The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3646 - Trump is the GOP, When Democrats Used to Win the Heartland w/ Cory Haala

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland welcome Corey Haala, assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and author of "When Democrats Won the Heartland: Progressive Populism in the Age of Reagan" https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p089176 Watch the Majority Report live Monday–Friday at 12pm EST on YouTube or http://www.Majority.fm To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the US Senate or the House of Representatives. Today's Sponsors: • JUST COFFEE: Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code MAJORITY for 10% off your purchase! • ZOCDOC: Go to https://Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY and download the Zocdoc app to sign-up for FREE and book a top-rated doctor. 

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. The with Sam Cedar. It is Monday. May 18, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live.

steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Assistant Professor of History, the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and author of when Democrats won the heartland, progressive populism in the age of Reagan. Also on the program today, Trump claims the clock is ticking on an Iran deal as Iran starts a Bitcoin. backed insurance for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, the Trump regime is planting seeds for an attack on Cuba. And meanwhile, demanding Denmark allow more U.S. control of Greenland. Supreme Court rejects the challenge to the Biden-era Medicare drug price negotiation power. And Trump drops his IRS suit to facilitate a full.

full-on embezzlement scheme from the U.S. government. Driven by APEC, Thomas Massey's congressional primary is now the most expensive congressional primary in the history of this country, just followed by Jamal Bowman and Corey Bush's. What do these things have in common? Tomorrow, primaries into Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon. Pennsylvania. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy fails to make a runoff in his primary. FDA decides to open the floodgates for vaping products regardless of their safety, like literally, regardless of their safety.

Republicans struggling with the idea of a third reconciliation bill. That's the second reconciliation bill. Senate parliamentarian Nixon's, nicks is the billion dollars for the, the ballroom. Trump continues to crater in polls. Israel assaults the Samud flotilla,

bringing aid to Gaza in international waters and kidnaps the activists. Florida closing alligator Alcatraz after spending millions a day, DeSantis claims he's saving taxpayer money. And talks continue today as

New York experiences a strike shutting down the largest commuter rail in the United States. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is Sunday, Monday. Oh, look, who's back? I'm sort of back. You got to put me on the screen. We should say, Emma was ill last week. Yeah. And now I've gotten Brian sick of the peers. And Matt is also under the weather. But he's here to run the show. I was under the weather. Not on Friday, though. I was out on a secret mission that will be soon to be revealed. Can you announce it? No, I will wait for the thing to drop and then I'll announce it. Okay. So

keep your eyes on the internet. I went on another show to interview a politician. And the interview, I think, was quite interesting. So people should be on the lookout for that. Great. Folks should check that out. Keep your eyes and ears open. Brian is out today. is holding down the fort at probably, I think, probably close to like 25% here at 25%? Yeah, that's exactly what I would have said. I feel horrible. I feel horrible. Emma is typhoid, you know, doing her modern-day typhoid Mary in the office. My poor husband's just just getting over it now as well.

The chances of me not getting this. And so in my advanced age, too. This could be really dangerous. So sorry. Well, we'll see. I'm basically a weapon. A couple of things in the news today. Yesterday, there was a Louisiana.

Was it yesterday? Saturday. Saturday. Today's Monday. Right. Okay. Saturday, there was a primary in the state of Louisiana. And Senator Bill Cassidy, who was one of those Republicans who voted in favor of Donald Trump's impeachment,

one of those rare ones has now paid the price. And in a three or four-way primary, he came in third. So misses the runoff. Here he is, this was the day before that, right? I think it was the day of as the results are coming in, Bill Cassidy. Saturday. Yeah. By the way, yeah, primary on Saturday in Louisiana.

I mean, I guess it's better than a work day. It's better than a work day. That's great. But it's just interesting. Like New Jersey did that too where they were having their primaries on Thursdays. It's like we need to have a national day where there are elections that are designated and people can take time. Saturday, I think, is probably a better day. That way you get people who don't have to work.

But he on Saturday was on Fox News with Jason Chaffetz. Was Jason Chaffetz the one? Maybe I'm wrong about it. this, but who was the one who said, I can't face my, uh, my 14 year old daughter or something. I think that was him after, uh, talking about Trump. That's what I'm saying. This is after the, um, grab them by the, uh, the word controversy. Yeah, couldn't look his daughter in the face. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, seems like, uh, maybe, uh, he no longer talks to his daughter. I'm incredibly proud of that.

Chairman, Jason Jafetz, uh, you and I got to serve in the, in the Congress for a little while. Um, But my question for you is still about Donald Trump. I mean, knowing what you know now about the farce that was put forward to the American people and the Congress, knowing what you know now, would you still vote to actually convict Donald Trump of the charges that he was put up for? Reporters always love to ask that question. I'm a doctor. You give me all the information I can. I make a decision I move on.

I don't keep on going back. Oh, what happened five years ago? I'm thinking about what's going to happen five years. Now, with all due respect, you just talked about the stuff you've done for the last five years. You just touted everything you've done for the last five years. Why can't you answer that question? Did you or did you not? Hey, Jason, if I can finish.

I want you to answer that question. Would you or would you not actually vote to convict knowing what you know now? It's a simple question. Yeah, Jason, you may go back and flagellate yourself over decisions in the past. I do not. I move on. By the way, what I'm talking about is not just a, is not. not just the present, it is the future. By the way, the future also includes that if somebody

wants somebody working for the state of Louisiana, for the future not fixated on the past, then polls close at 8 o'clock tonight, get out there and vote. But by the way, I will continue to vote for the future of Louisiana, working well with President Trump and anyone else. I'm about the future. Oh, okay. He's doing the Don Draper. I only go forward. I don't think about that, you know, a 2021 impeachment trial at all, even though it's the thing that's killing my political career. Of course. Let me also just say this as a, someone who's watched politicians doing media hits for decades now professionally. If you have to use the words, by the way, three times

of the course of 90-second response, you are stumbling. First of all, it's amazing to me that he doesn't have a better answer by the end of this primary campaign. And it's also sort of like what's going on in his head? Does he feel like if he apologizes, he looks weak or he's just selling himself out? Because he's already sold himself out. I mean, I just don't understand like what hill he's dying on. He seems to resent the idea that he has to buy into what Chaffetz is selling about that. vote that it was phony.

Then come out and say, you know what? I thought the vote was appropriate because he's afraid to do that. But also, again, Jason Chafetz. Yeah. Days after the grab them by the P-word came out was like, I can't vote for this guy. I can't look at my daughter and know that I voted for this guy. And now, of course, whatever. I mean.

I mean, Lindsay Graham did the same thing. Remember when he was running against Trump in 2016, he called him an Islamophob and was saying how he was unfit. to lead the Republican Party and that we would lose over and over again and we would deserve it. That's what he was saying until you know, he found his new

man to suck up to. Donald Trump took his phone in number and gave it out to everyone. I don't know if you remember that. And on national... They're in a speech. But Lindsey Graham has learned his lesson. He has now been

curbed and healed. And here he is. Just like as if he's gone from Steppard Wive retraining. He asked you about the news overnight. Senator Bill Cassidy losing his primary in Louisiana. You worked closely with Senator Bill Cassidy on a range of different issues, including a plan to replace Obamacare. He of course voted to convict President Trump back in 2021 in the impeachment trial.

Now he's lost his seat. Are you glad that Senator Cassidy is no longer going to be your colleague, Senator? No, I like Bill. I thought he's a great senator, but he made a political decision. He tried to, he voted to impeach President Trump, which would have ruined his political life. He could never run for office again. Massey's on the ballot Tuesday. He votes against Trump all the time.

What's the headline? Trump's strong. Those who try to destroy Trump politically stand in the way of his agenda are going to lose. Bill made a decision. What would LBJ do? Is it natural for a politician to go after people who try to destroy their, their, their political life. So Bill Cassie's lost because he tried to destroy Trump.

Massey's going to lose because he's trying to destroy the agenda. You can disagree with President Trump, but if you try to destroy him, you're going to lose because this is the party of Donald Trump. So for all people who are wondering, is Lindsay Graham being blackmailed? Is he afraid that somebody's going to out him or is, you know, why is he doing it's because lindsay graham wants power over anything else he could the reason why he was able to do a 180 on don't trump is because he wants power over anything else and also in terms of long game he finally got what he's always wanted he got the the brass ring as it were

and it was an attack on a rent now it turns out to be a total unmitigated disaster But he wants further escalation. He doesn't want there to be any negotiations. So when is the better time to be as obsequious to Trump as possible? Although I feel like he keeps hitting new lows on that front. I do not think that there is a floor. Yeah. And God knows what he's doing in person.

I know. I mean, if we're watching what's happening in public, God knows what he's. I feel terribly for the doctor that has to work on his knees. Exactly. At that old age, being on your knees. that often? Meanwhile, let's turn to something else. There is a story out today that Donald Trump is dropping his suit against the IRS. He sued the IRS for $10 billion because an IRS contractor had leaked his tax returns back in years ago, maybe in the early 2019, 2020.

And so Trump sued the U.S. government, the IRS. The DOJ, headed by his former defense attorney, decided like, oh, well, we'll settle this. And the judge, who was about to kick the case out of court, said, well, I need to see the terms of any type of settlement by the 20th, since this is still an active lawsuit. So Trump today announced two days before that deadline. We're dropping the lawsuit. And the DOJ is supposedly going ahead with a deal with Trump to give him $1,776,000 for not to him personally, of course, but to a slush fund that he completely controls to dole out money to people. And that's just one of the thing. I mean, we had somebody on a week ago to go through all of Trump's corruption scandals.

And since then, you have this IRS thing, which is a $1.7 billion corruption embezzlement scheme, you have new, sir, dribs and drabs about Trump doing insider trading in the past three months for up to $750 million. Here is a caller into C-SPAN yesterday or Sunday, I guess. Let's go to Thomas now calling all the way in from Honolulu, Hawaii on the Republican line. Good morning, Thomas. You're on with us. Yes, yeah, good morning. Yeah, a national thought and then a local one. It's hard for me to say this, but I think if I can open up about it in public that it might help others.

I wanted to believe Trump was a real deal for a long time, even though I had doubts because I knew enough about his business history to think otherwise. But now I regret my support for him, and I should have known better. He's making it plain as day. He's a con man. A liar doesn't keep his promises. He's in office all for himself,

and he doesn't even try to hide his corruption anymore. So unless you get all your information from what I call the right-wing propaganda for profit disinformation media industrial complex. He's the worst president we've ever had and he's the most corrupt president we've ever had. I know it's hard. It took me a while to be able to say that. Very difficult when you commit yourself to believing in somebody. If you don't mind me interjecting, did you vote for Trump all three times in 2016, 2020, 2020, 2024? I'm sorry. I missed that. Say that again, please. Did you vote for President Trump all three times that he's run?

Yes. I considered a third party, and I considered even the Democrat, but I did in the end vote for him. And what do you feel, that's really interesting. What do you feel, or what was the straw that broke the camel's back this time around? Was it the war? I don't think it's one thing. It's been a cumulative process. And it's gotten so blatant now.

And he's just literally the things he's, you know, he's going to lower prices on day one. He was going to do this on day one. And only he could fix all this stuff. And now I understand how somebody like Adolf Hitler was able to brainwash millions of people. I never thought I'd see that again in my lifetime. But it's happened, right? I thought we got past that, but we don't learn from history. But we got to slow him down, make him accountable anyway.

can right now the only weapon is to vote for as many Democrats, whether you like them or not, just get some balance back into our system of checks and balances, right? We just, Congress is doing nothing to stop him. He has more power. He wants to be a king or letting him get away with it. We fought a revolutionary war against England because we didn't want to be ruled by an arbitrary king like Trump wants to be. But I'll stop there for that. leaving maga.org for anybody who's interested, it gives you a community of people who used to be

supporters, but who also are having doubts now. So you, and being part of this community is a big part of the appeal, I think, right? So that last part's really interesting. I mean, I can't speak to how that website actually functions, but, you know, we talk about the MAGA world and Trump fandom as a cult for a reason. There are religious overtones. It is constructed in like the cult of personality in a way that also mirrors like other thought negating hierarchical parts of our society like mega churches and televangelist preachers who preach prosperity gospel. And you have people who don't have any money but they're giving what they can to their local church. Trump is that kind of guy.

And so how do you get people out of cult? How do you get people out of kind of anti-social thinking in general? It's you develop a community for them. So, I mean, that's part of it. It's like you don't want people to feel shame if they're coming to this realization. But he talks about in that clip, like, you know, how we have to learn from our history. You voted for Trump three times in a row, bro. So, I mean, I guess better than never.

Long-term history, as opposed to short-term history. I mean, I am happy to hear. voices like this and I have absolutely no doubt that it is helpful in some way. It may not be helpful in a huge way, but it's definitely helpful in some way. Anything that's helpful in any way, I consider, you know, if it doesn't cost much, to be good. But I mean, frankly, at the end of the day, this is not how things get fixed. You cannot rely on MAGA. Trump voters to change. Yeah.

It's just not going to happen in the numbers that are going to be relevant. It may be relevant in the context of like this midterm, maybe. But ultimately, it's going to have to come from Democrats providing something different so that people actually get engaged and are voting proactively. for something as opposed to against something because we've seen it just go back and forth. And the idea that, you know, Donald Trump, who has literally enriched himself to the tune of multiple billions of dollars in 15 months, finally, there's a couple of people who shake off from that. That's not the, that is not the winning formula.

That is helpful. It's great. Kudos and whatnot. But Democrats have to start offering something that is in delivering something that is going to fundamentally alter the way that people perceive the Democratic Party and perceive government. To that end, in a moment we're going to be speaking to Corey Halle, assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and author of when Democrats won the heartland, progressive populism in the age of Reagan. First, a word from our sponsor, life can feel like a big puzzle. Did you know that? I did.

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stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to Zocdoc.com slash majority to find and instantly book a doctor you love today. That's ZOC, doc, dot com slash majority. Z OC, D-O-C dot com slash majority. Thanks, Doc, doc, for sponsoring this message. And we're going to take quick break when we come back. Corey Hala, when Democrats won the heartland, progressive populism in the age of Reagan. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. Pleasure to welcome to the program, Corey Hala, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, and author of his first, when Democrats won the heartland, progressive populism in the age of Reagan. and Corey, welcome to the program.

I really appreciated this book because I was just coming into sort of like full-blown political consciousness around the time in which this book starts. I actually, and one of the few people I've ever met who read Walter Mondale's autobiography. But that was after he won the nomination. And I think, like, you know, coming back and really having a better, a clearer vision of who these folks were within the context of things is really helpful. And of course, the idea is it's a great time to have a vision of this, particularly we have Zoran Mamdani in New York, but we have Graham Platner in Maine, which I think is a lot

more sort of like analogous to what could revive in the Midwest. So let's just start with like, give us the the 1980s art maybe hopefully in the near future, in the way that the 1920s and 1910s in that area were to the 19 early 80s. Yeah, and there's a ton of economic collapse, especially here in the upper Midwest run based out of Minnesota. It's not just the kind of the deindustrialization of the 1970s and into the 80s, the auto plants closing, right, meatpacking plants, struggling,

steel mining up on Minnesota's iron range struggling. There's also a crisis in agriculture, too, that family farms are going bankrupt, are being foreclosed upon it at historic rates. And this is, you know, fuel inputs are rising. The price of commodities are falling. And so Main Street's hurting across the Midwest and the 80s, but it presents a real big opportunity for Democrats

for the left in the 1980s to build power back. And it comes out of times in the late 70s of just, I mean, calamitous defeats across the board. In 1978 and 1980, in the five states that I'd study in this book, in 1978, there were nine out of the ten U.S. Senate seats were held by Democrats just in this region alone. By the end of 1980s elections, it's down to just two. And so that's, I mean, a huge drop-off for Democrats, but a huge opportunity for them to rebuild and rebuild along the kinds of politics that you reference, right? The politics of Zora and Mamdani, of Graham Platner,

in the era that I'm studying of Tom Harkin and Iowa, of Paul Wellstone in Minnesota, of Russ Feingold, Wisconsin, and others. And we should say it's Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota are the other states. What was it about the 70s, just to get a sense? What was it that flip the script during that time? Because, I mean, there's a, again, we had a populism throughout that area. in the early 20th century. And certainly, like, you know, places like Wisconsin were probably, like, on the zeitgeist or the forefront of socialism in this country in many respects,

short of maybe like the Lower East Side in the early 1900s. And so, but what happened in the 70s? You know, in the 70s, there are a few different phenomenon. One is that American agriculture is doing. relatively well, especially in the rural Midwest, so not just Wisconsin and Minnesota, but Iowa and North Dakota, South Dakota. The Secretary of Agriculture in the 70s, Earl Butts is encouraging farmers to plant fens row to fens row and then just tells farmers either get big or get out, right? Either expand your operations, you know, take on more loans, take on debt, and get

bigger or just give up farming altogether. And farmers follow that. They do that because America's exporting a lot of grain over to the Soviet Union and internationally in the 70s. And then when Jimmy Carter embargoes grain on the Soviet Union in 1980 following the invasion of Afghanistan, the rugs pulled out from under these farmers. There goes the market. Commodity prices fall by 50%. And there's really that kind of struggle. It's as the Midwest has evolved, has diversified both in terms of its economy, but in terms

of its people as well, cities like Milwaukee become kind of a target, a coded language, right? That's where people of color live. Minneapolis is becoming, you know, more African-American, has already has a native. population and become stigmatized, you know, based on those kinds of, those kinds of politics and identities. And so there is that, that reaction toward urban areas that really means that by the late 70s, the voters are ripe to be picked off by the kinds of single issue campaigns that bring Ronald Reagan and bring the new right to power, whether it's, you know, anti-tax, like Proposition 13 in California, those kinds of revolts in the Midwest, anti-abortion

politics, anti-feminist and LGBTQ politics, lots of single issue voting in both 78 and 80 that dragged Democrats down. They're seen tied into those kinds of interests and less tied into the average, you know, the kinds of kitchen table or the bread and butter economics that really are important. So just if I, if I hear you correctly, there was a lot of, there was both like sort of, the crest of the wave was the undercutting of farmers that took place. because they had been told to design their businesses in such a way that they were very susceptible to that grain embargo. But simultaneously, there was growing resent for the social emancipation movements of the late 60s, early 70s.

Absolutely. I mean, there's, there's, you know, racial reactionary kind of politics. There's the anti-feminist kind of politics. And this all kind of swirls together in this idea that government is maybe not too big, but it's too big in the wrong places. It's helping the wrong people or it's not doing enough to look out for for average Americans. And that often does get coded as very kind of white working class politics. You know, we obsess in the 80s about the Reagan Democrats, right, of McComb County, Michigan. There's a lot of that kind of obsession, but the goal of these progressive populists I talk about in the 80s is not to just say, well, let's win back only the white working class and end it there. It's to say, no, we need to build a broader kind of politics, a multiracial coalition, but that's based in economic issues first and foremost. the system is stacked against you, the working people, and that there is a kind of a kind of

democratic politics that can be receptive to that, because like you mentioned with Wisconsin and Milwaukee in particular, having its sewer socialist traditions in the early 1900s, no, there's a politics we can call back and we can bring back into the conversation here that's going to be really productive and going to, you know, adapted for those changes in the region. There's a kind of politics that's going to overall be more helpful here to the Democratic Party. So who who is the first to sort of like, I guess, introduce that notion and find success with the populism? And I should also say, and I was familiar with a lot of stuff that Jim Hightower said. But in your book, I can't remember who was in the first chapter very early on,

there's a quote from Jim Hightower, which I found really actually a great way of, of providing a distinction between what he called liberals and a progressive populace was liberals will react, and I can't remember the exact thing that he was referencing, but liberals will react to a situation where, like, let's say a Tyson plant closure by saying we've got to retrain the workers, whereas progressives will react by shaping the market structure that allows a Tyson plant to close in that situation just because they want to squeeze more profits out. And I thought that was, I mean, that is really the difference between neoliberalism and progressivism, if people want a shorthand, that's really it right there.

One relies on the market, and we will help facilitate the market. The other says, we're going to restructure the market in such a way that's fair for other people. But who is the first to sort of, like, within those five states to sort of, introduce this notion? Well, so in terms of politicians, the one who's at the forefront of this is Tom Harkin of Iowa, a congressman from a very rural, often conservative coded district in Southwest Iowa. And Harkin, I had a good fortune to actually find just his reading list. Like he had a bibliography of all these old populist historians. And it was him reading it and kind of studying populace and saying, oh, no, we can bring this back in, right? Here are the kinds of

policies that we ought to be running on. But they also intersected with a a whole lot of activists at the grassroots level, folks who are traveling out to the Black Hills for survival gatherings in 1980 and talking with native and environmental activists. There were activists in St. Paul, Minnesota, who just set up like a kind of a radical newspaper and called it the Farmer Labor Leader, sorry, called the Minnesota leader, which was a direct callback to the old third party farmer labor party here in Minnesota. So there are people at the grassroots just kind of saying this stuff and saying, hey, we're experiencing economic conditions as bad as the 1930s, and we're experiencing a government that's not listening to us.

We need to organize at the grassroots bring back these kinds of cooperative commonwealth, these kinds of socialist principles, repurpose them for the 80s and bring them in. And there are folks like Tom Harkin who saw that happening and earnestly believed in that and kind of identified with those politics. There are others like Paul Wellstone in Minnesota, who was just a professor at Carlton College, who's in, who eventually intersects with the Minnesota leader and starts an education committee where they're traveling around to farmers who are fighting a power line in central Minnesota working with welfare mothers down in southeastern Minnesota and says yep the farmer labor

tradition is great and let's bring this back in and well still runs for state auditor in 1982 in Minnesota and says I'm running as a progressive populist and after me was a moment oh he learned this from somewhere right and let's find let's track where that was and it's really cool to see in the book I hope he didn't even know how to do math I mean that's a but that's an exaggeration, but he basically said, like, I don't know how to balance these books, but I'll hire somebody to do that. Yeah, he said, I'll hire someone and beyond that. We should have a nuclear freeze, and we should have a moratorium on farm foreclosures, and people are looking around going, dude, you're running for auditor. Like, that's not what the, that's not what the role is.

That's not what the job says, and he says, well, they're all tied together. And by the way, I want to have a state bank here in Minnesota, the way that our neighbors up in North Dakota have a state bank, which is when you mentioned Zoran Mundani, right? That idea that we can't have city-owned grocery stores, that's socialism. And I have a moment where I look around and think, well, North Dakota's got a state-owned bank and a state-owned grain-mellon elevator. Should we talk about the socialism in those states as well, right? The ways in which government structured in those states to help the little guy out.

And these are traditions, right? You mentioned Graham Platner and that Dan Osborne in Nebraska right now is running on similar kinds of ideas of restructuring those markets and using government to set up institutions, if necessary to make sure that little people aren't, you know, little folks aren't falling through the cracks in the process. So we have Harkin, and he goes on to be senator. He ran for president in 92. He was my pick in 92, but that didn't work out. And we've got Feingold, also one of my favorite senators. So it was like the interesting thing about Feingold is he was very much an institutionalist. along in addition to the the populism. I mean, that was a, and I think that was a very sort of like,

it was a tough thing to maintain for him, I think particularly towards the end of his run. But let's get to the end of these guys, a career. Paul Wellstone, of course, died in a plane crash in what must have been around year 2000. or 2002, yep, yep. And, but let's also talk about Dashel and Conrad and Dorgan. Dashel went on to be the speaker of the house.

Was it? No, I'm sorry, that's Gaphart. He wanted a majority leader. But speak to those three guys and like how much they were all in on, you know, where they were on these relative spectrums. And then we'll talk about why this is. died out, it seems like. Yeah, so they, I mean, they all kind of come of age and really are breaking into the Senate in the mid-1980s, the peak of the farm crisis here in the Midwest.

Dashel wins his Senate seat for the first time in 86. And that's the same year that Kent Conrad up in North Dakota beats the guy, Mark Andrews, who's a first-term incumbent senator, but he is very much like a Reagan Republican. He's well-liked in North Dakota. And Conrad, upset of all upsets, beats him. And they come of age in which they're trying to pass bills that are going to improve the farm economy. They're going to impose some government controls on American agriculture. They're also very opposed to free trade, in particular opposed to the North American Free Trade Agreement,

which eventually signed in 90, signed 92, 93. And this is the kind of politics they're advocating for, that main streets in the Midwest are going to hurt. And it's not just the farmer is going to hurt. It's going to be the Main Street Bank. It's going to be the school, the hospital in town, as people, start dying and they're underfunded as people start moving away because they can't afford to live here. The school's going to get co-opt out. It's those kinds of politics that they're espousing when they break into Congress. And with somebody like Feingold, they trust that Congress

can actually pass the bills and create the establishments that are going to fix those sorts of things. They very much believe earnestly that setting up commissions, regulatory bodies that are going to oversee and going to prevent corporate mergers and kind of consolidation, you know, by breaking up those big businesses by breaking up those trusts as their populist forebears did, they're going to be able to kind of return some of that control and return some of that autonomy to the local level. It doesn't wind up happening, and you said, we'll get into the decline, so I don't want to spoil that, but they do have a very clear policy vision that they're pushing for at the Senate level, but they're running up against those kinds of neoliberals,

the new Democrats or new liberals of Congress in the late 80s and early 90s, who either have the numbers or who make deals with Republicans that oftentimes undercut a very specific vision they're pushing out of the Midwest. How does Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition fit into this as well? Like, you know, we talk a lot on this show about outside, inside politics and how you have to play the outside game, but also play the inside game. It's interesting. I think Alexandria Cosvio-Cortez right now is maybe melding those two better than any

politician we've seen in a while. But where did, you know, reflecting on Jesse Jackson's movement, how does that fit into this dynamic? It's central to one of the, I think my favorite chapters to write was chapter eight where I kind of deal with the rise of Jackson in the 88 Democratic, Democratic race. And one of the kind of outside, inside games that's really interesting to it is that he very much has that role of outsider, but it's, it is a very authentic kind of politics where he's at a farmhouse in Greenfield, Iowa, which is, I mean, you know, not a nowhere town, but an out-of-the-way town.

He sets up his campaign headquarters, not in Des Moines, but in Greenfield, this town of 3,000 people, because he's been working with a farm activist named Dixon Terry there for four years. He has these longstanding relationships that are built, and in a way is able to kind of build this movement of people who feel like they're on the outside, who feel like they're not being heard in politics. And it's interesting to see the ways in which some of these Midwestern liberal senators are pulled into, or at least adjacent to that kind of orbit. Harkin doesn't endorse Jackson Dating because he's already sponsoring a bill with Dick Gephart, the Harkin Gephardt Farm Policy Reform Act.

But others like Paul Wellstone actually is the campaign manager for Jackson in Minnesota and runs this kind of outsider politics that you see when Wellstone gets into office, that he's very much in that Rainbow Coalition kind of idea, that it's not that we need to move the tent to the center. It's that we need to be expanding the tent and looking for new folks who can come into. to this kind of coalition, folks who feel marginalized on the outside because of race, because of religion, because of sexuality, because the economic system is just built in a way that they're not included.

That idea of being on the outside was something that a whole lot of people, it turned out, could gravitate toward, not necessarily all within the Jackson campaign, because others like Gephard and Paul Simon were seen as credible alternatives in 88. But it was this kind of politics, certainly of the Jackson campaign, that really informs that that rise of the Midwestern progressive populist head of cohort in the ladies. I just want to go back to when these guys get into the Senate and the House because in 1980, Democrats get wiped out, or I should say by 82, they get wiped out. I mean, in the Senate, obviously with Reagan, in 84, I wanted to call it.

college in that year and my government professors were talking about a realignment was happening. And so these guys, a lot of these populists are cutting against the trend in terms of what's happening electorally. So you would think that the, well, if there was a neutral body that got to sort of like oversee where Democrats should go in 19, 88, let's say, or in 92, they'd step back and they'd go, okay, there's something changing in the country. There's a backlash to the emancipation movements. There is a new sort of like deprivation that is coming as off-shoring starts to happen. And everybody was talking about the Japanese coming in, buying up everything at that time. And this sense that America may be beginning its dissent in some way.

Reagan came in and said to everybody, it's a new morning in America, and all as well, we're going to return back to that notion where we were, you know, completely without peer in the world or we thought we were or whatever it is. You would think that body, if they were aliens who came down who were in charge of like the Democratic Party, would say, oh, we should look and see what these guys are doing because there's obviously something happening with the Reagan Democrats, but these guys are speaking to those or. people in some fashion. And that's not what happened. There was one moment where you're talking about Tony Podesta being out, I think it was out in California or Cohello as well, seeing what's going on here and having no response other than Democrats to start going after this corporate money. And that's really what winds up happening throughout this story in this era. It's Tony Cuallo. It's Chuck Manit as the chair of the DNC saying no, we're going to bring in corporate money. we're going to bring in donations because the issue was we were out fundraised and our ground

game was beaten by direct mail and all this kinds of this really targeted voter contact. Well, the way that we do that is by raising a ton of money in order to, in order to go reach voters. And it turns into a first of a failed telethon in 1983. And then a, yeah, just outright raking in those corporate donations. It's folks like Cuolo. It's folks like Rahm Emanuel, who cuts his teeth kind of learning under Cuello how to, how to attract this corporate money. And the folks in the Midwest are showing, right? Hey, there's a different way. You can be organizing people instead,

that there is this kind of grassroots campaign that there's not a substitute for of making these authentic kinds of connections. But that's where the difference does come in. And with Harkin and 92 as well, Harkin, for all the good campaigning he did in Iowa and all the people kind of politics he was good at, it just didn't scale up on a national level.

Clinton as well had that kind of Tyson, that Walmart money behind him too. And it was tough to break through with that kind of a message if you didn't have, you know, an expert ground game, if you didn't have the kind of the kind of message that really appealed on a national level. Clinton also was just like, you know, one of those type of politicians, if you were to design them in a petri dish, you would basically, you wouldn't necessarily, I mean, his politics, he projected a populism to the extent that he needed. And certainly, he was just a good politician in a way

that Harkin was not as quite as charismatic as a guy like Clinton. But how much of like, I mean, because I, how much of like the Coelho and Emmanuel and the sort of move to the neoliberal bent, you know, the DLC, the Democratic Leadership Council that Clinton was the first president or chair of, I think. And this move towards corporate money, and I know this is outside sort of like your portfolio here, but how much of that was we need to do this to win elections, and how much of it was this is how much of it was this is how we want to win elections? like that fine line between, you know, my experience has been that folks who are positioned as the so-called moderates or centrists in these situations, the one who are supposedly the big tent, because Harkin and Feingold and certainly like Dorgan and Conrad and sometimes they took votes I wasn't necessarily so excited about. but they were actually the ones who were reaching across a wide range of voters.

These guys, I think, just they use the idea of electability and the tactics associated with it as a cover for these are our people. Yeah, it's that electability is the exact right word, and especially in 88 with Jackson that comes up in 92, again with Clinton. You know, he goes on Arsenio and he grins, he plays the sax, and it just is this very, this very positive kind of image that, oh, well, this is electable because nobody finds him terribly disagreeable, never mind all the marijuana and the infidelity and everything else. It's, there's that kind of raw rage that comes out of the Midwest at points in the 80s that really does lead to, lead to these concerns about electability that, and I think that the

taking money is certainly a way at which they, you know, the DLC and the DCCC, see themselves absolutely as we, these are our people. This is how we just restructure them, you know, not restructure, but this is how we retrain and just kind of deal with the changes in the market. Globalization is coming. There's nothing we can do about it. Okay, well, time to teach the people in the cornfields

to grow something else. Time to teach the people in the plant that's being closed. Well, here's how we're going to retrain you for a high-tech job now. Never mind that the people are saying this is actively going to hurt us, that they're saying this is going to hurt our communities. We don't want to relocate. that there are environmental reasons that small family farming, small agriculture

is better than large corporate agriculture. When the money's coming in and when there are politicians at the top who are able to just put on a, you know, kind of a happy face and say, look, we're going to all get through this and navigate this together. It does crowd out some of the more strident voices in the Midwest who had reason to be angry, right?

They had reason to believe that this is the economic system that's coming to screw them over again. You know, but that's where the idea that there's money behind them, that there's this kind of corporate money and this corporate and this Democratic National Committee structure that's saying, look, we want the, we want the firm hands on the wheel, we want these established superdelegant politicians who come around in 84. We want them to be kind of running the show. It does set up a structure in which these voices are crowded out very intentionally because they're looking for a way in which they can show

that they're the mature party and that they're able to kind of handle politics as Americans want to see them. And then let's just, just, briefly touch on ducaucus uh... because that was like uh... i was pretty emotionally invested in that to caucus was from massachusetts and uh... he specifically it was sort of fascinating because in many respects he had the eastern version of those politics but it seemed to me this is my perspective at the time and and granted you know

this is i was a kid uh... It was very young. Well, it was 20. I don't have 22. But nevertheless, my perspective on him is that he was told by all of his, I think at the time I thought Harvard advisors that he should hide from his populism and just be a technocrat. And I sort of felt like I got very disillusioned because I was like,

if a guy who shovels his own walk when it snows loses to George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, there's something really fundamentally wrong. Like the people around him, but, but tell me the more sophisticated version of what actually went on. Well, no, I mean, there are criticisms certainly of Dukakis and the kind of high-tech economy that he was building around Route 128 in, in the Boston area, right, the Willie Geisner, her wonderful scholarship on kind of the new high-tech liberals that come out of this era. The Atari Democrats. The It was a politics that didn't necessarily play across the rest of the country. It's certainly on face value, right?

Like you note, it's something that should have been able to play. But he makes a really early gaffin that that Iowans still. And I should you know, he, he, you bring up Michael Dukakis and they will still say, oh, blueberries and Belgian endive. And that was an early answer that they gave to how to solve the farm crisis. Well, if they don't, you know, if corn and soybeans aren't working, they can try growing blueberries in Belgian endive. And imagine suggesting that to a farmer.

That was the kind of the retraining comment that really goes over like a lead balloon in the Midwest. And he's working to make up some of that. He's working to kind of change some of that narrative here. But, you know, Jesse Jackson goes into states like Michigan and beats him in the 88 caucuses. Dukakis has a really good organization on the ground in Minnesota and Wisconsin and really makes it a point to beat Paul Simon and beat Jackson there. But it is something where Dukakis comes out of the primary or, sorry, comes out to the DNC with, it's like an 18-point lead in the polls,

and where that DNC is just a big, it's a big roast of HW Bush, right? You know, you have High Tower up on the stage making fun of him, you know, sniffing a fruity white wine spritzer while the rest of us are going down to the 7-11 for a six-pack in the slim gym. You have Ann Richards, of Texas is, again, a good Democratic populist governor, going up and saying, you know, poor George can't help, and he was born with a silver foot in his mouth. I mean, they're on the front foot, and it is.

you can almost see the moment in 2024 was a really, with Tim Walls, especially, was a really scary moment of kind of reliving that, of you could see when the consultants got a hold of them, right? And all of a sudden, we need to pivot to being strong on defense. We need to be strong and tough on crime. The questions where, you know, he's being asked about if his wife, kid, he was raped and murdered in a debate, the ways in which he has put on the back foot all of a sudden is having to, no, no, we need to appeal to that center,

rather than offering a new vision and trying to rebuild a new coalition, you can see the ways in which ducaucus is reined in and the way in which lee atwater and the republican party around george wushbush go all in on that willie horton kind of strategy of the race baiting absolutely willie horton was a guy who was convicted of uh i can't remember what crime it was but was out on parole it wasn't necessarily even a ducaucas ducaus had any um real influence over that decision or even the law, I think that allowed that, but they really played that up,

the Willie Horton thing. I do remember that debate when he was asked that question. And he was a little robotic in the way that he responded. And then, of course, they needed to put him into a tank so that he could project that he was good in defense. And the tank helmet

was like three quarters of the size of his entire body. And it made him look rather silly. So what is the lesson, though? I mean, are there politicians in the Midwest? I mean, I think like, you know,

I don't know if Platner derives any inspiration from these politicians. Surely, I imagine, he's familiar with a guy like Fine Gold and Harkin and Wellstone. I mean, these are pretty sort of like a big and recent figures in many respects in our politics. But where does this lead? I mean, like, do you see green shoots in the same way that you might have if you were in 19805 in Iowa and looking back?

Absolutely. There's reason, I think, for optimism within the Midwest, within this even rural democratic kind of tradition. Dan Osborne, who I mentioned earlier, running as an independent for Senate in Nebraska, certainly is talking about a lot of these issues. He was just joined by a candidate running at the congressional level in Nebraska, Austin Allman, who's an independent journalist, who's outright calling himself a populist in this Midwestern kind of tradition. So those are folks to watch for, and one of the things that after these Midwestern senators either lose or pass away that I mentioned in the conclusion is that a lot of their traditions live on.

There's what's called Fighting Bob Fest and Madison that lasts over 20 years. Folks coming together talking about Robert LaFalach, the progressive Republican from Wisconsin, talking about that kind of progressive populist tradition that he's running on. The Harkin steak fry right in Indianola, Iowa is a regular event for Democratic politicians to come and do that kind of retail politic and glad-handed. And in Minnesota, after Wellstone's death, there's what his campaign manager sticks around and sets up, what becomes known as the Wellstone Academy, which is a training kind of seminar for for candidates who want to run for office and learn how to, in their words, win the Wellstone way. And it's teaching the kind of Wellstone triangle that they talked about of electoral politics,

right, of how to run, how to be a good candidate, how to work with grassroots actors and grassroots groups, but then also how, you know, what kinds of progressive policies you can espouse that are not only effective but are really authentic on the campaign trail. What's actually going to restructure these systems to help folks out. And one of the early trainers within this, you go through Wellstrom Academy, you learn how to be a trainer. One of the early trainers for that was Peggy Flanagan,

Anishinaabe woman who's currently lieutenant governor of Minnesota, who's running now for Senate in a primary in Minnesota that kind of recalls some of that kind of establishment, more liberal, kind of establishment liberal, Angie Craig versus Flanagan, who is within relatively that progressive populist lane here in Minnesota, she trained very famously after the 2024 elections we learned. She trained Tim Walls, who went through Wellstone Academy when he was running for Congress in 2006 in Minnesota.

Others like Katie Hobbs in Arizona, Dave Lobesack, the former congressman from Iowa, went through this trajectory. And so there's really, there's a lane there in that tradition that Flanagan might be keeping alive, that Osborne and Allman are certainly running on in Nebraska. But one of the points of the book to is it takes time to build these kinds of things. I don't know 2026 how quickly and how authentically you can get those sorts of things on the ground and get those things embedded within communities. It took building trust within communities, assuring folks that you're actually going to go and take on some of these systems because they've been burned. And they've been burned in the past or have reasons to believe the Democratic Party isn't looking out for or isn't concerned with them.

Think about the, you know, the famous Chuck Schumer line from 2016 now that's being bandied about for every, you know, what are we losing in rural areas? we pick up to. And he says, right, you can repeat that in Wisconsin, in Ohio, other states. Well, the problem is, is that that kind of attitude loses Democrats, you know, the entirety of North Dakota, of South Dakota, of Iowa. And it takes time to really rebuild that in authentic manners. It's curious to see whether folks like Rob Sand running for governor in Iowa can occupy that kind of lane and then can, if elected, you know, if they win, can actually authentically kind of pass and push for those kinds of policies on a statewide level, too.

It's going to be particularly fascinating, I think, to watch Minnesota because you have between the Floyd protests and now, of course, the anti-ice organization. I mean, it goes significantly beyond protests. I mean, they're actually sort of like a mechanism. That still exists. Those networks still exist. The politics don't necessarily align with a progressive populism. But I bet a significant portion of that does. And it's really a question of like, who's going to tap into that?

You mentioned Flanagan. Flanagan's up as far as I can tell. But in some instance, double digits in the polls, we'll see. I don't know her politics too, too well. But Schumer endorsed the other candidate, just to bring it back to Schumer. So that is. Electability is why they're throwing around that you can't run a native woman in outstate Minnesota and win. And that's part of the Schumer kind of the Schumer endorsement, I guess, is running again.

that kind of, you know, running on that kind of logic. Well, well, we'll see about whether that logic holds up. It's failed in a lot of places, indeed. But it's a fascinating story, assistant professor of history, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, and the author of When Democrats Won the Heartland Progressive Populism in the Age of Reagan, Corey Halle, thanks so much for your time. Today, we'll link that book at Majority.com and in the podcast. podcast and YouTube description. Thanks again.

Thanks, Sam. Thanks, thanks for having me. All right, folks, quick break. We're going to head into the fun half of the program. Oh, Kowalski from Nebraska weighs in. Please let your guests know that I think this interview is in the running for the best of the year. Whoa. Kowalski putting his finger on the scale for some prairie populism. Yep.

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majority you get 10% off. I now have permission to show. share what is coming. Hold on for one second. Watch this space, but really... Emma has got an announcement. She is returning to her roots. Play the hit the song again.

I've decided that prediction markets are the way to go, and I'm leaving to move, to go back to TYT. No. So the majority report, why did I say the majority? Report. That's the name of the show. And I am over-stimulated. So my dear

friend Matt Bernstein, if you aren't listening to a bit fruity, his show, which I'm on fairly frequently, you really should be. He's just a great progressive, and he had Abdul Al-Sayyad on recently. And so Mallory McMorrow decided that, you know,

it would, or Matt Bernstein invited her on. They were in talks to have Mallory McMorrell on the show. To be fair. Yes, to be fair. They asked for topics. You may recall if you were super online that this was a little bit of a controversy last week. And Matt emailed them back and said health care and foreign policy and they canceled the interview.

But Matt has a large social media following and he decided to call this out very politely. And they came back and decided, okay, we will still do the interview. It was not revealed to her until the recording began that I was going to be joining the interview. And that is exactly what happened. So if you want to check it out, it got a little tense at some moments. I'm not sure she was thrilled with me in particular. You can check out the Matt Bernstein's A Bit Fruitie channel and his podcast, but I also think we're going to be cross-posting it here on this channel.

It's in the next hour or so. It should be out. To be fair, that does seem to be something Matt Bernstein does, right? Like when Ashley St. Clair was on, he had a third there as well. No, he regularly has a co-host. He just, you know, I mean, didn't reveal that it was me until the recording began, which we decided on that tactic together. So what I love about Matt is that just because he's like always so perfectly quaffed

and put together and has this like very kind of calming, voice. People constantly underestimate how much of a dog he is, but no, he, he, he, he, he took it seriously and we got a really interesting interview with Mallory McMorro that you should check out. She didn't say, oh, Emma Viglin, what a fucking nightmare. She did not. She did not, but she did. There was one moment where she said, I like the way you phrased the question, Matt, less so Emma. Well, you got to go to phraseology school. Folks, Oh, Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian Media universe? Yeah, new Left Reckoning to come up tomorrow.

We got Ron Placonon talking about a few things. We're going to be talking to him in a couple hours. So check that out tomorrow, patreon.com, so it's Left Reckoning. See you in the fun half. Wait, wait, we're not off yet. Yes, I know. But your camera. Left is bad.

Jamie and I may have a disagreement. Yeah, you can't just say whatever you want about people just because you're rich. I have an absolute right to mock them on YouTube. their buggy whipping like he's the boss. I am not your employer. You know, I'm tired of the negativity. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you.

You're nervous. You're a little bit upset. You're riled up. Yeah, maybe you should rethink your defense of that, you're fucking idiots. We're just going to get rid of you. All right. But dude. Dude.

Dude. Dude. Dude. You want to smoke this joint? Yes. Do you feel like you are a dinosaur? It's a good shit. Exactly.

I'm happy now. It's a win, win, win. Uh, hell yeah. Now, listen to me. Two, three, four, five times. 847, 906, 501, four, five, seven. Two, 38, 56, 27. One half, five, eights, three point nine billion.

Wow. He's the ultimate math, nerd. Don't you see? Why don't you get a real job instead of stewing vitriol and hatred your left wing limb off? Everybody's taking their dumb juice today. Come on, Sammy. Dance, dance, dance.

Ooh. First post-coital scene with a woman. I'm hoping to add more moves to my repertoire. All I have is the dip and the swirl. Fine, we can double-diff. Yes, this is a perfect moment. No. Wait, what?

You make under a million dollars a year. You're scum. You're nothing. Excuse me? Fuck you. You fucking liberal elite. I think you belong in jail. Thank you for saying that, Sam.

You're a horrible, despicable person. All right, going to take a quick break. I want to take a moment to talk to some of the libertarians out there. Take whatever vehicle you want to drive to the library. What you're talking about is jibber jabs. Classic. I'm feeling more chill already. Donald Trump can kiss all of our asses.

Hey, Sam, hey, Andy. Are you guys ready to do some evil? Hitler was such an idiot. You think I'm going to be a Nazi? Agree. No. Death to America. Do.

Yes. Wow. Wow, that's weird. No way. Unbelievable. This guy's got a really good hook. Throw our hands. Wow.

But, Sam, I've got to get off. No worries. I want to just flesh this out a little bit. I mean, look, it's a free speech issue if you don't like me. Hey, hey, hey, hey, shut up. Thank you for calling into the majority report. Sam will be with you shortly.