The Search for an Exciting Moderate

26:44Yeah. And I mean, I think this is a you know, this is where I think the substance of the positions and the communications methods sort of come together. Right. And so, you know, both Biden and Harris and Clinton for all sort of different reasons. But none of them were really kind of like sit down and gab at length kind of politicians who made you feel like they could explain in sort of some level of nuance what it was they really thought about these different kinds of issues. And that hurts you, right? Because like this is a big diverse country. You end up with two political parties, two candidates down there.

27:23You're trying to assemble a somewhat messy coalition. and there's going to have to be some like fuzzing of these issues. There's going to have to be some outreach to the middle, but you've got to get people on the left on board. I mean, look at this primary happening in Michigan, right? It's very bitter. Somebody's going to win. Somebody's going to lose. They're going to need to get the people who voted for the other person to come vote for them, which is going to mean whoever wins that is going to have to re-describe whatever it is they were saying about Israel or whatever else in a way that is at least acceptable to the other person's voters.

28:00And like, that's hard, right? I mean, that's the real art of politics. I, as a journalist, I observe that this occurs and that the good politicians do it. But I do feel like there has been a... I remember when Harris was campaigning with Liz Cheney, and there was a lot of people from the left were like, this is terrible. How can you work with Liz Cheney. And then conversely, Harris wasn't like moving toward Liz Cheney's positions at all on any kind of issues. Right. And so I think that wound up being a real kind of like dead zone version of like trying to see more moderate, but not actually making anybody like her better, but raising these different kinds of questions.

28:45And it was just challenging, I think, for her to convey to people exactly what she was trying to say about this. Like, why should somebody who was more conservative than Kamala Harris vote for her anyway? Because that's clearly what that was meant to convey, right? Like, that was the purpose of them being up on stage. But it's like, it's a hard argument to make. I mean, I don't have a big difficulty making the case to say, like, Trump, like he's corrupt January 6th. But like, also, I just don't agree with him. Like, he's cutting healthcare, he's doing tax cuts for the rich, like these aren't things that I agree with.

29:26But she wanted to make a pitch to people like my father-in-law, who's like, pretty conservative, but also really doesn't like Trump, you know, and he, I think he voted for Harris at the end of the day, and then he votes for Greg Abbott down ballot. But there's all these people out there who are conflicted. And you do have to come up with some way to build a bridge to them that also, you know, conveys to progressives that like, if Democrats win the election, progressive public policy is going to happen. So you're running the presidential campaign of your dream Democrat who's willing to emphasize moderation.

30:01What moderate stances are you telling them to emphasize where the Democratic Party's position is most out of step with even its own even its own voters on high salience issues right which are issues voters rate as most important to them or just issues that are going to come up in the campaign I mean we just talked about sort of affirmative action Supreme Court has now ruled on using race as a factor and in college admissions doesn't seem like that is going to be a hot button issue in 2028. And so you could argue that just purely on a political level, moderating on that in a sort of a loud way.

30:40Probably out. Yeah. Yeah. And also can feel a little inauthentic and opportunistic. Absolutely. You know. So what do you think are the big ones? So, you know, I think there's like a few different buckets here. But immigration is a big one, right? Because people are, there's a big backlash against what ICE has been doing. All Democrats are going to give voice to that, et cetera, et cetera. But this continues to be one of Donald Trump's strong issue areas. And you see that in polling of even Democrats, there's real concern about reopening sort of the gates to people seeking asylum. Now, this is not where I am at personally.

31:23I'm quite left on immigration, but I can see the numbers here. And you need to convey to people both that there's going to be a meaningful recalibration from what Trump is doing, but also that we have heard what people were saying during the Biden administration and are not going to rerun that experience. I think that's like a big one. I think some of these trans issues are not that salient with the public, but they get brought up a lot by Republicans. You have to be prepared to answer questions about them. And I think you have to be prepared to go into some level of nuance because you want to convey like real empathy, real support for people's rights.

32:07But also to understand, I think that there is a set of sex segregated spaces where most Americans want biology as defined by chromosomes to be the controlling factor there. I think you have to at least throw a bone to the median voter on this kind of topic when you're addressing it. And then I think there's this set of things, education is, I think, the most prominent of them. But can you show people that Democrats understand that voters support the social safety net, voters support public services, voters support taxing the wealthy, but also voters want to see change and reform in the state, in the government?

32:55that when Doge was first rolled out, people were really excited about it, right? And it like it all went to shit. But the idea of like, I am willing to take on the stakeholders inside the bureaucracy and do something good, like that means a lot to people in terms of like, what are their doubts about Democratic Party governance? You know, when people live in the Midwest, and they think about California or New York, right, they think maybe a nice place to live if you're like incredibly wealthy, but they don't think what they've really got there is like an incredible balance of taxes and quality public services, right?

33:33It's like the weather is amazing in California. The culture and nightlife in New York is fantastic. But people look at those higher taxes and they're like, well, what are you getting for that money, right? And people who live in those states, like you're in California, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like California is amazing, but none of the Californians are now are like the thing that is amazing about California is that the high levels of taxes that I pay is like really paying off in my day-to-day life, right? And like we know that between ourselves. And, you know, that is something that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, I think, both tried to give voice to, even as they tried to give healthcare, EITC, other things to help the needy.

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37:11part of the the challenge we're landing on here is um that nuance and um sort of uh thoughtful explanations don't uh first of all people aren't as good at at giving them sure and and so there's a skill level with politicians that we talked about and even if you are skilled there's just the ability to get that message out, right? And so people see ICE abuses and, you know, you've got people even like Bill Kristol now, every time there's an ICE story is tweeting abolish ICE, abolish ICE, right? And I get it because you feel this absolute fury and frustration for what they're doing. And look, I could make an argument that yes, ICE is a relatively new organization and that we could put immigration enforcement back at, you know, some parts of it at DHS and DOJ and we could do the bureaucratic chart and everything.

38:04And I am someone who's comfortable saying, yes, we still need immigration enforcement, obviously. But if you just say abolish ICE, of course, abolish immigration and custom enforcement makes a lot of people think, oh, well, then you don't want immigration enforcement anymore. When the reality is like, if I was a Democratic president, I'd go and I was heading into office after this. Yeah, I would fire most of the people in ICE because I think they've hired a bunch of unqualified psychopaths. I would still want immigration enforcement somehow, but that is, it takes a while to explain all of that, you know?

38:38And I just wonder how that, I wonder how that plays out in a Democratic presidential primary. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, yes, nuance is hard. On the other hand, I don't think it's actually that hard to say. We need to totally revamp how ICE works, or even abolish it, whatever. But we need a secure border. James Tallarico had this line, and he's like, we've got to have like a door with a beautiful welcome mat and also a lock, right? That's like a good, you know, metaphor, right? So he's smart. But it's not impossible to come up with these kind of formulas. But I actually think is a little bit harder, you know, for people who are down ballot, and maybe even for presidential candidates is navigating the kind of interest group, Minefield, where there's a lot of stakeholders who have very specific things that they want you to say.

39:30And politicians get these kind of memos from their staffs that are like, don't say this, do say that, don't say this, do say that. And they're really nervous. They're trying to navigate in this really precise way. I don't want to lose this endorsement. I don't want to get scored down on something else like this. And it makes it hard for them to talk like people. Like we all know Democrats in our lives who are much more nuanced, I think, than the members of Congress who we see on our televisions. And it's because they're not under the same kind of pressure and the same kind of scrutiny to sort of talk in like a relaxed, somewhat normal way about things.

40:17But it takes courage. I mean, this is why, again, I mean, to presidential campaigns, more to change things, because the reality facing anyone who wants to run for president is you're probably going to lose, right? Like, it's just, it's hard. It's hard to win. And I think a lot of the best presidential candidates are people who started off as real underdogs, right? I mean, again, that's something that Trump and Obama have in common, right? It took a certain amount of courage to even launch those campaigns and to work on them and to do it. The last three times Democrats have kind of had this sort of like overdog nominee who was like handed down by the weight of the past.

40:54And that's not great because people who are taking that path, just their incentive is toward being cautious all the time. So then you come across as a really cautious, really calculating person rather than as somebody who was like, I'm going to take my shot, you know, and I'm going to speak from the heart. And no politician is ever like truly authentic, truly, truly speaking from the heart. But there is a difference between someone who's like, I'm going to go for it. And someone who's like, well, this is coming my way, so I'm going to not fuck it up. At one point, you write that a center left candidate who is, quote, charismatic and skilled at contemporary social media can talk above the groups directly to voters.

41:36Totally agree. But you mentioned Obama is sort of coming up as an underdog and getting attention and everyone else has sort of been handed down. Like, how many Democratic politicians can you name in the last decade who've been able to command national attention with a message of disciplined moderation? Well, I know. I mean, you know, most of the people who've come up and have commanded attention have been very left wing, you know, and I think that's a big part of the reason why the whole discourse keeps getting sort of dragged to the left. Younger people are just more left wing, you know, and particularly within the Democratic Party.

42:14So you have your AOCs, you have your Mamdani's. And these are the people who've shown real flair for communication skills. I think you have also seen from both of them, you know, impulses toward AOC had this whole bit about like how we need to deregulate sunscreen, essentially, right? And Mamdani has some like small business kind of thing and stuff that he's doing that impresses people. So this stuff can work for different kinds of politicians with different kinds of ethoses. Also, you know, branding, I think actually is not what matters most. I mean, Obama in 2008, I think, was understood as the progressive sort of choice in that primary, primarily because of Iraq, you know, which was was really, really important to people at that time.

43:00So you look back and you say, well, he was actually the one who was like taking on teachers unions. He was the one who actually had more support from sort of like Wall Street and finance. He was the preferred candidate of a lot of the red state members of Congress at that time. um he uh he tacked to the center on affirmative action um all these other kinds of things but at the time like progressives really liked him because he was the one who said like this war is really fucked up and you know that is the advantage of taking a position that is vindicated by time um you know it's like always good to have like good judgment on the substance of questions And so I think anyone, including people who are sort of understood today to be progressive, could also move to the center on these kind of issues that we've been talking about.

43:52Because when I talk to really left wing people about like, what are they fired up about? It's like not actually the things that the public has the biggest doubts for Democrats about. I think if you want to be a Medicare for all candidate, there's like real problems of program design that you sort of need to confront. But it's not a political problem in the way that the sense that you want to open the borders is. You know, abolish ICE, maybe not a slogan I would advise people to go with. But if you can convey the idea that abolishing ICE doesn't mean reopening to millions of new asylum seekers, like that could be totally fine.

44:32Maybe it's easier, actually, to moderate on aspects of immigration if you have this left-wing slogan rather than if you're coming at it backwards. I'm not totally sure how that needle needs to be threaded ultimately. I just think it's that you have to give voters some level of reassurance about their biggest doubts about Democrats, especially if you're going to say we're going to have a whole new approach to Israel. we're going to take on the vested interests in the healthcare system, you're not going to pull that off while also alienating 60 % of the population around cultural issues. If you want to say we're going to have this populist anchor, then I think you just have to follow the logic of that in a compelling way and say, look, if you can agree with me that healthcare should be a right rather than a privilege, Like, I want you on my team.

45:27Like, I'm not going to take away your plastic straw, right? Like, because we're focused on the healthcare thing versus this sort of laundry list politics where it's like, you know, I got this for the healthcare. I got this for the childcare. I've got this on the plastic straws. I've got this on the immigration. I got this on the asylum, this on criminal justice. Like, that's a hard way to do politics. I am intrigued by your advice on candidates It's offering policy plans, which is don't do that. Less. Less, right. So like, you know, you're asked, how do you get to universal health care? And you say, it depends on the composition of Congress.

46:02What are you going to do about the deficit? We need to tax rich people and cut wasteful spending, but then not a lot more detail. I mean, the answers, those answers certainly have the virtue of being true. Of course, this all depends on Congress and all kinds of other circumstances that you can't predict in the heat of a campaign. In a campaign, as the primary goes on with the imaginary candidate we're talking about here, is it possible to dodge questions and attacks from your opponents about having no plans? And it does seem like that was part of like Kamala Harris's vagueness was part of sort of the negative coverage she received.

46:37Yeah. So one thing is like, with all this plan stuff, I'm trying to hold myself accountable a little bit because I was part of a wave of young at the time journalists who were really like, we got to see plans from these presidential candidates. And in retrospect, it's like, I wonder why we were so demanding of that, because that's not how the government works. Right. And like, we all know that. And so this is kind of, there was this faux sophistication coming from me. and from some of my colleagues, but I mean, specifically from me as well, to be demanding all this detail from people. And I think that if you can give real answers that make sense, that both journalists and voters will understand, actually, that like, the micro details of tax policy are written by Congress, and that the directionality of tax policy is like a numbers game, right?

47:35Like if we have a teeny tiny majority, it's gonna be hard to do very much. But if we have a big majority, we'll do a lot. And you try to say what kinds of things you wanna do. You know, with Harris, right? I mean, she was in this weird position where she was the vice president for an incumbent administration. She was saying, I mean, I remember the first time when she was doing a little rally and she said like, we're not going back. And I was like, yeah, you know, like I love that line, Because people really wanted both change, but also not Donald Trump. And so she seemed to convey that. But then she got the question like, well, in what way is this change but not Donald Trump?

48:16And she didn't have a great answer. The great thing about being a Democrat running when a Republican is president is that you don't have that same complicated question. It's like change that's not Donald Trump is just like, yeah, elected Democrat. Right? And then people do want to know something. Like, what does that mean? What are you going to do? How are you going to govern differently? And I'm not saying that you should dodge that question. I mean, again, implicit in all of this is that like, yeah, like rich people's taxes will go up. We're going to spend more money on subsidizing people's health care.

48:50We're going to, however we characterize what we're doing with ICE, it's like fewer people are going to be getting arrested in the interior of American cities. And then hopefully we can also say, but there's going to be a very secure border. You know, we're going to keep fighting crime. We're going to make crime even lower than it is now, you know, something like that. But do we really need to have this like 17 point plan like we had in the 2020 primary? Again, thinking about about 2008, right? There were all these articles written about different candidates, health care plans, and like Obama's plan didn't have a mandate.

49:24Right. And then he won the primary and then he won the election. And then Congress did want to do the mandate. So the mandate happened. But then in like the rule writing at HSS, it got watered down a little bit. Then there was like unrelated implementation problems. But then actually it was going pretty well. And like people liked Obamacare. But then the mandate got repealed. And then that maybe didn't. It's like so tedious. And in retrospect, I mean, it sure must have been a huge pain in your ass. And it wasn't mine. Like, why did we spend so much time talking about this? The challenge here is that a reason that these policy plans are developed in the context of a primary is to be used as a political cudgel against your opponents because you're running in a primary.

50:06And the truth is most of you have the same general position on most of the same issues. And you want to differentiate yourself from the other primary candidates. And so you put out a plan that is bolder and more ambitious, which is either it's more expensive or probably harder to achieve than the other candidates so that you can get on the debate stage and brag about that. And then, you know, I think it happened in an even more annoying way than the mandate in 2020, when I don't know how many of those debates ended up being just a conversation, not even a conversation, just a debate about Medicare for all and whose Medicare for all plan was the best.

50:48When then Joe Biden won and what did he like barely expanded anything? Yeah, but I mean, I gave some subsidies. That is one where I think it is important to remind people that like Joe Biden won that primary right after that huge shit show that actually his message of like, I'm just going to beat Donald Trump was like pretty compelling, actually, to Democratic primary voters. And he is not the single most like silver tongued person in the universe, certainly not a master of vertical video or whatever else it is. So I do think that there's like ways for younger politicians to tap into some of what worked for him there, right, in terms of like keeping the focus on like what do Democrats really care about?

51:35And it's beating Trump. It's not just beating Trump, right? I think Democrats care a lot about health care. And I think Democrats are quite exercised about some of the cruelty of these immigration enforcement actions. And if you can hit those three buttons in some kind of way and convince people that you're going to take action on those issues, like you could be, I think, conceivably pretty flexible on some other things if people believed that it was in pursuit of accomplishing these important goals. The Biden thing is interesting, though, because I think I don't see a lot of evidence that Biden ended up winning that primary because he staked out more moderate positions than the rest of the field.

52:22And in many ways, he sort of chased them on some of these issues. He he I think half raised his hands on raised his hand on decriminalizing the border on that one. And I think that he probably what helped him is he had universal name ID. He was Barack Obama's vice president. And so he sort of had a bit of an Obama halo. And then it was there was no one else left by the time it was just he and Bernie. Right. Well, and he did really well in the head to head matchup polling against Trump. Right. I mean, that, you know, people, Democrats these days, you know, read The New York Times when Nate Cohn tells them that like Elizabeth Warren is really unpopular and people like Joe Biden.

53:07Like that made a big difference. It did. Yeah. He just goes back to my the challenge I keep thinking about is like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, because she was just, you know, installed last minute. These are all people that their name ID came from virtue of them being political dynasties or someone else's vice president or and and the incentives to become nationally known and get attention. I feel like point towards language that is bolder, more ambitious, geared towards conflict, sometimes hyperbolic. and I'm trying to picture the candidate who practices discipline moderation who sort of breaks out in these, like, you know, I think about like an Andy Beshear, right?

53:56Like amazing track record, electoral record in Kentucky and still like a pretty mainstream Democrat, not like super conservative, but like I'm trying to picture Andy Beshear and I've seen him give some interviews. I've interviewed him myself, like really breaking out in a crowded primary with a message that's going to capture people. And that's the, I feel like we have a lot of center left candidates who may be electorally viable, but are not very good at getting attention. And then we have a lot of progressive candidates who are very good at getting attention and may not be electorally viable in swing states.

54:30So, right. So, you know, some of this, like, yes, right. Part of the deal with someone like Governor Bashir is that he's very disciplined, which I think is good for him winning elections in Kentucky, but it also denudes him of a certain amount of pizzazz, right, that could potentially be out there. Like one of the things that I think was interesting about Plattner wasn't just like the positions that he took, but that he seemed very like anything might happen in this interview, right? And that kind of kinetic energy is unusual in experienced politicians, because the way you kind of get to be almost a presidential contender is usually by being like quite controlled, you know, and like calm and you climb the state party ladder, and you make the right kind of people like you.

55:24And then suddenly you find yourself in a crowded presidential primary field. And like the challenge is to break through. And it's like a totally different kind of challenge, right? And I think somebody like Ruben Gallego, who has, through many twists and turns in his career, found himself as kind of like a moderate swing state senator, but just a couple of years ago was like the progressive challenger to Kyrsten Sinema. And before that was like the young guy in the state legislature who was trying to muscle Ed Pastor out of a House seat, right? And he has a little bit more of the looseness that kind of gets you attention, but is unusual in all kinds of politicians.

56:03We're seeing it more with left-wing politicians because they've been challenging incumbents, right? Only like a slightly crazy person runs against an entrenched house incumbent. Most of the people who do that lose, but a couple of them win. And then you're AOC, right? Because you took on this sort of suicide-run primary. You don't see as many people like that in the moderate lane, but I think it's possible, Right. Because it's about trying to be interesting and like trying to break through. And it is also about having the right issue positions. You know, I mean, so many people who are who care about electoral pragmatism, I think, really like Josh Shapiro.

56:43Right. Because he's doing incredibly well in the critical swing state. And I think that's really important. And it's also true that, you know, when he like speaks from the heart in a way that is moderate and compelling and makes you think like, OK, like this guy's for real. He tends to be talking about the Israel issue in a way that like it's just public opinion is not on his side, you know, and like that's that's a tough one. Like you can't you can't win by being moderate on something where everything is going the other way. Um, now that being said, like he has done some stuff in the state that is heterodox on energy.

57:23He's done stuff in the state that is heterodox on education. I think maybe if he talked more about those things, that can, you know, delivers the same kind of electoral pragmatism, but also actually connects more with things that Democrats themselves have mixed feelings about, you know, about like, how are these systems operating? Are we shaking them up? Are we governing well in our blue states? These kinds of things. but there's no getting around the fact that politics is hard.

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59:29joshapir is another one where it's like it's the the the center-left uh theory is there's often a lot of like this candidate is so great on paper and look at their electoral track record and you You know, Josh Shapiro is going to have a fantastic story to tell about that in a very, very important state. And look at how he's navigated the coalitions and approval rating, all that kind of stuff. And then it's not it's not just like I don't want to say it's a lack of charisma, but it's what is the story that you're telling about why you're running and why you're different from everyone else? And is that story cohesive and compelling versus cherry picking issues where you can say, see, this is why I'm different than the National Democratic Party and a little more moderate.

1:00:15And the thing that you hate about the National Democratic Party is is not the thing that you are going to hate about me, which can, again, really risk sounding like you read a polling memo. Yeah, although it also depends what people in our line of work decide that we are interested in, right? Like a very large share of media professionals live in New York City. And they personally are very interested in left-wing reformist politics in New York City where they live. And so things that happen in that vein get a lot of coverage. I don't think that's, it's not like wrong for people to be very passionate about politics in the city that they live in.

1:01:03I wish more people actually cared about the politics of the city within it. But it's distortionary in terms of like our understanding of national politics and like what's it all about, right? And something that I try to do that I think everybody has to try to do is exercise some discipline and responsibility for ourselves. That the most important races coming up in November are in Ohio. They're in Iowa. They're in Texas, Alaska, North Carolina. I have some personal connection to Texas through my wife's family. I have some personal connection to Maine where I am physically present right now. I don't have any connection to Iowa and Ohio.

1:01:45But like, I care a lot about the future of the country. So it's incumbent on me to like, learn to care about these states, right? Rob Sand is clearly doing something in Iowa that is compelling to people who used to vote for Democrats and stopped voting for Democrats. And they like Rob Sand. And so I'm trying to, like, I'm trying to get it, you know, like, because he's pretty charismatic. You know, he's an interesting guy. It conveys that there's something different about him, but it's not targeted at me. You know, and like that's that's why he's running in Iowa. Like that's what's good about it.

1:02:22I will say you're right that everyone needs to take responsibility for in the media and the professional class, like for what they emphasize and what they talk about. I will speak as someone who runs a media company who like we try to have everyone on. Yeah. And a lot of this is the attention that the person ends up commanding with audiences. Right. Like we we've talked to Mamdani a bunch of times. Very popular. Right. Not just with our audience, but like those clips travel beyond our audience. Right. And we will have, you know, Kate Connelly, who's in a much more important to the future of the country district to win when she's in town.

1:03:02and who knows, maybe it'll also be an incredibly viral clip, but our experience has been a lot of these candidates were in really important races that we ended up talking to. Like it doesn't go anywhere because people are like, well, I don't really want to, I'm not as excited about that. Oh, absolutely. And that's not going to stop us from doing it. We'll keep doing it. But eventually you want, and especially you want this as a candidate on a campaign, you want your message to reach the low information voters. and unfortunately the stuff that gets to the low information voters to people who don't pay as close attention to all this has to be stuff that goes viral you know and that's that's the the trick and this is i mean a huge frustration that i have with um a lot of the more moderate democrats is that they don't even want to try a lot of the time right that their attitude is look nationalizing things is bad for me.

1:03:55I do better if there's kind of less of a giant media glare on me. What I want to do is be well enough known among super high attention people that I can raise money. And then I want to talk to my local television station about my local issues. And I get why people come to that conclusion. And I think it's the advice that they're getting from the DCCC, from the DSCC. And it works within the kind of four walls of what it's designed to achieve. But then all these same people also come around to me and they're like, oh my God, I'm so frustrated. People think the only Democrats in the country are AOC and Mamdani.

1:04:36And it's like, well, because they do the interviews, right? And like, they'll go on your show. They'll go on Fox. They'll, you know, and some of it is like, you can be more devil may care in a safe district. And it's, it's a little bit of a loaded playing field, but also, you know, life's not fair as we, uh, they, they tell us not to tell our 11 year old that you're not supposed to waste kids with that message anymore. Uh, but like, I think it's an important point fundamentally. It's like, it is harder to be in a swing district. It just is, you know, the, the playing field is loaded against you.

1:05:13But like, you've got to try, right? You've got to try to be interesting. You've got to try to say, look, you know, if you look at Vincente Gonzalez, and Marie Glucicamp-Perez, and Don Davis, and Kate Conley, and Tom Suozzi, that there actually is something that we all have in common. We're not all just like, local people who are focused on our issues here, right? That Because they actually hang out together in D.C. They have common staff, common consultants, common fundraisers. There's a group of moderate Democrats, but they need to give some voice to like, what do we think? Who are we? Why are we the good people?

1:05:57And I give incredible credit to Bernie Sanders, who has been tireless about trying to promote politicians who he likes. And I hear so many other Democrats, and they're mad. that Bernie is promoting these people and that the people who they like aren't getting promoted. But it's like, well, who's going to promote them other than you? Yeah, that's what actually bothers me a lot is that they look at the insurgent candidates on the left and sort of the progressive outsiders with like umbrage. That's like the main feeling like, how dare you? And my candidate works really hard and has been just doing, you know, this is sort of like, Like the Haley Stevenson stuff has gotten better.

1:06:38I think the argument that people are making for her, but originally it was like, well, she's been there just working hard and give her credit for being there and working hard. And it's like, okay, I'm sure that's true if you know her, but like voters don't know that. And so they're gonna need a different kind of story there. Well, and also I know so many Democrats who want her to win this primary, but who don't want to fly to Michigan and campaign with her because it'll be embarrassing if they stand with her and she loses. But it'll be embarrassing to Bernie if Abdul loses. And he doesn't... He's doing the work, right?

1:07:15And there's no alternative to that in politics. And that's part of my message to the more moderate Democrats out there is don't just give up hope, but also don't just assume that we can keep endlessly staving off the left and, you know, pulling more rabbits out of the hat. Like somebody's got to run a campaign. Somebody's got to make the case. You've got to actually like articulate some daring positions on the issues. And if people yell at you, you have to explain why they're wrong. And like, you got to go on crooked and you probably got to go on Hassan Piker and, you know, do some interviews from people who don't agree with you and stand your ground.

1:07:58And that's, because that's how it's always been. You know, there's no, there's no like magic trick. Look, I know people have said it's not the issue that lost her the election, but the the ad that Kamala Harris dealt with about gender affirming care for undocumented immigrant prisoners. And, you know, the campaign was like, oh, we tested all the responses and the responses didn't do anything. And so we decided, like, not to talk about it at all. And I just I don't think that may be true in terms of testing the ads, but I think the candidate has to be able to tell a story about why they supported that, why they've changed their mind, if they have changed their mind, that that is acceptable to voters.

1:08:42Right. Like, I don't think ducking these issues or just trying to hide from them is it is not a an effective strategy on a presidential campaign level. Like some of the I remember Jonathan Martin wrote a piece a while back was like Democrats aren't focusing at all on maybe some of the most important Senate races. Like they don't get national attention like Roy Cooper or and I was like, well, Roy Cooper probably doesn't want a lot of attention on his race because he has enough money. He has raised quite a bit of money. He's ahead. And so what does Roy Cooper care if we're all talking about Roy Cooper's race?

1:09:13He probably doesn't. Probably rather us not. But you can't do that in a presidential primary. And the challenge is you're going to get a bunch of moderates in the presidential primary that don't know how to sort of make that argument and get that level of attention. Though the one person I've been thinking about this whole time and I thought about when I read your piece for the first time is Rahm. Like Rahm will be this person, right? Yeah, I mean, I mean, Rom is, I think, doing the right stuff. You know, he is getting attention to himself, people know his name, etc. You know, if I could, puppet master everything, I would say, look, is like a retread from the Obama White House, from the Clinton White House, who was ambassador to Japan, who, if he does gain some traction in the primary, we're going to be relitigating Lachlan McDonald.

1:10:00Like, that's not like I would love for Rom to take a step back and to mentor somebody else. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because clearly there is a demand for fresh faces and new voices. And like we can all everybody can see that. Right. And, you know, this is part of why I'm excited about Josh Turek and James Tallarico is like these are younger politicians. They are not part of the old kind of mess. I think they are kind of media savvy and no stuff. And they're not from the left wing of the party. They're just also not handed down by the establishment. Right. And like this can be done. But to an extent, some of the people, the Rahm Emanuel's of the world need to make room for other people and promote them or help them.

1:10:57rather than saying, look, the same cohort that was telling you in 2016, like, don't listen to Bernie. We know how to win. And then they didn't win. And now we're 10 years into that. And it's not a healthy dynamic. Last question on this. So who do you like in 28 as a potential candidate who could carry this message? Sure. You know, what I tell people is like, we know the universe of statewide elected officials in the critical swing states, right? It's Kelly and Gallego in Arizona. It's Whitmer in Michigan. It's Shapiro in Pennsylvania. There's some other, like Tony Evers is too old. Katie Hobbs seems like, I kind of like her, but it seems like she totally refuses to do press of any kind.

1:11:41Like someone who's not going to run. John Fetterman is like not going to be a leading contender, I think we could say. But like, we know this universe of candidates. and the question is, which of them is going to try to go beyond? Like you were saying, right? They're going to stand up and they're going to be like, I know how to win in the swing states. You should vote for me. This is the most practical thing to do. I kind of agree with that. It's also just not that compelling, right? And so who's going to say, I know how to win in the swing states And the way I did it is that I said, and then you've got to say the thing.

1:12:22You know what I mean? Like you have to actually go say something. And something that I have noticed is that a lot of these people, depending on what audience they're talking to, they sometimes want to undersell the amount of ideological heterodoxy that they've displayed in their campaigns. Because the easiest way to raise money if you're running for re-election in Kentucky is to kind of tell like liberal donors in coastal cities, like I'm a magician. You know, I just like one in Kentucky because I've got a cool accent. But like Andy Beshear rejected a Sierra Club endorsement and he got the United Mine Workers who have stopped endorsing Democrats in national politics to endorse him.

1:13:06And that's because like he has a position on the use of coal that like, I don't really agree with, but that people in Kentucky do agree with. And that's like, that's the truth about how Andy Beshear wins votes in Kentucky that other people don't have. I don't think you could sell that to a National Democratic primary electorate because it's like Kentucky is too right-wing, right? It's too far. But there's stuff you can say in the Midwest or in Arizona or in Georgia, but like you got to give people the real talk about like, what did you say? Raphael Warnock what did you say John Ossoff to the local audiences in Georgia and say it to a national audience and a lot of the time you know you'll find with these people it's border security it's some kind of political reform and it is some effort to indicate that you're not like woke like whatever it is exactly that that means to people but I think something like you know you are not going to be so obsessed with identity politics that you can't just like help everybody on their own terms, right?

1:14:18And that's the message Obama used. It's the message Bill Clinton used. I think we kind of like know what the like unifying, this is a diverse country, but we're all in it together. I mean, you're, you know, a brilliant speech writer, like you know how to do these things. but only certain people can sell it because politics is hard. Well, hope we find one soon. Matt Iglesias, thank you so much for joining Pod Save America. This was a great conversation. Thank you. Thanks to Matt Iglesias for coming on. Tommy Lovett and I will be back in your feed on Tuesday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

1:14:53Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Faris Safari with Reed Cherlin, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefcoat, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pellaviv, David Toles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.