Mitch Landrieu's Advice to Democrats On Winning the South

0:00Hello once again from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center in New York City. I am Carlo Versano and this is the 1600. This country was stone cold dead. If you're watching us along on YouTube, you can see that we aren't in our studio today. We got kicked out because somebody else is doing something in there. So I'm coming to you from my boss's office here. So what are you going to do? All good. My guest today is someone I'm really excited to talk to, Mitch Landrieu. Mitch is the former mayor of the great city of New Orleans, who's now hosting a docuseries for Crooked Media called The Long Play, which is an excellent series.

0:35It's really built around a simple argument, something that we've talked about here on the show, which is that the South, the American South, is really where our politics are going. It's where our politics is going to be decided next. And understanding that the American South really means understanding where this country of ours is headed. Take a look now at a clip from The Long Play from Crooked Media. The South is the political epicenter of the country. People in the South feel really misunderstood, left behind, put down on, and they want to explain that to somebody. That's why I wanted to do this with you, because you understand this city, you understand people.

1:07And so you have to go out and understand what people here really care about. What happens next is going to be really important. And it's going to happen here. Mitch Landrieu, of course, also starting to show up in some rooms and some scenarios that suggest perhaps the start of something bigger. He's not saying the word campaign yet, but we're going to ask him about that too. With that, Michelangelo, thank you so much for joining. I'm thrilled to be with you. Thanks for having me. Really excited to talk to you, sir. I want to start with the long play, the aforementioned series that you're doing for Crooked, along with Jennifer Palmieri and Aaron Haynes.

1:41As I said, the series states plainly in the open that the South is the, quote, new epicenter of American politics and culture. I completely agree. I went to school in the South. I'm a Northern boy, but I got a lot of friends down there, a lot of family members. I do a lot of old school Democrats, sort of like, you know, urban liberals like me have long ago sort of written off the South politically. But there are southern states, as you know, and have talked about on the series, states like North Carolina, Georgia, even Texas, that are really putting up some very strong Democrats this cycle, contenders for statewide office like Senate, of course.

2:17It's safe to say, I think that the South is in play for Democrats this year. Is that what you're seeing in your in your reporting out there on the streets? I do. I do very much. But before we get into that, I can't let it pass that you told me that you guys normally transmit from the top of the World Trade Center. And of course, we just commemorated September 11th, which was just one of the most awful days in the history of our country. And I don't I don't want it to pass that, you know, our hearts and minds are not with the people from not only New York and the first responders and all the folks that lost their lives.

2:50but the incredible consequence of that just very, very, very terrible time, which I don't think we can forget. You know, the people of New York have always loved the people of New Orleans, which is where I'm from. That's where I'm transmitting from today. We're like kind of their little sister. I agree with that. After September 11th, the people of New Orleans and the people of Louisiana put their nickels in a jar and bought two fire trucks that we sent back up there. And of course, when Katrina hit, the folks from New York were down here, you know, trying to help us out. And there's just a great story of a connection between the people in New Orleans and Louisiana and the people from New York.

3:30And of course, the consequence of that across the country was just devastating. And we're still feeling the effects of it. It's an important thing never to forget, always to remember, because it speaks a lot of who we are as a country. and how if we ever find a way to get back together again, we can move forward in a way that's good for everybody. Thank you for saying that, Mitch. No, I appreciate that. I was just saying in our newsletter the other day, like there was something about this anniversary, maybe it was just because it was 25, you know, quarter centuries, a big number. It just felt a little different.

4:01It felt a little more somber than it had in a while. It felt like people, like the gravity of what happened back then. Well, it's important. To your point, I'm still with us. I think, let me say this, there are, I agree with you, by the way, I felt heavy on the 25th, because you start looking back and you realize that it's not really gone. that the forces of evil that, of course, through American history are still with us, whether they manifest themselves in the North, in the South, whether it's Mother Emanuel, you know, in the South, or whether or not it's a terrorist attack. And it reminds you that we are one country and that even those things happened in the past, history is always with us.

4:44It never completely goes away. And I think one of the things that we have to learn as a country is how to, with great courage and a fierceness of forcing yourself to remember so that you either don't repeat or you make sure that you respond better, you know, just in terms of being ready to respond to bad things that might happen to you, whether it's a terrorist attack or a hurricane or this pending AI revolution that we have coming, either on the good side or the bad side, America has to make ourselves, if we ever want to become that more perfect union, remember well and remember correctly, not to punish, not to hurt, not to necessarily assign fault, although all of those things are critically important, but to always find a way to get better, to be ready for the next thing, because good things and bad things keep coming.

5:44You're not going to stop them, but you can change how you respond to them. And so just let the folks need to know that that everybody in America stands with all of the families of the first responders who, as you know, continue to go through very difficult circumstances because of not only the emotional side of the attack, but the physical consequences that still are practicing themselves and other families. So having said that, let me take you up on your offer to talk about the South. First of all, I welcome you as a Northerner to the South. I left the South and kind of went to the north of the South in Washington, D.C., which I believe is still the South, although they may not see themselves The Southerners would never say D.C.

6:28is the South. Well, I came into contact with a lot of people from the Northeast for the first time of my life and was startled, by the way, that the people from New England and New Jersey and, you know, everywhere north of where I was from didn't understand. They couldn't understand the way I talked. I moved slower than other people. I told everybody hello. They looked at me like I was crazy. I think they didn't think I was smart because I talked weird. I got my first taste of, you know, people who are not from the South thinking everybody in the South maybe wasn't as quick and as smart. And I didn't like that.

7:01I got a chip on my shoulder because but haven't been from the South. If you there is a there is a distinct culture that exists in the southern part of the country that developed because we had different histories. We walk different. We talk different. different. We celebrate differently in some ways that are unique and wonderful. They're a little bit slower than other places. You know, SEC football is like a religion. Down here, you know, NASCAR, championship wrestling, bowling. I mean, we do a lot of stuff, a lot of hunting and fishing that's going on. And so sometimes the South has been, I think, misunderstood.

7:40Of course, the Civil Rights Movement, as a consequence of the nation's history of slavery, has created an an entire new history down here. And so what has happened over time politically, and when I say over time, I mean a long range of time, post-Civil War all the way through the first 25 years of the 21st century, is the power of the South has ebbed and flowed. And over the last many years, people have written off the South as a place that people have spent time. But what is happening demographically in America is that people are moving. Now, when I say demographically, I'm not at this moment talking about black, white, brown, which has its own texture and context.

8:20I'm now talking about the movement of physical human beings from one place to another. And what is the people voting with their feet? We're in a post industrialization age is that jobs are moving to the south. People are moving out of California or maybe not necessarily into Florida anymore, but from Florida to North Carolina. or people are moving from New Jersey down to Tennessee. Lots of stuff is happening. And as a consequence, just like anything else, when people move, things change. And so the texture of a neighborhood changes, the texture of a community changes, the music changes, the food changes.

8:59And all of a sudden it starts to manifest itself politically, which is why we say that the South is really the future. And that's because a lot of folks are moving down here and it's changing the way things are being done. And, of course, elections change as a consequence. And long play is moving around these southern states to do a deep dive, to listen to people, to try to figure out what's going on, to try to, to the extent that you can predict the future, at least try to see what can be seen and know what can be known so that when it happens, you go, well, that wasn't a big surprise. You could see that coming.

9:35So one of the pieces that you guys have already done, Each podcast episode is focused on a specific state, right? So you did one recently on Texas. I want to ask you, well, I guess I have two questions. First is, Democrats, like we've been saying this every four years, it's, oh, is this going to be the year? Is this going to be the year Texas goes blue? It seems like if there were going to be a year, it would be this one, just based on the poor candidate quality on the Republican side and just the overall, you know, the Democratic enthusiasm to vote against Trump and Republicans right now. Are you seeing that in your travels?

10:11Do you think this is the year? Well, I'd like to respond to that broadly and then specifically. First of all, it is absolutely true that if you don't show up someplace and campaign ever or invest any money in it or build anything, you can't be surprised if you get your butt kicked all the time. And there has been a massive disinvestment politically in trying to build things in the South. Okay. And that strategy, it turns out is wrong. If you want people to vote for you, you have to go see them. Even if you've been losing, the easiest excuse to vote against somebody is for a citizen to say, well, I don't even know them.

10:45I've never met them. Nobody's come to my door. Nobody's giving me a reason to be for them. So I'm going to, I'm just going to go with the trend. It is absolutely true. Almost in every competition, whether it's sports or politics, that if you go someplace and you work at it, you have a better chance of winning than if you don't. So a lot of that has been happening. All right. Now, because of the demographic trends that I just talked to you about, states like Georgia and Texas and North Carolina are becoming more accessible and then more people are showing up. And then if you find yourself in a moment where we're in right now, and by the way, every election cycle is different.

11:19Every state is different for every different election because we're just in a different world, a different economy, a different sense of peace and war and safety and progress, that if you find yourself in a state like Texas, and you have a candidate like a Tallarico, and he's up against a guy like Paxton, which is a very interesting matchup, in a state that's on the brink with a president that's got numbers in the tank, it is absolutely possible, and you know what, right now may be very probable that Texas could elect Tallarico. Now, whether it goes blue or purple or red, which confuses people about whatever.

11:55I went to, as you said, with long play, I went to Texas myself. I went to Laredo, which is a border town. I went to a rally that Tallarico held on the border. And it was amazing how many people were there. And in talking to the people who were there, it was not unusual. As a matter of fact, it was quite usual to find people that had voted for Donald Trump three times that said unequivocally they're voting for Tallarico. Now, they didn't say, I want to be a Democrat and I'll be a Democrat forever. They didn't say I'll never vote Republican again. What they said was we're very disappointed in the president.

12:31We voted for him three times. He said he was going to do two things, stay out of wars and reduce our costs. He didn't do either one of those things. And then Ken Paxton is not a guy that shares our value, and we feel very comfortable that Tallarico is speaking to who we are. Now, I heard that more times than I thought I would, and I came away thinking this guy's got a real chance. to capture the mood of the people of Texas as American citizens in this moment. And that's the conclusion that I came away with. And I talked to enough people to make me think that that wasn't just off the cuff kind of conversation.

13:07Look, I mean, I totally agree. We in the media do this thing where it's, you know, you're a Democrat, you're a Republican, right? So it's like everything is partisan when all it takes is going out into the world and talking to normal people in knowing that there's a lot of Democrats who would vote for Republicans here in New York City right now. Absolutely. And vice versa, right? So, I mean, I totally agree. I think that's a good point. Give me a state-level race in one of these states that you've been traveling to that you're covering that people aren't keyed into on the national level and the issue shaping it.

13:39Because Tallarico, obviously, like, you know, Texas Senate, everyone's all over it. Are there any other races in any of these states that we should be paying more attention to? Well, first of all, You said something that we shouldn't skate over. And sometimes smart political people forget the basic stuff, which is that most people in America do not have jerseys on like political people do. Like I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican. Most people don't think of themselves that way. As a matter of fact, the reason why the president is in such trouble and the Republicans are in such trouble is because they keep talking to people like they are R's or D's.

14:13When you get on the ground, and this is true in the north, the south, the east, the west, it's all over the country. Working class people now who identify themselves as such when they never used to. They used to say poor, middle class, rich. Working class folks is a new, self-identifiable, distinct group of people who say, you know what? I'm getting screwed. I don't exactly know why I'm getting screwed or who's screwing me, but I'm on the bottom end. And you can feel it. And I'm getting left behind. I can't. And you say to them, Scott Bessett will get on TV or the Secretary of Commerce and say, your life is great.

14:50Stock market's up, blah, blah, blah. And they go, yeah, well, I can't make my rent. and I can't pay my car note. I'm having to choose between, you know, fixing my tire and doing this and I can't breathe and I feel like I'm watching all these guys with all this money that got this tax break and then they're closing hospitals and people are pissed and they don't understand exactly what happens, but they know that someone's not fighting for them. So that idea is coursing itself across elections on federal races, House and Senate, and then state races. So for example, if you're in Georgia, and you're looking at the governor's race in Georgia, or you're in North Carolina, and you're looking at the statewide races, or by the way, you're in Texas, and you're looking at a state Senate race for a guy that is focused on the issues of cost.

15:42This is the common denominator. Wherever that's happening, the candidate who's mostly speaking to people's anxieties and fears, which are about not being able to make ends meet and the country losing its focus by focusing on Iran and pushing out other issues. The person who is doing that is the person who is most likely to win. And those are mostly Democrats because the Republicans are so tied to Trump right now, they can't get away from him and they can't shake him off, even though they want to. No, he I mean, Ron, I was just talking to somebody. It's like it. It's unbelievable what a just, I mean, obviously, I think most people were against this from the beginning.

16:22He never even laid out why we were doing this, really. But just the political malpractice to do this in a midterm election year on Trump's behalf is just unbelievable. We could talk about that all day. I don't want to talk about Iran, actually. I do want to talk about Louisiana, your home state. You noted in an Axios piece recently that Louisiana, excuse me, probably won't make the cut actually in the series that you're producing. The open Senate race there pitched that the Democrat Jamie Davis against Representative Julia Letlow. She is widely expected to win. To bastardize the famous Thomas Frank book title, what's the matter with Louisiana, Mitch?

16:58Like, why don't we ever see a Democrat win in a statewide race? Was your sister actually the last Democrat to win a statewide race there? Well, I might have been or she might have been, but both of us. I was a lieutenant governor. I served from 2004 to 2010 before I became mayor. So I won in two statewide elections in the open, you know, pretty well. And she won four times. We were evidently the tail end of Democrats just kind of wiping the floor in Louisiana. And now the Republicans have won almost every statewide race. Louisiana will trend back, but we, like Mississippi, will be the two, in my mind's eye, will be the two last southern states to kind of kick up a notch.

17:40But you have an interesting thing going on in Mississippi. Scott Colombe is a young African-American law and order district attorney who is running against Cindy Hyde Smith. What's interesting about Mississippi is they she's a weak incumbent. And in Mississippi, the percentage of votes that African-Americans have a 38 percent, which is the highest percentage in America. In Texas, you have the largest number of African-Americans, but it's only 12 percent of the population. So even though these states are southern, every one of them is very different. Georgia, for example, has a much more diverse population, but they have a much higher level of college graduates there.

18:27So they have all these permutations that make states, that put states in a better position. That's why North Carolina and Georgia are punching above their weight with John Ossoff and Roy Cooper. and why those things are pushing down. In Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, you've got more work to do because the infrastructure has not been built over time. But I do not think Louisiana is nearly a good position as these other six southern states. So with the first tranche of long play, we wanted to go into the states that were in play for this election cycle. That is not to say that Louisiana won't catch up, but I don't think that we're there yet.

19:05But we have a lot of good candidates. We have a candidate for the United States Senate. It's a great guy. But, you know, given the politics and how red Louisiana is at this time and how pro-Trump it was, it's much harder in this moment. Now, that could change. And I'm hoping that it will. And I'm going to do everything I can to make a change. But my honest assessment is that it's a little bit harder than all the other states right now. It feels that way. I want to stick with this for a second, though, because you're being modest. Your political career, if people don't know Mitch Landrieu, he was a two-term mayor of Louisiana's biggest city, right?

19:38You ran as an unapologetic Democrat every time, right? You were never waffling about that. I appreciate, of course, that New Orleans is a blue city and an otherwise overwhelmingly red state. But you left office with an approval rating in the 50s. It was as high as 70 % in the middle of your time in office. We don't really see that anymore basically anywhere. I mean, that's no small feat for a mayor, much less a mayor in a Republican state. My point, Mitch, is what do you know that other Democrats don't know? Well, two things. First of all, getting elected in the state of Louisiana as a state, 3.8 million people, is wholly different than getting elected in the city of New Orleans.

20:16I got elected in both. I'm very thankful that my approval rating was high. I think my theory has always been, you know, no matter what you are, Democrat or Republican, you're an American first and you represent everybody. And whether they voted for you or not, you have to represent them and you have to go see them and be with them. And you have to listen to them, even if they're going to bust your hump. I can't tell you how many. I've done more community meetings. I mean, a lot. And if you've never been in a community meeting where people are mad at you, you haven't really lived a life. if you haven't eaten gumbo, you haven't really eaten food.

20:54And for somebody to hand your ass to you in a public meeting when there are 800 people that agree with them, it's a very uncomfortable thing to go through. But having said that, your life is not going to end if you do that. And one of the things that people are away with is a begrudging respect that, you know what, I don't like that guy, but he came to see me and he listened and I tore him up and at least he gave me a reasonable response. I have found in my life, and I haven't always been perfect at this. I've messed up from time to time. From time to time, I lose my courage. But if you tell people what you think and why you think that, even if they disagree with you, they go, you know what?

21:34But the guy is being authentic. And I use this word intentionally right now. It's very important. The people of America, I believe. Now, I've traveled. I don't know. I've been to 250 or so cities, towns, and counties. I've been almost to every state, not exactly everyone. I've talked to as many people as I feel like I can talk to, although I always think I can learn more. Right now, our country is suffering because we can't find our footing. And I think Americans right now are thirsting for a new thing. They don't exactly know what they're looking for, but they don't like this chaos. They don't like corruption.

22:15They certainly don't like the impact of cost, but there's something deeper going on in America right now that I think in a couple of years we'll look back on and it'll become clearer. And some of this is directly related to Donald Trump. Some of it's related to how America has handled the first 25 years of this decade, which has not been good. But they feel like things are out of balance and out of control. And people are getting tired of father being pitted against son and mother being pitted against daughter. and Thanksgiving, you know, or Christmas or Hanukkah being a tense situation because you just don't want to sit with your relatives that don't think like you.

22:54The country feels upside down with itself right now. And it's searching for a new way. And I'm not, I say this to you because with the MAGA crowd on the right and the, you know, the other folks on the left, everybody thinks they're really far away from each other. And I'm starting to sense that those folks are a lot closer together than we think. In other words, we all view the political field like a football field where certain people are all, and we're moving towards the 50, and the people in the middle are close together. Yeah. And the people on the extremes are not. And I would like people to start contemplating, just being creative and thinking that the extremes are actually at 1159 and 1201 on o 'clock.

23:39It's a horseshoe. Right. It's not so much It's not just left, middle, right anymore. It's up versus down. It's people who are in and people who are out, who's getting and who's paying, who's screwing somebody and who's getting screwed. And I think a large portion of the population, most working class folks in America feel like the system is rigged against them and they're right and that the rules that have been set have been set behind closed doors and that the country is just not working the way it is. And I'll just end this little piece with this. There's some empirical evidence, some good data.

24:16Raj Chetty and these guys have been tracking it for a long time. You know, back in the day, in the 40s and the 50s and the 60s, you had an 80 % to 90 % chance of doing better than your parents. You know, the American dream was, hey, man, get out there, work your ass off. You know, you're going to have one job that's going to pay one paycheck that's going to give you a house, give you a good education. You know, your partner and your kids are going to be able to create a better life with your wife and your husband and your mom and your dad. And, you know, it was all going to work out well. Well, that's not true anymore.

24:47People are not guaranteed that they're going to do better than their parents. They feel themselves falling behind. But yet they see this tremendous amount of wealth being created and all these trillionaires being created. And they're like, where the hell is the money going? My roads don't work. The water's not clean. My job isn't paying me. I've got three jobs for a one-job paycheck. I can't get health care. You're closing the rural health clinic. what the F is going on, and they're going to find out. And so there is an opportunity here. This is the big point to everybody in the country. There is an opportunity here to create a better tomorrow if we can find a way to get back together and find common ground.