Do The Democrats Really Need ‘Their Own Trump’ To Win? w/ Galen Druke

Summary

Conversations With Coleman: Do The Democrats Really Need ‘Their Own Trump’ with Galen Druke

In the July 21, 2025 episode of Conversations With Coleman, host Coleman Hughes engages in a thought-provoking dialogue with Galen Druke, the founder and host of the GD Politics Podcast. Druke, formerly of FiveThirtyEight, brings his extensive experience in political analysis and polling to dissect the current challenges facing the Democratic Party and the controversial proposition that Democrats might benefit from having a figure akin to Donald Trump—a concept he elaborates on in his recent New York Times op-ed.

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Galen Druke’s Background and Perspective

Druke begins by sharing his journey in political analysis, highlighting his tenure at FiveThirtyEight where he honed his skills in data-driven political forecasting. He emphasizes the trust his audience places in his judgment, contrasting it with the perceived biases of mainstream media. Druke states, “I think my audience listens to me because they found my judgment to be trustworthy in the past, but have found mainstream media organizations to be the exact opposite” ([00:00]).

Transitioning to his current work, Druke discusses the inception of the GD Politics Podcast on Substack, aiming to foster curiosity, rigor, and humor in political discourse. He reflects on the current political climate, noting, “GD Politics is both my initials, my name is Galen Druke. But I think maybe encapsulates or I think encapsulates how people feel about politics right now, which is goddamn politics” ([04:19]).

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The Science of Political Polling

The conversation delves into the intricacies of political polling, a field Druke has extensively covered. He analogizes polling to a “blood test” for understanding public sentiment, acknowledging its imperfections but asserting its necessity over personal anecdotes. Druke explains the evolution of polling methodologies, noting the decline in response rates from the era of landlines to the present reliance on diverse channels like text messages and online platforms: “Now it's something like 2% of people are responding to polls” ([08:11]).

Addressing concerns about polling accuracy, Druke asserts that despite challenges, modern polling still offers valuable insights. He remarks, “If your question is, do Americans think that abortion should be legal or illegal in most cases? Do you think America should bomb Iran? ..., Being off by 4 percentage points is not as big of an issue” ([12:34]).

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The Democratic Party’s Leadership Crisis

Hughes steers the conversation toward the Democratic Party’s current predicament, referencing Druke’s New York Times op-ed titled “Do The Democrats Really Need ‘Their Own Trump’.” Druke elucidates that the phrase is metaphorical, advocating for a leader who can navigate the party through its internal divisions by adopting a strategy similar to Trump’s 2016 campaign—balancing between appealing to the base and moderating positions to attract broader voter support.

He draws parallels with historical figures like George H.W. Bush and Mario Cuomo, who successfully reoriented their parties by adopting a mix of conservative and liberal policies. Druke emphasizes the importance of tackling high-salience issues where Democrats hold strength, such as healthcare, while moderating stances on less universally supported topics like immigration and fiscal policy. He states, “For Democrats, what could that look like? Today, Democrats are trusted a lot more than Republicans on the issue of health care, and they have been for a long time” ([20:35]).

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Democrats Needing Their Own Trump: A Strategic Pivot

Druke argues that the Democratic Party must embrace a leader who can bridge internal ideological divides and present the party as a cohesive alternative to the Republican establishment. He compares Trump’s 2016 strategy of targeting specific issues to galvanize the base while appealing to moderate voters on economic policies. Druke suggests Democrats replicate this by doubling down on healthcare and potentially addressing fiscal responsibility: “For Democrats, what could that look like? Today, Democrats are trusted a lot more than Republicans on the issue of health care... it's the economy, like Republicans in general have been trusted more on the economy, so also doubling down on that when moving to the left a bit” ([26:20]).

He further explores the necessity for Democrats to communicate effectively on high-impact issues without alienating key voter segments. Druke notes, “What are the strengths of my party, which for him [Trump] was the economy... so for Democrats, what could that look like? ... they're trusted a lot more than Republicans on the issue of health care” ([29:00]).

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Evaluating Potential Democratic Candidates

The discussion turns to assessing the viability of current Democratic figures to embody this Trump-like leadership. Druke critiques Gavin Newsom’s attempts at bipartisan dialogues, suggesting that while such efforts are commendable, they may not align with his established brand as a staunch Democrat: “I think ambitious Democrats are already doing some of that stuff...” ([37:06]).

When considering progressive leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Druke acknowledges their charisma and grassroots support but questions their ability to pivot without losing authenticity: “I don’t believe she can win because I honestly am not sure that, that conservative black voters in South Carolina are okay, even in the year 2025, playing pulling the lever for a gay, a gay man” ([52:09]). He highlights the complexities of appealing to diverse voter bases within the Democratic Party, especially among socially conservative black voters.

Discussing Pete Buttigieg, Druke admires his intelligence and rational approach but shares skepticism about his appeal in socially conservative regions: “I’m not going to say that I have a lot of polling data to support that. But what I do know is that... social conservative black voters... have problems with pulling the lever for a gay man for president” ([56:00]).

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Strategic Recommendations for the Democratic Party

In closing, Druke is asked to distill his recommendations into a sound bite. He candidly admits the difficulty but emphasizes the need for the Democratic Party to recognize and rectify its contributions to political fatigue: “Politics is distasteful and exhausting. The Democratic Party itself has contributed a lot to that. The Republican Party has certainly done its fair share, too” ([63:12]).

Druke suggests a move towards acknowledging past mistakes and fostering a more inclusive, efficient political framework that addresses both public concerns and internal party dynamics. This approach aims to rejuvenate the party’s appeal by balancing progressive zeal with pragmatic policy adjustments.

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Conclusion

Galen Druke’s insights offer a critical examination of the Democratic Party’s strategic options in a polarized political landscape. By advocating for a leadership model that balances fervent advocacy with moderate appeal, Druke challenges Democrats to rethink their approach to resonate with a broader electorate. This episode underscores the importance of nuanced political strategy in navigating contemporary electoral challenges.

For more in-depth analysis and discussions, listeners are encouraged to explore Galen Druke’s GD Politics Podcast available on GDPolitics.com and across major podcast platforms.

Transcript

[Coleman Hughes]

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Galen Druke. Galen is the founder and host of the GD Politics Podcast. He previously hosted and produced the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast, where he covered American elections for nearly a decade. His reporting and analysis have also regularly appeared on ABC News and the BBC, as well as npr, C Span, and more. In this episode, we talk about the science of political polling, we talk about the crisis of leadership facing the Democratic Party, and we talk about Galen's recent op ed in the New York Times where he argues that Democrats need their own Trump, though he doesn't mean what you probably think he means by that. So without further ado, Galen Druke, why are podcasts like this one at all popular? We can't compete with the resources of a place like cnn. I can't give you the sheer volume of analysis that the New York Times can, but there's one thing I have that those organizations trust. I think my audience listens to me because they found my judgment to be trustworthy in the past, but have found mainstream media organizations to be the exact opposite. That's why I love Ground News. They're an app and website designed to help you escape ideological echo chambers by by pulling in the world's perspective on today's most emotionally and politically charged issues. Ground News breaks down the political bent, reliability, ownership, and location of each reporting source so you understand that news isn't simply reported. Often narratives are crafted. For example, consider a recent story about the Department of Education informing my alma mater Columbia University that they broke federal anti discrimination laws and failed to comply with accreditation requirements. There are many different ways to frame the story. Instead of your typical news feed that uses algorithms to push or suppress certain angles, if you go to Ground News Coleman, you can zoom out and understand the full scope of the story. For instance, you can see that the Bloomberg headline frames it as Trump targeting Colombia over pro Palestine protests, which is a framing more sympathetic to the protesters, whereas Arut Sheva frames it as Trump moving to strip Colombia of its accreditation over antisemitism concerns, which is a framing more sympathetic to Trump as well as to Jewish students. Even the difference between the phrasing matters here is Trump targeting or is he moving to strip? The same action is being described, but the first one sounds far more negative than the second. These are the kinds of observations you begin to notice when you start using Ground News. That's why I got you 40% off the same Vantage plan that I use. Just go to groundnews.com Coleman and expand your worldview with unlimited access to all the features I mentioned, plus their browser extension and exclusive newsletters. Get a well rounded view of the world, think critically about what you read, and find common ground between perspectives. That's groundnews.com Coleman for for 40% off their vantage plan, available for a limited time only.

[Galen Druke]

You know that one friend who somehow knows everything about money? Yeah.

[Coleman Hughes]

Now imagine they live in your phone.

[Galen Druke]

Say hey to Experian, your big financial friend. It's the app that helps you check your FICO score, find ways to save, and basically feel like a financial genius. And guess what? It's totally free. So go on, download the Experian app. Trust me, having a BFF like this is a total game changer.

[Coleman Hughes]

Galen Druck, thanks so much for coming on my show.

[Galen Druke]

Thanks so much for having me. And congratulations on the new digs at the Free Press.

[Coleman Hughes]

Thank you. So we've been bumping into each other for years, mostly at the Olive Tree Cafe, really, for the past five, six years. But give my listeners a sense of who you are, how you got into political analysis and polling and what you're up to now.

[Galen Druke]

Who are you and what on earth are you doing here?

[Coleman Hughes]

Yes.

[Galen Druke]

So I started my career in political analysis and data in particular at FiveThirtyEight in 2015, so about a decade ago. And at the time, 538 was part of ESPN, then became part of ABC, then ABC shut us down in March of this year.

[Coleman Hughes]

Can you also tell people about the origins of FiveThirtyEight and why it kind of was such a big deal?

[Galen Druke]

Yeah, absolutely. So FiveThirtyEight was started by Nate Silver, who people are probably, maybe even more familiar with than FiveThirtyEight itself. But, you know, he has his own origin story. But the main piece is that he had a lot of criticism for how horse race coverage in particular was conducted, that it was a lot of like, you know, New York Times reporter goes to a random town in Pennsylvania, talks to Susie, Bobby and Jill and then writes up an article saying, okay, well, you know, we think that John Kerry is going to win because this is what Susie said. Right. I mean, obviously polling was taken into consideration, but it would be sort of a random poll here or there. It's easy to spin individual polls or individual pollsters might have their own motivations for putting out a poll. And so his argument was we ought to be aggregating the polls because that's how you get closest to the poll, to the accurate sentiment of the public. And also he started forecasting so incorporating the challenges of the fact that we have an electoral college system, that the results across different states are correlated, that economic sentiment or economic performance also matters in addition to polling and trying to be a lot more rigorous about the horse race coverage in America. Right. No one would ever argue at 538 that horse. Horse race coverage should be the only way that we cover politics. But to the extent that we do cover the horse race, it should be in a rigorous manner. And so he started off on his own, then joined the New York Times, then joined the Walt Disney Company. That was a whole saga. The saga ended a few months ago, and I hosted our politics podcast there alongside Nate and others. And as we all scattered to the wind, I started the GD Politics podcast, which found a home on Substack. Like many other folks, it's been a great space to join in a community, in particular to join. And I follow a lot of the same ethos that we did at 5:38. The way that I describe it is trying to understand the world and politics with, you know, curiosity, rigor, and a sense of humor. So we start with questions, not answers. When we answer those questions, we want to be rigorous and empirical about it to the extent that we can, whether it's data, polling, research, whatever. And also, like, what are we doing here if we're not having fun? So, yeah, it's been. And obviously GD Politics is both my initials, my name is Galen Druke. But I think maybe encapsulates or I think encapsulates how people feel about politics right now, which is goddamn politics. It's a hard time to find the joy and humor in politics.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. So you had a really interesting New York Times piece recently, and we're going to get to that. But first, I want to ask some generic questions about polling. So the first thing that people think of when they think about polling is I've never been polled. Oh, okay. It's like pollsters never called me. To my knowledge, I've never answered a poll. Why should I even believe polls reflect anything accurate? That's kind of the first part of the question. The second part is, have poll? Has the accuracy of polling changed over the years? Because, you know, 30 years ago you're calling landlines and everyone has a landline. Now very few people have a landline. How do you get to people? Is it cell phones? Is it. Is it pop ups on an Internet? So two part question. Why? Why? How can a poll even be accurate to begin with? This is obviously very basic stuff for you, but Some people may not know. And then how has it changed over the years?

[Galen Druke]

This is so important because. Right. If we're going to rely on this stuff to understand the world around us, because I would argue that as faulty as polling can be or as imperfect as polling can be, it's our best way to understand the world around us. Because the alternative is just relying on our own personal experiences. And while those experiences are great and add color to the world around us, it's not rigorous. Right. So I kind of describe polling as something like a blood test. Right. You know, you take a little bit of your blood to get a sense of what the whole looks like, but you don't need to drain your entire system of blood in order to get a picture of what's going on. And so, you know, we do have everyone or all voters weigh in when we have an actual election. But in a democracy, it's good to get a sense of what people think about policy, what people think about the current administration, what motivates them, or even, I mean, for business, all kinds of questions like, do you prefer this or that, or where would you like to live? Or, you know, do you think that, you know, taxes are too high? Or even random stuff like YouGov always does polling on, like, which side of a banana should you open a banana from? Or whatever. So if you have never been polled, it's because pollsters are relying on a sample. So most polls will speak to between 500 and 1,000 people for a nationally representative poll. And obviously there are over 350 million Americans. So you're not going to end up talking to a lot of people when it comes to the actual methodology. It didn't actually even start with landlines. Right. Original pollsters were block walking. They were just like sort of start at an intersection and go and talk to the folks in one house and the next and the next. And that's an incredibly reliable way of getting people to answer you. You can use your own personal charisma to get them to, to, to stay and talk to you. And on the phone, it's a little bit harder. And through texting and email, it's even harder still. During the golden era of polling, we did rely on landlines. Pretty much everyone has one. There's no call screening. People are answering. And back in the day, we would get, you know, 20, 30% of respondents actually answering polls. As landlines have gone away, as screening has become more common, response rates have declined precipitously. Now it's something like 2% of people end up actually taking the poll. And so when people express concern about the polling industry, they're right to do that because it is facing incredible challenges. Luckily for the industry, there's a lot of really smart people who care about doing this. Right. I think for people who say, like, screw the pollsters, they're trying to, you know, drive a particular narrative or spin us or whatever, there are folks out there like that. But there are a lot of people who are truly dedicated to trying to understand the world around us. And so ways that they're iterating is using text message. So you'll get a text and it'll say, we want to hear your thoughts about X, Y, Z. Click this link and then you can take a poll. There's ways of doing online polling, emailing folks to try to get them to do the poll. You can even mail people like snail mail and say, go to this website or call this number or whatever to respond to the poll. And. And so while we used to have the gold standard of polling, which was live, actual people calling both cell phones and landlines to get responses, that is no longer sort of going to reliably get you closer to the answer. It's really just using an all of the above approach to reach people where they are texting, email, snail mail, calling cell phones, calling landlines and the likes. And look, in an environment where 1 to 2% of people are responding to polls, even when the pollsters quote, unquote, get it wrong, they still get incredibly close, right? Like, it's a disaster when the polls are 4 percentage points off. Now, that's huge when we have elections that are decided by, you know, a point and a half, two points. But if your question is, do Americans think that abortion should be legal or illegal in most cases? Do you think America should bomb Iran? Whatever. Being off by 4 percentage points is not as big of an issue because a lot of these are areas where 2/3 of the country agree, Right?

[Coleman Hughes]

Do you think that politicians rely too much or too little on polling to tack to the center or away from the center on certain positions to decide what their messaging should be?

[Galen Druke]

That's a really, really good question. And in fact, that's a question that I oftentimes ask politicians when I get get a chance to sit down with them, which is what is leadership? Is leadership understanding what the public wants based on the information we have about it and delivering for the public, or is it having a sense of what's right and bringing the public along for the ride? And I think that it depends on what area we're talking about. There are a lot of issues in American life where Americans know what they want. And politicians, no matter how charismatic or, you know, whatever they might be, they're not really going to be able to change public opinion. I mean, there are lots of different examples of this. Abortion is one example where like, you know, even though Donald Trump has like pivoted away to some extent from pro life activists, he hasn't actually changed public opinion on the right in general. Folks are still opposed to, you know, legal abortion in most circumstances. Another example would be like immigration for the all the Marco Rubios and jeb bushes in 2016 who tried to pivot towards comprehensive immigration reform. That was an issue that Republican voters cared a lot about and weren't going to be swayed by elites in the party. There are other issues where Americans don't think deeply about them and those issues are liable to change practically overnight. So the Washington Post did a poll about whether or not the United States should bomb Iran during the Israel Iran conflict. And then again a poll after we chose to bomb Iran and support for bombing Iran increased by 30 percentage points amongst Republicans. Your average American is not thinking on a regular basis about whether we should bomb a nuclear facility in Iran. It's just foreign. It's very literal. It's quite literally distant. And so we're relying more on elites to tell us what we should do to, to make the case, whether it's just because we have faith in a particular person to do what's right and so we adopt their position or, or because it gets fought out in the public square and we inform our positions based on the information that we hear. And so I think sometimes cynical politicians just follow the polls. And to the extent that following the polls means delivering on behalf of Americans in the manner that they want, I don't think we should criticize that. You know, oh, they're flip flopping, they're too malleable. Whatever part of democracy, part of a representative democracy is, is that you are supposed to deliver based on what they want. But you can get too carried away with that and lose your own sense of leadership and agency as a leader. Because there are a lot of areas where if you believe something and you really make the case for it in public, you can convince people that you're right.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. I think foreign policy is a great example because there's also just a resting assumption that right now Trump and the security state know so much more than I possibly could as a citizen. And so if they make a decision, they're making it on the basis of way more information than I have and way more information than they can talk about publicly. Whereas with something like abortion or immigration, I feel I'm more able. Like, they kind of know as much as I know. So I think that's one intuition behind it.

[Galen Druke]

And it's a sort of intuitive set of moral values. Right. Like, you know, what you care about. It's a pretty concrete thing.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. Okay, so let's talk about your recent New York Times op ed, which was titled something like, the Democrats Need Their Own Donald Trump. So basically, the premise of your article starts out by acknowledging that the Democratic Party is currently in a kind of crisis, but it's a crisis that has been familiar to both parties in the past, and that the crisis also represents an opportunity if it's looked at through the right vantage point. So describe that to me a little bit.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah, absolutely. So that headline is intentionally attention grabbing, of course, and it did rile up some feathers. And I come to this not as a partisan, but more somebody who's spent more than a decade looking at public opinion data and just seeing how the public responds to politicians, both on the right and the left. And sort of the conversation has turned to how does the Democrat Democratic Party see its way out of the wilderness? And a lot of people have a lot of different ideas. And this is one option, and in some ways, it's following the Donald Trump 2016 blueprint. And now I'm not talking about sort of, you know, posing challenges to Democratic norms or whatever. I am talking about the way he handled the sort of moderate versus conservative divide within the Republican Party. Now, when Obama was inaugurated the second time at the beginning of 2013, Republicans were actually more unpopular then than Democrats are today, but very close. I mean, Democrat, the Democratic Party's like, net negative 24 percentage points in Pew polling. And that's about as unpopular as the party has ever been in the 30 years of Pew doing this research. I mean, it was a little bit worse towards the tail end of Biden's presidency, but it's pretty bad. And so Republicans were in a. In a similar spot back then, and there were folks like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush, who their sort of roadmap for getting out of the wilderness was moderating on immigration, right? Comprehensive immigration reform, more of the compassionate conservatism that you might have seen from George W. Bush and the like. And, you know, so they made their pitch accordingly. And then there were folks like Ted Cruz and Scott Walker who were more, you know, staunch conservatives. Right. Ted Cruz was a Tea Partier who was in favor of things like reforms to Social Security and Medicare. And Scott Walker, of course, became famous with Act 10 in Wisconsin, which was limiting the bargaining rights for public unions. And this is, like, pretty standard conservative fare. And that was kind of what was on offer, the two directions that the Republican Party could have gone in after repeated failures in elections against Barack Obama. And Donald Trump came in, and he. I guess you could say he chose both or he chose neither of those paths, which is that he ran to the right of his party on immigration, proposing, you know, a border wall, mass deportation, and the like. And by the way, back then, those were not policies that were broadly popular, but it was an issue that Republican primary voters cared an awful lot about. And at the same time, he ran to the left of his party on things like federal spending on Medicare and Social Security, infrastructure, universal healthcare. You know, put aside how he necessarily governed in his first term, but that was how he campaigned. And add to that that he savaged his own party. He trashed the Republican Party for the Iraq war. He. He trashed all three of the most recent Republican nominees. So Romney, McCain, W. And what that allowed him to do was create a separation for himself from a deeply unpopular party, frustrate people's partisan perceptions, you know, kind of taking a left position on some things and a right position on others, to the point that on election day 2016, voters saw him as a significantly less extreme option than Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that he had.

[Coleman Hughes]

That's a really important point to underscore, and it's super counterintuitive, which is, you know, so many people see Trump as an extreme candidate. Let's just forget the facts of the matter and talk about perception. He was viewed as a less conservative candidate than the alternatives on election day in 2016.

[Galen Druke]

Well, he was seen as less ideologically extreme than Hillary Clinton. So he was seen as more moderate.

[Coleman Hughes]

Than Hillary Clinton and more moderate than.

[Galen Druke]

And also more moderate, less conservative than every Republican nominee, going Back to George H.W. bush, which is as far back as the data goes. And you're right to say, like, that's kind of counterintuitive. Why would people think that? He did take extreme positions throughout his campaign. But when we talk about moderation in public opinion and in politics in general, I think oftentimes the mind goes to, I don't know, an elderly voter at a diner in New Hampshire who is, you know, lining up the different positions of the Democrats and Republicans and being like, I just kind of want the middle position on everything. And that's not what a moderate looks like in reality. It usually. It more frequently looks like somebody who will take the right position on one issue and the left position on the other. So somebody who is idiosyncratic. And it turns out that doing that as a politician also leads to you being seen as more moderate, but maybe more importantly, frustrating perceptions of you as a partisan. Right. We live in a world where both parties are unpopular. Today, the Democratic Party is less popular than the Republican Party, but Americans broadly don't think particularly highly of either party. And at, I think 43%, we have a higher percentage of Americans identifying as independent than ever before. So, you know, if you're running in a really red district or a really blue district, you want to be extreme. You want to take the top to bottom left position or the top to bottom right position, whatever, do it. People will still elect you. But if you're running in a competitive election, one of the most savvy things you can do is make sure that voters don't just see you as a Republican or just as a Democrat, but as above the fray.

[Coleman Hughes]

So in your article, you. You mentioned, I mean, you. You could have called this the Democrats need another Clinton. Because you talk about how Clinton essentially pursued the same strategy. Can you talk about that?

[Galen Druke]

That might have gotten maybe similar hate mail, but probably not as clickable. Yeah, I think Democrats relationship with Clinton has become complicated, or maybe it's always been complicated, but it's hard to deny the way that he reoriented politics. So. And, you know, I was only one or two years old, so I'm not gonna pretend like I remember, but a lot of people probably don't remember what the political world looked like in 1992. George H.W. bush had secured a third consecutive term in the White House for Republicans, which is very rare. And his. The first part of his presidency had been so successful that many ambitious Democrats decided not to run in the Democratic primary because they thought it was so assured that he would get another term in the White House.

[Coleman Hughes]

And also, this is coming off of Ronald Reagan's absolute shellacking of Democrats. Not just wins, but gigantic wins.

[Galen Druke]

Absolutely right. And a sort of successful Gulf war for George H.W. bush. I mean, I think he might have landed the highest approval rating of any president in. In American history during the sort of modern polling era. I think his approval rating was like 92% after the Gulf War, maybe only rivaled by his son in the days after September 11th. So these are. The Bushes are two presidents who have experienced some of the highest highs and the lowest lows, which it comes to public, presidential, public opinion. But, you know, folks like Mario Cuomo, who everyone knew wanted to be president, didn't even run in the primary because he thought HW was so assured to win a second term. And so this not particularly well known governor of Arkansas gets in the race, and he runs as a bit of an outsider, and he also runs against his party. So he runs to. Everyone knows this part. He runs to the right on crime and deficit spending. He goes on to obviously pass welfare reform and the crime bill. But he runs to the left on healthcare. He ran on a universal healthcare platform that was far more progressive than the Affordable Care act ever ended up being. Obviously, the fact that we ended up ultimately in a recession helped his general election campaign, but he created this break with the way that Democrats had been perceived. And his successful political gambit in some ways reoriented electoral politics in America, such that Democrats went from losing, losing, losing the White House to winning the popular vote in seven of the eight next elections. And so he was somebody else who could both run to the right on some issues, run to the left on others, and also importantly, run against his own party and create enough of a separation for voters who would previously not consider voting for a Democrat to then vote for a Democrat.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. So this is, this is very interesting. I mean, it's a. There's a pattern then of being willing to look at what, you know, take the issue that your party is most popular about, which for Democrats, for Republicans, it was like immigration during the Trump years. For Democrats, perhaps it's health care and doubling and tripling down on that extreme view with the assumption that actually the voters are more extreme on this than the establishment is. So you can afford to go 100 miles per hour in that direction on that issue, and then tacking towards the opposite direction on an issue where actually voters are a lot more moderate than your party is willing to allow. Right. That's essentially the strategy.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah. I mean, some people would describe this as like a, you know, a primary strategy versus a general election strategy, but I think that in order to seem authentic, you kind of have to do both at the same time. Now, Donald Trump's immigration policies were not out and out popular in 2015, 2016, when he introduced them to the public, but they were very popular and they were kind of, most importantly, very salient to Republican primary voters and in particular, a certain subset of primary voters that won him that primary. Right. He started off winning primaries by, like, with 35% of the vote. And because it was such a fractured field that allowed him to end up winning that 2016 primary. But the other thing is immigration just wasn't all that important to the broader electorate. So he could really attract the people that he needed to win the primary using immigration as an issue. But it wasn't necessarily, I think that a lot of people in, in the media and Democratic politics thought he was going to do a lot to repel the rest of the public with his. With the way he talked about immigration, and he certainly repelled some people with the way he talked about immigration. But the way that he appealed to a broader coalition was on more economic issues. Like, I'm not, you know, I'm going to be the first Republican in generations who says, we're not touching Social Security, we're not touching Medicare, we're spending more public money to make your life better. And so. And also, obviously, there's a whole piece of this that gets at, like, personality and media strategy and communication style, which we can talk about. And obviously that helped Trump in particular ways. Um, but it was. Okay, what are the. What are the strengths of the. Of my party, which I, for him as well, was the economy, like, Republicans in general have been trusted more on the economy, so also doubling down on that when moving to the left a bit. So for Democrats, what could that look like? Today, Democrats are trusted a lot more than Republicans on the issue of health care, and they have been for a long time. Even during Biden's unpopular presidency, where Democrats lost the advantage on education, immigrant, they had gained an advantage on immigration by the end of Trump's first term because he had sort of pursued more extreme policies that created its own backlash. So while Democrats were losing the public on all kinds of issues, they maintained it on healthcare. They're only stronger on healthcare now. Post the bill formerly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill act, and it's increasing in salience. You see more and more Americans saying that healthcare is important to them.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. And I think you can also see this by the reaction of progressives and Democrats to the United Healthcare shooter, Luigi Mangione, where there was just. It was just like, surprisingly easy to find people in my life that just totally were like, yeah, I mean, I kind of like the guy. The guy had a point and he murdered somebody. Right. So I think that tells you something about the ambient level of concern and outrage at the healthcare system on the left.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah. And I think there's. You could get a lot of Democrats excited about. I don't know, I'm not a policy wonk, but maybe the policy is something like a public option. Right. I think Kamala Harris said during the 20 in 2019 when she was running that we should abolish private insurance. Obviously, European countries don't even abolish private insurance. So I don't know that going all the way in that direction would help the Democratic Party. But doing, you know, private, proposing something like a public option or even more populous positions like, you know, we as Americans, we're not going to spend a penny more on prescription drugs than those Europeans do and it's unfair that they would expect us to do otherwise or, or whatever it may be. Right. I think could really get the Democrats that you need in a primary excited, while Republicans aren't going to be like, oh my God, they want, you know, better health care coverage or whatever. Like it's not going to freak Republicans out. No. Now if I think Democrats decided to make their, oh, we're going to go super far left on gender and sexuality, I don't think that. I think that that would cause a backlash.

[Coleman Hughes]

That would be the opposite because so, I mean, the strategy requires you to pivot to the center on some kind of 80, 20 issue where your party is actually not popular. And for Democrats, it seems to me that would be anything related to wokeness, anything related to, you know, gender reassignment surgeries, hormone replacement, puberty blockers, all of the category of woke racial preferences, all that stuff is consistently less popular with the masses than with the liberal elites. So would part of the strategy include a hard tack against all of those things?

[Galen Druke]

Yeah. So I think, right, if you're going to run to the left on some issues and to the right on the other side on others, what do you run to the right on? So say you go left on healthcare. I would also argue you could go left on housing or, you know, more affordability type issues. So what are you going to the right on in the P.S. i suggest, you know, immigration as one of them or even the debt and deficit as an option. That might not sound coherent to top to bottom partisans, but again, you know, the marginal voters who are deciding the election don't see the world in that kind of red and blue way. So, you know, I think one of the reasons I would say that, and again, Donald Trump is probably going to create his own backlash to his immigration policies during his second term because we experience something in America known as thermostatic public opinion where like you kind of over interpret your mandate as a newly elected president, go too far in one direction, and then the voters say, okay, we'll screw this. Actually, I don't want that extreme either. Even if I didn't like what Joe Biden was doing. I also don't want to sort of, you know, workplace raids or whatever it may be. But I think, at least on the border, American opinion is not going to change that much. Americans want a secure border. They're happy with what Donald Trump has done on the border, and they were very unhappy with what Joe Biden did on the border. So I think probably pivoting on that or even just openly attacking what the. How the Biden administration handled the migrant crisis would sort of create some of that space, even if you then go and show compassion towards, you know, know, folks who are in the country illegally today, if they're contributing to, you know, society more broadly on the issue of, like, WOKE stuff. So one reason I went to immigration is because when you look at the most important issues to Americans, immigration ranks really highly. Whereas things like, maybe it just shows up in different areas, but like, woke, social justice, know, race relations, things like that just don't rank as highly as things like. It's always number one is the economy, oftentimes number two is poor government leadership. But then number three will be immigration. And then it. It varies according to what, you know, the news cycle and. And whatnot. So I think, yes, you can signal to people by, like, well, one, I think everyone has already tacitly acknowledged that the Democratic Party's positions in, like, 2019, 2020 were unpopular. Whether it's like decriminalizing, crossing the border or defunding the police or abolishing ICE or whatever, the part of the Democratic Party that says they're working on behalf of the working class, I think ended up realizing that they weren't reflecting the values of the working class. And you have seen people like AOC on her Fighting the Oligarchy tour, not talk about this stuff. You saw. Even when AOC was congratulating Zoran Mamdani in winning the Democratic primary in the New York City mayoral race, I think one of the she said on Twitter, congratulating him. I want to congratulate Zoran Ramdani. We're going to make New York safe, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and affordable. The first word she used to describe the New York she imagined with Zoran Muhammadi was safe. And that's because she knows that that the left part of the Democratic Party in particular, and the Democratic Party as a whole, lost the American public on crime and safety. And so I think you're not even just seeing that from the moderates or whatever. You're seeing that from the straight up left in the Democratic Party. That's already been accomplished in some ways. You know, I think that voters don't care all that much about trans issues. Like, they just don't like, rank very highly on in terms of salience. When you ask people, we do know that when you ask Americans, like, do you think that trans girls should be able to participate in women's sports and the like, Yes. A clear majority of Americans say no, and a clear majority of Americans say that minors shouldn't have access to these surgeries. I don't think today that's going to be, that's going to continue being a major driver of conflict in politics because I, I don't think there's anybody really arguing particularly enthusiastically for the 20 side of that now 8020 issue. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two factor authentication, strong passwords and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions dollars of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for 40% off terms apply. Mama Papa, mi cuerpo crece a un rid mo alarmante Ila muy Amazon gasta menos son riemas.

[Coleman Hughes]

I mean, so the counterargument I would make is that though you don't necessarily see people at the national level arguing for the 20 side of those unpopular issues, like the parents of two in some town in Westchester where, like, this stuff is like, all in their children's schools, it still matters to them. Like, they may want to vote for a Democrat, but they may be more likely to vote for that Democrat if they're not just like, quiet about these issues but are actively like, no, we're going back to common sense on sports. We're going back to common sense on wait till you're 18 to get the elective surgeries you want. And they want someone to be able to say that in a debate. Because though it's like, maybe not quite as salient, it, it is quite important to the voters who it's important to.

[Galen Druke]

I guess it's also signaling, right. There's another thing which is like, even if it's not my most important issue, I just want to see that you're not a top to bottom partisan or that you're not extreme or whatever. And I think we saw Gavin Newsom do that, right?

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah.

[Galen Druke]

And so I think ambitious Democrats are already doing some of that stuff. Like Gavin Newsome did that on trans women and women's sports. Pete Buttigieg said in an interview that we should have opened schools sooner during the pandemic. So I think there are already Democrats who are critiquing the Democratic Party's, you know, policies of 2019, 2020. You know, if you want to go, if you want to go big, right. Like in the same way that Bill Clinton went big with crime and debt and deficit and pick an issue that is high salience is going to be one of the axes of conflict. I might even recommend the debt because like, Americans don't even need to totally understand the minutiae of interest rates and the like or the minutiae of public debt. But it's intuitive of like, I spend way more money than I have, eventually things are going to catch up to me.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Galen Druke]

And that issue has been dropped from American political conflict for like 15 years. And it's also a place where you can highlight sort of the political establishments either side of the political establishment's hypocrisy. Right. Like, you know, Republicans talk all about how they care about the debt and deficit, but they just increase the deficit over the next 10 years by $4 trillion. Ye, yeah. And then likewise, you know, Democrats will talk until they're blue in the face about the importance of, you know, funding things like healthcare and education for young people. But the way that we've set up our public expenditures today, we're transferring wealth from the youth to the old. Right. Like spending so much money on old people today is going to ensure that we can't spend money on health and education for young people tomorrow. You know, that's maybe like a different, different way than people are used to hearing that issue. But it's been, although America has not solved this issue, it has been used to great political effect at certain points in our past, like the 1992 election and Ross Perot. And while Ross Perot didn't win and the debt and deficit were not taken care of overnight, I think that put enough political pressure on Bill Clinton to end up balancing the budget during his presidency and actually be the last person to paid down the debt. And so, you know, oftentimes talking about new topics in ways that Americans don't often hear them discussed and stealing some of your opponent's strengths is A good way to shake things up, get people to listen to you.

[Coleman Hughes]

So if they went down the debt route, what would they be able to say? Because like, you either cut or you raise taxes. So what should they say when that question is presented? What are you cutting or are you just raising taxes?

[Galen Druke]

Again, so I'm not a Democratic strategist, so this is a bit more of like an academic exercise for me and it's kind of based on looking at the public opinion data. But Americans, and this is one of the things about the Trump administration, right. They're very actually sort of, you know, good at naming the problem and naming the problem in a sort of like more candid, audacious way than most people in politics will. So, for example, I mean, like health, right. Like the Maha report. I'm actually doing a podcast that's coming out soon on this, which is like the way that they go at ultra processed foods, sugar, you know, lack of exercise, screen time, all this stuff. You know, I talked to the dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington at St. Louis and he's like, yeah, we haven't seen an administration name the problem like this, like this audaciously in a quarter century.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah.

[Galen Druke]

But then the sort of like follow through is a little like, okay, is like, are any policies going to actually get implemented? Like, because you're also rescinding funding for research on how chemicals affect children's health and like that kind of stuff. So when you're talking about the, the debt and deficit, I mean, say, you know, Donald Trump is absolutely right. We are not efficient in how we're spending Americans hard earned dollars and the American government is bloated and we automate it, make it work a lot better for Americans. And so, yeah, there's cutting to do. At the same time, it's not fair that Jeff Bezos pays less in taxes as a percentage than the firefighter on Staten Island. So one of the ways that we solve the debt and deficit is by, yeah, being more efficient, but actually doing it the right way, not just doing it in like a sort of random half assed way because ultimately Doge didn't save very much money and created inefficiencies in the process. And at the same time, scratch the itch of people feeling like there's a mismatch or there's an unfairness in American society today between the rich and the poor.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay. So let's look at how some of the top Democrat contenders might possibly or not possibly be able to execute on this strategy. So Gavin Newsome is one he already mentioned. Currently, betting markets have him at the top spot, for whatever that's worth. I mean, it's so far out, it's not worth much. But betting markets have him in the top spot for the 2028 Democratic nominee. A few months ago, he went on a podcast with Charlie Kirk and I think Steve Bannon as well, and was talking, was basically having friendly conversations with people that weren't just Liz Cheney Republicans, but really further to the right. So do you think that he could possibly execute this strategy successfully? And do you think his strategy of talking, having friendly conversations with right wingers is going to help him or backfire?

[Galen Druke]

I think it already has backfired, and I think he's already pivoted away from that to some extent. Now, Donald Trump, even though he trashed his own party, he wasn't nice to Democrats. He wasn't like, oh, you know, let me sit down with, like, Neera Tanden and have. Do a podcast together or whatever. Right? He was trashing both parties. So you can acknowledge that your own party fucked up, which I think you're hearing a lot of Democrats do, without being like. And, you know, the other party, like the Republican Party is great on this. And so, you know, I think while we all like the idea of bipartisan, many of us like the idea of bipartisanship, or if not bipartisanship, mutual understanding, being able to have conversations across ideological differences and the like. I. I do wonder if a Democratic primary electorate is gonna be like, that's. I don't really like that. Also, the other thing is, does it seem authentic if your whole brand is being the type of person who will talk to anyone, meet people where they are, you know, almost be like the Pope, go and, like, wash people's feet and hear from anyone and just take it all in and be that kind of almost like, saintly figure who's willing to commune with every type of person in America. If that's your brand, then great, do it. I don't think that that's Gavin Newsom's brand. His brand has been like a kind of a, you know, a fighter for the Democratic Party. And I think he's probably getting back into that space with all of the, you know, protests and National Guard and Marines in California. I think he understands that the Democratic Party lost the public opinion battle on many of these issues, and so has pivoted away and whatnot. And that's a different endeavor than being like, hey, look, I can talk to Charlie Kirk and like, whatever those conversations Were interesting. If he wants to do that. Keep. I mean, at the end of the day, I don't think voters care that much about it. Like, will he win or lose the Democratic nomination based on a podcast he did with Charlie Kirk? No. But I don't know that the sort of triangulation necessarily means being, like, nice to the other side. In a way, it means, like, trashing the whole establishment.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. What about aoc? You, you, you and Nate Silver the other day said that aoc, or maybe this was a few months ago, said that AOC might be. Probably would be the. The nominee in 2028. Would she be able to execute on the strategy you're recommending, or is she too wedded to basically Democratic socialism to pivot on any of these issues?

[Galen Druke]

So I want to be very specific about what Nate and I did. We did a Democratic primary draft for 2028, and the motivating question was, who do we think is the likeliest to win the nomination? And so while we thought she might be the likeliest, it doesn't mean she's probably going to win the nomination. It just means, like, you know, there's not even, like, a 51% chance that she would win the nomination. Just the second person we chose was, like, Josh Shapiro. So, like, she's slightly more likely than Josh Shapiro, but you would probably take the field over AOC if you were actually lining them up. And part of my rationale for choosing AOC in this draft, I chose her first, and then Nate was like, screw you, I was going to pick her anyway. It got way more attention than it should have for some silly game. It was on, like, MSNBC and Fox News the whole following weekend. But part of my rationale was I expect a lot of people are going to run for President in 2028 on the Democratic side, maybe on the Republican side, too. And when you have a very divided primary field, there is a strong advantage to having almost a celebrity about you or a certain charisma that attracts a group of devoted. A devoted part of the electorate. That's what Donald Trump did, Right. I mentioned that he was winning 35% of the vote in those early projects primaries. And so you don't need a majority. You just need the most of anybody. And the left part of the progressive part of the Democratic Party may be enthusiastic enough about her to be like, screw everyone else. We're with her no matter what. And that can sort of power her through a certain part of the primary calendar. I think the other thing is, like, Democrats have spent the past decade nominating candidates who are like bad at politics and at that also very establishment characters for being a party that has historically nominated the more anti establishment characters like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter. Those were the three previous successful Democratic nominees to Joe Biden. And there's a whole generation of young people who have never seen a charismatic person who's good at politics lead the Democratic Party.

[Coleman Hughes]

It's interesting you frame it that way because if you think about it, post Obama, Democrats have run three people. Two of those were either were in some way not legitimate primaries because of what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders in the first case, and then the fact that Kamala wasn't even primaried and almost certainly would not have won if she were the only one of the three that was a totally untampered with unmanipulated primary, they won.

[Galen Druke]

Well, okay, it's interesting that you frame it that way because like I would say, Hillary Clinton would have won the 2016 primary with or without the DNC. Like it felt very close, but it wasn't that that close. Ultimately, if you remember Joe Biden in 2020, like it took all the cavalry coming out post South Carolina.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Galen Druke]

To rally around him to win because up until that point he was crushing in like Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Yeah, it looked like for a second Bernie Sanders was going to be the nominee. And so it was the sort of party elite, you know, calling out the cavalry to challenge Bernie Sanders and get behind Joe Biden. I think part of what has happened is that, you know, politics is about critiquing the other side and trying to sort of gain ground that they've ceded or whatever. But you can do that to a fault. Donald Trump is like the most anti establishment character we've had in at least my lifetime and probably anyone's lifetime in modern history in American politics or, you know, who actually ended up winning. And historically, Democrats had been more of the anti establishment party or at least, you know, critiquing things like institutions in American life, like church, family, military, like all of those kinds of things. Party politics, whatever, you know, whether it's go back to Howard Dean or, you know, whatever, it's the younger group, it's more coalitional, mixed up, different, you know, parts of American life, less ideological, whatever. Then Donald Trump becomes the leader of the Republican Party and Democrats reflexively just take the position diametrically opposed to Donald Trump. And it was like that. It was like, oh, you want to build a wall, we want to decriminalize crossing the border, you know, like you want to call in the National Guard, we want to abolish the police or, or whatever it might have been. And obviously when you behave that way, you become entrapped to the politician that you're responding to because when they take a popular position, then you're forcing yourself to take the unpopular position more broadly. What happened was Trump was so anti establishment that Democrats sort of found themselves in a way becoming the cheerleaders for the establishment.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Galen Druke]

Because that was the anti Trump position. And so this party that had been consistently nominating successful anti establishment or less pro establishment characters was nominating people like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris who are so establishment. And think of like other past establishment characters that Democrats have nominated that didn't do. Like John Kerry. Right. Like Democrats have seemed to do. Well when they get this kind of young gun who takes on the status quo to do their bidding.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right. Another. Another contender then. I don't know if this fits that bill exactly, but. Pete Buttigieg, I'm just reeling.

[Galen Druke]

I never answered your question about aoc. Like, could she.

[Coleman Hughes]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Galen Druke]

I have no idea. You know. Yeah, it would seem inauthentic to suddenly be.

[Coleman Hughes]

I don't think that my answer is no because I don't believe she can tack to the center on immigration, debt or wokeness. I think that her brand is too synonymous with progressive politics and socialist politics that she would not seem authentic tacking to the center on any of those issues she would need to tack to the center on.

[Galen Druke]

What you've seen her try to do is not talk about some of that stuff and reorient the conflict in American politics from red versus blue to sort of like the working class versus the billionaires. She was very Obama esque on her fighting oligarchy tour where she was like, you know, they try to divide us based on Republicans and Democrats, but they're just using that to distract us kind of from a more class based conflict. So she'll try to just reorient the conflict altogether so that she doesn't. Yeah. So that she doesn't have to talk about. Maybe all of that other stuff could work. The. I mean, maybe. And you know, saying that we thought AOC was the likeliest to win the nomination was not saying that we thought she was the likeliest to win the general election or the best position to win the general election. But to your point about what she's become synonymous with, like Democrats. Look back at the past 10 years of American electoral politics or presidential politics, probably not particularly fondly and so in some ways the Obama or Clinton or Jimmy Carter type mold is somebody who's a clean slate, somebody who doesn't really have any record of what they thought about ICE or the police or gender or whatever in 2019. Now, in a world where electoral politics are oftentimes very motivated by who can get attention, could some of these lesser known people like Wes Moore or Josh Shapiro or Ruben Gallego or take your pick, be able to marshal attention? Or will everyone just become like, oh my God, AOC is running for president, we're just going to cover her non stop because that's the ticket to a Donald Trump style takeover of everyone's political attention. Could they marshal enough attention? I don't know, but they are the more kind of tabula rasa types who have done it for Democrats in the past.

[Coleman Hughes]

So Pete Buttigieg is another name. He's someone I've always liked because he just seems to have a pretty rational, intelligent response to any question he's asked. He's Obama esque in that way. And I'm attracted to those kinds of candidates naturally. Just if I feel like you exude intelligence and intellectual maturity, that to me regardless of your politics, puts you higher on my list than, than someone who engages in pure dem demagoguery. My problem with Pete Buttigieg and the reason I, I don't think he can win is because I honestly am not sure that, that conservative black voters in South Carolina are okay, even in the year 2025, playing pulling the lever for a gay, a gay man. And I'm, I'm not going to say that I have a lot of polling data to support that. But what I do know is that, and this is something I think Democrats do not want to talk about, I think it's very uncomfortable to acknowledge just how socially conservative black voters within the Democratic Party are relative to white voters. Because the basic picture you have is black people on the whole are as socially conservative as white people pretty much. I mean it's not, there's not a huge difference in terms of gay marriage, trans issues, all this stuff, except all the black conservatives, most of them still vote Democrat. That's the difference.

[Galen Druke]

Although decreasingly so.

[Coleman Hughes]

Decreasingly so, but still to, to a great extent. And so if you're running in a Democratic primary in, in South Carolina, like you still have to get that vote and a lot of that vote is, is a lot less comfortable with a gay candidate than the rest of the Democratic Party. And it's, it's really underappreciated and not Talked about. And because of that, I just. I looked. I looked up how Pete Buttigieg did when he ran for president in 2020. Crushed it in Iowa, 25%.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah, he won. I mean, that got so muddled that no one ever really.

[Coleman Hughes]

He won.

[Galen Druke]

Figured out.

[Coleman Hughes]

Oh, I thought he was one. Oh, I see. Okay. But he was within one percentage point of Birdie.

[Galen Druke]

I'm pretty sure he won. Even though it was such a botched administration of the Iowa caucuses by the Democratic Party that I think there might still be a question mark.

[Coleman Hughes]

Yeah. And then he gets like 20, 24% in New Hampshire, which he's, you know, within spitting distance again of a win there. And then he drops down to 8% in South Carolina. And so I'm not saying I know for a fact him being gay is the reason, but I do know when I picture. And just think of all the people I know that fit that bill of a Black voter over 50 who lives in South Carolina or Virginia or something. A lot of them still do have problems with pulling the lever for a gay man for president.

[Galen Druke]

Yeah. I mean, what you say is really important. Right. Is that when you have sort of a group of voters who, you know, the way that this is described is sort of connected fate or whatever, have this feeling of, you know, for black people, it's, we're going to vote for the Democratic Party because we feel like, you know, what happens to other black people affects all of us as black people. And we know that the Democratic Party is more watching out for people like us. Then you end up with much more viewpoint diversity within that group, within that party.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Galen Druke]

Whereas white people separate themselves out along liberal and conservative lines between the two parties. And we have seen over the past, you know, in the Trump era, some of that breakdown, you know, like, particularly amongst Latino voters, because the same thing was happening in the Obama era. Conservative Latinos were voting for Obama, but Donald Trump was able to, you know. Well, it becomes a sort of waterfall effect or snowball effect. Once more people in your milieu, in your community start voting another way, you say, oh, okay, like this is a socially acceptable thing to do.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Galen Druke]

Maybe I'll do that, too. And Donald Trump ended up outright winning Latino men in 2024 after overall Latinos shifted seven points to the right between 16 and 20 and then nine points again to the right between 20 and 24. So one of the effects that that has is it makes the Democratic Party more out and out liberal. Right. There's less of that viewpoint diversity within the Democratic Party itself. Because now not only have white people divided along conservative and liberal lines, now Latino and black people have increasingly done the same. That means that maybe it's easier to win a Democratic primary being a total liberal, being somebody who appeals to the MSNBC set, as opposed to somebody who appeals to a broader coalition. And I think you've heard some people saying, like, this is interesting. Zoran Mandani won the New York Democratic mayoral primary without the majority of black voters. And the sort of conventional wisdom is that in a Democratic primary, black voters choose the winners. That obviously wasn't the case in this election. So I don't know if in 2028, somebody can win the Democratic primary without the support of a majority of black voters within the Democratic Party. It may be the case that they can't. There's another. I mean, there's another challenge, too, which gets beyond sexuality, which is like, Bernie Sanders had an awfully difficult time winning over voters of color when he first came onto the scene. Like in 2016, he was winning like all white people. He sort of became a better known figure, kept making his case. And in 2020, he did significantly better with Latino voters, whereas Latino voters were like 100% for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Oftentimes, it's just like whoever has a better relationship with the establishment and there's, you know, whatever, particularly. And one of the tests for that is Nevada, obviously, when we're thinking about how Latino voters considered Bernie Sanders. A lot of those caucuses are sort of motivated by, you know, party politics, Right. It's like, who's getting you to come to the caucus meeting, whatever. And so maybe, like, with time, you can make your case and be. Spend more time being introduced to the different parts of the Democratic Party that you might want to appeal to outside of whoever just, like, sees you on MSNBC or whatever. But that is a challenge as far as the polling is concerned. Overwhelmingly Americans say that they would be willing to elect a gay president. Now, is that true? I don't know, but I think if. If I have People Judge is running, but I think if People Judge does not win the Democratic primary in 2028, I think we should be open minded to the idea that it's not just based on sexuality. Also, his kind of very like, intellectualizing, technocratic response to everything has a certain high appeal to some people, but may feel alienating to others.

[Coleman Hughes]

Right.

[Galen Druke]

So there's a lot going on in terms of what you can end up like. Right. Nobody thought in 2018 that everyone was going to. Sorry. Nobody thought in 2008 that everyone was gonna go for the black guy named Barack Hussein Obama. But with your own personal charisma and building on successes, you can convince people. Remember this, when he won the Iowa caucuses in 2008, black voters in South Carolina were not supporting him. They were supporting Hillary Clinton because of those establishment relationships and Bill Clinton's history with the Democratic Party and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But once Barack Obama proved, this is how the story goes, proved that he could be successful, that he wasn't just like this bright young guy with new ideas that he could be electorally viable, he got a whole lot more people to sort of board that train. And so sometimes success begets more success, and people forget about the things about you that they might have, you know, not initially saw as appealing. Seen as appealing.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, final question. If you were hired as a consultant for the Democratic Party based on all of your polling and political science knowledge, and you had to sort of boil down your recommendation to a sound bite, what would it be? How to win in 2020.

[Galen Druke]

Oh, boy. That is like, a really hard question. But I would say something like, politics is distasteful and exhausting. The Democratic Party itself has contributed a lot to that. The Republican Party has certainly done its fair share, too. We need to acknowledge where both parties have fucked up and moved on and move on in a way that just serves everybody all right. I don't know. That was. That was pretty disjointed. But I'll get back to you maybe with a more concise answer later.

[Coleman Hughes]

Okay, cool. And plug your podcast one more time for people that want to hear more from you and your substack.

[Galen Druke]

Yes, absolutely it is. GDPolitics.com is where you can find the substack. Either, you know, stands for Galendrick politics or goddamn politics, however way you feel. And you can find GD politics wherever you get podcasts.

[Coleman Hughes]

All right, Galen Druke, thanks so much.

[Galen Druke]

Thank you.