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- [00:01]
Galen Drook
Hey there, listeners. Galen here. I'm sure you've all seen the news about the United States attack on Iranian nuclear sites. It's a fast moving situation that we're going to talk about on this podcast and we did talk about on last week's episode as well. It also happens that I wrote an op ed that's in the New York Times today about presidential politics, and I wanted to publish an episode in this feedback elaborating on my thinking around the op Ed. And that's what today's episode is going to be. By the way, it was recorded before Saturday's attack to give you a sense of the rest of the week. I also recently recorded an interview with Senator Lisa Murkowski that's going to be in your feeds on Tuesday. The first question I asked her was whether she thought the US should bomb Iran. And she was pretty candid. She was also pretty candid about a lot of other things as well. So that's the plan for this week. In the meantime, I'll start gathering information about how Americans are reacting to the attack on Iran. In classic fashion, YouGov is one of the first pollsters out of the gate. So far, more Americans disapprove of the bombing than approve. 46% to 35%. On the question of whether it will make the U.S. safer, 25% said, yes, we, while 44% said it would make us less safe. And 67% believed that the attack is at least somewhat likely to lead us to a broader war with Iran. So we will see what unfolds next and we will talk about it. But for now, here's today's episode. Is that a corgi shirt that you're wearing?
- [01:44]
Nathaniel Rakic
It is.
- [01:46]
Galen Drook
Best Corgi dad ever. Oh, my God.
- [01:48]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yeah.
- [01:49]
Galen Drook
Where's either.
- [01:49]
Nathaniel Rakic
Sorry to all the other corgi dads aren't there.
- [01:52]
Galen Drook
We'll have to get Ivo on the podcast sometime.
- [01:54]
Nathaniel Rakic
I can bring him in if you want to. Might as well do it. Why not?
- [01:58]
Galen Drook
Oh, Ivo.
- [02:00]
Nathaniel Rakic
For your audience, to build an audience. Hey, buddy.
- [02:05]
Galen Drook
Oh, Ivo. Such a good boy. There you go.
- [02:09]
Nathaniel Rakic
Are you a good boy? You want to say something?
- [02:10]
Galen Drook
Okay. Ivo, what do you think about the war between Iran and Israel? Should the United States get in? Should the United States bomb Iran? Ivo, I think he's. He's.
- [02:22]
Nathaniel Rakic
He sounds very stressed about that possibility.
- [02:24]
Galen Drook
Yeah, that sounds like a no.
- [02:26]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yeah. Yeah.
- [02:27]
Galen Drook
I don't know.
- [02:27]
Nathaniel Rakic
He's a very dovish dog.
- [02:40]
Galen Drook
Hello and welcome to the GD Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Drook. If you're a New York Times reader, and I don't want to make any assumptions here, you might have seen that there was an op ed in the paper today, written by yours truly. I'm recording this episode before the op ed was actually published. So I don't know exactly what the title is, but it's something like why Democrats Need Their Own Donald Trump. That is admittedly a framing designed to get your attention, and I hope that it did. The broader argument is that as the debate over the direction of the Democratic Party unfolds, I think there is something to be learned from Trump's campaign experience in 2016 and beyond. Now, today. I had originally planned to read the op ed and sort of annotate it with my thinking as I went along, but as I learned, that would violate the New York Times copyright, and they have much better lawyers than I do. So instead, my friend Nathaniel Rakic has kindly agreed to come on the podcast and talk with me about the argument that I present. So, Nathaniel Rakic, welcome to the GD Politics podcast.
- [03:52]
Nathaniel Rakic
Thank you, Galen. And should I say, you know, congratulations on getting published in the paper of record, the Gray lady herself.
- [04:02]
Galen Drook
Thank you, Nathaniel. I appreciate it. Look at us. Look at. Look at where, you know, laid off just three months ago, and look at where we're at now. We.
- [04:10]
Nathaniel Rakic
I think you, you. I'm still slumming it down here with all the people who haven't been published in the New York Times, so, I.
- [04:15]
Galen Drook
Mean, just you wait. So, Nathaniel, more importantly, where you are is in the seat that I usually sit in, which is the question asker seat. And so are you ready for, like, payback? After all of these years of me asking you the questions, you get to ask me some questions.
- [04:32]
Nathaniel Rakic
I am so ready. I'm so ready.
- [04:35]
Galen Drook
And I'm scared, honestly. Like, I feel that you've just been waiting for this moment for, what, eight years or something like that?
- [04:41]
Nathaniel Rakic
I have a whole list.
- [04:43]
Galen Drook
And they have nothing to do with the op Ed, right?
- [04:45]
Nathaniel Rakic
Oh, no. Exactly. Yeah.
- [04:47]
Galen Drook
Where were you on the night of? Okay. Also, by the way, we didn't get to many of the listener questions that you sent in on the last episode, so if we have time, if I don't filibuster too hard, we are also going to get to those questions. And by the way, if you have any questions about the op Ed, feel free to send them in and maybe we'll get to them in a future podcast. So I want to share a little bit about the overview of the argument and then, Nathaniel, you can dive Right in. So I'm going to try to do this without reading anything. Essentially, the case that I make is not about, you know, destabilizing American institutions or breaking democratic norms. It's about the opportunity that Trump seized in 2016 and 2015, given how unpopular the Republican Party was and the strategies that everyone else in the field was taking. So right now, the Democratic Party is about as unpopular as it's ever been in the 30 years that Pew Research has been tracking this. I mean, I think that in the waning days of Biden's own deeply unpopular presidency, the Democratic Party was viewed slightly worse. But other than that, this is far and away the worst the Democratic Party has ever been viewed by the American public. It's 22 percentage points underwater. This is not new for a party in American politics. The Republican Party was in a very similar situation at the second inauguration of Barack Obama. I think it was actually net negative 26 or something like that at the time. And there were people in the Republican Party, folks like Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, if you remember him, who thought that the Republican Party ought to pursue comprehensive immigration reform, sort of moderate on immigration as a way to, you know, win back over a majority. Obviously, the base revolted. That never happened. But as the 2016 primary came into focus, there were basically two options for Republican voters or two camps. There was this sort of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio camp of maybe more centrist or moderate ideas. Jeb Bush, obviously as establishment as they come. And Marco Rubio had been one of the people pursuing that bipartisan, comprehensive immigration reform. Then you had another camp that was folks like Ted Cruz, famous tea partier from Texas, and folks like Scott Walker, who had really done sort of conservative battle in Wisconsin with Act 10 and union busting and tax cutting and the like. Now, the problem for those two camps was that one for the. For the centrist, moderate folks like Bush or Rubio, the base had already rejected moderation on such an important issue like immigration. And for folks like Ted Cruz and Scott Walker, a big challenge was that some of the issues that are really core to their worldview are very unpopular with the American electorate more broadly. Mainly, you know, cuts to things like Social Security and Medicare. And one of the innovations of Donald Trump, among others, was that he sort of didn't choose between the centrist and the conservative camp. He sort of ran to the right of the party on immigration, proposing mass deportation on a border wall. And he ran to the left of the party on government spending, if you remember, funding for infrastructure, no cuts to Social Security or Medicare. And he even talked about universal healthcare. And on top of that, he spent a lot of time attacking the Republican Party, attacking all three of the previous Republican nominees, attacking the decision to invade Iraq. So he ended up in a place where kind of no matter where you sit on the spectrum, the political spectrum on the right side of the country, he was attacking an unpopular Republican status quo, both in a conservative fashion and in a moderate fashion. And on election day in 2016, he was viewed by Americans as the less extreme of the to options on the ballot and in fact by a significant clip, less conservative than Romney, McCain, Bush or George H. W. Bush. And that allowed him the, that position allowed him to not only distance himself from an unpopular Republican party, but also over time, change how Americans viewed him and the Republican Party and allowed them to get voters that I think even, you know, sort of 2013 era. Sean Hannity, who was supporting comprehensive immigration reform, might have never imagined. You know, Latino voters, for example, were nearly split in the most recent presidential election and Republicans actually won Latino men. Okay, so how does that apply to Democrats today? Obviously I've already said that Democrats are very unpopular. I think it's likely the primary has already started. Let's be very clear about that. The, you know, 2028 Democratic primary, you know, Pete Buttigieg is out here, you know, occupying his political ideological lane on substack. AOC is out here already doing campaign rallies around the country, you know, is.
- [10:04]
Nathaniel Rakic
On cable news, talking about Los Angeles.
- [10:07]
Galen Drook
He's got his own podcast. So, you know, the girls are running, they are running. I think in general, we imagine they might occupy moderate and progressive lanes. And my argument in this piece is that that misunderstands the Democratic Party's predicament. In fact, running against the party, both from the right and the left and attacking the party for its recent failures might be the best way not only to sort of win a primary and eventually an election, but also reset Americans views of the party enough so that things like the Senate longer are seem sort of totally out of reach. And in particular a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. You know, the fanciful ideas like abolishing the Senate or you know, whatever it may be, are not happening. And so if the Democratic Party wants to be realistic about, you know, legislating once it gets into power and not just try to win presidential elections by eking out victories against, you know, mediocre or poor quality Republican candidates, then the scope should be how do we win Voters who are currently written off in states that we currently imagine as not gettable. And I think you have to create sort of a break with the Democratic Party as it's been. And the way you do that is sort of attack it, you know, break with where it stands on some different policy questions. In the piece, in particular in the Times, I say probably it looks like run to the left on health care. Run to the right on immigration. Health care is one of the most important issues to Democratic voters. And the Democratic Party is far more trusted on the issue on immigration. It is still one of the top three issues overall for Americans. And the Republican Party, despite very controversial moves from President Trump, is still clearly the most trusted party on immigration. You know, there are, there are other things you can bring up, like you run right on the debt and deficit or conservative on the debt and deficit. You run, you run left on housing policy. And when it comes to the economy, obviously we're going to have to wait a couple of years to see what the economic circumstances look like to understand what a winning message looks like there. I've already been talking quite a bit, Nathaniel, what else? That's my, you know, nothing new. That's my general argument. I haven't fleshed it out entirely, but I'm sure, I imagine you might have some questions or actually, first of all, Nathaniel, am I right?
- [12:37]
Nathaniel Rakic
So I think that you are largely right. I think the devil will be in the details, of course. Like, it is definitely easier to write an op ed for the New York Times saying these things than to actually execute it in a Democratic primary or general election. Yeah. But what's great about our job, Galen, is that we aren't actually Democratic strategists. We don't actually have to like solve this problem for the Democratic Party. We can just kind of say what the data says and let other people figure it out. So it's quite convenient. But look, I think you're absolutely right that there is a deep dissatisfaction right now on several different levels. Right. Americans as a whole are dissatisfied with the direction that the country is going. You, I think in polls asking if the country is on, going on the right or the wrong track. We haven't been in like net positive approval in that area since like basically the aftermath of 9 11. Americans are also dissatisfied with the Democratic Party. As you mentioned, it has these kind of historically low favorability ratings. Democrats themselves are also dissatisfied with the kind of direction and caliber of leadership within their party. So for instance, Quinnipiac polling has found that they asked recently, do you approve or disapprove of the way the Democrats in Congress are handling their job. That's specifically Democrats in Congress. But I think, you know, generally indicative, only 21% of voters overall approved, 70% disapproved. And even among Democrats, only 41% approved and 53% disapprove of their own party's congressional leadership. And I think you've seen this with kind of the dissatisfaction against, like Chuck Schumer and people like that for not fighting hard enough against Trump. That's the, the view within the Democratic Party. So I think clearly there is this anger and anti establishment mood out there. I think that as you point out, Donald Trump very ably tapped into that on the Republican side back in 2015 and 2016 when there was also a lot of dissatisfaction. So for instance in Quinnipiac's polling. So what's notable, I think about this is in Quinnipiac's polling, this is the worst that Democrats have ever viewed their own party going back to 2009, at least as far back as I could find. Quinnipiac data. Republicans, look, point in this metric was during the kind of like 2014ish era, which of course was the immediate lead up to Donald Trump. And so I think that running against your own party is a good strategy both in the primary and the general election. I think that where it does get tricky is when you start to think about what that looks like, right? So I think with Donald Trump in 2015, he was really, he was tapping into a market that a lot of establishment Republicans either didn't realize was there or were kind of in denial about. And so this was the very kind of nativist America first make America great again movement, right? Which is you saw in polls at the time, right. Republican primary voters supported deporting undocumented immigrants. They opposed accepting more refugees from Syria, which was kind of a big issue at the time. They opposed free trade and free trade agreements like the tpp, which was also in the news at the time. And these were not positions that, as you mentioned, you know, kind of the leading thought leaders of the Republican party in like 2013, coming off the defeat of Mitt Romney, were taking. And Donald Trump was like, I'm going to kind of rush into that vacuum on the Democratic side. You know, I think you look at the issue of immigration specifically, right? And Democratic voters are quite liberal on immigration, and then that's not where the country is, Right. So for instance, basically there was a kind of a battery of polling from YouGov that I found, and basically it asked them A bunch of questions about specific immigration policies. And the only kind of hawkish immigration policy that was supported by a majority of Democrats was deporting people who've been committed of violent crimes. But if you ask things that are a little more moderate and some of, you know, the more extreme things that Trump has been doing have been, are generally unpopular. But I think, like something like deporting people who are committed of nonviolent crimes, that's something that is popular with independents. According to this YouGov poll, 43% to 33%, they say that nonviolent criminals should be deported. But Democrats are against that, 21% to 59%. So I think there is a tension there between Democratic primary voters and the general electorate. So I, I think basically what I'm saying is that I think that running against the Democratic Party in the abstract is a good idea in both the general and the primary. I think that taking more just generally popular positions, right, maybe to the left on healthcare, to the right on immigration, works great in a general election. But my guess, my question to you is, my first question is how do, how does this kind of Democratic candidate that you're picturing do that in the primary and kind of survive what is probably likely to be another race to the left like it was in 2019 and 2020?
- [17:51]
Galen Drook
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it will be a race to the left. I think a lot of Democrats are sort of wishing they hadn't said some of the things they said during the 2020 Democratic primary. But a couple things, the most important thing to say here is that the issue landscape will change between now and when people really start getting in the race in 2027 and when the primaries actually take place in 2028. And so it's hard to say exactly what this picture looks like. And the fact that Donald Trump does things that are so unpopular and controversial does indicate to me that there will be some thermostatic backlash to him and that while Republicans are more favorable on immigration today, even after a lot of this controversial stuff, they may not be more favorable come 2027. But I think that in order to understand the immigration piece, and this is not the only piece, I also think that if you're running in a Democratic primary, you may take a more moderate position on immigration, but you may speak most loudly about your sort of populist position on healthcare. So, you know, say, argue for a public option, argue in a patriotic way, argue that Americans shouldn't pay a penny more than Europeans for prescription drugs. You Know, maybe even dive into some of the arguments about how the goal of healthcare is not just spending money on health insurance. It's actually healthy people. And so how do you get Americans to be healthy? You know, there's a lot of stuff that can talk about that. We know from the polling. Democrats care a lot more about the healthcare issue than they care about immigration. So what are they willing to give up on immigration? But I think you also have to take a step back and talk about how we got here on the issue of immigration. And part of that is attacking the Biden administration, because I think it's probably smart for whoever runs next for the Democratic nomination pretty openly feels very comfortable attacking the Biden administration. So in 2016, immigration was not a super important issue for Americans. There was no migrant crisis. There was no migrant crisis for all of Obama's tenure. The last migrant crisis was arguably during George W's junior's tenure. He tapped into something that his voters, the, you know, the Republican primary voters, cared a lot about. He did it on an. In a pretty controversial way. And ultimately, once he was president, his pursuit of those, you know, he wasn't successful in a lot of that. I mean, look at where the wall ended up or look at where deportation numbers ended up and what have you. But he ended up sort of putting. And he didn't force the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party decided that anything Donald Trump said they were allergic to. And so they took the 180 position on it, which meant things like, okay, you want to build a border wall, we're going to decriminalize crossing the border. Okay, you want to sort of send in the troops, we want to defund the police, we want to defund ice. We want to, you know, as even Kamala Harris said, who wasn't here to, for a progressive, let's abolish private insurance, which, by the way, they don't even do in Europe. And so the way that Democrats reacted to Donald Trump was a lot more emotional than rational. And it put them in a really tough position to try to win over the majority of Americans going forward in a presidential election, let alone the Senate, which, you know, is harder for Democrats than even a presidential election. And so I think, first of all, acknowledging that the way you run to the right is acknowledging that Joe Biden absolutely dropped the ball on the border, you know, immigration sort of people who are in the country illegally today, that's a tough topic to address, even for Trump. You know, he did his 180 on workplace raids in hospitality restaurant and Farm circumstances. But the fact that someone like Joe Biden couldn't say one. One single illegal border crossing is one single illegal border crossing too many shows in some ways where the Democratic Party went wrong. You know, I have some behind the scenes stories of talking to people. Like I was, I was giving a talk at the, you know, conference of American Manufacturers and approached somebody who was pretty high up in the, in the Biden, had worked on the Biden campaign, worked in the Biden White House. And I was like, why doesn't he say something along. It was just 20, 23 before we ever hit those record breaking numbers of encounters at the southern border in December. Like, why doesn't he say something like one illegal border crossing is one illegal border crossing too many? She goes, well, you know, the progressives would attack him the next day, blah, blah. And it's like, well, that probably would be a good thing for Joe Biden. And the thing is, it was this weird sort of split screen where Democrats were saying that American self governance was on the line, but then behaving in an extremely partisan way on policy in a way that was not appealing to the majority of Americans. The majority of Americans, including the majority of Democrats, wanted more border security throughout Joe Biden's tenure. So, you know, I think it's easy to run right and create a split in part by attacking Joe Biden's approach. And I also think there's an important argument to be made that whatever priorities Democrats have on dealing with immigrants who are in the country illegally today, they will never be addressed until Americans feel that the border issue is resolved. They won't be addressed because Americans will prioritize it. They won't themselves. If they, if Americans feel like, okay, well, the next time we elect a Democrat, the same thing is going to happen as what happened with Joe Biden. They're not going to elect, I mean, whatever, immigration may not be important enough for them to make their decision based on that, but they're not going to want a Democrat to do that. And you can be sure as hell that either Republican senators or Democratic senators in Republican states will not be voting for any kind of amnesty until the border is resolved. So both from the perspective of Joe Biden up and from the perspective of, do you want, you know, fairness for dreamers in the long term? Do you want some sort of pathway to citizenship? Do you want people who work the farms and, you know, work in hotels and do a lot of important work in America? Do you want them to be left alone? Okay, well then you have to gain some credibility with the American public on the issue. Today's podcast is brought to you by you, the listeners. This podcast is made possible by paid subscribers@gdpolitics.com paid subscribers get access to about twice the number of episodes. They can join in our private chats and ask questions and. And they also, maybe most importantly, ensure that we can continue to be guided by our principles of trying to understand politics and the world with curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor. When you become a paid subscriber, you can also connect to your account wherever you listen to podcasts and never miss an episode. Join the GD Politics podcast community today@ GDPolitics.com in fact, do it now. We will still be here when you get back. That's GDPolitics.com and thank you so much.
- [25:02]
Nathaniel Rakic
I think that is correct. I think that is the correct kind of political and electoral analysis. I do think it'll be a harder sell. I don't think you can just kind of lay out the naked political strategy of it to a Democratic primary voter and expect them to vote completely rationally and not emotionally.
- [25:21]
Galen Drook
Right. So maybe you just, I mean, Joe Biden wasn't. I mean, Democrats didn't think Joe Biden should have run again. And he was very unpopular and ultimately he led to, he paved the way for Kamala's loss. And so I think attacking Joe Biden on the border is not going to be super controversial in, even in a Democratic primary, I don't think. And you know, you can still say, okay, and I want a pathway for dreamers without explaining everything I just explained.
- [25:49]
Nathaniel Rakic
Right.
- [25:49]
Galen Drook
And then you pivot to the economy, you pivot to healthcare, you pivot to whatever. I mean, there's a lot of. I talk about the debt and deficit in the piece as well, you know, not in any detail, but giving an example, like one of the ways that you want to attack a party is, you know, for example, when you want to attack a Republican Party as a Democrat, you use their issues. So Republicans have talked forever about the debt and deficit, but Donald, Donald Trump increased the debt the most of any president in American history. You know, you know who understood this? Who? Nikki Haley. She, she, I mean, obviously she was unsuccessful for many other reasons, but she jumped into that primary race. The number one thing she talked about was both parties are hypocritical. They've both the country on the debt. The Republican Party has been terrible on the debt and the Democratic Party has been terrible on the debt. I'm going to be the responsible adult who's above the. Okay, actually, this gets me to a very important part of the piece, which is now I'm just really going off.
- [26:50]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yeah. Which is go off, Galen, go off.
- [26:52]
Galen Drook
The worst kept secret in American politics is that both parties are unpopular. And when you are running in a competitive election, you want to position yourself as above the fray. You don't want to be viewed as a Democrat top to bottom. You don't want to be viewed as a Republican top to bottom. You want to be seen as, oh, that dude or that dudette who has good ideas on health care, who has some interesting thoughts about this thing that I have. You can, you know, bring up topics that aren't super partisan. You know, who makes a good argument on healthcare, who is, you know, reasonable on immigration, who also, you know, is seems kind of fun and charismatic or whatever. You know, that was Obama's approach to the there's no red America, there's no blue America. There's, you know, Little league coaches in blue states and blah, blah, blah in red states. And, you know, in fact, I argue in this piece that somebody who did something similar to Donald Trump, which was take a an extremely demoralized party and reorient the electorate for future successes was Bill Clinton. Right. Three terms of Republican presidents, ambitious Democrats like Mario Cuomo didn't even jump into that primary race because they thought that reelection for HW was so assured. Bill Clinton kind of comes out of obscurity to some extent. He runs significantly to the left on health care. You know, this is, this is not new. Proposes a far more progressive plan than the Affordable Care act on healthcare, and also runs to the right on crime and government spending to issues where the Democratic Party was not trusted at all and reoriented the electorate enough for Democrats to win seven the popular vote in seven of the next eight elections. And so, you know, one other thing I say in the piece, speaking of Bill Clinton, is that an important part of Donald Trump's appeal is his authenticity through his personal bio and his communication style and whatever. That's a harder lesson to learn because, like, I mean, the broader lesson is authenticity. You can't just copy Trump's style because you'll probably look like an idiot. But when it comes to the authenticity piece, I don't think that Gavin Newsom can tomorrow just suddenly run against the Democratic Party or that Pete Buttigieg, a member of the Biden administration, can suddenly run against the Biden administration tomorrow. So in many ways, in order for this to feel authentic, it's probably somebody who is not one of the best known likely candidates in the Democratic Party today. And that doesn't mean like a total outsider. It doesn't mean like Mark Cuban necessarily. It could be Wes Moore, it could be Josh Shapiro.
- [29:33]
Nathaniel Rakic
Right. It could be Andy Beshear who doesn't have much of a profile.
- [29:36]
Galen Drook
Speaking of the Bill Clinton, you know, Democratic governor of a red state. But I also want to make clear that there's a really big opening here. And if serious Democrats don't walk through that opening, maybe unserious people will, whether it's within the Democratic Party itself or as an outside candidate.
- [29:57]
Nathaniel Rakic
Right.
- [29:57]
Galen Drook
We've talked about Ross Perot a lot on this podcast recently, and I don't need to get back into it. But another feature of that 1992 campaign when Bill Clinton reoriented politics was that there was enough of a sort of backlash to the status quo that Ross Perot could come in and make a real argument for himself. Now, let me remind you that in 1992, independents were not the largest group in the American electorate. Today, they are by far 43% of Americans don't identify with either party. Obviously, those people pretty reliably vote with one party or another. But it tells you something. It tells you that people don't like either party's brand enough to the point where they'd rather just say, I don't align with any of that. You know, I'll vote for one. But like, I don't want to call myself a Republican or I don't want to call myself a Democrat.
- [30:47]
Nathaniel Rakic
Right. Yeah, I think I have many. I was keeping a list of like responses to all of the things to respond to in there. But no, on the dissatisfaction front, According to Pew, 28% of Americans now have unfavorable views of both the Democratic and Republican parties. That is a record that is up from 7% only 20 years ago. So it has quadrupled during that time. So I think that in some ways, as I think we've talked about on this podcast, there are the ingredients for another kind of successful third party run, like a Ross Pro type of situation. I think in other ways, I'm also, you know, a student of political science. In other ways, there are a lot of barriers to a third party candidacy that we've talked about also on the FiveThirtyEight podcast. Like just, you know, our systems are set up to encourage a two party system. But I think what to going back to your point about the op ed and kind of Democrats needing to find their own Donald Trump in a specific way, that way is that Donald Trump was essentially a third party candidate who used the institutions of an existing party and kind of hijacked them for his own means. And I think that in the same way that there could be an opening for a somebody to kind of hijack the Democratic Party or at least take the Democratic Party, you know, kind of by the reins and, and bring it in a new direction. So I think that is. Is absol. Correct.
- [32:11]
Galen Drook
Wait, can we, can we talk about that for one second? Because I think people are going to say like, oh, but the Democratic Party shows so much more deference to the establishment than the Republican Party.
- [32:23]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yes.
- [32:24]
Galen Drook
And so actually Democrats don't want their own Donald Trump and they won't vote for somebody who attacks the party.
- [32:31]
Nathaniel Rakic
Well, there's also. Goes to it. Yeah, goes to a point about, I'm talking about the stat from about 28% of Americans from Pew. That's among the general electorate. Right. And within the Democratic Party there is like I cited that Quinn Snipiac poll before and that was Democrats in Congress. There was also, you know, in the name of kind of averaging the polls or looking at a number of polls and not just one poll, there's also a recent AP Nork poll that found that 70% of Democrats still had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party as a whole. Like that also leaves 30% that had an unfavorable opinion, which is significant, I think.
- [33:01]
Galen Drook
But like primary.
- [33:04]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yes, that's actually, that's actually a great point too. I think part of what helped Trump in 2016 was that, you know, he was leading in polls with like 35% of the vote. And obviously eventually he got a majority. And you know, I think that there wasn't as much like the anti Trump coalition was not a majority of, of the party, obviously, but it was enough to put him in that pole position. So. Yes, sorry, but keep going.
- [33:26]
Galen Drook
Yeah. One of the lines from the op ed that got struck was when I was talking about the challenges for Rubio, Bush, Walker Cruz, I was like, this is to say nothing of the structural challenges of a divided primary and the individual challenges of a lack of personal charisma, AKA please clap. But you know, I think Democrats have shown more deference to the establishment the party over the past decade, especially as they have become more allergic to Donald Trump because he's obviously the opposite of establishment. And so even more establishment type Republicans have moved to the Democratic Party because it is exactly that, more of an establishment type party. But I think we shouldn't forget the period of the Democratic party that came before 2016. You know, people like Howard Dean, who obviously was not particularly successful, but showed that what he called Democratic members of Congress cockroaches or referred to them as cockroaches also. It's easy to gloss over now because he is so emblematic of the Democratic Party. But Barack Obama was not the establishment choice in 2008. And in fact, what did he do? He ran pretty aggressively against the war in Iraq, something that Hillary Clinton had voted for. So, and, and, and I'll also emphasize that sort of he ran to the left on something like Iraq, but he ran to the right of Hillary Clinton on healthcare. In fact, as another Clinton she was again took a very progressive position on health care. And Obama's position was to the right. He was also, I mean, I don't know how this oriented him in comparison to Hillary Clinton, but by today's standards, quite to the right on immigration.
- [35:17]
Nathaniel Rakic
And so, and to your point, that wasn't a big issue in that primary.
- [35:20]
Galen Drook
Yeah, and, and I haven't even brought up Bernie Sanders yet. Right. Bernie Sanders obviously didn't win the 2016 primary and not a Bernie Harry did ultimately defer to the establishment. But that was after that was when the party was in love with the establishment like Barack Obama was. You know, obviously he had his difficulties in office and he lost popularity over time. But Democrats still at the time really liked Barack Obama, who was emblematic, as I said, of the party today. Democrats have some problems with the way that the party has been behaving. And so running that anti establishment campaign is I think would be far easier for somebody like Bernie Sanders today than it was in 2016.
- [36:04]
Nathaniel Rakic
So I think that, so first of all, a lot of the opposition to. So two of the people you mentioned ran against Hillary Clinton. So I think that that has to be mentioned that it could just be kind of anti Clinton ness and anti Hillary Clinton ness specifically. I think in 2016 in particular, there were still a lot of Bernie Sanders support came from conservative Democrats who were opposed to Hillary Clinton from that direction because he the only alternative, I think like in West Virginia he did really well. So a lot of those at the.
- [36:34]
Galen Drook
Time, even better argument. That's even more support for my argument.
- [36:37]
Nathaniel Rakic
No, but they weren't endorsing like Bernie's positions. And like, I know you're not arguing.
- [36:42]
Galen Drook
They probably would have liked position on immigration though.
- [36:45]
Nathaniel Rakic
Sure, right, exactly. But like a lot of those people are no longer Democrats. They were kind of, that was the last gasp of people who are still registered Democrats because they're you know, pappy and their grandpappy before them were registered Democrats. And but they've been voting for Republicans in presidential elections for a few years now. And so I think that the 2016 lesson shouldn't be over interpreted. And then Howard Dean, of course, you know, yes, he tapped into something, but it just wasn't enough ultimately. And obviously that was the case with Sanders too, both in 2020 and in 2016. And so I think, sure, there is clearly this strain in the Democratic Party that is more progressive but also anti establishment. That's the other thing too, right. Is that Bernie Sanders represents both anti establishment and progressive. And it's like I think that both of those things in a, like you have to disentangle those things. So I think that there is a progress, a loud progressive voice in the Democratic Party, but I don't think that that is necessarily what a general electorate is looking for. I think they're looking more for the anti establishment side of things. And I think that is going to be harder to do in a Democratic primary. I think you mentioned Obama. I think Obama is the template, right. You have to be a little bit kind of, you know, feisty, pushing up against the establishment, which obviously he did at the time because it was literally Hillary Clinton and everybody assumed she was gonna be president. I remember there was a joke on the Gilmore girls in like 2006 that was like, see you when Hillary's president. And like everybody assumed this. Right. And Obama did that, but he wasn't a, like an explicitly anti establishment figure and. Right. And so this maybe does bode well for somebody like an Andy Bashir who is a elected official but has some kind of outsider credibility. But I think there's a needle that needs to be threaded in a way that in the Republican Party, Donald Trump could come in and literally just be the Kool Aid man and be like burn it all down. And I don't think Democrats would be receptive to that message. So I don't think like Mark Cuban is the answer for them, for instance.
- [38:42]
Galen Drook
I don't. Right. And I don't think it's necessarily burn it all down, but the advantage to this strategy or something that honestly the thing that really makes this strategy possible in many ways is how unpopular Joe Biden was. And so you don't have to run against everything the Democratic Party has ever done or stood for. You can just use Joe Biden as something of a stand in which, you know, I talked about immigration, but like think about for example, inflation, you know, I don't know that progressives might want to hear this, but again, I, I think that sometimes the way like I talk a lot about policy in this piece, but in part it's because that's how campaigns get waged. But the way you talk about policy tells people a lot about you besides just what you might do as president. So I want to make that clear. Like, I don't think again, people are looking at the 12 point plan and making their decision. But one of the ways that you can talk about it even from an economic perspective is like, look, Joe Biden's first big piece of legislation was the American Rescue plan. Obviously we were in a time of, time of crisis and whatnot, but it, you know, people were out there saying this is inflationary, this is not going to be good for Americans because two months earlier they'd already passed a trillion dollars of aid. Americans had record high levels of savings, the vaccine was coming online and they were proposing another $2 trillion in spending. And I've said this before on the podcast, but by the end of 2021, the San Francisco Fed had concluded that the American rescue plan contributed 3 percentage points to annualized inflation. That was before we ever got to the highs of June of 2023 or 2022. And that literally meant that overall, because prices were growing faster than wages for most of Biden's presidency, Americans were becoming poorer. So you know, if you want to try to challenge the AOCs of the world, you know, in a sort of, or the progressives of the world from a working class position that just doesn't go super left, you say, yeah, we tried spending $3 trillion in one place on the progressive wish list and it made Americans poorer.
- [41:02]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yeah, I mean again, I think that that is, I think emotionally a lot of Democrats aren't going to want to hear that argument. But I, I, I, I do think you're absolutely right about, there is a difference between how you talk about something and what you talk about. And I think that you can take positions that are, I think it, I want to go so far as to say that it doesn't matter what positions you take, but I think that as long as you kind of take it from a like anti establishment kind of angry way, you can make a lot of policy positions fit within that. Right. Like there are ways to talk about the economy and like to, there are ways to sound like you're being tough on the Democratic Party while still kind of advocating for progressive things that might not even be unpopular with the general electorate.
- [41:50]
Galen Drook
And sometimes left, right isn't the point, like I use left, Right. As an example, but what you really want to do is frustrate people's partisans, partisan expectations to the point where they don't see you as one thing. They see you as the solution to the problem of how to fix America.
- [42:05]
Nathaniel Rakic
Exactly. And I think one better or worse.
- [42:07]
Galen Drook
Because one person ain't gonna fix America.
- [42:09]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yeah. And I think that one issue you talk about in the piece is, like, housing. And I think that that's like a great example of, like, something that there is a lot of dissatisfaction out there about and people aren't really talking about it, at least on the kind of national level, the cost and availability of housing, specifically. And I think that that is something that you could very easily kind of just come out here being angry about and not like, specifically because I think there is also, like, a danger in the primary, again, like Joe Biden still popular among Democratic primary voters. And so I think you do. And I think there are also risks for someone, again, in a party apparatus that is more reliant on the path to nomination, runs through winning elite support in many ways in a way that the Republican nomination didn't. Right. In 2012 and 2016, the candidate with the most endorsements did not win the Republican primary. But the candidate with the. On the democratic side in 2016 and 2020, they did not in. In 2008, as you mentioned, with Hillary and Obama. But I think that, yeah. Like, on, on an issue like housing, you can really take the party to task without blaming somebody specifically and being like, Joe Biden's housing policies were terrible. But.
- [43:23]
Galen Drook
Right.
- [43:23]
Nathaniel Rakic
There's something like that.
- [43:24]
Galen Drook
I guess I want to say I'm not just describing a primary strategy, I'm also describing. Right, exactly.
- [43:29]
Nathaniel Rakic
But I think that's, like my main issue. Yeah.
- [43:33]
Galen Drook
I emphasize a lot sort of that this is in pursuit of. I, I think Democrats can win the next presidential election without taking this strategy.
- [43:44]
Nathaniel Rakic
Right.
- [43:45]
Galen Drook
And in some ways it will rely on Republicans being unpopular, but if they want to legislate with a meaningful majority in the Senate, that that's more of a challenge. And sort of like some of these ideas that I'm presenting have a lot to do with that goal. I mean, we are talking a lot about the primary here because I think you're right to point out that it would be hard to win a primary with the strategy potentially depending on how divided the field is. But, and I'm sorry I interrupted you, but I did just want to clarify that.
- [44:16]
Nathaniel Rakic
No, yeah, totally. And I just think that, to me, is like, the fundamental problem is that in American politics, winning a primary and winning a general election require very different approaches. And the kind of Venn diagram between them has gotten less and less as polarization has increased. And I think in many ways, like, you know, the premise of your piece being, you know, Democrats need their own Donald Trump, like, Donald Trump was very successful in Republican primaries. He has been moderately successful on in general elections. I think that he got pretty lucky in both 2016 and in 2024 and 2016 because he was running against a very like, basically the only other national political figure who is more unpopular than him and Hillary Clinton. And in 2024, obviously running at a time of deep dissatisfaction with the Biden administration, he obviously lost reelection the first time in 2020. And a lot of his can the candidates that he has endorsed in like, swing Senate races, to your point about the Senate, have lost because they have been too extreme. So I think that Donald Trump is not, I'm not, not, not saying that you're doing this, but like, Donald Trump to me is not a paragon of like, general election electability. And I think that there is a way for the Democratic Party to do that better by, you know, taking some of these populist positions and not doing things like breaking Democratic norms and not having a million scandals associated with him. So. Right.
- [45:42]
Galen Drook
So I think one of the mistakes that maybe, maybe I described Democrats as, as making is every single aspect of Donald Trump looking at it and being like, that's bad, that's terrible. We're doing the opposite. And yeah, I don't think he was a high quality candidate. I think that it's in some ways been a race to the bottom over the past 10 years that bad candidates have been able to win because they've been just facing even worse candidates. And so, you know, talking about Donald, using Donald Trump, first of all, I'm talking about him mostly in 2016. Obviously, he's come to be seen as more conservative over time. That's to get people's attention in some ways because this strategy has been used by other people as well. I talk about Bill Clinton, we've talked about Barack Obama. But yeah, I think, you know, that that is important to make clear. I don't think that Donald Trump has been a strong candidate totally.
- [46:37]
Nathaniel Rakic
I know, I, I, I know what you mean. But I think that, right. I think there is a big opportunity here for both parties because both parties remain very unpopular. Republicans are also unpopular, it should be noted, almost as unpopular as Democrats. Obviously, we've been focusing on Democrats. Because the, the question right now in political circles is how do they get back to power. But I think there's a big opportunity here for either party to seize back kind of this ground. Not, I was going to say in the middle, but to your point, it's not just in the middle, but it is just popular positions on various issues, things that aren't being addressed currently. So, you know, my kind of list, what I was saying earlier is like, I often think about like how a candidate who came out and just kind of took positions on like these non, non partisan issues, like we're going to make housing cheaper. We are going to like make it so that you don't have to take your shoes off at the airport. We're going to get rid of like junk fees when you're making reservations for things. We're going to get rid of spam phone calls and text messages. Like that candidate I think could do well. I mean a lot of that stuff is like, not these are not the most pressing issues facing America. But that is kind of a populist message. Right. And I think if we're talk, if the question is how does either party build back a. That is kind of long term sustainable, positive in the future. I think that I generally agree with you that this is a good way to do it. But yeah, the tricky part will be executing it then.
- [48:04]
Galen Drook
Oh, God bless. Another point that I made in the piece that was struck is that there's an argument that parts of this are good governance too. Right. The preferred policies of the American public don't reside on one side or the other. Obviously we know that. Also people who code as moderates generally have right wing and left wing positions on idiosyncratic issues. And so being able to put yourself in a position where you can take from both sides and take what's popular might actually help you govern. You have to do it to see if it works, I guess. And, and we don't know if anyone will do it. But at least I put my two cents out there.
- [48:51]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yeah, clearly it was a good argument. Are you glad you got that off your chest? Kalen?
- [48:56]
Galen Drook
I got it off my chest. I got more there. I lost it. But the producers of the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast and I were hanging out in the office after the 2024 election. One afternoon I was like, I got a couple things to say and it was like, in part, some of the ways that people were blaming Kamala Harris for losing. I was like, let me tell you about why Democrats just lost the last election. And we turned on the, I was like, this is not going to get published. But we turned on the microphone just for posterity's sake. And I thought I was going to speak for like five minutes. Boy, have we also learned from this episode that that doesn't happen. It ended up being about 30 minutes long and it was but stream of conscience. And unfortunately it was saved on a Disney ABC News Disney laptop and is lost to time and space. But we got some things off my chest today, Nathaniel.
- [49:56]
Nathaniel Rakic
Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad for you.
- [49:58]
Galen Drook
Do you have anything you want to get off your chest? Is there anything you've been itching to say?
- [50:04]
Nathaniel Rakic
No, I think actually I said a lot of them. In all honesty, I think it was a good discussion. And I think it gets to the point that there are obviously some things that both parties, but in this example, Democrats can be doing better. But at the same time, I think there are very real constraints that I think for a lot of people, they might look at Kamala Harris or whoever and be like, well, why don't you just say this or whatever. Why don't you distance yourself from Joe Biden? It's the easiest thing in the world. And like, it's not. There are, there are issues, institutional issues and public opinion reasons why you can't do stuff like that.
- [50:41]
Galen Drook
So it's not probably happenstance that a very shameless person was the kind of person who could just sort of be the Kool Aid man, as you said, and say the things. And again, I want to, you know, I take your, your question, your challenge about the primary, like, how do you win in a primary with this approach seriously? And, you know, the way that Donald Trump did it to remind you is, well, just, you know, being whatever himself and sucking up all of the oxygen. But was placing his stake in the ground on an issue that mattered a lot to the Republican Party. And I think for Democrats, that might be healthcare, if you can sort of make this sort of strong progressive whatever, because again, you're going to be able to convince some Republicans about that, too. Like, nobody in America thinks that we are spending our healthcare dollars efficiently and they're like happy about their deductibles and all of that, you know, whatever. I mean, I know back from the Obamacare debates that, like, while everyone thinks that healthcare is terrible, people like their own insurance. And yes, we can get into that, which is why sort of arguing to abolish private insurance is silly, especially when that's, you know, not even how European countries do it. But but also, I think, I mean, to argue that like, oh, you have to be all the way progressive in order to win a primary is silly. That's like saying that the only person who could have won the Republican primary in 2016 was Ted Cruz because he took like the rightmost position on absolutely everything. And yes, he won evangelicals and he won the most right wing people, but ultimately he did not win the primary. And so, so I think that, I think that we shouldn't pretend that primary electorates, as much as primary electorates are quite partisan or whatever. I don't think we should pretend that they're unidimensional. And especially in the Democratic primary, there are a lot of moderate voters in the Democratic base. And surprise, surprise, you will find that some of the most right wing positions or conservative positions on things like immigration within the Democratic Party are more moderate voters of color who do, in particularly in black communities, turn out in primary elections.
- [52:57]
Nathaniel Rakic
You know, speaking of things to get off my chest too, the other thing about getting fairly in the weeds, but like, another reason why like Donald Trump was successful and why I think in, in the primary and the Democratic candidate probably will not have is a, he was a celebrity and there isn't a, I mean, maybe there's going to be somebody, Stephen A. Smith or whatever. But, but right now there's not an obvious person to me who like, is like a Donald Trump equivalent in terms of like having been on a television show and like having that and like, also, but also like he had this like business reputation. Sure. But like, okay, that's, I mean, that's fair. But like Mark Cuban's, like Donald Trump's image as a businessman that he cultivated from the Apprentice is not, was helpful in a Republican primary in a way that like, I don't think that exact, like Mark Cuban's image isn't necessarily gonna be helpful in a Democratic primary. I don't know. But that, and then also the other thing is that, that to what we were talking about earlier, Donald Trump was able to win a lot of early primaries and get a lot of early delegates by winning states with like 35% of the vote. And then you get all the delegates on the Republican side, it doesn't work that way in the Democratic primary. So like, even if one candidate is able to win like 35% of the vote in Iowa and win in the Democratic primary, they allocate delegates proportionally and the system is set up in a Democratic primary to drag on for longer, whereas Republicans can, like, you can finish the race by Super Tuesday if you win the first, like, handful of states. And that's what Donald Trump did. And so that, I think, is another challenge, Right? Exactly.
- [54:24]
Galen Drook
We could be in 2028 president.
- [54:27]
Nathaniel Rakic
Exactly. We could be in for another 2008, you know, obviously, under certain circumstances. But if you had somebody kind of more like. Yeah, like an Obama figure who is, like, kind of challenging the status quo, and then maybe have somebody like Gavin Newsom who is more kind of traditional, that type of fight could last until June of 2028 again. So, anyway, that's a lot of rambling.
- [54:46]
Galen Drook
Listeners of the GD Politics podcast have something to look forward to or not.
- [54:51]
Nathaniel Rakic
Or to dread as maybe.
- [54:53]
Galen Drook
We thought we might get to some listener questions today. We're not going. Yeah, I don't think we're going to, unfortunately. And also, I have to go interview Senator Lisa Murkowski.
- [55:04]
Nathaniel Rakic
I know. Very exciting.
- [55:06]
Galen Drook
So thank you for joining me. I hope this was fun for you. It was fun for me. It was great. I'm sorry for all the times I interrupted you.
- [55:14]
Nathaniel Rakic
That's okay. But I tried not to interrupt you. I tried to let you pop off.
- [55:18]
Galen Drook
You know, I was popping off. I'll own it. But we're gonna leave it there.
- [55:22]
Nathaniel Rakic
We'll talk about the Texas Senate primary someday, I promise.
- [55:25]
Galen Drook
Someday. Someday. Someday. But we're gonna leave things there for today. Thank you so much for joining me, Nathaniel.
- [55:30]
Nathaniel Rakic
Thanks, Galen.
- [55:31]
Galen Drook
My name is Galen Drook. I'm in the early days of getting this podcast off the ground, and I appreciate your support in any way possible. There are a couple things that you can do in that regard. First and foremost, go to GDPolitics.com and subscribe. Even consider becoming a paid subscriber so you can support this effort. And also get all of the paid podcasts that we publish. Also, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and Apple podcasts or Spotify or whatever. Also leave a rating or a review and maybe even tell a friend about the podcast. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.