Do The Democrats Really Need ‘Their Own Trump’ To Win? w/ Galen Druke

22:11But, you know, folks like Mario Cuomo, who everyone knew wanted to be president, didn't even run in the primary because he thought H.W. was so assured to win a second term. And so this not particularly well-known governor of Arkansas gets in the race, and he runs as a bit of an outsider, and he also runs against his party. So he runs to, everyone knows this part, He runs to the right on crime and deficit spending. He goes on to obviously pass welfare reform and the crime bill. But he runs to the left on healthcare. He ran on a universal healthcare platform that was far more progressive than the Affordable Care Act ever ended up being.

22:58Obviously, the fact that we ended up ultimately in a recession helped his general election campaign. But he created this break with the way that Democrats had been perceived. and his successful political gambit in some ways reoriented electoral politics in America such that Democrats went from losing, losing, losing the White House to winning the popular vote in seven of the eight next elections. And so he was somebody else who could both run to the right on some issues, run to the left on others, and also importantly, run against his own party and create enough of a separation for voters who would previously not consider voting for a Democrat to then vote for a Democrat.

23:44Coleman Hughes:Right. So this is very interesting. I mean, there's a pattern then of being willing to look at what, you know, take the issue that your party is most popular about, which for Democrats, for Republicans, it was like immigration during the Trump years. For Democrats, perhaps it's healthcare and doubling and tripling down on that quote unquote extreme view with the assumption that actually the voters are more extreme on this than the establishment is. So you can afford to go a hundred miles per hour in that direction on that issue. And then tacking towards the opposite direction on an issue where actually voters are a lot more moderate than your party is willing to allow, right?

24:32Coleman Hughes:That's essentially the strategy. Yeah. I mean, some people would describe this as like a, you know, a primary strategy versus a general election strategy. But I think that in order to seem authentic, you kind of have to do both at the same time. Now, Donald Trump's immigration policies were not out and out popular in 2015, 2016, when he introduced them to the public. But they were very popular and they were kind of most importantly, very salient to Republican primary voters. And in particular, a certain subset of primary voters that won him that primary, right? He started off winning primaries by like with 35 % of the vote.

25:10And because it was such a fractured field, that allowed him to end up winning that 2016 primary. But the other thing is immigration just wasn't all that important to the broader electorate. So he could really attract the people that he needed to win the primary using immigration as an issue. But it wasn't necessarily, I think that a lot of people in the media and democratic politics thought he was going to do a lot to repel the rest of the public with the way he talked about immigration. And he certainly repelled some people with the way he talked about immigration. But the way that he appealed to a broader coalition was on more economic issues.

25:48Like, I'm not, you know, I'm going to be the first Republican in generations who says, we're not touching social security. We're not touching Medicare. We're spending more public money to make your life better. And so, and also obviously there's a whole piece of this that gets at like personality and media strategy and communication style, which we can talk about. And obviously that helped Trump in particular ways. Um, but it was, okay, what are the, what are the strength of my party, which for him as well was the economy. Like Republicans in general have been trusted more on the economy. So also doubling down on that when moving to the left a bit.

26:29So for Democrats, what could that look like today? Democrats are trusted a lot more than Republicans on the issue of healthcare. And they have been for a long time, even during Biden's unpopular presidency, where Democrats lost the advantage on education. they had gained an advantage on immigration by the end of Trump's first term because he had sort of pursued more extreme policies that created its own backlash so while Democrats were losing the public on all kinds of issues they maintained it on healthcare they're only stronger on healthcare now post the bill formerly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and it's increasing in salience you see more and more Americans saying that healthcare is important to them Yeah.

27:13Coleman Hughes:And I think you can also see this by the reaction of progressives and Democrats to the United Healthcare shooter, Luigi Mangione, where there was just, it was just like surprisingly easy to find people in my life that just totally were like, yeah, I mean, I kind of like the guy. The guy had a point and he murdered somebody, right? So I think that tells you something about the ambient level of concern and outrage at the healthcare system on the left. Yeah. And I think there's, you could get a lot of Democrats excited about, I don't know, I'm not a policy wonk, but maybe the policy is something like a public option, right?

27:49I think Kamala Harris said during the 20, in 2019, when she was running that we should abolish private insurance. Obviously, European countries don't even abolish private insurance. So I don't know that going all the way in that direction would help the Democratic Party, but doing, you know, proposing something like a public option or even more populist positions like, you know, we as Americans, we're not going to spend a penny more on prescription drugs than those Europeans do. And it's unfair that they would expect us to do otherwise or whatever it may be, right? I think could really get the Democrats that you need in a primary excited, while Republicans aren't going to be like, oh my God, they want, you know, better healthcare coverage or whatever.

28:29Like, it's not going to freak Republicans out. Now, if I think Democrats decided to make their, oh, we're going to go super far left on gender and sexuality. I don't

28:37Coleman Hughes:think that, I think that that would cause a backlash. That would be the opposite because, so, I mean, the strategy requires you to pivot to the center on some kind of 80-20 issue where your party is actually not popular. And for Democrats, it seems to me that would be anything related to wokeness, anything related to, you know, gender reassignment surgeries, hormone replacement, puberty blockers, all of the category of woke racial preferences, all that stuff is consistently less popular with the masses than with the liberal elites. So would part of the strategy include a hard tack against all of those things?

29:18Yeah. So I think, right. If you're going to run to the left on some issues and to the right on the other, on others, what do you run to the right on? So say you go left on healthcare. I would also argue you could go left on housing or, you know, more affordability type issues. So what are you going to the right on? In the piece, I suggest, you know, immigration as one of them, or even the debt and deficit as an option that might not sound coherent to top to bottom partisans. But again, you know, the marginal voters who are deciding the election don't see the world in that kind of red and blue way.

29:49So, you know, I think one of the reasons I would say that, and again, And Donald Trump is probably going to create his own backlash to his immigration policies during his second term because we experienced something in America known as thermostatic public opinion where, like, you kind of over-interpret your mandate as a newly elected president, go too far in one direction, and then the voters say, okay, well, screw this. Actually, I don't want that extreme either, even if I didn't like what Joe Biden was doing. I also don't want sort of, you know, workplace raids or whatever it may be. but I think at least on the border American opinion is not going to change that much Americans want a secure border they're happy with what Donald Trump has done on the border and they were very unhappy with what Joe Biden did on the border so I think probably pivoting on that or even just openly attacking how the Biden administration handled the migrant crisis would sort of create some of that space even if you then go and show compassion towards folks who are in the country illegally today if they're contributing to, you know, society more broadly.

30:52On the issue of, like, woke stuff. So one reason I went to immigration is because when you look at the most important issues to Americans, immigration ranks really highly. Whereas things like, maybe it just shows up in different areas, but, like, woke, social justice, you know, race relations, things like that, just don't rank as highly as things like, it's always number one is the economy. Oftentimes number two is poor government leadership, but then number three will be immigration. And then it varies according to what, you know, the news cycle and whatnot. So I think, yes, you can signal to people by like, well, one, I think everyone has already tacitly acknowledged that the Democratic Party's positions in like 2019, 2020 were unpopular.

31:42whether it's like decriminalizing crossing the border or defunding the police or abolishing ICE or whatever,

31:51the part of the Democratic Party that says they're working on behalf of the working class, I think ended up realizing that they weren't reflecting the values of the working class. And you have seen people like AOC on her Fighting the Oligarchy tour not talk about this stuff. You saw even when AOC was congratulating Zoran Mamdani in winning the Democratic primary, in the New York City mayoral race, you know, I think one of the, she said on Twitter congratulating him, like, you know, I want to congratulate Zoran Mamdani. We're going to make New York safe, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and affordable, right?

32:26The first word she used to describe the New York she imagined with Zoran Mamdani was safe. And that's because she knows that the left part of the Democratic Party, in particular in the Democratic Party as a whole, lost the American public on crime and safety. And so I think you're not even just seeing that from the moderates or whatever. You're seeing that from the straight-up left in the Democratic Party. That's already been accomplished in some ways. You know, I think that voters don't care all that much about trans issues. Like, they just don't, like, rank very highly in terms of salience when you ask people.

33:02We do know that when you ask Americans, like, do you think that trans girls should be able to participate in women's sports and the like? Yes, a clear majority of Americans say no, and a clear majority of Americans say that minors shouldn't have access to these surgeries. I don't think today that's going to continue being a major driver of conflict in politics, because I don't think there's anybody really arguing particularly enthusiastically for the 20 side of that now 80-20 issue.

33:36Coleman Hughes:This episode is brought to you by What Could Go Right, A podcast that pushes back on the doom and gloom in the news to ask a simple question. What if we're actually making more progress than we think? Each episode, host Zachary Karabell sits down with leading thinkers, policymakers, scientists, and cultural voices to dig into the biggest issues of our time. Episodes cover conversations like, can we achieve super abundance without AI doom? Or why AI and drones won't bring the apocalypse? Listen to What Could Go Right on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

34:14Coleman Hughes:Apartheid. White supremacy. Are Israelis indigenous? Are Palestinians? These are the conversations most people are too afraid to have. I'm Yeram Yahu, and my new show Borderlines with That Semite walks straight through that minefield. Every episode, I hit the street to ask regular people what they really think, then sit down with an expert who often sees it completely differently than I do. No slogans, no point scoring, just two people trying to understand. Search borderlines with That Semi wherever you get your podcasts from Unpacked. I mean, so the counter argument I would make is that though you don't necessarily see people at the national level arguing for the 20 side of those unpopular issues, like the the the parents of two in some town in westchester where like this stuff is like all in their children's schools it still matters to them like they may want to vote for a democrat but they may be more likely to vote for that democrat if they're not just like quiet about these issues but are actively like no we're going back to common sense on sports we're going back to common sense on wait till you're 18 to get the elective surgeries you want.

35:31And they want someone to be able to say that in a debate because though it's like maybe

35:37Coleman Hughes:not quite as salient, it is quite important to the voters who it's important to, I guess. It's also signaling, right? There's another thing which is like, even if it's not my most important issue, I just want to see that you're not a top to bottom partisan or that you're not extreme or whatever. And I think we saw Gavin Newsom do that, right? Yeah. And so I think ambitious Democrats are already doing some of that stuff. Like Gavin Newsom did that on trans women and women's sports. Pete Buttigieg said in an interview that we should have opened schools sooner during the pandemic. So I think there are already Democrats who are critiquing the Democratic Party's, you know, policies of 2019, 2020.

36:25you know if you want to go if you want to go big right like in the same way that Bill Clinton went big with crime and debt and deficit and pick an issue that is high salience is going to be one of the axes of conflict I might even recommend the debt because like Americans don't even need to totally understand the minutia of interest rates and the like or the minutia of public debt, but it's intuitive of, like, I spend way more money than I have. Eventually, things are going to catch up to me. Right. And that issue has been dropped from American political conflict for, like, 15 years. And it's also a place where you can highlight sort of the political establishments, either side of the political establishments, hypocrisy.

37:14Right? Like, you know, Republicans talk all about how they care about the debt and deficit, but they just increased the deficit over the next 10 years by$4 trillion. And then likewise, you know, Democrats will talk until they're blue in the face about the importance of, you know, funding things like healthcare and education for young people. But the way that we've set up our public expenditures today, we're transferring wealth from the youth to the old, right? Like spending so much money on old people today is going to ensure that we can't spend money on health and education for young people tomorrow.

37:47You know, that's maybe like a different way than people are used to hearing that issue. But it's been, although America has not solved this issue, it has been used to great political effect at certain points in our past, like the 1992 election and Ross Perot. And while Ross Perot didn't win and the debt and deficit were not taken care of overnight, I think that put enough political pressure on Bill Clinton to end up balancing the budget during his presidency and actually be the last person to pay down the debt. And so, you know, oftentimes talking about new topics in ways that Americans don't often hear them discussed and stealing some of your opponent's strengths is a good way to shake things up, get people to listen to you.

38:33So if they went down the debt route, what would they be able to say?

38:39Coleman Hughes:Because like you either cut or you raise taxes. So what should they say when that question is presented? What are you cutting or are you just raising taxes? Again, so I'm not a Democratic strategist, so this is a bit more of like an academic exercise for me, and it's kind of based on looking at the public opinion data. But Americans, and this is one of the things about the Trump administration, right? They're very actually sort of, you know, good at naming the problem. And naming the problem in a sort of like more candid, audacious way than most people in politics will. So for example, I mean like health, right?

39:13Like the Maha Report. I'm actually doing a podcast that's coming out soon on this, which is like the way that they go at ultra processed foods, sugar, you know, lack of exercise, screen time, all this stuff. You know, I talked to the dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington at St. Louis. And he's like, yeah, we haven't seen an administration name the problem like this, like this audaciously in a quarter century. But then the sort of like follow through is a little like, okay, is like are any policies going to actually get implemented? because you're also rescinding funding for research on how chemicals affect children's health and that kind of stuff.

39:50So when you're talking about the debt and deficit, I mean, say Donald Trump is absolutely right. We are not efficient in how we're spending Americans' hard-earned dollars. And the American government is bloated and we automate it, make it work a lot better for Americans. And so, yeah, there's cutting to do. At the same time, it's not fair that Jeff Bezos pays less in taxes as a percentage than the firefighter on Staten Island. So one of the ways that we solve the debt and deficit is by, yeah, being more efficient, but actually doing it the right way, not just doing it in like a sort of random half-assed way, because ultimately Doge didn't save very much money and created inefficiencies in the process.

40:38and at the same time scratch the itch of people feeling like there's a mismatch or there's an unfairness in American society today between the rich and the poor.

40:47Coleman Hughes:Okay, so let's look at how some of the top Democrat contenders might possibly or not possibly be able to execute on this strategy. So Gavin Newsom is one you already mentioned. Currently betting markets have him at the top spot for whatever that's worth. I mean, it's so far out, it's not worth much. But betting markets have him in the top spot for the 2028 Democratic nominee. A few months ago, he went on a podcast with Charlie Kirk and I think Steve Bannon as well and was basically having friendly conversations with people that weren't just Liz Cheney Republicans, but really further to the right.

41:31Coleman Hughes:so do you think that he could possibly execute this strategy successfully and do you think his strategy of talking having friendly conversations with right-wingers is going to help him or backfire i think it already has backfired and i think he's already pivoted away from that to some extent now donald trump even though he trashed his own party he wasn't nice to democrats he wasn't like oh you know, let me sit down with like Neera Tanden and have do a podcast together or whatever. Right. He was trashing both parties. So you can acknowledge that your own party fucked up, which I think you're hearing a lot of Democrats do without being like.

42:16And, you know, the other party, like the Republican Party is great on this. Um, and so, you know, I, I think while we all like the idea of bipartisan, many of us like the idea of bipartisanship or if not bipartisanship, mutual understanding, being able to have conversations across ideological differences and the like, I do wonder if a democratic primary electorate is going to be like, that's, I don't really like that. Also, the other thing is, does it seem authentic? If your whole brand is being the type of person who will talk to anyone, meet people where they are, almost be like the Pope, go and wash people's feet and hear from anyone and just take it all in and be that kind of almost like saintly figure who's willing to commune with every type of person in America, if that's your brand, then great, do it.

43:07I don't think that that's Gavin Newsom's brand. His brand has been like a kind of a, you know, a fighter for the Democratic Party. And I think he's probably getting back into that space with all of the, you know, protests and National Guard and Marines in California. I think he understands that the Democratic Party lost the public opinion battle on many of these issues and so has pivoted away and whatnot. And that's a different endeavor than being like, Like, hey, look, I can talk to Charlie Kirk. And like, whatever. Those conversations were interesting. If he wants to do that, keep— I mean, at the end of the day, I don't think voters care that much about it.

43:48Like, will he win or lose the Democratic nomination based on a podcast he did with Charlie Kirk? No. But I don't know that the sort of triangulation necessarily means being like nice to the other side. In a way, it means like trashing the whole establishment.

44:07Coleman Hughes:Right. What about AOC? You and Nate Silver the other day said that AOC, or maybe this was a few months ago, said that AOC might be, probably would be, the nominee in 2028. Would she be able to execute on this strategy you're recommending? Or is she too wedded to basically democratic socialism to pivot on any of these issues? So I want to be very specific about what Nate and I did. We did a Democratic primary draft for 2028, and the motivating question was, who do we think is the likeliest to win the nomination? And so while we thought she might be the likeliest, it doesn't mean she's probably going to win the nomination.

44:54It just means like, you know, there's not even like a 51 % chance that she would win the nomination. Just the second person we chose was like Josh Shapiro. So like she's slightly more likely than Josh Shapiro, but you would probably take the field over AOC if you were actually lining them up. And part of my rationale for choosing AOC in this draft, I chose her first, and then Nate was like, screw you, I was going to pick her. Anyway, it got way more attention than it should have for some silly game. It was on, like, MSNBC and Fox News the whole following weekend. But part of my rationale was, I expect a lot of people are going to run for president in 2028 on the Democratic side, maybe on the Republican side too.

45:32And when you have a very divided primary field, there is a strong advantage to having almost a celebrity about you or a certain charisma that attracts a group of devoted, a devoted part of the electorate. That's what Donald Trump did, right? I mentioned that he was winning 35 % of the vote in those early primaries. And so you don't need a majority. You just need the most of anybody. And the left part of the progressive part of the Democratic Party may be enthusiastic enough about her to be like, screw everyone else. We're with her no matter what. And that can sort of power her through a certain part of the primary calendar.

46:14I think the other thing is, like Democrats have spent the past decade nominating candidates who are like bad at politics. And at that, also very establishment-y characters for being a party that has historically nominated the more anti-establishment characters like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter. Those were the three previous successful Democratic nominees to Joe Biden. And there's a whole generation of young people who have never seen a charismatic person who's good at politics lead the Democratic Party.

46:49Coleman Hughes:It's interesting you frame it that way because if you think about it, post-Obama, Democrats have run three people. Two of those were either, were in some way not legitimate primaries because of what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders in the first case, and then the fact that Kamala wasn't even primaried and almost certainly would not have won if she were. The only one of the three that was a totally untampered with, unmanipulated primary, they won. Well, okay. It's interesting that you frame it that way. Because, like, I would say Hillary Clinton would have won the 2016 primary with or without the DNC.

47:24Like, it felt very close, but it wasn't that close ultimately. If you remember Joe Biden in 2020, like it took all the cavalry coming out post South Carolina to rally around him to win because up until that point, he had done shit in like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. It looked like for a second, Bernie Sanders was going to be the nominee. And so it was the sort of party elite, you know, calling out the cavalry to challenge Bernie Sanders and get behind Joe Biden. I think part of what has happened is that, you know, politics is about critiquing the other side and trying to sort of gain ground that they've ceded or whatever.

48:11But you can do that to a fault. Donald Trump is like the most anti-establishment character we've had in at least my lifetime and probably anyone's lifetime in modern history in American politics or, you know, who actually ended up winning. And historically, Democrats had been more of the anti-establishment party, or at least, you know, critiquing things like institutions in American life, like church, family, military, like all of those kinds of things, party politics, whatever, you know, whether it's go back to Howard Dean or, you know, whatever. Um, it's, it's the younger, it's the younger group.

48:53It's more coalitional mixed up different, you know, parts of American life, less ideological, whatever. Um, then Donald Trump becomes the leader of the Republican party and Democrats reflexively just take the position diametrically opposed to Donald Trump. And it was like that. It was like, oh, you want to build a wall? We want to decriminalize crossing the border. You know, like you want to call in the National Guard? We want to abolish the police or whatever it might have been. And obviously, when you behave that way, you become entrapped to the politician that you're responding to. Because when they take a popular position, then you're forcing yourself to take the unpopular position.

49:36More broadly, what happened was Trump was so anti-establishment that Democrats sort of found themselves, in a way, becoming the cheerleaders for the establishment. Right. Because that was the anti-Trump position. And so this party that had been consistently nominating successful anti-establishment or less pro-establishment characters

50:04was nominating people like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, who are so establishment-y. And think of, like, other past establishment characters that Democrats have nominated that didn't do well, like John Kerry, right? Like, Democrats have seemed to do well when they get this kind of young gun who takes on the status quo to do their bidding.

50:26Coleman Hughes:Right. Another contender then, And I don't know if this fits that bill exactly, but Pete Buttigieg. I'm just really, I never answered your question about AOC. Like, could she? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have no idea, you know? Yeah. It would seem inauthentic to suddenly be like... I don't think that... My answer is no, because I don't believe she can tack to the center on immigration, debt, or wokeness. I think that her brand is too synonymous with progressive politics and socialist politics that she would not seem authentic tacking to the center on any of those issues she would need to tack to the center on.

51:07What you've seen her try to do is not talk about some of that stuff and reorient the conflict in American politics from red versus blue to sort of like the working class versus the billionaires. She was very Obama-esque on her Fighting Oligarchy tour where she was like, you know, they try to divide us based on Republicans and Democrats, but they're just using that to distract us kind of from a more class-based conflict. So she'll try to just reorient the conflict altogether so that she doesn't... She's trying to become Bernie Sanders. Yeah, so that she doesn't have to talk about maybe all of that other stuff.

51:41Could work. The, I mean, maybe. And, you know, saying that we thought AOC was the likeliest to win the nomination was not saying that we thought she was the likeliest to win the general election or the best position to win the general election. But to your point about what she's become synonymous with, Like, Democrats look back at the past 10 years of American electoral politics or presidential politics probably not particularly fondly. And so in some ways, the Obama or Clinton or Jimmy Carter type mold is somebody who's a clean slate. Somebody who doesn't really have any record of what they thought about ICE or the police or gender or whatever in 2019.

52:27Now, in a world where electoral politics are oftentimes very motivated by, like, who can get attention, could some of these lesser-known people like Wes Moore or Josh Shapiro or Ruben Gallego or Take Your Pick be able to marshal attention? or will everyone just become like, oh my God, AOC is running for president. We're just going to cover her nonstop because that's the ticket to a Donald Trump style takeover of everyone's political attention. Right. Could they marshal enough attention? I don't know, but they are the more kind of tabula rasa types who have done it for Democrats in the past.

53:07Coleman Hughes:So Pete Buttigieg is another name. He's someone I've always liked because he just seems to have a pretty rational, intelligent response to any question he's asked. He's Obama-esque in that way. And I'm attracted to those kinds of candidates, naturally. Just if I feel like you exude intelligence and intellectual maturity, that to me, regardless of your politics, puts you higher on my list than someone who engages in pure demagoguery. um my problem with pete budaj and the reason i i don't think he can win is because i honestly am not sure that that conservative black voters in south carolina are okay even in the year 2025 pulling the lever for a gay a gay man and i'm i'm not going to say that i have a lot of polling data to support that but what i do know is that and this is something i think democrats do not want to talk about.

54:08Coleman Hughes:I think it's very uncomfortable to acknowledge just how socially conservative black voters within the Democratic Party are relative to white voters. Because the basic picture you have is black people on the whole are as socially conservative as white people, pretty much. I mean, there's not a huge difference in terms of gay marriage, trans issues, all this stuff. Except all the black conservatives, most of them still vote Democrat. That's the difference. Although decreasingly so. Decreasingly so, but still to a great extent. And so if you're running in a Democratic primary in South Carolina, you still have to get that vote.

54:49Coleman Hughes:And a lot of that vote is a lot less comfortable with a gay candidate than the rest of the Democratic Party. And it's really underappreciated and not talked about. And because of that, I looked up how Pete Buttigieg did when he ran for president in 2020, crushed it in Iowa, 25%. Yeah, he won. I mean, that got so muddled that no one ever really figured out who won. Oh, I thought he was won. Oh, I see. Okay. But he was within one percentage point of Bernie. I'm pretty sure he won, even though it was such a botched administration of the Iowa caucuses by the Democratic Party that I think there might still be a question mark.

55:25Coleman Hughes:Yeah. And then he gets like 24 % in New Hampshire, which he's, you know, within spitting distance again of a win there. And then he drops down to 8 % in South Carolina. And so I'm not saying I know for a fact him being gay is the reason, but I do know when I picture and just think of all the people I know that fit that bill of a black voter over 50 who lives in South Carolina or Virginia or something, a lot of them still do have problems with pulling the lever for a gay man for president. Yeah. I mean, what you say is really important, right? Is that when you have sort of a group of voters who, you know, the way that this is described is sort of connected fate or whatever, have this feeling of, you know, for black people, it's we're going to vote for the Democratic Party because we feel like, you know, what happens to other black people affects all of us as black people and we know that the Democratic Party is more watching out for people like us, then you end up with much more viewpoint diversity within that group, within that party.

56:34Whereas white people separate themselves out along liberal and conservative lines between the two parties. And we have seen over the past, you know, in the Trump era, some of that breakdown, you know, like particularly amongst Latino voters, because the same thing was happening in the Obama era, conservative Latinos were voting for Obama. But Donald Trump was able to, you know, well, it becomes a sort of waterfall effect or snowball effect. Once more people in your milieu, in your community, start voting another way, you say, oh, okay, like this is a socially acceptable thing to do. Maybe I'll do that too.

57:13And Donald Trump ended up outright winning Latino men in 2024 after overall Latinos shifted seven points to the right between 16 and 20 and then nine points again to the right between 20 and 24. So one of the effects that that has is it makes the Democratic Party more out-and-out liberal, right? There's less of that viewpoint diversity within the Democratic Party itself because now not only have white people divided along conservative and liberal lines, now Latino and black people have increasingly done the same. That means that maybe it's easier to win a Democratic primary being a total liberal, being somebody who appeals to the MSNBC set, as opposed to somebody who appeals to a broader coalition.

58:00And I think you've heard some people saying like, hmm, this is interesting. Zoran Mamdani won the New York Democratic mayoral primary without the majority of black voters. And the sort of conventional wisdom is that in a Democratic primary, black voters choose the winners. That obviously wasn't the case in this election. So I don't know if in 2028 somebody can win the Democratic primary without the support of a majority of black voters within the Democratic Party. It may be the case that they can't. There's another, I mean, there's another challenge too which gets beyond sexuality, which is like Bernie Sanders had an awfully difficult time winning over voters of color when he first came onto the scene.

58:45Like in 2016, he was winning like all white people. He sort of became a better known figure, kept making his case. And in 2020, he did significantly better with Latino voters, whereas Latino voters were like 100 % for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Oftentimes it's just like whoever has a better relationship with the establishment and there's, you know, whatever, particularly. And one of the tests for that is Nevada, obviously, when we're thinking about how Latino voters considered Bernie Sanders, a lot of those caucuses are sort of motivated by, you know, party politics, right? It's like, who's getting you to come to the caucus meeting, whatever.

59:29And so maybe, like, with time, you can make your case and spend more time being introduced to the different parts of the Democratic Party that you might want to appeal to outside of whoever just, like, sees you on MSNBC or whatever. but that is a challenge. As far as the polling is concerned, overwhelmingly Americans say that they would be willing to elect a gay president. Now, is that true? I don't know. But I think if, Pete Buttigieg is running, but I think if Pete Buttigieg does not win the Democratic primary in 2028, I think we should be open-minded to the idea that it's not just based on sexuality.

1:00:10Also, his kind of very like, intellectualizing technocratic response to everything has a certain high appeal to some people, but may feel alienating to others. So there's a lot going on in terms of what you can end up like, right. Nobody thought in 2018 that everyone was going to, or sorry, nobody thought in 2008 that everyone was going to go for the black guy named Barack Hussein Obama, but with your own personal charisma and building on successes, you can convince people. Remember this. When he won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, black voters in South Carolina were not supporting him. They were supporting Hillary Clinton because of those establishment relationships and Bill Clinton's history with the Democratic Party and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:00:56But once Barack Obama proved, this is how the story goes, proved that he could be successful, That he wasn't just like this bright young guy with new ideas. That he could be electorally viable. He got a whole lot more people to sort of board that train. And so sometimes success begets more success. And people forget about the things about you that they might have, you know, not initially saw as appealing, seen as appealing.

1:01:28Coleman Hughes:Okay, final question. If you were hired as a consultant for the Democratic Party based on all of your polling and political science knowledge, and you had to sort of boil down your recommendation to a soundbite, what would it be? How to win in 2028? Oh, boy. That is like a really hard question. But I would say something like politics is distasteful and exhausting. the Democratic Party itself has contributed a lot to that the Republican Party has certainly done its fair share too we need to acknowledge where both parties have fucked up and moved on in a way that just serves everybody alright I don't know that was pretty disjointed but I'll get back to you maybe with a more concise answer later on okay cool and plug your podcast one more time for people that want to hear more from you and your sub stack.

1:02:29Yes, absolutely. It is gdpolitics.com is where you can find the sub stack. Either, you know, stands for Galen Druk Politics or Goddamn Politics, however way you feel. And you can find GD Politics wherever you get podcasts.

1:02:44Coleman Hughes:All right, Galen Druk. Thanks so much. Thank you. On Tuesday, September 8th, I will be at the 92nd Street Y in conversation with Dara Horn. Dara's last book was called People Love Dead Jews, and it was an award-winning examination of the ways in which contemporary culture sentimentalizes Jewish suffering while ignoring Jewish life. In her new book, which is provocatively titled The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, Dara takes the next step, not only tracing the myths that have spread anti-Semitism in the past, but asking what can actually be done about them. So get your tickets now. I assume they will sell fast.

1:03:20Coleman Hughes:Once again, that's Tuesday, September 8th at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. See you there.