Speaker 1: Welcome to Poddave America. I'm Jon Favreau, on today's show,
Speaker 1: writer and founder of the Slow Boring newsletter Matt Iglesias.
Speaker 1: We've had a lot of people on the show make
Speaker 1: the case for why the Democratic Party should move to
Speaker 1: the left, and a lot of progressive candidates who represent
Speaker 1: that direction. We've also had plenty of people, including us,
Speaker 1: critique the Democratic establishment. We haven't really had someone on
Speaker 1: at least in a while, make a full throated case
Speaker 1: for a center left politics that emphasizes moderation.
Speaker 2: I know that probably.
Speaker 1: Sounds exciting and not at all annoying to many of you.
Speaker 1: Matt recently wrote a piece titled How the Center Left
Speaker 1: Can Come Back in twenty twenty eight that's based in
Speaker 1: part on a series of critical, tough questions that Nate
Speaker 1: Silver recently posed to the center left. I found both
Speaker 1: Nate's questions and Matt's response really useful in understanding where
Speaker 1: folks like Matt are coming from and what they're looking
Speaker 1: for from the party in twenty twenty eight and beyond.
Speaker 1: I also had plenty of questions on my own, so
Speaker 1: I invited Matt on to see if he had some
Speaker 1: answers and he did. We talked about how important issue
Speaker 1: positions are in a presidential primary, the role of charisma
Speaker 1: and the ability to get attention, why Democrats have lost
Speaker 1: in recent elections, and who on the current bench might
Speaker 1: be able to win in twenty twenty eight. It was
Speaker 1: a great conversation and we will get to it in
Speaker 1: a moment. Before we do, please consider becoming a paying
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Speaker 1: on over to Cricket dot com slash friends to subscribe. Matt,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Plase of America.
Speaker 3: Really good to be here.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk about the factional debate within
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party over how to actually win some national elections,
Speaker 1: and thought who better to do that with than the
Speaker 1: online left's favorite pundit who can faithfully represent the views
Speaker 1: of the neolibshill faction. And I think a good place
Speaker 1: to start is with your recent piece about how the
Speaker 1: center left can come back in twenty twenty eight, where
Speaker 1: your one big answer is that the center left needs
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty eight presidential primary campaign that articulates its
Speaker 1: critique of the status quo before we get to the
Speaker 1: critique itself. Why a presidential campaign?
Speaker 4: You know, I think something we see in politics is
Speaker 4: that political parties are really defined by their presidential campaigns
Speaker 4: and by their leadership. Everybody, I mean, you me, people
Speaker 4: with all different kinds of videological viewpoints are frustrated about
Speaker 4: where Democrats are at now, and they like want them
Speaker 4: to be clearer and have a better message, but realistically
Speaker 4: there's just like not that much the Chuck Schumer and
Speaker 4: Hakeem Jeffries can do. You're hurting cats on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 4: It's presidential campaigns. Donald Trump comes in, he wins a nomination.
Speaker 4: It totally redefines what the Republican Party is about, you know,
Speaker 4: for good and for ill. And that's what's going to
Speaker 4: happen in twenty eight, right There's going to be a contest.
Speaker 4: Somebody is going to win it. That person will be
Speaker 4: the leader. What Democrats stand for is going to be,
Speaker 4: you know, largely whatever it is that person stands for.
Speaker 4: And until then, you know, you try to have good
Speaker 4: candidates in the key races you hope they win. Everyone's
Speaker 4: going to have some who they like more than others.
Speaker 4: But it's it's like it's going to be a mess.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought about that after the twenty twenty five off
Speaker 1: year elections, when everyone had this like goldilocks view of
Speaker 1: it where they're like, well, you know, you had some
Speaker 1: more center left moderate candidates winning in some places and
Speaker 1: Mamdannie wins in New York and so it's all great
Speaker 1: and we don't have to fight that much. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's easier to do in a mide off your
Speaker 1: elections than a presidential election.
Speaker 2: That's where the rubber hits the road.
Speaker 1: So you make clear that this center left critique is
Speaker 1: a critique of what you call the Clinton, Biden, Harris
Speaker 1: Schumer status quo. How would you describe that status quo
Speaker 1: and what is your critique of it?
Speaker 4: Sure? You know, so, I think there's been some pretty
Speaker 4: dramatic leftward moves in the Democratic Party since Barack Obama's
Speaker 4: second term. And this has not been like the left
Speaker 4: quote unquote Bernie Sanders his people taking the party over.
Speaker 4: It's been an establishment stewardship. But they've shifted on a
Speaker 4: lot of different things, some of the minor or some
Speaker 4: of them big. I mean, I think a notable one
Speaker 4: that I've read about in the piece is education policy,
Speaker 4: where without really like a huge rancorous debate about it,
Speaker 4: ideas about performance pay for teachers, ideas about supporting high
Speaker 4: performing charter schools that you know, the Obama White House
Speaker 4: had chain and it was controversial at the time. Inside
Speaker 4: the party just sort of went in the other direction.
Speaker 4: And then we had, you know a lot of discussion
Speaker 4: about this around COVID and school closures and different things there.
Speaker 4: But you know, Democrats had an identity as a party
Speaker 4: of reform of the public sector that has sort of
Speaker 4: gone away in that regard. Democrats have also, you know,
Speaker 4: shifted a lot on immigration over the past ten to
Speaker 4: fifteen years. Right, There's been all this stuff about asylum
Speaker 4: that came up during the Biden presidency just wasn't really
Speaker 4: an issue that like people were thinking that much about.
Speaker 4: During the Obama presidency, there was this kind of very
Speaker 4: specific focus on trying to get a path to citizenship
Speaker 4: for people who've been here for a long time. New
Speaker 4: things came up. Democrats have you know, gone through a
Speaker 4: number of cycles around crime and criminal justice reform since
Speaker 4: that time, but have been sort of seen in some
Speaker 4: circles is very soft on crime. I think I think
Speaker 4: left wing Democrats have started to see that this is
Speaker 4: a problem. Everyone has sort of walked back defunding police
Speaker 4: things like that since then, but there's been this kind
Speaker 4: of and then on economic policy, there's been a shift again.
Speaker 4: It was a shift in the Biden administration to these
Speaker 4: kind of much more Elizabeth Warren like positions about you know,
Speaker 4: the role of business, it's relationship to the state. It
Speaker 4: used to be kind of a view that, you know,
Speaker 4: Democrats were a party that was going to make rich
Speaker 4: people pay higher taxes and that was going to be
Speaker 4: a non starter for a lot of rich people in
Speaker 4: the country, but for people who could stand that, who
Speaker 4: could say, you know what, I'm going to pay more
Speaker 4: under the Democrats, I'm going to contribute to the common will,
Speaker 4: I'm going to help the poor whatever. You know, I'm
Speaker 4: still going to be treated like respectfully as if business
Speaker 4: is a laudable thing to do with your career. And
Speaker 4: there's been shifts on both sides of that, much more
Speaker 4: contentious relationship between the Democratic Party and the technology industry,
Speaker 4: but really the Democratic Party in the business world were large.
Speaker 1: So I take your point that the party has definitely
Speaker 1: shifted leftward on a number of issues. And I can
Speaker 1: just speak from experience because oftentimes when this gets debated,
Speaker 1: I can remember when I was in the White House
Speaker 1: around the Obama campaign and we did Race to the Top,
Speaker 1: and we talked about teacher pay, and we talked about
Speaker 1: immigration in the context of we're a nation of immigrants,
Speaker 1: but we're also a nation of laws. And you know,
Speaker 1: now people on the right just like playback Obama clips
Speaker 1: from two thousand and eight where he's talking about border security.
Speaker 2: So I get that.
Speaker 1: How do we know people's negative view of the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party and the Democratic parties sort of losing some elections,
Speaker 1: some big ones, is due primarily to specific issue positions
Speaker 1: and not a number of other factors, you know, general
Speaker 1: perception of elitism, corruption, weakness, however you define it right,
Speaker 1: There's a whole bunch of different potential factors in these losses.
Speaker 4: You know, I think all this stuff is in the
Speaker 4: mix obviously, and to an extend, it connects to people.
Speaker 4: Search Light Institute did a really interesting series of polls
Speaker 4: about corruption. You know, people are very concerned about corruption.
Speaker 4: They think the political establishment is very corrupt.
Speaker 3: But they asked, like, do you.
Speaker 4: Consider X, Y and Z thing corrupt? And you know,
Speaker 4: it was like trading on insider stock information, definitely corrupt.
Speaker 4: But people also said it was corrupt when politicians do
Speaker 4: things to sort of curry favor with social elites that
Speaker 4: aren't what the public wants. Right, So that's like a
Speaker 4: very expansive view of corruption, where like if you're afraid
Speaker 4: of getting canceled or something, so you're doing this, you know,
Speaker 4: that could be corrupt in some people's eyes. You also
Speaker 4: might see that as weak. You know, I don't think
Speaker 4: you want to be weak. I think again, to the
Speaker 4: point of why presidential campaigns matter, moderate members of Congress
Speaker 4: are almost all people who are representing districts the Donald
Speaker 4: Trump one. I think those people are in some ways
Speaker 4: the Democrats' MVPs, but they are not MVPs when it
Speaker 4: comes to like big partisan controversies, because that's just that's
Speaker 4: not how you hold down a red House seat. You
Speaker 4: kind of like duck those fights, and that does look
Speaker 4: weak to people who are in the base, and that's
Speaker 4: not what they want. Right in a presidential campaign, you
Speaker 4: can do what Donald Trump did on Medicare and Social Security.
Speaker 4: You can do what President Obama did on education issues,
Speaker 4: which is you can reposition to the center on select
Speaker 4: things while also being like a strong voice for your
Speaker 4: party and its side on certain.
Speaker 3: Kinds of key issues.
Speaker 4: But you know, I do think that issues matter to people. Like,
Speaker 4: it's not a coincidence that in twenty twelve Democrats had
Speaker 4: all these great ads lambasting Mitt Romney's Medicare plan, and
Speaker 4: then Donald Trump comes along and he's like, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to do that Medicare plan right now. You know,
Speaker 4: ninety percent of the people who voted for Obama in
Speaker 4: twenty twelve vote for Hillary in twenty sixteen. But the
Speaker 4: people who were persuaded by those Medicare ads, now they
Speaker 4: got a Republican who's like, you know what, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to do that. So you know, you go around
Speaker 4: the country, right, like, not that many people are swing voters.
Speaker 4: It's a small population, but I think there are people there,
Speaker 4: right who are looking at, you know, these questions about
Speaker 4: who should play on women's sports teams, and they really
Speaker 4: do care about that issue, and it upsets them that
Speaker 4: Democrats have the position that they don't agree with. And
Speaker 4: that's a different I mean, that was not an issue
Speaker 4: that we talked about really ten fifteen years ago. But
Speaker 4: I remember in two thousand and eight when that campaign
Speaker 4: was happening, and Obama and all Democrats everywhere said that
Speaker 4: marriage is between a man and a woman. And that's
Speaker 4: not what I believed, and I know lots of the
Speaker 4: younger people who worked on those campaigns, that's not what
Speaker 4: they believed. I don't know what the principles themselves believed privately,
Speaker 4: but I think everyone kind of understood at that point
Speaker 4: in time that it was going to be the job
Speaker 4: of someone else to like persuade the voters that our
Speaker 4: more forward thinking progressive view was correct, and that the
Speaker 4: politicians were gonna, you know, try to get to yes
Speaker 4: with the electorate. That it was it was tough enough
Speaker 4: to be opposing these constitutional amendments and other kinds of
Speaker 4: things that would have completely closed the door in equality,
Speaker 4: and so some of what's happened is I think just
Speaker 4: a less of a pragmatic spirit. That Trump is so terrible.
Speaker 4: It makes people feel like, well, if he can get
Speaker 4: away with so much, like we should be able to
Speaker 4: get away with undisciplined behavior. But that's just like, that's
Speaker 4: not really how it works, you know. It's like, if
Speaker 4: he's really terrible, we need to take this really seriously.
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Speaker 2: It is true that you know a majority.
Speaker 1: Of voters, especially voters in the States we need to win,
Speaker 1: and routinely telpolsters, including especially in the most recent New
Speaker 1: York Times polls, that the Democratic Party is too far left,
Speaker 1: and more people think, at least in the New York
Speaker 1: Times poll, more people think the Democratic Party is too
Speaker 1: far left than they think the Republican Party is too
Speaker 1: far right. Not great though importantly, in all six of
Speaker 1: the states where they polled, the six Senate states that
Speaker 1: are pick up opportunities for Democrats, voters were less likely
Speaker 1: to describe the Democratic candidate as too far left than
Speaker 1: they were the Democratic Party itself. Do you attribute that
Speaker 1: to specific moderate positions taken by Mary Peltola, Josh Turik,
Speaker 1: Shared Brown, Roy Cooper, James tell Rico, Because and I
Speaker 1: don't know about all of their positions on everything, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like at least, you know, I know enough,
Speaker 1: like shared's been around long enough, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: they have moderated on any of the issues where democ
Speaker 1: or you might think that Democrats need to moderate on.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a little of both, right. So Turrek and
Speaker 4: Peltola have both sort of said that they want to
Speaker 4: support their state's oil and gas industries, you know, which
Speaker 4: would be a very hot take in national Democratic Party politics.
Speaker 3: I think it's kind of a.
Speaker 4: No brain or in Alaska and Texas, And you know
Speaker 4: that's good. We're just all kind of getting to a
Speaker 4: place of pragmatism and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Roy Cooper.
Speaker 4: You know, he's been in state wide office in North
Speaker 4: Carolina for a long, long, long time, has a distinctive
Speaker 4: relationship with the voters there. I think they see him
Speaker 4: as moderate, at least because he's held office for a
Speaker 4: long time. There's this Republican supermajority in the legislature, so
Speaker 4: we don't really know but what it is he would
Speaker 4: have done if he was empowered. Josh Turik and Iowa,
Speaker 4: you know, he really had a hard fought primary. Elizabeth
Speaker 4: Warren and others were supporting his opponent. He held and
Speaker 4: represented an Obama to Trump, you know, switching district in
Speaker 4: the state legislature there. I don't know anything about Iowa.
Speaker 4: I've never been there. I don't like to represent myself
Speaker 4: as an expert, but it did seem like it was
Speaker 4: the more moderate choice in a contested primary. You know,
Speaker 4: Chared Brown is I think the interesting one. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm old enough to remember in two thousand and six
Speaker 4: when he was like this progressive dream candidate we'd emerge
Speaker 4: and like that was a different era in Ohio, right,
Speaker 4: Like everything was very different back then. You know, he
Speaker 4: in Obama's first term, he really clashed with the white
Speaker 4: House over some energy stuff, Religi to the steel industry,
Speaker 4: things like that. In Biden's term, he was much more
Speaker 4: kind of a good soldier, got along with everybody. Maybe
Speaker 4: not the best idea, and it state that Trump won
Speaker 4: by six points, so I don't know, you know exactly
Speaker 4: where he's going to come down there. Some of it, though,
Speaker 4: is that you know, when you have a specific individual candidate,
Speaker 4: they can try to communicate who they are rather than
Speaker 4: being like a caricature, right, And so that is always
Speaker 4: the power of individual candidates, individual candidates who unlike late
Speaker 4: stage Joe Biden, can like actually speak and engage with people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, because I do
Speaker 1: think that the focus on positions and issue positions, which
Speaker 1: I do think voters care about. I would not dismiss that,
Speaker 1: but it is it is one of many factors because
Speaker 1: a lot of the people you just talked about, it
Speaker 1: seems like they they have an image of being more moderate,
Speaker 1: partly because of vibes that they put off, because of
Speaker 1: their their bio, because of who they are, how they communicate.
Speaker 1: I mean, Roy Cooper is an interesting one too, because
Speaker 1: he ran for governor and won that race partly the
Speaker 1: bathroom bill in North Carolina at the time. Now we're
Speaker 1: talking about trans issues around sports teams and gender affirming care,
Speaker 1: but back then it was a bathroom bill, and he
Speaker 1: was able to win in twenty sixteen. Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: tough year despite being very vocal on that issue at
Speaker 1: the time. And you do wonder, then, is the reason
Speaker 1: that Roy Cooper's doing so well and people think he's
Speaker 1: more moderate is is is it other factors aside from
Speaker 1: the actual positions he's taken.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I think that there's a there's a
Speaker 4: bollth end to this, right, So, you know, Governor Cooper
Speaker 4: was always sort of positioned himself as a champion of
Speaker 4: economic growth in North Carolina and of sort of modernization
Speaker 4: and bringing business in. There's this whole kind of you know,
Speaker 4: New South tradition that Bill Clinton was part of that,
Speaker 4: He's part of that. Andy Basheer is part of the
Speaker 4: bathroom bill controversy at the time that that was raging, right,
Speaker 4: It was related to that. Part of the case he
Speaker 4: was making was you know, this is going to hurt
Speaker 4: us in our convention business, is going to hurt us
Speaker 4: in attracting financial services jobs from New York things like that.
Speaker 4: And this is where you know, there's issue positions, there's vibes,
Speaker 4: there's communications, and it sort of comes together because if
Speaker 4: you can explain what you're doing in a way that
Speaker 4: connects to things that your constituents care about, that's much
Speaker 4: better than if you're kind of duck and cover all
Speaker 4: the time, right, Like, can you engage you can you
Speaker 4: convey some kind of empathy and complexity around these issues?
Speaker 4: People don't like to be everybody votes for politicians who
Speaker 4: they agree with about some stuff and disagree with about
Speaker 4: other stuff. If they feel like, well, this is a
Speaker 4: political party that wants to like cancel me over our disagreements,
Speaker 4: versus that can respect the idea of differences of opinion
Speaker 4: but thinks that all things considered, you know, my healthcare
Speaker 4: plan is really important.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Those are not different issue positions, but it's a little
Speaker 4: bit more than just vibes.
Speaker 3: Like I think we.
Speaker 4: Saw but before before wearing Platiner exited the race under
Speaker 4: a cloud of scandal. You know, we were putting to
Speaker 4: the test the idea that is sort of a pure
Speaker 4: vibes candidacy could sort of transform the demographic.
Speaker 3: Structure of the electorate.
Speaker 4: And I think the polls were saying that that wasn't working,
Speaker 4: that he was going to beat Susan Collins until scandals
Speaker 4: took him down. But this is a state that Kamala won,
Speaker 4: it's a state that Biden won, it's a state that
Speaker 4: Hillary won. He was winning based on educated people in
Speaker 4: coastal towns, kind of same old, same old, because his
Speaker 4: issue positions were actually very very standard, even though he
Speaker 4: had this really interesting persona I think we both met. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he's very charismatic in person, like like a cool guy.
Speaker 4: Then maybe not so cool. But you know, ultimately, if
Speaker 4: you're going to persuade people who haven't been voting for
Speaker 4: you to vote for you, you've got to give him something, right,
Speaker 4: like yah, some reason to think that you're different.
Speaker 1: And this is the case with so many of these races,
Speaker 1: is that there's so many different variables that it's hard
Speaker 1: to pin something down because it's like I realized that
Speaker 1: the left wants to believe that Graham Plattner and his
Speaker 1: race could have like, you know, won him up of
Speaker 1: non college educated white voters and sort of picked that
Speaker 1: lock that we've Democrats been trying to pick for the
Speaker 1: last twenty years. I never really thought that was the case.
Speaker 1: But I did think that his charisma was a big
Speaker 1: factor there. I saw you write a couple of times
Speaker 1: that that one of the reasons he might have been
Speaker 1: seen as not as left as the Democratic Party as
Speaker 1: a whole is because of his position on guns. But
Speaker 1: then I was like, did that many people in Maine
Speaker 1: really knew?
Speaker 2: Did they do?
Speaker 1: They all know what his position on guns was? Because
Speaker 1: he didn't talk about it a lot. It was like
Speaker 1: a big it was only a big part of his campaign.
Speaker 1: And I do I wonder if his style and charisma
Speaker 1: may have made up for some of the either well,
Speaker 1: in his case, both the scandals, the early the scandals
Speaker 1: early on and the you know, the further left issue
Speaker 1: positions like medicare for all, abolish ice, and his position
Speaker 1: on Israel. Like I wonder if his per sona helped
Speaker 1: with his perception.
Speaker 4: Well, I guess part of the point I was trying
Speaker 4: to make in my twenty twenty eight piece is that
Speaker 4: the things that the establishment and the kind of more
Speaker 4: progressive people have been arguing about are actually mostly not
Speaker 4: the issues that it seems like swing voters disagree with
Speaker 4: Democrats about right So, like on Israel, the mass public
Speaker 4: has become quite skeptical of the US Israel relationship. Obviously,
Speaker 4: that's a very fraught issue, and there's like always somebody
Speaker 4: wants to go further, you know, no matter what position
Speaker 4: you take. But there's like big room in the public
Speaker 4: eye for revisiting where Democrats have been on that Medicare
Speaker 4: for all, you know, we've been talking about for ten years.
Speaker 4: Like polling on that is all over the map, depending
Speaker 4: on what you ask, But people have pretty progressive ideas
Speaker 4: about healthcare, you know, like the voters believe that if
Speaker 4: people get sick, they should be able to see the doctor,
Speaker 4: and so you know, you can kind of go places
Speaker 4: on that. At the same time, you know, something I
Speaker 4: wrote about is kind of like racial targeting of programs
Speaker 4: is quite unpopular with white people in particular, who you know,
Speaker 4: want programs to benefit them rather than other people, which
Speaker 4: is pretty easy to understand, not really something the left
Speaker 4: in the establishment disagree about. Again, so interestingly, Obama in
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight on the campaign trail, you know,
Speaker 4: made some real waves by suggesting that he wanted to
Speaker 4: revisit some of that and questioned, you know, do his
Speaker 4: daughters need special advantage over low income white kids, right,
Speaker 4: that'd be a very hot take to put forward. It
Speaker 4: was a hot take when he did it. Obviously he
Speaker 4: had some personal qualities that gave him a little bit
Speaker 4: more space on those kind of things. But those are
Speaker 4: statements that make people think, huh, you know, maybe I
Speaker 4: need to give a new look to somebody who's out there.
Speaker 4: And I think you're right. You know, Platner didn't really
Speaker 4: talk much about the guns thing. We don't know how
Speaker 4: that would have gone as a general election, right, But
Speaker 4: you know, different things pop at different kinds of times.
Speaker 4: But I do think that successful politicians usually put something
Speaker 4: on the table to make you think, oh, this guy's different,
Speaker 4: Like that's fresh, that's new, and charisma is like how
Speaker 4: you make that pop. But it still matters what the
Speaker 4: content is, because if what we see is like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's different, that's an idea I've never heard before, and
Speaker 4: I hate it, Like that's not good, right, Like you
Speaker 4: don't want to get attention for terrible ideas that everyone hates.
Speaker 1: The empathy point you made earlier, And I wonder if
Speaker 1: you read Brian Bouler's piece today where he sort of
Speaker 1: wrote about this as well as like the sort of
Speaker 1: the need to show empathy, or a Democratic politician to
Speaker 1: show empathy can kind of sort of bridge some of
Speaker 1: these divides, these and these disagreements between factions and the party.
Speaker 1: The Obama thing made me think, so, yeah, he would.
Speaker 1: He would go out and talk about, like, maybe what
Speaker 1: we really need is class based a firm of action
Speaker 1: and not just raise based affirmative action. And then he
Speaker 1: would also make the point that when people said, okay,
Speaker 1: well then race doesn't matter, it's all about class, he
Speaker 1: would say, well, no, I mean, you know, I'm biracial,
Speaker 1: but when I hail a cab and the cab keeps going,
Speaker 1: it's I'm black.
Speaker 2: To that cab absolutly, you know.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder if it is a question of
Speaker 1: Democrats or a lot of the Democratic candidates we've seen
Speaker 1: not quite having the skills to explain their positioning and
Speaker 1: also explain it in a way where people who may
Speaker 1: be against the position they take can at least understand
Speaker 1: where they're coming from. And because the politician showed some
Speaker 1: empathy for their position as well as the position of
Speaker 1: the people that politician landed on their same beliefs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean, I think this is a you know,
Speaker 4: this is where I think the substance of the positions
Speaker 4: and the communications methods sort of come together, right, And
Speaker 4: so you know, both Biden and Harris and Clinton for
Speaker 4: all sort of different reasons, but none of them will
Speaker 4: really kind of like sit down and gab at length
Speaker 4: kind of politicians who made you feel like they could
Speaker 4: explain in sort of some level of nuance what it
Speaker 4: was they really thought about these different kinds of issues.
Speaker 4: And that hurts you, right, because this is a big
Speaker 4: diverse country. You end up with two political parties, two
Speaker 4: candidates down there, you're trying to assemble a somewhat messy coalition,
Speaker 4: and there's going to have to be some fuzzing of
Speaker 4: these issues. There's going to have to be some outreach
Speaker 4: to the middle. But you've got to get people on
Speaker 4: the left on board. I mean, you look at this
Speaker 4: primarily happening in Michigan, right, It's very better. Somebody's going
Speaker 4: to win, somebody's going to lose. They're going to need
Speaker 4: to get the people who voted for the other person
Speaker 4: to come vote for them, which is going to mean
Speaker 4: whoever wins that is going to have to redescribe whatever
Speaker 4: it is they were saying about Israel or whatever else
Speaker 4: in a way that is at least acceptable to the
Speaker 4: other person's voters. Like that's hard, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 4: the real art of politics. I as a journalist, I
Speaker 4: observe that this occurs and that the good politicians do it.
Speaker 4: But I do feel like there has been a I
Speaker 4: remember when Harris was campaigning with Liz Cheney and there
Speaker 4: was a lot of like people from the left were
Speaker 4: like this is terrible, like how can you work with
Speaker 4: Liz Cheney? And then conversely, Harris wasn't like moving towards
Speaker 4: Liz Cheney's positions and any kind of issues, right, And
Speaker 4: so I think that wound up being a real kind
Speaker 4: of like dead zone version of like trying to see
Speaker 4: more moderate but not actually making anybody like her better,
Speaker 4: but raising these different kinds of questions, and it was
Speaker 4: just challenging, I think for her to convey to people
Speaker 4: exactly what she was trying to say about this, like
Speaker 4: why should somebody who was more conservative than Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: vote for her anyway? Because that's clearly what that was
Speaker 4: meant to convey, right, Like that was the purpose of
Speaker 4: them being up on stage. But it's like it's a
Speaker 4: hard argument to make. I mean, I don't have a
Speaker 4: big difficulty making the case to say like Trump, like
Speaker 4: he's corrupt January sixth, but like, also I just don't
Speaker 4: agree with him, like he's cutting healthcare, he's doing tax
Speaker 4: cuts for the rich, Like these aren't things that I
Speaker 4: agree with. But she wanted to make a pitch to
Speaker 4: people like my father in law who's like pretty conservative
Speaker 4: but also really doesn't like Trump, you know, and he
Speaker 4: I think he voted for Harris at the end of
Speaker 4: the day, and then he votes for Greg Abbott down ballot.
Speaker 4: But there's all these people out there who are conflicted,
Speaker 4: and you do have to come up with some way
Speaker 4: to build a bridge to them. That also, you know,
Speaker 4: conveys to progressives that like, if Democrats win the election,
Speaker 4: progressive public policy is going to happen.
Speaker 1: So you're running the presidential campaign of your dream Democrat
Speaker 1: who's willing to to emphasize moderation. Yeah, what moderate stances
Speaker 1: are you telling them to emphasize? Where the Democratic Party's
Speaker 1: position is most out of step with even its own
Speaker 1: even its own voters on high salience issues, right, which
Speaker 1: are issues voters rate as most important to them, or
Speaker 1: just issues that are going to come up in the campaign.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just talked about sort of affirmative action.
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has now ruled on using race as a
Speaker 1: factor in college admissions. Doesn't seem like that is going
Speaker 1: to be a hot button issue in twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: And so you could argue that just purely on a
Speaker 1: political level, moderating on that in a sort of a
Speaker 1: loud way.
Speaker 3: Probably out yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also can feel a little inauthentic and opportunistic, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know. So what do you think are the big ones?
Speaker 4: So, you know, I think there's like a few different
Speaker 4: buckets here, but immigration is a big one, right because
Speaker 4: people are there's a big backlash against what Ice has
Speaker 4: been doing. All Democrats are going to give voice to that,
Speaker 4: et cetera.
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 4: But this continues to be one of Donald Trump's strong
Speaker 4: issue areas, and you see that in polling of even
Speaker 4: Democrats there's real concern about reopening sort of the gates
Speaker 4: to people seeking asylum. Now, this is not where like
Speaker 4: I am at personally, I'm like quite left on immigration,
Speaker 4: but I can see the numbers here, right, and you
Speaker 4: need to convey to people both that there's going to
Speaker 4: be a meaningful recalibration from what Trump is doing, but
Speaker 4: also that like, we have heard what people were saying
Speaker 4: during the Biden administration and are not going to rerun
Speaker 4: that experience. I think that's like a big one. I
Speaker 4: think some of these trans issues are not that salient
Speaker 4: with the public, but they get brought up a lot
Speaker 4: by Republicans. You have to be prepared to answer questions
Speaker 4: about them, and I think you have to be prepared
Speaker 4: to go into some level of nuance because you want
Speaker 4: to convey like real empathy, real support for people's rights,
Speaker 4: but also to understand I think that like there is
Speaker 4: a set of sex segregated spaces where most Americans want,
Speaker 4: you know, biology is defined by chromosomes to be the
Speaker 4: controlling factor there. I think you have to at least
Speaker 4: throw a bone to the median voter on this kind
Speaker 4: of topic when you're addressing it. And then I think
Speaker 4: there's this set of things education as I think the
Speaker 4: most prominent of them. But can you show people that
Speaker 4: Democrats understand that like, voter support the social safety net,
Speaker 4: voter support public services, voter support taxing the wealthy, but
Speaker 4: also voters like want to see change and reform in
Speaker 4: the state in the government that when DOGE was first
Speaker 4: rolled out, people were really excited about it, right, like
Speaker 4: it all went to shit. But the idea of like,
Speaker 4: I am willing to take on the stakeholders inside the
Speaker 4: bureaucracy and do something good like that means a lot
Speaker 4: to people in terms of like what are their doubts
Speaker 4: about Democratic party governance. You know, when people live in
Speaker 4: the Midwest and they think about California and New York, right,
Speaker 4: they think maybe a nice place to live if you're
Speaker 4: like incredibly wealthy, but they don't think what they've really
Speaker 4: got there is like an incredible balance of taxes and
Speaker 4: quality public services.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: It's like the weather is amazing in California, the culture
Speaker 4: and nightlife in New York is fantastic, But people look
Speaker 4: at those higher taxes and they're like, well, look what
Speaker 4: are you getting for that money? Right, And people who
Speaker 4: live in those states like that You're in California, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it's like California's amazing, but none of the
Speaker 4: Californians are now are like the thing that is amazing
Speaker 4: about California is that the high levels of taxes that
Speaker 4: I pay is like really paying off in my day
Speaker 4: to day life, right, and like we know that between
Speaker 4: ourselves and you know that is something that Bill Clinton
Speaker 4: and Barack Obama, I think both tried to give voice
Speaker 4: to even as they tried to give healthcare ec other
Speaker 4: things to help the.
Speaker 2: Needy pods of America.
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Speaker 1: Part of the challenge we're landing on here is that
Speaker 1: nuance and sort of thoughtful explanations don't First of all,
Speaker 1: people aren't as good at giving them, sure, and so
Speaker 1: there's a skill level with the politicians that we talked about.
Speaker 1: And even if you are skilled, there's just the ability
Speaker 1: to get that message out right. And so people see
Speaker 1: ice abuses and you know, you've got people even like
Speaker 1: Bill Crystal. Now every time there's an Ice story is
Speaker 1: tweeting abolish Ice of ballash ies, right, And I get
Speaker 1: it because you feel this absolute fury and frustration for
Speaker 1: what they're doing. And look, I could make an argument
Speaker 1: that yes, Ice is relatively relatively new organization, and that
Speaker 1: we could put immigration enforcement back at you know, some
Speaker 1: parts of a da Chess and DJ and we could
Speaker 1: do the bureaucratic art and everything. And I and I'm
Speaker 1: someone who's comfortable saying, yes, we still need immigration enforcement obviously.
Speaker 1: But if you just say abolish ICE, of course, abolish
Speaker 1: immigration and custom enforcement makes a lot of people think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: then you don't want immigration enforcement anymore. When the reality is, like,
Speaker 1: if I was a Democratic president, i'd go and I
Speaker 1: was heading into office after this, Yeah, I would fire
Speaker 1: most of the people in ICE because I think they've
Speaker 1: hired a bunch of un qualified psychopaths. I would still
Speaker 1: want immigration enforcement somehow, But that is it takes a
Speaker 1: while to explain all of that, you know, And I
Speaker 1: just wonder how that I wonder how that plays out
Speaker 1: in a Democratic presidential primary.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, yes, nuance is hard.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, I don't think it's actually that
Speaker 4: hard to say we need to totally revam how ICE
Speaker 4: works or even abolish it whatever, But we need a
Speaker 4: secure bore. James Tallerico had this line, and he's like,
Speaker 4: we've got to have like a door with a beautiful
Speaker 4: welcome mat and also a lock right that's like a
Speaker 4: good you know, metaphor right.
Speaker 3: So he's smart.
Speaker 4: But it's not impossible to come up with these kind
Speaker 4: of formulas. But I actually think is a little bit harder,
Speaker 4: you know, for people who are down ballot, and maybe
Speaker 4: even for presidential candidates, is navigating the kind of interest
Speaker 4: group mindfield, you know, where there's a lot of stakeholders
Speaker 4: who have very specific things that they want you to say,
Speaker 4: and politicians get these kind of memos from their staffs,
Speaker 4: you know, that are like, don't say this, do say that,
Speaker 4: don't say this, do say that, right, and they're they're
Speaker 4: really nervous, right, They're trying to navigate in this really
Speaker 4: precise way, like I don't want to lose this endorsement.
Speaker 4: I don't want to you know, get scored down on
Speaker 4: something else like this, and it makes it hard for
Speaker 4: them to talk like people like we all know democrats
Speaker 4: in our lives who are much more nuanced, I think
Speaker 4: then the members of Congress who we see on our televisions,
Speaker 4: and it's because they're not under the same kind of
Speaker 4: pressure and the same kind of scrutiny to sort of
Speaker 4: talk in like a relaxed, somewhat normal way about things.
Speaker 3: But it takes courage.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is why again, I mean, I look
Speaker 4: to presidential campaigns more to change things, because the reality
Speaker 4: facing anyone who wants to run for president is you're
Speaker 4: probably going to lose, right, Like, It's just it's hard,
Speaker 4: it's hard to win. And I think a lot of
Speaker 4: the best presidential candidates are people who started off as
Speaker 4: real underdogs, right. I mean, again, that's something that Trump
Speaker 4: and Obama have in common. Right, It took a certain
Speaker 4: amount of courage to even launch those campaigns and to
Speaker 4: work on them and to do it that last three
Speaker 4: times Democrats have kind of had this this sort of
Speaker 4: like overdog nominee who was like handed down by the
Speaker 4: weight of the past. And that's not great because people
Speaker 4: who are taking that path just there incentive is toward.
Speaker 3: Being cautious all the time.
Speaker 4: So then you come across as a really cautious, really
Speaker 4: calculating person rather than as somebody who was like, I'm
Speaker 4: going to take my shot, you know, and I'm going
Speaker 4: to speak from the heart. And no politician is ever
Speaker 4: like truly authentic, truly truly speaking from the heart. But
Speaker 4: there is a difference between someone who's like, I'm going
Speaker 4: to go for it and someone who's like, well, this
Speaker 4: is coming my way, so I'm going to not fuck
Speaker 4: it up.
Speaker 1: At one point, you write that a center left candidate
Speaker 1: who is quote charismatic and skilled that contemporary social media
Speaker 1: can talk above the groups directly to voters. Totally agree.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned Obama is sort of coming up as
Speaker 1: an underdog and getting attention, and everyone else has sort
Speaker 1: of been handed down. Like, how many Democratic politicians can
Speaker 1: you name in the last decade who've been able to
Speaker 1: command national attention with a message of disciplined moderation.
Speaker 4: Well, I know, I mean, you know, most of the
Speaker 4: people who've come up and have commanded it, Eenson, have
Speaker 4: been very left wing, you know, and I think that's
Speaker 4: a big part of the reason why the whole discourse
Speaker 4: keeps getting sort of dragged to the left. Younger people
Speaker 4: are just more left wing, you know, and particularly within
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party. So you have your aocs, you have
Speaker 4: your mom Donnie's and these are the people who've shown
Speaker 4: real flair.
Speaker 3: For communication skills.
Speaker 4: I think you have also seen from both of them,
Speaker 4: you know, impulses toward AOC had this whole bit about
Speaker 4: like how we need to deregulate sunscreen essentially, right, and mom,
Speaker 4: Donnie has some like small business kind of thing and
Speaker 4: stuff that he's doing that impresses people. So this stuff
Speaker 4: can work for different kinds of politicians with different kinds
Speaker 4: of ethosis. Also, you know, branding, I think actually is
Speaker 4: not what matters most. I mean, Obama in two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, I think, was understood as the progressive sort
Speaker 4: of choice in that primary, primarily because of Iraq, you know,
Speaker 4: which was really really important to people at that time.
Speaker 4: So you look back and you say, well, he was
Speaker 4: actually the one who was like taking on teachers unions.
Speaker 4: He was the one who actually had more support from
Speaker 4: sort of like Wall Street and finance. He was the
Speaker 4: preferred candidate of a lot of the red state members
Speaker 4: of Congress at that time. He he at tacked to
Speaker 4: the center on firmative action, all these other kinds of things.
Speaker 4: But at the time, like progressives really liked him because
Speaker 4: he was the one who said, like, this war is
Speaker 4: really fucked up. And you know, that is the advantage
Speaker 4: of taking a position that is vindicated by time. You know,
Speaker 4: it's like always good to have like good judgment on
Speaker 4: the substance of questions, and so I think anyone, including
Speaker 4: people who are sort of understood today to be progressive,
Speaker 4: could also move to the center on these kind of
Speaker 4: issues that we've been talking about. Because when I talk
Speaker 4: to really left wing people about like what are they
Speaker 4: fired up about, it's like not actually the things that
Speaker 4: the public has the biggest doubts for Democrats about. I
Speaker 4: think if you want to be a Medicare for All candidate,
Speaker 4: there's like real problems of program design that you sort
Speaker 4: of need to confront. But it's not a political problem
Speaker 4: in the way that the sense that you want to
Speaker 4: open the borders is, you know, abolish ice. Maybe not
Speaker 4: a slogan I would advise people to go with, But
Speaker 4: if you can convey the idea that abolishing ice doesn't
Speaker 4: mean reopening to millions of new asylum seekers, like that.
Speaker 3: Could be totally fine.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's easier actually to moderate on aspects of immigration
Speaker 4: if you have this left wing slogan rather than if
Speaker 4: you're coming at it backwards, like I'm not totally sure
Speaker 4: you know how that that needle needs to be threaded. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: I just think it's that you have to give voters
Speaker 4: some level of reassurance about their biggest doubts about Democrats,
Speaker 4: especially if you know you're going to say we're going
Speaker 4: to have a whole new approach to Israel, We're gonna
Speaker 4: we're going to take on the vested interests in the
Speaker 4: healthcare system. Like, you're not going to pull that off
Speaker 4: while also alienating you know, sixty percent of the population
Speaker 4: around cultural issues, right Like, if you want to say
Speaker 4: we're going to like have this populist anchor, then I
Speaker 4: think you just have to follow the logic of that
Speaker 4: in like a compelling way and say, look, if you
Speaker 4: can agree with me that healthcare should be a right
Speaker 4: rather than a privilege, like I want you on my team,
Speaker 4: Like I'm not going to take away your plastic straw
Speaker 4: right Like, because we're focused on the healthcare thing versus
Speaker 4: this sort of laundry list politics where it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: I got this for the healthcare, I got this for
Speaker 4: the childcare, I've got this on the plastic straws, I've
Speaker 4: got this on the immigration, I got this on the asylum,
Speaker 4: this on criminal justice. Like that's a hard way to
Speaker 4: do politics.
Speaker 1: I am intrigued by your advice on candidates offering policy plans,
Speaker 1: which is, don't do that.
Speaker 2: Less basically less.
Speaker 1: Right, So, like, you know, you're asked, how do you
Speaker 1: get to universal healthcare? And you say, it depends on
Speaker 1: the composition of Congress. What are you going to do
Speaker 1: about the deficit? We need to text rich people and
Speaker 1: cut wasteful spending. But then not a lot of more detail.
Speaker 1: I mean, the answer those answers certainly have the virtue
Speaker 1: of being true. Right, of course, this all depends on
Speaker 1: Congress and all kinds of other circumstances that you can't
Speaker 1: predict in the heat of a campaign. In a campaign
Speaker 1: as the primary goes on, with the imaginary candidate we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, is it possible to dodge questions and
Speaker 1: attacks from your opponents about having no plans? And it
Speaker 1: does seem like that was part of like Kamala Harris's
Speaker 1: vagueness was part of sort of the negative coverage she received.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so one thing is like, with all this plan stuff,
Speaker 4: I'm trying to hold myself accountable a little bit because
Speaker 4: I was part of a wave of young at the
Speaker 4: time journalists who were really like, we got to see.
Speaker 3: Plans from these presidential.
Speaker 4: Candidates and in retrospect. It's like, I wonder why we
Speaker 4: were so demanding of that, because that's not how the
Speaker 4: government works, right, and like we all know that, and
Speaker 4: so this is kind of there was this faux sophistication
Speaker 4: coming from me and from some of my colleagues, but
Speaker 4: I mean specifically from me as well, to be demanding
Speaker 4: all this detail from people. And I think that if
Speaker 4: you can give real answers that make sense, that both
Speaker 4: journalists and voters will understand actually that like the micro
Speaker 4: details of tax policy are written by Congress, and that
Speaker 4: the directionality of tax policy is like a numbers game, right,
Speaker 4: Like if we have a teeny tiny majority, it's going
Speaker 4: to be hard to do very much, but if we
Speaker 4: have a big majority, we'll do a lot. And you
Speaker 4: try to say what kinds of things you want to do?
Speaker 4: You know with Harris, right, I mean, she was in
Speaker 4: this weird position where she was the vice president for
Speaker 4: an incumbent administration. She was saying, I mean I remember
Speaker 4: the first time when she was doing a little rally
Speaker 4: and she said like, we're not going and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, like I love that line, right, because people
Speaker 4: really wanted both change but also not Donald Trump, and
Speaker 4: so she seemed to convey that, but then she got
Speaker 4: the question like, well, in what way is this change
Speaker 4: but not Donald Trump? And she didn't have a great answer.
Speaker 4: The great thing about being a Democrat running when a
Speaker 4: Republican is president is that you don't you don't have
Speaker 4: that same complicated question, right. It's like change that's not
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is just like yeah, elected democrat, right, And
Speaker 4: then people do want to know something like what does
Speaker 4: that mean?
Speaker 3: What are you going to do?
Speaker 4: How are you going to govern differently? And I'm not
Speaker 4: saying that you should dodge that question. I mean again,
Speaker 4: implicit in all of this is that like, yeah, like
Speaker 4: rich people's taxes will go up, we're going to spend
Speaker 4: more money on subsidizing people's healthcare. We're gonna however, we
Speaker 4: characterize what we're doing with ice, it's like fewer people
Speaker 4: are going to be getting arrested in the interior of
Speaker 4: American cities. And then hopefully we can also say, but
Speaker 4: there's going to be a very secure border. You know,
Speaker 4: we're going to keep fighting crime. We're going to make
Speaker 4: crime even lower than it is now, you know, something
Speaker 4: like that. But do we really need to have this
Speaker 4: like seventeen point plan like we had in the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty primary. Again thinking about about two thousand and eight, right,
Speaker 4: there were all these articles written about different candidates healthcare plans,
Speaker 4: and like Obama's plan didn't have a manndate, right, and
Speaker 4: then he won the primary, and then he won the election,
Speaker 4: and then Congress did want to do the mandate, so
Speaker 4: the mandate happened. But then in like the rule writing
Speaker 4: at HSS, it got watered down a little bit. Then
Speaker 4: there was like unrelated implementation problems. But then actually was
Speaker 4: going pretty well, and like people liked Obamacare, but then
Speaker 4: the mandate got repealed and then that maybe it didn't.
Speaker 4: It's like so tedious and in retrospect, I mean it
Speaker 4: sure it must have been a huge pain in your ass,
Speaker 4: and it was in mind like like why do we
Speaker 4: spend so much time talking about this?
Speaker 1: The challenge here is is a reason that these policy
Speaker 1: plans are developed. Then the context of a primary is
Speaker 1: to be used as a political cudgel against your opponents,
Speaker 1: because you're running in a primary, and the truth is,
Speaker 1: most of you have the same general position on most
Speaker 1: of the same issues, and you want to differentiate yourself
Speaker 1: from the other primary candidates, and so you put out
Speaker 1: a plan that is bolder and more ambitious, which is
Speaker 1: either it's more expensive or probably harder to achieve than
Speaker 1: the other candidates, so that you can get on the
Speaker 1: debate stage and brag about that, and then you know,
Speaker 1: I think it happened in an even more annoying way
Speaker 1: than the mandate in twenty twenty, when I don't know
Speaker 1: how many of those debates ended up being just a conversation,
Speaker 1: not even a conversation, just a debate about medicare for all,
Speaker 1: and whose Medicare for all plan was the best? When
Speaker 1: then Joe Biden won, and what did you like, barely
Speaker 1: expanded anything?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I have some subsidies.
Speaker 4: And that is one where I think it is important
Speaker 4: to remind people that, like Joe Biden won that primary
Speaker 4: right after that huge shit show, that actually his message
Speaker 4: of like I'm just going to beat Donald Trump was
Speaker 4: like pretty compelling actually to Democratic primary voters. And he
Speaker 4: is not the single most like silver tungued person in
Speaker 4: the universe, certainly not a master of vertical video or
Speaker 4: whatever else it is. So I do think that there's
Speaker 4: like ways for younger politicians to tap into someone what
Speaker 4: worked for him there, right in terms of like keeping
Speaker 4: the focus. I'm like, what do Democrats really care about?
Speaker 4: And it's beating Trump. It's not just beating Trump, right,
Speaker 4: I think Democrats care a lot about healthcare, and I
Speaker 4: think Democrats are quite exercised about some of the cruelty
Speaker 4: of these immigration enforcement actions. And if you can hit
Speaker 4: those three buttons in some kind of way and convince
Speaker 4: people that you're going to take action on those issues,
Speaker 4: like you could be I think conceivably pretty flexible on
Speaker 4: some other things if people believed that it was in
Speaker 4: pursuit of accomplishing these important goals.
Speaker 1: The Biden thing is interesting though, because I think I
Speaker 1: don't see a lot of evidence that Biden ended up
Speaker 1: winning that primary because he staked out more moderate positions
Speaker 1: than the rest of the field, and in many ways
Speaker 1: he sort of chased them on some of these issues.
Speaker 1: He I think half raised his hands on raised his
Speaker 1: hand on decriminalizing the border on that one. And I
Speaker 1: think that he probably what helped him is he had
Speaker 1: universal name id. He was Barack Obama's vice president, and
Speaker 1: so he sort of had a bit of an Obama halo,
Speaker 1: and then there was no one else left by the
Speaker 1: time it was just he and Bernie right.
Speaker 4: Well, and he did really well in the head to
Speaker 4: head matchup polling, yes against Trump.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I mean that, you know, people Democrats these days, you know,
Speaker 4: read the New York Times when Nate Cone tells them
Speaker 4: that like Elizabeth Warren is really unpopular and people like
Speaker 4: Joe Biden, like that made a big difference.
Speaker 2: It did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he just goes back to the challenge I keep
Speaker 1: thinking about is like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: because she was just you know, installed last minute. These
Speaker 1: are all people that their name I d came from
Speaker 1: virtue of them being political dynasties or someone else's vice president,
Speaker 1: and and the incentives to become nationally known and get attention.
Speaker 1: I feel like point towards language that is bolder, more ambitious,
Speaker 1: geared towards conflict, sometimes hyperbolic, and I'm trying to picture
Speaker 1: the candidate who practices discipline, moderation, who sort of breaks
Speaker 1: out in these like you know, I think about like
Speaker 1: an Andy Basher, right, like amazing track record, electoral record
Speaker 1: in Kentucky and still like a pretty mainstream Democrat, not
Speaker 1: like super conservative, but like I'm trying to picture Andy Basher.
Speaker 1: You know, I've seen him give some interviews I've interviewed
Speaker 1: to myself, like really breaking out in a crowded primary
Speaker 1: with a message that's going to capture people. And that's
Speaker 1: the I feel like we have a lot of center
Speaker 1: left candidates who may be electorally viable but are not
Speaker 1: very good at getting attention. And then we have a
Speaker 1: lot of progressive candidates who are very good at getting
Speaker 1: attention and may not be electorally viable in swing states.
Speaker 4: You know, so, right, so you know some of this,
Speaker 4: like yes, right, part of the deal with someone my
Speaker 4: governor Wasshire is that he's very disciplined, which I think
Speaker 4: is good yeah for him winning elections at Kentucky, but
Speaker 4: it also denudes him of a certain amount of pazazz,
Speaker 4: right that they could potentially be out there. Like one
Speaker 4: of the things that I think was interesting about Platner
Speaker 4: wasn't just like the positions that he took, but that
Speaker 4: he seemed very like any thing might happen in this interview, right,
Speaker 4: And that kind of kinetic energy is unusual in experienced
Speaker 4: politicians because the way you kind of get to be
Speaker 4: almost a presidential contender is usually by being quite controlled,
Speaker 4: you know, and like calm, and you climb the state
Speaker 4: party ladder and you make the right kind of people
Speaker 4: like you, and then suddenly you find yourself in a
Speaker 4: crowded presidential primary field and like the challenge is to
Speaker 4: break through, and it's like a totally different kind of challenge, right,
Speaker 4: And I think somebody like like Ruben Diego, who has
Speaker 4: through many twists and turns in his career, found himself
Speaker 4: as kind of like a moderate swing state senator, but
Speaker 4: just a couple of years ago was like the progressive
Speaker 4: challenger to Christen Cinema, and before that was like the
Speaker 4: young guy in the state legislature who was trying to
Speaker 4: muscle ed pastor out of a House seat. Right, and
Speaker 4: he has a little bit more of the looseness that
Speaker 4: kind of gets you attention, but is unusual in all
Speaker 4: kinds of politicians. We're seeing it more with left wing
Speaker 4: politicians because they've been challenging incumbents, right, only like a
Speaker 4: slightly crazy person runs against an entrenched house incumbent. Most
Speaker 4: of the people who do that lose, but a couple
Speaker 4: of them win, and then you're AOC right because you
Speaker 4: took on this sort of suicide run primary. You don't
Speaker 4: see as many people like that in the moderate lane,
Speaker 4: but I think it's possible, right, because it's about trying
Speaker 4: to be interesting and like trying to break through, and
Speaker 4: it is also about having the right issue positions, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean, so many people who are who care about
Speaker 4: electoral pragmatism. I think really like Josh Shapiro, right, because
Speaker 4: he's doing incredibly well in the critical swing state, and
Speaker 4: I think that's really important. It's also true that, you know,
Speaker 4: when he speaks from the heart in a way that
Speaker 4: is moderate and compelling and makes you think like, okay,
Speaker 4: like this guy's for real. He tends to be talking
Speaker 4: about the Israel issue in a way that like it's
Speaker 4: just public opinion is not on his side, you know,
Speaker 4: and like that's that's a tough one. Like you can't
Speaker 4: win by being moderate on something where everything's going the
Speaker 4: other way. Now that being said, like he has done
Speaker 4: some stuff in the state that is heterodox on energy,
Speaker 4: he's done stuff in the state that is heterodox on education.
Speaker 4: I think maybe if he talked more about those things
Speaker 4: that convey you know, delivers the same kind of electoral
Speaker 4: pragmatism but also actually connects more with things that democrats
Speaker 4: themselves have mixed feelings about, you know about, like how
Speaker 4: are these systems operating? Are we shaking them up? Are
Speaker 4: we governing well in our blue states? These kinds of things.
Speaker 4: But there's no getting around the fact that politics is hard.
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Speaker 1: where it's like it's the center left theory is there's
Speaker 1: often a lot of like, this candidate is so great
Speaker 1: on paper, and look at their electoral track record, and
Speaker 1: you know, Joshapiir is going to have a fantastic story
Speaker 1: to tell about that in a very very important state,
Speaker 1: and look at how he's navigated the coalitions and approval
Speaker 1: rating all that kind of stuff. And then it's not
Speaker 1: it's not just like, I don't want to say it's
Speaker 1: a lack of charisma, but it's what is the story
Speaker 1: that you're telling about why you're running and why you're
Speaker 1: different from everyone else, And it is that story cohesive
Speaker 1: and compelling versus cherry picking issues where you can say, see,
Speaker 1: this is why I'm different than the National Democratic Party
Speaker 1: and a little more moderate, and the thing that you
Speaker 1: hate about the National Democratic Party is not the thing
Speaker 1: that you are going to hate about me, which can
Speaker 1: again really risk sounding like you read a polling memo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, although it also depends what people in our line
Speaker 4: of work decide that we are interested in. Right, Like,
Speaker 4: a very large share of media professionals live in New
Speaker 4: York City and they personally are very interested in left
Speaker 4: wing reformist politics in New York City where they live,
Speaker 4: and so things that happen in that vein get a
Speaker 4: lot of coverage. I don't think that's it's not like
Speaker 4: wrong for people to be very passionate about politics in
Speaker 4: the city that they live in. I wish more people
Speaker 4: actually cared about the politics of the city with the event,
Speaker 4: But it's distortionary in terms of like our understanding of
Speaker 4: national politics and like what's it all about, right, and
Speaker 4: something that you know, I try to do that I
Speaker 4: think everybody has to try to do, is exercise some
Speaker 4: discipline and responsibility for ourselves that the most important races
Speaker 4: coming up in November are in Ohio, they're in Iowa,
Speaker 4: They're in Texas, Alaska, North Carolina. I have some personal
Speaker 4: connection to Texas through my wife's family. I have some
Speaker 4: personal connection domain where I am physically present right now.
Speaker 4: I don't have any connection to Iowa and Ohio. But like,
Speaker 4: I care a lot about the future of the country.
Speaker 4: So it's incumbent on me to like learn to care
Speaker 4: about these states. Right Rob sand is clearly doing something
Speaker 4: in Iowa that is compelling to people who used to
Speaker 4: vote for Democrats and stopped voting for Democrats and they
Speaker 4: like Rob sand and so I'm trying to like I'm
Speaker 4: trying to get it, you know, like because he is
Speaker 4: pretty charismatic, you know, he's an interesting guy. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: conveys that there's something different about him, but it's not
Speaker 4: targeted at me, you know, And like that's that's why
Speaker 4: he's running in Iowa. Like that's what's good about it.
Speaker 1: I will say, you're right that everyone needs to take
Speaker 1: responsibility for in the media and the professional class, like
Speaker 1: for what they emphasize and what they talk about. I
Speaker 1: will speak be as someone runs a media company who
Speaker 1: like we try to have everyone on. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of this is the attention that the person ends
Speaker 1: up commanding with audiences, right, Like we we've talked him
Speaker 1: Donnie a bunch of times, very popular, right, not just
Speaker 1: with our audience, but like those clips travel beyond our audience, right,
Speaker 1: And we will have you know, Kate Connolly, who's in
Speaker 1: a much more important to the future of the country
Speaker 1: to win when she's in town and who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: it'll also be an incredibly viral clip. But our experience
Speaker 1: has been a lot of these candidates were in really
Speaker 1: important races that we ended up talking to like it
Speaker 1: doesn't go anywhere because people are like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: really want to I'm not as excited about that. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: And that's not going to stop us from doing it.
Speaker 1: We'll keep doing it. But eventually you want, and especially
Speaker 1: you want this as a candidate on a campaign, You
Speaker 1: want your message to reach the low information voters. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the stuff that gets to the low information voters to
Speaker 1: people who don't pay close attention to all this has
Speaker 1: to be stuff that goes viral, you know, And that's
Speaker 1: the trick.
Speaker 4: And this is I mean a huge frustration that I
Speaker 4: have with a lot of the more moderate Democrats is
Speaker 4: that they don't even want.
Speaker 3: To try a lot of the time.
Speaker 4: Right that their attitude is, look, nationalizing things is bad
Speaker 4: for me. I do better if there's kind of less
Speaker 4: of a giant media glare on me. What I want
Speaker 4: to do is be well enough known among super high
Speaker 4: attention people that I can raise money and then I
Speaker 4: want to talk to my local television station about my
Speaker 4: local issues. And I get why people come to that conclusion,
Speaker 4: and I think it's the advice that they're getting from
Speaker 4: the D Triple C, from the DSCC and it works
Speaker 4: within the kind of four walls of what it's designed
Speaker 4: to achieve. But then all these same people also come
Speaker 4: around to me and they're like, oh my god, I'm
Speaker 4: so frustrated. People think the only Democrats in the country
Speaker 4: are AOC and Momdani And it's like, well, because they
Speaker 4: do the interviews right, and like they'll go on your show,
Speaker 4: they'll go on Fox, they'll you know, and some of
Speaker 4: it is like you can be more Devil may Care
Speaker 4: in a safe district and it's a little bit of
Speaker 4: a loaded playing field. But also, you know, life's not
Speaker 4: fair as we they tell us not to tell our
Speaker 4: eleven year old that you're not supposed to raise kids
Speaker 4: with that message anymore. But like, I think it's an
Speaker 4: important point fundamentally. It's like it is harder to be
Speaker 4: in a swing district. YEP, it just is, you know,
Speaker 4: the playing field is loaded against you. But like you've
Speaker 4: got to try, right, You've got to try to be interesting,
Speaker 4: You've got to try to say, look, you know, if
Speaker 4: you look at Vincenta Gonzales and marigoz Agamperez and Don
Speaker 4: Davis and Kate Connelly and Tom Swazi that there actually
Speaker 4: is something that we all have in common. We're not
Speaker 4: all just like local people who are focused on our
Speaker 4: issues here right that like they because they they actually
Speaker 4: like they hang out together in DC. They have common staff,
Speaker 4: common consultants, common fundraisers. Like there's a group of moderate Democrats,
Speaker 4: but they need to give some voice to like what
Speaker 4: do we think? Who are we? Why are we the
Speaker 4: good people?
Speaker 3: And I give.
Speaker 4: Incredible credit to Ernie Sanders, who has been tireless about
Speaker 4: trying to promote politicians who he likes. And I hear
Speaker 4: so many other Democrats and they're mad that Bernie is
Speaker 4: promoting these people and that the people who they like
Speaker 4: aren't getting promoted. But it's like, well, who's going to
Speaker 4: promote them other than you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's what actually that bothers me a lot, is
Speaker 1: that they they look at the insurgent candidates on the
Speaker 1: left and sort of the progressive outsiders with like Umbradge.
Speaker 1: It is basically that's like the main feeling like how
Speaker 1: dare you? And my candidate works really hard and has
Speaker 1: been just doing you know. This is sort of like
Speaker 1: the Hailey Stephen stuff has gotten better. I think the
Speaker 1: argument that people are making for her, but Originally it
Speaker 1: was like, well, she's been there just working hard, and
Speaker 1: give her credit for being there and working hard. And
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, I'm sure that's true if you know her,
Speaker 1: but like voters don't know that, and so they're going
Speaker 1: to need a different kind of story there.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: And also I know so many Democrats who want her
Speaker 4: to win this primary, but who don't want to fly
Speaker 4: to Michigan and campaign with her because it'll be embarrassing
Speaker 4: if they stand with her and she loses. But it'll
Speaker 4: be embarrassing to Bernie if Abdul loses. And like he doesn't,
Speaker 4: he has the case. You know, he's doing the work
Speaker 4: right and there's no alternative to that in politics. And
Speaker 4: that's like part of my message to the more moderate
Speaker 4: Democrats out there is like, don't just give.
Speaker 3: Up hope, but also don't just assume.
Speaker 4: That we can keep endlessly staving off the left and
Speaker 4: you know, pulling more rabbits out of the hat. Like
Speaker 4: somebody's got to run a campaign, somebody's got to make
Speaker 4: the case. You've got to actually like articulate some daring
Speaker 4: positions on the issues, and if people yell at you,
Speaker 4: you have to explain why they're wrong, and like you
Speaker 4: got to go on Crooked and you probably got to
Speaker 4: go on Hassan Piker, and you know, do some interviews
Speaker 4: with people who don't agree with you and stand your ground.
Speaker 4: And that's because that's how it's always been. You know,
Speaker 4: there's no like magic trick.
Speaker 1: Look, I know people have said it's not the issue
Speaker 1: that lost for the election, but the ad that Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris dealt with about gender affirming care for undocumented immigrant prisoners.
Speaker 1: And you know, the campaign was like, oh, we tested
Speaker 1: all the responses and the responses didn't do anything, and
Speaker 1: so we decided, like not to talk about it at all.
Speaker 1: And I just I don't think that may be true
Speaker 1: in terms of testing the ads. But I think the
Speaker 1: candidate has to be able to tell a story about
Speaker 1: why they supported that, why they've changed their mind, if
Speaker 1: they have changed their mind, that that is acceptable to voters. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think ducking these issues or just trying to
Speaker 1: hide from them is it is not an effective strategy
Speaker 1: on a presidential campaign level. Like some of the I
Speaker 1: remember Jonathan Martin wrote a piece a while back, was
Speaker 1: like Democrats aren't focusing at all on maybe some of
Speaker 1: the most important Senate races, like they don't get national
Speaker 1: attention like Roy Cooper or And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: Roy Cooper probably doesn't want a lot of attention on
Speaker 1: his race because he has enough money. He has raised
Speaker 1: quite a bit of money, he's ahead, and so what
Speaker 1: does Roy Cooper care if we're all talking about Roy
Speaker 1: Cooper's race, He probably doesn't. Probably rather us not. But
Speaker 1: you can't do that in a presidential primary. And the
Speaker 1: challenge is you're gonna get a bunch of moderates in
Speaker 1: the presidential primary that don't know how to sort of
Speaker 1: make that argument and get that level of attention. But
Speaker 1: the one person I've been thinking about this whole time,
Speaker 1: and I thought about when I read your piece for
Speaker 1: the first time is Rom. Like Rom will be this person, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 4: I mean Rom is I think doing the right stuff.
Speaker 4: You know, he is getting attention to himself, People know
Speaker 4: his name, et cetera. You know, if I could puppet
Speaker 4: master everything, I would say, look is like a retread
Speaker 4: from the Obama white House, from the Clinton white House,
Speaker 4: who was ambassador to Japan, who if he does gain
Speaker 4: some traction in the primary, we're going to be relitigat
Speaker 4: Glackwan MacDonald. Like that's not like I would love for
Speaker 4: Rom to take a step back and to mentor somebody else. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, because clearly there is a
Speaker 4: demand for fresh faces and new voices, and like we
Speaker 4: can all everybody can see that, right, And you know,
Speaker 4: this is part of why I'm excited about Josh Turek
Speaker 4: and James tel Rico is like these are younger politicians.
Speaker 4: They are not part of the old kind of mess.
Speaker 4: I think they are kind of media savvy and no stuff,
Speaker 4: and they're not from the left wing of the party.
Speaker 4: They're just also not handed down by the establishment, right,
Speaker 4: And like this can be done, but to an extent,
Speaker 4: some of the people, the Rammanuals of the world need
Speaker 4: to make room for other people and promote them or
Speaker 4: help them rather than saying, look, the same hourt that
Speaker 4: was telling you in twenty sixteen, like don't listen to Bernie,
Speaker 4: we know how to win, and then they didn't win,
Speaker 4: and now we're ten years into that and it's not
Speaker 4: a healthy dynamic.
Speaker 1: Last question on this, so who do you like in
Speaker 1: twenty eight as a potential candidate who could carry this message?
Speaker 5: Sure you know.
Speaker 4: What I tell people is like, we know the universe
Speaker 4: of statewide elected officials in the critical swing states. Right,
Speaker 4: it's Kelly and Diego in Arizona, it's whitmuer and Michigan,
Speaker 4: It's Shapiro in Pennsylvania. There's some of you, like Tony
Speaker 4: Evers is too old. Katie Hobbes seems like I kind
Speaker 4: of like her, but it seems like she totally refuses
Speaker 4: to do press of any kind, like someone who's not
Speaker 4: going to run. John Fetterman is like not going to
Speaker 4: be a leading contender. I think we could say, but like,
Speaker 4: we know this universe of candidates, and the question is
Speaker 4: which of them is going to try to go beyond
Speaker 4: like you were saying, right, they're going to stand and
Speaker 4: think'll be like, I know how to win in the
Speaker 4: swing states. You should vote for me. This is the
Speaker 4: most practical thing to do. I kind of agree with that.
Speaker 4: It's also just not that compelling, right, And so who
Speaker 4: is going to say I know how to win in
Speaker 4: the swing states, and the way I did it is
Speaker 4: that I said And then you've got to say the thing,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like like you have to
Speaker 4: actually go say something and something that I have noticed
Speaker 4: is that a lot of these people, depending on what
Speaker 4: audience they're talking to, they senters want to under sell
Speaker 4: the amount of ideological heterodoxy that they've displayed in their campaigns,
Speaker 4: because the easiest way to raise money if you're running
Speaker 4: for reelection in Kentucky is kind of tell like liberal
Speaker 4: donors in coastal cities, like I'm a magician, you know,
Speaker 4: I just like one in Kentucky because I've got a
Speaker 4: cool accent. But like Andy Basher rejected a Sierra Club endorsement,
Speaker 4: and he got the United mind Workers, who have stopped
Speaker 4: endorsing Democrats in national politics to endorse him. And that's because,
Speaker 4: like he has a position on the use of coal
Speaker 4: that like I don't really agree with, but that people
Speaker 4: in Kentucky do agree with. And that's like, that's the
Speaker 4: truth about how Andy Basheer wins votes in Kentucky that
Speaker 4: other people don't have. I don't think you could sell
Speaker 4: that to a national Democratic primary lecture, because it's like
Speaker 4: Kentucky is too right wing, right, it's too far. But
Speaker 4: there's stuff you could say in the Midwest, or in
Speaker 4: Arizona or in Georgia, But like you got to give
Speaker 4: people the real talk about like what did you say,
Speaker 4: Rafael Warnock? What did you say? John alsoff to the
Speaker 4: local audiences in Georgia and say it to a national audience,
Speaker 4: and a lot of the time, you know, you'll find
Speaker 4: these people. It's border security, it's some kind of political reform,
Speaker 4: and it is some effort to indicate that you're not
Speaker 4: like woke, like whatever it is exactly that that means
Speaker 4: to people. But I think something like, you know, you.
Speaker 3: Are not going to.
Speaker 4: Be so obsessed with identity politics that you can't just
Speaker 4: like help everybody on their own terms, right, And that's
Speaker 4: the message Obama used, is the message Bill Clinton used.
Speaker 4: I think we kind of like know what the like
Speaker 4: unifying this is a diverse country, but we're all in
Speaker 4: it together.
Speaker 3: Message.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're, you know, a brilliant speech writer, like
Speaker 4: you know how to do these things, but only certain
Speaker 4: people can sell it because politics is hard.
Speaker 2: Well, hope we find one soon.
Speaker 1: Matt Iglesias, thank you so much for joining Potzieve America.
Speaker 1: This is a great conversation.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Mattaglasias for coming on. Tommy love it and
Speaker 1: I will be back in your feed on Tuesday. Positive
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