How to Build a Winning Coalition in Trump’s Broken America

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welcome to assembly required with stacey abrams from crooked media i'm your host stacey abrams

One key tactic of authoritarianism is the argument that the existing political systems are broken beyond repair and only one man can fix it.

To do so, though, the rising autocrat will typically infiltrate an existing political party, gut it from the inside, and demonize the opposition, thereby exacerbating divides and turning them into chasms.

Then comes step four, breaking government so it doesn't work.

That weakens fealty to democracy, and tyranny becomes more attractive.

It's worked around the world, and America is no different, as we have watched in real time, especially since 2016.

In normal times, political parties serve a valuable function.

At their best, they are shorthand for ideological positions on how government should operate, and they act as conveners, bringing those of similar beliefs together.

Here in the United States, a stubbornly two-party system has dominated American politics since the country was founded, for better or for worse.

At a moment when one party favors democracy and the other exhibits open hostility, partisanship takes on a different urgency.

Despite efforts over the centuries, American politics have maintained this binary mode of operation, currently Democrat versus Republican.

Still, third parties have repeatedly attempted to break through, but they rarely succeed and never for long.

Instead, emergent competing political ideologies have typically been subsumed under the banner of one side or or the other.

Since George Washington's solo stint as a nonpartisan, we have persisted in our historic addiction to two parties, from Federalists and Democratic Republicans to Democrats and Whigs to Republicans and Democrats we know today.

But today's political scene is treacherous.

The aggressive polarization between our predominant parties has hardened our politics into something that goes beyond threatening national unity.

It endangers democracy itself.

With the domination of the Republican Party by MAGA acolytes and Trump's GOP-supported authoritarian movement, the divide feels deeper and unbridgeable.

Every social, economic, and political issue has a partisan position that may or may not reflect its membership.

But rather than guideposts on political philosophy, partisan labels now serve to sort fellow citizens with different opinions into enemies in a civilizational struggle.

The grand old party of Republicans has been transformed into a megaphone for autocracy.

Meanwhile, Democrats have been wrestling with how to communicate to the American people what we stand for and what we'll do about it.

As the opposition, Democrats are expected to be the bulwark against the destruction of democracy.

But too many are finding its response wanting.

I wonder if that's because we're trying to go it alone.

The coalition necessary to fight back against autocracy must be intentionally broad.

Historians of successful resistance movements agree pluralistic teams, multiracial, multi-ethnic, and of divergent ideologies, are all required.

That means defeating this regime and its aftermath must include everyone from never-Trump former Republicans to libertarians to far-left progressives.

These political identities align on rejection of autocracy, but not much else.

Well, one of the 10 steps to freedom and power is electing public officials who will defend democracy.

To defeat the overthrow of our system, we must win elections.

So, some candidates have tried to rebrand what it means to be a member of their chosen political party.

Some candidates have gone further, dropping the party label altogether and running as independents.

In this moment, no tactic is off the table, and increasingly, it's showing signs of promise.

In 2024, Dan Osborne ran as an independent in Nebraska and won 46.5% of the vote.

In 2022, Evan McMullen polled 42.7% in Utah.

And in 2014, Greg Orman took 42.5% in Kansas.

These weren't wins, but they were strikingly close for independence.

Rob Sand, running for governor of Iowa as a Democrat, describes himself as independent-minded, and his campaign is gaining traction.

Look, I am a Democrat for a reason, but I understand the allure of a party label as something that responds to a human craving for belonging, identification, and definition.

We like to name and claim.

However, in a moment when the majority political parties are having public identity crises and when defending democracy will demand strange bedfellows, now is the time to understand who else is out there and what they believe.

To help me dig into this, I'm joined by two special guests, Jane Koston, host of What a Day at Crooked Media and a former card-carrying libertarian, and Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party.

Jane Koston and Maurice Mitchell, welcome to Assembly Required.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's good to be with you.

Okay, so I'm going to kick us off with a broad question.

And I'm going to start with you, Jane.

Why is the two-party system so entrenched in the United States?

Because we keep choosing it.

There are, actually, lots of other parties, but for many reasons that we can get into, into, there's a reason why you may not have heard of the Constitution Party.

And there's a reason why the Libertarian Party greets success with utter horror and then destroys itself.

And there's a reason why, like, you know, the Green Party, you remember it exists about every four years.

We keep choosing the two-party system.

Yes, we have bicameral legislatures.

We don't have like a mixed-member proportional system like other countries do, where you definitely can choose a political party that is more akin to how you identify politically.

But again, I think we keep choosing the two-party system.

And then we get really mad at the two-party system.

But I think in some ways that is being mad about voters and being mad about how voters decide and being mad about the decisions that voters make or don't make.

And Maurice, I'm going to bring it to you.

Building on what Jane just said, We know that there are major structural challenges that help keep Americans convinced that this is what we have to choose?

Because anyone running as a third-party candidate in this country faces some structural challenges that the average person is not aware of.

Can you describe what that looks like if you're a third-party candidate who wants to have access and

why you think that persists?

Sure, absolutely.

So, you know, the American electoral system is not one electoral system.

It's actually 50 different bespoke electoral systems.

And so each state has its own laws, but all of them really

hew very closely to this rigid two-party system.

And so there's a lot of hoops that, if you're not a Democrat or Republican, that you have to get over in order to even qualify as a third party.

It's really expensive.

It's really costly.

You're probably going to have to hire lawyers.

There probably will be one of the two parties might challenge you.

And

most of the times, there's like a petitioning threshold where you have to get a bunch of people to sign a bunch of things in multiple counties just to qualify.

And then you have to run.

And by then you might not have enough money to actually run a campaign, right?

And those hoops are designed to prevent people from doing it.

Some people do spend a lot of time doing it and

they're able to get their person on the ballot, but then they don't have the tons of money that they need to actually run a viable, you know, country, country ride or a statewide campaign.

You know, there are places like New York or Connecticut or Oregon that have fusion voting, which allows us at the Working Families Party to have ballot access.

There's a lot of two-party systems, but the American two-party system is probably one of the most rigid two-party systems on the planet, right?

It's the first past the post, which means like, you know, whoever gets the most votes, winner takes all, meaning even if you have a plurality, you might not even have a majority of the votes.

If you have a plurality, you get the whole thing.

Voting system, and it's not super democratic.

It means all the voters that didn't vote for you, they don't really get to express themselves.

You know, there's other democracies that deal with that differently.

And the one thing I note is that when this country invades other countries and has to engage in rebuilding that country,

they never have that country adopt our form of democracy.

It's always some form of parliamentary democracy.

So

tend to think that that's because we understand that our system probably isn't the best.

So for both of you, just a little more history.

What are examples that you can think of where third-party candidates actually made a difference, not just in the race that they were in, but in challenging the system that we have?

Well, I am a millennial, so my first thought was Ralph Nader.

So for anyone who may not recall the 2000 election that lasted three months and appears to have only been enjoyable to my eighth grade civics teacher,

Ralph Nader was the Green Party candidate who helped

in some ways to

I mean, this is actually gets to one of the objections I think voters have to voting for third parties is the view that they can, by voting for those parties, accidentally tilt the race towards the candidate they least like.

And there have been many people who have argued that Nader's success in the 2000 election helped push the election towards George W.

Bush.

But I would also say that, you know, we've seen how Bernie Sanders' candidacy in 2016, obviously not technically a third-party candidacy, but I think that that was something that really pushed Democrats in a different direction.

But I would say more broadly, what we see from both of these examples, and there are others,

and you could also look down ballot to far more examples of successful third-party runs.

But what we see in these examples is that we have, and I think it's actually really bad.

I'm very concerned about the idea of the Omnibarty.

I remember, I'm a huge Rage Agustin Machine fan.

Love that band.

Favorite band when I was in junior high.

Still, I saw them a couple of years ago.

But I remember distinctly.

that in the late 90s, one of their big things was that basically Al Gore and George W.

Bush were the same person.

And if you, you know, whoever you voted for, you were just going to get the same same thing, which I was in Ohio growing up.

And I remember being like, I don't think these are the same people.

I don't think Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W.

Bush are the same person.

And I think that, you know.

We obviously don't have a counterfactual, but I'm pretty sure things would have gone a little differently if Al Gore had won the presidency.

But I do think that we saw in both 2000 and in 2016 ways in which people who were, even though Bernie Sanders was participating, obviously, in the Democratic primaries, we saw in which a alternative candidate really attracted people who were

interested in an alternative message.

Maurice?

Yeah, well, there's a, you know, it's interesting that, you know, before this is going way back in history, but, you know, before there was a Republican Party, there were the Whigs and Democrats, and the Republican Party actually came out of a number of fusion parties, like, you know, the Free Soil Party and others, coming together to make that party happen.

So, you know, just like really, that's like back in the day history.

But more currently, I could speak to another thing.

So like we had Dan Osborne, who ran as an independent in Nebraska.

And that actually required the Democrats to stand down and not actually.

get into the race so that an independent could kind of build a coalition across a number of people.

And Dan Osborne got really close, right?

I think that that's an indication that there is a popular desire for people outside of the two parties.

And then you could look to some of the examples that we have, you know, not at the top of the ticket, but at the Working Families Party, you know, a lot of people don't know that Tish James' entrance into politics started as an independent WFP-only candidate for city council in Brooklyn.

So Tish James was an independent-minded lawyer that was, you know, a public defender and a consumer lawyer and somebody that, you know, was really like connected to the grassroots.

And,

Republicans certainly didn't know what to do with her.

Democrats were very skeptical of her because of her connection to the grassroots.

We at the Working Families Party, this is in 2003, we ran her against the Republicans and Democrats and won.

And so it was, you know, you can't beat them, join them.

So it was only after she won as a WFP-only independent did the Democrats eventually adopt her.

And now she's the Attorney General of New York.

That's just one example of how independent politics and third-party politics create more opportunities for outsiders.

And, you know, we have tons of examples now.

So in the city of Philadelphia, we have two WFP-only at-large city council people, Nicholas O'Rourke and Kendra Brooks.

And the reason we're able to do that is that in some cities like Philadelphia, there's

basically at-large set-asides for the quote-unquote minority party.

Historically, that was the Republican.

So you just needed to be a Republican and sign some paperwork and you were going to win those seats.

We figured that we could challenge the Republican in a blue city like Philadelphia and there would be more working families party voters than Republican voters.

And we were right.

And so right now they govern in the city of Philadelphia and they actually govern and pass laws.

They passed a lot of anti-corporate laws like the law that

protect Philadelphians from algorithmic increases in rent prices, for example, that only would have happened because there are working families, city council people that aren't sort of connected to the real estate lobby.

It shows up in meaningful ways in the lives of everyday constituents.

Well, Marcel, I'm going to stay with you because as you just laid out, there are some very clear examples of how a third party that may have some alignment, but not complete agreement with Democrats has been able to really foster political change and protections.

Can you talk a little bit more about the origins of the Working Family Party and how you came to the conclusion that it was your political home?

Absolutely.

Okay, so come back with me 26 years ago, right?

And at that time, you know, the Democratic Party was led by Bill Clinton and the DLC, and they had this theory called triangulation, right?

They felt that if they continue to adopt some of the sort of social rights

progressivism of the Democratic Party,

but loosened the economic rights commitments to labor and adopted some fiscal conservative policies, that they might be able to just kind of run the map.

And this is the Democratic Party that brought us the 94 crime bill.

It's the Democratic Party that, you know,

didn't initiate NAFTA, but certainly like adopted NAFTA.

It's the the Democratic Party that

was tough on crime and also engaged in the policies that led to the quote-unquote welfare reform.

And at that time, there were people in labor unions, there were people in grassroots organizations that said, hey,

we believe that this is a mistake, that this is a betrayal of your working class base.

And by just kind of hugging corporations and making a deal with making deals with Wall Street and adopting free trade, that that is going to be a poison pill.

Fast forward to today, it turns out that the people who started the Working Families Party, who at that time

made those sort of assessments, were prescient because the industrial base of

the U.S.

has been decimated, that many people don't trust the Democratic Party because they don't know where they stand.

And a lot of those voters have either dropped out of politics or joined the Republicans.

And so the Working Families Party started in New York as a rebuke of those policies because those labor unions and grassroots organizations felt so betrayed by the Democrats that they felt they had to build a party of their own.

Fast forward to today,

we're now in every region of the country.

We're in more than a dozen states.

And what brought me to the WFP, like I grew up in New York, so I was familiar with the WFP and its politics, and I was able to vote on the Working Families Party line.

But what brought me to the WFP was a recognition that politics as they stood,

the two-party system in itself, at a time when one of the parties has been captured by a white Christian nationalist identity cult,

that we needed another option.

And if we didn't build that option, that somebody might build it that would have nefarious designs.

I actually think that the right wing, if we don't actually fill this demand for independent politics, the right wing will fill the demand.

Like, and so it's actually urgent.

It isn't abstract that we fill that demand with a pro-democracy party that is grassroots and aligns with the interest of labor unions.

The other thing is, I came from the movement for black lives, and one of the things I saw was the power of social movements and the power of protests to call the question and to surface contradictions and to demand things.

But if you do not have people with governing power that are aligned with your interests, then you're going to alley

to people who don't have the interests and desires and the passion of the outside social movements.

And we need inside-outside power.

And in order to do that, you need to take elections and party politics seriously.

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Well, Jane, you made a comment earlier.

I'm going to ask you to talk about it a little bit.

You have had a very interesting journey as a former card-carrying member of the Libertarian Party, which, as you mentioned a little earlier, seems to be afraid of victory sometimes.

And can you talk about what initially drew you to libertarianism?

Although your Rage Against the Machine does explain that a little bit, and then talk about why you ended up pulling away.

Oh,

Stacey.

I mean, it was an amazing article, but I want other people to know about it.

I've got, I've got,

I've got time.

Okay.

So I think that in 2016 and especially going

throughout Trump's first term, I was so repulsed by how

state power was being wielded even by Democrats.

And I think that something that's really important to me to talk about here is that there's libertarianism, big L, like the Libertarian Party.

But then I think that there is a kind of libertarianism, small L.

And I think that we get this, you know, when we talk about being a Democrat, lowercase Democrat.

And I think that for me, I was so struck by how Democrats' response and to say talking about

police violence was not to challenge what police were tasked with doing, but to change how the police looked or how they sounded or what the messaging looked like.

And I was really kind of repulsed by how state power was being wielded.

And I think all the time about how basically any law you write, anyone,

you are saying that it is worthwhile to me for people to be subject to potential violence from the state for this law to be enacted.

And that can go for pretty much anything.

I mean, I think about like kind of

like how many interactions with police come from noise violations or

so-called kind of quality of life laws or something like that.

Like, is your grass too high?

Or is someone objecting to something you've got in your yard or something like that?

And so all of that leads to interactions with the state, which can lead to violence because the state has the capacity for violence.

And we have, you know, you can read Machiavelli, but like that's kind of the purpose of the state in some ways.

And so I was drawn to the idea of letting people

make their own decisions for their own lives.

Now, regrettably, the Libertarian Party, as currently exists, does not believe in that.

The Libertarian Party has over the last, I'd say, six years, been taken over by a caucus known as the Mizes Caucus.

And they are definitely more of the so-called paleoconservative and kind of the paleo-libertarian movement, which adheres to the thinking of people like Murray Rothbard, who I think it's worth knowing that Murray Rothbard started Students for Strom Thurmond at Columbia University in like 1948, which he was like the only member.

But I'm pretty sure that, you know,

he was like an edgelord.

He was an edgelord before we had edgelords.

And if you look into Rothbard's writing and it's kind of this strain of libertarianism, it very much is like, no, no, no, no.

repress those people, just don't repress me.

Rothbard writes a lot, and there are some great pieces on the subject, about how, you know, yeah, it should be the cops should be able to kill homeless people and they should be able to beat people to death in the streets, just not you or me, but them.

And I think that we've seen the Libertarian Party one, it has edged closer and closer to Trump, but also to the point I was making earlier.

In 2016, they ran candidate Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, and they received more votes than they had ever received in the history of the party.

And everyone in the party lost their minds.

And this is actually to me, and I'd love to hear you talk about this, Mo, because this is something I get worried about with third parties.

Purity spirals.

There is a thing that happens in third parties and in politics in general in which we become subject to purity spirals.

And the Libertarian Party basically saw Gary Johnson, who in the world of libertarianism appeared to be a moderate.

And you see people who are who were furious with Gary Johnson because he tried to make libertarianism appealing.

I interviewed him twice

and he talked about how, you know, if you are, this is 2016, so he's like, you know, I want to be something for people who want to vote for Hillary Clinton.

I want to be something for people who want to vote for Donald Trump.

I want to be something for people who want to vote for Bernie Sanders.

Now, that is a complex way to try to view yourself as a political figure.

And he said a lot of things to me that I thought were very strange.

Like he tried to basically argue that the opioid crisis didn't exist.

But this was someone who was trying to appeal to as many people as possible, which is, in general, if you are trying to win a candidacy, that's just what you do.

Except in the Libertarian Party, where the the idea of winning more votes meant, oh, we would be watering down our message.

But I also, I think, that moment of seeing this party get taken over by people for whom, if you've ever looked on the Twitter feed of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, where they tweeted about how, you know, whoever would,

I hate to say this, whoever would murder Kamala Harris would be an American hero.

Or

saying that the Uyghur

genocide doesn't exist because Uyghurs aren't real.

and basically arguing for the return of slavery.

All this kind of edge lord bullshit, all coming from this one Libertarian Party within New Hampshire, has become kind of the mouthpiece for what the Libertarian Party looks like more broadly.

Despite the fact that the most recently, the Libertarian Party candidate was a anti-Trump, gay libertarian who wanted to speak for libertarians who opposed state power being used against minorities and also against white people, against pretty much anybody.

But he, you know, and he won that candidacy, which was a great move, I think, for the party.

But you still see this idea of like, oh, he's not a real libertarian.

Real libertarians are based and me and also super racist for some reason.

But I think that that is actually something I'd love, if it's okay, I'd love to ask Mo about, which is that my concern always is

how do you avoid the purity spiral?

Yes.

Yeah, totally.

Maurice, as you answer this, I'm going to wrap in a second part of a question, which is, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that we have to build a coalition that shares democracy as a core tenant because we are watching authoritarianism, fascism, tyranny rise at not just an unprecedented rate, but having

not just harm, but treachery is afoot.

Authoritarianism is not a political system.

Fascism is not an ideology.

We have to have some way to win.

So to your point, Jane, we've got to win, but we are facing people who want purity, but also believe that the worst has to be made manifest for good to ever grow.

So fix it.

Yeah.

So I think, you know, I actually believe that leadership really matters and leadership that is clear about strategy really matters.

So at the Working Families Party, we are explicitly a non-sectarian party.

Like that is in our DNA

to repel some of these sectarian urges or these like entryist organizations that are sectarian to like bury themselves in and then heighten the contradictions inside of our party.

But it's a thing that happens.

And then also, we have history as a teacher.

If it's true that we're facing fascism, then we should look at what happened when, like, in Germany, the social democrats and the socialists and didn't come together because of their sectarian differences against they were having such a good time fighting in the streets that they really, you know, they got distracted.

It was really fun to just fight in the streets for eight years.

Right.

And it created the conditions for the Nazis to take over, right?

We have examples of what happens when you don't join united fronts that include people that you disagree with against fascism again and again and again and again across history when people have made that mistake, when they looked up and they saw fascists rising and they thought, you know what?

Let me find the people who I have the most in common with, but differ on something that I think is really important and focus all my attention on hating and destroying them and their parties, right?

And so I think bringing in those historical lessons are really important for people.

And what I like to say is like, yes, we have to join the Cheney Tachomsky.

coalition, right?

It has to be that broad.

It has to include everybody that agrees that fascism is bad.

And that means being part of a coalition with people that you disagree with and dislike.

Absolutely.

Because the primary contradiction is growing fascism and white nationalism across the world, right?

And it takes different forms.

Like it's in India, it's in Hungary, it's in the United States, it's trying to come back in Brazil.

And we have to do everything to stop it.

And so we need leaders that are willing to say that and willing to engage in debate and willing willing to sometimes be unpopular with some people in order to protect our movement.

And one of the issues with a purity spiral is there's a difference between purity and having values that are concrete.

You know, when I was running for office as a Democrat, I emphasized the importance of inclusion of people with different values.

But the way I would phrase it is, look, Republicans are welcome to come to dinner, but they don't get to dictate the menu.

I'm not willing to abdicate my own, my commitment to my values, like defending LGBTQIA rights and reproductive justice and criminal justice reform in order to court voters who may not agree with me on these issues.

But I also believe that you can compromise your vision without compromising your values, that you can find alignment on policy outcomes, or in this case, you can find alignment on systems of government.

democracy better than autocracy, inclusion better than fascism.

But we know that

to your point, Jane, this notion that you have to have ideological purity has really run against how we actually build power.

And so I'd love for both of you to talk about how do you think about the balance between holding on to your values and to both of you, how do you build coalitions to get things done, especially in a moment as fraud as this one?

Okay, yeah.

So, I mean,

that word right there, power, right?

So this is...

This is an area where the right is really clear.

And I think most people on the far right are clear about their focus on wielding power, on gaining power, and gaining state power.

And

it's, I think we have to develop that level of power hungriness, right?

We need to focus on gaining power because once you have power, you could do all types of really good things with it.

Outside of power, there's very little you could do for any community that you care about, for any marginalized people that you care about.

And so politics are about being popular.

How can we offer an appeal that is popular enough for us to be in power so that we could wield that power in all types of good ways?

It's an order of operations thing, right?

And I think really helping people think through the strategy that would lead to power, ultimately you're like, all right, well, we need more people.

It's just me and my study group is not going to cut it.

I need to grow my appeal.

How do I do that?

So I think that that's actually really critical.

And then the other thing is that

I really appreciate how you framed it.

I disagree with many people who consider themselves like part of the establishment of the Democratic Party on a lot of things.

But I do agree with them sincerely on the fact that the Republican Party is the current Republican Party that's been captured by MAGA is a threat.

to democracy and a threat to human life.

And I'm willing to be in coalition with those people that I disagree with on that fight, which is why when the dust is settled, we often join forces with Democrats in general elections, right?

But in primary elections, we beat up on Democrats and we engage in a lot of primaries because I disagree with the direction of where that United Front is going.

These are the same people who brought us, like, again, the 94 crime bill and actually, you know, figured out how to spend, waste a billion dollars and still lose the election in November.

I don't trust them with the direction of the United Front.

So the way that I'm able to engage in a principled and I think productive way in engaging in that disagreement about how we build the United Front is through those primaries.

But when all the dust is settled, I join them against the Republicans in the general election.

I think that's how you're able to hold both of those things, part of the United Front, but also I have notes about the direction of the United Front.

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Jane, you look what role should third-party candidates play in how we're approaching 2026, 2028?

I mean, if the mission is to prevent the decimation of democracy, what should the major third parties be charged with doing?

I think that the major third parties should be tasked with doing what I want Democrats to do, which is to find a positive vision for moving forward.

I don't mean positive as unhappy.

I mean positive as an affirmative vision of what you want.

Because

what we, I think all of us us agree on, is that we don't like this.

I do not like the fact that Stephen Miller has actual political power.

That causes me to genuinely lose sleep.

But what do we want instead of that?

Not just the opposite of whatever Trump does, because I think that what we have seen, you know, I spent years covering American conservatism and the right.

And something that's been very weird and very bad that has happened in the Republican Party, and you can hear conservatives talk about this and complain about it in other places, is that the the Republican Party has become inherently reactionary.

They are anti-whatever it is liberals do.

So they don't have an ethos.

They have an anti-ethos.

If Democrats suddenly were like, you know,

we like sunny days, they'd be like, fuck you, clouds.

And so I think that we can't become that.

We can't do that.

And I'm aware that like, For 2026, it's a little bit different because midterms generally punish parties in power.

But I think it's really worth having an affirmative message.

And I think an affirmative message is not, I'm different from those people.

It's how are you different from those people?

So what are you for?

What do you want?

If you were in charge of everything, what would you be doing?

In its best form, politics is what we do to get to policy.

Like, it is the process by which we get to policy.

I think a lot of people have ignored that.

And a lot of times that just isn't true anymore.

But I think it's so important to have policies in mind and be thinking about what is it you want to do.

And so I think that, you know, something I was really impressed by what you just said, Mo, about like, yeah, we'll beat up on Dems in the primaries, but when the dust settles, like we know we need to work together.

Because I think that there are so many people and, you know, And it's interesting also because you see, I've spent so much time covering the Republican Party and I'm like, I know they do it too, where it just is like, actually, my most important thing is beating up on this other member of my political cohort who we agree with about most things, but I'm mad for

very esoteric reasons.

And I think that that is so deeply harmful to a political movement that wants to be for something.

I think that something else that I want to get into and just say here

is that most voters hold politics very loosely.

And I'm aware that if you cover politics or work in politics, this drives you insane all the time.

And so I think it's really important to remember that most people hold politics pretty loosely.

They see politics in many ways as a distraction from the stuff they actually want to be doing.

They do not enjoy this.

They do not think it's fun.

They want good things to happen for themselves and their families and for other people too, ideally.

But I think that it's really important to remember that to appeal to most voters, you need to appeal to how most voters view politics, which is kind of like this terrible thing that there are ads on my television for that's kind of confusing.

And I'm not really quite sure where I stand on a lot of issues, but I just want good things for people.

I always think about

my mom passed away earlier this year, and it's been really, really hard.

But it's been interesting because I just keep thinking back on moments that have that where she helped to inform my politics.

My mom

was probably further left than I am, very liberal,

did a lot of protesting in the 60s,

got arrested a bunch of times for sit-ins.

But I remember when I came out to her and I, you know, as

bisexual, and she was so worried because she was like, does that just mean you can't make a choice?

And I was like, nope,

that's not what that means.

But like, I could see her figuring it out and coming to understand because, you know, this is a woman who had was born in 1948.

This is a woman for her whom queer was a slur.

And then she started seeing people using it.

And it was like, is my child queer?

Is that okay?

And then she became, in so many ways, my greatest ally and greatest support, and someone who was so proud of me all the time.

And I'm so glad that I did not get into a language off with my mother for in pursuit of some sort of pure understanding of me coming from her, because I would have lost out on so much if I would have done that.

And I think that so much of our politics is actually about, it's not just the road to policy, but it's also about people.

And I think that if we want to grow our politics, one that doesn't just beat back Trumpism, which isn't actually very popular, and many of its closest adherents are people you would not want to be alone in a bar with, but we want to have something that's big and lasting, a movement that can

change and grow and be something that we can all hold on to for a really long time.

We have to be thinking about the people within our politics and the people matter.

Like, I'm okay if you think that I'm some like

horrible centrist liberal or something like that.

I'm okay with that.

I'm not okay with folks being put in iced detention centers and just lost because that's what is happening right now.

I'm not okay

with the same people who wielded the Iraq war as a patriotism litmus test, now pretending like they were opposed to the Iraq war, but now being totally okay with getting engaged in other potential violent acts abroad with no congressional oversight whatsoever.

I'm not okay with any of that.

So I'm okay if I'm like, you know, if

you want to say mean things about my politics, but I want the people who politics impact to be lifted up and to be at the center of how we think about how we do this.

And part of that, I think, Jane, goes to the issue of racial dynamics, which is both central to our politics in this country and operates as a third rail or as an excuse for all, you know, all manner of sins.

And Maurice, would love for you to talk about what you've observed about the racial dynamics, especially among unaffiliated voters, independent voters, and how we should incorporate that into what Jane is laying out, which is that, you know, people don't care about your politics.

They care about their lives.

Wow.

There's a lot I could say about that.

And there's so much I want to respond to about what Jade said with a lot of alignment.

But, you know, yes, the racial politics of this country are so deeply wedded to our politics to the point of, you know, most political strategists, like one of the first questions you want to understand is, like, what's the like demographic makeup of a particular county or a particular city?

And that could dictate a lot of how you seek to build a coalition, a winning coalition.

The thing that I'll say is that, you know, there's politics

up here in the sort of virtual space, and then there's politics that are very, very close.

And I'll

explain.

So I don't know if you've seen this phenomenon in real life, but there's people who are like, yeah, my neighborhood, my block is pretty safe.

I know my neighbors, but

the world that I live in is very dangerous and is like very scary and crime is rising.

That world, that virtual world that that person lives in is not a world that they actually come in physical contact with ever.

It's theoretically the world that they are swimming in.

And so similarly, people actually very, very close up have different dynamics, right?

I had a, I lived on a block where there weren't very many white people, but we had a neighbor right across the street from us.

And, you know, at a certain point, I was pretty sure that my neighbor was Trumpy.

I'm not exactly sure.

But I also know that at the end of the day, I have elderly parents.

Like, that was going to be the person that would likely.

come knock on the door if there was a a problem or be able to like share you know garden tools with my father like race is really complex.

And

we don't have fixed identities when it comes to politics.

Politics are super fluid.

So the same voter that voted for Trump, we know that some of those, many of those rural counties voted for Barack Obama.

And so

I ultimately believe that the stories that we construct and the leaders that we elevate can change the nature of how people see themselves and the decisions that they make, including whether or not they see themselves primarily as a white person, or they see themselves primarily as

a worker, or they see themselves primarily as part of this bigger movement for change.

I think that a lot of that has to do with how big our politics are.

And

I think that in some ways, MAGA politics are really big, and it allows for people to be inside of this calling.

And democratic politics tend to be kind of small.

And I think if we want to be able to have people change their allegiances and even though they might identify as white, choose to be part of a multiracial coalition, we need big politics.

And so I actually feel like that's how we break out of some of the racial categories that limit the type of solidarity we need to win against the right wing.

I think that that's so important.

I think that identity formation is such a key understanding here.

And I think also we do ourselves a disservice in which we act as if identity, especially political identity, isn't fluid.

There are lots of people who have voted for a lot of different candidates throughout their lives.

But I think that one of the challenges we have now is that the last nine years, we've seen this incredible rise of what I call political hobbyism

in which people, one, treat politics like sports.

I used to cover sports.

Sports is so much better.

Oh, it's just infinitely better.

But I also think that something about political hobbyism is that it means that people see

they don't favor a policy, they favor an idea of who they are.

And so you meet people who are like, yeah, I voted for Trump.

And then you get into like specific policies and they're like, no, I don't support any of that.

And you're like,

what?

But what they see is Trumpism representing an identity that they want.

And I think that this is something also where we get into, you know, the rising numbers of African Americans and other minorities who voted for Trump for vastly different reasons, for a lot of different reasons.

But I think that so often we

create a construction of political identity that's so rigid and doesn't allow for people to flow in and out of that construction.

And so every couple of years, people remember that there are black conservatives, like there are black social conservatives, and some of them vote for Republicans.

And I'm like, yes, I'm,

you know, please welcome to Booker T.

Washington.

Let's do a quick run through of the early 20th century.

But I think that it's so important for

the world of left-leaning progressive identity formation to be big and vast and include a lot of different places and not have that real hipster sense of like, oh, you're a progressive, name 10 of their albums or something like that.

Like, that doesn't get you anywhere.

It just pushes people out.

Like,

it's that idea of calling out versus calling in.

Like, I don't want people to feel like they can't identify as a Democrat if they voted for Mitt Romney.

Like, I'm like, okay, you voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.

A lot of things have happened since then.

Like, it's been 13 years, you know, that's fine.

And I want people to feel as if, again, they are not identifying.

My mom is white.

And I don't think she ever really thought of herself as a white person.

She thought of herself as a court-appointed special advocate for neglected kids, as a giant hippie, as a liberal who loved being a liberal and thought all Republicans were ridiculous.

Like, she identified as a lot of things that didn't involve being white.

And so, I think that it's so important for us to have a progressive identity that can be all-encompassing, that doesn't have to feel like,

you know, if you do the wrong thing, you're going to get kicked out of the club.

I want this to be a big, effing club.

You know, you pointed a few things out.

I mean, one of the things that's true about like black black politics is that there are, like, black people are not a monolith.

And

there are black people who hold socially conservative views.

Most of them vote for Democrats.

Right.

There are

evangelicals, right?

Yes.

Yes, I'm like, most

evangelical Christians, and most of those black evangelical Christians vote for Democrats.

Right.

And so, you know, this, I mean, speaks to sort of the nuances of political identity and what it looks like to be part of a community that could hold those nuances and a community that could weave together a lot of different people

and be able to share a politics and a point of view, even though people have really different points of view for all types of different reasons.

And I think in some ways, if, you know, the Democrats and progressives could learn from black people and how black people do politics, that might be be an interesting exercise because I think black people do politics in this way that is very, very strategic, that is able to hold the nuances, is able to hold those conditions and say, we're voting for these very important strategic reasons as a community.

And yes, the Republicans will try to kill you.

The Democrats might be taking you for granted, but we're going to choose the people who are taking us for granted as we build our own politics because the people who are trying to kill us will actually kill us.

And that level of sophistication is something that we all should probably learn how to adopt.

We learned that's in 2020.

Exactly.

So for both of you, one of the hallmarks of assembly required is we give people homework.

So I'm calling you in to help me.

Okay.

So Maurice, you are committed to lifting up working families.

What can our listeners do to join you in achieving that goal, regardless of their partisanship, and particularly in a moment where it feels like the people in power are trying to take us out.

Well,

Working Families Party includes a lot of people across ideology who believe the basic idea that in a democracy, people should govern, not corporations and ghoulish billionaires.

If you agree, you should check us out.

Go to workingfamilies.org.

You know, find me on all the social media platforms that are owned by the techno-feudalist overlords, and let's get into a conversation.

There's more than enough work for us to build a bigger wheat, and happy to meet you wherever you're at.

Jane, you are a very trenchant and sharp observer of political moments.

So, what can you tell our listeners about the steps that they can take against the rise of fascism and tyranny when they don't align with a political party, when they don't have a fixed identity, but they know something is wrong and they need to do something about it?

Well, I think that step one is act locally and think globally.

I so encourage people to get engaged in politics on a local level.

You will find it to be the most frustrating thing you have ever done in your entire life, as anyone who's ever been on like a parish council or a school board would know.

But that's what politics is.

Politics is the way in which you get things done, and it's not going to be fun or enjoyable, but it is so important.

Also, because I think that that'll help you understand politics more broadly.

I think also getting really

schooled in history is so helpful.

I actually wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on Nazi propaganda before and after the Battle of Stalingrad, a subject I could discuss ad nauseum that no one really wants to hear about right now.

But like, it's so helpful to have some historical backing for understanding.

For example, we've been mentioning like the rise of Nazism or something like that.

And I think it's helpful to know things about how so often do we want to portray

our political enemies or people who I think are enemies of democracy as being evil geniuses.

But let's remember that evil and stupid go together.

They always have and always will.

And thinking about how we can use history as not a roadmap, because we don't know what will happen, but to help us understand how we got here even more effectively.

There's a lot of really great writing on the rise of the American right in the U.S.

A great writer is John Gantz, who's done some really good work on this front.

But I think it's so important to become a student of history, of American politics, of global politics, while also acting locally.

Just, you know, to kind of give yourself that blend and give yourself that, I think the footing of history is so helpful.

And to just like, you know, things have happened before and things will happen again.

Here's how people respond to them effectively.

Here's how people responded ineffectively.

And here's what we can learn for that moment, but also getting involved in local politics.

Run for something, quite literally.

There are people, there are, there are so many local races where in which a Republican candidate goes unchallenged because because nobody runs, because nobody thinks to run.

There are so many people who are happy to help you run for office.

And yes, it is going to be hard.

And being in office is also going to be really hard.

But, you know, I would much rather have you running for office and failing than to just never try when you could have won.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I have to plug this, that we actually have an academy for local, local folks like school board, city council, all of of that stuff.

People could text run to 30403 and we're more than happy to help them.

And, you know,

don't run for Congress, run for library, school board.

We need people to govern on the local level.

Maurice Mitchell, Jane Koston, thank you both so much for being here on Assembly Required.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you.

This was a pleasure.

As always on Assembly Required, we're here to give you real, actionable tools to face today's biggest challenges.

First, be curious.

For a great primer on how America's unique approach to partisanship has unfortunately imperiled our democracy, I encourage you to read Tyranny of the Minority by Stephen Levitsky and Daniel Ziplat.

Second, to solve problems.

Third-party access to ballots is ultimately about having more diverse political choices.

Ranked choice voting creates more space for how we can elevate voices that reflect how complex our communities are.

To learn more about ranked choice voting, visit fairvote.org and check out our inaugural episode of Assembly Required, where we talked about how RCV gives us more options for representation.

And of course, do good.

This week, after our taping, the United States government may shut down.

Millions of Americans will face harm, including the thousands of federal workers who may be furloughed or fired as part of step four, breaking government so it doesn't deliver.

This is not just a call to reach out to your elected officials.

Instead, please check on your neighbors who may lose access to critical governmental services.

We must have each other's needs in mind as we face the real consequences of an autocratic government that doesn't actually like its people.

And as always, if you like what you hear, please be sure to share this episode and subscribe on all your favorite platforms.

And to meet the demands of the algorithms, please rate the show and leave a comment.

You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you go to listen and learn.

Please also check out my sub stack, Assembly Notes, for more information about what we discussed on the podcast and other tools to help us protect our democracy.

As you may have noticed, we're going to continue talking about the 10 Steps campaign as a way to recognize and activate against this regime.

For more information, visit 10stepscampaign.org.

I'd love to hear more about what you're going to be doing and what tools or resources would be helpful.

If you have a report, a question, or comment for me, send it in.

You can start with an email to assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

Well, that wraps up this episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

Be careful out there, and I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts, and our associate producer is Farah Safari.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilis Photopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroat, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hethcote, and Priyanka Muntha for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams.

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