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Speaker 2: And joining me now.
Speaker 1: Is a senior advisor to Bernie Sanders, but also the
Speaker 1: head of executive director of a of a progressive media
Speaker 1: organization called more Perfect Union.
Speaker 2: It's my core.
Speaker 1: I've known Faz a long time and one thing that
Speaker 1: I will tell you about Faz is he.
Speaker 2: He can't spin. It's it's I think it's.
Speaker 1: His most endearing quality, which is why so many of
Speaker 1: us reporters like dealing with Faz. He is a truth teller.
Speaker 1: He has very He certainly has his opinions, but he's
Speaker 1: not a very good spinner, meaning he's not he doesn't
Speaker 1: like the bullshit people.
Speaker 2: And so the.
Speaker 1: Point is is you don't have to feel like you're
Speaker 1: deciphering what he's saying to my questions. It will be
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. I hope you take that as accomplished.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that, and obviously it goes back to why
Speaker 3: we got involved in politics in the first place. And
Speaker 3: ideally it's not enough for spin or the tactical approaches,
Speaker 3: but rather some conviction.
Speaker 2: Well, you actually usually get pretty frustrated by it. I'm curious.
Speaker 2: Have you ever had clients get frustrated with you that
Speaker 2: you don't do that?
Speaker 3: Thankfully, the people I've worked for have not gotten frustrated.
Speaker 3: Harry Reid was a truth teller, you know, very kind
Speaker 3: of classic way, and Bernie Sanders for John Podesta and
Speaker 3: people like that who generally just appreciated my approach. But
Speaker 3: I'm sure that if there are many politicians who could
Speaker 3: potentially get frustrated, who might probably wouldn't work for.
Speaker 1: So this is sort of an interesting political environment we're in, right,
Speaker 1: You can look at it just through the lens of
Speaker 1: you know, you're hoping progressives have a better shot. You're
Speaker 1: you're looking at and tactically things couldn't be better for
Speaker 1: the left right. The opportunities are across the board, but
Speaker 1: there's it feels that there's something right. There's it's the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party feels very divided and sort of arguably leaderless.
Speaker 1: It is worth noting you ran for the Yeah, you went,
Speaker 1: and most of the time when you're the party out
Speaker 1: of power, it's you usually are less your your lead.
Speaker 1: Your leaders aren't usually very well known. But in this
Speaker 1: case it feels very leaderless. I do want to remind
Speaker 1: people you ran for DNC chair in the race that
Speaker 1: that elected Ken Martin. I am curious at that rate,
Speaker 1: if that position opens up before the end of the year,
Speaker 1: would you run again.
Speaker 3: No, I don't believe so. I mean the reason that
Speaker 3: I ran at that time that wasn't because I thought
Speaker 3: I went, but because I had a case that I
Speaker 3: wanted to make publicly about the direction of the DNC.
Speaker 3: And as I watched Ken Martin try to struggle through
Speaker 3: what I think we're foreseeable understandable challenges that you have
Speaker 3: a bureaucracy, that you have to navigate and if you
Speaker 3: don't come in like a bull in a china shop
Speaker 3: to change it, that the bureaucracy will capture you. And
Speaker 3: I think what I was trying to argue for at
Speaker 3: the time was that you have to have a clear
Speaker 3: mandate coming in the door of what you want to
Speaker 3: do and have people understand it and vote upon that.
Speaker 3: If you don't, you'll get stuck. And I think he's
Speaker 3: a good person stuck in a bad system. And you
Speaker 3: can see right. I mean, the only thing he had
Speaker 3: really firmly campaigned on was that the state parties would
Speaker 3: get additional funding, which he has delivered, but he has
Speaker 3: also put them in some difficult straits which I know
Speaker 3: he's working his butt off to try to fix.
Speaker 2: No, that's a great way of putting it.
Speaker 1: It does feel as if that he just he doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to deal with the system.
Speaker 3: And I think he'd own it and tell you. I mean,
Speaker 3: we've had some candid conversations between us about you. My
Speaker 3: own desires would be to lay out an agenda for
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six on the Democratic Party side, to say
Speaker 3: here four or five things we're actively going to go
Speaker 3: and campaign on to compel that kind of a conversation.
Speaker 3: I don't think he necessarily sees it as the DNC role.
Speaker 3: I think Schumer, Jeffries, the leaders of the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: right now don't want to necessarily campaign in that kind
Speaker 3: of direction. They think, if Trump is burying himself, why
Speaker 3: put anything out there affirmatively for a vision. And so
Speaker 3: you've got a bit of a play dead philosophy and
Speaker 3: mentality that is governing much of the Democratic ranks. And
Speaker 3: for those of us who are trying to reinstill the
Speaker 3: brand to be definitionally about something, it's an uphill climb
Speaker 3: right now. It explains partly why Bernie Sanders so popular
Speaker 3: within the Democratic Party right now, why in a leaderless place,
Speaker 3: why he is probably the most popular Democrat and elected
Speaker 3: official in these because he's definitially about something affirmative.
Speaker 1: Well, you're you're getting into something that I think is
Speaker 1: the real challenge for the party, and I just don't
Speaker 1: think they have the leadership to do with the challenge
Speaker 1: right that at the moment. And that is, Look, the
Speaker 1: party's got a massive brand problem. It's still there. The
Speaker 1: new NBC News poll. As bad as Trump is, as
Speaker 1: unpopular as this war is, the Democratic brand is in
Speaker 1: worse shape than the Republican brand. So that is, you know,
Speaker 1: that is the one thing at sort of which what
Speaker 1: is different from twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: That is the one difference.
Speaker 1: Now it may not matter in this midterm and because
Speaker 1: of what you just describe the play dead strategy, which
Speaker 1: is and you know, let them this is ropen dope, right,
Speaker 1: let them punch themselves out.
Speaker 2: And they're doing a pretty good job.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, Trump debates himself on Iran. Why do you
Speaker 2: have to put out a statement? He's gonna, he's gonna
Speaker 2: he's gonna have.
Speaker 3: Fractors his own coalition, you see now Joe Rugan and
Speaker 3: Megan Kelly and you.
Speaker 1: Know, and he's doing it all over the place, right
Speaker 1: if you think about it over the last two weeks,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's always for a check, right, monsanto
Speaker 1: to check. So he did the executive order on the
Speaker 1: on the weed killer. That upsets Maha, right, he doesn't
Speaker 1: run that upset like he put together this interesting coalition.
Speaker 1: But when you put together coalitions, you got to keep them.
Speaker 2: You got to you gotta deliver.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and he slut them down. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think in my mind, the one big difference from his
Speaker 3: first term to a second term. What what did we Well,
Speaker 3: a lot of things were baking in the cake about
Speaker 3: Donald Trump. If we had told each other, oh, he's
Speaker 3: going to be tough on immigration, he's going to do
Speaker 3: some acts that are boordlight illegal, we wouldn't have been
Speaker 3: terribly surprised about that. If you said, oh, he's gonna
Speaker 3: even you know, engage in tax cuts for the ranch,
Speaker 3: there's lots of things that you just would have baked
Speaker 3: into the cake. I think the way in which he
Speaker 3: campaigned and well, at least from the moment he wins
Speaker 3: to immediately the inauguration, having Bezos, Zuckerberg and you know,
Speaker 3: Musk right behind him was a stark departure from the
Speaker 3: first term, in which you know, you remember he got
Speaker 3: an anti trust case against Google, and now in the
Speaker 3: second term he is just wholeheartedly embraced big tech and
Speaker 3: the oligarchy, Saudi Arabia, the kings of the universe as
Speaker 3: it were, as a corruption racket. And I think that
Speaker 3: has more aggressively splintered the coalition faster than I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people would have.
Speaker 1: Assumed, as would you accept the premise that he is
Speaker 1: now the caricature that many on the left tried to
Speaker 1: paint the Bush family as.
Speaker 2: Right, the Bushes were.
Speaker 1: Never like this, right, he he's like this caricature version.
Speaker 3: Of this because we don't give him any credit for this,
Speaker 3: but he is brazen about putting the corruption out loud
Speaker 3: in front of you, to say, this is exactly why
Speaker 3: I'm operating everything from you know, you take the Iran war,
Speaker 3: it's just you know, here we're going to go do
Speaker 3: it with Israel. It's very clear in your face how
Speaker 3: we're going to execute this all the way through, you know,
Speaker 3: to just you know, these AI tech deals will be
Speaker 3: done at the behest of Tim Cook sitting right here
Speaker 3: in front of me, and then him out loud stating
Speaker 3: that these are the people, these high IQ individuals who
Speaker 3: I listen to, who I think are really brillian, are
Speaker 3: going to guide this administration. So when most working class
Speaker 3: Americans right now are worried that does the President even
Speaker 3: see me understand the struggles with affordability or cost of
Speaker 3: living that I'm going through, and they're worried that his
Speaker 3: agenda is somehow not on a different is fully on
Speaker 3: the different plane than the one in which they live,
Speaker 3: they are correct, because he's telling them that. Every given
Speaker 3: day he tells you the things that are most important
Speaker 3: to him, and none of them are around affordability. You
Speaker 3: can send Susie Wiles and company. You're trying to compel
Speaker 3: him in the union.
Speaker 2: Kind of a music.
Speaker 1: They set up these events that are clearly they're very
Speaker 1: much You're like, they're well thought out, like you know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. I think we're taping here on a Wednesday,
Speaker 1: where to eleventh. They've got a couple today and in contemptio.
Speaker 2: You know it's this.
Speaker 1: It's this stuff that that means table stakes, right, It's
Speaker 1: the stuff you should be doing as president in an electioneer,
Speaker 1: sell your agenda, show people, show people an example where
Speaker 1: you think your agenda's having an impact. And we know
Speaker 1: what he's going to do. He's going to go there
Speaker 1: just whin about the word affordability. They're telling me I
Speaker 1: have to do this, and you're just sitting there going
Speaker 1: huh okay.
Speaker 3: And he's stuck in the bad. As we remember about
Speaker 3: this with Biden, you get stuck in the finger wag
Speaker 3: of don't you people know that I am doing amazing things?
Speaker 3: Why aren't you appreciating all of the amazing things I've
Speaker 3: done instead of you know what we are argued with Biden.
Speaker 3: I think it would also be true to Trump. You
Speaker 3: lean forward and say, here's the fundamental problems in society
Speaker 3: that you are dealing with that I am focused on,
Speaker 3: and I have to do next, not backwards, and they
Speaker 3: only get stuck looking backwards and saying I've just done
Speaker 3: all these amazing things.
Speaker 2: What did you I.
Speaker 1: Noticed over the week at JD. Vance tried, right, he said,
Speaker 1: you know, he's trying. He was trying to say, yes,
Speaker 1: I know, there's an affordability issue, and he did the
Speaker 1: old you know, which is what any presidential administration would do. Hey,
Speaker 1: was it was really bad when we took over. This
Speaker 1: is going to take more time meanwhile, which okay, that's
Speaker 1: sort of beam C plus B minus spin. But when
Speaker 1: the president says, hey, pay no attention to that, it
Speaker 1: and I talk about undermining whatever little attempt Vance was
Speaker 1: doing to try to to try to let these people
Speaker 1: know that he at least pays attention.
Speaker 3: Well, you get into the psychology of the Trump advanced thing,
Speaker 3: which is kind of entertaining and growing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, yeah, right, you there were there
Speaker 1: were sort of two core principles to vance that I
Speaker 1: bought into.
Speaker 2: One is that he was genuinely.
Speaker 1: A believer in in breaking up these monopolies, you know,
Speaker 1: corporate consolidation. You know, he would praise Lena Khan. Not
Speaker 1: many Republicans would do that.
Speaker 3: The conservatives, the right wing popula who cosed into the.
Speaker 1: DAHO was a JD Vance, you know. So I genuinely
Speaker 1: believe this is something that is that is that he
Speaker 1: believes that this isn't just something that he adopted for
Speaker 1: political purposes.
Speaker 2: And then no more.
Speaker 1: Foreign wars, right, And here's Trump essentially firing his staffer
Speaker 1: at job steps, right, allowing companies to go around the
Speaker 1: Justice Department, and essentially like with the Ticmaster thing, It's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, this is the thing that like
Speaker 1: everybody knows the combination to Trump, right, how do you
Speaker 1: it's a there's a and I always hate to make
Speaker 1: Seinfeld references because there's it's such an old show now,
Speaker 1: but there's enough people that still spin it. But there's
Speaker 1: this like gag running gag with Elaine where she says,
Speaker 1: I put it in the vault and and they're like
Speaker 1: everybody knows, you.
Speaker 2: Know, the the the combinations of the vault.
Speaker 1: You just get get a little boone in her and
Speaker 1: she'll tell you all spell all the secrets. Well with Trump,
Speaker 1: well know the combination. You write a check to run
Speaker 1: on the slush funds, you'll get what you want. You know,
Speaker 1: you you know there's you know, you got to do
Speaker 1: a couple of things here, but you do a deal
Speaker 1: with the family whatever, and you'll get what you want.
Speaker 2: It's pretty true.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think it's you know, he allows
Speaker 1: people to know these things because he's trying to He's
Speaker 1: hanging out a sign like, hey, this is how you
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: It's really undermine Vance.
Speaker 1: Like I just don't think Vance has any anything, any
Speaker 1: credibility left.
Speaker 3: There's obviously this musing about him suggesting Rubio might you know,
Speaker 3: be a better candidate mar A Lago, And I was
Speaker 3: wondering if they leaked into your thought about it. When
Speaker 3: leading up into the Iran War, there's obviously some leakage
Speaker 3: of around well Jade. Vance wasn't fully on board initially,
Speaker 3: and I had some concerns and I was like, it
Speaker 3: reminded me back in the day when you remember Obama
Speaker 3: and they had the decision of going in Laden and
Speaker 3: in let that Biden had against me with them, right,
Speaker 3: and it felt that most are reducts of that, and
Speaker 3: it was done at that time, right, and you could
Speaker 3: sense of a Hillary kind of world that was setting
Speaker 3: up twenty sixty. You know, here's the choice. And I
Speaker 3: was felt again we got a Ruby over his vance
Speaker 3: choice of who was with the president.
Speaker 1: My warning to Rubio would simply be when the president
Speaker 1: besides Iran was a mistake, not if okay, we know
Speaker 1: when he ain't taken the blame, right, you know, and
Speaker 1: I think Rubyo has been set up.
Speaker 3: I mean this in my view, we can get down
Speaker 3: for a policy conversation there. So the rationales for this
Speaker 3: war are worse than you can imagine any prior US
Speaker 3: intervention anywhere. And it is really doing a great disservice.
Speaker 3: And we talked about the Democratic Party and the struggles
Speaker 3: with it that there isn't a leading security minded argument
Speaker 3: against this war. Well, you're seeing and hearing a lot
Speaker 3: of our process and gas prices and domestic needs, and
Speaker 3: those are all fair and correct, but what they miss
Speaker 3: is if the president says this is an imminent threat
Speaker 3: Iran was going to attack US, I had to go
Speaker 3: do this war. Who is making this American security minded
Speaker 3: argument that that is fully nonsense and that this war
Speaker 3: of choice puts us in a weaker position security wise
Speaker 3: than ever before.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think here more opposite of America.
Speaker 1: First, yeah, right, I mean, who's making the argument, Rand,
Speaker 1: but you're asking it's actually Rand.
Speaker 3: Paul, which which always frustrates me that we we you know,
Speaker 3: I appreciate the Democrats are focused on the domestic needs
Speaker 3: and we have to be right, and we just cost
Speaker 3: of living in formula issues. But if you live in
Speaker 3: the place of wine, to protect America, we should be
Speaker 3: making the art, you know.
Speaker 1: The issue this is still Vietnam syndrome. Yes, And I
Speaker 1: think I think infiltrates the democratic brain.
Speaker 3: You know, I tend to think that Israel politics is
Speaker 3: also at play here and that there's some concerns around
Speaker 3: you know, the AI companies that are at play here,
Speaker 3: and how do you navigate the big money that's being
Speaker 3: spent in the selection cycle, which we can get into, right,
Speaker 3: Who's who are the big spenders in these primaries? And
Speaker 3: it tends to be it's AI of two versions, right,
Speaker 3: It's AI of artificial intelligence and it's AI of AI
Speaker 3: American Israel Political Action Committee stuff.
Speaker 1: So both of them, don't forget the crypto guys too,
Speaker 1: fair shake where Chuck Schuber actually told them in the AA,
Speaker 1: I mean, when Chuck Schumer tells the Democratic Caucus you're
Speaker 1: just going to have to suck it up on crypto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that felt like that.
Speaker 1: We have we have crossed the rubicon of of of
Speaker 1: financial capture, right, and and I know it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: me you you would appreciate this. I moderated a panel
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago at the Principal's First Conference,
Speaker 1: which is sort of a right, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: Republicans still trying to repair the Republican Party post Trump.
Speaker 1: They're all anti Trump and all this stuff. And there's
Speaker 1: Pat McCrory advocating for campaign finance reform. And you're just
Speaker 1: like the number of people I've run into recently that
Speaker 1: have gotten religion on campaign finance reform are people I
Speaker 1: never would have put anywhere near this topic even five
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 3: Do you think see in that, just to stick with
Speaker 3: that for a second, that in that wonderful NBC pull
Speaker 3: that you and I read closely, Democrats are at the
Speaker 3: bottom on approval unfortunately talked about that. But you see
Speaker 3: who is a little bit below that.
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Speaker 1: That is you know, we're we're I was at another conference,
Speaker 1: a tech conference earlier this week, and they haven't fully.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's because of them, is what
Speaker 1: I said that you guys that aiso I'm popular, right,
Speaker 1: there's a distrust, they said. The public's not being stupid here.
Speaker 1: They know what social media did.
Speaker 3: Do us, the publishers.
Speaker 1: It's the same companies that are that are in charge
Speaker 1: of this. And you know if and oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: the memory of globalization one point oh wasn't very good
Speaker 1: for these people. What's interesting is that we are the
Speaker 1: most negative on AI of any Western country in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you make of that?
Speaker 3: Understandable? And I we should be. I think if you
Speaker 3: look at to your point of the understandings of what
Speaker 3: upside benefits does this have to working class people living
Speaker 3: in paycheck to paycheck sixty percent of Americans, And you say,
Speaker 3: what aren't you possibly putting on the table to improve
Speaker 3: their lives? There's really very very little to nothing being
Speaker 3: put on the line on the line by AI companies,
Speaker 3: by the tech oligarchs. They say, you're going to generally
Speaker 3: improve I would argue, we can get down all of
Speaker 3: all of the rabbit hole. But just looking at the
Speaker 3: campaign finance side of this, you know they are spending
Speaker 3: tons of money both on Super Bowl ads, which you
Speaker 3: and I watched together, but also it's spending in a
Speaker 3: lot of political primaries and trying to capture the political system,
Speaker 3: which means that the candidates are not actually being populous
Speaker 3: in the way that I would like to see, well,
Speaker 3: articulating the harms of working class people who are very
Speaker 3: worried about it.
Speaker 1: When you have a massive amount of money consume your
Speaker 1: camp primary campaign. And that's what we're seeing in Illinois right.
Speaker 1: I think the Illinois Senate race is gross, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: It is so gross because it feels like all of
Speaker 1: the candidates have some sort of sponsor, right that they're
Speaker 1: you know that they have a title sponsorship.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: One is the crypto guy, one is the AI data
Speaker 1: center person, one is the anthropic AI people, right. But
Speaker 1: it's it feels like they've all been captured by some
Speaker 1: massive industry that is currently trying to buy off Washington.
Speaker 1: And there's the three people, the three big the three
Speaker 1: big entities, and four if you want to put an
Speaker 1: APAC in there.
Speaker 2: And it is.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is that APEX numbers are actually payo financial
Speaker 1: in comparison to what you're saying with Crypto and.
Speaker 2: With the ACT.
Speaker 1: But it has made me question all those candidates running
Speaker 1: in Illinois.
Speaker 3: It should, I mean, I mean, this is why it's
Speaker 3: a Bernie Sanders moment in America is because it's not
Speaker 3: about the policy agen as much as the integrity question.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the integrity question of do you
Speaker 3: orient yourself of being a populast who fights for working
Speaker 3: class people and that that is who governs your sense
Speaker 3: of the fights. I picked the people for whom I
Speaker 3: am going to challenge the wealthy and the powerful.
Speaker 1: Fights that you pick. You talk about this all the time.
Speaker 1: You got to learn, you know, Donald Trump was really
Speaker 1: good about pick and fights. And you've said this before,
Speaker 1: and you think Democrats are.
Speaker 2: Terrible about it.
Speaker 3: They don't like friction by almost it's almost in the
Speaker 3: DNA now you can sense it that even as we
Speaker 3: talk right now, in this amount of leading up to
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, what are we putting on the table
Speaker 3: besides our hatred of Donald Trump? I mean, you go
Speaker 3: that Illinois race and you have candidates run, you know,
Speaker 3: running f Trump adds literally three seconds of just that.
Speaker 3: Trump got that. That's pretty clear. I think the public
Speaker 3: has as an understanding that you and Donald Trump are not,
Speaker 3: I time, on anything else. Is there any friction within
Speaker 3: American society on any economic justice issues in which you're
Speaker 3: willing to name names and take on powerful actors? And
Speaker 3: this goes back to our AI question. They're telling you
Speaker 3: right now, American public is telling you right now that
Speaker 3: this is one of their top concerns. And how is
Speaker 3: it possible that any political actors or political parties have
Speaker 3: not gravitated to the layup that's on the table. We
Speaker 3: could argue about the Data Center moratory method policy, but
Speaker 3: it is clear that Bernie Sanders, just by putting it
Speaker 3: on the docket, has said I am putting something out
Speaker 3: there that it was reflecting the pain of working class people.
Speaker 3: Does anybody want to meet me or match this bar
Speaker 3: or suggest that.
Speaker 1: Shared Brown loss because of Crypto fast exactly? I mean,
Speaker 1: like it is that has It seems like that result
Speaker 1: that Bernio Moreno became the crypto guy and then dropped
Speaker 1: the whole ton of cash on Shared Brown in twenty
Speaker 1: four It seems as if that has just absolutely overwhelm.
Speaker 3: This is why great talking with you about these kinds
Speaker 3: of things, as you live these very well, because you,
Speaker 3: unlike most political commentators, I think, are able to marry
Speaker 3: policy and politics, and I think often we get into
Speaker 3: your Democrats think so heavy heading about policy that they
Speaker 3: let their politics suffer as a result. Meanwhile, the Republicans
Speaker 3: are the other way around. They know when they're going
Speaker 3: to govern, they're going to govern on behalf of crypto.
Speaker 3: But when I politic, when I get out into the
Speaker 3: world and talk to working class people, I say things
Speaker 3: brazenly about, oh, I'm going to take on the wealthy
Speaker 3: and the powerful. I hate this wealthy actor and in
Speaker 3: ways that I think because they're better populist wise campaigning,
Speaker 3: And it gets to my deep, deep frustration with the
Speaker 3: Democrat Party of how we don't campaign is to name names,
Speaker 3: name some villains, get into fights, elevate these kinds of issues,
Speaker 3: and then of course I want to marry that with
Speaker 3: a policy agenda. But often the policy agenda, you know,
Speaker 3: is so much in the forefront of our mind that
Speaker 3: we have no politics by which to reach regular people over.
Speaker 1: So, I it's interesting that you call it. You think
Speaker 1: you're there's a Bernie Sanders moment here. I certainly think
Speaker 1: there's an outsider, independent moment that's happening. And I'm but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm one of those that getting close isn't
Speaker 1: going to mean anything to me in twenty six. You know,
Speaker 1: if Osborne loses again, okay, then it didn't work. Just
Speaker 1: because you come close doesn't mean it's It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: If Seth Bodner is not a United States Senator out
Speaker 1: of Montana, it didn't work. If Mike Duggan is not
Speaker 1: the next governor of Michigan, it didn't work.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: But all three could happen. Maybe three, All three could
Speaker 2: benefit from not having a party label A La Bernie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but also I think the over unders matter that
Speaker 3: the delta's in the margins. So I wouldn't go all
Speaker 3: the way to saying, hey, I hear you're still trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what is the right directional form of
Speaker 3: politics that people that matches what people would support, and
Speaker 3: for a democratic parties trying to find its way, I'm
Speaker 3: arguing that some of these independents are offering a kind
Speaker 3: of different working class economic first agenda, then should influence
Speaker 3: the way in which we think. Right.
Speaker 2: You know, I was.
Speaker 1: Spending a little bit of extra time on the FDR
Speaker 1: coalition a couple of weeks ago and going back through
Speaker 1: some of it, and you do realize that FDR's decision
Speaker 1: to just stick to an economic focus did widen did
Speaker 1: broaden his support. Now there's history is not kind on
Speaker 1: some of the on some of these things, right with him.
Speaker 1: But the only way you can make you can make
Speaker 1: economic justice a transformational issue is if you can get
Speaker 1: fifty five sixty percent type of coalitions. And he did
Speaker 1: build one, and he showed I mean, I've said, if
Speaker 1: if the right drops its cultural greed, the economic populace
Speaker 1: on the right, drop the cultural grievance issue or start
Speaker 1: prioritizing the economic justice over and above everything else. And
Speaker 1: you know, and Bernie's gotten in trouble at this at
Speaker 1: times right where he will endorse candidates that maybe he
Speaker 1: doesn't agree with on guns and doesn't agree with on abortion,
Speaker 1: but he's like, look on the economic.
Speaker 2: Issues, this is the priority.
Speaker 1: And this to me is always how the Democrats get
Speaker 1: in their own way, right, they punish a candidate it
Speaker 1: isn't correct on these social issues, and that still seems
Speaker 1: to be the struggle the party is having.
Speaker 2: And why these these Osborne's of the world or.
Speaker 1: Or the Bodiers of the world are going you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm better off from running as an independent. That way
Speaker 1: I can say no to some of these groups and
Speaker 1: not get punished for it.
Speaker 3: Right. I mean again, in the wonderful NBC poll I
Speaker 3: they get asked, you know, Republicans and Democrats essentially, would
Speaker 3: you prefer a candidate who has closer ideology to you?
Speaker 3: Or electability arguments? And it was always been generally the
Speaker 3: case that Democrats have favored these kinds of electability arguments,
Speaker 3: and still did in that poll. Though there's a little
Speaker 3: bit more ideological.
Speaker 2: It was a twenty point right.
Speaker 1: It was like Republicans were like seventy twenty and you know,
Speaker 1: this is what I have a big progressive lean In
Speaker 1: the class that I'm teaching at USC this year, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, legal studies majors. They're ready
Speaker 1: to go the world right justice warriors, and they're all
Speaker 1: very frustrated that you would love them because they are like,
Speaker 1: why does the Democratic Party?
Speaker 2: You know, they seem to always cave to its moderates.
Speaker 1: And I always say, look, there is a math problem
Speaker 1: that the Democrats have, right, which is the self described
Speaker 1: conservative is about ten points more than the self described liberal,
Speaker 1: and what does that mean in your goal to get
Speaker 1: to fifty percent? Republicans need fewer middle of the road
Speaker 1: voters than Democrats do. Right, continues to be a math problem.
Speaker 3: For the last maya pill fight on this within the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party ranks has been a kind of a rearguard
Speaker 3: difficult fight, which is that Bernie Sanders is a stronger
Speaker 3: under election candidate than he as a primary candidate. And
Speaker 3: if to understand that, you haven't been able to never
Speaker 3: been able to get there, and I would argue, well, sadly,
Speaker 3: we'll never see it, but I would. I'm firm about
Speaker 3: my own personal views on that, and as if if
Speaker 3: people were to agree with me on it, then you're saying, well,
Speaker 3: what about Senator Sanders would would move a five percent
Speaker 3: of conservatives independence in the column of him. Well, now
Speaker 3: we get into the heart of what I think of
Speaker 3: a Democratic Party should be in and around, is that
Speaker 3: here's a fight against a billionaire class. A willingness to
Speaker 3: take on corporate power and corporate greed and corporate influence,
Speaker 3: and willingness to fight or campaign finance reform and meaningful
Speaker 3: and important ways and integrity that you trust that you
Speaker 3: wake up every day wanting to fight for working class Americans.
Speaker 3: That is, That's clearly what they people associate with Bernie,
Speaker 3: and I think we want more of that associated with
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. But unfortunately this is a book wal
Speaker 3: re alignment opportunity in America. In my view, I think
Speaker 3: we get that you don't always get these opportunities, but
Speaker 3: right now you've got one where I think if the
Speaker 3: right hand with the right appeal gets that five seven
Speaker 3: percent moving fully over and potentially staying with you, if
Speaker 3: you you know campaign. You know, we saw this with Obama.
Speaker 3: He had the opportunity in two thousand and seven eight,
Speaker 3: and he had it, you know for a period of time.
Speaker 3: Somebody coming along right now could realign America in a major,
Speaker 3: major way.
Speaker 1: I am near a Tandon shares your belief in that
Speaker 1: that this is that this is a moment. Now, she's
Speaker 1: more in the this is a moment for the Democratic Party,
Speaker 1: don't screw it up type of moment. I I'm a
Speaker 1: bit more pessimistic. I think where I think there needs
Speaker 1: to be another kick. You know, there's a Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: phrase that I sort of like that he uses, which is,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no second educator, there's no extra education
Speaker 1: with the second kick to the head by a mule.
Speaker 2: Or something like that.
Speaker 1: And yet I have a feeling that I have a
Speaker 1: feeling that twenty six is going to give Democrats false
Speaker 1: hope about twenty eight and that they will go in
Speaker 1: the wrong direction. Well, what happened in eighty six eighty eight,
Speaker 1: it was a very similar situation.
Speaker 3: The the big TVD there though, is that unlike let's
Speaker 3: call it twenty twenty two, when you say, you know,
Speaker 3: led to the kind of the wrong false hope that
Speaker 3: you're referring to. There was an assumed front runner right
Speaker 3: of the Democratic nomination. There wasn't going to be as
Speaker 3: much of a debate there should have been, should argue,
Speaker 3: but there there wasn't sure by this time there will
Speaker 3: be right, There will be actively has to be a
Speaker 3: very competitive primary, very open debate. The question and concern
Speaker 3: that I have, of course, is that given that Senator
Speaker 3: Sanders is extremely extremely unlikely to run, I do think
Speaker 3: that were he able to run, he would win in
Speaker 3: this in this cycle.
Speaker 1: And oh, I'm more convinced today than I would have
Speaker 1: been five years ago that they that Bernie wins the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election.
Speaker 3: Right unfortunate and.
Speaker 2: I was probably would not have been in that camp
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen seventeen.
Speaker 3: But I think he you know, if we could rind
Speaker 3: the clock fifteen years younger where he could run, he
Speaker 3: would do very well. So is there a natural follow on?
Speaker 3: Is the obvious question? Who most is closest to the
Speaker 3: conceptions of what are the best political attributes of Bernie?
Speaker 3: And at this point, as you and I talk, it
Speaker 3: is not yet clear that there is that There's a
Speaker 3: lot of in the normy kind of moderate centrist lane.
Speaker 3: Lots of governors, as we could rattle off, but who's
Speaker 3: going to be out there progressive aggressively saying like Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 3: I believe X, Y and Z.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting, You're right, I'm I'm you know.
Speaker 1: I think another under sould aspect to Bernie, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm more skeptical of AOC, is that he was
Speaker 1: from a rural state. Yeah, and so there's a little
Speaker 1: bit more credibility than coming from you know, had he
Speaker 1: always been, had he stayed in Brooklyn and been a
Speaker 1: New York senator, I don't know if.
Speaker 2: He's the same following well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that it's a small thing, but
Speaker 1: I wonder because there is just a there is a
Speaker 1: branding that comes with New York Democrat, California Democrat that
Speaker 1: you don't get with Vermont.
Speaker 2: Yeah, liberals different, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, by his orientation is very much a class base there.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a.
Speaker 2: Class and what the Democrats.
Speaker 1: This goes back to the Democrats need a good old
Speaker 1: fashioned class warfare. Campasely, this is what FDR did, But
Speaker 1: you got to drop the culture and that I don't
Speaker 1: know if today's Democratic Party and the interest groups that
Speaker 1: control it are ready.
Speaker 2: To do that. Right.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'd quibble with drop the culture because the thing
Speaker 3: I get concerned about on this front is you cannot
Speaker 3: go before the American public and lie and deceive them
Speaker 3: about what you might honestly believe. What you're trying to argue.
Speaker 3: In my mind over is what is the primacy of
Speaker 3: the things that I most care about from my end
Speaker 3: litigated the sober Kambla and other people, is that when
Speaker 3: you don't have the privacy of an economic justice, class
Speaker 3: based argument that people believe and trust and say, oh,
Speaker 3: that's what animates you. When you don't have that, what
Speaker 3: becomes subsumed by you is the sense that you probably
Speaker 3: care a lot more about these other culture issues in
Speaker 3: which there's far more differences of opinions about the American public.
Speaker 3: And we tend to think maybe that's what animates you
Speaker 3: and why you want to get into government? Does you
Speaker 3: want DEI in various government agencies? And you know that
Speaker 3: you can't fault a lot of people from understand seeming
Speaker 3: like they're trying to hunt for what is it that
Speaker 3: drives you? And I don't want people to feel like, oh,
Speaker 3: I have to run away from culture, but I don't
Speaker 3: think that's the case. They just want to know that
Speaker 3: will you give allowance for disagreement on the cultural issues
Speaker 3: where there might be and say, hey, this is what
Speaker 3: I believe. I appreciate and you might have a different
Speaker 3: point of view, but here's what I believe. But together
Speaker 3: you and I are on the same page on these
Speaker 3: economic justice fights on wealth and income and quality that
Speaker 3: are the first order priorities of today.
Speaker 1: So what would should be doing if you were running
Speaker 1: the party right now with these independent candidacies in the
Speaker 1: in the in the sort of upper Midwest, you know
Speaker 1: you have You're probably gonna have one in Kansas, now,
Speaker 1: in Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota. Well, you're a lot let me,
Speaker 1: said Doug aside, Dugan is sort of a different type
Speaker 1: of campaign. The other ones are all very similar because
Speaker 1: you know, they actually coordinate. You know, they have their
Speaker 1: own I've interviewed a couple of them and they said.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, we're on a text chain. You know, Osborne
Speaker 2: and Bangs and the guy in Idaho, I'm blanking on
Speaker 2: his name.
Speaker 1: I apologize. They're gonna be mad at me. Todd Todd yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: What would you be doing with them if you were
Speaker 2: at the dnc UH.
Speaker 3: In my view, we have some really great candidates. So,
Speaker 3: first of all, while acknowledging that you've mentioned some that
Speaker 3: are kind of maybe problematic or challenging for you know,
Speaker 3: do you advance a Democratic Canada surveying the field, is
Speaker 3: there a strong candidate or not? You have to make
Speaker 3: prioritizations the question we're just say, well, who is a
Speaker 3: priority for you? Thankfully, the Democrats do have very strong
Speaker 3: priorities that you know, go to Alaska, you go Iowa, Texas, Maine,
Speaker 3: North Carolina, hire lots of potentials of pickups and on
Speaker 3: the Senate races alone, and you say, that's where the
Speaker 3: prioritization for the Democratic National Committee is right. Just to
Speaker 3: look at this field and look at the possibilities, and
Speaker 3: we need to advertise. This is the moment to advertise
Speaker 3: a different kind of a Democratic party. And Mary Bell
Speaker 3: Tolla gives you that, James Tallerico gives you on Grand
Speaker 3: Plantner gives you that. Obviously, you have to navigate some
Speaker 3: primary issues here. Who represents us in Iowa? Who represents
Speaker 3: us in some of these other places? But I think
Speaker 3: that the possibility is that for the first cycle that
Speaker 3: I can remember a long period of time, we will
Speaker 3: have new faces that look and feel like working class voices,
Speaker 3: relatively new voices across the board, although Charit and Roy
Speaker 3: Cooper are older. But I think you might have the
Speaker 3: opportunity to say, here, look at the new faces, the
Speaker 3: new direction, the new orientation of this Democratic Party. That's
Speaker 3: what I think is really possible for the d n
Speaker 3: C side of it things.
Speaker 1: So what would you do though, about the secondary races
Speaker 1: of Montana and Nebraska?
Speaker 3: What do you suggest on the table? I mean, we're
Speaker 3: not going to be We're not going to be.
Speaker 1: The ward agreed to stand down in Nebraska. I mean
Speaker 1: it seems like that's a that's an open secret. Montana's
Speaker 1: a different story where you have John Tester endorsing the Independent.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in my mind, if you feel like there's
Speaker 3: a good chance that we could capture the Senate with
Speaker 3: Democrats majority of the Democrats, why wouldn't you let a
Speaker 3: flyer run in Montana or wherever the case might be,
Speaker 3: in which we don't necessarily have to feel as a
Speaker 3: Democratic Canadon because we think we can defeat the Republican
Speaker 3: with the Independent. I don't know, I haven't seen enough
Speaker 3: with the polling on that, but we're making a theoretical
Speaker 3: observation here that if we feel like we can get
Speaker 3: to fifty plus one with Democratic votes and that Osborne
Speaker 3: or an independent and Montana could win, great, great, that's great,
Speaker 3: great froms grateful of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I mean, I just this is the look.
Speaker 2: I kind of think we kind of need a a moment,
Speaker 2: that that push that forces both parties to rethink of
Speaker 2: what they are, right, and that's what that's what independent
Speaker 2: candidacies can do.
Speaker 1: They're not replacements, right, We're not We're not doing that.
Speaker 1: There's not a third party that becomes a second party
Speaker 1: per se. But there's definitely interest in this, right. You
Speaker 1: see it among younger voters. I assume you see it
Speaker 1: a lot in your work at more Perfect Union.
Speaker 3: I mean the MVP, and we've seen this and Bernie
Speaker 3: as he gets that he's done the fight, all Gurchy
Speaker 3: rallies and the course of the last year, and we
Speaker 3: look at the match, every attendee over the vility of
Speaker 3: moves minutes, and then same with the MVU, and we
Speaker 3: look at all of our audience where they're coming in.
Speaker 3: Particularly if you're younger than thirty five, you're you're an independent,
Speaker 3: You're no party preference. Honestly, even if you might say
Speaker 3: you're done, you're not really. And so a lot of
Speaker 3: people are just are independent minded. But when you say
Speaker 3: independent minded, what is there? They still have ideological orientation.
Speaker 3: That's what often gets discounted, that the sense there's sometimes
Speaker 3: a conflation that independent is moderate centrist, not cent.
Speaker 1: What I always say independent usually is is you know,
Speaker 1: they nobody wants to feel like they have to own everything,
Speaker 1: the deeds and the rs stand for these days where
Speaker 1: I understand why people don't want to do that.
Speaker 3: And that the partisanship isn't what appeals to people right now.
Speaker 3: It is I don't want to beat the dead horse
Speaker 3: hero once again, that the people's economic lives govern their
Speaker 3: orientation and they're thinking about politics, not the other way around.
Speaker 3: Politics doesn't tend to govern I mean, l sure like
Speaker 3: you and me political animals. If you think about politics
Speaker 3: all the time, most people I think about their economic
Speaker 3: lives of the struggles, and then working backwards to does
Speaker 3: politics even match or represent or or have infused anything
Speaker 3: into this? And the answer currently right now is not really,
Speaker 3: because you don't have working class candidates generally speaking across
Speaker 3: the board who are matching your concerns over AI or
Speaker 3: the development or in the lack of a few human
Speaker 3: labor force, who matches where your thinking is at.
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Speaker 3: You know, it's a I think at some point we
Speaker 3: were always do for some kind of natural orientation on this.
Speaker 3: To be honest with your idea, the sustainability of these
Speaker 3: kinds of state by state approaches is in this age,
Speaker 3: what we understand of Trump is a sense of authoritarianism,
Speaker 3: and you sense that there's an appeal among some people
Speaker 3: in the public rightly so that all structures across the
Speaker 3: board become dysfunctional. There's lack of trust in democracy because
Speaker 3: we don't believe that institutions can can function. So then
Speaker 3: in my mind, there are some of these approaches that
Speaker 3: make better sense to execute nationally. Now that we're in
Speaker 3: a cycle, in a race to the bottom, you fight
Speaker 3: the fights that you have to fight to fight the
Speaker 3: moment that we're in.
Speaker 2: Well, there's this mindset of.
Speaker 1: Do whatever it takes to grab power, then you can
Speaker 1: implement an agenda. And I sense that that is where
Speaker 1: you know, there's a little bit of a divide, almost
Speaker 1: like a tactical divide on the left, which is.
Speaker 3: I'll know that there I don't even see.
Speaker 1: That session or just get power and then we'll worry
Speaker 1: about everything else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess the quibble there is do
Speaker 3: you sense an orientation of once you have power, what
Speaker 3: are you going to do? What is a first order
Speaker 3: priority of how do you solve this fundamental problem? And
Speaker 3: I think we have to make sure that it's an
Speaker 3: integrity based movement of people are saying, hey, here's the
Speaker 3: right way an election system should work. Let's have national readition.
Speaker 1: Do you worry that the left giving up it's look?
Speaker 1: I do think so let me defend Here's how I
Speaker 1: would defend the Democratic Party's lack of why there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of fear of putting themselves out there or
Speaker 1: picking a fight. I think I could make an argument
Speaker 1: that be playing the role of worthy adult in the
Speaker 1: room party has helped Democrats compete in some places that
Speaker 1: they normally wouldn't do as well, and so there's a
Speaker 1: fear of giving up the adult For instance, I think
Speaker 1: for instan this redistricting, you spend fifteen years branding yourself
Speaker 1: as the party of fairness and.
Speaker 2: Then you throw it all away here. You can't get
Speaker 2: that back.
Speaker 1: Are you going to regret in the long run not
Speaker 1: being seen as the party that was willing to put
Speaker 1: fairness above partisanship.
Speaker 3: I don't live with that fear, and I think everyone
Speaker 3: is fully aware of why we are engaged in a
Speaker 3: kind of asymmetrical warfare and the need for a different
Speaker 3: orientation to meet the crisis of the moment, and that
Speaker 3: happens to be around Donald Trump, and is the lack
Speaker 3: of value system of how he thinks about how to government,
Speaker 3: and so you say, okay, well we we're going to
Speaker 3: fully lose our values. Is we got to fight a
Speaker 3: fight right now, the bullies in the in the in
Speaker 3: the in the alley, and then attacking you attack. But
Speaker 3: then once you reorient say how would I better deal
Speaker 3: with this situation in the future such to avoid these
Speaker 3: kinds of problems. And I want that kind of a
Speaker 3: thinking that we have to be the struthurb a foreign
Speaker 3: party that says, hey, now that having it lived through
Speaker 3: chaos and a reorientation what Donald Trump did to government,
Speaker 3: can we come in and be reform minded in our
Speaker 3: own right. This goes back to your if you're with
Speaker 3: a discussion of the Democrats not loving friction and fights,
Speaker 3: we come up status quo party. It is what is
Speaker 3: assumed of you and of us in the words that
Speaker 3: you used as well.
Speaker 2: Adults, well, pragmatism has become code for status quo exactly.
Speaker 3: You know, adult minded is to say, no, listen, guys,
Speaker 3: don't fight fights, you can't win, don't worry what this
Speaker 3: is the system as it's always been, don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean to describe oversubscribes to it, but
Speaker 3: there has been a sign mentality around people who are
Speaker 3: upper class, upper educated. Right have you know you're making
Speaker 3: over one hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, you have
Speaker 3: an advanced degree, and you're like, fundamentally there, we don't
Speaker 3: need overhauls of any major things. But yeah, but the
Speaker 3: rest of America sixty plus percent believes in major systemic overhauls.
Speaker 3: We have to reflect those and they are needed in
Speaker 3: this moment.
Speaker 1: Who's the heir apparent to Bernie?
Speaker 3: I want a lot of people competing for that, Lade Jack,
Speaker 3: I want I want a lot of people throwing their hands.
Speaker 1: Is who do you think is doing a good job
Speaker 1: competing for the mantle right now?
Speaker 3: Good job competing is a high barber at the moment.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's obviously people. He has a great fondness
Speaker 3: for college Kagi pretension, He's gone out into the world
Speaker 3: with He's done events with a number of people.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it looks like he has a preference
Speaker 1: for her, if you're just watching observationally and how many
Speaker 1: times he's done events with her versus others.
Speaker 2: But by reading the.
Speaker 3: Word preference is doing a lot of work for you there.
Speaker 3: But I'd say what is clear is that he respects
Speaker 3: that she has built something of a national appeal and
Speaker 3: has a lot of young people in particular who believe
Speaker 3: in her and her vision of leadership. And he feels
Speaker 3: like he learned something from that. Right is that, Oh,
Speaker 3: here's somebody cultivating a populist kind of large natural, wide
Speaker 3: scale support. And for those of us, you know, Will
Speaker 3: Bernie and he's a populous by nature. He respects those
Speaker 3: who have built you could be Trump, he could build
Speaker 3: you know, you could be really any kind of politicians
Speaker 3: building huge amounts of support, because just something to learn
Speaker 3: from that. Then through that those kinds of people, you
Speaker 3: are getting a better access into what American public, what
Speaker 3: does American public think and believe? And in that way,
Speaker 3: it's sad to say that there aren't that many competitors
Speaker 3: on this front of who is populist, who gets their
Speaker 3: energy from people, who motivates and rallies large scales of people.
Speaker 3: AOC is at the top of that list right now,
Speaker 3: but there aren't that many beyond her, unless you want
Speaker 3: to challenge that condition.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, I'm you know, look, I Will Rocanna
Speaker 1: would like to be considered.
Speaker 2: What you say, what do you make of him?
Speaker 3: He's a very what you know about Row, he's very
Speaker 3: strategic and smart thinker, and you know his Silicon Valley polis.
Speaker 2: He lets the strategic thinking go get to public.
Speaker 3: I don't know that that's a it's a flaw I
Speaker 3: would put on him. I mean, you want people to
Speaker 3: be them.
Speaker 1: I like it, but I wonder if it plays like
Speaker 1: if it looks like he's being too calculating at times.
Speaker 3: I mean he is calculating.
Speaker 2: He is a calculating person. That's who he is. He's
Speaker 2: somebody is not right.
Speaker 1: I mean it up front, he moved to Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: simply because he thought it was better to represent that
Speaker 1: world than suburban Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: He's smart and I think you would add if you
Speaker 3: were here, he's a strategic, smart thinking person. Like that's great.
Speaker 3: And you know in this competitive environment you're saying, I
Speaker 3: think in this you know, it's not the presidency, it's
Speaker 3: not just a battle over width of intelligence. It is
Speaker 3: really kind of who captures the emotions and the visceralness
Speaker 3: of the feelings of American especially post Trump, where I
Speaker 3: think we'll have once again this moment of sensing who who.
Speaker 3: It's an entertainment industry as much as it is policy industry,
Speaker 3: and it's who feels like they are representing understand my life.
Speaker 3: And I think it's not just rows. A lot of
Speaker 3: people struggle to say, how how am I going to
Speaker 3: capture you emotionally?
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: Here'd be the I think a challenge that a sort
Speaker 1: of Burnie protege might have in twenty eight is that
Speaker 1: while there's a big demand for change, there's an exhaustion
Speaker 1: from all the disruption Trump has caused. And I think
Speaker 1: that's going to be a competing issue, right, You're going
Speaker 1: to have I call it the divide is not left
Speaker 1: versus center. It really is fight versus unite a little bit.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that you know, when you
Speaker 1: look at Biden, Biden benefited from the exhaustion wing of
Speaker 1: the country and then he tried to govern as a
Speaker 1: massive change agent and it didn't take. And I think
Speaker 1: part of it is if you don't, if you start
Speaker 1: governing different than your campaign, it doesn't matter whether.
Speaker 2: You're closer to them or not. It's just it bothers people.
Speaker 1: It's disruptive, like you know, you know, it is why
Speaker 1: you know, why hasn't Trump been punished more for by
Speaker 1: the voters.
Speaker 2: Well, the voters kind of.
Speaker 1: Knew he was always going to do certain things, so
Speaker 1: there is an expectation. Biden set the expectations radically differently
Speaker 1: as as a campaigner versus how he attempted to govern,
Speaker 1: and I think that's why he ran into I think
Speaker 1: in hindsight, that's why he ran into so many roadblocks,
Speaker 1: because what I get from you is if you tell
Speaker 1: people what you're going to do, you tell people you're
Speaker 1: going to be a disruptor, they're going to have more
Speaker 1: patience for you disrupting.
Speaker 3: And where I'm agreeing with you is that in that
Speaker 3: disruption argument, we need or want candidates who wrestle with
Speaker 3: coming in with an agenda and a plan on which
Speaker 3: is executable. That I think this project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: which obviously has now governed a lot of what Trump
Speaker 3: has done, and the fact that really came in with
Speaker 3: the qualifier doge and a lot of the desk.
Speaker 2: To learn from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to learn from that one. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 3: I could not stress this far, and I don't think
Speaker 3: enough thinking is being done on the left of center
Speaker 3: of given that you've got a reorientation if you were
Speaker 3: to walk into the presidency right now.
Speaker 2: It's what you know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, it's what says She's trying to get cap
Speaker 1: to do is essentially be focused on if he can
Speaker 1: destroy an agency without congressional approval, Well, what can you
Speaker 1: do with agencies in other ways without congressional approval?
Speaker 3: We want to know. It comes more from Alena con
Speaker 3: Wing of our party, which is to say, here's a woman,
Speaker 3: the talented person of integrity, comes into the FTC and says,
Speaker 3: here's all these latent powers that many people didn't even
Speaker 3: know existed, didn't believe this agency should operate in the
Speaker 3: way that it is. I'm coming in to reinstill a
Speaker 3: sense of imagination and purpose and mission to this place
Speaker 3: more akin to what it was founded to be. And
Speaker 3: therefore one of our primary objectives is to look at
Speaker 3: corporate concentration problems. File lawsuits. Even when people in the
Speaker 3: bureaucracy might say, what, we haven't filed lawsuits like that before.
Speaker 3: Those would be very hard, those would be challenging. Those
Speaker 3: are traditionally not what we do. It's like, guess what
Speaker 3: new sheriff in town. We're going to file some lawsuits
Speaker 3: and we're putting ourselves on the front edge. Now, if
Speaker 3: you're going to come into government, you're going to own
Speaker 3: that we're going to do stuff here. We're going to
Speaker 3: have to shake up the way in which the corporate
Speaker 3: world is two stacked against the American public. And that
Speaker 3: is understood. So if you take that FTC approach authored
Speaker 3: by I think by Lena that WORL. Hitchopra at the
Speaker 3: CFPB was great and effective as well, and you apply
Speaker 3: that across the board. As part of agriculture, we need
Speaker 3: somebody who shakes that up. We need Center for Medicare
Speaker 3: and Medicaid Services shakes that up and said, what are
Speaker 3: the powers to have more rural hospitals in America. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to sit here and just navigate the bureaucracy
Speaker 3: and the rules as it were. I have some purpose
Speaker 3: and mission to some real concrete goals, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to use the authorities to come in and do it.
Speaker 3: That kind of thinking, I think has been more associated
Speaker 3: with the progressive wing because they believe in the sense
Speaker 3: of a mission and a purpose and disruption. To your
Speaker 3: point that like, we're going to tap these latent authorities
Speaker 3: and have a concrete goal, not just I think, you know,
Speaker 3: good people, the Sarah Bill Sack, all these kinds of
Speaker 3: folks who've lived in government for a long period of time,
Speaker 3: and you get the sense they come in and say,
Speaker 3: what is it that we all have agreed to do here? Okay,
Speaker 3: we'll just do what we've all agreed to do it.
Speaker 1: Like, no, it's a little bit of agency capture.
Speaker 3: Yes, So.
Speaker 1: Of the all the people that run around floating, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of that are auditioning right now to run for
Speaker 1: president Among the Democrats, who do.
Speaker 2: You pay attention to the most?
Speaker 1: Who are you like I'm curious how they were received
Speaker 1: with that message, or I'm intrigued by the message they're using,
Speaker 1: or I don't understand what they're up to.
Speaker 2: You know, I'll just start name names. Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 3: Obviously he's built the strongest small dollar fundraising network. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you if you start not only with the polls
Speaker 3: of him building his traction and support off of Trump Brown,
Speaker 3: I mean, in many ways, it's kind of become the
Speaker 3: clearest you know, you almost we have the visual in
Speaker 3: our head, the finger point right of Trump right off
Speaker 3: the tarback right, that's what the guy, yeah, right, He's
Speaker 3: built it and he's cultivated. I think what he has
Speaker 3: done more effectively than anybody so far is he's translated
Speaker 3: that into an actual political apperative, so they as he
Speaker 3: as he delivers.
Speaker 2: In George, do you know any policy proposal he's offering.
Speaker 3: I don't think he's really I mean, he's obviously doing
Speaker 3: the podcast circuits, which is yeah.
Speaker 1: That's my thing with him, and that's why I think
Speaker 1: it's a it's probably a sugar high well.
Speaker 3: By the way, on that right, he's stuck in the
Speaker 3: morassos where well, tax is probably one of the biggest
Speaker 3: fights of our age right now, one of the point
Speaker 3: one of the biggest public If I go out anywhere
Speaker 3: to any town hall, I don'kay put a bunch of
Speaker 3: bag of people from me and I talked about taxing
Speaker 3: the rich. I guarantee you I got a hell lot
Speaker 3: of support. And here he is in what in California,
Speaker 3: basically opposing well Texan, not figuring out exactly he's.
Speaker 1: Probably eliminating himself from Democratic Party contention, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: fully realize.
Speaker 3: Employees out, but I imagine he's not, you know, not
Speaker 3: where the public is right now. AI too, by the way,
Speaker 3: you know, data centers also on the wrong side of
Speaker 3: that one. But not only him, I mean Shapiro Winmer.
Speaker 3: A lot of the governors have been stuck in these
Speaker 3: wrong I think, wrong positions on you know, cozying up
Speaker 3: to big tech BOLLI guards on Datisenter's Rob Emmanuel.
Speaker 1: You know, he's doing it differently than everybody else right now,
Speaker 1: which I find just I'm always interested in.
Speaker 3: Different you know. And I was talking before about the
Speaker 3: sense that you have just politic better, and at least
Speaker 3: to his credit, he's like, I'll own that I'm just
Speaker 3: the politic better. I think the struggle that had to
Speaker 3: have with wrong right, you know, as well as here's
Speaker 3: the person been in politics for like twenty thirty years.
Speaker 2: I don't know how his baggage right. I think his
Speaker 2: resume is too long for what people are looking for today.
Speaker 3: Right to be on every side of various fight and
Speaker 3: draft have you. You and I could go every text.
Speaker 1: You would be able to, you would be able to knit,
Speaker 1: you could pick a thousand knits in a Democratic primary,
Speaker 1: and he would be death by a thousand cuts. And
Speaker 1: yet what he's doing on the education issue is I
Speaker 1: think something that and he's been right, he came on
Speaker 1: this podcast and said, you know, I don't know why
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party stopped talking about education. And He's right,
Speaker 1: as a national issue, the Democrats have kind of surrendered this.
Speaker 3: Issue a great yes, so you and I'll challenge.
Speaker 2: I think it's why Latinos. I think it's why Latinos had.
Speaker 1: Been flirting with the Republicans, because the one thing Republicans
Speaker 1: do on a state level is they talk about education. Now,
Speaker 1: they don't want they want to gut public education. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you're a Latino voter, you care about education.
Speaker 1: One party is talking about giving you an opportunity to
Speaker 1: do something different.
Speaker 2: The other party's saying nothing right.
Speaker 3: So what I love about him, and I appreciate this,
Speaker 3: is that he is willing to throw ideas into the bay.
Speaker 3: Mix it up. Let me just say that's on education.
Speaker 3: What I what I worry about is obviously, you could
Speaker 3: get phones out of schools, that's easy, but you got
Speaker 3: to take on the power a big tech. That's a
Speaker 3: funmentally different question. I think related to this is all
Speaker 3: throw an idea. You know, I'm a pro labor guy,
Speaker 3: and I still believe that we should have year round
Speaker 3: schooling in America. Which I'm not sure where the you
Speaker 3: know where our teachers unions might feel about it. But
Speaker 3: we should have year round schooling and that that's something.
Speaker 2: So that would be enormously popular. And I have no
Speaker 2: idea why some of this.
Speaker 3: It should be built around trades, food, finance. We should
Speaker 3: teach kids how to cook those imagine summer programs that
Speaker 3: more built not edu caring you.
Speaker 1: For life skills, a summer of life skills. But it's
Speaker 1: mandatory education. Nobody says you have to go to the
Speaker 1: same school. Maybe a camp offers it. Maybe it's a form.
Speaker 1: Look what you're getting to. I love this idea because
Speaker 1: what it gets me closer to is national mandatory national service.
Speaker 3: And so now I'm one hundred. We'll stay with that one.
Speaker 3: So I think of the ideas I think to put
Speaker 3: on the agenda for twenty twenty. I hope there's Democrat
Speaker 3: candidates who sense that having scenes around them done, you
Speaker 3: execute a thirty dollars hour snow shoveling job in a crisis.
Speaker 3: We need to take that kernel of an idea and
Speaker 3: expand this nation wide. We need to put we need
Speaker 3: to make political economy judgments for this nation of the
Speaker 3: areas that we need service workers and other kinds of
Speaker 3: trade workers to work in that we do not have
Speaker 3: sufficient numbers of people working in whether dentist, doctors, nurses, teachers,
Speaker 3: whatever the case might be. We need more of these. I,
Speaker 3: as President of United Station, prepared to make that determination
Speaker 3: and set wages and benefits such that you can go
Speaker 3: and do public service for two three years to help
Speaker 3: our nation to do elder care. I will make sure
Speaker 3: you get paid eighty thousand dollars seventy thousand dollars with
Speaker 3: benefits to go and do this because the nation calls
Speaker 3: you right now. I am hungry for that kind of
Speaker 3: a vision.
Speaker 1: I think if you did a mandatory national service that
Speaker 1: was bigger than this. Is not about the military draft,
Speaker 1: you know this is different.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a version of it. Domestically. It's saying that,
Speaker 3: unlike a military, we mobilize people in service, which you
Speaker 3: know is I'll confuse people on my views on ICE,
Speaker 3: but I do then to think a lot of people
Speaker 3: who sign up for ICBP right now see a fifty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars bonus are motivated not only financially but also
Speaker 3: a sense of purpose and mission. I got federal job
Speaker 3: protecting your Now I want to go after this vast
Speaker 3: majority of them say, Hey, what if I give you
Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars to be a school teacher in eighth
Speaker 3: grade or do the summer school that we're just talking about.
Speaker 3: Would you do that instead? Would you help be a
Speaker 3: young male mentor for so many young men who need it?
Speaker 3: I think they would be there for it.
Speaker 1: Under Yeah, let's talk a little geographic tactics. If you
Speaker 1: could pick the ideal first four states to start the
Speaker 1: democratic primary process?
Speaker 3: I got my first. That's easy, right? Where am I going? First?
Speaker 2: What are you? Is your four? What do you think
Speaker 2: that should be the right test?
Speaker 3: At one hundred percent? So that that's Nevada to.
Speaker 2: Start in Nevada. First person? Are you on the DNC?
Speaker 3: Did you get I'm removed?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, removed? Congrats.
Speaker 3: I guess the Eurosy has got a different order. But
Speaker 3: I understood and I was comfortable with it, to be clear,
Speaker 3: I'm just not me upset about it.
Speaker 2: So I but look, you come for the king best
Speaker 2: not miss hey.
Speaker 3: They do will be a service of not needing to
Speaker 3: be off. Then well, I think that I would love
Speaker 3: Nevadi go first. There's a lots of reasons. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm an old free guy, and I think there's a
Speaker 3: lot of things about that state that that service it well.
Speaker 3: And in terms of a primary the compressed geography is
Speaker 3: he've able to meet and talk to people one to one,
Speaker 3: do TV ads and such that don't blow the budget.
Speaker 3: So I think that that makes sense.
Speaker 2: For one.
Speaker 3: I love you're.
Speaker 2: Not concerned that Vegas is too big of a market now, No, I.
Speaker 3: Think it's got a lot of working class people, culinary
Speaker 3: you know this. I mean, I love that the labor
Speaker 3: approach of that city is one that would orient Democrats
Speaker 3: and figuring out how to talk about labor again. I mean,
Speaker 3: we don't go through the dough tax on tips. But
Speaker 3: Trump was very loud and proudly about the fact that
Speaker 3: that state and those workers in that state have guided
Speaker 3: him to one of his more popular proposals. You know,
Speaker 3: So I want that time for the Democratic Party Michigan. I
Speaker 3: would move, you know, I would take either the top four.
Speaker 2: That's a big state to put in the top four.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is, but it's such a again because.
Speaker 1: Always worry about the big states just favoring the money candidates.
Speaker 3: That's all. Yeah, No, that's fair to where it's in
Speaker 3: the first four. It is an open question here. I like,
Speaker 3: I probably put Georgia over North Carolina, but between Georgia
Speaker 3: and North Carolina for me on one of those, uh,
Speaker 3: and then and then we got a TVD here on
Speaker 3: what we want us the fourth.
Speaker 2: Well, I here's the here'd be.
Speaker 1: My concern about your map, and and what I've been
Speaker 1: obsessed with is that I do think what Iowa did
Speaker 1: do for the Democratic Party for a long time is
Speaker 1: that it got it forced Democrats to talk to world
Speaker 1: voters right and to go out and it's you know,
Speaker 1: and look, I understand there's this scar tissue.
Speaker 2: From Iowa and.
Speaker 1: For for the you know, two times in a row
Speaker 1: it's not clear who won and and and you know
Speaker 1: that's you want to be our first in the nation,
Speaker 1: and you can't tell us who won twice now, right.
Speaker 1: So I understand that aspect. But there's also a party
Speaker 1: building aspect.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So if you make Kansas or Nebraska, which could easily both,
Speaker 1: you know, I could make the case for both of
Speaker 1: them as an Iowa like replacement. You also might start
Speaker 1: organizing a state and turning it and turning a state
Speaker 1: that's light red at the moment to a swing state.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Unfortunately, that isn't the story of Iowa as we know.
Speaker 1: No, but once it was there, it was I mean
Speaker 1: which case I think, Look, Iowa, New Hampshire are there
Speaker 1: are two states that demographically don't belong in the battleground,
Speaker 1: and they were in the battleground a long time. And
Speaker 1: I think it's simply because they were first in the
Speaker 1: nation states, meaning that voters, I think voters, this is
Speaker 1: where we underestimate voters. If you treat voters like swing voters,
Speaker 1: they'll behave like swing voters. And if you treat them
Speaker 1: like you know, partisan voters, they'll behave like partisan voters sometimes.
Speaker 3: Right, I'll give you a crazy idea that I've long
Speaker 3: had about this out, which was along those lines, was
Speaker 3: to look at highest democratic performance of every state and
Speaker 3: line them up by which state parlies. In other words,
Speaker 3: we're doing a great job cycle after cycle of making
Speaker 3: sure that that's almost.
Speaker 1: Like a reverse lottery, right, Like you you earn you
Speaker 1: want first in the nation be the best democratic performing stage.
Speaker 3: You have a spot for them essentially, Like you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not a huge soccer fan, but be from what
Speaker 3: I understand, you know you have like the you know,
Speaker 3: the second tier, the.
Speaker 1: Good stuffy exactly you want to be in the first
Speaker 1: tranche of primaries where you'll get a lot of candidates
Speaker 1: and a lot of money, a lot of extra resources,
Speaker 1: or do you want to be in the second trants
Speaker 1: of primaries or it might be a coronation by the
Speaker 1: time your your statement.
Speaker 3: Thanks for only challenge with my line of thinking there
Speaker 3: is that sometimes sometimes the smaller states benefit because.
Speaker 2: Every month in Delaware could both benefit.
Speaker 3: I'm sure right exactly, so I do though think to
Speaker 3: your part, I mean, it's making your argument here how
Speaker 3: and why you could have a recipe to do that.
Speaker 3: It's okay, a smaller state that will overperform getting democratic
Speaker 3: vote out and we'll have earned a spot in the
Speaker 3: first four by virtue of that. And I think it's
Speaker 3: not a bad thing to everything that you just say.
Speaker 3: It's probably more you know, probably rule tendencies and now
Speaker 3: you're rewarding states to say, show me that you are
Speaker 3: going to turn democratic orders out on YouTube and find
Speaker 3: yourself in the top. At least have a metric and
Speaker 3: guide for a.
Speaker 2: How that's where?
Speaker 1: Or how about Kansas sixteen sixteen years of Democratic governors
Speaker 1: in the last twenty four yet they get treated like,
Speaker 1: you know, as if that's not an accomplishment worth noting.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, But on this though, the the thing I'm
Speaker 3: trying to express is not just that Democrats have held offices,
Speaker 3: is that we're building our ranks. I want to see
Speaker 3: and reward those in the state parties who are who
Speaker 3: are doing an aggressive job of building the people. And
Speaker 3: right now that that was my number one critique of
Speaker 3: a democratic natural committee of architecture is that that is
Speaker 3: not one thing that we measure or assess or reward.
Speaker 3: If you're going to give money out to state parties,
Speaker 3: do it with some metrics or goals in mind, and say, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, you will earn this money by showing me
Speaker 3: that people within your ranks have grown, How have they grown,
Speaker 3: what volunteer capacities have you done? How will you earn
Speaker 3: these dollars not just a new dolling amount.
Speaker 1: Well, but let's fast forward to the twenty thirty two
Speaker 1: problem for Democrats, which is, right, the Kamala Harris map
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, if she carries Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan,
Speaker 1: she has two hundred and seventy electoral votes in twenty
Speaker 1: thirty two, that same group of states, it's worth two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty nine.
Speaker 2: So where do you invest?
Speaker 1: Look, I understand rewarding those states, but you've I think
Speaker 1: the Democrats have to put more states in play. They
Speaker 1: have to start looking for And to me, Kansas is
Speaker 1: just ripe. I just I view, Kansas is really ripe
Speaker 1: on this issue more than any other state in this
Speaker 1: sort of mid mid in the middle part of the country.
Speaker 1: And then there's the question of Texas and Florida. Right,
Speaker 1: they're big giant pots of money suck. But if you
Speaker 1: put them in play, you really screw up the strategy
Speaker 1: of the Republicans, right because they they count on those
Speaker 1: two states. So how would you be how would you
Speaker 1: be thinking about twenty thirty two if you were sitting
Speaker 1: at the DNC right now.
Speaker 3: But do you got to find somewhere in the Sun
Speaker 3: Belt to invest in? I mean Georgia obviously we're talking.
Speaker 1: Imagine if they hadn't done Georgia, right, and you know Georgia,
Speaker 1: North Carolina nour must wins.
Speaker 2: They're not nice to have anymore.
Speaker 3: And how to my mind, you can't lose the SEC
Speaker 3: this year after it's like, that doesn't.
Speaker 1: Which ones would you go to? I haven't been intrigued.
Speaker 1: My favorite ones to look at that I think are
Speaker 1: organizable probably the way I would begin obviously, look, we'll
Speaker 1: see what Texas does. You know, winning is a big deal,
Speaker 1: right if Tyllerica wins.
Speaker 3: Winning is a big deal.
Speaker 2: But over that does bring dollars to the state party.
Speaker 2: I was reading.
Speaker 1: I was doing the history of Texas campaigns weeks ago
Speaker 1: and the John Tower victory in nineteen sixty one when
Speaker 1: Republicans broke through the first time in sensory reconstruction. It
Speaker 1: said like that was the first That following year is
Speaker 1: the first time the national Republicans had ever written a
Speaker 1: check to the state Republicans in Texas. Right, like it opened,
Speaker 1: it does open the mind. Coming close doesn't always do that. Actually,
Speaker 1: winning does it? So I see the path there. I
Speaker 1: look at a Mississippi, which is to me, when you
Speaker 1: look at it, if you, if you if you created
Speaker 1: a statistic like baseball does with win above replacement, when
Speaker 1: you look at the cost of investing versus the potential
Speaker 1: for return, Mississippi is the best value on the board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and how do you think of that as different
Speaker 3: from Alabama as compared we obviously Doug Jones was you know,
Speaker 3: center obviously in a bit of a fluid situation, but
Speaker 3: nevertheless we did it.
Speaker 1: African American voters in Mississippi, Mississippi. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: disagree that. I think, look if if you succeed in
Speaker 1: Mississippi and Alabama surrounded right Georgia on one side, Mississippi
Speaker 1: and the.
Speaker 2: Other, and then you'll find out. I think Alabama is
Speaker 2: just a little bit different.
Speaker 3: And yeah, probably I've been intrigued by more of the
Speaker 3: labor activity in the state. Obviously, you know U A W. D.
Speaker 3: Donham Mercedes organizing campaign. There's Amazon warehouse organizing in Alabama.
Speaker 3: That was United mind workers who have been fighting.
Speaker 1: Shipbuilders down a mobile. I mean, there's definitely some I think.
Speaker 3: The labor base starts and it leads to a candidate too.
Speaker 3: So we're talking, we're talking about candidate. It's intrigued by
Speaker 3: you know, Holly Schaffner I think is her name, Who's
Speaker 3: who's running against Tom Cotton the cycle in Arkansas. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously very very uphill fight. But I love a lover bio,
Speaker 3: which is a work farmer who you know who's standing
Speaker 3: with the farm workers in the very economic minded argument,
Speaker 3: and I'm like that that. I like for Arkansas, that's
Speaker 3: a good that's a good candidate, But I'd like to
Speaker 3: see it for Alabama, for Mississippi putting forward those kinds
Speaker 3: of working class candidates that represent what I think are
Speaker 3: a lot of Democratic voters by history. I mean, we
Speaker 3: know these about West Virginia's and these kinds of states
Speaker 3: that if you're going back to lineage, they'd been Democratic voters,
Speaker 3: but they just feel the demacaty parties left down.
Speaker 2: Let me get you out of here.
Speaker 1: I realized we're just going over now, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean to do that to you. Let me get you
Speaker 1: out of here on this, did you have a big
Speaker 1: preference between Tall Rico and Crockett? What did you make
Speaker 1: of that primary campaign?
Speaker 2: I could just tell you.
Speaker 1: I say this not just as a as a guy
Speaker 1: who just enjoys a good campaign, but I felt like
Speaker 1: I felt like I didn't want that campaign to end yet.
Speaker 1: I wanted a couple more weeks. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: because it was fun. I actually think they didn't debate enough.
Speaker 1: I wanted a little bit more of this debate. There
Speaker 1: was a stylistic debate, yes, but there was some issues
Speaker 1: that were getting lost, right, Like, you know, tall Rico
Speaker 1: is moderate and temperament progressive in his in his belief system.
Speaker 1: I think Crockett is, you know, a fighter obviously, but
Speaker 1: not you know, not necessity probably would probably a little
Speaker 1: bit to the right of Tallerrico, but I.
Speaker 3: Think so, Yeah, Teller in many ways, in my view
Speaker 3: at least, was embodying a lot of a Bernie kind
Speaker 3: of argument with a different type of tone.
Speaker 2: Inside, putting it with a religious tone, which is right,
Speaker 2: Bernie's never gone down the religious defy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I think I think I was very
Speaker 3: pleased to see that kind I mean, I did feel like,
Speaker 3: here's a guy who's campaigning on a version of what
Speaker 3: I could imagine centaor Sanders doing in Texas.
Speaker 1: And trying to sell Bernie to a different group of voters.
Speaker 1: Is what I would have at it?
Speaker 2: Is that fair exactly?
Speaker 3: Yes, And he's talked to about his respect admiration for
Speaker 3: center Sanders. So I think that I was there with
Speaker 3: with Crockett obviously having gotten Commas endorsement, it felt much
Speaker 3: more around a reflexive anti Trump type of campaign which
Speaker 3: does meet a lot of voters where they're at of
Speaker 3: you know, give me that fight in a sense of
Speaker 3: swagger and a comfort in the in the kind of
Speaker 3: I am compared to not play by rules with this guy,
Speaker 3: you know, And there's some appeal to them, for sure.
Speaker 3: We can't discount that. But if you're looking for agenda
Speaker 3: of who is thinking economic first, of a fight against
Speaker 3: a wealthy oliguards taking out corporate greed and corporate power,
Speaker 3: that was Tallerico, and I think it's one of the
Speaker 3: reasons that he was able to build a You look
Speaker 3: at the Latinos and why working classly when we think
Speaker 3: of Latinos, they're working class Latinos, right, people making one
Speaker 3: hundred three thousand dollars, often working and holding a job,
Speaker 3: and not with a college degree. Those folks moving back
Speaker 3: in democratic ten I think motivated by that kind of
Speaker 3: an appeal and to your point of value orientation around
Speaker 3: the religion as well.
Speaker 1: He wins a Texas Center race or we are we
Speaker 1: ridiculous to think of him as a presidential contender automatic.
Speaker 3: No doubt, I mean that given the where it's at
Speaker 3: right now, I think both Tellerico and if you know,
Speaker 3: who knows what happens in Maine with Platner, But you
Speaker 3: have these two candidates are.
Speaker 2: Pretty charismatic and pretty they've got outsized personalities, and you.
Speaker 3: Could I mean, obviously we'll have to know who the
Speaker 3: governor is to get on succession problems and all that.
Speaker 3: But the in the Texas houses problem right clearly, but I.
Speaker 2: Think you'd take that problem. You know, the only way
Speaker 2: that happens is if he actually won the presidency.
Speaker 3: But anyway, yeah, right right, But I do think that,
Speaker 3: you know, it would be very compelling. And you remember
Speaker 3: the Obama story well, but it was probably too he
Speaker 3: was the incentive for two years at least. These these
Speaker 3: folks would lily be in the Senate for immediately.
Speaker 1: No Right always asked me who's going to be the
Speaker 1: Democratic nominee, and I'm like, well, none of the people
Speaker 1: you're talking about, And I said, I just sort of
Speaker 1: know that I kind of know Democrats. They usually want
Speaker 1: the newest, hottest flavor, and that could be Molly McMorrow,
Speaker 1: that could be James tall Rico, that could be Dan Osborne.
Speaker 1: You know, I say this, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: none of us saw Pete Bootage as aider.
Speaker 3: I think you mentioned this earlier on independent side, which
Speaker 3: is true that had somebody running as a third party
Speaker 3: could definitely do very well in twenty twenty eight and
Speaker 3: be a concern or issue here. But within the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party ranks that outsider, I think, which.
Speaker 1: There's an outsider lane, yeah, yeah, And right now I
Speaker 1: don't see there's there's no governor that's even you know,
Speaker 1: Andy Basher. I think some people thought was going to
Speaker 1: do this, and he seems to be trying. I think
Speaker 1: he's at risk of losing what made him different, that
Speaker 1: he's almost becoming part of the of the leadership structure
Speaker 1: of the party DGA and stuff.
Speaker 3: Some people don't remember Steve Bullock ran for president and
Speaker 3: when you look at the bullet, you know, the resume
Speaker 3: matches like it looks nice and there's a good kind
Speaker 3: of theoretical appeal about it. And then as you know,
Speaker 3: you're in a presidential politics butter in a frying pan.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a very different beast and you have
Speaker 3: to be kind of a lot of different things that
Speaker 3: you don't have to be as governor.
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine Bernie's going to sit on the
Speaker 1: sidelines fast this is going to once.
Speaker 3: You have an idea, Russ, let us know, check who
Speaker 3: should we be getting behind?
Speaker 1: And I mean, no, that's the thing, like I think,
Speaker 1: you know, why shouldn't I assume Bernie gets in.
Speaker 3: Oh for the reasons that you would, I.
Speaker 2: Know why he shouldn't. But I just know it takes
Speaker 2: to be Yah still the most popular politician in America.
Speaker 3: Until they come out with the anti aging pill, which
Speaker 3: please you know looking for at pharma, you know, bring
Speaker 3: it out, but until.
Speaker 2: Big Farma could do right.
Speaker 1: You know what, Big farm has been hiding that pill
Speaker 1: for fear that Berdie gets elected.
Speaker 2: You know that I'll get you out of here. On.
Speaker 1: Tell me about More Perfect Union and where people can
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Speaker 1: That's a pretty impressive, impressive movement. You got going there fast.
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