The Search for an Exciting Moderate

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau. On today's show, writer and founder of the slow-boring newsletter, Matt Iglesias. 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 in the ability to get attention, why Democrats have lost power, and how they can make a difference 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 Pods Save America, all our great subscriber-only newsletters, and exclusive subscriber-only podcasts like Pods Save America Only Friends and Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer. Plus, becoming a subscriber is the best way to support your favorite pro-democracy, independent media. Head on over to Crooked.com to subscribe. Matt, welcome to Pod Save 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 neolib 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. Your 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 different kinds of ideological viewpoints are frustrated about where Democrats are at. And they want to be clear and have a better message. But realistically, there's just not that much that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries can do. You're herding cats on Capitol Hill. It's presidential campaigns. Donald Trump comes in. He wins the 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 2028, right? There's going to be a contest. Somebody is going to win it. That person will be the leader. What Democrats stand for. It's 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 2025 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. And 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. You know, so I think there's been some pretty dramatic leftward moves in the Democratic Party since Barack Obama's. 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 them 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 rancorous debate about it, ideas about performance pay for teachers, ideas about supporting high-performing teachers, charter schools that, you know, the Obama White House had championed. And it was controversial at the time inside the party, just sort of went in the other direction. And then we had, you know, a lot of discussion about this around COVID and school closures and different things there. But, you know, 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, you know, shifted a lot on immigration over the past 10 to 15 years, right? There's been. All this stuff about asylum that came up during the Biden presidency just wasn't really an issue that like people were thinking that much about during the Obama presidency. There was this kind of very specific focus on trying to get a path to citizenship for people who've been here for a long time. New things came up. Democrats have, you know, gone through a number of cycles around crime and criminal justice reform since that time, but have been sort of seen in some circles as very soft on crime. I think left-wing Democrats. 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, you know, the role of business, its relationship to the state. It used to be kind of a view that, you know, Democrats were a party that was going to make rich people pay higher taxes. And that was. There's going to be a nonstarter 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 like respectfully as if business is a laudable 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 in 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, you know, now people on the right just like playback 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 due 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. 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 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 won. 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 percent 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 um 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 uh 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 gonna you know try to get to yes with the electorate that it was 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 some of what's happened is i think just a less of a pragmatic spirit that trump is so terrible it makes people feel like they're not going to be able to do what they're 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 pod save america is brought to you by helix uh boy is sleep important it's so important older you get the 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is too far left um and and more people think at least in the new york times poll more people think the democratic party is too far left than they think the republican party is too far right um great not great though importantly in all six of the states where they polled uh the six senate states that are pickup opportunities for democrats vote for acorns 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 turrick sherrod brown roy cooper james talarico 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 um moderated on any of the issues uh where democrat or you might think the democrats need to moderate on well it's a little of both right so uh turrick and peltola have both sort of said that they want to support their state's oil and gas industries you know 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 time and he's been in state office for a long time 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 super majority in the legislature so we don't really know like what it is he would have done if he was empowered josh turrick in iowa you know he really um 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 contested primary you know a charred brown 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 and like that was a different era in ohio right like everything was very different back then you know he um in obama's first term he was a very different era in ohio he really clashed with the white house over some energy stuff uh really did the steel industry things like that in biden's term he was much more kind of a good soldier uh got along with everybody maybe not the best idea in a state that trump won by six points um 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 um late stage joe biden can like actually speak and engage with people yeah that's what i was going to say because i i do think that um the focus on positions and and issue positions which i do think voters care about i would not dismiss that but it is it is one of many factors because a lot of the people you just talked about it seems like they um they have an image of being more moderate partly because of vibes that they put off because of their 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 and and won that race partly the the bathroom bill in north carolina at the time now we're talking about uh 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 yeah it's a pretty tough year um 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 is it's is it other factors aside from the actual positions he's taken well you know i i think that there's a there's a both end to 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 there's this whole kind of you know new south uh tradition that bill clinton was part of that he's part of that andy beshear is part of the the bathroom bill controversy at the time that that was raging right it 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 what you're doing in a way that connects to what you're doing to things that your constituents care about. that's much better than if you're kind of duck and cover all the time right like can you engage can you can you convey some kind of empathy and complexity around these issues people don't like to be um 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 like cancel me over our disagreements versus that can respect the idea of differences of opinion but thinks that all things considered you know my health care 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 um but before um before greg platner uh exited the race uh under a cloud of scandal you know we were putting to the test the idea that a sort of a pure vibes um you know we were putting to the test the idea that a sort of a pure vibes um 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 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's very charismatic in person like a like a 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 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 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 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 but then i was like 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 only 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 either well in his case both the scandals the early the scandals early on and the um you know the further left issue positions like medicare for all abolish ice and and um his position on israel like i wonder if his persona helped with uh his perception well 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 u.s israel relationship um obviously that's a very fraught issue and there's like always somebody wants you 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 health care 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 uh kind of like racial targeting of programs is quite unpopular with uh white people in particular who you know want programs to benefit them uh rather than other people which is pretty easy to understand not really something the left and the establishment disagree about again something interestingly uh obama in 2008 on the campaign trail you know made some real weight 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 uh to put forward it was a hot take when he did it obviously he had some uh personal qualities that uh 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 give a new look um to somebody who's out there and i think you're right you know platner 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 and charisma is like how you make that pop but 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 you don't want to get attention for terrible ideas that everyone hates the the empathy point you made earlier and i i wonder if you read uh brian boitler's piece today where he sort of um wrote about this as well as like the sort of the need to show empathy of a democratic politician to show empathy can kind of sort of bridge some of these divides and these and these uh disagreements between factions in the party the obama thing made me think so you know i don't know if you're interested in that but i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point so yeah he would 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 i'm biracial but when i hail a cab and the cab keeps going um 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 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 um 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 uh primary happening in michigan right it's very bitter 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 yeah 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 and they're going to have to re-describe whatever it is they were saying and they're going to have to re-describe whatever it is they were saying and they're 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 i observe that this occurs and that the good politicians do it but i i do feel like there has been a i remember when when harris was campaigning with liz cheney and there was a lot of like people from the left 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 at all on any kind of issues right and so i i think that wound up being a real kind of like dead zone version of like trying to seem 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 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 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 health care he's doing tax 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 but 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 your dream democrat who's willing to emphasize moderation yeah what moderate stances are you telling them to emphasize where the democratic party's position is most out of step with um even its own even its own voters on high salience issues right which are issues voters rate as most important to them or just issues that are going to come up in the campaign i mean we just talked about sort of affirmative action supreme court has now ruled on using race as a factor in uh in college admissions doesn't seem like that is going to be a hot button issue in 2028 and so you could argue that um just just purely on a political level moderating on that in a in a sort of a loud way probably out yeah yeah and also can feel a little inauthentic and and uh opportunistic absolutely you know um so what do you think are the big ones so i you know i i think there's like a few different buckets here uh but immigration is a big one right because people are there's a big backlash against what ice has been doing all democrats are going to give voice to that et cetera et cetera uh 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 um 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 going to 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 um 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 that's and i think you have to be prepared to go into some level of nuance because you want to convey like real empathy real support for people's rights uh 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 um i think you have to at least throw a bone uh to the median voter on this kind of topic when you're addressing it and then i think there's this set of things um education is i think the most prominent of them but can you show people that democrats understand that like voters support the social safety net voters support public services voters 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 look what are you getting for that money right and and people who live in those states like that you're in california right yeah yeah i mean it's like california is 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 and like we know that between ourselves and you know that is something that bill clinton and barack obama i think both tried to give voice to even as they tried to give health care eitc other things to help the needy you the wonder oven pro is an eight-in-one air fryer toaster oven that preheats 60 faster than a traditional oven and cooks up to 40 faster so meals actually happen quicker it air fries roasts bakes toasts reheats proofs dehydrates and broils all in one compact footprint and every cooking surface is made without forever chemicals it's especially great for quick meals reheating leftovers crisping things up or nights when you don't want to turn on the full oven i'm getting one of these wonder pro what a wonder i'm getting one of these wonder oven pros it's on it's on the way wow i'm gonna use it because i need an air fryer awesome i don't use i don't have an air 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widgets and you you know anyway zip recruiter save time and meet great people candidate sooner four out of five employers who post on zip recruiter get a qualified candidate within the first day try it for free at zip recruiter.com slash crooked that zip recruiter.com slash crooked meet your match on zip recruiter part of the the challenge we're landing on here is um that nuance and um sort of uh thoughtful explanations don't uh first of all people aren't as good at at giving them sure and and so there's a skill level with politicians that we talked about and even if you are skilled there's just the ability to get that message out right and so people see ice abuses and you know you've got people even like bill crystal now every time there's a nice story is is tweeting abolish ice abolish ice right and i get it because you you you feel this absolute fury and frustration for what they're doing and look i could make an argument that yes ice is relatively a relatively new organization and that we could put immigration enforcement back in place and that we could put immigration enforcement back in place 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 um and i and i'm someone who's comfortable saying um yes we still need immigration enforcement obviously um 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 um i would still want immigration enforcement somehow but that is it it takes a while to explain all of that you know absolutely and i just wonder how that i 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 um james talarico had this line and he's like we've got to have like a door with a beautiful welcome mat and also a lock right that's like a good you know metaphor right so he's smart uh 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 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 you say that don't say this do you say that right and they're 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 who are much more nuanced. I think, than 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, right? 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 have in common, 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 true. It's not great, because people who are taking that path, just their incentive is toward being cautious all the time. So then you come across as a really cautious, really calculating person, rather than as 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 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 ethoses. Also, 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. And that primary primarily because of Iraq, you know, which was 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, he tacked to 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 about like, what are they fired up about? It's like, not actually the things that the public has the biggest doubts for Democrats about. I think if 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 abolish ICE is a slogan that you would advise people to go with, 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 on aspects of 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 not going to be able to do anything about it. And so I think it's a good idea to give voters some level of reassurance 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 healthcare 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 healthcare should be a right rather than a wrong, then I think you're going to have a whole new approach to doing 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 healthcare thing versus this sort of laundry list politics where it's like, you know, I got this for the healthcare, I got this for the childcare, 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 candidates offering policy plans, which is, don't do that. Less. Less, right. So, like, you know, you're asked, how do you get to universal healthcare? And you say, it depends on the composition of Congress. What are you going to do about the deficit? We need to tax rich people and cut wasteful spending, but then not a lot of more detail. I mean, the answers, those answers certainly have the virtue of being true, right? Like, of course, this all depends on Congress and all kinds of other circumstances that you can't predict in the heat of a campaign. In a campaign, as the primary goes on with the imaginary candidate we're talking about here, you're going to have to do a lot of things. You're going to have to do a lot of things. 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's 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. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why we were so demanding of that. Because that's not how the government works. Right? And, like, we all know that. And so, there's this 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 we have a big majority, we'll 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, 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. Right. And so, she seemed to convey that. But then she got the question, like, well, in what way is this change, but 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, you don't have that same complicated question. Right. Right. It's like, change that's not Donald Trump is just like, yeah, elect a Democrat. Right. And then people do want to know something. Like, what does that mean? What are you going to do? How 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 a mandate. Right. And then he won the primary, and then he won the election. And then Congress did want to do the mandate. So the mandate happened. But then in like the rule writing at HHS, 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 mine. Like what? Like, why did we spend so much time talking about this? The challenge here is, is that a reason that these policy plans are developed in 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 than 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, but I mean, I gave some subsidies. 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 going to 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 healthcare. 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 of these 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 raised his hands on, on, raised his 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 an 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 matchup polling against Trump, right? I mean, 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. 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 candidate who practices discipline moderation, who sort of breaks out in these, like, you know, I think about like an Andy Beshear, 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 Beshear, and I've, you know, I've seen him give some interviews, I've interviewed him myself, like, really breaking out in a crowded primary, with a message that's going to capture people. And that's the, I feel like we have a lot of center left candidates who may be electorally viable, but are not very good at getting attention. And then we have a lot of progressive candidates who are very good at getting attention, and may not be electorally viable. And then we have a lot of progressive candidates who may be electorally viable in swing states, you know, so right. So, you know, some of this, like, yes, right. Part of the deal with someone like Governor Beshear is that he's very disciplined, which I think is good for him winning elections in Kentucky. But it also denudes him of a certain amount of pizzazz, right, that could potentially be out there. Like one of the things that I think was interesting about about Plattner wasn't just like the positions that he took, but that he was a very disciplined person. And I think that's one of the things that I think that he seemed very, like anything might happen in this interview, right? 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, and you make the right kind of people like you. And then suddenly, you find yourself in a crowded presidential primary. And then you find yourself in a crowded presidential primary. And then you find yourself in a crowded 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 Kyrsten Sinema. And before that was like the young guy in the state legislature who was trying to muscle Ed Pastor out of a 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 you're 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 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. I mean, so many people 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, OK, 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 is going the other way. Now, that being said, like he has done some stuff in the state that. 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, 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. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. I think that's a good question. 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 and real food. I think my dog would say that. Sundays starts with 80% plus all natural meats and then add superfoods 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% whole and minced fish, including eco-friendly invasive carp sourced from American rivers for a naturally rich flavor. In fact, did you know that many dogs naturally prefer fish flavors? So Sunday's fish recipe is especially great for picky eaters. And they're getting those damn carp out of the water. Get the carp out. Invasive carp sourced from our own rivers. 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So you can make smarter decisions that can help grow your business zero's ai can even offer insights to help you make your best move it's powerful enough for an accountant and simple enough for you zero is the all-in-one to get business done learn more at zero.com josh appear is another one where it's like it's the the the center left uh 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 appear is going to have a fantastic story to tell about that in a very very important state um 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 it is that story story cohesive and compelling versus cherry picking issues where you can say see this is why i'm different than the the national democratic party and a little more moderate and the thing that you hate about the national democratic party is is not the thing that you are going to hate about me um which can again really risk sounding like you read a polling memo yeah although although it also depends what people in our line of work decide that we are interested in right like a like a very large share of media professionals live in new york city and they personally are very interested in um left-wing reformist politics in new york city where they live and so things that happen in that vein get a lot of coverage um 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 i wish more people actually would be more passionate about politics in the city that they live in i i wish more people actually cared about the politics of the city within an event 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 um i have some personal connection to texas uh 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 so it's incumbent on me to like learn to care about these states right um 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 because he he's pretty charismatic you know he's an interesting guy yeah 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 in the media and the professional class like for for what they emphasize and what they talk about i will speak as someone who runs a media company and i will speak as someone who runs a media company and i will speak as someone who runs a media company who like we try to have everyone on yeah and a lot of this is the attention that the person ends up commanding with audiences right like we we've talked to mamdani 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 uh district to win uh when she's in town and who knows maybe it'll also be in the future of the country but i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not incredibly viral clip but our experience has been a lot of these uh 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 as close attention to all has to be stuff that goes viral you know and that's that's the the trick and this is i mean a huge frustration that i have with um 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 yeah and then i want to talk to my local television station about my local issues and i 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 dscc 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 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 may care in a safe district right and it's it's a little bit of a loaded playing field but also you know life's not fair as we uh they tell us not to tell our 11 year old that you're not supposed to raise kids with that message anymore uh but like i think it's an important point mentally it's like it is harder to be in a swing district yep it just is you know the 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 lucy camparez and don davis and kate conley and tom swazi 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 they because they they actually like they hang out together in dc they have common staff common consultants common fundraisers like there's a group of moderate democrats but they need to give some voice to like what do we think who are we what 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 that's what actually that bothers me a lot is that they they're they look at the insurgent candidates on the left and the and sort of the progressive outsiders with like umbridge that's like the main feeling like how dare you and my candidate works really hard and has been just like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know you know this is sort of like the hayley 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 and 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 like voters don't know that and so they're going to need a different kind of story there well and also i 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 abdul loses and like he doesn't he has the can you know he's doing the work right um and there's no 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 probably got to go on hassan piker and you know do some interviews from 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 i know people have said it's not the the issue that lost her the election but the the ad that kamala harris dealt with about um uh 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 um that that is acceptable to voters right like i i don't think ducking these issues um or just trying to hide from them is it is not a a 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 He has enough money. He has raised quite a bit of money. He's ahead. And so what does Roy Cooper care if we're all talking about Roy Cooper's race? He probably doesn't. Probably rather us not. But you can't do that in a 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. 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 Rahm. Like Rahm will be this person, right? Yeah. I mean, I mean, Rahm is, I think, doing the right stuff. You know, he is getting attention to himself. People know his name, etc. You know, if I could puppet 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 Laquan McDonald. Like, that's not like I would love for Rahm. I would love for Rahm to take a step back and to mentor somebody else. Yeah. 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 Tallarico 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 know 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 Rahm Emanuels 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 Kelly and Gallego in Arizona. It's Whitmer in Michigan. It's Shapiro in Pennsylvania. 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 going to run. John Fetterman is like not going to 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 going to stand up and think 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 got to say the thing. You know, 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 reelection in Kentucky, is to kind of tell, like liberal donors in coastal cities, like, I'm a magician. You know, I just like one in Kentucky, because I've got a cool accent. But like, Andy Beshear 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 Beshear wins votes in Kentucky that other people don't have. I don't think you could sell that to a national democratic primary electorate, because it's like Kentucky is too right way. Right? It's it's too far. But there's stuff you can say in the Midwest, or in Arizona, or in Georgia. But like, you got to give people the real talk about like, what did you say? Raphael Warnock? What did you say, John Ossoff, to the local audiences in Georgia and say it to a national audience. And a lot of the time, you know, you'll find with 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, you're not woke. 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 uses the message Bill Clinton used, I think we kind of like know what the like unifying, this is a diverse country, but we're all in it together. I mean, you're, you know, a brilliant speechwriter. 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. Matt Iglesias. Thank you so much for for joining Pod Save America. This is a great conversation. Thank you. Thanks to Matt Iglesias for coming on. Tommy Lovett and I will be back in your feed on Tuesday. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts and Farrah Safari with Reed Churlin, Elijah Cohn and Adrian Hill. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hefcoat, Jordan Cantor, Charlotte Landis, Kirill Pelleviv, David Tolles, Mia Kelman, Ryan Young, and Naomi Singel. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.