May 13, 2025 • 40 mins
Michael Podhorzer joins host Pete Altman to talk about what really happened in the 2024 election—and why the fight ahead isn’t about restoring the old order, but building a new one. From the failures of civil institutions to the importance of unions and organizing, this is a powerful conversation for anyone trying to navigate the Trump Era with clarity and strategy.
Find and subscribe:
Substack and your favorite platforms.
Contact: Contact@PrismaticStrategiesLLC.com
Find us on LinkedIn and Bluesky
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
To get past this, we have to understand that we are
not trying to restore the orderthat he's disrupting.
That's an old world that's nevercoming back.
The question right now, thecontest now, is what is our new
world going to look like?
And that's a project we shouldall be excited about that we all
have to lean into because it isstill contingent.
(00:21):
But as long as we think ourmission is to restore the
Democrats or to restore the oldorder, we are empowering the
monsters.
UNKNOWN (00:31):
Bye.
SPEAKER_00 (00:36):
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to The CampaignStrategist.
My guest today is MichaelPodhorzer, one of the sharpest
strategic minds in progressivepolitics.
If anyone out there is playing4D chess, it's Mike.
He served as political directorof the AFL-CIO for over 25
years, helped to launchCatalyst, a progressive data
service that helps progressiveand Democrats reach the voters
that they need, and the AnalystInstitute, which uses
(00:57):
evidence-based research andanalysis to strengthen
strategies and tactics.
Mike writes Weekend Reading, anewsletter that cuts through the
noise to name the real forcesthreatening our democracy and
what we can do about them.
He has a constant presence inthe progressive community
sharing information, helpingpeople learn more about where we
are and where we need to get to.
And if you're trying tounderstand what time it is
(01:18):
politically and how to act withstrategy and clarity, Mike is
someone you want to hear from.
Thanks very much for joining ustoday.
I appreciate it.
Tell us a little bit about howyou got into this work.
SPEAKER_01 (01:28):
Perfect.
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (01:51):
So 50 years.
I've got a little experiencewith this.
Let's start with the 2024election.
There are a lot of differentstories out there about what
happened.
Voters massively swung to theright.
Democratic voters lost faith inthe party and stayed home.
No one could have survived theinflation of last year, not to
mention late in the cycle swapout of candidates.
(02:13):
What do you think happened in2024?
And what does it really tell usabout voters and where we need
to go next?
SPEAKER_01 (02:20):
I've written much about it.
And so I'm just going to hit thehighlights.
But I think that the beststarting point is the
recognition that most Americansthink the system's broken, that
the choices they have are notthe ones they want.
For most of this century, by twoor three to one, people have
(02:40):
felt the country's going in thewrong direction.
As recently as the last day orso, there's another poll saying
most people want either to burnthe system down or big change.
And so So it's not surprisingthat in the last 10 elections,
in nine of them, voters havethrown the party in power out.
And that has just not much of aprecedent in American history,
(03:04):
right?
At the presidential level, goingDRDR has only happened once
before, and that's more than acentury ago.
Voters keep trying to say, wewant a different system, we want
different choices.
but they don't get it.
And so we toggle between thesetwo alternatives.
One that is saying, I want toburn the system down.
(03:26):
but not in a way any of youreally want.
And the other saying, I'll slaythat dragon, but to defend the
intuitions none of you haveconfidence in.
And to me, it was the fact thatat least 17, 18 million, if not
more people who were alarmedenough in 2020 to come out to
vote against Trump stayed home.
(03:48):
We see in the polling forDemocrats now that voters really
didn't lose confidence in themin 2024.
They lost confidence for a longtime.
But when you only have twochoices, like every other
election, you're the not loser.
So in 2024, the big failure,once we got to November, was
(04:08):
that not enough people werealarmed about what was obviously
going to happen if Trump waselected.
I'm going back to that onesecond.
The other aspect that bothreinforced the sense of lack of
alarm as well as literally madeit possible was the way in which
the Roberts Court first rewrotethe Constitution to take out the
(04:30):
Insurrection Clause and thendelayed accountability and then
came up with immunity.
In a world in which theinstitutions were functioning
properly, Donald Trump would nothave been on the ballot to begin
with.
In the last week, especially aswe've seen Trump's approval
rating go down, even on thingslike the economy and
(04:51):
immigration, which were supposedto be his best things, we see
that the source of that are thevoters who are least engaged in
politics.
Remember that Trump has donenothing he didn't tell us he was
going to do.
Did people not understand whatdictator on Bill 1 means?
Did people understand I'm goingto deport 20 million people Did
(05:13):
people not understand I'm goingto put huge tariffs on every
country?
But the way in which civilsociety institutions failed, it
was the media not taking itseriously enough, not reacting
as if this is what was actuallyabout to happen.
And so the average voter whodoesn't have 24-7 to do their
(05:33):
own understanding of it justfelt, well, we survived the
first Trump administration.
We don't like the way things aregoing now.
Just stay at home.
Basically,
SPEAKER_00 (05:42):
I've got a couple of questions from that.
And one of them is, as astrategist, as someone who
really studies things, how doyou parse things like David
Shore, a prominent Democraticpollster, made the case that
most of those voters who stayedhome, if somehow they had been
sort of spotted off the couchand gone out to the vote, that
they would have voted for Trump?
How do you figure out which isthe right interpretation?
(06:04):
Understanding what's actuallyhappened is essential to knowing
where you want to go and how youwant to get there.
SPEAKER_01 (06:10):
First of all, the argument that I just made about
Biden voters who stayed home isdifferent from if somehow
someone had a magic wand andeverybody voted.
And so it's a little bit of arhetorical sleight of hand.
Most of the people who stayedhome, voted in 2020 and didn't
vote this time, happened to havea lot of markers that they
(06:34):
didn't want to live in thisfascist country.
It was very disproportionatelydifferent.
people who lived in cities,people who were registered
Democrats.
One of the fatal flaws of thesure view of all of this, which
is really not just limited tohim, is that the only way you
can possibly understandAmericans is through these polls
(06:57):
where you have all these peopledoing online surveys and you
can't look to the real world forrevealed preferences.
In that area where turnout wasdown and America moved to the
right, seven RepublicansRepublican members of the House
lost their elections.
They flipped seven seats.
There was only one Democrat onthe Cook marginal list that
(07:20):
lost.
None of the senators orgovernors running in blue states
where all of this drop-off waswon by less than 12 points.
And that was in Maryland, whereyou had a successful Republican
governor in an open seat.
Because their view is soattenuated into the four corners
of a survey they wrote, Theycan't contemplate that Americans
(07:45):
in blue America and in cities inred America actually kind of
want to keep the right to anabortion.
They want a higher minimum wage.
They want all the things thatare under attack right now.
The prerequisite for taking allthat kind of stuff seriously is
accepting that you can onlytrust what a pollster tells you.
(08:08):
After that, they make youbelieve.
There's the expression, you'regoing to believe me or your
lying eyes.
A lot of people, I think, areintimidated by people who use a
lot of numbers.
It's probably better to sayyou're going to believe my
number or your lying eyes.
And somehow that actuallytripped people up.
But even there, and this is animportant point that I didn't
(08:30):
start with because I haveskepticism about the polling
generally, but what's alsoproblematic in terms of how the
media interprets it is that thedata that he put out there is
itself contested by otherpollsters.
There's another survey that'susually seen as a kind of gold
standard academic consortium CESthat says that those who did in
(08:52):
vote actually favored Harris,just as they had in the last
couple of elections.
And so it's deeply problematic.
SPEAKER_00 (09:00):
In one way or another, that's a whole bunch of
people that we have to figureout how to get back and to get
engaged and to want to come outand support candidates who are
going to stand up for freedomand the values that we're used
to in, say, the Constitution.
I'm not sure I want to be
SPEAKER_01 (09:14):
associated with that we.
I think that since 2010, thecountry has been on borrowed
time.
As I was saying before, whatDemocrats have done, how people
perceive them, I'm just talkingnationally, level now, has not
worked.
It's not what people want.
They've won because,alternately, they see
(09:34):
Republicans as worse.
That is an unsustainable systemthat you just keep winning
because of how bad the opponentis.
You inevitably get a point wherethe disillusioned Americans just
don't bother to show up.
It's really important tounderstand that the way Biden
didn't lose 2020 was that anenormously number of people who
(09:59):
up to that point had beenalienated from the entire
process decided to vote becauseof how alarmed they were about
Trump.
And it was those people whodecide to not go out and vote
again in 2024.
SPEAKER_00 (10:12):
You mentioned the failure of the media and others
to sort of really explain whatwas in store if we got Trump
back.
And you recently spoke with AnatShankar-Osario, who's a
brilliant messagingcommunication strategist, about
that we don't really havelanguage to describe what's
going on.
Assume those things are relatedand it's difficult for the media
to figure out how to talk aboutwhat's really at stake because
(10:36):
of that missing language.
Is that Is that how you see it?
SPEAKER_01 (11:08):
or other countries where they elected fascist
leaders and where Le Pen and AFDare on the ballot, where there's
a universally understoodshorthand for what it means to
elect a fascist government.
There isn't the same ingrainedsort of like lived memory for
the country that can attach tothose words.
(11:28):
But the problem is if you don'thave a different word for what's
going on now, then you can'tcommunicate what is actually
happening.
And we're long overdue for that.
I'll give you a couple examples.
One is if you remember afterJanuary 6th and in 2021, when
the Republicans were still sortof backing Trump or doing
(11:52):
different things, and there wasa lot of back and forth about,
well, you can't say that aboutRepublicans.
My uncle's a Republican or, youknow, that's too broad based.
And so fortunately, peoplestarted talking about MAGA
Republicans.
And MAGA Republicans says thatthis is a different thing than
(12:12):
your uncle who's a Republican.
And same way, and I wish we'dhad more success earlier on
this, the continuing use of theword Supreme Court to describe
everything that comes out of thebuilding instead of, say, the
Roberts Court, when thosedecisions are by fiat,
essentially.
When we say the Supreme Courtgave him immunity, we've lost
(12:34):
the argument from the jumpbecause we're saying that this
legitimate institution did alegitimate thing.
And when you say the RobertsCourt gave them immunity, you're
saying, no, this group of peoplewho are put there by the Kochs,
by Billionaire Project, theFederalist Society to do just
this, people have traction on anunderstanding of why we're here.
SPEAKER_00 (12:56):
It's interesting how important it is for us to think
about, carefully think about thelanguage, the words that we use
as in those examples.
And one of the other ones youtalked about was it's important
not to talk about the Trumpadministration.
It's a regime.
It's like administration isweight It confers legitimacy.
It confers normalcy.
And one of the ways we have toadapt our language is to call
(13:18):
out what's, well, not normal andwhat things really are.
That's just one of thechallenges that we face when we
look at the communicationslandscape, which is one of the
things I think causes ustremendous angst and trying to
figure out we're now in thiscommunications landscape that's
incredibly asymmetrical, thatthe right has both helped to
shape and also seems to be verymuch at home in because it's
(13:43):
much more driven about winningand like engagement through the
natural human emotions of angerand outrage.
And that's what algorithms arethen tuned to, not to mention
the big social media giantsbasically seeking favor from
Trump by aligning themselves tohim.
How do you think about thechallenges that are posed by
this communications environmentand how do we need to adapt?
(14:05):
Because audiences influence, wehave to adapt or die.
How do we meet this challenge?
The answer to
SPEAKER_01 (14:11):
any of these questions is not easy because
the decisions made long agothrough the media that allowed
the takeover of most media bycorporate giants and by
billionaires is the essentialissue.
The taking away of guardrailslike the Fairness Doctrine and
(14:33):
other things, and that's thething about the whole aspect of
where we are, is that in thesecond half of the 20th century,
but coming out of the New Deal,there were a lot of guardrails
put up against the disaster ofallowing for the concentration
of wealth and power in a fewhands, whether it was
Glass-Steagall for banks,whether it was the Fairness
(14:55):
Doctrine and like how manythings you could own for
communication, all thesedifferent things, there were
guardrails.
And so for a half a century, youhad decreasing inequality.
You had the greatest burst ofshared prosperity in human
history in the United States,for real, that by the 60s was
starting to expand beyond whitepeople.
(15:16):
And then they were starting tobe successful in taking away the
guardrails that made thatpossible.
And surprise, we get all theproblems that led to the crisis
of the New Deal.
And here we are again.
Unfortunately, it's that deeperproblem.
And I think to bring in is that,and this is where I think it's
(15:37):
another one of the guardrailsthat doesn't get enough
attention, is ability of workingpeople to act collectively in
unions, making sure that we eachhave to be satisfied with, you
know, oh, every two years youget to cast your vote, so this
is exactly the country you want,is the problem.
We were successful for decadesbecause there was a
(15:58):
counterweight to corporatepower.
And you don't have acounterweight to corporate power
unless you have stronger unions.
SPEAKER_00 (16:05):
There's this interesting challenge we have
right now, the collective actionproblem.
We're seeing it play out withlaw firms and definitely media
companies, especially withParamount, what's happened to 60
Minutes and some of the firstuniversities Trump went after,
where on an individual basis, ifthe president of the United
States comes after you and isable to threaten your interests,
(16:25):
your safety, your welfare, yourmoney, it's a perfectly rational
decision to go, whatever, givehim what he wants and we'll
survive.
When you have those decisions,that's how people keep making
the decision.
It means all of the voices andcenters that could be pushback,
opposition to what's going onare falling.
The challenge of trying to geteverybody to go, hey, it's in
(16:48):
all of our best interests not toaccede to this kind of
weaponization of the federalgovernment seems to be a real
challenge.
And I don't know if there issomething that can be done about
it or if we have to rely on thebond market freaking out in
order to curb the worst impulsesof the president and maybe some
corporations.
I'm just curious what yourthoughts are on that.
It's a great
SPEAKER_01 (17:09):
point, but there's a piece to add to that.
John Dewey, who's a thinker inthe early part of the 20th
century, had this greatexpression that politics is the
shadow big business casts onsociety.
I think if you reformulate whatyou were saying about the way
the law firms have capitulatedin universities and also the
(17:31):
Democrats in Congress, compareit to 2017, the first time
around.
People couldn't be anti-Trumpfast enough in those quarters,
right?
Those law firms were doing a lotof pro bono work on this, all of
this.
They showed up for the Muslimban.
They were just like all outthere.
Same with universities.
Well, a big difference is thatin 2017, most of corporate
(17:52):
America really was prettyfreaked out that Trump won.
So all of that standing up wasbolstered by the corporate
community who are the clients ofbig law.
At the same time foruniversities.
This time around, we saw beforethe election, corporate America
pretty much wanting to go, Trumpwon't be that bad.
(18:13):
We'll get our tax cuts.
All of the corporations stillare not part of the resistance
or whatever, the way they wereeight years ago.
It's not that those law firmpartners or university
presidents are becoming lesswilling to stand up in a vacuum.
In terms of their ownincentives, there's less of it.
(18:35):
Or even think about theDemocrats.
In 2017, most of them.
Not all of them.
There's obviously a fewexceptions.
They spend an enormous amount oftime raising money every day.
And in 2017, when they wereraising money and talking to the
affluent, talking about how theywere going to rein Trump in was
a positive.
(18:56):
And the people they were talkingto were pretty concerned about
what might happen.
Right now, they're callingaround to get money from people
who are not that concerned andwho are not showing the same
sense of alone they did eightyears ago.
We as sort of spectators toCongress to think about them in
this kind of vacuum that, well,you know, the voters think this
(19:16):
or the polls say that, butthey're spending hours every day
in a milieu where there isn'tthe same urgency or
SPEAKER_00 (19:23):
alarm.
I feel like I must have missedsomething.
The evidence of how poisonousTrump is for this country is
more clear than, way more clearthan 2017, but Democratic donors
are less concerned?
Yeah, not like
SPEAKER_01 (19:37):
marquee Democratic donors, but they have to call
through to all the corporatePACs.
They have to call through to alot of anonymous Wall Street
people or Silicon Valley peoplewho get no attention in the
media.
SPEAKER_00 (19:52):
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (19:53):
but who don't wear it on their sleeves
SPEAKER_00 (19:54):
necessarily.
SPEAKER_01 (19:55):
Right, right.
And why are they less concerned?
I think that there are differentreasons.
It's a complex story, but Ithink that in the immediate
past, many of them felt thatBiden was too antagonistic.
The antitrust stuff, theextension of the tax cuts, going
on a picket line for the UAW,you know, Lina Khan, all of
(20:17):
that.
Whereas in 2017, up through2020, the next Democratic
administration was hypothetical.
And so they had, like, we justdon't want this.
And in a more proximate sense,although this isn't the only
thing by any amount, if youreally roll your memory tapes
back to November 2020, when thebusiness community was so Yeah.
(20:41):
And so it didn't quite work outthat way.
Yeah.
And so it didn't quite
SPEAKER_00 (21:03):
work out that way.
was hundreds of millions ofdollars in pro bono work for the
beneficiaries, I guess, hepicks.
Who does he have in mind?
Like, was that just a way to dighim in and cost him more money
and time and embarrassment?
Or do you think he and hisregime have some groups in mind
(21:27):
that they, you know, will needlegal defense?
What do you think that means?
Does it mean something or is itjust...
SPEAKER_01 (21:33):
Oh, I absolutely think it means something.
I mean, we'll see whether thingsare changing, but I think what
they have in mind is Yeah.
(22:09):
blue states, they can, you know,challenge the try to decertify
labor unions.
They can do amicus briefs forElon Musk's case to make the
NLRA unconstitutional.
There's no shortage of legalwork that they can be deployed
SPEAKER_00 (22:28):
for.
That seems like something thatwould be good to have more
attention on.
If anybody can spare the time.
I think of Trump largely as anamoeba who's like stimulus
response, stimulus response.
And, you know, we know thetriggers.
He clearly has powerfulpolitical instincts, but there's
also a lot of very deep thinkingin MAGA world.
I mean, I know we both readProject 2025 and talked about it
(22:49):
last year.
That's a very comprehensiveplaybook that they are executing
100% and way faster than I everthought.
One of the things that I think alot of people worry about is how
Trump regime could use the powerof the federal government to
permanently plant futureelections in favor of the
Republicans to effectively lockDemocrats out of party.
(23:09):
And I thought it would besomething like a national voter
integrity law, which they haveintroduced called SAVE, that
would sort of pull together thebest of the crap they've pulled
in states.
I hadn't actually thought enoughabout them attacking the
institutions that are part ofthe electoral machinery.
And just this week, Trump'sexecutive order instructing the
DOJ to go after Act Blue, Ithink is really frightening.
(23:32):
How concerned are you?
Where do you see that going?
Do you expect them to open upmore fronts attacking
essentially the infrastructurethat helps Democrats get elected
in advance of 2026, when innormal times, one could
reasonably expect that theDemocrats would be able to
retake the House?
I think they're going to
SPEAKER_01 (23:49):
get as much of it accomplished as they can, right?
And that, again, to come back toearlier in the conversation, is
where words matter.
Because there's some people,unfortunately, throw off
expressions like, yeah, throwelections, right?
There are going to be elections.
But the problem is that when yougo vote in 2026, the current The
(24:10):
substance of what an election iswill be different than it was
before.
And as long as we keep makingjust the fact that you get to go
to your high school and cast aballot, the checkmark for we're
still a democracy, to add towhat they've done in a way that
it's hard to calculate what itmeans, for a long time, the
(24:32):
federal government has investeda lot in protecting elections
from cyber threats, and theyhave stopped doing that.
Trump's own appointee, ChrisKrebs.
(25:09):
check, we're still a democracy.
SPEAKER_00 (25:11):
You know way more than I do about all of this
stuff, and there are times Ifreak myself out about
foreseeing, like, you know, eachof these pieces combine to sort
of, you know, seal us into theempire from Star Wars of
absolute domination and control,which is not healthy.
It can absolutely bedemotivating, not to mention the
(25:32):
mental stress.
How do you keep it together,being able to see, like, all of
the sort of pathways that theseindividual things go down and
the way they interconnect andcould mean that we had our last,
I mean, I wouldn't even callrecent ones all that free and,
they're pretty free and fair,right?
But, you know.
No, we already are.
How do you handle
SPEAKER_01 (25:51):
that?
We are already past that.
That's part of the problem.
Yeah.
If you remember like where youwere in January of 2009 when
Barack Obama was sworn in, youprobably had a pretty good
feeling.
And if someone from January 2025time traveled back to you, told
you Right.
Because remember, in 2008, itwas before the election.
(26:39):
for Citizens United, and no onecould do any of that.
But that is what I mean abouthow, like, you keep using the
same word.
Well, the 2012 election, they'renot the same thing.
That's in the rearview mirror.
We had someone who should havebeen found guilty of
insurrection who was president.
That's not a free and fairelection.
I think to get back to how doyou keep your sanity and how you
(27:03):
actually be emboldened and readyto try to deal with it, we're at
a time that's not that muchunlike the period in the 1920s
and early 30s where you hadrising fascism coming across
Europe and you had after theFirst World War and you had
Soviet totalitarianism comingout of that and the same kind of
(27:25):
in Incredible inequalities, bothin terms of wealth and income
and political power.
And there was an Italiandissident who was imprisoned by
Mussolini, Antonio Grubsky, whosaid this.
He said, the old world is dying.
The new world is yet to be born.
Now they're just monsters.
And that describes where we arenow, right?
(27:48):
Even in the 30s, there was amuch more robust fascist
movement in the United Statesthan we tend to remember.
But the key insights here isthat the old world has died.
The miracle for the UnitedStates at that point was that
the new world that was born wasthe New Deal.
It wasn't fascism.
(28:08):
It wasn't totalitariancommunism.
It was the New Deal.
But it was absolutely not theold world progressives might
have had in mind or that theDemocrats, I should say, would
have had in mind.
It was that kind of departure.
And the challenge now, and thisis why earlier I was saying I'm
not sure I want to be part ofthat we, is that to get past
(28:29):
this, we have to understand thatwe are not trying to restore the
order that he's disrupting.
That's an old world that's nevercoming back.
The question right now, thecontest now, is what is our new
world going to look like?
And that's a project we shouldall be excited about that we all
have to lean into because it isstill contingent.
But as long as we think ourmission is to restore the
(28:52):
Democrats or to restore the oldorder, we are empowering the
monsters.
SPEAKER_00 (28:57):
I think that's an important point to make.
And I'm hearing people make itmore and more.
It already wasn't a perfectsystem that in fact led to so
many people feeling left behind,left out, dismissed, not in
control.
It has nothing for me.
So what does it look like as wemove forward?
What do you think are thebiggest challenges progressives
and Democrats need to reallysink their teeth into to figure
(29:19):
out how do we create the futurethat we want?
SPEAKER_01 (29:21):
Well, I think that an important element of it is
co-creating with a broader groupof folks and with working class
people, basically.
Going back to that New Dealcomparison, the people at that
point understood that theimportance of siding with
working people against corporatepower, right?
And that's when unions werecreated.
(29:42):
And unions played a huge role.
Working people played a hugerole in ensuring the success of
the New Deal project up untilthe Wagner Act, which created
unions, the government mostlyhelped corporations suppress
collective action.
After that, it defended it for abrief time, but it meant that
(30:04):
very quickly a third of theAmerican workforce was
unionized.
And that third of the Americanworkforce continuously voted for
FDR and the Democrats 80-20.
When you have a third of thecountry and their family
understanding that there's aconflict between your interests
and corporate interests and thatthe Democratic Party was on your
(30:26):
side, all the things we thinkabout now, like, well, the
economy wasn't so good or all ofthe ways we think about
elections now didn't matter.
In the Depression, it went downinto another recession, but
Roosevelt still won becausevoters understood that Roosevelt
was on their side, that theywere smarter in a way than
(30:47):
voters now who understoodclearly the stakes for them and
the And so you had five straightelections where the New Deal
won.
And then the next two withEisenhower, he won essentially
promising not to disturb the NewDeal.
And then you have Kennedy andJohnson.
That is when America's beensuccessful for the most people,
(31:10):
but it's also when the mostpeople have been organized to
have a voice in their future.
And so in this moment when it'sencouraging to see how many
people are going out into thestreets, doing things to defend
the people who were, you know,abducted to El Salvador, which
is all important to do.
It is not, not that.
They have to understand that itis as important as the Trump
(31:35):
regime goes after working peoplein their unions, that that is as
dangerous or more dangerous tothem, not just to the people in
the unions, as any of this otherstuff.
SPEAKER_00 (31:45):
One way, one of the many ways, 2024 was notable, was
the Teamsters declined toendorse Vice President Harris
and I think that you said, wroteor said recently, right now
union membership sort of 60-40,if I'm remembering correctly.
Yeah, 57-43 this time around.
And I'm guessing that largelyspeaks to the disaffection, the
dissatisfaction that people hadwith what was the status quo or
(32:07):
how things were going.
Looking forward, is the way tounite the working class and to
restore the sort of the power ofpeople over the corporate
elites, is it through unions?
Is that the only path or arethere other ways that that can
be done?
can be expressed and organized.
SPEAKER_01 (32:23):
I mean, it's the only path that's ever worked.
One of the pieces I wroterecently was about the much
broader connection betweenunions and real democracy.
And I go through some examplesthat almost everyone's familiar
with, but somehow doesn't thinkabout it in a union context.
The overthrow of Soviettotalitarianism, starting with
(32:45):
solidarity, the union in Poland.
You had the event, the successof the overthrow of apartheid in
South Africa, not just theobvious genius of Nelson
Mandela, but also the pressureof the organized miners in the
country.
The source of not being ademocracy is the imbalance of
(33:06):
power between corporations andindividuals.
And unions are the only way thatthere's been an institution at
scale that goes against that.
In terms of for freedom, I thinkin a way that that in sort of
concept also gets this ideaacross, but not with the same
(33:27):
values, is the role that theevangelical and Christian
nationalists play in the countrynow, where that is another 80-20
constituency, where it doesn'tmatter what Trump does, it
doesn't matter what Republicansdo, because their understanding,
(33:48):
it's flawed, it's wrong, is thatYeah.
And I think sometimes people onour side, when they see the ways
in which the Republicans orTrump are immoral or do things
(34:12):
that should offend them, theyare blind to the way in which
the justices they've put on theSupreme Court did jobs.
They continuously roll back theseparation of church and state.
We're having Supreme Court casesnow that could bring taxpayer
money to religious institutions.
Yeah, I think the jokes onpeople who think they're stupid
(34:35):
for going along with athrice-married adulterer.
SPEAKER_00 (34:38):
They
SPEAKER_01 (34:38):
actually understand power.
SPEAKER_00 (34:40):
When I think about the difference between the right
and the left, I often think theyseem to be far more focused on
winning, just winning.
I mean, I grew up from theadvocacy community, but it much
just thinking about winning apolicy, winning on an issue,
driving that forward.
It seems to me like a somewhatdifferent psychology that has
benefited them in some ways, thefluidity and the flexibility to
(35:03):
not really care about the, howmuch does this really line up
with our values?
We just want to win and havethat power.
Another notable Supreme Courtdecision was giving Trump
immunity for just about anythinghe chooses to do, which means
that there's really noconsequence.
I mean, he can pardon anybody inthe administration that violates
the law and he's not going to beheld accountable.
And that definitely contributesto what we're seeing these days.
(35:24):
Who do you think in theelectoral world, who's doing a
good job of figuring out what'sa pathway forward to grow
influence, to reach audiencesthat we need to reach, to get
people more engaged, you know,to start to build up this
resistance?
Who do we look to as goodexamples of this?
Well, here I'm going to be alittle disappointing, maybe.
(35:46):
It's one of those littlequestions where I should have
done
SPEAKER_01 (35:47):
the answer first.
The people who will lead us to abetter new world are people we
really don't know yet, that it'sgoing to be people who are
insurgent.
Not to say that everybody inCongress is corrupt or anything
like that, but if we look backfor examples of countries or
even the United States insimilar situations, like a key
(36:11):
ingredient of making a new worldis not being part of the old
one.
We're still at the verybeginning stages of coming to
terms with this.
And in In the conflicts that arecertain to be coming over the
next year, two years, threeyears with the Trump regime,
we're going to see a lot of newleaders.
We're going to see a lot offolks with new strategies, you
(36:32):
know, new visions of what shouldcome next.
The most important thing for usto do is to be open to all that,
to not just discount thembecause we don't know who they
are.
SPEAKER_00 (36:42):
What is a piece of advice that you got or a lesson
learned from a mentor orotherwise early on that was
really important to you that youthink is a important to
SPEAKER_01 (36:54):
share with younger campaigners.
(37:20):
regulatory proceedings againstcorporations.
And it had passed during theFord administration.
And then Carter was elected, soit was assumed.
And he vetoed it.
I can't remember if he actuallyvetoed it.
But anyway, he got to Carter.
He said he would sign it, all ofthat.
Once it became obvious that thebill would be signed into law,
the business community just didan enormous amount of lobbying.
(37:44):
The bill got weakened andweakened in committee, but it
was still something valuable.
And so then by enormous numberof post-functions.
We have the whole vote count.
Day of the final vote comes, andmy role is to be in the gallery
to keep track of who's votingand for what.
At that point, you voteelectronically, but you're not
(38:04):
seeing who's voting for what,but I know them by sight.
When the call for the final votecomes, all the members of the
House or they are listening tothe speeches by both sides.
Tip O'Neill's ends with a fieryspeech.
We know it's going to be reallyclose.
And so we watch the vote andit's neck and neck till it gets
to be about 170, 170.
(38:24):
And then there is not anothersingle vote cast for it until
after it's lost.
That is how powerful thelobbying was, right?
Which is something you would notknow otherwise because the vote
would have looked much closerbecause once it was clear that
it lost, a whole bunch ofDemocrats like stuck their cards
(38:45):
in the voting machines and votedfor it after it was too late.
SPEAKER_00 (38:49):
You mean after time had No, no, no.
After it
SPEAKER_01 (38:52):
had gotten to 218 against, they knew it would no
longer be seen as voting againstbusiness.
SPEAKER_00 (38:57):
So the rest of them felt then they could cast their
vote for it without sufferingthe consequences
SPEAKER_01 (39:07):
of corporate retribution.
pretty key moment for me becauseI realized what an illusions
created around the ability tofight against that kind of
(39:29):
upward power through electionsor the political system.
SPEAKER_00 (39:32):
That must have been, well, but you stayed in the
SPEAKER_01 (39:35):
game.
Not in a NGO advocacy way, in away that really understood that
the labor movement and the kindof community groups that I was
with before that worked with thelabor movement were
categorically different in thatall of the resources that go to
those groups come from thepeople that are those groups.
(39:59):
In the rest of the NGOcommunity, the money comes from
other people from foundations orrich people or who ultimately
don't have the same interest.
And that's why the labormovement is so essential,
because it is the only waypeople can put their dollars
together on their own behalf.
SPEAKER_00 (40:17):
That's a great point to land on.
Great.
Mike, thank you so much for yourtime.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for tuning into TheCampaign Strategist, where we
dive into the art and science ofadvocacy.
Thanks again, and see you nexttime.
To get past this, we have to understand that we are
not trying to restore the orderthat he's disrupting.
That's an old world that's nevercoming back.
The question right now, thecontest now, is what is our new
world going to look like?
And that's a project we shouldall be excited about that we all
have to lean into because it isstill contingent.
(00:21):
But as long as we think ourmission is to restore the
Democrats or to restore the oldorder, we are empowering the
monsters.
UNKNOWN (00:31):
Bye.
SPEAKER_00 (00:36):
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to The CampaignStrategist.
My guest today is MichaelPodhorzer, one of the sharpest
strategic minds in progressivepolitics.
If anyone out there is playing4D chess, it's Mike.
He served as political directorof the AFL-CIO for over 25
years, helped to launchCatalyst, a progressive data
service that helps progressiveand Democrats reach the voters
that they need, and the AnalystInstitute, which uses
(00:57):
evidence-based research andanalysis to strengthen
strategies and tactics.
Mike writes Weekend Reading, anewsletter that cuts through the
noise to name the real forcesthreatening our democracy and
what we can do about them.
He has a constant presence inthe progressive community
sharing information, helpingpeople learn more about where we
are and where we need to get to.
And if you're trying tounderstand what time it is
(01:18):
politically and how to act withstrategy and clarity, Mike is
someone you want to hear from.
Thanks very much for joining ustoday.
I appreciate it.
Tell us a little bit about howyou got into this work.
SPEAKER_01 (01:28):
Perfect.
Wow.
SPEAKER_00 (01:51):
So 50 years.
I've got a little experiencewith this.
Let's start with the 2024election.
There are a lot of differentstories out there about what
happened.
Voters massively swung to theright.
Democratic voters lost faith inthe party and stayed home.
No one could have survived theinflation of last year, not to
mention late in the cycle swapout of candidates.
(02:13):
What do you think happened in2024?
And what does it really tell usabout voters and where we need
to go next?
SPEAKER_01 (02:20):
I've written much about it.
And so I'm just going to hit thehighlights.
But I think that the beststarting point is the
recognition that most Americansthink the system's broken, that
the choices they have are notthe ones they want.
For most of this century, by twoor three to one, people have
(02:40):
felt the country's going in thewrong direction.
As recently as the last day orso, there's another poll saying
most people want either to burnthe system down or big change.
And so So it's not surprisingthat in the last 10 elections,
in nine of them, voters havethrown the party in power out.
And that has just not much of aprecedent in American history,
(03:04):
right?
At the presidential level, goingDRDR has only happened once
before, and that's more than acentury ago.
Voters keep trying to say, wewant a different system, we want
different choices.
but they don't get it.
And so we toggle between thesetwo alternatives.
One that is saying, I want toburn the system down.
(03:26):
but not in a way any of youreally want.
And the other saying, I'll slaythat dragon, but to defend the
intuitions none of you haveconfidence in.
And to me, it was the fact thatat least 17, 18 million, if not
more people who were alarmedenough in 2020 to come out to
vote against Trump stayed home.
(03:48):
We see in the polling forDemocrats now that voters really
didn't lose confidence in themin 2024.
They lost confidence for a longtime.
But when you only have twochoices, like every other
election, you're the not loser.
So in 2024, the big failure,once we got to November, was
(04:08):
that not enough people werealarmed about what was obviously
going to happen if Trump waselected.
I'm going back to that onesecond.
The other aspect that bothreinforced the sense of lack of
alarm as well as literally madeit possible was the way in which
the Roberts Court first rewrotethe Constitution to take out the
(04:30):
Insurrection Clause and thendelayed accountability and then
came up with immunity.
In a world in which theinstitutions were functioning
properly, Donald Trump would nothave been on the ballot to begin
with.
In the last week, especially aswe've seen Trump's approval
rating go down, even on thingslike the economy and
(04:51):
immigration, which were supposedto be his best things, we see
that the source of that are thevoters who are least engaged in
politics.
Remember that Trump has donenothing he didn't tell us he was
going to do.
Did people not understand whatdictator on Bill 1 means?
Did people understand I'm goingto deport 20 million people Did
(05:13):
people not understand I'm goingto put huge tariffs on every
country?
But the way in which civilsociety institutions failed, it
was the media not taking itseriously enough, not reacting
as if this is what was actuallyabout to happen.
And so the average voter whodoesn't have 24-7 to do their
(05:33):
own understanding of it justfelt, well, we survived the
first Trump administration.
We don't like the way things aregoing now.
Just stay at home.
Basically,
SPEAKER_00 (05:42):
I've got a couple of questions from that.
And one of them is, as astrategist, as someone who
really studies things, how doyou parse things like David
Shore, a prominent Democraticpollster, made the case that
most of those voters who stayedhome, if somehow they had been
sort of spotted off the couchand gone out to the vote, that
they would have voted for Trump?
How do you figure out which isthe right interpretation?
(06:04):
Understanding what's actuallyhappened is essential to knowing
where you want to go and how youwant to get there.
SPEAKER_01 (06:10):
First of all, the argument that I just made about
Biden voters who stayed home isdifferent from if somehow
someone had a magic wand andeverybody voted.
And so it's a little bit of arhetorical sleight of hand.
Most of the people who stayedhome, voted in 2020 and didn't
vote this time, happened to havea lot of markers that they
(06:34):
didn't want to live in thisfascist country.
It was very disproportionatelydifferent.
people who lived in cities,people who were registered
Democrats.
One of the fatal flaws of thesure view of all of this, which
is really not just limited tohim, is that the only way you
can possibly understandAmericans is through these polls
(06:57):
where you have all these peopledoing online surveys and you
can't look to the real world forrevealed preferences.
In that area where turnout wasdown and America moved to the
right, seven RepublicansRepublican members of the House
lost their elections.
They flipped seven seats.
There was only one Democrat onthe Cook marginal list that
(07:20):
lost.
None of the senators orgovernors running in blue states
where all of this drop-off waswon by less than 12 points.
And that was in Maryland, whereyou had a successful Republican
governor in an open seat.
Because their view is soattenuated into the four corners
of a survey they wrote, Theycan't contemplate that Americans
(07:45):
in blue America and in cities inred America actually kind of
want to keep the right to anabortion.
They want a higher minimum wage.
They want all the things thatare under attack right now.
The prerequisite for taking allthat kind of stuff seriously is
accepting that you can onlytrust what a pollster tells you.
(08:08):
After that, they make youbelieve.
There's the expression, you'regoing to believe me or your
lying eyes.
A lot of people, I think, areintimidated by people who use a
lot of numbers.
It's probably better to sayyou're going to believe my
number or your lying eyes.
And somehow that actuallytripped people up.
But even there, and this is animportant point that I didn't
(08:30):
start with because I haveskepticism about the polling
generally, but what's alsoproblematic in terms of how the
media interprets it is that thedata that he put out there is
itself contested by otherpollsters.
There's another survey that'susually seen as a kind of gold
standard academic consortium CESthat says that those who did in
(08:52):
vote actually favored Harris,just as they had in the last
couple of elections.
And so it's deeply problematic.
SPEAKER_00 (09:00):
In one way or another, that's a whole bunch of
people that we have to figureout how to get back and to get
engaged and to want to come outand support candidates who are
going to stand up for freedomand the values that we're used
to in, say, the Constitution.
I'm not sure I want to be
SPEAKER_01 (09:14):
associated with that we.
I think that since 2010, thecountry has been on borrowed
time.
As I was saying before, whatDemocrats have done, how people
perceive them, I'm just talkingnationally, level now, has not
worked.
It's not what people want.
They've won because,alternately, they see
(09:34):
Republicans as worse.
That is an unsustainable systemthat you just keep winning
because of how bad the opponentis.
You inevitably get a point wherethe disillusioned Americans just
don't bother to show up.
It's really important tounderstand that the way Biden
didn't lose 2020 was that anenormously number of people who
(09:59):
up to that point had beenalienated from the entire
process decided to vote becauseof how alarmed they were about
Trump.
And it was those people whodecide to not go out and vote
again in 2024.
SPEAKER_00 (10:12):
You mentioned the failure of the media and others
to sort of really explain whatwas in store if we got Trump
back.
And you recently spoke with AnatShankar-Osario, who's a
brilliant messagingcommunication strategist, about
that we don't really havelanguage to describe what's
going on.
Assume those things are relatedand it's difficult for the media
to figure out how to talk aboutwhat's really at stake because
(10:36):
of that missing language.
Is that Is that how you see it?
SPEAKER_01 (11:08):
or other countries where they elected fascist
leaders and where Le Pen and AFDare on the ballot, where there's
a universally understoodshorthand for what it means to
elect a fascist government.
There isn't the same ingrainedsort of like lived memory for
the country that can attach tothose words.
(11:28):
But the problem is if you don'thave a different word for what's
going on now, then you can'tcommunicate what is actually
happening.
And we're long overdue for that.
I'll give you a couple examples.
One is if you remember afterJanuary 6th and in 2021, when
the Republicans were still sortof backing Trump or doing
(11:52):
different things, and there wasa lot of back and forth about,
well, you can't say that aboutRepublicans.
My uncle's a Republican or, youknow, that's too broad based.
And so fortunately, peoplestarted talking about MAGA
Republicans.
And MAGA Republicans says thatthis is a different thing than
(12:12):
your uncle who's a Republican.
And same way, and I wish we'dhad more success earlier on
this, the continuing use of theword Supreme Court to describe
everything that comes out of thebuilding instead of, say, the
Roberts Court, when thosedecisions are by fiat,
essentially.
When we say the Supreme Courtgave him immunity, we've lost
(12:34):
the argument from the jumpbecause we're saying that this
legitimate institution did alegitimate thing.
And when you say the RobertsCourt gave them immunity, you're
saying, no, this group of peoplewho are put there by the Kochs,
by Billionaire Project, theFederalist Society to do just
this, people have traction on anunderstanding of why we're here.
SPEAKER_00 (12:56):
It's interesting how important it is for us to think
about, carefully think about thelanguage, the words that we use
as in those examples.
And one of the other ones youtalked about was it's important
not to talk about the Trumpadministration.
It's a regime.
It's like administration isweight It confers legitimacy.
It confers normalcy.
And one of the ways we have toadapt our language is to call
(13:18):
out what's, well, not normal andwhat things really are.
That's just one of thechallenges that we face when we
look at the communicationslandscape, which is one of the
things I think causes ustremendous angst and trying to
figure out we're now in thiscommunications landscape that's
incredibly asymmetrical, thatthe right has both helped to
shape and also seems to be verymuch at home in because it's
(13:43):
much more driven about winningand like engagement through the
natural human emotions of angerand outrage.
And that's what algorithms arethen tuned to, not to mention
the big social media giantsbasically seeking favor from
Trump by aligning themselves tohim.
How do you think about thechallenges that are posed by
this communications environmentand how do we need to adapt?
(14:05):
Because audiences influence, wehave to adapt or die.
How do we meet this challenge?
The answer to
SPEAKER_01 (14:11):
any of these questions is not easy because
the decisions made long agothrough the media that allowed
the takeover of most media bycorporate giants and by
billionaires is the essentialissue.
The taking away of guardrailslike the Fairness Doctrine and
(14:33):
other things, and that's thething about the whole aspect of
where we are, is that in thesecond half of the 20th century,
but coming out of the New Deal,there were a lot of guardrails
put up against the disaster ofallowing for the concentration
of wealth and power in a fewhands, whether it was
Glass-Steagall for banks,whether it was the Fairness
(14:55):
Doctrine and like how manythings you could own for
communication, all thesedifferent things, there were
guardrails.
And so for a half a century, youhad decreasing inequality.
You had the greatest burst ofshared prosperity in human
history in the United States,for real, that by the 60s was
starting to expand beyond whitepeople.
(15:16):
And then they were starting tobe successful in taking away the
guardrails that made thatpossible.
And surprise, we get all theproblems that led to the crisis
of the New Deal.
And here we are again.
Unfortunately, it's that deeperproblem.
And I think to bring in is that,and this is where I think it's
(15:37):
another one of the guardrailsthat doesn't get enough
attention, is ability of workingpeople to act collectively in
unions, making sure that we eachhave to be satisfied with, you
know, oh, every two years youget to cast your vote, so this
is exactly the country you want,is the problem.
We were successful for decadesbecause there was a
(15:58):
counterweight to corporatepower.
And you don't have acounterweight to corporate power
unless you have stronger unions.
SPEAKER_00 (16:05):
There's this interesting challenge we have
right now, the collective actionproblem.
We're seeing it play out withlaw firms and definitely media
companies, especially withParamount, what's happened to 60
Minutes and some of the firstuniversities Trump went after,
where on an individual basis, ifthe president of the United
States comes after you and isable to threaten your interests,
(16:25):
your safety, your welfare, yourmoney, it's a perfectly rational
decision to go, whatever, givehim what he wants and we'll
survive.
When you have those decisions,that's how people keep making
the decision.
It means all of the voices andcenters that could be pushback,
opposition to what's going onare falling.
The challenge of trying to geteverybody to go, hey, it's in
(16:48):
all of our best interests not toaccede to this kind of
weaponization of the federalgovernment seems to be a real
challenge.
And I don't know if there issomething that can be done about
it or if we have to rely on thebond market freaking out in
order to curb the worst impulsesof the president and maybe some
corporations.
I'm just curious what yourthoughts are on that.
It's a great
SPEAKER_01 (17:09):
point, but there's a piece to add to that.
John Dewey, who's a thinker inthe early part of the 20th
century, had this greatexpression that politics is the
shadow big business casts onsociety.
I think if you reformulate whatyou were saying about the way
the law firms have capitulatedin universities and also the
(17:31):
Democrats in Congress, compareit to 2017, the first time
around.
People couldn't be anti-Trumpfast enough in those quarters,
right?
Those law firms were doing a lotof pro bono work on this, all of
this.
They showed up for the Muslimban.
They were just like all outthere.
Same with universities.
Well, a big difference is thatin 2017, most of corporate
(17:52):
America really was prettyfreaked out that Trump won.
So all of that standing up wasbolstered by the corporate
community who are the clients ofbig law.
At the same time foruniversities.
This time around, we saw beforethe election, corporate America
pretty much wanting to go, Trumpwon't be that bad.
(18:13):
We'll get our tax cuts.
All of the corporations stillare not part of the resistance
or whatever, the way they wereeight years ago.
It's not that those law firmpartners or university
presidents are becoming lesswilling to stand up in a vacuum.
In terms of their ownincentives, there's less of it.
(18:35):
Or even think about theDemocrats.
In 2017, most of them.
Not all of them.
There's obviously a fewexceptions.
They spend an enormous amount oftime raising money every day.
And in 2017, when they wereraising money and talking to the
affluent, talking about how theywere going to rein Trump in was
a positive.
(18:56):
And the people they were talkingto were pretty concerned about
what might happen.
Right now, they're callingaround to get money from people
who are not that concerned andwho are not showing the same
sense of alone they did eightyears ago.
We as sort of spectators toCongress to think about them in
this kind of vacuum that, well,you know, the voters think this
(19:16):
or the polls say that, butthey're spending hours every day
in a milieu where there isn'tthe same urgency or
SPEAKER_00 (19:23):
alarm.
I feel like I must have missedsomething.
The evidence of how poisonousTrump is for this country is
more clear than, way more clearthan 2017, but Democratic donors
are less concerned?
Yeah, not like
SPEAKER_01 (19:37):
marquee Democratic donors, but they have to call
through to all the corporatePACs.
They have to call through to alot of anonymous Wall Street
people or Silicon Valley peoplewho get no attention in the
media.
SPEAKER_00 (19:52):
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (19:53):
but who don't wear it on their sleeves
SPEAKER_00 (19:54):
necessarily.
SPEAKER_01 (19:55):
Right, right.
And why are they less concerned?
I think that there are differentreasons.
It's a complex story, but Ithink that in the immediate
past, many of them felt thatBiden was too antagonistic.
The antitrust stuff, theextension of the tax cuts, going
on a picket line for the UAW,you know, Lina Khan, all of
(20:17):
that.
Whereas in 2017, up through2020, the next Democratic
administration was hypothetical.
And so they had, like, we justdon't want this.
And in a more proximate sense,although this isn't the only
thing by any amount, if youreally roll your memory tapes
back to November 2020, when thebusiness community was so Yeah.
(20:41):
And so it didn't quite work outthat way.
Yeah.
And so it didn't quite
SPEAKER_00 (21:03):
work out that way.
was hundreds of millions ofdollars in pro bono work for the
beneficiaries, I guess, hepicks.
Who does he have in mind?
Like, was that just a way to dighim in and cost him more money
and time and embarrassment?
Or do you think he and hisregime have some groups in mind
(21:27):
that they, you know, will needlegal defense?
What do you think that means?
Does it mean something or is itjust...
SPEAKER_01 (21:33):
Oh, I absolutely think it means something.
I mean, we'll see whether thingsare changing, but I think what
they have in mind is Yeah.
(22:09):
blue states, they can, you know,challenge the try to decertify
labor unions.
They can do amicus briefs forElon Musk's case to make the
NLRA unconstitutional.
There's no shortage of legalwork that they can be deployed
SPEAKER_00 (22:28):
for.
That seems like something thatwould be good to have more
attention on.
If anybody can spare the time.
I think of Trump largely as anamoeba who's like stimulus
response, stimulus response.
And, you know, we know thetriggers.
He clearly has powerfulpolitical instincts, but there's
also a lot of very deep thinkingin MAGA world.
I mean, I know we both readProject 2025 and talked about it
(22:49):
last year.
That's a very comprehensiveplaybook that they are executing
100% and way faster than I everthought.
One of the things that I think alot of people worry about is how
Trump regime could use the powerof the federal government to
permanently plant futureelections in favor of the
Republicans to effectively lockDemocrats out of party.
(23:09):
And I thought it would besomething like a national voter
integrity law, which they haveintroduced called SAVE, that
would sort of pull together thebest of the crap they've pulled
in states.
I hadn't actually thought enoughabout them attacking the
institutions that are part ofthe electoral machinery.
And just this week, Trump'sexecutive order instructing the
DOJ to go after Act Blue, Ithink is really frightening.
(23:32):
How concerned are you?
Where do you see that going?
Do you expect them to open upmore fronts attacking
essentially the infrastructurethat helps Democrats get elected
in advance of 2026, when innormal times, one could
reasonably expect that theDemocrats would be able to
retake the House?
I think they're going to
SPEAKER_01 (23:49):
get as much of it accomplished as they can, right?
And that, again, to come back toearlier in the conversation, is
where words matter.
Because there's some people,unfortunately, throw off
expressions like, yeah, throwelections, right?
There are going to be elections.
But the problem is that when yougo vote in 2026, the current The
(24:10):
substance of what an election iswill be different than it was
before.
And as long as we keep makingjust the fact that you get to go
to your high school and cast aballot, the checkmark for we're
still a democracy, to add towhat they've done in a way that
it's hard to calculate what itmeans, for a long time, the
(24:32):
federal government has investeda lot in protecting elections
from cyber threats, and theyhave stopped doing that.
Trump's own appointee, ChrisKrebs.
(25:09):
check, we're still a democracy.
SPEAKER_00 (25:11):
You know way more than I do about all of this
stuff, and there are times Ifreak myself out about
foreseeing, like, you know, eachof these pieces combine to sort
of, you know, seal us into theempire from Star Wars of
absolute domination and control,which is not healthy.
It can absolutely bedemotivating, not to mention the
(25:32):
mental stress.
How do you keep it together,being able to see, like, all of
the sort of pathways that theseindividual things go down and
the way they interconnect andcould mean that we had our last,
I mean, I wouldn't even callrecent ones all that free and,
they're pretty free and fair,right?
But, you know.
No, we already are.
How do you handle
SPEAKER_01 (25:51):
that?
We are already past that.
That's part of the problem.
Yeah.
If you remember like where youwere in January of 2009 when
Barack Obama was sworn in, youprobably had a pretty good
feeling.
And if someone from January 2025time traveled back to you, told
you Right.
Because remember, in 2008, itwas before the election.
(26:39):
for Citizens United, and no onecould do any of that.
But that is what I mean abouthow, like, you keep using the
same word.
Well, the 2012 election, they'renot the same thing.
That's in the rearview mirror.
We had someone who should havebeen found guilty of
insurrection who was president.
That's not a free and fairelection.
I think to get back to how doyou keep your sanity and how you
(27:03):
actually be emboldened and readyto try to deal with it, we're at
a time that's not that muchunlike the period in the 1920s
and early 30s where you hadrising fascism coming across
Europe and you had after theFirst World War and you had
Soviet totalitarianism comingout of that and the same kind of
(27:25):
in Incredible inequalities, bothin terms of wealth and income
and political power.
And there was an Italiandissident who was imprisoned by
Mussolini, Antonio Grubsky, whosaid this.
He said, the old world is dying.
The new world is yet to be born.
Now they're just monsters.
And that describes where we arenow, right?
(27:48):
Even in the 30s, there was amuch more robust fascist
movement in the United Statesthan we tend to remember.
But the key insights here isthat the old world has died.
The miracle for the UnitedStates at that point was that
the new world that was born wasthe New Deal.
It wasn't fascism.
(28:08):
It wasn't totalitariancommunism.
It was the New Deal.
But it was absolutely not theold world progressives might
have had in mind or that theDemocrats, I should say, would
have had in mind.
It was that kind of departure.
And the challenge now, and thisis why earlier I was saying I'm
not sure I want to be part ofthat we, is that to get past
(28:29):
this, we have to understand thatwe are not trying to restore the
order that he's disrupting.
That's an old world that's nevercoming back.
The question right now, thecontest now, is what is our new
world going to look like?
And that's a project we shouldall be excited about that we all
have to lean into because it isstill contingent.
But as long as we think ourmission is to restore the
(28:52):
Democrats or to restore the oldorder, we are empowering the
monsters.
SPEAKER_00 (28:57):
I think that's an important point to make.
And I'm hearing people make itmore and more.
It already wasn't a perfectsystem that in fact led to so
many people feeling left behind,left out, dismissed, not in
control.
It has nothing for me.
So what does it look like as wemove forward?
What do you think are thebiggest challenges progressives
and Democrats need to reallysink their teeth into to figure
(29:19):
out how do we create the futurethat we want?
SPEAKER_01 (29:21):
Well, I think that an important element of it is
co-creating with a broader groupof folks and with working class
people, basically.
Going back to that New Dealcomparison, the people at that
point understood that theimportance of siding with
working people against corporatepower, right?
And that's when unions werecreated.
(29:42):
And unions played a huge role.
Working people played a hugerole in ensuring the success of
the New Deal project up untilthe Wagner Act, which created
unions, the government mostlyhelped corporations suppress
collective action.
After that, it defended it for abrief time, but it meant that
(30:04):
very quickly a third of theAmerican workforce was
unionized.
And that third of the Americanworkforce continuously voted for
FDR and the Democrats 80-20.
When you have a third of thecountry and their family
understanding that there's aconflict between your interests
and corporate interests and thatthe Democratic Party was on your
(30:26):
side, all the things we thinkabout now, like, well, the
economy wasn't so good or all ofthe ways we think about
elections now didn't matter.
In the Depression, it went downinto another recession, but
Roosevelt still won becausevoters understood that Roosevelt
was on their side, that theywere smarter in a way than
(30:47):
voters now who understoodclearly the stakes for them and
the And so you had five straightelections where the New Deal
won.
And then the next two withEisenhower, he won essentially
promising not to disturb the NewDeal.
And then you have Kennedy andJohnson.
That is when America's beensuccessful for the most people,
(31:10):
but it's also when the mostpeople have been organized to
have a voice in their future.
And so in this moment when it'sencouraging to see how many
people are going out into thestreets, doing things to defend
the people who were, you know,abducted to El Salvador, which
is all important to do.
It is not, not that.
They have to understand that itis as important as the Trump
(31:35):
regime goes after working peoplein their unions, that that is as
dangerous or more dangerous tothem, not just to the people in
the unions, as any of this otherstuff.
SPEAKER_00 (31:45):
One way, one of the many ways, 2024 was notable, was
the Teamsters declined toendorse Vice President Harris
and I think that you said, wroteor said recently, right now
union membership sort of 60-40,if I'm remembering correctly.
Yeah, 57-43 this time around.
And I'm guessing that largelyspeaks to the disaffection, the
dissatisfaction that people hadwith what was the status quo or
(32:07):
how things were going.
Looking forward, is the way tounite the working class and to
restore the sort of the power ofpeople over the corporate
elites, is it through unions?
Is that the only path or arethere other ways that that can
be done?
can be expressed and organized.
SPEAKER_01 (32:23):
I mean, it's the only path that's ever worked.
One of the pieces I wroterecently was about the much
broader connection betweenunions and real democracy.
And I go through some examplesthat almost everyone's familiar
with, but somehow doesn't thinkabout it in a union context.
The overthrow of Soviettotalitarianism, starting with
(32:45):
solidarity, the union in Poland.
You had the event, the successof the overthrow of apartheid in
South Africa, not just theobvious genius of Nelson
Mandela, but also the pressureof the organized miners in the
country.
The source of not being ademocracy is the imbalance of
(33:06):
power between corporations andindividuals.
And unions are the only way thatthere's been an institution at
scale that goes against that.
In terms of for freedom, I thinkin a way that that in sort of
concept also gets this ideaacross, but not with the same
(33:27):
values, is the role that theevangelical and Christian
nationalists play in the countrynow, where that is another 80-20
constituency, where it doesn'tmatter what Trump does, it
doesn't matter what Republicansdo, because their understanding,
(33:48):
it's flawed, it's wrong, is thatYeah.
And I think sometimes people onour side, when they see the ways
in which the Republicans orTrump are immoral or do things
(34:12):
that should offend them, theyare blind to the way in which
the justices they've put on theSupreme Court did jobs.
They continuously roll back theseparation of church and state.
We're having Supreme Court casesnow that could bring taxpayer
money to religious institutions.
Yeah, I think the jokes onpeople who think they're stupid
(34:35):
for going along with athrice-married adulterer.
SPEAKER_00 (34:38):
They
SPEAKER_01 (34:38):
actually understand power.
SPEAKER_00 (34:40):
When I think about the difference between the right
and the left, I often think theyseem to be far more focused on
winning, just winning.
I mean, I grew up from theadvocacy community, but it much
just thinking about winning apolicy, winning on an issue,
driving that forward.
It seems to me like a somewhatdifferent psychology that has
benefited them in some ways, thefluidity and the flexibility to
(35:03):
not really care about the, howmuch does this really line up
with our values?
We just want to win and havethat power.
Another notable Supreme Courtdecision was giving Trump
immunity for just about anythinghe chooses to do, which means
that there's really noconsequence.
I mean, he can pardon anybody inthe administration that violates
the law and he's not going to beheld accountable.
And that definitely contributesto what we're seeing these days.
(35:24):
Who do you think in theelectoral world, who's doing a
good job of figuring out what'sa pathway forward to grow
influence, to reach audiencesthat we need to reach, to get
people more engaged, you know,to start to build up this
resistance?
Who do we look to as goodexamples of this?
Well, here I'm going to be alittle disappointing, maybe.
(35:46):
It's one of those littlequestions where I should have
done
SPEAKER_01 (35:47):
the answer first.
The people who will lead us to abetter new world are people we
really don't know yet, that it'sgoing to be people who are
insurgent.
Not to say that everybody inCongress is corrupt or anything
like that, but if we look backfor examples of countries or
even the United States insimilar situations, like a key
(36:11):
ingredient of making a new worldis not being part of the old
one.
We're still at the verybeginning stages of coming to
terms with this.
And in In the conflicts that arecertain to be coming over the
next year, two years, threeyears with the Trump regime,
we're going to see a lot of newleaders.
We're going to see a lot offolks with new strategies, you
(36:32):
know, new visions of what shouldcome next.
The most important thing for usto do is to be open to all that,
to not just discount thembecause we don't know who they
are.
SPEAKER_00 (36:42):
What is a piece of advice that you got or a lesson
learned from a mentor orotherwise early on that was
really important to you that youthink is a important to
SPEAKER_01 (36:54):
share with younger campaigners.
(37:20):
regulatory proceedings againstcorporations.
And it had passed during theFord administration.
And then Carter was elected, soit was assumed.
And he vetoed it.
I can't remember if he actuallyvetoed it.
But anyway, he got to Carter.
He said he would sign it, all ofthat.
Once it became obvious that thebill would be signed into law,
the business community just didan enormous amount of lobbying.
(37:44):
The bill got weakened andweakened in committee, but it
was still something valuable.
And so then by enormous numberof post-functions.
We have the whole vote count.
Day of the final vote comes, andmy role is to be in the gallery
to keep track of who's votingand for what.
At that point, you voteelectronically, but you're not
(38:04):
seeing who's voting for what,but I know them by sight.
When the call for the final votecomes, all the members of the
House or they are listening tothe speeches by both sides.
Tip O'Neill's ends with a fieryspeech.
We know it's going to be reallyclose.
And so we watch the vote andit's neck and neck till it gets
to be about 170, 170.
(38:24):
And then there is not anothersingle vote cast for it until
after it's lost.
That is how powerful thelobbying was, right?
Which is something you would notknow otherwise because the vote
would have looked much closerbecause once it was clear that
it lost, a whole bunch ofDemocrats like stuck their cards
(38:45):
in the voting machines and votedfor it after it was too late.
SPEAKER_00 (38:49):
You mean after time had No, no, no.
After it
SPEAKER_01 (38:52):
had gotten to 218 against, they knew it would no
longer be seen as voting againstbusiness.
SPEAKER_00 (38:57):
So the rest of them felt then they could cast their
vote for it without sufferingthe consequences
SPEAKER_01 (39:07):
of corporate retribution.
pretty key moment for me becauseI realized what an illusions
created around the ability tofight against that kind of
(39:29):
upward power through electionsor the political system.
SPEAKER_00 (39:32):
That must have been, well, but you stayed in the
SPEAKER_01 (39:35):
game.
Not in a NGO advocacy way, in away that really understood that
the labor movement and the kindof community groups that I was
with before that worked with thelabor movement were
categorically different in thatall of the resources that go to
those groups come from thepeople that are those groups.
(39:59):
In the rest of the NGOcommunity, the money comes from
other people from foundations orrich people or who ultimately
don't have the same interest.
And that's why the labormovement is so essential,
because it is the only waypeople can put their dollars
together on their own behalf.
SPEAKER_00 (40:17):
That's a great point to land on.
Great.
Mike, thank you so much for yourtime.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for tuning into TheCampaign Strategist, where we
dive into the art and science ofadvocacy.
Thanks again, and see you nexttime.
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!