Factually! with Adam Conover - Is the Trump Regime Crumbling? with Osita Nwanevu

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

After the madness of the past decade, it can feel impossible to tell where we’re at in our political story as a country. Between Trump kidnapping the president of Venezuela, his ludicrous threats toward Greenland, and the ICE murders in Minneapolis, are we seeing the literal death of American democracy, or are we seeing the last gasps of a dying reactionary movement that has overextended itself? This week, Adam sits with Osita Nwanevu, a columnist at The Guardian and Contributing Editor at New Republic. Together, they discuss whether we’re in the ashes of democracy or the fertile soil for a better America. Find Osita’s recent book, The Right of the People: Democracy and the Case for a New American Founding at factuallypod.com/books--SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hello there. Welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, as I speak to you, it's been just a little bit over a year since Trump was inaugurated for the second time. And what a year it's been. You know, so much has happened. It's been so much fun tracking all the events and the twists and turns with you, you know. You know, so much has happened that it can be hard to figure out where we actually are in this moment.

Like, are we watching a historically unpopular administration finally crumble right in front of our eyes? Or are we watching an ongoing and powerful fascist takeover of our country? Which way are the winds actually blowing? I mean, on the one hand, we've seen armed thugs, agents of the federal government, and virtual private paramilitary force under the power of the presidency, occupy and brutalize a major American city. In Minneapolis, they've roughed up protesters. They've thrown journalists in jail for the crime of doing journalism.

And they have murdered innocent people for simply watching them do it. These thugs have demanded people show them their papers based on the color of their skin or the language that they speak. They've done so legally. And they have sent those people off to squalid internment camps. And if what Trump is doing inside the country wasn't bad enough, The foreign policy of his administration is equally horrific. He kidnapped the president of Venezuela.

He murdered people in fishing boats in the Caribbean. And he's threatened military action against our allies simply to seize their territory. Just a few weeks ago, it seemed like we might invade Greenland and conquer it. Greenland, of all places. Now, thankfully, on the other hand, the American people have not taken this lying down. There has been a massive and inspiring rejection. of this fascist bullshit on a massive scale. Regular people have gotten pissed and taken to the streets.

And after the murder of Alex Pretti by ice thugs in Minneapolis, Trump has backpedaled massively because of that response. Internationally, there has been backlash too. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a speech at Davos talking about how the U.S. has caused an irreversible, quote, rupture in the global political order. And middle-sized countries like his need to consider going at a little. So it actually seems like we are seeing a and a complete realignment globally.

So what we have to ask is, does that mean that in this moment we are witnessing the death of the American democracy and the rise of fascism? Or are we watching the last gasps of a dying reactionary movement that has fatally overextended itself? I mean, either way, this is a wild and terrifying moment, but it might be one with incredible potential to build something new. Well, to help us answer that question today, I'm so thrilled to invite back on the show, one of my very favorite political commentators working today.

Ossita Nguanavu is a columnist at The Guardian. He's a contributing editor at the New Republic, and his new book is The Right of the People, democracy and the case for a new American founding. And I want you to remember those words, new American founding. I know you're going to love this conversation. Before we get into it, I just want to remind you that you, want to come see me do stand-up comedy out on the road. I'm touring my brand new hour of stand-up around before I tape it at the end of April.

Coming up soon, I'm going to be in Houston, Texas, February 12th through 14th at the punchline. February 19th through 21st, I'm going to be in San Francisco, California, at the punchline there. Formerly, we were going to tape the special there. We actually realized the venue is unworkable to tape, so we're going to be taping it later in the spring in a different city. However, we are keeping the dates. I cannot wait. it is one of the best clubs in the country. Please come out to the San Francisco punchline

February 9th through 19th through 21st. On April 10th through 11th, I'll be in La Jolla, California, at the Comedy Store. And we're also adding new dates in Sacramento and Chicago in April. Please come out, head to Adamconover.net for all those tickets, especially if you live in Sacramento or Chicago. I also want to remind you that if you want to support this show, you can do so on Patreon.

Head to patreon.com. slash Adam Kahnover, five bucks a month, gets you every single episode of this show. Add free. You can also join our wonderful online community. We would love to have you. And now, let's get to this week's wonderful interview with the incredible Ocita Nwanifu. Ocita, thank you so much for being on the show again, man. Thanks again for having me.

It's wonderful to have you. You're one of my favorite political commentators. You've been writing, skeeting up a storm over the past couple weeks about everything that's been happening. I first want to have you on because you were writing great stuff about foreign policy. Then as we were booking you, everything shifted back to domestic policy being the emergency of the day. So let's do those in reverse order. I mean, first, what is your reaction to, you know, the fascist crackdown is the word everyone is using rightly or wrongly over the past couple weeks?

and then also the political reaction that we've seen to it since the killing of Alex Preti. Yeah, well, I mean, I think all the different threads you saw me posting about, whether it's foreign policy or domestic policy, we're all kind of interrelated in an interesting way. I wrote a piece for The Guardian

about how, one of the things you can really use to understand this moment is something Stephen Miller said when he was asked about the United States taking over Greenland. What he said was, look, the only thing that really matters in the world is power. That's the way things have been since the beginning of time might makes right, basically,

what you're saying. And as distant as the Greenland situation what's happening in Minneapolis might seem, I think that underlying idea runs through all the things we've experienced in the last month since we started this new year. We've seen two people killed wantonly on the basis of lies about immigration. We've seen defenses of the impunity of federal agents. Beyond the people who are killed, we've seen after not just immigrants. That would be, you know, that would be by.

enough on its own, but we've seen them going out for American citizens. People using their first minimum rights to broadcasts what's going on have been attacked, harassed, harangued. So, yeah, you know, I think, and I've thought for the last year, all these debates we've had since 2015-2016 about whether Trump's politics constituted fascism in some time, these kind of, like, academic high-flying debates where people will bring in history and all these illusions, so on, and there's important stuff in them. But I don't think it's really an academic point. Now, we're in something that's fundamentally authoritarian. We're seeing an agency being deployed as the president's basically personal paramilitary force

in a way that we haven't seen in this country. So, you know, I think that the other thing I've really been struck by it in the last month, though, is just the strength of people on the ground. We're seeing people across the country, even here in Baltimore, monitoring ICE, following their activities, trying to get warnings out to immigrant families and so on. Spontaneous feels like the wrong word. I mean, this all requires a lot of planning and coordination effort and people taking all of their own personal time,

putting themselves at risk. But we had seen this kind of outcropping or this flourishing of organization beyond just going out there at protest to actually do things to resist in this regime. You're right, it wasn't spontaneous, but it was almost like an immune response or something on the part of the people in Minneapolis.

It was like, yeah, you're not going to fucking push us around. You do this. This is what we do. We are going to fight back. Like, it was sort of never a question of whether or not the people of Minneapolis were going to do that. Or at least it was clear once they started. This is how the American people, at least in this state and this city, are going to fight back.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's been extraordinary. I mean, we had a general strike in the city of Minneapolis. The people are posting on social media these last couple years. You know, when are we going to do a general strike against Trump? Well, they did one. You know, so that has been really heartening to see, especially in the kind of absence, continued absence of real leadership on the part of what's supposed to be an opposition

party, Democrat Party. I think that the real resistance, the real energy, the real animus right now is with the people of Minneapolis and people across the country who are standing up to these incursions and invasions. So, I don't know, I feel, you know, horrified by what's going on. I feel horrified by the two murders that we all wait. witnessed. But I also feel like this is a moment where, you know, people are doing what they can to stand up for themselves and stand up for the communities. And that, I mean, you often hear the ICE,

you know, as you say, as a personal paramilitary group deployed by the president and comparisons made to that in the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany, the SA or those other group, you know, paramilitary political forces deployed by a supreme leader in order to harass and kill his political opposition, yes, there's a similarity. Something that I don't think you had in the years prior to World War II in the rise of Nazi Germany was a vast portion of the population like kicking their asses. Right. And look, I'm not trying to minimize how much people are still being hurt and brutalized and imprisoned in Minneapolis and other places around the country. But the muscularity and the numbers that people have come out with is,

I think that's surprised everybody. You can't look at the rise of fascism in Europe and say there's a clear parallel, at least as far as I know, I'm not a huge student of history. Right. Well, I mean, I think the most important difference is exactly what you kind of suggest there. I mean, this is a deeply unpopular president

running an increasingly impopulated administration and pushing increasingly impopular policies. It would be one thing if he had 70, 80, 90 percent, of support for, you know, the immigration purges. Right. He's trying to accomplish. Then it would then would be a kind of different political situation. I think one reason why you think some people rise up is because people don't like these

policy. You know, and I think, you know, there's always a conversation now about, you know, the special elections that they've just had and, you know, what's going to happen in the midterms and so on. We've seen this movie play out with Donald Trump before. In 2018, you had this very same kind of situation where he wins an election. There's this assumption or presumption on his part and the part of the Republican Party that this means that he has a kind of mandate on immigration policy. And then they start doing these incredibly heinous things.

And the American people say, no, no, no. Like we're maybe we're not even necessarily sure what we want on immigration. But we don't want this. We don't want families being separated. We don't want people being shot in the street. We don't want coaches and then children being deported. So once the reality of Trumpism hits, we've seen over and over again that the, the American people kind of recoil at it in large numbers.

I mean, the numbers with independence, you know, if we forget about Democrats and people who are already predisposed to being his policies, but he's cratering with people who are supposed to be, you know, roughly in the amorphous middle. Immigration going into last year, I know, this inauguration is one of his best issues. We've seen that atrophy of the course of the last year

and absolutely plunge just in the last couple of weeks. See, I mean, one of the real differences between, you know, those analogs that should give us. us again, some hope is that, no, most Americans are looking at this and saying no. Now, you would hope that that would actually be an opportunity for Democrats to say. And therefore, this is what we should do to fix our migration situation instead. It is extraordinary to me that we had a Democratic administration come into power in 2021 with full control of Congress in the White House. Did not pass immigration before? Didn't even try particularly, did they?

I mean, the Biden administration made some executive moves and so on. But this is the As far as like a legislative, we're going to overhaul our ridiculous legal immigration system, provide people with a path of citizenship, also including, you know, Compton's Board secured, all that kind of, that package of ideas, which is not something that happened legislatively. And it didn't happen for a very simple reason. And that is Congress is set up in such a way that makes the passage of any kind of legislation that is not related to, you know, fiscal issues, functionally impossible to accomplish. We've seen that on all kinds of issues from gun control, the climate change and healthcare policy.

Immigration is just another one. Unless the Democrats come into power again and they decide they want to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, it's very unlikely they're going to pass immigration reform. They actually resolve this problem. And, you know, as people might know, I just published our book in August about democracy and what it means and why our system falls short. And, you know, there's a lot of like wonky explanation in that text. I think the simplest kind of reality

and people understand is every time it seems like we have a problem that everybody agrees we ought to do something about. Congress seems mysteriously unable to translate that public opinion into actual workable legislation and things get worse and worse and worse.

And so when you hear about the filibuster and there's this kind of wonky thing, you need 60 votes to pass a bill through the Senate. You know, you might read an op-ed by a law professor or a political science person and I wonder why it matters. What matters is that as long as that is the case, we are not going to have an immigration reform bill in this country. And as long as we die from an immigration reform bill, the Republican Party, whenever they come in the power, is going to have the opportunity to do exactly what they're doing Minneapolis.

They're going to hunt down immigrants. They're going to hunt down people who defend them and support them and try to keep in communities. And people are going to die. That is what that absence of democracy in the Senate actually means. It's not just a wonky issue. It's not just an abstraction for legal scholars. This is why where the situation we're in. on immigration and some of the other fronts.

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Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Yeah, and I also think of health care as an example where Congress did pass something large after President Obama's first win, but it took a supermajority in the Senate. And even then, it's considered by, I think most people, as a half measure bill. Hey, well, sure, it covered a lot of people. But is anyone walking around going, hey, we solved health care in America? You know, we say the exact same things we said about health care before the bill passed. is too expensive.

Not enough people have care. We have one of the, we pay more for the worst care. All those truisms of the American health care system are still the case. We just moved the ball a little bit. You know, we didn't get a touchdown. We moved the ball a little bit down the field.

And that was a Herculean effort, you know? And that would be President Obama's defense of it. Oh my God, it was the hardest thing I ever fucking did my entire life was to get it that far. Right. And so there is, now you can criticize Obama about it. I certainly do.

But it's a structural issue that you just cannot get shit passed even when everything breaks your way. So imagine if the Democrats are able to ride the unpopularity of Trump to some kind of massive majority, even then would they be able to get the necessary bill passed? It depends on what they decide to do. Yeah. If they have, you know, majority in the House, majority in the Senate, but that majority in the Senate is short of the 60-vote-fellate-thor-threshold.

it's going to be very, very hard for them to pass a lot of the legislation that they're presumably going to run out in the next election. Now, we do see every so often bills to pass through what's called reconciliation. I'm sure the people who fall politics obsessively have heard this word before. And what that means is that for certain kinds of legislation that are directly related to fiscal expenditures, there is a provision that allow you to pass those kinds of bills with just a bare majority in the Senate. We've seen some kind of action on the front of last year. what was it called? It's like, because it's been replaced by the one big beautiful bill in my mind.

It was the, oh, it was so important. I did videos. The IRA, the inflation. Thank you so much. Which was a huge piece of legislation, put a huge amounts of money into climate change, mitigation, et cetera, et cetera, yes. Yeah. So there are things like that you can do.

The issue is that there are a whole swath of legislation that doesn't fit the parameters that have been outlined for reconciliation process. Immigration is a person. example of this. I mean, to change immigration law and to change the way the people immigrate to this country, that's not necessarily a fiscal issue. You can try to do some things to kind of slide it in there. But it's not what the reconciliation process was designed for. In fact, there was some talk during the Biden administration about including immigration reconciliation bills and was shot down by the parliamentarian. So we need real structural change.

Democrats come in next time and they don't do anything like they didn't do anything during Biden to change that structural dynamic, structural situation. They're not going to pass immigration bill. And they're not going to pass a whole lot of other bills. And I'm sure they're going to promise the right people that are going to pass. The other side of this, I think, is worth mentioning too, is, you know, why the Republican Party is so crazy. There are a lot of different explanations you can give for this. There's a lot of different reasons.

There's no, like, one single cause. I do think that one of the contributing factors, though, is that the Republican Party. The Republican Party is not accountable to the majority of the American public. If you're a Republican legislator, especially in the United States Senate, your power, your electoral fortunes don't depend upon whether you can actually reach out to a cross-section of the American public. You really depend for your election, especially in safe states and rural states, conservative states, on the Republican primary elector.

Once you make it through a Republican primary, you're coming from a Republican primary. kind of golden in your Senate election in a red state, what that means functionally is that so much of the power in the system, especially in the United States Senate and in safe seats in the House, is tilted towards rewarding people who can win Republican primary. And if that's the case, and most Americans might oppose a policy, most Americans might oppose what Donald Trump's doing on immigration, but for a huge swath of people who are being elected to Congress, that's the same. doesn't matter. What matters is the extent to which they reach out to people and convince people

who watch Fox News all then, that pulls American politics further and further to the right. And they provide you with very few incentives, I think, to moderate from the kind of extremism we've seen from this administration. So again, you know, there's, I think, a lot of discourse around these points that can feel kind of academic, they can feel kind of, you know, nerdy, and this is people who, you know, study politics academically really care about. These issues are no longer in the realm of the purely academic. We are seeing every single day the consequences of a deranged political system to reward extremism that doesn't represent most of the American people

and it prevents us from solving our most important problem. And I wonder just when we're going to reach a point when the Democratic Party in particular is willing to take these issues head on and push for not just policy changes for the things they care about, be the actual structural changes they're going to make an acting. those are the Democrats going to run on? Our political system itself is so fucked up. Look at what's happening.

And that would take a recognition on their part. Like they would need to be able to call the Republicans crazy. They would need be able to say this is un-American. This is fascism. This is bad for the entire nation. Because you know that people around the world are. Like if you look at the reactions at Davos and before that, that the other other countries are now having towards America.

They're like, they look at it the same way that we look at, you know, some fucking, you know, South American dictatorship, a country that doesn't have its shit together. I don't want to malign any other particular continent, in fact, because we actually might be uniquely bad and worse. But, you know, there's some countries you look at it. Oh, my God. Oh, thank God I don't live there.

Things are so fucked up there that look what happens every couple years, you know? I think about like I don't want to name a card There are some countries where they're stable for like five years and then everything goes to shit again because there's something structurally wrong that causes the political system

to like lose a wheel and become completely undemocratic And like you can tell the other countries are looking at America going like Well hold on a second Even if like someone not sane comes into power next time Well what's going to happen four years later?

Like something is deeply rotten in America. Something is the table's missing a couple legs, you know. And in our internal political culture, the sane, the sane adjacent people in our political culture are not saying this out loud and saying we need to do something about it and put ourselves on a firmer democratic footing where this kind of shit doesn't happen. I think that's exactly right. And this is actually something that's been eye opening to me, just sort of seeing the European reactions in the last couple of weeks to what's going on.

because I has assumed that there was a lot of awareness, certainly amongst European legislative people involved in politics in Europe, of just how bad the American political system is. But I feel like that's actually something that was not, not as widely known as I had seen, because he'd read comments from these people, like, why aren't the American people opposing what's going on with Greenwood? Why aren't the American people standing up? Why aren't they, you know, opposing this president? To what your response as they are. You know, not only we're seeing like this activism on the ground, but like the polls are very, very clear.

Especially on Greenland was like an 80 to 90 to 10 issue. It was like 80% of the Americans are like, what the fuck is this? Republicans were like, you know, but Trump, you know, Trump is in the position as the executive to do a lot. People have been warring over and over and over again, of course, for decades about how powerful the presidency had gotten, how much the presidency had taken on powers were supposed to be restricted by, limited by Congress. And now we're seeing that, you know, come to cartoonish light with the Greenland situation. He can do functionally whatever is, you know, Durangelo-Mind wants to do there. We saw him, you know, do this crazy thing in Venezuela. We saw him conduct airstrikes in Nigeria.

Congress, you know, constitutionally is supposed to have a role in declaring war and engaging in these things. It doesn't really seem to matter. Conceptually, Congress can impeach the president if the president abuses of power and does things he's not supposed to do and violates the law. Actually, as a matter of fact, if Republicans agree that they support this president and they don't go on William Hinn, the threshold for impeachment is so high that that alliance with the president prevents Congress from doing anything. So these are deep, deep structural issues.

And, you know, I think that people around the world are waking up. to just how deep sets they are. You know, I don't know if I'm accurate in rendering European, you know, knowledge in the right of political system. It's been striking to me to see, you know, people not really get it. Like, how could this happen? How could Trump be so far gone without a leash? And I think the reality is that we have the worst political system in the developed world,

and I think that our peers have begun to understand that. Yeah. And look, you even saying that right now, it almost sounds radical and un-American in some way because it is such an article of faith that we are raised with, that we have the best political system. And of course, in every country, they raise the children to believe that they live in a good country. That is the story that everybody tells about themselves, because why would you tell any other story other than I'm great?

That's human nature. But we were told, I mean, like America is, you know, in many ways, the world's first modern democracy. We kind of invented the shit, you know, at least in the popular understanding. And so the fact that like, no, hold on a second, our very political system is fundamentally bad. It's been set up incorrectly because look at what it's done. That's, it sounds radical for you to say. And yet it's completely undeniable at this point.

Like, how could you look at what Donald Trump is doing in any way? one of the many spheres we've, you know, mentioned and said, this is what a rational political system produces. And to the point that you're saying about, about Congress and the war powers and things, literally the opposite of what I was taught in, you know, middle school, the balance of power, the checks and balances.

There, everyone knows checks and balances. Like, it's like fucking, you know, why do the chick across the road? You know, A is for apple shit. Checks and balances. there aren't any.

They're gone. We can tell. There are none. Mike Johnson is like, I never disagree with the president. He said like earlier. He said, I would never disagree with the president publicly or something a couple days ago. He said, oh, we do that in private. Yeah.

Like the Supreme Court is backing up everything that he does. There aren't any checks and balances. So how could you, how could you look at it otherwise and say the system has structurally failed? Before we get into what we need to change structurally, I want to ask a little bit, why is there such an asymmetry between the Republicans and the Democrats, because you said the Republicans are driven by, you know, the primary voters, and that is one of the structural problems. But when you look at the fall of the 2024 election, a big part of it was people saying, oh, the Democrats were too driven by the Democratic primary voters.

And that was literally just stuff like Kamala Harris being on record five years earlier you're saying, I like single payer health care or whatever, like pretty basic domestic policy, you know, stuff that she was agreeing with. Oh, yeah, Elizabeth Warren has some good ideas. You know, shit like that. And then literally they lose the general and it's like, oh, the Democratic primary voters were driving the bus. And that is why they failed. When in the case of the Republicans, Trump's literally out there saying, I'm going to deport 20 million people.

He wins on that. He does it. We find out, oh, yeah, guess what? The American people don't like it. And yet they were able to win. So why can they win the general when the Democrats can't? Well, I mean, I think it's important to point out. So in 2020, when those comments were made, that people resurfaced in 2024, you know,

these blurbs of people were doing to win a Democratic primary to win progressive voters. We won that election in 2020, right? Importantly. The election where we ran the other way, when Kamala Harris went out there and said, well, I'm a gun, I have a gun on, I know how to use it. When Kamala Harris was talking about being tougher on immigration to Donald Trump, when they ran away from trends, right? When they ran away from all these things, that was the election we lost, right?

And so I don't know that there is a one-to-one kind of relationship to, like, those, that's the explanation for why. But that should tell us, this is a more complicated story than strategists and consultants in the center wants to tell us it. And the politics is complicated. I think that they're obviously, their costs are taking all kinds of positions. But that doesn't mean that, running on principles and knowing what you stand for

and being able to articulate what you stand for is necessarily going to read. In fact, being robust in defense of a particular stance is something that I think that wrote is respect. And that's also the only way we can actually change public opinion. Look at Zoran in New York, right? When he got actually negative reviews for saying, I am not going to apologize for being a Democratic socialist

when he was inaugurated after he won the election. And let me tell you, that I tour all across the country and I have a line about Zoron in my hour right now. By the way, come see me in Houston next weekend if you want to hear this line. And every time I mention him, the entire crowd cheers. And of course, these are people who came to see me. But this just happened in Louisville, Kentucky, you know, because he's one of the most popular politicians in America because he does not apologize for his beliefs.

And that matters to people. Yeah. I think that's right. So, I mean, the way I'd put this reductively is Republicans, are usually trying to run ahead of public opinion in many respects. And Democrats are kind of trying to lag behind and catch up a public opinion is. So the thing about gay marriage, for instance, back in the mid-2000, there was incredibly toxic for many Democrats to come in and say they supported otherwise people to marry whoever they wanted to marry. Up through the Obama

administration, I think one of Joe Biden's greatest moments was this interview. I don't know if you remember this, where he's kind of like let out that he supported gay marriage right before the administration was willing to. That is a general democratic position and disposition on most things. To actually try to change public opinion, say, well, I believe this. You might not actually believe it,

but here's why you should and here's why you should come over to our side. That's not a kind of mode to exist. And I think that's partially a function of what I was talking about before. I'm doing with the political system, you know, does disadvantage progressive, does disadvantage left in public opinion

in certain respect because Republicans are so, you know, structurally empowered. But I think despite of that, there are moments where you can change things and shift things if you take a strong stand. And again, one other way to deal with that situation is to implement structural changes that tilt the system away from being so right dominated and so right controlled. Democrats have not been willing to do either of those things. And I think that's to their real detriment.

I mean, last year, I remember reading reports from Axios, you know, these quotes that they get from House members behind the scenes. What Democrats should do with immigration? This is when the Obrego-Kerzia case was in the headline. Right. I'm the innocent man who had been deported for no reason. There are Democrats who are being quoted to saying, well, look, this is just a random guy. You know, do we really want to stake our position on undefending this person?

We want to stake our position on defending these people. And now, of course, we're seeing that, you know, because the administration's actions have been so crazy. And because you see people, you know, ordinary people standing up, and because you have these confrontations, like the ones that ended in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretty, immigration is now one of Trump's weaker issues, or at least it's weakening for him dramatically. Imagine what would have happened if Democrats had last year, with intention, been pushing the line that this was wrong, that is going to lead to disruption of communities, destruction of families. These numbers would probably be even worse. So the sort of presumption

that you can't do anything to actually bring the American public to your side. You're always trying to kind of play catch up with whatever you think the public is. Meanwhile, the publicans are doing things like saying we're going to invade Greenland. That's an that's an asymmetry that's not sustainable. I don't think it's rational. And I think

that a lot of changing our position, a lot of changing our situation as a country is going to depend upon Democrats and breaking out of that mold and choosing a different approach to vote. I mean, it's so mind-boggling because to look at the Trump administration's specific cruelty to innocent people, which is something that like the public does not like. Guess what?

The average person doesn't like to see wanton violent cruelty meet it out against innocent people. And to look at that happening and say, no, we can't make a political issue out of this when it's organically coalesced around someone like Kimara-Brea Garcia, right? Now, maybe you could make the argument that it was easier in the case of Renee Good and Alex Prady because they're good white Minnesotans, you know, and I think that could be part of it. And also that there's been more of these cases. But like political malpractice to not look at the Kilmar case and say, hey, let's make some fucking hay out of it. They fucked up. They attacked somebody who didn't need to be attacked.

The public is incensed. Let's, you know, let's make hay while the sun shines, guys, you know. But then also I think you make a great point about, I think about Obama all the time, most successful, you know, a brilliant leader on the Democratic side in a long time. But when you talk to him, when you read what he wrote,

he really seemed to see public opinion as a prison that he existed within, to a large degree. Like it hemmed in what he could do. And that's how he felt about gay marriage. The fact that a guy like that when he ran and won so resoundingly, couldn't look ahead a little bit and say, you know what?

I think I know where people are going to be in five years. What if I push a little bit, you know, can I get on there a little bit earlier on gay marriage? And he did not. I think that is, you know, part of the entire problem with the Democratic Party and part of what they need to change. Yeah. I mean, that is the work of politics, right? Not just being aware, but seeing, you know, here's what I'd like to accomplish because I think it makes sense as a policy, because I think it's right in principle. maybe the public's not there, but what can I do as a political leader, as a political figure,

as a commentator, whatever happens to be, to shift these different pieces in the electorate in my direction, to construct a majority. That is what democracy is supposed to be about. That's what politics is supposed to be about. And again, in the absence of Democrats operating that way, Republicans go out and do and accomplish really crazy things. Very few Americans, for example, wanted to see Roe v. Ways overturned. Right? And adopts the decision. Republican knew that, conservatives knew that. And they taught themselves, okay, what can we actually do as a kind of legal strategy to get us there? And what can we do, you know, to sort of obfuscate the extent to which our abortion positions are crazy. They were smart about the politics. They constructed a kind of strategy

that got them to where they wanted to be. And that was a long-term project. It was not about what can we do and say to win this next election coming up or this marriage or whatever. it was, what can we do over the next 10 to 20 years to fundamentally transform the reproductive policy and reproductive rights landscape in this country? Democrats are never engaged in that kind of thinking and that kind of calculation in our politics. It's all about what's easiest, what's going to get me ahead in the next particular midterm, what's going to keep these seats safe and so on. There's a very little sense that there is a kind of real churning thing that they are all kind of working towards and striving for.

for. It's very hard for me imagine Democrats coming up with a kind of project 2025. Republicans had this kind of big document. Here are all the things we want to accomplish as a movement that we all kind of know and agree upon and are going to try to implement these various ways. Democrats had a very difficult time coming up with something equivalent. In fact, they've been trying for the last couple of years and I haven't really come up with anything that I'd be able to see. It's wild, even on the stuff that you would think they agree about. I mean, if you went to every Democrat who has a little bit of policy wonkism in them and said, hey, do you think single payer health care is a better way to pay for health care than what we

currently have? They would say, oh, yes, of course. But I can't say that out loud. I can't even acknowledge that as being a blue sky goal. Right. And that's what project 2025 was. It was like, hey, let's list every, let's list all our fantasies. Let's have a vision board.

You know what I mean? And like Democrats. Don't do it. No, I can't imagine I'm going to live in a big house with a handsome hot husband and three kids. I can't even, let's not even pretend like it's possible because let's just give up right now. It's bizarre. It's bizarre. And I think, you know, that sucks, you know, when things are normal, right? It sucks to be a part of a political coalition that doesn't have a kind of vision and horizon for what they want to go and the kind of these high ambitions. When things are like just plain or. That's still, that's bad. When we're in a situation where the country and the Republic is kind of collapsing in all of these ways, and you don't have the kind of bright sky understanding of where you want to take the American people, you're not going to use that opportunity to offer something different when all the rules have been broken and all the things that we told ourselves about how

politics supposed to work have fallen apart. You're not going to use that moment to offer something big. That feels egregious in a way that I think is actually. difficult for me to explain and understand. So I don't know, we have this presidential primary. It's going to get up and running, you know, disgustingly soon. People are already positioning themselves. And I don't know, it'll be interesting to see the extent to which this vacuum is filled.

You know, you are seeing some Democrats who are definitely going to run trying to gin up, you know, animus about Republicans and talk about how we're angry there and so on. And Gavin Newsom is, you know, putting out a lot of... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Egg forward on this stuff. And, you know, the redistricting stuff mattered, and that's, that's cool, too. But I just, I hope that people move beyond their, you know, just their anger, to say, and therefore, we're not just going to beat the Republican Party in 2028. We're not just going to take control of Congress.

These are the things that we're going to do to construct American society. And so I should wait, they're never in this place again. They were never in a place where people are going after American citizens, murdering people for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for just, you know, exhibiting and manifesting their rights, going after families. We're going to construct a politics and a country that is a fundamental departure for everything we're experiencing right now. That's what I would like to see. That's what I'd like to hear. I think it's not just right in principle. I think it's politically smart, but we'll see who rises to the occasion, because this is the kind of moment where, you know, if you're being selfish and cynical and you're just a

politician looking to get ahead. Well, this is a moment where people are looking for a leader. People will anoint you of something. If you're offering kind of vision, other people are not offering. And I don't know, we'll see if anybody rises to that moment and that occasion in the next few months and the next year. You know, car shopping shouldn't be a game of 20 questions. Is this the right price? Am I making the right choice? Well, with car gurus, you don't have to question yourself. Car gurus has the most inventory, transparent deal ratings and real-time price drop alerts. Plus, with Car Guru's app,

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He's not going to be able to do most of that stuff. But like he got into office and what did you do? you know what we should do first free toilets everywhere public toilets and everyone I haven't lived in New York City in a couple of years but if at the end of his first term they don't have free buses but there's a thousand

more free toilets around the city people are going to be like I'll take that fucking deal right because he showed he had ambition and then once he actually got into office he was like all right what can I do with it you know what the lowest hanging fruit is let's let people not be pissing on the sides of buildings which has been a problem in New York for a hundred years

what if we actually solved the fucking problem by thinking ambitiously about it? But now that's kitchen table stuff. You're saying we need to have politicians run on that structurally. And so, like on making big structural changes that the structure of American democracy is fucked up. So your fantasy political candidate for the Democrats, what are they running on in terms of a structural?

Are they running and saying, hey, I want the president to be less powerful? I'm going to run and try to give power back to Congress, for instance. What are they doing concretely to solve our structural issues? Well, concretely, I think that the demands, I think, have been, you know, circulating for a while now. I think that we should have new states added that will give Democrats more seats in Congress and rebalance things demographically and political. Puerto Rico, D.C., any others? Well, I think that there should be a referendum in Puerto Rico to see if the people actually

want to be a part of the United States as states. I mean, I think the referendums they've had so far indicated that that's probably the case, but there should be a really representative one. DC for sure. I think that that should be extended actually to follow the territory. We need to reform the Supreme Court. We need to add justices to the bench, I think. Those kinds of structure reform, people have been talking about them for a while, but I think it's really important to emphasize the people that these are not, again, just abstractions, these are not just poli-sci demands and desires. Implementing these things is the way you actually get to kitchen table benefits for,

the American people, right? If we can't get the health care we want and we can't get the labor rights we want and we can't get the minimum wage increases we want because these things in Congress are messed up, while reforming them is actually going to implement policies that mean more money for you, more resources for you, and more freedom and power to do what you'd like to with your life. That's, I think, the argument to make. Democrats did kind of run on democracy in a way in this last election, but they ran on it in a way where they were talking about the preservation of certain norms, preservation of institutions, people looked at all that and said, well, look, the norms and institutions are not working. They're not delivery for me.

And so when it comes to running structurally and running on democracy next time around, this I think they should, it has to be, look, we're not a democracy, actually. We need to implement really radical, not radical even, but look really important structural reforms that make us more democratically representative. And once we do that, you're going to have better health care. You're going to have a better job. You're going to be paid more for the work you're doing. You're able to send your kind of college, right? That's what, that's what a functional system is going to deliver for you. I think that's a very powerful message. It's a message that I think speaks to people, again, in this moment where we seem bereft of vision, people want to be inspired

by politics. If they hear politicians come out and say, like they're saying, the same old, same old, that's a vulnerability that's going to be exploited. Donald Trump exploited that, I think, very, very well, not just in 2016, but in every election he's run. I'm the guy who's going to come in. I'm going to take a look at Washington and tear the whole thing down because it's not working for you. And people who might not have liked Donald Trump's whole policy agenda, people who might not have liked aspects in his personality. People who didn't like January 6th or the effort to overturn 2020 election said, look, you know, I don't like all of these things, many of them. But I'm willing to invest some of my hope in a candidate who says he's going to be different from the status quo.

And he's offering a way that he's going to be a departure from politics if we've known it, right? If Democrats are not offering something in that same kind of register, I think they're going to be very, very vulnerable. I'm going to keep seeing people on the right take advantage of that vulnerability. So those structural changes are important. I hope they're run on. I hope they're run on not just, you know, as these kind of walkie things we should do for their own sake, as much as I believe that, because we're actually going to use those changes to deliver material gains for the American people. And I think that's an exciting message.

And it's one I think, you know, would be something a little bit different. Yeah, I'm imagining if a Democrat, one of the Democrats in the field who has some juice, right, let's say AOC or better, you know, in terms of in terms of how much juice they got. And they run on. Here's what I want to do. I want to double the size of the Supreme Court. I'm going to abolish the filibuster to do it. Here's a bunch of Senate candidates who I'm running along with who agree with me on this. And the reason we're going to do that is we're going to do that is we're going to.

going to make abortion legal around the country again, and we're also going to do, pick your favorite economic stuff. You know, we're going to do some new deal shit, right, that they say we can't do. And even if that person doesn't win, the effects that that could have on our political culture, because, you know, if, you know, Joe Biden was making, you know, there were rumbings about anything of the Supreme Court then, well, he didn't fucking run on it. But if you had somebody run on it and potentially win, Well, hey, that would, A, might change the behavior of the Supreme Court because they'd shit their pants.

But B, it would, that would shift the Overton window, I think overused phrase, but it would shift the Overton window so much because we would realize, oh, yeah, this is part of our material political reality. It's not crazy to do, especially compared to all the crazy shit that the Republicans have done over the past couple of years. They fucking defunded NPR for Christ's sake. like the item number 57 on their wish list. Like, I mean, the reality is like, if Democrats win in 28,

it came into law for in 29, and they start saying, well, we can't do this actually because, you know, there's this rule or this structural feature in the Senate or this kind of regulation.

People are not going to accept that. They've just witnessed Donald Trump going around saying that he's going to invade Greenland, right? Like there's, There's no, people have seen that there are actually fewer horizons, fewer constraints on what politicians are capable of doing and saying and acting upon.

Yes. And they've been led to believe, certainly led to believe by Democrats. And so I think to come in with the kind of disposition that Democrats have come in with, you know, the last couple of presidencies is not going to work. I think people are going to be, you know, I think very indignant because they know better. They know that the presidency, especially, there's a lot that can be done. I think that in principle, the next Democratic president should try to devolve the power back to Congress.

But people understand that there's a wider ambit than they've been led to believe. And so they're not going to accept the kind of talk about we can't do this or it wouldn't be right to do that, that Democrats have gotten used to using his excuses. Let me ask you, because something I wanted to ask since the very beginning, when you said Stephen Miller said might makes right. And that that is their operating principle. And it was clear before he even said that, right? That power, it's not quite might make, might makes right is not true because it's a

statement about morality. Might does make reality, right? Might not make morality. But if you have the power to do something, you can do it. And it can be done. And I fucking did it already. It doesn't matter. The man knocked down the east wing of the white.

house. Doesn't matter what laws. Might be the Kennedy Center next. Yeah. I'm hearing, you know, in the last, last day or so. Like, literally the building. He might knock down the building, the Kennedy Center. Yeah.

And I mean, once that's done, what are you going to do but shrug and say, well, he did it. It happened. You know, it doesn't matter what anybody has to say about it. Yeah. But there's also a degree to which I've seen you and others write about that that is an un-American point of view, that like the whole point of the country is that might is not supposed to make right, that the people are supposed to have something to say about it. And you are advancing sort of an argument that, hey, when the Democrats are in power,

they should have a little bit of the same idea, right? They should realize how much power they have to do things. So I'm curious how you, you know, weigh that use of presidential or political power against the need to want to have checks and balances and have the American people have a say and have there be, you know, mitigating factors in your overall political analysis? Well, I mean, I think that they should use their power to democratize the system, right? So they should be using their power in ways that actually give power back also to the American people through, whether it's adding seats or reforming the court. These are ideas that are going to be framed as radical, you know, usurpations or seizures of power.

But their actual impact is to democratize the system and to give more power back to the American people and give power to American people more equally. We have a political system where it matters tremendously where you live. Right. I think Democrats should use their power whenever they have it next to change that. And to say, you know, it doesn't really matter if you live in New York City or Los Angeles or you live in Wyoming. We're all Americans. We're all entitled to equal say. We're all entitled to equal political rights.

We're going to implement changes that makes that so. I don't see that as a kind of abuse of power. I see that that's something that will democratize the system and give more power to more Americans who lack it. But on this point about Spiefer Miller and how un-American what he said is. So like I said, I wrote a piece in The Guardian about this, this quote. They tied a lot of different things we've seen happen in the last month together. And I think the main idea in the column was this. The idea that might makes right and that there's nothing that really matters in the world

but your own, you know, will to power is an idea that you know, is an idea that you that is not compatible with civilization, right? Or any civilization worth aspiring to. I think any civilization, every society worth wanting to live in, says, no, we actually have obligations to each other. We have standards of behavior

we're supposed to uphold for ourselves. We're all entitled. We told ourselves in this particular society, America, to a certain rights that you cannot abrogate. And we believe in all these things because you believe there's something important about human life that is eroded

when we tell ourselves that nothing really matters but power. And so, you know, we're about to start this year of commemoration. I guess we have started this year of commemorating, you know, the Declaration of Independence. What an irony to have that anniversary be at this moment. Exactly. That's also opportunity. You know, I think that we've done a great job in the last decade or so in the discourse of critiquing various aspects of American history. history, bringing into light things from our past that we've ignored, that weren't taken sufficiently

seriously, trying to understand the ways in which they influence the present. I think all of that works have been important. I do fundamentally believe, though, that at least the first couple of paragraphs, so the Declaration of Independence, are among the best sentiments ever expressed by society. The idea that we're all entitled to basic rights, that we all have dignity and worth and purpose and all the constructed society on that basis. And if that society ends up in a place where it's abrogating those rights, we have also the right to overturn things and create a society that's better and that it's more respectful of our intrinsic dignity as human being. Right. That is not just a kind of dusty old document to me. It's not just a museum piece. That is a live

commitment that we should still believe that we have today. We should also do we actually have a political system that is respectful and that strengthens our humanity. Do we have an economy that respects and strengthens our humanity? I think it's no coincidence to me that a administration that has so little respect for intrinsic community that's willing to do what it's doing to immigrants, that's willing to do what it did to Renee Good and nowx Pretty is also a betting an industry in AI that hopes to replace large sections of humanity that hopes to throw millions of people out of work and turn over, some of our basic human capacities, to technology. I don't think it's coincidence that the Trump administration has been backing this as well. This is a political

formulation for me that is fundamentally at odds with some of the best human impulses and basic human impulses even that we have. And I think it's time to have a politic where people are willing to say that. And I can't think of a better year for us to to really take that up as a message and as an idea. What a gorgeous message. I mean, the idea that you're right, we have the part of the Declaration of Independence.

All men are created equal. All people are created equal. But the other piece is when in the course of human events, right? When the people recognize that they are being oppressed, that they live in our political system that no longer serves them, they have the right to wage a revolution, right? And what if we saw that as a, a living call to arms. You know what that reminds, it's sort of perverse, but what it reminds me of

is, if you look at the history of the Mormon Church, right? The Mormon Church was founded on direct revelation. Joseph Smith said, God talked to me. And the beautiful thing about that is God can talk to anybody. And one of the problems the Mormon Church has is Mormons ever since have gone, hey, guess what? God talked to me. And then they started a new sect. And the mainline Mormon church has to constantly go, no, no, no, no, no. God didn't talk to him. God's only talking to us. But like some of those, you know, splinter groups have had success because that's how religions work. But the fundamental premise of the religion is anybody can do this. And that's also the, let's make it to turn into a positive, that one of the fundamental premises of the Declaration of Independence

is this is the people's right. The people can sweep away the old when the old no longer serves them. And it is kind of a perversity that the American experiment has turned into, you know, a calcified set of, oh, the founding principles on the stone tablets that we cannot change. No, no, no. The point is we can change them when we want to. We can have a new founding at any moment. And maybe we could embrace that and say, no, that's really, that is what would honor the founder's intentions is to take up their call and do it again. Right. I mean, that's why this country exists in the first place. And I think we have the same prerogative. I mean, we certainly know more about governance than the founders did more than two centuries ago. We've had more than two centuries of experience with the system that they created. We've seen republics and other kinds of governments come up across the world we can learn from. We have political science as a discipline that didn't really exist in the late 18th century. All of these different resources are available for us beyond also the morality of we now, you know, not believing in slavery.

We now believe us now believing in women or equal. We're smarter than they are. We know more. I would let, there's plenty of people in America. I think Lena Khan is probably smarter than Thomas Jefferson was. You know what I mean? There's lots of people in America that say, give them the pen. Let them do a draft and we can all read it.

Please continue your point. But I was just saying, you know, there's no reason why we shouldn't also consider ourselves as founder. There's no reason why we shouldn't also consider the founding or refounding of a country. this country is something that we are compelled to do, can be compelled to do by circumstances. I think that's exactly the position we're in. We are in a tyrannical regime. It's not a full autocracy, no, but we are seeing extraordinary things happen in this country every single day that should disturb us and alarm us. We have an economy that is also not run and not really meaningfully under control of ordinary people, and that has consequences for our political

rights as individuals as well. We're in a really bad situation. Things I think have been worse in this country, sure, in a lot of different grounds, but, you know, the structural problems I'm talking about are not things that are easily fixed by tinkering around the edges. We are in a moment where to bring ourselves out of the morass we're in, we need to make big changes. We need people to speak in large terms about the kind of country we want to be. And I think that, you know, this is a perfect year for us to start doing this. But the most important thing is what you said. We can also be,

should also consider ourselves as founders. This is our country. This is a country that belongs to the living. Even Jefferson himself said famously that he didn't believe the Constitution to justly last, I think, about more than 19 years by his estimation. We're at more than almost 240 years

with the Constitution that we've got. The average lifespan of a written Constitution in developed world is about 32 years. We're overdue for a change. We're overdue for a real conversation. And I don't think that's something we change overnight. But this kind of project of making American democracy surreal, I think it's a generational project, but one that we can start now.

And the next time Democrats come in office, I think there are concrete things they can do to pull us in that direction that would also improve our political situation and disempower right that's gotten far to authoritarian for the health of our country. Are there any other concrete things you haven't mentioned yet? Supreme Court devolving more power upon Congress, Any others?

Well, I think one of the things I think is important to mention, I just talked a little bit about the economy, right, and the extent to which I think economic, the distribution of power in the economy matters. Look, we're in a situation we're about to have the first trillionaires in the world, right? We saw about a year ago the wealthiest human being on the face of Europe because he donated about $260 million to Donald Trump's campaign, which is a fraction of what he owns. He was given the right to rework the executive branch to his liking, you know, thousands of people, fired, under programs, I'm told, hundreds of thousands of people who are dead, you know, abroad

because the USAID cuts. Yes. A guy who just happened to be wealthy, waltors into government is able to do all these things over and above the American people's consent or knowledge. That's a problem. I think that there are ways in which the concentrations of wealth we have in this country, you know, beyond all the economic reasons why it's bad, are also destructive and destabilizing when it comes to our political rights and the extent to which we actually have democracy.

And so at a point, too, when we talk about reforms to a democratized country, we can't just talk about, you know, political, structural change. We also have to be thinking about an economy that's so unequal. The people in Elon Musk, given the amount of power that they have, and they can use it to wield and yield it to their own political ends. So I think that there should also be, as part of the democratization kind of message and agenda, reforms aimed at reempowering the American worker, offering them more control, more agency,

more agency within corporations, power to directs or incorporate activities, seats on corporate boards. These, I think, are reforms that also loop into democracy in an important way. I think the easiest thing, or the easiest lift, probably the pro-A. So this is a piece of pro-labor legislation

that's been on the table for a while now. It would make it much easier to organize. It gives workers a measure of economic democracy. But I'd also like to see, people start talking, again, about co-determination. So this idea of putting seats on corporate boards that are reserved for representatives elected by workers. Liz Warren talked about this in 2020.

Bernie Sanders talked about it. It was not a major proposal in the discourse. But for me, that's actually a very exciting idea that I think will strike the American people as new sounding, novel sounding, ambitious sounding. And then also, I think, ties into democratic principles that we are discussing in an important way. I also think there's a tweak to the way we have talked about wealth so far in American politics that would be appealing to the American people or at least would like to see someone try, which is a shift from let's take their money away and fund single payer health care to let's take their money away because it gives them too much power. They have too much power over your life.

Jeff Bezos should not be running our country. Elon must should not be running our country. Mark Zuckerberg should not be running our country. I think that that has been impossible for the Democrats to say until now because the tech titans were actually part of their coalition. They no longer are. I'm sure there are some, you know, Soros is still on the left, probably a couple other billionaires,

but, you know, they no longer have as large of a share. And, you know, it might be necessary to truly piss those people often say, I don't think that they should have as much political power as they do. And they're going to try to stop me because they want to keep the political power and they want to be able to tell you what to do. And we need to stop them. That's one of the, that would be saying it more plainly that it's been said in the past and it is the fundamental problem, you know? Yeah. I think that's right. I just think it's a new message that's easy to run on now, especially. I mean, things have gotten so cartoonish. The idea that we have, you know, as

as the leading industry, a growth industry of our economy today, an industry that says openly every single day, well, yeah, the point of all this is to throw millions of people out of work. And what happens to those people we really know? We're just going to press ahead and press ahead with this technology, artificial intelligence. It's going to replace everybody's, you know, work, profession, their hobbies, their relationships, et cetera, et cetera,

and we're just going to figure it out. All we know is that it's making us money now. We hope it's going to make us money. In the near future, it's actually losing a lot of money. But we're hoping it's going to lead to these huge profits. And society, you know, we'll just deal with the other consequences happen to be when we got there. That's not the world that most people want to live it. And the idea that they can work towards creating that world, really because they have the capital, without any kind of agency on the part of the American worker, is extraordinary.

And people should be saying that openly. The idea that this is not already a mainstay or a main message in democratic politics is unbelievable to me. But maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe this rupture from the tech world creates the opportunity space of people to start to say this. But we're already seeing all data center protests and these kinds of things. People are, you know, slowly but surely taking action here. Yeah, we can't do one like this.

There's something fundamental at stake right now. And I think it has to do with our humanity, again, whether it's immigrants being rounded up or, you know, AI replacing us. We're in a point in our politics where they're very existential things. It doesn't feel like a politician just speaking to. I even struggle to as a writer kind of wrap my head around it all. But I think a part of the piece of making things right has to be that the economy can't just be controlled by a cadre of investors and executives and widows in Silicon Valley.

The economy has to be controlled by all of us. And being the people who are doing the work, it creates the wealth in the first place. Yeah, so I don't know. We'll see if anybody bites on that. Well, so this leads to me to my last question, which is, you know, do we need a generational political talent to do this? I do think about, you know, the rise of Barack Obama. I remember very clearly listening to Ezra Klein right after the election of Donald Trump and he pointed out that it was that year, I believe, that George W. Bush won re-election that. that Obama first appeared as the new star

at the Democratic National Convention, right? With his speech, four years later, he runs and he wins. And I do remember that Obama moment is feeling, oh my God, here's a man who's actually saying a message about the country that feels large enough for what we need. And I think I can look back at hindsight and say, well, maybe it was a little too flowery and there wasn't enough oomph behind it, et cetera.

But it did, you know, he was a once-in-a-generation political talent who was saying those things and pulling a new coalition together. And I'm not like a fan of, you know, the great man theory of history, but I do believe that like you do have those leaders only come along once in a while if you just like look at the history of American society. And Ezra Klein's point when he said this a year ago was like, hey, we got someone's going to arise. I'm looking around going, I don't see him yet. You know, like Zoran, I'm a fan. I can't run for president at any point because he wasn't born in the country. Who else we got? I got a couple people I like more than others, but I'm not looking around saying,

hey, here's the Bernie Sanders, but 30 years younger. Here's the AOC, but three times is popular. Here's the whatever it is. So do you think we need that kind of person or is this a change that the Democrats and you know, everyone who's not a fascist in this country can make in aggregate. Well, I mean, I think those figures are always hopeful when they arise, if they arise, but you also can't kind of weigh around for them, you know. Republicans, you know, I think the conservative movement is, I think, a really good thing

to study when considering this question. Which movements are saying again? The conservative movement, the American conservative movement, right? So conservatives, Republican Party, they have Ronald Reagan in 1980. He is the ideal messenger. He's polished. He is great at public speaking. He's a compelling figure to a lot of Americans

who would not already consider a conservative ideology. And that was an important piece of their whole apparatus to have. But they also had a movement that before Reagan emerged as the guy who was going to take the conservative movement into power, did everything they could to build a constituency of Americans that was into their ideas. And conservatism, you know, up as late as 1964 or so. when you had Barry Goldwater, this conservative candidate, Republicans run,

get completely obliterated in the election. It was not a popular ideology. It was not a political ideology which is like a real mass constituency in this country. That had to be built over time through media, through books, through organizations, through specific issue campaigns, all oriented around getting people to think a particular way about policy, a particular way about society. Conservatives made an argument to the American people over the course of many decades,

about the kind of society that they wanted to create, and eventually they're given the chance to try to create that society. I think they've largely succeeded. What is the equivalent of that on the democratic side? We have a lot of policies we want to implement, a lot of them are good ideas and so on, but this kind of general principle of like, this is what we believe in American society should look like

on the basis of these three core ideas. That's not something I think that there's an analog for. Conservatives can rattle off very, very easily to you. Conservatives is about limited governments, It's about individual freedom. It's about markets. All these things are kind of tied up neatly, and that's why you should support all of these policies and so on.

And that's why you should never vote for a Democrat. Democrats have this kind of laundry list of, like, you know, disaggregated policy ideas that they need to hardly articulate why they all hold together. But that vision is important. That's what actually builds movement so that when the leader, when the political talent comes around, there's this kind of infrastructure underneath them. That's why we had Obama, right? That leader came for Democrats and what did they build with it?

So I hope that we have political talents emerge. I think they're always great. It's very big cover as journalists, you know, which will actually implement the kind of change I'm talking about. You need more than that. You need a kind of vision for where you want to take society. You need a ways to explain that simply to people. And I think Democrats don't have it.

I think democracy, in a way of describing it as this kind of ideal of self-governance. control our society. We control our own lives, not the billionaires, not people who happen more powerful than us. And we're going to implement structural political changes and economic changes to make democracy real in America and to flourish on that basis. That can be the thing for me. That seems like something that's worth trying. If it's not something like that, something like that. But, you know, I don't see people who are, as of yet, taking on a vision with that kind of ambition, that kind of like philosophical depth or whatever. And I, I, I, I hope that that changes, because I really do think it's necessary. I think the pieces are there, but they're fragmented,

you know, like if you look at the, you know, post-murder of George Floyd, you know, movement around racial justice, there was, there was some kind of call, right, for a couple principles, but they got muddled. And not everybody agreed on what they were. It went down some, some paths that were less productive than others. And then the entire thing was smeared as wokeism. and abandoned by the people in power. And it was never merged with a completely separate movement for economic justice that was being run by Bernie and his cohort. And those two move, I mean, you know, Bernie and others tried, but those two calls for justice and for democracy were never merged into a single program. In fact, they were seen as competitive with each other.

And the two sides argued, and now neither is in the assentance. And so I think you make a great point that like that no single movement has emerged. I'm very curious to go back as I always want to do and like study the history of the New Deal movement. And, you know, what presaged the FDR moment, right? I know that part of the story better. But I know there's the progressive era and et cetera, right? But what was the movement that was built at that time? Because that feels like the closest analog to what we need is an overall movement to restitution.

structure America in a more, you know, democratic, just direction. How does one build such a thing? It feels like that's what we're trying to do on this show. Yes. Is to build it. We're going to figure it out in the next, like, two minutes. I think that is the question. And, I mean, sadly for Democrats, like these moments where things have really gone

well for them, they've accomplished really great things. Even moments of real compromise on various issues. I mean, the Neil Deal was a perfect example of this. They're like a great economic agenda, did a lot for American people. Civil rights, you know, not so great there. In Johnson, you had both, you know, a real robust economic program and real commitment to civil rights and make a tank. And I think that gives Democrats this fear of combining those things again. But I think that's ultimately, you do have to figure out a way to do both of these things. That's what we need as a country. It's not just a matter of, you know,

abstract, whatever. I think that we are in a moment where we do. We need real social change and real economic change and real political change, all kind of at once, or we succumb to fascism. That's just, that's just a situation. And if you doubt that it's conceptually possible to unite those things, look, Republicans bans, bans abortions and union, right? They've succeeded on both of these fronts, you know, dramatically. That is what we're fighting against.

We can't really do things piecemeal. And I don't know. I hope that we learn that lesson. Otherwise, we're going to be in the same position again, probably you and I, you know, five, six, hundred years for now talking about President Tucker Carlson or whoever and what he's doing and how Democrats need to get their act together. I know, we're going to be stuck in this loop. And I don't know. I just, I think that there's one clear set of ways out of it. And I don't know what's going to take for people to realize that. Yeah. What's funny is, I remember after the first Trump administration, it was okay. We're in a pregnant moment where something could change. Maybe it will. Maybe this is the new, you know,

the new regime moment where we're going to sweep away the Reagan remnants and create the new thing. And in fact, when Biden was elected it, I always thought, oh, maybe this is actually going to be it. They're going to, he's going to be the new coming of FDR, et cetera. And then here we are a bit later having the same conversation again. I guess two questions to end us here. first, do you have any optimism coming from the last couple weeks? Does it seem like things have finally gotten so bad that they're now going to get better, A. B, how do people put this into practice in their own lives if they agree with the message that you're saying? How can they be a part of building this movement?

Well, I mean, I think I'll return on the first question to something I said for the very beginning, which is I've been tremendously inspired by the kind of activism is going on. are people who are not, you know, themselves usually activists who are not, you know, involved the organizing Australia, but are doing what they can in this media moment to respond for the immediate crises, these ice watch lines and all the things people are doing. I think that's been tremendous to see. It's also been encouraging to see those kinds of efforts like obviate a lot of online. There are a lot of people who are divisive online and who you get into fights, but you're seeing them in Minneapolis, you're seeing them out in other cities doing the work.

And there's this kind of agreement. Okay, whatever, bygones, let bygones be gabion. This person's actually out there, respond to this moment with their time, with their own lives, with their own bodies. That means that they're worthy of respect. We can paper over some of those differences. That's been important for me to see,

and I think very, very encouraging. On what people can do in their own lives beyond, you know, that kind of activism, oh, people are about to come around for your vote in Democratic primaries. We're going to have its presidential election revving up pretty soon. you should make it very, very clear as a voter that you are not going to support a Democratic

candidate who is not committed to the kind of structural reforms, economic reforms I've talked about. Your vote is not just going to be bought by, I'm not going to be Donald Trump. Your vote's not just going to be bought by. I'm the most electable candidate. You know, I'm really not going to be bought by, you know, I tweeted these angry tweets about the Republican Party. Your vote is committed to the candidate who is going to do the most to structurally reform

the American political system, an economic system, to bring ourselves, bring us closer to being a democratic society. If a candidate's not willing to engage at that level with this moment, they're not worthy of your attention, not worthy of your vote. That's what you can do. As a voter who is going out to these primaries, people are going to be asking you for money, asking you for your time, your attention, your vote, say outright that you expect candidates with a real vision where they take in this country, not just beyond Trump, but beyond the

That's brought us to Trump in the first place. That's, I think, what you should demand. And I think that there's a lot of power, actually, in the Democratic primary electorate. If they're willing to utilize it to these ends, I think you might see real change. I think that's probably the only thing that generates change. I can write and I can holler. I can do all these things. But ordinary Democratic primary voters need to use their votes in ways that bring the Democratic Party to a more ambitious place.

That's the only thing that's going to fix anything. That is so clear. and it really underlines exactly what I felt like I have been missing from a lot of the candidates thus far and what I am looking for them to say, whether it's Gavin or Pete or anybody else, like this is what we, this is like the litmus test is do they have that level of vision? And if they do, they're worthy of being backed. Ocita, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. This has been an incredible conversation.

your book, just so people have the full title, is the right of the people democracy and the case for a new American founding. You'd, of course, pick up a copy at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books. Where else can people find you on the internet if they want to follow your work? They can follow me at ocita wanevu.com.

I think that's the easiest place. When I'm in blue sky, I'm on blue sky. I'm taking a little bit of a break now because I'm busy, but I also have an active account there pretty often. Ocita, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been fantastic. Thanks again. My God, thank you once again to Aceta for coming on the show to share that incredible message.

I hope you check out his book. Once again, that URL factuallypod.com slash books. Please check it out. If you want to support this show, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam count over five bucks a month. Get you every episode ad free for 15 bucks a month. You can, I will read your name in the credits of every single one of these episodes and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues.

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