Dems Can Beat MAGA. Here’s How.

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0:57okay everyone labor day is over your bathing suits at the back of the closet and because it is a midterm year you know what that means we are going to be talking politics a lot of politics the good thing is i know just who to call about all this sarah longwell hi i think of you as an expert on how to have political arguments and maybe even how to win them. You run The Bulwark, which is a political commentary site. You run a whole lot of focus groups with voters. We've talked to you about that before. And you just wrote a book called How to Eat an Elephant about how to defeat Trumpism. Can I ask how optimistic you are about that right now?

1:41I'm optimistic. Really? Yeah, I get more optimistic all the time. Being optimistic is kind of Sarah's whole thing, but she really means it.

1:50Sarah Longwell: A Republican Party that has fashioned themselves around Donald Trump over the last decade, that is now wholly dependent on him for turnout and messaging and communications, they will not know what to do in a post-Trump world. The Democrats or the pro-democracy coalition has a unique opportunity over the next three years to build a dominant coalition that can sort of put them in the dustbin of history and salt the earth with their ashes. Today on the show, a midterm pep talk and a little bit of a book party with the bulwark Sarah Longwell. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next? Stick around.

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4:29So I do want to take a moment for the book, really just like a book moment if we can. Sure. Because it's part autobiography, part prescription for beating Trump. And your prescription for beating Donald Trump is deeply tied up in your autobiography. Like, I'll just run through it quickly. You were raised in small town Pennsylvania. You're also gay. And that kind of always gave you this insider outsider perspective on conservatives, I'd say, even though you identified as a conservative and Republican for a long time. you eventually went to work with this guy Rick Berman who you clearly liked a lot and you refer to him throughout the book and sort of use his like pillars of understanding political communication to examine this moment one of the funny things about your book though I don't think you ever use Rick Berman's nickname his famous nickname Dr.

5:19Evil Dr. Evil yeah I was like did you avoid that Because he was really like an enemy to a lot of progressive Democrats back in the day. Like he engineered PR wars against healthy eating people, mothers against drug driving, that sort of stuff. And you worked with him.

5:36Sarah Longwell: Yeah. And I dispute your characterization of the work that he did. And and because you're bringing me back to the days when sort of the left got to define him. I didn't I didn't avoid the Dr. Evil moniker on purpose. I always thought it was good that he leaned into that. He had a little guy on his desk. But, you know, what Rick did is, number one, there's a couple of things about Rick. One, I think he's a communications genius. I also think he's very Trumpian. I think he was Trumpian in his ability to understand things like narrative dominance, like using fear and anger as a way to sort of get people emotional about politics.

6:21Sarah Longwell: He's a provocateur at heart. He was a libertarian. He had the acronym FLAGS. FLAGS. Fear, love, anger, greed, and sympathy. And he was like, fear and anger are the most potent. And he basically was like, good politicians play that like a musical instrument. They do. And Donald Trump really, he basically was like, I don't care about sympathy. I don't care about love. I only care about fear and anger. And I will weaponize all of this against people. And Rick Berman is like, one of the reasons I talked about Rick a lot, not only because he was formative for how I think about communications work, not only because it gave me so much insight into how the right does communications work, because I lived in that space, but also because Rick is like a Trump figure if Trump ever told the truth.

7:08Sarah Longwell: Like one of Rick's, the thing that made Rick distinct from Trump is that Rick would if you got something wrong, you were fired. Like if you got a fact wrong, if you lied about something or just even made a sort of a mistake about what was true, Rick was tethered to the truth. Donald Trump took all of the communications lessons and then just took the truth away from them. And so I could, when I saw Trump coming up in 2015, and I was still working with Rick, I was looking at him being like, I see exactly what this guy is doing. I see how his communication strategy is working, but it is pernicious because it is untethered to the things that, you know, make any argument work.

7:47Here's the thing, though. You've talked about how this approach, the ethical way that you feel like it can be practiced is when tethered to facts, right? Like using these sort of emotional, this emotional pied pipering, I don't know. Isn't that the Achilles heel Democrats have in this moment? Which is like they are still tethered to facts. And so it's just an unfair back and forth to ask them to somehow overcome people who are comfortable lying.

8:20Sarah Longwell: I do think that is there's an asymmetry there for sure. But I don't think their Achilles heel is that they don't lie. I think that this is what makes Democrats still a good, realistic vehicle for a pro-democracy coalition to come together to defeat MAGA. I think if Democrats decide to just fight fire with fire, meaning we're just going to become like Trump, I think we're lost as a country. I think if Democrats say, no, we're just going to get better at communicating about what the truth is. We're going to get better about what we emphasize when we talk to the American people. We're going to stop getting sort of wound up about all of these internecine fights that we have and figure out how to have a an overarching message that appeals to the majority of people in this country.

9:06Like we can be a multiracial working class political party again that can defeat MAGA. So I think that's right. I think we agree on this. And, you know, I recently heard you do a really smart analysis looking at Tucker Carlson and how he could build a winning coalition. Could, emphasis could, if he did choose to try to run for president in the wake of Donald Trump. And it was interesting. You basically like had this Lego block theory of like he would build his coalition with culture warriors at the base and anti-Israel people layered on top of that and then economic populism on top of that. and I could really see it.

9:47And I could see how he was beginning to build that too. Do you have a similar construction for people who are anti-MAGA? Yes. And so first of all, this is very important about the book. This book is not about Sarah Longwell's preferred political policies, because if it was a book about that, it'd be a very different book.

10:12Sarah Longwell: This is what I've learned from voters listening to them day in and day out for eight years, which is you need to spend 70 percent of your time talking about people's material well-being. That means that the Democratic Party needs to stop focusing, like stop getting dragged into the trans conversation and so many of the other social things that voters think Democrats spend too much time on. Not precisely that they're wrong about that. Some of them they think Democrats are wrong on, but for a lot of them, it's about emphasis. What they want from Democrats is tell me how you're going to make my life better.

10:47Sarah Longwell: How are you going to make health care cheaper? How are you going to make education better? How are you going to get me a job? How am I going to get how am I going to take the job I have and move up in it? What is my upward mobility trajectory? Like, that's what voters want to hear from people. How are you going to make my life better? And so I think that that layer of economic populism, this is why with somebody like Momdani, I can be like, Momdani's doing this. Momdani's doing the thing that I said, which is so funny because you would never be a mom Donnie head like 15 years ago. No, and I'm not.

11:18Sarah Longwell: I'm even now like sometimes when he's like doing the grocery store thing or the transport, I'm like, those are dumb ideas and they're not going to work. But he's still and I'm going to give you a corollary. Donald Trump never built the wall. He talked about the wall all the time and voters don't hold him responsible for not building the wall. Why is that? It's because they didn't care about the physical wall. They cared about the idea that he was going to take immigration seriously. That's what the wall was about. Mamdani made it clear he was going to take costs and affordability seriously. And his couple of his policy proposals were less important than the idea that he was going to focus on the thing that voters wanted him to focus on.

11:59And to me, that is the key. Here's the thing that I think complicates your argument a little bit. And you allude to it in the book. You talk about the information ecosystem system triangle of doom, right? The Republican triangle of doom. Yes. The fact that progressives or Democrats or whoever, anti-MAGA people can talk all they want, but they will find themselves trapped in a triangle of doom eventually. Can you just lay out what the triangle of doom is? Well, the Republican triangle of doom is the toxic and

12:34Sarah Longwell: symbiotic relationship between Republican voters, the right-wing infotainment media system, and Republican politicians, right? So, and just take the election rise. It's really easy to see how this works. Donald Trump injects into the Republican triangle of doom the idea that the election was stolen. Now, in the beginning, most Republicans don't think that, but some Republican voters do, the ones who believe Trump is right, right? They say, yeah, the election was stolen. And so the right-wing media ecosystem to feed that, they kick into gear. They say this election was stolen, and pretty soon to reach the voters that they need to reach Kevin McCarthy, more serious Republicans, more semi-normal Republicans are like, well, I got to go on Newsmax and say the election was stolen.

13:19I got to go on Fox News, say the election was stolen. Before you know it, 70 % of Republicans believe the election was stolen because the triangle of doom is in motion. It pinged from Trump to voters, to the media, to the electeds, and back to Trump. That's right. It's a self-reinforcing cycle.

13:34Sarah Longwell: And so I think Democrats have spent the last few years being like, how do you disrupt this? How do you get it? And I'm saying, no, can't. You do have to overwhelm it, meaning you have to build a bigger coalition. You have to like kind of shrink that triangle of doom and isolate it. How do you do that? Number one, well, there's a whole bunch of ways that I say you do it in there. But one is Democrats need to build a correspondent media ecosystem. Like the idea that Democrats are still so reliant on mainstream media because they think that they're kind of like on their side, like what Republicans did.

14:05Sarah Longwell: And I was here for that. Republicans are like, hey, we feel shut out for mainstream media. So we're going to whine about it constantly. We're going to complain, work the refs. But also, this is the key, we're going to build our own. We're going to build our own where no one can tell us that, you know, we have to play by their rules. Right now, some progressives. That's so much easier to do on the conservative side. Like, I feel like the donors are like, OK, I personally feel like the donors are like, sure, yeah, I'd be more interested in building a media ecosystem than I feel like on the progressive side where I feel like people have policy interests that they want to fund or bugaboos.

14:38Sarah Longwell: Yeah, I know. And this is why I think that the whole Democratic ecosystem from top to bottom needs like some reworking around priorities. And so one of them is like, one of my personal favorite chapters in the book is Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus. Because one of the other things that I've got in my analysis is that I have lived on the operative side of both Republicans and Democrats. I was a lot, you know, I worked for Rick Berman all those years. And then after Trump happened, I was like, I'll do anything to beat this guy. I'll do anything. What do I? And I started raising money a lot of times from disaffected Republicans in the beginning and then people who are more centrist.

15:13Sarah Longwell: And now I've got big Democratic donors. And I've spent, I've raised and spent tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat Donald Trump. And so I've worked with the progressive ecosystem and I got there and I went, oh no is this how you guys do things oh man because republicans are straight up mercenaries they start companies they have economic incentives to and people i don't like this but they have economic incentives to be on the side of donald trump democrats have a bunch of non-profits and c3s and this ecosystem that's actually meant to try to make their politicians do what they want which means that they're at this unruly fractured kind of base doing lots of issue advocacy not nearly enough of like building democratic brands, building up democratic politicians.

16:01I mean, when I read your book and like I read about your first job out of college, which was like going to college campuses and basically kind of like encouraging conservatives to do what they're doing. And I'm like, does this exist for progressives? Not sure. But like, but that's an interesting job that Sarah had. I mean, here, I want to talk about this triangle of doom and like why it makes things hard, even despite what you're saying. And I think you can see it really clearly in the interview Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate candidate in Michigan, just did with Jesse Waters, right? He needs to do this interview.

16:28He needs to be reaching people who are watching Fox News. Jesse Waters, big guy, right? Jesse Waters in this interview just keeps, even though Abdul Saeed is doing exactly what you're saying, which is trying to talk about kitchen table, not kitchen table, we shouldn't say that, but like issues that are important to people's bottom line, right? And like looking out for the American, you know, wellness, economic wellness. He, Waters keeps bringing it back to the trans issue and keeps just trying to get him to talk about the trans issue. Trying to get it, trying to get it, trying to get it. Eventually they get into this like little tussle where Abdul Al-Sayed ends up like comparing surgeries on trans kids to circumcisions.

17:06It's awkward. It's strange. Is circumcision different than castration? I think it's a problem. It's a problem that you think that you get to decide what happens between a parent, a doctor and a patient. And I'm just saying that, yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid's ding-a-ling. So if you really want to bring that up, you can. And I'm just like, this is the issue, right? Like you can't, you're kind of in a little bit of a bear trap here. No, you're not. No, you're not. I'm telling you, all El Sayed had to do was be like, go on offense. You've got to figure out how to turn the tables. It's not that hard.

17:40Hey, Jesse, you know why you're so obsessed, weirdly, with this trans issue? Is because Republicans got nothing else going on. You guys are losing a war in Iran. The economy sucks. Trump's putting all these tariffs. You guys are all don't know what to do if Daddy Trump doesn't tell you what to do. And so like what? The one thing you've got is to go pick on trans people. That's because you guys are losing on everything else. Just for the love of God, figure out where the fight is. Republicans would have no problem turning the tables on this. I know Abdul El-Sayed sat in a room with some people and they were like, ask him if he's circumcised.

18:10And I was like, who is doing this? Who is what comms person thought that was a good way to go after this issue?

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20:52You're a native conservative. We're probably meeting in the middle at this moment. Yeah. I think your book is really good at talking about messaging and how people just need to rethink messaging. Political operatives need to rethink messaging. But I'm not sure about the policy sort of ideas that you extend that towards. That's where I was like, I feel like Sarah's showing her priors here. This is totally where I'm going to get pushback. This is on this because I do I basically say that there's. Well, OK, let me give an I'm going to give an example because I think it's helpful. OK, like around immigration, you talk about Democrats needing to communicate order, not cruelty.

21:31I think order is very important. I think not cruelty is very important. And, you know, you recommend they talk about securing the border, putting Americans first, which is OK. But I see a couple of issues here that I'll articulate with you. First off, we have an out of control enforcement agency right now. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I don't think you can talk about immigration and not talk about that. Totally. In some way. So that's number one. I also worry a little bit that talking about immigration in the terms you recommend could sound... like soft bigotry. And I say that not because I'm accusing you of anything.

22:09I'm just saying there's still an element of it that's saying we don't like immigrants. We need to keep them out when actually the country relies on immigrants economically, like our birth rate, all sorts of reasons we rely on immigrants. So why not communicate about security and putting America first in a way that doesn't give space at all, like no space to people who want to demonize people from other places.

22:36Sarah Longwell: I mean, look, I think that and I don't in the book, I come at it from like, this is what voters say all the time. And this is what I think. You also say the voters are inconsistent, though. They are inconsistent about this. Well, it's actually not that they're actually pretty consistent. It's that they have a moral alibi. What voters say is we do want immigrants to come here. We want them to come the right way. I hear that phrase over and over and over again, not just from Republicans, not just from independents, but also from Democrats. And I think progressives and people, no offense, you're pushing on me, I'm going to push back, who get a little high on their own supply, who do a lot of polling, they think that voters are okay with people coming across the border that is open and they're not being border security, And they're not.

23:24Sarah Longwell: Border security is table ante for how you talk about that because people see it as an issue of fairness and they see it as an issue of security. But they see it as an issue of fairness. There's people waiting in line. There's people doing it the right way. Why should we let people do it the wrong way? That's not a that is not an irrational position for people to hold. Now, I can sit here and I can agree that the reason why people are doing it the wrong way is that our immigration system totally we get like drastic reform for many years that people just put off because it's freaking hard because it's hard.

23:55But I'm talking about like, how does it how does a Democrat run and win? Like, let me ask you this.

24:02Sarah Longwell: Who is it? Which is better for a serious immigration system that operates with compassion? Right. Which which party is going to be better at that? for a second. I mean, given what we're seeing right now, I don't think you can not say Democrats. Of course. Right. OK, so Democrats are not going to put masked agents in the streets. So you want to elect Democrats to elect Democrats. Democrats have to acknowledge that a majority of the country thinks that we should start with a closed border, that we should say that we are going to have border security and that we are going to have a system that has people come in the right way.

24:40Sarah Longwell: And I think that I think that progressives who want to say, no, we cannot live with that position because that is soft bigotry, saying that there's a right way to do it. I do think that because of a decade of conversation around the chaos at the border, I think there's a new appetite from voters to have a conversation about what immigration reform looks like. And I think that Democrats, this is my point, I think Democrats are afraid of their own shadow on things like this and they're unwilling. They're like, well, immigration is not a good issue for us. You know, Republicans trust. You got to make it a good issue.

25:12Well, so make it a good issue by saying the system is broken. We want people to come here. And this is where this is where offense really counts.

25:19Sarah Longwell: Donald Trump's excesses on immigration. Everybody's happy with the border under Donald Trump. Like maybe maybe not progressives, but like you don't hear about people being upset about the border. Where are they upset, though? The brain drain that we have in this country, the fact that they're deporting people who've been here for 20 years, who've committed no crimes, the fact that we've got masked agents in the streets who are gunning down Americans or deporting people to foreign gulags. You can go on offense on the excesses, but you do have to have the other part where you say, look, I'm going to secure the border.

25:53I'm going to take border security seriously, but I'm not going to do these other things that are anti-American. We're going to figure out a way so that people can come here and come here the right way. That's an offense message. and you just can't be afraid to talk about it. Yeah. Okay. I know you're in a rush. You got to run. You got stuff to do. No, I'm not in a rush. I want to talk about this all day long. I want to hear more about the things you disagree with. This is my favorite part. Oh, I mean, I think if you have time, if you can give me an extra five or 10, I will get into that, which is like, I think the chapter you had on trans folks.

26:28Yeah. It kind of gets into some of the same issues for me. where I hear what you're saying about, I think the way you expressed it when you talked about that Abdul Al-Sayed movement was quite strong. But I do think the challenge in talking about these issues, whether it's immigration, whether it's trans kids or whatever, is when it steps into that space of feeling to people who are being actively harmed by the system that you are forgetting about them. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like that's, and I understand you have to win And there's a lot of people in this country who want to vote for X or Y or Z.

27:07But I just feel like and I think you know this, that there's like a moral thing at the core. But I talk about that.

27:14Sarah Longwell: I feel like I go I feel like I go straight at that in the book because, you know, as somebody who was gay during the period. I mean, I'm still gay, but like I was coming out during the time when gay marriage was the wedge issue. It was the trans issue of the early aughts. Right. And Republicans used it as like a cultural wedge to win elections. And so one of the things and so I I got very involved in log cabin Republicans, young conservatives for the freedom to marry. And so I worked on these issues. And one of the things that and I worked with a lot of Democrats and progressives. It was my introduction.

27:56Sarah Longwell: It's why I'm so comfortable in these big cross-ideological movements, because I think cross-ideological movements are really good and really profound. And I watched it work and change minds over and change minds fast. Like, I still think persuasion is possible. I believe in that. It's part of my optimism. But one of the things that the entire gay rights movement understood at the time was Barack Obama was not going to support gay marriage in 2008. He just wasn't because the public wasn't there yet. And do you know what? Well, everyone kind of knew it was like a fiction. Do you know what I mean?

28:27Like everyone kind of, everyone felt they understood how he felt and it was a political decision, I think. That is how I look back on that time.

28:34Sarah Longwell: And you don't think that if John Ossoff comes out and says, I think that the way Republicans talk about trans people is disgusting. This level of discrimination and demonization is so gross. That being said, there are real questions about what it means when minors transition. transition. There are real questions about, you know, if somebody has gone through puberty, a boy has then gone through puberty and is going to transition and play in women's sports. Like, those things are complicated. And this is what I argue in the book. And like, absolutely not a politician's territory. Do you know what I mean?

29:08Like, I'm like, why are you getting involved in these decisions? But let's say you say all that, right? That is not throwing trans people under the bus. It is not throwing trans people under the bus to say you're not sure, to say that that that this might not that they have concerns about the fairness of that because that is where voters are. Because if you're a trans person, you feel so demonized in this moment and so vulnerable. And if you believe the government is there to help you, you might feel like this person in the government is not there to help me. And I'm being actively demonized by these other people.

29:42I felt that way about Barack Obama not supporting gay marriage. Like I really this was I feel like it's a different level. Don't you feel like it's a different level? I don't know. I mean, I lived through where there was so— I don't want to, like, speech-church. No, no, no, no. It's okay. But when they were sending out mailers of, like, people—

29:58Sarah Longwell: I mean, I grew up in a time where they were like, you couldn't be allowed to adopt. Everybody's a heathen. Like, they're sending out all these, like, men in leather chaps, like, kissing and having—you know, it's, like, disgusting stuff. And it's meant to scare people. They're using you to scare other people. But there was no doubt in the gay rights community that Barack Obama, although he was even running against John McCain, in both cases, I think people felt like even with George W. Bush, the Republicans knew that those guys actually weren't as anti-gay marriage as they were running on. But they were using it.

30:30Sarah Longwell: But they were using it. Anyway, my point is, is that giving politicians grace on these things is an important part of the pragmatism to moving the ball forward. We understood that it was our job. The other difference here is it's kids. It's kids a lot of the time. And you're like, why? These are like literally the people we try to protect in this country. But that's how Republicans feel about it. Oh, because they want to protect their kids from... No, no, no, no. They think the idea of transitioning minors... Is abuse. When they can't... When they're so young to make a decision about their bodies and they worry about social contagions, you know.

31:06Sarah Longwell: And look, there was a period of time where everybody was like putting their pronouns and everything. And then that kind of went away. And I think there is fear from people. Look, I always try to sort of tease out bad faith actors who are demonizing people for horrible reasons and sort of good faith where they're like trans people shouldn't be discriminated against, which, by the way, is a majority position in the country. A majority of people don't think that trans people should be discriminated against, and they think trans adults should be able to do what they want with their bodies, with their doctors.

31:36Sarah Longwell: Where it gets 70-30 against is kids transitioning, you know, the transitioning of minors, and sports. Those are the two tough spots. And I think that Democrats are going to have to really focus on the place where they still have a majority position. And the activist community has to focus on the public education. And you can't make politicians walk the plank on a 70-30 issue that's going to imperil their reluctability. Yeah. I mean, I think I get caught up in like, I feel like I'm watching like the dinosaur learn how to open the door. And I'm like, you have literally tried this for so long. You tried it with bathrooms in North Carolina.

32:16And like, this is wrong. Like, I get, I think it just, I get pissed. You know what I mean? I understand. So, OK, one more thing. I just I disagree with you even. But like, I think a lesson you could take from Magus Magus success and from Rick Berman's principles is that Democrats need to rouse people to vote for them by finding someone other than immigrants to blame for all of the troubles that people feel like they're experiencing. Like billionaires, data centers, you can see them doing it right now. Is that a lesson you take, too? Yes.

32:52Sarah Longwell: So and this is where sometimes I think that Democrats just need to be really more specific on the billionaire front. OK, the tech oligarchs, the tech oligarchs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg. These are good villains. You know why? Because they're crappy people who are who are. They are crappy people and Elon especially. But Peter Thiel and they can ik people out if you go on offense against them. I feel like Democrats get too diffuse in who's a villain and they want to be like, ah, it's just billionaires everywhere. And like you'd say, like, I don't think trillionaires should exist. All that's fine.

33:29These guys really are controlling the discourse. You know who else? Ellison buying up CBS. Right. There are are real people to denies because here's here's where I think you can lean into populism in a healthier form, which is what are people mad about? What's going on all across the globe in part that is actually leading to more right wing phenomena is people feel like there's a global elite in charge of things. This is what the deep state's about as well. They think there's like a conspiracy up there that's controlling everything.

34:01Sarah Longwell: And they, the little guy who are trying to do the right thing and do their jobs, they're getting screwed. And there's like a revolt happening. And Republicans have been using cultural issues to bring that their way. But I think that Democrats should really weaponize a fight against these tech oligarchs and go on offense against them. But the idea that you could tax them and like that's going to solve, you know, the debt crisis or it's going to make people wealthier. That's not that doesn't track exactly what it does. You mean like you shouldn't tax them? You should put them in jail or something?

34:34Of course you should tax them. Of course you should tax them. I'm just saying that sometimes I think that. Oh, like they get caught up in like the policy solution versus like focus on the plot. Yeah, I'm like, guys, that's right. Focus on these guys, like making, making so much money off of algorithms that divide us. Like these guys right now, Elon Musk, his his big business is tearing us apart and making us hate each other. And like we should push back against that. It's so funny because Mom Donnie like did this. He did that video back in the spring where he was like, here's where this guy lives.

35:11We're going to do a pied-a-terra tax on him. And he got so much blowback on it. Now, he's not a tech billionaire. But no, that was against a different guy whose name is escaping me right now. Yeah, me too. But it's just interesting. All of these levers have pushed back. And I think you just have to get used to it and keep searching for your message that's going to work.

35:32Sarah Longwell: The part of the book that I think you said this earlier. You're like, I just get so mad about this. And I do think people are really mad. And I think that the way that good messaging and good communications work is it can channel the anger into something productive, something productive. It is not just to be like Trump, right? I think that we have to, you know, I say it in the book, we got to start feeding the good wolf. We all got light and dark in us. We've all got, there's two wolves inside of all of us. And like, which one are we going to feed? And Elon feeds the bad wolf. Zuckerberg feeds the bad wolf.

36:08Trump feeds the bad wolf.

36:09Sarah Longwell: How are Democrats going to figure out how to appeal to people's aspirations, appeal to the better parts of our nature? And I think it's OK to have an enemy. The enemy should just really be a bad guy, not just some amorphous thing. Yeah. OK. We started this conversation talking about the midterms, November. I was struck when I think about that, I think about the fact that voters in November are going to be a certain kind of voter. They're going to be motivated voters. It's a midterm. There are going to be a lot of Democratic voters. In some ways, I wonder if non-voters are going to be as important as actual voters in this midterm election.

36:44How much do you think November is going to tell us about what comes after November?

36:50Sarah Longwell: I'm not sure it's going to tell us that much about what comes after. Here's the thing. Your point, though. Okay, so here is, this is what matters a great deal to me. Donald Trump didn't just change the political coalitions in this country. He also brought in way more voters into the system who are just there for Trump. I tell this story in the beginning of the book about being at Dealbook Summit, listening to Kevin McCarthy in the green room be like, he's a turnout machine. I cannot believe these numbers he puts up in these rural places. Here's my question. Do those people still turn out when Donald Trump is gone?

37:24Sarah Longwell: He's telling them, pretend like I'm on the ballot. Yeah, I know he is. I know he is. But you know what? It doesn't work when he's really not there. Also, but this is also this is why the Bush line is so important. We got to get Trump. He's got to leave office in the 20s, man. Below the Bush line. Tim Miller calls it the dick line. We're talking about where Nixon was. And like, you've got to get them to a place where the public thinks that the Trump era was a mistake and where Trump is like an albatross around the necks of people who want to run the Marco Rubio's. And that's the reason that Tucker Carlson is moving away from him is he thinks this guy is going to end up in a bad place and I want to be distanced from him when I run.

38:07So.

38:08Sarah Longwell: All of that to say, I think that there is an enormous amount of opportunity that could be seized right now if Democrats understand how to be a community and a political party that works together, that has a range of candidates that work in all kinds of places. But the 2026 election is going to be about sort of a backlash to Trump. But because his voters are demotivated and Democratic voters are really motivated, you're going to see the enthusiasm gap really show up, I think, in the midterms. It's a reset. It's a reset for 2028. And that's why it really matters that Democrats figure out who they are going into 2028 because Republicans won't know.

38:49Sarah Longwell: They won't know without Donald Trump. So it's an opportunity. It's an opportunity. The biggest opportunity that we will have generationally to make sure that MAGA doesn't sustain beyond Donald Trump. They're going to have to figure it out fast. They do have some figuring out to do. But I am feeling like I am seeing, even with all the factional fighting, some of me actually is a little bit like, let's get it out of our system, everybody. It's a good thing. Get it out of our system right now so it's done by the time we go into 2028. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Sarah, I'm super grateful for your time for coming on the show.

39:21So fun. Thanks for saying you disagreed with some stuff because I think that's the best part. Sarah Longwell is the founder and publisher of The Bulwark. And her new book is called How to Eat an Elephant. You're going to want to check it out. All right. That's our show. What Next is produced by Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharm, and Patrick Fort. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TVD. Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. Ben Richmond is the senior director of podcast operations. And I'm Mary Harris. You can track me down over on Blue Sky if you want.

39:56I'm at Mary Harris. And I will catch you back here next time.

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