A Fight Worth Having with Corbin Trent

Welcome back to the home front. I'm your host, Reed Gailan. Today I am joined by Corbin Trent of America's undoing Corbin. Welcome back. Hello. Hello, Reed. Thanks for having me. No. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining me on this pre. Well, if you're celebrating Hanukkah, it's mid holiday. And if you're another faith, it's coming up. But I hope everyone is well. All right. So Corbin, the lot of the big democratic organizations had events on the last few days of the Democratic governor's association had a big event. And these are usually sort of the warmups where everybody tries out their stuff in a, you know, not only ahead of the 2026 midterms, obviously, but also trying to get ready for 2027 and 2028. The, the D triple C had a meeting in Los Angeles. That's the Democratic House campaign committee. Obviously, it's not run by Hakeem Jeffries, but obviously he's the leader. And President, former President Obama spoke there. Then there was a DNC meeting, a Democratic National Committee meeting, and Vice President Harris spoke there. There's been some speculation that she has, you know, depending on what sources you believe she has decided she's already going to get into 2028 probably again, he had some time there. But the first thing I want to talk about, talk to you about is, is there comments? So during a conversation with Jeffries, former President Obama said that it was his opinion that Democrats should put their differences aside there in his words, quote, tactical differences aside for 2026. And, you know, just get through winning. Just make winning the first and only thing that matters and that there will be a longer term ability if you win to have a broader discussion about what the party stands for, what it believes, what it wants to do. The other part of that, and I want to talk about this. And that's, that's the belief part, the political part. The second piece is his, his assumption that if and when the Democrats win the US house, this will somehow put the brakes on a Trump administration that is a car out of control with a brick on the accelerator and no steering wheel. So break down. Let's start with President Obama's remarks. So what did you make of those? So I guess to tell a little bit of my perspective on this, I want to go back just a scoach from when I was working on the house in the house with AOC, and I was a communications director. And it's like, I don't know, first week or so that after she was seated, Obama came down and gave a talk to all the freshmen. And he never said, Hey, Alexandria, oh, your role. But what he's talked about was, you know, we've got all these new faces and some of them have large Twitter platforms. Some of them have this. Some of them have that. It was obviously directed at her, right? And essentially his take was what now is not the time. It's crazy. It was not the time for all these big ideas and all these new fangled, the ways of organizing and ways of exciting the electorate now was not the time. We were up against a president in Trump that we had to sort of focus on, you know, yaddy, yaddy, yadda. So interestingly, his analysis has not changed. And one of the things I think is so disheartening about this is that the case that we were making the reason I was working with AOC, the reason I was doing justice, the reason I was doing all this is I thought that the way to win was to become a democratic party that people respect, trust and want to empower and feel like if they empower the democratic party, then they are empowering themselves. And when you listen to the words that Obama is saying is that we got to focus on winning, it's a, it's detaching winning from having an agenda, from having a vision, from articulating that vision to the American people. And that just seems basakwards to me, you know, as they say around here, is that a colloquialism or do people say that basakwards? I think it'll work. I think it'll work for here. You know, I was, I was thinking about something about president Obama, you know, first kids born in 2008 or I should say some kids in 2008 born in 2008 will be voting next November. And the reason I bring that up is because there is a massive generation of young Americans who really probably don't remember him being president. They don't remember the 2008 campaign. They don't remember the 2012 campaign. They don't remember any of the, any of his presidency, good, bad or otherwise. They only know him as, you know, 64 years old. So he's not old, but in there, in there, from their perspective, he's an elder statesman, they might have a better connection to Mrs. Obama, right? Because she's, I think, a much more, you know, positive cultural figure than even, than even former president Obama is. So I, I think that's interesting too, is that you, you know, I mean, he's going to speak to the D triple C and L.A. So, you know, I mean, it's, it's a very bespoke crowd, right? These are wealthy, wealthy democratic donors who, you know, paid somewhere between, I don't know, probably $10,000 and $100,000 or more, maybe to get their picture with him again, right? They probably all have about 800 pictures of them. But I, that was interesting to me, is that the, the democratic party of Barack Obama is a thing of the past, but here he is still a very potent force and potent voice for them. Yeah, I don't think that we've yet moved on from the democratic party of Obama or Clinton, because the folks that are, you know, the Hakeem Jeffries of the world, the new crop of, of leadership is very much in that same vein. They're very much, you know, aligned with Obama. They're very much aligned with the Clinton's, this sort of neoliberal status quo. You know, the irony is, you listen to, you know, you brought, you mentioned this in the opening, you listen to some of their rhetoric, which is the status quo is dead. We can't do the status quo. This is what Kamala Harris was saying in her speech, right, that people no longer trust their institutions. And it's basically, like the opinion piece that James Carville wrote, I don't know, a few weeks back where he was saying, we got to at least pretend to be populist, right? Well, it looks like a lot of people read that, that op-ed or at least, you know, they're reading the tea leaves. And then you've got Obama kind of, you know, letting people know that this is all going to be for show right now is not the time for the, it's like this good cop bad cop thing, I guess, that's happening. And I suppose that's to appease the sort of the donor class or what have you. I don't know exactly what the point of this is, but, you know, I don't think the Democratic Party has earned back the trust of the American electorate. I mean, what we can see is that this particular candidate or president, rather, is very, very unpopular. He was unpopular last time as on his way out. He, you know, the Republican Party doesn't have a real solid agenda, vision for the future. So it's not like they're competing up against much. They're basically, and they, you know, they said this early on, we're just going to let them fail. And then boom, we'll be back in power. And that's sort of useful to a degree. You can do that. But then if you have no vision, you have no driving force, you have no North Star with, with your shooting towards, then for what? And I just don't think that they can put this genie back in the bottle. I think populism, populist anger, I think people's inability to afford their lives, inability to thrive, inability to have class mobility happening in America, you know, it is something that's not going to get better with a handful of Democrats being elected. You know, they're, they're just, they have not yet come to terms with the level and the scale of the problem or the level and the scale of solutions. So I, I will consider myself corrected that yes, the establishment of the Democratic Party is still very much in the throw of the Clintons and the Obama's 100%. You are right about that. All right. So let me, let me just expand on Vice President Harris's comments a little bit to your point, which is one of our friends, Evelyn Quartz, and we were texting back and forth said, she sounded like downright like Bernie Sanders. She was talking about how we had overreached on off-shoring, we had overreached on financial deregulation, we had overreached on X, we had over reached on Y. So you talk about this good cop, bad cop. And what, what's interesting to me is, there still seems to be this belief in the, you know, we'll call it the LA San Francisco, New York, DC sort of quadrangle that when they say these things, actual human beings outside of those places aren't hearing them or don't listen, that they're not like, oh, well, you know, they're uninformed voters. Right. You know, Corbin, come on, like, you know, they don't read the New York Times every day. No, they don't, they don't read the LA Times every day. They're not, you know, mental health to it too. Yeah, but like, you know, they're not reading, you know, 17 different substanks a day. And so how well could they really be informed? And what we found, at least in my experience, and I think you probably have two, is that no democratic voters are very, very well-informed. And that's why they're so darn upset, I think. Yes. Yes, I think so. And, you know, I also wonder, and one of my hopes is, I think one of the other things that democratic voters do often is that they try to be the Steve Kornackie of in the voting booth. They try to, especially in primaries, they're like, okay, what do my neighbors think, especially the ones that are moderates, or especially the ones that I think are Republicans, but we might get yet or whatever, right? And so they try to do this, this game in their head of who is the most electable, right? Who is not, who do I like, not who's inspiring me, not what person makes the most sense to me, but who's going to connect with the most other people, and then they imagine who those other people are. And generally speaking, they have a very negative image of who those other people are, you know, sort of like with a deplorable or what have you. And then so what they do often, I think, is pick somebody based on that, what they think is going to be electable. And it goes to the filter of their, you know, their vision of America. And I hope that Democrats can see it. start trusting their guts more, could start trusting what they believe more and voting with their, with what they think the best candidate is. Not the one that they think is the most electable through whatever prism they want to view the rest of America. But yeah, you know, I, I think they are very informed in general. I think they are, you know, it's an electorate that's reading a lot, especially, you know, I was reading about, was a Heather Cox Richardson, you know, and sort of her base, which is millions of people and they seem to be. Oh, yeah, it was a, it was a very, you know, let me just say to all of our friends watching and listening on Substack. And I, I know I am some guilt, sometimes guilty of this, but I'll speak to Nate Silver who wrote about about Heather in particular, us to because you don't have an editor doesn't mean every post needs to be 3,500 words. Just, just advice, just a little advice. But go ahead, Corbin, I'm sorry. No, no, I mean, it's just like, you know, so he's talking about the isms, right? And this was the Nate Silver analysis of the Heather Cox Richardson sort of wing of the party, if you will. And he talked about it being the left wing of the party. And that's the AOC's and the Bernie Sanders. And then there's the Heather Cox Richardson, which is sort of the, what did he call them? The rebellious lives or the resistance lives. And then there is the abundance lives, right? So and that's sort of like in his mind, at least, that is the extent of the democratic parties over in the world. And I read that and I was just so dismayed that there is no FDRism, new dealism, no public capacityism, whatever you want to, you know, instead of private equity, maybe public equity, like this idea of another direction, they're all the same direction. All those isms are essentially the same basic direction. And I found that to be very discomforting and sad. And it's you know, it's painting, you know, it's the reason you see Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom. I'm waiting for Gavin to do the Gavin logo with just the exclamation point. I think that's what he's called. Please clap. Please clap. All right. So let's, but let's, you know what? And you know, I hate to give Nate Silver any more attention than he he absolutely deserves. But let's just go through that construction real quick. So you have have a OC and Bernie and you know, the progressive economic viewpoint. And I know, as you said, you work for Ocasio Cortez, you have the abundance guys, which is part of sort of like everything's okay. We're just too overregulated, which is just really neo liberalism repackaged with like a George Jetson book cover. And then then you have the resistance libs that he refers to as Heather and and co. And for me, you know, having been a never trumper, I guess, former Republican, whatever, my issue that I actually agreed with silver on was that there's this idea, Corbin that once Trump has gone ever, the system will somehow just reset itself. It's like, you know, you know, when like you're, you remember in the old days, like when you're computed and work right, just turn it off and turn it back on again. And it usually fixed it. Yeah, I plugged it plug it back in. Yeah. But that's like the American Republican is not is not a refrigerator who's light went out, right? Like that's not how it works. It's far more complex and far more complicated. And and far and it's run, it's a human endeavor, right? So by definition, it's got all sorts of tails and everything else that go along with it. But that to me, and I say this not only of the resistance libs, but also of, you know, my former colleagues at the Lincoln project or the Bullwark or anybody really who, who, you know, even on substex, been an inordinate amount of time talking about Donald Trump, whether or not he's failing, whether or not he's leaving, whether or not mag is cracking up, like, okay, you can make all an assumption on all of those things, you know, theoretically, he'll leave theoretically. But what does that mean? And this to me, I think is a, is a really important part of going back to the beginning of our conversation about both President Obama and Vice President Harris. And I want to get to what you're doing is, but see, there had, there's something's gonna come after it. And you have to have those conversations now. You have to be able to open the aperture of what's available to discuss. Because if you don't, then you get to 2027. And I've already, I don't know if I've said this to you, but I've already had several people say, well, we don't want to get in front of the presidential candidates in 2027 there that going to be the leaders of the party. But see, the party is supposed to stand for something year in and year out, whether or not it's Wednesday, December 17th or next April or next December or three years from now, right? You should be able to have some understanding of what the Democratic Party or any political party stands for. And that's my concern is it's like, no, no, no, don't believe in anything. Because we don't want to wreck our chances of winning just this time. So we can get back in power. What are we going to do? I don't know. We're going to stop Trump. But we're really probably not because he's doing all this crazy shit anyway that, you know, he didn't need Congress for. So give us a sense of, of, you know, how we start to turn the page of it's important to understand and illuminate and illustrate and make sure everybody knows what the Trump administration is doing. But in a weird way, he's the constant in this equation, at least for the next three years. I mean, he could blink out tomorrow and it'd be different. But for the argument, say he's not going anywhere. He's not going to be less crazy. So the question is not what to do about screaming about his insanity. It's what are you going to do? And I feel like it's the what you're going to do is the part that sometimes, you know, our friends and allies have a really hard time with, which to me is why it makes the advice of Barack Obama so bad, right? It is that you've got now basically the 2026 cycle to get ready for the 2028 cycle. This is one electoral cycle that you have to change who the Democratic Party is. I mean, I guess it's not bad that the Barack Obama saying that because that's what Barack Obama thinks, right? And that's the way he feels. And I think that's why we need to move beyond the Obama Clinton version of the Democratic Party and go to something else. And it's even beyond the Acasio Cortez or Bernie Sanders version of the Democratic Party in my mind. It's one that is going like, you know, I've been obsessed with health care for a while and just doing all kinds of research on it. And one of the things that has prevented us from having is the number of doctors that we need. So right now we're short tens of thousands of primary care physicians. In 1997, there was a cap put on the number of residency slots that there are for doctors. And you're not going to guess who the hell was president back then, but it was Bill Clinton. And then there was the faircloth, but whatever it was, there was like some, I think it was called faircloth. Wasn't it called faircloth? Yes, the faircloth amendment. Launched faircloth? No, this was the this was an amendment that made it very hard to make any new public housing units. So like, you know, we this idea of being able to increase supply of housing in order to bring down the cost by using federal funds and federal workforce was blocked again in 98. You know, so and you hear people like, you know, Kamala Harris was just saying the Democratic Party was involved in part of this mass or Cory Booker would say that, right? But they're not going to say anything specifically. We got to get back. We got to, you know, repeal these rules, repeal these laws. We've got, you know, for my administration did this or we need a different leader than Hakeem Jeffries. And he's not the future of this party. Like they'll say it in the abstract, right? Our institutions without naming any institutions, they'll say it in the abstract. Our party was participating in this without naming any individuals that need to be removed now. So, you know, for me, that's one of the things that I find so frustrating with these groups of candidates that are popping up, is that none of them are actually willing to throw the party under the bus, even for their own benefit, right? Like you would think that the desire to be president or whatever it is would be so strong with them that they would be willing to undercut the party. But I don't think that they see a different path forward. And I think that lack of vision, that lack of the desire to see things changed in a real substantial and lasting way, unfortunately, will lead us right back round to, you know, more magable shit. And not for nothing, but I think we dodged a bullet with this guy. I mean, he's not the greatest at this at being an authoritarian fascist. It's more complicated than that. When you look at people that have been able to do it, they didn't like tank the economy right off the bat. They didn't make, they actually increased people's ability to take vacations and have more money and there was, you know, like these people generally win in big popular elections eventually, right? Because they do things to help people's daily lives at the expense of another group usually, right? But they went straight to the, we're just going to, you know, enrich ourselves and put out the police forces on the street and snatch people up and disappear people like they jumped like five steps ahead that really make this not work as well as it could, you know, so that gives me hope. And I'm not sure that the next one we get will be as dumb. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's a good point, which is if you know that, that, you know, look, again, let's make a big assumption that Donald Trump decides in 2027 to definitively state, I'm not, I'm not leaving or I am leaving. Excuse me. So that opens the door for the 2028, you know, presumptive nominees or the potential nominees to get out there and start doing their thing. First of all, like they're going to, I mean, talk about a minefield. You're going to, you're not only going to have to, you're marching towards your opponent, but your boss is also shooting at you from behind, right? So like that's going to be their own mess. But if you tell me, you know, that like a rust vote, right, is not going to have is either a not going to stay at OMB or maybe be the White House Chief of staff. And, you know, I'm not going to say that I'm going to say that I'm not going to say that I'm not going to in a JD Vance presidency or a Marco Rubio presidency, like you've got another thing coming. And I think to me, that's the other part is that they, they have an evil energy, but it is an energy which gets people wrapped up and gives people something to join up to and to your point. Life will not be better for most Americans a year from today, right? And then Democrats, as I've said, and I've written repeatedly, should come to the table. Like they should take office on January 3rd, 2027 with a plan. I don't care if it's three points, five points, ten points, whatever. Call it the contract with America. No one will remember, right? And say this is what we're going to do because you know as well as I do, Corbin, just from the nature of electoral politics, that the Republicans will immediately start blaming Democrats for everything that's going wrong because now they own something, right? And that's how these things work. So if you're going to own something, you might as well believe in something, you might as well say what you believe and then stand behind at 10,000%. And I think that that kind of, it's not only necessity, it's beyond necessity, which is people, your voters, unlike what President Obama said, have to believe that you believe what it is you're telling them. And I think too many of them rightly don't because you know, I've referenced this, Tana Hisi quotes several times from back in March when he was in New Orleans with Joy Reed, right? Since 1992, we lost A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, right? What was it all for? What was all the money for? What was all the strategy for? What was all this for? And I think those are questions, he asks the question that needs to be answered. And I think it should be loud, I think it should be ugly, I think it should be knocked down dragout and the best man or woman or best men and women, you're right, should win the fight. But the idea that we're just gonna sort of coast along into the future and hope it all works itself out to your point will lead us to worse places than we are now because they will give, let me just finish, they will give Democrats maybe one more try and then it'll fail miserably or I'm afraid it will fail miserably. And then they'll go, okay, you know what, we actually do want more of what we had before. If we got to choose, we'll take that. - Especially if they've come up with a, if they formulate a plan, the other side, right? You know, the next group of Republicans that have learned that they can really push the, you know, push the levers of power really hard. And you know, some of the folks here in the chat, you know, brought up vote and they brought up the fact that, you know, they're trying to dismantle the government and that we didn't really dodge a bullet and so on and so on. And I see, I see you, I hear you, right? But at the same time, the other thing is, my personal opinion is a lot of the government needed to be dismantled. Like when you go in, like for example, the FDA, right? The people that said that OxyCotten was okay and that it's not that addictive and that passed it right on through. The people that have been, you know, the running the SEC, the people that have been running the Treasury and the Fed and that have really led to a really horrible condition of people's ability to afford their lives and they say that there's not been inflation. Well, that's, in my opinion, obvious and utter horse shit, right? And so the point is is that when you see power being put back in the hands of the executive branch, right? They call this the what the unitary executive, right? This idea that the executive branch should be run by the president of the United States. That he should have power to hire and fire people that are running this branch, that without that, basically it's abdicated, it's, uh, it's role to congressional, not just oversight, but congressional approval and so on and so forth. And I think domestically speaking, that's been happening for a long time. We've seen the office of the presidency and the executive branch advocate much of its responsibility to the, these individual agencies. Then for war, it's gone the other way around. The one that was like specifically written out to be in the hands of the people's house, right? War, trade, all these other things, they've given that power ironically to a branch that wasn't supposed to have it. So we've had this weird bastardization of congressional checks and balances and, you know, in the various rails and rules that we're supposed to see. So when, and that's what I think is fundamentally flawed in if we just elect Democrats, it'll be okay, right? If we just get rid of Trump, it'll be okay. There were problems that led us to this point. There were problems that led enough Americans to the point that they reelected Donald Trump. A second. Twice. Yeah. Yes. They elected him twice. Yeah. They nominated him three times, elected him twice. And he actually won the popular vote the second time, right? So there was a failure by the Democratic party. I can remember Kamala Harris when she was a senator talking about the impeachment and she was sitting in a little window talking to CBS News saying, this is a solemn sacred thing, you know, endeavor that we're under here. This is not reality TV where I'm not gonna get into the, you know, back and forth and I'm thinking, well, you misread what you're doing. Your job is to sell this guy as a criminal to the American people. That's who you're trying to convict him with. Not the Senate. You got no chance at 67 votes. It doesn't matter how solemnly you do it. What you're supposed to convince the, you know, what your job is is to show the American people that this dude's a criminal and they didn't do it. They failed and yet they padded themselves on the back. You know, they thought they did such a great job and then Adam Schiff thought he did such a great job in facilitating these two, I think, wasn't it two impeachment that led to the American people saying, Bullshit. Not a big deal. No big deal. Like they failed miserably and their theory is, just keep going. We got to protect the institutions. We got to protect the, it's working. We just got to get this guy out of here and put it all back together. And I find that quite in raging. So, I mean, this, this is a good point and maybe, maybe this is a conversation we need to have 365 days from today and maybe we will. Yeah. But as, as we're thinking about this, the 2026 midterms are about to be underway. If they're not already, they should be underway, at least from my perspective and I'll have more to say about that. But I think that's a really good question about what the next democratic nominee or the next batch of democratic would be nominees. Like what do you think the presidency should be? What do you think the government should look like? And if the answer is, I'm gonna put the education department back the way it was. I'm gonna put the letters back on the wall at USAID. I'm gonna put this back. I'm gonna put that back. What you're basically saying is one, I have no vision. Two, I have no imagination. Three, I'm really just like, I just really want the office and I wanna ride around on an airplane and be in a motorcade, right? Because we are in a transformational period which can be very scary admittedly but also has a heck of a lot of opportunity if you're willing to take the chance on. That's what, yeah. I think, you know, one of the things, you know, Bernie used to always talk about a political revolution, right? I feel like that's happening. We've been in-- Yeah, we had one or we're having one. Yeah. It's currently happening. The only problem is there's only one participant. One participant, which is the MAGA movement, is saying yes, we're in a political revolution and we're gonna change things and we're gonna do things completely differently. And then the other one, the other participant is a democratic party that says, there's nothing to see here, folks. We're gonna get back to normal. Everything will be okay. Trust me, we gotta get rid of this cancer, this guy here. But then once he's gone, we're free. We're cancer free. But my assessment is that no, we're not. We've had various laws and regulations passed that hamstrung the American people's ability to take care of themselves. We've off-shored and we've not-- We passed a $1.2 trillion by partisan infrastructure law. What, five years ago? I don't know when it was. Maybe not quite that long, but let's call it for. Yeah. So for over a year now, the interstate that connects, say East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, high 40, goes through the mountains, has been washed away into the pigeon river. And they still haven't fixed it. It's been a year in change. So it takes you two and a half hours to get through something that it used to take you 15 minutes to get through. And after we allocate $1.2 trillion to fixing our highways, our bridges, our internet, our rail, all these things, right? But we haven't decided that there's something that's systemically wrong, that things aren't actually functional. That because when you do that, then you have to have new ideas. It's sort of like health care. Right now, the Democrats are screaming from the rooftops that we have to extend these subsidies. These subsidies are the lifeline. Otherwise, health care will double for millions of Americans and so on and so forth. And I don't disagree with that. But the subtext, the underlying thing that you got to read here in the fine print, is what they're saying is a tragedy and will bring about catastrophe for families is Obamacare. That's what it is. It's Obamacare without the enhanced subsidies that were injected for COVID. It's just a return back to what Obamacast. And you know, Bernie was saying, "Hey, this is bullshit. ACA is nothing. It's horrible. It's gonna be bad for America." And everybody was, all the Democrats were like, "Bernie is a wacky old cook." You know? And now they're like, "This is gonna be terrible." But it's the fucking ACA. It's Obamacare that you're out here screaming against, but you're blaming Republicans, which I get, you know? I'm not saying it's not smart politics. But you gotta have the next step ready. This isn't gonna work. We can't just keep spending. We're on track to spend $9 trillion a year on health care. Health care. That's it. Nine trillion for fuck's sake. That's crazy. Right. Well, anyway. So a couple of things just on health care because I know that's a particular interest and passion of yours. Talk to you again, friend of mine. and OBGYN, it works at a fairly suburban clinic for a big healthcare provider. And two of her partners in that facility have already quit because the healthcare company is just squeezing them. And they're short all sorts of doctors to your point. They're short all sorts of doctors and nurses and everything else. And then one of the things that I think opponents of some generalized healthcare plan or from a backed plan, whatever it is, also look at the wait times, look what happens in Canada, look what happens in the UK. I'm new for a procedure that my GP scheduled in July, I can't get it till February. So tell me the systems working. Tell me the system's working. Right? My general practitioner, right? Like to get on his virtual calendar was three weeks. Right? Not even to see him. And if I want to see him, Corbin, I got to drive like 55 zero minutes, which is fine for me. Like I can be on the phone. I can listen to a podcast, whatever it is, like because I can work remotely. But for somebody who can't afford that, I got to wait three weeks and then I got to take basically four hours out of my day, out of my work day to go do that. And so to me, I think it's again, what are you defending? Right? Because it said Obamacare? Fine. Say the Affordable Care Act was what we could get done at the time. We're now in a different time. Everything has changed. Anything call it COVID, call it Trump coming down the escalator. Everything pre-choose a date is forfeit. The world doesn't work that way anymore. Right? And it probably shouldn't work that way then. So what are we going to do now? Right? The other part too that I'm sure you've seen over the years and you can probably cite some statistics here, most of the things that we're talking about that Democrats say they're for and if they were for would be good for the country are also very popular with voters. Right? They're unpopular with special interests or they're unpopular with crazy Republicans or whatever it is. But for the most part, these are broad-based, largely supported issues. They're extremely, I mean, I think the last thing I saw in just Medicare for All was 77 overall, you know, major support in the, and I can Republican support was, I believe over 50 or just barely under it. It was right around 50 and then, you know, it is the problem now is that the, the, the, the Boogie Man of Weight Times, right? The Boogie Man of Weight Times, first of all, we already have them as you mentioned and that's with about 12%, 15% of people still being uninsured, not just underinsured. And then I think the number that I saw the last poll done by, I don't remember who did the poll, but it was about 44% of Americans said that they have delayed or not sought treatment that they needed because of costs. Oh, if you indeed, you did pass Medicare for All tomorrow. Let's just say instantly everybody's got a healthcare card and it's taken universally across the country and then people started going. And there was no copay, no deductible, you had dental vision and health. Then it would indeed collapse, our healthcare system. It would collapse under the weight of all that. Why? Because we have not built a healthcare system that is capable of supporting 330 million Americans. It doesn't exist. So when I, that's why, you know, I like the phrase, you cannot buy what does not exist. And, you know, because we too often, especially Democrats, but more so than Democrats even are progressives, we think if we would just put money in the pockets of people that there is somehow gonna magically appear supply, right? That it will just happen that the market will take care of it somehow. But isn't that what Republicans are saying right now too? Give money directly to people and let them figure out their own healthcare? Yeah, and that will somehow magically fix the system. But we've been pumping trillions and trillions of dollars into this system. And what it's not produced is capacity. What it's actually done is shrink capacity through mergers and acquisitions and all sorts of other, you know, ways in which this has happened. So, and that's why, you know, when I read the options from Nate Silver of what the, you know, what the future of the Democratic Party looks like. And I don't see an option that says the system of just letting the free market figure out how we're gonna get the supply we need to support the population on things like healthcare and housing and electrical grids and, you know, water. We still don't have water fit to drink very much in Flint, Michigan. And that's not, they're not alone, right? The amount of work that there is to do to get this country back to like, you know, modern is vast. And, you know, and to think that we can just somehow sit back and let the market do it. We knew in World War II that the market couldn't win the war. You know, he didn't say, we didn't just say, oh, well, well, you know, we'll write these contracts for planes and see what happens. No, we told Ford, you're on hold with the, with the cars for a while, you're making bombers, right? We, you know, we actually decided this is what America needs, this is what the allies need. And by God, it's what we're gonna make, right? And that's what we did. But then for many, many years, we got so far away from what we had discovered through the New Deal, through the Arsenal democracy, the space race, and so on and so forth. And we got to a country that believes that destiny in the future just happens, that you don't need to work to make sure it happens. And I think that that's one of the problems with the Democratic Party. That's also one of the problems with our economic view of the world is that it's just nature as opposed to effort and planning and work. Well, that's the whole point of having a government. No, but that's the whole point of having a government. Otherwise, you know what, might as well just, you know, every man and woman for themselves. Right? All right. In fact, in fact, no offense to any, any, any boomers you might be in the chat or watching or listening to this either live or in a subsequent podcast, YouTube video or whatever. I feel like the entire, the entire country, Corbin is a little bit like Generation X. You know, I think you might be a little bit younger than me, but like, we're all like, all right, I'm 49. Like we're latchkey kids, right? You got to find your way home. When you get home, you got to find something to eat. But the bottom line is like, hey, kid, you're 12. Figure out your laundry. Hey, kid, you know what, make yourself something to eat. Mom and dad, they're not gonna be around. They'll be around occasionally, but you're a roommate. Right? Look, like they got their own stuff going on. And like, it's just, I mean, and so like, the boomers are still in charge, right? Like they're the ones who've been like, yeah, things work for us. And, you know, now we're good. Things, we set the system up so that it would always work for us along the way. And, you know, I'm taking it to a, you know, a ridiculous extreme, but I think you understand my point, which is, we're almost two. And every man for himself thing, you know, it's in, and I've seen, I'm not sure if you have, but I've seen the George Carlin quote, probably 15 times in the last two weeks now, right? It's a big club in Newaine at it, right? There's so much wisdom in George, though, right? Yeah. For sure. Yeah. I know, taking too soon, we should probably just run old, old videos of his. He would probably, he's, he should be just like, and we better than us. Just like he did in Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, right? Where he was sort of the spiritual guide for Bill and Ted. All right, you're probably all right. About him being in that. Oh, yeah. Great movie. Yeah. Yeah. If you haven't seen them, I'm not sure it holds up, gang, but a very young Kiano Reeves, a very young Alex Winners, terrific movie, you know, they stay awesome, my friends, I think they say, or be awesome to each other. All right. But before people go off and be awesome to each other, Corbin, tell us a little bit about your announcement of America's undoing. You're trying to put together a political organization, you're trying to raise some money for it. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. So December the 9th, I suggested that, you know, I think that these ideas, some of the stuff I've been talking about, public equity instead of private equity, you know, building supply again in a deliberate and in a massive way, sort of getting back to what we learned works for America and Americans between 1930 and 1970. Sort of like pre-pal memo. Like if anybody, if you've not read the pal memo, look that shit up and see how you think we got where we are. And then know that that dude was on the Supreme Court one year later. Anyway, and what I want to be able to do is get this message out more than just on my sub-stack. So I ride a lot of things, I do a lot of research, it's getting a lot of eyeballs, but everybody around here don't read, you know, especially younger folk, you know, everybody's not spending, I put up three pieces a week. (laughs) He's very, very, very few people are reading that much yet. Right. So what needs to happen in my mind is that we need to take this sort of idea of public capacity, public ownership, especially with things like AI and robotics emerging. The idea that we can just let Elon Musk in a handful of other folks own all the means of production. That's crazy. Yeah, I know. I mean, how many more coped-out tech bros do we need to submit to? Right, not, I think Zero is the answer to this, right? And, you know, so some people talk like, oh, we need a wealth tax, which I'm not necessarily saying a wealth tax is bad, but I think you take Elon, I wanna make SpaceX worthless by making NASA amazing, right? I don't want a wealth tax, I wanna destroy his company through competition, right? And I think we can compete with them by putting money back into NASA, by making NASA also a producer of rockets, not just a buyer of things. Anyway, so I will to be talking about this and the way I'm going to do it is through a super PAC. So the super PAC right now, you know, the name is a fight worth having. So it's sort of, and I think that is America, that is a Democratic Party in my mind. And I think the Democratic Party, the vehicle of the party has got the closest voting base to what we want to do. You know, what I think is, you know, what FDR did, what we've had success with in the past. So, you know, I'm not enamored with this Democratic Party either. And you know, I know a lot of Democrats that are not. And I want to go out there and play in primaries. I want to be able to run ads. I want to be able to do some guerrilla style marketing. It's a lot of the ideas that I'm having as I reread the Powell memo yesterday, were a little, you know, it's a little reminiscent what I want to do, except I don't have, you know, the Chamber of Commerce with me, right? You know corporate America on your side. I don't have corporate America on my side, but they, you know, and I've got right now, I don't know, a 12 or so donors, I was looking for big donors to start with because I wanted to make sure that I can get this thing off the ground. So people were like, oh, I'll throw in 25 or 10 or whatever, which is awesome. But I didn't want to take $25 from somebody. And then three months from now, I'm like, well, this didn't go off the ground. Sorry. So like all those NASA rockets in the 1950s. Yes, or worse, you know, I'm remember, hopefully not that bad or many or many Boeing products. Let's use that. It's just a modern example. So, you know, so now we've gotten right at 300, 300, 29, 297,000 pledged. I'm hoping that'll go. We're looking at a launch date of January 2nd or 3rd. The law your tells me don't start in December of 25. Then you got a file more paperwork that made sense to me. But then, you know, I can say, I want to start running ads in places like Tennessee nine where we've got a really great Justin Pearson candidate running against incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen, who was good for the time, but now's not his moment, you know, now Steve Cohen called Justin Pearson's filing for that race in a primary. He called it a Pearl Harbor like event to give you sense of just how to touch Mr Cohen might be. They will live an intimate. Right. At least in Mr. And at least in Steve Cohen's life. Right. Yeah, it was 10 days ago, 10 days ago. Yeah, that's the, can you imagine the hubris that leads to you saying some shit like that? Yeah. Again, it's, you know, yeah, look, I mean, but it's, you know, it's 90% of the seats are gerrymandered, right? Like, why does Steve Cohen talk like that? Because he got elected and never had to worry about it again. Right. Yes. Exactly. And I want to make sure that the ammunition is out there for people to think one of the things, you know, I tried Justin Democrats, Brent New Congress, and all these things that I was, you know, working on in, in previous lives. And I thought to myself, one of the things we don't have is the ideas to get these team to build a team. And so I want to socialize the ideas. I want to socialize the ideas of repealing the barriers to public housing. I want to socialize the idea of repealing the barriers to building a, you know, a health care system that's 40 or 50% owned by states and counties and cities again, you know, getting back what was taken from us. So that's what I'm trying to do. Well, and you know, count me in, however I can help, and I'm sure many of the folks watching and listening will as well. So before I let you go, first and foremost, thank you so much for giving me some time today. Where can everybody find you and any of the work you've been doing? So I am the easiest place to find me is at America's undoing.com. The name started off in February to tell the story of how America came undone. How we got to this moment was the point. I'm doing a little more hopeful stuff these days. So the name may have to change eventually, but America's undoing.com. And I've got a piece in there that announces the idea of the Super PAC, a fight worth having. If you read that and get inspired, you can email me and I'm still looking for big donors. So if you happen to have a lot of money that you think could be used for something, you know, useful, I think we can do it. How about you? We've got, you know, a lot of my folks on here too. They'd not maybe don't know about the home front yet. Yeah, sure. So everybody I write over at the home front on sub stack, which is also on podcast and then on social media, Twitter, TikTok, all of that. For those of you who don't know me, grew up a Republican, former Republican now left when Trump won the Republican nomination back in 16. I was a co-founder of the Lincoln project left there in July of 2024. I am now the president of an organization called Join the Union.us grassroots organization 175,000 volunteers, 100 partner organizations. We've got some exciting stuff that we're going to be doing in Q1 and Corbin will talk a little bit more about this. But the idea is we're going to, you know, it's, I think it's probably complimentary to what you're doing, but very much grassroots activation starting in January. We're going to try and do some proof of concept in about six or eight different US house districts and see if we can, you know, start to move needles against Republican candidates, either in a couple of open seats or in, you know, toss up seats. And, you know, I've got some more news about a 501-C3 organization, a charitable organization on the ground. And I want you to come join us for an event at one of those. But yeah, join me on the home front gang would love to have you. And, you know, to me as, you know, Corbin, I don't even know how you and I met. I think, well, it's sub-stack is a magical place, I guess. So, but it's been fun. You know, look, guys, I think for me, I am, I am proof that a political evolution is absolutely possible. And, you know, I spent a lot of times inside a party. Let me tell you, when you grow up in a party and then the first job, you, the first real job you have in that party is at the White House. Like, you don't really have to do a lot of thinking, right? Like, not a lot of, they don't want a lot of your opinions on anything, right? At least not at the level I was at. And so, this has been an incredible journey the last five or six years. And I hope that you will join both of us and many of our friends and allies as we go through this. Because as you said, it is worth fighting for a fight worth having, I should say. And we'll keep having it because, you know, what, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not qualified to do anything else, Corbin. I know you, you're like actually like can build things. I, I fixed my, my dishwasher the other day and my wife was like, that was amazing. My pinky would disagree. I chopped it off. No, I'm sorry. Anyway, guys, well, listen, Corbin, thanks for joining me. So much fun. Always a pleasure. Thank you. All right. I have it me and joining me. And everybody else, thank you so much for joining us. Remember, America's undoing, go sign up there. The home front go sign up there. You guys be safe. Stay warm. Have a good weekend and have a good holiday season. Thanks everybody. Bye bye.