Matt Yglesias and Tyler Austin Harper: Popularism v Populism

Summary

Summary of "Matt Yglesias and Tyler Austin Harper: Popularism v Populism" – The Bulwark Podcast

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Bulwark Podcast
• Host: Tim Miller
• Guests: Matt Yglesias and Tyler Austin Harper
• Episode Title: Matt Yglesias and Tyler Austin Harper: Popularism v Populism
• Release Date: December 12, 2024
• Description: Tim Miller hosts Matt Yglesias, author of the Slow Boring newsletter, and Tyler Austin Harper, professor and contributing writer at The Atlantic, to discuss the dynamics between popularism and populism within the Democratic Party, analyzing past electoral losses and strategies for future success.

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Introduction and Context (00:44 - 05:07)

Tim Miller opens the episode by addressing the recent resignation of Chris Wray, the FBI Director, labeling it as "a pre surrender" (00:44). He discusses the political implications of Wray stepping down, especially in the context of Donald Trump's presidency and the potential appointment of Cash Patel as the new FBI Director. Miller highlights concerns about Patel's qualifications and the broader impact on the FBI's impartiality.

Tim Miller:
"If we weren't also numb, this would be a five alarm fire and shocking to think that the incoming president would push out an FBI director over personal grievance with them rather than over any performance issue or scandal or anything such as that." (00:44)

He introduces the episode's guests, Matt Yglesias and Tyler Austin Harper, noting their previous debate on Twitter regarding Democratic strategies. Miller expresses respect for both guests' viewpoints and emphasizes the importance of authentic discourse to uncover the truth.

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Defining Popularism vs. Populism (05:07 - 17:39)

Matt Yglesias' Perspective

Matt Yglesias argues that Democrats failed to emulate the successful moderation seen in Obama and Clinton's campaigns. He suggests that post-2012, Democrats shifted left on issues like guns, immigration, and crime, which alienated independent and moderate voters.

Matt Yglesias:
"If Democrats did what Chris Murphy says they should do, it would probably work. But also all of what's doing the work, it seemed to me, was the moderating on cultural issues." (08:49)

He expresses concern that focusing solely on economic issues like NAFTA or opioid crises without addressing core cultural conflicts leads to a fragmented coalition.

Tyler Austin Harper's Perspective

Tyler Austin Harper emphasizes traditional economic populism, pointing to policy failures under Clinton and Obama, such as deindustrialization and the opioid crisis. He distinguishes between the charismatic appeal of Obama and Clinton and the administrative legacies that contributed to public discontent.

Tyler Austin Harper:
"I think, to that extent, I agree with Matt that we should run politicians who are popular and who people like." (07:31)

Harper argues for separating the personal appeal of political figures from their policy legacies, advocating for a focus on substantive economic issues over cultural moderations.

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Critique of Biden's Presidency (17:39 - 30:28)

Age and Communication Issues

Harper points out that Biden's age and perceived competence issues hindered his ability to communicate effectively, which negatively impacted his campaign.

Tyler Austin Harper:
"Biden had so many things not working in his favor. Core among them was his age, which isn't just related to how the public perceived his competence, but also just his basic ability to communicate, craft a story, push a message." (10:43)

Economic and Foreign Policy Challenges

Both guests discuss the lack of a coherent economic narrative from the Biden administration. Harper criticizes the administration's approach to climate change and foreign policy, noting that Democrats lacked compelling messaging to connect these policies with voters' immediate concerns.

Matt Yglesias:
"I think the Biden model would have worked. I don't know. What do you think?" (10:29)

Tyler Austin Harper:
"There was no economic narrative coming out of the Biden administration. And so this is where again, I think it's really important to separate policy questions from the question of what the Democratic Party is selling." (11:34)

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Cultural Issues vs. Economic Populism (30:28 - 49:28)

Climate Change and Immigration

Harper emphasizes the importance of framing climate change in relatable terms, such as its impact on insurance costs and national security, rather than abstract concepts. He also critiques the Democrats' handling of immigration, suggesting that aligning closely with figures like Liz Cheney reinforced a disconnect with working-class voters.

Tyler Austin Harper:
"We have obligations sometimes greater than ourselves, and I think that Chris Wray had an obligation to stay in this job until Donald Trump forced him out." (05:07)

Messaging and Narrative Construction

Both guests agree that Democrats have struggled with effective storytelling around their policies. Yglesias argues that policies need to be communicated in ways that resonate with the broad electorate, avoiding niche or overly complex explanations.

Matt Yglesias:
"It’s just a little bit fantastical to think that talking about trade deals that happened 30 years ago or an opioids problem, which is already somewhat in decline, that’s what Joe Biden tried to do." (09:48)

Tyler Austin Harper:
"We need to have a coalition of high minded people who care about this kind of thing, and it's easy to dismiss that because after you lose, you can be like, we just need to focus on helping people forget about the issues." (12:12)

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Policy Discussions: Student Loans and Healthcare (49:28 - 64:34)

Student Loan Reform vs. Medical Debt Relief

Miller raises the question of whether focusing on populist policies like student loan reform would have been more effective for Democrats. Yglesias critiques the implementation, arguing that the selective approach lacked accountability and failed to present a unified populist message.

Matt Yglesias:
"The symbolism, you know, I think clearly bad. But what really got me about it was the failed promise on top of all those things." (59:36)

Harper acknowledges the public support for student loan relief but argues that better messaging could have broadened its appeal.

Tyler Austin Harper:
"A majority of the public still supported it. But I completely agree [...] they need to hold universities accountable." (63:21)

Healthcare Policies

The discussion touches on the impact of healthcare reforms and the importance of targeting policies that resonate directly with working-class voters.

Tyler Austin Harper:
"Killing unarmed people is bad, whether it's in foreign countries or here." (52:00)

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Candidate Strategies and Future Outlook (64:34 - 72:05)

Identifying Model Candidates

Harper and Yglesias discuss potential candidates who embody the balance between economic populism and cultural inclusivity. They mention Senator Jared Golden and Ruben Gallego as examples of effective communicators who connect with working-class voters while addressing broader coalition needs.

Tyler Austin Harper:
"Jared Golden is good [...] someone who can weld economic populism to social values pluralism is what is going to win elections." (65:07)

Matt Yglesias:
"Marie Glusenkamp Perez is a great example. She shows independent-mindedness and resilience." (67:28)

Building a Broad Coalition

Both guests emphasize the necessity for Democrats to build a diverse coalition that can navigate and reconcile differing viewpoints on both economic and cultural issues.

Matt Yglesias:
"You have to stand up for the people who do it and not say, but you didn't do it in the exact right way." (67:43)

Tyler Austin Harper:
"We need to figure out a way to say, look, we're on this tent. Sometimes these people are gonna get this, sometimes you're gonna get that." (58:33)

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Concluding Remarks (72:02 - End)

Tim Miller wraps up the episode by thanking his guests and summarizing the key takeaways. He encourages listeners to check out Matt's Slow Boring newsletter and Tyler's article at The Atlantic for deeper insights. The discussion concludes with a promise to revisit topics like NAFTA in future episodes.

Tim Miller:
"Matt wrote in his slow, boring newsletter, which is not boring, a common sense Democrat manifesto. You can read more there. Tyler just wrote, is this how Democrats win back the Working Class? For the Atlantic. Go check that out." (69:00)

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Notable Quotes

• Tim Miller:
  "If we weren't also numb, this would be a five alarm fire..." (00:44)

• Matt Yglesias:
  "If Democrats did what Chris Murphy says they should do, it would probably work." (08:49)

• Tyler Austin Harper:
  "Biden had so many things not working in his favor. Core among them was his age." (10:43)

• Tyler Austin Harper:
  "Climate change is something I care about. I am literally an expert on human extinction." (26:06)

• Matt Yglesias:
  "It's a challenge to think that maybe medical debt relief would have been better." (58:35)

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Final Thoughts

The episode provides a thorough exploration of the internal debates within the Democratic Party regarding strategic focus on cultural versus economic issues. Matt Yglesias and Tyler Austin Harper offer contrasting yet complementary perspectives on how the party can rebuild its coalition and address the root causes of electoral losses. The discussion underscores the importance of effective messaging, authentic leadership, and cohesive policy strategies to navigate the complex landscape of contemporary American politics.

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Transcript

[Matt Iglesias]

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[Tim Miller]

Hey y'all. I had already had a little debate pod planned for today, which I'm super excited about, but wanted to talk a bit about the Chris Ray resignation first, as I think it's probably the most significant news of the transition so far. Bill Kristol called it a pre surrender in the newsletter this morning. I think that is extremely apt to me eventually Chris Wray was probably going to be pushed out by Donald Trump, but he was appointed by Donald Trump. He was appointed to a 10 year term. If we weren't also numb, this would be a five alarm fire and shocking to think that the incoming president would push out an FBI director over personal grievance with them rather than over any performance issue or scandal or anything such as that. I think from the Ray perspective, you've got Cash Patel. Cash Patel could crack. Cash Patel might not get confirmed and I think he's probably going to get confirmed. But to me that's why this is a pre surrender. It should be Chris Wray's obligation and other people in the government's obligation to stay for as long as they can until an action, till something precipitates their departure. So they're forced out, forced Donald Trump's hand, forced the Senate's hand because you know, Cash Patel is clownish and unqualified for this job and who knows what might come out during a confirmation hearing. And so to quit now and say he's gonna quit January 20th if Cash Patel isn't confirmed, that lets Donald Trump put in some acting FBI director via the Vacancies act. And who the hell knows who that could be. I just, I think it's a big mistake. Briefly, I want to read Ben Wittes, a friend of the pod, wrote about this for Lawfare. You can read his whole column if you want. The headline is the Situation Ray rolls out the carpet for Cash Patel. He says Ray faced no good option here, but he chose the worst. Wittes flashed back to a conversation he had in 2016 about Jim Comey, where Jim Comey for all his flaws said this if he wants to get rid of me, he's going to have to fire me, which is exactly the right mindset in this situation. Whittis then points to Ray's longer statement, I won't bore you with entire thing, but as Whittis describes it, it basically is a muddled, long mess. And it boils down to I didn't want to drag the FBI into a messy political fight. As Wittes writes, one thing Ray's statement does not address is why the right thing for the Bureau is for me to step down and avoid this fight. How exactly will this avoid dragging the Bureau deeper into the frail while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important? As Witness writes, Ray's resignation is not the right thing for the Bureau, and it will absolutely not prevent the agency from being dragged deeper into the fray. The only thing it will do is mitigate the degree to which Chris Wray personally gets dragged deeper into the fray. So I understand why this is Tim. Now back to Tim. I understand why Chris Wray would not want to get dug deeper into the fray. But we have obligations sometimes greater than ourselves, and I think that Chris Wray had an obligation to stay in this job until Donald Trump forced him out. Much more on that in the coming weeks. Much more on Cash Patel in the coming weeks. But my guests today are Matt Iglesias, he writes the Slow Boring newsletter on Substack, and he co hosts the Politics podcast with Brian Beutler. He's a columnist for Bloomberg. And Tyler Austin Harper, he's a professor for environmental studies at Bates College and he's a contributing writer at the Atlantic. Why I chose to have these guys together today, they got into a little Twitter kerfuffle over some of the Democrat autopsy stuff. Matt is more of kind of a moderate reformer. The in vogue term is popularism. Tyler Austin Harper is kind of a Bernie fan, more from the left, more of an economic populist. I saw them arguing and I was like, let's try something different on the pod and kind of hash this out in a space where there's more room to find disagreements and agreements than you have on the on the X platform. I respect both of these guys and both of their points of view. What I really respect is that they say what they actually think, which is the core tenet of this podcast. I try to only have people on that say what they really think so that we can do better at getting to the truth of the matter. And so I'm excited to have this conversation and now is the moment for me to bring in Matt and Tyler. All right, gentlemen, thank you for doing this. We're taking it off of the X platform. Y'all, I guess don't really know each other. Off of social media.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

No, not off of social media, no.

[Tim Miller]

That's exciting. That's exciting. Well, you know, popularism versus post neoliberalism. This is what the people of the Bulwark podcast demand, I promise. I wanted to start by kind of summing up what you guys were saying online was one of the problems that led to the two Trump presidencies led to the Democratic losses. And I want to give you the opportunity to expand, you know, revise and extend those remarks. So, Matt, you are pointing to politicians not emulating the successful Obama and Clinton model and pointed to the Dems went left on guns, immigration, and crime after 2012. Tyler, you are pointing to the Clinton and Obama policy failures, nafta, the bailout, embracing Big Tech, failing to confront the opioid crisis, saying that is at the root of our present discontents. I will admit that my priors are aligned towards Mat. So since you're going, you know, since we're on a power play, since it's two on one, Tyler, I'll let you. I'll let you start off. What is the origin of our. Of our current malaise?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, I mean, I think you summarized it pretty well. I mean, in my view, it's decades of deindustrialization, it's the opioid crisis, it's the concentration of wealth and power in Big Tech in particular. You know, the first thing I would say is I think it's important to make a distinction between Obama and the legacy of Clinton and Obama. Obama is charming. I like Obama and I am opposed to many of the things Obama stands for. Right. And I totally concede if Obama could run for a third term, I think he would win going away. So to that extent, I agree with Matt that we should run politicians who are popular and who people like. As a starting point, I would also say I agree with Matt, and I think our emphasis is probably a bit different. I agree on certain stuff like gun control, etc. And I'm sure we'll talk about some of those. Those cultural issues. I think Dems really radically underpriced how many sort of independent leaning, liberal ish people there are who are single issue 2A voters. So we agree on some of those things. But I think it's important to separate Obama the man and Bill Clinton the man, both of whom were popular and charismatic from the legacies of their administration, which are certainly not uniformly bad, but did coincide with, again, a lot of things that have caused discontent, like deindustrialization, the opioid crisis, which Obama was warned about, fentanyl and really failed to confront it, big tech, etc. And so I would advocate separating the man from the legacy a little bit.

[Tim Miller]

Maddie.

[Matt Iglesias]

Well, so you have a piece that I just read before we started recording profiling, Chris Murphy, senator from Connecticut, who's been talking about these things. And reading the piece, I felt like narrowed the gap between us because you and he both say very clearly there that you have to have a sort of bigger tent party on cultural issues. And I think that that's just like a logical necessity. Right? Like, if you, whatever taking on big Tech means, if you want to build a coalition that does that, some of the people in the coalition are going to be pro life. They're going to be, you know, gun hobbyists. They're going. They're going to, you know, be homophobic, they're going to have problematic opinions. And unless you can at least work with people across those kinds of differences, you can't tackle these concerns. Reading the piece, though, I felt like if Democrats did what Chris Murphy says they should do, it would probably work. But also all of what's doing the work, it seemed to me, was the moderating on cultural issues. And what makes me nervous when I hear people starting to talk about nafta, whatever else, is that it's because, you know, Tyler, I mean, you know how it is in progressive spaces, right?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I do.

[Matt Iglesias]

It's so much easier to go along, get along by being like, oh, you know, we got to talk more about opioids. And like, clearly, like, that is a real problem. You should try to address it. But I think it's just a little bit fantastical to think that talking about, you know, trade deals that happened 30 years ago or an opioids problem, which is already somewhat in decline, I feel like that's what Joe Biden tried to do, was to say, look, I can just like personally downplay, play cultural issues without addressing the kind of roiling. I kind of hate the word cancel culture, but I know what you mean. The idea that if somebody transgresses on this increasingly large laundry list of topics, we need to shun that person. It just strikes me as so much more core to politics than any amount of fussing around neoliberalism or whatever that's supposed to mean.

[Tim Miller]

So Tyler's article that you referenced is headlined Is this how Democrats win back the working class? I do want to get more to the forward looking stuff, but I think Biden is maybe a good way. And Tyler, you can respond to any of what he said, but I think the Biden frame is a good way to look at this. Right. Because in a lot of ways Biden did what kind of both of you want. Like Biden did do more populist economic stuff than Obama did. For example, he did pivot to the party to a more pro worker frame on policy. Didn't work. Biden didn't have his pronouns in his profile. He did DM emphasize some of the cultural stuff in a way that other candidates did. So he did both of those things and still I guess he didn't lose. But I mean, he had basically lost.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yes, he forfeited.

[Tim Miller]

He forfeited. And so within that frame, looking back at Biden, putting the age stuff aside, or maybe don't put it aside, maybe that was the only problem and the Biden model would have worked. I don't know. What do you think? Power. Go ahead.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I mean, I think the Biden of it all is a huge part of it. And I don't think you can set the age stuff aside. I mean, you know, my view is that Biden had so many things not working in his favor. Core among them was his age, which isn't just related to how the public perceived his competence, but also just his basic ability to communicate, craft a story, push a message. Right. I mean, my basic view on the Biden of it all is it's really impossible to disentangle the age stuff, the competence stuff, inflation, which obviously he had some role in, but was also a global phenomenon. It's worth noting that the Democratic Party ran better than most other incumbent parties, parties across, you know, across the world. So you could also make a case that they overperformed a bit given, you know, the reality of other incumbent parties.

[Tim Miller]

They also had a stupider, more clownish, more ridiculous opponent than most of the other incumbent parties throughout the world.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I would discount the buffoonishness. No, I totally agree. But you know, I really think part of this is about storytelling. And the Dems are really, really bad at storytelling.

[Tim Miller]

Right.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

There was no economic narrative coming out of the Biden administration. And so this is where again, I think it's really important to separate policy questions, which I think are extreme important, from the question of like, what is the Democratic Party selling and what does it stand for? And I think under the Biden administration, to the extent that there was A story that was a story about NATO and America's might globally and that we were restoring the international order. Right. And people don't care about that. I'm not trying to blame.

[Tim Miller]

Excuse me, you're on the bulwark, okay?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I know, I know.

[Tim Miller]

Have some respect. Sorry, bud.

[Matt Iglesias]

These people care so much.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

But, like, look, however you feel about. And I'm not trying to blame everything on foreign policy, like, I'm not doing that. Doing that. But however you feel about an issue like Ukraine, the reality is that Democrats were 20% more supportive of Ukraine than independents and way more supportive than people who lean conservative. Right. Gaza was extraordinarily unpopular among the Democratic base. Almost 80% of Democrats supported an arms embargo. The youth was even higher. 40% of Republicans supported an arms embargo. Right. So there were these foreign policy things that were also part of the problem. And I don't think you can neatly reduce to any one of these. Right. Again, I'm not one of these leftists that's going to say that Harris lost because of Gaza. I don't think that's true. I think there were a lot of things that were not working in her favor. But I think cumulatively, when you take Biden's age, when you take the foreign policy stuff that was more popular with Dems than it was Independents and Republicans, you know, when you take the global inflation question, I think there's a limited utility to thinking about how did Biden's legitimately progressive economic platform translate or not translate into, you know, electoral viability? I think it's just too muddy.

[Matt Iglesias]

So here, here's the thing, though. Inflation, in part, clearly a global phenomenon, right? There's commodity price shocks. There's a lot to do with COVID et cetera. But if you look at neoliberalism as a historical phenomenon, the reason this arises largely is the inflationary experience of the 1970s. Right. That is what makes people in the Democratic Party. It's what makes Jimmy Carter start saying, I need to care more about sort of inefficient regulations that labor stakeholders may like, because it turns out people care a lot about consumer prices. So I think it's like, at an adequate level of abstraction, like, Biden needed a stronger economic message. He needed to stand with working people, et cetera. Like, yes, I think that's definitely right. But then the question of, like, what would deliver what it is people actually want, I don't think it's necessarily, like, more or less neoliberal. But Murphy, and you had this schema of like cultural issues and economic issues, but kind of in between them, them is climate change and immigration, which, like, yeah, which like was described by Joe Biden repeatedly as like an existential threat to humanity. And if you're in a race against extinction, then you'd be like, sure, your heating bill went up, but like, at least we're not all dead. But that's, I think, like not really true and certainly not how the voters think about these things. And so I think a question for progressives, like the hard question is like, are you willing to sort of come down to earth, right? That when there was some bill House Republicans had, it's like the Appliance Freedom act or something, and it was going to like roll back water efficiency regulations that the Energy Department, now, I don't want to say like Joe Biden lost.

[Tim Miller]

Because our bridge broke, by the way. And the repairman came by and was complaining about some, I don't even know what the word is, you know, efficiency, regulation. And all of a sudden it was making me think Mr. Trump might be on, I don't know.

[Matt Iglesias]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

Well, and it's like there's $157 bill for the guy to come by. You know, that's not nothing.

[Matt Iglesias]

There's a question of like, what does it mean to sort of be populist on economics? Right. And I think sometimes, you know, left intellectuals, some of my best friends are leftist intellectuals, you know, want it to be that populist economics is like what they think is important, but what it's, I mean, what it's supposed to mean is like listening to people and what, what they think is important. Which, yes, sometimes is like we need to regulate big banks or you know, some of this FTC stuff, like about fees, like that all seems totally reasonable. But a big point of emphasis of the modern Democratic Party is like eliminating the fossil fuel industry or telling you what kind of car you can buy, things like that. And you know, on one level I think you need to back away from some of that to be more populist. But you also need to think about, I mean, if our moral commitment to addressing climate change is really, really serious. And part of the reason we're so committed to that is that we care about coastal flooding in Bangladesh and Nigeria. We need to think about having a coalition of high minded people who care about this kind of thing, for example, bulwark listeners. And there's actual deep reasons, I think, for the drive to try to incorporate into the coalition sort of ex Republicans who are people of character and dignity and care about institutions and values and democracy. And it's sort of easy to dismiss that, you know, because it's like after you lose, you can be like, well, you know, Harris, she campaigned with Liz Cheney and it clearly didn't move lots of people, which is true. But also you could imagine a world, especially with Trump not on the ballot, where he keeps the voters he gained and just wins back the voters who Democrats gained and certainly wins back the volunteers, the media support, et cetera. And it's worth taking seriously, I think, the pros and cons of that.

[Tim Miller]

There's a lot there, as is Matt's want. There are two elements that I'd pull out that are related to these questions. Is the Liz Cheney of it all. Was that really the main problem for the Harris campaign? That the vibes were just more associated with Liz Cheney? Not that Liz Cheney was supporting her, but that she was more oriented to that messaging. And then the climate thing I do think is interesting because that is like a real trade off question when you look at quote unquote, populist or left economics. Right. Like a lot of the money that went into the stimulus bill that Biden passed as part of these big initiatives was around climate and infrastructure, which is populist. Right. But that, that could have been, you know, that could have been a different priority. It could have been, I don't know, healthcare. It's going something else. So anyway, what do you take of those two points?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, I'll take them in order. So again, I don't want to attribute Harris's loss to any one thing. I think part of it is also she's just a bad candidate who's bad at public speaking. And I don't think that can be underpriced either. But in terms of the Liz Cheney.

[Tim Miller]

Some people are going to bristle at that. Well, I mean, I think maybe more accurately, she's. She was good at speeches, she just wasn't particularly good at extemporaneous. And she did it well in the one debate. She just wasn't particularly good in interview settings. So unfortunately, like the one debate was only one night and all the interviews were a lot of other news cycles. But anyway, I don't want to obsess over them.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah. So I mean, in terms of the Liz Cheney piece of this, I think what has been clear to me, and I've been yelling about this online for two years, is that it was very obvious in the lead up to this election, going back 18 months or two years, that Donald Trump was betting on anti war an anti war platform. Right. And we can, can absolutely point out that Trump is not actually an anti war president and that it is hollow and, you know, pseudo, whatever. But the reality is, if you paid attention to his rallies and speeches, and I paid attention to his rallies and speeches for two years, he hammered the threat of nuclear war, World War 3, anti war over and over and over again. And his campaign made a bet that immigration and anti war sentiment were the moves. These were the pillars of his campaign. Again, I don't want to attribute Harris's loss to any one factor, and I don't want to attribute Trump's victory to any one. But I think we have to recognize that one campaign won and it was the campaign that made a bet in part on immigration and anti war sentiment. You know, and so I think Harris leaned into that through the Liz Cheney stuff, right? Where it became very. She was already saddled with Biden's foreign policy, which people have mixed views about. And then on top of that, by campaigning with Liz Cheney, right. Then, then that just doubles the impression that she's not going to break with, with Biden foreign policy. She's not meaningfully going to distance from, distance from, you know, the kind overseas posture. And so I think that was part of the problem. I don't want to attribute it to, again, why she lost, but I think it's part of the picture.

[Matt Iglesias]

I'm glad actually that you linked immigration and anti war in this because I think there's a construct on the left of what is anti war politics. And I think that what Trump was advancing, it's not just that there's a certain fakery to it, it's something other than anti war as the left construes it. Right. Like the left's idea of anti war politics is that the American empire is like bad to foreigners, that it's extractive, unfair, et cetera. Trump is advocating on both immigration and NATO military foreign policy issues, and I would say also on climate, a politics of selfishness. Right. He is saying you are doing too much to help Ukrainians. A guy who, from the, the first Trump administration, who I guess may come back, I mean, he told me our message is going to be that you prioritize Ukrainians, refugees and climate freaks over the interests of working and middle class Americans. Right. And linking all three of those things together, not as like anti war in the manner you would hear on a college campus. And I think that is very poetry. Right. And it's something that you have to account for. And that I do think that you know, aligning with the Cheney family is maybe not the best way to sort of address it. But I also think that people on the left, you know, when you see like Elon Musk doing a tweet and he's like, we're wasting all this money on foreign aid, like, why are we even doing that? Like, I know that's good politics like that, that is authentic populism. But it's also like, it's a tough one, you know, Like, I think these are legitimately hard questions to think about. How do you kind of modulate and to think that it would be convenient, right, if just distancing from ex neocons who don't like Trump would sort of cure these problems. But it's like you actually have to confront like the immigration piece, the climate piece, the foreign aid piece, and say, because, I mean, I think this is a real question among high socioeconomic status Democrats, like, do we care more about the American working class than we care about foreigners?

[Tim Miller]

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[Matt Iglesias]

Absolutely.

[Tim Miller]

That makes a difference in campaigns. And a lot of the leftists who are throwing rocks at Liz Cheney right now spent most of the campaign throwing rocks at the campaign and not really, really wanting to help. And had there been some working class populist leftist socialists that like, really wanted to help the campaign and talk about the importance of the campaign and how they were willing to sacrifice some of their ideological priors to. In order for Kamala to win, I think they would have been campaigning with Kamala at the end, too. I'm interested in your answer to Matt's question about the global human rights kind of element of leftism versus the American worker side of it.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I think actually Matt has landed on a bugaboo of mine. And I'm going to again, I feel like J.D. vance and Tim Walls in that debate where they just, you know, were agreeing. I'm thinking, yeah, you keep agreeing.

[Tim Miller]

I'm going to, I'm going to find a disagreement here soon.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

No. So I think Matt is right in the sense that, you know, a conversation I'll often have with leftists, when I point out that Trump positioned himself as the anti war candidate, they will say, but he's promising to drone strike the cartels. And I keep saying, people don't think that's war one and two. They think that's in America's interest because they think the cartels are screwing us with fentanyl. And so they understand immediately what America's interest has to do with combating the cartels in Mexico. They do not understand necessarily what America's interest has to do with Ukraine or what's going on in the Middle East. Right. And so I think you're absolutely right like that. The way in which Trump is not anti war, he is pro America wars that are about, like, what he sees in a narrow sense as our immediate national interests. Right. And so I think Matt is right that the way in which the left understands anti war is different. But on the climate piece. So I teach environmental studies. Climate change is something I care about. I am literally an expert on human extinction. That's what my academic work is on.

[Matt Iglesias]

Are you for human extinction or against?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Oh, yeah, no, no, no.

[Tim Miller]

That is a question in left circles, you know, sometimes.

[Matt Iglesias]

Exactly.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

It is. Yeah, it is, it is. And there is like actually something I've written about is there is a Deep. This is a separate point. The misanthropy in certain corners of the environmentalist movement where there is a deep loathing of people. Every time I write about human extinction in public, I get emails saying, you know, I hope we go extinct. But, you know, for the climate change piece, look, one thing Republicans are really good at is telling voters what to believe, right? Where they will say, here's what we stand for. You're coming along for the ride, right? They're very good at that. And largely pretty successful. Not always, but on the whole, that's something they're good at. Where Democrats are very much like, well, what is popular? What. Let's look at the polls, let's look at the focus groups. You know, they don't will a politics and a coalition into existence. And the way that the GOP is really good at taking an issue and saying, now this is our thing and this is what you guys believe. And so on the climate piece of it all, like, look, I get that certain climate policies are unpopular. I think partly that's because Democrats are terrible at talking about them. It's not just communication, though. Some of them are legitimately unpopular. And I think you just need to be able to make a more forthright case that is believable that the Democratic Party cares about workers. They also care about climate change. And these things don't have to be mutually incompatible. And it's worth noting that Biden in 2020 did win, basically making that kind of pitch where he said he was going to incorporate elements of the Green New Deal, you know, and so I think climate change is something that, look, it's a hard issue for Democrats. I'm not, I'm not disputing that it's a hard issue in the same way that immigration is a hard issue for Democrats. But I think how we talk about it matters in a huge problem in this campaign was silence about unpopular issues. Right. We're just not going to talk about them. We're not going to be woke anymore. But we're just, we're not going to talk about them. We're going to hope everybody forgets about the things we used to say. And I think that strategic silence is not especially strategic, you know, and that forthrightly confronting unpopular positions and saying, hey, here's why you should care. That matters.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess this just gets me back to the fact that, you know, in that kind of Murphy mix. Right. The thing that would really move the needle far is if you were, you know, we talked about Joe Biden's infelicity as a, as a speaker, as he got on in years, Kamala Harris's, I think, shortcomings as an interview subject. I think everybody agrees in principle you want somebody who's like good at talking and charismatic, right? But the real way that that delivers value is you can take a question about something like trans participation in youth sports and you can give an answer to the question that seems compelling to most people, right? Because those kind of issues are just more transparent, right? Like I could hear somebody say, oh, this regulation is going to be really good. It's going to make your n homes better. And then the other politician is like, no, right. These are out of touch freaks and it's going to backfire. And I'm like, it's hard to say, right. Whereas you can just tell if somebody says something about immigration, like, do I agree with what this person is saying or don't I? And so it's like, obviously you need candidates who are more verbally dexterous, candidates who are more charismatic, but all of that is for the purpose of delivering messages that are acceptable to the broad range of people.

[Tim Miller]

Is it more though, about the authenticity? I mean, to me, I'm just listening to you guys hash this out and I mean, if each of you could have designed a Biden presidency, you would have designed the policies different. But in a weird way, he did kind of appeal to both camps. He was a coalitional president. He appealed to both camps. And so listening to you, I wonder if the actual thesis that you both have is if Mike Rowe had been the presidential candidate and ran on the exact same policy platform that Biden had. But he did so by more emphasizing the plants that were getting built in red America and how much they care about that. And he did so by de emphasizing whatever the democracy stuff or the woke stuff, that he probably would have won. Would you agree with that? Or do you think there was something fundamental about the policies going too far left? Do you think that was problem or too far right? And maybe in Tower's case, different things.

[Matt Iglesias]

Happen at different points in time, right? So they came around. I mean, Senator Murphy was involved in coming around on immigration. I think a huge question that I think we're waiting for people to leave the administration and write their memoirs is like, what took them so long? Exactly. And why did Harris, when she was invited repeatedly to break with Biden, it seemed like the most obvious thing to say was like this thing he already did, that the base is already swallowed. He was way too slow.

[Tim Miller]

Well, I can answer that one Biden didn't let her do that. He was anxious about.

[Matt Iglesias]

He forbade her.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, he was gonna create problems for her. I think that the whole vibe was like, you need to walk very lightly and gently around me because I'm sensitive about my legacy. I just think that that's obviously true.

[Matt Iglesias]

I mean, maybe so. And there's other. Rachel Cohn did a piece in Vox about how the administration in the end, tried to hew a kind of moderate common sense line on the school sports issue, but, like, never articulated that because they were afraid of blowback from certain kinds of people. It matters, like what you say, what you do. But another thing is, you know, I was talking to somebody post election in the White House, and she was saying, you know, at one point, some of the people on the team came up with a bunch of ideas that we thought might help bring grocery prices down. And it was like, maybe we could do a Jones act waiver. And the president didn't want to do anything that labor unions were going to oppose, which is part of his populist appeal. And I get why he had that view. But also, they kept saying bringing prices down is our number one priority. But the fact is it. It wasn't right. Their number one priority was bringing prices down in ways that are consistent with solidarity, with blue collar labor unions, with our climate goals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[Tim Miller]

So you're saying that there is some areas where they went too far left. Immigration regulations maybe would be the three that you're. Yeah, I mean, I think that had a tangible impact.

[Matt Iglesias]

Well, and the beginning of the administration on climate. I mean, they actually did try to shut down all oil and gas leasing on federal lands. That didn't happen because they lost in court. But it's like, why did they do that?

[Tim Miller]

Tyler, Did I find some disagreement now or are you more on the micro side of things?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I mean, I think they were right to try to do that. You know, I mean, I really do got think, yeah, that's the problem. There are. But. But there's no narrative again, with. With any of these things. I mean, there. This campaign and this president should have been saying that insurance companies are literally stopping, insuring houses in Florida and other places because the climate problem is so bad. The military believes in climate change. Insurance companies believe in climate change. And you better believe in climate change too, because it's coming for your pocketbooks. And they didn't have a message like that, you know, and so look, I just think it's not all framing, but I think framing was part of it. And they had no message and they had no story on the trans piece. Look, I think it was egregious that Harris didn't talk about and reframe the sports issue because there was a very easy look if she wanted to avoid stepping on toes. The easiest way to have that conversation is not to ignore it because everyone was talking about it and there were the ads. Right. The easiest way to frame that conversation is we are Talking about under 100 athletes, athletes across the country and who are trans, where this is actually an issue. Maybe we can debate what the policy should be there. But if you're worried about fairness in sports, you should be worried about the parents around this country who are spending tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars for year round camps to get their kids to win college tuitions for their kids who are already rich. Right. Like that's a way to reframe this issue and say this isn't about this tiny group, this is about this big group. I mean, one of my frustrations with the way in which we talked about the trans issue post election in the aftermath is there was that blueprint survey which showed that a lot of Americans thought, you know, that Harris cared more about, was more worried about minority groups and trans groups than they were about, you know, regular people or, you know, the rest of the country or however they put it. Right. And that was framed as Americans are angry about trans stuff. And I think the way to read that question is it wasn't clear to the public that the Democrats care as much about working people and about these other issues as they care about some of these, these smaller issues. Right. And so, you know, I just think the strategy of silence was really damning on a lot of these issues. You have to about it. You can't just hope people forget, you know.

[Tim Miller]

And so is the way to care then by just having a candidate that's doing more populous demagoguery against big, big corporations? Maybe one way to frame this is the Ohio senate races in 22 and 24. Tim Ryan ran a pretty, an iglesiasy like directionally type campaign, you know, trying to get more to the middle on cultural issues.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Is he the one who shot the TV or something with, with a gun?

[Tim Miller]

Did Tim Ryan do that? I forget if he had to shoot.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

The tv maybe through a foot ball at it. He did something.

[Tim Miller]

Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. And then Sherrod Brown in 2024 ran a directionally more Tyler ish campaign talking about populist economic issues. Sherrod Brown got 46.47% of the vote in Ohio. Tim Ryan got 46.92% of the vote in Ohio. So, like, absolutely no difference between the two different approaches, which maybe just speaks to the Democratic brand broadly or I don't know. So I guess my question is maybe the policy doesn't matter at all and it's just more about. Right. Like what you're emphasizing and trying to demonstrate that you're more of a populist fighter might be your pitch, Tyler, and maybe, Matt, your pitch is that it is actually more policy and that Tim Ryan was just drugged down by Biden. So, anyway, I don't want to speak for both of you, but I'm just trying to define the contours of the disagreement.

[Matt Iglesias]

Well, I mean, I think in terms of, you know, there's a national brand, right, which is shaped by different kinds of things. I think the line between policy and how do you talk about things is a little bit fuzzy at times. Right. One thing that how parties define themselves is like, what is room for reasonable disagreement. I think that one reason lurking behind the kind of failed strategy of silence is that Democrats, even Democrats in safe seats, are a little bit afraid of what they are going to say because they are afraid that if they cross some kind of line, people are going to jump on. So one person pitched to me a version of this, something similar to what you said on sports. Say, like, look, there's a very small number of athletes. There's a lot of strong feelings about this. I can understand that reasonable people might disagree, blah, blah, blah. And then something about school. And so, like, that makes sense to me. But the line reasonable people can disagree is actually a policy, right? Like, not a policy that, like, you will get death threats on blue sky if you say that. And it also, it begs the question of, like, did the federal Department of Education need to promulgate a policy about this at all? Or could the policy have been reasonable people can disagree. I'm working on inflation, Social Security, like, the things that the federal government has to do.

[Tim Miller]

They did do something, though, like. Right.

[Matt Iglesias]

But, you know, so it's actually like a Trump on abortion, right? Like, this was a big problem for Republicans in 2022, a big millstone around their neck. And they adjusted to trying to say different states are gonna be to go different ways on this. And from what I've seen, people bought this. I mean, most of the women who I know are like, trump is full of shit. This is awful. He's responsible for Dobbs Et cetera, et cetera. But he gained the votes of a lot of pro choice people by adopting a policy that at least he says abortion is going to remain available in the blue states. If you're in a red state, you're going to be able to travel, medication will be available. I mean, we'll see. Like, what he does with that is going to be a big deal politically. But, like, actually creating space for people to agree to disagree on cultural issues is largely about how you talk. But it does always, like, it touches on policy. Right. Like, you can't write a rule that says every elementary school in America has to handle things a certain way and then also say, hey, guys, it's not that big a deal. If it's not a big deal, it's not a big deal deal.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

No, I mean, I think that's. I think that's right. I mean, I agree with that. And I think. I mean, I do not think the Democrats, like, I take a holistic view, like I said, on why they lost. I think there's a lot of things, I think, you know, the legacy of 2020 locus, it's in there. I absolutely dispute that's the driving factor, but it's one of them. There's foreign policy, there's the economy. There's a ton of different things. But I do agree that Democrats need to get over this terror they clearly have of people yelling at them. You know, and I mean, I make this point in academia all the time where I get. I will have, you know, tenured academics reach out to me, and I'll have complained about something about academia online. They're like, I'm so glad you said that. I would never, you know, I could never say that. It's like, you literally have tenure. Yes, you can. What's going to happen? Who cares? You know, and I think it's really similar with politicians where you know, they'll point at Seth Molten and they'll say, oh, my gosh, people yelled at him outside his office. Who cares? You know, a couple staffers quit. Okay. You know, and I think there's this real terror of, you know, being yelled at. But it's totally incommensurate with the actual ramifications of being yelled at, which are, in political terms, I think, extremely minor. But in psychological terms, seem to weigh on these. These folks a great deal. You know, I mean, I do think Democrats needed to do a way better job on the trans issue because there was room to work with. If you look at polling, a majority of the public, including Republicans, believe that trans people should be protected in civil rights and housing and employment discrimination, et cetera. And 70% disagree on the sports thing. And that' that's quite a lot to work with. Right. It's not as though the public is anti trans. And I think Democrats have done too much to portray the Republican Party as, oh, they, you know, want to bring back employment discrimination, all these things. You know, most Republicans don't agree with any of that. It's this particular issue. And you can rightly say that this is a minor issue and it shouldn't matter in a campaign because it's a small number of people. But I think Democrats have failed to understand that this minor issue is a proxy for a bigger sense that Democrats just sort of legislate what the cultural values are going to be. They tell you things that sometimes seem Orwellian, and then if you. You don't believe them, they're going to shriek at you about it, you know. And so I think when we make quantitative arguments, arguments that I think are fundamentally right, I don't. I think there are so many bigger issues with fairness in college and sports than the small number of trans folks. But I think there's a mistake when you think it's just quantitative and that you don't understand the way in which these cultural issues are proxies for a bigger sense that the elites tell you what to do, you know, and there's this concentration of wealth but also a concentration of cultural power, and they get to dictate norms to you, you know, and I think that's part of it.

[Tim Miller]

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[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, so, I mean, I agree with you that policy in immediate terms does not drive people to the vote. The thing I would point out about populism is that the last three elections have all. Every election since Obama, every presidential election has been one by somebody espousing populist rhetoric. 2016, Trump was going after Wall street and he was going after people who voted for the Iraq war.

[Tim Miller]

And even 08 Obama, it was just 12. Obama is the only one that wasn't. Yep.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

2020, Joe Biden promised a public option for healthcare, which is worth noting that he didn't deliver and really didn't ever bring up again. Right. So he's. Trump is not the only one who promises populist things and then doesn't do them. And then, you know, Trump again ran on, we're going to do tariffs, economic nationalism, protectionism. And however you feel about that, those are, those are populist ideas. So the thing I would point out is that populist rhetoric has won at least the last three presidential elections and maybe going back to 2008 and Obama, you could absolutely make. Make that kind of case. Now, on the policy standpoint, I totally agree. And one of. I agree in the sense that that doesn't drive voters immediately. And part of the problem is that the gains from Biden's industrial policy aren't going to be felt for a long time. And so there are sort of two different speeds of politics. We're working with one, which is short term, where people feel unheard, both culturally and in terms of sort of corporate power, etc. And then this other speed, the long unfolding of the ramifications of some of his policies, like industrial policy. And you need to be able to bridge that gap rhetorically where you can say, look, this is where we're going. It took decades for neoliberalism to create the mess we're in of concentrated power and economic inequality. It will take a long time to dig back out. But this is why we're doing it. This is what we're doing, why we're doing it. Right. I mean, what Trump did, to his credit, and I completely agree, he's totally full of it in terms of things he says he's going to do. But if you watch Trump's speeches, you would come away with a basic sense that he cared about working people. Now, I think that's largely a lie, but when he went to McDonald's, Liberals on the Internet and in person were saying, oh, my gosh, can you look? He's such a phony. He's going to McDonald's, he's being the fry cooker, blah, blah, blah. It will be very hard for me to imagine, despite Kamala Harris saying she used to work at McDonald's. Be really hard for me to imagine her condescending to put on an apron and pick up a fry cooker or sit in a garbage truck.

[Tim Miller]

Really?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah. I can't see her doing it.

[Tim Miller]

I could have seen her doing it.

[Matt Iglesias]

So I think that we pay too much attention to that kind of pure BS aspect of Trump and Trumpism, and not enough to the fact that, I mean, we talked about climate a little bit, but, like, again, it falls in these debates into this, like, gap between the cultural issues and the economic issues. But whenever Trump was pressed, I'm like, what are you actually going to do about inflation? He would say, we're going to drill, baby, drill. We're going to have cheaper oil, we're going to have cheaper diesel. That. That's a cost INP to all kinds of things. As is often the case with things Donald Trump says, not 100% accurate in his rhetoric. Not like Mr. Scrupulous. But it's also not totally fake, right? Like, the Biden administration raised drilling fees on federal land for American things. They did various things to try to restrict fossil fuel output. They did put all these energy efficiency regulations on appliances. It's something that is very important to progressives. And you have to sort of decide, you know, how much you care about this stuff. It's one reason I'm a little skeptical of the idea that we're gonna, like, just go left on economics. There are some things championing Social Security, Medicare, championing better healthcare for people. I mean, these are like the core Democratic Party messages. This is like back when Tim was a Republican. This is the stuff that I'm gonna.

[Tim Miller]

Swallow them because of the cultural issues.

[Matt Iglesias]

That makes Republicans worried that we're going to have an argument about health care for poor kids, that we're going to have an argument about Social Security benefits. When you put more and more stuff on the table, I think almost regardless of what it is, it can be cultural, it can be environmental, it can be sort of more far out there, socialistic type stuff, it starts to make people nervous, you know, and you are at a kind of a risk Trump was very good at, through his gibberish, making a lot of people feel like they were welcome in the coalition as the left has become the, like, more educated group. It's not just you can get like, out of touch with people, very fastidious. Right. Like, tons of fighting, like, is it okay to be campaigning with this person? Right. Like, what are we doing? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, rather than boiling it down to, like a smaller agenda agenda and just being like, Trump is bad. We don't want to bankrupt the country with tax cuts. Let's get some medicine and like, otherwise be chill.

[Tim Miller]

I think we have an agreement on the fastidious language police across the podcast. So I want to just, before I lose you guys, I want to do two specific issues that I think might bring out some or at least might inform where you think we can go going forward. A lot of discussion this week about the assassination of a healthcare executive on the street. People do not like it when you say you think vigilante assassinations are bad. So I'm not, I'm not going to do that again. Well, I am going to keep doing it, but I'm not going to do it again.

[Matt Iglesias]

You have no. You're neutral.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I'm not going to do it again on this podcast. So, yeah, neutral on vigilante assassinations. But I am curious, though. There is then this conversation that is led out of that. Right. Which is maybe if the Democrats had been talking about how insurance companies are screwing you, that would have been better. And maybe if the Democrats did more populous demagoguery on healthcare against healthcare executives, they would have done better. And my instinct to that is that if this was such a passionate issue for everybody, then maybe the person that didn't even have a healthcare plan would not have been elected. But I could be. I'm open to being wrong on that. So I wonder what both of you think about that. The rabble rounds are saying that going after healthcare executives and demagoguing them is the path forward for the Democrats to get their mojo back. What do you think about that, Tower?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

The first thing I would say is I, look, I went to a Quaker college. I'm not a Quaker, but a lot of my leftism comes out of going through a Quaker institution that was very anti war, pro peace, et cetera. So when I say I think killing is bad and murder is bad, I mean it not in the way that people say I murder is bad, but like, I, I actually like a core part of my politics. And what for Me it is to be a leftist is to think, you know, killing unarmed people is bad, whether it's in foreign countries or whether it's here, here. That being said, people are livid because our health care system is really bad in this country, and that crosses class divides. I mean, there are wealthy people who also have their own horror stories about the health insurance industry, you know, and I think it's. Look, it's really easy to moralize about, you know, folks who are taking glee in a man's murder. I think that's horrible. Right. But at the same time, you have to at least recognize that many people in this country are struggling and this is an expression of pain. Right. And so in terms of the piece about, you know, would they have won if they would have run on healthcare? You know, I mean, I think it would have helped, certainly, but a thing I think about a lot. This philosopher, Ernest LeCloud, has a book on populism, and he says what populism is. Yeah, Matt, I'm doing a deep cut.

[Matt Iglesias]

He says, what populism is it populist? To cite obscure philosophers, yes.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

And so he makes this point that populism isn't just a. An aggregate of demand, like individual demands or claims like, I want healthcare, I want this, I want that. It's what happens when for a long time, a series of concrete demands have gone unmet and they become bigger than the sum of their parts. Right? So it's no longer just about, I want healthcare and I want better infrastructure and I want union jobs. It metastasizes into some bigger thing where it's like, I want, like, real change. I don't want just this piecemeal strategy. I want real change. And I think think, you know, it's a mistake for Democrats to think about this in terms of, oh, if we would have just done healthcare, or if we would have just talked more about labor, if we would have just done this. Like, they need to recognize we have swung back and forth, Dem, Republican, Dem, Republican, because people want sweeping transformation of the sort that Obama promised and didn't really deliver in 2008, you know, and so I think, I think healthcare would have helped, but I think we also need to recognize that people want somebody who's going to take a big swing. And saying this country, you know, a data point that's crazy is like 70, 80% of the country says we are on the wrong track. And a similar percentage said, no matter who wins the election, things are just going to keep getting worse. Right. Like, you need to find somebody who's going to make people feel like they're not just going to give you a public health care option or they're not just going to do this, they're going to bring real systemic change. And so I think healthcare matters.

[Tim Miller]

But you know, in defense of incremental change, Matt Iglesias, I mean, so I.

[Matt Iglesias]

Mean I think this is like one of the big parents paradoxes of American politics is that people are so frustrated with the system, they are so down on politics and politicians, they love outsiders, they love like big rhetoric about change and they kind of like the idea of upsetting the apple cart. At the same time, whenever somebody actually tries to enact large scale public policy change, it becomes contentious, it becomes unpopular. When Obama was doing health care reform, that was unpopular. When Trump was trying to undo Obama's health care reform, that was unpopular. When Trump was doing his tax cuts, that was unpopular. When Kathy Hochul says she wants to do congestion pricing, that's unpopular. When Sam Brownback tried to overhaul Kansas tax system, that was unpopular. So I think it's tricky. I mean this is part of why politics is hard, right? It's like you need to show people that you are in touch with their disgruntlement with the system. But part of that disgruntlement is that they don't trust the system to actually take care of their lives.

[Tim Miller]

Back to micro. Just need a working class reformer to put a face on incremental changes.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I'd vote for micro.

[Matt Iglesias]

When I think about this insurance executive who got murdered. A, I am against murder. B, there is a difference when you're doing anti corporate populism, I think it matters what your targets are. It is true that people have a lot of frustration with health insurance companies also with maybe with like phone companies and cable companies. These are like really shitty experiences. I think if you paid attention to politics during the Biden years you would have seen a lot of fighting with Amazon. At the beginning. Before Elon's like sharp right turn, Biden was fighting with America's leading electric car.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Entrepreneur for sort of no reason.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah, well he was fighting with them about union issues, right? Fighting with Amazon, fighting with Google. I, I think insurance companies are much better, not a target for violence but for like a politics of like I'm with you, not with big business. You gotta think about like which businesses are actually held in lower esteem by the public than politicians. Because it's not that long of a list, short list, you know, like Amazon delivers me packages in two days, pretty much subscription. They gave me jack re you know, lots of good, good stuff that I enjoy. And it's like the government.

[Tim Miller]

You can't watch Thursday Night Football in hotel rooms anymore because of Amazon, though, so we gotta attack them over that.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Do it during a Thursday night game.

[Matt Iglesias]

Whereas, like, the insurance companies are frustrating, right? Like, their business model is to sometimes refuse to pay claims that I want. So that is like a logical form of populism.

[Tim Miller]

Can I give one more specific policy issue to this point? The student loan reform, so that in one mind could be seen as a traditional populist policy issue. It's a wealth transfer. We're bailing people out. We're helping people. On the other hand, we're helping people that went to college. Now, the Democrats tried to reframe this as, like, well, but it's, you know, there's technical colleges and nurses and like, plenty of people. But like, just. But still, it was specifically targeted to people that went to college. So, anyway, I would like both of your takes on how the student loan reform fits into this rubric, Tyler.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, so one of the problems is that the Democrats haven't just owned that this is a policy that disproportionately not only, but. But helps the professional class. Right. It's worth noting that a significant percentage of people who were targeted for student loan relief are Pell Grant recipients, you know, working class people, etc. So I think it's disingenuous to frame this as like, oh, this is for the rich college educated. But it's simply a fact. Julius Krein in American Affairs a number of years ago had a really good essay on this. I think it was called the Real Class War. And one of the things he pointed out is if you look at who supported ber, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, it was basically the professional class, Right. Who were downwardly mobile and angry. And in a certain sense, what he was arguing in that essay is that, like, the real class war is between the oligarchs who make their money through capital gains, and then the top 10% who are professional class, but basically like, work for a living, you know, you.

[Tim Miller]

Know, I'm grinding it away on my podcast here. Paying the top tax.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Exactly, exactly.

[Matt Iglesias]

Here they in the take minds.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

But, like, I think Democrats, you know, need to do better messaging to target both their professional class and the working class and then make a case about the ways in which their policy helps both of these. These parts of their coalition. Right. I mean, one example was Lena Khan, who was beloved, obviously, and many Democrats were very much supported her. But there Wasn't enough of an emphasis on, you know, when Lena Khan was trying to get rid of non competes. That helps working people and that also helps professional class people who work in tech and are saddled with non competes all the time. Right. So there are ways you can talk about issues, issues like college relief and some of these other things and say, like, look, some of the stuff we do is for this group of people in our coalition. Some is for this other group.

[Tim Miller]

Would medical debt relief would have been better for you?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, medical debt relief would have been great.

[Tim Miller]

If you would have chosen between those, would you have just said that they should have?

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I would have chosen medical debt for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Republicans, you know, if I could recommend anything to anyone, it is to read the book the Conservative Intellectual Movement in America by George H. Nash, which is a history of what got called fusionism, where the Republicans married traditionalism and evangelical Christian Christianity to sort of libertarian economics and then neoconservatism and foreign policy. And it's a granular look at how they managed to build this coalition of people. Somebody sipping martinis in Wall street and an evangelical Christian in the south have very little in common, yet they were able to knit together a coalition. And the Democrats need to think in those terms. Right. Like we have a coalition of people who do not agree on issues like immigration or, or gender or some of our climate change. Right. But we need to figure out a way to say, look, we're on this tent. Sometimes these people are gonna get this, sometimes you're gonna get this. And that is, you know, that is what it is. And until Democrats can do that, I think we'll continue to flounder.

[Tim Miller]

Matt. Student loan and medical bailouts.

[Matt Iglesias]

And here's the thing to me about student loan, you can debate the distributional tables of that thing.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Sure.

[Matt Iglesias]

The symbolism, you know, I think clearly bad. But what really got me about it, and it relates to this whole concept of popularity populism, Right. Which is that if you want to say that people who were in debt for student loans deserve help. Right. Who is the bad guy in that kind of story? The bad guy has to be, on some level, the colleges and universities themselves.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, my language. Now bringing in more former Republicans, this might have helped in the Atlanta suburbs.

[Matt Iglesias]

So to do this in a way that has no accountability element for the universities, I think is just really bad. So. And if you go back to the Obama administration, right, they had a rule that was going to make it harder for for profit schools whose graduates weren't earning a decent living. To be eligible for federal student loans. He fought and fought and fought for that. They got it done at the end of the administration. Betsy DeVos comes in and she says, I think reasonably, it's arbitrary to saddle the for profit schools with this rule and not get the nonprofits. So I'm like, listening to her, I'm like, that makes sense. But then her butt is, so we're going to let the for profits off the hook. And then Biden came back and he stuck with that. Right. But he added in, well, I'm going to do like a bailout for this subgroup of students. So I think part of an economic populism means taking a more comprehensive look at, like, who are the economic elites. Right. Like the Yale faculty are not like scrappy workers, the university presidents, those boards. Right. Like, if they are ripping off the public, like, that is bad. Just like it's bad if a health insurance company rips off the public.

[Tim Miller]

I want to add one element to this. This is how I stay in touch with real people. By going to the gay bar and Gabe, our employee, recognized me and we started talking about politics. And this was towards the end of the campaign and he was like, I didn't get a student loan bailout because this is the other thing. Like, it wasn't a. Like it wasn't a blanket thing. Like it was challenging to do. Right. So you. So it ended up being a broken promise on top of all those things. Like it was again, it felt like there was a message for the elites. There wasn't a good villain and to a certain category of people, they didn't qualify for whatever various mundane reason. And it felt like a broken palm stone. He was pissed. He was like, I don't think that that one vote in Louisiana, I don't know if he ended up voting for Kamala or not, or whether that really mattered one way or the other. But, you know, like, that was another element of it. Like, it really did not have this broad impact that it was pitched as. It's like this was really going to help young people. Young people in particular were the ones that weren't getting it right because they didn't qualify in the right timeline.

[Matt Iglesias]

Well, most, I mean, most young people don't go to college. I mean, that's just like a reality that you need to sort of cope with. Right. So, I mean, I, I think this is just a great example that, like some populism in your economics. Sure. Like, by all, you know, it's the Democratic party. You, you gotta have a way to be like restanding for the little guy. But you can't just like grab shit that like emerges from the left policy ether and like assume that it will be populist. Like I, I kind of get why like nonprofit staffers and college professors and the other people from the Elizabeth Warren intellectual network like hatched this idea, but it's like a real stinker and I think kind of obvious ways and like they just like they wouldn't, they wouldn't listen. Like people kept saying, like this is gonna look really bad. Like what are you doing here, guys? And I don't know.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

I think you're right though, that the reason it looked bad. And I would note that still people supported it, right? Like a majority of the public still supported it. And you can, you can parse out independents and Republicans and how they felt about it, but like a majority supported it. But I completely agree with Matt that the, the failure to hold universities to account and say you guys are increasing your tuition by $5,000 every year, that is not inflation. You are screwing students. Right. Or that you guys have terrible labor practices and then you're lecturing us about social justice. Right. Like take it to them. And that didn't happen. And so it was just as though this, this is an amorphous policy with, with no friend, enemy, distinction. I think that's a crucial part of populism. To that I totally agree with Matt. And I think you need to be able to pick targets where you can name an enemy who people don't like. And people don't like colleges and universities. They have a lower approval rating than Congress, which Congress probably has like, you know, a lower approval rating than the devil. And so like I just, I, you know, I agree that they're the messaging failure though, right?

[Matt Iglesias]

Beloved. Oh yeah, beloved. Beloved Lewiston institution, anchor of the community paper mills, you know, aren't what they used to be.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Exactly.

[Tim Miller]

I did not get to fighting over NAFTA or the broligarchs, which I really wanted to. So we can maybe do this again in January. But I do want to end with like a forward looking thing. Is there somebody out there that you think is a model for what you're putting pushing? I would nominate potentially of interest to either of you. There's Jared golden, who's your man up in Maine, Tyler. And whose Matt's kind of maybe more ideological spirit animal. But I open the floor to any other thoughts about forward looking types of. Types of candidates that you think might work better? Tower, go ahead.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, you know, I mean, I just think it's too early to start naming people.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe just like paint me a picture of something that, you know, I just.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Wrote about Chris Murphy. One of the reasons I did is because I think he is onto something where at least he basically. And look, I don't know that I believe a guy from Connecticut is like the right vector for his haircut. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Haircut isn't giving working man.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

No, no. So like I don't know, I like.

[Tim Miller]

Chris Murphy, but I just.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, yeah, but like that basic stance he's taking, which the reason I find it appealing is it's welding legitimate economic populism. Still fuzzy on the details but like at least in speed spirit to the sense that we need to let, we need to open the tent. And explicitly he is, he is saying this isn't about throwing XYZ Group under the bus. It's letting other people into the tent and saying we all get to argue but like this is what we stand for, is a coalition roughly. And so I think somebody who can weld economic populism to social values pluralism is what is going to win elections, you know. And you know, like I said, I like Chris Murphy. Obviously I'm a Bernie guy. Bernie is far too old and you know, AOC I think needs to, to run for. I think A, she's a little bit too tethered to the sort of social justice corner and B, she hasn't, you know, I think she needs to try to run for governor or having culturally.

[Tim Miller]

Social justice like, like, you know, kind of identity stuff. Jared golden, he's in Maine.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, you know, I do. Jared golden is, is good on a number of issues like corporate power. I care about Jared golden is reasonable on things like gun control. You know, where I think this is one thing where I think Matt and I do agree, like Democrats need to realistically confront the fact that assault weapons ban is not going to happen. It's not the 1990s. I mean it's not going to happen.

[Tim Miller]

For this is where the former Republican is going to get to outlive both of you. I'm ready to go in with Beto, but anyway, go ahead, finish.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

Yeah, yeah, but like, so I like Jared Golden. I think, I think that is the kind of energy we need like people who have authenticity in their, in their working class appeal. Dan Osborne, I thought was a fantastic candidate and a number of Dems got mad because he, you know, he said privately he would, you know, does not support abortion but supports choice, you know, as a legislative matter and use pro gun control. Or whatever. But Dan Osborne, somebody with authentic working class appeal and economic populism. So there are some people that are.

[Tim Miller]

Promising Rand for Senate, Nebraska. Yeah. Matt, final word.

[Matt Iglesias]

Golden is good. I mean, I think Marie Glusenkamp Perez in Washington is a great example. One reason I like to point to her is that she is, I think, like, less obviously like working class vibes. Like, she kind of looks like she might be at a cool coffee shop in Portland.

[Tim Miller]

She also is like a mechanic.

[Matt Iglesias]

She is. But also she messages, you know, like she picked a fight with the Biden administration about some totally obscure regulation, about some kind of table saws. It's not like this issue transforms the universe. But he was a real example of showing, like, she thinks about things independently. She felt that she was hearing from other people who work with their hands that they did not like this idea and she was going to champion them. Tough on immigration, et cetera. You know, Ruben Gallego in Arizona, very successful. I don't think that the word Latinx is like, of incredible significance politically. I do think it was significant that he was the first Latino Democrat to talk about this in public because again, because it showed independent mindedness, it showed tough headedness and it showed thick skin. Because this is what you were talking about, Tyler. Right. It's. There's so many. There are many people in the Democratic Party who are like running scared. They'll like, tell me, oh, I have all these secretly reasonable opinions, but I could never say that. Right.

[Tim Miller]

This is like how Republicans used to come out of the closet to me. I've had more people come out of the closet to me than any person in America because I was like, I was the visible gay Republican. It's amazing.

[Matt Iglesias]

Yeah. And just anybody out there who has shown, look, I'll step out. I wouldn't have phrased what Seth Moulton said exactly the way that he said it, but I respect fact that he spoke what was on his mind. He got yelled at by some people and now he's like, we are going to keep living our lives. Because what it means to be a big tent party is that when somebody says something and it's like a little bit off, you're not like, this is the end of you. Right. You're like, we're a coalition that has like key principles. Right. And then it has a diverse set of views around these things. And that means that you have to stand up for the people who do it and not say, ah, but you didn't do it in the exact right way. Golden. What he said about Trump and democracy again, when he said that, I did not love it, but I respected that he took a shot. The crisis between the debate and when Biden dropped out, that was a hairy time. The obvious thing for a frontline Democrat to do would be to just go to ground and hide from everybody. I thought it was good that he. He just tried to talk to his constituents in a way that he felt would work. And I think they respected that. Right. And you have to be willing to do things that people in the base are gonna be like, what the fuck, man? Because by definition, if those voters in me too agreed with the Democratic Party base, they wouldn't be voting for Trump. You gotta say something that's meaningfully different, and that includes things I. I don't agree with.

[Tim Miller]

So, gentlemen, to be continued. Matt wrote in his slow, boring newsletter, which is not boring, a common sense Democrat manifesto. You can read more there. Tyler just wrote, is this how Democrats win back the Working Class? For the Atlantic. Go check that out. We'll do this again and go a full hour on NAFTA sometime in 2025. Thanks, guys so much. We'll be back tomorrow with Ann Applebaum. See you all then. Peace. A plan for a new toy. Pretty as a cupcake chip.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

It's a deep flake.

[Tim Miller]

Come on now the western the red stone drops down another click, click domino. Now the landfill bus kill TV domino. Populism politics. You be my princess to your mate. You bought it all on credit. Cause you can't push the product if.

[Tyler Austin Harper]

You'Re looking like you made it.

[Matt Iglesias]

I smelt him on the frontier.

[Tim Miller]

Hear the chest clicking in the gear Push down plastic, coffee and elastic. Come on now the oyster in the rhinestone drops your. The Bulwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.