Interview Only w/ Adam Jentleson - The Democrats’ Roadmap To Becoming A Majority Party Again - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you hate hangovers, We'll say goodbye to hangovers. Out
of Office gives you the social buzz without the next
day regret. Their best selling out of Office gummies were
designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood,
and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you
can tailor the dose to fit your vibe, from a
gentle one point five milligram micro dose to their newest

(00:20):
fifteen milligram gummy for a more elevated experience. Their THHC
beverages and gummies are a modern, mindful alternative to a
glass of wine or a cocktail. And I'll tell you this,
I've given up booze. I don't like the hangovers. I
prefer the gummy experience. Soul is a wellness brand that
believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Soul specializes

(00:41):
in delicious HEMP derived THHD and CBD products, all designed
to boost your mood and simply help you unwine so
if you struggle to switch off at night, Soul also
has a variety of products specifically designed to just simply
help you get a better night's sleep, including their top
selling Sleepy gummies. It's a fan favorite for deep restorative sleep.
So bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to

(01:02):
Soul today. Right now, Soul is offering my audience thirty
percent off your entire order. So go to gitsold dot
com use the promo code toodcast. Don't forget that code.
That's getsold dot Com promo code toodcast for thirty percent off.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
So joining me now is Adam Gentlesen. I've known him
a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
He was a longtime staffer for the late Senate Majority leader.
He's author of a book about the Senate called kill Switch,
The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of
American Democracy. So we'll have a little fun about about
how broken is the Senate and how to repair it.
But I have him mind because you just started anew

(01:45):
and I'll be curious what you describe it, Adam. Is
it a think tank? Is it a research institute? But
it's named after the hometown of Harry Reid, Searchlight, Nevada.
It's called the search Light. Let me make sure I
get this right. Well, you could tell me for sure,
search Light Institute.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Is that right? Right? Got it? There we go, So.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Basically trying to get Democrats to broaden the tent, make
the case that this is a big tent. And given
that you work for Harry Reid, who was for years
known as personally pro life or pro gun at times,
you know, certainly was culturally a bit conservative if a
probably an original populist on economic issues that I think

(02:25):
people if you didn't follow his career closely, might not realize.
So in many ways naming it after Harry read makes
a lot of sense to me.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
But what is it?

Speaker 1 (02:35):
What do you describe search Light Institutes.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
And the think tank? Is it something else? We are
an action tank, Chuck, And that feels like a focus
group word, dude, Well, you know the reason I call
it that is that is that, you know, we develop ideas,
but we don't want them to sit on the shelf.
You know, these aren't white papers that are designed to
just sort of be read by academics and policy wonks.

(02:57):
You know, they're they're well thought through, their credible, but
we want them to be put into action, and we
want them to become legislation. We want them to become
talked about on campaigns, and we want them to shape
the debate. And so the part of the reason we
have both a policy development arm of what we do
and appolling arm of what we do is to you know,
try to get that balance right between being responsive to

(03:19):
the public listening to the American people. I think in
a democracy it's very important to actually have the policies
that are developed reflect the will of the people, but
then factor that in to how we develop our own policies,
you know, and we don't just pull to say what's popular.
We just want to understand what people think and then
design people design policy in a way that sort of
bridges the divide sometimes between what we think is correct

(03:39):
on the policy and where the American people are in
their own thoughts and feelings on the issue.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Compare yourself to cat Center for American Progress, which is
arguably the sort of the leading progressive think tank these
days in Washington. We're more headed then and then and
Brookings you more center left, I guess, or you might
say very academic in comparison to the other two.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
That's exact right, And I think on sort of ideology,
compared to both of those, we are more heterodox. We
will take the best ideas from wherever they come from,
from across the ideological spectrum, and it's my own personal
view that the best and most durable, and frankly, the
policies that bring the biggest change to this country tend
to reflect points of view from across the ideological spectrum.

(04:23):
So I think a lot about Social Security, right and
you know, people have called Social Security liberal ends by
conservative means. It's the greatest anti poverty program we've ever implemented,
is you know, a core part of democrats appeal to
the American people, but it also embraced conservative principles of
personal responsibility. People paid in FDR himself was personally would

(04:45):
rail against the dole and cabinet meetings. He would say,
this is not a dole, this is not welfare. People
are going to earn what they get. They're going to
pay into it through the payroll packs, and then I
get something back in return. So you know, we try
to think about that balance as we develop policy. We're smaller.
I think we're more action oriented than some of the
folks who've been around for a long time, and I think,

(05:06):
but you know, it's the more the merrier as far
as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
We were talking off camera here for a minute and
you were talking about how your office space is right
in your heritage. And it's interesting you brought up Social
Security as an example that sort of meshed a liberal
and conservative idea. I could argue Obamacare did the same thing, right,
you know, the infamous Heritage. You know, Heritage has been
through a lot of shall we say, facelifts over the years.

(05:32):
Maybe they have a mar a lago look now that
they went to the doctor and got my joke, not years,
but in the nineties they came up with essentially the
healthcare plan that was the model for met Romney and
arguably the model for Barack Obama.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
That's exactly right. And you know, having sort of been
actually a cap for a little while while while the
affordable character was being debated during the campaign and then
legislated and then being on the hill through a lot
of that too, that's exactly right. And you know, part
of the way that we were able to pass that
was by embracing conservative ideas, and in fact it was

(06:08):
modeled You're one hundred percent correct. There was a Heritage
study in the nineties that that sort of provided the
intellectual basis for it, and then it was put into practice,
first by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney when he was governor there,
and people called it Romneycare, So you know, before it
was Obamacare, it was Romneycare, and it certainly reflected you
know that the idea of having an individual mandate, you know,

(06:32):
and other aspects of it were and you know, frankly
being aimed at bending the cost curve, at bringing down
the deficit. These are all conservative principles that were incorporating
into that development, although heritage walked away from it.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
But you know, every once in a while, I always
try to give little breadcrumbs to sort of like, you know,
how my political mind was shaped by my parents. And
you know, my father had this saying when I remember
as a kid, he said, you know, and I'd ask him,
you know, and he was he became a he was
a Reagan Democrat that became a Reagan Conservative. And he'd
say he left the Democratic already over LPJ and Vietnam.

(07:01):
That was that was sort of where you went. But
you still also say, he goes, you know, I want
the Democrats to come up with the ideas and I
want the Republicans to implement them. It was like that
that was his in his mindset. You know at the time,
and that back in the seventies and eighties, the perception
of the two parties was, you know, the the the
managerial brain was on the Republican side and the the

(07:23):
empathy brain was on the Democratic side, and that you know,
if you had too much empathy, it would be too expensive.
You needed, you know, that sort of balance. And in
some ways what you're describing here was what you describe
to Social Security, what we were retelling the story of
Obamacare somewhere that does sort of work itself out right,
that the stuff that sticks is the stuff that is

(07:44):
more ideologically diverse when it comes to the cooks in
the kitchen that create the policy.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Right, That's that's exactly right. I mean, you know, we've
fallen out of this balance and we're talking polarized. We're
so polarized. We'll talk about full us to you know.
You know, I think that's a big part of it.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
I argue the two parties aren't as in. You know,
I always say, what's the biggest change in American politics
in my lifetime, It's been the lack of ideological diversity
inside the two parties.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Oh well, you know, I mean, think about that was
the huge chain, one hundred percent. I mean I think
a lot about what the Senate Democratic caucus looked like
back when I worked for Harry Reid in the Senate
and we had, first of all, we.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Talk about all those northern red states that had Democratic
senators for yes, well, I.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Mean yeah, both Dakota's, you know, we had senators there,
We had a senator Nebraska. We had both Senate boat.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Senators in Nebraska for a long time.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
That's right, Bob Carry and Ben Nelson. We had both
Senate seats in Montana for a long time, both seats
in Arkansas. If you want to move further south, Louisia
had one seat in Louisiana. I mean, you know, we
had I think when I went to count it, it
was we had at least one one Senate seat in
thirty six of the fifty states, right, so just really
spread across the country. And the reason why was this

(08:58):
ideological diversity that you describing. You know, senators like Max Bocchus,
Ben Nelson, mary Landrew, Blanche Lincoln. They were four things
like you know, mary Landrew was strongly in favor of
the fossil fuel industry, coming from a state like Louisiana
where that was critical to the economy. Ben Nelson was
pro life, Blanche Lincoln was in favor of fiscal responsibility
and balanced budgets. Right, And that didn't make them not Democrats, right,

(09:22):
They still were strongly Democratic on most issues. They still
voted with the party, you know, on most issues. But
embracing that ideological diversity is what allowed us to win
Senate seats in those states. And what we've done over
the last ten years is to try to purity test
out anybody who has any kind of ideological diversity, particularly

(09:42):
when it goes to the right, and that's just shot
ourselves in the foot. It's left us unable to win
seats in those red states where we barely can't even
compete these days.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
You know, it's funny you brought up Blanche Lincoln. Remember
that primary challenge she had to deal with sure do
yep and organizing him right, And it was it was
you're just sitting there going, guys, what are you doing.
She's already in a tough general election. What are you
doing to her? And it made a tough situation worse well,
And it's.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
A good point because you know, I think what gets
mixed up in the sort of debate on social media
and elsewhere about this is that to embrace somebody like
Blanche Lincoln doesn't require you or your friends or most
other Democrats to change their points of view. Right, I'm
strongly pro union. Most of my policy views are probably
pretty far to the left of the American electorate. But

(10:32):
for someone like Blanche Lincoln to win in a state
like Arkansas, she's going to have to take different positions,
positions that diverge from my own, and that impulse towards
purity is going to guarantee that our caucus is smaller,
that the number of Americans Democrats are able to represent
is smaller, that the number of Americans who look at
Democrats and say that is a party I want to

(10:53):
be a part of is smaller.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
You know, I got my start at National Journal, and
they were fit as in the seventies and eighties and
nineties for doing this. You know, now we've got a
whole bunch of other ways that people look to use
sort of votes to put people on the political spectrum.
But there was always when I first started at National Journal,
when the Almanek would come out, it was always interesting
how many Democrats are to the right of the most

(11:19):
liberal Republican and how many Republicans are to the left
of the most conservative Democrats. And there was always you know,
and we would lament. Oh, it's getting smaller every year.
I think it's been a decade since they're the streams
have crossed, meaning like you know, I think Mansion and
Collins were like this. If I'm for those of you
just listening on audio, my hands are very close together

(11:39):
but not touching, almost in the way it was almost
felt like they were being repelled. Do you think that
is a bad thing or a good thing for the
US center?

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Oh, I think it's I think it's a very bad thing.
I think that you have to have people on, you know,
you have to be able to build bridges across the
logical lines. You know. Sometimes you can do that in
a strange Bedfellow's way, where you know, you have you know,
a Bernie Sanders alliance with a Josh Holly or you
know on some is.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Sure and you see this in some of these populous Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, but I but I think that it shouldn't be
the case that you know, the sort of you know,
there's no senator in the Democratic caucus who is anywhere
close to Republicans on ideology. I could get beat up
by some of my party for saying that, But I think,
you know what, if that is the case, you know,
there are consequences, there are trade offs to taking that approach,
and that's what we have here where Democrats can only

(12:30):
win forty seven sentence seats at best, you know, maybe
straight by to the narrowest imaginable majority, but that's you know,
there's a consequence of taking that approach and narrowing your
tent simply means you can win in fewer places.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Look, and to me, this is the I think the
baseline of what I remember seeing your press release when
you first came out. I think an op ed that
you wrote as well. You know, I think that the
twenty thirty two presidential election, if you just if Kamala
Harris carried the same the Democratic candidate carries every state
that Kamala Harris carried, and they won Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Well,

(13:11):
and right now, that was worth two hundred and seventy
electoral votes she'd have won right on the nose. That's
only going to be worth two hundred and fifty nine
electoral votes come twenty thirty two. That path, so every
state she carried plus the three in the Midwest, the
three Midwestern states, and then when you look at Senate seats,
because I've done this math, if Democrats sweep the seven
battlegrounds in Senate seats, right, and when every Senate seat

(13:35):
and every blue state that she carried, the max I
think is fifty two.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yep, that's right.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
I mean you just said thirty six states at one point,
which is why. I mean, let's look at Barack Obama's
first year, that six month period when you had sixty
Senate seats. All right, it was a brief period, and
it was you know, we can yes, it was some
weird you know, you had the Specter party switch and
all that. But the fact of the matter is, I

(14:02):
don't know what a path to sixty would look like.
Let's say that was your goal, you know, got to
get to sixty Senate seats. What's that path look like
in today's politics.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Well, that is our goal. I mean, that's what Searchlight
is here to do. We are trying to craft an
agenda and an approach that will allow Democrats to aim
at sixty Senate seats. We talk a lot about this
idea of super majority thinking here, and a supermajority mindset
is not to aim at two hundred and seventy electoral
votes and to try to scrape by there or aim
at you know, narrow majorities in the House and Senate.

(14:33):
It's to aim at three hundred and sixty five electoral votes,
which is what Obama won in two thousand and eight.
And it's to aim at sixty Senate seats and then
work backwards from there. So you know, what that looks
like is much more flexibility on issues across the board.
You know, I personally think that if you were to
sort of devise a basic template, you know, and again

(14:53):
I've sort of am allergic to templates. I think part
of what we're trying to do here is create more flexibility.
But just for the sake of argument, you know, let's
route this in some concrete idea of ideology. I think,
you know, economic populism is a powerful force. It's so
powerful that Trump has embraced it. Trump has moved to
the center on issues like social security and Medicare.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
And the only reason Republicans got have won the popular
vote exactly right, I mean, I think it is at
that specific decision he doesn't make that that you know,
we all there's a lot of people that you know,
say Paul Ryan had high character guy and all of
those things. But the Paul Ryan view of entitlements was

(15:35):
a losing issue for the Republican Party, which is why
Mitt Romney never won the.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
President And this is part of what our theory of
the case is is that a Democratic presidential candidate can
just decide to embrace a different set of policy positions
like we are here to help provide that infrastructure and
help you know, create those ideas and provide the air cover.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Put a little bit of a blue stamp on it.
So it doesn't feel so hard for some left what
I mean, maybe right.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
But you were there. It's it's difficult to overstate how
sort of encased in concrete. The conventional wisdom was in
twenty sixteen that that entitlement cuts were part of what
you had to be in favor of in order to
succeed in a Republican primary. You know, Paul Ryan was
the vice presidential nominee in twenty twelve. He was the
Speaker of the House by the time the primary was

(16:22):
in full swing. In twenty sixteen, Ryanism was considered you
know orthodoxy among Republicans. Trump came as the stool right,
that's irresponsibility, it's right. And Trump just threw it all
out the window, you know. I mean, I remember him
standing on the debate stage. You know, the Iraq War
is another issue that was considered you know, orthodoxy. In
twenty fifteen, he stood on a debate stage in South
Carolina and he turned to Jeb Bush and said, I

(16:45):
think the Iraq War that your brother started was a big,
fat mistake, you know. And so it is really difficult
to imagine a Democratic candidate diverging from their party and
taking stances in opposition to the Democratic ideology on that level,
you know, of that magnitude. But that's what we need,
is we need Democrats to say, you know, we are

(17:07):
here to break that rigidity, we are here to open
up a new pathway and to bring in more voters.
And you know, Trump, it is an underappreciated aspect of
his appeal that he was truly heterodox. He defied his
party's orthodoxy on three or four or even more very
high profile issues that were considered core to the Republican ideology,
and that's part of why people saw him as a

(17:28):
different kind of Republican. Oh, I'm convinced.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
And this is also why you can sort of see
I mean, I'm convinced that this is a coalition it's
not going to be able to hold itself together without
him in whatever you know, we you know, set aside
the character issue the guy has the guy created a
coalition that was unique. It was durable for him, right,
It's not really been transferable, but it's been durable for him.

(17:52):
And the thing is is you can see it, right,
the conversation on snap benefits, the conversation on healthcare, they're
singing off the same song sheet because they're actually a
coalition that that sort of got forged together and culture,
and they're they're all over the place on economic policy,
and I think that's where this thing starts to break
apart pretty soon.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
I think that's right. I mean, that's that's the optimistic
view for sure, and I think it's probably the right one, you.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Know, especially the economy keeps feeling the way definitely, that's right.
This in it it's a I always say, it's like
if you have a little bit of money, this economy
is okay. You know, everything's a little more expensive, but
it's okay. If you have some money in the stock market,
you feel like, okay, I'm I've got Pad. But if
you don't have Pad, this economy is horrible.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Right, just therendous. It's the Disneyland phenomenon. Right. If you
can afford the express pass, you know, it's great. But
if you can't, you know, you're stuck in three hour
lines the whole time for one ride. So yeah, it's
it's it's you know, it's you know. I worked for
one of your listeners, remember John Edwards the Center of
North Carolina in two thousand and eight. He talked about
two Americas, and I think that's that's what we're seeing

(18:58):
these days.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
This episode of the Chuck Podcast is brought to you
by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from
Frozen subscription box for our teasonal breads, seasonal pastries, and
fresh pastas, plus all items conveniently bake in twenty five
minutes or less. Unlike many store bought options, Wild Grain
uses simple ingredients you can pronounce and a slow fermentation

(19:23):
process that can be easier on your belly and richer
in nutrients.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
And antioxidants.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Wildgrain's boxes are fully customizable. They're constantly adding seasonal and
limited timing products for you to enjoy. In addition to
their classic box, they now feature a gluten free box
and a plant based box. I checked out the gluten
free box and let me tell you, they have a
gluten free sour dough bread.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
It is.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
We got two loads of it and we've done one
loaf already. It's a cranberry and almond sour dough bread.
It's like the best raisin bread you've ever had, except
it's not raisin. It's great. You're gonna love this. You
know it's hit or miss if you mess around in
the gluten free bread world.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
This is a hit. Seriously.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
I was impressed, so look for a limited time. Wildgrain
is offering our listeners thirty dollars off your first box
plus free croissants in every box when you go to
wildgrain dot com slash podcast to start your subscription, follow
these instructions. Free croissants in every box, thirty dollars off
your first box when you go to wildgrain dot com
slash podcast. That's wildgrain dot com slash podcast, or simply

(20:28):
use the promo code toodcast at checkout. Always use the code,
get the discount.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
I'm telling you it's excellent, excellent bread.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Boy, that speech would be really resident today.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
I agree more so.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
I mean, you know, Edwards, he was applaud human being.
There is a ton and I sort of I have
not to go off on a tangent here.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
I have.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
I think there's more empathy that the Edwards family deserves.
You never get over losing a child, and I've always
thought that their life, so, you know, and it threw
him into politics, like in some ways it did, but
you know that that I think that you can't judge
Edwards without understanding that. So I'm always a little more empathetic,

(21:19):
I think than the average person on him. But boy,
his you know, and what he was was it's old
Southern populace. And it's no different than Zell Miller, Bill Clinton,
Dick Riley. I think about all everything you're describing here.
I think about what Trump is doing. This is what
the Southern Democrats were. Those Southern Democratic governors were. They
would they were like, hey, government can be a good

(21:41):
thing for you, and we want to help you. But
they were also culturally somewhat conservative, right, you're Zell Miller's
or Bill Clinton's, you're Dick Riley's. But those southern governors
of the eighties, in some ways, the economic policies they
were pushing are exactly what's popular.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Today, that's right. I mean, you know John Edwards, son
of a mill worker, you know, I mean he was
in touch with with regular people. And you know that
that economic populism, I mean, that was the foundation of
the New Deal coalition, you know, I mean that that
was the foundation of lbj's coalition too, you know, as
you mentioned your father, I mean, you know, some of
the cultural stuff that's that's the you know, on the

(22:18):
Republican side, it's it's can you hold people together on
cultural issues while you pass economic policies that primarily benefit
the wealthiest and the big corporations. And on the Democratic side,
it's can you hold people together on economic populism issues,
you know, while you often take stances on cultural issues
that the American people don't agree with. And I think
when Democrats and liberals succeed, it's when they're able to

(22:41):
center their message on those core economic populist ideas and
provide some flexibility on cultural issues in a way that
will allow us to win in more states.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
Let me introduce an uncomfortable question about Democrats. I can
make an argument that the four Democratic presidents of my
lifetime that have been elect Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden,
none of them win without the economic downturn that was
happening during their initial campaign. And I say that in
that is that the only path to the presidency for

(23:13):
a Democrat.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Well, I think what that those downturns do is they,
you know, when you're in times of prosperity, people people
gravitate more towards cultural issues, you know, and I think
that's that's sort of a pattern there. And then Republicans,
you know, win on cultural issues, pass policies that benefit
the top one percent, and often you know, run up

(23:35):
huge deficits despite their you know, their claim to care
about this corresponsibility. And then that leads to a crash
and Democrats have to come in, and you know, and
it refocuses the public's attention on how unbalanced and tilted
towards the one percent Republicans policies, where I don't think
it's a necessary precondition, but you know, it certainly focuses voters'

(23:56):
minds on the unfairness and gross inequity of Republican's economic policies.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
For sure, Does that stark reality because I could argue
that the last Democrat to win the White House without
help from a poor economy was Kennedy? Does that stark
reality mean that the Democrats should be less leaning into
some cultural issues.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
I yeah, I think that's one hundred percent the case.
I think that, you know, part of what some of
the work that we've done here at Searchlight has shown
is that, you know, it's not just that we are
out of stuff with the public on a lot of
these cultural issues purely on the merits. It's also that
focusing on them distracts the public's attention from the economic issues.

(24:44):
It's what we call a crowding out effect, where you know, simply,
you know, you listen to the average Democrats stump speech today,
it's a laundry list, and they go down and they
acknowledge every issue under the sun, you know.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
And the land acknowledgment, and I say this, I'm not
trying to be snarky about it, but I just that.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Listen that, you know, the DNC's most recent meetings started
out with one and so I think you know, look,
Republicans will seize on that and they'll attack you for it,
you know, but you don't have to give them so much, ammo.
And we and we do that all the time. And
so then you know, it is not it is not
inaccurate for a voter to fix to themselves. Hmm. This
democrat seems more focused on these cultural issues that prior.

(25:26):
I don't really agree with that. Yeah, so so where
is your economics? You know what's really interesting though, Chuck,
is somebody who did an incredible job of avoiding that
crowding out effect was Zoron Mamdani. We went through and
we analyzed his paid media and you know, you do
a word cloud based on the analysis, and in you know,
words like affordable rent, freeze, billionaires, like all those words

(25:48):
were huge in the cloud. You literally could not find
the words climate change or LGBTQ issues didn't appear in
the cloud because didn't appear in the cloud either. He
chose not to talk about it, you know, and so
he became sort of almost like, you know, a joke
by the end of the campaign that he could take
any conversation and steer it back towards affordability, right, So

(26:10):
that kind of message. And of course Zorn cares about
climate change. Of course he cares about LGBTQ rights. You know,
he's not throwing those causes under the bus. He's making
a conscious decision to focus his campaign relentlessly on kitchen
table issues. So you know, I wouldn't take all of
his ideological positions and try to apply them in other states,
but I certainly would take that discipline practice and avoiding

(26:31):
crowding out that he demonstrated as a lesson that can
be universalizable in other places.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
So look, we're taping just to timestamp this on a Wednesday,
November twelve, where the government is in the process of
being reopened. Perhaps the release of the Epstein emails has
distracted the left's anger at the at Schumer and the
Democratic senators that chose to put a pause in this debate.

(26:58):
And I call it a pause because I I'll just
be I think a better messenger. You know, I think
you and I both though Bill Clinton would have been
able to say we're going to feed people, we're going
to let you get to grandma, and we're going to
make sure Grandma comes home to you to this holidays.
We haven't given we're we're not given up this fight
on healthcare, and in fact, we've got more people focused

(27:20):
on it than ever. We've got them super nervous about it.
But yeah, we're going to reopen the government. And this
is why we're going to reopen the government. But it's
only for the next and they they're on the clock
and they have sixty five days. Why was that not
an effective way to sell the reopening of this government.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
I think expectations got completely out of whack, you know,
And this is this is a responsibility of leadership, you know, Frankly,
is that you know, the idea Republicans were never going
to give Democrats a full year extension of the subsidies.
You know, this was just not now without a fight.
I mean they still might. I still think there will be.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
My theory is it won't be a majority of Republicans
that do it, but that there's going to be enough
to force the issue.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think as
the political pain takes hold, you know, that's that's probably
the case. But you know, that's gotta that's gotta have.
You got to give that time to breathe, and give
that time for people to start feeling that, you know,
I don't want them to feel the pain, but but
because of the Republican's policy choices, they're going to So
I think, look, you know, I mean, the the problem

(28:19):
with being a congressional leader is that the skills that
help you get that job aren't always the same skills
that make you good at communicating with the public, you know.
And so it is a very inside baseball job. It
is about. You know, you worked for.

Speaker 1 (28:35):
A senator who was really good behind the scenes, and
he was was the best community care let's tell you do.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
You'd be the first to say it, you know. I
mean it was.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
I say this I love talking to right the minute
it was on the record, his everything changed about it.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Well, he didn't care, you know. I mean that's the
other thing is that he didn't care that he didn't
have a you know, uh, you know, flowery sound bite.
You know, he would give you exactly what he wanted
to say. He'd say it very quietly, you know. Uh.
And and that was it because he had the confidence
of knowing that he you know, he thought through the
strategy that he had the caucus behind him. So it's

(29:13):
always been the case. I mean, Nancy Pelosi was an
incredible leader, but was also you know, a huge target
of Republican attacks. Right, So it's the best communicator, that's
that's right, And it's it's a difficult combination of skills,
you know, and especially today in a media environment that
prioritizes or that you know, where the ability to communicate
across mediums, to be natural on camera, to be quick

(29:34):
with the quip, you know. It's so that's just something
that is evolving and we're going to have to figure
that out as as the caucus decides, you know, what's
the right mix they want to see in the next leader.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
So it's funny, it's it's one of these cases where
it's Schumer's fault that this is being misinterpreted, whether it's
you know, it's this is not It's not as much
about the tactics. It's more about how he communicated.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
I think there's a there's a communication aspect, but there's
also a decision making aspect to this too, which is
that at some there was never really an end game here, right,
and at some point.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
And every shutdown ends almost exactly how this shutdown is
exactly the same. Whether right, you don't get what you want.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
You never get up. Literally never in the history of
shutdowns has the side that is demanding a major policy
concession gotten that concession. Right, It just doesn't happen. And so,
you know, the decision to do in the first place,
I think probably that was inevitable, especially after the one
in the spring. The caucus just wasn't you could feel it.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
It's like letting steam out of about you kind of
had and and and they found the issue, right, that's right.
I look, the reality is this was a shutdown in
search of a rationale and they found a Russian Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
It was and and and they succeeded in elevating the
conversation about healthcare they have not succeeded up to this
point and being able to drive a consistent, clear message
about healthcare. So they did that. Trump's numbers came down significantly,
whether you know, that's a function of the healthcare conversation.
You know, images of the east wing getting demolished, whatever
it was, you know it. You know, part of the

(31:08):
reason the east wing conversation was so salient was that
we were in the middle of a shutdown and he's
out here building a ballroom, you know, So they really
did a great job driving a message setting them on
their terms. You know, I think a lot. I think
a lot about the fall of twenty eleven, where Democrats
came off a really tough summer, you know, coming off
bad in the terminent in the first place, the whole
debt ceiling, you know, debate in twenty eleven got our

(31:31):
butts handed to us. But then we were able in
the fall to shift the conversation more towards our terms
by shifting the focus to what we call the Jobs
Act at the time, you know, which was just a
bill we put together out of the most popular policies,
was never really going to pass. But you know, President
Obama did a speech to the Joint Session of Congress,
you know, and we put that bill on the floor

(31:51):
and made Republicans vote on it again and again, and
we didn't pass it, but it got us back on
our front foot going into twenty twelve, and we were
able to sort of take that momentum going to twenty twelve.
So I hope that you know, the legitimate anger the
Democrats are feeling right now because I think they were
fed some false expectations. You know, we should be able
to move on and say, look, we take the good here,

(32:13):
which was driving the conversation about healthcare, getting the conversation
back on our terms, and play that forward into the midterms.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
You know, it's interesting they hold Dems in disarray, you know,
the fun meme that gets put around, and I think
about the fractures that were you know, you sort of
it's like watching you know, a fault line start to
start to crack, and you see the ones on the
left and you see the ones on the right. The
divide on the left right now is not is really

(32:40):
just tactical, This is not what's interesting is is you know,
you talked about the word cloud of mom Donnie. You
probably could have applied that to Spamburger and Cheryl right
and they both you know, as far as messaging, we're
talking about the same issues. They may have leaned in
different ways and may have talked to different constituencies, but

(33:02):
they were always on the affordability message. So like, this
is one of those cases where it's like Democrat, you
guys are all rowing in the same direction, and you
still want to.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Fight right like this we find it out like what's
the line Jurassic Park? You know, life, life finds a
way right disarray finds a way with Democrats.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
But the big tact I always say, the biggest I
think the biggest divide right now on the left is
do you start to look past Trump or do you
continue to fight Trump? And I think it is an
either or conversation, even though some might argue, no, you
got to do both. There are entities that should be
thinking about fighting Trump. Like, That's what I expect my

(33:41):
ACLU to do. And that's what I expect. You know,
where the hell are the good trial lawyers around? Like,
you know, ultimately I expect the courts to be doing that,
right I expect the elected officials to be thinking about, Okay,
what's next? Right where? I have a feeling know where
you are. But I assume you're on the side of

(34:03):
it's about thinking of the post Trump.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
One hundred percent. I mean that's why we that's why
I created Searchlight, you know, I mean, that is what
we're trying to do here, is to craft a vision
that will get people excited about the prospect of democratic
governance again. And we're going to go big on how
we're thinking about that. But I think, you know, look,
I think there's also a little bit of a difference
between a mid term election and a presidential election. And
so for me, my formative elections were two thousand and

(34:28):
six in two thousand and eight, and Democrats did a
good enough job in two thousand and six of putting
forward a positive vision. They had this six roh six
agenda that focused on you know, we were the original
drain the swamp. I mean we wanted after our folio
was a really salient issue that year, hugely salient. I mean,
you know, so every opportunity to make corruption salient again.

(34:49):
This year, we had ideas about you know, getting out
of Iraq, minimum wage and ethics reform. Uh. And then
you know that was and that was solid, right, I mean,
because you have to have something that every Democrat in
every corner of the country can can run on.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
And you guys are running in tough states. I mean
think about six I mean the six pickups to get
they needed six senates. It's less more than what it
is for this cycle. And you had to win in Montana.
Virginia was a big deal at the time because that
was the candidate, a sitting Republican senator that many thought
was going to be a presidential candidate until he sort

(35:31):
of his own words, got in, got got him in trouble, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri. Right, Like,
think of the the antenna that Tester wins in six,
mccaskell is in O six. You have Casey winning in Pennsylvania,
You had Shared Brown in Ohio, Jim Webb. Look at

(35:51):
all the people I'm describing all of them in the
economic populis category.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
One hundred percent. Jim Webb was very culturally conservative on
a lot of issues, but was was was a comd
economic populist, you know. And John Tester, Claire mccaskell, you
know the same. And I remember that was you know
when mccaskell won, you know, at his watch party, read
got down and kissed, kissed the television because I think
she was the one who put us over. Although actually
think the Virginia election, I think because it was late counting.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
I was on the air for that, like literally called
people about Fairfax County.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
How much more is coming in? Right? Yeah? But that's
the thing is it was defied expectations. You know, the
pundits did not expect us to take back the Senate.
I think the House was expected, although I think the
margin was higher than what people predicted, but the Senate
was considered a reach at best. And so that's but
that's where we find ourselves again here. And so for me,
the litmus test for success though in twenty twenty six

(36:44):
really should be do we take back the Senate because
you have to push yourself through there? Yeah, because look
in the cycles where the you know, the cycles are,
you know, a lot of it is determined by the fundamentals.
The Senate is a gnarly beast because you only it's
resistant to big swings because you only have a third
of the chamber up for reelection at any election, whereas
you know, everybody in the House is every seat in

(37:06):
the House is up. So what you've got to do
is you really got to maximize your gains in the
cycles where the fundamentals are in your favor. And for us,
that maximizing our gains would would look like, you know,
winning holding all the seats where we have incumbents up,
and then winning you know, all of the swing states
and then throwing in some ones that are reaches for us, like.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, I mean, I look at the you know the
path I mean, you know, North Carolina, Maine or quick
and then you start going, oh boy, okay, you need
Ohio to come in again. You probably need one of
the following and then you need one of the following
three Alaska, Iowa, Texas, right, and then you don't want
to be you know, then you got to sort of
probably throwing a couple others like you did that six

(37:47):
for oh six. There were two other races that were
top tier races in that last month of the campaign.
One was Harold Ford's Tennessee race against It that was
a Ford corker, was a competitive race. And then you
I think Jim Peterson in Arizona, if I remember, that's right, Kyle, that's.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Right, And I mean you look, you know, so yeah,
you know, we look Ohio, Iowa, Alaska. We have held
Senate seats in all three of those states within the
last ten years. We should be able to win there again.
And then yeah, you've got it. You've got to reach
in a place like Texas. That's how you put together
Senate majorities, you know. And what's crazy is that even.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
That argued Kansas and Mississippi to be on the mat
and you look at those two there, they're both there
are what I call green shoots for Democrats. In both
of those states, but they need some work, Like you've
got to actually tend that guard.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
You had a democratic government, Cathleen's we have currently have
a democratic governor, you know, I mean, the Democrats can
win in these states.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Sixteen to the last twenty four years in Kansas has
been that's right.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
That's right, talk about economic populism. I mean, that's the
home of prairie populism. And yeah, exactly. And so it's
really a choice, you know. I mean, Democrats can simply
choose tomorrow to start running on a mix of issues
that can appeal to folks in those states, the way
that Trump just simply decided to throw core tenets of

(39:09):
Republican orthodoxy out out the window. And you know, again,
that doesn't mean that the entire party has to shift
its position on some of these cultural issues. It just
means we have to embrace people who are going to
have different views than us, because they are the only
ones who can win in states like that.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
How do you think the unofficial presidential campaign presidential candidates
are doing right now in moving message? Because I look
at a guy like Gavin Newsom, who, on one hand,
it's impressive to me how much the bases embraced him
and that they love the fact that he's fighting. But
at the end of the day, he's introduced himself as

(39:46):
one of the great DNC chairs of all time. Right,
Like he's meaning like he's attacked, he's winning on tactics.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
Right.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
It's not as if there's some great policy proposal that
is just taking the world by storm. So I'm a
skeptic that this holds for him, right that, because this
is a process moment. Let's a policy moment. But in general,
how would you you know? I had Bashir, I've done,
interviewed Pher, I've seen, We've got the rom Stump speech.

(40:16):
I've got to be interviewing by the time this hits well.
I've interviewed Wes Moore at Texas the Texas Tribune Festival.
What what do you think so far of the of
the field and how they've tried to communicate about twenty.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Eight Yeah, I mean we are we are a wash
in raw talent, and it's it's gonna take. But I
think there's still very powerful forces pushing our candidates to
stay firmly inside that liberal box, you know. And so
and it is true that the sort of there's gonna
be sort of a You're gonna have to marry two
things together, I think, to get the right candidate here,

(40:50):
and that's marrying the aggressive you know, taking the fight
to Trump and the Republicans, that pugnacity that you see
in someone like Gavin Newsom, No, that's why he's he's
sort of risen to the top of the conversation in
a lot of places. But you're going to have to
marry that pugnacity with an issue mix that can appeal
to a broad swath of Americans. And so right now,

(41:14):
you know, I think there's some more sort of tinkering
around the edges there. You know, you look at at
Josh Shapiro, who is who's sort of you know, defying
the left wing of the party on some issues. But
I think I think we're going to need somebody to
go further, you know, if we're going to talk about
a super majority, and I you know, look, you could
eke buy you know, in a polarized nation, every elections

(41:36):
a coin flip, right, you could you could get to
seventy you may even get to fifty in the Senate.
But but that is a recipe for you know, whip
last Biden didn't get to govern very well. Didn't.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
He had all three, but he barely had all He
barely had the trifecta.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
You lose it, you probably lose I think the trifecta.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Yeah, I think I managed it. From the White House perspective, I.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Agree, And I think even if you're to have the trifecta,
you probably lose it in the first midterm, you know,
and then and then you're stuck. And so I think,
you know, what I see as a supermajority is having
a durable governing majority that sustains itself at least through
a few election cycles, that you can actually pass a
robust agenda. Most of what Biden has passed has already

(42:19):
been undone with Republicans. This has already been undone by Republicans.
You know it. At best, your accomplishments are extremely fragile.
They don't last, they're quickly repealed, and then the other
side comes in and does the same thing, and then
we're stuck in this back and forth. So I think
that the time is ripe right now for one side
or the other to craft the supermajority appeal that can

(42:41):
actually build a governing coalition that can sustain you in power,
you know, beyond just one one two year period.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
There's a reason results matter more than promises, just like
there's a reason Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury
law firm. For the last thirty five years, they've recovered
twenty five billion dollars for more than half a million clients.
It includes cases where insurance companies offered next to nothing,
just hoping to get away with paying as little as possible.
Morgan and Morgan fought back ended up winning millions. In fact,

(43:12):
in Pennsylvania, one client was awarded twenty six million dollars,
which was a staggering forty times the amount that the
insurance company originally offered. That original offer six hundred and
fifty thousand dollars twenty six million, six hundred fifty thousand dollars.
So with more than one thousand lawyers across the country,
they know how to deliver for everyday people. If you're injured,
you need a lawyer, You need somebody to get your back.

(43:34):
Check out for the People dot com Slash podcast, or
dial pound Law Pound five to nine law on your
cell phone. And remember all law firms are not the same,
so check out Morgan and Morgan their fee is free
unless they win. Do you worry about a insurgent third

(43:54):
party or independent?

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Do you worry that? You know? I look at it.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
As somebody who was always dabbled in. My first professional
year covering politics was the year of Ross Perro. So
you know when you get introduced to politics that way
and how crazy. It shook up the map, and it
shook up ideologies and it really I've always thought that
the Parro Parro's third party candidacy was extraordinarily successful because
he made both parties change who they were. You know,

(44:19):
he made the Democrats a bit more sensitive on fiscal issues,
made the Republicans a bit more sensitive on trade issues.
Hey that's that's to me. That's an accomplishment, right. That
was in theory originally why Ross Pero got it right.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
He was trying.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
He thought, hey, these guys don't know what and any
in those two issues. He accomplished a lot.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
We're in a moment.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
There is a vacuum, right, you see, sometimes it's simply
a vacuum in a place like Nebraska, South Dakota or Idaho.
And I single those guys out because I've interviewed all
of them.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
There.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
There are a bunch of really strong candidates running as
economic populists who've chosen to run his independence instead of Democrats,
and they just simply all I had two of them
on together and they said, it's simply so they can
have a conversation with local voters, like they agree with
the agenda. But if the minute they find out they're
a Democrat, then they don't want to, like they won't.
It's like they close their ears, so they're trying to

(45:10):
open their ears. Do you worry that there's a vacuum
out there that can be filled by a non democratic entity?

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Oh? I I one hundred percent worry that there's there's
a vacuum, and I think it's incumbent on the party
to close it, you know, And if they don't do that,
then yeah, they lead themselves very vulnerable. It is a
it's a regular, you know, not a not every election,
but you know, every once a generation or so, an
independent candidate comes along and identifies the sort of the
ways in which neither side is meeting the demands of

(45:37):
the American people. Nineteen sixty eight, George Wallace, You know
he did, and that cause you Nixon was sort of
running on a light southern strategy in sixty eight, and
then he.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Said, probably wins by a bigger margin without Wallace.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
I think, right, but I don't think that's yeah, that's
probably that's probably right. But then he sort of, you know,
just I mean this, I don't see this is a
good thing being a liberal. But then he know, decided
to close off that that.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
He didn't let that, but he wasn't going to let
that happen to him a second time exactly.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
And then Reagan's will refined that approached and you know, so,
I mean, I think I think that, you know, it's
it's sort of a market feature of if neither side
is meeting the demand, then you know someone's going to
step in. They won't win, I don't think, but they
can certainly, you know, cause Democrats to lose. And so
it really is incumbent on Democrats to take it upon

(46:22):
themselves to craft a broader appeal to sort of preempt
the possibility of getting, you know, having an end run
around them by an independent candidate. Yeah, let's talk about
the Senate.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
You wrote a book about it, you know, and and
and the filibuster, you know, one of the things that filibuster.
I always want to take a little time to educate people.
It is not in the constitution. The philibuster is a choice, right,
it's Senate rules, right, that's right. There is the mythology

(46:57):
that you know I grew up with, certainly was mister Smith, right,
the famous Jimmy Stewart movie of the fifties, and it
sort of celebrated the idea that one senator can sort
of stand up. So give me the ideal. What's your
ideal of I assume you still embrace the ideal that
a a senator should feel as if that they can

(47:20):
do that if they so choose to. How should that
work and how should we be using it as a
governing tool in your mind?

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Yeah, exactly that. That's the thing is that people think
when they think of the filibuster, if they think about
it at all, they think of they think of Jimmy Stewart, right,
But that's not how it works.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
I'm hopeful actually that most of the people that are
listening to this podcast are younger than I am and
probably are like, who the hell is Jimmy Stewart.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah, that's true, but I think that. But still the
idea of you of somebody standing up and talking is
what people think of, right, and that's just not how
it works anymore. You know. What's happened is it's become
a sort of a quiet, you know, passive filibuster, where
any soccer veto it's pocket veto. I mean you literally
have your staff call the cloak room and say I object.

(48:06):
That's it, and nobody has to do to show up
to the floor. They don't have to say a word.
And then that automatically raises the threshold for procedural reasons
that will borri your readers to tears to sixty votes.
And I think what's important understand is that you know,
according for the first two hundred years of its existence,
from the time it was conceived of the Framers until
about mid century in the twentieth century, the Senate was

(48:27):
a majority rule institution. It was it was intended to
be that way, and the Framers it wasn't an accident.
They thought very hard about whether there should be a
super majority requirement in Senate rules and they decided against it.
And the reason they decided against it was because they
had just had experience with the Articles of Confederation, where
there was a super majority threshold in the legislature, and

(48:48):
they put it there, you know, on the theory that
it would promote compromising consensus, when what happened in reality
was that it empowered a minority to be obstructionists and
to grind things to the halt when they didn't get
their way. And so the framers saw that happen and said, okay,
well we're not doing that, you know, And so they
designed the Senate to be different from the House in
lots of other ways, by giving every state equal representation,

(49:10):
by having senators serve for six year terms so they
can be a little bit less responsive to the whims
of the moment, staggering those elections, like we talked about,
you know, basically sort of building in things that made
it a more deliberate institution. But they were and they
wrote about it in the Federals papers. They debated the
consertorial convention. They said, we are not putting in a
majority a super majority threshold because that would allow and

(49:32):
they said explicitly, because that would allow a minority to obstruct,
you know, when they didn't get their way. And so
that's the difference in the filibuster, is that there should
be unlimited debate. You should have the opportunity to stand
and say your piece, to join with other colleagues to
keep a filibuster going indefinitely if you want to. But
you should have to put in the work. You know,
you should not be able to do it passively. Why

(49:54):
is it hard sell to sell that bipartisipately?

Speaker 1 (49:58):
That to me seems the upper use of the filibuster.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
I agree, you know, it's it's it's it's just the
sort of the proverb of the frog being boiled in water,
where you know, the Senate never decided to have it
be the way it is. It was a passive accumulation
of one norm being laid on another in layered form
over several decades where basically, when you're in the minority
you find this thing to be useful.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
But came up what the filibuster happened? What sometime after
direct election of senators? Yeah, well so nineteen seventeen. They
when when seventy of the amendment, So when direct election happened,
it was around the same time during the progressive era.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
You know, there was this idea. But what's really interesting
about it is that the rule that today gets used
to cause the super majority threshold was originally put in
place to end filibusters. It's I don't want.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
To get yeah, it's like it's like you're describing one
of my favorite things. You know, a reform in one
era turns into it a problem and other you know,
the seniority system was actually instituted in the House at
the turn of the last century because there were so
many cronies that a speaker would put into place, and
they said, well, we can't have that. So the seniority

(51:13):
system was actually a reform, right, that's right to improve representation.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
So the super majority rule was, you know, put in
place because if you had a talking filibuster that was
going on for way too long, right you you said, okay, fine,
you know what, We'll give you a tool to bring
that to an end. And that's if you know sixty
at the time it was three fits. It was three
thirds three fourths or something, or at the time it
was two thirds. Now it's three fitths. But they said, look,

(51:38):
if three fitts of the Senate can decide that, you know,
mister Smith has talked too long, you know, presumably that's
bringing people together from both sides of the whatever issues
being debated, you can sort of say, okay, that's enough guy.
Even then you still have like thirty hours. So you know,
in true Senate fashion, it wasn't moving that precipitously, but
that was supposed to be able to say, okay, that's
gone on long enough, let's let's let's end it. Let's

(51:59):
move to a vote. Now what happens is because of
the ease of implementing the filibuster, because you don't have
to go to the floor and you can just have
your staff call the cloakroom. That's all it takes to
do a filibuster. So there's no there's no you're not
putting any onus on the person blocking, But that simple
act of calling the cloakroom triggers that supermajority requirement. Now,
so every time the Senate votes on the super majority,

(52:21):
they're technically still ending a filibuster, even though there's nobody
on the floor filibustering. So it's completely a mutation of
what the original rule was decided to do, and it's
just accumulated in this sort of like accretion of layers
of norms and made the Senate completely dysfunctional, just like
the Framers predicted it would be if a supermajority requirement
was put in place.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
So let's talk about the different like hacks that were
essentially created to avoid the filibuster reconciliation. I got a
fun viewer question back to my last episode about it,
and I said, well, it was correct me if I'm wrong.
It was a creation essentially of Robert byrd right, that's.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
Right, you know it was. It was sort of downstream
of the sort of imperial presidency under Nixon, where you know,
Nixon seized a bunch of powers to the executive branch,
and so in the post Watergate reaction against that, they
wanted to shift more power back to the legislative branch,
and so they created this thing called budget reconciliation, where
you know, under the power of the purse, one of

(53:20):
the most important functions of Congress is to pass a budget.
And you know, if Congress gets you know, stuck on budget,
that's an abdication of their powers. It shifts more powers
to the executive because Congress hasn't told the executive how
to spend the money. So they wanted to make sure
that budgets could not get stuck or blocked by a minority.
So they created a separate pathway for anything related to

(53:43):
the budget, and they put in place strict rules where
it said, you know, it has to meet these standards.
But if it meets these standards and applies to the budget,
it has its own pathway where there's no supermajority requirement.
It's a straight fifty vote threshold all the way through,
but there is sort of almost a talking all the
us are built in of this thing called voterama, where
you know, anybody can bring an amendment, and so before

(54:05):
passage you'll have these night you know, sessions that go
all night where everybody's so you know, kind of they
they sort of tried to recreate the original Senate, but
only for issues related to the budget. Those those criteria
that determine what can pass along that pathway that's been
expanded steadily over the since the seventies when this was

(54:26):
enacted to sort of, you know, expand the definition of
what's allowed to pass through it. But even so, you know,
anything that's not economic and nature definitely can't pass through
that pathway, and even a lot of things that are
economic and nature, you know, still get kicked out.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
I think the first Bush tax cuts were not reconciliation.
I think he did that with sixty because I remember
him finding five Democratic senators.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
I know, no, I think that. I think it was
reconciliation he did, and both those things are true. He did.
Max Bochus supported those, some Democrats supported him, But I
still think it was on the reconsilation. But with which,
by the way, is the way it used to happen,
which was that just because something passed, you know, along
majority rule pathway, didn't make it party line, you know.
I mean, look, medicare you know? So the things we

(55:11):
think of as the greatest by partisan accomplishments generally happened
during the period when the Senate was majority rule. And
what would happen is people would fight it tooth and nail.
But then as soon as it was clear that the
majority had the votes, a bunch of people who were
holding out for something would would then come on over
and say, Okay, I'm going to join on board anyways,
and on the right I want to be on the
right side of that vote. Sure that vote.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Well, let's stuck the judiciary because this is where I
I you know, there have been separate rules created, and
I kind of think everybody's gone the wrong direction, right,
Meaning if I read Federalist seventy eight, which is the
Alexander Hamilton Federalist paper on the judiciary, it is pretty
clear that the description of the judiciary that the founders

(55:53):
intended was for what I call referees, so the least
partisan individuals you could get in the least part of way, right,
that was the reason for the lifetime appointment.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
That was so to me.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
He didn't say there should be And maybe you could
make the argument, you know, he should have said, you know,
all federal judges should be super majorities. But that's where
my head is at, like I don't trust the two
parties anymore. And to the point of, with the way
the judiciary works, would we be better off if we
didn't instead of lowering the threshold from sixty down to fifty,

(56:28):
of raising the threshold from sixty to seventy five. And
the reason I have come down on this idea is
looking at I got to know somebody who worked in
the Bush White House Counsel's office in the first Bush
forty three and they were the last Republican presidency under
the sixty vote threshold right until Trump came in, and

(56:50):
then it got lowered, he got to lower it all
got lowered, and he said they'd have nominated completely different
people for federal judge ships if the threat should was
fifty and not sixty, much more ideological, much less.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
You know.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
That to me was that is why I'm like, yeah,
this is why we shouldn't have lowered the threshold, because
ultimately I want the least partisan people as my judge.
I don't want partisan people as my judge. I know
we're a long way away from us from a from
a situation going back to that, but why is that
so difficult? How did we allow the judicial? Why did

(57:30):
we decide to politicize the judicial much? Yeah, I mean
I think one hundred percent. See you know where you're
coming from on that. I think that you know, it
is a bit cyclical, right, I mean, like, you know,
a lot of judges.

Speaker 2 (57:42):
Did used to be pretty partisan. I mean, you know,
the nineteen said, look, I'm not going to sit here.
The nineteenth century judiciary in general was corrupt. Yeah okay, yeah,
and there was a ton.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Of a lot of corruption there. I'm not gonna I
take your point right.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
Right, So I think I think those things work in cycles.
I think where I come down on this stuff is
that it's really hard to you know, enforce good things
like you know, good judgment, moderation by rule. It's just
very hard. And that's when you run into this problem
we were just talking about, of the rule, you know,

(58:16):
having unintended consequences. It's just if the nature of the
times is such that, you know, this is what people
are demanding, it's it's going to find a way. And
I think that, you know, you know, I'm not not
a conservative by nature, so I feel, you know, slightlycourable
saying this. But when you go back to the Framer's design,

(58:39):
you know, I think I am an originalist when it
comes to the system design, you know, and and this
this system was designed to just not have a super
majority threshold anywhere in the path from beginning to end.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
And the only thing that required is super majority. It
was was.

Speaker 2 (58:57):
Was cast social amendments, yeah, impeachment, you know, but they
specified those in the constitution, which just goes to show
how they consider this to be.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
It's a very fair point. The fact that he didn't
argue for it, you know, he certainly argued. He argued
hard against judicial elections, which to me tells you that
what I mean, you want to talk about corrupt those
states Supreme Court partisan races to me are just terear.
I mean, I think they just the mere existence of
them undermined the rule of law.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Well, and you're seeing more and more money start to
flow to them too, you know. I mean, they're going
to become just as political as any election. I think
that's right. So I think it's it's just a tough
thing to do by rule, and so you know, there
are many bad features of the times we live in.
I think, you know, sort of a return to the
basic features of our system that allow things to move
and allow our system to I think if you went

(59:47):
to seventy five, which you'd probably have, is just massive
judicial backlogs and seats not getting filled. Well, this gets
to the whole chicken and egg thing.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
Like we began earlier talking about the lack of ideological
diversity in the two parties. When we had ideological diverse
city in the two parties, we regularly had these sixty
and seventy vote confirmations because there was this ideological diversity
as we polarized ourselves right as you know, the embedding
of red and blue right, which you know, we could

(01:00:14):
make an argument it began in two thousand. I sort
of think now in hindsight, it began with the fallow
of the Berlin Wall, that that that's when both parties bases,
you know, got reanimated again. We're like, okay, cold War's over.
We can't be told to sit sit quietly in the
corner anymore. We're coming right. But you know, that's the

(01:00:36):
I guess it is the better solution than open primaries,
getting rid of all partisan primaries and that then you
just get a different type of nominee.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
I think that's I think that's I would be in
favor of opening up primaries for sure, you know, and
I think that, you know, you look at someone like
would Bernie Sanders have won the twenty sixteen presentsional nomination
if their primary had been open? You know, it's or
more primaries and along the way have been opened. Maybe
they I think they argued that at the time. You know,
he's interesting because you could say he's ideological, but also

(01:01:08):
he was sort of an underappreciated aspect of his twenty
sixteen campaign was that he was more moderate on cultural
issues than Hillary, and he was actually sort of presenting
much more of that classic poem. Remember how Hillary about.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Attacked them, kept attacking him other suns. Yeah, him from
the left, not the right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
And he you know, he had at some point said
the interest groups are the establishment, you know, plan pared
to all these groups. So I think that's I think
you've opened the doorway for a more interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Mix of ideologies. If you did that, well that let's
land the plane this way. What do you plan? You know,
do you see searchlight? On one hand, you want to
you're going to be an incubator of policy ideas and
also an incubator of campaign tactics.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Well, I think if we had a sort of campaign advice,
it would be basically to be heterodox, you know, I
mean we would say which, And I think that's more
powerful than any camping tactic. We are, we are a
political culture that's a wash in. You know, this or
that media strategy, this or that platform, and all those
things are important, but fundamentally, the most powerful thing you
can do is offer a different mix of issues to

(01:02:18):
the American people, and so much else flows downstream from that.
So our advice to candidates would be decide to be heterodox.
You know, if you look through your issue positions and
every single position on that page on your website. You
know it is a rigidly ideological left wing position. Then
you know, if you're running in a competitive race, then
you're probably doing it wrong. So and listen, look in,

(01:02:39):
look in, Look to your beliefs, Look to the people
that you're seeking to represent that works those issues.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
You are right, Like, yeah, I look at grand I
look at the Grand Platiner situation.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
And you know how I look. I got my.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Skepticism on the tattoos story. I will admit that, Like
you know, I think you put a permanent marking on
your body. You're going to research what that is. But
so look, that's me as a voter or as a
as a consumer of this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
But what do you make of his staying power? What
does that tell.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
You about what you're what you're advising people to be.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
I think I think it's it's it says a lot.
And I think that you know, he's he's a person
who served in the military, you know, and enlisted in
a war that he says he didn't agree with. But
I think that's a powerful story. He loves this guy
loves guns, you know, not just in the sort of
like carried a gun once way. But I mean, you
know that's that's a heterodoxy that that fits the state

(01:03:35):
of Maine. People are looking for authenticity, They're looking for that,
that desire to fight that that authenticity being imperfect, having
made mistakes, all that stuff. I think it's it's very powerful.
And so far the way voters in Maine are reacting
to those stories is to dismiss them or even to
say that's making me back him even stronger. So I
think that's a very powerful phenomenon that's going on right now.

(01:03:58):
And his level of heterodoxy could win state like Maine,
which is, you know, pretty blue. If you're going to
be running in a state like Iowa, Ohio or Nebraska,
you know you've got to be even more heterodox. And
that's that's the that's the advice I would give to candidates.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
And is this about finding how much of this is
on the party seeking out those candidates and how much
is it just simply more candidates need to not seek
out the groups looking for I mean, you see this
a lot where and I'm sorry I think that I
watch the committees do this right, Well, if you don't
do this then we're not going to be able to
bunge your general election. They sort of hold you hostage

(01:04:35):
uncertain things, oh.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
One hundred percent. I mean people, you know, the question
we gas a lot is like, oh, these are just
little nonprofits, you know, doing the best they can. And
that's that's in the post Citizens United world. These groups
wield war chests of millions and millions of dollars, and
in the primary, if you don't take their preferred positions,
they spend those millions of dollars against you and in
favor of your opponent. So it's still a lot of power.

(01:04:57):
But I think, you know, it would be smart for
the groups to get a little bit smarter in what
they're asking people to do and make their asks more about,
you know, can you beat the Republican then than you know,
going through a purity test. But I think candidates should,
you know, if they're being asked to take crazy positions,
they should just say no, and they should make they
should be clear of the voters that they're saying no.
I think we you no longer do questionnaires. A questionnaire

(01:05:20):
with one question, which is the tell me why you
can beat the Republican. That would be my qu that's
just the questionnaire. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
Are you can you imagine Searchlight funding a campaign for
against a candidate in a primary.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
We are acumenical for now. I think what we want
to do is just sort of put out the best
ideas and approaches and hope that that, you know, people
adopt them. So that's that is our stance for the
time being. We'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Well, I love your marker for success in your mind.
If Democrats don't win the Senate, they can't say they
won the mid terms.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
That is exactly what I think.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Yeah, it's a high bar, but guess what if you
want to if you want to succeed, you got to
go beat a high bar.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
You've done it before, you know, it's important name high.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
Anyway, Hey Adam, this was great.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Look, you have a book out about the Senate. You
talked in such detail on Don't you want to tell
people how they can go by it?

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
It's absolutely good. Kill Switch by by Me is available
on Amazon and anywhere books are sold, So.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
Go check it out Searchlight Foundations.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
It's about the Senate, but it's not boring. It's the
best is the mine.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
Think you did a good job sort of talking a
little history. I mean, you you you you sort of
you scratched all the itches I was hoping you scratched
during our conversation, which was talking about the founder's original
intent all this, and you've you've certainly been persuasive to
me about the lack of mention of supermajorities in certain
parts of the founders versus where they did intentionally bring

(01:06:46):
up the decision super majorities. I think if you're going
to be an originalist, you got to pay attention to.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
That as well. That's right, that's right. Well, thanks Je Fran,
good to see it.

All Episodes

Interview Only w/ Adam Jentleson - The Democrats’ Roadmap To Becoming A Majority Party Again

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Ruthie's Table 4

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Interview Only w/ Adam Jentleson - The Democrats’ Roadmap To Becoming A Majority Party Again