The battle for the soul of the Democratic Party

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place, so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more. Folks, is it finally happening? Are the Democrats finally fighting back? Yes, there is the government shutdown and we've talked a bit about that, but now we are approaching a real moment of truth. Actual elections in real states where real people make real decisions and the Democrats could be back or not. Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast.

1:15AmeriCast from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh dear, are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the President supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

1:41Hello, it's Sarah here in Washington, D.C. And it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of Mericast in London, England. And Sarah, we have a frisson of excitement running through everything we do today because we're actually talking about elections, finally. Yes. And we're trying to predict the future by looking at these upcoming elections, not just for what will happen on the 4th of November, which is polling day here in the United States, but what it could mean way into the future, way into 2028. Because although this is not a midterms year, it's what they call an off year in the electoral cycle.

2:14There are some big races that will be voted on on November the 4th, including the governorships in New Jersey and Virginia. Yeah. And we're not, we should say right at the start, we're not going to look at Zoran Mamdani in New York, who's likely to become mayor of New York. Number one, because we have talked a bit about him quite recently. Number two, because I think we ought to devote an entire episode to him. But what is really interesting in a way about this is that it's not just all about New York. And that's going to become increasingly obvious as these elections are held at the beginning of next month and the various ramifications of them sink in.

2:51that these are two states, Virginia and New Jersey, that are in themselves important states and states where the Democrats, it seems to me, if they can do well with the kind of candidates that they have in those states, they almost make a statement to themselves, it seems to be, never mind to the rest of the country. They make a statement to themselves, heck, we can do it, we can win. Yeah, because let's not underestimate the state that the Democrats are in at the moment. They got absolutely slaughtered in the 2024 elections with many self-inflicted wounds as well, it has to be said, as they are arguing with each other about what went wrong in 2024 and what the future strategy should be.

3:32So as we look around the country, we can see in different races, different versions of the future of the Democrats and whether that is young left wing progressives or whether it's more mainstream establishment candidates. And when that gets tested at the ballot box, it's going to be a major step in the development of the Democratic Party as they try and work out what they could possibly do to take on Donald Trump or Trumpism in upcoming elections. So I think these are these are a fabulous test as the electorate get to weigh in on what kind of Democrats it is that they want to vote for. And we'll have a real say in shaping the way the party goes in the future.

4:06Right. And the two candidates, Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, both of them. I mean, is it right to call them moderates? Is that does does that have a kind of meaning? Do we understand from that what what they are or is that the wrong term? I think moderate or centrist. And they're a little bit more traditional in some ways. I mean, so both of them personally are quite interesting. They've both served in the House of Representatives, but they both have national security backgrounds, which they lean on quite heavily in their biographies and things. Mike Uchero, who is the Democrat candidate in New Jersey, was a Navy helicopter pilot.

4:43Abigail Spanberger, the candidate in Virginia, had a very high-flying career in the CIA until she went into politics. And they're focusing on very centrist issues, mostly about the cost of living, saying, Luke, Donald Trump promised him we'd bring prices down and make your life more affordable. He hasn't done it. and trying to stay away from culture war kind of issues. And so in many ways it feels like, I don't know, a throwback to kind of Clinton Democrats or something like that, playing it pretty straight and down the middle. And just to set out sort of pen portraits of the two states, Virginia, not far from where you are at the moment, just across the river from Washington, D.C., at least that's northern Virginia, and that's the really kind of upper end of it, isn't it, certainly in terms of incomes and wealth.

5:28And you can see anyone who's been to Dulles Airport and driven into Washington, D.C., as lots of AmeriCasters will have done, will have seen the wealth along that road and the wealth that extends out into northern Virginia. But then the south of the state, pretty poor, actually. And a lot of it, you know, just forest, actually, is an enormous and beautiful state. So it contains everything politically. Politically, I mean, it's got a Republican governor at the moment, hasn't it? So this is an effort to... Yeah, swings back and forward. It's pretty purple, I would say, in many ways. Yeah, that's the point, isn't it?

6:06That it is genuinely up for grabs from the Democrats, but it's not a slam dunk. And of course, you're absolutely right, Justin, about the fairly prosperous suburbs of Northern Virginia. But remember, a huge number of those people in those homes worked for the federal government. And I say worked because a huge number of them now don't anymore. So one of the big parts of Abigail Spamberger's campaign has been talking about the way in which Donald Trump is reshaping the government, what Elon Musk and Doge did to firing all those federal workers, the way in which they're remaking a whole lot of the agencies.

6:39And some of the more subtle arguments about Donald Trump potentially undermining democracy or hampering the effectiveness of the federal government, which you might not care about voters in, I don't know, Arkansas or Illinois. In Northern Virginia, they care a very great deal about it because a lot of them have made their entire lives and careers in government. And so that's quite a salient issue there as well. And you think of New Jersey, gritty New Jersey, just south of New York City, you'd sort of expect it to be democratic. But actually, again, there is a mixed history, isn't there? Yeah, I mean, look at somebody like Chris Christie, really famous former governor of New Jersey, who, yeah, was a pretty mainstream Republican, embraced Trump for a while, then completely fell out with him, but famously, literally embraced Barack Obama, didn't he, when he visited after a natural disaster.

7:28And, you know, he's been on many sides of the argument, as have different Democratic governors whom they've had in New Jersey as well. So, yeah, it's another place to test both, I think, what the Democrats need to do to try and win back all sorts of voters whom they lost to Trump in 2024, but also how to fight against Trump, because these are the first elections held, you know, after we've had nine months or so of Donald Trump in office and what a whirlwind nine months has been. There's a lot for people to cast their verdict on. So that would be another, you know, big test in these elections as to what extent people are still coming out for Trump who were maybe reluctant Republican voters last year.

8:10Or has he actually inspired a whole lot of people to come out and vote Republican on the basis of what he's done? And a good example of that was the debate. It's actually the only debate they had in the Virginia gubernatorial race. But this is the moment that Abigail Spanberger is pressed to take a firm position on who should be allowed to use the boys' bathroom and the girls' bathroom in Virginia schools. REP. MISS SPANBURGER, The way that we keep our children safe is by ensuring they are safe in schools, which includes funding law enforcement and public safety. WILLIAM BRANGHAM, The question was, should the young...

8:50Would you rescind the Yunkin administration policy requiring boys and girls to use bathrooms aligning with their biological sex? You have 15 seconds to clarify that question. REP. MISS SPANBURGER, The way that we keep our children safe is by ensuring they are safe in schools, which includes funding law enforcement and public safety. parents and educators and teachers in each community. Just to clarify, the Youngkin referred to there is the current governor, Youngkin, the Republican, who had that rule, that law, that decision that requires girls and boys to use the bathrooms that align with their biological sex.

9:28I felt, Sarah, I don't know, I mean, I thought she sort of handled it OK because she didn't want to completely go against it. She obviously isn't entirely in favour of it. Pushing it onto localities, it's not a disaster. What do you reckon? No, I mean, it sounds like a bit of a dodge, which of course it is. And that's because Abigail Spanberg would really rather talk about anything else other than trans issues. Because, you know, she's part of the wing of the party who think that they went too far on some of these culture issue stuff, that these sort of DEI initiatives and trans issues are among the things that put people off, Democrats and possibly pushed all sorts of voters towards Donald Trump.

10:07But her opponent, Winsome Errol Sears, sees a real opportunity here and has been running ads saying that Abigail Spanberger is for they, them and Errol Sears is for you. The old echo of the Trump one that was such a success for him. I can't see it working quite so much the second time round. Interesting, though, isn't it, that even though Spanberger doesn't have, you know, a particularly outrageous policy on this. There isn't some previous statement like, you know, they got Kamala Harris was found to have supported government money being used to pay for sex change operations for incarcerated prisoners in California, right?

10:44That sounds quite extreme. There's nothing like that on Abigail Spanberger that they can cast up to say, look, you know, she's an extremist on these issues. But nonetheless, the way the Republicans here think that you attack Democrats is by trying to pin this trans issue on them. Say for the sake of argument that actually she is on the wing of the Democratic Party and has been a very quiet wing so far. But there is a wing and there are people among the Democrats who think, actually, you know, this whole thing's a disaster. We actually think and as we talked to one on the on the podcast and we seth Moulton some time ago, one of these Democrats who says, look, I mean, he said openly to us.

11:19I don't want my daughter to play sports with biological males. if if if she were to think that and decide to say it and put the issue to bed what would the comeback be on her what what what would she suffer because it goes it seems to me to something we're going to talk about quite a bit over the next 20 minutes or so which is the extent to which the democrat party can become a party that welcomes people from all wings in other words you can absolutely believe if you want to believe that that it's incredibly important to look after trans people because trans people are oppressed and have a terrible time and they should be allowed to live the lives they want to leave you can absolutely believe that but then you can equally believe actually i think in in the case of school bathrooms you should go to the bathroom that aligns with your biological sex and you can you can have people who believe either of those things but still have them in the democratic party and they would run then in those areas where the majority of people aligned with what they believed and said and we're some way off that i suppose is is the point I'm making or the question I'm asking.

12:23So definitely what would have happened in the recent past if you had Democrats running for office and saying the kind of things that you're saying, Justin, that it would spark a civil war within the party and there would be a social media spike that we would need to get Mariana on to talk about as people were trying to cancel each other left, right and centre. And it would just draw more attention to the issue and you would have this kind of blue on blue battle going on over it. I don't know if that would happen today to quite the same extent. I mean, you know, obviously, one can imagine that in New York and San Francisco, there are Democrat activists who would be absolutely incensed.

13:00Would they all pile on on a gubernatorial candidate in Virginia? Or do they too think that maybe now is not the time to be emphasising these issues? I couldn't tell you the answer to that. It's been really, really interesting to watch the next time we do see a Democrat taking a more conservative position on any of these particularly fraught issues, whether the pylon is quite the way it would have been in the last five years or so. Yeah, let's hold that thought because I want to come back to it when we come to the next section, which we're going to talk about, which is not just the elections that are coming up this November, but the preparation, the getting of the candidates for the elections in a year's time, the midterm elections, which is already very much taking place and already actually quite controversial in various parts.

13:41Let's just stick with Virginia for a second because, OK, that's how she dealt with the trans thing. And we sort of feel she kind of dealt with it. OK, she kicked it off into the long grass and it certainly doesn't seem to be damaging her in the polls, does it? She looks at the moment as if she is on course potentially to win. She's had another problem, hasn't she, though, which is kind of one of these things that's just come from left field, but potentially causes her some embarrassment, although it doesn't really, it's not about her herself or her politics or anything she's done. Yeah, this is probably what you would call an October surprise in American electioneering where everybody says, yeah, there's often something that comes out of a clear blue sky in October, just a few weeks before polling, that knocks everything and it's impossible to anticipate what it might be.

14:27Well, in the case of this Virginia election, what it is, is there is another Democratic candidate running to be Attorney General called Jay Jones. And CNN got hold of some text messages that were sent in 2022 to another lawmaker sent by Jay Jones. And he was talking about the then Republican Speaker of the House in Virginia, Todd Gilbert. And he said, if you've got three people, two bullets, Gilbert, Hitler and Pol Pot, Gilbert gets two bullets to the head. So meaning, you know, he would choose to shoot the Republican Speaker of the House rather than Hitler or Pol Pot. Now, it's a version of an old joke, and I don't think anybody thinks that he meant it seriously.

15:07But, you know, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder, this kind of violent rhetoric is taken very, very seriously in the States at the moment. And this has been leapt on by Republicans to make a huge issue out of this, to say that you certainly can't vote for him to be Attorney General when he was, they say, advocating political violence. And it's ended up reflecting on Abigail Spanberger as well, because she gets asked about it all the time. Yeah, well, let's listen to her being asked about it by her opponent again at that debate. The day that they came out and I denounced them as soon as I learned of them.

15:38She denounces murder. And importantly, at this point, as we move forward, the voters now have this information, information that was withheld for them, presumably for political reasons. But the voters now have the information and it is up to voters to make an individual choice based on this information. What she did not say there and what she will not say during this campaign is that people shouldn't vote for Jay Jones because of these text messages. And that's what her Republican opponent is pursuing her for, saying, how can you run as governor and potentially be advising people to vote for someone for attorney general who sent this message?

16:16And so this has become quite a big issue in the campaign, why Spanberger won't totally disavow Jay Jones. And he won't, of course, because he's a fellow Democratic candidate. And so that's how they're managing to make the issue about Spanberger rather than just about Jones. Every single one of these things that comes up, if you have Spanberger having to talk about it, of course, that's time it's not spent talking about affordability and the cost of living, which is what she really, really wants to be hammering on. Because to bring up this and the debate that there is around the trans issues is to possibly give the wrong impression of what this race is about or certainly what the Democrats want it to be about.

16:51I mean, they really are focused straight down the middle on housing costs, on grocery costs, on inflation, on tariffs, on that kind of thing. And that's really where the test of all of this will probably come down to is on those bread and butter issues. Can the Democrats win people back and can they in the poorer parts of the state win back working class voters who, you know, in so many cases were lost to the Republicans? Is this the approach to get them back on board? Yeah. And in both places, both in Virginia and in New Jersey, they have a real chance. I mean, let's not it's pointless to predict elections, isn't it?

17:27But the polls suggest that they can win and both of them. And that's that's obviously hugely important for the party as a kind of morale booster, but also because people will be trusting them. and it's important, you know, all AmeriCasters know that governors are important, but we ought to underline as well, they are being trusted to run things. This is, in a sense, more important than elections to the nation's legislature, to Congress, because these people are being trusted by local people to run their state and being the governor of a state really matters. Yeah, you've got huge power as the governor of a state, but also it's a great springboard to the White House as well.

18:10You know, a lot of people go from governorships into the White House. And when I talk to more mainstream establishment Democrats who are here in Washington, the people who want to campaign on these more moderate issues, the people who flinch every time AOC or somebody's back on the television, they are desperate for these women to win, partly to prove that this centrist cause is the way to recapture the country, but also because they think they are both really strong potential presidential candidates at some point. Not in 2028, because after Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, there is absolutely no way the Democrats will run a woman as their candidate in 2028.

18:48But in 32, or sometime like that, it is people like, and including Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill, who, you know, there are a lot of people here in DC think that they represent the future of the Democratic Party in more ways than one. We should talk a bit about what happens next after these elections, shouldn't we? Because as soon as these elections are over, And let's assume for the sake of argument that both women win. The party's then into, and this is in a sense why we've decided to talk about them now and why they're so important. They're important because of what is happening in those states.

19:23They're important because these are important elections. But also they set the tone, don't they, for the party in the run up to selecting the candidates who are going to run right across the country in the Senate elections and in all the House elections. In other words, the whole House is up for election, as it always is every two years. All those elections, they've got to find the right candidates and they've got to debate all the things we've just been talking about. Which part of the party do you go to? What do you say about the things that haven't done so well for us in the past, etc., etc.?

19:56And this, in a sense, doesn't it, sort of sets the tone for that? Yeah, there will be quite a strong focus, I think, on us looking at, say, for instance, primaries for senatorial candidates. in a way we might not normally, because we've got to try and detect who the new leaders coming through are going to be, what wing of the party they're going to be coming from, and how much damage the party might do to itself by having these sometimes fairly brutal arguments and civil wars amongst themselves out in the open, because that's what the primary process does. It means you can't do this behind closed doors.

20:29It means that you are having open debates and out there campaigning and criticising your fellow Democrat opponents as you go through it all. So, I mean, this is going to be an absolutely fascinating year watching how these primaries develop within the party. Yeah. And then number one question, and this refers back to what you were saying to me about the Virginia trans stuff, is the litmus test. So you were saying, hang on a second, there are some people for whom this is hugely important, the trans issue and rights for trans people, etc., etc. You can't just dismiss it. Well, here's the question.

21:01Can you dismiss it to the extent then that in some areas of the country you say we're going to run people who don't agree with those things? And actually, it's actually about other things, too, particularly abortion. Can you run someone who's not keen on abortion, not particularly pro-choice, as Democrats might have been in rural areas 20 years or so ago? Can you go back to that now and run those sorts of people in, I don't know, Nebraska or the Dakotas or whatever? Or will there be, as you were saying, people who say, hang on a second, if we stand for anything, we must stand for this. This must be a litmus test of whether you can be or cannot be a Democratic Party candidate.

21:42And it seems to me that it's those sorts of things, isn't it, that they've got to face up to and think about now. And of course, America has to be well aware that it's voters who decide this, not the elite of the party, not some executives sitting in the DNC headquarters here in Washington, in Nebraska, in the Dakotas. voters who are registered as Democrats will go to the polls and pick between their primary candidates. Now, of course, fewer people vote in these primaries than vote in midterm elections. And that's even fewer than vote in the years when there's a presidential election. It's people who are pretty active and pretty engaged in the party.

22:16But nonetheless, it is the voter base of Nebraska and the Dakotas who do this. So if you have somebody who is not particularly pro-choice, but that reflects the way the state is, then it's up to Nebraskans to decide whether or not that's who they want to represent them. It's one of the really fascinating ways in which American politics is so, so different from British politics, that these candidates have had to put themselves up in front of voters so many more times before they even get to officially run and how much more involved grassroots voters are in the entire process and actually shaping which way they want their candidates to take the party.

22:52Yeah, and that then takes us to the other question. So that's just throwing open primaries and saying, who are we going to have? But of course, there are plenty of these seats, most of these seats in the House that we're talking about, that the Democrats are going to win next time. Our seats they've already won last time, because that's the way the House works, isn't it? There are actually very few seats that change hands. They're hoping, I don't know, maybe 30 or so do, but most won't. And in those seats that Democrats already hold, are they now going to face challenges from other parts of the party that say you're messing this all up?

23:31Because that's the other question, isn't it? Never mind the left or rightness, etc. Sarah, it's also the it's almost a Tea Party thing, isn't it? You look to what happened to the Republican Party in 2009, 2010 or so, where it just blew up. They were sick of their leaders. They were annoyed that Obama got elected, etc., etc. And they had this great kind of revolution in the party that led eventually to Donald Trump. And you hear people, don't you, talking about the Tea Party moment in the Democratic Party having arrived or arriving now. Yeah, and we said we weren't going to talk about Zoran Mandani, but just to mention him, who is the really quite left-wing, he calls himself Democratic Socialist, Democrat candidate in New York, who's also riding pretty high in the polls and who represents a very different kind of future for the Democratic Party from the likes of Sheryl and Spanberger, but who also is polling well and is extremely likely to win.

24:27What he represents is a much more left-wing position, but he's generated all of this excitement and enthusiasm. And one thing that's fascinating is, I've spoken to voters there who say they don't necessarily believe everything he says. When he says, I'm going to freeze the rents I'm going to make all public transport free. They don't think he can do that, but they like the aspiration. They like the enthusiasm with which he's attacking it. It's like Trump voters who knew he couldn't fulfill all his promises that all are not to take too seriously all of the Trump rhetoric. But, you know, like what he's talking about, the direction he's heading in.

25:04And you like the vibes, basically. How do moderate centrists who might look like the answer to everything because you can capture back some swing voters who will be disenchanted with Donald Trump but won't be put off by attitudes that are too progressive. Since when has that ever generated the levels of excitement that you see both among MAGA supporters and somebody like Mamdami being able to do in New York? And if you've got to come back from the dead the way the Democratic Party do, can you do it without some level of Tea Party-ish excitement? Yeah. And that then brings us to the state of Maine.