Speaker 1: What are we recording? Yeah, yeah, yeah, what the episode started? Now,
Speaker 1: I was, I was, I was going to say something
Speaker 1: something to do with Texas. But to be honest, you know, why,
Speaker 1: why why do we do this? Why do we let ourselves,
Speaker 1: you know, get famous for for for saying a particular
Speaker 1: bit and then just keep repeating it over and over again.
Speaker 1: Are we so creatively bankrupt that there's there's nothing else
Speaker 1: we can do but repeat our greatest hits in order
Speaker 1: to recapture some of the some of the the excitement
Speaker 1: that we felt as younger men. Anyway, my co hosts
Speaker 1: on this episode, James Stout and me along, welcome to
Speaker 1: it could happen here.
Speaker 2: Hi, rob It. I'm glad you're doing so well.
Speaker 1: We're all doing great. James, You've just been having a
Speaker 1: searing emotional experience at the border. Yeah mm hm. And
Speaker 1: everyone else is busy living in the United States, which
Speaker 1: is its own searing emotional experience.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Today, today we're going to be talking about the both
Speaker 1: the most and least American state, Texas. Huzzah, Yeah, love you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who here has spent a lot of time in Texas. Garrison,
Speaker 1: you lived in the Dallas area, right.
Speaker 2: A lot that I I've made my visit to Texas
Speaker 2: over the years with you, even in the murder House.
Speaker 1: You and I have quaffed many a shiner bock together,
Speaker 1: James Many. Okay, I guess we'll move into the fucking episode.
Speaker 1: So uh, there was a There was a an email
Speaker 1: sent out by Texas Democrats dot Org recently with the
Speaker 1: title Texas moves from solid red to battleground. Sure, you know,
Speaker 1: like clockwork. A lot of Democrats got very excited, and
Speaker 1: I made a couple of people made posts being like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the same thing that happens every single election.
Speaker 1: They are never right. Texas is never a battleground and
Speaker 1: it always costs an insane amount of money. It is
Speaker 1: a con by DC political consultants to get your money
Speaker 1: and pump it into something that will fill up their
Speaker 1: coffers and not achieve anything of value for the state
Speaker 1: of Texas or for the Democrats nationwide. And this makes
Speaker 1: people very angry for two reasons. One, they tend to
Speaker 1: interpret it as saying abandon Texas and the people there,
Speaker 1: which is not the statement I was making or anyone
Speaker 1: else was making. And number two, everyone kind of obsessively
Speaker 1: starts pointing out like, look, look at how over the
Speaker 1: last thirty years, you know, the things have narrowed in
Speaker 1: Texas and the proportion of like Democratic votes is raised.
Speaker 1: This is winnable. We can do it. We can do it.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk today about why anyone who talks
Speaker 1: to you about flipping Texas as a political goal that
Speaker 1: you should give money to is conning you, and not
Speaker 1: only conning you, but making it actually more difficult for
Speaker 1: Democrats to win, both in Texas and nationwide. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's the premise of the episode, everybody.
Speaker 4: Here's here's how Bernie can still win. Though at the
Speaker 4: very end we will give you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We're gonna let you know he's got a shot. Look,
Speaker 1: look if he if he is capable of putting another
Speaker 1: three rounds of six point five into a dinner plate
Speaker 1: sized target at one hundred and fifty yards, now that
Speaker 1: was a that was anyway, he'd have to shoot a
Speaker 1: lot of people to make.
Speaker 4: He's going to deploy bought a joy into a.
Speaker 2: Name, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: Person. So I want to talk about this because I
Speaker 1: find it, like I think people tend to interpret this.
Speaker 1: I've certainly gotten accused of like, oh, you're just kind
Speaker 1: of being like a nihilist. This is you're being you know,
Speaker 1: just an anti electoralist. You're not being practical. There was
Speaker 1: a there was one particular guy who's like a local
Speaker 1: Democratic candidate who responded seven times to my tweet being
Speaker 1: like with variations, and his obsession was like, if we
Speaker 1: win Texas, it's impossible for the GOP to win national elections,
Speaker 1: which is true. If theoretically the Democrats flipped Texas, the
Speaker 1: GOP would have no chance at winning a federal election ever. Again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so simultaneous to this, right, if the Republican
Speaker 3: there are more Republicans in California than there are basically
Speaker 3: any other state in the Union, and if the Republicans
Speaker 3: won California, they would they would win every election forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, happen. Not going to happen. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things. I am not saying
Speaker 1: Texas will never be a blue state. You know, that
Speaker 1: is something that is possible, even likely, given enough time.
Speaker 1: What I am saying, the argument that I'm making here,
Speaker 1: and I'll provide you with evidence, is that number one,
Speaker 1: focusing on these elections from the top down and when
Speaker 1: you're saying, we want to flip Texas. That's a top
Speaker 1: down approach, right. You are not focusing on we want
Speaker 1: to fill up and win a bunch of different local elections.
Speaker 1: We want to flip, you know, the state houses. We
Speaker 1: want to flip a bunch of mayoralties and stuff. You
Speaker 1: are saying, what matters is how Texas votes in the
Speaker 1: national election. And if you were to get if you
Speaker 1: were to kind of eke out a bear like in
Speaker 1: Georgia right where you get a narrow victory in the
Speaker 1: federal election, that would be great for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: One of my issues with it is that kind of
Speaker 1: focusing obsessively on flipping Texas isn't focusing on the stuff
Speaker 1: that actually will help Texans, like Texans currently being targeted
Speaker 1: by the state government, because flipping the state in a
Speaker 1: federal election, but not taking the governor's seat, not taking
Speaker 1: the lieutenant governor seat, not like actually taking the state house,
Speaker 1: doesn't improve life for people in Texas. I think the
Speaker 1: kind of the degree to which the federal government, Biden's administration,
Speaker 1: has been unable to push back very effectively against kind
Speaker 1: of a lot of the shit that DeSantis has been
Speaker 1: doing in Florida. You know, they have started to make
Speaker 1: some attempts. Is evidence of this, and kind of more
Speaker 1: to the point, even if you don't agree with that, fundamentally,
Speaker 1: these strategies that the Democratic Party has embraced in Texas
Speaker 1: do not work. The Texas Democratic Party is incompetent. They
Speaker 1: are bad at their job. They are worse. People bring
Speaker 1: up Georgia a lot when I talk about flipping Texas,
Speaker 1: and folks are like, well, we flipped Georgia, And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: because the state elected officials and candidates in George number one,
Speaker 1: the state party did a much better job of kind
Speaker 1: of harvesting is a weird way to phrase it, but
Speaker 1: of incubating talent to run for election in a number
Speaker 1: of local offices then the Texas Democratic Party has ever done.
Speaker 1: And that was a big part of what allowed them
Speaker 1: to be competitive and eventually to flip the state. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of like kind of dollar sign information on
Speaker 1: how bad the state party in Texas is at this shit,
Speaker 1: and I guess I should go ahead and provide some
Speaker 1: of that now. So in the twenty twenty two election,
Speaker 1: the midterms famously an unusually good showing for the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party nationwide for a midterm election everywhere but Texas. O'Rourke
Speaker 1: ran against Greg Abbott. He lost by eleven percent. This
Speaker 1: is kind of to contrast the election that got everyone
Speaker 1: excited when he was running against Cruise. I think they
Speaker 1: were like three percent apart. And again, the only reason
Speaker 1: there was this kind of mistaken belief and excitement among
Speaker 1: dims that O'Rourke, because he was so close to Cruz,
Speaker 1: had a real shot of winning Texas. No, he got
Speaker 1: kinda close to beating Cruz because Ted even Republicans hate
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz. No one is ever liked that man. His
Speaker 1: own wife can barely stand to be in a room
Speaker 1: with him. His political allies would turn the other cheek
Speaker 1: if fucking somebody anyway, we shouldn't talk about political assassinations
Speaker 1: on this podcast. It wouldn't anger anybody though, right. Lindsay
Speaker 1: Graham has said that, like Lindsay Graham's like, what maybe
Speaker 1: the only good joke a Republican elected officials ever told
Speaker 1: is that if you were to shoot Ted Cruz on
Speaker 1: the floor of Congress and the trial was held in Congress,
Speaker 1: like nobody would vote to convict the murderer anyway. So
Speaker 1: Beto lost quite badly to Greg Abbott and beyond that,
Speaker 1: basically every statewide candidate that the Democrats ran lost in
Speaker 1: that election. It was a bad election for the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party and people who pay attention to Texas politics and
Speaker 1: actually like aren't just trying to like grift your donation money.
Speaker 5: Know this.
Speaker 1: Joel Montfort, a Democratic consultant in North Texas said, quote,
Speaker 1: it's been one election after another where we ramp everybody
Speaker 1: up and set these xpectations that we're going to finish
Speaker 1: in first and then we finish in second. I don't
Speaker 1: see any indication that we can win at state wide
Speaker 1: levels or won't continue to bleed house seats to the
Speaker 1: other party.
Speaker 2: I love these to finish in second.
Speaker 6: There is if there's like a podium on election libertarians. Yeah,
Speaker 6: the text Democratic Party to take the l to like
Speaker 6: giald Stein.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were some kind of site. There were some
Speaker 1: wins by Democrats in Texas. They managed to hold onto
Speaker 1: two out of three seats congressional seats in the battleground
Speaker 1: regions in South Texas, but they still lost one. They
Speaker 1: did what they did, still lose one, and you know,
Speaker 1: the GOP had to spend a lot of money to
Speaker 1: do that. But like one of the one of the
Speaker 1: points is that so they they held onto two of
Speaker 1: those seats, and they won a contested seat in the
Speaker 1: suburbs of Dallas. Uh. And you know, like but basically
Speaker 1: in all of these areas, Uh, these were like super
Speaker 1: narrow wins, like these the big successes, and they were
Speaker 1: narrow wins in areas that Joe Biden had carried by
Speaker 1: double digits two years ago. And Joe Biden is a
Speaker 1: historically like that is part of some of them. Some
Speaker 1: of it will show you how bad the Texas Democratic
Speaker 1: Party is. Joe Biden is not a popular president, and
Speaker 1: the fact that he carried a lot of these areas
Speaker 1: by more than the candidates who narrowly won in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two could is not a great sign for the
Speaker 1: way things are trending.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's probably also worth pointing out that like those
Speaker 2: southern Texas seats, like in the Rio Grande Valley, right, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: those people are normally Democrats. Yeah, but you have guys
Speaker 2: like Henry is it Quella Quala, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: who is opposed to abortion rights are yeah yeah and
Speaker 2: extremely hawkish on the border, and like yeah, yeah, what
Speaker 2: do we gain by having like, yeah, blue team good,
Speaker 2: Like not really if this person's going to take away
Speaker 2: your bodily autonomy and brutalize people for coming to this
Speaker 2: country for one day about a life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's like a lot of the some of
Speaker 1: these wins are kind of like marginal at best, given
Speaker 1: the compromises or just given the kind of Democrats who
Speaker 1: can win it. It's like a Joe Manchin kind of situation. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And more to the point, like it's not only is
Speaker 1: this like evidence kind of that the Democrats strategy isn't
Speaker 1: isn't working. It's not simply that they tried something and
Speaker 1: it failed. They tried something and it was so expensive
Speaker 1: that it stopped them from trying things in other areas
Speaker 1: where the money could have gone better. For example of
Speaker 1: how fucking wasteful, particularly the Beto wort campaign was. Right,
Speaker 1: he loses by eleven points to Greg Abbot. He raised
Speaker 1: seventy seven million dollars to lose by that much. A
Speaker 1: few years earlier, Lupe Valdez ran against Greg Abbot. She
Speaker 1: spent raised like two million dollars and lost by thirteen points,
Speaker 1: So seventy five million dollars may have bought Beto two percent.
Speaker 1: You know, like if you assume that national trends had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with that gap closing by a tiny amount, Like.
Speaker 3: With seventy five million dollars, I could take control of
Speaker 3: a moderate at least is Texas City.
Speaker 2: Yeah that is like, yeah, I could buy my chunk
Speaker 2: of Texas specific Like you could purchase a large chunk
Speaker 2: of Fort Worth with that much money. No, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: how I'll go here at cools the own media.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to own fort Worth. Finally my dream completed.
Speaker 1: I'll be able to be I'm gonna buy those horse
Speaker 1: statues that los kalitas. Finally be happy.
Speaker 2: Let's get blucifer as well. It's probably a good time
Speaker 2: to pivot to ads that help us pay for a
Speaker 2: piece of food.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, you know, who isn't a waste of money
Speaker 1: these fucking ads. So overall, we just talked about it.
Speaker 1: You know, Beto raised seventy seven million dollars. The gubernatorial
Speaker 1: race cost in total something like one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: million dollars, which is a huge amount of money for
Speaker 1: something that fails that badly and doesn't there's no evidence
Speaker 1: that Beto's campaign, like he was he's obviously good at fundraising, right,
Speaker 1: And there was kind of this belief among a lot
Speaker 1: of dims, an errant belief that this meant that he
Speaker 1: would be good for down ballot races. Right, He's going
Speaker 1: to bring the entire because of how much attention he gets.
Speaker 1: He's going to raise the entire Democratic Party up. The
Speaker 1: poor showing of the Democratic Party in Texas in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two suggests that that's not the case. And the
Speaker 1: money like there are there are fights that could have
Speaker 1: been won and probably weren't because the money wasn't being
Speaker 1: invested in those fights. It was going to bettle. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from an article by the Texas Tribune here.
Speaker 1: This year, the party ran Rochelle Garza, a civil rights
Speaker 1: lawyer with little political experience, against Attorney General Ken Paxton,
Speaker 1: who was widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican incumbent.
Speaker 1: But Garza struggled to raise money or gain traction in
Speaker 1: Auric's shadow and lost by ten percentage points against Paxton,
Speaker 1: who has been indicted on felony security fraud charges and
Speaker 1: is being investigated by the FBI for abuse of office accusations.
Speaker 1: And it's what maybe she couldn't have won no matter
Speaker 1: what you did. But one of the rules of politics
Speaker 1: in this country is that the money you spend at
Speaker 1: a big race, like a gubernatorial race, like a like
Speaker 1: a like a Senate or a congressional campaign at the
Speaker 1: federal level, like a presidential campaign, goes less far per
Speaker 1: dollar than the money you spend in smaller local elections. Right,
Speaker 1: ten million bucks going into that election might have done something,
Speaker 1: you know, as opposed to seventy five million going into
Speaker 1: Bedo O'Rourke and accomplishing very little. This has been not
Speaker 1: just a problem in Texas in previous elections, throughout the
Speaker 1: Trump area and a little before in particular, this was
Speaker 1: a problem the DIMS had kind of from the middle
Speaker 1: of the Obama years until the last couple of like
Speaker 1: really the last midterm at twenty eighteen is when it
Speaker 1: started to turn around nationally, and the DIMS have learned
Speaker 1: a lot in other regions about like not spending stupid
Speaker 1: amounts of money on hopeless contests, but not like comprehensively. Example,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, the second most expensive house race
Speaker 1: was the fourteenth Congressional District of Georgia, where Marcus Flowers
Speaker 1: raised sixteen million dollars and lost by thirty two points,
Speaker 1: not a great return on the investment. And it was like,
Speaker 1: the reason why he raised so much money is because
Speaker 1: he was running against Marjorie Taylor Green and nationally, DIMS
Speaker 1: outside of Georgia wanted to put in money because they
Speaker 1: hate her. And it's a trend that relies a lot
Speaker 1: on social media on kind of the way in which
Speaker 1: like hardcore dims, the dims that do a lot of
Speaker 1: the small dollar donations think about politics where it's like
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green bad donate money to opponent, Well, her
Speaker 1: opponent had no chance of winning in that district, Like
Speaker 1: no amount of money would have flipped that, and you
Speaker 1: just wasted sixteen million dollars that could have helped somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Like maybe that's an insane thing and it's not as
Speaker 1: bad as it used if you want to look at
Speaker 1: like the like the kind of the dumbest it ever was.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, so Lindsay Graham's seat was up in
Speaker 1: South Carolina and Jamie Harrison ran against Lindsay Grant and
Speaker 1: dims again because Lindsay Graham evil, you know, raised one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty million dollars and he lost fight ten points.
Speaker 1: Amy McGrath lost to Mitch McConnell, who is another Like
Speaker 1: you can always get a shitload of money to fight
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell ninety four million dollars lost by twenty points
Speaker 1: either of the like one hundred and thirty million, ninety
Speaker 1: four million, that's two state legislators. You could have flipped,
Speaker 1: or at least made progress on flipping, right, Like that
Speaker 1: amount of money could potentially do that or at least
Speaker 1: help set up, you know, get a couple of people
Speaker 1: elected who have a chance at kind of broadening a
Speaker 1: base of support and becoming you know, leaders in states
Speaker 1: that are currently like dominated by red legislators, Like there's
Speaker 1: a chance at least here.
Speaker 3: And that like specifically the state legislature. Thing is this
Speaker 3: has been a problem with the Democrats for fucking ages,
Speaker 3: which is that they just yet like it is only
Speaker 3: genuinely in the last years the Democrats are started giving
Speaker 3: a ship about state legislatures, like and this is this
Speaker 3: is one of the things from the Obama era, Like
Speaker 3: one of the reasons everything sucks so much is that
Speaker 3: the Democrats managed to lose, Like, oh god, I forget.
Speaker 3: It was like they I think I think the total
Speaker 3: they lost like a thousand seats. It was like yeah,
Speaker 3: and and and you know, on the we were seeing
Speaker 3: the product of this right like this like like Wisconsin
Speaker 3: was sort of just a hell hole for the last decade.
Speaker 3: Uh and you know, I mean like and these are
Speaker 3: like Minnesota to like the like there are lots of
Speaker 3: these states that like that, like not Minnesota or am
Speaker 3: I talking about Michigan?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Michigan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's a lot of these stats and you know,
Speaker 3: like and both of these places were winnable right, like
Speaker 3: like they're like the Democrats are winning there now, right,
Speaker 3: but they just like fucking left, like you know, they
Speaker 3: they they fucking left Flint to get poisoned by lead
Speaker 3: because they just not like the only the only things
Speaker 3: that the problem is there's there's no money for consultants
Speaker 3: in in sort of like downbout like state and like
Speaker 3: local races just just jack ship, right, and the Democrat
Speaker 3: the Democrat Party like is not run by sort of
Speaker 3: like it's it's not a party in like an actual
Speaker 3: real sense. It is a it is a collection of consultants,
Speaker 3: and those consultants only care about senates about Senate races.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they care about house races, and they care specifically
Speaker 3: they spend all of their fucking money in presidential races.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's like again, and the Republicans don't
Speaker 3: do that because they have a bunch of like people
Speaker 3: they you know, because they have a bunch of like
Speaker 3: part of their base, right is these like small and
Speaker 3: mid scale capitalists in you know, in cities, in rural
Speaker 3: areas who have like immediate concerns about like, you know,
Speaker 3: there's like there there are specific workers who they want
Speaker 3: like lives to be worse. And so because of that,
Speaker 3: the Republican machine is like seize the entire fucking country.
Speaker 3: And the Democrats have been sitting around like spending like
Speaker 3: a trillion dollars on Wendy Davis losing by twenty points.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it's like you get these you get
Speaker 1: these like cases where you know, you're looking at thirty
Speaker 1: million being spent, you know, failing to uns seat Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green or somebody thirty three million something like that.
Speaker 1: But what you don't like, at the same time as
Speaker 1: like that's happening, is all of these massive amounts of
Speaker 1: money are being devoted to these, like to the races
Speaker 1: that get attention because there's famous names involved. You have,
Speaker 1: like in twenty twenty I think it was you have
Speaker 1: or no, it's twenty twenty two. You have the election
Speaker 1: between Ted Budd, a Republican against the Democrat Sherry Beasley
Speaker 1: in North Carolina where the Democratic Party decided not to
Speaker 1: prioritize this election because it wasn't winnable, and then Bud
Speaker 1: won up wound up winning by just four points. That's
Speaker 1: a seat you can flip with money. That's not an
Speaker 1: unreasonable thing as opposed to again, the races where it
Speaker 1: went to and people are losing by like thirty something
Speaker 1: fucking percent. And if you want to know who a
Speaker 1: serious candidate is, who is not just trying to do
Speaker 1: the sexy thing or not just trying to like again
Speaker 1: flip the states so that we can win the federal election,
Speaker 1: but actually wants to help their state. And this is
Speaker 1: again there's very nice things about Beto O'Rourke. I was
Speaker 1: in Texas during the ice storm. He did good work
Speaker 1: during the ice storm, like actual community defense kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that I do have some respect for. He is
Speaker 1: not and has never been a serious politician, and I
Speaker 1: will tell you why he went from winning an election
Speaker 1: to losing a state election against Ted Cruz, to losing
Speaker 1: a presidential race to losing the governor seat. That is
Speaker 1: so fucking scattershot. That is not building a base of power,
Speaker 1: That is not building from the ground up and like
Speaker 1: encouraging the growth of other personalities. You're just darting from
Speaker 1: whatever the sexiest and most like pr driven race is.
Speaker 1: That's not serious. I want to talk about what number one,
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, the ship that like, as we've said,
Speaker 1: they're getting better. The National Party got a lot better
Speaker 1: at this, particularly in twenty twenty two. It was less
Speaker 1: stupid than the previous couple of elections had been.
Speaker 3: Really difficult to be more dumb than that. But you
Speaker 3: know it is British British labor et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Labor actually is the big one. Oh my fuck.
Speaker 1: I want to talk what has what has worked, and
Speaker 1: what I think could work again. And to do that,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about a guy named Howard Dean,
Speaker 1: who here knows who Howard Dean was? Garrison simply yeah
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 5: Have you?
Speaker 1: Have you all heard the video of him screaming that
Speaker 1: gotten like his career is before. Okay, well, James, would
Speaker 1: you load that up for us so we could play
Speaker 1: that in a second to the Deans. Coward, Jamie, pull
Speaker 1: it up. Howard. Howard Dean ran for president and was
Speaker 1: He was the first national political candidate to use the
Speaker 1: internet effectively to raise money in the in the history
Speaker 1: of US politics. He's kind of pre Obama. Worked out
Speaker 1: a lot of the strategies that Obama's people wound up
Speaker 1: using to very successfully raise money for him. He was
Speaker 1: really good at it. He was a reasonably intelligent candidate.
Speaker 1: And then he gave the speech that we're about to
Speaker 1: play for you, and it completely created his and ended
Speaker 1: him as a as a candidate. You know, I always
Speaker 1: says the thing about Dean.
Speaker 3: Dean is stunningly unlucky that he ran in the time
Speaker 3: that he did, because the clip you're about to hear
Speaker 3: is one thousand times less weird than anything DeSantis has
Speaker 3: ever done. Like he he ran in it. I mean
Speaker 3: there was there was dan Quayle, right, but like he
Speaker 3: ran in an era where like the seriousness and like
Speaker 3: non weirdness of politicians was so much higher.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's in the chat so you can.
Speaker 1: Up. This is a good shit straight to that beautiful scream.
Speaker 5: We're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona.
Speaker 3: In North Dakota and New Mexico.
Speaker 1: We're going to California and Texas and New York.
Speaker 5: We're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington.
Speaker 3: And Michigan, and then we're going to Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: To take back in the White House.
Speaker 1: That's it. That ended his career as a candidate. And
Speaker 1: like it's a little silly, but that doesn't that doesn't
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be a twelve second news cycle today. But
Speaker 1: after kind of failing out as a presidential candidate, he
Speaker 1: became chairman of the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, and
Speaker 1: he was a pretty good one. His kind of primary
Speaker 1: strategic vision was what he called the fifty state strategy,
Speaker 1: which is, don't focus just on swing states, never write
Speaker 1: a state off at unwinnable. Instead, spread the money that
Speaker 1: the DNC has around two campaign throughout the country everywhere,
Speaker 1: particularly to fund local dncs, so that they can start
Speaker 1: building a stable of candidates that can attract voters and
Speaker 1: eventually win local elections. It's not like an easy It's
Speaker 1: not a sexy strategy because a lot of it is
Speaker 1: focused on like the slow, kind of grueling fight to
Speaker 1: build up a base of support and unfriendly terrain. But
Speaker 1: it worked like really well. Actually in twenty or so states,
Speaker 1: those that had voted solidly Republican in private previous recent
Speaker 1: presidential races, Democratic candidates like won elections that had previously
Speaker 1: like in the like gone against them like it had.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 1: There were about like twenty states where it the kind
Speaker 1: of slide to red was arrested and pushed back to blue.
Speaker 1: These are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah,
Speaker 1: West Virginia, and Wyoming. Special list of yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1: So basically, Deans strategy led to a net gain of
Speaker 1: thirty nine state House seats and a two percent increase
Speaker 1: of all seats in the states analyzed. They lost two,
Speaker 1: you know, state Senate seats net, but it worked great
Speaker 1: in the House and gained an attorney generalship, gained three
Speaker 1: House seats, gained a Senate seat, and in fifteen of
Speaker 1: the twenty seats the Democratic nominees on increase in vote
Speaker 1: share between two thousand and four and two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: which was the years that so again not super sexy.
Speaker 1: These aren't like we flipped Texas suddenly, but it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we started to see real gains and like a lot
Speaker 1: of pretty red states. Now it didn't work everywhere. It
Speaker 1: was not particularly successful in a large chunk of the South,
Speaker 1: like it did not arrest the slide into the red everywhere.
Speaker 1: But in a lot of the Midwest, particularly the states
Speaker 1: that were like the Hillary Clinton so called firewall that
Speaker 1: went for Trump in twenty twenty, it was extremely effective.
Speaker 1: And of course it got mixed immediately after Obama won election,
Speaker 1: and this is a big part of why in twenty
Speaker 1: ten the dims lost disastrously. But like the basic idea
Speaker 1: of we should be putting money into local democratic parties
Speaker 1: in order to like number one, have like a big
Speaker 1: part of winning any conflict, whether it's a war or
Speaker 1: a political election, is having the resources available reserves to
Speaker 1: take advantage of opportunities that present themselves in the moment.
Speaker 1: So you have a solidly read state house seat or
Speaker 1: judge ship or something like that, or governorship or mayor mayoralty,
Speaker 1: and a candidate has a health scare or has a scandal,
Speaker 1: you know, they get caught fucking a thirteen year old
Speaker 1: or something, and suddenly this seat that was solidly read
Speaker 1: is in play. And if you have no one who
Speaker 1: can like get votes, who can get voters excited, who
Speaker 1: can run for that, well, then you're probably not gonna
Speaker 1: win it. It's just going to like go to whoever
Speaker 1: the RNC you know, picks to pick up the seat next.
Speaker 1: But if you've got someone waiting in the wings, they
Speaker 1: have a chance at winning it. And a good example
Speaker 1: of this is what just happened in Jacksonville, Florida. Right
Speaker 1: you have DeSantis make go like lunge to the fucking
Speaker 1: most fascist end of the right and pass this abortion
Speaker 1: build that something like seventy five percent of the state
Speaker 1: doesn't like. And the Dims had a decent candidate there
Speaker 1: that was able to run against the Republican mayor of
Speaker 1: Jacksonville and win. And in that election, the dim spent
Speaker 1: two million and the Republicans spent nine million. You were
Speaker 1: not talking about the kind of resources expended that you're
Speaker 1: seeing in some of these dumb races we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So anyway, like this is most of what I wanted
Speaker 1: to get into. Is just like you can win and
Speaker 1: you can improve things in Texas and you can build
Speaker 1: a base from which to actually change things electorally in
Speaker 1: that state, but you can't do it by just like
Speaker 1: focusing on whoever is at the top. Like it has
Speaker 1: to be smarter. It's not just about shoveling money into
Speaker 1: a pit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like I think there's there's a couple of
Speaker 3: things that wants to add. One was that like oh god, okay,
Speaker 3: Like so Tim Kye, Yeah, Tim Kaine got put in
Speaker 3: after they ran out Dean and Jesus, like Tim Kane
Speaker 3: might be is a is like a once in a
Speaker 3: generation terrible politician, like one of the worst, you know, but.
Speaker 1: Like like you would see ship like he is the Winston
Speaker 1: Churchill of making me bored.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, like like like you would see I mean,
Speaker 3: and this still happens, right, but like there are there
Speaker 3: are seats that are winnable that the Dems like just
Speaker 3: literally won't even bother finding people to run for because
Speaker 3: they're just fucking too lazy and they don't give a shit.
Speaker 3: And you know this this happens if this happens in
Speaker 3: a fucking lot of races, and you know, and part
Speaker 3: part of the other thing that that happens in this
Speaker 3: sort of period that like, you know, is the reason
Speaker 3: why the top down is okay. So this is like
Speaker 3: if if we're gonna actually do this sort of like
Speaker 3: complicated electoralism, like this is why Bernie Sanders lost two
Speaker 3: elections in a row, is that you can't actually like
Speaker 3: like actual sort of like substantive political change like doesn't
Speaker 3: happen from the top down. It's it's like it happens
Speaker 3: on bottom up organizing. And you know, the the democratic
Speaker 3: waves in like the last two years were basically like
Speaker 3: them eating actual social movements. It's you know, like they
Speaker 3: it's it's them basically like they're there. There's a sort
Speaker 3: of rejuvenated anti abortion movement that they just sort of consume. Right,
Speaker 3: They've been doing a very very good job of sort
Speaker 3: of like eating like whatever sort of queer rights like
Speaker 3: movements exist alive. And they had kind of stopped doing
Speaker 3: that for a while because they chose to just like
Speaker 3: destroy occupy whether rather than like try to co opt it. Yea,
Speaker 3: And you know, I mean there were reasons for that, right,
Speaker 3: but like part of part of the thing like if
Speaker 3: if you if if you're a Democrat and you want
Speaker 3: to actually like win Texas, you need to have like
Speaker 3: actual you to have actual sort of social movements that
Speaker 3: you know, the Democrats can eventually take over and destroy
Speaker 3: but in the time between they destroy them destroying them
Speaker 3: and then and you know, like like in the brief
Speaker 3: time while they both exist and are control by Democratic Party,
Speaker 3: that's how you actually sort of like build the kinds
Speaker 3: of the build the kinds of coalitions to build the
Speaker 3: kinds of organization that win these races. And the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party has just no interest in doing that like almost
Speaker 3: anywhere basically outside of Minnesota, where I don't know, those
Speaker 3: in the Minnesota devs are fucking built different. I don't,
Speaker 3: I don't, I don't know, I don't. I don't have
Speaker 3: another explanation for that, but like, yeah, it's I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's it's.
Speaker 1: It's like one of the things that you have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to do at the local level is and this
Speaker 1: is you know, this is a big factor in like,
Speaker 1: uh politics in Georgia. You've got people who are motivated
Speaker 1: because of a specific political issue that Dems are strong on,
Speaker 1: like abortion, and you can you can get people registered,
Speaker 1: you can get people out organizing, you can get people
Speaker 1: donating money, and more most important that you can get
Speaker 1: people voting and voting in numbers that they haven't before
Speaker 1: and make if you're able to kind of harness that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. But being able to harness that, again,
Speaker 1: part of it is this is not sexy. This is
Speaker 1: not something we can say this is going to flip
Speaker 1: a state in twenty twenty four. But putting in the
Speaker 1: money and the resources to have people who are being
Speaker 1: supported to go out and make attempts and to build
Speaker 1: like a reputation and a base of support and networks
Speaker 1: in the state. Like, that's the non sexy thing that
Speaker 1: the number one the Republicans are really good at. If
Speaker 1: you're asking yourself looking at all these horrible anti trans bills,
Speaker 1: anti gay bills, anti abortion bills, how do they do
Speaker 1: this well? Because church is organized at the local level
Speaker 1: to build up the kind of support and the kind
Speaker 1: of human infrastructure that allowed them to take advantage of
Speaker 1: the kind of broader social trends that drove some of
Speaker 1: those states more deeply read and that kind of like
Speaker 1: made made it possible for them to do things that
Speaker 1: ten years before people had said, like there's no way
Speaker 1: to make this happen. That can work on the left
Speaker 1: side of things, but you have to have the groundwork
Speaker 1: in They started with like school boards. Yeah, they started.
Speaker 4: They started with going after school boards, going after books.
Speaker 4: Then you get up base people riled up that you
Speaker 4: can go after healthcare for miners, and you can go
Speaker 4: after health care for adults. It was a very easy path,
Speaker 4: and it started by like going to the most accessible
Speaker 4: places to have public comment on issues, which was complaining
Speaker 4: about books inside of school Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And another thing I'd say about the church
Speaker 3: thing is like the thing that you used to do
Speaker 3: that for the Democrats was unions, but then they destroyed
Speaker 3: them all. And but you know, but like you can
Speaker 3: actually you can actually see what this looks like like
Speaker 3: in the places where something like this. This is why
Speaker 3: the state level Midwest Dems are so much further to
Speaker 3: the left than the Dems everywhere else, because like the
Speaker 3: people in Minnesota, the people in Wisconsin are like the
Speaker 3: the only reason they're even so remotely in power is
Speaker 3: because and you know, you're seeing this like at like
Speaker 3: in Chicago too with Brandon Johnson, is that like these
Speaker 3: those people are like functionally dependent on like that they're
Speaker 3: on their teachers unions to exist as like a political coalision. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so you know, like like union organizing is a
Speaker 3: is a like we're just like fucking just giving money
Speaker 3: to a strike fund is even even if the thing
Speaker 3: that you want to do is win elections, that is
Speaker 3: a more effective way of winning of winning elections than
Speaker 3: fucking giving money to Beto Auroric like a seventh time.
Speaker 1: Yeah and again when we the thing I want to
Speaker 1: get across here is the right thing to do is
Speaker 1: not say, and no one is suggesting this here, fuck Texas.
Speaker 1: It can never be fixed. The right thing is saying,
Speaker 1: if you're focused on one famous guy running in Texas
Speaker 1: or this like top level thing of flipping Texas, you
Speaker 1: don't actually care all that much about the problems being
Speaker 1: faced by people in Texas because that's not really going
Speaker 1: to fix them. Right, Beto's not going to win. And
Speaker 1: even if Texas flips for an election, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: the state legend your flips. It doesn't mean the governor flips.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that things get better for people doing
Speaker 1: these kind of bottom up approaches. Number one will eventually
Speaker 1: flip the fucking state. Right, there is a demographic trend happening.
Speaker 1: Part of how you flip the state, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're actually responsible, is like proving that you can
Speaker 1: make people's lives better. If you want to flip the state.
Speaker 1: That's maybe more ethical than just being like, what if
Speaker 1: we dump one hundred and seventy million dollars to try
Speaker 1: to make this guy who goes viral on YouTube or
Speaker 1: Twitter sometimes look better? Right, maybe one of those is
Speaker 1: more ethical than the other. Anyway. I don't want to
Speaker 1: rant about electoralism anymore, but as a as a transplant
Speaker 1: in Texan, I get frustrated by this, so I felt
Speaker 1: like we had to say something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also get frustrated by Better claiming to be punk,
Speaker 2: which is the least punk thing in the fucking whether
Speaker 2: that's a now repisode.
Speaker 1: No, we have one. We have one elected leader who's
Speaker 1: gotten anywhere close to being punk, and it was Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders when he got into that cold book depository that
Speaker 1: November morning with a manliquor carcano rifle. Extremely punk.
Speaker 3: Anyway, cutting the feed here, it could.
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