College Democrats President Sunjay Muralitharan talks fighting the GOP and mobilizing Gen Z

In this week's episode, hosts Beleh and Dylan sit down with College Democrats President Sunjay Muralitharan to discuss how Democrats can effectively counter the GOP and win back support from young voters, especially young men.

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Hey everyone, it's the Progressive Podcast.
Dylan, you know you want to do the introduction.
I'm gonna throw it to you. Sure, Sir.
Belay, I'll do the intro. Welcome to the Progressive
podcast. My name is Belay and or my name
is not Belay. My name is Dylan.
I'm joined by Belay and we are joined by Sanjay, the president
of the College Democrats, and weare excited to talk about how we

(00:31):
can improve as Democrats and be be better in the upcoming
midterms. But do you want to introduce
yourself where you're from your your horrible basketball team if
you want to talk about it? Only of course.
So my name is Sanjay. As Dylan mentioned, I'm the
current president of the CollegeDemocrats of America.
We're pretty much arguably the largest grass roots Democratic
leaning organization in the country.
We have approximately 500 chapters across the nation.

(00:55):
I'm from Fremont, CA, but I go to school in UC San Diego and as
Dylan said, I'm a fan of the greatest basketball team of all
time, the Golden State Warriors.The.
Question is, do you do you have Luca Doncic on your team though
I. I OK, well.
You have Butler, just give it like a year and a half and he'll
he'll throw, he'll throw a fit and and go sign with another

(01:16):
team at some point. I don't know.
I think, I think him and Draymond, they're going to bond.
They're going to bond. OK, yeah, I could see it.
You know, they're both both fiery personalities.
But hey, the the Nets almost gotyou guys.
I, I have to believe that that if the Nets almost got you a
first round playoff series, you're you're gone.
You're wiped out. Yeah, I mean, I I think we've
we've had a good enough history in this past decade.

(01:36):
So I feel like everything else is a slice of them.
OK, OK. Yeah, I'm.
Not a hostile argument I I hear it I.
Hear it. I I, you know what?
That's, that's the real Poly Cy.Are you Poly Cy?
Major? What's your major?
Yeah, that's that's the Poly sign major.
And I mean, it's like, well, youknow, we did this in the past
and give us a break. It's kind of funny, but no.
Sanjay, thank you for joining us.
I know that we've been we're excited to have you and Dylan, I

(01:58):
like I said earlier, we actuallymet at Bruin Democrats here at
UCLA. You're the president of, I'm
guessing also UCSD. What do you guys call yourself
the the Tri in what do you guys again?
Yeah, we're Tritons, Yeah. Yeah, the Tri in Democrats, is
that what you guys call yourselves or yes?
Which is the. UCSC Dems, Yeah.
And so I kind of want to start out with that and how you got
involved in politics. What led you to, you know,

(02:20):
become politically active, and how did you get to the point
where you're the president of, as you said, the largest
grassroots Democratic organization in the country?
So the original story is kind offunny.
I'm a little embarrassed, I'm being honest.
So my mom was really interested in like the 2020 elections and
she was following the first everHindu to ever run for president.
And I don't know if you guys know this.

(02:41):
That person was then Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.
Oh yeah. To a Tulsi Gabbard rally, I
wasn't a huge fan of her specifically, but I was just
interested in like, I was like, oh, this is really cool.
I was like 16. Then I kind of fell into a
rabbit hole kind of just diving in and, and seeing like kind of
being so interested, wow, look at this massive field of
different candidates. And at that time I kind of

(03:04):
gravitated towards Andrew Yang, largely because he showed me
that you could just be a regulardude with good ideas and get
involved in politics, you know, And I think that kind of made me
realize, hey, why don't I try? And then I came to UC San Diego
looking for ways to get involved.
And what I found is like, you guys did my local college
Democrats club and there I kind of worked internally, kind of

(03:24):
rebuilt our club. We started off with like three
members when I came in. Now we're at like 25 active span
of two years. So it's been pretty good.
I started off the director of comms there, then the vice
president and I later joined thestatewide level.
I was recruited to run for San Diego regional director.
And then I, as a whim, I just DMEd, the V, the current VP of all
Democrats of America a year later on LinkedIn.

(03:46):
I was like, hey, can I get in? And he plugged me in and it
incrementally rose up the ranks there, became vice president
through an appointment after we impeached our vice president.
Something I can get into later, if you're interested.
And then kind of built up, worked alongside our states,
kind of do the best that we could to advocate for Vice
President Harris and Democrats across the ballot.

(04:07):
And while things didn't go our way, I was able to build a lot
of strong relationships with lawless state leaders.
And that kind of allowed me to become the president with very
little opposition. Yeah, Yeah.
I think I where I want to start is you.
You mentioned briefly that you started with three members of
your UCSD Democratic club. What, what, how, how did you

(04:30):
find the motivation to get people politically involved,
especially on a college campus where most students are going to
be Democratic and in a state where everyone's left-leaning?
How do you get people motivated to actually go into their
communities and start that process of reaching out to
voters and having those conversations on college
campuses that we want to be having of?

(04:51):
Course. Well, there's two major ways.
I think the first thing is that a lot of students especially
call students of our age are looking to build up their
careers and politics. And to me, the number one way
that I will say, if you want to get a job in politics post grad,
you join your college Democrats chapter because by joining
there, you're put into like an internal group that is
incredibly well connected withinyour county parties and the
local officials around there. Even though we had three

(05:13):
members, all elected officials in San Diego from Todd Gloria to
members of the City Council knewwho call us Democrats were.
So it's just it's an easy sell to be like, hey, you know, you
might not think that it's important to get involved, but
if you want to build your career, you this is like the
place to start. That's one.
I think the second part is just making it clear that local
elections matter too. And even though San Diego is

(05:34):
largely, I mean we have all blueCity Council right now and our
US Board supervisors is like A32blue majority despite.
That I interned for the Republican on there back when I
was 15 1/2. Oh awesome.
That's that's I'm glad that I don't.
Have to deal with that. Yeah, Yeah.
What's the thing? Yeah.
So kind of kind of to Blair's point, it can always shift,

(05:57):
right. Well, and we saw our vaguely
swing district and that's kind of why we just stay involved.
Yeah, I think you nailed it. And being from San Diego, I I
understand the local politics ofSan Diego is a little
complicated. We used to actually be pretty
red. I think Bush won San Diego.
If I'm not mistaken, it was Obama who flipped it.
Ever since then it's been, it's been pretty blue, but it depends

(06:19):
where you're at. I'm from East County where it's
a lot more mixed. You have a lot of Republicans
out in Lakeside and Alpine and growing up, my state senator, So
this day, not to this day, actually, it just changed two
years ago. My state senator was a
Republican. So I wanted to get involved in
politics and I interned for my state senator and we actually
focused on constituent services.And that's when I started to
love public service. So I think what you bring up is

(06:40):
a good point, like get involved locally and look, the the
president of College Democrats is saying this, you know, so I
think, you know, you're shit. So people kind of are, we have,
I know some people that can think that, you know, local
elections don't matter. Can you talk a little bit about
that and how local elections canimpact people's everyday lives?
We, of course, I, I think there's kind of this general

(07:00):
auspice that we feel that, oh, that the guy at the top is the
one who makes the big decisions.But in reality, you know, our
governing system is inherently structured as a federalist
system. And because of that, we have
statewide and local governments that are actively defending
against, you know, they assaulted the Trump
administration and kind of by building the bench locally and
city councils and mayor offices and state senators were able to,

(07:22):
even though it might seem like, you know, what we're doing right
now, we'll have people on the ground locally who are actively
defending our rights as Trump attempts to take them for us.
Right, yeah. And I feel like that ground
game, especially as young peoplewho have the energy to just go
and canvas for 8 hours on a weekend or anything like that is
super important. What, what is what are the main

(07:44):
strategies that you are utilizing when you are helping
with local races? Is it social media?
Is it is the ground game? Is it going dorm to dorm trying
to get people to sign up to register to vote is what is?
What does your strategy look like?
I think it varies per campus. I think in a campus like UC San
Diego, for example, dorm storming isn't as effective just
because we're not the most civically inclined campus.

(08:05):
But I think in kind of the the more Midwestern schools like
MSU, that's kind of been a common tactic that we've used
there. But I think what makes college
Democrats the strong, one of thestrongest organizations is our
grassroots network. Like right now, we're busting
our chapters in Minnesota and Illinois up to Wisconsin to help
out the Supreme Court race there.
So kind of, you know, as you mentioned before, us young

(08:26):
people, we can move. We can move bodies.
So I think that's number one. I think #2 a lot of it is social
media. I'm sure you follow or you may
follow our page both on Twitter and on Instagram.
We have 14K followers on Instagram, 43 K on Twitter, and
we kind of are constantly engaging in new media there.
And also lastly, something that I'm personally passionate about

(08:47):
is, you know, going on podcasts like this, my thing is always
like, I'll talk to anyone from the New York Times to someone in
high school, you know, because Ithink it's important that we
engage with all audiences where they're at.
I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that we made
last election cycle. Totally echo that I think that
as Democrats, we need to be ableto reflect and realize that

(09:10):
we've become in some ways a party of restrictions when it
comes to allowing people into the party and, and how and who
we're going to speak to. And I think like an example of
that is, you know, Joe Rogan andand the Harris campaign.
And I know that they tried, I know there's campaign tried to
go on, but a lot of a lot of, you know, a lot of a lot of
strings attached. And I think that what I tell

(09:31):
Democrats all the time and the people that we've had on the
we've had a couple Congress people now on the podcast is
that, look, you're not going on these podcasts and necessarily
become friends with the hosts. You're not going to go get like
coffee with them afterwards. You're going to these podcasts
because their audiences matter, right?
And those and their audience forthe most part, for example, just

(09:52):
take Joe Rogan, for example. They're hearing a lot of right
wing stuff on their audience. You know, they're audience
hearing a lot of right wing stuff.
So when they go and vote for Trump, can we really blame them
if us as Democrats and people onthe left aren't willing to go
speak in places where we may notbe welcomed at first, but we're
going there to speak to voters, to people.
So I think we kind of need to get out.
I always say this. We need to get out of our
fucking bubble, dude. Like where we are this in some

(10:15):
ways, I, I am in, I am too. I'm from San Diego, so like, we
are this coastal elite. That doesn't mean we aren't
struggling. I would be like, oh, well,
you're from the coastal, you're from the coast and you aren't
struggling. We are this coastal leader.
So going and speaking to regularpeople and going on platforms
like Theo Von, just to name dropa couple things that aren't
inherently political, but when politics is brought up there,
it's usually only one side that's going and speaking to

(10:36):
those people. Yeah, and I just like echoing
Sanjay's point, it's also not always just like the Super high
Echelon podcast that you can go on.
It's also the local ones. The reason why, part of the
reason why Belay got me on this podcast, besides me just being
the coolest guy ever, is I'm thepresident of my fraternity at

(10:57):
UCLA, which you is very much more like a young man, young
white man, skewed to the right. And I'm this vegan, sober,
left-leaning frat president and so sober, OK?
Well. For.
Last weekend you. Trying to be more sober, but but

(11:17):
it's, it's important to also getthose local places where like my
friends, a lot of my friends in my paternity are not
left-leaning. They will proudly wrap a Trump
flag in their room and while they're pounding a Coors Light,
it's like it's not, it's not always those places that you are
like, it's not always the highest echelon places that you
need to go to, right? I think I mean two things.

(11:40):
Just to follow up one, I I completely agree that, you know,
you don't have to go to the up branch.
One kind of what college Democrats games to do is we've
seen, you know, Charlie Kirk kind of he's coming to my campus
soon and he's he, he understandsthat, you know, he's.
Been here all the time. And what and The thing is people
are looking for what's alternative and all you need to
do is work with your get out like one of these electeds going

(12:01):
to come down and work with our chapters and we can get them on
campus like this. We understand, you know, how to
work around the system and get speaking time and, and figure
out kind of the the niche internal bureaucracy of every
school. So I mean, that that that's the
first thing. I think the second thing you
mentioned is it it is deeply important that we embrace this
new media. And it's also deeply important
that we have conversations with people we don't completely agree

(12:23):
with. One of the people I talked to
recently, it was on Adam French.He ran for DNC vice chair.
He had nearly defeated Bobert in2022.
Yeah. Like, there's a 500 vote
differential. I mean, I asked and I was like,
Adam, I'm a suburb boy from California.
What does rural outreach look like?
And kind of one of the quotes that you told me that stuck with
me is Democrats bringing the cookbook and Republicans bring
the brownies. And I think we need to be more

(12:44):
open about bringing the browniesinstead of always being the
party of process, instead of being like, oh, you know, Donald
Trump is going to implement Schedule F.
That's going to get to bureaucracy, and that's going to
make it inherently partisan. No, we have to keep like, we
should make it simple. You know, where, for example,
when Harris has her, you know, her house rebate policies, we
want to make homes cheaper for first time homebuyers.
Yes. Yeah.
Things like that. And I, and I think like part of

(13:07):
the housing policy was an example of like them being, you
know, like, oh, we're going to have this down payment
assistance. And people, like a lot of people
understood what that was that was circulating around.
I think when it, when it comes to policy too, as Democrats, we
get too wonky, right? And I like, for example, no hate
to like the Democrats page. I actually have a friend who
works there and she's doing an amazing job.

(13:28):
But one of their posts, it was like all 200 and whatever 17
Republicans voted to undermine veterans care.
And I literally commented, can you just say cut?
Like, can you just say like and like, oh, but it's not
technically 100% truthful. And I'm like, no, if you're
voting to undermine something, you're technically voting to cut

(13:49):
it. If one person loses care, you
are cutting it. And so it's, it's that type of
plain spoken language. And we kind of just delve too
much into the academic language.And then we turn and it and it
and it does, and it does at somelevel turn people away from us.
You don't know the amount of people I know that have told me,
hey, like, I like when the Democrats want to want to give
more people healthcare. I like the Democrats want to do

(14:11):
XY and Z, but they just talk down at me.
They don't, they don't like, youknow, and that's a big thing
with us. We talk down at people.
And I like what you're saying about going to different places
and, and spheres. So how can we as Democrats kind
of realize that, hey, people mayhave different beliefs in us,
but if they agree with us on more than 50% of things, we
should welcome them in? I think it comes down to a

(14:31):
fundamental change in our mentality instead of kind of
viewing like as you kind of mentioned, if you don't agree
with us on everything, you're not welcome.
We should look at the people whoare leaving and defecting it
from our party isn't an indictment on that.
It's an indictment of us to not create welcoming in our party.
And that's one of the number onething that I I have good friends
who, you know, are teetering on the right and did Bill Trump and
I don't blame them for. I think that it is up to me and

(14:54):
my friends are called America, as well as insiders within the
DNC and are, you know, Democratsacross the country to make that
case. That's the thing.
And I think the second thing is,is to focus more on what broadly
indicts us. And I think what what normally
does is the fact that the majority of us, Americans are
going through an economic crisis.
You know, for us, for example, as as young people, home prices

(15:17):
are up like 800% from the past since like the 1980s, and wages
have only been up 300%. So it's like it's not keeping
pace. It's so much harder for us to
kind of live the American dream that our parents did.
And I think Democrats should be focused on, you know,
Republicans like Trump are goingto claim that they can lower
prices. We're going to claim that they
stand for you. But we actually do.

(15:38):
We've done the work when it comes to making houses more
affordable. We've done the work to increase
minimum wage and focus on that type of message.
Yeah, real quick, Dylan, I just want to say one thing, Sanjay.
I'm actually working on an ad like just just I was like, you
know what, I I saw a clip of Trump.
I remember this clip of him whenhe was outside.
I think it was in his, his his golf course new in New Jersey.

(15:58):
And he had all these products out when he was running for
president. He had like price tags on them.
And he says in the speech, I will lower cost day one.
So I'm like actually currently working on an ad if you want to
help me with it or work on it with me.
And it basically like it's him saying I will bring down cost
day one and then it goes to immediately like these.
How much are eggs cost this muchtoday because of tariffs, cars

(16:18):
are gonna cost this much today. Like the fact that I'm not
seeing that out there is insane.Yeah, yeah, I I agree.
And I I do feel like messaging like inside the party and
outside the party is super important.
What do you feel like, especially since there is the

(16:40):
narrative that college campuses are very left-leaning and have
kind of this group thing mentality, how have you found it
best to engage with college Republicans?
I don't know if they have an equivalent sort of organization
or anything like that, but maybejust on individual campuses, how
do you, especially in especiallyin campuses where it might be

(17:02):
more moderate or right leaning, how do you approach those people
in having productive conversations that might help us
get towards a closer middle? And of course, what I think the
first thing is knowing that you need to go in there with an open
mind. You know, you don't have to
agree with anything they say, but at least understand why they

(17:23):
think that way. Learn, try to learn more about
their background, ask more questions.
You know, why do you think this way?
Kind of opening walking in with intellectual curiosity.
And I know there's this common dichotomy of like, oh, there's
no middle ground between fascismand democracy.
And I understand that. I, I have went to my call of
Republicans meeting and I had listened to some very
questionable takes and I was like, whoa, OK, that's, that's

(17:43):
something like. But I, I think at the end of the
day, people just want to be heard.
And you might not be able to, you know, solve the issue.
You might not be able to convince them to come to your
side, But the very least if you could humanize, you know, your
side of the party and and there and will be able to kind of dial
back the scoring polarization that we've seen across our
country. Yeah.

(18:07):
And I, I think, I think especially since we are college
students who are able to grapplewith these ideas, the
polarization should end with ourgeneration.
It shouldn't continue where our college education rates are
going up, people, the amount of people who have degrees is going
up. The quality of our education is
improving as we learn more and grow inside the society, Like

(18:31):
polarization should be an issue of the past.
That was actually something I worked on briefly last quarter
when we were registering people to vote.
Like it was very much told to me, you're not allowed to talk
about what party you want to vote for.
You're not allowed to encourage people to vote in a certain way,
not only because it's illegal, but also because you want to be
nonpartisan in these conversations and realize that

(18:54):
democracy is for everyone. Even if one side might be trying
to steal a little bit more January 6th type activities,
they might be doing that more, but it's still important for
people to have that process. How do you think, how do you
think Democrats should go forward in kind of this like

(19:19):
doomer mentality? Me and Pele have been talking
about this, especially with our one of our mutual friends.
How do you think Democrats should go forward in recognizing
that we're we are in the opposition right now and we are
young people, Sometimes we feel powerless in what we can do.
What's the best approach to not giving up hope in a lot of these
situations? Well, I think the first two

(19:40):
things comes down to, first of all, recognize that he has a
very slim mandate. Like this wasn't by no means
like an FDR sweeping election. He had narrow victories in every
single swing state. His majority in the House of
Representatives is like the smallest we've seen in the past
century. So that that's the thing.
One like, like this was not a dominant victory.
It's very much like a 5050 split.

(20:01):
And I, I, I think the, the second thing really rests in
that historically, like it timeslike this kind of truly trust
test our strength as a movement.And, and I, I think like kind of
the, the ideal of pressure beatsbreeds diamonds or crates
diamonds. We're under pressure right now.
And it's up to us to to realize that.

(20:24):
Do we to realize? Are we truly willing to fight
for the ideals that we believe in?
And that means continuing on even when it's uncomfortable and
even when the odds are sacked against us.
Because at the end of the day, the arc of history bends towards
justice. But it isn't always consistent.
And it's up to us to continue pushing to continue a contest
against the ballot ballot box and encouraging our peers to

(20:45):
vote and doing the essential groundwork and learning from the
mistakes that we've made to ensure that this kind of current
Trump administration is a failedexperiment in history rather
than the norm of the 21st century.
What you you mentioned the mistakes that we made.
What do you think are the biggest takeaways from 2024?
What? Because my personal feeling,

(21:06):
part of the reason why we started this podcast was because
Kamala wouldn't engage with certain voters.
There were reports about her staff not wanting her to go on
Joe Rogan because he was too conservative.
What mistakes should we be taking as a party away from 2024
and the very narrow loss? Seems like minimizing a couple
of mistakes might have switched the way that the election went.

(21:30):
Of course, I think there's a couple of things.
I think 1 is instead of trying to out compete, the Republicans
are kind of moving rightward. We should be more focused on
mobilizing our base. One of the major reasons that we
suffered our loss was a lot of people who are turned out for
Biden in 2020 didn't turn out again.
And honestly, it, it's unsurprising when you're having,
you know, Liz Cheney be your major kind of campaign

(21:52):
surrogate. You know, you're not bringing up
Bernie Sanders, you're not bringing up Greg Cesaro and
other members of the ProgressiveCaucus.
You're, you're favoring Liz Cheney over that.
And I think I, I don't know about you guys, but I've never
met a like proud Liz Cheney voter in my life.
I've spoken to a lot of people. So I, I think that that's the
first thing, just kind of being more comfortable that we are a
Big Ten party and, you know, someone that Kamalais is more

(22:13):
moderate can be at the top of our ticket, but also be willing
to uplift the more progressive wings in Bernie Sanders and the
rest of the progressive caucus. And the second thing is, is
embracing new media. You guys put it well that a lot
of times as Democrats are afraidto have unscripted
conversations. I think Ben Wilker, who was the
the runner up in the DNC chair race, kind of put it very well

(22:34):
on The Daily Show when he said us Democrats, when we're taking
media features were kind of accuring to very strict talking
points, kind of trying to avoid these certain landmines.
But when while we're avoiding those landmines, we actually
forgot to actually represent what we believe in and represent
anything, for lack of better term.
And I think, I think being more comfortable with going on these

(22:56):
networks and knowing that, hey, we might screw up here and
there, but that's OK. I, I hate JD now, but to his
credit, when he was out there onthe campaign trail, he screwed
up the first few times, but he kept on trying and trying and
trying. And by the end of it, he was
relatively favourable. And on the flip side, Tim
Wallace came in as the most popular guy out of the, the,
the, the four with Trump, Harrisand Vance.

(23:17):
But when we brought him on, we barely put him out.
We kind of like sheltered him tothe and I, I honestly don't know
who made that decision or why, but I think that was just not,
that did not make long sense. So I think the last thing is we
just need to start kind of embracing young people in
positions of power because as aswe saw, this is one of the first

(23:38):
elections where we loosened our hole on the youth vote and 56%
of young men voted for Trump. And I will say there's a lot of
progress in this regard. We just had our DNC vice chair
elections and the two youngest people in the race were elected.
Of the three, we had 24 year oldDavid Hogg and 34 year old
Malcolm Cadotta. And I think both of these
individuals who I know personally aren't just, you
know, young people on paper. They actually, they walk the

(24:00):
talk and I'll represent the bestinterests of young people rather
than kind of generic power climbers who are doing whatever
they can to gain a new role fromthe resume.
Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it.
I I kind of want to shift gears here and there's like nothing
happening in politics today, man.
There's so much we can talk about, and I kind of want to

(24:21):
talk, you know? What was your reaction to the
the joint address to Congress? It's technically actually not a
state of the union. Yeah, yeah, I, I love doing
that. But what was your reaction to
the joint address? And we we did a reaction video
and I can kind of tell you what,what I thought, but I want to
hear your thoughts about it. The man, he has no shame.

(24:43):
Like, he will sit up there and say whatever sounds vaguely
politically expedient. You know, like, we give them one
line about, like, the transgender mice.
And I get it, like, off. Yeah.
Like, first class. You're like, oh, why are they
making transgender mice? That's kind of strange when you
dig into it. It's because they're trying to
figure out ways for trans peoplepost surgery to grapple with

(25:03):
certain health issues because there just isn't a lot of
investment in those specific fields.
And I think this constant assault on these minority groups
that are already underrepresented, that are
already oppressed and using those political talking points.
So he's incredibly disgusting. He didn't even just do it there.
He also brought up transports. And to me, I, I see this largely
as an odd issue. If it were up to me, I would
leave it up to the leagues and let them do it in a case by case

(25:23):
basis. They know far more than these
elected officials would. And when you look at within the
leagues, there's barely a presence.
There's like 10 trans athletes in the NCA for NCAA, for
example. And they have like what, 500K
athletes as a whole? So I, I think, I mean, I just
wanted to, but I think there's this common trend of just
willing to punch down on people's livelihoods for and lie

(25:44):
about them for political talkingpoints.
Real quick, while I agree with you on all of that, I do think
that like Newsome recently came out and said it's, it's a
fairness issue and and I saw a lot of people on the left
attacking him. The problem we have here is that
it is an issue that a lot of Americans do care about.

(26:04):
Like like it or not, it is a fact that like it.
It is an issue that people talk about.
And it when there was a recent New York Times poll that show
that even a majority of Democrats, for example, thought
that that trans women shouldn't be allowed in like women leagues
or women's sports. And so that's something that I
think that while I agree that it's like a non issue and we
should be talking about economicissues, at the same time we have

(26:25):
to have a cohesive answer on it.And there's going to be some
people in the party that may disagree, right?
And I think like it or not, you can agree with new suspicion,
not agree with this position. But I think that him coming out
there and stating what he believes in, that's what he
believes in, right? And us not, we don't have to
vehemently attack him for that. I think that's also that's the
problem I see with the left is like we just start attacking

(26:49):
people when you disagree with uson X issue, whatever issue is.
I just wanted to throw that out there.
I think that's a reasonable assessment.
And personally, I I don't reallythink that a lot of Americans
are too into this issue. I think it's more of something
that's been overly politicized and I think the right has kind
of success successfully Co optedit as you know, a effective

(27:10):
cultural war message. But I'm, I'm unfortunately the
belief that if we push for more economic specific messaging and
actually make it clear that we stand with you and we have a
record of standing with everydayAmericans, that's going to
resonate far more because Trump didn't win, you know, because of
these niche cultural war issues.Trump won because people
believed he would lower prices. So but to your point, I do agree
that there needs to be more of more tolerance for diversity

(27:34):
points within our party because at the end of the day, we are a
big tat. And unlike the right who could
kind of say whatever, we actually have some, you know,
moral clarity. But I think with that moral
clarity should also come respectfor those who may slip up here
and there, and a willingness to not push back against everything
that we may slightly disagree with.

(27:55):
Right. Yeah, and, and the identity of
the Democrats as a big tent party is something that is both
accepted and rejected at the same time.
And I think it's confusing to voters.
Like, like you said, having Liz Cheney as one of your primary
campaign surrogates while also being too scared to go on Joe
Rogan's podcast just doesn't make sense logically.

(28:16):
It's not logically consistent. You either need to take the bite
the bullet of maybe upsetting some of your base who will vote
for you in it. Inevitably, I don't think you
will. We will find a a very like
left-leaning person who just turn coat and vote for Trump.
You need to find a way to also not betray them while also just

(28:39):
being consistent on your messageand your your policies.
One thing that one thought that has been rattling around in my
mind is that the policy focus ofDemocrats has been more big
picture, big projects like Medicare for All, like both of
Biden's relatively successful legislative accomplishments,

(29:00):
Build Back Better and the American Rescue Plan, both very
big pieces of legislation. Where do you think Democrats can
make more small wins? It's always a question of
culture war. It's always a question of how
can we fix the entire housing issue or the entire homeless
issue is like, as California residents were very familiar
with this, what are the smaller things that Democrats can win
on? Well, I, I think one of the

(29:23):
smaller things that we've lost on, as you kind of brought up,
is largely the cultural war. And I think that's because we
aren't in the spaces making our case.
And I think the way that we should frame it is we are, we
unapologetically stand with marginalized communities.
I think there's kind of the sphere to kind of play the
political game where, oh, you know, like trans rights right
now is in politics media. I think what we should do is be
like, no, what Trump is doing isdiscussing he's lying about a

(29:46):
community and we're going to push back.
And I think having this this like constant rhetoric of
standing with people who are, you know, not, who are in some
instances aren't able to stand up for themselves is one way
that we can kind of build upon kind of moving the cultural war
and making that one of our ones.Yeah.
Do you do you feel like the cultural war is a smaller issue

(30:07):
that not, not to minimize like the a lot of the discussions
around that, but do you feel like the cultural war is a
smaller thing than what Democrats should be focused on?
I definitely, I definitely thinkso I think that our main focus
should be kind of the, the core economic message because we're
grappling with a reality where, you know, wealth is concentrated
in a way that's unprecedented. You know, globally, you have

(30:30):
like 1% of people owning more than 95% of the global
community. And I know it's, it's similar
within our nation as well. And I, I think that's the the
message that resonates closer with the Americans.
And I think part of the reason why Elon Musk, for example, is
such a terrible approval rating.Yes, because people don't like
the richest man in the world getting vital agencies that are

(30:51):
met to overseas companies. Yes.
And I, I want to take this back to the policy.
I think we spoke enough about the Democratic Party and
strategies and what Doge is doing.
I think like a lot of people outthere know that Doge is cutting
something from some department and people are being laid off
and their Social Security might be impacted on.
Sanjay, if you want to talk to people here and tell them you
know what is Elon Musk, What is this unelected bureaucrat

(31:12):
billionaire doing with this 20 year old from Berkeley, Screw UC
Berkeley. This is my own personal opinion.
What? Are they talking with you bro?
Yeah. What are they doing with with
our Social Security? They have all out of information
and how is this going to impact every single day people?
So I kind of how I put it is therichest man in the world is
gutting agencies that are supposed to oversee him.

(31:35):
For example, USAID, why do you go after that?
Because his because USA has beeninvesting, investigating
Starlink in Russia where he's kind of giving Russia access to
Wi-Fi because it's it helps him make more money.
Why is he wanting to get got theCFPB?
Because now that he's trying to transition Twitter into a more
like banking centric entity. Consumer just just to, yeah,

(31:57):
break the Consumer Protection Finance Bureau just to, to break
it down for people, yeah. But of course, yeah, thank you.
The, the reason why he's doing that is because they would,
over, they would oversee Twitter, assuming he made this
shift. So I, I think that's the most
important thing to know that he's, he's gutting agencies that
limit his wealth. And I think what I, what I think
he's doing is simple one, I think a lot of his, him and his

(32:20):
unelected cronies of these people of our age running
around, I think they're taking our data and running it through
his AI algorithm so he can say, you know, ahead of the race.
And I think his, his end goal comes down to taking our, our,
our taxpayer dollars, our national system, our, our
government as a whole and using it to accomplish two things.

(32:40):
One, to become the world's firsttrillionaire, and two, to put a
man on Mars. And so I'm all I think space
travel is a great idea. It's pretty.
Cool, but I want to know it's for healthcare first, right?
But. Yeah, I, I think at the end of
the day, like the most importantthing is delivering for
Americans on the ground. And I, I, I would way rather
prefer that, you know, we give Social Security to our elders,

(33:02):
unlike Musk who thinks it's a Ponzi scheme, then, you know,
funnel all of our money into building more cyber trucks or
into SpaceX so that Elon Musk can accomplish his questionable.
Happened last night, right? I mean, the boom.
And I think what you bring up a perfect point, right?
Because he just called it a Ponzi scheme.
And I want Trump supporters, if you guys are watching this out

(33:23):
here, Donald Trump ran on protecting the Social Security.
I think he's bullshitting. I think that it eventually
they're going to they're going to try to cut it.
But that's what he ran on. And Elon Musk called it a Ponte
scheme. So I think it's important to
understand that even if you're on the right and you support
these social programs, we can disagree about whatever
policies, but we can agree that Elon Musk is not the guy to make

(33:47):
decisions over whether your grandma receives her check this
month to live, right? Elon Musk is not the guy to make
sure or to, to, to actually takeaway from funding that schools
receive for disability programs,for example, free school lunch
programs, right? He's not the guy to be doing

(34:08):
this. And we can talk about, hey, we
want to cut waste. I'm all for it.
You want to cut waste and, and alot of subsidies that we're
sending to oil companies that donot need it, right?
Or, or, or tax cuts that were given to these rich
corporations. Why do they need more money?
You know, and, and the right likes to talk about, well, we're
spending money in this country or that country abroad.
Look, we can have that conversation at the end of the

(34:28):
day, if we can all come togetherand disagree that Americans need
fundamental things like healthcare, they need a shot to
the middle class. They need to be able to access a
good education. And that means having a
government that may be more simple, more narrow focused, but
actually delivers for the American people.
And an unelected billionaire like Elon Musk just doesn't have
your best interests in mind. Yeah, it's also important to not

(34:52):
minimize that it's not just ElonMusk.
I don't know why political discourse just forgot about
Project 2025 when the Trump administration has almost too
deep and following certain partsof it.
It's it's a little scary and we'll just wait for the Comstock
Act to get put into place or something like that.
But I, I, I do agree with Blay, but it's, it's important to

(35:14):
address that. And I, I wonder if this is like
the right question to be asking,but maybe there's too much focus
on Elon Musk because my reasoning is like, he's not the
person who's going to run for president at some point.
May well, maybe he will. I don't know that that I guess
that is a possibility, which would be a little scary.
But he's not the traditional politician.
He's relatively unpopular. It's like it's also important to

(35:36):
focus on the elected officials and the career politicians and
staffers who are making this happen.
Like the people in Trump's administration.
You need to at least spend some time talking about them and
people selling their souls like Marco Rubio during that press
conference with with Zelensky looked like he was like his soul
just left his body. He was trying to not like blurt

(35:58):
out all the false things that Trump and JD Vance were saying.
As somebody who was super pro Ukraine, that was antithetical
to everything he wanted. You should be calling that out
too. Yes, I agree with Marco Rubio
that Ukraine should have more funding that we should like
fight against Putin, but he's also selling his soul and
selling his policy positions just to have more power.

(36:18):
Like how is that not the definition of corruption?
He's just going after power in order to, you know, anyways,
there's there's my rant for the day.
I. Think you're completely right.
I mean, I think this administration has kind of
created this narrative that you have to obey the king, you know,
obey whatever the king says, whether you're someone's
cabinet, whether you're someone in Congress, you have to obey

(36:40):
the king. But I think that, and, and I
know there's kind of been this narrative that, oh, Democrats
have kind of cried wolf about Donald Trump being a threat to
democracy. He is.
And, and the issue is that we need to act like it instead of
kind of using it as a little talking point, we need to act
like it and, and treat it as such.
You know, during the joint address, Representative Al Green
should have been the only personwho was actively protesting.

(37:04):
Many people in in that chamber should have joined him.
And we need more than just pink suits and we need more than just
signs being held up. One idea that I really like that
I, I saw I float around was every single person should come
in there and kind of like bring up a sign that says this is how
many people who are on, you know, Medicaid benefits in my
county. I love that.
These are the people that you'reputting and I think that like

(37:25):
that and also being comfortable with, you know, making good
trouble. You know, as Democrats, we love
to to to kind of use that quote.But now and now is the time to
do it. And we shouldn't be censoring
someone for standing up for working Americans.
We should be praising them. And that's why today, close
Democrats in America, we released a statement kind of
standing with Representative Al Green and the Democrats that

(37:46):
backed him rather than voting tocensor him.
The The headline after the jointaddress to Congress should not
have been whatever Trump talked about his falsities and and his
his random campaign talking points.
It should have been Trump and Republican Party kicked out half
of Congress because they didn't like what they were saying.
It should have been we are standing up to this.

(38:07):
It should not have been we are walking out quietly.
Please file in line. And I think looking at
Democratic leadership and seeingHakeem Jeffries say we need to
play smart. We need to not bash too many.
We need to not be a bull in a China shop, but that is what the
Republican Party is doing while they're in power.
Where are you shaking your head?I, I think, look, I, I guys, at
the end of the day, like Congress people are going to do

(38:29):
what they need to do for their districts, right?
And some of the people that censor them, I disagree with it,
but they're voting for their district.
And like, also understanding that is like, not every Congress
person is going to be as like progressive, like, no.
And I want there to be like a diverse cohort of, of, of
Congress people out there. So I think that as much as we do
want them to vote a certain way or another way they're going to

(38:49):
do, I hope what they're going todo is what's best for their
district. And when it comes to saving
Medicaid and Social Security andMedicare, I hope that they'll be
standing there with Al Green andvoting against the House
Republican budget, which we can talk about real briefly about
how they want to strip funding away from life saving programs.
So I think at the end of the day, Congress people are going
to vote for their district. So it's it's a little tough.
It's tough here. Sure, I I, I acknowledge that,

(39:12):
but I also just feel like that's.
Where the moderate of me comes out a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, I I see that, Blaine.
I'm going to, I'm going to get the progressive out of me right
now. The progressive if you want to,
if you want to say that. But I do feel like for the more
moderate Congress people, for the more moderate Democrats,
they are still incredibly antithetical to what Donald
Trump wants and is. And you can't just roll over and

(39:35):
say Donald Trump kind of what Sanjay was saying, like you
can't let Donald Trump make himself king if he's going to do
that. This is this is the most
impactful administration possibly in our lifetimes just
because Donald Trump is breakingdemocratic norms.
And I understand that there are political realities and I don't
expect every single Democrat to get kicked out of this joint

(39:57):
address to Congress. But it's also not enough to sit
there with signs saying fire Elon Musk.
It's like you're you're not, you're not like getting your.
Base energized by that everyone who goes with you on the left
and on the right, everyone disagrees with you and.
Everyone's just going to say that, oh, look at these.
Look at these losers who have like little signs made in.
Yeah, I do think there needs to be some, some more bashing the

(40:19):
walls of what we're capable of doing would be and maybe
moderates need to sit that out and maybe they need.
To, I think there's a place like, there's a place for like
the Blue Dogs, for example, They, they, the Blue Dogs today
is a lot better than the Blue Dogs back in the day where
actually the blue hogs are out there talking about Medicaid and
Social Security and Medicare. And, and so I think like, like

(40:41):
what Sanjay said, focusing on these economic issues, life
saving issues is the way forward.
And I like, I like the idea of them coming with like signs
saying X amount of people in my district.
And I wish some, you know, there's Democrats who wanted
Trump districts, who came with signs saying, you know, we
wanted the same district, blah, blah.
Like this is how many people ourvoters would lose healthcare
coverage under your budget plan.Yeah, and I think Blair, I would

(41:04):
challenge that. Like I, I get the assumption of
like, you know, they they shouldvote in the way that it's
available to our districts. My question if that is
politically expedient, like for example, someone like AMI Bara
who voted in favorite, he's likefrom SAC relatively safe to
yeah, I don't really see much ofa reason for him.
So I I think I I was. It a moral thing then is, is it
like a moral obligation? They feel like we have to like,

(41:25):
oh, there shouldn't be any disruption to the president.
We need to be civil and you're always going to have people like
that. And I and I can understand where
that's coming from. And if we're dealing with more
precedented times, I would be like, yeah, that's very valid.
But we're dealing with an administration that has no
regard for our best interests, no regard for how our governing
system is structured. And, you know, obviously
they're, you know, the United States Congress, we're the

(41:47):
highest legislative body in the world there.
It's got to be some level of cordialness.
But I think there's also a levelof standing with your own and
standing with, you know, you're the member of your party who
comes from, you know, like Texas, not not the most safest
place in the world and is actively is putting his own kind
of political capital at risk to stand for what he believes on.

(42:08):
Yeah. So I, I think that that's kind
of where, where I stand, where I, I do understand that like,
yes, people have to make decisions from our district, but
I also think that that the decision that they made is not
politics media. No, I don't.
I don't think someone's going tovote for them or vote against
them because of the vote. Yeah, yeah.
Help it out. Yeah.
And I also think along with standing with your party and

(42:30):
standing with your people that you're you're aligned with, it's
also, this was a big thing for in in 2008, 2009, when Obama was
trying to get the Affordable Care Act passed.
Is that a lot of people who voted for that bill did end up
eventually losing in the midterms because it was not a
popular thing. But sometimes there is a

(42:51):
political capital calculus of maybe this is not the right
place to do it. That is a conversation to have.
Where do you stand up where it would be the most impactful?
And we also want to minimize younot losing your seat in the next
election. But it is a conversation of
there is going to be some political sacrifice that we have
to make in order to grow the movement.

(43:13):
Or when we hopefully do get in power again, if Trump doesn't
blow up the planet and we're allset on fire or something, then
it needs to be a a political calculus of what can we get
past, what can we overturn for Trump?
And maybe you will lose some people along the way in
Congress. And.
But yeah, again, me ranting. Yeah, yeah.

(43:38):
Sanjay, you got to go soon or what's don't want to keep you on
for too long. It's a, you have a busy day
today, but I just wanted to touch on real quick, something
that's been happening is cuts that they're projecting to
Medicaid. I know that they started the
budget process and to a lot of our viewers who may not
understand that basically there's a thing called

(44:00):
reconciliation. It allows them pretty simply to
just get 50 + 1 or the 50 plus the vice presidential vote in
the Senate for a bill to pass ifit deals with budget of
concerns. And so the Republicans started
that. And one of the things in the
budget resolution is that they're calling for $880
billion, I believe in cuts to Medicaid.

(44:20):
It could also be Medicare. It's not specifically in there,
but it could be cuts to, you know, a, a disabled child's
healthcare or, or a grandma's healthcare.
And that's something that they're working on right now.
And how can young people kind ofstop this?
How can people from all ages andall races and whatever identity
you are kind of try to obstruct and stop this?

(44:41):
Is going to town halls important?
Where can people find these resources?
So I think one thing that Ken Martin told me to spread far and
wide is if you text a volunteer to 43367, when you text a
volunteer to that number, you'llbe given updates kind of
perpetually of what special elections are up and kind of how

(45:02):
you can get involved to kind of shift away this slim majority
that Trump has. So that's that's the first way.
Second way, I think just comes down to exercising your rights
as, you know, someone in democracy, write to your elected
officials, join a protest, you know, join a letter writing
campaign, join your local Democrats chapter already kind
of have this all this infrastructure to do this work.
I think it's just constantly pushing and accepting that, hey,

(45:24):
you know, we might not win todaywith the offense are we doing?
But if by by showing up and consistently pushing the
overturn window, we'll be able to ensure that, you know, even
if the cuts occur this time around, we'll realize that this
was a terrible decision, probably going to suffer in the
midterms or suffer beyond. And we'll take back the House.
But also when we have Democraticleadership, also challenge that

(45:45):
challenge that actually represent your best interests
instead of us saying, you know, I think there's this the this
narrative that people are sick of about, oh, when we elect
Democrats, everything's going tobe OK.
And listen, I'm the president ofthe College Democrats of
America, but we still need to push our party to kind of.
And have transparency in the party.
Exactly. Yeah.
And let me let me find that number.
Yeah. Find that number, we're going to
put it up here and we'll we'll put all your information in the

(46:07):
you guys want to see what the college Democrats are doing
today, what Sanjay is doing today.
I'm going to put all we're goingto put all of this information
in the bio. We really do appreciate you kind
of coming out here and I know that you you have a busy day.
You told me so. Thank you for making time for
us.