Hastebin

Welcome everyone

Simon Rosenberg, Opium Chronicles

Um, you know, have a what's going to be an interesting event today

I thought this is going to be just Stuart Stevens and I reflecting on the amazing election we had last week

Um, but we have other things to talk about today

Welcome, Stuart

Thanks for joining me today

Great, great to be here, man

What the going on with these Democrats

Huh

I want to start by doing the the obligatory

We had a great election last week

It was one of our best elections we've had in a long time

Certainly since 2020, maybe 2018

There was a clear message of repudiation of Trump

There was really no, you know, sometimes, Stuart, elections are complicated and they send nuance messages

This one was not complicated

This sent a clear and rousing uh message of repudiation against this uh against Trump and his rancid regime

Um and then here we are a week later uh in a different place and you know we had a big win Tuesday

We did not have a big win last night uh when eight Democratic senators made a decision to join with the Republicans to reopen the government against really the wishes of the American people frankly and most of the Democratic party

But here we are and um do you do you want me to take the first stab or do you want to I mean is this like one of these things where they're trying to cover the spread and win by too much

I I think listen I um I I I think that we have to take what they're saying at face value that they believe they were doing the right thing and that they were protecting tens of millions of Americans from harm from Trump

And I think that part of in in our Chamberlain Yeah

Yeah

I understand

And I said, you know, the sentiment is correct, the analysis is incorrect

I disagree with it

Um, and they um, you know, I I think this was a mistake

And I think it was a mistake because there are two lessons that we have to always learn from our battles against autocrats, which is that if you appease, if you give in, they take more

It just it's an incentive

They see you as as weak

Um, and and the second one is that, you know, I think that in some ways, you know, in in the Hobian community this morning, I had a second point, but I'm forgetting

But let me get to what I was going to say anyway, is that I'm a little like everybody, I think a little frazzled today

I was expecting to have kind of a calm, joyous, celebratory victory lap week uh from our election

Not really working out that way

But I think the other thing that hap you know that's come up in our conversation at Hopium today is that you know was this always the outcome and and going to was it this was was this always going to be the outcome once Schumer and Jeff decided I think courageously to take this on back at the end of September early October and I think the answer to that is no because I don't I don't buy the idea that the likely scenario here is that Trump would start shooting the hostages

I mean, it was always a possibility, but also Donald Trump is a deal guy

You know, he's negotiating deals with foreign leaders all over the world

He seems uninterested in negotiating to, you know, to help the American people and to help our democracy

And I think that part of what motivated these the gang of eight yesterday to take their action was the sense of increasing harm that was happening and they wanted to protect the American people from harm

I don't I think this was a shortterm I don't agree with the decision as you pointed out, but I also think this is this was being done out of a virtuous sense and not one of that capitulation

But I I I do think that Stuart, going back to something you and I have discussed a lot in our regular conversations, the Democratic Party is still in a confused place about strong and weak

Yeah

and and you know and about strong leader weak leader kind of stuff in our politics

It's it's just too secondary to how we look at politics every day where it's primary for Trump and the Republicans

And you know this has also got to be I think a big lesson coming out of what happened in the last few days

Yeah

Look, um I think a couple of things

One, I think it's fair to say that Donald Trump will always have a higher pain threshold when it comes to other people because he basically doesn't care, right

I mean, if you said to Donald Trump, you know, in 16, you'll get to be president, but you have to offer up one of your kids as tribute

His only response would have been, could I pick the kid

Right

Which one

Yeah

Which one

Um, and I I agree with you that I think this is well-intentioned

Um, and ultimately I, you know, I always go back to this back in my political consulting days

In two months, will it matter

Um, and I think that the larger trends that we saw on Tuesday, last Tuesday, were will dominate this moment that you had, you know, it sort of goes back to what is your theory of the 24 election

Republicans announced that this was a realignment election and that there this was going to be a before time and an after time

Well, that always seemed ridiculous to me

Uh Trump's coalition in 20 was 84% 85% white

It dropped to 84% white

And it was an election that a challenger should have won and did win

That's not an endorsement

And so if you go back to just compare the exit polls for the Virginia governor's race to the exit polls in the uh presidential race, you know, you you're back to the black lieutenant governor candidate got 7% of the black vote

That's exactly the same that Barry Goldwater got in 1964

So that's about as flat a line as you can get

Um, you had Hispanics supporting a Republican dropping to 32%

Which really should be no surprise

You know, in Bush where we really worked at this, we got it up to 42, but then with McCain, it went back down to like 32

And it wasn't like McCain was out there saying they're a bunch of rapists and we're going to deport their asses

Um, and uh, Asian-Americans, back to 70%

So, um, I think and winning young men Um so you know I I think that the ugliness of what's happening in the country is very does reach people does resonate with people probably particularly younger voters and I think the fact that nothing has gotten better

I mean his one issue that he's winning on was immigration and he's losing on immigration because they overplayed their hand

So, you know, like Haley Barber used to say, at a certain point in politics, it's good to be with something people like

And, you know, I really don't know what Republicans are for that they like, except, you know, you shouldn't have transgendered athletes in the podiums, which is not an international winning issue

Yeah

Look, I let me try to give my summary here of this moment in in twofold

One is that and I agree with everything you just said

I think number one is that um the elections went way beyond anything that we could have anticipated

I mean, you know, seeing 20 point margin wins in Pennsylvania and in Maine uh and in Georgia and in California on these statewide ballot initiatives and various elections was extraordinary

I mean, you just don't see 20 point margins in competitive states

And these are places that the Republicans fought

It wasn't like they just gave up

I mean, these were these were contested races where Democrats had enormous margins

We had enormous margins in New Jersey and in Virginia

And the margins here really matters to me as somebody who's been doing this is that this wasn't just a win

It was a route

It was a clear repudiation

It was a legitimate blue wave that washed all across the country

And we all know to your point that if you game this out over the next 12 months, the likely scenario now heading into the midterms is that something like this is replicated next year just based on historic trend lines when you have this kind of definitive movement

And as I've talked about how in the in the generic ballot, we've moved seven to eight points since last year

In the Gallup party ID, we've moved 12

you now see Senate races that are the the reach Senate races for us that we need to win uh the Senate and flip the Senate

In Alaska, we're up in Ohio

We're up in Maine

We're up

Um in Iowa, we don't have a candidate there, but our gubernatorial candidate is up

In Texas, you know, our candidates are within margin of error in competitive races

And all of a sudden, you see the evidence of this shifting landscape, you know, of it moving 7 to 12 points

you can now see it in the state-based polling for 2026

And so this is a cycle of opportunity for us

But I think the second thing, Stuart, I'll throw out there, and this is something I've been arguing since the summer, is that the shutdown was really only a piece of the battle over the budget and Trump's agenda

And now the Republicans have to with one of the smallest uh congressional majorities in American history where they can only lose two votes in the House and three votes in the Senate

They have to now defend the indefensible

They have to go into these bud these final budget negotiations to get us to a budget next year

And they have to defend the tariffs potentially

They have to defend the health care cuts

They're going to have to defend the increases in electricity prices because the the subsidy cuts to the clean energy clean energy subsidy cuts

They're going to have to defend this domestic police force that Trump and the tripling of the ICE budget

There is a lot in this final budget that is going to be very difficult for the Republicans to defend

And I think that one of the recommendations that I've been making is that once the government is reopened and checks start flowing again and SNAP benefits are there and the air traffic controllers go back to work, we need to make it very very clear about what we are not going to vote for at the end of the year and that because in essence I think we should attempt to to repeal the entire big ugly bill

That thing only passed with 50 votes in the Senate

They need 60 on all those same many of those same things

And I think we should make it clear that we're not going to give them those votes

And this would be a way for the gang of eight to redeem themselves, right

To show that they're not just appeasers and capitulators, but that they're they're doing there's a virtue to their their fight

Um, and I think what how much of that we can get in this budget negotiation or then in next year's budget negotiations or when we come back into power in 2027, we've got a clear set of things that we want to do

We should talk to the American people about it

Here are the things we want, right

Roll back the tariffs, fully fund ACA and Medicaid, you know, make sure that we're funding our allies in Europe and Ukraine and not Putin

That we're aligned with, you know, our allies and not Putin

that we are um you know we're not going to triple the budget of ICE

We need to draw a line in the sand now on what we're not going to vote for

Our Senate Democrats are not going to vote for and have let them continue to make the case for things that they can't really defend because I think they have two options now as a party

They either defend the indefensible and run on the most unpopular agenda in modern American history, one that's pulling much lower than he is frankly, or they start course correcting

And we began to see this desire for course correcting. 13 Republicans have called for the House Republicans to negotiate in the ACA subsidies

We just voted three times last week to repeal the Trump's terrible tariffs

And so they're aware that this agenda is unsellable to the unsellable to the American people and we have to keep pushing on both fronts, right

which is that we got to make them eat it

Because I think one of the reasons we had such a good election is that Schumer and Jeff by picking this fight made the major issues in our country about the harms they were doing to America

It wasn't about process stuff or anything else

It was about healthc care cuts and people's lives getting worse

There was this massive repudiation

We need to keep all that in the news, but we also now, I think, have to show a greater willingness to be resolute about what we're just not going to support in the upcoming budget negotiations

Look, I I couldn't agree more

You know, if I ran the Democratic party, if you what I would suggest is that they could take a pace in a contract with America and have a very specific, relatively short list of this is what you're going to get, which is is just a version of what you're saying

Yeah, that I would say you're going to get a tax on people who make over, pick a number, $10 million a year, whatever

Uh I would say that you're going to cut off all funding uh for the executive branch

I would say that I would say we're going to nationalize Starlink

We're going to nationalize SpaceX

And I would have these things out there that are big, exciting to people

um and say this is I I I want something I'm going to get here, you know

And to me, it's time for like a little trash talk

This is good

Like, you know, we won, you lost, we're better, this is why we're right, you're wrong, you're you're got routed

And so, you know, you combine that with one of the things that just really strikes me about the Republican party is who do they have out there who's not just loses losing them supporters every time they go on

I mean, they have Stephen Miller who is like a cartoon character

You have, you know, Christy Gnome

You have JD Vance who, I mean, if his own family is speaking to him at the end of this, it'll be astounding

I mean, the way that he attacks immigrants and the way he says you shouldn't like people who speak another language who move next door, like like maybe your in-laws, his in-laws, like really JD, I don't think they're that bad

I kind of like to meet them

I bet they're interesting

Um, and Trump and who who's out there

Who is their appealing figure

Um whereas, you know, I think both of these women who are elected governor are tremendously appealing

I think their backgrounds are very uh important

It goes back to claiming a national security edge

Um so, you know, it's it's you need a a combination of a messenger and message

And it seems to me that the advantage goes to the Democrats on both

Uh and I just hope they get it together

Whereas Schumer is not a plus

I mean, nobody looks at Schumor and says,"Great, I want that." I mean, it's just where he is in his career

It's probably who he always was

He was more of an inside player

Yeah

I don't think they react horribly to it if you're just It's just sort of wallpaper, you know

Um, and he has this Senate process talk

Uh, so you know, I would be out there trying to put all these other faces out there for the Democratic party and there's a bunch of them and they're really appealing from Cheers to Yeah

Well, governor of Virginia and New Jersey

Yeah

Look, I mean, I I think it's a great perspective, Stuart, that, you know, getting beyond the sort of the anger and the frustration of the last 24 hours to, you know, what I tried to do in my post today is to sort of level set on where we were and and I, you know, went through the polling, you know, the polling data showing Trump, you know, incredibly unpopular, his agenda even more so

I think the thing that is also going to start to become a much bigger topic of discussion is his clear physical decline and and that is you know become impossible to ignore

I mean the media is doing the best that it can to ignore it but you know him falling asleep for 20 minutes in the middle of a live event at his own desk you know that took place on Thursday you know was kind of an incredible moment

I mean, an unprecedented moment in our in modern American history to have, you know, he's sitting at the Resolute desk with a camera on him and he's asleep for 20 minutes

And, you know, and so I think that's going to become an issue

And I also think we we for all of the the obvious anger and frustration at the Democratic party that has played out over the last few months, the data about relative strength of the two parties over the last few months has moved dramatically towards us

I mean, not just in party ID and in the generic ballot where we're now substantially ahead of where we were a year ago, but we've now seen in virtually every poll Democrats have an advantage on the economy, which has was not been true, was certainly not true in 2024

I went back and looked, Trump beat us on the economy by seven points in the election last year

Um, and and I think that, you know, we are um structurally things are moving in our direction

And I also think you're absolutely right

I mean, if you look at our top 20 to 30 leaders to compare them to the other side, you know, they got nothing

I mean, JD Vance would have to shave his beard if he was in the military, right

Like, I'm still, you know, it's so funny that Hegath has waged a war on facial hair

Vance and obesity

Trump, his own two guys, wouldn't be able to make it in in the Hexath military

And so I do think that as we get through this I I just I want to come back to one kind of very foundational understanding that I have at the moment which is that you know we have we we have more power than we understand

We are still struggling to sort of step into our own power in this moment

But I think the real test of this moment and and our lessons that we take away, you know, from it because I remember the second lesson I was going to talk about now, which is that I do think that one of the reasons we did so well in the election as the American people saw us fighting for them, right

and that and that we now need to be fighting really hard over the next few months when the Republicans now have to come back again and get seven of our votes, you know, for any final budget that passes and and let's if they can't do that and we hit an impass again and they want to get rid of the filibuster, you notice they haven't wanted to get rid of the filibuster and they and the overt reason they've said is because when we come back into power, we would use it maliciously

But the real reason is then they have to own their own budget and pass it with their own votes, which I they barely were able to do on the big ugly bill

They only got to 50 on the big ugly

This thing is going to be far uglier the end of year final omnibus that's going to come and I don't know that they can pass their own budget with their own supporters given their low margins

And so I think they we have them in a much uh weaker place than I think is the conventional wisdom

And if I can sort of riff off of your give you my riff of the riff you went on earlier

You know we have to get up every day remembering that Trump is weak

He's not strong

He's losing

He's not winning

He's a failure

He's not a success

He's a villain

Not a hero

And and that we have to and he's I call him a big blubbery baby man and anything but a strong man

But we have to recognize that our job in part every day is to pull the curtain back from the wizard to remind the country that this orange emperor has no clothes

What an ugly sight that is

But it is critical that we recognize that the bubble is piercing

This bubble of strength is piercing

And I'll give you one other example, Stuart, of this, right

And this is something you'll appreciate

So, you know, I've been waging this war against these red wave pollsters for the last few years

So in New Jersey, the Red Waiverss came in and showed the race dead even

She won by 13 points

There were seven different Yeah

seven Seven different pollsters in the final 10 days with polls showing the race one or two points

They were off by more than 10 points, which as you know means either they can't poll or these were fake polls, right

And so those seven pollsters now have been also and a few others nationally have been consistently pumping out these polls showing Trump up six in job approval, up four in job approval, up, you know, even

So, there were a series of these national polls that Republicans were seeing that were telling them that everything was okay

That even though we know in the independent polling that bottom has fallen out on Trump's approval rating, these fake polls have been instrumental in in keeping Trump's congressional coalition together

Well, guess what happened

Emerson after the election dropped a poll showing Trump going from minus3 to minus 8

You had another one of their pollsters, you know, after the election moving from plus4 Trump to minus5 Trump

And all of a sudden, these red wave pollsters, what I call the wie, the blankie for Donald Trump and the Republicans, are now starting to show a more accurate window into where he is, which is that he's a despised and unpopular figure with an even more unpopular agenda

And this is a very important dynamic because it will start to loosen the already loosened hold that he has over Congress, you know, in these coming consequential fights

You know, let's see what happens

Yeah

And so anyway, I throw that out there

No, it's a really good point

People aren't talking about that

Um, you know, one one of the things I wish the Democratic party do is stop talking about the Democratic Party

It's like comics don't talk about how funny they are

They just tell jokes

You know, NBA sinners don't say, you know, I'm really tall

You like know that and you see it in action

And that's how you know, you've been in these presidential races and sometimes, you know, you're losing a primary

It's like nothing

You can't talk your way out of it

You just got to win the next primary

So, you know, they didn't nobody voted, I think, for the any a governor's candidate in any of these states, any statewide candidates to help save the Democratic party

They voted because they liked that person

and they voted because they didn't like the other one

They voted because they liked what they were talking about

And I think that just expecting anybody really to have very strong feelings about any party now is uh it's just sort of unrealistic

It's sort of an an outdated language

You know, it it it's just a classic case where I think society has kind of moved on and we have these things and we're going to have them for a long time and but it it uh they are who the people who represent them

That's who they are and they are what you're talking about

Um, so I don't know, you know, and and all of these polls, if if I was doing them to try to guide a candidate or party, you know, I I would ask a special question

Did Donald Trump lose a free and fair election in 20

And if you say no, I would throw you out of the poll because it just pollutes the sample because there's nothing that you can say to those voters that is going to mean anything

I mean it would be the equivalent of you know having a discussion about 911 and you go okay do you think it was an inside job if you say yes there's nothing you're gonna say like you know what so I think that these numbers get very I think Trump's numbers are actually worse than they look because you know what percent of those voters think that Trump won I mean they just live in another world

Um, and there's no equivalent on the on the uh center left side of that

Um, so look, I I you know, you have to I think it's always useful in these things to if you were sitting in the White House, painful as I thought is, what would you do

It's an interesting question because you know change the subject admit change to what though right I mean I I I don't know you know they were talking about making crime this huge issue I I I just I crime is always a difficult issue that if people aren't fearful you know and and I don't know um crime Listen, crime and immigration is Willie Horton, right

I mean, it's still the same kind of exploitation, racial fear

It's the core kind of, you know, the the comfortable place for Trump and even the modern Republican party to go

It manifests itself differently every two years

It has different ways that it appears and manifests

But I I think this point you're making about what do they do is really really important because when you look at polling now, you know, Trump's in the low 40s, right

He's down, you know, somewhere in the low 40s

His disapproval is up in the high 50s, but when you look at the major issues that people are voting on or the issues that really matter, he is consistently now in the low to mid30s

Yeah

So it means that essentially twothirds of the country is not rallying behind his major stuff

It's much bigger than Yes

than than his approval rating

And the problem for the Republican candidates is they have to run on that agenda next year

And Republicans just ran on that agenda all over the country and failed miserably

And I think the second thing, Stuart, and I'd love your reflection on this a little bit, is as somebody on the Republican side, is that if you're a Republican candidate in 2026, you just watched the leader of your party basically throw every 2025 candidate completely under the bus, um, didn't campaign for them, didn't spend a dime of his $500 million in his political account for any of these candidates, did things to actually actively make it harder for them to win, like the government shutdown and the cancelling of the the tunnel into New Jersey

And you're looking around, you're like, "This guy doesn't give a about me in my race

He actually this redistricting they did in Texas has cost a bunch of Republicans in California now their seats

If they do, if we continue to redistrict, they're going to be other Republican House members who will now be basically their political careers will be over

It's going to be interesting to see how they approach voting with Trump over the next 12 months given that, you know, their political careers are now over

And I'm just wondering if you could comment on as somebody who's worked in the House and Senate races, what it means by Trump sort of delivering such a clear signal that he didn't really give a about any of the Republican candidates running in 2025

Well, you know, I mean, it used to be in the olden days, like 11 years ago, um that it uh certainly all all parties, Republican parties would would allow you to disagree like I don't I don't agree with the president on this

Um and you you could say that and you know, in in Bush world, Bush would just shrug

He didn't care

You know, he was you know what

He's like, "Okay, uh you know, I'm gonna go for a run." Um it and but you can't can you do that in Trump world and I think the answer is no

Um and I think that that is part of uh the manifestations of the party becoming an extremist movement versus a party

A political party by definition embraces a lot of different views

It it if it's a national party it has to

And you know, it wasn't that long ago that there were more Americans living under a pro-choice Republican governor than one who was against abortion because you had California, you had New York, you had Pennsylvania, you had Massachusetts

Um, and they were all pro-choice governors of one variation of another

Um, and now of course you that would be impossible

you couldn't win a primary

Um, and I think it's just the you have a party that has room for Andy Brashier and Mandami

That's that's a healthy party, I think

Um, and I don't see that uh in in the Republican party or the the ability to do it

Um maybe after they all get shellacked in 26 they'll do it leading up to the as a primary starts the day after that race

But I don't know

I mean I I I I think it's the Fouian bargain that the Republican party shook

And what people forget is Mesosphles not only doesn't take your soul, he doesn't deliver

You don't get what you thought

Um, and I mean, just think about this

This is just blows my mind

Think about this

The vice president of the United States, you had this sort of storm over these uh youngish, not they were not boys, Republicans or girls, Republicans who had this kind of Nazi love group chat room, right

Somehow the vice president of the United States thought he ought to go out and defend that

like just think of people working for him sitting in his office and he goes, "Look, guys, um I'm gonna go out and defend the Nazis." I don't know, man

Is that really like a smart idea

But he did it because he thought it would help him with the party because it would prove that he will be more transgressive than anyone else

There will be no enemies to my right

And if it means embracing a Nazi, so what

Nazis, dozens, dozens of Nazis

Nazis

Um, and I think it, you know, I mean, you look at this whole storm with the Heritage Foundation, which really, I mean, the Heritage Foundation has been corrupt for a long time

It's really not been important in Republican politics

I mean, I did all these Republican presidential campaigns

It Nobody ever cared about the Heritage Foundation

It was this sort of self perpetuating fundraising machine that paid a bunch of people a bunch of money and no one cared

But the idea that they still are seen as sort of an intellectual element of the Republican party and they have Tucker Carlson, you know, I mean, I don't know if you watch this guy, you know, he's got 911 truther films out there

He's broadcasting from Moscow

He's from having, you know, hanging out with Holocaust denying Nazis

and they go out and defend him

I mean, just like that is crazy

And you know, to the pimp people pay extent people pay attention to that

It's like no, I mean, where in America do you do that

You go to the reddest part of America

Go to I don't know the reddest state in Mississippi County in Mississippi and you wouldn't have somebody do that

He was like running for board of supervisors

You're not going to go out there and defend Nazis

Um, so I just think it just shows how lost they are

Um, and you know, the Republican party has never come to grips since in the '9s

You crime, welfare, taxes, Soviet Union

Okay

Crime went down, taxes went down

Clinton ended welfare as we know it, and we won the Cold War

So this was a dominant question we talked about in the 2000 Bush campaign

What does that mean

So we come up with compassionate conservatism which was never defined because of 911

And really the party has never redefined what that means

So you know McCain ran on sort of not being George Bush and on his own personality but there really wasn't a a policy framework there

And when Mitt Romney ran, I have to say, I mean, we had Mitt had very sensible kind of mainstream conservative policy ideas, but it didn't capture anybody's imagination, you know, and a lot of Republican voters just didn't care and didn't show up

And it took Trump going out there waving the bloody shirt to get them to show up

So, you know, a normal party would be asking itself kind of some of the questions the Democratic Party asked when it went through the whole DLC thing, like what is it that we are

You know, we've lost these presidential races

What is it

And yet Trump stops that, right

Because a threshold to advancing the Republican party is to say what a fifth grader knows is not true, and that is that that Donald Trump lost the election

It's it's a real uh conundrum that they're in that I think they're going to be in until Trump is no longer with it

Well, and JD, to your point, I mean, JD has so associated himself with the most extreme elements of Trumpism without having Trump's charm and and all the things that Trump brings

I mean, he's a remarkably unappealing political figure

um you know and only won one election before

He had not proven him yeah barely proven himself over time to be an effective politician

He comes off much more as a podcaster than he does as an elected official, you know, and and a commentator than somebody to be taken seriously

And I think that that I'm appreciating a little bit today uh your reminder of just these kind of structural trend lines that are of their weakening of their do not have a strong foreign team in the future having you know are now having to run on and defend the wreckage of the Trump era potentially for decades um that will come and how we are going through in fits and starts our own you know generation ational turn

I mean, we Nancy Pelosy's retirement last week was another sign that we're leaving the era of the Clintons and the Pelosis and the um and the Biden, you know, the Biden world and a new Democratic party is being built

And I think Stuart that one of the things that makes this moment you know in this moment of darkness today but as we shake it off and look forward that you know we are we have the opportunity now to go build the next thing and that next thing has a very strong set of leaders that are going to be leading us forward

We have an agenda, you know, I call it the three-legged stool agenda, which is affordability, healthcare, and, you know, threats to democracy, no kings that are is very strong and unifying

I mean, there was a lot of similarity in how all Democrats ran all across the country

And it's important I think if I can just add one more piece to my democratic friends is that I think it would be fil for us to believe that affordability is the only path forward or healthcare is the only path forward

I think it's all three

And I'll give you an example

California

Yes

I mean we're going to have a higher turnout in this ballot initiative than we had in the 2022 midterms

And this ballot initiative in California was about one thing and it was about Trump, right

It was about, you know, his it was it was no kings

It was anti-Trumpism

Newsome's ads were all about the harms Trump was doing to the country

Um, you know, we saw the huge turnout in races across the country

I think that there's this sort of weird internal discussion in the Democratic party about how we can only do one thing at a time

But of I know it's a weird thing, Steuart

We can of course we can say three things at a time because it's more appealing to more voters by the way if you're talking about things that are their top concern, right

I mean it well we've talked about this even when we used to try to pretend to focus people like having jobs and education it never worked and there were only three networks or something, you know, you could people just don't that's not how your mind works

You don't like well I'm only interested in like you know what's something called and you know affordability is just a repackaging of are you better off now than you were four years ago

Exactly

I mean there's nothing new about the idea that of you know it's the economy stupid

There's nothing new about that

Um it's just a different language

It's like from you know coaches telling you to drink water to telling you to hydrate

Well, I I can I tell you my favorite my favorite kind of I I feel like our family, the pro-democracy movement doesn't really have a rallying cry, right

And yet, we don't have a single and we may never have a single one

will have a series, but No Kings has been sort of the approximate and most popular one

But Mikey Cheryl stumbled onto something the other night that I loved it, which is which I'm also nominating as a finalist in the in the uh in the rallying cry competition, which was the New Jersey motto, which is which I didn't know before is liberty and prosperity

And I really thought that that in a very simple formulation really spoke to this moment

It spoke to obviously a moment over 200 years ago when New Jersey became a state

But I also I'm nominating that in addition to no kings as my is my f is one of my faves here is liberty and prosperity because it speaks to the desire to have freedom but also putting us not on the side of just lowering costs but putting us on the side of creating opportunity for people

Yes

and and which is where we have to be very careful as Democrats to make sure that we're for lower cost and opportunity

These are not at odds with one another

They have to be it's a both end, right

Um and and I think that Mikey Cheryl's campaign and I had her come on a few times

She just relentlessly talked about the opportunities that America had given her and her family, her service to the country um in this aspirational, this kind of very patriotic, you know, uh love of countrybased optimism and and about the future

I do think that we there were important things happened in and and and I'll I just want to be clear about the way I'm saying just to put an exclamation point in this and Stuart I want you to weigh in is that um I think that I come away from last week and I talked about this in a C-SPAN interview I did a few days ago sort of incredibly happy at the diversity of our wins and I and I think we have to really embrace the rainbow as I call it

We have to recognize that diversity is our strength

We had candidates that were able to win big time in different places all across the country

Um and and we won in ballot initiatives

We won in, you know, in the special uh election in California

We won a statewide vote in Colorado about feeding poor people

We won uh you know, we had more votes in the Miami mayor's race

We could win the Miami's mayor's race for the first time in 30 years, depending on what happens in this runoff

The party showed itself to be strong and diverse and capable of winning all different types of elections all over the country by large margins

To me, that's the big story here is that, you know, there isn't one true path for us

that there are many paths and that that this debate about our future, this building of this next thing, it's a process that we should view as being really exciting and giving us an enormous opportunity to build something better than what we had as we transition from the old Democratic party to the next one

Yeah

Listen, I I think purity tests are the death of parties because ultimately they always ratchet up and you end up being the vice president of United States defending Nazis, right

And that's, you know, he hasn't even really gotten started

I mean, what what's he going to call for

Cats and dogs

Cats and dogs, you know, eating cats and dogs

Where where do you go after defending Nazis, you know, you know, go to some memorial service, you know, for the SS

you know, um, and all of this I I I don't think we talk enough about race because all of this is being driven by the Republican party's realization that the country is becoming a minority majority party, which means it's becoming a more diverse country

And you, all the Steven Millers in the world aren't going to change that

So they're trying to fight against that, not by embracing it, not by trying to reach out to other people, but by trying to curate the vote to increase the percentage of the voters that they have, which are mainly white voters, will vote for him

Y and um you know, I I I think that that's just a sign of how weak it is

Um yeah, and I just wanted one of those guys

you know, this idea that if Ezra Klein was doing this thing, you know, about this problem that Democrats had with rural voters, I I I just would say just point out that in Mississippi, the counties that Harris did the best were the most rural

And why is that

Because they're black counties

And when you you you don't let yourself fall into saying rural voters when you really mean non-oled educated white voters because Staten Island wasn't Trump's best burrow because it's more agricultural than Manhattan

It's because where there's more white people and more non-olucated white people

Um and I I just think just as Trump never won workingclass voters

He won white working-class voters

Yeah

which is just sort of an extension of what you're saying is don't underestimate your strength

Um so uh look I think I think that's a good way to end my friend, right

I mean what you know don't underestimate our strengths and don't under don't overestimate theirs, right

I mean is there two sides of one coin

I think you know that that question you always ask yourself at the end of every day in a campaign

Would you rather be you know me or them

I I'd rather be the Democrats now

I think they have a lot stronger hand to play here

I think it's a great way to end

Stuart, it's always a pleasure to be with you

I get to host you sometimes, you host me sometimes

Uh you make me laugh

Uh which is important in this crazy business that we're in

And thanks for a little levity on what's been a tough day, I think, for Democrats

But I think this kind of coldeyed assessment from people who've been around a little bit that, you know, we've had a little bit of bump

We've had a bump today, but you know, we're on the right path

This is really important and so thanks for spending time with us today and bringing your wisdom

See you everybody

Take care

Listen, if you like this, hit like, share with your friends, and the most important thing of all, let's just keep fighting

Keep fighting for our country, for our future, the American people

Uh we got a lot of work to do

Um but we've had we had a tremendous election last week

Let's keep that in our hearts as we move forward and go win this thing together

Thanks all.
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