The Opinions: Bernie Sanders and Ruben Gallego

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Speaker 3 My opinion colleague David Leonhart has been doing these great interviews with Democratic politicians to ask, what is America's next story?

Speaker 3 And today I want to share two conversations in a series that focus on the question of how Democrats can win back the working class, a question we've talked about a lot on this show.

Speaker 3 These are two very different views. The first is with Senator Bernie Sanders, and the second is with Senator Ruben Gallego.

Speaker 3 And I think the ways in which these approaches converge and differ makes them particularly illuminating to listen to back-to-back.

Speaker 3 And if you haven't had a chance to check out our sister podcast, where these are from, The Opinions, you should.

Speaker 3 The show spotlights all sorts of interesting arguments and thinkers from the Times Opinion universe. We will link to it in the show notes.

Speaker 5 This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news.
Here's what to make of it.

Speaker 2 I'm David Leonhardt, an editorial director in New York Times Opinion. And this is America's Next Story, a series about the ideas that once held our country together and those that might do so again.

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

Speaker 6 Ask not what your country can do for you. You ask what you can do for your country.

Speaker 7 That America is too great for small dreams.

Speaker 2 Change is what's happening in America. And we will make America great again.
God bless you and good night. I love you.

Speaker 2 Today, my guest is Senator Bernie Sanders.

Speaker 2 Sanders has been talking about income inequality since the 1980s, back when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. In our nation today, we have an extreme disparity between the rich and the poor.

Speaker 2 He's been railing against oligarchs since the 1990s, before Elon Musk made his first million. To a very great extent, the United States of America today is increasingly becoming an oligarchy.

Speaker 2 Sanders started out as a political oddity, but his focus on inequality has turned him into one of the most influential politicians in America.

Speaker 2 You're about to hear a feisty conversation in which Sanders criticizes Democrats for not standing up for the working class, and I push him on what an authentic version of working class politics might look like.

Speaker 2 He also offers his take on the abundance movement, and he sketches out a progressive patriotism that can take back the country from Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you for being here. My pleasure.

Speaker 2 I have to start by going back to your days as mayor of Burlington and thanking you for bringing minor league baseball to the city because I had family there and I would visit every summer and we would pick a week when the Vermont Reds were home and we would go every night.

Speaker 2 That was a lot of fun. We worked hard on it, and they turned out to be a great team.
A lot of the guys who played, they ended up in the majors, so it was

Speaker 2 very good for the community. We had a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 My family were supporters of yours, and they got a big kick out of the fact that even though they were called the Reds because of the Cincinnati Reds, the one socialist mayor in America had a baseball team called the Reds.

Speaker 2 Yes, we thought that was kind of fun. Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay, let's get into it.

Speaker 2 I want to go back to the pre-Trump era and think about the fact that a lot of Democrats in that era, I'm thinking about the Clintons, Obama, felt more positively toward the market economy than you did.

Speaker 2 They were positive toward trade. They didn't worry that much about corporate power.
They didn't pay that much attention to labor unions.

Speaker 2 And if I'm being totally honest, a lot of people outside of the Democratic Party, like New York Times columnists, had many

Speaker 2 same attitudes. But some of them then actually weren't supportive of my candidacy for president.
That is fair. That is fair.

Speaker 2 I assume assume you would agree that the consensus has shifted in your direction over the last decade or so. That's fair to say.

Speaker 2 And I'm curious, why do you think those other Democrats and progressives missed what you saw?

Speaker 2 In the 70s, the early 70s, some of the leaders in the Democratic Party had this brilliant idea. They said, hey, Republicans are getting all of this money from the wealthy and the corporations.

Speaker 2 Why don't we hit your ride as well? And they started doing that. Throughout the history of this country, certainly the modern history of this country, from FDR to Truman to Kennedy even,

Speaker 2 the Democratic Party was the party of the working class, period. That's all here.
Working class, most people were Democrats.

Speaker 2 But from the 70s on, for a variety of reasons, I think the attraction of big money, the party began to pay more attention to the needs of the corporate world and the wealthy rather rather than working class people.

Speaker 2 And I think, in my view, that has been a total disaster, not only politically, but for our country as a whole.

Speaker 2 I agree certainly that corporate money played a role within the party, but I also think a lot of people genuinely believed things like trade would help workers. When I think about...

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 You think it's all about money?

Speaker 2 No, what I think is if you talk to working class people during that period, as I did, if you talk to the union movement during that period, as I did, you said, guys, do you think it's a great idea that we have a free trade agreement with China?

Speaker 2 No worker in America thought that was a good idea. The corporate world thought it was a good idea.
Washington Post thought it was a great idea. I don't know what the New York Times thought.

Speaker 2 But every one of us who talked to unions, talked to workers, understood.

Speaker 2 that the result of that would be the collapse of manufacturing in America, the loss of millions of good paying jobs, because corporations understood if I can pay people 30 cents an hour in China, why the hell am I going to pay a worker in in America a living wage?

Speaker 2 We understood that. Aaron Powell,

Speaker 2 I think that's fair.

Speaker 2 I guess I'm interested in why you think that members of the Democratic Party, not workers, why you think members of the Democratic Party and other progressives ignored workers back then, but have come more closely to listen to workers.

Speaker 2 I mean, if you look at the Biden administration's policy, if you look at the way Senator Schumer talks about his own views shifting, I do think there's been this meaningful shift in the Democratic Party toward your views, not all the way.

Speaker 2 Well, what we will have to see is to what degree people are just seeing where the wind is blowing as to whether or not they mean it.

Speaker 2 In my view, working-class Americans did not vote for Donald Trump because they wanted to see the top 1% get a trillion dollars in tax breaks.

Speaker 2 They did not want to see 15 million people, including many of them, being thrown off the health care they had or health care premiums double, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 They voted for for Trump because he said, I am going to do something. System is broken.
I'm going to do something. And what did the Democrats say?

Speaker 2 Well, in 13 years, if you're making $40,000, $48,000, we may be able to help your kid get to college. But if you're making a penny more, we can't quite do that.
The system is okay.

Speaker 2 We're going to nibble around the edges. Trump smashed the system.
Of course, everything he's doing is disastrous. Democrats, system is okay.
Let's nibble around the edges. Democrats lost the election.

Speaker 2 All right. They abdicated.
They came up with no alternative because, you know what? They even today don't acknowledge the economic crises facing the working class of this country.

Speaker 2 Now, you tell me, all right, how many Democrats are going around saying, you know what? We have a healthcare system which is broken completely.

Speaker 2 We are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people. I've introduced Medicare for All.
You know how many Democrats in the Senate I have on board? How many?

Speaker 2 15 out of a caucus of 47. And you think Medicare Medicare for All is both good policy and good politics? Of course it's good policy.
Health care is a human right, and I feel very strongly about that.

Speaker 2 I think that at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality, you know what the American people think? Maybe we really levy some heavy-duty taxes on the billionaire class. I believe that.

Speaker 2 I think most of the Americans, including a number of Republicans, believe that.

Speaker 2 Not quite so sure where the Democrats are. I believe that you don't keep funding a war criminal like Nathan Yahoo to starve the children of Gaza.
That's what I believe.

Speaker 2 It's what most Americans believe. Overwhelming majority in the Democratic world believe.

Speaker 2 Democratic leadership,

Speaker 2 maybe not quite so much.

Speaker 2 So the point is that right now, with 60% of our people living paycheck to paycheck, I don't know that the Democratic leadership understands.

Speaker 2 that there are good, decent people out there working as hard as they can, having a hard time paying their rent, because the cost of housing is off the charts. Healthcare is off the charts.

Speaker 2 Childcare is off the charts. Campaign finance system is completely broken.
You know, when you musk and spend $270 million to elect Trump, you got a broken system.

Speaker 2 Our job is to create an economy and a political system that works for working people, not just billionaires. So the key to you is the Democratic Party needs to tell a story and implement policy.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, you talk about the Democratic Party. David, who are you talking about? I'm talking about the leadership of the party and how.
I'm talking about the leadership.

Speaker 2 The leadership of the party right now, and this is the struggle that I had when I ran in 2016.

Speaker 2 What I said is open the bloody doors. Meaning.
Meaning, let working-class people in.

Speaker 2 With all of their flaws, they may have said something 28 years ago they regret saying. Open the door.
Open the door to young people. Open the door to people of color.
As candidates, you mean.

Speaker 2 As candidates, as participants. Do you know that I was in West Virginia? I don't know if you know this.
I went to West Virginia, I don't know, two months ago.

Speaker 2 I went to a county in West West Virginia which voted for Trump. Okay.
We had hundreds of people coming out. Unbelievable what I heard.
Decent, hardworking, good people.

Speaker 2 Did you know there is no Democratic Party basically in West Virginia?

Speaker 2 It's given up. Yeah.
It's only West Virginia. It's state after state after state.
Democratic Party has abdicated. They've given up.
They're not fighting for the working class.

Speaker 2 And what the Democratic Party has been is billionaire-funded, consultant-driven party, way out of touch with where the working class of this country is.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about what a true working-class politics might look like. So, I think clearly a part of that is a much bolder economic policy.
Yes, right? And you've made that much of your life work.

Speaker 2 I do think there's another part of it. And when I look at your career, I see that.

Speaker 2 So, your old colleague Pat Leahy once said that you appealed to an anti-establishment strain in Vermont that is not necessarily liberal.

Speaker 2 And when I think about what a true working working-class politics might look like, I think about the fact that in your history, you spoke positively about hunting and you got support from gun owners.

Speaker 2 And you really did better in rural Vermont than a lot of other Democrats.

Speaker 2 And so to me, I mean, just to think about Vermont for a minute, you sent the signal that you were not from one of the fancy Vermont towns like Charlotte, but that you actually understood the interests of people in less affluent rural Vermont.

Speaker 2 I am one of those people. I grew up in a three and a half half room rent-controlled party.
It is not those people. Those are my people.
And part of that, I think, is

Speaker 2 being willing to defy the Democratic Party orthodoxy, not only on economic issues, but also on some social issues. And you did that.
You did that on guns, for example.

Speaker 2 And I'm curious whether you think that a true working class politics needs to incorporate the views of working class people, not only on economics, but also on issues where many working class people just have different views than the faculty lounge at a fancy university.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think there are certain basic, I think, you know, I have spent my whole life

Speaker 2 believing,

Speaker 2 not a radical idea, that women have a right to control their own body. We've got to end sexism.
We've got to end racism. We've got to end homophobia.
Very, very important.

Speaker 2 You know, I'll tell you a funny story. Way back when, I can't remember the year in Vermont,

Speaker 2 there was an amendment.

Speaker 2 There was the Constitutional Amendment for Women's Rights. Do you remember that?

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 And it turns out that a number of people voted against that who voted for me. In other words, you've got to have a tolerance.
I believe, again, women have a right to control their own body.

Speaker 2 There are people who disagree with me. What am I supposed to do? Throw them out, discard them completely because they disagree with you?

Speaker 2 In this country today, in one sense, there is a lot of disunity, clearly, and a lot of people divided.

Speaker 2 But on the basic issues, is healthcare a human right? We're pretty, pretty much most people think yes.

Speaker 2 Should the rich stop paying their fair share of taxes? Yeah. Should we build low-income and affordable housing? Yeah.
Is the campaign finance system currently corrupt? Yeah.

Speaker 2 In the richest nation on earth, should elderly people be able to retire with security and dignity? Yeah. So got to be tolerant.
I mean, so what? You don't agree with me on every issue?

Speaker 2 What am I going to do? All right. We're going to work together and come up with the best plan that we can.

Speaker 2 We want to play a clip of an interview you did with Ezra Klein, who's now my colleague, but at the time he was at Vox. And it's about immigration.

Speaker 2 But I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the U.S. are considered out of political bounds.

Speaker 2 Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders, about sharply increasing.

Speaker 2 That's a Koch brothers proposal. The idea.

Speaker 2 Of course. I mean, that's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States.
Can you say more about your views on immigration?

Speaker 2 Look, when there are people who want cheap labor coming into this country to lower wages, no question about it.

Speaker 2 Where we are right now is we have, we think, about 10 million undocumented people in this country.

Speaker 2 The overwhelming majority of those people came to this country for the same exact reason as my father came from Poland without a nickel in his pocket to create a better life for themselves.

Speaker 2 And many of them actually brought their little kids here. They fled violence.
They fled poverty. The overwhelming, overwhelming majority of these people are working hard during COVID.

Speaker 2 Those were the people in the meat packing plants. Those were the people who were coming down with COVID and dying.
They were keeping the economy going.

Speaker 2 The failure of both the Democratic and the Republican Party in the last number of decades is we have not developed a comprehensive immigration reform and, in my view, a a path towards citizenship for those people.

Speaker 2 And I think what Trump is doing right now is disgusting. It is what demagogues always do.

Speaker 2 You take a powerless minority, maybe it's the Jews in Europe during the 30s, maybe it's gypsies, maybe it's gay people, maybe it's black people, you name the minority, and you blame all the problems of the world on those people.

Speaker 2 That's what Trump is doing with the undocumented. My view is very, very different.

Speaker 2 I think we've got to move toward comprehensive immigration reform and a path towards citizenship for people who are, by and large, working very hard and are a very important part of our economy.

Speaker 2 So Trump is clearly doing outrageous things that deny people their civil rights and that violate their basic humanity right now. There's no question about that.

Speaker 2 I also think it's fair to say that the Biden administration's immigration policy did essentially reject the views of a lot of working class Americans.

Speaker 2 And they looked at it and they said, that's just too open an immigration policy. And I think their discomfort with it was consistent with your longtime view of immigration.

Speaker 2 Well, what I do think in terms of the Biden administration,

Speaker 2 so long as we have nation states like the United States of America and Canada and Mexico, you have borders.

Speaker 2 And if you don't have any borders, in a sense, you don't have a nation-state. And Biden tried to make some progress at the end of his tenure.

Speaker 2 You know, you saw the pictures in Texas of just all kinds of undocumented people.

Speaker 2 And that does not resonate, and it's not right. We need to have an immigration policy, but you also need to have strong borders period.

Speaker 2 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: The reason I'm pushing you on this is I do think there is greater demand for a true working-class politics in this country than many Democratic elites have often acknowledged.

Speaker 2 It's a kind of working class politics that really could involve moving economic policy in the direction that you want.

Speaker 2 But I think for people to win, and when you look at people like Ruben Gallego in Arizona, who's won, or Marcy Kaptur in Ohio, or you in Vermont, when you first got elected there, it wasn't a solidly blue state.

Speaker 2 It is not enough to be populist on economics.

Speaker 2 Democrats also have to show some basic respect for working-class views and be authentic rather than just saying that they're tolerating views on things like immigration or on guns.

Speaker 2 They genuinely have to have views that are different than really affluent Democrats tend to have on social issues.

Speaker 2 You think that's fair? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I think it's really uncomfortable for the Democratic Party because I think it's...

Speaker 2 Yeah, you see, when you keep, David, talking about the Democratic Party, when I ran for president, you know, one of the things that I learned is there ain't much of a Democratic body.

Speaker 2 There are people on the top. When I think about a party, I think about the involvement of large numbers of people at the grassroots level.
You understand what I'm saying? Yep.

Speaker 2 That's my, when I think about a party, people disagree, they yell and shout at each other.

Speaker 2 People have said democracy is kind of messy.

Speaker 2 But I think sometimes when people think about the Democratic Party, think of it these cocktail parties in New York City or L.A., where wealthy people mingle with consultants, mingle with the leadership.

Speaker 2 That's not much of a party. That's really kind of an elitist institution.
So one of the things

Speaker 2 that I believe, if the Democratic Party is to survive, maybe it will, maybe it won't, the transformation has to be to open the doors, to bring in millions of people, to hear what they have to say, to have them start running for office, et cetera.

Speaker 2 Let's talk about Trump. You are turning out tens of thousands of people across the country for your fighting oligarchy tour.

Speaker 2 Over 300,000, but who's counting? I was thinking of individual events, but that's fair. Total audience.

Speaker 2 Fighting oligarchy is also the name of your book. I'm curious why you chose fighting oligarchy as opposed to something that was more Trump-specific, like say fighting authoritarianism.

Speaker 2 Why do you think oligarchy is the root cause of how we got to Trumpism?

Speaker 2 That's a good question.

Speaker 2 Obviously, I'm worked day and night trying to

Speaker 2 defeat this guy's effort

Speaker 2 toward moving us to an authoritarian society. I think the two go hand in glove, by the way.
But I think what I wanted to do, what we did in the rallies and what I wanted to do in the book,

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 ask the American people to start looking at some very uncomfortable realities. You know, it's very easy.
You and I can say, oh, in Russia now, Putin and his friends, that's an oligarchy.

Speaker 2 You know, you got a handful of zillionaires running that country. Oh, in Saudi Arabia, you got a billion-dollar family, I think.

Speaker 2 All over the world, you got these really wealthy and powerful oligarch types, but not in the United States. Not true.

Speaker 2 In America today, we have more income and wealth inequality we've ever had in the history of this country.

Speaker 2 Over the last 50 years, you have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

Speaker 2 You have a political system which is dominated by the billionaire class, right? That's what Citizens United was all about. That's what Super PAC's about.
So you got Mr.

Speaker 2 Musk able to contribute $270 million to elect Donald Trump and Democratic billionaires playing a role. You know, obviously I'm strongly supporting Zaran Mamdani.

Speaker 2 And it was just amazing to me how upfront the oligarchs were in New York City. One guy says, well, we're going to spend whatever it takes.
You know, we're landlords. We're the oligarchy.

Speaker 2 How dare this guy come in and upset the apple cart? Quite open. That's what really stuck me.
So you got an economy dominated by the very wealthy, a rigged economy.

Speaker 2 You have a political system dominated by billionaires. You have the media, corporate media having huge impact.
You add it all up. What do you call that country? You tell me.

Speaker 2 Is it fair to call it an oligarchy? I think, I absolutely think there are oligarchistic aspects to our country.

Speaker 2 You're sounding like a New York Times report. I'm not willing to say that we are already an oligarchy, but I'm worried that we're very much moving toward that.

Speaker 2 And so I think there's a huge amount of your diagnosis that I agree with. To some extent, I'm not pushing you on the oligarchy notion.
I'm accepting it.

Speaker 2 I'm asking, in this moment, should we be paying more attention to the authoritarian threat? Okay.

Speaker 2 They go together. All right.
I agree. They do.
All right. The point is what is very rarely discussed.

Speaker 2 I've been on 48 million television shows, and nobody has ever asked me, not one person has ever said, Bernie, are you worried that so few people in America have so much wealth and so much power while working-class people are struggling?

Speaker 2 No one ever asked me that question. I bet you make the point anyway.

Speaker 2 I do. I say, thank you for your silly question.
Now I'll give you the answer to the question that you didn't ask. All right.
But what do the oligarchs want?

Speaker 2 When you hear people like Peter Thiel

Speaker 2 talking talking about, I don't know if you followed this,

Speaker 2 when Peter Thiel, who is a billionaire actively involved in AI and robotics, you know,

Speaker 2 he refers to his opponents not as people he disagrees with, the antichrist. Did you see that?

Speaker 2 Literally, the word was antichrist, a religious critique, because these guys have the divine right to rule.

Speaker 2 And when Trump gets elected in his inauguration and he has all of these multi-billionaires behind him, A, these guys are doing phenomenally well. They love Donald Trump, no doubt.

Speaker 2 But B, what do they want? Do they want to pay taxes? No. Do they like unions? No.
They want to break unions.

Speaker 2 Do they want any form of regulation in AI and robotics? No way. You're an antichrist.

Speaker 2 You're an immoral. You're a devil.
literally, if you try to interfere with us. They like

Speaker 2 oligarchy. They like authoritarianism.
They like authoritarianism because people like Putin gives the oligarchs in Russia, right, opportunity to

Speaker 2 do anything they want.

Speaker 2 That's what Trump is doing right here in this country.

Speaker 2 I would say Russia's made it to full oligarchy, by the way. Yes.

Speaker 2 But let me tell you, there are some people on the right now who are beginning to refer to the United States Congress as the Duma. People blabbing all day long, powerless.
Trump has all the power.

Speaker 2 You mentioned Zoro Namdani. Yeah.
New York is obviously different from the rest of the United States in a whole bunch of ways.

Speaker 2 What lessons do you want Democrats who are from swing states or red states to take from Zoro and Mamdani? God, you keep sounding like a New York Times reporter. Well, I am.
Oh.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 All right. Get over something.
Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 I grew up in Brooklyn. It's very different than West Virginia.
Yes. Different than Maine.
Different than other states.

Speaker 2 But at the end of the day, and I say this not, you know, to to be sweepingly rhetorical,

Speaker 2 the overwhelming majority of Americans are working class people. And what Mamdani is talking about in New York is people cannot afford the outrageous cost of housing.
You know what?

Speaker 2 It's true in Vermont. It's true in West Virginia.
It's true in virtually every state in this country. He's talking about affordability.
talking about child care. You know what?

Speaker 2 Childcare crisis in almost every state in this country. Don't use the word red red state or blue state.

Speaker 2 When I hear red states, to me it's an abdication of the Democratic Party and fighting for the working class people have no alternative and they vote for the Trumps of the world.

Speaker 2 If we are bold, and we got to be really bold in demanding that in the wealthiest country in the history of the, you tell me, you tell me why in the richest country, all of our people cannot have a decent standard of living.

Speaker 2 There is no excuse for that other than the greed of the billionaire class who have so much power and the acquiescence of the political class in allowing that to happen.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, Jr.: I mean, this ties together our conversation nicely because I agree that Mom Dani's message on affordability can resonate in the entire country.

Speaker 2 But when you look at the Democrats who've won in places it's harder for Democrats to win than New York, they sound very different from him on something like policing. Very different.
Right?

Speaker 2 They appear in their ads with police officers. They talk about the border.
There's basically no counterexample of a Democrat who's won a tough race without Democrats.

Speaker 2 Well, I think the world is changing, by the way. And I think you're going to see more of that.
And I think you're seeing candidates right now running.

Speaker 2 And by the way, in terms of the police, one of the reasons, you know, I was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, a few years ago, 1981.

Speaker 2 You know who endorsed me? The Burlington Patrolman's Association. That was the police union.
And you know who endorsed me two years later? Because I did good things in reforming the police department?

Speaker 2 The Burlington Policemen's Union. And two years years later, oh, Burlington Policeman's Union.
And two years after that.

Speaker 2 I understand that being a cop is, in fact, a very difficult job, enormous responsibility when you have a gun on your hip.

Speaker 2 Scheduling is crazy. Divorce rate among cops is very, very high.
They live under a lot of stress. All right.
Treat them with the respect that they do, doing a very, very difficult job.

Speaker 2 Can we tolerate racism within police departments? Not at all. Is there brutality? Absolutely.
Do we need reforms? Yes. But police play a very important role and they should be respected.

Speaker 2 Look, that's, I think, the kind of message that can resonate with a huge number of Americans.

Speaker 2 I don't think it's the message a lot of Democrats have always given, but I think that's part of what interests me so much about your politics. By the way, I am an independent.
I know.

Speaker 2 I'm not a Democrat.

Speaker 2 I know. Let's talk about another debate that's gotten people excited.

Speaker 2 And I'm really curious about your view, the abundance debate, which is this idea that one of the things that government needs to do and progressives need to do is clear out bureaucracy so that our society can make more stuff, Homes, clean energy.

Speaker 2 What do you think of the abundance movement? Well, it's gotten a lot of tension among the elite, if I may say so. Look,

Speaker 2 if the argument is that we have a horrendous bureaucracy,

Speaker 2 absolutely correct. It is terrible.
I brought in over the years a lot of money into the state of Vermont.

Speaker 2 It is incredible, even in a state like Vermont, which is maybe better than most states, how hard it is to even get the bloody money out?

Speaker 2 You have so many, oh my God, we have 38 meetings, we've got to talk about this, unbelievable. I've worked for years to bring two health clinics into the state of Vermont that we needed.

Speaker 2 I wanted to renovate one and build another one.

Speaker 2 You cannot believe,

Speaker 2 you cannot believe the level of bureaucracy to build a bloody health center. It's still not built.
All right. So I don't need to be lectured on the nature of bureaucracy.
It is horrendous.

Speaker 2 And that is real. But that is not an ideology.
That is common sense. Any manager, your corporate manager, you're a mayor, you're a governor, got to get things done.

Speaker 2 And it in the bureaucracy, federal bureaucracy, many state bureaucracies make that very, very difficult. But that is not an ideology.
It's good government. Sure.
That's what we should have.

Speaker 2 Ideology is, do you create a

Speaker 2 nation in which all people have a standard of living? Do you have the courage to take on the billionaire class? Do you stand with the working class? That's ideology.

Speaker 2 Breaking through bureaucracy and creating efficiencies, that's good government. Aaron Trevor Brears, but it would be a meaningful change if states were able to reduce bureaucracy.

Speaker 2 It may not be an ideology, but it doesn't happen today.

Speaker 2 And you think you agree that we should do more of that. We should have policy changes to simplify things to do.

Speaker 2 I did my best when I was mayor to break through our own, you know, we're a small city of 40,000 people to break through the bureaucracy.

Speaker 2 And I was a good mayor. Yes.

Speaker 2 So there's no question that you have people who see, it seems to me their function in life is to make sure things don't happen you know we should not be paying people to do that

Speaker 2 right-wing nationalism and this is where i want to end is ascendant in much of the world yes and it is extremely dangerous in many ways as we are seeing in this country as we're seeing in europe as we're seeing elsewhere i'm curious what you think is a an effective progressive response.

Speaker 2 Is there a version of progressive patriotism that can counter right-wing nationalism?

Speaker 2 Is there something that is more than a sum of smart policies, but instead becomes a narrative and a message and something inspiring that people can say, we want that rather than this really reactionary nationalism?

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, good question.

Speaker 2 Look, as you've indicated, if you look at not only the United States and the

Speaker 2 and Trumpism,

Speaker 2 if you look at France, look at the UK right now, the leading candidate is a right-wing extremist. You look at Germany, and often, as you indicate, immigration is the issue.
Yes. Okay.

Speaker 2 What demagogues, as I mentioned earlier, always do is you take a minority who are powerless, you blame them for all of the problems.

Speaker 2 And I think

Speaker 2 what we have got to see is that in America and in many parts of the developed world, what has been happening over the last 50 years, especially in rural parts, is the rich get much richer and zillions of people get left behind.

Speaker 2 All right?

Speaker 2 Real inflation accounted for wages for the average American worker has been flat for 50 years.

Speaker 2 So people are angry.

Speaker 2 So I think you need an economic agenda that says to people in England, France, Germany, throughout Europe, throughout Latin America, that with all of this technology, we can create a new world in which all of our people have a decent standard of living.

Speaker 2 That doesn't solve all of the problems, but I think absolutely at this time of growing income and wealth inequality, when the oligarchs are trying to destroy democracy all over the world, that's an important part of the antidote.

Speaker 2 My worry is that a sort of whole world message falls flat. I think of you as a patriot.
I don't know if you think of yourself as a patriot. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 Do you think patriotism within this country is an important part of that?

Speaker 2 When I was at Trump's inaugural, I actually got pushed into the front row for whatever reason.

Speaker 2 And sitting behind them were the three wealthiest guys in the world, behind them, billionaires Trump had nominated to run government agencies.

Speaker 2 And honest to God, what I thought of when I was there looking at that scene, I was thinking about Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg after that terrible battle to help end slavery in America.

Speaker 2 Thinking gets up and says, these thousands of soldiers did not die in vain. They died so that we can maintain a government of the people, by the people, for the people.
So you want a nationalism?

Speaker 2 You want a patriotic nationalism? That's what it is. People fought and died, not just in the Civil War and the Revolutionary War, World War II, died to defend democracy.

Speaker 2 And we need a government and an economy that works for all of us, not just a handful of wealthy campaign donors. That's your nationalism.
We love this country, you know. My father, in a million years,

Speaker 2 you you know, he came from a very poor family in Poland, anti-Semitism, poverty, came to America. Never in a million years.
He was so, I mean, you know, you can talk about it.

Speaker 2 The fact that his two kids were able to go to college, unbelievable, unbelievable. And that is the truth of millions and millions and millions of people in this country.
This is a great country.

Speaker 2 He's given so much to so many people. And we're going to do everything that we can to make sure that Trump does not divide us up, does not move us into an authoritarian society.

Speaker 2 Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you so much. Thank you very much.

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Speaker 5 This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news.
Here's what to make of it.

Speaker 2 I'm David Leonhart, an editorial director in New York Times Opinion. And this is America's Next Story, a series about the ideas that once held our country together and those that might do so again.

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

Speaker 6 Ask not what your country can do for you. You ask what you can do for your country.

Speaker 7 That America is too great for small dreams.

Speaker 2 Change is what's happening in America. And we will make America great again.
God bless you and good night. I love you.

Speaker 2 Today I'm talking with Senator Ruben Gallego. He was a rare success story for the Democratic Party last year.
He won a Senate seat in Arizona, even as President Trump was winning that same state.

Speaker 2 Gallego has a clear diagnosis about where Democrats have gone wrong. and how they can start winning more often by telling a different story.

Speaker 2 In our conversation, we covered a lot of ground.

Speaker 2 What he has learned from Rosa Parks, what he admires about Zoron Mamdani, why he likes to talk about big-ass trucks, and why he still gets emotional when he thinks about his own family's journey.

Speaker 2 Senator Gallego, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me.
You've just dropped one of your kids off at daycare. That's right.
You just had a new baby. Congratulations.
Thank you.

Speaker 2 And your oldest kid is here with us today in the season.

Speaker 4 Yes, he's on break, so he's going to tag along with dad for a bit.

Speaker 2 Let's go back to college.

Speaker 2 You went to Harvard in the early 2000s.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 2 And back then, as is still the case, the most popular things to do coming out of Harvard included tech and finance and consulting. You did something different.
You went into the Marines.

Speaker 2 Why? Well, it...

Speaker 4 It wasn't much of a choice. I was a reservist and

Speaker 4 I had always intended to serve my country one way or the other. And I joined about a year before September 11th.
And after that, I went on a series of activations.

Speaker 4 And when I got out, I had basically one and a half years left on my contract. I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
And they told me if I joined, that I would be sent to Iraq. And,

Speaker 4 you know, to be honest, I hated the war. I hated that we had gone to war, but I also felt very.

Speaker 4 conflicted that if I didn't go, someone else is going to take my spot.

Speaker 4 And so I went. And unfortunately, it was a very hard

Speaker 2 activation.

Speaker 4 By the time I was done, you know, the war had changed me a lot to the point where I just couldn't go and do the finance work, the other types of work.

Speaker 4 I needed to do something that had some meaning and drive in my life because the war really took a lot out of me.

Speaker 2 And so you move to Arizona and you get involved in politics.

Speaker 2 You're in the state legislature and then you're elected to Congress. And then you run for U.S.
Senate. And let's go to election night last year because you must have had mixed feelings.

Speaker 2 I mean, you win and you are going to the U.S. Senate at a pretty young age.
Yeah. And you also realize that Donald Trump is going back to the presidency.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 What was that like when you realized that you were going to win, but Kamala Harris was going to lose?

Speaker 4 We knew on election night when the numbers came in from two big counties and one rural area that there was basically no way for us to lose at that point.

Speaker 4 But seeing the numbers that the vice president hit was,

Speaker 4 and she was leading, but knowing how kind of votes break out, we knew that that wasn't going to hold.

Speaker 4 It was hard because I wanted to jump for joy. My family had sacrificed for two years to run for office.

Speaker 4 And, you know, we were proud of the, you know, as a family that, you know, we hit an amazing American story. You know, we didn't come from a lineage of senators.

Speaker 4 But then, of course, you have Trump and you're realizing that that's going to be a very hard situation.

Speaker 4 I was hopeful, to be honest, that maybe things would be better than they are right now, but they're not.

Speaker 2 How do you diagnose why you won Arizona in particular and Kamala Harris lost it?

Speaker 4 We were very real about what was actually happening on the ground, and we didn't lie to ourselves.

Speaker 4 I think a lot of Democrats running, and it wasn't just Vice President Harris, they wanted to talk about the things they were comfortable talking about. They didn't want to go to where the voter was.

Speaker 2 So they wanted to talk about abortion and democracy?

Speaker 4 Basically, yes. And sometimes there are some voters that want to talk about that.
But what we were seeing on the ground in Arizona was that people were worried about being able to make the rent.

Speaker 4 They were worried about border security. And they were worried about what is truly happening to the American dream.

Speaker 4 And for a place like Arizona that was known to be affordable, had always been affordable, for the first time in anybody's. memory, it became a very unaffordable place very quickly.

Speaker 4 And we sounded extremely out of touch that we weren't talking about that. Now, my campaign, we did talk about it.
So it's all we talked about. We talked about the cost of everything.

Speaker 4 And we did it in a way that wasn't an economic message. It was like an emotional message, right? I talked about how I grew up poor and I understand

Speaker 4 how frustrating it is. And I remember those days to work and work and work and then look up and you're still underwater.

Speaker 4 And that is what was dragging down a lot of people in Arizona, especially working class Latino men who, you know, have a mentality that I can keep working and get myself out of the situation.

Speaker 4 But for the first time, I heard this like desperation that I had never heard in my 45 years of being a Latino man that they just felt that they weren't going to make it. And

Speaker 4 we talked to them because I understood what they were going through. And I think a lot of Democrats did not do that.
Certainly not in Arizona, but I think also across the country.

Speaker 2 I think if we had a member of Vice President Harris's campaign team here, they might say, hey, look, we tried. We criticized Donald Trump's tariffs as being a tax on the American people.

Speaker 2 We talked about her focus on lifting people up. And so I do think they tried.

Speaker 4 I'm interested.

Speaker 4 I think they did try. I just think

Speaker 4 there's ways to do it that probably weren't able to connect.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I mean, what's interesting to me about this is it plays into, I think, this broader critique you've had about the Democratic Party, which is that how it talks to people.

Speaker 4 Right. And how it treats people too.

Speaker 2 And how it treats people too.

Speaker 2 And you got a whole bunch of attention a few years ago for banning your staff in Congress from using the term Latinx, which you said is mostly a term that white liberals use and Latinos and Latinos think is silly.

Speaker 2 And I'm interested in your critique of how Democrats talk about the economy, because I think often the economy is an issue in which Democrats feel like, hey, we're comfortable on that issue.

Speaker 2 It's not like immigration, it's not like gender, we're comfortable in the economy.

Speaker 2 But you've said, actually, basically, the Democratic Party still talks, say, too much like Harvard professors and not enough like Marine Corps members to use your life.

Speaker 2 And so specifically, you've said this idea that Democrats should talk about the American dream in terms of prosperity rather than, quote, a nebulous message about justice. Yes.

Speaker 2 Can you be more specific about that?

Speaker 4 So, I mean, a lot of times, especially in the last couple of years, what I've heard coming from the Democratic side, my friends, is that they talk about economic equity.

Speaker 4 They talk about these ideas of essentially trying to equalize capitalism to lift people out of poverty. And that's just not how people think.

Speaker 4 And it's also this assumption that the Democrats themselves, the actual base voters,

Speaker 4 don't want to be prosperous. They don't want to be rich.
They don't want to be successful.

Speaker 4 And so we have this situation within the Democratic talk where we kind of shy away from that because we feel like that's, you know, somehow icky, right?

Speaker 4 You know, I'm surrounded by working class Democrats. And the reason I speak the way I speak is because no one in my family is involved in politics.

Speaker 4 Half my families are in union, but the other half are very working class. I have one sister who's a doctor.
I live in a working class neighborhood in Phoenix.

Speaker 4 No one there talks about economic equity. What they talk about is, I want to be able to buy a home.
I am starting a business. I want to make money.
I want my kids to do well. I want to be happy.

Speaker 4 And when we

Speaker 4 have these like nebulous positions that people just can't put their finger on, then Democrats are kind of losing an opportunity.

Speaker 4 Because if we're the party of opportunity, if we're the party that's going to give you a real chance at the American dream, you know, buying a home, starting a business, being able to go on vacation for God's sake, the things that people used to be able to do, then people would say, that's the party that I want in there to fight for me.

Speaker 4 But when we're just this kind of like nebulous blah group of people that is going to protect this idea, but we don't actually ever really do anything about it, they're going to go off to something else shinier.

Speaker 4 And the shinier has come with Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 This is the point where I have to ask about big-ass trucks.

Speaker 2 In an interview with the New York Times, you said that what Latino men want is to own a big-ass truck, which is connected very much to what you were just saying.

Speaker 2 And I assume you would say the point is broader than Latino men. It's men and women and women.

Speaker 4 It's everything else.

Speaker 2 Asian, black, and white American.

Speaker 4 I mean, I said that mostly just to kind of break through this because I've heard it so much, like, are Latino men go this way? I'm like, well, Latino men want things.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of Democrats and the kind of the more liberal side that would hope that Latino men are more reflective and look, look and vote like, you know, white liberal men.

Speaker 2 They don't. They're different.

Speaker 4 They're entirely different. They have an entirely different experience.
And they're not like black men either, right? They have an entirely different experience.

Speaker 4 And so to kind of break through, like you have to keep it simple. You know, they want security.
They want economic security and they want physical security for their family.

Speaker 4 And their wants are legitimate. We shouldn't just shy away from or ignore it because it puts us in an uncomfortable spot.

Speaker 4 So, the troquita, you know, the truck, it's symbolic because it really is a status symbol that you have succeeded in this country.

Speaker 4 It means that you can afford a brand new nice truck, that you take that truck to work, and that work brings dignity to your family. It helps you pay the bills.

Speaker 4 You get to load your kids on there, you get to go on vacation.

Speaker 4 It involves this whole symbolic gesture to your community that you are leading your family and that you are bringing them into the American dream. That's what it really represents.

Speaker 4 And I think a lot of people feel uncomfortable about that. But that really is as simple as that.
Also, trucks are fun. Trucks are a lot of fun.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I think, to me, that's a version of you saying the party needs to talk more about prosperity and less about things like equity and justice.

Speaker 4 Look, I think there was a lot of thought post-Obama that if we focus on equity and justice, then that somehow would be the unifier of

Speaker 4 the Democratic coalition. It ends up the biggest unifier Democratic coalition, black, white, Latino, immigrants, Asians, everybody else, is the personal checking account.

Speaker 4 That actually is what unifies our coalition. And when we walked away from that because of pure political convenience, our coalition started eroding more and more and more.

Speaker 4 And we're seeing it all the time.

Speaker 2 Look, I didn't predict that. Donald Trump would get increasing support over his political career from Latino and Black and Asian Americans.
But the fact is he has.

Speaker 2 And it feels like Democrats made this fundamental misdiagnosis, which is that people think of themselves first in terms of racial or ethnic groups. And it turns out that doesn't seem to be the case.

Speaker 4 It depends. That's the other thing.
It's like, when does it happen? When there is a, that racial group feels like they collectively are under attack. Like, I tell you right now.

Speaker 4 The Republican Party is going to lose badly with Latinos come 2026 because they moved beyond, hey, we're going after criminals. Now there's racial profiling in the streets, right?

Speaker 4 You know, originally I'm from Chicago, as you know, I have a lot of friends and family there, varying degrees of politics and who they support.

Speaker 4 And I would say I did see Latino men, especially in Chicago, moving away from the Democratic Party. That's not happening right now.

Speaker 2 I promise we'll get to immigration. Yeah, you don't have to.

Speaker 4 I talk about it too much.

Speaker 2 We will. We will.
Let's stay on trucks for a minute. So you said big-ass trucks.
And then the writer Matthew Iglesias took that and coined this term big-ass truck abundance,

Speaker 2 which plays into this policy debate on abundance within the Democratic Party.

Speaker 2 And so I'm going to overgeneralize a little bit, but the abundance crowd, which includes my colleague Ezra Klein, basically says the Democratic Party should focus on getting rid of bureaucracy and making more stuff, right?

Speaker 2 Houses, transportation, clean energy.

Speaker 2 And then there's another part of the debate, which is more associated with the progressive wing of the party, Bernie Sanders, AOC, that says, no, economic and political power is the issue.

Speaker 2 And we can't be naive. And we have to focus on cracking down on corporate power.

Speaker 2 And we should be creating universal government programs for child care, which I know is an issue you deal with in your own personal life.

Speaker 2 Just today. Just today.

Speaker 2 So, do you think you're more on one side in that debate, or do you straddle the two sides?

Speaker 4 There's a really good commercial for

Speaker 4 taco shells. And

Speaker 4 there's a debate of whether they should be soft or hard.

Speaker 4 And at the end of the commercial, this

Speaker 4 really cute Latino little girl says, Porque no los los.

Speaker 4 Why can't it be both? We should be able to mix both of this, right?

Speaker 4 We should be building things fast, as fast as possible, especially housing. And at the same time, we should be making sure that monopolies don't control markets that are driving up prices.

Speaker 4 We should be able to build roads fast and at the same time, make sure that there's ways for us to have affordable child care for working-class America.

Speaker 4 I don't understand why everyone seems to be in these corners because because the American people aren't that way.

Speaker 4 If we make their lives better by both means, then we get the net benefit, which is their support and their vote.

Speaker 2 And so you're saying you can be both pro-abundance and you can be a populist who wants to take on corporate power. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 It doesn't mean that everything's a fight. It doesn't mean like every corporation is bad, but there are some bad ones, right?

Speaker 4 It doesn't mean that every regulation is bad, but there are some bad regulations.

Speaker 4 And I think we as policymakers, as the actual people that vote and are leaders, we have to be able to pick and choose when to use the tools, right?

Speaker 4 So maybe sometimes it is abundance, sometimes it is going against our monopoly.

Speaker 2 So it's interesting because I think the answers you just gave on abundance could also have been given by Zoran Mamdani, the New York politician. I've heard of him.

Speaker 2 I'm sure you have. What do you think of him?

Speaker 4 Look, I think he really struck a chord. And

Speaker 4 when I talk about big ass truck policy, and that's how I got a lot of people to vote, like the man's talking about affordable rents, right?

Speaker 4 And, you know, be able to afford a, I don't know, for New York, like an apartment with a second bathroom or something.

Speaker 2 Medium-assed apartment.

Speaker 4 Yeah, medium-assed apartment, right? He talks about affordability. I disagree with some things, like I don't think they should have government-run grocery stores, but I guarantee you there's a lot of.

Speaker 4 New Yorkers are like, yeah, you know what? I don't agree with that. But at least he's talking about it.
At least he has some ideas. At least he's pushing something.

Speaker 4 And I think there's there's a lot of Democrats that are missing the vote. Like we don't have to support him on everything.

Speaker 4 We could disagree in some areas, but the fact is that he talks about affordability. He talks about trying to make people's lives better.

Speaker 4 That's resonating. And now we may not agree how he's going to get there, but let's not ignore the lesson that he's showing.

Speaker 2 I do think there's this interesting question about the attention economy today. Zoran Mamdani is clearly on the left part of the Democratic Party.
Yes.

Speaker 2 And I think what we see today is that it often feels easier for people who are making arguments and drawing contrasts and their critics would say are at the extremes to get attention.

Speaker 2 You're much more moderate, and sometimes moderation can seem boring, if we're being honest.

Speaker 2 But you figured out a way to break through in Arizona.

Speaker 2 How do you think about how someone with your politics doesn't just come off as boring and technocratic in this day and age of social media and attention?

Speaker 4 I think what happened with us in Arizona was that we used some smart ways to kind of get into people's feeds, right? We did boxing matches,

Speaker 4 we did car shows, truck shows, a lot of stuff. Hey, I reached out to white suburban people with pickleball tournaments too, right? So we did everything we could.

Speaker 4 But the reason it resonated is because, like, while I was using them to get their attention, I was talking to them about what they were really worried about right now.

Speaker 4 And the ability for any

Speaker 4 candidate or elected official to talk in an authentic way will carry through.

Speaker 2 It will.

Speaker 4 The problem is we have, and on the Democratic side, we have less and less of us that actually can speak about

Speaker 4 the personal checkbook and economics of a family in an authentic way. And that's why you could get on TV as much as you want.
You could go on podcasts.

Speaker 4 You'd do your Instagram lives, and it's not going to catch.

Speaker 2 It's really interesting because whether you're coming from the left or closer to the center, both Mom Donnie in New York and you in Arizona, your messaging really emphasized those economic issues.

Speaker 2 So he didn't talk in his mayoral campaign about ICE or about Gaza very much. He emphasized the same things you're talking about.
Right.

Speaker 4 Because that's what voters care about every day. Yeah.
You get reminded about it every week. So, you know, I have three kids.
You know, we have a family of five, but we go grocery shopping every week.

Speaker 4 So I see that grocery bill. And I'm very lucky.
My wife and I make a good salary. So it doesn't impact us that much, but I noticed that price.
And I still have poor boy mentality.

Speaker 4 When you grow up poor, it's hard to get out of that mentality. So I'm still kind of watching all this.

Speaker 4 If I'm seeing this, I can't imagine what a family is thinking every Saturday and Sunday when they go shopping. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 you know, it hits. It just hits.

Speaker 2 So we've touched on immigration a couple times. Now let's really dig in on it.
One of your early forays into politics in Arizona was you helped lead a recall campaign against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Yeah, I got very close to who was this, as I'm sure many listeners remember, was this cruel anti-immigrant sheriff. Yep.

Speaker 2 And more recently, I think your image on immigration has changed. In your campaign, you criticized Joe Biden's open immigration policy.

Speaker 2 You co-sponsored the Lake and Riley Act, which calls for the detention of undocumented immigrants who've committed certain crimes even before the court trial has happened.

Speaker 2 How would you describe your own personal evolution or not?

Speaker 4 On immigration? It hasn't actually been that much of an evolution. You know, why was I trying to recall Sheriff Joe? And he was racially profiling Americans.

Speaker 4 He was racially profiling Latinos because we were brown. He was pulling them over while driving brown.
Nothing to do with immigration, nothing else like that.

Speaker 4 Number one, that's and then I will do it again, should that ever happen again. Number two, I think the democratic understanding of immigration and illegal immigration has always been pretty basic.

Speaker 4 And then it went awry, which is we're for border security, we're for humanitarian immigration reform, and we're for reforming the visa worker permit.

Speaker 4 Something happened where all of a sudden now we were also supposed to be extremely liberal when it comes to asylum seekers.

Speaker 2 When do you think that happened?

Speaker 4 It's sometime happening between Trump and Biden.

Speaker 4 And I think there was this overall reaction to Trump in his first term that a lot of people just assumed that this is where the new conversation went and that policy went when there were some of us that grew up you know both on the border one way or the other i also lived in mexico for a little bit and and you know have family and all levels of immigration going on through the my whole life um

Speaker 4 when that started happening a lot of us were like whoa that's not what we want but nobody wanted to listen to us and what happened was that a lot of policymakers started listening to some more liberal people about what was happening at the border.

Speaker 2 Liberal people who claimed to speak for the Latino community.

Speaker 4 Correct, yes.

Speaker 2 And in many cases, liberal people who themselves are Latino, the ones getting a hearing in the administration.

Speaker 4 Yes, essentially. And because

Speaker 4 they were in their little bubbles and, you know, without any personal experience, the administration just basically listened to them. And for us that...

Speaker 4 had always had the same position, right? My position has not changed. I am for border security.
I am for immigration reform, sane immigration reform.

Speaker 4 If you're a criminal, you should be convicted and deported, right?

Speaker 4 That's never changed. The problem is we went totally to an area where a lot of Democrats weren't.
And so my position, I think, is where the traditionally Democrats have been.

Speaker 4 If you hear what Hillary Clinton was saying, if you hear what Barack Obama was saying, hear what Bill Clinton was saying about immigration, that's been the traditional place.

Speaker 4 What happened the last four years was absolutely

Speaker 4 out of norm of where Democrats are and why we lost because I don't know where most Americans are.

Speaker 4 And And now, if you see what's happening right now, most Americans are very unhappy what's happening with immigration right now because they like that the border is secure.

Speaker 4 And I get yelled at all the time because I say, you know, it's a good thing that the border is secure.

Speaker 2 Meaning Trump is secure.

Speaker 4 Yes, exactly. That's a good thing.
It's a value to this country that we have the lowest amount of illegal immigrants crossing the border right now.

Speaker 4 What I want them to do now is let's do immigration reform. Stop racially profiling.

Speaker 4 Stop deploying National Guards to patrol these streets that are supposedly are dangerous Then really invest in a smart way of dealing with a broken system.

Speaker 2 So I think that's what some Democrats who are in a little bit of a different place than you would say, which is there will be a time to debate the finer points of immigration policy and a time to vote for a bill like the Lake and Riley Act or not vote for it.

Speaker 2 But this isn't that time. We've got federal agents in masks picking people up off the street.

Speaker 2 We've got the president deporting people to a horrible foreign prison without due process.

Speaker 2 We've got the president and his administration racially profiling Latinos based on the way they have to to do both. And speak.

Speaker 4 And so you have to, because here's why you have to do both, David.

Speaker 4 If you give the voter the option of saying either we're going to have security that's way too strong or no security at all, they're going to give the more security side the benefit of doubt.

Speaker 4 So the Democrats, we have to have a position that is a position that Americans can gather to and say, you know what?

Speaker 4 I totally disagree with what this guy is doing, you know, with the Roundups, the deportations, everything else like that. What I want to see is what the Democrats are proposing.

Speaker 4 And what they're proposing is where I am. If we're only oppositional and just saying, no, no, no, we're going to end up losing this argument in the end because people generally want to be secure.

Speaker 4 And if we don't give them some type of idea of what we're bringing, they're going to go to whoever is giving them any type of security.

Speaker 2 Let me read you what Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois recently said.
He said, this is exactly the moment for people to stand up. And do I see enough people doing it? No, I don't.

Speaker 2 Do you disagree with that?

Speaker 4 I think this is the moment to stand up. I think there are people that are moving into the fight.

Speaker 4 This is not a very easy situation for, I think, a lot of people in your everyday American, you know, why? It's not that they want an open border. It's not that they want people deported.

Speaker 4 There's just a lot of stuff going on in their lives right now. There's just a lot of stuff.
And, you know, from talking to my family that's still in Chicago, they're afraid.

Speaker 4 I mean, this is the first time that

Speaker 4 they're afraid of being picked up. They're afraid for their country.

Speaker 4 You know, asking for people to take action right now, it's not as easy as it sounds because people are generally afraid of what could happen.

Speaker 4 And that is part of this, I think, decision-making that's happening right now.

Speaker 4 But it's not like we're going to be able to protest like we used to back in the day because people are generally afraid for their personal safety.

Speaker 2 I think I've also heard you suggesting that Democrats need to be strategic about this. And you probably wouldn't put it this way, but not always stand on principle.

Speaker 2 So after, um, after I would never put it that way. Well, I know you wouldn't, but that's why I want to push you a little bit.
It feels fair.

Speaker 2 So you, I read an interview where you were discussing Trump's deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador, and you said it's important to defend due process.

Speaker 2 And look, you've criticized Trump as you're doing here, but you also said Democrats shouldn't, quote, just jump and automatically assume that, number one, that the person you're advocating for is someone that people can empathize with.

Speaker 2 And so I'm kind of interested in, you basically said, look, that was an unjust deportation, but it's not the fight we want to have. Yes.

Speaker 4 It's look, you got to be smart about this. You know, there's very perfect examples, you know, throughout any type of movement.
You know, I'll give you a good example.

Speaker 4 When Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to go to the back of the bus, it wasn't coincidence that it was Rosa Parks.

Speaker 4 They had purposely, you know, vetted a lot of candidates to who would be the best example of this horrible segregation system if we want to point out how awful this deportation system is what it's doing to families we should do it in a smart way let's find the most caring person the person that people can empathize with the person that says i want that person to stay in our country right don't rush to a fight that someone has already set up because these guys you know and i think a lot of people don't quite understand donald trumps people are smart they set up traps of this nature all the time and they love nothing more for us to just run in there and just get into it with them.

Speaker 4 And they have all the advantages. You know, they've already set up the field to fight in.
They have all the information. And we're just, you know, playing catch up.

Speaker 4 If you want to win, and I think that's the ultimate goal, that's to be smart about actually doing this, right? Why not use the people that can actually connect with this issue?

Speaker 2 And this is a podcast series about what America's next story should be. And what you're saying is be smart about the story that the Democratic Party is telling.
Absolutely.

Speaker 4 We have to want to win and we have to plan to win. Those things don't necessarily happen in democratic politics.
And I've seen it over and over and over again. I've never lost a race every time I ran.

Speaker 4 And the reason I've never lost a race is largely because I don't bring any political perspective. I bring a Marine perspective to this.

Speaker 4 The Marines, they teach you everything is about mission objective first. And then you build your whole campaign, your whole plan, your whole battle plan around mission objective.

Speaker 4 And you're agnostic about it. And so when we ran for the House, for the Senate, I figured out what did I need to win, put the plan together and go.

Speaker 4 Democrats sometimes try to stumble into victories and that might be fine, but this really means people's lives are in danger.

Speaker 4 And Democrats not winning in 2024, in 2016, really cost us a lot of our positions and values that are going to be in danger for quite a while.

Speaker 2 And I would say that I think sometimes Democrats confuse the story that they want to be the winning message with the one that actually is going to be the winning message.

Speaker 4 Yes, because it makes them uncomfortable. Then why are we doing this?

Speaker 4 We need to win. With us not winning, we don't have the Supreme Court.
We won't have the Supreme Court for quite a while.

Speaker 4 Us not picking up a couple Senate seats for the last couple of years puts us out of potentially holding power again in the Senate.

Speaker 4 All the victories we avoided because we were afraid of these conversations, these icky conversations. Look what's happening to this country now.

Speaker 2 And there's a class aspect of this, which is the people who often find these positions and conversations icky tend to to be more affluent and more educated.

Speaker 2 And in working-class neighborhoods, actually, people are quite willing to engage in these conversations for the most part.

Speaker 4 And they do all the time. And they do all the time.

Speaker 4 Like going back to the big ass truck, everyone's like, oh, you look down, you're looking down on Latino men by saying, oh, they want some big-ass truck. Like quite the opposite, actually.

Speaker 4 The problem that happens in kind of elite democratic politics is that we don't think that the voter is that smart.

Speaker 4 We believe that we have to dumb things down. When like the voters are fairly sophisticated, they may not use sophisticated language or anything else of that nature, but they know what they're feeling.

Speaker 4 And they know when we're throwing bullshit at them. And they will vote in their own interests.

Speaker 4 Until we're willing to accept that, until we're willing to actually have real conversations, we're going to be finding ourselves still on a declining support level.

Speaker 2 Let's end by connecting your personal story with what you think the country's next story should be. So as you mentioned, you grew up in Chicago.
You grew up poor with a single mom and three sisters.

Speaker 2 And it's the kind of story in broad brush that I think used to feel more typical than it does today. There's less upward mobility.

Speaker 2 And I think a lot of Americans are understandably angry about a lot of things. And yet, you made optimism absolutely central to your campaign.

Speaker 2 Here are the opening lines of the ad that introduced you to Arizona voters last year.

Speaker 4 Growing up poor, the only thing I really had was the American Dream.

Speaker 4 An opportunity. It's the one thing that we give every American, no matter where they are born in life.

Speaker 2 I think for a lot of people, it's an incredibly inspiring story, whether it's one generation or whether it's three generations, three generations, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 And it's often connected to the immigrant experience. And I guess I have to ask: do you still think we give that opportunity to every American?

Speaker 4 I still think that we can. I think that the things that used to exist, the infrastructure of hope, of opportunity, is kind of slowly eroding.

Speaker 4 I think what we need to do as Democrats, as Americans, is put that back together. So for me,

Speaker 4 you know, for me, it was, I had a decent school. My mom was the secretary.
It wasn't great pay, but it wasn't horrible pay. We had an affordable apartment.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I slept in the living room, but we stayed in that apartment. It was in the same school districts.
I had support all around me. I knew that if I got good grades, I could afford to go to college.

Speaker 4 I could get a scholarship.

Speaker 4 There was this idea

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 my sacrifice, my family's sacrifice was going to have an end result.

Speaker 4 What I hear, and this is why the campaign started the way it is, is because especially from working class people, they don't feel that anymore. And

Speaker 4 the future of America has to go back,

Speaker 4 back to the future of where a Ruben Gallego felt comfortable in believing that the American Dream was possible, right?

Speaker 4 We have to be able to be able to tell, you know, the kid in Kentucky or the kid in California, yeah, you're poor. Yeah, you know, life sucks.

Speaker 4 But if you do this, this, this, you're going to be fine, right?

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 until we actually

Speaker 4 not just talk about it, but put back the policies and,

Speaker 4 again, the infrastructure of how to become successful, how to get out of poverty, people aren't going to believe it.

Speaker 2 Can I take a crack at telling you what I think you think America's next story should be? Sure. So it should be one part, call it Rosa Parks moderation, respecting voters, meeting them where they are.

Speaker 2 I think it's one part populism. You talk about taking on the rich and powerful.
I mean, you've said it.

Speaker 2 If you're in Congress and you're spending more time with the powerful than the powerless, you're doing the job wrong. Right.
And I think it's one part optimism. It is about the American dream.

Speaker 2 Is that fair?

Speaker 4 It's very fair. Look, honestly, I think if I had to say what the future is, is the American dream.
It's the thing that has driven us forever. It's what drove us to the shores here.

Speaker 4 It's what drove us west. It's what drove people from all over the world to come here.
It's what drove me, you know, some really, really hard days. Like, I remember

Speaker 4 just being very angry as a young man. And it wasn't because of the situation that I was in.

Speaker 4 My anger was the idea that I'm going to work so hard and I may not succeed.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 I just don't think I want to have any other young man or woman have that feeling.

Speaker 2 Senator Ruben Gallego. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 All right. Got tears out of me, David.

Speaker 2 All right. Fuck you.

Speaker 4 Oh, sorry, Son. Don't use that word.

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Speaker 5 The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Vashaka Darba, Christina Samuluski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek.

Speaker 5 Engineering, Mixing, and Original Music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabaro, and Afim Shapiro.

Speaker 5 Additional music by Amin Sahota.

Speaker 5 The fact-check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski.
The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.

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