Phones and Blame Fly at the DNC

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There is no safe like simply safe This summer America celebrated is 250th birthday But if you actually sit down and read the Declaration of Independence You'll notice something while the buried right near the end is a brutal rant about and this is a direct quote merciless Indian savages as it turns out relations with native nations weren't just a footnote in the American revolution They were central to it think about the Boston Tea Party the colonists literally disguised themselves as native Americans later The country's very first attempt at a government collapsed largely because it couldn't handle the sheer power and sovereignty of native nations First America is hosted by journalist Rebecca Nagel who hosted crooked's excellent this land podcast along with leading native historians It completely reframes how our democracy was actually built which feels pretty relevant in our current political moment Find first America wherever you get your podcasts Welcome to pod safe america. 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It's exciting Um, all right on today's show We're going to talk about the democrats new 2028 primary calendar Which puts south carolina first and has already set off a debate about who that helps We'll also talk about one democratic leader who seems beyond help DNC chair Ken Martin The subject of not one not two but three leak filled stories about the party's financial crisis Then we'll cover Trump's trip to michigan in the big senate race there as well as the latest with the Iran war And the biggest bombing of the weekend the president's performance at the rescheduled white house correspondence dinner Finally, Ben Wickler stopped by the studio to talk about the DNC drama the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary drama And his brand new drama free book. This is the plan Uh, all right guys. Let's start with the biggest news from over the weekend that will impact the outcome of the 2028 presidential election We have a new primary calendar. It's here on friday the dnc's rules and bylaws committee voted to make south carolina the first primary state on January 22nd It will tentatively be followed by navada on february 1st new hamster a week after that new mexico a week after that michigan the next week and finally virginia on february 29th before a bunch of other states vote in early march on super Tuesday The new calendar still has to be approved by the full dnc which we'll meet next month But there's already one potential stumbling block new hamster has a law that requires the state to go at least one week earlier than any other state primary uh the dnc's proposed solution is for the new hamster democratic party to fund and hold its own primary That's separate from the official state primary Uh, but it doesn't sound like new hamster democratic leaders are on board with that plan just yet or republican leaders or republican leaders right uh There's also been some grumbling from a few progressive activists that know They're putting so I say a few because access is like uh Progressives upset with south carolina and then it's like a jack of an op-ed and like one comment from his son piker But there's a few progressives really all of us. Yes. Yeah, it was because i i did my diligence I started reading and i'm like, okay, this headline is great Anyway, there's been some grumbling they putting south carolina first gives an advantage to more moderate establishment candidates But we'll get into all of this before we get into what we think about the proposed calendar You guys want to talk about why this is such a big deal and how much you think the early state calendar matters I'm just nostalgic for when we were in iowa rigging the caucus for ability josh And uh this didn't work. This is the thanks we get Yeah, we probably shouldn't have rigged it for him to only be revealed like four or five days later That was a film But anyway so much for iowa promise step. Yeah, I was gone I mean I think the early state calendar in its totality just could not be more important. It's the whole ballgame Um from the Obama perspective like Obama's not the nominee if he doesn't win iowa And because it gave us huge momentum and it made people over the country believe that he could win But also it taught us how to organize and we put in place those organizing practices in all the future caucus states And uh mopped up delegates against Hillary Clinton as we went forward So kept paying out dividends during that long drawn out awful primary process Um, the order will also determine, you know, what policy areas get highlighted like for example iowa being first meant that we talked about ethanol probably far too much for far too long that will now we may never talk about it again May not be as big of an issue We now have new mexico with southern border state. Uh, we'll see if immigration is more salient this time around and michigan We'll probably hear about autos and unions and virginia maybe dojos is an issue again, right? You have a lot of government employees in northern virginia Um, it also gives more power to different demographics and you know types of voters older voters white voters black voters, right? So that's a bit of a part of the conversation that we'll get into in a minute But I do think like Figuring this out is essential and it really does help in harm specific candidates So I'm just a counterpoint. I don't know that I agree with that. So I think you're right. The schedule in early uh 2008 was very important in part because iowa was was perfect for brachobama to prove that despite being uh a black candidate he could put together a coalition of white voters that were hyper engaged and You built a great opera organization on the ground had Hillary not had a surprising win in New Hampshire it probably would have been over sooner But that allowed the the race to go back and forth What's interesting is the way the race ultimately goes back and forth It was told as a momentum and and narrative but in reality it was Often more about the demographics of the voters in each state kind of ricocheting back and forth as like the fundamental dynamics of the race Didn't shift on the other side You have Joe Biden becoming the nominee. He loses in iowa. He loses in New Hampshire But he says wait for South Carolina. He's able to overcome Those early losses because they had set expectations And he comes out of South Carolina with so much momentum that he's able to clean up on super Tuesday and become The nominee. So I do think it it's important To me what I think is the most important is where the actual swing states fall in the schedule right Where Michigan is for example But sometimes I think we get into this idea of the order of states mattering when in reality It's partly about the order but also about managing expectations and How campaigns fair over the the the next few contests it can win. Oh, but I don't know if it's like a as such as orders new states too I mean like let's say if it was instead of South Carolina and Nevada New Hampshire It was Texas Oklahoma Arizona like that sort of what I'm getting. Yeah Having these new states in there will just change the issues and demographics Yeah, there's two factors here. There's order and then there's states Which is you know, I do think I I think you can make an argument that order doesn't matter as much as Everyone thinks it does I think that the which states the composition of the states in the early window is hugely important Yeah, that's what I was getting especially and especially now that there are five I think you You're probably going to have a slower momentum build over time But if you have five states in the early window before super Tuesday and the two last states are very big states Like michigan and virginia both of which are also going to be competitive states in the general election especially michigan You are going to know a lot by the time super Tuesday rolls around about who can put together a campaign that could win Almost any demographic group in any region of the country and Like I find it hard and unless now we Democrats award delegates in each of these states proportionally I'm like Republicans do a lot of winter take all states So they might who knows they might change that for 28 as well and their side So you could see a situation Super Tuesday and beyond where it's like an Obama and Hillary fighting out a delegate battle But I tend to think that having five states go and that many that many states and that many votes in that period of time is going to pretty much tell you who's the Who's done me by the time you get super Tuesday, but we'll say right they all like by the time you get through those early states you've been in Wider states you've been in latino states. You've been the state with a bigger African-American population By the time you get to michigan. You have some like sort of prominent urban areas that have been you know strongholds for Democrats You've gotten a good sense of of the entire picture, could you achieve that same thing if you did swap in a Texas and Oklahoma, Texas is the biggest band of population. It's also a border state. Oklahoma is a very white electorate right might bring out more hyper engaged Democrats in the same way that say like an Iowa would in the past, whatever. I think the part of the reason South Carolina was able to play such a big role in 2020 is Biden said explicitly wait for South Carolina. You can't become a dem- you will not be a- there will not be a Democratic president who doesn't have strong support among African-Americans and then he wins so handily in that state that kind of proves that case and he kind of is able to march on to the nomination after yeah. In terms of how much it matters though, like you got to imagine every single campaign and waiting is after Friday's announcement is like now finally starting to plan their strategy. I mean like it is everything for a campaign knowing what states go first in a way to order. It's like every decision is made around that. Where you travel, what operatives you hire, like- and also there were people who are talking about waiting until after the midterms figure this out. I was like what are you talking about? You can't possibly do that. Yeah, when I saw that some of the progressives were like sort of- and I had the same things like who's actually upset about this, but you know, oh, South Carolina is a boon to more moderate candidates. Well, that's sort of about what you're saying about the African-American electorate not being as part of the left as some like the more sort of the wider part of the democratic base. But now for the first time you might have instead of candidate spending six months in, you know, a crew white Iowa, you're going to have people spending months and months and months in South Carolina. And it's like, well, that's a great opportunity for the left to prove that they can appeal beyond their sort of online and sort of more less diverse audience. With Iowa and New Hampshire finally being dethroned as the first two contests, how do you guys think that changes the race and strategy of these campaigns? Well, it's just a point of the both states actually have laws on the books mandating their place in the order. But the Iowa law says the caucus has to be held at least eight days before any other primary or caucus. Iowa officials currently want to punt on that fight until after the midterms or whatever reason. But we'll see what they do. I kind of don't think they're going to fight it. New Hampshire is going to go down swinging in part because you have a Republican governor who is not going to agree to move it. I don't think that they have the primary. So then they're going to be asked to pay for a party funded primary. And if they don't, I mean, there's real consequences. I mean, if a state party refuses to abide by the rules, the penalties are now, they lose all their delegates at the 2028 convention. That's up from losing 50% of your delegates. And they have to pay a $270,000 fine and lose DNC membership voting rights until the fine is paid off. So that's pretty serious for them. And there's penalties for the candidates. Even worse for the candidates, you lose all your delegates from the entire early state nominating window and you're prohibited from participating in DNC rule like today. So New Hampshire is going to put on a separate party run primary or else they are just going to take themselves out of the early state window altogether. Those are the only two options because no one's going to deal with these penalties. The state of New Hampshire, the candidates. And so I think what they're all grumbling about right now and what I saw like Kathy Sullivan who is a former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman because I had asked about the Sun Twitter and she replied she's like, look, we have, we're trying to spend money to elect two members of Congress in 2026 and a senator to husband members and a senator. And now we're going to need all this money to put on a primary like that is a big undertaking. So I'm sure maybe some of this will be bargaining to try to get some money from the DNC, which we'll get to just to put on the primary. But that is a big, it's, you know, it's a big deal. There's a possibility if New Hampshire bows out because they don't have the money they don't want to do this. The only other northeastern state that applied that would slide into that slot is Delaware. Which is kind of interesting. Do you guys like where the DNC landed on this group of states in this particular order? I would have liked more swing states, but look, I am not, maybe like I just, I have so much on PTSD from 2007, 2008 where the calendar was treated as being this very, very important thing when in reality the experience of working for Hillary Clinton in that period was she would always do well enough that she could justify going to the next contest, but not so well as to change the dynamics of the race. And to me, I'm glad, like I'm glad Michigan's there. I think it is actually good that you no longer have this situation where the first two contests that draw so much attention and time for so long are these very white places that don't reflect the broader democratic electorate. But beyond that, I do think in the end part of the strategy is where you compete, but also part of it is just how you tell a story about where and when you're going to do best. So I look, I'm sad to see Iowa go because I know all the downsides of caucuses, we've talked about them, but there is, it forces you to invest in organizing, it forces you, it incentivizes a nicer brand of politics because you want to be your opponent's second choice for reasons we don't have to get into. So I think that will be missing that. Actually, I reached out to a bunch of people who worked in politics just to like get their opinions on what they'd seen and their responses range from, it's good and I like it, it's impossible to know yet because the new Hampshire to this is going to boom around, boomering back on us and be a disaster. So what was the argument for that? That it's just going to be messy, new Hampshire is going to screw everything up. Once we get to Northern Virginia, you're going to have like DC, you know, media markets spend people like making a big determination and it will just kind of be a mess and who the hell knows about what New Mexico did, whatever, like it's just one person's opinion. I felt, my personal take was, I feel like the DNC and the RBC did a pretty good job of navigating a very challenging process. I don't think the New Hampshire piece is solved in any way, share, perform. I think we're whistling past the graveyard on that and it's something that's going to have to give there. What do you think it's going to get? What do you mean? I just, I think New Hampshire is going to fuck around. We don't have the money to pay for this party run process and the Republican governor is not going to move the state. So I just, I don't know what's going to happen here. I think, can you end up with a primary where just the, the candidates don't participate, right? I mean, Joe Biden won New Hampshire with a right in and the delegates didn't, right? I think it was like that. No, but that's, it's either they find the money to put on the primary or they're out. There's no other out there. You know, I'm saying like that's, and it's just, it's going to be up to them to figure it if they can get the money. But you have the DNC threats work. No major candidates actually go there, but they're super PACs muck around in New Hampshire and stage right in effort so they can show strength and they get news cycles at it. Right. So there's all these weird ways that they can kind of mess around. So who knows? On South Carolina, I mean, I think South Carolina being first, I agree with you, like South Carolina first isn't like a massive change. I think it's a reflection that black voters are the base of the party, their half of the primary electorate there. I think the talk about you always hear from South Carolina people is we have the track record of actually picking the nominee with who we vote for and like that's true, but that's because the field was winnowed and then it gets South Carolina. So they voted for, you know, South Carolina voters picked Obama Clinton and Biden. My guess is South Carolina will now just kind of be the winner or it will be the filter function that Iowa and New Hampshire were. I do agree. It's a real bomber that it's just, it's not a background state. Like you do all this organizing in these early states and then the candidates never go back to them. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And that is because the laws are already in the books and if you look for other states with heavy populations of black voters to go first, you have to find a state with a democratic effect. They can move the primary day and it's a whole month. So I sort of feel the same about South Carolina, but I think they did, I think four South Carolina going first, they did a really good job of then balancing out the rest of the calendar because you have, I mean, they have diversity, all kinds of diversity, right? All diversity, geographic diversity, ideological diversity. I also like that the first four states are small states. And so the kind of retail campaigning that you got in Iowa and New Hampshire, and this will be true if Delaware takes New Hampshire spot, you get, so you'll have South Carolina, which is a relatively small state, Nevada, same thing, New Mexico, which is brand new to this process, which is pretty small. I just don't know what to think of that one yet. New Mexico is interesting, so you have in that state, New Mexico's overall voting eligible population is 45% Hispanic. That is the largest percentage of any state in the country. They also have a significant Native American population. That's the first time that we have an early state with a pretty significant Native American population. Like you said, it's a border state, which I think is great. We have a democratic effect there, so they should be able to move that no problem. It is more non-college, the voters there than some of the other states, which I also think is helpful, because you're going to want to prove that you can win non-college voters and not just highly college educated voters, like you get a New Hampshire. What is the different function in their theory that Nevada plays versus New Mexico? Nevada also has a big Latino population. It is compared to other states, lower percentage of college. It also has Las Vegas, which is a huge important center for unions, right? Other than just this is how it shook out, I liked having Nevada early when we were there. That was one of the last trips we took before COVID. Look, I was on record saying this last time, but boy, am I happy, we'll be spending a lot of time in Nevada. We'll have no choice. We're just going to have to go. What is the theory of the different role in New Mexico versus Nevada plays? New Mexico is a border state? Yeah. Even though there's a theory of that being different, what I took it as is Nevada and South Carolina were battling for first. That South Carolina party chair was like, well, if Nevada goes first, what does that say to black voters that they don't matter as much? I think you pointed this up to me a little bit. Does that mean the reverse is true then? The Latino voters don't matter. Now, by having two states with significant Latino populations, Nevada also has a significant black population as well, not as much as South Carolina, but it does. Then you get, then you basically have two states in the early window that have pretty heavy Latino populations. I'll make another case for this now that I think about it. South Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico. These are states that are not that cold in November, December, January. That is a very cool. That's what we want. Good for us. It's just going to be New Hampshire, and I guess Michigan, right, and we'll be cold too. What do you guys make of the South Carolina disadvantages progressives, a progressive candidate? I think it's probably right. I mean, the South Carolina Democratic primary electorate is older, more moderate than Iowa, New Hampshire, or Nevada. About 40% of South Carolina Democratic primary voters were college graduates, about half identified as liberal, which is less than earlier contest. This is, I think, 2020 exit polls. They're more likely to be working class, more likely to go to church once a week, older. Biden won South Carolina in 2020 because he won with black voters, but he did especially well with black voters over 60. He and Bernie actually tied with black voters under 30. I do think it's likely to be demographically set up to be more moderate. As we were saying before, if you're saying that you think South Carolina is a way to put a roadblock in front of progressives, you are saying that a black electorate is a roadblock in front of progressives. Now, I think the point that would be made in response is, as Tommy said, a generational thing, not a demographic thing. But of course, it's both, and we have seen, you see this in Michigan playing out, that one of our duals' challenges is trying to build support in the black community. I feel like this is an opportunity for the left if they want to start building a bigger coalition that can win in contest like this. South Carolina, that is where Bernie goes down in 2020. If that is the test and it may not happen in this election, you're right, it may be harder because of this. But also at the same time, even if South Carolina was third, fourth, or fifth, this test was always there. The candidate that wins black voters is going to be the nominee. Well, this is where I think that the order matters maybe less or at least can cut both ways, because let's say South Carolina does advantage a more moderate candidates. So a fifth of South Carolina primary voters describes themselves as very liberal, which is relatively low. Then you go to Nevada, and the third of voters there describes themselves as very liberal. So if you're a progressive lefty candidate and you don't do well in South Carolina, you hang on and you go to Nevada, you go to New Hampshire or Delaware, you go to, you can try. Basically, there's a state on the map in that early window for any kind of ideological flavor or different kind of voter that you can get. So I don't worry as much about that. I wouldn't worry if I was a progressive candidate or if I was an establishment candidate on like the order of that way. One under-discussed change, though, is Nevada going from a caucus state to a primary state, which I think is likely to disadvantage progressives, potentially, because there's, you know, some progressives tend to organize well in these caucus states and unions tend to do better than, unions tend to do really well in caucus states. We'll just, interesting to see how that kind of cuts. I don't know yet. Oh yeah, the fact that there's no caucuses means it's disadvantaging. I mean, that's, yeah, progressive do better in caucuses, for sure. But even without the caucus, Nevada will have like a more liberal primary life for South Carolina. Dan made an argument in his Saturday message box. The South Carolina going first massively advantages Kamala Harris. What did you guys think about that? So I saw that and I thought, huh, that's interesting from Dan. And then I went back and looked at the South Carolina polling from before Kamala ended her campaign. And she drops out in the end of 2019 before any votes are cast. But in the closing weeks of the year, there were polls that had her somewhere between say five to 12%. I think she sort of like ticking down a bit as we got closer. And so I don't know. I was like, like, maybe that's true, right? But part of the reason she entered her campaign when she did is she just wasn't gaining traction even in a state like South Carolina. Yeah, what do you think, Tommy? I think, you know, basically the argument is that black voters are half the electorate in South Carolina that Kamala Harris has the most support from black voters by far in polls. She has 69% favorability with black voters plus 42. I you're right that like her her presidential run in 2020 did not end well in South Carolina or any state, but I was just a bad campaign that didn't end well for her. And I think four years of being VP probably changed a lot of things. I think certainly, what does it make her the front runner? Yes. But being the front runners double edged sword, because the early states are not necessarily about winning all the early states, but expectations, management, and exceeding expectations in the early states. And when you're the early on front runner and everyone assumes you're going to romp in South Carolina for the following reasons that put the big old bullseye in your back and the media looks for better, more interesting stories to tell for them. That's what I thought. As soon as South Carolina is over, now you've got four other states for that month, including two very big ones at the end. And does anyone think that the media, like no matter how good of a campaign she's running is going to be like, yeah, it's the Kamala Harris front runner story all through February. That's just not going to happen. So it goes from like, oh, wow, South Carolina advantage is Kamala Harris to Kamala Harris is the only candidate that has a state if she loses its over. That's definitely true. Well, the other thing we haven't talked about is if Westmore runs or Raphael Warnock, like she's not the only black candidate that might run for president. And then you could have black candidates splitting votes, you could have. And then it's interesting. The two things that you need to know before starting to think about how the race is going to go and plan your strategies the campaign. One is the early state calendar, which is now locked. Two is the composition of the fields. Exactly. You need to know who's running, who's going to split what vote, how they're going to like that, that part, we don't know yet. But like, there is a situation to where if it's just Kamala Harris, if she's the only black candidate running and she's doing really well with black voters in South Carolina, then because the state is more moderate overall and you have a bunch of white moderates running aside from from Kamala Harris, then they're all splitting a vote and then maybe the progressive candidate or two does even better. So just in that's just an example, like we have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. I just think like, you know, some kind of like Pete Buttigieg, who is historically had a really hard time with black voters, like it's probably now to disadvantage. Bernie Sanders' war he to run again was probably a bit of a disadvantage for the reasons we just discussed. A lot of the conventional wisdom is also that AOC came out of this new primary process helped because she does well with Latinos and with labor. We'll see if she runs. We'll see if that's true. But I'm mostly with you guys that like a lot of the early attempts to kind of, you know, handicap this race are just silly. We don't know what it's going to look like. Yeah, exactly. Ron Brantstein, who digs into these demographics and knows them better than most, he said that the one through line for all of the states is the candidate who's going to be able to do best with black voters and white college educated voters as well is probably going to do the best because aside from Nevada and New Mexico, you don't have a lot of states with non-college, big non-college populations. And he was like, you know, last last candidate to have done that to bring that coalition together is Barack Obama, right? It's the white lives and the black Democrats. So we'll see. Pots of America is brought to you by Magic Spoon. We love Magic Spoon. It says here to mention the macros, but you know what? I don't deal in macros. I deal in delicious, delicious, high protein low carb cereal. 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Speaking of the DNC, seems like Ken Martin had a bad Sunday. The New York Times, notice and the bulwark all ran stories about what the Times calls. The troubled, broke Democratic Party. The Times story was certainly the newsiest and most damning for Martin. It includes a story about him throwing his phone at the desk of a junior staffer, which resulted in a formal HR complaint and another where Martin freaked out on a call about the party's finances because he thought his staff was planning a coup and they were like, no, we're just talking about the money. Wow, no coup. Sounds like just a usual law that relieves it, threatening to me. But the real meat of the story is the party's financial struggles under Martin, which are quite real. We already knew that the DNC is $2 million in debt after taking out a $15 million loan and more than $100 million behind the RNC in fundraising. But apparently the situation is so bad that the DNC is asking vendors not to invoice them until after the midterms. And for the first time, the DNC will not be transferring any money to the House and Senate committees to help them win the midterms. According to the Times, quote, "party officials are now reckoning with the fact that they must begin to repay $1.66 million of the loan's principle per month starting in January." Otherwise, pretty nice building, but we shame it's something where it happened to it. What'd you guys make of these stories? Do anything in them make you more worried than you already were? Can I just read a great entry in one of my favorite parts of an insider story like this, which is a leak about leaks. Quote, "It pisses me off when I see leaks out of this building," Mr. Martin said, according to four people who had heard the remarks, adding, "No more!" You know that's the exact kind of leak that a reporter's like, "This got to go in for this work." No more. It's just a brutal thing, leaks about leaks. I love it. I love it. So I reached out to some of the DNC staff, Ken Martin's defenders. I can offer that perspective. Sure. I don't know if you guys want to start with reflections on the story. No, no. You can't. We'll reflect after a year. Okay. So what they would say is. We're embarrassing over here. We're embarrassing a veto over here. Let's hear them. Okay. Thank you for doing the work. I'm grateful to it. Yeah. I'm going to make one phone call. You have woodward in this building. So they would point out that through June of 2026, the DNC raised more money than the DNC did in the entire 2017-2018 cycle. They love that talking. A comparable period when Democrats did not hold the White House. They also argue they have more cash on hand than the DNC did in 2019. So their argument is basically the median narrative is that this is like some historic disaster when, in fact, there's a recent precedent that they're actually have improved upon. They would also say, let's look at the investments we're making. The DNC gave $100,000 to the Mississippi Democratic Party right before a special election that broke a Republican supermajority. Obviously, a good thing. The DNC gave money to South Carolina now for the first time in 50 years. South Carolina recruited a candidate to run in every state house race, state-wide race, and congressional race. So there's sort of a talking point where they can sub-stack about this where he's like, we 90% of the race is we've over-performed or one. Now I think that's taking credit for the political environment and people being mad at Donald Trump. But, you know, it's evidence, right? It's results matter. Now, I also talked to some people who worked in the DNC in that period, that 27-20-18 period for Tom Perez. And they'll say, the thing you have to remember is that everyone hated the DNC in 2017 because they blame them for Hillary losing and they blame them for Bernie getting screwed. So, money wasn't really coming into the door. Yes. They walked into the building with $17 million in debt. The major fundraising team had been laid off, so they were at a standing start. And at least $30 million of Ken's fundraising total was Kamala Harris raising money to retire her own debt. So, I think those people would also can see, like, yeah, that 2017-20-18 period, fundraising wasn't good, but comparing to the not good period is still bad. And so, they still, in that election, did transfer money to the House and Senate committees, which they're not going to do this year? Well, it's also, hey, in this game that we're losing, we actually have more goals than the previous team. And you're not playing against the DNC from 2018, you're playing against the Republicans in 2026. So, the last point I think I've just making a response to the Ken too, is like, okay, you're telling us you've raised all this money, but you're still 2 million in debt. Like, that suggests mismanagement and mispending. You know what I mean? It's like a double, the talking point is a double-edged story. Yeah, that's my feeling about it, which is, like, before sort of diving into all these stories, like, oh, there's a massive fundraising problem at the DNC. We're being outraged by a huge amount. And then you read the defense. Like, wow, actually, you know, we're out of power, but the fundraising is actually comparable if not better, okay, then where'd all the money go out? And then the test is, if you really are going to say that we've been, it's not a fundraising issue, we've been using the money to kind of build infrastructure, well, then it's incumbent upon you to show how that's going to benefit Democrats in the midterms and beyond. And then you think, well, hold on. That was the strategy where, so right now, Democratic candidates have been outraising Republican candidates. The Republican House Committee and the Republican Senate Committee are outraising, not to the same degree as the DNC R&C, but are outraising the candidate committees. And the R&C has over $100 million more on hand than the DNC does. Now, before the Supreme Court ruled that the parties could spend at the same lower rate as candidates, there's an argument to say, you know what? The DNC should raise money, get it out the door for building infrastructure, focus fundraising for the candidates. Those candidates can then buy ads at a cheaper rate than the parties. But that advantage is now gone. That doesn't exist anymore. And so they have more money in their super PACs. Their candidate committees have more money. And the R&C has more money. And all of that just puts the Republicans at a huge advantage for buying ads over the Democrats. And so then you say, well, regardless of what money went out the door, that is the situation right now. So what do you do to get out of the hole? The answer isn't to point to how much worse it could have been or how much different it is. Like, we are behind how do you close that gap? Yeah. And it doesn't seem like there's any answers on that from the DNC. And it's not like they are sort of denying any of the stories. They didn't throw the phone, it slid next to someone else who didn't own the phone. Rufus Gifford, who we all know Rufus. He was on the Obama campaign. He was the finance director of the DNC. Who the phone knew you? He worked there for eight years. He wrote the subject today. He loves the place. He worked. He was the finance director on Obama's re-elect, on Biden's re-elect. So he's been around for a long time. He didn't have a dog in the fight on Ken versus Ben or anything else. But he said, in his subject post, the DNC is spiraling towards the relevance and that Ken Martin is a good man with good intentions, but simply not meeting this critical moment and his chairmanship is beyond saving. We do that. He now goes out where he says to everybody coming to that big DNC meeting, one slice of pizza per person. That's all we can do right now. No second slice is at this meeting. I just work. Just can't. We cannot afford it. We have a campaign where our paychecks were delayed until the next year to make like the FEC report look better. So we had more cash on hand. And by the way, it didn't suggest a healthy campaign and the things were going well. But then a reporter called and asked one of our spokespeople if staff had been asked to delay their paychecks to make our FEC report look better. And this black said no, because we had just been told that we would not be getting paid over Christmas. We were not asked. So yeah, that was memory lane. I mean, the question I was like, what can we do about this because we're all in the situation together. We're all like, we all need the DNC to be successful in the Democratic Party to be successful. You know, there is a scenario where we're talking to someone where once we have a nominee, the nominee of the party installs their person to the DNC and you know, tries to go around Ken and raises all the money. But you know, between now and getting a nominee, we need to figure, like the party needs to figure something out on like how to raise the money that we're going to need, especially with the Supreme Court decision, as you said, love it, where now the Democratic national committee, it's going to be really, really important for them to have a ton of money before there's even a nominee. This is a crisis. You know, like this is the terrible fundraising and the autopsy report and the interview with you. This is all compounded into a crisis of confidence with DNC leadership. And it is just not going to improve and it's time to make a change, I think. And I think Chuck Schumer and Hawking Jeffries need to go to Ken Martin and say, we got to do something different here and they need to get someone else in there that just has confidence of big donors, of parties, et cetera. And yeah, like we just can't overstate how important this Supreme Court ruling is in terms of erasing the Democratic party advantage that we used to have because small dollars would flow to our candidates who would get preferential rates on ad buys. And then you'd have Republican super PACs having to spend 10 times the same amount for the same ad. Now that advantage is gone. And we are that just makes a hole even deeper. And so like if I'm Chuck Schumer, like you're trying to win a Senate majority, if you're Hawking Jeffries, you're trying to become speaker. This is existential for you. Well, if I may be beyond those two. because for them it's like, you know, the midterms are in a couple of months, that ship has sailed. Every Democrat running for president, every one of these campaigns, it is in their interest to like back together on this to like, I'll go to these. I don't think it should be sailed for the midterms. I think you could get a new person in tomorrow who could bring like a bunch of big donors to send a message and raise a hundred million dollars in like a couple weeks. I really like to think that although I think on that though, the only reason I say that is because if yes, but then why not just send the money right to the DSEC and the DCC? There's no need to give the DNC money before the midterms. Sure. This is again, I'm taking Ken's work. I read your long stop-stack. But if you look at what his claim is, then there's actually is a fair amount of money coming in. And so what I don't understand is, there's this sort of hand-ringing, oh, there's nothing we can do before November. If there's this little amount of money on hand, but like what, something like 8.6 million is coming in every month at the elite, like, why can't there be a change in priorities where you kind of do say, from this point forward, we are going to be devoting these resources towards winning in November. And this is the amount that's going to be directed towards this as opposed to whatever kind of longer term kind of money that's going out the door per month is. Like, that's what I don't, that's what I came away, I was confused by. There's just this is a vicious cycle. And, you know, Wicklair was, as usual, very generous and kind and want to show over Ken Martin. But, you know, when there are stories like these, it just deepens the problem because now who's going to want to give money to the DNC after reading stories like this, right? And so it's a vicious cycle. I did think one more funny moment from the New York Times story is he's like, he's got this staff meeting and he's trying to like, block everyone up. And he says, my success is your success. So the weaker I am, the weaker all of you are. Which is true. It's just a weird thing to say your staff. Yeah. It seems so inspiring. I don't know if that's the best pop talk I've ever heard. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think it's a get through, like, the other thing too is any, like, if you're a presidential candidate starting next year and they're like, well, what do you think I can, Martin? You would just like, when I, you know, I, the president will choose a new DNC chair, right? Like, we will have a better, you know, they're all going to say they're going to choose a new DNC chair. So it's just like smooth that up. Well, let's get this get through the mentor and swap this guy out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like when when we swapped Kamala for Biden, I think the DNC raised like a billion dollars and a hundred days. You know, there's a lot they could do. This trip we were to make a change. I think, you know, it, in Ken's sub sack, he says, we must communicate and organize year round while one of the things that we learned in this New York Times story is that after the positive American review, Ken has only done like one local TV hit. So I'm not saying he's our people in Erie. Yeah, Erie full. Now, it is primarily a fundraising job, right? We don't expect him out doing to be out doing message events, but Rufus Clifford, then his sub stack made the point that when the DNC chair does a lot of TV, that gets shared, that gets seen by donors and makes them want to donate and be involved and kind of like keeps you in the mix. And then also you have like the DNC's got a lot of great staff and they must feel beyond demoralized. And they're supposed to be doing things like year around, you know, research in comms and digital on Republicans, they're doing mobilization. They have this big like creator program, you know, the RBC, the rules committee, just did a really good job on the calendar. And you need more hype reels for Ken. And it's like creators. I just feel bad for this team of people, not just because the phones are flying, but because like you feel like your your work is getting denigrated in the news all the time. And you don't have the leadership you need. And you know it's important. And like it just must be frustrating not to be able to fix it. Just because the phones are flying. Pots of America is brought to you by Haya. We're only beginning to understand the impact of ultra-process foods on our health and especially on the health of our kids. 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For limited time, NutriFull is offering our listeners $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. When you visit NutriFull.com and enter the promo code Crooked. That's NutriFull.com spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com promo code Crooked. So Michigan's in the early state lineup because it remains one of the most critical swing states. And this false Senate race there is going to be one of the most hotly contested. The primary already is hotly contested. Trump would they're on Monday to tour a GM facility in a pair alongside Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Senate who will face off against either Abdul El-Sahed or Haley Stevens, though neither were mentioned during Trump's speech. He did, however, go hard at the DSA wing of the party. If they're siding with the radical left communists taking over the party, they want, in other words, the normal socialists who can destroy a country too, they're not going to mess up. Communism is the greatest threat to our country in history, including even World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or 9/11. I mean, this is a serious threat. In that order, World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor 9/11. I was like the normal socialist and he kind of said he's like the normal socialist who could also destroy the country normally. He's got enough for that. That's important to hit. What was that cold war fever dream nonsense? Very weird. I was kind of surprised that Trump held back from mentioning the Senate race. What do you guys think that's about? I think he's suddenly a stickler for the hatch act. It was an official event. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, either in my broadgers, like, are they? I thought they would be, I thought he would hit a duel. I thought it was something. Well, I mean, a duel wants a fight with Trump right now, right? Presumably Democrats would love to watch a duel be in a fight with Trump right now. So maybe the idea would be if you, if you pick this fight, you're going to take attention into the race. But they kind of want a duel to come out of the thing. So I don't know. Well, that's the thing, right? Like what you'll hear from Haley Stevens supporters are the Republicans want a face of duel because they think he's weaker. That were so you think that they would elevate him in this moment right before the primary. It's weird that they didn't. I don't know why. I mean, it could just be because Trump is dumb and forgot his name and like, you know, it's supposed to do it. It's a communist right? And there is some evidence too that they do want that because Mike Rogers was like, there was a recording of Mike Rogers on a call with the other thing. Like, I think it's a duel wearing good shape. And so, you know, there is evidence for that, but they remarkably disciplined from Donald Trump there or maybe it wasn't disciplined. Maybe you just forgot. Maybe doesn't care. Is there any, is there any argument that Trump and Rogers think if they probably pick a fight with a duel, it helps Haley Stevens? Is there any, can you make that argument? Like, that's why I mean, Rogers has a behind the scenes in the kind of to try to be like, I'm excited about a duel, which is a perfect thing to help Haley Stevens. It's not a public fight. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. They also might be thinking that if Haley Stevens wins, they want to label them both as communists. Right, they don't want to do that. They're not going to be like, oh, we really wanted to, you know, like they're just gonna act like she's as left-wing as possible. Right. That's what they do. Meanwhile, Abdul, who is, you know, we're all supporting in the race, was quoted in playbook on Monday morning, telling donors on a private call, a lot of these private calls, these zooms. You gotta get these zooms. They're not that private. No, kidding. So he was telling donors on a private call that all the money and political power being used against him makes him look like David against Goliath, presumably meaning both Haley Stevens and APEC, and how if he wins, he'll have a massive platform and we'll start primary and extended moderates, including John Federman. What do you guys think of his assessment of things? I mean, like I say this with love for Abdul, but I thought it was not good. You know, like my first argument would be, you gotta win the general election first and then talk about this stuff. Like you're spiking the football on the 30-yard line. Let's win the primary. Let's win the general. Then you can maybe talk about 2028 if you want. Also, I'm sure what happened was he was trying to pump up donors and supporters, but you have to know this stuff is going to leak, it always leaks, and the ogre comment is getting taken out of context like people are suggesting that he said, "Oh, sorry, I didn't mention that." This will help me put an ogre on a pike, right, which is about John Federman. People are suggesting he was comparing Haley Stevens to an ogre. It does not sound like he was doing that in any way, but also don't call John Federman an ogre. You know, it's not helpful. I think it kind of plays into this belief among a lot of Democrats that the left wing of the party is far more focused on going after moderate Democrats than Republicans. I too find John Federman very frustrating on a lot of issues, but he's an elected Democrat Senator in a swing state. Let's beat the Republicans first and talk about that. I think my other just like big picture comment for a duel is take every sentence where you say, "I" and replace it with "we." This campaign is not about you and what you're going to do in 28 or whatever, it's about the movement. It's about what we're going to do to make people's lives better. The issues we're going to elevate, like the way you're going to fight for Michigan. I just think it was not good. Yeah. This is the second interview. This is the second sort of, first was an interview. This was leaked recording, but the second time we've gotten sort of this sort of tone for me. That's semifor interview. I think that at a similar level of like, I don't know, like hostility and kind of grandiosity to it, but also it's punditry and as a rule, if you're a candidate and you're doing punditry, that is a mistake. That is, if you think of all the gross gaps. Always with the donors. With the donors, every country with the donors is the worst set, it's just, that's where it happens all the time. That's where Mitt Romney says 52%, Barack Obama says bitter guns and religion. Like that, like Hillary, I think deplorables was the class, was that, was that a fundraiser? Yeah, yeah. So it's a common trap that you're sort of like analyzing the electorate, and if you're doing that as a candidate, by the way, which is something he understands in his interviews where he's actually, he did an interview with Dasha Burns and even she was like, my God, you're on message throughout this entire thing. But kind of let's loose when I think he thinks he's in private. The other part of it too, though, is like, it's got to be frustrating because we're campaigning against Haley Stevens, who's getting all this attention for having this aw shucks, pure Michigan thing. And then Apex dropping like $30 million on there, they're like, put a sort of salad in it as fucking hands. We'll see, we'll see what the odds are. I think for progressive candidates that tend to do well, have a sunnier disposition. There is, they do express anger, of course, but there's a sunnier disposition. And what a, what a duel has nailed is the liberal patriotism. And we saw that with the, when the protester, Jake Lang, like, you know, interrupted one of his events and he talked in the, basically, they showed him out with the USA Chan and the duel gave the speech. So he's got, he's got that part down, but you can't be also, you have to, look, you have to be happy all the time and not be, and not be hostile to your opponents. I was like, there's something deeper than this is not about Abdul. There is a, like, a bad faith critique from the left that takes, I think, what is largely a true argument about the influence of money and politics. And by the way, it's just percent, like, what's happening in Michigan is fucking crazy. This is the biggest outside spend by APAC ever is 30, maybe on any Senate race ever as in a primary, all being dumped on his head, like, that is what is on television. And the ad, like, there's two ads that are going around that are, like, that are just like, like, really manipulative to, like, say that, like, a duel is bad for women, right, taking some quotes out of context. But at the same time, like, when Whitmer endorses Haley Stevens, it's because she's bought and sold, right? And like, I don't believe Cretch and Whitmer is bought and sold, and I don't think most Democrats in Michigan believe Cretch and Whitmer is bought and sold. And she backs Haley Stevens, because she probably thinks Haley Stevens is a better chance of winning. That's it. And it doesn't help you probably to attack in pretty personal terms of very popular Democrat in the state you were trying to represent. And my guess, you know, there's probably some old bad blood there from 2018 when they ran against each other. But it's a win. And when Abdul is- You just gotta eat shit. That's the whole, that's the run of politics. So, like, when Abdul is asked in that interview about, like, whether he identifies as a socialist, he says, I don't identify- And he actually won't answer where he disagrees with Bernie and AOC, and he says, like, I just don't identify as a socialist, I appreciate some version of, I appreciate capitalism, I'm sorry, I'm just gonna be a nuanced guy, I'm a nuanced guy, right? But that nuance doesn't, like, especially, I get why in the heat of a primary, but like, you know, when, like, you say the root of our housing problem is corporate money. When the root of this problem is corporate money, it's just, like, I get why it works on the stump, I get why it's a valuable way of simplifying what's happening, but I think it starts to feel, I don't know, like, like, like, turning this race into, like, a black and white mannequin struggle, which is what comes off in these private conversations. >> Yeah. So Trump also used the Michigan appearance to provide an update on his, on, again, off-again, Warren Iran, which suddenly appears to be off-again after Trump threatened a massive attack last week. U.S. officials told reporters that the shrinking supply of air defense systems was at least partly responsible for the pause, which Trump, of course, blamed on Biden. We also found out this weekend that the four service members who recently died in the Iran War are no longer listed in the Pentagon's casualty count for the Iran War. Instead, the Pentagon moved the tally of their deaths to a new section, generically called Overseas Operations Casualties. They also updated the number of injuries to over 600. Here's what Trump had to say about the war on the flight to Michigan and at his event there. The war on took a beating over the last 14 days, and the S is very nicely. Please stop. Let's beat. And that's what we are right now, to what happens. >> When the fuel comes down, which it did for a little while, then they didn't behave and I had to go back, and now they're behaving again, you know, it's like playing a banjo. >> Is it like playing a banjo? >> It's like-- >> In what way is the Iran War like playing a banjo? >> I think I know what that is. >> Tell me. >> What he is thinking of is the song that goes back and forth from the film deliverance. But a bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, in the film deliverance. >> I know that. >> That is what I think-- >> I'm still struggling with why that. >> It's a back and forth. >> Because it's a back and forth. >> Who's going to squeal like a pig in this one? >> I think, I think, I think it's us. >> [laughs] >> Fuck. >> [laughs] >> I don't know. Tommy, what do you think? What's going on right now? >> I mean, we're losing the war. The Strait of Hormuz was once uncontested, and now it's contested, and I think in the long run, Iran, geographic-- you guys might have noticed on a map. That's where it is in the Strait of Hormuz, so I feel like they have the upper hand there. The New York Times reported that American intelligence agencies believe that Iran's new Supreme Leader, Mushhtaba Hamane, is far more interested than his father in acquiring a nuclear weapon. >> J.O. >> So that's good. >> That's not what J.D. Vance said. I thought that they were becoming friends. >> Yeah, the father had sworn off a nuke, there was a fatwa against them, obviously the people questioned that, but many analysts thought it was a genuine sentiment, and now there's quite an argument for getting a nuclear weapon. I think the long-term impact of the war as is is like just, it's going to be sporadic economic disruption for a very long time potentially, and that increases the likelihood of U.S. service members getting killed or wounded the same goes for civilians in Iran, by the way, anyone living in the Gulf in a base where the Iranians are firing at and people are getting killed all the time. It is led, there's just growing instability. You're now noticing like the Houthis rebels are getting involved in the war before they had not. There's these reports that the Saudis, the Emirates, are directly engaging with Iran and firing missiles or bombs into their territory. So it's just the worst metastasizing and growing. It's wildly expensive. We have Hexath and others going to Congress and they want a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget next year. I mean, that's insane. And the munitions issue is a really big long-term problem that you can't fix. There's all these interceptor missiles. There's the FAD system. There's the Patriot stockpile that's down by half. There's all these air-to-air missiles that are running low. There's the T-Lam or Tomahawk. So it would be like, there's all these war games of a U.S. war with China where you run out of Tomahawk missiles in like a week with the full stockpile. Now we're way down on those. And in many cases, these cost millions and millions of dollars each and they can take as long as 2030 to replenish them. So it just feels like everything he's done has sort of made our posture weaker, both in the Gulf and to visa V China, which Trump ran on telling us was the big geostrategic problem going forward. And now, one of the political problems of any war, which is U.S. service members dying and being injured, now they're handling that by just deciding to do some creative accounting where they hide the deaths from us for as long as they can or the injuries or then now they're listing them as overseas operations casualties. is despicable. The options of, well, he can escalate, right? It's sort of mirrors what happens in our domestic politics where Trump has to threaten greater and greater chaos for the markets to take him seriously. And so the markets have to respond more forcefully in order to get him to back off whatever the latest threat is, be it tariffs or some other economic policy that would be destructive going after the Fed. And so now he has to threaten this new, every single, you know, this is going to be an escalation on like anything we've ever seen. It's going to make the early stage of the war look like a firework show because he has to, because the only, he has to ratchet up the threat because that's, I guess, all he has in terms of trying to get some control over, over, over, around and get them to sort of vent on the straight of our moves. So that's one dangerous path. The other is some kind of increasing sanctions, economic crackdown, right? Like to sort of try to squeeze around that way. And then finally, it's like just saying we did it, but even that option, which is I think something we're like, oh, well, he should just declare victory and walk away. That's not really available anymore because that the Iran will continue to control the straight of our moves, the fake outcome where he says we got a better deal than Obama had, even if it's worse, is not available anymore because we've been so thoroughly sort of body by their ability to control the straight. I think this, the way they change the reporting of casualties is all about trying to get around the War Powers Act by saying, oh, the old war ended, and this is a new war, I think. But it also sounds like they weren't really updating casualties in a timely manner and then for the standard way. Like there were reporters kind of watching the website where this is reported out and seeing it kind of bump around last week, go up and down. They're like, what is happening? Even now the numbers aren't all in agreement. Like, we don't have, we don't have like a straight forward answer. The total of the two conflicts, operation, epic fury, and then whatever they're calling overseas operations is now 18 dead 624 wounded. And so they've also, they've really not been very transparent about what those wounded number means. They're like, oh, it's mostly minor concussions that they went back to work, but you know, traumatic brain injuries from, you know, a ballistic missile exploding near you. That's a big deal. And it also, it's part and parcel to the Pentagon covering up the cost of the war and just not being transparent. Like, I, you know, I have friends who are still in the military or people who are overseas will be like, you know, they're shutting down. You can no longer take photos on some of these bases because they're just so destroyed that they're basically rendered unusable. People had to be evacuated from some of these places. Like the, the, the cost of bases just being like, you know, unoperable for many years to come now has not really been like fully calculated. Yeah. Hegs is going in front of the Senate and saying this war cost $35 billion, but we need 80 billion right now in an emergency. And then you're like, well, why don't you already have 80 billion in cash? And he's like, no, no, no, I've already decided what that's going for. And we have to do this because Biden spent all of our money on, whoa. And it's like that may work on a Fox news. What the fuck are you talking about? How much does woke off? All right, speaking of bombs on Friday, the White House Correspondence Association held its rescheduled dinner after a gunman interrupted the event back in April. It was a smaller venue with a smaller crowd and more security, but Trump basically gave the speech he'd originally planned on giving and boy did he crush it. The other day a senator I knew got a tax of great guy from his wife. And she said, when you get home, I want to have you immediately come up the stairs and make love to me. And he said, I can't do both. You know what the, you know, in other words, I can't go with the stairs and to make love. Does anybody get that? Why I thought that was actually pretty good. That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole freaking stupid speech that they wrote. That was the only good one. And that went down with not exactly great laughter. I think, you know, in other words, you can't go up the stairs and do it. So we'll look at the term limits. Does anybody understand this? We will have sloppy Chris Christie, one of the sloppiest human beings you'll ever made. Fighting, I would say I could mention the governor of Chicago, but I'm going to mention instead, Jerry Nadler, and they're fighting for a big piece of cheesecake, big, fat piece of cheesecake, who the hell wrote that line. Barack Hussein Obama hosted it. Do you know who that is? And he hit me hard. And I have watched this clip thousands of times. They keep playing it because they think that was evening. I decided to run for president. It was not. He actually showed a picture of the White House with a big Trump on top. Like I put a sign and you know, I'm sorry to do in that when you think about it, right? Now, we have all said previously that Trump can be genuinely funny. That was so bad that I almost started feeling sorry for Donald Trump, which has never happened. But like, that was incredibly painful, especially the sex up the stairs joke when he goes. And then he's like, Oh, that was one of the better jokes. And then one more time, he's like, because it's like the, the third explanation of the joke. Did you see that he stole that joke too? Yeah. From Brad Paisley. Well, it's a, it's a classic bourgeois joke. And it could have worked. The reason it didn't work is he, we've done many of these speeches. You're trying to get it. It's a, it's a, it's a, you're doing stand up 10, 15 minutes. He was up there for an hour, an hour. And by the time he gets to that lighthearted joke about centers being old, he's described how much he hates half the people in the room called Don Lemon Dunn. He said, Adam ship has a ugly fat head. He hates Colbert compared Caitlin Collins to Dylan Mulvaney calls Josh Dossie unhierable. Right. I actually want to pull it through right? He's like an award. And then he's like, anyway, anyway, boy, your senators are old these days, right? So of course, by the time you get to that part, like they even sit in there for 45 minutes is brutal. He's never read the, this is the other thing. It's like, you've got a, I know he, he thinks that he's a genius and can just go off scripting whatever. You got to practice the speech like that. Can you imagine Trump like practicing jokes? No, like I can't, but he had like one good Barry Weist joke. He had a couple like well-structured jokes that he even the Barry Weist joke, which was good. He didn't like, he didn't deliver it well. Like he could have delivered it in a funnier way. But also I think it was in the prepared remarks. There's like a, like a portion of his stump about Gavin Newsom in California that he seemed to be reading off the teleprompter and it. And so like he says horrible things about Elon Omar. Like he just goes into his sort of vicious and cruel mean spirited riffing. And so the whole, like he doesn't, he was pokes a little bit of fun at himself here and there. But like, of course there's not going to be people laughing. It's deeply uncomfortable to be in an event that's supposed to be light-hearted. And you just like go for the juggerer like he would at a rally. He's just like, you're not built for this because you're such a fucking asshole. You know the comedy seller at 11 p.m. You're in front of the most oversensitive group of people you can find and you're being. So by the way, didn't Jerry Nadler like hit the GLP ones a couple of years ago and he's lost a ton of weight, too, the riffing made no sense. And he did the, he, when he talked about Pritzker, the governor of Chicago. He mentioned that as well, too. He's like, he's actually looking better. He's looking better. He's just a dick is really the problem. But it was sort of kind of magnanimous because like he did this whole bit at the top about how like the last dinner was bad and celebrated the, you know, the cops who kept everybody safe and said how that they had to, you know, they wouldn't let the show get canceled because that lets the shooter win and then we just went into this tirade. And when you looked at the, all the cuts to the audience, when you watch the whole thing, it was like, it's just silent. And also, I know there's, oh, it's a roomful of journalists. They don't like Trump. But like all of his administration, all of his people were there. No one was laughing. Yeah. They're just like, the funniest thing was when he got the laugh there and said, I thought that was the best joke of the bunch. Yeah. The whole thing was very ugly, right? Because he's going after Caitlin Collins and all these journalists in this really personal and sort of obviously misogynist way. And then you have like the, the, the, the, the, like reporters on the day as kind of like trying to like laugh. And they're, the whole thing was ugly. And so then you have like New York Times reporters like Peter Baker being like, we should rethink this dinner, which is, they're on their high horse about the fucking dinner because they haven't gone forever and are glad for that. To their credit, yeah. To their credit. Yeah. But yeah, it's like, what did anyone expect from him? Was he going to learn this time? Obviously, this is who he is and what he was going to say. And by the way, like he says, once he had two jokes about Caitlin Collins, one was suggesting she looked like Dylan Mulvaney, which you just said. But then also being like, Caitlin Collins never smiles. He says that to her all the time at press conferences. Every time she asked him a tough question, he's like, what's your problem? You're pretty girl smile. He's been a sexist old man. And like, he doesn't do that as part of a comedy bit. It's part of his like stump deflection routine for hard questions. Like he's just shithead. Yeah, he's a shithead. Might be time to retire. The dinner sucks. The course one is dinner. Well, now that we've moved it to the, to the former Trump hotel, now the Waldorf Astoria's smaller setting. We need a hard pitch for the ballroom being. We knock down the arch and we sort of get the gold leaf off the White House. And we restore independence to the Department of Justice. At the bottom of that list, we can decide what we want to do with what happened to the White House cars on this problem, for sure. The White House problem, the remaining romp state of media. Didn't stick around for the mentalist, I have to say, I didn't, didn't catch the O's. He did, he did, he did do the joke, which was if you're such a mentalist, how come you didn't know the shooting was coming? Yeah, the joke everyone made the night of the shooting. Yeah. He ripped off all his worst joke. Is it still funny couple months later? No, they work on it. Yeah, it worked crazy. All right. When we come back, Ben Wickler. I'm not sure if you're interested in this. America's brought to you by chime. Summer adds up fast. A trip here or dinner there. A couple of concerts. A visit to an amusement park. It might have you wondering if you're getting the most out of your money. That's where chime comes in. Chime is changing the way people bank. They're not like traditional banks. They love to gatekeep the best rewards if pile on hidden fees unless you have a massive balance. Chime offers the most rewarding fee-free banking. All with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. You get 5% cash back on Chime card and a category of your choice like gas or groceries, all while building credit through regular everyday spending. No credit check required. 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All right, so I want to get to the book, but first I have to take advantage of the entirely coincidental but highly opportune timings of you being here and ask about the messy gubernatorial primary in your beloved state and the messy leadership situation at the DNC, which you're in to be chair of. I know you well. You are far too wise and generous to shit on Ken Martin. I've got that covered, but I really want your honest thoughts on the DNC's financial situation. Ken's argument is that a party is not a savings account that he chose to spend early on organizers and technology and state party infrastructure, and that's also more or less your argument, the argument you make in the book. But of course, the party is now $2 million in debt while the RNC's sitting on $128.5 million in cash. So do you buy his defense that that's just the cost of investing early? So I agree that you should invest early and the goal, what you want, is to be able to do both. You want to be able to both have the money to invest in places that will take years to be able to build the power to win statewide, but there's state legislative races everywhere where we can win. And you also want to have the ability to invest in the places where elections are closest and highest stakes, and then tip those over the top. And I think the challenge right now is there's not quite enough money to do either. The other thing that's new in this moment is the US Supreme Court ruling that allows parties to invest in unlimited support for federal candidates. Wisconsin had a version of that that was started under Scott Walker. We call it the Scott Walker loophole. And it is the way that we beat Elon Musk, who outspend us dramatically, is that the Democratic Party of Wisconsin was able to raise money and then transfer it to our candidate who got a lower rate for TV ads than the super back ads that Elon Musk was funding in our state. We also had a better message, better candidate, and didn't have Elon Musk hanging around our neck. But the end huge grassroots organizing talk about the book, but right now that means that national committees could do a ton more if they have the money to be able to do it to support candidates in the places, especially for candidates who don't have huge fundraising abilities on their own, but who have totally winnable seats and who if they have the funds to get their message out, can win in places that are maybe off the national radar. So this is a time when having more funds at the DNC, having more funds at the other national committees makes an enormous difference. What I want is for Ken and for the DNC to be as successful as possible. I think there's a huge opportunity in this election, including a lot of places right now where Republicans aren't investing and don't realize how mad voters are. So if I wave the magic wand, there's a flood of money that comes in and we're able to invest in winning, sometimes in squeakers in a whole bunch of places that expand the map and safeguard the future of American democracy. Well yeah, so what you just said, you raised and spent $63 million in 2024 for the Wisconsin Democratic Party. That sounds right. Which is a little more than the entire Democratic National Committee has raised so far in 2026. Is the honest answer here that spending early only works if you can also raise than the raising is the failure here? I mean, there's, I think there's a lot of puzzle pieces here. I think that right now there's a kind of like vicious circle where there's negative new cycles that then make it hard to go out and say this is a good time to invest. I think that starts changing when people see, oh yeah, if I donate here, it's going to have a big impact on making things better and winning elections. And I think that's, you know, maybe that change starts right here in the pod, maybe whatever it is. Like we can't, as long as we're in circular firing squad mode and not, you know, pointing to where we need to like throw our shoulders against the wheel to save the country, it's very hard to get out of that cycle. And also like the election is 99 days away. There's a huge opportunity to like flood the zone and the places where elections are likely to be tightest and where a push can make the difference. And I will add that that is not just House and Senate races like at all levels. There's going to be state legislative contest that have enormous significance. One thing in a, I think the New York Times story was about the DNC helping Mississippi break the Republican supermajority at the state level. But I love like that, it was $100,000 investment, played a role and I'm sure there are a ton of other people involved as well. But breaking Republican supermajorities in deep red states can have an enormous impact on the future of things like redistricting. So you know, part of the argument in my book and my kind of life work at this moment in the democratic party is look at the whole map of how power is built and wielded in this country. The right keeps using its power to rig everything so that only a handful of people can write through rules for all of us. But if you can unrig the system often at the state and local level, those races are often much less expensive and have huge up ballot consequences. And I think it is, it is good to think as a party about how to fight at all those levels it wants. In the interest of fixing things, what would you do about the money situation if you were in Ken's position right now? I would, which I'm sure Ken is also working on. I try to raise more money so that you have more money to invest in the various things. And that, to me, the biggest thing is being able to lay out, if you invest here is how we're going to be able to win more fights that folks care about. There's often, you know, when people think about the corrupting influence of money in politics, which, you know, you may have to look at the news to see the corrupting influence of money in politics. Yeah. But very often it's about policies that particular candidates or elected officials hold. Parties are not where people who want to change policy. It's not where they give, especially when there's not a Democratic president. What parties do is they help create infrastructure for victories or losses. And so the way to raise money for the Democratic Party is fundamentally to instill trust, to demonstrate the results that come from those investments. And I, for all the kind of debate about the 50 state strategy, I think one of the things that is really helpful is when you see what's being done in particular states with those investments that actually generates electoral victory. And then it makes you enthusiastic about investing. And I think there's a lot of stories like that that I would love to see more of and hear more about. I think about, you know, some of the state parties that are doing amazing work, like North Carolina. There's this huge focus on, like, local organizing that's going to affect things like the State Supreme Court race. And the country's not thinking about the North Carolina State Supreme Court. But the only reason Republicans have a majority in the U.S. House right now is because Republicans won a state Supreme Court race there in 2020 by 401 votes, one 100th of one percent of all the votes cast in the state. And that put in place a chief justice who drove the gerrymandering that gave the national Republicans their House majority at this moment. And there's a Supreme Court race there this November, Anita Earls is up for re-election. If she wins, they could win a majority, Democrats could win a majority by 2028. And that could lead to the de-gerrymandering of that state and, you know, affect the future of American democracy. And those are the kinds of things that state parties specialize in, and supporting state parties to do that kind of work has a huge effect. I, you know, I'm personal to my own state of Wisconsin, which we can all agree is the best state. But it's also a place where our state party has been deeply involved in state legislative races, mayoral races, state Supreme Court elections this fall. We have a chance to win both chambers of the state legislature. And across the country, most people I regret to admit are not thinking about the Wisconsin state legislative battle of 2026. But that fight could dictate or prove Wisconsin before 2028. We were the closest state in the country to having the election overturned after 2020. We know Trump is going to try to pull something. Next time he is in danger of losing power, you, you lock down democracy at the state level or rather, unrigged democracy at the state level. That is the best way to defend national elections going forward. And those are the kinds of races that, you know, have supporting state parties right now. And the DNC is doing a lot of supporting state parties can have a huge effect on. So I, I look at the, you know, it is very painful to read the stories that are unfolding. Everyone experiences that. I'm sure everyone within the DNC is, you know, not thrilled about the stories unfolding, but there are giant opportunities that are right there where a small investment can make a huge outsides impact because Donald Trump's I have star on is not on those races. But we can put our eye on the ball and we can win and we can fight. Yeah, I think what I'm most worried about is, like, the DNC doesn't play the biggest role in the midterms regardless, right, the other party of committees do and the state parties do. Certainly play a big role in the 2028 race. And especially with that Supreme Court decision now, we'll play a big role because people can donate now much more to the DNC and that can help the campaign directly. And the stories are awful to read. No one wants that. We all want the Democratic Party to be successful and the DNC to be successful. I think what strikes me is that because they're coming from inside the DNC and the DNC members, it makes me think that those are people who also don't want bad press, but are at this point like, I'd rather talk and have the bad stories and try to fix the situation than continue to see this unfold. And I just thought today Rufus Gifford, I'm sure you know Rufus, who finance director of the DNC has been finance director, worked there for eight years, loves the place. He said today that the DNC is quotes spiraling towards irrelevance and said that Ken is a good man with good intentions, but simply not meeting this critical moment. Do you agree? I am the guy who lost the election for DNC chair. And I'm the last person you want to be armchair quarterback. I can beat me by out organizing me in the DNC race and building trust with voters over years. But the same kind of strategy that he and I both think is really critical to winning elections at every level. So I don't want to be in the middle of this. I'm not running for DNC chair myself. My goal is to spread a message to a much wider number of people about what everyone can do. I have a chapter in my book about the Democratic Party with the title, it's my party at all cry if I want to. Something many people feel at various moments at all levels. And the argument that I make is that the Democratic Party, however you feel about it, it actually has a door that is wide open, shockingly open. It is easier to join the Democratic Party in whatever state people live in than to join the benevolent order of the elks or any of the old, you know, 19th, 20th century social, civic organizations. There's not some set of boxes that you have to check. You can get involved and then you can you can revitalize the party where you are. You can turn it into a vessel for organizing and fighting. And I talk to people who are like running for county party chair all across the country who are mad about the way things are going right now. And then they realize, Hey, if I get a bunch of people together and we get involved, we can just like take over around here. And then we can start working to flip the city councils and we can win judicial races. We can flip state legislative seats. There are so many blue states where there are people in offices that are not using them to have the biggest impact that they could. And there are so many places in red states where there's very little Democratic Party organization. But you can if you build enough power, you can push through and you can make huge change. And then in purple states, it is shocking how few votes wind up tipping the entire thing. So if anyone who's frustrated about the Democratic Party right now, become the Democratic Party and build the kind of party that you want to be part of like it is right there. And it is a it's a vessel for organizing that unlike everything else, it exists everywhere in every county and every community. And if we can if we can make it stronger and we can make it a body that fights for things that benefit everyone, then I think it has a huge change on the whole future of the country. Your book is excellent. It is a tailor made for our audience. I hope everyone buys it. It's called This is the plan. Give us the cliff note version of what the plan is. So the plan starts with you, not just you, John, but you the reader, viewer or listener. And the thing that each of us can do, I have a chapter called Unleashed Superpower, which is about both the kind of art and science and practice of organizing of getting people together to do something they wouldn't otherwise do. So I dig into how to have the biggest effect with your volunteer hours. If you can chip in money, the kinds of stuff that makes the biggest difference. And then I map out drawing on the story of how we unregistered state legislative maps and Wisconsin, which is this huge multi-year fight that took a bunch of different offices. I traced out what we can do nationwide to unreg our system, which right now pretty clearly is a system where a handful of far-right billionaires write the rules for everyone else to enrich themselves at all of our expense. So how do we do that? Step one, in 2026, let's absolutely fight for housing senate majorities, but the states are the most critical battlefield because especially if we win democratic trifectas in the battleground states, A, you can pass laws in those states that prevent Trump from being able to steal the 2028 election. Elections are run by the states. So this is, you know, if you have people who refuse to play along with coup attempts, it makes all the difference in the world. You can also defame the electoral college. There's this law called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is a long nerdy name for an amazing bill that has been passed already in 18 states. The nitpick. That's what I call it. I came up with a way to pronounce the unpronounceable acronym. That's great because every time I say it, I've never said the acronym and I'm always like, it's the national compact, something voter. Yeah, it rhymes with lipstick. Nipvick. We got to spread nitpick across the country. If we, if no other thing happens, if we all be able to find a way to stay nitpick, then I will not be satisfied with the impact of the book, but I'll be happy. So that is a bill that if we pass it through the states where Democrats can win trifectas in 2026, you can, you can make it so that whoever wins the national popular vote, wins the presidential election because states decide where they put their electoral college votes. It is very, very close to actually happening. Basically, so it's like a backdoor way of eliminating the electoral college because the Constitution gives states the power, the ultimate power to decide how they assign their electors. So the state legislatures can decide we're going to assign our electors to the winner of the national popular vote. And then that way you can kind of go around the electoral college. That's exactly it. So I was actually talking to Heather Cox Richardson, her historian about this and she was pointing out to me that originally, overwhelmingly, states gave their electoral college votes on a proportional basis the way that Nebraska and Maine still do. And then a few states realized, starting with Thomas Jefferson in Virginia, that if you made his state go for whoever won the majority, winner take all, that would give him an advantage. So then every state kind of went to that system. The only way to get back to a proportional system is if all, if enough states decided to jump together. So this is what special about this law is that it only takes effect when enough states had passed the law to choose the next president, which means that you know, it's not like you're going to throw away your vote or dilute your power until the moment when everyone holds hands jumps together. And then all 270 plus electoral college votes of states that have passed this law go to whoever wins the national popular vote. And then it transforms this country. Like we end the era of swing states and state states, every person's ballot counts the same, the fight for voting rights laws in every state suddenly affect the whole national picture. It's, you know, it would be complicated and messy, but also glorious. And I want it so bad. I love it. I've thought about it for a while now. And I've been like keeping track of how close we're getting to like the so close. Yeah, we're pretty close now. Are you worried about the legal challenges? Or that like whether it survives legal challenges? Because there's a few, there's a few arguments, legal arguments about like why it might be tricky to pull off. And one of the more practical ones is that like it wouldn't get challenged until like in the midst of an election. So it has provisions in and about like how to be able to withdraw from it and so forth. Yeah, it's been like scrutinized in a whole bunch of different ways. And I think it's, I look legally signed to me. I'm not, I'm not a lawyer myself. I will say, even if it is completely legally legit, I'd say that this Supreme Court might find some basis, so much to strike it down. So that goes to another thing I argue for in the book. There you go. So, you know, step one, we win the states. We start moving in nitpick through the state, through more state legislatures. We need 48 more electoral college votes to be able to put it into effect. So when try effect is in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, New Hampshire, boom, more than enough electoral college votes. Great. Let's add Alaska while we're at it. Yeah. But then 2028 comes along. And we, we existentially have to win. Presidency, House, and US Senate. And I think ideally we win a majority of the House delegations in a majority of states, so that if Trump once again tries to mess with the electoral college, if it's still in place in the way that it is right now, that and the election goes to a vote in the House of House delegations, that the election is not overturned through another coup attempt, which how close to read a majority of House delegations? Far, we are far right now. We, right, right now Republicans have 30 House delegation majorities. Okay. And we have two election cycles to be able to change that. And so that is totally doable. And far, it's not crazy far. It's not crazy. Yeah. And there are enough states where we, where we could absolutely be able to win. It means organizing in places like Alaska, where Trump won by 14 percentage points, but is now hideously unpopular. And Mary Paltala could win the Senate race. We can win the House race. We can win the governorship there. We could have multi-party coalitions in the legislature. Like Iowa, we could win a majority of the House seats, as well as the governorship, the attorney general's race, the US Senate race. Like there are, there are ways that we can flip House delegation majorities that also, by the way, make life better for people in those states and when US Senate majorities. So big map, big battlefield, lots to do. And my argument to people is work where you are to improve policies, you know, build organized locally and then choose some places, maybe one place where elections are really close. It could be adopting a House district. It could be deciding to adopt a state legislative chamber and pour yourself, get a group of friends together, pour yourself into making a difference in that place. This is boat safe America's adopted state project. There you go. Pioneering in this regard. If you do that for a couple hours a month, then, you know, add up enough months and you can have a gigantic impact, especially if you, you know, find a way to make it fun with your friends, maybe involving alcohol or, you know, some kind of beverage. Like there's lots of, there's lots of ways to do this. They can feel really good when you win. This is one of the reasons I think we have so many volunteers in Wisconsin is we've found way we lean into so many different fights. People have the experience of being part of winning something, often something very close over and over, and it feels incredible to like stay up late, watch their turns come in and realize that you help make the difference in a nail-biter election that changes everything. So best feeling in the world. Best feeling. If you're a political nerd. Yeah. I mean, I mean, if you're not, it'll make it, it'll be a pretty good day. It'll turn you into playboy. It's, landslides are great. Like, they're ill, love those two. But the, like, if we're winning landslides, then our map's not big enough. Like, there's so many places where one more push can get us over the edge and do those places too. So, 28, we win the federal trifecta. We get through whatever coup attempt that is the Donald Trump tries to pull. And we thank goodness that we elected pro-democracy mayors and governors and attorneys general who fought back against whatever Trump's shenanigans turn out to be. We have a new president. They do an inaugural address to great speech. They have an even bigger crowd than Trump's 2016 inaugural. We're thrilled. Yep. And then, and this is a big, and then we, we have to actually abolish the filibuster and pass fundamental democracy reform to unreg the American system of government. And that is, I go sort of level by level of the American political system in the book and who's working on it, where we need to win to be able to change it. But my argument that all kind of rolls up to the plan, and this is the plan, is that we have to add states to unbalance the US Senate. We have to reform the US Supreme Court. I think term limits is the most interesting option. If the US Supreme Court decides that Congress doesn't have the power to do that, then it certainly has the power to expand the number of justices. So, there's another option there too. We have to have some combination of a national gerrymandering ban and doubling the size of the House. I'm really interested in proportional representation for US House members with multi-member districts. These are ideas that a lot of people don't know about right now. We're right about them in the book. There's like lots of countries that do this. I mean, American history, these things have happened before. But the system right now, where we've got of the Voting Rights Act, where we can have the country completely rigged after each census, and even in between the census. So, most House districts voters have no real say, where Republicans have a structural advantage in the US Senate, plus a filibuster that only blocks things that Democrats might want to do. Essentially, it allows tax cuts for rich people and confirmation of Supreme Court justices. And then this imperial presidency chosen through the Electoral College that Congress can't act to do anything about because of the filibuster. And the courts won't do anything because they have a hammer lock on the US Supreme Court. It just doesn't work. It doesn't work to have a country that has a huge diversity of views in which our structures are built to ratchet things just to the right. And so, what we've experienced this century is more than any other time in American history, a series of change elections, where people are fed up and they vote for change, and when Republicans come, they're like, not like that, the Republicans screw everything up. And when Democrats come in, a whole bunch of the stuff that they campaign on, they can't do because the system is set up to block it. The US Supreme Court strikes it down, the Senate filibuster blocks it. And so, a lot of people feel, and I think rightly, that the economic system is not working for them, that like basic things like being able to get health care or child care, they vote for people who say that they're going to deliver it, and then it doesn't come through. And if you ask yourself why that is, it is generally not that Democrats have a failure of nerve to vote for the thing they want. The House passes these things over and over again. It's because we have a system that is rigged against delivering for regular people. And so, this is the plan, maps up the plan to change that. In a way that we've changed how the government functions over and over throughout history. And then about a half century ago, we stopped. We stopped the amendment in the constitution. We stopped adding states. We stopped changing how Senator or elected. We stopped changing the size of the House. We stopped changing the size of the Supreme Court. All those things used to change regularly. And we've been stuck in this kind of failure mode, where the change that people are vote for, organize for, cry out for, never comes. And I think it's time to change the delivery vehicle for change itself and restore the vision of the best traditions of our country and the best moments in the founding of this country, which is a system of government that actually adapts to be able to respond to the crises and needs of the time, where the right of the people, as it says in the Declaration of Independence, to make their government actually work, is made real. - So, I don't know if people realize or remember, 'cause now it was all of five years ago, how close we were in '21 to getting rid of the filibuster, to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. - Yeah. - It was just mansion in cinema, where the only Democrats not willing to remove the filibuster, they're both gone. - Yeah. - Cinema was replaced with Guy Ego. - Oh, who's sort of like totally favorite of that? - Yep. - So we basically need a '51 vote majority, and hopefully if we elect some of these new senators and some of these tough states, they'll be there as well. You bring up the 2030, then becomes a pretty important year, not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but it's part of the plan, because we do all these things in '28. One part of your plan is to, for Democrats, to survive the 2030 backlash. We know there's always a backlash after there's a trifecta, there was in 2010, there could be in 2030, if this all comes to pass. And I wonder what you think about, 'cause you're right, and you have the stat in the book that there've been more sort of change elections, like party switching power in the last however many years, than there have been like all throughout history, like last couple decades. Since 2000, we've had more changes in the White House, the US House, and the US Senate than any other time history. - And I wonder, sometimes I wonder this too, is there evidence that delivering actual change, tangible change that improves people's lives, makes them satisfied enough to not vote for change again, considering that Biden passed quite a bit in his first couple of years. He passed the stimulus checks, aside from those, the climate investments, everything that was in the, the bill back better bill, that was more long-term investments. Do you think that in addition to those democracy reforms and 28 Democrats need to pass legislation that like improves people's lives? - Absolutely, within those first two years. - Yes, that's the whole thing. So, I wanna respond kind of at three levels. - Sure. - All right, level one. At the micro level, something that I think people forget and very little discussion of, is that when Biden came in, the emergency measures to deal with the COVID pandemic, the expanded unemployment insurance, the childcare tax credit, there was a set of things that dramatically increased the kind of disposable income for, especially like the bottom third economically of the country. And it was incredibly popular at that time. And then it all went away. And so, even though it is true that like wages grew from the bottom up in the Biden economy, for a ton of Americans, especially the people who were having the toughest luck in the economy, they got a bunch of help, and then suddenly the carpet was yanked out from under them. And at the same time as prices were rising. So, their experience was that their wages, their income, went down at the same time as prices were going up. And those are the exact voters who went for a Trump for the first time in either of our lives, and people earning less than $50,000 a year voted Republican in the 2024 presidential election. So, I actually think we sort of have a counter example, like we have an example for ourselves, of if people are experiencing material pain, then they will vote for change. - That part we know, that part we know. - We kind of saw that, right? And around the world, in every country, the governing party went off losing ground and developed democracies in 2024, as I write, and prices and inflation and cost of living was the biggest issue everywhere. But we actually were doing something serious about it, and then we stopped. And that was, there were some policy design choices in there that I think we should rethink how we, how we think about that stuff in the future. So, that's kind of micro level. The second level is, I was once talking to an administration official who said, "When you propose a policy, it's popular. When it's being passed, it's unpopular. When it's being implemented, it's unpopular. But when the other side drives to take it away, it becomes popular again." And before we get-- - ACA. - A sort of a perfect example, right? And the battle, like a bunch of different policies that have been good for people have this quality. And to me, the goal of politics, you win in order to be able to pass policies to make people's lives better. So, it might not be that there's an immediate policy reward, and especially policies that take a while to actually implement and get them going. It might be that you're kind of creating something that the other side can't take away that creates an enduring benefit for people. And I think that the ACA's proven to be an enormous help for Democrats. 2018 Republicans tried to take it away, and it was the number one issue. And once again, Republicans cutting Medicaid spending that was expanded through the ACA, it is an explosive issue that helps Democrats right now. So, I do think that there's-- Even if it takes a couple of cycles, I do think there's like a pretty clear path that you can draw towards if you do stuff to help people, then the party that tries to scrap it takes a price. And if we are the party that keeps doing the good things, then the Republicans trying to scrap it have a price. But the last thing, there's this very macro level, this concept in political science of political orders, which is essentially what's not controversial in a period of time, is the thing that tells you the most about that period. So, after the New Deal, there was Eisenhower came in, and he did not try to rip up the New Deal. The political order for decades was that the New Deal programs and the sort of set of economic guarantees, those were beyond politics-- - Through Reagan. - Through Reagan, exactly. And then came the neoliberal order, and Reagan did-- Union Busting and deregulation, and a bunch of stuff that is still raging through American politics. And a lot of that stuff wasn't contested. Both parties were kind of fighting on that terrain. The really big goal is to build a new political order. And I think what we want is a political order for the future where which party wins might change hands, but that certain things are actually built in. To me, things that start with, ensuring that nobody is, like, going broke because they get sick, or nobody is unable to afford a place to live. There's an economic guarantees. And then the second-- well, there's three things I want. - What is, like? make the economy actually work for working people. And I think union rights and, you know, and the way our social insurance program for our two critical elements of that, there's a bunch of others. The second thing is some rights and freedoms that like need to be guaranteed and protected by the federal government that are absolutely under assault right now in a way that has been, you know, shocking, they're trying to repeal the civil rights movement and, you know, and so much else. And it's like any group that has achieved freedom and equality in this country is being targeted by this administration. And a lot of this stuff was nonpartisan, low-stake stuff that both parties agreed in at different moments that there were, you know, bipartisan majorities, well, the public is still bipartisan majority for reproductive freedom. They, there was a period, do you remember when Republicans attacked trans people in North Carolina and it was like a giant uproar? This idea that attacking trans people is this great popular red issue for Republicans doesn't need to be that way. The public is not always naturally inflamed about, you know, whether gender identity should be a political battlefield. I'd like to get to a world where everyone's humanity is something that we can, like a starting point. And the third one is democracy itself, which is for most of, you know, there are periods when the fight over this basic question of whether we'll have majority rule in this country isn't really up for grabs every election. And one reason why we keep telling ourselves that the next election is the most important election of our lifetimes is because we keep having this question of whether it will be the last free election that America ever has. I'd like to get a little bit away from the precipice. And that leaves tons of stuff that we can contest. And I think the, you know, the, a natural access that makes sense is the kind of like, what is, you know, this kind of size of government, role of government in public life that there's, there's lots of different issues that divide most Republicans from most Democrats that we can argue over. And I think having competitive pressure pushes both parties to try to figure out how to govern more effectively. I think like excellence in public service and government is produced more when they're electoral stakes. And you might lose power if you don't do a good job. Yeah. All those things are good. But building a political order where they's kind of like, you don't feel as though the ground might crack open beneath you and swallow not every election. It's like a mannequin struggle. Yeah, I would like to turn down the stakes a little bit. And, you know, then we can, you can, I don't know if it'll be helpful for the political podcasting business. If fun. Yeah, I'll take that. We'll take this right. I'll take it. Speed of high stakes. I know that you're staying neutral in the primary in Wisconsin and the governor's race until the bitter end. I know you're not neutral and wanting a democratic governor in that state who will be responsible for among other things, certifying the presidential result in 2028. Is that a reason for primary voters in Wisconsin to think about electability differently this year than they normally would? I think that Wisconsin voters think about electability a lot. We have over and over experienced. Yeah. What happens when we lose? It's not be good. We've had the Wisconsin, I argue in the book, Wisconsin is like a mini version of what the country is going through right now 'cause we had our authoritarian breakthrough came when Scott Walker won in 2010 and then tried to rig our political system and, you know, defund schools and public services and smash unions, all this stuff. The same way Donald Trump has done on a national level now. So we have experienced our own state level, you know, authoritarian moment. The same way lots of states and the South have continued to experience it. And I think there's a big debate about, you know, what is electable right now? Who's going to vote? How do you energize people? And then this like trade off of like, what do you get when you win? What is the issue that MHU? All that is like legitimate grounds for having a debate and for people making the different arguments. Wisconsin has this great tradition I write about in the book is the birthplace of the progressive movement, capital-people-aggressive movement. And one of the reforms of the progressive movement that started in Wisconsin swept the nation is direct primaries to choose your nominee where the people decide who the nominee will be. And the party, when the Democratic Party was concerned, which I used to chair, and I'm an advisor to the new chair of Devin Remarkers, I think doing a killer job, very hard job. One of the party's core commitments in our constitution is that the party itself doesn't put itself on the scale. Even if elected officials and public, you know, citizens and groups and unions and everybody does their different endorsements, the party is neutral in the primary so that voters can decide who they want their nominee to be. And then the party can play a role of saying to everybody, hey, like even though that was tough, and, you know, messy and complicated, we're gonna like put that behind us, we're gonna unite and we're gonna do everything we can to chew through concrete and win the general election. And that is my own role in this fight, and that's what I invite everyone to do. - There's real confident that no matter who wins the primary, that I mean, you know all these candidates personally, do you think that all of them, like could definitely beat Tom Tiffany? - I think that there is a path with each of these candidates. And I think that what that path looks like is actually a little different with the different candidates. And they are building the coalitions around them based on their approach to campaigning and their arguments they're making, and the positions that they have, and their own stories. And the thing that would cause us to lose is if we lose the nerve to say that we can win. If Democrats decide after the day after the primary, that, oh, well, I guess we're not gonna win, then they will not win. But if they say, you know what? This is a state where over and over 13 times since 2000, we've had elections that come down to one percentage point or less. And like donating that extra buck, like knocking on that extra door, calling that extra friend could be the thing that tips the entire state. If we bring that kind of will to the race, I think that any of the candidates can beat Tom Tiffany and Wisconsin could be a thriving democracy for the future. - Last question, what is your thought process like as you consider potentially running in the state that you love in Wisconsin? - Well, I love the living shit out of my state. I just think Wisconsin is the greatest state. (laughs) And I will think about, you know, what I do in the future, in the future. I think my just obsession right now is to make sure that Wisconsin not only wins the governorship, as I've mentioned, the state legislative chambers. Remember, and those will come probably down to a couple hundred votes in a few different communities around the state. Like it has been the work of years to unrig our state legislative maps to get to this point where we have a shot at winning majorities in both legislative chambers. And next year could be a blooming of democracy and workers rights and ability of hosting at healthcare, all this stuff, if we can win the trifecta in Wisconsin in the next 99 days. So I have this book, I want to spread the gospel of like rolling up your sleeves getting involved. I want to make sure that people see the kind of hope that we've experienced in my state by building this kind of permanent campaign on a year-round basis. I want more places to do that. And then I'm going to just throw myself into everything I've got into the fight in my state. And then I'll figure out what's next. - Well, I've said this on the pod, when you're not here, that is a Democrat and a citizen. I wanted you to be DNC chair, because I think it would have been good for the party and good for the country, as your friend sort of glad you're not. (laughing) Because it's such a terrible job, no matter who has it. But when it comes to running for office in Wisconsin as a citizen and Democrat and your friend, I would love to see you to run one of these days. So I'm thinking about it. - I'm honored by the sentiment. - We need more than Wickler in America, so. - Let's zero in on what all of us can do right now. That is my message. - That is the plan. - This is the plan. - He's on message. - We love it. - Ben Wickler, thanks so much. - Thanks so much, Dan. (upbeat music) - That's our show for today. Thanks to Ben Wickler for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new episode on Friday. - Pods in America is a crooked media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari with Reed Charlene, Elijah Cohn, and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefco, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pelaviv, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's Guild of America East. (upbeat music)