Central Air - Eating the Elephant (with Sarah Longwell)

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.centralairpodcast.comThis week: Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and host of the The Focus Group, joins us to discuss persuadable voters and the extensive conversations she has with them (the topic of her new book How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time). We talk about what drove these voters away from Democrats (high prices), what’s driving them back to Democrats (high prices), and what politicians should say and do in an economic environment where the government has limited ability to deliver relief from high prices. And since this is Central Air, we talk about the bond market, and why it’s very important to these voters, even if they don’t realize it.That’s for all listeners this week. Paying subscribers get to stick around for cocktail hour, when we discuss:The immigration trap facing the next Democratic president.The president’s odd choice to go nuclear on Tom Cotton over Daylight Saving Time, andIn the wake of the drama at Last Ditch Bar, are lesbians okay?Upgrade your subscription to hear the whole episode at www.centralairpodcast.com.

Welcome to Central Air, the show where the temperature is always just right. This is Josh Barrow. I'm here with Megan McArdle, columnist for the Washington Post, and Ben Dreyfus, who writes the Substack newsletter, Calm Down. This is very exciting this Monday. We're going to get the national television debut of my blonde hair on CNN, where I will be discussing daylight saving time. Also a topic that we'll be discussing at the end of the show today for paying subscribers. Adam Gentleson, who runs the think tank where Jane Flage works, we had that actually really, really interesting conversation on Friday about the permitting reform bill that's likely to become law. But so Adam, who used to be Harry Reid's chief of staff, tweeted about that conversation that we had that he was distracted because he would look at me and all he could see was a Montague

in the Boz-Lerman Romeo and Juliet, which I see Ben nodding along to. That's how I felt for years, though, Josh. It's not your hair. I was worried that he was going to say, like, the Boz-Lermon, Ostrich. And you'd be like, oh, that's a terrible call. But then he, I don't, he, you've never seen Boslerman's Australia, you and the rest of America, apparently. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I, Jesus, what type of gay are you? Is that like, is that a mean thing to say about me? I don't even know what that means.

You've never seen, you guys don't even know enough about movies in this podcast. This is why I'm the worst on the podcast, because no one even knows what the fuck I'm talking about. Wait, so Australia, is that like, is that like a Crocodile Dundee reboot or something? No, it's this, it's this big bomb. that he made, that he made this huge movie. It was like, the history of Australia, a romantic film, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it was a huge disaster.

I don't know. Like Ben being like, you guys didn't see this awful movie that nobody saw? I think that this might be slightly unfair. Megan, you never saw this movie either? No, I'm afraid I have not. But like, my husband has a movie podcast. Across the movie aisle with Peter Souterman.

Peter Sutterman, Oisa Rosenberg, and Sonny Bunch of the Bullwark. And so I outsource my opinions on movies. We, we in our household believe in specialization and gains from trade. He is specialized in cocktails, movies, and outdoor cookery. I am in charge of kitchen gadgets and somewhat strained economic analogies. I guess since we haven't seen Australia, we have to talk about the news this week. And we have an excellent guest with us to do that.

We're joined this week by Sarah Longwell, who is publisher of the Bullwark. employer of Sunny Bunch, host of the Focus Group podcast, and also New York Times bestselling author of the recently released How to Eat an Elephant, one voter at a time. Sarah, congratulations on the book, and thanks for joining us here. Thank you. My goal was to be better than Tim Miller on the New York Times bestseller list, but we tied. I mean, I think it's fair to say that this book is sort of an extension of the work that you've been doing on the podcast. It's, you know, talking with swing voters, people who fell away from the Democratic Party and figuring out what needs to be done to bring them back. And I think you're an interesting position because you spent a lot of your time talking with these swing voters.

And then you also spend a lot of your time interacting with your audience at the bulwark, which I assume tends more toward people who are in the Democratic base who will crawl across broken glass to vote for whoever the Democrats nominate. Yes. And I'm just wondering, as you look at those two groups of people and hear from them about what they're looking for from Democrats, What's the overlap? What's similar there and what's different? Okay. So first of all, our audience, God love them because they're an incredible community. But, you know, these are the kinds of people who read all of the news. They are sick and demented like all of us on this podcast in that they want to consume as much of this as possible.

They want to turn it over. They want to watch a million podcasts with Tim Miller, you know, telling them the breaking idioticry news of the day. A swing voter doesn't do any of that stuff. A swing voter lives in an entirely different, both like electronic algorithmic world, as well as just has different things that they care about. So we have the luxury, all of us, of caring about a whole bunch of things that the average voter doesn't care about. So when I do a focus group, I start every focus group the exact same way and I say, how do you think things are going in the country? And they say terrible, always.

Doesn't matter the group, right, left, center, doesn't matter. But they immediately start talking about, I went to the grocery store and ground beef cost X. Like, that is how voters talk. And I will say one of the things, and I talk about this in the book in terms of being on a political journey, talking to voters or listening to them, because I don't talk to them. I listen to them as much as I do has completely changed the way that I think about politics. Because there is Sarah Longwell's bespoke. I just want to sit around with you guys. I want to talk about energy policy.

Let's talk about that. I'll talk about the bond rates. I want to talk about what we're going to do about the national debt, education policy. We maybe all grew up at a time where we moved to Washington, D.C., because we're like, I want to go deep on education reform and whatever. That is not how these voters think. And when I started listening to them and I thought, my God, the disconnect between what we talk about, what animates us and what animates them, couldn't be further from one another because they are thinking every day about basic necessity. They just are.

And their algorithms are like, what did their favorite rapper say or like the Instagram person they follow who chops wood and then suddenly spouted a political opinion? And I ask people where they get their information and they will tell you online. Like their answer is just online. Where did you see that thing that you just told me that's a complete piece of misinformation? I saw it online. They can't even remember. And so a lot of the book is about showing up to say, hey, the information environment that voters are swimming in is so complicated and complex. It's the difference between news seekers, which all of us are.

People who are listening to this podcast, they are news seekers. They turned you on because they're like, I want to know what's going on. I want to listen to these people opine on the news. Those guys, the swing voters that we call low info, but I think that's a mean thing to say, they are news receivers. it washes over them algorithmically. I mean, I just think that's the biggest difference, the disconnect between what we think people care about because we care about it. And this is a pundit problem.

Pundits thinking, this thing that matters to me or this way I think the world should be is how I'm going to analyze politics. And I just stopped doing that once I started listening to voters. And I just sit there and go, I don't know, here's what they say. When I was working at Mother Jones as their audience development person, And they would bring me out to give little talks to the donors, right? And my job had been what had made me so good was that I was manipulating Facebook. And that they would have me have me try to justify why this mattered.

Like why it mattered that I could get all these people to read about climate change or all of stuff. And there was a way that I like came up with how to sell it to them, which was that like, you know, everyone who cares about it is looking at it in some other way. They're maybe subscribing to things, but that these are people who, just like you said, are getting it by accident. They're being exposed to this by, they're there to see photos of their children or see what Drake is talking about. And that you're sort of like forcing them into this world of politics. And my way of selling it at the time was that that was good.

And then, of course, the problem was that if I was doing it, so were the right. So was everyone else. And that it led to this world of people being somewhat crazy. And I became, you know, I felt bad about it and thought that I had actually done something evil for the world. And it had to do with those algorithms that you talked about. Your audience is an old person as someone I know quite well, Colin Jones, who's brilliant and I've known him forever. And I wonder, like, when you guys talk to Colin, do you say like, all right, let's force people into this? Or is it more about talking to the right people, the people who really do care?

You know, the honest answer to this is there's a reason I kind of have two components to my work. So I started the bulwark almost as an advocacy project as part of a slate of advocacy things that I did. And one of the reason that political campaigns or people who do persuasion work, which is how I came up, and that's my background. Sometimes people say, I ran campaigns. A lot of people seem to think I ran Kamala Harris's campaign. None of these things are true. I've never run campaigns. I've always done communications and persuasion work.

And when you do that work, you got to buy eyeballs because those people aren't going to seek it out themselves. And you can have a lot of debates about which advertising strategies are better, which messages work better. What are you doing to create certain surround sound things? How do you spend enough paid money that you get earned media? Like those are all strategies of the communications world. But the bulwark, people opt in.

People opt into the bulwark. And so that's what I mean about our. audience being wonderful but sort of sick is that they say, I would like to have this, like, every time I open up YouTube, Tim Miller, Sarah Longel and JVL's faces are being shoved down my throat, and I'm here for it. Most people, though, you've got to buy billboards and everything else because they're not going to opt into that. When they open their YouTube page, it is football and singers and weird, you know, legal stuff

about murderers. And, like, that is not what news seekers do. So that's a big part of the difference. One thing I think about a lot is the way that there's this disconnect between the party bases and between the swing voters in that I observe in both parties, and maybe I'm unfairly both sides in this. But it looks to me like the demand in both parties is to be angry and to find a candidate who channels their anger. They are filled with rage at the other party. They are filled with rage at whatever they perceive as the decline and fall of the American Republic, democracy, what have you.

And the primary thing they want from a candidate is not so much a policy or even an outcome. What they want is someone who expresses how angry they are about how wrong everything has gone and how bad the people on the other side are and how scary the other people on the other side are. But when I talk to swing voters, which I don't do nearly as much as you, that's not at all what they want. Their demand for people to express rage against the other party is close to zero. Close to zero. That's right. Those people, they might be mad about the price of hamburger or whatever, but they are not, like, filled with disgust, loathing, fear and hatred of Donald Trump or of Kamala Harris or of anyone else. And so you've got this base that primarily wants someone who will channel their anger. and then you've got the voters that you need to appeal to in the general who primarily do not want that and in fact find it untrustworthy.

They find that over the top and they think they think less of a candidate who is spending all of their time bashing the other party. Is that a fair characterization of the divide and how much does that divide matter? Okay, so we're going to have to just do a little work on what does base mean? Sure. Because the swing voters, they don't have hyper partisan polarization rage. They do have double hater pox on both their houses rage. And so I make this joke a lot. But if in the focus groups that we're doing with swing voters, we had to drink.

Every time somebody said, I'm choosing the lesser of two evils, we just die. We'd be dead so fast because it is the number one thing that you hear from swing voters when they are pushed to the place of making a choice between the two parties. And it is less that it is rage-filled so much as they think both suck, and they're like, I'm just going to choose which one seems to suck the least. And they tend to like it when a candidate, in an effort to say why they're going to suck less, is I'm going to reach across the aisle, I'm going to be pragmatic, I'm going to try to figure out how to make things work.

Like, swing voters like that type of thing. The bases on both sides do not like it when their people say they're going to work with the other side. Because once you've decided the other side is evil, it's not great to work with them. And so like I even, I really struggle with this. I got in trouble because I even when Mumdani did his thing with Trump recently and I saw him kind of like being like, yeah, Donald, you know, he's he knows a thing or two about building things in New York City. I was like, what's he doing? I hate this. Because, right, you get into your own, like, it doesn't, I don't, you have to, people who love, love, love, mom, daddy's like, he's dog walking him all over the place.

But if mostly I have Trump Darrangement Syndrome, I just don't want to see anybody, you know, sucking up to Trump. And I think in that way, because I do have Trump's arrangement syndrome. I do not want to pretend I don't. But I think that's the difference. I'll just say one of the quick thing, though, on the bases, which is I do think that the progress, there's, like, different types of bases. And I think that the base of the Democratic Party is sort of old college educated white liberals and pragmatic black voters. And then it's got a bunch of progressive sort of young people that say they're the base. But those are not the people you can count on to show up.

So I'm not sure you call them the base. Like they talk about themselves like they're the base. But really they're like they're the people who put you in a hostage situation. I'm interesting when you said there about Mamdani because I think he's hit on something. that's very effective for him that it would be nice if other politicians were able to do it, which is that he has so much political capital with his base. And I think that, you know, there's, there remains a halo around him here in New York. He's a very affable guy. I like him a lot better than I expected to like him. But he has, he has the benefit of the doubt, which allows him

to go and make nice with Trump without people feeling like he's being some sort of traitor. Whereas, you know, Hakeem Jeffries goes and has a meeting with Jared Kushner and, you know, If Democrats take the majority next year, they're going to have to pass appropriations bills that Trump will sign. They're going to have to do certain governing together. And a lot of base Democrats are deeply suspicious about him laying groundwork to do that. Like, what is it that Mamdani did there that gives him the political capital to go and do something that, you know, even though I don't think Mamdani exactly is aiming for the typical swing voter in the country? It's the sort of thing where if a Democratic politician can do that, it benefits them with swing voters. What can people learn from Mom Dani that gives them the permission to behave like that? Yeah.

So I also like Mom Dani a lot more than I thought I would primarily because, A, he's just been doing some good governance stuff like permitting reform. And I'm like, oh, hey. But more than that, he's doing something as a communicator that I have found very enticing. I wasn't paying that much attention to the New York mayor always because you know what? Sorry for this, guys. New York politics interests me very little. It's only me you need to apologize to. I'm the only New Yorker here.

Not a lot of swing voters. And I accept your apology. Not a lot of national resonance, really. Because the national media is there, they're obsessed with New York, and I just usually don't care. So my first blush, I was like, okay, this guy wouldn't disavow, you know, globalized antifada on our podcast with Tim. Literally was one of the first things I watched.

And I was, and somebody showed me some bad tweets. And so, like, my first instinct was, I do not, this is no good. But then the thing that I've watched him do. And I think that this is what everybody else should copy. He clearly loves people. He likes people. He wants them to do better. And his ability to stay on messages,

if you ask Zoran, Mom Donnie, what do you think about trans kids in sports? He will say, I think New York City is too expensive to live in. And we should do something about it. And like that ability to stay on message and his ability, like the way he smiles, the way he makes people feel like he cares about them, he's on their side, he's on their team, is the kind of thing where when people say authenticity,

it's becoming kind of a buzzy buzzword. Like, what he's doing is he's saying, I see you, I want to help you, I care about the things you care about. And like, that's the magic that I think other people, other politicians have trouble getting their hands on. So, I mean, the book is called How to Eat an Elephant. And it's basically a roadmap for how Democrats can come back and win back the voters that they lost.

And it's been interesting to me watching the trajectory over the last few years. I'm going to give a summary and I first want to know whether you think it's an accurate one of, you know, what we've experienced recently and then what can be done about it, is that, you know, Democrats lost in 2024 in part because there's, you know, a global wave of dissatisfaction about migration and inflation. And then also there are a few specific issues where voters really perceived them as being out of touch. I would say crime, immigration, certain issues around, around gender and identity. energy price environment stuff. And then, you know, both there was dissatisfaction with specific positions and then a general sense that, you know, Democrats were focused on things they don't care about instead of being focused on the cost of living and the they-them ad is sort of the object lesson of all

of those problems coming together into one. And we lost. And then Trump came in and did not deliver on his promise to focus on the cost of living and started this war that has driven up energy prices. And so people see that and they're dissatisfied. and then they're also increasingly dissatisfied around his personal corruption because they're finally starting to draw a link between things are too expensive for me and here's the president enriching himself. But Democrats are kind of like a passive actor in that. It's not something that

they did in the last two years that improved their position. It's just that the other guy did worse. So like, you know, Democrats have watched their position improve. What is it that they also need to be doing to try to like further improve that position and then make it a durable one that will last once they, you know, I mean, after this election, Democrats are going to control part of Washington. They're going to be partly responsible for whatever goes wrong. What do they need to do so that, you know, these advantages can persist even when they're not out of power. Okay, first of all, a lot in there. So I'm going to try to do it fast. You guys can cut me off if I go on too long or redirect. But one of the things about writing the book is when I started the book, it was really

because I was listening to so many people would be like, oh, America's finished. It's over. We're so depressed because the 2024 election broke people psychologically in a different kind of way because they're saying, oh my God, my fellow countrymen saw him try to overturn an election, lie to everybody, and then they still said, yes, I'll take him. That was hard for people. And I was kind of doing a like, we need to get up off the mat. We can, this, you know, a very softball coach. Let's go, guys. We can do this. And then as I was writing, though, as I was going on, Trump became increasingly vulnerable. Like Renee Good and Alex Prettier shot as I'm writing the immigration chapter. And I'm watching. him do with the tariffs and the war, ignore Congress, and make these decisions that people very much attach to him. So it's not like right now when they're trying to do the, well, it's Biden's inflation or Biden's the reason. Voters are not buying it because they saw Trump make decisions

loudly and proudly. And now he owns them with the voters. But in the book, I try to lay out a few things that I try to avoid the like ups and downs of politics as it ebbs and flows and really talk about the things that are durable throughout focus groups over the eight years that I've been doing them multiple times a week. And one is, and I was saying this before, but sometimes to see, it's like an Orwell quote, to see what's right in front of one's nose is a constant struggle, I do think the whole like, it's the economy stupid, it's affordability stupid. I just, until you listen to people tell you exactly how much their gas is down the street and the tradeoffs that they are making in their life to be able to afford it and what it means for commuting with their kids or their

summer vacation or all of this stuff, you just like don't. And I would get in fights going into 2024 because I would say people are so upset about the economy. And like my buddy JVL would be like, but the GDP, but the economy is good. And this is what Dems were doing. They were saying, but it's fine, but it's okay. And I was like, I cannot tell you how ripshed people are about this. This is your podcast co-host, Jonathan V. Last. It is Jonathan V. Last. who we call JVL. He's a dark living cloud that I love. But, but so, so the number one thing is that Democrats could and should govern well in ways that improve people's material well-being, because voters have two very specific things that they want always. They want to be safe,

like they want themselves and their children to be safe. Two, they would like to have good jobs and upward mobility. They want things to be affordable. They want to be able to take a summer vacation. And everybody's going to nod at this, but also people are going to glaze a bit because you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. And I just want to take politicians and say, you need to talk, just set yourself a line. Seventy-five percent of every speech has got to be about some way that you are going to improve people's lives in a material way. Now, Megan's sitting here saying, as I might, what politicians can't just improve people's lives. This is not just the government that can walk in and do this. Agree. However, if you are running a campaign, you should,

should endeavor still to talk about creating an environment in which people can thrive and flourish. And in specific ways that you are going to lower costs for them. So like right now, the AI data centers, it was in 2025 that I first started hearing about the data centers because I was doing focus groups on Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spamberger. I had not heard it before. And then all a sudden, it was all anyone was talking about. But the AI data centers are an issue just like immigration is for Republicans, where it's cuts across multiple vectors. It raises people's costs materially, and they believe that, right? They're like, my energy costs are going up. It's taking away water. That's something you hear. It's a blight where they're like, this is being built in my

yard, my neighborhood where, you know, I know, and they're ugly and they're big and they do all these things. But then the third thing is also like, and billionaires are getting rich off of it. It's not coming to us, and it's going to take my job and then sometimes maybe also destroy us all. And when you get an issue like that that crosses a bunch of different vectors where it's like it's going to impact my material well-being and it's raising my prices and maybe it's going to take my job, that is what Trump did exactly with immigration. With immigration, he's like, these people make you less safe and they're taking your jobs and they're depressing your wages and they're bringing drugs and they're probably going to rape you. Like that's how Trump talked about it. And he does like a schema activation where it takes all of these different things that people are essential to them. and it wraps them into one threat.

And that's what immigration was, which is why, by the way, in the book, I really have sort of three main things. And it's pretty easy. Focus always on material well-being. So the economy, jobs, affordability, health care, things like that. Lots of stuff can be material well-being. Two, borders closed. You have to talk about immigration from the standpoint of we're going to know who's in our country. We're taking care of Americans first.

But also, we're going to figure out how immigrants are good. like Democrats should talk about it way differently than Republicans do because they should also talk about the positive impact of immigrants, the fact that we are all immigrants, because this resonates deeply with Americans, and also we're not going to treat people like garbage, right? Like we care about human rights, but we're going to have a closed border. And then the third thing is the deprioritization of the woke stuff. So like voters say not that they are mad that Kamlo's position or Democrats' position on trans stuff, like not so much either soft Democrats or even swingers.

What they're mad about, what they're mad about is how much they talk about it or their perception of how much they talk about it. They're like, this doesn't matter to me. And I don't know why it's what everybody talks about. They want to hear about things that are going to positively impact them. And I'll just say quickly on the trans stuff. Sports and surgery for minors, very different issues for voters than should trans people. be treated with dignity, should they be discriminated against, which the vast majority of people think, no. It's some of these other issues that mainly around minors and sports, that you get

the 70-30 going in the Republicans way. Am I right in my sense that that issue has really fallen a lot in salience in the last 18 months? I think that what's happening is that Republicans are now experiencing, though, why are they talking about this so much? Right. It is, right? So Democrats were getting it before. But now people are like, Republicans are in charge of everything. Trump promised to do the following things. Why am I hearing about the WNBA so much? Like for a certain kind of voter, it keeps their cortisol high. But for, again, these swingier voters, these independents, Hispanics, young people who are just dropping way back, it's not singularly animating enough to cut against all of the economic factors in the war. One question I have is how you think about running

for the next election and how you think about running for the longer term and building the party for the longer term. Because like, I hear you. The thing people most care about is affordability. And one, I think the reason Trump won, other than the fact that I do think that woke one was extremely irritating and people were really mad about it in 2024 and now they're not mad about it anymore because it's receded and like people are not acting in the way that they were in, say, 2023. But, but, you know, Trump comes in and he promises is going to make everything affordable. and he doesn't have a way to do that. And in fact, he also then goes and does some stuff

that's going to make stuff less affordable with tariffs and invading, randomly invading Iran. But, you know, the Democrats can not invade Iran. Great idea. Roll back the tariffs, also a great idea. But short of that, like, they're also going to be facing some deep headwinds in 20, whoever gets elected in 2029 is going to get the lucky bonus of dealing with the impending exhaustion

at the Social Security Trust Fund. with our rising debt, with our massive deficits, with our rising bond interest rates. Like, if we get a stiff recession that might take care of the inflation, but then again, might not. And they might also still be contending with inflation. And then you have a recession. And then you have a recession. Well, I mean, if the recession comes on Trump's watch, that's great, right?

For Democrats, I don't mean. Yeah. I'm not like a recession fan. But it's good for Democrats because then they can come in, wait for it. You know, they'll be taking the upswing rather than. the downswing. But they could also get the down swing. You never get to time these things, right. But you're going to have all of that other stuff to do. And if you go in and you promise, as Trump did, wildly, I'm going to make everything more affordable. And the fact is, like, you don't have money to

spend on health care. You don't have money to spend on giving people stuff. Like, the next president is going to spend most of their time dealing with trying to get some sort of fiscal order because we cannot afford to go on as we're going on. How do you prep people for that? Yeah. So here's what I think that Democrats are going to do. And I think broadly I endorse this as a strategy, which is I think you will get unsurious sort of demagogic types who do try to just like promise a lot of stuff. But I also think you're going to get some serious reform types. I think both Pete Buttigieg, John Ossov, even like if you get an AOC or something, she's gotten much smarter about policies. You might not like her policy, but she's got smarter about. about talking about it. And I think you were going to hear them saying, the reason we can't do the things that we want to do is because of these deep structural problems. And here are ideas that we have to deal with these structural problems. And I think, I don't know if you guys remember this, but I remember it because it was my first time after I helped elect Biden and went hard for him.

And then they got in there and the Democratic sort of ecosystem put together this laundry list bill. It was just like a wish lists of all the Democrats. It was like, we're going to end Citizens United and get this money and do other stuff. Mansion was the one they were really trying to get on board with that. And like, that was terrible. It was a terrible bill. And I was like, you're never going to pass this. And what I think is that I think somebody like Pete's going to walk in and he's going to say,

or not just Pete, but, you know, whatever. Let's say there's a Democrat who's a reformer, I think they are going to pitch people on the idea that you need to do gerrymandering reform, that we need to do. I think they're going to steal some of the Republicans' ideas around, like, family tax credits and doing more for families. And I think that there is a world in which they can do. And also, I love this, like, but the debt will be so high. Who can't, like, the idea that Democrats are going to feel bound by the debt after Donald

Trump has just, like, run the economy hot through two terms is they're not going to. I mean, I disagree with this. I think, I mean, the bond market can make you care. And we're going through this process right now. You know, this cycle we're going through where interest rates keep going up and up and up, make it less and less sustainable to keep borrowing. And it's not just an abstract matter of like, oh, it's not responsible to borrow like this. It means the more the government borrows, the higher mortgage rates are, the less affordable it is for businesses to invest and grow.

I think that, you know, there's a real economic imperative to actually get cost down. And the idea that, like, gerrymandering reform is a response to that, I think, will, like, really alienate voters. I think the promising thing is what's in the permitting reform bill that looks like it's going to come through Congress. Oh, my God. The most hopeful thing that I've seen, starting at the state level, where you've had these huge increases in electricity rates, and you're having Republicans and Democrats actually getting together and saying, you know, there's problems with ways we do utility regulation. They encourage too much investment in the wrong kind of infrastructure. It raises rates. We're going to do this federal reform that actually crams down the utilities and that makes it easier to.

add new infrastructure so that prices can go down. I realize that voters are not out there saying, I demand reform to NEPA and all these laws, but once you do the reforms, and if they lead to the installation of new power plants and new transmission lines, and it means that electricity prices go down, that's the thing that can make the voters less angry about the cost of living. And that's one area where there really is a government lever that's available to make things cheaper. Yeah. You disagree with that? I remember the big build back better. Yes. Biden passed so much money in infrastructure reform. So much. Did it help him?

Well, no, because the rules made it impossible to actually do any build-out. I mean, yeah, I mean, that's the famous thing. They were supposed to build all these electric vehicle charges, and they got eight of them built. But I think that this, you know, I think the new focus on this is a reflection is that, you know, not only do we not have more government money to throw around, the key factor isn't government money. It's we need to get the government out of the way so that investment is possible. I mean, this is what we did in the 1970s. So I agree with you. I, here's the thing, you and I, all of us here, the Venn diagram of our politics is very, very close. But this is the problem when you go listen to voters all the time. They will have no idea about NEPA. Sure.

And they're mad about their energy costs and what they want to hear a politician say. And this is why people campaign in poetry and govern and pros or need to is because they just want, they do not want the details of how you are going to lower your energy prices. They don't want the details. They just want to know you're going to do it. And then you do have to demonstrate broadly a level of commitment to it. Let me ask you this. Do you think that Omdani has lowered prices for people in New York? A price is going down in New York? I mean, he is, he does appear to be really delivering rent-freeze on rent-stabilized apartments, which there are about a million of in New York City, and that is real savings for those tenants. But you think about the policy implications of that.

Is that going to make prices go down in New York? Is it going to make it more? affordable in New York to live there? Overall, for everyone, no, but for a really large segment of the electorate that is longer settled and relatively influential, yes. So I think Sarah is right about the messaging, but I also think that Josh is right about the underlying thing. Like, look, I have been writing that our debt is unsustainable since, like, 2009. You guys, one time I ran a campaign where I put a bunch of homeless Uncle Sam's on the street,

and they were holding signs. It was this big stunt for this project I was working on called Defeat the Defeat the debt. And the debt at the time was $12 trillion. Right, but what were interest rates at the time? This is my thing is that, like, for most of the time I've been writing about it, this has been an abstract. One day this is going to become a problem.

Well, one day has arrived. And I think that like part of the disconnect here with a lot of, not all by any means, but with a lot of like the Democratic policy and politics people that I see is they've gotten so used to the idea that this is just something Republicans say and it never happens. That's true. Is that like they kind of reflexively are like, well, but you guys ran up the debt. Absolutely true. Republicans have been really irresponsible with their tax cuts. Joe Biden was really irresponsible with his spending. Donald Trump was really irresponsible with his tax cuts the first time around.

Right. Like Republicans bear a lot of the blame here. But that said, like, one day is here. And Democrats are not going to have the option to be like, I am not going to be responsible. How dare you ask it? Because the bond market is going to drive up the cost of borrowing to the point where it is simply not possible to repeat the Biden playbook or anything close to the Biden playbook. I think that maybe one interesting thing that I would love to hear Sarah talk about is if we, I've probably spent too much time on this podcast with you two fucking bond people who. who are, I'm a total believer in everything you just said

because I spent a year of listening to you guys be like, the death, the death, the dad. But I'm a true believer now. But so let's take say that we're all in charge of what the Democratic campaign is in 2028, you know, that people are going to do it. And they are also saying someone in the background is going, look, these bomb numbers, these are going up.

We can't just say we're going to make so many promises here. We're not going to be able to spend the money. We're in trouble. And we also don't want to make promises. Is this Democrat their Jewish grandmother? Yeah. Who is this? Go ahead. And they also don't want us to make promises that they will inevitably be, you know, bombing and

being unable to do. But isn't then the question of like, how do you frame, how do you square that circle, is to identify stuff and say to what Sarah was talking about, like, these are the structural things that have led us here. We are not going to be able to fix this in the next four years. But we are going to do these things, but it is going to deal with the pain of Trump and blame it on him or whatever it is. But blame it all in that and say so that like this is why.

So that then when in 2030, when all of these things are going on, they do have an answer to it. It's a structural one as opposed to a, well, who knew? Like I guess like if you know the things that you guys are saying are going to come down the pipeline, isn't there a way of dealing with it when you run? I just want to ask Megan one question back, which is if the time is here, Republicans are in charge of everything. No, yeah. Why are we asking Democrats this? Well, what I'm asking. Have you just given up that Republicans are a serious governing party at all?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I have. Obviously. Well, I mean, your book has advice to Democrats. No, that's true. My question is, how do you think about messaging in the next four years in a way that sets you up to ride through what is going to be a, I'm going to assume that the next president's going to be a Democrat?

I will probably, like, the gods will curse me for my hubris. but I'm going to assume. How do you do the messaging now? How do you set the party up? So when the whitewater raft hits the big shoals and you are rocketing over that and being jostled up and down, you have some chance of staying in the boat past 2032. Yeah. So one of the things I keep, I say in the book and that it's really important to me that Democrats get their heads around is that this is not about winning one. election. I think one of the weirdest things that Democrats do is say, like, oh, we won in 2022. We should probably just really run the old guy who's deeply unpopular again.

And no, like in 26, if they win, they should immediately start laying the groundwork for, they shouldn't leave it so that the next president, right? They have to win it to win in 2028. Democrats have to show up and say, we are not going to squander this opportunity. We're not going to impeach Trump. They can impeach Hegg Seth because that's actually a something. That's focused on the Iran war, but they are going to have to start to say, and this is all of my messaging, sort of advice hinges on contrast messaging, which is here is what they have done. And actually, I think Ben's, Ben is correct about some of this is to say what Donald Trump has done to run up the debt, both with the war and with his tax cuts for everybody, he has

put us in a perilous position. And somebody's going to have to make some serious choices. and we as Americans are going to have to make tradeoffs. I do think that somebody coming along and saying, there are grand bargains to be struck. If you want America first and you want the kind of social safety net that we're talking about, it means a different relationship with immigration. You don't get to have all of them. And so I would like some serious people in Congress, right,

to focus on, here is what Trump has been doing to cause this damage. And we have a response to it. And one of the things that is my overwhelming advice to Democrats is that they do not communicate enough. Like, they do not talk seriously about what they stand for, what they believe, what they want to see happen. They have gotten really lulled into complacency by saying Trump bad. And that's not a contrast message. A contrast message is Trump bad, we good. And we good has to be like, and here's why we're good. Here are our ideas. Here's what we're going to do for you. And that is like at the core of my frustration with Democrats has been a total.

inability over the last decade that I've been on their side to Joe Biden did that whole bill, all those bills. He didn't talk about them. He didn't sell them. He didn't make a case to the American people. This is one of the reasons Donald Trump is in so much trouble on the war in Iran and on prices. He has never leveled with anybody once, right? He has lied to them. And he never asked. He didn't make the case for tariffs to people so that they really, he didn't make the case for the war in Iran. Democrats are going to have to make a case for why they're going to do what they're going to do and they're going to focus on it. I'm actually not here to be prescriptive with Democrats on, because I'm not, I'm like, I'm like you guys. I'm like a sick neoliberal who wants good governance.

And like what I love about John Ossoff besides how handsome he is, is that when you do focus groups about John Ossoff, everybody tells you you can get somebody on the phone in his office. Like his, his response to voters is incredible. And so I actually like a lot more just like general blocking and tackling from Democrats, and then they're going to have to go with God on the policies they choose, but they're not doing any of the basics right now. I have a question for you on corruption and its role in messaging in this campaign, because I mean, that's been a major theme, especially that John Ossoff has led on, is trying to tie together dissatisfaction with cost of living and corruption in this administration.

And in this campaign where Democrats are out of power, I think that's clearly a fruitful issue for them. But I'm worried because I think the way the public thinks about corruption, is sort of inevitably a problem for whichever party ends up in power. I mean, a couple of things I see. I think there's been actually an in anordinate level of focus on congressional stock trading. And every time we pass new laws that force more disclosure, it actually makes the public more

cynical because what it creates is more stories about how people on all sides of the aisle, you know, make various technical violations of these laws. I think people have this idea that people in Congress are sitting there, trading their portfolios based on what's happening on the floor of Congress. And I think it is led to. Yeah. And then also like basically any accusation that has the word Epstein in it is nonsense nine times out of ten. And I think that there's been this sort of like general trend toward conspiratorialism that is inevitably a problem for whichever party is in power and is a bigger problem for Democrats because Democrats are the party of government. And if they're trying to get people to be willing to pay more in taxes to finance more government programs and believe that those programs are going to do things for them, I mean, it's a real problem that people basically think the whole government's corrupt. At least Republicans and say this is why we need less government. So how do you, what can Democrats do to take a public that's disaffected about this and not just use it to dislodge Republicans from power, but to actually

get people to feel better about Democrats and Democrats governing agenda? Well, this is why I do think they're going to have to do both some reforms and people want the candy. Like, and this is, can I, I think that there is a world, 10 years into Trump, a bunch of conversations where you could never have gotten any consensus on it before. So, for example, health care, universal health care, I think that's coming. I think Democrats are going to run on it. I think Republicans might start running on it. And this might make your brain explode because you're sitting there thinking about

how are we going to pay for this? Voters. Yeah. And so you think, well, and voters don't trust, you know, government to deliver these things. Voters no longer trust insurance companies to deliver this. This is like, again, not Sarah Longel's personal politics. but when I listen to people, and it is frustrating, people get so mad when they listen to voters, because they're like, well, this person's an idiot.

They're not thinking about all of these other things. I mean, JVL basically just like melts into a puddle on every podcast when I force him to listen to voters. But the reason I started the podcast wasn't because I was desperate to have another podcast. The reason I started the podcast is I was like, this is your average voter. It is a 55-year-old white guy without a college degree. and they want their lives to be easier. And they think rich people are rigging everything. They don't understand why politicians

who say they want to get elected into office, go in as a normal person and come out super rich. They think it is all corrupt. And I understand what you're saying, how one party of government isn't it a bigger liability for them? I would say the bigger problem for Democrats is that because voters basically take a zero sum,

like they're all corrupt, the scale of Trump's corruption relative to the scale of Democrats' corruption doesn't find the right levels in voters' minds. And the only reason that Trump right now is getting dinged on corruption, and it's why I believe talking about corruption right now is really important, is because, and this John Ossoff is doing this, is that voters would not care about Donald Trump's corruption if they were doing fine. I just the extent to which voters feelings about politics, like there's certain segments that are locked into a polarized environment and see everything through a partisan lens and live in their

own algorithms, then there's a much less tuned in group of people who are not playing politics as blood sport and their metrics are who is improving my life in all kinds of ways. And that might also mean why are things locked up at CVS? Like I, you want to talk about something that I think harms Democrats? I think that being able, I think having to push a button to get somebody to come get you your shampoo at CVS is like psychologically one of the worst things for Democrats. Because people are like, has order broken down in every way? Do we not live in a normal society where I can pull things off the shelf? Those are the kinds of things that I think people think about. They do not often think about the rest of it. Sarah, can I tell you what keeps me up at night when I think about. So we talked with Tim Miller about this when we had him.

That's it for this week's free episode of Central Air. If you want to hear our full conversation, including our discussion of immigration pitfalls for Democrats, and cocktail hours. Sarah Longwell sticks around with us. We ask her about last ditch bar. And, you know, like, one of the things I do on this show is we have straight people on. I ask them if straight people are okay. Sarah's here so we can have a conversation about are lesbians okay? And we talk about daylight saving time, which president's very upset with Senator Tom Cotton, who's been blocking his permanent daylight saving time bill from coming to the Senate floor.

I think Tom Cotton is doing the president and the country a huge favor by staving off this bad idea. So anyway, if you want to hear all of that, go to centralairpodcast.com. You can become a paying subscriber and get every full episode of our show, replays of Substack Live conversations that we have. We had a really interesting one just last Friday with Jane Flagle from the Searchlight Institute about the permitting reform bill, which I'm very excited about because I'm a big nerd. and if you want to see a really detailed discussion of how that's going to change the way that our electrical transmission system works and other aspects of our energy system, it's really worth listening to. Again, that's all at centralairpodcast.com.