Stuart Stevens

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone. Simon Rosenberg Hopium Chronicles. You know, have a
what's going to be an interesting event today. I thought
this is going to be just Stuart Stevens and I
reflecting on the amazing election we had last week. But
we have other things to talk about today. Welcome Stuart,
Thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Great great to be here. Man, What the fuck's going
on with these Democrats?

Speaker 1 (00:25):
I want to start by doing the obligatory. We had
a great election last week. It was one of our
best elections we've had in a long time, certainly since
twenty twenty, maybe twenty eighteen. There was a clear message
of repudiation of Trump. There was really no you know,
sometimes Stuart, elections are complicated and they send nuanced messages.

(00:46):
This one was not complicated. This was a clear and
rousing message of repudiation against this, against Trump and his
Ranson regime. And then here we are a week later
in a different place, and you know, we had a
big win Tuesday. We did not have a big win
last night when eight Democratic senators made a decision to

(01:08):
join with the Republicans to reopen the government against really
the wishes of the American people. Frankly and most of
the Democratic Party. But here we are, and do you
want me to take the first stab or do you
want to It's just like one.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Of these things where they're trying to cover the spread
too much.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
I think, listen, I I think that we have to
take what they're saying at face value. That they believe
they were doing the right thing and that they were
protecting tens of millions of Americans from harm from Trump,
and I think that part of in our yeah, yeah,

(01:49):
I understand, And I said, you know, the sentiment is correct,
the analysis is incorrect. I disagree with it, and they
you know, I think this was a mistake. And I
think it was a mistake because there are two lessons
that we have to always learn from our battles against autocrats,
which is that if you appease, if you give in,

(02:11):
they take more. It just it's an incentive they see
you as weak. And the second one is that you know,
I think that in some ways, you know, in the
Hobium community this morning, I had a second point, but
I'm forgetting. But let me get to what I was
going to say anyway, is that I'm a little like everybody,
I think, a little frazzled today. I was expecting to
have kind of a calm, joyous, celibratory victory lap week

(02:36):
from our election. Not really working out that way. But
I think the other thing that happened, you know, that's
come up in our conversation and hopeing today is that,
you know, was this always the outcome? And going to
this was was this always going to be the outcome?
Once Schumer and Jefferies decided, I think courageously to take

(02:57):
this on back at the end of September early October.
And I think the answer to that is no, because
I don't I don't buy the idea that the likely
scenario here is that Trump would start shooting the hostages.
I mean, it was always a possibility. But also Donald
Trump is a deal guy. You know, he's negotiating deals
with foreign leaders all over the world. He seems uninterested

(03:19):
in negotiating to you know, to help the American people
and to help our democracy. And I think that part
of what motivated these the Gang of Eight yesterday to
take their action was the sense of increasing harm that
was happening, and they wanted to protect the American people
from harm. I don't I think this was a short
term I don't agree with the decision, as you pointed out,

(03:41):
but I also think this is this was being done
out of a virtuous sense and not one of that capitulation.
But I do think that Stuart, going back to something
you and I have discussed a lot in our regular conversations,
the Democratic Party is still in a confused place about
strong and weak. Yeah, and you know, and about strong

(04:05):
leader week leader kind of stuff in our politics. It's
it's just too secondary to how we look at politics
every day, where it's primary for Trump and the Republicans.
And you know, this has also got to be I
think a big lesson coming out of what happened in
the last few days.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah. Look, I think a couple of things. One, I
think it's fair to say that Donald Trump will always
have a higher pain threshold when it comes to other
people because he basically doesn't care. Right. I mean, if
you said to Donald Trump, you know, in sixteen you'll

(04:43):
get to be president, but you have to offer up
one of your kids this tribute, his only response would
have been, could I picked the kid? Right? Which one?
And I agree with you that I think this is
well intentioned and ultimately, you know, I always go back
to this back in my political consulting days in two months,

(05:03):
will it matter? And I think that the larger trends
that we saw on Tuesday last Tuesday were will dominate
this moment that you had, you know. So it goes
back to what is your theory of the twenty four election.
Republicans announced that this was a realignment election and that

(05:26):
this was going to be a beforetime and in after time. Well,
that always seemed ridiculous to me. Trump's coalition in twenty
with eight eighty five percent, why he dropped the eighty
four percent white and it was an election that a
challenger should have won and did win. That's not an endorsement.

(05:48):
And so if you go back to just compare the
exit polls for the Virginia governor's race to the exit
polls in the presidential race, you're back to the black
lieutenant governor candidate got seven percent of the black vote.
That's exactly the same that Barry Goldworder got in nineteen

(06:09):
sixty four. So that's about as flatalion as you can get.
You had Hispanics supporting a Republican dropping to thirty two percent,
which really should be no surprise, you know. And bushwere
we really worked at this. We got it up to
forty two, but then with McCain and went back down
to like thirty two. And it wasn't like McCain was
out there saying they're a bunch of rapists and we're

(06:31):
going to deport their asses. And Asian Americans back to
seventy percent, so I think and winning young men. So
you know, I think that the ugliness of what's happening

(06:53):
in the country is very does reach people, does resonate
with people, probably particularly younger vote, and I think the
fact that nothing has gotten better. I mean, his one
issue that he's winning on was immigration, and he's losing
on immigration because they overplayed their hand. So, you know,
like Haley Barbius to say it a certain point in politics,

(07:15):
it's good to be for something people like. And you know,
I really don't know what Republicans are for that they like,
except you know, you shouldn't have transgendered athletes in the podiums,
which is not an international winning issue. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Look, let me try to give my summary here of
this moment, and twofold one is that and I agree
with everything you just said. I think number one is
that the elections went way beyond anything that we could
have anticipated. I mean, you know, seeing twenty point margin
wins in Pennsylvania and in Maine, and in Georgia and

(07:56):
in California on these statewide ballot initiatives various elections was extraordinary.
I mean, you just don't see twenty point margins in
competitive states. And these are places that the Republicans fought.
It wasn't like they just gave up. I mean these
were contested races where Democrats had enormous margins. We had
enormous margins in New Jersey and in Virginia. And the

(08:19):
margins here really matters to me, as somebody who's been
doing this, is that this wasn't just a win, it
was a route. It was a clear repudiation. It was
a legitimate blue wave that washed all across the country.
And we all know to your point that if you
gain this out over the next twelve months, the likely
scenario now heading into the midterms is that something like

(08:40):
this is replicated next year, just based on historic trend lines.
When you have this kind of definitive movement, and as
I've talked about how in the generic ballot we've moved
seven to eight points since last year and the Gallop
Party id we've moved twelve. You now see Senate races
that are the reach Senate races for us. We need

(09:00):
to win the Senate and flip the Senate in Alaska.
We're up in Ohio, We're up in Maine, We're up
in Iowa. We don't have a candidate there, but our
gubernatorial candidate is up in Texas. You know, our candidates
are within margin of error in competitive races. And all
of a sudden you see the evidence of this shifting landscape.

(09:20):
You know of it moving seven to twelve points. You
can now see it in the state based polling for
twenty twenty six. And so this is a cycle of
opportunity for us. But I think the second thing is
do it. I'll throw out there, and this is something
I've been arguing since the summer, is that the shutdown
was really only a piece of the battle over the
budget and Trump's agenda. And now the Republicans have to

(09:43):
with one of the smallest congressional majorities in American history,
where they can only lose two votes in the House
and three votes in the Senate. They have to now
defend the end defensible. They have to go into these budget,
these final budget negotiations to get us to a budget
next year, and they have to defend the tariffs potentially,
they have to defend the healthcare cuts. They're going to

(10:03):
have to defend the increases in electricity prices because the
subsidy cuts to the clean energy the clean energy subsidy cuts.
They're going to have to defend this domestic police force
that Trump and the tripling of the ice budget. There
is a lot in this final budget that is going
to be very difficult for the Republicans to defend. And
I think that one of the recommendations that I've been

(10:25):
making is that once the government has reopened and checks
start flowing again, and snap benefits are there, and the
air traffic controllers go back to work, we need to
make it very very clear about what we are not
going to vote for at the end of the year,
and that because in essence, I think we should attempt
to repeal the entire big, ugly bill. That thing only

(10:48):
passed with fifty votes in the Senate. They need sixty
on all those same many of those same things, and
I think we should make it clear that we're not
going to give them those votes, and this would be
a way for the Gang of to redeem themselves right,
to show that they're not just appeasers and capitulators, but
that they're doing there's a virtue to their fight. And

(11:09):
I think how much of that we can get in
this budget negotiation or then in next year's budget negotiations
or when we come back into power in twenty twenty seven.
We've got a clear set of things that we want
to do. We should talk to the American people about it.
Here are the things we want right, roll back to tariffs,
fully fund ACA and medicaid, you know, make sure that
we're funding our allies in Europe and Ukraine and not

(11:32):
putin that we're allied with our allies and not putin
that we are. You know, we're not going to triple
the budget. Device we need to draw a line in
the sand now on what we're not going to vote
for that our Senate Democrats are not going to vote
for and have let them continue to make the case
for things that they can't really defend, because I think
they have two options now as a party. They either

(11:54):
defend the indefensible and run on the most unpopular agenda
and modern American history one that's pulling much lower than
he is, frankly, or they start course correcting, and we
began to see this desire for course correcting. Thirteen Republicans
have called for the House Republicans to negotiate in the
ACA subsidies. We just voted three times last week to

(12:16):
repeal the Trump's terrible tariffs, and so they're aware that
this agenda is unsaleable to the unsellable to the American people,
and we have to keep pushing on both fronts, right,
which is that we got to make them eat it,
because I think one of the reasons we had such
a good election is that Schumer and Jeffries by picking
this fight, made the major issues in our country about

(12:37):
the harms they were doing to America. It wasn't about
processed stuff or anything else. It was about healthcare cuts
and people's lives getting worse. There was this massive repudiation.
We need to keep all that in the news, but
we also now I think, have to show a greater
willingness to be resolute about what we're just not going
to support in the upcoming budget negotiations.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Look, I couldn't remark, you know, if I ran a
Democratic party if you. What I would suggest is that
they can take a page in the contract with America
and have a very specific, relatively short list of this
is what you're going to get, which is is just
a version of what you're saying that I would say,

(13:19):
you're going to get a tax on people who make
over pick a number, ten million dollars a year, whatever.
I would say that you're going to cut off all
funding for the executive branch. I would say that, I
would say we're going to nationalize Starlink, We're going to
nationalize SpaceX, and I would have these things out there

(13:42):
that are big exciting to people and say this is
I want something. I'm going to get here, you know,
and to me, it's time for like a little trash talk.
This is good, like you know, we won, you lost,
we're better, this is why we're right, you're wrong, you're

(14:02):
got routed, and so, you know, you combine that with
one of the things that just really strikes me about
their punking party is who do they have out there
who's not just losing losing them supporters every time they
go on. I mean, they're Stephen Miller, who is like
a cartoon character. You have Christy no, you have JD.

(14:24):
Vance who I mean, if his whole family is speaking
to him at the end of this, it'll be astounding.
I mean the way that he attacks immigrants and the
way he says you shouldn't like people who speak another
language you move next door, like like maybe you're in loss?

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Is in loss?

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Like really, Jad, I don't think they're that bad. I
kind of like to Vidiam, I bet they're interesting. And
Trump and who who's out there? Who is their appealing figure?
Whereas you know, I think both of these women who
are elected governor are tremendously appealing. I think their backgrounds

(15:01):
are very important. It goes back to claiming a national
security edge. So you know, it's you need a combination
of a messenger and message, and it seems to me
that the advantage goes to the Democrats on both and
I just hope they get it together. Well, Schumer's not

(15:22):
a plus. I mean, nobody looks at humor and says great,
I want that. I mean, it's just where he is
in his career. It's probably who he always was. He's
more of an inside player. I don't think they react
horribly to it. If you're just it's just sort of wallpaper,
you know, and he has the Senate process talk, so

(15:46):
you know, I would be out there trying to put
all these other faces out there for the Democratic Party,
and there's a bunch of them and they're really appealing.
From cheers to Governor Virginia and New Jersey. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Look, I mean I think it's a great perspective Stewart,
that you know, getting beyond the sort of the anger
and the frustration of the last twenty four hours to
you know, what I tried to do in my post
today is a sort of level set on where we were,
and I you know, went through the polling you know,
the polling data showing Trump, you know, incredibly unpopular his agenda.

(16:25):
Even more so, I think the thing that is also
going to start to become a much bigger topic of
discussion is his clear physical decline, and that is, you know,
become impossible to ignore. I mean, the media is doing
the best that it can to ignore it. But you know,
him falling asleep for twenty minutes in the middle of
a live event at his own desk, you know that'
took place on Thursday. You know, it was kind of

(16:47):
an incredible moment. I mean, an unprecedented moment in our
in modern American history to have you know, he's sitting
at the resolute desk with a camera on him, and
he's asleep for twenty minutes, and you know, and so
I think that that's going to become an issue. And
I also think we for all of the obvious anger
and frustration of the Democratic Party that has played out

(17:08):
over the last few months, the data about relative strength
of the two parties over the last few months has
moved dramatically towards US. I mean not just in party
id and in the generic ballot, where we're now substantially
ahead of where we were a year ago, but we've
now seen in virtually every poll Democrats have an advantage
on the economy, which has not been true, was certainly

(17:30):
not true in twenty twenty four. I went back and
looked Trump beat US in the economy by seven points
in the election last year. And I think that you know,
we are structurally things are moving in our direction. And
I also think you're absolutely right. I mean, if you
look at our top twenty to thirty leaders to compare
them to the other side, you know they got nothing.

(17:52):
I mean, Jade Vance would have to shave his beard
if he was in the military, right, Like, I'm still
you know, it's so funny that hag Seth has waged
war on facial hair advance and obesity. Trump his own
two guys wouldn't be able to make it in the
Hegseth military. And so I do think that as we
get through this, I just I want to come back
to one kind of very foundational understanding that I have

(18:14):
at the moment, which is that you know, we have
we have more power than we understand. We are still
struggling to sort of step into our own power in
this moment. But I think the real test of this
moment and our lessons that we take away, you know,
from it, because I remember the second lesson I was
going to talk about now, which is that I do

(18:37):
think that one of the reasons we did so well
in the election as the American people saw us fighting
for them, right and that and that we now need
to be fighting really hard over the next few months
when the Republicans now have to come back again and
get seven of our votes, you know, for any final
budget that passes. And and let's if they can't do

(19:00):
that and we hit an impass again, and they want
to get rid of the filibuster. You notice they haven't
wanted to get rid of the filibuster. And the overt
reason they've said is because when we come back into power,
we would use it maliciously. But the real reason is
then they have to own their own budget and pass
it with their own votes, which they barely were able

(19:21):
to do in the Big Ugly Bill. They only got
to fifty in the Big Ugly This thing is going
to be far uglier the end of year final Omnibus
that's going to come. And I don't know that they
can pass their own budget with their own supporters, given
their low margins, And so I think we have them
in a much weaker place than I think is the

(19:41):
conventional wisdom. And if I can sort of riff off
of your give you my riff of the riff he
went on earlier. You know, we have to get up
every day remembering that Trump is weak, he's not strong.
He's losing, he's not winning. He's a failure, he's not
a success. He's a villain, not a hero, and that
we have to and he's I call him a b
big blobby baby man and anything but a strong man.

(20:03):
But we have to recognize that our job, in part
every day is to pull the curtain back from the wizard,
to remind the country that this orange emperor has no clothes.
What an ugly sight that is. But it is critical
that we recognize that the bubble is piercing, This bubble
of strength is piercing. And I'll give you one other
example Steward of this, right, and this is something you'll appreciate.

(20:24):
So you know, I've been waging this war against these
red wave Polsters for the last few years. So in
New Jersey, the red waivers came in and showed the
race dead. Even she won by thirteen points. There were
seven different yes, yeah, seven different Polsters in the final
ten days with poles showing the race one or two points.

(20:45):
They were off by more than ten points, which, as
you know, means either they can't pull or these were
fake poles, right, And so those seven polsters now have
been also and a few others nationally have been consistently
pumping out these showing Trump up six in job approval up,
four in job approval up. Even so, there were a

(21:06):
series of these national polls that Republicans were seeing that
we're telling them that everything was okay, that even though
we know in the independent polling that bottom has fallen
out on Trump's approval rating. These fake polls have been
instrumental in keeping Trump's congressional coalition together. Well, guess what happened,
Emerson after the election dropped a poll showing Trump going

(21:27):
from minus three to minus eight. You've had another one
of their posters, you know, after the election, moving from
plus four Trump to minus five Trump. And all of
a sudden, these red wave polsters, what I call the
wood the blank ye for Donald Trump and the Republicans,
are now starting to show a more accurate window into
where he is, which is that he's a despised and

(21:49):
unpopular figure with an even more unpopular agenda. And this
is a very important dynamic because it will start to
loosen the already loosened hole that he has over Congress,
you know, in these common consequential fights. You know, let's
see what and so anyway, I throw that out there.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
No, it's a really good point when people aren't talking
about that. You know. One of the things I just
wish the Democratic Party do is stop talking about the
Democratic Party. It's like, don't talk about how funny they want.
They just tell jokes. NBA sinners don't say, you know,
I'm really tall. You know that, and you see it

(22:25):
at action, and that's how you know. You've been in
these presidential races in terms. You know you're losing a primary,
it's like nothing, you can't talk your way out of it.
You just got to win the next primary. So you know,
they didn't. Nobody voted I think for the any a
governor's candidate in any of these states, any statewide candidates
to help save the Democratic Party, they voted because they

(22:48):
liked that person. They voted because they didn't like the
other one. They voted because they liked what they were
talking about. And I think they're just expecting anybody really
to have very strong feelings about any party now is
it's just sort of unrealistic. It's sort of an outdated language.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
You know.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
It's just a classic case where I think society has
kind of moved on and we have these things and
we're going to have them for a long time. But
they are who the people who represent them, that's who
they are, and they are what you're talking about. So

(23:27):
I don't know, you know, in all of these polls
if I was doing them to try to guide a
candidate or a party, you know, I would ask a
special question, did Donald Trump lose a free and fair
election in twenty And if you say no, I would
throw you out of the poll because it just pollutes

(23:48):
the sample because there's nothing that you can say to
those voters that is going to mean anything. I mean,
it would be the equivalent of, you know, having a
discussion about nine to eleven and you go, okay, hey,
do you think it was an inside job? If you
say yes, there's nothing you're gonna say, It's like, you
know what. So I think that these numbers get very

(24:11):
thin comps numbers are actually worse than they look because
you know what percent of those voters think the Trump won.
I mean, they just live in another world and there's
no equivalent on the on the center left side of that.

(24:33):
So okay, I I you know, you have to. I
think it's always useful in these things that if you
were sitting in the White House, peoples, I thought it
was what would you do? It's an interesting question because
you know, change the subject, admit chank to what though? Right?

(24:54):
I mean, I don't know, you know, they're talking about
making crime this huge issue. Yeah, I just crime is
always a difficult issue if people aren't fearful, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
I don't know crime listen, crime and immigration is Wally Horton, right.
I mean, it's still the same kind of exploitation, racial fear.
It's the core kind of you know, the comfortable place
for Trump and even the modern Republican Party to go.
It manifests itself differently every two years. It has different
ways that it appears and manifests. But I think this

(25:34):
point you're making about what do they do is really
really important because when you look at pulling now, you know,
Trump's in the low forties, and he's down, you know,
somewhere in the low forties. Its disapprovals up in the
high fifties. But when you look at the major issues
that people are voting on, or the issues that really matter,
he is consistently now in the low to mid thirties.

(25:58):
So it means that actually two thirds of the country
is not rallying behind his major stuff. It's much bigger
than his approval rating. And the problem for the Republican
candidates is they have to run on that agenda next year,
and Republicans just ran on that agenda all over the
country and failed miserably. And I think the second thing, Stuart,

(26:20):
and I'd love your reflection on this a little bit is,
as somebody on the Republican side, is that if you're
a Republican candidate in twenty twenty six, you just watched
the leader of your party basically throw every twenty twenty
five candidate completely under the bus, didn't campaign for them,
didn't spend a dime of his five hundred million dollars
in his political account for any of these candidates, did

(26:43):
things to actually actively make it harder for them to win,
like the government shut down and the canceling of the
tunnel into New Jersey. And you're looking around, You're like,
this guy doesn't give a shit about me and my race.
He actually this redistricting they did in Texas has cost
a bunch of more Republicans in California now their seats
if they do if we continue to redistrict, there's going

(27:05):
to be other Republican House members who will now be
basically their political careers will be over. It's going to
be interesting to see how they approach voting with Trump
over the next twelve months. Given that you know their
political careers are now over. And I'm just wondering if
you could comment on, as somebody who's worked in the
House and Center races, what it means by Trump sort

(27:25):
of delivering such a clear signal that he didn't really
give a shit about any of the Republican candidates running
in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Well, you know, I mean it used to be in
the olden days, like eleven years ago, that certainly i'll
party for poking. Parties would allow you to disagree, like
don't I don't agree with the president on this and
you could say that, and you know, in Bush world,
Bush were just shrunk. He didn't care. You know, you

(27:55):
know what got Okay, you know I'm going to go
for run it, but you can't. Can you do that
in Trump World? And I think the answer is no.
And I think that that it's part of the manifestations

(28:17):
of the party becoming an extremist movement versus a party.
A political party, by definition, embraces a lot of different views.
If it's a national party, it has to. And you know,
it wasn't that long ago that there were more Americans
living under a pro choice Republican governor than one who

(28:41):
was against abortion, because you had California, you had New York,
you had Pennsylvania, you had Massachusetts, and they were all
pro choice governors of one variation of another. And now,
of course that would be impossible. You couldn't win a primary.

(29:01):
And I think it's just the you have a party
that has room for andy pursuers and wandami. That's a
healthy party, I think. And I don't see that in
the Republican Party or the ability to do it. Maybe

(29:24):
after they all get shellacked in twenty six, they'll do
it leading up to the as a primary starts today
after that race, But I don't know. I mean, I
think it's the Faustian bargain that the Republican Party struck.
And what people forget as mesostophles not only doesn't take

(29:45):
your sole he doesn't deliver. You don't get what you thought.
And I mean, just think about that. This is just
blows my the Vice president of United States, you had
this sort of ship storm over these youngish not they
were not boys Republicans or girls Republicans who had this

(30:08):
kind of Nazi love group chat room. Right. Somehow, if
Ice by the United States start, he ought to go
out and defend that, Like to say, if you were
working for him, sitting in his office and he goes, look, guys,
I'm gonna go out and defend the Nazis. I don't know, man,
it's really like a smart idea. But he did it
because he thought it would help him with the party,

(30:31):
because it would prove that he will be more transgressive
than anyone else. There will be no enemies to my right.
And if it means embracing a Nazi, so what Nazis?

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Dozens dozens of Nazis.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
And I think if you know, I mean you look
at this whole shit storm with the Heritage Foundation, which really,
I mean, the Herriot's on the has been cor up
for a long time. It's really not been important in
Republican politics. I mean, I did all these Republican presidential campaigns.

(31:10):
Nobody ever cared about the Heritage Foundation. It was just
sort of self perpetuating fundraising machine that paid a bunch
of people with your money, and no one cared. But
the idea that they still are seen as sort of
an intellectual element of the Republican Party, and they have
Tucker Carlson, you know, I mean, I don't know if

(31:31):
you watch this guy. You know, he's got nine to
eleven Truther films out there. He's broadcasting from Moscow, he's
from having, you know, hanging out with Holocaust denying Nazis,
and they go out and defend him. I mean, just
like that is crazy. And you know, to depend people
pay to send people with attention to that, it's a no.

(31:54):
I mean, where in America do you do that? You
go to the reddest part of America, go to I
don't know, the red estate in Mississippi County and Mississippi,
and you wouldn't have somebody do that. He is like
running for board of supervisors. You don't gonna have to
finn Nazis. So I just think it just shows how
lost they are. And you know, the Republican Party has

(32:20):
never come to groups since in the nineties, crime, welfare, taxes,
Soviet Union. Okay, crime went down, taxes went down. Clinton
ended welfare as we know it, and we won the
cod War. So this was a dominant question we talked

(32:43):
about in the two thousand Bush campaign. What does that mean?
So we come up with compacting conservatism, which was never
defined because of nine to eleven. And really the party
has never redefined what that means. So you know, McCain
ran on sort of not being George but on his
own personality, but there really wasn't a policy framework there.

(33:07):
And when Mitt Romney ran, I have to say, we
had met a very sensible kind of mainstream conservative policy ideas,
but it didn't capture anybody's imagination, you know, and a
lot of Republican voters just didn't care and didn't show up.

(33:28):
And it took Trump going out there waving the bloody
shirt to get them to show up. So a normal
pody would be asking itself kind of some of the
questions the Democratic Party asked when it went through the
whole DC thing, like what is it that we are?
You know, we've lost these presidential races? What is it?
And yet Trump stops that because a threshold to advancing

(33:50):
the Republican Party is to say what a fifth grader
knows is not true, and that is that Donald Trump
lost the election. It's a real conondrum that they're in
that I think they're going to be in until Trump
is no longer with it.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
Well, and JD to your point, I mean JD has
so associated himself with the most extreme elements of trump
Ism without having Trump's charm and all the things that
Trump brings. And he's remarkably unappealing political figure, you know,

(34:28):
and only won one election before he had not proven
him barely proven himself over time to be an effective politician.
He comes off much more as a podcaster than he
does as an elected official, you know, and a commentator
than somebody to be taken seriously. And I think that
that I'm appreciating a little bit today. You're reminder of

(34:50):
just these kind of structural trend lines that are of
their weakening, of their do not have a strong farm
team in the future having you know, are now having
to run on and defend the wreckage of the Trump
era potentially for decades that will come. And how we
are going through in fits and starts, our own you know,

(35:13):
generational turn I mean we Nancy Pelosi's retirement last week
was another sign that we're leaving the era of the
Clintons and the Pelosis and the and the Biden you know,
the Biden world, and a new Democratic Party is being built.
And I think Steward that one of the things that
makes this moment, you know, in this moment of darkness today.

(35:34):
But as we shake it off and look forward that
you know we are. We have the opportunity now to
go build the next thing, and that next thing has
a very strong set of leaders that are going to
be leading us forward. We have an agenda, you know,
I call it the three legged stool agenda, which is affordability, healthcare,
and you know, threats to democracy, New Kings. That is

(35:58):
very strong and unifying. There was a lot of similarity
and how all Democrats ran all across the country, and
it's important. I think if I can just add one
more in peace to my Democratic friends, is that I
think it would be facile for us to believe that
affordability is the only path forward or healthcare is the

(36:18):
only path forward. I think it's all three. And I'll
give you an example California. I mean, we're going to
have a higher turnout in this ballot initiative than we
had in the twenty twenty two midterms. And this ballot
initiative in California was about one thing, and it was
about fuck Trump, right, it was about you know his
it was it was no Kings, it was anti Trumpism.

(36:40):
Newsom's ads were all about the arms Trump was doing
to the country. You know, we saw a huge turnout
in races across the country. I think that there's this
sort of weird internal discussion in the Democratic Party about
how we can only do one thing at a time,
But of course I know it's a weird thing stor it.
We can of course we can say three things at

(37:01):
a time because it's more appealing to more voters. By
the way, if you're talking about things that are their
top concern right.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
I mean, it's well, we've talked about this. Even when
we try to pretend to focus people like having jobs
with education, it never worked and there were only three
networks or something.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
You know, you people just don't that's not how your
mind works, you know. Well, I'm only interested in like,
you know, what's.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Something called and you know, affordability is just a repackaging
of are you better off now than your war.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Four years exactly?

Speaker 2 (37:36):
I mean knew about the idea that you know, it's
the economy stupid, There's nothing new about that. It's just
a different language, just like from you know, coaches telling
you to drink water, that they're telling you to hydrate.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Well, I can I tell you my favorite, my favorite
kind of I feel like our family. The pro democracy
movement doesn't really have a rallying cry, right, and yet
we don't have a single and we may never have
a single one. We'll have a series, but No Kings
has been sort of the proximate and most popular one.
But Mikey Cheryl stumbled onto something the other night that

(38:13):
I loved, which is which I'm also nominating as a
finalist in the in the in the Rallying Crying competition,
which was the New Jersey motto, which is which I
didn't know before, is Liberty and Prosperity. And I really
thought that that in a very simple formulation, really spoke
to this moment. It spoke to obviously a moment over

(38:35):
two hundred years ago when New Jersey became a state.
But I also I'm nominating that, in addition to No
Kings is my favorite as one of my faves here
is Liberty and Prosperity because it speaks to the desire
to have freedom but also putting us not on the
side of just lowering costs, but putting us on the
side of creating opportunity for people. Yes, and which is

(38:57):
where we have to be very careful as Democrats to
make sure that We're for lower costs and opportunity. These
are not at odds with one another.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
They have to be.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
It's a both and right. And I think that Mikey
Cheryl's campaign, and I had her come on Hopium a
few times, she just relentlessly talked about the opportunities that
America had given her and her family, her service to
the country, and this aspirational, this kind of very patriotic,
you know, love of country based optimism and about the future.

(39:31):
I do think that we there were important things happened,
and I just want to be clear about the way.
I'm just to put an exclamation point in this. And Steward,
I want you to weigh in. Is that I think
that I come away from last week and I talked
about this in a c Span interview I did a
few days ago sort of incredibly happy at the diversity

(39:53):
of our wins, and I think we have to really
embrace the rainbow, as I call it. We have to
recognize that diversity is our strength. We had candidates that
were able to win big time in different places all
across the country, and we won invalid initiatives. We won,
you know, in this special election in California. We won

(40:17):
a statewide vote in Colorado about feeding poor people. We won,
We had more votes in the Miami mayors race. We
could win the Miami's mayor's race the first time in
thirty years, depending on what happens in this run off.
The party showed itself to be strong and diverse and
capable of winning all different types of elections all of

(40:37):
the country by large margins. To me, that's the big
story here is that you know there isn't one true
path for us, that there are many paths, and that
this debate about our future, this building of this next thing,
it's a process that we should view as being really
exciting and giving us an enormous opportunity to build something
better than what we had as we transitioned from the

(40:59):
old democredit party to the next one.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, listen, I think purity tests are the death of
parties because ultimately they always ratchet up and you end
up being the Vice President United States defending Nazis, and
that's you know, he hasn't even really gotten started.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
I mean, cats and dogs, cats and dogs eating cats
and dogs.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Where do you go after defending Nazis? You know, you
go to some memorial service, you know, for the SS
you know, and all of this, I don't think we
talk enough about race, because all of this is being
driven by the Republican parties realization that the country is

(41:47):
becoming a minority majority party, which means it's becoming a
more diverse country, and all the Steven Millers in the
world are going to change that. So they're trying to
fight against that, not by embracing it, not by trying
to reach out to other people, but by trying to

(42:07):
curate the vote to increase the percentage of the voters
that they have, which or maybe white voters will vote
for them. And you know, I think that that's just
a sign of how weak it is. Yeah, and I
just don't want to think, you know, this idea that

(42:28):
if Ezra Kloin was doing this thing, you know about
this problem that Democrats have with rural voters. I just
would say, just point out that in Mississippi, the counties
that Harris did the best were the most rural. And
why is that because they're black counties. And when you

(42:49):
don't let yourself fall into saying rural voters when you
really mean non college educated white voters. Because Staten Island
wasn't Trump's best borough, but because it's more agricultural Manhattan.
It's because where there's more white people and more non
college educated white people. And I just think just as

(43:12):
Trump never won working class voters, he won white working
class voters, which is just sort of an extension of
what you're saying is don't underestimate your strengths.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
So look, I think I think that's a good way
to end my friend, right, I mean, what you know,
don't underestimate our strengths and don't under don't overestimate theirs, right,
I mean, is there there are two sides of one coin.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
I think you know the question you always ask yourself
at the end of every day in a campaign, would
you rather be you know me or them? I'd lot
to rather be the Democrats now. I think they have
a lot stronger hand to play here.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
I think it's a great way in Stuart. It's always
a pleasure to be with you. I get to host you,
sometimes you host me. Sometimes you make me laugh, which
is important in this crazy business that we're in. And
thanks for a little levity and what's been a tough
day I think for Democrats. But I think this kind
of cold eyed assessment from people have been around a
little bit that you know, we've had a little bit

(44:10):
of bump. We've had a bump today, but you know
we're on the right path. This is really important and
so thanks for spending time with us today and bringing here.
Thank you for everything. See everybody, take care.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Listen.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
If you like this hit like, share with your friends.
And the most important thing of all, let's just keep fighting,
keep fighting for our country, for our future, the American people.
We got a lot of work to do, but we've
had we had a tremendous election last week. Let's keep
that in our hearts as we move forward and go
win this thing together. Thanks all,