Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We are on vacation, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we don't have a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Run for Something's Own Amanda Litman stops by to talk
Speaker 1: about recruiting candidates to win the mid terms for Democrats.
Speaker 1: But first we have heated's own Emily Atkin to talk
Speaker 1: about the latest news and climate change.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Emily.
Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to have you because you are great
Speaker 1: and you are tirelessly chronicling the fuckery. Let's start with
Speaker 1: data centers because that feels like the scariest new way
Speaker 1: to fuck up the climate.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I've been so into this like reporting topic, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: say that I've been covering it tirelessly. I am quite tired,
Speaker 4: but this is a subject that sort of demands tireless reporting.
Speaker 3: So yeah, happy to start with there.
Speaker 4: You know what I think that I think most people
Speaker 4: get wrong about the data center conversation is that most people,
Speaker 4: I think think that the biggest water problem is from
Speaker 4: cooling the data centers, because you know, they need these
Speaker 4: like huge buildings that are full of like very hot
Speaker 4: computer processors need water to cool them down. And it
Speaker 4: is a huge problem, right, But one of the more
Speaker 4: surprising things that I've learned recently am I reporting, is
Speaker 4: that the vast majority of the water use the reason why,
Speaker 4: you know, there are those studies that say, like it,
Speaker 4: you know, a long conversation uses a bottle of water,
Speaker 4: that's mostly because of power generation. That's because of all
Speaker 4: of the water needed to cool like a natural gas
Speaker 4: power plant that is powering the data center. So yeah,
Speaker 4: the data centers need like a ton of water to
Speaker 4: cool the servers, but they also need a ton of
Speaker 4: water because they're all being powered by gas. Which is
Speaker 4: so interesting because that's a problem that is solvable if
Speaker 4: you were using not fossil fuel to power the data centers.
Speaker 4: I just think that's so interesting that it always goes
Speaker 4: back to the biggest problem is the.
Speaker 1: Fossil fuels again, and I think data centers are fucking
Speaker 1: waste of everything. But if you were to make a
Speaker 1: data center so you could make AI slop, I could
Speaker 1: not be more anti AI if I tried. But if
Speaker 1: you were to make a data center just to make
Speaker 1: ai slop. If you just had it be solar or
Speaker 1: wind powered, wouldn't you.
Speaker 2: Not have that problem?
Speaker 4: You wouldn't have the big water problem that you're having.
Speaker 4: You would still have a water problem because I think
Speaker 4: it's like thirteen percent of the water usage just for cooling,
Speaker 4: and that's a ton And you'd have to check me
Speaker 4: exactly on that percentage.
Speaker 3: I know there are a ton of different studies. I
Speaker 3: think it's around.
Speaker 4: There, but yeah, so much of that water problem is
Speaker 4: because we don't have enough power to power all these
Speaker 4: data centers. So we're using gas, building new gas plants,
Speaker 4: building new gas pipelines, and gas and fossil fuels. It
Speaker 4: makes sense, right, they're combustible power sources. They're really really hot.
Speaker 4: They need a ton of water, and it's like in
Speaker 4: the climate space so often we're thinking about carbon so often,
Speaker 4: like we forget about the huge water demand of these
Speaker 4: plants too. But they do have them, and that's where
Speaker 4: most of the water wasting is coming for data centers.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything is full speed ahead because there's no
Speaker 1: regulation Undertrune, right, it's basically back to a kind of
Speaker 1: Gilded Age cleptocracy. Let's get into some of the other
Speaker 1: carnage that he is rotting on our environment.
Speaker 4: There's definitely a lot of things we could talk about
Speaker 4: about what he's doing to the environment, like, for instance,
Speaker 4: you know, we just had the International Climate UN Climate
Speaker 4: Summit this year in Brazil. Every year we have a
Speaker 4: cop every year, all the countries gather and try to
Speaker 4: do something about climate change.
Speaker 2: America didn't go this year, right.
Speaker 3: No, America didn't go.
Speaker 4: You know, some people went, like Aba Newsom went, Al
Speaker 4: Gore went, but they weren't part of the official delegation,
Speaker 4: so they weren't like in the room where it happens,
Speaker 4: so to speak, like the negotiations actually happened. So we
Speaker 4: didn't send people. But while that summit was still going on,
Speaker 4: the Trump administration released like a bunch of environmental deregulatory
Speaker 4: actions that mostly went unnoticed. I think one of them
Speaker 4: was opening up was basically like eliminating regulations on offshore
Speaker 4: drilling off the coasts of California and Florida for like
Speaker 4: the first time in decades, so opening up those coastlines
Speaker 4: to potential oil and gas development, which the governors of
Speaker 4: both of those states have been like, please don't do that,
Speaker 4: including Florida, which is kind of surprising.
Speaker 2: Which is wild. Yeah, why does de sant does not
Speaker 2: want to d do that?
Speaker 4: I think that even Florida Republicans understand that the coastlines
Speaker 4: are really sensitive and valuable in other ways. They think
Speaker 4: you think of the coastlines in Florida, I mean, they're
Speaker 4: so essential for tourism and just like for maintaining the environment.
Speaker 4: They also have a lot of military training. Rick Scott
Speaker 4: wrote on Twitter it was like, please do not drill here,
Speaker 4: and obviously Gavin Newsom was like, do not drill here.
Speaker 4: There's gonna be fights around that. But also while all
Speaker 4: the countries were negotiating a climate deal in Brazil, I
Speaker 4: think Trump also wildly loosened the Endangered Species Act as
Speaker 4: one does as one does, so he essentially weakened the
Speaker 4: Endangered Species Act so that it's now easier to remove
Speaker 4: species classified as threatened or endangered from the list and
Speaker 4: harder to add.
Speaker 3: New species to the list.
Speaker 4: It also allows the government, if I remember this correctly,
Speaker 4: to consider like economic impacts when considering whether to list
Speaker 4: as species is endangered. So now you know when you're
Speaker 4: looking at should we make the cheetah endangered? And it's like, well,
Speaker 4: how would that affect the economy. That's never been how
Speaker 4: you decide if something is endangered right now it is,
Speaker 4: So those are the kinds of things that are happening.
Speaker 4: But I would also argue that, like especially we're talking
Speaker 4: about AI, like what the Trump administration is not doing,
Speaker 4: like regulating AI at all is also like equally as detrimental.
Speaker 4: One of the most interesting stories I think I did
Speaker 4: over the last couple months was interviewing two former Microsoft
Speaker 4: employees that were both like really gung ho on AI
Speaker 4: and how awesome it could be for climate change and
Speaker 4: the environment, and we're like working to promote sustainable uses
Speaker 4: of AI at Microsoft, and then eventually had to quit
Speaker 4: because they saw what the company was doing with like
Speaker 4: totally in their totally unregulated environment, which was mostly selling
Speaker 4: their AI to oil and gas companies.
Speaker 3: To want to laugh because it's so dark, but it's
Speaker 3: really dark.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it sounds like I'm making this up, and
Speaker 4: sometimes I pretend I am making it up.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: What they told me is that they think that one
Speaker 4: of Microsoft's the biggest use case for Microsoft's AI today
Speaker 4: is the application where they sell it to oil and
Speaker 4: gas companies. So that oil and gas companies can find
Speaker 4: and extract more oil more easily. So like ver AI
Speaker 4: helps the oil and gas companies essentially scan underground and.
Speaker 3: Be like, there's some oil. There's some oil.
Speaker 4: Like, here's how we can get it more efficiently. I'm
Speaker 4: saying in the.
Speaker 3: Most you know, in the least technical way possible.
Speaker 4: But it helps these companies drill more more efficiently and
Speaker 4: profit more.
Speaker 1: So well good, but al Gore is still optimistic, So
Speaker 1: talk to me about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I interviewed al Gore, which is not something that
Speaker 4: I would honestly, it's like not something I ever thought
Speaker 4: that I would ever say that I did because like,
Speaker 4: I don't know who cares about al Gore, but I've
Speaker 4: really found it over I've been surprised by him over
Speaker 4: the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so talk to me about al Gore. What's his
Speaker 1: thinking here?
Speaker 4: So, one thing I've really learned about al Gore recently
Speaker 4: is that he's like really not afraid to talk shit
Speaker 4: on on fossil fuels.
Speaker 2: Which I like nobody else does.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's becoming more and more dark Gore in this.
Speaker 4: He's like the fossil fuel industry is sabotaging all of
Speaker 4: our progress, Like our biggest problem is political influence by
Speaker 4: this industry, Like politicians on the left and the right
Speaker 4: are being bought off, Like we have to exclude them
Speaker 4: from this process.
Speaker 3: He's the last couple of years been super.
Speaker 4: Gung ho, not just on like educating about the science,
Speaker 4: which he's always been, but really becoming a for lack
Speaker 4: of a better word, propagandist against big oil and big
Speaker 4: oil's political influence.
Speaker 2: And what does he think.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so he is pretty convinced that the oil industry
Speaker 4: is just trying to suck up all that it can
Speaker 4: for the next couple of years under Trump because they
Speaker 4: also know that they're losing around the world. And that
Speaker 4: was sort of his take away from COP thirty in
Speaker 4: Brazil was that so many nations and like he would say,
Speaker 4: the majority of nations are actually committed to the science
Speaker 4: and committing to transition away from fossil fuels, and scares
Speaker 4: the shit out of the industry, which the oil industry,
Speaker 4: which is why they're so aggressively trying to strong arm
Speaker 4: these negotiations, which they were successful in doing, because you know,
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia is there, Russia is there. Those are essentially
Speaker 4: two arms of the oil industry, right, and if you
Speaker 4: need every single country at a COP to get an agreement,
Speaker 4: then you're not going to get a great agreement because
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3: And there and they're essentially arms of the oil industry.
Speaker 4: So, like Albor is not denying that that influence is there,
Speaker 4: but he's of the opinion that their aggressive presence is
Speaker 4: merely like a smoke screen for their fear. And what
Speaker 4: is happening Like South Korea, it's one of the seventh
Speaker 4: I think, like the seventh largest coal fleet in the world,
Speaker 4: you know, made a commitment at this cop to completely
Speaker 4: phase out coal from their whole economy, which is pretty big.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's a big hit for the coal industry
Speaker 4: over there. But that's how and then and eighty countries
Speaker 4: signed an agreement to explicitly, like fully transition away from
Speaker 4: fossil fuels, and like say, we away from fossil fuels.
Speaker 4: That's like the biggest language thing that is going on
Speaker 4: at these cops. So Gore is also really convinced that
Speaker 4: like Trump is a lame.
Speaker 2: Duck, which is true.
Speaker 4: Essentially, he is more optimistic than I would have expected
Speaker 4: him to be, just coming out of a climate summit
Speaker 4: that was like literally on fire and flooded and didn't
Speaker 4: produce an agreement where all the countries agreed to transition
Speaker 4: away from fossil fuels. He's like, yeah, but he's like,
Speaker 4: the majority of the world is on the right track.
Speaker 3: The United States is just behind.
Speaker 2: Wow. Why, I mean, I'm excited. I'm happy that he
Speaker 2: thinks that.
Speaker 1: Does he just think that solar and wind are so
Speaker 1: much cheaper than eventually they're unstoppable.
Speaker 3: So that's part of it.
Speaker 4: And then the other thing is that he's really inspired
Speaker 4: by the midterm election results.
Speaker 1: The five cycle, which is sort of the mean mid terms.
Speaker 4: Correct, and then all of the political opposition to Trump,
Speaker 4: the no Kings days, all that. So I think what
Speaker 4: he's trying to do, if I were to hyperanalyze his
Speaker 4: politician speak, really he's trying to build momentum to say
Speaker 4: that as long as we keep opposition high, we can
Speaker 4: reverse these policies, or we can stem some of this damage.
Speaker 4: And he's like, we're really on a good track. We
Speaker 4: just have to keep pushing.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with that? You don't agree with that.
Speaker 3: I don't think good track exists.
Speaker 4: So being a climate reporter for so long at this point,
Speaker 4: it's like I long ago abandoned the idea that like
Speaker 4: we're gonna get out of this without being like pretty fucked. Yeah,
Speaker 4: being pretty fucked But I do understand that there's like
Speaker 4: always a degree of things can always get more fucked up,
Speaker 4: more and more fucked up. I actually do think that
Speaker 4: we can limit the fuck upness to a degree that
Speaker 4: perhaps the US will be able to manage. I think
Speaker 4: that like things will get pretty fucked up a new
Speaker 4: global South, and I think things will get fucked up
Speaker 4: here too, But I also think that there's a limit,
Speaker 4: like we can we can severely limit that, and that's
Speaker 4: always what I'm hoping for, right the least amount of
Speaker 4: that possible.
Speaker 1: So you are basically in the same spot that I am,
Speaker 1: which is that you worry about wet bulb, like we're
Speaker 1: going to see dystopian stuff in Dubai in the area, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where people are going to die because it's just so
Speaker 1: hot they can't get cold or they can't get cool.
Speaker 1: But you think that sort of absolent modern cities will
Speaker 1: be able to somehow make it through.
Speaker 4: Like I think that the rich people in affluent modern
Speaker 4: cities will be able to make it through. But like
Speaker 4: you know, I think we need really really aggressive adaptation
Speaker 4: efforts in addition to our mitigation efforts, because you know,
Speaker 4: it's not like America is a fully a first world country.
Speaker 3: Really were a lot of vulnerable people.
Speaker 4: Living here in poverty and are on coastlines, and especially
Speaker 4: in cities that are that historically don't get very hot,
Speaker 4: and then they don't have they don't have cooling infrastructure.
Speaker 4: The problem with this administration is that it's like not
Speaker 4: it so rejects climate science that it doesn't even do
Speaker 4: the thing that you know, some kind of moderate Republicans
Speaker 4: used to do in the past, where they're like, climate
Speaker 4: change is real, but we can just adapt, so we'll
Speaker 4: will support like adaptation policies and just not limit fossil fuels.
Speaker 4: That's not happening at all either, because like there's because
Speaker 4: it's the policy of this administration.
Speaker 3: Is climate change is a scam. It is fake. I
Speaker 3: mean it's it's literally on the EPA.
Speaker 4: The EPA website now doesn't even list human causes as
Speaker 4: as climate change. The first thing you I think if
Speaker 4: you go to EPA dot gov the climate change website now,
Speaker 4: it's like climate change like the first the first thing
Speaker 4: listed for what's causing it is like the orbit of
Speaker 4: the Earth has changed, and.
Speaker 3: You're like, what the fuck does that mean? So it's
Speaker 3: just a bunch of mambo jumbo.
Speaker 4: But I will say, like a lot of that really
Speaker 4: really catastrophic, those really really catastrophic projections that were coming
Speaker 4: out like eight years ago, right, those look increasingly less likely.
Speaker 4: Like a five degree scenario we're looking at like a
Speaker 4: I don't know if this means anything to your listeners,
Speaker 4: but like a two two.
Speaker 3: And a half to three degree scenario, which.
Speaker 1: Is I mean it's also catastrophic, but not quite as catastrophe.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean these are still situations where all the
Speaker 4: corals in the ocean die, right, which is like I
Speaker 4: really don't want that. But it's so difficult to talk
Speaker 4: about these kinds of things because it's like, how can
Speaker 4: you even imagine like the difference between you can't super
Speaker 4: category and aulter catastrophe. And it's gonna look different for
Speaker 4: every single person. But that's why I always just come
Speaker 4: back to like, Okay, I can't predict the future, but
Speaker 4: I can like do my best to try to sign
Speaker 4: me the worst outcome, right, And that's that's all I.
Speaker 3: Can do, so like it doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: It really doesn't matter to me, Like what the outcome
Speaker 4: is gonna be at the end of the day. That's
Speaker 4: sort of how I've decided to deal with it. I
Speaker 4: don't know what the outcome is going to be. I
Speaker 4: can't decide what the alchemis is going to be, but
Speaker 4: I know that, like I would like to fight for
Speaker 4: it to be a better outcome.
Speaker 1: No, I know, and you have the problems of being
Speaker 1: a climate reporter, and I'm sorry that you do, because
Speaker 1: it's fucking bleak.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I mean I when I talk to you, I'm always
Speaker 1: you know, you have this incredible site which hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people are now subscribed to, which makes me happy.
Speaker 1: But you have a real book the problem which is
Speaker 1: that you know, you're like seeing the future in a
Speaker 1: terrible way.
Speaker 2: And I'm sorry, thank you.
Speaker 4: Someone asked me recently, They're like, why did you decide
Speaker 4: to get into climate change report?
Speaker 3: And I was like, because that was my beat.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Like I don't think I would have
Speaker 4: chosen this, you know, like you working at a newspaper
Speaker 4: and they're like, here's your beat, it's climate change and
Speaker 4: you're like, yeah, so that's what it is.
Speaker 1: Well, but also like, why are we not all running
Speaker 1: a bow climate change because Americans can't hear it because
Speaker 1: it's too scary?
Speaker 2: What you do is so valuable and important.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: I feel like the more you understand it, though, like
Speaker 4: I would even counter like the fact that Americans can't
Speaker 4: hear it because it's too scary, I would counter that
Speaker 4: the more you learn about it, like the simpler it
Speaker 4: kind of gets. It becomes less scary to me and
Speaker 4: more frustrating, because the more I learn about it, the
Speaker 4: more simple it gets. In my mind, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 4: so you're saying we know the problem. We've actually known
Speaker 4: the problem for a really long time, and we know
Speaker 4: the solution, you know, and so you're.
Speaker 3: Like, okay, but it's cruse solution.
Speaker 4: And then what's so frustrating about is that we get
Speaker 4: stuck in these loops of like, well, do we know
Speaker 4: the problem and do we know the solution? Yeah, we do.
Speaker 4: That's the most frustrating part is like just being stuck
Speaker 4: in these loops where I'm back to, you know, deciding
Speaker 4: if I'm going to cover the fact that the EPA
Speaker 4: website now just is a climate denial website. I'm like,
Speaker 4: this is so stupid, Like, can't we just move this
Speaker 4: conversation forward? But fortunately, as al Gore said, most of
Speaker 4: the world is moving this conversation forward, right, Thank god,
Speaker 4: Thank god for our Gore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks to the reminder.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Emily. Please come back.
Speaker 3: Anytime, anytime.
Speaker 1: We have exciting news over at our YouTube channel. The
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Speaker 1: and regulation can protect American citizens and make America thrive
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Speaker 1: Amanda Litman is the co founder of Run for Something
Speaker 1: and the author of the new book When We're in Charge,
Speaker 1: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Amanda Lutman.
Speaker 2: Thanks Molly, president of Run for Something.
Speaker 1: Let's talk what is going on?
Speaker 5: No, it's been a good year for young people running
Speaker 5: for local office all across the country, which we love
Speaker 5: to see it. We had one hundred and sixty six
Speaker 5: wins this year, like more than half of our candidates,
Speaker 5: and on election night in November, more than two thirds
Speaker 5: of our candidates, including forty three red to blue flips
Speaker 5: all across the country. Plus we had me. At this point,
Speaker 5: we're over eighty thousand people who've raised their hands to
Speaker 5: say they want to run for office in the last
Speaker 5: twelve months. That's more than we had in the entirety
Speaker 5: of Trump's first term. So things are good, which is
Speaker 5: a really weird feeling in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: So why are more people running for office now than
Speaker 1: they were during Trump?
Speaker 2: One point? Now well, your part of his.
Speaker 5: Room for something's been around a little longer, so people
Speaker 5: know if they want to run, we are here to
Speaker 5: help them. But I actually think one of the things
Speaker 5: that we've heard this year that we didn't hear during
Speaker 5: Trump one point zero is people quite explicitly saying I'm
Speaker 5: done waiting my turn. I'm not asking for permission, i
Speaker 5: am sick of the status quo. I'm sick of the
Speaker 5: people in charge. I'm not getting in the back of
Speaker 5: the line. I'm ready to run and I'm not going
Speaker 5: to let any stop me. The number one issue, as
Speaker 5: it has been for a while and now has been
Speaker 5: affordable housing, you know, childcare, transportation. But that, like frustration
Speaker 5: with the status quo, is so loud that in a
Speaker 5: way that it wasn't the first time around.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that because the polling we
Speaker 1: see shows voters mad at Trump, very mad at Trump.
Speaker 1: But then unlike twenty sixteen, they're not happy with Schumer,
Speaker 1: They're not happy with a chem They're mad at Democrats
Speaker 1: writ large. Is that what you got people coming and
Speaker 1: saying to you.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, they're just curious, They're like, why should I settle
Speaker 5: for these leaders? They are not fighting, they're not standing
Speaker 5: up for my community. They have made things better. I
Speaker 5: think that visceral frustration with the status quo of both parties.
Speaker 5: And you know, I'm not going to be like both
Speaker 5: sides are bad, but that frustration with people in both
Speaker 5: parties is so deep seated that it is pushing people
Speaker 5: to make the kinds of changes in their life and
Speaker 5: in their activism that we just didn't see back in
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen to twenty twenty, in part because at that
Speaker 5: point Democrats were a little better at fighting. This time around,
Speaker 5: the people at the top aren't, but the people who
Speaker 5: are going to be the leaders are really ready to
Speaker 5: get in.
Speaker 1: So do you think that a Democrat like when people
Speaker 1: say it's a Democratic tea party, do you think that's true?
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 5: I do, And I think like you have to keep
Speaker 5: in mind that most incumbents win, just generally, most incumbents
Speaker 5: win like like a ninety five percent reelection rate. It's
Speaker 5: really hard to take out an incumbent in a primary.
Speaker 5: The fact that there are so many competitive primary challenges,
Speaker 5: the fact that there's a ton of open races because
Speaker 5: thank god, many of these older leaders not enough, but
Speaker 5: many of them are retiring and making it their last
Speaker 5: term that many of them are like being outraised by
Speaker 5: their challenge. Even if the incumbents hold on to power,
Speaker 5: which I don't think in all of these is a
Speaker 5: sure thing. They are going to be forced a campaign
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty six in a way they haven't in
Speaker 5: years past, and that is a good thing. It's going
Speaker 5: to be a different Democratic Party at the end of
Speaker 5: twenty twenty six, and it is in the beginning, and
Speaker 5: I am cautiously optimistic it'll be for the better.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean, Like, are you seeing people
Speaker 1: primary and so first let's talk about red. I want
Speaker 1: you to talk about the red to blue flips. Give
Speaker 1: me a few examples of red to blue flips that
Speaker 1: you had.
Speaker 5: So we had folks like Will Rivera and the Onionta
Speaker 5: County Legislature in New York, first generation college grad, cancer survivor,
Speaker 5: local activist was really running on affordable housing. Was part
Speaker 5: of a wave of young leaders who flipped seats across
Speaker 5: the state of New York. There was more than fifty
Speaker 5: red to blue flips across the state of New York.
Speaker 5: You know, most of the attention went to Zorn, but
Speaker 5: Republicans had a terrible night here in the umpire's date.
Speaker 5: Even then there was only one Republican like blue to
Speaker 5: red flip oh fifty.
Speaker 1: So we had a good We had a good night
Speaker 1: even in South County because that was the one that
Speaker 1: I heard.
Speaker 2: There was some kind.
Speaker 5: Of yeah, but generally speaking like you didn't want me
Speaker 5: a New York Republican.
Speaker 2: Okay, good.
Speaker 5: Current favorite is this guy, Andrew Harbough, a current journalist,
Speaker 5: sports journalist, and a former Republican who left the party
Speaker 5: after January sixth. He's a parent of two young kids,
Speaker 5: one of whom is special needs, and the customer Department
Speaker 5: of Education, we're going to directly affect his kids' education
Speaker 5: in the services his kid was getting through school. The
Speaker 5: Medicaid cuts were also going to directly affect his kids.
Speaker 5: So he ran for Borough Common Council, which is like
Speaker 5: a county government office or a local government office, and
Speaker 5: slipped the seat red to blue in a district county
Speaker 5: that Trump won seventy thirty.
Speaker 2: Huge, awesome.
Speaker 1: So one of the things Trump said was that he
Speaker 1: said affordability is a hoax. What I think he meant again,
Speaker 1: we never want to be Trump's plainers, but what it
Speaker 1: seems like he meant were that Democrats are using affordability
Speaker 1: but they don't really care about it.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's true. But what are the things
Speaker 1: that that Democrats are running on.
Speaker 5: I would say that especially the red to blue flips.
Speaker 5: And we went through and looked at all of our
Speaker 5: forty three winners on election night in twenty twenty five November,
Speaker 5: and what we found are a couple things. One, they
Speaker 5: are absolutely runting on affordability and specifically housing. They are
Speaker 5: talking about all the different levers they could pull to
Speaker 5: build more housing, make it easier for people to buy
Speaker 5: a home, make it easier for renters, like really focused
Speaker 5: on when we talk about cost of living, the actual
Speaker 5: biggest category for most people and their expenses is where
Speaker 5: they live, So housing is number one. Number Two, they
Speaker 5: were talking about transparency in a way that actually really
Speaker 5: surprised us. Ninety percent of our red to Blue flips
Speaker 5: specifically named transparency and trust in government, whether it was
Speaker 5: bringing budgeting forward or you know, community modernization, some kind
Speaker 5: of way to make people feel good about government. Again,
Speaker 5: a lot of them talked about if not exactly you know,
Speaker 5: better sidewalks, then the kinds of like very local, lived experience,
Speaker 5: things that make living somewhere either good or bad. They
Speaker 5: were really reflecting the kinds of things that their voters
Speaker 5: cared about. Like you could see it in their queue,
Speaker 5: their ads, their videos, their websites.
Speaker 3: It was obvious that.
Speaker 5: Their campaigns were not their visions. It was that they
Speaker 5: were hearing from voter and how they were going to
Speaker 5: solve their problems. They were across the ideological spectrum in
Speaker 5: terms of Democrats are the left like, they weren't all
Speaker 5: you know, I just said Republican. They weren't all like
Speaker 5: socialist candidates. Most of these red blue flips are not.
Speaker 5: What they are is deeply rooted in community, and they
Speaker 5: love the places they're running. And that feels like such
Speaker 5: an obvious thing to say, but we can both name
Speaker 5: candidates where they are running somewhere they don't actually like.
Speaker 2: Or don't actually live.
Speaker 5: Totally, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: There was this congressional seat that recently Republicans were right
Speaker 1: they were going to lose it. It was at our
Speaker 1: plus twenty two and the Tennessee Jerrymander seat. They want it,
Speaker 1: but they only want it by point. The candidate there
Speaker 1: was very lefty, but she was an activist known in
Speaker 1: the area.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, aften Beina run for something alone. We'd worked
Speaker 5: with her in her state House trace a couple of
Speaker 5: years ago, and it's funny, you know. Yeah, she had
Speaker 5: a history of talking about some more of some more
Speaker 5: lefty type stuff her past, but she'd also been a
Speaker 5: fears fighter for grocery taxes and like for getting rid
Speaker 5: of the sales tax on groceries in Tennessee, making food
Speaker 5: more affordable for folks. She was running on affordability and
Speaker 5: she was super compelling, super authentic, really talked about what
Speaker 5: she believed and how it reflected the voters of her community.
Speaker 5: Do I think a more you know, there's this discourse,
Speaker 5: like a more moderate candidate could have made it more competitive.
Speaker 3: Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 5: She won the primary.
Speaker 2: She won the primary. She won the primary.
Speaker 5: And if you think that a more moderate candidate should
Speaker 5: have won, you, whoever the usiness discourse, you should have
Speaker 5: engaged in the primary. She won the primary, and she
Speaker 5: campaigned really hard, and she brought out voters who may
Speaker 5: not have otherwise been excited.
Speaker 2: About this election.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about winning the primary, because I think that
Speaker 1: the more competitive a primary is the better, And I
Speaker 1: think a lot about Biden that a primary would have
Speaker 1: hurt him, that he should have just you know, and
Speaker 1: especially with Harris, that they should just be allowed to
Speaker 1: keep going and that. But do you think a primary
Speaker 1: process actually does get a candidate in a better spot?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
Speaker 5: Primary make candidates better because running for office, it's like
Speaker 5: anything else, and which the more practice you get at it,
Speaker 5: the better you get at it. It gives you a
Speaker 5: chance to you know, get more reps in giving your
Speaker 5: some speech and talking to more voters and engaging volunteers.
Speaker 5: Literally gives you more time to raise money and build
Speaker 5: data infrastructure and higher staff. It forces you to talk
Speaker 5: to voters more, which I think is a good thing.
Speaker 5: You get to really hear what they care about. I'm
Speaker 5: not saying that if you can win the primary, then
Speaker 5: you can win the general. Obviously that is not always true.
Speaker 5: Like candidates of either party on the extreme ends win
Speaker 5: primaries and that are very unelectable in the general. But
Speaker 5: if you can't win the primary, you definitely can't win
Speaker 5: the general. That's just how this goes. You've got to
Speaker 5: be able to excite your base, and your base is
Speaker 5: the Democratic crime ary voter.
Speaker 1: So now we look to the midterms and Run for
Speaker 1: Something does do midterms. There's a lot of state seats
Speaker 1: coming up, so talk us through. What are the races
Speaker 1: you are watching organized?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so run for Something. As I said, we've had
Speaker 5: like almost more than eighty thousand people's line up in
Speaker 5: the last year. So we're making sure that as many
Speaker 5: of those folks as possible get plugged into races wherever
Speaker 5: they are, because the battlefields could be super expansive in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty six. If we're going to have a blue wave,
Speaker 5: which I suspect based on every available data point, we will,
Speaker 5: we should be fighting to win in r plus ten
Speaker 5: or plus twenty communities, and we're thinking ahead to twenty
Speaker 5: thirty and twenty thirty two. We laid out earlier this
Speaker 5: year our battle uplant and of a vision to expand
Speaker 5: the battleground map that includes a dozen states where we
Speaker 5: think over the next six years we need to be
Speaker 5: doing this kind of work to build local power so
Speaker 5: that eventually they could be battlegrounds. I'm not saying they
Speaker 5: all will be, but some of them if we don't
Speaker 5: do this work, they never will be. So that includes
Speaker 5: places like you know, Idaho, you taught Nebraska, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Ohio,
Speaker 5: and Iowa. I think I got them off places where
Speaker 5: it's going to be really important that we have many
Speaker 5: paths to victory post redistricting in twenty thirty. You know,
Speaker 5: the final thing that we're also keeping an eye on
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty is that so many of our alumni
Speaker 5: are running for higher office, so like, well, we're not
Speaker 5: working with those campaigns directly, we are aggressively rooting for them.
Speaker 5: We have seven run for something running for Senate, including
Speaker 5: two running in Texas. James tell Rico and Jasmine Crockett
Speaker 5: are both run for something along who've come through our
Speaker 5: pipeline in years past for six running for governor, and
Speaker 5: a couple dozen at this point running for US House
Speaker 5: or state wide offices like secretary of State or AG
Speaker 5: or treasurer. And I'm just so excited because that is
Speaker 5: more new energy than the Democrat Party could ever have imagined.
Speaker 5: And I'm really proud that we built that bench that
Speaker 5: can now rise.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about if you're listening to this and you're excited,
Speaker 1: what's the call to action here?
Speaker 5: Two things you should look into running for office. It's
Speaker 5: probably not too late wherever you are, a couple of
Speaker 5: places filing deadlines have passed, but you should look it up.
Speaker 5: You can go to run for wild dot net enter
Speaker 5: your address, see where you might be able to run.
Speaker 5: Send it to a friend who should run. Second thing
Speaker 5: you can do is give money, especially a small recurring donation,
Speaker 5: make it monthly. Run for something dot net slash donate.
Speaker 5: Every dollar goes towards building the largest candidate pipeline in
Speaker 5: politics and then helping those folks run and win, and
Speaker 5: we really need it, so thank you.
Speaker 1: It's someone who sees a lot of candidates, sees a
Speaker 1: lot of Democrats, has real eyes on the ground. What
Speaker 1: do you think are the biggest issues that democrats need?
Speaker 1: Like that, most opportunities, most you know that democrats should
Speaker 1: be when they're looking at this cycle.
Speaker 5: I think one of our challenges for twenty twenty six
Speaker 5: is that there's gonna be a lot of attention paid
Speaker 5: to congressional candidates we're at large, which there should be.
Speaker 5: We need to flip the House, we should try and
Speaker 5: flip the Senate. But congressional candidates can't really talk about
Speaker 5: the issues in a way that we can genuinely believe
Speaker 5: they'll get things done, like they're not gonna be able
Speaker 5: to govern. If you're in the House in twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 5: and even if Democrats have the majority, you'll be able
Speaker 5: to do accountability. You'll be able to do oversight.
Speaker 2: We'll be able to investigations.
Speaker 5: And that's great.
Speaker 2: We got to do that.
Speaker 5: Shit, You're not really going to be able to write
Speaker 5: any policy about housing or reproductive healthcare or anything else
Speaker 5: that Trump.
Speaker 2: You don't have the president, you don't have the present.
Speaker 5: So one of the tensions I think that we have
Speaker 5: to hold is that the attention will be on the House.
Speaker 5: We got to make sure the people running for the
Speaker 5: local offices, the state legislatures, the mayors, the city council,
Speaker 5: members of school board candidates who can talk about very
Speaker 5: specific things they are doing, have as big of a
Speaker 5: megaphone as possible. Those got to be the leaders we empower,
Speaker 5: and those are the got to be the folks that
Speaker 5: can't have voters who are otherwise unengaged are hearing from
Speaker 5: the most because those are the people that they can
Speaker 5: genuinely believe when they say, I'm going to do something
Speaker 5: to make your life cheaper.
Speaker 1: So affordability has clearly been a very good issue for DAMS.
Speaker 1: What are the other issues that you think DEMS should
Speaker 1: be running on As someone who has a lot of
Speaker 1: view into states, you.
Speaker 5: Know, I think housing, as I talked about earlier, is
Speaker 5: probably the biggest one, because it's the thing that people
Speaker 5: feel the most acutely. It's also in particular for young people,
Speaker 5: it's not just about like can I afford to live
Speaker 5: where I want to live? It's can I have the
Speaker 5: kind of American dream that felt available to my parents,
Speaker 5: my grandparents and does not feel available to me. The
Speaker 5: idea for a twenty or thirty something right now for
Speaker 5: most of us, like buying a home, feels unrealistic never
Speaker 5: And I think that instability and that sense that what
Speaker 5: is it all for is really really challenging for young people.
Speaker 5: I think that was Mamdannie's really like see superpower. It
Speaker 5: wasn't the afford to live or that like a city
Speaker 5: we can afford. It was the afford to dream component
Speaker 5: of Hispagan, which is it allows you to be ambitious
Speaker 5: for other things. I also think childcare, we're seeing this
Speaker 5: and lots and loots of our campaigns, you know, there
Speaker 5: was just a big story in New York Magazine earlier
Speaker 5: this month about how they hear in New York, you know,
Speaker 5: the child care costs went up twice as high as inflation,
Speaker 5: or outpaced inflation by double same is true in a
Speaker 5: lot of places across the country, and it is really
Speaker 5: affecting twenty and thirty somethings ability to have the families
Speaker 5: they want, play and the families they want, live where
Speaker 5: they want to live, have the jobs they want. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's connected to affordability, but it's not about like the
Speaker 5: economy end jobs. It's about how does it feel to
Speaker 5: live where you live and to have the kind of
Speaker 5: family and life that you want. The other piece, and
Speaker 5: I know this is something that some candidates are starting
Speaker 5: to talk about. It really bubbles up on the local
Speaker 5: level is AI and we're talking about data centers, they're
Speaker 5: talking about electricity, they're talking about jobs, they're talking about
Speaker 5: utility rates. They're also thinking really carefully about you know, Okay,
Speaker 5: I use chashibichi for work. Doesn't seem that bad, but
Speaker 5: I don't want it to be unregulated. I want to
Speaker 5: have guardrails. I don't trust the people who are, you know,
Speaker 5: designing these things to have my best interest. I want
Speaker 5: people in leadership who understand these tools and can legislate
Speaker 5: on them. And I actually do think that's one thing
Speaker 5: where congressional candidates can really lean in, and even more
Speaker 5: so than local which is, okay, what are you going
Speaker 5: to do to make sure the robots don't take all
Speaker 5: our jobs?
Speaker 1: And also they make energy more expensive?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: These data farms make energy more expensive?
Speaker 5: They do, and they there's been a lot of really
Speaker 5: interesting local campaigns against some of these data centers because yeah,
Speaker 5: it's construction jobs for a short period of time and
Speaker 5: then ultimately, you know, five or six people employed security,
Speaker 5: jan and orial staff.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 5: It's not like a job creation factory, and if anything,
Speaker 5: it's a job destruction institution. So how can you usure
Speaker 5: especially for young people who feel really unsure of how
Speaker 5: AI is affecting their ability to get hired, you got
Speaker 5: to speak to it.
Speaker 1: So interesting, Amanda Littman, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Always, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Mollie, Happy holidays.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.