Elon's Exit from Trump Administration + Amanda Litman on Recruiting the Next Democratic Leaders

thinking about running as independents. It's basically an organization that number one is trying to encourage younger people to run for office, but also trying to be a resource for people that don't, because if you're younger, you usually don't have as much of a network, You may not have as many rich friends. You get the picture here if and you'll hear me make these comparisons during the interview. Back in the eighties and nineties, you had go Pack

on the right. That was a similar organization that was trying to get conservatives who were not connected, essentially with the tools to figure out how to run for local office, and this is you know, maybe Emily's list, you'll hear a little bit of that, but it's about trying. And clearly the Republicans have done a much better job over the last twenty or thirty years encouraging folks to run

for local office. Democrats have been a bit too focused on the presidential big big offices and don't think about the smaller stuff than they were. You know, arguably it's why they're getting crushed on the issue of schools and funding of schools and the privatization of the public school system. You've had a lot more activist parents on the right get involved in school board politics, and you've had activist

parents on the left, pure and simple. And it is those type of outcomes that I think are making some people reassess and decide where to where to participate. If you've ever thought about running for office and didn't, I actually think you'll enjoy this conversation. If you thought about running thinking about running for office now, regardless of your politics left or right, I think you will hear some interesting advice and to do that, so you I hope

you'll do that. I've had a tremendous weekend. I had. I had a lot of fun and I want to showcase a neighborhood I used to work in. It's called del Rey. Basically, this a neighborhood in Alexandria, just on the border of Arlington and Alexandria. Back in the in the Hotline days before we were moved to the Watergate in Washington, d C. The Hotline was headquartered out in Orlandria, literally this little pocket of northern Virginia in between Arlington

and Alexandria, right on the border there. Well, some good friends of mine are very active in that business and civic association, and so they asked me to be the judge at their annual It's basically a restaurant contest. So both the people come for the for the food festival put on by the Delray Business Association, and I got to play judge. So there was two awards mine whoever, I decided we're the three best bites of food that

I had versus the people. If you will, and I just if you are, this is probably our hippiest and coolest food neighborhood that you can have in the Northern Virginia area. There might be others will argue in h Street and some other places in the district. Don't get me wrong, but if you're a Food Network fan, you would have There's a couple of restaurants in that participated in this where that have been featured on Food Network, a couple of chefs that have been featured on Chopped.

I do want to shout out my winner, Bella Napoli, who made a chicken brunello that was amazing. You're eating outside in a little cup and you're like, it's fantastic. Lena's was my second place. She made a terrific Cuban beurrea taco, just awesome, and of course, being a Miami guy, I'm gonna be partial to anything like that. And there

was a ton of gaspachos. But the folks at Tako a poblanomado a good spat show that was not red tomato based, so it was a different It had a green color to it if you were a green yellow color to it, and it had shrimp in it, and it was just it was sort of it felt more like a Savie Chase soup, if that's possible. So anyway, I just want to give a shout out to them. My friend Pat Miller he's been the unofficial mayor of del Rey for decades now and an old friend of mine,

Maureen Schweer's really appreciate you guys getting me involved. I'm still full from the process and the way I digested that had been obsessed over college baseball. This week, it's been an amazing baseball weekend for my household. The Nats have been on a roll, in fact, over the last fifteen games, best record in baseball, So take that, everybody literally. We were all starting to rail on the Nats front office,

and sure enough they go on this role. Who knows if the pitching can hold up, but James Wood is proving that he was every bit the one Soto trade, which is given the Nats these starters James Wood, c j Abrams, Mackenzie Gore, and Robert Hassel the third. I still miss Soto, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't a bad return and James Wood is doing a pretty impressive one Soto impersonation. But I gotta even shout out

to my friends at ESPN. I like to give them a lot of grief for how they've ruined college football in their partnership with the SEC. Sometimes, however, ESPN Squeeze Play, which is the college baseball tournament, and there happened in all Granted my house, Miami and Florida State are in my house, so we care about what's going on here in both. Mimi in Florida State been doing well so far in this tournament. He's been Squeeze Play. It's the red zone for college baseball. I just have two requests.

Can we please get rid of the metal bats? It's silly. We've got these major programs can afford wood bats. That's number one. Number two, how you determine who's the home team at these sites is ridiculous. Just use records, then highest seat? Is it that difficult? This bizarre rotation that they do. Literally go look it up in the internet. It's a five step process, all right. So I've probably given more about my personal weekend plans than perhaps my

family wishes I did. But hey, isn't that what we're all doing now? We're supposed to overshare. And I did want to give a good shout out to my friends in Delray, But look, let me move on to starting my week because we do. We ought to mourn the

departure of Elon Musk and out of Washington, and I'm not saying it's going to totally disappear. In fact, as I was coming back from that from that food festival where I got to judge, I drove right by a Tesla dealership where there was a very active protest still against Elon Musk and against Tesla, which is probably the

why he has accelerated his exit. And technically he can say he was exiting at the time that he always intended to exit, but let's be honest, he is leaving Washington with his tail between his legs, and you know it's This is one of those where I hope the idea doesn't get thrown out with the bathwater, because the problem with what Musk was doing was how he went about it. It wasn't the idea itself. But if you try to run government like a disruptive tech startup, you're

gonna fail. It was a masterclass in misalignment, if you will. The approach was haphazard, it was discombobulated. It treated government

like a badly managed Silicon Valley startup. Musk was or is intentionally ignorant of the complexities of public administration, and that impatience coupled with his short attention span, and I'm not even going to comment on what he may or may not have been on if you will when we got all that story about his prolific drug use, both legal and illegal, but all of it seemed to be the ingredients that led to some chaotic attempts at policy make But I don't want to miss the force through

the trees to beat up a cliche like that. Musk and Trump ended up these strange bedfellows together because they do share some key traits. They're incredibly impatient, and they prefer quick, sweeping actions over the slow, meticulous work that the federal government often requires. They couldn't be more mismatched for the job. The mentality was great for headline grabbing moves, but it was disastrous for actually sustaining this idea of

cutting government. And it's a cautionary tale for the dangers of trying to apply a tech disruptor mindset to the intricate, slow moving machinery of government. There is no less qualified person. The worst phrase I hear is we've got to run government like a business. Bullshit. If you run government like a business, you will not do the stuff that doesn't pay big dividends. That is not how government works. Everybody

has to get a service. If you ran the postal service like a business, nobody in Alaska would get mail more than once a week. Okay, that is not When you're providing services, and you're a country that claims to be for equality, then the service you give to a citizen that chooses to live in Alaska, it's got to be the same than the services you give somebody that lives in New York, Virginia or Maryland. And that is

the problem, right, it is. Frankly, if you could run government like a business, you could make a lot of changes that would make the government's balance sheet look better and would completely be unpopular and would be a complete disaster that set for all the horrendous ways that Musk went about this, for the stupid, incompetent way that the Trump administration went about this, it doesn't mean the idea was bad, right, And in fact, this should be there's

an opportunity here, particularly for somebody on the left, to pick up this, to pick up this chalice and go on with it. Here's the opportunity. Must failure cannot mean that the idea of reforming government is a bad idea. You just have to understand it was poorly executed. He was the worst possible person to put in charge with this,

completely temperamentally unqualified to do it. But if there is a leader out there that is willing to put country over party, there's a real chance to pick up where this experiment failed and to do it right, thoughtfully, legally, with a coalition of serious reformers. There's even a chance to build a bipartisan effort around restructuring and modernizing these institutions.

That's what's so frustrating here. It was it was Trump's obsessiveness and musk subscessiveness to look like they were being moving quickly and being successful, that they failed to actually do this the right way. And again, what the most likely result of all this is that this experiment will actually cost taxpayers more money than it saves. The amount of government contractors that will successfully sue the government or get their contract monument and probably get restitution is going

to only grow. And that's why this to execute it the way they did was complete chaos and a mess. But that doesn't mean that there isn't an opportunity here. Look, I've got one of my long held ideas is that every government agency should be vote should be sunseted every twenty five years, forcing Congress to reauthorize and justifies its existence or reform it to meet the current modern needs. This is the kind of reevaluation that could help ensure

that government is actually relevant and effective. This is the type of reform that somebody ought to tackle. This isn't something the left has seated. This to the right for some god forsakered reason. The middle of the political middle of this country would like to see some responsible reform.

And what it really is, it's modernization in the same way we finally decided, Hey, maybe the bridges we built nineteen fifty five ought to be the same bridges we drive over with today's vehicles, Right, maybe we ought to build a new bridge or update the new bridge. Well, it's the same thing with government, Okay, what we you know, the Department of Defense that was developed in the fifties is not the same department we should be running today.

And instead, what we do with these government agencies, and the reason we ought to sunset them every twenty five years and then reauthorize them, is they end up becoming like the you know, there's always one house in every neighborhood where that people don't have enough money to knock it down and build something new, so instead they do a little bit at a time, and it's a Frankenstein house. Well, that's what every government agency that's more than twenty five

years old has become. It becomes like a Frankenstein agency. Instead of doing maybe rehabbing something within the agency, they literally tack on an annex, or tack on a special committee, or tack on a special sub agency to do some work that they think, oh, maybe this falls under Commerce rather than falling under the Department of Defense or something like that. You know, I mean, in fact, some of our departments couldn't have weirder combinations of things, right, A

Department of Commerce also happened. The largest department within agency within Commerce is Noah. Right, Why is basically our weather office in Commerce? Right? The two Yes, weather can impact commerce, but okay, but other than that, what's it doing in there? You could argue that weather belongs in the Department of Defense, or the weather Noah belongs in Homeland Security. If FEMA's in Homeland security, why is it Noah in Homeland security? Point is that there's a lot of actual good work

to be done here in this reform. And and you know, the fear that I think some real reformers have is that Musk's failed effort, in Trump's failed effort, because it didn't get done in the haphazard way that they did it, that they're just going to give up on it. And what somebody ought to do is pick up this mantle and carry it and make it their own and do it the right way. Get Congress involved. You can actually do this speaking of of sort of musk and tail between his legs. So it was as if, as if

as if his humiliation of Washington couldn't get worse. Right the day he leaves, the Times drops this story about his obsession, his what appears to be excessive drug use, uppers and downers, whatever it is that needs to meet. The moment his handpick guy that he wanted for NASA, Trump decides to boot because somebody drops some appo on this nominee for NASA. Apparently he had given to Democrats

in the last couple of cycles. And Donald Trump, he is, even though he himself is given to quite a few Democrats in his political career, doesn't believe that somebody in the last four years giving to Democrats is anything other than an affront to himself. This is again, this is

a moment where if this is how he's really making decisions, right, we already see that pardons and this, and my gosh, it is breathtaking. What is happening on this pardon front. It is, I mean, and this is the numbness that we often describe when it comes to Donald Trump. Here is behavior that in any other president would be impeachable. This guy's been impeached twice. What kind of appetite is our political system going to have for a third impeachment?

But what he's doing on pardons, that alone, isn't it. The partons are for sale. It's plainly obvious these his pardons are for sale. It's sitting in front of us. It's the quid pro quo. Other than him showing us the ledger sheet itself that keeps track of the quid pro quot. That's about the only piece of evidence that's missing. But you know you had the one whe of the person shows up at a million dollar fundraiser. A couple of days later, her husband and her relative gets out of

gets what he wants out of this. So it is alarming how easy it is. Everybody has figured it out. And this gets it to why foreign governments are all willing to do some form of business with him, because they all know how transactional he is, and if he doesn't get what he wants, he may do what he just did to musk Here it looked like he cut a deal with musk heye NASA's yours. You get to

decide who runs it. And then he decided, oh no, I've got to make sure that I'm gonna if I allow anybody in that gave to Democrats in the last

four years. Then it means there are other nominees that he essentially has already, other people that he has actually fired from the National Security Staff and from the Pentagon who also had made supposedly, I mean apparently, if you've given money to Liz Cheney is the equivalent of giving money to a Democrat as far as Donald Trump's concern So that is among the other things that are out there. So this is how he's running the government, which means

it's not being run with the best people. It's simply being run based on who's the most loyal to him and to him personally. I know none of this for many of you that are listening his news, but this is terrible governance. This is bad for the by the way, this is bad if you care about the Republican Party. It's bad. He is so corrupting the Republican Party right now because there is no difference between Trump's party and the rest of it, you know, those there's a lot

of good Republicans have walked away. There's some Conservatives who are uncomfortable but have stuck it out, believing they are better operating on the inside on the outside, but the stain that they're receiving, you know, it's really interesting. There's a lot of ways to look at Jony Ernst, the Republican senator from Iowa whose comments about well, we're all going to die son, you know, and how they went

viral and how frustrated. But that s back to me of somebody who's had to carry a ton of water on ideas that she's not in favor of, but she has no choice but to support because if she doesn't do it, she will lose any political support she has in Iowa. Because the Maga movement is that popular in Iowa. It felt like the type of line somebody says when they realize they're just sort of frustrated with where they are. Look,

I'm not I'm not going to be here. I'm not here to tell you that I was going to be that competitive of a state in twenty twenty six. Although I think it will be more competitive than it's been the last cycle. I think it's going to be more like twenty eighteen, and who knows. I certainly think Rob sand has a very good chance of becoming governor. I'm not going to sit there and tell you Joni Arn's Senate race should be moved to toss up just yet. But that is a line that will stick with her.

She strikes me as somebody I'm not put it this way. I'm actually going in another direction. She doesn't look like somebody who's running for reelection. Yes, she went through the town hall, which wasn't a great exercise for her, but that I'll just say this, I have a I still believe she's the hegg Seth backup. I'm not sure Pete hagg Seth is going to survive. It's clear that the Pentagon and he's not been able to you know, his paranoia.

You know he sees a spy around every corner. I mean, my goodness, he's so restricted press access at somebody from Owa n seem to complain about it, right, That tells you something. My guess is the only reason she hasn't snapped at the Republican party itself is that she would

like to be Defense secretary. And she's probably the Pete Hake seth backup plan, and at this point, I'm sure she'd prefer to do that then to try to carry Trump's water in a midterm election in Iowa at a time when there's not going to be a lot of this because this big, beautiful bill is turning out to be a big piece of let's just say, of a big piece of rock that they got to carry around because remember, it does not have a tax cut. It just is preventing a tax hike. There is no deliverable

that Republicans have for the people. They can't say, here's a check, here's a tax cut, here's something you're going to benefit from this. Instead, this thing is already to have been defined by what it takes away, not what it gives. That is a bad place to start, and I'm sure Trump's going to try to find out how to write checks under his name to people in some form or another. Maybe it's these baby bonuses, whatever he's

going to try to do. But right now this bill is I don't see any political upside on this bill as it stands, and if anything, the impact on the bond market because of the debt this thing could be considered in the same way. What I think we all thought was, Look, I will confess I thought the first Biden tranch of money was going to be something that would be positive for him. He got those two thousand dollars checks to them, Well, it turned out to be

probably something that shouldn't have been done. It was blamed for helping to accelerate the inflationary problems that we already were having because of the supply chain, and it really sort of tarnished all of his bills, and the public didn't see it as a net positive. I think this is a situation that Trump is going to find himself in. This bill is not a positive at all for him.

Not many good deliverables to give to the voters to say hey we've lowered cost or hey we've done this, and oh, by the way, he's still got the terrified that the more the courts say no, the more determined he seems to be to have it, which of course only does more damage to the economy. All right, I will I think I've said enough. The conversation with the

man a litment. Again, if you've ever once thought about running for office, or you know somebody, particularly if there's somebody under the age of forty who's been thinking about it, take a listen. It's a fascinating conversation and regardless of whether you're left or right. Well, my guest right now

is Amanda Littman. She runs an organization called Run for Something. It is primarily an organization trying to recruit more diverse set of candidates to run, particularly on the left side of the aisle, Progressives, Democrats, and I'm going to ask her about her opinion on things like Dan Osborne and whether that's the profile of finding more Dan Osborne's as well, who didn't run as a member of any major party,

but certainly ideologically certainly was on the left side of the asse. So Amanda, thanks for coming on the.

anybody can do this. What do I do? And at the time, if you were young, I was in my mid twenties, and you were newly excited about politics and you wanted to do more than vote and more than volunteer, there was nowhere you could go that would guarantee to take your call. So I reached out to a whole bunch of people with an idea, what if we started an organization that could be this on ramp for folks who might want to run for office. One of them

became a co founder. We wrote a plan, we built a website, and then we launched Run for Something on Trump's first inauguration day, thinking it would be really small, we'd get one hundred people who want to run in the first year, because at the time nobody wants to run for office. We have a thousand people signed up in the first week. As of this moment, we're up to about two hundred and ten thousand young people all across the country who've raised their hands to say they want to run.

that you would I might look back on and see how they did it. On the right side of the aisle, it was a it was an organization called go Pack, and I don't know if you've heard the history of gopack, but it was literally it's what New Gingridge got involved with before you ever got into Congress. And I've run into Republican candidates to this day. He goes, oh, yeah, he sent cassette tapes like how to speak to reporters and how to talk to you know this, and this

was back. And what was funny about go pack is it reminds me, in fact, exactly of what you are. And I'll get to the other organization a minute that I'm thinking of. But at the time, it was Republicans who thought, you know, the Democrats are in power on

the local level. All Republicans were doing was winning presidentials, right, they knew how to do that, but they didn't know they needed a grassroots And what's interesting is is it was a twenty year plan, but it did pay off for them, and it was meticulous and it was sort of they started very you know, and it's funny to

me how political parties from the national level let this stuff atrophy. There was nobody in the national Republicans thinking about this. And I'll be honest, I think, you know, the opportunity that Barack Obama had and the DNC had in nine and they just blew it. In hindsight, I guess right.

They do candidate training and operative training.

want to run against a Democratic incumbent. We're like, great, let's do it. Let's try. We'll see what happens. But I can see why some of the more official institutions are a little more wary about it.

you've built a blueprint on, and you've already name dropped a few people, at least in our private conversation. That makes me think this is you know, I was there at the creation or near the creation of Emily's List, that's right, back in the late eighties. And really ninety two was to me the year they took off, right, Yeah, ninety two was the first year of the Woman if you will, the election of Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer

dying find it. That was the heart of that movement, and then they became it was candidate training that was something. And I have to tell you I remember, you know, I worked at something called the Hotline back in the nineties, and I'd have people asking me, well, I want to run for office, how do I do it? I bought a magazine at the Barnes and Noble called Campaigns and Elections.

Well that teld me how to run for office. And it's like, will not not really, but I didn't know what else to do, and then Emily's List, you know, had this candidate training and go pack. That's what I would say. I'm like, go to go pack. But Emily's List was only for one gender, like it was. There wasn't any place else on the Democratic side that was akin to a go pack.

people forty and under have not been seen as people to ask to run for office because we can't make money, we're risky.

out there, set it before, so I might as well make sure you've heard it so that I don't look like I'm contradicting myself, which is Look, do I think once you're once you're you've become an elected leader of the DNC, that you know you shouldn't be attacking fellow members of the club that you've chose to lead hard stop. Do I think the way the DNC is handling this revote situation in some manufactured way that they claim has nothing to do with what he's doing. Is also right.

Like I'm sitting here going, you know, I'm not sure. I don't think there's any good guys here in how everybody's behaving. But I understand the motivation that Hog has here, because in some ways it's very similar. I think what you're driving at now.

generational lines is good. And I think it's really really important that the DNCB scene is a neutral actor, especially as they go into setting up what is the most important thing the DNC does setting up the presidential primary in twenty twenty eight. We know it's going to be a very rowdy, open race. The DNC is going to

be at the calendar. They might move around states, they might rethink about criteria like, it's so so important that DNC and especially DNC leadership be trusted to be good actors here, and I think it is very frustrating that, you know, what David is trying to do in good measure with leaders we deserve, might actually undermine that effort when we need him most.

that the first candidate that he's chosen to work with is Robert Peters, who is a run for something alone running for Congress in Illinois. We worked with him in his state Senate race a couple of years ago. He's not primary and an older leader. It's in an open race.

these things, right, So that's so I absolutely agree. I think he's culturally not crazy about some of the don't tell me how I'm supposed to speak, but there's agreement on hey, what should the role of government be and that can you disaggregate those things?

more people and wanting to fight it from within. They also, I think, really clearly understand who the Republican Party is in a way that I think some of the older Democrats don't. This is in part I think if you came of age politically in the last ten years, like it's the Party of Trump all the way down, if

you didn't, I was just seeing something this earlier today, Like ten years ago, Mike Johnson was a state legislator in Louisiana, like most of the Republican members of Congress were not yet there. They were just about to enter, Like the Republican Party has changed very very quickly over the last decade. And if you've been serving longer than that, or been in politics longer than that, you might misremember

or misunderstand who your opponent is. This is not George W. Bush's part of your John McCain's Romney all the way.

People were winning right. And I always try to remind

myself that if you're thirty five or younger, you have seen a lot of failure by the US government. Some of it was not the government's fault. Nine to eleven Iraq War was a self inflicted the financial crisis was a self inflicted one. We've seen this sort of Now I'm starting to conclude here's the other sort of I think very and at this point would be a controversial is a little strong of a word, but sort of

a debatable point here. But I do think that if you're fifty or older, you know, you look at politics still through the prism of the Cold War, even though you don't even though you know it's over. And it's very possible that the seventy year period between World War Two essentially and nine to eleven, let's just take that chunk, is an outlier period in American history, and that the

country's default political setting is polarization. Because if you extract that seventy years out essentially from you know, FDR to to to the end of Bill Clinton. If you extract that out, all of the other elections look a lot more similar to each other. We've had. We've had three straight one term presidents. Guess what, we had five straight one term presidents at the end of the twentieth century. We've had all this, And so that's where I accept

the premise that generational change is beyond ideological. Meaning Schumer knows and even myself right anywhere a Corey Booker to Chuck Schumer, Right, Corey Booker's a little bit older than I am, but not much. We grew up in a certain type of politics, with a certain type of Republican Party, and what the Republican Party sort of was morphing into, right, there were sort of two there were two parties almost simultaneously.

Pat Buchanan in some ways Gingrich was straddling the fence between Buchanan and Bush, and we saw where that was developing, and you still sort of had the Eisenhower wing was what Bush was sort of carrying on. And then Iraq collapsed it right like that, that was their collapse. So

I know I'm rambling here a little bit on that, but I think it I'm trying to sort of accept the premise that this isn't ideological. Is what I'm selling it and I think like it.

has also changed so quickly. Like I think a lot about how many members of Congress like have never run their own Instagram account, which feels really silly to say out loud, But when you think about how people get information and how we use the internet, how we consume things, that the way in which we we're doing a podcast that is also a video that people will probably watch or listen to on their phones, like while they're doing

other stuff. You know, there's a very different way in which you engage with the media and what the media is has blown up in a way that if the last time you were like a normal person was early two thousands, right, maybe, like if you didn't have someone curating information for you, which most lucted leaders do at this point. You know, they get their clips, they're told

what's going on, they get briefed. It is so different, and that that faculty with the communication tactics of twenty twenty five, you got to be born of the Internet

to know how to navigate it.

through that candidate. Maybe it's twenty seven to twenty eight, or she's twenty seven to twenty eight, lives lives in Higalia. And I'm going to be very specific for those that care that much, but Miami Dade County in a largely Latino district.

found you, you entered the candidate pipeline. You then might join a conference call which we do every month to talk about why you might want to run for office and answer some basic questions every first time candidate has, like how do I pick an office? How do I figure out how to raise it?

Let's say that you're like, all right, I know I'm I'm thinking about running in the next couple years, but I'm not sure exactly what for or when. We would start working with you, either over email, we'd connect you with one of our team members or volunteered to help you sort of winnow it down. What's the problem you care about solving, what's the office that will give you power to solve it? And why would voters want you to win, which is different than why you want to win.

You want to win because winning is great and losing sucks. Voters want you to win because you're going to do something for them. So maybe you say, you know what, I'm really pissed about the Don't Say Gay bill in Florida. I'm really pissed about the book bands. I'm thinking about running for school board in Miami Dade County, which Run for Something has helped elect a number of members of Miami Dade school Board. Great, let's get to it, so we'll help you. We've got guides to help you figure

out how to file. Once you have gotten on the ballot and you've used our materials to set up your campaign, you thought about how much money you need to raise. All of that you can apply for our endorsement. We do background checks, we screen your your grap suits contact plan. That's where we do a values alignment to make sure that we're fully aligned on our broad progressive values. But because we work both in Miami Dade and also.

City state council candidate. We know that we can't have a strict policy position or like a platform because it doesn't make sense the way that we engage these races. But as long as all of our candidates have a vision for how they're going to reduce guns in our streets and make it safer, lots of different ways you can get at the same goal.

that a disqualifier or not?

They want to talk about bullying and mental health, Like for all of the discourse around even like trans kids in sports, that's not what these races are about.

this one, and this one. And at the same time, I know that I would be torn because I'm you know, as somebody given advice too, it's like, look, you got to be who you are, don't try to be something you're not. So how do you navigate that where you're like, well, you know that that issue is just not a voting issue. I wish it were, you know, you know, for the left that's campaign finance reform and for the right it's

the debt. I always say, those are these two issues that I know there are people that care about them, and I'm like, yeah, you know who doesn't the voters? Because if they did, we'd have done something about it by now.

about the city budgeting process because right now you're getting screwed out of services. You deserve that. I think that ability to connect it.

And is is how much responsibility do you think you have an improving the Democratic brand versus getting just getting people elected.

because Bernie asked them to working with them great. We specifically endorse people who are running as Democrats or who if they're in nonpartisan elections, which a lot of these rates are. What alignment at a local level? Right, we're exploring whether it makes sense to engage with independence too, Like you know, I've asked the team make a recommendation. Let's think about it. How does that look practically? There's a lot of about access reasons why it's really hard.

You know, I think there's people who imagine it.

wear extra large or I wear small. You know, I've always joked that we would hate it if they're only offered two sizes of T shirts, you know, right, And I assume you run into that, like people, Hey, I want to run for some I'm mostly agreeing on this, but I don't know if I want to pick a party.

because I think the details really matter here.

on the forty and under. But I imagine there's a lot of former government workers that are suddenly interested who never thought they were going to be a political servants. They always saw themselves truly as public servants.

and see young people have left out of power. But everything else is welcome to anyone, and we work with so many partners who tackle different pieces of a community. So if you're an older woman, great, We've got lots of partners who work with older women. If you're an older man, great, we have partners who do that. You're in Latino or African American or LGBTQI, like, lots of different groups engage with different sort of sub segments of

people for us young folks. But that's why we've got a big ecosystem.

I'm an advocate of doubling the size of Congress. I think that Congress has become out of reach and out of touch. So I think if we uncap the House, that would help. I know other people that are advocating for all party primaries, right, no more partisan primaries. Does run for something? Get involved with the infrastructure debates these days of you know, how should elections be run? Who you know those sort of things and if you don't, what do you what does a mandilipment think of these ideas?

talking point for two decades is suddenly becoming a progressive talking point.

There's always going to be any system, there's abuse, but for the most part, and I think it's I think it's worked out pretty well, because by the way, it's all public, so if you're abusing it, it becomes a problem for your own campaign. So I think it is kind of self correct. Are there things if you thought about that run for something could sort of you know, supplement income or incubate or provide you know, are you trying to figure out a way to provide outside source resources.

Maybe it's childcare. I'm just spitballing here, but these are the various real life impediments to somebody under forty running

for office.

And if I ever got the money for it, I think it'd be really fun and more importantly, I think it'd be really impactful.

more hate threats coming your way. I think the final big thing is this sense, in particular, if you are not a homeowner, that you don't deserve a say in

the future of the community. So this is one of my projects that we're launching later this year. You are c three run person thing civic. So does you want to get more renters to run for office one? Because the housing market is a nightmare, and if you are in your twenties or thirties, you think about it very differently than if you're someone who bought your house in the eighties and are now sitting on well but two.

Renters make up about thirty five percent of the American people and about seven percent of all elected officials nationwide. In the New York State legislature, there are more.

legislators zero. It is no wonder that we have basically no federal law that helps renders outside of some of the stuff around like you know, public housing Section eight.

doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democrat. They all say housing. It's always housing. And it's like it was sort of like you just did the It was one of those well duh, when you have no no wonder, nobody has it as a priority in front of their face. And that's a that's as good of an explanation as I've heard of why we have terrible housing policy in this time.

which again there's no renters there either. But and a lot of the places where we really need to affect affordability, Like you know, I think about one of the many reasons why a lot of stuff swung right, like New York, New Jersey, everywhere sung right in the last election, in part because of the affordability crisis, in part because how many Democrats in these blue states sent money to Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania and have never engaged in a

local election where they live and therefore have not actually participated.

And Republicans, sure shit, are spending a ton of money to try and flip over blue states.

and it's like, here's the thing. You may not even win to vote another extra voter in Idaho, but somebody in rural Virginia might say, oh, I see, he might he might not ignore my my issues if he cares about their That's right.

Labor Party? What would you be doing if you could wave a magic wand at the DNC right now to do some brand improvement.

and sound different. It's going to be so consequential for both for the Democratic Party or how these community spaces feel, for how these governments run.

and elsewhere. I think it is going to be a transformative election for the Democratic Party because no.

want to be running for office, do know. I did an interview that'll be dropping this week with Lindsay Draft. She is the CEO of the Forward Party. That's a party that is now the combination of the efforts of former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who left the Democratic Party to start this party, and or Republican Governor of

New Jersey, Christy Whitman. They've put their efforts together. It's still it's all under the umbrella of forward, but it will be another avenue in another way that people who are frustrated, particularly by the two parties in ability to work with each other, might find this appealing later this week, So be on the lookout for that drop. So with that, let me do a couple of ass chucks before I send you on your way to to go about your day.

First question, been struggling on how to word this for a few First of all, this comes from Bill s Newberg, Oregon, and as he puts in parentheses, it's a liberal state that all that's also football crazy, yes, and it's also at least in Corvallis, they love their college baseball as well. By the way, shout out to my friend Nathan Zalez, who is an Oregon State rabid Oregon state guy. But here's the question from Bill in Oregon. Been struggling on

how to word this for a few weeks now. But the ultimate question is, quote, are the two major parties in this country essentially equivalent in your eyes? I asked, because you've said you're a character voter. You've also said that both parties had become cults of personalities, meaning Trump on one hand, Obama and the other. But if I put those two politicians next to one another, the difference

in character is just inescapable. I wonder if this dovestails at all with the toxic branding of the Democratic Party. According to Pew and others, being a party that promotes good character often means putting the right thing above the expedient thing, and sometimes even above winning. The Republicans being the party of selfishness. I either current tax bill seem to be let off with a boys will be boys

type of excuse. You've often said that you essentially hold the Democrats to a higher standard because they ask you to. Isn't having a higher standard to sign a better character in the first place? Our folks in the media sometimes buying into a false equivalency because essentially being of good character is often also boring, I e. Know, drama Obama, How does one teach their children how to be of good character when the bad characters keep being chosen and

allowed to act with impunity. That is the most important question. How does one teat how do let me repeat this, how does one teach their children how to be of good character when the bad characters keep being chosen and allowed to act with impunity. Look, I don't know other how to react to your question other than you're right? Do I do not currently see the two parties as

their run as equivalent parties? I do, and and oddly enough, I'm somebody who holds the Democrats more accountable because they, you know, I do. I look at this, particularly Joe Biden, that his poor leadership is why Donald Trump is back right, why voters didn't want to kick Trump to the curb. If Biden had been a better leader, they wouldn't looked backwards for Trump. The Republican Party would have looked for

a new candidate. This is the first time in over one hundred years that a party decided to go to go backwards rather than forwards with who their nominee was. And the question is is that on the Republicans? Is that on the Democrats? And the answer is yes to both. Right, why has the Republican even been an answer well, because there's a desperation of one part of the electorate to really shake up government and to have government sort of understand that we've been living in this I guess I

think that the anger is over. It feels like we live in a two tiered system where it's impossible for somebody stuck in one tier to jump to the other tier. And I think that that's the feeling that's out there now. I can point to individual examples and say this isn't true, and then I wish people didn't see it that way. But there is this sense of the rungs to the

ladder are missing, right. They're like, yeah, you can get up five or six rungs, but if you're trying to get up to run fifteen, ten through fourteen are gone, right, and you've got to somehow get lucky to go somehow and grab it, or you've got to risk your life in order to jump up the economic ladder. So I get that frustration. I think it's a lot having to do.

People don't know what they want, but they do know what they don't like, right, And on the issue of character, you know, this is something that I vote on character, but I'm in the minority. And I've said I spent. I wrote a big, long column about the transactional versus the aspirational voter in twenty twenty four. You can go find it in the NBC website. Because the aspirational voter versus the transactional voter. A transactional voter looks and says, Okay, well,

who's going to benefit me. The aspirational voter says, what's in the You know, who's going to benefit the country? You know, when we hear all this put in country first, et cetera, et cetera. The fact is most people do vote for what's in their own best interests, right, And there's a form of it you get. If you're voting in the country's best interests, it usually means you have the luxury to do that. Right usually means you're personally well off or you feel pretty stable, so you can

look at the bigger picture. Right, if things are unstable in your life, you look at things very binary. Who's good for me, who's bad for me? And I think what we have with the working class is as a large group of voters who are not seeing what's good for me. In the moment, Donald Trump is really good at sounding responsive in the moment, and you had, you know, in Barack Obama the ultimate, hey, let's play the long

game type of politician. And you know, I think it's exactly what people wanted in O eight after the experience with Bush. But between the financial crisis, how long it took Obamacare to get up and running right, how many fits and starts it had, the broken website, it was a sense of, Okay, maybe Democrats have good ideas, but they don't know how to execute them. They're bad on the leadership front, if you will. So whether that was the reason for the turn to Trump.

sentence right. I mean, just look at the look I bet you when Grover Cleveland run his second non consecutive presidential term, there was a thought, Wow, this is historic. This is something that's going to be taught in schools all the time. How much were you taught about Grover Cleveland in school? So it's very likely that this is sort of thought of that. What Trump is a part of that. This is part of this larger I think impact that we're having. Right we're in the middle of globalization,

a transition from industrial attack, a rising global economy. We've never had this many people engaged in the free market than we have today, So there's a lot more potential winners and losers across the globe. Right in the twentieth century of the United States had more say over who won and lost on the economy. And guess what, we're having to share that share that now with more and more countries, and this is the growing pains of it. I'm one of those long term optimists short term pessimists

in this. But to get at the nut of your questions, are the two parties the same? In my eyes, they're not. Right now, the Republican Party has been I think hijacked by Trump and trump Ism. This is not a conservative party by the definition of conservatism that we've we've I think on culture, this is in some ways a recognizable uh, part of the Republican Party compared to before, But on when it comes to economic policy, it's unrecognizable and it's

not conservative. It's a reactionary party in many ways. So I think that you know, when I when I look at a guy like George Will, right, that's you know, for me, that was the face of conservatism as a kid. Okay, George Will and Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump doesn't fit. He feels like, like I said, a bizarro superman, you know, compared to Reagan. If you will, You're like, huh, you kind of look like a Republican, but you behave almost the exact opposite of the type of Republicans I grew

up with. And that's, you know, especially on the character front. I think the Republican Party always prided itself on being the party of of of proper character, whatever that meant in society in any given moment. But certainly you wouldn't expect it to be, you know, the party of serial marriages out of wedlock. Children all over the place, like an Elon Musk, who may or may not you know again,

I mean, I just think about ten years ago. Imagine if one of the closest listen on Matt Eric Schmidt was was in some ways the type of advisor to Obama that Elon Musk became to Donald Trump. Somebody who's successful in Silicon Valley, trying to trying to help the government understand the Silicon Valley mindset. You know what, I don't think Eric Schmidt did bring around a drug kit for everybody to have it. And if he did, it would be either probably would be oversight, you know, hearings.

There would probably be Congress would want to find out where did these drugs come from? Right? Are we going to have anything like that with Elon Musk? I think you know the answer to that. So I would say that this is the part where I'm just a believer that eventually bad character does get punished by society. The voters eventually sniff that out because we eventually realize people with bad characters do bad things, and while they may

accidentally do some good things that maybe make sense. I mean, you know, take what he's you know what Trump's trying to do in the Middle East is in some ways very good. What he's trying to do with Iran Syria. You know, he's trying to sort of put BB a little bit back in his place. But how he's going about it and his motivation to do it is all about the self enrichment business deals, as he's been doing

with the Gulf State guys. So there's such a corrupt you know here he's doing something that trades actually and is pragmatic, but he only got it got there in a corrupt be a corrupt means. And the question is, you know that never holds. And so I guess I would say to you long windy answer there for you, Bill is from Oregon, is simply, Look, character counts. Just doesn't always count when you want it to count, but

eventually character will count. Look, I would argue that in some ways Bill Clinton's character flaws eventually costs the hurt the Democratic Party in two thousand and cost Hillary Clinton the presidency in twenty sixteen. So the point is is that you know a lot of people thought, oh, Bill Clinton got away with something. Eventually he didn't. I know a lot of people think Donald Trump's getting away with something. Eventually he won't all right with that. I was going

to do a second question. I'll save it. Got a great week of shows coming up for you, I promise. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Can't wait to talk to you again until I upload again.