Interview Only w/ Rep. Sean Casten - What’s Broken In Congress & How To Fix It

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that don't last. Go to qu I n ce dot com slash chuck for free shipping, three hundred sixty five day returns quins dot com slash chuck. Well joining me now, is someone anybody elected after twenty sixteen I still call a new member of Congress, but he's been there a few terms now, so it's hard to call him a new member. And we're going to get to that in a minute. But it's Sean Caston. He is a republic

Democratic sees me from suburban Chicago, and we're going to make him describe his district a little bit. He did the original district he won. He flipped a Republican seat. It has gotten after the normal redistricting. I have to say normal redistricting now considering all the different ways iterations that take place these days. But he got I think

a slightly less competitive district these days. But I booked the Congressman because he did something that I've been dying for somebody to do at one of these open committee hearings. He asked detailed questions looking for a response, without being theatrical, without trying to dunk on a person. He was just trying to get information, and it went viral because the person that didn't answer the question. In this case, it was the Treasury Secretary didn't have an answer to what

was a fairly simple question. Though it was fraught with

how he answered. It was fraught with some political peril there. But it was a reminder that you don't have to yell, you don't have to perform for something to go viral if you just have a really good question and you stump the cabinet members. So Congressman, is good to see you.

committees and to subcommittees and things like that. Now you know, they're four hundred and thirty one excuse me, five hundred and thirty one elected pundits and four people that make decisions. And it's and when you do that, eventually you'll stop having legislators and you'll start having more political pundits as elected officials. You know. I I remember I interviewed Jake Laturner. I don't know if you remember him. Yeah, he's left

no reason.

Cortes than it is. You know, the grinders. Do you feel that well?

you can inject something in. I mean, look, as you said, I'm on your show today because I injected something into the public conversation about what was going on in Venezuela and some of the legal authority that wouldn't have happened if this was a closed door hearing. And so there's there's a there's value within that, and you know, but.

from the Trump administration. He's going there's going to be a lot of theatrics because that's his style. And therefore I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to ask him because I'm working on on some things that I don't want him to be prepared for, because I

want him to be engaged in this. And this reporter came to me afterwards and he said, I understand why you didn't tell me now, but what we were trying to do was to say I had earlier written a letter to the oil majors pointing out to them that because the Trump White House has not outlined any legal authority for seizing Venezuelan and oil, any investments they might make to refine distribute that oil, they're going to be exposed to Venezuela's creditors, the largest of which is China,

because this is a fraudulent conveyance. And I had wanted to go in with that, and we got the uh, the good fortune, the bad fortune that a day or two before, Marco Rubio had been before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and had made some suggestions about things that

we knew were legally not true. And so it was just an opportunity to go and frame those conversations with percent to say, Okay, you either have to either have to agree with Rubio, in which case you're in a problem, or clarify clarifying, which is going to put you in a pickle. And I didn't want him to be prepared, and we had to and we had to keep our tone down because if he got on the defensive of starting to throw out all of the you know, the

Pam Bondi burn book stuff. Five minutes goes pretty quick in that situation.

you do, you know, because I think he look, I think he does talk Trump off off of some ledges that are even worse than the ledges that Trump that we see Trump go out on. But I've noticed that Besson is clearly trying to get on the President's good side by by being performative in public against the quote unquote owning the Libs or whatever it is that Scott Besson thinks he has to do to keep his job. But he didn't do that with you. Why do you

think that is? You think he was embarrassed that he didn't know the answer.

And when you read those ninety one trust accounts, and none of them actually fit the bill. So, I you know, I think I think he was trying to well, let me not expect them what I was trying to do. I think there was no way for him to answer that question in ways that just sort of made Trump happy that he went viral and made a Democrat look bad.

go down too many conspiracy rabbit holes if we If you agree with my point that they have not, well, this isn't just This isn't even something I'm agree with. Administration has not given any indication that they have any legal authority to take title to Venezuelan oil or to distribute Venezuelan oil. As a result of that, you now

have this account that we're taking. They've moved it to Cutter, which is a whole other set of problems because there are superios where Treasury takes custody to accounts, but we keep them in US banks where we can monitor. This is now in a place that's notorious for hiding money, right, and then said that they have no wateritor in place

to monitor the inflows and the outflows. Well, if you were doing all that, then you take Trump in his face that there are a lot of bad people in Venezuela who are using money to funnel drugs and run these narco terrorism empires. How do you possibly know that the money you're distributing back to Venezuela isn't going to those bad actors. And as I was asking the questions, what I was trying to get them to acknowledge is I'll stipulate for the purpose of the hearing that Maduro

a bad guy. You didn't want the way to go through there. Why wouldn't you have an audit regime in place to monitor that? Rubio said they did have an audit regime regime. Bessen said they didn't have one yet but would set them up, which suggests that the two of them didn't coordinate their story, right, And so now

this raises this is where the conspiracy starts. Is it not being audited because it's going to shady characters in Venezuela or is it not being audited because it's going to shady characters in the United States?

that some of these rules don't apply to him, separation of powers doesn't apply, you know, all these little things in it. And it takes the Supreme Court rebuke that he got late last week on tariffs, and even then, he's not really accepting the rebuke the way normal presidents would. A normal president would do one of two things, find another you know, find another way, or ask Congress to give him the authority whatever. You know, he's just attacking

the institution itself. Do you get the sense now that many of these cabinet agencies that come before you guys and these hearings, when they do these testimonies, they feel as if they don't really have to abide by the rules of Congress. They just have to do just enough performance and they'll be protected by the majority.

of law will comply with the rule of laws, that falls apart pretty quickly.

but took took their oath to the constitution. Seriously, the people who Trump nominated for cabinet secretaries, virtually to a person, where nominated because they'll take orders. Anybody who was going to stand up has been has been merged from the party. I mean, Adam Kinsinger and I did not agree on very much. That Adam Kinzinger was dangerous because he challenged the president. Right, I agree with Marjori Taylor Green on

virtually nothing. She's dangerous because she challenges the president. And so the people who are left there. I mean, think of all the criticisms Trump had of Marco Rubio back

in the presidential race. Those criticisms stung because Marco Rubio, he's a beta dog, right, that's who is person.

It also explains Congressman, you know what you've never heard ever out of this White House. Donald Trump had a meeting today with one of his business partners from thirty years ago. Donald Trump had a meeting today with an old college roommate. Donald Trump had a meeting today with some he has no friends or colleagues or acquaintances that will do business with him who did business with him in the seventies, eighties or nineties, or the first.

he throws somebody away and they you know, that's it, and they won't come back. You know, most of them don't come back into the fold unless they're kind of like Lindsey Grant, right, who were just desperate for it.

put pressure on the presidency's. Congress's decisions to to not make tough decisions, to let the executive branch do it. And it's been sort of a slow thing, right, It's it's an emergency here, trade authority there. You know, it's been it's been over time. But here you are running. You're a CEO. Here you are and I so I'm glad somebody who's had a real career, meta pay role

wants to come to Congress. But it is not a functional, small d democratic institution these days, particularly when you join starting in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.

standing up to Trump. And my my big issue for my whole life has been trying to do something about climate change. That the businesses I ran and most of what the legislating I've done. And a good friend of mine, Katie McGuinty, who had been the head of the Council of Environmental Quality and the Clinton White House, she said, I'm not going to encourage you to run, but I

will tell you that this is if you know what you wanted, I want to have written on your tombstone about what you contributed to the Earth during your time on it. There's no better job than being a member of Congress. And if you don't know what you want written on your tombstone, there's no worst job, because you have such enormous levers that you can pull on. And so you know, in my private sector life, we deployed a couple hundred million dollars I'm worth the capital projects,

made some money for various investors. It looks good in a resume. My first year in Congress cut a billion dollars of legislation passed specifically to deploy clean energy technologies. Not that not that things are measured in dollars, but this was a fresh number of Congress and movement in different ways. And the part of it that I think is sort of beautiful and inspired hiring is that the

I flipped seat. They'd been Republican for fifty years. There were forty of us in that class of eighteen who flipped seats. Of the forty of us, Jennifer Wexton, Ben mccadams, and Anthony Brindisi had held prior elected office. The other thirty seven had never held any elected office before coming in.

back way more than twenty years. I went forty founders. Our founders created a Congress that was the article one branch. It was where all the people were, it was where all the budget was. Congress is now less than one half of one percent of the total federal budget, because every time we identify a problem, we basically create an

executive branch agency to fix it, and we gradually, you know, make ourselves weaker and weaker. And I, you know, I think other than other than the War Powers Act, I'm hard pressed to think of a time where Congress took power back from the other agencies or the other branches. But I can think of lots of time, starting with Marbori versus Madison, where the judicial branch took power from

the legislative branch. Lots of times where the executive has taken power from legislative And I think we're vastly overdue. You know, if we still believe that it's important to have a government with three co equal branches, we got to be a little more equal. And I think we need to sort of push for some structural reforms. And the while I'm not naive about a loan that's going to take, what other job could I possibly get where I could actually have a role in fixing that.

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and he tried it out. Lauren, how was your experience, I'll be honest, Chuck.

use the code Chuck podcast. You you have made the

case for why you should be there, and I appreciate that attitude. I fear that not many have the same attitude that you have. You know, some wanted as a stepping stone as well. Some are you know, some are Some actually want it on their resume so they can say they did it on that front. But let's talk

about so one of the way. One of the ways I describe myself as I always say, I'm short term pessimistic, but long term optimistic that history shows that when we are in these moments, we do the structural changes or updatings that are needed. And the only question is whether

how much violence it takes before we get to that point.

And I know that sounds harsh. I don't mean to sound or doomer gloom, but when you look at the we've really only had about four periods where we've made serious changes to the constitution to try to update the democracy, right at the start, during and after the Civil War, and the period that I'm currently obsessed with, basically the first twenty five years of the twentieth century, where we had where we had three of the most important reforms

that were added to the constitution, women, the right to vote, income tax, and direct election of senators, and all three were really direct responses to what felt like a crisis. In the moment. It felt like income inequality was out

of control with the industrialists and they weren't paying their fair share. Tariffs were not the way to fund a government. People realize this, The democracy felt like it wasn't really responsive to the people. I think we now feel that same that same thing. Now I've got my own theories as to why that is. I think Congress is too damn small. But we'll get to that in a minute.

And of course, with the feeling that hey, the Senate's rigged and it's it was a bribery scandal, by the way, in the great state of Illinois that helped accelerate the cause of direct election for senators. Illinois, of course, has its fair share of scandals political scandals over the century.

in today's dollars, was what a vote for a US senator was in the state ledge back in nineteen oh nine. But you know, a couple of weeks ago, there's a there was a constitutional amendment that was introduced in Congress to give Congress nullification powers on pardons if if enough members decided it was yes. While it was actually I think Johnny Olewinsky, Okay, he introduced it, and Bacon became the first Republican to sign on to it. What's the appetite.

You sound like you're a reformer. You you'd like to get involved in some of the updating of the American democracy, reforming the institution. Maybe it's a constitutional amendment, some stuff you can do just with an Act of Congress. What are the reforms that you'd like to focus on for the rest of this decade?

the whole trust busting era. I think that, arguably, you know, is what set us up for such a booming century. I think if you look at the reforms we've made over time, everything we're really proud of in our history has made democracy more inclusive, whether that was you know,

expanding the franchise to women, to minorities, to Native Americans, direct election of senators. The most anti democratic institutions in the United States are still the ones that hold us back. The Senate, the Electoral College, and the structure of the Supreme Court. The Senate sort of has a self destruct button that Article five of the Constitution says that you can't You're not even allowed to amend the Constitution in a way that would reduce the proportional power of the states.

Because I think our founders understood how deeply anti democratic the Senate was and what the problem is, We've introduced a bill to get around that in a sort of a sideways way by saying, let's create twelve nationally elected at large senators so that the Senate would actually have a significant block of senators who had to be responsive to national public will, as a way to fix that. The Supreme Court, I think, on any objective analysis, has

always been political and has always been lowercase C conservative. I mean, with the exception of the War in Court, they have always protected the power of incumbents over expansions of democracy. And there's nothing particularly wrong with them being political other than the fact that they tell themselves a story that they are just gods on high who live in a temple and dispense wisdom, and they're not political actors,

and yet we all know they are. And so we've introduced some legislation that would basically take advantage of the fact that Article three of the Constitution specifically says that the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is limited to disputes between the States admiralty law and the maritime law, matters related to ambassadors and such a pellet jurisdiction, as the Congress provides. So Congress has the ability if we choose to strip all the pellet jurisdiction from the Supreme Court.

And so what we've done is introduced legislation that would say the Senior Appellate Court would now be a separate court and judges would be randomly assigned from the seventy or eighty Senior Circuit Court judges, so that you couldn't you couldn't choose your docket right, And that would go through to set that case so that we would actually

have you wouldn't have a way to politicize the court and do that. We can do that, you know, and I for one, think that Clance Thomas and Samuel Lto are really good at maritime law and admiralty law, and they could continue to do that. Matters related to ambassadors, fine, you can have your lifetime appointment. I think beyond that though, on the Supreme Court, prior to nineteen twenty five, the

Supreme Court didn't get to set there on docket. Congress gave them the power to set their dockete and grant cert in the judges active nineteen twenty five. We could take that away, right, and all of a sudden you wouldn't have the situation where Thomas makes a footnote in a dissent and somebody says, Okay, I see what you're saying. If I bring this case, we can go in and bring this down. We can take that away. We could

We have the power of the purse. Why don't we always give the Supreme Court one hundred percent of the appropriation they ask for. We could go back and say we're going to give you less next year unless you institute the following ethics reforms. Right, let's make people trust the court. Then, all things that we could do within our power, And I know there are a lot of conversations.

is whatever it takes to get the least, you know, sort of the most neutral person you can get. That was the point of lifetime appointments. I mean, look, imagine if we didn't have lifetime appointments, Donald Trump would have fired Neil gorsicch this weekend. Yeah, okay, right, I think that's what we do. Know that he probably does that, and probably you would have fired Amy Cony Barrett after

you know, a couple of times ago. So it is, I take your point on supermajorities, but if you so, I had a source of mine who worked in the Bush Justice Bush Council office in the Bush w forty three's and back then it took sixty votes essentially to get a judge through, and he said, if it had been fifty that they wouldn't have nominated any of the people they nominated.

he certainly is a partisan warrior. I mean, although ironically he came through during the sixty the sixty zone.

they essentially adopted the US form of government. And they went through and he said, after twenty years we got rid of what you would call the Senate because it just come things up. And there sitting there and Tom Carper, it's this big frown in his face and all of

US House members start churning. But there's sort of an acknowledgment that that structure and I say this on the judges, because the Senate always is going to skew you know, conservative and again in the lowercase see sense because it always overly represents rural areas, people closer to the land. You know, we're sort of you know, you know, traditional, all that sort of stuff, And maybe that made sense in seventeen eighty nine, but it means that, you know,

the the swing vote in the Senate is always very far to the right of the Median American voter.

the size population wise of one of the fifteen largest cities in America. So if you go back to what it was in nineteen thirty, because we were doing it every decade, expanding the House with the size of the population, I think you might need a constitutional amendment to put a put a numerator in there and say that no congressional district can be bigger than point oh three percent of the right Now, that would make it point oh three percent of the population. If we went to one,

say three point fifty one per four hundred. Right around there, we'd have about eight hundred and fifty eight hundred and seventy members of Congress. But what it really does is that it allows the electoral college to level, basically become a level playing field. Wyoming goes from being six six times more more an advantage of a presidential vote over a Californian. They still have an advantage, but it's two

and a half. So it's it's what I would argue, it keeps in what the founders always wanted, which is at the small stage, should get a little more influenced, but not a lot more influence. Right, two and a half to one feels better than six to one, And

I think it would make jerrymandering just less necessary. You're going to have it in some places, but it's it's less and somebody's harder to do, and you probably lower you probably diversify Congress just by sheer numbers in ways, and you'll get different walks of life and and it

will be the people's house again. But try telling, try making the case that the problem in Washington is not enough politicians.

And you lack a district at five hundred thousand. We picked five hundred thousand for sort of arbitrary reasons. But there's been a number of political scientists who look at this cube root law that if you look at all the parliamentary democracies of the world, you put population on one the access how many members, It kind of follows a cube route, and it's about five hundred. So at least just say, well, we know this works because other governments kind of run on this form.

you are going to get more districts where there are more people, which means that I think you counter some of the reason why the electoral college stuff works out is that essentially large rural areas are overrepresented, urban areas are underrepresented.

And so if you get a situation where you know me and whoever comes in second are representing the same communities, you should, in theory get rid of some of the polarization in Washington. But put it that way, and we're with other ideas, but that's the way that we've structured it.

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your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quoted ethos dot com. Slash Chuck so again that's ethos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and the rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me, life insurance is something you should really think about it, especially if you've got a growing family. Look, you're one of the few members that engages in this conversation. There aren't many members that are thinking about this. You know, is

it a caucus of twenty thirty. Who's the group that you're working with that are animated on this.

on things that the public cares about. And I think the number of members who think about this stuff and care about it is much higher than the number of members who are willing to say, I'm going to prioritize this over all the things that voters are telling me to prioritize at any given time. And so I did a thing about this with some various other podcasters recently, and when everybody said, what's the most important thing we can do to drive this forward is just make noise

about it. You know, the more that voters care, the more that those of us in elected office have to do something about it now.

could argue that you could you could do that. I'd also allow for remote voting. I think that with eight hundred and fifty members of Congress, maybe that is something. Because here's the thing. You know, if you make it just a little bit harder for the lobbyist to find the member of Congress, maybe that's not so bad.

How Washington Works to college students, and I was doing a whole thing on Congress last week and I said, we've had these various moments where it just got worse for a specific reason, and this current era it began basically, it began with the rise of Gingridge and the rise of Gingrich happened because of partisan of a partisan decision by Democrats back in eighty six in an Indiana congressional district.

It's known as the Bloody eighth. It's a it's got sort of this this there's a sort of mythical status to it. But it gave rise to Newt, and then Newt when he became the leader, basically got rid of He didn't want any more. He wanted all his members to be in the you know, he stop people working Mondays and Fridays, and everything became about, you know, only be in Washington Tuesday through Thursday and be in the

district and that prioritize not bring in your family. And then you know, that had all sorts of and frankly both parties now have accepted that schedule. And so yeah, I'd love to see you guys two months here, one month not here, two months here, you know, something like that.

members who stay in DC through the weekends and there are those of us who go home. Broadly speaking, you don't stay in DC over the weekend if you're not in a really safe seat. And so I would I would worry a little bit about that because since so much of this job as relationships. Wouldn't that concentrate power in sort of the senior safest seat members who could stick around you got to go back to your district if you don't know whether you're going to win your next election, well it could.

think they've only made lobbyists more powerful. They've made governors more powerful, they've made state legislatures less powerful, just generally. I mean, I could doing a broad stroke. But the best idea I've heard if you do institute term limits, which would need a constitutional amendment, is to make the House four year terms. And if you had the House at four year terms, would you at least maybe for the first you know, and and by the way, if

you end up doubling the size of the House, you might actually want to have half the house up two years, the other half up the other two years, and go with four years. There might be some logistical reasons to do that. But if you did four year terms, would it would it encourage what it discourage? Because right now you're running for reelection. The day you get sworn in on January third, you're dialing for dollars.

the pulse of where Americans are all the time. And in a six year term, you know, you can the first couple of years just working on things like dictated by your own wisdom. And there's a value in that in the Senate. But you do that, there's you know, none of us like dialing for dollars. Some of us like kissing babies for weird reasons.

looked at Trump's numbers, you'd be like, oh, this has got to be good news for Democrats, right, He's sixty percent disapproved upside down in every issue. But then, when given the choice of you have the main problems, who do you trust? Democrats are Trump? They were both in the low thirties, and neither was also in the thirties.

The Democratic brand has really taken a beating. Do you think the four years of Biden we're a successful four years and it's just been bad messaging or is this a is this a much bigger problem than Democrats want to face.

think depending on the question we're asking. You know, we for all sorts of reasons that you were well aware of, we have political parties. If you ask people what are the things that you want government to do and where your values are those those things are very popular across

broad bipartisan swaths of the economy. We want we want to get shot when we go to school. We think all people should have equal rights. We you know, we want a peaceful transfer of elections. You know, those things tend to skew democratic in this moment. The brand isn't so good. But it's sort of like saying, do you like do you like Jerry flavored kolas? That's one question.

What is the brand status of mister pibb. That's a different question, right even though even though they're synonyms, so so all that really says to me is, okay, maybe don't hang your don't hang your party after your idea and get votes. But that doesn't necessarily mean whether or not Democrats or Republicans are going to win the next election. I think ultimately that's a race by race.

to Trump again. Like I think that a better leader turns figures out how to help the country turn the page, and he couldn't do it. Is that all on him? Was it circumstances? Was it starting the presidency with an impeachment trial and create an impossible situation? Maybe I'm not like, but you know, I do think that the Democrats are being punished by some voters for somehow not putting Trump away.

And I don't know what that means in their head, right, It doesn't mean putting him in jail, just means, you know, how is it that we did not how did we end up with him still here?

the party you know, or that you know, etcetera, etcetera. I think at the same time, Biden's great strength and his great weakness was that he was a senator. Trump's great strength in his.

how to get things through the Senate. And I think that reads the American people as being way down in process that I don't care about. Why are we Why am I having to talk about what we did to make a compromise with Joe Manchin in order to get this thing through. Compare that to Trump, who says, look, this is what we're going to do. I don't care what happens. I don't care what my favorability is. This

is where it's going. And I think there's a I think there's a forceful executive that we need in the White House that you just don't get there if all of your formative years are crafted in a legislative body with an ousesource in it. We haven't had a leader of the Democratic Party with executive experience. It's Bill Clinton, right, and the Republicans consistently nominate people with executive experience. And you know, when you look back, go back to your

period in the twenties, you know Roosevelt Teddy. Roosevelt walks into a room, you are not under any confusion of who the top dog in this room is. Donald Trump walks into a room, You're inder no confusion about who the top dog is. Biden walks into a room. He's a nice guy, right and and like morally I like him. I think he was extremely effective for what he did.

But I think we need to you know, as we get to our nomination process, we need we need to get people who, you know, make it very clear that this is where the buck stops.

you know, I want a Churchill. I want somebody who says I have nothing to promise you but blood, sweat and tears. I can't guarantee will win, but I can guarantee we'll lose if we don't fight. So once more to the Battlement's my dear friend. Like, that's that's what we need in this moment, right. I don't particularly want someone who's going to talk about the reconciliation process.

to him. But if you look at the other three Obama, Clinton, and Carter at this point in time and all of those presidential cycles that they ended up president, they were not the front runner at this point, and they were not even being they were they were barely registering as can. It's in the in Carter and Clinton, and you know, Obama was seen as somebody that was going to be four years down the road. You know, he wasn't necessarily

right away. So I tend to agree with that. Do you think this is a party that would nominate somebody with a CEO background, and I'm not you know, it's unusual for the Democrats to do something like that, like a Mark Cuban.

a governor's mansion. You know, you could get that, you know, you know, major cabinet secretary, you know it kind of but I think I think it needs to be someone with those kind of backgrounds. I also think, you know,

I think you want somebody who's who's who's authentic. I think, without naming names, there are some people who are in the mix right now who are very different people when the curtain is down, then when the curtain comes up and it becomes very clear as they go through, you know, and I think there are some people who are just sort of consistent in who they are at all at all moments. And I think that's again, like for all of Trump's faults. People appreciate that that he is who he is all the time.

that's more of a tactical debate. What I the real divide I'm sensing and I think the Texas primary really sort of shows this one pretty well is U And even in the presidential I could I could compare Gavin to rom which is, do you want a fighter or do you want a uniter? Are you looking? Are we looking for? Is the next president need to be somebody who's going to take the fight and one you know you're to or is the next president going to be tough but try to bring the country together? And I

think it's a fun of Mike. I think there are some Democrats who say, hey, we tried the united stuff with Biden. It didn't work. It's time to It's time to, you know, get somebody who's not afraid to throw a punch somebody more like Bill Clinton. I mean, you could argue, do you want Bill Clinton or Barack Obama? Right? You know that? And those are distinctively they were two different types of presidents. Where do you fall?

out how to be better politicians than Abraham Lincoln. Because in Abraham lincoln second inaugural when he said, it may seem strange to you know, for any just God to bless a man for earning his spread from the sweat of another man's face. But let us not judge less we we judged ourselves. And the butt was Lincoln saying, I don't I don't know how to unite the country and be morally clear about what just happened. And I think that tension has always been in our politics, doesn't

you know? To be a uniter is to is to forgive some sins. To not forgive the sins is to not be a uniter. I see the divide as being a little bit different than you going into this cycle that I think the particularly with the wealth inequality and with the huge disruptions and unemployment. My daughter's a freshman in college right now. When we were looking at colleges, one of her comments was that every college she looks

at is sixty sixty five percent female. The you know, you, you've got a whole lot of young men who who's who's forward forward expectations is different than what they thought it was going to be. And AI is making that worse because the jobs that are being displaced are jobs that historically skewed very male people who analyze large sets of data, identified trends, and prepared memos for their bosses, right whether that was a bank or a law firm

or an engineering firm. There's a lot of uncertainty there. And I think the I think the person who gets really energized at Bernie Sanders rally is not that much different than the person who gets really energized at a Charlie Kirk rally. The institutions are terrible, and I want to I'm going to support them and burns them down. Yeah, And I think the I think there's sort of a nihilism at the fringes that's really dangerous. If you if you come forward as a politician and say trust me,

the institutions are going to be fine. You're not very credible. I think there are very few politics I've seen, but I think this is what we wanted. I keep going back to Teddy Roosevelt, who says, I love the institutions and they are desperately in need of repair, and this is what we're going to do, right, And that I think is the more interesting divide right now. Not uniers have dividers. But who's the person out there who can say,

I can I understand your pain. I understand that the system did not work for you in the way that you thought it was going to go for it, But we're not going to burn it down. We're going to work together and make it better and make it more inclusive, right, you know. I keep going back to the twenties. Was that there was that Louis Brandeis line when he said, when you have great concentrations of wealth, you only have three choices. You can let the wealth take over the government,

which is to embrace fascism. You can have the government take over the wealth and embrace communism, or you can break up the wealth and embrace capitalism. Right there, you go, That's that's kind of where we are right, but that.

more in common they Burnie would hate. Neither one of them would accept that premise, though they may agree in a couple of acknowledge that they agree on some of this stuff. But the distrust of big corporations in particular, I mean, you know, and I think that moment is coming. And I think the question is is the person who puts that coalition together a responsible actor or an irresponsible actor? FDR was did that FDR put that coalition together? And he was a responsible actor.

you have plenty of room for the klan. Right. But in that era, the Republicans who said we need to hold people account for their sins, they were the radical Republicans, right, and they had that same sort of like they were defined not by who they were, but who they weren't. And I feel like we're flopped on that right now and strung a lot of the same issues. And I don't know what lessons we learned from that era, because

ultimately the radical Republicans didn't. You know, we got three solid amendments out of it, and one hundred years later we actually started enforcing those amendments.

terrible workplaces before we made the changes. That were necessary because we were letting the industrialists were running a monk, right, AIS kind of may end up running a mock. So we'll get there. It just how much damage has to be done before we before we collectively decide to act, right. Yeah, yeah, to quote Churchill, right, you can trust the Americans to eventually do the right thing after they've exhausted every other what is it, every other path of that doesn't work.

you as being very precient. And I voted one way and he sticks his card in the machine boats the other wind and says, yeah, I can't do that.

and you know, is it is it ten to fifteen percent? Maybe, but it's it's not ninety percent.

So the democratic policy agenda is much better at winning the House than winning the state in the electoral college. And to really make democratic reforms is partisan because of that. It shouldn't be, but it's just sort of the way we're skewed right now.