Factually! with Adam Conover - Let’s Replace Our Elderly Politicians, with Amanda Litman

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

Our politicians are too f*#&ing old. We’ve covered the state of our dismal, sleepy, cranky gerontocracy before—but how do we actually get power into the hands of people who are not Boomers? Waiting for a mass die-off isn’t an option. This week, Adam speaks with Amanda Litman, co-founder and president of Run For Something, a PAC that recruits young progressive candidates, and the author of When We're in Charge: The Next Generation’s Guide to Leadership. Find Amanda’s book 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.

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I don't know what to think. I don't know what to think. you know, but that's all right. That's okay. I don't know anything. Hey there, welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thanks so much for joining me on the show again.

You know, I'm in my early 40s. But a lot of the time, I still feel like a young person. And, you know, part of that's because I haven't aged a day in the face or body, as you can all tell. But also it's because compared to the. the people who run the country, I am actually pretty young. And that's weird. You know, I think people in early middle age should probably be in charge. But no, people of my generation and younger are completely disempowered in our political and therefore economic system. You know, I'm not a fan of generational labels. I'm very on the record about that. But just to

indulge in them for a second, there's definitely a shared sense among millennials and Gen Z. that the boomers have stayed in charge of this country well past their fucking expiration date. And the world has gotten worse on their watch. They have presided over an almost total collapse of our economic system, at least for people who are younger than them. But somehow, there are still more members of Congress over 70 than ever before in the history of the country. You know, so here's a little proposal.

I don't think that we should be subjected to the grim spectacle of watching politicians like Diane Feinstein or Mitch McConnell or Joe Biden lose their marbles slowly live on C-SPAN. That's not democracy, it's elder abuse. You know what we should be doing, we should be patting them on the head and giving them their jello while we go and make the world a better place on their behalf. Chuck Schumer should be sitting at home watching Yankee games from the couch with a volume turned up too loud, not leading the goddamn Senate. You know, I'm making jokes, but this is a serious problem.

We can't just wait for the change to happen. wait for them to slowly die so we can take over, like living in your parents' house, waiting for them to kick the bucket. Because we're going to be fucking 60 when that happens. We need to get them to acknowledge it's not safe for them to drive anymore and that they should move to a home

where they can get the support and free jello they need. And I mean that as a metaphor, but only kind of. So how do we push for this generational change? How do we make sure that young people or young-ish people like me can get into power and make the changes we so desperately need in this country. Well, to answer, I have a fantastic guest on the show today who has done a huge amount herself to bring younger people into office.

But before we get to that interview, I want to remind you if you want to support the show, head to patreon.com slash Adam Cowan. Over five bucks a month that gets you every episode of the show ad-free. We have a community discord. We have a community book club. Right now, we're reading Rashid Khalidis the Hundred Years War on Palestine. If you'd like to check out that book, read a little bit of it

and discuss it with some like-minded people. head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. If you'd like to come see me do stand-up comedy live on the road, I got a brand new hour about our fucked up political situation and my fucked up personal life. You can see that coming up soon. And Brooklyn, New York on November 15th at the Bell House. Great big show, one of my favorite venues in America,

Brooklyn, New York, November 15th, then Washington, D.C. in December and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I'm always adding new dates. Head to Adamconover.com for all those tickets and tour dates. And let me give you a hug at the meet and greet after every single show. And now let's get to this week's interview. Amanda Lippman is the co-founder and president of Run for Something, a pack that recruits young progressive people to run for office. And she's the author of the new book, When We're in Charge, The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership.

Please welcome Amanda Lippman. Amanda, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. So why have old people held on so long to American politics? What's going on? And why more so now than in the past? why would they give it up? It's like, you know, it's a joke answer, but it's a real answer because I think it's a genuine question to ask. If you are a 70 or 80-year-old member of Congress, what is the incentive for you to leave? You are getting great health care. You have good benefits. You have a staff that takes care of you. You have a position of power. You're in a job that you have probably held for 20 or 30 or longer years. It's your whole identity. And you have no idea what else to do with yourself. Why would you give it up? I think there's a pretty clear answer to it,

but I can understand why they are grasping for dear life with all they can. Is it not even a hard job? You know, like Diane Feinstein, right? There was like there wasn't a point where she was like, man, I'm getting tired. I would rather, you know, go to the beach and my dad retired a couple years ago. He's happier now. I think it sounds really nice to not work and spend time with your family and your kids or your grandkids. like, go hang out on the beach, but I'm also not a member of Congress. So, but I do think it's a real

question of like, why do these folks think that they deserve to hold on to power for so long? And what are the structures that have made it so that there is actually an incentive to stay longer and longer? Because I do think this is something that the Democratic Party in Congress in particular has created, which is a seniority system such that if you want to be a chairman of a committee, it's up until about six months ago was granted by seniority. So there was a reason to stay for as long as you possibly could. Now, that's starting to change, but we're not quite there yet. Well, and it's gotten worse over time.

You know, a couple of years back, I read Robert Carrow's LBJ biographies. And when he gets to the Senate, the years when LBJ was a senator, he, there's a whole passage about the gerontocracy problem, about how you had these daughtering old men, you know, who were falling asleep and how this was like a problem for democracy. and he was writing that the book was probably written in the 70s, early 80s, but he was writing about

LBJ's period in the 60s. So this is like before even Strom Thurmond, you know, it was a problem back then to the extent that, you know, this major biographer is like, this was a serious systemic problem in the Senate at the time.

But now it's worse. The same problem is actually worse. We've got, yeah, I remember Strom Thurman in around, you know, the early 2000s. Now we've got multiple Strom Thurman's all the time. time. And so what forces are causing this already bad problem of having these aging old

people get even more malignant? Well, let's look at the numbers here. The average age in the House is about 58. And the Senate, it's about 63, 64. You know, even at more local levels of government, these folks are pretty old. Maybe 20% of state legislators are under the age of 40 at most. That's like a generous estimate. The average age of a school board member, is 59. The average mayor of a major American city isn't their late 50s, although Zorn Mamdani is going to send that plummeting when he takes over in New York, hopefully, and next year. It is boomers or near boomers or often silent generation members as far as the eye can see. And I think part of this is that they have structurally made it really, really hard

for young people to run for office, for young people to win, and they have not created space for young people. You know, it's really difficult to run for office against an incumbent. If they're not creating the space, it's, there's not a great incentive structure for you to challenge them. Yeah. And most of the cases where a big incumbent gets knocked off like AOC beating, uh, that guy Crowley, right, is when the older politician is just completely derelict in duty, ignores the, the work of campaigning at all, recently rewatched that documentary about her campaign. Yeah. It's a, it's a great can. It's a wonderful. documentary, but he, you know, he handed that to her, right? By by refusing to campaign at all,

you could argue that that's giving Zoran the same chance, right? That if, if there had been a popular incumbent, right, or, you know, not a, not a sex abusing couple maniacs, right? Corrupt maniacs running. He wouldn't have had quite the same opening. So what makes it so difficult to run against, they've made it difficult for young people to run. How have they made it difficult for young people to run? How have they done so and in what way? I'd say they in this circumstance, it's like the Democratic gatekeepers. So it's party operatives, it's donors, it's activists to a certain extent, the people who control access to things like the voter file. And one of the ways they've done so is by not seeing young people's viable candidates. So if you want to run for office and you go

to your party office, your county or state party and you say, you know, I want to do this, how do I get started, if you don't have the ability to raise large sums of money, especially for a congressional race where the baseline is usually like 300K, they say you need to have or have like line of sight into, they're not going to take you seriously. They're not going to answer your emails. They're not going to answer your calls. They probably won't even take the meeting to begin with. And there's a bunch of structural things that keep this young people out of these offices or out of these campaigns. You know, for Congress, you likely have to quit your job to run. For city council, state led, school board, you don't, but it will take up all of your time outside of your full-time job.

These positions are barely paid if they're paid at all for everything outside of Congress. And even Congress isn't as well paid as it honestly should be, given how much of an expense you have to take on in your personal life. Like, you have to maintain two homes. You have to travel back and forth. You know, it's much easier to understand why a politician becomes corrupt when they realize how much of their life they have to pay for as a member of Congress. Yeah, it's funny. It's like not a popular position to. go out there and say, oh, we need to pay politicians more.

But true, if you don't pay them more, if you don't pay them substantially, and it costs a lot of money to run, then of course they're going to try to personally enrich themselves. Like, you need to pay them so that they should be paid by the public, not by, you know, anybody else, right? And like, it makes it really hard for anyone who isn't either independently rich or married wealthy or from a wealthy family to run for office. Because if you don't have access to wealth, whether yourself or through your network, this structure feels in and, like, in-entrable for you.

It's incomprehensible. I think that is one of the biggest things that, like, one of the candidates that run for something works would say is, you know, I'm 27 years old. I'm a public school teacher. I want to run for office, but all my friends are also public school teachers or also 27 years old, and they also don't have a ton of money.

This party is telling me that I need to ask everyone I know to max out to my campaign. No one I know can afford to do that. That's a really hard challenge. Yeah, and in some ways, it's part of the natural dynamics of politics, right? Like, I've been a part of a couple local campaigns here in Los Angeles where folks I know have run. And one thing that I've noticed is that you kind of need when you're running a natural base. You need like a natural network.

So, for instance, you know, Hugo Soda Martinez, who I'm lucky to say as a friend of mine who is on the LA City Council now, He came from the labor world and, you know, was a union leader in his union and had, you know, made connections with the rest of labor in Los Angeles. And so who's going to turn out for him? Well, he's got this network of folks who might donate, who might knock doors, who might vote for him. And then he can go from there to everybody else, right? It's like part of just being enmeshed in the political life of the place that you live already is like a natural advantage, as it should be, because politics as part of having what is it to be a democratically elected politician is that people in your community like you and know you and feel connected to you and you can deliver things for

them so so like it makes sense right like you you can be elected as a leader if you're already a leader in your community to some degree and a lot there's a lot of people in your area going oh i like him i like her i know that yes you have my support right um and that's easier to do when you've been alive longer because you've had more chance you know more people right like you you're adding to the number of people you know, your Rolodex only gets bigger as you live, right? Because even if you haven't seen someone in 10 years, you can call them up and they go,

oh, hey, yeah, I remember when we were in college together or whatever. So that's like age has natural advantages that like we, that's nobody's fault, right? That's just sort of part of part of the way the world works. But there's also got to be more like specific things that are being done to edge out younger people, right? You know, there's ways in which gatekeepers can literally undermine young candidates running, you know, prevent them from accessing the voter file, which is the list of voters you need to talk to for your campaign. You know, it's like a database of all of the voters in your district.

When you go knock doors, you're working off that list. If you don't have access to it, you're just flying blind. I think one of the biggest things that we have seen them try to do to young candidates. We've actually seen this most recently, even in the last like six months, is try and find their online histories to understand. undercut them. Because, you know, if you are in your 20s or 30s, at this point, you have probably been online most of your life, most of your life, most of your life. You know, we saw this with a 30-something who's running for United States Senate in Iowa, Zach Walls. Before he announced his campaign, some Democratic operatives across the state were pitching stories to a bunch of different outlets

about a post he did on Reddit when he was 19 as part of an AMA talking about his porn preferences. It was part of a larger sort of promotion for a book that he had coming out about his experience, fighting for gay marriage, for his two moms in Iowa, and speaking front of the state senate and, like, his advocacy and the Boy Scouts, like, very wholesome shit. They tried to pitch that as oppo against him. Like, do you really want an elected leader who once talked about porn on the internet? It's like, anyone who is in their 20s or 30s at this point has all kinds of wild shit about them online. Yeah. That is not a disservice. That means that they're a real person who hasn't been planning to do this their entire

life. It means they were on Reddit. Like that's all like that's what you do on Reddit is stuff comes in front of you comment on it. Yeah. And like do you know how many politicians in their 50s, 60s or 70s? You'd have to one, explain what Reddit is and then two have much weird or weirder stuff about them out there because they don't think about this public curation of self

and presentation. Yeah. It is so missing how people consume. information and how important it is to be a real person, not just like a beepop robot politician. Yeah. So again, I just want to know, like, what has caused older people to become an even larger proportion?

Like, yes, they've wanted to keep everybody else out. But is it also just that like they're living longer than they did in the past? Like, are there demographic factors that are happening? it part of the size of the boomer generation? And what sort of policies are we missing out on because older people are in power generally? I do think part of it is boomers are one of the biggest generations. Millennials are coming up after them. They are living longer and a better health for longer. Modern medicine is a miracle science. And I think it does have real consequences for policy. And the thing I think it really helps articulate the difference here is housing.

So if you think about the experience of a current 60 or 70-year-old probably bought their house, their first house, 50 years ago, 40 years ago, a very different market, probably has not been a renter in a really long time, has moved maybe a couple times. Most of their wealth is caught up in their home. If you're in your 20s or 30s, you experiencing the housing market totally differently. You're almost certainly not a homeowner. If you are a homeowner, you're in a starter home where you got locked in and low mortgage rates that you now can't move or you're a renter who feels incredible instability and like psychic stress because you don't know if your rent's going to keep going up and up or you can't afford to live where you want to live or work where you want to work because of the cost of housing. It is a totally different experience. I think a lot about trying to explain to my grandma who I love, I love Grammy, but trying to explain to Grammy how I used Street Easy to find an apartment and the amount of paperwork I needed to prepare before I even stepped foot into an apartment to tour and the amount that I'd have to pay for broker's fees and the amount that

it would cause for the security deposit. It was unimaginable to her how that process worked. That doesn't mean that she's a bad person or incapable of understanding or not like empathizing with that. But, you know, multiply that by every politician we have in city councils and state legislatures and in Congress. They don't understand what it means to be a 20 or 30 something in America right now and has direct consequences for how they govern. is it a I mean is it just selfishness because those people you know my grandfather you know had an education and home because of the GI Bill because he was a veteran right he was part of the generation that the government handed him a home to live in essentially as as happened for

you know the entire boomer generation basically because those policies continued you know through the next couple decades um and you would think that those people might say oh well I was handed a home. So people of the next generation might want to be handed a home too. But instead they seem to say, well, no, why don't you work for it? I work for it. And, you know, they want to change policies so that it, so that that doesn't happen. I mean, I think about, you know, the housing policy here in California where I live. It's all about making sure that people who already are in homes don't have to, their taxes never go up or that they don't have to pay taxes when they give the home to their kids or et cetera, et cetera. It's never about making sure that someone

in the future gets the same benefit that they received. And I mean, is there any explanation for that other than like myopia and selfishness? Um, not really, no. You know, I like, I think that there is, and people like to joke that millennials are like the me generation, but man, we learned it from the boomers. Oh, my God. It's, for real. Not all boomers. No generation is a monolith. Anytime I talk about the stuff on the internet, I get people calling me an agist or a monster in my mentions.

I'm like, sure, maybe, fine. But there is a nugget of truth here because when you, when I say, like, man, they're being such a boomer, you know exactly what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. And there are people who had us, look, if I had the same. same experiences that they had, I would probably feel the same way. It's not like they're individually bad people, but it's that they have a set of experiences that gave them a particular perspective.

And that plus human foibles and myopia and et cetera caused them to behave in a way that is overall selfish. And we need them to sort of step out of it and look down and like look at what's happening. But the reality is they're not going to because of all those problems. And so we're sort of stuck politically in this narrow boomer perspective where all of American policy is seen through the eyes of a 75-year-old who had all this government policy handed to them, lived through the post-war era, you know, dropped some acid in the 60s and thinks they're cool forever, et cetera, right? Well, and now they're getting their brains boiled by the internet. We worry about like the kids online, but no, it's the boomers who we need to be concerned about. my God. They're the ones watching the AI Slop. We just did an episode with Jason Keebler from

404 Media about the AI slop taking over Facebook. And it's all boomers who are watching that shit. I mean, it is unbelievable. I know among my friend group, like we talk about the emails and messages we're getting from our parents that are so clearly written by chat GVT. And it's like, what are you doing here? Just communicate like a person. Yeah. Yeah, it's not good. We're worried about the kids And we're not worrying about grandma We've got to look on both sides here You know, there's the age where

You know, my parents are aging And I've seen the ways in which they kind of And I'm sorry mom and dad if you're listening But you know, as people age They sort of revert to childhood a little bit So I've talked with those my friends too It's like, oh my parents used to like cook a nice dinner And now they do like a microwave frozen thing

That they got at Costco. I'm like, you have money? Why are you getting? You have money and time. You have a garden. You have, you know what's good. But they, you know, as you get older, I think people kind of give up a little bit. And they go, I'll just have a frozen dinner who gives a fuck, you know?

And I think they, it's the same reason. Like, I'll just scroll on Facebook. Why not? And maybe they're treating policy the same way. Like, oh, who cares? I'm on my way out, you know? Why bother? I do think there's something to millennials and to my elder Gen Z being the only ones to really have to learn internet literacy.

Like, I remember being in middle school probably and having to really understand, like, what does it mean to use Wikipedia as a source? Like, how did you look at, like, the tracing of where the links were going and why was it not credible or not? And, like, really understanding what a valuable place on the internet could or could not be. And I don't think they definitely didn't teach that to my parents. And I don't think they're teaching that to the kids now. Like, we were the singular place who had to learn how to do it in real time.

That's true. because we were like, you know, 18, 19 years old when it was happening. I was never scared of Wikipedia because I was like editing it because it was just getting started. Right. You know, life's been a little crazy for me lately. I've been bouncing around all over the country, headed from town to town on stand-up tour,

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That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash factually. One more time, that's gusto.com slash factually. So what are the policies specifically that we're missing out on or that young people, for instance, might want to put into place if we didn't have this systemic bias towards elderly politicians setting our priorities? I think housing is a big place that we've already covered a little bit, but thinking more about housing for first-time buyers and for renters, about increasing supply, about not being so afraid to reduce the value of people's current homes by increasing supply. I think childcare. It is

really unimaginable to some of the boomers how much we are paying in child care expenses right now. It is in many places more than your mortgage or your rent. It is in many places more than the cost of college, and it's only going to go up. I think a lot about transportation costs. You know, how do we think more about public transit and reducing focus on car culture, both for the climate and also because I think it's making our mental health really, really bad. And I think, you know, connected to that, health insurance, health coverage, reproductive health care, gender, affirming care, mental health care, all of that is experienced very differently by younger folks than it is by the elderly. Not to say one is better than the other, but it's just a very different stage of life.

Yeah, and there's really specific policies that we go. put in place. I mean, I hate to bring it back to housing, but you talked about renters. There are so many policies that might benefit renters that we could put into place. Rental protections, anti-eviction, you know, measures to just stop the costs of rent from rising astronomically. And we have so many of those measures in place for homeowners. And yet all of our housing policy is just about existing homeowners. rather than, you know, where, where young people are living. 93% of elected officials are homeowners.

Wow. And what's the U.S. population? It's about 65%-ish. And let's talk about cities where it's higher. Yeah. Even in a state like California, where you would think the rental population is much higher, there are, I think, five or six renters in the state assembly or state legislature. In New York, where I live, there are more landlords in the state legislature than

are tenants. Wow. Not great. Not great. Yeah. Yeah. Not great at all. And if you go to, you know, any local city meeting, you'll, you'll see a lot more cranky older homeowners rather than younger renters setting policy or even just, you know, coming up to the mic to talk. Yeah. One of the things my organization run for something is doing this year is trying to recruit renters to run for office because it's a thing that we've heard young people say is like, well, I don't own property. So I can't really run for office. What if I have to move?

I don't have a stake in the community. And it's like, we don't have freeholder shit here anymore. There is nowhere that it says you have to own property to be an elected official. Nowhere in any of these rules is that the case. If you're a renter, especially in this particular economy and this housing market, you have as much a right to have a say in the future of it. And in fact, maybe even more so because your voice is for sure not being part of that conversation. Yeah.

You know, one of my real beefs in local politics is you'll go to these meetings and you'll have people come up. And it's always someone trying to like get a, you know, a homeless encampment thrown in the landfill or whatever. And they'll say, I've lived in this neighborhood for 30 years. And what I always want to say is, who gives a fuck? I don't care. I could have lived here for six months. I live here now, motherfucker. And like, I have a stake here because I pay rent here currently. So you're not better than me because you've lived here longer. In fact, like, you built the system, arguably, that we all live under, that we all agree sucks.

So maybe you should shut the fuck up. I'm sorry, I'm getting a little bit. No, I am right there with you. It makes me fierce. And it is so, like, aggressively tied with the same people who are like, you know, immigrants welcome, communities of color, welcome, refugees welcome, but not new people who might want to live here, not in my, not next to me. No way, no how.

I mean, look, I'm always plugging my stand-up tour on this. I currently have a 15-minute-long bit of people with the love is love, kindness is everything sign who live in a giant gated community, you know. I literally took a photo like last year of a, everyone is welcome here sign in front of the biggest gated mansion you've ever seen on some windy hill street. I was on a jog in in Silver Lake. It's, it's this, you know, I hate to use the word. virtue signaling, because I think virtual signaling is often a good thing. Yeah. But the amount of cognitive dissonance that you have to have to not understand, you know,

everyone is welcome here, except I don't actually want anyone to live here. Not in that apartment building next to my night's house. No way, no how. Yeah, exactly. So, okay, so we have, those are the problems with older people running the world. and we've got some of the barriers. How do we begin to overcome them? We ask young people to run and then we help them win.

How do we do that? So I run this organization called Run for Something. We launched back in 2017 and we have built a pipeline of 230,000 young people across the country who said they want to run. They've endorsed more than 3,000. We've helped elect more than 1,500. They are amazing millennial and Gen Zee leaders in state and local office all across the country who are actually doing the damn thing.

Hugo Soto Martinez is one of our alum, Nithia Raman. Yes, he was one of my favorites to endorse in that cycle, as well as Nithia Raman who's on the city council who has been like a... My city councilor. She's so good. And I think there's Lindsay Horvath is on the board of supervisors. I think one of the first renters are only renters on that board of supervisors. There's been so many of these amazing leaders who have shown up and decided that they're not going to wait for the system to fix itself or wait for

someone to say it's their turn, but rather to claim their power in a really meaningful way. So you support them, how? So we do everything from asking people to run for office. So, you know, tell them to sign up with us, learn how to find what office they can run for, figure out how to write a campaign plan, design a budget, design a campaign message, all the way through to endorsing them, helping them connect to other partners, get discounts on tools, leverage our national relationships on their behalf, help them raise money, help them get volunteers, and then stick with them post-election day.

So if they want to run for office again, how do they set themselves up for that? And if they don't, what do they do to be good governance? So I want to put on my skeptical hat for one second and push it this a little bit, because we've talked about, okay, why we want more young people in office. But I don't think, I think the last couple of years have shown us that someone's age or generation does not necessarily correlate with their political. convictions. You know, we've had a lot of right-wing, right-wing youngsters, right-wing Gen Z folks who maybe

we would charitably say, oh, they don't understand why they're voting for something that's actually going to hurt their generation. They're voting for a, you know, billionaire who's close to 80 years old. We can set that political problem aside for now, but A, those things aren't directly correlated. And then B, you know, I think sometimes. the left-of-center political groups, such as yours, tend to, we tend to put process ahead of actual policy, right?

Or actual results. They're like, hey, we want to, we just want to make sure we get some good people in there and we got to beat the fascists and the right-wingers and, like, let's make sure, and let's make sure we market our candidates right, but without enough focus on, like, what do the people actually stand for? like, you know, and making sure that they're actually running on policy that people actually give a shit about and will change the world in ways that we actually care about and are not just sort of feel good sloganeering, right? And so, so how much do you bring, you know, ideology and policy like into your, you know, who you choose to work with? So we have a set of values we want every candidate we work with to align by, you know, it's pro choice, pro quality, pro tolerance, for working families, pro-ford,

health care. There's a few others in there. You can go find them all on our public endorsement application, which is on our website. But the thing with Run for something is we work in all 50 states. So we've got candidates who are on the Anchorage School Board in Alaska, the Iowa State Senate, the Miami-Dade School Board, the New York State Legislature, Texas County executives, all across the country. So to be able to work with candidates and win, which we have done in all of these places, we need to be strict on our values, but flexible in how they show up as policies. So, you know, for a lot, for example, one of our values is you have to be committed to reducing gun safety, or excuse me, you have to be committed to reducing gun violence and promoting

gun safety. We're pro-gun safety, anti-gun violence. There are a lot of people running to reduce gun safety. That is a political position in America. We're pro, pro the safety part against the violence part. Okay. If you are running, say for Alabama State Legislature, which we have an incredible member of the Alabama state legislature. The policies that you can work with there are very different than if you're, say, running for, you know, city council in Phoenix or state ledge in Iowa. That doesn't mean one is necessarily right or wrong, but we've got to be a little bit flexible in what we're demanding of the Alabama state legislative candidate because he just doesn't have as much wiggle room to work with given the political environment. So when we worked with a Philip Ensler,

who's a member of the Alabama state ledge, who was able to get a gun safety legislation passed in Alabama? Is it everything that every gun safety activist would have wanted? No, but is that progress in Alabama? Yes. And for now, that's a big step forward. Now, the rubber meets the road, though, and where exactly you make that cut. And because there are plenty of times, I think a lot of folks in the left can think of many times in which they're asked to compromise a little bit strategically, and what they end up compromising is a value or is, I mean, let's be real clear about, you know, you see democratic politicians equivocating on trans rights right now, right? And there are trans folks in America who are like, we are being thrown under the bus.

This is not, you cannot equivocate about our humanity, right? And so how do you make sure that, yeah, you're not compromising your values when you do that? because it's a very difficult, it's easy to say, but it's much more difficult to do. It is. It's very hard to do it. You know, we haven't always gotten it right, but we're working at scale. We're working with thousands of candidates. And the fact that we've won a bunch of places and made some really meaningful progress. I'm proud of that. And I think we have to really hope that candidates are being honest with us about what they believe and how they will govern. We have declined to re-endorse people if they don't always hold true to those values.

and really, like, pushing folks to tell us, like, how is what you're talking about in touch with where your community is? Like, how do you know that's where your voters are? Because I'm actually not the best person to decide what the, you know, Blue Springs, Missouri City Council candidate should take a position on. But I hope that that candidate was connected to community enough, like, as we were talking about earlier, has a base of support can explain to me, like, how is this where their voters are? Right. because the way democracy is supposed to work is that we, the voters tell the politicians what they want or the voters select a politician who represents what they want and the politician operates at the whim of the voters, right? And so if you go back to that principle again and again, hopefully you make good choices. You know, our MO is that run for something's endorsements are, yeah, like, meant to help signal to voters this is a good candidate.

But it's not like a Planned Parenthood endorsement or Sierra Club or LCV where it signifies a particular position on any given issue. We are trying to empower candidates to be the best possible messengers to their communities. We don't know how to talk to voters. Candidates know how to talk to their voters. We don't run ads on their behalf. They run ads. They are the messengers. They're the best people to really connect with their voters.

I think it can be really hard for political operatives to think like this because it requires us to trust voters, which feels. It's really silly to say in this moment, but I think that's what they want. They want to know that we trust them. Well, that's really interesting as a form of strategy for you because it sort of cuts both ways because on the one hand, I could read that as you not really having that strong of a set of values, you know, you're saying, well, no, ultimately we're going to let the voters decide. And then I go, well, what if the voters in Alabama? like what if they're they really support stuff I don't like you know and and so therefore I might sit here in

California and go I don't know if I like what your org is doing in Alabama because you're you're empowering people and policies that I might disagree with on the other hand there's a lot of political organizations that push a specific agenda top down which is another problem in our political system and that they're trying to sort of impose it on people and you are trying to go back to older sort of more organic form of democracy where you're trying to you're focusing on no no no we want candidates who are connected with their voters and we're trying to increase that connection and so you so a different analysis might say no our problem is we have political leaders in office who are only taking orders from pressure groups right um and they're not connected enough to their

voters and what we want is the connection between the politician and the voter and that's the most ideal thing for democracy, even if we don't like every single specific result every single time. Am I saying it well? I do think so. I think like this is the tension, but if we want to win in deep red places or purple places, which Democrats need to do long term, there's a incredible redistricting that will be happening in 2030, where the electoral college is going to get upended for 2032, assuming we still get an electoral college or a presidential election in 2032, where it won't be enough to win, you know, the blue wall if it even exists. We're going to need to win red states in order to get enough electoral college votes to win because of the population

loss, because of housing affordability, primarily in places like New York, Illinois, and California. So, yeah, I don't need to agree with every Democrat elected for school board in a southern state or red state or Idaho. That's not, I'm not, they're a constituent. Actually, doesn't matter if I agree with them. What matters that the voters in that community agree with them. You know, I think this is one of the challenges the broader sort of activist space in particular where you can absolutely fight for a community without speaking for that community. There's a distinction here. And that is, I think, where politicians have gotten a little messed up. And I want to make a broader point to those of a leftish persuasion who are listening

because I think so often we condescend to people in red areas. And look, there's many people in red areas. There's many people in blue areas as well who have bigoted views or views that we might not want to have be represented in elected office. But there's also many, many, many people whose views would align with a leftist perspective. Or let me put this a different way. I think part of the core of, for instance, when I think about unionism, right, which is the portion of the left that I'm most closely associated with, the point is the workers know something. workers know what they need, the point is to give them power. And if you listen to them and you accurately reflect what they actually need,

you are doing good organizing. You are furthering the agenda, right? You have to trust them. Like one of our core values in my union work is trust the membership. Don't think, oh, we can't actually let them say what they think. And so I think part of what we need to remember is that even. deep red places are full of really good empathetic people who would support the kind of policies who we agree with that would support their lives.

They're just being held down by a really fucked up political system and a lot of pressure groups that don't represent them. And not only that, but something like 70% of local races go uncontested to begin with, which means in many of these races, Democrats say in a 70, 30, you know, red to blue district, those 30% of Democrats never have someone to vote for. They have never met a Democrat running for office. They've never had someone come knock at their door. They've never even been given a chance.

Like, we have seen this even in the last seven months or so in almost all of the state Senate races that in districts where Trump won in 2024, where Democrats have now flipped the seats and outperform Trump by upwards of 20 points. Each of those districts have been uncontested at least once in the last decade. Yeah. If we're not running, we can't win. And often people think, well, if I'm not like the perfect candidate, I shouldn't get on the ballot. We can't let the perfect be the enemy of good in this particular moment where we need to try and get any hold onto power we can in some of these places. And then we can move the needle further.

And by making the campaign, you can make the case and you can activate the people. I think about, I mean, this whole conversation, we should be talking about Zoron's candidacy more. But the way, watching him so visibly go to. literally the people of New York City one-on-one and say, what do you want? Have them tell him on camera, and then he says, that's what I'm going to go fight for. And thereby activated, you know, hundreds of thousands of people who were completely tuned out of the political system or voted for Trump. New York City swung harder for Trump than any other major city in America.

I mean, it didn't go for Trump, but like the swing to the right was, you know, the biggest change of any city, I believe, especially in work. working class neighborhoods like the Bronx. And by going to those people and saying, no, actually, what is really fucking affecting you? And okay, here's my plan to do something about that based on your feedback. He was able to swing those people back. And like, imagine if someone did that in Appalachia.

Right. And actually ran with that technique and went to the people and said, hey, forget about the fucking NRA and the pro life people who are speaking for you. what do you want, you know, and did that, and maybe you don't win the first time, but you do that for a decade or so, like, then you've actually created a constituency that is fighting not just for like, oh, the Democratic Party, but for like what they want and what they need, which last time I checked was kind of supposed to be the point of the left generally, was like fighting on behalf of working people and giving them their actual needs. am I getting it right? That's exactly right. You've just described the run for something long-term strategy. Congratulations. Okay. All right. So we'll get along. Okay, cool. I wanted to, I wanted to know. You know, owning a home can be amazing until it's not. One minute you're sipping coffee, the next, your ankle deep in water from a burst pipe. Repairs don't care about timing, and they definitely

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You should run for office. God damn it. You should think about it. We can talk offline. But if you're thinking about it, I... It's more fun to talk about it here. Look, I've gotten very involved in labor work, right? I've been involved in city politics.

I've been in and out. Sometimes I'm more wrapped up in my own personal shit. But, you know, it's stuff that I care about. People sometimes say, you should run for office. A way that I have felt often, though, is that if you, you, I'm like, damn, I could do a hell of a campaign. I could, I would have a great time. It'd be real fun to campaign, right? Once you get into office, though, you become the recipient of so much pressure, right? Like, like, we have a pretty mature political system. There's a lot

of organizations, individuals, political actors, whose entire job is to press on elected officials as hard as possible. And then the official gets like shunted in a particular, like, Like, oh shit, I came in wanting to do this, but now I'm being forced to do this or forced to do that or or, you know, it's like it is a lot to deal with, right? And also, by the way, a big problem we have on the left is as soon as you get elected, the same people who voted for you suddenly hate you because now you're in a position of power and and, and there's some, there's some in our, in our coalition who just enjoy, uh, being disempowered and yelling at people who, who, who are used to. to be on their side. Now that they're in power, they hate them and they blame them for everything, right? So that's uncomfortable. And my answer to that to people has occasionally been, maybe instead of being the recipient of power, it's better to be the power. And that's how I think of my labor work, right? Like in the labor movement, we can put together a coalition of working

people that can press on the politicians, right? We can be the ones who show up and say, no, you better do what we fucking want you to do. And they go, oh my God, the, you know, the, the, the, the hospitality workers are here, I better pass that minimum wage increase, you know? And now some of that is a cop out, right? It means like, well, maybe I don't want to do the hard work and run. But I do have that concern of like, okay, running could be fun. It could be engaging.

It has the illusion of power. But once you get in these roles, you might not have as much power as you think you do. I'm curious what you think about that. I think there's a certain reality of you run for office with big ambition. and then you win, you have to govern in reality. You know, campaign and poetry, govern in prose. But prose is a type of art as well, you know.

There can be beautiful, meaningful, moving prose. I have found that the best candidates and the best electeds are the ones who have the communication skills to bring people with them and explain why it's hard. So there's a city council member here in New York City where I live as a run for something alum named Chi Jose. He was the first Gen Z member of the city council. He is so fun on social media.

I think I've seen, so good, probably. Does he do stuff about transit? He does stuff about all kinds of things. He's got a whole series. Transit is a big one. Housing is a big one. I've seen it just on my TikTok feed. I've seen his shit.

He's a big series, but like why shit doesn't work. That's, I've seen this. Yes. And his ability to explain why the system is broken can help bring people with him as he tries to fix it. I think this is something that, you know,

here in New York where Madani, I think is very likely to win in November and become mayor. He has the communication skills and the plus. to explain to his movement and to the people of New York City the challenges and tensions and compromises that he is going to have to make as he tries to get things done. And if you can bring people along with you, if you can be transparent and honest and authentic as you do that, I think people will trust you. That is like the sort of, you know, getting back to our generational divide earlier. Like it's a very quintessentially millennial thing to like show your work as you do

to bring people along with you, to build in public, such as it is. I think the politicians who can do that well are going to be able to navigate that structural challenge. That's such a good value. And it's something that I've always tried to do in my work. It's hard to do sometimes to bring people along to explain what's happening, especially when as a politician, I've seen it happen to people that I know. you will specifically be cast in a negative light by people in your own community who are

seeking to tear you down. And I think that's a big barrier to people running too is, you know, hey, if I win or even before I went as I'm running, there are going to be people who are just out to make me look bad, to villainize me, right? that's that's if nothing else emotionally difficult even if you can handle the hit to your reputation you know I know um I I know elected officials in L.A. who have been fearful for their kids at times, you know. Um, and that's, you know, our political culture is getting worse. We have more political violence than ever. Um, that's another hard issue, right? It's so difficult. It's something we work with candidates on like real physical safety, online safety, you know, how to keep your

your home address off the internet, which in some places you actually have to do as part of your campaign filing paperwork, although the roles are changing around that as we've seen the violence in Minnesota and elsewhere, it is really, really scary. And it's gotten worse in the last five years. But I think people are running anyway and they see how scary it is and they get on the ballot anyway. I find that very moving. Yeah. Yeah, no, it is. And I'm not trying to give people reasons not to do it. I'm just talking about, you know, for my own part, as I have thought about it. Yeah. Because it's, you know, I think I'm drifting off to sleep and I'm like, oh, what if?

If you, once you actually start to to conceptualize what it would take, there's, there's a lot of things about it that aren't rosy, you know what I mean? No, and I think it's really important to be clear-eyed about what it is. Like, it is hard. There's a, you know, when I talk to people running for office, that one of the first questions I ask is like, do you want to do the job? Do you want to someone running for Congress? Like, do you want to be a member of Congress? Do you want to be a city councilman? And if their answer is, well, no, but, then don't run. Don't do it if you don't actually want to do the job you get to do or have to do if you win. Because running is so, so hard. There's not enough money, not enough glamour, not enough power. You're going to have to make compromises. You're going to get yelled at. You're unfortunately, your life could be like at jeopardy or at risk, your physical safety. It is taxing on your spirit. And one thing I will say, basically every candidate we have, have ever worked with who has ran and either won or lost will tell you it was worth it.

Which I think is so, like speaks to what it does to your relationship, to your community, and to your home. I did an interview once with Sarah McBride, the now member of Congress from Delaware first openly trans member there who was a state senator in Delaware before that. She's around for something alum. One of my favorite, such a principled leader. You know, she's taken a lot of heat lately, but like she really knows who she is and what she believes and what her role is in this moment.

And she told me, if you want to fall in love with where you live, run for office. Because the way that it puts you sort of in relationship with your neighbors, with your community, it is transformative to how you understand the place you call home. It's magical. That's really, really magical. And that's one of the things that appeals to me the most about politics. I've seen friends of mine go through that transformation. I feel the same way about my union work, the way it, like, connects me to, you know, the industry. that I'm in and the community of artists that I, that I'm a part of. I also, you know,

I've seen some people in the queer community say some very nasty things about Sarah McBride. And I'm not even going to argue with those people because people can differ on political strategy and whatnot. But how painful it must be for her, I would imagine, to see people call her a sellout or whatever, because she is taking a particular political strategy that she feels is best. Right? She's making her choice of the political strategy she's going to take under, under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Extraordinary. And she's extremely poised and et cetera.

And again, reasonable people can differ. But like, I can also imagine, you know, the pain that must cause. Well, this is the challenge with really any leadership position, but especially in politics. Like, it is especially in this moment, so lonely. It's so isolating. Yeah. Even if you have, say, a politician, which this doesn't happen anymore, but a politician has 70% approval rating. That'd be exceptionally popular. That still means 30% of people don't like them. And those 30%

are probably really, really mean in their Instagram comments. Yes. Yes. This is what I'm talking about. And I'm a person who, that would be rough for me, because I'm already in the public eye all the time. And a lot of people really love what I do. And I get a lot of those thumbs up. It's really hard not to focus on the thumbs down and to focus on the nasty thing. And there's that little dark voice inside of you that. that goes and looks for the nastiest comment because that's the one that like sort of matches your little self-loathing voice inside your self-loathing voice says you're a piece of shit and then when you go find that comment that says you're a piece of shit then you're like oh yeah see it was

right the dark voice inside was right and it's this sort of like psychic self-harm that you can do I'm going a little bit far afield here but like that's hard for me as a fucking comic with a podcast you know and the difficulty it must cause for someone who's actually doing something. And, you know, so I wrote a book earlier this year about Millennial and Gen Z leadership called When We're in Charge. And a big part of it is about the challenge that especially millennials and Gen Z rising to power both politically and at work and anywhere else have is that we are being asked to be

authentic, to be yourself, and to do that in all different kinds of places, to do it online at the office over Zoom in Slack, and then to deal with the incoming feedback that you get. The people saying the worst possible shit about you, your employee, is doing negative reviews on you on Glassdoor, your voters, sliding into your DMs and being hateful or mean. And like,

how are you supposed to be yourself in that moment knowing that if you are, it is going to get you like pilloried. I think about this myself as I run a political organization. It is very good. I've also made some mistakes as a leader. I write about that a ton in the book. My therapist told me I get yelled out online

more than any of his other clients. I was like, I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult, my dude. It's real, though. It's hard. It's really hard. Yeah. And I don't want to prioritize, like, the feelings of people who are in public as being the most important thing.

What I'm trying to say is, this is one of the barriers that makes it hard for people to do it, right? Like, because a lot of, I think people know before they step over that threshold what they're going to be in for. And so everybody else gets to say. I'm going to prioritize my piece. You know, I'm going to do my good work in the world. And then apart from that, you know what,

I'm not going to deal with the shit, right? And I do that in a lot of areas of my life. It's hard to step into an office where you don't get to say that anymore. No. You know, you and I can sort of say it right now because you're an author and an activist and I'm a comedian. I can say, man, it sure is hard when people yell at you. I don't think, you know, any.

Don't feel bad for me. Yeah. Anybody in elected office doesn't really get to, doesn't really get to say, hey, wow, my feelings are hurt all the time. But it's real, and it's a part of our political culture that's new because of the internet and everything else. And it's difficult. I don't have an answer for it.

I don't either, but it's something, you know, as part of the book, I talk to all of these, you know, millennial Gen Z members of Congress as well as like executives and editors and chief and doctors and lawyers, all that. And it was a thing I heard from all of them, different variations, different themes, but it is the isolation, the loneliness, the mental health challenges of these roles. of any kind of leadership position right now, it is crushing. And that's what the money is for.

That's what the title is for. It's what the corner office is for in many ways. But that doesn't mean you can't have some kind of empathy for the person, for the person, even if you don't have empathy for the role. And the hard thing especially is if you really want to do good shit, because that's the important thing. The important thing is not your feelings. The important thing is making the world materially better for actual people,

protecting vulnerable people and all those. sorts of things. That's why I'd never say Sarah McBride's feelings are more important than, you know, the reality of the people who she represents, to take an example. But I think that is why so many politicians just do shit to be liked. They do shit so they get yelled at the least. And that's a problem, you know, like for instance, we talked about homeowners that homeowners are the meanest people in local politics.

They're so nasty. And they have, and, you know, 65-year-olds who own their home and have their home fully paid off and are no longer working, they have nothing to do but sit around and be mean on the internet, also in person. And so they end up driving the whole agenda, you know, and I think actually the people who, the politicians who probably have the least emotional turmoil are the ones who embrace the meanness and just go on the attack. Well, like, that's what the right-winger's do, right? They just say, yeah, fuck, fuck everybody I don't like, right? And, like, you think about the kind of personality you have to have to willingly enter this. I mean, the run for something candidates we work with over the years who are fared away, some of the, like, most selfless community-centered, values-driven leaders I've met,

they are, in many cases, the exception, not the rule. Like, you do kind of have to be a sociopath to throw yourself into the lion's done like this. Yeah. That sucks. We should change our political system such that that is not the case. And that should actually be a goal if when we think about structural reform, like, what can we do to make it so that when you run for office, you are not signing up to just experience the worst of humanity every day. But the problem is that, okay, and I hate to keep talking about these barriers or the problems with running. But say I run for office and I join the political system.

Well, I can try to make the political system itself better. For instance, maybe I can try to get some law passed about campaign finance or XYZ, right? Or the debate system or blah, blah, blah. But I don't get to change the media environment. I don't get to change the, you know, the newspapers or the television news. You know, I don't get to make Fox News not exist, you know. And that is driving so much of the conversation. For instance, here in Los Angeles, where do people engage,

with politics. There basically is no local paper anymore. The LA Times only sort of covers, you know, local politics. There's a couple blogs that do. There's the local radio stations. Those aren't reaching that many people. Most people are going on Facebook and next door, right? And that's where, and they're seeing just abject racism and rumor and stuff like that. And, you know, I've had conversations with people in politics and they're like, how do we change the narrative and like reach those people? Like, who do we go to? And I was like, I don't know if you fucking do, man, because there is simply not a meet. There isn't like a TV show you can go on.

You know, there isn't a, there isn't a newspaper columnist you can talk to on the phone that people read anymore. We're just, you know, you're at the whim of these social media sites and these giant, like media organizations. You don't get power over those things when you win office. You still are their victim. You don't, but I do think you can do things that can help break through. I think, um, Donnie has been like the first really good example.

of this where, you know, earlier this summer, he hosted a scavenger hunt in New York City that had thousands of people bopping around the city, like doing my favorite thing, which is just like going from place to place on the subway, getting ice cream, solving clues. And it was the prize was like, honestly, the friends you made a long way. It got people in person together in community. And good candidates and really smart campaigns can cultivate that. Now, I think to your broader point of like, you can't fix everything, I think that's often an excuse people use to not do anything.

Changing campaign finance reform would be huge. Even if it wouldn't solve every other problem, it alone would be huge. And we should make stuff like that a goal and try and do it, knowing that there are so many other problems to fix that we can't solve all of them. Doesn't mean we should try and solve none of them. No, and that's your hit in my philosophy, which is, you know, we can always do something today to make it better tomorrow no matter how bad the situation is today. And it's, in fact, incumbent upon us to do so. So that's really real. I mean, look, I, Mom Dani's had a wonderful campaign.

He's also benefited from the Instagram algorithm, right? Totally. And, you know, one phone call from Trump to Mark Zuckerberg, you know, and Mom Dani 2.0 doesn't get off the ground. Now, he's also doing person to person organizing on a massive scale, which is like, that's the real shit, you know, knocking on doors and like meeting people where they are. That is the real, real, real shit. But he's also been the beneficiary of like, you know, of catching the algo, which like, I know, I know, as well as anybody is a, is a fickle thing. But your, your point is really well taken.

Well, so what, if, say I do want to run for office, let's just, okay, don't lean in like that. You're really, you're, okay, let's, we'll talk about it. I'm getting scared. We're having a conversation. All right. So, so let's say I'm, let's say you've tickled my fancy, right? I'm like, all right, okay, okay.

What's, what steps two, three, and. four after peaking after my curiosity is peaked what do I do next we'd have a little conversation here about what is the problem you care about solving what would the office that would give you power to solve it and then I really push you to say why should voters want you to win which is different than why you want to win you want to win because winning is great and losing sucks voters are going to want you to win because you're going to do something for them like what is that thing you're going to deliver once you've been able to answer those three questions like the problem the office and why voters want you to win, that's the core message of your campaign.

Everything else is logistics. We can work through logistics. We can work through how you'd raise the money, how you'd get on the ballot, like the political environment. It is not rocket science. It's hard work. It would take time and effort and energy and, you know, the commitment of you and your friends and your family.

But, like, idiots do this all the time. Unfortunately, you can do this. We would help you. what we cannot teach you is, and what we cannot, you know, create for you is that intrinsic motivation to do it. So if you've got that, we can solve for everything else. But a lot of people, the intrinsic motivation is the wrong motivation, right? It is like, is the self-aggrandizing motivation or the lust for power or, or notoriety or wealth or that sort of thing, right? Yeah. And, you know, those are not the ones I like to work with,

personally. But I do think a lot of those yield, you can tell they flame out pretty fast, generally speaking, not always, especially not historically, but in the last couple of years, it's very hard for you to run for office successfully if you are constantly debating within your campaign what you believe. Like the best campaigns are the ones where it's a decision of how to communicate what you believe, what tactics to use, but the core values are there. that's that's the key i want to come back to the the question of young people and core values because i'm looking at you know j d vance is the most powerful millennial punchable person in america you know yeah no and and he uh somehow i think his punchability

is almost his greatest asset you know like um like uh i i think it i think it almost comes across as authentic to people in America. I feel like everybody in small town America knows some jumped up little shit who's the son of a car dealer and drives a sparkling clean Ford F-150 and has fake cowboy boots on

and talks like a good old boy like a fake good old boy but they're like I know that guy he's our prick. I feel like that's how J.D. Vance comes off to a lot of people but yeah, he's a real he's a real like he's a real special case to this guy. And so I'm just a little bit worried. Do you have any concern about, you know, again, your techniques being used to sort of create dark twins of the people you're trying to get elected, right?

Where, like, again, he's the most, he's, he's the most successful person of his age so far in our, you know, of my age cohort in American politics. And he started out saying stuff that, like, wasn't quite so repulsed. He started out talking about his community, right? And now he's out there doing what he's doing. So how do you account for that? You know, I think J.D. Vance is a really good example of someone who, one, deeply sucks. But two, like, he, whenever he takes over the Republican Party, he is not going to be able to hold it together. He does not have the juice.

Trump's brand that he had built over 40 years in the public eye, as repulsive as it is to me, like it attracts a very particular coalition, not to compare him to Obama. He is not the same as Obama, but in the same way that Obama was able to build a very specific Democratic coalition in 2008 and 2012 that then fell apart as when Obama was no longer at the center of that conversation, Trump's coalition is similarly as tenuous. And when J.D. Vance tries to take it over when he's not going to walk into that without a fight, those like Trump's sons, Kristineau, Marco Rubio, all the little dinkle berries are. around the Republican Party, you're going to fight him for it. And too, he's not going to be able to hold it.

Because to your point, he does not have core values. He does not have like a clear sense of self. They're going to try and push him to have conversations and like, you know, have the three hour long podcast conversations. He's going to meander. He's going to lose his core shape because it's just,

it's like snakes all the way down. And when they try and unpeel that, it's not going to work. So I think when it, when pressure comes to, him, he's going to crumble. Yeah. I agree with you about that.

Because he has no, he very transparently has no core. And again, I think that is, in some way, there's some people who like that about him. Not enough, though. Yeah. No, not enough.

Not enough. It's just he's, he's very blatant about it. I guess my question is, look, something that I really deeply believe is that, Every problem on earth was caused by people being people.

People have good and evil competence and incompetence, altruism and greed within them. Sort of all in equal measure, those things are evenly distributed throughout the human population. So every human created group has those things within it. I talk about this a lot. In the labor movement, I'm like, hey, every union's going to have some selfish people, going to have some assholes, you know, going to have some, uh, There's going to be problems in every group, right? And we can't just assume that things are going to be great, you know?

It's really easy when you get involved in a union to look around and go, oh, everyone thinks like me and we're all good people and the bad people are just the bosses. No, if you were a boss, you'd be bad too. The problem is the systems, you're trying to build a system that sort of overcomes some of that stuff. And that doesn't, you know, allow those, doesn't support the bad things and supports the good things about humanity. And so I'm curious how you see your work, right? If you're just saying, hey, we need to get young people to run. We want to put them in positions of power.

Well, they're going to have bad and good in them just like any other generation. So how do you see your work as creating systems that is going to support only good things and sort of keep the bad shit like J.D. Vance type young people out. You know, part of this is our endorsement criteria does have a strong values system that we work for. So like we don't work with Republicans. We don't work with people who are anti-gay, anti-choice. Like, practically we don't do that. And I think that what we have found is that many of our candidates are able to change these structures as they enter them. Like they can pass campaign finance reform.

They could make city councils more accommodating to parents. They can, and we just had a city council member in Houston. This is something like a really small thing, but it's actually a big deal. So many of the city council meetings that they were having in Houston were in the afternoon, which meant that the only people who could come were retirees, folks who didn't have work, or like could take time off work to go there. They moved them to the evening and they had 90 people show up

to come speak on an issue. That's like a small thing that really changes accessibility in civic engagement. Yes. Is it, you know, does it change the world? No.

Does it change that community which if you do it 10,000 times over in every county in America could change the country? I think so. No, I think the, one of the things

that the Democratic Party and the left has really lost sight of is that we tend to focus on the big flashy thing at the top of the ballot. We talk about the presidency. We talk about Congress. And yes, those are really important. The things that actually affect your quality of life are who runs your school boards, who render city councils, who range your mayors, who run your state legislatures. These small offices can have such a big impact and can lay the groundwork for us to more easily be able to win the big offices. If we win more of the

small ones, we can win the big ones. That is what the work we do is trying to accomplish. It's trying to build not just short-term wins, but long-term power. And power for not just young people, but what working people average people. For normal people, which I hate to describe it. We're like totally normal people. You know, the thing that I love about the thousands of candidates run for something has worked with is that they are, and I mean this in the most like complimentary way, totally ordinary.

They're totally ordinary. They have people who worked at Chipotle. They're teachers, their nurses, they're actors and actresses. They are rodeo stars. They are small business owners. They are parents who have decided that because they care enough about their community, they're going to put their name on the ballot. You know, being a politician or an elected official,

it's kind of like being a comedian or an artist or a musician. You're not born to do it. The way you become one is by doing the damn thing. You become a podcaster by making a podcast. You become a politician by putting your name on the ballot. Yeah. And these are folks who said, you know what? I'm not going to wait for someone to tell me it's my turn.

I'm not going to wait for some of the tap me on my shoulder. I'm getting in. I think that's so powerful. All right. Today I'm announcing my candidacy for California governor, 2028. Let's go. Someone's got to do it. Lieutenant, we'll start with lieutenant.

Amanda, if people want to jump in, if this is inspiring to them, like, what's the, where do they find you? What's their step one to get in touch with you? Go to run for something. That net. You can look up where you can run. You can find more information. I am just yapping all over the internet at Amanda. Littman or Amanda LITM.

Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on. You're such a wonderful communicator and you make me feel very positively about the potential for change in our political system, which is something I could use right about now. So thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. Thank you once again to Amanda for coming on the show. I hope you loved that conversation as much as I did. If you want to support the show, well, first of all, you can head to factuallypod.com

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Batman. Thank you, a screaming Batman for your support. If you'd like me to read your name or silly username on the show, or hey, even the name of your YouTube channel, patreon.com slash Adam Conover, once again, is that URL. If you want to come see me do standup comedy live on the road, send to Adamconover. Dot net for all those tickets to tour dates. Of course, I want to thank my producers, Tony Wilson and Sam Roudman, everybody here at HeadGum for making this show possible. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time on Factually. What's going on, It's a HeadGum podcast.

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