The MeidasTouch Podcast - Rep. Janelle Bynum Shares Playbook for Dems Winning in Red States

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Democrats continuing to win elections against MAGA Republican candidate and Meiselas interviews Democratic Congresswoman Janelle Bynum on the playbook she used to flip her purple district to blue. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Discover the magic of Bad MGM Casino, where the excitement is always on deck. Pull up a seat and check out a wide variety of table games

with a live dealer. From roulette to blackjack, watch as a dealer hosts your table game and live chat with them throughout your experience to feel like you're actually at the casino. The excitement doesn't stop there. With over 3,000 games to choose from, including fan favorites like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz, and more. Make deposits instantly

to jump in on the fun and make same day withdrawals if you win. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. You don't want to miss out. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The midterms are getting closer than we think. And I think we have to really talk about how Democrats plan on flipping red congressional seats blue, how they plan on flipping red states and turning them blue. And we have to look at what's working across the country. And we do see things that are working. And so I think it's important we highlight people who are in these frontline districts who are winning. I want to remind everybody about our reporting last week about the mayoral election in

Omaha, Nebraska, where a Democrat, John Ewing Jr., defeated the longest serving Republican mayor incumbent in the United States. And it was a 20 point shift from the prior election held in 2021. So a 20 point shift where a Republican who had held that seat for 12 years, that mayoral seat for 12 years lost. I want to remind you of what John Ewing Jr. said when he won here. Let's play this clip quickly. Tonight, we embark on a new chapter. Yes! I am deeply honored and humbled to stand before you today as your mayor-elect. I think was important is that the Republican candidate went full MAGA and was talking about all these culture war issues and bathrooms and, and just all of these things.

And John Ewing jr. Was talking about potholes and medicine and healthcare and things that really mattered, you know, to his constituents, you know, there was a debate over this, this,

this horrible budget bill that the MAGA Republicans are trying to ram through. And this is a portion that kind of brings it home where there was a Congresswoman Fernandez wanted one of these MAGA Republican Congress members, Adam Smith, to just read the legislation they were pushing through at 1 a.m. And they were sneaking in all of these provisions like a way to do tax deductions or exemptions for tanning beds because, you know, they're all tanning themselves, you know, orange over there while taking away hospital beds. This is an important moment that I think really resonates with voters. Let's play this clip. So that the American public knows what this bill does. One of the little things that it does, would you please read page 901, line 20? I think it would be better if you read it.

Oh, he doesn't want to read it. I'll read it. I know the legislation, but I'm not going to be part of your little show here. It was a question if you would read it, so I'll ask Ranking Member Moore to read the text. This is in their bill. They don't want to read a line from their own bill. Ranking Member. I don't want to read the bill for you.

I'll help you out. I am testifying about this legislation. I'm not going to read the bill to you. Okay. This is amazing. Ms. Lager-Fernandez, shall I pass this back or shall I read it for you? No, no, why don't you just read it? Section 111106, repeal of excise tax on indoor tanning services. So they're going to repeal, they're repealing an excise tax on tanning beds.

Hey, so if you have a tanning bed, you get a little bit of a tax break. And if you need a hospital bed in rural America, I'm sorry, you're out of luck. Right. And I don't know where this particular provision came from. We do know that there are certain elected officials who appear to have a certain orange hue about them, that maybe they want to make sure that tanning beds get a little bit of special credit. But really, really, we are prioritizing tanning beds over hospital beds in rural America. So then we look to Oregon's fifth congressional district for, I think, one of the best roadmaps of how Democrats can flip seats. There you had Lori Chavez-Dreamer, a MAGA Republican who's now the labor secretary who actually hates labor. She's been a fraud her entire life, but she pretended that she was for labor.

You had the now Democratic Congresswoman Janelle Bynum, who had ran against her before, but was really able to effectively point out in this past election that Laurie Chavez deurimer did not care about the constituents. And Congresswoman Bynum's always focused on hospital beds, health care, Medicaid, focusing on issues that people really talk about. And she won. Lori Chavez-Durimer lost. Durimer then became the labor secretary and then admitted that she was against the proact, against the major thing for

labor. So I want to bring in Democratic Congresswoman Bynum to again, talk us through, we've had Congresswoman Bynum on before, but a few months back, what are you seeing now across the country? We're doing this interview late May-ish. What are you seeing, Congresswoman? Well, we're seeing Democrats take the fight. I'm doing it both on the East Coast and the West Coast. So in D.C., we're making sure we're standing up for Oregonians and Americans, making sure we're protesting in the well, making sure that we're bringing these issues of Medicaid, of pharmacies and drugs, and making sure that we're talking about how we center children in our policy. I'm someone that believes that Oregonians have told me they want to make sure they have the healthiest children,

they have the brightest future, that we're taking care of our seniors. I'm doing this on the East Coast and the West Coast. We've launched our Give Them Hell tour, 10 stops all throughout the summer. We've already started and people are giving us the material to take back to D.C. So what I love about your approach to politics is that I don't really view it that much as politics. I view it as I view it as people. And you highlight the stories of people in your district and across the country who are the victims, who are the targets of this MAGA cruelty. Like Rose, a first grader who you highlighted recently. Let's play this clip. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, this is Rose. She's seven years old in the first grade and she makes friends everywhere she goes. Rose was diagnosed with an ultra rare genetic syndrome when she was just three and a half and now uses a feeding tube and a wheelchair. Medicaid allows Rose to receive physical therapy.

And thanks to this therapy, she's starting to take steps. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, my Republican colleagues are working overtime to take Rose's health care away. It might be easy for people to strike through one number and write in another, take a little bit from here and there. But each of those numbers represents a person, a child like Rose, who will lose critical care so billionaires can have more money in their pockets. We cannot let them steal from our kids and our families. We will not. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker. I yield back.

And so, Congresswoman, when we talk about, you know, 1 a.m. and handing heads over Medicaid, we're talking about rows, aren't we? Yeah. You know, they're sacrificing rows and millions of roses for a trash budget that lines the pockets of billionaires. And oh, by the way, doesn't even lower the deficit. Trash, garbage in, garbage out, doesn't even protect our children. And I just can't understand it. There's also some sort of disconnect. $5,000 if you have a kid without even thinking about what it takes to support our children, making sure that every child in this country has a full belly when they get to school, making sure that our seniors are

cared for when they need medical care. It's there at a rural hospital, making sure that our seniors are cared for when they need medical care. It's there at a rural hospital, making sure that our parents can care for their children, that they have good, stable jobs and that they're not going to have the wool ripped out from underneath them. Like that is the essence of what we're fighting here. Trump and his cronies are going to go down hard in the midterms, guaranteed. You know, your district is a purple district in Oregon. I mean, it was held by a Republican for many years. Just two. We made sure of that. But that means that people for those years went into the ballot box, they saw a D and an R, and for whatever reason, they clicked the R one for those years. And fortunately, no more.

No more. But there are people who, what are you hearing from those people, though, right now, who went in that direction? Republican, ostensibly Republican voters, purple voters. Well, here's what people are telling me. Number one, they care about getting their social security benefits on time. And that wasn't a red issue or blue issue. That was just a green issue. They want to make sure that they can count on their government to deliver what it's supposed to and when it's supposed to. The issue with, you know, having the Republican candidate in this race was that she was lying to Oregonians about what her beliefs are and what she was going to defend. And we illuminated the fact that she wasn't really pro-labor.

She got to her nomination seat and started saying, oh, no, I don't remember. That's the problem. Wolf in sheep's clothing, trying to make you think that you're going to get X packaging, you get Y. And that's why this trash budget is so dangerous. That's why they're trying to do it in the middle of the night. That's why they're trying to rush it through in just a couple of days and hold everybody's time in their district hostage. That is why you attempt to push a trash budget through, because you know it's trash. It always started out as trash,

always will be trash, and will forever continue to be in history trash. Congresswoman Bynum, thanks as always for joining us. We're going to be following the tour. Where are the next stops? Oh, we're going to Albany, Lake Oswego. We're going to Bend. We're going all over the district. All right. We'll have Asen from our team following those town halls. We'll get some clips out of it as well. And I'm sure our audience wants to see that. Thank you, Congressman, for joining us. All right. Thanks. I hope to see everybody on the Give Them Hell Tour. Amazing. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's hit 5 million subscribers this month. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more.

Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com.