← Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer
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- [00:06]
A
Hey, it's Zach. I'm in Washington D.C. this week at Econcon. I just heard a panel talking about the economy, the election, what happened and why.
- [00:19]
B
It was really incredible.
- [00:21]
A
The team at Pitchfork Economics thought our listeners would really benefit from hearing the conversation. So we're sharing that with you today. Enjoy. Please welcome Helen Brosnan.
- [00:44]
C
I'm the executive director of Fight Corporate Monopolies. We are the sister organization of American Economic Liberties Project and we are a progressive advocacy and electoral organization dedicated to breaking up political and economic concentrations of power. This is a really exciting moment for us. For the last year we've been standing up programs to build evidence that a progressive populist economic framework rooted in sharp local contrast with powerful corporate entities could bolster Democratic candidates electoral performance. Last week we saw our theory come to life in many ways. A diverse set of candidates who were able to expand beyond partisan divides to villainize the giant corporations that price, gouge ship jobs overseas, abuse workers and small business and corrupt our politicians and democracy both made inroads with persuadable independent voters and excited an existing Democratic base of voters who were fed up with the status quo. We conducted a large research project that ultimately showed there's widespread popular support for economic populist perspectives across race, geographic and education lines, including bold policy ideas we don't often hear in the mainstream. And so many candidates really came through and responded to to that demand. This cycle we disseminated messaging, research, policy interventions and conducted several independent expenditure efforts and saw that taking on corporate power finally is a winning case. From Congressman Elect Pat Ryan in Upstate New York pledging to take on the utility monopolies in his county. To Congresswoman Elect Summer Lee offering a vision of multiracial working class solidarity in the face of massive corporate influence in our politics. To Senator John Fetterman embodying economic populism at every turn. To Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison fighting as hedge fund opponent on corporate price gouging. We saw this play out in so many crucial elections. And in case you had this one on your election bingo card, Congressman Elect Chris d' Aluisio in Pennsylvania was the first candidate to use the phrase corporate jag offs in an ad. Republicans tried faux right wing populist rhetoric and they failed. It turns out when the messages only seek to divide people and are backed up by absolutely zero substance, you fail. That's where we come in. Democrats won because we actually have an agenda that can work for working people of all races and all backgrounds, not just hollow rhetoric that punches down from bold visions offered on the campaign trail to progress made in the Biden administration. We have given voters a peek at a more vibrant, inclusive future where our economy and our political system and our democracy are not held in a vice like grip by corporations and their enablers and now we have to deliver for them. We actually recently just put out a corporate power agenda this week offering the new Congress a governing agenda to rebalance power away from monopolies and Wall street and fighting for workers and small businesses really to confront that corporate influence that can take over our politics. And we're hoping it can help supercharge our legislative battles over the next two years and keep substance married with powerful messaging and encourage Democrats to pick tough, tough fights for working people. This could not be a more timely conversation for our current political moment and I have good news because we have an incredibly impressive panel of the perfect people to address this path forward. And with that I would love to introduce each of our panelists and bring them on stage Perry Bacon is a Washington Post columnist. In his work he focuses on two major themes, the growing radicalism of the Republican Party and the right, and the efforts, mostly on the left and among Democrats, to create a more just, equitable society. Before joining the post In May 2021, Perry had stints as a government and elections writer for Time Magazine, the the Post, Politics Desk, The Griot, and FiveThirtyEight. He has also been an on air analyst at MSNBC and a fellow at New America. He grew up in Louisville and he lives there now. Maurice Mo Mitchell is an American activist and musician currently serving as the National Director of the Working Families Party, a progressive political party known for cross endorsing candidates through fusion voting. Mitchell earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from Howard University and after college he he returned to Long island where he worked for the Long Island Progressive Coalition. Mitchell then worked as an organizing director for Citizen Action and during the Ferguson unrest. After the shooting of Michael Brown, Mitchell temporary relocated to Ferguson, Missouri to work with other activists. Faz Shakir is an American Democratic political advisor. He serves as senior advisor to Bernie Sanders and Executive Director of the nonprofit media organization More Perfect Union. Previously he was a campaign manager for Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, an aide to congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and editor in Chief of the Think Progress blog and a political Director at American Civil Liberties Union. Anna Greenberg has over 20 years of experience polling in the political, nonprofit and academic sectors. She joined GQR in 2001 after teaching public opinion and survey research methodology at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the lead pollster in many successful campaigns and in 2014, won Pollster of the Year award from the AAPC for her work with Mayor Bill de Blasio's campaign for mayor of New York City. And with that, I'd love to hand it over to our wonderful panel. Thank you so much.
- [06:27]
D
Good afternoon. Nice to see everyone. Thanks for coming. So I want to start off with just general takeaways from the three of you about what happened last week, what the results meant, and also a little bit about what your role was. I should know this, but I don't really know what the Working Families Party director does on election day or the days before this. So everybody talk about what you were doing in the weeks before the election as well. So start with Fez.
- [06:54]
E
Thank you, Perry, and nice to be with you all. Appreciate the invitation. So, a couple of things. One, I kind of wear two hats. So one is with Senator Sanders. We traveled all over the country. Bernie did 19 stops over seven states in the course of 10 days. Hit a bunch of campuses. We're at the rattle them off. Oregon, California, Nevada, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, largely rallying a youth vote. And we were very pleased to see that in the normal midterm cycles, you have significant youth drop off. And we did not have significant youth drop off. We had huge lines, particularly in the races that mattered. A big deal was a deciding factor. So we were pretty happy with that. With another hat, obviously run more perfect union and journalism content around economic justice issues. And on that score, very quickly, you know, I think Lindsey mentioned it in her opening remarks is if you had done survey research, and we did survey research, you saw some of it yourself. Perry, if you did this last year and you asked people what's the cause for inflation, a plurality would have told you a version of Joe Biden or Democratic policies. And over the course of a year and a half, we changed that narrative, working together with a bunch of people in this room such that On Election Day 2022, Biden Democratic policies were not seen as a major driver of inflation, and rightly so. I think corporate greed and to some degree, the war in Ukraine and snarled supply chains were seen as the cause for inflation. And that mattered so much. At a point where voters were going into the voting booths, voting on as economy on economy as the number one issue. Recognizing inflation was something serious to be dealt with. And saying that the Biden path seems much more appropriate than whatever these Republicans are offering. And I think that was a credit to everybody who Helped build a movement to say, let's discuss why inflation in America is happening. And proud to say we played some part in that.
- [08:52]
A
So thank you for moderating and thank you all. So the Working Families Party, for those of you that don't know about us, we're a national political movement that essentially believes that our politics should work for the many and not the few. We're a independent political party with a ballot line in New York and Connecticut, and we do a lot of work all across the country. So we endorsed close to 1,000 people around the country, a number of states. And in the days before the election, I was crisscrossing states, intersecting with Bernie in a few places. You know, I was in Pittsburgh, in Philadelphia, in Milwaukee, a lot of the swing states on the ground with our activists and organizers and our candidates was with Summer Lee in Pittsburgh. Shout out to Summer Lee, who'll be. Yeah. Joining a number of others. We had a wonderful election day, by all measures. Also, we as a country had a wonderful election day, and I think one of the reasons why is voters. And there was work done to make this happen. Voters were voting against fascism, and there was a lot of work to be able to connect the dots between abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, our economic rights, and the ways that Republicans in the far right were a collective force to reduce our rights. And voting with Democrats was a path towards expanding our rights and preventing and also our democracy. So that's pretty clear. But also, voters were voting for something. And I think if the Biden administration and the Congress hadn't delivered more than $4 trillion of resources on the ground through the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction act and other legislation, I think we would have been in a different place. But we had something when we were knocking. So we hit more than a million doors around the country, 5 million phone conversations, 40 million texts. We had something to say outside of, you know, the Republicans are scary. We actually had a message aligned with concrete solutions that Democrats were actually delivering on. And then the last thing you know, there's been a lot of talk about abortion, which is many things. It's a public health issue. It's a gender issue. It is a human rights issue, and it's also an economic issue. The ability for working people to be able to plan their families is a fundamental economic right. Right. As anybody should know if they're thinking about planning a family or if they have a family. Right. Children are expensive. Right. And so people understood that. They understood what was at stake. They understood the stark nature of what was at stake, and they voted accordingly in historic ways. And we were able to at least buy ourselves some time. The Trump movement is still alive, but we've at least been able to buy ourselves some time in order to do the organizing. It's like a monster movie where there's 30 minutes left of runtime, but you think the monster's dead. But there's more movie to go, I think, in that moment. And we're going to have to continue to keep this electoral momentum going into more organizing, more governance, in order to consistently demonstrate that contrast between us and the far right.
- [12:40]
B
Thank you. It's great to be here. So I'm a pollster, and I spent the last two years polling in races across the country. My firm, well, I, I did five statewides, about eight congressional races, but my firm overall worked in about 35 races in every, just about every state where there were congressional and statewide races. And so I went to bed on Tuesday night at three in the morning just going, I'm so happy. I'm so happy. I'm so happy. Not only because Democrats won and I think saved democracy. I think that if Democrats had lost, our democracy would be in serious jeopardy. And it's still, still has a lot of problems and there's a lot of danger, but we're in a much better position than we are if we'd had election deniers as secretary of state in Michigan and Arizona and places like that. Also really pleased for my industry and my profession that the polling actually did pretty well this cycle. But let me just say a couple things about, you know, when we, you know, for statewide races, we're already doing research, you know, in 2021. And then with congressionals, the research starts in 2022. And in the early research we did, one of our biggest challenges was the economy, you know, not. And it certainly inflation grew over the course of 2022. And really, the peak where, if you looked at the polls, where Democrats are doing the worst in the cycle was in, like, June, when that's when gas prices were about, you know, $6, $5, $6 a gallon, depending on where, where you lived. But the challenge even leading up to that, coming out of COVID and this kind of strange economic recovery was people feeling deeply insecure, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anxiety. Had a sense that, you know, Biden was going to come in and fix things, and it didn't quite work out. You know, Afghanistan really undermined confidence in him as a president. Even though that's not directly related to the economy. It's kind of undermined a sense that he was in control and a strong leader. And it was a real blow from a voter perspective. And so we had to spend a lot of time thinking about how do we talk about the economy and trying to find the balance between sort of talking about accomplishments, the things that Maurice is talking about the Inflation Reduction act rescue plan in a way that's credible to people because to be honest with you, a lot of people didn't feel the direct effects of those programs or particularly in the case of the Inflation Reduction act, none of it's happened yet. Right. The $2,000 cap on out of pocket costs for prescription drugs is not happening until next year. Medicare negotiation hasn't happened yet. So talking about these accomplishments when people don't even feel them yet. And so, you know, you would do focus groups and you talk about them and people would say, well, I didn't get that. You know, I don't see that. So how do you talk about it? And we spent a lot of time and you know, there was a lot of commentary out of Washington about what Democrats should be doing in these different races without them actually going and looking and seeing what we were doing. But in every race I did, we ran ads about the economy and we did two things. One, for lack of a better way of talking about it, we felt people's pain. We had to acknowledge that people were struggling, acknowledge that anxiety, acknowledge that uncertainty, otherwise you sound completely out of touch. And then talk about the economic measures putting in place that eventually will make things better, but not going out there and saying things are better now and then linking it to a few things, but most importantly linking it to corporate greed. So particularly around gas prices, as you know, the House passed legislation around price gouging and so and but I certainly had people running for Senate and governor who talked about it too, even though it didn't pass the Senate and wasn't the law of the land. A lot of discussion about corporate greed, excess profits, taxing excess profits, returning money to folks, but also in terms of prescription drugs and talking about finally being able to defeat, you know, prescription drug companies and being able to force them to table to negotiate with Medicare. So we can't, we couldn't say we've lowered your cost right now, but we could say what our values were, you know, why we did it, who we went up against and what eventually it's going to do. I do think going forward it's, we're going to have Democrats are going to have to continue to be very careful in how we Talk about the economy because things are not going to get better for people right away. Many, again, many of the things in the Inflation Reduction Act. I mean, one of the things that I said to a number of my candidates was I don't want to put the $2,000 number in an ad because most seniors pay less than $2,000 a year for the prescription drugs. And so it's a very. It's actually a fairly small number of seniors who will benefit from it. So we need to be really careful in talking about what we've done so that we are credible with folks and that we ultimately, you know, in electoral terms, get some credit for, for doing that work.
- [17:24]
D
So you all hit some of it. But I don't think the terms student loan forgiveness or infrastructure was necessarily used by, I guess you mentioned a little bit, but talk about. Drill down a little more about which economic ideas or economic policies or messages really resonated. And then if you don't mind which ones didn't. I'll start with Anna.
- [17:42]
B
Sure. So I think it's complicated, right? Very complicated. Because you have this. Both a very, very strong support for progressive economic policies, but also some resistance to economic policies that benefit. I don't. I don't. Are not linked to work. Are not linked. And I'm not talking about this from a moral perspective. I'm talking from a voter perspective and what I hear in focus groups, just to be clear. And so, you know, there are certain policies, like the child tax credit, for example, that there was some resistance to. Right. Even though you poll it and it polls really well when you're in focus groups and you talk to people about it, there's a conservative perspective around parents and families are responsible for their children. The government is not responsible. So if you decide to have children, it's expensive. That's something that you sort of own. It's not the government's job to give you a child tax credit. There was also a sense that it went to people who didn't need it. You know, the tension between something that's means tested, but then if it's so narrowly distributed, then it feels like welfare. So I think that the right, the right choice was to have pretty high level of eligibility. But there were people in folks who said, I got the child's credit and I went out to dinner. Right. So I didn't need it. And so there are policies like that that test very well and are obviously incredibly important in terms of lifting kids out of poverty. But it's really tricky to figure out how to Implement it in a way that feels inclusive. And I think a lot of so I think you have to look at each. So I think student loans has that same issue, right? Everybody agrees that we have a problem, right? That this debt is bad debt and it hurts our economy and hurts individual people. And people agree that predatory lenders and for profit colleges are the bad actors here. And people have been duped and screwed at the same time. You know, you get this if you give this benefit, this, you know, eliminating student debt for the certain group, you know, why are only certain people getting it? Or I paid off my loans yesterday, why is the person today getting theirs, right? And so these are really, really tricky. And so what we found to fit in the campaign world, we didn't really talk about the child tax credit and student loans. We talked about Medicare negotiation, prescription drugs. We talked about insulin cap. We talked about things that will kind of vary, that had a very broad application, right. And very clear, broad benefit. And I think that's always the tension with progressive economic policy is how do you make sure the right people are helped by it without it becoming a stigmatized program. It's just always going to be the challenge.
- [20:18]
A
Royce Yeah, I would agree that one of the economic policies that when we were at the doors we were having conversations with, and I think is both universally popular and it's something that Democrats consistently have as one of their core positions is the ability to control the prices of life saving drugs. And we also, I mean, it's one of the reasons why we primary some Democrats when they don't go along with that, because we think it's one of the ways where Democrats need to be consistent. And it actually bring, it builds the coalition to include a lot of independents and other people agree with it. And we know that's an area that Republicans just will go. I would say, though, as it relates to like I see some looking at the audience, I see some people who might be college age or soon out of college.
- [21:13]
D
You know, all of you look very young to me.
- [21:20]
A
The cancellation of student debts struck a chord that mobilized the base of the Democratic Party that I think was very helpful for Democrats. I hear smatterings, right? And you know, it was from our standpoint in our base, with our volunteer base and the energy needed to get people who are giving their volunteer hours and small dollar donations and few feeling inspired and breaking off the patina of cynicism that gets them in motion. Concrete victories like that was to me very electorally helpful in terms of the people who are the base and the sort of core of what it actually takes to mobilize folks into winning an election. It's not necessarily just about the sort of popularity of a particular position. It's about how that position might mobilize people to believe that they need to get in motion and organize in order to get one party or another towards victory. And I saw that with student debt, which isn't just, you know, young people or people just came out of college. It's, you know, I'm in my 40s, and I have a lot of contemporaries that have student debt that still have student debt. I only recently cleared my student debt. So, I mean, and I think all of these, all of these are complicated, right? Because based on the polling, it's one of the reasons why a lot of these economic policies have means test. I tend to think from a policy standpoint, there's problems with means testing because then the policy has an arbitrary cutoff, and then you almost create a constituency of people who get it and people who don't, which, again, makes it harder to maintain the policy once it becomes law. Right. But certainly in terms of what I saw working, I think broadly popular, anything related to healthcare, because that hits people in such a fundamental place across identity, across politics. And then, yeah, the student debt, it was like a shot in the arm that we noticed in our ranks that was undeniable.
- [23:39]
E
I would say, that they didn't hear enough about us on the economy. They did not hear enough on an economic contrast. And I say that as someone who is pleased with the outcome, very excited about the outcome, I think the message around abortion rights got through loud and clear. The message on the assault on our democracy got through loud and clear. And those were undoubtedly significant factors in driving and mobilizing a Democratic base and coalescing us to have the turnout we needed to maintain. Essentially, the Biden coalition that helped him win in 2020 and then helped us maintain essentially the same seats in 2022. I, I, and I say all that saying now, look at all the potential opportunities that are presented to us to get the next 2, 3, 4, 5% in the next cycle, because we didn't even get aggressive about an economic contrast. Think of what that would look like. Think about aggressively campaigning on Medicare expansion, Social Security expansion, right? It's one thing to say, hey, these guys want to attack and kill Social Security. And you did hear that. And President Obama deserves a lot of credit for probably most effectively animating that at a time of need. And yet you did not get that as a loud and proud brand Enough, in my view. Do people know that we love Social Security, Medicare? Yeah, I think they do. Do they hear us actively advocating for the expansion? Probably not. Do they know that we want to take on corporate greed in the way of wanting to institute a windfall profits tax on oil companies? Do you think that got through? I don't think so. To our credit, you know, President's credit. I think he said it near the end of the campaign and suggested he would do it. I would argue to you it's one of the most popular things you could do. I mean, and it could correct me on the survey results. But if you didn't, let's go ahead and test expansing expanding Medicare, expanding Social Security, instituting windfall profits tax on the rich, and then giving a rebate back to consumers in their pocketbooks. Let's test it. Let's run. And, and to my mind, you know, one of the frustrations I had and I still carry is that while we had this great success, right? We did. And I. Excellent. Let's keep it going. Let's build on it. But, you know, we went through a painful year. Build back better in which predominantly two senators throttled a lot of the ambition there.
- [25:55]
A
Which two senators are you talking about?
- [25:56]
E
Oh, man, they happened to be up in 2024. You might be playing in some primaries there, Maurice, but I think, you know, in center Santa, center mansion. So we went through a difficult, tendentious fight and at the end of it, we got the Inflation Reduction Act. And I want to echo, you know, everything that Anna was saying about the idea that you can't just go back and say, hey, we came, we saw it, we conquered, we passed Inflation Reduction act, everybody's success, we're done here. Because if that's the message, then what, what are we voting for you to maintain office for? What's next? Give me the next two, three, four things that we're going to do. And I guess to my dismay here that some of the things that were left on the chopping block almost felt like they left the public conversation. Like an expanding Medicare was one of those expanding childcare. Right. Imagine when inflation continues to rise and higher and higher in people's minds and you're not talking about that one way I gotta deal with your family cost of living is I have a plan for making childcare more accessible and affordable for you. And I think the paid sick leave, there are some elements there that felt like you could maintain. Give me two more Senate seats and we're coming back for more in a way that builds credibility with the audience. Because what I sensed and felt from some in a Democratic Party was that we passed American Rescue Plan. We did chips, we did infrastructure, and then we did the Inflation Reduction act, all significant accomplishments. And we flinch because we might think that maybe the progressive economics that we were pursuing, in which we did stimulus and Medicare, prescription drug negotiation, student debt relief and, you know, domestic manufacturing, maybe that, maybe that was bad and you could feel it in the air. Tell me I'm wrong. Like, like maybe we shouldn't be loud and proud about talking about why we did that stimulus check. Let's just, let's not talk about that anymore, you know, and you're like, what? No, the idea is to advocate and argue that it was right. It delivered two sentences that Georgia, by the way, one of the major reasons to deliver two Senate seats in Georgia, and yet it felt like we walked away not only from the advocacy and the defense of the things we did and the things that got left on the chopping block and build back better, you build credibility. And we're coming back for more. And here's why. And I think we to some degree lost the threat of why we did those things, why they mattered, why they're effective, and why they're a better solution than whatever a credit crazy MAGA movement trying to put on the table.
- [28:22]
D
I don't think it's too much of a debate, but there were two sort of differences that were expressed here. So I want Anna to respond to his contention that there wasn't enough talk about economics. And I don't think you said there wasn't any, but I don't want to give your response to that. And then Maurice, respond to her comment. The student loan debt, we can't really talk to people about. We have to be careful about things. You get at that, but it sort of reconcile what you said with what she said on that, if you don't mind. So Anna first.
- [28:44]
B
Sure. I mean, I agree with much of what was said on the panel, but I just for a friendly amendment about. We didn't talk about these issues. I think actually Democratic candidates, I can only speak for the ones, the many that we did. And my firm talked about economy a lot in a bunch of different ways. And so I did Mark Kelly's polling and I would say a third of our ads, and I think we ran about 70 were on the economy, including not just prescription drugs and health care, but chips, supply chain, trucking. I love the trucking ad. If you guys ever watched the trucking ad, it was one of the last ads that we ran. And so in fact, throughout the campaign, we basically were like, every third ad has to be on the economy. And I think if you go and look at Matt Cartwright, another race I did, about half of our ads were on the economy. Same kinds of issues. And by the way, also mentioning things like corporate greed and that sort of thing. And also not this is the economy per se, but a lot of discussion of not taking corporate PAC money about who you're for. And so I would just disagree that we didn't talk. Didn't talk about them. I do think overall we have a challenge building on this and going forward because while I completely agree that there is a lot more work to do in all of these areas, many pieces of build back better, like paid leave, which didn't happen, need to happen. I also think that we need to be more expansive in our economic messaging and think about a growth message, not just a kind of redistribution message. You know, people where Biden actually has his strongest numbers is on job creation. He's at about 67% disapprove on inflation and actually about split 50, 50 on approve, disapprove on jobs. That's an enormous accomplishment for a Democrat. Usually we lose on who's good at creating jobs. And so, you know, we should be thinking about what does a growth economy look like? What does equitable growth look like. We should be talking as much about people who don't go to college as we talk about student loan debt. And I think that that has to be where we go next. You know, every cycle I pull on apprenticeships and skills training and alternatives to college. And, you know, all that. And it's always, it's, you know, it's cross partisan, cross class, cross age. It is incredibly popular. You know, I work for Michelle and Grisham now. It's free to go to college and trade schools in New Mexico. We advertised about that. I think that we have to. And we really focused in Michelle Han Grisham's race on. On kind of growing the economy in New Mexico, not just things like spending on education and healthcare. And I think that's where we have to go. So I'm hoping that as we think about what progressive economic policy looks like, especially in divided government, you actually have a whole lot of Republicans who actually support, you know, apprenticeships and skills training and trade schools and free community college. I think that we need to be more expansive in how we talk about economic policy.
- [31:30]
A
This is the student debt question. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think all of these issues are complicated. And there's a lot of ways to read a poll like, I'm an organizer, right? So the way that I use polling is to get a baseline for where we are, not where we're going, right? That's the work that we need to do through. Through the organizing. And so, for example, we did some polling, and we understood that generically, Democrats had some credibility issues as it related to public safety and as it related to the economy in some areas. When I read that, I didn't think, oh, all of the candidates that were endorsing, they should be afraid of their shadow as it relates to public safety and as it relates to the economy. That just helped me understand that we needed to come up with a rigorous, clear, and authentic progressive response that stands on our issues and our values as it relates to those things. And so to me, any rigorous response in the area of the economy has to. To talk about student debt relief and how that is transforming people's lives and other things, of course. Additionally, you know, in order for us to have the outcome that we had on Tuesday, we needed, and Democrats and progressives needed their base to understand that all of the work and the voting and the organizing that they had done last cycle was for some purpose, right? And those concrete proof points in people's lives and the very specific items that the President had ran on and delivered on was a recognition that people in the base, who were the millions and millions of volunteer hours that were calling their neighbors and. And calling and connecting to other voters and turning people out in churches, that led to these razor thin margins. It was an element that led to the victory. And so whether or not there's segments of the population that might frown on student debt relief, it doesn't take away from how important it was in mobilizing and energizing people that people like me need to organize. And I also think it's like the intensity and salience of that issue may not reflect in all of the polling in terms of the percentage of people that may or may not be for it in a binary test of whether or not you agree with it. And what I could tell you, and this is more anecdotal, is that there was an intense. There was an intensity that, I mean, 26 million people registered for that. I think that demonstrates how intensely people felt about that as a real need and how that translated into people really feeling, because there was a disconnect, and people were wondering at a certain point near the summer, why is it that I vote for Democrats? And I think a lot of that gap was closed by things like the student debt relief and this drumbeat of solutions that people are either feeling in their lives or they're anticipating. And that shifted expectations. That helped the organizing on the ground and I think ultimately helped electoral outcomes.
- [35:08]
D
Let me jump. We talked about this a little bit last week. You have Florida passed the minimum wage in 2020. A bunch of states have passed them last few cycles, but all these states are red states. So abortion, a proposal to ban abortion fails in Kentucky. You had Medicaid expansion pass in South Dakota. Very, very red state. So talk about the voter who votes for Democratic or progressive economic policies, but also votes for Rand Paul or votes for John Thune. Who is that person, in your view? And how do and can Democrats win those people's actual votes?
- [35:42]
E
Perry and I were having a conversation, so he's teeing me up for exactly what he knew wanted to discuss. And I'll jump right off the point. I agree with a lot of what Anna was saying, and I think that, you know, the economy was the number one issue in everybody's mind. So it was the number one issue for the persuasion audience. So of course we had to say something and we had to be talking about the economy. My nuanced slight difference of opinion is were we talking about enough in a way that animated a distinction and a difference in the brand of what the Democratic Party is and stands for? I think we've got a lot of room to run on. I think we got a lot of room to make. And it goes right into the, the conversation that Perry's teamed me up for, which is, you know, where's the audience that we're trying to build towards? And it's a multiracial, diverse working class coalition across America. And those, what we know about those working class voters is they voted in Nebraska for a $15 minimum wage. They voted, you know, for Medicaid expansion. In South Dakota, they are, you know, even in Arizona they passed a predatory medical debt law. And, you know, Oregon passed health care as a human right law. I think that there is, in my view, a strong consensus when you do economic justice issues that speak to working class issues that go to 60 plus percent of the American public. And when you're living in that bread and butter, it is our expansion universe. It is our persuasion universe. If we are speaking to people and wanting to get beyond the 50% needed to win an election and to say, how do we get to 52, 53, 54, I'm arguing very boldly for a strong working class brand Party and definition around these issues that requires in my mind, and I'm open to other perspectives and thoughts and ideas on it, is that in some sense it needs to break through in the audiences and in the voters minds that that is what defines a Democrat. That means that there was a fight and a friction that these guys picked against power, they went up against them. I saw it animated before me on the TV set and when push came to shove, those guys were on my side and those guys were not. And it just means getting a little bit stronger on how we practice politics. The tension in some of these conversations is when we're producing good progressive policy, does it match good progressive politics? And sometimes in my view, and I think the progressive wing of our party feels like that politics needs to have fight. It needs to have animation of a fight and a fight against corporate greed. Are you willing to take it on and show people that we are willing to go up against powerful actors? It goes to the heart of what I believe a Democrat is, is that you're saying that in a world of many influential powers and wealth has a ton of power, that somebody has to fight for people. And if all we do here is live and work for profit, we're not looking out for the values of working. People are left behind. So who's going to be willing to take on profit maximizing individuals, profit seeking individuals, wealthy individuals, who's willing to take them on first for people? So if it isn't work for the market to provide paid sick leave, who's going to fight for my paid sick leave? If it doesn't work for the market to provide a rural hospital, who's going to fight for my rural hospital, my rural health care? If it doesn't work for the market to reduce student debt, who's going to fight for. And so while we execute a policy and I think we're moving in a good and positive direction on progressive economics, I give a lot of credit to Biden, Ron Klain and the whole team there have just moved pushing this pile in the right direction. It also needs the animation in the public's mind that that is what defines these guys. Holy cow, these Democrats, they are willing to fight for me and take on power. And I think we got a lot of room to run and where we have done it well. And I think, you know, there's some areas where I feel like this goes into a larger conversation on recruitment of candidates and what type of candidates you're putting up. And you know what, how do you animate these conversations? But I really happy about Fetterman's rise over the course of a few short years. And even there's a young, talented woman in Washington state who beat Joe Kent in an R&13 district named Marie Glush and Camperez auto repair shop owner. And here she is, wasn't sure she even wanted to run. She gets in the arena, boom, takes down one of the most impressive wins. And here's a working class person. So I think there's a lot of things entangled in everything that I'm saying. But if you had your North Star of like what are we trying to do get working class voters back? You know, that's our job. And we're just very quickly before I conclude, you know, before we get very laudatory about what happened, you know, it's dangerous that we lose a popular vote in 2022. Right? It is. And even if you go back to 2020 and reckon with 2022 too, you're still needing to reckon with in a crazy after four years of Trump and watching that disaster of an S show that like you still have a lot of people saying you're going to vote for the House Republicans and we're still in a polarized tribal climate. I get it. We are in polarized tribe. The way out of it is to kind of reach these middle class, working class voters.
- [41:01]
D
Either one of you want to add, either one of you want to add anything on? No. Okay, good. Because I have two more questions and then we'll go to the audience. What are this taken Biden trifecta in Washington? What are the two things you were glad the Congress and the president enacted? And then what is one thing you really think was either a mistake or really left on the table?
- [41:29]
B
I mean, I think that infrastructure and chips. I will go back to my point about economic growth and equitable growth and being the party of growth and job creation. I think those two pieces of legislation have allow us to, I think create and build a narrative about how we want to provide good paying jobs, stable jobs, jobs with benefits. And I think that that is, you know, talking about kind of cross class coalitions and cross racial coalitions. I don't think anybody disagrees with that sort of agenda. And I think that we should be doing more of it. And I'll go back to skills training and apprenticeships and community college and alternatives to college. I think that that kind of growth economy, supply chain, domestic manufacturing, Republicans. Oh, and I should have added supporting small businesses who actually create most of the jobs in this country. And I think that people perceive that Republicans are much more interested in small, small businesses than Democrats are. And, you know, if we're going to compete and make the contrast that we're talking about the Republicans, we have to be people that people trust on the economy, they trust us on our values. They think that we're for regular people, that we care about poor people. They think that, you know, that we're advocates. You know, if you. After the 2012 election, you know, by Obama in the exit polls was seen as better on supporting the middle class, but Romney was seeing better on the economy and job creation. We need to own both of those spaces. Right. In order to compete with the Republicans on the economy. And so I thought that chips and infrastructure and we advertised extensively on those issues in our races, you know, just kind of creates this foundation for being about equitable growth.
- [43:09]
A
A lot.
- [43:10]
D
One thing you wish he had done or something didn't go well.
- [43:14]
B
Wish they'd done.
- [43:15]
D
Wish they'd done.
- [43:15]
B
I got to be honest with you, I thought we did. We wildly exceeded any expectation of doing anything. And so I was, I would. To me, it was like a cornucopia of accomplishments that we could talk about in the campaign. So it's hard. I'll think about it. But I was pretty excited about what was coming.
- [43:31]
D
I'm a journalist. We think only term negativity, but others don't go ahead.
- [43:35]
A
No, I mean, there's a lot of the agenda that remains to go through or be passed. Right. Like there was a huge opportunity around structure, like in a moment where actual fascists nearly won power in key states and are planning to take over a federal government. We had opportunity to pass some structural democracy reform that we just, we didn't. And I think that that was malpractice, that that didn't happen. And also there were components of the build back better agenda that included the care economy. Right. That was left on the floor. And we need to figure out how to pick that up. I mean, there's so many Democrats. I think, yes, there were accomplishments and you know, when you take a step back and the fact that there's trillions of dollars of resources sent directly to state, state and local governments and directly to taxpayers and to individuals, that significant is historic. And in that governing window, there's still a lot more that I think could have been done. I think it was a mistake. It's interesting. I disagree strategically that we should have separated, have a bipartisan sort of infrastructure bill because I think that that sort of lessened the demand for us to actually Have a larger package. And then at the end of the day, like, you know, the two senators that you talked about, you know, ended and as well as a number of people in the House, a few of which we primaried and some of which won't be coming back to Congress, you know, created the conditions where they sabotaged full agenda. And I think that that was a mistake. And you know, when Democrats have the ability, I agree, like every single day people should get it in their heads that what Democrats or progressives, what we do is every single day we look for opportunities to fight for working people and to fight against organized capital and have a legislative agenda that tells that story. And I think there were missed opportunities and doing that in terms of this. I mean, again, it's kind of wild to even say this because the scale was intense, but the scale could have been even more if we didn't have two senators that kind of blocked, stymied and slowed down the progress and sometimes arbitrarily, like what's the difference between 379 billion and 380? It's like some of this stuff is just like maddening. Even though we did a lot, we could have done a lot more. And I want us to have that appetite to do more. We could do both. We could celebrate the wins and actually demand more. And I want us to figure out how to do both.
- [46:30]
E
President Biden and his team are doing some impressive things on corporate accountability. Got a great antitrust effort going on. Some of that has included making things like hearing aids broadly accessible and affordable to a lot of people. And when you're trying to think about how you animate those issues for people, we obviously work on building a distribution of information so that people do know these kinds of things are happening. But there's also got to be animation around it. I think our politics is still yet catching up to an area that Biden is leading the Democratic Party on. Because you would have gone back many decades and these kinds of things, you wouldn't have necessarily seen a robust antitrust agenda from prior Democrats presence. Now you do. So now you need politics catching up to it. So how do you start going out and talking about here's what actions where we've got going, one slight critique or constructive criticism of people as we get into policy design, you pass something like inflation reduction act and I get, I appreciate that you're going to have to reach compromise and you're going to have to bring down your hopes of what you wanted to get done. The one thing that like was a sense of frustration for me is like when you know you're about to pass something, put something in there, it's immediately beneficial, immediately to the thing that Anna's raising. Like we should be able to go out and talk to people about, yes, we passed inflation reduction Act. There's five provisions that are going to hit over the next four, three, four years that are going to have some impact. But what we definitely did in the next few months is we made insulin. 20 bucks for you. Right. And whatever it might be, that one thing that I'm going to do, you know, Medicare is now at 64. So when you retire at 64, you're going to get it now instead of 65, whatever it might be. Give us. You give something that is tangible, that people can feel, touch, smell. And I think this is a particularly unique challenge for us as Democrats rather than Republicans, because we believe in government. And because you believe in government, you have a cynical populist, particularly in the protection persuasion audience, that you're working against people who might not believe that government can do anything anymore. And you're saying, hey, we're making it work for you. Trust us. You know, we're get domestic manufacturing back. We're going to build these jobs. And I trust that there is going to be this. It's a long haul. You're going to shovels are going to ground. It's going to take a while. But one of the ways you start to restore and build that confidence is, boom, I got something that immediately touches you. That's why I thought the stimulus was really critical. Right. It's touching. You feel it, you sense it. That, yes, this would not have happened in my life were it not for a Democrat. I think as we get into more policy design conversations and merging them with politics, I hope that more people are incorporating. That line of thinking is that we're gonna pass these kinds of bills. Just gotta have something in there that we're gonna immediately go tell people about.
- [49:10]
D
This is a great panel. Thank you all for your candor. Thanks for your answers and thank you all for.
- [49:23]
C
Pitchfork. Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook @CivicAction and Nick Hanauer. Follow our writing on Medium@CivicSkunkworks and peek behind the podcast scenes on Instagram. Itchfork Economics. As always, from our team at Civic Ventures. Thanks for listening. See you next week.