September 9, 2025 • 37 mins
On this very special episode of Truth In The Barrel, Amy speaks with political strategist and author of “Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts,” Dr. Rachel Bitecofer on what Democrats need to do to defeat the GOP in the 2026 midterms and beyond.
*This episode was recorded on September 2nd 2025, and aired on September 9th, 2025
About Truth in the Barrel:
Amy and Denver are both military veterans, political junkies, and whiskey lovers who sit on opposite sides of the aisle but have one thing in common: they love the United States of America.
Truth in the Barrel was born of Amy & Denver’s commitment to country, the Constitution, and a well-curated collection of the world’s finest bourbon.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Predicting what many believe is unpredictable, speaking about what is often unspeakable,my guest today does both.
In 2018, she accurately predicted the size of the blue wave.
In 2020, she was one of the first to say Donald Trump was destined for defeat.
These days, she's trying to help Democrats get their messaging act together, which isreally, really important.
(00:25):
She is Rachel Bidicoffer, PhD.
Welcome to the show, Rachel.
Oh, Amy, it's such a deep pleasure for me to be here, especially.
to engage with you and your audience.
I come from a military family.
I'm a civilian.
My husband is an Iraq war vet, but my father was a Navy cryptologist.
(00:46):
So, you know, I have military background.
So I'm very excited to be here with this community today because I believe the militarycommunity, ex and current, is probably going to be the most important people, group of
people that we have in this country going forward.
m
I appreciate that and your dad's service as well and and yours, know your life or youradult life has been spent talking to to voters talking to the American people you're sort
(01:15):
of your strategist and a national political analyst and you're somebody that believes thatDemocrats need to uh Speak a little more bluntly shall we say about how to how to fight
this sort of authoritarian
bent of the other side and when you have a uh book called hit him where it hurts you havea best selling some stack called the cycle and that's what you do right now is that
(01:42):
correct.
Yeah, that's all I do.
I mean, just for a little context for people who've never heard of me, which should bemost of your audience, I got a PhD in political.
I just wanted to be a lazy professor.
Okay.
I wanted to work and have summers off and publish here.
Next thing I know, I'm running this polling firm, but really what changed everything wasthe escalator ride of Donald Trump in 2015.
(02:05):
That happened in June of 2015, the same time of year, in fact, almost to the day that Iwas defending.
a dissertation that was on polarization in the United States.
Back then, 10 years, just 10 years ago, the scholarly community that I was a part of, weknew that the polarization thing was bad.
(02:27):
It wasn't a good thing.
It had only arisen one time before, and that was the Civil War.
We knew things would be bad, but never in 10 years could any of us, even on the Cassandraof all of us, right?
Could any of us have predicted that we'd be on the precipice of democratic collapse in theyear of 2025 and that thus is where we find ourselves.
(02:48):
So I really reconditioned my career to uh try to wake people up to the threat prior to itactually being here where you can see it because unfortunately what my research, I've been
studying the third rake for five years now has found.
is that it's hard to get, people cannot panic until it's way too late.
And that's where we're at right now in this country.
(03:10):
We see it every day.
Well, I want to start out by talking about messaging and I have my own opinions on thisand branding in particular, but it's often been said that Republicans, and this is not,
you know, me saying this and I'll tell you my opinion in a minute, but the Republicanshave an easier time messaging to their base because their base is less diverse.
(03:34):
Whereas Democrats struggle with messaging because they have this diverse coalition.
So
I'll tell you my opinion in a second, but I wanted to get yours.
Does that reasoning hold true or is it more sort of just electoral folk wisdom?
No, it's not.
It's absolutely true.
When I used to teach political behavior and campaigns and elections, this is one of thethings I would focus on.
(03:57):
And this comes from some great research from a friend of mine and his co-writer, Matt uhGrossman.
what it talks about, okay, to answer your question, yes, we have a homogenous politicalparty and it is now regionally centered in the South, right?
So 50 years ago, the South was as Democrat as it is currently today, Republican.
(04:19):
uh
And because that has made it almost a completely white, it's a white party, frankly, it'sbeen, the Republican party has always been robustly white, but now it's really like the
party of white identity politics, which is a backlash to our side of the identity politicscrusades.
And because of that, Amy, I'm so glad you mentioned this, because I talk about this in thebook.
(04:41):
I explained it a little bit more deeply if you want to.
get that background, but I want to focus on what that means right now, because I thinkthat's what Amy's trying to get at.
What it means is over our 20 years of Obama and the emergence of digital technologies,especially that gave you the ability to micro target, our thought was, now we have all
(05:03):
these diverse groups in our coalition and it's not an ideological movement.
The Democratic Party is not an ideological party.
is a...
party of group interest that have banded together in a coalition to kind of push theirinterests together.
The Republicans have always been the ideological movement until recently.
Right now it's a cult, right?
(05:23):
But it used to be really about uh Cold War, fiscal conservative, free market.
I it's really not what the modern GOP is about, right?
Right.
actually quite the opposite now.
Yeah, I mean, which is, know, if I could, my father was alive, he just be horrified.
Right?
So, you know, so what we did, you know, that caused a divergence until that time Democratsand Republicans kind of did electioneering.
(05:50):
Basically the same Republicans were always better at it because they were always had theability to do, to do racism, dog whistles to win conservatives.
Right.
But, but they got really much, much better at it because
They went onto the strategy that I've built for the Democrats in 2004 when they took JohnKerry, who was a Vietnam War vet hero.
(06:11):
And what did they do?
They swift vote that veteran for truth, his war record.
Yeah.
And that was the first time that people strategists, and this is a Carl Rhodes special,right?
Realized, oh, there's a different way to do persuasion, right?
Up until then.
persuasion was about selling the better product of two.
(06:33):
From that moment on for Republicans, persuasion became disqualify the other option and winby default.
And so by 2010, they have institutionalized that within a year of the great recession thatthey caused, they win 63 house seats, right?
And they do it on this strategy.
We, on the other hand, were taking, embracing this tech.
(06:56):
And we're like, okay, we'll talk to women about this and Latinos about that and da da dada da da da da da.
Well, here's the problem.
When you are talking about everything, you're talking about nothing.
And if you read my book, you'll understand why.
And so most Americans don't follow any news.
don't even know who their state's federal senators are.
(07:16):
They don't realize there's a state legislature.
I know that sounds insane, but in the book, I'm going to show you that.
uh A lot of America doesn't pay attention to politics and Republicans understand then thatthese wedge campaigns around one theme that are very loud are what you need to get
through, right?
And they're so good at it, right?
(07:37):
I mean, look what they did to Clinton.
When I ran a poll in 2020 for Clinton and Trump, and we all know that Trump lies,literally every time he opens his mouth, the word that popped up when voters thought of
Hillary Clinton, the largest word in my word cloud was liar.
Okay.
And she was running against a guy who at that point already was a serial liar.
So we, we have to stop that urge.
(08:00):
And what my work in the book does is it says, look, no matter what micro group you'refocused on, that's great.
When you have power, you can take care of everybody, but you run on a strategy on themost, what is your opponent's biggest weakness?
And then you run against that and you run hard at it, right?
Like it was a George Patton strategy.
(08:21):
for politics, okay?
Right.
What I'm trying to sell here, blood and guts, Yeah.
Super interesting because Democrats, you know, we do have this big coalition.
So it, you often hear, Hey, Democrats don't have a cohesive message.
They don't have it, but you're, you're saying, I mean, I don't know.
Are you saying that every candidate that runs needs to pick, you know, one thing and go atit hard, but recognize that overall it's not going to be the same thing.
(08:57):
for each race?
Is that sort of what you're saying?
It doesn't need to be the same exact wedge, but the wedge is this.
Here's the problem.
The reason they win and they beat us even with terrible candidates like JD Vance againstwonderful people like Tim Ryan or, you know, the new guy that beat um Sherrod Brown, which
is John Tester, two of our best senators, right?
So obviously something's happening.
(09:18):
What's happening there, right?
Is that they're finding one thing and they are wedging and Tester's a moderate, Brown's amoderate.
They're both never have been socialist.
They don't want to mutilate children's genitalia.
But they are defined that way because the brand of the D and the R on the ballot are themost important things on the ballot, even more important than the candidates name, which I
(09:40):
know is crazy for candidates to hear.
But because we have low info, we have this strong partisanship effect that people have tohave to deal with.
So why do we lose?
Well, we're running about how great we are.
They're running about how terrible we are in a very effective megaphone.
Sniper, not shotgun, right?
(10:00):
Sniper effect.
We're shotgunning.
Diversity, this, that, blah, blah, blah.
They're snipering always.
CRT, Biden's age, whatever it is, right?
And so what we want to be doing is making sure that Susan Collins doesn't go through theelection next year without the swing voters of Maine finding out that she is not actually
(10:23):
a moderate, right?
So what we have to...
do in David Schweickart and the House is a great example of this.
uh He serves in Arizona CD1.
He's an extremist.
votes for the most.
He voted to ban IVF, dude, but his voters have no idea.
So, accept the voters know nothing.
Understand that they will know only the thing that you pay to know them.
(10:46):
Okay?
So, if they're running against us,
And we're running against us.
I'm not one of those Democrats.
I'm different.
Blah, blah.
My party is definitely messed up working class people.
No, it hasn't.
Okay.
Stop.
What you need to do is make the race about Susan Collins.
Is Susan Collins promised the voters of Maine that she would make good decisions?
(11:10):
Did she make a good decision when she voted to confirm RFK Jr.
to the whole thing?
Did she make a good decision?
No, she's an extremist hiding in moderates clothing.
And we think swing voters just all read the news and they're following everything.
Well, I guarantee you guys, I don't know what state you're in, but unless you're in DC,LA, San Fran, Chicago, New York, you can't just walk out on the streets and find people to
(11:35):
talk about Speaker Mike Johnson, okay?
I mean, Eugene is a very educated place.
I can't go to the grocery store after a 15 vote, you know, speaker vote and go in and seethe guy walking next to me and be like, did you see that speaker vote?
Holy shit.
Right.
Like he would have no idea what I was talking about.
(11:55):
Right.
So think about, think about how effective that propaganda system becomes.
when people don't have a well of reservoir to protect them from it, right?
And understand that what they're going to say about you, doesn't matter who you are.
He can be an ex-military crab fishing, whatever, right?
But what's going to matter is that D and that R and either you got to shit on the R and upbrand the D and that is exactly opposite of what we do in our swing races right now.
(12:24):
Most of them, ones I can't get my hands on.
No, it's really fascinating because I mean, you are spending a lot of time trying to pushback on all the narratives with the branding that Republicans have done so well.
um You know, when I ran against McConnell, I always said to people, I wasn't just runningthat year.
(12:47):
was running against decades of branding of that D in the state.
so, you know, my military background and
stances were good and important, but like you're also running against that.
And not to say that it can't, you know, break through.
(13:07):
I think it can.
One of the things that we often hear about is um candidates needing to run away from thatnational party piece, you know?
And I think that, or does that present a challenge?
I mean, as you just talked about,
early.
You're saying Democrats just don't even...
(13:31):
Well, defensive, dude.
my God, George Patton would hate it all.
Wouldn't he?
I he was an offensive guy.
Offense, offensive.
You're not on offense, you're losing.
And that's the fact of American politics in a propaganda system with a digital tool thatemerged like radio in the 1920s and was leveraged by people with not good intentions to
confuse the mind of the general public, right?
(13:52):
In Wisconsin, Ben Wickler is a big fan of negative partisanship.
The Wisconsin and Arizona Democrats have been embracing it.
Adrian Fontes used it to run for Arizona's secretary of state against an actualinsurrectionist.
Okay.
And he outperformed Mark Kelly in some of the precincts.
Okay.
Mark Kelly, who's who's, who sailed because it's NASA, NASA's a fit.
(14:16):
Right.
So, and that was against the midterm effect.
So in a cycle when Arizona should have turned red, we held the whole state on negativepartisanship.
The Wisconsin state Supreme Court race is more recent.
So if anybody listening to this or yourself, watch that race play out.
Go look at the ads.
What you'll see from the Crawford campaign is the exact campaign that I'm trying toconstruct across the swing map.
(14:42):
And what it did was it focused on her opponent as an opponent focused strategy on the paidmedia.
The only thing that matters is the paid media.
I know that seems weird.
But the people who come to your speeches, people who watch a debate on TV for the Senate,I'm talking about maybe 5 % of your state watching that debate, right?
So what matters, what matters is the paid ad strategy.
(15:06):
And right now what's emerging is our 2026 new version of sucking, which is affordability,which of course is what we should run on, right?
We should have a wedge campaign about one thing, promises made, promises broken.
Right.
And it's easy to go to whichever promise.
I'm going to take care of your health broken.
I'm going to take care of your money.
I'm going to make things lower.
They're higher.
(15:27):
Right.
They're such huge.
Right.
But I've seen some affordability ads, frankly, that don't even mention Donald Trump.
Like, why create that product as a $50,000 ad that's going to be useless.
OK.
So it's not enough to go and tell people both parties like screwed you over.
You're doing the Republicans.
(15:47):
work for them.
What we need to do now is come in and say, yeah, you should be angry.
I'm angry.
You should be angry too.
And let me tell you why.
Because for 50 years, the Republican party has built this economic model that was called,they knew what it was going to do because they called it Voodoo Economics.
And what it did was it gutted our middle class and it gutted rural America.
(16:10):
Right.
And that's the record I want people to run on.
Not on
You know, Mitch McConnell was corrupt.
He takes money from China.
Whoopty shit.
Voter doesn't care.
Voter thinks Amy McGrath not not fair, but thinks Amy McGrath is just as corrupt as MitchMcConnell because they're politicians and the public hates politicians.
Right.
So we're not selling a Toyota or versus a Ford, right?
(16:33):
Products that people like and want.
We do things that people are predispositioned, even if they bothered to vote, which halfthe country doesn't, to not necessarily like.
Right?
So why, when you're trying to sell this person, you're talking about you and 80 % of yourads are all about this, right?
80, 90 % of their ads are going to be Rachel Bidicoff remunerates children.
(16:55):
She wants immigrants, migrants to come and kill your family.
She's a socialist.
I mean, this is literally what goes in their ads, right?
So we have, and yet what happens, Amy, they win swing races all the time on that strategy.
So somehow we're supposed to believe.
that the psychology of the electorate will only accept that kind of messaging fromRepublicans, right?
(17:20):
And we're not special people.
the research, like I call them the research cabal who sucks all of our distribution moneyfor paid ads on research has done many, many research things to prove that voters don't
want to listen about partisanship.
Of course not.
Voters say that all the time in polling.
I'm a polling expert, okay?
(17:41):
Voters hate negative ads all the time.
And then the next question is, what do you know about the candidate?
Guess what the one thing is that they know?
The negative ad, right?
So those negative ads are extremely potent and powerful.
And the only way back to power is to rebrand us back to the working class and rebrand themas the people who ruined your life.
(18:08):
And it's real too, because right now, like the policies are insanely bad for the everydayAmerican, the everyday Kentuckian with tariffs and with healthcare and ripping away, you
know, uh benefits, Medicaid and SNAP and all of that stuff.
I mean, it's really bad.
(18:30):
And then all of the stuff that the president is doing that is just shredding ourconstitution.
But I hear you in the sense that voters, many voters are not following this all the time.
And um some of these messages, really have to, you really have to pick one or two and, andgo at it and really make the race about how bad the other side is.
(18:58):
Right?
mean, think about CRT in 2021, which is really, please, if can hear my voice, I beg you,please read the book.
You don't have to buy it.
Get it from a library.
Get it for free.
I don't care.
Read the book.
The reason I need you to read the book is so that you can help us stop what's coming.
And when you read this book, you're going to realize pretty quickly, like, oh, OK, youknow, the way that we do things are counterproductive.
(19:21):
Like there's a current to the electorate is is like you think of it as an ocean.
Right.
And what they do in the ocean of psychiatry of loss aversion is a very powerfulpsychological effect on humans.
Loss aversion, right?
And what that means is like something that gets taken from you, right?
And you think about how Republicans have framed this, you know, in 23rd year branding war,it's really a bit about Democrats are taking America from you, right?
(19:47):
So it's all loss aversion trigger.
And the reason why it works so well instead of, you know, our beautiful policy plans.
is that the voter, we're talking in a cerebral policy way that's rational, fact-based andlogical.
And that's because we are rational, fact-based and logical people, right?
But we tell the truth, right?
(20:11):
And we are up against an opponent that does not tell the truth.
And the nice thing about running against Susan Collins is you don't have to lie, okay?
You just have to understand the people of Maine
Not all of them, but many of the swing vote electorate that will come in and decide thatmain election has no idea that Susan Collins did some of these terrible things.
(20:33):
And they will never hear it unless the Democratic nominee uses the only money availablebecause it's, you know, you and I both know super PACs are hard to fund, right?
Most of that money is going to go into the candidates and the campaigns.
So if they're wasting the money doing Harris's joy and opportunity economy crap,
and throwing up ads to win white voters that are, you know, there's no white people in thead.
(20:57):
mean, hello, we have a racist, bigoted and sexist electorate.
Okay.
And I'm not saying that to insult it.
I'm saying it as a political scientist to say, don't swim against the current.
Okay.
You're not going to cure racism and elect Kamala Harris.
(21:18):
If you're making votes or ads to target swing Republican districts or districts that arepredominantly white suburbanites, you've got to have white people in the ads.
Okay.
You can't be saying stuff like pregnant person.
Okay.
And all this wonky googly goob.
I it's cringe, dude.
Okay.
(21:38):
The snapping shit, the land acknowledgements.
Our party is cringe AF as anybody who's been...
not a partisan, but has come into our party.
We know there are problems within our party that are exploited to make us look bad.
Okay.
So I'm not saying we don't need some policy moderation.
(22:00):
We need to be able to say Joe Biden f**ked up.
He should have shut that border down right after the surge started.
Okay.
And we need to be able to say we should get a national voter ID.
It's 2025.
Everyone has ID.
Black people even vote in polls support.
voter ID.
And the reason, friends, that we need it is because they're going to claim 2028 was stolenfrom them by illegals.
(22:23):
And that's how you can crush that myth.
But we're not going to do that because, God forbid, we help them do national voter ID.
So they're going to have this excuse to use against us.
As I listen to you, you're very much an offensive and negative strategy towards formessaging.
And I get that.
Believe me, I get that.
(22:46):
However, um you do hear people, and I do hear this a lot, that candidates also need tohave a vision for the future.
can't just be running an anti them.
strategy.
Do you agree with that?
(23:06):
I totally disagree with it.
That's the prevailing wisdom that I'm up against.
For five years, those well-paid consultants that you're referring to have perpetuatedmyths that they have created themselves and made a shit ton of money on perpetuating.
Yes, obviously, if you're running for office, you have to have a vision and a positiveplatform.
(23:31):
That's what your stump speech is all about.
You're not going to go out there.
I mean, I would recommend having some fire and fury in your stump speech right now,because especially if you're in Democratic nomination fight, because what does America
want right now?
America, the rest of us, we want a leader, right?
We're terrified.
Where's our goddamn Winston Churchill, right?
(23:51):
And that's, Gavin Newsom's gonna be our Winston Churchill if nothing else emerges, right?
But at least the public's gonna rally behind this guy because there's the one thing wewant.
mean, my God, it sounds so weird to me to have a debate.
about abundance and populism and the New York mayor shit.
Like, why the house is literally on fire, guys.
(24:12):
mean, the house now.
down.
totally agree with you about that.
I'm so tired of that kind of stuff.
It is mind blowing.
mean, we need to we need leaders and there's so many people and it's not just in politics.
But I think what's scaring to scaring a lot of people is, know, universities are caving,businesses are caving, uh know, lawyers, all that.
(24:38):
There's people are living in fear right now.
And this is true in the military.
I mean, I read articles all the time about, you know, firing of or the removal of, youknow, the three star Admiral, for example, at the Naval Academy read and read an article
today that talked about 200 alumni from um one particular class.
(25:02):
I think it was her class who stepped up and wrote a letter and basically said this, thisis wrong.
You know, a good percentage of those who wrote that letter.
there wasn't even published letter, where we wanted to remain anonymous for fear ofretribution.
And they said that in there, retribution is real.
(25:22):
And so I bring that back to this idea that we absolutely crave and need leaders right nowwho will step up against this stuff because it is completely un-American.
But I want to ask you also about a particular policy issue and it's one that
That is in the news a lot right now.
(25:43):
I think it may be like the policy issue that the other side, it appears is going to berunning on, which is crime.
Okay.
And I've always felt like Republicans don't give a shit about crime.
oh Is BS when you um are, are behind the people that took batons and used American flagpolls to,
(26:11):
spear cops on January 6th and then you raised money and then you supported a guy thatpardoned, you know, 1500 of these criminals and all of that stuff.
But yet it is still there.
And so what are your thoughts on this and messaging for
Yeah, mean, this is their power.
(26:31):
want people to understand.
Now people are more receptive.
Last year I was having these conversations all across the state with Democrats saying,we've got to do this.
We're running.
We're in power now, so they hate us.
We have to run this strategy.
Now people are kind of receptive to it, right?
And part of that strategy has to be, I think,
(26:53):
increasing and enhancing.
We have a realignment and a de-alignment in our electorate.
Again, read the book and you'll get some more information.
the Democratic Party 50 years ago was the rural party of the South.
Okay?
Now it's the city party of like the North and the West, the two coasts, right?
And so the parties have transitioned a lot.
(27:16):
And we talk all the time about the degradation or the erosion of
what we call white working class voters.
But when we talk about class folks, want you to understand pollsters are really talkingabout education, college education versus not.
Why?
Because even if you have a college education, you're better inoculated to propaganda.
(27:36):
You have a better appreciation for why rights for all have to be protected for everyone tohave rights and all this other stuff that you get from a college education.
so, you know, number one,
that decline of the working class is not entirely organic.
Some of it was triggered by the Southern realignment and the end of segregation, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.
But now a lot of it is triggered by a billion dollar propaganda campaign that the rightwas very smart when I said they embraced the new technology of the internet and understood
(28:08):
its capacity to reach the human brain, just like the Nazis understood the capacity of thenew invention of the radio.
to get directly to people's brains.
And they were very shrewd and they have a lot of billionaires that spend a lot of money oninfrastructure.
And so those white working class voters, you know, first it started in the South andspread to the Midwest and now it's everywhere.
(28:32):
They've been told very strategically not to like us.
Like, they're just inundated all the time with the freakiest things they can find on theinternet.
You know, Hamas lovers, you know, defacing the Liberty Bell or
know, the scariest, weirdest looking trans people, right?
And it's so easy to exploit.
(28:52):
And they're so good at it that when we look at Virginia in 2021, in January of 2021 toOctober of 2021, there was this thing called CRT and it didn't even really exist.
Nobody knew what I was.
oh
know what CRT was until the first time Christopher.
(29:15):
That was like the head injury thing.
Yeah, me too.
So, you know, but they took that thing.
And so like number one, CRT, race in schools, not coming up on your 20 most importantissues.
Okay.
If you're pulling Virginia and you're like, we would be like, what should we run on?
affordability.
Right.
They were like, we're going to, we, governor Yonkin is a sweater vest wearing businessguy.
(29:39):
Okay.
So if he was our guy, he'd be like, Oh Glenn, your strength is the economy and let's makesure you do this and that and that.
No, on their side, evil people get paid and they control the campaigns.
Okay.
They don't get to sit on the sidelines like I do.
And somebody over there was like, Glenn, think we could win this.
It's a, by now a bluish state is purple, blueish, right?
(30:00):
So in 2021, Virginia had been going blue, blue, blue, blue, blue.
And suddenly it swings back to Republican.
We think we can win if we all run on this thing called CRT.
And we took the debate, the bait, right?
So they,
Instead of being all high minded and having to win the right way, they just want to winshit.
(30:20):
That's all they want to do.
They want to win and they plot war to win.
not plot war to win while being nice and making sure I have a vision and doing this andthat and union things and you know, a diverse staff and all this shit.
No, they just want to win.
Right.
So like that's Mr.
Strategic creep into mission creep.
Everyone in the chat probably knows what I'm talking about.
(30:41):
You don't want mission creep like that.
Right.
And so they got them all to do it.
Glenn Youngkin and the two other statewide candidates and all of the Republican House ofDelegates pounded, pounded CRT.
National News picks it up, starts talking about what do we do?
What we always do.
Well, it's not real and actually it's a legal theory that's never taught in any lawschools.
And even if it was, let's talk about race in America.
(31:03):
We had MSNBC humming for like two months about defense, defense, defense, right?
And meanwhile, I'm texting Jamie Harrison.
I'm like,
I launch a counter offense.
I can do this for you.
Right?
Like we can do it cheap.
Like, my God.
And they didn't.
So think about what I'm saying.
Sniper strategy, one issue.
(31:25):
And they defined every Democrat in Virginia that cycle around that one issue.
our minds, the voters don't care or know what that is.
Voters knew what it meant.
Okay.
They understood that to them, what they were hearing
is they want to make your kids feel bad about being white.
Okay?
That's what CRT means.
So doesn't matter if they can define it.
(31:46):
And we can do show the stump video of the dumb people are like, I don't know what it is.
I just hate it.
Right?
Right.
the end of the day, they understood what it meant.
It was a dog whistle for they want to make you feel bad about being white.
Right?
And so they're going to do that with crime.
They don't have a lot they can do because Trump screwed them on terrorists.
Right?
If he would have just not done anything to the economy.
(32:07):
The economy would be getting better and better because it was already pretty good andgoing better and better with Biden.
And then he couldn't make an all the credit for it.
And he already does.
He's like, you know, he would he's good at that, but he screwed himself.
And now they can't run.
They're going to have a real problem if we come and say he lied to you.
He's going to make shit cheaper and he made it more expensive.
Right.
(32:28):
He got rich.
He got he got paid.
You got played.
Right.
I mean, he's five billion dollars.
Right.
So, you know, I think.
I think it's important for people to know, just because something doesn't, they tooksomething that didn't even exist and made it the number one issue for a year.
uh That's the power of their-
I crime isn't a problem.
(32:50):
yeah, no, so you flip and pivot and attack.
It's actually better than it used to be.
it's like, now all of sudden, the president, the Republicans are saying that this is a,he's going to call a national emergency, I think.
He's just waiting to break Drake's Sack fire away.
(33:10):
Right.
Yes.
But as somebody, can't say it's not real because there is crime.
Yes, of course there is.
that's why they understand that we're cerebral and we'll respond exactly how you'veresponded, which totally makes sense in any normal world in any normal country.
We are not living in a normal world, man.
(33:31):
We have Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard is the DNI and holy shit, We're the bottom ofabnormality.
don't even recognize what's abnormal anymore.
What's so abnormal, right?
So, you know, what I would tell you is the instinct is to be like, well,
you, crimes actually lower, right?
To do all the things we did with CRT.
(33:52):
That's our instinct and they know it and that's why they feed that shit to us because ourdumb consultant class will be like, we can't just pretend crime is not an issue and the
worries that you express, but you're reasonable things in a reasonable world.
But we're not talking about reason and we're not talking about a reasonable world.
So instead, every time they mentioned crime, boy, how do you want to talk about crime?
(34:16):
Let's talk about crime.
mean, we have a guy sitting in the White House who's a surreal, serial criminal, right?
We have a Republican party that's run the biggest heist in America, and they just got theworking class to vote for a guy who took their money and gave it to Elon Musk, right?
Like, instead of, see how I'm on offense now, Amy, and I'm not on defense?
(34:36):
So you can say, crime?
Oh, you want to talk about crime?
ah You know, school safety, the shit with kids and the trans crap, same difference.
You...
want to tell me in America, you want to protect children?
You have voted 39 times against banning assault weapons.
Do you know what an assault weapon does to a child's body when the bullets enter it?
(34:58):
Like, see, I have changed the whole conversation.
And now what do they have to do?
They have to defend.
They have to defend themselves.
And if we can't get them and keep them in that posture next year and in 2028, then we are
I mean, we have to try to win, right?
We can talk about whether that election is going to be certified, but I will tell you guysthis.
(35:18):
Can you imagine a Republican, this Republican party as it currently is constituted, iflet's say they're going to gerrymander some districts and we fail because we run weak
affordability stuff and we think people are more excited than they are, right?
Let's say they control the house.
Is that Republican house going to certify?
(35:40):
the 2028 election.
No, they are not.
Like we know they will not.
All right.
So like this battle of 2026, I mean, the real battle was 2024.
I wanted to win that battle so we wouldn't have to have war.
Okay.
Which goes back, and I have to end on this, but it goes back to this real need to haveleaders with courage.
(36:02):
It does.
up.
And so we need to keep at it.
And I so appreciate this conversation.
Let's continue it because I really want to hear from you as things progress here.
This is so important and you're doing tremendous work.
If people want to follow you, Rachel, where do they go?
(36:22):
So I'm at Rachel Biddecoffer on Twitter on blue sky.
It's R-A-C-H-E-L-B-I-T-E-C as in cat, O-F as in Frank, E-R, and I'm the only one.
Like there's no other Biddecoffers, because no one would want that monstrosity as a name.
So I'm pretty easy to find.
I really urge the most important homework I can give you guys is to read the book.
(36:45):
And a lot of the people who listen to this probably are connected in the securityapparatus.
There's never been a dearth of money in the national security world.
I know there's money out there.
If you happen to have some and you want to use it to wage a patent-style rhetorical war,reach out to Amy and let's talk about it.
(37:07):
The thing that you can do is you can fund effective strategic messaging that fights themin the trenches.
That's what I'm trying to build.
I'm so excited to have talked to you about it today.
That's awesome.
Thank you for that work, Rachel.
We're going to keep listening.
Your book is Hit Him Where It Hurts.
So everybody needs to go out and get that.
(37:28):
And you're awesome.
It's great to talk with
Oh, my pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Predicting what many believe is unpredictable, speaking about what is often unspeakable,my guest today does both.
In 2018, she accurately predicted the size of the blue wave.
In 2020, she was one of the first to say Donald Trump was destined for defeat.
These days, she's trying to help Democrats get their messaging act together, which isreally, really important.
(00:25):
She is Rachel Bidicoffer, PhD.
Welcome to the show, Rachel.
Oh, Amy, it's such a deep pleasure for me to be here, especially.
to engage with you and your audience.
I come from a military family.
I'm a civilian.
My husband is an Iraq war vet, but my father was a Navy cryptologist.
(00:46):
So, you know, I have military background.
So I'm very excited to be here with this community today because I believe the militarycommunity, ex and current, is probably going to be the most important people, group of
people that we have in this country going forward.
m
I appreciate that and your dad's service as well and and yours, know your life or youradult life has been spent talking to to voters talking to the American people you're sort
(01:15):
of your strategist and a national political analyst and you're somebody that believes thatDemocrats need to uh Speak a little more bluntly shall we say about how to how to fight
this sort of authoritarian
bent of the other side and when you have a uh book called hit him where it hurts you havea best selling some stack called the cycle and that's what you do right now is that
(01:42):
correct.
Yeah, that's all I do.
I mean, just for a little context for people who've never heard of me, which should bemost of your audience, I got a PhD in political.
I just wanted to be a lazy professor.
Okay.
I wanted to work and have summers off and publish here.
Next thing I know, I'm running this polling firm, but really what changed everything wasthe escalator ride of Donald Trump in 2015.
(02:05):
That happened in June of 2015, the same time of year, in fact, almost to the day that Iwas defending.
a dissertation that was on polarization in the United States.
Back then, 10 years, just 10 years ago, the scholarly community that I was a part of, weknew that the polarization thing was bad.
(02:27):
It wasn't a good thing.
It had only arisen one time before, and that was the Civil War.
We knew things would be bad, but never in 10 years could any of us, even on the Cassandraof all of us, right?
Could any of us have predicted that we'd be on the precipice of democratic collapse in theyear of 2025 and that thus is where we find ourselves.
(02:48):
So I really reconditioned my career to uh try to wake people up to the threat prior to itactually being here where you can see it because unfortunately what my research, I've been
studying the third rake for five years now has found.
is that it's hard to get, people cannot panic until it's way too late.
And that's where we're at right now in this country.
(03:10):
We see it every day.
Well, I want to start out by talking about messaging and I have my own opinions on thisand branding in particular, but it's often been said that Republicans, and this is not,
you know, me saying this and I'll tell you my opinion in a minute, but the Republicanshave an easier time messaging to their base because their base is less diverse.
(03:34):
Whereas Democrats struggle with messaging because they have this diverse coalition.
So
I'll tell you my opinion in a second, but I wanted to get yours.
Does that reasoning hold true or is it more sort of just electoral folk wisdom?
No, it's not.
It's absolutely true.
When I used to teach political behavior and campaigns and elections, this is one of thethings I would focus on.
(03:57):
And this comes from some great research from a friend of mine and his co-writer, Matt uhGrossman.
what it talks about, okay, to answer your question, yes, we have a homogenous politicalparty and it is now regionally centered in the South, right?
So 50 years ago, the South was as Democrat as it is currently today, Republican.
(04:19):
uh
And because that has made it almost a completely white, it's a white party, frankly, it'sbeen, the Republican party has always been robustly white, but now it's really like the
party of white identity politics, which is a backlash to our side of the identity politicscrusades.
And because of that, Amy, I'm so glad you mentioned this, because I talk about this in thebook.
(04:41):
I explained it a little bit more deeply if you want to.
get that background, but I want to focus on what that means right now, because I thinkthat's what Amy's trying to get at.
What it means is over our 20 years of Obama and the emergence of digital technologies,especially that gave you the ability to micro target, our thought was, now we have all
(05:03):
these diverse groups in our coalition and it's not an ideological movement.
The Democratic Party is not an ideological party.
is a...
party of group interest that have banded together in a coalition to kind of push theirinterests together.
The Republicans have always been the ideological movement until recently.
Right now it's a cult, right?
(05:23):
But it used to be really about uh Cold War, fiscal conservative, free market.
I it's really not what the modern GOP is about, right?
Right.
actually quite the opposite now.
Yeah, I mean, which is, know, if I could, my father was alive, he just be horrified.
Right?
So, you know, so what we did, you know, that caused a divergence until that time Democratsand Republicans kind of did electioneering.
(05:50):
Basically the same Republicans were always better at it because they were always had theability to do, to do racism, dog whistles to win conservatives.
Right.
But, but they got really much, much better at it because
They went onto the strategy that I've built for the Democrats in 2004 when they took JohnKerry, who was a Vietnam War vet hero.
(06:11):
And what did they do?
They swift vote that veteran for truth, his war record.
Yeah.
And that was the first time that people strategists, and this is a Carl Rhodes special,right?
Realized, oh, there's a different way to do persuasion, right?
Up until then.
persuasion was about selling the better product of two.
(06:33):
From that moment on for Republicans, persuasion became disqualify the other option and winby default.
And so by 2010, they have institutionalized that within a year of the great recession thatthey caused, they win 63 house seats, right?
And they do it on this strategy.
We, on the other hand, were taking, embracing this tech.
(06:56):
And we're like, okay, we'll talk to women about this and Latinos about that and da da dada da da da da da.
Well, here's the problem.
When you are talking about everything, you're talking about nothing.
And if you read my book, you'll understand why.
And so most Americans don't follow any news.
don't even know who their state's federal senators are.
(07:16):
They don't realize there's a state legislature.
I know that sounds insane, but in the book, I'm going to show you that.
uh A lot of America doesn't pay attention to politics and Republicans understand then thatthese wedge campaigns around one theme that are very loud are what you need to get
through, right?
And they're so good at it, right?
(07:37):
I mean, look what they did to Clinton.
When I ran a poll in 2020 for Clinton and Trump, and we all know that Trump lies,literally every time he opens his mouth, the word that popped up when voters thought of
Hillary Clinton, the largest word in my word cloud was liar.
Okay.
And she was running against a guy who at that point already was a serial liar.
So we, we have to stop that urge.
(08:00):
And what my work in the book does is it says, look, no matter what micro group you'refocused on, that's great.
When you have power, you can take care of everybody, but you run on a strategy on themost, what is your opponent's biggest weakness?
And then you run against that and you run hard at it, right?
Like it was a George Patton strategy.
(08:21):
for politics, okay?
Right.
What I'm trying to sell here, blood and guts, Yeah.
Super interesting because Democrats, you know, we do have this big coalition.
So it, you often hear, Hey, Democrats don't have a cohesive message.
They don't have it, but you're, you're saying, I mean, I don't know.
Are you saying that every candidate that runs needs to pick, you know, one thing and go atit hard, but recognize that overall it's not going to be the same thing.
(08:57):
for each race?
Is that sort of what you're saying?
It doesn't need to be the same exact wedge, but the wedge is this.
Here's the problem.
The reason they win and they beat us even with terrible candidates like JD Vance againstwonderful people like Tim Ryan or, you know, the new guy that beat um Sherrod Brown, which
is John Tester, two of our best senators, right?
So obviously something's happening.
(09:18):
What's happening there, right?
Is that they're finding one thing and they are wedging and Tester's a moderate, Brown's amoderate.
They're both never have been socialist.
They don't want to mutilate children's genitalia.
But they are defined that way because the brand of the D and the R on the ballot are themost important things on the ballot, even more important than the candidates name, which I
(09:40):
know is crazy for candidates to hear.
But because we have low info, we have this strong partisanship effect that people have tohave to deal with.
So why do we lose?
Well, we're running about how great we are.
They're running about how terrible we are in a very effective megaphone.
Sniper, not shotgun, right?
(10:00):
Sniper effect.
We're shotgunning.
Diversity, this, that, blah, blah, blah.
They're snipering always.
CRT, Biden's age, whatever it is, right?
And so what we want to be doing is making sure that Susan Collins doesn't go through theelection next year without the swing voters of Maine finding out that she is not actually
(10:23):
a moderate, right?
So what we have to...
do in David Schweickart and the House is a great example of this.
uh He serves in Arizona CD1.
He's an extremist.
votes for the most.
He voted to ban IVF, dude, but his voters have no idea.
So, accept the voters know nothing.
Understand that they will know only the thing that you pay to know them.
(10:46):
Okay?
So, if they're running against us,
And we're running against us.
I'm not one of those Democrats.
I'm different.
Blah, blah.
My party is definitely messed up working class people.
No, it hasn't.
Okay.
Stop.
What you need to do is make the race about Susan Collins.
Is Susan Collins promised the voters of Maine that she would make good decisions?
(11:10):
Did she make a good decision when she voted to confirm RFK Jr.
to the whole thing?
Did she make a good decision?
No, she's an extremist hiding in moderates clothing.
And we think swing voters just all read the news and they're following everything.
Well, I guarantee you guys, I don't know what state you're in, but unless you're in DC,LA, San Fran, Chicago, New York, you can't just walk out on the streets and find people to
(11:35):
talk about Speaker Mike Johnson, okay?
I mean, Eugene is a very educated place.
I can't go to the grocery store after a 15 vote, you know, speaker vote and go in and seethe guy walking next to me and be like, did you see that speaker vote?
Holy shit.
Right.
Like he would have no idea what I was talking about.
(11:55):
Right.
So think about, think about how effective that propaganda system becomes.
when people don't have a well of reservoir to protect them from it, right?
And understand that what they're going to say about you, doesn't matter who you are.
He can be an ex-military crab fishing, whatever, right?
But what's going to matter is that D and that R and either you got to shit on the R and upbrand the D and that is exactly opposite of what we do in our swing races right now.
(12:24):
Most of them, ones I can't get my hands on.
No, it's really fascinating because I mean, you are spending a lot of time trying to pushback on all the narratives with the branding that Republicans have done so well.
um You know, when I ran against McConnell, I always said to people, I wasn't just runningthat year.
(12:47):
was running against decades of branding of that D in the state.
so, you know, my military background and
stances were good and important, but like you're also running against that.
And not to say that it can't, you know, break through.
(13:07):
I think it can.
One of the things that we often hear about is um candidates needing to run away from thatnational party piece, you know?
And I think that, or does that present a challenge?
I mean, as you just talked about,
early.
You're saying Democrats just don't even...
(13:31):
Well, defensive, dude.
my God, George Patton would hate it all.
Wouldn't he?
I he was an offensive guy.
Offense, offensive.
You're not on offense, you're losing.
And that's the fact of American politics in a propaganda system with a digital tool thatemerged like radio in the 1920s and was leveraged by people with not good intentions to
confuse the mind of the general public, right?
(13:52):
In Wisconsin, Ben Wickler is a big fan of negative partisanship.
The Wisconsin and Arizona Democrats have been embracing it.
Adrian Fontes used it to run for Arizona's secretary of state against an actualinsurrectionist.
Okay.
And he outperformed Mark Kelly in some of the precincts.
Okay.
Mark Kelly, who's who's, who sailed because it's NASA, NASA's a fit.
(14:16):
Right.
So, and that was against the midterm effect.
So in a cycle when Arizona should have turned red, we held the whole state on negativepartisanship.
The Wisconsin state Supreme Court race is more recent.
So if anybody listening to this or yourself, watch that race play out.
Go look at the ads.
What you'll see from the Crawford campaign is the exact campaign that I'm trying toconstruct across the swing map.
(14:42):
And what it did was it focused on her opponent as an opponent focused strategy on the paidmedia.
The only thing that matters is the paid media.
I know that seems weird.
But the people who come to your speeches, people who watch a debate on TV for the Senate,I'm talking about maybe 5 % of your state watching that debate, right?
So what matters, what matters is the paid ad strategy.
(15:06):
And right now what's emerging is our 2026 new version of sucking, which is affordability,which of course is what we should run on, right?
We should have a wedge campaign about one thing, promises made, promises broken.
Right.
And it's easy to go to whichever promise.
I'm going to take care of your health broken.
I'm going to take care of your money.
I'm going to make things lower.
They're higher.
(15:27):
Right.
They're such huge.
Right.
But I've seen some affordability ads, frankly, that don't even mention Donald Trump.
Like, why create that product as a $50,000 ad that's going to be useless.
OK.
So it's not enough to go and tell people both parties like screwed you over.
You're doing the Republicans.
(15:47):
work for them.
What we need to do now is come in and say, yeah, you should be angry.
I'm angry.
You should be angry too.
And let me tell you why.
Because for 50 years, the Republican party has built this economic model that was called,they knew what it was going to do because they called it Voodoo Economics.
And what it did was it gutted our middle class and it gutted rural America.
(16:10):
Right.
And that's the record I want people to run on.
Not on
You know, Mitch McConnell was corrupt.
He takes money from China.
Whoopty shit.
Voter doesn't care.
Voter thinks Amy McGrath not not fair, but thinks Amy McGrath is just as corrupt as MitchMcConnell because they're politicians and the public hates politicians.
Right.
So we're not selling a Toyota or versus a Ford, right?
(16:33):
Products that people like and want.
We do things that people are predispositioned, even if they bothered to vote, which halfthe country doesn't, to not necessarily like.
Right?
So why, when you're trying to sell this person, you're talking about you and 80 % of yourads are all about this, right?
80, 90 % of their ads are going to be Rachel Bidicoff remunerates children.
(16:55):
She wants immigrants, migrants to come and kill your family.
She's a socialist.
I mean, this is literally what goes in their ads, right?
So we have, and yet what happens, Amy, they win swing races all the time on that strategy.
So somehow we're supposed to believe.
that the psychology of the electorate will only accept that kind of messaging fromRepublicans, right?
(17:20):
And we're not special people.
the research, like I call them the research cabal who sucks all of our distribution moneyfor paid ads on research has done many, many research things to prove that voters don't
want to listen about partisanship.
Of course not.
Voters say that all the time in polling.
I'm a polling expert, okay?
(17:41):
Voters hate negative ads all the time.
And then the next question is, what do you know about the candidate?
Guess what the one thing is that they know?
The negative ad, right?
So those negative ads are extremely potent and powerful.
And the only way back to power is to rebrand us back to the working class and rebrand themas the people who ruined your life.
(18:08):
And it's real too, because right now, like the policies are insanely bad for the everydayAmerican, the everyday Kentuckian with tariffs and with healthcare and ripping away, you
know, uh benefits, Medicaid and SNAP and all of that stuff.
I mean, it's really bad.
(18:30):
And then all of the stuff that the president is doing that is just shredding ourconstitution.
But I hear you in the sense that voters, many voters are not following this all the time.
And um some of these messages, really have to, you really have to pick one or two and, andgo at it and really make the race about how bad the other side is.
(18:58):
Right?
mean, think about CRT in 2021, which is really, please, if can hear my voice, I beg you,please read the book.
You don't have to buy it.
Get it from a library.
Get it for free.
I don't care.
Read the book.
The reason I need you to read the book is so that you can help us stop what's coming.
And when you read this book, you're going to realize pretty quickly, like, oh, OK, youknow, the way that we do things are counterproductive.
(19:21):
Like there's a current to the electorate is is like you think of it as an ocean.
Right.
And what they do in the ocean of psychiatry of loss aversion is a very powerfulpsychological effect on humans.
Loss aversion, right?
And what that means is like something that gets taken from you, right?
And you think about how Republicans have framed this, you know, in 23rd year branding war,it's really a bit about Democrats are taking America from you, right?
(19:47):
So it's all loss aversion trigger.
And the reason why it works so well instead of, you know, our beautiful policy plans.
is that the voter, we're talking in a cerebral policy way that's rational, fact-based andlogical.
And that's because we are rational, fact-based and logical people, right?
But we tell the truth, right?
(20:11):
And we are up against an opponent that does not tell the truth.
And the nice thing about running against Susan Collins is you don't have to lie, okay?
You just have to understand the people of Maine
Not all of them, but many of the swing vote electorate that will come in and decide thatmain election has no idea that Susan Collins did some of these terrible things.
(20:33):
And they will never hear it unless the Democratic nominee uses the only money availablebecause it's, you know, you and I both know super PACs are hard to fund, right?
Most of that money is going to go into the candidates and the campaigns.
So if they're wasting the money doing Harris's joy and opportunity economy crap,
and throwing up ads to win white voters that are, you know, there's no white people in thead.
(20:57):
mean, hello, we have a racist, bigoted and sexist electorate.
Okay.
And I'm not saying that to insult it.
I'm saying it as a political scientist to say, don't swim against the current.
Okay.
You're not going to cure racism and elect Kamala Harris.
(21:18):
If you're making votes or ads to target swing Republican districts or districts that arepredominantly white suburbanites, you've got to have white people in the ads.
Okay.
You can't be saying stuff like pregnant person.
Okay.
And all this wonky googly goob.
I it's cringe, dude.
Okay.
(21:38):
The snapping shit, the land acknowledgements.
Our party is cringe AF as anybody who's been...
not a partisan, but has come into our party.
We know there are problems within our party that are exploited to make us look bad.
Okay.
So I'm not saying we don't need some policy moderation.
(22:00):
We need to be able to say Joe Biden f**ked up.
He should have shut that border down right after the surge started.
Okay.
And we need to be able to say we should get a national voter ID.
It's 2025.
Everyone has ID.
Black people even vote in polls support.
voter ID.
And the reason, friends, that we need it is because they're going to claim 2028 was stolenfrom them by illegals.
(22:23):
And that's how you can crush that myth.
But we're not going to do that because, God forbid, we help them do national voter ID.
So they're going to have this excuse to use against us.
As I listen to you, you're very much an offensive and negative strategy towards formessaging.
And I get that.
Believe me, I get that.
(22:46):
However, um you do hear people, and I do hear this a lot, that candidates also need tohave a vision for the future.
can't just be running an anti them.
strategy.
Do you agree with that?
(23:06):
I totally disagree with it.
That's the prevailing wisdom that I'm up against.
For five years, those well-paid consultants that you're referring to have perpetuatedmyths that they have created themselves and made a shit ton of money on perpetuating.
Yes, obviously, if you're running for office, you have to have a vision and a positiveplatform.
(23:31):
That's what your stump speech is all about.
You're not going to go out there.
I mean, I would recommend having some fire and fury in your stump speech right now,because especially if you're in Democratic nomination fight, because what does America
want right now?
America, the rest of us, we want a leader, right?
We're terrified.
Where's our goddamn Winston Churchill, right?
(23:51):
And that's, Gavin Newsom's gonna be our Winston Churchill if nothing else emerges, right?
But at least the public's gonna rally behind this guy because there's the one thing wewant.
mean, my God, it sounds so weird to me to have a debate.
about abundance and populism and the New York mayor shit.
Like, why the house is literally on fire, guys.
(24:12):
mean, the house now.
down.
totally agree with you about that.
I'm so tired of that kind of stuff.
It is mind blowing.
mean, we need to we need leaders and there's so many people and it's not just in politics.
But I think what's scaring to scaring a lot of people is, know, universities are caving,businesses are caving, uh know, lawyers, all that.
(24:38):
There's people are living in fear right now.
And this is true in the military.
I mean, I read articles all the time about, you know, firing of or the removal of, youknow, the three star Admiral, for example, at the Naval Academy read and read an article
today that talked about 200 alumni from um one particular class.
(25:02):
I think it was her class who stepped up and wrote a letter and basically said this, thisis wrong.
You know, a good percentage of those who wrote that letter.
there wasn't even published letter, where we wanted to remain anonymous for fear ofretribution.
And they said that in there, retribution is real.
(25:22):
And so I bring that back to this idea that we absolutely crave and need leaders right nowwho will step up against this stuff because it is completely un-American.
But I want to ask you also about a particular policy issue and it's one that
That is in the news a lot right now.
(25:43):
I think it may be like the policy issue that the other side, it appears is going to berunning on, which is crime.
Okay.
And I've always felt like Republicans don't give a shit about crime.
oh Is BS when you um are, are behind the people that took batons and used American flagpolls to,
(26:11):
spear cops on January 6th and then you raised money and then you supported a guy thatpardoned, you know, 1500 of these criminals and all of that stuff.
But yet it is still there.
And so what are your thoughts on this and messaging for
Yeah, mean, this is their power.
(26:31):
want people to understand.
Now people are more receptive.
Last year I was having these conversations all across the state with Democrats saying,we've got to do this.
We're running.
We're in power now, so they hate us.
We have to run this strategy.
Now people are kind of receptive to it, right?
And part of that strategy has to be, I think,
(26:53):
increasing and enhancing.
We have a realignment and a de-alignment in our electorate.
Again, read the book and you'll get some more information.
the Democratic Party 50 years ago was the rural party of the South.
Okay?
Now it's the city party of like the North and the West, the two coasts, right?
And so the parties have transitioned a lot.
(27:16):
And we talk all the time about the degradation or the erosion of
what we call white working class voters.
But when we talk about class folks, want you to understand pollsters are really talkingabout education, college education versus not.
Why?
Because even if you have a college education, you're better inoculated to propaganda.
(27:36):
You have a better appreciation for why rights for all have to be protected for everyone tohave rights and all this other stuff that you get from a college education.
so, you know, number one,
that decline of the working class is not entirely organic.
Some of it was triggered by the Southern realignment and the end of segregation, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.
But now a lot of it is triggered by a billion dollar propaganda campaign that the rightwas very smart when I said they embraced the new technology of the internet and understood
(28:08):
its capacity to reach the human brain, just like the Nazis understood the capacity of thenew invention of the radio.
to get directly to people's brains.
And they were very shrewd and they have a lot of billionaires that spend a lot of money oninfrastructure.
And so those white working class voters, you know, first it started in the South andspread to the Midwest and now it's everywhere.
(28:32):
They've been told very strategically not to like us.
Like, they're just inundated all the time with the freakiest things they can find on theinternet.
You know, Hamas lovers, you know, defacing the Liberty Bell or
know, the scariest, weirdest looking trans people, right?
And it's so easy to exploit.
(28:52):
And they're so good at it that when we look at Virginia in 2021, in January of 2021 toOctober of 2021, there was this thing called CRT and it didn't even really exist.
Nobody knew what I was.
oh
know what CRT was until the first time Christopher.
(29:15):
That was like the head injury thing.
Yeah, me too.
So, you know, but they took that thing.
And so like number one, CRT, race in schools, not coming up on your 20 most importantissues.
Okay.
If you're pulling Virginia and you're like, we would be like, what should we run on?
affordability.
Right.
They were like, we're going to, we, governor Yonkin is a sweater vest wearing businessguy.
(29:39):
Okay.
So if he was our guy, he'd be like, Oh Glenn, your strength is the economy and let's makesure you do this and that and that.
No, on their side, evil people get paid and they control the campaigns.
Okay.
They don't get to sit on the sidelines like I do.
And somebody over there was like, Glenn, think we could win this.
It's a, by now a bluish state is purple, blueish, right?
(30:00):
So in 2021, Virginia had been going blue, blue, blue, blue, blue.
And suddenly it swings back to Republican.
We think we can win if we all run on this thing called CRT.
And we took the debate, the bait, right?
So they,
Instead of being all high minded and having to win the right way, they just want to winshit.
(30:20):
That's all they want to do.
They want to win and they plot war to win.
not plot war to win while being nice and making sure I have a vision and doing this andthat and union things and you know, a diverse staff and all this shit.
No, they just want to win.
Right.
So like that's Mr.
Strategic creep into mission creep.
Everyone in the chat probably knows what I'm talking about.
(30:41):
You don't want mission creep like that.
Right.
And so they got them all to do it.
Glenn Youngkin and the two other statewide candidates and all of the Republican House ofDelegates pounded, pounded CRT.
National News picks it up, starts talking about what do we do?
What we always do.
Well, it's not real and actually it's a legal theory that's never taught in any lawschools.
And even if it was, let's talk about race in America.
(31:03):
We had MSNBC humming for like two months about defense, defense, defense, right?
And meanwhile, I'm texting Jamie Harrison.
I'm like,
I launch a counter offense.
I can do this for you.
Right?
Like we can do it cheap.
Like, my God.
And they didn't.
So think about what I'm saying.
Sniper strategy, one issue.
(31:25):
And they defined every Democrat in Virginia that cycle around that one issue.
our minds, the voters don't care or know what that is.
Voters knew what it meant.
Okay.
They understood that to them, what they were hearing
is they want to make your kids feel bad about being white.
Okay?
That's what CRT means.
So doesn't matter if they can define it.
(31:46):
And we can do show the stump video of the dumb people are like, I don't know what it is.
I just hate it.
Right?
Right.
the end of the day, they understood what it meant.
It was a dog whistle for they want to make you feel bad about being white.
Right?
And so they're going to do that with crime.
They don't have a lot they can do because Trump screwed them on terrorists.
Right?
If he would have just not done anything to the economy.
(32:07):
The economy would be getting better and better because it was already pretty good andgoing better and better with Biden.
And then he couldn't make an all the credit for it.
And he already does.
He's like, you know, he would he's good at that, but he screwed himself.
And now they can't run.
They're going to have a real problem if we come and say he lied to you.
He's going to make shit cheaper and he made it more expensive.
Right.
(32:28):
He got rich.
He got he got paid.
You got played.
Right.
I mean, he's five billion dollars.
Right.
So, you know, I think.
I think it's important for people to know, just because something doesn't, they tooksomething that didn't even exist and made it the number one issue for a year.
uh That's the power of their-
I crime isn't a problem.
(32:50):
yeah, no, so you flip and pivot and attack.
It's actually better than it used to be.
it's like, now all of sudden, the president, the Republicans are saying that this is a,he's going to call a national emergency, I think.
He's just waiting to break Drake's Sack fire away.
(33:10):
Right.
Yes.
But as somebody, can't say it's not real because there is crime.
Yes, of course there is.
that's why they understand that we're cerebral and we'll respond exactly how you'veresponded, which totally makes sense in any normal world in any normal country.
We are not living in a normal world, man.
(33:31):
We have Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard is the DNI and holy shit, We're the bottom ofabnormality.
don't even recognize what's abnormal anymore.
What's so abnormal, right?
So, you know, what I would tell you is the instinct is to be like, well,
you, crimes actually lower, right?
To do all the things we did with CRT.
(33:52):
That's our instinct and they know it and that's why they feed that shit to us because ourdumb consultant class will be like, we can't just pretend crime is not an issue and the
worries that you express, but you're reasonable things in a reasonable world.
But we're not talking about reason and we're not talking about a reasonable world.
So instead, every time they mentioned crime, boy, how do you want to talk about crime?
(34:16):
Let's talk about crime.
mean, we have a guy sitting in the White House who's a surreal, serial criminal, right?
We have a Republican party that's run the biggest heist in America, and they just got theworking class to vote for a guy who took their money and gave it to Elon Musk, right?
Like, instead of, see how I'm on offense now, Amy, and I'm not on defense?
(34:36):
So you can say, crime?
Oh, you want to talk about crime?
ah You know, school safety, the shit with kids and the trans crap, same difference.
You...
want to tell me in America, you want to protect children?
You have voted 39 times against banning assault weapons.
Do you know what an assault weapon does to a child's body when the bullets enter it?
(34:58):
Like, see, I have changed the whole conversation.
And now what do they have to do?
They have to defend.
They have to defend themselves.
And if we can't get them and keep them in that posture next year and in 2028, then we are
I mean, we have to try to win, right?
We can talk about whether that election is going to be certified, but I will tell you guysthis.
(35:18):
Can you imagine a Republican, this Republican party as it currently is constituted, iflet's say they're going to gerrymander some districts and we fail because we run weak
affordability stuff and we think people are more excited than they are, right?
Let's say they control the house.
Is that Republican house going to certify?
(35:40):
the 2028 election.
No, they are not.
Like we know they will not.
All right.
So like this battle of 2026, I mean, the real battle was 2024.
I wanted to win that battle so we wouldn't have to have war.
Okay.
Which goes back, and I have to end on this, but it goes back to this real need to haveleaders with courage.
(36:02):
It does.
up.
And so we need to keep at it.
And I so appreciate this conversation.
Let's continue it because I really want to hear from you as things progress here.
This is so important and you're doing tremendous work.
If people want to follow you, Rachel, where do they go?
(36:22):
So I'm at Rachel Biddecoffer on Twitter on blue sky.
It's R-A-C-H-E-L-B-I-T-E-C as in cat, O-F as in Frank, E-R, and I'm the only one.
Like there's no other Biddecoffers, because no one would want that monstrosity as a name.
So I'm pretty easy to find.
I really urge the most important homework I can give you guys is to read the book.
(36:45):
And a lot of the people who listen to this probably are connected in the securityapparatus.
There's never been a dearth of money in the national security world.
I know there's money out there.
If you happen to have some and you want to use it to wage a patent-style rhetorical war,reach out to Amy and let's talk about it.
(37:07):
The thing that you can do is you can fund effective strategic messaging that fights themin the trenches.
That's what I'm trying to build.
I'm so excited to have talked to you about it today.
That's awesome.
Thank you for that work, Rachel.
We're going to keep listening.
Your book is Hit Him Where It Hurts.
So everybody needs to go out and get that.
(37:28):
And you're awesome.
It's great to talk with
Oh, my pleasure.
Thank you so much.
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