Andy Beshear Has a Plan for the Democratic Party

0:03The Democratic Party is in crisis. But while polls show that the party is historically unpopular with Americans, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear is the exception. Despite presiding over a red state, Beshear has become the most popular Democratic governor in America. This is something that he attributes to focusing on a cost-of-living platform, while also standing firm on social issues like trans rights and abortion. Because of all of that, he's generating serious buzz as a potential presidential candidate in 2028. I wanted to talk with Bashir about what Trump's big, beautiful bill will mean for rural America, why he thinks the Democratic Party is struggling, what he thinks the party can learn from the New York City mayoral campaign of Zoran Mamdani, and how Democrats can recapture voters by speaking like regular people.

0:50This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

0:59Hi, Governor Bashir. Thanks so much for being here. Happy to do it. So I want to start by talking about the latest for Donald Trump. My guess is that Trump is probably feeling pretty good right now. He signed the big, beautiful bill into law last week on July 4th of all days. His decision to strike Iran did not result in a wider war, or at least not yet. He's had some major Supreme Court victories, and even the jobs numbers have defied expectations. So what do you make of the fact that his big gambles, at least so far, seem to have worked out for him? Well, if Donald Trump is feeling good today, it's because he's more focused on himself and what he perceives as his victories versus what he is doing to the American people.

1:39His big, ugly bill is an attack on rural America, and it's an attack on my state, the Commonwealth of Kentucky. You look at the devastating impacts. I've just never seen anything like this go through Congress because in the past, people were more concerned about their constituents than whether they pleased the president. We stand to have 200 ,000 people lose their health care coverage. Those are people who may develop cancer and need treatments. Those are kids. Those are seniors. We're going to lose 20 ,000-plus health care jobs. Those are people working primarily in rural communities, and all their income that then goes around the local economy is going to be dried up.

2:21And then we have 35 rural hospitals that might close. And what that means is a Kentuckian or a rural American, whether they're covered by private insurance or by Medicaid, are going to have to drive hours just to see a doctor. They're going to have to drive hours just to take their kids to a doctor. They're going to have to drive hours just to take their parents to a doctor. And that's even before you get to the fact that Donald Trump's bill is going to make seniors and children go to bed hungry and wake up hungry. It adds trillions of dollars to the national debt, and it's going to blow open states' budgets.

2:54So anybody feeling good after passing something like this needs to rethink their life. You've gone to great lengths to expand Medicaid access in your state during your time as governor. Can you talk a little bit more about how big of a setback this bill is and how you plan to rebuild? I mean, how do you stop the bleeding after something like this passes? I believe health care is a basic human right, and that comes from my faith. In the Bible, Jesus says a doctor is for the sick, and I believe that when someone's sick, they ought to be able to see a doctor. And it makes sense to get people into a system so that we can do preventative care, so we can find issues before someone comes to the emergency room with a very serious condition that ends up costing all taxpayers a significant amount of money.

3:41In Kentucky, we'll do everything we can. We'll try to find every way to help, but there is no state whose budget is going to be able to make up for the damage that's being done. This is a trillion-dollar-plus cut to health care, which is one of the fastest-growing parts of our economy. It's not just taking a hatchet to people's coverage in rural hospitals. It's taking a hatchet to the American economy. So we'll look for ways to try to help people as they navigate what is essentially more paperwork. That's, for instance, what these work requirements are. They're not really pushing to get more people to work.

4:20what they're doing is requiring everyone, and that includes parents with disabled children, that includes seniors getting long-term care to check more boxes, to have to do it more times a year. And this Republican majority hopes that they will not check a box, that they will make a mistake, and then they get kicked off their coverage for six-plus months. And then what happens? A family has to take in someone that needs long-term care, can't go to work, or misses a significant amount of work. You know, I have friends that have children that are dependent on them and will be their entire lives. Without Medicaid, even though they do well, they couldn't cover all those sessions even with an extra job.

5:03We'll do everything we can to help our people, but the federal government and the president have passed a bill that is incredibly harmful. It is a punch in the gut or in the face to rural America. Do you think that Democratic messaging is kind of united on this. One thing I've been wondering about is, I mean, Kentucky is, of course, a red state, and you also have more than 200 ,000 Kentuckians who are probably going to lose their health care over the next 10 years because of this bill that was just a conservative measure. And so do you think that it's going to become clear to people that this is something that they're losing their health care because of Trump, or do you think that it's going to be a little bit more just murky than that?

5:46Well, when you lose your coverage, you're going to know why. You're going to know that it was the president and the big, ugly bill. Certainly, if your hospital has to no longer provide services and you get laid off because of the cuts to Medicaid, you're going to know it's the president and this big, ugly bill. If your rural hospital closes in your community, hundreds if not thousands of jobs leave, and suddenly the restaurant, the coffee shop, and the bank can no longer pay the bills, you're going to know that it was that hospital closure caused by the president and this big, ugly bill. I believe that Democratic messaging is certainly pushing out there the loss of coverage.

6:27But I think what's been understated is the huge economic toll that this is going to cause. This is the president and congressional Republicans directly firing so many hundreds of thousands of health care workers across the country. And for what? You don't get a tax break if you don't have income if you've lost your job because of this bill. I want to talk to you a little bit about immigration because the bill also super funds Trump's anti-immigration efforts, allocating$45 billion for ICE to build new detention centers and another$30 billion in additional funding. Critics have said that this funding amounts to the establishment of a police state, but most polls still show that immigration remains Trump's strongest issue.

7:12Based on your experience of not only being a Democrat in a red state, but the most popular Democratic governor in America, how do you think the Democrats should be handling the issue of immigration? Like, is there a humane approach that also contends with the political reality that immigration enforcement is popular? Well, we got to start by saying that border security is national security because it is. And illegal immigration is illegal. Now, if we call on the president to follow the law, we've got to enforce the laws of the land. But how we do it is critically important that we never lose our humanity.

7:50These stunts where people's legs are shackled or people are flown to other states immediately, that's not how we treat people in the United States of America. And that's not how we enforce our laws. This is a country where people don't disappear in the night. And it should be concerning to us that armored SUVs are being, or Humvees are being pulled up into residential communities. People are jumping out in masks and body armors, grabbing someone, and they may be at a detention center in another state before they get due process. Our immigration system, yes, has been broken, but there is a humane way to fix it.

8:31And first, that's to hire more judges, more folks, especially on the amnesty side, so those cases don't take nearly as long. But it's also to fix the system overall. You know, if we have enough visas for people to come to work, then we don't have the same attempts at illegal immigration. In the end, it is a math equation of how many workers we need in what industries. And if reasonable minds could stop playing politics and or trying to demonize people and sit down at the table, we could get a real long-term solution. There are so many agencies that are either being dismantled or that are at risk of being dismantled under Trump.

9:13And there are, of course, all of the cuts that we were just talking about that are coming from the big, beautiful bill. What would you say is kind of like the overarching story of the Trump administration so far? And do you think that the Democrats are doing a good job of telling that story? Because I feel like there are just so many different threads, and you can focus on any one thing. What is kind of like the overarching narrative that you see so far coming from this administration? What I see is an administration that seems to try to break these agencies, to make such massive cuts so quickly that they can never bounce back.

9:48But what this administration is going to find is these agencies do some important things that the administration doesn't even know about. And they're going to need them to do those things, to carry out those functions, to make sure grants that they agree with get out the door, and they're losing the people who can do that. For me, many of my cabinets are on their fifth or sixth new contact with a member of the corresponding federal administration. And what that's done is slow everything down and made this the least efficient administration that certainly I've ever dealt with. We're going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, I'd like to talk a bit about the Democratic Party's public image and the struggles that the party has had in the past connecting with voters.

10:33More from the political scene in just a moment.

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11:33So one thing that I feel like we often hear is this idea that the Democratic Party is in crisis. You know, approval ratings for Democrats in Congress are as low as 21 percent, according to some numbers. There are other polls that are slightly more favorable, but it does feel like there is a disconnect between the party and regular voters, and that's something that we saw during this previous presidential election. I'm wondering where you think that the party has gone wrong. I know that's a very broad question, but are there specific places where you think that the party has lost ground where it didn't really need to?

12:05Well, the party as a whole is certainly not polling well, but Democratic candidates are winning and are winning all over the country. So I think you have a little bit of, I'm not sure about the party as a whole. I'm not sure that it's effective, but I love the Democrat running in my community. Here's what I think that the Democratic Party, but also I think the Republican Party should do. First is to focus. You know, I think when people wake up at the beginning of the day, they're not thinking about politics. I think we kind of push that on them, but they're not. They're thinking about their job and whether they make enough to support their family.

12:41They're thinking about their next doctor's appointment for themselves, their parents, or their kids. They're thinking about the roads and bridges they drive every day, the school they drop their kids off at, and whether they feel safe in their community. The Democratic Party and all of our candidates need to spend 80 % of our time on these issues. Yes, there's a lot of other important issues, but if you're worried about paying for your child's next prescription, it's hard to get to that next thing. And the American people right now are struggling. And when you show them that regardless of what party they're in, that you are going to make their life easier, especially in one of these ways, they will vote differently.

13:22The second thing we've got to do is talk like real human beings. You know, advocacy speak came around for well-intentioned meanings to reduce stigma. But you don't reduce stigma by changing words. you reduce stigma by changing hearts. I'll give you an example that's really personal to me in my state, and that's addiction. We have lost more people than just about any state, maybe West Virginia has an argument, to the opioid epidemic. People who are going through it don't call it substance use disorder. They call it addiction because it's mean and it's cruel and it's killed far too many people. And when we get good news, like a 30 % decrease in overdose deaths last year.

14:03Thank God it's our third year in a row with a decrease. If we say we're making ground against substance use disorder, it doesn't mean the same as making up ground against that difficult and cruel thing that is addiction. On the big ugly bill, I mean, those that were out there saying this bill is going to increase food insecurity. Most people don't know what food insecurity is supposed to mean. What the bill is going to cause are people to go to bed hungry and to wake up with hunger pains. Or even the newest is justice-involved population. That's supposed to be our inmates, who all call themselves inmates.

14:40And I believe in reducing recidivism as much as anyone out there. I'm working to have a trade taught in every one of our prisons. I believe in second chances as a part of my faith. But our inmates call themselves inmates. And if we don't start using words that have real meaning and emotion, then you can't connect with the American people. And the final thing I'd say is we've got to share our why. I'll admit Democrats are really good at the what. You know, right now, Republican counterparts don't put out any policies. And Democrats put out the 35-page policy where we talk about 0.2, sub 0.3, bullet 0.4.

15:20So we talk about the what, but we never talk about the why. Why do we make the decisions we do? When I was running for reelection in 2023, My legislature passed the nastiest piece of anti-LGBTQ legislation our state had ever seen, and I vetoed it because it was the right thing to do, and I didn't want them picking on a group of kids. But when I explained my why, I said, my faith tells me that all children are children of God, and I'm going to stand up for these kids. And I'll never forget the next day, somebody made a beeline at me. I think it was at a jobs announcement. But what he said to me wasn't what I expected.

15:56He said, Governor, I'm not sure I agree with what you did yesterday, but I know you're doing what you think is right, and I support you. And he walked away. Just that why created a grace and a space, maybe for him to think about it a little bit differently, or maybe for there to even be some disagreements that are out there. But I also think people respect conviction, and they want people that stand up for what they believe in, again, even if they maybe don't agree. That's interesting because there's, of course, been all of this discussion of whether the party has become too progressive and by championing certain issues, like when it comes to the LGBTQ community, specifically trans rights, trans women playing sports, that, you know, that kind of thing has become a losing platform.

16:42But it sounds like you're suggesting that you can continue to champion all those things as long as you explain where it is that you're coming from. And it seems genuine. I vetoed that bill. I vetoed every other anti-LGBTQ bill that's been passed. I vetoed four anti-choice bills, and I won re-election by the largest margin that I've ever won on. It's about explaining your why, what drives you to do it, and then the next day, being at a jobs announcement, opening a new clinic that cuts down how long it takes an ambulance to get there, opening a new road that saves somebody 20 minutes each way on their commute, 40 more minutes with their family, Making that next announcement about public safety and how people are going to be safer or that next investment in our schools where children will excel more.

17:31People want you to better their lives. And so we can have this focus on people's everyday concerns and worries and still stand up for our convictions and win. I want to go back to something you said earlier, which is this idea, which I definitely think is true, which is that the party, the Democratic Party itself is unpopular these days, but there are all of these individual politicians like yourself who are Democrats and who are still very popular. Where do you think that broader disconnect comes from? Like, do you think it has something to do with DNC messaging or like the people who have been the faces of the party up until this point?

18:09Like, how is it that there are so many popular Democratic governors and individual politicians, but then the Democratic Party as a whole, just like that phrase, can leave a bad taste in one's mouth these days? Well, I mean, the Democratic Party is made up of so many different leaders, which is a great thing with so many different voices. So, you know, the quote unquote party has always been this amorphous thing. And remember, if a party could make decisions, Donald Trump would have never been president because the Republican Party, as it was at the time, wanted nothing to do with them. But I think once you look across the landscape, you also have to look at differences, say, between Congress and governors and even attorneys general.

18:52As governors, we are common sense, common ground, get things done types of public officials. And when you look at what they've achieved, like we have in Kentucky, record job growth, truly helping out your people, creating a sense of optimism, expanding health care. you see that we can do what the Republicans can't, and that is govern well. As a governor, your people also get to know you, and that's sharing your why. It's being vulnerable. It's making sure you form a personal connection with the people that you serve, and then it's just showing up time and time again. I call it getting dirt on our boots.

19:30People need to be able to see, touch, and feel how you're bettering their lives. The best example I've got is there's a county called Henderson County in Kentucky, that I think in 19, I won by about three percentage points. It was definitely moving to the right. But then in 2023, about a month before the election, we actually opened the cleanest, greenest recycled paper mill in what used to be a coal-producing county. But it had 350 jobs. It paid$30 an hour. And we won Henderson by double digits. The reason is we delivered. And we showed people that we delivered. They knew that lives were going to be better off for at least 350 families in their communities.

20:12So if we back up, I think part of what we have to recognize is that people aren't as political as we think they are. They just desperately want a better life. Yeah, I feel like that's, I mean, I'm sorry to make you talk about an election in New York City, but as you talk about just people kind of focusing on, you know, just wanting a better life and which candidates will help provide them with that, I immediately think of the primary victory of Zoran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral election over Andrew Cuomo, who was once a titan of the Democratic establishment. Do you think that that election is something that Democrats around the country should be paying attention to as a sort of template?

20:50Or do you think that was just a uniquely New York thing that happened? I'm going to give you a take that I bet you didn't expect. I believe that he won that primary for the same reason that Donald Trump won the presidential election. And that's that people believe that they were more focused than their opponents on affordability, on being able to pay the rent, on being able to pay childcare, on being able to pay the bills at the end of the month. You know, certainly Donald Trump convinced people, I think wrongfully, that the vice president was distracted over a hundred different issues. But he was focused on trying to make paying those bills just a little bit easier.

21:34And I certainly think in New York, that candidate talked more and more frequently about people's struggles and about paying those bills. Do you think that Democrats around the country should be embracing Mom Donnie? I feel like there's been conversations about Democrats not wanting to endorse him. And I guess I'm just wondering what should the stance be toward someone like him who's, you know, obviously very progressive and who other Democrats might necessarily be aligned with, you know, on every single possible issue, but who still represents hope for the future of the party among young people?

22:08Well, I think you started by nailing it on the head that I don't follow New York politics as closely as you all do, because that's certainly part of your beat. But I think what Democrats should take from this is the American people and the people of New York City want people who are focused, incredibly focused on making their life better. And right now, that's reducing costs. That's creating higher wages. And we ought to take lessons from successful candidates that talk about that the way they talk about it. But what's most important in all this is after an election, we've got to deliver on it.

22:48I'm wondering if we can talk a bit about age in the Democratic Party. I feel like one element of Mamdani's success comes from the fact that he's young and was able to get people excited. And there have obviously been a lot of conversations about gerontocracy, especially since Biden stepped out of the race. And I've been thinking about it a lot even in the context of the big, beautiful bill, given that in the first five months of 2025, three elderly Democratic representatives died. And had any of them still been alive when the bill was being voted on, the results could have been different. Do you think that Democratic lawmakers should be stepping aside more often to make room for the next generation of leadership?

23:26or is there a problem in terms of mentoring young Democratic leaders? I mean, are you worried about gerontocracy as an issue? And if you are, then where do you think that, why do you think that it's become such a problem? Well, I certainly think that these are not forever jobs. I'm limited to two terms as governor, and I'm good with that. It means that I do everything I can during that period to help my state. And I think that a lot of people, when they go to Congress, promise to only serve a certain number of terms. and then don't want to leave. And I recognize that there are arguments about seniority and experience, but we've got to make sure that we are also nurturing the next generation.

24:07And we all need to know that there's a certain period of time that we should get our work done in. You know, I'm a believer in term limits and that would solve any other issue, both in my state legislature and think we need to see it in Congress. I want to talk to you about what's happening in your state of Kentucky. I was actually sort of surprised in recent weeks at how Kentucky has become a real model of like red state opposition to Trump, just in the sense that you have Senator Rand Paul and Representative Thomas Massey, both Republicans who voted against the big, beautiful bill. But now you have Trump launching a super PAC with the explicit goal of replacing Massey, while Elon Musk has pledged to fund Massey's reelection campaign.

24:51So how do you interpret this fracture within the Republican Party And do you see it as a way to create new space for bipartisan cooperation? Or is this just proof that it's more difficult than ever to govern across party lines? Because as soon as you do the right thing by voting against a bill that will really hurt your constituents, you have Trump immediately trying to get rid of you and having to maybe team up with Elon Musk. I'll admit that I did not have the Trump-Musk feud coming down to Thomas Massey on my bingo card. That is just, again, amazing things seem to be happening every day. That's certainly one that is bizarre.