Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Folks, hi, this is Dick Flax, joined by my partner in crime here on Talking Strategy, Making History, Daraka Larimore Hall. And we have today the special pleasure of talking with Sam Rosenthal. Sam, you've been very active as a staff member of Roots Action and I think other organizations for several years in the struggle to try to see how we can remake the Democratic Party. That's the broad way to define what you're doing, and you should say a little more about your background. But I want to make note of the fact that early in this situation with Biden, you were leading an effort to get him to step down, and now you have a new Step down movement you're trying to build.
The name Chuck comes up with that one. So why don't you tell us what, what the history is that you think is relevant for our conversation today and then we will do it.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Sure. Well, thanks for having me. First of all, very longtime listener. Happy to be on the show.
I'm not sure I can speak for Gen Z. I sort of think of myself as more, more of a millennial than a Gen Zer. But I'll, I'll try to consolidate what I know of both generations, but. Yeah, that's right, that's right. The background you describe is exactly right. I'm the political director now at Roots Action.
Prior to that, I was the political director at Our Revolution. They're both kind of left leaning progressive groups that are active within the Democratic Party and still believe in Democratic Party reform as a viable strategy for the left, which we can talk a lot more about, I'm sure. Outside of my kind of salaried life, I've been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America for a long time. First in New York, where I lived for a decade and a half, and then now in D.C. where I live with my family. And over the years, I've been in different leadership positions, both within NYC DSA and also national dsa, doing electoral work for DSA at a national level. So I have a lot of time logged as a DSAer and I've seen a lot of different iterations of the organization and been through many of the same kind of debates that are playing out today with the organization, but also with the broader left.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: So what prompted us to invite you today is the fact that Roots Action, and you were much part of this, has issued its own autopsy of the 2024 election.
And that's not only a necessary and important piece of work in itself, but especially given that the DNC has suppressed its autopsy.
We need an autopsy. And I'd rather have yours than theirs, probably anyway.
So maybe the best way for us to start, but it's going to be a springboard because so much has happened just in the last few days, really, that adds to the story that we want to get into. But how would you summarize the point of the Roots Action autopsy report that. That you helped edit?
[00:03:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So the autopsy was written primarily by Chris Cook, who we've worked with before at Roots Action.
I edited the document and we thought it was important to have an accounting of how the Democratic party failed in 2024, failed both in its attempt to defeat Trump and Trumpism, and also failed as a political party that had a transparent, you know, lacking a transparent political process whereby they came to nominate the person who was at the top of the ticket. We were aware that the, the DNC was working on an autopsy at the time. The reporting was that there was a lot of infighting between different constituencies within the sort of corporatist mainstream wing of the party.
And apparently those debates were too much for them to handle because they've now suppressed the whole thing, as you say. So I don't think we'll see that report unless some enterprising staffer leaks it. Ken Martin, the chair of the dnc, said that there's no point in looking backwards. You know, we have to look forwards to winning. And it's clear that they're anticipating doing really well in the midterms and that this will all be forgotten. But we think that that's really irresponsible attitude to take. It's. There's. You can't learn from your past mistakes if you're unwilling to examine them. I think any person who's lived in the world for a little while knows that that's the case.
[00:04:52] Speaker C: Like, we got Ken Klippenstein's gotta be on that case. Like, yeah, keep sort of refreshing his site for, like someone's gonna leak it to him.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: He does have a propensity for finding documents. So I would hope, I, I really would hope that a staffer would feel like it's important for us to see this document and to see what the contours of the debate are inside the DNC right now because this is the pattern that the party keeps getting into over and over again.
It's much happier to sort of keep the, keep the inside baseball secret, keep the eyes of the public away from the intra consultant debates. And this is how we end up in this situation where despite Trump being such an unpopular president, the Democratic Party Congressional Democrats are still more unpopular. It's because the party just blocks access to its internal debates and there's nothing for voters to really hold onto there. That's our argument at least.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: So tell us what the report thrust is.
What's the findings? What's the autopsy saying to us?
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Sure. So the report really looks at voter disenchantment, I'd say, broadly. And we get into some of the specifics of, you know, these are different issues where we think the party lost support from its base. But the top line is really that Kamala Harris in 2024 got almost 7 million fewer votes than Joe Biden did in 2020.
And most of those votes dropped off not in purple states, not, you know, swing voters, but members. Voters who are members of the Democratic Party base just didn't vote. They didn't turn out at all. So it's not that people shifted to Trump so much or that they voted third party. It's that people just didn't come out. Seven million people who supported Joe Biden in 2020 didn't come out. We don't think that's because Joe Biden was like a spectacular candidate. I mean, you alluded earlier, Dick, to our campaign in 2022, that we started in 2022, asking Biden not to run again, saying that, you know, it was time for him to declare that he would be a one term president. But this was in a, this election in 2024, we thought was a referendum on Joe Biden. And Kamala Harris and the rest of the party were unable or unwilling to distance themselves from Joe Biden, who had become a very unpopular president for a lot of different reasons by that point. So some of the things that we point to for that unpopularity are Biden's sort of making it seem like he would be a bridge candidate, as he said, like he would only be there for one term and then turning around and saying, I'm running again when he was already the oldest person to hold the office, clearly suffering some kinds of declines that were impairing his ability to do the job. We also point to Gaza and to the effect that his unyielding support for Israel's onslaught in Gaza had on especially younger voters, Muslim American voters, Arab American voters, and in critical parts of the country, like Michigan, for example. And then finally, just there's, this is part of, we see this as part of a broader move for, from the Democratic Party away from its working class base. It's, you know, Chuck Schumer famously, in like 2017, I think said, well, for every blue collar voter we lose in West Virginia, we're picking up two voters in the suburbs. And we just think that that's been a disastrous political strategy. There's been this generation long pivot for the party away from working class voters to kind of suburban dwelling, well educated white collar voters. And that just has not yielded for the most part electoral success. I mean, there are cases where they've had candidates like Obama, who is a once in a generation political talent. And I think the party has conflated Barack Obama's success with a general winning strategy, which I just don't think they've had for most of this century. And we're seeing the effects of that now. So those are some of the things we point to in the report. And I'm happy to talk about arguably.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: All of this century, this being a young century. I think you're, you're, you're dead on.
So one, one question that I have and I appreciate it and I thank you for coming on and I appreciate the, the document, we'll post it in the show notes, people should check it out is the, There seems to be a kind of assumption in all of these kinds of analyses that there's a necessary trade off between, you know, groups of voters. You know, you, you talked about it in terms of sort of suburban and middle class versus working class. That's, I think one way to look at it. There's also like, you know, do we get from, you know, party leadership? There's like, well, we can, you know, maybe get a few hot headed youngsters, a few less of the hot headed youngsters because we were shitty on Gaza, but we'll make up for it in, you know, I don't know, Republicans, you know, never trumpers or whatever cockamamie strategy it seemed to have. But all over the world I've noticed this about center left parties is this assumption that politics is a subtraction or substitution game.
And it seems to me that yeah, we should get middle class voters in the suburbs and we should have a strategy for them and a strategy for keeping and expanding our vote amongst working class voters in West Virginia, et cetera. And so, yeah, so where is the discussion of how to either simultaneously, you know, how to get one without losing the other, how to thread needles about it, et cetera. I feel like that is missing. And if there's any organization or you know, sort of conversation that could lead there, it's, it's the one started by documents like yours.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that we're not saying. And, you know, I don't think it's like my sort of constituency on the left. I don't, I don't think we're saying, well, we've got to just target this particular group of voters and that's how we're going to win. Again, I think we're saying, like you, we have two major political parties in this country, and if you are in charge of one of those parties, if you're in the leadership of one of those parties, your job is to create a narrative, create a politics that is going to compel people to vote for you. And too often, I think we hear from the Democrats, well, the things that people want are unrealistic or, you know, young people are clamoring for things that they can never actually get. And they say it out loud. I mean, that's just not good politicking to me. I think you have to be willing to see where voters are, where your constituents are heading, and to say, okay, so how can we craft policy, how can we craft messaging and narrative to try to meet people there instead of saying over and over again as, as the Democratic Party has said, we can't do those things. You know, the, you have to, you have to meet us where we are. You're being unrealistic, and you have to meet us where we are. And this is in the context of a country that is just spiraling through this late capitalist affordability crisis. You have more and more people who find it impossible to get by day by day, who can't afford housing, can't afford groceries, and can't afford a lifestyle that they could afford just a decade ago. It's not like these are people who are asking for the moon. These are people who are asking for their lives to feel a bit more affordable and remember a time very recently when things were not so expensive, when it wasn't so impossible to get by in life. And I think that if you are the head of a major political party and you can't see that discontent and respond to it, it's really malpractice. It's not being an effective party. And so I think that there are lots of strategies that are available for speaking to people who are, you know, have advanced degrees in the suburbs or speaking to people who went to trade school who are living in, you know, a city or living in a rural environment.
But you have to lead with the idea that, like, we are going to reach out to these people and bring them in. Not here's our message, here's our platform. It says effectively, let's, let's kind of do more of the same. And why aren't people coming to us? I mean, I think that's what we've seen a lot from the Democratic Party over the last especially eight to 12 years.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: Well, there's two elements in what you said, so I'd like to unpack those because they're both very, very important.
One is the mess, the, the, the content of the message, not just message, but the what the party represents in terms of meeting people's needs, in terms of change and the content.
And then there's the organizing itself, the reaching out, as you put it.
And from the beginning of our podcast time, over several years now, we've been hearing over and over again that one key to changing the party is not just the messaging, but having a party, as Howard Dean advocated, that's involved in 50 states in red areas and blue areas, 24, 7. A full time party organizing at the grassroots.
And because if you were to do that at the grassroots, you would have to have a way of communicating to people about their very needs. It would not be possible to simply devise messages, you know, for the least common denominator or the least offensive or that so forth. So there's a way in which the more outreach you are committed to, the more you are committed as well to, to making sense to people in terms of their own lives.
I think what, what the republic. One of the achievements of the right wing and the GOP since Reagan has been the idea that the government is not a place you can look for solving your problems.
In fact, the government said Reagan is the problem and that cynicism is pervasive. It's part of what I think has led to the cynicism about the Democratic Party itself.
So how do you overcome that? Well, we, I'm going to, we'll get to this in a, in a, what I'm about to say a little later. But the achievement of Mamdani and, and, and the movement in New York shows that it didn't take that much to get a tremendous amount of involvement and enthusiasm about a government that actually works for working class people, for ordinary people. And that his, his entire messages, but also the way the campaign, I think unfolded. So there is a clearly a clue there. Some people will say right away, New York is not America. No, it isn't. But what can we learn from that? I'd like to get to that in a minute. But one more point I like to make about the messaging content side of it is something else. That your report emphasizes. It's Biden's. Biden's argument for himself was, look at all the policies we have devised that are in fact good for working class people and for rural communities and so forth. And there's truth in that. The policies were beyond what we ever had seen for quite a long time in terms of that kind of intention.
But not only were they not communicated, but there is a missing piece to that, and that is if people are cynical about government, and one reason they're cynical is that if you want to really accomplish things against the will of the corporate sector, you can't do it. They have all the power. So you've got to prove as a party not only that you have the program, but they have the will to fight the corporate power control.
And that's rare. That piece is rarely being said. But you do say it in this report, in the autopsy that you do. That's part of the.
That's part of what people need to believe about the party.
And that's not an easy thing because in fact, corporate power is extraordinary. And how do you prove this to people? Well, maybe there's a clue in what the Mamdani campaign and what Mamdani even even emphasized in his inauguration, which is to say over and over again, this is the kind of government I am promising to you, one that meets, that speaks to you and speaks for you and is made up of people like you, not.
And we're going to tax the rich. Which got the biggest applause in, in his speech when he said that it is extremely popular slogan. I have a hat that says tax the rich. Every time I wear it, people have what a great hat that is. People say, well, okay, so that's my little speech. I wonder what your reflections are on what I'm just what I just said.
[00:17:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, just to talk about Biden for a second. So you're right that there was, you know, over the course of four years, there were things that Biden did for to. To address affordability. I mean, this is in the wake of the COVID epidemic too. So lots of people were struggling, had lost their jobs. You know, there were supply chain issues, there was corporate price gouging. It was already a period of real economic chaos.
And he, he did implement measures that I think over time we'll see and you know, we have seen already were helpful in ameliorating and addressing some of those things. But the problem. And again, I think this is really redolent of the Democratic Party's. Approach right now is that people did not feel that those measures had been effective. And it wasn't hard to discover that all you had to do was go out and start talking to voters. And they were still comparatively immiserated. I mean, they were feeling like this country's on the wrong track. There, there are reams of surveys that say this things are still too unaffordable, I can't live the life I want to live, et cetera. So what the, the Biden administration did and then what the Harris campaign did and you know, the reporting is that the Harris campaign did this at Biden's insistence, Biden's team's insistence that they not throw him under the bus was they said Bidenomics has been good, it's been pretty. What's the problem? I mean, this has been, we have these charts that say it's been good for working people. We have these policies we've implemented. And so again, instead of saying to people, you know, I, we understand that you're still, you're unhappy, this is not desirable situation, you feel miserable with your day to day, they instead said, no, you're just not looking at the right charts, you're not paying attention. If you actually would look at the macro picture, things are going pretty well. I mean, and we had the pandemic and we turned that around and that was all true to some extent, but that, that wasn't a winning political strategy. So I think that, that this is really representative of the attitude that we've seen a lot, which is again to say, well, we are making a difference, we're making a change. People just aren't, you know, it's the media environment, it's podcasts speaking to young men. If people would just consume the media that we're consuming or you know, look at the report we just put out, they would understand that actually we're doing a good job. And I just, I really don't think that's a winning politics. And I don't think there's anywhere that doesn't bring you anywhere. There's no prescription that grows out of that except to just keep hammering that message over and over again and hope that you get to run against incredibly odious Republicans, which they've had the privilege of doing the last three cycles. And they, they have a 33% win record against truly one of the most disliked people who has ever existed in modern American politics. I mean, it is just, it's incredibly well documented that most voters don't really like Donald Trump. It's Just in the face of what the Democratic Party has supplied them with, they've thought, okay, well, I'll, I'll, you know, roll the dice on this guy, this businessman who might, you know, figure things out economically. And then I just wanted to say really quickly speaking to like the 50 state strategy, which I broadly think is a good idea, but you go to DNC meetings a lot and you, you hear discussion about this all the time and you would, to hear DNC higher ups talk about this, you'd think that they have, you know, boots on the ground in all 50 states canvassing relentlessly. And we know that that's just not really the case. And I think that sometimes the strategy gets warped and perverted a bit where we see something like the Amy McGrath campaign, where you have like tens of millions of dollars just going down the drain in an unwinnable campaign, a campaign that anyone, even the most, you know, novice political strategists could tell you was not going to be an, an easy campaign to win. And at the same time, you'll see areas of real energy where there are progressives running, galvanizing people that the party won't invest in and they won't put resources into supporting more candidates like that. So that progressives need to bootstrap our campaigns every single time we run them because were basically ignored by Democratic Party power structures until they have to address us. I mean, you saw, you know, Chuck Schumer rolling up to Zuran's inauguration yesterday, sort of grumpily sitting there, you know, after never having endorsed this person who is clearly the most promising talent to emerge in his party in the last year. And so finally, grudgingly, he's, he's at the inauguration, you know, for the mayor of New York City. But I think that that is the kind of thing we see over and over and over again from the party.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: Yes. And in the report you talk about anecdotally, but it's a very important example that you have that expands even what you just said, what happened in Pennsylvania during the 64, the 90, whatever year that was, the 24 campaign, which was that a rogue group of organizers in Philadelphia decided that they needed to, without the approval of the official party, go out and go into door to door organizing in neighborhoods and among people that had not been officially designed to do that. And that's, I had heard independently of that story of people saying, well, what the party, what the campaign is trying to do is get people to do come in there in the way that's been going on for Some years get people to volunteer close to the election to go out door knocking.
And that was not. People weren't even opening their doors. And the real fundamental difference. So it isn't simply wrong campaigns being chosen isn't simply misuse of funding. It's a fundamental lack of commitment to the 247 model of a party with roots in a community that people can see the party as part of their lives.
[00:24:05] Speaker C: But that, that doesn't come from the dnc. I mean, that would never come from the dnc. Right. So hold on. But the thing that people don't they miss or Forget about the 50 state state strategy moment was that it was the, it was with Dean getting elected. It, it was then the National Party responding to a demand from the grassroots of a party that was like awash in activists, revitalizing it at the local level.
And the, so there was this demand like, we are out there, we need resources. You need to give us resources from the National Party, you know, in, in even in places that aren't electorally viable in this cycle because we're building up to something else. And you know, that fizzled out in both directions. But it was never like there's for a million reasons, even if they wanted to, if the DNC had a great idea to like organize in communities, it could never happen from the DNC out. I mean, so that, and that brings me to my sort of another question, right. Which is that, you know, there are a lot of good pieces like this autopsy, like, you know, columns like the.
Which, you know, I'm famously not a fan of the, the autopsy cited a report from the center for Working Class Politics, which I think is, yeah, a very problematic organization with bad methodology.
But all of it is in this voice of this is what the Democrats should do and this is what they should stop doing. But a, as you know, like there's no such thing. There's no like command center of the Democrats to make that decision. Number one, it's far more diffuse and polyarchic than that. And then secondly, like the people who are in that network, that diffuse network that could make that happen or that could improve the party are just not going to do it. Like, exactly as you said, they've they've just like election after election, they're satisfied if they just kind of barely beat the spread. They're not interested in, you know, changing the game or changing the, the sort of core lines of struggle in American politics or they don't think it's possible whatever.
Like Schumer's never going to be a good leader.
The, the current array of power in the DNC isn't going to elect a game changing chair. Even if they did, the, you know, the chair would be, you know, cornered by the other shot callers and in the, you know, the party in government, et cetera. So to me, like a, those people need to be replaced and B, the change that has to happen has to happen from volunteer activism, engaging at every level to like make it happen. And so what? And you know, we've never had nationally sustained, continuous, multi election cycle effort by the left to do that.
You know, as I said, it sort of fizzles out from above and below. So what, give me some hope or some ideas, some thoughts with your, your sort of hands are in a lot more pies nationally.
Are, are there, is there movement out there to transform the Democratic Party from below and how do we support it? If so, you know, and, and what, what are some examples of that?
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Great.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: So I, I think that, I mean, I agree completely with what you're saying that there is no, there's no means by which the, the DNC or leaders in Congress, Democratic leaders in Congress can galvanize grassroots momentum. That's not the direction of that flow.
But you know, one of the things that we're, one of the points we're trying to make in this report, and then I'll speak to your larger question, but is, is that there is far too much deference to the consultant class inside the Democratic Party right now and that this is not a winning approach and that this should be seen as a negative, not just by people like me who think that like consultants like this shouldn't exist, but also by people within the Democratic Party who want to keep their jobs and want to have the party retain some relevance because these people are sort of crashing the plane into the mountain repeatedly for the Democrats. And so one of the things that we want is to see a party that is more open to channeling the momentum from the grassroots because the, one of the tragedies are kind of the, you know, potentially unfolding tragedies of the moment we're in is that this is actually a moment of extreme intense energy for the left. I mean, we have, we've been here before, but this is in at least a generation. I think we're really seeing an explosion of energy among progressives, among the left. And it's sustained. This isn't just like, you know, two years, one cycle we're now going on. I mean, my lens on this is going to be dsa. And I think maybe it's sort of time to like talk about dsa. But we're now going on a decade basically of the post boom DSA where we have socialist organization that rivals some of the largest socialist organizations historically we've ever had in this country that has cycle after cycle been able to sustain some energy. I shouldn't just say cycle after cycle, I mean, because there are many electoral skeptics in dsa, but there is a sort of established organizational home now for people on the left that has been continuing to prop itself up for like a decade. And I think that what we are encouraging the Democratic Party to do is to not spend all its energy, expend all its resources to block that momentum the way we saw it do with Bernie Sanders and two presidential primaries, the way we've seen it do with other candidates at all levels of office.
And to be open to that pressure. I mean, you know, there's another model of takeover that we saw the Republican Party suffer from, right, where, where they were sort of going along and you know, they thought Jeb Bush was going to be their candidate. And then there was this hostile takeover from the top where you had this like Trump, Trumpian black swan come in and, and totally upend the party order. And I think that's been much more of a hostile takeover. And I think that we, we'll see soon that when there is no Donald Trump, the Republican Party has some serious, serious problems that it's going to root through to. But I don't think that's going to happen for the left in the Democratic Party. I think that what we've got to do is just sort of this death by a thousand cuts where we keep chipping away at the party structure. And I think that, you know, some of that is going to be like really boring, like rules changes that people have clamored for, you know, like ending the superdelegate after the 2016, but they are effectively ended.
No, I mean, but that, that's an example of a reform that I thought was important and you know, was like it, it seems minor. It's not the sort of thing that you have like top of mind if you're a casual observer of the party. But to me that was like a good change that was made in the party. And I think that like winning these elections at different levels, like, you know, you look at New York state, for example, and DSA has been really effective in getting people into the state assembly, into the New York City Council, into the Ithaca City Council, and There is this way. There's this sort of like very long running pincher maneuver that we can potentially pull off where we're starting to build a real block at the State assembly level that eventually I think we could see DSA and DSA fellow travelers start to wield real power. It's just not, it's not a fast process this way. And I think that that can be incredibly frustrating. And, you know, and we don't have the resources that the National Party has. So I don't, I don't really see like a faster maneuver through these, through these issues than to do what we've been doing for a while now and just kind of like chipping away at the established party structure. And I think, like, but, but say.
[00:32:25] Speaker C: More about chipping away at the established party structure. What, how is, what does that mean?
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that winning elections is part of it. I think that sort of continuing to put the lie to the idea that a focus group tested, consultant, propped up campaign is the way that you win elections is important. You know, sort of like cutting out the legs from under that industry. And you know, people seeing, like consulting for corporatist campaigns is a viable strategy. People who are coming up, but all.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: Of those campaigns have consultants, all the ones that are winning.
[00:33:02] Speaker B: I think there's a difference between a consultant who has just come from Uber, for example, from the Uber C suite, and a consultant who's like, you know, worked on five or six or seven grassroots campaigns. I mean, of course you need like an apparatus of folks who know how to run a campaign, but they're very different people. If you look at like, you know, who, who staffed, you know, Jimmy Harrison's campaign versus, like, who staffed Zoran's campaign. And I think that we need to keep sort of shining a light on this, this revolving door between people who are going private sector to political campaign, private sector to political campaign, and how ineffective that is. Not just like, that's bad. It is bad, of course, but also that's not like these are not people you actually want to be listening to. These aren't people who know Ball, really in the same way that like our people know Ball. And I think it's important for us to be able to say that over and over again and demonstrate it over and over again. And I think that, like, you can show that through electoral success, but you can also show it through documents like these and saying, like, look at all these mistakes you made. I mean, look at all these ways in which there were missed opportunities, there were unforced Errors. And now this is the world we're living in. I mean these are things with real, real consequences. We're living in a world that is substantially more dystopian.
The, the country is substantially closer to the precipice now. And it's because mistakes like this were made by the party that should have not made these mistakes. And so I like, I hear you like sometimes I think these, these documents feel like you're preaching to the choir. But I think that being able to establish like these, these were the errors that were made and you are going to see these again and being able to point out to a track record and a history of, of dissecting what's gone wrong is important as part of a larger constellation of ways that we're attacking us.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: So the chipping away includes though in a major, the major way is the primarying of establishment and sort of time expired incumbents by left including self, self identified socialists who've been. That's been surprisingly and enormously successful in you know, across the country.
And Schumer is clearly going to be a target of that. I actually have this fantasy that he will gracefully allow AOC to take his Senate, get the Senate nomination for the Democratic Party and embrace that generational change and that will so change his historic role in, in his favor that it'll be wonderful when he does that. That's my fantasy.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Fantasy is the right. Is the right word for that scenario, I'd say.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
So but the other one other point I would, I would make that you guys are maybe a little younger than me. Not a little.
And I have the memory that the struggle to change the party has been going on in a major way for many decades now. And so my time in the 60s, the idea was to break the power of the white supremacist Dixiecrat and realign the party, get those people out of the party that was successful. It was to break the power of the machine urban machines over the party.
That that was a big struggle in 6:68 and then the McGovern McGovern led the effort as a re to reform the party before he became the nominee and that a lot of the rules were changed about that in a major way. These were. So it isn't the case that in the long view it's a long. It's an, it's a struggle that has taken much too long and, and very fitful because I think a strategy for going beyond what I just beyond the 60s in changing the party hasn't really been articulated very clearly by Anybody including our, our mentor Michael Harrington in some ways. But the, the point and and I, I'm, I would add another point and get your view on this. Both you and Daraka.
What I've learned from this podcast is the very much the importance of non party organizations that are adjacent to but see the electoral necessity of being in a coalition with the Democratic Party and to some extent why California is the way it is in terms of super majority of Democrats around the state is because that kind of loose and somewhat fragmented adjacent grassroots organization has been there and helped at least in our county. Daraka helped make this happen as chair of our local Democratic Party, invigorating the party itself as a grassroots organization while at the same time allied with groups that have major resources now in working class and immigrant based organization, for example. Well, isn't that going on in other states in some way or other. Pennsylvania it is a lot in Georgia. What did Stacey Abrams lead there? That a vast network of organizations as I understand it. I don't know too much about it but that I think we need to foreground that fact that it isn't necessarily and it sort of relates I think Daraka, to what you were saying. It's not the party's bureaucracy that's going to bring the change, it's the grassroots. But the grassroots is organized in ways that in my long history is pretty unprecedented.
And you know, I give credit to certain people who've led, you know, things like Citizen Action, which was a national movement.
Heather Booth, our good friend in many different roles that she's played in creating those kind of opportunities, many other people like that.
And so that's, it's not, it's not going to be a very well organized high, you know, highly directed effort if, if it rests on these kinds of state level and, and even local level adjacent.
[00:39:35] Speaker C: No, but it should be partisan. I mean and it's part of, I feel like the, well yeah, but I feel like the, the, the, the thing that keeps getting missed is that like of course there's going to be organizations, there's always movement that happens that's not even electoral right. That has all kinds of relationships to formal organizations like the Democratic Party. But there has to be progressive activism inside the Democratic Party per se.
And so what you just talked about, Dick, about Santa Barbara, like the, the part you sort of glossed over, you're like oh, there's all this stuff that's adjacent to the party but not in the party and blah, blah. But the key to unlocking progressive power in this county was that progressives spent 15 years transforming the Democratic Party from something that was like by bylaws and culture, designed to not be a vehicle for progressive change into one that was.
And so people have to go in and do that in the party organization, county by county and state by state.
And no one is talking about doing that. And so and it's why I, I think that the strategies that are, that are reliant on, number one, electing better elected officials is precarious because it relies on elected officials and no matter how great they are when you put them in office and no matter who comes and sings at their inauguration, they're elected officials.
And then secondly, it relies on sort of convincing the political class that they're failing and they should try something else. And I think they're too stuck in the failure to for that to be I'm not saying there's no one who won't see the light or whatever, but I don't think that's going to be transformational.
They have to be most more or less replaced or forced by stronger forces to do better. And that, that's what frustrates me about dsa. Even the sort of pro realignment folks in dsa, they're not thinking about how do you actually make realignment a reality.
And yeah, so that, yeah, that's my, that's, that will be, that is literally the hill I'm dying on, so to speak. And it's not to say that other stuff isn't, you know, great. It's, it is great.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: But. So, Sam, what is there discussion within DSA along the lines that Daraka is suggesting?
[00:41:57] Speaker B: I, you know, I don't know. I can't speak for every DSA chapter and what they're up to. I know here in D.C. we do have some folks who are also involved in the local Democratic Party and that's part of an effort to like, change the way the party endorses in D.C. and change what the party is attentive to here.
I at Roots Action and before at Our Revolution. These are two organizations that have actually invested a lot of time in reforming state Democratic parties as well as the National Democratic Party, and have tried to support delegates and people who, especially people who are delegates for Bernie in 2016 and 2020, trying to get them into offices in their local and state Democratic parties. So I do think it's important to be able to reform those bodies and to be able to, you know, build power to force people out. But I think it's, I think it's part of the, the broader sort of dialectical process of like, you know, you, you nudge things along in, in this realm. I mean, I feel like we've got our different realms that we're dealing with. We, we haven't even talked about popular movements and labor and, you know, and that's probably outside the ambit of this conversation. But like, we're also, that's part of what, at least that's part of what I see as our, you know, our role in the electoral project with DSA is like, we want to create bodies, legislating bodies that are more, that are more friendly to, to labor, that are more friendly to kind of popular movements and the demands those movements are making. And so as, as those movements are pushing on legislatures, pushing on elected officials, we want to create a climate that is going to be going to respond more favorably to those movements. I think, and I think that's true of the party reform effort too, is that as the electoral pressures and the movement pressures push on those people, you don't want them to be, you know, closing the gate every time, as they currently are, at least at the national level. You want to see party that, where you have at least some semblance of, you know, a group of allies that you can rely on or that you can at least used to, to pressure other less amenable groups of people. And, and I, I think that's kind of what I mean when I say, like, chipping away is that it's like you've got to induce movement here, then you've got to move over to your other arena and induce some movement there. And like, this is the process that we're currently engaged in. And, you know, a lot of DSA energy is not electoral. And as I said, there are a lot of people in DSA who are very electoral skeptic who, you know, think that any engagement with the Democratic Party is ridiculous. And I kind of like, I often agree with them, but, but they're involved in all kinds of other struggles that have been really important. And you just like, you know, like to look at the, the Gaza issue like, we did not anticipate this as a struggle in 2022. No one knew that this was going to become a major locus of left organizing.
But because we already had machinery in place, because there were already people in DSA who are heavily invested in this issue, I think that DSA and similar groups were ready to kind of channel the momentum, the outrage that people felt about this, and turn it into an issue that was really building political power. So when did that happen?
When did what happened?
[00:45:15] Speaker C: I'm sorry, the.
What, what was, when was the issue around Gaza turned into political power? I think that by dsa, I think.
[00:45:26] Speaker B: That, I mean, DSA was one of a series of groups or a host of groups who are working on this. So I don't want to say that.
[00:45:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. But I don't mind here. People can take credit.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: I just want the uncommitted vote.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: I think in Michigan, for example, of not voting, you know, voting uncommitted, that really showed that there was a mass base for. On that, on that issue, electorally.
[00:45:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: And the Democrats didn't officially respond at all. You know, they did terribly on that. But, but that's a great lesson that they fail to realize that.
And, and you know, part of Mamdani's appeal has to be that he is exactly what we are talking about. He is embracing these issues that are supposed to be third rail issues in American politics. And a million Muslims in New York City want him to be the mayor part, not only because he's a Muslim, but because he's outspokenly clear, morally grounded on the issue of Palestine and Israel.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I also, I just want to say I worked on APEC anti AIPAC organizing for a lot of 2023 and 2024 with other DSA members, with members of Jewish Voice for Peace, with members of Palestinian youth movement, lots of different actors.
And I think that was actually quite a successful political movement. I mean, it's ongoing, but we've seen people like Seth Moulton, moderate Democrats, say they're not going to take money from aipac. Now he still might take money from AIPAC donors who are single issue donors. But this is a huge sea change within the party. It's made the issue of sending arms to Israel front and center for Young Voters. I just think that this is a real, I mean, I can't believe the, the change in public opinion that we've seen within the Democratic Party on this issue in an incredibly short period of time. So I, I do think that there was sort of success in this movement and that there was a channeling of political energies and it's because people were playing the inside game, playing the outside game. You saw the uncommitted movement. You saw people, you know, the, the movement within the Nat Democratic National Convention to try to get a Palestinian American speaker that failed, but it was a huge PR disaster when it failed. And so, you know, I think it, it actually is kind of like a testament to the viability potentially of this strategy, you know, not the success that we want to see like there, this money is going to find a way into different political coffers. I mean, we're going to have to. It's going to be like whack a molecule. But I think it's still the success that we had just in APAC by itself and in branding it negatively has been significant.
Right.
[00:48:10] Speaker A: Let me get a different on the table. And that has to do with tax the rich, which to me is.
[00:48:19] Speaker B: A.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: Very important issue in itself. But underneath it is the whole issue of how to deal with the power of what Bernie calls the top 1%, the billionaire class and the corporate sector within the Democratic Party. So there's now a understanding really and, and around the country that taxing the rich is key to any real programs that are going to be meaningful to people. So in, in the New York case, it has a lot to do with the promise of universal child care. In Seattle, it had to do with housing and taxing Amazon and the other giant companies in Seattle and both of those, these cases.
So you have in New York the Governor Hockshell saying she's all for the child care, but she's not for the taxing the rich. In Seattle, the mayor who was defeated by Katie, Katie Wilson on this, on this very issue, he was a liberal Democrat of some sort, but he was against, you know, the taxing program.
He went down in flames to her in, in California, I just heard Governor Newsom doing a endless two hour conversation with Ezra Klein in which Newsom complains. He says, I don't understand why I'm being branded as an enemy by economic populace. I'm all for progressive taxation, but he is specifically against a wealth tax measure that is clearly would be beneficial to the kind of programs he claims he wants having to do with housing.
So it seems to me this is a great issue to battle on.
And the more we can get rid of the MAGA threat and the Trump threat, which, which requires, you know, united front with us with liberal corporate people to some great extent, the more we can have this battle. But do you have any. Am I on the right track there or what? What do you think about what I was just saying?
[00:50:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think this is a hugely popular proposal, taxing the rich. I think a lot of Mamdani's success had to do with speaking to the gulf between incredibly rich people. New York is the perfect microcosm of this because you have the richest people in the world and you have people who are living in, in terrible poverty and it I also think it cuts across party lines to some extent. I think that there is some kind of sense that, I mean, there are sort of the Elon adulators and people like that, and you're never going to get those people. But I think that there is a sense that, like, we didn't used to have such wealthy, wealthy people in this country and that there's something sort of basically wrong about that.
And it's a very effective means for talking about a whole host of really complex economic things that are happening to just say, like, hey, do you think Elon Musk should be a trillionaire? He's headed that way. He's, you know, he'll be there soon. Does that make sense to you? Does it seem like we should have people who are worth a trillion dollars and just basically just say to people like, you know, he could give us each $1 billion if he wanted to? You know, once he gets to that point, I mean, does that seem like the kind of wealth we should harbor in this country?
[00:51:38] Speaker A: And the highest crime rate in America is in the billionaire class. That's the, that is where crime is located. But, well, Mitt Romney just wrote an op ed, amazingly enough, in which he said there are taverns in the tax code that allows for this concentration of wealth. He advocated dealing, dealing with it. I don't think he'd favor the wealth tax, but I, but he was favoring just much more wonky tax reform that would plug up some of those, those loopholes. So, yes, I think my gut is telling me this is coming to the fore as a, as the battle that can be very productive. But it's it. It's it.
And you know, part of me thinks, and I don't know what the history of, long history of socialism tells us about what I'm about to say, but sometimes there are wealthy people who see that it's actually in the broader interest that they have to, to be fair to people and have more equality. And we do have, you know, George Soros and a few other very wealthy people who seem to feel that way. So, and, and in some ways that inauguration that we saw yesterday spoke to that they said, you know, the, what we're advocating is not, Bernie Sanders said that this is not radical. If you mean by because these are programs that are needed by the people and that makes sense to everybody. So maybe we can convince some of the, some of that class.
The strategy should include splitting the, the ruling, the ruling capitalist class as much as possible on these issues. I guess.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: I think one of the Things that we just strategically that we try to do at Roots Action and other groups try to do. And certainly DSA is talk about how this is one of the reasons why we don't have nice things in this country, because there's an enormous hoarding of wealth in this country, an unprecedented hoarding of wealth in this country. And so when we talk about things like single payer, healthcare free public universities, things like this, this is. We try to pair these things as much as possible that there is enough wealth generated in this country for us to pay for these things. And then, I mean, you know, a whole other project is to convince people that you are generating that wealth. It's not just Elon Musk generating that wealth, but, you know, maybe farther down the path, but that there's a lot of wealth generated in this country and it's being hoarded increasingly. And I mean, I think this was the genius of Bernie's platform and campaigns and it clearly resonated with voters. He went from obscurity to prominent position is just to say that there is, there is a lot of money out there. It can pay for things for all of us or it can pay for, you know, someone to have 15 super yachts, one person or something like that. So it's our choice. What do we want to do? What decision do we want to make here?
And I think that's been effective messaging for a while now.
[00:54:42] Speaker A: All right.
We're very grateful for this chance to have this very good conversation with you. Sam, you want to say anything?
[00:54:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:50] Speaker C: Is there anything we missed?
What? Well, was there anything that we missed that you felt like you wanted to?
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Well, we didn't. Is there really a campaign to get Chuck to step down? Is that really a project that you're involved in?
[00:55:02] Speaker B: It is a project we're involved in. We'll see. I mean, I think we have to see in the new year what kind of approach we're seeing from the Democrats. I think we do. We want a more confrontational Democratic Party. I don't think that that is very con. Controversial to say. I think that that's clearly what voters want, what constituents want. We, you know, I'm here in D.C. we live through a year of being terrorized by federal forces here being our communities being terrorized by ice. And we want to see a. An opposition party that's responding to the. That register of terror that isn't just saying, oh, well, you know, the midterms are coming and we'll kind of get back on track. That's true. And you know, I certainly hope that the Democrats retake the House, at minimum, in the midterms. But there has to be more than that. They have to be more creative. And I think our, our campaign with Chuck is just, if he is unwilling to be bellicose, to be aggressive in his confrontation, need someone else in that role.
It's not a time for business as usual politics.
This was a shockingly brutal year for American politics that we've just come out of, and we can expect more of the same next year, I think. And so we really want to see a true opposition party.
[00:56:20] Speaker A: So apart from these roles that you have exemplified with us here, apart from your daddyhood, you are a musician who may record.
[00:56:29] Speaker B: Yes, that's right.
[00:56:31] Speaker A: I would. We, we, we have a little tradition of one occasion where a guest who was politically active also could sing. And I'm gonna. So what, tell us briefly what's, what's your band and what records you want to have people be interested in. And then I'll ask you when we get off what song I should play to, to conclude this program.
[00:56:54] Speaker B: Oh, sure. I, I, I will not sing. I, I have to say, the kind of music I write is not the kind of music that privileges, you know, a singer at the front of the mix with an acoustic guitar.
[00:57:05] Speaker A: So it wouldn't be your voice.
[00:57:07] Speaker B: No. Yeah, but my, my band is my sort of now less active band, but it's called Personal Space.
When I lived in New York, we were a bit more active, but we're sort of experimental rock music and yeah, it's a great, it's a great joy. I love playing and writing music.
I wish I could do it all the time, but, you know, capitalism call space on spot, on Spotify, on Apple Music. I encourage folks to use anything other than Spotify, but it's out there on YouTube and yeah, you can find us out in the music universe.
[00:57:44] Speaker A: Well, thanks so much. And you, you inspire me by, by your thinking and by your action and as do many of the people of your generation.
[00:57:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been a great conversation. I just want to say, inspired by both of you and your much longer track records of activism and our crankiness.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: Hopefully there'll be a world where, where you can be this old, too.
[00:58:08] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Someday you too will have a podcast that younger people will come on and you'll yell at them.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: Beautiful. From your lips to God's ears.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. Bye Bye, folks.
[00:58:20] Speaker C: Take care.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:22] Speaker C: Happy New Year.
[00:58:36] Speaker D: Goodbye to a decade I spent Goodbye to premature yearning for stuff that sort of recently happened goodbye.
Goodbye to downward mobility accidents.
A while until it didn't. Goodbye acting like my talent must be editing it's not that strong but I'm chilling I'm super fine.
Goodbye to the wait to get notice Goodbye to happenstance fame of the classmate in the seamless bogus if I can catch him like an albatross around my neck that worked a while until it didn't If I Acting like my talent must be but it's not that fun I'm chill, man. I'm simply.
Sam.
Goodbye to a lifetime of leisure.
Goodbye paralyzed guys masquerading as our achievers.
Goodbye to inscrutable coolness.
Goodbye to mid morning affirmative talk Sit. You can do do this.
Sam.
Sa.
