Democrats Actually Win Something with Chris Hayes and David Plouffe

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Speaker 4 Ladies and gentlemen, it is Wednesday, November 5th. This is the Weekly Show Podcast.
My name is is Jon Stewart. And are you hearing something in my voice? You may be hearing something in my voice.

Speaker 4 In my voice, maybe something called hope.

Speaker 5 A little bit of hope.

Speaker 4 Hasn't been in there in a while. Last night's election was the kind of election night that I haven't seen since I was a kid.

Speaker 4 It harkened back to those old election nights when the polls would close at eight and they'd be like, okay, that's it.

Speaker 4 And I know all the networks had gotten their election teams and their political pundits and they'd gotten all the desks set up in the election center center and the magic TV and all that.

Speaker 4 And they were ready to go for, you know, the eight to 12 hours that they were going to do to try and discern the closeness. And it was just a fucking

Speaker 4 eight o'clock at close. And at 8:30, they're like, yep, we're calling it.

Speaker 4 Clear, decisive,

Speaker 4 really, I thought, positive results all across the board. Mikey Sherrill, Spanberger, Mom Donnie, Prop 50.

Speaker 4 You know, even these races in Georgia and everywhere else, it turns out, and again, I am not a political consultant.

Speaker 4 And by the way, we're going to have on a really smart political consultant and a political analyst.

Speaker 4 But it may be that

Speaker 4 when the President of the United States tweets out a video of him dumping diarrhea on the American public, they find that slightly dismissive. And maybe that's what all this is.

Speaker 4 I don't know about the argument of populism versus security state Democrats or moderate Democrats, all that, but I think I do know that the arrogance and dismissiveness and chaos and incompetence of this administration's first year has to have a result.

Speaker 4 It has to. And it seems like it does.

Speaker 4 It seems like a direct result of those.

Speaker 4 uh elements within our society but other people know better let's let's talk to them let's bring out our guests and dive right into this sunny day that has been in a sea of monsoons.

Speaker 4 So let's go right in.

Speaker 4 Oh, so on this very historic day here in the tri-state area, we are delighted to be joined by Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's all-in with Chris Hayes, author of the number one Times best-selling book, The Sirens Call.

Speaker 4 That's New York Times.

Speaker 4 That's no bullshit Times.

Speaker 4 That's no Times from around the world.

Speaker 4 And David Pluff, campaign manager, White House senior advisor to Barack Obama, last 10 plus years spent time as an executive in the corporate and non-profit worlds, but he's back now talking politics with us.

Speaker 4 Gentlemen, I just did people are, I don't know if they're listening to this or if they can see it on the YouTube. I just lifted out of my chair.

Speaker 5 That kind of night.

Speaker 4 Last night was a night that Democrats have not had.

Speaker 4 Even in 2020, it wasn't that even when it ultimately, days later, it was determined that Biden had won, and then a few people rolled out into the streets and San Francisco and danced.

Speaker 4 Last night was just one of those crisp, clean, polls close, they win more than normal.

Speaker 4 Done. Chris, what was your impression last night?

Speaker 5 It was exactly my feeling, too. And it's funny because the outcome.

Speaker 5 There's the outcome and then the benchmark you had for the outcome going in. Like

Speaker 5 it's funny you mentioned 2020 because because in retrospect, when all was said and done, it was a big,

Speaker 5 they won the national popular vote by four and a half points. They won both houses.
It didn't feel that way that night.

Speaker 5 There was a bunch of polling that had suggested like Sarah Gideon is going to beat Susan Collins by eight points. And that didn't happen.
There was a bunch of house races.

Speaker 5 So there was this expectation and then reality. Last night, the expectation was, you know, Spamberger wins.
fairly easily, Cheryl in a neck and neck race.

Speaker 5 You know, we think Mom Donnie's ahead and we think Prop 50. And it was was just boom, boom, boom, boom.
You know, 15-point victory in Virginia. Cheryl absolutely waxes Chitterelli.

Speaker 5 Mom Dani's called at 9.45. California is called at pole closing.
Right. So that was, I totally agree that like

Speaker 5 that, that just emotional experience of the night was, was something that we haven't had in a while, where it was just like clean sweep. Dems win and they outrun the polls.
I would also note.

Speaker 4 That was the other thing that did that. It's, I don't know if you guys are gambling men.
Certainly, I don't recommend it. But

Speaker 4 in football, man, it's there's always there's, you know, you can take the money line, you can go with the spread. They beat the spread.
They beat the spread. Exactly right.

Speaker 4 David, when was the last time you can recall the Democrats beating the spread?

Speaker 6 It's 06, 08. Because even though 18 was a good year, Republicans won a bunch of the center races that were targets.
You know, the Florida governors. You really have to go back to 06 and 08,

Speaker 6 where it was, you know, won everything, won everything with massive margins, and cases historical, turned around trends like Pasea County, New Jersey is the best example of this. You know,

Speaker 6 a county that's been reliably Democrat that actually Trump won in 24. Cheryl won, but I think like 15 points, a lot of Hispanic vote there,

Speaker 6 and won everywhere. I mean, Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania won over

Speaker 6 60% of the vote

Speaker 6 statewide, and these weren't close, right? And so

Speaker 6 it was as dominating a night as Democrats have had in almost a generation.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was amazing. And I guess the question next for both of you is, how will they squander it?

Speaker 4 How will it all go to nothing? How will they piss this away?

Speaker 5 Chris! Well, so look, I think there's basically three elements to the victories, right?

Speaker 5 There's what we call thermostatic public opinion, which is when one party has a White House, the other party tends to do better in the off-year elections. Right.

Speaker 5 You know, it's why the, you know, Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell won in 2009, right? A year into Barack Obama, they won Jersey and Virginia.

Speaker 4 Are those thermostatic things, are there metrics for that? Is that more because they're also not related again to sports, but there are a lot of correlations that are not causation.

Speaker 4 Is there a sense that thermostatic opinion is also

Speaker 5 caused? It is caused.

Speaker 5 I mean, there's a pretty good political science literature that suggests people tend to look at the party in the White House as the, you know, doing stuff, doing too much, doing stuff they don't like.

Speaker 5 It reminds them of why they opposed them in the first place so right it's a pretty reliable thing so you've got that at the base layer then you've got like donald trump is really unpopular it's not just how dare you how dare you sir how could i say this they're gonna cancel me no it's you know it's uh he's at 39

Speaker 5 you know that the the national mood is dyspeptic and disgruntled and the wrong track numbers are through the roof and then the third layer is

Speaker 5 what can democrats control right those first two things they don't make that the third layer is candidate recruitment messaging campaigns.

Speaker 5 And I think on that, you know, that's the place you're talking about how they're going to screw it up or how they're going to build on it. That's the place where they can control stuff.

Speaker 5 And I think they did a lot that was right last night. And I'm curious, David's a professional here that

Speaker 5 meant that Spamberger won by 15 and not by eight. And that Cheryl won by, you know, 12, I think, and not by six.
And that Mom Donnie got over 50%. They could have won those races.

Speaker 5 to the point you're making about being the spread by less with worse campaigns.

Speaker 5 And if you look at the Attorney General in Virginia, who won by five points and had a pretty brutal scandal, it reminds you that it does matter what you're doing in that campaign.

Speaker 5 It doesn't matter who the candidate is. And so that's the place to think about how to build on or what to avoid if you're the Democrat.

Speaker 4 But how much does it matter? You know, to that point, David, when you got a candidate in Virginia who's, you know, got messages like, I'd like to kill all these people, you know, generally that is.

Speaker 5 I seriously want their child to die.

Speaker 4 I seriously want them to die. You know, that's, I don't want to say box office poison, but generally that is not considered a positive closing message.

Speaker 4 But as far as the professionals go, look, and by the way, I still believe it. I think the Democrats are still a mess.
I truly believe they're a mess just because there is

Speaker 4 what this shows to me is, again, there is this underlying potential energy within the United States of America that is much larger than I think any of us could have imagined.

Speaker 4 And channeling that energy directionally will be the challenge for whoever wants to harness it.

Speaker 4 I still don't believe they're doing that, but tell me why all those things came together in the manner that Chris was just describing.

Speaker 6 Well, I think just to build on Chris, so, you know, this year's a long time, but as we look at 26, I think the atmosphere should be just as good, if not better, for Democrats.

Speaker 6 It's not just Trumpets that they're in complete control and people are deeply dissatisfied, right?

Speaker 6 So I think where where the campaign comes in is the quality of the candidate is always the most important thing. And I'll come to that in a minute.

Speaker 6 But the pizza messaging, are you maximizing the critique against Republican opponent as much as you can?

Speaker 6 So for instance, all these House Republicans, I guarantee you, by the summer and fall, are going to suggest somehow they oppose some of the stuff Trump did and they're independent.

Speaker 6 So the job of Democrats writ large is to make them own their weakness and their fealty to Trump.

Speaker 6 And then the big part where I agree with you, John, where the Democrats are still too much of a mess, is the Republican brand is terrible. We kind of have a market failure.

Speaker 6 80% of the country doesn't like either option.

Speaker 6 So if we become stronger, if we have candidates who seem different, they're good at critiquing Republicans, but also seem that they want to challenge the status quo and say the Democratic Party's gotten some things wrong.

Speaker 6 They come from interesting backgrounds.

Speaker 6 You know, they're willing to say, like, I think the strongest Democratic candidates next year will probably be people who say, look, listen, if I win my House or Senate race, I'm not going to vote for any member of the current Democratic leadership.

Speaker 6 Like that says to voters, this is somebody different. So I think that Cheryl and Spanberger, you know, they've been in Congress for a while, but they ran as outsiders in 2018.

Speaker 6 You know, they were these national security, never ran for office people. Madami, obviously, very different.
So there's a recipe there. The other thing is they were just relentlessly on message.

Speaker 6 They didn't get distracted by anything.

Speaker 6 It was all about cost of living. Now, they're now executives.
So their biggest challenge will actually be delivering on what they promised as mayor and governor. But I think, John, I agree with you.

Speaker 6 And for me, I think about the 26 and 28, and I'm most concerned about this. We have five Supreme Court justices that are over 65.
So between now and 2040, let's say,

Speaker 6 three, four, five, like the court could go back to being more progressive 5-4, or it could go 8-1.

Speaker 6 And we live in a time where even if we win the White House and hold it, which is super hard to do, I'm sure we'll talk about that later.

Speaker 6 If the Republicans control the Senate, they will not confirm a replacement for Alito or Thomas. So where do we have to go?

Speaker 6 We have to get to the point where we reliably gain and maintain power and hold the White House and the Senate.

Speaker 6 And we have a long way to go because Virginia and New Jersey are not Iowa and Ohio and the Sunbelt.

Speaker 6 So that's where we have to get to as a party is can we maximize Republican weakness, but also maximize Democratic strength? You put those things together.

Speaker 6 That's how we become more competitive in more places, which for the fate of the nation is what we have to do.

Speaker 4 So, it feels to me, and this is going to be a complete

Speaker 4 projection or speculation, that this election was about Republican weakness for the most part. It turns out

Speaker 4 dumping diarrhea on people that are protesting from a plane or throwing a great Gatsby party in the middle of food stamp benefits running out may not be,

Speaker 4 may be viewed as smug and condescending by much of the electorate. So there's that.
But what I hear on television is: should they go progressive or should they go,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 security state, moderate? And in New York City, it worked in progressive, but in Virginia and New Jersey,

Speaker 4 those people are more normal. And you're going to want normal people to do normal things.
And it all seems like bullshit to me in the sense of the simplicity of this.

Speaker 4 A government that very simply says, we haven't been delivering to what are clearly the needs of the people.

Speaker 4 And whatever those needs may be, we must deliver that in a much simpler, more agile, and fast-moving way.

Speaker 4 And that's where the Democrats, to me, have failed, whatever they're saying, whether they're saying, I want a government-run grocery store, or I'm going to make sure that I lower your property taxes.

Speaker 4 It's knowing what the people you purport to represent seem to need.

Speaker 4 And that's where I think they actually can learn a lot of lessons from Trump,

Speaker 4 who doesn't give a shit about

Speaker 4 the ways he just looks at it and goes, I'm going to do that. Now, he's done it incompetently and ham-handedly and dismissively and condescendingly.
But what do you think of that formulation?

Speaker 4 David, I'll start with you.

Speaker 6 Well, I think, yeah, there's no question that there's the, listen, we should always listen to the voters. And the voters have been very clear.

Speaker 6 Their sense is the Democratic Party writ large has not been focused enough on the problems that they care most about.

Speaker 6 And even when we do pass legislation, that's like the easy part in a way. It's like, how do you execute on it? How do you make it timing? Mom Donnie is a great example of this.

Speaker 6 I mean, he's talked repeatedly in his campaign about going after government waste.

Speaker 6 The video that really propelled his campaign in the beginning was at the halal truck where he talked about cutting regulations. It was brilliant.
But John, I will say this.

Speaker 6 So I think Spamberger and Cheryl, last night in those states, it wasn't just about Republican weakness. They were kind of, they were not just like a safe alternative, but kind of a good alternative.

Speaker 6 So that's what we want. But I actually think, Democrats, there's a big opening here.
We have fallen into a trap where there's basically any kind of attack on government we feel like we have to defend.

Speaker 6 And if you go back to like Obama and Clinton, two Democratic presidents, Obama, I was part of this.

Speaker 6 We're going to look at every regulation on the books and get rid of ones that don't make sense anymore. And there were thousands of them.
Clinton reorganizing government. Was that good politics?

Speaker 6 Yes, but they both understood: hey, we're Democrats. We believe that government can play a constructive force in people's lives.
I think Mondami gets this.

Speaker 6 So why don't we be the first person to say when it's being inefficient or too slow?

Speaker 6 That's not going to, we're not going to tolerate that. By the way, Daniel Lurie in San Francisco, the new mayor, is a good example of this.

Speaker 4 Great example of this.

Speaker 6 You know, focusing on things like crime and homelessness, but also cutting tons of red tape. Like there's a saying that I think is a, I think it's Abner Mikva, the legendary Illinois political figure.

Speaker 6 I think it's associated with him, which is sometimes Democrats come across as if they

Speaker 6 love humanity and hate people. And we need Democrats where like people, they're kids only in first grade one time.
They're renting this house one time in their life.

Speaker 6 They're trying to open a small business. We should be in an athletic posture,

Speaker 6 you know, saying that we are going to deliver for you. And there's a huge opportunity there because I think the Republicans have not shown skill there and they don't give a shit about people.

Speaker 4 So if we care about people, no, they give a shit about certain people.

Speaker 5 So I wouldn't say that.

Speaker 4 They don't give it. They love America.
They just hate about 52% of the people living there. It's not, I don't think it's that they don't give a shit about anybody.

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Speaker 6 So, here's my point. I think Democrats have enormous runway on a lot of issues.

Speaker 6 If we will seize it, and by the way, to your point, not get caught up into this left versus right, democratic socialist versus right of center.

Speaker 6 If we can say all comers can come, probably the one thing that unifies us is those Democrats will all believe: A, we should not be on autocracy, and two, we should have an economy that works for working people, we should be focused on that.

Speaker 6 And everything else, to me, let them be who they are and talk about the stuff they care about. And if we do that and deliver,

Speaker 6 I think we can really, I don't want to overstate it because we live in a divided country, but is it possible over the next decade, we could get back to being competitive in five or six more places than we are today and have a better chance than we do today about winning 50% of the vote in those places?

Speaker 6 It's possible, in part, because the Republicans are so weak and they're trapped with Trump. They are not going to change who they are until at least 2030.
So we've got to fully maximize this moment.

Speaker 4 Opportunity exists. And, Chris, to that point, what most encourages me is the energy that comes from younger people who seem to understand this on a molecular level that the

Speaker 4 uh and the hakeem jeffries uh chuck schumer leadership appears to be repring uh representing democrats right after you know the republicans released their contract for america like they seem to be of a very different

Speaker 4 time style and and and purpose do Are you hopeful that they have the energy, the understanding, maybe not through the National Democratic Committee, but on a grassroots level?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think it's interesting to look at the polling last night to the extent we have exit polling on young voters, right? Because

Speaker 5 there was this story that was told about, you know, the sort of rising tide of the Obama electorate and this was going to be this kind of permanent, quasi-permanent majority.

Speaker 5 And actually, you know, people poo-poo that now, but it actually it did produce like a series of national majorities.

Speaker 5 The Electoral College kind of messed with that, but it was actually a pretty successful coalition for a pretty long time in some senses. Last election, famously, young men broke for Trump.

Speaker 5 There's this tendency in political punditry where we have one dot here and one dot here, and we draw a line and then we just keep drawing it all the way.

Speaker 5 Like, well, at this rate, 99% of young men will vote for Donald Trump in eight years. Like, well, it doesn't work that way, right? So last night, what did we see?

Speaker 5 We saw young men breaking for the Democrat by huge amounts, both Cheryl and Spanberger by double digits, 15, 20 points, Momdani plus 40.

Speaker 5 So, what does that say? It says that to me,

Speaker 5 this sort of anti-establishment or like distrust of the incumbent, right? Like, the system's not working for me. It also says to me, young people are some of the most exposed to higher prices.

Speaker 5 Like, they are, they are almost definitively some of the most price-sensitive voters. That's right.
Remember when I was 24? Like, I was a lot more sensitive at 24 than I'm a 24.

Speaker 4 I hadn't been described as price sensitive, but yes, I have been.

Speaker 5 I was cheap as hell.

Speaker 4 Sort of like a shellfish allergy. You're a little price.
You're gluten and price sensitive.

Speaker 5 So like, to David's point, it's like the voters have been very clear on this, right? Like the system, the cost of living, things are too unaffordable. I can't get ahead.

Speaker 5 I'm concerned about the economy. That is also the sweet spot of overlap of the different democratic factions.
It's also the thing that young people are most focused on.

Speaker 5 Like, and, you know, the last sort of element of this, which I think Momdani really got, and this I think is a harder thing to kind of spread around, is just in the way Barack Obama

Speaker 5 sort of, the people, he and the people around him were sort of generally native to new forms of communication. Momdani has been that way.
And I think that matters a lot.

Speaker 5 There's a certain kind of charisma and comfort that he had with particular forms that reach younger people that was part of that really genuinely electric

Speaker 5 thing that he put together in New York City. That's a little harder to replicate, but you've already seen like James Tallarico in Texas,

Speaker 5 you know, Jeff Jackson, who's kind of a much more centrist figure. He's the attorney general in North Carolina, experimenting with forms that are similar from different ideological profiles, right?

Speaker 5 But speaking to young people and to people everywhere in the same way.

Speaker 4 So I want to, I think that's an unbelievable point. And I want to talk about that a little bit because sometimes I think we confuse the medium with the message.

Speaker 4 And when they talk about, well, he understood TikTok or he understood Snapchat or he understood Instagram.

Speaker 4 But what he understood more than anything was how to connect like a human being with people, whether that, if I feel like if Momdani had been doing fireside radio chats, they would have been successful.

Speaker 4 And I do think it reminds me of years ago, the news magazine show 2020 decided they were going to appeal to young people. And so they did 2020 downtown.

Speaker 4 And 2020 downtown was 2020 with John Kiñones wearing a black leather jacket and standing outside. And the young people were like, who is this whipper snapper in a black leather jacket?

Speaker 4 And that gets to, I think, the next part of the conversation, which is, David, it's tell me about the consultant class that talks about this, because I think we make the mistake of confusing these new forms

Speaker 4 with what is at the heart of this, which is politicians that connect with human beings in a real way, whether it's face to face or on the radio or on television, because they love these people, they care about these people, and they are not focus grouped to within an inch of their lives so as to appear false.

Speaker 6 Yeah, well, listen, historically, and I think that's even more true today with the social media world, the most successful candidates are authentic to who they are, who have a very good idea about why they're running for the office they're running for, have core beliefs.

Speaker 6 And what a good campaign team does is just, okay, let's figure out the best way to communicate that and then acquire the votes we need to win.

Speaker 6 So, candidate quality and their message is always at the top of the pyramid.

Speaker 6 But Chris's point's important, and obviously, he has spent a lot of time researching and writing about the attention economy.

Speaker 6 So, the reality is a candidate and campaign team who says, we're going to really think about TikTok and YouTube first, but they're a crappy candidate with a poor message, they're going to be unsuccessful.

Speaker 6 But if you're a good candidate with a good message to fully maximize your votes, you do need to think, what is your campaign? It used to be, if I have something to say, what speech am I going to give?

Speaker 6 What interview am I going to give?

Speaker 6 I'm not saying you don't do those things today. The most important thing to do is, what is my TikTok video and piece of content? What's my YouTube piece of content?

Speaker 6 What's my content on Instagram, Reels, Reddit? And those are not the same. This is what Mondami understood.
And I think it was, he didn't have to go to school, Chris. He knew this.

Speaker 6 This is how he lived his life.

Speaker 4 But certainly Mikey Sheryl and Spanberger in particular do not.

Speaker 6 Mo, but they had active TikTok, they had active YouTube.

Speaker 5 So my point is.

Speaker 4 But the content on TikTok is the content that you generate. It's like the daily show.

Speaker 4 The daily show can be on TikTok or Instagram or any, but that's not the content. The content is what we generate on the show.

Speaker 5 And how good you are at communicating. That's right.

Speaker 6 But if you, right. So, so, so none of the tactics and sort of, you know, multi-platform strategy work without a flawed content strategy or product.

Speaker 6 But my point is we do need as a party and Democratic candidates to think more through the, what is my windshield as I think about winning elections?

Speaker 6 It's everything. It's still TV ads.
It's still interviews, but it's TikTok and YouTube first. And I think that

Speaker 6 the better we do that, because there's about 40% of the electorate, that's the only way they get information. They never seek out information about politics.
They encounter it.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 they, so we just have to make sure, you know, and TikTok's particularly challenging because you cannot pay for political ads. So it's all organic.
It's relying on influencers.

Speaker 6 I think one of the things Mondami's campaign did well, you know, they basically understood that we have to create content every day across these platforms.

Speaker 6 Now, to your point, John, that doesn't matter if it's not compelling. Like some of his most compelling content wasn't the policy.
It's how he interacted with people.

Speaker 6 This is a guy that clearly loves the city of New York that came through and loved the people in New York. And there's no rather than a message.

Speaker 5 But his message was really simple. On affordability.

Speaker 6 It was great. And he found different ways to bring that.
So let's flip this though.

Speaker 4 Because this, I think, is a really interesting

Speaker 4 discussion. We're talking about how candidates need to exploit.

Speaker 4 all manner of communication to try and get their message out and that they have teams that are there to help them design those messages for each things. Let's look the other way.
Can they take

Speaker 4 really good candidates and ruin them? And that's, you know, and I want to talk specifically about Kamalaris because I spoke with her last week on the podcast.

Speaker 4 My sense of

Speaker 4 what happened in that campaign is, and that's just one example,

Speaker 4 is that the strategists and consultants and pollsters

Speaker 4 basically wrung every last bit of light out of the eyes of what is a compelling and smart person.

Speaker 4 And I think continue to do a disservice. And David, you were there.

Speaker 4 Have these sort of, has the consultant, strategist, political complex

Speaker 4 destroyed destroyed in some measure the talent and potential of many of these really good candidates. And does it continue to do that? Right.

Speaker 6 Well, I was there. So what I'll say is, you know,

Speaker 6 and, you know, she was on your show, John. She wrote a book.
I mean, it's pretty clear she ran the campaign she wanted to run.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 everybody, and I get it, like, if this ad or this tactic or this line had been different, she would have won. Let me just tell you, I've worked in politics a long time.

Speaker 6 I retired, I came back for 100 days.

Speaker 6 This was steep headwinds. Deeply unpopular Democratic president.

Speaker 5 No question.

Speaker 6 Unhappiness about the economy. In every battleground state, voters gave Trump's first term approval in the economy 50 plus.
Okay.

Speaker 6 The border out of control. So, and this is, remember, Kamala Harris, she ran for president in 2020 and didn't even get to Iowa.
Okay.

Speaker 6 You know, so my view is we could have done a bunch of stuff differently.

Speaker 6 The biggest thing I think, and I don't think Trump would have bit, was, you know, after the first debate, which was, you know, kind of her best moment.

Speaker 6 And I think all that did was get a bunch of voters back who had left Biden, but it got us in the race. And we, you said we'd like the debate again.

Speaker 6 We probably should have that night said, we will debate on October 20th on Fox. Make it hard for him to say no.
We should have done that because we needed big moments.

Speaker 6 But at the end of the day, should she have separated more with Biden? I think in the book she says, I certainly thought she should have. But, you know, she's talked about this.
She's a loyal person.

Speaker 6 And the reality of that question would be, I would have liked her to go as far as she could. I would have liked her to say, I didn't think he should run.
And I think he mishandled the border.

Speaker 6 And I think we didn't pay enough attention to prices. None of that stuff happened.
She wasn't going to say that. So I just think we need to live in a world.
But here's your point.

Speaker 6 The best campaigns I have either been part of or seen. are, by the way, sometimes they lose, sometimes they win, are candidates who know exactly who they are,

Speaker 6 the issues that they're running on.

Speaker 6 There may be issues that aren't aren't popular, but they're going to say, I'm going to stick by my values.

Speaker 6 And basically, the campaign is there to support them. And I thought Kamala Harris ran a great race under the circumstances.

Speaker 6 You know, probably you would have said, by the way, the thing that struck me about that race was in the battleground states, it was closer than the erosion.

Speaker 6 I wasn't paying much attention in that campaign to what was happening in New York or New Jersey or Connecticut. And when I started to see those numbers, I'm like, we're in deep trouble.

Speaker 6 And I think why she did a little bit better in the battlegrounds is they saw her directly talking about the economy a lot, prices a lot.

Speaker 6 I'll be a different leader than Joe Biden, but it wasn't enough. So at the end of the day, I think we should,

Speaker 6 that was going to be a tough race to win. Could we have won it? Potentially.
I think the key thing is as we think about the House races, Senate races, the White House in 28, keeping it in 32,

Speaker 6 the most important thing will be, are we putting forth candidates that capture people's imagination, that seem authentic, that are willing to challenge every status quo, Republican, the status quo, and Democrats.

Speaker 6 Are they offering ideas that people can believe in? And to Chris's point, can they excite people? I mean, the most exciting candidate generally wins. Trump was an exciting candidate.

Speaker 6 Obama was an exciting candidate. Clinton, Kennedy, particularly in the presidential race, because this is what's interesting about the moment we're in.

Speaker 6 I spent most of my life in politics where we did better as a party in high turnout elections. That's completely changed.

Speaker 5 Totally.

Speaker 6 Not last night. Not, well, but if you look at the the turnout in some of these places, it was quite high.

Speaker 4 No, that's what I'm saying. That turnout was high, and they did better.

Speaker 6 But it was still less than a presidential year. So, our big sort of wave in front of us that we have to somehow crest is in 28, there's going to be a much bigger turnout.
It's a presidential year,

Speaker 6 and that's going to be harder for us to navigate unless we have a candidate that is exciting, that people believe in, who's saying things that they wouldn't expect necessarily a Democrat to say.

Speaker 6 If all those things happen, we can do this. But, candidate quality is at at the top, John.
Right.

Speaker 4 But the point, David, I'm trying to make is, is the machine that we have designed to create candidates and their campaigns antithetical to exactly what David just said.

Speaker 4 David just said the most exciting candidate. But the truth is that the machine that is around candidate selection and promotion and campaigns is risk averse.

Speaker 4 It's the kind of thing that says, okay, you're going to, depending on what it is, the candidates that are throwing a Hail Mary can say whatever they want.

Speaker 4 That's just why I loved when Al Sharpton would run.

Speaker 4 You knew he wasn't winning. Boy, was he going to make that debate fun.

Speaker 4 Hey, do you guys follow the news?

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Speaker 5 How dare they?

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Speaker 4 So I want to ask Chris to David's point, which I don't dispute, I don't dispute the types of candidates that he's talking about are being successful. What I'm asking is,

Speaker 4 is the mechanism and machine and factory that we've set up around them,

Speaker 4 isn't that designed to actually wring what David's talking about out of the process?

Speaker 5 So I think that there's two distinct points I think to make here. So one is, and let me start with a defense of political consultants because I'm not one, so I'm not just talking my book,

Speaker 5 which is to say, you know, there's this great line in James Q. Wilson wrote this famous book about bureaucracy, right? And he's, you know, everyone hates bureaucracy, right?

Speaker 5 But he's like, what is bureaucracy? Well, bureaucracy is the thing that allows a bunch of 19-year-olds to

Speaker 5 run an aircraft carrier, right? And the point of bureaucracy, right, is that

Speaker 5 you have the normal distribution of talent, okay? You don't get to just be like, well, only the best people are going to run an organization.

Speaker 5 No, you're going to have some that are good, some that are bad.

Speaker 5 And what a bureaucracy does is it figures out how to take the normal distribution of talent inputs and try to make a functioning institution. So think about

Speaker 5 fucking institution. Right.
So think about politics at scale, right? Like, yes, you want to recruit good candidates, but also there'll be some that are good. There'll be some that are amazing.

Speaker 5 There'll be some that are not so good, right? So you're dropping into a whole bunch of places at scale. Think of all those state races, all those like contestants.

Speaker 5 You need some kinds of mechanisms that are going to work across that distribution.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 that's an inescapable part of the enterprise. Now, the place where I think this critique is true is on this question of risk aversion.
And right now, to David's point, Democrats have to look into

Speaker 5 the void, which is the Democratic Party brand is unpopular. You are playing from behind at a certain point.
If you're playing from ahead, you can be more

Speaker 5 risk averse. If you're playing from behind, you got to throw the ball downfield.

Speaker 5 And so I think the Democratic Party and consultant class has to internalize this idea of taking risks because you are behind, because the brand is not very good right now.

Speaker 5 And that means not just conserving what you have. You are not up a few scores with five minutes left.

Speaker 4 You're saying don't play prevent defense.

Speaker 5 Don't play prevent defense. And I do think, and look, there are races where you should play prevent defense.

Speaker 5 Like I would have not told Spam Burger, hey, you should do five debates down this stretch in the last two weeks. Absolutely not.
You're up 10 points. Don't do that, right?

Speaker 5 But generally, I think the risk calculation of the Democratic Party, its leadership generally is too risk And let me just say one last thing. The shutdown is a great example.

Speaker 5 They have pursued a fairly high leverage and high risk strategy around the shutdown. And I think

Speaker 5 it has redounded to their benefit. And I think a more risk-averse strategy, which is people are going to blame us.
We're the party out of power. It's going to be bad, all this stuff.

Speaker 5 These elections happened against that backdrop. I think

Speaker 5 the higher risk, higher leverage strategy they

Speaker 5 pursued has been rewarded. And I think that should be a lesson for everyone about what your general risk profile is.

Speaker 6 Yeah, can I just say two things, John? So I agree with that. I think, you know, last night, again, couldn't have gone any better for the Democratic Party.

Speaker 6 Amazing night.

Speaker 6 I think one of the risks is there will be a sense that things are better than they are. Right.
So we have to go.

Speaker 5 So now we can get conservative. Right.

Speaker 6 So I will say back on your point.

Speaker 5 Oh, man. I'm going to, oh, all right.

Speaker 4 You finish up, and then I'm going to yell at both of you.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but I think that the one place where I think there, it is, I mean, data makes us all smarter, right? We use it in the media business, we use it in the private sector, we use it in politics.

Speaker 6 I think there has been this

Speaker 6 movement towards like trying to evaluate everything you do through the cost per vote. And, you know, you do ad testing.

Speaker 6 So you create 50 different ads you could run, whether they be social media or TV. And, you know, one is a 3.2 out of five and one's 3.5.
So should we run a 3.5?

Speaker 6 And I think we've really fucked ourselves in that regard. And I think that's where some caution comes in.
Because I think the other thing about best campaigns are

Speaker 6 you're trying to tell a story here. And the forest is more important than the trees.

Speaker 6 And you really have to think about, I think, not necessarily, you kind of got to go a little bit more with your gut.

Speaker 6 It's like Luke Skywalker, you know, in the X-Wing, you know, basically puts away the technology and just goes with his gut, right? And I think we could use more of that, right?

Speaker 6 Because, and, but here's the other thing, John. Plenty of consultants.
I've made plenty of mistakes. There's some good consultants, as Chris said, some bad consultants.

Speaker 6 But the best candidates also don't get bullied around by their consultant teams. They say, I'm not going to say that or I want to say that.

Speaker 6 So your job is to figure out, like Barack Obama would say this to me all the time. I'm going to say the thing you don't think I should say.
So let's figure out the best way to say it.

Speaker 4 So let me, let me, here's my visceral reaction to. to parts of the conversation.
One is this idea that because the Democrats are in the wilderness, they must take risks.

Speaker 4 But once they take those risks and gain a little bit more of a foothold, they must once again retreat.

Speaker 5 No, I don't think they should. The strategy is worried they're going to be tempted to, but they shouldn't.

Speaker 4 Okay. But the second part of it is

Speaker 4 this.

Speaker 4 Democrats, I think, do really well running on the audacity of hope.

Speaker 4 And Democrats fuck things up by governing on the timidity of what they believe is possible through the rule change that are the norm.

Speaker 4 The American government is complex to the extent that if you want to stop something from happening,

Speaker 4 there are enough poison pills in whatever

Speaker 4 Amendment A of 13. You could make it so that we can't do anything.
But it's also complex enough that the truth is you can find a way to do anything.

Speaker 4 You can subvert those very same things as we see Trump doing with, well, it turns out in 1803, there was an emergency that they declared based on getting a steamboat.

Speaker 4 And so that's why I'm allowed to send the Navy wherever I want. Like,

Speaker 4 it's about imagination and about resilience, but it's about clarity.

Speaker 4 And my fear is this process that we're talking about, this analytics process that is overly reliant on these teams that you discuss, that the very nature of that, you're right.

Speaker 4 Candidates can ignore it,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 when there's something there, generally it will be used. Yeah.
And generally, I think it has gotten too big, too expensive.

Speaker 4 Have you seen

Speaker 4 there is a great video of Mike Donlin being testifying in Congress about what he would have gotten if Joe Biden had been elected. And they were like, so what did he pay you?

Speaker 4 And you know, Mike is very thoughtful. And you think, like, is he thinking or is he like, should I even fucking say this? Like, this is terrible.
He's like, well, what'd they give you?

Speaker 4 Well, you know, I got 4 million for that. And you're you're like for what and then he goes and if they got elected what would you got and he's like i

Speaker 4 would remember maybe another four million and you're like that can't be real and so my point is this thing has its own

Speaker 4 it is a complex that will not cede its own power and i think it is to the detriment of of governance and good candidates Well, I'll take this opportunity to make clear.

Speaker 6 I volunteered for Kamala Harris's campaign and had no win bonus. Okay.

Speaker 6 No, here's what I'd say.

Speaker 5 I actually think Congress pluffed. Yeah, John, I will say this.

Speaker 6 This is actually more about people who've won office than campaigns. And this is not just about consultants.
I do think where the caution has hurt us is like

Speaker 6 we are not as comfortable as we need to be about executing all the levers to gain power, maintain it, and use it. Okay.

Speaker 6 So even after last night, you're seeing some state legislators and states, Democrats, saying, oh, we don't need to change our lines to respond to what the Republicans are doing because, look, we're going to have a great year next year.

Speaker 6 Like,

Speaker 6 we have to gain every House seat we can. By the way, that's not popular with the general electorate necessarily, but it's what's required structurally to make sure we win the House back.

Speaker 6 Like every state, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, everyone where there's a potential to win one, two, three more House seats, we have to do it because the Republicans aren't going to go let up.

Speaker 6 Some Some of the things around Supreme Court reform and other challenges that I think don't necessarily pull well, but at the end of the day, I think we're required to make the progress we need as a country.

Speaker 6 So I think that's where some of the caution comes in when we acquire power.

Speaker 6 And I think that's much to our detriment.

Speaker 6 I think we have to change the way we think about it, which is, you know, we need a lot more Bobby Kennedy in the party than Teddy Kennedy in the party, which is we just need a ruthless MFer who understands none of it matters,

Speaker 6 no matter how good your ideas are,

Speaker 6 and no matter how strong your values are, if you don't win,

Speaker 6 because it's worthless if you don't have the power and for the time you have it, you're trying to deliver for the American people. So I just think that's a place where we have definitely,

Speaker 6 if not failed,

Speaker 6 been far from ideal. I don't know what you think, Chris.

Speaker 5 Well, to John's point, I think the Trump example is so

Speaker 5 illuminating, right?

Speaker 5 Because at one level, like I have these moments where they're like, he does something and I feel like a little bit of like an illicit thrill where it's like, oh, it's like, I guess you're 10% of intel.

Speaker 4 I like it.

Speaker 5 Like, I guess you can just do that. Like, and here's what I would say.

Speaker 5 I think you're, you're identifying something absolutely true in the culture of Democratic Party politics, which I know better than the culture of Republican Party politics, which is a kind of lawyer brain.

Speaker 5 And I say this, you know, married and deeply in love with and admiring of of my wife who's an incredible lawyer and incredible lawyer and by the way strict scrutiny a fine podcast thank you very much i agree so lovely i agree wholeheartedly we love her very much so uh so

Speaker 5 let the record show that chris hayes hold up most strict scrutiny logo no but here's here's here's the point two things have i think i take away from trump right one is oh my god you need lawyers and you need people that respect the law and it's crazy to have this like bulldozer approach.

Speaker 5 But the second thing is there's some place between what Trump's doing and no, we can't do that because it's never been done that way or because there's some memo somewhere that says we can't that allows for more innovation and creativity and aggression.

Speaker 5 I use that word advisedly. in pushing the envelope a little more than Democrats have been comfortable doing.
And that to me is one lesson. You do not want the lawlessness of Trump.

Speaker 5 but what you do, I think, want to copy is a little bit of this spirit of like, it's a malevolent creativity in the case of Stephen Miller, but a little bit of innovation creativity.

Speaker 5 What, you know, to what you were saying, David, where Obama said, I'm going to say it, so figure out how to do it. Like, I want to do this.
What can we do that is within the law

Speaker 5 to get there? Now, maybe it's never been done before, or maybe it. might face a legal challenge, but I want you to tell me how to legally do what I want to do.

Speaker 4 You need a John Yu, somebody that could go in there and go, just call it enhanced interrogation and you'll be fine.

Speaker 5 Well, that illustrates the perils of it, right?

Speaker 5 But I do think, like, again, it's not one or the other, but I do think one of the lessons here is be a little more envelope pushing on some of this stuff when you do have power.

Speaker 4 And the other thing is, because right now we're still talking about, in some respects, the permission structure to do things. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 4 The second part of that argument, and it's one I want to get your guys' opinion opinion on, is what it is you want to do through that permission structure.

Speaker 4 And I think that's another area for Democrats. And I'll use the ACA as an example.
And it's the one I kind of always go back to, which is

Speaker 4 Democrats at their heart, I truly believe this, forget about when, you know, the platitude of healthcare is a right. It's not a right.
It's a commodity.

Speaker 4 And it's a commodity that doesn't serve itself well in the marketplace because there's too many externalities for it to function properly.

Speaker 4 So there's got to be a way to deliver health care to the people. Now, the Democrats go through this incredible process to get the ACA and absolutely got more people insurance.

Speaker 4 But I think if you asked most Democrats at their heart, is that what was wrong with our health care system? They would say no. What they would say is it's too complicated.

Speaker 4 No matter what, even if I have insurance, if I still get sick, I still go bankrupt, 40% of us are spending too much money on insurance premiums to the point where we have to make different decisions about where we're going to eat or what we're going to drive or any of those other things.

Speaker 4 So not just the permission structure being streamlined. Are Democrats also

Speaker 4 not audacious enough in how they fix the problems?

Speaker 4 Is that something that you would also put into the equation? Chris, start with you.

Speaker 5 I think this the subsidy fight right now is a perfect illustration of it, right? Because at one level, the Democrats are on the right side of this, both politically and substantively.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 5 people's premiums are going to go skyrocket.

Speaker 5 We've all seen, we've heard the interviews, we've seen the screenshots, right, of them, and they want to pass these subsidies to stop that price spike from happening, right?

Speaker 5 But then when you take a step back, you're like, wait a second, wait, why is this happening? Well,

Speaker 5 emergency subsidy support was initially a temporary COVID piece of legislation. And when Republicans critique that, they've got a little point.

Speaker 5 You're like, wait a second, there's something wrong with the structure such that what's necessary is more subsidies to keep the cost down. Right.

Speaker 4 And so one of the remember, Chris, though, connect that to why that's in there in the first place, because the reason it's in there in the first place is that was

Speaker 4 the program was designed so that insurance companies wouldn't fight it. It wasn't designed because they thought that was the right thing to do.

Speaker 4 That was the thing they thought they could get away with.

Speaker 5 And I think, and David was there, so I'll let him speak on this.

Speaker 5 But the last thing I'll just say is: one thing that I think you are identifying that I think is a broader question is, and you see it in this question about affordability, right?

Speaker 5 Which shows up everywhere, cost of living, is

Speaker 5 a democratic policy approach that has been to sort of let the market work and then do aftermarket transfers, often subsidies, subsidies for solar, subsidies for electric cars, subsidies for

Speaker 5 insurance premiums, right? Snap is a subsidy, right? These are all different ways of, and I believe in that. I'm a liberal, right?

Speaker 5 But like,

Speaker 5 what would it look like to make policy such that the prices were lower?

Speaker 5 Right? Or people had higher wages so that you didn't have to do all the aftermarket transfer. Now,

Speaker 5 easier to say on a podcast than to get past, honestly, because you're right that

Speaker 5 the thing that killed previous healthcare reform was the insurance industry was dead set against it.

Speaker 5 This stuff is complicated, but I think the thing you're identifying, and I agree with, is the current model in Democratic policy making tends to be we have market distributions and then we have aftermarket transfers and subsidies.

Speaker 4 And that takes with no control.

Speaker 4 So as it skyrockets, a great example, and David, we'll get to your response as well. Like, but here was the Democratic plan on student loan.
Student loan plan was, what if we forgive some of it?

Speaker 5 And everyone's like, sure, I guess, but are we gonna that's the problem isn't that that's the band-aid yeah that doesn't in any way the costs need to come down this is the key thing that's right how three the three pillars of middle class life which are education housing and healthcare right there you go can you go to the doctor child care and healthcare can you live in a place and can you get your kids educated okay and and and child care and that the cost of all those things are too high now you can subsidize against them you could you and that's important but some question of how do we get the costs down how do we keep the costs down, I think is key at a policy level.

Speaker 4 David, jump in.

Speaker 6 Well, first of all, I agree with that. I think as a party, we have rightly spent, I think, most of our economic time talking about not just the creation of jobs, but growth of wages.

Speaker 6 We should keep doing that. But from a math standpoint, if you're a family, you want wage growth, but obviously you want costs to rise either less or ideally come down.

Speaker 6 So I think for the Democrats to view that as a Manhattan project writ large, and that works across ideology, which is: I'm going to basically be on that wall trying to bring down every cost I can for you at the same time we try and grow wages is great.

Speaker 6 I would say, first of all, in the ACA, there is just, I, no one wants to talk about political reality, but the political reality is that's all that could pass, even though we had,

Speaker 4 I've got to disagree with that and say you make political reality.

Speaker 4 And the reason I say that is I was, we did the PACT Act and we did Zadroga, and I was told over and over again what the political realities were.

Speaker 4 And we bent the political realities. We did.

Speaker 5 Well, you did heroic work, right? No, no, no. It wasn't heroic work.
It was.

Speaker 6 And it was effective

Speaker 6 against the odds. No.

Speaker 4 In the trenches with groups that day in and day out were relentless. And so when I'm told, and I can tell you when we were writing that bill,

Speaker 4 how many times we were in a room with VSOs, veteran service organizations, and representatives of veterans within Congress who would negotiate against themselves in the bill based on what they thought they could get done.

Speaker 4 And the hardest part of us working with them was convincing them to fight for what they thought would fix the problem. That was the hardest part.

Speaker 6 Right. Well,

Speaker 6 so here's what I would say. I mean,

Speaker 6 one, that was a time where, while we had Democratic majorities, we had four Democratic senators in the Dakotas, Georgia, Louisiana, Blue Dog districts.

Speaker 6 Like, yeah, maybe there would have been a better way to sell a public option, but I refuse to trash the fucking ACA,

Speaker 6 which has delivered 20 or 25 million people health care. It didn't fix the system, okay?

Speaker 6 But let me tell you, this is important. You want to get back to polling the consultants? Yeah.
Obama takes office in the financial crisis, has to bail out the auto industry, do more with the banks.

Speaker 6 Support for healthcare reform was in the toilet. And that wasn't because of bad storytelling, because the American people were saying, you know what, we sort of want this sort of

Speaker 6 notionally, but like this has nothing to do with me losing my job. And he and a lot of Democrats, who almost all those Democrats then lost their seats, took a tough vote.

Speaker 6 So I disagree with you that the public option could have been passed if we had been smarter or more effective. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it got all we can, and I think it's paid big dividends.

Speaker 6 I do think, given not just general election voters, young voters, everyone's dissatisfied with the status quo. So I think you raise a really important question.

Speaker 6 I think it's whether it's our health care system, our education system, how we're going to do with AI, an aging population, the climate crisis, deficits out of control.

Speaker 6 I think there's more opening for Democrats to be more bold. No question.

Speaker 6 I really do agree with that. And so I hope we see some people running for president who are willing to tackle these things.
And by the way, the other thing is I think our politics is too small.

Speaker 6 Like we should win every election we can.

Speaker 6 And sometimes just because we want to cut taxes for the middle class and they want to cut them for the wealthy, or we want to give people health care, we don't. That's very, very important.

Speaker 6 It's the lives people are living right now. We have to win those debates.

Speaker 6 I also think people are hungry for like there's some scary shit happening out there, and kind of what's your view as a potential president about how to deal with it.

Speaker 6 I think there's an opening for that. So, I think that this is back to your point about caution.

Speaker 6 I'd like to see more Democrats let it rip and say this is the world we ought to live in, even though there's complexities along the way.

Speaker 6 I think we would be well served as a country and a a party if we did that.

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Speaker 5 That thing that David just said about the country we want to live in, like I think about this a lot about the notion of the American dream and how animating it is and how sort of distant it seems from our politics.

Speaker 5 But I think a lot, like, okay, let's just start from like total blank slate. Like, what do you want out of your life? Okay.
Right.

Speaker 5 And, you know, a certain percentage of people want to be, you know, famous and wealthy

Speaker 5 and end up in the sort of top

Speaker 5 percent of the distribution. But I think most people, it's like, I heard Lula give a speech in Brazil once about this, where he basically talked about like,

Speaker 5 you want a weekend barbecue with your friend and family

Speaker 5 where you crack a beer. No, literally.
That's Brazil. Right.
But he talked about like a little bit of space where you can crack a beer and

Speaker 5 your family.

Speaker 5 And like, I think about like, well, let's get back to the most basics.

Speaker 5 What do we want to, what is the thing we want to be achievable, which is like a little bit of space for my family, a good education, healthcare, a job that I don't hate, and a sense that I have a little space to like take a vacation and have people over for a barbecue.

Speaker 5 The thing we think of like the American dream, right? This certain level of comfort, not like luxury, you know, that

Speaker 5 really feels out of touch. It really feels like we have a sorting hat in America.
And

Speaker 5 it sorts you into like drudgery and brute brutal trying to make ends meet, where like a few people end up at at the very top.

Speaker 5 There's a kind of class in between them who are always fearful falling down.

Speaker 5 But I do think that it's useful for both policy and politics to start with that project of like, what do we want to provide to people?

Speaker 4 Boy, that's a nice point.

Speaker 5 As the thing at the end of all this. And it doesn't have to be a yacht.
It's, I want to have a barbecue and crack a beer and have a little bit of space. And like.
that, you know,

Speaker 5 these basic things.

Speaker 4 I think that's an excellent. I think that's an excellent point.
And it speaks to maybe something. Right now, I think we are in a cycle that's a little bit of a lazy Susan of populism.

Speaker 4 And it's either going to be coming around, you know, and Bannon understood this very, very well, which is, you know,

Speaker 4 if I can take my nativist shit and fuse it with a populism that brings in, I'm going to be able to peel away enough working class people in a variety of minorities that I'm going to get my, you know, my anti-woke project and be able to work that through.

Speaker 4 And the Democrats, I think, were slow to recognize.

Speaker 4 They use the language of populism, but without in some respects the understanding of.

Speaker 4 So I'll give you an example. Dave, you speak to this.
Let's tax the billionaires. We shouldn't have billionaires.
And people are like, oh, okay.

Speaker 4 What are you going to use the money for? Like, if they don't believe, well, we're going to do, we're going to forgive student loans. You're like, right.
But if,

Speaker 4 to my point, if you don't tie money to value for people, and that's the missing piece, and it's so frustrating to watch, like going back to the Kamala thing, 107 days was not enough time.

Speaker 4 Okay, it's been a year.

Speaker 4 Where's the non-incremental policies that aren't platitudes that tie money to value? Why is it so hard to develop nationally

Speaker 4 for the Democrats?

Speaker 6 Well, I think it's not going to come nationally. I think it's going to come from individual candidates, right? Mondami had his flavor of that.

Speaker 6 It's not going to come from Washington. It's not going to come from the DNC.
It comes from candidates. And ultimately, our party will be defined by our next nominee.

Speaker 6 But until then, by these candidates in 26. So, John, I'm glad you raised this because there's this, I find it frustrating,

Speaker 6 debate, which is, is it populism or is it abundance? And, you know, the truth is, they swim together. So to your point, people would like to see the wealthy pay more.

Speaker 6 Some of that, a lot of that might even be punitive, which is not fair.

Speaker 6 It's not as strong as it should be because people don't believe that the proceeds will be spent in a way that delivers results for them, right?

Speaker 6 So this is where as a party, if we can be much more focused about that and even being transparent when it's not working, right? So

Speaker 6 if we ask the wealthy to pay more, we can both begin to pay down our deficit, but also invest in things that are working.

Speaker 6 Right now, people aren't sure that the stuff we want to invest in is going to pay dividends.

Speaker 6 And so if you look at a Mondami or Cheryl or Spanberger, just to use them as an example, they're going to try and do some things.

Speaker 6 Now, they're executives, which means half their job is just dealing with bad shit that happens on the exact class.

Speaker 6 But then they're going to have stuff they're going to try and pass, and they'll be successful in some and unsuccessful. But when they are,

Speaker 6 I think one thing we have to do a better job is doing the same kind of intensive storytelling we do during a campaign when we're in government, which is we passed this, and now a month from now, this person was able to get their small business open more fast, or this person was actually able to get, you know, free training to become a plumber, or whatever it is.

Speaker 6 And then, when that stuff's not working, say it's not working. But if we fuse these things together, which is, yes, we would like the wealthy to pay more.

Speaker 6 I don't think it's really, we're still a country, by the way. People want to be wealthy.
They want to be successful. So I'm not sure we should malign it, but say it's just fair for people to pay more.

Speaker 6 So that, and I think Democrats should say, A, we're going to use some of that to pay down deficit, which has gotten dangerously too high, but we're also going to invest in things.

Speaker 6 And it shouldn't be invest in 20 things. It shouldn't be invest in amorphous things.
Be very specific about what you're asking people to pay. I also think, John, we as a party should be better.

Speaker 6 I think there's a sense from voters, I've seen this in research, where they're like, Democrats just seem to want the tax money. And, you know, like it's hard for us to pay the taxes.

Speaker 6 Like, I'd like to see Democrats, again, I think Obama and Clinton were good about this, which is, hey, if we're going to ask you to pay any taxes. We're going to be like so watchful of that.

Speaker 6 We're going to make it pay off. We're going to ask you.

Speaker 5 That's right. Right? Not to be fucking about it.

Speaker 6 To Chris's point, if you pay taxes, you know, you want to go on vacation, you don't want to be in debt, you know, you'd like to be able to big holiday and birthday gifts for your families.

Speaker 6 You know, any kind of taxes that you pay, you know, makes that a little bit harder. And so I think we need to be seen as much more watchful.

Speaker 6 But I do think that if you put together the populist side of the wealthy and big businesses paying more, if we strengthen the other side of that to what end and people believe it a little bit more strongly and clearly and we do good storytelling about that, we will be stronger.

Speaker 6 But I agree with you, it's not as strong as it should be because people question, okay, I'd like the wealthy to pay more, but I'm not sure that that, what am I going to get out of it?

Speaker 6 Other than I'm happy they're paying more.

Speaker 4 We don't connect it to their lives in a way that is, that is meaningful. Well, it's even, I don't know if you've ever seen this, and I, I, I, unfortunately, I can't remember the site that we went on.

Speaker 4 Once went on a site that basically breaks down your tax bill, and it's like 10 different receipt, yeah, taxpayer receipt, 10 different tranches.

Speaker 4 Well, the first five tranches, unless you're very old or very, very poor, you don't see any of it.

Speaker 4 It's military, Medicare, Medicaid, service of the debt, and something else that has really no bearing on the overwhelming majority of people's lives.

Speaker 4 So it's there in stark relief, that disconnect that you're talking about.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, most of it is, I mean, 70% of the budget is social insurance, social security, Medicare, medicaid uh and defense right that's that's that that is what the you know that's kind of it paul krugman is like you know the the the federal government is an insurance corporation with a with with an army right and that's and then everything else comes after and it spends too much of it on middlemen to deliver those services yeah it doesn't ever use its capacity as the largest customer of those things it's like do you guys remember uh you know, when the Biden administration came out and said, hey, everybody, great news.

Speaker 4 The pharmaceuticals are going to let us negotiate the price for 10 drugs.

Speaker 5 10 drugs, right? Yeah.

Speaker 4 And, well, not all 10, like six of them. But then a couple of years from now, we're going to add these other two.
And you're like,

Speaker 4 right, but how many billions do we spend

Speaker 4 subsidizing these companies? And now, like, that's the worst shark tale, shark

Speaker 4 tank deal in history. Like, you know, we're going to give you $100 billion.
And what do we get? Maybe we'll negotiate 10.

Speaker 5 Well, that's also just, I mean, part of that, right?

Speaker 5 Is like a camel is a horse designed by committee right it's like right what the the thing that you get at the end of the process after being in the room and that you know those were brutal negotiations is something that's not as clean and straightforward i think to to to david's point one of the things that's interesting in in the new york city mayor's race right

Speaker 5 these promises that mom danny's made are very like one of them which is freeze the rent okay now this is really interesting because a memorable b 2 million people are in rent regulated apartments in new york that's a lot of people that's not like it's not like some little subsection of people.

Speaker 5 And three, they have the power to do it hilariously because of a law signed by Andrew Cuomo as governor, which no one brought this up in the race, but it is really funny.

Speaker 5 Like they did actually expand rent regulation, which the governor did.

Speaker 5 Now,

Speaker 5 that kind of thing doesn't,

Speaker 5 that's a little bit of a unicorn, okay? But the reason I bring it up is to, to David's point there about like, it's direct, it's memorable, it applies to a lot of people, right?

Speaker 5 Like this is the kind of thing that is a use, is useful both in policy and in governing, right? Now, Eric Adams is trying to stack the rent board so that he sabotages them on the way out.

Speaker 5 And we'll see if he, you know,

Speaker 5 the governing part of it, it's hard. But when you're looking for things that you can say to people of like, this is tangible, it's going to affect a bunch of people.

Speaker 5 And it's, I can say it in a sentence, you know, that's three words, freeze to rent.

Speaker 5 And everyone knew whether they liked it or not.

Speaker 4 If you, some people oppose it. Sure.
Some of it might work. Some of it might work.

Speaker 5 And that's fine. That's fine.

Speaker 5 But they know, right? They know

Speaker 5 what you're doing.

Speaker 4 Yeah. And it does seem like, you know, look, the argument for government is not that it does everything great.

Speaker 4 It's that something's got to be there to offset the power of corporations or fill in the gaps on things that corporations won't take on or can't take on efficiently.

Speaker 4 And specifically, David, is that, so this, let's tie it all together because I know you guys got to go and we're going to get to think and you have jobs and I don't.

Speaker 4 So here's where I think it ties it together. We talk about what's needed, which is this really

Speaker 4 imaginative new rethink about the government's relationship to its citizens and to creating policy and to being specific and to being efficient and to being honest brokers with the taxpayers about the value that they're getting out of the money.

Speaker 4 And that seems like a really important, large project. But if you think about our political world, where's the money?

Speaker 4 The money is in the consultant strategy pollster class. And this wraps us around to the whole thing.

Speaker 4 If our priority

Speaker 4 is the one side of it, why do we spend so much money and so much time and on the other side of it to the neglect of the part that we think will deliver better results for people and better electoral results?

Speaker 4 How has that happened?

Speaker 6 Well, I think John, you know, New York's a good example of this, where I think Mondami is charting an important course. Daniel Lurie is doing the same thing in San Francisco.

Speaker 6 I think Spanberger and Cheryl will as well.

Speaker 6 So I think that that reimagination that is still deeply progressive, that believes there's some things only government can do or there are some things only government can start, and we're going to invest in that, we're going to be transparent about what's working, that should be core to who we are.

Speaker 6 And I think you're going to see more candidates emerge. I do think what is interesting, the more we see, whether it's an Osborne or a Platiner on one end, you know,

Speaker 6 people like Sheryl and Spangenberger who come out of the national security, Mondami, these are all different flavors of Democrats.

Speaker 6 And what I think is exciting about that, I think those people can be successful, but it means more people like them will come out.

Speaker 6 And we'll see more Democratic candidates emerge who hopefully start with.

Speaker 6 Obviously, I deeply oppose what Trump and the Republicans are doing, but I also think we've not done a good enough job as the Democratic Party meeting at the moment, either politically or substantively.

Speaker 6 And I think the rubber really hits the road in executive offices. And legislators, for the most part, can just gas bag their way through their career, right? But executives have to make decisions.

Speaker 6 And that's why I'm excited about, you know, Alluri in San Francisco or Momdami in New York philosophically seem very different, but they seem very focused on just making their cities work better for working people and for small businesses.

Speaker 6 And I think that can really show the way, yeah, and livable, because that's important.

Speaker 6 I think that's another place where, you know, there's a lot of people who thought that the Democratic Party, and I'm not saying all Democrats, but we weren't as focused on the people that are living their lives today.

Speaker 6 And they deserve to feel safe and go to a good school

Speaker 6 and, you know, be able to open a business without it taking four years and 50 lawyers. And like Mondami talked, even though he's a Democratic socialist,

Speaker 6 as well about government working for people and changing as any Democrat I've seen in recent times. And so I have a lot of hope there.

Speaker 5 I'll throw one more name into this, which I think is really a useful model. It's Michelle Wu up in Boston,

Speaker 5 who is progressive,

Speaker 5 has governed as a progressive, and has also been, I think, incredibly effective. Her approval ratings are through the roof.

Speaker 5 They didn't even have a challenger.

Speaker 5 She's one of the most popular mayors in America. And again, this is like proof is in the pudding stuff, right? Like, you know, you, you don't, if, if it doesn't go well,

Speaker 5 people are not happy at that level of governance.

Speaker 5 And I think a lot of the stuff that she's done in Boston is really interesting and shows that like this, this transition from campaign to government, which is really hard,

Speaker 5 is also not insurmountable. Like you can do a good job and then be rewarded by the voters who say, no, I'm serious.
Like,

Speaker 5 we like this. Like, this is good.
Like, thank you.

Speaker 6 And one other example, and he's not the only one, but Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 6 I mean, one of the things he's worked on is, let me look at all the jobs that people in Pennsylvania are, you know, would like to have.

Speaker 6 And where are we making the licensing requirements too burdensome in terms of time or money? How do we make it easier for somebody to achieve their dream?

Speaker 6 That's an example of great governance, which is connected to like progressive values, which is we want working people to have more economic stability and the ability to grow and build wealth, but it's connected to like what's in their way.

Speaker 6 And what's in their way isn't always just the Republican Party. Sometimes it's just regulation or laws that

Speaker 6 made sense 40 years ago.

Speaker 4 And sometimes the Democratic Party, too, that to solve one problem, you have to solve every problem within that. We need more housing, but it also has to be carbon neutral.

Speaker 4 And there also have to be LGBTQ.

Speaker 4 You know, it's all that stuff. Because if you think about Trump, you know, for an authoritarian, he's really unpopular.

Speaker 4 Like when authoritarians generally take over countries and do things by executive fiat, they generally become quite popular quite quickly. It wanes over time.

Speaker 4 But even guys like Duterte and Cece and all these people.

Speaker 5 They're doing a weird backward version of it. I've never seen it.

Speaker 5 It's truly bizarre.

Speaker 4 Yes. It's to see a guy go in and go, I'm just going to do it the way I want to do it.
And that's normally that brings. a certain order to people that have been feeling chaotic.
This is the opposite.

Speaker 4 But to get back to the original point

Speaker 4 of that, for all those things that you say, can the Democratic Party pivot and spend the money that we're talking about more wisely in terms of governance on the very things that we're talking about rather than the things that

Speaker 4 rather can we make their analytics departments smaller

Speaker 4 and make their

Speaker 4 connecting to voter departments

Speaker 4 larger. Will that happen? Or do you think it doesn't need to?

Speaker 6 No, of course it does. And I actually think another connected to this is I think there is,

Speaker 6 you know, there are some Democratic politicians, those seeking office and those who've attained it, who would like to do something, but they're worried that some part of their base or a group will be opposed.

Speaker 6 Housing is a great example of this, right?

Speaker 6 I mean, some of the people who've opposed housing in some states, like build more housing at public transportation, are environmentalists, love environmentalists but like like housing is a great example where if i'm a governor or a mayor like and and some of our like newsoms really i think pulled a lot of the red tape out but like it's a mathematical like we need in north carolina a million and a half houses or we need two million in new york or five million in the southwest and just say you know what nothing matters to me except reaching that goal.

Speaker 6 Why? Because our economy will be stronger, people will be safer, people to build wealth, people will have shelter if we have housing.

Speaker 6 And so a good Democratic candidate, I think, would say, you know, we're going to make it a lot easier to build. We're going to make it a lot cheaper to build.

Speaker 6 By the way, things like modular housing, which, you know, there's obviously some controversy around that because that doesn't create as many union jobs, but like that's part of the solution.

Speaker 6 Like, I think, John, part of this is like, there's always reasons not to do things, but if you're faithful to your central goal, so in housing, it would be, I need to build this many uses over the next five years.

Speaker 6 Sure. You're not going to get to let anything get in the way of that goal.

Speaker 6 And you're also going to narrate your progress and your setbacks along the way so people know that like the thing you campaigned on, the thing that was important is you're working on it every day.

Speaker 6 This is basic stuff, but it's really important.

Speaker 5 And to the last point, on just to finish this here, on the analytics, you also have to understand you're going to go through like a valley of death in public opinion when you're doing it often, right?

Speaker 5 Which is sometimes people voted for you to do this thing. They want to do this thing.
And while you're doing it, they're like, I don't know about this.

Speaker 5 And you have to, no, I mean, this is, you know, congestion pricing. Congestion pricing is a great example.
The ACA is a great example.

Speaker 5 That's where this question of the analytics and the polls versus your gut and your North Star really come to play because you have to say, I campaigned on this.

Speaker 5 I know this is going to be good on the other side. I understand why people are not happy right now.
They're having second thoughts. And I'm going to do it anyway because I'm betting on.

Speaker 5 what I promised. And if they don't like it at the end of it, then I'm out.
Then they then get rid of me because I was wrong. But that's that really key place where

Speaker 5 you cannot let the analytics push you off course.

Speaker 6 That's a great point. And, you know, what it tells us is I always working in the West Wing, the thing that was furthest from the West Wing show was actually working in the West Wing.

Speaker 6 What Chris just described doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be just an Aaron Sorkin screenplay.

Speaker 4 The president just to just walk in and go, we believe that all people are equal.

Speaker 6 Yeah, if only. But I do think that doesn't have to be fantasy.
I think that's a great point. And let the chips fall where they may.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 4 And in this moment of a rare, good day for the Democratic Party and for progressives and for liberals around the country, important to remember for all of us, this can be done.

Speaker 4 It is not beyond our controls.

Speaker 4 It can absolutely be done. Guys, I thank you so much for the conversation.
Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC still, or where do you?

Speaker 5 MS Now.

Speaker 5 MS Now

Speaker 4 is that is the change already taking place?

Speaker 5 It's like in a week, I think.

Speaker 4 Is it like setting your clocks back? Are you going to feel weird for like a day and then you'll be fine? No, it's fine.

Speaker 5 I don't, you know, yeah, who cares?

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 5 I'm still doing the show.

Speaker 4 I worked on Comedy Central.

Speaker 5 Right, exactly.

Speaker 4 A name's a name.

Speaker 4 All in with Chris Hayes, author, the number one Times bestseller, The Sirens Call, and David Pluff, campaign manager, White House Senior Advisor to Barack Obama.

Speaker 4 Guys, thanks very much for the conversation. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 6 Thanks, John. Thanks, John.

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Speaker 4 There you have it. Very appreciative of their insights.
We are short a little bit on time because of the lateness of when we're producing.

Speaker 4 So we're just going to go to the thank yous, for God's sakes, because damn, do I have a good staff?

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