Do Libs Need a Social Media Safe Space? Did Misinfo Hurt Kamala? How Much Should the Left Influence Democrats?

Summary

Offline with Jon Favreau: Episode Summary – "Do Libs Need a Social Media Safe Space? Did Misinfo Hurt Kamala? How Much Should the Left Influence Democrats?"

Release Date: November 24, 2024
Host: Jon Favreau
Guest: Waleed Shahid, Longtime Progressive Strategist and Former Justice Democrats Spokesperson
Produced by: Crooked Media

---

Introduction

In this thought-provoking episode of Offline with Jon Favreau, host Jon Favreau engages in an in-depth conversation with Waleed Shahid, a seasoned progressive strategist and former spokesperson for Justice Democrats. The episode delves into the intricate dynamics between progressive movements and the Democratic Party, examining whether the influence of left-leaning groups is aiding or hindering the party's quest for greater political power. Additionally, the discussion explores the impact of misinformation on voters’ perceptions, particularly concerning Vice President Kamala Harris, and how the evolving information landscape shapes electoral outcomes.

---

Key Discussions

1. The Tension Between Movements and Political Parties

Waleed Shahid opens the conversation by contextualizing the historical tensions between social movements and political parties in the United States. He draws parallels with past movements, such as abolitionists protesting against Abraham Lincoln and the labor movement against Theodore Roosevelt, emphasizing that such tensions are a recurring theme in American political history.

Waleed Shahid [00:30]: "There's this tension between movements and parties, and they aren't for the same things like they've never been for the same things..."

Jon Favreau and Max Fisher build on this premise, discussing how the Democratic Party today grapples with balancing the demands of various progressive groups while striving to appeal to a broad electorate.

2. Influence of Progressive Activists on the Democratic Party

The core of the episode revolves around a New York Times piece by Adam Jennelson, a Democratic strategist. Jennelson argues that while progressive organizations play a crucial role in pushing the party's agenda, their strategies might inadvertently trigger backlash among voters, potentially jeopardizing the party's chances of securing a majority.

Jon Favreau [01:43]: "I'm going to set up the entire debate later when I introduce Waleed. But tl;dr, it's about the future of the Democratic Party and specifically the influence of progressive activists and organizations on the positions that Democratic politicians take..."

Waleed Shahid responds by acknowledging the complexities of coalition-building within a diverse party. He asserts that while progressive groups have valid points, blaming them solely for electoral setbacks oversimplifies multifaceted political dynamics.

Waleed Shahid [26:05]: "The windup is necessary because not everyone is on Twitter for the last 48 hours. So appreciate the summary. And yeah, I just want to start by. This stuff is complicated..."

3. The Role of Misinformation in Shaping Voter Perceptions

A significant portion of the discussion addresses how misinformation has affected voters' understanding of Kamala Harris's policy positions. Exit polls revealed that many swing voters held misconceptions about Harris's stances on issues like electric cars, border crossings, and transgender surgeries.

Jon Favreau [13:12]: "And so I think that even in his victory, his campaign showed us that they went beyond those spaces."

Max Fisher elaborates on how consistent misinformation, particularly from right-wing sources, has shaped public perceptions, although he contends that economic factors like inflation were more decisive in the election outcome.

Max Fisher [14:03]: "What gets me is the consistency with which low information voters in this election specifically believe right wing conspiracies..."

4. Communication Strategies and Information Environment

The conversation shifts to effective communication strategies within the Democratic Party. Both hosts and Shahid emphasize the need for clear, relatable messaging that resonates with the general electorate, moving away from overly technical or ideologically narrow narratives.

Jon Favreau [19:14]: "I think in this information environment, I don't, I don't know that that's a good strategy anymore."

Shahid highlights the challenges of bridging the gap between activists and mainstream voters, suggesting that progressive movements must focus on making their issues more appealing and understandable to a broader audience.

Waleed Shahid [72:55]: "And I do think there are ways to communicate fact checks to people, especially if you do it preemptively before they hold the belief that will counter it."

5. Lessons from Past Campaigns and Future Directions

Reflecting on past elections, Shahid and Favreau analyze what strategies worked and what didn’t. Shahid points out that during Obama’s tenure, effective grassroots movements like the advocacy for the DREAM Act played a pivotal role in shaping party policies. He underscores the importance of building similar movements to address current issues such as immigration and transgender rights.

Waleed Shahid [77:34]: "You have a lot of angry young people who have seen democracy not work for them. And like, you know, it goes back to the whole reason why Bernie was popular with young people..."

Favreau echoes these sentiments, advocating for a more assertive and relatable approach in communicating the Democratic Party’s economic and social policies to win over undecided voters.

Jon Favreau [60:26]: "You know, the point that you're making about Republican, sorry, median voters think that the Democratic Party is overly concerned with social and cultural issues and not their issues or economic issues."

---

Notable Quotes

• Waleed Shahid [00:30]: "There's this tension between movements and parties, and they aren't for the same things like they've never been for the same things..."

• Jon Favreau [01:43]: "It's about the future of the Democratic Party and specifically the influence of progressive activists and organizations..."

• Max Fisher [14:03]: "It’s a very specific subset of things they came to believe. And I don't think this is what got people to vote for Trump."

• Waleed Shahid [26:05]: "This stuff is complicated and I don't want to come here as like a propagandist for the left..."

• Waleed Shahid [72:55]: "There are ways to communicate fact checks to people, especially if you do it preemptively before they hold the belief that will counter it."

---

Conclusions and Takeaways

The episode concludes with a mutual acknowledgment of the challenges facing the Democratic Party in reconciling the demands of progressive movements with the necessity of appealing to a broader electorate. Both Jon Favreau and Waleed Shahid advocate for innovative communication strategies that highlight the party’s commitment to economic and social justice in ways that are accessible and compelling to average voters.

Shahid emphasizes the importance of building effective grassroots movements that can persuade public opinion and create a conducive environment for policy changes, drawing inspiration from historical movements and contemporary international examples like Mexico’s AMLO administration.

Jon Favreau underscores the need for cohesive strategies that enable both movements and politicians to collaborate effectively, ensuring that the Democratic Party can navigate the complexities of the modern information landscape while staying true to its core values.

---

Final Thoughts:

This episode of Offline with Jon Favreau offers a nuanced exploration of the internal dynamics within the Democratic Party and the broader implications of progressive activism on electoral success. By addressing the balance between advocacy and pragmatism, and the impact of misinformation on voter behavior, the conversation provides valuable insights for anyone interested in the future trajectory of American politics.

Transcript

[Kia Advertisement]

The first ever Kia K4 seamlessly combines bold style and advanced tech. With striking star map, LED headlights and an available panoramic display, the Kia K4 delivers design and function. The available Surround View and Blind Spot View monitors can help provide added confidence. Plus, SiriusXM comes standard, bringing you closer to what you love. The Kia K4 balances aesthetics and innovation. Learn more at kia.com K4 surround view and blind Spot View monitors may not detect all objects around or behind the vehicle.

[Waleed Shahid]

There's this tension between movements and parties, and they aren't for the same things like they've never been for the same things like abolitionists protested Lincoln, labor movement protested Roosevelt, civil rights movement protested lbj, act up protested Clinton. Like, this is American history. It's a big country, People have a lot of demands. And wishing away all of civil society when Trump is about to crack down on those same activists is kind of. Yeah. An overly simplistic explanation, I think, and not helpful.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm Jon Favreau.

[Max Fisher]

I'm Max Fisher.

[Jon Favreau]

And you just heard from today's guest, longtime progressive strategist and former spokesperson for Justice Democrats, Waleed Shahid. So in the true spirit of this show, Waleed and I attempted to take an online debate offline because online debates are stupid and offline debates are better, which is a lesson I will apparently never learn.

[Max Fisher]

Learn the hard way yet again. Listen.

[Jon Favreau]

And then I have a conversation like this and I'm like, this is. I was. I was right. Me. Listen to yourself next time.

[Max Fisher]

Here's the thing. Every time you learn that lesson, it produces a great podcast. So I say keep logging on, keep posting, keep coming back, keep posting.

[Jon Favreau]

I'm going to set up the entire debate later when I introduce Waleed. But tldr, it's about the future of the Democratic Party and specifically the influence of progressive activists and organizations on the positions that Democratic politicians take on certain issues and whether those positions are more likely to advance progressive goals or trigger backlash. This was in response to a piece in the New York Times by Adam Jennelson, who worked for Harry Reid and John Federman and various progressive organizations that has caused a stir.

[Waleed Shahid]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

But you can all hear about that later. It's a really great conversation that I.

[Max Fisher]

Have, a really important conversation that is both about and part of the process of coordinating a political movement in a moment of being, as you might say, in the wilderness.

[Jon Favreau]

That's.

[Max Fisher]

So I'm really exactly right.

[Jon Favreau]

It's like you were right here.

[Max Fisher]

Mat there's actually, if I could just add one more thing, there's a clip that I think speaks really well to this. Emma, do you have this Favro?

[Waleed Shahid]

Smart buddy, not too bright. John got into a Twitter fight.

[Max Fisher]

So really, really important. Weighty conversation.

[Jon Favreau]

Who voiced that again? Was it. Is it?

[Max Fisher]

I think it was Ben.

[Jon Favreau]

It's Ben. I love it. It's so good.

[Max Fisher]

It's so good with us always.

[Jon Favreau]

I really. I appreciate that, guys.

[Max Fisher]

I like the Bells.

[Jon Favreau]

All right, before we get to a lead this week, amidst all the insane cabinet appointments, President elect Donald Trump quietly announced his selection for chair of the Federal Communications Commission. Brendan Carr, a current Republican FCC member and author of the FCC chapter in Project 2025. As indicated by that chapter and some recent tweets, Carr has some radical views about the role of the country's communications regulatory agency, including that the FCC must, quote, dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech for everyday Americans. Max. So we talked about CAR a little bit on Pod Save America, but I thought you and I could get into the implications for the tech industry and the Internet. What do we know so far about car's views and how he wants to reshape the fcc?

[Max Fisher]

First, can I just say, I will never forgive Trump for making us learn about the finer points of the fcc.

[Jon Favreau]

It's crazy.

[Max Fisher]

It's awful. It reminds me of that joke that Americans learn geography by launching foreign wars. And Americans are learning about the inner workings of our regulatory state by Trump appointing lunatics to run them. And as we learn, oh, those are the powers it has because now there's a crazy person abusing them for personal gain.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Max Fisher]

So the three.

[Jon Favreau]

What a way to wake up.

[Max Fisher]

The three big agenda items, as I understand it, for car are one, reinstating this $885 million contract to Elon Musk that he lost for non delivery on rural broadband. So that's the out, not corruption, part of the agenda.

[Jon Favreau]

Starlink for Starlink for rural.

[Max Fisher]

That's right. Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And I don't know if you looked into this. I couldn't figure out why they blocked it. The FCC voted to block it in the first place because I'm like, starlink, Elon Musk sucks. Starlink. Pretty cool.

[Max Fisher]

It is pretty cool. So my understanding is that fiber optic is cheaper, more reliable, requires less infrastructure, less prone to disruption by weather. So they were just like, this is cool, but it only really is cost effective for very, very rural communities. And they chose to go with fiber optics.

[Jon Favreau]

Got it.

[Max Fisher]

Which does make sense. But according to Renkar, it was political persecution on the basis of Elon Musk. Politics. And that is why he wants to both reinstate that contract and steer $10 billion more to cool, cool, cool, cool. He wants to punish news networks for their coverage of Trump. Trump has said that he wants to strip broadcast licenses of news networks that reported critically on him. The FCC cannot do that, but it can make itself a nuisance in all sorts of ways. It can abuse its regulatory power. It can issue all sorts of fines. So he can certainly find ways to punish news networks for reporting. And he wants to regulate the big tech censorship cartel, as you mentioned, which the FCC does not have the power to do, does not have authority over the tech industry.

[Jon Favreau]

So it should probably need an access Congress.

[Max Fisher]

Yes.

[Jon Favreau]

To expand the fcc, which wouldn't make.

[Max Fisher]

Any sense because we already have agencies that do that. So I think this was just him auditioning for Trump by saying, we're going to break up the evil big tech.

[Jon Favreau]

Mission accomplished.

[Max Fisher]

I know. It works.

[Jon Favreau]

Looks like the audition went well.

[Max Fisher]

I know. So he's good at that part of his job.

[Jon Favreau]

He argues in his Project 2025 chapter that the immunity tech companies currently have under Section 230 should be eliminated. Been a minute since we last talked about 230 on this podcast. Can you remind our listeners what it is and why CAR wants to change how it's interpret?

[Max Fisher]

Section 230 says that tech platforms are not legally liable for user generated content. So like if I were to say something on this show that was libelous or incited violence, crooked media would be legally liable for that. But if I say it on Instagram, Meta is not liable for that because it has these protections. And by extension section 230 allows social media companies to decide on their own how to regulate or not regulate what is on their platforms. There are, I think, valid arguments on both sides about whether Section 230 still makes sense in this world because Meta, of course can use itself algorithms, for example, to boost harmful content and they are not liable for that. Maybe they should be. But Carr's argument is just that is rooted in the right wing conspiracy theory of which he is a major proponent, that social media companies enforcing any rules whatsoever is political persecution of the right. And that removing anti vaccine conspiracies and stop the steal conspiracies is a plot to, you know, empower Democrats.

[Jon Favreau]

I mean, I think it's really starting to feel like the content moderation hopes are just like that's not. It feels like that's not going to be a phrase that we're going to think a lot about over the next 48 years.

[Max Fisher]

Well, I mean, something that we saw in Trump's first term is that they will put a lot of pressure on the social media companies to do content moderation. But it's just specifically for putting your thumbs on the scale on behalf of Trump and Republicans and the political right, which a lot of the platforms did.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. We're not making our principles universal here on this one.

[Max Fisher]

No, absolutely.

[Jon Favreau]

The Trump way.

[Max Fisher]

The universal principles are that the right gets to do and say whatever they want. And if you say otherwise, then you're doing a political witch hunt.

[Jon Favreau]

Right. That makes sense. In other news, the New York Times reporter Shira Frankel has a piece this week where she argues that almost all social media platforms are now either apolitical or have become places for right wing conversation, leaving liberals without a public square. So the platforms that still emphasize political content prioritize right wing perspectives. Gab Parlor, Truth Social, now the site formerly known as Twitter. And the platforms that do not prioritize right wing content are platforms that have largely decided to publicly de emphasize politics altogether. Downrank news, Facebook threads, Instagram, TikTok. And this discrepancy leaves us snowflakes with no safe spaces to call our own. What'd you make of this piece?

[Max Fisher]

So I think this is a new version of an old problem. If we kind of look at the landscape, I think it makes more sense in context. So 2016, the platforms tilted their algorithms hard to the right, unknowingly because they were maximizing content that elicited fear, hate, conflict. And this unintentionally boosted far right conspiracy misinformation. Outlinks to sites like Breitbart News exploded during the 2016 election. It was the site which got the third most referrals off of Facebook in the 2016 election. Yeah, which is terrifying. 2020, basically, it was the same thing, except they knew the effect. This time they did it anyway. And Metta also made a show, as you mentioned, of deliberately putting their thumbs on the scale for Trump to avoid reg. And this time around, it's a little different. The only platform that is making a show of boosting right wing and far right content is Twitter and trying to brand itself as a right wing platform. I think it's too early to say whether meta and other platform algorithms are still favoring right wing content now that they are downranking news. It's possible that the fact that they're downranking news has actually eliminated that effect. TikTok's algorithm, I think, from what we can tell, seems to be just exaggerating people's politics, whatever those are, rather than pulling them to the right in the way that a lot of social platforms did in 2016, 20, which is destabilizing.

[Jon Favreau]

All on its own, of course.

[Max Fisher]

No, it's not. I'm not saying it's a good thing. And the TikTok news audience does tend left wing. Now, that might not be because TikTok is making them that way. Maybe those are left wing people who are coming to TikTok. And then Shira, as you mentioned, points out that there are a bunch of little platforms that are right wing. The cabin, truth, social. But altogether, I don't actually know that this is a worse social media landscape for progressive politics than it was in 2016, 2020. And I think there's actually an argument that it's better.

[Jon Favreau]

I would love to hear you make that argument because I was going to. I don't. I don't know if I was going to argue that it's better, but my argument is. And just get into it. So the one, the one refuge for the libs is turning. It's turning out to be Blue Sky. So a lot of people are really.

[Max Fisher]

As if, as if losing the election wasn't painful enough, really kicking us when we were fucking down here. Now we all have to go to blue sky.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it was like a million. They got a million extra signups since the election.

[Max Fisher]

I will cop to you that. I.

[Jon Favreau]

You did finally.

[Max Fisher]

You got there. I haven't brought myself to skeet yet.

[Jon Favreau]

No skating yet?

[Max Fisher]

No, no skating.

[Jon Favreau]

Let me tell you, my experience has not been good.

[Max Fisher]

I noticed that you skated a little bit.

[Waleed Shahid]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. But my problem was, like I said, I turned off notifications on Twitter for people I don't follow. I didn't do that on Blue Sky. And so I got all the, all the stuff.

[Max Fisher]

It's truly sanctimonious.

[Jon Favreau]

It is. But it's like, I don't know that I love the idea that we are now segregating our social media platforms so that I won't just say liberals, the pro democracy coalition, as I would call it now, because it's a lot of. It's never. Trumpers are there and a lot of journalists are there, but it's not. It's a lot of. It's just a lot of like, it reminds me of like 2017 resistance.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah, a little bit. That, that is the vibe.

[Jon Favreau]

And everyone's like, you know, people are nice mostly. Not, not necessarily to me, but to each other. It seems like people are nice, which is great. We love that. But like, we just had this whole conversation about liberal Joe Rogan and we need to speak in spaces that like other people are who are not interested in politics or might be right leaning because we're trying to persuade them. We have this whole conversation. We're like, you know, we should have this conversation more on Blue sky and leave now. Look, if you want to leave X because you are facing like harassment and just a bunch of fucking assholes there, which there are.

[Max Fisher]

There's plenty. There's people leaving it too. Because maybe I don't want to give money to Elon Musk.

[Jon Favreau]

Totally. I get that. I get that. So I get why people are doing it. But I think from a strategy perspective, political organization on behalf of the Pro Democracy Coalition, like our voices need to be out there in a whole bunch of different spaces. And, you know, if people want to use Blue sky to be the place where we just hang out and feel good.

[Max Fisher]

I think the one thing that I would really push back on Shira's piece and you hear this argument from other people is the idea that the existence of explicitly right wing platforms like gab, Truth Social and Parler are good for the right electorally. Like, GAB is not persuading any undecideds to vote for Donald Trump. And I think there is actually an alternate reality or an alternate world where, you know, Trump, instead of winning by 250,000 votes, he narrowly lost. And we're having a conversation about how the existence of these platforms solidified the base, made them more extreme, more ideological in a way that turned off undecided voters. So I think if the, if the kind of lament is that there's not a safe space platform for liberals, I think that's a good thing.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and also what. Now that he won, what we're talking about is not that like all these right wing social media platforms boosted him. We're talking about the fact that he went on podcasts and sounded more like a normal person because he talked to Theo Vaughan or Joe Rogan and didn't do his whole spiel that he does at rallies all the time, which is.

[Max Fisher]

The opposite of the truth social media effect.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. And so I think that even in his victory, his campaign showed us that they went beyond those spaces. Finally, new exit polling from blueprint shows that late deciding swing voters had views about Kamala Harris's policy positions that were much different than the actual policy position she ran on in 2024. According to Blueprints poll, 72% of swing voters said they thought Harris supported requiring all cars to be Electric. By 2035, 64% believed she supported decriminalizing border crossings, and 66% believed she supported, quote, using taxpayer dollars for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants in prison, which was the subject of one of the Trump attack ads against Kamala Harris. You want to talk about this in the context of whether misinformation or disinformation had an effect on the election outcome.

[Max Fisher]

What do you think? Yeah, so I initially, when we discussed this, I said that I think that it did not. And I am really revising that. Some of the other things that majorities of undecided voters or late deciding voters believed, according to this exit poll, were that Kamala wanted to ban fracking, she wanted to issue reparations for slavery, she wanted to keep convicted criminal undocumented immigrants in the U.S. she wanted to allow kids to transition genders with without parental consent, and she wanted abortion legal up to the day of birth. That's majorities over 50% of late deciders. And I think we're seeing a lot of confirmation of this anecdotally in things like undecided voter panels, where you hear a lot of these same things. It's not new that low information voters, which late deciders tend to be, have wrong or misheld beliefs. Right. There's this famous poll that Time used to run asking people to name the vice president, and a lot of people couldn't. What gets me is the consistency with which low information voters in this election specifically believe right wing conspiracies, like, not just the usual grab bag or whatever. It's a very specific subset of things they came to believe. And I don't think this is what got people to vote for Trump. I don't think this decided the election. I do still think that it was the prices, it was the economy. But I think that right wing misinformation gave shape to people's disaffection with politics and the incumbent party in a way that did not determine their vote, but will drive their politics going forward because it told them that, hey, you already feel like the Biden administration is out of touch with you because prices are up and you're upset about that, understandably. And here are all these other ways that the Democrats are out of touch, that they want to do all these crazy things that are extreme. I think that helps explain why so many undecideds kept saying over and over, we, you know, we want to like the Democrats, but they're so focused on cultural issues and identity Politics, even though all the Democrats in fact were talking about in the campaign trail was the economy and individual rights.

[Jon Favreau]

So my take on this is it's an information environment problem. I would, I do not put this in the misinformation or disinformation bucket. The ones that I, most of the ones that we've. That you mentioned and I mentioned with the exception of abortion up until the day before birth and. And not wanting to go after. Yeah, criminals were undocumented. But she did support requiring all cars to be electric by 2035. And then when she supported it in 2019 and then when they asked the campaign does she still support it? Like a spokesperson just put out a line that said that's not her position anymore. Same thing with decriminalized border crossings. There's video which I'm sure low information voters, if they wanted to get information, could have seen her and all the other Democratic candidates put their hands up during the debate.

[Max Fisher]

I remember.

[Jon Favreau]

And the end. I didn't realize this by the way. The ACLU questionnaire is. Everyone is talking about is where she checks taxpayer funded surgeries for undocumented to.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

Then there's a video they used of her. Right.

[Max Fisher]

Oh, I didn't realize that.

[Jon Favreau]

And in that video they asked her the question. And I didn't realize this until like yesterday someone pointed this out. They asked her the question, what would you do to protect trans transgender Americans? And she just said the prison thing.

[Max Fisher]

Did she really?

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, because she had dealt with that issue when she was district attorney in San Francisco. But she just decided to do a whole long. It was like a three minute answer. So it wasn't like the only thing she said. She started off by my broad values. I want to stand up for transgender people's rights and great. All kinds. And then she just like went into the whole thing. So I'm like, part of this is she. They made a decision that all of her 2019 positions that weren't popular and aren't especially aren't popular now.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

That they were just going to like kind of wish them away and have like statements from the campaign and not really have her go out and fracking. She did. She said, yes, I'm frack everywhere. Great. So some of them ones she did publicly. But it was. I don't actually blame the voters on this one and I don't even blame necessarily the Trump campaign because if I was on a campaign like and someone is on video saying something in a position like that's, that's fair game. We did that With Trump on abortion.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

Even though he flipped, I mean, he did.

[Max Fisher]

Trump did also give us a lot of reason to believe that that was actually his position. Whereas.

[Jon Favreau]

Oh, for sure.

[Max Fisher]

To your point, and I know this is supportive of what you're saying, but to your point, you have to go. Go very, very deep into the archives and you have to also ignore many, many other things in order to conclude that these things that we listed are Kamala Harris's agenda.

[Jon Favreau]

Yes. I think. And this sort of gets into one part of the conversation I had with Waleed, like, part of navigating this information environment as a candidate for office. And because this is not a complaint specific to Kamala Harris's campaign, this is what, like, Democrats have done forever. I think we need to rethink how we respond to whether it's misinformation, disinformation, or just stuff that we said that was taken out of context, positions politicians taken that they don't have anymore. Like.

[Max Fisher]

Sure.

[Jon Favreau]

I think it requires a, like actually addressing the misinformation or the misrepresented position head on, explaining, doing it in a way that actually captures attention.

[Max Fisher]

Yeah.

[Jon Favreau]

And draws attention to it, which is the communication strategy that we all grew up with was like, don't, you know, don't, don't say elephant. What was the George Lakoff thing? Right. Like, don't make people think of an elephant or something. You're not supposed to repeat the attack. You're never supposed to repeat the attack.

[Max Fisher]

Right.

[Jon Favreau]

I don't, I think in this information environment, I don't, I don't know that that's a good strategy anymore.

[Max Fisher]

There has been a ton of research in the last five or ten years about fact checking, when fact check works, when they don't work. I think there was a lot of research initially that found to the, whatever the elephant metaphor was, that doing the fact check actually deepens people's commitment to the wrong belief. And I think we moved away from that and I think there's now a little bit more nuance around the field and that there are ways to communicate fact checks to people, especially if you do it preemptively before they hold the belief that will counter it. And I guess to your point, I guess that's just part of the information environment now.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. All right, after the break, I talked to former Justice Democrats spokesperson Waleed Shaheed about the role of advocacy groups in the Democratic Party and what Democrats need to change if we want to win a supermajority.

[Max Fisher]

And just a heads up, we are dark next week. For Thanksgiving. But we will be back on December 8th.

[Jon Favreau]

The credit card companies are ripping you off and you don't even know it. Every time you use your credit card, they charge a hidden swipe fee. It costs the average family more than eleven hundred dollars per year. Eleven hundred dollars? That's because the credit card companies organize banks into pricing cartels. It's like OPEC for credit cards with no competition. We have the highest credit card swipe fees in the world. That's just wrong. Thankfully, the House and Senate have a bipartisan bill to fix this problem. It's called the Credit Card Competition Act. It would finally make credit card companies compete like every business across the country is supposed to do. So call your senators and representatives and tell them to pass the Credit Card Competition act offline is brought to you by three Day Blinds. There's a better way to buy blinds, shades, shutters and drapery. And it's called three day Blinds. They are the leading manufacturer of custom window treatments in the US and right now they're running a buy one, get one 50% off deal. Three Day Blinds has a local, professionally trained design consultants who have an average of 10 plus years of experience that provide expert guidance on the right blinds for you in the comfort of your home. Just set up an appointment and you'll get a free no obligation quote the same day. Three Day Blinds handles all the heavy lifting so you can sit back, relax, and leave it to the pros. I've used three day blinds since I've been here in la. They come, there's like a great consultant that talks to you, then they come back, they install them, they look great. It's super professional, very easy and pretty affordable. And on the fourth day, you rest and that's it. And then you have those blackout shades and you just sleep and sleep and sleep. Right now you can get three day blinds, buy one, get one 50% off deal on custom blind shade shutters and drapery for a free, no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to threedayblinds.com offline. That's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to threeday blinds.com offline one last time. That's the number. 3D a Y blinds.com offline.

[Amazon Advertisement]

Once upon a time, Amazon Music met audiobooks and listeners everywhere rejoiced. Oh, yeah. Because now they could listen to one audiobook title a month from an enormous library of popular audiobook titles, including Romantasy, Autobiographies, True Crime, and more. Suddenly, listeners didn't mind sitting in traffic or Even missing their flight. Amazon Music Unlimited now includes Audible. No way. Download the Amazon Music app now to start listening terms apply.

[Jon Favreau]

Waleed Shahid, welcome to the show.

[Waleed Shahid]

Thanks so much for having me. John.

[Jon Favreau]

I wanted to have you on because the two of us were part of an online debate about the future of the Democratic Party that I think would be more productive offline, which is the central philosophy and hope of this show.

[Waleed Shahid]

You don't think we can solve all the problems in 200 characters?

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Many tweets across now, many social media platforms apparently. I don't know why I keep touching the hot stove, but I can't stop. So forgive me for the long wind up, but I just want to give our listeners, like, the full background and context for what we're going to talk about. So. So there's a piece in the New York Times by Adam Jennelson. He's a Democratic strategist who's worked for Harry Reid, John Fetterman, various progressive organizations. I first knew Adam as an intern when I worked on the Kerry campaign 20 years ago. I am very old. And whether or not you agree with what he says in the piece, he is someone who's thought a lot about politics, comes from a place of genuinely wanting Democrats to win more power so we can help more people. So Adam argues in the piece, Democrats need to figure out how to win the next real majority in Washington so we can actually do shit for people again. But he's worried that it's going to be hard to win the majority if, quote, Democrats remain stuck trying to please all of their interest groups while watching voters of all races desert them over the very stances that these groups impose on the party. And the examples he uses are some of the more unpopular positions that presidential candidates took during the 2020 primary. Decriminalizing border crossings, defunding the police, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And he mentions the ACLU questionnaire that asked every presidential candidate to state their position on whether the federal government should fund surgeries for transgender undocumented prisoners, even though the law already gives prisoners access to gender affirming care. And this became fodder for the attack ad had against Kamala Harris that the Trump campaign put the most money behind. So, basically, Adam says the progressive groups play an important role, but they should think more about whether their tactics are more likely to trigger backlash than to advance goals. Uh, and if it's more likely to trigger backlash, then they should change those tactics or Democratic politicians should get more comfortable saying no to these groups. I like the piece. I don't agree with everything. I've experienced what Adam's talking about. I've had the experience of being pressured by the groups. I've also had the experience of being part of the group that pressures Democratic politicians. So I've been on both sides of it. I don't think it's what cost Kamala Harris the election. I don't think it's the biggest problem the party faces. That doesn't mean it's not still a problem. So I shared it approvingly. People had a lot of feelings about this piece, which is totally understandable, minus the people who said you should be deported and that cancer is too good for me. Those were two of the responses.

[Waleed Shahid]

Jesus Christ.

[Jon Favreau]

It's great. Social media is awesome. But you wrote a. I've always respected you a lot and you wrote a thoughtful response in the Nation titled the Left Didn't Sink Kamala Harris. Here's what did. So with all that said, again, sorry for the long wind up. I would love to hear you make your case and then maybe we can just get into it from there.

[Waleed Shahid]

The windup is necessary because not everyone is on Twitter for the last 48 hours. So appreciate the summary. And yeah, I just want to start by. This stuff is complicated and I don't want to come here as like a propagandist for the left or the progressive side and just say if they were just more progressive, they would have won. I don't think that's true and I don't think this is. There's so many factors here and there's so many pieces of this that are extremely important to sift through. And doing it in a long conversation like this is more useful than sniping on Twitter or, you know, that just reduces the arguments and reduces the conversation. And I think there's like, there's like Adam's. There's like a version of Adam's piece that is like the best version of Adam's piece to me. And then there's like the worst version of Adam's piece. And so I don't. There's also things in Adam's piece that I agree with and don't disagree with. And there's probably pieces in my piece that I'm like, you know, that aren't fully thought out in the way that maybe other people could take up. And so Jesse Jackson used to have a quote when he ran for president, you know, plane needs two wings to fly. And so every part, like in a two party system, you need a left wing and a Right wing. And I'm not saying Adam's right wing, but, you know, like, there are. I think part of the best version of Adam's piece is that we need to be ruthlessly pragmatic about how to win elections and be really laser focused on that and forget all of the kind of social justice movement stuff that's going on as a distraction that doesn't resonate with people and distracts us from the real issues and becomes unpopular for our brand as a party. I think that's kind of the best version of Adam's piece. And there's parts of that I don't disagree with. The part I disagree with most is that, like, somehow the Sunrise movement or Working Families Party or Justice Democrats, the aclu, the groups that Adam named, are the primary cause or the primary reason that Harris lost this election. And there's a lot of reasons why I don't buy that. And it is a convenient excuse for people who are making an argument for their preferred ideology. So I will say that we have to look back at 2020 like the left was so much louder in 2020, when Biden had historic margins and historic youth turnout. Historic turnout. And like the calls, millions of people were in the streets calling for defunding the police, a polarizing, unpopular slogan. And Biden still won. And Sunrise was much louder. A lot of the other progressive groups were much louder. And people. I'm not saying that Democrats should have run on defund the police this time around. I'm just saying there's a counterfactual in which these left wing groups and progressive groups were much louder in a time where the margins were better for Biden and people were mobilizing to the polls because they thought it would deliver police reform on some level. It wasn't that Biden completely distanced himself from police reform. He actually said he wanted to deliver racial justice and do the justice and Policing Act. And so that's one of the main issues I had with Adam's piece. The second issue is like, we have 330 million people in this country. We have two parties. There's always going to be conflict between people who have various passions or interests or grievances about their particular cause. And it's the role of movements to pressure parties and get wins and concessions and be seen and recognized. And it's the role of parties to figure out how to navigate those tensions and conflicts.

[Max Fisher]

And.

[Waleed Shahid]

And I have advice for movements. And I have advice for parties. The role of movements is to make their demands popular, majoritarian, win over the Public. And it's the role of politicians to follow that movement if it happens when it comes to stuff like transgender rights. Many people in my family voted for Trump for the first time this election. I obviously come from a Muslim American family. It's a unique demographic in this race. But a lot of people in my family who voted for Trump did not attend college, so they fit in this kind of working class conversation. And you know, the number one reason they voted for Trump was because they thought he would be different on Gaza than Kamala and because he said he would and Kamala didn't say that she would be different than Biden. And like the trans. Honestly, the transgender stuff did come up, but it didn't come up from groups. It came up from like three years of like a Christopher Rufo far right misinformation campaign, conspiratorial campaign that's dominating. YouTube, TikTok, WhatsApp about like kids basically that kids are going to school and then their teachers are convincing them to change their gender and promoting that in schools and then they come home confused with their parents. I don't think that's because of the groups like, and I don't think Adam's perspective on it, that it was like the fault of the ACLU questionnaire in 2019 is going to help us in the next four years. Like, this is a place where we need to do. The politicians need to make a lot more space and encourage social movement organizations and LGBT rights organizations to do some persuasion on transgender rights. Because I empathize with family members of mine who just found out. I know it sounds silly to people like us who like listen to pod save and like, but like people in my family just found out about they them pronouns like within the last four years. And the only people talking to them about it is far right YouTube and far right TikTok. And the Democrats approach this time around was kind of to either pivot away from the issue or say this is a distraction or kind of have a non answer. And I'm not blaming Kamala Harris for that, but I'm like part of we could have seen this two years ago that this would have come. I'm not saying Biden or Harris needed to do anything on it, but there could have been in the same way that there was a huge campaign for same sex marriage between 2004 and 2008 that had some allied politicians. I just didn't see that same kind of infrastructure on one of our weak points as a party that could lean to the movement's strengths. And create the room for politicians to be able to make it a majoritarian issue and change. The number one issue for transgender people is not athletics. No trans friend of mine is that their number one issue is public safety and healthcare. And I just think, yeah, I think we dropped the ball there. Same thing on immigration. And I don't know, I just thought it was an overly ham fisted take. But I'm curious what you think about some of this, because you said you've been on the receiving end and part of the pressuring group. And anyone who knows me in real life, I am a critic of the left within the left. And so the groups Adam named are some of the most strategic groups on the left. Like when I started in politics, very like before Bernie Sanders, there were very few social justice organizations doing electoral politics at all. They were doing disruption and protest and maybe a little bit of advocacy. And after Bernie ran in 2016, like, a lot of those movements are engaging in politics, which is a good thing because when you engage in elections, you have to win a majority. And so I'm just, I have seen improvement. And I think we're at this place where, yeah, there's this tension between movements and parties and they aren't for the same things, like, they've never been for the same things like abolitionists protested Lincoln, labor movement protested Roosevelt, civil rights movement protested lbj, act up protested Clinton. Like, this is American history. It's a big country, People had a lot of demands. And wishing away all of civil society when Trump is about to crack down on those same activists is kind of. Yeah, an overly simplistic explanation, I think, and not, not helpful.

[Jon Favreau]

One, one thing I thought about as you were just talking is that I almost think that the, we need to like, broaden the lens on the issue here because, you know, I think just saying that it is about the. How the party and politemocratic politicians interact with the groups is missing that. As you said, a, like, Republicans and the right, they get a say here too, and they drive a lot of this. We're talking about, you know, this, this ACLU questionnaire from 2019 and the ad that Trump ran in 2024. But even if that didn't, if none of that happened, you know, we're talking about a day after Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman, decided to introduce a bill banning transgender women from using women's restrooms, which she admitted was specifically to target the new congresswoman from Delaware, Sarah McBride. And like Sarah McBride, you know, responds in a way that is like, this is a distraction. And I hope we can all treat each other kindly. And I'm here to lower prices and help people in Delaware. And that's what I'm focused on. And it's like, you know, I saw a clip from Fox. Jesse Watters is like the first day in Congress, you know, the right after this election, the first thing Democrats focus on is, you know, trans bathrooms and trans women in bathrooms and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, okay, that's just crazy because Democrats didn't focus on that. Nancy Mays focused on that because she wanted this outrage. Right. So it's like, on one hand, we do have to, I totally get that. We have to realize that, like, Republicans are going to make something of this. I also think the other big factor is the information environment. And as you pointed out, that the interest groups and progressive organizations are now getting involved in politics. Right. So there is more interaction than there used to be, whereas just like, you know, they're pushing and they're doing advocacy and protest and all that kind of stuff, and then politicians are doing their thing, and then maybe they meet once in a while. Well, now it is. And the questionnaires, you know, they're, they're one example of this. It is a lot of groups saying in a primary, all right, these are the positions that we hope Democratic candidates will take or that we want you to take. And if you don't take them, then, you know, we'll criticize you or your, your fellow candidates will take them and criticize you for not taking the positions. Right. Which is basically what the dynamic was in the 2020 primary. And the reason I keep thinking about that the 2020 primary is like, look, when I said I was on both sides of it, like, I we interviewed every candidate who ran in 2020. And I remember, like, asking them, you know, my big thing was the filibuster. Like, I wanted them to all say they were going to get rid of the filibuster. And, you know, we're getting close to a point now where maybe the next time Democrats are in control of the Senate, they actually do that. But, you know, I would also go down the list. Green New Deal. And what do you feel about, how do you feel about immigration reform and all that kind of stuff? And I think that, like, those of us, whether we're in groups, media, whatever else, this is sort of amorphous blob on the left. I think that we like. And look, the politicians need to take responsibility for this, too. I totally agree with your critique there. Like, this isn't the groups didn't make them do anything. They decide, they, they chose to take these positions. But I look back on that primary and I'm like, did we really need to press them to decriminalize, say that they wanted to decriminalize border crossings, which is a policy that was not necessary to end family separation, as Joe Biden proved when he took office, which is a very unpopular policy. But they all raised their hand, except for Michael Bennett, I think, on stage on that. And that's, I do think that, like, it creates a perception.

[Waleed Shahid]

Michael Bennett, who would have definitely won in 2024, definitely won, right? Yeah, right.

[Jon Favreau]

It creates a perception that has, I think, dogged Democrats to this day. That is not about any single issue. But it's like, oh, and this is, this is, by the way, I think what the problem with the, the effectiveness of the. We're calling it like the trans ad, but I don't think that it was effective because it just went after trans people. It was effective because it said Democrats are focused on caring for undocumented immigrants in prison who want taxpayer funded. And even if you didn't say, you know, gender transition surgery, and you said they wanted health care or they wanted food, you know, like, whatever it may be, I still think it would have been effective because it's the idea that, that Democrats care about other people who aren't you. Right. And that cuts across whether it's trans folks, whether it's immigrants, whether, you know, like, whoever it may be. I do feel like we have to figure out a way, even though we are this giant coalition of all kinds of people and a lot of marginalized folks and vulnerable folks, we still have to figure out a way to make sure that the whole country knows, or at least the whole working class people in the country know that, like, we are for them and Republicans are not. And Republicans just want to, like, pick out individual people to scapegoat, and we're not gonna let them do that because we're fighting for everyone, no matter what you look like, who you love, how you identify, or what religion you belong to.

[Waleed Shahid]

So a couple of responses to that is one I really, I liked Benji Sarlin at Semaphore, wrote a piece about the 2020 primaries. And like, it's, you know, you didn't, you didn't contradict this. But there was, there was Bernie and then there was everyone. There was Biden and there was everybody else. And Benji's point in his piece was it wasn't just the groups pressuring for some of These positions. It was that like Julian needed a press hit and Beto needed a press hit and like Kamala needed like they needed some differentiation to get some headlines going because it was 20 people running. And like when Beto said like, hell yeah, we're going to take your guns, or Julian was like, will you join me in supporting decriminalizing border crossings? I don't know if that was like an interest group thing as much as I need to show the kind of grassroots, I guess I need the media's attention and get some applause from grassroots activists. And that was probably a misguided approach, but it made sense in a 20 person crowded field of just trying to figure out how to differentiate yourself. The second piece is on like the focus of the party. I think I've been thinking about this piece a lot, which is in 2019, I was home for Thanksgiving and I got called in to do an MSNBC hit with Chris Hayes about Medicare for all debate. Debate between the Bernie Wing and the Biden wing on Medicare for all. And I went because I guess I hate spending time with my family during the Thanksgiving holidays. So I decided to do the studio hit. And you know, my parents don't read the New York Times, they don't read English at like a college educated level, but they do watch CNN and MSNBC and these news stations. And it was like the debate that we all know happened for, for a year about Medicare for all, like, what? How do you pay for it? What are you gonna do about Joe Manchin? Are you gonna eliminate private health care? 10 minutes debate. Me and a Biden person, I come back home and I'm like, what did you think? Mom and dad? In my head, and they're like, honestly, we didn't really understand what you guys were talking about. And it was because the debate was so focused on inside baseball kind of tactics of like it never. It wasn't like, I think both me and the Biden person and Chris lost the room for like kind of the non college educated, quote unquote, low information voter who decides general elections. And so on some level, my reflection about the 2020 primaries is like, who, who did that actually make sense to like some of those debates that were kind of arcane and like difficult to understand. And like we do have a professional class in the party that isn't just activists, but like the journalist class, the D.C. pundit class, the average like MSNBC viewer who's super hyper engaged and I don't think are even left or woke, but like care about these minute things. That don't forge a collective will of what is the party about, who is the party for in the most simplest and broad terms. And like Trump is a lot easier to understand like just on like reading level and comprehension level. Like he dumbs things down. It's classic authoritarianism. It's strongman stuff. And it's like the system is broken. I'm going to fix it. And the people to blame are, you know, these, these others that you don't know. And so I'm thinking about that moment a lot where I'm like, how much time did I spend in 2019, 2022 having a debate about single payer healthcare and how you're going to pay for it? And what about Joe Manchin that honestly, like my parents who are vote, have voted Democrat their whole voting career watched 10 minutes of their son and didn't understand what the debate, what the substance of the debate was or how it affected them. And, and it's about the information environment. It's like, and so I don't know if this is like, I don't think this is like one point for Adam or one point for me. It's like, I'm not getting into that.

[Jon Favreau]

No, no, no.

[Waleed Shahid]

But like, I just am like, what, like there's our, the whole information environment is broken.

[Jon Favreau]

Like, oh well, I look back at that too. The, the number, the amount of detail I learned about Medicare for all and then the various ways that the different candidates tried to differentiate themselves from each other where it was like a Medicare all plus plan.

[Waleed Shahid]

And I think me and you debated each other over Twitter about it and I'm like, why did I, why did, why did we waste our time? I mean, it's important. It is important. But like is it?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, and it's like, did it. I think the real, the real question here is if you and I like want, want everyone to have affordable health care. Right. And did we.

[Waleed Shahid]

Don't put words in my mouth.

[Jon Favreau]

Right, right.

[Waleed Shahid]

I didn't raise my hand for that.

[Jon Favreau]

Did all of us candidates, activists, everyone else, did we like move the goal forward of getting to a point where we're going to get universal health care in this country? Because I remember thinking that after inflation Reduction act passed, I'm like, it's awesome that we finally capped insulin and are, you know, going after drug companies so that the Medicare can negotiate with drug companies, which Democrats been saying they wanted to do forever. And it's great that they, you know, Biden got to plus up the subsidies in the Affordable Care act. But like man, Is that a long way from what we were all debating in the 2020 primary? Like, we didn't. You know, we. We basically just got to do a little more on the aca, which everyone during that primary was already saying, like, is insufficient. And we got some, you know, good progress on prescription drugs. But, like, I don't know if we're going to get people. I don't know if we've gotten people closer to the place where they are. You know, the truth of the matter is, like, willing to get rid of private health insurance, which was, like, the big stumbling block with the public in 2020.

[Waleed Shahid]

The thing I'm left wondering about is, like, I mean, you did a whole podcast called the Wilderness when. After Hillary lost in 2016, and, like.

[Jon Favreau]

Looks like we're going to need another season of that.

[Waleed Shahid]

No, I know, but I'm, like, having so much deja vu that annoys the shit out of me because I'm like, what? But we had all these conversations in 2016, 2017, 2018, and, like, what did we learn that was right? What didn't stick? Because back then, the Bernie left critique of Hillary Clinton, one reason she lost was that kind of the Adams argument, like, managing a coalition representing a lot of interest groups, not having a simple message, a populist message, and overly. And part of that was because the Hillary campaign spent a lot of time in the primary saying that Sanders wasn't paying attention to issues of identity and race and gender and sexuality. And so it kind of affected her general election campaign. And now it's, like, turned the other way around where it's like, the left is overly focused on those things. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm kind of like, what happened? Some of these lessons apply to both sides. And, like, how do we. How do we get. How are we in the wilderness again?

[Jon Favreau]

Well, I. I do think that's a. It's a great example. And I was just talking about it with someone the other day, because I think Bernie's campaign in 2020 was different than Bernie's campaign in 2016, because in 2020, he did. In 2016, he was like, you know, one track mind, talking about economic populism, the establishment, the status quo, like that. He just had his message down in 20. He was doing a little bit more of that. I think his campaign reflected a little bit more of that coalition management that sort of. Hillary Clinton did a lot of. In 2016. I mean, it is interesting. She. In that primary in 2016. My view is like, this is the source of a lot of the problems as the primary in 2016, not necessarily the primary in 2020, is because in order to get to his left, she couldn't go there on economic issues because it's Bernie. And so she decided to go to his left on social and cultural issues. And when he would say something like the establishment, she'd be like, oh, you're calling Planned Parenthood the establishment, therefore you must be not sufficiently pro choice, or you're calling, you know, common sense gun reform groups, you know, the establishment. And that's. So you're not good on gun safety. So I think that we were sort of left with that version of the Democratic Party post 2016, that sort of. That Hillary's campaign, like. And a lot of it was a reaction to Donald Trump as well, right? Like, we should say, I think the Donald Trump winning, I think, led a lot of folks on the left to think, well, if that guy can win saying all the shit that he said that we know is not popular, or at least we don't think is that popular, then maybe we can say whatever and really say what we believe and push for the most ambitious agenda possible. And. And, you know, we can. We can run someone like that and have them win, too, if Donald Trump can win. And I just don't, you know, eight years later, I don't think that's where the electorate is. And I'm just trying to figure out how we get the electorate to that place. And clearly there's a role for activists and movements to persuade people and to change public opinion on this. And there's a role for politicians to both, like, sometimes agree with that and sometimes disagree and try to win their own races. But there is something with the communication between politicians, people in politics, and the movements and just everyday activists on social media that is, like, not working well. And part of it's because of the nature of social media. I think part of it's because, again, the right jumps in there and they cause trouble as well. Journalists like to stir up trouble on this because it makes for a good story when, you know, certain voices are fighting. But I don't know how we get to a place where we can sort of strategize in a cohesive way, knowing that we're going to disagree, right? Activists are going to disagree with politicians. It's been like the case throughout history. Like, we know that disagreement's there, but, like, it feels like we need a better way to sort of communicate and, like, give each other the space where we can disagree with each other. But not like not saying that you do this or. Or anyone did this, but, like, you see. You see it on social media all the time, like, accuse people of just, like, bad faith or throwing people under the bus or, like, exaggerating what someone's claim might be, which is. Seems to be what's happening now again. And that's just. I don't know that that's something that I've been thinking of, but I don't know how you've been thinking about it.

[Waleed Shahid]

I mean, so. So we. I'm like, an example of this. Like, I am the first in my family to attend college. I'm the first in my family to do anything in formalized politics. And a lot of particularly black and brown organizers in progressive civil society. And I don't know what it's like at Pot Save or Crooked, but, like, are often the first in their families to either attend college or be in a political space. And, like, they carry the. Part of being woke. Like, the old actual definition of being woke is being like, oh, I. Like, I know so much about how this country. I know the history of this country, the history of oppression, and, like, now I have a chance to do something about it. And I have the burden of, like, 11 million undocumented immigrants who still don't have any relief, the burden of the world's largest prison population, the burden of a rigged economy. And like, the, like white millennials who are in these spaces are often downwardly mobile from their parents. And so. So you have a lot of angry young people who have seen democracy not work for them. And like, you know, it goes back to the whole reason why Bernie was popular with young people is, like, people want to change, want to change fast, and we're fed up with the status quo. And then Bernie kind of brought a lot of this generation, including me, into formalized politics. And I just feel a certain way that that class of people, of particularly millennials and zoomers who have been handed a pretty shit world are the ones who are now being blamed for a loss that I don't actually think that a lot to do with. Obviously, there are things that we all progressives need to do better. Bad progressives and good progressives. There are bad moderates and good moderates. Like, there are things we can all work on. But the zeroing in on this class of kind of young people is hard for me to swallow on what happened in the election. I do think there's a general phenomena of, like, how do. And I care about this deeply as a progressive person. Like, how do we get progressive movements and young people more? And I do this work myself. Like, interested in strategy, interested in coalition, interested in majoritarian politics, interested in learning about movement history and movement debates. Like, the things happening today, amongst all the questions you're asking are the same questions that were asked to every movement in American history. And like, and so that's one piece. Another piece is like, we haven't talked about some of the things that are happening outside of movement groups. And to me, like, I have a Republican operative colleague. And so I brought up some of this debate to him. And I was. I asked him, why do you think we lost? And he. I don't. He was like, I don't think this has anything to do with it. Like, Biden was unpopular. She couldn't differentiate herself from Biden. And that basically explains the story. And. And to go back to themes of democracy, fascism, and then a comedian at Madison Square Garden was not a recipe for success and did not project an image of strength with the kind of voters that you needed to bring over. And I don't know if I agree with all of that, but even like this, like, Lincoln project, Republican operative didn't buy this, didn't think this was the right debate to be having or right discussion to be having. And. And I've seen so much news coverage in the past week about, like, a much harder conversation to have. Like, which is like, you know, David Plouffe, I think he's like, a smart guy. But, like, having two people, two senior people closest to the candidate come from Uber. Like, why aren't we talking about that? I've never met an Uber driver who is happy with Uber. Like, Uber drivers. Show me all this past year, Uber drivers. I'm not trying to pick on David or Tony west, but, like, there's a whole class of people who run the party who are not. Who actually are in the room, who come from the most wealthy corporations and corporate clients in this country who are getting very little scrutiny in this debate and had a role in moving Kamala Harris away from economic populist message and toward Mark Cuban, Liz Cheney, and a message that didn't and wasn't what we started with, which was aggressive, risky, and calling them weird. And it seemed like they went back to some of the 2012 stuff, which is like, play it safe. Let him fail. Let him do the Madison Square Garden stuff. And I don't know, when you have people in the room who are extremely wealthy or work for some of the wealthiest corporations, we have a consultant class that also deserves scrutiny. But we're not. We're talking about Sunrise. Like, why? Like, I feel like Outline Iverson. Like, why are we talking. Like, we're talking about practice? Like, what are we doing?

[F]

Building a business may feel like a big jump, but On Deck Small business loans can help keep you afloat. With lines of credit up to $100,000 and term loans up to 250,000, on deck lets you choose the loan that's right for your business. As a top rated online small business lender, OnDeck's team of loan advisors can help you find the right business loan to fit your needs. Visit ondeck.com for more information. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by Ondeck or Celtic Bank On Deck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

[Amazon Advertisement]

Once upon a time, Amazon Music met audiobooks and listeners everywhere rejoiced. Oh yeah, because now they could listen to one audiobook title a month from an enormous library of popular audiobook titles, including Romantasy, Autobiographies, True Crime, and more. Suddenly, listeners didn't mind sitting in traffic or even missing their flight. Amazon Music Unlimited now includes Audible Download the Amazon Music app. Now to start listening terms, apply.

[Kia Advertisement]

The first ever Kia K4 seamlessly combines bold style and advanced tech. With striking star map, LED headlights and an available panoramic display, the Kia K4 delivers design and function. The mobile Surround View and Blind Spot view monitors can help provide added confidence. Plus, SiriusXM comes standard, bringing you closer to what you love. The Kia K4 balances aesthetics and innovation. Learn more at kia.com K4 surround view and Blind Spot View monitors may not detect all objects around or behind the vehicle.

[Jon Favreau]

I read Adam's piece a couple times for this. Like, he definitely obviously calls out those groups. I don't think he blames them for the loss. I certainly don't. I haven't heard a lot of other people like blame those. Those groups or blame these and I would never blame all these kids. Right. Like you said. Right. Like I.

[Waleed Shahid]

No, no, but A.D. but the, the authors, the people in that orbit, Adam at Iglesias are saying no foundation should ever fund these groups from now on. Like, so it is pretty.

[Jon Favreau]

And I and I have never really bought into the like, it is the, it is the foundations funding the groups. Like, I think that the desire for politicians to take these positions and to run on these positions is so much more complicated than like a donor funds a group and the group does this. Like I just think. But what I always try to think about is like, how to validate the anger that a lot of these young kids feel and sort of the ambition to like build a better world because they have been handed a lot of shit, right? Like how to validate that while also like guiding them towards a strategy that actually will help them accumulate power, which is the only way that we can actually improve people's lives. On the consultant stuff, I have like a nuance view of this just because I've been in these rooms. Like, yeah, Tony, I don't really know Tony, but he's like her, you know, Kamala's brother in law. So it makes sense that she would listen to him. Pluff, like, look, if Tony. And if Tony and John, if.

[Waleed Shahid]

There's one thing I've learned from campaigns, always avoid family. It doesn't matter if you. Doesn't matter if they work for Uber or not. But family's complicated.

[Jon Favreau]

But it's like, look, if Tony and Pluff were like, you know, if there was like a ride sharing policy that was like way too lenient on ride sharing companies, I would be like, that's kind of fucked up. But like, David is like so like maniacally focused on the data and what's going to help win and would take the most populous position ever if he thought it would help us help win. Right. And I do think it. She ended up talking about price gouging. She ended up talking about she did a lot of good stuff on housing, right? Like 3 million new homes, the $25,000 credit. So she ended up like having a pretty, a good economic agenda that was populist. I look, I think like, I think it was a huge mistake politically and policy wise for her to like differentiate herself from Biden with like a lower, lower long term capital gains tax rate. I don't, I don't understand why that happens.

[Waleed Shahid]

Republicans in the Cabinet.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, I don't think that's why I like. Well, Republicans in the Cabinet's also like an easy one. You know, we fucking put Ray LaHood in our cabinet as Transportation.

[Waleed Shahid]

No, no, I know, but it's not. That doesn't capture a lot of people's attention.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, well, this. But I'm saying it's, you know, as you said, it's like a country of 330 million people and we are in the unfortunate position of having to have a much bigger, more heterogeneous coalition, or at least we thought we did. Now the Republicans are trying to get a more heterogeneous coalition, but like, so, yeah, I definitely have gripes about like, could she have been more like relentlessly on message in terms of economic populism? Yes, I think so. But that's also like my own priors and I've wondered like, look, she won in the exit polls on like who cares more about people like you? She, he just people trusted, you know, Trump more to manage the economy than that. I also agree, by the way, with your initial take that you could almost explain this entire election just because of inflation and backlash to Joe Biden's unpopularity and, and part of the anti incumbent global backlash that was in part caused by the hangover from the pandemic, which is, you know, high prices. And the high prices sort of, you know, fit on top of an affordability crisis that has been brewing for, for years, long before the pandemic. Right. And so when you add all that together, you have a working class people who are very upset. And I think where the social and cultural issues play in there is not that they are. That our majority is necessarily like conservative on these issues, but that they see Democrats as care, as focused on those issues more than they are focused on like the economic aspirations of most working people in this country.

[Waleed Shahid]

Yeah, two things. One, my point isn't about like Uber's nefarious kind of influence on the campaign in like a direct quit pro quo way. I just mean like demographically there's a conversation that we have professional college educated staffers all over the DNC and all over the Harris campaign who are calling the show and everyone's afraid of them and that's why they're making the decisions they do in actuality that I don't think that that's true at the highest levels of the party. And like, you know, like, what would it look like to have more like labor union leaders in the center of the room or senior advisors or like that kind of stuff instead of that's fair. People who've worked at Corporate America. That's my point. And like, maybe that's something we should also scrutinize if we're also, if we're going to scrutinize, quote, unquote, the groups. The second thing is on what you're saying, like, you know, I don't know how much there is that Kamala could have done, like in the position she was put in. Obviously, like, there should have been a primary to settle out. You know, Ested has talked a lot about this at the New York Times. Like a primary would have helped the party update its positions, had some conflict, debate, some of this out see who's reaching the mood of the country. I agree with that. I still don't know if we would have won. But the point that you're making about Republican, sorry, median voters think that the Democratic Party is overly concerned with social and cultural issues and not their issues or economic issues. I brought this up in my piece. But one, we need to understand that like, I mean we both know this and like this is not my, the America my parents moved to. And it's not the America like your parents were born into. Like family, gender, sexuality, race, immigration, culture we have. This country has changed on fundamental levels. Again, like most Americans learned about a pronoun that they never knew existed, did probably within the last five years, within their lifetimes get same sex couples can get married. Like you know, it was only in the, in the, in, in the past couple decades that a majority of the American people were for interracial marriage, that women like a majority of women earned and earned an income. Like this all has happened like within the last 50 years. And I used to think that Bernie style populism or even the race class narrative which you have talked about in your program was the best way to address this kind of stuff, which is like this culture war is a distraction. They're trying to divide and conquer us and by using cultural issues to pit us against each other. I've become skeptical of that view because of this election. Because I don't, I think Americans aren't stupid. I think Americans realize the country has changed and we're telling them don't worry about that.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Waleed Shahid]

And like I don't have an answer or a form solution yet. And I'm like, but I'm like, but there's one party that's saying, yeah, the country has changed and it's bad. And there's another party saying either get over it or don't worry about it. There's nothing to see here. And I think it's kind of condescending in both ways. Ways.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah, because the other message is if you're worried about it or you have questions, then you are just as bad as the Republicans who are using these issues as a wedge to divide us. Or you're stupid or you're, or you're the victim of propaganda. I mean like, I don't know if you read that New York magazine piece where the Reporter went to AOC's district to talk to a lot of the voters who voted for AOC and voted for Trump. Trump, it was like a working class in the Bronx and he talked to a lot of minority communities. And he talked to black voters and Latinos and Muslim voters and Asian American voters, and they're all working class. And when they talked about immigration, they're like, a lot of them are immigrants. A lot of them are immigrants who are here within the last couple of years. And they're like, here's the thing. When all these migrants came to New York City, there's now, like, an underground economy that's sort of above ground, where you've got these street food vendors that are undermining, like, immigrant small business owners. Because. And then there's like, prostitution. And a lot of the prostitution comes from, like, people who've been sex trafficked, you know, from South American, Central American countries with smugglers, Right? And so people are like, I'm mad about this because, like, my kids are going to school, and there's, like, prostitution out in the open, and there's these street vendors who are, like, screwing me on my business. And, like, are those the concerns of everyone in the country? No, but they're like, genuine, real concerns. And I posted that piece, and it was wild because the replies on that one. Well, first of all, I got a lot of replies, was like, why do you want to throw trans people under the bus? I'm like, literally, the piece doesn't say anything about transgender Americans, first. But second, there. There was like, well, you know what those people enjoy Trump? Enjoy getting deported, Enjoy your families getting deported, like, all that kind of shit. And I'm like, this is the evidence that. And back to your original point here, which is, like, college educated, like, folks from the coasts, whether it is the groups, the consultants, the Democratic Party structure, like, it's. It's. There's too many of those folks, us folks running this, and not enough, like, economic diversity and cultural diversity in sort of the people who work in politics.

[Waleed Shahid]

I think one thing about what you just said, which is that on some of this stuff, like, I live in New York and, like, you know, I noticed that there are a lot of migrants, like, selling fruit on the subway. Like, it is visible and felt. And at the same time, like, I'm like, people haven't seen gangs of New York. Like, everything you just described has happened in New York City 100 years ago. They were just Irish. And like, the fact that in our countries, like, DNA and story, we tell ourselves, like, what's happening today is not that different than what has happened historically in our country. And I don't know, I'm like, the Democrats so far are offering three proposals to this question of immigration or culture war issues, which is one, the Republicans have a point. And I'm going to, you know, some of the ads we saw in swing states, like, I'm also going to fix the border. I'm not going to give benefits to quote unquote, illegal immigrants, blah, blah, blah, blah. The second option is pivot to class war. And the third option is like kind of a version of that, which is like we believe in racial justice and immigrant justice and we should stand with the marginalized. I'm not satisfied with any of those three right now as proposals of how to deal with culture war issues. And going back to something you said earlier, like I wrote about this in my, in the piece, but one of the only countries that where the incumbent party was able to win reelection in the post Covid era was Mexico. And I'm not an expert in Mexican politics, but center left populist party. This amlo, the he's, that's the nickname of the president. He would hold these three hour daily press conferences in which he would, he would put up villains of the week week who were, you know, populist villains responsible for Mexico's inequality, corruption, crime. And AMLO had the third biggest YouTube channel in all of Mexico because these were entertaining, provocative, polarizing, like publicity stunts essentially. And his party won like a huge majority primarily from working class people in this recent election that Mexico just had. And, and I think like there are many people within the Democratic Party coalition, particularly those like at the height of the, at the higher levels of the party, who would think that kind of stuff is tasteless, uncouth, gimmicky. And in terms of like the war for attention and the attention economy. Like one thing I like, President Biden held the least amount of press conferences of any president in modern history. Meanwhile, the president of Mexico is doing three hour press conferences every day about the villains of the week. And so I'm just like, we have to get a lot more creative. We have to make things a lot more punchy because the stuff on the far right is, and stuff from Trump is totally geared by these social media algorithms to grab your attention. And our stuff is kind of created by college educated people, upper middle class people and geared toward like, you know, to be honest, like the MSNBC audience pod saves audience. My audience, which is not the audience that determines general elections and presidential elections. Like, I think we can all be honest about that. And like our, the audiences that I speak to when I go on TV or on Twitter or your audience are primarily people who are plugged in. And yeah, I've just been thinking a lot about like what this information age is so hard to make something bleed through, especially on economic issues. And we really, I think I have not seen anything from the Democratic Party that gets close to what amlo was doing in Mexico at all.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Waleed Shahid]

And maybe some of what Bernie's campaign did in 2016 or 2020, but like this guy was the president and he was doing this stuff. So I don't.

[Jon Favreau]

No, I mean, look, I think, I don't even know if people would think it's tasteless. Some would, but I think, you know.

[Waleed Shahid]

The American, you know, Joe Scarborough would think it was.

[Jon Favreau]

I think that, I think that there's Americans actually just, they see rich people like that and they get pissed off about people taking advantage of them, but they don't necessarily see them as villains. But I do think that like, look, your point is, is the point that I definitely take is having a president and leaders of the party who go up there and tell stories of how people who are in power are ripping people off and screwing people, I think is very, would be very powerful. Right. Like, I remember I talked to some people on the Harris campaign and whenever she talked about she had this record as attorney general where she like went after the big banks and like got the best homeowner settlement of any other attorney general and kept pushing the Obama administration on that even though she was friends with Barack Obama and was a Democrat. But she like wanted a bigger settlement and she went after for profit colleges. And I was like, she talk about that all the time. You know, like we didn't hear about that as much. And I, and I do think that you know, or like congressional hearings, you know, you, Katie Porter has taken on a, or, or AOC or someone like that has taken on a, like a drug company executive like that. I do think that kind of resonates with people a lot. Lot.

[Waleed Shahid]

It resonates because there's, there's some con, there's some conflict there, which I think people are naturally drawn to.

[Jon Favreau]

The one part of the race class narrative that I think is smart is like we don't, Democrats don't, we don't talk about our values in the positive, in a positive framework as much. Or when we do, it's like cliched poll tested garbage. Right. But like, I don't know that anyone really understands what our position on immigration is. Right. It's like, because, because when like you said, a lot of the folks who, who talked about it in this cycle will you say, look, well, I'm going to be tough on the border, too. Right. And I think that people probably want, like, an orderly immigration system. But if they just hear you say, I'm going to be tough on the border too, yeah, they probably think that you're doing it because it's the election and you're trying to run to the right of Republicans. Like, voters aren't stupid. But I do think if you articulated a position that, like, this is a country of immigrants and we want people to come here, here who want to, like, work and fulfill their dreams and raise their families and follow our laws. And if you're one of those people, then, like, we want to give you the chance. And we don't want to give anyone special treatment and we don't want to make a mockery of our legal immigration system by letting people in who, you know, after there's people who've been waiting in line for years to become citizens in this country. And so we want it to be fair and we want it to be equitable. We don't want to give anyone special treatment, treatment. But this is a country of immigrants and we want people here. Like, I do think, like, articulating sort of a positive vision about each issue that, that speaks to, like, where people are. I think is. Is at least one step that we just haven't done recently to go back.

[Waleed Shahid]

To the very beginning of this conversation. Like, look at the dreamers in Obama. Like, people weren't annoyed as shit at the dreamers. They were disruptive, annoying. Going to all the rallies and disrupting Obama to get the Democratic Party to change on the DREAM Act. And ultimately it created. There was tension, but it created a way for the party. The dreamers were very successful at organizing a majoritarian coalition, majoritarian message and make the space for Obama to do something that I think in his heart he wanted to do, but felt like, and even Harry Reid in his heart probably wanted to do, but felt like was politically toxic this time around. There was nothing like an immigrant rights movement anywhere, like, compared to the activism of the dreamers in the Obama era. And so I'm like, there's work that movements need to do to create the space for politicians to take those positions. And I just, I have witnessed in the past two years that like, even actually under Biden, that like the main mobilizations from the left and progressives under Biden were fundamentally about, about Palestine, to be honest. Like, there wasn't that. There wasn't that much other energy happening. And so this is like, I don't even Know, like, this is where I disagree with Adam's original piece, which I'm like, it's. I don't necessarily. Like, there is a role for movements to do some of this work, and I feel like some of the reasons why, like, if. If there was an immigrant rights movement or a transgender rights movement or even late, like a stronger labor movement like that could try to, in the margins, persuade the public on some of these things that Democrats are going to get attacked on or going to run on, that would be helpful for everybody. Sometimes that doesn't line up one to one. And movements have movements. Like, you know, if we had a movement for reparations in this country that's not a majoritarian position in this country, does that mean we shouldn't have a movement for reparations in this country? Probably not. But, like, you know, that's a tension between a movement and someone who wants to win a majority of the electorate. So it's complicated. And I just think in the next four years, like, I'm trying to think about all the conversations we had in 2016 and 2017 that maybe some of which we didn't fully integrate, because I don't. I don't. There's some things that are very similar to the conversations in 2016 and 2017. One thing. Thing that I want to take away for myself is like, what does it look like to be a progressive who not just pressures the party to deliver on our issues? Like, I don't know. And I'm not saying this to be a propagandist for progressives at all, or. But I don't think we get the IRA without Sunrise organizing, like, for two years, three years, annoying the shit out of candidates in the 2020 primaries by making climate change a huge issue for young people, organizing young people around it, moving people around the polls. Like, we need that for so many other issues.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah.

[Waleed Shahid]

And some of that needs to look like pressuring Democrats, and some of that needs to look like persuading the majority of the public around these issues or even if you can't win a majority. But, like, you know, I think there are a lot of. When it comes to asylum seekers and transgender Americans, like, they're honest. Depending on how you frame it, there's a majority coalition against rights for those people in this country. Country. If you can reduce some of that opposition in the margins, that would help Democrats in the longer term indirectly. So that's some of the things. Those are some of the things I'm thinking about.

[Jon Favreau]

Yeah. Well, look, we could talk forever about this, this was a fantastic conversation. I'm glad we did this. But I will leave it here and I'll say, look, I mean, so much of this, I think the conversation right now is at least online. It's like blame or looking backwards. Part of the reason we're doing all this is what you just said, which is like, over the next four years. And of course, like, again, this is all predicated on, like, what the Trump administration does, like, what we're responding to. But I do think figuring out, like, effective ways for both movements, politicians, everyone in between, to, like, communicate, strategize, figure out when to push, what kind of pressure to exert, when is something strategic, when might it trigger a backlash? Like, it's just, it's going to be the important work that we do and, and hopefully we can all figure out ways to have productive conversations about it and make some, make some real progress. So thank you for, thank you for chatting and hope we can, hope we can keep doing this.

[Waleed Shahid]

And again, like, we need to take risks and try things out. And there are effective and ineffective progressives. They're effective and ineffective moderates.

[Jon Favreau]

Yep.

[Waleed Shahid]

You know, it, it is true of effectiveness can be, you can be any kind of effective person. But yeah, I actually had one more question for you. Well, I'm curious what, I mean, you were around Obama during the Dreamer sting, and I feel like that was at the time that was such a polarizing conversation and people were trying to see if this was. People were trying to test if this was a majoritarian position and would help or hurt Democrats and Obama and Harry Reid in reelection. And so I'm curious, like, that's a way that movements disrupted Obama were angry, were protesting, and ultimately Ellie kind of found a place to work in concert together. And we did, we saw that with Biden and climate somewhat in 2021. And so I'm just curious what your read is of Obama and immigration.

[Jon Favreau]

We always thought that the like, in terms of, you know, public opinion, we actually thought that it was a majoritarian position. The challenge there was, which is the challenge with bureaucracy and being in government is like the lawyers kept telling us, like, I don't think we can do it. I don't think it's going to stand up to scrutiny. And of course, we saw during the Trump administration, it was, it was not a good look. Executive action is not necessarily a good substitute or almost ever a good substitute for legislation, which is much more, you know, far reaching. And so he did the executive action because I think thanks to a lot of the Dreamers and a lot of the activists that pressured us to do that, that. But he knew when he did the executive action that it was, it was going to be precarious.

[Waleed Shahid]

And it wasn't about the polling as much.

[Jon Favreau]

It was about, it was about, like, whether this is going to last. And I just, the reason I bring this up is because I do think as we, we focus so much on like presidential races and primaries, but figuring out, like, how to get a Senate majority again of like, you know, Democrats who are mainstream Democrats who are going to, who are going to work with us on some of the stuff, like, that's going to take winning some pretty purple reddish states, you know, and that's a, that's a tough project.

[Waleed Shahid]

I, I brought, I brought this up in the piece. But like, the reason I'm a little prickly about some of what Adam writes in this piece is like, Harry Reid famously said he opposed the Ground Zero, quote, unquote, Ground Zero Mosque, which was a complete Fox News right wing fabrication that I remember as a kid being like, what? Like, this isn't, like, this is completely. Feels so dehumanizing, so toxic. And like, this isn't true. Like, people are not trying to build a mosque at Ground Zero. And so, like, I'm worried. I want people to be specific about. And it's better to do this conversation not online. But I'm like, what are your proposals on immigration and transgender rights and like Palestine? Like, because I've witnessed the party take what I feel like are immoral positions based on these conversations in the past. And Ground Zero Mosque is one of the ones that for me, deeply, like, impacted me and made me feel like, I don't know, it's like we always have a Ground Zero mosque, like in every election. And so the, how do you respond to that? Like, this time the Ground Zero Mosque was around transgender rights and the border and asylum and all this stuff. And yeah, I want people to get more specific. And I'm not saying I have the answers, but I have a worry about, about what I've seen the party do in the past on some of this stuff.

[Jon Favreau]

Well, having worked for Obama when he was on the right side of that issue and us knowing how unpopular it was going to be that he took that stance, even though Reid broke with him, like, part of his way out of that is that he and Ben Rhodes, like, they crafted a speech because Obama's like, if I'm going to take this position, we're going to talk to people about it and we're going to be honest. And we're going to talk about the, like, the nuances in it. And, and again, it's harder to do that in this information environment. But I do think we need leaders on our side who are going to be willing to say, I hear where you're coming from on that side. And I don't agree, but it's a valid view and I'm going to be on this side. You know, like, I just think we can't take shortcuts.

[Waleed Shahid]

Sometimes people respect the conviction and the time. Sometimes they don't. But sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. And like, so I think we've all, we've all agreed that Harry Reid should have held daily 3 hour press conferences.

[Jon Favreau]

About the guy explained Nevada all right, will lead. Thank you so much for joining. This was really thanks so much. All right, take care.

[Waleed Shahid]

Take care.

[Jon Favreau]

Offline is a crooked media production. It's written and hosted by me, Jon Favreau along with Max Fisher. It's produced by Austin Fisher and Emma Iluk Frank Jordan Cantor is our sound editor, Charlotte Landis is our engineer. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, Reed Churlin and Adrian Hill for production support and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Delon Villanueva, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.

[Kia Advertisement]

The first ever Kia K4 seamlessly combines bold style and advanced tech. With striking star map, LED headlights and an available panoramic display, the Kia K4 delivers design and function. The available Surround View and Blind Spot View monitors can help provide added confidence. Plus, SiriusXM comes standard, bringing you closer to what you love. The Kia K4 balances aesthetics and innovation. Learn more at kia.com K4 surround view and Blind Spot View monitors may not detect all objects around or behind the vehicle.

[Amazon Advertisement]

Once upon a time, Amazon Music met audiobooks and listeners everywhere rejoiced. Oh yeah, because now they could listen to one audiobook title a month from an enormous library of popular audiobook titles, including romantic autobiographies, True crime, and more. Suddenly, listeners didn't mind sitting in traffic or even missing their flight. Amazon Music Unlimited now includes Audible Download the Amazon Music app Now to start Listening Terms app.