What's the future of organizing? + Ken Martin with Vote Save America’s Shaniqua McClendon (Crooked Con)

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Speaker 1 Welcome to Assembly Required. I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

Speaker 1 The Thanksgiving holiday is a time to reconnect with family and friends, eat really good food, and partake in spirited yet thoughtful discussions about what we can do to keep our democracy alive and thriving.

Speaker 1 To help you out, today we're playing a special episode with two important conversations from CrookedCon. Up first, a discussion about how to contact and engage low-information voters.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 Hi, everyone. Thank you for coming.
I am Shaniko McClendon, as was mentioned. Before we get started with the substance of our panel, I just wanted to thank ActBlue, one of our sponsors, for

Speaker 2 today.

Speaker 2 And I have said this so many times, but I really do mean it. You know, ActBlue has been a driving force behind Vote Save America, the program that I run at Crooked Media.

Speaker 2 We've raised about $70 million since we started Vote Save America in 2018.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I'd say like 99.9% of that has come through ActBlue. We've been able to send money directly to candidates, to organizations.

Speaker 2 And in 2018, we even had candidates reaching out to us to say, you know, the fundraising that you all did through Vote Save America brought us back into the black after, you know, not knowing how they were going going to make it through the end of the election and these are people who helped the house in 2018 so thank you to act blue for powering so much of the progressive movement and we're just really appreciative of their support for for today so thank you

Speaker 2 okay So, hi again, everyone. I'm Shaniqua McClendon, and we are live here at our first Crooked Con.
We are really excited that you all joined us for this. Really excited for our panelists.

Speaker 2 And I'm just going to go down and introduce everyone, but you will be able to hear from them directly about the amazing work that they're doing.

Speaker 2 Right next to me, we have Kate Barr, who runs Can't Win Victory Fun.

Speaker 2 And then we have Melissa Morales, who runs Somos

Speaker 2 Votantes. Yes, I got that right.
Sorry.

Speaker 2 I took like four years of Spanish, but I'm self-conscious about it.

Speaker 2 And then next to Melissa, we have Maurice Mitchell with the Working Families Party.

Speaker 2 And next to Maurice, we have Ezra Levin from Indivisible.

Speaker 2 And all the way on the end, we have Dere McKesson, who is the host of Pod Save the People.

Speaker 2 Okay, I've had like two talks already this morning, and I'm just going to say it again. I'm really excited about what happened Tuesday.
I hope you all are excited.

Speaker 2 And we're happy that you all can be here right now after such an amazing day. And, you know, I want to take us back to a not so fun time, which was the 2016 election.

Speaker 2 You know, after that, we saw some good come out of that. I mean, Donald Trump was president, but we saw a lot of innovation and creativity come into the organizing space.

Speaker 2 And all of that work paid off in 2018, 2020.

Speaker 2 And I think you would have to go back to probably 2008 to think about the last time we really saw a lot of excitement and innovation around the way we organize and mobilize voters.

Speaker 2 But after last year's election, I think we can all agree that it's something we need to think more about.

Speaker 2 Hundreds of thousands of volunteers showed up for Kamala Harris's campaign and a lot of money was raised. But that was not enough to turn her candidacy into a presidency.

Speaker 2 This week on Tuesday, we saw people like Zaran Momdani win who ran an amazing campaign that really just motivated and inspired a lot of people.

Speaker 2 So I think we can say that, you know, there are some bright spots, but people are trying different things. So I would love to go down, and we can start with Kate and make our way down to DeRay.

Speaker 2 I would love for you to each talk about how you've effectively broken through with the kind of work that you're doing in this moment.

Speaker 2 Also, I would like for you to introduce yourselves a little bit more. I know I said your name, but didn't go into depth about your work.

Speaker 2 But particularly, I want to know how the work you're doing in this moment is effective and why, and how you're approaching things differently. And I'll just add one more thing in.

Speaker 2 Thinking back to your past work, do you feel like you're being more effective now in this moment?

Speaker 5 That's a lot of questions.

Speaker 3 I'm going to do my best.

Speaker 2 Sorry, that's how I moderate.

Speaker 2 I love it.

Speaker 5 I'm just going to talk for a while. I'm Kate Barr.
I ran for state senate in North Carolina in 2024 as Kate Barr Can't Win. It was a protest campaign against gerrymandering.

Speaker 5 I declared my loss on the day I filed for office and kind of thought I was just going to go back to my day job after getting my ass kicked electorally.

Speaker 5 But it actually, that campaign had an impact beyond just my little protest.

Speaker 5 We flipped our votes to Ds.

Speaker 5 We had

Speaker 5 voter turnout that was comparable to 2020. We were one of only eight counties in North Carolina that got bluer.

Speaker 5 And so we were like, man, we should try this in other places and launched the Can't Win Victory Fund, where

Speaker 3 thanks.

Speaker 5 We basically help candidates, we call them candidates because we're cute,

Speaker 5 run out loud and they lose out loud.

Speaker 5 And they talk about our broken maps, our rigged voting maps, how those maps affect people's daily lives, because the entire purpose of these campaigns is to take gerrymandering out of the space of like something you write a poly psi thesis on and help people understand how it affects the money in their pockets, the traffic on their way to work, you know, who their kids' teachers are, what books their kids can read.

Speaker 5 Literally everything

Speaker 5 you care about is affected by how our voting maps are drawn.

Speaker 5 So we started the Can't Win Victory Fund. We worked really hard in a rough fundraising season.

Speaker 5 And I think at this point we have just over 200 folks who have raised their hands to be interested in running as candidates in 2026.

Speaker 5 And what makes me most excited about that and why I think this is even more effective is

Speaker 5 there are, so 81% of our state legislative districts are not competitive across America. And that's 81%.
percent of Americans who are effectively being left out of state level politics.

Speaker 5 That means they probably don't have a politician or a candidate knock on their door. They may have never been canvassed.
And we are sending charismatic, smart, authentic, honest people

Speaker 5 out to run for office, knock on those doors, and engage voters that we've left behind. And it makes a difference.

Speaker 5 I think we are.

Speaker 5 I mean, like, I never expected gerrymandering to be the hot topic that it has become in, frankly, the worst possible way but we are well positioned to put a lot of political pressure on

Speaker 5 the system as a whole to make elections fair to expect fairness from our system

Speaker 5 and then in North Carolina our path to fair maps runs through our state supreme court

Speaker 5 And it is incredibly important that we re-elect Justice Anita Earls in 2026.

Speaker 5 And so all of our candidates will knock doors and say things like, I'm Kate Barr, you're losing candidate for Senate District 37. I'm running because voters deserve a choice on their ballot.

Speaker 5 If you think it's wrong that I've already lost before a ballot is cast, let me talk to you about how we get Fair Maps and let me talk to you about Justice Anita Earls and then P.S.

Speaker 5 future Senator Roy Cooper. So we're going to turn out some votes for statewide elections too.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 2 I can't tell if you just have a lot of fans or are there a lot of North Carolinians in here, but either way,

Speaker 2 it's North.

Speaker 2 Yeah. We're both from North Carolina.

Speaker 5 You know, I roll deep, Shaniqua.

Speaker 3 Melissa.

Speaker 4 Hi, everyone. Melissa Morales, founder and president of Somos Voddentes and Somos PAC.
You can call us Somos if that's easier.

Speaker 4 But don't ever apologize for trying to say it because we should all be polishing our Spanish ahead of Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance.

Speaker 3 There you go.

Speaker 4 But just to talk a little bit about our program, which is the thing I could talk about it forever. It's the thing that most excites me in life.

Speaker 4 To take us back to the context for our program this year, which is very different than the program we've run in the past, I'll take us back not quite to 16, but to a year ago this week,

Speaker 4 when it felt like everybody in my life, from our biggest donors to my favorite bartender, were asking the same question, which was, what the f happened with Latino voters?

Speaker 4 And at the time, I'd said it, and I will say it again,

Speaker 4 based on the 300,000 conversations that we had with Latinos last year, it didn't feel like we were in the middle of what was a permanent ideological realignment, or at least it didn't have to be or become a permanent ideological realignment.

Speaker 4 Based on the, if we had 300,000 conversations, we had one conversation, and it was a referendum on people's personal economic experiences, their everyday economic lives.

Speaker 4 And the reality is that the pandemic created this environment that exacerbated people's everyday economic anxieties, and that never went away.

Speaker 4 In our latest poll, we asked people if they live comfortably in their everyday economic lives. 14% of Latinos said yes, one four.

Speaker 3 Wow.

Speaker 4 And that's the sort of stress that people have been under.

Speaker 4 And there's this really illustrative moment as we were thinking about what kind of program, who we wanted to be this year, that really stuck out to me and should have been a warning bell about the types of shifts and erosion that we might see, which was during the height of the pandemic, the economic stimulus checks were going out.

Speaker 4 And I remember my dad, who's a blue-collar southwest Kansas guy, lives in farm country, Kansas, doesn't have a bank account like millions of Americans. And so he received a paper check in the mail.

Speaker 4 And he went to the local check cashing place to cash that. And I remember he called me after to say,

Speaker 4 I started shaking as they were counting the money out into my hand. It's the most money I've ever had in my hand at one time.

Speaker 4 And I remember thinking two things.

Speaker 4 One, that that was a very real moment for people, and it wasn't unique to him.

Speaker 4 Millions of people in this country had that same type of moment, which was evidence of the type of financial stress they had been living under. And if our response to that was to then say, well,

Speaker 4 If then you voted for Trump, then you sold out for a check and I hope your family gets deported or I hope you you lose your health care or whatever unhelpful narrative is making its way around the internet, then we're part of the problem still because it means we want to be right more than we want to reach people.

Speaker 4 And the second thing to that end was it is unacceptable that that story is true. It means that our economic policies have left people behind and the impacts of them have left people behind.

Speaker 4 It means the economic trade-offs that we've made in policy over the course of the last four years had left working people behind.

Speaker 4 I think a lot about the day that the family care provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act were left on the table. That's what we chose to give up.

Speaker 4 And I don't know if we lost the election that day, but I know that those types of choices matter. So as we came into this year,

Speaker 4 I genuinely believed deeply then and even more so now that if we're going to respond to the frustrations of working people in this country, we are going to need to do so by speaking directly to them and speaking directly to their daily needs.

Speaker 4 And I think there's incremental incremental ways that we can do that. And then there's big ways that we can do that.

Speaker 4 We saw, you know, future elect Mayor Mamdani do that in New York. He spoke to these big economic vision needs that people could buy into.

Speaker 3 And then for our program,

Speaker 4 We've tried to do that by really focusing on what are people's day-to-day economic needs.

Speaker 4 So we're running what is a large-scale direct services economic program that has meant thousands of backpacks filled with school supplies distributed.

Speaker 4 This month, that will mean thousands of grocery bags filled with Thanksgiving meals that are distributed.

Speaker 4 Every bag, every book bag, every grocery, every guest card, every gift card is a little bit of rebuilding credibility. It's a little bit of rebuilding trust.

Speaker 4 And it's a little bit of telling people, I see you and I understand

Speaker 4 that two things can be true at the same time.

Speaker 4 That over the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration had delivered amazing historic economic legislation, and you are not feeling the impacts enough of that in your everyday life.

Speaker 4 And if you are not feeling those impacts, then we are failing. And so our program is step-by-step trying to help people feel the impacts in their everyday lives.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 3 What were the four questions?

Speaker 2 Essentially, I want you to talk about the work you do, but why it's breaking through.

Speaker 2 Like everyone who's on this stage is because I felt like you are doing work that's actually moving the needle, and that is what we need right now.

Speaker 2 Um, the you know, folks who were making decisions last year, we did a lot of the same stuff, and it got us this presidency. And so, that's what I want you to speak to.

Speaker 3 For sure. Hi, Maurice Mitchell, National Director, Working Families Party.
Hello.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and so I grew up in the 80s, and my mom is a union nurse. My dad was a union electrician.
And folks around us, we grew up right outside of New York, a working-class place.

Speaker 3 Everybody voted for Democrats. And the Democrats were just kind of the party of everyday people.
And the Republicans were kind of like the country club people.

Speaker 3 And most people understood that to be true.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 something happened in the late 90s where things got icky. where, you know, the Democrats made a decision to lurch towards Wall Street.
And that was this era where they

Speaker 3 co-signed passing NAFTA and the free trade agreements and

Speaker 3 welfare reform and that horrible 94 crime bill. And at the time, there were people at the time, people in labor organizations, people in grassroots organizations,

Speaker 3 activists that said, this is a very bad idea. You're going to lose working people, right? And they were like, what are you talking about? Where are they going to go?

Speaker 3 They're not going to go to the Republicans.

Speaker 3 And so, fast forward

Speaker 3 to November of 2024,

Speaker 3 you know, by the way, those people in grassroots organizations and labor institutions

Speaker 3 started the Working Families Party in 1998 in New York, right?

Speaker 3 And so, fast forward, and we weren't surprised, right? Like, the political scientists

Speaker 3 call it

Speaker 3 class dealignment, right?

Speaker 3 I just call it stupid politics, right?

Speaker 3 And so we weren't surprised that working class people of all races, many dropped out of politics altogether because there's 90 million people that did not show up.

Speaker 3 Because it's this like cycle of cynicism where people, people who aren't like MAGA sort of cultish people could see like, yes, there's a crazy party run by racist, but then there's the status quo party, and we're told we only have two choices.

Speaker 3 So reasonably, many people just drop out and leads to cynicism and it leads to that 90 million number. And some people are like, well, if the choice is crazy and strong

Speaker 3 or status quo and weak,

Speaker 3 let me try this crazy and strong shit and see what happens. And some people did that.

Speaker 3 They're not MAGA people, but given how horrible daily life for most working people, and by the way, like the way they talk about it, they're like, the bottom 60% of Americans are struggling to make ends meet.

Speaker 3 That's called the majority of fucking people in this country.

Speaker 3 Right? So that's what's happening to most people. It's not surprising that when the only party, that is at least saying the entire system is fucked up and we want to actually change the entire system.

Speaker 3 It's not surprising that some people vote in that direction.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 here we are.

Speaker 3 This week, by the way, I've decided to just be obnoxious this week because

Speaker 3 democracy had a wonderful day.

Speaker 3 And the Working Families Party had an excellent week this week.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 I bring good tidings and halal food from Zorah Mamdani's New York City.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, they're just, they're like,

Speaker 3 halal food is delicious. And I would be the first to be like, yeah, just mandate it everywhere.
It's fine.

Speaker 3 But what I'm actually, and so we could go on and on and on about New York City. By the way, in New York City,

Speaker 3 We have a party line in the Working Families Party. So people could vote on the Working Families Party line.
You could do that in Connecticut. You could do that in Oregon.

Speaker 3 And we had the most votes for the Working Families Party in any mayoral race. It's historic.

Speaker 3 It's 15% of the vote was the working.

Speaker 3 We beat the Republicans. So you can't call us a third party anymore, right?

Speaker 3 In New York City.

Speaker 3 In New York City, you cannot call us a third party anymore.

Speaker 3 But I'm also excited about, and you know, I think sometimes sometimes people give Zoron a, you know, a frenemy beer hug and talk about how amazing he is and what a generational talent he is.

Speaker 3 And all those things are true. But I have a sneaky suspicion when I see people on, you know, the 24-hour news channel that I know hate us and hate him, praise him.

Speaker 3 And I think one of the reasons they do that is so that

Speaker 3 they could frame Zoron's victory as exceptional, right? It could only happen in New York. It could only happen happen with Zoran.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, all right, explain how the Working Families Party-backed candidate won in Albany, in Syracuse, in Buffalo, and will be joining Zoron.

Speaker 3 Explain to me, and still in New York State, explain to me how

Speaker 3 in the Newburgh City Council, the Working Families Party was able to, in a general election, to defeat the Democrat. Yeah, we actually run people as third-party people.

Speaker 3 And we have five people who are beat the Democrat and the Republican and will be sitting in Onondaga where we flipped from red to blue. Right.

Speaker 3 Not only did we flip from red to blue, so Onondaga, you know, these are just random county names. I could be making it up, by the way.

Speaker 3 But trust me,

Speaker 3 we flipped from red to blue, but we also flipped to WFP orange. There's going to be somebody sitting there that is an independent.

Speaker 3 And then also explain away the fact that in Dayton, Ohio, our candidate defeated the incumbent, right? Explain, yeah, you could clap for that.

Speaker 3 And I could go on and on and on with fake county names and fake people, but the point I'm making here is that something is happening in this country, right?

Speaker 3 These type of independent politics that WFP has been toiling on for years and years and years. You know, like I like to say that,

Speaker 3 you know, leaders like Zoram, because, you know, we knew Zoram because he was a WFP assembly person that governed with our independent assembly people in New York, but many people didn't know Zoran until recently.

Speaker 3 I like to say that, you know, leadership is not just about individuals. It's when individuals meet time, place, and condition.

Speaker 3 And I think that's also for ideas and institutions.

Speaker 3 And this is a moment for the crazy idea that the folks that started WFP in 1998, this is a moment where an idea and an institution is meeting the time, place, and conditions.

Speaker 3 And I couldn't be more proud. And I will wait after and sign everybody up for their WFP.

Speaker 3 Because look, the Democrats are polling at 18 or 20%,

Speaker 3 which means that most Democratic Party

Speaker 3 adherents are like, we're voting for you and we think you suck. I think we can do better.
If you agree with me,

Speaker 3 come join the Working Families Party.

Speaker 2 Great pets. Great pets.

Speaker 2 Ezra?

Speaker 6 I love that Maurice is showing us that every moment is an organizing moment. And recruit, recruit, recruit.

Speaker 3 Always organize.

Speaker 6 Hey, everybody, I'm Ezra, one of the co-founders of Indivisible.

Speaker 3 I appreciate that.

Speaker 6 Look, we started Indivisible accidentally. For folks who don't know, look, Trump was elected in 2016.
My spouse, Lee, and I, we were, I'm sorry, we were former congressional staffers.

Speaker 6 Don't hold that against us. But we were congressional staffers during the Obama first term and second term.
We were advocates, me on anti-poverty, her on anti-human trafficking issues.

Speaker 6 And this amazing thing happened in 2016 because Trump won and the response of the broader Democratic ecosystem was not, holy shit, he won. We got to fight back.

Speaker 6 We had experienced the Tea Party. We had experienced massive electoral majorities for a popular Democrat with trifecta government.
And the response of the Republican grassroots was: fuck that guy.

Speaker 6 We're going to organize against him and stop everything he wants to do. And the Democratic response to Trump's first election was, let's figure out how we can work together.

Speaker 6 And we're like, what the hell is going on?

Speaker 6 We've seen what works. Look, disagree with the Tea Party's racism, their violence, their bigotry.

Speaker 3 There's a lot to disagree with.

Speaker 6 God damn, they were smart about organizing. They knew how to organize locally, focus on their elected officials, and never give an inch.
And they weren't able to stop everything.

Speaker 6 Look, we got Dodd-Frank, we got the ACA, we got national service reform, big stimulus package. We did some stuff, but we also got the 2010 red wave.
We got absolutely clobbered.

Speaker 6 And so when we saw how the broader Democratic establishment was responding, we were saying, okay, that's fucked up. That's not politically smart and it's going to cause a lot of damage.

Speaker 3 So we wrote a Google Doc.

Speaker 6 As one does. Obviously, that's the natural thing to do.

Speaker 3 So we were like, let's write a Google Doc.

Speaker 6 We'll get it together and we'll send it out because something has to happen. Maybe somebody will use it.

Speaker 6 And so we wrote this guy, like drawing on the lessons from the Tea Party that we saw with our own eyes and said, look, you can organize locally. You can stiffen Democratic spines.

Speaker 6 You can try to fracture the Republican coalition. You build towards an electoral win.
Stop what you can. stall what you can and ultimately win back power.

Speaker 6 And we put it out online and shockingly, like it went viral and we were just inundated with all these messages from really all across the country that all said the exact same thing.

Speaker 6 This guide is full of typos.

Speaker 6 Because if you want something copy edited, just put it out there and people will do that.

Speaker 6 But then the cool thing beyond that was what they said is like, and I've got an indivisible group now that's meeting this weekend in Austin, in Tallahassee, in Albany, wherever it is. And

Speaker 6 what are we going to do?

Speaker 3 And we're like, we just wrote a Google Doc.

Speaker 6 I don't know. You figure it out.
And so we started Indivisible to support this movement of local groups. And these are the groups that...

Speaker 6 pushed to save the Affordable Care Act in 2017, pushed for the blue wave in 2018, pushed Democratic leadership to impeach the bastard in 2019, pushed to defeat him in 2020, build the a Democratic trifecta in 2021, stop the red wave in 2022, win in off-year elections in 2023, and then we all lost in 2024.

Speaker 6 Not a totally happy story. And then what happened in 2024? Something that we saw that happened in 2016, which we have America's Mussolini win the election with a Republican trifecta.

Speaker 6 And the response from the Democratic leadership is, well, we got to figure out ways to work with Mussolini.

Speaker 6 That was the response. And so when the Democratic establishment immediately proved it learned no lessons from the previous eight years, we wrote a Google Doc.

Speaker 6 And the Google Doc made a couple of points. One, fascism did not win, as we've heard from Maurice and what we've heard from the other panelists.
What one was

Speaker 6 a belief that something better than the status quo was possible. And even if that was blowing up the system, even if he didn't like the guy, at least it wasn't the shit we were dealing with now.

Speaker 6 And people were willing to hold their nose and vote for somebody else. And us in the opposition needed to do what opposition does well, which is oppose what this guy was planning to do.

Speaker 6 And we all knew what it was. Project 2025 was out there.
We knew what was coming. And what we've seen this year is astonishing.

Speaker 6 The rapid growth of indivisible groups in 2017 is dwarfed by what we see now. There are four to five new indivisible groups every single day.
These are normal, everyday people who are standing up.

Speaker 6 And what we've seen is that democratic establishment that, again, started by saying, let's feel how we can work with this Mussolini character in America.

Speaker 6 They saw the hands-off protests in April. They saw no kings in June.
They saw no kings too in October. And they said, oh, shit, maybe the wind is blowing a different way.

Speaker 6 That's how this works. So I'm optimistic that...

Speaker 6 not that some democratic politician is suddenly going to see the light, but that there are enough people out there that are pissed off and recognize that they have power, that they're going to be able to push back.

Speaker 2 Yeah, thanks.

Speaker 8 Hi, everybody. I'm Duray.
It is great to be on a panel with people who do electoral organizing because I don't do that that much.

Speaker 3 So I'm like, this is cool.

Speaker 8 I'm an organizer. I was one of the early protesters in Ferguson in 2014 when the police killed Mike Brown.

Speaker 8 And the host of Podsy, the people. It's crazy to think that the protests started in 2014.
I'll just say a couple of things.

Speaker 8 One is, you know, I thought the work was going to be trying to figure out how to convince people and push people and da-da-da.

Speaker 8 What I realized very quickly after we started Campaign Zero was that what is true and not true is actually a little more complicated than I thought around the work of public safety.

Speaker 8 The reason why we sort of stay in the public safety space is in almost every election, in all communities, the issue of safety just becomes the issue. It just is the thing.

Speaker 8 And I sort of feel like if we can convince people around the police, I can convince you of anything in the world because people feel very strongly about the police.

Speaker 8 But I'll ask you first, I'm assuming that most of you have heard of private prisons or the idea of private prisons.

Speaker 8 I'll ask you to raise your hand because I'm trying to figure out how many people you think are incarcerated in a private prison.

Speaker 8 If you think it is more than 75% of the 2 million people incarcerated on a given day are in a private facility, raise your hand.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 8 50 to 75%,

Speaker 8 25 to 50%,

Speaker 8 and under 25%.

Speaker 8 It is 8%.

Speaker 8 It's really low. It's a little bit under 8%.

Speaker 8 And the reason why I start there is that it is one of the stories that people just believe. They're like, everybody's in a private facility.

Speaker 8 And the reason why it matters to us is not because we're like annoyed at the storytelling, but what people de facto do when they think that it's private facilities is that you've let your governor and mayor off the hook and you don't even know it.

Speaker 8 It is your governor and mayor who are locking people up, who are allowing the horrible conditions. It's not a private facility.
And I think...

Speaker 8 In our work, we come across these things time and time again where people just don't know what's true.

Speaker 8 We have a campaign on gang enhancements in 38 states, if you're in a gang, you can get an extra penalty. One of the questions we have to figure out is how many people is in a gang?

Speaker 8 In 30 states, it is three.

Speaker 3 And you're like, three people is not a gang.

Speaker 8 Three people might be annoying, but they're not a gang.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 And it's one of those things that like, how can we help people and communities understand like what is policy? And you do have a perspective on the number of people in a gang.

Speaker 8 We go to a lot of communities. People are like, I don't do policy.
We're like, you believe three is too low. Now we might fight about what the number could be, but three is not the right number.

Speaker 8 Another of our campaigns that I'll talk about briefly and then talk about the second thing about storytelling is pay to stay.

Speaker 8 We just launched this campaign and every state but two, it is legal to charge people room and board for their incarceration.

Speaker 8 So we go into states in Massachusetts, they can charge 15% of your work release funds are recouped for a rent or room and board in Massachusetts.

Speaker 8 So we go talk to legislators and they're like, we don't do that here. We're like, no, no, you do do that here.
They're like, no, we don't do that. I'm like, no, no, I got the FOIA data.

Speaker 8 This is how much they take it. You know, it's one of those things where we go into the room and half the battle is being like, what is true and not true?

Speaker 8 I didn't think that would be our work, but you'd be shocked at how much we actually just haven't uncovered about the carsel system.

Speaker 8 But the second thing I'd say that does make me super hopeful and that that does tie into the electoral work is like, what is the story we tell?

Speaker 8 One of the things that I'm mindful of is that we have to share the cognitive burden with people we're trying to recruit into organizing.

Speaker 8 And we have to get off the defense about the things that we are just absolutely right about. People feel really strongly about the police.

Speaker 8 And when I go into rooms, I don't really talk about the police as a police, but I'll say, Do you need a person with a gun to tell a 10-year-old to stop yelling?

Speaker 8 It's an easy way for me to talk about police in schools. Do you need a person with a gun to tell that your taillights out? It's an easy way for me to talk about traffic stops.

Speaker 8 We talk about a world beyond policing, and people are like, This is crazy. And I'll ask you, think of the place where you feel the most safe.

Speaker 8 Like, just get it in your mind. You're like, I feel safe here.

Speaker 8 Raise your hand if the police are in that place.

Speaker 8 So we tell people, you already know what a world beyond policing looks like. You already know what safety feels like.
And we want whatever was in that room to be in everybody's room.

Speaker 8 But part of that is like, how do we share the cognitive work? And the last thing I'll talk about is gangs.

Speaker 8 I was doing an interview once and Chris Matthews, he's like, DeRay, you know, gangs are taking over. Gangs are crazy.
What do you think about gangs? And I was like, Chris. Gangs are crazy.

Speaker 8 We got to do something about gang. Gang violence is maybe the number one issue in the country.

Speaker 8 And the biggest gangs I know are the New York City Police Department, the Baltimore City Police Department. And the, you know, it's like,

Speaker 8 like, how do we fight people on the message every single time and sort of convert people and change what people think about things one by one?

Speaker 8 And I believe that we can always find like one story to convince people. We don't need to convince people everything every time.

Speaker 8 But when I'm talking about the people, about the police, I'm trying to tell like one good story to get them to think differently about what safety looks like. I'm trying to give up a little bit.

Speaker 8 You know, people would say, Duray, are you saying the police should never kill somebody? And I'd say, you know, do you have a kid you love? And they're like, yes.

Speaker 8 And I'm like, like, tell me the kid's name. And they're like, okay.
And I'm like, well, what could that kid do that you're okay for the police to kill him? Like, is it a robbery?

Speaker 8 Is it a, is it running a red light? Like, what for the person you love, when is it okay for the police to kill that child?

Speaker 8 And people are like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, every person killed is somebody's kid. So when is it okay for them to kill the kid you love?

Speaker 8 But that is an exercise in sharing the cognitive burden for people with people, not doing all the work ourselves, because we will yell and yell and well and we'll be blue in the face and people will not have changed their minds at all.

Speaker 8 Part of our work is to push people to think deeper as we bring them into the organizing space.

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Speaker 2 Melissa, the next question is for you.

Speaker 2 The work that you are talking about and doing

Speaker 2 is not starting with asking people to vote.

Speaker 2 You're building trust with them, which I think is something we saw was really important last year, that when people trust that you are going to rebuild their economic situation, they might listen, they might come in, they might vote for you.

Speaker 2 Can you talk about how the work you're doing that isn't necessarily electoral on its face actually does bring people into civic participation?

Speaker 4 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 And I think it's important for us to realize, which was pretty stark after, you know, a year ago this week, that we are starting at ground zero on trust and credibility in what we believe, who we're fighting for, and most importantly, what we can deliver.

Speaker 4 Because I think

Speaker 4 we get the pushback a lot when I talk about the economy. It's like, well, we did deliver things and we were talking about an economic agenda.
I'm like, okay.

Speaker 4 But when you were talking about those things, if people don't believe you actually can or will deliver on those things, then that means nothing.

Speaker 4 So everything we're doing this year is really starting at that. We are starting at square one now of how we're building trust with people.

Speaker 4 Can we listen to them, hear what their needs are, and then actually deliver that to show them that there can be some impact? And I think we're thinking about it in this everyday type of way, right?

Speaker 4 Backpacks with school supplies, gas cards, grocery cards. Come here, what we have to say, and you don't need to, you know, don't worry about filling up your tank or your fridge this week.

Speaker 4 Let's just be in community with each other.

Speaker 4 Because that was sort of the second thing we found last year, especially with young voters, was that when we asked them to define community, they really couldn't.

Speaker 4 Even when we pushed pretty hard, they couldn't define what the core of community meant.

Speaker 4 And if we've lost that, we've lost a big part of, I think, who we want to be when we think about what we can collectively do together and what we can collectively demand together.

Speaker 4 And the core idea that

Speaker 4 we should give a shit what happens to our neighbor and we should give a shit about the people around us.

Speaker 4 And so, everything we're doing this year is about rebuilding that trust and rebuilding community.

Speaker 4 If it was just we were doing these things and we were delivering something good, I think that would that would be enough in a year where shit's really hard and we're like, what's the slice of good we can deliver in the world?

Speaker 4 But there is a way to do this and also be strategic.

Speaker 4 I think every time somebody comes and they're picking up this backpack or they're picking up this grocery bag, they're also filling out an involvement card.

Speaker 4 That involvement card gives me everything that we need for our organizers to contact them again and to match them back to the voter file to figure out: are they involved? How do we get them involved?

Speaker 4 How do we get them up that ladder? And

Speaker 4 part of it is like we could just distribute to homes, and sometimes we do, but it's also really important for us to be bringing people together in spaces. We had our last backpack event in August in a

Speaker 4 parking lot in the middle of Milwaukee, and we had 1,200 families come through that parking lot. Right? That's that's real.
It was four straight hours of a line.

Speaker 4 And we had sort of learned over the course of trial and error. We're like, okay, well, how do we get people though to stay and communicate with each other instead of just picking up and leaving?

Speaker 4 So we started implementing at the end of each of these events, we're also going to raffle off of $500 or five, $500 gift cards, but you have to be present to win. And we don't do it till the very end.

Speaker 4 So people are staying for the entire event. And as they're staying, they're taking that SOMO shirt and they're putting it on.
That's building a brand.

Speaker 4 As they're staying, they're having conversations with their neighbors. That's building community.
And as they're staying, our organizers are also working the crowd. That's building power.

Speaker 4 And so all of those things, I think, are a way to do some good in the world and deliver what we say we want to deliver while also continuing to be strategic and build power.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that is great.

Speaker 2 And I'd say it does a lot of work for the Democratic Party, who talks a lot about these issues, but people don't actually feel it in there every day,

Speaker 2 like you were mentioning.

Speaker 2 Ezra and Dre, this next question

Speaker 2 is for you.

Speaker 2 Again, just really want to shine a light on things that have been breaking through in a moment in our political landscape where it's really hard to break through.

Speaker 2 Mass mobilizations are an absolute cornerstone of our American democracy.

Speaker 2 And you too have been at the forefront of movements that have changed the country, organizing some of the largest protests in history like Black Lives Matter and No Kings.

Speaker 2 And these are movements that have even spread to other countries. But right now,

Speaker 2 we're seeing a lot of, quite frankly, alarming challenges to mass mobilizations. And Ezra, for Indivisible,

Speaker 2 Your organization is one that Donald Trump has specifically named as being one that he wants to target and go after.

Speaker 3 What a compliment.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I can't imagine that that feels safe, but I think that means that the work that you're doing is really effective.

Speaker 2 And so in being kind of on his target list, I'm curious how you all are navigating the uptick

Speaker 2 and his efforts to just censor people. And Dure, after Ezra answers that, I would love to hear how you're thinking about the scrutiny from Trump's DOG.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I type DOG, DOJ.

Speaker 2 I guess it could be the same thing.

Speaker 2 Trump's Department of Justice.

Speaker 6 What's the Department of Transportation doing? doing?

Speaker 2 Trump's Department of Justice into Black Lives Matter, but also your case that went to the Supreme Court, which to me, again, was another effort to pretty much silence effective voices.

Speaker 6 Well, one thing I'd say, it's not very proud of Indivisible's role in No Kings. It's not just us, Maurice, Working Families Party, Move On 50-51, Unions, S-E-I-U, AFT.

Speaker 6 This is a massive coalitional effort, not just us.

Speaker 6 So, would you say they're all being targeted? We're all being targeted. This is not a normal administration.
I say regime. I try to say regime.
If I remember, I say regime.

Speaker 6 I think of it as an authoritarian regime, and that the hallmarks of an authoritarian regime are not just that they're cutting taxes for billionaires and cutting health care for the rest of us, it's that they're attacking the other sources of power and trying to concentrate power in their hands.

Speaker 6 So, that means businesses, that means law firms, media institutions, universities, and also political opponents.

Speaker 6 So, yes, the number one thing an authoritarian regime fears is peaceful opposition, mass protest, because it depends on making people feel like they are alone.

Speaker 6 Because if you are alone and powerless, they can run roughshod over you. So it is no surprise to me that they are coming at us now.

Speaker 6 The only way they would not be coming at us is if we were ineffective.

Speaker 6 So in the world that we are in, I would far rather be the target of their ire, both legally and the saber-rattling their supporters are doing through physical threats than just be entirely irrelevant.

Speaker 3 This is the better world.

Speaker 6 It means that they actually care what we're doing.

Speaker 3 What do they say?

Speaker 6 First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Y'all, we're one step from winning because they're fighting us.

Speaker 3 So, what do we do?

Speaker 6 Our mantra is:

Speaker 6 be brave, not stupid. Be brave, not stupid.
We need a lot of courage out there. We need people to stand up and recognize there are risks, and it's important that all of us understand those risks.

Speaker 6 Don't take on risks accidentally, but no, in an authoritarian regime, we're not getting through this unless a lot of people out there there stand up and say, yeah, we got to do this.

Speaker 6 And the impact of doing that is not just that you bust that bubble of inevitability that the regime wants to create. You're also going to encourage the people around you.

Speaker 6 Why is it that the Democrats right now are fighting in the shutdown? Why is that happening now? Why didn't it happen six months ago? They surrendered six months ago.

Speaker 6 What happened in between those two periods? We had...

Speaker 6 We had hands-off in April. We had May Day.
We had John Lewis Day of Remembrance. This is Good Trouble Lives On.
We had Labor Day. We had No Kings One.
We had No Kings Two.

Speaker 3 All of that, what did that do?

Speaker 6 It busted that bubble of inevitability from the regime. And it made all these folks who are on the sidelines thinking, maybe the smart move is just to lay low.

Speaker 6 Maybe the smart move is to roll over and play dead. They said, oh no.
Maybe we got that wrong. A lot of people are standing up.
Maybe we should be standing up too. That's the way the wind's blowing.

Speaker 6 We got to get there. There go the people.
I am their leader, so I must follow them.

Speaker 6 That is the game plan.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 we believe it is important to say this is a time for courage. We need more people to demonstrate courage

Speaker 6 and understand that courage means there's actual risk here. This isn't fearlessness.

Speaker 6 There is reasonable fear out there, but it's bravery. It's better than fearlessness.
And

Speaker 6 we do a lot of training, a lot of recruiting, a lot of organizing to get people to see that this is possible for them as well in this moment.

Speaker 2 Maurice, I didn't mean to erase you from that question.

Speaker 8 I've been interested in what is happening with Black people. When I think about the mobilizing in this moment, Black people are not coming out in the way that we were coming out in 14, 15, 16.

Speaker 8 And when I think about the internet, I'm like, I talk to my father a lot about like, who are you listening to, Daddy? I'm like, and he is like, I'm not listening to 20-year-olds on Instagram.

Speaker 8 He's like, that's not my people. You know, so I do think we have to figure out like, who are who are Black people listening to on the internet or online or that world?

Speaker 8 I think we got to figure out one of the things that was really impressive about Zoron, and I love Zoron even more because he went to Bowdoin. I went to Bowdoin.
Shout out to Bowdoin.

Speaker 8 But I canvassed for Zoron in Harlem. And it was interesting going to some doors because some people, you know, young people are like, we know, da-da-da.

Speaker 8 And then some people literally like, what's his name again?

Speaker 3 And you're like, you haven't heard him?

Speaker 8 And it's people like, she, she's like, I don't have the internet, da-da-da.

Speaker 8 And it was one of those, one of those cool organizing moments that reminded you that like showing up really matters because when you bet on the internet, sometimes you get it, you get some people, but you lose a whole set of people.

Speaker 8 So when I think about the mass mobilization piece, I am interested interested in the strategic absence of black people in this moment, but also like who is making sure that we keep that base fresh.

Speaker 8 And I think one of the learnings from the last 60 years is that winning is not enough. Protecting the win is a second part of the battle.

Speaker 8 And when I think about our work as the organizers with the electoral people, it's like, I'm trying to keep the people hot.

Speaker 8 So when people get elected, people are still pissed off enough to support the big ideas.

Speaker 7 Like that is part of our work.

Speaker 8 And to this, to the case, I'm still in the case. It did go to the Supreme Court.
Sotomayor wrote a very nice sort of note that put it down back to the district courts. I'm being accused of

Speaker 8 creating the conditions for a police officer to get hit by a rock in Baton Rouge at a protest that I did not organize, but because that is the allegation, but I did not organize it.

Speaker 8 So I did not organize it. And but I was there.
So we've been back and forth. I've been to the Fifth Circuit four times.
We have four separate opinions from the Fifth Circuit.

Speaker 8 We went to the Supreme Court, the Louisiana State Supreme Court, went back to the Supreme Court. We went to district court.
It got dismissed. And then it is still in the Fifth Circuit.

Speaker 8 I went to oral arguments at the Fifth Circuit, and I'm in the courtroom, and it's a three, three judge panel.

Speaker 8 And one of the judges literally, there's this question of like, did I throw a water bottle as well as getting the officer hit by a rock?

Speaker 3 I did not throw a water bottle.

Speaker 8 I did not have a water bottle. But the judge literally says, she's like, a jury might think he did throw it.
You're like, is this like, is this court?

Speaker 3 This is crazy.

Speaker 8 But I am lucky in the sense that I have great lawyers, but it is a wild case because if we lose,

Speaker 8 you'd be able to charge anybody affiliated with the protest or seen as a protest leader with any of the civil damages that result from the protest.

Speaker 8 So that is sort of the question at hand is, can I be charged for the fact that he got hit by a rock?

Speaker 8 And because we actually have not gone to court court, I don't know if he actually got hit by a rock because we're dealing with the legal questions of like, can I be sued for it?

Speaker 8 But I didn't even know that cases could get this far, that like we could go this far down down the road without any proof that the thing happened at all.

Speaker 8 And that was in 2016, it started in 2016. So I've been in this case since 2016, and we are still

Speaker 8 going.

Speaker 2 About 10 years, that's a long time. That's like as long as Donald Trump's been in our lives and doing stuff.

Speaker 2 Kate, you know, we just heard from Dre, Ezra, and Melissa. And while I think their work ultimately feeds into our democratic process, you took it straight on and, you decided

Speaker 2 to run for office. And in doing so, have,

Speaker 2 I think, ushered in a really interesting and new way to mobilize voters, making sure that they're hearing from someone, even if the someone they're hearing from, won't win.

Speaker 2 And you've also been a pretty outspoken opponent. I think a big voice of opposition in North Carolina.

Speaker 2 If you care to talk about it, because I did not clear this with you,

Speaker 2 some of

Speaker 2 kind of

Speaker 2 censorship you may have faced or people, yes, if you want to talk about that, you can, but also more broadly, I think what you've brought into the conversation is really creative. And I'm

Speaker 2 interested to know

Speaker 2 what kind of risks and creativity do you think Democrats generally need to bring to the work they're doing?

Speaker 5 Maurice, I'm familiar with the front of me hug, is what I will sort of say there.

Speaker 5 You know, I don't travel internationally because I've been told my name is on a list and I might not be able to get back into the country,

Speaker 5 which

Speaker 5 we're all broke. So it's like not that much of a hardship.
Like, where am I going to go?

Speaker 3 We're organizers.

Speaker 5 We're not wealthy.

Speaker 5 And my daughter. God, I've never talked about this in public.
I'm going to try not to.

Speaker 3 Oh, my God. You don't have to.
No, no, no.

Speaker 5 I'm going to do this because it matters. It really, really matters.

Speaker 1 And here's why.

Speaker 5 I am a middle-aged suburban mom. I am a white lady with bottle blonde hair.
I can put my body in places that no one else can.

Speaker 5 And my daughter, every night before she goes to bed, worries that I'm going to get shot the next day.

Speaker 5 If that's happening to me,

Speaker 5 I don't know what the fuck is happening for y'all. That is bananas.
Like, I am the safest human on this earth, and I won't get on an airplane to go out of the country.

Speaker 5 So, that

Speaker 2 thank you for sharing. And the reason I asked Kate that question, and even the question I asked Ezra and DeRay: you know, as people are taking new tactics that are effective, you become targets.

Speaker 2 And so, I really wanted us to spend a little bit of time talking about what it means to actually have an impact and what it looks like when someone says, I don't like that you are successfully opposing me, and so I'm going to target you in some ways.

Speaker 2 But go ahead.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 5 if it's okay, may I share about how I'm about to become a bigger target?

Speaker 2 Oh, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 5 We're a more is more kind of state organization, whatever you want to call it. I mean, we are living under an authoritarian regime.

Speaker 5 And what we learned on Tuesday is that they are vulnerable right now

Speaker 5 and that the corrupt,

Speaker 5 complacent politicians, many Republican, but not exclusively, are vulnerable right now.

Speaker 5 And I, for one, do not not want to give them a year to get their shit together and figure out how to send a check to everybody and win in 2026.

Speaker 5 And so, surprise, y'all, I'm a Republican

Speaker 5 as of May,

Speaker 5 and I will be challenging my congressman in the Republican primary.

Speaker 3 Thanks.

Speaker 5 I cannot imagine that my life is about to get easier, but that vote is on March 3rd.

Speaker 5 So that is a run that happens right now. They are not ready for it.
That's the kind of experimenting we need to be doing. This is a heavily gerrymandered district.

Speaker 5 Cook political report has it in a super safe Republican seat,

Speaker 5 but we can win the fucking primary.

Speaker 5 That's some low-ass turnout.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 2 do Democrats or do you have to be registered as part of the party, or can anyone vote in these primaries, just choosing one primary to vote in?

Speaker 5 Republicans and unaffiliated can vote in the Republican primary. This particular district is 38% unaffiliated.
That's the majority.

Speaker 5 There are about 544,000 people that are registered to vote in the district, and I need like 33,000 of those votes to win.

Speaker 5 So this is the kind of shit we have to be trying. It might not work.
I'm great at losing. I'm going to be fine.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 5 we are not living in normal times. We cannot respond in a normal way.

Speaker 5 And people who look like me

Speaker 5 need to be leading this charge because despite it all being somewhat unsafe, we are the safest.

Speaker 5 So hopefully all y'all will, if you live in North Carolina, love my North Carolina. I'm suddenly worried we're a gang.

Speaker 5 I don't know what's coming next.

Speaker 5 Anyway, hope you'll vote for me on March 3rd, your Republican, future Republican congresswoman.

Speaker 2 Okay, Kate's switching parties. Maurice, this

Speaker 3 Maurice, this next question is for you.

Speaker 2 And the role of party is not necessarily invading the Republican Party, but the Working Families Party is,

Speaker 2 you know, a separate party.

Speaker 2 The Democratic brand, as we've discussed a lot up here today, is pretty damaged. But as we saw in New York,

Speaker 2 you know, Mom Dani, sorry, Zoran Momdani had the Democratic nomination and he won. But as you mentioned earlier,

Speaker 2 you know, I actually saw a video you posted where you were talking to him about the fact that he even voted for himself on the Working Families Party line.

Speaker 2 And so I'm curious what you think, like, why do you think your candidates who are affiliated with the Working Families Party have such a draw? And is...

Speaker 2 people's interest in them an indication that there's something outside of the two-party system that people might be more interested in?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think like there's a set of people who deeply care about politics, identify with parties, identify with ideology.

Speaker 3 And if you're one of those people, you kind of assume that that's everybody, but it really isn't, right?

Speaker 3 And most everyday people who aren't like me a political nerd are identifying based on their identity as a mom or their identity as a community member. And they just want shit to get done.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 what we've noticed and what is that people do have strong values.

Speaker 3 People hate corruption. People deeply hate corruption.
And that's something that's like a transpartisan value. So there was this like guy who was like MAGA for Zoran.

Speaker 3 I don't know if you saw this guy, right?

Speaker 3 Like, it might make no sense to you, but what I understand from that is like most people know and get like that

Speaker 3 basically

Speaker 3 there's a set of oligarchs and corporations that kind of prop all of this shit up, right?

Speaker 3 And there's like, yes, this crazy party, and they have their oligarchs, and it's kind of,

Speaker 3 you know, there's one master, this kind of weird puppet king type of guy,

Speaker 3 and he's kind of an oligarch. But then there's this other party that is like a status quo party that maybe has two masters, you know, the oligarchs and sometimes the people.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 people don't like that.

Speaker 3 And a lot of Democrats do not like that at all. And

Speaker 3 those two parties are funded by, it turns out, like the Republicans are funded by Wall Street, APAC, AI, Crypto, Pharma, Real Estate Lobby, Fraternal Order of Police.

Speaker 3 The Democrats are funded by Wall Street, APAC, AI, Crypto, Pharma. Fraternal Order of Police.
You get what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 Regular people see this, right? I don't know if you saw that clip of Corey Booker squirming.

Speaker 3 Just answer a yes or no question. People are tired of this bullshit.

Speaker 3 And so...

Speaker 3 It creates an opening for a different type of politics. So when you see the Democratic, the Democratic Party is polling at atrocious levels.

Speaker 3 And so it's not for the working families party, for the Democrats to figure out how to improve their brand. And God bless the Democrats in that quest.

Speaker 3 But if you're hanging on to

Speaker 3 improving the Democratic Party brand as the way that we defeat fascism, then you're signing up to lose. We need people who are running in Republicans.
Like literally, we need no.

Speaker 3 We cannot do the politics that led us here. It's crazy to me that the people that led us here, right?

Speaker 3 So the people that led us here, the people who raised and spent more than a billion dollars on that failed campaign, right? They're not being held accountable.

Speaker 3 In fact, immediately after, they're writing like op-eds in the New York Times and the Washington Post, blaming the groups, blaming woke, right?

Speaker 3 There is a group that we should blame, the Mark Cubans of the world, right?

Speaker 3 There is, there are instinct, there are, there are like these interest groups who put the Democratic Party and their candidates in this stray jacket where they almost seem like real people.

Speaker 3 But then when it comes to answering a yes or no question, is BB Netanyahu a war criminal? Yes, the answer is yes, by the way. There's only one correct answer to that question.

Speaker 3 Right and they can't they end up with this 30 word answer that doesn't include BB Netanyahu or war criminal. People just see them.
They're like, yuck, what is that?

Speaker 3 And the thing is, like,

Speaker 3 people don't need to agree with you. People need to believe in you.
It's very different.

Speaker 3 And it turns out, like, with Zoram, people could agree or disagree on a whole range of things. Right.

Speaker 3 But also understand, like, that's the guy that's going to help make New York affordable.

Speaker 3 So I'm voting for him. Right.
And when you see things like, all right, 104,000,

Speaker 3 that number,

Speaker 3 that's the amount of individual volunteers that Zoran had, right?

Speaker 3 40. That's the spread of

Speaker 3 men that went from wherever they were,

Speaker 3 however they were voting back to the Democrats through Zoran, right? All of those folks were talking about, where's young men? We need the Joe Rogan of the left, right?

Speaker 3 We need to babysit men with some like idiotic comedian, right?

Speaker 3 It turns out that men also care about affordability, that that men are experiencing a crisis that everybody else is experiencing. And if you're able to like

Speaker 3 talk to everybody like they're adults and just be real and authentic, you could actually build a politics that that meets meets the urgency that everybody's feeling. So when you talk about

Speaker 3 this idea of third parties, yeah, third parties seem kooky to a lot of people, right?

Speaker 3 And the Democratic Party has largely been governed by fear, right? Fear that if we don't vote blue no matter who, unless there's Oran, by the way,

Speaker 3 that we might lend a victory to the Republican, right?

Speaker 3 To wait in line, to do all those things.

Speaker 3 Look, like,

Speaker 3 my thing is, I don't know if any of that was ever true. I don't think so, but it certainly is not true today when we have a fascist that's that's captured the federal government.

Speaker 3 If we continue to do the politics as we've done them before and we continue to fit within the box of the Democratic Party as the brand and only do politics in that way and not seek different ideas and different brands and like run people as independents, run people in Republicans, run people as Working Families Party people.

Speaker 3 We are doomed. Look, the Working Families Party brand is actually, it polls very well everywhere, right?

Speaker 3 And so it makes more sense for candidates to align with those brands than have to explain away the Democratic Party brand.

Speaker 3 All of the popular Democrats, the reason they're popular is because part of their brand is why they're not. a Democrat.

Speaker 3 You know, and so look, there's a problem here. And Democrats need to face it.
I hope Democrats face it. But

Speaker 3 meanwhile, the Working Families Party is going to continue to recruit people on the local level and govern with them.

Speaker 2 So we are unfortunately

Speaker 2 out of time.

Speaker 2 Even though you see a little time there, we're out of time.

Speaker 2 So I just want to thank all of our panelists for joining us today. And thank you all for coming in.

Speaker 2 Even though though there's a lot more conversation we could have up here, we can't have it up here. But you know where you can see all these lovely people?

Speaker 2 I am going to pressure all of them to come to the Vote Save America Action Hub. So we have chairs and couches and stuff, and we want these conversations to be able to continue.

Speaker 2 I hope that all of you are inspired to support the work that is happening that our panelists spoke about today.

Speaker 2 And I hope you will ask them how you can get involved to help it, be it a candidacy or helping people with direct services or joining the Working Families Party or getting to a protest.

Speaker 2 But I hope that the one thing you all do is something because that is why Crooked Media and Vote Save America and all of these organizations exist.

Speaker 2 So thank you again and I hope you all enjoy the rest of the conference.

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Speaker 1 I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Up next, you'll hear another key discussion from CrookedCon, looking at the future of the Democratic Party and how we repair and prepare.
for what's to come.

Speaker 2 Hi, we are live from CrookedCon.

Speaker 2 I am Shaniqua McClendon. I am the VP of political strategy here at Crooked Media, and I run Vote Save America.
And I am here with Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, DNC.

Speaker 3 Ken, welcome to CrookedCon.

Speaker 7 Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 3 It's great to be here.

Speaker 2 And thank you to all of you for being here. I know it's early, and this is the first panel going on today.

Speaker 2 So we appreciate you joining us for such, what will be an important and interesting conversation.

Speaker 2 So to get started, I kind of just want to level set. I know a lot of people have thoughts and feelings about what your job is, but you've been in this role for nine months.

Speaker 2 I know last month you did an interview when you said you, it's the best job, but it makes you want to pull your hair out sometimes.

Speaker 2 So, I would love for you to just kind of start with telling everyone what exactly is your job, and then what are some of those components that make you want to pull your hair out?

Speaker 7 Yeah, look, let me say the role of a political party chair at any level is to build permanent and durable infrastructure, right?

Speaker 7 Infrastructure that candidates can rely on. You know, in 2023, I was down in Mississippi with Brandon Presley, our candidate for governor, who was tied with the Republican at that time, Tate Reeves.

Speaker 7 And I asked him, what more could the DNC at that point do to actually help you?

Speaker 7 And he said, years of indifference, years of disinvestment in southern states by the National Party and other committees has resulted in this moment where I'm on the cusp of being the first Democrat elected to a governorship in the deep south in a generation, yet I've got to build all the infrastructure myself.

Speaker 7 So our job at the DNC is to build the type of infrastructure that allows candidates to plug into and not have to build everything themselves, right?

Speaker 7 And that's things like voter protection infrastructure, right?

Speaker 7 Voter registration infrastructure, our data infrastructure, our volunteer infrastructure, working with our state and local party committees to, you know, develop that infrastructure throughout the nation.

Speaker 7 And when I ran for this position, position, what was critical for me was to make sure that we do that very holistically, up and down the ballot and throughout the country.

Speaker 7 It's really critical that we as a party are not just a party focused on building federal power.

Speaker 7 One of the real reasons I ran for this is because I've seen over many years now a negligence on the part of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 7 We just play for one cycle, one candidate, or one campaign at the expense of a long-term strategy on how we build power up and down the ballot around our agenda.

Speaker 7 And that's what the conservative movement has done. Now, let me be clear about my statement.

Speaker 7 People want to focus on the fact that I said I want to pull my hair out. This is a tough job.
There's no night that I go home where I don't want to pull my hair out.

Speaker 7 But listen, every day I wake up, I believe I've got the best job in America. There's two things I say every morning.
One is the serenity prayer.

Speaker 7 As the oldest child of a single mom who had some chemical addiction issues, I say the serenity prayer every single morning to remind myself of the things I can't control, right?

Speaker 7 And in politics, there's a lot of things I can't control. And so I got to focus on the things I can.

Speaker 7 But I also say a quote that my mentor in politics was a bushy-haired college professor named Paul Wellstone. And

Speaker 7 Paul said, you can remake the world daily.

Speaker 7 That's my positive.

Speaker 7 affirmation every single morning I say that because I get to get up and help remake the world daily for so many people who, you know, politics may seem abstract, but the consequence of our work is so real in their lives, right?

Speaker 7 And so I just say that because I've got a great job. And every day I get up, I'm looking forward to it.
But every day I go home and I'm like, holy smokes, it's tough.

Speaker 2 Well, you still have hair. So

Speaker 3 I think.

Speaker 2 That is a beautiful thing to remember that we can wake up every day and, you know, take another opportunity to try to make this place better.

Speaker 2 Living here in Washington, D.C., that is like a constant reminder that is needed, you know, going outside, seeing the National Guards,

Speaker 2 and just knowing Donald Trump's down the street, we need to remember that we can get up every day and do something.

Speaker 2 You mentioned that you, you know, in the past, that the Democratic Party has focused way too much on federal races, and you want to make sure that we're not just focusing on that.

Speaker 2 And so I think actually on Tuesday, we got to see a really great opportunity of some down ballot races that went really well. You know, I'm still really excited about what happened on Tuesday.

Speaker 2 You know, we saw

Speaker 2 Zora Mamdani win the mayoral in New York, Prop 50 pass in California, Mikey Sherrill and

Speaker 2 Abigail Spanberger be elected to governorships. What do you think that tells us about where Democrats are right now? And should we feel like there's a blue wave coming in the midterms?

Speaker 7 Well, let me answer that last one first. Where is the Democratic Party at right now? Clearly, Tuesday night showed that the Democratic Party is back, right?

Speaker 7 The premature reports of the death of the Democratic Party were deeply exaggerated, right? We've seen throughout the course of this year actually

Speaker 7 win after win up and down the ballot throughout the country. In fact, there were 45 elections on the ballot since Donald Trump was inaugurated before Tuesday night.

Speaker 7 And in all 45 of them, the Democratic Party was overperforming at a historic rate. Actually, the average overperformance was 16 percentage points.

Speaker 7 This is a huge, huge overperformance that allowed us to put a number of seats into play as we came into those Tuesday elections, right? And let me give you an example of this, right?

Speaker 7 In Pennsylvania earlier this year, we flipped a state Senate seat that was a plus 20% Trump district that had not elected a Democrat since the 1880s. We won that seat.

Speaker 7 And the DNC was deeply involved with Senator James Malone's race there. In Iowa, Caitlin Dray flipped a state Senate seat a few weeks back, right, where she broke the supermajority there.

Speaker 7 And throughout the country, we saw that momentum. And I was out there saying to everyone, there's wind at our back.
We're going to win. And sure enough, on Tuesday, we did, right?

Speaker 7 But the one thing that's important to remember is there is a through line on what happened on Tuesday. And

Speaker 7 what that through line is, of course, in this big tent party, no one should confuse unity with unanimity in the sense that we have a lot of different ideas and opinions and thoughts on how to actually achieve our goals.

Speaker 7 But what you saw, what is the through line between Abigail Spamberg in Virginia, a Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey, and of course, Sora and Mamdani and many candidates is that they ran on an economic agenda.

Speaker 7 They ran on affordability. They ran on the sense that people were frustrated in this country and needed a champion.
And so I will just say this. Tuesday was historic.

Speaker 7 It was the biggest off-off year for Democrats ever. And it was deep and wide.
It wasn't just the big five in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, and New York, right? Georgia.

Speaker 7 We elected in Georgia two members, statewide elections, for the first time in 20 years that were non-federal candidates to the Public Service Commission. This is amazing.

Speaker 7 In Mississippi, in Mississippi, where the DNC made massive six-figure investments down there to help them with their legislative races, we picked up two state Senate seats to actually help break the Republican supermajority, and we added another House member, right?

Speaker 7 This is, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. We didn't get to this point in the Democratic Party in some of these states overnight.
It was a very steady decline.

Speaker 7 And it's not going to happen overnight. We chip away at this one seat at a time, right? And that's what we did on Tuesday night in Virginia.

Speaker 7 We picked up 13 seats, of course, in the House, which was historic. But think about this.
Of those 13 seats we picked up, seven of those 13 seats have been represented by Republicans for 40 years.

Speaker 7 This is how historic it was. And we flipped school board seats, city council seats, mayoral ships in some of the reddest parts of this country.
It was deep, it was wide.

Speaker 7 No doubt, some of it had to do with the anti-Trump sentiment.

Speaker 7 But let's not take away from the candidates' positive message that they ran on, really focused on the anxieties and the economic pain that most Americans are facing right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think affordability is something we've heard a lot of, a lot during this election that happened on Tuesday, but also we just hear from people in general.

Speaker 2 Vote Save America worked with a creator in Georgia around the public service commission race.

Speaker 2 And when he would post our videos about the election, all through the comments, people were commenting on how high their utility bills were.

Speaker 2 And I think it was enough to get people to show up for an election for an office they probably had not heard about before.

Speaker 2 So we saw a lot of success on Tuesday.

Speaker 2 And right now Donald Trump is very unpopular. A recent poll, a CNN poll, shows that he has a disapproval rating of 63%, which is the worst number of his first or second term.

Speaker 2 But another CNN poll showed that the Democratic Party's favorability is just at 29%,

Speaker 2 which is about 20 points lower than it was at the end of Donald Trump's first term.

Speaker 2 So in a moment where people are really, you know, need affordability, especially, you know, in the moment of this government shutdown, what do you think is stopping so many people from seeing the Democratic Party and Democrats in general as a proper alternative when they clearly do not like Donald Trump?

Speaker 7 Well, Tuesday night sort of

Speaker 7 contradicts that, right? Because clearly Americans throughout the country chose Democrats. But there's no doubt that we've seen a steady erosion of support within big parts of our coalition.

Speaker 7 And I would argue it's for two reasons. One is

Speaker 7 we treat voters in various parts of our coalition as

Speaker 7 just voters. We show up three months before an election.
We have a transactional conversation with them where we're asking them to do something for our party, which is to vote for us.

Speaker 7 And then they don't see us for two years again.

Speaker 7 Repeat, repeat, repeat. The only time they see people from the Democratic Party is when we need something from them.

Speaker 7 And then they keep voting for us, hoping, hoping that maybe we'll actually improve their lives, strengthen their communities, make a difference for them.

Speaker 7 And we don't. Their lives don't get better.
And so there's no doubt that

Speaker 7 we've seen a steady, steady decline for many years now with big parts of our coalition because people don't feel like we're standing up and fighting for them.

Speaker 7 Now, last year there was research, and it should have been the canary in the coal mine for Democrats.

Speaker 7 It showed that for the first time in history, the perceptions of the two parties, political parties, had flipped, with the majority of Americans believing that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the middle class, the working class, and the poor, and the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elite.

Speaker 7 Well, it is crazy for sure, but sure enough, the only two groups that we overperformed with in the presidential contest last year, college-educated voters and wealthy households.

Speaker 7 That's not who we are as a Democratic Party. And so the other thing I would argue is this.
Right now, in this moment, when things are so existential,

Speaker 7 people want fighters.

Speaker 7 The biggest divide in this party right now

Speaker 7 is not ideological.

Speaker 7 As much as people want to make it about ideology, the biggest fight in our party right now, or the biggest divide in our party right now, is between those who are actually using the power they have.

Speaker 7 to stand up and fight for what we believe in and those who are sitting on the sidelines. That's what people want to see is people actually standing up.
You know, because let me ask you all this.

Speaker 7 Let me ask you all this, seriously.

Speaker 7 If you are not willing in this moment to fight like hell for the things you believe in, do you really believe in them at all?

Speaker 3 No.

Speaker 7 And that's why you see our numbers where they're at. Now, they're changing, right? Because I can tell you.
You see it across the country, Democrats standing up. You saw that at those No Kings rallies.

Speaker 7 You saw that throughout this country, people standing up, using the power they have, using their voices, using their platforms, and pushing back. I have no doubt that that's changing.

Speaker 7 But let me end with this. Don't mistake what a midterm

Speaker 7 is about. Midterms are never a referendum on the party out of power.
They're a referendum on the party in power. And Donald Trump's numbers just hit the lowest ever, as did the Republican party's.

Speaker 7 And so don't get me wrong. We got to work on our brand.
We got to stand up and fight for people.

Speaker 7 We got to give them a positive vision of what we would do to strengthen their lives and communities.

Speaker 7 But at the end of the day, the 26 midterms are going to be about Republicans and what they've done and continue to do to destroy this country.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I just want to follow up on that. I'm not sure how many of you were at the Pod Save America show yesterday, but Jasmine Crockett,

Speaker 2 Dan, interviewed her, and she made an interesting point when she was talking about possibly running for Senate in Texas.

Speaker 2 And she said, you know, we need a candidate who can actually bring people out who wouldn't have voted before. And that Donald Trump has done that.
Zara Mom Donnie has done that.

Speaker 2 That's something Barack Obama did. And they inspired people who wouldn't normally participate.
And you also mentioned kind of the people who we did well with last year. And so even if...

Speaker 2 And I'm a Democrat because I do care about people. I grew up with government assistance.

Speaker 2 Like I recognize that those programs give a lot of people the ability to live a prosperous life in this country.

Speaker 2 But I think a lot of people don't connect the dots for that now for the Democratic Party. And so what do candidates, lawmakers need to think about when they're running, but also governing?

Speaker 2 Because there's a reason people don't feel like the policies that will help them are being passed.

Speaker 2 And of course, Republicans are like a factor in there, but what needs to change on our side so that people actually feel like they're not just like fighting in front of the microphone, but pushing for policies that actually happen in the future.

Speaker 7 Well, I think it's a very fair critique of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 7 And I will say that one of my favorite quotes is from my friend Ayanna Presley, who said, those closest to pain should be closest to power. And I think we don't need more sympathetic leaders.

Speaker 7 We need more empathetic leaders. And I think Congresswoman Crockett is exactly right.
We need people who know what it's like to be unhoused, to be,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 not be able to put food on the table, to worry about where their next check is going to come from and how they're going to be able to live their lives and afford their lives, right?

Speaker 7 You know, I mentioned that I'm the oldest son of a single mom. My mom had me when she was 15 years old.
She raised four kids by herself and she struggled mightily.

Speaker 7 And as a home cleaner, I will tell you, she worked her ass off.

Speaker 7 You know, this idea, you know, that people who receive SNAP like we did or are on Medicaid like we were are somehow, you know, lazy and undeserving or they don't work.

Speaker 7 I mean, my mom worked her ass off, literally.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 2 I cry every day watching the news.

Speaker 3 It takes a while.

Speaker 7 It is shameful, shameful what this administration is doing.

Speaker 7 I think, you know, the reality is last Friday night, Donald Trump is sitting in Mar-a-Lago with his rich billionaire friends having a great Gatsby party on the eve, on the eve of kicking 42 million families off of nutrition benefits, right?

Speaker 7 This is how soulless and depraved and just backwards these people are.

Speaker 7 I mean, I say this truly because to your question about the Democratic Party, people want fighters. They want people who've had struggle.

Speaker 7 They want empathetic leaders who understand what this is about. I do this for very personal reasons.

Speaker 7 And I will tell you at the end of the day, what pisses me off is people who treat politics like a sport. We pat ourselves on the back and we say, well, we won an election.
And then we go home.

Speaker 7 Or we hang our head and say, we lost election. Well, we'll dust ourselves off and we'll win the next one.
It's not a sport. When you lose elections, people's lives literally are shattered.

Speaker 7 People who are hanging on by a thread. who are just hoping for a chance.
That's what this is about. So I did not run for this position to come here to ask for permission or to make friends.

Speaker 7 I wasn't supported by the billionaires. I wasn't supported by the establishment.
Most of the elected officials supported my opponent.

Speaker 7 I came in here to change the way we do things, to win elections again so we can actually improve people's lives. That's what it's about for me.
It's a tough job for sure.

Speaker 7 But I will tell you right now, we're making a lot of progress. And in the end, I'm not going to rest until we get this bastard out of the White House.

Speaker 7 Then I'll take a breath and then we'll keep going. So.

Speaker 2 I agree. We got to get rid of Trump.

Speaker 2 I do think it's really important. And I think we're seeing more of it, but the difference between

Speaker 2 sympathy and empathy.

Speaker 2 And It's really different when you encounter, I'm sure everyone in here has knocked the door, Canvas, talked to voters before, but when you do that, you hear a lot different conversations than what we hear in the media.

Speaker 2 And, you know, it's interesting. I go on MSNBC sometimes and the questions

Speaker 2 feel so different. Like we're always talking about politics like a sport and not the human element of it.

Speaker 2 But as someone who, again, benefited from government programs, it just feels really disconnected.

Speaker 2 But again, on Tuesday, we saw really great outcomes in these elections. And again, affordability was a really big part of that.
And so

Speaker 2 last year in the 2024 election, we spent a lot of time talking about the threat that Donald Trump was and is to democracy, which I think resonates with people who listen to Pod Save America, people who watch MSNBC.

Speaker 2 But it seems affordability is something that actually got through to people.

Speaker 2 Do you think that that is a message that everyone will come around for the midterms?

Speaker 2 And if we do, do you think that's one that Democrats can effectively deliver so that people can have that trust that is not there right now?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, look, we saw this last year in the election, right, in 24.

Speaker 7 We were out there defending President Biden's excellent economic record, right?

Speaker 7 You know, high GDP, real wage growth for the first time in 30 years, low unemployment, the best economy of any industrialized nation coming out of the pandemic, booming stock market.

Speaker 7 You know, I'm the first card-carrying union member to be elected a DMC chair, and I will tell you most of the working people that I would talk to, when I'd say that, that the economy is great, they'd look at me and say, are you kidding me?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 7 What planet do you live on? I can barely put food on my table, right? I can't afford my mortgage. My, you know, gas prices are off the charts, right?

Speaker 7 I am struggling right now, and you're telling me the economy is good?

Speaker 7 And that was true last year. And it's only gotten worse under this president, right? With

Speaker 7 the

Speaker 7 tariffs and his destructive economic policies, you know, this guy promised people on day one he was going to help them. Why did he win so many parts of our coalition?

Speaker 7 Why did he win with so many people who had voted with Democrats for years? It's because they needed some hope. They needed some relief.

Speaker 7 They thought Donald Trump and the Republicans were going to give that to them.

Speaker 7 And they've done nothing except push policies, tax breaks for the rich, policies that help the people in this country that already have the most on the backs of the people who are struggling just to get ahead.

Speaker 7 That's why we saw the win we did on Tuesday. People swung back heavily our way.
Latino voters, which he won big in 24, swung back our way, and we're now leading with Latino voters across the country.

Speaker 7 Independent voters swung back our way, right?

Speaker 7 Young voters, including young men, swung back our way.

Speaker 7 But my admonition to us is to never, ever, ever take any group for granted. Not to assume that just because that swung our way, that that means we're going to win in 26.

Speaker 7 I'm confident we will win in 26, but I'm not complacent. There is a reason when I was in Minnesota, we never lost a statewide election.
And it's because we did not rest on our laurels.

Speaker 7 We did not take communities for granted.

Speaker 7 We were always organizing year-round, having conversations with people around their hopes and their dreams, and eventually around shared values, and then eventually around politics and campaigns.

Speaker 7 And my admonition to us right now is to not get cocky about what happened on Tuesday. It was a great night, and we should celebrate, but let's keep our foot on the gas.

Speaker 7 As I said to folks, and I was probably like Debbie Downer on election night, because all the DNC folks were celebrating. And I said, it's a great night, but I have bad news.

Speaker 7 Tomorrow is the first day of the next election.

Speaker 7 As I said, I am not going to be satisfied until we get this guy out of the White House and until we elect Democrats who actually give a shit about people and start making a difference.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Last question before I get into some questions that we actually got from our audience. Following up on the question I just asked and your answer,

Speaker 2 I think a lot of the shift we saw back was a reaction to Trump, you know, and the economy. But as you said, we can't assume that that means Democrats will keep those voters forever.

Speaker 2 So as we look forward, not just to the midterms, but to the future of the party, in this moment, what, if you can offer it in two to three sentences, what would you say is the Democratic message for what we stand for right now that would pull people in more permanently?

Speaker 7 I think this has always been our message, but we've strayed away from it.

Speaker 7 It's no matter where you're from, no matter where you live, no matter who who you love or who you are, every person, every person in this country deserves an opportunity to get ahead and not just skip by.

Speaker 7 And that means that, you know, we believe that everyone should have an opportunity to climb the economic ladder, build a better life for their family.

Speaker 7 I mean,

Speaker 7 I will tell you, as I said, if it wasn't for a snap when I was a kid, we went to had food. If it wasn't for Medicaid, we went to had health care.

Speaker 7 And if it wasn't for a community who gave a damn about four four little kids and their struggling mom, I wouldn't be standing here today. This is the message for the Democratic Party.

Speaker 7 This is and has always been our message.

Speaker 7 And I will sum it up in something that my first boss and mentor and hero Paul Wellstone said, because I think this should be the slogan of the Democratic Party. We all do better when we all do better.

Speaker 7 Because the all matters here. Every single one of us matters.
And everyone should be able to get ahead. It's as simple as that, right?

Speaker 7 And that's as crazy as it is, this American dream is so powerful in this country. People believe if I just work hard, I can actually get ahead.

Speaker 7 And so many people are, but they're feeling like that dream is a far-off, distant reality that they'll never achieve.

Speaker 7 We know as Democrats, there's structural and systemic barriers in the way of people actually getting that opportunity. And our job is to remove those barriers.

Speaker 7 But nonetheless, we believe, like everyone in this country, country, that that dream should be realized. And that's what our message is.
And there's so many policies underneath of that.

Speaker 7 But at the core, that should be our guiding star. And that's what we have to get back to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 I'm going to be biased. So we

Speaker 2 went out to our friend of the pod subscribers and our Vote Save America community to see what questions they had for you.

Speaker 2 And why I'm being biased is because I see that my county party chair offered a question. So I'm going to ask her a question first.

Speaker 3 first.

Speaker 2 From Liz in Oxford, North Carolina. She asked, can you talk about how the DNC can support

Speaker 2 organizing, or maybe you already are, all the way down the ballot, not just at the national or state level, but at even the precinct or county party level?

Speaker 7 We have to, and we're already doing that at the DNC. It's really important when we run coordinated campaigns that we don't just focus on federal power.
or just the top-of-the-ticket races.

Speaker 7 As I mentioned, our own indifference over the years to school board elections, for instance, right, has resulted in the far right taking over school boards.

Speaker 7 Some of our biggest school districts in the country were controlled by the Moms for Liberty group, where they were banning books, they were whitewashing history, they were attacking our children.

Speaker 7 That's as much on them as it is on us because we weren't competing there. It is important for us to realize that every office has been politicized by the far right.

Speaker 7 It's a long-term plan to build power around their agenda in every public policy arena.

Speaker 7 So when we ignore school boards, when we ignore county boards, when we ignore mayoralships, it's at our own peril.

Speaker 7 Now, what you've seen in this DNC already, first time in 30 years, we established a national coordinated campaign table.

Speaker 7 When we made investments this year, we didn't just make investments in the top-of-the-ticket races. We invested deep down ballot.

Speaker 7 We're working with the Democratic Mayors Association, the Democratic Municipal Association. We're working with the National Democratic County officials.

Speaker 7 We're working with all all of the organizations out there that are trying to build power at every level of government.

Speaker 7 We made deep six-figure investments in Pennsylvania around those Supreme Court races, right, to make sure those billionaires couldn't actually buy those seats.

Speaker 7 We made deep investments, as I said, in Mississippi and those state legislative races, right?

Speaker 7 We made deep investments in municipal races throughout the country because we believe the way you actually re-emerge as a party is not from the top down, but from the grassroots up.

Speaker 7 And the last thing I'll say on this is: is look

Speaker 7 people are in this town and what drives me crazy about washington they are obsessed with what happens here yeah elections aren't won in dc they're won in the states on the ground in local communities and if we're going to rebuild our party in this moment we have to build it from the grassroots up yeah yeah um when we started vote save america something that i had heard throughout my career and i wanted to make sure we didn't do was the people in dc always try to tell us what to do and they don't know what's happening here.

Speaker 2 And so I think you're absolutely right that we we have to start there.

Speaker 2 Another question that we have from,

Speaker 2 I think it's Brooke, who's a friend of the pod.

Speaker 2 He said, we often, or they said, we often hear that we should have our own version of Project 2025, but people have a tendency to jump right to policy without articulating.

Speaker 2 You know, honestly, this, you answered this question for me already.

Speaker 2 Okay, so I'm going to skip over to one last question and then we'll close out here.

Speaker 2 But it's one that I think is really important in this current media age. One of the biggest challenges is the volume of disinformation on social media and the news.

Speaker 2 Is there a way where the DNC could have a two-way channel so we can utilize both the power of grassroots organizations and the DNC? And that is Marie from Michigan asking.

Speaker 7 Well, this is critical because frankly,

Speaker 7 you know, when you think about a movement, as I do do often, right, because I come from movement spaces, the DNC is a part of it and certainly a large part of it.

Speaker 7 But what I've been inspired by is a number of these resistance groups this year, like Indivisible, right, who put on those no-kings rallies.

Speaker 7 It was just amazing what they were able to do to harness that energy.

Speaker 7 And what we have to realize is that there are many people who are part of those no-kings rallies who don't consider themselves Democrats, but they actually share the same goal, which is to actually defeat this authoritarian regime

Speaker 7 and build power around the things we all care about. So we have to work with those organizations, those outside organizations, in meaningful ways to join hands.

Speaker 7 And frankly, they gave us a shot in the arm that we needed, all of us needed, throughout this country, to get off of our asses, stop hanging our heads, get over the last election, and roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 we absolutely have to work with them.

Speaker 7 The second piece on this, though, is, you know, in terms of the misinformation that's out there, I'm really proud of what we've done at the DNC because think about this.

Speaker 7 There were 18 million Democrats who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 who did not vote for Kamala Harris in 24.

Speaker 7 Now, 8 million of them showed up and voted, either voted for Trump on the ballot, some other candidate, or just skipped the presidential.

Speaker 7 But 10 million Democrats stayed home in the third closest presidential election in 100 years. And there's reasons why they stayed home, a whole host of reasons.

Speaker 7 But in our research, one of the things we found is that misinformation and disinformation and the prevalence of it really contributed to a lot of those folks actually checking out instead of checking in.

Speaker 7 And we brought folks into the DNC from the Obama and Biden administrations who worked in Homeland Security, Intel, and military to help us really think through

Speaker 7 how we combat misinformation and disinformation in real time.

Speaker 7 And we're doing that right now, using AI and other social listening tools to actually be able to monitor and identify in real time this misinformation campaign.

Speaker 7 And it's foreign actors, Russia, China, other foreign actors who are influencing our elections through misinformation. It's also domestic actors, right?

Speaker 7 Billionaires, corporations, others who are actually influencing in ways to get people to check out of elections. And so we are combating that.

Speaker 7 What was once a torrent of misinformation is now a trickle. And so there's so many things we're working on I'm proud of.
Let me end with this because I know we're out of time.

Speaker 7 I want to give you guys something that is really important. We are going to win, but it's not a certainty.

Speaker 7 None of us should be complacent. We've got to keep our foot on the gas.

Speaker 7 I've always said we run like we're 20 points behind, even if we're 20 points ahead.

Speaker 7 Let's celebrate those victories on Tuesday because they're well earned and so many of you worked your asses off to get there.

Speaker 7 But then let's get back to work and understand that there are people literally counting on us to win in 2026. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 2 Thank you for answering the question I wanted to ask to close out. So I didn't want us to close out on a low note.
So thank you for closing there. And thank you all again for joining us today.

Speaker 2 I'm really excited that we were able to chat with you today. And, you know, I hope this has given people some more perspective and insight to what's happening at the DNC,

Speaker 2 how the chairman is thinking about his work moving forward. And the last thing I'll say is: Vote Save America actually has an action hub here today.

Speaker 2 You know, a lot of the work that the DNC does is a lot of the kinds of work that Vote Save America is doing. And so we have an action hub.
There's a stage. There's a lounge.

Speaker 2 We're hoping that you all can connect and just spend some time together.

Speaker 2 But I'm actually headed over there now to have a conversation with Julie Kahn from ACBlue.

Speaker 2 And we'll also have workshops on how to run for office and dig into the details of what organizing tactics are working now.

Speaker 2 So if anyone is interested in heading over there, we'll have some programming happening on stage there. But thank you again for coming.

Speaker 2 Thank you for coming to such an early conversation and enjoy the rest of the conference.

Speaker 1 If you have ideas at the end of the episode, don't forget to tell us what you think.

Speaker 1 You can email me at 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Our theme song is by Vasilis Fogtopoulos.

Speaker 1 Thank you to Matt DeGroat, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hescoat, and Priyanka Munza for production support. Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams.

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