The Bulwark Podcast - Roy Cooper and Noam Scheiber: We Gotta Rein Trump In

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

Elon is now pitching in to help POTUS sabotage Ukraine while Trump makes a payout to Putin and works on his next self-enrichment scheme. A Cooper victory in North Carolina would be key to a potential Democratic Senate majority—a first step to reining in Trump—but the former governor warns Tim that Republicans have historically been undercounted in the polls and his lead should not be taken for granted. Plus: Scheiber in his recent book has the backstory on the radicalization of recent college grads, who tend to support the DSA and think America has too much power. And at a time when even white collar professionals identify with the working class, Trump's economic messaging sounds even more ridiculous. Roy Cooper and New York Times reporter Noam Scheiber join Tim Miller.show notes: Cooper’s campaign site Noam’s book, “Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class” JVL on Trump screwing the housing market This week’s “The Next Level” Link to send to elected Democrats on behalf of Maryam Tahmasebi and her family The Jay Kang piece that Tim referenced about Noam’s book October Surprise: The Bulwark is 30% off Upcoming Bulwark LIVE show in Atlanta on Oct. 20 The Bulwark’s campaign to help the Haitian community of Springfield The Bulwark store NOBL gives you real travel peace of mind — security, design, and convenience all in one. Head toNOBLTravel.com for 46% off your entire order! #NOBL #ad

U.S. voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click request my ballot, ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote from abroad.org. Hey, everybody. We got a double header for you today. We're in North Carolina on Sunday, but wasn't able to get Roy Cooper out there. So I wanted to to have a chance to chat with him. Like crazy what's happening in his race. North Carolina, a Democrat hasn't won in 20 years, and nobody even talks about this Senate race

because he is so far ahead in the polls. So we talk a little bit about why he's doing that and some little modest concerns they have about the polling. So we'll get to that with Roy Cooper. We also have Noam Scheiber, who wrote a book earlier this year. I've been wanting to get him on, talk about what I think is pretty much the most important

trend that explains the rise of DSA, left economic populism, and simultaneously kind of magas hold on the right. And so we get a little wonky and talk about that. I think you should enjoy that as well. For, you know, lighter fare. If you miss the next level, go check out the next level podcast. And I go deep on J.D. Vance protecting his gay feelings onto James Tellerico. So we talked about that on T&L and also the first press conference from Katie Zachariah as press secretary for Trump. And I mean, it was so bad that we had a commenter from France who offered a comment on our analysis on this press conference and was like, I know that English is not my first language, but is it possible that English is not her

first language because I don't recognize this American accent. It was just like, you just haven't watched enough pageants. She does a, this is a traditional American blonde accent. Sorry, blondes. We love you. I love blondes. Husbands are blonde, but traditional American blonde accent just turned up to 11. And it was a disastrous performance for her yesterday.

So we'll have that on the next level. And tomorrow's show will give you a lot of candy. with some highlights from it as well. I have one news item and then another serious thing I want to talk about before we get to the interviews. I asked Roy, we pre-taped Roy on Tuesday afternoon and we do a lot of foreign policy talks about the Russia-Ukraine situation.

Since that interview, we have additional news about the total ratfuckery that Elon Musk is engaged in right now helping Putin and hurting Ukraine as it tries to defend itself from this horrific invasion as its biggest city descends into darkness as we see images of mother and child buried beneath the rubble. What is Elon Musk doing? He is creating Starlink restrictions to hamper Ukraine while Russia is doing this escalation. So troops are being blindsided drone men. missions have been disrupted and the Polish leader is attacking Musk over this. I discussed with Roy, like it seems like there's some threats being made also by Trump to Ukraine about not,

you know, not sharing intel, et cetera. You know, sorry, this is Russia, Russia, Russia. It was real from the start. A Russian oligarch was paying for Don Jr's wedding. And now you have Elon spending 300 plus million on the midterms trying to help Trump. And, um, They're simultaneously helping Russia in their war effort, and they see that as being politically beneficial because they've somehow convinced themselves that, like, you know, the diesel price is the fault of Ukraine, and Ukraine's effort to defend themselves. And, you know, we discussed this with Susan Rice yesterday, the degree to which that is, you know, stupidity or sinister kind of doesn't matter. It's probably both. You know, there's probably some element of them liking being able to help Putin and being on Putin's side. and there's also, I think, a stupid general belief that this is what is causing high diesel prices rather than the stupid war of choice in Iran.

It is just completely unconscionable what he lines up to. And I'm going to have much more on this on tomorrow's show, but just wanted to mention it since that was a development since the interview with Roy Cooper. I also want to talk about Miriam Thomas Sebi, her husband, Issa, and their son who have been in Dilley internment camp now for, 187 days because of something that one of their ancestors did. Nothing. They've done nothing. They're here legally. They have no even alleged immigration issues.

And we're holding them in a camp like it's Japanese internment again. I don't know. I've been pretty frustrated by the lack of focus on this, even from our friends in the Democratic Party and the lack of outrage about their family, but they're just represented. of a lot of people who are wrongly being interned right now in the various camps we have all over the country. So some friends of there started a website. It's called Free Profs Family, FreeP-R-O-F-S family.

FreeProFest Family.com. If you could do me a solid and send that website to your representatives, your senators, particularly if they're Democrats, really, and ask them to engage on this and speak out on it, that would be appreciated. We'll put the link to that in the show notes. It is fucking horrific. And it's fundamentally un-American. And if we believe in anything and if we're going to do anything here when it comes to the fight for liberal democracy,

it has to start with fighting for people who are being wrongly imprisoned for no reason for political purposes by an authoritarian state. And by Marco Rubia in particular. So there we are. Stick around for Roy Cooper at the end. I do my Royal Cooper impression. But up first, it's Noam Shiber. Welcome to The Bullwark Daily. I'm your host, Tim Miller.

He covers labor and workplace issues for The New York Times. His book, Mutiny, The Rise and Revolt of the College Educated Working Class was published earlier this year. It's Tulane grad, Nome Shiber, Roll Wave. What's up, man? Hey, good to be here. Thanks for having me. Thank you for doing it. The book is about one of kind of two countervailing political trends that you have been covering.

And you've been covering, I think, from an interesting angle looking at this from labor and workplace issues. Because I think the political trends are downstream of that. And that is these college-educated workers who feel like the promise of their education has not been fulfilled economically. And they're getting upset about it. And they're getting radicalized and going more left. And then simultaneously you have like working class white guys that feel like they have a ceiling on their aspirations. And they're getting radicalized and they're moving right. And so I kind of want to talk about both of those trends and how they intersect at the midterms here.

But before we do that, just kind of set the table for people. Does maybe explain the Reader's Digest version of Mutiny? Yeah. So my book is about the generation of people who graduated from college, beginning right after the Great Recession, really all the way through, you know, this past June. So kind of younger millennials and Gen Z folks. And this was a generation of folks that was really given the hardest cell of any general. generation in history about why they need to go to college. Everyone from the president, you know, Obama, Clinton saying college is no longer a luxury. It's essential to compete in the global

economy to, you know, their guidance counselors and principals and teachers. I love your anecdote. You had to know that KIP because my daughter went to KIP for one year for preschool and it was like they had a slogan, college starts in kindergarten. I mean, this really became a national obsession beginning in the early 90s. Yeah, Kip had, you know, all these Kipps had, you know, all though you couldn't miss it. You know, college begins in kindergarten. And so naturally these folks, you know, were completely preoccupied with going to college. They did more to prepare for college than any generation in history.

The number of people taking AP courses increases like 10fold between the 80s and the 2010s. So just huge increase in the number of people preparing for college. And then, you know, they obviously go to college. They take on huge amounts of debt. When they get out, the return to a college degree is suddenly stagnating. and then, you know, starting to go down if you factor in all the debt that they've had to take on. And so just a huge gap opens up between these folks' expectations of what awaited them on the other side of college and the reality that they encounter. And, yeah, as you say, that's a super radicalizing development.

These people get incredibly frustrated, and they start doing things that college grads don't normally do. They're picking fights with their employers. They're staging walkout, signing petitions. Some of them start unionizing going on strike. And then, you know, most relevant for this conversation, they start voting for, you know, far-left candidates for Democratic, socialist candidates. The number of college grads who say they support socialism basically doubles in the 2010s from, like, the low 20s to over 40%.

So just this huge shift that affects everything, as you say, from the workplace to the political realm. And, yeah, I think we're still sort of living in that world. Yeah. And the book follows, like, anytime you talk about these broad trends, like you're always kind of painting with a broad brush, I don't want anybody to kind of feel. offended, right? Because they're like specific examples of all these different things. The book follows, like, about a dozen employees. Some of them end up, like, having to work at Starbucks or be Apple, genius people, and some of them are at universities. And this is, you know, kind of the, you know,

kind of college, kind of doctorate crowd. You know, some of them who have, you know, kind of are stuck in jobs and like PR, Hollywood, et cetera, and not, you know, having the growth that they thought that they would. And so I guess my question is, you know, obviously in some of these cases, the economic hardship is more than others. Yep. And they're like certain categories of the people, these people get stereotyped, right? I mean, like this is going to be offensive to some of the DSA is listening. But some of these people are just kind of the updated Bobos. Like the David Brooks, like Bobos and Paradise book, you know, 10, 20 years earlier, which was, you know, kind of Bobos was bohemian bourgeoisie. It was like people that like were in upper middle

class, upper class environments, but didn't have that income. And like that created the status anxiety, you know, that they had. And it feels like this is like a little bit of an exasperated version of this where, like, sure, there's some that are like really struggling economically, but then there are others that just have this kind of like deep status anxiety that's leading to kind of resentments. And that has contributed to the radicalization. How do you kind of parse out those, you know, different categories of people? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think you're absolutely right. There are a few different types of folks that are that all kind of exist in what I broadly call the college educated working class.

So one is this group of people who went to college, they took on debt. And then, you know, they just couldn't get the job that they anticipated. So I follow a worker at an Apple store in Towson, Maryland, which was the first Apple store to unionize in the country. Her name is Kaya Barrett. She went to Towson University. She majored in communications. She worked at the Apple store while she was in college and then was applying. to like a whole bunch of companies for sort of communications,

kind of instructional design, training jobs, you know, to help train their employees. So she applied to like Facebook and, you know, industrial companies like Stanley Black and Decker sends out hundreds of applications, doesn't get any bites. So it just ends up taking her college job as a full-time job, you know, after she graduates. So I think in her case, you know, what we saw is just the real bite

of kind of some long-term economic forces. You know, I cite research in the book about how the labor market for college grads really starts to kind of slow down even before the Great Recession, sort of 2003, 4, or 5. And then nose dies after the Great Recession. And then we just never see it fully recover, at least for young grads, even 10 years after the Great Recession. So she graduated in 2018.

Job market is still not great. So there's a large cohort of people who are kind of caught up in these kind of shifting tectonic forces that are really lowering the return on a college degree, lowering employment prospects. But then, as you say, there's another group of folks who I think graduate and do okay by any conventional measure, but they're not doing as well as they thought they would. So this is kind of like less than a sort of objective economic reality than a kind of real gap between expectations. You know, they wanted to, you know, to be an architect and, you know, they took on a lot of

debt and worked really hard. And, you know, maybe they work in an architecture firm, but they're in like PR and communicate, you know, so it's a, it's a frustration that things are naming two of my friends right now. I'm not going to know about that. So I think, I think that is a piece of this too. And I think, you know, the third piece is a group of professional workers, white-collar workers, who I think did well, both economically are making a decent amount of money and, you know, kind of realize the ambition so far as it goes, but are just frustrated by the way those jobs have changed. So I put doctors in this category. You know, doctors, we haven't really seen wages for doctors take a big hit. You know, doctors still earn a pretty good living economically. But what we've seen is

just a huge change in the working conditions. You know, 30 years ago, doctors were they own their own business. They were these professionals whose opinion was deferred to. No one questioned their judgment. They treated patients how they saw fit. If you flash forward to the present, the medical profession has undergone this huge consolidation. Most doctors are now employees.

They work for these huge healthcare systems that are run by like MBAs that give them all kinds of like marching orders about how long you can spend with your patients, how long you can keep the patient in the hospital, the questions you have to ask them when you see them. And so doctors now feel like, like, you know, one of them literally told me, like, we feel like factory workers, you know, basically these employees just yank us around. So I think that's this third group, you know,

a group who kind of achieve what they set out to achieve. They still make a decent amount of money. But the way that their workplace and the economy has changed has completely alienated them. And so they now feel like workers, whereas a generation ago, they used to feel like, you know, owners or professionals. they did not feel like labor.

They felt, you know, like capital, basically, to put it in the Marxist terms. Yeah. So it's interesting. So we'll get to the other, like, the more traditional kind of union worker types and the way that they've changed. But like that, I think is like the conceit of the book, right? Which is right. These big professional class type people who are varying degrees of success are, you know, now motivated the way that, like, factory workers were in a different era. And, you know, I do think that there's like some eye rolling at this at times in the culture, right?

I mean, what drew me to the book, I admitted this in the green room, was Jay Caspian Kang's article about the book, which is the point of doing PR, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But he says his article, which I read this and was like, oh, man, this is so right. And it was titled Subaru Socialists and the Great Disappointed. And he kind of pegs it around, you kind of Zoran. And he writes this, like after every big election night for the leftist comes some eye-rolling complaint from centrist and the right.

Oh, great. Some gentrifiers who went to Sarah Lawrence or coastplaying social. and pretending they're working class. And to me, I kind of see both sides of that, right? Like, I see the side of why I understand the frustration of why this is happening. I also understand the eye rolling. Like this is not, you know, we're not in the gilded age, you know, like you're not in a factory. Like your fingers don't really hurt at the end of the day, right?

And so, like, how do you kind of tease out, you know, the degree to which this is legitimate versus the degree to which there's something about our cultural milieu that's creating So in like, not to bore readers, but in the political science literature about this, there is a kind of debate over whether this is economics, you know, this is kind of materialist forces or it's ideology, you know, something that is untethered to, you know, I mean, I personally think ideology is, is downstream of economics, so I think they're tied up. But in the way I think about it is, if you look at where the big shift left comes among college educated voters, so in the in the 80s, into the early 2000s, college-educated folks were generally to the right of non-college

folks on economic issues. You know, so the size of government, redistribution, regulation, college folks were to the right. You know, they were kind of right-a-center on economics, non-college folks. You know, the classic, I rolly, my people, you know, I'm conservative on fiscal, I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Exactly. That's exactly right.

Beginning in about 2004, there's a great paper by a Stanford political scientist named William Marble who gets at this with really granular data. in 2004, we start to see the college educated folks move a little bit left. And you know, you got to think that's like, that's an ideological thing. It's a reaction to George W. Bush and, you know, Iraq and things like that. But we see this huge lurch in 2008, right? And what happens in 2008, right? The bottom falls out of the global economy. You know, even at the, at the worst part of the global financial crisis, only about 10% of Americans were unemployed, which was very high, you know, by historical standards. But that means, you know, 90% of folks were not unemployed. So the way I think about it is,

The people who were directly impacted or directly feared for their job, you know, so 10% unemployment, you know, probably another 10 to 20% folks were really worried, you know, maybe their companies were downsizing. They didn't, weren't personally affected, but they were really worried about it. I would say those folks are the folks who are materially impacted, by the way, you know, they are worried about economic conditions and they think this system is screwed up and is going to potentially cost them their job. That is economics. That is me worried about where my next paycheck is going to come from. But I think that the way that the financial crisis played out has kind of adjacent ideological effect, which is maybe I'm doing fine. I'm still earning my paycheck. But man,

like this whole system of institutions, you know, Wall Street and the banks and the government, like it's just looking pretty rickety to me and I'm not sure I can trust it anymore. And so I think at the same time as you had the people who are sort of directly or kind of indirectly impacted by the financial crisis, you have a whole other, you know, massive swath of college educated folks who are just like losing faith in the system. And I think that's the kind of ideological shift that's happening at that point. And those two things are happening at the same time because, you know, the financial crisis is kind of impetus for both of them, but for like slightly different reasons. Everything you just laid out from that period, from the economic crisis and then up through COVID,

like makes a lot of sense to me about how, you know, some of these political shifts in this kind of college educated class to the economic left, like, is rational. And don't. stream of economics. Then, like, Biden gets in and is, like, really responsive to this group's concerns in particular. You know, you have the student loan bailout. You have, you know, Lena Kahn, and, you know, the ability to unionize, right? Like, in these different types of workplaces expands. And so, like, you would think if this was just about kind of, like, economics and policy, you would think that then the response would be, okay, like, what, are part, this party is being responsive to my concerns.

Yeah, take the way, right? Yeah, and instead you get the opposite, right? Like, more anger at the Democratic establishment than ever right now. And do you have a quasi, not really, like a little bit of a Tea Party left wave after Biden leaves? Yeah. How do you square that? Yeah, it's a great question. And this is where I'd kind of lean heavier on the ideological component.

And the way I think about sort of the ideological arc of this generation is something that I sort broadly refer to as underdogism. And so I think if you're, you know, a baby boomer or even a Gen Xer, I'm 50s. I'm a kind of younger Gen Xer. You grew up in a world where, you know, maybe the U.S. wasn't the underdog, but we faced like real adversaries. And we could tell a story about like this righteous fight that we're engaged in, right? You know, certainly World War II, fighting fascism. And then, you know, during the Cold War, we're fighting communism. And you could feel good that, you know, maybe your country was flawed. Obviously, you know, things went off the rails in Vietnam. But basically, like, we are fighting a righteous fight against these kind of existentially

dangerous adversaries. Well, what happens in the 90s, right? Our adversaries go away. And so these folks are born in the 90s. The adversaries are gone. The U.S. is now the unrivaled power in the world. And it looks like, instead of these external threats, like, what is the biggest danger to the world? It's us, right? Like, we have Iraq, right? We invade Iraq. And, It's a huge fiasco. 9-11 does happen during this period. Sure, no, no, right. I hear you.

I mean, I'm airbrushing the narrative. But yes, clearly 9-11 is an impetus, but, you know, if you're born in the 90s, you know, you're a teenager, you know, or late 80s, early 90s, you're kind of in middle school right around the time of the Iraq War. Then you have the global financial crisis, right? You have huge inequality. So suddenly it's like, you know, for the previous generations that were, you know, the U.S. was like this kind of righteous actor.

We're now the unrivaled super power, and we're doing all this stuff that's like messing up the world. You know, we're screwing up Iraq in the Middle East. We're screwing up the global financial system. We have all this inequality in the U.S. We have all these corporate fat cats who are unaccountable. Our police are like roughing up, you know, black and brown people. Like suddenly like U.S. institutions start to look deeply suspect. U.S. power looks deeply suspect, right?

And these folks who've only known like the U.S. as like the top dog in the world start, you know, start wondering like what is the deal? Like maybe we're like we're the danger to the world. And so I think that kind of ideology of like underdogism, deep skepticism of American power of American institutions really fuels the ideological component of this. And just to add one more layer because I think people often struggle to wonder like where Israel fits into this, right? Israel is the ultimate example of kind of a country that goes. goes from underdog to overdog, right? You know, if you're Gen X or a boomer, Israel, in your mind, is this underdog, right? Surrounded by hostile powers, trying to expunge, you know, the country. But if you're born in the early 90s, right, and you're coming of age in the 2010s, all you know is Israel is like the hegemon in the Middle East.

And you know that despite it being the hegemon, the U.S. sends it billions of dollars at AIDS, gives us all this military weaponry. So it's like this kind of overdog story, gets repeated in a whole variety of ways that really informs this generation. So you see, as you say, Biden in many ways is doing everything that this group of voters wants, right?

But, you know, Gaza just brings all these contradictions to the four. And you wonder, like, you know, in my book, I write about how, you know, how these Starbucks workers who are unionizing and they're engaged in this kind of like trench warfare with the company, they unionize hundreds and hundreds of stores, but they can't reach the contract.

And at a certain point, October 7th happens, and they all rally around, you know, Palestine and the Palestinian cause. And you're like, what on earth does Palestine have to do with a contract for baristas? But it actually does fit neatly into the story. Were these underdogs, we're taking on this like terrible, you know, in their minds, you know, hugely powerful corporate actor. And look, Palestinians are taking on this hegemon, you know, we're all sort of united in our fight against these kind of overdogs, these hegemons. And that's kind of the sort of unified theory that starts to take shape.

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you guys are to be really shocked to hear this. Expenses just are not, don't happen for me. I mean, like the amount of money that I feel like I'm a working class professional, like Nome Shiber talks about whenever expense time comes around, because I just give money to the boss, have my whole life. I don't like doing it. I lose the receipts. Makes me annoyed to do it.

I don't turn in my expenses. So I'm like costing myself money. because out of laziness. And that's bad. Like, I shouldn't do that. But some bosses kind of count on that, right? Like,

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Time is money. Save both with RAMP. New customers get $250 off at ramp.com slash bulwark. Go to ramp.com slash bulwark. Every podcaster is a little bit of a narcissist. So I feel like we all have a good ear for narcissism. And I just I do think that there's a like a little bit of that. underdog story where there are these, you know, folks that are like, again, like pretty deeply focused on their own like concerns, whether it be their own material or status concerns,

but also like the concerns of their cohort, which some of them are well meaning, like obviously, Gaza, climate, et cetera, but like dismissive of the concerns of other underdogs. And like this takes us to where like these things intersect. And you do hear a lot from kind of the populist left, like this idea that like we want to have a kind of a unifying class battle against the establishment. But like the problem is it feels like a lot of times they're pretty dismissive of the concerns that the working class, like the more old school working class, which I guess we sometimes shorthand as white working class. But there are a lot of, I mean, there are plenty of black and brown factory workers. So like the more traditional, what's called the industrial working class. Industrial working class. There you go.

And like they're dismissive of their cultural concerns. or status concerns, their views that they're being talked down to, religious, you know, gap, you know, between religiosity and churchgoing. And I don't know. I just wonder, as you kind of have covered both of these trends, it feels like there's more lip service being paid to the class unity than there is actual empathy towards the concerns of the voters that have put Trump in the White House. Yeah, I guess I would say two things. I mean, one is that I think we are seeing a real convergence on economics. So if you just look at economic issues, this paper I cited earlier, you really do see this convergence. You know, the college educated folks and the non-college folks by 2016 are kind of like right in the same spot.

And in fact, actually, the college grads end up even moving further to the left of the non-college folks. But basically, you know, you had the college folks to the, you know, well to the right on economics on these, you know, taxes, redistribution, government. regulation in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s. And then they really do converge on economics. And the, you know, the moment that this becomes clear to me is in 2023, you had all these strikes, you know, you have Hollywood strikes. You had the UAW going on strike for six weeks, something like that. And Gallup did a really interesting set of polls where they asked folks, you know, do you side with the striking workers or do you side with the companies? And if you looked at, say, support for UAW, striking UAW workers, it was about 70 percent of Americans support,

supported the workers over the companies. And if you just broke it out by college-educated folks, they were even higher. You know, they were like 75% support for the workers. So on economics, you have this real convergence. On sort of social issues, on rhetoric, on, you know, a whole variety of cultural issues, foreign policy, I think you're absolutely right.

I mean, you see this real convergence on economics, but a real distance on a whole variety of cultural issues. Like I often would join some of the workers that I write about in the book at Starbucks and Apple were very generous and letting me sit in on on calls, you know, bargaining sessions, organizing meetings, things like that. And on economics, you know, any factory worker at a Ford or GM plant would have been 100% comfortable with where these people are coming from. But there was definitely a language around a whole variety of identity issues that would, you know, that just no question would be alienating. And I think they really struggled to sort of modulate that

because, you know, I guess sometimes you get the impression that they like the idea of this coalition of the sort of college-educated working class and the industrial working class. They like that in theory, you know, but the sort of lived reality of the interactions is a little tricky. There are kind of two case studies where I write about this coalition kind of falling apart. One is at Amazon, where you had, you know, a mix of kind of college-educated workers and more traditionally working-class folks at Amazon. They came together for the sake of winning this election at an Amazon warehouse.

Stett Island was the first unionized facility in the country. But then it just descends into kind of recrimination and the non-college folks would refer to them as like Ivy Leaguers, you know, even if they'd gone to like a random state school. AOC gets wrapped up into this. Exactly. Yeah. So the Amazon thing kind of unravels along those grounds. And then at the UAW, too, you have this sort of coalition of grad students, which the UAAW represents now tens of thousands of grad students and traditional factory workers. They came together to elect this, you know, reformist, militant, leader named Sean Fane, who then leads the strike. But then after that strike, that coalition kind of unravels too. And you just start to get, you know, a whole bunch of recriminations and

rivalries between the college folks and the non-college folks. So you do see how, even though the, you know, you see the sort of basis for the coalition, but you also see how fragile it is and how quickly it can kind of unravel. Like another example, I'm going to get to some positive parts about this coalition in the midterms in a second. But we're going to, we're going to go through all of my concerns first. So, you know, stick around if you're starting to get depressed about the trajectory here. But, like, the projecting out to like an agenda for another Democratic president, right? Like, another way you see that, like, people will say, well, like, there is unity on economic populism. And there is, like, on certain things, right?

Like, you know, income inequality, you know, the tech for the billionaire class, still to do that. Like, you know, broader support for unionization, as you said. But then, like, on priorities, like, this is something that by. and fell into, right? Like, if you are a, you know, in the people you write about in your book, college educated working class, you're for like student loan forgiveness stuff because that addresses what you're doing. If you didn't go to college, that does nothing for you, right? And if you didn't go to college and you're more in the industrial working class, you know, whatever, cutting red tape to build more factories is important to you so you can have higher paying jobs.

And that is going to come in conflict at some point with some of the kind of left green concerns or maybe left ideological hostility towards the AI build-out, you know, that means limiting kind of the expansion of jobs. So like, how do you see kind of like that, even in the just pure economic side of things, like that tension playing out? Yeah. I mean, I say there's probably a little more overlap than, you know, than the common narrative, you know, so the Biden education, loan forgiveness, for example, you know, I think the administration argued with some justification that the people in the worst of all worlds were the people who'd gone to college for a year two, didn't get that degree, but still have that debt, you know, and a lot of those people are

sort of traditional working class, you know, you went to your state school or even community college. You ran up $10,000, $20,000 in debt. Now you work at an Amazon fulfillment center. You never got that degree, so you don't get the benefit if I had gone to college, but you still have that $20,000 in debt, you know, so I do think there's a little more overlap. But on your broader point, it's a totally fair point. I think there are clear sort of, you know, tensions in the coalition, I think that, you know, you probably see that most in, actually you mentioned green energy. And I think, you know, if you kind of dug a little bit around the green energy debate in the Biden administration, you really did see this tension because the people who are most concerned about climate

change are saying, like, why are we like slowing this down and putting all these union requirements on this stuff? Like, why don't we just buy a bunch of solar panels from China? Because they produce that stuff way more cheaply. And if we're really concerned about climate change, like that would be the fastest, cheapest, most efficient way to do that. Whereas the Biden folks were like, no, we've both got to do the green energy, but we've got to make it a source of jobs. I think to critics, that was just like incoherent, right? Like either you care about jobs and you want to do industrial policy or you care about climate change, but like pick what your priority is, right? And the Biden folks, you know, I understand the political logic, we're really concerned

that this not be seen as this kind of upscale, you know, kind of lefty green initiative. They wanted to, it wanted politically for it to be. seen as a jobs program too. But that, you know, that makes it less efficient. It slows it down. All kinds. So you really saw that tension between the two groups and the circle of the Biden folks were trying to square in the implement, you know, in the conceit and implementation

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After you purchased, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. One of the things you wrote lately is, or recently was about concealing for attainment for people coming out of the traditional working class, non-college. People, folks didn't go to college, which like maybe wasn't true in past generations. And that extends also to the. politics debate. And like there's something,

this is not to take away, like, I think that there are earnest people on both sides of this who like care deeply about working class people's concerns. Like, you do end up kind of

in this kind of weird, performative political world where you have the Ivy League working class that you're talking about, kind of a college educated professional working class, like competing with old school capital tech guys and like the car dealer

owners on the right. Yeah. Like for the support. of the people that are like actually the traditional kind of working class, right? And so they end up, you know, I think as we project out to the next decade, like that group, like the old school teamsters union types, like are going to become like basically the swing voters. You know, like in the past like the swing voters is like my people at suburban, whatever security moms or whatever soccer mom.

That's not it anymore. So you have these two kind of professional. classes like competing over the working class. Maybe that gives them power. I don't know. How do you kind of see that playing out? Yeah. I think that, you know,

the class is like fascinating and fraught in all the ways that you said. I mean, I think, you know, the traditional, as I thought about class and who gets to, you know, claim that they're working class, this bubbled up obviously like in Grand Platner's campaign in Maine, right? And that was the sort of peg for my writing about it was, you know, this guy, his father is an Ivy League trained lawyer. his grandfather was a famous architect.

He went to sort of private schools. But then, you know, ended up sort of downwardly mobile, right? As this Western farmer, he served in the military as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, yeah, I mean, the way I see it at a broad level is the left kind of thinks of class as what you are now, right? Like your relationship to capital now. So you may come from a really privileged background. your parents may have gone to Ivy League schools, you may have gone to college,

but if you're just like driving Uber and delivering for Amazon Flex or whatever, you're working class. And the right tends to see class as like inherited, you know, so it's why you can have like a card dealer, you know, who makes $10 or $20 million a year owning like a chain of 12 car dealerships across the Midwest.

But if that person grew up working class, they think that they get to claim that they're working class. So you have this sort of two clashes of visions. You know, the left, it's like what you are now in your immediate circumstances and your relationship to work and capital. And the right, it's like,

what did your parents do and how did you grow up? And I think, you know, where that hits the road, where that rubber hits the road politically, is very much in that, like, whose kind of story about class feels like realer in any given moment, you know? And there are times when the right story feels realer because, you know, we get into these kind of cultural conversations

these conversations about, you know, vocabulary and, you know, gender and identity. And everyone who sort of grew up a certain way is like, wow, this is like totally alien to me. And then we get into other moments when, like, you know, as in the last year or two, when like affordability looms incredibly large and inflation is hitting people and they feel like they can't keep up, when it's like your current circumstances, like just that feels like what defines class and privilege. And so in a way, to me, it's like the kind of swing voter is defined by the narrative that one or the other side succeeds at putting at the center of the election. And obviously that's, you know, that's dictated by external circumstances and in this kind of affordability moment. Well, that takes us to the happy part of the midterms, which is that obviously the left story is winning now. And I think that, you know, if you look at kind of where the Democrats seem likely to gain. this year, it is going to be clawing back some of the white working class voters in the

industrial Midwest. It's going to be clawing back Hispanic working class voters, a lot of places, and calling back some of the younger voters that I think were caught up in this economic anxiety that you're writing about, and particularly the men, you know, maybe, hopefully, we're just very briefly enamored with, you know, the story that Trump was offering. in part because their like experience was about the tough economy during Biden years. Like, is that too simple for you? Or is that kind of what you see basically happening right now? Yeah.

No, I see that happening. I mean, again, to go back to the kind of political science analysis of this, I think, you know, you have this thing that doesn't make sense right over the past 15 years. If college educated Democrats are moving to the left on economics, and we have now this huge majority of folks, you know, from college educated to non-college folks, all of whom have more populist economic preferences, right? How is the right winning? I mean, you know, it's a little more complicated that.

I mean, Trump, to his credit, recognizes this, and he breaks with Republicans over traditional economic issues on trade, on globalization, manufacturing, things like that. So Trump recognizes this. You know, he's a very savvy political actor, obviously. But I think the biggest reason, you know, you would say that Republicans succeeded in this period where the whole country was missing left on economics,

is by making elections about non-economic issues, about culture, about grievance, things like that. Well, I guess I just want to pivot on that for a second. I think that Trump also, we talked about this a little bit yesterday, Jackie Rose, so about the Hispanic vote. It was a lie, right? But Trump told an aspirational economic story to working people, and like despite the fact that he was a Nepo baby rich kid, like, because of his, like, sort of, like, middle class, if you're middle brow, you know, kind of cultural status, right?

I think he was able to kind of tell a little bit of economically aspirational story why you had a lot of the people in the Democratic leadership that, like, didn't have, like, that coherent of an economic narrative at all, actually. Like, you know, and people might have been moving more to the left, and you see them this appeal of Bernie, et cetera. But I don't know. I, and Jay writes about this in the article about your book. It's like, what would, like, Kamala Harris's, like, messages about opportunity, economy.

me. And it was a lot of, all three of them really had, the last three nominees had a lot of a little bit of a mushy, like economic message maybe. Is that okay? Is that no? You think it's all culture? No, no, I think that's fair. I mean, I think there's an element of that. I mean, I'd say two other things to me that mattered. One is just a huge focus on the right, often successfully on identity, you know, and you just can't, you know, whether it's black brown or, you know, gay lesbian, And trans, you know, just the elevation of identity during this period, I think is hugely successful for the right. And the other thing is, yes, there is an economic message. And it's a kind of aspirational story that Trump is telling.

I think that is very appealing for some. But it's tied up in him as this kind of pop cultural figure, too, this kind of celebrity thing, which, you know, again, has economic resonance, but also has a kind of cultural resonance, too. You know, so yeah, it's a little tricky, but I think you're right. I think there's an element of that. But, you know, suffice to say, we're now in this moment where, you know, the price of gas and home heating oil and, you know, your rent and interest rates, right, is now just focusing the mind like never before. And I do think that is kind of uniting this coalition that you just talked of, you know, young people, non-college sort of traditional industrial working class and the college educated working class that I write about. And that's just like a very potent coalition, obviously, because if you're in a world where. where, you know, two-thirds

to three-quarters of the country thinks of themselves as working class and is pretty left, you know, on economic issues. And that's what the election is about. Do the math, right? It's a pretty favorable environment. Yeah, and it's also related to this. I think JVL read about this in his newsletter yesterday,

and I'd recommend people go read that. Just about people, there's a real sense of feeling stuck right now. And if you feel stuck, then, you know, like the Trump, like, message starts to sound ridiculous to people. You know what I mean? Like, people that are not, like, fully on board with the cultural side of Trumpism.

You know, he was focusing particularly on the housing side. And I guess we haven't really talked about that. But so maybe talk about this as it relates to your book as well, which is he's like, we're in this weird moment right now. Like, Trump has managed to create an economy where it's bad for buyers and sellers. Like, people feel stuck, like your housing value is going down. But if you want to do downsize,

the cost of your new mortgage would go up because of the interest rate. Right, right, right, right. Anyway, talk about the degree to which housing overlaps on all this. Yeah, no, I think housing is a huge issue. And just to go back to the kind of the big theme of my book is this sort of story that young folks were sold, right? It's like, go to college. That's your ticket to the upper middle class, right? And what is like the signature upper middle class investment? It's a house, right? And yet that generation of folks, the people who, you know, kind of start graduating in the early 2010s, you know, you know, and continue over the last 15 years, housing has never been more unattainable to any generation of Americans, you know, since we started doing, you know, the kind of modern mortgage market than it is today. I mean, the National Association of Realtors puts out, you know, data every, I can't remember it's every month or every quarter, but basically age of first home

ownership. And, you know, by the early 2020s, that had hit about 40, which was just like way higher than it had been, you know, a generation earlier. So it's, it's both kind of, kind of, economically, substantively important in that, like, this is a huge part of most people's financial portfolio, but also symbolically, arguably, even more important because there's nothing, like, more closely associated with the upper middle class lifestyle that your college degree was supposed to get you than a house. Okay. Well, Crystal Bald is for us. You spent a lot of time with the radicalized professional working class. Are we headed towards France, you know, like mass protests among this class,

maybe even like little spouts of violence, or is there a path towards, you know, rebalancing things? Yeah. I mean, look, I think what we saw... I see France, just to say, you see. I see France. Funny. Yeah, look, I think what we saw in the Democratic primaries, this election cycle, was a warm-up for 2020. I mean, you have this pretty radicalized, college-educated demographic, and you have a sense.

I think you will have a sense, you know, unless things go very badly for Democrats in the midterms, that actually either, you know, you do better nominating these, you know, left populist candidates, or at least you don't do worse, right? So you can kind of vote your conscience and your ideology and not give up on your electoral process. So, you know, if Democrats end up taking the Senate, if they win some of these seats like Abdul al-Sayed in Michigan, I think you're going to have like a very strong argument by folks in the DSA, in the kind of DSA adjacent left, you know, certainly Bernie AOC, that like, look, we've been telling you this for years. This is a political winner. And, you know what,

substantively, way better because we need to shake up this kind of neoliberal oligarchy that's been running the country for decades. So, yeah, I expect this year's, you know, sometimes divisive primaries, you know, particularly in Michigan, I suspect that we're going to see that play out on like a much bigger scale in the run up to 2028. Obviously, it'll depend on who exactly runs. I mean, I think AOC, as much as she's sort of caricatured as like a kind of unapologetic left figure is actually, you know, somewhat pragmatic and kind of gets where the fault lines are and gets where the areas of overlap are. So I think she's actually reasonably pragmatic, but, you know, you could get any number of folks. I mean, you know, wouldn't be crazy to imagine.

We might end up in a 2012 situation, too, especially if AOC doesn't run. I mean, that's my last time as a Republican, but you think back at that and it was like, well, the seeds of Trumpism, you know, had already been planted in. the stuff we've been talking about between Iraq and the financial crisis, but just like there was no good vessel for it, you know? And so you end up kind of like ending, you end up with sort of Mitt Romney by default. And I, and I do think, it's hard to see another good vessel besides AOC. I guess maybe Abdul is running immediately, but there are a lot of issues with that. Yeah, you can imagine someone turning around. This might end up being something that has dealt with in 2032 or but the robot

war could happen before that. So, you know, it's hard to know exactly. Exactly. Or, you know, you can imagine someone like an Asa figure. who kind of like understands the populist energy and kind of plays to it on some level, but is still, you know, a pretty mainstream candidate. But that's a minute. That's a minute. I mean, Mitt ran on self-deportation. Exactly.

That's right. That's right. Sorry, John. I don't mean to, you know, compare you to Mitt's, but maybe Mitt with a little bit more panache, you know. Exactly. A little more sexy. Yeah, exactly.

It's pretty sexy. Yeah. Well, I mean, I would, if I look like Mitt at his age, I mean, I'll, I'll be my one wish for a genie. If a genie can't debate this afternoon. All right, no, anything else I didn't ask you about? Any hot takes you've got, even waiting to get off your chest? No, I think, I mean, look, I'd say the only thing just per the last point that we were discussing is

Mamdani is a kind of power broker, you know, obviously he can't run for president. You have to be born in the U.S., but, you know, I think he kind of flexed his muscles as a power broker within the party. Just, you know, you saw in New York, he came out and backed some of these DSA and DSA-adjacentists. They won. You know, I expect him, you know, to be a, you know, a player in this 2028, 2032 conversation, even, you know, again, if he won't be the candidate himself, but I think he'll be pretty influential.

It's Noam Shriver. The book is Mutiny, the rise and revolt of the college-educated working class. There's going to be a lot more on this beat to come, I suspect. So we'll keep in touch. All right, brother? Yeah, I look forward to it. Really, really enjoyed it. Thanks, it's time. U.S. voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to vote fromabroad.org and click request my ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote

from abroad.org. All right. He is the Democratic nominee for Senate in North Carolina. He was the governor there for two terms and also the state's longest serving attorney general. It's Roy Cooper. welcome to the show. Glad to be with you, Tim. Good to see you, sir. All right, we got a bunch of politics to talk about, but I'm going to do a little bit of news. You know, the thing I'm most interested in what your views are on, kind of headed to the Senate, if you win here in a couple of weeks, obviously his foreign policy stuff, which he didn't deal with as much, you know, as Attorney General and Governor there in North Carolina. Over the weekend, Trump announced that he was doing this diesel deal with Russia. It's to buy Russian diesel. It's also some reports that he's

pressure on Ukraine to stop their attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia and threatening even to not share intelligence anymore with Ukraine if they don't stop that. What is you going to make of that deal and the way he's handling the conflict right now? Well, it's frustrating. We need to know who our allies are and who our enemies are. And instead of this payout to Putin, what he ought to be doing is removing these chaotic tariffs that are costing people, finding a way to end this war in Iran that's costing American lives, and at the same time, driving up the cost of diesel and gas here at home. It's frustrating

to me that this is the kind of response that he would have to people not having enough month at the end of their money and struggling with paying bills. This is his response instead of things that we know that he can do that most of the country, I think, would agree with that he could have a real effect. And to put Ukraine in this position and to give the power to Russia is just the wrong way to go. I think he's getting some bipartisan pushback on that, which is we need a lot more pushback from our Republican friends on this. president clearly when it comes to decisions like this. Yeah, to that bipartisan pushback, and they had just passed this Lindsey Graham sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, what, like not even a month ago now, and that would have authorized the president to levy tariffs and sanctions on buyers of

Russian oil and gas. And now, here we are just a couple weeks later, and we're buying it. He wants to buy it and do the deal, which seems to be a total, you know, affront to that legislation that was passed by Congress and signed. I mean, like on the one hand, it seems illegal, it seems bad strategy, but also is pretty discouraging for somebody like you that wants to go to the Senate and, I guess, do bipartisan stuff. It doesn't seem like Donald Trump is going to be responsive to what the Congress does. It's turning the idea on his head, but I'm just not sure that he's ever been all in on understanding that Russia is an enemy and that we need to treat Russia as such.

I think that's the biggest problem as to the fact that we did or this legislation was passed. It's clear that we need to put pressure on them. And this not only relieves that pressure, but gives them more money to drop more bombs on Ukraine. It's just very frustrating. I do believe that one of the things that we can do if we are able to take back the Senate and the House is to bring back those checks and balances that the framers of the Constitution intended, because there has just not been a pushback from the legislative branch of government. The executive has run roughshot, and you've taken back the constitutional authority on declaration.

on Declaration of War, on trade and tariffs, on budgetary matters. And I think that that's what these midterms gives the people an opportunity to do, is to restore those checks and balances. And I think that there will be, particularly in January, if I'm fortunate enough to be elected by the people of North Carolina, and especially if we have a majority, which I think there's a chance that that can happen, that we will have some Republicans, maybe who have just been reelected, recognizing that this is the last two years of this president's term, they may be with us on taking that authority back to the legislative branch of government. I've often found in North Carolina that things are more lasting when you do them of a bipartisan way. And although

I'm a Washington outsider, my observance of what's happened in Washington is that things that are done in a bipartisan way last longer than those things that are done on a strictly partisan basis. So I'll get there and work as hard as I can to make sure we can find some bipartisan cooperation, particularly in pushback against this president right now. And I guess that leads us to kind of this question of how you see prioritization, you know, of what, you know, the kind of you know, those obligations are as far as checks and balances. And I think it might be one thing in 27 and another thing in 2029, you know, but if you have a president that doesn't seem to give a shit about what the Congress is doing, and like it seems to me that there's a big first step,

which is, you know, trying to, you know, kind of rein them in and hold the executive branch accountable as much as possible. And like that seems to me like that's going to be the big priority for 2027, you know, versus like trying to work with, you know, the two normal Republicans on the center and stuff. But tell me what do you make of that? Well, look, I don't disagree with that other than I think the first priority of business is responding to the people and what we're hearing from them. We're hearing that their utility bill is too high. They can't afford groceries. They can't afford gas.

So I think the first thing we need to do is to perform. We need to pass legislation that restores funding for health care subsidies that provides for child tax credit that tries to end this war in Iran and rolls back the tariffs and addressing the cost of living issue that they believed that this administration, who's there now, promised that they would do. not only have they not done it, this president and the administration has not made things less expensive, they've made it so much worse. So I think the first thing we need to do is to try and put that kind of legislation on his desk. Who knows what he'll do? The housing bill that they passed in a bipartisan way, he just didn't even sign, but it became law. So who knows what he might do if we pass these things that we know are going to be good for the people. And yes, I'm going to be first in line to try to find a way to overturn citizens united and extreme partisan gerrymandering.

And there's going to have to be some reforms, particularly anti-corruption, very prescriptive anti-corruption legislation that we need to pass and put on his desk. Like should the president be able to have a crypto coin, for example? Yeah, I mean, you shouldn't be elected to office in order to make a buck, and there are too many there now who believe that that's part of the program. And we need to elect people who know right from wrong. Look, when I ran for governor, I sold all of my individual stocks. I put my money in widely held index fund, mutual funds. I'm doing that now.

I will do that if I'm elected to the United States Senate. regardless of what the law says, I'm not going to be a lobbyist when I leave the U.S. Senate. What are you going to do? I don't know what I'm going to do. But what I'm going to do right now is going to the United States Senate. But I just don't think that we need people in office who are going to try to take advantage of that office for self-enrichment. And I think we need to elect people who are determined to write laws to prevent that kind of thing, but who will do it regardless of what the law says.

You got a lot of people who say, well, I'll sell my stock if the law changes, and I'm for a change in the law, and then they arrange it so that they can vote for it one time, and then they can say they voted for it, and it never happened. We've got to change all of that, and it needs to apply to the executive branch as well. U.S. voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots, to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to vote fromabroad.org and click request my ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions?

Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote fromabroad.org. One thing I think it'll be interesting to watch as you try to navigate all this stuff, whether that be, you know, I don't know, rolling backs in the tariff. is something, for example, you could imagine getting some Republicans on board for. A lot of those guys used to be against tariffs until two minutes ago. But on the other hand, it's been kind of hard to get people to step. Your current senator, outgoing senator, Tom Tillis, there in North Carolina, he's got a new book out right now called How to Lose Friends and Tagonize Presidents.

I think it's kind of an interesting title because I don't know. Has he been antagonizing the president enough from your vantage point? Well, I think it's part of why Washington is broken is because we haven't had Republican leaders willing to stand up to the president when he's wrong. It's just like my opponent, Michael Watley, he's going to do and say whatever the president tells him to do and say, regardless of whether it's good for the people of North Carolina. and we have needed people who would be willing to step up. And that just hasn't happened. Yeah, I guess I just wonder, like, you know, don't you get a little bit nervous that and Tillis will be gone, but there'll be other guys like him that maybe, I don't know,

behind the scenes would agree with you on tariffs, but aren't going to go along with you all. And, you know, that's going to then create some tough questions about the filibuster and kind of about how you go about it. Right. Well, look, I was planning to run for this seat even before Senator Tillis announced that he was retiring. And in fact, that was a shocking thing for me to find out that I wasn't going to be running against him because I just believed that Washington was broken. I was tired of seeing two or three things happening. It seemed like almost every single day that reached. a new level of chaos and horror, any one of which we could talk about for hours. And that's how you're able to have a podcast, because we can talk about these issues for hours. And it was scattered. I would love to have a smaller audience and have the Harris administration. Yeah, we could do a book day, you know, some days. We could talk about, you know, we could talk about

the WMBA finals, whatever, you know, we can talk about Belichick. Well, I just think, let's don't talk about that. I just think, I just think that there are going to, you know, we can talk about. to be after these elections, I think there are going to be some Republicans who are going to want to work with us. And I think it's going to be important for us to work with them as much as we can because we can't just kick and scream and yell about things and continue to be rebuffed by this executive branch. I think we're going to have to be tough and we're going to have to hold people accountable who need to be held accountable. But, you know, we've got three weeks in order to get this majority. And people are going to have to step up. You know, they can, in North Carolina here, we haven't flipped this seat in almost two decades.

And we've only had two Democratic senators in almost 40 years. And we need to be helping all of these candidates in swing districts and in swing states across the country to make sure we do. get this majority because if we don't get the majority, it's going to be real problem. And those issues you are talking about now, it's going to be very hard to get bipartisan health. I want to talk about the campaign, but just on that kind of filibuster question, like, is that something that you've thought about at this point, about whether you have a view on whether it's going to be important to maintain that? I've thought about it. I do know right now the filibuster has helped save us from the Save Act.

And that's something that we have to think about that had that been in place, I'm not sure where our elections would be because that would give the federal government a lot of control over voter lists. So I think we have to look at the issues as they come. But that's an important thing to think about right now is what the filibuster is doing, is helping to protect voting in states across the country. It's a good point. It's a tough one.

I don't think it's open shut at all. On the other hand, it's kind of hard to imagine the Democrats having the 59-seat majority they had in 2009, again, anytime soon, because of the nature of our polarized democracy. And so there's a lot of priorities that are going to be hard to get done without at least maybe some reforms to it or changes to kind of the way that they go about it. The first two years, the real issue is going to be the veto. Right. That's something we have to deal with the first two years. So there's a big agenda. There's a lot we need to do to.

respond to the people in these elections across the country, they are telling us that stuff costs too much. And we have to respond to that because that is the overwhelming issue. And I taught to person after person who are having to make decisions about couples, one of them, quitting work because the child care just costs too much. People having to change jobs because they simply can't afford to get back and forth to work or gas. It's turning. lives upside down, and we have a Washington that is continuing to make it worse, and we've got to fix it. I guess that's my point. Like, if you end up in a place where it's so gridlocked still in 2029 or whatever, where, like,

the system is not working as it's currently set up because everything is getting blocked, like does that lead you open to reforms on the way the system's working, whether it be the filibuster or otherwise? I think our democracy certainly is being ferrettened right now. And I think that we're going to have to look at reforms across the board and keep an open mind about all of them for sure. Let's talk about the campaign. I got an unusual memo from your team. Usually people are sent to be memos about how great their candidate is doing, you know, because they want to demonstrate momentum. Your staff sent a memo talking about how we got to be a little worried about North Carolina. Got to be a lot worried about North Carolina. Yeah, okay. Got to be a lot worried. There you go.

how Tom Tillis was always behind the polls, but he won anyway. How the last time you were on the ballot, I think it said that the polls had you up by 5%. You ended up winning by 10,000 votes or so. What's that all about? Like, do you think that, is that real? Like, are you concerned that there's some kind of shy mega vote in North Carolina that's not being reflected in the polls? Because right now you've got a pretty good lead.

It has been real. And we've seen it in the past too many times where you can pretty much add five or six. percentage points to whatever Republicans are doing in the polls in North Carolina. We had David Pluff come and talk with us the other day and said he went through it with Obama and 08. And that's the last time North Carolina voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. It's also the last time that North Carolina voted for a Democrat to the United States Senate. And although we've been successful in electing Democrats to state offices, it's been really hard to elect. Democrats to federal office. So we're pushing through the tape. We need people to help us. People can go to

Roy Cooper.com to help us. I'm glad that we're helping people in these states that we didn't think we had a chance because I want to serve in the majority. And so Democratic outside money that's moved out of North Carolina that is going to these other states, I'm all for that. I think it's important because we've got to get a majority. But we have to carry this campaign across the finish line. And I'm telling people, number one, we've got to reform campaign finance. It's unconscionable the amount of money that's being raised, but we also cannot unilaterally disarm right now.

So I'm telling people they need to help everybody across the board. A lot of the questions at the beginning of this campaign were, hey, shouldn't we just concentrate on the House? You know, this is really not a chance for us to take the U.S. Senate. We're just going to put money in the House. And my argument was we're at a critical point in the history of our country. So we need to invest across the board in both the House and the Senate. And that has proven right.

And we've got to take it all the way into the end in these last three weeks if we are going to get a majority in the Senate. these states that we're trying to win, North Carolina being one of them, Trump won them all three times, and now we're trying to flip that on his head. So that's a tough thing to do. But I believe we can, but we need people's help to get it done. All right. So I used to do PR for campaigns, and I always told my candidate not to be a pundit. So I'm asking you right now to just, just for one question. Just punt it with me for one question, and then we'll let you off the hook. And because there's a lot of them discourse out there about what the party needs to be doing to win better

and these different models about whether it would be economic populism or what else I add is doing in Michigan or what Tel Rico is doing in Texas. And when they have those conversations, I noticed nobody ever brings up Roy Cooper as a model, really, for 2028 in the future. But as you mentioned, the Democrats haven't won a Senate seat there in 20 years. As of now, you're winning the polls by a lot. you're running a pretty simple campaign that looks like to me where you are talking about how you want to make sure criminals be put in jail, but we want to treat our neighbors like we should be treated and care about everybody's pocketbooks. And that seems to be working. And so what do you think? Is that like a model you think that should be tried other places or is there something special about you? I don't know that it's a model. I know that sticking to the basics is important because

most people want to live in a safe community. They want their kid to get a good education. They want to be able to afford a doctor when they get sick. They expect clean air and water. These are issues that bring us together. 400 electoral votes. That's it. Don't talk about anything else.

The Democrats, that's a Ronald Reagan majority for the Democrats. Why don't we just do that? Well, I'm for that. I mean, that's what I have done over the years when I have run for office is concentrate on the issues that affect everyday people and that they care about. And it's what I, it's what I care about. I mean, I had a, I wanted a state where people were better educated, where they were healthier, where they had more money in their pocket, and they had the opportunity to live lives of abundance. That, that was my. my CEO mission statement back when I became governor in 2017, and we got a Republican legislature

to expand Medicaid. We helped create $640,000 new better paying jobs, third fastest growing state in the country. Yeah, I hold the record for a number of vetoes as a governor. I had a Republican legislature for all eight years, and we disagreed on a lot. But I think the key is to try to find where you do agree because most people are not into this hyperpartisan disputes. They want government to work. And that's what I tried to do as Attorney General and as governor. And I realize this is going to be challenging going to Washington. I just figure that Washington needs a little North Carolina common sense,

and I'm ready to come with knowing what I know. I was also in the private practice of law for 18 years and had to meet a payroll. So I know about the private sector as well represented everyday people and small businesses. So I'm going to try to bring that experience to Washington and try to make things better for the people there, for sure. When you look at the national Democrats across any of those kind of issues or just generally, like, do you feel like there's something in particular where the party's gotten out of step with everyday people or where the emphasis has been wrong? Well, look, number one, I have been encouraging people at this point in time and just during the past year to not worry about fixing the Democratic Party. What I have encouraged people to do was to support these candidates in these swing races in order to work to take back the majority because it's very hard when you just don't have any power at all at the federal level to. fix anything because you can't do very much. So my argument has been, let's support these candidates.

Let's don't worry about the party structure or the party messaging. We've got a long way to go to fix all of that. Let's concentrate on these candidates. And we have some amazing candidates who are in tough battles right now across the country. And I think if we can get a majority, you know, One of the things about Democrats, we disagree on how to get some of these places, how to get to getting more people health care. But I think trying to focus on those issues leading into 2028, we've got to find common issues and then try to stick to those issues because we have to win. We have to win now in these midterms. We have to win in 2028. Press Secretary Tim is happy. I tried to sneak in another pundit question on you and you didn't take the bait. You're not going to pund it on me. That's good. I have one more policy issue of immigration. Here's one of my frustrations with the Democrats on both sides with this, which is I think basically everybody agrees at this point that the border got out of control under Biden and it needs to be more secure and that the next Democratic Senate and hopefully president needs to do differently on that. But simultaneously to that, like what we're seeing with the deportations, right? right now and with these camps that we have around the country is utterly un-American and inhumane.

And I do feel like some Democrats have been a little shy because of political considerations about engaging on that question. So I'm just wondering kind of how you're thinking about those issues, oversight of ice, reform of ice, defunding maybe some of the programs that they have. Like, what's your positions on the kind of the internal immigration enforcement that we've seen? Well, first, I agree that we need. a strong, secure border and that in the last administration, not a good job was done. Secondly, we need to deport violent criminals and make sure we have people who are working on

doing that. But what is happening with ICE right now, going around detaining people simply because of what they look like, oftentimes they are American citizens, shooting people in the street, that's wrong. You know, at the very least, ICE officers should have to obey by the same rules and have the same training that local and state law enforcement have. And it definitely needs to be reform because what is happening is wrong and we have to fix it. And look, I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get involved. in trying to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

We have to have a better system in place than we have right now. And it's being run over roughshod anyway. And that's another thing that the legislative branch of government needs to do is to push back on the executive branch and to make sure that laws that are already on the books are being followed. And that's not happening now in that area and in many other areas. And just as far as like the individual, like the way that people are being treated and held in the camps and the funding for all of that. We've got to be humane in the way we're dealing with people.

But we also need to have a system where they can have a fair hearing about their legal status in the United States. We're going to close to doing a little. You said you don't want to talk about Belichick, but I don't know what's happening over there at North Carolina. Well, you know, the one job of a Carolina football coach. What's that? Is to delay the question. Oh, really? The question being...

What about the basketball team? I just know, you got my old Nuggets head coach Michael Malone, who I do like. I just took a peek here. You're 37th in the Ken Palm coming in. That's... What's happening with the program down there? So the Carolatic football coach, the only job was to delay the question, and the question is, when does basketball season start?

If you get into mid to late October and people aren't asking... the question, when is basketball season start, then you are a successful football coach at Carolina. Look, Malone, let's start by saying that the NCAA in college sports are just the wild west right now. It's just so different. There are two players on Carolina's roster who played last year, and one of them played a lot, but the other one didn't.

And everybody else is brand new to the system. Many of them coming in through the transfer. a portal. I think Malone is going to be a good coach. The college sports are moving toward the professional level. I think players are getting their due finally. I think players should have been paid. But we now have to find a way to clamp down on the transfer portal and at least bring a little sanity to the system. But I'm going to bet that the Tar Hills might have a pretty good year this year. It's, well, I don't know. Here in Louisiana, Jeff Landry is the governor and the LSU athletic director. So I think it would be possible for you, especially given the Senate calendar lately, you know, they're barely working up there.

You could probably do both jobs, I think, if they need you down there. Well, that's another reason I need to run for the Senate because they don't work hard enough. And I'm ready to get up there and to do that. I would hope that the majority. Is it going to be Schumer? Do you think as the majority leader? Don't know. Don't know. I don't know. Well, I'll wait until I get there to make my decision. Well, whoever it is, hopefully they work a few more days next year. They had a pretty leisurely schedule up there.

I mean, Mitch McConnell was in the hospital for months and people barely even noticed because they weren't doing anything. Well, you know, when things got hot, they just went home. Yeah. That's what they did. That's no way to do. I mean, you got to step up to your job. All right, but we appreciate you. We're going to be in North Carolina. I'm going to miss you. That's why I wanted to have you on the podcast. But we have a live event there. on Sunday. Pete Buttigieg is going to be in town. That would be great. You guys have a great time.

If you have any Charlotte tips for us, a little restaurant to go to or something. Yeah, just go to pick up a Hornets game. Go to a Hornets game. It'll be fun. Are you feeling good with Lamello gone? It's kind of a new refresh.

They had to readjust. Yeah. But I think they've got the core of a good team. You've got to get out of this play-in game level where they are. They've got to get back to where they need to be. All right. I'm Googling now to see if I can get to a Hornets game while I'm there. We'll see. Yeah, I don't know what the schedule is like. I might be able to stay clean. It's probably a preseason. If it's next week, it'll be preseason if it's anything.

So that's even more fun. We appreciate you for all the time. Good luck up there at the campaign trail. Run through the tape. And hopefully we'll be checking in next year when you're up in Washington, which is kind of a downer. But it's good for us and maybe not as much for you. Thanks a lot, Tim. Thanks so much to Nome and Governor Cooper. We'll see everybody in North Carolina on Sunday, and we'll be back tomorrow with a fun psycho edition of the podcast. See you all then. Peace. The Bullwark Daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeChico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.