The Search for an Exciting Moderate

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Podcast America, I'm John Favreau. On today's show, writer and founder of the Slow Boring Newsletter, Madaglaces. We've had a lot of people on the show make the case for why the Democratic Party should move to the left, and a lot of progressive candidates who represent that direction. We've also had plenty of people, including us, critique the Democratic establishment. We haven't really had someone on, at least in a while, make a full-throated case for a center-left politics that emphasizes moderation. I know that probably sounds exciting and not at all annoying to many of you. Matt recently wrote a piece titled, How the Center Left Can Come Back in 2028. That's based in part on a series of critical, tough questions that Nate Silver recently posed to the center left. I found both Nate's questions and Matt's response really useful in understanding where folks like Matt are coming from, and what they're looking for from the party in 2028 and beyond. I also had plenty of questions of my own, so I invited Matt on to see if he had some answers. And he did. We talked about how important issue positions are in a presidential primary, the role of charisma and the ability to get attention, why Democrats have lost in recent elections, and who on the current bench might be able to win in 2028. It was a great conversation, and we will get to it in a moment before we do. Please consider becoming a paying subscriber to friends of the pod. Subscribers unlock ad-free episodes of all their favorite crooked pods, including Potsave America, all our great subscriber-only newsletters, and exclusive subscriber-only podcasts like Potsave America, Only Friends, and Polar Coaster with Dan Fyfer. Plus, becoming a subscriber is the best way to support your favorite pro-democracy independent media company. Head on over to crooked.com/friends to subscribe. Matt, welcome to Potsave America. Really good to be here. So I wanted to talk about the factional debate within the Democratic Party over how to actually win some national elections and thought, who better to do that with than the online left's favorite pundit, who can faithfully represent the views of the Neolibs' shill faction. And I think a good place to start is with your recent piece about how the center left can come back in 2028, where one big answer is that the center left needs a 2028 presidential primary campaign that articulates its critique of the status quo. Before we get to the critique itself, why a presidential campaign? You know, I think something we see in politics is that political parties are really defined by their presidential campaigns and by their leadership. Everybody-- I mean, you, me, people with all the different kinds of ideological viewpoints are frustrated about where Democrats are at now, and they'd like want them to be clearer and have a better message. But realistically, there's just not that much the Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries can do. You're hurting cats on Capitol Hill. Its presidential campaigns, Donald Trump comes in. He wins a nomination. It totally redefines what the Republican Party is about, you know, for good and for ill. And that's what's going to happen in 28, right? There's going to be a contest. Somebody is going to win it. That person will be the leader. What Democrats stand for is going to be, you know, largely whatever it is that person stands for. And until then, you know, you try to have good candidates in the key races. You hope they win. Everyone's going to have some who they like more than others. But it's like it's going to be a mess. Yeah, I thought about that after the 20, 25 off-year elections when everyone had this like Goldilocks view of it where they're like, well, you know, you had some more center-left moderate candidates winning in some places and Mamdani wins in New York. And so it's all great. We don't have to fight that much. It's like, well, yeah, it's easier to do in a midterm or a set of off-year elections than a presidential election. That's where the rubber hits the road. So you make clear that this center-left critique is a critique of what you call the Clinton Biden Harris Schumer status quo. How would you describe that status quo and what is your critique of it? Sure. So I think there's been some pretty dramatic left-word moves in the Democratic Party since Barack Obama's second term. And this has not been like the left, quote unquote, Bernie Sanders, his people taking the party over. It's been establishment stewardship, but they've shifted on a lot of different things. Some of the minor, some of them big. I mean, I think a notable one that I read about in the piece is education policy, where without really like a huge, rancorist debate about it, ideas about performance pay for teachers, ideas about supporting high-performing charter schools, that the Obama White House had championed, and then was controversial at the time. And so the party just sort of went in the other direction. And then we had a lot of discussion about this around COVID and school closures and different things there. But Democrats had an identity as a party of reform of the public sector that has sort of gone away in that regard. Democrats have also shifted a lot on immigration over the past 10 to 15 years. There's been all this stuff about asylum that came up during the Biden presidency. Just wasn't really an issue that people were thinking that much about during the Obama presidency. There was this very specific focus on trying to get a path to citizenship for people who have been here for a long time. New things came up. Democrats have gone through a number of cycles around crime and criminal justice reform since that time, but have been sort of seen in some circles is very soft on crime. I think left-wing Democrats have started to see that this is a problem. Everyone has sort of walked back, defunding police, things like that since then. But there's been this kind of-- and then on economic policy, there's been a shift. Again, it was a shift in the Biden administration to these kind of much more Elizabeth Warren-like positions about the role of business, its relationship to the state. It used to be kind of a view that Democrats were a party that was going to make rich people pay higher taxes. And that was going to be a non-starter for a lot of rich people in the country. But for people who could stand that, who could say, you know what, I'm going to pay more under the Democrats. I'm going to contribute to the common will. I'm going to help the poor, whatever. You know, I'm still going to be treated respectfully as if business is a lot of both thing to do with your career. And there's been shifts on both sides of that, a much more contentious relationship between the Democratic Party and the technology industry, but really the Democratic Party and the business world writ large. So I take your point that the party has definitely shifted leftward on a number of issues. And I can just speak from experience, because oftentimes when this gets debated, I can remember when I was in the White House or on the Obama campaign, and we did race to the top. And we talked about teacher pay. And we talked about immigration in the context of we're a nation of immigrants, but we're also a nation of laws. And now people on the right just play back Obama clips from 2008 where he's talking about border security. So I get that. How do we know people's negative view of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party's sort of losing some elections, some big ones, is do primarily to specific issue positions and not a number of other factors. You know, general perception of elitism, corruption, weakness, however you define it, right? There's a whole bunch of different potential factors in these losses. You know, I think all this stuff is in the mix, obviously, and to an extent it connects to people. Searchlight Institute did a really interesting series of polls about corruption. You know, people are very concerned about corruption. They think the political establishment is very corrupt. But they asked like, do you consider X, Y, and Z thing corrupt? And you know, it was like trading on insider stock information definitely corrupt. But people also said it was corrupt when politicians do things to sort of curry favor with social elites that aren't what the public wants, right? So that's like a very expansive view of corruption, where like if you're afraid of getting canceled or something, so you're doing this, you know, that could be corrupt in some people's eyes. You also might see that as weak. You know, I don't think you want to be weak. I think again, to the point of why presidential campaigns matter, moderate members of Congress are almost all people who are representing districts, the Donald Trump one. I think those people are in some ways the Democrats MVPs. But they are not MVPs when it comes to like big partisan controversies, because that's just-- that's not how you hold down a Red House seat. You kind of like duck those fights. And that does look weak to people who are in the base. And that's not what they want, right? In a presidential campaign, you can do what Donald Trump did on Medicare and Social Security. You can do what President Obama did on education issues, which is you can reposition to the center on select things while also being like a strong voice for your party and its side on certain kinds of key issues. But you know, I do think that issues matter to people. Like it's not a coincidence that in 2012, Democrats had all these great ads lambasting Mitt Romney's Medicare plan. And then Donald Trump comes along and he's like, I'm not going to do that Medicare plan, right? Now, you know, 90% of the people who voted for Obama in 2012 vote for Hillary in 2016. But the people who were persuaded by those Medicare ads, now they got a Republican who's like, you know what, I'm not going to do that. So you know, you go around the country, right, like not that many people are swing voters. It's a small population. But I think there are people there, right, who are looking at, you know, these questions about who should play on women's sports teams. And they really do care about that issue. And it upsets them that Democrats have the position that they don't agree with. And that's a different, I mean, that was not an issue that we talked about really 10, 15 years ago. But I remember in 2008, when that campaign was happening, and Obama and all Democrats everywhere said that marriage is between a man and a woman. And that's not what I believed. And I know lots of the younger people who worked on those campaigns, that's not what they believed. I don't know what the principles themselves believe privately, but I think everyone kind of understood at that point in time, that it was going to be the job of someone else to like persuade the voters that our more forward thinking progressive view was correct. And that the politicians were going to, you know, try to get to yes with the electorate, that it was tough enough to be opposing these constitutional amendments and other kinds of things that would have completely closed the door on equality. And so someone what's happened is I think just a less of a pragmatic spirit that Trump is so terrible. It makes people feel like, well, if he can get away with so much, like, we should be able to get away with undisciplined behavior. But that's just like, that's not really how it works, you know, it's like, if he's really terrible, we need to take this really seriously. I'd say America is brought to you by Helix, boy, a sleep important. It's so important. Older you get the more you realize the wisdom of that. That's right. And Helix knows how to help there because they have the most comfortable best mattresses. I love my Helix mattress. Don Luxe. Don Luxe. They're great. How do you know which mattresses right for you? Take the Helix sleep quiz and it will match you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. They have over 20 mattress models, so you can find the perfect model for you. 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Though, importantly, in all six of the states where they pulled the six Senate states that are pick up opportunities for Democrats, voters were less likely to describe the Democratic candidate as too far left than they were the Democratic Party itself. Do you attribute that to specific moderate positions taken by Mary Peltola, Josh Turck, Sherrod Brown, Roy Cooper, James Telleriko, because, and I don't know, about all of their positions on everything, but it doesn't seem like, at least, you know, I know enough, like Sherrod's been around long enough, it doesn't seem like they have moderated on any of the issues where you might think the Democrats need to moderate on. Well, it's a little of both, right? So, Turck and Peltola have both sort of said that they want to support their state's oil and gas industries, which would be a very hot take in national Democratic Party politics. I think it's kind of a no-brainer in Alaska and Texas. And, you know, that's good. We're just all kind of getting to a place of pragmatism and stuff like that. Roy Cooper, you know, he's been in statewide office in North Carolina for a long, long, long time, has a distinctive relationship with the voters there. I think they see him as moderate, at least, because he's held office for a long time. There's this Republican supermajority in the legislature, so we don't really know what it is he would have done if he was empowered. Josh Turck and Iowa, you know, he really had a hard fought primary. Elizabeth Warren and others were supporting his opponent. He held and represented an Obama to Trump, you know, switching district in the state legislature there. I don't know anything about Iowa. I've never been there. I don't like to represent myself as an expert, but it did seem like it was the more moderate choice in a cadested primary. You know, a chaired ground is, I think, the interesting one. I mean, I'm old enough to remember in 2006 when he was like this progressive dream candidate who'd emerged. And like, that was a different era in Ohio, right? Like everything was very different back then. You know, he, you know, Obama's first term, he's really clashed with the White House over some energy stuff related to the steel industry, things like that. In Biden's term, he was much more kind of a good soldier, got along with everybody. Maybe not the best idea in a state that Trump won by six points. So I don't know, you know, exactly where he's going to come down there. Some of it though is that, you know, when you have a specific individual candidate, they can try to communicate who they are, rather than being like a caricature, right? And so that is always the power of individual candidates, particularly individual candidates who, unlike late stage Joe Biden, can like actually speak and engage with people. Yeah, that's what I was going to say, because I do think that the focus on positions and issue positions, which I do think voters care about, I would not dismiss that. But it is one of many factors because a lot of the people you just talked about, it seems like they have an image of being more moderate, partly because of vibes that they put off, because of their bio, because of who they are, how they communicate. I mean, Roy Cooper is an interesting one too, because he ran for governor and won that race, partly the bathroom bill in North Carolina at the time. Now we're talking about trans issues around sports teams and gender affirming care, but back then it was a bathroom bill and he was able to win in 2016, pretty tough year, despite being very vocal on that issue at the time. And you do wonder, then, is the reason that Roy Cooper is doing so well and people think he's more moderate, is it other factors aside from the actual positions he's taken? Well, you know, I think that there's a bold thing into this, right? So, you know, Governor Cooper was always sort of positioned himself as a champion of economic growth in North Carolina, and of sort of modernization and bringing business in. This is whole kind of, you know, new South tradition that Bill Clinton was part of, that he's part of, that Andy Bashir is part of. The bathroom bill controversy at the time that that was raging, right, he was related to that. Part of the case he was making was, you know, this is going to hurt us in our convention business, it's going to hurt us in attracting financial services jobs from New York, things like that. And this is where, you know, there's issue positions, there's vibes, there's communications. And it sort of comes together, because if you can explain what you're doing in a way that connects to things that your constituents care about, you know. That's much better than if you're kind of duck in cover all the time, right? Like, can you engage, can you convey some kind of empathy and complexity around these issues? People don't like to be, everybody votes for politicians who they agree with about some stuff and disagree with about other stuff. If they feel like, well, this is a political party that wants to cancel me over our disagreements versus that can respect the idea of differences of opinion, but things that all things considered, you know, my healthcare plan is really important, right? Those are not different issue positions, but it's a little bit more than just vibes. Like, I think we saw, but before, um, before Grant Platner exited the race under a cloud of scandal, you know, we were putting to the test the idea that is sort of a pure vibes of candidacy could sort of transform the demographic structure of the electorate. And I think the polls were saying that that wasn't working, that he was going to beat Susan Collins until scandals took him down, but this is a state that Kamala won, it's a state that Biden won, it's a state that Hillary won. He was winning based on educated people in coastal towns, um, kind of same old, same old, because his, his issue positions were actually very, very standard, even though he had this really interesting persona, I think we both met, he was very charismatic in person, like, like a cool guy, then maybe not so cool, um, but, you know, ultimately, if you're going to persuade people who haven't been voting for you, to vote for you, you've got to give them something, right? Like, yeah. Yeah. Some, some reason to think that you're different. And this is the case with so many of these races is that there's so many different variables that it's hard to pin something down, because it's like, um, I realize that the left wants to believe that, um, Graham Platner, um, and his race could have like, you know, won him a bunch of, uh, non-college educated, uh, white voters and sort of picked that lock that we've, Democrats have been trying to pick for the last 20 years, um, I never really thought that was the case, but I did think that, um, his charisma was a big factor there. I saw you write a couple of times that, that one of the reasons he might have been seen as not as left as the Democratic Party as a whole is because of his position on guns. Yeah. But then I was like, uh, did that many people in Maine really knew, did they, do they all know what his position on guns was because he didn't talk about it a lot. It was like a big, it was like a big part of his campaign. And I do, I wonder if his style and charisma may have made up for some of the, um, uh, either, well, in his case, both the scandals, the early, the scandals early on and the, um, you know, the, the further left issue positions like Medicare for all abolish ICE and, um, his position on Israel, like I wonder if his persona helped with, uh, his perception. Well, I, I guess part of the point I was trying to make in my 2028 piece is that the things that the establishment and the kind of more progressive people have been arguing about are actually mostly not the issues that it seems like swing voters, um, disagree with Democrats about. Right. So like on Israel, the, the mass public has become quite skeptical of the US as a relationship. Um, obviously that's a very fraught issue and there's like always somebody who wants to go further, you know, no matter what position you take, but there's like big room in the public eye for revisiting where Democrats have been on that Medicare for all, you know, we've been talking about for 10 years, like polling on that is all over the map, depending on what you ask. But people have pretty progressive ideas about healthcare, you know, like the voters believe that if people get sick, they should be able to see the doctor. Um, and so, you know, you can, you can kind of go places on that at the same time. You know, something I wrote about is, um, kind of like racial targeting of programs is quite unpopular with white people in particular who, you know, want programs to benefit them rather than other people, which is pretty easy to understand, not really something the left and the establishment disagree about. Again, so interestingly, Obama in 2008 on the campaign trail, you know, made some real waves by suggesting that he wanted to revisit some of that and questioned, you know, do his daughters need special advantage over low-income white kids, right? That'd be a very hot take to put forward. It was a hot take when he did it. Obviously, he had some personal qualities that gave him a little bit more space on those kind of things. But those are statements that make people think, huh, you know, maybe I need to give a new look to somebody who's out there. And I think you're right. You know, Plattener didn't really talk much about the guns thing. We don't know how that would have gone as a general election, right? But, you know, different things pop at different kinds of times. But I do think that successful politicians usually put something on the table to make you think, oh, this guy's different. Like that's fresh. That's new. And charisma is like how you make that pop. And it still matters what the content is because if what we see is like, oh, that's different, that's an idea I've never heard before. And I hate it. Like, that's not good, right? Like, you don't want to get attention for terrible ideas that everyone hates. The empathy point you made earlier, and I wonder if you read Brian Boyler's piece today where he sort of wrote about this as well as like the sort of the need to show empathy or democratic politician to show empathy can kind of sort of bridge some of these divides and these disagreements between factions and the party. The Obama thing made me think, so yeah, he would go out and talk about like maybe what we really need is class-based affirmative action and not just race-based affirmative action. And then he would also make the point that when people say, okay, well, then race doesn't matter. It's all about class. He would say, well, no, I mean, you know, I'm by racial, but when I hail a cab and the cab keeps going, it's, I'm black to that cab. Absolutely. You know, and I do wonder if it is a question of Democrats or a lot of the Democratic candidates we've seen, not quite having the skills to explain their positioning and also explain it in a way where people who may be against the position they take can at least understand where they're coming from and because the politician showed some empathy for their position as well as the position of the people that that politician landed on, their same beliefs. Yeah, and I mean, I think this is a, you know, this is where I think the substance of the positions and the communications methods sort of come together, right? And so, you know, both Biden and Harris and Clinton for all sort of different reasons, but none of them were really kind of like sit down and gab at length kind of politicians who made you feel like they could explain in sort of some level of nuance what it was they really thought about these different kinds of issues. And that hurts you, right? Because like this is a big diverse country. You end up with two political parties, two candidates down there. You're trying to assemble a somewhat messy coalition. And there's going to have to be some like fuzzing of these issues. There's going to have to be some outreach to the middle, but you've got to get people on the left on board. I mean, look at this primary happening in Michigan, right? It's very better. Somebody's going to win. Somebody's going to lose. They're going to need to get the people who voted for the other person to come vote for them, which is going to mean whoever wins that is going to have to re-describe whatever it is they were saying about Israel or whatever else in a way that is at least acceptable to the other person's voters. And like, that's hard, right? I mean, that's the real art of politics. I, as a journalist, I observe that this occurs and that the good politicians do it. But I do feel like there has been a, I remember when Harris was campaigning with Liz Cheney. And there was a lot of people from the left who were like, this is terrible, like how can you work with Liz Cheney. And then conversely, Harris wasn't like moving toward Liz Cheney's positions and any kind of issues, right? And so I think that wound up being a real kind of like dead zone version of like trying to see more moderate, but not actually making anybody like her better, but raising these different kinds of questions. And it was just challenging, I think, for her to convey to people exactly what she was trying to say about this. Like, why should somebody who was more conservative than Kamala Harris vote for her anyway? Because that's clearly what that was meant to convey, right? Like that was the purpose of them being up on stage, but it's like, it's a hard argument to make. I mean, I don't have a big difficulty making the case to say like Trump, like he's corrupt, January 6th, but like also I just don't agree with him. Like he's cutting healthcare, he's doing tax cuts for the rich, like these aren't things that I agree with. But she wanted to make a pitch to people like my father-in-law, who's like pretty conservative, and also really doesn't like Trump, you know, and he, I think he voted for Harris at the end of the day, and then he votes for Greg Abbott down ballot. But there's all these people out there who are conflicted and you do have to come up with some way to build a bridge to them that also, you know, conveys to progressives that like, if Democrats win the election, progressive public policy is going to happen. So you're running the presidential campaign of your dream Democrat who's willing to to emphasize moderation. What moderate stances are you telling them to emphasize where the Democratic Party's position is most out of step with even its own voters on high salient issues, which are issues voters rate is most important to them. Or just issues that are gonna come up in the campaign. I mean, we just talked about affirmative action. Supreme Court has now ruled on using races a factor in college admissions. It doesn't seem like that is going to be a hot button issue in 2028. And so you could argue that just purely on a political level, moderating on that in a sort of a loud way. - Probably out. - Yeah, and also can feel a little inauthentic and opportunistic. - Absolutely. - You know, so what do you think are the big ones? - So I think there's like a few different buckets here. But immigration is a big one, right? Because people are, there's a big backlash against what ICE has been doing. All Democrats are gonna give voice to that, et cetera, et cetera. But this continues to be one of Donald Trump's strong issue areas. And you see that in polling of even Democrats, there's real concern about reopening sort of the gates to people seeking asylum. Now, this is not where like I am at personally. I'm like quite left on immigration, but I can see the numbers here, right? And you need to convey to people both that there's gonna be a meaningful recalibration from what Trump is doing. But also that like we have heard what people were saying during the Biden administration and are not going to rerun that experience. I think that's like a big one. I think some of these trans issues are not that salient with the public, but they get brought up a lot by Republicans. You have to be prepared to answer questions about them. And I think you have to be prepared to go into some level of nuance because you wanna convey like real empathy, real support for people's rights. But also to understand, I think that like there is a set of sex segregated spaces where most Americans want, you know, biology is defined by chromosomes to be the controlling factor there. I think you have to at least throw a bone to the median voter on this kind of topic when you're addressing it. And then I think there's this set of things, education as I think the most prominent of them, but can you show people that Democrats understand that like voter support, the social safety net, voter support public services, voter support taxing the wealthy, but also voters like want to see change and reform in the state, in the government, that when Doge was first rolled out, people were really excited about it, right? And it like it all went to shit. But the idea of like I am willing to take on the stakeholders inside the bureaucracy and do something good, like that means a lot to people in terms of like what are their doubts about Democratic party governance? You know, when people live in the Midwest and they think about California or New York, right? They think maybe a nice place to live if you're like incredibly wealthy, but they don't think what they've really got there is like an incredible balance of taxes and quality public services, right? It's like the weather is amazing in California. The culture and nightlife in New York is fantastic. But people look at those higher taxes and they're like, well, what are you getting for that money, right? And people who live in those states, you're in California, right? - Yeah. - Yeah, I mean, it's like California's amazing, but none of the Californians are now, are like the thing that is amazing about California is that the high levels of taxes that I pay is like really paying off in my day-to-day life, right? And we know that between ourselves. And that is something that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, I think, both tried to give voice to, even as they tried to give healthcare, EITC, other things to help the needy. (upbeat music) - Pots of America is brought to you by Our Place. Our Place makes beautiful high-performance kitchenware designed to make home cooking simpler and more enjoyable. 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And look, I could make an argument that yes, ice is relatively, a relatively new organization and that we could put immigration enforcement back at, you know, some parts of it at DHS and DOJ. And we could do the bureaucratic chart and everything. And I am someone who's comfortable saying, yes, we still need immigration enforcement obviously. But if you just say abolish ice, of course abolish immigration and custom enforcement makes a lot of people think, oh, well, then you don't want immigration enforcement anymore. When the reality is like, if I was a Democratic president I'd go and I was heading into office after this. Yeah, I would fire most of the people in ice because I think they've hired a bunch of unqualified psychopaths. I would still want immigration enforcement somehow, but it takes a while to explain all of that, you know. And I just wonder how that plays out in a Democratic presidential primary. Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, yes, nuance is hard. On the other hand, I don't think it's actually that hard to say. We need to totally revamp how ice works or even abolish it, whatever, but we need a secure border. James Tolerico had this line and he's like, we've got to have like a door with a beautiful welcome hat and also a lock, right? And that's like a good, you know, metaphor, right? So he's smart, but it's not impossible to come up with these kind of formulas. But I actually think is a little bit harder. You know, for people who are down ballot and maybe even for presidential candidates is navigating the kind of interest group minefield. You know, where there's a lot of stakeholders who have very specific things that they want you to say. And politicians get these kind of memos from their staffs. You know, they're like, don't say this, do say that, don't say this, do say that, right? And they're really nervous, right? They're trying to navigate in this really precise way. Like, I don't want to lose this endorsement. I don't want to, you know, get scored down on something else like this. And it makes it hard for them to talk like people, like we all know Democrats in our lives who are much more nuanced. I think then the members of Congress, who we see on our televisions, and it's because they're not under the same kind of pressure and the same kind of scrutiny to sort of talk in like a relaxed, somewhat normal way about things. But it takes courage. I mean, this is why, again, I mean, I look to presidential campaigns more to change things because the reality facing anyone who wants to run for president is you're probably going to lose. Like, it's just, it's hard, it's hard to win. And I think a lot of the best presidential candidates are people who started off as real underdogs, right? I mean, again, that's something that Trump and Obama haven't commented, right? It took a certain amount of courage to even launch those campaigns and to work on them and to do it. The last three times, Democrats have kind of had this sort of like overdog nominee who was like handed down by the weight of the past. And that's not great because people who are taking that path just, they're incentive is toward being cautious all the time. So then you come across as a really cautious, really calculating person, rather than somebody who was like, I'm going to take my shot, you know, and I'm going to, I'm going to speak from the heart. And, and no politician is ever like truly authentic, truly, truly speaking from the heart. But there is a difference between someone who's like, I'm going to go for it. And someone who's like, well, this is coming my way. So I'm going to not fuck it up. At one point, you, you write that a center-left candidate who is quote, charismatic and skilled at contemporary social media can talk above the groups directly to voters, totally agree. But as you mentioned, Obama is sort of coming up as an underdog and getting attention and everyone else has sort of been handed down. Like how many democratic politicians can you name in the last decade who've been able to command national attention with a message of disciplined moderation? Well, I know, I mean, you know, most of the people who've come up and have commanded attention have been very left-wing. You know, and I think that's a big part of the reason why the whole discourse keeps getting sort of dragged to the left. Younger people are just more left-wing, you know, and particularly within the Democratic Party. So you have your AOCs, you have your Mamdani's. And these are the people who've shown real flair for communication skills. I think you have also seen from both of them, you know, impulses toward AOC had this whole bit about like how we need to deregulate sunscreen, essentially, right? And Mamdani has some like small business kind of thing and stuff that he's doing that impresses people. So this stuff can work for different kinds of politicians with different kinds of ethosys. So, you know, branding, I think, actually, is not what matters most. I mean, Obama in 2008, I think, was understood as the progressive sort of choice in that primary, primarily because of Iraq, you know, which was really, really important to people at that time. So you look back and you say, well, he was actually the one who was like taking on teachers unions. He was the one who actually had more support from sort of like Wall Street and Finance. He was the preferred candidate of a lot of the red state members of Congress at that time. He tacked the center on affirmative action. All these other kinds of things, but at the time, like, progressives really liked him because he was the one who said like this war is really fucked up. And you know, that is the advantage of taking a position that is vindicated by time. You know, it's like always good to have like good judgment on the substance of questions. And so I think anyone, including people who are sort of understood today to be progressive, could also move to the center on these kind of issues that we've been talking about because when I talk to really left-wing people, and I'm like, what are they fired up about? It's like not actually the things that the public has the biggest doubts for Democrats about. You want to be a Medicare for all candidate. There's like real problems of program design that you sort of need to confront, but it's not a political problem in the way that the sense that you want to open the borders is. You know, abolish ICE, maybe not a slogan I would advise people to go with. But if you can convey the idea that abolishing ICE doesn't mean reopening to millions of new asylum seekers, like that could be totally fine. Maybe it's easier actually to moderate unaspective immigration if you have this left-wing slogan rather than if you're coming at it backwards. Like, I'm not totally sure, you know, how that that needle needs to be threaded ultimately. I just think it's that you have to give voters some level of reassurance about their biggest doubts about Democrats, especially if, you know, you're going to say we're going to have a whole new approach to Israel. We're going to take on the vested interests in the health care system. Like you're not going to pull that off while also alienating, you know, 60% of the population around cultural issues, right? Like if you want to say, we're going to like have this populist anchor, then I think you just have to follow the logic of that in like a compelling way and say, look, if you can agree with me that health care should be a right rather than a privilege, like I want you on my team, like I'm not going to take away your plastic straw, right? Like because we're focused on the health care thing versus this sort of laundry list politics where it's like, you know, I got this for the health care, I got this for the child care, I've got this on the plastic straws, I've got this on the immigration, I got this on the asylum, this on criminal justice, like that's a hard way to do politics. I am intrigued by your advice on on candidate offering policy plans, which is don't do that. Like basically, less, right? So like, you know, you're asked, how do you get to universal health care and you say it depends on the composition of Congress, what are you going to do about the deficit? We need to text rich people and cut wasteful spending, but then not a lot more detail. I mean, the answers, those answers certainly have the virtue of being true, right? Of course, this all depends on Congress and all kinds of other circumstances that you can't predict in the heat of a campaign. The campaign, as the primary goes on with the imaginary candidate we're talking about here, is it possible to dodge questions and attacks from your opponents about having no plans? And it does seem like that was part of like Kamala Harris' vagueness was part of sort of the negative coverage she received. Yeah, so one thing is like, with all this plan stuff, I'm trying to hold myself accountable a little bit because I was part of a wave of young at the time, journalists who were really like, we got to see plans from these presidential candidates. And in retrospect, it's like I wonder why we were so demanding of that because that's not how the government works, right? And like we all know that. And so this is kind of, there was this faux sophistication coming from me and from some of my colleagues, but I mean specifically from me as well, to be demanding all this detail from people. And I think that if you can give real answers that make sense that both journalists and voters will understand, actually, that like the micro details of tax policy are written by Congress and that the directionality of tax policy is like a numbers game, right? Like if we have a teeny tiny majority, it's going to be hard to do very much. But if a big majority will do a lot and you try to say what kinds of things you want to do, you know, with Harris, right? I mean, she was in this weird position where she was the vice president for an incumbent administration. She was saying, I mean, I remember the first time when she was doing a little rally and she said like, we're not going back. And I was like, yeah, you know, like I love that line, right? Because people really wanted both change, but also not Donald Trump. And so she seemed to convey that. But then she got the question like, well, in what way is this change about not Donald Trump? And she didn't have a great answer. The great thing about being a Democrat running when a Republican is president is that you don't have that same complicated question, right? It's like change that's not Donald Trump is just like, yeah, elected Democrat, right? And then people do want to know something, like what does that mean? What are you going to do? Are you going to govern differently? And I'm not saying that you should dodge that question. I mean, again, implicit in all of this is that like, yeah, like rich people's taxes will go up. We're going to spend more money on subsidizing people's health care. We're going to, however we characterize what we're doing with ICE. It's like fewer people are going to be getting arrested in the interior of American cities. And then hopefully we can also say, but there's going to be a very secure border, you know? We're going to keep fighting crime. We're going to make crime even lower than it is now, you know, something like that. But do we really need to have this like 17 point plan like we had in the 2020 primary again, thinking about about 2008, right? There were all these articles written about different candidates, health care plans and like Obama's plan didn't have mandate, right? And then he won the primary and then he won the election and then Congress did want to do the mandate. And then it happened, but then in like the rule writing at HSS, it got watered down a little bit. Then there was like unrelated implementation problems, but then actually it was going pretty well. And like people liked Obamacare, but then the mandate got repealed, and then that maybe didn't. It's like so tedious. And in retrospect, I mean, it sure must have been a huge pain in your ass. And it was in mind like what, like why do we spend so much time talking about this? The challenge here is a reason that these policy plans are developed. if the context of a primary is to be used as a political cudgel against your opponents because you're running in a primary and the truth is most of you have the same general position on most of the same issues and you want to differentiate yourself from the other primary candidates and so you put out a plan that is bolder and more ambitious which is either it's more expensive or probably harder to achieve than the other candidates so that you can get on the debate stage and brag about that and then you know I think it happened in an even more annoying way then the mandate in in 2020 when I don't know how many of those debates ended up being just a conversation not even a conversation just a debate about Medicare for all and whose Medicare for all plan was the best when then Joe Biden won and what did he like barely expanded anything yeah that is one where I think it is important to remind people that like Joe Biden won that primary right after that huge shit show that actually his message of like I'm just gonna beat Donald Trump was like pretty compelling actually to democratic primary voters and he is not the single most like silver-tongued person in the universe certainly not a master of vertical video or whatever else it is so I do think that there's like ways for younger politicians to tap into some of what worked for him there right in terms of like keeping the focus on like what do democrats really care about and it's beating Trump it's not just beating Trump right I think democrats care a lot about health care and I think democrats are quite exercised about some of the cruelty of these immigration enforcement actions and if you can hit those three buttons in some kind of way and convince people that you're gonna take action on those issues like you could be I think conceivably pretty flexible on some other things if people believed that it was in pursuit of accomplishing these important goals the Biden thing is interesting though because I think I don't see a lot of evidence that Biden ended up winning that primary because he staked out more moderate positions than the rest of the field and in many ways he sort of chased them on some of these issues he he I think half raises hands on raises hand on decriminalizing the border on that one and I think that he probably what helped him is he had universal name ID he was Barack Obama's vice president and so he sort of had a bit of a Obama halo and then it was there was no one else left by the time it was just he and Bernie right and so well and he did really well in the head to head match up polling against Trump right I mean that you know people democrats these days you know read the New York Times when Nate Cohn tells them that like Elizabeth Warren is really unpopular and people like Joe Biden like that made a big difference it did yeah he just goes back to my the challenge I keep thinking about is like Joe Biden Hillary Clinton Kamala Harris because she was just you know installed last minute these are all people that their name ID came from virtue of them being political dynasties or someone else's vice president or and and the incentives to become nationally known and get attention I feel like point towards language that is bolder more ambitious geared towards conflict sometimes hyperbolic and I'm trying to picture the the candidate who practices discipline moderation who sort of breaks out in these like I'm you know I think about like an Andy Bashir right like amazing track record electoral record in Kentucky and still like a pretty mainstream Democrat not like super conservative but like I'm trying to picture Andy Bashir and I've you know I've seen him give some interviews I've interviewed myself like really breaking out in a crowded primary with a message that's going to capture people and that that's the I feel like we have a lot of center left candidates who maybe electorally viable but are not very good at getting attention and then we have a lot of progressive candidates we're very good at getting attention and may not be electorally viable in swing states you know so right so you know some of this like yes right um part of the deal with someone like governor Bashir is that he's very disciplined which I think is good for him winning elections at Kentucky but it also uh denudes him of a certain amount of pizzazz right that they could potentially be out there like one of the things that I think uh was interesting about about Platner wasn't just like the positions that he took but that he seemed very um like anything might happen in this interview right um and that kind of kinetic energy is unusual in experienced politicians because the way you kind of get to be almost a presidential contender is usually by being like quite controlled you know and like calm and you climb the state party ladder you make the right kind of people like you and then suddenly you find yourself in a crowded presidential primary field and like the challenge is to break through and it's like a totally different kind of challenge right and I think somebody like like Ruben Gallego who has through many twists and turns in his career found himself as kind of like a moderate swing state senator but just a couple of years ago was like the progressive challenger to christian cinema and before that was like the young guy in the state legislature who was trying to muscle and pastor out of that house seat right and he has a little bit more of the the looseness that kind of gets you attention but is unusual in all kinds of politicians we're seeing it more with left-wing politicians because they've been challenging incumbents right only like a slightly crazy person runs against an entrenched house incumbent most of the people who do that lose but a couple of them win and then then your AOC right because you took on this sort of suicide run primary you don't see as many people like that in the moderate lane but I think it's it's possible right because it's about trying to be interesting and like trying to break through and it is also about having the right issue positions you know I mean so many people who are who care about electoral pragmatism I think really like Josh Shapiro right because he's doing incredibly well in the critical swing state and I think that's really important it's also true that you know when he like speaks from the heart in a way that is moderate and compelling and makes you think like okay like this guy's for real he tends to be talking about the Israel issue in a way that like it's just public opinion is not on his side you know and like that's that's a tough one like you can't you can't win by being moderate on something where everything's going the other way now that being said like he has done some stuff in the state that is heterodox on energy he's done stuff in the state that is heterodox on education I think maybe if he talked more about those things that can be you know delivers the same kind of electoral pragmatism but also actually connects more with things that democrats themselves have mixed feelings about you know about like how are these systems operating are we shaking them up are we governing well in our blue states these kinds of things but there's no getting around the fact that politics is hard pots of america is brought to you by sundays is your dog a picky eater it's surprisingly stressful you wish they could tell you the problem maybe if they could your dog would say they know the difference between processed brown pellets in real food I think my dog would say that sundays starts with 80% plus all natural meats and then add super foods like kale ginger and blueberries no fillers no nutritional blends no chemicals just simple complete nutrition and sundays just launched a brand new fish recipe it's made with 80% hole in minced fish including eco-friendly invasive carp source from american rivers for a naturally 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off your first order at sundays for dogs dot com slash cricket sundays for dogs dot com slash cricket or use code cricket at checkout Josh appears another one where it's like it's the the the center left theory is there's often a lot of like this candidate is so great on paper and look at their electoral track record and you know Josh appears going to have a fantastic story to tell about that in a very very important state and look at how he's navigated the coalitions and approval rating all that kind of stuff and then it's not it's not just like i don't want to say it's a lack of charisma but it's what is the story that you're telling about why you're running and why you're different from everyone else. And is that story cohesive and compelling versus cherry picking issues where you can say, see this is why I'm different than the National Democratic Party and a little more moderate and the thing that you hate about the National Democratic Party is not the thing that you are going to hate about me, which can, again, really risk sounding like you read a polling memo. Yeah, although it also depends what people in our line of work decide that we are interested in, right? Like a very large share of media professionals live in New York City. And they, personally, are very interested in left-wing, reformist politics in New York City where they live. And so things that happen in that vein get a lot of coverage. I don't think that's, it's not like wrong for people to be very passionate about politics in the city that they live in. I wish more people actually cared about the politics of the city with the living. But it's distortionary in terms of like our understanding of national politics and like what's it all about, right? And something that, you know, I try to do that I think everybody has to try to do is exercise some discipline and responsibility for ourselves that the most important races coming up in November are in Ohio, they're in Iowa, they're in Texas, Alaska, North Carolina. I have some personal connection to Texas through my wife's family, I have some personal connection to Maine where I am physically present right now. I don't have any connection to Iowa and Ohio. But like I care a lot about the future of the country. And what's incumbent on me to like learn to care about these states, right? Rob Sand is clearly doing something in Iowa that is compelling to people who used to vote for Democrats and stopped voting for Democrats. And they like Rob Sand. And so I'm trying to, like I'm trying to get it, you know, like he's, he's pretty charismatic. You know, he's an interesting guy. It conveys that there's something different about him. But it's not targeted at me, you know, and like that's, that's why he's running in Iowa. Like that's what's good about it. I will say you're right that everyone needs to take responsibility for in the media and the professional class like for what they emphasize and what they talk about. I will speak as someone who runs a media company who like we try to have everyone on. And a lot of this is the attention that the person ends up commanding with audiences, right? And we've talked to Mum Donnie a bunch of times, very popular, right? Not just with our audience, but like those clips travel beyond our audience, right? And we will have, you know, Kate Connelly, who's in a much more important to the future of the country district to win when she's in town. And who knows? Maybe it'll also be an incredibly viral clip. But our experience has been a lot of these candidates were in really important races that we ended up talking to like it doesn't go anywhere because people are like, "Well, I don't really want to. I'm not as excited about that." Oh, absolutely. And that's not going to stop us from doing it. We'll keep doing it. But eventually you want, and especially you want this as a candidate on a campaign, you want your message to reach the low information voters. And unfortunately the stuff that gets to the low information voters to people who don't pay his close attention to all this has to be stuff that goes viral, you know? And that's, that's the trick. And this is, I mean, a huge frustration that I have with a lot of the more moderate Democrats is that they don't even want to try a lot of the time, right? That their attitude is, look, nationalizing things is bad for me. I do better if there's kind of less of a giant media glare on me. What I want to do is be well enough known among super high attention people that I can raise money. And I want to talk to my local television station about my local issues. And I get why people come to that conclusion, and I think it's the advice that they're getting from the D-Triple C, from the D-S-C-C, and it works within the kind of four walls of what it's designed to achieve. But then all these same people also come around to me, and they're like, "Oh my God, I'm so frustrated. People think the only Democrats in the country are AOC and Mamdani." And it's like, "Well, because they do the interviews, right?" And like, they'll go on your show, they'll go on Fox, they'll, you know, and some of it is like, you can be more devil-make-air in a safe district. And it's a little bit of a loaded playing field, but also, you know, life's not fair as we, they tell us not to tell our 11-year-old bat, you're not supposed to raise kids with that message anymore. But like, I think it's an important point, fundamentally. It's like, it is harder to be in a swing district. It just is, you know, that the playing field is loaded against you. But like, you've got to try, right? You've got to try to be interesting. You've got to try to say, "Look, you know, if you look at Vincente Gonzalez and Marie Closet Campares and Don Davis and Kate Connelly and Tom Swazzy, that there actually is something that we all have in common. We're not all just like local people who are focused on our issues here, right? That like, because they actually like, they hang out together in D.C., they have common staff, common consultants, common fundraisers, like, there's a group of moderate Democrats, that they need to give some voice to like, "What do we think? Who are we? Why are we the good people?" And I give incredible credit to Bernie Sanders, who has been tireless about trying to promote politicians who he likes, and I hear so many other Democrats and they're mad that Bernie is promoting these people and that the people who they like aren't getting promoted. But it's like, "Well, who's going to promote them other than you?" Yeah, that's what actually bothers me a lot is that they look at the insurgent candidates on the left and sort of the progressive outsiders with like, "Umbridge." That's basically the main feeling of like, "How dare you?" And my candidate works really hard and has been just, you know, this is sort of like, the Haley Steven stuff has gotten better, I think, the argument that people are making for her, but originally it was like, "Well, she's been there just working hard and give her credit for being there and working hard." And it's like, "Okay, I'm sure that's true if you know her, but voters don't know that." And so they're going to need a different kind of story there. Well, and also, I know so many Democrats who want her to win this primary, but who don't want to fly to Michigan and campaign with her, because it'll be embarrassing if they stand with her and she loses. But it'll be embarrassing to Bernie if have dual loses. Like, he doesn't, he has to, you know, he's doing the work, right? And there's no alternative to that in politics. And that's like part of my message to the more moderate Democrats out there is like, don't just give up hope, but also don't just assume that we can keep endlessly staving off the left and, you know, pulling more rabbits out of the hat. Like, somebody's got to run a campaign, somebody's got to make the case. You've got to actually, like, articulate some daring positions on the issues. And if people yell at you, you have to explain why they're wrong. And like, you got to go on crooked and you've probably got to go on Hassan Piker and, you know, do some interviews and people who don't agree with you and stand your ground. And that's, because that's how it's always been. You know, there's no, there's no, like, magic trick. Look, I know people have said it's not the issue that lost for the election, but the ad that Kamala Harris dealt with about gender-affirming care for undocumented immigrant prisoners. And, you know, the campaign was like, oh, we tested all the responses and the responses didn't do anything. And so we decided like not to talk about it at all. And I just, I don't think that may be true in terms of testing the ads. But I think the candidate has to be able to tell a story about why they supported that, why they've changed their mind, if they have changed their mind, that is acceptable to voters, right? Like, I don't think ducking these issues or just trying to hide from them is it is not an effective strategy on a presidential campaign level. Like some of the, I remember Jonathan Martin wrote a piece a while back, was like, Democrats aren't focusing at all on maybe some of the most important Senate races, like they don't get national attention, like Roy Cooper or, and I was like, well, Roy Cooper probably doesn't want a lot of attention on his race because he has enough money. He has raised quite a bit of money. He's ahead. And so what does Roy Cooper care for all talking about Roy Cooper's race? He probably doesn't. He'd rather us not. But you can't do that under presidential primary. And the challenge is you're going to get a bunch of moderates in the presidential primary that don't know how to sort of make that argument and get that level of attention. Though the one person I've been thinking about this whole time and I thought about when I read your piece for the first time is Ram. And Ram will be this person, right? Yeah, I mean, I mean, Ram is I think doing the right stuff, you know, he is getting attention to himself, people know his name, et cetera. You know, if I could pop it master everything, I would say, look, is like a retread from the Obama White House, from the Clinton White House, who was ambassador to Japan, who, if he does gain some traction in the primary, we're going to be relitigating. "Glock On McDonald," like, that's not, like, I would love for Ram to take a step back and to mentor somebody else, you know what I mean? Because clearly, there is a demand for fresh faces and new voices, and like, we can all, everybody can see that, right? And, you know, this is part of why I'm excited about Josh Turek and James Tellerico, is like, these are younger politicians, they are not part of the old kind of mess. I think they are kind of media savvy and no stuff, and they're not from the left wing of the party, they're just also not handed down by the establishment, right? And like, this can be done, but to an extent, some of the people, the Ram Immanuel's of the world need to make room for other people and promote them or help them rather than saying, look, the same cohort that was telling you in 2016, like, don't listen to Bernie, we know how to win, and then they didn't win, and now we're 10 years into that, and it's not a healthy dynamic. - Last question on this, so, who do you like in 28 as a potential candidate who could carry this message? - Sure, you know, what I tell people is like, we know the universe of statewide elected officials in the critical swing states, right? It's Kellyanne Gallego in Arizona, it's Whitmore in Michigan, it's Shapiro in Pennsylvania. There's some of you like, Tony Evers is too old. Katie Hobbs seems like, I kind of like her, but it seems like she totally refuses to do press of any kind. Like someone who's not gonna run, John Federman is like not gonna be a leading contender, I think we could say. But like, we know this universe of candidates, and the question is, which of them is going to try to go beyond, like you were saying, right? They're gonna stand up and think about like, I know how to win in the swing states. You should vote for me. This is the most practical thing to do. I kind of agree with that. It's also just not that compelling, right? And so who's gonna say, I know how to win in the swing states, and the way I did it is that I said, and then you gotta say the thing, right? You don't really like, like you have to actually go say something. And something that I have noticed is that a lot of these people, depending on what audience they're talking to, they sometimes want to undersell the amount of ideological heterodoxy that they've displayed in their campaigns. Because the easiest way to raise money if you're running for re-election in Kentucky is to kind of tell like liberal donors in coastal cities, like I'm a magician. You know, I just like won in Kentucky 'cause I've got a cool accent. But like, Andy Bishir rejected a Sierra Club endorsement and he got the United Mine workers who have stopped endorsing Democrats in national politics to endorse him. And that's because like, he has a position on the use of coal that like, I don't really agree with, but the people in Kentucky do agree with. And that's like, that's the truth about how Andy Bishir wins votes in Kentucky that other people don't have. I don't think you could sell that to a national Democratic primary electorate 'cause it's like, Kentucky is too right way, right? It's too far. But there's stuff you can say in the Midwest, or in Arizona, or in Georgia, but like, you gotta give people the real talk about like, what did you say? Raphael Warnock, what did you say, John Assof, to the local audiences in Georgia and say it to a national audience? And a lot of the time, you know, you'll find these people, it's border security, it's some kind of political reform, and it is some effort to indicate that you're not like woke. Like whatever it is exactly that that means to people. But I think something like, you know, you are not going to be so obsessed with identity politics that you can't just like help everybody on their own terms, right? And that's the message Obama used is the message Bill Clinton used. I think we kind of like know what they're like unifying. This is a diverse country, but we're all in it together. I mean, you're, you know, a brilliant speech writer. Like, you know how to do these things, but only certain people can sell it because politics is hard. - Oh, hope we find one soon. (laughing) Matt Iglesias, thank you so much for joining Plads of America. This was a great conversation. - Thank you. - Thanks to Matt Iglesias for coming on. Tommy Love It and I will be back in your feed on Tuesday. Pads of 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 Heffko, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Carol Pelivive, David Tolls, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Single. Our staff is probably unionized with the writer's Guild of America East.