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Speaker 1: So this is not and we've lazily called it a

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Nicki Haley voter. It's not a Nicki Haley voter. It's

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an anti Trump voter. And that's very important. That distinction

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is really really important because we're trying to gauge the

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true sentiments of why they're breaking off. They're not voting

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for Nicki Haley. They were never voting for Nicky Haley, right,

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they were voting against Donald Trump exactly, and that is important.

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It's really really really really really important for messaging. Okay,

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so that what I'm gauging, what I'm looking for is

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the math that says how many Republicans are just anti

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Trump and then why? Okay, and the why then becomes

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very important. There were three pieces of information that we

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did not have heading into November twenty twenty. The big

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Lie double Linewy election is January sixth, and the Dobbs decision.

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All three of those were incredibly powerful motivators for Republicans

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to bail on this guy, and they all happened after

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the twenty twenty Okay, So what we have also seen

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if you even watch sort of anecdotal evidence or like

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kind of watch some of these groups putting out ads

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of like the local person saying I'm against this is

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why I'm not voting for Trump. I can't do it again.

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Ninety nine percent of them say one of those three things.

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They're not saying I felt comfortable because Dick Cheney came

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out right. So the permission structure is important, but it's

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not the primary lead of why people are leaving right

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and thirty days out. It's great to kind of show momentum.

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It's kind of like the yard signs. It's a good

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sign in your community. There's yard sides coming out. People

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are showing momentum. But the yard sign itself is not

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convincing people. What is convincing people is those three messages.

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And if Harris wants to close a record number of Republicans,

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they've got to hit those issues in those messages more

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than they need to put the messengers out front of it.

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They both help, don't get me wrong, but messengers alone

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aren't going to carry the day. It's those three reasons

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that have gotten us to this unprecedented potentiality of losing

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upwards of ten percent of Republicans. And if Harris peels

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off ten percent, she will be the next president. Of

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the United States.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so let's talk about the people that because that

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gets us right into what you have written. By the way, folks,

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it's a great new book out, the Latino Century. That

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Mike and I were laughed when he came up with

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the title. We were talking. He said, I have the title,

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and I'm calling the book the Latino Century. And I said, oh, yeah,

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that's going to throw some people. That's gonna make some

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people go, that's the problem, right, right, But the book

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goes on. The title really kind of reflects the story

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that you want to get into, and that is how

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America's largest minority is transforming democracy and we're seeing it

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in so many quarters of the country that unfortunately for

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a lot of white Americans. And again I'm not pink

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with a broadbrush, y'all know who I'm talking about. That

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there's that neighbor down the street that when you walk

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by the house, you just shake your head. Right when

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you see me in the grocery store, you go, my god,

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they're so bad. Right, Those are the folks I'm talking

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about who have this sort of idealized view of an

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America that never existed a nineteen fifties. You know, brand

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new television expectation a father knows best, and folks like

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that living in a suburbia with the wife and the

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apron that America never existed, and a lot of folks

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know that. What people also know is what you get

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into is how much even then the country was changing.

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And it wasn't just with this kind with the white

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immigrants who had come at the turn of the twentieth cent,

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at the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. But what

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had happened and what was beginning to happen as more

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and more folks in places like Cuba and Puerto Rico

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and elsewhere a greater affinity started calling America home, started

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raising their families and creating legacy. And that that part

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of the story, I think is going to be a

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big X factor in this election, because the Latino vote,

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like the Black vote, is not monolithic. It's culturally as

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well as politically diverse within what was arguably the broader

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Latino community. Talk a little bit about how those changes

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impact a race like this.

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Speaker 3: Brother, you just wrote my whole book.

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Speaker 1: Look, and this is why I love having conversations with you,

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is because the nuances and the understanding of people who

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come as you know, men of color who come up

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with our own different experiences. You're in the East coast,

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me on the West coast, black brown guys just coming

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up in the Republican Party and knowing what those nuances

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are and speaking the same language and not even have

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to say the words, but only talking about right.

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Speaker 4: It's like it's magic for me. So I appreciate you

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more than you know, because it's been a very lonely

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road and in so many ways. And I know that

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you as the chairman of the party, I mean, you

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got to the pinnacle of this whole thing. So, look,

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America is changing, and it's going to change the way

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we look at everything.

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Speaker 1: It's going to change the way Latinos view themselves, black

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people view themselves, White people for sure view themselves. A

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lot of this change that we're witnessing is, frankly, this

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kind of regression of white people to behaving like this

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aggrieved racial minority. They always blamed everybody else for being right.

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You're seeing it in the entitlement that you know, Donald

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Trump comes out with, as we're entitled to this, this

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is our birthright, this is our country. You know, government

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largees should be going to our tribe and to our people.

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And that's okay when it goes to our people, but

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it's it's well burned handouts when it's everybody else. And

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that's why they're coming here illegally, is to get all

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this money and all of these racist tropes. And that's

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really what it is. It's just you can't get past that.

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We are going through. I think this very tumultuous time demographically,

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and America is becoming for the first time in her

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history a non white European people. Yeah, that's that's serious business.

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There goes the neighborhood. It's in the country, right, Well, there's.

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Speaker 2: A lot tied up into that. There's a lot of

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money tied up with it, power.

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Speaker 1: And going, keep going.

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Speaker 5: Yes, all of it is tied up, all of it.

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Speaker 1: It's the whole conceptualization of what America is. It was

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supposed to be, what it was meant to be, what

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it was suposed to be. And we've always had this

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like mythical anybody can come to America and be American and.

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Speaker 5: You know, black people are going, what is about you're

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talking about?

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Speaker 4: Right?

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Speaker 1: And and and so it's challenging this whole idea of

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of the founding credos.

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Speaker 3: Of all of us are in out by.

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Speaker 1: Our creator, right because we say this, and we've had

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this mythology about it. And it's easy when you're an

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eighty five percent white country, but suddenly, after two and

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fifty years of that, when you're becoming less than fifty

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percent white, it's like, wait a second, we didn't really

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mean all of that, right, Like what.

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Speaker 2: Do we really mean?

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Speaker 4: Right?

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Speaker 1: Can't America be in America if it's if it's not

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a white Christian nation? And that is so much of

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the struggle that we're going through because we are going

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through this incredible technological change and economic change. But the

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most visible every day that we see is the complexion

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of our country is changing. And that's the easiest way

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to relate to it, and politicians will take advantage of that.

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What's changing though, what's transforming? And this, by the way,

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as you know better than anybody, is a lot of

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these shifts are happening beyond just Latinos. It's happening with

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African American men. Maybe not as much, maybe it's little.

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I'm not an expert. I don't know, but I know

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that it's happening. The New York Times did a phenomenal

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analysis after the twenty twenty elections showing that in every

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single immigrants dense precinct in the country, everyone there was

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a right word shift.

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Speaker 3: So it's not even just a black and brown thing.

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Speaker 1: It's like an Asian thing. It's like it's an everything thing.

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Speaker 3: And what that tells us very clearly is.

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Speaker 1: The class separation is gotten out of control. Then it's

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like beyond the Gilded Age, right, and our oligarchs are

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like Elon Musk and Peter Teel. They're acting like populists

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and they're acting like men of the people Donald Trump,

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but they're the ones that are fueling this sort of

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this this class rage, and it's got direct correlations to

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the race and ethnic tensions in the country, any one

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of which would be very very difficult to handle. But

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they're both crashing on our shores of the same time,

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and so it's it's really really hard for us to

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find any sense of commonality right now.

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Speaker 2: You you did a it was interesting there was a

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Washington Post article that actually commented on some of what

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you've written in what you said is said quote Madrid

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criticizes the GOP as the biggest purveyor of identity politics

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in America for its anti immigrant appeals to it sometimes

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bigoted based. If Republicans abandoned the nativism and stress tax cuts,

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he argues, they could regain power in Washington. Democrats conversely,

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need to drop the denial about Latino's right word drift

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and frame an economic message to appeal to a Latino

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voting base that isn't wedded to the Democrats. And that

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is the strength of the Latino community right now, is

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that it is something that we've struggled with in the

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black community after a long time, giving ourselves over in

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the first instance, to Republicans and that didn't turn out,

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and then giving ourselves over to the Democrats in the

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nineteen sixties, and what we got was the Great Society

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and a lot of people like but now just living

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in a tenement and I still don't have a job, right,

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so you have you have that, and so now, but

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the Latinos in coming to the country, and and a

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let's keep in mind, Latino has been coming to America

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folks for a long time. Right, they just didn't start

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showing up two months ago, Okay, they were They were

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as much a part of helping to build the country

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as a whole lot of other folks that we know

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from Asia and elsewhere. But but the reality of it

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is people don't understand that part of the Latino history.

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Your book asked the question of whether the first you know,

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the rise of Latinos put it that way, the rise

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of Latinos will inflame or or begin to control and

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and dissipate this, uh, this partisan tribalism. What we're seeing though,

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is to the point you just made it, seemingly the

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partisans want to pull Latinos into the partisan tribalism because

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the grift and the political advantage over the Democrats, in

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their view, is far greater than the respect for the legacy,

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the history, and the aspirations of the very people. So

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you trap them the way other communities have been trapped

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into a lot of promises for shit they ain't gonna get.

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Speaker 4: Again.

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Speaker 1: Man, I'm glad I wrote the book before you did.

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That's exactly right. Look, yeah, and that's exactly it. And

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what is happening is a lot of this. I explained,

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it's kind of demographic, right. What I was doing work

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for on Latino stuff for George W. Bush in two

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thousand and two thousand and four we were getting high thirties,

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mid forties support levels. But back then, remember this is

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twenty five years ago, Latino's were a much more recently

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migrated voting block. There was a lot of naturalized citizens.

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The dramatic explosion that's happening now over eighty percent are

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US born and they're very young. It's like a huge

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tidal wave that's coming. These are not migrants themselves. In

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many cases, it was either their parents or their grandparents,

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and so they're not as sensitive to that issue. And

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Democrats have been speaking to them as basically as aggrieved

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immigrant communities. And we have a deep reverence for our migrants,

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there's no question about that. But at the same time,

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we also have this immediate economic crisis that is facing

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a lot of working class people right now. That is

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very real, right and the polling has been telling us

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overwhelmingly for three decades, Michael, for thirty years, it's economic

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issues that they want to hear about. And then when

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the Democrats hear them'll be like, yeah, I understand that,

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but he wants to put your kids in cages. And

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it's like, I hear you, and I get that.

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Speaker 5: But I don't have the luxury of worrying about that

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right now, because my kids are hungry to nights right right,

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Like I got mouths to feed now and rent is

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due on Friday.

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Speaker 3: Politics bring that to me, Like, that's what I have

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the capacity to worry about. And that is part of

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this broader class shift. As the Democrats have consolidated college

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educated voters overwhelmingly white, the Republicans have consolidated non college

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voters overwhelmingly black and brown. And so now we've got this,

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these parties isolated by culture, diploma divide, class divide, and

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racial and ethnic relation is all pulling the country in

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very different political directions. And one of the great ironies

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of this moment, and I think again, you and I'm

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gonna have to have a bottle of wine to talk

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about this after November when we win, yes, is the

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fact that the Republican Party has become far more diverse

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under Donald Trump than at any time since the nineteen

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sixty four Civil Rights Act. Like that's crazy talk, but

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it's happening.

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Speaker 1: Is happening because of the things that you and I

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built our careers on, which was talk about economic opportunity

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and economic issues foundationally first and foremost, because If we

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can address economic issues, then we can better address our

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race issues.