1084: Can Democrats Lose the Downer Image? + Chris Murphy in Conversation (Crooked Con)

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29:10God, this is going great. Are we having fun yet? I'm not. Are we having fun yet? No, Jessica, I want you to respond. And then I want to kind of tease two things out here. Well, I agree. I totally agree. I just exist in a world where we can't behave that way. Like, not everybody who's going to run for office or who wants to have a voice can build the platform that you have. You're ridiculously talented. Damn, thank you. No, but even being able to talk that long, it's a skill set that I don't have. But when you say we don't need to deal with this, and I agree with you about the ad, and I remember when that happened, there are people who are running in races where you need to do more than that.

30:03Like we were talking earlier, I was over doing Tim's pod with him. we're talking about Jared Golden not running in Maine. And Jared Golden can't afford to not talk about the issues that his constituents genuinely care about because they also vote for Donald Trump. And for some of them, they just want to hear someone say, listen, I want to protect everybody. I'm an inclusive guy, you know, but I, whatever happened with Leah Thomas, or that's always like the lightning rod, you know, trans athlete issue. I understand your concern about, you know, trans women in women's sports. That doesn't mean Jared Golden needs to say, I want to ban on this.

30:38It means Jared Golden says, like the head of the NCAA did when they testified, this is talking about 10 athletes out of 500 ,000. So it is a small fraction of the population, but I'm not going to dismiss your concerns. And this big tent and a winning coalition across this country has to be compromising about what people need to do to win their races. I'm not talking about being bigoted. I'm not talking about being nasty, but the country operates differently in different places. And I feel like we give lip service to that, but don't always behave that way. I like I the thing is, like if the Democratic Party was defined by five key policies, OK, Medicare for all, a single payer system, socialized medicine.

31:34Right. Something of that sort. And a plan to expand the available housing units. I want socialized housing. That is not even broached. That's not even discussed amongst the Democratic Party. I want a federal jobs guarantee and a jobs program to build those houses. Right. Free college and better education overall from K through 12. If those were like your five key signature campaign promises that directly tackle all of the issues that people, the economic hardships that people in the heartland are actually going through and not just like, you know, highly educated liberals in big cities. Then any moment that these people would turn around and be like, well, what about trans people?

32:21They're going to get health care, too. You could just be like, OK, what do you not want health care because you think a trans person is going to get it? I just want to be clear. There was a moment on a debate stage where they weren't talking about trans people. But in the Democratic primary in 2020, they asked there was a one of the large primary debates and they asked, well, do you think undocumented people should have health care? And people raised their hand and it was used as an attack ad and it was an effective attack ad. So I think sometimes we I agree with some of what you're saying. The dig in small businesses, I disagree with because the biggest driver of wealth in African-American communities outside of government jobs, which is why the fact that 300 ,000 black women have lost their government jobs is a blow to wealth ascension in this country for black women, is small businesses.

33:06And so the small business plan was a plan that spoke to working class black and brown people in this country who do not work at large corporations, but had an idea, wanted entrepreneurship. And then they saw a plan for them. And so it was a wide, a wide, you know, tent situation. But I guess my point is to Jessica, what Jessica is saying, yes, I do think candidates have to be. You got to run for your district. You got to run for the race that you're in. And as a, you know, I'm a black woman from the Midwest every day, everywhere I go. Okay? I live in Washington, D.C., but I'm black and I'm bald.

33:42So there are some things I think I hear when these conversations come up, and I've said in strategist rooms when they've come up, they've come up on campaigns I've worked on, and I hear them on the sets and the commercial breaks when we have some of these candidates on our show. So it feels like to some people that look like me that the people within the party apparatus want folks to compromise on issues that for me are uncompromisable when folks say that. And so, like, I do think that if the party is like, look, people need to, I think the answer is people need to run for the race that they're in.

34:19Okay, well, what does that mean? Does that mean when, because let's just be very clear, Donald Trump and the Republicans, they aren't looking for a big tent. they're like mass deportation f you look at my one good black person shithole countries in africa all the brown people need to be deported women got blood coming down their eyes but like yay uh we're going back to a meritocracy and that means only white men like what hold on what but they're with but they were winning and so they didn't win because they opened up the aperture and let people do what they need to do they won because they tripled down on what they believe even if what they believe right that's just not i'm sorry that It sounds good, and I like it.

34:53I want it to be right. It's just not right. They didn't win because they tripled down on what they believe? No, they did tripled down on what they believe. Yes, they tripled down on racism. Yeah. It was populism, but it was a... Populism is a thin ideology mixed with a thick ideology, according to Cass Mudd. Simone, hey. His populism had a lot of things in... It was an economic populist, but populism had a little white supremacy in it, a little racism. Like, Bernie Sanders is a populist in a different way than Donald Trump. Yeah. Here's the thing. though i don't understand here's the thing though can i just say really quick though here's the thing like yeah he doubled down on a bunch of terrible shit that they believe that's extreme no doubt no doubt he also was seen as left of kamala on foreign policy he was seen as an anti-war candidate he was seen as anti the republican establishment of war he cut to the middle on that he lied about that for sure he's a liar he lied but then maybe our guy should lie about some things that are popular too okay okay now you sound like me during the campaign where i was like what the fuck are you guys doing when you're not like addressing this stuff where donald trump can present himself as the peace candidate that was insane to me but obviously sending bill clinton to dearborn to talk about judea and samaria as most people were seeing all right most people were seeing i want to bring us back let's not pretend like they didn't moderate on things that's all i'm saying he might i'm having so much fun.

36:16No, no. I'm sorry. You cannot have a convention where you have signs that say mass deportation now. I'm not saying he was a moderate. I'm saying he moderated on things. That's no centric nationalist version of this country and say that he moderated what he did is say, people in Gaza, you should vote for me because Joe Biden ain't doing what you want. That's not a moderation. He had good rhetoric, but his policy was consistent. And the vice president on that debate stage said all of the things that he was saying that he would do and he has outdone them he said he was going to send the military into the streets he was saying it on the campaign that's not moderation that's fascism he said he was going to deport all of these people in this country that is what he said that it's not just the criminals he's coming for anybody that is in this country who is undocumented so i'm i just i can't i i can't get with the well Donald Trump didn't moderate a bit.

37:07No. They tripled down on the bad stuff and had nice graphics and good and smiled through it. So can I? Just stop. I want to bring us back. Simone is. All right. Hassan, quick, and then I want to bring us back. Simone is absolutely right. 100%. And these were things that I was screaming about nonstop. You said you agreed with me that he ran to the left of Kamala on foreign policy. On foreign policy. That's moderating. On foreign policy. He didn't run on the unpopular Republican views on foreign policy. However, he ran to the left on foreign policy only because the Democrats came out and said, I'm going to have the most lethal military.

37:46Because unfortunately, and I mean this sincerely, I don't think the Democrats actually saw the threat of Donald Trump as a significant enough threat. because if they were, they would have locked in and had better messaging overall and tried to at least establish a base of support with counter-narratives, with counter-messaging leading up to the election. Not in the aftermath, or not during the election, but leading up to the election. Because Republicans, they act as though there is an election every single day. They are constantly on message. They're constantly creating an alternative reality with lies, saying that undocumented migrants are actually responsible for a metric ton of the crimes that are taking place in American cities, when that is an abject lie, okay?

38:28And when I talk to congresspersons, whether it be at the DNC or even before or even after, and I tell them, why the fuck aren't you guys counter-messaging against this? We are a nation of immigrants. America is the most diverse nation on the fucking planet. It is literally the reason why we are such a domineering force beyond all the other violent reasons. But that is one of the most redeemable aspects of America that I personally love, that the Democrats completely dropped because they were scared. They saw that one poll from the Pew Center of Research that said that 66 % of Americans want mass deportations.

39:06That exact same poll also showed that if given two options, mass deportation and mass amnesty, that the majority always chose mass amnesty. So why is that never communicated? Because Americans, sure, the median voter, trying to understand where the median voter is coming from is impossible, okay? You will kill yourself if you try to understand what these people are thinking. You just lost me, Hassan. I was with you halfway through that, but you lost me, but I'm with you. No, but what I'm trying to say is this, okay? There are Trump... There are... He's doing great. I want to hear this point, and then I'm going to tell you that I promise.

39:41There are Trump supporters out there, okay, that have been deluded into thinking that Donald Trump represented a change, and obviously we saw that buyer's remorse, this past Tuesday, right? Especially in Hispanic communities where they were like, oh, I can't believe that he is actually doing mass deportation. And it's, you know, we're in DC, it's a fairly liberal crowd and we laugh at those people, but like, I talk to those people every day and there were people that genuinely thought, they genuinely believed that Donald Trump was actually excising the violent criminals. And the only reason why people are led to believe this lie, aside from the faucet of misinformation that comes from independent outlets on the right and also Fox News as well, is because there is no robust response from the Democratic Party that says that's a fucking lie.

40:30That's a lie. Undocumented migrants in this country are responsible for a lower rate of per capita crime than natural born U.S. citizens are. If you pair that up with documented migrants, it's negligible. It is marginal. And they're hyper focusing on it specifically because this is a vulnerable population that is easy to target and it's easy to ridicule and there is not enough of a robust defense mechanism out there. And that's the reason why people end up believing this bullshit and then they get shocked when it's actually implemented. So I think that's a good point. And I think I sort of agree with Tim and with Simone about this.

41:11Impossible. It's a fundamental rift. Because one of Trump's gifts is he is a, I think he convinced a lot of people he was going to go after criminals, but he also said at the convention that they were going to do mass deportations. And I think how to bring it back is that is possible because of a big void. So Trump can do a lot. Trump has room to operate, to maneuver. Why? Because he has built an authentic connection with millions of people who believe him, who have his back, who think, yeah, he'll compromise. It is inconceivable that Kamala Harris would appoint Mike Pence to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.

41:49Inconceivable. He wouldn't live in that world. But Trump can appoint a Kennedy to run the health department. Why? Because he has built such a credible, loyal following that he, because of the authentic way in which he, you don't agree with that. Cults. No, it's just cults. It's upgrading you from fun. Look, yes, it has certainly become a cult, right? And then you look at our side, and you find the politicians that have that kind of authentic connection to the voters. You look at the list of leadership of the Democratic Party. How far down do you go before you have somebody that can fill an arena?

42:24You have to get to Bernie Sanders. You go to Barack Obama. You go to Zoran Mamdani. You go to AOC. It is largely on the left. That is the truth of this moment, but it wasn't always true. Barack Obama didn't run from the left. He ran against Washington. Bill Clinton had that kind of momentum. He actually ran from the right. But right now, that energy and connection is coming from the left. And so Hassan lays out a group of policies that are from the left. Like, I'm not for socialized housing. I'm for building a ton of housing. Boo. That's OK. But it is a void that the left is currently filling that the leadership of the Democratic Party is not.

43:01How does Trump get away with all this stuff? How do we get defined as being anti-trans? The other day, Bernie Sanders was asked about the border, and he said, oh, country's got to have a border. And that pissed off some people. Me too. It pissed off some people on the left. Did it piss off Hassan? I mean, yeah, I disagree with Bernie Sanders' message around that. Because obviously, yes, nation states have well-defined borders and boundaries. But my point about it is he can say that with confidence because everyone knows what Bernie Sanders stands for. Yes. And so when he is asked about trans issues, when he is asked about issues in which Democrats are not at 55-45, but at 30-70, whatever it may be, he can either say, you know what, I don't care about that, I'm not talking about that, or he can answer in a way that maybe riles some of the base, but you trust him.

43:46And that to me is the connection between, honestly, the kind of like what seems a bit frivolous, like are we having fun, and the actual hard work of politics. Like Zoran, you said, was moderating in the last few weeks of the campaign. I was glad to see that. Tim and I are both people that pushed him hard. I almost got a T-shirt. I am to the left of Tim. The ballots came out against him, and I was like, okay, we're in business now, Z. I mean, the reason why Zohan was moderating on, I don't know what he was moderating on. I guess maybe you guys were talking about the policing stuff, even though it was, now that the election is over, we can be honest about it.

44:19Zohan Mamdani did this brilliant thing that got liberals to basically come to terms with a lot of things that liberal media had considered radical, right? Because he had a really good way of communicating these things. Can you generously call that he did a good job of listening, seeming curious, and being persuasive to bring more people into his mind? Sure. But one of the things that he did, but he was still uncompromising. Defund the police always was about making sure that the headcount either remained stable, but then we actually turned around and restructured some. Defund is a very tough one.

44:53Now you're the PR guy. That's the most political you've sounded. But the thing is, it has a bad rap. No matter what you say or do, Democrats immediately attacked it. They said this is a danger, and it's partially because Americans really love police. It's unfortunate. I don't know how, because they don't do their fucking jobs ever. And I wish they would, because I'm not saying we can live in it. Cheering for police never do their jobs ever? I want to be able to call the police. I just don't want them to think I'm a suspect when they show up. Exactly. Exactly. we want we want a presence of law and order and unfortunately in many communities police's presence is lawlessness and disorder now having said that having said that he wanted to to not reduce the head count necessarily but at least like bring in social workers to take away some of the bandwidth some of the workload from the police and that was a that was a message that that resonated with even Tim Miller, it seems.

45:55No, I want it, but I... He liked it. He was. You want defund the police now. No. I want to... Can I just, just really quick, because I think, like Simone, I'm like, you're talking, you're talking, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you say something like, dude, bro. But here's, I think, what Zoran did well that kind of combines part of what you're talking about with what maybe I think, I'm happy he didn't take your advice on part of his campaign. But what he did well, are we having fun yet? Zoran was happy. He was having a good fucking time. He was a fun hang. Here on my pod, we had a great time.

46:30He had a couple specific things. You cooked him on Globalize the Intifada. That wasn't his best answer. That wasn't his best answer. But we were vibing though and people listening to the pod liked it. He had four issues like you mentioned. It's kind of hard to know what Kamala's issues were. I think if you quizzed all of us on here, everybody would say different things. Everybody knew what Zoran's issues were. That was good. He was good on that. he could go on a pod with me or with somebody else. He could have gone on Rogan for three hours and hung out and had a good time. So he could communicate.

46:58He's happy. He had three issues, three or four issues. But he also just did, like, making the practical decision to say he was going to keep the police chief rather than doubling down on the tweets that he sent in 2019 with smart, practical politics. Like, you can do both. No, I agree. You can have clear left-wing policy issues that people understand. You can be positive and optimistic, and you can also be practical. he did all of that like quite well actually i'll give you oh i i agree with that i think his messaging was good on that and that's precisely what i was talking about like for example okay especially not in like the the broader population's understanding of this issue but like in mainstream media and in american politics there's a major uh division between how the population is receiving what israel is doing and and how our politicians are responding to it right And how the media even responds to it.

47:48Anti-Zionism is a scary term or a scary word for a lot of media professionals in a way that being anti-Israel is not necessarily scary at all for the average person. As a matter of fact, they are very anti-Israel now, and there's polling to reflect on that reality. Now, what Zoran did so perfectly was to communicate his position in a way that liberals understand it. He turned around and said, yeah, Israel has a right to exist as a nation state that has equal rights and representation for all people. That is identifying that Israel has a Jewish ethno-state project, right? That is identifying that Israel has an exterminationist policy on the Palestinians and incredibly repressive policies on the Palestinians.

48:33Is that true for Qatar too? Does Qatar have a right to exist only if everybody has equal rights for all religions? Is that true for Qatar or just Israel? No, I don't care. I mean, yeah, okay, no nation has a right to exist, including Qatar. Like, I don't know why you're bringing up Qatar, like, as though I'm going to be like, oh, my God, Qatar. Like, they pay me so much money. I was going to say, I don't know why that's the only country that doesn't have a right to exist unless they get equal rights for everybody. Because it's an ethnostate. So all of those countries in that region are an ethnostate.

48:57No, if you can – Qatar's an ethnostate, Iran's an ethnostate, Jordan's an ethnostate, Saudi's an ethnostate. So I'm okay with criticizing Israel. I'm just saying that's like – So you're okay with all of these other countries being ethnostates, then, And you're not just using that as a deflective mechanism to move the attention away from Israel, a country that literally receives more aid and more political support from the United States of America than anyone else. As a matter of fact, a lot of people actually get mad about Qatar because now the Gulf leaders have realized, oh, if we give this guy fucking jets, he's going to defend us too.

49:27We're oil barons. It's awesome. And that's the reason why it almost feels like people who defend Israel are jealous that now other Gulf nations are trying to do Israel-style things over there. I love it. Please, bring us back. Sorry. Anyway. I would say this. He moderated the message without compromise. I have disagreements with you on this, as you know. I will say that Zoran had a challenge, right? And part of his challenge was reassuring a lot of Jewish New Yorkers that are deeply worried about some of his past comments. And he spent a lot of time trying to reassure those people, I think, because he recognized that there was a liability in some of the ways in which his previous statements and some of his positions were seen by a lot of New Yorkers, which is where more Jews on earth live than in any other place than in Israel.

50:19True. And he sought to address it. Now, without getting into the details of where we just read it. do that because he's Muslim. I'm going to be honest. I think it was racism, straight up. He had never said a single thing that was even remotely anti-Semitic, and yet the media constantly kept needling him on that. I don't agree with that. And I don't agree with that because it's honestly impossible to know because it's overdetermined. Do I think there's Islamophobia in the reaction to Zoran? Of course there is. Do I think there's genuine concerns about some of the things he said? Of course there is.

50:46Can you tell me what... Hold on. You can't tease it out. What was concerned? Well, he got elected, so does that argument really matter? He is now the Mayor-elect of New York City. So whatever he did worked. So the reason I don't want to stay on it is because I think there's a lot we can say about it. But what I'm trying to say is he had people that were really glad to see someone who had taken his views run for mayor and succeeded. He also had people he needed to reassure who had disagreement. But he recognized that he was in coalition with a lot of people who had different views, including he was asked about Abigail Spanberger.

51:15And he was asked about Mikey Sherrill. And he said that this is a party that has room for everybody, not just people who look like me. And I think that to me is what I hate Republicans. If you can unseat a Republican is good. It's good in my book. And that was my anger and resentment with like the way that the Democrats were representing themselves during the campaign, where it kind of felt like they didn't hate Republicans too much. Whenever I hear Nancy Pelosi say, oh, we need a strong Republican Party. I'm like, no, we don't need a Republican Party. We want to run out this country in every seat and be so successful that you have a weak and feckless and ineffective Republican Party that cannot undermine the agenda that centers the working class.

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54:31Talking about the overlap of the ways in which Zoran built a big enthusiastic base of support, talking about the ways in which Democrats have a void of people not really knowing what they stand for, which lets them be buffeted by issues where they're kind of, whether it's trans issues or other kind of issues where they feel like they're on their heels and there's this debate about throwing people under the bus. What are the lessons that you think Democrats should be taking from the success on Tuesday? You know, Chuck Schumer was afraid to... So I... Yeah. So this is now going to be the third time Chuck Schumer has been booed at a Democratic event I've been at in 48 hours.

55:12And... All right, are you ready? The former Republican's going to praise Chuck Schumer right now. The shutdown strategy's worked pretty good. We're doing great on the shutdown. Give him a little claps. Shutdown strategy turned out to work pretty good. Everybody's like, oh, Chuck. Yeah, we had to drag him to finally do that. He had an opportunity to do it earlier. At least he's there. You did it. Simone, you were going to leave the Democratic Party in March. Well, you know, about every six months, I got to do a gut check. Every member of the 92%, that's how we sustain ourselves. It's like renewing your vows.

55:44Very much so. Very happy to be with my husband. So Chuck Schumer is being afraid of Democrats being tied to Zoran. He is less afraid, it seems to me, about the young people and people that support Zoran not seeing Schumer on their side. And so, Jessica, how do Democrats... We can confidently assert that we are a big tent that includes everyone from Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberg and Tim Miller and Hassan and Tim Miller without ignoring the genuine and real politics of moderating and I think that we're not wanting to be a big fun yet. The last 10 minutes were the opposite of fun. And I think that, no, but it's important for our electoral strategy because that fight is the opposite of fun.

56:41It doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen, but when you are the party that is being represented by that kind of screaming back and forth versus saying the stuff that we agree upon that we're like all of the candidates that won were affordability candidates. It sounded different out of Abigail Spanberger's mouth and what she was talking about then out of Zoran's mouth. But we all got to the place where they thought the Democrats want us to have more housing and more money in our pockets. And the Republicans have been dicking us over with their policies. And so that's where we have to be. I was so excited by Zoran's campaign in that it finally felt to me like there was some Obama energy back.

57:23And as an elder millennial who spends a lot of time with Gen Zs, I'm sad for them that they don't know what hope and change felt like they don't know you know what it meant to watch him from the dnc convention through you know when he left tim's like it was terrible but it was fine he was good i got some i got some goosebumps every now and then no i i hated the dnc for sure like i'll stand on that yeah but people finding community people combating loneliness people having shared purpose, getting outside, touching grass, all of that. That's what politics means to me. And you want a great policy agenda, of course, but you really want to feel common cause with people.

58:08And you can have disagreements about various issues. But that is the path forward for me. And that's not going to come from Chuck Schumer. I think Chuck Schumer passes sell-by date in terms of leading the party this way. But Chuck Schumer, I think that he was right to recruit Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown to be running for those Senate seats. And I hope that they're going to win. And I feel good about that. And I think that his Mamdani stuff is about himself. And he voted in the election. He's a Jewish New Yorker in Brooklyn there. And Mamdani got 30 % of the Jewish vote, which is very low. He has work to do with the community.

58:51I hope that he will do that work. But I don't think focusing on Chuck Schumer is the answer to it. It's the energy and that there was energy across New Jersey and there's energy in Virginia and there's energy in New York. And that's the kind of organizing. It's not, you know, big democratic energy. It's individual candidates that have this affordability message and are communicating as a naval pilot, as a CIA officer or a community organizer.

59:20And this can be for everybody. So Trump is also now giving us a pretty big opportunity. On the one hand, he's been going after comedians, and he's trying to get Kimmel canceled. He's angry about Seth Meyers every other day. He's tearing down parts of the White House, which was a strange choice, which I tried to walk to see it, and they've built giant walls so that we don't see the construction site. And, you know, Trump is not doing as many rallies as he used to do. He's really kind of ensconced now in Mar-a-Lago and the White House at his Great Gatsby parties. He's tweeting out photos of marble bathrooms.

1:00:02Even some of his top staff now are living on military bases. They've isolated themselves in a lot of ways. is like, do we now have the opportunity to say, hey, they're the hall monitors and out-of-touch scolds. We're the ones that actually understand what's going on. And is there a way, to me, is there a way to have a unifying agenda that does what Hassan is talking about, but is one that is appealing to maybe not every single most centrist Democrat, but a broad enough and big enough agenda that you would like and Tim would like and Jessica would like that we can get behind? I just think, I just come at this from, as a former strategist, I was a commons person for most of my career and I did campaigns from state legislative races to judges races to presidentials.

1:00:54Yes, I worked in the White House. I don't know if you'd agree with me here, Tim, but I think that the wrong, the answer is not, okay, just these five things and then da-da-da-da. I think the answer is about the strategy and the what things you put under your strategy depends on what candidate you are and where you are running. Because coming up in 2026, there are gubernatorial races. There are state legislative races like 2026 and frankly, 2027 are really about 2028 and then 2030. And you have to win state legislative seats. You have to win the governor's races, but you also, you know, you should want to take back the House and the Senate.

1:01:33Okay, and how do you do that? It is not by saying we only do these five things right here. No, it is about what is the strategy. And the strategy does have to be touch grass, talk to people. You need to understand your constituents and your community. So whether it's Abigail Spanberger, Mikey Sherrill, or Zora Mandami, the thing, to Jessica's point, that they all did well is they understood what the people wanted. Affordability in Jersey and Virginia also meant energy. Energy prices are way up. One of the things that Mikey Sherrill said that people got behind is that she wanted to declare a state of emergency on energy on day one.

1:02:08And that is what she plans to do. I talked to a lot of, I talked to the folks whose job it was to go out there and organize African-American voters in New Jersey. and they said for the black voters in New Jersey that they talked to, that for them it was bigger than Mikey Sherrill. They were dealing with all of these issues that they listed that had to do with affordability and whatnot, and they felt like what was happening in the other states and places in this country, voting for Mikey Sherrill was going to keep that from happening because Jack Trittorelli was very much so aligned with Donald Trump.

1:02:38So I think that you have to just stay close to the issues and the races, but the answer is not the party apparatus says this is, The answer is not those policy papers that these people keep putting out. That's not the answer from my perspective, because that's not how you win races by campaigning. And you go out there and you talk to people and you earn their votes. You do not win a race by a policy paper. And I just think that there's all this focus on how can we align on these five issues and not a focus on what is our strategy. Is our strategy staying close to the people? It's why Democrats, the shutdown fight, it is terrible for people in this country who work in the federal government.

1:03:18That is absolutely terrible. What the Democrats are doing is, at the end of the day, it's going to benefit all of those people because they are fighting. But they settled on a strategy. Isn't this a good example, though, this shutdown, exactly what we're talking about, which is Democrats chose an issue. I was skeptical of every choice. To be honest, I didn't think there was a good option for Democrats for not playing with the best hand. But we chose health care. We chose it, and we said we're going to take this to its logical conclusion. And it's worked better than anyone, I think, really predicted.

1:03:50But can I just note, they didn't just choose health care. They chose a very specific thing that was happening in Congress that was tangible, that connected to people's everyday lives that they could see. And so when I say we don't need to choose all the – like, that was a strategy. Exactly. No, I'm agreeing with you. I'm agreeing with you. Yeah, I just want, we're getting, I think, I was having fun, by the way. We could do a whole other hour. Yeah, and I think the disagreement, I think the disagreement is necessary. I also would say, I'm also like, you know, I'm pretty easy to please. I mean, like, Zoron had me.

1:04:19Like, I don't know what more you people want from me, you know? I voted for three straight Democratic presidents, and I was going to vote for Zoron for mayor. So I'm pretty easy to please. So you can get me on board. Here's what you have to do. We'll get this. Some specific things. Have some fucking balls. Like, run a fucking campaign. Tell us what your campaign is about. Don't be a fascist. And be able to talk. And be able to talk. And be able to communicate to people and lift them up. And, like, it's, that seems like that isn't that hard, but it's kind of been for us for the last 10 years. But, like, that's how I would summarize it.

1:04:53I do think, you know, we're coming from behind in part because I think we've paid for having, like, if you were someone coming up in politics and you see who the standard bearers of our party have been for the last 10 years, you might not know exactly the Democrats used to be fun and cool. So we have one minute left. Hassan, final thought. Yeah, we got to get rid of the gerontocracy within the party. Down with the seniority structure that we have. We need real whips in the party. This is something that I talk to you about. This is something that I talk to the Pajans about every single time. If you have people who don't want to play ball.

1:05:29I'm sorry, what kind of whips? Like, you know it. I don't. I don't. That's like whipping votes. I don't mean it in the... Unless it's Joe Manchin, in which case, you know, maybe... I'm kidding. Of course, I can't use spicy language here. But we need to make sure that we earn the trust of the working class back. And I think that they have been hyper-focused on culture war narratives. And the only reason why they've been hyper-focused on culture war narratives is because we have not done enough on the left flank to say, no, we are with you. We will fight for you. We're going to make sure that we solve your economic hardships.

1:06:10And Jessica, you're just going to go back in there and you're going to fight all these people and you're going to defeat them for us. Yeah. You got this girl. But I agree with all of what was just said as the kind of final wrap up stuff. But, you know, this idea you need to be able to talk. You need to be able to talk where I talk. You don't need to be able to talk for three hours with people who agree with you. You know, it's easy. I launched a podcast last year like everybody else. I can get anyone who's going to be running for president to come on my pod. They're dying to do it. The tougher conversations are the ones that we need to be having because that's how you can get in people's faces and say, that isn't what my party stands for.

1:06:51We're not a communist party. We're not a socialist party. We're a big tent part. Sorry. We're a big tent that includes some socialists. Yeah. A democratic socialist is not a socialist. I mean, they use these words interchangeably. Asana was pro-USSR this week. We're wrapping it up. We're ending on a high note. Are we having fun? Are we having fun? All right. And I do think, by the way, I hear, look, what's great about being part of a big coalition is being comfortable with the moments of tension and discomfort and disagreement because Republicans can't. You're right. They've been a little less scoldy.

1:07:29But they also are running to squash dissent because they're not comfortable with discomfort. They're trying to tell people that politics is easy and there's never any time where you need to feel conflicted or bad or that anything is hard. That's kind of part of the appeal of fascism. Democratic politics can be tough. Democracy can be tough. But we are part of a big coalition. And I just think we can all have fun together. All right. Thanks everybody Thanks for coming to this And thank you to Jessica Tarlow, Tim Miller, Hassan Piker And Simone Sanders Yeah

1:08:10Joining us live here at Crooked Con He's one of the Democratic Party's loudest voices Calling out the dangers of the Trump administration Welcome, Senator Chris Murphy. Hey, thanks, Dan. Hey, everybody. Before we get started, I would note the senator has a vote, so we're going to probably have to wrap this up a little about five minutes early because we can't let him miss the vote, but we're going to be here for as long as we possibly can. All right. Let's start with the good stuff. Yeah. So the mood, as you can tell in this room, is much better because of what happened on Tuesday. How are you interpreting those results?

1:08:45Well, democracy is, for the time being, still alive and well. And listen, obviously, the election on Tuesday was first and foremost a referendum on Trump's corruption, his chaos. It was an important statement in every corner of the country that the American public are not ready to turn our government over to a would-be dictator. But there's another message, I think, that comes from Tuesday as well. and it's one that I hope Democrats are able to learn, which is that people want an opposition party that is willing to stand up and fight in this country. It is not coincidental that we got that big victory at the first moment when the Democratic Party is showing real resolve, is showing a willingness to stand up to this guy.

1:09:39And so as I've said over the last few days, it's important for us to hear the voters and continue the fight that we're engaged in right now. So it was, I think, a really important moment. I think the result of Tuesday will be that a lot of folks who maybe had been thinking of sitting on the sidelines, some of the corporate elites, the higher education elites, the legal elites who were maybe thinking that Trump had already won this fight will now realize that, right, the fight is still on. And I think it ends up giving confidence to a lot of people and a lot of institutional players all around the country to maybe re-enter the fight to save democratic norms and the foundation of our democracy.

1:10:20Obviously, huge wins, but these wins are mostly in bluish states, right? New Jersey, Virginia, two states, Kamala Harris won, California. I mean, Georgia is obviously the exception. Do you worry that there's maybe a danger of over-reading this, right, to think maybe it kind of as Democrats did after 2022, that the voters are with us? I mean, like you can ignore some of the hard questions that still exist after 2024? I think that's exactly right. I think it's interesting that the party has not been able, I think thus far, to find the oxygen to do a real autopsy as to how we got to this point. And that's understandable at some level because we've had to be engaged in this, I mean, just epic scale fight to save the country.

1:11:07But the reality is, if you look at the United States Senate, the best right now that Senate Democrats can do if we run the table is 52 seats, because right now, for the time being, we're not competitive in a lot of states that just a decade ago we were competitive in. And so we do have to wrestle with why we have lost a lot of low-income voters? Why rural areas have abandoned Democrats? And Trump will make us more electable in some of those places, but it probably doesn't get us over the hump in a place like Missouri or Florida, where just two seconds ago we were running candidates that won. So I am certainly worried about the fact that the party has only 12 months to go before the midterm election and maybe hasn't done enough of that reckoning with what went wrong that will allow us to once again be a national party able to win everywhere.

1:12:05Not that I expect you to have all the answers here, but one of the reasons we're all gathered here together is to try to figure out questions like this. Do you have some thoughts on how Democrats get back to a world where we can win the Ohio's, the Iowa's, the Montana's, or even some states in the South, some things we should do differently, different kind of candidates we should be open to? Yeah, I do. And I'll give you sort of three simple ideas. First, I just do believe that it's not a mistake that the only person in our party that draws crowds of 50 ,000, 60 ,000, 70 ,000 is Bernie Sanders and AOC.

1:12:41I just think you have to tell a story, and you obviously are better at this than anybody, but you have to tell a story, a narrative. And that narrative has to not only tell you how we're going to make your lives better, but it has to tell people who's screwing them. And there's a true story out there about the corporate class, the billionaire class, consolidated economic power, making people's lives miserable in this country. And the Democratic Party has become this sort of technocratic party that only talks about solutions, solutions that are largely about just rearranging the pieces on the existing marketplace playing field.

1:13:18We've gotta be a party that talks about who has too much power and exactly how we are going to radically and immediately shift power from people who have too much of it to people who have not enough of it. The second thing we have to do is become a big tent party again. And I know this is a tough conversation for our party, but if it were up to me, we would be a party with two big tent poles, a tent pole that talks about unrigging our economy and a tent pole that talks about unrigging our democracy, right? getting big money, anonymous money, billionaire money out of politics. And by the way, like admitting that you have to do big things to do to do that, like if it takes a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics, we should be for a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics.

1:14:11But Dan, that means that means that you are letting people into the tent, perhaps nominating candidates or being present in areas where, you know, folks might not be with us on all of the social and cultural issues, might not even not be with us on, you know, issues that I care deeply about like guns, but I just think we have a better chance of convincing them if they step inside because they align with us on a higher minimum wage or on campaign finance reform. So I just think we have to become that big tent party again. And then the last suggestion I'd have is just how we spend our money. We've been corrupted by a consultant class in the democratic party.

1:14:49That tells us to spend money only on 30 second TV ads and digital ads. The Republican party goes out and builds a permanent messaging and mobilization infrastructure. We talk about that all the time, but we ended up spending almost all of our money on ads that disappear as soon as the last election is over. And so if you want to win in this country as a democratic party, be a big tent, be a pugilistically populist party, and spend money on permanent messaging and mobilization infrastructure. Speaking of populism, what do you make of Zoran Mondani's win in New York City and some of the discomfort that some Democrats, including some of the Democratic leadership, have had with that sort of candidate?

1:15:35It almost got to the point of being hilarious. You look at Momdami's interviews in the final days of the campaign, and you couldn't ask him a question that he didn't answer by talking about the cost of living in New York, right? I mean, he was so laser-like focused on cost. There was a survey done of Democratic social media posts maybe two or three years ago, and it showed the percentage of our social media communications that talk about the economy. You know what the percentage was? 10%. One out of 10 messages from the Democratic Party is about economics. Now, we were talking about a lot of other stuff that's really important, but when you only spend 10 % of your time talking about economics, people start to take the hint that maybe you are not going to fight as hard as you say you're going to fight when you get into office.

1:16:23So that relentless focus on the economy. Second, just being authentic and not being worried about making mistakes in your communication, not vetting every single thing you say through communications professionals. And then like a realization that if you don't, listen, I don't agree with Zoran on everything, but like you are actually perceived as illegitimate to voters if all of your views are inside the 40 yard lines. Like if you don't have one or two things that a voter vehemently disagrees with you on, they get suspicious of you. And so just being true to what you, and also they have a bullshit sensitivity that voters probably didn't have as acutely decades ago.

1:17:09And so if you aren't authentic, if you don't have a couple views that are a little outside of the mainstream, you are actually not perceived as real and thus not electable as a Democrat in this country today. Let's talk about the shutdown, right? We are, I don't even know what day we're on now, but it's the longest shutdown in history. Some of the people who are here today are people who would be at work in the federal government somewhere were it not for the shutdown. You know, there's been all this talk since the, you know, right before the election, even after election, about some group of Senate Democrats who are negotiating with or open to negotiating with Republicans around some sort of deal to open the government exchange for a vote on the Obamacare subsidies.

1:17:50Sort of what is the status of those negotiations you can tell us? And what do you think Democrats should need in exchange to end the shutdown? Well, I mean, first, let me say this. In this audience, I know our people that, A, right now, have been furloughed, have been without a paycheck for over a month. People in this audience who have been illegally fired from their jobs. First and foremost, let me just say from the bottom of my heart, thank you for what you have done for this country. Thank you for the sacrifice that you have made.

1:18:23So I went down to South Florida on Monday with Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith. And we went down there because in South Florida is the highest concentration of people who have ACA plans. In some parts of South Florida, 25 % of residents have an ACA plan. And if these premium increases go into effect, and you're talking about premiums doubling or tripling for folks across the country, but particularly in this area where we have a high concentration, we're talking about a meltdown of the health care system. And so, yes, there is deep pain in a shutdown. People are not getting paid. Food stamp benefits are at risk.

1:19:04Obviously, travel gets interrupted. But if we don't stop these premium increases from going into effect, there is life and death pain as well. And so it is important for my colleagues to realize that there is no good choice here. that Republicans have put us in an impossible position. Listen, for me, coming off of Tuesday, when the people of this country told Democrats to fight, it would be heartbreaking for Democrats to make an immediate decision to stop fighting.

1:19:42So, I guess the question is, how does it end, right? There is a Senate vote without a guarantee of a House vote. That's fake. You're not actually solving. You're getting something, but the people who are premiums going up are getting nothing. I really feel you guys are in an impossible position of you're negotiating with people or you're standing off against people who do not seem to care about hurting their own voters. You're in Florida, which is the highest percentage of people on plans, people get the subsidies. The subsidies largely benefit people in states that did not expand Medicaid, which are red states.

1:20:26So how do you sort of think about how to bring this thing to a close when there's no good faith partner to negotiate with here? Yeah, I think it's charitable to suggest that they don't care about hurting their voters. they actually do seem to care about hurting their voters in that they are deliberately trying to make the shutdown as painful as possible. These are nihilists, right, that we're dealing with, which makes it hard. I mean, listen, I think you have to listen to Donald Trump. What did he say on Tuesday morning? He said that the shutdown is hurting Republicans. We should realize that most Americans have not actually gone on to the website to see what their new premium increase is.

1:21:11Many of the rates were just posted a few days ago. We should understand that Donald Trump's pollsters are telling their party's leaders that they are going to lose the midterms. They're going to lose both the House and the Senate if they don't stop these premium increases from going into effect. And so I just think we have to have faith that there are a lot of reasons why the Republicans, as this nightmare of premium increases starts to become more real, are going to be willing to sit down and cut a deal. We made an offer just an hour ago to Republicans in which we said, listen, we will vote to end the shutdown today for a simple one-year extension of these premiums.

1:22:01Previously, we've been talking about two or three years. We made a really, really simple offer here. I think as the days go on, it is going to be much harder for them to say, no, we can be reasonable. We were reasonable in the offer we made today. But to fold at this point, I think ultimately, A, doesn't help the people we're trying to help in our healthcare system, but also empowers Trump to act more brazenly and more illegally, knowing that the Democratic Party really, in the end, doesn't have the stuff necessary to stand up to him. So I think if we don't get something for the people we say we have been fighting for, not only is there an immediate impact on them, but there is potential more pain coming from an emboldened President Trump.

1:22:48You know, this is the point in a typical election cycle where the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader become laser focused on nothing more than keeping their jobs in the majority. Like what just maybe maybe some there may be some answers, but help me understand why when Trump says it's hurting the shutdown, it's hurting them. The shutdown is hurting them. Trump's pollster said it would be a 12 point shift in the generic ballot if they didn't let these things expire. and he said that before the shutdown. What are they doing? I don't really understand the thinking here. There's just no logic to it.

1:23:26You're asking me to try to explain what Republicans are thinking. You go to the gym with these people. I mean, you see them in the hallway. You talk to more Republicans than these guys do, I think. Certainly I do. Yeah, I mean, they don't have any independent thought process. They are employees, right? They are. They just take direction from Donald Trump. Now, he did give him a direction on Tuesday morning in the Senate. He said, go and change the rules of the Senate. But Senate Republicans sort of scratched their head because they just got wiped out on Tuesday. They are now increasingly likely to lose the Senate next November.

1:24:04And they thought to themselves, do I really want to change the rules so that when Democrats take control, we can very easily pass into law Roe versus Wade and universal background checks. and an extension of the voting rights law with 50 votes. So maybe there are very limited moments when they choose not to follow his instructions. But no, by and large, even if he is telling them to take a barrel over Niagara Falls, right, which is what they're kind of doing right now politically, they are going to follow instructions like good cult members do. It was very funny. I watched the video, the very strange video that Trump put out arguing for eliminating the filibuster.

1:24:49And it sounded to me almost exactly like a bizarre version of a 2021 Potsdamerica episode. We were selling abolish the filibuster shirts back in those days when you guys tried to get the voting rights bill passed. Let's talk about a little general strategy here, right? Like one of the things that you have become very known for since Trump took office is like just being a very vocal spokesperson who's sort of like calling it as it is, not mincing words around the dangers to democracy, to our freedoms, to Trump becoming authoritarian. Now, at the same time, you have Mondani winning this race on affordability.

1:25:25There's this report, the Tiding to Win, that came out last week that's like Democrats have to talk about economic issues. That's what everyone cares about. How do you sort of think about the balance of these obviously critical assaults on democracy that we know are of great interest to the people in this room, but maybe not to swing the earth. How do you sort of think about your messaging? Yeah, so I don't think of it as two different stories. I think of it as the same story, okay? It's not a story about his assault on costs and making people's economic lives more miserable and his assault on democracy.

1:25:58It's the same story in this sense. What is his goal as president? His goal as president is to turn the federal government into a vehicle to enrich himself and his billionaire friends and to steal from people, to raise your costs in order to reserve enough money so that he can give it all to his pals. That's deeply unpopular. Nobody wants that, right? The Big Beautiful Bill is the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich. In the history of the country, it's wildly unpopular. So how do you get away with just stealing from regular people? Well, you destroy the rule of law.

1:26:31You destroy the ability of people to dissent, to protest, and to stand up and object in elections. And so, yes, he is trying to turn our government into a kleptocratic oligarchy in which he hurts us to help he and his Mar-a-Lago cronies. The only way he gets away with that is to destroy the democracy. So now I just explained that in 60 seconds, but you can actually explain that in 20 seconds. And so I think as long as we tell those two twin stories together, people will get it. And I also do think that we maybe have overlearned our lesson a little bit from 2024. Okay, it is true. Like our democracy message did not land in 2024, in large part because people were like, why do I want to save this version of democracy, right?

1:27:16Like this version of democracy sucks. It just works for the elites and the billionaire class. But that doesn't mean that people aren't plugged in right now to the actual threat. And the polling tells you that 80 % of the American public thinks that we are in a political crisis right now, that more than half of Americans believe that their right to free speech is at risk. So I think you tell it together, and I think that you have confidence that the democracy part of the story actually does resonate and turn people out in a way that maybe it didn't a year ago. That's how I think about it. It's interesting.

1:27:48I think that you hit earlier when you were talking about how we reach these voters in these red states, what I think is the key solution to this challenge, which is we need a reform agenda. because we have to be the, what happened in the Biden era is we became the party that was defending democracy as is. We were the status quo people. But if we can be the party that's trying to reform democracy, to get the corporate power out, get the money out, like that's a different message. And it gives people a sense that we're fighting for something better than we currently have. So when I entered politics 20, 30 years ago, so campaign finance reform, right?

1:28:26Getting big, corrupt money out of politics was like a top three or four issue for Democrats. And something happened over the last 20 years in which it barely cracked the top 10. Some of it is that our democracy reform agenda migrated from big money to voting rights. And that's for good reason, because they were and still are trying to stop people from voting. You were going to ban dark money in the John Lewis bill last year. or four years, one of those. Right, but it wasn't necessarily what we led with. It is just true, though, that Trump did get elected on his promise to drain the swamp. People do want to vote for a party that they think is going to clean up Washington.

1:29:06Right now, they don't really believe that we're much less corrupt than they are, in part because they don't hear us talking every single day about that reform agenda. And so that's why I get back to my prescription, my amateur prescription for the party, which is make the tentpole, make 75 % of what you talk about, unrigging the economy, big ideas to put money in people's pockets, simple ideas like Mom Domini had, and talk all the time about what you're going to do to unrig the democracy and make the influential have less power and regular people have more power. One last quick question here because we know we got to get you to this vote.

1:29:49One of the great concerns of people in this audience is that the Republicans are going to do something to try to steal the 2026 elections. How are you thinking about that problem, anything you guys are doing to get ahead of it? Yeah, I think continuing to invest in good local and state leaders, which is why these elections were so critical. We made a smart play, which was to put a lot of focus and investment on governors and mayors who are the actual people who administer elections. And so I think we can have some confidence that right now we in the states that are going to matter, we have people who are going to protect against these efforts to try to corrupt elections.

1:30:27I think we have to be in a real active public and private conversation with social media companies that right now are being corrupted by Donald Trump to essentially allow for election distortion and interference to exist on their platforms. That if they do that and Donald Trump doesn't win, that they should keep their records and that there's going to be a price to be paid for essentially helping Donald Trump try to engage in election intimidation.

1:30:57And then lastly, just keep on turning out, right? There's this political science that says if 3 % of a population is engaged in regular protest, it just becomes the secret sauce which puts enough sand in the gears to protect your democracy from destruction. election the institutional players who would have to fold to essentially steal an election are just a little bit less likely to do that and that includes the supreme court right who are full of politicians who want to do trump's bidding but don't want to get too far outside of the political mainstream they are all watching you they are all watching whether no kings is just a once a year phenomenon or if it becomes a once a month phenomenon and so the amount of buying you need to steal an election is pretty large.

1:31:48And public protest at scale is probably the key ingredient to keep the folks we need to stay straight from being corrupted when Donald Trump asks. So I wish it were more simple than that, but there's nothing more important than your ability to be present and to organize your friends and neighbors in being present during this moment. that is a great place to end it please give it up for Senator Chris Murphy thanks for being here thanks guys

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