Galen Druke: Americans Do Not Like Trump's Deportations

Transcript

Speaker 2 We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 4 These words are more than just the opening of the Constitution.

Speaker 7 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 9 They're also the cornerstone of MS Now.

Speaker 14 Whether it's breaking news, exclusive reporting, election coverage, or in-depth analysis, MS Now keeps the people at the heart of everything they do.

Speaker 24 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust, MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 26 Their name is new, but you'll find the same commitment to justice, progress, and the truth you've relied on for decades.

Speaker 34 They'll continue to cover the day's news, ask the tough questions, and explain how it impacts you.

Speaker 38 Same mission, new name, MS Now.

Speaker 41 Learn more at MS.now.

Speaker 42 This week, on a very special episode of Health Discovered, we take a closer look at MS.

Speaker 44 Every week in the U.S., approximately 200 people are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Speaker 45 I grew up with parents that were divorced, and so when it was time for me to find care for these symptoms, it kind of just fell on me.

Speaker 44 We'll also address the deeper challenges patients face, like health disparities that delay diagnosis in underserved communities.

Speaker 42 Listen to Health Discovered on America's number one podcast network, iHeart.

Speaker 47 Hello and welcome to the Bowler podcast.

Speaker 48 I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Speaker 47 Delighted to welcome, I think for the first time, host of the GD Politics podcast, also GD Politics on Substack,

Speaker 52 formerly host of the 538 Politics pod, and he's got a recent piece in the New York Times arguing the Democrats need their own Trump for 2028, but not in the way you're worried about.

Speaker 55 It's Galen Drook. What's up, man?

Speaker 56 Hey, how's it going? Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 48 It's going well. It's going well.
I mean, I don't, should you have just gone with the goddamn America podcast?

Speaker 6 Are you a little concerned about the GD there?

Speaker 51 You know, just whether that's sending the wrong signals to any potential Christian subscribers?

Speaker 60 Well, I thought of that, which is why I also purchased gosh darnpolitics.com when I was setting up the site.

Speaker 65 So we have GDpolitics.com, GalenDrukePolitics.com, and goshdarnpolitics.com because we're an inclusive community, you know?

Speaker 69 Okay.

Speaker 6 Gosh darn politics. So that is that is sweet.

Speaker 70 I think maybe I'm voting for that one, but we'll see how it goes.

Speaker 48 All right.

Speaker 47 I've got a bunch to talk to you about.

Speaker 71 I want to get eventually to that Trump article, which we agree with passionately, fervently, hence you coming on the pod, you know, because I like to have passionate agreements with people.

Speaker 75 And so we'll get to that, but we've got some new stuff we got to do first.

Speaker 54 So since we taped yesterday's pod, the BBB, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is no longer called that actually, Chuck Schumer got a big win.

Speaker 9 I don't know if you saw this in the Senate yesterday.

Speaker 52 He got a big win, and he forced the Republicans to change the name of the bill.

Speaker 77 So big kudos to Chuck Schumer on that.

Speaker 32 It's passed the Senate.

Speaker 82 It's going over to the House right now.

Speaker 85 You either said or wrote that this looks to be the least popular major legislation passed since at least 1990.

Speaker 76 So I just want to start the biggest picture before we get down into kind of the vote, the politics of the vote itself.

Speaker 32 Like, why do you think it's so unpopular? Talk about that.

Speaker 57 Yeah, so this was actually some analysis from Chris Warshaw at George Washington University, who looked at the popularity of major legislation that's been passed since at least 1990.

Speaker 100 And this looks to be the least popular.

Speaker 59 Less popular things have been considered, like repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2017.

Speaker 98 That was less popular, but it failed.

Speaker 85 And looking at- What about W is Social Security privatization?

Speaker 70 Where did we fit? Where did we fit on that, my boy?

Speaker 100 Well, Tim, that didn't actually happen.

Speaker 103 So it wasn't included in the big legislation that that got passed.

Speaker 108 But I have to imagine that somewhere near this and where this polls on average is about 25 percentage points underwater, looking at four recent polls from reliable pollsters.

Speaker 112 And so it's pretty bleak.

Speaker 114 And why is this happening?

Speaker 116 I think it's because this is an issue that Americans care increasingly about, healthcare.

Speaker 103 It's also an issue where Republicans start with a deficit.

Speaker 118 You know, even throughout Joe Biden's unpopular presidency, Democrats still had an advantage on the issue of health care.

Speaker 100 And it's also an issue that's becoming increasingly salient.

Speaker 110 We see it moving up in the ranks of concerns for voters.

Speaker 121 And unlike, I would say, the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, that was quite unpopular when it passed, the media moved on, Democrats kind of moved on and argued about other things.

Speaker 124 This is the kind of story that, if it ultimately gets signed into law, sticks around because there's going to be stories about folks losing their health insurance.

Speaker 63 You know, there are projections that 10 million people will be put off Medicaid and that another 6 million or so might lose their subsidies through the Affordable Care Act.

Speaker 124 And that's not only something for Democrats to talk about, it's also something that the media is going to report on.

Speaker 117 And I'll just add here, as I'm spewing out all of these numbers, like the Yale Budget Lab did some rigorous work looking at how this shifts around funds for the American public.

Speaker 130 And it found that the bottom 20% of Americans will end up with $700 less per year if this becomes law, while the top 20% will end up with about 6,000 more.

Speaker 133 And if you break that top 20% down even more to like the 0.1%, so people making over $3 million a year, they're going to get over $100,000 more a year when all is said and done.

Speaker 96 And so if you want to make an argument against the billionaires, against the oligarchy or whatever, and you're a Democrat, you were just handed a gift.

Speaker 77 I guess my follow-up is I've done a little Googling while you're talking, and it feels like Social Security privatization was significantly more popular, actually, than this bill.

Speaker 86 So suck on that, MAGA.

Speaker 135 There was also some data come out that shows that like a lot of people don't actually know what's in this bill.

Speaker 134 So how do you kind of

Speaker 55 parse that?

Speaker 85 Like its unpopularity with also the lack of familiarity.

Speaker 58 Yeah, so I think a couple of things are going on.

Speaker 124 And to your point, actually, about Social Security privatization being more popular, in some ways, Republicans haven't even done the work to try to convince Americans that it's worth cutting Medicaid, right?

Speaker 43 Like in the Bush era, there would be some intellectual argument about how we need to make these programs solvent or why work requirements are actually a good thing.

Speaker 66 And by the way, when asked in abstraction, if there should be work requirements for Medicaid, a majority of Americans agree and a majority of Democrats even agree.

Speaker 66 And so in some ways, they've tried to do this in the dark of night, not really talking about it very much.

Speaker 59 And that may be to their deficit, because there are probably some areas where they could win over at least more Republicans, because even Republicans don't have the best view of this legislation at this point.

Speaker 140 It's like only two-thirds that view it favorably.

Speaker 66 And when it comes to Americans not knowing much about it, I have seen, I've been watching the polling as this has all played out, increasingly Americans do know about it.

Speaker 100 So today, when you ask them, like, will this increase the deficit?

Speaker 63 A majority of Americans say yes.

Speaker 100 Who will this benefit the most?

Speaker 95 I was just looking at YouGov polling this morning.

Speaker 91 57% 57% of Americans say the wealthy when compared with other groups of Americans.

Speaker 139 And so I think that they have a general vibe.

Speaker 59 They may not know all of the provisions that affect green energy or the provisions that affect, I mean, I think people are also aware of the tax and

Speaker 100 sorry, the repealing of tax on tips to a certain extent.

Speaker 137 But I think that they will probably learn more and it's, I would say, unlikely to get more popular.

Speaker 25 I want to get into the particular peculiarities of Lisa Murkowski, who you did a very interesting podcast with recently, and why she decided to become the tying and essentially tiebreaking vote on the bill next.

Speaker 9 So like just putting her aside, like what's your theory of the case on why they did this?

Speaker 80 Like they really didn't have to do this.

Speaker 147 Like they could have done a two separate bills, one that was just border security, one that was just extending the Trump tax cuts.

Speaker 81 That would have also been bad on the deficit, but like, so was this.

Speaker 135 So, you know what I mean?

Speaker 76 Like they, they, they could have just done popular stuff.

Speaker 82 Like that was an option to them.

Speaker 52 And that was something Donald Trump was pretty deft at in 2015, 2016, like focusing on just doing things people like.

Speaker 49 So like, why don't you think they did that?

Speaker 124 Well, the parties do have a problem with over-interpreting their mandates.

Speaker 93 If you'll remember, Joe Biden started off with, you know, a decent amount of popularity.

Speaker 66 And the idea was to do popular things.

Speaker 125 And quickly they started also doing unpopular things.

Speaker 112 I mean, we don't have to rehash the whole thing, but on immigration and on inflation and things like that, he actually wasn't with the majority of Americans and there was a backlash, which I expect to be the case here.

Speaker 105 And so.

Speaker 65 On one hand, it's Trump overinterpreting his mandate and saying, I want to do this, I want to do that, and we'll put it all in one bill.

Speaker 153 It's also the Republican Party being, I mean, you're intimately familiar with this, the Republican Party being drawn in different directions.

Speaker 93 So there are now the conservative populists like Josh Hawley, who say that they like Medicaid, although he voted for this bill, obviously.

Speaker 59 And then there are also the budget hawks like Rand Paul, who, you know, obviously didn't vote for this, but say that they're very concerned about the debt and deficit.

Speaker 102 And so how do you both, you know, try to not explode the deficit so much so you are going to cut benefits like Medicaid and SNAP benefits and also Affordable Care Act subsidies, but also

Speaker 125 try to

Speaker 66 be something of a conservative populist while also incorporating all of these promises that Trump made on the campaign, like no tax on tips, you know, no taxes on your interest payments for your car loan and the like.

Speaker 58 And what you end up with is something that kind of, I guess it accomplishes a little bit of each, but it also does quite a bad job on the deficit.

Speaker 94 It does ultimately take away people's benefits.

Speaker 94 And ultimately, you know, the things that Trump said he wanted to do for folks, like no tax on tips and the like will expire expire at the end of his term.

Speaker 69 Yeah.

Speaker 75 I mean, like in a strange way, you don't, you hate to hand it to Bannon, but like the Bannon version of this bill would have been more popular, right?

Speaker 71 Like if they did like not extending the top tax bracket and, you know, not doing as much on the benefit cuts and I don't know, maybe adding more money for like an alligator moat around all of the jails instead of just one.

Speaker 71 Like, I think that kind of combination of policies feels like more popular than what they did.

Speaker 100 Yeah, I mean, that's what Susan Collins was pushing for as well.

Speaker 151 She tried to add an amendment that would bring the top tax rate back up to 39.5% from 37%,

Speaker 103 which I forgot to mention.

Speaker 94 If you want to do all those things that are priorities for different parts of the Republican Party and then also not raise taxes on anyone, you're going to end up with something that kind of offends everybody in some way.

Speaker 51 My theory of the case on this is, I mean, part of this is just inertia and Trump wanted to get something done and it's stupid legislative.

Speaker 85 It's like old, you know, same same problem with every legislature where everybody's trying to get a little bit of what they want.

Speaker 135 But I think maybe the fundamental sin is that

Speaker 87 like a shocking number of congressional Republicans believe their own bullshit. when it comes to like them being fiscally responsible and the Democrats not being fiscally responsible.

Speaker 35 And so like they convince themselves that they have to do these cuts to maintain their self-perception, their identity

Speaker 48 as a fiscal hawk would be in doubt if they didn't do the cuts part of this.

Speaker 73 And so they are going to kind of lop on these unpopular cuts to a bill that still is bigger than anything Biden did or Obama did as far as increasing the debt.

Speaker 165 Like, I think that's like literally it.

Speaker 86 Like, they fooled themselves into doing this.

Speaker 80 Yeah, I think there are plenty of people within the Republican Party that believe in work requirements for Medicaid and reducing benefits.

Speaker 40 I should also say here that there is a cynical aspect to this, which is, yes, we hear a lot about Trump doing better with lower income, lower education level voters, but Democrats still do quite well with the poorest people in America and then the upper middle class and wealthy in America.

Speaker 141 You know, Harris won outright the top income bracket that exit polls look at.

Speaker 106 And this is going to hurt most the people at the very bottom of the income ladder that actually Republicans don't rely on quite as much as they do the middle class, right?

Speaker 111 This is going to benefit the wealthy the most, but at least it's not going to have sort of the deepest negative impacts on the people who are the prime Trump voter.

Speaker 112 You know, everyone gets lumped into the working class here, but when we're talking about the working class, we're talking about people making, you know, $50,000, $60,000 a year.

Speaker 125 We're not talking about the people who are making, you know, according to this Yale budget lab, if you're in the bottom 20%, you're making very little money a year and you're seeing the deepest cuts and the most negative impact from this bill.

Speaker 114 As Josh Hawley argued in the pages of the New York Times, there is some push within the Republican Party to care more about the worst off among us.

Speaker 66 But here, it seems like there may be some electoral calculations as well, because what they weren't doing was slashing Medicare.

Speaker 86 That's a good point.

Speaker 147 And they also ended up adding in a bunch for rural hospitals.

Speaker 70 I note that a huge chunk of money then goes to help support rural hospitals, which is needed and right, But nothing to help low-income hospitals and urban neighborhoods.

Speaker 36 That's your effort at sort of targeting your base versus the other sides.

Speaker 177 Hi, I'm Martine Hackett, host of Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a production from Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenix.

Speaker 178 This season, we're sharing powerful stories of resilience from people living with MG and CIDP.

Speaker 174 Our hope is to inspire, educate, and remind each other that even in the toughest moments, we're not alone.

Speaker 180 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington.

Speaker 178 After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 186 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 189 Listen to Untold Stories, Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.

Speaker 85 Speaking of efforts to do that, Lisa Murkowski.

Speaker 71 So

Speaker 49 you talked to her at an opportune time.

Speaker 14 When was it?

Speaker 6 Like a week ago? Two weeks ago?

Speaker 55 Time is a flat circle.

Speaker 80 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 190 She ends up being like the vote that is needed here to get to 50.

Speaker 191 The Republicans could only lose three.

Speaker 36 They had lost Paul, Tillis, and Collins.

Speaker 61 And so Murkowski was kind of the teetering vote at the last second.

Speaker 31 She ends up supporting it extremely reluctantly.

Speaker 146 In a very unusual post-positive vote interview, she says that she thinks it's a bad bill.

Speaker 80 It's going to hurt people.

Speaker 73 So we're going to psychoanalyze that next.

Speaker 2 But I want to play just a little bit from your interview with her where

Speaker 73 you asked her specifically about kind of this carve out for Alaska.

Speaker 115 Is this something where you could get to yes for this if there was a waiver for Alaska on those Medicaid provisions?

Speaker 115 Or do you think there are other places in America like the situation you've described in Alaska?

Speaker 193 Well, I think that there are other pockets where, again,

Speaker 193 you have limited economic opportunity, right, in some of our really rural areas.

Speaker 193 And so, again,

Speaker 193 that's one example: work requirements. And I'm trying to be specific because I think it helps people.

Speaker 193 I'm not saying Alaska needs to be carved out of everything. What I'm saying is, I've got to have some flexibility.
I have to have some appreciation that not all states are equal in terms of

Speaker 193 how you're able to implement.

Speaker 16 What'd you make about,

Speaker 85 obviously, you asked her that question, so you felt like this was coming.

Speaker 87 I just kind of look at it and it's like, it's kind of a small car in the grand scheme of things.

Speaker 26 I don't know. It's not like Alaska got something.

Speaker 5 It like avoided getting punished, right?

Speaker 82 And so I don't know.

Speaker 88 What did you make about her kind of, you know, making the decision to vote for this after some of those changes?

Speaker 112 Yeah, honestly, at the end of my conversation with Lisa Murkowski, I thought she's a yes for this bill because she was pretty clear that she'd been working with her caucus, with leadership, with the White House, pursuing things that she wanted to pursue.

Speaker 167 And I mean, a big priority for Murkowski is, you know, energy resource production in Alaska, which ended up, I believe, being part of this bill, although things were getting added and subtracted at the last minute.

Speaker 151 So I'm not 100% sure on that.

Speaker 169 But Murkowski is somebody who said all along that I'm out here for Alaska.

Speaker 66 And she repeated that again and again in the interview.

Speaker 100 And so ultimately, I think she felt that she got what she wanted.

Speaker 100 And because there were so many carve outs made and so many sort of concessions in some ways made for Alaska in this bill, at least that they considered.

Speaker 123 Probably she would have lost a lot of faith amongst her colleagues if at the end of all of that, she voted no.

Speaker 66 And so you get this situation where she feels like she has something good for Alaska, but then she comes out and says, I don't think this is a good bill for America.

Speaker 117 So what we can say is that's probably not the greatest political strategy to get folks to, you know, admire the work that you're doing necessarily.

Speaker 108 And so in some ways, like she's being honest.

Speaker 112 She said, I'm here to represent Alaska and I got what I wanted for Alaska.

Speaker 93 And so I voted yes.

Speaker 39 You kind of landed there then on the

Speaker 52 two-pronged rationale for a decision, which is the Alaska focus and the brand,

Speaker 134 which she was very adamant about in your discussion, but also the social,

Speaker 77 literally it's high school cafeteria stuff a little bit.

Speaker 147 Like she does have relationships with Thune and with like the leadership in a way that maybe she wouldn't with some of the more recent MAGA guys in the caucus.

Speaker 163 And I think felt like she had an obligation to like work with them in good faith or whatever.

Speaker 65 Yeah, I mean, I think they knew from the jump that they needed her vote and the way to do it was to

Speaker 59 put positive things in the bill for Alaska.

Speaker 140 And, you know, when we talked, it was, you know, about two weeks ago at this point.

Speaker 116 It was clear that they had been working on this for a while and she had raised plenty of issues regarding Alaska that were being considered.

Speaker 91 And she said in the interview, you know, they have to consider my concerns for Alaska because they need my vote to pass this bill.

Speaker 109 So I think that was an open part of this whole negotiation from the jump.

Speaker 82 There's another section of the interview, which I played last week, which was kind of this question of

Speaker 88 whether she might be interested in forging some kind of coalition government with Democrats or with other independent types, depending on how things go off in the midterms.

Speaker 51 You were like a dog with a bone on that question.

Speaker 148 That went on for like seven minutes.

Speaker 72 So I could only play a little clip of it on this podcast.

Speaker 49 But what did you make about that whole exchange?

Speaker 86 And how do you look at it now after seeing kind of how the last week has played out?

Speaker 100 You know, to her credit, she could have just said no and ended the conversation.

Speaker 99 So at the very least, I think she tries to be honest when she's answering questions, which is if this is something she would ever consider.

Speaker 59 She didn't say flat out no, which is what led to a conversation that I think it was even longer than that because I first started by asking if she would.

Speaker 66 ever consider being unaligned or independent.

Speaker 138 And then I said, okay, well, if Democrats win three seats in the Senate at the midterms and they need a fourth in order to have a majority, would you ever consider caucusing with them if, once again, they promised that you could pass good legislation on behalf of Alaskans?

Speaker 108 And she could have just said, no, I'm a Republican.

Speaker 66 I'm going to stay this way.

Speaker 100 But the conversation kept going for about 10 minutes, which tells me it is something that she has considered.

Speaker 119 It's not a secret that I think she has pretty, you know, I'm going to speak in like memeable language here, but deep reservations with the Republican Party.

Speaker 102 And she talks at length in her book, which is why she was doing these interviews, about places where she's broken with her party and her reactions to January 6th and her concerns for her own security.

Speaker 92 There are people who are spending time behind bars because of threatening her.

Speaker 130 And she said in the interview itself, it's no secret that my party has rejected me or something along those lines, has not embraced me, I think she said.

Speaker 104 And so there's obvious discomfort there.

Speaker 33 You know, she says that also she doesn't like democratic policy.

Speaker 168 I think you aired that clip with Nicole last week.

Speaker 118 And I think that that's probably also true.

Speaker 116 And so I think oftentimes we look at these folks in Washington and they're super cynical and they're egotistical and they're kind of like unlikable people.

Speaker 154 I think she's truly conflicted.

Speaker 115 You know, I think that she is not a cynical politician.

Speaker 95 I think that in some ways she's got a lot of feelings.

Speaker 100 She wants to represent Alaska and she oftentimes lands in places that piss off Republicans and she oftentimes lands in places that piss off Democrats.

Speaker 94 And it works for her in Alaska in some ways because of the electoral system that they have there with open primaries and then a ranked choice voting system in the general.

Speaker 115 But I would imagine that under any other system, she'd be booted.

Speaker 25 And maybe the answer to that is that like she's conflicted and she's working through it.

Speaker 51 Because part of me comes to the question of, and please take this in the greatest spirit in which it's intended, because I love and honor the GD Politics podcasts.

Speaker 199 But it's like.

Speaker 143 The fact that she's doing that interview, I mean, I don't know, maybe you're just pals with the chief of staff or something, but like she's not coming on my podcast.

Speaker 54 She's not really going on MAGA podcasts, right?

Speaker 135 You know what I mean?

Speaker 9 Like, she doesn't have a natural,

Speaker 53 you know, usually, if you're a politician that's selling a book, right, you would find the podcast that fits your natural constituency, right?

Speaker 48 And you would go on that because you figured that the listeners would really like you, you know what I mean?

Speaker 32 Like, if Abigail Spanberger was doing a book next year, she's going to come on the Bulwark podcast because she figures people will like her.

Speaker 22 Like, she doesn't have that, right?

Speaker 32 And so, she like, I guess, my question is, like, who is she trying to reach?

Speaker 100 The GD Politics podcast listeners.

Speaker 132 I mean, look, I struggle with that myself.

Speaker 12 I have tried to reach statistical nerds, you know, crosstab divers.

Speaker 96 Well, you know, in a world where everyone sort of retreats to their partisan corners, I struggle with that too, because the work that I do and have done for the past decade is not really about sort of telling people what they should think or,

Speaker 63 you know, sort of sharing my moral values necessarily with folks.

Speaker 58 It's more just saying, this is the world world as it is.

Speaker 59 There are parts of it that you'll probably like. There are parts of it that you probably won't like.

Speaker 128 And, you know, hopefully we can go along on this ride together and have a sense of humor, you know, where appropriate along the way.

Speaker 125 And it is a tricky space to occupy in an era when it's just way easier to find your tribe and kind of celebrate with them.

Speaker 63 And so in some ways, I understand that sort of tricky in-between.

Speaker 58 It's easy to end up pissing a lot of people off.

Speaker 69 Yeah.

Speaker 67 Or providing opium to no one. And, you know, Lord knows.

Speaker 41 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 14 That's true. Hey, who doesn't?

Speaker 81 We honor that here, too.

Speaker 17 Or she could go hang out with Elon.

Speaker 51 Elon's trying to start a new party. And, you know, it's kind of like the ketamine and deficit hawk party.

Speaker 39 And they could add on Alaska Drilling to that. And boom, there we go.

Speaker 200 You might have a ticket.

Speaker 32 The interesting thing, I guess, just finally closing on the Murkowski thing, which is I'm wondering what you made of it, is like...

Speaker 82 Like, she's not up until 28.

Speaker 13 I guess the argument against for her to going the coalition government route that you guys were talking about is like why she ends up voting for this bill.

Speaker 88 Like she thinks that she can get what she wants out of Jon Thune and that like working the inside game with that is a is a workable path for her right now.

Speaker 150 And so she doesn't need to blow it all up, you know, over her feelings about, you know, the ice police state that we're going to run.

Speaker 139 Yeah, I think that

Speaker 66 it's probably less likely at this point

Speaker 60 in this very moment that Democrats Democrats feel like they want her on their team.

Speaker 169 But people have a short memory in politics and folks are going to move on, and there's going to be another vote.

Speaker 192 And if Murkowski wants to, you know, at the end of the day, Murkowski has an awful lot of power in Washington.

Speaker 192 And if she wants to maintain that power in a different environment, remaining the gettable vote is a good way to do that.

Speaker 130 And, you know, given how she's voted in different ways, it's probably not entirely worthless for Democrats to try to pursue some moderate Republicans here and there.

Speaker 100 And obviously, they were successful in doing that during the Biden administration.

Speaker 101 And so, in a future administration, especially, look, you know, the piece that I wrote in the New York Times that we're going to discuss, a big piece of it was like,

Speaker 59 okay, I think Democrats can win future presidential elections by being top-to-bottom partisans because they'll rely on mediocre candidates from Republicans.

Speaker 110 And what we've seen over the past decade is kind of a race to the bottom in terms of candidate quality for, you know, these national presidential elections.

Speaker 151 But if Democrats want to have any kind of meaningful majority in order to legislate, they got to win majorities in the Senate too.

Speaker 98 And so you either have to sort of put together a policy platform that appeals to Americans in states that have currently been written off, or you have to pursue folks like Lisa Murkowski.

Speaker 113 And

Speaker 58 both of those are probably unappealing to top-to-bottom partisans, but that's the world that we live in.

Speaker 178 We'll hear from people like Corbin Whittington After being diagnosed with both CIDP and dilated cardiomyopathy, he found incredible strength through community.

Speaker 186 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 22 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust.

Speaker 28 MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 22 Well, let's just do it.

Speaker 87 Let's just get into that because the core of the Democrat New Trump argument that you made in the Times is speaking about national politics.

Speaker 163 And I do want to close with some commentary on the draft you did about the Democratic nominee in 2028.

Speaker 61 And I have some negative feedback for you on that.

Speaker 73 But while it's true about the national political presidential candidates, the argument you're making, I think it's also true about Democrats in the Senate.

Speaker 36 And essentially,

Speaker 81 I'm going to make the short of the argument, then you can kind of expand on it.

Speaker 75 When you say Demes Nina New Trump, you're talking about the fact that Trump took heterodox positions in both directions, right?

Speaker 51 Like he came in and offered the Republican base a lot of red meat when it came to immigration and issues such as that.

Speaker 80 But then he also hedged to the middle, if you want to call it that, on other things like Social Security privatization, which you mentioned earlier, like the wars, right?

Speaker 39 And that the Democrats haven't really

Speaker 126 had a lot of candidates that have tried that and that that could be a successful recipe.

Speaker 48 So, anyway, is that a good summary of the argument and expand on that?

Speaker 166 They haven't had a lot of candidates try that, at least not recently.

Speaker 166 And I should say that another important piece of what Trump did was at the time that he ran, the Republican Party was very unpopular, about as unpopular as the Democratic Party is today.

Speaker 166 Now, listen, the Republican Party is also unpopular today, but it is more popular than the Democratic Party.

Speaker 93 And so, he was dealing with a pretty disillusioned electorate, primary electorate, and he ran pretty aggressively against the Republican Party.

Speaker 137 And so that's another piece of this.

Speaker 144 I think that's a good point.

Speaker 80 Ambitious Democrats should consider trying to break with an unpopular Democratic Party by running against it, sort of showing I'm going to be a different type of Democrat.

Speaker 60 And here's the evidence.

Speaker 65 I'm not one of the Democrats that you've become familiar with during the Trump era, the Biden era, the Hillary Clinton campaign, et cetera.

Speaker 52 Yeah, let me just add on this point on Trump, because just in the Trump nature,

Speaker 31 Trump didn't just run against the unpopular Republican Party.

Speaker 145 He was withering.

Speaker 80 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 196 In a way that like, and that was part of why a lot of people didn't think it was going to work, like myself included, right?

Speaker 165 I was like, I believed that you could run as whatever, a nationalist, far-right, Republican, populist guy and win.

Speaker 90 That person probably would have won in 2012 if they were a good candidate.

Speaker 85 I was skeptical of Trump in 2016 because I didn't believe you could do that and like go after these like what you would thought would be sacred cows with the fox watchers like you know people that had george bush brooches um and elephant you know paraphernalia around their house wouldn't vote for somebody that like actively shit on that legacy but that was wrong like he you know he didn't just kind of run away from the Republican party he ran at it in a very aggressive way and you think that that same type thing could work here look and maybe he didn't have those people necessarily early on he was winning those early primaries with 30 some percent of the vote but clearly those people could still get on board and one thing about you know public opinion is

Speaker 66 on issues that are uncontested, you don't really know where the public lands. So if you had polled in 2015, what do you think of George W.

Speaker 129 Bush?

Speaker 128 What do you think of John McCain?

Speaker 80 What do you think of Mitt Romney?

Speaker 58 Republicans would have said, oh, you know, great.

Speaker 91 You know, today, Democrats, 75% of Democrats, which is still, you know, comparatively low, will say that they have a favorable view of Biden.

Speaker 93 But if somebody starts trashing those things that you are kind of inspired by, you find charismatic, you might change your opinion.

Speaker 123 And so I think a lot of folks who had been sort of along the ride for the ride with the Republican Party did change their minds once Trump came onto the scene and made that pitch.

Speaker 37 And look, I started by saying that both parties are unpopular in America today.

Speaker 101 And so when you're running in a competitive election, For folks in deep red or deep blue seats, you can tune this out.

Speaker 66 You want to run to the extremes.

Speaker 107 If that's what floats your boat, I guess go for it.

Speaker 116 The primary electorate's going to keep putting you back into office.

Speaker 98 But if you want to win in a part of America that's actually competitive, one of the best ways to do it is to not be seen as fully one thing or the other, not fully Republican, not fully Democrat, but something else.

Speaker 103 And Trump was able to do that.

Speaker 140 By the time voters went to the polls in 2016, they viewed him as the less extreme of the two options, despite the fact that he had taken extreme positions throughout the campaign.

Speaker 66 And they saw him as less conservative than any Republican nominee going back to George H.W.

Speaker 93 Bush, which is as far back as the data went.

Speaker 137 And, you know, we haven't seen a Democrat try this recently, but we have seen Democrats do this.

Speaker 140 I mean, I mentioned in the piece Bill Clinton, who, you know, Democrats were very disillusioned when he came onto the scene.

Speaker 166 If you'll remember, Mario Cuomo didn't even run in that primary because he thought it was so fated for George H.W.

Speaker 116 Bush to win re-election.

Speaker 102 And, you know, he had his moments where he broke with the Democratic Party, and then he also ran to the right on crime and the debt and deficit, and he ran to the left on healthcare.

Speaker 116 He was also a very charismatic person who was able to bring people along for the ride.

Speaker 91 I mean, Obama as well, we think of him now as like the most establishment figure in the Democratic Party, but at the time he was running against the establishment.

Speaker 59 He, you know, was running against Hillary Clinton on her Iraq war vote.

Speaker 67 While he was to the left on that, he was actually to the right of Clinton on healthcare, for example.

Speaker 91 And then also talked a lot about sort of putting partisanship to the side and rising above the fray.

Speaker 132 And that is one of the best ways to win over sort of marginal, persuadable voters is by saying, oh, that negative caricature that you think of when you think of a Democrat, that negative caricature that you think of when you think of a Republican, I'm neither of those things.

Speaker 58 I have, you know, these sensible popular policy positions that I will pursue on behalf of you and sort of try to cut the partisanship out of it.

Speaker 100 In this piece in particular,

Speaker 60 some positions I mentioned that a plausible candidate could take.

Speaker 197 And again, the issue landscape will change between now and when this becomes applicable, but is something like, you know, run pretty heartily to the left left on healthcare and move to the right on immigration, in particular border security, run to the left on housing and run to the right on the debt and deficit.

Speaker 118 That may not sound coherent to a top-to-bottom partisan, but again, the marginal, gettable, swingable, moderate people who code as moderate have, you know, views that don't fit one party top to bottom.

Speaker 165 I want to hear a couple of models for what you think might look like in a Senate race, because I think that the Senate race is a little different than a presidential race in particular, Because for Democrats to win a marginal Senate race, you're trying to win the marginal voter in Iowa.

Speaker 88 Like, that's what we're talking about right now, really.

Speaker 89 We're not talking about the Maine or North Carolina race. We're talking about how do the Democrats win Senate seats outside of the purple states.

Speaker 87 So, I think that model looks which Democrats still haven't been able to do in Maine over the past decade.

Speaker 16 Right, good point.

Speaker 82 But I'm just saying that, like, you could probably win in Maine with a more traditional type of campaign with some caveats applying.

Speaker 77 In Iowa, you're going to have to do something different, right?

Speaker 75 And so, it's a little bit different on a Senate race than in a national campaign.

Speaker 135 But on a national campaign, looking at the Democrats need a Trump model, I think that somebody could win a Democratic primary in 2028, like being absolutely the most withering person possible about how awful the Republicans are and just being absolutely against not just Donald Trump, but J.D.

Speaker 26 Vance, but Mike John, you know, but the BBB, just a withering attack on their policies, while also taking very strange, like weird, anti, you know, weird positions like against the Democrats on any series of issues.

Speaker 165 Like literally, you could pick the buckets, could be fucking AI, you know, it could be phones, could be schools.

Speaker 20 You could do a bunch of different stuff.

Speaker 35 Do you think that's right?

Speaker 145 Like, do you think it's about affect, like being like you win over the partisans by, by being, you know, like Trump was, good at fighting the other side?

Speaker 86 And then you win over the moderate voters with a couple of random issues?

Speaker 51 Or do you think that it has to be policy-based?

Speaker 92 So I think you bring up a very important point, which is that voters cast ballots based on a lot of things that have nothing to do with policy.

Speaker 66 Because campaigns oftentimes get waged over policy, how you talk about policy is one way to communicate information about yourself beyond just what you might do in office.

Speaker 166 Because remember, Donald Trump didn't do a lot of this stuff once in office.

Speaker 63 It was mostly about telling people what kind of person he was.

Speaker 130 And it's right that you bring up that he didn't just attack the Republican Party.

Speaker 202 He spent a ton of time also attacking the Democratic Party, the media, the left, all, you know, so I'm not saying here that this sort of Democratic Trump, who again, to be clear, I'm not talking about violating democratic norms or, you know,

Speaker 41 attacking institutions.

Speaker 109 I'm talking more about this, this triangulation sort of thing is somebody who would, you know, heartily attack the Republican Party.

Speaker 31 Well, Fetterman is just the example of this, just really quick.

Speaker 77 Like, well, look at what Fetterman's done the last year. He's run against the Democratic Party, but them them only.

Speaker 171 Like, you almost never hear him talking about how terrible.

Speaker 82 And he does from time to time, but like, he doesn't do it in a way that gets attention.

Speaker 84 Like, his provocations are all aimed left.

Speaker 80 That is not what will work. Absolutely.

Speaker 51 You have to have provocations aiming right and

Speaker 149 left.

Speaker 132 And especially during the primary, you focus on the red meat to your base.

Speaker 140 And so for Trump, that was immigration.

Speaker 66 But for this person, I don't know if AOC would ever take right positions on some of these things, or say it's Josh Shapiro or whatever, you talk a lot about a public option.

Speaker 59 You talk a lot about how healthcare is broken and Republicans have broken it even further.

Speaker 110 And you really get people riled up believing in you on that issue and also maybe bring up some issues that aren't fully polarized, fully partisanized, like housing, for example, and you know, talk about affordability there.

Speaker 91 The Democratic Party is unpopular and Joe Biden's presidency wasn't particularly popular.

Speaker 98 So there are a lot of opportunities to create those differences, create those distinctions by just attacking what's already been done that's unpopular.

Speaker 91 And, you know, you don't have to probably go as far as Donald Trump did in 2015, 2016.

Speaker 139 But again, you're right that it's not just policy.

Speaker 121 It's also charisma.

Speaker 124 It's also celebrity and it's authenticity, right?

Speaker 94 And, you know, for Donald Trump, being that kind of brash, off-the-cuff, whatever kind of person was authentic to him, I think that whoever Democrats feel, it'll be important that the path that they take is authentic to them.

Speaker 59 So, when thinking about this strategy, it's harder for somebody like Pete Buttigieg, who was part of the Biden administration, or somebody like Gavin Newsom, who has become, who at least was something of a poster child for the Democratic Party, to then go and like run against the Democratic Party.

Speaker 128 It would probably be easier for a lesser-known person like a Josh Shapiro, like an Andy Bashir, somebody like that.

Speaker 133 Like, I'm not saying that those are necessarily the strongest candidates for Democrats in 2028.

Speaker 140 I think in many ways, time will tell.

Speaker 138 The issue landscape will change.

Speaker 66 Exactly how unpopular Donald Trump is and the specific areas in which he fails or succeeds are yet to be seen entirely.

Speaker 66 But I think you're right to point out that authenticity, charisma, celebrity, even just going viral can mean an awful lot.

Speaker 147 You keep trying to drag me into the 2028 hot stove discussion, and we are saving it for dessert.

Speaker 55 Okay.

Speaker 1 That is saved.

Speaker 71 I have three other topics I want to get to.

Speaker 51 So just as leaning in on the Senate, for example,

Speaker 6 the Democrats are going to, and I talked about this Iglesias a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 36 If the Democrats are going to have any kind of majority where they can do anything in the Senate, they have to win in places like Texas and Iowa this time.

Speaker 81 Like there's just no other path.

Speaker 150 Like even if they sweep all of the blue and purple states, I think that their ceiling is like 54 or 53 or maybe 52, even that I don't have in front of me, but it's like not a high number of Senate.

Speaker 123 Well, Tim, I'll do the math feed.

Speaker 95 They got to win four seats in order to win the majority in the Senate.

Speaker 86 Their top pickup, especially now with Tom Taylor retiring, is North Carolina.

Speaker 91 Their second best opportunity is Maine with Susan Collins up for re-election, although that has eluded them for a decade.

Speaker 99 Then after that, it is take your pick, but states that Democrats have not done well in.

Speaker 58 It's Iowa, it's Texas, it's Alaska.

Speaker 118 Those are probably their best options from there.

Speaker 6 I don't know, maybe Kansas.

Speaker 103 Those are probably their best options from there.

Speaker 91 And then they also have to defend some of their seats, you know, in Michigan and the likes.

Speaker 203 Yeah, I was, I was, I meant more like long-term, like if you're like playing this out into the future, if the Democrats also want to like have a governing majority, you know, because you don't have a chance to win the Pennsylvania seat back for six years or whatever.

Speaker 196 But like if you play it out a decade, even if you win all of the blue and purple seats now, like the ceiling is still very low.

Speaker 149 Like there's not a lot of seats to pick up there.

Speaker 89 You got McCormick, you got Ron Johnson, you know, just a couple.

Speaker 6 So then the question for you is, like, what does a candidate look like that wins in Texas and Iowa?

Speaker 85 And I want to put aside the caveat that, you know, we lost 30,000 jobs last month.

Speaker 51 Maybe we go into a Great Depression by next October and the Democrats don't have to do anything and they accidentally win a couple Senate seats.

Speaker 70 But so like, let's put the exogenous event aside.

Speaker 79 Like, what is a Democrat that would even have a chance for you in Texas or Alaska or Iowa or Kansas?

Speaker 80 I think it's probably the mold that I mentioned.

Speaker 101 So what is Americans' biggest concern today?

Speaker 151 It's still the economy and the cost of living.

Speaker 59 And so you want to present probably

Speaker 92 more progressive policies on something like that, which I know we're holding off the Zoran Mamdani conversation until later.

Speaker 123 Oh, that's next.

Speaker 26 That's coming up next.

Speaker 101 But you probably present more, like

Speaker 132 run something of a

Speaker 8 single issue campaign on the things that Americans care most about while also, I think, pivoting on some some of the areas where Democrats have been least popular.

Speaker 60 I think in a place like Texas, in particular, border security, I mean, that was one of Joe Biden's worst issues.

Speaker 157 It was pretty clear to people, I think, at this point, that those were policy choices that exacerbated the migrant crisis.

Speaker 133 And so

Speaker 67 sort of letting that be known, I don't know if you want to touch this stove, but there are even plenty of arguments that the American Rescue Plan was significantly too large and inflationary in its own right.

Speaker 157 I mean, by the end of 2021, the San Francisco Fed had concluded that it added three percentage points to annualized inflation.

Speaker 118 And so there are areas where, you know, Democrats have fallen down on the issues that Americans care most about.

Speaker 128 And I think by breaking with the party or even just giving voice to it, like I know that people do judge is trying to do this in places where he's like, oh, we kept schools closed too long and the like.

Speaker 63 But saying, you know, Democrats fucked up here and there, I think to a Texas audience is going to buy you a lot of credibility with folks who might not naturally be in your corner.

Speaker 100 And then in addition to that, sort of

Speaker 166 juicing enthusiasm, boosting enthusiasm by talking a lot about the most important issues like cost of living.

Speaker 70 I think that you're not even thinking big enough.

Speaker 86 I think you just lost by five points in Texas.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 41 All right. Go for it.

Speaker 41 With your candidate.

Speaker 36 I mean, I don't think that there's a great answer to this, but like, I think that if you do what you're, the playbook you just laid out and you have a really heavy focus on cost of living, that's as a candidate and that's your number one issue and that goes from healthcare to housing to all that and there's some populist economics in there i like that's fine but like i to pair with that i like you need to like own a gun store or or like be actively like have some have a view a passionate view about a cultural issue where you think the left is really wrong.

Speaker 3 And that's not just like a random thing you mention sometimes, but that's like the second most important thing that you talk about.

Speaker 68 And people,

Speaker 3 when you ask people in Texas, like, what do you know about this person?

Speaker 73 It's like, well, they want to make cost of living better.

Speaker 84 And they also really care about trans sports being only boys and girls.

Speaker 48 This is why I would not be a good candidate for this because I'm a cultural lib. But like, I don't, I think you have to be a hard cultural pivot away from the Democrats on something.

Speaker 112 Yeah, and I think that's probably in a place like Texas on immigration.

Speaker 100 Now, it's not sort of how you necessarily treat people who are already in the country who came in illegally, but more how you deal with the border.

Speaker 110 I think that probably the trans issue gets overplayed a little bit in the role that it played in 2024.

Speaker 104 It's clearly an 80-20 issue.

Speaker 100 The Democrats have been on the wrong side of this, but it's just not a salient issue.

Speaker 96 Americans don't care that much about transition.

Speaker 87 Yeah, but it's a signaling thing.

Speaker 144 Sure. It's a signaling thing.

Speaker 72 But you have to figure out something to signal to people that you are not like one of the elite bibs that they don't like.

Speaker 2 And so that, so like for that, it's like, that would just be a signaling.

Speaker 57 And Americans care a lot more about immigration.

Speaker 115 And it's also the two parties have become highly distinguished on that issue.

Speaker 80 And so breaking with your own party on that, I think would also accomplish the same thing.

Speaker 186 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 6 They're a reminder of who this country belongs to.

Speaker 7 and what we can be at our best.

Speaker 41 Learn more at at MS.now.

Speaker 75 Let's do the immigration thing because I think the immigration part is complicated.

Speaker 71 So I'm about to argue against myself a little bit, and maybe not really, because I think the thing might be different if you're an Iowa Senate candidate in 2026 and if you're a Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, it's different for a variety of reasons.

Speaker 53 But I feel like the immigration issue is going to become so salient over the next year and a half that it is going to become very hard for Democrats to zag towards Trump on it in a way that makes sense.

Speaker 147 Like, I think they could have done that with effect in 2022, zagging against Biden by saying we needed to be harder on the border.

Speaker 83 But trying to do it in a way that triangulates between what Trump is going to do and whatever, what some Democratic policy would be, I think is going to be very challenging.

Speaker 85 And I just, I want to use one example of this.

Speaker 147 I play every clip of this that I find, but in the manosphere recently, we've had Andrew Schultz saying he's uncomfortable with what's happening with immigration.

Speaker 165 We've had Rogan saying he's uncomfortable with what's happening with immigration.

Speaker 78 Here is a barstool sports podcast that I was listening to earlier this week, and I want to play it.

Speaker 46 Oh, I totally flipped on immigration. Oh, okay.
I guess that's under good sense.

Speaker 46 100%.

Speaker 46 So

Speaker 205 for years, I thought if you're not here legally, you shouldn't be here at all.

Speaker 1 I flipped.

Speaker 205 I think the people who are working, the people who are paying taxes, those people should be able to stay.

Speaker 80 Okay.

Speaker 205 And the other people who are doing bad things, we need to find those people and get them out.

Speaker 46 Okay. So seems well reasoned.

Speaker 205 Yeah. You know why my thoughts switched on immigration? Well, I was talking to my girlfriend in bed one night, and she knows I'm,

Speaker 80 I'm a little right.

Speaker 153 She knows that. And

Speaker 205 she was like,

Speaker 205 just talking. She's like, can we talk? I was like, yeah, sure.

Speaker 57 She's like, this is fucked up. I'm like, what's up?

Speaker 205 Talk to me. She goes, explain to me, you know, you know, how her family got here, all that stuff.

Speaker 57 And I was like, you know what? You might be right.

Speaker 46 Oh, wow.

Speaker 46 There you go. You might be right.

Speaker 205 Because there are people here who work very hard to take taxes and they should be able to live in America.

Speaker 147 Shout out to Jersey Jerry's girlfriend, not giving out blowjobs until he switches on immigration, I guess.

Speaker 78 But that was him with Big Cat on Barstool.

Speaker 166 Yeah, enticing pillow talk.

Speaker 77 Very enticing pillow talk.

Speaker 196 I don't know, man.

Speaker 51 Talk about the immigration polling.

Speaker 86 I think that sometimes the Democrats are fighting the last war on this one.

Speaker 18 And I think that the divide on immigration is going to be less about the border and more about why are masked agents nabbing people off the streets in a free country.

Speaker 123 Yeah.

Speaker 127 Let me throw out one other thing that I just remembered while we were listening to that that I do mention in the piece is another way you can signal sort of your

Speaker 151 openness to non-fully partisan ideas is the debt.

Speaker 65 Like every 15 years, the debt and deficit takes on a new role in electoral politics and people start talking about it again.

Speaker 93 I think, especially after this recent, you know, tax and spending bill, voters are, I think, primed to hear an argument about how the debt and deficit are too big.

Speaker 128 And it's not natural territory for Democrats, but if they want to be the people who do that, I think that could help them to significant effect in the places that you mentioned, like Texas, Iowa, Alaska, and the like.

Speaker 58 And it's also kind of an

Speaker 32 awesome green eyeshade, bulwark Democrat running.

Speaker 77 And if only, do we have any contributors live in Iowa? We got to move Amanda Carpenter out of West Virginia to somewhere where she can run.

Speaker 99 Now, look, pretty much everyone who runs on the debt and deficit doesn't actually do anything about it, but it is a a way to also fight the establishment because it's an area where you can say both parties have fucked up on this.

Speaker 124 Donald Trump during his first term spent more deficit dollars than any other president in American history.

Speaker 58 You know, Democrats have not cared about it as well.

Speaker 132 You can even like bend the idea.

Speaker 128 in and talk about it in different ways.

Speaker 103 Like it's about generational equality.

Speaker 100 The more money we spend today, the less money we can spend on young people's education and healthcare tomorrow.

Speaker 138 And so are we going to bankrupt ourselves for the boomers or are we going to sort of put together some policies that millennials and that watch out for millennials and Gen Z?

Speaker 126 There are many different ways to talk about an issue if you want to frustrate it in people's minds.

Speaker 67 Anyway, I'm not, I'm beating around the world.

Speaker 77 Thank you for pandering to the host. Thank you for pandering to the host on debt and deficit issues.

Speaker 70 But what about on the topic of do we think that the immigration number polling is?

Speaker 87 This might be hopium on my part.

Speaker 58 Yeah, I think you are 100% correct that the polling is changing.

Speaker 119 This is going back to the idea of politicians, presidents in particular, over-interpreting their mandate.

Speaker 129 We saw that happen with Biden.

Speaker 127 You know, at the end of Trump's first term, higher numbers than ever before said that immigration benefited the country.

Speaker 64 We should be more open to it and were very down on Trump's approach to immigration.

Speaker 87 Biden comes into office.

Speaker 94 There's a migrant crisis.

Speaker 140 They don't do very much to sort of stem it at the border.

Speaker 107 Obviously, it became clear in blue cities and blue states with sort of like bussing migrants up to those places.

Speaker 132 And Biden became very unpopular on the issue.

Speaker 124 And for the first time ever, Americans said, oh, actually, you know, because when he first ran, this wasn't actually a popular policy outside of his base.

Speaker 125 Americans said, we should build the wall.

Speaker 140 We should do mass deportations.

Speaker 125 Americans turned sharply to the right on immigration in reaction to what they perceived as Biden's de facto open borders policy.

Speaker 46 Now

Speaker 102 we are seeing, we call this thermostatic public opinion in the industry.

Speaker 66 Now we are seeing Trump come back into office, overinterpret the mandate once again, pursue deportations

Speaker 115 in a way that many people see as inhumane, ad hoc, and not even sort of in line with what they envisioned as his priorities. And so increasingly, we're seeing folks move against him.

Speaker 127 I was just looking at a Quinnipiac poll this morning where the number of Americans who say that most immigrants in the country illegally should be given a pathway to citizenship has increased by 10 percentage points over the past month or so.

Speaker 142 And so Trump is going to now make his own policy platform unpopular by doing it in a

Speaker 66 sort of careless, ad hoc, you know, potentially inhumane way.

Speaker 111 And, you know, I want to, I want to say something here about like, how do you critique that as a, as a Democrat without going full 2019, like abolish ICE, decriminalize crossing the border, all of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 131 For one, views on the border itself hasn't changed.

Speaker 125 Like, Americans are happy with the way that Donald Trump has decreased, for the most part, decreased encounters at the southern border.

Speaker 93 And that data is pretty clear in terms of what has happened there.

Speaker 103 But, and the data has been slow to update here.

Speaker 128 So, I think the most recent data we have is from 100 days in on Trump's first term.

Speaker 128 He has made more arrests, but deported fewer people than Biden in his last year in office.

Speaker 104 And fewer of those people have criminal records.

Speaker 100 So even if you take the promises that he made, which is

Speaker 43 worst first, deport people with a criminal record, he is not doing it as effectively as some past Democrats have done.

Speaker 119 And you can use Obama as an example as well.

Speaker 71 Part of that is just because Biden was deporting people that just came across the border.

Speaker 144 They're going right back.

Speaker 19 But anyway.

Speaker 67 But maybe then emphasize.

Speaker 112 emphasize the part about the criminal record.

Speaker 201 Yeah, but this is where your stats nerds sometimes fall apart because like it is it is a difference to people if you're deporting somebody that just came across the border that's sitting in some place in Texas waiting for a hearing versus taking the Iranian mother out of the suburbs and like sending her across the border, right?

Speaker 88 And so like because there's fewer border encounters, there's also fewer deportations of the kind that people are okay with, if that makes sense.

Speaker 132 Okay, well, then we can look at Obama's situation, right?

Speaker 128 He was far more effective at doing the thing that Trump says he wants to do than Trump himself.

Speaker 91 So because they have sort of been careless in this, and now they were pursuing workplace raids, and then they kind of did a U-turn on that.

Speaker 121 There are lots of different areas to critique the Trump administration on immigration.

Speaker 112 But you're right that the humanitarian issue is absolutely one of them.

Speaker 151 And he has made his own approach to this unpopular.

Speaker 47 What did the path to citizenship number rise from and to?

Speaker 81 Do you know?

Speaker 69 Do you have it offhand? Quinnipiac number?

Speaker 202 I do have it offhand.

Speaker 140 So nearly two-thirds of voters, 64%, say they prefer giving most, this is Quinnipiac, by the way, they prefer giving most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status, while 31% say they prefer deporting most undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Speaker 59 This is a change from roughly six months ago, so I stand corrected.

Speaker 98 It was not a month ago.

Speaker 130 In Quinnipiak University's December 18th poll, 55% of voters said they preferred giving most undocumented immigrants a pathway to legal status.

Speaker 128 So Trump himself has moved public opinion against himself by 10% points since he's been in office.

Speaker 69 Yeah.

Speaker 19 It's interesting.

Speaker 30 I think that an aggressive,

Speaker 5 we're going to pass a law to make ICE agents show their face and put their names on it, and we're not going to deport anybody that hasn't committed any crimes.

Speaker 34 Like, I think there's a way to go at him that way aggressively for Democrats that is a winner, not a vulnerability.

Speaker 61 And I'm just worried that some Democrats are scared of that.

Speaker 128 Tim, I think one of the challenges is that,

Speaker 118 and we're seeing this change a little bit, but the people in American life for whom immigration is a number one issue are almost all Republicans.

Speaker 65 And, you know, for Democrats, their top issues are, you know, well, one, the economy and affordability, but healthcare is really high up there.

Speaker 204 Even some of the most liberal younger voters, when you looked at polling in 2024, it showed that it was all like jobs, housing, affordability, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 100 And so I think making the central focus of a campaign an anti-Trump message on something that is just not Democrats' biggest priority, while that probably will scratch an itch for the MSNBC set,

Speaker 63 because I think that people are very offended by what Trump is doing, I don't know that that expands the tent or sort of

Speaker 116 increases enthusiasm amongst more marginal voters in the way that you were describing.

Speaker 66 But I will say that one of the reasons that when sort of folks who do a lot of research into Latino voters, Part of the reason that they were so solidly part of the Obama coalition, what they'll they'll tell you, is that that was when the conversation was focusing on people who are in the country today and not the border, right?

Speaker 58 During Biden, the conversation was about the border.

Speaker 96 During W.

Speaker 129 Bush Jr., the conversation was about the border.

Speaker 125 And that's just going to be bad terrain for Democrats because Americans trust Republicans more on border security.

Speaker 66 But once you start talking about people who are already in the country, it gets a lot easier for Democrats to make that case.

Speaker 204 And I think, obviously, you know, you know, we saw Latino voters shift seven points to the right between 2016 and 2020, and then another nine between 2020 and 2024, being a total of 16 percentage points to the right in two presidential elections.

Speaker 118 I think if Republicans want to keep those voters, they should be careful about signaling to the broader Latino electorate.

Speaker 96 Like, you know, having a secure border is something that Latino voters are broadly positive about, but signaling to people that like, you don't give a shit about like Latinos who are in the country, including some people who are in the country illegally, is probably bad for Republicans long term with the Latino electorate.

Speaker 186 So when we talk community, we're talking about an entire ecosystem surrounding this condition, including, of course, the patients at the center, that are all trying to live life in the moment, live life for the future, but then also create a new future.

Speaker 22 Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust.

Speaker 28 MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world.

Speaker 74 All right, I'm going to give you a preview of where I'm going with the 2028 draft review by telling you that we're going to lump the New York Mayor conversation into that.

Speaker 144 So

Speaker 195 that's how we'll close the podcast.

Speaker 74 For listeners, Galen did a draft with Nate Silver where they picked who they thought was going to be the most likely to be the Democratic nominee.

Speaker 51 There was a very complicated point system, which I do want to put to the side for this because I think that my listenership is going to be less interested in the game theory of what Nate had put together as a kind of a complex point system.

Speaker 51 So, just for the basics, like you get more points if they're the nominee, and you also get some points if they decide to run.

Speaker 190 Your first pick was AOC.

Speaker 27 Nate was mad at you because that was also his first pick, which I think is interesting.

Speaker 190 I want to talk about that.

Speaker 52 Then he picked Josh Shapiro as his first pick.

Speaker 81 And now, I want to go just go down your top five.

Speaker 51 This is what I'm going to call your team, your first five rounds.

Speaker 80 Oh, no.

Speaker 72 AOC, Kamala Harris, Pete, Ruben Gallego, and Jared Polis were

Speaker 34 your candidates.

Speaker 2 Nate's five candidates were Josh Shapiro, Corey Booker, Gavin Newsome, Gretchen Whitmer, Andrew Cuomo.

Speaker 48 And I would like to be invited into the game.

Speaker 190 At first, I was like, can I take the field against both of your first five rounds?

Speaker 48 But then I decided I actually want to be invited into the game.

Speaker 54 And

Speaker 76 I would like to, I get to start at round six, and I'm going to take Wes Moore, Raphael Warnock, Andy Bashir, JB Pritzker, and Zoron and I'm roll and I'm rolling my squad against either of your teams and I want to talk about why in a second but what do you make of that?

Speaker 102 So I think many of those people were eventually picked.

Speaker 108 You know, I would say that I

Speaker 133 made the mistake of going into

Speaker 123 the

Speaker 91 exercise thinking a lot about my first pick because I thought it was something of a hot take and not thinking enough about my subsequent picks,

Speaker 117 which obviously Jared Polis.

Speaker 60 Sometimes when you're doing this, you pick people to make a statement more than you do to suggest that they're actually the likeliest to win the nomination.

Speaker 100 But maybe Polis and Harris weren't the best picks in that case.

Speaker 151 I mean, I probably would have picked AOC than Josh Shapiro if I had my drawers.

Speaker 65 But yeah, I mean, the reason I picked AOC, which again is to say that I viewed her at the time as the likeliest nominee, not necessarily the likeliest, sort of the best option to win a general election or the person that I wanted or whatever for what it's worth.

Speaker 151 I'm not a registered Democrat. So in New York State, I can't vote in a Democratic primary anyway.

Speaker 80 We have closed primaries here, which was also the case in the New York City mayoral race a couple of weeks ago, a week ago.

Speaker 66 And so the argument that I was making is that

Speaker 98 Democrats, I think, are ready for someone who can offer something anti-establishment-y, that it's likely to be a really deep field in 2028.

Speaker 57 And when you have a deep, fractured field, somebody who's well-known and has an energetic base of support can sort of win those early primaries with 30-some percent like Trump did in 2016, whereas like, you know, the rest of the field may be fractured between Wes Moore and Josh Shapiro and Gavin Newsome or Pete Buttigieg or whoever else, that having a sort of strong, energetic, charismatic message and being kind of a celebrity in your own right can be to your benefit.

Speaker 85 It was interesting that you guys both picked AOC.

Speaker 51 So since that's the thing you spent the most time thinking about, and that was your hot take, I hear everything that you're saying there.

Speaker 90 Do you not think that she is bogged down too much by her presence during the

Speaker 72 great enwocification of America during the 2020s?

Speaker 49 That's why I kind of like, it's cheeky, but we get to Zoron.

Speaker 52 Like, Zoran is really the closest right now to the Obama emerging figure, like somebody that emerges kind of after that period.

Speaker 29 You know, Obama was not bogged down by any Iraq baggage like Harris was.

Speaker 51 Zoran, he was on Twitter, so he was posting, you know, about queer liberation and stuff, but like his image did not emerge during that time.

Speaker 52 Someone like that, I think, that is interested in trying to triangulate themselves, that emerges in kind of more of

Speaker 72 the end of Trump versus having been involved in the Trump era and having done all of the Ibrahim ex-Kendi stuff.

Speaker 51 I don't know.

Speaker 90 What do you make of that?

Speaker 128 As far as Zron Ramdani is concerned,

Speaker 108 you know, I don't know that he has presidential ambitions, but also just from a mechanical perspective,

Speaker 115 he was born in Uganda and is a naturalized citizen.

Speaker 125 And so from what I understand, you know, the Constitution's rules for who can run for president are at odds with those presidential ambitions anyway.

Speaker 77 Because it's not really a serious suggestion.

Speaker 78 It's more of just a commentary on like what type of person is going to be able to run against the Democratic Party.

Speaker 151 So I think that you make good points about why AOC might not be a good general election candidate, but I don't think that those come into play as much during the primary.

Speaker 102 Historically, we've seen that Democratic voters say they care more about electability than somebody who shares their views on the issue, but that's shifted a little bit as Democrats have, I think, become exhausted by, I don't know, being forced by the establishment's like middling presidential candidates.

Speaker 202 Like Democrats have not had a sort of strong charismatic contender since Obama and then Bill Clinton before that.

Speaker 66 And so a whole generation has missed out on that, you know, charismatic, semi-populist, whatever kind of figure within the Democratic Party.

Speaker 115 And obviously, Sanders' losses made people who were looking for that maybe not complacent, but upset, disillusioned with the Democratic Party.

Speaker 59 So I hear those concerns from a general election perspective.

Speaker 125 She and Zoran, and look, Zoran was, he obviously ran for assembly during the Trump era in a sense.

Speaker 93 And he has a lot of stuff on record that is also on the 20 side of the 80-20 issues.

Speaker 66 And they're both running pretty aggressively against that version of the Progressive Party.

Speaker 67 They're not trashing what they said, but they are not talking about it.

Speaker 131 I mean, the fight the oligarchy tour from AOC was all about, you know, partisanship doesn't matter.

Speaker 100 Like, we just need to fight the rich.

Speaker 59 It was so Obama-esque in the sort of bid to kind of putting partisan divides behind us.

Speaker 128 Zoran Mamdani totally backtracked on defunding the police during his campaign.

Speaker 103 And while he didn't backtrack on other things, really didn't talk about them, was really laser-focused on affordability.

Speaker 128 And, you know, he didn't run against a primary election candidate who had enough of a campaign to really bring those things up.

Speaker 58 And so part of the reason we haven't heard about them, or it maybe seems like he doesn't have that history, is because Andrew Cuomo didn't run a real campaign against him.

Speaker 12 It's interesting.

Speaker 11 I just think that the,

Speaker 54 and maybe that's just wrong. I don't know.
And a lot of it will depend on what happens with Trump.

Speaker 34 But as I was watching your guys' draft, I was just like, you know, the person that is able to most run against the party is also going to have to run against the era.

Speaker 83 And having been a major figure of the era, I think is going to make things very challenging for AOC and for Gavin and even for Pete, kind of, you know, like people that I do think people kind of are going to want some, like someone, and maybe no one else will have the charisma to emerge and they'll kind of fall back on a Gavin or a Pete, or, you know, somebody that they know.

Speaker 148 And like, but to me, I guess that's my, that's where I agree with you most on the Trump thing.

Speaker 201 I think that somebody that has the ability to emerge and say to people, guys, like, I'm going a totally different direction for all this.

Speaker 150 My focus, my passion is different.

Speaker 88 These guys are bogged down in that would probably benefit them.

Speaker 81 And again, I'm being cheeky by suggesting that could be Zoron, but the fact that nobody knew who Zoron was three months ago demonstrates that, like, really could be, like, I think the options are much greater than maybe people are thinking.

Speaker 129 Maybe they wouldn't be up for it because they have two strong ties to the Democratic Party, but do you think a Josh Shapiro or Wes Moore type could fit that role in your mind?

Speaker 136 I think Wes could, for sure.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Shapiro, maybe.

Speaker 54 These are now, we're now into my people.

Speaker 33 Like, I like Josh Shapiro's great.

Speaker 191 I've interviewed him. I've interviewed Wes.

Speaker 19 I think Josh is like an immediately going to get bogged down in all of the, you know, it's just not his fault, but like all of the Israel-Palestine fight.

Speaker 201 And, you know, if you're running for president, you become a national figure, like the hatred for him among the far left.

Speaker 39 Well, I think bogged him down in that.

Speaker 201 Like Wes more, Wes is a little bit more of a blank slate. I think Wes could do it in a way that it would be a little tougher for Shapiro.

Speaker 170 And from what I understand, there are plenty of powerful Democrats who want that to happen.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 60 for everything I've said, the Democratic Party has during the past decade been pretty good at getting its wishes when it comes to triangulating in the presidential primary.

Speaker 130 So we'll see.

Speaker 190 Gail and Druke.

Speaker 32 I'm going on vacation. So I'm on a podcast marathon today.

Speaker 71 I'm doing like 19 podcasts today.

Speaker 20 So this is it. This is over.

Speaker 199 I wanted to go person by person and give you negative feedback on all of your draft picks, but we'll do that as a special bonus substack segment in August when we're more bored.

Speaker 90 How does that sound?

Speaker 166 Well, I'm glad I filibustered long enough that I've now given myself some months to prepare for all of that feedback.

Speaker 128 But most importantly, enjoy your vacation, you know?

Speaker 71 Thank you, brother.

Speaker 208 Super nerds, go sign up for GD Politics or not, or normies that, like, you know, want to just drop fun polling facts with their pals.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 207 GD Politics is a sub stack for you. And we'll be back here tomorrow with the last pre-vacation edition of the Bulwark Podcast.

Speaker 208 We'll see you all then. Peace.

Speaker 208 A practical method hid in the bed while I'm cutting the cash match fees a swift falling one by one head of a little station in the California souls all late now we're done with a break down and rolling stuck at the dinosaurs keep rolling out the time zone changes two weeks ago and it feels like ages

Speaker 208 We should start

Speaker 208 to lose all touch with the real world.

Speaker 208 And I was a start of a big touch of bed.

Speaker 208 The smallest finger, no air. Except through the man of an hour to kill.
With the shots on our back, throw their phones and a cigarette back in.

Speaker 208 Discourage workers, you have don't deserve the time they show to life to stop the fights now. And we can pair in the food to your goal.

Speaker 208 If you think you want money alive,

Speaker 208 let us win.

Speaker 208 If you're looking for one line of hope,

Speaker 208 it's a fire of love.

Speaker 48 The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

Speaker 209 This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 206 This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturalistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

Speaker 139 Hey, Bowen, it's gift season.

Speaker 206 Oh, stressing me out. Why are the people I love so hard to shop for?

Speaker 209 Probably because they only make boring gift guides that are totally uninspired. Except for the guide we made.

Speaker 206 In partnership with Marshalls, where premium gifts meet incredible value, it's giving gifts.

Speaker 209 With categories like best gifts for the mom whose idea of a sensible walking shoe is a stiletto.

Speaker 206 Or best gifts for me that were so thoughtful I really shouldn't have. Check out the guide on marshalls.com and gift the good stuff at marshalls.

Speaker 210 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work? If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 210 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 210 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io slash podcast. That's pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 211 Life with CIDP can be tough, but the Thrive team, a specialized squad of experts, helps people living with CIDP make more room in their lives for joy. Watch Rare Well Done.

Speaker 212 An all-new reality series, Rare Well Done, offers help and hope to people across the country who live with the rare disease CIDP. Watch the latest episode now, exclusively on RarewellDone.com.

Galen Druke: Americans Do Not Like Trump's Deportations

Press play and read along

Transcript

More episodes from The Bulwark Podcast

Tommy Vietor: The 'Peace' President

Sam Stein: We Got Ourselves a Mad King

Jonathan Lemire: A Bubble-Wrapped Trump

Olivia Nuzzi Breaks Her Silence

Project 2025 Is Coming Back To Bite Trump