Pod Save America - "9 parts hero, 1 part troll" (LIVE from Pasadena!)

Episode Date: July 31, 2017

Reincey goes home, and the Resistance kills Trumpcare. Then Joy-Ann Reid and Symone Sanders join Jon, Jon, and Tommy to talk about the future of the Democratic Party. 

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Tommy Vitor. On the show today, in a little bit, we're going to bring out our guest. We have the host of MSNBC's AM Joy, Joy Ann Reid. NBC's am joy joy and read We have the former press secretary for Bernie Sanders and current CNN political commentator Simone Sanders Okay Let's start with a busy week yesterday Donald Trump fired his first chief of staff and most talented fly swatter, Reince Priebus,

via tweet. And he replaced him with his secretary of Homeland Security, General John F. Kelly. Reince had the shortest tenure of any chief of staff in history. Yep. Which is odd, since it feels like he's been there for about 20 years.

Honestly, though, it's not about, you know, we use the time so well. Your mic's off. Oh, guys, the mic's... No. Keep talking, Lovett. Lovett's mic's not working. Very professional operation.

Why don't you and I just have a talk? Yeah. How are you, Tommy? This is the best... This is what we've always waited for. This is our dream right here.

The mic is off. Tell us your thoughts. Do you want to talk about Darfur? John, I thought you'd never ask. I was listening to old Pod Save the World on the way here, and it made me think. No one cares what I do.

Shut up. Watch it. There's no... Hello? Love it. Power of voice. Show saved. Wonderful.

I want to go back and make the joke I was going to make. It's going to be just as good now. It's all about timing. Yes, it was the shortest tenure of any chief of staff in history, but it's not about the length of time. It's the amount he got done during that time. I think it worked just as good as 7 times. Okay, so the firing took place as Air Force One was landing.

Reince gets off the plane, gets into a Suburban with some other staffers, and when the other staffers learn he's fired, they get gets into a Suburban with some other staffers, and when the other staffers learn he's fired, they get out of the Suburban. Reince is sitting there alone on the rain-soaked tarmac. And then, as the motorcade pulls away, Reince's Suburban goes off to Kenosha. I can only guess. Credits roll. Stay tuned for scenes from next week's episode. So, Tommy, why didn't the Reince thing work out?

Why didn't Reince work out? Well, according to what we read today, Reince's original sin was daring to tell Donald Trump that it's unacceptable to say that you just grab women by the pussy and then run for president and you think that that's okay. So apparently that's what Trump could never get over, is that Reince wasn't down with sexual assault. So I think that's an important thing to remember. They called it the Scarlet A.H. The Scarlet A.H. is the access Hollywood.

So I think a lot of this was driven by personal peak. Now, was Reince a successful chief of staff? Did he lead the team well? Did it seem like he had the confidence of the president? Absolutely not. But I don't know how you can have the confidence of someone who has no core, no beliefs, no values, doesn't seem to care about the policies you're trying to execute on, and is generally, you know, not undisciplined, unfocused, and doesn't do his job day to day. So. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this before.

do his job day to day. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this before. All the machinations aside, the problem is Donald Trump. I don't know. We'll find out, right? Is it possible for someone to be a better chief of staff to Donald Trump than Reince Priebus? Seems pretty clear it's hard to do a worse job.

Starting from a low bar. Very low bar. Reince obviously couldn't run the White House, but his saving grace was supposedly the fact that he was a D.C. guy who knew how to work the Hill. That didn't go very well. He was chairman of the RNC. But that was the idea.

That's the idea. He's this insider. Look, Donald Trump has another problem, which is the only people that'll work for Donald Trump are the kind of people who would work for Donald Trump. Like Reince Priebus. But Reince Priebus is not a White House chief of staff. He's like a mid-level... The deputy political director.

Yeah. He's an okay operative that you slot into a job because he's one of the three people left that you promised jobs during the campaign. Guy's a B plus, B minus hack. So now he's White House chief of staff. Oh my God, I can't believe he's not up to it. Sean Spicer, Sean Spicer is... whatever. One more time. Why else are we here? Sean Spicer... Sean Spicer is not a White House Press Secretary under any other Republican, because there are people that are up for that job that are going to compete with you and take it from you because they want to work for an actual Republican,

not whatever the fuck is going on now. Back to your original question, I think ultimately... What was the question? Who are we? Ultimately, your ability to be effective at that job boils down to your relationship with the President of the United States. And Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel, as frenetic and all over the places Rahm was, was really close because Rahm got a lot done

and he had great ideas. I think Obama's relationship with Bill Daley was not nearly as close, and it wasn't as successful a tenure as Rahm's or Dennis McDonough's, who was the last chief of staff. So if Trump hated him from day one, he was doomed. Love it. Back to your point that Trump is the problem. This is an informal White House advisor to The Washington Post.

I really enjoy this quote. Any observer, including one that did not speak English and knew nothing about politics and came from another planet and solar system, could, after observing the situation in the White House, realize the White House is failing, and when the White House is failing, you can't replace the president.

I think that pretty much sums it up. I think there's a structural issue, too, which is Reince reported to the president, but then a bunch of other people reported to the president as well. A bunch of people had walk-in privileges in the Oval. If it were a normal functioning White House, you would want the chief of staff to actually exert some sort of control over the rest of the staff. But we should talk about why, which is the president's time is insanely valuable. I mean, not this president. This president cannot fill a schedule.

He's hours to watch television. It's insane. But the president is, like, the most valuable thing a president has is time. You know, they're there for four years. They're supposed to make the most of it. This guy is wandering around the White House with nothing to do.

Kellyanne is in and out. Ivanka's in and out. Scaramucci, who canceled on this lovely event, Politicon. Where's the mooch? Where's the mooch, yeah. You know what? It's one thing to get a little wasted and call Ryan Lizza and curse for half an hour about your colleagues.

You cancelled on Politicon. But cancel on an event the day before? Are you not a professional? Mooch. Okay, so Reince is being replaced with General John Kelly, Secretary of Homeland Security, Boston guy, Tommy? Boston guy. That's something.

So we are told that General Kelly is going to work out his Chief of Staff because he won't suffer idiots and fools, as a quote. So he has come to the right place. It's going to be a tough first day. So they've already, you know, the White House has talked to Axios, as they do, and said, you know, the reason that Kelly's going to work out, he's no nonsense. He's going to make the trains run on time. He looks the part, which is very important to President Trump that you look the part

because we are innocent. Poor Reince. No, not poor Reince. Whatever. But on top of everything else, stop tweeting about a soft chin. That's pretty tough. Just not a leader's chin.

That's what that says. So what do we know about John Kelly? What do we know about his tenure as DHS secretary? He served in the Obama administration. Yeah, he was a combatant commander. He ran Southern Command. He's a four-star general. So, you know, to get to where he got to is an incredibly difficult task. You have to have some political skills as well as being a great soldier, marine, or airman, or whatever it is. So, you know, he's obviously an incredibly successful person.

I think he is well known for being a disciplinarian, a taskmaster, somebody who rides his team pretty hard. If he can translate that experience and worldview into the White House, maybe it will help things. I just don't know that Donald Trump will ever allow him to if the mooch is going to run into the Oval Office after he's done and upend everything. Yeah, I mean, the one thing about Kelly is he's, as far as the stories are concerned,

he's supposedly one of the adults, right? He's in the Mattis McMaster school of the people behind, Tillerson, that are supposedly the ones who are behind the scenes desperately trying to stop all the bad things and that are supposedly doing this out of a sense of patriotism even though they have no warm feelings for donald that's that's the story from well from the more you read about him he's a little rougher around the edges than mattis and the rest of them i mean he did he saw through the travel ban no problems there the muslim ban he saw through the deportations no problem there he does he's given some speeches since he's been Homeland Security Secretary that sort of hearken to the more darker impulses of the Trump campaign

when it comes to crime and immigration and the rest of it. So I think that's probably a little concerning. Yes. Do you think so? Yes. A little concerning. It should be concerning. I mean, I just want to put a stamp on something Lovett talked about last night

in Love It or Leave It, which is the hottest new show on the internets, if you haven't tried it. It's a fantastic podcast. Here we go. We've got some fans. But he talked about a speech President Trump gave yesterday, ostensibly about MS-13, where he encouraged police officers to rough up suspects when they put them in the car.

And it was just, I think it was one of the most disgustingly authoritarian things he's done and disgustingly authoritarian things he's done and nakedly racist things he's said lately and I'm just raising it because you know, you read the paper today and there's like, Priebus, Kelly,

the mooch, like all the fun things, but this speech yesterday I think was so remarkable and so outside the norms of anything that is, that should be allowed in our discourse that I think it's worth just flagging. Yeah. It's totally right.

It was a week of that, right? Donald Trump is under threat and he kind of takes to these kinds of more, he goes back to this sort of white identity politics, right? He goes to the Boy Scout jamboree and makes a mockery of it and uses it at a political event. He tweets out a transgender ban that that even the pentagon can't take seriously and then he goes and speaks to these uh police officers and gets them applauding and hooping and hollering for treating people who are innocent until proven guilty like criminals because they're not

like us he used the word us thugs to rough up. At a time when incidents of police violence and police shootings have come to the fore in a way that I think has shocked people on a bipartisan basis, and he's still saying these things. It's very frightening. And look, in some of the language in that speech, not the language we've seen in the video, not the most

craziest language, the scariest language, but some of that in that speech, Kelly had said in a speech in May, too, about some crime and violence. So it's a little, he's got a little bit of a like-minded person now there, which is not. Okay, interesting. Yeah.

But one outside advisor told Axios, Kelly, being a mature general, may finally be able to get Donald to pivot into a presidential dynamic. The pivot, we are still waiting for the pivot. It's coming. Today is the day that Donald Trump became president. You guys ready for the Donald Trump pivot?

It's right around the corner. But look, I think, I mean, there is, we talk about it all the time, but there's a lot of press attention that will be paid to this personnel shift. And the bigger, I think the conclusion of this whole thing is the much bigger story here is that Donald Trump will never change. Yeah. It's been six months.

And I think he was like, okay, you're going to stick Reince in my West Wing? Fine. I want to try Washington on for size. And he gave it six months and he just tossed it out. And now he's going back to his New York goon friends to run things, and they care even less about norms and conventions and traditions than the other guys.

And that does genuinely worry me. I love it. You made this point last night, but it is completely insane that the staffer who did not get fired this week was the one who threatened to kill people, accused the chief of staff of a felony, and accused the chief strategist of sucking his own cock.

That is, that person... That's the keeper. He's the keeper. And we don't know, and so far the mooch still reports directly to Donald Trump, and not necessarily Kelly. And Kelly thinks he's going to try to get him to report to him, so that's going to be a thing.

These are actual people that are going to go in a room and have a meeting about this very topic. The Mooch and Kelly and Kellyanne and Bannon. All the characters in one meeting. Just tune in, you know, Monday. All right, let's talk about that Trumpcare is dead, Obamacare is alive. Good news. For now.

It'll never be completely safe until Democrats control the Congress and the White House. So let's talk about why the bill finally died, and who do we credit it to, and what do we credit it to. I want to start with the policy and the politics, right? The Republican health care plan raised premiums,

raised deductibles, raised the uninsured rate in America, the number of uninsured Americans by tens of millions, and never polled above like 15%. So one thing we should talk about is it's pretty amazing that it almost passed and pretty scary that it almost passed. A bill that's that bad both in policy and in politics. Yeah, Jason Kander made this point in the aftermath of the bill, front of the pod, after the bill failed, and it's, you know,

put all the process aside, and the process is obviously important, but ultimately, they just didn't have a better idea. Right. And this terrible policy was central to why they couldn't get it through.

Yeah. And I also think the resistance plays a huge role in this. Activism played a huge role, and, like, we never want to forget that. There's obviously been a lot of focus on john mccain and susan collins and lisa murkowski and even all the yes and we'll talk about them and and also all the senate democrats who stood united

under schumer's leadership like you have everyone from everyone fromchin to Bernie Sanders stood together on this. Total unity. Democratic senators from deep red Trump states. They never wavered. And that's a testament to them. That's a testament to Schumer. Yeah, it really is. And a testament to all the activists who kept the pressure on.

Yeah, look, I mean, like, it is a very cool and cynical thing to say on Twitter and social media and elsewhere that, you know, LOL, nothing matters, right? Well, Susan Collins was at first, you know, mild in her opposition to this bill. She goes home to Maine. She's greeted by crowds everywhere she goes cheering her on. And then she became one of the most vocal opponents of this bill, right? Lisa Murkowski was telling stories about cancer patients who were coming up to her and saying, please don't do anything to disrupt my treatment. And now she's opposed to the bill, right? Lisa Murkowski was telling stories about cancer patients who were coming up to her and saying, please don't do anything to disrupt my treatment, and now she's opposed to the bill, right? Like, Jerry Moran from Kansas, real conservative, goes home, town hall in Kansas, people protesting outside. He, at one point, tries to kill the bill. People that you would never

expect, right? So this is a big, it was big. And the pressure also just slowly but surely had to lower sort of the lower their ambitions right things have to keep coming out right the the medicaid cuts have to start coming out until all they're left with is like a tiny strange skinny repeal that even they didn't believe should become law right and and so even that was a result of the pressure because just to get the yeses they got, they had to reduce the bill to basically nothing. We talked about the McCain thing last night on Love It or Leave It. Tommy, what did you think?

What were your thoughts on McCain coming back? In 2008, we all actually got to know the McCain staff really well. Part of it was that I got sent to the RNC to try to mess up all their press. And on day one, there was a giant storm bearing down on New Orleans. And David Plouffe was like, if you leave your hotel room, I will kill you. I didn't. And then day two, it was rumored that every member of the Palin family may or may not be pregnant. So we didn't say anything that day. It was like this disaster. It's like, what do I do here? So Ryan Lizza of the Mooch fame

organized a big dinner with all the McCain people and a bunch of Obama people there. And we got to know each other. And it turns out like they were just like us. They had the same sort of dealing with the same crap and they're just great people. And I was talking to a friend of mine from those days last night and he said the thing he's always loved about McCain and they revere him is that he is nine parts hero, one part troll. And I think McCain, in the way he dragged it out, and he let Pence come and talked to him for 20 minutes, he said, yeah, I'll take the call from Donald. Let's do this. Let's talk. Let's dance, Donald. And then he just walked out there, thumbs down right in Mitch's face. I mean.

Nine parts hero, one part troll. I mean, that's, you just named the episode. We don't have to do another thing. I love our cynicism about cynicism now. This is like a good look. We are cynical about cynicism. This is a good look for us. And you know what? It's back to like our Obama roots

because who the hell thought that was going to happen? But it was so nice after so much darkness to see someone that you know has this heroism in him do the right thing. And I don't mean to give all the credit to Senator McCain, because a lot of Republicans and Democrats stood up and did brave things, but it felt incredible. It's nice to see people do the right thing, even if you don't have to love John McCain, you don't even have to like John McCain. He did the right thing in that instance, and so did Susan Collins, and so did Lisa Murkowski, and they did it for a whole week, You don't have to love John McCain. You don't even have to like John McCain. He did the right thing in that instance.

And so did Susan Collins, and so did Lisa Murkowski. And they did it for a whole week, by the way. But look, on the cynicism thing, it is not to say that we will not be disappointed by politicians again and again and again. We will. Bad things will happen. We will lose a lot of these fights. But the reason it's important to look at what just happened this week and be hopeful about it is because from that hope we

can build on future activism and organizing and realize that we actually can make a difference right that like we build on this win we build on this win and we go from here you know um so what lessons did we learn from this health care battle forward? Lovett, do you have any lessons? So for all, I think the biggest lesson is I know we're disheartened. We see that there's such a disconnect between cause and effect that it seems like gravity sometimes doesn't apply to Donald Trump. But the rules, the basic rules of politics, they're still there. Pressure works.

Showing up works. The phone calls works. I mean, mean look it should not have been dramatic the country should not have been waiting on bated breath to find out if this thing Would pass and what would happen next the fact that it was? Suspenseful the fact that we were scared that is a testament to just how broken the process was and how much shame Mitch McConnell brought to the Senate, but we saw on the floor of the Senate was democracy, really was, and it worked. And that's inspiring, and it's good to be inspired. And also, just democratic unity from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin is effective. Activists working with Senate Democrats together on a plan, going to the Capitol, we can take the microphone from Donald Trump,

we can take the microphone from Mitch McConnell, and we can make our case, and it gets through. You know, it's hard to see because, you know, we're all people on Twitter, all the rest, like local news, local newspaper headlines, they were terrible for people like Dean Heller, for the people that were voting no. That is effective. Local news matters, you know, local news headlines matters. And look, you have to be, protests look great on television, and like it or not, that works.

Yeah, it's a lesson I learned early in politics is doing something, putting a legislative agenda forward and passing it is infinitely harder than opposition. And you mentioned this last night. The Democrats, at a time when we didn't have a lot going for us, blocked Social Security reform under the Bush administration. You know, so it's just a reminder that, yes, we don't have the White House, the House or the Senate. But that's not a reason not to fight every single fight because you're going to win some.

I think the lesson for me is we have to win back Congress in 2018. We have to because, like, you know, John McCain doesn't do the right thing. Lisa Murkowski doesn't. Susan Collins doesn't. That's the end of Obamacare, right? We would have lost it. If there was, in 2016, if a thousand votes went the other way in New Hampshire, Maggie Hassan isn't senator and Kelly Ayotte is, and this thing, this bill passes. A thousand votes in New Hampshire. Winning the Senate is really, really difficult. The deck is stacked against us. It's still worth trying.

We can still pick up seats. We can win the House. And if we win the House, we have shut down this kind of ridiculous process. We have taken the gavel from Paul Ryan, who has abdicated his responsibility, who has just sold out his country in the way he refuses to criticize Donald Trump and refuses to take a stand. And we can make sure that nothing, this kind of a crazy repeal just will not happen, just won't happen. We have to win the House. And it's not just the House, it's not just Congress, it's state-level elections and local elections, someone was making the point that, you know,

we shouldn't just be on defensive now and trying to save Obamacare. We should go on offense. And that means there are a lot of states out there with Republican governors and Republican legislatures who have not approved the Medicaid expansion yet. And in 2018, if we flip legislatures and we flip governorships, in states that didn't expand Medicaid yet, they will expand Medicaid and more people will have health care. One of the most despicable things I saw this week

was John Cornyn complaining about the lack of access to health care under Obamacare in Texas, a state that did not expand Medicaid. Unbelievable. Can we talk about John Cornyn for a minute? Yeah. He's the most dishonest human being in Washington, D.C. And this man was a judge.

He was a Supreme Court judge in Texas. It is shocking to me. I think he's the greatest Twitter troll in the Senate. Yeah, that's a good one. His Twitter feed is just... Not in a fun way, not in a mundane way. Like a just liar way. Also, if you go back and look,

his predictive average on health care votes has been not great. We will vote on Friday. Hour later, Mitch McConnell pulls the bill. We have the votes. They don't have the votes. I mean, he's just been he has just been wrong all the way through. Worst. Last thing I want to say about health care before we bring out our panelists. Is it dead for good? Right. So we've said that, obviously, we need to win back Congress, and then it will be dead for good. But there's some reports today that, you know, Republicans in the Senate, some in the House want to revive this. Donald Trump this morning is tweeting that he basically wants to sabotage the insurance markets. So, you know, what do we do now? I guess we just stay vigilant, huh?

Yeah. Well, look, we have to hope that they don't want to bring this up again in the Senate, that they accept. You know, you look at this process and, you know, forget the machinations. Like, we did learn something, which is it seems like there's not, what they need is an overlap in the Venn diagram between a bill that the moderates or the more moderate members will accept because it leaves Medicaid alone enough, leaves enough subsidy in place, leaves enough regulation in place, and the conservatives who want to basically repeal the whole thing. Like, is there a sliver of that Venn diagram where it overlaps? And so far, the answer has been no. And I see no reason for that to change. But this thing's not on the level,

right? You can buy people off and push them into a part of the Venn diagram they don't actually want to live in. So we have to remain vigilant on that score. But something that Brian Boitler wrote about in The New Republic is there's a more difficult part of this fight coming, which is the sabotage fight. Donald Trump has a lot of levers at his disposal to make Obamacare work less well from advertising to the supports for insurance markets and a few other levers that he can pull to try to make Obamacare fail. And I think the key there is to just make sure that we highlight those stories when they happen, that we're loud about it. I think the final message here is it's good this weekend to celebrate the progress we've made on this, but no one should relax.

No one should just move on to the next thing. Yeah, I mean, he's literally bragging about how he's going to step back and let markets implode and push them in the back while it happens, and it will hurt millions of people, and he doesn't care. So yeah, we should be crystal clear about his intentions and stay vigilant. And one last thing is, this is obviously a bit of a kabuki dance, but you have Schumer say, let's work together. You have McConnell say, what are your ideas? Nancy Pelosi sent a letter saying, here are the aspects of the House bill that we would support, which is basically those six pages that are about stabilizing the markets that Democrats would support anyway. And so making it clear that there is something we would get behind, it seems unlikely that something

like that could pass. But repeating over and over again that we're here to do the things that will actually make Obamacare stronger is a really important part of this. Because Obamacare isn't perfect, and there are things we can do to fix it, and that's something Democrats have said all along. Okay, we are very happy to welcome to the stage Joy Ann Reid and Simone Sanders. You guys come right here. Thank you both for joining us. Joy, I want to start with you. Your latest Daily Beast column is about what Democrats can say and do to pull us back from the brink. Do you think the party has a policy challenge, a message challenge, some mix of the two?

What's your diagnosis? Well, I think, first of all, it's great to be on Pod Save America. Yes. I think it's a little bit of both. I think the Democrats, they have a mental organization challenge because Democrats have all of these things that they want to do all at the same time. They pine for the Trump voter who they think they can somehow talk into not being for Donald Trump. And they feel, you know, what did we do to you?

How did we hurt you? If we can find some way to appease you, will you come back to us, please? And this has been, you know, I'm wearing a little LBJ pin. It's been really since the Lyndon Johnson era, which was the last time that Democrats won white voters, a majority of white voters, and they pine for those voters. So they have that problem. And then they want to figure out, well, how do we keep the active progressive voter that's really excited and really interested and really wants to be a part of politics? And you can't really do both and also message to the base of the party, which is largely people of color. So they're trying to juggle these three things all

at once. I think the first thing Democrats need to do is figure out who are your voters. And then you can figure out the message that gets your voters out. You can't figure out who the other side's voters are and then try to beg them to vote for you. So my question on that is, the number that always sticks in my head is that on election day, one in five Trump voters had a positive, gave Barack Obama a positive approval rating. So it's like, who are those voters? Forget about the Trump voters that they go,

everyone goes and interviews, and they were from Trump, they were for Trump from the beginning, and they believe in, you know, we're not going to reach those people. But those voters, there's some voters who voted for Obama twice and then were from Trump. They were for Trump in the beginning and they believe in, you know, we're not going to reach those people. But those voters, there's some voters who voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump. And then voters who voted for Trump, who approved of Barack

Obama? So like, how do we reach those voters? Or do we? I think you figure out how to reach them later. Okay. You can get a psychologist, maybe sit down with them, maybe some of them, or people who, you know, now that he's leaving, in hindsight, he wasn't so bad, you know, but I don't know what, who they are

and what their psychology is. I do know that if you needed 77,500 people, it's a lot easier to get 50,000 black people in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee than it is to figure out what is in the minds of those Obama to Trump voters. Absolutely. I mean, those Obama-Trump voters everybody talks about, they only account for 8% of the electorate. But, I mean, 8% is a big number when you think about how many people that voted. So I do think some of these Obama-Trump voters are some of those persuadable folks that,

yes, you need to understand who they are. Bursar USA has done a lot of polling around those folks, but people also need to focus on turnout. Like, I've worked 15 different, no they do, I've worked 15 different campaigns, and it is always easier to get people that agree with you to come out and support you and go to the polls as opposed to persuade somebody to come to your side and then drag them and push them and hope that they mobilize and go. So I'm always telling the part, like, I think the people at the DNC are tired of me, actually,

because I run up in the building on a regular basis talking about, well, I don't like this. What about turnout? We talk too much about persuasion. And we need to, like, black women voted at 94% for Hillary Clinton, and they have yet to get a thank you card. You know, so for all this talk about how do we get the white working class voter back, to be frank, working class is going to be majority minority by 2032. The United States is going to be majority minority by 2040. America is browning.

And so instead of focusing on white working class voters, like Joyce said, who ain't voted since, for the Democratic candidate for president since, what, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Like, we need to be focusing on young people who are increasingly diverse. The millennials. Shout out to the millennials.

The most diverse generation ever. That's who I think the party needs to be talking to, figuring out how to create a message, an economic message that speaks to, yes, working-class people of all genders, racial backgrounds, religions, but also a message that speaks to black women, a message that speaks to Latinos, a message that speaks to LGBTQ Americans.

And I think the economy and health care are two really good things to talk about that can help Democrats win in 2018. That's the message. Talk about that. So what do you think, I mean, do you see that message out there? I mean, obviously you're someone who supported Bernie Sanders. I mean, he's somebody, I think, who spoke to young people. All young people, by the way. I know there's this thing out there that Bernie didn't talk to young black people. He won millennials across the board, including young black millennials.

He didn't win all black people, though. That's clear. For multiple reasons. But that's been a source of contention, right? Whether there was a divide based on race or gender, but actually it was one based on age. But do you think the Bernie message is the message? Is that the message that does that kind of working class appeal?

It's a trick question. Is it? I didn't realize. This is a trick question. I think the message is not necessarily, is it the Bernie message or the Sch trick question. I think the message is not necessarily, is it the Bernie message or the Schumer message? I think the message is a message that authentically speaks to all people, a message that says, look, people are working 40, 50, 60 hours a week, black people, Latino people, white people,

and they still can't make enough money to put food on the table to feed their families. Young folks are going to college, paying lots of money to go to college, and then get out and can't find jobs. So we need an economic message that speaks to everyone. We need a healthcare message that speaks to everyone. But I also want you to talk about that black people are getting shot and killed in the street and nobody's doing anything about it. That's important. Can I say that I think the other thing is that Democrats need to understand that there are two different separate elections and they're very different, right? So when you're talking about the big picture, the sort of large driving dream messages, what we can do

about immigration and what we can do about race, what we can do about policing, those in my mind are messages that a presidential candidate needs to carry. You need to find a charismatic, telegenic, somebody who knows how to carry that message, because that's what Barack Obama did. He emerged as somebody who you could pour all of those dreams into and who could carry it off, right? When you're talking about a midterm, you're talking about a situation where the kind of people who vote for Democrats, namely younger people and people of color, don't usually vote. And also where you're driving right into the core cynicism of the American citizen right now,

which is that government doesn't work. So if I'm the Democratic Party right now, what I would be saying is, look, we are running a congressional election, okay? We're not running a driving dream message. We are saying we are going to get a small number of very specific, concrete things done in Congress for you, if you give us the Congress. Give us control of the committees and we will reign Donald Trump's insanity in. He won't be able to operate the way he is now with

the lackeys and the supine stewards that are running the Congress now. You don't have to use all those adjectives. But wait, no way. But I think even people who like Donald Trump can see that he is losing control, that he is out of control in fundamental ways that don't let him get things done. So if you're the Democrat, you say, just going to do a few things. Number one, we will protect Medicaid. We will protect your health care, and we will be the guardians of it. Number two, we will rein Trump in and force him to operate within the bounds of normal.

We will make that happen, right? We will protect the social state. We will protect sort of the presidency from the seat of Congress. We will make that happen, right? We will protect the social state, you know, we will protect sort of the presidency from the seat of Congress. We can do that. We're in Congress, right? And just, you know, don't say we're going to do everything. We're not going to fix criminal justice. But then number three, we're going to return the Congress to the people. We're going to go back to regular order. We're going to have normal committee hearings. We're not going to pass, we're not going to allow Mitch McConnell to send 13 men into a room and write health care rules for millions of American women.

We're not going to do that anymore. We're going to have an open Congress. It's your Congress. Contracts with America work because they're simple, they're things you can do, and they're feasible, and they're not pie in the sky. And I think in that case, even people who aren't in love with the Democratic Party will say, you know what? It may be more rational to return this Congress to you.

And then let's see if you can get something done. And leave that bigger picture to a charismatic candidate. And then y'all need to find one. Well, that was my question. I mean, look, healthcare is the most potent issue for the voters right now. In 2018, the polling and real people that you talk to, nobody's going to the polls and voting based on Russia right now. So I definitely think, I agree with Joy, the Democrats need to stick to concrete things that affect people's everyday lives.

I've sat in a whole bunch of focus groups, and it's bleak. People feel as though, particularly about the Democrats, that they're literally not working for them. But I disagree with you that Russia does not affect your lives, people, because my thing from before is that we will control the committees that investigate Russiagate, and we know Republicans won't. Let me give you a way that Russiagate affects all of your lives. What does Russia want from the United States? They don't want Donald Trump. They don't care about Donald Trump. He's just somebody to use as a vehicle for what they really want. What they really want and what Vladimir Putin cares about is money. Vladimir Putin might be the richest man in the world.

You can't account for it because he won't tell you, right? He's more opaque than Trump is. What he wants is to be able to take Russian money and rinse it in America and wash it in America. How do you do that? Buy some condos from Donald Trump. That's one way to rinse Russian money in the United States. Another good way, energy investments. The Magnitsky Act is there and it is preventing Russians from

getting paid. They want paper and they want to come in here and make billions of dollars drilling up the oil and gas under your land, under your properties, under your ranches. They want to come into the great Midwest of the country and drill the hell out of it and make money. And if they can't be the driller, they will make the steel. They already are making the steel for the DAPL pipeline. So we're fighting a pipeline that is going to make them rich. So Russiagate matters because if you give a foreign hostile power control of your country, eventually you're giving them control of your land. And if the federal government that is in there employ, essentially, is doing takings clauses to take your ranch so Vladimir Putin's cronies can get rich drilling for oil and gas under your land, you better believe Russiagate matters to you. Get them out of our country.

I believe it matters to me. But again, unfortunately, the large swath of the American people, they're not there yet. I'll just say this. When Watergate was happening, and I don't even think I was alive, but I've read about it. I read about it, but if you look at the Gallup polling back then, it didn't become an electoral issue for people in the polls until after Nixon resigned. So I would hope that American people will wake up and feel that Russia is one of the most potent issues in our lifetime. But for now, they're not there yet. So we've got to talk to them where they are.

Vladimir Putin, not a good guy. He's really just, yeah, he's a pain in the ass. So, question for you. When I think back to the 2016 race, hindsight, it feels very 2020 to me. It's like you look at Bernie's election, the Bernie campaign,

and people were desperate for someone that was new and didn't feel like a Washington insider, didn't talk like one, didn't sound like one, and they loved him. They fell in love with this man who, on paper, you wouldn't think they would fall in love with, right? Similarly, Donald Trump was the outsider's outsider. He wanted to burn the place down. So my question is, do you guys think that the Democratic Party, I mean, instead we gave them someone as a candidate

that they've been seeing in Washington for 25 years. So do you think that the next leaders of the Democratic Party have to come from outside of Washington? Should we be looking to states and governors? And do you think we're recruiting the people we need right now to get that next generation of leadership that you both are talking about? Well, first of all, Democrats aren't running effective enough statewide races to have enough governors to choose from. So Democrats are doing a poor job of state-based politics, so we don't have enough people cycling up through the school boards and through the city councils and through the state legislatures so that they can become a governor. It's scandalous that the party of African-Americans can barely rub two black governors together. Can you find somebody that's of color to run a state

so that they can be teed up to be ready? We can't get senators. We get one Kamala in there. We're like, yay, us. That's pathetic. That's pathetic. Okay. Kamala Harris has to be the Asian and the black people's person. It's ridiculous. So to me, to be the Asian and the black people's person. It's ridiculous. So to me, the Democrats need to get back to basics. This used to be a ward party. It used to be a party that knock and dragged people to the polls, that knew their little district and they could get their little guy elected to the city council.

That's what Republicans do. They go into Wisconsin, they find little Scott Walker and they make him a little county executive and next thing you know know he's the governor. And that's what they do. And Democrats, it's a long game strategy. You need to play the long game. But in terms of looking for stars, there are a lot of great people. There's Mitch Land, the Mitch Landrews of the world that are really good.

You've got Gavin Newsom who's really great. You've got Kamala Harris who's in government but great. I think Joe Kennedy is a star. I don't know what he wants You've got Kamala Harris, who's in government but great. Friend of the pod. Yeah, I think Joe Kennedy is a star. I don't know what he wants to do. And I always feel a little awful sort of asking Kennedys to sacrifice themselves

because the family has given so much. Look, think outside the box. Eric Holder. Could Eric Holder run? Yeah, you never know. That could be something interesting. He's candid enough. Right, and so I think there are some great people.

It's just that right now, that person should start to emerge now. If you're interested in running, get out there and start emerging as a national voice now. That's what Obama did. To me, it's partly about people, but it's also about this larger, I think, soul-searching that Democrats are doing around policy, around politics, right? Because we have, look, you can look at individual personalities, I think, soul-searching that Democrats are doing around policy, around politics, right? Because we have, look, you can look at individual personalities, I think, you know, talking about why we ended up nominating somebody who was a D.C. insider is really important, but at the same time, we have lost up and down the ballot, right? From the state legislatures to the governor's races, to the

House races, to the Senate races, to the White House. And so that isn't about people. I mean, it's about putting up the right candidates, but it's also about policies and the agenda. So putting the message aside, do you think Democrats right now are doing enough to do the kind of soul searching around policy, around addressing the actual needs of people, not speaking to them, not how they feel, but what they're actually going through? Well, I was happy to see that the party recently, you know, put out this platform about the economy, like what they're going to do about the economy. I think that there's some tweaking to be done

because the rollout to me read, Dear white working class people of America, we are here for you. And I don't think that's what the message on the economy should be, but I do think there is some soul searching there and some tweaking that is being done. But I just think we need to put proposals on the table. The American people are not, they don't want you to take two years, three years to figure

it out. I think the party needs to put proposals on the table and they need to give resources. So the DNC has given resources to local state parties to do some of that infrastructure building that they need to do because we can't get more black mayors and Latino mayors and young people mayors that are Democrats and governors and lieutenant governors. People like Justin Fairfax, who's running for lieutenant governor in Virginia, without the support

the state party going in and supporting those people. So there's also an infrastructure thing that needs to be done, because there are viable candidates on the ground that don't get looks, that don't have the resources, and their local parties don't have the resources. And also, I think the Democratic Party needs to sort of figure out who

they, who, what is the Democratic Party, right? If you tell me Republican, I think tax cuts for the rich, this sort of libertarian idea that you should take care of yourself and that the federal government should not help you get health care, repealing the 20th century, right? Like, I kind of know who they are, right? century, right? Like, I kind of know who they are, right? When you say Democrats, I immediately think of FDR or LBJ or Barack Obama, people who have already been president, you know, and I don't really know what is the Democratic Party writ large beyond the big personalities of the, you know, truly great presidents Democrats have produced. When that president goes, that agenda

kind of goes with them, right? So what does it mean to be a Democrat? They need to figure that out. We've got to start tying our politics to the issues instead of tying our politics to the people. Because I think we literally tied our politics to the people of Barack Obama, whom I voted for, whom I love. And then when Obama was gone, it was like, well, what are we doing? So this is my next question. So we had this big fight in 2016 over what the Democratic Party is, what we stand for, you know, between Bernie and Hillary.

What lessons from Bernie's campaign should the rest of us in the party learn? Well, I think one lesson particularly is that young people are increasingly independent. The millennial generation is about 45% of those of that generation identified as independent. So there is no party loyalty. They literally care about the issues and they care about what you're talking about. They want you to speak to them frankly. And I don't think that really broke through, especially into the general, when folks thought that these black millennials were just going to jump up and pull the lever for Hillary Clinton, and they didn't. And people kept telling them that they're not going to pull the lever for her for a very reason.

So I think the thing about young people I think being Frank I think people really liked Bernie because they felt like he was like their uncle like he was just really Frank about it he was he he didn't speak quote-unquote political speak and I think that's what the electorate kind of once they want you to give it to him plain and straight I think we can also learn though that when you don't go out to communities, when you don't put resources into communities, they will not show up for you, whether they kind of like what you're talking about or not. And I think that's a lesson that we learned from the Bernie campaign. And what do you think that you guys could have done better?

One of the ones, well, aside from like not putting any money into the March 1st thing and the South, which is like a bad thing that we did. Very bad. Joy's like, yes, very, very negative. I've talked about it. I also think this message that the economy, that the message about the economy was a message that did not speak to anybody except white people, I was personally upset with myself that we let that narrative get away, because jobs is an everybody issue. And so I think it's the way that you talk about it. But also, I think we learn to be able to pivot and talk about other issues.

Like everything for Bernie comes back to the economy. And everybody doesn't necessarily feel that way. And it's not necessarily the truth. But because the base of your message is we lived in a rigged economy kept in place by a system of corrupt campaign finance, and everything came back to that, that was problematic. And I don't think it broke through for a lot of communities well and also i think one of the lessons that i'm not sure if the sanders campaign learned it quite frankly you know in all candor um is that

yes millennials are the largest numerically the largest cohort now they're more millennials than baby boomers but it is let me speak for the aunties, the aunties vote. The church hat ladies vote. And the church hat ladies were not going to vote for Bernie Sanders. He was not speaking to them. And the Sanders cohort within the liberal coalition, because they're not all Democrats, right? The Democrats and progressives that are in that coalition, exhibited, if I may say, a kind of contempt for the anti-voter that really turned off the anti-voter. And the kind of contempt, for instance, for John Lewis, the living symbol of the civil rights movement,

and sort of attempting to substitute Bernie as a greater symbol of the civil rights movement than John Lewis. But that wasn't us. That was the Bernie bros. But the bottom line is... What, me? Is that the Sanders campaign was doomed because black people in the South, over 30 and over 40, that is who votes. And if you want to win South Carolina, you cannot spurn that voter, and you cannot spurn the Hillary Clinton voter.

And I think what that campaign hopefully learned is that it wasn't, in a sense, a single-issue campaign. You know, things like free college, education, et cetera, okay, that's fine, but when I talked to voters on the trail, they said, that's not realistic. Where's the message for me? So you can't have a cult of personality campaign that doesn't speak to the entire base of the Democratic Party. And so I'll ask you then about Hillary's campaign.

What did Hillary's campaign do right, and where do you think she could have done better, all outside factors, Russia, Comey, everything aside? You know, I think one of the, you know, a few of the mistakes that the Hillary Clinton campaign ran, and first of all, you know, Hillary Clinton, I think what they did right at the convention, and they only started at the convention, was to start to tell her personal story. I think they assumed people know everything about her, so they never really told you anything about her. So all you knew, and it was filled in by my profession, which isn't fond of her, and so

you only knew the baggage, the baggage, the baggage. They underestimated, I think, the extent to which the media would see the email issue as chum and never let it go, that once those emails were dropped, the media was never going to drop it, that everything Hillary Clinton did would be perceived as a scandal and dragged through the mud and would add to her narrative. I think they underestimated the extent to which her support was soft among Democrats who were voting for her because she was a Democrat and not necessarily because she was Hillary Clinton

because they didn't know enough about her and she wasn't attracting enough emotional sort of support. And so that whenever there was any doubt, it let people stay home. I think they overestimated the extent to which the data said she would win. You cannot run a campaign on data. And if the data says you're going to win and you're so overconfident that you're going to win, you make mistakes like going to Arizona instead of Michigan and Wisconsin. Because you think I'm going to run up the score on Trump.

I'm going to get all these Republican women. And I think the final mistake, two mistakes were demographic. One was presuming, to your point, Simone, that black voters, Hispanic voters, Asian American voters and young voters, because of Trump, would race out and vote for her the way they did Barack Obama, because she had Barack Obama's endorsement, rather than going out and working for that vote. And then the second one, which might have even been bigger, was assuming that Hillary Clinton would be so tempting to white women that they would vote for her even if they were Republicans naturally. That is not true. Most white women are Republicans, and most people vote for their party. It's tribal.

And she overestimated that she would have that vote because women like her would – and I'll be very quick about this, but I'll say that it's something that, you know, is very different for black people. And Simone may agree with me on this. You know, African Americans, we are brought up to be very overt and very intentional about intentionally pulling for one of our own. When Barack Obama seemed viable, we ran to Barack Obama. And there was no embarrassment about saying, yeah, I want a black president. Are you kidding me? He's qualified. We're not going to vote for any black president, but this guy can win. And we were intentional about saying, I want him because I can have a black president and he's qualified. I found on the campaign trail that white women, especially younger white women,

were very reticent to say, I want a woman. I want a woman just to have a woman. That's probably changed because of Trump. But at the time there was not this overt You know and they assumed that there was that there was. I remember that was covered fairly early on There was a story about mothers and daughters actually arguing over supporting Hillary. That was the primary Yeah, I mean there were younger. I spoke to a lot of younger people who were like look I think we'll have an opportunity to get another woman president in our lifetime. And there were lots of younger voters who felt as though Hillary Clinton was not their

only option. Like, if she didn't get it, we could get it again. There were also people that literally nowhere in anybody's brain did they think Donald Trump was going to be elected president. Like, it was so far-fetched, especially after the grab him by the, you know, tapes came out. I was like, oh, he is him by the, you know, tapes came out. I was like, oh, he is done. There is no way.

But it happened. And so I think in hindsight, like nowadays, there are folks that are saying, okay, I do understand. You know, anything is literally possible in Donald Trump's America. And perhaps we should just be a little bit more vigilant. But, you know, folks, I wanted to know where were the white ladies that have Hillary Clinton's back? Because if Hillary Clinton was a black woman running for president...

She'd have won. She would have won. Michelle Obama would have won. Look, we'd have been dragging folks out the grocery store to go get in line on election day and vote. Because that's how we roll. I'm just saying.

When Barack Obama ran, we had, and at that time I was out of journalism and was working on the campaign, and we had a 100-year-old woman, we actually had a 99-year-old woman who was turning 100 very soon, right? She was all over the news. And she was in the line in Broward County in a wheelchair. They let her go toward the front and people kept saying, ma'am, do you want us to take you inside?

Do you want us to move you into the shade? And she was like, nope, I'm going to sit right here until I can vote for that black man and have him be the first black president if I have to stay until my birthday. She was like, nothing could pull her out of the line. And that is just, there's something that people of color are just raised to feel that way because you're constantly beleaguered and under the gun because of your race and you live with your race, you wear it everywhere you go. And so that idea of voting in an intentional way

to advance somebody who looks like you, it's not even a second thought. Coming back to what you said about Michigan and Wisconsin versus Arizona, one of the things that has been hard to square with that is campaigned actively in Pennsylvania, returned to Michigan towards the end, forgot that Wisconsin was a state. In that order.

They had a takeout menu for a Chinese place and they put it on the Wisconsin thing and nobody forgot there was a state under there. It's a huge blunder. Great takeout, though. The great restaurant. That's why it was up there. It's huge blunder. Great takeout, though. The great restaurant. That's why I was up there. But anyway, same result in all three states.

So to me, I look at that, and I think there's an underlying structural problem. One of the things that I've returned to, and it's a lesson that I took, is Bernie Sanders comes out for a $15 minimum wage. The Democratic establishment takes that and puts it through a machine, and out pops a modified version that kind of gets you there slowly through states, et cetera. Bernie Sanders has a universal college

proposal. It goes through the democratic machine. And I'm not faulting the Hillary Clinton campaign for this. This is the democratic consensus of what should happen and out pops a more complicated version that's more responsible, sensibly because it's more affordable. Do you think that there's a lesson there around how we make policy as a party have have we been sort of having a debate with ourselves that results in a kind of 40 page white paper and say you know and uh do we need to be for lack of a better word more daring and a little bit less governing in our campaigns yes yes and because it goes back to what is the democratic party for like if you had to just say in a log line,

why was Hillary Clinton running for president? If you had to say, because she's qualified, brilliant, et cetera, but why was she running for president? What was she going to do, right? If you had to say in a log line why Barack Obama was running for president, he's going to bring us hope and change. Very simple, hope and change. Why was Donald Trump running for president?

The answer was provided by the best ad in the campaign. And Donald Trump didn't make the ad. It was a super PAC. And the ad was called Man of Steel. And I saw this ad in Ohio. It was the first time I got a little worried. Because this ad showed steel workers, and they showed like a chained up steel, you know, factories. And they said, our factories are closed.

Our jobs are gone. And then all of a sudden the factories started to turn on. The machines turned on. The sparks are flying. You start seeing all these workers. They're white. They're black. And they sort of turn on.

And it says, we can bring it back. We can bring it back. That's what Donald Trump was running for. Make America great again. Bring it back. Bring back that era that people are nostalgic for of when steel plants and factories were working. Democrats, to your point, were so white papered and so sort of eggheaded about the election that they didn't they forgot to say why they would be better for those Rust Belt states.

What is it that they're going to do? And it just you know, and you need to go there a lot and knock on a lot more doors than, you know, doing a concert. I love Beyonce, but that's not the only way to win. You need to have her be the ice cream on the cake, not the cake. Steve Bannon's floating a 44% tax on people making $5 million a year. That's never going to pass. I know, but I think to myself, yes, yes, a millionaire's tax. Let's just make that a platform. Let's go. And Al Gore got so beaten down for class warfare

and all the things they say about Democrats that we don't just go out and trumpet these policies. Well, Bernie's message, I remember seeing Bernie's announcement speech and that first line, I'm here to talk about a revolution in the economy. Political and economic revolution. Done.

That was it. And you're like, that's the campaign. That's the campaign. Now, some people will say the political revolution wasn't feasible, but this, we have to remember 2016 was a. Yeah. And you're like, that's the campaign? That's the campaign. Now, some people will say the political revolution wasn't feasible, but this, we have to remember, 2016 was a change election. I don't think folks understood it was a change election until it was too late. I did not. What makes you say that? I think it was a change election.

If you ask those folks, particularly the diehard Trump people saying they voted for Trump because change and racism. The Obama-Trump voters, please be clear, Donald Trump's populism was intrinsically tied to racism. But these Obama-Trump voters, people that literally pulled the lever for Obama at least twice, some of them twice, and then voted for Trump, said that they voted for Trump because change, because their lives hadn't changed. It was more of a change, right. It was like a change-back election, right? They wanted to change us back to the 1950s.

And, you know, the one thing I would disagree with on the political revolution, if that's your slogan, right, it was like a change back election, right? They wanted to change us back to the 1950s. And, you know, the one thing I would disagree with on the political revolution, if that's your slogan, okay, if that's your slogan, and I'm a 56-year-old Cuban-American in Miami, revolution? No, I'm serious. If I am an African-American 60-year-old woman in South Carolina, revolution? Really? I can't even get the right to vote. They're telling me I'm not on the voter rolls and I've been voting for 30 years. You're talking about revolution? What about my voting rights, right? It's not relevant, but it's a vague expression that sounds great to millennials and does not move the core Democratic voter, which is a 50 to 60-year-old woman of color. And that is not moving

them saying we're going to have a revolution and college is going to be free. These things sound wonderful, but they aren't realistic. Most Democrats are pragmatic voters. And so if you were to say, if you were to say, we're going to stop lying to the Rust Belt, we're going to stop lying to the coal worker and say to the coal worker, we're going to refire the plants. But what we are going to do is we're going to be America again. We're going to get back to the days when we invented industries, when we created industries, when we created entire fields that we've now ceded to Asia, to Japan, to China. We're going to invent the new industries that are going to put you to work. And if you do that message, then people get, I'm going to work.

That's a message that makes sense. I guess I'm saying it may have been a message or a slogan that was too narrow in the end, right? It might not have been for you, but you knew what it was, right? Just in terms of speech writing, right? I knew from that first line, this is what Bernie's about. With Hillary, you never got there. And it's funny that you said most Democratic voters are more pragmatic. That might be right. The problem is, as Lovett was pointing out, sometimes the pragmatism and the practicality gets us into slogans and white papers that aren't as big and bold.

They're a glass of warm milk. You know what? I think, so people always ask, what was Hillary Clinton's issue? I think there's a myriad of different reasons why she lost that we could debate about all day. But I think one of the things is every single, people say, oh, Hillary Clinton didn't have a platform. She had a platform.

She literally had a platform for everything. She had some great stuff. It was on the website, though. And every single time a camera came to a Hillary Clinton rally, when you got sound bites of her on MSNBC or CNN or even Fox, she was talking about Donald Trump. Every single time the large swath of the American electorate heard from her, she was talking about Donald Trump. Every single time the large swath of the American electorate heard from her, she was talking about Donald Trump. And so it made folks feel as though that, again, the Democrats as a whole,

they were just saying, oh, Trump and these Republicans are so bad. Vote for us because they're so bad. And we did not effectively communicate as to what we would do for them. So I think we have good policies and platforms that could be tweaked, but we just need to communicate them. Well, I think that's an important point, but I think it's, it's important to actually dig into what that means because Hillary Clinton would give a 30 minute speech, cover a ton of policy, have a Trump section because it was necessary in part, because it was the only thing that would be covered. And I'm not saying that to disagree

with you. I'm saying that that is one of the great challenges we face. Um, so thinking about how we do, I think the most important thing to take away from this conversation, for me anyway, is that it's less about trying to figure out where the blame goes and that there are lessons to be learned from Bernie,

there's lessons to be learned from Hillary. Trump's not going anywhere. How do we fight in this new climate, right? How do we break through with a clear, clean message? And I think that is the challenge.

Joy and Simone, thank you so much for joining us. I know you guys have to get to the panel. We will continue this conversation forever. Thank you. Absolutely. This was good know you guys have to get to the panel we'll continue this conversation forever thank you they didn't let Joy do the messaging for the party

thank you I'm I'm I'm I'm