaker 10: of partisanship. And I think that was also kind of
47:21
Speaker 10: proven by the fact that She stood up to leaders
47:23
Speaker 10: in her own party time and again. And I think
47:26
Speaker 10: some of these Trump voters were just looking for something
47:28
Speaker 10: new and not a 30-year career politician like Jack Ciattarelli.
47:32
Speaker 8: Also, I mean, you guys ran change elections, right? I mean,
47:36
Speaker 8: not necessarily this different party with Eric Adams, but it
47:38
Speaker 8: was a change message, the look, the feel, everything about
47:41
Speaker 8: the election. You had a tougher job, in my view,
47:44
Speaker 8: which is running for a third term with the Democrat,
47:47
Speaker 8: you know, after two terms with Phil Murphy.
47:49
Speaker 2: Was that a headwind? How did you deal with it? Yeah,
47:53
Speaker 2: I think it was.
47:53
Speaker 10: I mean, New Jersey, while our federal delegation is pretty blue,
47:58
Speaker 10: we like to swap back and forth on parties when
48:01
Speaker 10: it comes to the governor. And it hadn't been since
48:05
Speaker 10: 1961 that we elected a third term of the same party.
48:08
Speaker 10: So that was certainly a headwind. And also, you know,
48:11
Speaker 10: we had to walk a fine line. We couldn't just
48:13
Speaker 10: go out and rail on Phil Murphy because why would
48:15
Speaker 10: you want to elect another Democrat? Um, and you know,
48:19
Speaker 10: he had done some good things for the state in
48:20
Speaker 10: terms of funding the pension and, um, our credit rating.
48:23
Speaker 10: So we focused on the, on the pieces where, um,
48:26
Speaker 10: you know, it just came back to costs and affordability. And, uh,
48:30
Speaker 10: you know, I think our opponent tried to talk about
48:32
Speaker 10: a change election, but again, 30 year career politician, uh,
48:36
Speaker 10: I just didn't land.
48:38
Speaker 8: Um, Morris, you guys had some like unique ad strategies,
48:43
Speaker 8: ad buys seem to be very digitally focused. Do traditional
48:48
Speaker 8: TV ads work? And what did you do differently?
48:50
Speaker 2: You're asking a TV consultant, Tom.
48:52
Speaker 8: I know, but you guys, like, I think when people
48:54
Speaker 8: think of Zoran's campaign, it's like, oh, there's the dude
48:57
Speaker 8: who walked to Manhattan, right?
48:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that it's an all of the above.
49:02
Speaker 7: And I think so often we still have this approach
49:05
Speaker 7: of political consultants pretending that the only kind of thing
49:09
Speaker 7: that matters in a campaign is how many points are
49:12
Speaker 7: we going to have on broadcast TV over the final
49:14
Speaker 7: six weeks of a race. And I think that era
49:16
Speaker 7: is over. I think New York might have gotten there
49:18
Speaker 7: a little bit sooner than other places. Like there's more
49:21
Speaker 7: of a social media presence in New York than there
49:23
Speaker 7: is in other places. It's more expensive to buy ads,
49:26
Speaker 7: but I think we're all headed in this direction. it's
49:28
Speaker 7: never been harder to communicate consistently with a large group
49:31
Speaker 7: of people than it is right now. And people like
49:33
Speaker 7: to ask, is it the social media? Was it the TV?
49:36
Speaker 7: Was it the field? It's like, it's fucking all of it.
49:38
Speaker 7: You can't leave one part of it out. And for
49:41
Speaker 7: the ad campaign, we also did, we thought a lot
49:44
Speaker 7: about the kind of emotional experience that people were going
49:46
Speaker 7: to be having. And so we first went up on
49:48
Speaker 7: TV during the Knicks playoff run with the idea and
49:51
Speaker 7: vision that at a moment of hope for the city,
49:54
Speaker 7: if you could believe that the New York Knicks could.
49:58
Speaker 2: Fucking Boston fans.
50:01
Speaker 7: But the idea that if you could believe the Knicks
50:03
Speaker 7: could win a championship, maybe you could believe that a
50:05
Speaker 7: 34-year-old Muslim socialist.
50:06
Speaker 2: Could be mayor. So, sorry. But that was the general
50:11
Speaker 2: kind of vision.
50:12
Speaker 8: Samson, you guys had like how many million dollars of
50:16
Speaker 8: attack ads run against you focused on an anti-trans message?
50:20
Speaker 2: Why do you think... About 40 million. 40 million dollars.
50:23
Speaker 3: Wow.
50:24
Speaker 8: A lot of people think that the messages, the anti-trans
50:27
Speaker 8: ads run against Kamala Harris were effective. Why do you
50:30
Speaker 8: think that they were clearly not effective against you guys?
50:34
Speaker 11: Yeah, so I think a couple things. One, I think
50:38
Speaker 11: Republicans in Virginia were trying to run a tired playbook.
50:41
Speaker 11: I think they got way ahead of their skis on
50:43
Speaker 11: culture issues. They ran a campaign entirely devoid of anything
50:48
Speaker 11: focused on the economy, lowering costs, or coming up with
50:51
Speaker 11: any types of solutions to make life better for Virginians.
50:55
Speaker 11: So I do think first and foremost, they got way
50:57
Speaker 11: ahead of their skis and those ads fell flat. And
51:01
Speaker 11: I think that from our perspective, we knew that these
51:05
Speaker 11: were likely attacks that were gonna come. We had different
51:09
Speaker 11: ads cut and ready to go to be placed as
51:12
Speaker 11: soon as we knew that that attack ad was gonna
51:15
Speaker 11: be put down. But I think first and foremost, we
51:19
Speaker 11: spent a lot of time at the beginning of the
51:21
Speaker 11: campaign credentialing Abigail former federal law enforcement officer, former CIA
51:26
Speaker 11: case officer, mother to three girls. This is not somebody
51:29
Speaker 11: who wants to hurt children. This is someone who literally,
51:32
Speaker 11: whose job it was was to protect children. And we
51:34
Speaker 11: also credentialed her as someone who was laser focused on
51:36
Speaker 11: the economy from the very get-go. So I think when
51:39
Speaker 11: you had the Republicans try to put these ads together,
51:43
Speaker 11: I think what the Republicans were relatively effective at in
51:46
Speaker 11: 2024 was convincing voters that these were issues that Democrats
51:53
Speaker 11: really cared about and that they were out there proactively
51:55
Speaker 11: campaigning on, which just wasn't the case. From our perspective,
52:00
Speaker 11: by laying down a really solid foundation of us being
52:03
Speaker 11: laser focused on the economy, on strengthening jobs, on lowering costs,
52:09
Speaker 11: and on keeping communities safe, those ads that they ran
52:13
Speaker 11: fell relatively on flat ears because it just wasn't believable
52:17
Speaker 11: by the time that they put down this deluge. Another thing,
52:19
Speaker 11: just from a media strategy standpoint, you know, Morris touched
52:23
Speaker 11: on this. A lot of times people are looking at, oh,
52:24
Speaker 11: how many points are you running on broadcast TV at
52:27
Speaker 11: the very end? We took it and we stretched it.
52:30
Speaker 11: We started our paid media strategy much earlier than most
52:33
Speaker 11: campaigns do, certainly the earliest that has ever been done
52:36
Speaker 11: in Virginia before. And part of the reason for that
52:39
Speaker 11: was to lay down that strong foundation of Abigail as
52:42
Speaker 11: someone who's a federal law enforcement officer, a former CA
52:44
Speaker 11: case officer who's laser focused on lowering costs and on
52:47
Speaker 11: making your life a little bit better. so that when
52:49
Speaker 11: Republicans did come at us with those culture war issues,
52:52
Speaker 11: there's already a lot of inoculation that was done there.
52:55
Speaker 8: So, I mean, what tactics did you guys try that
53:00
Speaker 8: were new that you think worked? And what sort of
53:05
Speaker 8: campaign tactics of the past need to go, in your view?
53:08
Speaker 2: I'll give you one.
53:09
Speaker 3: Please.
53:09
Speaker 2: It's a little spicy. Spice it up.
53:12
Speaker 11: Questionnaires... need to be jettisoned from the party.
53:16
Speaker 2: Can you tell folks here what these questionnaires are? You
53:18
Speaker 2: can clap.
53:19
Speaker 5: Sure.
53:20
Speaker 11: So, and I do want to confirm, there's a lot
53:24
Speaker 11: of awesome national and partner groups who do have a
53:28
Speaker 11: place in our party. And I think that questionnaires largely
53:30
Speaker 11: come from a position of good faith and trust. And questionnaires, oftentimes,
53:36
Speaker 11: very simple, easy ones that just want to, they get
53:40
Speaker 11: sent to candidates for candidates to fill out. that talks
53:43
Speaker 11: about different positions to take. And on its face, that's fine.
53:48
Speaker 11: But the problem is when we have these highly, highly
53:51
Speaker 11: intensive questionnaires that go to candidates that, especially when you're
53:55
Speaker 11: looking at state house candidates, ones that don't really know
53:57
Speaker 11: much better, and what they see is a potential endorsement,
54:01
Speaker 11: potential door knockers, potential campaign contributions, and they say, all
54:05
Speaker 11: I have to do is go down and just check
54:06
Speaker 11: yes in all of these boxes. Sure, sounds great, easy.
54:10
Speaker 11: But then what happens, and we saw this in 2024
54:12
Speaker 11: with probably the most notorious campaign ad that existed, the
54:15
Speaker 11: TheyThem ad, that you get backed into a corner and
54:20
Speaker 11: you set your candidates up for not for success. So
54:27
Speaker 11: what I would say is if you were someone who
54:29
Speaker 11: works at a national organization, leads a national organization, I
54:34
Speaker 11: would look very hard at doing away with questionnaires. and
54:37
Speaker 11: look more into coming at it from a position of
54:41
Speaker 11: candidate interviews. That was something that we did on our end.
54:43
Speaker 11: We filled out the questionnaires that we wanted to. We
54:46
Speaker 11: filled them out the way that we wanted to. But
54:48
Speaker 11: we also worked very closely with the State House caucus
54:51
Speaker 11: to make sure that candidates were not getting backed into
54:53
Speaker 11: a corner unnecessarily. So that's one tactical change that I
54:57
Speaker 11: would say. I think it's a pretty easy one too.
55:00
Speaker 2: Any tactical things you guys want to talk about?
55:02
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I don't like talking about this with
55:05
Speaker 10: Morris right here, but influencers are a thing.
55:09
Speaker 2: And we just got.
55:10
Speaker 8: Them in New Jersey.
55:12
Speaker 10: So it was really this untapped market that campaigns in
55:16
Speaker 10: New Jersey just haven't used.
55:18
Speaker 4: I mean, New Jersey's pretty old school.
55:21
Speaker 10: And I think we did some really innovative things for
55:23
Speaker 10: the state in terms of building up an actual political
55:26
Speaker 10: influencer class.
55:28
Speaker 2: There's about like.
55:29
Speaker 10: 35 of them that have kind of formed their own
55:32
Speaker 10: ecosystem in the state.
55:33
Speaker 11: We do events with them. We give them special access.
55:37
Speaker 10: And really, unfortunately, the media in New Jersey is very
55:40
Speaker 10: much dying. And we really struggled with legacy media taking
55:44
Speaker 10: our momentum seriously. I can't tell you how many headlines
55:49
Speaker 10: there were that Mikey Sherrill has a momentum problem.
55:52
Speaker 2: She has this problem. She has that problem.
55:54
Speaker 8: Why was the polling so off in New Jersey? And
55:56
Speaker 8: are there any specific people you want to dunk on
55:59
Speaker 8: that tweeted... about your demise over the summer now?
56:02
Speaker 2: It'll take too long.
56:05
Speaker 10: You know, there was definitely some polling that was right. Like,
56:08
Speaker 10: our independent expenditure had us at 12 points in the
56:11
Speaker 10: last couple weeks. We are inching towards 14 points.
56:14
Speaker 2: The RCP was like three.
56:16
Speaker 11: We're inching towards 16.
56:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.
56:20
Speaker 10: But no, there was a ton that were incredibly off.
56:22
Speaker 10: And it was clear in the methodology that they were off.
56:25
Speaker 10: We had one poll that had us plus one, but
56:28
Speaker 10: it had Chittarelli winning black voters 60-40.
56:32
Speaker 4: We won black voters 95-5.
56:35
Speaker 10: We outperformed Harris in Essex County that has a large
56:38
Speaker 10: black population by eight points. We won back Latino voters
56:43
Speaker 10: in Passaic County to win that county by 15 points
56:47
Speaker 10: that Trump won by three, and yet we had a
56:49
Speaker 10: problem with Latino voters.
56:50
Speaker 2: So it was ridiculous.
56:53
Speaker 10: But if you looked at the data, you saw that
56:55
Speaker 10: Mikey was winning on affordability. She was winning on utility prices.
56:58
Speaker 10: She was winning on taxes. And Jack was underwater every
57:02
Speaker 10: single time. And yet it was neck and neck. And
57:06
Speaker 10: it was anyone's race. So I don't know. But, I mean,
57:10
Speaker 10: there's just so many, like, random things. people in their
57:13
Speaker 10: parents' basement running polls these days and putting them on
57:15
Speaker 10: the internet.
57:16
Speaker 7: I'll say Atlas Intel missed it big time. Fuck Atlas Intel.
57:22
Speaker 2: That's the headline coming out of this thing. Fuck Atlas Intel.
57:24
Speaker 2: I think we had this exact conversation on the pod.
57:26
Speaker 8: Morris, you are infuriatingly young for being as successful as
57:31
Speaker 8: you are, as is Zoran, who's 34 years old, right?
57:36
Speaker 8: your opponents tried to make age a weakness. How did
57:38
Speaker 8: you think about like making it a strength? Like obviously
57:41
Speaker 8: there's internet fluency, but like how did you guys deal
57:44
Speaker 8: with people who are like, can a 33, 34 year
57:46
Speaker 8: old really run the city?
57:47
Speaker 2: Coming from you guys.
57:49
Speaker 3: I'm washed. I'm 45.
57:50
Speaker 7: Um, no, I think we, it fit into the message framework.
57:55
Speaker 7: And I think oftentimes like you try to run every
57:57
Speaker 7: campaign with the same universal message framework and it's kind
58:00
Speaker 7: of the boilerplate like consultant approach. And we were running
58:04
Speaker 7: a change campaign and Zoran looked like change and he
58:07
Speaker 7: felt like change. And I also think he fit into
58:10
Speaker 7: this moment uniquely for a city in which there's so
58:13
Speaker 7: many young people who love this city who can't imagine
58:16
Speaker 7: a future in it because they can't afford to raise
58:18
Speaker 7: a family here. They can't afford to buy a home here.
58:21
Speaker 7: And having someone who kind of was of the age
58:24
Speaker 7: group that is dealing with, frankly, an existential crisis in
58:26
Speaker 7: the city fit nicely.
58:29
Speaker 2: And we were never.
58:31
Speaker 7: You know, I think Zoran mentioned in his speech that
58:33
Speaker 7: it was like, you know, I'm young, I'm Muslim, I'm
58:36
Speaker 7: a democratic socialist, and worst of all, I refuse to
58:38
Speaker 7: apologize for any of those things. And that was kind
58:41
Speaker 7: of the ethos of the campaign.
58:54
Speaker 2: Along those lines, I mean, you.
58:55
Speaker 8: Know, Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill, like the They are the
59:00
Speaker 8: types of kind of backgrounds and bios that the Democratic
59:04
Speaker 8: Party loves. You know, like 2006, Rahm Emanuel would have
59:08
Speaker 8: recruited the shit out of both of them. to run, right?
59:12
Speaker 8: National Security, military members, CIA. Zoran was not the plug
59:16
Speaker 8: and play.
59:17
Speaker 2: Are you saying Rahm Emanuel wouldn't have recruited Zoran Mandani?
59:21
Speaker 8: Zoran was not, like, your plug and play candidate, right? He's, like,
59:24
Speaker 8: interesting background.
59:25
Speaker 2: His parents are academics. He's a younger guy.
59:28
Speaker 8: How did you think about, like, That bio, was it
59:31
Speaker 8: liberating to not have to kind of play a part?
59:34
Speaker 7: I think this applies to Zoran, but also I think
59:35
Speaker 7: this applies nationally right now. If like, you know, some
59:38
Speaker 7: of the kind of Senate stuff happening with Graham Platten
59:40
Speaker 7: or Iowa with other places. I was like, there are
59:43
Speaker 7: no people I think right now who have a worse
59:46
Speaker 7: read on what electable means and like less of a
59:48
Speaker 7: pulse on voters than the Democratic establishment in D.C. And
59:55
Speaker 7: the Mamdani coalition is not just, I think, what it's
59:59
Speaker 7: easy to be kind of viewed as on social media
1:00:01
Speaker 7: and other places. You know, over 10% of Trump voters
1:00:05
Speaker 7: voted for Zoran Mamdani. Zoran flipped multiple neighborhoods that went
1:00:08
Speaker 7: for Donald Trump in a general election with more votes
1:00:11
Speaker 7: than Donald Trump got in those very places. He reshaped
1:00:14
Speaker 7: the electorate. He won back immigrant communities that had left
1:00:17
Speaker 7: the party just a year ago. And that wasn't I
1:00:21
Speaker 7: think it sells voters short to pretend that they're not
1:00:24
Speaker 7: going to be able to see past someone named Zohan Mamdani,
1:00:27
Speaker 7: and it's a lesson that we seem like we're just
1:00:29
Speaker 7: not able to learn.
1:00:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, I noticed that myself.
1:00:34
Speaker 8: So Democrats, we constantly fight about whether the way you
1:00:37
Speaker 8: win is turnout versus persuasion. I would argue it is
1:00:41
Speaker 8: a false choice, but certainly in a campaign, you have
1:00:45
Speaker 8: a finite number of resources, and you have to allocate
1:00:49
Speaker 8: them in the way you think is most likely to
1:00:52
Speaker 8: help you win. How did you guys think about that
1:00:55
Speaker 8: kind of allocation and whether you needed to just turn
1:00:57
Speaker 8: out the base or convince all these crossover voters that
1:01:01
Speaker 8: you got? Jump ball here.
1:01:04
Speaker 11: I'll say something that sounds really obvious, but I think
1:01:06
Speaker 11: it's a little less obvious to folks. Driving turnout gets
1:01:10
Speaker 11: you one vote. Persuading a voter gets you two because
1:01:15
Speaker 11: you have taken it from the other side and put
1:01:17
Speaker 11: it into yours. I would say that from our perspective,
1:01:20
Speaker 11: our victory was a combination of persuasion and turnout, but
1:01:24
Speaker 11: Morris touched on something that I think is important. And
1:01:27
Speaker 11: I think that our victories across the board were not
1:01:30
Speaker 11: just landslide victories, but coalition redefining victories. Across the board,
1:01:38
Speaker 11: we had Abigail Spanberger flipped counties that went for Trump
1:01:42
Speaker 11: in 2016, 2020, and 2024. If you look at, we
1:01:47
Speaker 11: are looking at the overperformance compared to 2024. And broadly,
1:01:53
Speaker 11: we overperformed almost every county across Virginia when you compare
1:01:58
Speaker 11: it to 2024. But most interestingly, the precincts that we
1:02:02
Speaker 11: overperformed 2024 the most by are also the ones with
1:02:05
Speaker 11: the highest percentage of Latino voters. In addition to that,
1:02:09
Speaker 11: Abigail brought back in a huge swath of non-college white
1:02:12
Speaker 11: voters to the table, and that was by visiting rural Virginia, right?
1:02:17
Speaker 11: She was just in Lee County last week, which, fun
1:02:20
Speaker 11: fact for folks that are less familiar with Virginia geography,
1:02:24
Speaker 11: is so far into the southwest of the Commonwealth that
1:02:26
Speaker 11: it's actually to the west of Detroit. She was just
1:02:28
Speaker 11: out there last week in a diner, and I know
1:02:31
Speaker 11: that that sounds basic, but a lot of it was
1:02:33
Speaker 11: just us showing up and us showing up with a
1:02:35
Speaker 11: message of lowering costs. And that led to what, in
1:02:38
Speaker 11: my opinion, was a shattering of the Trump coalition that
1:02:41
Speaker 11: he has put together. People have reported that he made
1:02:44
Speaker 11: inroads with communities of color, with black and brown voters,
1:02:47
Speaker 11: with non-college white voters, obviously. And what we went out
1:02:50
Speaker 11: there and did, and I think what we all went
1:02:51
Speaker 11: out there and did, was shatter apart that coalition and
1:02:53
Speaker 11: take a bunch of people back into our frame because
1:02:56
Speaker 11: they're tired of the chaos, the division, the culture wars.
1:02:59
Speaker 11: And they saw a Democratic Party that was actually united
1:03:01
Speaker 11: under one message, which was lower your damn costs.
1:03:06
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think, obviously, I agree that it's kind of
1:03:09
Speaker 7: a false choice. And we were dealing with, in New York,
1:03:11
Speaker 7: you're capped on what you can spend because of public
1:03:13
Speaker 7: matching funds. And so we were just getting, like, it's
1:03:16
Speaker 7: $ 8 million, which is nice. But in the New York
1:03:18
Speaker 7: media market, it goes very quickly. Yeah, and we had about, like,
1:03:21
Speaker 7: $ 45 million spent against us. So a little under-matched or over-matched.
1:03:27
Speaker 7: But I think that it speaks to a broader issue
1:03:28
Speaker 7: kind of in the party of, If you have the
1:03:30
Speaker 7: right message, you're not having to choose between turning people
1:03:33
Speaker 7: out and persuading people. It's the same thing that excites
1:03:36
Speaker 7: all of those people.
1:03:38
Speaker 2: Did anyone care that Chuck Schumer didn't endorse?
1:03:40
Speaker 9: Who?
1:03:42
Speaker 2: Fair answer.
1:03:44
Speaker 8: Alex, you guys also, I mean, speaking of breaking the
1:03:46
Speaker 8: Trump coalition, you guys had considerable success winning back Latino
1:03:50
Speaker 8: voters the Democratic Party had lost. Was that something that
1:03:54
Speaker 8: was part of a wave? Was that part of deliberate
1:03:56
Speaker 8: targeting and choice?
1:03:57
Speaker 9: How did you approach it?
1:03:58
Speaker 10: Yeah, there's a lot of signs coming out of 24
1:04:00
Speaker 10: that we were going to have a lot of ground
1:04:03
Speaker 10: to make back, particularly with Latino voters. I think like
1:04:07
Speaker 10: all of the national press was watching Passaic County in
1:04:09
Speaker 10: particular because there's a large Latino population there. So we
1:04:13
Speaker 10: did invest heavily on the ground, hiring people from the
1:04:16
Speaker 10: community to go and talk to their neighbors. But we
1:04:18
Speaker 10: also spent a lot of money on Spanish broadcast, cable, digital, mail,
1:04:25
Speaker 10: all of it, And I think New Jersey is a
1:04:27
Speaker 10: really bilingual state. So you could try to get away
1:04:30
Speaker 10: with just doing general population messaging, but it's not enough.
1:04:34
Speaker 10: And I think our opponents in both the primary and
1:04:36
Speaker 10: the general made a mistake by not making that investment.
1:04:38
Speaker 10: And I think also we tried to over-prescribe what we think,
1:04:43
Speaker 10: you know, some of these constituency groups want to hear
1:04:45
Speaker 10: from Democrats, but we didn't change our message. We talked
1:04:48
Speaker 10: about affordability and we knew that that was the message
1:04:51
Speaker 10: that was going to resonate because that's what we were
1:04:53
Speaker 10: hearing from people on the ground as Mikey mentioned. went
1:04:55
Speaker 10: in and talked to these voters, sometimes in some broken Spanish, but,
1:04:58
Speaker 10: you know, connecting with them with where they were, and
1:05:01
Speaker 10: I think it went a long way.
1:05:04
Speaker 8: So, when I think back to the OA campaign, I, like, remember,
1:05:08
Speaker 8: the good days you don't really remember, but I remember, like,
1:05:10
Speaker 8: where I was when I first saw the Reverend Wright video,
1:05:13
Speaker 8: which imploded our race for, like, four months. It was, like,
1:05:16
Speaker 8: my JFK being shot moment. You guys have, sort of,
1:05:21
Speaker 8: do you guys have, like, uh, a worst moment, a
1:05:24
Speaker 8: biggest mistake you made on the campaign that you're now
1:05:27
Speaker 8: emotionally able to talk about in hindsight?
1:05:31
Speaker 2: I'll say one thing.
1:05:31
Speaker 11: It's less a mistake and one thing that really scares
1:05:33
Speaker 11: me about the future that we saw on our end,
1:05:36
Speaker 11: and that is these fake AI videos.
1:05:39
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:05:40
Speaker 11: We saw a lot of them, and I won't name names,
1:05:45
Speaker 11: but there was one that the Republicans put out, and
1:05:48
Speaker 11: it was just a ridiculous AI video. I won't get
1:05:50
Speaker 11: into the details, but we had a couple... top national
1:05:54
Speaker 11: level democratic consultants and operatives call me and say, what
1:05:57
Speaker 11: the hell kind of video are you guys putting out there?
1:05:58
Speaker 8: This is ridiculous.
1:06:00
Speaker 11: Because it was meant to look like it was from
1:06:02
Speaker 11: our campaign. And the other thing is it was put
1:06:04
Speaker 11: on X. And people know that at Grok is the
1:06:07
Speaker 11: AI bot that you can tag and ask questions about tweets.
1:06:10
Speaker 11: And people are asking, Grok, is this really a campaign ad?
1:06:14
Speaker 11: And who's coming back saying, yes, this is in fact
1:06:16
Speaker 11: an ad that the Spanberger campaign put out and put
1:06:20
Speaker 11: out there. And that was something that scared the shit
1:06:22
Speaker 11: out of me because it's something we as the campaign
1:06:23
Speaker 11: had absolutely no control over. So we had a digital
1:06:26
Speaker 11: team that quickly reached out to Twitter and said, hey, like,
1:06:28
Speaker 11: or X and said, hey, please readjust Grok.
1:06:31
Speaker 2: This is totally false.
1:06:32
Speaker 11: We did political calls on iron to make sure that
1:06:34
Speaker 11: people knew that this is a ridiculous ad and we're
1:06:36
Speaker 11: smart people and we never put something like that out.
1:06:39
Speaker 11: But that is something just looking into the future of
1:06:41
Speaker 11: campaigns that I think that, one, there's hopefully some kind
1:06:45
Speaker 11: of legislation to help. but also that we as campaign
1:06:50
Speaker 11: and campaign workers need to be prepared to help candidates
1:06:52
Speaker 11: and campaigns respond to.
1:06:54
Speaker 3: That's terrifying.
1:06:55
Speaker 7: That's also why we need a younger consulting class. They're like,
1:06:58
Speaker 7: look at this ad.
1:06:59
Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
1:07:00
Speaker 11: I also won't name the ages of the people that
1:07:03
Speaker 11: reached out to me either.
1:07:04
Speaker 7: Yeah, I can guess. Mine, which is like a half cheat...
1:07:13
Speaker 7: But it is, I think, obviously it's all worked out well,
1:07:16
Speaker 7: but I won't forget seeing so many in the Democratic establishment,
1:07:21
Speaker 7: the Democratic donor class, embrace Andrew Cuomo in the primary.
1:07:24
Speaker 7: And seeing someone who everyone universally demanded resign from office
1:07:30
Speaker 7: just two and a half, three years prior, who covered
1:07:33
Speaker 7: up the murder of seniors in nursing homes, who sexually
1:07:36
Speaker 7: harassed his staff and then intimidated and bullied the victims,
1:07:40
Speaker 7: was then being funded by Donald Trump's biggest donors, and
1:07:43
Speaker 7: seeing so many fall in line behind him because it
1:07:46
Speaker 7: was politically convenient. I think it's just a real, real
1:07:50
Speaker 7: indictment in a lot of ways. And I'm glad we won.
1:07:53
Speaker 7: I'm glad we're moving past it. But I think that
1:07:55
Speaker 7: kind of that looms large.
1:07:57
Speaker 9: It's gross.
1:07:59
Speaker 2: Alex, any trauma? I too will talk about mistakes other
1:08:02
Speaker 2: people made. You guys are all like, I just care
1:08:05
Speaker 2: too much. You know, that was my mistake.
1:08:08
Speaker 10: The bedwetting that happens in our party has got to stop. Like,
1:08:15
Speaker 10: the Republican side, like, while their candidate was, like, continuing
1:08:19
Speaker 10: to underperform and, frankly, like, lose on things that he
1:08:24
Speaker 10: should have been winning on, they were so rock solid
1:08:27
Speaker 10: in their support of him on Twitter, on Fox News,
1:08:30
Speaker 10: in the New York Post. They were all aligned, and
1:08:32
Speaker 10: I get who owns all of those media sources, and it's, like,
1:08:35
Speaker 10: all the same people, and so we don't have that luxury, but...
1:08:38
Speaker 10: I will just say, like, our enthusiasm could have taken
1:08:42
Speaker 10: off a bit more if people in our own party
1:08:44
Speaker 10: stopped being unnamed strategists who want to talk about all
1:08:48
Speaker 10: the issues we're having. Whereas, like, I will give credit
1:08:50
Speaker 10: to the Republicans because they are all on the same
1:08:52
Speaker 10: page and we need to do the same thing or else.
1:08:54
Speaker 9: We're going to just keep getting in our own way.
1:08:56
Speaker 2: Name names, Alex. Can't.
1:08:59
Speaker 10: They're unnamed.
1:09:00
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I know.
1:09:01
Speaker 2: Cowards.
1:09:02
Speaker 8: Morris, for a while it seemed like Zoran was running
1:09:06
Speaker 8: to be U.S.
1:09:06
Speaker 2: Ambassador to Israel. It was like all you guys talked about.
1:09:10
Speaker 8: I noticed on like election day, maybe the day after,
1:09:13
Speaker 8: Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, he went on
1:09:15
Speaker 8: Morning Joe and he said, that he's going to hold
1:09:17
Speaker 8: Mamdani accountable, and he launched something called the Mamdani Monitor,
1:09:21
Speaker 8: and then something, a tip line to track anti-Semitic incidents
1:09:24
Speaker 8: in New York. Curious what your reaction to that is,
1:09:26
Speaker 8: like how Zoran wants to work with groups like the
1:09:30
Speaker 8: ADL to like, you know, have conversations with people about
1:09:34
Speaker 8: the legitimate problem of anti-Semitism, but not play into this
1:09:38
Speaker 8: idea that Greenblatt is promoting that Zoran is going to
1:09:42
Speaker 8: lead to a spike of incidents.
1:09:44
Speaker 7: I mean, to be clear about Greenblatt for a second,
1:09:46
Speaker 7: this is someone who's lied repeatedly about Zoran throughout the race,
1:09:48
Speaker 7: that he didn't go to synagogues when he'd gone to
1:09:50
Speaker 7: multiple synagogues, that he wasn't meeting with rabbis when he
1:09:52
Speaker 7: was meeting with rabbis, that has really flamed or fanned
1:09:57
Speaker 7: the flames of division across the city. I think that
1:10:01
Speaker 7: there's a bit of a kind of social media issue
1:10:04
Speaker 7: around this issue specifically, where Zoran will be at a
1:10:08
Speaker 7: presser about free buses, And he's going to get asked
1:10:11
Speaker 7: eight questions about Israel. And then those are going to
1:10:13
Speaker 7: be clipped and kind of fed into an algorithm that's
1:10:16
Speaker 7: meant to feed division. And then it's, well, Zoran, why
1:10:19
Speaker 7: are you always talking about Israel? And it's like, well, no,
1:10:22
Speaker 7: I'm trying to talk about free buses. And then it
1:10:24
Speaker 7: becomes this kind of echo chamber. But I think he's
1:10:27
Speaker 7: been relentlessly clear throughout the race of the urgency to
1:10:31
Speaker 7: fight anti-Semitism. and with a deep kind of commitment to it,
1:10:35
Speaker 7: a list of policy proposals to do just that. And
1:10:37
Speaker 7: I think what you also saw is a lot of
1:10:38
Speaker 7: Jewish New Yorkers showing up across the city who reject
1:10:42
Speaker 7: the kind of Cuomo-backed notion that criticism of genocide is
1:10:47
Speaker 7: the same as anti-Semitism.
1:10:48
Speaker 2: And I think that was far more dangerous. All right.
1:10:54
Speaker 8: I could have gone on for twice as long, but
1:10:56
Speaker 8: we've got five minutes left. So I'm going to do
1:10:57
Speaker 8: what I called my brain-dead cable news lightning round.
1:11:01
Speaker 2: Who is the face of the Democratic Party? Mikey Sherrill.
1:11:06
Speaker 2: Mikey Sherrill. Tommy Vitor. Chuck Schumer.
1:11:14
Speaker 11: Abigail Spanberger and all Democrats who are committed to lowering costs.
1:11:17
Speaker 2: There we go.
1:11:19
Speaker 8: What's the winning strategy, DSA or CIA? You don't really
1:11:26
Speaker 8: have to answer these. All of your campaigns were successful,
1:11:31
Speaker 8: but which one was correct?
1:11:35
Speaker 2: This is just a bit. I should let you guys know.
1:11:36
Speaker 3: I think all three.
1:11:37
Speaker 2: This is a good bit. All three, easily.
1:11:39
Speaker 7: But, like, this is the, like, you guys all, you
1:11:42
Speaker 7: rank them, you rank them on your favorites from one
1:11:45
Speaker 7: through three.
1:11:46
Speaker 2: Oh, this sucks.
1:11:52
Speaker 3: I love you all.
1:11:53
Speaker 8: I mean, like, this is the fight, right? Like, the
1:11:56
Speaker 8: Democratic Party, you saw it on Twitter. The Twitter warriors
1:11:59
Speaker 8: were out with their, their, You know, shields and swords,
1:12:03
Speaker 8: election night being like, we got to go left, we
1:12:05
Speaker 8: got to go right. I mean, obviously the middle ground
1:12:08
Speaker 8: is state by state, but I don't know.
1:12:10
Speaker 2: Do you have a theory of the case?
1:12:13
Speaker 10: I mean, I think they're just applying labels to completely
1:12:15
Speaker 10: different electorates. Like we all had landslide victories. Sure, we
1:12:19
Speaker 10: all talked about affordability, but we all did it in
1:12:21
Speaker 10: very different ways. So to say that we all have
1:12:24
Speaker 10: to follow the same blueprint, I mean, it just doesn't
1:12:27
Speaker 10: really make sense or match.
1:12:28
Speaker 3: Up at all.
1:12:29
Speaker 7: I think, like, we should be a big tent party.
1:12:33
Speaker 7: And I think, like, this is a great example of it's, like,
1:12:35
Speaker 7: we should be a party that can elect Zohar Mamdani
1:12:37
Speaker 7: in New York and Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey and
1:12:39
Speaker 7: Abigail Spanberger in Virginia. And I think too often we
1:12:43
Speaker 7: use the big tent as it's, like, it is a
1:12:45
Speaker 7: big tent that can go as far to the right
1:12:47
Speaker 7: as you want it to go.
1:12:48
Speaker 2: But there's a very rigid.
1:12:50
Speaker 7: Edge on the left. And I think it doesn't have
1:12:54
Speaker 7: to be like that.
1:12:54
Speaker 3: Thank you.
1:12:59
Speaker 11: And I think, too, one thing that's really important, because
1:13:01
Speaker 11: I agree, I'm not big on the labels. I know
1:13:04
Speaker 11: I've always thought of Abigail as a pragmatist. She's been
1:13:07
Speaker 11: put into moderate or centrist buckets before, but always thought
1:13:09
Speaker 11: of her as a steady pragmatist. But I think one
1:13:12
Speaker 11: thing that's different this cycle that hasn't always been the
1:13:14
Speaker 11: case over the last 10 to 15 years is that
1:13:17
Speaker 11: regardless of the spectrum of the Democratic Party that you
1:13:20
Speaker 11: are from, we are all united behind the inherent challenges
1:13:24
Speaker 11: facing Americans, and that is that life is too expensive.
1:13:28
Speaker 11: And regardless of where on the political spectrum you're from,
1:13:32
Speaker 11: and the big tent of our party comes down to
1:13:35
Speaker 11: the kind of approach and ideas and the way that
1:13:37
Speaker 11: you message lowering costs. And that can look like it's
1:13:40
Speaker 11: a lot different in Bedford, Virginia versus Bed-Stuy.
1:13:43
Speaker 2: But as long as you are.
1:13:44
Speaker 11: United around the need to lower costs, I think that
1:13:47
Speaker 11: we can have a big tent party.
1:13:50
Speaker 10: Can I also, I agree, and I would also add,
1:13:53
Speaker 10: that we're all united in the fact that government has
1:13:55
Speaker 10: a role in lowering costs for people and delivering for people.
1:13:58
Speaker 10: And that's the difference with the other side, I think.
1:14:02
Speaker 8: The last question I wrote down was MJ versus LeBron,
1:14:05
Speaker 8: but I don't know if that's going to play in
1:14:06
Speaker 8: this room. Okay, that's it for our panel. I just
1:14:10
Speaker 8: want to say thank you to Morris, Alex, and Samson.
1:14:13
Speaker 8: These guys are not only just coming off massive winning campaigns,
1:14:17
Speaker 8: they're also now doing the transition.
1:14:19
Speaker 2: Which is doubly hard because you have to staff up.
1:14:21
Speaker 2: entire government.
1:14:22
Speaker 8: So I'm really grateful to all of you, first of all,
1:14:23
Speaker 8: for kicking ass because this whole thing would have sucked.
1:14:27
Speaker 2: We hadn't won, but also.
1:14:28
Speaker 8: For being here and being really thoughtful and smart and successful.
1:14:34
Speaker 2: So thank you all. Thank you.
1:14:36
Speaker 11: Thank you guys.
1:14:40
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