Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Hi, folks. Dick Flacks here with another episode of Talking Strategy, Making History with my partner in crime and conversation, Daraka Larimore Hall. Hello, Daraka. How are you doing? Hello.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: I'm good. I'm good. Looking forward to this one.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: Yes, I'm looking forward, too, because our guest is David Dan, who is the executive editor of American Prospect.
That's the magazine that very much tracking much the same kinds of issues that we try to work on this podcast. And David's just come out with one of his many excellent pieces of reporting that stimulated us to reach out to him to talk about what he's been covering having to do with the upcoming election and the campaigns of, you might say, insurgent or progressive candidates.
And the title of the article, David, is the New Majority Makers. And I find that kind of I don't know what that means just reading that, but you learn what it means when you go reading the article.
Why did you select that title?
[00:01:27] Speaker D: Well, first of all, thanks for having me on podcast.
So Majority Makers is kind of a term of art that is used in politics and Democratic politics in particular. And what it refers to is the candidates who provide sort of the margin of the majority when Democrats take hold of Congress or the Senate. It's those tight races, those toss up seats, those races that are very competitive, that involve a lot of spending, and there aren't that many of them. As you know, we have a very gerrymandered and politically sorted country.
So there only are a handful of these seats across the country.
And typically the conventional wisdom says that if you want to win these swing seats that go Democratic or Republican from campaign to campaign, election to election, that you have to, you know, there's a sort of archetype that, that a type of candidate that Democrats like to run in these seats and they have moderate politics, they take, you know, kind of weak stands on every issue in the midpoint between what they consider to be two extremes.
And that is, that is kind of how Democrats seek to win these races. What I mean by the new Majority makers is that in a number of these kinds of seats around the country, we're seeing progressive candidates who are, you know, running on a campaign and an agenda of action, things like Medicare for all, things like getting money out of politics, things like working class issues.
And they're running in swing seats all over the country from Montana to Maine to Michigan to California.
And we're going to get a test of this proposition of whether Democrats are able to run progressives in these swing seats and win right and so you
[00:03:32] Speaker B: went to cover several of these in some detail.
And I found it a revelation to learn about these candidates in places like Bakersfield, California or Montana or, and other areas that you would not expect. It's not only they're running working class issues, but embracing the Democratic left in their campaign. Not avoiding, but actually embracing that. And so one of the most interesting people I've read about in recent times is Randy Viego, Senor. You, you went, he's running for Congress in Bakersfield area. Why don't we talk about his campaign? Because you went there to cover it. It sounds like a pretty dramatic story, almost like a movie could be made of it. It sounded like. So tell us about it.
[00:04:26] Speaker D: Yeah, he's a really interesting guy. He's, you know, born to Mexican immigrants, worked in his parents auto repair shop and helped in on the weekends in swap meets. They grew up fairly poor, maybe middle class. He got, he, you know, was on Medicaid. He was getting free school breakfasts and lunches and so. And that's similar to the profile of the district apparent.
As I understand it, 67% of this district is on Medicaid, which is the largest percentage in the entire country.
So even though this is a swing seat, you know, sometimes a lot of swing seats, you think about, oh, it's these suburban areas that have a mix of Democrats and Republicans in them. This is a very different kind of seat. This is the Central Valley of California. It's, it's, it's, you know, needs a lot of public assistance, poor. It's got a lot of problems with public health.
And it's, it's a different kind of district, heavily agricultural.
In the primary, Villegas, who's become a college professor, but he also runs his parents auto shop. He's still involved in that. So he's got some working class roots.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: 30, 31 years old, right? 31.
[00:05:49] Speaker D: That's right. That's right. And you know, really came to this meeting, Bernie Sanders in college, when Bernie Sanders was in his campaign for president in 2016 and kind of got on board, was involved with the Working Families Party here in California, which as you know, is kind of a progressive organization.
And in the primary, it was, there were, you know, we, you know, we have a top two primary here in California. Right. So everybody runs on the same ticket and two people advance to the general election. Well, there were only three people in the race, so it was more like a traditional primary. The incumbent is a guy named David Valadao. This is a seat that went for Trump by 2 points in 2024 after the redistricting of Prop 50.
So Valadeo was going to make the general election. So really it was down to who was going to face him. And there were two Democrats. A more moderate assembly member named Jasmeet Baines, who was a doctor who had a lot of corporate PAC money come in for her. She shared corporate PAC donors with Valada 53 different corporate PACs supported both of those candidates.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: Oh God.
[00:07:00] Speaker D: And then Viegas running on Medicare for all, running a very progressive race with a very progressive agenda.
And in, in that primary, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee actually came in in favor of Baines was, you know, put her on this coveted list called Red to Blue which gets her fundraising support and other other support services and even spent money on ads trying to get Baines through. Because this is sort of the archetype of what a Democrat thing, you know, the Democratic establishment thinks wins in these, in these swing districts you need a moderate, you need someone who isn't, you know, extreme, whatever that means.
But they miscalculated. It turns out Villegas ends up winning the primary or advancing to the general election got I think 6 points, 6 percentage points more than Baines in that primary.
And as soon as that happens, the DCCC and the other establishment campaign groups, they do embrace Villegas. They give him support, they do polling for him, they're running ads in his district.
And unlike other years where a progressive would beat a date DCCC backed candidate and then the DCCC would ghost the district, it would just abandon the district.
That is not the case.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: Called them good Americans. Good Americans. Great Americans.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:35] Speaker C: They would.
[00:08:35] Speaker D: They would they. You know, that is not really the case this year. You have seen the Democratic establishment, even if they were working in the primary against a candidate, after that candidate wins, they have come in with the support that they need to win the general election.
And you know, I think there's a sense that this economic populism and running on these issues, you know, kitchen table issues important to working class voters in these districts. I think the Democrats are starting to understand this is, this is a winning politics.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Yeah, well, so the main media story however is quite the reverse which is that, you know, the establishment and the centrists in the party are really mobilizing to beat the left and that's been foregrounded. So your piece is quite a revelation because begin to see the possibility of some of a different path happening. And so let's just finish the Randy Viegos story. So he's. How do you think he's doing. Just what are his chances in this?
[00:09:47] Speaker D: Well, polling has showed him ahead. Valadao has a big problem because As I mentioned, 67% of the district is on Medicaid. And the biggest thing that Valadao has done in the last two years in Congress is vote for $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. So there is a large section of the district that is personally affected by those Medicaid cuts. And you know, when I was up there, you know, talking to people who were nurses in the area and just seeing like the incredible amount of traffic and people at the emergency rooms in the district, you can see that this is, this is a serious problem, that there are a lot of health care facilities that are at risk of closing considering the amount of losses that they're going to have because of reduced Medicaid participation. There's a couple places up in Bakerfield have already laid off workers in advance of some of these cuts. Many of these cuts don't happen until after the election, but they're already preparing these healthcare facilities for it. So, you know, he has a really good story to tell as far as that's concerned. And the town hall that I was at was actually about healthcare.
And so rather than recalibrate for the general election where you, you talk this progressive game in the primary and then you, you know, swing to the right in the general election, that's not what's happening. Villegas is running on Medicare for all in a general election in a swing state, swing seat. And, and, and if he wins, that really changes the understanding of who can win in those kinds of seats.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Exactly. And understanding of how that is, how Medicare for all works as a political issue. That is, I want to stress the fact that this particular district is one of very bad rates of healthcare, health rates, high rates of disease, high rates of health issue with this, the worst,
[00:11:53] Speaker C: the worst air in the state. I mean the worst air in the, in the region.
[00:12:00] Speaker D: High asthma rates, high cancer rates, you know, a lot of agricultural runoff similar to the Imperial Valley down in the southern part of the state. But the Central Valley definitely has a lot of health challenges.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: So this is a campaign people might. I just want to highlight. It's one of our goals today is to get people aware of a campaign like this.
Go go to Randy Viegos website and, and make a donation that helped us campaign. What your sense is that they're building the turnout. You know, if it's a, I mean, theoretically it's a, it's a district that the Democrats couldn't, could easily take charge of if they had the turnout and the voting participation of this very depressed population. Right.
[00:12:46] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a toss up seat. I mean this is a district that before Prop 50, before the redistricting, I think it was plus six. Trump in 2024, after the redistricting it's down to plus two.
There are a number of new people to the district from Fresno. So Bakersfield is one of the biggest cities in the district, but Fresno is also represented and other parts of the Central Valley.
And you know, one of the, one of the things we've seen historically in this district is low turnout.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:18] Speaker D: And so, you know, maybe the calculation is that by offering people something tangible, by talking about issues that really affect them, Viegas can boost turnout as we've seen across the country for Democrats in the primaries and therefore do very well in the general election. I should say that in the primary, if you put the two Democrats together, they, you know, it was a. Substantially more voters than the voters for Valadao in that primary. And so that, that bodes very well for him in the general election.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: Can you say more about the redistricting piece of this? You know, looking nationwide at, you know, the races that you're highlighting and the dynamic that you're, you're highlighting, which is, you know, when progressives emerge, you know, from a primary that the party apparatus is getting behind them and that it may be that as you say, this is like very strategically important how, you know, must win districts in order to, you know, take and hold a majority in Congress.
That something, it, there's something important when it's progressives in that role rather than, you know, whatever.
[00:14:33] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: CIA agent onto their second career.
[00:14:36] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:14:37] Speaker C: But anyway, it was just like, but the, the, the redistricting. How many of these are the result of the redistricting, you know, fights that we've seen in various states and how many are in, in districts drawn by Republicans?
[00:14:52] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean I, I think the, the races that I'm highlighting, you know, in this story, most of those districts were untouched by the Trump gerrymandering attempts in 2025 and 2026. These are historical swing seats.
However, what I would say, and, and I've done, you know, other reporting on this, those races where Trump came in and, and changed the district lines or you know, legislators at the behest of Trump came in, change the district lines in places like Texas and Florida, Ohio, North Carolina. Those gerrymanders aren't holding the way that Republicans think.
[00:15:34] Speaker C: At least, that's right.
[00:15:35] Speaker D: If, at least if you look at their spending patterns. I did a piece earlier this week that looked at where Republicans are spending money. And you know, I'm talking about the outside groups that, that fund super PACs in general elections, including Trump's group called MAGA Inc. Which is funding a number of races.
So if you look at those though, they're funding six races in Texas, even though they were supposed to be gerrymandered to favor Republicans.
They're funding three other seats in Florida that were specifically gerrymandered to favor Republicans and another two in Ohio and another two in North Carolina. And so, you know, sometimes there's a term of art used called the dummy mander where you, you try to gerrymander a state and you end up spreading your, your voters so thin that you end up losing seats that you thought you were going to win. And that could be what we're seeing in these races. I, I don't think too deep. They dug too deep. And I don't think anybody thinks that Texas is going to yield five more seats for Republicans, which is what they thought they were going to get. And I don't think they're going to yield three or four more seats for Republicans in Florida, which is what they thought they were going to get. So this, this, this attempt to sort of rig the election and you know, in this manner through gerrymandering, it does not seem to be as effective as the Republicans thought it was going to be.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: All right, well, let's talk a little bit about a couple of the other races that you cover in this article because they're all very interesting. Every single one, there's about five or six cases we don't have. Can't go through all of them. But one that's getting publicity not only in your article is that of Will Lawrence in, in Wisconsin. And he's a great example of the fact that this is a genuine rebel against the Democratic establishment. A left wing candidate backed by Justice Democrats and Sunrise and dsa, I think.
And now he is, as you just mentioned before we got turned on the recording here, he's one of the people that the Red to Blue program is going to be supporting running in there. So you wanted to talk about him?
[00:18:04] Speaker D: Yeah, I think Will Lawrence is a fascinating story, one of the most interesting stories of the entire cycle. So he ran in a primary in Michigan. This is the 7th congressional district, it's around Lansing, and there were two establishment candidates in that race.
And they kind of ignored Will Lawrence at the beginning of the cycle. And we're mostly concerned with fighting each other for supremacy of who was going to win sort of the establishment lane in that race. And what Will Lawrence did is something that was way ahead of the curve of where politics is going. He started talking about data center projects in that district and he went to town hall meetings in, in deep red parts of that district, spoke at public meetings, went to public events, you know, looking at these data center projects, and ended up getting a lot of support, not just from Democrats, but from people across the political spectrum. He ends up winning that primary by 15 points.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:19:12] Speaker D: And the issue that he was looking at at that point, which was data centers, becomes the sleeper issue of the entire election.
And you're seeing this fire, you know, sort of across the country of people really opposing the development of these data center projects and this AI infrastructure all over the country. And it really kind of started with Will Lawrence, at least in a political sense.
And so here's an example of a progressive candidate. He was the co founder of the Sunrise movement, progressive candidate who has found a way to find transpartisan issues that everybody can agree on. And now what we're seeing is, I mean, data center development is opposed by 75% of the public. And he was a very early adopter of this in politics.
And so it was an example of, you know, here you have a progressive candidate not sort of content to just sort of sit in the middle and try to, you know, be buffeted along by the waves of anti Trump sentiment, but to stake out a position and have the whole race sort of come to him and having to answer to him and really defining himself as a candidate who is backed by the people rather than billionaire tech founders who want to put data centers in his district.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Right. And I assume it's not only that issue, but others that he's raising. He is deliberately raising more, you know,
[00:20:44] Speaker D: other kind of transpartisan issues. He recently put out a. Something on, you know, stopping AI development until we understand the risks and manage them. He's been very out front in opposition to flock cameras and surveillance that is AI fueled.
So he's been, he's been on the, on, on some issues very early that end up being major factors, I think in a lot of races across the country.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: What kind of population is that district where this is? Lansing, did you say?
[00:21:17] Speaker D: It's Lansing, but it's a good cross section of America, really. There are some urban areas, like Lansing is the state capital. And so obviously there's some, some urban enclaves, but also suburbs and a lot of exurbs and rural areas in that district.
And in fact, a lot of the data center development is out in the sticks out in the rural areas there.
So you see, you know, a candidate that's trying to appeal, despite being a progressive, trying to appeal to all areas of the district. And I think that's what's unique about.
[00:21:49] Speaker B: Do you think part of his, is part of his thrust as to foreground his critique of the Democratic Party leadership? Is that part of what he's doing?
[00:22:00] Speaker D: Well, I mean, certainly he was out front in saying that, you know, this is an issue that Democrats have kind of not taken a strong position on and I'm going to take a strong position on it. But I mean, I think more generally, and this isn't just true of Lawrence, but a lot of the candidates I've talked to have talked about how voters, particularly working class voters in their district, have been left behind by both parties and that they're interested in, in uplifting their voices, those working class voices in Congress and to be a voice for them rather than to be a voice for, you know, any kind of party machinery.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Right.
So.
And by the way, Michigan is also the Senate campaign, a very rather parallel kind of case. You don't really discuss the El sayed Senate campaign, but I don't know if you have any comment on that or you probably been following that.
[00:22:54] Speaker D: Yeah, I don't, I don't to as much of a degree, but I think it's very similar. Right. I mean, I mean, you had Abdul al said beat two more establishment PAC candidates in the primary, survived $60 million in super PAC ads against him and still wins and now is getting support from all areas of the party, has consolidated that support and is, you know, on a pretty decent path to potentially win that seat in a swing state like Michigan. And one thing I think that both in the Senate and in the House, this is going to change a very common political dynamic that we see when legislation comes. You often see the political leadership of the Democratic Party say, well, we have to be careful with what we do because we don't want to upset those majority makers. You know, those majority makers have to run tough races and we don't want to risk, you know, them losing and then losing our majority.
And, you know, they basically this is used generally as an excuse like, you know, we don't want to upset our corporate donors because the majority makers would be upset. Right. But if you have majority makers that are actually calling for action, that they're, they're actually saying, no, I ran on delivering for my district and we have to do something here that completely upends that dynamic. It robs the establishment of that excuse, and it will change politics. If you have a different kind of candidate winning in these swing areas, it's really, really important 100%.
[00:24:35] Speaker C: Because I think there's another way that majority maker as a term works in this context, which is also what kinds of Democrats are constituting the majority of the Democratic caucus itself. So, like among the Democrats, you know, what is the median Democrat plays a big role in, like what. Yeah, exactly. As you said, like what kinds of issues get proposed, fought for, stuck with, et cetera. And for a very long time there's a kind of tail wagging the dog that those members, and this is true at the state level too, that are from, you know, the swingiest seats, the most difficult seats, marginal seats, however we want to describe them, like fear of them getting attacked from the right is used as an excuse to like, hold back the whole project.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:25:25] Speaker C: And so, so, yeah, so they're also making the, the, the majority within the majority possible.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:33] Speaker C: So the, an alliance between progressives that are elected from deep blue seats and ones who have won marginal seats, purple seats, with a progressive platform like that, you know, that could, that could change what kinds of people become leaders.
[00:25:52] Speaker D: Right, Absolutely right. And, and, and the reality is that these kinds of swing seat members of Congress get listened to at a greater level sometimes than maybe progressives that are in a plus 50 Democratic seat. There, there is this assumption that these guys have this special sauce. They know how to win close races and that translates into presidential elections. It translates into, you know, swing states and in the Senate and gubernatorial races. And so they are seen as, as, I don't want to say oracles, but they're seen as important votes because, you know, if they end up losing, then you know, the fancy offices that you get when you're in the majority suddenly get taken away from you. Right.
[00:26:39] Speaker C: So, yeah, and the idea of a chuckle look like, like Adam Gray being looked at, you know, as any kind of bellwether for where we should go as a party is pretty terrifying.
[00:26:50] Speaker D: Right? So, I mean, you think about that like, so Gray is someone who's, who fits that archetype. Like, he's a moderate and that's what we have to do to win there. But if you think about a Randy Villegas in the same, you know, basically in a similar area region as, as Adam Gray saying, no, actually we got to pass Medicare for all because that's what I promised my constituents, it's totally different. And it really? And people will see viegas like, hey, you won. We tried to win there with moderates all the time and we didn't. And now you end up winning that race.
Maybe we should about that.
[00:27:27] Speaker C: Exactly. It also is a great direct attack on the, the, the political assumptions that moderates use in those kinds of districts because you know, the, the idea is which, which makes sense in the most abstract sense, you should be more moderate in a district where you have to appeal to Republicans and Democrats who consider themselves more conservative. So like that makes sense as a sentence. But then when you start talking about issues it falls apart because in, in fact those being moderate on those issues on, on economic issues, on social justice issues, on gender issues, on any of the issues really hurts their constituents. Right? It's, it's like you're, you're a moderate in the Central Valley or in the Bakersfield area. Being a moderate Democrat means doing everything that the oil companies say, right. Which is like polluting the water and you know, exploiting workers and so forth. So it's like being, or in, in the case of healthcare, it's like siding with for profit healthcare companies over your constituents. That, that is the moderate position. On paper it's a more pro capitalist
[00:28:39] Speaker D: or whatever, but it's a very good, totally make a very good point. It's a great point.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: And let me add to that point by something quite long standing which I always taught when I taught political sociology.
The in, in surveys people will say they are conservative or centrist, but the policies they support, and this goes back for decades, are much more, you might say a class conscious or progressive than their political label. People call themselves conservative who will then endorse Medicare for all.
And yet the journalistic account of how politics works so much emphasizes the left right continuum as if that's how people are distributing themselves in their real, in their voting life or in their political instincts.
[00:29:36] Speaker D: And yeah, I mean we, I talked to some people who you know, follow this stuff, political scientists and election experts and there were varying degree of views. But you know, I think there's. The one thing we can say is that there's a tremendous degree of uncertainty here when you talk about what actually works in, in elections. First of all, we have a very low sample size. We, most elections are foregone conclusions before anybody ever casts one ballot.
So we have a pretty low sample size. What we, what we seem to know is that the national political environment is a much bigger factor in these races than the individual takes of, of the particular candidates.
And so, so that that kind of is problematic for trying to figure out, okay, is it moderate? And then Daraka, as you say very eloquently, you know, some. So often we have moderate being used as sort of a substitute for, you know, corporate support.
And what does that really mean for, for, for actual constituents is a very different thing than whether it pleases, you know, the median voter between two, two endpoints, the 50 plus one.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: So there's one other story that you tell that I was intrigued by that we might talk about, which is this guy Fortag in Montana and the reason that's intriguing, you say that he brought AOC into the district and that helped his campaign.
So that's really an interesting anecdote.
[00:31:11] Speaker D: Yeah. So let's talk about that. Yeah, Sam Forstag is, he's a union smokejumper. And what that means is he actually his job with the US Forest Service was to parachute into firefighters and then create fire breaks to stop them from advancing. It's a, it's a really high stress, dangerous and really admirable job. And he saw all these doge cuts at the US Forest Service, losing tons of his buddies who were, who were laid off. And he said, you know, I got to get into the game and I gotta, I gotta run for office. Now this is a district that Trump won by 10 points in 2024. So you know, and that, that's true of several of these seats where we're seeing progressives win the, the primaries is that these are double digit Trump seats and Forstag was up against the Democrats gubernatorial candidate in the primary. So someone with high name recognition and he thought, you know what, we've had low turnout for this seat for a long time.
I'm going to bring in someone that's going to try to get people excited. This is another district that has some, some blue dots and then some rural country in it. So Missoula is in the district that's a college town, so is Bozeman. And so he brought AOC to Missoula and Bozeman, the, the, the sort of blue dots in that district.
[00:32:33] Speaker C: But that's part of the base.
[00:32:34] Speaker D: I mean, that's part of the base.
[00:32:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:36] Speaker D: In a Democrat. Oh, not at all. And in the Democratic primary it, it ended up raising turnout and he beats the very well known gubernatorial candidate by several points.
And he didn't stop with the primary. This is the important thing. Greg Cassar, who's the head of the Progressive Caucus, recently during the general election went out to the district to talk and campaign for Forstag. And we're now seeing he's on red to blue. There is polling that shows a very tight race. He's running in, it's an open seat against like a talk radio host in, in, in that area.
And he's getting support from the, the, the Democratic campaign groups and has a real shot to flip a plus 10 Trump district. Running on a pretty progressive and pretty working class pro union agenda, running on the pro act and things like that. So yeah, it's a different understanding. And there are a lot of working class candidates like this running in these kinds of seats. I mentioned Brian Poindexter who is running in Ohio against Max Miller. He's the guy who had this domestic violence scandal with his wife.
Poindexter looks pretty well positioned to win that race. That was a, a double digit Trump seat. Bob Brooks who was head of, and Poindexter is an iron worker union. Iron worker. Bob Brooks in, in Pennsylvania is the head of the state firefighters union. He's running in a swing seat toss up race in Allentown area, Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Getting a lot of support. You know, he's, he's endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Josh Shapiro. So you know, he's getting support across the political spectrum there.
[00:34:20] Speaker C: That makes me, that's interesting. So then how like what are his
[00:34:23] Speaker D: policies running on a very working class, pro. Working class, pro economic populist agenda.
[00:34:30] Speaker C: Josh Shapiro doesn't give a shit about any of those things. So why is Josh supporting it?
[00:34:34] Speaker D: Well, I mean, you know, Josh Shapiro probably needs firefighter support if he wants to win presidential election. They're a key constituency and a union that does endorse in Democratic presidential primaries. So maybe that has something to do with it. But the point is that, you know, we're seeing a lot, there's, there's always talk of diversity, but you know, we're seeing a lot of class diversity in this new crop of candidates. A lot of candidates from, by and for and of the working class who are running in these races. It's not the sort of, you know, very polished resume of someone. You know, I went to Harvard Law and I served in the military and here I am. That's what we see often. Or CIA as you mentioned before. That's what we see often in these, in these swing seats. And this is a really different conception. So, so it's really interesting.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Well, and I think part of what's important and implied in many of these stories is these are not necessarily candidates who are trying to cover up or walk away from some of the more Cultural issues. That's not necessarily that. They're not running on the culture war front, but they're not, they're not denouncing, they're not throwing trans people under buses and they're not, they're not separating themselves from.
[00:36:02] Speaker D: And they're. And they're getting hit with those ads, of course.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Exactly.
That's why I'm saying that, you know,
[00:36:08] Speaker D: we're, we're seeing ads all over the country calling people running Democrats socialists, communists and hitting them for all the issues that you're talking about, saying they're for amnesty for illegals and pro trans and whatever it is.
And, you know, I think there's some understanding from these candidates that they're going to be called this no matter what they believe.
[00:36:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:31] Speaker D: No matter what they endorse. So they might as well, you know, live their values and principles and put forward an agenda that works for working people.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Well, not only that, by the way,
[00:36:41] Speaker C: I just had a, I realized that I had, there was a brain. I had a brain fart earlier, but I totally was mixing up Josh Shapiro and Ben Shapiro.
Yes, it's great. He's got Josh Shapiro and Bernie Sanders, but that was less of a cognitive
[00:36:55] Speaker D: dissonance than what the hell, Josh Shapiro.
[00:36:59] Speaker C: Yes. Makes more sense.
[00:37:02] Speaker D: He's certainly not seen as a fiery progressive or anything, but. No, it does. It spans the ideological gamut of the Democratic Party.
[00:37:11] Speaker C: He's uniting the party, which you gotta, you're gonna, you gotta do to win.
[00:37:15] Speaker D: That's right.
[00:37:15] Speaker C: So that's something, if I could ask, this is like a personal request is to help in your writing, because I think you get this is to help readers and the, and leftists and activists sort of be smarter and more accurate about how we think about our opposition. What, what does it mean when we throw out terms like the Democratic establishment or is the establishment doing this, establishment doing that, et cetera. Because there's two different things going on. We, we've got, there's a right wing in the Democratic Party and we could call them whatever we want. Corporate Democrats, moderate Democrats, Vichy Democrats. I like that term from back in the Bush era, whatever. But the point is, like, there's a right wing in the party and they have, they're factional and they want to elect more of their people and they don't like our people and they want our people not to win. They have a, they run the majority organizations in the. Or they run the party organizations in Congress.
So they run the dccc.
And so that's why you see them intervening in primaries for, you know, right wing candidates against progressive candidates. Now that's different than in a general election and what the DCCC's job is, which is to grow the overall number of Democrats so when a Democrat wins the primary, the organization, the apparatus is following, and that's what you're documenting and is so important for us to like watch and make sure is happening and all of those things. But, but we, I just feel like we need to be, we need to normalize that. There's like two general factions in the party. We both act in a factional way. It's just, it's part of democracy. So people can sort of see a difference between what is real, that there's a bunch of corporate money and billionaire money going into operations like Third Way that are really trying to hurt the left within the party and so forth. And those guys suck. And there are opponents, et cetera, and then there's like the Democratic Party and we're in a fight with those guys to control it, you know.
[00:39:23] Speaker D: Right. And I want to see, Go ahead. I think what's interesting there is to see the way in which the Democratic Party, as you describe it, has reacted to this progressive insurgency. Because, you know, as I've sort of alluded to in past years, if a, if a progressive by some chance won a primary over a, a Democratic Party backed candidate and advanced to the general election, what you would typically see is they would be deprived of financial support and they would end up losing that race. And I have some documented examples of that in your story.
And that almost is sort of creating a foregone conclusion saying, oh, see, I told you progressives can't win. Well, yeah, if they get outspent by millions of dollars on the air, yes, then progressives have a problem winning general elections and swing seats.
That's not what we're seeing this year. And I think that the, the, the way in which the Democratic Party has reacted to this shows you, you know, it, it, it provides some hints as to this, this jockeying for power that you're talking about between the various factions that, you know, progressives on, on that side of the spectrum running in these tough races that Democrats need if they want to gain the majority are being embraced more, rather than saying, okay, that's an acceptable loss, we would rather, you know, have, have power in the institution, go to the conservative elements of the caucus rather than have a progressive win somewhere.
[00:41:06] Speaker C: They put faction before a party.
[00:41:08] Speaker D: Right, right. And we're not seeing that as much, at least at the upper echelons. Of the party this year.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: So there's real hope in that. There's a true contradiction that we have to deal with all the time. We need a Democratic majority uniting center and left against the fascist threat, so to speak. And to defeat that, at the same time, we need a fight between within the party for making the party a people's party rather than a corporate, you
[00:41:42] Speaker D: know, and at the level of policy, I think what these candidates are saying is that saying that we're not Trump and saying that we're just here to fight Trump is not enough.
That we have to offer people a vision. We have to offer people something tangible, and they're willing to do that in ways that I think moderate candidates have been less willing to go out on a limb and take those kinds of stands.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: All right, so we are learning, we all of us, who are active in this, this terrain, constantly learning how to traverse that terrain. And your work as you, David, Dan, work as a journalist has been very helpful all through this and continues to be. And so it's very glad that we had this chance to talk and the magazine, I want to make sure people look at American Prospect, not in general.
They can read your stuff online. Right? Do you have to. You don't have to subscribe to the Prospect?
[00:42:49] Speaker C: No, there's. Yeah, but people should subscribe. People should subscribe.
[00:42:51] Speaker D: Please, please donate.
[00:42:53] Speaker B: But that's what I was saying. Yeah.
[00:42:55] Speaker D: We have no paywall. We have no advertising from outside corporate advertisers. We actually removed all the targeted ads off our site this year. We are completely funded by our readers. And so it's prospect.org and there are lots of buttons and things that you can donate once you get there. And, and you can read all the stories and hopefully that really good, by
[00:43:17] Speaker C: the way, and podcasts.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's an excellent resource and, and, and I, I've been following it since the beginning. It's been evolving in just ways that I've that I'm very glad to see happening and very glad to have met you for this occasion. Hope we have further chances to do this.
So I'm leading up to closing. Any final word to rock off?
[00:43:45] Speaker C: No, no, this was very good and succinct, but really appreciate it. I know you're very busy and appreciate you taking some time. David.
[00:43:53] Speaker D: Well, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks for your interest.
[00:43:56] Speaker B: All right, take care, everybody.
[00:44:04] Speaker A: The New York Times reported.
To keep the elections distorted, the super rich have poured what they could easily afford, a billion dollars at least to keep the wheels greased regulations to benefit corporate profit Dark money, impunity running the country Such a very far cry from democracy.
A billion dollars we know that we can show links that went from A to B to then buy up the polity get return on their investment when they buy the government get the servile politicians who know what to do Dark money, impunity running the country Such a very far cry from democracy.
A billion dollars so much greater enough to make a crater Enough to play the role of digging a giant hole through the heart of whatever remained of a remotely sane system of running a nation for the population Dark money, impunity running the countryside Such a very far cry from democracy Dark money, impunity running the country Such a very far cry from democracy.
