← Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English with Derek Thompson
Trump Is Doubling Down on Iran. How Should Democrats Respond?
00:42:18
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A
Foreign.
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B
With an unjustified, unexplained war spreading in the Middle east, with ice rampaging through various American cities, with tariffs going up and down and up and down depending on the day, Donald Trump's polling has continued to edge downward every week, and yet the approval rating of the Democratic Party is still stuck near its all time low, according to Gallup and other surveys. One interpretation of these polls, one obvious interpretation, is that the deep unpopularity of that letter D at the end of a candidate's name is a huge albatross around Democratic candidates nationwide. But there's another interpretation that I think is more interesting and perhaps more true. The fact that the party has no clearly defined leader, no clearly defined brand, to use the dreaded B word, is an opportunity for young Democrats to define it for themselves. Rather than act like a congregation all singing from the same hymnal, they can experiment, disagree, adapt their message to the electorate. Today's guest is Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego. I think Gallego is interesting because he's hard to pin down. He's deeply critical of the Trump administration on immigration, obviously, but he was also deeply critical of the Biden administration on immigration. While the concept of abundance ideas from the book that I co wrote with Ezra Klein are often held up in direct opposition to economic populism, Gallego is a proponent of abundance principles who also isn't afraid to talk about taking on corporate power and even breaking up companies. He's someone who could be plausibly accused of being a moderate, but he questions the very concept of moderation. Today we talk about the latest in the Iran war before talking a bit about why the Democratic Party is still so unpopular and why that unpopularity might be a sneaky opportunity for Democrats and we end up in an interesting place that I didn't quite anticipate. Democrats, I think, are very good at talking about affordability at the moment. They're good at talking about redistribution, too, how to bring people up to an income level that is decent and dignified. And I agree that Americans need to feel, want to feel like they can get through the day. But I also believe, as Gallego does, that good politics has to offer something a bit more than problem solving that brings people up to a minimum viable level of comfort. I think good politics, maybe especially now, has to offer a vision of success in America, a message of aspiration, not just affordability. And so we end up talking about how Democrats can pull that off, how the party that at times might sound like they mostly want to tax success might also be a party that celebrates it. I'm Derek Thompson. This is Plain English. This episode of Plain English is presented by Audi. We all know that feeling. A change of plans, a new opportunity. Instead of overthinking, what if you just said yes with the all new Audi Q3? The answer is easy. It's made for the yes life. With the power and room to handle whatever pops up. Yes to adventure, yes to right now. Because saying yes without hesitation, that's real luxury. The all new Audi Q3, made for the yes life. Learn more@audiusa.com Senator Ruben Gallego, welcome to the show.
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A
Thanks for having me.
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B
The war against Iran. I don't know why we're doing this. Sometimes the White House calls it a war. Sometimes they insist it's not a war. Marco Rubio, I think, said we had to do this because Israel was going to attack anyway. And then we. Then he said we had to do this because Iran posed a direct threat to the United States. Sometimes I feel like Trump calls a reporter and says Iran's about to get on the phone and beg for peace. And sometimes he says, get prepared to fight for weeks or months. I'm confused. You're a senator based on what you've been told, why are we doing this?
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A
That is a good question that they don't have an answer to and scarier for our troops. I unfortunately had to experience this deja vu 21 years ago as a Marine in Al Anbar, where two years into the Iraq war, I was going town to town searching for insurgents. But there was no clear direction. What victory looked like, what the end goal was, what was going to be the after action report on Iraq. And right now we don't know what actually brought us into this war. There's been a lot of testing of messages, which scares me. The fact they didn't actually have a reason except for the real situation is probably because we could. And that they don't know what victory looks like. They don't know what happens after they destroy every launcher that Iranians have. What happens if we're able to destroy every boat possible, every vehicle that moves as owned by the Iranian military, But yet what happens if the Ayatollah's successor is still in power? Is that a victory? I don't know. We may, we, it may not be a victory. What was the end goal besides trying to destroy their military capability? And then that only means they were just, you know, putting off, you know, having to come back and do it. This is a very scary situation. I think that's why the American public is against us. Like, none of this seems right, none of them seems good. And it's also totally off focus of where the American public wants us to be, which is on domestic issues, because people are really hurting right now.
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B
I want to get to where I think you were headed, which is making the war a domestic issue. But I want to be clear about what I think you're telling me. You're saying you haven't seen evidence that an attack was imminent.
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A
Absolutely not.
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B
You haven't heard a case for war and you haven't heard an end goal articulated. All three. No evidence.
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A
The reason I heard, which is also not a reason, a rational reason, and or a reason to go around Congress, was that there was an imminent attack that was going to happen because Israel was going to attack Iran with or without us. And by that happening, that would mean that we were going to get attacked in retaliation for, therefore, we had to join in a preeminent attack on Israel, which is absolute bs. Why are we subordinating our war, making decisions to any country, mind you, we are the superpower of the world. In what world would we allow the UK to decide to go to war with us or any NATO partner or anybody else? And so that first excuse, or the first reasoning, which actually think is probably pretty close to the truth, fell like, you know, a lead weight in MAGA world. And that's why you're seeing a big retreat, because MAGA world does not like the, the messaging of we went to war because Israel forced our hand.
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B
One of the things I want to talk to you about is Democratic messaging, and I think a key part of that is focus. With Trump, there's always an oversupply of things that Democrats can criticize. But I think good messaging is, isn't about saying everything about everything. It's about being deliberate about what you ignore and what you say. So take the case of Iran. I feel like you could criticize this on several grounds. You could criticize this war on constitutional grounds. The President started a war process. Yeah, right. That's, that's, that's, that's Article one. That's, that's the role of Congress. You can prosecute it on moral grounds. The Iranian children, the American lives lost. You can also focus on economic grounds. Look at oil prices. Look at the pain Americans are going through, and this isn't responsive to their pain. What's the message that you think Democrats should focus on?
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A
I think it's very simple. This is a war of choice. And this is a distraction from, you know, focusing on what people need right now, lower prices. You know, be able to buy a home, be able to buy a car, keep it very simple. Like as simple as possible. And, and yeah, I don't know if Derek and I talked about this, but I've always been an advocate is. Yes, we don't have to fight everywhere all the time. We have to be very selective of the battles we take this president on because he does try to overwhelm us and we are in the minority. So we need to be very smart about when we attack and when we don't attack, when we let some things just slide away because, you know, it's a distraction or it'll take us away from the base of orders that we need to do. Sometimes you have to engage because there is an ethical reasons to engage, and I think war is one of them. But in this instance, this is the first time in quite a while that war of this nature is also extremely unpopular at first go, if you, you know, for those that are old enough. I'm not. You are. But Iraq and Afghanistan were actually very popular among voters when they first kicked off Afghanistan. Understandably so. But Iraq was still popular when we first kicked off. There was a lot of belief in the American government's assertion that Iraq was a danger to us. Right now, there is not even a real assertion by this administration that Iran is a direct threat to us. They don't have the ICBM capabilities nearly enough to even hit our homeland, not for years to come, certainly don't have the capability to. To load on a nuclear weapon. The nuclear weapon system. The nuclear weapon program was severely on the back foot and with, you know, true real diplomatic efforts, if we wanted to. I do feel that we could have had a solution that would have kept us out of this war. But I think, you know, this was set in motion years and years ago when the president took, the current president took us out of the Iran nuclear deal.
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B
I told you that I wanted to talk about the future of the Democratic Party. And then the Iran war comes up. And I think it's absolutely critical that we start there because that's the breaking news. But scoping out a little bit. If you told me all the things that Trump would have done and said in the first 13, 14 months, this administration, if you told me all those things 13 or 14 months ago, I think I would have predicted that the Democratic Party would have surged in popularity. And instead, at least as a brand, the Democratic Party is still less popular today than in basically any period in modern history, according to Gallup polling. Why do you think people say they hate the Democratic Party so much?
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A
I think for two reasons. I think number one, there's just generally an anti establishment feeling across the country. People that are just sick of both parties and, you know, we're one of those two parties because we don't actually have a brand. And I know this sounds really dumb that I'm speaking in this way. We don't actually have one person.
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B
I introduced the hated word, so it's okay for you to pick it up.
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A
We don't have one brand ambassador. Right. So it's very hard for people to say, hey, I'm, you know, I, I like that Democrat, therefore I am a Democrat. Now, if you poll individual Democrats, individual states, like elected officials, they're fairly popular. I'm the most popular Democrat in Arizona. Red Arizona. Right. Like there, there is something that's happening there, but the brand does suck. I think that actually starts shifting the closer and closer you get to elections. And you could kind of see that because we keep winning elections. Right. So I think that will eventually change. I think that, you know, it's also important. The other thing that needs to happen now is that the Democrats House and senatorship have to start introducing real economic policies that people can say, damn right, I'm with those guys. Right? And you're kind of seeing some of those things already, right? Like the blowback to ICE and immigration enforcement has been, you know, a huge aid to Democrats. Right. Because now that one of the strongest points that Republicans have is now a weakness. Right. We're seeing this in a lot of Latino neighborhoods and precincts where there is massive switch from people that were Republican, curious or, you know, anti Democratic. They're now running back to the Democratic Party. You saw what just happened in Texas is a good example. But you're seeing this all over the country in different parts of the different parts of the country and different regions altogether.
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B
I think an obvious thing to say is that historically low approval ratings for the Democratic Party are embarrassing and horrible. But there's a less obvious conclusion to draw that I think you were beginning to scratch at, which is that even though you have historically low approval ratings for the party writ large in a way that almost frees up individual Democrats to run without just being a chip off the party. Borg. Like they can be themselves. They can, you can run a socialist in New York, you can run, you know, a centrist in Nevada. Is it, is it crazy for me to think that the party's national brand being, I won't use the word brand anymore. That because as you said, there's no party leader who epitomizes what this.
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That's. That's exactly what I was about to say.
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B
Yes. That everyone can essentially run as if auditioning to be that possible party leader that vacuum frees up people to experiment.
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A
It's not the vacuum frees you up so you could be the leader, but the vacuum is there. So therefore you don't have to check in with the leader in the sense that I don't have to check my messaging with Team Biden because Team Biden is not there. There is nobody there there. Right. And not that I wouldn't have that I would do that necessarily, but I think a lot of people are team players. Democrats are team players, not just under Biden, but under President Obama, under President Clinton, or even under VP Harris's race or Secretary Clinton's race. We are team players. So we don't want to necessarily hurt our own leadership because that leadership is the brand. So we don't actually move too far left or right. We don't experiment. We don't kind of go away from the party line because then it actually is going to potentially hurt people in our coalition. And the coalition leader, which tends to be the president or the leader of the Democratic Party at that point, who the nominee is. Now, we don't have that right now. Right. 100% true. And I think what that does is, does make a lot of us feel a lot more liberated to kind of just test things out. And the other thing is that we don't, especially younger members of the House and the Senate, which is younger political leaders. I think a lot of us just aren't stuck on orthodoxy. I don't believe that I can only have conservative Democratic positions, moderate centric positions, or liberal Democratic positions. I think I could mix them all up because I think that's how the American public is. At least that's what I've seen. And I will pick and choose what I think is good for the people I'm trying to represent. In the past, what I've seen, older politicians, they get stuck in their orthodoxy. If I'm a. I'm a Blue Dog, I'm only going to be a Blue Dog. I'm going to do Blue Dog things the Blue Dog way. Right. If I'm a progressive, I'm going to do progressive things the progressive way, and that's it. And no crossover. And I think you're seeing that environment change a lot, which is extremely, extremely helpful. And it helps us kind of just throw shit against the Wall and see what sticks. I guess that's a bad analogy. Throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.
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B
We'll stick with spaghetti.
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A
Okay. Spaghetti.
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B
Yeah. The way you just described sampling policies, I don't say sampling policies across the buffet because it's not, it's not frivolous. What you're saying is that you don't feel bound by the straightjacket of some ideological lady that, like, maybe because you're a center left senator, that therefore you have to embrace all the positions that some elites designate. A center left, Absolutely.
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A
And then I saw that during the Senate race, like when the Senate race, for example, people were very confused. Like, you're all over the place. Like, no, I'm not over the place. Like, literally, I am, you know, progressive in some areas, I'm conservative in some areas, I'm moderate in some areas. And by the way, that's how the Arizona electorate is. And I think that, you know, that's a little more authentic than us kind of being orthodox all the time.
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B
There's so many places that I want to go from this, and I'm just trying to keep things straightforward in my head. The first place that I think this connects to, the first conversation I think your comments connect to is this conversation about the value of moderation. You know, as I'm sure you know, like, close to my world of policy and polling nerds. There's a furious debate about whether or not Democrats need to moderate. And this word is particularly used for cultural issues. Moderate to win. And there's this knockdown, drag out debate
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A
among text messages flying forward back and forth.
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B
You see that, you see the text messages, you see the group chat. I'm not going to belabor this point, but let me. We're not going to make this a Harvard seminar over the definition of modern.
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A
You don't definitely want me to be.
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Let me, let me put it to you really, really simply. Here's a claim to expand their appeal in states and districts currently controlled by Republicans. Democrats have to moderate to win.
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A
Okay.
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Period. How would you evaluate that statement?
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I guess, like, for me, the problem is more the word. You need to do whatever. Let me, let me. You need to do what it takes to win. That stays within your value system. First of all, as an elected. Right, this is me telling you someone had to put their name on the ballot and had to run a very hard race and a very hard year. You know, Arizona was a very, very Republican year in 2024. And the way I look at this, like my state has had, has 315,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. It's Republicans, then independents, then Democrats and declining. Right. And so I didn't think about this like I need to moderate on this in order to get, you know, this vote to come this way or anything like that. I kind of thought about it more along the lines of like, this is the demographic and I know in some areas this is where they care about and this. Am I aligned with that? Right. I'll give you some really easy examples.
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B
Yeah. Give me an example.
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Policing, right. You know, there was, there was a vein that carried all the way into 2024among definitely based Democrats about you know, not being too pro police. Not just that you had to be abolished, ice abolish the police, which was a very extreme movement, but even if you actually were too pro police, that. That was actually kind of anti Democratic or piss off your base. And I remember, I'll give you a good example. I got the endorsement of the police union in Arizona. That same police union endorsed Donald Trump the same year. Right. And there was a lot of conversation about whether I should even take the endorsement, whether I should, you know, take the endorsement but don't announce it. And one of the things that I had to, you know, be very clear about to supporters, to staff was that, you know, we don't have the luxury of not winning. Right. We just got handed a winning hand. Are we in agreement with the police union? 100%. No. But is it, does it matter if I win or I lose? Because if I don't win, Carrie Lake is in this office and the politics of Arizona changes. And potentially, you know, because there's only 100 senators, the politics of the country changes. Right. So I need to understand that at this position and because I can morally support it, because I do believe that especially loan commissioners want good policing, that I should take that endorsement. Immigration enforcement is the other one. Right. We had a very, what I think would be described as, to some, a moderate position on immigration enforcement during the election. Somebody would say it was actually kind of liberal because I was like, I think we should have immigration reform, but I also think we should have secure borders. That was a very moderated position to some people, but that's actually literally what everyone in Arizona thought. And I felt like I can ethically believe that because I did believe that and I ran with it. Now what I won't do is I won't do something that is just truly inauthentic because I think the American public is really smart. And if you are just like triangulating for the sake of votes, they're going to smell it. And if you're triangulating for the sake of. So you could say that you're moderate and show that you're moderate, they're going to smell it. So I think that's not necessarily what we want to do. But look, when it comes to individual candidates in these really, really red states, especially because, yes, we have to win races, we should tolerate what we can from them as long as they win those races. And when we get them in, then we have to get through a negotiation. Right. Like you may run in some areas where you're a little more on the conservative side, but when you get to the Senate, you could speak all you want. But when it comes to certain votes and stuff like that, we want to make sure that you're not out there to screw some of our most important bases.
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B
I want to drill down on immigration a little bit. It's a really interesting issue where it seems to me that the polling is relatively straightforward, that America is in some ways almost historically pro immigration. From the standpoint of do Americans think that immigration makes the country better? I think these are questions that Pew and Gallup ask all the time. And in general that line has gone diagonally up. Americans also don't seem to like chaos at the border or chaos anyway. There's really not a lot of American voters that are like, what I really want is the feeling of chaos right outside of my.
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A
Absolutely. And I say that, by the way, nobody wants chaos in the border and no one's chaos in our streets.
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B
Right? Yeah. No, I think your anti chaos message has large purchase. It's interesting to me that immigration, the moderate position, seems relatively easy to identify and yet policy as it exists in the executive branch seems to swing quite wildly from far right in Trump 1.0 to an incredibly different lax. One could argue left wing immigration policy under Biden and then swinging back all the way under Trump 2.0 to ice in the street. What is it about immigration that makes it so hard for the moderate position that seems to be the mainstream American opinion on this issue to actually find a home in the White House?
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A
It's because immigration, immigration issues when it comes to policy side, are actually shaped by the extremes of the issue. And so, for example, if you were involved in policymaking for the last gazillion years like I have when it comes to immigration, immigration enforcement issues, the people that have actually been, have had the most power, have had the most kind of liberal positions on immigration. Right. Liberal to the point where Latino voters felt that it was out of line. But what happens a lot of times, because the policy making brain of the Democratic Party in terms of immigration tend to come from liberal groups. A lot of times when these senators and members of Congress and committees start looking for the brain power, they go pick from those liberal groups and bring them in. And that's where it's is shaped. And so, you know, if you, you know, talking to some former Biden cabinet members and staff, one of the things they had a very huge internal problem was, is that there was no consistency or forceful immigration policy that made, that helped the Biden administration make decisions. Right. Instinctively, some of them knew that what was happening at the border was horrible. They needed to come down and have enforcement, but they just didn't know how to do without having political blowout or fallback. My contention to them last November, before the elections, November 2023, is that the blowback they're talking about doesn't exist. The blowback is imaginary. Which really surprised me that they just did not get that because the Biden,
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B
what do you, what do you mean the blowback is imaginary? The blowback at the polls is imaginary because people are going to pick up the phone and scream at the Biden administration.
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A
They're definitely going to pick up and scream and they're going to get on Twitter and call you, everything else like that. But you're not going to get punished at the polls for trying to bring chaos, the chaos down on the border. Right. But they just, there was no way for them to kind of feel that that was correct, even though I was on the same ballot. And I was telling them like, no, no, no, no, this is what I'm doing. And I'm hearing on the road, like, what I'm saying is working, you could do the same. And they were looking for an out, let me tell you, because again, I was involved in all this. When the Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans said we're going to negotiate a deal, the Biden administration was so happy because now they got to give, take this issue away from. They didn't have to be the bad guy. They were hoping that the Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats would come up with a solution to the border. And then it was a bipartisan solution and of course that never happened. Right. And what did Biden do correctly starting in June, July, he came down with a lot of these changes and you started seeing border crossings dropping dramatically again. But it was like the extremes that were kind of forming the policy positions of, of, of the White House at that Point. The same thing happens though to Republicans. Even though the moderate position is yes, border enforcement, but yes, I want some kind of immigration reform and I want some visas. The extremes of the Republican Party in terms of the policymaking side come from the numbers USA guys, all these that believe in a zero sum game when it comes to, when it comes to immigration. And they also create this world that informs, you know, Donald Trump. And that's why Donald Trump is losing now because he went out of where the norm, Normie American is right. The normie American wants people that are here in this country illegally to have serious crimes to be deported. They want that person that is working at the taco shop that they really like or the coffee shop they really liked. They want that person to be given an opportunity to stay here legally. You could question whether citizenship here or there. Pretty big consensus that if you have a son or daughter that's an American citizen, you should have a right to stay and become a citizen. Pretty big consensus. If you're a dreamer, the same thing. But the people that are the most extreme are on the Republican side are the ones that are in the policy making world. Lastly, the reason this all comes to a head is because the filibuster has created an environment where the extreme will get to dominate that. Because if you can't get to 60 then you end up losing the battle. And some of this has been Democrats on our part. We had the opportunity to pass the DREAM act. We didn't. Three Democrats joined with Republicans to block the DREAM Act. A dumb move on their part. They assumed that it would politically hurt them to give dreamers pathway to citizenship. Republicans on the other end also thought that if any type of immigration reform happens be in the world so they filibuster that there is no world, just to be clear. And I think Democrats explain there's no world that we're going to get confidence. Immigration reform with the filibuster. It's just not going to happen. And what has happened in the past is that Republicans have said no and the Democrats continue to push forward this massive, massive bill that makes it easier for them to say no. So two things are going to have to occur. We're going to have to start doing piecemeal legislation which some of these groups have been against for quite a while or we have to bust a filibuster and just get this done, which I am for. But the status of us not doing anything, by the way, is the thing that's hurting us the most. The fact that we keep talking about it is what hurts the most when it comes to some of these voters that we keep promising we're going to do it.
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B
A theme from what you just said, and I think a theme from immigration policy in the last few years is that good politics, good electoral politics, I think is very responsive to what's happening in the world. But that can sometimes mean that the policy that emerges from various elections is over responsive.
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A
Right.
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B
We react, the democrats react in 2020, in 2021, I suppose, when Biden becomes the president too much to the Trump example and swing too far to the left. And then you have right. Trump coming back into office and his politics is incredibly reactive. Exactly. Policies of Biden holding on that idea just a bit, the idea that that good politics are reactive. But one outcome of that is that policy can sometimes be overreactive. You've said that one of the policies you're interested in if or when Democrats have executive power again, is you want to target these big mergers that the Trump administration has allowed among his friends. So for example, Warner Brothers Discovery was recently bid on by Netflix, but Warner Brothers will instead go to Paramount. No surprise, Paramount is run by David Ellison. He's the son of billionaire Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Trump's friend. And regarding these sort of friends of Trump deals, which is a theme that extends beyond Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount, you said the following quote, once we take power, whoever the president is, we're going to break up your companies. This is what you told Semaphore, continuing with your quote, so all the investment you did to create those mergers are going to be for naught. Your investors are going to be pissed at you and you're likely going to end up getting fired as a CEO because you wasted so much time and money and corrupted yourself in the process, end quote. I don't want to suggest that this is an overreaction. I want to make that very, very clear. My real question here is of all the things to focus on, why are you focusing on this?
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A
Well, it's not a focus, it's more of a warning shot because you were dealing with multi billion dollar corporations that right now feel that they can do whatever they want. Now why does that matter? Who's in charge of Twitter right now? Who's in charge of all the other social media? TikTok, all these other. Who's in charge of some of the.
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B
By the way, for folks who don't know, Ellison, Larry Ellison, Ellison the elder is also on the buying party that got TikTok.
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A
Who's in charge of some of these massive Media collaborations. We have seen anti Trump messaging being throttled by social media already. We have seen, you know, pro Democratic messaging being throttled already by social media. We're about to go into another election and we have to put it within our brain that is entirely possible that these massive corporations that feel that they owe it to Donald Trump will listen to Donald Trump if he says, like I want you to stop democratic messaging in this upcoming election. I want you to, you know, meter what's happening. That's entirely a possibility. Now we don't actually have control because we have no power as elected officials right now. We don't have control of the FTC or anything else like that. But we have the power of future repercussions. And as you know, you have a lot of. One of the most important areas to do is have these corporate boards that have a lot of shareholders. And as a CEO, you have to look out for the betterment of your company or you can be held responsible. We need to start basically socializing that. So is it the thing I'm worried about? No. What I'm worried about is making sure we win election. And this is one of those instruments that they're going to potentially use and we need to make, to make sure that there is a serious, serious threat. So they could actually make a calculation in their minds if they're going to engage in this type of corruption and overt government aligned fascism. I mean, it's that simple.
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B
So I co authored a book called Abundance. You co authored an idea with Matt Iglesias called Big Ass Truck Abundance. What is that?
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A
Well, Big Ass Truck Abundance and it could be anywhere, right? The big ass truck for us in the Southwest for Latinos is important. It's for people in New York. It's like the Brooklyn walk up maybe, something like that, right? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not trying, I'm not even trying to be funny.
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B
Brooklyn walk up is the big ass truck is a funny sort of cultural translation from Arizona to Brooklyn.
- [32:03]
A
I'm doing my best here, but basically what I'm trying to say is that I actually think this is not true. Majority of American super majority are aspirational. Right. And they want to succeed. They want to be comfortable. This comes more from an immigrant background. The reason my family did everything it could to get to the United States is because it sucked in the countries they were at. My family was poor in Mexico and poor in Colombia. They could have stayed there and stayed in poverty. They could have stayed there and been on their version of the Social welfare. And they didn't. They came to the United States because they want to build something. They wanted to have stability. They wanted to be successful. And I think Democrats need to own that. We need to be the party of success. We need to be the party of, you know what? It's okay if you do well. We just don't want you to screw other people in the process of doing well. And so we need to kind of like, you know, organize around that, because that is something that is very, you know, I think very deep and personal to every American that they want to succeed. And we should be the party that figures out how to do that. Right? The policies, the programs that help them get, get that. So that way they can, you know, do well enough to buy that big ass truck. Right? And the big ass truck, again, is not the actual truck. It's the pride of it, right? You get out there, you ride around with your, your boys on the weekends, you drive it through your, you know, your, your community, you know, you wash it with your family. It shows to your community that I'm here, I've made it right. It is, it is a symbolic, you know, totem that you are living the, the good American life. And again, that could be anything for everyone else. But we need to be. That's what that, like, I want to vote for the Democrats because I'm going that those guys are going to help me hit that. We kind of slid away from that in the past, like for the last couple of election cycles. I think we need to, we move back into that. That's part of, like a big winning message or going forward.
- [34:02]
B
I'm so interested in this idea. I mean, we only have 10 minutes left. I could do an hour on this. But there's really something that I think you hit on with big ass truck abundance. It's not SUV abundance. It's not minivan abundance. Right? There's, there's, there's a celebration of success, exuberance and extravagance that isn't embarrassed of extravagance.
- [34:22]
A
Exactly.
- [34:22]
B
It's also, it almost sounds to me
- [34:24]
A
you're proud to be an American, essentially. It's like the, it's. You're, you're just, you're just one step away from just like, like, damn right I made it in this country.
- [34:32]
B
What I think is, what I think is cool about this idea that, that doesn't, doesn't have sufficient articulation, I think, of the Democratic Party yet, um, is that, you know, Democrats are in danger, I think, of developing this Reputation of like tall pompy syndrome. Like, you've got local Democrats who are against gift and talented programs. You've got Democrats talking about the rich who often do terrible things. You've got Democrats proposing billionaire wealth taxes, which in many cases I think might be worthwhile. And yet when you pull it all together, I feel like it's a party that's very good at using euphemisms for middle class. Plenty. Right?
- [35:07]
A
Well, sort of. I mean, I think, I think let's back up because, for example, you talked about getting rid of a gifted program and what are these other things? I don't know where that comes from, but there's no actual parents and parents group. And you and I are both parents. I have a kid in elementary school and he's in one of these gifted programs. But there's no parent or parental group that wants to get rid of these gifted programs. It is capture, biological capture by the school boards. And it's the dumbest thing you could do because the way you keep the best parents in the school system, which sometimes have a mixture of all these economic groups, is to have these programs. And those parents are the ones that are most involved. They're the ones who'd be the biggest advocates. They're the ones who hold everything more accountable. I hate when I hear these things happening where in the name of, I guess, equity or egalitarianism, whatever the hell it is, they go and they destroy some of these programs that are actually very important, by the way, for lower income students to actually use, to kind of rise in terms of the economic and socioeconomic power. Like, you know, English is my second language. If I didn't have some of these programs when I started hitting junior high, I don't think I would have built the confidence in order for me to even decide to go to college. When they start stripping these kind of programs away. You're no longer telling the voter base. The Democrats are about building that aspirational future. Right. We replace what is a good idea, like a very valued thing that we should go for, which is equity. And you're replacing it with everyone potentially just ended up on the same level. And that doesn't make sense to people. It doesn't make sense to, especially to working class Latinos, which I would probably know the best. Even when you're billionaires, Right. Is there a billionaire tax that could work out and voters can be for especially middle class voters? Absolutely. I think there's something there. I think we have to work out the numbers, what the effects are all that kind of stuff. But there also has to still be this, this general attitude like, hey, we want you to be super rich. We're totally fine with that. We just don't want you to screw people in the process, and we want you to pay your fair taxes. Right. There needs to be a real good kind of messaging component to this, beyond just punishing success.
- [37:23]
B
Right. I think you need. It's these two ways together. Right. You need affordability and you need aspirations.
- [37:28]
A
Absolutely right.
- [37:29]
B
We want to make your life easier now. And also we want to pave this road, legal road, that allows you to dream about a better life. You know, the Wall Street Journal did this survey that I' never forgotten. Maybe like three years ago. They asked Americans, how much money do you need to be happy? And at every income level said, I need 50% more. Folks who made $40,000 said, Give me 60. Folks who made 90 said, Give me 135. And so on all the way up the income ladder. People want to be meaningfully richer. And I want, and I think this is especially true for young, for young folks, especially true, maybe even for young men. And I really don't want the Democratic Party to shut its doors to the millions of voters who might see themselves in the party if they thought the Democratic Party was outwardly and unembarrassedly rooting for success and not just amelioration.
- [38:21]
A
And the other thing is, the reason we want to be successful is because we're actually the only party that will actually deliver that for them. Right? We're the only party that will actually put the policy, the programs together to make sure they succeed. Right. Because a lot of this requires government intervention, government investment, government. It's going to require higher taxes on the rich to actually give some subsidies to, I would say, the poor. And if we, and if we're not elected to do it, the Republicans are elected to do it, and they're just going to throw more hate and distraction to them. But I do want to make sure that they feel they have a future with us. And we have to actively think about what that means. How do we make their lives better? Lastly, I think just my point before I got to go vote. So the reason I think young people have a problem right now is because they actually remember how their parents were. And their parents had jobs, they had vacations, they had stability. And now they're looking at their own personal policy choices. She could come in. She could come in. My daughter's asking for me. They're asking for personal policy choices. They're looking at these policy choices that they're not getting. They're working harder and they have less they're working harder and they have more stress. And the Democrats need to figure out how to answer to that.
- [39:32]
B
Senator McGallego, thank you very much.
- [39:34]
A
Thank you. Have a good one. Buddha.