Offline with Jon Favreau - Do Libs Need a Social Media Safe Space? Did Misinfo Hurt Kamala? How Much Should the Left Influence Democrats?

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

Jon got piled on last week for tweeting that activist groups have pushed the Democratic Party out of supermajority territory. Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist who’s worked for Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Justice Democrats, joins the show for an offline version of his and Jon’s online debate. Waleed explains why he thinks the blame is misplaced, and Jon weighs in on who—or what—is behind Democratic leaders losing touch with their base. But first! Trump’s new head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, is a Project 2025 author. What does this mean for social media, free speech, and Elon Musk’s ventures? Plus, new exit polling shows late-deciding, swing voters had wildly inaccurate beliefs about Kamala Harris’s policy positions. Is hyper-targeted misinformation a permanent part of our electoral process now? For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

There's this tension between movements and parties and they aren't for the same things. Like, they've never been for the same things. Like, abolitionists protested Lincoln. The labor movement protested Roosevelt. Civil rights movement protested LBJ. ACT UP protested Clinton. Like, this is American history. It's a big country.

People had a lot of demands. And wishing away all of civil society when Trump is about to crack down on those same activists is kind of an overly simplistic explanation, I think, and not helpful. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Max Fisher. And you just heard from today's guest, longtime progressive strategist and former spokesperson for Justice Democrats, Waleed Shaheed.

So in the true spirit of this show, W'll lead an eye attempted to take an online debate offline because online debates are stupid and offline debates are better, which is a lesson I will apparently never learn. Learn the hard way yet again. Listen. And then have a conversation like this and I'm like, I was right, me. Listen to yourself next time. Here's the thing.

Every time you learn that lesson, it produces a great podcast. So I say keep logging on. Keep posting. Keep coming back. Keep posting. Um, I'm going to set up the entire debate later when I introduce we'll lead, but TLDR, uh, it's about the future of the democratic party and specifically the influence of progressive activists and organizations on the

positions that democratic politicians take on certain issues and whether those positions are more likely to advance progressive goals or trigger backlash. This is in response to a piece in the New York Times by Adam Gentleson who worked for Harry Reid and John Federman and various progressive organizations that has caused a stir. But you can all hear about that later. It's a really great conversation that I have to believe. A really important conversation that is both about and part of the process of coordinating a political movement in a moment of being, as you might say, in the wilderness.

That's exactly right. It's like you were right here, Matt. There's actually, if I could just add one more thing, there's a clip that I think speaks really well to this. Emma, do you have this? Thavros smart buddy, not too bright. John got into a Twitter fight. So really really important weighty conversation.

Who voiced that again? Was it? I think it was Ben. It's Ben. I love it. So good. It's so good. You're always with us.

I really appreciate that guys. I like the bells. Me too. Alright before we get to Walid, this week amidst all the insane cabinet appointments, President-elect Donald Trump quietly announced his selection for chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, a current Republican FCC member and author of the FCC chapter in Project 2025, as indicated by that chapter and some recent tweets. Carr has some radical views about the role of the country's communications regulatory

agency, including that the FCC must quote, dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech for everyday Americans. Max, so we talked about Carr a little bit on Pods of America, but I thought you and I could get into the implications for the tech industry and the internet. What do we know so far about Carr's views and how he wants to reshape the FCC? First, can I just say, I will never forgive Trump for making us learn about the finer points of the FCC. It's crazy, it's awful.

It reminds me of that joke that Americans learn geography by launching foreign wars, and Americans are learning about the inner workings of our regulatory state by Trump appointing lunatics to run them. And as we learn, oh, those are the powers that has because now there's a crazy person abusing them for personal gain. Yep. So the three-

What a way to wake up. The three big agenda items, as I understand it for Carr, are one, reinstating this $885 million contract to Elon Musk that he lost for a non-delivery on rural broadband. So that's the out-and-out corruption part of the agenda. Starlink for rural. That's right, yeah. And I don't know if you looked into this. I couldn't figure out why they blocked it.

The FCC voted to block it in the first place because I'm like, Starlink, Elon Musk sucks, Starlink, pretty cool. It is pretty cool. So my understanding is that fiber optic is cheaper, more reliable, requires less infrastructure, less prone to disruption by weather. So they were just like fiber optic is cheaper, more reliable, requires less infrastructure, less prone to disruption by weather. So they were just like, this is cool, but it only really is cost effective for very,

very rural communities. And they chose to go with fiber optics, which doesn't make sense. But according to Red and Carr, it was political persecution on the basis of Elon Musk politics. And that is why he wants to both reinstate that contract and steer about $10 billion more to. He wants cool, cool, cool. He wants to punish news networks for their coverage of Trump. Trump has said that he wants to strip broadcast licenses of news networks that reported critically on him.

The FCC cannot do that, but it can make itself a nuisance in all sorts of ways. It can abuse its regulatory power, it can issue all sorts of fines. So he can certainly find ways to punish news networks for reporting. And he wants to regulate the big tech Censorship cartel as you mentioned which the FCC does not have the power to do Yeah, I have authority over the tech industry. So it was probably made an act of Congress Yes to expand the FCC which would make any sense because we already have agencies that do that So this I think this was just him auditioning for Trump by saying we're going to break up the evil big tech mission accomplished

I know it works like the audition went well So he's good at that part of his job He argues in his project 2025 chapter that the immunity tech companies currently have under section 230 should be eliminated Been a minute since we last talked about 230 on this podcast Can you remind our listeners what it is and why CAR wants to change, how it's interpreted? So Section 230 says that tech platforms are not legally liable for user-generated content. So like if I were to say something on this show

that was libelous or incited violence, crooked media would be legally liable for that. But if I say it on Instagram, meta is not liable for that because it has these protections. And by extension, Section 230 allows social media companies to decide on their own how to regulate or not regulate what is on their platforms. There are, I think, valid arguments on both sides about whether Section 230 still makes

sense in this world because Metta, of course, can use its algorithms, for example, to boost harmful content, and they're not liable for that. Maybe they should be. But Carr's argument is just that, is rooted in the right wing conspiracy theory of which he is a major proponent that social media companies enforcing any rules whatsoever is political persecution of the right and that removing anti-vaccine conspiracies and stop the steal conspiracies as a plot to you know empower Democrats I mean I think it's really starting to feel like the content

moderation, I know, just like that's not, it feels like that's not going to be a phrase that we're going to think a lot about over the next four, eight years. Well, I mean, something that we saw in Trump's first term is that they will put a lot of pressure on the social media companies to do content moderation, but it's just specifically for putting your thumbs on the scale on behalf of Trump and Republicans and the political right, which a lot of the platforms did. Right, we're not making our principles universal

here on this one. No, absolutely not. The universal principles are that the right gets to do and say whatever they want, and if you say otherwise, then you're doing a political witch hunt. Right, that makes sense. In other news, the New York Times reporter, Shira Frankel has a piece this week where she argues

that almost all social media platforms are now either apolitical or have become places for right-wing conversation, leaving liberals without a public square. So the platforms that still emphasize political content prioritize right-wing perspectives. Gab, Parler, Truth Social, now the site formerly known as Twitter, and the platforms that do not prioritize right-wing content are platforms that have largely decided to publicly de-emphasize politics altogether.

Downranked news. Facebook, threads, Instagram, TikTok. And this discrepancy leaves us snowflakes with no safe spaces to call our own. What'd you make of this piece? So I think this is a new version of an old problem. If we kind of look at the landscape, I think it makes more sense in context. So 2016, the platforms tilted their algorithms hard to the right unknowingly because they

were maximizing content that elicited fear, hate, conflict, and this unintentionally boosted far-right conspiracies, misinformation, outlinks to sites like Breitbart News exploded during the 2016 election. It was the site which got the third most referrals off of Facebook in the 2016 election, which is terrifying. 2020, basically it was the same thing, except they knew the effect this time, they did it anyway, and Metta also made a show, as you mentioned, of deliberately putting their thumbs on the scale for Trump to avoid regulation.

In this time around, it's a little different. The only platform that is making a show of boosting right wing and far right content is Twitter and trying to brand itself as a right wing platform. I think it's too early to say whether meta and other platform algorithms are still favoring right wing content now that they are downranking news. It's possible that the fact that they're downranking news has actually eliminated that effect. Um, TikTok's algorithm, I think from what we can tell, seems to be just exaggerating people's politics, whatever those are, rather than pulling them to the right in the way that a lot of social platforms did in 2016, 2020.

Which is destabilizing all on its own. Of course. No, it's not. I'm not saying it's a good thing. Um, and the TikTok's news audience does tend left wing. Now that might not be because TikTok is making them that way. Maybe those are left-wing people who are coming to TikTok. And then Shira, as you mentioned,

points out that there are a bunch of little platforms that are right-wing in the cabin truth social. But altogether, I don't actually know that this is a worse social media landscape for progressive politics than it was in 2016, 2020. And I think there's actually an argument that it's better. I would love to hear you make that argument because I was gonna, I don't know there's actually an argument that it's better. I would love to hear you make that argument because I was gonna,

I don't know if I was gonna argue that it's better, but my argument is, just get into it. So the one refuge for the Libs is turning out to be blue sky. So a lot of people are- It's really as if losing the election wasn't painful enough,

really kicking us from over fucking down here. Now we all have to go to blue sky? I think it was like a million, they got a million extra signups since the election. I will cop to you that I did sign up for blue sky. You did, fine, you got there. I haven't brought myself to ski yet.

No skiing yet. No skiing. Let me tell you, my experience has not been good. I noticed that you skied a little bit, yeah. Yeah, but my problem was, like I said, I turned off notifications on Twitter for people I don't follow. I didn't do that on Blue Sky, and so I got all the stuff.

It's truly sanctimonious. It is, but it's like, I don't know that I love the idea that we are now segregating our social media platforms so that, I don't want to say liberals, the pro-democracy coalition, as I'll call it now, because it's a lot of, it's never Trumpers are there, a lot of journalists are there, but it's not, it's a lot of,

it's just a lot of like, it reminds me of like 2017 resistance, a little bit. That is the vibe. And everyone's like, you know, people are nice, mostly. Not necessarily to me yet, but to each other it seems like people are nice, which is great. We love that. But like we just had this whole conversation about liberal Joe Rogan and we need to speak in spaces

that like other people are who are not interested in politics or might be right-leaning because we're trying to persuade them. We have this whole conversation. We're like, you know, we should have this conversation more on blue sky. If you want to leave X because you are facing like harassment and just a bunch of fucking assholes there, which there are, there are plenty. There's a whole other case for leaving it too, because maybe I don't want to give money to Elon Musk. Totally. I get that. I get this. I get why people are doing it. But I think from a strategy perspective.

Political organizing. On behalf of the pro-democracy coalition, like our voices need to be out there in a whole bunch of different spaces. And you know, if people want to use blue sky to be the place where we just hang out and feel good. I think the one thing that I would really push back on and share as peace, and you hear this argument from other people, is the idea that the existence of explicitly right-wing platforms like Gab, Truth, Social and Parler are good for the right electorally.

Like Gab is not persuading any undecideds to vote for Donald Trump, and I think there is actually an alternate reality or an alternate world where, you know, Trump, instead of winning by 250,000 votes, he narrowly lost. And we're having a conversation about how the existence of these platforms solidified the base, made them more extreme, more ideological in a way that turned off undecided voters. So I think if the kind of lament is that there's not a safe space platform for liberals, I think that's a good thing. Well, and also, now that he won,

what we're talking about is, is not that like all these right wing social media platforms boosted him. We're talking about the fact that he went on podcasts and sounded more like a normal person because he talked to Theo von or Joe Rogan and didn't do his whole spiel that he does at rallies all the time.

Which is the opposite of the truth. So right. Yeah. And so like, I think that even in his victory, spiel that he does at rallies all the time. Which is the opposite of the truth. So right. In fact, yeah. And so like, I think that even in his victory, he kind of, his campaign showed us that like, they went beyond those spaces. Right. Finally, new exit polling from Blueprint

shows that late deciding swing voters had views about Kamala Harris's policy positions that were much different than the actual policy position she ran on in 2024. According to Blueprint's poll, 72% of swing voters said they thought Harris supported requiring all cars to be electric by 2035. 64% believed she supported decriminalizing border crossings

and 66% believed she supported, quote, using taxpayer dollars for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants in prison, which was the subject of one of the biggest Trump attack ads against Kamala Harris. You want to talk about this in the context of whether misinformation or disinformation

had an effect on the election outcome, what do you think? Yeah, so I initially when we discussed this, I said that I think that it did not. And I am really revising that. Some of the other things that majorities of undecided voters or late deciding voters believed according to this exit poll were that Kamala wanted to ban fracking she wanted to issue reparations for slavery she wanted to keep convicted criminal undocumented immigrants in the US she wanted to allow

kids to transition genders without parental consent and she wanted abortion legal up to the day of birth that's majorities over 50% of late deciders and I think we're seeing a lot of confirmation of this anecdotally in things like undecided voter panels where you hear a lot of these same things. It's not new that low information voters, which late deciders tend to be, have wrong or mishheld beliefs, right?

There's this famous poll that Time used to run asking people to name the vice president and a lot of people couldn't. What gets me is the consistency with which low information voters in this election specifically believe right wing conspiracies. Like not just the usual grab bag or whatever, it's a very specific subset of things they came to believe.

And I don't think this is what got people to vote for Trump. I don't think this decided the election. I do still think that it was the prices, it was the economy, but I think that right-wing misinformation gave shape to people's disaffection with politics and the incumbent party in a way that did not determine their vote, but will drive their politics going forward because it told them that, hey, you already feel like the Biden administration is out of touch with you because

prices are up and you're upset about that, understandably. And here are all these other ways that the Democrats are out of touch, that they wanna do all these crazy things that are extreme. I think that helps explain why so many undecideds kept saying over and over, we wanna like the Democrats, but they're so focused on cultural issues and identity politics, even though all the Democrats,

in fact, were talking about in the campaign trail was the economy and individual rights. So my take on this is, it's an information environment problem. I would, I do not put this in the misinformation or disinformation bucket. The ones that I, most of the ones that we've, that you mentioned and I mentioned, um, with the exception of, um, abortion up until the day before birth and, and not wanting to go after criminals were undocumented But she did support

requiring all cars to be electric by 2035 and then When she was deported in 2019 and then when they asked the campaign does she still support it like a spokesperson? Just put out a line said that's not her position anymore Same thing with decriminalized border crossings. There's video, which I'm sure low information voters, if they wanted to get information, could have seen her and all the other Democratic candidates put their hands up during the debate. I remember that. I didn't realize this, by the way.

The ACLU questionnaire is everyone is talking about is where she checked taxpayer funded surgeries for undocumented. Then there's a video they used of her, right? Oh, I didn't realize that. And in that video, they asked her the question, and I didn't realize this until like yesterday, someone pointed this out. They asked her the question, what would you do to protect transgender Americans? And she just said the prison thing. Did she really? Yeah. Oh. Because she had dealt with that issue when she was a district attorney in San Francisco.

Oh, I see. But she just decided to do a whole long, it was like a three minute answer. So it wasn't like the only thing she said. She started off by broad values. I want to stand up for transgender people's rights and great, all kinds of, and then she just like went into the whole thing.

So I'm like, part of this is she, they made a decision that all of her 2019 positions that weren't popular, especially aren't popular now, that they were just going to like kind of wish them away and have like statements from the campaign and not really have her go out and say, fracking she did, she said, yes, I'm frack everywhere. Great. So some of them ones she did publicly, but it was, I don't actually blame the voters on this one. And I don't even blame necessarily the Trump campaign because if I was on a campaign like, and someone is on video saying something in a position,

like that's fair game. We did that with Trump on abortion. Yeah. Even though he flipped. I mean, he did, Trump did also give us a lot of reason to believe that that was actually his position. Whereas to your point, and I know this is supportive of what you're saying, but to your point, you have to go very, very deep into the archives and you have to also ignore many,

many other things in order to conclude that these things that we listed are Kamala Harris's agenda. Yes. I think, and this sort of gets into one part of the conversation I had with Buhlid, like part of navigating this information environment as a candidate for office, and because this is not a complaint specific to Kamala Harris's campaign,

this is what like Democrats have done forever. I think we need to rethink how we respond to, whether it's misinformation, disinformation, or just stuff that we said that was taken out of context, positions politicians taken that they don't have anymore. Like I think it requires a, like actually addressing the misinformation or the misrepresented position head on, explaining, doing it in a way that actually captures

attention and draws attention to it, which is the communication strategy that we all grew up with was like, don't say elephant, what was the George Lakehuff thing, right? Don't make people think of an elephant or something. You're not supposed to repeat the attack. You're never supposed to repeat the attack.

I think in this information environment, I don't know that that's a good strategy anymore. There has been a ton of research in the last five or 10 years about fact checking, when fact check works, when they don't work. I think there was a lot of research initially that found to the, whatever the elephant metaphor was, that doing the fact check actually deepens people's

commitment to the wrong belief. And I think we moved away from that. And I think there's now a little bit more nuance around the field and that there are ways to communicate fact checks to people, especially if you do it preemptively before they hold the belief that will counter it. And I guess to your point, I guess that's just part of the information environment now. Yeah.

All right. After the break, I talked to former Justice Democrats spokesperson Waleed Shaheed about the role of advocacy groups in the Democratic Party and what Democrats need to change if we want to win a supermajority. And just a heads up, we are dark next week for Thanksgiving, but we will be back on December 8th. Will Ead Shaheed, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, John. I wanted to have you on because the two of us were part of an online debate about the future of the Democratic Party that I think would be more productive offline, which is the central philosophy and hope of the show. You don't think we can solve all the problems in 200 characters?

Yeah, in many tweets across now many social media platforms, apparently. I don't know why I keep touching the hot stove, but I can't stop So forgive me for the long windup, but I just want to give our listeners like the full background and context for what we're gonna talk about So there's a piece in the New York Times by Adam Jentleson Democratic strategist who's worked for Harry Reid John Federman various Democratic strategist who's worked for Harry Reid, John Fetterman, various progressive organizations. I first knew Adam as an intern when I worked on the Kerry campaign 20 years ago. I am very old.

And whether or not you agree with what he says in the piece, he is someone who's thought a lot about politics, comes from a place of genuinely wanting Democrats to win more power so we can help more people. So Adam argues in the piece, Democrats need to figure out how to win more power so we can help more people. So Adam argues in the piece, Democrats need to figure out how to win the next real majority in Washington so we can actually do shit for people again, but he's worried that it's going to be hard to win the majority if, quote, Democrats remain stuck trying to please all of their interest groups while watching voters of all races desert them over the very stances that these groups impose on the party.

watching voters of all races desert them over the very stances that these groups impose on the party. And the examples he uses are some of the more unpopular positions that presidential candidates took during the 2020 primary. Decriminalizing border crossings, defunding the police, and abolishing immigration and customs enforcement. And he mentions the ACLU questionnaire that asked every presidential candidate to state their position on whether the federal government should fund surgeries for transgender undocumented prisoners even though the law already gives prisoners access to gender affirming care and this became fodder for the attack ad against Kamala Harris that the Trump campaign put the most money behind. So basically Adam says the progressive groups play an important role

But they should think more about whether their tactics are more likely to trigger backlash than to advance goals And if it's more likely to trigger backlash, then they should change those tactics or Democratic politicians should get more comfortable saying no to these groups I like the piece. I don't agree with everything. I've experienced what Adam's talking about. I've had the experience of being pressured by the groups. I've also had the experience of being part of the group that pressures Democratic politicians, so I've been on both sides of it. I don't think it's what cost Kamala Harris the election. I don't think it's the biggest problem the party faces. That doesn't mean it's not still a problem. So I shared it approvingly people had a lot of feelings about this piece Which is totally understandable minus the people who said you should be deported and that cancer is too good for me

Those were two responses This is great social media is awesome But you wrote a I've always respected you a lot and you were to thoughtful response in the nation I've always respected you a lot and you were a thoughtful response in the nation titled the left didn't think Kamala Harris Here's what did so with all that said again. Sorry for the long windup I would love to hear you make your case and then maybe we can just get into it from there The windup is necessary because not everyone is on Twitter for the last 48 hours. So Appreciate the summary and yeah, I just want to start by This stuff is complicated and I don't want to come here as like a propagandist for the left or the progressive side and just say I appreciate the summary. that are extremely important to sift through and doing it in a long conversation like this

is more useful than sniping on Twitter or you know that just reduces the arguments and reduces the conversation. And I think there's like there's like Adams there's like a version of Adam's piece that is like the best version of Adam's piece to me and then there's like the worst version of Adam's piece and so I don't there's also things in Adam's piece that I agree with and don't disagree with and there's probably pieces in my piece that I'm like, you know, that aren't fully thought out in the way that maybe other people could take up. And so Jesse Jackson used to have a quote when he ran for president, you know, a plane

needs two wings to fly. And so every part, like in a two party system, you need a left wing and a right wing. And I'm not saying Adam's right wing, but you know, like there are, I think part of the best version of Adam's piece is that we need to be ruthlessly pragmatic about how to win elections and be really laser focused on that and forget all of the kind of social justice movement stuff that's going on as a distraction that doesn't resonate with people and distracts us from the real issues and becomes unpopular for our brand as a party. I think that's kind of the best version of Adam's piece and there's parts of that I don't disagree with.

The part I disagree with most is that like somehow the Sunrise movement or Working Families Party or Justice Democrats, the ACLU, the groups that Adam named, are the primary cause or the primary reason that Harris lost this election. And there's a lot of reasons why I don't buy that and it is a convenient excuse for people who are making an argument for their preferred ideology. So I will say that we have to look back at 2020. Like the left was so much louder in 2020, when Biden had historic margins and historic youth turnout, historic turnout, and like the calls, millions of people were in the streets

calling for defunding the police, a polarizing unpopular slogan. And Biden still won. And Sunrise was much louder, a lot of the other progressive groups were much louder and people I'm not saying that Democrats should have run undefund the police this time around I'm just saying there's a counterfactual in which these left-wing groups and progressive groups were much louder in a time where the margins were better for Biden and people were mobilizing to the polls because they thought it would deliver police reform on some level it wasn't that Biden completely distanced himself from police reform.

He actually said he wanted to deliver racial justice and do the Justice and Policing Act. And so that's one of the main issues I had with Adam's piece. The second issue is like we have 330 million people in this country. We have two parties. There's always going to be conflict between people who have various passions or interests or grievances about their particular cause. And it's the role of movements to pressure parties and get wins and concessions and be seen and recognized. And that's the role of parties to figure out how to navigate those tensions and conflicts. And, you know, I have advice for movements and I have advice for parties.

The role of movements is to make their demands popular, majoritarian, win over the public. And it's the role of politicians to follow that movement if it happens. When it comes to stuff like transgender rights, like many people in my family voted for Trump for the first time this election. You know, I obviously come from a Muslim American family.

It's a unique demographic in this race, but like a lot of people in my family who voted for Trump did not attend college. So they fit in this kind of working class conversation. And you know, the number one reason they voted for Trump was because they thought he would be different on Gaza than Kamala and because he said he would. And Kamala didn't say that she would be different than Biden. like the trans honestly the transgender stuff did come up but it didn't come up from

groups. It came up from like three years of like a Christopher Ruffo far right misinformation campaign conspiratorial campaign that's dominating YouTube, TikTok, WhatsApp about like kids the basically that kids are going to school and then their teachers are convincing them to change their gender and promoting that in schools and then they come home confused with their parents. I don't think that's because of the groups like and I don't think Adam's perspective on it that it was like the fault of the ACLU questionnaire in 2019 is going to help us

in the next four years. This is a place where we need to do, the politicians need to make a lot more space and encourage social movement organizations and LGBT rights organizations to do some persuasion on transgender rights because I empathize with family members of mine who just found out, I know it sounds silly to people like us who listen to Pod Save, but people in my family just found out about they, them pronouns within the last four years. And the only people talking to them about it

is far right YouTube and far right TikTok. And the Democrats' approach this time around was kind of to either pivot away from the issue or say this is a distraction or kind of have a non-answer. And I'm not blaming Kamala Harris for that, but I'm like, we could have seen this two years ago that this would have come. I'm not saying Biden or Harris needed to do anything on it, but like there could have been in the same way that there was a huge campaign for same sex marriage between 2004

and 2008 that had some allied politicians. I just didn't see that same kind of infrastructure on one of our weak points as a party that could lean to the movement's strengths and like create the room for politicians to be able to, you know, make it a majoritarian issue and like change. The number one issue for transgender people is not athletics. Like no trans friend of mine is that that that is their number one issue is public safety and health care. Like, and I just think, yeah, I think we dropped the ball there. Same thing on immigration.

And I don't know, I think I just thought it was overly hamfisted take. But you know, I'm curious, curious what you think about some of this, because you said you've been on the receiving end and part of the pressuring group. And anyone who knows me in real life, I am a critic of the left within the left. And so the groups Adam named are some of the most strategic groups on the left.

When I started in politics, very, before Bernie Sanders, there were very few social justice organizations doing electoral politics at all. They were doing disruption and protest and maybe a little bit of advocacy. And after Bernie ran in 2016, like a lot of those movements are engaging in politics, which is a good thing because when you engage in elections, you have to win a majority. And so I'm just, I have seen improvement and I think we're at this place where, yeah, there's this

tension between movements and parties and they aren't for the same things. Like, they've never been for the same things like abolitionists protested Lincoln, labor movement protested Roosevelt, civil rights movement protested LBJ, ACT UP protested Clinton. Like this is American history. It's a big country. People had a lot of demands and wishing away all of civil society when Trump is about to crack down on those same activists is kind of an overly simplistic explanation, I think, and not helpful.

One thing I thought about as you were just talking is that I almost think that we need to broaden the lens on the issue here because You know, I think just saying that it is about the how the party and pollot Democratic politicians interact with the groups is Missing that as you said a like Republicans and the right they get a say here too, and they drive a lot of this We're talking about, you know, this, this ACLU questionnaire from 2019 and the ad that Trump ran in 2024. But even if that didn't, if none of that happened, you know, uh, we're talking about a day after Nancy Mace, a Republican Congresswoman, uh, decided

to introduce a bill banning, uh, transgender women from using women's restrooms, which she admitted was specifically to target the new Congresswoman from Delaware, Sarah McBride. And Sarah McBride responds in a way that is like, this is a distraction and I hope we can all treat each other kindly and I'm here to lower prices and help people in Delaware. And that's what I'm focused on. And it's like, you know, I saw a clip from Fox, Jesse Waters is like the first day in Congress, you know, the right after this election, the first thing Democrats focus on is, you know, trans bathrooms and trans women in bathrooms and blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, well, okay, that's just crazy because Democrats didn't focus on that. Nancy Mays focused on that because she wanted this outrage, right? So it's like, on one hand, we do have to, I totally get that we have to realize that Republicans are gonna make something of this. I also think the other big factor is the information environment.

And as you pointed out, that the interest groups and progressive organizations are now getting involved in politics, right? So there is more interaction than there used to be. Whereas just like, you know, they're pushing and they're doing advocacy and protest and all that kind of stuff. And then politicians are doing their thing. And then maybe they meet once in a while.

Now it is in the questionnaires, you know, they're one example of this. It is a lot of groups saying in a primary, all right, these are the positions that we hope Democratic candidates will take or that we want you to take, and if you don't take them, then, you know, we'll criticize you or your fellow candidates will take them and criticize you for not taking the positions, right? Which is basically what the dynamic was in the 2020 primary. And the reason I keep thinking about that, the 2020 primary is like, look, when I said I was on both sides of it, like I, we interviewed every

candidate who ran in 2020. And I remember like, asking them, you know, my big thing was the filibuster. Like I wanted them to all say that we're going to get rid of the filibuster. And, you know, we're we're going to get rid of the filibuster. And, you know, we're getting close to a point now where maybe the next time Democrats are in control of the Senate, they actually do that. But, you know, I would also go down the list, green new deal. And what do you feel about, how do you feel about immigration reform and all that kind of stuff?

And I think that like those of us, whether we're in groups, media, whatever else, that this is sort of amorphous blob on the left, I think that we, like, and look, the politicians need to take responsibility for this too. I totally agree with your critique there. Like, the groups didn't make them do anything. They chose to take these positions. But I look back on that primary and I'm like,

did we really need to press them to decriminalize, say that they wanted to decriminalize border crossings, which is a policy that was not necessary to end family separation, as Joe Biden proved when he took office, which is a very unpopular policy. But they all raised their hand, except for Michael Bennett, I think, on stage on that. And, you know, that's... I do think that, like, it creates a perception...

Michael Bennett, who would have definitely won in 2024. Definitely won, right, yeah. It creates a perception that has, I think, dogged Democrats to this day, that is not about any single issue, but it's like, oh, and this is, this is by the way, I think what the problem with the, the effectiveness of the, we're calling it like the trans ad, but I don't think that it was effective because, um, it just went after trans people. It was effective because it said, uh, Democrats are focused on caring for undocumented immigrants in prison who want taxpayer funded and even if you didn't say, you know, gender transition surgery and you said they wanted health care or they wanted food, you know, like whatever it may be, I still think it

would have been effective because it's the idea that Democrats care about other people who aren't you, right? And that cuts across whether it's trans folks, whether it's immigrants, whether you know, like whoever it may be, I do feel like we have to figure out a way, even though we are this giant coalition of all kinds of people and a lot of marginalized folks and vulnerable folks, we still have to figure out a way to make sure that the whole country knows, or at least the whole working class people in the country know, that we are for them and Republicans are not. And Republicans just want to pick out individual people to scapegoat, and we're not going to let them do that because we're fighting for everyone, no matter what you look like, who

you love, how you identify, or what religion you belong to. So a couple of responses to that is, one, I liked Benji Sarlin at Semaphore wrote a piece about the 2020 primaries and like, you didn't contradict this, but there was Bernie and then there was Biden and there was everybody else. And Benji's point in his piece was,

it wasn't just the groups pressuring for some of these positions. It was that like, Julian needed a press hit, and Beto needed a press hit. And like, Kamala needed, like they needed some differentiation to get some headlines going, because it was 20 people running. And like, when Beto said like,

hell yeah, we're gonna take your guns, or Julian was like, will you join me in supporting decriminalizing border crossings? I don't know if that was like an interest group thing as much as I need to show the kind of grassroots I guess I need the media's attention and get some applause from grassroots activists and that was probably a misguided approach But it made sense in a 20 person crowded field of just trying to figure out how to differentiate yourself. The second piece is on like the focus of the party. I think I've been thinking about this piece a lot, which is in 2019, I was home for Thanksgiving. And I was I got called in to do an MSNBC hit with Chris Hayes about Medicare for All, debate between

the Bernie wing and the Biden wing on Medicare for All. And I went because I guess I hate spending time with my family during the Thanksgiving holiday, so I decided to do the studio hit. And you know, my parents don't read the New York Times. They don't read English at like a college educated level, but they do watch CNN and MSNBC and these new stations. And it was like the debate that we all know happened for a year about Medicare for all, like how do you pay for it?

What are you going to do about Joe Manchin? Are you going to eliminate private health care? Ten minutes debate, me and a Biden person. I come back home and I'm like, what did you think, mom and dad, of my hit? And they're like, honestly, we didn't really understand what you guys were talking about. And it was because the debate was so focused on inside baseball kind of tactics of like, it wasn't like, I think both me and the Biden person and Chris lost the room for like kind of the non-college educated quote unquote low information voter who

decides general elections. And so on some level, my reflection about the 2020 primaries is like, who did that actually make sense to? Like some of those debates that were kind of arcane and like difficult to understand. And like, we do have a professional class in the party that isn't just activists, but like the journalist class, the DC pundit class, the average MSNBC viewer who's super hyper-engaged, and I don't think are even left or woke, but care about these minute things that don't forge a collective will of what is the party about, who is the party for, in the most simplest and broad terms. And Trump is a lot easier to understand just like just on like reading level and comprehension level,

like he dumps things down, it's classic authoritarianism, it's strong man stuff, and it's like, the system is broken, I'm gonna fix it, and the people to blame are, you know, these others that you don't know, and so I'm thinking about that moment a lot, where I'm like, how much time did I spend in 2019, 2022, having a debate about single payer healthcare

and how you're gonna pay for it and what about Joe Manchin, that honestly, like my parents who have voted Democrat their whole voting career, watched 10 minutes of their son and didn't understand what the substance of the debate was or how it affected them. And it's about the information environment. It's like, and so I don't know if this is like,

I don't think this is like one point for Adam or one point for me. It's like, I'm not getting into that. Yeah, no, no. But like, I just am like, what, like there's, the whole information environment is broken. Like, on some of this stuff. I look back at that too.

The amount of detail I learned about Medicare for All and then the various ways that the different candidates tried to differentiate themselves from each other, where it was like a Medicare all plus plan and just public option. I think me and you debated each other over Twitter about it. I can't believe you said that. Why did we waste our time?

I mean, it's important. It is important, but like, is it? Well, and it's like, did it, I think the real question here is, you and I want everyone to have affordable healthcare, right? And did we... Don't put words in my mouth. I didn't raise my hand for that.

Did all of us, candidates, activists, everyone else, did we move the goal forward of getting to a point where we're going to get universal health care in this country? Because I remember thinking that after inflation reduction act passed, I'm like, it's awesome that we finally capped insulin and are, you know, going after drug companies so that Medicare can negotiate with drug companies, which Democrats have been saying they wanted to do forever. And it's great that they, you know, Biden got to plus up the subsidies and the Affordable Care Act. But like, man, is that a long way from what we were all debating

in the 2020 primary? Like, we didn't, you know, we basically just got to do a little more on the ACA, which everyone during that primary was already saying, like, is insufficient. And we got some, you know, good progress on prescription drugs. But like, whoof, I don't know if we're gonna get people I don't know if we've gotten people closer to the place where they are you know the truth of the matter is like willing to get rid of private health insurance which was like the big stumbling block and with the public in 2020.

The thing I'm left wondering about is like I mean you did a whole podcast called the wilderness when after Hillary lost in 2016. And like... Looks like we're going to need another season of that. No, I know, but I'm like having so much deja vu that annoys the shit out of me, because I'm like, what? We had all these conversations in 2016, 2017, 2018. And like, what? Did we learn that was right? What didn't stick? Because back then,

the Bernie left critique of Hillary Clinton, one reason she lost was that kind of the Adams argument, like managing a coalition, representing a lot of interest groups, not having a simple message, a populist message, and like overly, like part of that was because the Hillary campaign spent a lot of time in the primary saying that Sanders wasn't paying attention to issues of identity and race and gender and

sexuality. And so it kind of affected her general election campaign and like now it's like turned the other way around where it's like the left is overly focused on those things. And I'm like, I don't know, like, I'm kind of like, uh, what happened? What I, some of, some of these lessons apply to both sides. And how are we in the wilderness again? Well, I do think that's a great example.

And I was just talking about it with someone the other day, because I think Bernie's campaign in 2020 was different than Bernie's campaign in 2016, because in 2016, he was like, you know, one track mind talking about economic populism, the establishment, the status quo, like that he just had his message down in 20. He was doing a little bit more of that. I think his campaign reflected a little bit more of that coalition management that sort

of Hillary Clinton did a lot of in 2016. I mean, it is interesting she in that primary in 2016. My view is like this is the source of a lot of the problems as the primary in 2016, not necessarily the primary in 2020 is because in order to get to his left, she couldn't go there on economic issues because it's Bernie. And so she decided to go to his left on social and cultural issues. And when he would say something like the establishment, she'd be like, oh, you're calling Planned Parenthood the establishment. Therefore, you must be not sufficiently pro-choice. Or you're

calling, you know, common sense gun reform groups, you know, the establishment and that's so you're not good on gun safety. So I think that we were sort of left with that version of the Democratic Party post 2016, that sort of that Hillary's campaign, like, and a lot of it was a reaction to Donald Trump as well, right? Like we should say, I think the Donald Trump winning, I think led a lot of folks on the left to think, well, if that guy can win saying all the shit that he said

that we know is not popular, or we at least we don't think is not popular, or at least we don't think is that popular, then maybe we can say whatever and really say what we believe and push for the most ambitious agenda possible. And we can run someone like that and have them win too, if Donald Trump can win. And I just don't, eight years later, I don't think that's where the electorate is. And I'm just trying to figure out how we get the electorate to that place.

And clearly there's a role for activists and movements to persuade people and to change public opinion on this. And there's a role for politicians to both like sometimes agree with that and sometimes disagree and try to win their own races. But there is something with the communication between politicians, people in politics and the movements and just everyday activists on social media that is like not working well.

Um, and part of it's because of the nature of social media, I think part of it's because again, the right jumps in there and they cause trouble as well. Journalists like to stir up trouble on this because it makes for a good story when, you know, certain voices are fighting. But I don't know how we get to a place where we can sort of strategize in a cohesive way, knowing that we we're gonna disagree, right? Activists are gonna disagree with politicians. It's been like the case throughout history.

Like we know that disagreement's there, but like it feels like we need a better way to sort of communicate and like give each other the space where we can disagree with each other, but not like not saying that you do this or at it or anyone did this, but like you see it on social media all the time like accuse people of just like bad faith or throwing people under the bus or like Exaggerating what someone's claim might be which is seems to be what's happening now again

And that's just I don't know that that's something that I've been thinking of but I don't know how you've been thinking about it I mean, so we I'm like an example of this like I am the first in my family to attend college. I'm the first in my family to do anything in formalized politics. And a lot of, I spent particularly black and brown organizers in progressive civil society. And I don't know what it's like at Potsae or Crooked but like are often the first in their families to either attend college or be in a political space and like they carry the part of being woke like the old the actual definition of being woke is being like oh I like I know so much about how this

country I know the history of this country the history of oppression and like now I have a chance to do something about it. And I have the burden of 11 million undocumented immigrants who still don't have any relief, the burden of the world's largest prison population, the burden of a rigged economy, and the white millennials who are in these spaces are oftenly downwardly mobile from their parents.

And so you have a lot of angry young people who have seen democracy not work for them. And like, you know, it goes back to the whole reason why Bernie was popular with young people is like people wanna change, wanna change fast and we're fed up with the status quo. And then Bernie kind of brought a lot of this generation, including me, into formalized politics.

And I just feel a certain way that that class of people generation, including me, into formalized politics. And I just feel a certain way that that class of people, of particularly millennials and Zoomers who have been handed a pretty shit world, are the ones who are now being blamed for a loss that I don't actually think that had a lot to do with. Obviously there are things that we all progressives need to do better. There are bad progressives and good progressives. There are bad moderates and good moderates. There are things we can all work on. But like the zeroing in on this class of kind of young people is hard for me to swallow on what happened in the election.

I do think there's a general phenomena of like, how do, and I care about this deeply as a progressive person, like how do we get progressive movements and young people more, and I do this work myself, like interested in strategy, interested in coalition, interested in majoritarian politics, interested in learning about movement history and movement debates, like the things happening today amongst all the questions you're asking are the same questions that were asked to every movement in American history and like and so that's one piece another piece is like we haven't talked about some of the things that are happening outside of movement groups and to me like I have a Republican operative colleague and so I brought up some of this debate to him and I was I him, why do you think we lost?

And he said, I don't think this has anything to do with it. Biden was unpopular. She couldn't differentiate herself from Biden. And that basically explains the story. And to go back to themes of democracy, fascism, and then a comedian at Madison Square Garden was not a recipe for success and did not project an image of strength with the kind of voters that you needed to bring over. And I don't know if I agree with all of that, but even like this like Lincoln Project Republican

operative didn't buy this, didn't think this was the right debate to be having or right discussion to be having. And I've seen so much news coverage in the past week about like a much harder conversation to have like which is like you know David Plouffe I think he's like a smart guy but like having two people two senior people closest to the candidate come from uber like why aren't we talking about that I've never met an u driver who's happy with Uber. Like, Uber drivers show me all this past year Uber drivers. I'm not trying to pick on David

or Tony West, but like, it's there's a whole class of people who run the party, who are not who actually are in the room, who come from the most wealthy corporations and corporate clients in this country, who are getting very little scrutiny in this debate and had a role in moving Kamala Harris away from economic populist message and toward Mark Cuban, Liz Cheney and a message that didn't and wasn't what we started with, which was aggressive, risky and calling them weird. And it seemed like they went back to some of the 2012 stuff, which is like play it safe, and calling them weird. And it seemed like they went back to some of the 2012 stuff, which is like play it safe, let him fail, let him do the Madison Square Garden stuff.

And I don't know, when you have people in the room who are extremely wealthy or work for some of the wealthiest corporations, we have a consultant class that also deserves scrutiny, but we're talking about Sunrise. Why? I feel like out in L.A. also deserves scrutiny, but we're not, we're talking about Sunrise. Like why? Like I feel like Alan Iverson, like what are we talking about? Like we're talking about practice. Like what are we doing? I read Adam's piece a couple times for this. Like he definitely obviously calls out those groups. I don't think he blames them for the loss.

I certainly don't. I haven't heard a lot of other people like blame those groups or blame these. And I would never blame all these kids. Right? Like you said, right? Like I don't know. But the authors, the people in that orbit and Adam Adeglesius are saying no foundation should ever fund these groups from now on. Like so it is that. The authors, the people in that orbit, and Adam, and Matt Iglesias are saying no foundations should ever fund these groups from now on.

So it is pretty. And I have never really bought into the, it is the foundations funding the groups. I think that the desire for politicians to take these positions and to run on these positions is so much more complicated than a donor funds a group and the group does this. I just think, but what I always try to think about

is like how to validate the anger that a lot of these young kids feel and sort of the ambition to like build a better world because they have been handed a lot of shit, right? Like how to validate that while also like guiding them towards a strategy that actually will help them accumulate power, which is the only way that we can actually improve people's lives. On the consultant stuff, I have like a nuance view of this just because I've been in these

rooms. Like Tony, I don't really know Tony, but he's like her, you know, Kamala's brother-in-law. So it makes sense that she would listen to him. Pluff, like, look, if Tony and, if Tony and... If there's one thing I've learned from campaigns, always avoid family. It doesn't matter if it works for Uber or not, but family's complicated. But it's like, look, if Tony and Pluff are like, you know, if there was like a ride sharing policy that was like way too lenient on ride sharing companies, I would be like, that's kind of fucked up. But like, David is like, so like maniacally focused on the data and what's going to help win and would take the most populous position ever. If you

thought it would help us help win right and I do think look she ended up talking about price gouging she ended up talking about she did a lot of good stuff on housing right like three million new homes the $25,000 credit so she ended up like having a pretty a good economic agenda that was populist I look I think. I think it was a huge mistake politically and policy wise for her to like differentiate herself from Biden with like a lower long-term capital gains tax rate. I don't understand why that happened.

Republicans in the cabinet. Yeah, I don't think that's why I like, well, Republicans in the cabinet is also like an easy one. You know, we fucking put Ray LaHood in our cabinet as transportation secretary. No, no, I know, but it's not that, doesn't capture a lot of people's attention. Yeah, well, this, but I'm saying it's, you know, as you said, it's like a country of 330 million people, and we are in the unfortunate position of having to have a much bigger, more heterogeneous coalition,

or at least we thought we did, now that the Republicans are trying to get a more heterogeneous coalition. Um, but like, so yeah, I definitely have, have gripes about like, could she have been more like relentlessly on message in terms of economic populism? Yes, I think so. But that's also like my own priors. And I I've wondered, like, look, she, she, you know, she won in the exit polls on like, who cares more about people like you? People trusted Trump more to manage the economy than that. I also agree, by the way, with your initial take

that you could almost explain this entire election just because of inflation and backlash to Joe Biden's unpopularity and part of the anti-incumbent global backlash that was in part caused by the hangover from the pandemic, which is high prices and the high prices sort of, fit on top of an affordability crisis that has been brewing for years long before the pandemic.

And so when you add all that together, you have a working class people who are very upset. And I think where the social and cultural issues play in there is not that they are, that a majority is necessarily like conservative on these issues, but that they see Democrats as focused on those issues more than they are focused on like the economic aspirations

of most working people in this country. Yeah, two things. One, my point isn't about like Uber's nefarious kind of influence on the campaign in like a direct quid pro quo way. I just mean like demographically there's a conversation that we have professional college-educated staffers all over the DNC and all over the Harris campaign who are calling the show and everyone's afraid of them and that's why they're making the decisions they do and actuality that I don't think that that's true at the highest levels of the party and Like you know like what would it look like to have more like labor union leaders in the center of the room or senior advisors or like

That kind of stuff instead of people who've worked at corporate America. That's my point and like maybe that's something We should also scrutinize if we're also if we're gonna scrutinize quote-unquote the groups My second thing is on what you're saying like, you know, I I don't know how much there is that Kamala could have done like In the position she was put in Obviously like there should have been a primary to settle out You know a stead has talked a lot about this at the New York Times like a primary would have helped the party Updates would have positions, had some conflict, debate some of this out,

see who's reaching the mood of the country. I agree with that. I still don't know if we would have won. But the point that you're making about Republican, sorry, the median voters think that the Democratic Party is overly concerned with social and cultural issues and not their issues or economic issues. I brought this up in my piece, but one, we need to understand that like, I mean, we both know this and like, this is not the America my parents moved to and it's not the America like your parents were born into, like family, gender, sexuality,

race, immigration culture. This country has changed on a fundamental levels. Again, most Americans learned about a pronoun that they never knew existed probably within the last five years. Within their lifetimes, same sex couples can get married. It was only in the past couple of decades that a majority of the American people were for interracial marriage, that women, like a majority of women earned an income. Like this all has happened like within the last 50 years.

And I used to think that Bernie style populism, or even the race class narrative, which you have talked about in your program, like was the best way to address this kind of stuff, which is like this culture war is a distraction. They're trying to divide and conquer us and by using cultural issues to pit us against each other. I've become skeptical of that view and because of this election because I don't I think Americans aren't stupid I think Americans realize the country has changed and we're telling them don't worry about that And like I don't have an answer or a for no solution yet

And I'm like but I'm like but there's one party that's saying yeah The country has changed and it's bad and there's another saying, either get over it or don't worry about it. There's nothing to see here. And I think it's kind of condescending in both ways. Yeah, because the other message is, if you're worried about or you have questions, then you are just as bad as the Republicans who are using these issues as a way to divide us or you're stupid or you're the victim of propaganda. I mean, like, I don't know if you read that New York magazine piece where

the reporter went to AOC's district to talk to a lot of the voters who voted for AOC and voted for Trump. It was like a working class in the Bronx and you talk to like a lot of minority communities and talk to black voters and Latinos and Muslim voters and Asian American voters and they're all working class. And you know, when they talked about immigration, they're like, a lot of them are immigrants. A lot of them are immigrants who are like, you know, here within the last couple of years. And they're like, here's the thing, when all these migrants came to New York City, there's now like an underground economy

that's sort of above ground where you've got these street food vendors that are undermining like immigrant small business owners. And then there's like prostitution and a lot of the prostitution comes from like people who've been sex trafficked, you know, from South American, Central American countries with smugglers, right? And so people are like, I'm mad about this because my kids are going

to school and there's prostitution out in the open and there's these street vendors who are screwing me on my business. And are those the concerns of everyone in the country? No, but they're genuine real concerns. And I posted that piece and it was wild cause the replies on that one, well, first of all, I got a lot of replies. It was like, why do you want to throw trans people under the bus? I'm like, literally the piece doesn't say anything about transgender Americans first.

But second there was like, well, you know what? Those people enjoy Trump, enjoy getting deported, enjoy your family's getting deported, like all that kind of shit. And I'm like, this is the evidence that, and back to your original point here, which is like college educated Like folks from the coast whether it is the groups the consultants the Democratic Party structure

Like it's it's there's too many of those folks us folks Running this and not enough economic diversity and cultural diversity in sort of the people who work in politics, I think. One thing about what you just said, which is that on some of this stuff, I live in New York and I noticed that there are a lot of migrants selling fruit on the subway.

It is visible and felt. And at the same time, I'm like, people haven't seen gangs in New York, everything you just described has happened in New York City 100 years ago, they were just Irish. And the fact that in our country's DNA and story we tell ourselves, what's happening today is not that different than what has happened historically

in our country. And I don't know, the Democrats so far are offering is not that different than what has happened historically in our country. And I don't know, I'm like, the Democrats so far are offering three proposals to this question of immigration or culture war issues, which is one, the Republicans have a point and I'm going to, you know, some of the ads we saw in swing states like I'm also going to fix the border. I'm also like, I'm not going to give quote-unquote illegal immigrants blah blah blah the second option is pivot to class war and the third option is like kind of a version of

that which is like like up like we believe in racial justice and immigrant justice and like we should stand with the marginalized I'm not satisfied with any of those three right now as proposals that of like how should stand with the marginalized. I'm not satisfied with any of those three right now as proposals of like how to deal with culture war issues. And going back to something you said earlier, like I wrote about this in my in the piece, but one of the only countries that where the incumbent party was able to win reelection in the post-COVID era was Mexico. And I'm not an expert in Mexican politics, but center left, populist party, this AMLO, that's the nickname of the president,

he would hold these three hour daily press conferences in which he would put up villains of the week who were, you know, populist villains responsible for Mexico's inequality, corruption, crime. And AMLO had the third biggest YouTube channel in all of Mexico because these were entertaining, provocative, polarizing, like, publicity stunts, essentially. And his party won, like, a huge majority, primarily from working class people in this recent election

that Mexico just had. And I think like there are many, there are many people within the Democratic Party coalition, particularly those like at the high of the higher levels of the party who would think that kind of stuff is tasteless uncouth gimmicky. And in terms of like the war for attention and the attention economy, like one thing I, like President Biden held the least amount of press conferences of any president in modern history. Meanwhile, the president of Mexico is doing three hour press conferences every day about the villains of the week. And so I'm just like, we have to get a lot more creative. We have to make things a lot more punchy. Because the stuff on the far right is, and stuff from Trump is totally geared by these

social media algorithms to grab your attention. And our stuff is kind of created by college educated people, middle, upper middle class people and geared toward like, you know, to be honest, like the MSNBC audience, Podsave's audience, my audience, which is not the audience that determines general elections and presidential elections, like I think we can all be honest about that. And like the audiences that I speak to when I go on TV or on Twitter or your audience are primarily people who are plugged in. And yeah, I've just been thinking a lot about like what this information age is so hard to make something bleed through, especially on economic issues. And we really I think I have not seen anything from the Democratic Party that gets close

to what AMLO was doing in Mexico at all. Yeah. And maybe some of what Bernie's campaign did in 2016 or 2020, but like this guy was the president and he was doing this stuff. So I don't know. No, I mean, look, I think I don't even know if people think it's tasteless. Some would, but I think, you know, the Americans. You know Joe Scarborough would I would think. I think that there's Americans actually, just they see rich people like that and they get pissed off about people taking advantage of them, but they don't necessarily see them as villains.

But I do think that like, look, your point is, the point that I definitely take is having a president and leaders of the party who go up there and tell stories of how people Who are in power are ripping people off and screwing people? I think is very it would be very powerful, right? like I remember I talked to some people in the Harris campaign and whenever she talked about she had this record as attorney general where she like went after the big banks and attorney general where she like went after the big banks and like got the best homeowner settlement of any other attorney general and kept pushing the Obama administration on that, even though she was friends with Barack Obama and was a Democrat, but she like wanted a

bigger settlement and she went after for-profit colleges. And I was like, she talked about that all the time. You know, like we didn't hear about that as much. And I do think that, you know know or like congressional hearings, you know Katie porter's taken on a or aoc or someone like that has taken on a like a drug company executive like that I do think that kind of shit resonates with people a lot it resonates because there's there's some there's some conflict there Which I think people are naturally drawn to the one part of the race class narrative that I think Is smart is like we don't Democrats don't

We don't talk about our values in the positive In a positive framework as much or when we do it's like cliche poll tested garbage, right? But like I don't know that anyone really understands what our position on immigration is, right? It's like cuz when like you said a lot lot of the folks who talked about it in the cycle will you say, well, I'm going to be tough on the border too, right? And I think that people probably want, like an orderly immigration system. But if they just hear you say, I'm going to be tough on the border too, they probably think that you're doing it because it's the election and you're trying to run to the right of Republicans. Like voters aren't stupid. But I do think if you articulate a position that like,

this is a country of immigrants, and we want people to come here who want to like work and fulfill their dreams and raise their families and follow our laws, and if you're one of those people, then like, we want to give you the chance. And we don't want to give anyone special treatment, and we don't want to make a mockery of our legal immigration system by letting people in who, you know,

after there's people who've been waiting in line for years to become citizens in this country. And so we want it to be fair and we want it to be equitable. We don't want to give anyone special treatment. But this is a country of immigrants and we want people here. Like, I do think like articulating sort of a positive vision about each issue that speaks to where people are, I think is at least one step that we just haven't done recently. To go back to the very beginning of this conversation,

look at the Dreamers and Obama. People weren't annoyed as shit at the Dreamers. They were disruptive, annoying, going to all the rallies and disrupting Obama to get the Democratic Party to change on the DREAM Act. Ultimately, it created, there was tension, but it created a way for the party to, the DREAMers were very successful at organizing a majoritarian coalition, majoritarian message, and make the space for Obama to do something that I think in his heart he wanted to do,

but felt like, and even Harry Reid in his heart probably wanted to do but felt like was politically toxic. This time around there was nothing like an immigrant rights movement anywhere like compared to the activism of the dreamers and Obama era and so I'm like there's bet there's work that movements need to do to create the space for politicians to take those positions and I just I this I have witnessed in the past two years that even actually under Biden, that the main mobilizations from the left and progressives under Biden

were fundamentally about Palestine, to be honest. There wasn't that much other energy happening. And so this is like, I don't even know, this is where I disagree with Adam's original piece, which I'm like, it's I don't necessarily like there is a role for movements to do some of this work and I feel like some of the reasons why Like if if there was an immigrant rights movement or a transgender rights movement or even late like a label a stronger labor movement like that could try to in the margins persuade the public on some of these things that Democrats are going to get attacked on are going to run on that would be helpful for everybody

Sometimes that doesn't line up one-to-one and movements have movements some to like, you know If we had a movement for reparations in this country, that's not a majoritarian position in this country Does that mean we shouldn't have a movement for reparation in this country? Probably not, but like you know that that's a tension between a movement and someone who wants to win a majority electorate. So it's complicated and I just think in the next four years like I'm trying to think about all the conversations we had in 2016 and 2017 that maybe some of which we didn't fully integrate because I don't I don't there's some things that are very similar to the conversation than

2016 and 2017 one thing that I want to take away for myself is like what does it look like to be a progressive who not just pressures the party to deliver on our issues like I Don't know and I I'm not saying this to be a propagandist for progressives at all or but I don't think we get the IRA without sunrise Organizing like for two two years three years Annoying the shit out of candidates in the 2020 primaries by making climate change a huge issue for young people organizing young people around it, moving people around the polls. We need that for so many other issues. And some of that needs to look like pressuring Democrats, and some of that needs to look

like persuading the majority of the public around these issues. Or even if you can't win a majority, but I think there are a lot of, when it comes to asylum seekers and transgender Americans, like, they're honest, they're it on the way, depending on how you frame it, there's a majority coalition against rights for those people in this country. If you can reduce some of that opposition in the margins, that would help Democrats in the longer term indirectly. So it was some of the things. Those are some of the things I'm thinking about. Yeah. Well, look, I, we could talk forever about this.

And this was a fantastic conversation. I'm glad we did this, but I will leave it here and I'll say, look, I mean, so much of this, I think the conversation right now is, um, at least online, it's like. Blame or looking backwards. Part of the reason we're doing all this is what you just said, which is like over the next four years. And of course, like, again, this is all you just said, which is like over the next four years. And of course, again, this is all predicated on what the Trump administration does, what we're responding to. But I do think figuring out effective ways for both movements, politicians, everyone in between,

to communicate, strategize, figure out when to push, what kind of pressure to exert, when is something strategic, when might it trigger a backlash? Like it's just, it's gonna be the important work that we do and hopefully we can all figure out ways to have productive conversations about it and make some real progress. So thank you for chatting

and hope we can keep doing this. And again, like we need to take risks and try things out and they're effective and ineffective progressives, they're effective and ineffective moderates. Yep. You know, it is true of it. Effectiveness can be, you can be any kind of effective person, but yeah, I actually had one more question for you.

Well, I'm curious what, I mean, you were around Obama during the Dreamer sting and I feel like that was, at the time, that was such a polarizing conversation. People were trying to see if this was, people were trying to test if this was a majoritarian position and would help or hurt Democrats and Obama and Harry Reid in re-election. And so I'm curious, like, that's a way that movements disrupted Obama, were angry, were protesting, and ultimately kind of found a place to work in concert together. And we saw that with Biden and climate somewhat in 2021.

And so I'm just curious what your read is of Obama and immigration. We always thought that the, like in terms of, you know, public opinion, we actually thought that it was a maturitarian position. The challenge there was, which is the challenge with bureaucracy and being in government is like the lawyers kept telling us like, I don't think we can do it. I don't think it's going to stand up to scrutiny.

And of course we saw during the Trump administration, it was not a good look. Executive action is not necessarily a good substitute or almost ever a good substitute for legislation, which is much more far reaching. And so he did the executive action because I think thanks to a lot of the dreamers and a lot of the activists that pressured us to do that. But he knew when he did the executive action that it was going to be precarious. It wasn't about the polling as much. It was about, it was about like whether this is gonna last.

And I just, the reason I bring this up is cause I do think as we, we focus so much on like presidential races and primaries, but figuring out like how to get a Senate majority again of like, you know, Democrats who are mainstream Democrats who are gonna, who are gonna work with us on some of the stuff, like that's gonna take winning some pretty purple, reddish states, you know, and that's a tough project.

I brought this up in the piece, but like the reason I'm a little prickly about some of what Adam writes in his piece is like Harry Reid famously said he opposed the ground zero quote unquote ground zero mosque, which was a complete Fox News right wing fabrication that I remember as a kid being like, what like this isn't like this is completely feels so demonizing, so toxic and like this isn't true. Like people are not trying to build a mosque at ground zero. And so like, I'm worried, I want people to specific about, and it's better to do this conversation not online,

but I'm like, what are your proposals on immigration and transgender rights and like Palestine, because I've witnessed the party take what I feel like are immoral positions based on these conversations in the past and Ground Zero mosque is one of the ones that for me deeply like impacted me and made me feel like I don't know it's like we always have a ground zero mosque like in every election and so the how do you respond to that like this time the ground zero mosque

was around transgender rights and and board and the border and asylum and all this stuff and yeah I want people to get more specific and I'm not saying I the answers, but I have a worry about what I've seen the party do in the past on some of this stuff. Well, having worked for Obama when he was on the right side of that issue and us knowing how unpopular it was going to be that he took that stance, even though Reid broke with him. Like part of the way his way out of that

is that he and Ben Rhodes, like, they crafted a speech because Obama's like, if I'm going to take this position, we're going to talk to people about it. And we're going to be honest and we're going to talk about the, like, the nuances in it. And again, it's harder to do that in this information environment. But I do think we need leaders on our side who are going to be willing to say, I hear where you're coming from on that side. And I don't agree.

But it's a valid view. And I'm going coming from on that side and I don't agree but it's a valid view and I'm gonna be on this side You know, like I just think you can't you know, we can't take shortcuts. Sometimes people respect the conviction and in the time sometimes they don't but sometimes they do something they do and like So I think we've all we've all agreed that Harry Reid should have held daily three-hour press conferences about that We've all agreed that Harry Reid should have held daily three-hour press conferences about the ground zero mosque. That would have, yeah. Explain the students. Would have won Nevada.

All right, Waleed, thank you so much for joining. This was really, this was great. Well, thanks so much. All right, take care. Take care. Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted by me, John Favreau, along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Illich-Frank. Jordan Cantor is our sound editor. Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglen. Jordan Katz

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