The Bulwark Podcast - Ruy Teixeira: More Tough Love for Democrats

Episode Date: March 29, 2023

While Republicans frequently overdo it on cultural issues, Democrats still are vulnerable on race, gender, and drag queen story hour. They need to stop denying the issues — or taking the bait and attacking Republicans for raising them. Ruy Teixeira joins Charlie Sykes today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to. At work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself, so you can stop hiding and take off the mask. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Whether you're navigating workplace stresses,

complex relationships, or family dynamics, therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding a way to overcome them. If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com. This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask?

BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self so you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is March 29, 2023.

We've actually almost made it to the end of March. There will be no indictments this week out of the Manhattan DA's office. So, you know, perhaps we could think about something a little bit different. I was actually thinking of mixing it up by not focusing the entire podcast on Donald Trump or what he has been doing or saying. For those of you that are, you that are really locked into that, we will be back to that. But we're joined today by Rui Teixeira, who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on the transformation of party coalitions and the future of American politics. Also the co-author of the forthcoming book,

Where Have All the Democrats Gone? And he's the politics editor and co-founder of the Liberal Patriot, which this week just announced this huge expansion from a part-time newsletter into a full-time online publication and nonprofit organization. So first of all, congratulations about that, Rui. Thanks a lot, Charlie. I mean, it's been quite a ride, and now the rocket ship has really taken off. I feel my introduction of you is completely inadequate. We need to explain who you are.

Put your credentials on the table because there's going to be a little bit of tough love here for Democrats. So just give me the thumbnail, Bayag, because I'm thinking back to the before times. I think the first time I encountered your work, I'm thinking, Rui Teixeira, he's, you know, the solid, hardcore, progressive Democrat. He's a Democratic strategist. He's a Democrat, you know, a man of the left. And now you're at AEI. So how do you describe yourself right now? Well, I would still describe myself as being on the center left and still describe myself as a Democrat. I'm just less sanguine about the blue team than I once was. When we wrote the emerging Democratic majority in 2002, John Judas and I thought the Democrats had quite an opportunity to take advantage of various shifts in the political terrain, including shifting demographics, but also shifting ideological and economic developments that could make them a dominant party for quite a while, if they practiced a sort of progressive centrism, took advantage of these burgeoning constituencies, and kept a very significant share of the white working class, because they were such a big group and so important,

particularly in certain states. Now, over time, people thought, well, 2008, it's really arrived. But, you know, that was quickly dashed by 2010 and further developments. And over time, even though I was at the Center for American Progress, you know, perhaps the leading center left think tank, I just became increasingly disquieted by the fact that people at the think tank, I thought, and in democratic circles in general, were more and more susceptible to groupthink, more and more unwilling to think beyond the so-called rising American electorate, and more and more unwilling to think about, well, you know, the white working class, we actually do need more of their votes. I mean, this is a very serious electoral vulnerability that needs to be remedied. And I felt like I was basically knocking my head up against the wall. Then after Trump gets elected in 2016, things really take a turn for the worse, I thought, in terms of a sort of reasonably objective analytical approach toward how do you build a democratic coalition and more and more toward hashtag resistance. And, you know, just a series of rah-rah, you know, we're the good guys, the other side of the racists.

Anyone who would vote for Donald Trump is basically signing up for Satan's army. And I thought this was a really bad idea. I just thought it was political strategy in terms of political coalition building. This was a bad idea. Then I became increasingly disquieted about that and basically found that within CAP and within a lot of Democratic circles, I couldn't really talk about that. I couldn't talk about sort of culturally inflected issues where the Democrats were going farther and farther to the left and crime and immigration and gender and race. Nobody wanted to hear it. I mean, in the in this era of Trump, because the threat feels so existential, it feels like there's been kind of a shutdown on any sort of introspection among Democrats. Obviously, that's I'm overstating it, but kind of the sense that, OK, we just can't engage in any sort of both sides.

You know, this is not the time to be self-critical. And as somebody who's spent the last, you know, eight years, you know, trying to figure out what went wrong with the right, you know, what did we miss? What were the messages that went off the rails? It is interesting to see the resistance to the kind of critique that you're giving, because one would think the Democrats would be laser focused on the question that you just touched on, which is like, what is happening with the white working class voters? These used to be central to the Democratic coalition. You can't talk about the FDR coalition or the coalition behind the Great Society without talking about working class voters, and they have been hemorrhaging them. So what is the resistance to when you raise your hand and say, this is crucial, we can't have an emerging majority, but we are alienating people who for generations had been, you know, part of the core constituency of the Democratic Party?

Right. And I would actually add to that, Charlie. I mean, we now have a situation where non-white working class voters are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the Democrats, most famously Hispanics. We're also seeing it now with Asians, even in a minor extent with black voters. So the Democratic Party in a quantitative sense is no longer the party of the working class. Republicans get more working class votes and Democrats are remarkably, you know, unfazed by this. And I think that gets to your point about there's just this enormous resistance to doing some sort of serious introspection, whatever weaknesses Democrats might have. That's partly because, as you say, you know, the sort of the hegemonic idea within the Democratic Party is that Trump is so evil

and so awful and such a threat to the republic that we just must never criticize our own side. We must simply attack the other side, which doesn't really make a lot of logical sense in the sense that if you think if our basic idea is to beat Trump as soundly as possible, then we must have as many people as possible in our coalition. Therefore, if it is necessary to make compromises on things that make us feel a little bit uncomfortable, perhaps we should do it. I mean, isn't the goal here to defeat the other side and defeat them soundly so they can't immediately come back into power, as indeed we've been in this revolving door in American politics for quite a while? So I don't think that makes any logical sense, but I think psychologically

that's where people's heads are at. And then the question might become, well, why are people's heads in this place? And I think this is something I've written about quite a bit. I think the Democratic Party at this point is really hegemonized by the views of liberal-wide college-educated voters and sort of supportive organizations, academia, nonprofits, advocacy groups, foundations, and the media. There's an enormous amount of groupthink about how, you know, we are the good people. These issues are really important. You know, we can make no compromises. We are, in fact, on the right side of history. We are the good people, the other side of the bad people, and we cannot compromise on that.

And this is like a very politically ineffective way to approach things, in my view. Let's step back for a moment, because I want to go into this whole question of, you know, on that. And this is like a very politically ineffective way to approach things, in my view. Let's step back for a moment, because I want to go into this whole question of, you know, white college Democrats, you know, or now that, you know, the Democrats knew, you know, BFS and why that's a problem and what, you know, what's happened with the working class voters. But I guess the question is also, you know, this is the era of Joe Biden. Joe Biden comes from that old tradition. So I guess who is the face of the Democratic Party? Who defines what it means to be a Democrat? Because there will be people who push back and say, well, hold on. Joe Biden won that primary. He's the president of the United States and he's got all kinds of working class cred. So when you look at the Democratic Party, what are you seeing?

OK, I'm going around on all of this. but if Joe Biden does not define the Democratic Party, what does or does anyone define the Democratic Party? Is there any figure that you think embodies the Democratic Party? Or when voters look at Democrats, who do they think of as being the avatar of this party? Well, I don't think there's any one person really, and that's part of the problem. I think the Democrats have benefited from Biden obviously being the biggest figurehead in the party. The guy is actually the president. I think of it as a designated normie of the Democratic Party. He does have a different ethos and sort of image and approach that is different than a lot of other people in the Democratic Party who they know about. They might know about AOC and the

squad. They might know about Chuck Schumer. They might know about their local Democrats, but they also know about Joe Biden. And Biden is able to project much more of a normal image. Now he has, I was just talking about this on another podcast about the idea that typically big presidential leaders put a stamp on their party. They make it their party to some extent. I mean, my view about Biden is more the parties puts a stamp on him. He has, in a sense, been captured by the evolving tendencies in the Democratic Party and the sort of the broad cultural outlook of that party. Now, he pushes back against that a little bit. But if you look at issues of gender and race and crime and immigration and just the sort of general democratic approach to that cluster of issues, he's more influenced

by it than not. Now, he's trying to tack back to the center on some of these things, like, for example, the willingness to sign the override of the D.C. crime bill. He's talking a little bit tough on immigration. But by and large, he's not done too much. And he's staffed up by and large with people who are considerably to his left on all these issues. And I think he's just, he's a creature of the party. He's not going to rock the boat. He's not going to try to change the image of the Democratic Party in any concrete way. He's not going to pick any fights within the party in any kind of big way. I mean, for example, look at the DC crime bill thing. I mean, that's a fight, but it's not a fight against any particularly obvious icon or person that he can then, you know, sort of really

make a big deal out of. I mean, I've written about this and you did too, Charlie, I guess about, you know, the Democrats missed their chance for a Chesa Boudin moment when Chesa Boudin, the notoriously sort of lax DA in San Francisco who was associated with crime and disorder in the country and in a city got cashiered out by the voters of San Francisco. Great opportunity to say, well, you know, that's Chesa Boudin, but that's not where Democrats come from. He is totally not our guy. He's not who we are. So I think that refusal in a sense to define more clearly and with a bit more sharp edges who Democrats are these days and what they are not

is a real problem for Biden and for Biden's coalition. You know, he can't put his stamp on the party as it were, and the party will continue to put its stamp on him until and unless he's willing to do that. And right now I don't see him doing that. I think the fundamental reliance is back to something we were talking about earlier, Charlie, Trump, MAGA. They're all bad. They're all the same. As long as we continue talking about them and not criticizing ourselves, then we'll be great, right? It's a matter of keeping the focus on how evil the other side is. I mean, anyone who, like you or me, who might raise questions about the Democrats' approach and think they need to modify it significantly as basically almost doing the work of the other side. I mean, I'm sure you've heard this yourself. So one of the things that you have written about that

really stuck with me is what you call the Fox News fallacy. And I think it tacks along with all of this, which is, and then I want to put words in your mouth here, but the Fox News fallacy basically being anything that Fox News thinks is a big deal or that MAGA thinks is a big deal, we need to either ignore or defend. So talk to me about the Fox News fallacy and how it fits into all of this. Right. Well, I think that is very much the sort of worldview, the filter through which a lot of things are seen by Democrats these days. If something is being raised by the conservative media, by politicians who are putting the Democrats on the crosshairs, it's the obligation of Democrats to stoutly deny there's anything to it. And in fact, the only reason why anyone would be concerned about this is because

of their underlying racism, xenophobia, transphobia, or what have you. And I think that is not responsive to where ordinary voters are coming from. I mean, there are many, many, many examples of this. Crime was a great example to begin with. Now, as I say, Biden's trying to tack a little bit to the center, but the initial reaction of most Democrats to the concern about crime and the need to get tougher on crime was basically to argue that crime was being exaggerated as a problem, that people who are bringing this up in conservative media just want to scare you, they want to make you afraid, and they may want to make you afraid because they really want to

tap your underlying racism about who the criminals are. It goes on and on and on, as opposed to like the more parsimonious approach, which is, well, people are probably concerned about crime because there's a lot of crime and people hate crime. And they don't think we're doing a good job in terms of public safety. So maybe we need to address that. That's the more parsimonious approach to the issue. Same thing with immigration. When people are pouring across the border, when the country is hitting like new highs in the amount of illegal immigration, maybe the best approach isn't to deny that it's a problem and sort of act as if, well, I mean, the only real problem here is people talking about how much immigration there is, as opposed to, well, here's

our plan for doing it. We are going to be tougher at the border. We do think border security is important. We do think the asylum system is going to be gamed, and here's how we're going to fix it. Now, the Democrats, again, are moving, have moved over the last few months into a little bit saner or tougher position on this, but it's taken them a long time and they've lost credibility on the issue as a result. So, you know, the Fox News fallacy is like trying to reason in a fog. If you're trying to understand where voters are coming from, the first reaction to any kind of criticism on a whole cluster of issues is, well, it's all made up and it's all like these terrible actors who are trying to pull the wool over the voters' eyes. And that makes you not able to defend as well as you should

and make your viewpoint known and actually articulate a reasonably centrist, reasonably progressive view in all these areas. It's totally antithetical and counterproductive to where Democrats need to be on a lot of these issues. Well, it also takes the bait, right? I mean, if Fox News decides it's going to make an issue of something, they can bait progressives into defending it. So they find themselves either ignoring the substance of the issue or being baited into defending something on, you know, the culture war turf. It feels as if many of the Democratic leaders are catching up with their voters, though, because Democratic primary voters have shown that they, in fact, you know, do want a tougher line on crime. I mean, you see that in the New York mayoral election. You see that in, you know, the San Francisco recall of the D.A. there. You're seeing it perhaps in Chicago as well. feels as if Democrats are catching up with where their voters are already going, that the primary

electorate is far less progressive or willing to ignore these issues than the college-educated staffing elites. True? Yeah, no, I think that's definitely true. I mean, it depends, of course, on the area you're talking about. I mean, one reason why there's more members of the squad than there used to be is because it is possible in a primary context to get rid of a sort of moderately liberal person and replace them with a flamingly liberal, hard left kind of person who is down the line and all the issues we've been talking about. But in a much broader context, when you look at entire states, when you look at the country as a whole, the Democratic primary electorate is, in fact, not all that left on a lot of these issues. And their concerns are now starting to come to the attention of the politicians. And I think this

does connect to what you were alluding to there at the end. What do staffers think? What do people in the media think? What do people in advocacy groups think? What are the people who are constantly trying to talk to these politicians? What do they think? It's got too much influence over what politicians think and what they respond to. And there's not enough influence of what ordinary voters, even ordinary Democratic voters think, leaving aside voters as a whole. So I think that is a huge problem. And I think Democratic politicians should get their head out of the sand and try to more understand what their own voters are thinking and pay absolutely no attention to what's on Twitter. Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast and friend of the Michael Steele show. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy

voices on the center right and the center left for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. On my daily podcast, and that's right, we do it five times a week, I'm joined by some of the smartest, savviest, most provocative voices on the scene. And every day we have great conversations. You won't always agree, but you won't be disappointed. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around. Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bullwork Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to

thebulwark.com slash charlie. That's thebulwark.com forward slash charlie. We're going to get through this together. I promise. So let's talk about how Democrats should handle the culture wars. You wrote a piece about 10 days ago, you know, pointing out the Democrats have a host of vulnerabilities on, you know, some of these cultural issues ranging from crime and integration to race, gender and policies around schooling. As you point out, you know, Republicans, you know, frequently overdo it. They go over the top, they demagogue it. But that doesn't mean that the vulnerabilities aren't real. So you laid out the Democrats have three choices for responding to the Republican attacks on these issues. They can ignore them, they can attack, or they can try to diffuse.

So let's break that down, what you mean by, you know, the ignore, attack, and diffuse. What right now is the default setting for Democrats on these cultural issues? Well, as I said in the article, I think it's a sort of confused combination of the first two. I think on the one hand, they try to ignore frequently a lot of these attacks. I certainly think that's been Biden's approach in some areas at some times. I mean, let's not talk about this and let's instead talk about, you know, we just spent umpty gazillion dollars on X and, you know, we assure you that this is going to improve your life. And, you know, we're going to make things better. Inflation is going down a bit. It's basically

trying to take, you know, a given attack in a culture war area and basically talk instead about something else on the theory that that's really the true interest of the voters. And they'll respond to that. The attack is truly taking the bait and saying, well, whatever the conservatives are saying that we're for, you know, damn right we're for it. You know, it's a good thing, not a bad thing. And, you know, to the extent there's anything wrong with it, it just reflects an exaggeration or a lie on the part of our opponents, sort of essentially giving absolutely no ground, right? So damn right we're in favor of drag queen story hour. We love drag queens. Drag queens should be in every school. Right. Anybody who would oppose this is obviously just

some sort of bigot, and the Republicans are trying to, you know, sort of unleash the underlying bigotry of the American people, and we must oppose that. But yeah, if you look at where ordinary voters are coming from, if you look at where the median voter, they're very uncomfortable with a lot of this stuff. They don't think kids should learn gender fluidity when they're seven years old. They don't think drag queen story hour is an unalloyed joy for everybody. They're actually very nervous about, you know, this continue with the trans issue, about the easy availability of hormones, puberty blockers, and surgery for people who are under 18.

And in fact, that's a legitimate concern. We get it. You know, I mean, that would be what ideally Democrats diffuse the issue. This is a serious problem some kids have. We have to pay attention to it, but on the other hand, it's, you know, there's nothing wrong with them having talk therapy and so on and so forth. And the first thing we want to do is not medicalize children. I agree with you, concerned voters out there. Medicalizing children at the drop of a hat is not a good idea and we're not for it. Instead, the response is typically, these are just bigots who are seeking to sort of discriminate and

oppress trans kids, you know, bullying trans kids. And there'll be, you know, millions of suicides if we continue down this road. And it's just so awful and evil. But I mean, there is a middle ground here, you know, where like you're sort of attentive to the concerns of different kinds of children. You don't want discrimination. You don't want bullying. You want to be nice to everybody. But you recognize it's a problem. Is anyone there, though? Because I'm thinking of the middle ground, it feels like kind of an empty field at the moment. Right. Well, I think that's a very interesting, I mean, just on this specific issue. I mean, I think the middle ground is remarkably unoccupied in most of these issues for the

Democrats. But I think one thing that's really quite interesting is how little deviation there is from sort of an extreme, sort of pretty radical approach that's basically driven by the trans lobby and trans activists within the Democratic Party. I mean, there's almost nothing that this sort of group of people and advocates have argued that Democrats are willing to dissent from at this point. You're much more likely to have Democrats talking about being tough on crime and immigration than you are to have any Democrat with any kind of a profile saying, well, I think actually there are some real problems here. And this is a

contrast, Charlie, to what's going on in the UK and Finland and Sweden and Norway. I mean, we're realizing there's a lot of questions about these procedures and about this approach to, you know, trans kids, right? That this is a really difficult, complex issue. And the evidence is not good that medicalizing children is actually a good idea that puberty blockers are in fact, it's unalloyed good and all it does is pause people so they have a time to think. I mean, this is dogma, basically, that has essentially taken over the Democratic Party. There's real pressure on people, you know, not to say this. I mean, it feels like right now, this would be political suicide for any progressive to take the position you're taking

right now, because in terms of intolerance and by then we were going to get huge blowback on all of this. But I was actually talking about this with my colleague Mona Charon the other day. And I think, you know, part of it is, and I use this word advisedly, the kind of violent reaction against even questions being asked about this actually doesn't seem like a, an expression of confidence um you know that that anyone that even raises this you know is is immediately demonized immediately attack which basically says look if you're confident about your position if you're confident about the science why are you so intolerant why are you so resistant to any questions being offered so this is one of

those issues where democrats feel it feels like they're trapped on this issue, that there is no wiggle room. There's no way for them to take the position that you just articulated. Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. I think that, yeah, I mean, a lot of it is to some extent driven by the precariousness of the underlying position of the people who are blocking with the trans advocates. I mean, the idea that biological sex isn't important is like not a normie voter position. It's kind of like, who are you going to believe me or your own eyes? Right. I mean, everybody knows that, you know, sex isn't just assigned at birth. There is such a thing as biological males and biological females. And you can, in fact, suddenly become a woman just by saying you're a woman. I

mean, maybe you're a trans woman. Maybe you want to live as a woman. That's fine. Nobody should take that right away from you. But that doesn't, you know, don't tell me to change my whole world view about, you know, the nature of biological sex and the nature of society and the nature of evolution just because you say so, right? So I think that's where some of the defensiveness comes from, because the whole line of analysis is so precarious and so illogical in many ways that I think the impulse is to strike back at it as brutally as possible and just try to dismiss critics as being transphobes, bigots, and people who just aren't, you know, for being humanitarians. So a lot of Democrats are going to push back on this argument that they can't take the central position on cultural issues. They'll say, look, look at the Dobbs decision where Democrats have been able to occupy a center ground in opposition

to a lot of the extreme positions of the GOP. So isn't the Democrat positioning on abortion kind of counterfactual to what you're describing? Well, I mean, not counterfactual in the sense that it's much more of a centrist position to be for, you know, availability of abortion than it is to be for banning it full stop. And I think that's really what the Republicans benefited from. The hardcore pro-life position of the Republican Party became associated with a lot of candidates in 2022 and with the Republican Party in general, whereas in reality, the sort of normie voter position on abortion is it should be basically legal and available in the first three months, maybe not in the second three months, and definitely not in the third three months, right? I mean, people are very leery about the idea,

basically, abortion should be available almost to the time of birth, right? So that's an extreme position, which a lot of Democrats do hold, particularly some of the abortion advocates. But that became not the issue because of Dobbs and the way it came down and the way that 2022 election evolved. Basically, they were able to run against the idea Republicans wanted to ban abortion full stop. Now, to the extent that continues to be the discourse, then they will benefit. To the extent it starts getting a little bit more complicated about just what should be the regs on abortion, should it in fact be available without restrictions up to the time of birth, well, I think that's when you're going to have a little bit more challenging sort of situation. And there was some interesting morning consult data that just came out that shows the saliency

of abortion issues. It was already starting to go down, as indeed we might expect after the Dobbs and the 2022 election. So I think this will be a more complicated issue for the Democrats, but I don't think it obviates the idea. Just take a centrist position, right? I mean, yes, you're for abortion being available, at least within the first three months, and after that, to safeguard the life of the mother and health, and available only with restrictions, say, after the first three

months. Whatever the particular set of weeks people want to select is, I think that will ultimately should be the centrist position and should be what Democrats seek to promote, not that abortion be available without any restrictions at any time. Well, as you also point out, though, abortion isn't crime, it's not immigration. And the party is still associated with views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech, race, gender, and meritocratic schooling that are far from median voters. You write, voters are just not sure that Democrats can look beyond their cultural commitments to ensure public safety, secure borders, high quality, non-ideological education, and economic progress for all Americans. So let's go back to this diffuse response. You know,

you're talking about neutralize the vulnerabilities, disassociate yourself from extreme positions held by members of the party embrace common sense approaches can you give me an example of where that's actually worked i mean you you do cite some things i mean i mean biden's nullification of dc's move to reduce penalties for carjacking some of the rhetoric that we heard from tim ryan in ohio where he seemed to at least show some respect for the concern as opposed to simply rejecting it. So give me some examples of effective, successful diffusing. Well, it's hard to give too many examples of successful diffusing because it hasn't really been done much.

This is an aspirational kind of thing, you know, but as I point out in one of those articles, I mean, there's a lot of common sense positions Democrats might want to start being associated with that, in fact, would probably do better and help change their image from what it is today. I mean, for example, equality of opportunity is an American principle. Equality of outcome is not. I mean, this is what everybody agrees with. It is not what Democrats are currently associated with. Equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. Outcome, which has now become shorthanded as equity. Democrats, you know, believe that, you know, back to the crime thing, Democrats believe that crime is a big problem and we

must safeguard public safety. On the other hand, we're opposed to police brutality and we think there needs to be more provisions made for having policing be more humane, but also more effective at the same time. These are all common sense positions. We believe that racial achievement gap is a big problem. We should try to remedy this, but we think standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races and backgrounds. And we should, you know, not do away with merit as a criteria for determining, you know, how well someone's educated and sort of controlling access to elite slots and all that. I mean, Democrats are associated now with a sort of somewhat anti-meritocratic approach to schooling that's hurt them in New York, it's hurt them in San Francisco, you know, it hurt them in Virginia

and the Glenn Youngkin race. I mean, people are not on board with the idea that basically all and this this gets to sort of a broad position Democrats might want to take, that they're not on board with the idea America is a white supremacist society and that all disparities in America, including between races, are strictly a product of racism and that all white people benefit from this. They all have white privilege and so on and so forth. Democrats should forcefully, in my view, dissociate themselves from that and basically take the position that, you know, that's not fair to characterize people in this way. And we actually do believe in equal opportunity, colorblindness, neutrality, and that's what America is about, giving everyone an opportunity to achieve. And we're adamantly opposed to discrimination.

We want to give people the tools to achieve, the opportunities to achieve. We want to give people the opportunity to acquire merit, not to do away with the criteria of merit. So I think all of these things are very simple, common sense things that would go a long way toward reestablishing the Democrats as, you know, the party of sort of the ordinary man and woman, the ordinary working person, and the sort of just the ordinary American. I mean, this is like, hey, we're of Democrats, we believe in all this stuff. Those Republicans, now they are extreme about a lot of this stuff, and their approach is not going to work. But our approach is much better. We're actually for, you know, all the common sense that you, the American voter believe in and embrace. And we just want to make sure you have a better opportunity to get ahead in life and

you're treated with, with fairness and dignity at all times. I mean, what would be so hard about that, Charlie? It doesn't seem to me that's that hard. It doesn't seem that hard, except as you point out, Democrats aren't really interested in this approach of defusing because college educated liberals are not interested. Why are they not interested? Because, as you point out, if you really want to resist Trumpism, if you really want to win elections, if you really want to establish credibility with some of the voters who have been peeled off, you would be interested in this approach of defusing these issues. So why is it? Is it because they live in their own bubble? Because they talk with one another? Because there's a hive mind when it comes to all of this? Or they're afraid of having any enemies to the left?

Yeah, I mean, I think they are ideologically captured. I mean, I think there is a real phenomenon being bubbled up in a lot of these circles where they never hear anything different than what they already believe, and they also feel pressure from some of their peers to embrace the same points of view. I think it matters that some of the sort of commanding heights of cultural production are now controlled by people who have a fairly uniform point of view in a lot of this stuff, and that is the media that people consume, and that's what they hear on social media. I think there's a lot of reasons why people might not be able to break out of that sort of ideological mindset. It just gets reinforced day by day and in many ways. Now, I think another reason for that is I think we shouldn't

underestimate the influence of sort of appearing in a certain way, emphasizing certain issues, talking in a certain way, using a certain kind of language, and sort of your labor market and social position in life. I mean, there's payoffs. Virtue signaling. Basically, virtue signaling to saying you're one of the good people. You know, you're one of the people who understands these issues, who speaks the language, who would never deviate in any way from the consensus. And I think that's an advantage in many professional

settings. It's the advantage in many social settings. And I think that cannot be discounted, that it's hard for people to break out of that and think more seriously about politics. Okay, how do we build the biggest possible coalition, which then, I mean, virtue signaling is probably one way of thinking about it. If you're virtue signaling, you're not doing politics. Okay, how do we build the biggest possible coalition, which then, you know, I mean, virtue signaling is probably one way of thinking about it. If you're virtue signaling, you're not doing politics. Politics is about, you know, getting the greatest number of people behind your positions and your policy program and winning elections and winning elections by as much as possible. Yeah, virtue signaling is not about doing politics. So it also occurs to me, though, that in this culture of virtue signaling, and you know, in this hive mind, that they often don't know how they sound to people outside of it. Like last week, I was writing something about wokeness and the way, in fact, it's become this

rather absurd thing on the right where everything they don't like is woke. And of course, there's a lot of, you know, rolling of the eyes and disdain about it and, you know, denial that there is such a thing as wokeness. But there is a thing of wokeness. And if you look at a lot of popular culture, including some of the standup comedians, there's a lot of videos that have been circulating about how absurd it can be that politically correct knee jerk answers to all of that. Going back to this Fox News fallacy, there is no such thing as woken woke. It is not a problem. It does not exist. And yet you don't realize the fact that the rest of society knows exactly what it means.

And they think it is absurd and ridiculous or perhaps even dangerous. So there is this inability to engage on it. I was actually just watching a Tracy Ullman video where she's talking with a group of people about how it was like a focus group of people, or maybe it was a therapy group of young people who were so woke that their lives had been completely ruined. It is absolutely hilarious. And it's not within the last few months. So there is this disconnect where I think that with all the virtue signaling and the over-the-top extreme use by Republicans, there's kind of a disconnect. Like, do you understand when you talk like this how ridiculous you look to the normies? Yeah, no, I think there's not a consciousness of that at all, and probably because they never talk to normies.

They talk to each other. But I think it's a bit of a failure of imagination because it's not like people who live in these bubbles have zero contact with working class people. They do have some contact with working class people. So why don't they try to imagine what would happen to the person at the gas station or the, you know, the sort of the person who's working behind the counter at McDonald's or the person who's like a sanitation worker, what would they think about the kind of way I talk about things and the language I use? Would this really work with those people? Or maybe they would like roll their eyes and say, who is this moron? You know, so it would be great if people would talk to more normie people. I mean, people who are in this

bubble. I think that's a great idea, but I would at least advocate they just try to imagine, imagine what it would be like to talk in the way they normally talk about a lot of these issues to people they might encounter in their daily life, but haven't spent a lot of time talking to, because I think it's that thought experiment might be instructive for them. On the flip side of all this, what are the Democrats' strongest talking points? What are their strongest positions vis-a-vis Republicans going into 2024 in terms of substance? I mean, obviously, you know, the craziness, the deplorability of MAGA and Donald Trump, but are there other issues that are in in fact, really salient issues like Social Security, issues like income security? What are the issues that you think might actually be attractive to these normie working class voters? If you push aside all of these other issues like gender identification, etc., or, you know, the sense that that people look down on them? What works with them? Well, you mentioned Social Security and Medicare. I mean, that's obviously, these are enormously popular programs. And the extent

Republicans can be associated with attempting to, you know, sort of restrict them or dismantle them or cut them, that's obviously electoral gold for the Democrats. Now, it's not clear Republicans will necessarily cooperate along these lines, But Democrats have some ammunition there, a previous statement some of these candidates have made. You know, Trump, though, on the other hand, I mean, the biggest weapon against Trump is the fact that he's Trump. But Trump is also probably one of the people with the best record on defending Social Security and Medicare. He's been adamant about that. That was one of his attractions in 2016 to a lot of these voters he managed to win over.

But I think Democrats, you know, are on relatively secure ground in terms of defending some of these kinds of programs and defending the idea the government has a role to play in providing some income security for people and medical security for people that Republicans want to take that away from you. And that's bad. I think a little bit harder for them is trying to basically hawk their wares in terms of all the legislation that was passed, the Chips and Science Act, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure bill, because a lot of that hasn't really come online yet and there are reasons for that. But I think you certainly want to end up doing this or touting this has been built, that has been built, this factory is about to be built, that factory is about to be built. I mean, this is basically a good idea. The problem is that a lot of this is taking quite a bit of time, and it's taking quite a bit of time because essentially America and its regulatory and permitting system isn't set up well these days

to actually get stuff done fast. Instead, it's really slow and there's so many obstacles and there's so many choke points. My view is that Democrats should tout their achievements in some of these bills, that these are wise and useful investments that are going to pay off. But I think they'd also be well served by saying, by God, we're not going fast enough on this and we're going to press the accelerator on this and get a lot of barriers out of the way. And we can't let a set of weird regulations and permitting problems prevent us from building high speed, high voltage transmission lines. It can't prevent us from building bridges. It can't prevent a fab factory from being built. It can't prevent America from building things again. I mean, let's make America, you know, sort of a really dynamic,

forward looking economy. Let's unleash, Let's unleash the productive forces of America. And we realize, we Democrats realize, trying to talk for them, that it's not just about spending money. It's about unleashing the productive forces of America and the creativity of the American people. And we're going to do that. We hear you, that it's not enough just to spend money. You want to see stuff accomplished.

It's your phrase, right? The abundance agenda? Right. The abundance agenda. Emphasize that you are in favor of prosperity and abundance as opposed to the 1970s message that we need to learn to live with less, that you're going to shrink the world. At some point, progressives have to say, no, we want to keep growing the economy. We want there to be abundance. We want there to be prosperity. We want there to be prosperity. So let's go back to your seminal work that you wrote with John Judas about the emerging Democratic majority, which seemed to suggest, and I'm simplifying and I apologize, that

demography was destiny. And a lot of Democrats, I think, became complacent about the idea that there was this emerging electorate out there that would inevitably deliver them victories, that at some point, you know, young people and women and African-Americans and Latino voters were all going to be reliable Democratic voters. So it's just sort of, you can wait a lot of this out. Everything is going to be fine because this demographic wave was coming. So is demography destiny? And if not, what is going wrong? I'm sorry to ask a very broad question. Absolutely. Demography is not destiny. And that was not our point in the book, though. I think that that was a widely appreciated takeaway from it. I mean, people tend to bowdlerize one's work i think

and they tend to hear what they want to hear and one thing they they really wanted to hear and they liked it is hey basically the way the country is changing is like really in our favor and the longer it goes the better off we'll be and we just need to get these people out to the polls that was a very nice thing for people to hear but i think one thing that complicated it is, you know, how are you going to prevent slippage among groups that are declining, like the white working class? How can you maintain enough support among those voters that could sort of neutralize whatever effect there might be from a changing mix of voters that was in your favor? And secondly, and very importantly, and we're seeing this obtained now, it's just a mathematical fact that,

for example, you know, if there are more Hispanics over time, the benefit to the Democrats can be canceled out by Hispanics voting for Democrats by a smaller margin. In other words, it's two forces that kind of cancel each other out. And I think Democrats have not been cognizant of that, that these two forces, the potential, the moving away from the Democrats on the part of an unfriendly constituency, and the diminution of democratic advantages among a growing and sympathetic constituency between them, they can actually completely cancel out or more the effects of a changing mix of voters that's in your favor. So I think that's what people didn't understand

about demography is destiny. I mean, not only is it too much of a simplistic way of approaching politics, but it doesn't even make any sense logically and mathematically. There's too many things wrong with it. And I think Democrats are now in a situation where that should be a lot clearer to them. And they should realize we in fact need to rectify both of these problems. We need to get more working class, white working class voters, and we have to take care about the fact we're now losing working class voters who are not white or Hispanic or Asian, to some extent, even black. We have to get back to being the party of the ordinary American and the working class,

broadly speaking. And we can't just be the party of the good people and, you know, sort of liberal non-white voters or something, right? I mean, there's got to be an approach to America that is based on the actually existing American electorate and not rely on some fantasy about how demographic forces over time are just going to be this wave that overwhelms all opposition. So that's my wrap on that. I mean, I never believed demography is destiny, but I think it should be even clearer to people now that that's not the case. Okay, so in the few minutes we have left, give me the pitch for what you're doing with the liberal patriot, because I'm really interested

in seeing what you're doing. You're going to be featuring twice the amount of coverage of American politics and policy. You're going to have a regular column from a former Ohio congressman and Senate candidate, Tim Ryan. That's right. Dispatches from the heartland. You have an afternoon news roundup, and you also just have a long list of contributors that does remind us that, in fact, although they may not be that visible, that there are these progressive centrists out there. There are people and you're giving them a voice. So just tell me a little bit about why people should sign up for the Liberal Patriot. What you're going to be doing there? You know, the Liberal Patriot started out as just the four of us, myself, John Halpin, Peter

Jewell, and Brian Katoulas, kind of running this sub stack out of our back pocket, trying to write once a week, each of us. And gradually it developed the readership and we got some support. And now we're attempting to really, as you say, provide an outlet for a discussion center for lots of people in the progressive center of American politics, people in the center-right, people in the center-left, people who are independent, who would basically try to deal with the actual political and policy problems America faces without any dogma and any sort of super-partisan approach from either the Republicans or the Democrats. So, you know, I'll continue to write a column every week, as will John Halpin and Peter Jewell and Brian Koutoulis will do something on foreign policy. We're going to bring in a lot of other people to contribute to our discussion.

Like today, we had something from Tim Bardock, who works at the Upjohn Institute on how policy can help distress places in the United States. And that's a huge, important issue politically and just for our society, that there's so many places that are being left behind. It's not really the case that simply by having big, massive federal programs, you're going to be able to help the distressed places and the left behind communities in the country.

So that's an important discussion to have. And we're going to have many other contributors, Lane Kamark, Bill Galston, Moussa El-Gharbi, John Judas. There's a whole long list of people. And we're going to bring in more. We're going to try to encourage people to publish on our platform and have discussions about the important issues, again, outside of the sort of fog of the partisanship of both parties. And we're going to be doing some survey research. We're going to do five big surveys a year to try to get at some of these issues that are roiling the American electorate and really understand what's going on with that. We're going to do some policy projects. We're going to probably have, eventually we'll probably have a podcast. But most of all,

we're just really going to ramp up the amount of material that we put out and that sort of helped drive this discussion forward. And you know what you know, sort of helped drive this discussion forward. And you know what, Charlie, best of all, it's free, free. So you can go to the Liberal Patriot right now and sign up for free and you will get all of our stuff on a regular basis. And wait, there's more. We even put out a digest every day of important stories that have hit the news and important developments in the country, giving a summary of what's going on and TLP's take on the whole thing and why it's important. So, you know, there's just sort of a wealth, a plethora of content that is available to you at a mere tap of the keyboard. So I implore, I beg, I beseech your listeners to sign up for the Liberal

Patriot. Oh, and I would encourage that. I'm very, very much looking forward to this. Rui Teixeira, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for having me, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again.

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.