← The Focus Group Podcast
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- [00:00]
Sarah Longwell
Foreign hello everyone and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. And this week we're turning away from Donald Trump's chaos because we have four years to talk about that and we're going to focus on the Democrats. Now we've spent a lot of time on this show talking about where swing voters have found Democrats lacking in the last election. But we want this to be a forward looking discussion about where Democratic voters think the party should go and whether that helps them win elections in the future. My guest today has had some thoughts about how Democrats need to shape up. Adam Gentleson, like gentleman, former chief of staff to Senator John Fetterman and deputy chief of staff to Harry Reid. He, he's also the author of the Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Adam, thanks for being here.
- [01:00]
Adam Gentleson
It's great to be here. Sarah, thanks for having me.
- [01:02]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Okay, so your main thesis since the election has been that Democrats need to spend less time listening to quote unquote, the groups, meaning progressive special interest groups. You said they, quote, imposed the rigid mores and vocabulary of college educated elites, placing a hard ceiling on Democrats appeal and fatally wounding them in the places they need to win, end quote. Man, do I agree with that sentence. So we're going to explore where we go from here during this episode. But do you want to tell us a little bit about how you think we got here?
- [01:36]
Adam Gentleson
Yeah, I think how we got here there's sort of the short version of the long version. Right. We can probably tease out the long version over the course of the show, but I think the short version is that over the last 10 years or so, Democrats have sort of become captive to a network of special interest groups that impose this very rigid orthodoxy on them and they're terrified of violating that orthodoxy in any way. And you know, a lot of the reactions that I read that piece has been, you know, are you overstating the power of these groups? And I promise you that I'm not. Because having worked on both sides of this, you know, mechanically and structurally, I can tell you that, you know, one of the first questions that gets asked in any Democratic office or on any campaign when they're developing an issue position is what are the groups going to think? And the answer to that question often determines what the outcome of the issue position is and what position that the candidate or the elected official takes. The groups, you know, they don't have a lot of grassroots supporters even though they represent that. They do, but they're very good at generating earned media, or as regular people call it, press. So if you violate this orthodoxy, what the groups do is they generate a bunch of bad stories about you. They accuse you of being pro genocide, they accuse you of being in favor of trans suicides, they accuse you of really extreme and awful things. And, you know, your average candidate or campaign is not equipped to take that amount of heat from the left. And so what they generally do is they back down. So it's that sort of fear of pissing off the groups and of encountering that kind of bad press and bad attention or having people come sit in your office that cows Democrats into doing what they say. Now what the upshot of this, though, is that Democrats have become so preoccupied with what the groups think that they no longer prioritize actually winning elections. And so the positions that they take on a campaign are sort of what's left after the groups have had their fill. And so you have a situation where we as a party have started to prioritize coalition management over winning elections. And we only sort of get around to trying to craft a winning strategy once we've checked all the boxes, pleased all the groups, and satisfied our coalition partners. And, you know, what's left strategically after you've done all those things is not much. And so you end up being sort of penned in to a very narrow approach. And a lot of the smart positions you should take to win a election have been taken off the table already.
- [03:56]
Sarah Longwell
One of the reasons I was really excited to have you on, and my producer has been like, you got to talk to this guy. You got to talk to this guy. Because I think that the focus group, not just the podcast, but, like, the concept of listening to voters, like, the chasm between the voters and the groups is very large. And also in there is the margin of victory. I come from the center right, and from, like, working on Republican politics. And I will say it's been a bit of an education for me over the last few cycles of trying to defeat Donald Trump and candidates like him to be like, oh, so this is how you guys do it? Wow. And honestly, what it has made me feel a little bit is sort of sorry for Democrats because Republicans benefit enormously from the homogeneity of so many of their voters, whereas Democrats have this, like, fractious coalition of people they need to manage that represent these issue sets. Because one of the things when I talk to Democrats and I say, listen, guys, one of the places you're super vulnerable is on immigration, because I listen to Voters across the political spectrum, and they're real clear, they think we should have strong borders. They like immigrants, they like the idea that people should be able to come here, but they also think they should do it legally and don't really have much of a sense of what that means. Like, they don't know how hard it is to come here legally because they're Americans, they've never had to do it, but they just basically think, well, people should follow the law and if they break the law to get here, that's a bad thing. And I think Democrats are sort of aware that that's broadly the case, but the groups would never let them say that. And so they have this sort of paralysis that then causes them to, I think, where like, be where Joe Biden was, which is to just do nothing on the border. Right. He doesn't want to confront the groups, and so he just does nothing. And as a result, you have a porous border and Republicans hammer you with it relentlessly and they win. It's like, how do you think about the vast majority of voters who do not know who the groups are, who the groups do not represent? Because there are way more voters than there are people in the groups. So why are Democratic politicians so much more beholden to the groups? I know what you just said about the using the press and like, going after them. And maybe this is why Federman kind of just flips everybody off when they come after him. Like, is that the correct response? Or like, how do they manage it as an elected official?
- [06:22]
Adam Gentleson
Yeah, I think it basically is the correct response. I think that there is actually enormous value to be gained by demonstrating to people that you are independent from the groups. And what's interesting about Senator Fetterman's experience over the last year or so is that his polls, his have gone up. And this isn't a commentary on the merits of the position or the substance or anything like that. It's just a commentary on politics. And ever since people in Pennsylvania saw him standing up to left wing activists, his polls went up pretty dramatically. And I don't think it's because people in Pennsylvania necessarily are looking at it as a substantive issue. I think they're looking at it as a political issue. And they see somebody demonstrating independence from the fringe of the party and voters. Primary concern right now with Democrats is that they're controlled by the fringe of the party. We saw after the election that people generally liked Kamala Harris, but they just thought that her ideology was too far left and out of step with their own So I think that's one of the problems. And I frankly sympathize with the voters. They don't understand. They're sort of mystified why Democrats are suddenly. And I think it's pretty sudden. It's only over the last five to 10 years, Democrats are suddenly taking these sort of fringe positions and using these terms and this language they just don't understand. I think that probably feels very mystifying as a voter. You know, what happened to the party and where did it go? And then that quickly leads them to the conclusion that, oh, they're waking up every day thinking more about what activists want than what I want. And in a lot of ways, they're not totally wrong. I mean, I think if you look at how Democrats vote, vote their votes, and the issues they choose to prioritize, the legislation they put on the floor does tend to be much more focused on the everyday concerns of Americans. But the problem is, you know, they keep feeding all this stuff out into the ether that just sets up Republicans to slam them, you know, answering questionnaires, taking these positions, putting stuff on their websites just to please the groups, and then that's what they get hit with. And we're just teeing Republicans up to portray Democrats as actually more focused on the deeds of activists.
- [08:28]
Sarah Longwell
You wrote something recently, I believe it was a Twitter thread that I was like, this. This right here is it. Which is that what happened in the election was pretty simple. Now, I have done a lot on this show about Joe Biden and how poorly he sort of set Kamala Harris up. But when Kamala Harris came in immediately, people were like, yes, somebody new that is not this very, very old man who's having health events on stage. Great news. I'm excited. And then Republicans did one thing. They took a clip of her saying that she supported trans surgeries for people in prisons. So criminals who are in prison, taxpayers funded trans surgeries. And they ran it over and over and over again. And the tagline was, Trump is for you. Kamala's for they them. That's what happened. And, like, 100% that's what happened. And what's funny is in the intervening time, there's been all of this fight about, did she run too far to the right? And like, my gosh, she was on stage with Liz Cheney, and wasn't that stupid? She should have been, you know, with the Palestinian protesters. And I don't even know how to intervene with some of this stuff because I listen to voters all the time, how obvious it is that actually they were open to her. And then Trump and Elon trumped like a gajillion dollars of the they them stuff on her head defined her by something people already kind of were worried about, which was that she was too progressive. Like her 90 days of saying to people, no, no, I promise I'm a centrist and I own a gun wasn't enough to dig her out of the hole when people were reminded, no, she's super duper progressive. And you don't like that. Like San Francisco liberal, people don't even know what it means, but they know what it means.
- [10:13]
Adam Gentleson
Or Massachusetts liberal, they said Against John Kerry 20 years ago, Michael Dukakis. I mean, this is the classic frame that Republicans use against Democrats. And sometimes it sticks. And if it sticks, Democrats lose, and sometimes it doesn't stick. And for Democrats to win, they have to make it not stick. And so what happened with Harris was that it was the classic frame they use against every Democrats, and it stuck because of the position she had taken. Yeah, there's this complicated argument from the left that she lost because, you know, somewhere in late July, her tone shifted slightly on the economy, probably to a degree that you really had to be paying extremely close attention to notice. And that that lines up with her decline in the polls, you know, and that was entirely through press clips in our media. And, you know, we're sort of awash in this misinformation environment. This is part of our problem as a party is that, you know, people will deploy motivated reasoning to come up with these extremely convoluted explanations for why a Democrat lost because they didn't run far left enough. And there's a lot of push polls and poor quality polls out there that people use to sort of cherry pick and support these theories. But when you step back and, you know, sort of take that argument into account and then compare that to the sort of Occam's Razor of Republicans deployed the frame that, you know, for 50 years has been the most effective frame against Democrats. It stuck because it aligned with positions Harris had actually taken relatively recently. And it was backed by millions and millions of dollars in advertising and a full fledged attack from the Trump campaign. That's probably why she lost. Not this complicated thing about the mild shift in her tone on the economy. So, you know, and here's the other thing I'd say, Sarah, is that it didn't used to be like this. Even among Democrats, I mentioned John Kerry. I mean, that was the first race that I worked on. And as a young staffer whose own Positions were to the left of where his were. I got into politics when I was in college as an activist against the Iraq, and I went to work for Kerry, who more or less supported the war. Kind of famously flip flop, but, you know, basically did support it. I took it as a given that I would work for candidates and politicians whose positions didn't align with my own, because that's what you had to do to win elections. And, you know, that carried through to Barack Obama in 2008, who opposed the war, but was, you know, far to the right of many Democrats on things like gay marriage and immigration and a bunch of other issues. And we took it as a given that that was what you needed to do. Because the point of being a candidate is to win elections. Because if you actually care about the issues you claim to, the only way you can help vulnerable people, the only way you can help the causes you care about, is to change policy. And to change policy, you have to win elections. You know, Mitch McConnell, who was our nemesis when I worked in the Senate for Senator Reid for many years, had this saying that always drove me crazy because it was true, which is that winners make policy and losers go home. And he'd always say that after he'd beaten us at something, you know, sometimes we beat him, sometimes he beat us, but. So it always drove me nuts. But it's true. And you can decide you want to be pure, and if that's your goal, you should be an activist. But activism is a different endeavor than politics. If you want to work in politics, your goal should be to win elections so that you can actually make change and help the people that you claim to care about.
- [13:30]
Sarah Longwell
Ooh. I want to talk more about activism versus politicians, but for this show, we did a couple of focus groups with rank and file Democrats. They self identify as Democrats, and they voted for Hillary Clinton. They voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And so to start off, we just asked them what drew them to the Democratic Party in the first place, like what made them Democrats. Let's listen.
- [13:50]
Focus Group Participant 1
I mean, I can put it very simply. I care about people, but it really just revolves around caring about people and caring about people's liberties and the freedom to be who they are and their authentic selves and to have a government that's working for them and supporting them. And nobody should go bankrupt because of medical bills, for an example.
- [14:14]
Focus Group Participant 2
Right now, it's really easy to be a Democrat when the alternative is so horrible, which is a Republican. You got to fight that. So I care about people in Need. I think government should be helping people in need. I'm not in need, thank goodness. I feel grateful, but there are a lot of people in need. You know, I will never have to face a difficult choice about whether or not to get an abortion, but I care about people who are in that position. I don't have to worry about food or housing or opportunity based on the color of my skin. I have privilege and I'm not ashamed of it. I feel grateful for it, but I. I don't want a government that cares really about the plight of the wealthy in America. And that's really what you have. On the other side, since I started.
- [14:55]
Focus Group Participant 3
Voting, I've been a Democrat, and especially.
- [14:59]
Focus Group Participant 4
Now that I've got Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
- [15:07]
Adam Gentleson
I'm especially a Democrat because the other alternative is possibly losing my benefits, which has been in the news lately. As you know, it's a scary thing.
- [15:25]
Focus Group Participant 4
So I grew up around seeing people suffer in poverty. I grew up with family members who were in poverty. So I see how much social programs can affect people and how much they can really, really improve their standard of living. In addition to that, my mom worked with Social Security for over 30 years. So just hearing the things that she did and hearing the things from her job and just knowing how important these benefits and how cruc are to people.
- [15:52]
Focus Group Participant 5
I consider myself a business person. And I really, you know, respect the fact that the Democratic party always has been, always will be, you know, a party of facts and of science. And that means a lot to me. You know, one of my favorite rebuttals to Republicans, you know, make sure a multi millionaire or owner of a corporation. Why. Why would you not be a Democrat? And, you know, oh, it's a business decision. And so I, you know, I have to remind them often. Let's take a look back. Let's go back to Reagan, one recession, Bush, one recession, Clinton comes in, leaves the biggest surplus ever. You know, the bottom line is it's a trend. If you want to look at the facts, as I come back to, from a business standpoint, every single Democratic administration comes in, cleans up the mess that the Republicans and leaves it in a much better place.
- [16:46]
Adam Gentleson
I'm very big on the healthcare system as far as actually making healthcare accessible for all. And to me, it feels like Republicans, they don't have a plan for that. I mean, every time somebody tries to remodel the healthcare system, first thing, they're gonna call it socialism, which is another problem, a key problem Democrats have.
- [17:06]
Focus Group Participant 6
I wanna be with a party that is more tolerant, a party that lets me take care of me. I don't need you in my bedroom. I don't need you in my marriage that I can take care of myself. So I don't need you to be my. To be my mom and my daddy. I'm grown. Grown. So let me live my life. Democrats let you live your life and do what you need to do, but also don't try to preach to you from an angle of fear.
- [17:32]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, so I consider that pretty, like, mainstream why I'm a Democrat. Makes sense. I don't agree with all of it, but, like, I get it. But like, it's funny, not a lot of them were like, let me tell you my particular policy position on xyz. It's a lot of, like, care about people. And so one of the things you mentioned in your piece is that progressive interest groups have taken over the staffing pipeline in the party and promoted a lot of what you call magical thinking. And so, like, do those people in that pipeline, do they listen to these voters or do they come in with their own set of things that they're like, this is what I care about. And so I'm going to impose that on the voters. Or like, I'm going to say that this is what voters prioritize. Like, how do you think about it?
- [18:16]
Adam Gentleson
Well, I think the staffers in your average congressional office tend to be more connected to voters because they do tend to come up. You know, you start your first job in a congressional office is usually answering the phones and, you know, talk about listening to voters. It's literally what you do all day, you know, or answering the mail or the email, you know, getting constituent correspondents, right? And, you know, you work your way up from there. And you tend to be very in touch with local issues. You're spending your whole day looking at extremely local, specialized things that are going on in the district or the state that you represent. So I think they tend to be more in touch. And that's certainly been my experience. But when it comes to campaigns and activist groups, that's where you have a lot more folks who are coming in because they care deeply about a single issue or a set of issues, and their goal is to make the party care more about the issue that they care about. And look, there's a time and a place for that. What's happened in the last 10 years is that interest groups have been here for a very long time, at least 50 years, the 1970s and the sort of Ralph Nader perg consumer advocacy Sort of movement was sort of the origin of a lot of this kind of activism. What it is now is it's on steroids. This is downstream of the Citizens United decision. There's been a flood of money. We focus on it in campaigns, but it has also massively increase the presence of these interest groups in Washington, D.C. and they have hired up a lot of young people who care about an issue and really want to just focus on this issue and are willing to go stage a sit in or do a protest on that issue. And then, you know, the incentives of the groups are also to please their funders by pressing this issue on people. So there's sort of a deleterious incentive structure here, a perverse incentive structure where the way that they achieve success in the eyes of their funders and their board is to push this single issue on Democrats, to get Democrats to put out statements on it, advocating for their position, to put it up on their website, those sorts of things. So the staffers start with a single issue. You know, I started with a single issue myself. Well, I don't know, I had a few issues, but let's just say, you know, in 2003, opposition to the war in Iraq was the main thing that motivated me to get into politics. There wasn't the same network of organizations to go to that would then tell me, yes, focus on that one issue. That issue is all that matters. And your job is to press that issue on politicians today, basically, you can pick whatever issue you want and you can find an organization that will give you a full time salary and benefits to go spend all of your time advocating for that issue. And then they will commission polls that will supposedly show that this issue is popular and that sort of checks the box of political intelligence. And you say, all right, look, I've sort of conceded to the reality that I need to at least show that this is politically popular. But as you know, there are good polls and there are bad polls. And if you have an organization that's dedicated to one issue, they pay $40,000 for a poll. The pollster knows what results they're supposed to deliver. You ask the question a million different ways until you get a result showing that IT polls at 55%. And then the group takes that poll and takes it to congressional office and says, CR issue is popular, but that's not an accurate reflection of where public opinion is. So that's a long answer to your question. But I think the difference now, young people have always been focused on small sets of issues. It's part of how you get involved. There's now this industry that will take that impulse and validate it and professionalize it in a way that has not been true in past years.
- [21:46]
Sarah Longwell
So let me ask you something that's a strategic question, because I think there's something that Republicans do on this that's different from the way Democrats do it. Because Democrat activists, like you said, they sort of take a pass at the idea that their issue is popular, but then they take it and they beat the politicians up until they walk the plank on their issue and take an unpopular position. Republicans say, hey, first we have to win the argument, and then we'll win the vote. And so these interest groups on the right and its network of podcasters and influencers and all these people, they are all working in concert not just to bring the elected officials in line, but actually to win public opinion to such a degree that the public is the reason. Like, I am watching Republicans do all kinds of things right now that I know are contrary to their beliefs, their values. I'm looking at you, Senator Cassidy, MD, who's decided to say yes to the guy who thinks that vaccines cause autism and wants to get rid of the polio vaccine. This is insanity, just insanity. But why is it happening? It is happening because they have convinced a lot of people to call up Senator Cassidy and be like, I will primary you because they've won an argument on the culture first. Right? These groups, though, it feels like they bully the politicians without trying to win over public opinion first. Like, they have all this money and it would be much better used. And maybe I'm wrong about this. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but it just feels like that's a difference in their strategies.
- [23:24]
Adam Gentleson
It is a difference. And what really is effective at bullying senators and members of Congress is the prospect of being able to win elections and being able to wield political power effectively. So it's not a poll showing your issue is popular. It's getting calls from people who are aligned with a movement that you know can beat you if they try, because they just did. So it only underscores the importance of winning elections. Like that is what talks with elected officials. You know, if they don't think that you can beat them, they're not going to listen to you, no matter how many polls you throw at them showing your issue is popular. And this is one area where I would say, it didn't used to be like this. I remember working during the Obama administration outside of government for a little while for some advocacy groups and think Tanks. And the dynamic was completely different. We had this sort of nascent left wing blogosphere at the time derided us. They came up with this term for us. They called us the Vealpen because they said we were basically being fattened up by Democrats in elected office to do their bidding. And so a lot of what we saw as our job was to explain to left wing activists why difficult political decisions were necessary and why you should still support Democrats even though they had to make these political decisions. For instance, when we were working through the Affordable Care act and the public option had to get dropped from the bill because Senate Democrats didn't have the votes for it, that was a difficult moment. And a lot of advocacy groups at the time saw their role as explaining to the left wing of the party why this was necessary. This was the best we could do. This was just a simple political reality that we had to accept. Today, it's the opposite right. All these left wing advocacy groups see their role to criticize Democrats for making any sort of concession to reality and to come up with magical thinking scenarios where they could somehow just change political physics and manufacture votes for something out of thin air. You saw a lot of this going on with the debate over Build Back Better and the Inflation Reduction act under President Biden, where Democrats just didn't have the votes for the massive spending package that the left wanted. And so people came up with all sorts of fantastical scenarios for how you could get Joe Manchin and Senator Sinema to come around and vote for things in that bill that they said they wouldn't vote for. And that's, I think, a disservice to people because rather than explain to people that Joe Manchin represents West Virginia and there are some things he's just not going to vote for, you lead them to the conclusion that corruption must be at play, that he must be doing this not because it's what he truly believes as a center left Democrat, but there's got to be some nefarious issue at play. You know, he's got to be corrupt. He's got to be on the take. And so it ends up leading you down a path where by age 26 or 27, you've been taught that the entire system is corrupt and people are making decisions because of unethical reasons rather than political reality. And so you're not learning the basic facts about politics. You're not learning basic facts about how to affect change through the system we have. I think that's really a disservice to young people. To teach them that.
- [26:32]
Sarah Longwell
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- [28:08]
Focus Group Participant 3
I hate to be this person, but the trans fight for me is not a fight for me, you know, and here's the thing, and it sounds crazy because I, I have a woman as my partner. You know what I mean? So it's hard for me to be this person. But at the same time, I don't want to spend all of their term fighting about bathrooms and BS because that's, that's the stand that they've decided to take. Meanwhile, I feel like we're not as a party organized enough. We've got the squad who they're going to do their little thing and they're going to fight for their rights and interests. But then we've got the other ones who are like, well, we got to get along with everybody and if we could work with them and make it bipartisan and all that. Those days are over. The Republicans have showed us over and over again those days are over. They're going to vote for their candidate. They're going to vote for whatever that person says, whether it's right or wrong. Because if we all band together and we're all unified, that's how we win. That's how we get the power, and that's what we do. And that's all they've done. And now they've got all the power. And we all have to just sit here and live with it.
- [29:20]
Focus Group Participant 2
Don't cater to the extreme wing of the party or to extreme positions. I'll take the squad, for example, but I think Democrats are doing that. The squad doesn't run the Democratic Party. They have a place, but their positions, by and large have not been adopted by the party as a whole. On the other side, the Republicans, it's like the loonies are running the asylum. The far right of the party is driving that party. But I would guard against the same thing. We can't get pulled too far to the left.
- [29:48]
Focus Group Participant 7
I'm done with the showboating, showman bullshit.
- [29:55]
Adam Gentleson
Theater that we have in Washington.
- [29:57]
Focus Group Participant 7
I want people like aoc, who will speak truth and has that youth, to continue with her policies through upper levels of government. I want honesty. I think that'd be a really nice change. I want exposure of corruption. I want Congress not to be able to purchase stocks and be able to trade stocks while in office. That's just obscene. You look at Pelosi, I mean, you.
- [30:29]
Adam Gentleson
Got to look at both sides here.
- [30:31]
Focus Group Participant 4
We're always called to be a bigger person. We're always called to work together. We're always called to do this. Meanwhile, Republicans, they can spit in our face and hardly anyone calls them out. And what's particularly upsetting is I saw the other day that Hakeem Jeffries tweeted, presidents come and go, but remember, God is on the throne forever. And I'm just thinking, this man is signing executive orders all day long that are chipping away at people's rights. And this is what you say. This is basically saying, this is beyond us. We have to trust the higher power. And from that point, I got very angry because I feel like that has just always been the thing. Be a bigger person, take the high road. When they go low, we go high. It's just very frustrating.
- [31:22]
Focus Group Participant 7
Everybody is too damn polite. Way too damn polite. They should be in the Senate hearings and say, clearly you are not competent for this job. Why are you even applying for it? You know, something like that. Just a simple one minute thing. Call people out to their face, tell them that they're full of the 78 year old wonder who has the life expectancy of a bunch of bananas sitting on the counter in Arizona, there's no problem getting up and talking and acting like an expert, although he knows nothing.
- [32:01]
Focus Group Participant 2
I think they need to meet people where they're at. Back when the Republicans put out the Powell memo. Look that up if you haven't.
- [32:09]
Adam Gentleson
Their plan for taking over America. One of the tenets of that was to run celebrities.
- [32:15]
Focus Group Participant 2
And don't tell me that Oprah wouldn't have kicked his ass.
- [32:20]
Adam Gentleson
You know, as. As childish as that might seem, that.
- [32:24]
Focus Group Participant 2
In order to win, that's what you're going to have to do. You have to run a celebrity or at least bring some of the people in your party up to the celebrity level.
- [32:36]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, I'm going to put a pin in the let's run a celebrity conversation, because we come back to that a little bit. It comes up a lot in the groups of people are like, stop running regular politicians and Oprah, man, I swear to God, people really think Oprah would have just dominated this election. And maybe that's true. But you wrote a great New York Times guest essay shortly after the election in which you said that Donald Trump engaged in what you call super majority thinking, which is to say that he envisioned what it would take to achieve a massive electoral realignment and worked from there. So the example you gave was Trump holding a campaign rally in the Bronx last May despite not having a chance in New York. Something I think, like, people might have made fun of him for, like, what's he spending his time here for? But he had a reason. And in the end, Trump came closer to winning New York than Harris did to winning Florida or Texas. And I want people to absorb that, absorb that facts. I don't think people have thought about the stuff like, Trump came closer to winning the full state of New York, which includes New York City, than Harris did in Florida or Texas. And Florida, not that long ago was a state that Democrats could win. So what else can Democrats learn from the current Republican Party that would help them fight harder? Because I got to tell you, like, whenever you talk to Democrats and you just do a screen for Democrats, you're not sorting them at all ideologically between progressives and sort of center left. You kind of get this split between, you got to be like AOC and go fight, and the squad is too progressive and they're dragging the party in the wrong direction. You always sort of keep that tension. But the through line is like, we got to fight harder. Why are we letting them eat our lunch? So what can Democrats do? I always want to write a book for Democrats, it's like, fight like a Republican. But maybe you should write that book and like, you tell me what you think.
- [34:21]
Adam Gentleson
I think Carville might have written a book or something like that.
- [34:23]
Sarah Longwell
Oh, see, everything's been done before. I have no original idea.
- [34:26]
Adam Gentleson
Maybe I'm wrong, but I. I have some memory of that. And I mean, that was part of their brand, right? Was fighting, and I think it was successful. No, I think that's right. I mean, I think what I hear a lot is people on authenticity. You know what I hear in these comments? They want people who are real, who don't seem like they're testing every position. And I think that's right. I think one of the things that does attract people to the left within Democratic circles is that the left does seem to be fighting harder sometimes. And I think that's tricky. And honestly, I think you're seeing it right now. That is part of the appeal there. It's part of what's accounted for this leftward shift within the party.
- [34:58]
Sarah Longwell
I see. I see what you're saying.
- [34:59]
Adam Gentleson
So, like, right now, people are feeling very lost. They're feeling very angry about what's going on in Washington. And the woman on the focus group that you played, you know, she was angry at Leader Jeffries for a sort of sanguine tweet about what was going on. And I think that's a danger for mainstream Democrats is that if they don't look like they are standing up, people are going to sort of gravitate towards folks who look like they're fighting. That's a very difficult line to walk because you want to pick fights in smart ways. I'm reminded of leaders who successfully walked this line. My former boss, Senator Reid, in 2005, 2006, he and then Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sort of joined together and drew a very hard line against Bush and his effort to try to privatize Social Security. And this was sort of how Democrats got back on their feet. Now, on a lot of other issues, Reed and Pelosi let Democrats work with Bush, and part of that cleared the decks to keep the focus on Social Security. But that's a good example of demonstrating a willingness to fight on an issue that is core to Democratic principles. All the people that you played who were talking about what it means to be a Democrats, so many of them cited entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid. Right? So picking a fight that is popular with the American people, that is core to what Democrats believe, drawing a Hard line. And fighting hard on that issue is part of how we, I think, right the ship as a party. But that also means letting a lot of other things go and letting dumb fights go and letting issues where we are out of step with the American people go. And that's the tension between the mainstream and the left that I see. The left wants to fight on everything, and they want to fight on a lot of issues where we are dramatically out of step with the American people. We can't do that. At the same time, people are scared. People are terrified about what's going on right now, and they want to see Democrats showing some backbone. So the way to do that is to unite behind a small set of issues that are extremely meaningful, extremely core to what Democrats believe in, but. But also popular with the American people and fight on that. And that's what we used to do. That was sort of an accepted type of strategy. And it's what we've gotten away from now. It's the everything bagel that Ezra Klein likes to talk about, where we need to fight on everything. It's the Unicause. We have to do everything all at once. And I think that's just a losing strategy because that allows Republicans to pick out the issues where we are out of step with the American people and focus on those. It is our job to be more selective and to focus on the issues where we are in line with the American people. Where Trump is on the wrong side, things like health care premiums that are going to go up because Republicans are not going to extend some of the laws that were passed under Biden, things like cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that Republicans are eyeing in order to pay for tax cuts for rich people. These are issues where we really can fight and we should fight, but we're also going to win, not just in Congress, but with the American people as well.
- [37:47]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Since we're looking forward, we asked these focus groups who the future leaders in the party were that they liked, which is often my favorite, one of my favorite things to ask Democratic voters, or all voters, actually. But let's listen to what they told us.
- [38:05]
Focus Group Participant 4
I like Gavin Newsom, but the one problem that I can see with him, and just going back to things that we were saying earlier with the younger voters and the more leftist voters, they do not like Gavin Newsom.
- [38:18]
Focus Group Participant 6
No, they don't.
- [38:19]
Focus Group Participant 4
And I just feel like that's where the party's just really going to have to come in and say we need to cut ties with these types. We're not Going to cater to this fringe group because they really do not like him. But however, I would have wanted Gavin Newsom to run this last election.
- [38:33]
Focus Group Participant 2
You know, another name out, Josh Shapiro, I'm in Pennsylvania. He too maybe is not a darling of the left, but I mean the one thing against him, and I'm Jewish, is the fact that he's Jewish and that you know, potentially just like being African American is a turn off for some people out and out. They won't vote for a black person or won't vote for a female. There are some people who will not vote for a Jewish person. But. But that aside, I think he has a lot of that middle of the road characteristic. He speaks well. He's been able to operate in a bipartisan fashion within Pennsylvania.
- [39:02]
Focus Group Participant 6
That's why he didn't get chose to be VP When I was looking at him like they're not going to choose him because they're not going to choose anybody who's Jewish, not even for the VP slot.
- [39:13]
Focus Group Participant 1
I love Pete Buttigieg, but I don't know that it's going to be a good presidential candidate. But he's actually, and I'm super excited Gary Peters is vacating his seat. Pete Buttigieg is going to run for it for Senate next year in 26. So. And I'm very excited about that.
- [39:34]
Focus Group Participant 5
I like Buttigieg as well. He's highly qualified. But I mean the reality, the gay thing, they would eat at alive. I don't have communicate friends. I had no problems with that. I would vote for him. But you know, if we wouldn't vote for an African American female, then the next boogeyman, you know. But I think, yeah, Mayor Pete, you know, he agrees, a great candidate, but I don't think the being gay thing would ever surpass that. Gavin, I think he had probably has the best shot if you ask me. Where do they take his odds today?
- [40:06]
Sarah Longwell
So I hear this a lot when I ask this question where people are like, I like this person. But America will never elect a fill in the blank demographic. You know, like not going to elect another woman. They're not going to elect a gay guy. Maybe, maybe. God knows I hear a lot of sexist stuff in the groups. When it was looking like Joe Biden might have to step down. I talked to a lot of black women and the fear that they had about Kamala Harris becoming the nominee, it was like palpable. They were just like, America won't do it and she's going to get savaged. And then I even saw you know, at the DNC recently, right, there was this conversation around Kamala Harris didn't get elected because she was black and because she was a woman. And at some point, I just gotta say, like, are the Democrats, do they have to become the party of straight white men? Is that the only way they can win? Or, like, how are they supposed to navigate this when many of their most dynamic people are Jewish or black or women or whatever? Like, what is the path forward? Are we straight white men from here on out?
- [41:07]
Adam Gentleson
It'd be really tragic if that's the conclusion that. That people drew, because I don't think it's accurate. You know, that conclusion being that we have to only elect straight white men from now on.
- [41:15]
Sarah Longwell
I also don't think it's accurate.
- [41:17]
Adam Gentleson
Yeah. I mean, because, look, yes, we had Secretary Clinton lose, we had Vice President Harris lose, but I would say the reason they lost was not because they were women. It was because they took positions that were out of step with the American people. And so what we should try doing is run a candidate of any gender, race, sexuality, whatever, but they should just take positions that are in step with the American people instead of taking positions that are out of step with the American people. I think that would do wonders, and I think any kind of candidate can win if they do that. I think we're drawing the wrong conclusions because we haven't done the thing that used to be taken for granted as basic politics 101, which was to try to craft a party platform and a series of issue positions that meet the voters where they are and that are popular with the American people. And it's kind of like that saying, we tried nothing and it didn't work. And that's what it's like for us right now, because we just haven't tried the most basic, obvious thing to do in politics, which is to take positions that are in line with the American people. So let's try that and see how that goes would be my recommendation.
- [42:24]
Sarah Longwell
Man, wild. You're pitching wild stuff here. Ok.
- [42:27]
Adam Gentleson
It's revolutionary. I know.
- [42:29]
Sarah Longwell
So here's the thing, though. These voters are not quite with you. They basically do think we need a straight white male. That. That's the problem. Let's listen.
- [42:38]
Focus Group Participant 1
One of the things that is sort of the elephant in the room. I mean, I think a lot of it comes down to people that look like you, Paul and Kevin don't want a black woman running the country. They don't think that she could stand up to Putin, the only group. And white women didn't show up for Kamala Harris either. The only group that showed up was black and brown women.
- [42:59]
Focus Group Participant 4
That's it.
- [43:01]
Focus Group Participant 1
This is terrible, because here you have this man who's a complete felon, and there was not even any dirt on Harris. But we can't show up for her. You know, and. And I hate to say this, but it needs to be a white man. I just know that literally, people didn't vote for Hillary Clinton because she wasn't likable. And, you know, the first thing that people did when Kamala became the candidate was start to, you know, talk about her relationship with the guy who had been separated for 10 years and put all these, like, photoshopped images of her looking like she's going out dressed like a sex pot. Like, we just want to make women be the freaking enemy in this country.
- [43:50]
Focus Group Participant 3
You got to be a straight white guy, and he got his religion. Can't be too on the fringe. He literally has to be a middle of the road, somewhat educated, proven to be someone that they can trust. It can't be somebody who's trying to make moves and trying to make change, because if we come out there with that, no one's going to vote for him.
- [44:12]
Focus Group Participant 4
I saw the debate between Biden and Trump, and my first thought was, why did they let this man go up here? Because this looks terrible. He looked old. He was slower. It was awful. Then from there was the fallout. So when Biden announced he wasn't running, my first reaction was, I was so happy because I was like, finally, we have a chance of winning. But then when I saw it was Kamala, my first thought was, well, shit, we're going to lose now. And I did what I could do, but I just knew. I'm like, this man has won before. He beat a woman before, and now you're going to put up another woman. Which, by the way, while Kamala served, I remember there were so many articles talking about how her staff was quitting, how she was hard to work with, how no one liked her, and that kept coming out. And as a black woman, once you get those details on you, it's hard to shake that off.
- [45:06]
Focus Group Participant 7
We have to pick a white straight guy who hopefully hasn't had too many affairs. And if he did have affairs, he should make sure he's had affairs with women. You know, I mean, like, it's like, if you're performing Shakespeare, but you're performing it in front of a bunch of imbeciles, then they're not going to appreciate the Shakespeare.
- [45:32]
Sarah Longwell
These people were funny.
- [45:33]
Adam Gentleson
Love our voters, man.
- [45:35]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Okay, so I think there's two ways to react to these voters thoughts. So on the one hand, they're willing to give Democrats wide latitude to do what it takes to win. They are, and I really wish politicians would understand this, that these voters want to win. And so they're like, do the stuff that it takes to win. The groups are holding the back, the voters are not. That's one way to think about it. On the other hand, like there's this harmful self fulfilling prophecy for Democrats where they convince themselves they can never run a woman, never run a minority, never run somebody who's gay or I guess Jewish. I don't know what fringe religions are, maybe Mormon. But what do you think? We talked a little bit about the latter, but just in general, what are we supposed to do with these voters?
- [46:20]
Adam Gentleson
It's tough. And I think people are reacting to things they've seen in real life. And that's tragic that that's, you know, that's sort of become the conventional wisdom, you know, but it does remind me a lot of the sort of anti Catholicism that was present before JFK ran. And look, I know he's a white man and you could make similar arguments about President Obama, but again, he's a man. So I don't want to downplay how unique sexism is as a factor here and how difficult it is for women to come off as presidential. I think there's unique challenges that women face in trying to project that image. But I do think it's possible, I would say that, you know, look at Kennedy, I mean, the way John F. Kennedy, not Robert, he knew he was facing enormous anti Catholic sentiment and he ran to Nixon and to Dwight Eisenhower's right on national security. On the top issue of the time, he ran his entire campaign focused on how we had a missile gap, that Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied Commander, wasn't hard enough on national security. And so he understood that to overcome these ingrained biases, you have to tack hard to where the American voters are. And so if I were advising a candidate who is not a straight white man, I would say that places an even greater premium on crafting a profile that is one of standing up to your party, of standing up to the fringes of your party, and of meeting the American people where they are. And I think one of the things I'm looking forward to as long as we continue to have free and fair elections in 2028 is a genuinely open primary. We haven't had one of those in a long time. But I think that's a very exciting prospect for us as a party. But I think if 2020 was a competition about who could lean as far to the left as possible, I would like to see 2028 be a competition for who can stake out the center the most aggressively. And I think that if you do that and you run a smart, politically savvy campaign, it doesn't matter what your race, religion or gender or ethnicity is.
- [48:25]
Sarah Longwell
I guess I would just add to that that I really believe this self fulfilling prophecy is becoming a problem. I think the extent to which you place a high premium on whether or not somebody is black or is a woman or whatever like, and you, it's historic and it's about this. Voters recoil from that. And there's a reason Kamala Harris just abandoned all that, didn't go anywhere near it. And that was the right move. And I think had she not had a political profile that was so progressive in her past and then had so little visibility etc with Joe Biden and was having to dig out of an enormous hole, if she ran exactly as the person that she ran as, but had always been that person, I'm not sure she couldn't have won. Anyway, I'm going to move on because I could sort of dig in on all of this stuff for a long time. So earlier, when we heard one of these photos was open to a celebrity candidate, we decided to throw out a celebrity candidate who we see and we hear come up a lot, especially among elites, as somebody who might run, which is Mark Cuban. Right. He's been sort of visible out there. If you're out talking to people, people are like, man, I don't know, Cuban maybe, right. But he owns a basketball team and he does have this ability to go into any conversation and sit down and talk. And he's the straight white male that, you know, I think people are looking for. So when we asked about that, let's listen to how they reacted.
- [49:44]
Focus Group Participant 1
He would be great. I honestly think he would be. Right. Because he's a white man. You know, he's outspoken. He spoke out against Trump really early on, like before he was elected the first time, you know, so. Yeah. And then people would probably get behind the whole billionaire, whatever thing.
- [50:07]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, he would.
- [50:08]
Focus Group Participant 1
I would definitely get behind that in.
- [50:10]
Focus Group Participant 2
The vein of somebody that is probably not as qualified. I think you could say that about Mark Cuban as a lot of other people, but has the potential to draw people in because of that celebrity status to get to what you were talking about. I think looking in that Direction could be a good thing if you find the right person. I don't know that Cuban. You know, who else might be out there that fits the bill for that? But basically, yeah, I'm willing to trade off some qualifications for somebody that can win and then have good people around them to help push forward the positions that we all are sort of in agreement on.
- [50:42]
Focus Group Participant 4
I also like how he has really stepped behind affordable medication and made it affordable to people. I follow Mark Cuban on Twitter slash X and I really like the conversations that he has. I do like that he stands behind his convictions. After Trump won, there were a bunch of people being very nasty to him about just him backing Kamala, but he didn't back down and he said, I thought she was the better candidate. I also like that he stands up to these billionaire bullies such as Elon. It's very scary how powerful Elon has gotten within the past year. To me, that's one of the most scariest things about Trump. And I feel like at this point it may be just a fight, fire against fire. And to challenge Elon, you would need another billionaire.
- [51:28]
Focus Group Participant 3
I like Mark Cuban and I like that he's a regular guy. Even though he's so rich, he still held on to his regular guy. And I think that that is kind of what Obama brought us. I'm a regular guy still. He kind of had that, that feel about him. So people think that even though Mark Cuban is a billionaire, he still has that regular guy charisma, I guess. So he, he does have that going for him. But the whole notion that we got to come up with our own reality star, the anti Trumper, but still on that same level, again, it lessens the power or the power of the office. It's almost like the queen and the crown. You know what I'm saying? Like, she's the queen, but the crown is the office, our presidency. We need somebody in there that has like a certain authority. We can be, like, feel our security, our safety and security, that our lives are in strong hands. And I'm sorry, but I've seen Mark Cuban run across the basketball court too many times. I just, I, I don't, I don't take him seriously in that, in that place.
- [52:45]
Focus Group Participant 6
Well, Cuban is okay, but I don't think he is that big of a superstar to do it. I mean, the person who would be, if you're looking for that, it's going to be somebody out of left field that isn't even on the playing board yet, because we can't, we can't bank on qualifications.
- [53:07]
Adam Gentleson
I was kind of banking on and actually kind of predicting that people by the end of Trump's term are probably going to be so sick of a reality that they're going to probably want to try to get back to the norms.
- [53:24]
Sarah Longwell
So I'm going to take the opposite of the guy there at the end. I mean, I do think potentially at the end of the Trump chaos, they might be like, yes, give me somebody normal. But I'm not sure by normal they mean give me Joe, governor of the Democratic Party. I don't even know about Cuban, although I'll take your thoughts on him specifically, but just in the general sense of somebody outside of the traditional. I was a congressman and then a senator, then a governor, and now I'm going to run for president.
- [53:55]
Adam Gentleson
Yeah, I have a feeling that that's going to be where our next nominee comes from as a party. And I have no dog in this fight whatsoever. I think we've got an incredibly talented Ben bunch of next generation elected officials. And as I was saying before, I'm already excited for the 2028 primary because I want to see our talent out on the field and, you know, see what everybody can do. But I do think that if you're a politician right now, you have sort of come up and probably learned a lot of bad habits already and maybe already have been forced to take some issue positions that are gonna hurt you down the stretch. And so one big advantage of having somebody come from outside of politics would be that they're a relatively clean slate. There's obviously all sorts of other things that come along with that. Their business record, their personal lives probably haven't been put under the same kind of scrutiny as they will and as they would have if they run a campaign. But I'm not sure how much that stuff matters anymore. And I also don't think you should reverse engineer and say, okay, well, they have billionaires on their side, and so therefore we need our own. But I, I do think it's worth thinking about why people like billionaires. And I think this is something that the left gets very wrong, which is that working class people think billionaires are cool.
- [55:09]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, they do.
- [55:10]
Adam Gentleson
They're successful, they're winners. They probably have a lot of qualities that people like to see in themselves or aspire to have. They're fun. Like, who do we think watches Shark Tank? Who goes to Mavs games? There's complicated polling on sort of people's attitudes towards concentrated corporate power and whether they see that as impending on their freedom. But Even then it's like, okay, they also see government is impinging on their freedom. So it's. This is something the left really is off the mark on where they think that people are out there with this like, roiling desire to be anti corporate and anti billionaire. And so, you know, in Cuban's favor, you know, he has been extremely politically savvy. And as one of the focus group participants mentioned focusing on health care, which is one of, we talk about Democrats sort of perennial strengths, Medicare, Social Security. Well, health care is right there in the core of what Democrats tend to be successful on. We've lost a lot of ground. It's one of the most shocking things of the last few years is to see our advantage, even on an issue like health care get eroded. But we can win that back. And Cuban has been very smart to seize on that as an issue. He's been very smart to not advocate for a sort of government only solution like Medicare for all, but sort of heterodox ways of bringing down prices that include the private sector and take markets seriously. So he's shown a lot of ability to know how this process, process works and know what succeeds.
- [56:28]
Sarah Longwell
So I'm also nominally pro Cuban slash Cuban type. And I didn't used to be because the woman in there that was like, you know, you want them to be somebody serious is basically what she's saying. Like, I too would like it, people who are politicians to have done something, something extraordinary in service to the country, John McCain type, you know, they served in some way and then, then they built a legislative record and they learned the ins and outs of government and they like would know how to deal with other world leaders. But you know what? I also live in the world of now. And the world of now, is that the way that Democrats, I completely agree with you think class warfare is the solution is not right anymore. Like our generation grew up on cribs, but now it is just like there are billionaires everywhere that they are seeing and what they want is both, both access to their lives. And then the idea, the wish, the wish that I could be like that too. Tell me how you did it. I cannot tell you how much of Trump and Elon stuff in the manosphere is around influencers. They have built an economic model for themselves around telling other men like, here's how you get rich. And like, look, this is how these guys did it. I mean, people are like, why would black men like Donald Trump, like when Trump was like, well, black people are going to vote for me because they know what it's like to get targeted by the cops and things like that. But like what I hear from young black men, and actually you do hear a little bit of that, like Donald Trump, like the cops are after him for stuff he didn't do. But like, mostly what I hear is a real entrepreneurial sense. Like, man, I want to be rich and I want to figure out how to do business like this. And that's exciting to me. I think you can go after unelected MAGA billionaires taking over the government. You want to do that, fine. But like the idea of being reflexively sort of anti rich person, you don't realize how voters actually want to engage with these people, because they do. And then the other thing I'll say is when the woman was like, man, I don't know. I don't know if he's a big enough star or whatever. I don't know. All of you have heard of him because let me tell you, I go into a focus group and be like, so what's everybody think of Jared Polis? Be like, I have no idea who that is. You know, what does everybody think of? Name your Democratic star. And they're all like, I've never heard of that person. But they've all heard of Mark Cuban. That gets you so far. You know, I know that there have been scuffles, like maybe he spit on somebody at a basketball game or there's been fights or things like that. Let me tell you what, guys, that is not going to hurt him in the modern political environment if he got in a fight with a fan who was being a jerk. Everybody's going to be like, yeah, you get that guy, that guy's being a jerk.
- [59:00]
Adam Gentleson
Yep.
- [59:01]
Sarah Longwell
Like, that's the world we live in now.
- [59:02]
Adam Gentleson
Yeah, absolutely. And that goes to another point, which is that someone like him is comfortable on media, on any kind of media, on any kind of camera, comfortable on social media, comfortable being caught getting in a fight. Two things are invaluable in politics. One is name id, and, and you know, if you don't have it, you have to spend millions and millions of dollars to get it. And that's a huge drain. But the other is the ability to generate, again, what we call earned media, but is really just press, like the ability to generate viral clips, clips that show you being charismatic, charming, empathetic. You know, those sorts of things unscripted are worth their weight in gold many times over. And someone like Cuban has that comfort. It's very hard to teach. I think it was one of the Things that hampered Harris was she did not have that natural comfort in that sort of unscripted media environment. But you know, whoever is our next nominee has to be somebody who is comfortable flooding the zone, going everywhere, talking to anybody and not needing to be prepped for hours and hours before they do it. And I'm not saying that's specific to Harris. I think that is a sort of, believe me, having prepped many, many politicians over the course of my career, this is something that has become part of professional democratic culture is the need to do an hour and a half murder board of going over every topic under the sun and refining your answers before you do like a 15 minute sit down interview with a conventional news outlet. And we just can't continue to operate that way. So having somebody who is comfortable being themselves, being authentic on any kind of media platform is enormously valuable. And I think our candidate has to have that quality or else we're just not going to be able to compete in this 21st century environment.
- [60:38]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Well, I'm not going to officially endorse the idea of a celebrity candidate right now, but I am going to say it is time to throw out the old playbook guys, because we are in a whole new world.
- [60:49]
Adam Gentleson
Absolutely.
- [60:50]
Sarah Longwell
Adam Jentelson, this was super fun. I'm really glad you came on. Thanks for joining us.
- [60:55]
Adam Gentleson
It was really fun. Sarah, thanks for having me on.
- [60:57]
Sarah Longwell
Okay. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the focus group podcast. Remember to rate review us on Apple Podcast, subscribe to The Bulwark on YouTube and become a Bulwark plus member at TheBull Work.com we will see you next week. Bye. SA.