Jon Favreau on Where the Democrats Went Right

27:51Where we are in the shutdown is early. there isn't a lot of pain being felt. And right now, Democrats have not had to withstand real pressure. And Republicans are not seeming eager to start negotiations to get the government reopened. We feel in a holding pattern. I have one particular fear about the position the Democrats have staked out, which is that they seem obsessed with the polling question of who is being blamed for the shutdown. I know. They really want to make the argument that they are not the ones shutting down the government. The American people see it. Every poll, we just saw one in our caucus today.

28:28They blame the Republicans. They blame them because they're not negotiating, because they're on the wrong side of health care, because they're in charge. They have the presidency, the Senate and the White House. And they've gone home. I don't think that argument holds a lot of water. I think that the correct argument is that it is worth shutting down the government. we are refusing to reopen the government until we see these health care subsidies extended because that is worth doing we are not going to reopen a government just to see you get screwed but i already we have begun to see it's different polls so it's hard to tell but maybe some slippage on that question and i'm worried that the degree to which they have been bragging to me privately that on the polls they are not being blamed for shutting down the government the moment they see that poll number move, and it certainly could move, they will begin to lose their nerve because they have decided that not being blamed for it is the measure of winning in the court of public opinion.

29:28And it just feels to me like a real vulnerability or fragility in the way they are telling the story to themselves right now. I think the vulnerability is, if only they were just saying that privately. But that message has come through very clearly. publicly as well. I think they've gotten a little better about it since the very beginning of the shutdown. I think there's less of that now. But I mean, you heard me when we started the conversation. I talked about like Democrats shutting the government down. I'm not pretending the Republicans shut the government down. I do think an honest argument you can make is we are not going to give our votes to fund a government that is going to jack up premiums on 20 million Americans.

30:12And if you want to keep that government open without giving anyone help on premiums, you are free to change the rules in the Senate. And you have the 50 plus votes that you can pass it and get rid of the filibuster. And you are free to do that. You run all three branches of government. Go for it. But we are not providing votes for that because we are fighting to make sure that people don't have health care premium increases. You lose moral high ground if you start saying, oh, I got blamed, you got blamed, or, you know, it's their fault. It's our fault. The Kaiser Foundation poll shows that we're winning.

30:45You know, like, I would not be reading polls if I was them. I would not be talking about how they're winning. I would just be talking about this is a core moral issue for the Democratic Party and for people in this country who are already suffering from high prices and high taxes because of Donald Trump's tariffs. And we are not going to let this happen anymore. Yeah, I just think people have gotten a little obsessed with a very Washington way of thinking about this. I was just going to say, one thing we've learned over the last decade or so is people don't give a shit about process arguments.

31:16This is why, you know, you were out there years and years ago and I was right behind you on the filibuster, on getting rid of the filibuster. And I think it is substantively the right thing to do in order for Democrats to pass an agenda ever again with the way that the Senate map is. But I also think politically, I was never afraid of that fight because most people in the country don't give a shit about the filibuster. They don't know what it is. They don't care about our Kaine Senate procedure. And I think that the government shutdown, who shuts the government down when, who's supporting the CR and who's not, like that all gets lost with people.

31:48To the extent that they're paying attention, they are going to know that there are disruptions in government services, which will happen when more, you know, especially with air travel, it's already starting to see some of the delays. They'll know that. And then they'll know that Republicans don't want to do anything about healthcare and Democrats do. That's probably the message that's landing with people to the extent that they tune into the shutdown. So I don't think the blame game is important. I don't think Senate procedure is important, what Republicans do. But like, I just I think you've got to make it about health care and that's it.

32:19I want to talk about the Senate map, which you just brought up. Let me do it this way. Why don't we talk about the House briefly first, because I think it's more straightforward. And then let's talk about the Senate, because all of this is leading to the midterms. the next moment of political accountability, the next moment of power shift is the midterms. Democrats are in an, I think, an okay position to take back the House with the big question being redistricting. And so you have Texas moving to do this mid-cycle redistricting. Now you have California moving towards a ballot initiative. I think those are actually beginning to go out in the mail pretty soon or even now to suspend the nonpartisan redistricting maps they have there in order to sort of counter Texas.

33:00You then could have this sort of chain reaction of other states countering each other. How do you rate what that looks like right now? The people you talk to, the conversations you're having, how does the fight for the House look to you? So I think the Prop 50 here in California, the polling for that looks good. Republicans are sort of that they just pulled some money back on that campaign because I think they believe it's not going well for them. So I feel good about that. The best estimates I've seen if Prop 50 passes, so California gets to redraw the maps to partially neutralize Texas, Missouri, and then all these other states go, Republicans pick up around anywhere from six to eight seats, I think I've seen.

33:41But if Democrats win the generic ballot by three, four points, that'll still be enough to take back the House. But it's close. It's not like 2018 blue wave territory, at least not right now. It's a full year, so who knows? And so I think that the people that I talk to that are working on these House races, they think these frontline members, they want to talk about cost. They want to talk about cost of living. That's what voters care about. And so that's what they're focused on. And they feel confident about the House. I think the Senate is more of a reach. But, you know, there's more optimism there now than I think there was when Donald Trump took office.

34:17Recognizing that we don't know how the midterms are going to go. it's also my sense from the polling and from talking to people that it is not feeling to the people working on house races like 2018 2006 blue wave territory i'm curious why you think that is though because you compare this trump administration the first one yeah this trump administration is inflicting much more real pain on people than trump did in his first two years of his first term. The tariffs are real pain. There is ICE agents in the streets. There's much more chaos around RFK Jr. at HHS. They passed something that is tax cuts, but also has embedded in it something more like Obamacare appeal, given how profoundly they gutted Medicaid, the kinds of destruction of health care that, you know, was very mobilizing for Democrats in the first term.

35:10You know, Trump isn't popular. He's looking, you know, about as bad as he did in his first term. is about 42%, which is more popular than I'd like to see him be, given what he's doing, but is not a great number. So why doesn't this look like blue wave territory? A few things. I think the shock value has worn off. And so when Trump was doing everything he did in 2017, it was the first time people like, you know, think about family separation and what a talk about an attentional moment. And he actually had to walk that back because of political pressure. And we are so far past family separation now in terms of what he's doing on immigration enforcement.

35:49But I think people get used to it, unfortunately. I think people are used to the pain of a Trump administration, which is a really depressing thing to say, but I do think that's playing a role. I also think people are exhausted after a decade. I talk to people in my life all the time who are, you know, in the first Trump term, were very politically active, paying attention to the news all the time, wanting to get involved. and this time around, you know, especially after the loss in 2024, there's just this feeling of defeatism. There's always been cynicism, but the cynicism has almost morphed into nihilism with some folks.

36:26And people are like, I just can't do it. I can't pay attention anymore. I can't do it again. It's been too long. I'm tired. I got to go about my life and maybe we should just wait, wait this out. And at some point, you know, he'll be gone and things will be normal again. And I don't want to be involved in politics because politics sucks. But that explains why you don't see the level of resistance organizing you did in the first term. I get that. And, you know, I end up in these conversations often where people say, well, you know, why doesn't, and you do have no King's marches and other things that have been significant.

36:58But when people, I think, are asking the question of why there doesn't seem to be as much resistance as there was in the first term, I think a lot of people in the resistance feel it failed. I don't totally agree with that. But the sense that Trump got back in, like we gave it our best shot, and now they don't really know what to do, I think that's very real. That doesn't explain why Republicans haven't collapsed on the generic ballot. They are battering the economy with tariffs. They've slowed the labor market. I mean, they have done things that are genuinely unpopular and are causing people pain where you wouldn't need the reaction people are having to be, I'm going to be out in the streets every single night.

37:37You know, you could just have people saying, I want to give these guys a chance. But when a pollster calls me, I don't like what's happening. So I'm going to tell them I'm supporting the Democrats. That's you've not seen a collapse in Republican support, even as Republicans have, you know, signed on to some pretty profoundly unpopular things. And on tariffs in particular, the idea that they came through a cost of living election and they decided to increase the cost of goods all across the economy. It's a wild political decision to make that has not had particularly wild consequences for them, at least as of yet.

38:15Do you have a view on why that is? I think we're early on the effects of the tariffs. I think those will get worse. But I think if you look at the polling, who has Trump lost? He's lost some of the younger voters, the Black and Latino voters that sort of moved his way in 2024. I think the core of Trump's support, as it has been for the last decade, remains because even if they are feeling sort of pinched on cost of living issues, he is doing what they want him to do. for a good portion of his base, they like seeing all this. And so he has that support solid. I think if you look at his numbers with independents and the independents that are left are going to be more left leaning anyway, because some of them have already voted for Donald Trump and become Republicans over the last decade.

39:04But the independents who are left, I mean, he has collapsed in a big way, right? He's sitting at like, probably closer to mid 30s, low 30s, than he is in the 40s. And, you know, it's like he's 2 % of Democrats approve. But it's the support among the core base of Trump voters where he's delivering what he at least talked mostly about delivering outside of the economy, the support's holding up. But again, it's not a year yet. And I do think that the pain from the tariffs is going to get worse. I think the economy is not by any means chugging along. And there is a year left of Donald Trump sending troops and masked men into the streets all over the country, which could cause a lot of chaos.

39:46How much do you think the Democratic Party's brand is part of the problem? In polling, Democrats have never been lower, at least in modern polling. Elections are ultimately a choice. How much of why Democrats aren't doing better on the generic ballot is that people don't really like Democrats. Yeah, I mean, Democratic voter dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party and its leaders is at an all-time high, the dissatisfaction. And the last time voters of either party were this dissatisfied with their leaders was with Republicans in the Obama era, right around when the Tea Party basically took over the Republican Party.

40:28And so I do think a A lot of this is Democratic voters saying I and people who would tend to be Democratic voters to the extent that they vote. They are probably very unhappy with what Trump is doing, if not alarmed, but have not heard much from Democratic politicians. Now, part of that is where the party out of power. So we don't have one leader. Our congressional leaders aren't necessarily the most effective communicators, Schumer and Jeffries. That's why you have the 2028 potential contenders. You got Gavin Newsom out there and J.B. Pritzker making a lot of noise. But even a lot of the 2028 contenders are relatively quiet, aside from Newsom and Pritzker.

41:09They're quite quiet. I found it strange. Me too. Me too. And I assume that's a strategy to be like, okay, I'm going to hold my fire until, you know, we have a primary and I don't want to piss anyone off early. And I don't know. I can't tell the strategy. If anything is being rewarded in American politics recently, it's caution. It's good. Well, you know, I could see someone saying, OK, you know, there's just a poll out of Pennsylvania. Josh Shapiro, more popular than he's ever been in Pennsylvania, would beat J.D. Vance in that state by, I think, double digits, according to that poll. And so maybe Josh Shapiro was right to stay out of this.

41:46And he could just sit there as a figure who is quite popular in one of the most important swing states in the country, if not the most important. So I get that, but I also think that the information environment, the attention economy requires you to be communicating all the time if you want to build a following, not just in your party, but in the country at this moment in politics. People expect their leaders to be communicating constantly about what's happening, especially people who decide primaries.

42:34So you're talking a bit about the relationship between the Democratic Party's leaders and the Democratic Party as an organization and its base. But I'm also thinking here about the people who are not Democratic primary voters who, you know, are maybe people Democrats could win over or have won over in the past but have soured on Democrats. And I think that brings us to the Senate map. So in order to win the Senate in 2026, Democrats would need to successfully defend seats in Georgia and Michigan. They would need to win seats in Maine, which they have often thought they will beat Susan Collins in Maine and failed.

43:16They would need to win the Senate seat in North Carolina that former governor there Roy Cooper is running for. That seems plausible to do. Then they would need to win in two states that Trump won by big margins. The ones you hear mentioned here are Iowa, Ohio, Nebraska, Florida, or Texas. Alaska. Alaska. Maybe Alaska. Tough states for Democrats. Yeah. What would it take for Democrats to win in two of those? First of all, you need a national environment that is much better for Democrats. So I think you need the generic number up much more than three or four points. So you need a national environment that is quite poor for Republicans and quite good for Democrats.

44:01And then you need candidates in those states that I think are well known, which is why you've got, you know, the Roy Coopers of the world running and people excited about that who are well funded and I think who have strong communication skills, maybe maybe most importantly. I've been able to work with Republicans in North Carolina, and I have been able to try and stop them when they do bad things. Time and time again, we are seeing Washington hurt everyday people, taking food out of the mouths of hungry children. You know, I've thought that I need to make a difference at a time like this. Yes, but who are the well-known enough Democrats?

44:47I mean, Ohio, actually, where Sherrod Brown is running. I mean, that's the answer there. But Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, Florida. Well, even that, I think in Nebraska, like if you have Dan Osborne running again, he at least ran statewide before, so he has the name ID. Colin Allred in Texas has name ID. James Tallarico in that primary is getting some national notoriety. Mary Pallotta in Alaska, right? She won the House seat from Alaska, which is statewide. So if she ran for the Senate there, she's well-known. In Maine, Janet Mills is the governor and now Graham Plattner in that primary is also generating a ton of national attention.

45:24And, you know, we'll see if that translates to attention in Maine as well. So I do think you need these candidates that are well known within their states who either because they have they've held office there statewide or they've run before. So the thing that's been on my mind is how many states the Democrats were competitive in, just normally competitive in a dozen years ago in the 2012 cycle, say. now feel like these incredible reaches. So when Obamacare passed, Democrats held Senate seats in Iowa, in Ohio, in Nebraska, and in Florida. That wasn't long ago. Like, I am not that old, nor are you.

46:08You've been in politics this whole time. What happened, in your view, that so many of these states became so much tougher for Democrats to compete in, that Florida and Ohio, say, went from the canonical swing states to red states, that Iowa went from a place that Barack Obama wins to a place that Democrats lose. What went wrong? I mean, I think most of it is the result of a political realignment along lines of education. I think two-thirds of the electorate does not have a four-year college degree, and a third does. And so when you have states like an Ohio, like an Iowa, where there are more non-college educated voters, then you're getting a realignment that has probably been lagging for a while because you had, to the extent you did have Democrats in those states when Obama was president, they were very conservative Democrats.

47:09And so at some point, voters think, do I want a conservative Democrat or do I just want a Republican? The real thing. But that just restates the question. Why are Democrats the party that sees themselves as a party of the working class? The party that is still much more pro-union, party that is still trying to expand your healthcare, that is raising taxes on billionaires rather than cutting taxes on billionaires. Why are they hemorrhaging voters who don't have a college degree? I think because the economic policies that Democrats have passed over the last couple decades, while they have improved the lives of millions of people, have not improved them enough to sort of neutralize the effects of an economy where wealth inequality continues to grow.

47:51Their view of the National Party has become, and part of this is, you know, the fault of the Republicans or the success of the Republicans, they view the National Party as a party of elites obsessed with cultural and social issues and not focused enough on economic issues. and this has basically been the Republican message and the Trump message for many, many years now. And I think that when we've been talking this whole time, like cultural, social issues, identity inflected issues, they get more coverage and more, they generate more attention than cost of living issues and fights over cost of living issues.

48:31And so if you're someone who is more conservative on immigration, trans issues, abortion, whatever it may be, and you look at the national debate and you tune in, you're likely to see Democrats stake out progressive positions on that, Republicans fight them on it, and you're not as likely to see fights about healthcare like we're seeing right now, which is, again, what led Senate Democrats to the strategy that they're pursuing right now is this very dynamic. Now, do you just run an economic populist like Sherrod Brown? And maybe that's enough. Possibly. Possibly. But I also think that ignoring the identity inflected issues at this point is not feasible because, again, Trump and the Republicans have a vote and they get to make the election about something as well.

49:21and again the way that the information environment works right those issues are going to generate attention so you do have to have a message on all those issues and it has to be a message that resonates with people who may be more conservative than national democrats or more moderate than national democrats on those issues this is not about like so then we have to change all of our positions and moderate all of our positions but like at the very least let's try telling a story about our position on those issues that appeals to people, or at least doesn't push them away. And I don't think we've done a great job of that.

49:59I think a debate you're getting at here, which I think is a pretty big strategic debate in the party, is, is economic populism enough? Or in order for your economic populism to be heard, do you have to, in these states run Democrats or have Democrats run who are more culturally in touch with their own state, who share the views of more of the people in their states. So Dan Osborne, I think he's interesting. Dan Osborne runs in Nebraska. He's an independent. Every Democrat I know wants Dan Osborne to win. No Democrat I know wants Dan Osborne to run as a Democrat. Right. Because the Democratic brand is trash and it would destroy his chances.

50:47But Dan Osborne runs quite far to the right of where the Democratic Party is on immigration. Social security to illegals? Who would be for that? I'm where President Trump is on corruption. China, the border. If Trump needs help building the wall, well, I'm pretty handy. And I mean, the last time you had a Democrat representing Nebraska was Ben Nelson, who was a pain in the neck during Obamacare, but was also the crucial vote to get it passed. He was a pro-life Democrat from Nebraska. And I think there is a pretty big divide in the party of can you hit the economic populism button so hard that you don't need to do anything on the other stuff?

51:27You can maybe tell a bit of a better story, maybe de-emphasize it. Or do you have to run candidates who make liberals in New York and California uncomfortable with their cultural positions. You have to re-regionalize the Democratic Party, have much more variation in the actual positions of the Democrats running. You know, the way Joe Manchin was quite different than other Democrats. How do you think about that? I think the one gift politically that Donald Trump and Republicans have given us in the second Trump term especially is that they have become so extreme on so many of these issues that we're talking about these, whether it's immigration, whether it's trans issues, whether it's abortion, that Democrats simply staking out positions that are mainstream, that are reflective of where most of the public is or reflective of where the party was under Barack Obama.

52:26For a lot of this, I'm thinking especially of immigration here. I think you just need to do that. And when I think about Arizona and West Virginia are very interesting to me because in Arizona, we had Kyrsten Sinema who became an independent and was a pain in the Democrats' ass for quite some time. And then you have Joe Manchin in West Virginia who got a lot of shit as well. I think we all wish we had Joe Manchin in the Senate still right now as opposed to Republican Jim Justice who has that seat. We don't know when there's ever going to be a Democrat again in West Virginia. And would Joe Manchin be voting to keep the government shut right now?

53:03Would he have been with Angus King and Catherine Cortez Master? So, yeah, he'd probably be with them. But I don't know. I'd rather have that vote in the Senate right now. He voted with Democrats on the Inflation Reduction Act. He voted on judges, right? Like, that's the best we're going to get in West Virginia. Arizona is a different story. Ruben Gallego is culturally in tune with his state, including on the issue of immigration, but is much more progressive than Kyrsten Sinema was and is much more mainstream Democratic and won that state, which is a tough state. Yeah, the Democratic Party is right on immigration, but is not a, you know, would support healthcare and childcare in a way cinema was incredibly difficult on.

53:41And I will say for Gallego, I remember interviewing him right after the election and we talked about immigration and it was right when Kilmar Obrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador. And he was in the camp that this is a trap. We shouldn't be talking about this too much. This And as Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda has become more extreme and they've been picking people up off the streets, I check out his Twitter feed and he is much more forceful these days on immigration. And so I still think he has this position on immigration that is, you know, pretty mainstream and where most of the country is.

54:18But that has not stopped him from speaking out forcefully about what's happening right now. Issues change in relationship to actual events. Yes. I mean, I think people think everything is stuck. and you don't want to rerun the last election. I do, though, think this issue of the Democratic Party's national brand is an important one. What I would like to believe is that Democrats could find candidates in these states that match the states and that would be enough to win. And I think that's increasingly untrue. Yeah, because everything's nationalized. Everything's nationalized. And so Sherrod Brown, he held the Ohio Senate seat for three terms.

54:57Sherrod Brown is as economically populist as you get. Not just as a Democrat, like he is a, like one of the anchors of economic populism in the Senate and before that in the House for a very, very long time. For decades, corporations have had all the power in our economy. It's going to take a lot of work to undo those decades of bad trade and tax policy that gave corporations every single day the upper hand. I want to see employers competing for workers. That's a good thing. It's how you get rising wages, which get spent in the community and then create growth for everyone, whether in Santa Fe or Columbus.

55:34He knows his state. He is trusted in his state. He's beaten by Bernie Moreno, like a wealthy owner of car dealerships, who had to settle a dozen wage theft cases before he beats sterling economic populist Sherrod Brown. And what I take from that, what I take from Dan Osborne, who, whatever he is or is not in his soul, absolutely cannot run as a Democrat under any circumstances, is that it's not going to work. Even good candidate selection is not going to work if people feel the Democratic Party's national brand has so little room or respect for them. I don't really know how you change it. I have some thoughts that I'll probably expand as the weeks go on.

56:23But I think it needs to be understood as a more central concern that a world where the Democratic Party brand is so bad that it is an anchor that will drag Sherrod Brown down with it. I mean, that's a problem you need to find some way to fix. Versus just never having the Senate or never having it with more than 51 votes. Ever again. Democrats have gotten used to having a lot less power than they used to be able to have. Yes. They've also gotten used to, and partly this is Trump's fault, but being primarily a reactive party to what Donald Trump does. And then there's this conversation that, okay, well, we need a positive agenda.

57:06And then it goes right to like policies. And I do think we're missing a story to tell about where the country is and where we want it to go. and we are on the cusp of revolutionary technological change again that's going to reshape the economy and how we interact with each other and we didn't do so great the last time at figuring that out we're still dealing with the effects of you know the attention economy and now we're heading into artificial intelligence and i think democrats have to figure out a story about what kind of country we want to be how people are going to work how people are going to interact with one another.

57:46We are in a political crisis right now. I think Democrats need to, it's not enough to say vote for me and the political crisis will end. It's how are we as a country going to get out of this political crisis together? And in your poll, in the New York Times poll, cost of living is now being eclipsed by political division as the issue that people bring up as the issue that concerns them the most. Telling a story about where we want this country to go. We want a path for every American to make a living, make sure there's a living to make, and make sure that we have a government that protects our rights and freedoms, no matter who we are, no matter who we voted for.

58:21And you don't want a country where people who don't vote for the right leader get punished after the election. I actually think that's quite a popular position that would really resonate with people. And so I do think that Democrats who have something to say about the moment we're in, the crisis we're in, both in the economy, in politics, and in how we interact with one another, technologically and culturally and how we can get out of that, that's the story we need to figure out how to tell. And if someone who tells a compelling story about that is going to help the brand more than any number of, you know, fucking polls and research and focus groups.

58:56Let me try a thought out on you. I think part of the problem the Democratic Party is facing, the part of how it ended up in its current ditch is that it really hasn't had a strong party leader since 2016, that Hillary Clinton loses in 2016, so she doesn't become the party leader. Joe Biden in 2020 is just a very strange kind of candidate. He has already, I think, suffered a significant deterioration just in his communication abilities. It's not as bad as it'll be four years later, but he doesn't have the energy. He's a kind of consensus candidate in a strange way. You know, people flood to him after South Carolina as a safe bet.

59:42But he's not a candidate the party falls in love with in any real way. And he is acting in his own way from a place of coalition building and a certain kind of insecurity. So he's really trying to keep his tent broad. The Joe Biden, you know, of 15 years before, I think would have had much stronger views on what the Democratic Party should be and how it should sound and act than the Biden of that era. But then four years later, he's in no shape to craft his administration into an argument about what the Democratic Party is and isn't. And so then you have this crazy period after the first debate.

1:00:21Kamala Harris ends up as a nominee with 107 days to go or whatever it is. And she obviously doesn't win, but you don't have a full primary. People fight out what the party should be and what its direction should be and how it should work and what issues it should emphasize and what it should let go of. she makes a series of moves, like moving to the right on immigration and moving, you know, to right on fracking, but with no explanation ever of like why this huge change from her 2020 campaign to her 2024 campaign is happening, right? So the sort of party doesn't have the fight about itself that leads to change.

1:00:56Meanwhile, Donald Trump is changing the Republican Party in all kinds of ways. You know, he's bringing RFK Jr. and he's, you know, has changed it on immigration and changed it on Medicare. I think it's very hard for parties to change without an agreed-upon leader who decides on the change. And the Democratic Party has been just leaderless now for a long time. And as such, it's ended up in a space of drift. I think that a lot of Democratic politicians, and I think this spans generations, have sort of lost confidence and do not trust their gut instinct anymore about politics. And I think that was true after, to some extent after Trump won the first time.

1:01:39I think after Trump wins again, after everything we've been through, they're like, well, I have no idea what works. I have no idea what people actually want in this country anymore. And I think when a leader has come along and changed their party, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or even leaders who don't make it all the way to the presidency, Bernie Sanders. It is because they believe something so deeply. They have a theory of the case. They have a story they want to tell about the country and where it should go. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. But they're going to try it out.

1:02:16And they're going to have confidence in that story. And you're going to be able to sell it. And you don't have to worry about which medium you go to and what shows you're doing. because, you know, everyone talks about like, we have a million conversations about media and stuff like that. Like Bernie Sanders, everyone knows what Bernie Sanders stands for. And do you agree with his policies? Do you not? He knows what he stands for. He feels good about it and he's going to keep talking about it. And I think to be a leader to change the party, you have to have a story and have to feel confident in it.

1:02:48And I think right now, too many Democrats don't feel confident. And so they are looking around and asking too many people and looking at too many polls and too many focus groups to try to figure out where they should be as opposed to deciding, where do I think the country should go? What do I believe about the country? And then let's look at the polls and the focus groups to figure out how best to message that, right? But you got to start with the core conviction. And I just don't think we've seen that yet from a lot of Democrats. And they don't project confidence, which makes it hard to get people to follow you.

1:03:19Yes. Do you think it matters that the Democratic Party's leadership and its best known figures over the past decade or so have really ended up completely concentrated in New York and California in a way that wasn't true before. So you think about, you know, you had Tom Daschle, who was a Democratic Senate leader from South Dakota. You had Harry Reid from Nevada. Now, leader of Senate Democrats is Chuck Schumer from New York. Leader of House Democrats is Hakeem Jeffries from New York. The most prominent House Democrat is AOC. The biggest Democratic name in campaigns this year is Zoran Mamdani. Prior to this, you had Pelosi, the leader.

1:04:02The last Democratic nominee was Kamala Harris. Currently leading in the polls is Gavin Newsom. I can't really remember a time when the party seemed quite so concentrated. And look, I am a Californian who is currently living in New York, talking to somebody in California. So I am noting a problem I'm part of. maybe it doesn't matter. Good leaders can come from anywhere. But it seems weird. And I wonder if it, in ways that people don't quite want to face up to, affects the party, the way it sees politics, its instincts, its sense of what strategies are acceptable even to try. Like, do you think there's something worth worrying about there?

1:04:50Yes. And I think most people would say that it's, ideologically related. And perhaps that's true. But I also think when you are in New York, in LA and San Francisco, in Washington, especially, you're sort of ensconced in a bubble of people who don't just think like you do in terms of like, what's my position on a given issue, but like how I see politics and how I say like, to the extent that politics is nationalized, It is very nationalized when you're in one of those cities. And I think when people hear, oh, we need more Democrats from like the middle of America, a lot of progressives, their mind goes to, OK, we don't want another or some conservative Democrat like Joe Manchin.

1:05:33But I think that some of the most promising leaders in the party who speak in ways that I find compelling, right? Like I think John Ossoff in Georgia, we talked about Gallego to some extent, Alyssa Slotkin in Michigan, right? some of these younger Democrats in states where they have had to win the votes of Trump voters and have done so while still maintaining their political identity as mainstream Democrats, not conservative Democrats. And I think that those leaders, especially the younger leaders in those purple states, are probably where we're going to find sort of the next leader of the party.

1:06:15Let's leave it there. All is our final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience? You know, I've gone from reading about what life is like in authoritarian countries kind of books, right? I feel like we've already passed that. Now I'm trying to be more hopeful and trying to figure out books about like nonviolent protest and resistance and civil resistance. What Everyone Needs to Know by Erica Chenoweth had them on Pod Save America a couple of months ago. now. They have the three and a half percent rule, which is no authoritarian regime has been able to withstand a protest movement, a nonviolent protest movement that is three and a half percent of the population or more.

1:06:53Martin Luther King's Stride Toward Freedom, which is his book and a firsthand account of the Montgomery bus boycotts. I was reading that again, and I find that just a fascinating study in the strategy and discipline necessary for nonviolent resistance and protests and political movement and social movement building. And then this is not a book that's out yet. It's out next week, but I just read the long essay by the author in the New York Times, John Fabian Witt, The Radical Fund, How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America, about a very wealthy philanthropist who decided to donate all of his money to progressive causes back in the 1920s and sort of ceded the ground for a lot of the most progressive policies that we saw, we would end up seeing in the New Deal, which was in when he was doing this, it was also a time in the 1920s where we are seeing a lot of the political and social and economic conditions that we are seeing right now.

1:07:45So I find I thought the essay was excellent. I'm excited to read the book. Jon Favreau, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

1:08:21and Jan Kobel. Original music by Carol Saburo and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Christina Simulowski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Pending Audio is Annie Rose-Strosser.