Latest / Pod Save America / Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con)
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- 1:59Speaker 5: Hi, everybody. Wow. I'm John Lennon. We're live at Cricket Con.
- 2:13Speaker 5: He's got people. Everybody here has got people everywhere.
- 2:15Speaker 6: We're in the Reagan building, baby. I've co-opted your ass.
- 2:21Speaker 5: Can't lose control just yet. In his 1992 convention speech.
- 2:25Speaker 5: Bill Clinton, who is perfect, said of Republicans who were
- 2:30Speaker 5: at the time angry about Murphy Brown being a single
- 2:33Speaker 5: mom on television, if other politicians make you feel like
- 2:36Speaker 5: you're not part of their family, come on and be
- 2:38Speaker 5: part of ours. Republicans were the hall monitors we were welcoming.
- 2:43Speaker 5: Three decades later, Trump found an audience among pretty apolitical
- 2:47Speaker 5: comedians and media personalities and their fans who see Democrats
- 2:50Speaker 5: as pious and scolding. The Democratic Party is widely reviled.
- 2:55Speaker 5: A broad survey of working class voters described Democrats as, quote, woke, weak,
- 2:58Speaker 5: and out of touch. Coming out of Tuesday, which was awesome.
- 3:06Speaker 5: Semaphores Dave Weigel.
- 3:07Speaker 7: Woke Sharia.
- 3:07Speaker 5: What? Yeah.
- 3:08Speaker 3: I said woke Sharia, baby.
- 3:11Speaker 5: We're all living in Mamdana-stan now. Semaphores Dave Weigel put
- 3:16Speaker 5: it best in summarizing the exit polls. What do you
- 3:19Speaker 5: think of the Democrats? They stink. Who did you vote for?
- 3:21Speaker 5: As many Democrats as possible. So where do we go
- 3:25Speaker 5: from here? Joining me, our streamer and political commentator, Hasan Piker.
- 3:29Speaker 5: MSNOW's Simone Sanders. The Bulwark's Tim Miller. And the co-host
- 3:39Speaker 5: of The Five, Fox TV's Jessica Tarlon. Tim, I want
- 3:47Speaker 5: to start with you. And I want to just concede
- 3:49Speaker 5: that this is like a big topic. And it can
- 3:51Speaker 5: be hard to tease out style from substance, strategy, ideology.
- 3:57Speaker 5: But I want to start with that 2024 dynamic. You
- 4:00Speaker 5: have Trump and his allies on Rogan and a whole
- 4:02Speaker 5: bunch of apolitical shows and media. In hindsight, Democrats say, oh,
- 4:07Speaker 5: we need Democrats that can go everywhere. They have to
- 4:09Speaker 5: go everywhere just like Trump did. But then we look
- 4:11Speaker 5: around and we say, well, who are the Democrats that
- 4:13Speaker 5: can do that? And as a former Republican, as a
- 4:17Speaker 5: pilgrim in an unholy land, who's gone from viewing Democrats
- 4:21Speaker 5: being annoying as an asset to a liability. Where is
- 4:26Speaker 5: your head at?
- 4:27Speaker 6: Well, I was happy about the woke Sharia in New York,
- 4:29Speaker 6: but you do have to remember that the CIA has
- 4:31Speaker 6: taken over in Virginia across the river. So the deep
- 4:34Speaker 6: state establishment is also on the rise.
- 4:38Speaker 3: Big tent, big tent.
- 4:40Speaker 6: Big tent. You know what, Lovett? You guys are kind
- 4:45Speaker 6: of annoying. And it is something that we're dealing with.
- 4:48Speaker 6: And I think that it's important to just accept it
- 4:50Speaker 6: and think about it. And the fundamental question you got to,
- 4:54Speaker 6: which was, okay, well, we need a Rogan Barone, or
- 4:58Speaker 6: we got to be able to go hang out with
- 4:59Speaker 6: these folks. We got to be appealing more to the
- 5:02Speaker 6: comedian set. And then it's like, well, who would go
- 5:04Speaker 6: on the podcast? And then it's like, well, Are you available?
- 5:09Speaker 6: Are you? Like the list is kind of short, right?
- 5:13Speaker 6: And so, you know, we can't create people from scratch,
- 5:15Speaker 6: but I think that it's important, you know, when I
- 5:18Speaker 6: look back at the mistakes the Democrats made that got
- 5:20Speaker 6: us to this place, it's like Biden wins in 20
- 5:25Speaker 6: when everybody's inside, right? So you didn't have to be
- 5:27Speaker 6: out there. And then in 22, it's like, well, we
- 5:29Speaker 6: didn't have a red wave. So it's like things are
- 5:31Speaker 6: going pretty well, right? And so I just think that
- 5:33Speaker 6: there was a lot of, just inertia and status quo happening.
- 5:37Speaker 6: And a lot of the problems that were undergirding that,
- 5:40Speaker 6: a lot of things people were frustrated with about COVID
- 5:43Speaker 6: or about, you know, the not as fun parts of
- 5:47Speaker 6: woke Sharia, right? Like there wasn't a lot of reflection
- 5:51Speaker 6: on that. And I think that it's good to reflect
- 5:53Speaker 6: on it now. And I think that Tuesday was awesome,
- 5:54Speaker 6: but just because we did really well on Tuesday because
- 5:58Speaker 6: Trump is fucking everything up does not mean that we
- 6:00Speaker 6: shouldn't also like think about how we can continue to
- 6:02Speaker 6: kind of expand out and appeal to more people.
- 6:07Speaker 5: Simone, it seems like Democrats are often in a trap,
- 6:12Speaker 5: which is Trump or one of his acolytes does something
- 6:16Speaker 5: genuinely offensive, whether it's attacking or undermining a democratic institution
- 6:21Speaker 5: or going after a vulnerable group of people. And Democrats
- 6:25Speaker 5: want to defend those people, right? But then at times,
- 6:28Speaker 5: sometimes they seem like they're writing their own version of
- 6:30Speaker 5: the Federalist Papers. or they are doing what is then
- 6:35Speaker 5: described as identity politics. And so how do you fight
- 6:38Speaker 5: back against Trump when he's attacking people, when he's making
- 6:42Speaker 5: an issue of marginalized groups, without then being seen by
- 6:45Speaker 5: a broader group of being focused less on, say, the economy?
- 6:48Speaker 5: How do you square that circle?
- 6:49Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm from North Omaha, Nebraska. Shout out
- 6:53Speaker 2: to the Midwest people in the room. Yes, there are
- 6:55Speaker 2: black people. There are black people in Nebraska, all over
- 6:57Speaker 2: this country. Maybe not North Dakota. And so I say
- 7:02Speaker 2: that because earlier this summer, a black man who is
- 7:07Speaker 2: a Democrat unseated a three-term Republican mayor in Omaha, Nebraska.
- 7:12Speaker 4: And we can clap for that.
- 7:13Speaker 2: His name is John Ewing. And John Ewing, I grew
- 7:17Speaker 2: up knowing John Ewing.
- 7:18Speaker 4: I know him very well.
- 7:19Speaker 2: But in that race, like in many other races across
- 7:22Speaker 2: this country that have happened since 2024, One of the
- 7:25Speaker 2: issues that the Republican candidate tried to pull to the
- 7:30Speaker 2: forefront were bathrooms and trans issues. And you know what
- 7:34Speaker 2: John Ewing's answer was? Well, first of all, he had
- 7:36Speaker 2: an answer. He put up an ad to answer the attacks,
- 7:40Speaker 2: which I think is really important.
- 7:41Speaker 4: You cannot let attacks go.
- 7:43Speaker 2: You cannot allow your opponent, as a former strategist, you
- 7:46Speaker 2: cannot have your opponent defining you and you not answering.
- 7:50Speaker 4: So that's part of it.
- 7:51Speaker 3: I think.
- 7:52Speaker 2: Specifically coming out of 2024, a lot of candidates did
- 7:54Speaker 2: not answer the attacks.
- 7:56Speaker 4: And some people were just like, oh, no, no, that's
- 7:57Speaker 4: not me. And it's like, well, who are you?
- 7:59Speaker 2: But John Ewing put up ads and went out there
- 8:01Speaker 2: and did speeches and was on the streets talking to
- 8:03Speaker 2: folks during interviews and whatnot and campaigning and saying, she's
- 8:09Speaker 2: doing this because she don't want to talk about the potholes.
- 8:11Speaker 2: She doesn't want to talk about the issues that are
- 8:13Speaker 2: affecting you. She's going to make up this issue that
- 8:17Speaker 2: I'm not talking about. She doesn't want to talk about
- 8:18Speaker 2: the potholes. And so I think the answer is not
- 8:21Speaker 2: to run away from the confrontation. Like, you're not about
- 8:24Speaker 2: to make me, as I used to always tell candidates,
- 8:28Speaker 2: don't allow these folks, anybody, any of your opponents, to
- 8:32Speaker 2: make you believe that you're for an issue that you've
- 8:35Speaker 2: never taken up. Like, I don't know what the hesitancy
- 8:37Speaker 2: is from some of the campaigns and the strategists over
- 8:41Speaker 2: the last, you know, couple of cycles to just not
- 8:44Speaker 2: be clear about what folks are for and what they're
- 8:46Speaker 2: not for. Because in 2024, that TheyThem ad was seen everywhere.
- 8:51Speaker 2: And black people in Philadelphia told me the organizers in
- 8:54Speaker 2: Philadelphia said that everybody had saw that ad and there
- 8:57Speaker 2: was no counter and.
- 8:59Speaker 4: They believed it.
- 9:00Speaker 2: So I do think that, I don't think Democrats need
- 9:04Speaker 2: to do a wholesale, like, You need a full brand
- 9:07Speaker 2: rebrand because I think, frankly, the Democratic Party brand, it
- 9:10Speaker 2: might never be popular. But what may be, and that's okay,
- 9:14Speaker 2: because what you need are candidates who people like and
- 9:18Speaker 2: they want to vote for and who they believe in.
- 9:20Speaker 2: And if the brand is popular or not, I'm not,
- 9:23Speaker 2: I think the Democrats need to be less concerned about
- 9:25Speaker 2: rehabilitating the brand of the Democratic Party apparatus and more
- 9:28Speaker 2: concerned about running candidates that are close to the issues
- 9:31Speaker 2: in the districts and places that they're trying to win.
- 9:32Speaker 5: Thank you.
- 9:36Speaker 4: Tim don't agree. Tim, Tim don't agree.
- 9:40Speaker 3: I know.
- 9:40Speaker 6: I mean, the brand is boned. I agree with that.
- 9:44Speaker 4: The brand was poopoo and people voted for Democrats anyway.
- 9:46Speaker 2: So to me, that says people are willing to support
- 9:49Speaker 2: candidates even if they think your brand is shitty.
- 9:52Speaker 5: Well, I think that's an important part of what I
- 9:56Speaker 5: think the dynamic we see, right? There was just a
- 10:01Speaker 5: report that came out that said, here's a set of
- 10:03Speaker 5: policies that are broadly popular that Democrats should embrace going
- 10:06Speaker 5: into the midterms. and they're pretty moderate and sort of.
- 10:09Speaker 2: Oh, a bunch of these people that lost some races
- 10:11Speaker 2: and hadn't won recently put this report out?
- 10:14Speaker 3: It was shocking. I, for one, was shocked when I
- 10:16Speaker 3: saw that report. I was like, wow, so do the
- 10:19Speaker 3: exact same thing that the Democrats have been doing that
- 10:21Speaker 3: caused them a sequence of failures? That's good. I like that.
- 10:26Speaker 5: I knew there was no way.
- 10:28Speaker 3: Moderate enough, that was what the issue was.
- 10:31Speaker 5: There was no way I was going to get to
- 10:32Speaker 5: the end of that sentence. I don't even know why
- 10:34Speaker 5: I considered starting it, but... Taken. But when I hear
- 10:41Speaker 5: what you're saying there, when I see a report like that,
- 10:43Speaker 5: I see a group of people struggling against a brand
- 10:45Speaker 5: that is in the toilet and a bunch of people
- 10:48Speaker 5: trying to win despite that, which is another way of
- 10:50Speaker 5: saying we're in a ravine. Let's find the highest spot
- 10:53Speaker 5: we can here in this trench that we're stuck in.
- 10:57Speaker 5: But the reason I think this question is important, even
- 10:59Speaker 5: if you're right, like people win despite disliking the Democratic Party.
- 11:02Speaker 5: People hate Congress like they're congresspersons. I do think it's
- 11:05Speaker 5: worth asking what it is like to imagine a world
- 11:07Speaker 5: in which Democrats are broadly popular.
- 11:12Speaker 7: So.
- 11:12Speaker 6: How many gummies you take before coming out here?
- 11:17Speaker 5: So, which brings me to Jessica. So, I will reveal
- 11:23Speaker 5: something to all of you, which is John, Tommy, and
- 11:27Speaker 5: I share an office, perfectly.
- 11:28Speaker 3: Perfectly.
- 11:31Speaker 5: And we often, if not more often than not now,
- 11:34Speaker 5: switch over to Fox News during the day. And we
- 11:37Speaker 5: do because we want to see what's happening over there.
- 11:40Speaker 5: But also, it's entertaining.
- 11:42Speaker 6: It is.
- 11:43Speaker 5: They're having fun over there. True story. And Jessica, I
- 11:47Speaker 5: want you to talk about what it is like to
- 11:50Speaker 5: be in that environment. Because part of what is so
- 11:52Speaker 5: fun is there just collective appreciation and shared view of Democrats,
- 11:57Speaker 5: which is that they're kind of feckless and funny and ridiculous.
- 12:01Speaker 7: They definitely enjoy that part of it. And I'm so
- 12:05Speaker 7: glad that this conference is this week and not last week,
- 12:08Speaker 7: because we'd all just be sitting around crying and looking
- 12:11Speaker 7: at that memo and saying, well, You know, this is
- 12:14Speaker 7: 57% popular, so I think we should go with that.
- 12:16Speaker 7: But now we have some wins, and we have this
- 12:18Speaker 7: diverse set of wins, so I have had a way
- 12:20Speaker 7: better couple of days.
- 12:22Speaker 5: They've been almost circumspect. Oh, yeah.
- 12:25Speaker 8: I mean, sometimes. They got a little rowdy, too. But,
- 12:27Speaker 8: you know, you.
- 12:29Speaker 7: Can't dispute results like that. You can't dispute a Mom
- 12:33Speaker 7: Donnie win and a Spanberger win and whatever happened in
- 12:35Speaker 7: the Mississippi Statehouse. And I'm obsessed with whatever a public
- 12:39Speaker 7: commissioner is in Georgia. You know?
- 12:43Speaker 6: When nobody shows up to vote, we win. It's important
- 12:48Speaker 6: to remember.
- 12:49Speaker 7: But the joy is important to the formula that makes
- 12:56Speaker 7: Fox so appealing as a set of programs to watch.
- 13:00Speaker 7: And I think about it in context of the joy
- 13:04Speaker 7: campaign of 2024.
- 13:06Speaker 8: That was not right.
- 13:07Speaker 7: We were being told all the time, like you're having
- 13:10Speaker 7: so much fun. Like Brat summer feels great. And I
- 13:14Speaker 7: did feel great at the DNC. Cause I thought that
- 13:17Speaker 7: was the moment of like, maybe we have a chance,
- 13:19Speaker 7: but it was fleeting. And it's always on our side.
- 13:24Speaker 7: I think since the 2016 election, it feels like it's
- 13:28Speaker 7: forced upon us versus it's coming from within and There
- 13:32Speaker 7: may be individual candidates that we're into. I've gotten super
- 13:36Speaker 7: excited about people, you know, down ballot all over the
- 13:38Speaker 7: place or, you know, I love Ruben Gallego.
- 13:41Speaker 8: Like, that's always fun for me to talk about.
- 13:43Speaker 7: But because we have this kind of uniform policy of
- 13:49Speaker 7: stay in line, it's joyless because you can't feel free
- 13:54Speaker 7: to criticize somebody that you disagree with or, you know,
- 13:57Speaker 7: you're going to get scolded by this person and that person.
- 14:00Speaker 7: And the Republicans, generally speaking, live free of that amongst themselves.
- 14:06Speaker 7: I mean, criticizing Trump is a whole other thing, but
- 14:08Speaker 7: they go about their business in a way that we don't.
- 14:11Speaker 7: And that I think that we're adapting to in, at
- 14:14Speaker 7: least based on these election results.
- 14:16Speaker 8: And Fox captures that.
- 14:19Speaker 7: That there are people who have kind of like a
- 14:21Speaker 7: shared core set of values maybe, but they're not taking
- 14:24Speaker 7: themselves that seriously. They're not scolding each other. Like it
- 14:29Speaker 7: also matters in the quality of the programming, it looks great.
- 14:32Speaker 7: Our graphics are beautiful. Our lighting is fantastic. Are you
- 14:36Speaker 7: making a face?
- 14:39Speaker 3: Look, I'm your Fedayeen. I'm your biggest die-hard fan, okay?
- 14:43Speaker 3: But no, I don't think the Fox News graphics are beautiful. Look,
- 14:49Speaker 3: I respect what you do, especially because if I had
- 14:51Speaker 3: to sit next to Jesse Waters and Greg Buttfeld the
- 14:54Speaker 3: entire time, I would kill myself. And the fact that
- 14:58Speaker 3: you have been able to successfully sit in that room
- 15:01Speaker 3: every day and just white-knuckle through Jesse Waters' snide-ass remarks
- 15:07Speaker 3: is impressive.
- 15:10Speaker 5: It is.
- 15:11Speaker 6: Concur.
- 15:12Speaker 8: Thank you.
- 15:14Speaker 7: And it is nice to be a... amongst my people,
- 15:17Speaker 7: which I'm usually not like cautiously weaving through here. But
- 15:20Speaker 7: my point in bringing it up, and you don't have
- 15:21Speaker 7: to love our graphics, even though they're copied in every
- 15:24Speaker 7: movie and things like that.
- 15:25Speaker 8: It's like the official look of it.
- 15:30Speaker 2: But even when- The PR people love Jessica. She is
- 15:34Speaker 2: a favorite of the Fox PR folks.
- 15:38Speaker 8: But nothing is taken that seriously. Seriously.
- 15:42Speaker 7: And that's not the case in liberal media. And that
- 15:46Speaker 7: doesn't mean you're not talking about serious things, but there's
- 15:48Speaker 7: this feeling like it is not the end of the
- 15:50Speaker 7: world in every topic that you're discussing. And this idea
- 15:56Speaker 7: that we can just go and show up in conservative
- 15:59Speaker 7: spaces or come for an hour and you have to
- 16:01Speaker 7: be open to those kinds of things doesn't capture how
- 16:06Speaker 7: hard it is for people who vote like me and
- 16:08Speaker 7: some of the things that I think to genuinely form
- 16:12Speaker 7: bonds and interact on a ongoing basis with people who
- 16:16Speaker 7: you disagree with. An hour, two hours, three hours is
- 16:20Speaker 7: not getting to know the other side.
- 16:23Speaker 8: Living amongst them and spending time with them is.
- 16:26Speaker 7: And I think that's why I'm able to do my
- 16:29Speaker 7: job and have a reasonable therapy bill, like not insane,
- 16:34Speaker 7: but you know, we know each other like the family
- 16:38Speaker 7: that it looks like, which is dysfunctional, but it's still
- 16:41Speaker 7: a family. And people who watch the show, and we
- 16:44Speaker 7: have 20% Democratic viewership, still get that.
- 16:49Speaker 5: I'm sorry.
- 16:50Speaker 8: It's maybe not the answer you guys wanted.
- 16:53Speaker 3: You're not getting a lot of claps because you're defending
- 16:54Speaker 3: Fox News in this room.
- 16:57Speaker 5: Let me speak. I want to talk to Hasan about
- 17:00Speaker 5: what you just said. I heard something from the crowd,
- 17:03Speaker 5: and I think it reflects what they're feeling, which is Well,
- 17:06Speaker 5: they're not taking it seriously because these are people that
- 17:10Speaker 5: are not appreciating the consequences or telling themselves a story
- 17:14Speaker 5: about the consequences. And I know you know that. But
- 17:18Speaker 5: that's a challenge for the left. I think sometimes we
- 17:21Speaker 5: are seen as upset or scolding because we're motivated by
- 17:29Speaker 5: a deep set of values, and when you watch Fox,
- 17:32Speaker 5: there's a frivolousness to it, but maybe that's a kind
- 17:34Speaker 5: of carelessness about what's happening to the country.
- 17:37Speaker 7: I totally agree with you about certain issues, absolutely, and
- 17:41Speaker 7: I make that very clear, and they can make fun
- 17:43Speaker 7: of me or whatever, but elections have consequences, and we
- 17:45Speaker 7: saw on Tuesday night that the American public sees through it.
- 17:48Speaker 8: That's the point.
- 17:51Speaker 7: People get all hot and bothered about how conservatives are
- 17:53Speaker 7: reacting to certain things and that they're being dismissive. But
- 17:56Speaker 7: they are the ones that think the American public is stupid.
- 17:59Speaker 7: And we're the ones who know that they can see
- 18:01Speaker 7: what's going on. So whether you get 90 seconds of
- 18:04Speaker 7: talk time or you get to talk for hours a
- 18:06Speaker 7: day on your podcasts or on your live stream, all
- 18:10Speaker 7: the things for Assad. Like, they're the ones that are
- 18:15Speaker 7: doubting people's capacity to understand. And so... I get what
- 18:20Speaker 7: you're saying and I feel it. And sometimes I don't
- 18:22Speaker 7: like being made fun of sometimes for being upset about
- 18:25Speaker 7: American citizens taken into ICE detention and not getting to
- 18:29Speaker 7: call their loved ones. But Tuesday night, people showed up
- 18:32Speaker 7: all over the country and said, fuck off.
- 18:35Speaker 8: That is unacceptable.
- 18:38Speaker 5: Hassan.
- 18:39Speaker 8: I got applause.
- 18:41Speaker 6: Hassan hasn't gone 17 minutes without talking since 2014. I
- 18:46Speaker 6: honestly like.
- 18:48Speaker 5: The stage is vibrating and I'm sorry it took this
- 18:53Speaker 5: long to get to the fact that what we saw
- 18:57Speaker 5: in New York on Tuesday in many ways feels like
- 19:01Speaker 5: an antidote to some of this problem. Zoran Mamdani is
- 19:06Speaker 5: having fun out there. And he's also representing a incredibly
- 19:13Speaker 5: enthusiastic base of people who are finding community in being
- 19:18Speaker 5: part of politics. And that does seem like something now
- 19:23Speaker 5: that is more easily formed on the left. I can
- 19:26Speaker 5: think of all the candidates and campaigns that have been
- 19:28Speaker 5: left-driven that have built that energy and enthusiasm and sense
- 19:31Speaker 5: of fun. Brad Summer was an exception. There was a
- 19:34Speaker 5: moment where, look, we can all look back and be like,
- 19:36Speaker 5: I knew, I was full, I went full Brad.
- 19:38Speaker 3: I mean, I was there.
- 19:39Speaker 6: We were, yeah.
- 19:40Speaker 3: No, and as someone who was there to DNC before
- 19:43Speaker 3: I got kicked out, but on the last day, I
- 19:47Speaker 3: actually found myself feeling a sense of anxiety over the
- 19:53Speaker 3: course of every single day that passed where I was like,
- 19:56Speaker 3: why is everybody just like celebrating like we're at the
- 19:59Speaker 3: end zone here when it is not a guarantee that
- 20:02Speaker 3: Kamala Harris is going to win? And I kept warning
- 20:04Speaker 3: over and over again that there were a lot of
- 20:07Speaker 3: unaddressed issues that the Democrats just kind of never wanted
- 20:12Speaker 3: to acknowledge at all.
- 20:13Speaker 6: Can we not just be excited we had somebody who
- 20:16Speaker 6: could talk, though? Could we just have had one week?
- 20:18Speaker 6: We were excited for a week because she could talk.
- 20:21Speaker 3: That was great.
- 20:22Speaker 6: So just give us a break.
- 20:24Speaker 3: No, but the excitement that came into the DNC was
- 20:29Speaker 3: actually because for, for some reason, right? And the reason
- 20:33Speaker 3: is because people finally realized Joe Biden was, you know,
- 20:36Speaker 3: his brain was leaking out of his ear. I'm sorry. And,
- 20:39Speaker 3: and for that reason, I know there's probably a lot
- 20:42Speaker 3: of democratic party staffers in here. They're going to get
- 20:44Speaker 3: really pissed off for me saying this, but, um, it
- 20:47Speaker 3: almost felt like we had a competent party for once,
- 20:49Speaker 3: and they were responsive to the people's needs. And that's
- 20:52Speaker 3: the reason why everyone was excited. I was excited. When
- 20:55Speaker 3: I saw Kamala Harris choose Tim Walz, when she could
- 20:59Speaker 3: have just as easily gone with Josh Shapiro, for example,
- 21:02Speaker 3: I was like, oh my God, is this happening? Is
- 21:04Speaker 3: there an actual progressive momentum backing this candidacy, backing this campaign?
- 21:10Speaker 3: And then they backpocketed him. And Kamala Harris went from
- 21:14Speaker 3: saying that she was going to do price controls, And
- 21:18Speaker 3: she actually very decently messaged around that by saying, we're
- 21:21Speaker 3: just going to go after price gougers at the grocery store,
- 21:25Speaker 3: which was her most popular policy at the time, and
- 21:28Speaker 3: directly addressed one of the main economic anxieties that people
- 21:32Speaker 3: were experiencing. And then, lo and behold, her brother-in-law, who's
- 21:37Speaker 3: head of legal at Uber, came on and was like,
- 21:40Speaker 3: cut this economic populism shit out. And And then you
- 21:44Speaker 3: had $ 50, 000 in tax credits for small business owners. And
- 21:48Speaker 3: that was not addressing the problems that people were experiencing.
- 21:53Speaker 3: And I think that we have to do the honest
- 21:57Speaker 3: autopsy of this campaign and realize that maybe people were
- 22:01Speaker 3: excited for the progressive momentum that they perceived the campaign
- 22:06Speaker 3: actually was going to have and the responsiveness that the
- 22:09Speaker 3: party finally had. to the people's desires, to the base
- 22:13Speaker 3: of voters' desires, but then they kind of just threw
- 22:17Speaker 3: that into the wind and just kept pumping Liz Cheney
- 22:22Speaker 3: and refused to talk about.
- 22:25Speaker 6: Sorry for wanting to help poor Liz Cheney. Can I
- 22:29Speaker 6: just do one thing on the honest autopsy, though? Actually,
- 22:32Speaker 6: we can find some common ground on the economic populist stuff.
- 22:34Speaker 6: I think the common list should have probably, in retrospect, obviously,
- 22:37Speaker 6: had a more tangible message on economic populism. My problem
- 22:40Speaker 6: with the walls thing, though, is that, that relates to
- 22:44Speaker 6: the topic of this panel, is that I think if
- 22:46Speaker 6: we're having an honest autopsy and looking back at the campaign,
- 22:49Speaker 6: there were a lot of liberals that live on the
- 22:53Speaker 6: coast that were like, whoa, this dude can change a carburetor?
- 22:57Speaker 6: And I can put on a camo hat? Like, he's
- 23:00Speaker 6: gonna really, that guy is really gonna connect with rural America,
- 23:05Speaker 6: because he seems like a guy that really connects with
- 23:06Speaker 6: rural America. And people who like, grew up in rural
- 23:10Speaker 6: America who, or who lived in red spaces are like, no,
- 23:13Speaker 6: like that is the guy. who was the PFLAG teacher
- 23:17Speaker 6: at the rural high school. And by the way, being
- 23:19Speaker 6: the PFLAG sponsor at a rural high school is awesome.
- 23:22Speaker 6: That's a great thing to be. Everybody loves that. That's great.
- 23:25Speaker 6: But like everybody who's from that world did not look
- 23:27Speaker 6: at him and say, you code conservative. They're like, you
- 23:30Speaker 6: have conservative values like me. They coded him. It's like, oh,
- 23:32Speaker 6: you're the nice liberal at the school, right? And so
- 23:35Speaker 6: I think that if we're going to have an honest
- 23:36Speaker 6: reflection on the last campaign, the economic populism stuff was
- 23:40Speaker 6: a miss too, was a miss for sure. But being
- 23:43Speaker 6: seen as being to the cultural left and being out
- 23:46Speaker 6: of step with the country culturally on a wide variety
- 23:50Speaker 6: of issues, whether it be social issues or COVID or
- 23:53Speaker 6: free speech or just being able to chill on comedians' podcasts,
- 23:57Speaker 6: that was a miss, and people misunderstood what Tim Walz
- 24:01Speaker 6: was bringing to the table because he was not able
- 24:03Speaker 6: to do any of that.
- 24:04Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the cultural stuff is only relevant if
- 24:08Speaker 3: that is– ostensibly the only thing that you're bringing to
- 24:12Speaker 3: the table. And unfortunately for the democratic party, I mean,
- 24:15Speaker 3: these used to be wedge issues for a reason, right?
- 24:17Speaker 3: These were concocted in think tanks with the deliberate design
- 24:22Speaker 3: to make it seem as though there was some significant
- 24:25Speaker 3: disagreements between the two parties and they were created to
- 24:29Speaker 3: make the Republicans more popular so that people would focus
- 24:34Speaker 3: on whatever, you know, the Family Foundation decided was a
- 24:38Speaker 3: more successful way to present anti-trans narratives after focus testing
- 24:44Speaker 3: their message. And when people are focusing on that, they're
- 24:50Speaker 3: always going to go, okay, well, the Democrats are silly.
- 24:52Speaker 3: Why do they care about this? This is like a
- 24:53Speaker 3: tiny sliver of the population. Instead, they should be Every
- 24:58Speaker 3: moment that they're talking about that is a moment where
- 24:59Speaker 3: they're not talking about affordability, where they're not talking about
- 25:03Speaker 3: a working class centered party.
- 25:04Speaker 4: Where are the Democrats that ran on trans issues? Show
- 25:07Speaker 4: them to me, people. Where are they?
- 25:09Speaker 3: They didn't.
- 25:10Speaker 4: They didn't.
- 25:11Speaker 3: I agree.
- 25:11Speaker 4: It was the Republicans.
- 25:14Speaker 3: You actually brought that up, and I 100% agree with you.
- 25:16Speaker 5: Okay, good.
- 25:17Speaker 4: Sorry I jumped out of my seat.
- 25:19Speaker 3: No, I 100% agree with you because you said the potholes, right?
- 25:23Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
- 25:24Speaker 3: If you're talking about the potholes and your opponent is
- 25:27Speaker 3: constantly being like, but what about trans people? Then they
- 25:29Speaker 3: look insincere and they look silly. And there is no
- 25:33Speaker 3: reason to betray marginalized groups and decide that we're going
- 25:38Speaker 3: to actively write them out of the equation because they're
- 25:42Speaker 3: working class as well. And this is something that I
- 25:44Speaker 3: have never compromised on. And yet seemingly I've been able
- 25:47Speaker 3: to find like a very populist and robust movement in
- 25:52Speaker 3: my own audience. that does not compromise on these issues,
- 25:56Speaker 3: but also is always in the affirmative, making the argument
- 25:59Speaker 3: that we have to focus on kitchen table issues, if
- 26:02Speaker 3: you want to use that kind of language around it,
- 26:05Speaker 3: but like center the working class and try to seek
- 26:09Speaker 3: out what their problems are, address them, and also make
- 26:12Speaker 3: this earnest attempt and show that we are honest about
- 26:16Speaker 3: actually fighting for them. And I think Zoran's campaign and
- 26:19Speaker 3: its success was a fantastic example of this. I know
- 26:22Speaker 3: people say it's in New York, but that's precisely what
- 26:24Speaker 3: he did. Five key issues. He went out, he asked people,
- 26:28Speaker 3: what's your problem? I'm going to solve it. And he
- 26:31Speaker 3: centered his campaign around five key issues of affordability in
- 26:34Speaker 3: New York. And lo and behold, in spite of 22
- 26:37Speaker 3: billionaires spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to take
- 26:41Speaker 3: them out, in spite of a very hostile media environment,
- 26:44Speaker 3: especially leading up to the primary or certainly after the primary,
- 26:48Speaker 3: they They genuflected a little bit by the end. But,
- 26:53Speaker 3: and all of these attack ads, he still won.
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- 29:11Speaker 5: God, this is going great.
- 29:13Speaker 6: Are we having fun yet?
- 29:15Speaker 5: Are we having fun yet? Jessica, I want you to
- 29:19Speaker 5: respond and then I want to kind of tease two
- 29:20Speaker 5: things out here.
- 29:21Speaker 4: Well, I agree.
- 29:23Speaker 8: I totally agree.
- 29:25Speaker 7: I just exist in a world where we can't behave
- 29:28Speaker 7: that way.
- 29:30Speaker 8: Not everybody who's going to run.
- 29:31Speaker 7: For office or who wants to have a voice can
- 29:35Speaker 7: build the platform that you have.
- 29:37Speaker 8: You're ridiculously talented.
- 29:39Speaker 3: And Damn, thank you.
- 29:43Speaker 8: No, but even being able to talk that long or to...
- 29:45Speaker 8: It's a skill set that I.
- 29:49Speaker 8: That I don't have.
- 29:52Speaker 7: But when you say, we don't need to deal with this,
- 29:55Speaker 7: and I agree with you about the ad, and I
- 29:56Speaker 7: remember when that happened, There are people who are running
- 29:59Speaker 7: in races where you need to do more than that.
- 30:02Speaker 7: Like we were talking earlier, I was over doing Tim's
- 30:05Speaker 7: pod with him. We're talking about Jared Golden not running
- 30:08Speaker 7: in Maine. And Jared Golden can't afford to not talk
- 30:13Speaker 7: about the issues that his constituents genuinely care about because
- 30:15Speaker 7: they also vote for Donald Trump. And for some of them,
- 30:18Speaker 7: they just want to hear someone say, listen, I want
- 30:21Speaker 7: to protect everybody. I'm an inclusive guy, you know, but I...
- 30:26Speaker 7: whatever happened with Leah Thomas, or that's always like the
- 30:29Speaker 7: lightning rod, you know, trans athlete issue. I understand your
- 30:32Speaker 7: concern about, you know, trans women and women's sports. That
- 30:35Speaker 7: doesn't mean Jared Golden needs to say, I want to
- 30:37Speaker 7: ban on this. It means Jared Golden says like the
- 30:40Speaker 7: head of the NCAA did when they testified, this is,
- 30:42Speaker 7: you're talking about 10 athletes out of 500,000. So it
- 30:46Speaker 7: is a small fraction of the population, but I'm not
- 30:48Speaker 7: going to dismiss your concerns. And this big tent and
- 30:52Speaker 7: a winning coalition across this country is has to be
- 30:58Speaker 7: compromising about what people need to do to win their races.
- 31:01Speaker 7: I'm not talking about being bigoted. I'm not talking about
- 31:04Speaker 7: being nasty. But the country operates differently in different places.
- 31:11Speaker 7: And I feel like we give lip service to that,
- 31:15Speaker 7: but don't always behave that way.
- 31:19Speaker 3: The thing is, if the Democratic Party was defined by...
- 31:27Speaker 3: Five key policies, okay? Medicare for all, a single-payer system,
- 31:33Speaker 3: socialized medicine, right? Something of that sort. And a plan
- 31:38Speaker 3: to expand the available housing units. I want socialized housing.
- 31:44Speaker 3: That is not even broached. That's not even discussed amongst
- 31:46Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. I want a federal jobs guarantee and
- 31:50Speaker 3: a jobs program to build those houses, right? Free college.
- 31:56Speaker 3: and better education overall from K through 12, if those
- 32:00Speaker 3: were like your five key signature campaign promises that directly
- 32:06Speaker 3: tackle all of the issues that people, the economic hardships
- 32:10Speaker 3: that people in the heartland are actually going through, and
- 32:13Speaker 3: not just like highly educated liberals in big cities, then...
- 32:17Speaker 3: any moment that these people would turn around and be like, well,
- 32:20Speaker 3: what about trans people? They're going to get healthcare too.
- 32:22Speaker 3: You could just be like, okay, what do you not
- 32:24Speaker 3: want healthcare because you think a trans person is going
- 32:25Speaker 3: to get it?
- 32:26Speaker 4: I just want to be clear.
- 32:26Speaker 2: There was a moment on a debate stage where they
- 32:28Speaker 2: weren't talking about trans people, but in the Democratic primary
- 32:32Speaker 2: in 2020, they asked, there was a, one of the
- 32:34Speaker 2: large primary debates and they asked, well, do you think
- 32:38Speaker 2: undocumented people should have healthcare? And people raised their hand
- 32:40Speaker 2: and it was used as an attack ad and it
- 32:42Speaker 2: was an effective attack ad. So I think sometimes we,
- 32:46Speaker 2: I agree with, Some of what you're saying, okay? The
- 32:48Speaker 2: dig at small businesses, I disagree with because the biggest
- 32:51Speaker 2: driver of wealth in African-American communities outside of government jobs,
- 32:57Speaker 2: which is why the fact that 300,000 black women have
- 32:59Speaker 2: lost their government jobs is a blow to wealth ascension
- 33:03Speaker 2: in this country for black women, is small businesses. And
- 33:06Speaker 2: so the small business plan was a plan that spoke
- 33:10Speaker 2: to working-class black and brown people in this country who
- 33:14Speaker 2: do not work at large corporations but had an idea,
- 33:17Speaker 2: wanted entrepreneurship, and then they saw a plan for them.
- 33:21Speaker 2: And so it was a wide, you know, tent situation.
- 33:25Speaker 2: But I guess my point is to Jessica, what Jessica
- 33:27Speaker 2: is saying, yes, I do think candidates have to be,
- 33:29Speaker 2: you got to run for your district. You got to
- 33:31Speaker 2: run for the race that you're in. As a, you know,
- 33:35Speaker 2: I'm a black woman from the Midwest every day, everywhere
- 33:37Speaker 2: I go, okay? I live in Washington, D.C., but I'm
- 33:40Speaker 2: black and I'm bald. So there are some things I
- 33:44Speaker 2: think I hear when these conversations come up, and I've
- 33:47Speaker 2: sat in strategist rooms when they've come up. They've come
- 33:49Speaker 2: up on campaigns I've worked on, and I hear them
- 33:52Speaker 2: on the sets and the commercial breaks when we have
- 33:54Speaker 2: some of these candidates on our show. It feels like
- 33:59Speaker 2: to some people that look like me that the people
- 34:03Speaker 2: within the party apparatus want folks to compromise on issues
- 34:07Speaker 2: that for me are uncompromisable when folks say that. And
- 34:11Speaker 2: so I do think that if the party is like, look,
- 34:15Speaker 2: people need to... I think the answer is people need
- 34:18Speaker 2: to run for the race that they're in.
- 34:19Speaker 4: Okay, well, what does that mean? Does that mean when.
- 34:21Speaker 2: Because let's just be very clear, Donald Trump and the Republicans,
- 34:23Speaker 2: they aren't looking for a big tent. They're like, mass deportation,
- 34:27Speaker 2: F you, look at my one good black person, shithole
- 34:29Speaker 2: countries in Africa, all the brown people need to be deported.
- 34:33Speaker 4: Women got blood.
- 34:34Speaker 2: Coming down their eyes, but like, yay, we're going back
- 34:37Speaker 2: to a meritocracy and that means only white men.
- 34:39Speaker 4: Like, hold on, what? But they were winning.
- 34:43Speaker 2: And so they didn't win because they opened up the
- 34:46Speaker 2: aperture and let people do what they need to do.
- 34:47Speaker 2: They won because they tripled down on what they believe.
- 34:49Speaker 6: I'm sorry. That's just not right. I'm sorry. That sounds good,
- 34:52Speaker 6: and I like it. I want it to be right.
- 34:54Speaker 6: It's just not right.
- 34:55Speaker 4: They didn't win because they tripled down on what they believe?
- 34:57Speaker 6: No, they did triple down on what they believe.
- 34:59Speaker 4: Yes, they tripled down on racism.
- 35:00Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 35:01Speaker 4: It was populism, but he was a.
- 35:05Speaker 2: Populism is a thin ideology mixed with a thick ideology,
- 35:08Speaker 2: according to Cass Mudd. His populism had a lot of
- 35:12Speaker 2: things in it. It was an economic populist, but populism
- 35:15Speaker 2: had a little white supremacy in it, a little racism.
- 35:17Speaker 2: Like Bernie Sanders is a populist in a different way
- 35:19Speaker 2: than Donald Trump.
- 35:20Speaker 6: Yeah, here's the thing.
- 35:21Speaker 4: No, I don't understand.
- 35:23Speaker 3: Here's the thing, though.
- 35:24Speaker 6: Can I just say really quick, though? Here's the thing. Like, yeah,
- 35:26Speaker 6: he doubled down on a bunch of terrible shit that
- 35:28Speaker 6: they believe that's extreme. No doubt. No doubt. He also
- 35:31Speaker 6: was seen as left of Kamala on foreign policy. He
- 35:34Speaker 6: was seen as an anti-war candidate. He was seen as
- 35:36Speaker 6: anti the Republican establishment of war. He cut to the
- 35:38Speaker 6: middle on that.
- 35:39Speaker 3: He lied about that, for sure.
- 35:41Speaker 6: Of course he lied. He lied. But then maybe our
- 35:44Speaker 6: guys should lie about some things that are popular, too.
- 35:46Speaker 3: Now you sound like me during the campaign where I
- 35:51Speaker 3: was like, what the fuck are you guys doing when
- 35:53Speaker 3: you're not addressing this stuff where Donald Trump can present
- 35:56Speaker 3: himself as the peace candidate? That was insane to me.
- 35:59Speaker 3: But obviously... Sending Bill Clinton to Dearborn to talk about
- 36:03Speaker 3: Judea and Samaria as most people were seeing.
- 36:06Speaker 5: All right.
- 36:06Speaker 6: Most people were seeing.
- 36:07Speaker 3: I want to bring us back.
- 36:08Speaker 9: They didn't moderate on things.
- 36:09Speaker 6: That's all I'm saying. I'm having so much fun.
- 36:16Speaker 4: No, no, I'm sorry.
- 36:18Speaker 2: You cannot have a convention where you have signs that
- 36:22Speaker 2: say mass deportation now.
- 36:23Speaker 6: I'm not saying he wasn't a moderate. I'm saying he
- 36:25Speaker 6: moderated on things.
- 36:27Speaker 2: Ethnocentric nationalist version of this country and say that he moderated.
- 36:31Speaker 2: What he did is say people in Gaza, you should
- 36:33Speaker 2: vote for me because Joe Biden ain't doing what you want.
- 36:36Speaker 2: That's not a moderation. He had good rhetoric, but his
- 36:39Speaker 2: policy was consistent. And the vice president on that debate
- 36:42Speaker 2: stage said all of the things that he was saying
- 36:45Speaker 2: that he would do, and he has now done them.
- 36:47Speaker 2: He said he was going to send the military into
- 36:49Speaker 2: the streets. He was saying it on the campaign.
- 36:51Speaker 4: That's not moderation. That's fascism.
- 36:53Speaker 2: He said he was going to deport all of these
- 36:56Speaker 2: people in this country. He said that it's not just
- 36:59Speaker 2: the criminals. He's coming for anybody that is in this
- 37:02Speaker 2: country who is undocumented. So I'm... I just, I can't,
- 37:05Speaker 2: I can't get with the, well, Donald.
- 37:06Speaker 4: Trump did moderate a bit.
- 37:07Speaker 3: No.
- 37:08Speaker 4: They tripled down on the bad stuff.
- 37:10Speaker 2: And had nice graphics and good, and.
- 37:13Speaker 4: Smiled through it.
- 37:14Speaker 6: So can I, I want to bring this back.
- 37:16Speaker 3: Simone is.
- 37:18Speaker 6: All right.
- 37:19Speaker 5: Hassan, quick, and then I want to.
- 37:20Speaker 6: Bring us back.
- 37:21Speaker 3: Simone is absolutely right, 100%. And these were things that
- 37:26Speaker 3: I was screaming about nonstop. You said you agreed with.
- 37:29Speaker 6: Me that he ran to the left of Kamala on
- 37:31Speaker 6: foreign policy.
- 37:32Speaker 3: That's moderating.
- 37:34Speaker 6: He didn't run on the unpopular Republican views on foreign policy.
- 37:38Speaker 3: He ran to the left on foreign policy only because
- 37:42Speaker 3: the Democrats came out and said, I'm going to have
- 37:44Speaker 3: the most lethal military because unfortunately, and I mean this sincerely,
- 37:49Speaker 3: I don't think the Democrats actually saw the threat of
- 37:52Speaker 3: Donald Trump as a significant enough threat because if they were,
- 37:55Speaker 3: they would have locked in and had better messaging overall
- 37:58Speaker 3: and tried to at least establish a base of support
- 38:02Speaker 3: with counter narratives, with counter messaging leading up to the election,
- 38:07Speaker 3: not in the aftermath or not during the election, but
- 38:09Speaker 3: leading up to the election because Republicans, they act as
- 38:12Speaker 3: though there is an election every single day. They are
- 38:15Speaker 3: constantly on message. They're constantly creating an alternative reality with
- 38:19Speaker 3: lies saying that undocumented migrants are actually responsible for a
- 38:23Speaker 3: metric ton of the crimes that are taking place in
- 38:25Speaker 3: American cities when that is an abject lie, okay? And
- 38:28Speaker 3: when I talk to Congress persons whether it be at
- 38:31Speaker 3: the DNC or even before or even after. And I
- 38:34Speaker 3: tell them, why the fuck aren't you guys counter-messaging against this?
- 38:37Speaker 3: We are a nation of immigrants. America is the most
- 38:39Speaker 3: diverse nation on the fucking planet. It is literally the
- 38:41Speaker 3: reason why we are such a domineering force beyond all
- 38:44Speaker 3: the other violent reasons. But that is one of the
- 38:50Speaker 3: most redeemable aspects of America that I personally love that
- 38:53Speaker 3: the Democrats completely dropped because they were scared. They saw
- 38:57Speaker 3: that one poll from the Pew Center of Research that
- 39:02Speaker 3: said that 66% of Americans want mass deportations. That exact
- 39:07Speaker 3: same poll also showed that if given two options, Mass
- 39:10Speaker 3: deportation and mass amnesty that the majority always chose mass amnesty.
- 39:16Speaker 3: So why is that never communicated? Because Americans, sure, the
- 39:20Speaker 3: median voter, trying to understand where the median voter is
- 39:23Speaker 3: coming from is impossible, okay? You will kill yourself if
- 39:26Speaker 3: you try to understand what these people are thinking.
- 39:29Speaker 4: You just lost me, Hassan.
- 39:30Speaker 2: I was with you halfway through that, but you lost me.
- 39:32Speaker 4: But I'm with you.
- 39:33Speaker 3: No, but what I'm trying to say is this, okay?
- 39:35Speaker 3: There are Trump supporters out there, okay, that.
- 39:44Speaker 3: That have been deluded into thinking that Donald Trump represented
- 39:47Speaker 3: a change. And obviously we saw that buyer's remorse this
- 39:51Speaker 3: past Tuesday, right? Especially in Hispanic communities where they were like, oh,
- 39:55Speaker 3: I can't believe that he is actually doing mass deportation.
- 39:58Speaker 3: And it's... You know, we're in D.C., this is a
- 40:01Speaker 3: fairly liberal crowd, and we laugh at those people, but, like,
- 40:04Speaker 3: I talk to those people every day, and there were
- 40:06Speaker 3: people that genuinely thought, they genuinely believed that Donald Trump
- 40:10Speaker 3: was actually excising the violent criminals. And the only reason
- 40:15Speaker 3: why people are led to believe this lie, aside from
- 40:18Speaker 3: the faucet of misinformation that comes from independent outlets on
- 40:21Speaker 3: the right and also Fox News as well, is because
- 40:25Speaker 3: there is no robust response from the Democratic Party that
- 40:29Speaker 3: says that's a fucking lie. That's a lie. Undocumented migrants
- 40:33Speaker 3: in this country are responsible for a lower rate of
- 40:38Speaker 3: per capita crime than natural born U.S. citizens are. If
- 40:41Speaker 3: you pair that up with documented migrants, it's negligible. It
- 40:44Speaker 3: is marginal. And they're hyper focusing on it. specifically because
- 40:48Speaker 3: this is a vulnerable population that is easy to target
- 40:51Speaker 3: and it's easy to ridicule and there is not enough
- 40:54Speaker 3: of a robust defense mechanism out there and that's the
- 40:57Speaker 3: reason why people end up believing this bullshit and then
- 40:59Speaker 3: they get shocked when it's actually implemented.
- 41:02Speaker 5: So I think that's a good point and I think
- 41:08Speaker 5: I sort of agree with Tim and with Simone about this.
- 41:11Speaker 6: Impossible.
- 41:12Speaker 5: It's a fundamental rift. Because one of Trump's gifts, one
- 41:18Speaker 5: of Trump's gifts is he is, I think he convinced
- 41:21Speaker 5: a lot of people he was going to go after criminals,
- 41:23Speaker 5: but he also said at the convention that they were
- 41:24Speaker 5: going to do mass deportations. And I think how to
- 41:27Speaker 5: bring it back is that is possible because of a
- 41:31Speaker 5: big void. So Trump can do a lot. Trump has
- 41:35Speaker 5: room to operate, to maneuver.
- 41:37Speaker 10: Why?
- 41:37Speaker 5: Because he has built an authentic connection with millions of
- 41:40Speaker 5: people who believe him, who have his back, who think, yeah,
- 41:43Speaker 5: he'll compromise. It is inconceivable that Kamala Harris would appoint
- 41:47Speaker 5: Mike Pence to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Inconceivable.
- 41:50Speaker 5: We wouldn't live in that world. But Trump can appoint
- 41:52Speaker 5: a Kennedy to run the health department. Why? Because he
- 41:55Speaker 5: has built such a credible, loyal following. that he, because
- 42:00Speaker 5: of the authentic way in which he, you don't have
- 42:03Speaker 5: to agree with that. Yes, it is certainly become a cult, right?
- 42:10Speaker 5: And then you look at our side and you find
- 42:13Speaker 5: the politicians that have that kind of authentic connection to
- 42:16Speaker 5: the voters. You look at the list of leadership of
- 42:18Speaker 5: the democratic party. How far down do you go before
- 42:20Speaker 5: you have somebody that can fill an arena? You have
- 42:24Speaker 5: to get to, to Bernie Sanders, you go to Barack Obama,
- 42:27Speaker 5: you go to Zoran Mamdani, you go to AOC. It
- 42:30Speaker 5: is largely on the left. That is the truth of
- 42:33Speaker 5: this moment. But it wasn't always true. Barack Obama didn't
- 42:36Speaker 5: run from the left. He ran against Washington. Bill Clinton
- 42:39Speaker 5: had that kind of momentum. He actually ran from the right.
- 42:41Speaker 5: But right now, that energy and connection is coming from
- 42:44Speaker 5: the left. And so Hassan lays out a group of
- 42:46Speaker 5: policies that are from the left. I'm not for socialized housing.
- 42:50Speaker 5: I'm for building a ton of housing.
- 42:51Speaker 6: Boo. That's OK.
- 42:54Speaker 5: But it is a void that the left is currently
- 42:56Speaker 5: filling that the leadership of the Democratic Party is not.
- 43:01Speaker 5: How does Trump get away with all this stuff? How
- 43:03Speaker 5: do we get defined as being anti-trans? The other day,
- 43:05Speaker 5: Bernie Sanders was asked about the border. And he said,
- 43:08Speaker 5: our country's got to have a border. And that pissed
- 43:10Speaker 5: off some people.
- 43:10Speaker 6: Me too.
- 43:12Speaker 5: It pissed off some people on the left. Did it
- 43:13Speaker 5: piss off Hassan?
- 43:14Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I disagree with Bernie Sanders' message around
- 43:17Speaker 3: that because obviously, yes, nation states have well-defined borders and boundaries.
- 43:22Speaker 5: But my point about it is he can say that
- 43:25Speaker 5: with confidence because everyone knows what Bernie Sanders stands for.
- 43:30Speaker 3: Yes.
- 43:30Speaker 5: And so when he is asked about trans issues, when
- 43:32Speaker 5: he is asked about issues in which Democrats are not
- 43:35Speaker 5: at 55-45 but at 30-70, whatever it may be, He
- 43:38Speaker 5: can either say, you know what? I don't care about that.
- 43:40Speaker 5: I'm not talking about that. Or he can answer in
- 43:42Speaker 5: a way that maybe riles some of the base, but
- 43:45Speaker 5: you trust him. And that, to me, is the connection between, honestly,
- 43:50Speaker 5: what seems a bit frivolous, like are we having fun,
- 43:52Speaker 5: and the actual hard work of politics. Like Zoran, you said.
- 43:55Speaker 5: was moderating in the last few weeks of the campaign.
- 43:58Speaker 5: I was glad to see that. Tim and I are
- 43:59Speaker 5: both people that pushed him hard.
- 44:00Speaker 6: I almost got a t-shirt.
- 44:02Speaker 5: I am to the left of Tim.
- 44:03Speaker 6: The ballots came out against him, and I was like, okay,
- 44:05Speaker 6: we're in business now, Z.
- 44:07Speaker 3: I mean, the reason why Zoran was moderating on, I
- 44:11Speaker 3: don't know what he was moderating on. I guess maybe
- 44:13Speaker 3: you guys were talking about the policing stuff, even though
- 44:15Speaker 3: it was, now that the election is over, we can
- 44:18Speaker 3: be honest about it. Zohra Mamdani did this brilliant thing
- 44:21Speaker 3: that got liberals to basically come to terms with a
- 44:24Speaker 3: lot of things that liberal media had considered radical, right?
- 44:28Speaker 3: Because he had a really good way of communicating these things.
- 44:33Speaker 5: Can you generously call that he did a good job
- 44:35Speaker 5: of listening, seeming curious, and being persuasive to bring more
- 44:38Speaker 5: people into his life?
- 44:40Speaker 3: Yeah, but one of the things that he did, but
- 44:42Speaker 3: he was still uncompromising. Defund the police always was about
- 44:46Speaker 3: making sure that the headcount either remained stable, but then
- 44:49Speaker 3: we actually turned around and restructured some.
- 44:52Speaker 4: Defund is the very thing.
- 44:54Speaker 5: Now you're the PR guy. That's the most political you've sounded.
- 44:58Speaker 3: But the thing is, the thing is, it has a
- 45:01Speaker 3: bad rap. No matter what you say or do. Democrats
- 45:04Speaker 3: immediately attacked it. They said this is a danger, and
- 45:06Speaker 3: it's partially because Americans really love police. It's unfortunate. I
- 45:10Speaker 3: don't know how, because they don't do their fucking jobs ever.
- 45:14Speaker 3: And I wish they would, because I'm not saying we
- 45:17Speaker 3: can live in a.
- 45:17Speaker 6: Cheering for police to never do their jobs ever?
- 45:20Speaker 4: I want to be able to call the police. I
- 45:22Speaker 4: just don't want them to think I'm a suspect when
- 45:24Speaker 4: they show up.
- 45:24Speaker 3: Exactly. Exactly.
- 45:28Speaker 9: I'm a diagnostic.
- 45:29Speaker 3: We want a presence of law and order. And unfortunately,
- 45:34Speaker 3: in many communities, police's presence is lawlessness and disorder. Now,
- 45:38Speaker 3: having said that, having said that, he wanted to not
- 45:42Speaker 3: reduce the headcount necessarily, but at least bring in social
- 45:46Speaker 3: workers to take away some of the bandwidth, some of
- 45:49Speaker 3: the workload from the police. And that was a message
- 45:52Speaker 3: that resonated with even Tim Miller, it seems. He liked it.
- 45:57Speaker 3: You want defund the police now.
- 45:59Speaker 5: No.
- 46:00Speaker 6: Can I just, just really quick, because I think, like Simone,
- 46:05Speaker 6: I'm like, you're talking, you're talking, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 46:07Speaker 6: Then you say something like, dude, bro. But here's, I think,
- 46:12Speaker 6: what Zoran did well that kind of combines part of
- 46:14Speaker 6: what you're talking about with what maybe I think, I'm
- 46:17Speaker 6: happy he didn't take your advice on part of his campaign.
- 46:19Speaker 6: But what he did well, are we having fun yet?
- 46:23Speaker 6: Zoran was happy. He was having a good fucking time.
- 46:26Speaker 6: He was a fun hang here on my pod. We
- 46:29Speaker 6: had a great time. He had a couple specific things.
- 46:32Speaker 3: You cooked him on globalized intifada.
- 46:33Speaker 6: That wasn't his best answer. That wasn't his best answer.
- 46:37Speaker 6: But we were vibing, though, and people listening to the
- 46:40Speaker 6: pod liked it. He had four issues, like you mentioned.
- 46:43Speaker 6: It's kind of hard to know what Kamala's issues were.
- 46:45Speaker 6: I think if you quizzed all of us on here,
- 46:47Speaker 6: everybody would say different things. Everybody knew what Zoran's issues were.
- 46:49Speaker 6: That was good. He was good on that. He could
- 46:52Speaker 6: go on a pod with me or somebody else. He
- 46:54Speaker 6: could have gone on Rogan for three hours and hung
- 46:56Speaker 6: out and had a good time. So he could communicate,
- 46:58Speaker 6: he's happy, he had three issues, three or four issues.
- 47:02Speaker 6: But he also just did, like making the practical decision
- 47:06Speaker 6: to say he was gonna keep the police chief rather
- 47:08Speaker 6: than doubling down on the tweets that he sent in
- 47:11Speaker 6: 2019 with smart, practical politics. Like, you can do both.
- 47:14Speaker 6: You can have clear, left-wing policy issues that people understand.
- 47:18Speaker 6: You can be positive and optimistic, and you can also
- 47:20Speaker 6: be practical. He did all of that, like, quite well, actually.
- 47:23Speaker 3: I'll give you, I agree with that. I think his
- 47:25Speaker 3: messaging was good on that, and that's precisely what I
- 47:27Speaker 3: was talking about. Like, for example, okay, especially, not in, like,
- 47:30Speaker 3: the broader population's understanding of this issue, but, like, in
- 47:34Speaker 3: mainstream media and in American politics, there's a major... division
- 47:38Speaker 3: between how the population is receiving what Israel is doing
- 47:42Speaker 3: and how our politicians are responding to it, right? And
- 47:46Speaker 3: how the media even responds to it. Anti-Zionism is like
- 47:49Speaker 3: a scary term or a scary word for a lot
- 47:52Speaker 3: of media professionals in a way that like, you know,
- 47:55Speaker 3: being anti-Israel is not necessarily scary at all for the
- 47:58Speaker 3: average person. As a matter of fact, they are very
- 48:00Speaker 3: anti-Israel now and there's polling to reflect on that reality. Now,
- 48:04Speaker 3: what Zoran did so perfectly was to communicate his position
- 48:09Speaker 3: in a way that liberals understand it. He turned around
- 48:11Speaker 3: and said, yeah, Israel has a right to exist as
- 48:13Speaker 3: a nation state that has equal rights and representation for
- 48:17Speaker 3: all people. That is identifying that Israel has a Jewish
- 48:22Speaker 3: ethnostate project, right? That is identifying that Israel has an
- 48:26Speaker 3: exterminationist policy on the Palestinians, and that's incredibly repressive policies
- 48:31Speaker 3: on the Palestinians. Is that true for Qatar too?
- 48:33Speaker 6: Does Qatar have a right to exist only if everybody
- 48:37Speaker 6: has equal rights for all religions? Is that true for Qatar?
- 48:40Speaker 3: Or just Israel? No, I don't care. I mean, yeah, okay.
- 48:43Speaker 3: No nation state has a right to exist, including Qatar.
- 48:45Speaker 3: I don't know why you're bringing up Qatar as though
- 48:47Speaker 3: I'm going to be like, oh my God, Qatar. They
- 48:48Speaker 3: pay me so much money.
- 48:49Speaker 6: I was going to say, I don't know why that's
- 48:50Speaker 6: the only country that doesn't have a right to exist
- 48:52Speaker 6: unless they have equal rights for everybody.
- 48:54Speaker 5: Because it's an ethno state.
- 48:55Speaker 6: It's an ethno state, Dan. All of the countries in
- 48:56Speaker 6: that region are an ethno state. No, if you can–
- 48:58Speaker 6: Qatar is an ethno-state. Iran is an ethno-state. Jordan is
- 49:00Speaker 6: an ethno-state. Saudi is an ethno-state. So I'm okay with
- 49:03Speaker 6: criticizing Israel. I'm just saying.
- 49:04Speaker 3: Let's– So you're okay with all of these other countries
- 49:07Speaker 3: being ethno-states then and you're not just using that as
- 49:09Speaker 3: a deflective mechanism to move the attention away from Israel,
- 49:12Speaker 3: a country that literally receives more aid and more political
- 49:17Speaker 3: support from the United States of America than anyone else.
- 49:20Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, a lot of people actually
- 49:21Speaker 3: get mad about Qatar because now the Gulf leaders have realized, oh,
- 49:24Speaker 3: if we give this guy fucking jets, he's going to
- 49:27Speaker 3: defend us too. We're oil barons. It's awesome. And that's
- 49:31Speaker 3: the reason why it almost feels like people who defend
- 49:33Speaker 3: Israel are jealous that like now other Gulf nations are
- 49:37Speaker 3: trying to do like Israel style things over there. I
- 49:41Speaker 3: love it.
- 49:41Speaker 4: Please, bring us back.
- 49:42Speaker 5: Sorry.
- 49:43Speaker 6: Anyway.
- 49:45Speaker 5: I would say this. I would say this.
- 49:46Speaker 3: He moderated the message without compromise.
- 49:48Speaker 5: I have disagreements with you on this, as you know.
- 49:52Speaker 5: I will say that Zoran had a challenge, right? And
- 49:54Speaker 5: part of his challenge was reassuring a lot of Jewish
- 49:57Speaker 5: New Yorkers that are deeply worried about some of his
- 50:00Speaker 5: past comments. And he spent a lot of time trying
- 50:03Speaker 5: to reassure those people, I think, because he recognized that
- 50:07Speaker 5: there was a liability in some of the ways in
- 50:09Speaker 5: which his previous statements and some of his positions were
- 50:13Speaker 5: seen by a lot of New Yorkers, which is where
- 50:16Speaker 5: more Jews on earth live than in any other place
- 50:18Speaker 5: than in Israel.
- 50:19Speaker 6: True.
- 50:20Speaker 5: And he sought to address it. Now, without getting into
- 50:23Speaker 5: the details of where... I think he had.
- 50:24Speaker 3: To do that because he's Muslim. I'm going to be honest.
- 50:26Speaker 3: I think it was racism, straight up. He had never
- 50:28Speaker 3: said a single thing that was even remotely anti-Semitic, and
- 50:31Speaker 3: yet the media constantly kept needling him on that.
- 50:35Speaker 5: I don't agree with that. And I don't agree with
- 50:37Speaker 5: that because it's honestly impossible to know because it's overdetermined.
- 50:39Speaker 5: Do I think that there is Islamophobia in the reaction
- 50:42Speaker 5: to Zoran? Of course there is. Do I think there's
- 50:43Speaker 5: genuine concerns about some of the things he said? Of
- 50:45Speaker 5: course there is.
- 50:45Speaker 3: Can you tell me what you think?
- 50:46Speaker 5: Hold on, you can't tease it out.
- 50:48Speaker 3: What was concerning?
- 50:48Speaker 4: Well, he got elected, so does that argument really matter?
- 50:51Speaker 4: He is now the mayor-elect.
- 50:52Speaker 9: Of New York City.
- 50:53Speaker 3: So the reason I.
- 50:55Speaker 4: So whatever he did worked.
- 50:56Speaker 5: So the reason I don't want to stay on it
- 50:58Speaker 5: is because I think there's a lot we can say
- 50:59Speaker 5: about it. But what I'm trying to say is, He
- 51:02Speaker 5: had people that were really glad to see someone who
- 51:04Speaker 5: had taken his views run for mayor and succeed. He
- 51:06Speaker 5: also had people he needed to reassure who had disagreement,
- 51:09Speaker 5: but he recognized that he was in coalition with a
- 51:11Speaker 5: lot of people who had different views, including he was
- 51:14Speaker 5: asked about Abigail Spanberger, and he was asked about Mikey Sherrill,
- 51:17Speaker 5: and he said that this is a party that has
- 51:18Speaker 5: room for everybody, not just people who look like me.
- 51:21Speaker 5: And I think that, to me, is what I.
- 51:22Speaker 3: I hate Republicans. If you can unseat a Republican, it's good.
- 51:25Speaker 3: It's good in my book. That was my anger and
- 51:27Speaker 3: resentment with like the way that the Democrats were representing
- 51:30Speaker 3: themselves during the campaign where it kind of felt like
- 51:32Speaker 3: they didn't hate Republicans too much. Whenever I hear Nancy
- 51:35Speaker 3: Pelosi say, oh, we need a strong Republican Party. I'm like, no,
- 51:38Speaker 3: we don't need a Republican Party. We want to run
- 51:40Speaker 3: this country in every seat and be so successful that
- 51:44Speaker 3: you have a weak and feckless and ineffective Republican Party
- 51:47Speaker 3: that cannot undermine the agenda that centers the working class.
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- 54:31Speaker 6: Talking about the.
- 54:31Speaker 5: Overlap of the ways in which Zoran built a big
- 54:34Speaker 5: enthusiastic base of support, talking about the ways in which
- 54:36Speaker 5: Democrats have a void of people not really knowing what
- 54:38Speaker 5: they stand for, which lets them be buffeted by issues
- 54:41Speaker 5: where there are kind of, whether it's trans issues or
- 54:44Speaker 5: other kind of issues where they feel like they're on
- 54:45Speaker 5: their heels. And there's this debate about throwing people under
- 54:48Speaker 5: the bus and What are the lessons that you think
- 54:51Speaker 5: Democrats should be taking from the success on Tuesday? You know,
- 54:56Speaker 5: Chuck Schumer was afraid to.
- 54:59Speaker 7: So I.
- 55:01Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 55:02Speaker 5: So this is now going to be the third time
- 55:04Speaker 5: Chuck Schumer has been booed at a Democratic event I've
- 55:07Speaker 5: been at in 48 hours. And.
- 55:13Speaker 6: All right, are you ready? The former Republican's going to
- 55:15Speaker 6: praise Chuck Schumer right now. The shutdown strategy's worked pretty good.
- 55:19Speaker 5: We're doing great on the shutdown.
- 55:20Speaker 6: You better give him a little claps. Shutdown strategy turned
- 55:22Speaker 6: out to work pretty good. Everybody's like, oh, Chuck.
- 55:26Speaker 3: Yeah, we had to drag him to finally do that.
- 55:29Speaker 3: He had an opportunity to do it earlier.
- 55:31Speaker 4: At least he's there. What is Jessica doing?
- 55:33Speaker 5: Simone, you were going to leave the Democratic Party in March.
- 55:36Speaker 2: Well, you know, about every six months I got to
- 55:38Speaker 2: do a gut check. Every member of the 92%, that's
- 55:41Speaker 2: how we sustain ourselves.
- 55:43Speaker 5: It's like renewing your vows.
- 55:44Speaker 4: Very much so. Very happy to be with my husband.
- 55:49Speaker 5: Chuck Schumer is being afraid of Democrats being tied to Zoran.
- 55:53Speaker 5: He is less afraid, it seems to me, about the
- 55:57Speaker 5: young people and people that support Zoran not seeing Schumer
- 56:01Speaker 5: on their side. And so, Jessica, how do Democrats confidently
- 56:06Speaker 5: assert that we are a big tent that includes everyone
- 56:09Speaker 5: from Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger and Tim Miller and
- 56:12Speaker 5: Hassan and Zoran, without ignoring the genuine and real politics
- 56:18Speaker 5: of moderates not wanting to be tagged as New York
- 56:22Speaker 5: or San Francisco socialists, which is real and we can't ignore.
- 56:24Speaker 8: Well, I think so.
- 56:27Speaker 7: I just want to say, since I've been looking and
- 56:30Speaker 7: reading Are We Having Fun Yet?, the last 10 minutes
- 56:32Speaker 7: were the opposite of fun.
- 56:34Speaker 5: And.
- 56:35Speaker 7: I think that, no, but it's important for our electoral
- 56:38Speaker 7: strategy because that fight is the opposite of fun. It
- 56:42Speaker 7: doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen. But when you are
- 56:45Speaker 7: the party that is being represented by that kind of
- 56:49Speaker 7: screaming back and forth versus saying the stuff that we
- 56:51Speaker 7: agree upon, that we're like all of the candidates that
- 56:54Speaker 7: won were affordability candidates. It sounded different out of Abigail
- 56:58Speaker 7: Spanberger's mouth and what she was talking about than out
- 57:00Speaker 7: of Zoran's mouth. But we all got to the place
- 57:02Speaker 7: where they thought the Democrats want us to have more
- 57:04Speaker 7: housing and more money in our pockets. And the Republicans
- 57:07Speaker 7: have been dicking us over.
- 57:08Speaker 8: With their policies.
- 57:10Speaker 7: And so that's where we have to be. I was
- 57:15Speaker 7: so excited by Zoran's campaign in that it finally felt
- 57:20Speaker 7: to me like there was some Obama energy back. And
- 57:23Speaker 7: as an elder millennial who spends a lot of time
- 57:27Speaker 7: with Gen Zs, I'm sad for them that they don't
- 57:29Speaker 7: know what hope and change felt like. They don't know
- 57:33Speaker 7: what it meant to watch him from the DNC convention
- 57:37Speaker 7: through when he left.
- 57:39Speaker 8: Tim's like, it was terrible.
- 57:40Speaker 4: That was fun.
- 57:42Speaker 6: He was good. I got some goosebumps every now and then.
- 57:45Speaker 3: No, I hated the DNC for sure. Like, I'll stand
- 57:48Speaker 3: on that.
- 57:49Speaker 7: Yeah, but people finding community, people combating loneliness, people having
- 57:55Speaker 7: shared purpose.
- 57:57Speaker 8: You know, getting outside, touching grass, all of that.
- 58:00Speaker 7: That's what politics means to me. And you want a
- 58:04Speaker 7: great policy agenda, of course, but you really want to
- 58:06Speaker 7: feel common cause with people. And you can have disagreements about,
- 58:10Speaker 7: you know, various issues.
- 58:13Speaker 8: But that is the path forward for me.
- 58:15Speaker 7: And that's not going to come from Chuck Schumer. I
- 58:17Speaker 7: think Chuck Schumer is, you know, past his sell-by date
- 58:21Speaker 7: in terms of leading the party this way.
- 58:24Speaker 5: Thank you.
- 58:25Speaker 7: But, you know, Chuck Schumer, I think that he was
- 58:28Speaker 7: right to recruit Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown to be
- 58:31Speaker 7: running for those Senate seats. And I hope that they're
- 58:34Speaker 7: going to win. And I feel good about that. And
- 58:36Speaker 7: I think that, you know, his Mamdani stuff is about himself.
- 58:40Speaker 7: And he's, you know, he voted in the election. He's
- 58:43Speaker 7: a Jewish New Yorker in Brooklyn there. and Mondani got
- 58:47Speaker 7: 30% of the Jewish vote, which is very low. He
- 58:49Speaker 7: has work to do with the community. I hope that
- 58:51Speaker 7: he will do that work. But I don't think focusing
- 58:54Speaker 7: on Chuck Schumer is the answer to it. It's the energy,
- 58:57Speaker 7: and that there was energy across New Jersey, and there's
- 59:00Speaker 7: energy in Virginia, and there's energy in New York, and
- 59:03Speaker 7: that's the kind of organizing. It's not, big democratic energy.
- 59:08Speaker 7: It's individual candidates that have this affordability message and are
- 59:11Speaker 7: communicating as a naval pilot, as a CIA officer, or
- 59:16Speaker 7: a community organizer.
- 59:17Speaker 5: And this can be for everybody. So Trump is also
- 59:23Speaker 5: now giving us a pretty big opportunity. On the one hand,
- 59:26Speaker 5: he's been going after comedians, and he's you know, trying
- 59:29Speaker 5: to get Kimmel canceled. He's angry about Seth Meyers every
- 59:33Speaker 5: other day. He's tearing down parts of the White House,
- 59:36Speaker 5: which was a strange choice, which I tried to walk
- 59:39Speaker 5: to see it. And they've built giant walls so that
- 59:42Speaker 5: we don't see the construction site. And you know, Trump
- 59:47Speaker 5: is not doing as many rallies as he used to do.
- 59:51Speaker 5: He's really kind of ensconced now in Mar-a-Lago and the
- 59:54Speaker 5: White House at his Great Gatsby. parties, he's tweeting out
- 59:58Speaker 5: photos of marble bathrooms. Even some of his top staff
- 1:00:04Speaker 5: now are living on military bases. They've isolated themselves in
- 1:00:07Speaker 5: a lot of ways. Do we now have the opportunity
- 1:00:11Speaker 5: to say, hey, they're the hall monitors and out of
- 1:00:15Speaker 5: touch scolds. We're the ones that actually understand what's going on.
- 1:00:20Speaker 5: And is there a way, to me, is there a
- 1:00:23Speaker 5: way to have a unifying agenda? that does what Hassan
- 1:00:27Speaker 5: is talking about, but is one that is appealing to
- 1:00:32Speaker 5: maybe not every single most centrist Democrat, but a broad
- 1:00:35Speaker 5: enough and big enough agenda that you would like, and
- 1:00:40Speaker 5: Tim would like, and Jessica would like, that we can
- 1:00:42Speaker 5: get behind.
- 1:00:43Speaker 2: I just think, I just come at this from, as
- 1:00:46Speaker 2: a former strategist, I was a comms person for most
- 1:00:49Speaker 2: of my career, and I did campaigns from, say, legislative
- 1:00:52Speaker 2: races to judges races to presidentials.
- 1:00:54Speaker 4: Yes, I worked in the White House.
- 1:00:55Speaker 2: I don't know if you'd agree with me here, Tim,
- 1:00:57Speaker 2: but I think that the wrong, the answer is not, okay,
- 1:01:02Speaker 2: just these five things and then da-da-da-da.
- 1:01:04Speaker 4: I think the answer is about the strategy.
- 1:01:06Speaker 2: And the what things you put under your strategy depends
- 1:01:09Speaker 2: on what candidate you are and where you are running.
- 1:01:12Speaker 2: because coming up in 2026, there are gubernatorial races, there
- 1:01:17Speaker 2: are state legislative races, like 2026 and frankly 2027 are
- 1:01:22Speaker 2: really about 2028.
- 1:01:23Speaker 4: And then 2030.
- 1:01:24Speaker 2: And you have to win state legislative seats. You have
- 1:01:28Speaker 2: to win the governor's races, but you also... you know,
- 1:01:31Speaker 2: you should want to take back the House and the Senate. Okay,
- 1:01:34Speaker 2: and how do you do that? It is not by saying,
- 1:01:36Speaker 2: we only do these five things right here. No, it
- 1:01:39Speaker 2: is about what is the strategy. And the strategy does
- 1:01:41Speaker 2: have to be touch grass, talk to people. You need
- 1:01:45Speaker 2: to understand your constituents in your community. So whether it's
- 1:01:48Speaker 2: Abigail Spanberger, Mikey Sherrill, or Zora Mondami, the thing, to
- 1:01:52Speaker 2: Jessica's point, that they all did well is they understood
- 1:01:55Speaker 2: what the people wanted. Affordability in Jersey and Virginia also
- 1:02:00Speaker 2: meant energy. Energy prices are way up. One of the
- 1:02:02Speaker 2: things that Mikey Sherrill said that people got behind is
- 1:02:06Speaker 2: that she wanted to declare a state of emergency on
- 1:02:07Speaker 2: energy on day one.
- 1:02:08Speaker 4: And that is what she plans to do.
- 1:02:10Speaker 2: I talked to a lot of, I talked to the
- 1:02:12Speaker 2: folks whose job it was to go out there and
- 1:02:14Speaker 2: organize African-American voters in New Jersey. And they said for
- 1:02:18Speaker 2: the black voters in New Jersey that they talked to,
- 1:02:21Speaker 2: that for them, it was bigger than Mikey Sherrill. They
- 1:02:25Speaker 2: were dealing with all of these issues that they listed
- 1:02:27Speaker 2: that had to do with affordability and whatnot. And they
- 1:02:28Speaker 2: felt like what was happening in the other states and
- 1:02:30Speaker 2: places in this country, voting for Mikey Sherrill was going
- 1:02:33Speaker 2: to keep that from happening because Jack Turtarelli was very
- 1:02:36Speaker 2: much so aligned with Donald Trump. So I think that
- 1:02:39Speaker 2: you have to just stay close to the issues and
- 1:02:41Speaker 2: the races. But the answer is not the party apparatus
- 1:02:45Speaker 2: says this is the answer is not those posse papers
- 1:02:47Speaker 2: that these people keep putting out.
- 1:02:48Speaker 4: That's not the answer.
- 1:02:49Speaker 2: From my perspective because that's not how you win races
- 1:02:53Speaker 2: by campaigning. And you go out there and you talk
- 1:02:56Speaker 2: to people and you earn their votes. You do not
- 1:02:58Speaker 2: win a race by a policy paper. And I just
- 1:03:02Speaker 2: think that there's all this focus on how can we
- 1:03:05Speaker 2: align on these five issues and not a focus on
- 1:03:08Speaker 2: what is our strategy. Is our strategy staying close to
- 1:03:11Speaker 2: the people? It's why Democrats, the shutdown fight, it is
- 1:03:14Speaker 2: terrible for people in this country who work.
- 1:03:17Speaker 4: In the federal government. That is absolutely terrible.
- 1:03:20Speaker 2: What the Democrats are doing is, at the end of
- 1:03:24Speaker 2: the day, it's going to benefit all of those people
- 1:03:26Speaker 2: because they are fighting, but they settled on a strategy.
- 1:03:28Speaker 5: Isn't this a good example, though, this shutdown, exactly what
- 1:03:32Speaker 5: we're talking about, which is Democrats chose an issue. I
- 1:03:35Speaker 5: was skeptical. I was skeptical of every choice. To be honest,
- 1:03:39Speaker 5: I didn't think there was a good option for Democrats.
- 1:03:41Speaker 5: We're not playing with the best hand. But we chose
- 1:03:43Speaker 5: health care. We chose it. And we said we're going
- 1:03:45Speaker 5: to take this to its logical conclusion. And it's worked
- 1:03:48Speaker 5: better than anyone, I think, really predicted.
- 1:03:50Speaker 4: But can I just note, they didn't just choose health care.
- 1:03:52Speaker 2: They chose a very specific thing that was happening in Congress.
- 1:03:56Speaker 2: that was tangible, that connected to people's everyday lives, that
- 1:03:59Speaker 2: they could see. And so when I say we don't
- 1:04:01Speaker 2: need to choose all the, like, that was a strategy.
- 1:04:03Speaker 5: Exactly, no, I'm agreeing with you, I'm agreeing with you.
- 1:04:05Speaker 6: Yeah, I just, we're getting, I think, I was having fun,
- 1:04:08Speaker 6: by the way. We could do a whole nother hour.
- 1:04:09Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think the disagreement, I think the disagreement
- 1:04:12Speaker 2: is necessary.
- 1:04:13Speaker 6: I also would say, I'm also like, you know, I'm
- 1:04:15Speaker 6: pretty easy to please. I mean, like, Zoran had me. Like,
- 1:04:19Speaker 6: I don't know what more you people want from me.
- 1:04:20Speaker 3: You know, I voted.
- 1:04:22Speaker 6: I voted for three straight Democratic presidents, and I was
- 1:04:24Speaker 6: gonna vote for Zoran for mayor, so I'm pretty easy
- 1:04:26Speaker 6: to please. So you can get me on board. Here's
- 1:04:29Speaker 6: what you have to do. Look at this. Some specific things.
- 1:04:33Speaker 6: Have some fucking balls. Like, run a fucking campaign. Tell
- 1:04:38Speaker 6: us what your campaign is about. Don't be a fascist.
- 1:04:42Speaker 6: And be able to talk. And be able to talk.
- 1:04:44Speaker 6: And be able to communicate to people and lift them up. And, like, it's...
- 1:04:48Speaker 6: that seems like that isn't that hard, but it's kind
- 1:04:50Speaker 6: of been for us for the last 10 years. But
- 1:04:52Speaker 6: that's how I would summarize it.
- 1:04:53Speaker 5: I do think we're coming from behind in part because
- 1:04:56Speaker 5: I think we've paid for having, like if you were
- 1:04:59Speaker 5: someone coming up in politics and you see who the
- 1:05:01Speaker 5: standard bearers of our party have been for the last
- 1:05:03Speaker 5: 10 years, you might not know exactly that Democrats used
- 1:05:06Speaker 5: to be fun and cool. So we have one minute left. Hasan,
- 1:05:12Speaker 5: final thought?
- 1:05:14Speaker 3: Yeah, we got to get rid of the gerontocracy within
- 1:05:16Speaker 3: the party. Down with the seniority structure that we have.
- 1:05:20Speaker 3: We need real whips in the party. This is something
- 1:05:24Speaker 3: that I talk to you about. This is something that
- 1:05:25Speaker 3: I talk to the Pa Johns about every single time.
- 1:05:28Speaker 3: If you have people who don't want to play ball.
- 1:05:29Speaker 4: I'm sorry, what kind of whips?
- 1:05:31Speaker 3: Like, you know it.
- 1:05:32Speaker 5: I don't.
- 1:05:33Speaker 3: I don't. Like whipping boats. I don't mean it in the...
- 1:05:37Speaker 3: Unless it's Joe Manchin, in which case, you know, maybe... No,
- 1:05:41Speaker 3: I'm kidding. Of course, I can't use spicy language here.
- 1:05:43Speaker 3: But we need to... We need to make sure... that
- 1:05:47Speaker 3: we earned the trust of the working class back. And
- 1:05:50Speaker 3: I think that they have been hyper-focused on culture war narratives.
- 1:05:54Speaker 3: And the only reason why they've been hyper-focused on culture
- 1:05:56Speaker 3: war narratives is because we have not done enough on
- 1:05:59Speaker 3: the left flank to say, no, we are with you.
- 1:06:03Speaker 3: We will fight for you. We're going to make sure
- 1:06:05Speaker 3: that we solve your economic hardships.
- 1:06:10Speaker 5: And Jessica, you're just going to go back in there
- 1:06:14Speaker 5: and you're going to fight all these people and you're
- 1:06:16Speaker 5: going to defeat them for us.
- 1:06:17Speaker 4: Yeah, no.
- 1:06:18Speaker 3: You got this, girl.
- 1:06:21Speaker 7: But I agree with all of what was just said
- 1:06:24Speaker 7: as the kind of final wrap-up stuff. But, you know,
- 1:06:26Speaker 7: this idea you need to be able to talk. You
- 1:06:28Speaker 7: need to be able to talk where I talk. You
- 1:06:32Speaker 7: don't need to be able to talk for three hours
- 1:06:34Speaker 7: with people who agree with you.
- 1:06:35Speaker 8: You know, it's easy.
- 1:06:36Speaker 7: I launched a podcast last year like everybody else. I
- 1:06:38Speaker 7: can get anyone who's going to be running for president
- 1:06:40Speaker 7: to come on my pod. They're dying to do it.
- 1:06:43Speaker 7: The tougher conversations are the ones that we need to
- 1:06:46Speaker 7: be having because that's how you can get in people's
- 1:06:48Speaker 7: faces and say, that isn't what my party stands for.
- 1:06:51Speaker 7: We're not a communist party. We're not a socialist party.
- 1:06:55Speaker 7: We're a big tent party.
- 1:06:56Speaker 4: Sorry.
- 1:06:57Speaker 5: We're a big tent that includes some socialists. Yeah.
- 1:07:00Speaker 7: A democratic socialist is not a socialist. I mean, they
- 1:07:03Speaker 7: use these words interchangeably.
- 1:07:05Speaker 6: Hassan was pro-USSR this week.
- 1:07:07Speaker 5: We're wrapping it up. We're ending on a high note.
- 1:07:09Speaker 4: Are we having fun?
- 1:07:10Speaker 5: Are we having fun? All right. And I do think,
- 1:07:14Speaker 5: by the way, like, I hear... Look, what's great about
- 1:07:18Speaker 5: being part of a big coalition is being comfortable with
- 1:07:21Speaker 5: the moments of tension and discomfort and disagreement because Republicans can't...
- 1:07:25Speaker 5: You're right, they're... They've been a little less scoldy. But
- 1:07:29Speaker 5: they also are running to squash dissent because they're not
- 1:07:33Speaker 5: comfortable with discomfort. They're trying to tell people that politics
- 1:07:36Speaker 5: is easy and there's never any time where you need
- 1:07:38Speaker 5: to feel conflicted or bad or that anything is hard.
- 1:07:40Speaker 5: That's a kind of part of the appeal of fascism.
- 1:07:43Speaker 5: Democratic politics can be tough. Democracy can be tough. But
- 1:07:45Speaker 5: we are part of a big coalition. And I just
- 1:07:48Speaker 5: think we can all have fun together.
- 1:07:49Speaker 8: All right.
- 1:07:50Speaker 4: Thanks, everybody.
- 1:07:52Speaker 5: Thanks for coming to this. And thank you to Jessica Tarlow,
- 1:07:55Speaker 5: Tim Miller, Hasan Piker, and Simone Sanders.
- 1:08:11Speaker 12: Joining us live here at CrookedCon, he's one of the
- 1:08:13Speaker 12: Democratic Party's loudest voices calling out the dangers of the
- 1:08:18Speaker 12: Trump administration.
- 1:08:20Speaker 9: Welcome, Senator Chris Murphy.
- 1:08:22Speaker 6: Hey. Thanks, Dan.
- 1:08:23Speaker 3: Hey, everybody.
- 1:08:26Speaker 12: Before we get started, I would note the senator has
- 1:08:28Speaker 12: a vote, so we're going to probably have to wrap
- 1:08:29Speaker 12: this up a little about five minutes early because we
- 1:08:31Speaker 12: can't let him miss the vote. But we're going to
- 1:08:32Speaker 12: be here for as long as we possibly can.
- 1:08:35Speaker 5: All right.
- 1:08:35Speaker 12: Let's start with the good stuff.
- 1:08:37Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 1:08:38Speaker 12: So the mood, as you can tell in this room,
- 1:08:40Speaker 12: is much better because of what happened on Tuesday. How
- 1:08:42Speaker 12: are you interpreting those results?
- 1:08:45Speaker 9: Well, democracy is, for the time being, still alive and well.
- 1:08:49Speaker 5: And.
- 1:08:51Speaker 9: Listen, obviously the.
- 1:08:53Speaker 11: Election on Tuesday was first and foremost a referendum on
- 1:08:56Speaker 11: Trump's corruption, his chaos. It was an important statement in
- 1:09:02Speaker 11: every corner of the country that the American public are
- 1:09:06Speaker 11: not ready to turn our government over to a would-be dictator.
- 1:09:11Speaker 11: But there's another message, I think, that comes from Tuesday
- 1:09:14Speaker 11: as well, and it's one that I hope Democrats are
- 1:09:17Speaker 11: able to learn, which is that people want an opposition
- 1:09:21Speaker 11: party that is willing to stand up and fight in
- 1:09:23Speaker 11: this country. It is not coincidental that we got that
- 1:09:30Speaker 11: big victory at the first moment when the Democratic Party
- 1:09:33Speaker 11: is showing real resolve, is showing a willingness to stand
- 1:09:38Speaker 11: up to this guy. And so as I've said over
- 1:09:41Speaker 11: the last few days, it's important for us to hear
- 1:09:44Speaker 11: the voters and continue the fight that we're engaged in
- 1:09:48Speaker 11: right now. So it was, I think, a really important moment.
- 1:09:51Speaker 11: I think the result of Tuesday will be that a
- 1:09:54Speaker 11: lot of folks who maybe hadn't been thinking of sitting
- 1:09:56Speaker 11: on the sidelines, some of the corporate elites, the higher
- 1:09:59Speaker 11: education elites, the legal elites who were maybe thinking that
- 1:10:02Speaker 11: Trump had already won this fight will now realize that
- 1:10:05Speaker 11: the fight is still on. And I think it ends
- 1:10:08Speaker 11: up giving confidence to a lot of people and a
- 1:10:10Speaker 11: lot of institutional players all around the country to maybe
- 1:10:14Speaker 11: reenter the fight to save democratic norms and the foundation
- 1:10:18Speaker 11: of our democracy.
- 1:10:20Speaker 12: Obviously, huge wins, but these wins are mostly in bluish states, right?
- 1:10:25Speaker 12: New Jersey, Virginia, two states, Kamala Harris won, California. I mean,
- 1:10:28Speaker 12: Georgia is obviously the exception. Do you worry that there's
- 1:10:30Speaker 12: maybe a danger of over-reading this, right? To think maybe
- 1:10:34Speaker 12: it kind of as Democrats did after 2022, that the
- 1:10:38Speaker 12: voters are with us. I mean, like you can ignore
- 1:10:39Speaker 12: some of the hard questions that still exist after 2024.
- 1:10:43Speaker 9: I think that's exactly right.
- 1:10:45Speaker 11: I think it's interesting that the party has not been able,
- 1:10:51Speaker 11: I think thus far, to find the oxygen to do
- 1:10:55Speaker 11: a real autopsy as to how we got to this point.
- 1:10:59Speaker 11: And that's understandable at some level because we've had to
- 1:11:01Speaker 11: be engaged in this, I mean, just epic scale fight
- 1:11:06Speaker 11: to save the country. But the reality is, if you
- 1:11:09Speaker 11: look at the United States Senate the best right now
- 1:11:13Speaker 11: that Senate Democrats can do if we run.
- 1:11:15Speaker 9: The table is 52 seats.
- 1:11:18Speaker 11: Because right now, for the time being, we're not competitive
- 1:11:21Speaker 11: in a lot of states that just a decade ago
- 1:11:23Speaker 11: we were competitive in. And so we do have to
- 1:11:26Speaker 11: wrestle with why we have lost a lot of low-income voters,
- 1:11:30Speaker 11: why rural areas have abandoned Democrats. And Trump will make
- 1:11:35Speaker 11: us more electable in some of those places, but it
- 1:11:39Speaker 11: probably doesn't get us over the hump in a place
- 1:11:42Speaker 11: like Missouri or Florida, where just two seconds ago we
- 1:11:46Speaker 11: were running candidates that won. So I am certainly worried
- 1:11:50Speaker 11: about the fact that the party has only 12 months
- 1:11:54Speaker 11: to go before the midterm election and maybe hasn't done
- 1:11:58Speaker 11: enough of that reckoning with what went wrong that will
- 1:12:01Speaker 11: allow us to once again be a national party able
- 1:12:04Speaker 11: to win everywhere.
- 1:12:05Speaker 12: Not that I expect you to have all the answers here,
- 1:12:07Speaker 12: but one of the reasons we're all gathered here together
- 1:12:08Speaker 12: is to try to figure out questions like this. Do
- 1:12:10Speaker 12: you have some thoughts on how Democrats get back to
- 1:12:13Speaker 12: a world where we can win the Ohio's, the Iowa's,
- 1:12:15Speaker 12: the Montana's, or even some states in the South, some
- 1:12:18Speaker 12: things we should do differently, different kind of candidates we
- 1:12:20Speaker 12: should be open to?
- 1:12:20Speaker 9: Yeah, I do.
- 1:12:23Speaker 11: And I'll give you sort of three simple ideas. First,
- 1:12:28Speaker 11: I just do believe that it's not a mistake that
- 1:12:31Speaker 11: the only person in our party that draws crowds of 50,000, 60,000, 70,000
- 1:12:38Speaker 11: is Bernie Sanders and AOC. I just think you have
- 1:12:43Speaker 11: to tell a story, and you obviously are better at
- 1:12:46Speaker 11: this than anybody, but you have to tell a story,
- 1:12:47Speaker 11: a narrative.
- 1:12:49Speaker 3: And that narrative.
- 1:12:50Speaker 11: Has to not only tell you how we're gonna make
- 1:12:53Speaker 11: your lives better, but it has to tell people who's
- 1:12:55Speaker 11: screwing them. And there's a true story out there about
- 1:12:58Speaker 11: the corporate class, the billionaire class, consolidated economic power making
- 1:13:03Speaker 11: people's lives miserable in this country. And the Democratic Party
- 1:13:08Speaker 11: has become this sort of technocratic party that only talks
- 1:13:11Speaker 11: about solutions, solutions that are largely about just rearranging the
- 1:13:15Speaker 11: pieces on the existing marketplace playing field. We've gotta be
- 1:13:19Speaker 11: a party that talks about who has too much power
- 1:13:22Speaker 11: and exactly how we are going to radically and immediately
- 1:13:26Speaker 11: shift power from people who have too much of it
- 1:13:29Speaker 11: to people who have not enough of it. The second
- 1:13:32Speaker 11: thing we have to do, has become a big tent
- 1:13:35Speaker 11: party again. And I know this is a tough conversation
- 1:13:38Speaker 11: for our party, but if it were up to me,
- 1:13:40Speaker 11: we would be a party with two big tent poles,
- 1:13:43Speaker 11: a tent pole that talks about unrigging our economy and
- 1:13:47Speaker 11: a tent pole that talks about unrigging our democracy, right?
- 1:13:51Speaker 11: Getting big money, anonymous money, billionaire money out of politics,
- 1:13:58Speaker 11: And by the way, admitting that you have to do
- 1:14:01Speaker 11: big things to do that, like if it takes a
- 1:14:04Speaker 11: constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics, we
- 1:14:06Speaker 11: should be refer a constitutional.
- 1:14:07Speaker 9: Amendment to get big money out of politics. But Dan, that.
- 1:14:12Speaker 11: Means that you are letting people into the tent, perhaps
- 1:14:17Speaker 11: nominating candidates or being present in areas where you know,
- 1:14:22Speaker 11: folks might not be with us on all of the
- 1:14:24Speaker 11: social and cultural issues, might not even not be with
- 1:14:26Speaker 11: us on, you know, issues that I care deeply about
- 1:14:28Speaker 11: like guns, but I just think we have a better
- 1:14:31Speaker 11: chance of convincing them if they step inside because they
- 1:14:34Speaker 11: align with us on a higher minimum wage or on
- 1:14:37Speaker 11: campaign finance reform. So I just think we have to
- 1:14:40Speaker 11: become that Big Ten party again. And then the last
- 1:14:42Speaker 11: suggestion I'd have is just how we spend our money.
- 1:14:45Speaker 11: We've been corrupted by a consultant class in the Democratic
- 1:14:48Speaker 11: Party that tells us to spend money only on 30-second
- 1:14:53Speaker 11: TV ads and digital ads. The Republican Party goes out
- 1:14:56Speaker 11: and builds a permanent messaging and mobilization infrastructure. We talk
- 1:15:00Speaker 11: about that all the time, but we end up spending
- 1:15:02Speaker 11: almost all of our money on ads that disappear as
- 1:15:06Speaker 11: soon as the last election is over. And so if
- 1:15:08Speaker 11: you wanna win in this country as a Democratic Party,
- 1:15:12Speaker 11: be a big tent, be a pugilistically populist party, and
- 1:15:16Speaker 11: spend money on permanent messaging and mobilization infrastructure.
- 1:15:21Speaker 12: Speaking of populism, what do you make of Zoran Mamdani's
- 1:15:26Speaker 12: win in New York City and some of the discomfort
- 1:15:29Speaker 12: that some Democrats, including some of the Democratic leadership, have
- 1:15:32Speaker 12: had with that sort of candidate?
- 1:15:35Speaker 11: You know, it was it almost got to the point
- 1:15:37Speaker 11: of being hilarious. You look at Mamdani's interviews in the
- 1:15:40Speaker 11: final days of the campaign and you couldn't ask him
- 1:15:43Speaker 11: a question. that he didn't answer by talking about the
- 1:15:46Speaker 11: cost of living in New York, right? I mean, he
- 1:15:49Speaker 11: was so laser-like focused on cost. There was a survey
- 1:15:54Speaker 11: done of Democratic social media posts, maybe two or three
- 1:15:57Speaker 11: years ago, and it showed the percentage of our social
- 1:16:00Speaker 11: media communications that talk about the economy You know what
- 1:16:04Speaker 11: the percentage was?
- 1:16:04Speaker 6: 10%.
- 1:16:05Speaker 11: One out of 10 messages from the Democratic Party is
- 1:16:09Speaker 11: about economics. Now, we were talking about a lot of
- 1:16:12Speaker 11: other stuff that's really important, but when you only spend
- 1:16:14Speaker 11: 10% of your time talking about economics, people start to
- 1:16:17Speaker 11: take the hint that maybe you are not gonna fight
- 1:16:20Speaker 11: as hard as you say you're gonna fight when you
- 1:16:22Speaker 11: get into office. So that relentless focus on the economy. Second,
- 1:16:27Speaker 11: just being authentic and not being worried about making mistakes.
- 1:16:31Speaker 11: in your communication, not vetting every single thing you say
- 1:16:34Speaker 11: through communications professionals. And then a realization that if you don't, listen,
- 1:16:39Speaker 11: I don't agree with Zoran on everything, but you are
- 1:16:43Speaker 11: actually perceived as illegitimate to voters if all of your
- 1:16:48Speaker 11: views are inside the 40-yard lines. If you don't have
- 1:16:52Speaker 11: one or two things that a voter vehemently disagrees with
- 1:16:56Speaker 11: you on, they get suspicious of you. And so just
- 1:16:59Speaker 11: being true to what you— and also they have a bullshit
- 1:17:03Speaker 11: sensitivity that voters probably didn't have as acutely decades ago.
- 1:17:09Speaker 11: And so if you aren't authentic, if you don't have
- 1:17:11Speaker 11: a couple views that are a little outside of the mainstream,
- 1:17:14Speaker 11: you are actually not perceived as real and thus not
- 1:17:18Speaker 11: electable as a Democrat in this country today.
- 1:17:21Speaker 12: Let's talk about the shutdown, right? We are— I don't
- 1:17:24Speaker 12: even know what day we're on now, but it's the
- 1:17:26Speaker 12: longest shutdown in history. Some of the people who are
- 1:17:28Speaker 12: here today are people who would be at work in
- 1:17:30Speaker 12: the federal government somewhere were it not for the shutdown.
- 1:17:33Speaker 12: There's been all this talk right before the election, even
- 1:17:36Speaker 12: after the election, about some group of Senate Democrats who
- 1:17:39Speaker 12: are negotiating with or open to negotiating with the Republicans
- 1:17:42Speaker 12: around some sort of deal to open the government exchange
- 1:17:46Speaker 12: for a vote on the Obamacare subsidies. What is the
- 1:17:51Speaker 12: status of those negotiations, you can tell us? What do
- 1:17:54Speaker 12: you think Democrats should need in exchange to end the shutdown?
- 1:17:58Speaker 9: Well, I mean, first, let me say this.
- 1:18:00Speaker 11: In this audience, I know are people that, A, right
- 1:18:03Speaker 11: now have been furloughed, have been without a paycheck for
- 1:18:07Speaker 11: over a month. People in this audience who have been
- 1:18:09Speaker 11: illegally fired from their jobs. First and foremost, let me
- 1:18:12Speaker 11: just say from the bottom of my heart, thank you
- 1:18:14Speaker 11: for what you have done for this country. Thank you
- 1:18:15Speaker 11: for the sacrifice that you have made. So I went
- 1:18:24Speaker 11: down to South Florida on Monday with Elizabeth Warren and
- 1:18:28Speaker 11: Tina Smith. And we went down there because in South
- 1:18:31Speaker 11: Florida is the highest concentration of people who have ACA
- 1:18:34Speaker 11: plans in some parts of South Florida, 25% of residents
- 1:18:40Speaker 11: have an ACA plan. And if these premium increases go
- 1:18:44Speaker 11: into effect and you're talking about premiums doubling or tripling
- 1:18:48Speaker 11: for folks across the country, but particularly in this area,
- 1:18:51Speaker 11: where we have a high concentration, we're talking about a
- 1:18:55Speaker 11: meltdown of the healthcare system. And so, yes, there is
- 1:18:58Speaker 11: deep pain in a shutdown. People are not getting paid.
- 1:19:01Speaker 11: Food stamp benefits are at risk. Obviously, travel gets interrupted.
- 1:19:06Speaker 11: But if we don't stop these premium increases from going
- 1:19:10Speaker 11: into effect, there is life and death pain as well.
- 1:19:13Speaker 11: And so it is important for my colleagues to realize
- 1:19:15Speaker 11: that there is no good choice here. The Republicans have
- 1:19:18Speaker 11: put us in an impossible position. Listen, for me, coming
- 1:19:23Speaker 11: off of Tuesday, when the people of this country told
- 1:19:27Speaker 11: Democrats to fight, it would be heartbreaking for Democrats to
- 1:19:32Speaker 11: make an immediate decision to stop fighting.
- 1:19:40Speaker 3: So I.
- 1:19:43Speaker 12: Guess the question is, how does it end, right? Like
- 1:19:46Speaker 12: there is, you know, a Senate vote without a guarantee
- 1:19:50Speaker 12: of a House vote is, that's fake, right? Like you're
- 1:19:53Speaker 12: not actually solving, you're getting something, but it's really, but
- 1:19:57Speaker 12: the people who are, premiums are going up, are getting nothing.
- 1:20:00Speaker 12: And I just, like, I really feel like you guys
- 1:20:04Speaker 12: are in an impossible position of you're negotiating with people
- 1:20:07Speaker 12: or you're standing off against people who do not seem
- 1:20:11Speaker 12: to care about hurting their own voters. You're in Florida,
- 1:20:15Speaker 12: which has the highest percentage of people on plans, people using,
- 1:20:19Speaker 12: get the subsidies. The subsidies largely benefit people in states
- 1:20:22Speaker 12: that did not expand Medicaid, which are red states. So
- 1:20:27Speaker 12: how do you sort of think about how to bring
- 1:20:30Speaker 12: this thing to a close when there's no good faith
- 1:20:33Speaker 12: partner to negotiate with here?
- 1:20:35Speaker 11: Yeah, I think it's charitable to suggest that they don't
- 1:20:38Speaker 11: care hurting their voters they actually do seem to care
- 1:20:43Speaker 11: about hurting their voters in that they are deliberately trying
- 1:20:46Speaker 11: to make the shutdown as painful as possible these are
- 1:20:50Speaker 11: these are nihilists right that were that we're dealing with
- 1:20:53Speaker 11: which which makes it hard I mean listen I think
- 1:20:56Speaker 11: you have to listen to Donald Trump what did he
- 1:20:58Speaker 11: say on Tuesday morning he said that the shutdown is
- 1:21:02Speaker 11: hurting Republicans and we should realize that most Americans have
- 1:21:07Speaker 11: not actually gone on to the website to see what
- 1:21:10Speaker 11: their new premium increase is. Many of the rates were
- 1:21:12Speaker 11: just posted a few days ago. We should understand that
- 1:21:18Speaker 11: Donald Trump's pollsters are telling their party's leaders that they
- 1:21:23Speaker 11: are going to lose the midterms. They're gonna lose both
- 1:21:26Speaker 11: the House and the Senate if they don't stop these
- 1:21:28Speaker 11: premium increases from going into effect. And so I just
- 1:21:32Speaker 11: think we have to have faith that there are a
- 1:21:35Speaker 11: lot of reasons why the Republicans, as this nightmare of
- 1:21:43Speaker 11: premium increases starts to become more real, are going to
- 1:21:46Speaker 11: be willing to sit down and cut a deal. We
- 1:21:50Speaker 11: made an offer just an hour ago to Republicans in
- 1:21:53Speaker 11: which we said, listen, we will vote to end the
- 1:21:56Speaker 11: shutdown today for a simple one-year term. extension of these premiums. Previously,
- 1:22:02Speaker 11: we've been talking about two or three years. We made
- 1:22:04Speaker 11: a really, really simple offer here. I think as the
- 1:22:06Speaker 11: days go on, it is going to be much harder
- 1:22:09Speaker 11: for them to say, no, we can be reasonable. We
- 1:22:12Speaker 11: were reasonable in the offer we made today, but to
- 1:22:15Speaker 11: fold at this point, I think ultimately, A, doesn't help
- 1:22:20Speaker 11: the people we're trying to help in our healthcare system,
- 1:22:23Speaker 11: but also empowers Trump to act more brazenly and more
- 1:22:28Speaker 11: illegally in knowing that the Democratic Party really in the
- 1:22:32Speaker 11: end doesn't have the stuff necessary to stand up to him.
- 1:22:36Speaker 11: So I think if we don't get something for the
- 1:22:39Speaker 11: people we say we have been fighting for, not only
- 1:22:42Speaker 11: is there an immediate impact on them, but there is
- 1:22:44Speaker 11: potential more pain coming from an emboldened President Trump.
- 1:22:49Speaker 12: You know, this is the point in a typical election
- 1:22:53Speaker 12: cycle where the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader
- 1:22:58Speaker 12: become laser focused on nothing more than keeping their jobs
- 1:23:01Speaker 12: in the majority. Like what just maybe, maybe there's no answers,
- 1:23:05Speaker 12: but help me understand why when Trump says it's hurting
- 1:23:08Speaker 12: the shutdown, it's hurting them, the shutdown's hurting them. Trump's
- 1:23:11Speaker 12: pollster said it would be a 12 point shift in
- 1:23:15Speaker 12: the generic ballot if they let these things expire. And
- 1:23:17Speaker 12: he said that before the shutdown, like what is like,
- 1:23:21Speaker 12: what are they doing? I don't really understand like the
- 1:23:22Speaker 12: thinking here. It makes like, There's just no logic to it.
- 1:23:26Speaker 9: You're asking me to try to explain what.
- 1:23:29Speaker 12: Republicans are thinking. You go to the gym with these people.
- 1:23:30Speaker 12: I mean, you see them in the hallway. You talk
- 1:23:33Speaker 12: to more Republicans than these guys do, I think.
- 1:23:35Speaker 6: Certainly than I do.
- 1:23:36Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, they don't have any independent thought process.
- 1:23:41Speaker 11: They are employees, right?
- 1:23:43Speaker 3: They are.
- 1:23:44Speaker 11: They just take direction from Donald Trump. Now, he did
- 1:23:48Speaker 11: give him a direction on Tuesday morning in the Senate.
- 1:23:50Speaker 11: He said, go and change the rules immediately. of the Senate,
- 1:23:54Speaker 11: but Senate Republicans sort of scratched their head because they
- 1:23:58Speaker 11: just got wiped out on Tuesday. They are now increasingly
- 1:24:01Speaker 11: likely to lose the Senate next November, and they thought
- 1:24:05Speaker 11: to themselves, do I really want to change the rules
- 1:24:08Speaker 11: so that when Democrats take control, we can very easily
- 1:24:12Speaker 11: pass into law Roe versus Wade and universal background checks
- 1:24:17Speaker 11: and an extension of the voting.
- 1:24:18Speaker 9: Rights law with 50 votes.
- 1:24:21Speaker 11: So maybe there are very limited moments when they choose
- 1:24:25Speaker 11: not to follow his instructions, but no, by and large,
- 1:24:29Speaker 11: even if he is telling them to take a barrel
- 1:24:33Speaker 11: over Niagara Falls, which is what they're kind of doing
- 1:24:36Speaker 11: right now politically, They are going to follow instructions like
- 1:24:39Speaker 11: good cult members do.
- 1:24:42Speaker 5: It was very funny.
- 1:24:43Speaker 12: I watched the video, the very strange video that Trump
- 1:24:45Speaker 12: put out arguing for eliminating the filibuster. And it sounded
- 1:24:50Speaker 12: to me almost exactly like a bizarre version of a
- 1:24:52Speaker 12: 2021 Potsdamerica episode. We were selling abolished filibuster shirts back
- 1:24:57Speaker 12: in those days when you guys tried to get the
- 1:24:59Speaker 12: voting rights bill passed. Let's talk about a little general
- 1:25:02Speaker 12: strategy here, right? Like, one of the things that you
- 1:25:04Speaker 12: have become very known for since Trump took office is, like,
- 1:25:08Speaker 12: just being a very vocal spokesperson who's sort of, like,
- 1:25:11Speaker 12: calling it as it is, not mincing words around the
- 1:25:14Speaker 12: dangers to democracy, to our freedoms, to Trump becoming authoritarian. Now,
- 1:25:21Speaker 12: at the same time, you know, you have Mondani winning
- 1:25:23Speaker 12: this race on affordability. There's this report that's hiding the
- 1:25:26Speaker 12: win that came out last week that's, like, Democrats have
- 1:25:28Speaker 12: to talk about economic issues, that's.
- 1:25:32Speaker 6: What everyone cares about.
- 1:25:33Speaker 12: How do you sort of think about the balance of
- 1:25:36Speaker 12: these obviously critical assaults on democracy that we know are
- 1:25:41Speaker 12: of great interest to the people in this room, but
- 1:25:43Speaker 12: maybe not to Swinkler? How do you sort of think
- 1:25:44Speaker 12: about your messaging?
- 1:25:46Speaker 11: Yeah, so I don't think of it as two different stories.
- 1:25:48Speaker 11: I think of it as the same story. It's not
- 1:25:51Speaker 11: a story about his assault on costs and making people's
- 1:25:54Speaker 11: economic lives more miserable and his assault on democracy, it's
- 1:25:59Speaker 11: the same story in this sense. What is his goal
- 1:26:02Speaker 11: as president? His goal as president is to turn the
- 1:26:04Speaker 11: federal government into a vehicle to enrich himself and his
- 1:26:08Speaker 11: billionaire friends and to steal from people, to raise your
- 1:26:11Speaker 11: costs in order to reserve enough money so that he
- 1:26:15Speaker 11: can give it all to his pals. That's deeply unpopular.
- 1:26:18Speaker 11: Nobody wants that, right? The big, beautiful bills, the biggest
- 1:26:21Speaker 11: transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class
- 1:26:22Speaker 11: to the rich in the history of the country, it's
- 1:26:25Speaker 11: wildly unpopular. So how do you get away with just
- 1:26:28Speaker 11: stealing from regular people? Well, you destroy the rule of law.
- 1:26:31Speaker 11: You destroy the ability of people to dissent, to protest,
- 1:26:34Speaker 11: and to stand up and object in elections. And so, yes,
- 1:26:37Speaker 11: he is trying to turn our government into a kleptocratic
- 1:26:40Speaker 11: oligarchy in which he hurts us to help he and
- 1:26:44Speaker 11: his Mar-a-Lago cronies. The only way he gets away with
- 1:26:48Speaker 11: that is to destroy the democracy. So, and I just
- 1:26:52Speaker 11: explained that in you know, 60 seconds, but you can
- 1:26:55Speaker 11: actually explain that in 20 seconds. And so I think
- 1:26:57Speaker 11: as long as we tell those two twin stories together,
- 1:27:01Speaker 11: people will get it. And I also do think that
- 1:27:03Speaker 11: we maybe have overlearned our lesson a little bit from 2024.
- 1:27:07Speaker 3: Okay.
- 1:27:08Speaker 6: It is true.
- 1:27:08Speaker 11: Like our democracy message did not land in 2024 in
- 1:27:11Speaker 11: large part because people were like, well, why do I
- 1:27:14Speaker 11: want to save this version of democracy?
- 1:27:15Speaker 5: Right?
- 1:27:16Speaker 11: Like this version of democracy sucks. It just works for
- 1:27:18Speaker 11: the elites and the billionaire class. But that doesn't mean
- 1:27:21Speaker 11: that people aren't plugged in right now to the actual threat.
- 1:27:24Speaker 11: And the polling tells you that 80% of the American
- 1:27:27Speaker 11: public thinks that we are in a political crisis right now,
- 1:27:30Speaker 11: that more than half of Americans believe that their right
- 1:27:33Speaker 11: to free speech is at risk. So I think you
- 1:27:36Speaker 11: tell it together, and I think that you have confidence
- 1:27:38Speaker 11: that the democracy part of the story actually does resonate
- 1:27:41Speaker 11: and turn people out in a way that maybe it
- 1:27:44Speaker 11: didn't a year ago, that's how I think about it.
- 1:27:46Speaker 9: It's interesting.
- 1:27:48Speaker 12: I think that you hit earlier when you were talking
- 1:27:51Speaker 12: about how we reach these voters in these red states,
- 1:27:52Speaker 12: what I think is the key solution to this challenge,
- 1:27:55Speaker 12: which is we need a reform agenda because we have
- 1:27:59Speaker 12: to be the, what happened in the Biden era is
- 1:28:01Speaker 12: we became the party that was defending democracy as is.
- 1:28:05Speaker 12: We were the status quo people, but if we can
- 1:28:07Speaker 12: be the party that's trying to reform democracy, to get
- 1:28:10Speaker 12: the corporate power out, get the money out, like that's
- 1:28:12Speaker 12: a different message And it gives people a sense that
- 1:28:15Speaker 12: we're fighting for something better than we currently have.
- 1:28:17Speaker 11: So when I entered politics 20, 30 years ago, so
- 1:28:24Speaker 11: campaign finance reform, right? Getting, you know, big corrupt money
- 1:28:29Speaker 11: out of politics was like a top three or four
- 1:28:31Speaker 11: issue for Democrats. And something happened over the last 20
- 1:28:35Speaker 11: years in which it barely cracked the top 10. Some
- 1:28:39Speaker 11: of it is that our democracy reform agenda migrated from
- 1:28:43Speaker 11: big money to voting rights. And that's for good reason,
- 1:28:46Speaker 11: because they were and still are trying to stop people
- 1:28:50Speaker 11: from voting.
- 1:28:51Speaker 12: But it is also- They were going to ban dark
- 1:28:52Speaker 12: money in the John Lewis bill last year.
- 1:28:54Speaker 9: Or Right, but it wasn't necessarily what we led with.
- 1:28:59Speaker 11: It is just true, though, that Trump did get elected
- 1:29:02Speaker 11: on his promise to drain the swamp. People do want
- 1:29:04Speaker 11: to vote for a party that they think is going
- 1:29:05Speaker 11: to clean up Washington. Right now, they don't really believe
- 1:29:08Speaker 11: that we're much less corrupt than they are, in part
- 1:29:10Speaker 11: because they don't hear us talking every single day about
- 1:29:14Speaker 11: that reform agenda. And so that's why I get back
- 1:29:16Speaker 11: to my prescription policy. my amateur prescription for the party,
- 1:29:20Speaker 11: which is make the tent pole, make 75% of what
- 1:29:25Speaker 11: you talk about, unrigging the economy, big ideas to put
- 1:29:30Speaker 11: money in people's pockets, simple ideas like Mom Domini had,
- 1:29:34Speaker 11: and talk all the time about what you're going to
- 1:29:38Speaker 11: do to unrig the democracy and make the influential have
- 1:29:42Speaker 11: less power and regular people have more power.
- 1:29:44Speaker 12: One last quick question here, because we know we got
- 1:29:46Speaker 12: to get you this vote. How are, you know, one
- 1:29:50Speaker 12: of the great concerns people in this audience is that
- 1:29:52Speaker 12: the Republicans are going to do something to try to
- 1:29:53Speaker 12: steal the 2026 elections. How are you thinking about that problem?
- 1:29:58Speaker 12: Anything you guys are doing to get ahead of it?
- 1:30:00Speaker 11: Yeah, I think, you know, continuing to invest in good
- 1:30:04Speaker 11: local and state leaders, which is why these elections were
- 1:30:07Speaker 11: so critical. We made a smart play, which was to
- 1:30:10Speaker 11: put a lot of focus and investment on governors and
- 1:30:13Speaker 11: mayors who are the actual people who administer elections. And
- 1:30:17Speaker 11: so I think we can have some confidence that Right now,
- 1:30:20Speaker 11: in the states that are going to matter, we have
- 1:30:22Speaker 11: people who are going to protect against these efforts to
- 1:30:26Speaker 11: try to corrupt elections. I think we have to be
- 1:30:30Speaker 11: in a real active public and private conversation with social
- 1:30:33Speaker 11: media companies that right now are being corrupted by Donald
- 1:30:36Speaker 11: Trump to essentially allow for election distortion and interference to
- 1:30:41Speaker 11: exist on their platforms, that if they do that, and
- 1:30:44Speaker 11: Donald Trump doesn't win, that they should keep their records
- 1:30:48Speaker 11: and that there's gonna be a price to be paid
- 1:30:50Speaker 11: for essentially helping Donald Trump try to engage in election intimidation.
- 1:30:57Speaker 11: And then lastly, just keep on turning out, right? There's
- 1:31:02Speaker 11: this political science that says if 3% of a population
- 1:31:07Speaker 11: is engaged in regular protest, It just becomes this secret
- 1:31:12Speaker 11: sauce which puts enough sand in the gears to protect
- 1:31:16Speaker 11: your democracy from destruction. The institutional players who would have
- 1:31:21Speaker 11: to fold to essentially steal an election are just a
- 1:31:25Speaker 11: little bit less likely to do that. And that includes
- 1:31:27Speaker 11: the Supreme Court, right, who are full of politicians who
- 1:31:31Speaker 11: want to do Trump's bidding but don't want to get
- 1:31:33Speaker 11: too far outside of the political mainstream. They are all
- 1:31:37Speaker 11: watching you. They are all watching whether No Kings is
- 1:31:40Speaker 11: just a once a year phenomenon or if it becomes
- 1:31:42Speaker 11: a once a month phenomenon. And so the amount of
- 1:31:46Speaker 11: buying you need to steal an election is pretty large
- 1:31:49Speaker 11: and public protest at scale is probably the key ingredient
- 1:31:54Speaker 11: to keep the folks we need to stay straight from
- 1:31:58Speaker 11: being corrupted when Donald Trump asks. So I wish it
- 1:32:02Speaker 11: were more simple than that, but there's nothing more important
- 1:32:06Speaker 11: than your ability to be present and to organize your
- 1:32:09Speaker 11: friends and neighbors in being present during this moment.
- 1:32:13Speaker 12: That is a great place to end it. Please give
- 1:32:15Speaker 12: it up for Senator Chris Murphy. Senator Murphy, thanks for
- 1:32:17Speaker 12: being here.
- 1:32:18Speaker 6: Thanks, guys.
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