Preview of “The Blueprint” Season 2

Hey everyone, it's Jensaki.

I'm excited to tell you about season two of my podcast, The Blueprint with Jensaki.

We all spend a lot of time talking about the Trump presidency and the GOP, but we also need to have a conversation about the future of the party that is out of power and how they're planning to win it back.

So every Wednesday, I'm going to be interviewing somebody reshaping the Democratic Party, whether that's the co-host of a hit podcast straight out of Oklahoma or the governor of Kentucky.

And to start every episode this season, I'll debate how the the news of today might impact the elections of tomorrow with my longtime friend and completely unfiltered Democratic strategist Liz Smith.

The first two episodes of The Blueprint with Gensaki are available now, and new episodes drop Wednesdays.

Plus, stay right here to listen to a special preview of the first episode: my conversation with Texas Congressman Greg Kazar, who chairs the Progressive Caucus.

You can also subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts for ad-free listening.

Sometimes, when people hear someone is the chair of the Progressive Caucus, which you are, they may think if they don't consider themselves a member of the progressive wing of the party, I'm not going to have anything in common with this person.

This guy is probably somebody who is drinking a matcha latte and hugging a tree in Brooklyn, and you are definitely not, right?

Not that there's anything wrong with any of those things, but there's this perception that I just don't think is right.

And the third reason is the one I already touched on, which is that as as the fastest man in Congress, you obviously are not 85.

You are a rising star because you're young, you're very good at what you do, but also because you're somebody who I think is going to be around for a while.

So I'm delighted to have you here.

And I just want to introduce to people listening kind of why I wanted to talk to you so much.

So let me start with this.

This is a question that has not just been on my mind, but you see it in poll after poll.

It's something that comes up in focus groups and even beyond that, just average people out there who are trying to figure out where their politics are.

Who is the Democratic Party?

And what does the Democratic Party stand for?

So what do you tell people in answer to that question?

I tell people that the Democratic Party has been, really should be the party of working class people, the party of the many.

against the few, the few people that want to use the economy to screw you over and take your work and your labor and your money, or the few that want to take over the government to enrich themselves themselves and screw you over either through discrimination or taking away your voice or your power and say.

And so I believe kind of in that old school Democratic party of a hundred years ago that took on the Robert Barons or the Democratic Party that created Head Start and Medicaid and Medicare and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, all in one presidential term under a Texas president, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

And I think that's the kind of Democratic party we're trying to create today.

And I know that folks may look back at this in a few months, but my hope is that right now, when folks see this fight over reopening the government, where the Republican Party of today wants to take away your healthcare and your money, all to hand it over to billionaires, that the Democratic Party right now is trying to lower your costs and help you keep your money and keep your health care and stand up to that billionaire class.

So that's who I think the Democratic Party is or should be when we're at our best.

And I believe progressives play a key role in that, not to knock on any of my tree hugger friends, but not just on single issues, but progressives really have been the folks that have been willing to stand up against the rich and powerful and stand up for the mass number of our constituents who really share a lot more in common than what are different between us.

So there was a lot packed in.

And first of all, I love a matcha latte every now and then.

Sometimes it tastes

not kicking the matcha.

No, you have to be tired.

Not kicking our friends in Brooklyn either.

No, I love Brooklyn and i love trees it's just this perception right i think people throw around working class voters they throw around kitchen table issues which is a phrase that drives me absolutely bananas or things like you know economic populism and i raise this because i think some of the issue is that a lot of democrats or people out there who are fighting for all of these good things don't really know how to talk about it in a way that doesn't sound like it's off of a dnc one pager and like it's how people actually talk.

So what do you think about that?

And how should people who are trying to connect with voters, trying to connect with their neighbors, talk about these issues in a human-speak way?

Look, I started out my career not as a lawyer, not as a city council member or as a member of Congress, but on construction sites.

I was a labor organizer helping bring construction workers together to take on oftentimes really wealthy real estate developers and huge corporations that were screwing them over.

And on a Texas construction site, you oftentimes have 200 people, mostly guys with about 200 different opinions, different races and ethnicities and backgrounds.

And we had to figure out that amongst everybody's differences, usually people's economic interests could bring people together.

And that's, I think, how the Democratic Party should be thinking.

And we should be talking about saying, look, the folks at the top that are working the least and making the most can afford to give everybody else here a raise.

And we've seen it a ton of times when you're organizing in the union movement that the guys at the top, the rich real estate developers who think the rules don't apply to them, who don't want to give people a raise, who are self-interested, they try to exploit immigration status or race or find ways to divide us.

But we can bring all those folks together around saying, folks deserve a raise.

People should be able to retire.

Your kids should be able to afford to go to school after you've been out here working all of these long hours.

And I think if we're talking to people like we talk to them on a construction site, then we will be way better off as a party.

I even have talked about the construction sites test, where if Democrats are trying to figure out whether we should be talking about an issue or not, we should ask ourselves, should somebody that is pulling 712s on a construction site, will this issue make a difference in that person's life?

Would they give a shit?

And if the answer is no, then maybe it shouldn't be the primary issue.

If the answer is yes, then we should absolutely be fighting to make sure you get a raise and can afford your house and can afford to live.

And I think that's how we win back voters' trust and then really start beating back the authoritarianism problem that we're dealing with right now.

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