Speaker 1: So let's go kick a little ass. What what do
you think the Democrats need to do right now? You
got you got ass, donkey.
Speaker 2: I get it. I've heard better jokes. I would say one. Well,
I don't know where do you come down. It's like
there's there's the debate right now where it's like, you know,
they need to moderate and they should therefore adopt moderate policies.
Or is it that they need to show their sort
of you know, generationally changing or maybe they don't need
to do anything at all because you know it's always
going to be a referendum in the in the midterms,
and look at these special election result results are doing great.
I kind of jump between a few of those. And
before I give you my answer, I want to hear yours.
Speaker 1: So uh, if you know anything about me, uh and
the first time we've met, right, sorry about I'm going
to I'm going to redefine the edge, uh, and I'm
going to do everything I can to cut you with it.
And that's that's what the Democrats do. Not have a
propensity towards a political fight.
Speaker 2: So you just say slash say, I say, look.
Speaker 1: What I did in when I was a county chairman,
out outgunned here in Prince George's county fifty eight thousand
Republicans to eight hundred thousand citizens.
Speaker 2: Right, what I did is.
Speaker 1: State party chairman, outgunned two to one in democratic registration.
Yet I got a governor elected twenty in two thousand
and two that happened to be on the ballot. That
may have helped, may not have helped. But we had
a plan, and the plan was to fight, right, was
to fight, to lean into the opposition. When I got
to the R and C, it was no different. Outnumbered, outgunned,
a seventy percent plus approval for Barack Obama. Our brand
was in the toilet, were hemorrhaging voters and money. I
had a lot of internal fighting. You know, the political
establishment didn't like me or trust me, even though they
knew me. Probably that's why they didn't like me or
trust me. And I was not I was not a
person who play well with others.
Speaker 2: Well, let me talk, let's let's stop there everything, because
this is this is the most interesting parallel, which is
two thousand and nine and twenty five, right, like is
there is this what were you see like a lot
of discontent among Democrats, the party is not very popular.
But if I remember in two thousand and nine, their
public party wasn't very popular either. Nope, and there's a
lot of discontent. The Tea Party was on the rise,
and there's a lot of questions about whether they were
going to fumble the ball because of it, right, and
it turned out it was like obviously historic election for
the party. I'm I'm kind of interesting towards this being
similar to that. But maybe that was because of Obamacare
and that was a unique situation, or maybe not.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, but you can have Obamacare, but if you
don't define what Obamacare means to people, if you don't,
if you don't look it's a parallel thing. I've got
to know what we're going for, what we're doing, and
I've got to be able to convince my team this
is the way to go, and that was very hard
to do. I had a lot of people In January
of twenty ten, Karl Rover I'll never forget the op
ed he did in the Wall Street Journal basically, lighten
my ass up. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm
an awful chairman. We'd be lucky if we get thirty
seats out of this election. Well, we got sixty three, bitch, right,
and I picked up almost one thousand.
Speaker 2: Ever have you ever brought that up to him directly? Oh?
Speaker 1: He and I have laughed about it. Yeah, Carl's a
good guy. I mean, you know, I've got no beef
of Carls with me. But but you know a thousand
state legislative races. You know how we got those? I
focused on and no one in the party focusto winning
state legislative races. Right, you want to change the game,
change the game where the game is changed? How do
you you know if you want the how do you
how do you get control of the courts, congressional districts.
Speaker 2: How do you get control of congressional districts?
Speaker 1: You draw the lines, and who draws the lines.
Speaker 2: Say, legislatures? There you go. Well, there's some state supreme
courts that can have some say but yes, I hear you.
Speaker 1: But what I'm just saying is you've got to have
You've got to have a forward looking strategy. Now, look,
you can't. You can't account for every outcome and the
behavior of every politician and gets elected. Sure, I mean
we're all sitting here looking at some of the folks
that we've worked with over the years ago. Who the
hell is that person in the land of Trump. But
the reality of it is, that's for me, Sam, the
way the Democrats need to sort of look at this
is what's the multi layered strategy here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Number one? But then what is your messaging? What was
my messaging in twenty ten? Fire Pelosi?
Speaker 2: Right right?
Speaker 1: You want your garbage picked up? Fire Pelosi? You want
to change the Congress? Fire Pelosi.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And see that's where it might be different. I
don't think Mike Johnson is that type. I mean, this
is not a Mike Johnson election, right, this is Donald
Trump the.
Speaker 1: Other things that will substitute for Mike Johnson, right right,
you know, I mean I I My sense is that.
Speaker 2: The question was where do Democrats stand and what should
they do? I think honestly they need to find one
or two things which resonate with the public. And it
could be honestly, could be the corruption, right like that
could be it it worked, that's what works for them
in six it was a corruption thing and then kind
of just hammer away. And yes, there's gonna be divisions
in the party over like ideology and philosophy and what
policies to emphasize. But if you can say Donald Trump
is corrupt and Donald Trump has not than anything to
make your life meaningfully better with costs, So I think
that's a winning formula.
Speaker 1: That works better than a conversation around birthright citizenship in
monument's clause.
Speaker 2: Except yes, I mean yes it does. Now they the
monument's clause does get into the corruption stuff. But an
argument over birth rate, here's the thing I think you
can argue. I think you can argue the morality of
the immigration stuff, totally fine. I think what you say
is I'm not I'm not a strategist, so so no
one should be listening to me, be like that's the guy. Now,
just I'm just throwing out an idea here. But the
birthright citizenship, the deportation stuff, that's a form of corruption,
all right. It's a corruption against the constitution. And if
you can frame it like that, then you can kind
of sweep it into one.
Speaker 1: What about the what about the economy? I've been saying
for a number of months. I mean, you know, I
was I'm minored in economics, and so I know a
little bit of our numbers work and how they flow.
And I've been saying for a few months, along with
a few other folks, that the impact of what Trump
has done, even though he's trying to clean up on
all nine through twenty right now, right, has already been
set in motion and will be realized at the end
of this month beginning of June, and it's starting to
come into focus. We'll see a lot of folks, how
does the economic piece play that messaging?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean, look, what is it. It's May fourteenth,
twenty twenty five. We have so much time. We have
so much time, so we don't just we just don't
know where we're going to be economically. But let's say
in theory the elections were in like six months, then yeah,
I think it would. I think there's a lot to
run on here. If you're a Democrats, it's you know,
it's all self inflicted damage that he's created. You can
easily say we handed him and helped protest, but like,
we handed him a pretty good economy with low inflation,
high low unemployment GDP moving in the direction, and he
went and took a hammer to it. And that's factually true.
Like the tariffs were self inflicted. The fact that he
had to reverse on them is not an act of
negotiating genius is not like the art of the yell.
It's just he admitted he was wrong, and you know,
going out and firing you know, tens of thousands of workers,
and these are yes, they're government in place, but they're
also you know, blue collar people who man your parks,
who work in and around government buildings, who research diseases
and make sure your water is clean and all that
stuff that matters. Like he fired them, right, and that
has a real impact. I mean, like you can say
that the economy is not in a better spot despite
what he wants to say, and he promised you fix
it on day one, and does it feel fixed to you?
And you can look at the consumer set sentiments like
the University of Michigan Consumer sentiment data. Then people don't
think the economy is going in right direction. They're fearful
about where the economy is going. So again, we're very
very very very very far away. We don't know what
the economy is going to look like in a year
from now, but there is fodder for Democrats here for sure.
Speaker 1: So before I let you go, I want to have
a little fun with you.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned her.
Speaker 1: A little bit earlier, a little Laura Lumer. You guys
had a little little Twitter Twitter back and forth.
Speaker 2: You Yeah, what was that about? What I was going
to ask you?
Speaker 1: Bro?
Speaker 2: What that? Well? So I don't think she went after me.
I didn't get lumored. Let's just be I want to
be very You did.
Speaker 1: Not get lumured.
Speaker 2: You're just not. So what's happening here is this is
the backstory Will Summer, who.
Speaker 1: Asked the question, is Willa Lumer for sale?
Speaker 2: Okay? I was posting an article we reported from Will
Summer about whether or not Laura Lumer's for sale? And
by that we mean there's accusations flying around that she's
running some sort of payola scheme because suddenly she's tweeting
about Venezuelan oil, Like, where did that come from? I
haven't really tweeted about that ever, And this was not
an accusation I made. Kaylee Means, a top Robert F.
Kennedy advisor whose sister is being nominated for surgeon General,
has publicly accused Laura Lumer of attacking his sister because
she's paid for by someone He hasn't specified, but she
has been pretty viciously attacking Casey means his sister, and
so Lumer denied it to Will Summer. She says she's
not paid for her work. She's just out there doing
the vetting that everyone needs to do. But this is
like getting a lot of buzz in maga circles. And
Will noticed it, and he did the reporting. And then
I tweeted the article innocently enough, as a good editor does,
trying to promote the work of his reporters, and I
got lumored. I got lumered for it. It was so funny.
Speaker 1: It it's just the way, you know, she just sort
of came at it, and you're like.
Speaker 2: Typically and typically understated fashion, Yes.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly exactly, you know, your misogynistic I you know what,
I can't have my own companies. It's just but it
does matter who pays you.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you're paid for And this is the other thing, though,
there's like a pretty lengthy history now people in this
sphere getting paid to post, and so there's not like
it's not this is like non contextualized.
Speaker 1: I thought she protested a bit too much and went on,
had had to explain way too much and just sort
of couch it. And when you look you may.
Speaker 2: Have read similarly to some people here.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was like, okay, all right, see in any
other world did to go please and move on. But no,
you got to go into the whole. If you can't
beat them, make them join, I mean, make them like
you quotes. I'm like, please spare me, all right. Well,
Sam Stein, you keep doing you boo.
Speaker 2: Thank you, mister chairman, Thank you very much. I'll always
do it.
Speaker 1: Well, my friend, take care.